Boys schmoyz

I'm not sure if I have blogged about it before or not but I've certainly talked to many of you before about how hard it can be to make male friends. It's stupid, of course, but it's true. There are a handful of guys I don't know that well but would rather like to hang out with but with whom I would never suggest getting a drink for all the obvious and stupid reasons...

Those reasons being, of course, that if you ask a not-quite-a-friend guy to hang out it sounds a looot more like a date than if you're hanging out with a female friends. The problems are obvious - if you're both single and of mildly comporable levels of attractivenesss the chances are high that you'll end up sleeping together and fucking it up. If you're not both single then probably one of you will end up fancying the other anyway and you'll never quite sort it out. Prob-lems.

But tonight I met up with a certain (blog-reading, er so hi) guy I'vemet a handful of times and got on well with, and it was so very nice just to have a chat and a drink or four and chat about fuck all and music. I tend to think of myself as past the stage of making new friends - I love the ones I have and don't see them as often as I would like - but nobody should ever be that. The enjoyment of finding out about someone entirely shiny and new cannot be underestimated. Just as the availability of a new drinking partner should never be ignored.

I'm so inpired I swear I might actually go on a man-befriending binge. Maybe. Baby steps and all that.

Since you asked...

Everyone wants advice. I don't mean from me (because what sort of disturbed mind would do such a thing?) but generally speaking.

Most of us, I think, would like somebody to tell us what we should do every so often, to point us in the right direction or even to tell us what we want to hear. I'm a terrible one for it because I just don't trust my own reasoning (and with good cause, I assure you). When I have a problem I can't stop talking about it - friends learn to avoid me and run screaming into the night when I get a certain questioning glint in my eye. I beg you not to pity me too much when I confess that I once sent in a question to the (oh Christ, wait for it) Belle and Sebastian Q&A website while at an all time time low over a certain problem last year and my inability to decide what to do(incidently the truly delicious and sweet Stevie replied to my post and a very intellligent answer it was too - I took his advice).

For these reasons I love reading advice columns but I find that I hate most of the advice. It's predictable, it's judgy-judgy and it's dull. Enter Cary Tennis, Salon blogger, and the advice-giver I wish I had in my life. How can you not like a man who opens his reply to a woman who fears she has become an alcoholic like this:

"Thank you for your concise and beautifully detailed letter. I sense that it took some courage and focus to put things so clearly. Your letter is a reminder why many people who do not particularly care for my own writing style read the column anyway: They read it for the letters..."

I love Cary because he doesn't do the obvious. But he also doesn't do controversial for controversy's sake. I love him because he frequently rambles, goes off on a tangent or admits that he's cut out huge chunks of his "mostly boring" reply. I love him because he seems genuinely interested in helping the people who write into him - there's no mugging for the cameras, if you know what I mean. He's like the friend you invite to the pub when you're thinking about dumping your partner, or the first person you call when you've just been dumped. I love him because he can say something like this...

"I am not even remotely qualified to diagnose people psychologically. But I will say that it crossed my mind that you might be one of the estimated 4 percent of Americans who are sociopaths..."

... and still come off as sweetly concerned and caring. I love him because reading his column - the letters and his answers - never fail to make me feel better about my own lot, to help me appreciate what I do (and don't) have, and to satisfyingly stick my nose into the business of strangers.

All of the above is, of course, why you should all be reading him too...

Token Smokin' Hottie: Hugh Laurie? Um, really?

Oh Hugh. I loved you when I watched Blackadder for the first time and marvelled at its brilliance. Your comic timing. Your brilliant turn in season three as the Prince. That time you couldn't work out how to put on your pants. That was the beginning.

Our love only grew stronger when I belatedly stumbled onto A Bit of Fry and Laurie and, oh, how I wished I could invite you and Stephen Fry over for a dinner party.

By the time I got around to watching you in the TV adapations of PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories I was already completely gone. Even today I can't read the books without imaging your blank, foolish face in the starring role. It was love - asexual and borne of admiration, not desire for your bandy legs and floppy hair but, still.

And yet I never fancied you, nor could have imagined fancying you, until House came along. Who knew a crumpled suit, designer stubble and abrasive personality could look sooo good?

I'd love to hate this incredibly popular, occassionally smug, show but I simply cannot. I am charmed - by the show, by the concept but, er, mostly by you. I find myself wondering if your eyes have always been that blue and I've never noticed, whether you've always had a certain crinkly hot charm or if it's come to you late in life and exactly what you would look like if I could just rip off that... ahem, but I digress.

Don't be a stranger, Hugh. Come over, bring wine, we can make fun of Darling and help you out of that artfully rumpled suit...

If you have an enemy, picture him asleep...

If you have an enemy, picture him asleep.
Notice his shoes at the foot of the bed,
how helplessly they gape there.
Some mornings he needs three cups of coffee

to wake up for work,
and there are evenings when he drinks alone,
reading the paper down to the want ads,
the arrival times of ships at the docks.

Think of him choosing a tie,
dialling wrong numbers,
finding holes in his socks. Chances are
his emptiness equals yours

When you thoughtlessly hurry a cashier
for change, or frown to yourself
in rush hour traffic and the drivers behind you

begin to remind you
the light has turned green.

(John Skoyles)

Go on Howard, you know you want to cry...

I don't even know what to say. I'm fucking speechless. I have abused and criticised the Australian public as a bunch of ignorant cashed up bogans who wouldn't know a social justice policy if they gave birth to it and I was... well, not entirely right. Apparently. Because the people have spoken and they have made the right decision. For a change. I know the disappointment will come, oh God it will, but right now I am motherflipping ecstatic.

Oh please, please, please just give me this one.

I can't remember being so nervous about an election before. I can barley contain myself. I shall be out on the town on election night and I may never return if the Libs get back in - it just doesn't seem worth it, does it? If there any swinging voters out there who are into the economy and shite then read Dan for a very well put snapshot, otherwise read the paper, watch the news , think abot what issues actually matter to you and make an informed bloody opinion (read: vote Labor or Greens). Come on, Australia, please, please, please don't let me down, I don't think I can take it...

Flip you, fliphead.

Who the flip has stolen my flipping wheelie bin? Dicksnap come forward and I will forgive you. Hide and I will bury you.

Then I went out and robbed an old lady

Yesterday I stood at my fridge, facing a dilemma, and I thought to myself ‘what would a drug addict do’?

Now, 9 times out of 10 this is NOT the way to solve a problem, (kids – just say no etc.) but this time it happened to be just the thing. It was, in fact, sheer brilliance on my part.

You see I had, well, how do I put this? I had accidentally taken some drugs. About an hour and a half before I was due at work.

Put the phone down, Mum, I assure you that when I say I had accidentally taken ‘some drugs’ I mean I had accidentally taken a valium after forgetting I had (for reasons which require a long and dull explanation) stored them in an old thyroxine bottle. It was the morning and I had come to the fridge, only half awake, to take my daily dose of thyroxine. Having moronically put the valium-filled thyroxine bottle in the fridge along with the genuine thyroxine-filled specimens I grabbed the wrong bottle, chomped the wrong pill and realised, as the little beggar, slid down my throat, just what I had done.

Again: due in work in 90 minutes, give or take.

Generally speaking valium does not, tragically, knock me out but it does induce sleepiness and, sometimes, mild silliness. Not ideal while you’re still swimming (read: sinking) in a new job and even less ideal when you’re already knackered from having a puny six hours sleep the night before… and the night before that.

But I’d taken this stupid tablet and no way was I putting my fist down my throat to bring it up again, even if I thought it would work. Dilemma.

And that’s when the moment of genius struck, perhaps even as I gazed at the picture of Pete Doherty affixed to my fridge door - ‘what would a drug addict do?’. It was so obvious: Take. More. Drugs.

It’s all about physics really. For every action there must be an equal or opposite reaction. Or maybe it’s a bit more like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer is a truckie and, having accidentally takes too many stay-awake pills, has to dope himself up with sleeping tablets, then more of the other and so on with mildly hilarious consequence. Isaac Newton or Matt Groening – they were both well on the money.

Two No-Doze and one double-shot mocha from the hottie still working it at Tarts later and I was perky as a lamb. Problem solvered.

And, my friends, I think we can all learn a valuable lesson from this example of the triumph of counter-intuitive thinking . That sometimes what seems to be the right thing to do isn’t while, at other times, what seems like the wrong thing can be exactly what you need to do.

The bitch is, of course, that nobody tells you which is which before you do it. Because nobody else knows either.

So, for instance, because I spend way too much money on books you might think that the delicious new purchase sitting on my coffee table should be classified as ‘a mistake’. You might even call me a fool for buying it hours after I checked my bank balance and vowed to change my ways.But you’d be wrong, wrong, wrong. Because, again, this is a case where the course of action that seems completely mental is in fact completely right-on.

How, you ask?

Well it’s complicated and, honestly, I’d love to explain it to you in detail but I’m afraid I’ve just helped myself to the pills in the fridge and I…zzzzz….

For my next 'prank' I'm going to run Ms Kelly down in my hatchback... hi-larious

A chaser style prank.

That was how outgoing Liberal MP Jackie Kelly described the distribution of fake election flyers claiming to be from a (non existent) Islamic group and suggesting the Labor Government was sympathetic to Islamic terrorism.

The pamphlet said Labor wanted forgiveness for "Muslim brothers who have been unjustly sentenced to death for the Bali bombings" and supported building a mosque in the area.

“I think its intent is to be a send-up but obviously it hasn't worked," Ms Kelly said on ABC radio "I think if you read it you'd be laughing. Most people who have read it have said 'That's a Chaser-style of prank'."

You know what else is a chaser style prank? Pumping out lies in a desperate attempt to stop what polls suggest will be a landslide victory against your party days before the election is held. Tearing up votes and distributing fake ‘how to vote’ cards for other parties. Hell, I tend to think shooting people who come to the polls to vote for the other party is pretty hilarious but call me crazy if you like.

Nobody can think this is a joke when we’re two days out from a flipping federal election and the only joke is the party involved.

When I get back we can talk about Picard, if you like

Now one or two of you may know this already but I can, just every so often, be a bit of a dork.

And by that I mean I'm a huge dork, obviously. I read too many books, I watch too much Star Trek, I like to talk about both books and Star Trek in public and, yes, I am sometimes partial to a good computer game. I am also kind of a music dork, or at least I have been in the past (read: don't expect me to keep up with the music the kids are listening to today).

So please don't judge me when I say that I gave a small squee of excitment today when I realised I am on the same facebook group (yeah, I know, shut up - it's a longish story) as John Moore, of The Jesus and Mary Chain (and, yeah sure, other stuff) fame. God I'm lame but, still.

Now, somebody was giving me lip in the comments to a previous post about my penchant for this moody little group but, je-sus, when they were good they were very good. I remember the first time I heard Psychocandy and swooned and Munki is one of those records that still gets a good work out. And those two albums were produced more than Ten Years Apart, people. I'm just saying. Do yourself a favour and pick one of them up - I'm off to stalk Mr Moore...

Rules to live by...

"I'm going to marry someone over 30 and fuck everyone under 25."

(Anonymous friend)

Habit.... habit? Oh, wait, oh I see what she did there...

Apparently it takes two weeks to break a habit. I’m not really sure how anybody comes up with these slightly random and yet suspiciously exact figures but there you go.

It is an attractive idea, somehow, to think about earmarking two weeks to eliminate some of my less appealing qualities. I could, in theory, be free of any bad habit I choose, if only I can do without it for two weeks. And what couldn’t I do without for two weeks? Not much, that comes to mind. Jesus if I can live without hot water for five days, as I’ve just done, I feel I can get through anything.

So brilliant, give me two weeks and I’ll be Kate 2.0: the same old Kate but better. I like it. The only question is what I should give up? The diet coke? The booze? Bulk book buying when I already have a huge ‘to read’ pile on the coffee table? Using my ipod as a sleep aid and ruining my hearing in the process? Perhaps the handful of other very bad habits I take great pains to conceal and have no intention of revealing now? Hmmm.

I was thinking about this last night, as I divided my time between a glass of wine and a can of coke, finalising my amazon.com order as I did it. There are many not-so-great-for-me things I do that I could, albeit with some pain, give up for two weeks. It wouldn’t be fun and I would miss doing them and maybe go a little bit mad but I’m sure I could make it through a fortnight.

But what about after that? If, as I’m told, the habit will be officially broken does that mean I’ll no longer have the desire for these things? Or merely that I will have broken my natural tendency to indulge in them but will have to continue to stop myself from slipping back into my bad old ways? The latter I fear and it sounds... shit. In fact even the first option sounds shite.

The catch to this whole two-weeks thing is that, although I have many bad habits and many things I wish I didn’t do… I don’t necessarily want to eliminate them. It’s like being a flipping alcoholic I suppose – you have to want to change. A cold can of diet coke may bring me brain tumours and tooth erosion but it also brings me a great deal of pleasure. Same for the booze. The books thing may drive me to the brink of ruin but it also surrounds me with piles of lovely books and makes me feel rather happy. And there are worse things to spend your money on than obscure Hungarian novels and Saudi Arabian chick-lit.

The other habits I didn’t quite mention are probably mildly self destructive but they are also part of who I am. What would I be like if I didn’t spend too much time on the internet, overanalyse things to death and obsess over things I shouldn’t? How would I cheer myself up if not with a new book and a bottle of wine? What other bad habits would I have to develop to fill the void? And, then, how many weeks would I have to devote to eliminating those bad habits? That road leads to ruin, I say, best to quit (or not) while you're ahead and try to conceal your many repugnant habits from those around you. By not blogging about them, ideally.

Is there any problem music cannot solve?

1. Problem: My boss hates me, probably because he's realised I have no idea what I'm doing.

Solution: Listen to Belle and Sebastian's Boy with the Arab Strap as soon as you are out of the building. Possibly do a little dance in the car park.

2. Problem: Neighbours anger me for no good reason, mostly because they have terrible taste in music and tend to bang their door late at night a lot.

Solution: Put The Jesus Mary Chain's What Do You Want if You Don't Want Love? on repeat as loud as the incredibly costly stereo will go and open the balcony doors.

3. Problem: Trying to resist the temptation to blog about work, lest you cry like a bitch.

Solution: Blog about music instead. While also listening to music. Brilliant.

And send George Dubya in to massage my corns while you're at it...

Thanks to the two years of my life I wasted studying psychology before I decided that an English degree was where the big bucks are I know that one scientific study doesn’t really prove anything. Really, I do. And yet I want to believe that a new study published in US journal Nature Neuroscience proves what those of us who hang to the left have always suspected: little-l liberals have better brains than conservatives. Oh, come on – you know it Just. Makes. Sense.

This study, which apparently has been whipping up a bit of a storm in the US, sat participants in front of a computer screen and asked them to push a key every time they saw the letter M or (for half of them) the letter W on the screen. They would see a lot of the Ms or Ws in a row, thus obliging them to push the button repeatedly until they saw another letter flash up (which would be an “M” if they were supposed to be pushing the button for Ws and would be a W if they were supposed to be pushing the button for Ms) and had to stop themselves from pushing the button.

The results of the experiment, which asked participants to identify themselves as either conservative or liberal voters, found conservatives made statistically significantly more mistakes than liberals, as in about 10 per cent more. The experiment concluded that “a more conservative orientation is related to greater persistence in a habitual response pattern, despite signals that this response pattern should change.”

.

And so, of course, a lot of inferences have been drawn about this in the media. Like that liberals are less stuck in their ways than conservatives and more mentally flexible. Like that conservatives’ brains are weaker when it comes to thinking about new ideas. Like that people who like people and vote left-of-centre are awesome and people who hate everyone except their sister-wife and/or their pile of cash are shite. Like maybe the people behind the test are a bunch of commies. The media has got it a bit wrong, of course, as we so sadly often do. The experiment was just a stepping stone to future research, really, and open to all the criticisms that any experiment is – small sample size, external factors interfering etc. etc.

.

But screw scientific accountability. I, for one, am taking a punt and saying we will look back on this experiment in ten years time as groundbreakingly significant. “Of course,” we shall say, “how could we ever have been so cynical about the results? Left-Wingers are smarter than Right-Wingers and we should have known it all along.” Four legs good, two legs bad etc. Then we will ring the bell for our Howard-voting butler and ask him to remind the Bush-loving cook that if she burns the dinner again you’ll throw it in her stupid, ignorant face.

And what about those pesky single mothers, eh?

You know what is a really good way to help drug addicts back into society? Deny them access to social welfare. Sounds crazy but it's totally true and I for one am completely behind John Howard's plan to cut welfare payments to criminals convicted of "hard-drug related offences".

“We are the zero-tolerance coalition when it comes to drugs,” Mr Howard said.
“It’s not right that people should have control of taxpayer money when they have been convicted of such offences.”

I mean what's all this crap about 'rehabilitation' anyway? When has cutting already vulnerable people off from a financial lifeline and leaving them to find thheir own means of making money not been a good idea? Never that's when. You've just got my vote, Johnny you complete knobsack.

I need 200 pages of E.M Forster... stat

Synchronicity, when it happens, is a funny old thing. It gives you the impression, just for a moment, that Things Matter and that there is some order to what happens and some reason behind why they happen. All that is a cruddy illusion, of course and Julian Barnes had it right when he said books are where things happen and they tell you why and life is where things just happen. I know this and, yet, because I'm as much a victim of this kind of slushy thinking as anyone else, I've spent the morning thinking about love and relationships and all those things to which there are never any proper answers.

It all started with the not-so-big coincidence of having two conversations about the same thing.

Yesterday I was talking with a certain friend about the fear of having a long, long term relationship break down and being left with nothing to show for it. What is not terrifying about such a scenario? Relationships (between partners, I mean, not friends or family or what have you) are such messy and uncertain propositions that it's ridiculous how much importance we allow them to have in our lives. We want insurance that if we devote twenty years of our lives to someone we're not going to fall out of love with them or visa versa and, of course, we can't have it. The old Greek (I think) idea of men and women being two halves of the same people looking for each other is bunk. Love or marriage doesn't make two people into one any more than mixing coke and lemonade in one glass makes a delicious cocktail.

.

The second conversation came this morning when I was talking with another friend whose very long term relationship has just fallen apart in a very horrible way, leaving him quite miserable. This friend told me, quite bluntly, that I should simply never fall in love and certainly never get married. Look at it this way, he said, if you're a smoker you have a certain risk of dying of the habit. If you fall in love your chances of having it all end in tears with one of you craving oblivion is, statistically, much higher. But, while smokers are prevented from indulging in their habit in enclosed areas and reminded of the dangers they face ever time they pick up a packet of cigarettes, nobody worries about the health risks of falling in love - nobody is out there slapping warning stickers on foreheads bearing the warning 'Falling in Love Could End in Unbearable Heartbreak' and a grisly picture of a crying girl with red, puffy eyes.

.

Having two independent conversations within 24 hours about the likelihood of the boy-meets-girl scenario ending with one of you fucking up the other's life made me a little bit uneasy. I didn't know what to think. Was the world conspiring to tell me my future lay in a rambling Parisian house with twenty cats, rattling around in a nightdress that smells like cat piss? Was all this doom and gloomy supposed to help me appreciate what I have? Telling me to end it all now? Pointing out that there are worse things than dreading going to work? The world was telling me nothing, obviously, because there's nobody pulling the strings up there, in fact there aren't even any fucking strings.

.

But still, as I say, uneasiness settled in. I see other people's relationships turn to sludge - and there are plenty of them doing just that - and I wonder what the whole point of it is and why we haven't worked out a better system of making ourselves miserable. Then I listen to the inane chatter of the possibly insane man who occasionally sleeps on the street outside my apartment and I wonder what the alternative is.

.

Then I remember it's Sunday and too early for this shit, and also that I should probably be far too young to be this cynical. Give me twenty years and I'll say it all again. For now I shall say fuck it, take Barnes' advice and read a book when I want answers - has anybody seen my copy of Maurice?

NOTE: Apologies for the big chunks of text. Blogger hates me and has screwed me over on the paragraph breaks. Apparently the computer program is a big fat softie and disapproves of my cynicism... what a sap.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Michael Vartan

Oh Michael Vartan I don't know how you do it. I don't mean how you turn my knees into little puddles because that's obvious: the sickeningly chiseled jaw, twinkly eyes, artfully scruffy stubble and mouth constantly on the verge of a smile pretty much speak for themselves.

I mean how have you convinced me that you're incredibly smart, funny and probably very good at fixing the sink or something when I can't think of a single genuinely great movie or TV show I've seen you in. I never watched Alias, where apparently you became a sex symbol and, although I have watched and enjoyed both Never Been Kissed and Rogue pardon me if I don't think you'll be necessarily highlighting those two items on your CV. Or maybe you will because what are the alternatives? Those episodes of Ally McBeal you'd rather forget? To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything? The Next Best Thing? Oh really?

And yet you manage to come off as terribly urbane and witty, even while delivering shiteful B-grade line after shiteful B-grade line. Is it because you wear suits a lot? Because you speak French? Because you managed to convince me you actually found Drew Barrymore attractive? Maybe it's just because you're really, really hot and I'm really, really superficial. Hard to say.

Hey... you

I had a weird experience at work today.

Two weeks into my job I still barely know anybody outside my little section of the office or beyond my former Community colleagues because I spent most of my time either at my desk or downstairs buying another diet coke. You're shocked, I'm sure.

So today I was surprised to find somebody lingering at my desk to say hi. I looked up.

"Hey Kate," he said. "How're you going?" He had a lovely smile, he seemed very personable and he obviously recognised me.

"H-ey." I said.

I had no idea who he was. Oh I recognised his face and he seemed to gosh darned sweet that I wanted to know him but... I could not remember his name. Nor when I had been introduced to him or what we might have chatted about, if anything. Shiiiit.

We talked for a couple of minutes, by which I mean he asked me nice, friendly questions about how I was going in my first couple of weeks, and I tried to think up responses and questions that wouldn't display my ignorance of, um, who he was.

The question is, what is my next move? Continue to say hi and engage in banter until inspiration strikes? Admit my ignorance and hope we can have a bit of a laugh about it? Um, option C? Is this that alcohol-induced memory loss I hear so much about or am I just a careless bint who doesn't pay attention when she should? No, wait, don't answer that... what's your name again?

Quotable Quotes: Shallow Grave

"So tell me, Cameron, just tell me because I'd like to know, what on earth could make you think that we would want to share a flat like this with someone like you? I mean, my first impression, and they're rarely wrong, is that you have none of the qualities that we normally seek in a prospective flatmate. I'm talking here about things like presence, charisma, style and charm, and I don't think we're asking too much, I don't think we're being unreasonable. Take David here, for instance: a chartered accountant he may be, but at least he tries hard. The point is I don't think you're trying." (Shallow Grave)

Calm down, I've already dumped the hooker in the alley...

It's a tough thing "success" - it has its pros and its cons.

I use the quotation marks because I'm talking about this blog... for which the word 'success' sounds a bit wanky. And by a bit I mean a lot. I wouldn't go so far as to call it 'successful' because what does that mean, but I would say it is a lot of fun. I started it back some time ago as a bit of a writing exercise, basically to encourage me back into writing for pleasure. On that score it has been a big success - I may write complete tosh but it does bring me pleasure.

The most surprising thing about the whole blog phenomenon is that people read it. I'm a voracious blog reader myself - I love reading strangers' and friends blogs, sifting through their lives and looking for clues as to what is going on in their lives. I'm nosy, basically. But I don't think any blogger, whether teeny tiny like me or one of the big boys, can ever quite get over that feeling of surprise that anyone might want to listen to what are, all too frequently, the ramblings of a madwoman.

Anyway I find the blog counter and the comments people leave more gratifying than I can say but it does have its downside. Because there are certain things I wannt to say on this blog that I can't. Oh of course I can but, I suppose, I don't want to. Because I know who will read it and what they will think...

...Aaaaand now it sounds like I have a dead hooker in my living room and am trying to dispose of her body or something but it's not like that at all. At worst it's that I've fallen into bad habits. At best I'm rediscovering things I had forgotten I loved. At worst there are stories I want to tell about people who might recognise themselves. At best I'm embarassed at the prospect of having to discuss anything I write here with someone In The Real World.

So, please, let's not.

DISCLAIMER: Allow me to reiterate: No hookers were harmed in the writing of this blog.