Pseuds Corner No 12 - Pseuds Melbourne

. . . an occasional column devoted to self-important, euphemistic, contorted, pompous and plain weird prose from throughout the media-sphere. Send you favourite examples to pseuds' HQ: pseudsaustralia@yahoo.com.au [Ed]

I am watching The Social Network. The breakneck delivery of conversations, (conversations?) between the technology powerbrokers makes me uber. I sit upright, as upright as I imagine I would be in an electric chair. I am on speed life alert, goodbye contemplation, hello quick or the dead. . . But then there's my other love, Mahler - the composer of the longest movements in symphonic lieterature. How can his languid verbosity and posturing on the infinite possibly fit in to my social network lifestyle? (Xenia Hanusiak, The Age 25/01/2011)

Javier Marias is one of the reigning foreign language masters to whom we defer as if they were the automatic inheritors of a modern classicism carried like an insignia or an insinuation. . . Marias' While the Women are Sleeping is full of fiddly little jewel boxes of gentle creepiness. Stories of ghosts, stories of graves, faint intimations of how the spirit of story that is the spellbinding glory of the world is never separate from the spiral staircase of what makes the blood go chill. (Peter Craven, The Weekend Australian, 29/01/2011)

With this spirit of like-minded people to which Margaret Mead refers, I’d also like to use this opportunity to recognize the amazing work of my co-authors Michael and Scott. Both have been engaged by some of the leading companies on the planet — which have sought their wisdom, expertise and Thought Leader capabilities to help drive results in organizations. They are brothers in arms, as are all Thought Leaders, on this journey to raise consciousness by inspiring thinking that facilitates conversations that rock the planet. - Imagine a place where great thinkers can come together, financially resourced, strong in their views, articulate in expressing them and focused on value. What a force they could be. What kind of legacy could a group like that make? It would be a kind of immortality. A loosely put together carbon structure of genes and DNA seems doomed to entropy and finally death. But a collection of ideas, a meme pool, will and always has served the world long after the grey matter responsible for it has passed. Matt Church, Thought Leaders: How to capture, package and deliver your ideas for greater commercial success)

She is nice. She gives head. She doesn't like all the attention in bed. She's used to selfish lovers. Not lovers like me who need the redemption of her pleasure. She probably doesn't cum unless she's alone. She's been with a string of those weak men who feel threatened. Men who like women that don't say much. She falls for men who take. Not men like me who need vindication, who need to give back too. That without her orgasm she hasn't truly validated who I am. Without that mark left behind on the bed, I am left only with the stain in me. (Jon Bauer, Rocks in the Belly)

Pseuds Melbourne

- wherein staff writers at The Age newspaper and tenured university professors masturbate in public with their eyes closed at the thought of the city of Melbourne's style, sophistication and general ssssassiness.

What do you call a city whose unofficial dish is kingfish ceviche or salt and pepper calamari; a city enamoured equally of hierloom vegetables and re-imagined street food; a city that also spent the past 12 months going a bit mad for that humblest of convenience foods, the sandwich? You could call it many things. Interesting, certainly. Enigmatic. Eclectic, even. You could certainly call it Melbourne. (Larissa Dubecki, "The year in food and drink (in Melbourne)" the age (melbourne) magazine)

Oddly this year, architects are providing proof in their own puddings. A headquarters for the Australian Institute of Architects in Exhibition Street (by Lyons) will be 21 floors of energy efficiency, composed of a fashionable broken surface of ribs and fins and highlighted by a ribbon of bright green (this year's colour). - In the new architecture of disorder, there is chaos, fuzzy logic, irregular patterns and an organic expression of function. It's all about the contemporary human condition and our precarious grip on the environment, wedded to a belief that fundamentalism has passed us by. (Norman Day, "The year in architecture (in Melbourne)", the age (melbourne) magazine)