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Archive:
Month: December 2016
In what ways are you racist?
Sicut alicubi dixit medicus bonus Habibus Magnus: Confiteor. [As the good doctor Habib the Great has put it elsewhere: “I Confess”] [Hey, it’s not my fault Habib chose to quote the Catholic Mass in Latin.] You know, Habib le toubib, I’ve been expecting a question like this for maybe a month or two. Since I […]
SEEN: Apocalypse Now Redux
Let me preface this by saying that I am a cinematic dunce. At least, when I was a kid, Bill Collins was still presenting pre-1950 Hollywood films every Saturday night on Australian television. That was the 80s, of course. I think I got a lot more depth in my cinematic education then than the young […]
PARTLY READ: George Herbert
I got a fifth of the way through the Temple on holiday (his complete works), before deciding that I needed to go back and get a listing of what the good stuff was. A couple of the short poems I read were good. Not transcendentally good, but good enough that I looked forward to finding […]
Why do Australians say fuck off all the time to everything even birds?
I wish to register my mockery of Quora deciding that (a) a question about the use of the word fuck is automatically an Adult Question; and (b) much more importantly, that there shall be No Request From Suggestions available for any Adult Question. What would an Australian Quora term that, I wonder? Infantilising horseshit, I […]
Why is Christianity obsessed with sexuality?
The cumulative effect of the following: Patriarchy, and its concern to control fertility and access to fertile women as tribal commodities. The concern of archaic Judaism to associate fertility with religious identity (circumcision). The dismissal of bodily desire as more base than spiritual pursuits, to be regulated (already present in both Judaism and several strands […]
Who were the least saintly saints?
Cyril of Alexandria. Patriarch of Alexandria. Doctor of the Church. Founder of Mariology, and formulator of the concept of the Mother of God. Establisher of Miaphysitism, the distinct belief of the Oriental Orthodox Church; yet his formulation was also foundational to the Chalcedonian Christianity of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church. Even if you don’t […]
What is your very first memory?
Originally Answered: What is your first memory? I remember remembering my earliest memory. I don’t remember it, but I remember remembering it. I remember remembering being photographed, and thinking how tight my pants were. The photo is with my sister, and I must have been 3 or 4. It’s at my parents’; I should get […]
What is the biggest atrocity you have seen committed against books?
Yeah, when I was an undergrad, someone did a conceptual art thingy, involving nailing books into the lawn. And students had the kind of anguish that McKayla Kennedy spoke of in her Pinterest answer. And rescued the books; I got a Ulysses out of it. The books were going to be pulped by the publishers […]
If your country had a slogan what it would be?
My country (Australia) already has a slogan. The Lucky Country. The popular understanding, within and outside Australia, is that Australia being lucky (having lots of resources, affluent, stable) is a good thing. The original book, which everyone in this country should read (and which is still relevant 50 years on), argued that this was a […]
READ: Geoffrey Blainey: A Shorter History of Australia
I will also be including in the Aphypnesis blog books and art I have consumed outside of recommendations. A Shorter History of Australia Took me a little while to get through, but it is quite digestible. Geoffrey Blainey has been the doyen of the Old Right Wing of Australian Historiography, and was embroiled in Australian […]