Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Czech city halls, public offices, and schools will commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the Tibetan rebellion against Chinese occupation by raising Tibetan flags today. Czech & SlovakFilm Festival in Sydney featuring bohemian interpretation of Paul Keating’s Scumbag ‘A box office hit, Scumbag is a political thriller inspired by real life events. The story takes place in a small picturesque European country where anything goes. Drugged girls become the playthings of influential men from the underworld and the top echelons of politics. Fortunes can be made from government contracts and blackmail is just another type of business. Power is the best way to protect your people from the police and the courts. If you have power, you can do anything. In this country some will do well. Very well. And sticking your nose into other people’s business can be fatal. Life is sometimes cheap and death is just another commodity.’
OPENINGFEATURE*
If you were a superhero, what superpower would you choose?In this warm comedy, the main character Josef, a self-centred writer, acquires anunexpectedability– extraordinary hearingasaresult ofanewpairof rabbit ears. Needless to say, things won't be the way there were...
* complimentarycocktail & nibbles +music
CLOSINGFEATURE*
Three women, three faces of love, three stories of joy, pain, happiness and sorrow. This charming & touching film shows that while life is not always just a nice dream and we have to often times fight for it, it's also full oflovethatcomesinasmanyformats as there are people in the world.
Over at the Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze (ČSFD), the Czech & Slovak version of the hugely-popular IMDb, hundreds of thousands of users have rated hundreds of thousands (millions?) of movies from the past 100+ years.Czech out Czech Diabol Devil
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Two Novellas by Kashimada Maki, Touring the Land of the Dead.
The title piece was awarded the 2012 Akutagawa Prize, as this prize continues to be one of the leading feeders of new Japanese fiction for US/UK publishers. See also the other Akutagawa winners under review at the complete review.
Pictures stick in your head don’t they. The tongue kiss Soviet President Brezhnev gave East German President Eric Honecker in 1979 is one. That photo of Scotty (“Holidays”) Morrison and now deposed clown-king Donald Trump getting close on the White House lawn is another. Smiling, whispering, foreheads touching, a speck of dribble on the corner of Trumps mouth.
Then there is that photo of Joey Hockey (“Stumbles”) and Matthias (“Waffles”) Both sucking down hard on fat Cuban Arturo Fuente Opus cigar($30,00 box) while preparing the 2014 Federal Budget, that among other things, led to cuts in Aged Care that produced the crisis we have today. This budget goes down in ignominy
The share market
In the last few months, there has been a surge in share prices. They reached a record high in February 2020 (ASX All Ords 7230 on February 16), before falling sharply as investors and speculators realised that a pandemic had been spreading around the world and, as is their habit, they panicked. But since November last year, as companies started reporting their profits, shares have once again approached that record high (ASX All Ords 7109 on March 16), even though the economy is still far off recovery.
David Chau of the ABC , reporting on the views of financial experts, writes that the record-breaking market frenzy will come to an ‘abrupt halt’. There are many factors fuelling share market rises here and in other countries – FOMO (fear of missing out) as cashed-up naïve investors buy on momentum, pitifully low interest rates in secure cash accounts, and generally a global excess of liquidity driven by low interest rates. As the economist Herbert Stein said of stock market booms, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”.
What will stop in Australia is “JobKeeper”. Dominic Powell, writing in The Age, points out that a fifth of JobKeeper payments made to big listed companies in the second half of 2020 went to firms whose profits rose during the pandemic “Hit by a rainbow”: Fears millions wasted on JobKeeper payments to profitable companies. Powell’s article lists a number of firms that have repaid excess JobKeeper funds, and some that have refused to do so, such as Harvey Norman.
Those who invest in the stock market, or who trust the task to others such as superannuation funds, should remember that capitalism is dynamic: the social media giants whose profits have driven up US share prices are starting to look like yesterday’s firms, writes Tom O’Reilly: The end of Silicon Valley as we know It?. He warns that “the inventions we most urgently need will take us in a very different direction than the consumer internet and social media revolution that is coming to an unsightly end”. Covid-19 has spawned an explosion of biomedical invention, which is taking place in a different milieu, and dealing with climate change will involve investments that are local and intensive in physical capital. Palo Alto may start to look like any other bayside suburb once again.
Look over there, mate. Should we really ignore a rape allegation against the first law officer of the nation because Labor also has skeletons in its closet?...
The title piece was awarded the 2012 Akutagawa Prize, as this prize continues to be one of the leading feeders of new Japanese fiction for US/UK publishers. See also the other Akutagawa winners under review at the complete review. 
