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September 07 Update your links lovely readersDear all
as many of you know, we have been experiencing some issues lately. MSN doesn't load. We get internal server errors. We get catastrophic errors. We get asked to "Stand by".
I for one am sick of this. It sucks not being able to update my blog. It really does.
Accordingly, I have found a new blog thingy. It even allows me to do Google ads and earn money. Huzzah! The editing process is a bit more complicated than using MSN, but it's fully customisable html, you can use javascript, all sorts of nerdy goodness. I will slowly be taking down bits of this blog as I work out how to transfer them to the new blog. And all new posts will be on the new blog (after this one). There's one there for you to read already.
And so, dear readers, I ask you to update your links - particularly those of you who are lovely enough to have linked to my site from yours - to my new blog url
May this new forum be uninterrupted by catastrophic errors. This blog has been fun. The new one will be better.
For those of you who use RSS, I am currently working on adding an RSS feed to the new site. I promise it will be up and running soon.
As MB said in her drunken state last night, I love you all.
Bek
PS don't forget, update those links! O crap, it's WednesdayI woke up this morning at 6.43 am on the rocket clock, and briefly lay here with my eyes half open in a pleasant daze, thinking "how nice, it's Sunday, I don't have to get up" (possibly because the amount of alcohol consumed last night made it feel like a Sunday). The reality kicked in, I realised it was Wednesday and that I do, in fact, have to get up and go to work. Damn it. I never could get the hang of Wednesdays.
I also realised that sending drunk text messages to everyone you know asking them who they had a shameful crush on in the 80s may result in people, er, thinking you're a little odd. Especially when it's a Tuesday and they may not realise you were very pissy. September 06 What's in a name?As Bart pointed out, a rose wouldn't smell as sweet if it was called a stench blossom.
Laoch posted a comment on one of my earlier posts saying the authors of Freakonomics had done some research into a theory related to my you-only-end-up-on-the-front-page-of-the-paper-dead-or-as-a-convicted-drug-dealer-if-you-have-a-stupid-name theory - theirs was that your name doesn't affect your future success.
Well, bollocks to that, I say. I have invented a new way of testing the criminal potential of a name. Prospective parents take note.
This is what you do. Go the the Magistrates' Court website search page, where you can search the court listings
You can search by informant (the person bringing the case, generally a Police officer), and defendant. Pick a name - say, Earl. Search for Earl as a defendant. Six cases with a defendant called Earl. Clearly, if your name is Earl you are more than likely to end up on the wrong side of the law. It's not like it's a common name.
I am morally neutral. There are no Rebekkas as defendants. Spell my name (ugh, shudder) with Cs however, and you end up with a long list. But then again, it's quite a common name. What we really need to do is work out a way of comparing how many people are called the name with how many end up in court. To do this, we can go to a name statistics website. It is American, but we'll assume it's relatively accurate, for the purposes of this exercise. Apparently 0.43% of women in the U.S. are called Rebecca.
There are around 200 cases in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Friday, none of the defendants are called Rebecca. That's less than 0.43% (duh!), so it's clearly not a very criminal name.
Let's see. Michael. My brother's name. 2.629% of men are called Michael. There are four cases on Friday with defendants called Michael, which is 2%, which is less than the population statistic, so Michael is clearly not a very criminal name either.
0.562% of women are called Ruth, yet none are in court on Friday. Ruths clearly behave themselves (or else they have diplomatic immunity and don't end up in the magys)
MB is a surprisingly rare name - there are no available statistics. And no defendants.
So what are the (alleged) criminal names? After extensive research, I am bound to tell you that you are more likely to end up in court if your name is Shane, Sharon, Wendy-Lee, Tracie, Ashlie, Delilah, Candice or Flowers.
Surprisingly - and possibly contrary to my theory - I noticed a lot of Christians as I was first looking through the list. I've only ever met two Christians (and am bound to point out that neither of them are criminals, and I like them both, despite the fact that my friends all wish to stab one of them with a fork*), and so was surprised to see so many as I browsed the court listings. Upon doing some more extensive research, I note that 0.065% of men are called Christian, yet 1% of the cases on Friday have a defendant called Christian. Clearly more likely than average to end up in the dock. Since my brother and sister-in-law were thinking of naming the new baby (if it's a boy) Christian Xavier (to annoy my grandmother, mostly, who objects to Catholic-sounding names and was most objecting to my first nephew being called Benedict), I shall have to warn them of the possible alleged criminal tendencies of this name.
*There will be no stabbing with cutlery, you wenches. Even if he and I never speak again, I still don't want you hurting him with utensils. You hear me? Once there was a way, to get back homewardJust as you can never step twice in the same river, so you can never return home.
The word nostalgia, from the Greek Nostos - homecoming, and algos - pain, grief, distress, has come to mean a saccharine longing for the past, but the word in fact originally had a meaning specifically associated with the homecoming of seafaring men - specifically in literature with Odysseus's men and homecoming. Ten years fighting the Trojans, and ten years wandering as they tried to get back home would have certainly have invoked some home sickness, but the word did not refer to homesickness as such - it was about the pain of returning home, not longing to return home.
Actually the word is also related to the Sanskrit nasate, meaning "he approaches" - I am always utterly fascinated by the relationships between languages. I wish I had done Latin and Greek at school instead of useless bloody Australian Studies and English classes that made me want to commit hari kiri. But I digress.
Why is homecoming painful? Well, for some of the Greeks there were probably good reasons why it was painful. Agamemnon, for example, got an axe in the head. That's gotta hurt.
Mind you, he had killed his daughter before he left, spent twenty years away from home, and brough a Trojan hussy with him when he returned, which is enough to make any wife go for the axe, really (mind you, she hadn't exactly been faithful while he was away either).
Apart from possibly getting an axe to the head, why exactly would homecoming be painful? My guess is it's because home is never as you have imagined it. What you have been thinking on those long nights at sea (apart from "Where'd I put my boy butter?", or "Who's going to make me their bitch?") is not going to match up to the reality of home, which even if you were entirely realistic in your imaginings, has changed since you left anyway.
Perhaps this explains why I feel at the moment that I don't belong in my life. I can't get back home because the concept of home is transitory and where I want to be no longer exists.
Or perhaps it's just because someone stole my ruby slippers.
 More great parenting tipsOnce you've named your children Symphony and Sincere, or perhaps Jai, Tyler, and Bailey or Schapelle and Mercedes, or Tudor and Della, and had them end up in disasterous circumstances on the front page of the paper, good parenting can continue apace.
Perhaps you could teach your children to recognise cigarette brands - while feeding them Lucky Charms. I don't know which is worse, frankly.
And in other news...Sharia Spikes-Sotomayorcolon proves once again the ineffable law of the universe that means if you name your children nice normal names like John, or Michael or Elizabeth, they don't end up in the news for bad things*. Conversely, if you name your two children Sincere and Symphony, they will end up on the front page, and it won't be for anything good like winning the Nobel Peace Price, or an election.
The stupider the name and the more made-up the name, the more likely your kids are to be lost in a flood, murdered by their estranged father, murdered by you in a fit of post-natal naming remorse, eaten by a zoo animal, arrested for drug smuggling, involved in some sort of massive scandal. You know the sort of things...
Just give them a name that's been around for more than a hundred or so years. It's like an insurance policy. There are some unusual names from back in the day if you don't want John or Elizabeth. I like the name Tarquin. It's been around for hundreds - thousands - of years. He was the first King of Rome.
*They may still end up in the papers for good things, such as winning an OBE, or rescuing someone's puppy from a pipe, or being elected to parliament. September 05 Move over, Glebova!Natalie Glebova is clearly nothing in comparison to the lovely Ruth, Miss Petro Georgio's Electorate 2005. Like MB, aka Miss Atlanta, Georgia, she was robbed. Here are her answers to the Miss Universe interview questions:
Student: Drop out Masters of International Relations student at Monash.
Occupation: Operations and Government Relations co-ordinator. Interests: pubs, books, film, stuff Name one person, other than your parents, who has had the most influence on your life. Why? Geoffrey Robertson. I love him. And a lecturer I had in 2nd year South East Asian politics. He taught with passion and style. What is the most interesting or unique thing that has ever happened to you (aside from winning your title) and/or what is the most interesting thing about you? Interesting?? I seem to be a trouble magnet -at the age of 18 being arrested in Italy with several members of the successful 1992 Miami Dolphins and winding up on ESPN, having a military escort through various "militarised zones" last year. Turned down a date to the Brownlow medal as I was embarrassed to be a "footy girlfriend". Rightly so.
What is your career ambition and what are you doing or plan to do to accomplish that goal?
My career ambition is to not work at a toll road company - maybe something more genteel like going back to working in a bookshop, which serves beer. Or to be Nigella Lawson (is that a career goal or sick fantasy*??)
Describe where you were raised and what your childhood was like. I was raised as a Diplomat Brat, so spent many years living in various colonial outposts, some far flung, some not so. As one person said, it was politics, parties, ponies, airport lounges, embassy houses.
What is your most unusual talent?
I can put my feet behind my head and have double jointed thumbs.
As if that last answer should beat all the other candidates outright!
Plus, according to the google image search results, Ruth does ballet:
 *There is nothing sick about Nigella fantasies. We all have unnatural love for Nigella. And John Anderson, as we disclosed on Saturday night.
Oooh, sorcery on MedicareThis article about so-called "intelligent" design says Brendan Nelson advocating "intelligent design" be taught in schools is "...as surprising as if the Health Minister had said sorcery-based cures would be available on Medicare..."
I'm all for it. In fact, quite frankly, it's a disgrace that we can't get bulk-billed sorcery. The government should do something about it. Some sort of enchanted net perhaps?
After all, it's not that different from medicine divorced from scientific evidence, and since many doctors still critisise the concept of evidence-based medicine, quite frankly what they're doing is not so different from sorcery anyway. This guy, for example, who is qualified enough to know better judging from the amount of letters after his name, doesn't believe in it. Thinks randomised controlled double-blind studies "discount the value of the case study".
Hmm, let's see, case study. Right, I've got the following:
Okay, having diagnosed my patient as suffering from an illness caused by a curse, I point my magic bone at them, sprinkle them with my mysterious (and powerful) voodoo powder, and instruct them to wear either the necklace of garlic or the amulet (or if they start to feel worse, both) in oder to aid their recovery. Patient gets better! I document this as a case study, and if we don't believe in evidence-based medicine, this can be used as "evidence" that other patients should be treated this way. Of course, we're not quite sure whether it was the magic bone, the voodoo powder, the necklace of garlic (which after all does have antibiotic properties), or the amulet that made the patient get better, or indeed they could have gotten better on their own. But it doesn't matter! The case study is a powerful tool. Where's my goddamn Medicare rebate? Back to the practice of medicine as observed in the fine upstanding citizens who are our GPs and specialists. They prescribe someone a drug because they've seen it work in another case study. They are practising sorcery, and we are paying for it through Medicare. And quite frankly, given the morbidity and mortality caused by iatrogenic prescription errors (wrong drugs, wrong doses, not checking drug interactions), in a lot of cases we'd be better off with a magic bone and external application of some voodoo powder. Evidence-based medicine basically says the best evidence is random, controlled, double-blind studies. This means that rather than pointing our magic bone at one patient, observing that they get better and then applying this "evidence" to future patients, we need to point our magic bone at a randomly selected group of patients who all have the same disease, point a non-magic bone at another randomly selected group of people who have the same disease (this is called a control group), and that the practitioners pointing the bone need to be unaware of whether the bone they are pointing is the magic bone or not, and the groups don't know whether they got the genuine magic bone, or the cheap, made in Taiwan faux bone. Thus "double-blind", meaning both sides don't know who's getting what. Then we can observe if there's a statistically significant difference in the rate of cures between the two groups, and thus scientifically assess whether our magic bone is an effective treatment for the disease in question. Anything less than this is publically-funded sorcery. I for one am all for it. I am going to set up a hoodoo clinic, with bone-pointing, powders, magic amulets, enchanted red vests and powerful ritual magics. And I'd better get a Medicare provider number, because quite frankly my brand of sorcery is less likely to do harm than the brand practised by most doctors, and I have a whole truck-load of case studies to back up the efficacy of my cures. God, I'm in full auto-rant state today. Sign my guestmap. When did we become such weedy wets?As N Molesworth might have asked.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Well, let's go back to lunchtime on the same day. Now this is just 12 hours after John Brogden was rushed off to hospital. You're now a guest speaker at another function and I'm told you were asked about a particular health proposal and you said this, "If we did that we would be as dead as the former Liberal leader's political prospects." Did you say that? TONY ABBOTT: Look Barrie, I was at a fundraising gathering. It was a very small gathering. And I was no doubt commenting on a particular political proposal. BARRIE CASSIDY: But inappropriately surely, and particularly as Health Minister? TONY ABBOTT: Well, Barrie look, as I said, if you want to accuse me of insensitivity, by all means. I have never claimed to be the world's most sensitive person. Really, it was kind of witty. For an evil man who wants to ban abortions. And who grins like a chimp baring its teeth. I've said far worse things in public. And hey, it's not like it's not true. The man's political prospects have well and truly kicked the bucket. They are not pinin'! They are passed on! They are no more! They have ceased to be! ... run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-POLITICAL PROSPECT!! as John Cleese might have said. Fuck, the man is only using someone else's misery to make a joke. The rest of us do that all the time. The Germans (charming race that they are) even have a word for it - schadenfreude.
Humour's not really funny unless you're making fun of something. Jokes about talking dogs aside. It's not like Abbott made a joke about Brogden's apparent attempted suicide. He just said something was as dead as his political prospects, not that it was lying on the floor with self-inflicted stab wounds. Could everyone please just lighten the fuck up?
Perhaps we could take a leaf out of Fotherington-Thomas's book as we skip like gurls and cry i simply don't give a row of buttons whether it was an offcolour remark or not, nature alone is beautiful.
Chiz. Diga-me agora como eu sintoCheck this out - me in Spanish. It's like a crazy alternate dimension where I'm foreign. Like, whoa.
Also, apparently these yobs will send your name to Pluto on the unmanned mission NASA is sending next year. I'm not sure I believe it, but you don't have to enter an e-mail address or anything (or as Pete puts it, sell your identity on the internet). Thanks YOB for sending this to me. Mine name and your name are off to Pluto. Tell me now how do I feelMonday, obviously.
We went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night. A return to form by Tim Burton, with stunning visuals complimented by outstanding performances from the cast. Johnny Depp is excellent as Willie Wonka, and I do not get why people have been saying the way he plays Wonka is deliberately like Michael Jackson. Other than his looking pretty pale, I can't think of a single way in which he was remotely like Michael Jackson. He clearly didn't like children at all. Mad as a snake, yep. But fond of children (in whatever way), nope. Charlie's family were also excellent.
I just can't say enough about how visually fabulous the film was. Apart from all the very post-modern references to other films (2001 was a stand out example in the scene where Mike Teevee gets sent through the television), and musical references, I thought it was a beautiful example of Burton's somewhat Victorian style - a little bit gothic, and a little bit frilly. Just like how I like to dress, really, only with brighter colours. The outside world was very grey, the inside of the factory very colourful and curly. Red was used to good effect to join the inner and outer worlds. Wonka wore purple rubber gloves. There was a scene at the end where he met up with his father again for the first time in thirty years, and his father was also wearing rubber gloves. There was a close up of their hands as they embraced. Perhaps this says something about being unable to touch?
Anyway, enjoyable from start to finish, the only jarring thing in the film was that they kept referring to what Wonka manufactured as candy. Bloody Americans. Aside from that one small detail, close to perfect. 4 1/2 Whipple–Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight bars out of 5.
Now sign my guestmap! These posts aren't free you know!
September 04 WeltschmerzPete said I am suffering from world sadness, because I said the whole world feels like one big wheel of chores, holding entropy at bay in an untimately futile attempt to impose order on increasing chaos.
But seriously, it is. Entropy, as the second law of thermodynamics famously tells us, in a closed system increases with time. According to the same lot who came up with the whole fucking ridiculous idea of "intelligent" design, this may be some sort of "intelligent messiness" rather than, say, the laws of physics, but either way the results are the same. Sweep the courtyard. Leaves fall, the courtyard needs sweeping again. Wash the dishes. Eat, and the dishes need washing again. Apartheid laundry - black wash, white wash, coloured wash. Wash towels on Thursday. Wash sheets on Sunday. It all just gets dirty and needs washing again. In the end it all disintegrates into small fibres and the fluff you find in the inside of the washing machine filter. Entropy at work. Earn money, pay bills, buy black tops. Money is spent, bills regenerate like one of those monsters where you chop the heads off and more heads grow back, black tops turn grey and get covered in cat hair. Process starts again. Cook dinner, eat, but you don't stay satisfied. You have to repeat over and over, night after night until you get old and die. Try not to think, as Spike said on Angel, about the third of the world who are starving to death. Try not to think about hurricanes and people behaving like animals in New Orleans. Try not to think about death and disease and try to sleep and not lie awake staring at the ceiling.
In the end, it's futile. The universe cools down, one tiny fraction of a degree at a time, and in the end everything will be cold and unmoving. No more time, no more movement, no more entropy increasing, everything spread out, uniformly disordered across a cold and decayed universe. Our lives are just a tiny speck in a tiny world in a tiny galaxy, compared with the whole. None of it matters in the end. We die, we cease to exist. Actually, come to think of it, we live, we cease to exist. Like a candle flame is not the same flame it was five minutes ago, so we are not the same self from moment to moment. Maya, illusion, continuity.
Laoch asked me if it is better to be loved, or to feel loved. Better to be loved, I suppose, as if you only feel loved you might be wrong, and you might not actually be loved, which means the whole thing can collapse like a house of cards at any moment. It's nice to feel loved though.
Sadness over the evils of the world, especially as an expression of romantic pessimism. Pretty much sums up my mood.
Oh well, I suppose it is SundayWhich probably explains the lack of internet love, people are out doing actual stuff. I went round to Pete's for lunch and downloaded podcasts (can't do it at work because the firewall blocks it) of ABC radio. Pete made a frittata and I made salad. Then I came home, but we're going to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tonight. It had better be good, I have been looking forward to it since last Christmas.
I feel lately like I can't do anything without pissing people off. Sometimes I feel like I should be locked in a cupboard and not allowed to communicate with the outside world.
At least the cat loves me. Now taking requestsI will write a post on whatever you want. Just sign my guestmap so I feel loved. September 03 So not writing anything elseUntil at least ten people have signed my guestmap. Click here - it's really kind of cool and you don't have to sign in or anything.
C'mon, give me some internet love, people. Until you do, I'm going to do sudoku and ignore you all (I did a diabolical one yesterday - have I mentioned lately that I'm very clever?). Actually I won't have much time for sudoku or the blog today as am going out for lunch and also out to see bands tonight. But if you don't sign the guestmap, you'll never get to here about the fun social activities that constitute my life.
Have I mentioned Natalie Glebova lately? Or that big damn hurricane in New Orleans? Anderson Cooper and Mary Landrieu seem to be having some sort of hissy fit about the whole thing (or so it appears from Technorati, I am clearly just trying to up my search results hits again). Katrina Bush Eleanor Clift Ray Nagin good that should do it.
Okay, I have five - another five and I'll seriously consider telling you something interesting. I just did an easy sudoku in 3 minutes 34 seconds - which means I am in the top 2% according to the website - http://www.websudoku.com/?level=1 - best time yet! September 02 Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the tastiest of them all?You can't eat people, eating people is wrong, so goes the song.
Not as wrong as our discussion over dinner tonight. We had a detailed discussion about when we are victims of a plane crash in the Andes, who we want and don't want to eat. It all started with MB telling the others about how I was eating the marrow out of my lamb shank the other day, and she said if we were ever on an Arctic expedition and she died, could I please not suck the marrow out of her bones. I refused to guarantee this, as naturally enough I wasn't sure how hungry I might be if we were on an exploratory mission and had run out of supplies. And we all know what happens if you eat the huskies' livers... but I did promise I wouldn't eat her unless she died on natural causes. As previously mentioned, she'd be too scrawny to bother killing for the meat.
Someone asked if eating people was bad for you, but we did point out this is not a long-term low-carb diet. More of your emergency measure really. We all agreed eating Shane Warne would be disgusting, as would eating Russell Crowe. I said I'd rather eat Russell Crowe than Warne though. Heavy smokers might taste disgusting, like an ashtray. Kim Beazley would have a lot of fat on him but be tough. Anyone with breast implants might be poisonous, and the brain is probably not a good idea because of mad cow disease*. Although I do like the word prion.
We decided what you ideally want is someone young, and a little bit plump, then they'd be nice and tender. There was some argument as to exactly what had survived the crash in terms of catering equipment and whether we'd have cups and straws. There may have also been a discussion about whether we'd drink the blood, and whether human flesh would be more nutritious raw or cooked. We should not be allowed out in public. The people at the table behind us will probably never eat out again (if they can even afford it once they've paid for their kids to have therapy).
We then moved on to the "if you were really hungry would you eat a..." hypothetical. Dogs, cats, your own pet, koala's noses, dolphins, whales, and a camel's neck were all mentioned. I pointed out that if you eat tuna, you've probably eaten dolphin anyway. I said I would eat my cat if I was really, really actually starving, but since I've got home and she's all cosy and curled up under my legs, I think maybe I couldn't. But if you're a succulent, plumpish youngster, better not catch a plane to South America with us. You'll be first against the wall when dinnertime comes.
*shit, check out the early warning signs. I think I may have it. The Blue DoorwayObviously, I'm feeling a little nostalgic for my debauched youth today.
Some months after the First Time - on 12 September 1992, if I recall correctly - we'd scored some acid and the boy was having a party. We'd decided, however, to take the acid in the afternoon, so we could watch the sun set, and so we wouldn't (as usually occured) be up all night completely unable to sleep. In retrospect, I wonder if my problems sleeping started around this time...
The day before the party I was at the boy's house, just hanging out. His younger sister baked a blue cake, for no apparent reason. We probably had some drinks, I don't really remember. Late morning the next day, people started drifting over. Finding acid was always a huge drama, a mystical search for a magic elixier, never just a matter of a phone call and a pick-up, like anything else we were after was. F rocked up. F didn't like me very much back then, a small matter of a poem I had written about him called "Ode to an Urban Cowboy". I don't have a copy of the poem, I do remember it rhymed cowboy boots with score some good roots, and made fun of his shirts. Frankly, the shirts were asking to be made fun of (as I'm sure he would admit now). Anyhoo, he had taken the poem fairly badly, and since its inception had made a point of following me around social gatherings saying "I hate you, you're such a bitch". Fair call, I definitely was. F was driving one of a series of beat-up Chargers*, in which he took us all to get some drugs, after some frantic phone calls to various contacts were made from the boy's kitchen, his mother serenly looking on as she generally did, in her calm Buddha-like fashion.
The acid in the end came from somewhere suspiciously close to the St Kilda Police station - the same station that later got shut down after they discovered a large stash of drugs and weapons hidden in the roof, perhaps not coincidentally. We went back to the boy's, dropped the acid, and waited. And waited. Impatient creeters that we were, Jan and I decided to go for a walk - getting the blood pumping makes the drugs hit harder. We ventured to the temple. Dark and deserted, there was nothing much happening. We walked further. I knew the drugs had started to work when Jan said she didn't need to look before she crossed the road, because she remembered it from before. We started talking about how people used to think there were only four elements. Air we had, our breath and all around us. Fire we had, a cigarette lighter. We spent some time looking at the flame. Fire pretty. Earth and water we needed to collect, obviously. There was earth on all the nature strips, but it didn't seem clean. Too much rubbish and stuff in Richmond. Walk further, we must, to collect clean earth. We walked, and we walked, and we walked. Talking about the elements, and the cleanness of the earth, and all manner of things. Eventually, we found a park, and collected some earth. With my utterly lousy sense of direction, I am frankly surprised by the fact that we ever got back to the boy's. Chaos greeted us. F was lying on the footpath outside the house. The boy was rounding people up to go to the temple, as he wanted to perform a ritual to raise a demon. No! we said, we had already been there. We must get water so we have the four elements. Into the kitchen with us, we found a bowl, filled it with water, and sat at the table splashing our fingers in it. In wanders the boy's mum. Takes in the scene. "I thought you kiddies couldn't get any drugs" she observed. We giggled. An idea! Let's mix all of the elements together. V Mystical. We get as far as earth and water, assume there is some air in the mix, realise we're never going to get fire to mix with the mud, and give up. The boy's sister comes into the kitchen, and takes a blue cake out of the oven. I suddenly think I'm in a time warp. This happened yesterday! I observe as much. She tells me yesterday's blue baking was a practice for today's blue baking. But I swear the entire thing was an exact repeat. Like pressing the back button and watching the scene again.
As if called by the cake, everyone troops back from the temple. The ritual was unsuccessful, no demons appeared, for which the boy blames me as I wasn't there, and persuaded Jan not to attend either. Apparently we were essential to the success of the demon raising. People have cake. Jan and F take their cake outside and lie on the road, bonding, while eating blue cake. God knows what the boy's neighbours think of us all. We are all hanging round outside, waiting to watch the sun set. I am so absorbed in the trip I have totally forgotten there is any life outside this. A bunch of us walk to 7-11, and come back with chupa-chups. I sit in the back room, staring at the door to the garden.
The door is open, and the doorway is shimmering blue. I can not see garden beyond it. It is a gateway to another dimension. If I walk through it, everything will change, I will exist somewhere else but no longer in this plane of existence, and I am not sure I am ready to do that. I sit, contemplating the choice. Prue sits next to me. "I know exactly how you feel" she tells me. Wow, I think, she knows about the door, and she is also contemplating walking through it. There'd been some tension between us lately, what with her having been with the boy, and me being in love with the boy, and, frankly, trying to steal him away. Mind you, the boy had by this stage told me he was in love with me too, and they had broken up. I was glad we were talking again. I said something about it being difficult. She agreed. I just couldn't get over how well she understood the whole blue doorway dilemma. Trippy.
People started walking round moving furniture, putting things away, moving stuff to one of the back rooms. What are they doing? My focus is no longer on the blue doorway. I look again and it is gone. Clearly a new level of reality is happening to everyone, and we are re-arranging the furniture to prepare for it. Eventually, when the boy and one of his friends come through the back room with a table, I ask them what they are doing. "Moving stuff before people get here," the boy tells me. People are coming? "What people?" I ask. He looks at me strangely - "The party??". Oh. Shit, we're having a party. I had completely forgotten.
*if I recall correctly this particular Charger was orange, and the doors didn't lock. To prevent theft, F used to take the gear stick with him when he left the vehicle.
Ausssie ausssie ausssie, ooy, ooy, ooyCheck out the spelling of the headline in this article - or in case they have corrected it by the time you get there...
Ausssie disaster experts to help US
September 2, 2005 - 10:14AM
Ha, ha. They need some new proofreaders, methinks.
I woke up this morning looking so shockingly pale and tired that I decided I needed makeup, despite the fact that I don't normally wear any at all to work. I was actually looking a bit like a zombie, and had to use the special prescriptives glow-y moisturiser, tinted sunscreen, blush, eyeliner of two varieties, and eyeshadow. I then looked vaguely human again. Vaguely. I'm off to get my hair done soon, so I hope that will complete the tranformation from living dead zombie woman to fully human again. Brains... brains...
I just went to grab a quick coffee with MB, who looked at me and said "What have you got on your eyelids?" What I have got on my eyelids is the Mac eyepaint ("Shimmer") that is the same Mac eyepaint she has. I said this. She said she can't get it to go on so thinly, and that perhaps it's because my eyelids are less wrinkly. I don't think MB has wrinkly eyelids. It is all a mystery.
Vanity, vanity... brains...
Right, it is later, and I am no longer quite such a zombie. My hair looks... well, as good as it's going to look when it's due to be cut next week. The sun has come out. I thought of something to get MB for her birthday. I had some lunch. Someone accessed my blog from this search.
And still later, and we are off to Phoenix for a drink. I have actually done a considerable amount of work the last two days (I may have been working before that but have difficulty remembering anything that happened before Thursday, work-wise, as it's all too dull to retain in the long-term memory). So, the Friday night beer is richly deserved, I feel, and will go down quite nicely. Brains... brains... entrails...
Beer, beer, beer, beer, brains, entrails... MB and I were eating lunch yesterday up in the caf, and they had lamb shanks. I'm quite fond of a lamb shank - the meat is not that great, but the tasty marrow in the bone... mmm. MB had a brilliant suggestion - suck the marrow out with a straw. Works like a charm (she took photos, but frankly, they're too gross to post), and watching me she said
"I hope we're never in a plane crash where you have to eat me. I don't want you sucking the marrow out of my bones." I assured her I wouldn't eat her unless she died of natural causes - she's too scrawny to kill, there's bound to be a plumper, tastier survivor to eat. But if she does die, I'm going to eat all the bits - just like the warriors who eat their enemies' hearts to absorb their courage, I will absorb all of her good qualities so they are not wasted by lying around the Andes. Or wherever we happen to have crashed.
Right, definitely beer o'clock.
O good grief, I show up one page one results for this search. My first timeWhen I was in year nine at school they did the whole drugs are bad, m'kay thing where they told us about how if we ever smoked pot we would end up dead in a ditch from a heroin overdose.
Being quite sharp with the critical analysis even back then (although apparently not so sharp with the remembering names of wars, as I tried to claim Florence Nightingale was a nurse in the Boer War during this morning's quiz), I had decided this was hyperbole practically before the words left the teacher's mouth. They then gave us a book to read which purported to be the diary of a girl who innocently started with a few tokes on a reefer at a partay, and, natch, ended with her being forced to write her diary on fragments of paper bags whilst living on the street, and then ending, poetically, dead in a ditch from a heroin overdose. The book was called "Go Ask Alice" - whether this was after the song by Jefferson Airplane (one pill makes you bigger, one pill makes you small, but the ones your mother gives you don't do anything at all), or Alice in Wonderland with its mushrooms and hookahs, I'm still not sure. Anyway, I digress. This book had somewhat of a different effect from the one our teachers clearly wished it to have.
The book - if it was indeed the actual diary of a teenager - had clearly been edited to emphasise the anti-drug message. Most of it sounded awful. But there's a description of a party where she takes acid for the first time which made lightglobes light up above my head. I want me some of this! It sounded like it made your mind work in a whole different way, and I had been curious since I was a small child about how the mind works and what it means about our identity. The books I was reading around this age were about a zillion non-fiction books about sleep and dreaming, Jung, and Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, which I was somewhat obsessed with, (which should give you some indication of the sort of fucked up teenager I was), if that helps explain any of this at all.
Perhaps fortunately, at this age I had absolutely no clue where to get acid, and if I had been able to get it would have had no-one to take it with and nowhere to take it - at least not without assorted parental units around, who may have been upset by us ingesting hallucinogens at such a tender age. Segue to the end of 1991, it was James's 18th birthday and he had chosen to celebrate in style at the Bush Inn, our local pub that seemed quite happy to let all and sundry imbibe the blessed nectar, despite the fact that I was 15 and clearly in no way should have been allowed in, let alone served Jack Daniels. I digress. Prue seemed rather excited by a long-haired boy in a Slayer t-shirt. I wasn't sure why, but when she went to the bathroom, something compelled me to ask if he could get any acid. He grinned, showing his fangs, and pulled out the notes he'd been taking on how to make it. Thankfully we never did remotely work out how to make it (or at least not in any meaningful way with ingredients it wasn't utterly impossible to obtain), but fast-forward a little bit to Easter 1992, when Prue was seeing the boy, the boy and I were extremely good friends, we finally had obtained some drugs, excuses had made to parental units as to why I was staying out all night, and we had been given instructions by said boy not to eat anything all day (which I had completely ignored, I might add). At his house, he told us we had to wait until 8.00pm, the hour of Venus, as this was the auspicious hour to begin a journey on a Saturday. Impatient, and as he never wore a watch, I put my watch forward half an hour and told him it was time to begin. Strange sharp taste under my tongue. Waiting.
Sitting in his kitchen, the world started to distort ever so slightly. Was it the drugs? I couldn't tell. The walls were pulsing slightly, like the kitchen was alive and breathing. Everything was imbued with meaning it didn't have before. I was talking to a friend of the boy's and his girlfriend, we were sitting round the old laminex table, I think the friend was talking about aliens, but I don't remember. I do remember having a wicked sense of de ja vous - not quite like it had all happened before, more that it had all happened lots of times before in slightly different ways. But I kept being able to predict what would happen next. The boy decided we should walk to 7-11. Cigarettes were needed, and possibly lollypops. Four of us set out, leaving Prue behind with Leonard. Prue was discovering she could read the chalk writing on the boy's walls, which had been rubbed out some time ago, and seemed reluctant to leave. The night air seemed amazing, heavy with the smell of the brewery as it always was in Richmond, the sky the colour of pollution and night. The atmosphere of intense anticipation, like something important was going to happen - a new reality, a space ship landing and the aliens sharing the secrets of the universe with us - something, anyway. I knew it wasn't really likely to be aliens. Half way to 7-11 I realised my watch was still half an hour fast, and stopped to reset it. The friend asked me why, and I explained to him I had put it half an hour forward so we could take the drugs. He laughed at me, and said I had probably already wound it forward and didn't remember. I laughed at him, at the thought that it would be possible not to remember anything that was happening in this ultra-real state. I said he didn't understand, the boy said he did because he's taken it before. At 7-11 everything was wild - the bright lights, the weird foods - food! how can people eat, it's just gross! - the guy with the pie sitting on a plastic crate outside the door - "Look!" I cried, enchanted, "It's the guy with the pie!". I remembered him from a different reality. This, I thought, is how we really know we're on drugs, 7-11 is so fucking strange. I had prior experience of the weirdness of 7-11 from going in there very, very stoned. Friend and his girlfriend must have walked back a different way, because the boy and I walked back up Buckingham Street alone. He said something to me - I don't remember what - and I turned around and looked at him, and it hit me like a silent bell tolling that I was in love with him, and had always been in love with him - not just since I met him, but since aeons before that, since before I even existed myself.
Back at the house, I was sitting on the spare bed in boy's room, looking at my fingers, which were approximately twice their normal length and still growing, and looking at boy's tarot cards. He had a black and white Aleister Crowley deck, and I was sorting through them, looking at the amazing pictures, which were of course extremely dynamic by that point, and I knew that a card was missing. 72, we counted, and counted again. The right number, but the cards were missing an influence, the Major Arcana was not balanced and needed an extra female symbol. The Stupid Woman, boy suggested, to balance the Foolish Man. Perhaps. Everything in my life had been leading up to this point, everything from the last few months was imbued with meaning because of this night, because it had been leading up to this night. The full moon was huge in the sky, auspicious time of good magic. Boy's magic books were huge and strange, the pentagram above the bed visible though it was not there any more, the chalk writing forming rollercoasters on the walls. Oh, so strange, so wonderful, so alive, so pure. Water! Water tasted so damn good.
The next day, and for many days, I couldn't eat. It was like food was disrupting that pure state of being I had found. Walking up and down St Kilda Esplanade with my sunglasses on, pupils still dilated, brain kind of foggy but elated. I want to do it again. The secrets of the universe are somewhere in that state, I have not uncovered them yet but I will. When can we do it again? Boy says we have to wait, tolerance builds up quickly and you have to wait for it to go away again. And what do I do about being in love with boy? He's seeing Prue. I don't know what to do. Don't want to hurt my friend. But I have loved him since the beginning of time.
This seems like yesterday, but at the same time so long ago. There are other things that happened that night, but some of them I am no longer sure if they were that night or one of the many other nights our search for reason led us round the laneways and back streets of Richmond. The boy and I were together, then apart, then together again. In the end, I was not in love with him any more, but it took an awfully long time for that to happen - longer than most people realise I suspect. If you'd told me that night that there would be a time I wouldn't be in love with him any more I would have laughed at you. Love is eternal. Love is unchanging. Ah, the illusions of sixteen - even of seventeen and eighteen. We're still good friends. We don't take drugs any more. I have been in love since then, but not with the passion and despair of sixteen, thank god.
Enough! Memories, like drugs, contain their own illusions. Back to the real world. September 01 4 minutes, 44 secondsI have a thing about numbers that are like palendromes. I don't know what you call it when it's a number, but it's the same back to front. If I look at the page number in a book, it's always symmetrical - 66 or 33 or 222, or at a pinch 212 or 343. If I look at a clock (other than if someone asks me what time it is) the time is always symmetrical - 3.23am or 9.49pm, for example. I just solved a sudoku in 4 minutes 44 seconds. Strangely, this has made me feel better. I didn't have a good day, overall. I guess some days are always going to be better than others, but I usually like Thursdays. I was born on a Thursday - far to go - and it always seems like it's almost the weekend and full of possibilities, but today just seemed...
You'd think by my age I would have stopped expecting the world to be in any measure fair, but some days in my mind I am still protesting that the world has thrown enough crap at me and it just can't throw any more because it's not fair. I laugh at myself, somewhat grimly, but I do laugh. As if it matters how much I have already dealt with. It's not like there's a finite amount of trouble in the world. There's always some more. I guess it's easiest to deal with when it seems like it's inevitable, and not like I've caused it myself.
Oh well, tomorrow, as Scarlett O'Hara said, is another day. Then again, she also said she'd never be hungry again, and imagine how dull eating would be if you were never hungry again...
Freaky - I just solved another sudoku in exactly 4 minutes, 44 seconds. I am beginning to think this is some sort of savaunt ability. If you want to try it, here's the link.
And I just checked my stats - 888 page views this week. |
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