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Showing posts from September, 2007

My Keyboard Is Sticky: One Blogger's Guide To The Confessional Memoir

The thought has crossed my mind lately that I should write a confessional memoir. Confessional memoirs are taking over the world. Visit the Biography section of any generalist bookstore, and as many as half of the titles on the shelves will be confessional memoirs. Never having been one to blindly follow trends, I realise that in order to get ahead of things, I should have published my memoir ten years ago; the problem with this being that ten years ago, most of the juicy stuff I'd want to reveal to the public to boost sales reveal my inspiring journey to readers, hadn't happened yet. Nonetheless, if I do decide to bare my venal soul to the reading public, I know exactly how I need to do it. These are the four elements you need to turn your confessional memoir into this year's Must Read Book: 1. An Intriguing Title You need to grab the audience's attention as they stroll through the bookstore, so that they feel a warm inner glow that if they choose your volume, it

Can Anyone Spell Beat Up?

A woman in the ACT is suing her doctor after she gave birth to twins, following him incorrectly impanting her with two embryos during IVF treatment when she specifically said she only wanted to have one child. Oh yes, and the woman in question happens to have a female partner. Here's the headline from ABC News : Mother Sues Doctor Over Twin Birth And from NewsCorp's Finest, Sydney's Daily Terrorgraph : Landmark Lesbian Twin Suit (Be sure to check out the enlightened "reader" comments!) I don't know why the Tele doesn't just change it's name to FoxNews Sydney and be done with it.

As If Monday Mornings Weren't Bad Enough

Watching the Liberals crash and burn is not bringing me the malicious glee you may imagine. I need to somehow become less compassionate - right now, I can't help feeling sorry for them. John Howard is counting on this kind of sympathy, hoping people will be kind enough to re-elect his government. Well, Australians may well feel sorry for them, but from here it seems they'll act on this by putting the Liberals out of their misery. Apparently, the Australian Navy is using Our Tax Dollars - these things must always be presented in such terms - to pay for breast implants for female sailors. What is going on here? When I was in the Army, I was never offered plastic surgery (although my commanding officer did once say he wanted to rearrange my face). O.J., O.J., O.J. What could I possibly add to this ? I admit to having judged Britney harshly in the past. So, I must thank this guy for completely turning me around on her. I promise to count my blessings to be living in the same Un

"Life" Under APEC

It's amazing how quickly you get used to all this nonsense - helicopters buzzing around the office blocks, for instance. Apparently there's some new terrorist threat from middle management. I mean, what the hell do the security services think we're doing up there - preparing pipe bombs along with status reports? (How many of the "security experts" who plan these things have ever had real jobs?) Apart from "The Wall" though, the most obvious sign that there's something going on is that there are police everywhere . There's 1500 police on patrol for APEC, and most of them seem to be around the couple of blocks near my office. Right now, they're just standing around in groups of four and five, looking pretty bored. I can't help but wonder if any of them secretly want something to go wrong, just so they'll have something to do - as well as the possibility of appearing as a hero on international television. I guess we'll have to wa