MEN WITHOUT WOMEN
A friend of David’s owned only one glass. In the mornings he would drink milk with it. In the evenings he would drink beer with it. He held that the beer washed out the milk and then, in turn, the milk washed out the beer, so that he never needed to wash the glass. In the end he got quite sick.
MR. SQUIGGLE AND FRIENDS
Dir. Virginia Lumsden Perf. Norman Hetherington. Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1959-1999. Television.
Down near the bottom of my resume, it reads:
“November 1979: Contributing television graphic artist, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)” Continue reading
ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR
Adobe Systems (CS11, October 2003)
I knitted this space fish together in Adobe Illustrator using Illustrator’s punk and bloat functions, which replace the segments between the anchor points with curves: Continue reading
CREATING CAPABILITIES: THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT APPROACH
Martha C. Nussbaum (Belknap Harvard, 2011) ISBN: 9780674050549
I think I may have fallen in love with Martha C. Nussbaum. Law professor, ethicist, feminist, philosopher, confident teacher and elegant writer, she is a source of inspiration, even if I don’t subscribe wholeheartedly to her political biases. Creating Capabilities is but one of her numerous contributions to discourse on human rights and starts with a simple proposition: living beings are more important than money. GDP, which measures the economic wellbeing of a country in purely monetary form, is an at best unhelpful measure of any given nation’s actual prosperity. In its place, Nussbaum and other proponents, such as the originator of the school, Amartya Sen, nominate the “capabilities approach” to measuring human (and animal) development, suggesting several different benchmarks that should first be aimed for and then improved upon by the world’s nations. Creating Capabilities forms something of a manifesto for this approach.
BENJI
We spent the month after our after our refrigerator entered Valhalla eating canned goods and Saltines. When they delivered the new refrigerator at last, Ken and Benji helped us shuffle it into the apartment. It looked like the fridge IKEA would sell you: a white, enamelled box with no curves or decoration.
Hilary and I dashed out to the supermarket. We placed Ken in charge of the fridge. When we left, its unrelieved cleanliness made it look like a vector model with the textures turned off. By the time we got back forty minutes later, Benji had written, “Phear My Elite Skillz” across the front of it in indelible marker. We found them trying to scrub it off with methylated spirits.
FAIRIES
This shows the trails of sparkles shed by four moving fairies. The first and third fairies shed bluish green sparkles; the second and fourth buff-coloured ones. Continue reading
KILLING HOPE
Blum, William (Common Courage Press, updated edition October 2008, ISBN 978-1567512526)
In 2009, President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” [1]
Many thought the prize undeserved – on the grounds that Obama appeared too much the enemy of peace. Had he won it, they asked, for prosecuting a war in Afghanistan? Or instead for his proposal to expand the United States military? Or for his plan to send “at least” two additional American combat brigades to Afghanistan? Continue reading
THE FILING CABINET OF DOOM
Swan, Madeleine (Burning Bulb Publishing, July 2013, ISBN 9780692245200)
I got the Murder Cabinet at Vincent Raux Second-hand Furniture on Clayton Road. Inside the shop it looked like any other sheet metal filing cabinet. It had four working drawers, less rust than the Carpentaria, and smelled no worse than the shop itself. They kept it against a wall. That should’ve tipped me off. I didn’t behold the stain until I got it home.
A wide, blotchy stain streaked down the back. Thickest and blackest at the bottom, it thinned into a carmine cracklature at the top. As Colin expressed it, you could never quite convince yourself you looked at something other than blood. From another room you could laugh that your imagination must’ve got the better of you, that next time when you looked, you would just see brown paint. But when you got there, you couldn’t shake the impression that you saw blood. Continue reading
NEW CYCLIST HANDBOOK
Hewitt, Ben (editor; Rodale Books, November 2005, ISBN 9781594863004)
Winter found me cycling down a service road on the Princes Highway, in the calm of the middle of the night, when two men leapt out of their car and chased after me on foot.
“Oi!” yelled one, “Oi! Stop you bastard!” Continue reading
HALF THE SKY: TURNING OPPRESSION INTO OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN WORLDWIDE
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Vintage Books, 2009) ISBN: 978-307-38709-7 
So a couple months ago, giddy with having my first full-time job, but already feeling intellectually understimulated from the lack of university work to avoid doing, I stumbled into that great bookshop on Bourke Street. Near Parliament House with the very aesthetic black and white sign, and crammed full of various works in a style reminiscent of a secondhand bookshop, but where everything is quite new. Difficult to navigate, but a joy to lose yourself in. In my highly suggestible state, one of an armful of books I took home with me was Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky. I hesitated over it for some time, worrying that the book might have a white saviour complex and would thus turn out to be a disappointment[*]. In the end, though, I decided it was easy to read and so if I hated it, it would at least be quickly dealt with.
Half the Sky is what will hopefully be a portrait of humanity at the beginning of the 21st century. Of the world’s people, women are still overwhelmingly more likely to be under-educated, under- or completely unpaid for their work, and face discrimination on every front. In many parts of the world, girls are less likely to be born in the first place[†], and from the moment of their birth are provided less nutrition and less healthcare than boys.
THE SONG OF ROLAND
Sayers, Dorothy L. (translator; Penguin, reprint December 1957, ISBN 978014044075)
On the phone, she‘d told me that she’d driven the car on to a raised section of the concrete, where she’d had to leave it. It took the security guard and me half an hour to find it. I’d enlisted his help at the parking garage near the haematology building. I thought of him as the squire. Without his help, I’d never have found it.
“Cooey!” he yelled out. Continue reading
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
Orwell, George (Signet Classic, January 1961, ISBN 9780451524935)
I receive a letter from Centrelink explaining that when I lodge next fortnight’s form I need to “negotiate a new Activity Agreement”.
When I go in that fortnight, they tell me again that we need to negotiate a new Activity Agreement. Continue reading