"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.

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)