These bite-sized tales punch well above their weight and will have you questioning why you would waste time on full-length novels. Selected Short Stories by Anton Chekhov To read Checkhov's short stories is to be plunged into a completely different realm. Although written over a century ago, the characters and their emotions and struggles resonate…
Continue reading ➞ Seven larger than life short story collections that open up big worlds
I actually missed like 17 days since the last installment of this. Sorry about that, I have just been really busy. I have a lot of cool stuff to share if that's any consolation. Welcome to the Khruangbin funk train Funkadelic purveyors of sunshine grooves Khruangbin have released another genius video clip. This time two…
Continue reading ➞ 10 uplifting things I found on the internet this week #4
The world has become rather scary lately. So with this in mind I have found some odd but tasty memes and strange oddities to get you through the next week... 1. The map of procrastination https://twitter.com/GroundImpressi1/status/1245230267167584256 2. A serenade to Director General of Health in NZ Dr Ashley Bloomfield Dr Ashley has become a much-loved…
Continue reading ➞ 10 uplifting things I found on the internet this week #1
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Here are the classical rules of rhetoric, illustrated and made simple. Based on Mark Forsyth's Elements of Eloquence. I hope that you enjoy them and that this handy cheat sheet helps you to improve your writing.
Mark Forsyth is the witty and effervescent writer of several books on the history of language, etymology and linguistics. The Elements of Eloquence explains the timeless art of crafting memorable one liners. In other words, the rules of classical rhetoric. This is a great guide for writers who want to master the subtle art…
Continue reading ➞ Book Review: The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth – Part 1
Book Review: Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come by Jessica Pan There have been a swathe of books lately on how to overcome shyness. This one is my favourite. This memoir recounts the adventures of Quiet American, Jessica Pan as she undertakes a year of living as an extrovert in London. It’s a…
Continue reading ➞ Book Review: Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come by Jessica Pan
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'I saw your blog postIt was fantasticThat was sarcasticBecause you write like a spastic' - Weird Al Yankovic breaks it down for all of us online spastics
As a teenager I was incredibly precocious at times, spouting big words to make myself feel older and more worldly in high school. Later on, as my vocabulary developed at University, I dropped these intellectual bombs into conversations to make myself feel better in the company of people more middle class and posh than I was.
Put the kettle on and start eating some water crackers with lard on them. Just to get in the mood for this one... Nincompoop: Is said to come from the Latin legal and medical term Non Compos Mentis meaning 'not of sound mind'. This evolved into nincompoop meaning a stupid or dumb person. Flibbertigibbet: A flighty…
In the past I've showcased Scorpion Dagger's Renaissance era GIFs. This takes the classical art mash-up one step further with hilarious results. B4 XVI (Before Sixteen) explores the often overlooked visual and cultural similarities between hip hop poseurs and medieval aristocrats. Hey it's all got to be referenced from somewhere, right? One from the deep…
This amazing explanation of narrative arcs by Kurt Vonnegut had me laughing out loud. To actually be present at this lecture would have been totally awesome. This video is great starting point for narrative structures and point of view, although really only the tip of the iceberg of a very gigantic topic. I hope other…
Continue reading ➞ Narrative arcs: a funny and simple explanation by Kurt Vonnegut
Recently, while working away on a project, I discovered that the only way to actually grow followers on Instagram in any sort of meaningful scale above 300 or so is to either buy these followers from China or Russia, or to enlist the help of an infamous Instagram Bot. These are regularly banned from Instagram for…
Continue reading ➞ Words of the Day: Shit-Ring & Bubble-Butt Bot-Net
"How long does it take to make the woods? As long as it takes to make the world. It is always finished, it is always being made, the act of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction." (Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir, 1999)
I'm in the middle of reading the brilliant travel book Ryszard Kapuściński 'Travels with Herodotus' in which the author talks about his travels as a young journalist through Mao's China of the 1960's. Kapuscinski sets out the politics of China in such a poetic and intensely profound way that it resonates across the decades. His reasoning is resonant…
Continue reading ➞ Comparing the Great Wall of China to the Great Wall of Trump
Gemma Correll is the high priestess of wry, cute and amusing cartoons that are compassionate to women's bodily woes and emotional complexities. Her cartoons are sweet, sassy and charming and I'm totally in love with them. Also she's an aquarius, an INFJ and pretty much loves all the same things I do, so I have a…
Back in the 'noughties' there was a landmark book (Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander) which lampooned all of the pop culture stuff that white people like. Of course, six years on some of these things have changed. Yet a lot still remains the same and speaks volumes about how race, nationality and class all inter-relate.…
David Foster Wallace combined his phenomenal intelligence and gift for writing with a high level of self-awareness, and a deep awareness of the brutality and enormity of the world. He had an almost omnipotent ability to understand and communicate about what it means to be human in his iconic books. Like most highly sensitive people…
Continue reading ➞ The Soul of the World: David Foster Wallace
Prepare to enter a truly surreal and fantastical realm. These stock photos were created by people who had the most noble intentions of using these images in a myriad of situations. Although just how many people purchased these stock photos I wonder? I'd mortgage my house and sell my family to bet that nobody has…
Melbourne artist and game developer Andrew Brophy has developed a wonderfully therapeutic game to play when you come home in a huff needing to bitch about your job. Knuckle Sandwich is a role playing game/adventure game that follows a male protagonist on his move into the Big Smoke to realise his dreams. Pretty soon said…
Continue reading ➞ Finally! A tongue-in-cheek game that pokes fun of working in a crap job
I'm sure you're familiar with the trend of indecipherable menu items that's sprung up all over the world recently, right? it's also known as hipsterising a menu. Suddenly there's a whole new world of pretentious sounding menu items that you've never seen in all of your years prior, living on our planet. Who knew that…
Continue reading ➞ Hipster menu generator: get ready for culinary darts of displeasure
Everyone's favourite yellow-bodied people in The Simpsons inhabit a world of biting satire and strange congruences to our 3D world. J.J. Jones is the creator of the underground Tumblr blog Signs of Springfield. He has collected stills of billboards and signs in Simpsons episodes and posted these onto his Tumblr blog. These blink-and-you'll-miss-it signs reveal…
The mysterious green cat of Varna Bulgaria has baffled people all over the interwebs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHXM8DqqSgs Many have asked, is green cat real or was he simply shaded that way in photoshop? It seems that he is indeed real and scientists have been unraveling the mystery of this pea coloured puss ever since. In truth he…
Continue reading ➞ Cats These Days With Their Trendy Hair…What Can You Do?
So...the Blood Moon last night: I'm sure that this is the perfect time to segway into The Moon from the Mighty Boosh. This white and marshmallowy looking bastard did annoy me last night during the biggest harvest/blood moon in the past few decades. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWTd3oW-HOE I swear it would have been far more enjoyable to…
