Club Troppo

Just to let those of you who are both forgetful of the fact that I am traveling in South America and at the same time sufficiently geographically challenged to be unable to distinguish Bolivia from Belgrade, I left the area of Bolivia currently being flooded a couple of weeks...

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Books mainly. Including Michael Moore's latest, " Dude, Where's My Royalty Cheque !" or somesuch. An elderly relative gave it to me with the advice that it had been recommended by the girl in the shop for "a guy who enjoys current affairs." It was sweet of her and it's now han...

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It's the preferred seasonal salutation of Aussie naturists apparently and since I'm not far off being nude at the mo' myself - no, it's purely climate induced, and there is no link - it's kind of appropriate. It's a while since I blogged. Indeed, as Wendy James might rightfull...

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I thought I should post a brief Christmas message; if it's good enough for the Queen it's good enough for me. May all loyal Troppo readers (and even the disloyal ones) have a happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year. It won't surprise readers to learn that I don't expect to be...

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The Peruvians are great wall builders. Show the poorest campesino a field full of rocks and before you can say Sexy Woman, he ´s knocked together a wall - around his house, around his field, along the river, up and down the mountain side. Travelling across the altiplano throug...

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Ahhh the magic moments in travelling. Not that I could begin to match the masterwork by Yobbo, but then anyone who goes to that sterile island off the coast of Malaysia and compounds the error by flying Qantas deserves what he gets. I ´m sitting at an Entel terminal in La Paz...

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In his usual idiosyncratic fashion J.M. Coetzee has orated his Nobel Lecture through the persona of Robinson Crusoe. With great plagues, decoy ducks, parrots and mutliple Defoe references Coetzee weaves a fascinating tale of isolation, unease and confused identity. Worth a rea...

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Its just three weeks from Christmas so I thought I'd help those news organisations with a few ole trusty news angles that appear every Christmas. Early this month we had a new variation with Cocaine Christmas cards from Chile , which I believe would provide a new style of seas...

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It's all a bit tragic - not least in the timing. On a slow news weekend - when the next biggest story seems to be that Bob Brown has invited Mark Latham to tour the old growth Tassie forest - Senator Andrew Bartlett's fall from grace has exploded all over the season of ho, ho,...

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A veritable Niagara of comment has poured forth about Mark Latham in the last couple of days but the Daily Telegraph's sordid little contribution gave me special pause. Latham's first wife, Gabrielle Gwyther, is featured , observing that: "He talked about climbing the ladder t...

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You would think that at a time when the United States needed all the resources at it's disposal it might have thought twice about it's ludicrous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy which excludes openly gay servicemen and women from the Armed Services. The Washington Post covers th...

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This sad little story concerns a 7 year old boy named Marcus whose seat of learning is Ernest Gallet Elementary School in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was nabbed telling a classmate, (in response to a question), what "gay" means. "It's when a girl likes another girl" he offered, b...

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What else is there to say? How depressing! I think I'll return to blogging hibernation. I just hope they surround Motormouth with sensible minders, and spike his morning coffee with Prozac. For John Howard, Christmas has come 23 days early. On my part, my election date bet wit...

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Words can ´t really do the vision justice. As one walks into the main entrance the view of the site is amazing, mindblowing, I can ´t imagine what it must be like to see it through the Sun Gate at sunrise. That ´s right, I didn ´t walk the Inca Trail because my knees are shot...

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The leadership of the ALP is up for grabs , so why don't I write about a complete irrelevancy? From the same Tim Blair column that Ken Parish links to below : Anyone who picks up Noam Chomsky's latest book probably deserves to have their hands removed. But, since we're still m...

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According to ABC News, Ray, Faulkner and McMullan - The Three Wise Men - have popped in today to see their parliamentary leader to impart the news that he no longer enjoys the majority support of the ALP caucus. Should he not avail himself of the opportunity to step down in th...

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As a male who (by choice) spends the vast majority of his time surrounded by women, who uniformly share an unshakeable conviction that the world would be a much better place if run by their sex rather than blokes, I can't resist sharing this passage from Kundera's Immortality...

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Despite still being swamped with exam marking and administrative tasks at CDU, it's past time to inject a bit of legal content into Troppo Armadillo , which seems of late to be evolving de facto into an online literary magazine. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind...

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Who'd a thunk it? The excision of all those islands could have just been about the comedic inability of a Mosman Kebab shop owner to organise his way out of a slightly greasy paper bag! The SMH reports that the 14 Kurdish 'asylum seekers' last seen on Melville Island - frantic...

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The votes are in the ABC's search for Australia's favourite book , and the winner according to the voting public is Tim Winton's 'Cloudstreet'. Now, these lists may only be useful for conjecture, and I think like most lists, this one also tends to favour the more recently publ...

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