By the way, I was at the pool yesterday and someone, some guy with a tattoo of the Southern Cross on his back, who was in my lane started talking to me. I’ve never had a pool conversation before, but I haven’t been to many different pools either so maybe it happens all the time at some places. I’m not sure. So what’s the deal?

Anyway, I was just thinking, and I know some people who read here are not Australian and they should probably listen up especially, that Picnic at Hanging Rock is a totally awesome film. Like, totally. I don’t know whether you can get it in America or wherever, but if you can, people who live there or wherever should really get it out and watch it. It’s just really really creepy. And good.

Another thing is, if you’re bored why not read Clare’s NaNoWriMo Novel. It’s pretty excellent and fun. Her one from the other year is damn good too.

Oh, and anyone who hasn’t seen the new Casino Royale should go and do that right now. Hell. yeah.

Quick post. Must rush off and see the new James Bond film. yay!

Went to a reunion of the Fascist Fair Go Party and the God Fearing Republicans. (They’re big Perth bands from c. 2002, not right-wing conspiracies, btw.) Everyone there was from UWA, including Liz (aka Boofuls) and her friends and it was a bit crazy. Liz and Tom and I were in the front row during FFGP, but managed to avoid the worst of the flying polony, milk and fake excrement. In fact, it was one of the best FFGP shows I’ve seen. I nearly lost my voice during the ‘Dove andiamo allora - LA DISCOTECA!!’ bit in ‘Disco Fascism’. LOLZ God Fearing Republicans were cool also, but the song that stuck in my head was their cover of ‘Jackson’ by Johnny Cash (was it him?)

Anyhow - good night. Danced with Liz, dodged polony, made crude jokes, drank some beer, and acted like a prick back-seat driver on the way home… who could ask for anything more?

Man, the blood bank is sending me many text messages about donating blood and it is starting to piss me off. Is there a spam plugin for mobile phones yet?

The Christmas haul:

Chocolate. Lots of chocolate.
Happily, after that, an electric toothbrush (it’s like chewing on an electric shaver :| ).
Modem for my laptop.
Plates and cups.
iTunes voucher.
A book: The History of Ideas: from Fire to Freud. (A thousand-page tome of social history. Nerdtastic. I’m reading about the Reformation right now - apparently the Vatican put together a council to deal with protestantism, and in their first year the only resolution they came up with was that council members should live in a ‘frugal and pious manner’ or something. In the meantime the protestants were smuggling banned books all over the shop and being super heretical.)

While I’m here, here are some random pics I dug out of my TV capture folder.

This one speaks for itself. Who thought up that headline?!

Christa Miller dancing in a glass box. Best episode of Scrubs ever.

And the award for worst suit, tie and shirt combination on a newsreader goes to… Rick Ardon! Well done, Rick.

I was talking to some film students once, and they said the wankiest student film they had ever seen featured a clown lying dead underneath a table in some kind of bizarre symbolic statement. This is the M*A*S*H equivalent.

With The Husband in a garage somewhere on the outskirts of the metro area awaiting a new distributor, my mum’s boyfriend lent me his other car for a few days. It was a c. 1985 Toyota, bought for $900. This car, he says, he’s going to put some money into. A couple of grand to fix the transmission and do some other repairs. After half and hour’s drive to my place, I know it has at least the following things wrong with it:

dodgy transmission
no handbrake
dying muffler
massive cigarette damage to the interior
no immobiliser
dodgy central locking
wheels out of alignment
steering wheel not set right
brakes not set right

And that’s not including the rust. Now, speaking of cars, the very husband that The Husband is named after has just bought a new car. A ‘97 Nissan. It is beautiful, smooth and fast, and has a nifty heads-up speedo display. The wife is going to learn to drive in it.

See, what strikes me is how things are going life-wise. That a couple of my friends, not much older than me, can invest in a car like that. A car that just screams ’stability’. Stability and abundance and maybe thinking about having children. While I’m driving a heap of crap that isn’t even mine. And it’s not really a money issue. I could afford a car like that without taking out a loan if I wanted to, it’s just that there would be no point. I’m still at the stage where the bus is cool and I’ll ride my bike if it’s close enough. It’s more of a change of life issue. These people are getting into the realm of real adult life stuff, like:

decent cars
consumer items
fancy plates and glasses
places to live where the people all have shirts on
pianos
debt
maybe children
et cetera

Let me put it like this. When I was a kid, I could see how the adults were and it looked like they had it made. They didn’t seem to have to worry about money, or where they were going to live in six month’s time, or what they were doing with their lives. They had stability, and it was real, even if a bit more tenous than I had thought. Now I can see my friends getting it too, and it makes me feel funny because I’m still in my casual, commitment-free student lifestyle. Feels like… well, it would feel a lot better if I were so much happier than them, because then I could laugh at them and feel good about my choices. It’s not that simple, though, is it?

I think I did right. Maybe I did what I had to do, and that’s much the same. And I don’t think I’ll be driving around in a car like the crap Toyota when I’m my mum’s boyfriend’s age, even if I’m not headed for a Nissan yet, either. But when I think of the nice carpet and the big 1980s stereo speakers and the colour TVs of my parents and aunts and uncles, I wish I had that life. I wish I finally had answers to those annoying questions:

Are they going to kick me out of my apartment?
Will I have enough to pay for new clothes?
Will this degree actually get me a job?
Will I even like the job anyway after a year?
Can I keep typing this thesis, this short story, this email, this blog post without my forearms cramping up into mutant claws?
Will my mutant claws be enough to get me steady part-time work as a sideshow freak?

Oh well.

I took the day off today and read half of Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels - the actual book Firefly and Serenity are based on, except it’s still during the war and it’s set at Gettysburg, not in space. Jubal Early is still a bad guy, but. You can count on that.

I think I will take the day off tomorrow as well. Finish the book. Eat jellybabies.

Anyone know any parties this weekend?

Suicide - My best shot at publication, a paper has been in peer review for TEN MONTHS, came back as a reject. They said my conclusions were too tentative, when in fact I was *obviously* trying for arrogant subtlety (the illiterate teabags!). Now I am angrily sending another paper to a different journal. This paper is damn fine and ought to be accepted with praise and adulation, but I have a feeling I’ve yet to rack up a sufficient number of rejection slips to get my first publication. Suicide may be the only way to ease the pain.

Murder - I asked a friend for a reference on rave culture that I had heard him talking about, and it turned out to be a reference to his own honours thesis. This the husky, hairy little man with the unbelievably hot girlfriend, who is also apparently a master on the wheels of steel. I think my self-esteem will improve significantly knowing that he is no longer out there, mocking me with his outrageous intelligence, sex appeal and DJ skillz. Murder is definitely the go.

Martinis - New Year’s party this year is going to be a Casino Royale theme. I was trying on my outfit this afternoon and I look so good, well, I’ll need a big stick to keep the girls away (and one rather randy boy, I might add). My character is a dissipated young man gambling away the last of his inheritance. In a cravat. The one thing I’m not looking forward to is playing poker against Tomas. He played his first game of Texas holdem the other night and he beat the hell out of us - his strategy was to take all of E and David’s chips while I was playing convervatively and then use them to bludgeon me to death when I got drunk and stupid. I’m going to have to stay off the martinis if I want to avoid going down in a screaming fireball under the onslaught of poker’s latest idiot savant. But if I do lose, it’s martinis all the way to oblivion.

Here’s my artistic anticipation of New Year’s fun. A tip of the hat to Lizzy:

Below is a long and wanky literary comparison of some obscure music. Feel free to skip to the end where there are a couple of fun links.

I will now venture an opinion. In response to something Tom muttered at me last night during an obscenely good game of strip poker, I will now explain why I like Schvendes but not so much Nick Cave. Since my experience with both is pretty superficial, I reckon I will be shot down in flames, but anyway here goes.

The question is why, if both Nick Cave and Schvendes do murder ballads, aren’t they both pretty good? Murder ballads = good music, right? Well, I think there are three points that need to be made. First: Nick Cave plays Christian rock. I know you’re going say a whole lot of stuff about his religious imagery being metaphorical but I just don’t buy it. Sorry. Christian rock was cool when Dylan did it, but I don’t think we really need to go back there. Point number two: Rachel is a woman, and that’s something different when it comes to scary country music. She can’t be the first person to use that persona, but damn if it ain’t refreshing anyhow. And kinda hot.

Finally, three (and this is the big one): in a Nick Cave song there is always the possibility of redemption. It’s a conflict between good and evil; an epic contest for the man’s soul. With Schvendes on the other hand, there’s none of that manichean religiosity and need for redemption. There’s just violence with no meaning beyond the exercise of power over another person. Case in point: Nick Cave’s character kills Kylie’s character because “all beauty must die” - totally sophomoric to my mind - whereas ‘Oh Marlon’ ends with the eerily disaffected statement that “every man needs a hobby”. In other words, when a Nick Cave song is over, you know the world is a fucked-up and bad place but you have hope. At the end of a Schvendes song, you just want to hurt somebody. Schvendes is better.

Can I add a fourth point and say also that Rachel Dease never ruined a perfectly good Dirty Three track with her bad poetry? Oh, and to put it all right, two token concessions to Nick Cave on the grounds that he’s kinda okay: 1) His records are always beautifully produced whereas Schvendes tend to sound like crap on record. 2) The man wears some nice suits.

Now, if you’re feeling as bored and laconic as I am, you might want to check out Pitchfork’s top 25 worst album covers of 2006 (some of them are actually damn good) and Demonbaby’s second annual MySpace Stupid Haircut Awards.

Aargh. Stupid real estate agents think I’m behind on my bills, but it’s really just a kink in their computer system. Moral of the story: The System is Perfect but the User is Flawed. Ha, sounds like a good song title…

Went to Garden City shopping centre today. Lost the car. Ended up miles away. I swear that place is like some kind of Harry Potter maze. The exits shift around when you’re not looking, and deposit you in a scary bit of carpark with no shade and people driving around like maniacs intent on making you into a big patty of burger mince with boots on. And why didn’t they think to put in pedestrian paths? Jesus.

Oh, and The Husband broke down the other day. Stopped dead and left me in the middle of the highway, stuck in the slip lane of a busy right hand turn. And I won’t lie to you or conceal the truth - I was pissing myself just a little bit. Didn’t know what to do. Thought someone would either hit me full-on in the back or stop and get out and punch me for sitting in the middle of the road. Luckily, neither happened. Some middle-aged guy with a ute and a length of rope pulled me into the KFC carpark and then the RAC came.

Anyway, you get my point - hassles. Too many. And not nearly enough Margaritas.

All I have to say is, anyone who truly loved me would get me the Red Dot ‘piano mat’ for Christmas. I’m itching to do an album of piano mat songs. There would even be a cover of ‘Been Caught Stealing’ by Jane’s Addiction.

So, like, I bought a copy of Tasmanian Babes Fiasco and read some of it on the plane. It was good because I am never ever sleeping on a plane again (my neck gets bent - the seats must be made for fat people or tall people or something). I also proved how jet-set I am by typing with more than one finger on the automatic check-in. Wikkid.

In Sydney, I stayed at James’s uber-trendy bachelor pad in Surry Hills. We had some kickarse Turkish and stayed up watching Foxtel. In the morning I went down to Cleveland Street to catch a bus and watched the morning traffic go by. Built-up urban areas bring out a kind of nervous curiosity in me, since I come from the suburbs where there are trees and grass and spaces between the houses. It’s a bit fun and creepy to stand there and watch about a million people go by who you’ll never see again.

Not much to say about the conference. My paper rocked, I met a lot of people and we all had some nice refreshments. I even talked to a girl from ANU who had to be at least a 9. She asked me whether I was coming to the after-conference dinner and I told her I had to fly out right away. I was surprised she could hear me over the sound of my heart exploding into a frappe of gooey red bits.

I flew home on Quantas because there wasn’t a late flight on Virgin. I can totally see why people prefer Quantas:
a) a blanket on your seat
b) the airconditioning isn’t set to give you hypothermia
c) food!
d) I think you can even get booze

Oh, here’s a picture: this was the cheese that came with my dinner.

For some reason, it’s called ‘Strong and Bitey Vintage’. Sounds kinda dangerous. Like the rottweiler of the cheese world or something. I just ate it, btw, and it was kind of tart and icky. It didn’t try to bite me though.