Pseuds Corner No 13

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

Writing the second novel is supposed to be hard, because you write into expectation. . . This, now, is the matter most at hand for me. And if in some ways that deadens the passion, it certainly invigorates the experience -- the vividness of it all. Because it is located more in the work, the voyage, the journey (insert your own platitude), and less in the ethereal destination of arrival, success, ego, fame, some killer whale of need (insert your own platypus).
Sisyphus (sisyphus, platypus, tomayto, tomato) springs to mind. What would Sisyphus have done if he'd ever got that rock to the top? How would he have felt? Don't we need the struggle, even if we struggle with it? - So in this way, every novel is a first novel. All the uncertainty, even if they're different uncertainties. All the investment. But mostly, the same shackling to the fundamental experience the novel takes place in: your life. (John Bauer, "Another first novel")

In the case of classical music, record companies and entrepreneurs appeal to our hedonistic responses when they decide to package all Mahler's slow movements in one box set - that's over 150 minutes of contemplation, melancholia and metaphysical yearning with proportional profit margins to match. But, far away from the profit dollar, what we are contemplating here is the texture of time. Mahler, through his seemingly immobile phrases, elongated compositional lines and heady climaxes, teaches us that our thoughts and ideas can be short or long, that there is no right or wrong to slow versus fast. (Xenia Hanusiak compares the slow food movement to the slow movement of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, The Age 25/01/2011)

The gospel references don't intrude with a reverberant or religiose rhetoric, but Steele often gives chapter and verse at the start of a poem, as if a religious vision were the gnomic precondition of this swirling erudite talk that has been made artifactual and poetic without losing the implication of a moral dimension. . .
It's a sense of the fated journey that makes the book moving for all the bric-a'-brac of its referencing and erudite innuendoes and inflections. There's a beautiful sombre line in a poem that is among other things a tribute to the high and hairy language of the Irish: "The road to Heaven is well enough signed,/ but it's badly lit at night." Yes, we know not the day nor the hour, though this book of poems is luminous with the sense of a mortality costing not less than everything and the light that darkness is configured by. (Peter Craven reviews Peter Steele's The Gossip and the Wine, The Age)

"We're seeing younger consumers and younger members of society re-evaluate their role within wealth creation in often very, very social ways. That lies at the heart of "betapreneurialism"; your reason for doing something isn't necessarily just about making yourself wealthier. There is an implicit consideration of those who are part of that journey with you. . . Baby boomers were all about self; self-pleasing, self-actualisation, and finding value in self. What you now see when you look at a younger generation is people who are re-evaluating the reasons why you do something. And I think there is less of an inclination to think that it's really about fiscal generation; it's about value generation." (Chris Sanderson, "guru trend-spotter", in conversation with Michael Short in The Zone)

"Sustainability at the University of Melbourne is evolving beyond an operational focus to a philosophy underpinning all that we do. . . The University has a long-term commitment to reducing the environmental impact of our operations, while developing opportunities for students and staff to be informed and empowered as advocates for a more sustainable world. . . The growing importance of 'Education for Sustainability' is reflected in our graduate attributes, enabling graduates to become 'active global citizens' and to 'be advocates for improving the sustainability of the environment'." (Chris White in conversation with Shane Cahill about the myriad ways in which a philosophy of sustainability is being practised in the operations of the University of Melbourne's Property and Campus Services, The Melbourne (University) Voice, March, 2011)

Vintage Pseuds

Many areas in the arts still need financial stabilisation. Others need consolidation and some need growth. A redefinition of the Australia Council's "Key Organisations" should be undertaken. At present the category is too large and indistinct, with a massive variance occurring within its spectrum. There is a need for a new platform of support for "flagship" organisations across the art forms. Flagship organisations are those that commission ambitious new works and engage with multiple audiences. They need differentiation from the incubator groups catering to niche and cogniscenti clusters. These flagship organisations already exist, but are buried in the morass of "Key Organisations". Their leading role in creating national cultural assets and setting the national cultural agenda needs to be recognised and supported. Funding these organisations will assist the arts to flourish, make them more accessible, and by extension create an adaptive, innovative society.
The "small to medium" performing-arts sector was analysed in 2002, but no particular financial action was taken. These are urgent issues. Artistic and professional outputs have already plateaued in this vital part of the arts sector. We need government funds to increase our capacity, to bring human resources up to an acceptable professional level. . . (Juliana Engberg, "The Arts" in Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia, 2008)

Pseud's Corner Part 7

For multiple disservices to literature and human dignity, this week's Order of the Brown Nose goes to Jennifer Byrne, host of ABC's First Tuesday Book Club. The list of the pseudy talents on display in her most recent First Tuesday website update really only starts with public brown-nosing of much-loved writers; apart from the general air of unreconstructed self-love and clubbyness, there's the excrutiating pretention ("we laughed like drains" etc), unselfconscious use of cliche's ("that grand old man" etc) and boganic glossy magazine slang (the Book Industry Awards could've been "glammer" etc). Oh, and the generous plug she gives her own interview with Christopher Hitchens in the same breath as announcing that he has cancer.CS

"Another week, another literary prize... last week it was the turn of young Craig Silvey, who took out the industry's Book of the Year with his terrific story of life and a mysterious death in a country town, Jasper Jones. I was sitting at the back of Paddington Town Hall next to that grand old man of letters Tom Keneally, - always blissful company - who scored big applause for his win in the non-fiction category. These Book Industry Awards aren't perhaps as glam as some others but what I like about them is they honour not just writers but the lesser-known people who make the publishing world spin: booksellers, distributors, illustrators, publishers. Though the anxiety in the room about the rise of the e-book was palpable. Lots of passionate speeches in support of the paper-and-ink version - the "heritage delivery system", as the marketers might say. - As for my own reading - well, you can't get much more heritage than Tolstoy's epic Anna Karenina, nominated by many as the greatest novel ever written. . .

Thanks for your reading suggestions last month. I can tell you which clubber suggested Curtis Settlefield's An American Wife, it was Amanda Keller on our Christmas show last year - along with the unforgettable Me Cheeta, a spoof celebrity biography by the world-weary chimp in the Tarzan pictures. We all laughed like drains - assuming she was joking - but had to eat our cackles [eat our own kaka?] when it turned up on the the 2009 Booker Prize longlist!

And even though it is the second Tuesday of the month, a reminder to tune in July 13 for my special half-hour interview with the brilliant, mouthy contrarian Christopher Hitchens. This is a man who could charm birds from the trees. And then roast them for dinner as punishment for being so easily seduced. Funny, pugnacious - and at the moment, I imagine, absolutely devastated. He was out promoting his 11th book and first memoir, Hitch-22, when advised that he'd been diagnosed with cancer; he immediately pulled out of the tour to start chemo treatment. But he's in scintillating form in this interview - and the full hour version will go up on the First Tuesday site." (Jennifer Byrne, "What I'm reading" First Tuesday Book Club online)

***

On Fanoodling

It's been non-stop fanoodling here on The Great Stage since Julian Meyrick fanoodled his way to a really prominent corner of the Corner of Shame in edition no. 6 and revealed to us with the f*ck-you appassionata of a man of true conviction - not only that Beckett's immortal Waiting for Godot is a moral lesson in . . . waiting, but also what Vlad and Estr really get up to in the course of the play. Of course they despair, but, more importantly, they fanoodle. They fanoodle so significantly that the great gullet of Australian cultural unresponsiveness opens wide and emits . . . funny noises. Feeling almost certain that Dr Meyrick wasn't suggesting he'd seen Ian McKellen and co. "messing round on a couch" doing something "like cuddling, only better" - as a quick trip to the Urban Dictionary seemed to indicate - we asked readers to tell us what they thought Meyrick really meant - deep down. Today, the results are in.    

A SHIFTING, shuffling, furrowing, cogitating noise. A cross between a wheeze, a sigh and a snort of determination. This is the sound emitting from the Comedy Theatre at the moment. The sound of Australians facing up to Culture. . . That Waiting for Godot should be presented commercially 50 years after it was damned by New York critic Walter Kerr as "a play in which nothing happens, twice" suggests either the world has lost its mind, or changed it. Beckett's two tramps, fanoodling and despairing their days away waiting for a mysterious Godot who never appears, is stamped on our collective consciousness as the archetypal existential statement. A ditch, a tree, a few guys killing time. That's it, folks. After all the unwanted Christmas presents, great loves, political upheavals, promotions, demotions, technical advances, broken marriages and lost biros, that what we're left with. That's life. - A production of Waiting for Godot is a compelling event because it is still an affront to theatre-going sensibilities. Or once again an affront. Discontinuity is the dominant mode of the modern world, as we frazzle and fragment in unrelenting competitive locomotion. Harried, hurried and chronically overwhelmed, waiting of any kind has been banished, an unmitigated bad. So Beckett's tramps, who literally do nothing for two hours, is a poke in the eye, a ''f**k you'' from beyond the grave. Having to sit in the theatre and think for a prolonged period demands skills all but forgotten, like tuning a crystal set. Something more is required, a quality of attention we reserve only for things that touch us deeply. Things that really matter. (Julian Meyrick, "Beckett can teach us how to wait", The Age)

So, were Vlad and Estr fanoodling, as in:

(a) canoodling in fcuk apparell (Daniel Pilkington)?

(b) "fail-noodling" - i.e. failing to use their noodles - presumably to agree on a departure strategy once it became clear that Godot was putting in a no-show (Sam Waters)?

(c) squeezing the wrong end of the sauce bottle (Kevin Rudd)?

OR

(d) running around with their underpants on their heads being boisterously expressive, i.e. acting (Larissa Harrison)?

The free lunch voucher I think clearly goes to . . . Mr Pilkington.

***

For my part – and in this forum for intimate, writerly expression – I’ve got to openly submit here to conceding that for the longest time I’ve resented the contention that a tactile, geographical environment impacts on the quality of an author’s work. I do, however, freely and cordially embrace the notion that a physical, authorial space administers a significant influence upon a writer’s work ethic. - For wherever I work – be this sprawling over and scrawling onto the leg of an armchair – be this conveniently adopting the Yellow Pages as both a makeshift desk and seer-stone for its infinite supply of barbarous character names – be this scrawling my linguistically anomalous breed of hieroglyph into water-choked moleskines, or onto the backs of lurid junkmail pamphleteering the services of professional suburban podiatrists moonlighting as dental technicians – be this writing with my fingertip into granulated mounds of sugar, or into nuggets of spilled coffee grounds, before palming my idle attempts at kitchen literature into my enamel-ware mug and consuming these same imperfect sentences with soy milk so sweet I can almost mask the bitter taste of haphazard syntax – for wherever my compulsion to write seizes me, my stamina for producing is dependent upon a space where personal comfort reigns supreme. (Kirk Marshall, "Kirk Marshall's Literary Space" LiteraryMinded)

The Advancement Solutions Consultant is responsible for analysing client requirements and providing complex data reports to the advancement community of the University. The position is required to play a pivotal role in the development and documentation of technical procedures for managing information across the Advancement system portfolio. Furthermore, the Advancement Solutions Consultant will develop standard reports that replace ad hoc reports using the business intelligence reporting tool (Microsoft SQL Server BI) by adhering to the report development lifecycle. - The incumbent will also be responsible for providing assistance and making business process improvements across the Advancement system portfolio. - Additionally, the Advancement Solutions Consultant will manage new customizations and configurations to advancement systems and conduct system and user acceptance testing on applicable environments with other team members. (University of Melbourne, "WANTED: Advancement Solutions Consultant - Advancement Office, Deputy Vice Chancellor (University Affairs))

By day three, we were total ratbags. Our American companion had morphed into ‘Dingo Dave’. Ascending a sharp incline, we found Jennifer Byrne [Why, hello again!] rolling on the ground in paroxysms of laughter. Linda Jaivin’s description of the plot twists in her Song dynasty opera scenario grew more baroque with every mile. Raymond, now bereft of any hope that we might be capable of shutting up for even the shortest time, announced that he had decided to let us talk. I pumped him for dirt on Doc Neeson and the Angels. Conversation ranged across topics from Cormac McCarthy to the difference between a cad and a bounder to cheap eats in Istanbul. Only rarely did we encounter other walkers, groups of older folk mostly, with serious expressions and ski-stock walking sticks. They looked scandalised as we trooped past singing selections from The Sound of Music. ("Shane Maloney opens his diary", The Spectator Australia)

[The latest album]'s many false starts and dead ends also place M.I.A. on shaky ground aesthetically, and with no coherent message to fall back on, the album feels alienated and disconnected, perhaps ironic for an album attempting to evoke the hyper-connectedness and sensory overload of culture in the wake of iPhone and Google. A lot of the criticisms of M.I.A. have focused on her lack of a coherent politics, the questionable ethics of her aestheticization of poverty, and the hypocrisies of her privileged lifestyle. With albums as vital and original as Arular and Kala, it was easy to defend her deterritorializations as a valid artistic strategy, a method of salvaging the radical moment and making it resonate with a Western audience weaned on hip-hop's valorization of the outlaw. The Hirschbergs of the world are wrong when they attempt to bring M.I.A. to task for these perceived ethical violations, when her body of work is more productively viewed as a series of politically charged portraits in which that naïveté is essential to the revolutionary urgency she seeks to bring to the dancefloor. Unfortunately, this time out, M.I.A. just hasn't given us enough to work with. (Jonathan Dean reviews MIA, Tiny Mix Tapes. Tip of the hat for a close reading of this spasming hypertext to Matt Wendus)

Hyland’s writing, which has only increased in strangeness with each new book, emerges from a shifting of co-ordinates between cold-eyed clinician and artist’s empathetic heart. Her characters are constructed from the tension between autistic remove and panting proximity; her narratives energised by the insertion of wildly disturbed individuals into drab, constricted worlds. And her style? As Harold Pinter once said of his work, “What goes on in my plays is realistic, but what I’m doing is not realism.” (Geordie Williamson, The Australian)


[Spotters: ONR, BG, CMcC, ACG] 

Melbourne University in $85 mill plan to “grow in its own esteem” (2007)

Melbourne Uni Vice Chancellor Glyn Davis has a “bold new plan” for the university’s future. It may be controversial, but the CEO of Melbourne’s sandstone “icon” has some classic tricks up his sleeve, as he candidly revealed to The Stage recently.

“We are fully up-to-date with the lessons of modern advertising,” Davis told our education correspondent. “Lesson number one is that if you repeat a lie often enough it will be accepted as truth. And lesson number two is that commercial hype, once it goes into overdrive, has the power to cancel out what is normally common sense. Any idiot knows you can generate a bunch of statistics making it sound as if you’re the best or the eighth best in the world. Among the other nonsense we’d like accepted as truth is that Melbourne University’s ‘global positioning’ is ‘enhanced’ by huge class sizes, 1000’s of students who struggle with English, spending millions of dollars on administrative salaries and churning out disgusting amounts of university merchandise like t-shirts and degrees [Is this right? Ed.]”

“That’s where our new Growing Esteem Strategy comes in. It’s like the Federal Government’s Future Fund. We want it to be like the Future Fund. That’s why we’ve given it the dicky name. Only there’s a difference – while the government’s Future Fund will be spent over time to pay for hospitals and telecommunications, the $85 million Growing Esteem money will be spent straight up outspending other universities on advertising. Our aim is to use it on trips overseas talking up our credentials – in fact on anything that will sear the Melbourne University logo onto the retina of anyone who comes within 100km of the place.”

Asked whether he would stop at anything to boost the University’s profile, Professor Davis said he had rejected a proposal to hire girls in bandanas and g-strings to hawk the “hot new education package” outside city train stations. But apart from that he is “open to suggestions.”

“Obviously coming up with slogans and some sort of catchy jingle is the key. We’ve come up with plenty so far. Let me see: The children are our future. Making the future safe for diversity. Go with ‘esteem power’ – it’s the future, yeah!” he said, weirdly punching the air.

Davis was frank about where the $85 million is to come from for him to grow in his own esteem. “Obviously we intend to put the screws on departments that aren’t willing to cut corners so that we have more money to burn over the next few years. But we’ll do it in polite-sounding managerial jargon they can barely understand.”

How are staff reacting to the prospect of yet another education revolution from above? “Ask any member of staff who’s ever been involved in a meeting about ‘Growing Esteem’. If they’re honest, they’ll admit they have no idea what’s going on. That’s because we haven’t told them what’s going on. It’s also partly because we don’t know what’s going on ourselves. About the only thing we’ve decided is that it will involve spending this 100 or so million on ‘fully commercialising’ the ‘venture’ and increasing the number of Deputy Vice Chancellors from the current ten to about 50 or 60.”

“Staff in general need to understand that they are small cogs in an enormous education ‘machine’. And if they aren’t spinning and spinning, as a good cog should, then they will be asked to leave the machine.”

“Obviously it is a gross dereliction of public trust to treat students as canon-fodder in some vast educational war effort. But it would be foolish to try to lay the blame at anyone’s door. There’s nobody who’s really responsible and so nobody’s to blame. Is it me? Is it the government? Is it John Dawkins? Maybe it’s the Abominable Snowman. More likely it’s something to do with the global economy and the global economy means thinking about things from a realistic economic perspective. People accept that. They accept that any economy is a good economy. Including a false economy like dropping standards to pay for first-class publicity.”

“I object to the suggestion that I’m just trying to make the noises Canberra wants to hear. I’m here to spend the pathetic trickle of money that comes down to us from Canberra on something other than education.”

“At the most basic level, I’m just trying to look after myself, like everyone else. I look after Melbourne University by looking after myself. Has your esteem grown as this interview has worn on? Never stop growing in your own esteem – that’s the shot.”

(Glyn Davis will be coming soon to 168 giant plasma tv screens near you.)

(The Stage was the much-loved reality-based predecessor of The Great Stage. It "leant its breast against a reedy shore and unlocked its silent throat" beside a Coburg pond in 2007.)

(Melbourne University continues to grow in its own esteem)

Pseud's Corner 3

Send your favourite examples of self-important, euphemistic, contorted, pompous, wanky and plain weird prose through to pseudsaustralia@yahoo.com.au [Ed]

I have been looking at the idea of letting people help you. I feel that there are 3 levels of personal evolution when it comes to collaboration, delegation and relying on others. 1. Take 2. Push 3. Share. - Take is about being dependent and taking from others, it has a needy vibe and is obviously not ideal. In take, you draw from others unconsciously. Push is about being independent and winning from others. It has a competitive vibe and is about getting by, pushing your agenda. In push, you win, they lose. Share is about being interdependent and working with others. It has a liberating vibe. It is about effortlessness flowing and is the key to creating sustainability. In share, you flow. (Matt Church, "Take no More" Inspiring Thought Leadership)

The audience was peppered with Beckettian spectres. I didn’t see Barry Humphries, who’d been a striking presence at the Bill Henson opening in Sydney two nights earlier but Geoffrey Rush, [Mel] Gibson’s Vladimir, and a triumph 30 years later as Ionesco’s exiting king, was there, as was his friend Bille Brown who had actually written an Aladdin pantomime in which McKellen played the Widow Twankey. So too was Max Gillies who had done Krapp’s Last Tape for Elijah Moshinsky at Monash 40 years ago. And Colin Duckworth, the professor of French who knew Sam Beckett himself, was in the audience, having seen most of the notable Godots since Peter Hall’s. . .
With the passage of the years Waiting for Godot has come to seem less like a shocking paradigm of absurdity and more like the deep sad comedy of a continuing condition (call it human if you must). As with Eliot’s Waste Land, the brilliance of the comic surface has almost outlived the existential insecurity it is shaping. - Sean Mathias’s quietly brilliant production takes this fact as its opportunity by constantly emphasising the mature human face of the grinding rituals through which his two ageing tramps wait and wander (wittily and witlessly) as Godot puts them through their paces in his failure to come. McKellen and Rees, in contrasted ways, have the rueful stoicism of age, and their comic embrace of catastrophe — McKellen’s boggle-eyed and flailing, Rees’s dapper and wincing — is light years from the contorted angst of young actors with the world before them as an enigmatic agony. (Peter Craven reviews Sean Mathias' "Waiting for Godot", The Spectator)

Knowledge Transfer is the name of a central concern that an intellectually ambitious university should have. The attention that we're giving it is logical. I think we're in a phase in which responsibility is a key concern. - In the humanities you see that in the gradual demise of irony and theory. Knowledge Transfer expresses the ambitions of being understood and of making a difference. . .
A university stands in a reciprocal relationship to society. How much good will does our society have towards the university sector as a whole, and to the University of Melbourne in particular? Governments tend to reflect broad public sentiment in this respect. Research doesn't only need to be done, it needs to be seen to be done. That's crucial to good relations with the state, and crucial to developing autonomy. You can't force people to take you seriously. If we're ignored or left to drift - that's our problem. We have to do something about it. Knowledge Transfer is our name for doing something about it. (John Armstrong reflects on the concept of Knowledge Transfer)

Teachers must endeavour to engage their students by creating lesson plans which are 'RRR': Rich, Rewarding and Relevant... But there is one 'R' that we have omitted: Resiliency. Resiliency is the quality of approach that each student brings to their particular life circumstances; the ups and the downs. Fostering resiliency in the learning environment enables students to approach their world with confidence and expectation. Fostering resiliency is learning to get up after a fall. When we learn resiliency we take the bull by the horns and look life in the face again, after (or before) the fall. Resiliency is its own outcome in the modern classroom. (Lesson plans and their relation to fostering resiliency. Victorian Department of Education)

News just in: Katie Price has not had sex with her boyfriend for a month. According to Fairfax newspapers, reproducing news from Britain’s reputable New! magazine, her boyfriend Alex Reid is getting ‘a cuddle – nothing more.’ What on earth am I supposed to do with this information? . . . If I were being generous, I could argue that these stories personify common grown-up problems. Many couples, particularly those with children, frequently experience dry spells. . . But this news – and I use the word loosely – really doesn’t add much to our understanding of adult intimacy. . .
So much of our every day life – conversations in queues, reading newspapers, watching television – is routinely superficial. It involves little reflection or analysis. It’s what German philosopher Martin Heidegger called ‘groundless floating’ – a sort of existential treading water, which adds little to our character. We lose ourselves in daily interaction with things and people, rarely questioning the fundamental ideas or values we’re upholding – perhaps they’re a little frightening. And the entertainment media feed on this, of course. If it’s ‘idle talk’ we want, magazines like New! will supply it: a few minutes of distracted bliss, where the abstract failures or triumphs of famous strangers can take us away from ourselves. Price’s sex life is a vaporous lure for groundless floating. But when, then, does the shallowness end? What moments offer us retreat from surfaces and reflexes? For someone like Heidegger, it presumably ends with philosophy or poetry – with some radical authenticity, or re-envisioning of Western civilization. Others have replied with God, art or revolution. But with Price in mind, I’m suggesting intimacy. In its genuine form, love is one genuine antidote to distraction and superficiality. I’m not talking Hollywood romance, with its predictable plots and happy endings – though they’re aiming at something valuable. And I’m not talking about sex, though it’s often part of the magic. The reason is simple: regardless of how the world changes, love enters into your mind as a non-negotiable fact. It is inescapably, painfully real. . . And this is particularly the case when we have children. Once they enter your life, kids push you again and again to recognise your faults and frailties, and reassess how and why you’re living. They’re the ultimate existential test. (Damon Young, "Katie Price: No Sex for a Month", darkly wise, rudely great)

And, last but not least, Eduardo de la Fuente on Academic Vampires

A growing number of academics entering upper and middle university management are themselves vampires. It's not just deans and heads of departments who subscribe to vampire ideology. In Britain, where performative-vampirist culture has been around much longer than in Australia, even the odd Vice-Chancellor is a self-identified vampire academic. In Australia, vampires are also making their presence felt within research funding bodies and in the formulation of the research assessment exercise framework. - On the demand side, it's only a matter of time before students start to question "credentialist creep", especially if it means universities force them to take vampire subjects as part of their degrees. - On the supply side, things will change when a number of the senior vampires reach retirement age. . . But for those impatient for the vampire system to collapse, let me suggest a couple of personal strategies for coping with widespread vampirism in universities. . . At some point, theology has to be about God, the divine or the sacred; in the final analysis, art history has to be about things called paintings, sculptures or, for argument's sake, let's say multi-media artwords; and, philosophy finds it hard to escape entirely considerations of logic, epistemology and things like metaphsics and aesthetics. - Then there are disciplines where there is enough exposure to daylight so that vampire tactics lose some of their magic and dark powers. Try telling studets paying for an MBA and jggling assignments with work commitments that reading Michel Foucault on governmentality is good for them! - Interestingly, the fields of marketing and management studies seem to be experiencing something of a rapprochement with the traditional humanities. Ethics and aesthetics are quickly emerging as hot topics in fields such as branding, organisational dynamics and also studies of entrepreneurship. - Of course, if one is still feeling unsafe, one could always resort to more old-fashioned metjhods for repelling vampires. Academic vampires seem to be allergic to anything that requires lots of training, especially things that might be deemed to be part of high culture and, are generally repulsed by economists and anything that is perceived as propping up capitalism. (Eduardo de la Fuente, "Vampires latch on to learning" The Australian: Higher Education Supplement)

[With thanks for tip-offs from LK, PCF, ECD and ONR.]