Drowning in Vitriol

That hath such creatures as this....

2010-03-13T01:57:00.006+11:00

With my immensely time-consuming video review finally complete for the launch of my new blog it's now time to say goodbye to the never-really-that notorious D.I.V. Don't think I won't miss you, old girl. Even from the farthest shores, I shall call your name out to the sea, and hope that every ship that docks into harbour carries word of you and your people. I shall always remember the lilt in

Behold, I come to make all things a bit different than they were last year

2010-01-21T11:00:00.005+11:00

Dear comrades,First of all: let me wish an absurdly (even obscenely) happy new year to you and all who sail in you. (Note that I have long loved the above expression for its delightfully mysterious suggestion that the person being saluted is a ship...)I hope all your harvests are bountiful and that you are now eating lotuses and sucking ambrosia through a straw, preferably one upon which the

Bread and Wine

2009-11-14T15:20:00.008+11:00

[edited 18/11/09]Okay. This is my favourite passage from John Milbank's "Being Reconciled":"...For while libertarianism insists that the future lies with the isolated 'reflective' individual, managing and manipulating a plethora of life-choices, chances and risks, it nonetheless seeks also to claim that civil society is good in heart, and that new forms of community are emerging: one cites

Classicism, Moderation and Shaftesbury

2009-09-23T11:48:00.022+10:00

Dear all,Today I have something very exciting to announce. In my last post, I mentioned that Helen Webberley (of "Art, and architecture mainly") and I would both be writing guest posts for each other's blogs. I'd like to take the opportunity to mention just how delightful it is for me to have my impressionistic scrawl associated with Helen's marvellous blog: I feel like a street artist who's

In which I think relatively seriously about hanging up my cape and no longer wearing my underpants outside my trousers.

2009-09-10T12:42:00.015+10:00

[note 10/09/09 thanks to K.M. and M.T. for stopping this for saving this post from being the boulevard of broken links]Not sure whom this will interest exactly, but I've been thinking recently that it might be time to dispense with my secret superhero identity. Although, I think that I've now made up my mind on this issue, it's still a great wrench for me to give up being 'Mal' for all kinds of

Hacks of Academe: Redux

2009-08-14T10:49:00.017+10:00

Hacks of Academe: or How to Get a (Humanities) PhD in 5 easy steps: [edit on 05/10/09]Step 1) Appear credible by doing anything that you can to appease the world's fetish for all things empirical. Essentially this step can be summarised by saying that you should do everything in your power to make sure that your candidature involves at least one completely pointless field trip from which can

Bath time fun: Links and short reviews: 05/08/09

2009-08-05T18:53:00.016+10:00

No time to post anything at the moment, as I'm in the midst of a flurry of activity which (like most flurries) doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere or achieving much: kind of like I'm the 5th clown from the left in my own personal circus. In fact, it's all getting a little bit tiresomely surreal 'round here: jump cuts here and enormous Wagnerian castles built by mad Ludwig II there, then me

"Just act normal": Review of "Dexter" (Seasons 1 and 2)

2009-07-22T21:00:00.013+10:00

Post edited 26/07/09 and again on 06/08/09 (one is born; one makes typos.)[SPOILER WARNING: Yes, I’m going to tell you about things that happen in the show, so don’t read this if you’re in any way interested in finding out the story arc from any other source than this review.]There are two reasons that I started to watch Dexter last year when it was screened for the first time on Australian

Things that are really your fault

2009-07-18T17:07:00.017+10:00

(or: the problems of starting a Misanthropes Society based around the slavish adoration of me.)This was going to happen sooner or later.Yes, I'm in another of those self-reflective "why-doesn't-everyone-love-me-and-want-to-have-my-baby?" moods. And no, I don't actually want you to ANSWER the goddamn question, you insensitive, tough-love-preaching, Navy Seal-joining,

Being like Michel Foucault or counting angels on pinheads? -Yes, please!

2009-07-08T15:40:00.014+10:00

(edited into some kind of coherent state 18/07/09Justin Clemens' lucid and frequently charming review (taken from "The Australian" newspaper) of the first complete English edition of Foucault's 'Folie et deraison' does a good job of articulating what is exciting and indeed 'untouchable' (in, as Dr. Clemens says, the full M/C Hammer sense of the word) about Foucault's corpus. However, just

Why Facebook is a steaming pile of shitake while Twitter is comparatively shiny.

2009-07-06T10:08:00.007+10:00

I hate Facebook.You don't find this surprising? This may be, of course, because you know something of me from your assiduous trawling through the D.IV. archives, but it’s much more likely to be because you have the rudimentary (“I really should stop touching the fire now”) intelligence required to realize that, in fact -- when push comes to shove -- EVERYONE hates Facebook.And please don’t tell

Philemon and Baucis (or: Why I Write)

2009-06-30T23:22:00.008+10:00

Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book VII,A cold night in a small town:Two peasants are wandering from house to house in search of shelter. Everywhere they go the ragged looking couple is rejected. We are not sure what goes through the heads of the various homeowners, but we are fairly certain that it has something to do with the appearance of the strangers. But what is it exactly about these two that

“Time out of Mind”: Thoughts on George Megalogenis’s "The Longest Decade" in lieu of a ‘poem’.

2009-05-17T23:43:00.004+10:00

If the universe is, as Borges persistently maintained, a library, my own role in the grander scheme of things would seem to be that of an old woman who comes in every fourth Tuesday in a hat and a cardigan to ask the staff “whether they have any Barbara Cartland” and who can’t remember whether the book she is currently holding is what she calls the ‘new one’, or one of the ones that she’s

Not Waving, Drowning (or Blogging and Redemption)

2009-04-01T01:06:00.005+11:00

[cleaned-up some of the insane punctuation April 10]Dedication: For all the bloggers out there and to everyone who has commented, e-mailed, or helped me over the last few months. For all of you silent and invisible types who keep coming back to read my scrawl. To those who find themselves passed over.Ruminating the other day on how much traffic passes through this place, I was wondering whether

(Three Line) Formula for all Werner Herzog films

2009-03-10T01:05:00.005+11:00

(for Andrew Montin, and Anamnesia How as they sojourn in far-away lands. And to all our ursine friends out there in the jungle trying to build an opera house.)*Warning: this post will not make any sense at all, unless you have seen at least two Werner Herzog films. Worse: if you have only seen two, “Grizzly Man” must be one of the two.Dearest and Fairest,I have three words for you:

Book Review: Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer

2009-03-02T17:23:00.012+11:00

(some proofing 6/03/09)[First: to all the people who have arrived at this link looking for Mailer: THERE IS A REVIEW HERE PEOPLE, GODDAMN IT. JUST SCROLL DOWN IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE WORD 'TOME' and its associaton with WALLOW.")Two years ago, coming to the end of a 5-week trek around Western Europe, I found myself sitting on the balcony of a small, stylish, Berlin bachelor pad

Crank-Spotting

2009-02-28T20:15:00.004+11:00

"Choose Life. Choose a hairstyle. Choose a bloody big beard of the “Charles Darwin-said-that-it- was-the-only-aspect-of-male physiognomy-brought-about-exclusively- by-sexual-selection-directed-by-the- human female” variety. Choose graduate courses, reputable academic journals, and as many routes as you can imagine to reach your one true goal of being the only truly ‘hot’ person left in the

With a little bit of help from our friends...

2009-02-15T20:39:00.009+11:00

It’s been quiet here recently, I know. I regret this as I really want to give this blog a chance to live and grow and one day play beach volleyball at a professional level. I want it to have a washing machine and an apartment in Paris or Manhattan; I want it to stay out late at night without my permission and then slam the door of its room shut when it comes home. I want it to yell at me

Why Fowler's Modern English Usage is Better than Sex

2009-02-04T23:46:00.008+11:00

(edited 06/02)(for “The Rock Where Moses Stood…” for friendship, wisdom, and for not being afraid to call me a sub-literate hack when necessary.)There are three kinds of people in the world. The first are those who --as I do -- think that Fowler’s Modern English Usage is the best thing since Aristotle released his ”Live in the Lycaeum” concerts on vinyl (yes, I’m talking about the ones with

The Razor and the Garden God Part II

2009-01-24T16:25:00.003+11:00

(01/02/09 Major editing on this post. I couldn't believe what a mess this was until I had the misfortune to read it just then. Substantial revisions then ensued. Sorry for those of you who had to wade through the original! -Mal.)(Please read "The Razor and the Garden God Part 1" first. The two parts together constitute the promised sequel to "Parachute Colours." ) *

The Razor and the Garden God Part I (Parachute Colours 2 )

2009-01-24T15:15:00.004+11:00

(edited 18/02/09 -- I really have to learn to type more slowly...)N.B. My quest for shorter posts continues. In the name of this, I reserve the right to continue to break the sequels to "Parachute Colours" into increasingly smaller parts. The current divisions of the argument are still long, damnit, but at least they are going to be shorter than "Parachute Colours" which it seems was enough to

Parachute Colours 1 of 2

2009-01-10T15:21:00.005+11:00

(sequel to the 'Big Guy' with a sequel to follow. Proofread and thus purged of several, but doubtless not all HOWLERS on 13/01/09)I was raised an atheist; less a confirmed unbeliever than simply the stock-standard product of a social milieu where any profession of religion (particularly where it was organised or monotheistic) would immediately be seen as the confession of something eccentric,

The Big Guy

2008-12-31T13:21:00.005+11:00

While it may come as a surprise to members of my enormous fan-base, I do -- contrary to what you might have expected -- keep one or two vices in the otherwise endless wardrobe of my virtues.Amongst the more newly-minted (and more embarassingly pedestrian) of these, I have of late, but wherefore I know not, developed something of a road accident fascination with the mass-media's "Is religion

Are we having fun yet?

2008-12-31T11:55:00.004+11:00

When it comes to furnishing my misanthropy with its eleventh (and bitterest) herb and/or spice there really is nothing quite like New Year's Eve.Of course, the entire period between Christmas -- which in the land of my nativity is usually marked by heat so literally blistering that it is traditionally reserved only for those of Dante's old school-chums whom he thought had betrayed both their

In praise of hypocrisy?

2008-12-18T16:01:00.006+11:00

(for Ashok Karra)Leo Strauss once said that the problem with conservatism is that nothing that a conservative LOVES has ever actually come into being by conservative means. This, like many, of Strauss’s remarks calls for some interpretation, starting with the all-important question of what kind of "conservatism" is being talked about here.At first, what Strauss appears to be saying is this:A