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 [...]
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Kiss Me, Genius Boy is Ben Hourigan's debut novel, and the first of three volumes in the No More Dreams series. Available on the full range of ebook platforms starting at just 99c on Kindle, KMGB is an unforgettable tragi-comic tale of teen romance and obsession. Full details here.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.
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- http://t.co/HUAYYP8b My entry as a freelance writer and editor on Editors Victoria's excellent Freelance Register.
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