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NEWS 4 Sept 03
Work has started on the cover of my novel, which I'm excited
about. It makes me feel like a 'real' author. The
publisher's graphic designer, Adrienne, has already got two designs
drafted, not that I'm allowed to see them yet. One involves
biohazard signs (uh oh sci-fi alert); the other sounds very cool, and has
Michael and Rebecca standing together on one side of a fence, on the other
side of which stretches 'the lone and level sands' (Shelley). We
agree that Rebecca looks a lot like Winona Ryder. And I believe
Michael looks a lot unlike Joshua Jackson, because I think that guy really really sucks.
I'm considering a title change: A State of Fur: the adolescence of Michael David
Sullivan. Have your say; make your comments in the guestbook.
Also, my idea for a cover: a fungused rustic
cross on a barren landscape with stuff like an old Spiderman comic, a non
brand specific cola can, a tortoise shell and musty yellow
paperbacks.
I'm up to 48 000 words on my Agape novel. I'm going to finish it by
the end of October! Watch out world. I am a writer and a
slave for Christ Jesus and all else is petty
detail.
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NEWS 5/4/03
My publishers estimate that my
novel will be published in May 2004.
NEWS 31/3/03
COPPED, ROBBED, AND RIMBAUDED.
This is the
poem about a police ambush I suffered during the week. Also,
whoever has stolen my car, I'd like it back.
Here is an
Easter article I recently wrote.
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NEWS 23/3/03
The media and government may soon be triumphantly declaring that 'the
people' now support the war and hence
Howard was right all along. I hope that
we will maintain the rage. I hope people see this for the deception
it is, because nothing shapes public opinion like the right wing agenda of commerical media.
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NEWS 9/4/03
We spent three months protesting the war and now it's almost
over after three weeks. It feels to the world like a troubesome
tooth that's been purged; there's a horrid sense of release even for us
peaceniks and I wonder how war can be stopped in the middle of it - it's
like trying to stop an evil sex act halfway through - a little impossible;
probably quite futile. Perhaps. Actually, the comparison's apt - these boys
with guns poking holes in their pants who won't rest until penetration is complete
and they leave their mark deep inside Iraq.
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NEWS Monday 17/3/03
EXTRACTS FROM MY TRAVEL DIARY
Thursday 6/3
I'm
somewhere east of Madura and about the only one
with a neighbour. He's snoring and
drug fucked. I found my batteries
under my seat. The soundtrack is Joy
Division.
(10:38am)
okay, it's happening, this is what it has all come down to - New Order are slowing, distorting and I'm
at the Eucla roadhouse. How far is
it to the border? It's 1438 to Perth, 1268 to Adelaide. Will there be a
sign? There has to be. And now the driver's gone into Eucla
police station to check up on us.
(7:40pm)
When I crossed the border I was trying to
hear the bus driver's instructions.
Then I walked over to the monument and thought about crossing the
border. I was the only one to bother.
Monday 10/3
When we got
to Adelaide at 6AM she said in her
shy confident husky voice, 'Are you backpacking?' and we caught the bus
together in the dark to Adelaide Backpacker's Inn. I didn't sleep. I was disorientated. The morning was starting. I felt I'd been there a night
already. What I did was a cold
shower, breakfast, and walked out into the city. I was inside my 'Holden Caulfield in the
25th Century' story. The city was
orderly. Many statues - oh, well,
more churches actually, great ancient churches, unpeopled. An elegant city, just like its name. Couple of malls. I came back and slept. It was still so early, such a wrong time.
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THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER:
NEWS 28/2/03
'The last
day of summer never felt so cold...' - The
Cure
I've read John Pilger's A Secret Country
in the last days. It is an account of Australia at odds with everything we are told. I'm angrier than
ever now at the injustices and evils that have
occurred and are occurring now in my own country. Until the last
twelve months, I wanted to think of myself as a de-facto European, above
the provincial goings on of my backwater home. Now I realise how
ignorant I was. Important, bad stuff has gone on here and if I can be
called patriotic in any sense, it is in the sense that I care about these
things.
Conservatives
decry the 'black armband' view of our history, but the fact is that the
treatment of Aborigines by invading white colonists is even worse than is
generally accepted.
Pilger makes a strong
case that the CIA were indirectly involved in the
Whitlam dismissal. America's
government did not like someone so 'left' being in public office and feared
he was going to close down the secret US military base at Pine Gap,
Northern Territory. I fear what
evils are being perpetuated at that site.
The fact is
that our subservience to the United States has helped the new American imperialism to flourish in the South
East Asian region. The current John
Howard led blind bondage to George W Bush is but the latest part of a long
and repetitive story.
Pilger and friends are
dismissed as 'left wing loonies' or 'troublemakers' by the establishment,
but the fact is that he raises a lot of questions that the establishment is
afraid to answer. I can only hope
that more people will begin to listen to dissident voices like his before
we plunge further into war and injustice.
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NEWS 21/2/03 -
On Tuesday I came closer than I will again to being a
rock star; I was a feature 'act' at the Word Up Festival, sharing the
billing with Leon Ewing the lead singer of defunct hip hop rock outfit Beaverloop. I read extracts from my two novels
and two poems - 'Schedules' and 'The Truth About Auden'. It was a big moment for me.
Last night, the state Anabaptist network had a small
meeting which marked the start of a prophetic revival about to rock Perth... watch out,
powers and principalities!
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NEWS 14/2/03
I'm reading W. Somerset Maugham's Of
Human Bondage which I compare favourably to two novels I regard highly -
Sons and Lovers meets Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. How many sensitive
precocious writers start out considering becoming priests? Well, me
and Jim [Joyce] Bill [Maugham] and Dave [Lawrence] at the
least.
My novel is progressing, as part of my new found discipline of writing for
a whole hour every day (such unbelievable commitment). At the moment
I'm rewriting some S11 urban myths that sprang up and bolstering the role
of Noah Jones, the working class revolutionary in love with Phoebe.
Here's a recent poem written in a time of dissipation - 'I Shrank My World'.
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