Dominic Knight

I am a good reader. I know what lots of long words mean. Words that you wouldn’t necessarily expect me to know, I do, in fact, know. And I can read pretty quickly, too. Because, as I mentioned, I am a good reader.

At one point in my life, it would have been extremely important to me that you knew what an excellent reader I was. I was reminded of this last week, when I attended the final of the NSW Premier’s Spelling Bee and ran into Barbara Ryan, one of my old kindergarten teachers from North Sydney Demonstration School who now teaches at St Ives North.

After we figured out the connection, she recounted a story that has had me laughing and wincing ever since. Apparently when I arrived at kindy, she gave me a standard-issue reader, and asked me whether I read books.

My reply was “I don’t read books, I read encyclopaedias.” Continue Reading →

Dating is hell, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. If you don’t believe me, remember Sex & The City, a warts-and-all portrait of the relentless New York dating scene that seemed to me exactly like the deepest pit of Hades, only with better footwear. I assume Manolo also produces a cloven-hoof range for the afterlife.

I’ve never been able to understand those serial daters who flit from romance to romance like bumblebees buzzing from petal to petal, spreading STIs in lieu of pollen. It’s hard enough trying to find someone who’s single, tolerably nice and over their last failed relationship/s, let alone facing the near-impossible challenge of trying to convince them that their lives would be improved with you in it. Continue Reading →

The American government knows absolutely everything about you. Let’s just all conclude this now, shall we, instead of letting that harrowing realisation dawn on us gradually, with every fresh document leaked by Edward Snowden? It’ll save us all time if we just imagine that everything which passes through our in and outboxes is BCCed barack@whitehouse.gov.

I assume this post is getting scooped up by some kind of NSA auto-web-searching drone, by the way, so – hello, spooks! I’m extremely harmless. But you’ve probably already concluded that. Continue Reading →

You know that famous MC Escher engravings of staircases that wend up and up and then turn downwards and then winds around and then somehow, perplexingly, ends up exactly where they started?

Well, if you made those stairs ramps, surrounded them with a branch of every bland chain store you’ve bypassed while wandering through other malls (I’m looking at you, but not kikki.K and Dust. And The Reject Shop, couldn’t you have at least tried?) and filled the hole in the middle with a strange sculpture of a wireframe globe atop a huge multi-tiered wedding cake, you would have the exact architectural plan for the Macquarie Centre. Continue Reading →

Why do we never do the things we know we’re supposed to do?

We all know we shouldn’t eat food that’s high in fat and sugar, but we still regularly shovel deep fried rubbish down our gullets, and junk food is so popular that nowadays lots of trendy restaurants and pubs do an upmarket version where suckers pay upwards of fifteen bucks for a hot dog.

We all know we shouldn’t smoke, but clustered around the entrance of just about every office building in every Australian CBD you can see people puffing away, spending a fortune on contracting cancer.

And we all know we shouldn’t drink, but visit any pub on a Friday or Saturday night, and you’ll see that this message hasn’t exactly sunk in either. Continue Reading →

Nothing makes me feel like more of an idiot than a conversation with a sommelier. In my work I sometimes get to chat with astronomers, and even when they talk about things like dark matter and the expanding universe, I feel more in my element than when someone is patronisingly guiding me through a wine list.

You’ve no doubt spoken to one if you’ve ever visited a restaurant that’s either genuinely fancy or has tickets on itself – sommeliers are those waiters who’ve done some kind of TAFE course in wine who turn up to your table and make you feel inadequate.

Their job has no English word – the wine-snob industry prefers just to use the French term, which I would argue speaks volumes about their profession. Continue Reading →

Everyone who plays or follows competitive sport, on any level, needs to take a step back. Take a deep breath. Every single one of you. Because you’ve taken things too far. In fact, you’re ruining it.

Sport has jumped the shark. And players have vaulted further over it than any human rightfully should, fuelled by peptides, human growth hormone and an approach that says that you’re a mug if you don’t do anything that’s not expressly prohibited by the rules, no matter how unethical it may be.

In an attempt to get an edge, clubs have been re-enacting the 1980s movie Weird Science, giving their players “supplements”, and if not breaking the rules, then certainly flirting with danger – much as the two geeks do in Weird Science. Continue Reading →

A confession: I’m one of those people who frowns when they see bad parenting. Or at least what I consider bad parenting, from my relatively ignorant perspective of not being a parent at all.

And I’ll go even further than frowning – at times, I’ve even been known to tsk.

Whenever I’m in a shop and I see a child throwing a tantrum in what seems a cynical strategy to get the latest toy, I will shake my head, with what I hope, but cannot guarantee, is sufficient subtlety that the exasperated parent won’t notice my self-righteous disapproval, and think to myself how much firmer I’d be in the same situation.

The child might cry, or beat the linoleum floor with its fists, or even say “I hate you, daddy,” but I would remain as unmoving as one of Clive Palmer’s imitation dinosaurs.

Continue Reading →

Yesterday, I got home after a long day at work and read a book in the bath. It was Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, which turned out to be fairly harrowing, dealing as it does with the harrowing impact of the bombing of Dresden in World War II. But then again, it has plunger-shaped aliens from the planet Tralfamadore in it, so that’s something.

It was a wonderful read, and kept me in the water long after my skin had turned wrinkly. And it occurred to me that there’s simply no way to enjoy the great pleasure of bath-reading with a tablet, unless you’re rich enough to have a few dozen of them on hand. It’s best done with a paperback, one that you don’t mind getting slightly damp just in case you can’t quite manage to keep one hand dry. (Keep a towel within reach is my tip.) Continue Reading →

My family and friends divide neatly into the dog-mad and the dog-skeptical. I have always been very much in the latter camp, considering hounds rather like permanently unruly children – they’re well-meaning and friendly, but they simply can’t control themselves.

They jump all over me, they run around indoors and frequently knock things over, and they drool everywhere. Especially, it seems, on my pants.

Continue Reading →