Over A Week And Far Away

As I sit and drink black coffee, listening to Led Zeppelin's grand 'Houses of The Holy' masterpiece and trying to wake up the ol' grey critter coiled in semi-slumber on the top bunk of my skull, I thought I should just insert this li'l message 'ere to let you, dear reader, know that I shall be posting properly very, very soon. Sorry that it has been over a week but, well, there are reasons, although I can't quite remember them just now. Maybe this is due to the image of Robert sup-Plant-ing zippers for a complex series of interlacing cords in the flies of his cock-rockin' pantaloons?!

Post #13 - Dead Man Sitting Duck

If I live ’til I am about 75 years old, then there are roughly 15,800 days to go before I am dead. That doesn’t seem like so many days to fill up with useless stuff, I guess.

There is ultimately no point that can be reasonably given regarding doing anything in particular in this life. If one finally owns that beautiful thing to display in their parlour - well, what of it? In a few years, they’re dead and can never, ever admire it again; a whole eternity without it and so the point is so infinitesimally titchy as to equal practically none at all and so there really is no point whatsoever. If you struggle to make that movie or write that book or visit that country or whatever, before you know it it no longer exists, and does so forever. All we are actually doing is just killing time before we die. That's the way it is for businesspersons and hoboes alike. Obviously, one would prefer that time be painless rather than painful but I’ve tried that and it doesn’t seem to work for me. It works temporarily, to an extent, I suppose, but whoopdy-doop, right? Of course, there could be a reason for the way things are but that we just don’t know what it is, and yet that doesn’t ‘cut it’ for me. Maybes and maynotbes cancel each other out for scrutiny and so we are left with what equates to pointlessness. It’s really quite funny; and very tragic, of course. But what can you do? Ultimately, nothing. That’s what we’re all being forced to do in a mere smattering of days’ time and as that time is so infinitesimally titchy as to equal practically none at all, there really is no time whatsoever. All we have is nothing at all. Ha! – quite funny; and very tragic, of course.

…Well, that’s one way of looking at things. There are others, of course – all equally meaningless, I suppose.

Anyway, I hope you have a relatively painless day,

S. Gregory.

P.S.: Incidentally, this is a record, however uninteresting or interesting, merely of my thoughts during a depressed state.

Yeah, It's...

Yes, this is a box of ‘Yes’. It contains a white powder speckled with blue. What is it? “It could be for making all your dreams come true, I guess,” I considered. On the other hand, as macabre and controversial as it may sound, I couldn’t help thinking also, “Something for date-rapists?” Or maybe it is merely a concentrated laundry detergent as it says on the box. Maybe. It’s an Australian product but I’d never encountered it before, even though I also am an Australian product. My birth mother was Irish and I don’t know what my birth father was but I was born in Toowoomba, town of flowers, like that Geoffrey Rush chap who tries to be as excellent as I.

As may be gleaned from my Blogger profile, I like human-made objects. Not all of them, of course. Not trucks. Well, not aesthetically, at any rate. Or environmentally, unless they’re the renewable resource powered ones; but how many of those traverse our highways? And utes depress me. G-strings repulse me. Anal-flossing? Gross! Despite that technically it is not human-made in the sense I am talking about, still, though, I adore the female ass. (I am drooling as I type, actually. Ouch! Just suffered an electric shock. Although, strangely, it didn’t elicit pleasure from anywhere ILlicit, like my glans, for instance, from which orifice I was also drooling. Whoops! Did I write that out loud? Now, where was I? Oh, that's right, Earth. So...)

The fact is, certain human-made items appeal to me. Aesthetically. Sensually. Scientifically. Intellectually. I am kind of materialistic, to be honest, although I don’t think it is in a negative way; just like how we are all, to some degree, selfish, and that’s another word that has garnered a misleadingly negative connotation.

So, anyway, here is a box of ‘Yes’. Available only on the mad planet named Earth.

And maybe also on some other planets that we don’t know much about.

Oh, yes, and also quite possibly in a parallel universe.

Or an alternate reality.

Or just inside your mind. Turn the bend and you can't miss it. I turned the bend years ago and I haven't missed my mind at all.

Little Sister

This is our other cat, Coney. Since I posted recently about Edena it only seemed fair that I do the same for his sister. As you can probably surmise from the photo, they are not biological siblings. She is about 9 years old. She was a feral kitten who my partner saved but because of her early malnutrition she was a little stunted and is not the brightest among furry ones. However, she is quite lovely and gets along very well with Mr. Ed. Her name derives from the episode of 'The Simpsons' where Homer enters the third dimension and is stabbed in the butt by an airborne conical shape which he plucks out and throws away, saying, "Take that, Coney!", and which proceeds to pierce the fabric of the universe. Her tail as a small kitten was the very same shape as Homer's cone.

Her most amusing routine, of several, is as follows: She will climb a tree and, hugging the trunk like a koala, make unusual chirping noises, pretending to be a bird in hopes of drawing one close enough to catch. The big black crows on the protruding branch nearby will just watch her, wondering at such obvious feline folly.

Through The Muck Of Life...

My sickness finally seems at its last vestige. Took its time, though, and that’s not illin’, man. It is/was, rather, some kind of viral infection, I guess, and I did not like it, Sam-I-Am. I threw up the other morning – greenish eggs and ham and I am not joking. Errgh! Plus, as a special offer or some shite, this vile bout came with a bonus infliction of insomnia, which I still have (and may try selling on eBay – after all, someone was trying to sell a photograph of a ‘curiously vagina-shaped pothole’ and that is the truth). I’ve been up since 4AM and I’d only gotten about two-and-an-half hours’ sleep. ’Tis ridiculous.

I am glad that the virus seems to be dying. Yes, that’s right, all you vegans out there, “glad,” I said! The reason why I catch so many of the 'bugs' that go around is because of my annoying fatty liver condition, which I am working towards remedying; it's not a severe problem and will go away when I become somewhat fitter and healthier. For me, possibly the worst thing about being sick is that I tend to become confused; focus blurs regarding art and humanism and comforts and other eclectic mainstays of my life and this is, needless to say, unplea... - in fact, if it's needless to say, then I won't bother saying it! I have lines to learn, dawg-nabbit!, over the coming weeks for a film rôle I’ve procured; it’s a short film but mine is the lead rôle and I’m looking forward to it, so this virus must now completey abdicate the buffeted ottoman of my innards!

There’ll be more about this current cinematic foray as it draws nearer, incidentally, but what d’ya mean, “Big fuckin’ whoopee”? (Hee-hee.)

I am currently listening to Swiss band Yello’s 'Eccentrix Remixes’ album. Boris Blank and Dieter Meier – granddandies of techno. Yet, unlike so much of the bland electronica with repetitive beat thumps to have unfortunately evolved from their blueprints, these originals have actual, definite character and, more importantly, the talent to transmute that throughout their art. Quirky, yes, but also epic, moody and intricately imaginative, and, not to forget, fun. Their latest album, 'The Eye’, is being received, it seems, as one of their very best and so I excitedly await a hearken. The work of Yello is dumbly difficult to come by and hear in John Howard’s Chunderland; I’ll probably order it from Europe as I did recently with 'Flag', oh, yeah, chika-chikaaa.

Interestingly, I am finding this blog to have developed more of a personal-journal aspect than I thought it would, and I’m fine with that so long as I do not neglect representation of (my view of) the poetry of existence. I don’t mean that in any pretentious way but if it comes across like that then just call me Don Juan’s Lord and let’s be done with it! Seriously though, the way I see it, through the muck of life we need to try to keep an eye upon the glimmering shards of white-magical amenity to be kenned in life from this corner, from that abscess, from this grey cloud and this gutter. Hmm, that’s hard to explain well, especially when I’m not totally, but hopefully you get the gist of what I mean.

Here is an exemplification from French libertine, Paul Verlaine, from his 1870 poem, 'The Good Song':

‘… the sidewalk’s mire,
sycamores shedding leaves in the black air;
the omnibus, ill-hung on four wheels, rattles
and creaks, a storm of mud and old scrap-metal …
roofs drip, walls sweat, the broken asphalt creeps,
in heaps along the gutter sewage lies:
that is my route – at the end is paradise.’

(from 'Selected Poems' by Paul Verlaine, translated by C. F. MacIntyre, p.99 1948, 1976 University of California Press, U.S.A.)

I hope you have enjoyed my latest rambling idyll of sorts,
and here comes a full-stop > .

Masculine Pussy

This is Edena and I. Edena is our male cat. I am our male human.

When my partner adopted this Balinese in 1997 she was told that he was a she and, as orange female cats are rare (plus, of course, that he possessed an obviously smoochy nature), Shantoo was sold on him. She named him Edena after the character portrayed by Jennifer Saunders in 'Absolutely Fabulous' and years later we realised that he was not a she when he began territorial combat against another orange male cat, from the downstairs apartment. Although he is easily embarrassed, we still call him Edena for this seems somehow to appeal to his vain and prissy nature. He is now about 11 years of age. He is very personable, and enjoys eating, sleeping, gormandizing, vomiting, eating his vomit, playing with string, gluttony, pats and dining.

Nothing profound to say here, really; this is just a simple post. Um... I must say that cats are unusual in that they are mammals with the eyes of reptiles. And a little known fact is that both they and I have whiskers. Hmm. Cats. I like 'em.

Noggin On Heaven's Door

Okay, so one thing I want to know right now is: Is there no god, or is there a god, or is it a paradox and there simultaneously is and isn’t a god? After much pondering, the last possibility seems to me the most logical, I suppose. Are we our own god? Am I my own god? Seems possibly a part of it all. If I am you and you are I and all is one and one for all of the three and D’Artagnan makes four must-get-theres if Max Linder knew what’s what but his wife and he wound down via a suicide pact and so I simply don’t know!!! Too simple to know, brain-wise. See, the whole problem just gets me confused. It seems unbelievable that in all of human history no-one has known the most important thing that there is to know.

And if I drink a cup of tea now where does that fit into the scheme?

If any entity knows what’s behind the really, really thick brick wall at the end of the universe, or has a saved news clipping pertaining to any occurrence, however boring, which happened before the Big Bang, could they please let me know so I can start becoming sane? I’ll be the first human to have become sane, actually.

Madness, Sweet Madness

Well, there were several guests – all close friends of Shantoo’s or mine or both. There was much cake (too much for me but it's Shantoo's favourite food; I am more of a savoury-tooth than a sweet- so I had to make myself a tuna fish sandwich, which was not my ideal choice but savouries were slim pickings in the house that day). There was much Champagne which isn’t so because it was made here in Australia but it really is the same thing basically, let’s face it, as we eat our French fries on Swanston Street. After the bubbly, I shared around a bottle of English 'Old Fart' ale.

It was great catching up with one friend in particular whom we hadn’t seen in a year, even if later back at her house she fed Rupert and I the sourest candy ever concocted, which we all agreed must be known thereafter as ‘Gullet Sluts’. Eekkk! A great fun time, though. In between the gathering that morphed into a compact drunken party at our house (and Shantoo’s subsequent succumb into slumber) and arriving to drink raspberry 'Absolut' at 7AM at our confectionary-pusher’s place in Fitzroy, we cabbed it to the seedy 24-hour bar for booze and pool and jukebox music clips like ‘Wild Thing’ by Tone Lõc, ‘Bust A Move’ by Young M.C. and ‘Sabotage’ by Beastie Boys. And the sun came up and we didn't care; Rupert thought it was the start of the sabbath again, this Monday morning.

When later we got to the Fitzroy house, Rupert cooked us up a lip-smackingly rejuvinating breakfast and this was followed by a helluva lot of laughter, madness, singin’ along to pop tunes, and photographs and filming done on Rupert’s mobile-’phone. The wonderful effervescent madness of the day culminated in a venture to a faux Irish pub in Carlton where we staggered in, the three ‘dehydrated ones’ long searched for by many a loopy pirate type, or so we told ourselves through howling whirlpools of high-C’s laughter.

Ales And Cake

It was my partner’s birthday yesterday – Happy Birthday, Shantoo! – and what had we done?

I gave her some pressies: As she is one o’ dem Eighties-reprobate Cyndi Lauper fans, I got her a rare shaped picture-disc single of ‘She Bop’ (a full body photo of Cyndi in outrageous Eighties garb and the disc is cut to her shape, and it even comes with a cardboard stand for erection, ah-hem); this was, I believe, the first ever mainstream song about female masturbation composed and sung by a woman – a fact which my partner finds most, er, stimulating. Also got her a gigantic heap of They Might Be Giants c.d.s she didn’t yet have (and one d.v.d.), as they are her favourite band. Yes, thought I’d go with a musical theme this year – Da-dadada-Daaah!

We went for sweets in the city and then out to St. Kilda for an expensive selection of cakes for today’s cake fest. being held at our pad at 4PM for the attendance of local pals.

Then we performed some other actions not irregular to the human body but I’m feelin’ all shy-like to say.

A while later two drunkards appeared at our door. Stewart and, shortly after, Rupert. They had been at the pub and were full of hugs, swear-words, beer, of course, and arms filled with a large cane hutch with no shelves in it that they’d found on the street somewhere. There was rolling upon the floor from Stewart in sturdy laughter at his own mad comments and then he lay down outside near the gutter and smoked and talked about the mathematics of personality or something, and about appreciating people outside one’s own generation. Rupert kept trying to get the tobacco pouch off him and was filming us with his mobile-’phone’s motion picture camera, but then felt that he had to go to the supermarket at 4AM to buy tea-cake, and then off home to bed. The sight of the two of them trundling drunkenly across the road with cane hutch in arm put me in mind of claymation creatures escaped from a BBC children’s production and let loose upon a planet alien to their blurry antennae-orbs and bumbly cognizaances. My partner and I shared a guffaw over that, and no mistake!