Monday, July 17, 2006



Pacific International hotel chain rocks as do the noisy bunch of Asian kids next door who keep working class people awake in the middle of the night ;-(

And another thing ... Is anyone who is serious about the literary scene in Australia surprised ;-)
AS Australia's sole Nobel laureate for literature, the late Patrick White should occupy a place of honour in our nation. Instead, as The Australian's Jennifer Sexton reported on Saturday, many of the nation's publishers do not recognise his prose or even consider it suitable to print. Sexton submitted a chapter from White's novel The Eye of the Storm to 12 Australian publishers and agents. Not one would have published it. How embarrassing. The only conclusion to draw is that Australians do not honour their literary legacy. Two decades ago, White was a fixture on the secondary-school syllabus. It says much about Australia that students are made to study movie posters and book covers but White's timeless literary genius is not accorded a place.
Jayne Denshire and Helen Bateman of Limelight Press and Rebecca Kaiser of Allen & Unwin are yet to respond ...
Whatever you do do not mention the literary ignorance

Antipodean bohemian published in Canada Now blessed with amazing American and European distribution

Saturday, July 15, 2006



Just like the river, always in love with the moon ...
-Source my space ;-)

Blasts from parliamentary past, John and Rebecca, shared a few stories over coffee with me. I was late, but it is better to be later than never especially after tasting all kinds of Wirra Wirras ;-) Adelaideans are very forgiving lot especially when it comes to relaxing Saturday morning - Honourable mention to great bakery and Providore Paul and Irene Noakes of Gourmet to Go fame and also Atlas Continental whose barista has never ever left Adelaide yet makes the best coffee and squeezes the freshest juices on earth - the place also attracts laughter ;-)

Margaret enjoyed her Salmon, Peter had half of the organic chicken and my eye fillet was cooked to rare perfection last night. Much damage was done to our liver ... Six more days and another set of Sydney based wine lovers will suffer my company at Pyrmont.

While I do not miss the Sydney smog, I certainly have spicy food withdrawl as Dial's Kitchen is one of the best cuchina in the world and Mal attracts only the best quality of taste buds and and eyes for exotic details around her ;-)

I am coffied out, newspapered out, ( SMH, the Australian AFR even Adelaide Advertiser) and now even walked out as the River Torren is such a twisty mass of H2O. Luckily, it is peppered with cozy cafes all within stone throw distances be it at Hindley or Rundle or whatever streets ... I gather that the headlines in Sydney today mention Adelaide Cornelia Rau

Indeed, many bohemian characters would be worried if they were not booed by taxing lorraways and barranquerros of these world or similar death coaches and green avocados ... Like Cold River Barri Kosky is different

Friday, July 07, 2006



When I lay down I thought and said

Perhaps tomorrow I may be dead

Yes, I shall stand with all my might

And for sweet liberty will fight.
- Lt. James McMichael 

Iceberg Survives Cold River Crossing: marking rusty barb wires over a quater of century old IT'S A BOOK! Resuscitating the Storyteller: 7 July 2006 AD
Biography allows us in the best case to see a human being in exactly the grandiose way that Tomas Tranströmer described in his poem “Romanesque arches”:
Inside the vast Romanesque church the tourists thronged
in the half-dark.
Arch after arch yawned, no view of the whole.
A few candle flames flickered.
An angel with no face embraced me
and whispered through my whole body:
“Don’t be ashamed of being human, be proud!
Inside you arch after arch opens without end.
You will never finish, that’s how its meant to be.”
Blinded with tears
I was thrust out onto the simmering piazza
along with Mr and Mrs Jones, Mr Tanaka and
Signora Sabatini
and inside them all arch after arch opened without end.
(For the living and the dead, 1989)

As Gordon Bowker points out in his life of Orwell, it is interesting to note that the central character in 1984 works as a kind of anti-biographer. Winston Smith’s profession is, of course, to falsify the past, to eradicate individuals from history
Biography keeps the idea of the author alive, and does do with a mixture of history and fiction.

BOOK LAUNCH INVITATION: Iceberg Survives, Cold River

Coming soon to one of the coolest bars in Sydney: The Iron Curtain escape: The Stuff of Dreams

IT'S A BOOK!

Born in the USA in 2005 (after a 25-year gestation!)
Weight: 800.0 grams
Length: 244 pages
Baby Dimensions: 9.0 x 6.0 x 0.6 inches

Iceberg's is throwing the Proud Father a party ... Selected Friends are invited to join Icebergs for the Antipodean Paperback Launch of - Cold River - by Jozef Imrich. This is an escape story with frostbite ...

SUNDAY, July 9 - Noon (til late)
@ Sydney’s hottest literary venue, Bondi Iceberg Spy Bar
(between ocean pool and roof)

Cold River @ Sydney’s hottest literary venue, Bondi Iceberg Spy Bar

Wednesday, July 05, 2006



What’s wrong with that exclamation? You hear it uttered everywhere, by friends and family, on television, radio, the internet…Happy Fourth of July! Not so independent.

July fourth is Independence Day in the United States, a day when Americans commemorate the signing, in 1776, of the Declaration of Independence, a document that formally severed political ties with Britain, then America's colonial ruler.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Those words, written by a 33 year-old activist named Thomas Jefferson and published by the Continental Congress on July 4th, 1776, are but a few the significant phrases in America's Declaration of Independence ...

Similar the words were included by Vaclav Havel in Charter 77 - Three boys three days after July celebration in 1980 escaped across the Iron Curtain took place - A day I shall always remember 7 of 7 1980.

26 years later some of my friends gather at Iceberg this weekend to mark the day potential Iceberg Survived Cold River crossing ...

Tuesday, July 04, 2006



Google sends me many of my readers ...
Like medicine, blogging is learned through practice and experience. Yet bloggers (like doctors) can practice their craft more effectively if they relentlessly seek new knowledge and insight, from both inside and outside their websitess, so they can keep updating their assumptions, skills, and knowledge.     

The funny thing about blogs, whether we realize it or not, is that who we are and what we're made of  shines through. Over time the reader really does get to know the blogger and form opinions which do lead to book buying decisions. There are authors whose books I will never read after reading their blogs and conversely authors who I never would have read otherwise who I go out of my way to support their fiction because of what I've discovered about them through their blogging. When Blogs Are Worth It

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Columnists at Confab Hail Blogging: The Media should stop pretending it knows nothing
The BRW Rich 200 list met with some interesting guerrilla marketing in May. The Big Issue, a street magazine sold by the homeless and long-term unemployed, had a cover story on the Poor 20 that mimicked the Rich 200.

In terms of blogs, we're in the 'Wild West' days. But many of them will be edited in the future, I'm sure," said Kansas City Star columnist Bill Tammeus, who does a blog on faith-related issues -- and likes "the freedom of not submitting stuff to editor


You don't have to write about everything ... You can just link to something instea [Another Way to Get at Thousands of Deals Blog of practicing note ; A conversation at Readerville on writing to “the market” has brought up some issues I’d like to use to start a diaglog here. To market, to market to buy a... ]
• · In the Old Parliament House, everyone used to mix: politicians, journalists, staffers. Notable press gallery grump Alan Ramsey is adamant it is filling that a new exhibition exploring the history of the press gallery at Old Parliament House features dummies. Leaks, Scoops and Scandals: The Press Gallery 1927-1988 has granted two journalists the dubious honour of being immortalised as mannequins. Gallery on display; Bloggers - Quote of the year ;-)
• · · This is a much-anticipated session at Gnomedex - everyone is looking forward to hearing what a potential president of the USA has to say Live-blogging Senator John Edwards at Gnomedex ; Women’s Voices Boom in the Blogosphere
• · · · The increasing tendency for governments to create a legal "meta-level" where spatial and physical humiliation becomes everyday practice. Made in Washington; When do The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times publish a secret? Editors Dean Baquet and Bill Keller respond. SINCE Sept. 11, 2001, newspaper editors have faced excruciating choices in covering the government's efforts to protect the country from terrorist agents ; The administration's protests that the press revelations about a financial monitoring program may tip off the terrorists are overblown. A Secret the Terrorists Already Knew
• · · · · Tuangou, or team buying, aims to drive unprecedented bargains by combining the reach of the internet with the power of the mob Shop affronts ; Why is The New York Times so wicked? Rabbi Aryeh Spero wants to know. The people’s right to know
• · · · · · The GOP's media bashing is a response to journalists' attempts to hold the administration accountable—a job Congress won't do. Political Theater ; James Fallows on how broadband sent over power lines offers Internet access everywhere in your house, and could also offer the country a way to save energy; E-mail Out of Every Plug