Unable to sleep on Sunday night, I entertained myself with reading the parts of Baby’s Named a Bad, Bad Thing that I hadn’t yet encountered. While it had me cackling madly for much of the night, it did keep me up quite late and I was a little worse for wear at Uni on Monday.

For one of my history subjects, we had a guest lecturer who gave a fantastic lecture and was really engaging. She spoke about the last 100 years or so of South African history, obviously largely apartheid but about other things as well. Unfortunately, my brain hadn’t quite gotten over the horror of finding out that someone, somewhere named their baby Karryllinne (because that spelling will ensure that their baby turns out unique and special, not like all those nasty Carolyns and Carolines), so I wasn’t entirely present mentally. Which turned out to be a bad thing indeed, as I got an image of two women, not unlike Kath and Kim, saying “Apartheid! That would make a really nice name!”. As a result of that, I sat there tittering to myself, right as the lecturer was talking about some particularly horrific examples of racially-motivated violence.

I can’t help but feel that this makes me A Bad Person.

I wrote some time ago that I would keep you abreast of my search for a new abode. That was a while ago, but in my defense I would like to point out that nothing much has been happening on that front (although Castle Anthrax has seemed less Anthrax-y of late. Maybe it looks really good in comparison to all the other places I’ve seen?).

Earlier this week I very, very nearly had a new house. It was a lovely house, had seemingly nice people there, and was in a suburb I really like. The interview went swimmingly and the house was actually in my price range, which was nice because nothing else seems to be. It wasn’t until I got a message from them on Tuesday saying I could have the room if I wanted and that it was almost $100 per month than they’d first said that the alarm bells started playing Betty Blowtorch’s ‘Shut Up and Fuck’ (they’re my personalised alarm bells, you see). I rang them back in the evening and spoke to the guy who’d called me again. I asked about the discrepancy in rent. “Well,” he said, “the total cost of the house is $X a month…”.
“Hang on,” I said, “you told me it was $Y.”
“Did I?” he asked innocently. Yeah, butter wouldn’t melt up his arse.
I mumbled something polite along the lines of “oh, I must have misheard” (despite the fact that we’d had a long conversation about the total monthy cost of the house during my interview because it wasn’t $Y precisely, but some weird amount that involved uneven numbers and cents), and made my conversational retreat. It was all just a little bit fishy. As, actually, I’ve found all the male-dominated sharehouses I’ve looked at so far to be. Sorry, guys, but that’s my experience. Maybe I am drawn to them somehow? I make a point of not dating fucktards or arsehats, so maybe I need to fulfil my arsehole quotient elsewhere?

Seeing as how I ended the conversation before I could ask any of the other questions I had about the house (since they all pertained to me living there, which I’d decided was not an option), I had some questions unanswered. The one that I’m most curious about now is that he mentioned in the phone message that another guy who was moving in was called Troy and is “from the country”. Now I know it’s very naive of me to assume connections just because I’m originally from the country too (’though ahm smrt enough not t’ get suckered in by them thar city slickers), and used to know a guy named Troy. But for a while, I was genuinely wondering if it was the same Troy I went to high school with. Before the rent malarkey eventuated, I was also fervently hoping it was not, because there’s no way in hell I’d want to live with the Troy I know. This Troy was, in his high school years, really not a very nice person. He was creepy, but the kind of creepy a lot of stupid girls seem to go for. My friends and I called him Mr Date Rape, partly out of a general dislike and partly because of things we’d either noticed or heard about him.
At one stage he was dating one of my good friends (who, it must be conceeded, wasn’t all that bright), so he took to hanging around my group at recess and lunchtimes, which naturally we were all delighted by. I know it’s terribly prudish of me, but I find it kind of annoying when I’m trying to talk to a friend and someone else is trying to finger fuck them at the same time and we’re all sitting in a public space in broad daylight.

After I left high school and moved to Melbourne, I put people like Troy (and there’d been a lot of them) out of my mind. In fact, I lost contact with most of the people I knew from the area I’d grown up in (with a few very notable exceptions). The thing is, even far away from home, people from dear old Gippy seem to flock together. The friends I had in Melbourne who’d moved up from home had other friends who’d also moved up, so at one point a few years ago I had quite a large network of Gippsland expatriates. They still had ties back home, so I got quite a lot of gossip about who was seen screaming at their significant other in the middle of the street about who’d smoked the last Stuvey, and about who was now fulfilling the dual careers of junkie and single parent.

One of the people in this group was a guy called Andy, whom I’d actually known many many years before through a drama class, and who was now a friend of one of my friends. He was a very camp, pretty young gay boy and had done the whole move-to-St-Kilda-and-go-wild thing. We (being a bunch of mostly straightish girls) all enjoyed hearing his stories of his latest conquest. My ears pricked up one day over breakfast when he started on about his Gippsland conquests. I was surprised to hear Troy’s full name come up in conversation.
“Him?” I said. “But he’s Mr Predatory Heterosexuality!”
“No,” Andy said slowly, “you must be thinking of someone else.”
We compared notes on physical attributes to make sure we were both talking about the same guy. It turned out we were, although I refused to agree with Andy’s assertion that he had a great arse. I sat back, stunned.
“But…” I murmured, “he’s…just…gross, and he’s…I can’t believe it.”
“Well, you’d better believe it.”
“I’m just not sure I can, Andy. I’m just not sure I can.”
“Well, darling” he said, with a theatrical toss of his head, “if it convinces you any further, he certainly sucks cock like a faggot.”
And there was just no argument I could make against that irrefutable statement.

A collection of short short stories and a short novella, and Keret’s first English-language publication, this slim volume showcases the author’s simple, often almost childlike prose style, which both compliments and contrasts with his preoccupation with the darker aspects of humanity. Touching tales of childhood innocence sit alongside dark treatises on racism and religious intolerance, and Keret’s use of language and imagery ensure that the stories stay with the reader long after they have put the book down. Keret’s black sense of humour and keen eye for the strange and ridiculous bring comedy to every subject he writes about. His understanding of how humanity works makes even his most political and heartless characters human. His knack for putting familiar characters in new situations - like the cold-hearted, efficient assassin hired to kill the man who saved him from an orphanage - keep the reader guessing until the last page of every story. The novella, Kneller’s Happy Campers, takes as its subject a road trip through the afterlife for people who have committed suicide, and manages to be touching, thought-provoking and humourous.
Keret’s dark sense of humour, warped world view and keen eye for the absurdities of people may not be for everybody, but those who like their fiction short, thought-provoking and off the wall may find that The Bus Driver… is what they’re looking for.

You’ve knocked back a couple of drinks by now, so everything is starting to get that warm, slightly fuzzy glow to it. You’re also mixing your drinks; your standard beer is interspersed with the brightly-coloured pre-mixed chick drinks your significant other stole from a party at the office with the sole purpose of getting on your good side and playing a game of hide-the-source-code.

You’re in the presence of good friends who have gathered to celebrate the occasion of your 21st birthday. As such, you’re flitting around like a social butterfly and hoping that no one notices you’re actually just a social cabbage moth in drag. You have the camera out and are snapping away, much to people’s collective dismay.

Your friend Loz iz present. Loz is a very bad influence on you. Loz offers to take some photos for you as you frolic with your female friends. This is a little like letting Larry Flynt come to your all-girl slumber party for “journalistic purposes”. You kneel on the ground to pose and hand him the camera. He goes to take a picture and realises it’s not working. You grab the camera back from him without turning it around, so it’s still pointed at you, ready to shoot. You unsteadily show him how the focus works and which is the button that actually takes the photo. Your finger hovers over it and because you don’t quite have the motor skills you’d have if you hadn’t been drinking, it presses down without warning.

And that, children, is how you end up with a close-up photo of your own cleavage.

After so many years of catering mediocrity, Monash Clayton fiiiinally has a spanky new cafe, one that actually serves decent coffee. Before I go on, I should defend Wholefoods, the student-run, hippy cafe-restaurant. I love Wholefoods, and there will always be a place in my heart for it; after all, it’s been such a huge part of my Uni “experience”. That said, I get really frustrated with it sometimes. I really don’t like having to wait for someone to recover from their most recent goddamn bong hit before they make my fuckin’ coffee. Anyway, it’s great to finally have a nice place to hang out at Uni that does decent coffee. Even though Bronwyn (who seems to be my source of information for everything these days) told me that the Science Faculty had to build the new building its in so they could start working with dangerous contaminants, presumably of the nature of Anthrax and such. And still I ate there. Just shows you what a girl will do for coffee, really.

Earlier tonight I caught up with my dear friend Sonya and went to see Boob Tube, a collection of short films that is part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival. Overall it was a really excellent collection, although of course some were far better than others.
I felt sorry for the director of one of the films, who was actually in the audience and got up and spoke before the screening began. I felt sorry for her because hardly anyone spoke after her film was shown, and that was because it was A HUGE LOAD OF SELF-INDULGENT CRAP. In its defence, though, I guess it didn’t really fit in with the rest of the films, because it was experimental and also a documentary of sorts, and the rest of the films were a) fiction and b) generally had a least some humour to them, even if they weren’t funny overall. But even saying that in its defence, it was still shit, partly because it took itself soooo seriously, and partly because I could see that if it had been made better (and possibly by someone else), it would have had the chance to be really, really good. As it was, though, it reminded me of that South Park episode where they took off exactly that sort of film - I think it was the one where South Park got a film festival? With the bad black-and-white lesbian film that made people want to gouge out their eyeballs? That was the same episode with the Gay Cowboys Eating Pudding film, yeah? I loved that. Ever since that comparison formed in my mind, I’ve been going around saying “Gay cowboys eating pudding!” and giggling to myself. Because I am ten. At any rate, it was pretentious twattage, and I’m an Arts student, for fuck’s sake. It’s not like I need any more pretentious twattage in my life right now.

I’ve spent the last few days extremely sick, which has not been fun, although it’s given me time to read Kim Wilkins’ latest book The Autumn Castle from cover to cover. I loves me some Kim Wilkins, and it was nice to be reminded why. I love the way she seamlessly blends high fantasy and horror with contemporary life, and her ability to write some of the most interesting and complex characters I’ve come across.

I find it interesting to note the different ways my body reacts when I get sick. I used to find it fascinating, but that was before I started getting quite sick every few weeks, as I have been for the last few months. What has been irritating this time is that I really haven’t felt hungry or wanted to eat. Of course, when I forced down some tinned peaches today I started to feel better almost immediately. Wish I’d done that a couple of days ago. Stupid body!

I’ve had to miss a couple of days’ work, which I really don’t like doing and which isn’t good for me financially since I’m a casual employee. But by the same token I’ve not really been in a position to be able to work; apart from how I feel physically, the public seem to take offence when people in customer service roles break off from serving them, scream “I HAVE TO GET TO THE BATHROOM!” and proceed to run away, gagging.

I thought I was getting better last night, when I even had the energy to bounce around my room to Mclusky for a while, but alas, it was not to be. I felt even worse this morning. But luckily, it all seems to be getting better, and I can quit writing whiny entries like this one! Hooray!

In other world news…hmm. Nope. I got nothin’. I’d best haul my diseased carcass off to bed, methinks.

Me: One of these days I’m going to have to get you to explain that geek language to me, the one where they use numbers instead of letters. Because I totally don’t understand what it means and heaps of people I know use it. And after all this time using the Internet, I’m really too embarrassed to ask.
Stuart: [smugly] Well, if you’d spent some time at message boards in the mid-nineties…
Me: I was getting laid in the mid-nineties.
Stuart: Shut up!

For those of you who may be interested, the excellent Cardigan Press are now accepting short story submissions from Australian writers for their third anthology.

Cardigan’s previous anthologies, the sold-out Machines Will Not Give Change and the brilliant Normal Service Will Resume, both feature excellent stories from up-and-coming Australian writers, so what the hell are you waiting for?

Submissions close April 16. Guidelines can be found here.

I think I won some sort of anti-fashion award for the outfit I wore to Uni today. Despite the fact that it was rather cold, I wore blue three-quarter length pants, open brown sandally things, and my slightly ratty Nancy Vandal t-shirt that dates from about ‘97 or ‘98, the one with one of Fox Trotsky’s signature lurid skull and crossbones designs, and the slogan “Satan commands you to dance funny”. I looked absolutely ratshit, and for once I didn’t give a fuck. It was great.

I’ve been thinking about how much effort people seem to go to in dressing up just to come to Uni. This is something I’ve long observed, often with much amusement, but it’s been brought forward in my mind again by a conversation I had with my friend Bronwyn the other day, as we wandered around campus watching people walking, talking and generally doing their thing. Bron pointed out that you just don’t seem to see people slobbing around in their trackies and thongs (by which I mean FOOTWEAR, American pigs!) anymore. And you know, she’s right. There’s far too much designer bullshit around on students these days, as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t like it. For one thing, how do they afford it? I see girls in Dolce and Gabbana and I think, “but you’re STUDENTS!” Did I miss something by dropping out of How To Get a Sugar Daddy 101? Or do they just live at home with no expenses, work a part time job, and pick up extra cash by being a topless waitress at Uncle Jim’s poker nights? Is everyone working as a stripper these days and I’ve missed the boat because I’m belligerent and have completely unruly bosoms and no one’s actually willing to pay to see me naked (buying the cow, and all that)? And how the hell do they expect the government to believe they can’t afford a 25% increase in HECS fees when they’re all dolled up in expensive, s/wanky clobber?

I seem to remember this not being as extreme at Monash Clayton a couple of years ago. Part of why I remember this is that I did a couple of PR subjects at Berwick in my second year (now let us never speak of this again). I remember being the only girl wearing jeans and sneakers in a lecture of 200 students. I remember noting the labels and slavish trend-following with a mixture of amazement and alarm. I also noted how many of the girls wore expensive, highly impractical shoes, and I noted this with a certain gleam of malicious glee: your stilettos or kitten heels may look great when you’re sitting around looking fashionably bored, but when you have to walk through a paddock to get to the Uni buildings, and one that turns into mud soup in winter, you just look like a dickhead.

I remember with fondness a friend of mine who has sadly long since left Uni. He was the antithesis of fashionista. He would frequently turn up to Uni in his dressing gown, underneath which would be tattered army pants and a t-shirt with an amusing and/or somewhat indecipherable slogan on it. Usually the t-shirt would have numerous holes. Combined with his ultra-skinny physique, scruffy I-haven’t-shaved-since-the-last-Labor-government grooming style, the huge dark red and fluffy dressing gown topped off a look that was sort of a cross between Hugh Hefner and a metho-drinking derelict. And you know, he worked that look, and worked it well. I miss him and his eclectic style (also our conversations about politics, culture jamming and who are the best porn directors, but that’s by the by). I just don’t think I can respect someone in $300 cargo pants and a Che Guevara t-shirt from Dangerfield.

Yes, I know everybody’s been posting this, but I’m going to get on the bandwagon anyay. This one’s for someone who’s won a place in the black lump that passes for my heart, and since I didn’t pay him to bow down in front of me today and say “All hail the power of pink!”, I figure I at least owe him something.

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control are not natural.

2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.

3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children because straight parents only raise straight children.

4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears’s 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.

5. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn’t changed at all: women are property, Blacks can’t marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.

6. Gay marriage should be decided by the people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of minorities.

7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That’s why we only have one religion in America.

8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people makes you tall.

9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.

10. Children can never succeed without both male and female role models at home. That’s why single parents are forbidden to raise children.

11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven’t adapted to cars or longer lifespans.

12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a “separate but equal” institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages will for gays & lesbians.

Liberated from here.