December 2007
75 posts
2 tags
“Do you know it took Marie Antoinette 5 years to consumate her wedding?...”
– Emily
I love it when people agree with me →
A new study says people born between 1965 and 1985 — and since when did 22-year-olds qualify for Gen X? whatevs — have “significantly fewer sexual partners and are less likely to be unfaithful than those who came before and after them.” - also via Jezebel. Another one for the thesis proposal. The comments are great too. Such as this one: I’m optimistic. I’m...
Public Service Announcement: Don't Drink and Diet →
Excellent advice from Jezebel. Pretty much every time I’ve had a messy night out, it’s been due to not eating that day as much (if not more) than the amount I had to drink.
Choice may be sacred, but it's not always... →
I filled the shoes of regular Saturday columnist Adele Horin in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald.
Vaguely related to an earlier post today
Blair Waldorf of Gossip Girl might just be the most intriguing and oddly sympathetic character I’ve seen on TV in a long time. I adore her. More on this later (perhaps).
Via anthonydever
I thought Googling people was revealing but it’s got nothing to the openness of Myspace where I just found out two or three people I was at school with are now in porn. Seems they are just publishers and photographers but still not a bad bombshell for my first few days on here. — anthonydever It’s true. I used to google people if I wanted to get a sense of what they were about —...
“When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close...”
– Andy Warhol, via annamarie Flippant, yet chilling.
Facebook as a town square
In the real world, I am lucky if I have 10 people I can call true “friends”. With the rest qualifying as either an acquaintance, colleague or a friend of friend. So how is it, when it comes to myspace, i have 185 people who hold the title of friends? This isn’t “networking” people, this is called collectworking. And in a lot cases, you can call it flat-out stalking....
One of my articles made the NewMatilda.com top 10 most viewed stories this year. Awesome.
How to live a fabulous life
This article was first published in the New York Times last month, and republished in the Sydney Morning Herald’s (or Herlad, as I like to call it) Spectrum supplement yesterday. As a perrenial entertainer, I found it quite, erm, entertaining. My favourite bits: One can liven up a guest list as Crawford did, by mixing corporation presidents with a hairdresser, a physics professor, a...
tourist?
old woman: “I wouldn’t bring a camera into the city. you don’t take a camera around in the city you live in. that’s what tourists do.” old man: “he must be a tourist then.” — erockappel Except that, I suppose, that is no longer the case.
“Are some of us actually more complicated than others? I want to say...”
– Dylan, in the latest episode of Quarterlife.
Christmas is a secular holiday
I’m sick of religious media commentators being up in arms about the perceived secularization of Christmas. I agree that materialism is out of control in our culture, but humans all over the world have been celebrating the winter solstice time since long before Jesus. Roland Martin recently said, “we should continue to remember that Jesus is the reason for the season.” Well,...
“The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you...”
– Chuck Palahniuk via jamie Reminds me of Andy Warhol’s “the most exciting thing is not doing it.”
“My greatest achievement was just that I got to be Prime Minister and no one else...”
– An Interview with John Miasma Howard, by Adrian Glamorgan
Eating cake in no way makes me feel good about myself. It makes me feel sick, bloated and crap. Salad on the other hand makes me feel great about myself. It’s light, tasty and pretty damn virtuous. So why bother eating cake and sweets if it only gives me two seconds worth of pleasure when i can have a whole dayful eating vegetables? Great. So it’s settled then. I refuse to feel guilty...
If You Want Something, Say Something: One of the...
I just got a commission to write a piece for a major UK magazine - and while they gave me an offer that I thought was fairly normal, it didn’t blow me away. That said, my first inclination was to accept it - a huge mistake. I caught myself, and volleyed back with a higher fee. They not only said yes, but then gave me even more (I can’t explain that part, but hurray!). Another...
"Indie porn" →
— via jakoblodwick These photos veer towards the erotic rather than the crass, but still — why so many visible ribs?
2 tags
Fame by association →
— via alexklaff Cool. I spoke on a panel with #5 in August.
“I don’t see the end of a 20-year relationship that has run its course as a...”
– Catherine Deveny in today’s SMH. I agree. It always strikes me as bizarre when people say that certain types of relationships “never work”, because if we define “not working” as “ending at some point”, doesn’t that make pretty much every relationship...
Yes dear, eat your sticks and dirt before they get...
- via Crikey.
But you know what? I think that the celebrities are going to — once they figure out that they can blog, that they can post videos — if Britney Spears posted a video right now on YouTube, if she chose to do that and said, you know what? I’m sick of all of the crap that I’ve been getting, everyone in America would watch that. And that’s powerful. — juliaallison...
These would make awesome gifts →
On labels
I wonder if “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” exist primarily to serve outsiders’ need to have a complete gossip-understanding of your life. OLD: Kevin: “So what’s up, Dan? Are you still dating Katie?” Dan: “Well, she’s sort my girlfriend, I mean, we’re in an open relationship… we’re sort of lovers, kind of date-friends, I...
It's a radical idea...
But I’m thinking I might go to New York twice next year. Twice in the space of two weeks, actually. First, for a week of quasi-“work” (undertaking my favourite activity - meeting the cool and interesting residents of a city), with possible day trips to DC and/or Boston, then down to SXSW for a week, then back up to New York again to hang out there with the delightful Monica for a...
Strange indeed
The number of people reading my Tumblr doubled today and I’ve no idea how they found me.
Striking writers in talks to launch Web start-ups →
via anthonydever. This is awesome news, which could potentially catalyse a real revolution in how we consume our entertainment. At present, television’s main advantage over the net is that it’s where the writing talent is - this could change that. It also presents a potentially practical way that screen writers, who work best in groups, could manifest what Jakob Lodwick dubbed...
It's good to be... Judith Brett
And so in March I rang Chris Feik and suggested that I write the December Quarterly Essay… - Judith Brett, on page 3 of the December Quarterly Essay.
“Susan Shirk, of the University of California at San Diego, recently published a...”
– James Fallows in the 150th anniversary issue of the Atlantic Monthly. I want to spend at least a couple of weeks in China next year, to get a visceral sense of the socio-political changes happening there, and this quote has stuck around in my head.
“They talk about it all the time, but they never do anything about it!”
– My cousin Max, 10, on global warming. This was after i asked him if he wanted me to read the articles on global warming in the newspaper to him today. - via jessicalouise. Out of the mouths of babes…
3 tags
Why being pretty doesn't make you special, part...
Sometimes I think that much of what makes a woman “beautiful” is self-identification as such.
As I wrote a couple of years ago for Lip magazine, there are a lot of beautiful girls out there, if our standards for “beauty” are simply “looks nice with the right grooming.” We’re talking, what, 70% of the female population here? (NB: The aforementioned figure...
1 tag
Instincts
If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s the importance of taking heed of my instincts. Every time I’ve followed them, things have turned out great; each time I haven’t followed them… well, the outcomes have been not so great.
It's not cool to like fun things?
A reader of Julia Allison’s tumblr wrote, in response to this post: People don’t think it’s “cool” to like things like costume parties or the color pink or things like that because they are EASY to like. i came to this realization when i had a boyfriend who liked really indie and not very popular music. i tried listening to it and hated it. but why is it cool to...
How to say sorry and heal the wounds
AN APOLOGY to the stolen generation of indigenous people must contain the word “sorry”… Wow. No kidding. From today’s SMH.
“Why do guys who date really really lame girls purely for superficial reasons get...”
– via Jezebel. Oh, indeed!
Turnbull seeking staff via Facebook →
Posted this to the PollieGraph today.
The Internet Sucks: Why Is There No Good Gossip... →
— via jakoblodwick But then there’s also the fact that “second hand information, information embargoes, secret sources, tips, etc.” have never been as fundamental to the “gossip industry” as publicists, managers, deliberate leaks, strategic appearances, and press releases. And by controlling the dissemination of information about themselves 100%, Jakob and Julia...
3 tags
From "Bloody Howard" to "Good lord, Ruddikens!"
Rachel: Good lord, Ruddikens! Redacted 1: That’s a change. It used to be “bloody Howard”, now it’s “Good lord, Ruddikens!” Redacted 2: Or “Good Heavens, Kevin!”
In response to this.
