A Disclaimer
In light of how popular my last post about conservative writers has been with a certain Herald Sun columnist and other conservatives, I think I should offer a few caveats: Firstly, as much as I love to bash the sillier brand of leftism, I see myself more as a libertarian, or classical liberal, than a...
Why Are Conservative Writers Funnier?
Last week, I sat through a whole morning at work pondering a thorny and controversial question: why are conservatives so often the best political writers? While you pause in outrage, rallying your favourite left-wing writers like so many dead-eyed Pokemons, consider the following rhetorical death match, in the vein of TV’s TNI X-Plosion: in the...
Kampot
Since arriving in Phnom Penh, I’ve already managed two short trips down to Kampot, a somnolent town 150km south of the capital. Although both were work trips, I was struck by the charm of the town’s riverine setting and have planned a dedicated weekend of reading and indolence at the French-run Les Manguiers guesthouse, whose...
The Cephalopods of Syntax
In my downtime at work, I’ve been reading some amusing material about bad academic writing, my arch-nemesis while at university and, it appears, something of a sub-genre of humour on teh web. The primus inter pares of this genre is undoubtedly Postmodern Pooh by literary critic Frederick Crews, a riotous satire of the state of...
The Invoice
Last week I received via email a mysterious invoice from the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) instructing me to pay (via cheque or direct bank transfer) the sum of $226.00, purportedly for the quantity of 1 (one) ‘Bound Farrago Editions’. Remembering the miscommunication and bureaucratic tomfoolery that resulted in said purchase, I was unexpectedly...
Lon Rith
The nights now are cool and humid, alive with the whisper of insects and the chk-chk of tiny geckos. I am sitting on my balcony after a long spell of wine-induced sloth, staring down at the pin-pricks of moto headlights and the tumult of the fountains in Hun Sen Park. After just sixty days, fragments...
Pisah Khmer
After two months, my Khmer is coming along like a dry-season slum fire. I now have a tutor named Sokha, a former journalist, who comes to my apartment on Sundays to guide me through a fairly solid textbook course. Speaking Khmer is not too difficult in comparative terms — I’ve met a lot of people...
Khmer New Year
Khmer New Year and the stifling heat of mid-April have conspired to cast a smothering blanket over Phnom Penh. Just about everything is shut: even the roadside barbers have folded up their chairs, unhooked their mirrors, and scattered back to the provinces to pursue the cycle of binge-eating, Buddhist offerings and family activities that marks...
Porn: Why Censorship Won’t Work
While I was in Saigon I found the time to write an opinion piece about censorship of internet pornography, which has now been published at Online Opinion and has sparked some interesting debate that has helped me to clarify my views on the issue. My article — which has also cropped up in The Nation,...
Gold Tower 42
Like Saigon, Phnom Penh is booming, and the Cambodian nouveau riche — as nouveaux riches are wont to do – is busily casting about for new ways to flaunt its wealth. To service this new demographic, an old government hospital at the intersection of Sihanouk and Norodom Boulevards has recently been flattened to make way...
Chamkarmon district
Phnom Penh is about two hours from the Vietnamese border, a trip broken only by a ubiquitous half-hour lunch stop and a short break at Neak Loung, where cars, buses, motos and pedestrians are borne across the Mekong on rusting ferries. Due to the abundance of foreign aid the highways here are well-sealed and, excepting...
TPHCM Phat Trien!
Since China’s economic rise, the ironies of ‘market socialism’ have become something of a staple of international journalism. Indeed, the story of socialism yielding to neoliberal economics can be sketched in sharp, simple contrasts: Mao and Motorola; Deng and Disney; Tiananmen and Toyota. But despite all of this — and all irony aside — I...
