Jealousy is a cruel thing.

It's always everyone but you, isn't it? Oh well. Get on, go on, go.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

I wanted to write something but the thoughts of this morning have vanished and no others have come along.

Thing

Yesterday my eyes were green with tiredness. Today they're greener still. I wonder why they do that when I'm tired. And I wonder whether it's worth being always tired to keep them so green.

When we pretend that we're dead

I think I hate facebook. I have oh so many friends – nine, I am popular – and I think at least a third ‘friended’ me merely to boost their own stats. One, well, I see him every other day anyway and chatter to him at work so I guess I just make him look popular whilst making it look like I have a friend. Another is a school friend who I now suspect wishes she’d rejected me – and, really, didn’t we reject each other when we ‘lost contact’ for eight years? Another is another work person who I don’t speak to very often but have quite nice chats with when I do. I don’t know her very well though and suspect that this might be a good way to do so. Two are very old friends who I utterly adore for their complete wonderfulness and the fact that they love me enough to not mind that I am a bit of a crap friend. Aside from the lost-contact-with-school-friend I suspect that at least one secretly despises me and I know one thinks I am fool. One gets massively annoyed with what she sees as my great waste of potential. And for two, well, I doubt they ever think of me at all.

Yeah, call me cynical but I think the whole thing is about who looks most popular and who knows the most people [I do wonder when it will end and a winner will be declared]. I do not think it is at all about friendships or even the connections we make with each other. Quite frankly, I feel awkward about those of my ‘friends’ that I know but don’t have any major connection with. How much of me do I want these people to know? Obviously, given that I have a semi-secret blog under a pseudonym and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who actually know my real name who read this, I am a fairly private person in that oddity that is real life. Hell, of those two very old friends only one of them knows about this – and I’ve known the other since I was four. The thing that gets me thinking is that if I am not close to them in person, if we cannot be bothered being friends in another way, in a proper way, why should we even pretend just because the internet is watching? Not that I think the internet is particularly watching but, you know, popularity contest – hello.

I suppose this is an odd thing to mention on a blog given the nature of the space and the rather odd set of relationships that come out of blogging but I do not feel comfortable with these half relationships, the relationships that are more about popularity than about the players. Fond as I am of a number of bloggers, really some of you are too fabulous for words, you are not my friends.* You may know me a little, you may imagine that you know me a lot, you may, in fact, know me quite a lot but you do not know me and I do not know you. Friends are the people one can phone or, being me, send random text messages to. Friends are the ones that you phone, in tears, when you realise your love and its ultimately pathetic and unrequited nature. Friends are the people that you go to the pub with every week. Friends are the ones that know your family and/or your family stories. Friends are the ones that realise that you love a person despite the fact that you may call them dumbarse and tease them mercilessly. Friends are the people you spend ten hours travelling to see and to spend a couple of hours with. I really must get back to the point. Did I have one? I think I was saying that I don’t like facebook because I find it essentially false. It is another way for people to pretend to be friends, or pretend to have a connection, and then spend their time ignoring each other.

* This is not to say that I wouldn’t like to know some of you better but, as is, well…

Cinnamon toast.

RIP Birdman

It seems that the rumours of the Birdman's demise were actually true. This depresses me more than you can know.

Oh Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

Let me tell you just how retarded I am. I just spent a couple of months without proper TV because I temporarily forgot how complicated my TV/VCR/DVD/STB set up is. Tonight I gave it a final attempt and suddenly remembered that I can only access the STB channels through a particular channel on the VCR. Not expecting anything much, I flipped through the VCR channels and suddenly came across my missing STB/aerial set up. Remember, MONTHS. I missed the end of Dr Who - and most of the middle bits too. Ugh. Argh! Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!!!
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think a normal person would have worked this out MUCH sooner. So dumb. So very very dumb.
My parents/sister are going to DIE laughing at me.

Multiple choice.

Did I spend the afternoon:

1) madly cleaning my flat because I have yet another inspection tomorrow?

2) pissing about doing not much and going to the pub?

3) lying on the couch reading children’s books and eating curried egg sandwiches and napping?

4) earnestly writing terribly exciting new and upcoming blog posts?

5) with my tits out, dancing round the house with a feather duster?

Nailpolishblues is

having Press Gang envy.

Don't fuck it up.

I wave my little wand over the birthday boy de jour (well, in about half an hour) and wish him one special thing: Don't fuck it up, Kevvie. Do you hear me? Don't fuck it up.

We are holding you to an unbelievable standard, don't make us lose faith.

Did you get that? Don't. Fuck. It. Up.

Many happy returns, etc.

Things I learned from C.S. Lewis #2:

That sometimes, if you're really lucky, you can find a beaver that can do everything.

17th September

The third of the five babies of my cousins this year (busy family) was born today. I shall never keep all these children in order but isn't it sweet that everyone has second cousins the same age? In one part of the family it's first cousins as well.

All my cousins are between 5-10 years older than me, maybe that's why it seems sweet.

Things I learned from C.S. Lewis:

bear meat

Well fuck me...

I just received and email from my aunt, my sixty-something year old, terribly conservative, eccentric [by which I mean crazy] aunt. It was entitled Blonde Pole Dancer - apparently this somehow reminded her of me...

You cannot imagine how relieved I felt when I discovered that it was a picture of a labrador puppy straddling bamboo.

Frightening though, is that she signed off with Remember Faith, Hope and Love.

I'm so awful. If I didn't know that they were leaving all their shitloads of money [no kids] to the dogs home I'd be much nicer to them.

Beer.

This is the short story of how I became a female beer drinker – a thing much maligned by many of the young lay-dees of my acquaintance. The attitude, so frequently held by girls in regards to beer is very much: ew, horrid tasting smelly boy drink, one can’t drink that it’s yucky, it’s just not feminine, ew. I must own that I have limited respect for girly-girls and may sometimes be crueller to them than strictly necessary. Life is not all sweet pink things and, in the great cause of alcohol, there is no room for dismissing something because it does not suit your sense of aesthetics.

Historical note: I come from a family who are well fond of the bottle so long as it contains something alcoholic. We have many high-functioning alcoholics and a genetic predisposition, on both sides, for sturdy livers. This being so, alcohol has always been a part of my family life and, indeed, I have often found that I much prefer my family when a) I am drunk, b) they are drunk, c) we are all drunk together. By family I mean my extended, as well as my immediate, family group.

The first time I got drunk, as documented by my parents in my baby-book, was when I was eighteen months old. I got into the sherry bottle when nobody was looking and, apparently, glugged it down before my ever watchful parents noticed what I was doing. When they finally did notice my ever practical father decided that the best way for me to learn the lesson of alcohol was to just let me be. As ever, he was quite right; I’ve never touched sherry since. I can’t even stand the smell of it.

After that, I had more or less free access to alcohol. I was not encouraged to drink but it was not prohibited and there was always quite a lot of alcohol in the house. I didn’t really take advantage of this when I was a child or a young teenager. My parents’ attitude was so relaxed that it was simply a non-issue. I could if I would but there was no challenge to it so it wasn’t all that appealing. Besides which spirits both smell and taste awful. Later, when I was fifteen or sixteen, my parents continues with their ideal of responsible alcoholism by purchasing grog for my underaged self and friends – for whom the liberty of it was so extreme and frightening that the kindness was rarely used.

When I was still 17-18 and regularly hitting the nightclubs of my small shithole of a town my drink of choice was vodka -cheap, greasy, disgusting vodka – especially that of the establishment (whose name I now cannot recall) that had a charming happy hour of $2 basics. I cannot count the times we took advantage of those $2 basics. It was long enough to get it down to a fine art where we’d have about ten or so drinks (oh for 2 bucks you weren’t expecting full shots, were you?) in an hour. The more people in the group the better this worked. That was all good for a while but, as with all things, times change.

Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, I drifted, really drifted. I did nothing (literally) for about two or so years. At eighteen you see, a year and a half into my first attempt at university, I dropped out. For quite a while I did nothing but live off my parents, my friends, and the few grand that I got when my grandmother died. I also attempted, almost, to get crap jobs and spent rather a lot of time at a local sleaze bar. It was at this time, at the Rising Sun – after all, who could know? – that I became a beer drinker.

Why beer, you ask. Well, it wasn’t just any beer. It was the shittiest of shit beers – VB - and it cost all of $2 a pot. This is getting drunk at its finest and at its cheapest. This is the art of drinking merely to get drunk – and listen to really shithouse cover bands and flirt with too old miners and bikies (okay, not so much of that, those are people you don’t fuck with on any level) and low class loser boys. This is alcohol for its own sake and sometimes nothing can taste better than that.

Now you might ask why, when I could probably regularly indulge in more expensive drinkies, is it that I continue to indulge beer. I admit to getting the taste, aside from a childhood shandy or ten, from need and penury but what non beer drinkers don’t understand is that beer is a many splendoured thing. There is, I can quite understand, a beer for every occasion and a large quantity of them are incredibly tasty. Beer is something that can be drunk and not just sipped and is quite a lovely way to while away an hour or three.

We are now midway through a sunny Sunday afternoon in spring and I, for one, am dreaming of my first beer of the day – to be had in just an hour or so – on a day that just seems to have been made for sitting out of doors with schooners and cigarettes.

a bustle in your hedgerow

I can't believe that I forgot to watch The Chaser on Wednesday night. I made up for it tonight though. I giggled, tittered, sniggered, chuckled, guffawed, snorted, and generally laughed my way all through Stairway to Kevin. I don't know how I will sleep for the random attacks of giggle that keep coming upon me. Also, in that one-thing-leads-to-another way, I've had to have a wee listen to Led Zeppelin - that's a whole other I-can't-sleep-because.

On day I shall wirte something decent. Until then...

Wherein the author details her foolish fondness for people who fall into the group rather arbitrarily named ‘Virgo’.

I go way back with Virgos. They make up some of my favourite people and they are somewhat over-represented in my life. I’m not sure how they came to be over-represented but I’ve now reached the stage of collecting them and putting them in little boxes and only taking them out once a year, sometime in August or September, for their birthdays and having tea parties for them. Some of that may be lies; forgive me, I have a lot on my mind with trying not to forget to wish people ‘Happy Birthday’ on the right day. And, you know, totally ignoring a certain day in late August for officially being A-Black-Day-Filled-With-Grief(-How-Is-Tumut?).

Anyway, rather than being totally random and seeming quite insane (things that you know I utterly detest), I will explain myself. Virgos, in my book, unreservedly rock. This is evidenced by, oh just you wait for this, Jarvis Cocker (swoon etc etc), my awesome friends J. and N., my nephew (totally anally retentive at 18 months – and he’s been that way ever since!) and now, the new and improved, Kevin Rudd. Okay, sure, it is lame to judge a politician by his star sign, I do understand, but as the man has relatively little going for him and I am willing to grasp straws, well, yay the Virgo. There are others – some of my favourite colleagues for instance but I can’t be arsed naming everyone and, also, I so run out if initials quickly…

Okay, so there are notable exceptions – S. the-cousin-fucking-bitch (my cousin, her bitch) who damn near ruined my relationship with my favourite cousin and, of course, the Black-Filled-etc though to be fair I totally adored him (and still do, to a certain extent, from a police decided [I lie] distance/several hundred kilometres and a couple of years of non-speakers) and now mock him (okay, always mocked him, always mock everyone, there was no fish, no barrel, don’t be so damn hurt!), in safe anonymity, as means of exorcism. Mostly, though, I heart my Virgos…and have totally forgotten why I started writing this and/or what the point is though I think it had something to do with Kevvie and, possibly, insulting people who don’t read this and would probably be offended if they did.

Fuck I need some sleep.

This is a mess.

You just know that I’m going to post this anyway.

A Virgo wouldn’t do that. No way. They’d mop the floor or something stupid like that instead.

I wonder if Kevvie’s anally retentive? I wonder why I find that such an amusing quality in other people. Oh no wait, I don’t wonder that at all - I know.

either my spine just cracked or my brain did

I am finding myself unable to cope with a job that I can do, and can do easily, and have done for quite a long time.
The feeling, of course, does not stem from being treated badly and worked like a slave but from my own want of character.
I do, you see, understand.

Only prettier, bitch.

I suffered a train ride with Amélie this evening; never have I felt more plain.

Oh fuck me

Air crash investigations: Plane Crash in Queens.

It doesn't get any better than this.

Yes, I know I'm a bit sick but we all fly and this shit is almost obscenely interesting.

P.S. Does anyone actually remember this happening?

Things I hate about the Prime Minister #54325

Call the fucking election already. The rest of us want this shitfight over.

What, do you suppose, is the difference between teize and teaze?

Half-written, spiteful thing

I think that your overarching interest is in the possibility of your own celebrity. You want your 15 minutes and will take them however you can get them, one minute at a time if need be. You believe that you are special and you can’t decide whether it’s yourself you hate or the rest of us for not seeing you as so very special. You don’t seem to realise that we all do that, at least sometimes.

I do not have great faith in your thinking and, therefore, do not trust your opinions. Quite quickly the point is reached when youth is no longer an excuse. I believe you to be intellectually lazy and quite uneducated – finding it easier to believe what you are told by those who have some power to make your name. You believe the cheap shots, imagining them to be commonsensical without thinking on them and realising their nonsense. The problem with cheap shots is, of course, that they seem sensible and one thinks they ought to be sense but words and language make fools of us all – of some, perhaps, even more than others.

You think that reading makes you educated. Reading is a wonderful thing, a great thing, you should never stop it, never let it go. But when you read uncritically and without perspective and your reading is far from thorough then you do yourself a disservice when you imagine your understanding. I view your understanding gravely and you dismiss me as a spoiled little child who has had too much ease of life to truly understand, as though love makes for inferior understanding, as though all lives that are not yours are all ease and comfort. You do not seem to realise that we make our own decisions and live the lives we’ve created. You give lip-service to the idea but it does not seem to have penetrated your mind. It certainly seems to have no effect upon your actions. But then, there’s always someone to blame, isn’t there?

My day.*

I had to go to work today. I don’t really mind working Saturdays. I’m never really productive on a Saturday so I may as well spend them at work earning my pittance. To get to work, owing to the weirdways of Saturday public transport, I had to pass through the city. More specifically, I had to pass Town Hall. I walked past as my bus seemed to be going places I had no intention of going. I walked past and through the APEC protesters as they were assembling at Town Hall. I walked past and around the altogether too many police. I had a little policeman herd me onto the sidewalk with the protesters as I attempted to avoid the crowd by walking on the road of a dead street. Clearly the police weren’t about to let a single possible protester escape.

There were I few things I really noticed about this huge and terrifying protest.

The first is that there weren’t that many people there. At 9am I was able to get a seat on a bus in Enmore. This may not sound like much but when there are big protests on, like the anti-war one of a few years back, it is impossible to get into the city by bus from where I live. With the anti-war one we had to walk – along with hundreds of other people – because the public transport, which is inadequate at the best of times, was absolutely woeful. Today, one or two or three people got on at each stop until, of course, we could hold no more.

The second thing I noticed, as we got off the bus, was the guy wearing a helmet and pulling up a scarf to hide his face. I noticed him particularly because I thought he was being oddly paranoid and then I realised that his intent was, unquestionably, bad. He certainly did not fit the vibe of the day. Everyone else was as relaxed as people can be when they are corralled by people with guns. I really wondered about that guy when I heard about the neo-nazis later on.

The third thing I noticed was the all people with prams and little kids. It was obvious at that point that the bulk of the protesters were planning all manner of violent and nasty stuff.

The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh things I noticed were all the police. They were lined, a couple of meters apart, along George Street in rather sweet little blue overall ensembles. They were crossing the street in some nasty bike shorts. They were standing on corners. They were standing next to television cameras. They were standing next to a car filled with some rather vocal police dogs. They were standing next to one of those charmingly refurbished busses that you can’t see into because they’ve been made all secure for the violent rioters that were going to go into them later. They were getting out of another of those busses. They were walking down the street in threes and fours. They were, in short, absolutely everywhere one looked.

* The last time I mention APEC, honest.

I'm quite serious.

I've developed a sudden and ever so slightly unhealthy crush on The Chaser. Yes, all of them. I want to marry any/all of them. And, yes, it's mostly because of yesterday. I'm pretty sure that most of, ahem, Sidney [I do so love American spelling] feels the same. Possibly most of the country.

This is going down as my favourite political moment since Norman Gunston at The Dismissal.

Even Howard's trip, stumble, and fall of the other week was a mere bagatelle compared to this.

My day.

I was manic all day at work today. Enough to have people comment. It was the only way I could cope.

I received a compliment from a doctor about my pleasantness and professionalism. It totally blew me away.

I ache all the way down my back and arms and my eyes hurt from the computer screen. My throat aches from talking and I am enunciating too much.

I was not at all enthusiastic about my cousin’s baby. It looked like a baby – what would you have me say?

I should be in bed but I juts can’t seem to find the energy to pack up and switch off. I get to sleep in tomorrow anyway.

Hope you have a happy APEC day, folks.

Just don't.

I feel like I have nothing left to offer.

The harder I work and the more I give – the harder I am expected to work and the more I am expected to give. I am exhausted. I haven’t paused all day.

For a few days there I felt like a real person.

APEC

Oh fuck off with APEC already. I've had enough. I'm sick of it. I don't give a fucking damn.

I keep forgetting that we still live in a sort-of democracy and that we still sort of have some rights [although watch those walk out the fucking door]. Certainly, that bastion of goodness The Media seems determined that we forget these things. I'm sick of hearing about the ratbags, and rent-a-crowds, and all the scum that are, apparently converging on the city to create mayhem and murder and fuck only knows what - ALL BEFORE ANYTHING HAS ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED. I could kill the hype and kill over the hype and this bullshit makes me want to take to the streets in protest.
Still, you know, since my political views fail to align with those of our overlords and masters and the owners of our lives, society, and country you know that I am scum just waiting for the opportunity to bash cops or some shit - you know what the evil little fucking lefties are like.

I've fucking had enough of this country and the media in this country - have it your way - no disagreement, no discussion, nothing but your way but do it properly. Stop pretending that we have a democracy. Hold a coup and lock those of us who disagree with you up. Take us away. Kill us. Stop us from being, from thinking, from breeding. Eradicate us.

I much prefer honesty.

Why oh why oh why oh!

Why is it, do you think, that I can't accept my own mediocrity..?

252 - as below

I finally saw Harry Potter & Whichever One is the Current Movie. They chopped it up so much that it kinda sucked. It was pretty but, still, it kinda sucked.

Also, Fred [alas] is the better looking twin. Yeah thanks, J.K., now I'll just go and cry my heart out for the last movie. Seriously, what's with killing the pretty 'uns..?