These days if we want answers to ques­tions we turn to the inter­net. You can find the answer to almost any ques­tion online. But what is the most asked ‘how?’ ques­tion asked online? What set of instruc­tions do we as a race of peo­ple look to Google for the most? Allow me to spell it out for you. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

If you go to Google and search for some­thing that begins with ‘how to…’ you will be offered the most com­monly searched  ‘how to…’ phrases.

‘How to lose weight fast’ is pop­u­lar and ‘how to tie a tie’ is up there too. But at the top of the list is ‘how to kiss’. I myself remem­ber googling a sim­i­lar thing a few years back, once the girl germ rumours were proved to be noth­ing more than rumours. And with Valentine’s Day sched­uled for this Sun­day it sud­denly seems impor­tant to look at the hows and tos and fros of kissing.

Kiss­ing can­not be sat­is­fac­to­rily achieved by sim­ply run­ning to first base on a base­ball field or by sit­ting up in a tree and spelling out verbs with another per­son. There is no fail-safe plan of attack that can lead to kiss­ing nor ensure that said kiss­ing is enjoy­able for all.

The best thing a per­son can do is think the right things whilst kiss­ing. Kiss­ing is a psy­cho­log­i­cal activ­ity con­trolled 98% by the brain and 2% by excess saliva. So here are some topic sug­ges­tions for think­ing and not think­ing about dur­ing kissing.

GOOD FOR THINKING ABOUT DURING KISSING

1. But­ter­flies
2. Eye­lashes
3. Lips
4. A world with­out cold sores
5. Warm show­ers
6. Freshly-ironed pants
7. Baby horses
8. Foal
9. Sponge cakes
10. Any­thing dap­pled (exlud­ing infec­tious diseases)

NOT GOOD FOR THINKING ABOUT DURING KISSING

1. Wind­mills
2. Jack­ham­mers
3. Jack Nichol­son
4. Gums
5. Bleed­ing gums
6. Heli­copters
7. Stilt walk­ing
8. Eng­land
9. Lick­ing the spoon
10. Cir­cu­lar breathing

Keep read­ing →

It’s an excit­ing time to be liv­ing in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, The World. Last year Mel­bourne was announced as the sec­ond UNESCO City of Lit­er­a­ture, closely beat­ing out Madrid, Tokyo and Chicago for the honour.

This meant that Mel­bourne needed to find an entity to be the cen­tre­piece of the new City of Lit­er­a­ture. After scout­ing around for peo­ple who could build such a cen­tre­piece, the engi­neers that built the Collins Class sub­marines were even­tu­ally over­looked in favour of world-renowned arts man­ager Chrissy Sharp. A shame really because book read­ings in sub­marines are da bomb. Or at least, da torpedo.

Chrissy Sharp, who was fresh from a stint at London’s Sadler’s Wells The­atre, is the kind of author­i­ta­tive inter­na­tional fig­ure who should never be described as being ‘fresh from a stint’. She is not a footballer.

Chrissy hired local pub­lish­ing guru Michael Williams to run the pro­gram, turquoise was cho­sen to be the offi­cial colour of the cen­tre and things were under­way. But there was one thing miss­ing – a name.

The cen­tre was even­tu­ally called the Wheeler Cen­tre (a name that, for me, con­jures up images of axles) after Tony and Mau­reen Wheeler, who founded Lonely Planet in Mel­bourne 30 years ago, and whom are donors to the cen­tre. And no they didn’t name the cen­tre after them­selves. Where do you think we are? Pottersville?

The Wheeler Cen­tre set up shop in the south wing of the State Library of Vic­to­ria and a num­ber of Melbourne’s small lit­er­ary organ­i­sa­tions — such as the Emerg­ing Writ­ers’ Fes­ti­val and Express Media — moved into the cen­tre, where they are free to use the pho­to­copier and cof­fee machine when­ever they want.

Now we’re but days away from the cen­tre offi­cially open­ing with its big kick-off event – A Gala Night of Sto­ry­telling. It will be the first time in Aus­tralian his­tory that the word ‘Gala’ has been used out­side of the Mel­bourne Inter­na­tional Com­edy Festival.

Just two days after the Gala is the first Debut Mon­day – a recur­ring event that sees four new writ­ers read­ing from their books on Mon­day evenings. I will be appear­ing at the debut Debut Mon­day event at 6pm on Feb­ru­ary 15th where I’ll be read­ing from The Great­est Blog­ger in the World. Bob Franklin, Sofie Laguna and Madeleine Hamil­ton will also be there read­ing from their books. It’s a free event, there will be wine on hand and I’m told that all the authors will be read­ing from their books out loud. I know, right!

If you’re in Mel­bourne or you’re going to be in Mel­bourne soon have a look at the Wheeler Cen­tre pro­gram and pop by some­time. I’m sure they’ll be glad to have to. So long as you don’t tell them their state-of-the-art lit­er­ary cen­tre reminds you of axles.

www.wheelercentre.com

A quote on the cover of a book can do won­ders for book sales. The right words will sell the right book to the right per­son. Putting review quotes on book cov­ers can, how­ever, be trou­ble­some. Bob Har­ris wrote about some of the pit­falls of writ­ing book review copy a cou­ple of years ago in the New York Times, men­tion­ing words such as ‘lyri­cal’, ‘poignant’ and ‘craft’ as being overused and predictable.

And of course the old favourite — as used here on poor Mary O’Sullivan’s novel — appears on a reg­u­lar basis.

Here are a few of my favourite tes­ti­mo­ni­als that pop up all the time on book cov­ers. I’ve included a few words on each to help with that unen­vi­able task of match­ing up the right book cover quote with the right book.

‘Unput­down­able.’
Only use on the book’s cover if the movie adap­ta­tion is unDVDpausable.

‘A tri­umph.‘
Best used for musi­cals and muf­fin recipe books.

‘Enthralling.‘
Only to be used on the cov­ers of books con­cern­ing vam­pires. It’s a thrall thing.

‘The must-read book of the sum­mer.‘
This is for books that fea­ture beaches and/or mur­ders. Use on polit­i­cal mem­oirs at your own risk.

‘Unsto­pread­able.’
Offi­cially retired from book­selling jar­gon these days, but was com­monly heard in book­shops until ‘unput­down­able’ was discovered.

‘Com­pelling’, ‘aston­ish­ing’, ‘astound­ing’, ‘amaz­ing’, ‘thrilling’, ‘shock­ing’ or ‘dis­turb­ing’.
Best used on books that are so good that the reader needs to be warned not to start read­ing with malaise.

‘A work of genius.’
Use spar­ingly. It’s a big call.

‘A work of evil genius.’
Good for auto­bi­ogra­phies of killers, mad men and any­one con­victed of any­thing really.

‘Hilar­i­ous.‘
For use on EVERY SINGLE MEMOIR EVER WRITTEN BY A COMEDIAN.

‘A sen­sa­tion.’
Again, only for musicals.

‘Epic.’
This is a good one for his­tor­i­cal fic­tion as things in the past usu­ally came in big­ger for­mats, from mobile phones to rep­tiles. Ergo, epic.

‘Roll up for the Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour.’
This is a Bea­t­les lyric. Do not try to pass it off as some­one else’s quote. Unless you’re quot­ing Paul McCartney.

‘Inspi­ra­tional.‘
For rags to riches biogra­phies, sports biogra­phies and any biog­ra­phy of Nel­son Mandela.

‘This is the best book I’ve read that com­bines aliens, the fall of the Ottoman empire and the “secret life” of Peanuts’ cre­ator Charles M. Schultz.’
Spelling out the plot of a book in the cover quote isn’t always the best idea.

‘A fresh new voice in con­tem­po­rary fic­tion.‘
Works best when fol­lowed with a com­par­i­son to another author. For eg. ‘A fresh new voice in con­tem­po­rary fic­tion. A cross between Von­negut and Kerouac.’

‘Unskim­read­able’.
This quote has never been used on a book before. It’s yours if you want it.

The bus stop seat that gets you closer to a real estate agent than you ever thought you’d have to get. No mat­ter where you sit on this seat, the real estate agent’s eyes fol­low you, end­lessly peer­ing over your shoul­der as you check your phone, wal­let, fin­ger­nails. This is the per­fect seat to give up to an elderly per­son, lest you get any of that ‘prop­erty smarm’ stuck to your back.

Christ­mas means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. For some it means cel­e­brat­ing love and peace. For oth­ers it means food and wine. But for me, Christ­mas means Batman.

From Bat­man #285: The Mys­tery of Christ­mas Lost.

Every year as Christ­mas gets closer I start see­ing the Dark Knight every­where; as if I’m wear­ing con­tact lenses with the bat sig­nal printed on. Obvi­ously this is founded on a child­hood of Christ­mases that all fea­tured Bat­man in some way or another – from play­ing with Bat­man action fig­ures received from Santa to draw­ing pic­tures of Bat­man with Der­wents received from Santa. But Bat­man and Christ­mas have a much deeper con­nec­tion than just my own (prob­a­bly com­mon) Bat­mana­nia under the Christ­mas tree. Christ­mas, as it turns out, is a big part of the Bat­man­verse and the comics­verse too.

Both Mar­vel and D.C.  have a long his­tory of putting out Christ­mas comics. Super­man was at the North Pole sav­ing Santa from Nazis back in the 1940s. D.C. has put out var­i­ous Christ­mas With the Super-Heroes col­lec­tions over the years. (That’s the cover of a 1974 edi­tion above). And here’s twelve of the best D.C. hol­i­day comics accord­ing to Comics Alliance.

Speak­ing of Christ­mas comics my favourite one of late is It’s Begin­ning to Look a Lot Like Zom­bies – an illus­trated col­lec­tion of Christ­mas car­ols told from a zombie’s point of view. It’s the lat­est in the trend of mix­ing zom­bies with well-known cul­tural cor­ner­stones. But that’s a dis­trac­tion from our Caped Christ­masader conversation.

It’s not only the Bat­man comics that are inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the fes­tive sea­son. The sec­ond Tim Bur­ton Bat­man movie, Bat­man Returns, is set in Gotham City dur­ing Christ­mas. And one of my favourite episodes of Bat­man: The Ani­mated Series was ‘Christ­mas With The Joker’. I rec­om­mend watch­ing the whole episode below.

For me Christ­mas con­tin­ues to the Bat time of the year. I already know that this year there will be Bat­man presents, chat­ter about Heath Ledger dur­ing Christ­mas lunch and quite pos­si­bly The Bat­man Board Game will get a play in the evening.

I sup­pose any pop­u­lar cul­tural icon that has lasted for so many years is bound to make a big appear­ance dur­ing the gift-giving sea­son. And when you walk through shop­ping cen­tres and see lit­tle chil­dren decked out in full Bat­man cos­tumes, hold­ing Mummy’s hand as she does her last-minute Christ­mas shop­ping, it’s evi­dent that Bat­man is going to be a yule­tide fix­ture for many years to come.