You have to admire an author who, despite his death before the advent of the WWW, has an email address - which also responds. For those seriously interested in Australian literature, organisers from the universities of NSW, and Western Sydney, are facilitating Patrick White Remembered in May this year. More information from contacting patrickwhite@uws.edu.au . Really.
Dr Tim Semple Convenor 27th ASM of the Australian Pain Society, cheerily invites YOU to attend the 27th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian Pain Society… an exciting and challenging program in one of Australia’s top purpose-built conference venues, the Adelaide Convention Centre, right in the heart of Adelaide’s cultural precinct and overlooking the River Torrens.
Which all sounds really rather nice, doesn’t it? But let me be the first - of what I’m sure will be many - to stand up, look down at my feet, and mumble in embarrassment that I didn’t know that there even WAS an Australian Pain Society.
However, I do know a number of people that are complete pains, so I’m guessing that they’re already members of the Society. Maybe in the interests of information dissemination, I should forward them the contact details. But then again, maybe it’s easier to deal with them on an individual basis, rather than allow them to coagulate into structurally coherent groups …
Interesting report in SMH about Seattle’s Nancy coming back for the Sydney Writers’ Festival, making it her second appearance in two years. When asked which book she would recommend for an “All Sydney reads …” exercise, she recommended Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man, a novel about the American West. You’d think after already having travelled here once, to the other side of the planet, she’d realise that Australia isn’t actually part of the USA. Or maybe she thought that the Ozzie accent was due to being VERY deep south?
But that’s not actually fair - I’m just being sniffy because no one was interested in producing a Warrior Librarian action figure. Pearl actually showed a quite reasonable knowledge of Australian popular literature … considering she’s from the Very Far North Queensland village of Seattle.
Wikipedia certainly seems to have come a long way in a short time, although there are still those pesky concerns regarding bias and authority. Not that the average punter seems to care too much about such trivial matters. Apparently.
Who knew that they had such an excellent quotations section? Not to mention many other bits that were unearthed recently. But there does seem to be a major gap in coverage; namely nothing about Warrior Librarianship, the Warrior Librarian, or the best type of coffee to sip on a late night reference desk shift. How could such a tragedy have occurred?!!!
I’ll have to put this on the list of things to do when I have managed to have myself cloned.
It is November 11, at 11am as I write.
They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun
and in the morning,
We shall remember them.
Lest we forget.
Sure, you’ve got a whole document on your library’s policy for removing material from circulation, and the auditor’s are quite happy with statement’s like “damaged beyond repair” or “not borrowed for 50 years”. But let’s show some consideration for those future generations that follow in our footsteps, and may be in need of an Emergency Laugh. Why not demonstrate some creativity in our reporting?
My fellow train commuters, please allow me to apologise. It would appear that I have sinned, yet again. This time I have committed the grave offence of manually closing the automatic internal rail carriage door in order to preserve at least a portion of City Rail’s generous supply of air-conditioning. At least, the door was labelled as ‘automatic’ – but that might have been some subtle ruse to confuse the Forces of Evil.
Had it not been for the timely intervention of a fellow traveller, I would not have realised that I had transgressed yet another of the Unwritten Laws of Commuting. Indeed, his resonant quizative assertion of “are you f*ckin’ stoopid or somefink?” was all that prevented me from returning home, after a long day of employment servitude, completely in ignorance of my crime.
I certainly was not fooled by the appearance or manner of my informant. Being stubbly unshaven in the recently publicised month of ‘Mo-vember’ – to raise awareness of men’s health issues – is surely to be considered as a Badge of Honour.
And the reek of alcohol could have come from any number of sources apart from the crumpled paper bag containing a brown, long-necked bottle. On reflection, I suspect that the gentleman was in fact returning from a convention of quantum physicists, and the rumpledness was merely the result of being confined to some philanthropic Think Tank for a prolonged period.
As to the question of my stupidity, I am not keen to venture an opinion with regard to comparison of such august company. Clearly I am not in the same intellectual league as my incidental travelling companion, although to be fair neither of us had ready access to an appropriate assessment instrument at that time and place, let alone any means of independent judgement.
But I have digressed, in addition to transgressed. Again. I once was thoughtless enough to prop an elbow onto an armrest, never suspecting that five minutes later the adjacent passenger would require the use of the same facility.
In a moment of wild abandon in a now bygone time, I took a thoughtfully folded broadsheet newspaper onto the train with me. Unfortunately though, I found myself eventually needing to open to a new page. Regardless of the care taken to minimise the amount of space required for this seemingly mundane task, it clearly drew the ire of many of the jet-setting globetrotters temporarily in transit between Harris Park and Lidcome.
And here’s a quick tip for any other middle aged women with a single piercing in each ear. Don’t engage in eye contact with those who flaunt multiple exhibits of face hardware, unless you’re skilled in that dazzling repartee of the type popular in the emerging genre of Street Lit. I’ve never quite understood why these young adults would go to the trouble, pain and expense of looking like a cluster bomb victim, given that they object to a related species observing them.
But be assured, I have learned my lessons well. I did attempt to make notes on the other subtle nuances of commuting, but apparently the scratching of a pen on paper was interfering with the Personal Listening Devices from three rows down. The Personal Listeners quite reasonably needed to increase the volume even further than was normally required to drown out the audial obstructions caused by twenty other passengers, simultaneously telling their mobile phone callers that they were on the train.
A book titled in the vein of The Lore of the City Commuter would be a fine vessel for documenting the lessons from my past sojournal wickedness, for the edification of future travellers. However, it would seem wise not to attempt to write any part of it on the 7.55 Interurban from my local railway station.
Yet another of Life’s Great Language Mysteries was solved, and by a Ten Year Old.
Following the advice dispensed that “you shouldn’t dis people just because they’re different”, peals of laugher broke out - “OOOOh, mum thinks she’s cool just because she said ‘dis’!!!”
Response? “Well, in My Day we knew how to say the whole word. ‘Disrespect’. Not just ‘dis’. I wonder why kids can’t say a whole word? Or even a whole sentence?”
Explanation? “It’s because of cheapskateness. People just download the demo version, not the whole language.”
So now we know …
