I came to the podcast Ordinary Unhappiness very recently while on a Wilfred Bion binge (blog post abt that stuck in development hell). The shtick seems to be that three very well-informed-on-psychoanalysis young(ish) East Coast Americans (two seem married, to each other I mean) will have a topic (Bion and groups, the 1967 film The... Continue Reading →
Who stands for an anthem? Australia from the 1970s to the 2020s
I remember going to sporting events (athletics meets, cricket) in the 1980s in a sleepy country town in South Australia (Adelaide, its capital). Most of the time no anthem would be played - everyone I knew (obvs not a random sample) regarded Advance Australia Fair with either 'no opinion' or some derision. Plodding, vacuous, nowhere... Continue Reading →
Thomas Hardy vs Christianity, via Joseph Brodsky
So, I have memorised that Phil Larkin poem "This be the verse." Next up, this little beauty by Tom Hardy. " Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,And pay a million priests to bring it.After two thousand years of massWe've got as far as poison-gas. Hat tip to the late great Joe Brodsky, whose... Continue Reading →
Everybody knows (or chooses not to). On climate denial, Trump’s tariffs and what links them…
Another slapdash post (fixing a transcript of a great interview, but there's only so much you can do before you get, er, slapdash). As per that song by Leonard Cohen "everybody knows" - that we're heading for 3 or 4 degrees. That's been clear to numerate people with even a cursory understanding of how the... Continue Reading →
Degraded infrastructure of dissent – four examples
Well, it's not looking good for our species, is it? (And not so hot for most of the other species we 'share' this planet with - those microbes that eat sulphur in the deep ocean might make it through unscathed, but as for the rest of it...). Here I am going to bash out -... Continue Reading →
In the Kingdom of the Biters, the …. thick-skinned? are king?
Holy cow this is a must-read. The thing about the Trump regime(s) is that allows people to express their worst impulses. It gives permission to the atavism, the id, the sadism. And, as per the article, it allows deeply inadequate people to wield power (or, rather, strength) and get vengeance for the perceived (and actual)... Continue Reading →
A late 80s vibe to the Arrived Ecological Debacle – on Signal/Hegseth and amour propre
As the t-shirt goes "it's weird being the same age as old people." You remember the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union under Mickey Gorbachev tried to shake itself from torpor with "pereistroika" and "glasnots" - or rather, Gorbie thought he could make that happen. But it didn't turn out like that, for short and... Continue Reading →
“‘Be aware of contingencies?’ Is that all ya got??”
In a spiral . Attending online events just to reassure myself that we are well and truly fubarred. On Thursday I attended one because someone has a New Book out. I put my question in the Q&A and it was resolutely ignored by the compere until they had no choice (there were no other questions... Continue Reading →
Another shoddy neologism to add to smugosphere, emotacycle etc – “stolidarity”
Stolidarity n. Boring and at-best-useless forms of non-engagement, where potential allies and participants are unable to do more than show stolid solidarity because the organisers of the meeting/event have not bothered to undercut the "sage on the stage" dynamic. I didn't have a name for this when I encountered it twice in Australia, during the... Continue Reading →
After the “revolution” – singing Beasts of England for solace…
I used to say that when I became Chief Fascist Dictator one of my first decrees (or "executive orders") would be that everyone had to read Animal Farm once a year and write an essay about how the techniques the pigs used applied in the reader's life - at home, at school, at work, wherever.... Continue Reading →
