By the way, does everyone else out there realise how awesome Dinosaur Comics is? I hope so. Having all things cartoonish on my mind, I tried out the copy of Comic Life that came with my Mac.

I attribute any success this program has to the ability to make your own butt talk.

I will preface this comic by saying that it’s crap. Winter’s Help Wanted and Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North are both waaaaay funnier. This is just the sort of thing that runs through my mind when I’m thinking about teaching:

When I was ten, I went away on a weekend camping trip with the people who lived next door. They were an unmarried couple with two boys from her previous marriage, and each boy was allowed to bring one friend with them. The third kid was someone we knew from school. I think we went to a place called 80 Mile Beach, which is a few hours drive north of Port Hedland, although I could be wrong on both points.

They had a big four-wheel-drive with a dinghy on a trailer, and I can remember it going off the road and into the sand dunes past where people were camping. Everything was bright with all the white sand and sunlight. The dad was cursing at someone for driving in front of him, or perhaps laughing at someone who was bogged, I forget. We drove away from the campers up the beach and parked when there was no one else in sight. It was a stupidly long beach. I remember there was an island in the distance.

We did some fishing that afternoon and I caught a big silver fish that someone took a photo of, and the dad almost caught a shovel-nose shark-type-thing, but it got away. As the afternoon went on, it became cloudy and windy. At one point, I looked up and there was a great big unbroken band of cloud going from one edge of the sky to the other like an enormous grey bridge over us. I had the most intense feeling of deja vu I have ever had, standing there with my feet in the shallow water. When I look back on it now, I wonder if something about it reminded me of the first time I had seen the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne, which was the tallest, most enormous thing I could imagine, at least up to the deja vu moment when the whole sky, and regions beyond, were joined up by that cloud bridge. It buckled and disintegrated after a few minutes, and then my mind is blank. I suppose we had tea, though I don’t think we ate the fish I caught.

During the night it rained. The youngest of the two boys kept waking up, worried that we were being washed away into the water, or that the battering of raindrops on the tent was actually an army of tiny soldier crabs marching up and down the beach in the night.

Then in the morning we woke up at 4 am because we were excited and played chasey in the sand. The boys’ parents rolled down the window of the four wheel drive and yelled at us, but we wouldn’t go back to sleep. Then the dad guy said that he’d had enough and we were all going home early. After that, we wandered down the beach and found some dunes that were full of weird shell-type things that were white and egg shaped with pattens on. They were full of damp sand and crumbled when you squeezed them. We threw them as hard as we could and watched them explode into bits on the sand, and then started throwing them at each other and taking cover behind the dunes. Eventually I think the kid from school got some sand in his eye and we stopped and walked back to the camp site.

The boys’ parents made good on their promise to go home straight away, and I was still in my pyjamas when we packed up and left. At lunch time we were back at their place in Port Hedland, and I climbed the back fence with a frozen fish in a plastic bag to get home. I still don’t know if they stopped the camping trip just because we got up too early and then refused to go back to bed. Maybe the guy had some work to do or the mother didn’t like sleeping in the car. If they did lie about it, I think that’s pretty stupid.

The bearded lady situation is still unfolding. We have reports of bearded ladies at several universities, including a sighting yesterday by Liz at UWA. We are not sure at the moment whether they are popping up at random or if there is some kind of pattern. Could this be a conspiracy in the making? Could the univerities be involved in some kind of plan to deploy bearded ladies across the globe, and what would their reasons be? And how do you explain this and this? Is the Bearded Lady of Guildford really in our extended network? We don’t know yet, but we will keep you updated as information comes to hand.

Yes, I have nothing constructive to write about today. I will go now and comment on everyone else’s sites.

So what’s the haps? Um, I spent my day in Murdoch Library reading books by Talcott Parsons who (to quote Mark from Daria) gives dry, ponderous intellectuals a bad name. Him and books on the ‘rational choice’ theory of economics, a theory which basically says people act in rational pursuit of their own interests. You think people would have cottoned on to that a bit earlier than 1850, but if they did they certainly didn’t bother writing it down. And it’s strange because I learned that sociology and economics were only really invented 100 to 150 years ago. Did you know that?

Oh, and by the way, has anyone else been to Murdoch Library lately? I swear they have a BEARDED LADY working there. Seriously. A bearded lady. How the hell do you explain that?

I spent the afternoon helping Tomas move into the Blue Room for his new rock/theatre thing ‘Tomas Ford vs. The Audience’. We moved heavy bits of stage around for a while and then built his sound system, which is an awesome shopping trolley of doom thing. It is the most excellent thing I have helped build for ages. Here’s a diagram:

It looks like he’s stolen a bunch of electronic equipment and bundled it into a trolley and hooked it together - the result is basically a mobile computer-based DJ system. It’s going to be a sweet show.

Then there was the birthday party and people came over for merriment of various kinds. As it turned out, there were more of them than I had either seats to accomodate or glasses to serve so I was a bit embarrassed. I think I will get nothing but glasses and plates for Christmas, which is fine by me. Anyhoo, it was the best fun. Plus, in another bizarre blog-life-meets-real life phenomenon, Liz showed up, bearing wine and potted cacti. I sent her an invite but didn’t think she would actually show up on account of we have never met before, and for a terrible moment I was about to greet her with a drunken “who the hell are you?” but my stars were in alignment and I worked it out. It was all good from then on. I think everyone assumed we were old friends. Liz, aka Boofuls, is charming and not creepy in the slightest by the way.

I can basically remember three dentists I’ve seen. There were the crap primary school dentists who chiselled a big hole in one of my molars, but they don’t count.

The first was Doctor Lee. Or maybe Doctor Li. I can’t remember. Anyway, everyone else thought she was a pain in the arse because she always wanted to do fillings and gave everybody hell about brushing their teeth better, but I had a big crush on her. She was HOT. Hot in the slightly creepy maternal / sadistic way only a female dentist can be. I wanted her desperately. Needless to say it was a love-hate relationship: she would beam at me when I came in and then break my heart by criticising my brushing technique as I left. I kept coming back of course.

Then I moved to Sydney and went to the university clinic. The dentist there was pure malignant evil. He autistically threw me into the chair and scraped crudely at my teeth for half an hour, then cajoled me into buying a $25 bottle of ’special’ mouthwash that tasted like pool water. Fucker.

Then today I went to my local dentist - and it was love at first sight. He was a big burly bloke with a big burly bearded niceness about him. He asked enthusiastically about me and took an interest in what I said, cracking jokes left, right and centre like a big burly joke-cracking machine. Then he did the checkup and it didn’t hardly hurt at all. He must have some kind of new technique. I wish he was my dad. His nurse also looked fairly well in love with him, and I think you would have to be after being around him every day (either that or he would get annoying and you would have to stab him in the eye with something sharp and close-to-hand).

How excellent. Now I can’t wait to go back and get those expensive fillings I probably don’t need, just so I can bask in the glory for a little bit longer :D

So, I went to Tom & Eleesha’s baby’s birthday party on Saturday. I was a bit - I don’t know, scared maybe - because Lu was going to be there with her new doe-eyed and clean-shaven husband and I hadn’t seen either of them really since I left for Sydney almost two years ago, madly in love with her and bitterly disappointed that all she cared about was how to bake him a cake that his navy friends would like. I’m sure everyone has moments like this, don’t they?

Down at the beach I hung out with the grandparents for a while until everyone else showed up. I could tell I was a bit nervous because whenever I wanted to say yes to something I gave two thumbs up instead of saying anything, and couldn’t bloody stop myself from doing it. I had to sit on my hands so people didn’t think I was crazy. And then everybody rocked up, including Lu and her husband. They walked over, her in red and him in an amusing t-shirt with a sexual innuendo on it, and he said ‘hi’. So I said ‘hi’ also. And that was about how it went.

It may seem stupid, but this is the thing that gets me: how much meaning a simple monosyllabic word like ‘hi’ can have, if said to the right person at the right time. After that it was like we were all back in high school, and I chose to play my part by not saying very much or seeming very interested in anything. Just sort of ride it out and flirt with Belinda when I was bored, which was pretty much how high school went. He even told me the story of how he had shingles, and it was pretty normal since I didn’t know what shingles was and being a year older he has been telling me about stuff I didn’t know about since, well, always.

Which reminds me how, many years ago, it was at his house while his parents were away that I took of Pippa Stepanoff’s bra. I never realised how imporant he was in making that happen. So I have decided to name my car in honour of him, as a symbol of some kind. I shall call it: ‘The Husband’.

Hey get this - yesterday I was hanging out at Mojo’s in Freo watching Schvendes and One Horse Town and a guy came up to me and asked if my name was Mark. At first I thought he was some random or a person who had seen my old band, but it turned out he was a blog reader - a guy who goes by the alias of Bob. He had picked my face from some time when I had posted a picture of myself, probably ages ago. How damn cool is that? Bob turned out to be a nice guy as well. He goes to the same uni I went to.

So, in honor of my first time being spotted as a blogger, I have made this self-portrait:

It’s a little bit wrong, but oh so right.

Natalija posted this yesterday on her site. It’s perfect:

One thing to note is that the side circle only has four people in it. Who’s been getting it on with boys and girls, I wonder? Plus, since it’s Perth and Nat moves in hip arty circles*, I’m betting that the L there stands for Linda. I mean, everyone’s been out with Linda (we went to an Augie March / Dirty Three concert, but nothing really came of it). Ah, Perthness. It’s kinda neat really.

List: Top 5 Perth girls I wanna make a pass at -

The lesbian chick with the curly hair
Blainie from Burgers of Beef
Jazmin
Elanor F Chaos
Really any member of 7 Day Weekend, especially the one who is also in the Judy Planes.

*When she’s not walking normally, of course.