This morning, at about 0740, my maternal grandfather, Hugh Slattery, died. He was 90. The event Dad called me at around 0800, and told me, his voice shaking a little as the call ended. He’d died peacefully, Dad said, “just stopped breathing.” He had been suffering from both emphysima and myelodysplasia, both of which decrease [...]
So I proposed in my review of Japanese Story. Adam Ford commented: This is a joke, right? No, Adam, it’s no joke. Here’s why I’d like to see an immediate end to government arts funding: Taxation is a form of coercion (which under normal circumstances I view as always being wrong). The government uses the [...]
Sue Brooks (dir.) “Japanese Story.”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001L3LUO/ref=benhourigan-co20 2003. 2/10 I was determined not to like this film, and so, unsurprisingly, I didn’t. On one level, this is a film about a woman’s being forced to face and accept the reality of death. That part of it, which occupies the last twenty minutes or so, is mildly emotionally [...]
I had lunch yesterday with Harvey Lee, formerly of Blue Tongue Entertainment, an Australian videogame developer. Among the things we talked about were licensed videogames: apparently these are the only opportunities available to small, contracting developers. “Think about it… What AAA(Triple A: A videogame game of the highest quality and technical proficiency.) games came out [...]
Macworld UK – Oz Mac sales double – IDC Apparently sales of Apple computers are really taking off in Australia. Macworld UK quotes IT analyst Michael Sager “saying”:http://www.idc.com.au/press/detail.asp?releaseid=144 “Apple seems to be finally benefiting from the iPod halo effect.” I get really tired of people talking about how the popularity of the iPod is going [...]
Why don’t you ever see a homeless person in a movie or on TV holding a sign that says that? Why do their signs always say something like “will strip for food”? I suppose it’s because those fictional characters neither realise that there are many people who want things other than stripping done for them, [...]
Yesterday I wrote about the wrong way to relate to the powers of science: to scorn them as inauthentic. For the curious, I think “Ray Kurzweil has the right idea”:http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66585,00.html on this matter, according to a report in Wired. Kurzweil expects that within 20 years, humans will have invented the technologies they need to make [...]
I am going bald. Or at least, I was. Today I went to a doctor and got a prescription for finasteride, a drug that halts male pattern baldness (also known as androgenetic alopecia). Of course, it remains to be seen if the drug will work for me, and I am unlikely to regain any of [...]
If you notice that the site is a mess, it’s because I just upgraded to WordPress 1.5. I’m hoping to soon have things looking like they were before. Thanks to all the WordPress developers for making such mayhem possible.
A little while ago Mel posted a link to an “article,”:http://www.nerve.com/personalessays/calhoun/mcsweeneys/ along with “some of her own musings”:http://wildyoungunderwhimsy.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_wildyoungunderwhimsy_archive.html (scroll down and look for February 16) expressing distaste for the emotionally arid cleverness of “McSweeney’s”:http://www.mcsweeneys.net/. Both this post and “Christian’s”:http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/~Mccrea/archives/2005/02/index.html (again, no permalink, look for February 18), mentioning it, also link to the fictional exploits of [...]
About
Ben Hourigan is an indie novelist, the author of Kiss Me, Genius Boy (2011). He is also the manager of digital operations at a Melbourne design publisher, a freelance writer and editor, and the founder of ebook label hourigan.co.
benhourigan on Twitter
- â@lilithia: @benhourigan You're cool.â Just saw this. Can't remember if this was our spoiler discussion? <3
Friends and allies
Melbourne novelists
Benjamin Grant Mitchell
Joanna George
Iain H. McLean
Christos Tsiolkas
Elliot PerlmanOther novelists
