This one's pretty much just for the chicks...

... though the photo is for everyone.

I don't usually use this blog to shameless spruik things but I feel obliged to share the beauty that is Elle McPherson's underwear range with any plump-breasted femme out there who has ever had a sinking heart at the prospect of going bra shopping. I loathe underwear shopping because it's dull and frustrating but McPherson's range kicks arse and, unlike many, many ranges of cute non-hideous underwear doesn't comprise entirely of uber flimsy straps ideal for supporting the boobs of a 12-year-old but nobody else. There's really no point to this post other than to share the love and point you in the direction of the McPherson collection, which isn't cheap but is well worth the cost.

Alright, now I just sit back and wait for the cheque to arrive.

Brideshead Revisited

"I'm not going to have you get mixed up with my family. They're so madly charming. All my life they've been taking things away from me. If they once get hold of you with their charm they'd make you their friend, not mine and I won't let them."

So Sebastian Flyte tells the protagonist Charles Ryder in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Of course it's Sebastian who's the charming one.

To read the rest of this entry see the CNG Lending Library.

Nice to meat you

I never, ever thought I would have reason to say this but Fuck Off Sam Neil.

No, wait, come back I didn't mean it. Okay I sort of did but let me explain. I am actually a closet Sam Neil enthusiast. I have no idea why but his craggy face and smirking mug have always appealed to me - I think he would be fun to go for a beer with. But his latest appearance on Aussie TV screens pimping red meat for Meat and Livestock Australia is really grinding my goddamn gears.

"Red meat - we were meant to eat it," he assures us, all charming cragginess and barely-hidden-beneath-the-surface smirk.

Now really what the fuck does "meant" mean? We're meant to eat it because our ancestors did? Well sure they did - they needed the energy, protein and iron. Early man didn't have access to the wide range of vegetables, grains, legumes and meat-substitutes that we do today. They didn't have the same food choices that we do and they needed every calorie they could get their hands on.

You know what else our ancestors did? They died early, by modern standards. They also evolved into us. You know what they didn't do? They didn't breed animals for the slaughter in the same way or on the same scale as we do. We are in a position now where we do not have to eat meat. Nobody does. It is possible, even easy, to be a perfectly healthy vegetarian and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that a good vegetarian diet is preferable to one containing meat.

It is everybody's individual choice whether they want to eat meat or not but to imply that we have some kind of evolutionary imperative to do so is both stupid and offensive. We aren't meant to do anything and chomping down on a piece of cow flesh is no more normal or natural than choosing to go for tofu. So, Sam, I understand that we all have bills to pay, but until you get another gig you can fuck off as far as I'm concerned.

Quotable Quotes: Evelyn Waugh

"Here love had died between me and the army. Here the tram lines ended so that men returning fuddled from Glasgow could doze in their seats until roused by the cnductress at their journey's end. There was some way to go from the tram stop to the camp gates; a quarter of a mile in which they could button their blouses and straighten their caps before passing the guard room, a quarter of a mile in which concrete gave place to grass at the road's edge. This was the extreme limit of the city, a fringe of driftwood above high-water mark. Here the close, homogenous territory of housing estates and cinema ended and the hinterland began."
(Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited)

I see a young Richard E. Grant in the role of Arthur…

You know that episode of The Simpsons when Troy Maclure says “I’ve been reading a lot of scripts lately… it’s a lot cheaper than actually seeing the movies”? Well I don’t generally read scripts for fun or financial reasons but someone recently directed me towards this pilot script written by the hugely talented Charlie Kaufman before he was known for being hugely talented. On the downside I am now extremely bummed out this show was (so far as I know anyway) never made.

Es blood hard Para Mi

I am learning Spanish on my ipod and it’s not going particularly well.

That’s not entirely true. I mean it’s fair to say that it’s not going particularly well in that I’m not exactly learning any Spanish but, much to my surprise, I am having fun. The reason for this is that, purely by chance, the Spanish language lessons course I downloaded is a fantastically naff one presented by a dude called Michael Thomas.

Not only does Michael Thomas have a voice that makes him sound like he’s having a stroke after every third of fourth word he also gives the impression of making it all up as he goes along. Lessons trail off into “and if I remember anything else I’ll mention it later” or long, weird anecdotes that end as abruptly as though he was just killing time while waiting for a bus, which has since arrived.

More importantly he has an awesome learning technique that, he assures me, will mean I can have a practical use of Spanish in 10 to 12 hours.

Hmm. Quite.

Anyway, this technique involves tips such as “never review anything you have learned” and “don’t try to remember anything” and he is dead-set against any kind of practice or homework.

The idea – from what I can gather – is that instead of treating the language as something you have to grapple with you just sort of immerse yourself in it (or something). In theory it makes great sense and appeals to my sense of laziness. In practice, however, I keep drifting off and/or replaying the bit where he talks about the different ways to pronounce the word “calzone” (which is surely Italian anyway, no?)

God I suck at learning languages. For all I can tell poor old Michael probaly had an actual stroke three minutes into Lesson One and has been calling for help in Spanish ever since.

The Doherty Files

Yeah I like Pete Doherty a lot more than the next person and even I have no idea how he’s pulling this off.

I hear the streets are paved with Gael

Generally when I hear the phrases “he/she was acting uncharacteristically” or “he/she was throwing a lot of money around” I associate them with the sort of crime shows that appear on Friday night on the ABC.

It’s the sort of statement that crops up when someone is found floating in a canal and Robbie Coltrane or that dude from Taggart who looks vaguely Japanese but really isn’t have to find out why he/she was acting uncharacteristically or throwing a lot of money around before his or her untimely death.

And yet this week I have been both acting uncharacteristically and throwing money around in as much as I have opted to go to Argentina, New York and London in October. Um yes this October, why do you ask?

The Argentina thing has been in the works for a bit because we have friends there (Kate and Jerm - pour us a drink) and Andy is red hot keen to get busted as a drug mule in South America but I have been in two minds for weeks and weeks because of the exorbitant cost. My solution? Throw a few extra cities in to make it even more expensive. Also, only take a couple of weeks of work so you have to cram it all into the tightest time frame possible, thus ensuring a combination of jetlag and sleep deprivation for the duration of the trip. Awesome.

This is not normal Kate behaviour. Having spent my life on a series of poor wages I have always had to be careful with my money and planned everything big I do way, way in advance. And yet here I go. Yes it does seem like a semi-reckless, cash-swallowing decision that will either financially cripple me or leave me with an exotic South American disease but I’m incredibly excited.

And if I wind up dead in some seedy Argentinian hostel you can tell the police that I was acting uncharacteristically and throwing around a lot of money before my untimely death.

NOTE: I realise Gael Garcia Bernal is not, in fact, Argentinian and therefore I am unlikely to run into him while I'm there. He is, however, very attractive and if the movies have lied to me about all South American boys being uber hot I shall be very disappointed indeed.

Rushmore ("These are O.R scrubs")

A cynic might say I just don't have anything to blog about. I prefer to say that if this clip convinces anyone to watch what is one of my all-time favourite movies then my work here is done. Really nice.

Quotable Quotes: E.M Forster

"Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership." (E.M. Forster)

A Bit of a Blur

Somewhere in the 200-ish pages of his autobiography Bit of a Blur Blur bass player Alex James finds himself twisted up in expensive sheets in a hotel room somewhere in South America, alternating between having sex with the five prettiest girls he could find, drinking champagne and snorting a dick-load of cocaine.It was, he says, pretty much at the height of his excesses.

To read the rest of this entry check out the CNG Lending Library site.

I could get those white pants off in seconds, seconds I tells you...

I cop a reasonable amount of crap when it comes to my penchant for tall, skinny, nerdy guys. Why a guy only has to be scrawnier than me and/or wearing a pair of Buddy Holly glasses to make me swoon I don't know. All I know is that I would go out with a guy who could dance like this in a second.

NOTE: You Tube and I are having a domestic right now so I can't post the video here - just follow the link.

What is there to say about Facebook that has not been said?

A friend of mine who shall remain nameless but who knows who she is has been refusing to get onboard the Facebook train. Despite numerous emailed ‘friend requests’ and attempts to make her jealous by stealing her genuine friends and claiming them as my own she has stood fast in the face of a country-wide frenzy.

Today said friend who will still remain nameless but whose unnamed name might rhyme with ‘smelly’ and start with an ‘A’ emailed me the news story everyone seems to have since read (simultaneously apparently based on the emails I’ve been receiving) saying Facebook is thought to cost employers $5 billion a year through wasted company time.

To the people who agree with this, and possibly even tch tch-ed at the story I present this simple yet compelling argument. It goes as follows:

Recently, while fricking around on Facebook, I joined two wonderful groups: one called Embrace the HoYay (which is exactly what it sounds like) and another dedicated to ending the obnoxious use of exclamation marks. Realising that there are people who think like me somewhere in the world has made me very happy. When I am happy I feel better and, as a result, I have more ideas, enthusiasm and drive at work – I work better when I’m happy.

Um probably.

Sure, talking about favoured slash pairings and how right on F. Scott Fitzgerald had it when he said that an exclamation mark was like laughing at your own joke might not seem like it’s contributing towards the company’s profit margins or whatever but it’s all helping to make me feel happy. For the knock-on effects of my happiness see above.

If I depended on my work to keep me entertained, energised and stop me from throwing myself out of the window with frustration I would be a spot on the footpath by now. Facebook, and blogging and the myriad of other websites I may or may not frequent, depending on whether my boss is reading this, are all ways to let off steam and enjoy a few minutes of peace where you don’t have to deal with insane residents or inane PRs yelling at you.

Take away these things and we might all realise just how dull and repetitive and soul destroying our jobs really are.

I cannot believe it.

Some motherfucking fuckhead has been using my motherfucking phone.

Apologies for the language but what a cunt.

Since losing the thing on Sunday I’ve done jack about it, not really because I’m lazy, though I am, but because for some stupid reason I assumed that if someone found it they would try to get it back to its owners.

What the fuck is wrong with me? Why would I think for a second that the average person is anything more than a shithead when all evidence points to the contrary?

Today I finally rang up Virgin to admit defeat and cancel the phone, only to discover that some fuckstick has been using it for the last four days. And a few nice long, cosy chat he or she has been having too.

The helpful chick at Virgin did give me the numbers this dicksnap has been calling and if I were a much ballsier person, I might call them up and tell them their friend is a fucking thief. Well it is Friday so maybe I’ll have a few drinks and then do it.

UPDATE: I have been calling a couple of the numbers just for shits and giggles and to see who answers and the weirdest one so far? Anglicare. I suppose I should be grateful my phone has gone to the underprivileged.

Zen and the Art of Self Indulgent Wank

I’ve been having a bit of a think about my life these past few weeks (yes sadly it’s been that sort of fortnight). Mostly this is because, despite having what certainly looks like a nice little life, I’ve been getting a bit restless. I can’t stop remembering London and wonder if I should head back there. I love my job but I’m constantly thinking about what else I could be doing. I look at everything I have and worry that it won’t be enough for me five or ten years down the track and no matter how hard I squint I can’t seem to see my future at all.

Well I don’t want to get all Zen on your collective arses but I’ve come to a few decisions about what I want. Or, rather, I’ve come to a few decisions about what I don’t want out of my life. As to what I do want… well I haven’t figured that out yet. Standby.

1. I don’t want to be angry girl any more. A new friend told me this week that forgiving people is everything. I will attempt to learn how to let go of grudges and to cut the people I love a little slack.

2. I don’t want to settle down yet. Watching other people buy houses and pop out sprogs lately has made me realise how much I don’t want those things yet, however well they have worked for some of my friends. This is not just because I have no money and even less desire for children but because I can feel time moving away from me and I don’t want to regret not doing anything. Chances are this is going to lead to my falling on my arse, losing a huge wad of cash or doing something incredibly fucking stupid but I refuse to be paralysed by doubt. The responsible, sensible Kate you knew is gone. Well maybe not gone but thinking about having a bit of a lie down and letting Impulsive Kate take the wheel for awhile.

3. I don’t want to spend my life in my head. Existential crisis’ are getting old and I must learn to chill the fuck out. So I technically have no idea what I want, what I’m doing or where I’m going? Fuck it - I’m sure it will come to be eventually. Hurrah.

More words of wisdom to come once the drugs kick in again I'm sure.

The Hungry Years

"I wake up on the fattest day of my life, 20 January 2003. I am just over 6 feet tall, and weigh... how much? I step on the scale and off it very quickly, to limit the damage. 236lbs. At best! My bathroom floor slopes slightly, and I have positioned the scale carefully to ensure the smallest possible reading"

So begins UK journalist William Leith's book The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addict.
To read the full blog check out the CNG Lending Library site.

I think not my white-lab-coat-wearing friends

Je-sus Christ, if this isn’t the worst use of scientific reseearch ever then I will… well, I don’t know, be surprised I suppose:

“Researchers at Britain's Natural History Museum have come up with a simple
calculation to measure a man's sex appeal based on his face. And the results are
in. The scientists measured up ten celebrities and ranked them in order of
attractiveness as follows: 1. Will Smith 2. Peter Andre 3. Justin Timberlake 4. UK Big Brother's Liam 5. Thierry Henry 6. Brad Pitt 7. David Beckham 8. Johnny Depp 9. Kanye West 10. UK Big Brothers Ziggy”

Hmm, so what you're saying is that Peter Andre is more attractive than both Johnny Depp and Thierry Henry? Peter. Andre. Is more attractive. Than Johnny Depp… Peter Andre is more attractive… Peter… Peter Andre???

That sound you hear is me poking out my own eyes.

Spirituality Schmirituality

The idea of synchronicity has always interested me. Not in the sense that I have anything interesting to say about it now but more that I am rather happy to have a chance to use it here as a nice little segue into the subject of this blog, which is actually spirituality. Or perhaps ‘spirituality’.

The justification for the segue is that I have been thinking about the concept of 'spirituality' today since I heard a bint in the coffee shop descripe herself as 'spiritual' while I was waiting for my mocha and wondering what the chances were that the incompetent boob behind the counter would remember to use the soy milk and not to add the marshmallows. Then, while taking an extremely well earned break at work I read Charlie Brooker’s rant about more or less the same subject (and I’ll get to that in a minute).

I dislike it when I hear people describe themselves as ‘spiritual’ and this is probably because I don’t know what it means. Or, rather, I know what it means and I think it’s either a complete cop-out or one of the early warning signs of brain damage.

Technically to be 'spiritual' is to be concerned with the idea of the spirit. Practically it seems to refer to a desire to believe in some higher power without needing to narrow down your options, go to church on a Sunday or risk angering one of a dozen potential deities.

Pussies.

If you want to believe in religion then believe in a religion. Personally I’m not a fan but then I could well be looking at 10 to eternity in the fiery pits of hell for that belief, or lack thereof. If you want to dope yourself up on the opium of the people (if I'm wrong then Orwell may well be cursing my name from Heaven or Hell for my poor paraphrasing right there) then pick a religion, any religion. You have plenty to choose from and a couple of them even have some pretty nifty ideas.

Just do me a favour. Don’t buy healing crystals, or at least don’t refer to them as such around me. Read horoscopes if you like (I have been known to dabble) but don’t believe them. Don’t try to convince me to go in for alternative treatments for any of my many problems because they’re so much better than all those “harsh drugs” the doctor keeps trying to ram down my throat and please, please, please don’t tell me about your friend’s husband’s dog’s uncle who was once cured by the power of thought.

'Spirituality' to me is the opposite of rational thought, reason and logic. Strange things do happen, I concede, but the universe is a strange place. Open a physics textbook instead of consulting your mood stone and you might get a little bit closer to understanding something. Take off your ridiculous hemp pants and introduce yourself to Mr Intellect and Mrs Common Sense and maybe we can start improving things around here.

It falls to Brooker to present my closing argument:

“’Spirituality’ is what cretins have in place of imagination. If you've
ever described yourself as ‘quite spiritual’, do civilisation a favour and punch
yourself in the throat until you're incapable of speaking aloud ever again. Why
should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the
contemptuous mockery it deserves? Maybe you've put your faith in spiritual
claptrap because our random, narrative-free universe terrifies you. But that's
no solution. If you want comforting, suck your thumb. Buy a pillow. Don't make
up a load of floaty blah about energy or destiny. This is the real world,
stupid. We should be solving problems, not sticking our fingers in our ears and
singing about fairies.”

An Open Letter to everyone I have had to deal with this week"

I’m going to let you in on a little secret, just between you and me, because we’re such good friends and all: I don’t care. I don’t care about your stupid organisation/fight with the council/ageing mother/pet. I don’t care about your (many) apparent mental problems. I don’t care about why you think your organisation/mother/mental problems should go in the paper.

In fact the only reason I am even wasting time listening to you, your problems and feigning interest in what is a fucking pathetic story is because my editor is off sick and I need all the stories I can get for this week only.

That much said I am not so desperate that I will put up with your fucking shit any longer. If I ask you for a photo then send me a photo. If you say you’ll call me back then Call. Me. Back. If I say I need something by this afternoon that is exactly what I mean. Believe it or not I am actually trying to help you when I tell you what we need, why we need it and when we need it by. Listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth and act accordingly.

Sincerely etc.

Ring, ring, why don't you give me a call?

I have lost my mobile and I am surprised at how bereft I feel.

More than that I am embarrassed by how bereft I feel.

I am also abashed that I have used the word ‘bereft’ twice (now three times) in a post about a bloody square of plastic and metal and… I don’t know, whatever the hell else is in there.

It is not merely that in losing the phone I have lost the numbers of half my friends, or even the fact that the phone was only about a month old (being fairly indifferent to the whole mobile-phone-comparison thing I bought the cheapest one I could find and you do, in fact, get what you pay for). It is that suddenly I feel as though my world has shrunk. Technically, yes, I can still call someone up, send them an email or even pop past their house. Despite not using a landline any more I still have enough other lines of communication open to mean I am (again technically) not quite an island.

But I feel like one.I can no longer text Ali to urge her to turn on Age of Love, alert Jade to the fact that I have just seen a picture of her freaky ex-ex-boyfriend in our newspaper or spontaneously lure someone out for a drink. I can’t while away boredom by sending someone increasingly insulting messages, or co-ordinate my weekend via some group texts.

I know all this is ridiculous and I feel as though I should be having an epiphany of some kind about the way that the possibility of constant and immediate communication can restrict us as well as liberate us and how we’ve lost the art of face-to-face contact or something but, fuck it, I’d really rather just have my phone back thanks.

Done in 60 seconds... by which I mean about 120 seconds

I read this nice little piece in The Guardian today in which music journo Jon Wilde tried to name his top 10 favourite songs in 60 seconds. And while he had to do it in front of Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller, thus with the added pressure of trying not to humiliate himself with embarrassingly naff choices, I think that, either way, the idea is a nice one.

So I'm going to attempt do the same (and I'm thinking of favourite songs - not my ideas about the 10 best songs ever written and yes of course there's a difference) over the next 60 seconds. Sure, my poor dear readers will have no idea if I'm sticking to the 60 second rule or taking a lazy half hour to graze my way through but I'm sure the incompetence of my choices will speak for themselves.In no particular order... start the clock:

10. You're so Great (Blur)

Not my favourite band but love, love this song, which was allegedly recorded under a table.

9. If I ever feel better (Phoenix)

It still kills me.

8. Half a Person (The Smiths)

7. Orgasm Addict (Buzzcocks)

Rebellion lite playing this one loud but I loved it.

6. The Wind (Cat Stevens)

Oh fuck me I think I'm over a minute already - this is hard...

5. In Your Head (The Panics)

4. New Slang (The Shins)

3. Ain't that Enough? (Teenage Fanclub)

2. There's Too Much Love (Belle and Sebastian)

I have to mention my favourite band and this is a good one.

1. Time for Heroes (The Libertines)

Oh fuck off it's a modern classic.

In conclusion: not an unqualified success. Somehow I've ended up with a mish-mash of songs I've been listening to lately, songs that are genuinely in my top 10 and random songs chosen in a state of semi-panic just to enable me to include a favourite band. And it took me almost two minutes. Hmm.

If I had the time I would include something from Nick Drake and The Cure, probably dumping The Panics in the process, lovely as they are. I’d change my Belle and Sebastian song choice and possibly my Buzzcocks one too but there you go: having to do it fast and use what comes to mind is what makes the whole thing more than an exercise in wankery.

Anyone with a minute to spare please take it away in the comments - but stick to a minute (or two).

NOTE: I have taken extra time to go back to my list and correct some horrendous spelling, punctuation and typos. Clearly for the sake of honesty I should have left it as-was but would you really have known who Teh Msiths were?

Quotable Quotes: Dorothy Parker (yes - too much DP is never enough)

Symptom Recital
I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the simplest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick. I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore:
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men.
I'm due to fall in love again.

So long and thanks for all the music.

Record label owner, radio and TV presenter, journo and music legend Tony Wilson died today. And if you think you haven't heard of him you will certainly have listened to some of the bands he managed - most famously Joy Division but also Happy Mondays, A Certain Ratio and some others I forget and am too lazy to look up. He also founded Factory Records and ran the Hacienda nightclub, generally playing a huge role Manchester's music culture.

If you don't want to, as I plan to do, listen to Love will Tear us Apart on repeat to mark the occasion you are best recommended to check out 24 Hour Party People (thanks to Bec, who recommended it to me in the first place) which is a great fictionalised account of his life. And bloody funny.

Band Schmand Grand um Stand

My first significant memory of seeing a live band was watching The Dandy Warhols many, many years back with Ali. It wasn't very crowded, most of the crowd didn't seem to know the music well and into some silence or other we shouted "take it off, Courtney" at the (hot) lead singer. In return he deadpanned into the microphone "why does everyone always say that?"

There is something special about seeing live music and it's easy to forget when you fall out of the habit.

Tonight I was out, quite randomnly and not particularly plannned, to see Perth band The Simian Line and, even putting aside my predeliction for skinny indie boys in tight pants, cute jackets and shaggy hairstyles they were great.

The production quality of a CD is hard to beat but harder still to replicate are the vibrations of the music coming up through the floor and along your legs, the excitement of the crowd when they recognise the next song and the capacity of each band member, however repulsive initially, to become incredibly attractive during a one hour set.

It is so much easier to fall in love with a band and mentally swear your undying loyalty to them during a good set than while sitting at home with the CD on in the background and that is the best thing about gigs - the immediacy and the sensation that you're one of a select group experiencing something

Also, obviously, a side effect of the live music life is a tendency to come home drunk and crap on while your brain ponders what the fuck happened to your ID and when exactly it is someone will take your goddamn word that you are, in fact, well over 18. Hopefully the same somebody invents a handy gadget to prevent me from blogging drunk - hey it would be doing us all a favour.

Belle And Sebastian - I'm A Cuckoo

I have finally worked out the not-at-all complicated process of posting you tube videos on here. To celebrate here are my Scottish beauties Belle and Sebastian in their happiest song for years.

Neil Harvey for PM

You may not be surprised to hear that John Howard’s $189 million dollar vow to “clean up the internet” has not won my vote.

On the contrary it has merely given me the desire for a strong cup of tea and a bit of a lie down. And by ‘lie down’ I mean ‘projectile vomit’.

Under Howard’s vote garnering pla- I mean uh under his well thought out and surely desperately needed plan every Aussie family (and wouldn’t I like to see his definition of family while we’re at it) will get a free internet filler and… well I don’t know what else exactly, as I may have experienced a small rage black out while reading the article, but I gather it’s bunch of other crap to prevent people from accessing (clutch your pearls now) porn.

The fact that Howard chose to reveal this plan while blathering on about Christianity and “family values” (don’t even get me started) at the National Press Club in Canberra makes it pretty clear exactly who he is appealing to and why. It is a shameless attempt to claw back some votes from a dying government that I hope will backfire. I just cannot believe anyone can think that this is the best way to spend nearly $200m bucks - ahead of, say, education, health, the environment or - Jesus - half a dozen areas they have been neglecting for 10 years. (Then again the people he is appealing to seem to believe in a lot of very incredulous things so you never know).

This is not to say that the thought of paedophiles using the internet to procure young victims is not a terrible one. I just find it very hard to believe it happens as often as the government and/or media seem to suggest. Or maybe I just think that there are simpler ways of cracking down on it, such as, say, ensuring your child is not a fucking idiot.

Meanwhile the promise to give every Australian family a filter is just… lame. I mean I can understand that some people do find pornography highly sexist and offensive but I just don’t get what the big deal is. It might not be everyone’s view but I actually don’t think that exposing a child to most of the laughably-lame porn on the internet is going to scar them for life. If they’re seeking it out and you put it out of their reach they’re just going to want it more and find a way to get it. I say let everyone experience the joys of B-grade porn, complete with cheesy music, for themselves and they’ll soon discover how anticlimactic (I wish I could say pun unintended) it is.

Growing up in the computer age (well sort of - our first machine was an Amiga 500 so it wasn’t exactly The Matrix) as a teenager I had, in theory, access to all kinds of disturbing stuff on the internet and yet somehow I made it through. I’d like to give the next generation enough credit to assume they can do the same.

As Neil Harvey (god bless you, stranger) from Perth commented on the PerthNow website: “Can we get some filter to block out politicians from appearing on Youtube?”

Hide the soft porn behind the Proust - nobody's looking there.

Bec has put me onto this lovely website which is sort of the online equivalent of looking through someone's bookshelf as soon as you're allowed into their house (other people do this, right?) and quietly judging them.

Quotable Quotes: Evelyn Waugh

"All over England people were waking up, queasy and despondent."

(Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust)

Rose-tinted spectacles are all well and good but Come. On.

I don’t know who among you have read Douglas Adam’s brilliant Dirk Gently series (which, although quite fantastic, has never quite achieved the popularity of the Hitchhiker books) but there’s a recurring joke in there where our protagonist Dirk attempts to use an I-Ching computer to solve his problems. The computer’s answer, regardless of the question it is asked, is “a suffusion of yellow”.

It’s quite a charming idea. It is not, however, nearly so charming when it is happening in real life and the answer is a suffusion of magenta. Because, for reasons unknown, my computer screen is currently pink. Very, very pink. It is the kind of pink that looks like I have just popped a piece of cellophane over a lamp or makes me think that I constantly have a bit of sleep in my eye. And although I have dutifully poked the cords under my desk and rubbed my eyes raw it is not getting any better.

Not only is this making my eyes go all weird but I am starting to fear it is affecting everything I write with a pink hue, much like the way a bad headache infuses all my writing with vaguely grumpy overtones. What kind of result this pink hue will have on the kind of hard-hitting topics I’m covering over here is anyone’s guess but I am begging the IT department: please don’t let me find out.

Take a chapter of Wodehouse and call me in the morning.

Whenever I'm feeling a bit flat or harbouring the suspicion that life has let me down (I'm paraphrasing someone there but fricked if I can remember who) I have a simple solution. It’s not quite as good for me as a vomit-inducingly wholesome country walk or anything but neither is it quite as self destructive as pumping myself full of drugs. Basically I spend money. Specifically I seem to spend money on books.

My bookshelf is full of sad little clusters of books I haven’t read - most of them probably purchased during just such a pick-me-up mission, ranging from the this-is-happy-so-it-will-cheer-me-up genre to the misery-loves-company collection. I even have, squirrelled away somewhere to my eternal shame, a nifty collection of self-help books, purchased during a moment of madness when I thought I might be going actually clinically mad instead of just being a weirdo.

There is something about buying books that is a great mood lifter and it's different to the semi-euphoria of purchasing a coat that I can convince myself makes me look like Audrey Tatou. Finding and aquiring such a coat is indeed great (at least until I look in the mirror and find the effect to be more Enid Blyton's Moonface than Parisian minx) but buying books, however many times I do it, makes me feel like I am changing my life. Strange and disturbing, I know, but if you don't know that I'm both of those things who are you and why are you reading my blog?

Anyway, I do have a few ‘to read’ books scribbled down on a piece of paper… somewhere safe I’m sure, but I’m appealing for suggestions from any genre, any author and any style. What have you got?

UPDATE: I have just spent a large squage of cash I don't have on books I don't technically need and yet I feel no shame. I'm also officially going into hermit mode to get some serious reading done - I am not at home to callers... unless they're bringing me some booze to lubricate the whole process.

I'm so lame I can't even come up with a scrabble-related pun for this goddamn title

I am a surprisingly terrible scrabble player. I don’t just mean that I’m particularly bad at coming up with seven letter words into which I can wedge my X, J and three Os, although I am. I mean also that I dislike the game, find I get far too competitive and am prone to a fit of the sulks when things don’t go my way. The combination of being a bad player and a bad sport is not a very good one. So why is it that news of a Scrabble plug-in for Facebook has me so excited?

This from Charlie Brooker:

"Don't kick your own teeth out with excitement or anything, but I've been
playing Scrabble. Virtual Scrabble. Or "Scrabulous" as it's known. It's a
plug-in for Facebook: you challenge a friend, then play turn-by-turn; casually,
languidly, via email, which means games often last a week or more - like test
match cricket, but faintly more interesting."

(You can read the rest of his article, which is pretty funny here)

I’m not sure why I should care about the rise of a new forum in which to play I game I neither like nor am particularly good at but ultimately I think it is something to do with the fact that I have always wanted to like scrabble and to be good at it. Having never managed either I continue to nurse a hope that the prospect of not actually having to be in the same room as the person or people I’m playing against might help me to finally achieve this.

Not, as Brooker suggests, because of the ease with which you can cheat but because it removes the social aspect of the game, which I think is what I find distasteful.To explain this one I’m going to go all Normal Bates and blame my mother. My family seemed to do little else but play games of scrabble while I was growing up and, as the youngest by a good few years, I was also inevitably the crappest player. I spent hours floundering around with four letter marvels while my parents and siblings hit the triple letter word scores, simultaneously divesting themselves of those pesky Z, Q or Js.

My mother, bless her, sought to encourage me to stay in the game by ‘helping me’, which mostly consisted of rearranging my scrabble tiles and staring pointedly at a spot on the board on which I might like to place this new-found word. I hated this and still blame these early forays for my life-long distaste for the game. Put a set of tiles and some competitors in the same room as me and I’m a grumpy eight year old again, staring at the letters my mother has helpfully rearranged for me: DUNCE.

Is it too much to help that technology has finally given me a way to enjoy a game I’ve always wanted to enjoy? Can the soothing touch of a mouse beneath my hand help to erase years of barely repressed rage at my inability to come up with somewhere to place my flukishly-assembled seven letter word? Could I come to love a game that has always hated me? Probably not but it sounds worth a shot.

The anatomy of the girl crush.. sort of.

I had quite a witty blog planned on the anatomy of a girl crush. It touched on the delicate relationship and subtle differences between wanting to be like someone and wanting to be liked (read: shagged) by someone. It even included a mildly amusing anecdote about the time my sister, and then my friend, asked me if I was a lesbian. It was potentially the most amusing, incisive and well-written blog I’ve written today and I had written half of the bugger, really I had, but then my computer crashed and I lost it all. This has crushed my spirit to the point where I can't quite bear to write it all again. Instead you just get a picture of this chick from America’s Next Top Model, who I think is a real hottie.

And for the actual wedding we’re thinking of sacrificing some virgins…

So the Aussie soldiers who dressed up as Ku Klux Klansmen while getting maggoted were taking part in a bucks night prank, were they?

So says the former soldier who spilled his guts, if not his identity, to Channel 7 after the now infamous video was released on you tube.

I have no big problem with the binge drinking side of things, no matter what the tossers from Family First say because everybody needs a drink every now and again.

Also, frankly, I think that the people who are offended by the whole pointed-pillowcase-over-the-head side of the matter just don’t understand the context. Because you know what makes a really fun bucks party? Lynching black people.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Marlon Brando

Okay sure - putting (a young) Marlon Brando as a Token Smokin' Hottie is not unlike saying The Beatles are your favourite band: safe but incredibly dull, right?

I know this, I know this but there are things that need to be said and the fact that Brando was, in fact, an extremely attractive man is one of them (so it's not quite 'we will fight them on the beaches' but the dude is hot).

For people of a certain age a hot Brando seems natural, normal, maybe even familiar, I don't know. For those of us, however, who remember him best as a bloated and mental Kurtz, a croaking Godfather or a billowy-shirt-wearing freak in The Island of Dr Moreau (which I will pretend not to have seen) it's worth having a look just to remind yourself what everyone was talking about.

Huh huh. Hmm. Mmm. Sure, sure great actor, method schmethod, possibly shagged James Dean whatever. To recap: The dude was hot.

The Spam Wars

Is it just me or is the spam in my inbox starting to get a little bit personal?

Maybe it's the effect of having to routinely clear hundreds of spam mails offering me sex aids, penis pumps, degrees in subjects I am supremely unqualified for and pills with highly questionable ingredients and side effects out of my work and personal inboxes but it's all got a bit much for me lately. In fact I've started to feel the spam is speaking directly to me and I don't really like it.

Why Be an Average Man any Longer? The subject line in my inbox wants to know.

Are you really happy with the size of your penis? It goes on to question anyone foolish enough to open it. And If you are then your girlfriend or wife probably isn't. Despite the fact that I am, actually, quite happy with the lack of any such appendage on my body the spam’s continued insistence that, despite what I may think, I am in fact only half a man starts to make me feel insecure. Could it be bigger? Should it be? Would I, in fact, be happier if I had a six foot penis to throw over my shoulder?

Delete.

Worse still are the subject lines that use my name. These little suckers really take it to another level - first giving me a moment of hope that somebody I actually know has emailed me and then using that second of weakness to plunge the knife home.

So Tell Me Kate, Are You Healthy? The latest unsolicited email from Boost Juice wants to know. Wow, what a warm and chatty tone. It’s just like talking to a friend… except wait a minute… Sure I have a diet coke in one hand and some kind of pastry good in the other but is that really your business, Mr Spam?

As it happens I like a good Boost Juice every so often but, upon reading this, I vow never to go back, eyeing my pastry balefully and taking a few experimental steps to see if my thighs rub when I walk.

Delete.

Make Your Fat Friends Jealous! The next one tempts me. What kind of person does this spam think I am? Apparently the sort of person who wants to drop twenty pounds so I can smugly offer my (soon to be former) best friend if she wants to have my ‘fat clothes’ before I throw them out. That's just... wrong.

Delete, delete and delete again but this time I’m thinking war and it's your fault, Sir Spamalot. Imply I have a tiny, flaccid penis if you like. Suggest I’m an uneducated yob in need of a degree in nanotechnology from a university run out of a creepy old man’s spare room if you feel the need. But make fun of the fact that yes sometimes my thighs do rub together when I walk and call me a bad friend and I will cut you.

It has begun.

Quotable Quotes: Woody Allen

"Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds and in the end, none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do ... I read Socrates. This guy knocked off little Greek boys. What the Hell's he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we're gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years and nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer."

(Woody Allen, Hannah and Her Sisters)

Fence Peeping

Relationships, and how other people navigate them, fascinate me and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Of course, on one level, it satisfies our voyeuristic impulse to hear about the ins and outs (minds out of the gutter please) of somebody else’s relationship.

We mentally to compare their relationship to our own, either to depress the hell out of ourselves or revel in smug satisfaction. But I think there is a great deal more to it than that.

I don’t really want to make the sweeping statement that none of us really know what we’re doing when it comes to relationships… but I fear it may be true.

Where do we get our ideas about how relationships are supposed to work? Popular culture, I suppose. Books and TV and films show us images of happy, unhappy or somewhere in between. The problem is that, to badly paraphrase Jean Rhys, books, movies and TV have “shape” - they have a narrative structure that ensures a beginning, middle and an end. Things happen for a reason. In real life things happen, of course, but they don’t necessarily happen for a good reason, follow a story or take us closer towards a climax (what did I say about the gutter? You disgust me…) or a happy ending.

In real life we just muddle about, wondering why our relationships bear no resemblance to what we read or see. In desperation we talk to our friends, trying to catch a little glimpse of what is going on in their backyard so that we can better understand the mess that is our own.

Despite clocking up a few solid years in the relationship game I don’t think it ever gets easier to figure out what you want and how you can achieve it. Despite my best efforts my life does not resemble those I read about or see on the big screen and I still have no idea how other people make these things look so easy.

I don't really have a solution here (I'm like the Bible: all questions and no answers). I’m not sure if we all need to be more honest about how fucking hard some of this stuff is to figure out or if we need just need books, movies and TVs that are a bit more true to life but one or other would be nice. In the meantime I’ll just continue to peep over the fence.

UPDATE: If you’re into fence peeping you should check out this single life blog. Despite the title it’s really about relationships and it fascinates me.

UPDATE TWO: The spacing is all messed up here. I don't know why blogspot hates me but apparently I killed its Mum or something.

Would you look at the time, it's 1987 already...

Is it really 2007? I mean really?

Because the line being taken by media covering US research to do with men and women's motivation for having sex says otherwise. The Slimes, at least, is practically clutching its pearls as it claims the research shatters the myth that women have sex to be emotionally fulfilled while men are driven by lust.

“It's refuted a lot of gender stereotypes ... that men only want sex for the
physical pleasure and women want love,” University of Texas clinical psychology
professor Cindy Meston, the study's co-author, told the Associated Press.
“That's not what I came up with in my findings. None of the gender differences
are all that great.”

Jesus - really? I mean we really have to go through this stuff again do we?

Meanwhile, on a more disturbing note some of less popular reasons given by men and women were one part amusing and another part creepy, including “I wanted to punish myself,” (uh huh) “I wanted to end my relationship” (hmmm) or “I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease” (jesus!).

Honestly, though, it’s articles like this that make Hollywood believe we still need or want a Sex and the City movie. Haven’t we dealt with this crap already?

I said I love you, George

My delight at seeing the only-getting-better-with-age George Clooney in Vanity Fair's best dressed list has been marred with my disgust at seeing Ashton 'isn't-he-irrelevant-yet' Kutcher and Demi 'Snip-Tuck' Moore on the same damn list.

Has the world gone mad? It's the only explanation for putting a cradle snatching weird-kneed bint and a man-child fond of wearing stupid hats within touching distance of the don't-you-pray-you-look-this-good-at-my-age Cloonmeister.

Ditto Lenny Kravitz who, when he's not busy looking like a woman, is busy looking like a prat.

I'll give them Richard E. Grant, who I love, and even The Becks because David is pretty and Posh is sort of awesome in a frightening rock-hard-nippled way but Kravitz and Moore/Kutcher? Not on my watch Vanity Fair, not on my watch...

The Secret History of this damn book

There should be a name for the blank look on someone’s face when you are talking to them and they have no idea what you are talking about. There should also be a name for the feeling you get when you, midway through a conversation, suddenly realise they have no idea what you are talking about.I had this experience this morning when I was babbling away to Lindsay this morning about Donna Tartt’s The Secret History - a great little page turner of a book that I started on Saturday and have barely been able to put down since.

I was mid-flight, conversation-wise, and talking away about how much I was enjoying it and thanking her for the recommendation when I noticed the blank look on Lindsay’s face.
“Uh, you did lend it to me, didn’t you?” I asked. “Um no.”

Oh. So the end result is that I have this great book but no idea where it came from. Apologies for the lapse in my memory but I can’t quite remember who lent it to me in the first place. Please, please let me know who you are so I can return it and have someone to discuss it with…

In other news I'm going straight to hell.

I know this is really harsh to say but what were the parents of the dead 16-year-old from Port Kennedy thinking when they selected the photos they then gave to The Slimes for their page one article at the weekend?

(Note: I don’t want to say the chick’s name in case her parent’s google it and and have to read a random blog slagging off their dead daughter but the story is here).

When your young, bogan daughter is killed because she a)is a bogan b)is dating a bogan and c)hangs out with bogans who think racing their cars qualifies as entertainment, maybe you want to reconsider your decision to hand over a handful of photos which, to be brutally, honest, sort of make her look like a bogan slut-whore.

As Josh, who showed me the paper, said: “She looks like she still wants to have sex with you, even though she’s dead”.

Creepily The Slimes’ (online at-least) headline of What a Waste somehow adds an even more seedy edge to the whole thing, as though it’s only a waste because she’s young, blonde, kinda slutty and could have been getting her tits out at the Dolls House in another two years instead of being buried by her family.

Obviously the death of anyone in a stupid car crash is a tragedy but maybe it’s a nice idea to try to give them a little dignity in death, even if they never had any in life.

Quotable quotes: Depressing Shite

"Depression, when it’s clinical, is not a metaphor. It runs in families, and it’s known to respond to medication and to counseling. However truly you believe there’s a sickness to existence that can never be cured, if you’re depressed you will sooner or later surrender and say: I just don’t want to feel bad anymore. "
(Jonathan Franzen)

N.B: I know I've posted this somewhere before now but it wasn't on this blog so there you go.

The B-Word

I quite like boys. That's not really news - I do have a 'current hottie' bit on the sidebar and I regularly feature 'token smokin hotties'. Clearly I like boys. But I also like talking to boys and, when I'm in the mood, flirting with said boys. I don't mean I'm a big fat Slutty McSlut-slut (at least I hope not - feel free to jump in here any time, guys) but there is nothing wrong and there are many things right with some harmless bantering and so on.

Anyway, guys who know me know that I have a boyfriend so I assume that they know that, when I laugh at their jokes, throw things at their arse or muck around with them, I’m not mentally picking out a wedding dress or planning to tattoo their name on my (buttock) cheek.

But when it comes to people I don’t know well I don’t know when the time is right to deploy the B-word. As in Boyfriend.

I don’t mean to imply I’m picking up strange men in bars and just choosing to break it to them that I’m actually spoken for as they try to throw me on to the back of their bikes or anything but when I do occasionally meet new people through work or friends or what-have-you I feel that I’m being mildly deceptive in not telling them I’m having a boyfriend.

This is clearly a product of a rampant ego gone mad that assumes every guy I meet finds me irresistible and is having a crack. Clearly this is not the case but assuming the opposite (that everyone sees me as an asexual chum) has led to a couple of veeery awkward conversations in the past.

On the other hand I feel like a tool when I attempt to deploy the B-word in casual conversation… efforts that usually feel about as casual and painless as having colonic irrigation administered by a blowfish.

Bringing up the B-word when you’ve just met someone feels, to me, like the equivalent of bringing out a can of mace (or that classic scene from Beverley Hills 90210 when Donna fights off a rapist while shouting “no! no! no!”) when someone pats you on the shoulder. Maybe it’s the lack of self esteem talking but I hate the implication that I assume whoever I’m talking to thinks I’m a hot tamale. For instance I was recently a bit put out when some guy I had just met (and was making idle chit-chat with) deployed the G-word in the course of conversation about some crap or other. “Back up, Mister,” I wanted to say to him. “I’m really, really not trying to jump your bones so you don’t need to panic.”

Am I being overly sensitive? Weird? Do I have too much free time on my hands? Possibly all of the above but what do you think, young readers and how do you coupled-up ones deal with this?

I'll piss anywhere I want, is what this miaow means, bitch

A few weird things happened to me in the course of a 15 minute trip today.

Firstly I saw a man waiting at the traffic lights who was sporting the most perfect handlebar moustache I have ever seen. That, combined with his air of utter nonchalance and the fact that he was wearing a t-shirt so well-worn-in that it looked super soft made me want to burst out of the car and hug him.

Thirty seconds later, and on the same street, I saw Thom, who either didn’t recognise me or was embarrassed to admit to knowing someone who was, at the time, attempting to make a right hand turn while stuck somewhere between first gear and neutral and waving out the passenger window in a state of apparent hysteria.

Finally I met this awesome grey cat who befriended me while I was walking back to my car. It was collarless and just sort of wandering the street but plump enough that I figured it probably belonged to someone nearby so I stroked it and played with it and then attempted to get back into my car. The problem was that it seemed keen to get in with me.

No matter how many times I set it back on the pavement it jumped on to my bonnet or followed me around the car to hop in with me. It was adorable but also worrying because I was on Beaufort Street and I was shit-scared it was going to get cleaned up if I just left it there.

Eventually I hefted it over my shoulder and dumped it near a house, then got the hell out of there but it got me thinking about how different things would be if animals could speak English.
I’m not sure what this cat was trying to communicate with me, other than ‘hey I sort of like you,’ or ‘a little bit to the right’ but would I have had the heart to leave it behind if it had opened its little cat jaws and said in perfect English “excuse me but could I possibly come home with you? I’m awfully cold and lonely”?

Similarly I think a lot of you carnivores (ok, omnivores if you must) would convert to my team once you experienced the trauma of meeting a little piglet or cow who asked you, if you wouldn’t mind, not to eat it. Then again, if animals made out of the tastier meats turned out to have really annoying personalities or were closet racists or something then maybe I'd change my stance on the whole vegetarian thing.

Someone whose name I can’t be bothered looking up famously said that if lions could speak we wouldn’t understand them. Meaning not that they would be speaking Swailee but that their experiences were so different to ours that we wouldn’t have common words to communicate with. I’m not so sure about that but the possibility of what animals could tell us is pretty fascinating. Oh sure in reality it would be all “I have soiled myself - how embarrassing” but in my mind they’ve discovered the secrets of the universe and are just trying to tell us all about it.

It tastes like burning.

Nicholas Lezard may not be eating his words but, at the very least, he's got them on a low flame at the back of the stove.

Ha... ha?

I’m in two minds about The Simpsons Movie, which I saw last night. Well actually that’s not quite true. I know what I think - I just feel bad saying it.

As a Generation Y-er I grew up with The Simpsons and was at about the perfect age to enjoy them at their peak during the mid-90s. Who of us born in the late 70s or early 80s could forget the musical version of Planet of the Apes (“Help me Dr Zeus!”), the ‘you don’t make friends with salad’ dance, almost anything involving Lionel Hutz (“Well, he's kind of had it in for me, since I accidentally ran over his dog. Actually, replace 'accidentally' with 'repeatedly', and replace 'dog' with 'son'.”) or the current affairs beat-up job when Homer is accused of grabbing his babysitters arse (“sweet… can”)?

When The Simpsons were good they were very, very good and when they were bad… well they were still kind of good.

The movie feels like watching three episodes back-to-back. Unfortunately it feels like watching three recent episodes back to back. Much like the last few series of the show the movie has occasional moments that reduced me to quivering laughter (most of the scenes with the pig are pretty a-dorable and there were a few other genuinely funny bits that made me laugh aloud) but the rest of it seemed to drag. The Homer-stuffs-up-but-eventually-proves-himself arc, for instance, seems like it’s been done more than once in the past 17 or 18 years. Similarly a few of the scenes feel more like giant winks to the audience than new material, which is vaguely patronising and frustrating for nerds like me who are way too familiar with the source material.

For me the main problem was that the movie has been so anticipated and has taken so long to get to this point that it also has a whiff of trying to please everybody and cover its bases. I know that, in theory, it’s a cartoon and intended for kids as well as adults, but I wish they had gone flat out for the Generation X/Y viewers who grew up with them and screwed the kids instead of trying to have it both ways. By way of comparison I thought the Family Guy movie was much funnier, perhaps partly because it was a much, much smaller offering and the series is young enough that it is still taking risks and trying new things. Maybe if The Simpsons Movie had gone down the same road and tried something a bit more ambitious or offbeat it would have been more interesting to watch.

Ah well at least we'll always have Bovine University.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore... damnit

You know that famous quote from the movie Network where Howard yells “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”? Well that’s how I feel today. I don’t know why I’m so angry but I just feel so fed up with everything. I can’t be bothered dealing with people, I don’t want to help other people solve problems that have nothing to do with me and I’m not in the mood for inane chatter from people who are, apparently randomly, being put through to my phone. Maybe it’s one part ennui, one part rampant hormones and/or the fact that it is constantly freezing in the office so that I am forced to wear a winter coat at my desk every fucking day but this sucks balls. My focus for the day is just to keep plugging on and to get some decent stories out in the process. Somebody give me a diet coke and then back the fuck up…

Ice to see you

I was going to blog about Enough Rope last night but it looks as though Johnsy has beaten me to it and I wouldn’t be surprised if Lindsay were far behind. Nevertheless, consider this my two cents.

I’m not particularly a Grinspoon fan but I was hugely impressed with Phil Jamieson’s appearance on Denton’s show last night. It was also probably one of the more effective anti-drug pieces of TV I’ve seen in awhile.

There are so many puff interviews on TV and in the paper these days that it’s refreshing and weirdly affecting to see someone talk so apparently honestly about his addiction to crystal meth, cheating on his wife and a downward spiral that ended in detox and rehab.I won’t step on Lindsay’s blogging toes by musing on the difference between Jamieson and Perth’s apparent favourite junkie son Cousins but the comparison is an obvious one.Unlike certain footballers Jamieson came off as a likeable, confused person who had been severely messed around with drugs and was (slowly) trying to get back on his feet.

Also unlike certain footballers he didn’t come off as trying to restore his public image and his story wasn’t wrapped up with a nice happy ending: he’s probably shitting himself about what a life without drugs will be like; his wife could take months or years to forgive him and I don’t know what his relationship with his bandmates is like but I’d imagine fairly damaged.

Denton’s work really does show the holes in other interviewers and the cheap way in which most media organisations treat stories about drug addiction and ‘celebrities’.

For anyone who missed it, it should be up on the Enough Rope website soon and is well worth a viewing.

Nicholas Lezard may or may not be a cock. I don't know.

I am having an attack of the guilts. Just a smidgen. A few posts ago I made some rather disparaging remarks about a certain Guardian columnist and his views on Harry Potter. I loved writing that post - deploying the words “cock” and “dicksnap” is one of my favourite ways to pass the time. I laughed as I wrote it and I laughed as I read it again. And then someone claiming to be Nicholas Lezard posted a comment (which you can read here).

At first I dismissed it because, you know, the chances that the poster was, far from being Lezard, 15, pimply and/or had his hand down his pants was pretty high. But since then… I don’t know. Lindsay has given me the fear by suggesting it might actually be him. And, on the one hand, I don’t know why I should care because I disagreed very strongly with what he wrote and I still do but on the other hand… well nobody wants to see themselves called a cock online, do they? Plus on a Howard/Bush/bitchy sales manager at work sliding cock scale columnists for The Guardian should come pretty far down the line, right?

But I don’t know. Tell me, dear reader(s) if I should feel as squirmingly guilty as I do? Is it him? If it is should I care? And why am I now frightened to google my name?

UPDATE: My answers in order: Yes. Yes. Probably. For a very good reason. Read the comments.

Quotable Quotes: Thomas Mann

"Since that moment it is all up with me. My last remaining shreds of happiness and self-confidence have been blown to the winds, I can do no more. Yes, I am unhappy; I freely admit it, I seem a lamentable and absurd figure even to myself. And that I cannot bear. I shall make an end of it. Today, or tomorrow, or some time, I will shoot myself. My first impulse, my first instinct, was a shrewd one: I would make copy of the situation, I would contribute my pathetic sickness to the swell of literature of unhappy love. But that was all folly. One does not die of an unhappy love affair; one revels in it. [ . . . ] But what is destroying me is that hope has been destroyed with the destruction of all pleasure in myself. I cease to write, fling the pen from me -- full of disgust, full of disgust! I will make an end of it -- alas, that is an attitude too heroic for a dilettante. In the end I shall go on living, eating, sleeping; I shall gradually get used to the idea that I am dull, that I cut a wretched and ridiculous figure."

(Thomas Mann, The Dilettante)

I am currently in the world of Harry Potter... I may soon emerge

The obligatory Emmy nomination post

I don't even know half these shows or these "actors" or "actresses" so I've just commented on the categories or people I give half a shit about.

Drama series
Who Should win: Heroes
Whose win would motivate me to kill myself: Grey's Anatomy

Comedy series
Who should win: Hmm for want of something else I'd say The Office.
Whose win would motivate me to kill myself: Two and a Half Men

Actor in a drama series
Who should win: James Gandolfini (The Sopranos) or Hugh Laurie (House)
Whose win would motivate me to kill myself: Kiefer Sutherland (24)

Actor in a comedy series
Who should win: Ricky Gervais (Extras)
Whose win would motivate me to kill myself: Charlie Sheen (Two and a Half Men)

Actress in a comedy series
Who should win: Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds)
Whose win would motivate me to kill myself: Felicity Huffman Huffman (Desperate Housewives... this show is still classified as comedy? Come. On!)

Supporting actor in a drama series
Who should win: Masi Oka (Heroes)
Who's win would motivate me to kill myself: Anyone else

Nip, suck

After watching The Age of Love last night (shut up) with Andy it has become clear to me that not all boys cannot recognise giant, fake boobs when they see them. Allow me to present Exhibit A: Tara Reid. (In Lindsay's words: "One's going out for the shopping and the other's coming back with the change")

Fairly warned be thee say I...

...If anyone has discovered the ending to the new Harry Potter book do not tell me. I will not laugh and buy you a drink. I will cut you.

The Shopping Spiral, or The Devil Wear Silicon

The effects of stress on the human body and mind are pretty well documented. But what about the effects of specifically shopping-induced stress? Because I think there is a subject ripe for analysis right there.

I don’t know what it is about me and shopping. When I’ve got money to burn or I’m in the mood for browsing I love shopping. In that sort of mood I seem to stumble over more lovely clothes than I can stuff in my shopping bags. I look nice in anything, everything’s in my size and I go to a very happy place.

When, on the other hand, I’m looking for something very specific and I’m desperate to buy it I have absolutely no joy - everything is pants, I look hideous and I go to a very bad place I like to call The Shopping Spiral.

The first stage of the shopping spiral is optimism. The shops are new, the possibilities endless and in my mind I look fantastic in every on of the hundreds of dresses I have yet to try on. This is also known as the delusional stage.

Stage two is when reality hits. The shops are shite, all the clothes look the same and the only dresses I can find are of the pinafore/smock variety, apparently designed to make me look like I am not only carrying twins but that I may have eaten a baby or two on my way into the fitting room.

Stage three is rage. I sneer at the teenage fools who probably look good in everything, I mock the dresses waving at me from their hangers and I pour abuse on my shopping companions for being cruel enough to find something they like and look good in.

Next comes bargaining, also known as the time at which I try to rewrite my personality to become the kind of person who might wear a tulip dress. Sure, I tell myself as I wriggle into layers of hideous chiffon/spandex/polyester, it’s not my style now but maybe it could be. I mean, just because I’ve never thought of myself as a strapless, slashed-to-the-thigh sort of person doesn’t mean I couldn’t one day be that person… oh wait no it totally does.

Of course the last stage is a combination of acceptance and depression. I accept that I may never find a dress that I like. I am depressed that this is so.

On the plus side, I discovered last night that a good antidote for the depression side of things is to go home from a failed shopping expedition to watch The Poo’s reality TV show, Age of Love (which is, incidently, exactly as awesome as you hoped it might be). Yes I may be undressable but at least I possess neither a)giant fake cans, or b)the desire to win The Poo’s love. There's always a silver lining.

Do I have too much time on my hands?

I mean should my working day reeaallly include time to mock up fake ransom demands to send to work colleagues who displease me?

July Audit

Last book I bought: The Well of Loneliness. I haven’t read it yet but it’s on the (long) list.
Last movie I watched: Knocked Up. I laughed a lot.
Last good deed: Being nice to Andy last night.
Last good deed done to me: Oscar Hair!
I am saving for: Paying off the couch that will (hopefully) soon arrive. Also a dress that will somehow be everything for any occasion.
Last time I got drunk: Last Friday night. This should be repeated tomorrow night.
Last time I laughed: Probably this morning while trying to drag Andy out of bed.
Last time I was embarassed: 5 Minutes ago running into Moist Eye in the corridor while holding a My Little Pony with a sign reading ‘help me’.
Last risk: I am buying shares in a company I know almost nothing about. Eep.
Last failure: Don’t talk to me about the splits. I am useless.
Next challenge: Hmm, haven’t decided yet. I will take suggestions.
I am loving: Stormy weather, boozing, Andy, mochas.
I am hating: Cleaning, my insatiable appetite, being so uncertain about everything, feeling guilty when people buy me gifts.

I hear it makes Citizen Kane look like an episode of Sweet Valley High...

For those of you who have better things to do than read I Watch Stuff (you smug bastards) comes the synopsis for what may well be the most awesome movie of all time, Dynamite Warrior. I have been a not-so-secret fan of martial arts-esque movies ever since I saw the bit with the stool in the great early Jackie Chan movie Young Master so this presses all the right buttons for me (especially the one that reads simply ‘what the fuck?’)…

“Set in rural Thailand during the 1920s Dan Chupong (Born To Fight) plays
Jone Bang Fai a young man riddled with grief and bent on revenge after
witnessing his parents’ murder by a callous and malicious killer. The only
information Jone has as to the killer’s identity is the memory of a
tattoo-covered man who is part of an organized group of cattle rustlers. Jone makes it his mission to stop all cattle rustlers and in the process return each head of cattle back to its rightful owner. After searching the country high and low, Jone finally believes he has found the murderer in a small rural village in the North of Thailand. To Jone’s dismay he learns that the killer is in fact a
warlock of immense power, a nearly invincible mystical man who is trying to
control the whole village. His one weakness? He can be harmed only by weapons
that have been treated with the menstrual blood of a young virgin. Armed with this knowledge and a few hundred highly charged rockets (and a dash of menstrual blood), our intrepid hero goes up against one of the most dangerous men to have ever walked the Earth.”

Meanwhile, a milestone...

...2000 hits. Good work you five loyal readers, you. You make me feel so... mop.*

*shameless Scrubs reference thrown in purely for Ali's benefit - hope you appreciate it.

Nicholas Lezard is a cock.

What a big, big surprise: someone is complaining about Harry Potter and the quality, or lack thereof, of the way it is written, blah blah blah.

An even bigger surprise: the commentator in question is Nicholas Lezard who is writing for The Guardian. I loathe every word that comes out of this Harold Bloom wannabe's mouth (with the exception of what he says about buying books from independent bookstores instead of chains, which is surely par for the course).

The Harry Potter books aren’t the best written books in the world but neither are they the worst. The language isn’t particularly amazing, it’s frequently over descriptive and stuffed full of unnecessary adjectives but who cares? As far as I’m aware nobody’s claiming it’s more than a very well plotted and hugely entertaining series.

Literary snobbery is a real pet hate of mine, maybe because I’m a huge genre slut - I’ve been a big fan of fantasy and sci-fi since I was a kid but I also like books that would be, I suppose, classified as literary fiction or ‘classics’. I remember once being savaged for reading an Ursula LeGuin fantasy on holiday with a friend (Ironically LeGuin is actually a fantastic writer who has really set amazing literary standards in fantasy and science fiction writing, but anyway…). “But you’re studying English” the friend in question said. Balls. So long as a book engages me in some way - either its language grabs me or the plot does - I don’t care much about why I like it or whether it’s well written, I just keep reading.

Some books are entertaining, some are though provoking and some inspiring. Either way so long as they motivate the reader to turn the page I think they qualify as ‘good’ books.

People who complain about Harry Potter are the sort of vile people who agree with everything Harold Bloom has ever said, deride anything popular as populist and probably have to force themselves to read the books on their bedside table because they’re so fucking dull.

When Lezard says…

“I think it was Verlaine who said that he could never write a novel because he
would have to write, at some point, something like "the count walked into the
drawing-room" - not a scruple that can have bothered JK Rowling, who is happy
enough writing the most pedestrian descriptive prose.”

…I think he’s missing the point, and being kind of an arse. It’s all very well for a writer to sit at home and wank about what a fantastic book he would write if he could be pedestrian enough to write at all but writing books is bloody hard work. Writing books that engage millions of readers across the world is amazing. Not everyone has to like the same books but if Lezard had his way everybody would be sitting around with a copy of Howl.

Not only are you showing what a complete pleb you are by reading Harry Potter, he goes on to say, if you actually enjoy it it’s practically a miracle you’re reading a newspaper at all, you’re clearly such a moron.

“But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is,
then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English
language are largely lost.”

Oh fuck you, Lezard. If you’re such a fucking dicksnap that you can read what is a very engaging book and see nothing but things to criticise then you are achingly dull, which is worse than being a pleb any day.

Things I wish I own but do not.

1. A working hard-drive recorder or VCR. I am missing out on hours of quality programming right there.

2. A little hand-held dustbuster. I was obsessed with these things when I was younger and it occurs to me that if I had one I might never need to use the dustpan and brush again.

3. A winter-appropriate dress. I have never managed to find one of these that did not make me look either approximately 40-years-old, pregnant, fashion challenged or all of the above.

4. A machine, yet to be invented, that will put me to sleep on request and wake me up at a designated time without a raging headache.

Some more forensic partying.*

Thanks to Lindsay and Ritchie for these pictures of a boozy Friday night. As ever the photos raise more questions than they answer: Why do I appear to be holding a different type of drink in each photo? How drunk did I get and why is McCrory such a boob?

*TM Dan Hatch.

“Hold me closer, Tony Danza”

I’m a terrible one for misheard lyrics but they make me laugh. My family still tease me mercilessly about my enthusiastic rendition of Under the Boardwalk or, as I liked it, “Under the Doormat”. Similarly I was a little disquieted once upon a time to hear about my beloved Belle and Sebastian’s brush with incest when they sang “My brother had confessed he was gay - he said that he loved me for awhile”. Slightly disturbing yes? Except of course no it was “My brother had confessed he was gay - it took the heat off me for awhile.”

So I was quite excited to find this archive of misheard lyrics recently. Some of them are stupid but harmless, such as the knob who misheard the line from The Smiths’ Bigmouth Strikes Again “And now I know how Joan of Arc felt” as “And now I know that I’m adopted”.

Others, such as thinking R.E.M’s Losing My Religion featured the entreaty “Let’s pee in the corner, let’s pee in the spotlight” (instead of “That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight”) are pretty amusing. I love, too, the Creedence Clearwater Revival fan who must have thought the band had run out of ideas when he misheard Bad Moon’s Rising “There’s a bad moon on the rise” as “There’s a bathroom on the right.”

And personally I think Outkast's Hey Ya would have benefited if the line "shake it like a polaroid picture" was replaced with what one enthusiastic punter swore blind was "shake it like a polarbear ninja".

More words, I say, more, more...

I think we need more words in the English language. Oh sure there are plenty already and I don’t know what loads of them mean, or even that they exist, but we still need more.

More specifically we need one for that moment when you’re having a discussion (or an argument) and you feel confident you’ve just made an argument-winning point.

You’re standing or sitting there all smug self satisfaction, thinking ‘they can’t possibly refute this one, my logic is flawless’ and then they just reach over, not saying a word, and just fuck with your hair and you think ‘well okay that was pretty good'.

"She will leave your arse for a model called Brendan"

This isn't the official video obviously but this song is lovely. God I wish I had a french accent or looked this cute. Damn French hotties.

Is this some kul-cha I see before me?

I have never been a huge, nutty fan of Shakespeare. I’ve read the obvious ones, like Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Macbeth, but I’ve never been into it in the way that some people I know or have met (frequently people who look like they’re on their way to a Ren-fair).

So I went to see Macbeth (ok, sorry The Scottish Play) last night partly because Andy was lovely and bought me a ticket and partly because it was put on by the Bell Shakespeare Company, who have a great reputation. My theory was that if I was going to see Shakespeare I’d rather see a good version than a handful of spotty kids from WAAPA.

I was pleasantly surprised. The set design was fab and minimalist, all jagged red slashes and crap piled to the side of the stage. Similarly the use of sound effects and, in particular lighting, was really well pulled off and the casting was pretty good - Macduff, Lady Macbeth and Malcom were stand-outs, I thought. Sean O’Shea’s portrayal of Macbeth surprised me because it was much more slimy and nasty than I’d imagined when I read the play. Andy thought he was shit but I liked it - for me it turned Lady Macbeth into a lot less of an Eve character than usual, which was bloody welcome.

I don’t think it will change the way I view Shakespeare forever or anything like that but it was definitely an experience. And, because I am nothing if not superficial, the guy who played Malcom was a total hottie. Who knew a beret could look so good?

(Thanks Andy.)