Regrets

What is my number one regret? The lies I've told, the friends I've hurt, the manslaughter of the childhood friend I covered up?

NO

My number one regret is that I have been neglecting my faithful blog readers. Both of you. Ha ha ha self-deprecation!

Anyway, I was away for a little bit decompressing from a rather frantic personal and professional period, visiting family and lying down etc. I'm back now, blogging for your delectation.

What's been happening since the last update?

Well, there have been more writings, obviously. Check them out:

At newmatilda.com:

Thoughts on rugby league and great 20th-century statesmen

Thoughts on the Victorian government's affaire grande with the religious right

My thoughts on silly immigrants and why the athletic ones are better

At Crikey:

My first stab at investigate journalism; I managed to smuggle out the minutes from Hey Hey It's Saturday's production meeting prior to their second reunion special.

Please note: not only did John Blackman comment on that last one, he almost knows my name! I am pretty special I think you will agree.

So in other news...a new project! Gather Around Me, with Australia's hippest young pop culture vivisectionists Ben Pobjie and Cam Smith bringing you their thoughts through the magic of Montenegran internet.

GAM will feature random musings by Cam and myself throughout your long, otherwise-stultifying days, but the main meat of the site is in our regular podcasts. There are two up so far, check 'em out. You can also subscribe through iTunes.

Also, following my gig way back at the Emerging Writers' Festival, I have a piece in the EWF Reader, a collection of writers writing about writing. To quote the EWF:

"The Reader is a new collection that combines highlights of the 2009 festival with general writing information and new creative works across various writing forms.


The Reader is about the craft, the approaches, the techniques and processes; the discipline(s), the forms, the experiments; the inner life, the social life, the lifestyle; the ups and downs, the tricks and the tribulations, the fun and the failure…

The Reader is Artworks, Illustrations, Flash Fiction, Fragments, Interviews, Short Stories, Sketches, Songs, Sonnets, Haiku, Poetry, Plays, Photos, Comics, Couplets, Verse, Recipes, Rants, and Memoirs.



The Reader is Steven Amsterdam on writers’ workshops, Clem Bastow on freelancing, Jen Breach on writing comics, Mel Campbell on pitching to editors, Kathy Charles on shameless self-promotion, Stephanie Convery on writing Black Saturday, Olivia Davis on fear and writing practices, Lisa Dempster on how much writers earn, Koraly Dimitriadis talks to Christos Tsoilkas, Caroline Hamilton compares writers’ festivals and music festivals, Stu Hatton on his mentorship with Dorothy Porter, Jane Hawtin discusses publishing academic research for a general audience, Andrew Hutchinson recalls the Emerging Writers’ Festival, Tiggy Johnson on parenthood and writing, Krissy Kneen on not writing about sex, Benjamin Law on failure, Angela Meyer reviews books for writers, Jennifer Mills on the politics of publishing and engaging with readers, Anthony Noack on good grammar, John Pace on re-drafting your screenplay, Ryan Paine on the role of the critic, Ben Pobjie on writing comedy, Robert Reid on the role of the contemporary playwright, Aden Rolfe on the emergentsia, Jenny Sinclair on the landscape of her book research, Chris Summers talks to Lally Katz about theatre writing, Mia Timpano on how to cultivate the ultimate author profile photo, Estelle Tang on Christopher Currie and blogging fiction, Simmone Michelle-Wells pens a letter to her younger self, Cameron White reviews alternatives to Microsoft Word.

And new creative works by Maxine Clark, Chris Currie, Chris Downes, Claire Henderson, Kirk Marshall, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Alice Mrongovius, Meg Mundell, Warwick Sprawson and Cameron T"

Nota Bene: "Ben Pobjie on writing comedy". Yes! After reading the Reader, you will know how to be funny, like me! I'm not even joking, y'all! In bookstores now!

More soon, you sexy readers.

The Blind Leading the Flamboyantly Drug-addled

In a stunning development, Australian television viewers have been forced to process the disturbing revelation that apparently blind people are not naturally suited to ballroom dancing.

After Dancing With The Stars judge and well-known pants-removal enthusiast Todd McKenney cruelly pointed this out, blind Paralympian and adventurer Gerrard Gosens protested, enlisting the Herald Sun in his public campaign to have people with disabilities treated differently to everyone else. A fighting fund has now been set up to provide support for Gosens in his efforts to be judged by lower standards and be rewarded for inferior performance at every opportunity.

McKenney's "tactless attack" (sic) was one of the most flagrant examples of an arrogant celebrity shamelessly telling the obvious truth that has been seen in this country since Paul Keating famously told John Hewson that he looked "a bit like a sad horse".

Fans of the show have reacted angrily to McKenney's outburst, questioning the judgment of a man who, hired for the purpose of assessing the dancing talent of others, has the temerity to tell someone he's a bad dancer for no other reason than the fact he is very very bad at dancing. The fans have complained that Gosens was "humiliated", an outcome that surely nobody could have seen coming when a commercial television network put a blind man on a celebrity dancing show.

"Oops!" cried Channel Seven executives. "The blind man has been humiliated and made into a sort of horribly compelling freak show! How tragically removed from our original intentions this development is! Woe is us!"

In The Punch, Tory Maguire, taking a break from her usual occupation of informing us on how Telstra is improving all our lives, one completely unjustified fee at a time, has written what I thought was a reasonably sensical piece on this burning issue.

So, what have we learnt?

1. Gerard Gosens cannot dance

2. There is no need to publicly point this out just because he chose to enter a nationally broadcast dancing competition

3. Todd McKenney is a complete bastard

4. Tory Maguire is a more palatable read as a defender of brutally honest reality TV judges than as a morally repellent corporate apologist.

5. Dancing With The Stars is a microcosm of society in ways that we cannot even imagine and are unlikely to try.