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.