After reading this post by Juicy Lucy - or as I call her, J-Lu - I have a few thoughts. And yeah, if you’re lazy you don’t need to read the back story.

The Onus of Sleaze. It’s fair to say that men are usually expected to make the first move. At least this is what a lot of girls seem to feel, on account of they are shy little mousies like J-Lu; and as a guy, I feel like there’s a lot of pressure to be outgoing and make the first move. But of course, the vast majority of us don’t have the foggiest idea of what that entails (except for what we see in movies, which ain’t necessarily anything like the truth) and so there is fuckedupness. Guys with more personality and less confidence - people like me who are wonderful and deserve to be drowning in it - will let opportunities slip by because it’s easier that way, and girls with lots of makeup* and big boobs** will get hit on by drunken idiots who think that’s what they’re supposed to do.

The onus of sleaze is therefore too far weighted on the male side, and I would much rather live in a country town where, if you’re not related to her, a girl can’t take her eyes off you. (Based on a true story, by the way.) Anyhow, I hereby resolve to be outgoing more often, and exhort the womenfolk to do the same.

Friends with Partial Benefits. I never heard about this before, but J-Lu and Winter both seem to point to the existence of a relationship that involves:

a) friendship
b) making out sometimes
c) no sex

What’s the deal? I thought FwB (cause that’s what all the cool kids are callling it) was all about chicks being used for sex, but now there seems to be a half-way, not-below-the-pants version. I wonder if this is something I could be interested in - like, as a pastime. Since I Say No To Casual Sex and can’t bring myself to whip out the utensil for anything less than the possibility of a long term relationship, maybe I should be a makeout slut instead.

Or would I still feel cheated?

*Men are suckers for a foundation-plastered visage. Fuck knows why.
**Ditto.

“Your body may show signs that it has been ravaged by a hard life, by sin, and neglect. God the Father and Jesus your Bridegroom weep over the hurts and the indignities that your body has been subjected to. God did not create it to be abused physically by yourself or by anyone else. It wasn’t intended to be hurt by a working mother whose anger and self-hatred was taken out on her daughter, nor was it made to be a plaything by a brother who violated it sexually.”

It’s fucking true, people: you should not be afraid of your period (or, as we call it in Australia, your ‘monthly pain’). If you have a spare few minutes, check out Family First. You can order a range of informative books, DVDs and information kits that can help you get closer to the Lord, and even cure your burgeoning homosexuality (I *have* been watching ‘Once More, With Feeling’ a bit too much lately…) - and it’s all for a suggested donation, which can be as low as zero dollars US.

While we’re talking about vile sexual habits, I can’t work out what was worse: the sound of my neighbours having PASSIONATE MULTIORGASMIC LOVE with the window open last night or the sound of my neighbours playing Scribe’s ‘Not Many, If Any’ with booming bass at the break of day this morning. Filthy people and their devil’s music.

In summary, today’s lessons:

1) The bass end of the spectrum is the devil’s own. Angels only sing soprano and above.

2) Keep your faith real (on campus with a cool diary!)

Meme courtesy of T.

One Book That Changed Your Life:

Easy. It was the mysteriously untitled NaNoWriMo novel by T. of course. Now let’s never speak of NaNoWriMo again. Seriously but, the best example I could give would be Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. I really liked Fight Club, with it’s interesting take on conformity, alienation and friendship, and Choke develops those themes in a different way - with the added advantage of not leaving you wondering whether the movie was better than the book. Along the same lines is Andrew Wellman’s S.F.W. but, again, that one was made into a movie that’s just as good.

One Book You Have Read More Than Once:

I’m not one for multiple reads, so the ones I have read a few times are only the greats: The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, To Kill a Mockingbird and Catch 22. But poetry is different - books like TS Eliot’s Prufrock & Other Observations and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass are always worth another read.

One Book You’d Want On A Desert Island:

Perhaps my pocket edition of The SAS Survivial Guide? Either that or some heavy tome that I would only ever read if I had nothing else to do. Like Being and Time or something by Dostoevsky.

One Book That Made You Giddy:

Vile Bodies was too too giddy-making in my opinion, but if you’re really up for some Evelyn Waugh you’ll want to grab The Loved One. It’s sort of a surreal black comedy about the funeral industry, with bonus marks for not being long enough to have any crap bits in it.

One Book That You Wish Had Been Written:

‘Here’s What I Was On About’, and edited collection with chapters from TS Eliot, William Burroughs, Gilles Deleuze and all the other authors whose books I can’t make sense of.

One Book That Wracked You With Sobs:

I have never been wracked with sobs by a book. That shit is for girls and sissies, whereas I am tuff and manly. However, as a manly man I am allowed to shed a quiet tear at Leaves of Grass because of the inspirational manliness of it all.

One Book You Wish Had Never Been Written:

So many to choose from… something like Mein Kampf would be a start, though the Da Vinci Code is perhaps an even greater evil. And if Brave New World had never been written I wouldn’t have wasted precious hours reading that turgid and condescending heap of crap. But I guess I can’t narrow it down to one.

One Book You’re Currently Reading:

Well there’s nothing non-fictional around here, so I’ll say: In Spite of Plato by Adriana Cavarero. A sort of stylish Italian feminist thing about female characters in Greek mythology. Worth a read if you’re into classics and/or gender issues.

One Book You’ve Been Meaning To Read:

After reading The Winter of Our Discontent and finding it very nifty I’d like to try another Steinbeck novel, like The Grapes of Wath. People have also been telling me to read some Beckett so I might do that. And I never read He Died With A Felafel In His Hand, which apparently everyone else has read, so that could also be the one. Plus, I would like to try and read Cloudstreet, if only to further justify my disdain for Tim Winton.

I just received a text message from my cousin. I sent him one earlier asking if he wanted to go out on Saturday night, and he responded saying that he wanted to but he had an essay due on Wednesday and couldn’t spare the time. That’s usually the way it is with him.

And of course I don’t mean to be critical. I certainly shouldn’t look down on anyone with more than my meagre share of application, and essays and the like are important. But it gets me thinking nonetheless.

Well, for mine it’s always this: if I’m not busy living then what do I have to write about? What goes on to the page, when all is said and done, but the collected experiences of my friends and I? All the things we’ve been through, what we hope for and what we fear? Be it the driest text (and I’ve penned a few dry ones) there’s always a stake, a reason, that comes from outside and makes me mean what I say.

Because we don’t live through what we write, but let it stand for us and the lives we have.

Because, without passion and curiosity rooted deep in the love of our world and our friends, words on a page are

well, pointless.

Today I went to the video store and they gave me too much change, so I told them and gave them some back. I am yet to work out whether I am an idiot for doing this.

Given that it’s Jumbo Video and not some evil chain store, I think I can at least live with myself.

Oh, and speaking of doesn’t Liz have great taste in music - check out Harry & the Potters.

*By “what’s right” I assume I’m talking about saving Ginny Weasley from the Basilisk, not giving back money that’s not yours.

The chapter. The chapter of my thesis I had been working on up until last week is now, excepting a last read-through, sorted out and complete. It was a nightmare to write because I started it all wrong. I won’t go into the details, but I think I was writing for me and not the audience, so it came out a bit confusing and vague. Now I’ve started the final chapter but one and I have a feeling it’s going to be a way way different story. I not only have a kickarse idea, but I have a swag of references to secondary texts that will help me explain everything in a way that looks academically legitimate. Clean start. Downhill from here. It’s looking good. The chapter topic, if you want to know, is ‘counter-culture’ - it’s all about subversive communities, which is a sort of counterpoint to the subversive behaviour of individuals I’ve been talking about elsewhere.

The band. The Mega Masturbation Experience has jammed on most of its new material, and the songs are slowly coming together. I’m discovering that Morgan has written some very large vocal ranges into this stuff (think D above middle C up to F# in the next octave) which might be okay for professional singers but means I’m doing the wheezy chipmunk at one moment and wishing I had a bit more testosterone at the next. Morgan also wants to teach his girlfriend the keyboard, but I think that might take a few more years than anticipated. At this rate I don’t know when we’ll be ready, if ever, but at least we’re having fun kicking out the jams. And for once I’m a genuine front man with no guitar and it. feels. awesome. You become some sort of monster.

I was the one who had the idea of setting the rum on fire, but I was not the one who tried to drink it straight afterward.

I got Tomas’s CD the other day. We used to have a band together but he’s been doing a solo show since I left for Sydney last year. I won’t go into the details about how it sounds, but it’s good. A couple of the tracks have me on them and they’re very special indeed :) Anyhow I was completely blown away by the packaging: a folded fabric sleeve with random groovy sewing bits and printing on, plus a paper inner sleeve. Apparently it took his mum weeks to do the initial run of 100 on the sewing machine. Now I want to figure out an even cooler form of CD delivery for when I have enough recorded tracks of my own to have an album. My ideas so far are:

1. CDs projected via cannon from long range into people’s windows.
2. CDs baked into loaves of bread you buy at the shops.
3. CDs that are banana-flavoured so everyone will pay heaps of money for them.
4. Okay, basically I have no good ideas.

And another thing. I was at a seminar at Notre Dame this week and people started introducing themselves with first and second names. I guess it was so I could hear their whole name and know them from their research papers and general reputations. Personally though, I found it a bit rude. Like saying “Hi, do you know me? You should really know me. Here, have my business card. Now fuck off.” And I am still known as just plain Mark. I guess I’ll be able to spread my name around one day when I find a break in the conversation and actually get to say something.

In honour of Kat’s upcoming Pirate Party!, here is a list of Things I Would Be Inclined To Shake If Someone Asked Me To “Shake My Booty”:

Nintendo
Doc Martens
Electric guitar
Neato jeans (though this would result in the actual shaking of my butt on most days)
1919 edition of Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’
TV on the computer
Chocolate gold coins, yarr!

So there is plenty of booty that desperately needs to be shaken about tomorrow nite @ Kat’s. If you want to read the old list, ‘Shake What Ya Mama Gave Ya’, click here.

In other news, I need to get engaged RIGHT AWAY so I can sing the Xander part in I’ll Never Tell (from the Buffy ep ‘Once More With Feeling’ *squee!*) before the tune goes out of my head. The best song in the best Buffy ever, and a complete victory for the ‘crap singer + autotune software = great song’ equation.

Am I crazy?
Am I dreamin’?
Am I marryin’
A demon?

Oh, but I never got diseases from a chumash tribe.

We go by torchlight, I think. Each of us holds a little torch out in front that shows us the different paths we can take and what we’ll have to step over on our way. There are times when these flashlights seem amazingly powerful, like they can make all the twists and turns visible from here to the hereafter and the future becomes almost boringly clear. And there are also times when the batteries start to fail and our lights get dimmer and dimmer, showing us what’s coming only a few steps ahead. Sometimes we even walk in the dark, knowing the ground only after we’re trusted our weight to it, and what the future holds for us is unclear until it’s already here. This, of course, is scary.

Lately, I have felt like my little flashlight is going dim.

People like to keep their work life separate from their social life. But they tend to do it in time, whereas I’ve managed to separate them by several thousand kilometers in space. And how they bark at each other like ill-mannered dogs nowadays - I would be deliriously happy if I could live without either or both of them, and have contemplated it often.

Routine is certainly wearing a bit thin in some places.

I’m often surprised by the things I say, which is fun.

And the amount of stuff that I am simply okay with is reaching mountainous proportions (but I’m still friends with a lot of people who are uptight, and that’s okay).

What I mean to say is, it’s a wavering beam of brownish light that strikes on what awaits me. I don’t know with a great certainty what the future holds, and what any of it’s really worth escapes me entirely.

Maybe I ought to stop having a ‘plan’ and start having a ‘way’. (Everything comes back to Serenity, doesn’t it?)