Meme-tastic

"Take the nearest book and turn to page 123 and find the fifth sentence, then publish the next four."

OK.

That'd be Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, by a certain Mr B Anderson, which I'm meant to be reading for, oh, that thing that's due in NEXT WEEK.

"Nationalist leaders are thus in a position consciously to deploy civil and military educational systems modelled on official nationalisms..."

Oh GOD. I can't do it. That sentence goes on for nearly a PAGE.

via Dave the Scott.

(Who was reading something much more edifying.)

Internet v Thesis smackdown

The picture really is worth 1000 words.

Via Lifehacker (via 43things).

Cat fight

Possible other names for this blog, based on IMDB search for keywords teen prison break reform school girl:

-Space Rage: Breakout on Prison Planet
-Excessive Torture in a Female Prison Camp+
-Girls Gone Wild: San Quentin#
-Schoolgirl Report Part 3: What Parents Find Unthinkable
-Satans (sic) School for Girls
-Prison Camp Girls, Jailed for Love*

+Hong Kong's seminal Great Escape from Woman's Prison. Directed by Wang Gang - great name for anyone working in this genre, no?
#I made that one up.
*My fave.

Hooked on tunez

Man, I can't believe how long I had that free iPod languishing in my cupboard, unused.

As soon as I got it I took a massive hate against it.

Because, you know, no voice recording, radio, or flash memory, the scroll wheel's stoopid, the battery's crap, it's so shoddy and overpriced, I could never go for a walk with it, it'd break into a million pieces, I wanted green, not blue, blah blah Apple-hate.

So I just stuck it on the eBay pile and forgot about it, mostly.

'Til last week, when I was forced to use it for uni listening purposes.

NOW I'M MAINLINING IPOD LOVE-CRACK.

That's a special kind of crack, by the way, where you love, love, love, love, your iPod. You love it beyond all reason, beyond all understanding. You love it as you've never luuuuurved before.

It's so awesome. I love its clicky wheely goodness, its pretty backlit screen, its... everything.

I ADORE that I'm coocooned from everything, wrapped in a shimmery, soft bubble of tunes.

Right now I'm floating on a balmy, breezy old-school sea, with Frank, Rosemary and Louis.

Buh-bye now - I have to put my tiny, shiny baby to bed.

My heart belongs to...

Thinking about past literary crushes.

In no special order:
Andrew McGahan. Wrote his first novel working as a Centrelink mail sorter. Love this even more now that the dole Fortnightly Commonwealth Arts Stipend has fallen out of fashion a bit.
John Birmingham. Adored him ever since he wrote for Semper. Crazy ex-housemate claimed to have lived with people in West End who'd shared with Birmingham and had hated him for selling out. That sealed the deal.
Do detectives count? Lord Peter Wimsey. And Albert Campion.
Jon Ronson. Hi-larious.
PJ O'Rourke. Mean. Republican. Wrote lots about sex and drugs.
Boris Johnson. Not exactly literary. But oh, he does turn a nice phrase.

Status report

You: ''How's your thesis going?''

Me: ''Yeah, no, great, thanks. Should be done any day now.''

But IN FACT...

09.21am Mainline Nescafe and nurture huge internet crush.

09.38am Google The Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright and The Damage Done.

09.53am Use postgrad reciprocal lending to get copies mailed up from NSW.

10.06am Factiva "Jack Marx" AND "All dates" GET.

4.40pm Realise Marx is ''hat wearing journalist Jack Marx'' of Sex and Money fame infamy. Crush deepens.

4.44pm Dimly aware Marx maintains regrettable silence on all matters pertaining to Timor, oil, online news, business reporting.

4.45pm More Nescafe. Peruse Radar archives.

Osama eat your heart out

''He threatens and taunts like a deranged child, strutting the desert like an animal on the prowl, and dressing like an extra on the set of his own gaudy war.

''But who really is this man who has caused so much fear and outrage in the international political scene, who has made terrorism his creed and practices it with deadly consistency?

''...whose messianic vision and ruthless fanaticism threaten world stability?''

Is it...?

Nope.

''This mad dog of the Middle East.''
--Ronald Regan

Are they talking about...?

Nuh-uh.

''He is one hundred percent sick and possessed of the devil.''
--Anwar Sadat

One of these guys...?

No, infidel fools.

It is the one and only Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

From Harry Gregory's superbly lurid 1986 bio of ''number one anti-American thug'' and ''Tripoli Terror Merchant,'' Muammar al-Gaddafi.