Anzac Day 2017.

The cost.

The Devil's Buttocks: the worst hotel art in the world. WARNING: photographs follow.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you ‘it could be worse’, because sometimes it can’t be. Or, if it could, it is already so bad that degrees of badness are meaningless: think of the cold war when a global nuclear arsenal capable of vaporising the world 100 times was really no worse then once capable of vaporising it once.

         So, sometimes it couldn’t be worse. I know, because currently I’m staring at a case in point. Hotel art so bad it rendered me sleepless and shuddering.

        

The Devil's Buttocks.

Why is it that hoteliers so often take a comfortable and functional apartment and render it almost uninhabitable by adding vomitus objects to the wall. It happens everywhere. Bedrooms discomforted by some black brooding vision, kitchenettes and lounge rooms scourged by crude geometric swipes or exuberant feacal festivals of muck.

Post Truth Trash: the best body balm in the world and other lies.

Every body needs a little care. Even the aging, much abused but still serviceable body of a grafting criminal barrister. I may be growing cranky and cynical with age but I am not totally without optimism. Even I want and hope to have aches soothed, pains reduced and broken bits fixed. So it was with some excitement that I viewed the array of promising personal items in my hotel room during my latest work trip.

Black tubes, longer than most, was an encouraging sign.

Stylish black tubes, longer than most, was an encouraging first sign. According to the blurb printed in white along their length, this collection of body products was officially amazing. Today I tried them all. This morning after my first jolt of coffee, instead of reading and re-reading briefs, I used those hopefully remarkable fluids and lotions. They promised to make me feel good and absolutely unstoppable in court and elsewhere. Today I would shine, which is good, because lately I’ve emitted nothing but a dull glow. The Urban Skincare Co’s range of body products would change that. How did it go? Read on.

The Nude Selfie Movement: from toss shot to selfie stick and beyond.

Thirty-two years ago I tossed a camera into the air, smiled at the sky then heard the device smash to smithereens at my feet. An inauspicious beginning for the photographic technique that delights the world today. Of course, I didn’t give up at one smashed camera, or two or three. I kept trying till I perfected the toss-shot then went on to invent the selfie proper: it turns out that any inanimate object or slow moving animal can be used to create selfies. Your camera, rested on a rock, wedged in a tree branch or taped to a koala, will give you a basic selfie. This technique was a triumph of invention. Then came the stick.

Choose a stick of appropriate weight and length.