Jean Baudrillard (1929—2007)

Il aimait les omelettes aux cèpes.

…although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man’s life, detail is always welcome.

—Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark

In the case of my great-uncle, George Norman (“Norm”) Olds, that detail is sparse indeed and his public existence is now reduced to a single reference on Google, a mention that barely replicates what that moss-bound tombstone usually contains. Born in 1895 in Glebe, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, Australia, he saw active service in the Great War in Turkey, Egypt and France and was killed in action in the Somme on 27 March 1917. He is apparently buried in Bapaume Communal Cemetery in Pas-de-Calais. (In March 1917 the allies occupied Bapaume.) (more…)

THE THIRTEEN MEN AND BOYS WHO HAVE FRONTED UP TO QUEENSLAND HOSPITALS IN THE PAST FOUR YEARS WITH TROUSER-ZIPPER INJURIES TO THE PENIS ARE PROBABLY OUTNUMBERED MANY TIMES BY THOSE WHO BEAR THEIR AFFLICTION PRIVATELY

Victor Noir was the rather punkish nom de plume of Yvan Salmon (1848-1870), a journalist at the republican newspaper La Marseillaise. On 10 January 1870 he called upon Pierre Bonaparte, a hothead cousin of Napoléon III, with the intention of organizing a duel for his editor-in-chief. The visit turned ugly, a pistol shot was fired, and Victor Noir, aged just 22, was fatally wounded. In order to quell popular outrage, the authorities decreed that his funeral should take place in Neuilly, then as now an enclave of the monied establishment. In spite of this, 100,000 people launched an insurrection that ultimately spelled the end of the Napoleonic régime. In 1891 the mortal remains of Victor Noir, by then a republican icon, were transferred to Père-Lachaise cemetery. (more…)

Naked and dripping, I tipped the gym scales the other day at an undesirable but far from tragic 86 kilograms. Then, without my breathing or moving, the LCD gave me the benefit of the doubt at 85.9. Then flickered back up to 86, then back down again to 85.9.

I concluded there was something inherently unstable about either my body weight or the electronic scales. Then I remembered the Zen parable in which the novice asks the master whether it is the fluttering flag that is moving or the wind, to which the master replies, It’s your mind that’s moving, dude. (more…)