Monday, 27th of October, 2003

My congratulations to Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle for standing up to the incredibly fascistic behaviour of the Howard Government/White House in parliament this week. For my sake as much as anyone else’s, here’s a link to Margo’s webdiary on Bush in Parliament. Some great stories there. Margo writes:

Nearly half of Australia’s citizens voted for Labor in 2001 in preference to the Coalition. Not one Labor MP or Senator – not one – was invited to that barbecue.

And that “I love free speech” quote by Georgie really is too much! This while the Australian people’s freedom were being methodically and deliberately curtailed during the two presidents’ visits. Margo has a really angry webdiary here from Saturday, describing how invited pro-democracy and Tibetan activists were barred from entering the public gallery. Every effort was made to shield Chinese President Hu from all protestors. Bob Brown’s press release, as well as the Falun Gong statement, can be read there.

OK I should clarify: My use of “fascistic” is intended to reflect the tight propagandistic control exercised by those in power in order to shield themselves from (and quash) dissent.

Wednesday, 22nd of October, 2003

I guess I should be waiting for absolute confirmation, but I just heard on FBi Radio that Elliott Smith died today, of an apparent suicide. Check Sweet Adeline, the fansite, for an obituary, and a brief news item at the Undercover music news site.

(later) Yes, it’s true and it was suicide. Here’s an article from Pitchfork Media. What sad news.

Wednesday, 8th of October, 2003

Science fiction/fantasy author Alex Irvine, whose excellent story “Reformation” I just read in the extremely excellent anthology Live Without A Net (warning, horrible font on this page! Does not represent contents of book!) *ahem* Irvine also edits The Journal of Pulse Pounding Narratives, the one issue of which I have not seen.
However, they have a very cute online Errata page, which I cannot help linking to, good editor that I am.

The aforementioned anthology also features stories by Charlie Stross, Paul Di Filippo, Adam Roberts, Michael Swanwick, John Meaney and the list goes on. The stories all describe, or circle round, a world without the near-instantaneous communication between masses of people that we are familiar with these days. Some stories succeed better than others for me, but there is a remarkable proportion of very fine stuff indeed.

Friday, 3rd of October, 2003

In a previous entry, I complained about lax standards in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Quick Crossword. In particular “NS” annoys the hell out of me… Yesterday’s crossword had

3 Down: Not accustomed to writing with the right hand (4-6)
Would you guess LEFT-HANDED?
What’s wrong with that? It’s just a stupid clue; the word “hand” in the clue is part of the answer. What kind of effort went into that?

Today, however, I’m tempted to actually write in to complain about this extremely frivolous (nay, pointless) issue. “DA” today commits a grievous error in giving this clue:

15 Down: Musical climax (9)
The desired answer is, of course, CRESCENDO. Anyone with any musical knowledge winces everytime that word is used to mean climax. A crescendo is a gradual increase in volume. “DA” would do well to check out dictionary.reference.com’s entry for crescendo, in which both Webster’s and The American Heritage Dictionary mention this “Usage Problem”. The Macquarie Dictionary’s entry, on the other hand, just ignores the “climax” usage and mentions only “a gradual increase in force or loudness”.

I hate to be the language maven, but it’s the fucking crossword. You’d think they’d have a clue. Cross I am.