Favour­ite spam name ever: Syl­lab­ic­a­tion I. Prospectuses

So, Tas­mania. Can I just say how good it is to be paid to travel, and have the most amaz­ing food paid for in the most incred­ible places? It was good to get the Dismal Swamp thing out of the way on Day One so it wasn’t hanging over my head. That night, I stayed at…

Tas­mania was fab­ulous. More on that shortly. In the mean­time, here’s a poem I fiddled with while I was there after I found two unfin­ished poems from 1998’s trip to Hol­land in an old note­book. The Café Tabac of the title is in Den Haag and is this fab­ulous café…

After a lot of fuss­ing around, I’m off to Tas­mania today for work: I’ll be writ­ing an art­icle about Tas­mania for the travel magazine I’m edit­ing. I haven’t talked much about this magazine yet, because it’s brand new and does­n’t launch until early May. I’m having a…

So, Hunter S Thompson is dead. Sui­cide. Man­aged to sur­vive the drugs and the drink and the mad­ness and everything else and then shoots him­self. Good­bye, crazy dia­mond. You changed journ­al­ism. Not single­han­dedly, but you were one of them. You called it as you saw it,…

I am by no means well, at least not for any defin­i­tion of ‘well’ that excludes excru­ci­at­ing agony in the gums, but I am still fever-free and ton­sils are almost a normal colour. Back to the doctor tomor­row night for a check on these gums, but oth­er­wise I’m recommencing…

Arthur Miller has died, aged 89. Thanks for everything, Arthur. When I read your plays as a teen­ager, it was an amaz­ing eye-opener: the idea that polit­ics and the stage could com­bine in such a way. Every­one raves about your Death of a Sales­man or The Cru­cible but the…

azahru posted some ques­tions in her journal and des­pite my ill­ness I decided to hazard answer­ing them: I’m sick as a dog, so these answers brought to you by Fever 38.6 degrees but non­ethe­less… Ques­tion: Why the fuck should anyone care about art? Because without art…