13 | April | 2020 | Lee Battersby

One of the things that has been highly noticeable about the spread of Covid-19 is that it is no respecter of rank, position, or privilege. Like a true plague, it has struck indiscriminately, from Prince Charles, to Boris the Bastard, to Kenny Dalglish, to fathers and mothers and siblings and offspring less famous, but just as necessary to the wellbeing of the world.

Sadly, for everyone who contracts the virus and recovers, we suffer a painful loss: at the time of writing, over 144,000 lives have been lost worldwide, and the number grows daily. And while it could be argued that some figures might improve the world immeasurably by no longer being in it*, we’re also seeing the loss of people who have enriched our experiences through their work and their legacies. Gita Ramjee has died. Lorena Borjas. Terrence McNally. And last night, as Luscious and I were heading to bed, news broke that brought us both to tears.

British comic actor, writer, and absolute pillar of my childhood memories, Tim Brooke-Taylor, succumbed to the virus at the age of 79.

Continue reading “RIP, TB-T: SOMEBODY CALLED” →

Yeah, look. I tried. Honestly. But Queens of the Stone Age suck arse, and all my Quincy Jones is stuff he produced for others, not any of his own material. So it’s Queen, okay? Of course it’s Queen. It’s only a matter of which Queen track to choose. We want something that offers some kind of comment on what’s happening to the world around us, but also something that you might not have heard before, just in case a taste of new music is what you need right now.

Not so easy with Quee….ah, got it.

It’s an easy out to blame everything that’s going wrong on a cookie-cutter old-white-man-in-a-suit boogie monster, but by the same token it’s also not exactly a really long stretch, either. The truth is, white-man-politics-with-money is at the root of an absolute fucktonne of the social, cultural, racial, and economic issues that Australia finds itself contorted by. And the truth is, many of those issues are the result of the ingrained xenophobia, racism, misogyny, empire-building, religious zealotry, and all-round just being stupid dumbshits-ery brought over with the Western European diasporas that have hit Australian shores with stunning regularity over the decades. I’m sure no other countries have issues with historical European imperialism.

So, you know what? Suck it up.

And I say that as an increasingly old white man from good, old-fashioned, racist English stock who has had to overcome a whole lot of inherited psychological bullshit over the years. You’re either part of the solution, or shut up. Nobody gets to be proud of being part of the problem anymore. That shit has to stop.

Adapt or die. The new world needs it.

And, hey: a Queen song you might not have heard a billion times on the radio. That’s something too, right?