A SECURITY GUARD’S BOOK OF AWESOME NOTES, LISTS & IDEAS: FEATURING BRAIN TRAINING EXERCISES
Clarity Media (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, March 2015, ISBN 9781508827979)
I must’ve caught the security guard during his first few weeks on the job. He seemed never to have had trouble from anyone who refused to let him search their bag before. At first he just asked why I’d refused.
“Because,” I said, “it feels uncivilised for private citizens to search each other.” Continue reading
PROPRIOCEPTIVE NEUROMUSCULAR FACILITATION
Voss, Dorothy (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, January 1985, ISBN 9780061425950)
When he closes his eyes, Damien Moore apprehends a cavity behind the blackness. It makes one think of a savage and marvellous god. Behind the space behind the darkness lives Damien Moore.
Damien even receives a sense of this unfathomable region’s extent. It feels wide enough to hold a novel, but not a phonebook. Continue reading
BRAZILIAN CLOWN’S POLL WIN THREATENED BY ILLITERACY CLAIM
Associated Press (October 2006)
By subjecting Francisco Oliveira to a literacy exam, Brazil’s National Congress only enriched the metaphor. Then, instead of a clown in congress, they had a semiliterate clown in congress[1]. For a medley of ads from Oliveira’s electoral campaign, go to:
Crescendo to an error
A certain private parking area near my brother‘s apartment includes fold-up pedestals that the spaces’ owners can upraise to defend them from other motorists. Each pedestal folds up into the middle of its parking space, where you lock it into place with a key. The distance between pedestals in adjacent spaces then becomes just one pedestal diameter less than the width of the space. Now instead of just blocking your space, the interloping vehicle blocks two spaces.
HIVE
Yianni, John (Gen42 Games, 2001)
This shows a set of pieces with cartoon artwork for the board game Hive. To turn them into a real set, I recommend sticking them to hexagonal bathroom tiles. Each set should contain three ants, three grasshoppers, one queen bee, two beetles and two spiders (making twenty two pieces in total). Continue reading
CASK WINE UNDER FIRE AS GOVERNMENT PONDERS TAX HIKE
Hawthorne, Mike (The Sydney Morning Herald, April 2015)
I swing into the bottle shop with just enough fuel left to reach the petrol station on the corner. They’ve invited me to dinner twenty kilometres away in Southbank. By emptying my change jar, I’ve collected together seven dollars and fifty cents to divide between petrol and the bottle of wine I’ve said I’ll bring. Every cent I save on the wine improves the car‘s odds of getting there.
I locate a five-dollar bottle of rosé and then start foraging for something even cheaper to undercut it. Continue reading
DO NOT OPEN: THE DISCARDED REFRIGERATORS OF POST-KATRINA NEW ORLEANS
Laborde, Katheryn Krotzer (McFarland, August 2010, ISBN 9780786437894)
Colin knew the igloo would cause trouble. I’d erected it in our freezer from rings of ice-cubes I shaved so they’d lean in to make a dome. A tiny ice Eskimo kept watch near the door until, one day, Colin snapped it off to put into a drink. With its dying breath, the Eskimo vowed revenge. It placed a curse on the freezer.
After Colin moved to California to marry a woman he met on the internet, Hilary insisted we clear out the freezer so we could store food there. A hairdryer had no effect, so I started chipping out the igloo with a butter knife and mallet. Continue reading
TAKEN FOR A RIDE
Royce Millar and Clay Lucas (The Age, January 2011)
Somewhere between Caulfield and Clayton a drunk whom the whole train watched brought his fist, without warning, down on top of the skull of a teenager sitting beside him. While the kid grabbed his head, the drunk turned towards the dumbfounded gentleman next to him and giggled that no other way existed to deal with an Asian.
At the blow, I stood at the other end of the carriage. It took me at least five seconds to barge in, plenty long enough for any of the onlookers to collect their wits and confront him. But no one did. 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.
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
DEAR LEADER
Jang Jin-Sung (trans. Shirley Lee; Rider, 2014) ISBN: 9781846044212 
Jang Jin-Sung’s* memoir of his time in and flight from North Korea is a valuable and urgent glimpse into the secret state around the turn of the millenium. It shines a light on the plight of North Koreans within North Korea, and as refugees living under the threat of forced repatriation in China. Most interestingly, in my opinion, it provides a glimpse into the daily lives of North Koreans through the eyes of a man who was a true loyalist to the Supreme Leader or “General”, Kim Jong-il.
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