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Keywords: Barry Gittins

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Election year food, sex and meaning

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 08 February 2013

    David Marr's withering piece on Tony Abbot completes the political trinity. These writers manage the impossible: they have me feeling sorry for politicians. Well, almost. I'm not sure if such magnanimity is allowed in an election year. But what a pleasure to discover those grey Canberran corridors harbouring such a chiaroscuro of emotion.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Empathy and irony in post-Howard Australia

    • Barry Gittins
    • 11 December 2012
    1 Comment

    Becalmed, bereft, besieged by race memory and hip pocket absorption, a nation of travellers and seafarers swallow leaders' sleight-of-hand, as they conjure pirates from refugees, demons from daughters, sons and lovers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Flying sofas in the Great Australian Dystopia

    • Barry Gittins
    • 05 December 2012
    4 Comments

    Hindrance Day was conceived as a means of commemorating the millions of acts of self-indulgence that marked the First Gillard-Abbott war on unAustralians. The concept of two minutes' ignorance was popularly adopted across what was left of the civilised world and became a key ritual of the annual celebrations.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dodging dogma ninjas

    • Barry Gittins and Matthew Davies
    • 25 September 2012
    1 Comment

    We're strugglin' through the mythos of our parties. We're losin' gospel truths that never rang true. If life prompts metaphysical pilates, then faith is surely meant to stretch, extend you.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Olympics silver whining

    • Various
    • 07 August 2012

    Our species believes it progresses without limitation. We shout when a swimmer wins silver, 'That's no inspiration'. As humans pound forward, no 'burden of care' limitation ... We deserve only winners, our species the sole inspiration.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Poverty's skanky tarts

    • Barry Gittins
    • 06 June 2012
    11 Comments

    Poverty is the unpaid rent of 200 years of colonisation. Poverty leaves a kid to her own solitary devices in the corner of a one-bedroom unit. It is pensioners eating canned excuses for a decent meal. Poverty is what happens when I don't care about you and you don't give a toss about me.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Feminism by the numbers

    • Barry Gittins
    • 07 March 2012
    5 Comments

    Various pontiffs and potentates block annulment and divorce. So Harry pushes himself to the head of the queue, rogering the wee chasm twixt church and state. When Anne, too, non-delivers the baby boy jackpot, he manfully sweeps Jane off her feet and Anne's head off her shoulders. Still counting sacrificial sheep? 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    How to wrestle an angel

    • Barry Gittins and P. S. Cottier
    • 14 February 2012

    Try a Cobra Clutch Bulldog; an Elevated Gutbuster; Wheelbarrow Driver; Gorilla Press Slam; a Frankensteiner. There's always the Alley Oop, where you hoist him, (the opponent) on your shoulders. But be aware of the possibility of take-off ... Who will be riding whom?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2011: Religion's homophobic scratch and sniff

    • Barry Gittins
    • 03 January 2012
    1 Comment

    Vile denunciations and allegations waft across the vast expanse of space and time. Flatulent Dutch ovens of bigotry aloft fly, as adult, equal love's tagged 'sin', not raft to finding solace, as surely as the Made seeks the Maker's consoling deeps. Published 21 November 2011

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Religion's homophobic scratch and sniff

    • Barry Gittins
    • 22 November 2011
    9 Comments

    Vile denunciations and allegations waft across the vast expanse of space and time. Flatulent Dutch ovens of bigotry aloft fly, as adult, equal love's tagged 'sin', not raft to finding solace, as surely as the Made seeks the Maker's consoling deeps.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Boat people poems

    • Michael Sharkey and Barry Gittins
    • 19 July 2011

    Bought after the wreckage of a shoaled first marriage, the becalmed, calming painting survived a bachelor's anchorage, flotsam and jetsam, to find love. Peace. Safe, prized harbour under muted tiles and a stultifying light orb.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Gospel truths in children's stories

    • Various
    • 22 March 2011

    What's more unfeasible? The dim prospect of churches selling off real estate to house and feed and clothe the homeless, or elephants, webskidding with zeal?

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