Wherever you may find the moment.
Here are some places that I read.
1. Sitting in my car in traffic.
Look, I know it's not the most legal thing in the world. But sitting mindlessly on Sydney roads - especially when your car stereo is broken - can destroy one's soul. Why not pick up a novel and rest it on your steering wheel? If you become so engrossed in Carson McCullers' searingly dry prose that you knock over a pensioner or two, so be it. All in the name of learning, Your Honour.
2. Waiting in line at the bank.
This is why you must carry a book with you at all times. Every shred of lifelessness miraculously disappears from a queue when you take Henry Miller out of your bag and immerse yourself in some filthy French literature. You may even come a little in your pants when the teller says NEXT and startles you from your creamy reverie.
3. On the exercise bike at the gymnasium.
Breaking a sweat is boring as fuck, but good for the brain. If you're able to balance William Boyd on the LED display thing or whatever the hell it is trying to convince you you're cycling through the Parisian streets, you are doubling the awesomeness pulsating through your receptors. That's right, cerebrovascular affairs are my specialty subject.
4. At the dinner table.
I never said I had nice manners. Just very tolerant and long-suffering friends and family and partners. Also: try and tell me that a three course meal doesn't taste better with Kingsley Amis. TRY.
Anyway. I work in a day job where they couldn't really care too much about what I do at my desk so long as it involves something youthfully exuberant and 'on the pulse' (hackysack is particularly encouraged) so this particular website is more for you than for me. Lady and genteels, please admire from up close readatwork.com and don't say I never do anything nice for you.
To precis: readatwork.com is a website set up specifically so office workers can read at their desk without being busted by 'the man', or woman if it's a particularly progressive company or organisation. It looks cannily like an average desktop though has short cuts to online novels like follows:
By clicking on a folder in one of these menus you'll be taken to the first page of an abridged novel, which may look something like this:
Why do I not work in places where they power point present such happy-looking folk? Honestly.
The slightly irritating thing about the site is that a) you're reading a somewhat condensed version of otherwise great literature and b) you have to train your brain to get around reading pages like this:
But it's a small price to pay, really. Just look at this excerpt from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Ice Palace. LOOK AT IT.
IT IS BOTH LITERATURE AND A PIE CHART. THIS WEBSITE WILL MAKE ME DIE A HAPPY LADY.
You're welcome.
Comments
i'm pushing back the end of the financial year.
Can I come work with you, though, when I lose my job here? It is a thinly veiled charade, and I fear the IT bods here will have the better of me in no time.
In other news, this is my doubleyou-tee-eff moment for today:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/former-emo-jailed-over-teen-sex/2008/05/16/1210765135852.html
I do. I just finished re-reading James Joyce's "Dubliners" short stories, and am now reading Bryan Magee's "Wagner and Philosophy".
I read in queues, elevators, MacDonalds, on the bus, cafes, funerals, etc.
This doesn't include stuff I have to read for vocational development, which I read at home.
In fact, that's why I read everything else everywhere else.
http://tiny.cc/LVk7g
Promise me, it's worth your time.
It sends you plain text emails each day, with the next section of your selected book. It looks like legitimate work AND you can hit the 'next installment' link to get the next one straight away!
Actually, that would be a fucking scary cover design for '1984'. Really, fucking scary.
"...and allowed her to perform an indecent act on him in a McDonald's restaurant in front of her 13-year-old friend."
And then "a friend" told the cops?
They're odd dynamics, aren't they? Like, a tad Oedipal.
I read an OK! mag and marvelled at the chandelier in JLo's nursery and then I read about that Top Gear guy who crashed his rocket car. I'm feeling much better now
Never seen so many complete assholes in one television reality programme at Top Gear. Inlcuding the Footy Show.
They're at the complete opposite end of the social and moral spectrum as the folk in Mythbusters. And a lot uglier.
But they are so cute! and they are having sooo much fun. I luv them. I luv top gear. I love the stig.
I mentally misuse the stig.
He keeps the helmet on.
Mythbusters, good. Top Gear, good. Footy Show, bad.
"But they are so cute! and they are having sooo much fun."
Sorry, but they're lager louts with cars.
I'm not against cars, mind you. But Jamie and Adam at least try to blow up vintage Caddies and stuff, and shoot frozen chickens through aeroplane cockpit windshields - practical things - and not just endlessly compare piston size.
And the girls on Mythbusters are totally part of the action, doing hard corse things with welding tools and detonators.
Really, if I had to go for a long drive it would be with the red-head girl in Mythbusters and none of the Top Gear louts.
You're just jealous coz you don't get paid oodles to have sooooo much fun and be a rich lager lout.
Even so it did make me feel better. I thought well squib you nearly got run over but at least you didn't crash a rocket car and get your brains hurled around like they were in a lettuce spinner
red-head chick mythbusters = good taste
Top Gear/Lagar louts = poopyhead!
The Stig = Sex God
Don’t judge me. There is a girl here who insists that everybody read everything ever written by Neil Gaiman. The stuff without pictures.
http://i26.tinypic.com/120qfet.jpg
x
"You're just jealous coz you don't get paid oodles to have sooooo much fun and be a rich lager lout."
Yes, that's true. And I am a poopyhead.
But as I see it, the function of serious art is to reveal to human beings the most fundamental truths about our innermost nature.
You do this by dropping Buster off 20 storey buildings and firing cannon balls out of home-made, wooden-barrelled artillery pieces. Not by doing burn outs in Wapping in a borrowed Maserati.
QED. Assholes.
And making gel heads with pig spines and fake arteries and lifting them up into industrial grade fans is a thing of joy and wonder. But watching three grown men accidentally set fire to not one, but two caravans is very very funny.
I also read books and usually carry a couple so I can switch the trashy book for the book about tea or cod, if I see people I know.
Well, if I'd known we were talking about art, I surely wouldn't have come out in favour of Top Gear (although there was that one ep where they got academics from [I think] Edinburgh Uni to judge which car was the most art-like).
That's true, if it's your dad and a couple of uncles trying to set up a temporary holiday accommodation situation in Toukley, for sure.
But why not drop the caravan from the underbelly of a pre-loved B52 over the Mojave desert to test whether it's possible to re-enter earth's atmosphere in a second-hand Viscount Sunseeker and survive?
We already KNOW you can go really fast in an E-type but that they handle like a bucket full of housebricks. So what's the fuckin' point?
I highly recommend Anne Wroe's "Pontius Pilate : The Biography of an Invented Man".
We do? *not to self: must keep up*
"...to judge which car was the most art-like."
A bloody Karmann Ghia, obviously. But that's just going over old ground. Because can it also float??
*not(e) to self: must keep up*
Well, they've got leaf-spring suspension and drum-brakes on the rear axles. Hopeless.
Blimey. I missed that one...
"MCL that's like my dad. He reads a broadsheet down on the cafe strip, then he reads the West Australian at home, furtive-like"
Donald Sassoon claims that the status of a cultural product is entirely dependent on the status of the audience using it. A very interesting concept given that there's no reason to think the news content in a broadsheet is any different to that in a tabloid.
and people would mistake me for respectable and possibly virtuous.
Balances out the Laurell K Hamilton and other vampire books nicely.
I'm sorry, that's just silly
I've always wondered why the smaller size equates to crappy content.
No room to fit big words and complex thoughts maybe? Any other ideas?
"I'm sorry, that's just silly"
No, it's true. Shocking, I know. But basically it's the same crap coming from the same news agencies and very often produced by the same media organisations. At exactly the same time.
Except the tabloids get right to the naked breasts earlier on the pretext of being "shocked" whereas the broadsheets pretend it's "art".
"I've always wondered why the smaller size equates to crappy content."
They're both crappy. I mean, Miranda Divine isn't "better" because she writes for a broadsheet.
Tabloids are smaller because their audience reads them on busses and trains. Broadsheets have the same crap but in a layout that's better suited to sitting around the boardroom.
Tabloids have more focus on celebrity gossip and sensational stories about aliens and wotnot whereas broadsheets are more interested in grain exports. There are loads of differences but just spelling them out makes me feel suddenly like I'm writing an essay for Journalism and Society unit MCC240 *yawn*.... *dribble*
That's not to say I don't agree with you about them both being crappy. It's just degrees of crappiness - I tend to find one's a great steaming turd and the other's a small plopper.
But that's just audience segmentation at work.
"Local" news isn't inherently inferior to "international" news.
I mean, you could write terrific, insightful, revealing local news - and write derivative crap about international affairs.
And broadsheets have heaps of celebrity gossip, but about different, higher status celebrities. Audrey Tautou instead of Posh Spice, or they'll gossip about Posh Spice in a "knowing, wry, ironic way".
In fact, certain celebrities have been appropriated by up-market audiences FROM down market audiences - Kylie Minogue.
Other celebrities have gone the other way - Pavarotti for example - starting off as the exemplars of upper class cultural status but subsequently devalued when they became popular amongst, and accessible to lower class people.
Well it's not
Hence the top headline from 'News of the World' is 'Cheryl's Rebenge: Video that will Shock Love Cheat Ashley' whereas 'The Times' is 'Lebanon’s ‘wedding day’ snatches peace from the jaws of civil war'
Don't give me that audience segmentation gobbledegook
In the 19th Century, incredible amounts of tosh was written about the Mona Lisa by people like Walter Pater and Theophile Gautier mainly for upper class, 'intellectual' audiences - all the nonsense about La Jaconde as the epitome of the femme fatale, about her 'inscrutable' smile, etc, etc.
The the Mona Lisa got stolen from the Louvre, and there was enormous media interest in the pianting and 'why' it was 'important'. So, the press (mostly tabloid) began pumping out all the nonsense written about the Mona Lisa by Pater and Gautier and others. To 'explain' to ordinary people why the painting was 'special'.
So, the painting was now "important" and "special" to a different audience - the broad, mass audience of ordinary folk.
It was then immediately dropped by the intelligentsia, and even held up to ridicule by the likes of Duchamp and others.
In other words, the Mona Lisa had changed "ownership" culturally - and being now 'popular', became "cliché".
Only a few years earlier, she had been the epitome of the western cultural tradition. And then she was demoted to 'kitsch' almost overnight.
"Note: I did not say one was better than the other."
Neither did I. I said the audiences had different social status. So the media they consume is judged differently.
There can be excellent local tabloid reporting.
And there can be high status gossipy news (Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, etc).
The difference in status depends on that of their audiences.
Started off about reading and literature ->tv about cars and blowing stuff up -> newspapers ->art -> ???
Also, I don't know what's going on with me today. That should have said 'I promise you', not 'Promise me'. Maybe my hair colour is to blame.
Right up there with this little gem: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
As an alternative, when I had a slack-ass desk job, what I did was paste the chapter of the classic text I happened to be reading (courtesy of gutenberg.org) into the cell of a spreadsheet. I would then make the entire row that the novel was pasted in invisible, by doing something with right-click. This spreadsheet was cunningly disguised as the asset database I had been 'working on' for the duration of my employment.
By selecting the equation bar at the top of the screen, I could line down, sentence by sentence. I read Crime and Punishment, and Pride and Prejudice this way.
Bit desperate perhaps, but I never got caught :).
and that is all.
Always carry a book.
Love Mythbusters. Too bad about buster's adventures in space last week.
Love some of Top Gear. The race between the jet and the mini was awesome.
I am with Duchamp on the Mona Lisa.
Read at work whenever I want. Totally impressed with the ingenius methods devised to do the same.
Why not post the pic? Use photobucket to give you the HTML code.
And Amazed I think that is a girl thing. Boys would get medals on their pants so we have to think of car accidents in that situation.
where's my Berliner editions?
Funny, coz teachers come along thinking I'm texting, and then when I show them the book, their faces are totally at a loss.
Shows how much is expected of my generation.
I wrote about you tonight (creepy ay?):
http://heath.hrsoftworks.net/archives/000207.html
I think you're neat.
Heath "haven't finished a book since high school" Raftery
But NOW I'm overly excited to find that I might discover the Stig's identity!!!
Now, if I can only find a way for Jeremy Clarkson to (verbally) abuse me whilst watching an episode of House I'll be set.
Alicia, your teachers should be impressed with your multi tasking. Must be a boring lesson.
Be good when every student gets a laptop then you can blog during lessons. Or not?
"Maybe my hair colour is to blame."
Hey, how ironic, Rach, Squib that we be talking about the differences between "porn" and "art", and the "sexualisation of children" while overnight the hysteria breaks out over Bill Henson and the Roslyn Oxley gallery exhibition featuring nude shots of teenagers.
I said @ 22May16:12 ...
"Except the tabloids get right to the naked breasts earlier on the pretext of being "shocked" whereas the broadsheets pretend it's "art"."
That's exactly what happened today in Sydney's "Telegraph" newspaper...
"IF any of The Daily Telegraph's photographers shot and presented images even half as incendiary and vile as those planned for display at the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery, they would be out of work - and probably inside a police station."
The Australian newspaper, takes a more measured approach;
"Henson is an internationally renowned photographer who was given an important retrospective show at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2005.
He declined last night to comment on the cancellation of the show's opening night, but yesterday expressed frustration at the controversy that sometimes attended his shows. "
Yet the Australian and the Telegraph are both News Ltd papers - the difference being that the former has broadsheet pretensions, the latter is tabloid.
It's interesting, too, that Kevin Rudd takes the straight Telegraph line:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has told Channel Nine the photos are revolting.
"Kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected," Mr Rudd said.
"I have a very deep view of this. For God's sake, let's just allow kids to be kids.
"Whatever the artistic merits of that sort of stuff, frankly I don't think there are any."
This is almost the straight, hysterical Hetty Johnson line.
She told ABC Radio:
"It's child pornography by any name you want to call it."
Interesting reactions all round.
The New South Wales Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, says the photographs are "inappropriate".
"Art will always push society's boundaries, but protection of our children must always be the priority," he said.
"It wasn't OK for a 14-year-old model fully dressed to be on the catwalk for Australian Fashion week, [so] it's definitely not OK for naked children to have their privacy and childhood stolen in the name of art."
Interesting point - except the 14 year old catwalk model hysteria was also a largely tabloid beat up.
But at least O'Farrell acknowledges that what is "art" and what is "porn" is open to interpretation.
But, of course, it's not just about that, is it? Quite apart from the rights of children to be protected from whatever he, Rudd and Hetty Johnson think will "happen" to the children.
What the images "are" depends not on what people are looking at, but on WHO is looking.
It's the same with all cultural products.
Like being a talking head on a commercial-format radio program for instance. Like you, sort of.
I can't think what to write though! Heeheeheee! Do you have any ideas that might get me started Ms Fits? Bye now.
-As fans of the show will know, there have been two Stigs... the first had all black racing gear on (he drove a car off the HMS Invincible, to his apparent demise) and the current (white) Stig. In relation to the white Stig's real identity, I've read that its a test-driver called Ben Collins...
Does this help? Personally, not knowing who the Stig is, makes the show and his involvement all the more interesting.
As a segue, it reminds me of the brilliant Kenny Everitt Show, and one of his characters, the Frenchman, Marcel Wave - where towards the end of the show's run, he revealed himself to be Kenny himself. Its no surprise now, but as a young kid growing up watching him, it was the biggest surprise in the world!
Ok, enough of that. Good day to you all.
Rudd the conservative, Christian Queenslander reveals why the arts will not be getting much support from this Government.
'I don't know much about art but....'
As you say Marxstubatory, if you think pictures of naked children is pornographic and not art, DO NOT GO to the gallery. And for Chrissakes stop looking at the Old Masters depictions of Cherubs in art with religious themes. LOOK AWAY, LOOK AWAY.
We spend millions of dollars encouraging European tourists and migrants and now these morons show them we are still living in a fifties style cultural backwater. Christ on a bike.
I also read wherever takes my fancy, walking to the shops, walking to get coffee, waiting for coffee, walking through the supermarket. I used to sit in traffic for an hour or more on the way to work and I would always have a book on the steering wheel as you say. Thankfully avoided incident, on more than one occassion.
This is news to me
Perry blabbed, and his untimely demise occured soon after.
I too was a book under the table, inside my text book, waiting for a bus, in between classes, dinner table, on the phone, in the bath, etc, etc, reader. I even used to tape pages to the outside of the shower screen... I am sad, now I am a drone and struggle to read on my lunchbreak. Sigh
"I used to work for the Department of Defence and I never had sex with Tania Zaetta"
That must have made you really Angry.
Anonymous said...
squib said...
"This is news to me"
Please try to keep up. For God's sake.
richwell said...
"Rudd the conservative, Christian Queenslander reveals why the arts will not be getting much support from this Government."
He practically fucking quotes Hetty Johnson, a complete autodidact representing nobody but her own hysterical opinions.
Perhaps he admires her skill at being continually in the media seeming to be doing something about insurmountably complex issues while actually achieving nothing.
Maybe he should make her Treasurer?
At the moment I can only get my Berliner format by osmosis, reading The Guardian Weekly every Friday, which is in one of the strangest newspaper sizes I have ever seen. Somehow it works.
The name "Stig" came from one of two sources, depending on who you believe. JC says it was from his days as a school kid. According to Clarkson, new students were always called "Stig." But apparently it may also have derived as a reference to Stig Blomqvist, the Swedish rally driver (who many thought was the very first Stig).
There have been many 'temporary' Stigs. The original, black suited and helmeted Stig was Perry McCarthy - the former F1 driver and LeMans veteran.
Names of subsequent part time, but frequent, white Stigs include Ben Collins (who is widely regarded as the most likely 'full time'), Jamie Davis, Antony Davidson and David Leslie. Lots of cameo Stigs over the years. For example, the Renault F1 car was apparently driven by Heikki Kovaleinen or Franck Montagny (Renault test driver at the time).
Rumours that the Stig was former F1 driver Damon Hill remained plausible after he appeared on Top Gear and when asked failed to deny that he was the Stig.
According to the Swedish tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet, the ski stunt performed in the Winter Olympics special was performed by Dan Lang, a Swedish snowmobile cross driver.
The Daily Express once claimed that former Formula 1 driver Julian Bailey was also a temporary 'full time' Stiggy.
For those who are interested, his photo was recently snapped, and slightly over exposed... revealing this! http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article831687.ece
"Wasn't The Age moving to Berliner?"
A couple of US newspapers did, too. Including the Wall Street Journal
"Eccentric Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has threatened to behead gays unless they leave the country, according to reports."
Eccentric? That's understating it a bit, isn't it?
Like, is that out of deference to Gambian cultural sensibilities? How fucking SBS is that?
Just found the most gorgeous video - it's from the news a few nights ago and has people reacting to Senator Edward Kennedy's illness. Sounds thrilling, I know, but check out the grab from Senator Robery Byrd (about 1.08 into the clip). Is it just me or is he a dead ringer for the "I love you" dog?
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=7906891
Enjoy :)
It's quite obviously Tony Mockbel
And anonymous bloggers who pick on marxstubatory - gutless! Marxstubatory, you entertain me.
I am yet to see Robert Byrd pee against a tree or chase his own tail, so it's hard to tell.
Maybe he could 'fetch' something?
Oh, wait. I see... He's upset because his friend is dying of a brain tumour.
Nowwwww I get it...
"Awesome, I am the Stig, thanks"
That's a relief. I was afraid it might be Anonymous ...
They'll get tired, or realize that those they are attempting to entertain and enlighten loathe them and think that they're wankers, and then they'll go away!
And then some more will pop up to take their place! It's all just the normal rhythm and flow of Ms Fit's blog. Timeless.
Unlike Ms Fits, who is aging rapidly.
Like, "eccentricity" has a special level of intensity in Gambia?
Like "interesting" in China? Or "firing squad" in North Korea?
Like, I have the tag 'marxstubatory'. You think I don't already know this?
Hey. I think I know who you are. You're the guy who tried to pick Marieke up at that pub at Prahran, aren't you?
Look, pal. Everyone gets a knock-back from time-to-time, so there's no use in cyber-stalking women. Okay?
It's time to move on in your life. You cannot always have what you want. Do you understand.
There's a good chap.
You got that off my CV. It's no fucking secret. I even have it printed on a t-shirt.
He's turned gay...
Top Gear's conversion of a Robin reliant into a re-usable spacecraft which crashed into Salisbury Plain was the pinnacle of motoring television history.
The Stig is (or has been) several people.
I am underemployed today.
*tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap* *wilt*
There!
Nurse Fits! Wash this spoon but keep some ice handy.
:( I was trying to post a picture of Nurse Rachett
And preview your comment to see if it works.
"What's this then Mr Marxtutbatory?"
That's Dr. Marxtutbatory, Sister, with all due respect. And is Mr Anonymous's catheter ready? Pressure's been building for days by the looks of it....
Instead there's richwell and marxstubatory and co with their own special brand of jerking...on and on and on ...
"Gone are the breathless confessions, the anonymous navel gazing and occasional well-written tear jerker."
Hey! I know! Play us a song!
So we now await his "witty posts". Say somehting "witty" bummer.
I'll have to call security if you keep wandering round with the back of your gown flapping open. And just in case you're going to ask, no you can't have the bicycle pump back, it was all we could do to get it out without killing you last night!
*sigh they make the worst patients*
er..I've forgotten what I was going to say (rats)
just sayin is all.
You write... a lot.
have a nice weekend all of you...you especially marxstubatory.
Is one break
Which is not
My neck.
Otherwise it is called a website or a brochure. Herself chose the design of a blog because she, and every other blogger in the world, who enables comments, wants us to interact with each other around the theme(s) in the post.
There is an unlimited amount of space for comments.
Say anything.
This is the internet, where everybody will laugh at you and call you names.
(See examples above)
Images in comments are not spam and are easy to do.
Try photobucket.com.
Provided herself's hoster does not get nervous about storage allocation the more images the better.
Thems that don't like can scan past them.
Comments are closed.