Hmm

According to a terribly scientific quiz at the political compass (thanks, Pav), I'm further to the left on economic issues than Marx and than Ghandi on social issues .

Gotta stop reading that pinko-bleeding heart-black armband Sydney Morning Herald if I want to hold my head up on the Lower North Shore.

Mind you, if I did stop reading it, I wouldn't have come across this oddity from a bestelling Russian-American author Gary Shteyngart on being told that his publishers had rushed to print an additional 200,000 copies of his book Absurdistan after a favourable review in the New York Times Book Review:

"Who are these people? They must be incredibly rich to have time to just sit around and read."

Maybe they'd need to be incredibly rich to pay full price for hardcovers...

Week-end paper silliness #1

I don't often read the "Open Gallery" column in the Sydney Morning Herald but I'm glad I did last week-end. This sounds like a doozy:

"Another series of photos Incinerator Holiday emerged from negatives found at the Waverley garbage incinerator. When developed they were covered in red blemishes with a texture like rice paper, the blurred landscapes glazed and weathered but compelling."

I don't know whether the artist cropped out the grinning tourists from the foreground or if the original photgrapher was like my dad who only occasionally and grudgingly allowed us kids to sully his perfectly framed piictures of whatever beauty spot we'd driven all day to visit.

It'd be pretty odd to walk into a gallery and find your old holiday snaps up on the wall and called art. But the way these look, you probably would haved thrown them away for a pretty good reason...

The Rich are Different

I also read the May edition of Vanity Fair when I was in hospital.

I admit I only bought it because the cover had two of the cutest things in the world on it: Leo di Caprio and a teensy weensy cuddly fluffy white polar bear cub. What's not to like?

Inside, I learned that Bobby Kennedy Jr - son of Bobby that got shot in 1968 and apparently an environmental lawyer - chose his prep school in upstate New York himself. He was attracted to his choice because it had a zoo.

A zoo.

At my school we thought ourselves lucky to have grass.

How I almost burst my stitches

When I was in hospital with Baby Winnie, I couldn't hold both her and a book. Well I could HOLD a book; I just couldn't keep it open and actually READ.

So I spent a lot of time reading magazines. Very slowly because my concentration was shot.

This profile of of superstar artist Jeff Koons made me giggle far too hard. It alleges that when Jeff was wooing Ciccolina, an Italian parliamentarian and porn star, she didn't speak any English and his Italian extended to ordering dinner.

Instead of LEARNING Italian, he spoke English to her with an Italian accent.

Eventually, when that didn't really work, he got a translator to help but she had to be dismissed when she fell in love with Jeff.

And he reckons he was surprised when the marriage didn't last...