The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Jonathan Shaw:

ds @ 11: m, Wls s n Brtn

Not that I want to load anyone up with even more time-wasters but
last year's election in Australia produced quite a bit of YouTube
activity as well. The successful challenger, Kevin Rudd, featured in,
among other things, a Mao-propaganda-style anthem. My favourite piece,
and the only I can find a link for, was this post-election farewell to John w Howard, 'Will I ever see your face again? No way! Get lost! F*ck off!'

I was born in 1947, and would have said my earliest was the Suez Crisis in 1956, but when I looked up 1953 on Wikipedia I found a number of things I do actually remember: Christine Jorgensen and the first successful gender reassignment surgery; Hilary and Tensing Norgay climbing Everest (though I don't remember Tensing Norgay being mentioned so much). Trawling back to 1952, I find the coronation of Elizabeth II, of which I have very clear memories -- at least of the special coronation mugs and paper cut-out coronation coaches on display in shop windows. But nothing else from that year.

Number 96 was a groundbreaking soap in Australia in the 1970s -- naked bottoms seemed to be the main thrilling innovation.

A tiny note: Mr Rimmer actually signed his letter as Charlie, so there's nothing odd about Chris etc calling him that.

And Queenie at #182 is a nice example, I think, of a letter from a real person who likes the person whose actions are under criticism -- she says he's 'lovely', and then engages with the issue.

Mary Dell @ #241: Other people here know much more about this than I do, but I can confirm Lulu as a good way to go. An octogenarian friend of mine recently published a small run of her autobiography through Lulu. More accurately, one of her sons took her manuscript and, thanks to Lulu, gave her a birthday present of a small run of a nicely designed and produced paperback which she in turn has given to her grandchildren and sold for a modest sum to selected friends. I was one of the friends. I wouldn't have got to read her story otherwise, and I'm very glad I did.

To throw further light, for the non-Australians who seem to frequent Making Light, on the historical bitterness of this development, I quote a reminiscence from Morgan Smith, Gleebooks events coordinator:

In the olden days I worked in the A&R Imperial Arcade shop in the now defunct Customer Service Department. There were two of us working flat out to process special orders from schools, businesses and individuals - as well as a full-time typist who typed up orders and sent them snail mail. Patrick White would shuffle up to the window to order and collect his books. There was a fantastic art department (where gleebooks’s Ingrid also once worked) and a foreign language section staffed by two European women who had about ten languages between them. Older Sydney-siders would have very fond memories of the old premises and now A&R, which was once the flagship of bookselling in Australia, is run by the worst kind of bean counters. Oh dear…

Brilliant post, Teresa. One small correction: Tower did not publish Carpentaria, which was published by an even smaller company, Giramondo; Tower distributes it. Incidentally, I would love to hear your and/or Patrick's take on that book. It's a book that makes an editor-reader's fingers twitch, long after accepting that its eccentric syntax, frequent tautology, occasional misspelling are integral to the narrative voice. (It is fantasy of sorts.)

With more relevance to the main subject: A&R was once an honourable name in Australian publishing and bookselling. Harper Collins Australia still have an A & R imprint, but personally I haven't darkened the doorway of an A&R bookshop for decades. Bibliophiles intending to visit Australia would be better off dropping in on Readings (Melbourne) or Gleebooks (Sydney) and the equivalents that surely exist in other cities.

[meta] I have nothing to contribute except my slack-jawed admiration for the list that is emerging. So much of this stuff passes for debate in Australian parliamentary politics, and I assume elsewhere.

the true internationalism.

And has anyone mentioned inoculate?

I'm glad someone mentioned minuscule. Another one that I've seen in print more than once, in large bold type, is "forward" as a misspelling of "foreword". And I choose to seize this opportunity to tell my light-bulb joke:

Q: How many copy editors does it take to screw in a light globe?
A: I think you'll find that in Australian usage we'd say "light bulb", and mostly we still use boyonet fittings, but since this is intended for publication on a US-based Internet site, the US usage should be allowed to stand. On the other hand, diversity of usage on the US sites can function as a reminder of teh trues internationalism of the Internet (etc)

DaveLuckett at #693: Filii lupae should do it.

#660 Carrie S.: "Je parle francais comme une vache espagnole."

The phrase book had me laughing too, but that particular translation just knocked me for six: my French teacher taught it to us in rural New South Wales in the 1960s and I've always thought it was his idiosyncratic invention. when I've tried it out with French speakers, carefully pronuncing "vache" as "bache", they've generally looked at me with incomprehension (perhaps because it's accurate). I'm thrilled to discover that Spanish cows are as idiomatic as Italian footballers and Yankee drunks.

I apologise for my ignorant aggrieved post back at #11. Thank you Kathryn from Sunnyvale at #13. i'm probablyt too close to the Equator anyhow, and it was seriously overcast.

I may be far enough from the Equator, but sadly it's in the other direction.

You might have to preface that with "All right, I'll say it" to make it qualify as Pratchett.

A Pratchett: "It's a million to one chance but it just might work."

*(Shush. I'm being vernacular.)
i intend to use that line often.

On the subject of intrusions on public transport: at a big multi-union rally against the Australian government's (then) proposed changes to the industrial relations laws, we were told of a young man who stood up on his morning train to give a five minute lecture on the implications of the legislation. Apparently his carriage-load of fellow commuters applauded and an animated conversation followed. Perhaps that was a special case: the Americanisation of Australian IR is a cause of huge concern here, and there are some routes where the same core group of commuters share a carriage every day for years. Perhaps we were given a false version of how the event actually went down. Or perhaps the exigencies of class war override the need for important staring-out-of-windows time in a way that the need for poetry doesn't?

Here's my pass at the Latin:
Shall I believe [that] these things [come] from an honourable god? from a just god? from a god who is known? Crucified on the cross! As your slave on earth I have been your representative; I have performed my duties. Crucified on the cross. Go onto the cross!

Comment statistics for Jonathan Shaw on the Making Light blog

Total: 189 comments. View all these comments on a single page.