My silence is born out of a fundamental dishonesty. I cannot speak because I cannot lie, and I cannot remain silent because I cannot speak the truth. What an interesting and logical paradox. The suppression of truth inevitably leads to one talking to oneself. The “I” becomes the only person you can speak to without suffering a crushing shame. This is what he told me that afternoon, squinting through the cigarette smoke with only the slightest trace of a cynical smile on his face. This poi...

There has been a lot of talk recently about the ignorant, redneck American tearing around deserts in armoured vehicles, armed to the teeth, executing the policies of a stupid little man that lives in a big white house, surrounded by crooked cronies who have a tendency of having a vocabulary limited to the word “yes”. This is a fiction that has been useful to many, but counter-productive to me. I find fiction more than helpful when trying to understand phenomena. I refuse to accept fiction ...

I fine Italian suit and a reason to wear it, A Humvee with a mountain bike on the rack, leather hiking shoes, standing the summit of a mountain, next to the behemoth, with a cup of hot coffee, warmed by my contentment. A tall glass of white rum and a banana chair on a Central American beach, somewhere where the beer costs you a dollar a bottle and the children’s teeth are impossibly white, breakers off a distant reef and the alcohol doesn’t eat at your liver. A living room looking ou...

I fine Italian suit and a reason to wear it, A Humvee with a mountain bike on the rack, leather hiking shoes, standing the summit of a mountain, next to the behemoth, with a cup of hot coffee, warmed by my contentment. A tall glass of white rum and a banana chair on a Central American beach, somewhere where the beer costs you a dollar a bottle and the children’s teeth are impossibly white, breakers off a distant reef and the alcohol doesn’t eat at your liver. A living room looking ou...

Subways and shopping centres, these are places of loneliness. It grips my tongue and imposes its terrible silence when I turn to the one next to me and want to speak. It’s almost as if I do not exist and the thought makes me tremble in some minor way because of its persistence, its day to day occurrence which pesters my movements. I gaze at wonderful women, at lowly women, only to see if they return my doleful enquiries. If only they would. Then I would exist, I would have a place, I would be...

Julie looked up towards the peak of her mothers insurmountable height and wondered what was wrong with her. Are adults blind or dumb, ignorant or indifferent? Of course, the thought did not occur to her in exactly those words, well, they were not words at all, more like a suspicion that cannot properly or explicitly take root in your consciousness. She did not want her mother to be stupid or retarded. She could not conceive of this possibility. Her mother was a genius, even if she did stay at...

Australians love bagging Americans. This is not an opinion but a fact that has been ascertained by having to sit through countless conversations where the generic American has been the subject. More often than not Shakespeare’s Richard the Third has been treated more kindly than this American that is just as fictitious as the hunch-backed despot. Why is it that Americans inspire such animosity, what in many cases is constituted of a envious respect and a persistent annoyance? The Columbin...

NSW teachers are planning a strike and march to parliment house on thursday to protest our governments refusal to honor pay rises. A 5.5% increase had already been given last december, but a further rise has been postponed after the government claimed that it could not "afford" this further rise. Parents are know claiming that the teachers are holding their children to ransom, that they cannot afford the costs and inconvenience of placing their children in day care centers. Now paren...

My university is a microcosm, this much is true, not that it tells you a lot about the cosmos, not that it will expand your ontological horizons, not that it facilitates in the transfere of useful information. I learn more at nightclubs. I learn more lining up for cigarettes at my local 24/7 convenience store. The billboards aren't the only things on campus to exude image and the faint odour of ink and too many transactions. There's an underground economy of style that has an inta...

For some directors the Palm d’Or revolves in tight little circles inside their heads, like bodily vital functions and sex. For some it’s about as important as a plausible plotline and the respect of critics. I’m not sure what camp Michael Moore falls into but he won it anyway with a film lacking US distribution and a plausible plotline. If we were to turn the current international events into a screenplay, people would laugh it off as a film that couldn’t even sell seats in cinemas, let...