Saturday was Stuart’s birthday. Aside from the fact that I spent most of the day either at work or asleep, I did my best to make it a nice day for him (because it’s always really, really great when someone you’re sexually attracted to climbs on top of you and promptly falls asleep. Poor Stu).

One component of his present was a voucher for the massage clinic I go to in Richmond. I was telling a co-worker about it on Saturday morning and he was getting a bit confused as to precisely what I meant by “massage”, since apparently there’s a parlour in close proximity to the clinic. Probably best not to think about why he knows that. Eventually, we managed to acertain that I did, in fact, mean a genuine place of health improvement (although the health benefits of the other could probably be argued, too). I wondered how my co-worker would even think I would make a purchase like that for my boyfriend, and just barely managed to bite back a comment about how I don’t believe in outsourcing something you can do yourself. We were in a small public library filled with grandmothers and little children, after all.

I also decided to write him a birthday card. This may not sound like much to you, but I have Issues with writing birthday cards, even for people I really care about (actually, especially for people I really care about). I just can’t do it. I can’t even come out with very good trite bullshit, just the normal kind of trite bullshit that any old moron with a grade three education and a solid knowledge of the Top 40 could churn out. So I decided instead to write out a deeply emotional, loving card that truly expressed my feelings towards Stuart and our relationship. It ended up containing the sentence “I will knife you in your sleep”.

I think I should just give up and accept that I am no good at this romance caper.

In an effort to make myself feel better than I have lately, and because I’ve been looking like shite, I got my hair cut today. It’s always a big event because I rarely get it done (I’ve found exactly one hairdresser who can cut my hair properly in my LIFE and I’m not going to let go of him, problem is he’s pretty expensive to keep hold of), and there’s always a big excitement buildup because I’m a bit sad like that.

As usual, Geoff was entertaining as he worked his magic. Usually we talk about things like how we imagine the world to be if there was a true separation of church and state, which sure beats conversations I’ve had with other hairdressers, which always seem to contain the inevitable question ‘So, [snaps gum] you gotta boyfrien’?’ I wish that was exaggeration, but it isn’t. I think it also had something to do with the fact that this was back in Gippsland, where it’s widely acknowledged that if you’re a young girl without a boyfriend you are a) a sad loser and b) a prime candidate for a friendly gang-raping by one of the local football teams. I know people just try to make conversation, but seriously? It’s a question I can’t help but have a problem with. I mean, I never asked a Moe scrubber hairdresser ‘So, how’s the herpes going?’ or ‘Have the paternity test results come through yet?’ Which is probably just as well; since it was Moe, I probably would have ended up with a pig’s head thrown through my window - that’s if they’d been able to find me in my isolated mountain hideaway (I do not kid when I say I grew up on top of a mountain, kilometres from anywhere. Fortunately trips into Moe were not that frequent. That said, the whole top-of-mountain thing sounds kind of cool and exotic until I point out that it was also in the midst of a whole shitload of potato paddocks. Unless you’re Irish, there’s nothing particularly exciting about potato paddocks.).

It got to the point where, during one of my rare haircuts, when asked the inevitable question I would start muttering darkly about the evils of the patriarchy rather than giving a direct response. Given that I was a scowly militant type at the time anyway, it proved quite effective. Although it’s possible that my slightly mean-spirited sense of humour went a bit too far the time I claimed to be an active member of SCUM.

Today’s haircut conversation revolved around cartoons, Commodore 64s, and the fact that Geoff really, really hates little children, the latter conversation only occurring as his employer’s children ran around the salon shrieking. I could see his point, although they were cute in a don’t-feed-them-after-midnight kind of way.

Most importantly, however, is my hair. Ahh, my hair. I walked out of the salon feeling all swish and sleek and lovely. Unfortunately, the wind picked up the second after I stepped out the door, so I got to keep my salonlicious feeling for even less time than usual (even styled by experts my hair is psychotic). Apart from that, things were okay until I got home. I studied in my room for a while and eventually went to the bathroom, where I made my discovery.

As I glanced sidelong at myself in the mirror, shaking the shorter, layered locks of hair at the front out of my eyes, I realised I looked like someone else.

Unfortunately, that someone else is Hilary bloody Duff. Sure, you have to imagine her as older, crankier, fatter, poorer, with glasses and no makeup, but the resemblance is definitely there, and it’s all the haircut’s fault.

Tomorrow I go cyan!

It seems that banging on about underpants, strippers and my inability to find non-psychotic housemates in Melbourne’s suburbs for the past few months has given me some sort of blogging street cred (even if the goddamn tough kids do keep stealing my lunch money). I’ve been asked by Jeb, formerly of World Wide Jeb, to write for his new collaborative site, Tastes Like Drunk. Naturally, I was so pleased and flattered that it took me forever to write a goddamn entry, but I finally got around to doing so. I’d forgotten the story of my father’s relationship with Jesus until I was casting around for a childhood trauma to write about. Whee!

It was very nice to be asked. It’s like being popular, except I haven’t had to blow any football players!

Tonight is the Australian premiere of British reality TV series There’s Something About Miriam. There’s a fair bit of controversy around about it, what with the men who competed for the attention of the lovely “lady” suing after discovering that she, too, could write her name in the snow if she wanted, as well as general fears about moral fibre (keeps you regular!) and all that.

Free Melbourne rag B News ran a photo of Miriam as their front cover for the May 6 edition, supposedly in support of an article about whether or not the show was exploitative. In true Journalism-student reportage, however, the article itself makes no mention of any issues of exploitation and instead operates as a summary of the show itself, with a few quotes from Miriam thrown in. Someone’s headed for a bright career with the Herald Sun!

I could write about reality TV’s need to wade ever further-out in the quest for ratings. I could write about the potential effects the show could have on transsexual issues, and pretend I have in depth knowledge of current issues in the trans community, which I don’t.

Instead, I choose to write about Miriam herself, based on the quotes used in the article.

Apparently, her reason for agreeing to the show was “I wanted to know if real love exists.”

I can answer that one for you, lovey. Real love exists. If my cyincal black heart can believe in it, anyone can believe in it. The thing is, you’re probably not going to find it by looking for it on a reality TV program. I’m just not sure it works that way. And even if it does, there are a lot of different aspects of love, and all are important in keeping it alive. One of the more important things is honesty. While you may not tell your partner absolutely everything, it’s important to share some of the more vital things about yourself with them, like, oh I don’t know, THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE A PENIS.

She goes on to say of her gender orientation that “if anyone has asked me about myself I would have told them.” Well. That’s big of her. Personally, I would think that telling someone you’re not quite the woman they think you are would rate pretty highly on the list of Things I Have to Tell Someone About Myself Before I Get Naked. Sure, she didn’t lie to them exactly, but when most straight boys see a person with breasts, a curvy figure, a pretty face with makeup on, and long hair, they think “woman” rather than “someone like in those videos Uncle Albert used to make me watch with him while we sat around in our underwear”. Generally they don’t think to have a surreptitious look at their interest’s crotch to make there aren’t any dodgy-looking bulges ruining the line of her skirt.

“The show will help people understand better what people like me are all about,” Miriam says. I, personally, am almost sure it will, just like Big Brother and Australian Idol help people better understand what other, non-transsexual soulless fame-whores are about. And the answer to that is: not a whole fucking lot, really.

Okay, so, unbeknownst to me, my comments haven’t been working for some time, thanks to a cunting internal server error. This isn’t the first time something like this has happening in the, oh, five months this site has been around. I am thoroughly unimpressed. Here I was, thinking ‘wow, my page got really unpopular before it even got popular!’, but no. It’s a bloody SERVER ERROR, as well as garden variety unpopularity. Hmph.

In other news, I’m going to attempt to write a real entry with actual content today, but I’m not sure how I’ll go. I’ve got a major essay for one of my history classes due today, and one I haven’t started yet due on Wednesday. I’ve nearly finished the one due today, the only problem is that I’ve been doing some additional research in the last half-hour or so after getting a funny feeling about something I’d written, only to discover that one of my major arguments is based on something that’s entirely a figment of my imagination. Damn it. Also, it’s bloody unfair: if Keith Windschuttle can make up ‘history’ to suit his own arguments, why can’t I?

EDIT (11/05/04): They’re fixed, hurrah! It’s been kind of annoying not having them (because I’m sure people have been dying to discuss my hard-hitting social commentary with me, ahem), but on the plus side, I haven’t had to delete any comment spam. Hurrah!

Liah sent me the link to this story (I know that’s not a static link, but I don’t know what to do about it). I found it pretty interesting, because giant squids are pretty cool, although the first few lines alarmed me somewhat:

“The giant squid is not especially choosy when it comes to sex and will mate blind without checking if the object of its affections is male or female, a German researcher said today.”

I think I have dated giant squids in the past without knowing it. Not insulting myself or anything, because I’m pretty hot in a mentally disturbed shut-in kind of way. That description just seems to fit more than a few of my, uh, “special friends” of the past.

Also:

“Until now, it was thought males injected themselves with sperm by accident during mating. But that is definitely not the case here: the sperm was clearly injected by another giant squid.”

That’s totally how I found out one of my high school boyfriends was bisexual.

Man, I’ve really developed a tendency to go with long entry titles, no?

Tonight, myself and a few choice lassies are off to catch Gurlesque’s show at The Stage on Smith St. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve meant to see them the last few times they’ve been in Melbourne, but haven’t seemed to get around to it (well, that would involve leaving the house). Finally I’m getting my arse into gear! Although maybe not in the same way as the Gurlesque ladies. That said, my dear friend Sonya and I have developed a tradition of giving each other lapdances when we’re out together. I think it’s nice to have special traditions with your friends.

So, anyhow, I’m psyched. If you’re around and not busy tonight, and also female, you should think about coming along. Also, about saying hi. I will be the tall bespectacled blonde molesting the slightly bemused-looking punky Fijian chick.

I’m hoping it will drag me out of the funk I’m in today, actually. I feel absolutely shocking at the moment, and have all day. I think it’s partly to do with the weather, and the fact that my essays are refusing to write themselves. It may have something to do with the fact that I’ve been listening to sad bastard music all day (although that’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg conundrum). And it definitely has something to do with the fact that, last night, Stuart and I had our first fight in about eleventy billion years, and it was a doozy. Everything’s okay and sorted out now, but I’m still down about it. Turns out that ignoring your issues doesn’t actually make them go away. Bummer, eh?

Anyway, I’m greatly looking forward to spending some quality time with some of my favourite ladies, watching some other ladies take their clothes off. Now I’m off to do something productive with the remaining hours of the afternoon. Exercise-productive, I mean. Not homework-productive. That would just be silly.

Despite my inherent (or what I like to think of as my inherent) cynicism regarding my fellow human beings, sometimes I’m still really shocked at how nasty people can be to and about one another, even when there’s no actual reason for it.

I had this happen a few days ago at work. I was serving a woman who happened to be tall and also rather overweight. There was one man queuing behind her, who decided that rather than wait in line, he would walk around her and come and lean on the desk, sighing loudly and pointedly, because by serving the person in front of him I was obviously not doing my job properly.

After finishing with the woman, I politely turned to the man, now sprawled across the desk from the waist up, and asked how I could help him. As I was serving him, he suddenly started ranting about the girl I’d just served, none too quietly. He was deeply offended by her size - “I could hardly get past her!” I refrained from pointing out that, had he queued like a person with manners, it would not have even been a problem. Then he launched into a tirade about how disgusting she was and how she should lose some weight.
“Stop it,” I said, giving my best steely librarian gaze over the frames of my glasses. “That’s really inappropriate and I don’t want to hear it.”
He dropped his voice but didn’t stop talking about the woman.
“I mean it,” I said. “I don’t want to hear it, you’re being completely inappropriate and I want you to stop right now. This is no place for that behaviour.” By this time, another woman had queued up and was watching us with curiosity. She could hear what I was saying, but not what he was, because by this time he’d dropped to a low mutter. This continued for another thirty seconds or so, then I finished serving him and he left.

I felt angry and disgusted for a while after that, even after reporting him the branch manager and being praised how I’d handled the situation. I know pretty much everyone judges everyone else internally, and people tend to be pretty harsh about the overweight, but seriously: what the fuck makes people think they have the right to start ranting about someone who has done nothing to them, simply because they’re fat? Furthermore, what makes them feel so justified in their right to rag on someone’s physical appearance that they continue to do so even after being asked to stop several times? I just don’t get it. This woman did nothing to deserve the man’s reaction - except, of course, exist, which was apparently offensive enough. It’s situations like this where I start to feel that old standard about glass houses and stones really has some merit; not that I want to sink to his level, but an ugly, obese, rude and bitter old man attacking a well-mannered, polite and beautiful young woman who also happens to be overweight would be funny if it wasn’t so, I don’t know, bile-inducing.

I’ve never really understood why so many people seem to feel they have the right to comment on and judge other people’s bodies at random, especially when it’s deliberately done to be in the subject’s hearing. It’s just rude and stupid, people. You don’t come across as wise or helpful or honest or even superior, you just come across as cuntish. I’m not even going to start on the effects comments like this have on the subject. My official stance is “DUH, FUCKTARDS!” It’s not fat people who are offensive, it’s the people who think they’ve got the right to comment and sneer, because as we all know, an excess of body fat severely inhibits one’s ability to hear, as well as their sensitivity to unjustified criticism. Not to mention that it completely voids their rights to be treated with the basest levels of human decency when they dare take their fat arses out of
the house to, oh, I don’t know, go to their local public library. God forbid a fat person should ever do anything besides hole themselves up in a shuttered house, stuffing their faces in shame. God forbid sterling examples of humanity like Mr Dickcheese are expected to treat them with anything but vocal contempt.

I hate it when I’m reminded in this way of how stupid and petty and just outright nasty people can be. I hate it that this guy just completely did not understand (or care) why I was asking him to cease and desist. I hate it that I had to even try to point out to someone with a good four or five decades on me that the way he was behaving was inappropriate for a public space. And I really, really hate it that, along with my reasonable disgust
and anger at the inappropriateness and base nastiness at the man’s comments, a small, ever-present kernel of self-doubt and loathing began to unfurl and make me take all this personally.