By tom | November 23, 2005
These Elliott Smith-esque days are coming thick and fast. There are many more reasons to detest the ubiqutous iPod than there are seasons in the sun, the least of which is the overturning of conventional punctuation which results in Steve Jobs iCon (sic) biography. The more glaring one is that, for most, for the recent [...]
By tom | November 16, 2005
Bad things happen to bad people. I was reading Andre Schiffrin’s The Business of Books (subtitled: how the international conglomerates took over publishing and changed the way we read).
And it came true.
The itinerary for the forthcoming vacation to the West coast would have included a visit to “Midnight Special”, a specialist (read: leftist / critical) [...]
By tom | November 8, 2005
It’s just as well that it is a French word. I remember writing about “race” riots and the disenfranchised in 1980s Britain – the impact of Thatcherite economics, institutionalised racism, antagonistic policing methods, disproportionate unemployment rates etc. Listening to news reports, it seems that explanations are simply regurgitated, albeit with an easily ridiculed French accent. [...]
Also posted in critique |
By tom | November 5, 2005
We angstsy moderns wear our and everyone else’s anxieties on our sleeves. Mine jolted me out of bed this morning with a venom worthy of a jilted lover: it is not that my books will never see the light of the published day, but that they will be the ones that you see on display [...]
By tom | October 31, 2005
This is what I wrote during my 12 days in Tehran; it should have been posted then. Now, in the lobby of the Surabaya Marriott , a mere 7970 km away, it no longer seems familiar, as if a lie, a memory deadened by distance. As if memory’s judgement is susceptible to the diktat of [...]
By tom | October 21, 2005
And dammit, why come up with “lisp” to describe the condition? Is this some sort of etymological wit?
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addthis_title = ‘lisps’;
addthis_pub = ”;
By tom | October 13, 2005
I’ve been to Paradise but I’ve never been to me (Charlene)
Is this the lyrics of a “so-bad-its-good” 80s disco song, or does it question the incongruence between the Good Life and self-reflection, the non-identity of the Divine and subject?
addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.writing.adancingstar.com%2F2005%2Fso-bad-its-good-80s-disco-song%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘question’;
addthis_pub [...]
By tom | October 12, 2005
This extended stay in the modern capital of Persia is lacking an appropriate, nay, deserving, reading companion. I wish my tattered copy of The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire is beside me (somehow, prejudices have rallied and ruled against the online substitute). It must only be this ragged copy, of course: survivor of [...]
A less than startling observation follows. Animals penned in enclosed spaces often develop repetitive behaviour patterns: in scientific jargon, this is called “stereotypic route-tracing”, or more generally “stereotypic behavior”.
A leopard at the world famous Night Safari circles in a never-ending figure 8. While the symbolism of the “Eight” in Feng Sui-riven Singapore might signal [...]
By tom | October 13, 2004
First steps: (24th October 2004)
It started innocently enough with a Sunday shopping sojourn; it started entirely aimlessly and proceeded to spiral out of control, ending only when the plastic cried out.
One of the assorted nothings was a sleek coffee machine. The logic was quite simple: why let the 21st century equivalent of McDonald’s ruin my [...]
