shillyshallying around

I WAS GOING to call this post "procrastination of the nation" but that sounded too much like the name for a reality teevil show or something and i could just see eddie maguire as the irritating strangle-worthy host and then he really would be eddie everywhere and it'd be all my doing and i'd have to run away and hide under a big rock in a faraway land to escape the wrath of a million or so irate pitchfork wielding melburnians.

don't you think shillyshallying sounds so much nicer that that?

i imagine it to be an ancient tribal dance incorporating hopscotch moves, hula hoops and feathered headwear, what say you?!


yah, so these are the things i SHOULD be doing today:

resubmitting the grammar module for my tefl course [for which i only got a measly 82%]

fixing up my CV to make me look like a shithot teacher-like candidate and sending it over to supermum ON. THE. DOUBLE.

writing up part two of my rainbow adventure so it can be published along with part one on vibewire

scheduling a dins with professor grey hair and auntie joan

scheduling a mumma burrito dins to drag poor malnourished rak along to

working out some kind of travel insurance for my rapidly approaching departure ~ at the time of writing i have approximately 128 hours left of this horrid office ~ WOO. FARKING. HOO!!

and these are the things i AM actually doing today:

pissing around with html to try and make this blog look pretty [your opinion is graciously NOT required]

listening to such musical gems as the gunners' [how crap is their "official" site?!]"don't cry" blasting from my workmate's computer

eavesdropping on conversations occurring across the other side of the office about people's fingers getting bitten off in fights and the subsequent hospitalisation that has occurred

counting the number of desks in our department [31] and marvelling at my ability to not speak to any of the occupants for near on four hours now and yet simultaneously incur absolutely NO GUILT from stealing their cheese slices from the frige

wondering if SHE has figured out this blog address and might be reading this post.

last night was "the~infamous~kent~street~lives~on~bbq" hosted by professor grey hair and held in his concrete garden under that great grey sky you might have noticed on your travels.

twas surely a roaring [if a leetle short-lived] success replete with peach cheesecake, TWO kinds of felafel & hommus, a surprise visit from charlie brown [alternately known as tom's mate matty], and beer n hugs aplenty.


and today? it smells like felafel [of course!], surprises and virtual bubble wrap [i popped 196 medium bubbles in 20 seconds flat with using manic mode ~ the high score is 5.4 seconds so i didn't even make it into the top 50...yet].

xx

i HATE this thing

i AM working on my template. this is why i AM NOT writing anything of any interest to ANYONE. not that i EVER DO. raaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

today smells like a shonky keyboard...or is that just my html ineptitude?~!

xx

DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF

Location: X32-K1 [Earth]
Intercept Type: Audio
Transcript: DOOF, DOOF, DOOF, DOOF
Source: Rainbow Serpent Festival
Conclusion: Gathering of humanoids with intent to communicate with alien life using a repetitive 'DOOF DOOF' beat.
[with MASSIVE thanks to greg tossel, the dancing robot and supremely lovely crazy being who created twenty of these gems and scattered them amongst the masses ~ for the rest, you'll just have to wait! or ask nicely...]


SO FAR, THE hardest thing about returning to what is oddly known as "civilisation" [it is particularly definition four that i have a problem with] has been trying to clean the dirt from my feet and all the grime out from under my nails ~ turning what used to be my jeans back into a wearable item is going to be an arduous task too, no doubt.

i am pretty well completely stuffed and rather hoarse to boot but have been floating quietly along on a cloud at work today and it's only now, after many a strong corfee that i feel even remotely able to tell you as much as i can remember about the bushdoof known fondly as rainbow.


~ 23/01/05 23:50 ~

next to the pub is a hardware store. next to that, beaufort cycles and toys. the gazebo's all lit up and pretty. the war memorial, less so. behind me is the payphoneless service station; in front of me, banana and mango juice; and tonight, i'm *working* for my festival.

so mobile phone unconscious [yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!] that i forgot mine, i'm sitting here waiting for a dj called so to wash behind his ears so i can get my dancing legs back where they belong.

having not been to rainbow before, i wasn't too excited about spending over a hundred bucks on a ticket so billie jazz [fellow telstra slave & rainbow organiser extraordinaire ~ go here for an interview] hooked me up with shift driving the shuttle bus: "just go to the info tent every couple of hours and see if any of the djs want a ride into town," he said. and that sounded okay to me, the 10pm til 6am timeslot looking like my only challenge. oh, that and being sober...

so, i got on the forums and found myself a ride with miss slingshot and adambgood. forgetting my cooler bag and thus all my food was not a good way to start the trip, but a couple of hours drive and a few beers later, things were looking much improved as, dripping with excitement, we entered the party through the legs of bertha the giant dragonfly and almost ran along the dusty fairy-lit path towards the all-encompassing beat at the market stage.

but we weren't ready for dancing, not just yet.

adambgood having disappeared immediately upon arrival, it was me, miss slingshot and her mate jay that were left. so, awandering in the dark we went. we drifted through through the market area, entranced by hammock hq, poffertjes and costumes aplenty. stopping only for some cleopatra's brew, we walked on through the healing zone to the first camping area. it didn't take long to run into someone i know and while that was kinda nice, it wasn't the someones i particularly wanted to run into, the lovely alice and the douche [gotcha!] german who i knew i'd be camping and playing with for the weekend.

in the dark, trying to find our friends, "happy rainbow" cries coming from strangers along the way, we shone our torch randomly around til nearly the end of the camping area. about to turn around and head back, miss slingshot gave the torch one last swing and jay cried out, in the first of awesome coincidences and number plate related incidents, "FULLY INTOXICATED PEOPLE, THAT'S THEIR CAR!!" having no such luck myself, i *camped* there for the night too. if, by camping you mean crawling into a sleeping bag underneath a shade~cloth and curling up on a pile of twigs.


waking up to a renegade sound system [which i later found out was STRICTLY against the rules!] after four hours sleep in this ditch, i began to wonder whether this rainbow business was all it was cracked up to be. when we got told we had to move coz we were outside of the designated camping area ~ as were a multitude of others who'd arrived in the dark ~ i decided it was high time to locate the elusive alice and locate i surely did: first jay then steven, alice, and a mass of fantastical crazies i was to share my life with for the next few days. and from that point on, as a man on a beach at butterfly valley once said, "alles in dortmund."*

to be continued...
[my woolly brain has been attempting in it's severely sleep-deprived state to recount these events to you since 3.33pm but now it has well n truly given up the ghost ~ i can't believe that's a biblical reference!]

xx

*this tale has now been published on vibewire!! must get onto part 2...

evidence

THIS WAS ME last friday.


(can you guess what i'm eating? for a clue, go here)

it was a week ago almost exactly, a night of bruised skies and...

~ did YOU know bruises could be beautiful?

well, they CAN!


the fitzroy sky that night was brilliantly pinkpurple and heavy as i sat on my front step talking to the joogling star in ooh ah portslade by the sea dah~ling.

until i realised with a sudden panic i was supposed to be at THE pub.

(can't get that stoopic pic to work without it ruining the rest of the post ~ I.GIVE.UP.)

today smells like nasty and grammatically incorrect letters in telstra envelopes and i don't want to test the power of prayer coz i don't believe in ANYTHING today (except hommus).

BUT BUt But but, i AM off to rainbow in about fifty minutes. getting in a station wagon with miss slingshot from abbotsford. going to pick up a adambgood from the airport. am DETERMINED to come home in a better mood than this.

it's now time for you all to go away. oh sorry, i mean go visit and say thanks/give spanks (your choice) to THE monsieur le raquetti rak, deliverer of photos and sharer of pizza n beer not-so-plenty.

i hope YOU have a nice weekend. without ME.

xx

charmingly awkward

SHE SAID WE were the quietest audience she'd ever played to, thanked us and said it was weird to not have to yell at anyone, or she might have just said it was good. i'm not sure coz the acoustics were shiteful.

we, especially rae, wished she'd yelled at them good n proper when grand salvo were playing. we knew they was meant to be "quiet and soulful", but we had a hunch it was not meant to be at a frequency outside the normal range of human hearing.

turns out the incompetent behind the mixing desk had forgotten to turn on a whole row of speakers/desks/or whatever they call them in roadie/mixer lingo. this did not bode well for my impression of the all new and improved manchester lane ~ check how big and swish they try and make it look in the photos, it's bullshit, just so you know. and the merlot's $6.80 an unpassionate pop.


she didn't talk much, mostly sat at the piano with her back to us, just like that helen garner quote indicated she would.

while she was playing, she tucked her left foot behind her right knee so her bare pink toes were poking out from under the folds of her jeans, wiggling at us fools like it almost wouldn't matter if we weren't there. she said later she hardly ever gets to play in venues with a piano and at the end of the show she just wanted to keep playing.

i liked how she didn't do the whole pause-at-the-end-of-the-song-and-wait-for-applause thing. after her first song she just muttered into the mike, "it's the end." and, for the rest of the set, as soon as she finished playing she was straight into another song or clambering across the stage to sling her guitar on for yes; or welcome jim white of dirty three fame to drum with her for a song or two; or plug in her discman and dance around the stage for a bit.

when she was playing guitar, she held her knees together and swayed a bit out of time. i think i agree with sunanda creagh from smh when she says "singer-songwriter sally seltmann's stage presence is charmingly awkward".

she doesn't look like the pictures on her website, by the way. they make her look older, skinnier and less interesting. she nearly forgot her shoes when she was leaving the stage.

yah, so it was good, not fabulously outstanding but nicely enjoyable all the same. i bought her "the last beautiful day" cd so if you wanna listen to it, see ya in my loungeroom (you might wanna read some reviews first). otherwise you can see her at st kilda festival or performing with a full band at the northcote social club ~ i might even be there too!


today smells like mistakes. and your diaretic task? to free someone, such as leonard peltier. but y'know, i'm sure you're old enough to select your very own captive due for release.

xx

bermuda triangulated

gra·phol·o·gy
n.
the study of handwriting, especially when employed as a means of analysing character.


SO, BLAIR LENT me chuck palahniuk's diary (go here to read an excerpt).

as well as introducing me to THE most brilliant phrase EVER ~ bermuda triangulated. AND being a highly unusual story about a carpenter who bermuda triangulates rooms from people's houses and a woman who grew up in a trailer park and may or may not become a famous artist, this novel contains some interesting tidbits about graphology, a hobby i've never considered but which sounds infinitely intriguing.


apparently, "real handwriting experts are known as forensic document examiners, not as graphologists. forensic document examiners consider loops, dotted "i's" and crossed "t's," letter spacing, slants, heights, ending strokes, etc. they examine handwriting to detect authenticity or forgery.

"whereas, graphologists examine loops, dotted "i's" and crossed "t's," letter spacing, slants, heights, ending strokes, etc, but they believe that such handwriting minutiae are physical manifestations of unconscious mental functions. graphologists believe such details can reveal as much about a person as astrology , palm reading, psychometry, or the myers-briggs personality type indicator."


whether or not astrology, palm reading, psychometry or the myers-briggs personality test reveal more than sweet FA about us i DON'T wish to go into. but here are some examples of the ways YOUR handwriting may be interpreted (according to diary):


"anything that falls below the bottom of a word, the tail of a lowercase g or y for example, that hints at your subconscious. what freud would call your id. this is your most animal side. if it swings to the right, it meanns you lean to the future and the world outside yourself. if the tail swings to the left, it means you're stuck in the past and looking at yourself."


hmmm...that would make me the latter. not so good, methinks. but who the HELL loops a lowercase g's to the right??

"update: if "they hang straight down...this means determination and strong leadership."

also:
"anything that rises above the regular lowercase e or x, those tall letters hint at your greater spiritual self. your superego. how you write your l or h or dot your i, that shows what you aspire to become.

"anything inbetween, most of your lowercase letters, these show your ego. whether they're crowded and spiky or spread out and loopy, these show the regular, everyday you."


presumably, spread out and loopy means you're precisely that!

anyway, the reason i wanted to post about this is because, as we may have all noticed, it seems that handwriting, as a practical skill, is WAY on it's way out, at least in the western digitised world. to the point where national handwriting day is celebrated annually by the writing instrument manufacturer's association in new jersey.

but does this mean that our handwriting is more or less indicative of our nature than it ever was? IF it ever was? and if it IS indicative, do we, for example, loop our lowercase Gs and Ys even more to the right than ever before because we're all looking further forward now due to the rapid pace of change in our lives?

or have i just got FAR. TOO. MUCH. TIME. on my hands?


here are some clues for you, if you feel like you need to practise.


today smells like ink.


oh, and today's diaretic task is to test a proverb and record it's practical usefulness. but i've already bagsed "you can't have your cake and eat it too" so you'll have to either have cake with me after work or pick another one!

xx

dump your partner for the day

I'VE GOT THIS recurring problem. well, okay, not just the one but i wont burden you with more than one for now.

on a far too regular basis at all different times of day, the following happens:

i. get. hungry.

now, i'm guessing there's nothing too freakish about that (although i'm sure it is a condition of particularly high-frequency amongst bored telstra employees), but due to my lack of creativity and skill in the kitchen, the result of my hunger is usually toast.

even this too would probably be okay but when i put bread in the toaster, i get impatient. so usually, i'll go get a drink. then, i'll wait around for a bit, get a bit more impatient, tell myself it wont be much longer (usually aloud), get more bored and impatient, start harassing the nearest living thing etc.

eventually, i'll peer into the toaster to check on the progress of the bread-like substance and, at precisely this point, either the toast will jump out menacingly gnashing it's teeth and brandishing a light sabre or, more often, i'll realise that i've forgotten to push the handle down.

so, i've started trying to figure out just why my short-term memory IS so bad. but then i found this website containing 57 possible medical conditions causing forgetfulness AND a link to symptoms of the silent killer diseases...?

admittedly, it was on a website called wrong diagnosis.com but, well, it's scared me right off. i think i'd rather be forgetful than knowledgable.


oh yea, and speaking of short-term memory loss, the reason i was actually writing this post was to let all you relationshipified people know that today's task (according to THE diary) is "dump your partner for the day" and i knew how excited you'd all be to know it.

here's what you gotta do:

~ announce to your other half that you're done with them and storm out.
~ play the field: fool around and satisfy your animal lust.
~ bitch about him/her: your friends will enjoy revealing that they hate him/her.
~ do that thing you stopped doing because they hate it
~ enjoy a bottle of wine by yourself!
~ masturbate!

okay, i realise that if you're in the southern hemisphere you aint got much time so, those of you in europe, i'm counting on YOU, NO EXCUSES!

today smells like: harley's fourteenth (?) birthday!!

xx

is it really only monday?

ACCORDING TO MY new this-diary-will-change-your-life, given to me yestereve by the ever fabulous mei-mei, this past weekend has been "family weekend".

the instructions given were to:

~ celebrate my nearest and dearest by never leaving their side.
~ sleep in my parents' bed.
~ accompany my dear auntie to the lavatory (dunny probly would have been okay too, methinks).
~ hold my older brother's hand on his date.

AND, if they protest out of sheer raw emotion,
~ hug them tight until they give in to my love.

unfortunately (or...?), i missed the opportunity as i didn't get the all important instructions til sunday eve and by that stage there was gor-mei beer at black cat and nachos pizza


(yup, the 3rd in five days) to be had. even more unfortunately, i missed last wednesday's "apply to an orgy" day. ah well, can't be helped, i s'pose.

lucky for me, in terms of meeting my diaretic (?!) obligations [what i'm trying to say here is my obligations to complete the life changing tasks set out by the diary, NOT my obligations to wee!!], i DID have a family weekend, complete with the wedding of my cousin soph to her nice traditional italian boy, frankie, teacher at the parish primary school and all-round mr nice guy.

as most of my family will now be aware, if they weren't already, i am somewhat lacking in the department of affinity-with-weddings genes. i feel kinda the same way about them as i feel about telstra. and that's saying something.

it's not that i don't respect those who choose to make it their way. but there's just something altogether outdated about weddings for my liking ~ it's a tradition that some people seem to follow simply because it IS a tradition, rather than for any personal significance.

i don't think that all weddings are infinitely meaningless, i just think that the flippant way that many undertake such a committment somehow reduces the meaning of the cermony overall. just an opinion, y'know.

an opinion which inevitably results in an earnest (or was that suicidal?) attempt at the world record for revoltingness induced by excessive champagne consumption entirely* against my will. it's almost like i'm consumed by the soul of a formula one grand prix winner and i just have to share the love.



to be honest, it was probably the red wine at the end of the night, followed by jugs at the exford (whose website does not belie their ultimate seediness) that did it.

they try and deny it: jo, nic, sqodge AND my old man. even blair just laughed and told me to shut up. so perhaps my claims to revoltingness supreme are, after all, sadly invalid and the soul of the aforementioned racing champion resides elsewhere.

*if by entirely, you mean entirely the opposite!

yup

WORKIN' HARD IN telstra land today...hmmm...what have we eaten?

well, i had to start with a salada coz i was too late to eat brekkie at home (what's new?! ah! hang on, i'm selling myself short - i was busy getting our broadband back online, yah, that's imPORtant!) and too hungry to wait til playtime.

saladas were followed by muesli & yoghurt, cranberry juice & coffee - NO, not toGETHer! the only drinks you should ever mix in the morning are beer & coffee and even then only in newcastle after a long week on tina time.

oh, okay, sorry i was getting distracted. next on the menu was tofu and lee kum kee soy sauce but sqodger ate it all while i was on a call. apparently the average number of calls for a call centre agent in australia is 118 per day.

so far i've taken twenty-six and i've been here for 438 minutes which means an average of one call every sixteen minutes. of course, they do last more than one minute...sometimes...so that's not entirely accurate but still...

fourth course was um...i've been so busy i can't remember! no, i'm pretty sure it was inari from wabi sabi salon, oooooh, i LOVE wabi sabi salon. if you ever want to take me out to dinner and really impress me, there's how!

yea, i got to meet the lovely miss mel at lunchtime. only she wasn't feeling so lovely and neither was her fella, sorry, defacto. bit like how they were feeling on nye, only completely different:

well, i knock off in four minutes so i'll leave you with the thought of today's smell: $250 of COLD.HARD.CASH oooh, it smells gooooooooooood.

xx

i want one

of these pics

to become the

background for my

any idea how?

blog

hi ho, hi ho

MY MISSION TODAY, should i choose to accept it (which i probably wont coz i can't be arsed), is to go through a list of pending orders three pages long.

i am supposed to check whether these orders (dating back to november) have been processed yet. if they have, i cross them off. if not, i put a nice little tick next to them to indicate they're not yet done.

...what?!

you want me actually to process them?!! oh no, i couldn't possibly! i'm doing something far more important. i'm going through the list and ticking which ones need to be done! hmmpft!


working here, is not good for my work ethics. WHAT work ethics? oh yea...the ones i used to have.

now, i have nothing but scorn for the shambles that attempts to pass as an office and the utter incompetence of both my "supervisors" and my colleagues or should i say, my fellow plebeians.

it's not that they're all incompetent all of the time, just most of the time. and the rest of the time everyone does as little as they can possible get away with doing and proves the suspicions of those that must interact with call centres (um...yea, our entire population!) to be all too true.

and there are an obscene amount of recurring problems that no supervisor makes even the slightest effort to remedy. which results, as you can imagine, in a great deal of what you'd call "irate customers".

and somehow, this is all acceptable to *management*.


in other breaking news, today i got a letter delivered to my desk. it was addressed to me on telstra letterhead (ooooooooh, spe-shal!). it said:

Staff attendance is of vital importance blah blah blah

Your contribution for the month of December 2004 has been 100% blah blah blah

Your continued committment to achieving 100% attendance shows your blah blah

Well done and blah blah blah

there's a few problems with this...

1. my attendance was not 100% in december. it's been about as good as at my old job. except there, they drew up a graph to show me how bad it had been. admittedly, i don't need a functioning brain to "work" here so i guess i prob'ly don't skive off quite as much.

2. my punctuality was, and continues to be, abysmal. and yet, they are congratulating and even thanking me! i suppose i should be glad but i just feel like a big fat fraud.

3. i don't even care anymore

today smells like incompetence...or was that incontinence...? oh, i can't remember anymore...

xx

not without my dancing bees...

WHEN I GO away, there's only one thing that i really don't wanna leave behind (present company excluded, конечно).

that one thing is not my bike.

although i would dearly love to have that squeaky silver rust-bucket at my service in downtown k-burg city.

neither is that one thing my big comfy bed.

despite the daily delight and nightly relief if offers my cranky bones.

and neither, despite the title of this inane post, is it my dancing bees,

which are sure to remain on the mantelpiece of my house for all eternity.

no, that ONE thing from which i can just barely part, is my beautiful boudoir in the best share-house in the world.

sqodger says my walls are scary and he could never sleep in there for all the things looking at him and holding great significance.

so i'll take them down, hokay?

and then i'll need to find someone, preferably female, to take over the lease.

ideally, this person will get tha hell out! when i get back, whenever that may be.

but, i do realise this is entirely unrealistic of me.

so, room for lease: $466 pcm...dream fitzroy l0cation...sob...


please contact via email.

today smells like: asphalt and sour cream

xx

clouds over commish

after lunch

I'D LIKE TO make an amendment, s'il vous plait.

i just went for lunch and dagnabbit! it's HOT out there!!

BUT BUt But but...i munched on a deee~bloody~lish $2.70 salad & cheese roll (with sunflower seeds on it!) as i reclined in a gloriously dappled with sunshine glade

well okay, in a nice spot anyway, in the fitzroy gardens.

read a bit of the most beautiful woman in town (the book, not the poem and i really don't think it is a poem anyway), listened to the water spouting from the atlas-like fountain behind me

and felt that...

today (really actually) smells like: thirty-seven degrees*, eucalyptus leaves and... just a leetle bit of disappointment.

*pls note, i hold no responsibility for the fact that it may be only thirty-four degrees out there, it might mess with my rhyme!

xx

a smashing encounter

one word.

disaster.

OKAY SO MAYBE that's a leetle bit harsh but i tell ya what, being forty-five minutes late is highly UNrecommended when meeting someone for the first time regardless of how many "sorry i'm late" phone calls and text messages you shower them with.

also highly UNrecommended, just in case you're curious, is bringing your sister, her two friends AND your two dodgy mates who proceed to sit at the table adjacent to you whilst you attempt to make conversation with someone you've only had a short-term my space blogosphere *friendship* with.

and finally, if you must bring dodgy mates and rellies (five in all), either don't encourage them to eat everyone else in the pub's leftovers, or at the very least, don't join them in their povvo scrounging. it's just not cool.

and yes, i KNOW they serve monstrous meals and their wedges are divine. i also know that the leftovers would have just been thrown out had you not scavenged them. pity you weren't thrown out!

so no, danielle, he's not my "space boy", he's just "myspace" boy. and never have i been gladder to return to my loungeroom and knock back a longneck with sqodger & jo than yestereve.

but finally, i'll tell you why it could still be described as a *smashing* encounter...it's because whilst i was undergoing serious barfly training, i got to have a wine glass smashed around me by the lovely andrea, hard workin bar wench extroadinaire, and for this i am eternally grateful.

today smells like: cranberry juice, or at least i wish it did.

xx

melbourne still

SO SELF-CENTRED AM i at the moment, that i somehow managed to convince myself that the title of the waifs' song "london still" was actually "melbourne still"...it's not. but if it was it would neatly describe how i'm feeling.

after the excitement of spending hundreds of dollars in a matter of minutes on friday, there's been a bit of a reality check going on in terms of all the stuff i need to do before i go - including six interminable weeks of telstra's fluorescent-and-grey version of hell that lie before me which, without sqodger's exotic breakfast feasts (today's is tofu with coconut & lime salsa, fig jam and peppered cucumber!!), would surely be fatal.

and everyone seems to think i should be more excited about going o/s than i am. but the truth is, i AM excited, dagnabbit!! i've just had a bit of a nasty infection over the weekend (now much better, spanks) and well, you know that whole falling out with a friend thing; it's never much fun, especially when it's two friends at once.

but today, i must say, started very nicely. apart from the nasty business of waking up, which has never been my forte, an early morning bike ride to lygon street for coffee with nywf vollie & vibewire extraordinaire sarah was just what i needed - yet didn't know it - gracious and grateful spanks to yooo, sarah!!

and tonight...? off to meet my space boy which should be interesting, to say the least!

today smells like: freshly mown grass

xx

ps

ON THE SUBJECT of honesty:

i hereby promise to yooo, oh loyal reader, that i definitely will not lie in this blog but i may very well choose to keep things away from your pesky prying eyes!

SO, please read this, if you so desire (!) with an awareness that it is but a slice of the scrumptiously divine and infrequently sour pie that is my life!

aloha

xx

crazy crazy cool

the nervous me: oh my farking god, i just booked a flight for 22nd of farking feb! is that way crazy?!

the spontaneous me: crazy crazy cool is what that is!! wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

HOW INSANELY SURREAL it was to be on the 112 tram, putting money in a ticket machine (and fares have gone up AGAIN! goddamm privatisation sucks - now i have to pay $3.10 to get to the city. lucky i don't live in glenfarkingwaverly!!) and, as i scrabbled for the extra ten cents, i pondered out loud, amsterdam or milan??

"you can't re-route once the ticket has been issued," came the sage advice from the lovely julie at best flights.

"better make it amsterdam then," i said into my mobile, feeling every bit the fitzroyalty yuppie. and yea, milan IS closer but i might just be in need of one last fling with the duchies before i come home. ohhhhhh, the duchies, it's been way to long since i even heard from those craZy cats!

aaaaiyaaah!! AND supermum AND the fugazi AND mister might should could himself!! not to mention an overnight stay in tokyo AND a rendezvous with the hot water service in birmingham!! all these sudden realisations and their so very near tangibless (ha! that IS a word, i checked!) almost made me bounce out of my skin completely. luckily, sqodger called me immediately when he finished work and yippeed with me aplenty so i'm still definitely inside my skin.

the night was then destined to be filled with fantastic food, fabulous friends and frisky frolicking all the way from lee's poshO apartment in port melbourne to gorgeous gabs'

gabs n pandy

PERFECTly gorgeous and brand spanking new art deco apartment in west st kilda (she's even got rock throw at able windows!), and then back again to farewell mister hottness himself by drinking champers without him in the pool room at the pub - well, i suggested he partake but he said he doesn't "do" bubbly and never has to pay for beer there anyway, lucky bastard! or do you think it was just a brush-off??

anyway, after convincing monsieur le napes to sell us six longnecks way past the legally acceptable (i refer to the time, not only the level of intoxication) limits, i realised, in the words of the marvellous poetry posse mouth off, i can't complain!

xx

alackaday

mr high jinks emailed this pic to me (and others) on new year's eve day.

IF I'D SEEN it at the time i'm sure it would have made me feel less cynical than it makes me feel now.

but maybe that's coz i was being overly optimistic about new year's anyway.

there have been a few underlying shiteful things going on in recent times and i haven't made even a vague attempt to address them.

this means, as could only be expected, that they have morphed into what feels like an insurmountable leaning tower of friendlessness.

oh, i KNOW i'm exaggerating. and i KNOW that there are much more shiteful things going on in the world for many hundreds of thousands of people.

i just feel a bit sad. but this aint fishing for nothin, this is just self-expression, albeit self-absorbed self-expression.

let's see what blossoms in 2005!

xx