Tag Archives: motor vehicles

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Earlier Work [pt.2]

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THE FRANTIC AND EXHAUSTING LIFE OF A PARLIAMENTARY MEDIA ADVISER colinposter

Jacobs, Colin (7 August 2014; Crikey.com.au)

I bundle out of the train in short-pants and find a phone box to call Colin. I’ve started explaining where to meet me when Colin screams and I hear the receiver clatter against the tabletop.

When he comes back on a few minutes later, Colin explains that from his kitchen window, he saw his car start to roll back down the slope out of his garage. He ran out of his house and slapsticked along beside it trying to get the key into the lock as it picked up speed, rolled down the slope and through the neighbour’s fence in front of an audience of staring children. Continue reading

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Tim

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MAD MAX 2mmtwo

Dir. George Miller Perf. Mel Gibson and Bruce Spence. Kennedy Miller Entertainment 1981 Film

Tim reminds you of The Humungus from Mad Max 2. Of a barbarian born in the last days who hurtles through life in a dune buggy wearing a mixture of bondage gear and sports padding. Of a man who has hooked a public address system up to his dune buggy so he can proclaim himself to the people of the refinery. Continue reading

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Flighnay

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REMAINS TO BE SEEN: TRACING JOE HILL’S ASHES IN NEW ZEALANDrema

Davidson, Jared (Rebel, 2011. ISBN 9780473189273)

In a bum one sees the mystery of how he got there. Seasick Steve ran away from home. Joe Hill fell into the Great Depression. Ours came from a tatterdemalion public library on Cooke Street, where he’d spent the morning chroming petrol from a lemonade bottle. Whomever they’d sent to pick him up hadn’t arrived, so we offered him a lift home in Colin‘s Subaru.

The bum lived in a shelter on a street he pronounced, “flighnay!” Continue reading

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Clearwater Primeval

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A Clockwork Orange
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Burgess, Anthony (William Heinemann: UK, ISBN 0434098000)

 

The Monash Transfer and Recycling Station on Ferntree Gully Road gives you the best chance you’ll ever get to tolchock your property without bothering your conscience.

After paying their veck on the way in, you back your automobile up to the edge of a concrete pit three-feet deep. For as long as you want, they let you throw your stuff down there, watching it fly apart as it hits the ground. Boxes tear apart and CDs fly out through the holes. Electric kettles bounce like skipping stones, trailing their electrical cords. You pitch your microwave up into the air as hard as you can, grunting. For one crystalline moment it hangs in the air, rotating with the door open, before it explodes against the concrete. Continue reading

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Arrakis [pt.2]

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dune

DUNE

Herbert, Frank (New English Library, ISBN 978-0450011849)

For Sophie, physical necessity, by itself, didn’t fix the moment when the future must arrive. Time marched rubato, stretching and bending to the individual rhythms of the players. As long as you stuck to the spirit of the arrangement, Time would turn a blind eye to a few extra minutes here or there.

To those with a pragmatic turn of mind, the view must’ve seemed an unmitigated failure. You found Sophie forever running late, out of petrol and waiting on her next paycheque to make the phone work again. Repossession agents chivvied her in flocks while friends she’d failed to meet crammed her answering machine with irate messages. Continue reading

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Decades Of The 20th Century

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decades_of_the_20th_century

DECADES OF THE 20th CENTURY

Yapp, Nick (c. 1986 onwards) several volumes inc. ISBN 3829005229

Getty Images publish a remarkable series of photobooks called Decades of the 20th Century. Besides the usual shots of counterrevolutionaries storming Cuban beaches, the Beatles and parading Nazis, we see Castro batting a baseball out of the ballpark and Emperor Hirohito meeting Mickey Mouse. Continue reading

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