Ahem.

I think I’ll keep the entry below, as a reminder to myself about the dangers of drinking and mashing my poor old keyboard. It’s just that when I’m drunk, touching things that move and do stuff is the most fascinating and wonderful thing in the world. This has led to many regrettable sexual encounters. Or it would have, if I didn’t have a strict policy of never regretting any sexual encounter I’ve willingly entered into, if only because it can be counted as a learning experience. Sometimes the lesson learned is “beer goggles are not your friends,” but still.

Given that I tend to correct my keyboard mashings rather haphazardly, you may have gleaned that I have returned to study. I’m now doing a Professional Writing and Editing course, which is a refreshing change from Uni. I actually get to do stuff, instead of talking about the theory behind why someone else has done stuff. It’s very odd. Also, it’s nice to be surrounded by people who actually care about writing enough to want to do it well, rather than people who a) share Adrian Mole’s acquaintance’s view on writers (see entry title) or b) are doing a writing subject because it it looks like a bludge and if they don’t do well on their English minor, Daddy is going to make them pull out of the Arts part of their double degree and then they’ll just have to do Law instead.

I’m taking Novel as one of my subjects, which has already made me have several minor freakouts; while I’ve started many novels, the idea of actually working on one to completion terrifies me. I submitted two synopses to my teacher because I couldn’t decide what to write, got his blessings for both, then thought “fuck this, I’m writing a werewolf novel”. So I am. Watch me backflip as the internal “You should be writing your Vogel entry” demon fights with the “Dismemberment is FUNNY!” demon. Dismemberment Demon usually wins, partly because I have the sneaking suspicion my “literary” fiction is horribly overwraught and no one wants to publish it anyway. DD also likes to remind me that I won a straight literary competition with a balls-out horror story and that my other successes have been in the sniffed-at “genre” categories too. Also that nothing makes me as psychotically tearful as badly-written “literary” fiction and the people who take it way too seriously.

I may return to this rant sometime in the future (and believe me, if I don’t stop here, I’m going to go careening wildly off into rant territory), but I think I’ll stop it here for now. Much like my increasingly frequent drunken antics, it’s something no one really needs to see.

IT’S FUION TO DO YHOUR HOMEWHETOK WHILE DRUNK ANDS LUSTENING TO STUPID MSUCIK.

EDEITED TO AQDD: THIS IS GOOIOGNG TOL BE THE BE3ST PICTUERA STORY BOSK EVFER!

Four years ago today, I was nervously grooming myself in preparation for hanging out with a cool guy I’d met at a zine launch some months previously and who I’d spent some time hoping would ask me out on a date. That never happened, although we kept in contact sporadically via email. I’d decided he wasn’t interested and told my friends, who’d observed our initial meeting with some amusement, that I now thought he was a bit of an arsehole.

Eventually we’d gotten back in touch, and I’d reneged on the arsehole judgement just enough to agree to coffee in St Kilda.

He arrived at my house fifteen minutes late and extremely apologetic. On the walk to the tram stop he shyly engaged me in a conversation about how awesome Dan Savage is, which I thought was cute because I’d mentioned my enjoyment of Savage Love in one of our phone conversations. He’d done his research. We rode the tram with the nervous awkwardness familiar to first dates everywhere, despite the fact that I’d fiercely assured my friends it wasn’t a date - “we’re just hanging out and having coffee!”
“Sure, Aimee,” came the replies. “Whatever you say.”

We went and had a coffee, which eventually turned into lolling around in a park for some hours, which eventually turned into returning to my place for “coffee”.

I don’t think I’ve seen him drink coffee since, although fortunately there has been plenty of “coffee”.

Happy anniversary, Stu.

P.S. I love you, but as you’re probably aware, I’ve never fully reneged on that arsehole judgement.

If there’s not a website featuring mature-aged people engaging in watersports, and if it’s not called Golden Oldies, then that matter really ought to be rectified.

Despite the teabagging, some of my friends have begged me to give 2006 another chance. I am sceptical yet hopeful that the relationship will work out. 2006 has given me flowers and chocolates and said “aw, c’mon, baby, I’ll be good.” So I’ll give it a chance and see how things work out, because deep down I am a hopeless romantic and really want things to turn out okay, and am willing to make the extra effort if that’s what it takes. But I think that, deep down, at least for a while, I’ll be cautious, and hold my heart close, lest 2006 suddenly decides to give me a dirty sanchez.

I don’t want another year like 2005. I asked 2006 to please be nice to me, or at least better than 2005, and it said “Sure”. Then it waited until I was asleep, took pictures of itself teabagging me, and posted them on the Internet. I hate 2006.

Now that I’ve officially finished at Monash, I feel like it’s time to say goodbye to the place that, for better or worse, has been such a part of my life for the past five years. I have this kind of tremendously loving ambivalence towards it, which doesn’t make any sense but means that my feelings towards it are at least cohesive with the rest of my emotional life. Plus, I finally got around to updating the About Me bit in the sidebar, so now is as good a time as any.

Goodbye, Union Building! I look forward to not having to battle my way through you at peak times. Also, I look forward to not having to evacuate you because someone burned toast or some funster phoned in a bomb threat.

Goodbye, Menzies Building! The site of debates, arguments and astonishing feats of wankery, I will miss the way you sway in the slightest breeze, and the way in which that forces me to contemplate my own mortality.

Goodbye, Bus Loop! We didn’t have much to do with each other after second year, I guess, but you’re still a major part of my Monash “experience”. Although, looking back, it was probably a bit rude of me to have sex in you.

Goodbye, Rotunda! I had some great lectures in you, but honestly? Your seats are really fucking uncomfortable, and your restroom facilities inadequate.

Goodbye, Monash Library Document Delivery Services! I would never have gotten my thesis written if it weren’t for you guys. Stupid obscure research.

Goodbye, Rare Books Room! Oh, I probably spent too much time in you, and I had a habit of bringing people to you like I was ushering them to the Promised Land, but seriously? You rock. So much time spent in you, in the company of wonderful people. So much time spent pawing through your collections of zines and lesbian pulp fiction. So much time spent awed in your collection of Swift first editions. So much time spent badgering the poor Rare Books Librarian, who is probably terribly pleased to see the back of me.

And on that note, goodbye, Rare Books Exhibition Space. A source of much wonder and learning in your own right, you were the place in which I attended more than one exhibition opening, and witnessed firsthand the horrific feeding frenzy that occurs when English academics are given unrestricted access to free alcohol. I will never forget my first attendance at such a function, where my normally mild-mannered Lit tutor from first year expounded on the difficulties of finding permanent work in academia while severely invading my personal space, shaking his finger around in an alarming manner, and loudly slurring. “You carn geddany work! I gotsh a PhD and exshperience! Whammore do they want? Ish, ish…ISH UNFAIR, THAT’SH WHAT IT ISH!”. Happily for him and for my personal space concerns, he found work overseas and is by all accounts happy with his lot, although probably still an opportunistic lush. I imagine that’s one thing that doesn’t change, and it kind of really makes me want to become an alcoholic English academic.

At any rate, it’s mostly been a good half-decade (sheesh, I wish I hadn’t just thought of it like that). I hesitate to say that it’s goodbye forever, because I don’t know what’s in store for the future and let’s face it, I’m a glutton for punishment.

Holy fuck. I got First Class Honours.

I am over the moon and possibly a couple of planets. I never expected to do this well; I was hoping for Second Class, Division A, and expecting a lot worse. I was really worried how my thesis would be received, as it doesn’t adhere strongly to any particular theoretical framework, although given the subject matter and the person who wrote it, it does borrow heavily from feminist theory. It’s just not, strictly speaking, a feminist literary theory kind of thesis.

After I found out, my friends Mairghread and LJ found me in the Union building, tearful and smiling inanely. Hugs were given and received. Reactions from my friends and family have generally been of the “Congratulations! Also, duh” variety. My brother-in-law asked who I’d bribed, because he’s a sweetie like that. Stuart, when I rang him at work, shouted “HAHAHA! In your FACE!”, which probably destroyed his reputation as a quiet, well-mannered young man. He has no time for my self-doubt. My favourite reaction, though, was from my father, the blokey-bloke working class hero: he burst into tears.

I’m on a high, and while my cynical inner voice is already trying to point out that it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, I am going to ignore it and spend the next little while telling myself that the world is my slimy mollusc.

I had a birthday on Saturday. It’s the kind of thing I try to avoid, but it tends to roll around once a year anyway, like a gigantic and persistent night soil cart.

You might gather that I hate birthdays. You would be correct. I don’t like having them, and I don’t like celebrating them. It’s not an age related thing, which would be laughable at my age anyway. I’ve had one age-related birthday freakout, and that was when I was going on nineteen, of all things. It was really just that eighteen was a very good year for me and I didn’t want it to end. Then, on my nineteenth birthday, I was involved in a hit and run car accident, so I was RIGHT to dread the damn thing. That philosophy has pretty much stuck with me.

This year’s was pretty good, though. I visited my immediate family, complete with their offspring. My nephew Myles and niece Alexandra were disgustingly cute as always, and Baby Harriet’s present to me was avoiding spitting up breastmilk all over me, although she did start crying when I tried to sing to her, which puts her in a class with all the people who go to Extreme Karaoke.

My net friend Katie has also been in Australia, and hence my absence (also, I am lazy). We hung out and I tried to convince her to play Stupid Texan for me, but she refused to put out. Honestly, what’s the point of having international net friends visit you if they refuse to stand in the middle of the Queen Victoria Market on a busy Sunday afternoon loudly exclaiming “Golly, this here sure is different from how we do it in Houston!”? Some people are no fun. Also on her visit we learned about Ye Olde Worlde pimps at the Old Melbourne Gaol, and photographed ourselves doing rude things in front of Parliament House. Upon seeing Jeff Kennett’s portrait, she correctly identified him as an evil, snake-eyed man, at which I may have emitted a small squeal of delight. Sure, she may not have lived down to my ideas of how an American tourist behaves, but I think I’ll keep her.

I topped the weekend off by having a lovely barbecue which was nice and relaxing and was almost enough to make me decide that celebrating my birthday is actually a pretty fun and nifty thing to do. Almost. See, it was a great barbecue and I had a lot of fun, but I’m not entirely sure I’ve made it clear here just how deep the birthday celebration hatred runs.

There’s being busy, and there’s being self-absorbed, and then there’s being an absolute fuckwit.

I was on a tram in the city on Remembrance Day last week. Pulled up at the intersection of Swanston and La Trobe, an announcement came over the loudspeaker that since it was about to be 11am, the tram would be staying at the stop to observe the minute’s silence. And fair enough, too.

However, a charming example of humanity apparently didn’t feel the same way. “Awww, what?” he whined, in a loud, listen-to-me, Mummy! kind of way. “I fucken paid for this!” He glanced belligerantly around the carriage, looking for support for his one-man anti-war-victim rant, his suffering and the few bucks spent on a ticket quite obviously analagous to the plights of those who were now putting him a full minute behind in his terribly important business. Dying tragically and pointlessly in a war declared by those who will never come close to fighting it? Pffft. Spending five bucks on a Metcard only to be forced to sit in silence while a tram doesn’t move for sixty seconds? INHUMAN.

Fortunately our charming hero was the subject of many greasy eyeballs for his outburst, my own among them. He actually seemed to deflate as he took in the disgust of the other tram passengers. It was rather neat, in a way.