Less than an hour after I made the previous post, I got a job offer. I am hoping this means that blogging about my woes and wants helps to materialise them. In which case, I WANT A PONY! No firm preference for equine or human, both are good.

It’s that time of year again, where I get so stressed out about Uni (and the fact that I am STILL AT UNI, no matter how much I like my course, shouldn’t I be out in the “real world” by now, etc etc etc), and start looking for gainful employment. This tends to happen at the end of every semester when I have a wee crisis of faith, and anytime I start feeling poor (ie, all the time, and especially now), or realise that for the next fortnight I can pay my overdue bills or eat but not both. It’s hard to remember that one day this will all be over when you’re standing in the supermarket making what my friend Shannon calls the Toilet Paper vs. Tampons Decision. Apparently, I can look all I like, but gainful employment is going to keep hiding and chuckling to itself every time I storm past its hiding spot in a frustrated manner. No can do. So, in honour of my own frustration, and in recognition of the fact that a first-class Honours degree, relevant experience, a solid volunteer history and an internship will apparently get you nowhere (at least when you’re me - ooh, bitter), and in the interests of propping up my floundering self-esteem, I hereby present a list of the attributes that generally don’t make the CV cut:

• I have worked hard to rise above my humble beginnings in life and to reject the path seemingly set out for me. As a young woman born in Moe in the early 1980s, avoiding this path has largely involved: not getting pregnant while still legally a child, not owning mocassins, leaving the house in something besides tracksuit pants, fending off the advances of identical guys named Robbo/Stevo/Greg Domasewicz, not getting involved in too many punchups or knife fights, and not throwing pig heads through anyone’s windows. I have also avoided the lure of intimate relations with family members. All this has been quite a struggle, as I’m sure you can imagine. Particularly if you’ve ever met any of my uncles. Phwoar.
• I love language, and am always keen to expand upon my creative use of it. Referees to back up this claim: anyone who’s ever been in my car with me when someone cuts me off.
• Can make my boobies applaud and do sundry other tricks. (Okay, so this skill would probably further certain career options, but only for careers for which my current BMI disqualifies me, so it’s not really helping me out at all.)
• Most of my paid work experience has been in various forms of adult retail. You’d be surprised how often this doesn’t impress children’s book publishers.
• Good at insulting people without them realising it.
• Have learned to get along with just about anybody in a workplace environment, no matter how difficult or stupid they may be, through the use of creative visualisation (also known as “plotting their bloody demise”).
• Firm believer in the philosophy that there’s a Futurama quote for every occasion.
• Devout Pastafarian. Being touched by the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s noodly appendage changed my life.
• Working on making what is actually social awkwardness appear to be charming eccentricity. This long-running and time-consuming project is still in its initial stages. I guess I’ll keep plugging away at it.

Maybe if I whistle casually and pretend to ignore it, employment will come sidling up to me in the form of some job application I’ve already forgotten about. In the meantime, polish yer boots, guvnor?

Today I found myself without any forms of entertainment while on public transport, so I settled back into my seat to have a good, long think about some of the issues currently affecting my life. After mulling over some topics that have come up in conversation recently with friends, I had one of those moments where you realise that you’ve discovered a truth about yourself, but really wish you hadn’t. I was forced to conclude, as part of this moment of complete honesty, that while I am not too worried about being attacked by sharks while swimming in the ocean, I am genuinely concerned that swimming in the ocean may lead to me being attacked by the Kraken.

If that’s the best my brain can do in terms of self-discovery after all these years of navel-gazing, I am definitely making sure I have a book and my portable music box with me every time I travel anywhere.

I just received an email from Maxim Jakubowski telling me that he’s accepted my short story “The Mercy of Strange Men” for his latest anthology The Mammoth Book of Erotica 6 (a title chosen because it’s a large anthology, not because it features erotica about mammoths. To the best of my knowledge). This is the story that won Palmprint Publications’s short story competition last year. I am now thinking of retitling it “The Freaky Little BDSM Story That Could,” although that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

If it weren’t for the fact that I should have been in bed hours ago and have just cleaned my teeth, I’d have a drink to celebrate.

The first time my father’s pack-a-day Benson and Hedges habit ever benefited me, I was nine or ten years old. B&H were running a promotion whereby when one bought a carton of their cigarettes, one received a compilation CD of classic rock hits. Since my father has always been the kind of person to buy in bulk wherever possible (our visits to my grandfather would always conclude with the boot of the car stocked with dozens of bottles of wine from local vineyards), he quickly ended up with two of these CDs, and gave one to me.

It was one of the first CDs I ever owned, and introduced me to the delights of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and furthered my enjoyment of the Small Faces, while simultaneously establishing my lifelong hatred of Gerry and the Pacemakers. But my favourite song on the compilation was “Lola,” by a band I’d previously never heard of called The Kinks.

I quickly fell in love with the story of the young man’s seduction, but it wasn’t until many listens later I began to suspect that something was a little awry in this classic tale of boy meets girl. A few more careful listens confirmed my suspicions that Lola was no ordinary sexually assertive young woman. To my mind, this made the song even cooler, which retrospectively seems quite an interesting perspective coming from a sheltered pre-teen country bumpkin who at that point in her life had met few adults who weren’t church-going National Party-voting farmers. Lola, I decided, was a bit of all right.

But then it occurred to me that my father was also listening to the same song, and I began to worry. I mean, sure, I was nine, I could handle it. But what of poor, innocent ol’ Dad? I wasn’t sure he would be able to cope with the song’s message if he figured it out. I decided the best thing to do would be to gently point out the subtext of the song and reassure him that there was nothing wrong with a man dressing like a woman and seducing naive but curious young men on the dance floor.

I picked my moment as best I could. One weekend when I was visiting my father and he had a tape of the CD playing in the car, I waited until he was fast-forwarding “Ferry Across the Mersey” at my request. Casually, I piped up with, “hey Dad? You know that song ‘Lola’?”

“Yes, gremlin. What about it?”

“Well,” I paused. Then I realised that there was point stalling for time. “I don’t think Lola is really a lady.”

My father paused, obviously to take in this new information. I glanced across at him, to make sure he wasn’t too shocked.

“No, darling,” he finally said. “I don’t think she is either.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d educated my father, and he didn’t seem too shocked by my revelations. All was well, and I could go back to enjoying my song without the burden of unshared knowledge.

I was really rather cut when I realised I wouldn’t be able to take part in the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle because it clashed with work.  However, I just had the next best thing: Stuart rang me to let me know they were about to pass my work (he’s not taking part but is walking with them to take photographs), so I dashed outside and got to see the lovely zombies in all their glory.  I also got my photo taken with two lovely zombie lasses chowing down on my tasty tasty brain.  God bless the undead.

I’ve been laid low for the past week or so with a nasty flu-like bug that seems to like me very much, as it won’t go away. I’m starting to feel a little better now, but in addition to the fun illness symptoms, it’s had some interesting side effects.

I have a tendency to have weird dreams, which becomes even more pronounced when I’m not well. A couple of nights ago, in the grip of the bug, I had an absolute doozy.

Like many dreams, the events kept shifting. It started out as me trying to get away from a zombiesque foe. I dream a lot about zombies, for some reason. Somehow in the midst of all the running and fighting, I kept bumping into people who kept saying, “Oh, you simply must buy Stephen King’s new book, Cell. It’s great!”. Over and over and over again. I woke up not with the usual relief that I had averted the danger and avoided the consumption of my tasty tasty brain, but with an overwhelming urge to pop down to my local bookshop and get me some King.

This sort of marketing campaign was funny when it was used in Futurama to sell Lightspeed Briefs, but not so funny when it happened in my own head. Knock it off, arseholes!

But it could have been worse. Dreaming about zombies I can handle, but I think I would have awoken in a cold sweat had there been an appearance by Kerri-Anne Kennerley or anyone from Danoz Direct. Now that’s true horror.

I was very excited the other day to receive my contributor copies of First-Timers: True Stories of Lesbian Awakening, edited by the lovely Rachel Kramer Bussel (who I’d think was lovely even if she hadn’t selected my story, honest).

I’ve not had a chance to read much of it yet but it looks divine - that gorgeous cover! - and features stories from some fabulous erotica writers. My own little story is sandwiched in between stories by Audacia Ray and Alison Tyler, which is certainly very good company to be in.

I don’t think I mentioned my acceptance into this anthology when it originally occurred, but I seem to recall it happening around the time I was having a bit of a great run with getting stories accepted, which is always a nice feeling: they like me, they really like me! And my dirty mind, too!

Go check it out over at Amazon if you are so inclined. Which I personally think you should be.

Update 25/04/06: I’ve received word that First-Timers will be available from its Australian distributor in May.  You should be able to order it in at any good bookstore (or even some of the crappy ones).  Bliss for Women should have it as a matter of course, and it might be in Borders’ woefully inadequate lesbian fiction section.

Look Ma, I’m on WordPress!

Thanks to Stu, who’s spent the last little while doing this when he could have been sitting around thinking about his sins on this, Good Friday, aka Honey I Killed Our Lord Day.

Although now that I ponder the death of Our Lord, I have to say that I think that without the influence of Jesus, there would be less racism in the world today. I mean, would the Ku Klux Klan burn rocks on black peoples’ lawns if he’d been stoned to death instead of crucified? I think not.

I have a tendency, when talking, to suddenly forget most of my vocabulary. This is particularly the case when talking to someone I don’t know well, which is an unfortunate side effect of never having outgrown shyness but being way, way too old to hide my face in my mother’s skirt. Mostly I cover this up by babbling, which is sort of my only defence because my mother lives several hundred kilometres away and generally wears pants these days.

There are a couple of things you can do when you suddenly realise you no longer know how, to paraphrase your kindergarten teacher, to use your words. You can pause and smile at the person you’re talking to (or at) in what you hope is a beguiling manner but will really just look goofy. Or you can do what I do, which is to plough on regardless and demarcate any misused or ironically used words with air quotes.

It’s probably best, really, to pause, to laughingly reflect that you’ve gone blank on the exact word, but whoops! it will come to you eventually. Because while you might look like an arsehole if you forget what you’re trying to say or are obviously having vocabulary issues, you will always look like an arsehole if you use air quotes.