Tell us how you really feel

While I am sometimes in less than full agreement with the Age's Catherine Deveny and don't always think her columns are 'good' (unlike many bloggers, I think there's a very clear distinction between those two things), I have just decided that I want her for my new best friend.

That's because I've just caught up with her Wednesday column (my secret Terrist name is Pavlov Bin Busy), in which she expressed the feelings of -- I'm guessing -- about three-quarters of the Australian populace, thus:

You can shove your citizenship test up your poxy date.

Like many others, including -- again -- many bloggers, she then goes on to provide her own citizenship test, and I must say this is the best one I've seen so far. After long consideration I've decided that my favourite question is #1 under 'Customs':

'Macca, Chooka and Wanger are driving to Surfers in their Torana. If they are travelling at 100 km/h while listening to Barnsey, Farnsey and Acca Dacca, how many slabs will each person on average consume between flashing a brown eye and having a slash?'

(Zoe from crazybrave may well be able to answer this correctly, but I don't like anyone else's chances. Those who have had the experiences are unlikely to have been doing the arithmetic.)

The Miles Franklin Literary Award 2007

Even as we speak, they will be getting stuck into the $120-a-head gourment nosh (it had better be gourmet, at that price) at the Miles Franklin presentation dinner. It's 8.35 pm in Sydney; I imagine the announcement is being made about now.

So here's a last-minute prediction, except that my psychic powers are getting a lot of interference and static from my wishes in the matter: I really, really, really want Alexis Wright's Carpentaria to win.

And I do actually think it might be going to.

Now I'll check the ABC news site (they were first with the news last year) and see whether I was right or not. Watch this space ...

UPDATE: Hah!

Astonishingly relevant anniversary post

Inspired by ThirdCat's blogiversary post, I looked back at my own archived post for December 14, 2005, and this (see link for the whole article) is what I found :


If it's good enough for him ...

Longtime Fatwa victim Salman Rushdie on the realities and the virtues of multiculturalism:

"This is the question of our time: how does a fractured community of multiple cultures decide what values it must share in order to cohere, and how can it insist on those values even when they clash with some citizens’ traditions and beliefs?

The beginnings of an answer may be found by asking the question the other way around: what does a society owe to its citizens? The French riots demonstrate a stark truth. If people do not feel included in the national idea, their alienation will turn to rage."