Diary

Wednesday, 22nd April 2009

Last time I spoke in Sydney, close to 600 university students turned out, and I was so startled by that delicious fact (take that, haters), and their obvious goodwill, that I forgot most of what I had planned to say about sex, politics and religion.

There is also a set of poignant notes on ‘surname extinction’ and the queer fact that most Koreans are called Kim, Lee, or Park; alongside a report from the US Department of Agriculture (which I found linked from liberal ‘it’ blogger Ezra Klein’s site) purporting to show that a reduction in the price of fruit and vegetables would not necessarily increase consumption among poorer consumers. Also, a reminder that my iPhone auto-corrects any typo, made while typing the term ‘typo’. Those are the standouts. There is also much more hairy stuff, such as the notes on Joyce Carol Oates on Flannery O’Connor on transubstantiation and mystery that I will show to a retired friend in Sydney (a former High Court judge), a man I have been trying (for nine years) to convert to Catholicism (he has, in turn, always wanted me to become a gay rights activist), and the reference sheet I keep of Greek and Latin rhetorical devices. This lists the tools associated with repetition, such as epizeuxis (repetition of a single word — see Hamlet), anadiplosis (repetition of the last clause of the preceding sentence — see ‘idée fixe’), and diacope (which means uninterrupted, or near uninterrupted, repetition of a word or phrase — see ‘typo’).