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
"Remember, when you leave this Earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received—only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice, and courage."
What’s the Point of Sex, Anyway? “There is yet another kind of male, known among ichthyologists as a ‘sneaky mater.’ This type dispenses altogether with nest-building and partnering and simply darts around squirting.”
Created by Slovak craftsman Vladimir Kostelansky of VKBlades
The sword gets its name from Irish mythology, where Fragarach ("The Answerer" or "The Retaliator") was the legendary weapon of King Nuada and the sea god Manannán mac Lir.
LitHub – “So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was.
We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels, the best short story collections, the best poetry collections, the best memoirs of the decade, and the best essay collections of the decade. But our sixth list was a little harder—we were looking at what we (perhaps foolishly) deemed “general” nonfiction: all the nonfiction excepting memoirs and essays (these being covered in their own lists) published in English between 2010 and 2019…
The following books were finally chosen after much debate (and multiple meetings) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans…”
What would he say to her, if he was going to speak truly? He didn't know. Talking was like throwing a baseball. You couldn't plan it out beforehand. You just had to let go and see what happened. You had to throw out words without knowing whether anyone woud catch them -- you had to throw out words you knew no one would catch. You had to send your words out where they weren't yours anymore. It felt better to talk with a ball in your hand, it felt better to let the ball do the talking. But the world, the nonbaseball world, the world of love and sex and jobs and friends, was made of words.
"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through
to you."
-Mortimer J. Adler
The Book of Jargon NO1 Not a complete list of finance dazzle-speak, but a good start.
Com "The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."
~ P Picasso
Why Handwritten Grocery Lists Outperform Every App
RIFTLY: and What That Says About How Memory Actually Works – “You’re standing in the kitchen, trying to remember whether you need tinned tomatoes. Your phone is in your pocket, loaded with a shopping list app that syncs across devices, sorts by aisle, and checks items off with a satisfying animation.
You ignore it.
You grab a pen and the back of an envelope and start writing: milk, eggs, tomatoes, pasta, bin bags. The list will be illegible by the time you reach the supermarket. It will crumple in your pocket. You will probably lose it between the car park and the trolley bay. And despite all of that, you will remember more of what was on it than if you had typed the same items into your phone…”
“I am alive, and drunk in sunlight.”
-George RR Martin, "A Storm of Swords"
A tree is never just a tree. It's a home for birds, a playground for children, a refuge from the summer heat, and a place where families make memories that last a lifetime. When we protect trees, we're not just protecting nature—we're protecting the moments that make life beautiful
“Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.”
- Amy Winehouse - The Jimi Hendrix of voice who joined the club 27, 15 years ago in 2011
The Fake Influencers Selling Wellness on Your Feed
The New York Times – gift article: “The New York Times found hundreds of A.I.-generated doctors, healers and wellness influencers on social media touting the health benefits of supplements to American consumers. Many of these hyperrealistic looking ads promise medical miracles, and appear to be targeting older women, while making misleading health claims for a profit
You told me once that a soul isn't something a person is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error, study and love. And you did that with more dedication than most, that work of building a soul-not for your own benefit but for the benefit of those that knew you.
Each of us, deep down, believes that the whole world issues from his own precious body, like images projected from a tiny slide onto an earth-sized screen. And then, deeper down, each of us knows he’s wrong.
Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie may do many things well but it can’t match the original’s horticultural prowess
I have spent weeks building a fence in my mind’s eye. It is a Hollywood-proof fence to protect three of the world’s most important gardens alive in Homer’s Odyssey.
I have not yet seen Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, but others have reassured me. There is not a garden to be seen in it. The characters who immortalise its top two gardens are not even cast in the film. Thank you, Nolan, for not trampling on hallowed ground: you simply left it out.
The first of the three gardens is in the Odyssey’s fifth book when the god Hermes flies down to visit Calypso and tell her to let Odysseus go home.
Film-goers will marvel at lovely Charlize Theron who plays the divine nymph Calypso, but unlike Hermes they will not marvel at the botanical beauty around her cave. The film sets her in a blank sort of desert. In the poem Calypso had no need to rewild her garden. It was a natural wilderness, wet and lush.
Calypso’s island, Ogygia, is in Neverland and never existed in a real sea. Homer’s poetic eye is exact nonetheless. He makes Hermes marvel at its tree-scape of alders and poplars, surely the ones we call black, as black alders and black poplars grow in wet ground in Greece. Sweet-scented cypress is growing with them too, presumably evergreen Cupressus sempervirens, which will indeed grow in damp ground as well as on dry slopes. A heavily fruiting vine frames the entrance to Calypso’s cave, the one in which she was bedding reluctant Odysseus. It is approached through “soft meadows of violets and selinon”.
This selinon is sometimes mistaken for parsley, but it is wild celery, Apium graveolens, which grows up to 2ft high and also thrives on damp. It is often a biennial, lasting for only two years, but among the sweet violets it would easily have sown and perpetuated itself, even without a goddess’s help. Calypso never had to worry about watering it. Four springs of clear water, facing in opposite directions, watered the ground for her. Her flowery landscape has a special resonance for gardeners who are burning in this summer’s drought.
In other contexts prasiai can refer to flower beds, but in Alcinous’s productive garden they are probably beds of vegetables. I cannot agree with those who have argued that they are beds of leeks, as if Alcinous anticipated that leek-loving Welshman, Shakespeare’s Owen Glendower.
This marvellous garden is described in the present tense. One great scholar has argued that this tense shows that the garden is a later insertion which Homer moved from another context, perhaps a speech. I do not believe that notion, either: the garden is described in the present as if it is still alive in Neverland, though it is not on general release on Imax screens this month.
One of the poem’s last great scenes of recognition takes place in the garden of Odysseus’s father, Laertes, and is of the son identifying the trees his father named for him as a child. ‘Odysseus Observing Laertes’ by Jan Styka (1858–1925)
The third garden caps it and rounds off major themes in the poem, though Nolan left it out. It, too, is an orchard, the one in which Odysseus finds his elderly father Laertes after slaying the suitors of his wife Penelope. Without his son, old Laertes had withdrawn in grief and distress to his orchard far beyond the palace on Ithaca. It is there that his long-lost son Odysseus watches him at work.
Like Laertes I have avenues of pears in my garden, ornamental Chanticleer pears, however, not varieties grown for fruit. Like Laertes I garden there in scruffy clothes, though without his humble cap of goatskin on my head. Laertes wears leather guards on his legs, to the puzzlement of archaeologists who consider that they are versions of the metal greaves worn as armour but not yet attested when Homer composed. I, too, wear leather knee patches, without needing armour as a model: they are the knee pads sold for gardeners who kneel or work among thorns.
A Roman reader assumed that Laertes was spreading manure round his pears. Actually he was scratting on the soil, just as I do while wondering if my excellent son, too, will return, not from the fall of Troy but from travels round investments in young tech companies throughout the world.
Odysseus “tries out” his father by telling him one last tale of lies about his own identity, but then he reveals who he is. His father wants proof, so Odysseus recalls to him how once he took him out as a boy into the orchard and named the fruit trees which would one day be his. Pride of Aphrodite? Penelope’s Wonder? I think Laertes just pointed to the trees involved, but Odysseus remembered how many. It is the poem’s last great scene of recognition, one based on trees in an orchard.
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Robin Lane Fox
Would the corgis love the new Queen Elizabeth II Garden in Regent’s Park?
The scene has been trailed in advance and is surely Homer’s own. I will not spoil its poignancy, which is heightened by Laertes not yet recognising Odysseus, but remembering him from so long ago and wondering “if he was ever really so”. In the Iliad, the earlier poem, Homer had already invented moving pictures, described for us as scenes which the god Hephaestus was crafting on a metal shield for Achilles and which Homer’s poetry brings to life as we look on. His eye so often seems filmic before its time, using close-ups, long shots and other tricks of style. He would be fascinated by watching a film, but he would never call it “the” Odyssey, his own masterpiece, one so much richer and subtler.
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3,708 notable landmarks · 131 countries · one map – “Everything on this map comes from open data: facts, coordinates and founding dates from Wikidata, photographs from Wikimedia Commons, stories from Wikipedia, and the night basemap from OpenFreeMapand Natural Earth. The atlas is curated, not exhaustive: the 3,708 most significant landmarks worldwide, ordered by a fame ranking that blends Wikipedia coverage with real readership.
The Universe of Short Film is an amazing site for watching, sharing, and connecting around short films. This is really cool…not sure why the site isn’t better known.
Bipartisan Bi-Cameral ‘Epstein Transparency Act II’ Bill Introduced
Stop chasing life goals and start trying tiny experiments to learn from instead. “Chasing goals doesn’t work for life’s most important questions — career, relationships, health. It’s like locking in your answer before you have understood the question.”
"Remember, when you leave this Earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received—only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice, and courage."
Even careful internet users cannot avoid data collection since brokers gather information from everyday activities like store loyalty programs and voter registration.
Automated data-removal services like Incogni can significantly reduce your digital footprint by sending opt-out requests to hundreds of brokers simultaneously.
This fast-paced and delightfully inventive production brings all of Austen's beloved novels to life in one unforgettable performance. Six novels, countless romances, scandles and witticisms – all in under 90 minutes…and afterward enjoy vino changed from water with Gre and Sim
Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park.Major NovelsSense and Sensibility (1811):
Two sisters navigate contrasting views on love and reason after financial changes force a move.Pride and Prejudice (1813):
Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy overcome class snobbery and personal misjudgments.Mansfield Park (1814):
Quiet Fanny Price stands firm against moral corruption while living with wealthy relatives.Emma (1815):
Well-meaning, rich Emma Woodhouse mismanages the romantic affairs of her neighbors.Northanger Abbey (1817): Naive Catherine Morland learns to separate Gothic fiction fantasies from real-life society.Persuasion (1817):
Anne Elliot gets a second chance at true love years after turning down a proposal.Minor and Unfinished WorksLady Susan:
Short epistolary novel about a manipulative widow.
The Watsons & Sanditon:
Unfinished narrative fragments.
Juvenilia:
Early comedic stories written during her youth.
It was a fast forward and rewind enacted synopsis of Jane Austen’s plays from go to woe on the opening night. The audience was in for a charming, funny and rapid view of Austen’s women and men outlining the stupidity of Regency society through to pointing out that for most women of that era, it was ‘marriage or poverty’. Definitely read at least a couple of her novels for her ironic view and wonderful language on family and economic values. Best of all, the play is about real sisterhood and friendship through trials, tribulations and at times love and hope.
The set was a cartoon version of a Regency living room with the obligatory chaise lounge. Heidi Jilwan and Georgia Britt set the scene, breaking the ‘fourth wall’ and addressing the audience. Wearing Empire style dresses, bonnets and hairstyles they set to debating which was the best novel. As the audience settled, the immediate problem of a missing leading man was solved by a willing replacement actor ‘from the audience’.
Enter the actor, Peter Hoekstra-Bass, who quickly highlighted that he didn’t have a clue about Austen’s work but ‘needed the gig’. This was wonderful for any audience members who equally hadn’t had any information or who had only watched the television series, Bridgeton.
The set was a cartoon version of a Regency living room with the obligatory chaise lounge. Heidi Jilwan and Georgia Britt set the scene, breaking the ‘fourth wall’ and addressing the audience. Wearing Empire style dresses, bonnets and hairstyles they set to debating which was the best novel. As the audience settled, the immediate problem of a missing leading man was solved by a willing replacement actor ‘from the audience’.
Enter the actor, Peter Hoekstra-Bass, who quickly highlighted that he didn’t have a clue about Austen’s work but ‘needed the gig’. This was wonderful for any audience members who equally hadn’t had any information or who had only watched the television series, Bridgeton.
The ensemble had a great natural chemistry as if they were all best friends. Each actor portrayed different characters in the book with asides to what their modern personality really thought.
Bonnets and top hats were used to depict new characters and each actor changed style and attitude depending on the book. Peter was at times, convincingly dashing as Darcy or painful as a parson clumsily professing love. Both Heidi and Georgia were witty, ditzy and lovestruck as each female character came alive with explanations to Peter why women reacted to the wrong man at the wrong time and how long self-reflection takes before they realise with whom they should be in love. Peter was both wonderfully bewildered and superb when putting on a hat altered his persona and posture.
Heidi and Georgia were convincing as best friends who were trying to understand Austen’s view of women, marriage and what choices they could or couldn’t make.
Through Ali Bendall’s tight direction, the messages and wit of Austen came out quickly as each farce, family and affair were rapidly thrown out to the audience to make of it what they would and adding modernisms and comparisons to modern love and female issues. This could be frustrating at times with clunky text and perhaps breaking the fourth wall too often. The audience laughed and clapped as the cast pushed us along to make sense of it all and it really didn’t matter anyway as Austen herself, through the character of Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, said, “We are all fools in love”
This wonderful repertoire company has a winner on their hands again when three actors take on all of Austen’s beloved heroines, friends and love interests in her incisive social satire, all in 80 minutes. But when they lose a cast member, the two remaining ‘Janeites’ must teach an understudy about her work.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an audience in possession of high spirits must be in want of a ticket to this big-hearted comedy that certainly knocked-the-socks-off Austen fans and newcomers such as your reviewer. If you were not a ‘Janeite’ at the beginning of the performance, you were certainly inscribed on your way to becoming one by the end. The play is a delight, wholly charming, original and for this newbie , i couldn’t stop smiling. Its an affectionate tribute to the author whose characters live indelibly in the minds of the readers all over the globe. The show’s real charm lies in its delicate negotiation between homage and parody.
The originators of this creative theatrical fun are a quartet of very clever ladies- Jessica Bedford, Katherine-MacMillan, Charlotte Northeast and Meghan Winch concocted this work over meetings with cheese and wine.
In this fast-paced romp, three actors take on all of the roles as the Protagonists and the Deuteragonists. Georgia Britt playing Charlotte and Georgia, Heidi Jilwan plays Jessica and Heidi and Peter Hoekstra- Bassplays Trevor, Harry and Peter. They raise the roof with their timing and devastatingly funny delivery, tackling the entire canon of Jane Austen’s works. These funny, nimble actors mine the depth of each character they portray with skill that had the audience laughing throughout. The audience at times act as active participants in the show, a truly labor of love as the show tells the audience just enough info about Austen to avoid overload. Our trio skewer the exact depth to cleverly represent the author’s work. Whether you’re a super fan or just dipping your feet into the pool of of her classic novels, like myself…or maybe you secretly wish to root for Mansfield Park, its impossible not to have fun with this performance. I found myself, as did the audience laughing out loud and clapping with delight, and leaning in, despite my lack of prior knowledge.
This production is a most proper and oh so wickedly delicious opus of comedic manners for lovers of all things Jane Austen and the “Regency Era Splendour.” In short this production says what we’ve all thought at one time or another, about the works, about the truths they highlighted, and about how little has changed in the affairs of men and women, despite how much has changed in our world since these stories were written. Its a cocktail of iterary truths with a repertoire of new-age references that connect the dots of Jane Austen stories and the truths of the everywoman. Director Ali Bendall along with Production Stage Manager Natalie Hughes bring us the heart of Jane through the minds of her characters. The Genesian Theatre Company have offered a satirical spark that make us enjoy the vintage and richness of these books allowing through the fabulous work of our actors the themes at the centre of the stories to rise to the surface.
Why do we love the heroines? It surly isn’t just for the antiquated garb and dense verbiage, but because we enjoy these stories that set the stage for the conversations and the clever juggling between the small cast. Jane’s fandom is embodied in the performance of Heidi (Heidi Jilwan) who is giddy and gossipy, Trevor/ Harry/ Peter’s role (Peter Hoekstra-Bass) is riddled with comedic brilliance, bumbling grace appropriate for the newbie he is. Georgia (Georgia Britt) invokes by body language extra layers to the story
The production team; costumes by Susan Carveth, sound by Ali Bendalland Cian Byrne and lighting by Cian Byrne collectively and cleverly don’t allow the satire to cross into the irreverent and make a mockery out of the things it claims to revere. They manage to put the microscope over Jane Austen’s work bringing out the fondness and idiosyncrasies of the characters stirring the underbelly with upbeat remarks, such as, about female anatomy and clothing that gave women of the time “great tits”. In short, this winning production is a fun spoof and highly recommended .
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JANE AUSTEN ABRIDGED is playing the Genesian Theatre, St Joseph’s Church Hall, 2b Gordon Street, Rozelle until Saturday 22nd August 2026.
The Complete Works of Jane Austen (Abridged)
Written By:
Jessica Bedford, Kathryn MacMillan, Charlotte Northeast & Megan Winch
Directed By:
Ali Bendall
Playing From:
17 July – 22 August 2026 AD
Synopsis
Three actors. Six novels. Countless romances, scandals, and witticisms — all in under 90 minutes! When a cast member drops out, two Janeites must train up an unsuspecting understudy, plunging audiences into a whirlwind of Austen’s greatest hits. Fast-paced, big-hearted, and endlessly funny, this irreverent love-letter will delight die-hard Austen fans and newcomers alike.
Tickets on sale Early 2026!
Dates and Times
Preview: Friday, 17 July 2026 Opening Night: Saturday, 18 July 2026 Closing Night: Saturday, 22 August 2026
Fridays and Saturdays at 7.30 pm Sundays at 4.30 pm
