Beyoncé, Brunswick and the internet
In Melbourne internet circles, yesterday was Beyoncé in Brunswick Day. The Fierce One was sighted (and photographed) doing a photo shoot in a coat and lingerie on the veranda of an old Brunswick house, and it was all on from there. This morning, there’s even a Beyoncé in Brunswick Tumblr. But before all that, there was our own humble contribution: Beyoncé at the Wheeler Centre … which was picked up, as an actual sighting, by a Beyoncé fan Twitter account. Ah, the internet!
Japan’s ‘celibacy syndrome’
An in-depth Guardian article investigates the increasing number of Japanese young people who can’t be bothered with sex, let alone relationships. ‘Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious. Yet conservative attitudes in the home and workplace persist.’ The themes seem to echo American feminist Hanna Rosin’s in her controversial bestseller The End of Men (which she’ll be talking about at the Pop Up Festival of Dangerous Ideas next Sunday).
Noel Gallagher: ‘Novels are just a waste of fucking time’
Oasis singer Noel Gallagher has told GQ magazine that he believes fiction is a waste of time. ‘I can’t suspend belief in reality … I just end up thinking, “This isn’t fucking true”.’ He was being interviewed to mark his status as GQ Icon of the Year, and stated his preference for ‘books that actually happened’, like Ernest R. May’s The Kennedy Tapes. ‘People who write and read and review books are fucking putting themselves a tiny little bit above the rest of us who fucking make records and write pathetic little songs for a living,’ he said.
David Sedaris’s tribute to his dead sister
David Sedaris’s latest New Yorker personal essay is among his best: sad and funny, intimate and controlled. He writes about his family staying together at a beach house after the suicide of his youngest sister, Tiffany, and reflects on his sister’s life and death - including the fact that she had asked him not to write about her. ‘Knowing that she wasn’t pleased with this kind of “therapy through public forum” in life, I can’t imagine she would’ve been terribly happy with it being used in the circumstance of her death,’ writes Jezebel. What are the ethics of the piece?
Why you look like your dog
Why do people look like their dogs? Is that something we imagine, or is it a real thing? The Atlantic says it’s a real phenomenon (including heavier owners resulting in heavier pets), for a variety of reasons - including the fact that dogs have an ‘automatic imitation’ instinct that makes them mimic their owners. Fun fact: one study has found ‘dog people’ to be less neurotic than ‘cat people’.
