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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is there any problem music cannot solve?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

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

.

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

And what about those pesky single mothers, eh?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

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

.

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

.

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

.

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

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

Token Smokin' Hottie: Michael Vartan

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

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

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

Hey... you

I had a weird experience at work today.

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

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

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

"H-ey." I said.

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

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

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

Quotable Quotes: Shallow Grave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, please, let's not.

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

"Terror made me cruel..."

It's hard being a book lover sometimes because every so often you get The Fear.

The Fear comes along when you sense a dark shadow over your shoulder or a little darkness in your belly and it suddenly occurs to you: not everybody likes books.

I don't mean I think everyone should be reading 'classics' or non-genre fiction or even non Oprah-endorsed fiction (she did, after all, spruik Jonathan Franzen's spectacular The Corrections, which is quite remarkable when you think about it). There are, naturally, books I think are Good Books or Books You Should Read but I read plenty of weird and trashy stuff and other people can read what they like. They just have to read.

Recently(ish) I got The Fear when I recounted what I thought was a brilliant anecdote about a quite brilliant author and journalist. Someone famous. Someone who has had books written about him and movies made of his books. I finished my anecdote and waited for smiles. Nuthin'.

"Who's that?" my audience asked. It took a bit to sink in: they had no idea who I was talking about. The audience in question was made up of some of my favourite people in the world: people who were lovely, very smart and well educated. But this moment gave me The Fear.

Even worse than the above is hearing the phrase "I don't really read". I know people who don't really read and they are people I like but cannot ever completely understand. It's like living your life and never listening to music. It's like chips without salt. No, fuck, it's like life without chips. I don't know why anyone would choose that once they've tasted how good books can be. Maybe they are put off because they never read as kids and they only have the memories of slugging through Macbeth in high school. I don't know. But I wonder sometimes if they know what they're missing out on... which is everything.

But all that pretentious wank is just a way of saying that sometimes you can get the opposite of The Fear. I don't really know what that is but I got it today when I heard that a copy of Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights sold for 114,000 pounds, more than double the expected price.

Oh sure I know it was probably for a rich old bint who is 110-years-old and it doesn't represent anything bigger, other than that some people have obscene amounts of money, but I don't much care. I love Wuthering Heights in all its melodrama, slushy over-the-top romance and roaming around the moors and, every so often, it's just nice to hear that someone else does too.

Phew, it took a while to get there, didn't it?

Seriously, Charlie, it doesn't even have to be a real marriage...

I was going to stop spruiking Charlie Brooker, honestly I was. You don't care. It's predictable. He seems to be quite popular, I don't see how he can't be popular. Certainly he doesn't need my help getting readers. But how am I expected to resist linking when he comes up with this:

"Weirdly, for a programme based around the relentless humiliation of desperate K-listers, I'm a Celebrity has a fairly solid track record of relaunching careers (far better than, say, the now defunct Celebrity Big Brother, which, in the fame stakes, surely ranks 10 steps below releasing an internet sex tape starring yourself and a microwaveable ready meal for one)."

Mr Brooker you're killing me.

Will you look at the time, it's 1950 already...

Everybody has their secret shame and one of mine is that I have, for some time, actually quite liked Peter Costello. Oh shut up. I don't agree with his politics, obviously, but I've always sort of suspected he might be quite fun when really, really drunk. But No. Fucking. More. Because, my god, I have just heard him use the phrase "reds under the bed". What a wanker.

Life Pursuit: a love letter

The first time I listened to the charming Scottish band Belle and Sebastian it was because of a boy.

A certain skinny, Buddy-Holly-glasses-wearing boy I had a huge, multi-year unrequited crush on. I believe at least a few of you know exactly who I'm talking about. He recommended the band to me for some reason or other, possibly because I feigned an interest, and suggested I would like them. Of course I promptly devoured every song of theirs I could, pushing past the 'eh it's okay' barrier into true love. I got over the boy (mostly, eventually, probably) but I never got over Belle and Sebastian.

Since then most people who become close friends of mine eventually have to listen to a lot of Belle and Sebastian. "Isn't this great?" I bellow at my passengers while I'm a Cuckoo ('I'd rather be in Tokyo/I'd rather listen to Thin Lizzy-oh' guffs lead singer Stuart Murdoch) blares out of the car stereo. "This will change your life," I say, pressing a copy of Tigermilk into someone else's hand ('reading the Gospel to yourself is fine,' coo B&S).

Some of the friends who have been around for awhile have learnt to like (a bit of) them. Others have learned to feign enjoyment and quietly pray for death as I crank up the stereo. I forget how much I talk about them until sometimes, when they come on the radio, and I receive a text message to let me know. That makes me almost as happy as a B&S song does.

It's weird the way some bands get into your mind. Eight-ish years on from listening to my first Belle and Sebastian song I still nominate them as my favourite band, pretty much without hesitation. They're not the 'best' band in the world, the most talented, the best looking or anything like that but listening to a Belle and Sebastian record, for me, is like taking prozac. Even the depressing songs about break-ups and infidelity and stuff that should make me want to take a razor to my wrists cheer me up.

Maybe it's Stuart Murdoch's irrepresibly friendly face or the suspicion that he'd be really fun to hang out with. Maybe it's the fact that, as somebody wise recently told me, no music will ever be as important to you as the music you listen to before you're 25. Maybe it's because they're bloody good and sweet and charming.

So why aren't you listening to them, fool? Call me, we'll talk about it - I'll make you a mix tape...

Not a bad innings for someone who once stabbed his wife with a penknife.

“There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must

grow or else pay more for remaining the same.”

(Norman Mailer, January 31 1923 - November 10 2007)

Perhaps one is more valid than the other...

Call me old Mrs Unadventourous but, before tonight, two experiences on the list of many I have not had would have included having a bottle thrown at me from a moving car and hearing "fuck you, you fucking slut" shouted at me from a completely different car. Clearly I have led a sheltered, middle class life because tonight I experienced both.

Oh sure leaving Burswood on my lonesome to catch a taxi 'on the walk home' was among the less brainy schemes I've hatched over the years. Actually it was doubly stupid because I was tarted up for the media ball and tottering on heels at the time but when has anyone ever made a brilliant move when free booze all night was involved?

So the increasingly dark road pretty quickly became very, very creepy and it did occur to me (thanks for asking) that I may well die and be buried in a shallow grave in the uber dodgy-looking park/oval I discovered on my travels. Concern over my inability to recognise my surroundings (I was, as it turned out, walking the wrong way- I know, I know) also grew pretty sharply, heightened by the complete failure of any of the many taxis I saw to stop for me. But until some cockhead hurled a bottle from the window of their car (which managed to smash on the footpath right in front of me, covering my lovely new silky dress in the process and scaring ten types of shit out of me) I was holding it together pretty well.

Me being me (read: drunk, emotional and sort of a pussy), as soon as said cockhead let fly I pretty much burst into tears. Luxuriant, embarassing mess-up-your-face-tears. Tragically, however, I was not distraught enough not to give the finger, moments later, to the dicksnap who beeped at me. The result? A "fuck you, you fucking slut" screamed out the window as the car sped away. Je-sus. Is this really what we've come to?

It was right about then I decided it was time to call in a lift, which only necessitated another ten minutes of waiting in the middle of fucking nowhere at the continent's creepiest intersection (presumably marking the entrance to hell) for the lovely Ruth (to whom I owe many things) to arrive. I was wearing a skimpy-by-my-standards dress with a huge wet patch on it, tottering in high heels, still sort of bawling and trying not to look like a distraught hooker. I can't remember the last time I have actually been quite so frightened, nor felt so helplesss. It was all a bit fucked actually.

At the risk of angering my two male readers I would suggest that men can't imagine quite what it feels like to be alone and stranded in the wee hours on a Saturday night in a slinky dress when all those episodes of Prime Suspect come back to terrify you. I mean nobody enjoys being uncomfortable on the street waiting for a taxi instead of tucked up in bed but it is, I'm a little bit sorry to say, Different For Girls.

Of course boys, too, can have bottles thrown at them, just as they can be brutally raped and murdered in the middle of the night but I've yet to see a boy huddled in the darkness trying to cover his cleavage with a pathetically small clutch bag and dreading each new set of headlights coming along the road just as I've yet to see a boy get called a fucking slut from the safety of a speeding car.

The lesson of the night? It's a tie between 'Don't Go Off On Your Own You Dumb Bitch' and 'People Are Fucked'. Both valid points, I feel.

Are you lonesome tonight?

For reasons into which I would rather not go my bathroom is currently full of towels. I don't mean there are a lot of towels in my bathroom - I mean it is full of towels. Wet ones. On the floor.

For related reasons the launcdry is full of clumps of white fluff that make it look as though a poodle has been brutally done to death there. These are minor, if messy, matters but it has got me thinking about the slightly mad things people can do when they're by themselves.

As I'm only just starting to discover, when you're by yourself there's nobody around to query the wisdom of what you do. Leave the slightly crusty plates in the sink for another day why don't you. Who needs a plate when you can make and eat that omlette right in the frying pan and why is drinking in bed not okay again?

Most of this stuff is all good, of course. I can stay up until 2am watching Biggest Losers: Where Are they Now and nobody needs to know I wasn't up late working on the magnum opus or reading Tolstoy or something. I can drink a bottle of wine for dinner and pretend I may one day cook the eggplants cluttering up the vegetable crisper.

On the downside, of course, there is nobody to stop me doing the kind of mental things that lead to the poodle-fluff situation or the bathroom flood.

But, hey, at least nobody ever needs to know about them. This is just between you and me, right?

Wait, so, Darcy and Elizabeth hook up?

I know people who don’t reread books (indeed I am related to one of them) and I don’t understand their attitude because rereading books is one of the great pleasures of reading at all.

There are plenty of books I doubt I will ever reread because I didn’t enjoy them all that much on the first run through and hold out no great hope for changing my mind after a second crack (no, Life of Pi, I will never understand your reputed charms, I’m sorry) but there are many more I have thumbed through, either in their entirety or to linger over favourite passages, two, three or (in a few mildly shameful cases) dozens of times.

Oh sure on the second time around you know that know Elizabeth and Darcy will end up together, Sebastian will crash and burn or that things aren’t going to end all that well for Gatsby but that knowledge doesn’t diminish the pleasure. At least not for me. Instead it just makes the experience different, filling every page of, for instance, The Great Gatsby with foreboding for what’s to come and fuelling your hatred for the cunt Tom. Of course a reread also allows you to focus on the language, a lot of the prettiness of which - as a reader with a bad habit of skim reading when I get excited - I tend to miss out on in a first read when I’m desperate to find out what happens in the end.

Of course rereading one book means you’re spending time on familiar passages when you could be discovering something new. I assume that’s pretty much the argument of non rereaders (and the more I type reread and rereaders the more wrong it looks, and Microsoft Word appears to agree with me).

But I suppose the whole thing turns on what you think the point of reading is. If it’s to cross off titles on a long list of ‘classics’ or to absorb the latest water-cooler (and, as an aside, can’t somebody please come up with a replacement for that sucked dry phrase?) book so you can bore people at parties then, okay, you’re wasting your time rereading anything and you should just keep right on moving. (Of course if that’s your attitude then you’re probably a dull wankhead too so perhaps you should tie a copy of In Search of Lost Time around your neck and jump off a bridge of some kind while you’re at it.)

But if the reason you read is to enjoy the writing, to watch a story unfold and, maybe, to take a wild and purely hypothetical example, to escape the very unliterary and rarely beautiful world of business reporting, then there’s nothing better than cracking open an old favourite.

I could go on but a)my right hand is tired (what? too much?) and b) I’ve already completely ripped off the Nicholas Lezard column this post was actually intended to link to. Forget everything you’ve just read and read that instead

This is not a love song

Call me crazy but I'd swear I was prepubescent when this stupid election campaign started. And yet the election is still So. Far. Away. How can this be possible? I hate it.

I hate the gabbled super-fast "authorised by blah blah blah" bit at the end of the stupid ads. I hate Howard. I hate the flip in my stomach every time the Labor campaign hits a bump and I wonder if they might fuck it all up. I hate Howard. I hate finding out that somebody else I know and like is going to vote Liberal. I hate realising that so many people care more about what tax cuts they're going to get and whether they can buy another flatscreen for the spare room than what their government plans to do about social justice, the environment and things that actually matter.

I hate the knobhead who called ABC radio this morning to complain about both a)Rudd and b)the dangers of multiculturalism and I really, really hate the fact that said knobhead's vote is worth the same as mine.

I would so be into babies if they looked like this...

It is, of course, an English doormouse.

It's not actually that hard...

It's so nice to see that John Howard can say sorry about the latest interest rate rise.

The rise isn't really his fault and he's not accepting blame for it, or offering to reimburse everyone who has been affected by it - he's just sympathising, saying that he wishes things could have been different and that it is not okay. It doesn't change anything or make things better but it's a nice gesture. And maybe the cockmuncher will learn to like the sound of the s-word on his tongue.

Sounds fair to me

"Seamed stockings aren't subtle but they certainly do the job. You shouldn't wear them when out with someone you're not prepared to sleep with."

(Cynthia Heimel, Sex Tips for Girls)

Pass me the floatie, Mum

There’s a lot to be said for getting thrown in at the deep end. You learn more quickly when your feet can’t touch the bottom, you feel incredibly good when you manage to stay afloat and, to stretch a metaphor to breaking point, you don’t become reliant on floaties. All of these things are good – they are what makes you better at whatever you’re trying to do.

But you know what else there’s a lot to be said for? Telling. Me. What. To. Do. It's not the business thing - I know it's nobody’s job to teach me about how goddamn warrants and future work (though, seriously, if anyone can... call me). But that’s not the problem. The problem is that nobody will tell me what to do. I mean the basics. Like what I’m supposed to be doing. And how. And by when.

Like, um, how do I file a story? And which parts of the paper am I responsible for? And, um, how do I file a story again? All the lovely colleagues in the world and even the new-found enthusiasm I seem to have discovered for all things sharemarkety don't really make up for realising at 7pm that you haven't actually filed that market report after all. Unfortunately.

Charlie, will you marry me?

"How, as a tragic singleton, are you meant to go on holiday anyway? I know from experience what couples do on holiday: they argue. But I'm not a couple. Who am
I supposed to slowly fall out of love with? I can't slowly poison my relationship with myself. Or can I?"

Gosh how I love Charlie Brooker.

Fascinating (yawn), just fascinating, Kate

It's all about perspective, really.

A month ago, for instance, the prospect of starting my new job, was a terrifying one. I was scared then and I assumed I would have been about ten times as scared now. And so I should have been.

But the past few days- as anyone who has been unfortunate enough to be forced to listen to me moping can testify - have been pretty shitty for me, generally. Not shitty in the sense that anything bad has happened to me but shitty in the sense that I have been at my lowest in quite awhile thanks to general ennui brought on, I assume, by extreme lack of sleep. Sob, sob poor me etc.

But the huge perk of feeling really, really bad lately means that I am now starting to put things into persepctive. Yes the job still scares me and I'm by no means convinced that I will be any good at it. There's still so much I don't know and so many things I don't know how to do that nobody should be surprised if you bump into me in the dole queue in a month's time. But who gives a fuck, really? All that I care about is being happy and while a job that I like and can do is important it's not everything. It won't be the end of the world if it all goes tits up and I will manage. Probably. Phew. Glad to get all that off my chest.

And yes I know I've been a whinging bint these past few days. Would a joke kill me? Probably not, so I'll work on it.

Zzzzz

Don’t drink tea or coffee. Try herbal tea before bed. Don’t drink booze. Have a glass of wine. Try reading in bed to relax.. Only use your bed for sleeping.

The worst thing about insomnia is the theories.

Soo many theories. And, as you stare at the ceiling at two am each of them seems to make perfect sense, even the ones that contradict the other ones. Should I stay in bed and try to sleep or get up and distract myself? Should I try to read a boring book or should I just try to relax and not think about anything? Would taking a second sleeping tablet be considered an overdose?

Equally crap is the fact that, the more you worry about not sleeping, the less you’re able to. For every half hour I spend stressing about having to start a new an terrifying job on way too little sleep and too little preparation (the fatigue means I can’t concentrate on anything more complicated than walking between the fridge and the couch) that’s another hour I’ll spend lying awake in bed. The more I think ‘I’m not going to sleep’ the less I sleep.

Somebody put a fork in me and tuck me in: I’m done.

Quotable Quotes: Leonard Cohen

"Are the stars tiny, after all? Who will put us to sleep? Should I save my fingernails? Is matter holy? I want the barber to bury my hair. Catherine Tekekwith, are you at work on me already?"
(Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers)

"If he hangs himself over this I can stick an orange in his mouth and call it a fatal wanking accident."

There’s nothing worse than listening to somebody bang on about why you should be watching this TV program or that TV program is there? In theory nobody really needs a reason to spend more time watching TV and why would you take advice from someone else who has nothing better to do than slug on the couch?

And yet I can’t keep quiet because Peep Show is one of the funniest new shows I have seen in a long time (also you might not believe me but another new show that is much better than it looks is How I Met Your Mother… hey I’m just saying, it's true).

But back to Peeperino, well, y ou don’t care about some show you’ve never seen, I know, but you should because it’s hilarious and different and I’ve just watched three series of the fucker back to back (thanks to the lovely Bec). My eyes may or may not be wet with tears of laughter and I have actually been cackling away like a maniac.

So the lecture is over but, while I have big plans to tie certain people to the couch and force them to watch it, once that’s over the DVDs are just a call away...

NOTE: Still don't believe me? Hear it from the experts.

Not hungry but homeless... kinda

I love, love, love 'my' apartment. I love the giant living room and the guilty-inducing leather couches. I love the balcony and the proximity to Northbridge and the city. I even love the crack dens that surround us. But in December 'my' apartment will no longer be mine. The lovely friends who have been renting it to me at a heavy discount are, tragically, returning, and while it will be great to see them again I am already mourning the loss of my home.

Shopping around for a new home is a weird exercise. It's fun and a bit sad but, more than that, you're forced to try and imagine yourself into each house you look at. Would you rather be slugging on the couch watching Peep Show (thanks Bec) in this cutesy two bedroom Subiaco cottage or am I more of a drinks-on-the-balcony in Leederville sort of a person? Hmm.

Perth being such a car-based city in theory your choice of home doesn't need to have that much of an impact on your lifestyle. And yet, for me, it seems to.

Living in Northbridge, for example, is great and it's definitely encouraged me to take up mild alcoholism (if not on the lovely balcony than at the pub juuuust a short stroll down the road) as a serious pursuit. The style of the house has also encouraged me to make an effort to have people over ever so often as I don't have crappy tiles and a hideous kitchen to be ashamed of. My previous house, by comparison, had a lovely living room and several lovely flatmates, both of which encouraged me to clock up a lot of couch time and watch perhaps more Angel than one person ever needs to watch.

What will the new house be life? No fecking idea but I could be moving to a neighbourhood near you so keep your doors locked.

You are not getting very sleeeeppyyy

By my calculations in the past 72 hours I have had six hours sleep. Admittedly I was always a bit crap at maths but, even accounting for an odd hour at either end, things are not looking great. My body hates me and I hate my body.

Four of those hours are all but a distant memory, having been taken more than 48 hours ago while on a couch in London, while the other two were picked up on a plane and, last night, in my own bed. At least I think so: I remember looking at the clock at 4.48am and the next time I looked at it it was six o'clock so I assume that time went somewhere. All this is fascinating stuff I know. Shall I give you a blow-by-blow of the nine hours I spent lying awake in bed last night? Perhaps not.

Lack of sleep does funny things to you. I'm not tired, not exactly. Oh I'm sort of bone weary, my eyes hurt and every so often my legs go a bit funny but if I snuggled up beneath the doona right now I don't think I could drop off. This ridiculous situation has been described to me as the equivalent of the over-tired child who won't stop screaming and go to sleep. I am that over-tired child.

As a result I have been drifting about in a haze when I should have been seeing the people I have missed or beefing up for a new job I'm still not convinced I'm qualified to do. I could be achieving things and enjoying myself but instead I am stressed about not being able to sleep and even more stressed about the likelihood of this additional stress making sleep even less likely.

More than that, lying in bed and being unable to sleep is very depressing. I'm paraphrasing someone else there, someone good. In fact I'm pretty sure it was F.Scott Fitzgerald and what he said was that the worst thing in the world was to try to sleep and not be able to. Looking at those words from beneath bleary eyelids I think he had a point. You think about everything you don't want to think about when you can't sleep. Or at least I do. And there's a reason I don't think about those particular things.

Johnsy may also have had a point when he suggested, in the comments field of the previous post, that I needed more sleep before I got back on the blogging horse. Well, yes, that is true. But I don't care. I need to share my pain. I need to explain why I have barely talked to anyone since my return and why, when I do eventually see you, I may look like a puddle of death. Most importantly I need some sleep.

NOTE: I have aquired a hardcore sleeping tablet to ensure sleep tonight and get me back on schedule. Hopefully. However, apparently this lovely little pellet of joy has been known to cause people to sleepwalk, talk in their sleep and even make phonecalls they later don't remember making. Of course there will be no witnesses to the first two but, er, just a little warning: if anyone out there receives a weird call from me at two in the morning blathering about the aliens under my bed or the three children I've just dismembered in my bathroom... er, you don't need to be alarmed. Probably.

Tubular Hell

Recently I have spent quite a bit of time on airplanes. And, coincidently enough, until very recently I loved to fly.

Love, love, loved it. And now... eh.

I think my love may have died in the wee, wee hours of this morning as I sat sandwiched in a non-aisle, non-window seat between three crying babies (no... seriously - I have never wanted to take a hatchet to my fallopian tubes with such enthusiasm before) and a couple apparently in love (vomit), while being semi-pestered by a well intentioned but creepy steward who wanted to talk to me about Montaigne.

It was about then that I started to think about planes and how they are metaphors for life. It's the 'so much time and so little to do' thing I suppose. But don't worry, I'm not going to subject you to much of that crap because the theory falls down almost immediately. Because a plane, you see, is taking us somewhere. Somewhere exciting even. Somewhere we want to go. Planes have a destination and that doesn't usually mean crashing and burning into the scorched earth below. Life, meanwhile, is more like a plane with its wings cut off sitting on the runway: boring as fuck and going nowhere.

What is also taking us somewhere but (and this is the crucial point), generally, nowhere new or exciting and frequently somewhere we don't particularly care to go, is the London underground. And as far as life metaphors go this one holds up a lot better than the plane crap. This might come as a surprise because, in my opinion anyway, the underground system is mostly fantastic and only occassionally shit whereas life is the other way around, but please indulge me...

For a start the likelihood of you enjoying yourself on the tube is almost entirely dependent on your ability to make your own fun. I have whittled away many happy hours on the tube with my ipod and a good book but I have also wanted to commit hari kari in the two minutes it took me to travel between Bank and Holborn stations upon discovering my ipod's battery is dead and my book has been left at home on the bog.

At the same time, on the tube, you can do everything right and people will still fuck you over. Book? Check. Ipod? Check. Refreshing drink? Check and check. fifty sweaty people sans deoderant with exactly the same destination in mind as you? Er, check.

The most infuriating aspect of the entire operation is that there is no way to avoid it. If you need to get somewhere in London you pretty much need to catch the tube. Oh sure you can pussy around with buses and black cabs for a bit but that's just a cop out. A stop gap even. Sooner or later you'll be down in the tube, standing dutifully to the right of the escalator and wondering if you will enjoy a pleasantly seated 15 minute ride or an hour long death march.

It's just the same with life. We're not entirely enamoured with the trip but what's the alternative? Fuck all is what so quit your whining. Just stand to the right, don't make eye contact and hope that, today, the train will be empty, the seats will be free and you can make it to your stop without weeping bitterly onto your Oyster card and wishing imminent death on yourself and others.

Questions I had good reason to ask myself recently:

• Why is there an egg-shaped lump on my head that really hurts when I push it?
• Why is one of my knees red and swollen?
• Why are my feet covered in a variety of incredibly unattractive blisters and weeping sores?
• When exactly did I become a sleepwalking self harmer?

Unwanted Destinations

It is inevitable that on any holiday you will find yourself in places you really don't want to be. I'm not talking about the Czech town apparently populated entirely by prostitutes and unhelpful train ticket collectors in which you find yourself stuck for three hours while waiting for a train, nor even the dodgy Argentinean internet cafe which welcomes you with the sight of a small child pissing in the doorway, so much as I'm talking about...

Shitting-your-Pants-Ville
You will realise you have entered this small, hopefully rarely-visited, locale when the possibility occurs to you that you might actually be about to die. This could happen, for instance, when you discover, while thousands of feet up in the air, that the air hostess demonstrating the safety procedures is very, very drunk. Concerns will be further raised by the sporadic ramblings of a madman that come over the PA at unpredictable intervals, offering contradictory advice or suggestions before falling back into silence mid sentence. If you don't know where you are by now try turning on the overhead light, listening to the radio or accessing the long promised but never received in-flight entertainment. You observe not only your light but that of your neighbour's flicker once and die while your radio is either non existent or offers only silence? Congratulations... you're in Shitting-Your-Pants-Ville.

Aw Fuck County
Aw Fuck County is always open for a quick stay, such as when you realise you are a day late not only for the flight you have just arrived to catch but for all subsequent connectingflights, or for a longer trip, such as when you discover your boyfriend has left his wallet in a plan somewhere between Washington DC and Argentina.

Ugly America
Ugly America is not, as you might suppose, a place populated by fat tourists with Texan accents who talk as though nobody around them could possibly understand them and whose 'Spanish' consists of speaking in an increasingly loud voice (apologies to MrHatch senior). Ugly America is when you discover that YOU are being viewed as the equivalent of the fatties with Texan accents. This may happen as you try desperately to speak bad Italian to a hostel clerk and, upon receiving his blank stare, complain "oh come on, they're practically the same language" or it may happen when, aftera highly confusing verbal exchange, your taxi driver turns to you and says "so you're American, right?"

Out of Office Reply

I’m sorry but I am busy jet-setting about and spending money I don’t have and cannot take your call today.

I will be back in town at the end of the month. If you need entertainment in the meantime please enjoy the luscious Gael Garcia Bernal above, check out the fine list of links on the right hand side of this page or send me an email, as I’m bound to be in and out of some of Argentina’s mustier internet cafes to keep up with all the business news that Perth has to offer (ahem).

Alternately you can leave me a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you.

Damn you extra strength cold and flu meds - what have I become?

When I was younger my mother, bless her, once compared me to Jo from Louisa M. Alcott’s classic Little Women. This delighted me for two reasons. Firstly, of course, because, as far as I was concerned, Jo was the most awesome of the March sisters - far better than the whiny little martyr that was Beth or the stupid bitch that was Amy. Secondly because it infuriated my older sister who felt (perhaps rightly) that she was being cast as the older, dull and super sensible Meg. To this day I can still get a rise out of her by referring to her as “Megsie”.

Anyway the point (and I am getting there) is that part of me thought there was some validity to this comparison. Not because I’m like Jo in many ways but because she hated change and she just wanted everything to stay the same.

Now, unlike Jo, I would never have turned down Laurie for a snooty German wankhead but on this particular point I agree with her: change blows.

The end of this week, which has nearly arrived, promises to herald a fairly significant change for me as I change jobs. I will miss the work, which I love most of them when I’m not being cried at over the phone or yelled at by some crazed council watcher.

But more than that I will miss the people I have met here. Blame it on the cold and flu medication for making me all weepy but I’ve never worked in a place where I have met so many awesome people. Not all of them are still with the company or, indeed, work in the same office as me, but they are among the smartest, funniest and most right-on (hee sorry) people I’ve ever met. Soonish after starting here I was prattling on about this to my best friend, the lovely Ali and she said something like “wow, you don’t usually like people” or something to that effect. Completely true and yet I totally (vomit bags in place, please) fell in love with the CNG crew.

And I’ll miss them all terribly.

*Sniff* See you at the pub.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who contributed to both card and pressie. Love it.

Congratulations... you're a c*nt

Now pass me my cane and shut up - granny's watching her stories.

How do you know you’re getting old? It’s got nothing to do with turning 25 and then having somebody say to you the very next day “Jeez you’re looking old” (As an aside: Fuck you, man. As far as I’m concerned I still have baby fat). It’s all about hearing yourself mumble that killer phrase “Ah the youth of today…”

Which I kinda did when I read this article in The Guardian about how much pocket money kids (English kids actually but who’s counting?) are getting these days. Up to a thousand pounds a year apparently.

Hmm. On the one hand: good work kids and who cares. But on the other hand… part of me vaguely resents this little development because I distinctly remember the Good Old Days when I received exactly a dollar a week in pocket money. A freaking dollar a freaking week. I can’t remember how old I was but I do recall once saving for two weeks to splurge and buy my sister a $1.50 piece of lace (I know, I know - the lace bit makes it sound like I grew up in the Depression but it’s what happened, ahh but they were simpler times).

To compensate for this kind of tough love approach I had to work a string of low-paying fairly crappy jobs from a pretty young age. Highlights include my very own paper route, working the fries at Hungry Jacks and my brief foray into the world of the sandwich deli where my boss chain-smoked and I nearly cut off my thumb with the industrial meat slicer.

And yet - and I say this filled with fear of getting too comfortable in my role as Wise Old Woman Reflecting On Her Past - I think it actually did me some good. These days I expect to have to work for it if I want something, I appreciate the slightly better-paying awesome job I have now and I’m mighty handy if you want your ham sliced up wafer thin. Even better if you want some human blood on the side.

And I’m not sure that I would have any of that if I’d had large cash sums dolled out to me by Ma n’ Pa Emery.

Then again, hoping down from my pedestal right about now I did just spend a crazy, crazy amount of money on a pair of ridiculously costly stockings which I had flown in from (ahem) London, and I have, now that I come to think of it, blown my savings on a whirlwind trip I can’t ‘technically’ afford.

Um what was I saying about life lessons learned? It’s all bunk. Damn you Mum and Dad - where was that silver spoon I was promised at birth?

Poetry Corner

"About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window
Or just walking dully along."
(W.H. Auden, Musee de Beaux Arts)

Things I do not want to hear:

• I am the same age as Graham Greene when he published his first novel.
• I am only a year younger than F.Scott Fitzgerald when he published The Beautiful and the Damned.
• I am two years older than Ian Curtis was when he died (ok well maybe that one's ok).

Lemsip is the new booze

I think I may be in the middle of a bloody self fulfilling prophecy.

You see for the past few weeks I’ve felt, on and off, that I was on the cusp of becoming ill. I don’t know why but I seem to have had an inordinate number of sore throats/weary muscles/sneezy fits… fortunately without ever actually having any of them develop into a full blown stay-in-bed illness.

That’s all well and good but now that I’m about to jet set off at the weekend for a lovely overseas trip I’ve developed the fear that I will get sick. And now damn it if I don’t seem to be doing just that. Sore throat? Check. Weariness? Check. Stomach that feels like a teensy craft set adrift on stormy seas? Double check.

Of course the worst part is that the whole thing is probably bloody psychosomatic: I worry about getting sick and the stress not only makes me imagine symptoms but probably actually creates the little fuckers. I stress because I feel sick and I am sick because I am stressed. Pah. Stupid body and brain, can’t get it together.

However I’m determined to beat my mind or body or whatever at its own game. From now until, you know, the end of the week I will become one of those sickening bastards who takes Echinacea, eats shite like berries with natural yoghurt for breakfast and never drinks diet coke at 7am.

Hey, it’s three days - what’s the worst that could happen?

Happy Birthday to, um, me?

As a caveat to this blog I would like to mention that I have been out on a long and boozy birthday lunch, which has only just ended. Therefore nothing i say should be held against me. Aaaanyway...

Birthdays. Aren't they fucking fabulous?

At the big 25 I feel I am both getting getting older, getting younger and staying the same.

On the one hand I am obviously getting older. For instance on Saturday night while out with my lovely ol' school girls I looked at my watch at about 1.30am and though 'yeeeeah I'm ready for bed' and I was. And I went. Something I wouldn't have done five years ago. Maybe that doesn't seem like a particularly good thing but it's nice to feel that I can admit it when I'm ready to slope off. And to admit that maybe I'm not all about the clubs these days.

On the other hand I have a giant pimple. On my face. It is almost a second head. Ew. So I am still, technically, 16ish.

And on the er alternative (third?) hand, the song I chose as today's 'birthday song' (yeah I have too much free time on my hands, some might say) was a Belle and Sebastian classic, This is Just a Modern Rock Song. This is a long term favourite so, you know, the more things change blah blah blah.

There are too many people to thank for unexpected gifts/flowers/happy birthdays but thank you all - I have had a truly lovely day.

Exhibit A

So featuring hotties in two blogs in a row is sort of lazy - I know this. I also think it brings the incredibly intellectual tone down just a smidgen. And yet. If you haven't been watching the new series of Heroes or you missed the first season may I present exhibit A for why you should be watching it: the ever luscious Milo Ventimiglia. Without his shirt on. And although you cannot see it here I assure he was chained up. And sort of sweaty. *Ahem* Please excuse me.

Cusp-of-the-weekend hottie

"There is nothing like desire for preventing the things one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in mind." (Marcel Proust)

PLEASE NOTE: This photo was supposed to be a shot of a shirtless, shaved-headed and er (a moment of wooziness) chained up Milo Ventimiglia, courtesy last nights episode of Heroes. Sadly however my computer has shat itself and gone to sit in the corner with a stiff cup of tea and the photo will have to remain for my eyes only. Now if you don't mind I have some business to attend to. In other room.

It was a dark and stormy night...

The opening line of a novel sets the tone of the whole thing. At least that’s the way I see it. The author knows it will be the first thing the reader reads, I reason, and they should try to make it the best line in the book. The theory follows on, then, that if the first line is crap the rest of the book will be crapper. Of course that isn’t always the case but it’s a nice rule of thumb and I always read the first couple of lines of any book I buy because the plunging disappointment of starting a new book and being immediately turned off in the first ten words is terrible.

By contrast the sensation of sitting down to read a brand new book and reading “Mother died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know” is a fabulous one. That particular start, from Albert Camus’ The Outsider, is a personal favourite of mine but there are plenty more.

What about Anthony Burgess’ Earthly Powers: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

Or the wonderful “It was a pleasure to burn” from Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury).

Traditionalists who like that sort of thing might think the whole thing starts and ends with “Call me Ishmael” (Melville's Moby Dick of course) or think Dickens had it right with A Tale of Two Cities - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair”.

Certainly the latter is a mood setter but I prefer Steinbeck’s equally evocative opener from The Grapes of Wrath - “To the red country and party of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.” - Plath’s Bell Jar - "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York” - or Orwell's 1984 “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen?”

But what do I know - I’m just one stupid reader. So I shall turn it over to you book readers out there - favourite opening line for a novel ever? There's no need to be shy...

Beautiful Losers

"[F[ind a little saint and fuck her over and over in some pleasant part of heaven, get right into her plastic altar, dwell in her silver medal, fuck her until she tinkles like a souvenir music box, until the memorial lights go on for free, find a little saintly faker like Teresa or Catherine Tekakwitha or Lesbia, whom prick never knew but who lay around all day in a chocolate poem, find one of those quant impossible cunts and fuck her for your life, coming all over the sky, fuck her on the moon with a steel hourglass up your hole, get tangled up in her airy robes, suck her nothing juices, lap, lap, lap, a dog in the ether, then climb down to this fat earth and slouch around the fat earth in your stone shoes, get clobbered by a runaway target, take the sensless blows again and again, a right to the mind, piledriver on the heart, kick in the scrotum, help!
help! It's my time, my second, my splinter of the shit glory tree, police, firemen! look at the traffic of happiness and crime, it's burning in crayon like the akropolis rose!"

I have just finished reading Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers and um, for reasons which may or may not be clear upon reading the above extract, I'm not entirely sure what to think.

You can read the full blog entry here.