After a few days of headaches, a stiff neck and sore throat my nose joined the party and forced me to admit I’m sick. So I’m home, mostly in bed, snoozing, reading and drinking Lemsip out of my favourite cup. Isn’t the […]

Peter Carey is one of my favourite authors, and I’m obviously going to have to read his latest book: it’s based on the Ern Malley hoax, which my Great Uncle Jim was one of the instigators of. Uncle Jim wrote rather traditional […]

“I kiss you as we’re sitting on the sofa with the computer open beside us. I lean against you, pushing you down until you’re lying beneath me with your head resting gently on the keyboard of the laptop. I lift my eyes […]

Seeing the world absentmindedly through the LCD screen of a digital camera you’d almost forgotten was still turned on you’re surprised by details usually unseen, views you’d never have pointed a camera at if your eye was hard against the viewfinder.

Oh my goodness. I’ve just ticked off all but one of the items on my work to-do list leaving nothing but “start prospectus for book”. You know, the book that would be based on my PhD thesis but popular while still serious […]

Torill is cutting up her dissertation committee’s comments to keep some measure of control. I know that she’ll fly, without even needing to row.

The American Elf is James Kochalka’s online , presented in short, daily comics. James and his wife had a baby last Thursday, and Grumpygirl’s comments on reading the daily strips during the long, long wait for the birth are interesting in terms […]

Now this is a good quote for bloggers, found and cited by Alex: I believe that an intellectual should use newspapers the way private diaries and personal letters were once used. At white heat, in the rush of an emotion, stimulated by […]

In Norwegian a navlebeskuer is someone who’s so busy looking at their own navel they can’t see anything else. Today that’s me. But at least I’m looking through a breathtaking camera with a macrosetting that is clearly going to leave my old […]

I finally revised the definition I wrote of “weblog” for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative and sent it back to the editors. The changes were mostly small, the one I like best being a suggestion from an editor that I weave in […]