Not falling for this again

There are more fictional Australian Country Towns With A Secret than there are actual living Australians.

Imagine trying to take the minutes at these meetings, not being able to hear what anybody was saying.

This is what happened when he finally moved on from Beatrice.

There's nothing like a poem about a lazy, drunken evening to make someone from 1000 years ago feel like a contemporary. (Poem by Li Qingzhao, trans. Wendy Chen)

Nocturnal magpies, white bears, what madness will they come up with next?

Imagine being trapped in a conversation with this fucking idiot:

Make THIS guy Prime Minister (via www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/15/i...)

H.P. Lovecraft: Your limited human mind cannot comprehend Cthulhu Me: (comprehending easily) Squid guy

So what you do is, you just scroll. With your thumb. Yeah, like that. And then your brain lives 8 very stressful lifetimes in the span of 30 minutes. I do it like 10 times a day. I’ve lost the ability to make eye contact with my loved ones.

In an excellent secondhand bookshop

The majestic moustache:

In the words of the Go-Betweens...

Lowering the flags at the Guantanamo Bay McDonald's for the death of a frothing bigot is possibly the most American thing ever.

Well I guess we're seeing today the people who would have sorrowfully tut-tutted after Operation Anthropoid.

I may have the first human body to contain zero (0) muscles, but I do have new books.

Reading a collected poems from which I see all the homophobic early work has been carefully, silently excluded.

Recent movie watching (or, in the case of CLEARCUT, rewatching). It and NEVER LET GO definitely the best of the bunch. VERMINES had great casting but was only middling as a scary movie. 28 YEARS LATER was all over the shop, quality-wise. HYPNOSEN was interesting but not entirely successful.

"He has a right to live Though he's ill- ill- ill-shaped He's on his way to extinction."

Might I suggest, "I will not use AI"?

Staff meeting day:

o no, more

It’s the last line that makes this perfect:

A lovely double dose of "eat shit, Ben Roberts-Smith, you murdering dipshit, burn in hell" today.

Well, this sucks arse: Literary journal Meanjin to close after 85 years of publishing www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/04/m...

I was going to make up a few joke sexual positions ('The Derivative Retread' etc etc) for this, but even doing the quickie google research necessary has made we want to gouge my brain out. Also, real missed opportuntity to come up with 5 more. Let's just all agree this sucks and move on.

The danger of summarising your high-concept novel is that it might accidentally sound very stupid:

Might've gone mad and bought a whole bunch of pulp reprints. Gil Brewer, wildly underrated. Douglas Sanderson's early gay novel. Female-written crime novel filmed as Otto Preminger noir classic! A whole bunch of fatale-type femmes. Hot diggetty!

Found in a used book, if anyone wants to give it a go.

RIP Graham Greene ok.ru/video/252161...

Hey, @neglectedbooks.com, @amayna60.bsky.social and other people of good taste, we have a new Madame Nielsen in English next year from @prototypepubs.bsky.social www.englishpen.org/posts/news/p...

oh, 'legitimate concerns' is it? The Australian Labor Party is such feckless weak piss.

[swipes left]

Old Soviet joke for today: A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves. After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?” “I’m looking for the obituaries.” “The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.” “Not the one I’m looking for.”

I think if Britain colonised your country of origin you should get free BBC iplayer.

seems bad

[klaxon sounds] new books! Includes two literary translator memoirs/musings

Wow! For only US$1750 you could own this Taschen special edition guide to the most worthless, vapid art the world has ever seen! Art that actually makes the world measurably worse! Bargain!

When you're trying to be spooky but you're just awkward and you have a cramp

Compelled to put my thoughts about the increasingly rubbish Alien Earth SOMEWHERE, don't want to crap things up with a whole thread on it, so feel free to ignore while I use this post to get them off my chest. Basically, one game aside, nobody's had an idea worth a damn about this world since 1993.

[rings bell] We got another one!

Two months is how long it takes from meme event to terrible paranormal romance cash-in publication day, if you were wondering.

sees Jane Austen say, "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid," and immediately buys more novels to show just how motherfucking smart he is

must be nice to work for a thinktank; get paid heaps to say the dumbest dogshit imaginable

It must be very odd to do your creative writing MFA with a(n extremely talented!) writer who only put out one book and that was more than 20 years ago, but who keeps getting all the jobs and fellowships and awards. The urge to ask 'WHAT'S GOING ON?!?!' every time you meet them must be overwhelming.

The last person left alive in the world, whistling quietly for comfort as the long night draws in, thunder rumbling in the distance.

nothing is THAT riveting

A new addition ('The Woman in Cabin 10') to the surprisingly extensive Keira Knightley library, for people who only want to read books with Keira Knightley on them.

Love the way the head of QBD Bookshops keeps plugging his awful book in the company's emails, even though everyone hates it. (For those who've blessedly missed the story, it has Alan Turing being heterosexual and having a child who ends up in charge of a time machine.)