ausculture.com

(Santa, apparently is “not in the business of hooking people up with Juliette Lewis,” so that was a waste of time!)

Ausculture.com began as an Australian pop culture blog in January 2004. It was written by the incomparable Jess McGuire, the warmhearted zeitgeist with the Britney Spears obsession and penchant for Red Bulls. Sadly, Jess’s time with Ausculture came to an end when she took up a paid blogging gig at Defamer Australia in April this year, but the Spirit Of Jess lives on here. Webmaster Patrick started work on a community link-posting thingo which got going in August, and Ausculture was reborn.

This month sees the addition of Ausculture Extra. Here, we’ll be poking around inside Australian culture with the consummate skill of a crapulent Christmas partygoer playing Operation. It’ll be good; trust me, I’m a doctor. (See? I have the tweezers to prove it.)

The Ausculture Extra Team

Australia’s a big place. And Australian culture’s a big topic. Not a problem — we’ve got it covered! Patrick’s in Sydney, I’m in Melbourne, and Natalie, who’s joining the team of writers in January, is in Brisbane.

And thanks to the magic of the interweb, you can contribute too, of course. Post a link, leave a comment (now working!) or even draft an article (more details soon).

The Ausculture Philosophy

In a word, tolerance. We take a very dim view of the Pauline Hansons of this world. Firstly, most of us are from families that migrated here fairly recently, so obviously immigrant-bashing is just thinly-veiled racism. Secondly, cultural diversity enriches our society and saves us from a Stepford Wives -like hell.

At Ausculture we are tolerant of the tolerant and intolerant of the intolerant. And to be otherwise would be un-Australian.

Information Overload

The best thing about the internet is also the worst thing — the amount of information. Our psyches aren’t wired for it. Two hours’ surfing can become almost like two hours looking out the window of a speeding train — pleasant enough but really just a nondescript blur.

Ausculture Extra has the bold ambition of pulling the world of Australian culture into focus. As a site with a big train window on the home page, that idea has a sense of synergy about it to us...