Commentary from a radical and pluralist perspective on Australian and world affairs., Culture, satire and the occasional breaking story
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You Wish, Voyeur, You Wish: The Picasso Theft, 1986, a Specvestigation, and some names Oh no, I’ve been stolen! Who stole the Picasso from the NGV in 1986? Spoiler alert, Brechtian epic framing: it was two art/crim kids, directed by David Larwill from Roar studios. OK, here’s why I think that…and some suspects I have ruled out of the inquiry It was forty years ago about today….that the Picasso…
Alright folks....Spec will soon be expanding its offerings. In the meantime, if you wandered on here, liked itwant more of it, now's the time to subscribe. This is a living!
Spec would like to wish a happy birthday to the following racehorses. Apologies if we missed you! Good luck out on the track: Aardvark Boy Abacus Ablative Abyssinia Dreaming (7,811 names omitted…..) Lightning Bolt Thunder Strike Furious Speed Demon Apex Storm Chaser Blazing Star Power Play Turbo Charge Velocity Flying Fury Sonic Boom Dark Horse Electrify Quick Draw Rapid Fire Storm Surge…
The Light on the Hill At the End of the Tunnel….. These days, when they dig something like the Suburban Rail Loop, they let the archaeologists in for a while.Building workers found it weird when it started decades ago, now they seem to like it. Who wouldn’t? Bottle caps, pens, lapel pins, fallen down cracks of floors, dozens of teeth beneath old dentists’s floors, heartbreakingly once, at the old…
It is always wrong to translate Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926, for range of those hitherto unaware of him), but it is sometimes necessary. A small excursus on method and purpose next week, but I won’t kill the poems with that here (the asterisks are necessary due to this layout, for stanza division. But not part of the poems themselves). OK, enough. Either I’ve bodied forth some of the Teutonic…
Holiday Over Cambodia: Through late globalisation, December 2023 ‘Daily reminder to not fly @etihad, who refuse to take responsibility for costing us 4k for their screw up.’ - AJ Bartlett, philosopher, X/twitter The nothing nothings - Heidegger ‘Philosopher: a man who gives advice to people who are happier than he is’ - Hilaire Belloc Sharjah, UAE ‘Sharjah hotel traffic ticket jewellery!’ In the…
Spec has delayed its midwinter holiday by a week, as were going to meet Bert and Thel with the caravan, but Bert’s got the sciatica again and couldn’t go to the Holden Museum, and if you can’t go to the Holden Museum what really is the point? We depart next week… Quick fire rounds Bobbing for Appel The sally by minister Pat Conroy to re-open the war record of Robert Menzies was a) a continued…
Spec will be taking a fortnight break from news posting, to pursue our annual midwinter, wandering through misty avenues of bare plane trees. But fear not, as we will preload weekly episodes of mildly tendentious cultural criticism and reviews. Enjoy! That’s an order Bad Dose of Monoculturalism? Ballarat train, about 1910 Gentleman (to Chinese man in suit, not unkindly): You like train!? Melbourne…
The Peers Rail at Pauline Hanson did well enough to get through her Press Club appearance, in conventional terms. Those who like her for being Paaaaauline, who happened to see it - won’t be many - will have loved the fact that she was stumbling and stop start in a speech written for her. She’s not like the rest of em, slick and smooth etc etc. Those Coalition voters thinking of switching over to…
Thirty One percent One Nation’s rise to the top of the polls has occasioned more than panic among many people. With its triumph, whether it be brief or enduring, has come a fundamental demoralisation among some. Boomers, Gen Xer and older on the left and progressive side are seeing a repudiation of the long arc they have lived on and by, from the great social and cultural revolution of the 1960s,…
