shtick

2011

'loss’s sphere grows wider now, and included in it is all possibility. you reflect on all you’ve missed – how much of your life you’ve forgotten, how much has streamed by you, how paltry the haul in your little net. there are the books you haven’t read, the ones you’ve read but don’t recall, the history you don’t know, the languages you haven’t learnt, the music you haven’t heard, the songs you haven’t written, the things you wish you’d asked your parents, the hugeness of the world, the tiny fraction of it you’ve gleaned, its sadness and suffering and deterioration, the friendships you didn’t have with people you admired, that beautiful stranger you saw in the street the other day who you’ll never know.'
– p490, PK - HtMG


two of my friends modelling for me at the Mackay Student Festival of Fashion '09(?)

'then you think there is no God?'
'no, i think there quite probably is one.'
'then why..?'
Mustapha Mond checked him. 'but he manfiests himself in different ways to different men. in pre-modern times he manifested himself as being that's described in these books. now..'
'how does he manifest himself now?' asked the Savage.
'well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all.'
'that's your fault.'
'call it the fault of civilisation. God isn't comparable with machinery and scientific medicine and univesal happiness. you must make your choice. our civilisation has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. that's why i have to keep these books locked up in the safe. they're smut. people would be shocked if..'
the Savage interruped him. 'but isn't it natural to feel there is a God?'
'you might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers,' said the Controller sarcastically. 'you remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. he defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. as if one believed anything by instinct! one believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy. people believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.'
'but all the same,' insisted the Savage, 'it is natural to believe in God when you're alone - quite alone, in the night, thinking about death..'
- p208-9, Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

'i don’t think of God as a he or a listener or a she..i just love the word. i love using it. it sings, you know? it’s sweet. it’s a sweet word. i’m at ease with it. my ancestors used it. some wonderful musicians and composer and poets used it. they must have been talking about something.’
– Michael Leunig, talking to Andrew Denton (on Enough Rope)


'i played Scrabble with my mother in her final days and, surprisingly, almost won. normally it was a doddle for her to beat me – i could ccount on one hand the number of times i’d toppled her in thirty years – but on this occasion she was labouring and not on her game. i got away to an early lead and she seemed unable to concentrate.
‘would you like to leave this for another day?’ i asked. ‘no,’ she wheezed, ‘i’m all right.’
i pulled steadily away. she was taking longer than normal between moves and muttering occasionally to herself in frustration. she didn’t like losing. with only a few letters left i was fifty points ahead and home and hosed. it was then she calmly played the word ‘qi’, with the Q landing oh a triple going both ways. Q is worth ten.
thirty times two – sixty points.
what’s ‘qi’? i asked. it means ‘the life force’, she said.
‘i thought you spelled that c-h-i.’
'yes, that’s the more well-known spelling. but q-i is acceptable too. it’s in the new edition of the Scrabble dictionary.’
i knew it wouldn’t be worth challenging her. when it came to fiendish two-letter words, she was an authority. who could forget ‘zo’, otherwise known as ‘dzo’, from a long-ago Christmas, meaning a cross-breed of a cow and a yak? (Z being also worth ten.) or the legendary ‘xu’, a sub-unit of Vietnamese currency.
‘sub-unit?’ ‘yes, a hundred xu make a dong, you nong!’
i flailed around with my remaining letters P, H, F (three, four, four) and some others, but i was now well and truly phfucked, stuck with them as my mother got rid of her tiles on her next turn.
defeated by a 76-year-old woman’s life force, i packed up the letters and board ruefully. she gave me a small apologetic smile. a week later she was dead.
– p308, PK - HtMG

Is Fashion Feminist? - Barbara Hualicki:
'is fashion feminist? absolutely. fashion means power for women. as a young woman in the 1960s, you had two choices. you could dress old-fashioned like Mad Men’s anti-feminist attire, dressing for men and their careers in stifling corsets, pointy brassieres and mid-calf hemlines, or you could become modern and lose the brassiere, shorten your skirts and wear flat shoes. in the 1960s fashion had nothing to do with men, as women became independent and were not being ‘kept’. they had their own careers and had left home, at last independent of their fathers. it never occurred to the 1960s generation that fashion was anti-feminist – though the angry brigade blew up Biba ‘for being a slave to fashion’, which still puzzles me to this day.
when i was little, i watched my mother dress up and she exuded this great confidence and power. to me clothes always stood for power. the visual effect she had on the family, especially on my father, was tremendous. how strange that the Mad Men look is now fashionable again: cleavage, pointy bras and high heels. but i guess, this time, its power dressing.'
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Is Fashion Feminist? - Daniela and Annette Felder:
'in a business sense, fashion has enabled women to launch their own companies and to run them successfully which has allowed women to be able to emancipate themselves through the means of fashion.'
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Is Fashion Feminist? - Anita Borzyszkowska:
'fashion is post-feminist, it means you can dress for yourself or for someone else with no misgivings – its about the freedom to make a personal choice, whether you stay true to your own style or play with fashion.'
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Is Fashion Feminist? - Jane Aldridge:
'for me, fashion is feminist. i have never felt crippled by heels i wear or objectified by a short skirt. when women wear something they love, they feel powerful. feminism doesn’t have to be anti-beauty.'
- p96, Elle Collections SS20