Kick a Dead Man When He's Down

Or "Why Naming Things Is, like, Totally Awesome"

Yeah so today there was a wrap up in The Age of what they felt thought about the Arts Festival. In the interest of, well, disclosure I should perhaps admit that I freeloaded my way into the opening of that sucker and I would like to thank/blame the Arts Festival for my recent descent into Big Weekends (and the concomitant Shame Spiral Of Doom that can only be silenced by more drinking).

Oh who am I fooling? The Arts Festival Opening was really just the first ringing of the bell of Summer. The bell of excess and vomiting but no sausages this year, for reals alright? Dainty Sichuan might be on the mauve terror list also now I think about it...

To return to the pressing lesson of the Arts Festival, however, and the bait and switch that they employed with "Now That Communism Is Dead, My Life Is Empty". I defy anyone to tell me that that is not an excellent name for a play. Accompanied by the photos of dour eastern bloc ladies with balls held to their swimsuit clad thighs, those boys were definitely on a winner. How terrible, how ... deeply sad... for want of a better expression, that theatre, like so much else these days, has succumbed to the thirty second power-grab-sound-bite attack. Where the 30 seconds of power are all in the title of the play and the horrendous, meaningless, sound and fury signifying nothing, usually covered by the "sell" of, say, an advert, are now contained in the hour plus time of the play.

My dad and I compared notes afterwards. It went something along the lines of "hey, how glad are we that we were twenty minutes late, right?" "Did that whole thing mean anything, anyway?" "are we so bourgeois that it is a cliché to be pissed off by that play... or wait, did it really just suck?"

The thing that it taught me was that that play would've been nothing and nowhere without it’s title. And without it's title I definitely would've been nowhere near it. Which could only've been a good thing.

Handjobs for the Holidays

Sunday morning I found myself cycling into the dawn which was not something I'd done in awhile. I'd like to thank pre-daylight savings and the hard partying crew of Fitzroy.

I'd been dancing with a mirror for some hours previously although the image cracked when I shoved my finger up my nose to see if he'd copy that too (in fact, not so much).

I was never allowed/interested in going to blue light discos when I was a young un but that party seemed a lot like The Best Blue Light Disco You Never Went To. There was mad making out, there was booze, there were dark/brightly lit alleys. It was awesome.

It was also awesome to leave while hearing one of my own personal complaints being aired by a stranger. Namely Night Birds. God I hate the sound of birds at about 4/5am. Why must they twitter, why??

Do You Know The Way To San Jose?

I do! It's via Auckland, Los Angeles and Caracas. And I'll be starting the journey on the 3rd of March.



plus



equals



I also found this image while I was searching google for images of a "jet plane" and thought it too strange and cute not to include...

Bad News...

Friday I finally broke free of Office Lady's Aspbergeresque-oppression and threw myself into the alcoholic arms of Friday Night In The City.

Kicking off with the thrill of Alice Euphemia's jewellery launch/opening. There is something about those launches that bring out the latent Mean Girl in Hottness and I. The thrill of the carefully selected Outfits around us. The absurdity of the clothes. The stream of champagne. It all just spells Bitchery to us. The usual faces were there (ooh, poor choice by Lindel with the spotted leggings - and only just now have I realised that she is probably around the same age as me, not the decade plus I'd always previously imagined. Sometimes red lipstick is so aging) with BoyV turning up with an unfortunate bumpart to remind me why you can't go back again (as well as him just being too damn short).

Somehow the endlessly topped-up glasses of champagne inspired me not to stumble sensibly home but instead to stalk down my friend PrettyBoy (is it stalking if they tell you where they are? Surely that's an invite?) and after all it was on the way home, really.



Catching up with PB meant catching up on some interesting news... Apparently the message I'd left on his phone the night before had been missing certain key words. Like "ing" and "your girlfriend". Instead it had just used verbs and, since his girlfriend and I share the same name, I may've substituted "me" instead of her. Wooooh. I'm sure I'll laugh about this modern mixup, all sliding-doors style in later months but for now it appears as though I'll have to reinstitute my No Phones After 9pm policy. Despite an earlier post, technology is baaaad m'kay.



I'm not sure the no-phone policy would've helped with the later part of the evening where I ducked into the Copacabana club to use the toilets and, on stumbling out again was unable to find the exit and became instantly convinced that I was doomed to live in the club FOR EVER. I siezed up the faux-wood panelling with an eye to living with it everyday for the rest of my life, trapped in the windowless hell that was my new home. Luckily I remembered that the exit was to the right of the bar and finally stumbled through it. Phew.

I feel like I've run too fast for no purpose and I wish I knew where I was headed. Not a particularly original thought but by Saturday I felt hollow and ill at ease. It is unnerving to realise that nothing makes much sense and that one could possibly be a stunted psychopath when it comes to relationships. Or that one has a weakness for emotionally stunted retards? Which is worse?

What's In A Name?

So the other day I found myself trying to decode a missive from my friend in havana which held news pertaining to "malibu heat" "snow white" "cinderella" and "the other one". I then found myself thinking of my friends in terms of "NoLogic" "SpakkAttack" and "ginga" (ok, I would use the last one no matter what).



I have just had a conversation with my mother where I referred to the current crop of freaks and weirdos that I work amongst soley by their secret spy names. Thus we have "Office [bitch] Lady" "That Woman" "Secret Bitchface" and "The Real P.A." We also have "The Campest Man In The World" and "Hot Arms". I ask you, when did life become so coded? (Barthes, don't answer that)

And then my shoes started to squeak...

So this morning as I was wandering through the office bustling through the corridors of employment on my Very Important Stationery Mission, I found myself going a way I did not usually go. A way that, lets face it, avoided seeing a girl that I know, vaguley through [insert typical melbourne story of flatmates, friends of friends, drunkeness, parties etc] "the traps".



Why was I avoiding her? Would it have something to do with having a dream in which she appeared last night on her weekend long "having sex in public" tour which she commenced to do in front of me while I was waiting for the public toilets. So not only did this girl cut in the line in front of me (when I really really needed to go to the toilet, too) but then she had loud sex in the stall! With some ugly random named Greg! What a bitch! And I was forced to try to use the boys toilets but they were all urinals and there were boys in those toilets watching me. And I'd just been trying to convince my friends at the seaside that I really would eat the fish as long as it was sashimi/tartare.



In other up-to-the-minute work news, if I had it in me to kill and kill again I would cheerfully bludgeon to death The Office Lady of my current place of employment. Fuck I hate that bitch. We have just engaged in a spirited discussion on - wait for it - blue pens. Bitch has been whinging that there are No Blue Pens. This is, apparently, a level 'Brilliant Magenta' stage of emergency because she is Stationerily Autistic. This is not a widespread phenomena but one which is highly likely to develop in Women of A Certain Age who have worked in one company for nearly 20 years and never progressed beyond Office Lady. It produces a crippiling unwillingness to use any stationery that is in any way different from the stationery that has been used before. Thus all blue pens are not equal, to the stationerily autistic, but as with snowflakes, unique and terrible and to be feared.


burn in hell, Office Lady xxherbert

Manu Chao

Tonight was the gorgeous S's birthday. It culminated in a traffic stopping procession of candle-whelders on their way to Merri creek to sing "happy birthday" to S and attempt to keep their just-made candleholders working in their job to stop the tea lights from getting blown out.


this is pretty much what it was like on the way to the creek

Not only was it delightfully choreographed by S's elf for the evening, it was also populated by people who were, in the words of Austen, willing, abled and determined to have a Nice time together. Nothing like a bit of discussion about electrolysis and nipple hair to bring people together....

Yes, I love technology...

How is my ipod so prescient? A lot of the time I ride around vaguely cursing my ipod because it seems to insist on playing "randomly" the same five damn songs over and over and over and over again and then, out of nowhere my ipod appears to channel gattaga or maybe that film with arnold schwarzenegger in it where he pulls the tracking device out of his nose... one of those films that is all about the technology of the mind or some shit. Anyway. My ipod. Sometimes it reads my mind/the future. Helloooo hammerheads....




And then sometimes it just plays "Panama". And that's ok too...

Under the seeea

Last night not much happened but I saw a friend's work at Tomorrow, ate delicious cheesey things that I strongly suspect her mother baked especially for the occasion and got utterly shikkered. It was swell.

The above image is something I found while searching for "under the carpet" a place that I believe could be almost as much fun as "under the sea" and which does not require me to attempt anything with photoshop. I also found this:



Last night I also saw a couple salsa (or merengue?) at The Spanish Club and I truly believed that if I just squinted at them long enough I would be able to get up there and follow their steps perfectly. HA. Either that or I was possibly checking out the man's arse which, in salsa (merengue?) wiggles a lot. A lot. Awesome.

Upon Reflection

Yesterday I experienced the rather dubious thrill that was A Breakfast Date (with no night before if you get where I'm coming from).



The time was initiated by me as an attempt to take a stance against previous instances of gross (although charming and witty, natch) insobriety and so to soberly assess the potential (or lack thereof) of the young man. The role of "independent and impartial judge" was to be played by Sunlight, aka, the harsh light of day and I, the European-style magistrate would be there to gather all the facts and asses the evidence without anything getting in the way like, oh say, too much alcohol, sunglasses at night or The Music.

The role of Young Man was played with charm and quiet intensity by a resident of the Emerald City but I couldn't help feeling as though, despite being intrigued, at times a bit entertained and in general enjoying discussing Things for the first time in awhile, as though I had not just had breakfast with... a tall glass of water.



What the hell does that mean, herbert? Clearly there is no rational argument that can be mounted against the glass of water. I don't care how many annoying ad campaigns I see trying to paint water as some sort of horrifying bogey monster all water is is a mysterious liquid that we - finger puppets, humans, whatever - need in order to function. There is also the expression "s/he was like a tall glass of water" implying that someone is a revelatory quenching of the observer's needs. On the other hand there is the same expression which can be used to imply that someone is just as boring, but vital, as a glass of water. That is - transparent, tasteless and inoffensive. And prone to wearing vests. Although personally, I find vests very offensive. Hmm. I can talk myself out of just about anything, should I talk myself out of this? On the other, non-vest wearing hand, Emerald City was rather smitten. There's always the excitement of having someone be smitten with you. Particularly when, to quote KRS 1, "[they] think very deeply" . So is he a frog or a philosopher? Or both?