“Lamb With Us, or Leave Us”: MLA’s Latest Australia Day Ad Message
In other words, the ad demonstrates an extremely helicopterist method of bringing back into the fold the country’s lost sheep, just so they can eat some baby sheep under a…
Vale, David Bowie: You Changed Us
David Bowie’s role in music was one of the weightiest to ever come careening into western culture as we know it today. His death, concluding a concealed 18-month battle with…
Just Asking
Question: How much is our national identity worth? Or rather, how susceptible are ‘Australian values’ to serious examination? Sorry if these questions are vague or flimsy, but then again, Australians…
Pelican Crashes PJ’s Christmas Party
Beyond the thin and flag-fluttering boundary line enclosing the UWA University Club, where staff and cashed-up members gathered about champagne islands and mini sliders for Paul Johnson’s Christmas Party, a…
Pursue New Careers: UWA Slashes 300 Jobs
In a statement released yesterday, UWA Vice Chancellor Paul Johnson announced that Perth’s prestigious “Group of Eight” University will be laying off 300 of its staff as part of its…
Pelican’s Albums of the Year
It’s not quite the end of the year, but it is the end of the Pelican year, so I thought I would get Peli’s music writer community to give us…
Thomas Pynchon’s Paper Bag Masked Party: A Oral History
JONATHAN FRANZEN: I was sitting in Kirschbaum’s Bakery one morning, halfway through a strudel, when this girl walked up to me, all Helvetica-light glasses, braided hair and jelly sandals, and…
Short story: An Incident at the Glove Factory
Nosing at the Selangor canals in the industrial zone of Setia City, there is a large, grey, squat building of a dour aesthetic which one passer-by of no consequence to…
Little Pretty Pocket Books and Murderous Clones: The Dark and Puritanical Heritage of Kids’ Lit
It would be grossly naive to think children’s stories are undeserving of serious consideration. Prevailingly though, they’re seen as the ‘paddling pool’ of literature; a place we glibly float before…