benjamin law // selected works

DEATH NOTICE

The story goes like this. Ernest Hemingway, master of literary economy, is challenged to write a narrative in just 10 words. Hemingway trumps the bet and comes up with a heartbreaker in six. For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn. Since then, his exercise in brevity has been widely circulated amongst writers to demonstrate how someone can condense the human experience into so few words, which seems like a very Hemingway thing to do. But it’s also been strongly rumoured that Hemingway mightn’t be the author at all, and that the story may have come from a theatre production about him instead.

Whatever the case, it doesn’t really matter. It still makes for one hell of a classifieds advertisement. Whoever came up with the six-word slayer clearly knew that the entirety of human existence could be found in the print classifieds, from the barely-contained joys of birth notices, to the sunny Sunday horrors of deceased estate sales. Even now, the print classifieds are a rich reservoir for the banal and bizarre. In any given issue of the Trading Post’s Queensland edition, you’ll find the usual: cars and computers, fish-tanks and barbecues, puppy litters and board games. But there’s also someone’s toilet going for $60 (or nearest offer), a 4.5 cubic foot front loader kiln, beef calves of various breeds and used women’s hot pants selling for three dollars each, with emphasis placed on ‘USED’. The ‘Other Pets’ section is almost exclusively—inexplicably—occupied by pythons.
[read more]

I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT MEAT

Kuan Yin Hsiang Vegetarian String Meat Ball (600g)
“These,” my boyfriend said, chewing aggressively, “are like gigantic testicles. And not in a good way.” It’s true. Trying to fit one Kuan Yin Hsiang’s meatballs in your mouth is almost an act of vulgarity; they’re just so large and meaty. We cooked these in a tomato-based stew with herbs, and served them with rice. That approach might sound easy, but these motherfuckers took ages to cook through. Eventually I had to quarter them to ensure they even were properly heated. One concern: there are discrepancies in the packaging. On the back, these things are called “vegetarian stewed meat balls.” That’s a worry.

Made from: Soybean fibre, wheat protein.

Vegan? Yes.

Verdict: After a while, my boyfriend and I had to eat around these things — never a good sign. Overall: flavourless, and texture is springy and gag-inducing.

We paid: $3.99
[read more]

FACING THE DOLE WITH DIGNITY

As a young 20-something, I spent a lot of time doing two things: listening to Nina Simone, and staring mournfully at my frighteningly low bank balance. Back then, I’d graduated from university, my youth allowance was kaput, casual jobs weren’t paying much, and my writing career — if you could call it that — was paying me in CDs instead of cash. I’d do sums in my head, and wonder how I was going to break even. “In your pocket’s not one penny,” Nina Simone sang, “and your friends: you haven’t got any.” It was a sadistic soundtrack for a sad state of affairs.

It was inevitable I’d find myself at Centrelink. Robbo, my flatmate at the time, had mastered the system, having been on welfare for so long, he was now receiving food vouchers. Though he made me hopeful, I found the whole experience to be degrading and tedious. There was a Bible-stack of indecipherable paperwork to churn through which, once completed, was promptly lost by Centrelink staff. There were mandatory interrogations and psychological assaults. But what cracked me were the remedial job-seeking workshops (“How to write a résumé! How to stamp an envelope!”). After that, I lost it, and vowed never to step into the place again.

Which is why, at the age of 26, I’m surprised to find myself in Centrelink’s queues again. Sure, there’s no shame in the dole, especially now. All over the world, the recession has hit hard, and welfare lines now resemble overnight camp-outs for Bob Dylan tickets. But it was an ominous sign when I rang the phone number for Newstart applicants, only the find the phone line had melted, and continued to be broken for 10 days straight. “Oh, I should apologise for that,” an employee told me eventually. “Those lines don’t work. They’ve exploded. Heaps of people getting fired.”
[read more]

NOWHERE LAND

Mona Mona is a place that doesn’t even appear on Queensland maps. Its history is complex; its future uncertain. But Benjamin Law finds members of a small but strong Indigenous community fighting to make the best of what they have.

[PHOTOGRAPHS BY TAMMY LAW]

To get to the Aboriginal community of Mona Mona, you need to drive right off the map. Flick to North Queensland’s large-scale directory, and the rectangle where Mona Mona should be is faded out. “There are presently no maps for the areas shown,” it says, “however, they may be included in future editions.”

Mona Mona’s official status has always been murky. Queensland’s Department of Communities has been the trustee of the land since the mid-90s, and, since then, every decision about Mona Mona – home to a community of around 50 people – has gone through the department. Last year, the government announced, out of the blue, that officials wanted to consult with Mona Mona’s leaders. Then came 10 months of consultations, which made everyone quietly optimistic, even excited. Things that community leaders had long lobbied for were finally being canvassed: infrastructure and trusteeship, freehold and ownership, leases and land tenure. There was even talk of an Indigenous tourism plan: music festivals, craft workshops, nature tours.

Finally, last December, the department’s director-general, Linda Apelt, called a community meeting to unveil Mona Mona’s new direction. Locals could become trustees of the land, Apelt said, but only over 100 hectares of the existing 1610. The rest of the land would become a national park. Then she bowled an unexpected bouncer: no one could live in Mona Mona any more. The standard of living was deemed unsafe. Camping would be okay though, she said.
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BUT FARTING MEANS I LOVE YOU

Long-term relationships can be such beautiful things. Having been with my boyfriend for a pretty long stretch now, I can safely vouch for the fact that when it’s working, there’s nothing quite like it. There’s warmth and security, comfort and shared history. Of course, there’s also a trade-off: being in each other’s pockets for so long means any mystery you once held evaporated long ago.

Some couples try to stave off the inevitable by establishing ground rules: you must always close the toilet door; you must never look at me when I’m changing; you must never see my anus—that sort of thing. But rules are difficult to maintain, and complacency usually settles in after a while. Comparing notes with other long-term couples, I’ve found most of us have already slipped into bad, unsexy habits with our lovers: belching in the bedroom; talking openly about bowel movements; using stupid accents and baby voices; discussing menstrual cycles in a graphic and matter-of-fact fashion.
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GREENWASH

Growing up, I was one of those children who told you—often in a shrill, whiney manner—to turn off the taps, use both sides of the paper and switch off the lights. Now in my adult years, those early signs of hyper green-consciousness have seen me transform into a supermarket sweeper of the most nauseating kind. Slap your green credentials on a product, and I’ll buy it. Give me logos of hands holding globes, and images of green leaves floating in the wind, and you’ve won me over. It’s not even a question of cash. If your product says it’s more eco-friendly than its neighbour, I’ll even pay more for it, hands down. I’m just that kind of guy.
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FAMILY MATTERS

When you’re a blind parent, you can’t see if your kids are red in the face and choking, if a scrape is infected or not. When they’re infants and you’re changing their nappies, you’re never entirely convinced you haven’t left poo somewhere on their bottoms, on their faces, on yourself. Eventually, you become so worried and exasperated you resort to stripping off completely and taking them naked and howling into the shower with you.

There’s relief when they’re older, talking and able to communicate their discomforts, but even then you can’t read their body language or see beyond their angry words to the silent tears rolling down their faces. The sheer act of growing is coupled with its own brand of sadness. It’s around this age, says parent of two Gerrard Gosens, that you start to lose a concept of how your kids look. you can’t see; a voice you will never hear. That’s the reality for many people who’ve put their disabilities aside and plunged into parenthood.
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A LONG WAY FROM ROME

For the past few weeks, it’s been Lent in South Brisbane, and the local Catholics have been observing the usual customs: replacing meat with fish; cutting back on alcohol; trying to attend mass more regularly. But while this period leading up to Easter is usually been observed as a time of quiet reflection and restraint, recent dramas involving this suburb’s Catholic community have almost reached New Testament levels of theatrical intensity.

At first glance, St Mary’s doesn’t seem like a site for religious warfare: a beige and apricot building with pigeon crap gently layering its roof. Built in 1892, its history dates back far enough that Mary McKillop—Australia’s closest candidate for a saint—taught in St Mary’s original wooden chapel in 1870, before she was temporarily excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Her misdemeanour: resisting a bishop’s attempt to control her order. St Mary’s has a history of attracting rebels it seems.

Now it has become the unlikely epicentre of a long-burning row for the past few months that goes straight to the Vatican. By the end of last year, St Mary’s priest—the slow-talking, sharp-thinking 71-year-old Father Peter Kennedy, who’d been there since 1980—had been accused of performing non-traditional baptisms, blessing same-sex couples, keeping a Buddhist statue on the premises, to allowing women to read at the pulpit, none of which he denies.
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A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MY MOTHER

In both the realms of quantum physics and anthropology, it’s often said that you can’t observe something without changing whatever you’re observing. It’s a profound statement—one I probably first heard watching Jurassic Park or something—and it came to mind when I watched my mother pull out a yoga mat she hadn’t used in months, and lay it in front of the television. You see, usually, when I gently suggest she should exercise more, Mum dismisses me. In her mind, she doesn’t really see the point. “But all your kids have left home now,” I tell her, “so you’ve got the time. You really should be moving that body. It’s good for you, and you’ll sleep better.” So I suggest a few things to her: getting back into yoga, going for walks, learning to swim.
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HANDS OFF MY SISTER

There’s something repulsively Freudian about the way men worry about their daughters and sisters. Once puberty hits, things start to grow, peers start to leer, and male family members collaborate to ensure their precious lady-folk survive adolescence as white, unsullied flowers of sexual virtue. It’s weird. On the other hand, my family didn’t have to worry excessively about my sisters. Between the three of them, puberty wasn’t exactly perfume, brooding and breasts. Instead, there were orthodontic braces, underbites, gangly limbs, perms, severe myopia, orthodontic plates, rainbow glasses and thick eyebrows. To seal the deal, Dad insisted they all keep their hair short, to the extent that one of my sisters was once ushered out of female toilets and into the men’s. Adolescence didn’t coincide with a sultry Lolita-esque sexual discovery for them. No, they had scoliosis instead.
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RAMEN REVIEWS

Maggi 2 Minute Noodles: Chicken & Corn
Origin: Malaysia
Verdict: It’s true: Asians do love their corn. In Malaysia, you’ll find cups of the stuff offered as a side dish at McDonald’s, so the marriage of corn and ramen was perhaps inevitable over there. But something’s gone terribly wrong here. The smell is weirdly buttery and popcorn-sweet, disconcertingly like your suburb’s local budget cinema. Also, the sachet powder flavouring here is so yellow, it resembles the ground-up fingernails of an 80-year-old chain-smoker. Weirdly expensive too.
Will it kill you? It might smell weird, but Maggi worked hard in getting fat levels close to zero. A sachet of dehydrated, shrivelled vegetables adds to the idea that you’re eating something healthy.
Try: if you have a sweet-tooth.
We paid: $1.02
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TV SIDEKICKS FROM THE '90s
(AND WHERE THEY ARE NOW)

STEVE URKEL
Family Matters (1989—1998)
Played by: Jaleel White.
Sidekick to: The long-suffering Winslow family, who lived next door.
Memorable traits: Smashing stereotypes about black men being sexually virile and attractive. Instead, Urkel—with his hitched-up pants, cardigans, duck-like posture and annoying voice—was presented as repellent to all sectors of the community.
Catchphrase: Any slapstick catastrophe brought on by Urkel’s clumsiness was followed by a sheepish and nasal “Did I do that?” For a while, he also had an ‘Urkel Dance’, which included his featured his trademark, donkey-like snort laughter. Where he is now: Jaleel White was actually quite the ladies’ man, as demonstrated by Urkel’s smooth alter-ego Stefan Urquelle. In 2006, a hoax claimed White had killed himself, and left behind a suicide note with the phrase “Did I Do That?” However, a much alive Jaleel finished a film and television degree, and had small roles in Dreamgirls and Boston Legal.
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A MOTHER'S WORK IS NEVER DONE

In Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, there’s a studio that artist Arthur Boyd built over 50 years ago. Nowadays, it’s headquarters for the art publishing house McCulloch & McCulloch, where mother-daughter team Susan McCulloch and Emily McCulloch Childs are in pre-launch mode, organising mail-outs. “So we’re surrounded by piles of brochures and books—all this glamorous stuff,” Emily jokes. “Actually, it’s not very glamorous,” mother Susan deadpans. The parent-child working relationship harks back a generation too. Susan was the only child of renowned art critic Alan McCulloch, who founded McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art—a book that has since become an iconic art reference. As a teenager, Susan would help out on typing duties, as her dad put together the original editions.
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HOW UNIVERSITY MELTED MY BRAIN

Most university students have the right idea. With brutal efficiency, they knock off their degrees in three or four years, before heading off towards illustrious careers as nurses and lawyers, landscape architects and chemists—all professions I can’t even begin to understand. Instead, I pursued the type of degree that, literally, had the word ‘creative’ in its title.

When you’ve got something like that framed in your mother’s house, you know the future’s potentially bleak. So unsurprisingly, arts graduates—like me—will find any excuse to hang around campus, long after they’re needed. Honours? Why not! Masters? Don’t mind if I do! It’s alluring: continue to score adequate marks, and you’ll be kept safe by a combination of HECS debt and Centrelink. Psychologically, you know you’re trapped; but you’re comfortable, so you stay. Similar things happen in other institutions, like the Catholic nunnery or prison.
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ALL TALK NO ACTION

Drive west out of Brisbane, and the road eventually becomes a single-lane highway. Out here, billboards display Bible verses instead of ads and crows own the bitumen stretch, strutting across the road like they’ve never seen a car before. About an hour from Warwick you’ll find the small town of Inglewood, population less than 1000. Locals say they don’t measure distances by kilometres but by hours: three to Brisbane; nearly one to the nearby town of Texas.

It’s not often that the local school attracts visitors. But today, Inglewood State School is playing host to Straight Talk Australia, a Toowoomba-based Christian organisation here to preach the gospel of delayed gratification. Its founders, Jim and Faye Lyons, married for 35 years, are a friendly couple who advocate a zero-tolerance approach to sex before marriage. They’ve recently been to Victoria to spread the word, often tour capital cities, and speak throughout the Pacific Islands too.

As the Lyons set up their DVD player, projector and pamphlet display, they chat to school staff about a recent incident that demonstrates why they need to be here today. According to Jim, a young boy from a private school was on a bus and showed some girls the condom he carried around in his wallet. The girls were aghast, so were their parents. Jim shakes his head in disbelief; some of Inglewood’s teachers make tutting noises. “These parents: doing the right thing, sending their children to a good Christian school,” Jim says. “And for what? Their daughters to be corrupted on the school bus.”

Students from Years 8 and 9 file in. Boys are told to sit on the left; girls on the right. Ranging from 12 to 14 years old, they’re at the age where school mornings are a hassle, and some students slouch into their seats sleepily. Jim tries rousing them with his standard ice-breaker. “How many of you are planning - as one of your goals in 2008 - to get a sexually transmitted disease or infection?” he asks. “Can I see the hands of those who are planning to get an STD this year?” No one puts up their hand.
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THE HUGGING DILEMMA

When my grandmother died a couple of years back, the mood was sombre. Death tends to do that I find. My extended family and I had gathered at the airport, ready to fly off for the funeral in Hong Kong—and lowen behold, my uncle was there. Considering I hadn’t seen this big, imposing, man-titted Malaysian dude in ages, I immediately went up to him for a friendly hullo. “Hey,” I said, bear-hugging the man. “How’ve you been?”
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TYING THE KNOT WITH MARTHA WAINWRIGHT
"The best gift I got was probably from my brother Rufus: a beautiful chandelier. From others, I got some paintings by artists, pottery—from actual potters—hand-made stuff, and beautiful knitted wear from my mother’s generation. From my friends, I got a gramophone. The lesson: don’t register.
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TURNING THRIFTINESS INTO GIFTINESS

Housewarmings can be awkward, since they forcefully bring together disparate, detached and unrelated social cliques. Oversized crossword puzzles facilitate social interaction by discovering all kinds of hideous facts about your mutual friends. Unlike board games, its grand scale means even 50+ inebriated people can participate simultaneously.
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AM I A STEREOTYPE?

Growing up, my family did what was expected of Asians: we went to theme parks. Every school holidays, we’d head off to coo at the majesty of the dolphin stunt show at Seaworld, injure ourselves on the scoliosis-inducing rides at Dreamworld, or embark on the thrillingly lame, faux-Hollywood tours of Movieworld. Hell, what can I say? We just weren’t camping people.
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SURFACE CLEANERS COLES RELIAN
CE: ALL-PURPOSE CLEAN
COLES RELIANCE: ALL-PURPOSE CLEANER (750ml)
Test surface:
Bathroom basin, covered in dust, human hair, unidentifiable slime.
Verdict:
Coles’s all-purpose cleaner looks like a product you might find in North Korea—utilitarian, no-nonsense and at $1.79 for 750ml, made for the proletariat. There are no lavendar fields or citrus groves to be found on the packaging here. But had they employed a graphic designer, the dominant motif might have been a high school locker room: it’s all artificial lemons and bleach. This product is not recommended if you were bullied in your teen years, and are prone to olfactory-induced trauma flashbacks. Harsh but adequate.
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THE MOMENT I REALISED I WAS AN ADULT

Now this assumes there was a moment where I became bone fide “adult”. Yes, I recently turned 25, but I’m not convinced I’m quite there. At my age, my mother had already shot two children out of her loins; my sister had been engaged for marriage; my brother was on a mortgage and planning to gravel the driveway.
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NEW BUFFALO

For someone who wrote and recorded her latest album on a vintage grand piano, Sally Seltmann remembers having very terse words with her parents about keyboard lessons. Having played the instrument from the age of six, the then 14-year-old Sally Russell (Seltmann is her married name) was beginning to get sick of it all.

“I started to think I was really independent and wise,” she says laughing. “I told my parents I didn’t want to learn any more, and that I was only learning because they wanted me to!” That didn’t turn out to be entirely true. Out of all the instruments Seltmann plays now—keys, guitar, bass, drums and flute—piano is now her first instrument of choice. But looking back, she says there was something important about that teenage outburst: it was “my own choice”.

In the past few years, Seltmann has become accustomed to doing things on her own terms. When she first emerged under the New Buffalo moniker in 2001 with her debut EP, she was quickly courted by illustrious UK label Heavenly. Out of that, she was paired up with hotshot international sound engineer Jake Davies, best known for his work with Björk. But after she was unceremoniously dumped by the label out of the blue, that work with Davies came to a dead end.
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JESUS WAS BASICALLY AN X-MAN

“Stephen King is possessed by the devil!” our substitute religion teacher Ms Zarnke once shrieked to us in class, after we had been discussing the scary movie adaptation of the novel It. When asked why, she simply replied: “Because it takes someone who is truly evil to write such evil books.” It was the woman’s first day of her job, and we found her to be thrilling entertainment. Obviously—the woman was clearly unhinged.

I went to a Lutheran school, and since the banning of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series in Year 7, and the subsequent Ms Zarnke “Stephen-King-is-the-devil” episode in high-school, I’ve always just assumed Christianity and my pet world of nerd pop culture were fundamentally incompatible. It wasn’t a problem really; it just gave me extra incentive to be an atheist.

But behold! With the dawn of the fangdangled internet, witness the mobilisation of a new breed of Christian, whose online work can only be described as ‘Christian textual analysis.’ Here, Hollywood holds hands with Jesus. On HollywoodJesus.com, you can discover the true Christian message behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On CultureWatch.com, discover how Brokeback Mountain’s Jack and Ennis could have saved their wives a lot of heartache by having “stuck to the biblical principal of sex being contained within marriage”.
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MARISHA PESSL

It usually happens once a year in the literary world. It’s an annual phenomenon, which sees literary agents and publishers engage in professional warfare, and the press hyperventilating themselves into a stupor. And it’s all over one thing: the next Bright Young Writer. About three years ago, Marisha Pessl didn’t look like a strong candidate for that title. Despite her now much-publicised good looks (more on that later), her two previous novels remained unpublished and she didn’t have any contacts in the publishing industry. She was working as a financial consultant, of all things. “And I hated it,” she says laughing.
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about // selected works // contact
THE MONTHLY (Oct 2009)		DEATH NOTICE The story goes like this. Ernest Hemingway, master of literary economy, is challenged to write a narrative in just 10 words. Hemingway trumps the bet and comes up with a heartbreaker in six. For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn. Since then, his exercise in brevity has been widely circulated amongst writers to demonstrate how someone can condense the human experience into so few words, which seems like a very Hemingway thing to do. But it’s also been strongly rumoured that Hemingway mightn’t be the author at all, and that the story may have come from a theatre production about him instead. Whatever the case, it doesn’t really matter. It still makes for one hell of a classifieds advertisement. Whoever came up with the six-word slayer clearly knew that the entirety of human existence could be found in the print classifieds, from the barely-contained joys of birth notices, to the sunny Sunday horrors of deceased estate sales. Even now, the print classifieds are a rich reservoir for the banal and bizarre. In any given issue of the Trading Post’s Queensland edition, you’ll find the usual: cars and computers, fish-tanks and barbecues, puppy litters and board games. But there’s also someone’s toilet going for $60 (or nearest offer), a 4.5 cubic foot front loader kiln, beef calves of various breeds and used women’s hot pants selling for three dollars each, with emphasis placed on ‘USED’. The ‘Other Pets’ section is almost exclusively—inexplicably—occupied by pythons. [read more]
THE MONTHLY (Sept 2009)		SLEEPERS, AWAKE Twenty years ago, just past midnight, the American tank ship Exxon Valdez was slicing through cold black water, cutting a course through the Gulf of Alaska. Anyone who was an adult in the ’80s knows what happened next: a misjudged turn, a grounding on the reef and 258,000 barrels of crude oil spilling into the ocean. The National Transportation Safety Board’s post-mortem on the incident makes for riveting reading, packed with figures and costs that leave you light-headed: damage to vessel, US$25 million; clean-up operations, US$1.85 billion. Yet a central concern of the report is sleep. The evening of the spill, the third mate on duty, Gregory Cousins, was documented as having returned to work after only four hours’ rest, following an already “stressful, physically demanding day”. Fatigued and under-slept, Cousins’ judgement was deemed impaired; he may even have fallen asleep at the wheel. All that spilt oil, and over lost sleep. The cost of fatigue may have come in one hit in this case, but in most Western economies today, lack of sleep builds like slow-rising debt. In Australia, lost work productivity from sleep disorders and associated illnesses is estimated to be worth $1.7 billion every year. Sleep deprivation has become a way of life. On the internet, my friends’ status updates read like odes to warped sleeping patterns, modern-day haikus of despair and insomnia. “Currently eating breakfast at 2 am,” one writes. “This last week,” writes another, “a whole new sleep disorder has developed. Xanax was my happy ending.” [read more]
FRANKIE #31 (Aug/Sept 2009)		I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT MEAT Kuan Yin Hsiang Vegetarian String Meat Ball (600g) “These,” my boyfriend said, chewing aggressively, “are like gigantic testicles. And not in a good way.” It’s true. Trying to fit one Kuan Yin Hsiang’s meatballs in your mouth is almost an act of vulgarity; they’re just so large and meaty. We cooked these in a tomato-based stew with herbs, and served them with rice. That approach might sound easy, but these motherfuckers took ages to cook through. Eventually I had to quarter them to ensure they even were properly heated. One concern: there are discrepancies in the packaging. On the back, these things are called “vegetarian stewed meat balls.” That’s a worry. Made from: Soybean fibre, wheat protein. Vegan? Yes. Verdict: After a while, my boyfriend and I had to eat around these things — never a good sign. Overall: flavourless, and texture is springy and gag-inducing. We paid: $3.99 [read more]
THE MONTHLY (Jul 2009)		A GAY OLD TIME If the huddled group of males gathered outside on the kerbside were teenagers, you’d say they were loitering: hanging out after dark; warming their hands in a circle; talking in low, conspiratorial murmurs. But as it happens, all of the men are in their late fifties and sixties, either already in their senior years or about to collide with them. When I approach them, they acknowledge me with polite smiles at first, until I get closer and they see I’m in my twenties. That’s when the jokes start. “You’re a bit young to be here, aren’t you?” they say. When I make a quip about simply using the right moisturiser, they all start hooting in response, mock-scandalised. “Oh stop,” one man drawls, before shaking his head and lighting a cigarette. What these men have in common are two basic things: their age, and the fact that they’re all gay. Tonight, they’re also all waiting for the same thing to begin: a seminar called ‘Getting Ready for Retirement: Age Pension and Your Choice’. Tonight’s talk is one in a year-long series of similar sessions arranged by QAHC – the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities – that specifically caters for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people approaching their retirement years. Upcoming seminars have similarly informative-sounding but vaguely sad titles, like ‘Wills, Advance Health Directives and Enduring Powers of Attorney’ and ‘Elder Abuse and Financial Exploitation’. [read more]
FRANKIE #30 (Jun/Jul 2009)		FACING THE DOLE WITH DIGNITY As a young 20-something, I spent a lot of time doing two things: listening to Nina Simone, and staring mournfully at my frighteningly low bank balance. Back then, I’d graduated from university, my youth allowance was kaput, casual jobs weren’t paying much, and my writing career — if you could call it that — was paying me in CDs instead of cash. I’d do sums in my head, and wonder how I was going to break even. “In your pocket’s not one penny,” Nina Simone sang, “and your friends: you haven’t got any.” It was a sadistic soundtrack for a sad state of affairs. It was inevitable I’d find myself at Centrelink. Robbo, my flatmate at the time, had mastered the system, having been on welfare for so long, he was now receiving food vouchers. Though he made me hopeful, I found the whole experience to be degrading and tedious. There was a Bible-stack of indecipherable paperwork to churn through which, once completed, was promptly lost by Centrelink staff. There were mandatory interrogations and psychological assaults. But what cracked me were the remedial job-seeking workshops (“How to write a résumé! How to stamp an envelope!”). After that, I lost it, and vowed never to step into the place again. Which is why, at the age of 26, I’m surprised to find myself in Centrelink’s queues again. Sure, there’s no shame in the dole, especially now. All over the world, the recession has hit hard, and welfare lines now resemble overnight camp-outs for Bob Dylan tickets. But it was an ominous sign when I rang the phone number for Newstart applicants, only the find the phone line had melted, and continued to be broken for 10 days straight. “Oh, I should apologise for that,” an employee told me eventually. “Those lines don’t work. They’ve exploded. Heaps of people getting fired.” [read more]
THE BIG ISSUE #329 (May/Jun 2009)		NOWHERE LAND Mona Mona is a place that doesn’t even appear on Queensland maps. Its history is complex; its future uncertain. But Benjamin Law finds members of a small but strong Indigenous community fighting to make the best of what they have. [PHOTOGRAPHS BY TAMMY LAW] To get to the Aboriginal community of Mona Mona, you need to drive right off the map. Flick to North Queensland’s large-scale directory, and the rectangle where Mona Mona should be is faded out. “There are presently no maps for the areas shown,” it says, “however, they may be included in future editions.” Mona Mona’s official status has always been murky. Queensland’s Department of Communities has been the trustee of the land since the mid-90s, and, since then, every decision about Mona Mona – home to a community of around 50 people – has gone through the department. Last year, the government announced, out of the blue, that officials wanted to consult with Mona Mona’s leaders. Then came 10 months of consultations, which made everyone quietly optimistic, even excited. Things that community leaders had long lobbied for were finally being canvassed: infrastructure and trusteeship, freehold and ownership, leases and land tenure. There was even talk of an Indigenous tourism plan: music festivals, craft workshops, nature tours. Finally, last December, the department’s director-general, Linda Apelt, called a community meeting to unveil Mona Mona’s new direction. Locals could become trustees of the land, Apelt said, but only over 100 hectares of the existing 1610. The rest of the land would become a national park. Then she bowled an unexpected bouncer: no one could live in Mona Mona any more. The standard of living was deemed unsafe. Camping would be okay though, she said. [read more]
FRANKIE #29 (May/Jun 2009)		BUT FARTING MEANS I LOVE YOU Long-term relationships can be such beautiful things. Having been with my boyfriend for a pretty long stretch now, I can safely vouch for the fact that when it’s working, there’s nothing quite like it. There’s warmth and security, comfort and shared history. Of course, there’s also a trade-off: being in each other’s pockets for so long means any mystery you once held evaporated long ago. Some couples try to stave off the inevitable by establishing ground rules: you must always close the toilet door; you must never look at me when I’m changing; you must never see my anus—that sort of thing. But rules are difficult to maintain, and complacency usually settles in after a while. Comparing notes with other long-term couples, I’ve found most of us have already slipped into bad, unsexy habits with our lovers: belching in the bedroom; talking openly about bowel movements; using stupid accents and baby voices; discussing menstrual cycles in a graphic and matter-of-fact fashion. [read more] GREENWASH Growing up, I was one of those children who told you—often in a shrill, whiney manner—to turn off the taps, use both sides of the paper and switch off the lights. Now in my adult years, those early signs of hyper green-consciousness have seen me transform into a supermarket sweeper of the most nauseating kind. Slap your green credentials on a product, and I’ll buy it. Give me logos of hands holding globes, and images of green leaves floating in the wind, and you’ve won me over. It’s not even a question of cash. If your product says it’s more eco-friendly than its neighbour, I’ll even pay more for it, hands down. I’m just that kind of guy. [read more]
QWEEKEND (18-19 Apr 2009)		FAMILY MATTERS When you’re a blind parent, you can’t see if your kids are red in the face and choking, if a scrape is infected or not. When they’re infants and you’re changing their nappies, you’re never entirely convinced you haven’t left poo somewhere on their bottoms, on their faces, on yourself. Eventually, you become so worried and exasperated you resort to stripping off completely and taking them naked and howling into the shower with you. There’s relief when they’re older, talking and able to communicate their discomforts, but even then you can’t read their body language or see beyond their angry words to the silent tears rolling down their faces. The sheer act of growing is coupled with its own brand of sadness. It’s around this age, says parent of two Gerrard Gosens, that you start to lose a concept of how your kids look. you can’t see; a voice you will never hear. That’s the reality for many people who’ve put their disabilities aside and plunged into parenthood. [read more]
SUNDAY LIFE (12 Apr 2009)		A LONG WAY FROM ROME For the past few weeks, it’s been Lent in South Brisbane, and the local Catholics have been observing the usual customs: replacing meat with fish; cutting back on alcohol; trying to attend mass more regularly. But while this period leading up to Easter is usually been observed as a time of quiet reflection and restraint, recent dramas involving this suburb’s Catholic community have almost reached New Testament levels of theatrical intensity. At first glance, St Mary’s doesn’t seem like a site for religious warfare: a beige and apricot building with pigeon crap gently layering its roof. Built in 1892, its history dates back far enough that Mary McKillop—Australia’s closest candidate for a saint—taught in St Mary’s original wooden chapel in 1870, before she was temporarily excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Her misdemeanour: resisting a bishop’s attempt to control her order. St Mary’s has a history of attracting rebels it seems. Now it has become the unlikely epicentre of a long-burning row for the past few months that goes straight to the Vatican. By the end of last year, St Mary’s priest—the slow-talking, sharp-thinking 71-year-old Father Peter Kennedy, who’d been there since 1980—had been accused of performing non-traditional baptisms, blessing same-sex couples, keeping a Buddhist statue on the premises, to allowing women to read at the pulpit, none of which he denies. [read more]
FRANKIE #28 (Mar/Apr 2009)		A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MY MOTHER In both the realms of quantum physics and anthropology, it’s often said that you can’t observe something without changing whatever you’re observing. It’s a profound statement—one I probably first heard watching Jurassic Park or something—and it came to mind when I watched my mother pull out a yoga mat she hadn’t used in months, and lay it in front of the television. You see, usually, when I gently suggest she should exercise more, Mum dismisses me. In her mind, she doesn’t really see the point. “But all your kids have left home now,” I tell her, “so you’ve got the time. You really should be moving that body. It’s good for you, and you’ll sleep better.” So I suggest a few things to her: getting back into yoga, going for walks, learning to swim. [read more] HANDS OFF MY SISTER There’s something repulsively Freudian about the way men worry about their daughters and sisters. Once puberty hits, things start to grow, peers start to leer, and male family members collaborate to ensure their precious lady-folk survive adolescence as white, unsullied flowers of sexual virtue. It’s weird. On the other hand, my family didn’t have to worry excessively about my sisters. Between the three of them, puberty wasn’t exactly perfume, brooding and breasts. Instead, there were orthodontic braces, underbites, gangly limbs, perms, severe myopia, orthodontic plates, rainbow glasses and thick eyebrows. To seal the deal, Dad insisted they all keep their hair short, to the extent that one of my sisters was once ushered out of female toilets and into the men’s. Adolescence didn’t coincide with a sultry Lolita-esque sexual discovery for them. No, they had scoliosis instead. [read more] RAMEN REVIEWS Maggi 2 Minute Noodles: Chicken & Corn Origin: Malaysia Verdict: It’s true: Asians do love their corn. In Malaysia, you’ll find cups of the stuff offered as a side dish at McDonald’s, so the marriage of corn and ramen was perhaps inevitable over there. But something’s gone terribly wrong here. The smell is weirdly buttery and popcorn-sweet, disconcertingly like your suburb’s local budget cinema. Also, the sachet powder flavouring here is so yellow, it resembles the ground-up fingernails of an 80-year-old chain-smoker. Weirdly expensive too. Will it kill you? It might smell weird, but Maggi worked hard in getting fat levels close to zero. A sachet of dehydrated, shrivelled vegetables adds to the idea that you’re eating something healthy. Try: if you have a sweet-tooth. We paid: $1.02 [read more]
FRANKIE #27 (Jan/Feb 2009)		TV SIDEKICKS FROM THE '90s (AND WHERE THEY ARE NOW) STEVE URKEL Family Matters (1989—1998) Played by: Jaleel White. Sidekick to: The long-suffering Winslow family, who lived next door. Memorable traits: Smashing stereotypes about black men being sexually virile and attractive. Instead, Urkel—with his hitched-up pants, cardigans, duck-like posture and annoying voice—was presented as repellent to all sectors of the community. Catchphrase: Any slapstick catastrophe brought on by Urkel’s clumsiness was followed by a sheepish and nasal “Did I do that?” For a while, he also had an ‘Urkel Dance’, which included his featured his trademark, donkey-like snort laughter. Where he is now: Jaleel White was actually quite the ladies’ man, as demonstrated by Urkel’s smooth alter-ego Stefan Urquelle. In 2006, a hoax claimed White had killed himself, and left behind a suicide note with the phrase “Did I Do That?” However, a much alive Jaleel finished a film and television degree, and had small roles in Dreamgirls and Boston Legal. [read more] A MOTHER'S WORK IS NEVER DONE In Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, there’s a studio that artist Arthur Boyd built over 50 years ago. Nowadays, it’s headquarters for the art publishing house McCulloch & McCulloch, where mother-daughter team Susan McCulloch and Emily McCulloch Childs are in pre-launch mode, organising mail-outs. “So we’re surrounded by piles of brochures and books—all this glamorous stuff,” Emily jokes. “Actually, it’s not very glamorous,” mother Susan deadpans. The parent-child working relationship harks back a generation too. Susan was the only child of renowned art critic Alan McCulloch, who founded McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art—a book that has since become an iconic art reference. As a teenager, Susan would help out on typing duties, as her dad put together the original editions. [read more] HOW UNIVERSITY MELTED MY BRAIN Most university students have the right idea. With brutal efficiency, they knock off their degrees in three or four years, before heading off towards illustrious careers as nurses and lawyers, landscape architects and chemists—all professions I can’t even begin to understand. Instead, I pursued the type of degree that, literally, had the word ‘creative’ in its title. When you’ve got something like that framed in your mother’s house, you know the future’s potentially bleak. So unsurprisingly, arts graduates—like me—will find any excuse to hang around campus, long after they’re needed. Honours? Why not! Masters? Don’t mind if I do! It’s alluring: continue to score adequate marks, and you’ll be kept safe by a combination of HECS debt and Centrelink. Psychologically, you know you’re trapped; but you’re comfortable, so you stay. Similar things happen in other institutions, like the Catholic nunnery or prison. [read more]
QWEEKEND (15-16 Nov 2008)		ALL TALK NO ACTION Drive west out of Brisbane, and the road eventually becomes a single-lane highway. Out here, billboards display Bible verses instead of ads and crows own the bitumen stretch, strutting across the road like they’ve never seen a car before. About an hour from Warwick you’ll find the small town of Inglewood, population less than 1000. Locals say they don’t measure distances by kilometres but by hours: three to Brisbane; nearly one to the nearby town of Texas. It’s not often that the local school attracts visitors. But today, Inglewood State School is playing host to Straight Talk Australia, a Toowoomba-based Christian organisation here to preach the gospel of delayed gratification. Its founders, Jim and Faye Lyons, married for 35 years, are a friendly couple who advocate a zero-tolerance approach to sex before marriage. They’ve recently been to Victoria to spread the word, often tour capital cities, and speak throughout the Pacific Islands too. As the Lyons set up their DVD player, projector and pamphlet display, they chat to school staff about a recent incident that demonstrates why they need to be here today. According to Jim, a young boy from a private school was on a bus and showed some girls the condom he carried around in his wallet. The girls were aghast, so were their parents. Jim shakes his head in disbelief; some of Inglewood’s teachers make tutting noises. “These parents: doing the right thing, sending their children to a good Christian school,” Jim says. “And for what? Their daughters to be corrupted on the school bus.” Students from Years 8 and 9 file in. Boys are told to sit on the left; girls on the right. Ranging from 12 to 14 years old, they’re at the age where school mornings are a hassle, and some students slouch into their seats sleepily. Jim tries rousing them with his standard ice-breaker. “How many of you are planning - as one of your goals in 2008 - to get a sexually transmitted disease or infection?” he asks. “Can I see the hands of those who are planning to get an STD this year?” No one puts up their hand. [read more]
THE BEST AUSTRALIAN ESSAYS 2008 (edited by David Marr) ISBN 978-1-86395-279-8 GROWING UP ASIAN IN AUSTRALIA (edited by Alice Pung) ISBN 978-1-86395-191-3		TOURISM My family aren’t exactly the outdoors type. Despite being raised right on the coastline, Mum detested visits to the beach (all the sand it brought into the house), while Dad actively disapproved of wearing thongs (“It splits the toes”). We never camped. All those things involved in camping—pitching a tent; cooking on open fires; the insects; shitting in the woods; sleeping on rocks; getting murdered and raped in the middle of nowhere—they never appealed to us. Camping just seemed too involved, too much effort. “We were never camping people,” Mum says now. “You dad never wanted to camp, and insects eat me alive. See, Asians—we’re scared of dying. White people: they like to ‘live life to the full’, and ‘die happy.’” She pauses, before adding, “Asians are the opposite.” We preferred theme parks. For parents raising five children, theme parks made so much sense. They were clean. They were safe. There were clear and set designated activities, and auditory and visual stimuli that transcended racial, language and age barriers. Also: you could buy heaps of useless shit. This seems to be an exercise in which Asians of all nationalities, ages and socio-economic backgrounds seem to naturally excel: buying shit. Venture into my childhood home, and in amongst the epic piles of suburban debris, you’ll still find a plush blue whale wearing a Seaworld cap, t-shirts emblazoned with Kenny and Belinda—the now defunct Dreamworld mascots—and a pox of hideous fridge magnets. Oh my god, the fridge magnets. It was family tradition that once a year, our family of seven (eight, including my Ma-Ma) would cram ourselves into my grandmother’s 1990 grey five-seat automatic Honda. Five seats. We’d travel like this—faces smashed against the glass; no leg room; the two smallest children illegally wedged between various legs—for a good three hours before we reached the Gold Coast. By the time we got to the theme park, our limbs were numb, our nerve endings destroyed. On the ride home, exhausted and drained like a dead battery, we’d fall asleep in such extreme angles, our spines contorted and twisted. We’d wake up, our shirts covered with drool we weren’t even sure was ours. On the day of the trip, we’d wake before sunrise to get there by opening time. Despite having endured three hours of vivid pain, we’d feel an overwhelming sense of awe as the Thunderbolt, Dreamworld’s fire-branded rollercoaster, emerged out of the trees that bordered the Pacific highway. It would appear so suddenly, like some strange apparition, or a mirage. Our necks would crane back trying to take in the sheer majesty of it all. For a non-religious family like ours, the experience was borderline spiritual. Once through the gates, the kids would do our best to distinguish ourselves from the actual Asian tourists. We’d make our Australian accents more pronounced. We ended our sentences with “eh”. Our trousers were pulled further downwards, away from our navels. We refused to wear bumbags, and spoke English very loudly, with proper grammar and syntax. These hoards of Japanese and Chinese tourists would point to the most innocuous objects and proceed to take photographs like idiots. We could only imagine what they were hollering to each another as they ripped through their film. “Look, a fire hydrant!” “Over here, a drinking fountain!” “Wow, there is a toilet: a public, shared facility and receptacle for my waste. Why not take a photo of it!” *Full version of this essay available from Best Australian Stories* and Growing Up Asian in Australia, both published by Black Inc.**
FRANKIE #26 (Nov/Dec 2008)		THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING NUDE Swimming lessons were compulsory at my primary school. Back in Year 4, after I’d changed into my boy-sized speedos, I’d take my usual place in Lane 6 of the pool. Lane 6 was reserved for the for the physically compromised: the girl with childhood arthritis; the rotund, androgynous blob with inverted nipples; and me. None of us could swim 25 metres without clutching the side desperately, the way drowning people hold onto the floating debris of a sinking ship. [read more] EMILÍANA TORRINI Emilíana Torrini is very cute in the morning. Talking to us from her place in Brighton, UK (having relocated from her native Iceland) she apologises for not being very conscious. She’s not very good at this hour, she says. Then she admits it’s actually 10am her time. After some muttering in Icelandic, she then explains she’s just stupidly poured a whole lot of salt into her coffee, when she wanted sugar. If you didn’t know her well, you’d think she was a bit weird. [read more] THE THINGS I'VE SEEN: DAMIEN BROWN While Angola is one of Africa’s richest sources of petroleum and diamonds, its people are said to be amongst the continent's poorest. Its drawn-out 27 year civil war decimated the country, leaving behind a dark legacy: a slew of civilian casualties and un-detonated land mines. By the time Melbourne doctor Damien Brown arrived in 2006 with aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the civil war had been over for four years, but the effects were still palpable. [read more] THE HARDEST THING I'VE HAD TO DO Us homosexuals like pointing out how diverse we are. We enjoy drawing attention to the fact that we work all around you. We’re your accountants and bus-drivers, politicians and pastry-makers, school teachers and engineers. We’re as varied as the colours of that repulsive rainbow flag of ours. If we spontaneously decided to go on strike—and just watch, we will one day—society would collapse. [read more]
QWEEKEND (27-28 Sept 2008)		LOSING IT Waiting rooms are tense, silent places. Nervous patients in the reception areas of GPs, physiotherapists and proctologists sit quietly wondering the same thing: whether they’re worse off than the person beside them. Usually it’s hard to tell, but sometimes there are clues. If you’re at the ophthalmologist you can watch how closely someone holds a magazine to their face. At the chiropractor observe how people are slouching. In the waiting room at hair surgeon Russell Knudsen’s clinic in inner Brisbane Spring Hill, men discreetly judge one another’s scalps in glass reflections and self-consciously run their fingers through their remaining locks. The man in the leather jacket sitting opposite me I notice has broken a golden rule of hair loss: don’t grow it long to compensate for its absence. While we don’t make eye contact, I know he’s surreptitiously examining my head too. When I’m called into Knudsen’s office I can’t help but notice his own promiscuously wild salty mane. It’s almost botanical, growing in vine-like licks and curls. The 54-year-old has four clinics like this in Australia and one in New Zealand, and has personally performed hair transplants on more than 4000 patients. Sitting behind me he runs a small, tube-like camera across the back of my head. “These are your hairs on your scalp,” he explains, pointing towards a small monitor, “fifty times closer.” Zoomed in like this you can see how hair grows. Some roots yield single hairs; others sprout two or three from the same spot. These, Knudsen explains, are “follicular units”, what surgeons call naturally-occurring groups of one to three hairs, growing from the same spot. When he moves the camera higher, towards the top of my head, the landscape changes a little. “Here, I’d say your hair looks normal,” he says. “The odd one’s a bit wispier, but most look healthy.” [read more]
THE MONTHLY (Sept 2008)		SAVING YOURSELF In the library classroom of Inglewood State School— a three-hour, sleep-inducing drive west out of Brisbane—Jim Lyons discusses Scarlett Johansson with Year 7 and 8 students. He shows them a laminated newspaper article featuring Johansson’s photograph. The headline is unfortunate: “Bush Bashed on Sex”. Jim paraphrases it for the students: Johansson is outraged that the Bush administration has poured millions of dollars into abstinence education throughout the US; she argues it takes women back into the dark ages; she gets tested for HIV every month; she also urges every young woman to do the same. “What can we learn from this young lady?” Jim asks. “What does this tell you about Scarlett Johansson?” In the back row, a skinny girl with spectacles puts her hand up. “That she’s safe?” she asks. Jim raises his eyebrows. “She’s safe?” he asks skeptically. “What else?” To the side, a Year 8 boy mumbles something. “She’s sexually active,” Jim repeats so the rest of the class can hear. “Well some would say she’s very sexually active.” Jim Lyons and his wife Faye are abstinence teachers. Together, they founded Straight Talk Australia, a Toowoomba-based travelling sex education program that teaches children to save themselves for marriage. Today, Jim and Faye might be at Inglewood, but their work isn’t limited to the regions. Since 1997, the Lyons has travelled all over Australia’s east coast, as well as New Zealand, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, Norfolk Island, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. “We haven’t come to your school today to tell you what to do with your life,” Faye tells the kids. “That is not why we’re here. We care about you as young people. We care about your future.” *[To read the full, edited version of this article, purchase The Monthly* or subscribe to The Online Monthly.]**
FRANKIE #25 (Sept/Oct 2008)		REVIEWS: TOILET PAPER PLANET ARK/SAFE 2-ply, 240 sheets, 105x98cm Appearance: Some of you refuse to buy white sheets or underwear, since stains are harder to detect on non-white material. If you are such a person (i.e. disgusting), this toilet paper is for you. It has a brownish hue, like sourdough bread. Scent: Like sourdough bread. Which is an improvement, actually. Someone at Planet Ark has clearly changed the manufacturing process in the last few years. Five years ago, I swear this stuff smelt like possums. [read more] REVISITING CHILDHOOD Back in the homeland of my people—the vast, mystical moors of China—sport just isn’t the same. From what I can gather, the national pursuits there are Tai Chi, badminton and smoking opium. We’re a gentle—not gargantuan—race, so I never exactly excelled at Australian sports. I couldn’t swim or tumble turn. However, I didn’t always come last at swimming carnivals, like you’d expect. No, no. That would be weak. I was disqualified instead. [read more]
FRANKIE #24 (July/Aug 2008)		MAN BITES DOG! My boyfriend’s a breakfast radio producer, which sounds like a pleasant enough career path. But in reality, it’s rendered our apartment into a relentless, blaring 24-hour multimedia news hub. Every morning, radio news and talkback wakes me up, and Kevin Rudd bleeds into my dreams. By midday, every computer is uploading an avalanche of news sites: Fairfax, News Limited, ABC, Crikey, CNN, BBC. I’ve learned that, if you so desire, you can actually watch 180 minutes of evening news bulletins, non-stop. By Saturday, the place is a disgrace. The gutted remains of weekend newspapers line our floor, as if we’re taking care of a runaway creature that’s lost control of its bowels. [read more] JOAN AS POLICEWOMAN When people talk about Joan Wasser, death inevitably comes up. Like the fact she was Jeff Buckley’s girlfriend when he drowned. Or that she wrote the track ‘We Don’t Own It’ after her friend Elliott Smith committed suicide. Her music is marked by losing people. Her second album To Survive was written while her mother was dying of cancer last year. You wouldn’t blame her if she was tired of talking about it. [read more]
THE COURIER MAIL (9 August 2008)		DAVID SEDARIS If they didn’t actually exist, the Sedaris family would make for great American fiction. Chain-smoking mother Sharon had such a caustic wit, it was as though Oscar Wilde had been reincarnated as a mother-of-six from North Carolina. Sister Amy, an actress, once wore fat suits to family get-togethers for shock value. Youngest brother Paul swears like a stevedore, but has a high-pitched feminine voice. [read more]
THE COURIER MAIL (28 June 2008)		CHLOE HOOPER By early 2005, a provocative story had been developing on Palm Island, one of Australia’s biggest Aboriginal communities. We all know it by now. Three months earlier, Cameron Doomadgee, a 36-year-old Aboriginal man, was taken into police custody. He was drunk, but upright. Doomadgee came out of custody dead, with suspicious injuries, similar to those caused by a car accident. His liver was almost cleaved in two. The Indigenous community blamed Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley—who claimed he fell on Doomadgee—and burned the station down. [read more]
FRANKIE #23 (May/Jun 2008)		THE HUGGING DILEMMA When my grandmother died a couple of years back, the mood was sombre. Death tends to do that I find. My extended family and I had gathered at the airport, ready to fly off for the funeral in Hong Kong—and lowen behold, my uncle was there. Considering I hadn’t seen this big, imposing, man-titted Malaysian dude in ages, I immediately went up to him for a friendly hullo. “Hey,” I said, bear-hugging the man. “How’ve you been?” [read more] TYING THE KNOT WITH MARTHA WAINWRIGHT "The best gift I got was probably from my brother Rufus: a beautiful chandelier. From others, I got some paintings by artists, pottery—from actual potters—hand-made stuff, and beautiful knitted wear from my mother’s generation. From my friends, I got a gramophone. The lesson: don’t register. [read more] TURNING THRIFTINESS INTO GIFTINESS Housewarmings can be awkward, since they forcefully bring together disparate, detached and unrelated social cliques. Oversized crossword puzzles facilitate social interaction by discovering all kinds of hideous facts about your mutual friends. Unlike board games, its grand scale means even 50+ inebriated people can participate simultaneously. [read more] AM I A STEREOTYPE? Growing up, my family did what was expected of Asians: we went to theme parks. Every school holidays, we’d head off to coo at the majesty of the dolphin stunt show at Seaworld, injure ourselves on the scoliosis-inducing rides at Dreamworld, or embark on the thrillingly lame, faux-Hollywood tours of Movieworld. Hell, what can I say? We just weren’t camping people. [read more]
FRANKIE #22 (Mar/Apr 2008)		MODERN ETIQUETTE WITH BETH DITTO Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto has demanded people kiss her naked arse, repeatedly exposed her naked crotch on stage, and purposefully vomited on hecklers during live shows. So it might come as a surprise that she is also one of the most polite and charming people you’ll ever talk to. As a woman of the world, she discusses modern-day etiquette with frankie. [read more] BALDNESS Even though you’re a stranger, I’d like to invite you to scan over my family’s photo albums. Over here is my grandfather—a lovely old man with tortoise-shell glasses, and a cheeky smile. You will notice he is bald. Over there are my maternal uncles, all crass jokes and sunshine, most of whom wear glasses. You will notice they are also bald. [read more] AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHT BEERS Indonesia is responsible for one pungent pilsener. Like Indonesian cuisine, subtlety is not a virtue here, and neither is lightness: this is heavy, brassy liquid that will leave your guts lined and, despite its lower alcohol content, your liver feeling assaulted. Bintang is one beer toxic and powerful enough to sedate even the most prickly of diplomatic tensions. [read more] TRUE OR FALSE WITH GOLDFRAPP Goldfrapp was afraid the only person who’d buy her latest album would be her mother? True. Because this one’s so different, I thought: “One: the record company probably won’t like it. Two: all the people who were really into the dancey Goldfrapp will stick their fingers down the back of their throat when they hear this.” So I thought the only person who’d be really enthusiastic for me will be my Mum. [read more]
THE COURIER MAIL (1 March 2008)		WRITE CLIMATE FOR CREATIVITY If you’re a young writer in Queensland, you’re probably familiar with the annual exodus of friends leaving for Melbourne and beyond. Usually, they never come back. But in a nice reversal of that phenomenon, young writer, poet and journalist Anna Krien moved from her hometown of Melbourne last year, for Brisbane. [read more]
ABC UNLEASHED (9 Jan 2008)		THE BLAND COMING OUT Earlier this year, queer news website SameSame made front-page headlines by announcing the inaugural list of Australia's 25 most influential gays and lesbians. Many were familiar names: high-profiled journalists (David Marr); politicians (Bob Brown, Penny Wong); musicians (Darren Hayes, iOTA); High Court judges (Michael Kirby); artists, directors and performers (William Yang, Neil Armfield, David Page); Olympians (Alyson Annan); and television programmers (Channel 7's Bevan Lee). Throughout 2007, a slew of other high-profile names opened their closets and joined them. What was nice about those revelations was how refreshingly banal, and thrillingly bland, most of them were. When it came to Australian news stories about sexual orientation, the persisting lack of scandal and public care-factor was a nice development. Nobody cared. [read more]
FRANKIE #21 (Jan/Feb 2008)		SHARMEEN OBAID-CHINOY Towards the end of 2006, Pakistani film-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s documentary Beneath the Veil was broadcast around the world. It had a provocative thesis: that despite Western intervention, and the downfall of the Taliban, Afghani women were still subject to the same social, economic and physical degradation of the old regime. “Yes, women were in parliament,” Sharmeen says, “but they weren’t allowed to speak or make laws. And in the four and a half weeks that I was there, I didn’t see a single woman behind the wheel of a car.” [read more] SURFACE CLEANERS COLES RELIAN CE: ALL-PURPOSE CLEAN COLES RELIANCE: ALL-PURPOSE CLEANER (750ml) Test surface: Bathroom basin, covered in dust, human hair, unidentifiable slime. Verdict: Coles’s all-purpose cleaner looks like a product you might find in North Korea—utilitarian, no-nonsense and at $1.79 for 750ml, made for the proletariat. There are no lavendar fields or citrus groves to be found on the packaging here. But had they employed a graphic designer, the dominant motif might have been a high school locker room: it’s all artificial lemons and bleach. This product is not recommended if you were bullied in your teen years, and are prone to olfactory-induced trauma flashbacks. Harsh but adequate. [read more] THE MOMENT I REALISED I WAS AN ADULT Now this assumes there was a moment where I became bone fide “adult”. Yes, I recently turned 25, but I’m not convinced I’m quite there. At my age, my mother had already shot two children out of her loins; my sister had been engaged for marriage; my brother was on a mortgage and planning to gravel the driveway. [read more]
FRANKIE #20 (Nov/Dec 2007)		HEART OF DARFUR Lisa French Blaker doesn’t sleep well. During her time as a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) nurse in Sudan’s Darfur, she encountered enough instances of human abuse and suffering to induce permanent insomnia, in even the most hardened people. Actually, so many stories play in her mind, she’s lost track of whether she included them in her memoir or not. [read more] GOING CARBON NEUTRAL So the world’s burning up, the ice caps are melting, and we’re all going to die screaming, our hair having burst into flames. But being a simple kind of guy, leading a simple kind of life, I can’t imagine I’m making an incredibly significant impact on the planet. Irregular access to a car renders me a public transport and bicycle kind of guy. I’ve changed my light bulbs, use green bags, switch things off at the wall, recycle, print on both sides of the paper. You know, all the shit Al Gore told me to do. [read more] EW BOOKS I SHOULD HAVE READ BY NOW An admission: I have attempted all of the following books, and—after a good deal of brow-furrowing and chin-stroking—given up a the halfway point, thrown them against the wall, and redeemed them for cash: Mrs Dalloway (too boring); The Lord of the Rings (too long); The Picture of Dorian Gray (too tedious); Catch-22 (too confusing); Ulysses (too impenetrable); and anything by Patrick White (too Patrick White). It makes me feel all kinds of guilty and stupid. [read more] E A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND My boyfriend and I didn’t have to look particularly hard to find one another. We went to the same high school. I found him between first period and recess. Since getting together, we’ve since decided—in an admittedly repulsive and slovenly fashion—that the prospect of dating new people would be taxing. Going to the effort of impressing and deluding a whole new person to sleep with me? It just sounds exhausting. [read more]
FRANKIE #19 (Sept/Oct 2007)		MY WORST ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME Did anyone see Channel Nine’s recent reality television show The Lost Tribes? The premise: three suburban Australian families are forced to live with tribal cultures in Africa and South East Asia. No one? I can’t blame you if you missed it. What started as a great Discovery Channel-type concept quickly descended into a Gods Must Be Crazy meets Kath & Kim farce—but nowhere near as funny and a lot more racist. And violently tedious. No Australian seemed to learn anything, except that tribal people were gross and backwards. [read more] MIRANDA JULY Already a renowned performance artist, and the award-winning filmmaker of Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July has just also published a book of her short stories. Now that she’s a bone-fide writer, she talks about common preconceptions about the writer’s life. [read more] BAT FOR LASHES She might be turning 28 this year, but UK singer-songwriter Natasha Khan still believes in fairytales and ghost stories. Under the monicker Bat for Lashes, she carries a shaman stick on stage, finds alternative universes in her videos, and sings of horses, quests, wizards and bats in her songs. Blame her childhood. [read more] EW RANDA JULY
FRANKIE #18 (July/Aug 2007)		TORI AMOS Over the span of her 15 year career, the brazenly eccentric Tori Amos has written songs about zebras, cornflake girls, voodoo and bee-keepers. But with her most recent album American Doll Posse, Amos’s lyrics have probably never been so direct, or overtly political. Just to make things interesting, shameless, die-hard nerd Benjamin Law recently chatted with Tori by asking her a series of random questions, lifted from the lyrics of her back catalogue. [read more] BRING IT BACK: NOT HAVING TO ORGANISE BIRTHDAYS There are a couple of celebrations I detest. At the risk of sounding like an unpatriotic scarf-wearing pinko, Australia Day is one of them. In my mind, January 26 should be this epic tribute to our beautifully delinquent nation, a festival of our shared heritage. But in my experience, it usually just means a lot of empty flag worship, and fat, hairy men across the road hollering, bare-chested and drunk. The next morning, I inevitably find broken glass and regurgitated pizza in and around my apartment’s pool. Great holiday there. [read more] PODDY McPODCAST As my luddite mother often complains, it’s a digital world nowadays. Goodbye, 35mm film. Adios, mix-tapes. Sayonara, VHS. But just as we thought we were about to say goodbye to analogue radio too—hark! Along comes podcasting, and with it, an unexpected renaissance of the medium. While having an MP3 player makes your on-demand radio experience nice and portable, all you really need is your computer and a healthy internet connection. Like the best things in life, all of these podcasts are lovely and free. [read more]
THE BIG ISSUE #280 (June 2007)		MAVIS STAPLES Half a century might have passed, but singer Mavis Staples clearly remembers the segregation she endured as a young African-American woman. The worst of it, she says, was when she travelled the country with her family band. “Naturally, after driving 200 miles, you need to stop for gas,” she says. “We needed to go to the washroom, but we’d have to use that ‘colored only’ washroom. Nine times out of ten, it would be filthy. Just filthy. It hurt so bad that we were treated like we were nothing. Like we weren’t human beings.” Consisting of her father, her three siblings and herself, the Staple Singers would travel through the States in the ‘60s, singing protest and gospel songs like ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ and ‘On My Way.’ Roebuck ‘Pops’ Staples was a good friend and ally of Martin Luther King Junior’s, and the Staple Singers would often open his addresses and sermons. Nowadays, those very same civil rights era protest songs provides Staples with ammunition against the poor state of race relations today. Her latest album We’ll Never Turn Back is a vigorous and urgent collection of those songs, reinterpreted for a new generation. “My record is a history lesson,” she says. “It’s taking you on a journey, letting you know what we went through, and what we survived. It’s showing how strong we are, as people.” [read more]
THE BIG ISSUE #277 (Apr/May 2007)		NEW BUFFALO For someone who wrote and recorded her latest album on a vintage grand piano, Sally Seltmann remembers having very terse words with her parents about keyboard lessons. Having played the instrument from the age of six, the then 14-year-old Sally Russell (Seltmann is her married name) was beginning to get sick of it all. “I started to think I was really independent and wise,” she says laughing. “I told my parents I didn’t want to learn any more, and that I was only learning because they wanted me to!” That didn’t turn out to be entirely true. Out of all the instruments Seltmann plays now—keys, guitar, bass, drums and flute—piano is now her first instrument of choice. But looking back, she says there was something important about that teenage outburst: it was “my own choice”. In the past few years, Seltmann has become accustomed to doing things on her own terms. When she first emerged under the New Buffalo moniker in 2001 with her debut EP, she was quickly courted by illustrious UK label Heavenly. Out of that, she was paired up with hotshot international sound engineer Jake Davies, best known for his work with Björk. But after she was unceremoniously dumped by the label out of the blue, that work with Davies came to a dead end. [read more]
FRANKIE #17 (June/July 2007)		THE WORST THING I EVER DID AS A KID Young people are awful. Well they were at my school anyway. In highschool, pupils made local headlines when neighbours found a congealed mess of human faeces in their pool, after a particularly festive party. In primary school, I remember someone throwing a brick at another kid’s head, and connecting. Someone else impaled a kid’s hand with an HB pencil. [read more] BRING IT BACK: MULTICULTURALISM Remember the late ‘80s? That brief, fleeting period when everyone was madly in love with multiculturalism? Back then, I was a six-year-old Asian kid, totally working it in my hypercolour t-shirt and plastic sunglasses. It was a cutting-edge style to match a cutting-edge occasion: World Expo ’88. In Brisbane’s ongoing tradition of hosting the most tragic cultural icons and events (the rainbow skyneedle; the Goodwill Games), Southbank was divided into caves and marquees, each representing a different country. Okay—admittedly, it was actually amazing. For a while there, everything seemed so euphorically multicultural, it was like we lived on frickin’ Sesame Street. [read more] HORRIFIC TREND IN FASHION 1. Coloured, plastic clogs. Feet are revolting. As a species, we should to do everything possible to cover these calloused, hard-skinned appendages with footwear that makes us appear hot; footwear that makes us forget feet even exist. But footwear often goes wrong and can make feet—indeed the whole body—supremely unattractive. For instance: a few years ago, straight men—following the lead of their misguided homosexual brethren—started wearing leather slides. The trend was both alarming and foul, but soon disappeared. [read more] MICKEY AVALON First up, let’s get the facts straight about punk-rapper Mickey Avalon. Yes, he was a heroin addict. Yes, he has a family history of substance abuse. Yes, his grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and he was an Orthodox Jew as a teenager. Yes, he gave hand-jobs to truck-drivers to support his heroin habit. And though his real name is Yeshi Perl—no, Mickey Avalon isn’t an act. [read more] HOT MEN FROM THE '80s AND WHERE THEY ARE NOW MICHAEL BIEHN (b. 1956). Best known: As Linda Hamilton’s protector in the Terminator (1984); Sigourney Weaver’s love interest in Aliens (1986). Pivotal heart-throb moment: In Aliens, Ripley and Newt are trapped by a villainous pre-Mad About You Paul Reiser in a room with alien face-huggers, surrounded by shock-proof plexiglass. Biehn AK-47s his way into the room, and proceeds to pulverise the alien spawn. What happened next: Post-Aliens, Biehn starred in the massively successful The Abyss and Navy Seals. However, his ultimate career direction would cemented with 1997’s Dead Man Can’t Dance. The tag-line: “The Cold War just got hot. Time to Rock ‘n’ Roll.” [read more]
FRANKIE #16 (Apr/May 2007)		YOU CAN SHUT UP NOW Everyone has their vices. Your vice might be shopping. My boyfriend’s is a good bottle of New Zealand pinot noir. My vice is homosexual pornography. However, you don’t hear me exclaim during the middle of a work shift: “Oh, it’s been such a long day! I can’t wait til I can go online, drop my pants and stroke my wang.” No, that would be indecent. So why do coffee-drinkers feel the need to groan their way through a day at the office about their undying, constant need for a “caffeine fix”? [read more] TILLY & THE WALL It’s not a luxury many bands can claim, but Omaha-based pop outfit Tilly and the Wall are able to travel lightly on tour. Unlike most bands, who haul drum-kits across state lines and international borders, Tilly’s percussion section fits in their overhead luggage. In place of a drum-kit? Tap-shoes. [read more] THE ALBUM THAT CHANGED MY LIFE None of my friends like Tori Amos. Too twee to be rock; too earnest to be cool, she’s long been dismissed as the refuge for bad poets, pimpled homosexuals, and unwashed lesbians with a penchant for purple velvet and pentagrams. (It might sound harsh, but this overview of her fan-base was pretty much confirmed during her recent Australian tour.) The woman just isn’t fashionable. [read more]
THE BIG ISSUE #273 (Feb/Mar 2007)		THE SLITS It’s difficult pinning down Ari Up for an interview. You’re told that she often goes AWOL for days on end, then you have to delay the interview for 12 hours. When you finally get hold of the Slits co-founder, the first panicky thing she says is: “Don’t hang up! I’ve got to pee!” before disappearing from the phone line. But when the punk stalwart is finally ready to chat, it soon becomes clear why she’s been hard to track down lately. “Just the other day, six bullets were put into my brother-in-law, right in front of my doorstep,” she says. Ari Up (whose real name is Arianna Forster) currently splits her time between Brooklyn and Jamaica. Recently, her family in Jamaica has become targets of drive-by shootings, carried out by corrupt policeman in the area. “Right now, my brother-in-law is in hospital with a bullet in a back. If they take it out, he’ll be crippled,” she says. “He’s lost a kidney, and tonnes of blood. But the main thing is, the cops tried to come into the hospital to kill him. We’re very worried. We’ve got a hot-shot lawyer trying to expose the dirty cops, getting it all out in the open, but it’s very scary. So I’m really freaked out.” [read more]
NERDS GONE WILD #3 (Feb/Mar 2007)		SNOWY (from TinTin) versus BRAIN (from Inspector Gadget) While Snowy the Dog endures horrific, unimaginable abuse at the hands of his boyscout cunt-of-a-master Tintin, let us not forget the bigger victim here: Brain, the yellow, antennae-eared dog of MENSA-like intelligence, who played second fiddle to Inspector Gadget. Because when it comes to dogs, Brain is by far the most intelligent—and abused—dog on television. There is something epic in the tragedy that is Brain the Dog. In many ways, he is like Cassandra, the figure in Greek mythology whose gift is to know the future, but whose curse is that no one believes her. Similarly, Brain is both gifted and cursed. His gift is that his intelligence is so profound, he is hardly even dog anymore. He occasionally walks upright, predominantly uses charades to communicate, and is also known to slip into actual anthropormorphism. Unlike Snowy, Brain has taken a page from those sign-language trained gorillas, and can actually communicate outside of his own species. What a star. [read more]
FRANKIE #15 (Feb/Mar 2007)		I WISH I KNEW THEN, WHAT I KNOW NOW Let’s be frank. How could I not have known? The signs were there from the start. The denim cut-offs; the gymnastics lessons; the drama classes. All that hair product. As a kid, I may as well have had a pyrotechnic display of pink fire constantly spewing out of my asshole, spelling out the word FLAMER. [read more] FIONN REGAN It’s safe to say you’ve never heard of Fionn Regan before. Yet in Europe, the Irish singer-songwriter’s debut LP The End of History—along with his first headline tour—has seen reviews name-checking everyone from Bob Dylan to Nick Drake; Mark Kozelek to Paul Simon. (Personally, we hear Ron Sexsmith and Ben Kweller, too.) [read more] BRIGHT YOUNG THING: ANNA KRIEN A couple of years ago, Anna Krien was a cadet journalist filing stories for The Age. Eighteen months into it, she quit. “I was so depressed,” she says laughing. Though she chuckles now, everyone told her she’d just made the worst career move of her life. But since leaving her full-time perch, Anna’s decision has been vindicated. Her byline has appeared everywhere. She’s written non-fiction for The Monthly, Yen, Dazed & Confused and The Big Issue; had her poetry published in The Griffith Review; scored a scholarship to write a novel; and started editing Subterrain, a journal of the life stories of Melbourne’s homeless. [read more] THE BANNED BOOK Who said the novel was dead? If a measure of artistic merit is its ability to provoke people, it seems the humble novel is still potent enough to send everyone—from the right-wing, to concerned parents, to the government—into foamy-mouthed outrage. From Nabokov’s Lolita to William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, most modern classics have been damned into oblivion at some stage. Long live the banned book, we say. [read more]
NERDS GONE WILD #2 (Nov/Dec 2006)		JESUS WAS BASICALLY AN X-MAN “Stephen King is possessed by the devil!” our substitute religion teacher Ms Zarnke once shrieked to us in class, after we had been discussing the scary movie adaptation of the novel It. When asked why, she simply replied: “Because it takes someone who is truly evil to write such evil books.” It was the woman’s first day of her job, and we found her to be thrilling entertainment. Obviously—the woman was clearly unhinged. I went to a Lutheran school, and since the banning of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series in Year 7, and the subsequent Ms Zarnke “Stephen-King-is-the-devil” episode in high-school, I’ve always just assumed Christianity and my pet world of nerd pop culture were fundamentally incompatible. It wasn’t a problem really; it just gave me extra incentive to be an atheist. But behold! With the dawn of the fangdangled internet, witness the mobilisation of a new breed of Christian, whose online work can only be described as ‘Christian textual analysis.’ Here, Hollywood holds hands with Jesus. On HollywoodJesus.com, you can discover the true Christian message behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On CultureWatch.com, discover how Brokeback Mountain’s Jack and Ennis could have saved their wives a lot of heartache by having “stuck to the biblical principal of sex being contained within marriage”. [read more]
FRANKIE #14 (Dec 2006/Jan 2007)		THE PROS & CONS OF LIFE WITHOUT A CAR There are some things in life you just never get around to learning. Some of us remain virgins well into our 30s, whether through self-discipline, intimacy issues, or poor genital hygiene. Some of us never learned how to mow the lawn (our family always outsourced the work), and I’ve lived with several people to whom I’ve had to demonstrate the complicated art of mopping. Me? Well, at the age of 24, I still find myself unable to drive a car. [read more] MY MOTHER IS TOO PROUD OF ME My mother’s hodge-podge photo collection of us kids is now so massive, it threatens to avalanche over and destroy her living room. She outright refuses to paint over our childhood wall-scrawlings, claiming they are “works of art”. Now, after five kids, the walls now look more vandalised than an outer-suburb public toilet. [read more] EARS TO THE GROUND Online, Wei Choong and Rebecca Monson write a blog called Chasing Disasters. It’s an apt title. Between the two of them, their work has led them everywhere from Thailand to Bangladesh, Laos to East Timor, the Solomon Islands and—most recently—post-Katrina New Orleans. After reciting that list of disaster zones, Wei is the first to sheepishly admit, “There’s something fucked up about what I do.” [read more] MY WORST BIRTHDAY Mum has a particularly graphic account of my birth, which she now describes as the “slipperiest” out of her five children. Although it was quick, she is quick to discount the idea it was an easy process. “No birth is easy!” she says. “Can you imagine a lemon coming out of your penis-hole? I’d like to see a man squeeze lemons out of his penis-hole. OUT OF YOUR PENIS-HOLE! Imagine! A lemon. Or maybe a bigger fruit… I don’t know. Anyway. Penis-hole.” [read more] ETHICAL EATING Vegetarians and animal activists, gather around me and start a vigil. Come close. Light candles. For my digestive system is a graveyard. Join me in saying a prayer for all the various cows, chickens, sheep, pigs, ducks, deer, fish, sharks, jellyfish, squid, lobsters, mussels, kangaroos, oysters, emus, quails, clams, prawns, pigeons, octopus, frogs, abalone, crabs and sea cucumbers who have come to find my stomach as their final resting place. May they rest in peace. [read more]
FRANKIE #13 (Oct/Nov 2006)		AN OPEN LETTER TO AUSTRALIAN TELEVISION Dear Television: Where did it go wrong between us? I thought we were pals. At one stage, I loved you so much, my family owned three of you. I used to bolt to the newsagencies every Monday afternoon to buy the latest TV Week, and sat in monk-like silence for an hour, reading it cover-to-cover. (This practice has now stopped.) You were my best friend, and we didn’t ask much of one another. [read more] WHEN I WAS IN HIGHSCHOOL ... When I was in highschool, every Year 10 student was shipped into the wilderness for a month of survival camp. Half the time would be spent hiking in the woods; half would be spent like the Amish—baking our own bread and reconnecting with God at base camp. Armed with Lutheran Bibles, a month’s worth of flannelette, and camp-standard machetes—no kidding—our year level was divided into four and sent into the bush, one group after another. Obviously, this was before the public liability boom. [read more] ISOBEL CAMPBELL & MARK LANEGAN Take a former member of sugary popsters Belle & Sebastian, and a one-time vocalist for sweaty rock-pigs Queens of the Stone Age. What do you get? Well, one would expect bloodshed, really—shredded cardigans and stepped-upon spectacles. But for Isobel Campbell—best known as Belle & Sebastian’s ex-cellist and vocalist—pairing up with Mark Lanegan and using his shredded-up vocals on her latest album was a no-brainer, as soon as she heard what he was capable of. [read more] DIY: GARAGE SALE Holding a garage sale is a fine art. There are certain techniques one must master in order to successfully sell one’s useless shit to the masses. So whether you’re moving house, doing your annual spring cleaning house audit, or simply dirt-poor and desperate for cash, here are some tips to make your next garage sale kick some serious suburban ass. [read more]
THE BIG ISSUE #263 (Sept 2006)		MARISHA PESSL It usually happens once a year in the literary world. It’s an annual phenomenon, which sees literary agents and publishers engage in professional warfare, and the press hyperventilating themselves into a stupor. And it’s all over one thing: the next Bright Young Writer. About three years ago, Marisha Pessl didn’t look like a strong candidate for that title. Despite her now much-publicised good looks (more on that later), her two previous novels remained unpublished and she didn’t have any contacts in the publishing industry. She was working as a financial consultant, of all things. “And I hated it,” she says laughing. [read more]

Last Updated :: 13 October 2009 All Content © Benjamin Law 2009