(image from Domain.com.au)
Published in Sunday Life Magazine (The Age/Sydney Morning Herald), 11th March, 2012
Some people go to the movies or to Shakespeare to get their theatrical fix. I go to house auctions. For drama, intrigue, suspense and towering individual performances, nothing beats a good old-fashioned suburban bid-off.
Published in Sunday Life Magazine (The Age and Sydney Morning Herald), 26th February, 2012
There are more than 12 million cars in Australia: if owning a house is the Great Australian Dream, owning a car is the Australian Right. Or perhaps the Australian Necessity. Our cities sprawl across our wide country with little regard for the practicalities of non-motorised transport. Getting to the beach, the shops or your mate’s place on the other side of town is often a tough ask in Australia without a car. Continue reading
My dear followers,
Last week I launched a new website called The Shovel (www.theshovel.com.au). It is dedicated to satirical news coverage. In fact, people are calling it Australia’s second best satirical news service after Today Tonight. You can even sign up on Facebook.
If you’re into bad puns and cheap Clive Palmer jokes, I suggest you give it a look. If you prefer more serious news coverage, I’ve heard the BBC’s not too bad.
www.jamesschloeffel.com will remain my primary area for posting general articles, so keep visiting here as well. You can think of it as two for the price of one.
Cheers, James
An artist's impression of how the new Question Time might look
In what has been labelled a political masterstroke, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has used the standing aside of Speaker Peter Slipper as an opportunity to remodel Question Time on the popular game show ‘The Voice’. Continue reading
Reports emerged this morning that Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott has been in secret talks with US technology giant Apple to develop an electronic spying apparatus disguised as a deer. Coined the ‘iDeer’, the device would be used to surreptitiously record conversations of anti-mining demonstrators and other activists in rural Australia, it is alleged. Continue reading
Swedish furniture retailer IKEA has renamed its 6-seater dining table the “Queensland Labor Party” in recognition of the state’s historic election result. Breaking from the tradition of using obscure Nordic names for their products, the furniture giant says it wanted to commemorate the ALP’s landmark achievement in a relevant way. Continue reading
Pull on your camouflage and gather up your arsenal of nasty insults, we’re headed for another ‘class war’.
Wayne Swan has questioned the motives of a few billionaires which, according to shadow treasurer Joe Hockey, can only mean one thing: he’s fanning the flames for a dirty, all-out, class versus class battle. Continue reading
KRudd takes time out to update his diary.
Tuesday 21st February, Washington USA
4am: It’s now been 607 days since I was viciously stabbed in the back by Julia Gillard; if you take into account the time difference between the US and Australia it’s 608. Or about that anyway. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I’ve got more important things to do. Like this G20 meeting in Washington today.
An edited version of this article was published in Feast Magazine, February 2012
If Lewis Carol and Willy Wonka got together and opened a restaurant, it would probably look something like Bogota’s Andrés Carne de Res. The Colombian capital is not known for its tourism industry, much less its culinary scene, but in Andrés Carne de Res, it just might have the most imaginative, over-the-top, downright ridiculous yet utterly memorable eating experience in the world today. It’s certainly the most fun you’ll ever have eating a steak. Continue reading
I don’t want to sound sensationalist, but Today Tonight has never been at the forefront of serious journalism. In fact, it’s fair to say that TT has built its loyal following by scaring its audience into submission with stories like:
“Why your sunscreen is making you sick!”, “How your child’s school bus is a hidden death trap” and “Why your Muslim next-door neighbour is almost certainly a terrorist”. Or, to put it another way, “Why something that’s very unlikely to occur is actually quite likely to happen to YOU”. Continue reading
