There are strange things in the air at Casa del Tribune. Jane’s been reading a lot of mid-70s lesbian separatist sci-fi, so she’s spouting all kinds of stuff about psuedo-Amazon space warrior princesses crushing the evil male oppressor monsters. Which is fun when the kids ask for an after-dinner treat. I, on the other hand have just watched about fourteen hours straight of Sons Of Anarchy, a US drama about an outlaw motorcycle crew, that makes The Shield look like the Gilmore Girls. There’s a constant mist of pure testosterone floating around the Mac.

Winter’s coming, bringing with it another wave of swine flu. Those of us who ignored the wailing and hand wringing and didn’t get our flu shots may have to call in sick. No big deal, it’s a few days on the couch with a blanket and some chicken soup. I think I’m almost looking forward to it.

Winter can also bring with it a wave of depression, which in an odd way can be quite similar to flu. It can be quite mild, just needing some chicken soup and a bit of TLC, or it can be serious, debilitating and, in some cases, life threatening.

NOTRUDD does Khe Sanh

I left my heart to the sappers round Khe Sanh
And my soul was sold with my cigarettes to the blackmarket man
I’ve had the Vietnam cold turkey
From the ocean to the Silver City
And it’s only other vets could understand

Having been disengaged from the field of human conflict by my superiors, I felt within certain parameters that a small part of my emotional totality had remained, as it were, subjectively and perhaps figuratively, in the custody of those fine working Australians whose tours had not yet been completed; the engineers, who remained at that wonderful destination in that beautiful country, our neighbour and friend whence so many valuable contributions to Australian society and cuisine have come: Khe San, in the People’s Republic of Vietnam.

We’re glad that there have been calls for a Royal Commission into the murder of Carl Williams, and we’re glad that the response from Premier Brumby has been so dismissive and populist. We’re thrilled to bits that people are saying things like “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas”, and “live by the gun, die by the gun”, and “he was a piece of shit crook, his killer’s on toast, why waste money on a Commission?”

There is a point in everyone’s almanac where they admit defeat on summer’s behalf and embrace winter. The scarves and jackets are retrieved from the cupboard above the wardrobe, and the Havianas and shorts are packed away with longing thoughts of sunny days to come.

Personally, I have been able to put a date to this seasonal calorific transition for many a year: the 25th of April. On every other day I am happy to let dawn and all its glory wash over me from the comfort of a deep sleep, every year on ANZAC day however, I have beaten the sun to the starting point of its daily march and made my way to the dawn service.

No, this is not a short history of all the arses I have known. Firstly, that wouldn’t be short, and secondly, I don’t like having bricks thrown through my window.

This is a short history of the buttock, the bottom, the derriere, the butt, the caboose, the blurter or the stinkhole.

Interesting aside: there are far more euphemisms for genitals than there are for buttocks, and very few of the ones that exist for buttocks are considered particularly offensive, I wonder why that is, because if you think about it, bottoms are, or can be, far more offensive than genitals. Butt (ha ha) I digress, again, on with the article:

Lately, I have been thinking about Virginia Woolf’s assertion that women (well, all people, really) need a space of their own and the income to support themselves, if they are to be able to produce the literary, artistic, academic (etc) work that they have in them. Having shared houses with other people for most of my life, I would have to agree that this sounds ideal; however, most of us have had to make do with what we had.

Dad’s always at me to get the hell away from the Xbox and go outside. Outside sucks. How can I yell “W00t, noob, you are so pwned!!!” at someone outside? There’s no gunships or juggernauts outside, and if I’m outside I’ve just got, like, Dog, and I can’t option him up to full-repeat liquid cooled with optional M-40 grenade launcher, can I? Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to get Sister or Cat in my sights and let loose, cause then Mum would get pissed. Outside sucks.

Okay, we’re going to get a little interactive here. Hands up if you own one of the following; Ford Territory, Subaru Tribeca, BMW X3 – X6, Toyota RAV4 or Kluger, Nissan X-Trail, Hyundai Santa Fe, Kia Sorrento or Tucson, Mitsubishi Outlander, Holden Captiva, Mercedes M-Class, Volkswagen Tiguan, Honda CR-V or any other so-called SUV.

Right, got them up, good, now keep them up if you can tell me why. Seriously, what made you buy one of these over a regular station wagon? For the life of me I can’t figure it out and I deal with pretty much every one of the aforementioned vehicles on a daily basis. Where, you might ask? In the scrub? No. Out on a mountain trail? Again, no. In fact I deal with them on the daily school run. This makes the mystery of these vehicles run ever deeper.

Ok, I know I’m a little late coming to the WTF party on this, but let’s overlook that and just embrace the fact that I’m almost 40 and I still bothered to get out of my cardigans and turn up at all.

I’ve seen various WTF tweets about this kid, but never got interested enough to find out who he was, then, this morning, I was at the gym watching the soft porn music video show and trying not to think about how unfit I am.

The people from the internet have been wailing and hand wringing about how all the recent earthquakes were caused by Mother Earth being all mad and getting her revenge on.

Most of the time I don’t pay too much attention to the wingnuts, but there does seem to have been a preponderance of earthquakes hitting the media lately so I though I’d find out whether there really has been an increase in the last few years.

Born of a Chinese mother and an Australian father, Tegan Jones is a genuine intercultural fusion that is the ideal representation of the ACT (Australasian Chinese Theatre), a theatre and film company I created.

The ACT was born out of a need: to increase the visibility of Chinese Australian performing artists in Melbourne.

I was fascinated to read in The Age, Epicure section recently, a list detailing Australia’s top twenty recipes searched on Google. Not so dissimilar to those clicked by American cooks, the repertoire included such stodge and tradition as Banana Bread, Meat Loaf, Cheese Cake, Pumpkin Soup, Anzac Biscuits and surprisingly, on both lists, Quiche.

The variations of the composition of this wonderful tart when I have googled ‘Quiche’ have been significant.

I don’t usually butt into our regular writers particular area of expertise, but we had a some spare space and I was reminded of this recipe the other day when my children set up a clamour for it on the first cold night of the year.

These old English pudding recipes come from a time before anyone had heard about size 0 or cholesterol problems, so you can pretty much hear your arteries hardening as you eat it, but we’ve all got to die of something, and this pudding is just about worth it.

Friggin hell, I hardly know where to start. Fremantle are four and one, Cousins is most likely going bye-bye, Richmond are looking more and more like Fitzroy in the early nineties (although, thankfully, they don’t have a merger-obsessed AFL following them around with an autopsy kit), and there’s a shit-storm in Rugby League. In a surprising turn of events, a senior Indian administrator has been suspended for suspicious dealings – the surprising bit being that he’s suspended, of course, and not running around shrieking “racism” at the accusers.