Another copy of Maurice, Kate? You shouldn't have... no you REALLY shouldn't have...

Is there anything more fun than buying books for other people?

I don't think even buying books for yourself is quite as enjoyable. This Christmas, just for a change, everyone is getting books, so I have spent long hours considering which books to give to which people and having a surprisingly brilliant time doing so.

Buying books for other people is really all about the delicate balance between buying someone What They Would Actually Like and What You Think They Should Be Reading. In the past I have tended towards the latter choice but that way lies danger, as I have discovered by bitter experience. So this year I think I have actually managed to buy people books they might like, books they could even read instead of just sticking in the bookshelf and (worst case scenario) possible regifting to others.

In the course of this endeavour I have discovered that, as with a lot of things, the joy of choosing a book for someone - weighing the volume in your hand, opening to the first page to read the first sentence they will met and the mental gymnastics of marrying the perfect book to the perfect person - is probably greater than the joy they will get from reading the book. In many cases, no doubt, I've failed completely to assess my friends and family's reading tastes and have bought them another doorstop.

Even so, walking out of the bookstore today, positively weighed down by books and with considerably less cash than I'd had an hour previously, I felt almost as excited as I used to as a kid on Christmas morning which, I think, is saying something.

My life is off the hook

I think I've lost my mobile again. Fuck it, I can't do this again: the replacement sim card, the new phone, more numbers I've lost, more messages I've missed and calls I couldn't answer. It's only been a couple of months since I lost the last one and I don't even know how I did it this time. I had the stupid thing when I left work on Friday, I didn't have it when I got home and now it's gone. The home phone is broken and I don't have anybody's number anyway. Fuck. This.

No, no Plathy, there's no place for you here...

Allow me to defend this post before I begin.

Hard as it may be for regular reader to believe I do try not to write self congratulatory blogs on here. If you’re one of my friends you get enough of that in person and if there’s anything more dull than reading about somebody else’s achievements it’s probably only listening to them spruik charities and post poetry.

But a kind-hearted friend of mine emailed me yesterday to ask why I was so “fucking miserable” and if I was okay. I appreciated the concern. I’m not that wildly brilliant, as it happens but, as I assured him, I’m not going to do a Sylvia Plath either. For a start my oven is electric. But it did make me think I might be inclined to posting a bit doom and gloom on here sometimes. Sooo I thought I’d share some good news. Even if it is good in a way that neither benefits nor interests anyone but me.

There you go, there’s my disclaimer and what an anticlimax to report that my good mood is only because I actually sniffed out a decent story today all on my lonesome. It’s not a big story at all, it’s not that exciting and no doubt it will be cut to a five centimetre brief on page 909 but I don’t care – for the first day in a while I don’t feel like an incompetent boob and for the second time in oooh a month my boss has actually gone for one of my lamearse ideas. Brilliant.

Oh I have the money, I just don't have the will to live after reading the post...

If you're running short on time and fear you might not be able to make it through this post make I make the following suggestion: find yourself a can of mace, spray yourself directly in the eyes and then slap yourself in the face. This will be about as enjoyable as reading the post and probably a bit quicker. Because, you see, I Have A Cause.

Today I saw Tim Costello, of World Vision Australia, speak. I wasn't much looking forward to it because it was a work schmoozefest and (as predicted) I was stuck next to a complete gimp and given a lamb chop to gnaw on, thanks to a small oversight on the veggo side of things. But as it turned out it was three hours well spent because Costello gave a great speech. There was nothing in there most of us haven't heard before - why the wealthy western world has a moral and economic obligation to help the third world, how simple such help could be, how ridiculous the choices are that we make when we choose a larger flat screen over helping to save someone's life - but he boiled it down in a nice way to the point that I felt like empty my wallet as well as being close to tears. (Although there is a chance the latter may have been the fact I was running on two hours sleep at the time).

He also used the phrase 'lottery of latitude' - a lottery all of us won because we weren't born in a third world country or into extreme poverty. It's a pretty obvious concept but it's also pretty amazing if you start thinking about the kind of life we could all be living (or not as the case may well be) if we were born in certian parts of Africa, Asia or South America.

Costello also drew a comparison between third world poverty and a beggar on the street. When you see a beggar, he said, I think you all feel something, some sort of tug on your conscience. Even if you keep walking and don't give him anything it has an effect on you. (Considering it was a business lunch I wasn't entirely sure he had the fat cats convinced but whatever). Why then? he asked, don't we feel the same way when we ignore third world poverty and turn away from people in just as much, if not far more, need? The answer is, of course, that it is because we can't see them but that's completely fucked really.

I tend to think of myself as a reasonably caring person - I give to this charity or that, I do tend to give beggars coins if I have them, I buy the bloody Big Issue and have conversations at dinner parties about gosh how darned awful some people have it. And all that means precisely fuck all. The reality is that I spend more money on books in a month than I do on charity. I probably spend more on stockings and I certainly spend more on mochas. Is a hot beverage more satisfying than helping to improve the life of someone I can't meet or speak to on the other side of the world? It's an absurd idea. But does it matter? Will it stop me from buying my morning mocha tomorrow? We shall see but I doubt it.

What it won't stop me doing, however, is signing up to World Vision and the entire purpose of this post is, obviously, to encourage you to do the same, or at least to do a bit of Christmas shopping on their website. Seriously, dudes, don't tell me you don't have the money.

NOTE: First poetry and now charity, Je-sus. Tell you what - donate to WV and I'll try to crack a joke sometimes. Or um, at least find a really, really hot picture of James Franco... sans pantaloons.

I remember the days when 'style' referred to your ability to pull off jaunty hat or wear fancy pants...

I have plenty of sympathy and little judgy-judgement for people who want to kill themselves. I would, of course, be devastated and furious if any of my loved ones did so (yeah that means you, you know who you are) without talking to me first but my view is that everyone’s life should be theirs to live or not as they choose. You know what’s not cool? Taking eight other people with you just to “go out in style” like the demented dicksnap who opened fire at an Omaha department store today. Jesus, man, if you don’t want to be here then fine – go for it – but there are plenty of people who still do.

Quotable Quotes: Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh fast

In a field I looked into going past,

And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,

But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs,

All animals are smothered in their lairs.

I am too absent-minded to count;

The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less -

A blanket whiteness of benighted snow

With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars - on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places

(Robert Frost)

.

NOTE: I am sorry to go all your poetry on your arse - reading someone else's idea of a good poem is only a step up from reading their own shiteful poetry, in my opinion, but I'm just a bit too shattered to blog intelligibly and this is a very prettily sad poem. Plus it's Frost and I'm pretty sure it's illegal not to like him. Between now and next time I will try to think up an innane topic to write about or somebody new I can insult and then befriend...

Clackety clack clack

Everthing seems like a good idea when you don't have to actually, you know, do anything about it doesn't it? This includes simple pleasures like opening a bottle, those drunken conversations where you decide you're going to move to South America to raise sheep and tomorrow you'll nut out the details or the vow that, yes really, you're going to start running every day. It's a bit like Jerry Seinfeld's very amusing bit about Night Guy always screwing over Morning Guy by not giving a shit about the consequences.

Anyway all this is a long-winded way of saying I have a new stupid plan, which is that I'll do an hour of proper writing before work each day. Brilliant, right? Sounds so easy. So efficient. So hard-working. Well yes, yes and yes. Yet today is the first morning of this plan: I'm still half asleep, I'm completely groggy and, far from the sort of writing I had planned, I'm blogging. Hmm. I'm tempted to handball this one back to After Work girl...

London brawling

I am sometimes asked, though it is rarely couched in these terms, to shut the fuck up about London. That is to stop my eyes from coming over all dreamy whenever I think about moving back there or, perhaps, to better conceal my rage and jealousy when a beloved friend (*sniff* I miss you already) decides she is heading that way. But honestly, quite aside from the phsyicality of London how can anyone not want to live in a city where these kinds of debates go on in the pages of a daily newspaper. I don't know if anyone else has been reading the Martin-Amis-is-racist-oh-wait-no-he's-not-and-I-say-this-as-a-personal-friend rants going on in The Guardian but the latest installment is out and, as ever, it's fascinating. Read it and we can move there together. Call me, we'll talk about it, etc.

Yes even if I count Hungry Jacks...

The worst job I ever had was probably the job I never actually got.

For one long day many, many years ago I ‘worked’ (in the sense that I sweated blood and tears, not in the sense that I was paid for it) at a truly crappy souvenir store in the city. Don’t ask me why I wanted the job – I can only assume I had acquired a number of habits it was necessary to finance and time has blurred the memory of what those habits might have been.

Anyway the job interview turned into a day trial working behind the counter to “see how I handled it”. How I handled it was, by general consensus of the vaguely creepy couple who ran the place, pretty crappily. This was, perhaps, unsurprising given I’d never worked in retail, didn’t care much for customers and found the shop’s eccentric and frequently contradictory pricing system completely impenetrable. Plus, you know, you try giving a shit about poorly made tshirts with the Australian flag on them or crappy emu figurines that fall apart if you blink at them twice.

At the end of a soul-crushing day I went home (unpaid) feeling exhausted but mildly confident of having acquired gainful employment... only to receive a phone call that night telling me they didn’t think I had quite the right skill-set for the job. “However,” the store’s co-owner told me in a tone that suggested she had a nice boiled lolly for me if I could recite all the words to The Owl and the Pussycat, “we like you so if you want to come back tomorrow for another trial we could see how you go.”

I didn’t go back the next day but, ridiculously, I still feel a faint sense of was-I-really-that-shit embarrassment when I think about that crappy job and what might have been.

The point is, however, that there are a lot of truly bad jobs out there and thinking about them never fails to raise the spirits in a slightly sick schadenfreudey sort of way.

For those for whom my tale of exploitation and woe was not enough to perk you up The Idler, that most delightful of companion for those of us who prefer not to raise a sweat, has a nice little collection of reminiscences about the worst jobs people have had that makes good reading.

These jobs include weedbusting, washing up, and working in a syringe needle factory but also supposedly glamorous jobs like working on an animated movie (a nice reminder, if we need it, that just because a job looks good from the outside if it makes us miserable it is Not a Good Thing) and genrally is rather a good antidote for anyone who has had a crappy day.

For the record, today at least, that does not include me.

Suburban dilemma

As many of you know I have to move out of my beloved Northbridge apartment in about three weeks. As many of you also know I have been so unbelievably slack (and have also been a victim of circumstances outside my control, I assure you) getting it together that I have left it to the last possible moment to find a new place. Meaning I shall be homeless in oooh 15 days or so.

The circumstances-out-of-my-control bit is more or less to do with where I want to live. Which is to say I want to live in Northbridge and my would-be roomie not only does not but has rejected a perfectly wonderful place just down the road on the grounds that it does not accept pets and appparently he now requires a dog (the fact that the proposed dog would be called Jean Luc Picard is not quite enough to melt my icy heart). I love, love, living in the middle of the city, love the immediacy of everything, love the close proximity of my beloved Tarts and so on this one point I have been extremely firm. I may even have yelled, once or twice, that I was not ready to move to the fucking suburbs, buy a dog and spend my weekends at Bunnings.

And then my lovely parents not only go and drop a huge chunk of my future inheritance on a sweet-as little place in Shenton Park but offer to rent it to us at a knock-down fee and I'm presented with a dilemna. The house itself is lovely - it has a great bath and a great living area, both surely necessities - and is generally very cute and aesthetically appealing. Furthermore this means I won't actually be homeless and living out of a storage facility in the near future but will have a sweet-arse house in a matter of weeks and will have a pair of very understanding landlords who won't require a reference from that stupid bitch Pam at Property People with whom I once exchanged a flurry of furious emails and who probably still has a doll-sized version of me with a pin sticking out of its left eye socket sitting on her desk.

So taking the Shenton Park place and sucking up my inner-city ambitions (for the short term anyway) may seem like an obvious step but I'm conflicted. On the one hand part of me actually believes that moving to the suburbs is the death of hope and the start of a trajectory that ends with me in a cable knit sweater watching The Bill, but the other part of me remembers that a)I was once perfectly happy in Mount Hawthorn, b)Shenton Park is a perfectly lovely suburb as suburbs go and c)I do own a perfectably serviceable (suspect thumping noise aside) vehicle with which to leave the suburbs when I choose to do so.

So I seek your opinion, readers. Am I being a big girl's blouse about the entire thing? Is it actually possible to find an awesome Northbridge apartment in 15 days that is big enough to fit the biggest couch every known to mankind (and the Chesterfield)? Should I just suck it up and start working on the cable knit sweater set now?

.

UPDATE: It has been brought home to me, ever so gently and kindly, that I am a bint who doesn't know how good she has it. This is true. Shenton Park is starting to sound rather appealing to me after all even if I don't get to live over the road from one crack den and two houses down from another. Sigh. Still, one can't have it all...

Saturday night pleasures

"My flocks feed not, my ewes breed not,
My rams speed not, all is amiss:
Love is denying, Faith is denying,
Heart' renying, causer of this."
(Richard Barnfield)

"And I'm a mean (motherflipper) now but I was once cool..."

Now I don’t want to excite you kids but The Jesus and Mary Chain are… coming to Perth. Oh yes they will join the Smashing Pumpkins, Duran Duran (Je-sus, really?), Queens of the Stone Age and a bunch of other groups (tragically, for Perth, this does not include French hotties Air) at the V Festival in April next year. Huzzah. Personally I wouldn’t really get out of bed for any of the other bands announced thus far and, if I’m honest, I sort of don’t like seeing bands outdoors and during the day because it’s hot and lame and drinking during the day is sort of sad, but I think I would be willing to fork out for a ticket just to see JaMC… and I’m just crossing my fingers for Belle and Sebastian to be (extremely unexpectedly) added to the line-up…

Now with half the self deprecation

I tend to be pretty down about work on this site but, dear reader(s) you shouldn’t think I’m ungrateful for having been given this opportunity. Yes it’s mildly terrifying, I’m frankly unsure if it will work out and I really do think my boss views me as a pleasant but completely incompetent boob… but today I got my new business cards identifying me as a reporter for the paper and I actually felt, well fuck it, life’s not that bad. Gosh I've turned into fricking Pollyanna,.

Ewww

In the course my unbelievably unsuccessful 'career' as a 'fiction writer' (and yes there are indeed more quotation marks required than I'm actually capable of putting in there) I have been required to write the odd sex scene, much as I might avoid it. I will spare you the gritty but I assure you they were brutal. So I should have more sympathy for Norman Mailer who has posthumously received the Bad Sex in Fiction Award today. And hey I'm not saying he didn't deserve it for this shocker...

"So Klara turned head to foot and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth and took his old battering ram into her lips."

...but I was gunning for Jeanette Winterson.

Unknown Pleasures

You know how sometimes you anticipate something so much that it's a complete anticlimax when you finally do it or, in the case of a movie, see it? Well frick that because I finally, finally saw the Ian Curtis biopic Control tonight and thought it was fricking brilliant. Sam Riley was so mesmerising and heartbreaking I feel like I could turn around and see it again. If you haven't seen it (and, er, I know there are many of you) I suggest you do so while you can. Quality.

Do I dare to eat a peach?

I know plenty of people who don't like poetry. It's understandable - it's not like settling down with a novel or listening to a brilliant song. For various reasons it's seen as being quite inaccessible. But can anyone read this...

"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

...and not swoon? You can, and should, read T.S Eliot's masterpiece in its entirety here. I know i've linked to it before but I find it irresistible.

Wheelie bin update

Last night I performed a midnight-raid on the bins of the Vietnamese restaurant I live above. Yes, that's pretty much what I've come to. I got into the room where they keep their bins and dumped my rubbish. And then today... weeeeell I parked a bit further down the street than usual and, while walking back, saw my bin in front of some random tool's house. I stole it back. Re-sult.

You forget 'bore us into fuckery'...

For reasons that would, I’m sure, come as a surprise to nobody I am every-so-often a little less than sharp-fingered when it comes to my blogging. Every so often, in fact, I have already tilted back one too many when it comes to accessing my blog and instead of typing in the address of this blog end up with http://kirovkate.blogpot.com/. The result of omitting the humble 's' is that I have to read this:

“God loves you. Jesus stands at the door of your hear, knocking. If you will open the door he will come in."

And so on. Uh hmm hmm. But the thing that tickles me most is that the website has, as it declares loudly and proudly a “site purpose”. The purpose? Well it’s starting small…

“To seek and to save that which was lost. To feed (his) lambs; feed (his sheep)… to humbly, freely and truthfully present the gospel clearly with sound bible teaching so that people might examine themselves to see if they are in the faith…and afterwards to be baptized by full immersion in the name of the Father and of the son and of the holy ghost.”

All well and good you might think. Certainly I’m not going to use this space to bash people who have the faith, even if they are completely deluded about our own importance in this world and merely clinging to whatever they can to give their lives some sort of meaning. Ahem. But the point is that stumbling onto this site got me thinking about what purpose this site serves, other than forcing people to listen to the rambling of a complete madwoman, obviously. And this is what I’ve come up with.

• To make myself sound brainy by pointing to brainy things genuinely clever people have said elsewhere. Paraphrase them and don’t link to the original source at all, ideally, if I think I can get away with it.


• To post pictures of hot boys and odes to said hot boys in the hope they might stumble on the site and fall madly in love with me.


• To complain about other people, including but not limited to Liberal voters, people who use too many exclamation points, people who don’t read, people who not only watch but cast a vote in Australian Idol, people who use the word "diarise" and people who fail to appreciate British comedy shows.

What do you think? Have I missed anything?

I'm just sorry you're all suck fuckwits...

I was going to post something about Paul Keating’s brilliant post-election comments, passed onto me by Stew Rat:

“I was just so relieved that the toxicity of this Government had gone, this dreadful vicious show which had been around for all these years, the active disparaging of particular classes and groups … Sometimes you see people at factories, they've been in a plant that's got toxic stuff on them and they get hosed down later. I felt on Saturday night like I'd been hosed down."

Hurrah, drinks all around etc. And then? Ooh I turned to the letter pages of today’s West and read a couple of beauties just to remind me what country I’m living in. First off the rank Freda Miller, who is offering a heartfelt apology to the indigenous people in Australia, from way down in Marangaroo, for what they’ve been through since white people came to their country, killed a lot of them, stole their kids and on behalf of a society that is apparently happy to sit around and watch the 20-year life expectancy gap from a distance:

“I want to say sorry to our indigenous Australians. Sorry that they indulge in drink and drugs to the detriment of their children. Sorry that they damage the homes and schools provided for them. Sorry they have low self respect and don’t teach their children to respect the law…”

It continues but why let her have all the fun when D. Ford of Osborne Park (where else?) has so much to say?

“Mr Rudd, if you have done something to be guilty about, go ahead, but don’t you dare include me when you are saying sorry. I was not involved in any way.”

I could go on but I’m afraid I’ve just poured kero on the paper and set it alight. Ah well perhaps my bitter, bitter tears will put it out for me.

White with two thanks...just leave the tea bag in for 45 seconds... yeah soy milk that's right, oh and no real sugar.. uh huh, equal, hmm hmm...

One of the overlooked benefits to not clicking all that well with your new colleagues is never having to make another cup of tea for anyone else every again. For anyone else who wants to know the ins and out of the whole sorry, tea-bag-waggling ordeal, check it out.