the news

(I wrote this on Friday)

Today’s paper was full of ghastly things, and I don’t just mean horror quake/tsunamis in Samoa and Indonesia, etc, but also the news that Hey Hey it's Saturday might be back for good (i.e. for evil). The Age’s education reporter Miki Perkins says on page 3 that ‘Over the next five years a quarter of senior academics will retire and those who remain will work longer hours than their international colleagues, according to a study to be released today at Melbourne University.’ I look back to a decade ago when I, just starting on my academic career, was told that ‘the old people’ would soon be retiring. Those bastards never go anywhere (some of them are lovely bastards, too, by the way though of course some are just bastards).Also I see Jon Stevens is responding badly to recent heart surgery. It will be interesting to see if JS’ reputation undergoes any kind of resuscitation in the light of this news. Personally I like him, and I think that the casting of him as a music industry tart is quite unfair, not just considering the fact that either everyone in the music industry is a tart or everyone isn’t. I wouldn’t have joined INXS myself, and I think INXS are rather tasteless in their decision, taken poorly every day, to continue post-Hutchence. But Stevens is a decent bloke as far as I can tell. I suppose on the other hand it is nonsensical and foul for me to spend this much column inches on someone who hasn’t even died, and just passingly remarking on thousands who did, violently and horribly, a few days ago in Australia’s near neighbourhood. Perspective. It’s hard to come by at this point. I am en route to visiting a friend in hospital with cancer. One of my students died, apparently by his own hand, a few days ago.