Clearly Quite Absurd is a very quiet piece from the Deep Purple album Rapture of the Deep. Its concept is simple – life would be much simpler if we could clear away all the clutter and subterfuge and just read each other’s minds. There’s some lines in there that hit …

There is a lot of doom and gloom being pedalled by most mainstream media outlets about the effects of coronavirus and how long this pandemic may last. A coronavirus cure seems to be months, perhaps years away. The situation is quite serious with the disease seeming to be particularly deadly …

So, this is March madness. Empty supermarket aisles, a toilet paper shortage, politicians slashing regulations and pumping money into the economy like crazy, CEOS resigning en masse, travel basically ceasing, major sport playing to empty stadiums, bars closing (now I’m scared) and a thousand talking heads insisting that the world …

Sometimes potential life partners pass each other by with never a backward glance. Time and circumstances don’t create the necessary spark. Other times, the stars align and everything falls into place. If I’d met Brigid three months earlier we may have simply passed each other by as I was still …

I’m staring up incredulously at an earnest young man telling me and the scattered “crowd” that the young people of Australia are uniting behind Assange and that revolution of the working class is all but assurred. He means it. I don’t know what he’s been taking, but I want some, …

It’s been almost thirty five years to the day since you left us. Eighteen or so months more since a civil word passed between you and I and the time has come at last for me to embrace and own my grief. I can almost hear you laughing at that …

You’d best not miss. It’s a classic line that I’d attributed to Shakespeare but actually comes from the classic TV series The Wire. The line has been running through my head for the past couple of days as the dust settles from the failed attempt to remove Donald Trump from …

Tulsi Gabbard was back in the news today for having sufficient guts to take on the Clinton machine. She is suing Hilary Clinton for $50 million for smearing Tulsi and stating that she was a Russian agent. For some time, Gabbard has asserted herself as perhaps the only democratic party …

The celebrated social commentator, Clive James, once said something to the effect that gazing upon the face of an intelligent beautiful woman was to gaze upon the face of God. It’s a  good line but is ultimately a shallow one. It resonates with me nevertheless because, I think he’s at …

Around the time of the second Iraq War, I started jamming on a Sunday afternoon with a local Ararat musician, Darren Sherwell. It started out as a bit of fun. He was an accomplished player and excellent singer. My fingers were full of rust – but somehow,in those first fumbling …