One last thing

I'm drowning in other people's "Best of 2008" lists, so I'm not going to add to the pile. Instead, just one lovely thing from 2008 that still makes me laugh every time I see it.The shiny guy does always worry.See you next year!

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Because disabled people need rules, too

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If a tree falls in a forest and no Aussies are around to hear it, does it make a sound?

I woke up this morning, as I have so many, many mornings of my life, to news of conflict in the Middle East. Today it’s the second day of Israeli air attacks in the Gaza Strip, with a ground attack looking highly likely.The prospect of yet another war there, even after almost 600 years of conflict, should be news in itself.Why, then, does the story have to be run on our local news – Seven’s

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I know who should play Karen

I can't believe that Mamma Mia! was a hit musical and a hit movie-of-the-musical while the only decent thing anyone ever made about the Carpenters, Todd Haynes' all-Barbie Superstar, was banned.A Carpenters' jukebox musical, which will artlessly be called Close To You (although Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft would be pretty good), can only be just around the corner.Let me get a

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A special Christmas Day message for His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

Fuck you, asshole.Another power-crazed German determined to wipe out an entire people. Terrific.

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Dreams of glitter and style

I really must try to use the word "silversational" more often.Happy holidays, everyone!

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Please remember those less fortunate than yourself

At this special time of year, please take a moment to remember the people in our world who are suffering the most: the poor souls in the "before" section of infomercials.Angry woman with hectic kitchen-tile pattern struggling with the washing-up. Her apron print, like the tiny broomsticks in Fantasia, suggests even more dishes to come.Frustrated woman who saves time by not having to iron her

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Would you mind if I put you on hold?

43 minutes spent talking to my phone company’s “care” call-centre in India. It took nine people to answer my ostensibly simple question: What is the status of my order?No record of the order. No match for the receipt number. “Would you mind if I put you on hold?” For five minutes.Along the way, inumerable requests for my date of birth. I know for sure that I’ve never given it to them, and I said

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Revisiting 'Brideshead Revisited'

"We ate the strawberries and drank the wine. As Sebastian promised, they were delicious together. The fumes of the sweet, golden wine seemed to lift us a finger's breadth above the turf, and hold us suspended."
I'm having something of a Charles Ryder moment tonight: I can't quite believe it's been 26 years since I watched Brideshead Revisited when it was first broadcast. I was 17 years old,

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The scariest sentence in the English language

"This is Entertainment Tonight in high definition and I'm Mary Hart."

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Really, Detective Senior Sergeant? Do ya think?

From today's paper:Police are searching for two men who fled after dumping a body with a gunshot wound to the chest outside a Melbourne hospital's emergency department early this morning. "Certainly the fact that they didn't stick around leads us to believe that they have got information that can assist us," said Detective Senior Sergeant Stephen McIntyre, of the Victoria Police Crime Department.

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Well, hello, fellow Grits to Glitz listeners!

 There's been a spike in my reader numbers lately and it's all Amy and Bay's fault. Hello, Amy! Hello, Bay! Thanks for the shout out!To all my fellow G2Gers, welcome to my sandbox on the web. It's a pretty random affair, and I do encourage you to try out the Lucky Dip button to the left because the more randomly you are willing to face it, the better. Just like life.For those of you who have no

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1,000,000 for setting yourself up for failure

You have a point. You believe in something. You think other people do, too. So you create a Facebook group to collect 1,000,000 people – or more! – to show that you're right. You fail. The numbers don't lie.[You can click through, if you must.]I bet I can find 1,000,000 ChristiansSize: 311,430 membersI Bet I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Just Want PeaceSize: 229,846 members10,000,000 Strong for

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Good morning, America

Two moments from an extraordinary day. If Bush got anything right in eight years, it was phoning Obama and saying it was "an awesome night". 

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Crazy for Mad Men

I'm only two episodes in and I've already fallen hard for Mad Men, the series about Madison Avenue advertising people set in 1960.The visual style is exquisite, down to finest detail. The storytelling itself is brilliant because the range of values seems like it's from another planet, yet we recognise it as being modern.The men are all jocular buddies, constantly drinking and smoking. The women

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Exterminate! Exterminate!

This is a Dalek.This is someone's interpretation of a Dalek in cake.And so, apparently, is this.More horrible cakes at this wonderful site.

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Ellen does Cher

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What exactly do you want to film me doing?

From a cocktail party I went to on Friday night at a model agency.

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Dismembered body parts – with lovely nails

The display in the window of a new nail salon in Kings Cross. I've never seen fake nails for toes before.

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Making a scene

Two people are having a fantastically heated argument right outside my house. When it started I thought I was going to have to call the police – it sounded like he was going to kill her. Then it stopped really suddenly.It started again about five minutes later, but the strange thing was they were having exactly the same argument. I mean, it was exactly the same words, same intonation. It stopped

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Searching for smears

Apologies to all my regular readers – hello east coast of India! hello person in Sweden! – for the lack of posts lately. I'm launching a new magazine and a new website on 16 October, so busy is an understatement.Anyway, I was cruising around the Barack Obama campaign website and there's a page devoted to correcting false stories about the candidate, including this gorgeous search tool.

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A new do

Juanita Phillips' new hair on the news tonight.I'm yet to be fully convinced.

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My contemporaries

Here's a list of people born in 1965, just like me. 



Robert Downey Jr.
Shania Twain
Gong Li
Princess Stéphanie of Monaco
Sherilyn Fenn
Dr Dre
Chris Rock
Sophie, Countess of Wessex
Diane Lane
DJ Jazzy Jeff
Alan Cumming
Julia Ormond
Joely Richardson
Slash
Jeremy Piven
JK Rowling
Elizabeth Hurley
Manuel Uribe Garza
Sarah Jessica Parker
Paul WS Anderson
John C Reilly
Brooke Shields
Björk
Ben

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Cute friends

The winner of the All My Facebook Friends Are Gorgeous award is this guy. Even the thumbnails are stunning.

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End time: it's all Elizabeth Taylor's fault

I’m intrigued and fascinated by the Rapture – the idea that Jesus is coming back, gathering up all the believers, including the dead ones, and taking them to heaven.The people who believe in it are a fervent group, to say the least. They're close readers of the Bible, although I must say only when it suits their purposes. There’s a lot of speculation among them about timing and whether the rest

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Let Wikipedia launch your music career

Got some time to waste? Go to Wikipedia and hit the Random article button on the left-hand side. That’s the name of your band. Hit it again to find the name of your hot new CD. A few more times and you’ve got the names of all your songs. Here’s mine:BAND: SimtelALBUM: Guqin aestheticsTRACKS:Space pirateDe DannanCineasteNest FreemarkBondelumMedial intercondylar tubercleSpring Garden TunnelWilliam

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It turns out all my dreams are cliches

Everyone dreams. At about two hours a night, the average person spends six years of their life dreaming.We don't know how or why we dream, the thing between our ears still being one of the great scientific mysteries. We do, however, know what we dream about.Since the 1950s, there have been several large-scale studies of the content of dreams.The most common emotional state we experience in our

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Oh, no – does this make me a geek?

There's this guy called Jay Hinson. He's bright. Really bright. His PhD thesis was on the decay of the tau lepton into three charged pions and a tau neutrino. That's particle physics, people.So Jay lets his mind wander one day and starts to think about "technology which allows subspace fields to 'reduce' the mass of a ship while still allowing for energy and momentum conservation".Except when Jay

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I, Tallulah

I'm reading Tallulah Bankhead's autobiography, Tallulah. It's one of the most eloquent, entertaining books I've ever read.In the chapter called "Affidavit of the Accused", she writes:I've had many momentary love affairs. A lot of these impromptu romances have been climaxed in a fashion not generally condoned. I go into them impulsively. I scorn any notion of their permanence. I forget the fever

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Coming soon

Peter Kay has a new sitcom in production called Britain's Got The Pop Factor ... And Possibly A New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly On Ice.

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Design by committee

My friend David was working on a logo for a mining company that started out with this completely on-brief sketch:and, thanks to everyone at the client end weighing in with their fascinating opinions, somehow ended up, at one point, with this horror:His entire sordid history of what happens when you let clients keep making changes is here.

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You guys are no fun

Some random Taliban prohibitions:anything made from human hairequipment that produces the joy of musicpool tableslobsternail polishsewing cataloguespictureschessmasks

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Just Druitt

When news happens in the outer Sydney suburb of Mount Druitt, it’s never going to be a good thing. Here are the recent headlines from ABC News tagged “Mount Druitt”.Man flips car during high-speed chaseMan charged over Sydney rape spreeYoung crims face curfews in Australian firstSydney serial sex attacker 'will strike again'Sydney sex attacks feared linkedP-plater 'doing 110 in a 60km zone'Teens

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Kaiser Karl is a bear

Not that kind of bear. After all, it is hard to imagine the creative head of the house of Chanel submitting to the "No Artificial Scents" rule at the door of his local bear bar.The inventors of the teddy bear, Steiff, have created a Karl Lagerfeld bear, designed by the man himself.Speaking of KL, was he really ever fat? Go ahead – do a Google image search. Not a one. Has he had all evidence of

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Screaming, falling down, cross-dressing, vomiting

Konstantinos Lagoudakis, the mayor of Malai, Crete, interviewed in today’s New York Times: “They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit.”He's talking about British tourists.“It is only the British people,” he said, “not the Germans or the French.”The Times spoke to 21-year-old man from Essex who said that the night before he had drunk had five

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Not no more, you don't

As recently as yesterday, Dairy Farmers was running a TV ad in high rotation featuring actual dairy farmers – and lots of photogenic kids – saying "I own a company".




Today, Dairy Farmers was swallowed whole by National Foods of Japan for $910 million.

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You got that right

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Morons R Us

The Official Moron Registry allows you to let the world know about the moron in your life. Here, some morons of note.





Bodes, Patricia - She doesn't know how to be a real parent. She is not the brightest color in the box of crayons. She is as dumb as a box of rocks.

Cairo, Kelly - Chooses to play billiards instead of spending time with his girlfriend who had slaved over the stove cooking

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Cutest. Animal. Ever.

The momonga (Pteromys momonga), a flying squirrel that lives in Japan.Super-kuwaii!

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Space: 1899

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Rise and fry

If the buzzing and beeping of an ordinary alarm clock won't entice you to rouse from your slumber, perhaps the irresistible smell of sizzling bacon will.The Wake 'n' Bacon alarm clock switches itself on 10 minutes before you want to wake up and cooks some bacon in its internal tray.It makes the morning so much easier.

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Lumoava Suomi!

Every time I watch a DVD, I always sit through those endless copyright warnings in different languages wondering who on earth the one headed "Suomi" is for.It turns out it’s for Finns. They call Finland Suomi, and their language is also called Suomi.From Enchanting Finland: legends, feelings, experiences comes this list of the top 10 things that make a Finn happy. Number 6 is odd, but I know what

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Unfamous last words

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has a website dedicated to its executions, including a database of final statements. Here are some highlights.Leon Dorsey, executed 12 August 2008“See you when you get there. Do what you’re gonna do.”Patrick Bryan Knight, executed 26 June 2007“I am not Patrick Bryan Knight, and ya'll can't stop this execution now. Melyssa, take care of that little monster

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Happy finish

Aveda stoops to conquer with this poorly named product.

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This monkey pants

Finally, something on eBay I actually need. "It's offered to your attention the 'space pants' for macaque small monkey to wear it during the experimental space flight. This pants has been used for animals (monkeys) experiments in 1950s & 1960s in the USSR Institute of Biomedical Problems (IMBP, Moscow). This monkey's 'space pants' are designed with many clasps to fit bigger or smaller monkey."I

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Life. Be in it. v2.0

Without any apparent irony, the commercial television association Free TV Australia is running community service announcements telling us to “live life”.This message is being hammered home in almost every ad break by sportbots like Grant Hackett and Giann Rooney.Hackett is a particularly inappropriate choice to be telling anyone how to live. In the past year he has only seen his parents once and

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"I'm just coming into the stadium now."

I slept through the Olympics opening ceremony -- actually, it put me to sleep -- but I saw highlights this morning.The Australian team looked good in their shiny blue jackets and silver caps, but did they all have to be chatting away on mobiles as they came in to the stadium? It looked like they had somewhere else to be.

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警警 and 察察

Meet Jingjing and Chacha, the adorable mascots of the Internet Surveillance Division of the Public Security Bureau of the People’s Republic of China. In other words, the internet police.The bureau employs more than 30,000 people to monitor the internet, ensuring that anything to do with the Falun Gong, police brutality, the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square, freedom of speech, democracy,

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Flirty dewy petaly floralcy

I love the press releases for fragrances. They try so very hard. Here are some highlights from a six-page press release for an upcoming Mariah Carey fragrance.Endowed with the gift to bring her art to life, with heart-stirring music and lyrics to alluring fragrance, Mariah unveils a heavenly side of herself with the launch of her newest fragrance, Mariah Carey’s Luscious Pink.This brand is a

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Nord e Sud

A wonderous dinner last night at the Park Hyatt, with a menu designed by Giovanni Pilu, from Sardinia, and Alessandro Pavoni, from Brescia. The two brought elements of their local cuisines – the mountains and the seas – together for a memorable meal. Here’s the menu with matched wines.

Thinly sliced swordfish served raw with grapefruit and Sardinian bottarga with capers
2006 Sella and Mosca ‘

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Loveable losers: Sydney’s “double A list” are just LA’s leftovers

You can tell how quiet Sydney becomes in winter when the local gossip hacks are forced to lead with claptrap about nobodies.

Witness, for instance, Ros Reine’s column in today's Sunday Telegraph. It leads with the utterly banal story of a former prime minister’s daughter having a go on the turntables at a Kings Cross hole-in-the-back-lane bar where nobody dances. Yawnsies!

In order to justify

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My man of the match

An excursion out to Olympic Park tonight for the Bledisloe Cup. While I had a gold Wallabies scarf hanging around my neck, I had my eyes on the very handsome Richard Kahui – an All Blacks' rookie who also happens to be a great player. For the record, Australia won 34-19.

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How do Oprah, Wu Yi and Angela Merkel feel about this?

And what about Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith?From today's news coverage of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s whirlwind visit to Perth.The Sydney Morning Herald:The world's most powerful woman strolled through the city's

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Is it hot or crazy?

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's campaign spokesperson's name is Tucker Bounds.

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Estelle Getty, 1923–2008

Oh, Estelle. For 173 episodes of this alone, thank you.

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Module behaviour

Which Sydney model has the stage-mother from hell? The chatter at brunch today was electric with tales of the pushy mom who’s riding roughshod over everyone in her daughter’s path towards – well, what? Already chewing her way through agents, the model daughter had literary ambitions and engaged a writer who cooked up a concept, wrote two chapters and came up with a perfect title. Mommie Dearest

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Which New York socialite has the better name?

Is it Topsy Taylor . . . . . . or Muffie Potter Aston?

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As if public transport wasn't scary enough

Those devilish pranksters, Improv Everywhere, filled a subway carriage with identical twins, creating a human mirror simply to delight people or freak them out, depending on their disposition. Genius! Video and more photos from the event here.

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Will Nikki Webster infect me with malware?

I came across this warning while fact-checking a story.And your brain, no doubt.Here's what I remember about Nikki Webster: dangling from a wire at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Sydney eight years ago; a song called "Strawberry Kisses" that could easily become Rickrolling V2.0. That's it. And she's still, against all odds, trying to become a brand. Last I heard she was working the gay

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Odd jobs

In an institution as old as the British royal household there are some positions that go back centuries, to when the monarchy actually ran the country.


Some positions no longer exist because the roles were absorbed by government. The Master of the Revels, for instance, oversaw royal festivities and, oddly, stage censorship. The Master of the Great Wardrobe ran the office that provided clothing

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Piss off a pilgrim

Two student activists took the New South Wales Government to court today to challenge the special World Youth Day laws that allowed police to detain people or fine them $5,500 for “annoying or inconveniencing” Catholic pilgrims (first discussed in this post) – and won.They argued that the laws, which were never discussed or debated in Parliament, were unconstitutional because they would make

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Vertigo-round

The Coen brothers are channelling the spirit of Saul Bass in the poster for their new film, Burn After Reading.By the way – quite the cast, isn't it? It opens the Venice Film Festival at the end of August, arriving in cinemas swiftly afterwards. The trailer's here.

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Black-collar crime

The Pope's in town and says he'll apologise for all the pedophile priests. Sorry about all the kiddy-fiddling! Happy World Youth Day, everyone!Broken Rites is a group that helps victims of church-related sex abuse to obtain justice. Since 1993 they’ve documented thousands of cases, in particular involving the Catholic Church. Here is their list of the 107 Catholic priests and religious brothers

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Then why, exactly, are you here?

What is the one thing that all dreadful people on reality TV shows say to excuse their dreadfulness?

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Recycle your spam

Forward a piece of spam to the Spamrecycler. Its address is spam@spamrecycling.com.It will send you back a link. Click to watch your inbox-clogging piece of crap turn into something far more interesting to look at. Here's what it made out of mine.

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Movie star morphing

Two excellent videos by Phillip Scott Johnson. How many faces can you name?Men in FilmDouglas Fairbanks Sr., Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Errol Flynn, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, Tyrone Power, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Gene Kelly, Burt Lancaster

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On yer bike

A bicycle by Chanel. A steal at $13,000.

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For all your fashion news and views

The very fabulous and fearless Patty Huntington has abandoned the shackles of mainstream media to strike out on her own. The author of, most recently, the Fully Chic blog at news.com.au has gone all indie on our ass with her very own blog, [frockwriter].There's a great story about Patty being banned from some off-schedule New York Fashion Week shows a couple of years ago by a megalomaniac PR --

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Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

There's a wonderful expression in French, l'esprit d'escalier. It means "the wit of the staircase", thinking of something brilliant you might have said during a conversation – as you're leaving.Its origins come from leaving the drawing room of a grand 18th-century house. (The drawing room, where guests were entertained, was on the first floor – thus Upstairs, Downstairs.)The Germans have a word

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Mind your manners, please

Having just finished reading a series of books set in the 1920s and 30s filled with details of calling cards and dressing for dinner, I’m currently obsessed with old systems of manners and etiquette. I’ve uncovered some gems, including the English Manners And Tone Of Good Society, Or Solecisms To Be Avoided by A Member of the Aristocracy (1879) and the American Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood’s

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The Stepford munchkins

Before-and-afters from Pageant Photo Retouching, a service specialising in work for children's pageants. And they're special, all right. I'm warning you: only pop them open if you're feeling brave.More horror here.

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Fashion police - for reals

New regulations came into force today for World Youth Day – a Catholic event in Sydney featuring special guest star, the Pope. (What, have they run out of kids to molest overseas?)It’s not a “day”, either: it’s five. The new laws are in effect for all of July, even though the event itself is in the middle of the month.There’s one that says you can’t do anything that "causes annoyance or

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OMG! IMing God

Artificial intelligence meets the confessional with amusing results as you type and a chatbot responds at iGod. I've had a couple of chats with Him and, frankly, He seems a little forgetful. Then again, being omnipotent and omnipresent, He's probably got a lot on His mind.

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Smock? Belt?

Here's the lovely Cate Blanchett (with a couple of hangers-on) at the screening of the new Indiana Jones film in Cannes yesterday, wearing a grey gown by Armani Prive.And here is how the reporter from AAP/AFP described it: "Blanchett looked radiant in a purple and black smock, tightly belted at the waist to reveal her trim figure."The moral: don't let Sunday stringers anywhere near fashion.

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29hr 24min 42sec

The head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, today appealed wealthy countries to help meet the $500m funding shortfall faced by the UN’s World Food Programme, which feeds 90 million people in over 80 countries.The “wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing American taxpayers $17m an hour. You read that right: $17 million per hour.

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You have been warned!

What would the penalty be?

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Shut up and drive

Caught a cab this morning and the driver had Alan Jones, who's now so lazy that he just reads the newspapers, on the radio. I don’t need to hear right-wing bullshit – or cab drivers' opinions about right-wing bullshit – first thing in the morning, so I put my iPod on and listened to some music.It's a 15-minute drive, and when we got to my office, he turned around and said, aggressively, “Are you

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Thr3e: a review, of sorts

It looked like a typical serial killer thriller. Thr3e instead of Se7en. It even started like one: a rapid-fire scene of a police psychologist running through the streets, on the phone to a spooky voice, until she discovered her brother, in a car, bound up in gaffer tape, wired to a bomb. After that, however, there was something a little, well, off about Thr3e.First of all, where was it shot?

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Uno is number one

His thoroughbred name is Park Me In First, but you can call him Uno. He won Best in Show at the Westminster Dog Show last night, the first time a beagle has won since 1939.I’m very happy, because if ever I had a dog, it would be a beagle. I’ve always loved them. They’re a good size and they have exactly the temperament I like. But I think they like being in packs, because they’re pack hounds, so

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Naughty Goths

Because I am a dedicated a journalist, I’m reading the Plan of Management for Hyde Park. The usual bureaucratic ordinariness, until this:Saturday and Sunday afternoons bring a lot of Goths to the War Memorial. They hassle the Salvation Army Band.Now I have to wander up there to check it out. I’ll take photos.

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Amuse bouche: just say non

Salmon Belly Tartare, Fennel Seed and Pine Nut Croccante, Preserved Lemon and Honey Gelee, Fennel Syrup.It was the size of a five-cent piece and looked as though the plate hadn't been washed properly.Could we not, please?

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Anonymous delivers

“For its part, Scientology is seemingly powerless to stop this underground warfare because members of Anonymous could be anyone.”— reporter Bryan Seymour, Today TonightThe /b/ thread that led to today's anti-Scientology actions is archived here.

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Quod erat demonstrandum

Ever wanted to get inside a saxophonist’s mouth? For some reason, researchers at the University of NSW did."It's wet in the mouth and the acoustic conditions in there are really variable, and it gets really loud in there during playing," acoustician Jer-Ming Chen he explains.No shit, Sherlock.Today’s issue of Science has the results of their research: experienced saxophonists are better players

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“How may I torture you today?”

When is torture not torture? When it’s American, of course. Only the masters of doublespeak could come up with the term “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” to cover waterboarding, standing shackled to a bolt for 40 hours, withholding pain medication for bullet wounds or being kept in a freezing cell and regularly doused in cold water.Not illegal enough for you? Try the “acts of cruel, inhuman or

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Digital sajada

Losing count during the Salaah? Then you need US Patent No. 6783822: the Muslim Prayer Counter Rug. Every time your forehead touches the switch (14), it displays on the counter (26). Clever!

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The Queen’s small talk

I don’t know how she does it.I was watching a documentary about the Queen. She was in Estonia, of all places, and was being introduced to 200 people at a reception. The British Ambassador to Estonia was flapping around – “This gentlemen is the inventor of the philharmonic chamber choir; this lady provides foreign policy advice to the prime minister” – and there she was, making small talk with

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Jewelled palaces

Another dreary wet night in Sydney last night but relieved by a very pleasant outing to the State Theatre. The Taj Hotels screened a dreamy travelogue about four of their most opulent properties followed by cocktails. I met three members of Indian Royal families, all with glorious names. They are, left to right, Prince Rajkumar Vijit Singh from the Royal Family of Jaipur, Princess Bhargavi Kumari

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All hail Mega-Dik

A new champion has been crowned in the spam wars: the botnet Mega-Dik, used solely to push penis-enlargement products, has taken over from the Storm botnet as the most prolific sender of spam.Mega-Dik now accounts for 32% of all spam – about 3 billion messages per day – and is growing its army of zombie computers thanks to increasing high broadband penetration and low antivirus protection in Asia

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Kon. Ich. Ee. Wa.

Andy Warhol demonstrates his mastery of the Japanese language in this ad for TDK from 1982.

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Another suburban coke addict

"Cocaine, darling! I'm totally off my face! That's why I let you touch me. By the way, who are you?"

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Making Sensorama

I’m obsessed with Morton Heilig lately. He’s called “the father of virtual reality” with good reason.When TV sucked the life out of the cinema in the 1950s, the cinema fought back with gimmicks like Cinerama, 3-D and Smell-O-Vision. Heilig, who was working as a Hollywood cinematographer, wanted to take the illusion of cinematic immersion one step further.His Sensorama machine, patented in 1962,

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Ninja skirt

The level of street crime in Japan is actually declining, but the local media is fanning hysteria about muggings and assaults. It prompted designer Aya Tsukioka to create this piece of clothing for escaping from an attacker. And she's serious. It's yours for ¥80,000, with a kimono-to-vending-machine version available by special order.

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Belief-O-Matic™: Choosing My Religion

I was answering the 20-question Belief-O-Matic™: What Religion Am I? quiz at Beliefnet and, between questions about God, the afterlife, abortion and Satan, this ad popped up.It's for Eli Lilly's post-Prozac cash cow, duloxetine. It's the new standard-issue seratonin reuptake inhibitor for depression. An interesting choice of target audience, I thought.Anyway, the quiz said my number one choice of

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Eye candy

Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka studies the psychology of vision at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. His work centres around visual illusion, visual completion, motion perception and stereopsis (binocular depth perception). He is a scientist but I think his work is art.His current research is about "anomalous motion illusions": static images that look like they're moving.Click these pictures to

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My summer jam

I've got the new three-CD Pacha set on high rotation. CD1 is mixed by The Potbelleez, CD2 by Vandalism (the thinking man's Sneaky Sound System), and CD3 by KC Taylor from Pacha Ibiza. And it's all rly rly good. Very tasty.

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The Crapworks

There used to be a waxworks in Kings Cross. It was called, brilliantly, the Kings Cross Waxworks. It closed in the late 1980s because it was kinda sad and boring.Here, for instance, is the "Shark Attack!" exhibit. Note the rather casual pose of the now-footless bather, and the stick holding up the surface of the "sea". Terrifying.[Photo by Goobertron at flickr]My friends Jeffrey and Amy and I

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Got a light?

High-speed digital. You've gotta love it.

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Paradoxes

I was reading a pdf document and came across this:Technically, it's a "self-refuting meta-reference". I like to think of it as a koan, a Zen puzzle to clear the mind.Here's another one.Cue the finger cymbals, please. Twing twing!

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Modern childcare

[More delicious comic goodness at Married to the Sea.]

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RE: Trade secrets press release

As an editor I get a shitload of email from PR companies. But why bother sending me an email press release with this disclaimer in the footer?The information in this email is confidential. The contents may not be disclosed, forwarded, published or broadcast without the explicit written permission of [company name].So, do you want me to write about your client or not?

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I’m just a mess of Body Thetans!

I can answer these questions from Scientology’s 343-question Whole Track Sec Check audit with an emphatic “Yes!”• Have you ever tried to give sanity a bad name?• Have you ever consistently practiced sex in some unnatural fashion?• Have you ever been a professional critic?• Have you given robots a bad name?• Have you driven anyone insane?• Have you ever warped an educational system?• Have you ever

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Drinking and dialling and dialling and dialling

There's a committal hearing underway in Sydney against a football player. Another one – yawnzies. Anyway, one piece of evidence caught my eye.The woman said she had been drinking heavily and dancing with friends at clubs in Kings Cross the night earlier, and she had no recollection of how she came to be in the [football player's] apartment.The court also heard the woman made 21 calls on her

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Not written in the stars

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禁止吸烟！

Beijing's trying to turn smoke-free for the Olympics in 200 days, but it's not going very well.Authorities wrote to 30,000 restaurants asking them to put a ban in place, and only one took up the suggestion – and it's going out of business.The Meizhou Dongpo chain of Sichuan restaurants trained its floor staff to discourage people from lighting up only to have them locked out of private dining

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Facebook groups about Corey Delaney: a taxonomy

As of this morning, there are 70 groups on Facebook about Corey Delaney (née Worthington). There's something for everyone! To make navigating them a little easier – it's so hard to decide! – I've classified them into this handy guide.NEUTRAL > Discussion✮ Corey Delaney: A genius or a complete retard?✮ Corey Delaney: Friend or Foe?FANS > General✮ Corey Delaney, we salute you.✮ Corey Delaney Fan

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The new princes of pop: a crash course

If you are a 12-year-old girl you may skip to the next post. The rest of you, pay attention.Meet the tween phenomenon that is the Jonas Brothers (left to right): Kevin (b. 1987), Nick (b. 1992) and Joe (b. 1989). They’re Hanson for the 21st century with an extra dollop of Disney.They have a totally poptastic "history":March 2007 - Performed the jingle in an ad for Baby Bottle Pops. “You can lick

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What's that word?

I've been playing with a couple of visual thesaurases – or is it thesauri? – online. They're excellent for feeling your way towards the word you're looking for in an intuitive way. The first one is the Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus.You can try it online and either subscribe to it or download it. It's extremely comprehensive and allows you to chase a word depending on nuance – if you click on one of

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The kids today

[I started writing this post on Saturday night when the ABC began reporting on the police helicopter's presence, with only a gut feeling that it would be a good media moment. I had no idea that it would become massive just 24 hours later.]Corey Worthington’s parents went on holiday to Queensland. They left the 16-year-old at home in the outer Melbourne suburb of Narre Warren, telling him not to

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I’m Gonna Wash These Dishes With My Tears

I was listening to Loretta Lynn this morning while I was doing some housework and singing along like a crazy person, like you do. Listening to “You’re the Reason Our Kids are Ugly” reminded me of “I’m Gonna Wash These Dishes With My Tears”, which isn’t a country song, but it should be. These country songs, however, are real and wonderful.♪ Is It Cold in Here, or Is it Just You?♪ Are You Drinkin

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Petrol and porn

I saw the National Theatre of Scotland's Black Watch last night. (It's the ninth show I've seen this year - yes, it's Sydney Festival time!) It's about the famous Black Watch Regiment and their deployment in Iraq. The play moves between their active service and their homecoming, and all the contradictions of the two.It begins in a pub with the boys recounting stories to a journalist. When a knife

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O'Mer? Oh, my!

I went to see La Clique in The Famous Spiegeltent last night as part of the Sydney Festival. It's mix of cabaret, burlesque, vaudeville and circus.The highlight, for me at least, was David O'Mer, the bathtub acrobat.Lordy.

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Have you even looked in a mirror lately?

Mr Blackwell – or Richard Sylvan Selzer, as I like to call him – has announced his Worst Dressed Women List for 2007. At the top of the list: Victoria Beckham. Oh, really?Here is Mr Blackwell and his husband.Here is Victoria Beckham and her husband.I know who I'd rather look at.

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A (former) pop star's cry for help – and, no, it's not Britney

Marilyn, who had a hit in 1983 with "Calling Your Name", wants a computer. The 45-year-old former Blitz Kid is willing to give you "personal items" at lunch "or preferably dinner" in return for the required £850. There's more: promises of an official web site and more music. Oh, hooray. And presumably more posts like this one. Here is an edited version of his sales pitch which you can read in

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Bon appetit! [Warning: enlarge pic at own risk]

Looking for something to horrify the guests at your next dinner party? Just serve anything from the Knudsen Recipes for Greater Food Value cookbook published in 1958. It all looks dreadful.From the top: Green Beans in Hampshire Sauce, Onion and Green Pepper Stew, and Curried Rice Casserole.These are just three of the many culinary disasters featured at James Lileks' The Gallery of Regrettable

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Box-office whores

Global branding consultancy Interbrand has announced the top product-placement movies of 2007. Here they are in order of product placement volume.#1: TransformersAAA, Apple, Aquafina, AT&T, Austin-Healey, Beretta, BMW, BOSCH, Bose, Boston Red Sox, Burger King, Cadillac, Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet, Chevrolet Camaro, Cisco, CitiGroup, Daewoo, DeWALT, Dickies, Ding Dong, Dodge, eBay, Enterprise,

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Amazing trompe l'oeils

The works of Swiss painter Felice Varini are magical illusions. They can only be viewed from a single point in space, otherwise they make no sense. In person, the pieces appear two-dimenensional and floating. In photographs, they seem to be superimposed.Here is a simple example. This painting appears to be a cross over a doorway.When the point of view changes, you can see that it's painted onto

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Wheeee— aaaaargh!

How safe are amusement park and fairgound rides? Not very.

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Exploding dogs? "Oh, it happens"

This was just posted on ABC News. Any – any! – explanations are welcome.Exploding dogs pose no threat to estate housesThe Northern Territory Government is confident it will not have any problems building a housing estate across the road from a crematorium in Darwin where a dead dog exploded on Wednesday night.   Police were called to the crematorium because of a strong red glow coming from the

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A kinder, gentler Chinese execution

Lethal injections will become the preferred death penalty in China as shootings are phased out. The reason? It's more humane, says a Chinese government official. Welcome Lucky Olympic Year 2008!It's also a lot more efficient. Executions by lethal injection are carried out immediately once the order has been made, including in mobile "death buses". The procedure for shootings is much more

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Armoire amour

This cabinet is from a collection of five pieces in editions of five from the Dutch design group Studio Job. The pieces are all for the imagined residence of a robber baron and represent industrial power, wealth and corruption. It's made of polished bronze with a black patinated "crater" with gilded reliefs. It weighs a couple of tons but the doors are functional thanks to a ball-bearing

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2008: the year, so far, in violent crime

What the hell is going on? The year is only two days old and it has already been unbelievably violent. All this happened in Australia in the past 48 hours. So much for goodwill to all men.New South Wales• Police say a tomahawk was used to hack a 61-year-old man to death at Schofields in Sydney's north-west.• A 38-year-old man was found dead from head injuries in an apartment at Forster on the

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Driving and dialling

While I was having lunch today at a café in Victoria St I was amazed by the number of people driving past with a phone clamped to their ear. It was more than half of all the drivers that went past, so I counted them for 15 minutes: 32.Last year I was almost hit on a pedestrian crossing by a woman driving while on the phone. She screeched to a stop – on the crossing – and then carried on, one

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