Time Starts...

I have had a few crisis of wardrobe recently. I am usually not the dithering type when it comes to clothes. Sure I enjoy checking which of two tops I really want to wear before leaving the house and that sort of thing but usually the general theme of my attire is pretty clear to me.



Recently, however, I found myself having this conversation with Hottness:

Hottness: Hi! I'm here, nearly at the bar, where are you?

Herbert: Ah.. er... I'm at home!

Hottness: ... ok... well...

Herbert: I'm in my undies! I don't know what to wear! What do I do, Hottness??

Hottness: [hysterical laughter] um, I don't know! but I'll have a gin and tonic waiting for you when you decide

Herbert: and hot chips too?

Hottness: yes, hot chips too.

People, this has never happened to me before. Normally I am the one rolling my eyes on the other end of the phone at the muntedness of my friends.

The very next day, JZ dropped past to find me lolling around, watching Entourage and, although fully clothed, still unable to leave the house with him because the night ahead held varied amusments as well as decreasing temperatures so I needed to plan my satorial ensemble accordingly. I was unable to do this in the amount of time it was going to take Spakattak to drive from x to y, stopping at my place on the way. This is getting ridiculous.


Possibly a group that should've gotten the "end of naked time" memo earlier

On a slightly tangential note, I was interested to note the finite nature of Naked Time the other day. We've all been there. One minute you're all chill with hanging out, naked, with someone. You've done the sprint to the loo a few times, the sun has probably started setting up shop for the lunch-rush crowd and everything is fine.

Then, suddenly, it isn't fine anymore. I don't know what flicks the switch for the end of naked time. But there's always that moment where you suddenly, desperately, without question, need to be wearing clothes again. Sometimes both people receive this "end of naked time" memo simultaneously, sometimes not. And then, for the abruptly naked-alone person there's that uneasy moment where you start wondering where exactly you threw your knickers last night. And whether the person with clothes on is going to have their back turned long enough for you to make the dash to the corner you think they might be in. Strange.

The Cheezels, WHERE ARE THE CHEEZELS?

Today I polished another glass, stared out towards the MCG and tried to convince myself that the deep sense of boredom I was feeling really could be parlayed off into a state of zen like stillness and inner tranquility.


I would probably be the smaller, more clearly gendered one on the right

No, I thought, as I reached down for another teacup to wipe dry, this isn't tedious. This is truth in its purest form.

Damn I hate temping sometimes.

I had another stab at liking it in the afternoon as I tried to think of another verb for what my feet were doing in the sunshine up Collins St and past Miss Louise (it tickled me to notice that every type of rich woman is catered for in their window display. From aspirational super vamp to sensible stockbroker to trophy wife cliche, each woman will find her shoe in that store. Its like a modern day Cinderella. For rich women) while listening to M. Ward.

I tried again, on the way back, after watching the trapeez set up on Swanston St.

I did enjoy hearing the food and services co-ordinator try to sell a Miss Universe-inspired brand of socialism to the receptionist though. That was definately a highlight.

Speakeasy

On the way home tonight I found myself riding over the Westgarth bridge. Nothing all that exciting about that, you would think... except it was (please imagine a voiceover now, of a certain 1960s "duck! and take cover!" era vintage, entoning the next part) clearly an hotspot of some type of gathering.

Well that's totally not interesting, I thought. Hey, heaps of people are walking under the bridge. Sort of like an en masse Sunday night in Melboure re-enactment of that song by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Whatever.



Only despite that I somehow found myself locking my bike up on the other side of the bridge and turning around. What if its the speakeasy, I asked myself, the one you were always too lazy to check out? It clearly isn't another squat party like what you feared it was. It could be... interesting (unlike my internal monologues).

So although the beer was nowhere near as cheap as I assumed it would be, it was, in fact, that speakeasy, complete with some band that looked like it could possibly be fronted by martin martini. (Unfortunately possible M.M. was summarily kicked off around the midnight mark by a pill chewing group called... oh I don't care what they were called. The tuba was good. The guitarist sat there and looked bored.) As I stood around, enjoying listening to people effusively greet people that they subsequently realised they didn't know at all (it was dark), I found myself chatting to some guy who was persistently interested in how i'd come to be there.

"By bike", didn't seem to cut it. Neither did admitting that I was just riding past and was bored enough to see what everyone else was doing. Eventually the horrible truth came out.

That's right: even in the bohemian environs of a speakeasy, marketing researchers walk amongst us.

Goddamn.

Still, it was good to be able to confirm that the whole reason for the set up appeared to be amply summed up in the statement "just because". And he was concerened with lighting. How nice.

Hommage de Bernaise

People, did you know that they now make bearnaise sauce... in a jar? A jar!



So tonight, with pretty much total success, I recreated the Napier's infamous roo + bearnaise sauce = heaven on a plate at Park's house. Although it was a little tepid it still maintained its inherent core of utter awesomeness (thanks, entirely, obviously, to my mad chef skillz. Not even gluten free flour could overcome me).

The only low point was realising that a kitchen I took such enormous pleasure of being the master of was shortly to disappear. Aw, who will have the fairy lights now?

What Are You Doing Today, Dear?

Oh, I'm gonna be checking out a room full of photos of manginas.



Surprisingly, when I Google image searched that word I was not overwhelemed with the response. Men of the world, why are you not prouder of your manginas?

Lucky charms

As I trudged away from the taxi-man who seemed to’ve offered me a lift for free as a sort of karmic sacrifice to the Friday Night Fates in a hope of securing an actual paying customer in future, I had time to think about a recent conversation.

Now, I can’t quite remember who it was but one of my friends accused me of being the type of lady who would only sleep with boys based on their method of cooling. That is to say, I was liable to haul out a questionnaire at any moment from somewhere deep inside my purse and ask them to tick a, b, or c where a = none, b = fan and c = air conditioning. At the time I was shocked and offended that anyone would think my time could be purchased so cheaply (or so, well, practically. I am nothing if not nonsensical) but tonight I found myself wondering “why don’t I know anyone with aircon?



I also found myself discussing earlier how it was that comedy is only funny if you don’t mean it. So although I enjoyed dancing with the laydeez on Thursday night and seeing that young man do that thing where you lean back and touch the ground with one hand and then spring right back up as if you haven’t just used every single muscle in your abdomen and it was nothing, well. I mean, that was pretty awesome but I’m not sure it was funny.

Then again, I’m not sure that this is a spot of unbridled comedy so maybe I shouldn’t over think it too much.

Still wish I knew someone with more than one fan in their whole fucking house though.

Ugh

You know what I hate?

Being proven right when I predict that I will be woken at an uncomfortably early hour for money-earning purposes.

Longest day.

Ever.

And its only two hours in.

Take the Long Walk Home

Honestly, if I had accepted a lift from Budgie the freaking Helicopter via way of the South/North pole and back again I think I might've reached home sooner



But that was hardly the point now, was it?

So I had a not unsatisfactory perambulation. I learnt that:

• My phone has no flash



• Cider makes me bloat like a beached whale



• It takes more than one to get home..... but one will do if you weild it like a weapon



• There is no breeze



• I think there might be something going on between one late night RACV driver and an establishment near my house.... Ooooh...

So I guess tomorrow I can venture out and buy as much feta as I want. Whew.

Street

So occasionally I find myself wondering if I am the only one who wanders the streets of her own neighbourhood slightly fearing the accidental encounter with The Other who is (un?)fortunate enough to work in the streets by my "town".

I'll find myself at five in the afternoon wondering "is it safe to buy feta now? should I wait til after six? what if I bump into him on the way out of the deli? what then? do I act natural? fuck!" And then I feel resentful that I can't even buy cheese in my own neighbourhood without overthinking it.



Anyway, the whole point of this is, I'm sitting in east brunswick wondering if I can make it home to the 'hood without doing anything to embarassss/illegalise myself. I'm sure I can do it. Totally.

Fuck it is hot

Contrasts

One of these things is not like the other (or rather, two of these things are the same);

"There is violence but also deep caring; fear but also courage; want but also generosity; despair but also hopelessness"

From The Age A2 section, 13/01, in the review of Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall who apparently slummed it hardcore for 6 months and signed a publishing deal halfway through his time in a shantytown on the edges of Toronto.

What I'm left wondering is if the broken couplet at the end is actually the reviewer's personal cry for help. Or whether they have come to terms with the idea that it is now hopeless to expect anyone to be denied a publishing deal for writing anything, ever. Even if that deal is just with blogger.

It's bothered me all day.

Look It's A Yak

Inside A Sak.

Sunday morning started with Gynger doing his patented "there's cleaning up going on, why - I must be leaving!" routine and a strong pot of coffee being made after the debris from Margarita (and daiquiri) night was cleaned away.

And since I am no fan of the cricket it was time to revisit a cartoon that JZ and I first discovered back in the green-haze days of North Melbourne and which, thanks to the power of the interweb and various...things... within it... we are able to watch all over again.

Angry Beavers!



I'd never seen this episode before Sunday but I think it might be my favourite. Wait for the 9.55 minute mark. Although upon repeat viewing I think Norb should've been wearing a shirt or big glasses or something. Then again, if Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys morphed into each other then maybe they would look like beavers?

I wrote an essay about the Angry Beavers at uni once. It was a hard concept to sell to my drag-dressing lesbian lecturer. I still think it was worth it.

Gender Politics

Last night I did a number of stupid things.

I really didn't eat anything during the day

I forgot to have dinner

I drank two bottles of white wine

I was out in public

I disclosed something that I hadn't entirely made up my mind about to two of the biggest gossips I know

I invited myself over to The Egg's house and made myself entirely at home.



So it was the last one that I've been pondering all day. It seems largely acceptable (where "acceptable" is understood to be "within the city limits of Crazytown, population: various") for a girl to do this. Men of my acquaintance have spoken wistfully of girlfriends past who would climb through windows, late at night. Nostalgic sighs have been heaved over the idea that some girl from their past would've only tried to do such a thing for them back in the day. So while I was... aware of a certain moral ambiguity over the issue I couldn't help but wonder "what would I do if I came home to someone I hadn't invited "chillin'" in my bed?"

And I'm not sure that saying "oh" and having a brief discussion about each others day would've been the answer.

I guess it really is different, being a girl.

Censorship

Today I am working at the place that has government-protected tea and afternoon breaks, biscuits both sweet and savoury and a large, well designed kitchen area for all and saundry. It also has three types of newspapers and little competition for the e.g. section of the age.


Your search - "adventures of naked man" - did not match any documents


So everything was going pretty well until I noticed. The horror. The creeping kudzu vine that is: Jim Schembri.

God I hate that fucker. I can't quite decide why. I gave it some thought as I flipped through page after page bearing his unctuous, greasy prose. I know, buried in my memory, is some particular column that I must've actually read all the way through at some point and at the end exclaimed "I just lost five minutes of my life! FOR THIS?!" but I can no longer locate what was contained within. All I know is that he is everywhere with an opinion on everything. And that he gave Apocalypto five stars. Five.

He tainted the Green Guide for me yesterday and now he's moved on to my Friday lift out. If he's in Saturday I'm officially Cracking It.

I am already, I should confess, a fastidious newspaper reader. I have found I have a lot of fellow feeling for... that famous guy... who famously made his family iron his newspaper every morning if they dared to read it before him so that he could pretend he had a fresh, new, crisp newspaper every day. I used to be proud that I would read certain sections cover to cover until The Age saw fit to taint those sections with such writers as Stephanie Dowrick or that annoying young lass who used to write the intro for the Good Weekend (damn, I just outed which section I used to read all the way through). Why I am now being hounded not just in the weekend but throughout the week days too?

Go away, Jim Schembri, go away

Lunch Break

As I ambled back to The Office from my not-unpleasant but lamentably brief bask in the sun I realised that I had two things to thank for my, upon analysis, slightly generic and in no way un-thought-before thoughts on matters various:



and:



So thank you, my dad's plaid shirt from the mid-90's and Elizabeth Arden et al for all those last-minute Christmas presents for my mother. Together we came up with 1993. So retro! So now!

Williamstown Doesn't Want You

Yesterday Nologic and I pooled our collective genius (geniii?) and decided that it was the day for the beach. We wanted to go somewhere we'd never been before so we decided to chance the western suburbs and see what Williamstown had to offer. Apart from a potential sighting of Bracksie in a wetsuit, obvs.

Little did we realise, as we set out, how hostile Williamstown would be to our advances.

There are no direct trains to williamstown, for example. There are no platforms for the halfway trains either. They are everywhere and nowhere. They are at platform 9 1/2. They are in your collective unconcious. They are right behind you.

After stabbing a few dragons to prove our seriousness, we somehow found ourself at the back of a children's crusade, all scantily dressed teenagers and "ohmygaaawwd!!", heading left towards the sea. We decided to take a right and find some beer.

Why do all seaside towns seem the same? Too many roundabouts, no footpaths in the side streets and enormous roads.

Not realising that Williamstown provides exactly one window of availability per day to outsiders we attempted to lure others down to the waves and rocks. One spent an hour waiting for a train that wouldn't let him on. One couldn't find the yellow umbrella (to be fair she was about half a km away) and one simply refused because I think he actually knew it was a stupid idea.

At least we got to sit in the sea and drink a beer. And I got to yell at small children for throwing rocks near me. Who needs a senior citizen's card to be cantankerous?

Embedded

Just because I can and just because it is one of my favourite, favourite songs at the moment:



Even though, damn, as much of a fan of beards as I am this band has actually made me think "Sometimes a beard... should not be a beard". If you see what I mean.

1 New Message

I kicked off today by lounging in my dressing gown for three hours, thinking seriously about never having a shower at all and then listening to M.I.A. in lieu of actually doing anything, y'know, meaningful.

Since I've done little today except, well, dress myself, I offer you a recent text exchange that made me laugh (and then cry over the emptiness of my own existence. Oh you know it didn't):

NoLogic:
Thanks for the hospitality on Friday, it stopped me dying like an old person in the heat. You still out there or at work?

Herbert
Dying of boredom back home in herbertland. Judge Judy for once has 2 middleclass claiments. How can she rule based on class now?

NoLogic:
Maybe like the north koreans? Your grandfather was a criminal, you get life sentence too? I'm bleeding and can't get a house, even tried bribing real estate

Damnit, when a bleeding girl can't even bribe "real estate" (which makes me think of a Monopoly board for some reason) what the dickens has gone wrong with our society? Must one use ones' blood for evil rather than good? A few Carrie style moves in order to gain the perfect two bedroom house in Northcote, for example?

Blue Water High

The Sunday Social Club Go Swimming

So over the weekend I had the pleasure of house sitting a house with an awesome pool and a fantastic deck. Between running to the toilet to wee out all the beer and cocktails we'd been drinking, the social club found itself most of the time immersed in water or lounging meters from water thinking very seriously about getting back into it.

The few hours of each day that I myself was not doing any of the above mentioned things I still felt as though I should be dressed, superhero style, ready for any moment when I would be forced to plunge back into the pool again. Which meant I spent most of the weekend in my bikini with a t-shirt over it.

So what I'm saying is, "Blue Water High" is a piece of stunning cinema verite and I am totally down with that.

Furious Annoyance

There are other things I need to discuss but right now, burningly, I am overwhelmed with righteous indignation at my position on Google.



Don't pretend that you've never googled yourself/others before. I'd call you a liar if you tried to tell me that. And then I'd stab you in the kidney. And you would have no way of protecting yourself because you would be an illiterate, thalidomide luddite and then, only after stabbing you in the kidney would I realise what I'd done and that you had told the truth and then I would cry "why god, oh god, why?? shrug and somehow make it all your fault for being so lame in the first place.

So last night, while enjoying the extended pool party with the social club and somewhere between my fifth or sixteenth rum cocktail I found myself within lurching distance of a shiny computer object with a keyboard. Having the co-ordination and logical facilities of a monkey on rum I found myself punching in the [I need to pause here and reveal that I just typed in someone else's name in an attempt to soothe my rage all, "why no, nothing will come up for this one - I would've sworn they were 'off the grid'" yet - there it is, that name too, in all its first ranked google glory...] least demanding (in spelling sense at least) of names and google came up instantly with... his picture and link.

WTF?! I thundered at the indifferent screen. How could you betray me like this, google?!? If I could find a way of pouring rum down your clearly bad-hair-loving engine I would do it.

The more names I type, the angrier I become. I admit it. As my friends know - I am shallow. I like shiny things and pretty surfaces. I like things that sometimes wander into the dangerous world of Blue States Lose . I like to reduce everything down to filmic analogies so that I don't have to be forced to face anything new or original. And most of all, I like to pretend that I am, somehow, important. Or at the very least, more google-ific than some of the people I know. To be faced with ones own, internet mandated superfluosity - nay, unexistance..... Why, it’s enough to make a finger puppet start making up new words.




**********************************



And a snapshot of some of the results are, for anyone who is interested:

(maybe I should cease watching remakes of Shakespeare which seem to encourage murder in any efforts to become number one before bedtime):

JZ - not only number one but also pictured avec beanie
Spakattak - also, annoyingly, head of the class
BFG - You lose out to a plea for justice and some type of life insurance
Park - number one
A* - your name is linked with a flower. And that state known for its inbreeding. Not sure how you feel about that but still - is being number one such a bad thing? (I wouldn't know)
B - You have the honour of not turning up at all. Either that or I've misspelt your name.
"Ferris Bueller" - you'll be happy to know that either Reds and international spies are paying off google or our old uni has some sort of dark deal with a search engine
Mereki's darkplace - goddamnit you were meant to be off the grid
Napoleon dynamite - I can even get your phone number again, first time round
Heardatron - they (I) aren't sure what you're doing but you're still at the front of the class with... whichever university that was
BoyY - AGDA approves
Simone - well, that one wasn't all that surprising
...

I just can't go on. I'm too annoyed.

Pickin' Tan Bark Out of My Cardi

Before signing in here I noticed a headline on another page that said "new year, new start" to which I can only say "pft". Why start afresh when one can revisit the past?



After a deeply inauspicious start (recruitment drives for artistic Catholicism on NYE anyone? Anyone? Oh, no, didn't think so) and a long and grumpy march from North Fitzroy to Sydney Rd I was resigning myself to a new years spent bitching with Nologic and fighting off well intentioned bogans in stripy shirts.

Instead I found myself in a car with five people I didn't know being whisked off to the crazed night of fuckedness that is That Party By The Fitzroy Pools. Ah. That party. Last new years eve I remember walking into a sea of people with eskies and picnic rugs making me think of a hardcore, twentysomethings only version of carols by candlelight except instead of champagne and pate and small children it was liquor and drugs and groping on the grass. So you can see why I thought it was just like carols by candlelight.



Now I'm not proud of this but it's a fact. As TheWedge once pointed out to me, when it comes to Spewtown I'm the Mayor. I'm the Governor General, the Queen, the figurehead of Spewtown. Summer especially seems to bring out the spew within me - something about not eating very much but drinking a lot makes my stomach a tad delicate. There is also one person I know who can, almost invariably, make me vomit. Romantic no? I see him and then I have to run to the toilet. Except new years eve this year I didn't make it. I wonder about the state of the world and the absence of moral centres etc when a girl can chuck up twice in front of a multitude of people (including the boy's best friend), run off to wipe it off and come back and... well lets just say for any of my friends who remember last new years it was like that but on tan bark so not as roll-y.

On the way home there was attempts at tango in my favourite park which, earlier on this year I had bid a mournful goodbye to all "oh park, you sooth my troubled mind and I will walk through you no more, adieu adieu" (obviously I am an idiot) and then I got to wear a hoodie and redecorate certain objects. And sleep badly.

And then I watched an incredibly shit episode of degrassi. And then an even worse 'Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Keira Knightly wears a hell-bad wig' and then I went back to bed. I love a slumberous household and I love a slow, slurred, couch-full new year’s day.

So last year I stumbled home at 11am to sit on my own couch and watch The West Wing and this year I didn't stumble out of that house until 11pm. Why not get the New Year off to a gentle start by pretending the last twelve months didn't really happen? And what did you do for new years?