A few things are coming together this week. Tomorrow I have to go and pay the rent on my place in Sydney (the only place I can do it is in the city - how crap is that?) and grab a book to read for my thesis. Sometime this week I need to book the flight home to Sydney. Which means it’s a leaving and getting on with things kind of time. I want to be in Sydney by O week to get ready for teaching and to catch up with what’s going on there, so a week or two more and it will be time to think of packing everything up again.

Perth has been fun. It’s been good mostly because I’ve been living in a place with enough room to move around and decent light, and getting my mum to do the shopping. Seeing all my friends again and (shock) actually going out places has also been so very welcome - living in the most interesting city is still boring when you don’t know anyone who wants to go anywhere. And on that note, I’m not surprised that the only girl I’ve met for aaaages that I’ve felt I had some connection with was here.* That said, I’ve been watching a lot of tv as well. I have a newfound appreciation for M*A*S*H and I’m drooling over the double Buffy that’s going to be on in a minute. Wasting your life is a totally relative thing.

I don’t know what Sydney will be like. I don’t know what I want to happen there, or how I’ll feel about whatever does happen. It would be nice to be absorbed in work, but my inability to type and total impatience for reading literature mean that I’ll probably have plenty more time for thinking it over and watching Buffy. I envy people who are certain about what they mean when they talk about ‘home’. It’s hard to be divided, and in a strange way it’s hard when you’re not divided between somewhere you hate and somewhere you love - just between two places where you can’t find enough to care about. Do you know the times when you wish life would give you a break?

*See previous post and this one.

I’m still missing J. I wish she’d call. It’s not very often I meet someone who I don’t immediately dislike. Or someone I can talk to without reminding myself that talking to other people is necessary for a healthy life. I might call her. I hope I don’t. Punch me if I do, okay?

no use wishin’ now for any other sin

Today I wrote a poem. It’s called:

Nothing Rhymes With Krishna

Take it easy Jesus
You’ve got what it takes to please us
Don’t send no more diseases
We’re just your average geezers

Take a drink Mohammed
It’s time we all got hammered
Until we staggered and stammered
Like six-tequila-slammered

Let’s have a party Ghandi
You sat there in your undies
For so long it wasn’t funny
If you want I’ll lend you some money

by Mark

I particularly like the way it reaches across cultural boundaries… er, in it’s grotesque inappropriateness. Now all I have to do now is find a coffee house and I’ll have it made in the shade. Would anyone else like to share a poem here, or on their blog? Here’s my chance to start a meme!

Person #1: …you see this problem I have, I just can’t work it out.
Mark: Have you ever read Bataille’s Theory of Religion? That might help.
Person #1: No, this is not about religion. Rant rant rant rant!!
Mark: (to himself) Well neither was the book, really…

Mark: (knowing Bataille has the answer) Can you remember - what was Bataille’s definition of sacrifice?
Person #2: Well Bataille didn’t know very much at all. He had some good ideas, but his history was way off. Rant rant rant rant…
Mark: (under his breath) Yes, it was the good ideas I was getting at…
Person #2: …rant rant rant rant, ergo I’m right and you’re wrong. (Looks at Mark, expecting him to finish what he was saying.)

NO WONDER I SUCK AT CONVERSATION. I WASN’T RAISED BY WOLVES.
As an interesting aside, Bataille *so* had the answer. Bataille has the answer to everything.

papertrap[dot]net: official recruiting office.

Did I mention that I’m on the WAMI 2005 compilation CD? Yeah, I’m a rock singer, hey. Cover art by Rolf Harris. Have I mentioned that already?

#603776 +(127)- [X]
[J-Dawg] I tried to buy a hooker with monopoly money once.
[Kyee] how’d that work out for you?
[J-Dawg] my mom said they weren’t in monopoly
[J-Dawg] …they never let me play after that, either…

Ross and I went to see this show that Tomas was meant to be playing at. The first part was a play called Cowboy Mouth, with the band Radarmaker playing the backing music. It was apparently based on the poetry of Patti Smith. I liked the concept, but the actors didn’t talk very loud and we couldn’t hear them over the pool comp at the back. We also couldn’t see them because of all the people standing in front of us (it would have worked at Mojo’s, or some other one-room place, but not the Hyde Park) So, I don’t really know if it was a good play or not. The bands kicked arse though:

Trash Band 1987 are ultracool. I couldn’t hear the words, but they don’t sing much anyway.

7 Day Weekend are my new favourite band. Here they are in pirate costumes. Think Chicks On Speed, or chicks yelling semi-random ironic lyrics to a cheesy backing track and miming their instruments. They are all superhot. They do a neat cover of ‘Fank Mills’ from the musical Hair.

Tomas Ford’s Cabaret of Death. Tomas is even more attention-grabbing than before and his new material rocks. He is also very loud now.

Bye bye. We had a good night then.

She gave me a party hat.

I was meant to go to the Perth weblog meetup, but I didn’t. Just like last month when I didn’t either. It’s getting to be a little tradition, isn’t it? So here’s why this time:

Thinking that J must have returned from Mandurah, I made a date with her to see Rocky Horror at Sunset Cinema - which only showed last night, unfortunately. So, priorities organised, I ditched the nerd gang and headed over to J’s place. Now - you know I’m not one to kiss and tell, don’t you? Certainly not. But if I don’t get kissed then it’s very much my duty to tell.

When I got there, J was getting into her corset/hot pants/hat Columbia combination (she was The Hotness, but the way). Some of her friends were there too, though not as any particular characters. They did their makeup and I changed into my undershirt/tiny shorts/nerd glasses Brad getup.

Rocky Horror kicked massive butt. There were like a hundred people doing the Timewarp.

Afterward I took J and her friends home. We agreed that we’d had a good time at the show, and should go to the next one at Burswood. Then she sat on the stairs and I sat on the couch and we talked until it was too late. We didn’t kiss, but I was ambushed into a hug before I closed the car door, and sent away with an invitation to her birthday party.

So, I don’t know. It was just like a real relationship, except at the end of the night where you would normally expect the sex bit to happen, it was just me driving home. Or it was like dating for friends.

So I shrug:

And I eat chocolate cake today, and I move on tomorrow. I’m reminded of how it’s easy to say ‘let’s just be friends’ and how much it hurts as well.

from Clare

1. You know what? This is really hard.
1. I guess I’m more normal than I thought I was.
1. That has been a long-term goal of mine.
Okay, let me really try: 1. Always wearing boots, even in the height of summer.
2. My toothbrush must be rinsed before the toothpaste is applied, and then again afterwards.
3. Obsessively watching ‘What Not to Wear’.
4. Lining things up with the edge of the table.
5. Standing with my hands in my back pockets. (See, we’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. I’m just too average.)

plus some Bash.org:

#601337 +(447)- [X]
[sev] so I was walking through the city with a bunch of roses in one hand and a bag of potaotes in the other, and I had something like five people stop me and ask if I was going to propose to an irishman 8\

It was fancy dress so I went as a cowboy. I thought that was a fine idea but people wanted to know what was so scary about a cowboy, like it really mattered. Kat was there as Velma from Scooby Doo and her boyfriend was Shaggy. The best costume was Adrian’s - he came as an Abstract form of Distress, wearing nought but a towel, motorcycle goggles and washing-up gloves. Come to think of it, that was a really wanky costume.

I gave Kat gave Kat a bubble-blower because it was her birthday as well and hung out with Morgan (a very convincing convict) in the kitchen. Emma showed up, like she does every year or so, walked in and stole my heart talking about how she’s been mapping vegetation in Malaysia, then went off to the punch bowl and left early after that. I guess I won’t see her for another year but, in a strange way, I think we’re developing some kind of very very low tempo flirting relationship that might see me getting her number in, like, fifteen years.

Word got around that Morgan was naked in a play last year and that he was ‘equipped’, so to speak. (Morgan started the rumour himself of course). Anyhow, he was eventually dacked by this girl called Angie who we’d just met - she apparently couldn’t take his word for it. It was kinda disturbing so you’re better off not trying to picture it. Think of the birthday cake, which was vanilla icecream with chocolate chips and green food colouring in and jaffas on top, sculpted into a colourful lump like a Gaudi roof. Mmm, that’s better.

Then Candice smashed her guitar on the patio and threw it on the fire. When I went home I took the head so I could use the tuning keys to repair my old guitar. Which I did.

You see the number of crossings-out going on on the ‘links’ bar at right? Looks like blogging is no longer the next big thing and everyone’s tired of it. Finally, thank God. However, in the interest of community, I’ve decided to bag something that everyone likes so people can come together in mutual disapproval.

So I was looking at T’s new diary and went into the ‘about’ part to see what I could see. It turns out her favourite books are A Clockwork Orange, Lolita, Brave New World and 1984 (Memoirs of a Geisha didn’t make the cut, thank Christ - otherwise I’d be talking about how much I hate that). It strikes me as strange that anyone would put A Brave New World amongst their favourite books - I’m sure everybody likes it, and it is a good book, but why a *favourite*? Isn’t there something a bit… you know about it?

It’s the classic sci-fi thing, isn’t it? Keep the audience at arm’s length from the characters - things happen to them and you certainly empathise, but only in a simple, two-dimensional, monophonic kind of way - and let the plot do the work. The story is there to give the audience a kind of message, to reflect the present by showing a dystopic future. It’s all plain and simple. All the time in these kind of stories, the characters walk out in protest, shouting

you’re using us
we’re just pawns in your game

because they know they’re there for demonstration purposes only. They are quickly replaced by union labour paper cutouts of themselves but it happens again in the next chapter.

you tell all our eulogies wrong

Bernard is never more than an agreeable protagonist - he is a failure in his life but he never fails to deliver the right line. Lenina might have her own arc but she’s not Lenina, is she? She’s a chorus of women, an infinite number of ingenuous and ignorant bystanders. She brings the dystopia home to us by standing in for someone we already know; nothing about her is extraneous or accidental, she is the idea of a woman only. Nobody who reads her really loves her. John is the same - his whole mind is a misquote from Shakespeare, his life is a hollow accident.

And I’m not just talking about characters, who are obviously sleepwalking through it, but the whole carry-on. When the curtains come down and Huxley closes the book and looks down from his rocking chair at his assembled grandchildren he will ask us: “what did the whole thing mean?” And we will be able to put it quite simply if we try, because there really wasn’t anything else to think about.

Everything that happens proves the point. We get the point. So where are we then? John sums up the situation well enough when he refuses to let Lenina kiss him* - the situation is a scam and Huxley is pulling all the strings.

*In short, he calls her a strumpet.