Weds 17th June 2026. (What are the Fafocene Diaries? See here). Yesterday I finished the basic tidy up of the CO2 Newsletter texts. (1). The CO2 Newsletter, founded and edited by William Barbat, ran from 1979 to 1982. It came out ever two months and was a round-up of what was being written, said and... Continue Reading →
At some point in the mid-late 1980s (I think), I read a novel written in the 60s or 70s (I think) about submarine warfare. This was pre-Tom Clancy stuff, not technoporn. More the gritty, sweaty industrial stuff. Anyway, in the book in question (Event-1000?) a submarine is damaged (I forget if due to hostile action,... Continue Reading →
Yesterday I met someone formally for the first time (we’d crossed paths a couple of weeks earlier). And he told me some background about the person in charge of a current campaign that helped me see recent events in a new light. Without getting into libelous details, suffice to say that sometimes people are using... Continue Reading →
I have been deep into the archives of the State Library of South Australia, mostly looking at papers (magazines, newsletters etc) from the second half of the 1960s through the 1970s. No, I am not a strange strange man. Why do you ask? Anyway, this was the period, as the 'Great Acceleration' slowed slightly, where... Continue Reading →
John 18: 38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all. I did not buy a copy of Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory (that’s a lie). I did not spend a... Continue Reading →
I met up with an old friend recently. Right at the end she asked if I wanted feedback on blog posts I had sent her. I knew roughly what was coming, because I have heard it once or thrice before. The main problems (before you get to the content) are around even understanding what the... Continue Reading →
Thanks to a rather brilliant writer (Beejay Silcox, since you ask), I read an 'Outback Noir' novel, by Garry Disher. It involves a cop (bent? Seems not, but who can tell and what is bent anyway) exiled from the bright lights of the (checks notes) big "city," Adelaide to - as the Americans say -... Continue Reading →
The dinner party from hell is hardly a novel topic for a play - whether it’s Albee or Bunuel or Bill Shakespeare - so the assessment is not ‘what’s new, pussycat?’ but ‘how well was it done?’ Fortunately the latest production, the Housewarming’ by “Famous Last Words Theatre” is well done indeed. It traces one... Continue Reading →
There is a fine new Australian film exploring old (ancient) anxieties about being lonely and lost in the vast ‘alien’ spaces of the Australian continent. It’s not quite as good as 1978’s Long Weekend, but it could (should) easily be on a double bill because it would hold its own and provoke further thoughts. Alphabet... Continue Reading →
I am in Adelaide. Lucky me, lucky Adelaide. Have read two rather good essays, about Australia's Place In the World. There are two quotes that speak to the same period, which covers me growing up (or taller, anyway) and then the mid-1990s pivot. From Hugh White's Quarterly Essay "Hard New World - our post-American future."... Continue Reading →
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