B(if)tek: Big in Hungary? Happy Chinese New Year! On 23 January, the world ascends into the mystical Year of the Dragon. According to a Chinese astrology site I selected after throwing digital yarrow stalks into the air several times: “A dragon is a legendary creature. All legendary stories about Chinese[…]
Read More »Nicole Skeltys
Composing cool tunes for warm people
From the blog
I had this fantasy as I dozed off last night: Episode title: Gas bagging Scene: The Emergency Department of All Saints Hospital, New York (fictional setting of Nurse Jackie). The usual crew are hanging around the nurses station. Zoey (mustering courage): Umm. Jackie? How come we’re a major metropolitan hospital[…]
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The Wind in the Suburbs In Thornbury, an inner suburb of Melbourne which is more suburb than inner, there is a little two bedroom flat, and in that flat, there dwell two women and two dogs. Its winter in Australia, a place the rest of the world chuckles at because[…]
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As we start to jet down the runway of a new year, I feel the need to press my nose against the economy class window and fix the past year in my stare as it starts to roll away. Although I know 2010 can’t see me anymore, I nevertheless find[…]
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British Chums In October, my former band mate and fellow life soloist Lucy alerted me to the existence of an on-line dating site that had the allure of an inbuilt screen against right wing loony romeos. This site hung off a highly respected and internationally distributed left-leaning paper based in[…]
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America votes “They accuse us of discrimination. Of being against the poor, of being racist. But I say the real problem is ‘soft’ discrimination. Giving welfare, hand-outs to the poor. That’s soft discrimination!” Virginian Christian radio announcer and GOP supporter, Nov 2. My car radio broadcast that comment, as well[…]
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Science fiction My Brisbane school mates and I spent our tweenage years crimping our hair, slathering on make-up and trying to pass for drinking age to get into outer suburban discos. At around the same time, Eric Zala and his friends were spending their Mississippi tweenage years making a blockbuster[…]
Read More »You’ve never seen anything like it The agent at the booth to the right of me was doing brisk business. Behind him was a plastic banner displaying a photo montage of musicians heavily jowled, paunched, but still throwing their silver hair around under purple stage lights: Eric Burdon and The[…]
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LA Confidential My feel-good at being in the empty row with extra leg-room evaporated like an inhaled mary-jane cigarillo. The doe-eyed dame with the bub was swaying excited-like towards the seat one over from mine. “You got kids”? she asked. This without any invitation to talk from my eyes or[…]
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I Feel Almost Normal The last few weeks I have used this blog not to chronicle my American adventures as usual, but to interview people involved in aspects of Australian cultural life I find inspirational. This is because my quick dash back to Australia in December turned into a four[…]
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