Daisies In The Gutter

Look, Pappy, I Is Manure ...er, Mature!

2007-07-02T19:08:00.001+10:00

Saw this blog rating system thing on Darkneuro's House of Musings and decided to be a copy-puss. This is the rating I received:

Mingle² - Online Dating

One of the reasons given as to why it got this rating is because I've used the word 'gay'. Strangely, my usage of the word 'homosexual' wasn't deemed as problematic to them! What the fuck's all that about? Weird. And undeniably offensive! Especially when you also consider that writing things like 'cunnilingus', 'foreskin', 'orgasm' and 'I squirted ivory sap from the borehole of my log' doesn't seem to bother them at all. Silly manure-heads!

Unhealthy, Poor and Foolish

2007-06-30T23:47:00.000+10:00

I haven't been posting much over the last little while because I have been either too busy, too stressed or too tired. My sleeping pattern is all out of whack - I had been living in the vampire hours until a couple of days ago when I began resetting my internal timepiece to the conventional pattern for human beings by forcing myself to go to bed earlier and rising earlier in the day. It seems to be working, although I am as yet still spending all my awake time in a sleepy state. Coffee has been helping with this, and what's been helping at night are sleeping pills (unfortunately, a necessary evil, so to speak, at the moment but I figure this is okay because I won't be taking them very many nights). Anyway, I plan to start posting more regularly again next month, which begins in about three minutes! I'd better go get my pinch and punch ready!

We Two Are Four From Twins

2007-06-18T01:00:00.000+10:00

I am now two Uncles. Shantoozy is now two Aunts. On Thursday, my brother and sister-in-law were the recipients of miniature twin female humans. Not that I support anyone thwacking out more than one child - in fact, I am steadfastly against such idiocy on this horribly people-plagued planet - yet the sporadic occurance of twins, triplets, etc., being unintentional, is as welcome as any singular birthing. Shantoozy and I shall meet them in about a month or so when we fly up North for familial visitations. I shall attempt to inform them about the original "Star Wars" trilogy in an attempt to warn them early against the abominable so-called 'special' editions from the Nineties. Yes, they shall learn much of use from their wise Uncle Me.

In other news, I hear that Britain's Queen who don't play majestic rock'n'roll tapped something sharp a few times and then did arise Sir Salman Rushdie. Well, I'm sure that the author of the magnificent "Midnight's Children" should find it all a bit of silly fun, so, why not, eh? (At the risk of being an embarrassment to Sir Sal, I ended that sentence thus because I couldn't be bothered trying to extract an intelligent comment from my fractured brain; and aren't you glad I explained that?)

News the third: I have yet due four asses (as I call my uni. assignments for short), having procured extensions obtainable because of the tiring stress of being me at present. Fear not, for I am fine despite, and am handling the craziness of my life by the grace of the Divine Powers of the universe and beyond, whilst utilising a wondrous capacity for consuming diet ice creams. I need to kick these asses in themselves and get them bared for lecture-ous eyes to critique! Then I shall be free to ... well, by the time I'm finished them all I shall be free to start more, for semester 2 will have surely begun. Errggghhhh!

Here

2007-06-07T05:08:00.000+10:00

Here on Earth my current feet, although they are inside blue ug-boots, feel cold and brittle. My flannel pyjamas have planets and stars on them. My sinus cavities are murky. My teacup is yawning hollow. Well, actually, I have some Chinese Medicinal herbal broth here in another cup, to try to increase my energy levels. I am somewhat sleepy. I recall what is probably my latest dream, which, from memory, involved my hearkening to an unreal version of Allen Ginsberg’s Ballad Of The Skeletons with what seemed to my sleeping soul like quite a good lyric, but Philip Glass was nowhere to be heard. My current artistic endeavour has me working at finishing a short story I began many years ago; it is pretty shitty but can perhaps be made worthwhile. The two cats slumber upon their heated mattress. The clock tick-tocks. It is early and the sun shall be rising soon. I’d better get a move on, off to bed once more. I like bed. Bed provides a raft above the chaotic sea.

Hay, Hey

2007-05-19T01:48:00.000+10:00

I’ve been feeling really wasted lately, which is partly to blame for my lack of posting on mi blog. However, I’ve started a treatment of acupuncture and boiled herb broth so disgusting tasting I thought my mouth was going to be permanently disfigured from the pained contortions they put it through, so hopefully that’ll help. I think maybe I am getting another cold or something, or have hay-fever, or hey-Judaism, where you become a piano-playing, bearded Beatle or some such. I’d love to be one of those people of whom it can be said, “ He was never sick a day in his life.” Although, that doesn’t stop the sentence degrading into, “But then he just dropped down dead one day, aged 50.”

Various Vicissitudes Aside...

2007-05-02T23:22:00.000+10:00

Hello again all! Yes, I have been away too long, I know, I know. Please, as The Kinks say, stop your sobbing. … Oh, you mean to say you’re not crying because I was … oh, I see, well, then, rest assured I shan’t be staying long. Fine!

(He-he, and a jolly good laugh was had by all over that cute opener.)

But, seriously, this is just a quick ‘pop-in’ post to assure you all that I still breath here in this virtual gutter.

The main reason it has taken me so long to post again is that I’ve been wanting to compose a little paragraph or so in tribute to Kurt Vonnegut, who recently passed away, as you doubtless are all aware. I’ve been busy with uni. shit and dealing with the various vicissitudes of my body and mind, and once again I find my feet lagging behind the days on the calendar.

Anyways, I shall produce that post real soon, and then onwards and beyond unto the realms of more musings and illiteracy from the bilious gut, er, of the Idyller.

Wacky In The Noggin And A Boot To The Buttocks

2007-04-17T21:01:00.000+10:00

I don’t know what to write sometimes. Hmphh, some writer! Moving on, however...

I think my o.c.d. has been acting up lately. I’ve been thinking that all the books I own need to be in near-perfect condition in order for me to be a ‘proper’ writer because that’s the condition of ‘proper’ writers’ book collections, except I’m told that it isn’t, that I’m just being a little wacky in the noggin, and I think I might perhaps believe that may well be true, quite possibly. Ha-ha.

And I’ve been thinking that my poetry isn’t ‘real’ poetry. I’m not talking ‘real’ in the sense that Yeats or Bukowski or Verlaine is ‘real’, coz that’s really REAL poetry, from the tendons of the earth beneath well-worn slippers, and mine’s certainly not real poetry like their’s – it’s but a fact that few genuine poets exist – at least, I think that’s probably correct – although my slippers are slightly scuffed, shall we say? – so, no, I’m not talking ‘real’ like that. I mean that my poetry doesn’t feel ‘real’ to me (at the moment, anyway) because I don’t have a clear understanding of the varieties of poetic form. Most of my so-called poetry is free-form stuff, but does not, for example, the painter need to be able to draw accurately before legitimately experimenting with line and form? I think there are a lot of sloppy, semi-skilled poets in the world today, myself included; and I feel a pressing urgency to improve my poetical understanding and skills. Yet, am I just talking rubbish? I mean, perhaps Bukowski couldn’t adequately descant upon accentual-syllabic verse in relation to the iambic pentameter and its caesurae, and I think my o.c.d. has been acting up lately and that can be debilitating to me.

In fact, yesterday I was so discombobulated, and at times so dang tired, not to mention busy trying to get a uni. assignment in on time, which I failed to do – I think I missed the papers box closing time as the office was closed by the time I arrived, a bit after 5pm – that I didn’t do anything for the 118th anniversary of Charlie Chaplin’s birth, beyond pleasant well-wishing. A big-footed kick in the buttocks for me! I plan to do something this weekend, if not before. Watch a short and eat some custard pie with Shantoozy, at least.

Happy Birthday for yesterday, Sir Charles!

Moran and Morons

2007-04-08T23:43:00.000+10:00

Last night Shantoozy and I saw performing at Town Hall as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, that red wine drinking, cigarette smoking, cake and chocolate loving Irish chap from Ireland in Ireland, Dylan Moran.

Here's an accurate description of Dylan's performance style from The Internet Movie Database:

'Moran’s live stand-up comedy is unique in that it merges two strands of stand-up that seemed incompatible for a long time: sharp observational humor, and surreal and fantastical language-based absurdity. On the one hand, he has a clear influence from what could be called an American school of stand-up comedy that is heavily observational. On the other, Moran’s comedy is characterized by a use of language similar to the stand-up comedy of Eddie Izzard and Ross Noble: surreal associative leaps between on the one side observations and on the other fantasies, verbally painting bizarre and absurd worlds, often through a use of stream-of-consciousness narration. His language is often highly poetic, resembling a James Joyce that has had one too many.'

Some morons in the audience may have gasped when he posited that it really wouldn't be all that bad to have sex with one's own mother ("What's the worst that could happen? You might both feel a little embarrassed afterwards."), but Shantoozy & I laughed considerably during his one hour show, and now he's got me wondering, what are the spaces between the teeth of a comb called, and does Batman have nipples?

Pinnipeds, Penguins, Cows, Poo-Poo, Einstein...

2007-03-30T20:42:00.000+10:00

I am not surprised, as I’m sure neither are you, Dear Peruser, that it’s been a whole week since my previous blog update. Time goes by so quickly these days. I’m 34 years old and that cliché rings truer and truer every year. Oh, well. I have actually come to the conclusion, or to what seems like a supportable conclusion but may well just be a product of my own tiresome human arrogance, that I shall possibly die fairly young. I mean, is it likely that I will reach a colostomy-bag-usage age when I have Type 2 Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, and a weak immune system due to the constant stress of having fairly severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the resultant colds, ’flues and such that regularly bombard this wretched body in which I reluctantly squat? I have my doubts. Oh, well. There is, perhaps, a tad of self-pity here but more so just a bluesy sense of acquiescence. Maybe this mood extends from the fact that I think I am now onto my third viral infection in a row. Yippee!

On a less disconsolate note, here be information on some stuff what I has been up to in the recent past:

On Sunday the 18th of March, Shantoozy and her sister, nicknamed Turkey by me, who had flown down from Brisbane to visit, went for a drive across to Phillip Island, which is about 90 minutes away, by car, from ol’ Melbourne town. Our main reason for this trip was to see the fairy penguins, small groups of whom come back home each dusk from being three weeks at sea. Actually, I should mention that these li’l blue-coated chirpers are now officially called ‘little penguins’ as that is more true to their Latin name but I prefer ‘fairy penguins’ as it seems to suit them more, and also because they are all homosexual, except that that is a falsity I just felt like inventing and the real reason is the former one, that it just seems to suit them more. Aaaaanyways...

Firstly, we went to the Nobbies, where you can look out to Seal Rocks, which is a small rocky clump of land jutting out of the ocean just off the western tip of Phillip Island, where Australian fur seals make their homes. You must look through a telescope for a good glimpse of the critters; you can also take a boat tour out to there, which actually leaves from Melbourne, and I shall certainly be doing that in the near future! Seals and sea lions are my favourite animals, and long have been. So endearingly clompy on land, and so sleek and nimble in the water. Intriguingly odd, those pinnipeds.

We then went to Summerland Beach to watch the penguin parade. Shantoozy had the intelligent idea of asking a ranger there where the best position to view the penguins from was and they replied, on the sand in the upper right corner of the second stall of seating. So we sat there on the beach and the penguins did their best Charlie Chaplin impressions within a metre of us. You might think me a sentimental old fluff (to borrow a phrase from another favourite comedian, Groucho Marx) but I found it very funny and sweet. Some of them had such bellies full of fish that they could barely ‘tramp’ the shingle! We trod the boardwalk then to watch them returning to their abodes in the dunes, and to their partners and young-uns waiting there to greet them. By the time we left, the hubbub of their squawking had grown quite outrageous.

In my photo here, you can see some of the penguins’ housing as constructed by researchers on the island; there are also natural homes all about in the dunes as built by the penguins themselves, of course.

This is one of the penguins who was already home, who I snapped as we made our way along the boardwalk down to the beach:

We ended up spending the night on the island at the Tropicana Motel, which is an interestingly named place considering that Phillip Island is just the place for strutting about in nothing but a lei and promptly dying from hypothermia!

The next day we checked out some secondhand shops, visited a winery for some wine-tasting, and drove across to Churchill Island (a little island nearby) where we encountered the grooviest cows I have ever seen. They are called Highland cows. Here is a photo Shantoozy took of one of the quirky chaps:

And here is a photo I took of one the Highland cows’ poo-poos:

Now, in more reportage of my recent activities:

My episode of the quiz show “The Einstein Factor” was recorded last Wednesday (21st of March). I’d arrived as merely a stand-by contestant in case one of the scheduled contestants proved unable to go on and was initially informed that all looked fine and that I wouldn’t be required to substitute for anybody that day but then, about half an hour before taping time, the situation changed and, lo and behold, my time was up, the plank was laid, and I was forced to walk …straight to the make-up department and to have a shave and to get a substitute shirt from wardrobe as the one I was wearing was too dirty-looking and crumpled – so, as you can tell, I had arrived well prepared that day! (The silly thing is, of course, that I had arrived all prim and proper on my previous days as stand-by!) I won’t say as yet whether or not I won but you can find out when it airs in June – on the 24th, I think – but I’ll let youse know for sure closer to the date. Man, did I ramble on in my responses to questions about myself and my subject of Sir Charlie! Not to mention the lacklustre puns I injected into the activities, now nestling on the ABC’s cutting-room floor, no doubt (I hope!). Well, actually, there’s one stupid comment I think they will have difficulty editing out, unfortunately. Oh, well. Still, it was good fun.

Last Saturday afternoon, Shantoozy and a uni. friend - whom I shall here refer to as Jafar, not that it probably matters but people like their privacy, and could anyone be blamed for wanting to distance themselves from connexion with an Edels like I? Of course they could! However, I am so dang interesting that I can stand alone, a veritable king among poo-bottoms (AKA mammals, like Highland cows, humans, Einsteins, etc.)! – , well, we went to see Melbourne Theatre Co.’s current production of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons”. Was it any chop? Make no mis-steak, it was enthusiastically devoured by me. It cost a mere $16.00 on a ‘day ticket’, where you turn up at the box-office at 9am on the morning you wish to see a play and hopefully are able to grab one of these tickets, which don’t provide the best seats in the house, of course, although they are perfectly acceptable to me at a discount of around a whopping $55.00! We were fortunate this day because we just managed to secure the last three el-cheapo seats for the day! It really is a very good play, too. My enjoyment was barely hindered at all by the actors’ affectations of United States of American accents – the lead male actor, John Stanton,’s was the most sustained and believable (even ol’ Yankee Shantoozy said it sounded genuine) and the lead female actor, Janet Andrewartha (of the soap, “Neighbours”), 's was the worst. This John Stanton chap’s performance was wholly excellent, in fact, and I certainly would like to check out some more productions in which he features. Or at least acquire video footage of him struggling to remove a too-long hair from his nostril - yes, he may prove entertaining doing even that. He may not, too, though. Why am I rambling on like this, in such a foolish and prosaic fashion? Is it in avoidance of composing a 1,250-word critique of Saturday’s production for my Theatre And Drama class? I would not dare to guess!

Chilling Facts

2007-03-23T22:41:00.000+11:00

I am so very sick of this weather. (I’m so very sick of being sick, too, and in this horrid, torrid weather – I think I got over my last cold just as I was getting a new one!) Melbourne used to have pretty good weather – excellent, in fact, with coldly crisp winters, regular, if shallow, rainfall throughout the year, and the summers, while occasionally providing very hot days, were never humid and relentlessly sweltering like nowadays. Apparently last night was almost the hottest March night in Melbourne on record. And that is chilling news. Hurumph! Shantoozy & I simply must move to somewhere in the world where the weather is not going to become unreasonable despite old man Global Warming. But who knows when that will be possible? Hopefully someday in the not to distant future.

One can reason that 'twas, therefore, unseasonably hot at 12AM this morning when a new playing-station games console thing-um went on sale, so I hear. I also hear that the reception of the thing was lukewarm, yet, still, can you believe this?: a big deal is made (concocted, that is, by the company’s marketing division gits) whenever a new version of this machine is released, as though it were something really worthwhile. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt any new book release by Kurt Vonnegut has ever had a midnight launch anywhere in Australia, if even the world. It doesn’t make sense to me. Don’t get me wrong, I think the occasional computer-game playing is a fair enough diversion but there are people who will spend time at this entertainment preclusive to ever experiencing an Ibsen or Chekhov play in their lives! (And it seems to me a problem endemic to most computer-games that the player must spend a long, rather than a short, time in order to master but one of the blasted things.)

Now, if this sounds pretentious, well, then valuing depth and wisdom over flippant self-indulgence is pretentious – which it isn’t, and so there! Not that I mind flippant self-indulgence – au contraire, I cherish it like a googly-eyed pet, such as those rocks that were once such a fad – but all things in healthy balance, y’know, what-ho! And, frankly, if people spent more time developing their minds and hearts and less time fiddling with their joysticks then I hassit that there wouldn’t even be such problems as Global Warming.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t help that computer-games are something I, personally, get bored over after a mere few hours’ indulgence at, yet even regardless of this I find it rather sad and a bit irritating that so much cruciality is placed on something so ultimately insubstantial, over something that can prove enlightening, like a good book. …Or, just as good, if not better: a substantial, ‘real-life’ experience.

Anyways, enough bitchin' for me (but only for the moment - mahaHA!). There'll be information in my next post about what I've actually (not merely virtually) been up to of late, ol' beans, so hold onto your throttle-jostlers!

I Thant Cin'k Traighst

2007-03-12T23:32:00.000+11:00

I have caught the virus Shantoozy has been suffering with for the past half a week or so. My throat hurts, my ears are imploding and I thant cin'k traighst.

Citing Sightings Sites

2007-03-11T22:59:00.000+11:00

On the 19th of March, 2005, at Mayfield’s Bar in Collingwood, Shantoozy (the floozy - hee-hee!) videoed some footage involving a certain Northern European sex poet called Jerzy Beefkowski, who, if you must know the embarrassing details, holds a resemblance to a certain Northern Melbournian Idyller called Edels. You can view the creature HERE. It’s really not an especially interesting video but if you like bulky torsoes with skinny legs then check it orrn out!

Also, the short film, “Cedric”, with which I was involved late last year, should be ready and up on 'youtube' by about midyear. I didn’t mention it on “Daisies” at the time ’cause, well, I was just helping out on the shoot in a small capacity, and I may end up onscreen in a couple of shots, but that’s about all for my meagre contribution. The really good thing about this shoot was that they were actually working with film. 16mm. One of the filmmakers, Ed, was accepted into Victorian College Of The Arts on the merits of his work on this production, and the other co-writer/director, Yianni, is hoping for the same. I must admit that I was somewhat taken aback by just how good the rushes look. Although I’m not a filmmaker, I have done some work in the films or video-movies of others but never had I seen rushes that actually look professional, like these do. These young fellas, in my opinion, may possess real talent – from a technical standpoint, at any rate - and, who knows?, perhaps even artistically. I'm not guaranteeing anything, of course, because, well, the simple fact is that I really don't know nuffin'!

Anyways, dear bloggeroonies, check 'youtube' around midyear for your chance to win a sighting in this next spot-an-Edels contest, otherwise known as the blink-and-you’ll-miss-the-Edels event.

On Hooky

2007-03-05T23:09:00.000+11:00

Didn’t go to uni. today. I only had a one-hour lecture for Writing Fiction. I’d like to attend them all but it’s really the tutorials of this subject that are, for me, the important classes not to miss. Being that I have been out of high school and working at my writing for, ooh, about three or sixteen years, I feel that I am, frankly, less in need of attend these second-year lectures than most of my younger fellow scholars. In fact, let me face it, this subject is gonna be a bit of a breeze. And, no, there is no chance that they shall prove to be ‘famous last words’, I dare posit, touch wood, and may I try to resist causing that parasol leaning against the stereo cabinet nearby to bloom indoors.

I didn’t go to uni. today because my back muscles went haywire again yesterday. That will teach me for standing bent over for too long whilst shaving the missus’ legs! Oh, yes, indeed it shall, for I shall never help her like that again! … Oh, it’s the standing bent over part of the equation that elicited the bastardly response from my back? Well, shhh… Any chance to get out of chores… Nah! I actually enjoy the satisfying “chipper-chop! chipper-chop” of the electronic razor as it snips against the leg like a small shears-scissor through iron filings.

But mi back. Aww, mi POOR back!!!

Distillin' Mi Illin'

2007-03-03T22:57:00.000+11:00

Laa-dee-daa. What to write? Nothing. …Well, obviously not nothing – I wrote that previous sentence, didn’t I? – and this one. Wow, aren’t you glad? I’m not, particularly.

…Ergghhh! Man, I’m feeling crappy. Still ill.

I've just finished watching ‘The Benny Hill Show’. Prior to that, I’d watched ‘On The Buses’. Prior to that, it was ‘Are You Being Served?’ And prior to that, ‘Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em’. (No ‘George And Mildred’ tonight, though, disappointingly.) All part of Saturday night television’s regular Comedy Classics revue, hosted by some chap called Russell Gilbert whom I think is supposed to be funny but comes across instead as intellectually disabled, the poor dope. I feel awful watching him in case he is being exploited by the TV network somehow.

Anyway, I guess that makes me seem pretty dull, spending my Saturday nights like this, as I do. Yet, I suppose I am a bit dull. No more dull, of course, than anyone else, though. We are but human beings. I try to think of alternative things I could be doing tonight, of what might be more fun. Hmmm? Well, certainly not being ill would be better, for starters. Assuming I was, what then? What does society do? Go out to a pub, drink depressants and talk about inconsequential things and look at asses of people they are almost certainly never going to ball. – Blegghhh! Depressingly drab. Besides, I’ve got enough inconsequential things to think about without having to sit around a bunch of alcoholically retarded fellows exchanging such rubbish.

Um, what else?

Go to the movies. – No more exciting than watching good TV programs like I did tonight. Certainly, I don’t find such activities boring – provided that I am in the right mood – but they’re not exactly what one would deem wild and exciting. But, what is, really? And why do people (myself, at times, included) sometimes (or more often, for some people) feel that life need be wild and exciting? Comfort and contentment are much more tangible emotions.

…Ha! My mood is certainly a bit flat due to my being ill, so apologies to anyone reading this if my tone is coming across as a bit whingey. The fact is that, if you are feeling like it is, you can go take a long jump off a skinny peer – try Nicole Ritchie, if you’re young enough!

Um, what else could one do of a Saturday evening (besides jump off people suffering from eating disorders, what-ho!)? (What ’ho’? I don’t know that she doesn’t give it away. Boom-boom.) Um…

Go over to someone’s house and eat dinner and get pissed. – No more or less dull, really, than doing that at home with one’s partner.

What else?

Go on a date. – Well, that’s not applicable when you already have a partner. Of course, one could go out with the intention of having sex with someone (or someone else, if you’re in a sexually open relationship). – I could find that fun, but only if I were in the mood for it. Sex is overrated, I think. To me, it works nicely as one of life’s delicious side-dishes but the main course must consist of more substantial stuff. I’m interested in what this existential electricity is that passes through my whole body – indeed, my soul – and not just through my genitals. Ultimately, I much prefer having sex than merely having thoughts about it, as, frankly, it really doesn't seem particularly mysterious to me.

What else?

Go and keep reading Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Hedda Gabler’. – Okay, I shall!

A Fresh One (Again)

2007-03-01T22:58:00.000+11:00

University has begun afresh for the new year. My first semester subjects are Writing Fiction, Advanced Screenwriting, and Modern Drama. For that subject, this week, we are reading Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Hedda Gabler’; I have read ‘A Doll’s House’ before but that’s it, so this should be interesting. We watched a clip from a TV dramatisation of Henrik's ‘The Master Builder’, and I felt (rather cornily, I admit) that it should perhaps have been entitled ‘The Master-Bator’ instead, ’cause this whole scene was basically about how the dirty old builder wanted to erect big, firm spires on the tops of houses and how his young female friend, remembering (or fantasising – Ibsen couldn’t work out which aroused him more, I think) how, when she was 13, he’d kissed her, and who knows what else beyond – the builder’s fingertip hammering at her clit? or even more? - , was groaning in hot desire for him to take her out and show her his biggest erection. Very funny stuff!

Speaking of unfunny stuff now, I have some kind of viral infection. I got it free, and didn’t even have to pay a tip. My body was all so ache-crimped for a couple of nights that falling asleep and remaining under was none too easy, and by last night I had developed a cough but was physically drained enough to get a good, long slumber and now this morning my throat is feeling rough and swollen and my nostrils a bit drippy and, yeah, I just feel like crap all-round. Unhilarious stuff!

… Onto other news, I hear that the great Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar statuette. This is a real shame. No-one that good deserves the insult of winning something so shoddy as an award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Look at the wonderful company of ne’er-do-wins he leaves (and this is even excluding the so-called ‘foreign’ directors, who are too many to list here, what with my headache and drowsiness): Charles Chaplin, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Preston Sturges, Hal Ashby, Charles Crichton, Stanley Kubrick, and Robert Altman, to name big 'uns who never won a best director Oscar and but come to mind just now. And besides many other problems endemic to such silly rubbish, since when was art or entertainment supposed to be a competition? If you want that kind of aggressive shit, watch or partake in some sporting activity. Although, I don’t begrudge Scorsese his acquirement, for he’d long declared how much he’d love to win the award, and, despite how daft it is for him to have yearned thusly, I am happy for him because such a great artist and entertainer as he deserves to get what they want.

As a footnote to this, if I were ever in such a position to be nominated for an Oscar I would almost certainly accept it. The main reason for doing so would be the benefit of the public exposure that (often, not always) goes along with it all. And so let’s hope recent winners like Roman and Martin are now finding it easier to get proper funding for their projects, for even such big directorial names as these have, of course, experienced difficulties with this in the past.

… And the most important news of all: Shantoozy and I have been together for nine years today! Happy Anniversary, Shantoozy!

Amazingly Delicious, Deliciously Amusing

2007-02-16T02:32:00.000+11:00

I’m feeling happier now, thankfully. I’m feeling good, in fact.

Tonight (well, technically last night now, for it is past 2:00 AM as I write this) we went to dinner for Hissy Kitty’s birthday at a most amazing vegetarian restaurant. It’s called "Enlightened Cuisine". It’s at Southbank. It’s a Chinese vegetarian restaurant where they serve fake versions of duck, chicken, lamb, beef, prawns, crab, fish, and even shark fin soup (which we had and which was delicious – in fact, I believe we tried all the “meat”s except the crab), along with regular tofu and vegetable dishes and what-not. It’s basically for people who like the taste and texture of meat but don’t like to eat it for ethical reasons, and for those vegetarians who just want to try something novel. Seriously, the food is as nice as any similar food I can recall ever eating that contained real meat. The service was fantastic, too. Highly recommended.

I should also mention that Shantoozy took Hissy Kitty on the “Neighbours” tour, where you go in a little bus filled with British backpackers to visit Ramsey Street and other places around town where they film the show. It’s a ridiculous show, of course, and these two loonies are into it and had a jolly good time being intentionally ludicrous by taking this tour. They got to meet Harold Bishop AKA Ian Smith, who was one of the top handful of actors they’d hoped to meet. Shantoo said to him, “I’ve heard you would bring porn onto the set.” This shocked the attendant Brits, apparently. Ian replied that, no, he didn’t, then going on to confirm, however, that he is a dirty old man who eats meat, smokes, drinks and womanises (unlike the vegetarian, prudishly Christian Harold). Shantoo then went on to explain that what she’d meant was that she’d heard that he used to bring pornographic photos onto the set and hide them in places like drawers and such where they wouldn’t be seen on film but would certainly be seen by the actor opening the drawer while acting their silly character. It seems like it’s probably true, but of course he didn’t want to admit it at the official “Neighbours” tour. Hehe, deliciously amusing, however.

Back 'N' Black

2007-02-13T02:04:00.000+11:00

Well, my birthday came and went, as they are wont to do, and a slurpy-lipped thank-you to everyone for their wonderful pressies – and company, of course – but especially the pressies! Hawww-hawww! That was last month. Fuck, I’m a slack-buttocked entity!

Well, life has been moving along and I find myself intermittently surprised by the fact that my heart is still beating and I’m still breathing; I read the signals and know that I am still alive. Some moments have been good, others have been mighty crappy - such as they are just now, but I hope the down-ness ‘off’s itself soon and so ups the anti-depressive quantities of my existence on this calamitous globe, which is what it has always seemed to do when my horizons have been grey-skied and bleak. I am back here with a new post but - bleggghhh! - I’m not a ‘happy camper’ at the moment. In fact, if and when I do become happy again, if I had to go camping I'd slump right back down again, but, because this sentence is largely irrelevant, I advise you to not have read it. A-hem. (...a sleeve, a cuff, a leather-patched elbow on a cordouroy jacket...)

Well (yep, that’s three of ‘em in a row now – perhaps I should begin every sentence I ever write from now on with a ‘Well’ – or not, actually, for it would be stupid),…

Well, I recently had my audition to appear on ABC TV as a contestant on “The Einstein Factor” – subject: the life and films of Charlie Chaplin – and the other day received a confirmation telephone call, letting me know I’ve been accepted and that my episode shall be recorded in April. Now, those of you who read Rupert’s blog will, of course, recall that he appeared on this same program last year espousing on the subject of Errol Flynn. (Also like Rupert, I have been asked to be a stand-by contestant for a couple of tapings before my own comes up – which is good, as I could do with the money they toss one for these little endeavours.) I remember that neither of us were too surprised at the time that he got accepted, being that his subject was one of Australia’s greatest movie stars (if not, indeed, its greatest) – this is what made it such a clever idea of his to apply for the show, knowing they'd raise a patriotic flag to his idea (although, a cocaine-dappled erection would have been more appropriate to raise, but, hey, it's a family program) – yet I didn’t really think that they would be too keen to go for Chaplin as a subject – after all, isn’t he some English banana-peel-slipper from the dayes of yore, before our primordial ancestors evolved ears? – however, Barry at the studio said he thought it was an excellent subject and seemed genuine in his interest, even discussing with me the problematics of Richard Attenborough’s “Chaplin” biopic, and wondering if Sir Charles was a good person or not (which, doubtless, he was - a strange angel, in fact). I shall let youse know when my episode will be broadcast.

Well, there’s more I could say right now but I won’t. This is due to tiredness. Tiredness eventually makes one sleep. I shall be one of those ‘one’s, therefore, and trundle off now to slumberland. Nighty-night, dear reader.

I may not be happy but at least I am tired.

Happy New Year, Earthlings!

2007-01-23T18:47:00.000+11:00

Well, it's not exactly the day after my last post but installment 4 is here finally. Aren't you relieved?

To continue...

I spent New Year’s Eve with HissyKitty and her partner S., and, of course, Shantoozy. We all agreed it would be amusing to dress up and go to a goth club, so we did. (I remember that Rupert and I had wanted to do so, for entertainment purposes, a while back, but we never had, so I embraced the opportunity now.) We attended an event in the city, called 'Lash'. Didn't stick around there for long, though, as HissyKitty and Shantoozy wanted to go and hang out in the Botanical Gardens. We saw some of the fireworks and then spent an interminable time trying to cross the bridge over the Yarra River, stuck as we were in a massive, conjested crowd of revellers, but eventually we got to the Gardens and had a good ol' time with our brains in unnaturally enhanced states. I'd have liked to return to the club, as would S., but the femmes were adamantly not into it. It was a pretty good night over-all.

More soon!

My Holiday by Edels, mental-age zero

2007-01-10T23:51:00.000+11:00

I was in Queensland again, over the Xmas period, up ’til New Year’s Eve’s eve. Familial visitations. The weather, usually unfit for an Edels of my Irish-stock physique, was unseasonably acceptable, warm but not excessively hot, and not very humid; except for the last two days, which were not feral, yet, still, not to my liking. I still needed the air conditioning most of the time, but could handle it when it was not available so long as a fan was.

We spent Xmas Eve with Shantoo’s family, Xmas Day with my family, and Beat-’Em-Brutally-With-Boxes Day back with Shantoo’s family at her Aunty L’s house in the mountains.

Shantoo and I stayed at the house of one of my sister’s on the night of Xmas Day, where I drank excessively, something which I had only recently been able to do, and this is due, I believe, to the fact that I now know I have type-2 diabetes and am on medication and a better diet (except for the boozing, but, hey, it was the festive season!). I actually need to improve my diet some more still, but I have an appointment with diabetes specialist and dietician type humans next month so that should help me out there. More on this ailment in another post.

(And some of this post has been shamelessly pilfered by me from Shantoo’s blog, so apologies to those who may be hearing some of the same stories twice.)

Apparently, at Shantoo’s family’s house the festivities were not going so well. Her sister, T, loves playing pool volleyball whenever there is a gathering so she and her sister, C, and her 70-something plastic surgery victim Aunty B all got in the pool and were playing when C sister asked if anyone minded if she played topless, and there were no objections. After a while, however, Aunty B got jealous and declared her boobs to be just as good as Shantoo’s youngest sister’s and took her top off as well! Sister C was horrified that her 70-something year-old Aunty was taking her top off in front of her 29 year-old boyfriend. Shantoo’s family is a little bit ‘normal’ perhaps, but only a little.

… Okay, instalment 4 coming tomorrow, kiddlies!

Writing Of Writing

2007-01-09T23:56:00.000+11:00

To continue along my backlog of Terran exploits:

Writing of writing, as I was yesterday, things are looking positive for my having some writing, and an illustration, published in an hard copy anthology over in the States. I won’t be paid for my work but the publication is legitimate and the fellow behind it seems to genuinely like the work of mine that he has seen so far. So, hopefully, I shall be in print soon! Small cookies, of course, but it’s a step up from merely being published on the internet.

Not that there’s anything wrong with internet publishing – I’ve done some myself and shall no doubt do some more – but I’ve never been all that enthused by it. I suppose this is because it’s pretty darn easy to do – whether on a 'net-page of one’s own or by having a piece ‘published’ on someone-else’s site, it’s less significant to me because it’s considerably easier for someone to ‘print’ your wordings on the internet than for them to produce, or get produced, an actual, physical document. If someone is going to put in the effort to produce a professional, or even semi-professional, hardcopy volume of writings and they want to include some of your own work then, well, that seems to me to be a bit more significant, is all.

So, yeah, it’s a nice little recent seedling in my life, which shall hopefully come to fruition soon.

…Tune in tomorrow for part 3 in the mildly interesting saga of what I’ve been up to recently!

Well, Well, Well... Well?

2007-01-08T23:11:00.000+11:00

Okay, ’bout time I updated this fucker – ’tis a different year now, after all.

Well, well, well, how are we all? Well, I hope.

For your catching-up pleasure, I shall delineate some of my existential, experiential, monumental stuff and nonsense – in other words, sheit what I’s been doin’. Here’s the first part:

I received my uni. results for the final two subjects I had to do to complete First Year. Did well in English – a solid B. Was kept just 1/2 a percent away from a B in Theatre, though, same as in 1st semester. They obviously don’t fancy the idea of my undertaking Honours within their school, but that’s okay because neither do I. I actually received a letter from the English Dept. inviting me to major in English and go on to do Honours if I keep my results high enough, and this sounds more like it to me! Although, I am also considering possibly majoring and, if I am able, doing Honours in Cinema Studies. I’m not sure either way yet but I’m thinking that teaching movies may prove more fun (and less hard work) than teaching literature, when (or if) I eventually need to get an academic job to support my (possible – or probable?) insufficiently remunerative writing career. Then again, becoming a literary professor may make more sense, my being a writer and all. Besides (and this sounds more appealing), I’d prefer to try teaching the creative side of writing, rather than, say, the history of the modern English novel. Hmmm… I’ll have to see what transpires in the forthcoming school year.

Das Capital Marx Collexion

2006-11-27T23:55:00.000+11:00

First year of uni. is done! I haven't got my results back yet, though. Soon they shall come to me. Soon. Ooh, yeah!

This is not much of a post so far, I know, but then this is not much of a world. People kill people, tear down too many trees, blah, blah, blah. I get sick of the crap sometimes, humans' sickness crap.

Anyway, I picked up this little beauty at a second-hand shop on Saturday: "The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection". It's at least AUD$80.00 new but I purchased this for a mere AUD$29.00! It was the most desired DVD(s) by me so I was quite ecstatic to obtain it so cheap; or, indeed, to find it for sale in any shop at all, for it is an import from U.S.A., having not been released here, which no doubt it never shall be. I thought I'd be waiting a while yet before being able to order it in, due to the price. But Fortune smiled.

For anyone interested, it contains the Bros.' first five movies (excluding Humorisk, which was a short silent flick that was made first but never released - late in life, Groucho offered $$$s if a copy could be procured but, alas, it is still currently a 'lost' film). The six-disc set contains The Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933), plus a disc of bonus materials containing three interviews - one with Harpo, one with Groucho, and one with Harpo's son, Bill.

Sometimes fellows like the Marx Brothers make more sense to me than most anything else in this world. Honestly.

Also, they make me laugh lots.

The Beat Niked My De Soto

2006-11-19T03:02:00.000+11:00

So, I’ve had bad sciatica for the past couple of weeks, the longest that my back muscles, and the nerves in my back and legs, have suffered with this ever for. It’s painful and makes me hobble like an old fart, or sometimes like the Little Tramp and that’s ne’er a connexion I’d ever wished to share with Chaplin. It’s annoying, too, especially in how it sometimes is too distracting for me to carry out any more complex mathemalogical thought processing. I’ve also had a few bouts of irritable bowel syndrome, which wouldn’t be so bad if I actually enjoyed the pungent, bitter odour of diarrhoea.

I just watched Memento (written and directed by Christopher Nolan) again; showed it to Shantoozy, who had not seen it before. She found it a bit painfully confusing for her mood at the time, which was one of a certain intellectual exhaustion. She appreciated its being a great thriller, though, which it is. It’s up there with Les Diaboliques (The Fiends) (dir.: Henri-Georges Clouzot), Vertigo (dir.: Alfred Hitchcock), North By Northwest (dir.: Alfred Hitchcock) and The Narrow Margin (dir.: Richard Fleischer), as an exposition of clever, really well crafted pulp fiction.

Then, later, and a change of mood it certainly exemplifies, we watched two classic episodes of the classic 1950’s program, the Groucho Marx -hosted You Bet Your Life. The wittiest ad-libber on the globe! (…Yes, S. Gregory, and Groucho’s not too bad, either.) “Go see your local De Soto (automobile) dealer today, and when you do, tell ’em Groucho sent you,” and he’d waggle his eyebrows and wiggle his cigar. Yep, Groucho was an odd duck. Thank goodness for that! Makes me want to track down an ol’ De Soto and drive it around, with an electrically modified engine, of course. I’d be a regular Prince Charles, puttering around, telling everyone that Groucho sent me.

I’ve been writing. More on that probably in my next post. Hopefully. You see, I am not one of those writers who talks a lot about his projects as he is at work on them. Afterwards is okay, but during is a bit tedious, it somewhat dampens the mood for me. There are a large number of writers who love to talk of their own work in progress, so it certainly works well that way for some, which I am completely respectful of; it’s just that, for me, it works differently. I guess my method shows that part of me, at least, is living the experience I write about, and that part is exercised quite rigorously by my imagination. When I was younger I thought I didn’t have much of an imagination, if any at all. I used to think that adding things together in intriguing lateral ways was a simple talent we all had, and could hardly be the same as imagination, for that was a magical thing that ended in fireworks and orgasms. Although, it isn't.

I’ve been getting stoned and enjoying it. Not every day, just sometimes. Also, three of us shared a small bag of ... Coca-Cola, shall we say? ... that I’d found on the street on my way to a drama performance early one frosty Sunday morning not too long prior. (Please note, seriously, that just because I do something, like emulate a Doobie Brother, for instance, doesn't mean that you should, or that I wasn't in the wrong in doing so, or whatever.)

I’m getting my guitar overhauled this week. It’s finally actually going to happen. It’s quite a nice acoustic guitar, all solid wood, with a curved, two-piece back, and nice, gentle action, manufactured by Aria of Japan, probably in the ’70s. It’s a bit banged around but I really like it. I bought it … Well, I bought it twice, actually. The story goes as follows.

I bought the guitar for around $350.00, I believe, in the year 1990, in a pawnbroker’s in Brisbane City’s limehouse region, the dark and dirty Fortitude Valley. The nite club, Family, which was voted Australia’s very best nite club, is in the Valley nowadays. I was still attending high school back in 1990. My proficiency on the instrument improved at a greater pace now than previously with my first guitar, a disgustingly blunt clump of shit of plywood construction.

After some quite serious time at the instrument I changed direction with things and basically forgot about the guitar, and so I sold it to a friend of mine for some cheap price. He had it for many years but didn't play it much; his band's guitarist used to play it a lot though, and had it in his possess for much of that period. Eventually, having no tangible use for it himself, he sold it back to me. He actually, and fairly, traded it with me for some Transformers toy robots I had. I feel happy to have the ol' twang thang back.

1990 was the year I properly discovered and befriended Ernest H. Shepard and A. A. Milne, and the characters of their illustrated stories of the great Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends. A friend of mine dug Paddington Bear particularly, and another friend I had was most hep to Rupert the Bear, but for me it is always Pooh Bear. Isn't funny how there's comfort in bears? Just the other day I won, on eBay, a copy of the rare The Pooh Song Book, containing simple guitar chord tablature which will be perfectly suited to my out-of-tune fingers. I shall learn to play the songs. The music, apparently possessing just the right degree of whimsy, was composed by H. Fraser-Simson as handpicked by A. A. Milne. So, I’m not talking any Disney Company reinterpretation shit here. This is the genuine article. Proper Pooh. And, yea, I’ll play the songs on my steel-string guitar.

…Smoking ganga, playing acoustic guitar… What am I, an hippy? Hot dang, I’d sooner be a beatnik, and that ain’t no great thing. Too affectatious. I gotta be keepin’ it real, dig?

I am, incidentally, reading Milne’s adult comedy play, The Dover Road, and am enjoying it immensely. Fellow-humourist P. G. Wodehouse cherished this play as his all-time favourite. I don’t know if I’d choose it over Wilde exactly, but it is very humourous, and philosophises with an amusing, old-fashioned sense of fun and absurdity. The premise is very clever. But I shan’t ruin it for you by outlining a synopsis here; you’ll have to track it down and read it for yourself – I think it’s available for free in ebook format through Project Gutenberg dot com.

Well, there’s still something delectable and black at calm near the bottom of my coffee cup. I shall depart and drain the contents, just as you have taken the time to nourish your mind on my brief words here, and I thank-you for it. Until next time, goodnight and pleasant orgasms.

Checking Of Your Head

2006-11-06T20:39:00.000+11:00

Handed in my 2,000 word short story, now all I've got to do is hand in my 2,000 word short story. My other 2,000 word short story, that is. All of 'em autobiographical! But this last one is written in a third person narrative. So, like:

'Shane was a man. A great man. A sexy man. He would rise and go to the mirror and admire his hideous paunch and excessively grand family jewels. He then sat back down and continued writing his blog post with nobody the wiser. O, except the readers, of course. Yet there shouldn't be too many of them to worry about, maybe not e'en one.'

Anyway, to offset the possible bathos that scene might invoke, I shall briefly talk shopping. A recent purchase was the Star Wars Trilogy (Originals, of course) on DVD in their unaltered, unadulterated (or in other words, non-raped) versions. Limited Edition, so they will eventually become collector's items. Haven't watched them yet, nor e'en opened them; we are waiting for our big TV to get fixed (soon!) and these shall be the premiere films to be watched.

Then, I want to show Shantoozy Fellini's Satyricon, which is another one of the best things I've ever encountered in my life. It, too, is truly epic. It's about the ancient Roman demigods. The whole thing's real Ancient Rome type shit - barabaric and excessive yet a massive civilization! Highly recommended to anyone who likes good motion pictures.

Check your heads and later, dudes!

More At Last, Hooray, Ooh Boy, Big Whoopie, Who Gives A ...!

2006-11-01T01:27:00.000+11:00

Sorry again. I’m late again. Yet, then again, I was always a late starter. Later than my friends did I enter into puberty. Again, I was probably the last one of my friends to lose my virginity after a ludicrous amount of missed opportunities where I was far too timid and gentlemanly for my own libido’s good. I am the tortoise, not the hare; through patience I hope to succeed where certain others rush about madly, like ol’ Busy Backson, Rabbit, woodland friend of Pooh Bear, with no clear goals in mind and not actually achieving anything really worthwhile. Don’t misunderstand me, please, for I know I am not guaranteed of creating anything really worthwhile either, but I think the slow but sure path is the best way to high quality, truly professional work, and go suck eggs if you don’t agree, hee-hee.

Anyway, I have been quite busy of late. Uni. has been winding down for the year. Or should I say, rather, winding up, because end of semester is always the most stressful time on the scholastic clock. Theatre is finished with for the year. Our last production saw me directing for the most part, with only a small speaking role and also an onstage appearance as a dead man. The play was “Mad Forest” by Carol Churchill. It seemed to have gone across well.

I puttered along to the uni. bar afterwards with other budding thespians and got thoroughly trashed, a rare occurrence for me because I generally find bars and the people who go there a terrible bore (ooh, how Evelyn Waugh of me!), but I liked my drama class this semester and it was a good night. I wouldn’t want to do it very often, though. Me, an unexciting homebody? To some, perhaps. But not to the ones who matter to me. I like my hobbit-hole, that’s for sure. Yet, I am also aware of the importance of getting out there a bit and mingling with dickhead society every now and again, if only to make me vomit up a bit of chutney or something I’d gotten lodged in my throat. Ah, psychotic humanity! When will sanity and peace reign strong?

I am currently writing an autobiographical short story about ‘a place that has a particularly resonant presence in my memory,’ to quote from the question I am answering for English 12WYL. The story is about ‘a dark and mysterious place which my semiliterate adoptive father used to refer to as, “The lowboar’”. This place was a weird area of our abode that my siblings and I hadn’t really explored before.’ This place was on the ground floor of my double-storey, very Nineteen-Seventies, suburban Australian childhood house.

‘One of the bricks constituting the far wall was vented, and sharp pricks of light serrated the gloom of the room from out of the vent holes in the brick. Looking through the little windows in the vented brick one day, I espied green shrubs and yearned for the vast lush jungle lands beyond, which I could barely glimpse.’

I hope I can make it better than it is at present. I mean, I quite like the segments I quote here but, over-all, she’s kinda shaky.

More soon, Daddy-O’s!

Festivus Of The Shantoozy

2006-10-17T21:23:00.000+10:00

Festivus - (n.) a week of celebration centred on the week of the anniversary of one's birth.

Here is but a short post pertaining to Shantoozy’s Birthday Anniversary Festivus Celebrations.

A short while ago now, I accompanied Shantoozy to her Chinese Medical appointment, which is out at RMIT University in the sticks, even slightly past my own La Trobe University stomping grounds -cum- Henry Lawson story setting. Then, being the Festivus week of Shantoozy’s Birthday Anniversary, we thought it would be an amusingly tacky thing to do and so on our way home we decided to go for dinner at Smorgy’s, which is a massive all-you-can-eat buffet situated way out there near the two uni.s. It was probably the best of such low-quality dining experiences you could hope for and was reasonably priced, and much of the food was actually perfectly acceptable (vegetarian pizza, roast, good-sized prawns, Oriental rice and noodle dishes, lasagne, fresh donuts and flapjacks, and such). At one point I mentioned nervously that I hoped none of the Chinese Medicine practitioners we’d just seen would be eating there and Shantoo said that, no, of course they wouldn’t, they would eat more healthily than that and so we ate and a little while later who should we see but someone who was not a Chinese Medical practitioner, well, not one of hers anyway, just a regular Jo/Joe, like us, but then we did see the head practitioner we’d visited earlier, sitting down, dining away! We are pretty sure it was he, anyway. He’d occasionally glance over at us in a friendly demeanour. It’s not that interesting an occurrence, to be sure, but it was odd.

The main gift I gave Shantoo for her B’day was Owl (spelt WOL, of course) perched on one of Pooh Bear’s honey pots in the form of a ‘Royal Doulton’ figurine. She already had one of every other character from the 'Winnie-the-Pooh' series except for an Owl, which seems to be the rarest one to obtain. She was a smiley Shantoo-the-Pooh when she got this little trinket, and then I was smiley, too. Ain’t that cute!

All in all, Festivus was good, except that I felt a bit down and (or – I can’t fully remember now) stressed for a couple of the days, but we shall do some more fun stuff soon to make up for that.

There's More Where That Came From

2006-10-11T22:54:00.000+10:00

My posit was wrong! Again! Hooray!

A continuation of the previous post:

But I like girls I can talk to. I love bodies, make no mistake, but I like there to be a Soul inside. She must have heard the word ‘literature’ before I’ll find out if she’s heard the word ‘cunnilingus’. Hee-hee!

Well, I’m simply being honest.

And that’s one thing that all books must have before you can call them great. Honesty. The author must be willing to look beneath surfaces, even their very own, and show us what goes on there, and wonder why. And when we wonder why, too, and can see the manner in which fellow humans have dealt with existence and their specific situations in the complex, somewhat tatty web of life, then that, to me, is when a book is doing its job. The writer must milk the Earth for truths. Writers are no less helpful than scientists; we are simply mathematicians of the heart. Of feeling. Sometimes we, like the scientists, don’t know the right answer.

The best things in life are always ultimately free. I mean, you can possess a tangerine-coloured Peugeot but if you cannot be content, or are anally retentive, then you do not possess as good a version of the experience as you could. A poor man can look at a lump of resin he owns of interesting shape that he found out in the country one January and really see lightness and gentleness glistening off of it and feel pretty content, even though he is poor. We cannot, perhaps, choose the life we lead but how we choose to experience our life is ultimately up to each of us to decide for ourselves, I posit. A character in literature – dare I say, the character of a good book itself – and I don’t mean The Good Book, The Bible, which is actually kind of a bad book in that it is authorativley declared by some as a work of non-fiction to lure people to their knees – can exemplify this sort of possibly helpful philosophizing.

So, yes, I suppose I philosophize a bit. I suppose that any good writer does. I have my head in the clouds sometimes and I suppose that’s why I’m not concerned with fashion. The clothes I wear are the ones I largely have chosen, rather than those which others have chosen for me via billboards and videoclips. But, er, um, you know, reliable threads are a good thing to have. They stop one being arrested for indecent exposure. And what, by the way, is with those couples in movies who have obviously just fucked a blue streak (it is legal to have intercourse with a blue streak in certain states of the union, incidentally, mainly the sexual union), what is with them, I ponder, that the woman must cover her titties when they are both sitting up in bed, talking? (The humans, that is.) What girl does that, unless it’s in a really cold woodshed or some such place? And I don’t know about you but I haven’t ever done much fucking in woodsheds during Winter.

My writing is my ultimate mistress, said the writer. I think that’s about right, too.

Bookish, Yet Wacky. Wacky, Yet Bookish.

2006-10-10T17:05:00.000+10:00

I was just out front milking the garden, for I hate to throw away empty soy milk cartons if there are any usably loose droplets of milky refreshment and so I always make certain to shake the carton out fully on earth’s soil before I toss it away to remain mummified for centuries below the surfaces of our footfalls in some ghastly landfill’s stomach, when I thought, I must look odd to passer-bys sometimes but there really is some semblance of sanity belying the existential modes of my wacky actions. Wacktions. Small fractions of wacktions. Etcetera (in its unabbreviated version, did you notice?).

Nonetheless, I am also somewhat of a bookish person. I can relate to the lifestyles of certain other bookish writers like Virginia Woolf, A. A. Milne, Stevie Smith and Emily Dickinson, as I image they’d potter about their libraries, admiring the materialistic aspects of their collection, and then get reading and then achieve sparkling artistic inspiration. I love books. They are one of my very, very favourite things.

I love what’s in them, whole worlds and inner journeys, and a lovely aroma wafting off the physical pages. You meet great friends in books, and they don’t think you are strange for enjoying to sniff the pages of books in public places, sometimes even around children. Yet it’s a weird relationship you share; a papery connection where you get to know the author but they don’t get to know you - until, perhaps, at death. I think that one actually connects more with the characters of books, like Winnie-The-Pooh, Jay Gatsby, Boswell’s Samuel Johnson LL. D., and fascinating cohorts, than with their authors. Nonetheless, that still makes two great connective opportunities to help you to not feel so lonely in your confusion about the world.

Another one is, of course, with other actual human beings; people like Bob what ya hang out wif at da boozer. Or sweet, curvaceous Miriam who likes to get naked and together.

…Yes, yes, I said this post was gonna be about Shantoo’s Birthday Festivus, which wasn’t all laughter and success, but I appeared to have misled you, even as I misled my own grey brain-box device that you can’t smash with aeroplanes, other than by physical piloting on into my physical body. The post relaying information pertinent to Shantoo’s Birthday Festivus shall be the next post after this one. I posit.

I Am Titular!!!

2006-10-09T23:15:00.000+10:00

Well, it was Festivus for Shantoo's Birthday Anniversary just recently, and I'll write a post about that next. O Brother, has there been a bunch o' stuff I been doin' of late keeping me away, like a randy bull cordoned off from the paddock of cows, from posting afresh here. I have been composing poetry. I have been reading. Shantoozy and I spent a night at the grand opera, in the second best row in the house, on these tickets she'd been given as a thank-you from some market research company she'd fill in a survey for. I went to the Picasso 'Love and War' exhibition. I watched 'Fantastic Four', the recent movie. It was quite good for its genre, which is valid yet necessarily limited. I've got zero problems with that every once in a while. I must say, though, I think they should have been called the 'Elemental Four'. Soon Marvel shall release 'The Iron Man' movie, starring Robert Downey Jnr. as the titular super-hero, a role that Downey campaigned for and won. I've hung out with friends, and been generally a little more energetic than usual. Yes, there's been sex and food and laughter. There's been songs sung in the kitchen whilst preparing hot vessels of invigorating brown gold, too.

Off And On

2006-09-24T23:57:00.000+10:00

It's been a little while. I'm off for a week's mid-semester break this week and shall write some proper wordings here. Just quickly (and boringly) I did a little theatre piece last weekend, just for school. I watched "Zardoz" starring Sean Connery in his infamous orange nappy, and some other films, like "Cherry 2000" (another sci-fi thing) and goodness knows what others. Done some creative writing. Got a soothing massage yesterday. What else can I bore you with?

Hmmm....

What about if I just say, every woman wants to fuck me and I am the greatest person ever, ooh, boy, am I worthwhile, yessir, the best of 'em all?

Well, it would be insane, wouldn't it? So, I'll be off for now. Ta-ta, chappies!

The Point, While Certainly Not Everything, Is Definitely Something

2006-09-09T22:42:00.000+10:00

She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes, yee-hahhhh! And when she does she'll return to my boudoir for a fresh romp! I'm speaking metaphysically, of course.

??? Does it compute ???

This information has not been authorised.

This computerised page will self-destruct in approximately ... er, ar ... Well, let's see, how long until Greenland has completely melted away and people finally realise it was time to stop driving gas-guzzling automobiles several anti-conservationist milestones back?

Anyway, the point to begin with was, here's a new blog post for youse all to peruse and abuse. (Go on, it likes it.)

What's happenin'? Well, I'm eating an avocado, mozzarella and coriander sandwich as I type this sentence about my eating an avocado, mozzarella and coriander sandwich as I type this sentence about that.

What else, seriously? I have been doing a bit of writing. And tonight, enjoying the regular Saturday night 'British comedy classics' batch on Channel 7 - "George And Mildred", "Doctor In The House", "On The Buses" and "The Benny Hill Show" - I got some fine inspiration for what will probably be my next major project. More on that as it develops. Which shall be when? Actually, as soon as my bedraggled carcass is able; I am very keen to get this project up and going.

We sent off our application form to foster a greyhound yesterday. Actually, it's very rare that they will allow anyone to foster a dog on the day before you actually ask them to, for it is impossible in this particular realm, at this particular time. Please call back last Tuesday.

Also, I have been going to uni., doing poos (sometimes even while at uni.), feeding the cats, book shopping/browsing, noticing firm breasts about the Earth which look ripe and succulent, so hand over that fig-apple, Eve!

I have also done things a mature man of my age normally does but I am too embarrassed to here expose the shameful boredom of such necessities as paying bills and acting well-mannered in what's known as an human society.

Words From A Great Writer*

2006-09-02T01:19:00.000+10:00

Listen:

This is the opening to a book by a true genius called Kurt Vonnegut, entitled ‘Cat’s Cradle’ (I bought this book yesterday for $2.00 in a Salvation Army opportunity shop):

‘Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

Jonah – John – if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still – not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there.

Listen:

When I was a younger man – two wives ago, 250,000 cigarettes ago, 3,000 quarts of booze ago …

When I was a much younger man, I began to collect material for a book to be called ‘The Day the World Ended’.

The book was to be factual.

The book was to be an account of what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.’

Can’t wait to read this book!!!

(*And Also From Kurt Vonnegut. Ahem.)

Catching The Greyhound

2006-08-28T00:04:00.000+10:00

Recently, I ventured forth to the Bru’s house. He’d bought a bicycle off eBay and it had come deconstructed. Being that neither he nor his boyfriend is mechanically minded he decided not to ask me to ally its greasy, alloy-framed dots because I am not mechanically minded either. So, he asked Shantoozy – she of the uncanny mathomechalogical cognisance.

These two North Melbournian loonatics live with four dogs, and have a fifth whom they are (if they can both agree that it must be done, which I doubt) offering up for a new home. This puppy is the daughter of two of their yippety-yappety brood. Some fellow supposedly bought her from them (via the internet, I think) but then wanted to pay them with part of a money order they would cash, having them pass on the rest (3,000 Euros!!!) to some mysterious third party. Fortunately, they recognised this as some kind of dodgy behaviour practised by drug-dealers, apparently, and, sensible fellows as they can occasionally be, didn’t want any part of it, least of all the part where they give their lovable puppy away to some degenerate fuckhead who’ll dump it along the freeway or take it swimming wid da fishes. Anyway, this puppy is one hell of an adorable furry bundle of mischief, and meeting her has finally swung Shantoozy over to my corner in now wanting to plonk an hound down in our hobbit-hole wif us and the two felines. (No Hefner bred ‘Bunnies’ here, unfortunately.)

Anyway, Hissy Kitty told us about G.A.P. (Greyhound Adoption Program) (Victoria) where you foster an unfortunate ex-racing/ ex-breeding greyhound until it becomes familiar enough with the human home environment, which takes about one to two months; then it can be adopted out to a permanent human family. If, however, you fall in love with it, you have the option of keeping it permanently yourself. We are just going to see how it goes and what shall most likely wind up happening is that we keep one while continuing to foster, getting our permanent pet hound a new playmate every one to two months, and that way we can keep helping this very worthy cause.

Pretty much anyone can foster a greyhound, so long as you live in Victoria; if you live elsewhere, I imagine that there is an equivalent program in your state or territory, and no doubt not just in Australia.

It should be nice to have a flesh and blood ‘Santa’s Little Helper’ about the abode (the two dimensional ones are tricky to feed and you get a really bad paper-cut type of wound if you pat them). I grew up with dogs and other pets and my folks eventually moved to a small acreage where Mum runs an hobby farm, mainly for the eggs and because she is a loony. Well, what can I say, some people like having animals around and some people don’t (and some people like Animal from ‘The Muppets’ and I do, too, but that is an utterly irrelevant point).

Groucho Marx, himself a dog-owner, said, ‘Outside of a book, a dog is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.’ I’ll still have plenty of time to write and to read because the greyhound will be snoozin’ most of the time. Greyhounds are fast (indeed, the fastest land mammal on Earth!) but they are also lazy. They have an high metabolism, however, and so they don’t need to be very active. Something like half an hour’s walk-time per day is all they require, and they can sleep for up to 20 hours each day! Just like a uni. student, in that respect.

I think we should get along splendidly. The cats and the dog, too, for greyhounds are very good around other pets. (No, no ‘Penthouse’ pets around here either, unfortunately, but if you know any who also need a foster home I’ll be glad to take one or two of ‘em in, especially because I hear they breed like ‘Bunnies’.)

Let's Have Fun With Pizza!

2006-08-18T23:25:00.000+10:00

“Are we paying for the pizza with the credit card?”

It sounds so ‘adult’ when you say things like that.

“Well, I don’t think we have any cash on us,” she replied.

I check my wallet just in case. I pull out: one almond. “That’s in there as a good-fortune charm to make sure I never go penniless; in other words, to ensure that the last thing I’d ever pull out of my wallet is an almond,” I exclaim. “I must need a new wallet.”

So, we used the credit card. Shantoozy had given the last of our cash to the dentist because Shantoozy went to the dentist today. She is a grown woman and she knew she had to go, so no-one needed to force her there, wailing and resisting. When I have to go to the dentist I know it, too, and go there even though it will hurt a bit and be boring.

I am thirty-three years old now, and for most of my life my favourite food has been pizza.

Only after I’d noticed she was finding eating her pizza quite painful on the ol’ muncher, did I latterly find out that she had actually undergone a root canal while in the dentist’s chair.

If it were me instead, she would have heard every facet of my dental ordeal in explicit detail:

“…But the eighth time Doctor Renson put the dental saw’s unforgiving interrogator to my second premolar I hearkened a slight octave shift, thus realising that the blades now carving out a higher pitch of air were rotating ever so slightly faster than previously they had. This was due, obviously, to the fact that this particular layer of the tooth was showing the beginnings of tartar-induced decay and that’s strength had been subsequently compromised. Then the sawing desisted. The dentist retracted the saw, sighing through his quavering hygienic face mask, as I…”

Well, she has the male brain in our relationship and I have the female brain, or so ‘Blog Things’ informed us when we sat their little quiz. Then again, they also told my friend, who is in an established pop-punk rock band, that he was ‘emo’ and he swears that ain’t the facts.

We kept eating the pizza. Shantoozy was down to her last slice and became concerned that I was about to commit theft when I asked her to shut her eyes, reaching as I was for her exposed vegetarian triangle.

I beseeched her not to worry, that I would not eat her final slice and, because we have constructed a strong, reliable bridge of trust between us, she relaxed and closed her eyes. I held the pizza slice above her head and told her to open her eyes as the pizza slice hove slowly into her field of vision just like the triangular Star Destroyer at the start of the original ‘Star Wars’ film, guided by my hand, and accompanied by laser-beam blasts emitted from my mouth. Half an olive was Princess Leia’s spaceship and it got sucked up to the bottom of the slice, just like in the movie, which was something else I loved as a kid, and as a kid, boy, was 'Star Wars' something else! People born later than the Nineteen-Seventies really don't know just how impressive a cultural event the original 'Star Wars' trilogy was.

Of course, at my current age one does ‘adult’ things like devote yourself to your art, and fuck regularly and soberly, and partake of the occasional metre-and-an-half long party-line of coke, and you keep your toys packeted ’cause they’re worth more that way.

Yet, I don’t really like that last one. I prefer it when toys come in a box that you can open and close, and remove from and put back into, without damaging its novel aesthetics, unlike blister-packs where you have to rip the plastic bubble off of a piece of backing-card to get at the trinket inside.

I still have the action figure collection that I built up in my childhood, and even though I now appreciate the injustice of their manufacture by kids in a sweatshop in Hong Kong, I also still have my inner child, whom I hope shall always be there despite the evil that human beings perpetuate like Darth Vader or, from Mel Brooks' 'Spaceballs', Pizza the Hutt.

Capt'n Keef

2006-08-17T20:23:00.000+10:00

Now I have finally seen “The Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl”. I’d heard it dubbed ‘the new Indiana Jones’, but this is going too far. It lacks the wit and the imaginative thrills of the classic Indiana Jones trilogy – in all but one area, ultimately the most important: the lead character. Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow is inspired – it’s pretty high praise, I know, but I dare say Captain Jack is a better action hero even than our beloved Indy. Without Depp’s eccentric portrayal (based on Keith Richards! Good ol' Keef, the tree fella, as in, a fella who falls out of trees, like in Fiji, for example) this movie would have been merely another acceptable yet missable actioner, but this is a good and fun movie, and I’m looking forward to meeting Jack again, and that shall be real soon because Shantoozy has been hankering to see it since it came out however many months ago.

Love And Misanthropy

2006-08-12T02:31:00.000+10:00

It’s not that I haven’t been wanting to post, I just haven’t felt that I have had anything interesting to impart. I’m really kind of a dull person, that is one whom the exciting set wouldn’t find interesting, but I don’t find them interesting either, and I generally find myself interesting, although I can also be tiresome and my brain, which causes this tiresomeness for me, and maybe it’s my heart, or soul, as well, or instead, but anyways it contributes to wearing me out.

And then there’s the difficulty in finding anybody else who isn’t dull. There are a few that I have found, true, but it’s difficult to find warmth on this crust. O, so many cold people, and solipsism ain’t the loveliest state to visit by a long shot!

Of course, this has been written while I’m in such a worn out condition as previously described. Bombarded by the searing radioactivity of this computer screen, my eyes smart like empty camel humps. I'll trundle my weary carcass off for now. Sincerely, better fortune next time, o appreciated perusers of this small-time gutter. Thanks for dropping by.

Love and misanthropy to all!

Announcing: The Engagement of Shantoozy and Edels

2006-07-29T23:05:00.000+10:00

Now a few words to honour this occasion (that had, by the way, taken eight years in development, planning and sitting looking vague on the shelf, which itself looked vaguely uncomfortable under the weight of it all).

This event had been dubbed:

Mr. Edels makes an honest woman of Shantoozy.

Rumour has it that on a cool and rainy New Years Day in 2006 Edels took Shantoozy for a walk to a small, yet romantic, park in Brunswick, Victoria. The scene was one of beauty and romance, and there Edels got down on one knee and asked Shantoo to marry him, presenting her with a white gold, half-carat blue-diamond ring (and then asked her to wash the knee of his trouser leg when they get home). (See photos - of the ring, not the knee, and not any body part kind of ring either - unlike the knee, let's keep this clean!) Shantoo, of course, said, “Yes” (the fool!). They then went out for a romantic dinner to their favourite (cheap) restaurant. When asked to comment on the proposal, they both agreed, “It was very beautiful”. (Edels blushes.)

Six months later, to the day, the official engagement party was held in sunny Queensland (unfortunately that's where it was) on the Gold Coast at Shantoo’s Mother’s home. Yes, the Family Edels and the Family Shantoozy were drawn together for the first time. Although conspicuously missing was Shantoo’s little sister and bridesmaid, Cherry, who was in hot pursuit of Scottish love in the Himalayas at the time but was able to call and well-wish the happy couple. Also, Edels’ best high school friends (rumoured to both be ‘best men’) ("And believe me, it is only a rumour!" - Edels), Chilly Coldwoman and The Bru, also turned up for this momentous event.

The highlights of the evening included the early arrival and departure of the S, T & M team, Edels parents being generally charming, that bore Kelvinator (Shantoo’s other sister’s pseudo-partner) falling asleep in an armchair, Aunt Bezzy not being the star of the party despite her status as some kind of dethroned silent movie royal, and Chilly Coldwoman (straight man) getting drunk enough to pash (French kiss) The Bru (gay man). The Bru ended up having to push Coldwoman off him!

In all, Edels and Shantoo report that “It was a very fun and silly, yet momentous, evening.”

...So there you have it, folks. It's too late for me now, and perhaps that's why this post was so late itself in appearing! Hee-hee-hee!

"Can You Speak Bocce?"

2006-07-04T23:21:00.000+10:00

"Late Again?"

"Yes, late again. Sorry."

"You've been late with posting afresh a bit lately, Idyller!"

"I know. I said sorry, though."

"Yes, well ... You'll be late to your own funeral!"

"Ha, yes, I recently had a dream where, from as best as I can recall, I had died and become a ghost and was in a flustered state because I was literally running late to attend my own funeral. When I finally arrived at my grave, the funeral was almost over and I was feeling depressed that I hadn't gotten to hear what was said about me there."

"Was that a mere dream, or a premonition of the future?"

"Um ..."

... I am in Brisbane at the moment. Shantoozy and I flew into Surfer's Paradise ... well, Coolangatta airport, to be pedantic ... last Tuesday afternoon. Her Mum lives on the Gold Coast. We had a big party on Saturday but more about that soon (i.e.: in my next post). We are now at Shantoozy's sister's place. I call her sister "Turk". It is an abbreviative from "Turkey". She gets nervous when Thanksgiving rolls around and she and I happen to be in the same city together and I have a grumbling belly.

Brisbane is a crummy city in many respects. I grew up here, although I wasn't born here, and I left it because of its crumminess. For one thing, it is too close to the sun. Turk's books' spines are faded and, depite that it is Winter, one has to wear sunglasses outside because of the intense glare of the sun's laser beam bombardments. It is Winter, and yet I have experienced sweating during the daytime! This is not quite right. Not quite right at all, I tells ya!

Here's another thing, a most odd thing, but indicative, I feel, of the state of the people of this wretched place. I went to several cafes today looking to purchase a cup of fair trade coffee. One's waitress knew what it was but wasn't sure if they served it; none of the others knew what I was saying. "What?" asked one chap, "Filtered coffee?" "No," I replied, "FAIR TRADE coffee." "Fair trade coffee?" he said, "Never heard of it, mate." I explained at one cafe that fair trade coffee was actually coffee which was ethical, and at another cafe that it was non-exploitative, but they looked at me like the bartender in the Mos Eisley cantina who said of C-3PO and R2-D2, "We don't serve their kind in here!" as though I were C-3PO and had just spoken some Bocce to them, or another of the many alien tongues programmed into my droidal memory banks.

More from this 'hive of scum and villainy' real soon, folks!

I'd Sooner Watch That Faux Comedy, "Friends"

2006-06-24T23:34:00.000+10:00

Grrr! I’m sick of having crap friends! I do have good friends but I’m speaking here of the crap ones, past and present. The liars, the egomaniacs, the selfish, the deceptive … the genuine crazies, and these people are all genuinely crazy in one way or another. Then there’s the crap associate friends. You know the ones – they’re most often the partner of either a crap or non-crap friend, and they are fucking annoying.

Grrr! The dickhead who assures you that you can temporarily store your furniture and full packing boxes at his parents’ house but who then, at the eleventh hour, realises you cannot, thus costing you a few hundred dollars in storage fees you could have otherwise re-arranged things to have avoided paying, but who gets seriously mad at you because you didn’t collect his broken umbrella that you accidentally left at a mutual acquaintance’s house for a couple of days, even though he had told you that he would collect it himself!

Or, the immature ’knuckle who won’t let any male smoke a joint with his girlfriend if he’s not there, in the highly improbable case that they shall end up having sex together!

Or … well, I could go on, but I trust that you get the idea.

Oh, I’m such a soft-hearted fool at times! Okay, that sounds melodramatic but it is true that I’ve been taken advantage of by supposed friends, which has upset me, of course, but I would rather be the kind of fool I am than the cold and callous kind like these folks. These people think that a stony demeanour casts the sure line to success, but they are wrong; there are plenty of people who’ve achieved contentment (which is generally what one is ultimately looking for in success) while being nice, empathetic human beings, and I don’t believe that the assholes ever truly achieve this goal.

I’ve been forced to discard a number of relationships over the years because of the comparatively severe manufacturing flaws, as I here loosely phrase them, in those certain people. If this sounds like I myself am being a bit cold, well, I guess I am, but only because sometimes one has to look upon and react to a life situation with an element of objectivity – I have learned that this is true, for, unfortunately, without such an ability for self-preservation the ‘softer’ people would be pummelled and the human race would, ultimately, be quashed in the furious scurry of foot upon forehead performed by those granite-hearted nincompoops trying futilely to be the ‘best’. ‘Softer’ shouldn’t mean ‘weaker’, in such respects; it’s like vinyl and porcelain dropped on the floor. Anyway, ‘forced’ is the key word in this issue; it would be preferable to not have to end a relationship but sometimes you simply must. Life is not easy.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t bother me to lose someone I’d misperceived as a friend so long I still do have real friends, and there are certain people (not many, I’ll grant) whom I know beyond any reasonable doubt are genuine friends of mine. That is enough.

The particular person, incidentally, who inspired this rant by being crappy earlier today is someone whom I do consider an actual friend because of the high quality of their good attributes, but their fucked attributes are still very fucking annoying! Grrr!

Words Written Down In Such A Manner As To Form A Blog Post

2006-06-23T21:44:00.000+10:00

Well, I lied. I didn’t mean to! It was one of those accidental lies. Honest. You know, it amazes me how quickly it can slip from a Sunday into a Friday. What a fool was I to have said that I would be back again tomorrow when I ended up not being back ’til today, which was tomorrow yesterday but not Sunday’s follow-up day. Ask any old person and I think you’ll find that most say that one moves out of baby nappies and into old-folk nappies very fucking swiftly!

Been working at my art, which is good. Makes me feel good. I’m working to the maxim of writer and cartoonist James Thurber, who said, ‘Don’t get it right, get it written.’ It’s coming along fine so far, and that is good.

I found out my results today for my essay and group presentation for my drama subject. I think it translates to a credit for the essay and an high distinction for the group performance wherein I played Edward Gordon Craig, British revolutionary of the theatre. For the subject I am supposing that I shall receive a distinction overall, and I’d be content with that. I’m hoping I’m not over-calculating. (Is that the right phrase? Oh, well, you knows what I means.) I must say, my tutor is not the shiniest berry on the bush, so to speak, and her system for marking is certainly not the most reasonable I have ever encountered. For example, she marked me down in places where I feel she should not have, and marked me up in other places where I clearly didn’t deserve it. University teachers: a generally mediocre breed. Not that I’m saying I’ve been much more than a mediocre student…

Hello Again, Dear Daisy-Trodders!

2006-06-18T21:53:00.000+10:00

Things got a bit hectic for me for a while there – uni. work slammed frantically to a halt for the semester, and an old friend, recently returned from a year working in London with his rock ’n’ roll band, Van Lustbäder, came to town to perform, and stayed with me. (You can check their site from my ‘Links’ if you feel like it.) Then, of course, there’s the regular dampness, stagnant qi, and excessive liver heat, which, in Shantoozy’s opinion, is what’s largely responsible for my ongoing fatigue of mind, body and spirit. However, all this would not have been, in itself, reason for my having not impressed a blog post here for over three weeks. The fact is that I have been feeling ‘up in the air’ with my life lately. I hate being this way, and, even though it is but a temporary state, it has been making me feel less than inspired.

Party to this state is an uncertainty as to the exact direction I want to take with my art; that is, with my writing and illustrations with which to decorate the writing, or, perhaps conversely, words for decorating my drawings. I feel confident that this shall all come clear in time, of course, and until then I must simply wait. It has long been generally decreed by fellows of my species that patience is a virtue, and I guess they are correct, but it’s also an unavoidable necessity at times, so too bad if it happened instead to be a deadly sin, what-ho! But I suppose that’s not really what they mean; they mean, be calm rather than tense while waiting, even if the magazines are old and boring.

…

I termed them ‘my’ species just now, incidentally, because I assume there may well be at least one non-human peruser of this blog, given how many galaxies there are and what a mystery is the substance gold and such. Isn’t that funny? – you know, the universe and black holes containing alternate universes and such?

Anyway, “Hello!” again to you, Dear Daisy-Trodders. I’ll leave off there for now. Back again tomorrow shall I be. My mind’s a bit foggy.

Kind of like my street a few weeks ago when I took these eerie, early morning photographs that I now leave you with:

Brain Sex

2006-05-27T20:30:00.000+10:00

Shantoozy and I took part in this study to ascertain what gender our brains are. (Yes, yes, but 'dickhead' describes the exterior part of the noggin and this study describes the interior.) It is interesting to note, as Shantoozy has pointed out on her blog, that our results mirror one another's exactly! Check out his - er, that is, her - blog for a comparison.

Your Brain is 67% Female, 33% Male

Your brain leans female
You think with your heart, not your head
Sweet and considerate, you are a giver
But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Here, I'll delve into my intellectual handbaggage so we can share my block of eggplant and testicle chocolate while Shantoozy fixes the video player.

Seriously, though, she really is the fix-it person around our house. I do the vacuuming.

Stress Relief

2006-05-26T23:15:00.000+10:00

This afternoon Shantoozy and I needed stress relief, so we had sex for the first time in a million years or thereabouts. Although we had both been willing, the able part of the equation had kept on eluding us for one reason or another – be it tiredness, fatigue, stress, uni. work, or what the hail ever. We put a stop to that today and I squirted ivory sap from the borehole of my log. (I laugh uproariously at my idjiotic cleverness with that last line and Shantoozy says, “You amuse yourself, don’t you?”) Although I agree that it is probably true what Woody Allen had one of his characters say, that too much importance is placed on the orgasm by many people to make up for the empty areas in their life, Shantoozy and I most certainly both felt instantly a whole lot better after ours this afternoon. (…Which were actually attained between hours, boom-boom!) (…Boom, boom, boom, let’s go back to my room, that is.) (Ahem.)

Then, Hissy Kitty came around and demanded – in a friendly, helpful manner, of course – that we get away from our studies for a while and go see a movie. Who am I to disagree with sound logic like that which involves me being lazy? So, we three went into the CBD and ended up seeing “Final Destination III”. I haven’t seen either of the first two but that didn’t matter. Basically, this movie (like its predecessors, I assume) is pretty much totally devoid of being about anything at all. There aren’t even really any characters, as such; there are some fictitious girls and guys whom we watch on screen but we don’t know anything about them or care anything about them beyond a general feeling of identification because we are human and they are, too. This is probably just as well because the entire movie is simply - oh, yes, quite simple-ly - a successive display of the gory deaths, and the lead-ups thereto, of all of the humans, including the gal with the bare real tits and the gal with the bare jelly-mould implants. There could have been no better type of movie to distract one from wearying intellectual labour than this gleefully dumb and senseless lump of widescreen extravagance. All those splattering bite-size brain bits and the seepy burbling of teenagers frying inside tanning machines! Ah, it really did help me further unwind.

Now would a massage with a nail-gun be too much to hope for?

Or nailing her with my love-gun?

Or maybe I’ll just drink my dandelion-root tea and quit key-tap-yappin’ for now…

Lactose!

2006-05-24T23:43:00.000+10:00

Bought some soy milk from 'Not Quite Right' (the clearance supermarket) and, having added some chocolate and malt powder, drank a glass of the stuff. I got sick! This ought not to happen. The reason I drink soy milk and not cow milk is because I am lactose intolerant. Yep, my body is a regular Joseph Stalin when it comes to lactose. (If only it would be that way about other kinds of fat that I find so delectable...) Anyway, I drank the stuff and, lo and behold, I started feeling that familiar dizziness and nausea caused by lactose. It seems that what is 'not quite right' about these cartons of soy milk is that somehow they contain lactose. Oh, well, that's all part of the gamble that is shopping at 'Not Quite Right' - a gamble that usually pays nice dividends.

Kind of like this blog, actually. Often the posts are worthwhile (well, in my own very special, self-delusional way I like to think that they are so to some degree, anyway - to someone out there) but occasionally you get a nauseatingly dull one like this. Just have a lie down and the horrible feeling should pass soon enough.

Ahhh, that’s the way!

View It, Baby! ...Er, If You Like. Well, You're Here Now So...

2006-05-22T23:51:00.000+10:00

Upon review it comes to my attention that I haven’t been watching much of the moving image lately. I finished watching the complete fourth season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” a short while ago in life. The amount of times I have to press pause whenever I watch it, what-ho! Surely this show is the most painful of all hilarious experiences since the invention of tickling! Well, I don’t want to spoil anything for those who’ve not yet seen it but let me just mention the scene where Larry gets stoned with his father and a prostitute in his father’s home – Larry’s acting in this scene is superb. The show is so well done that one is often not aware of how much craftsmanship goes into it. Mel Brooks guest-stars in this season and the final episode features him onscreen with his soon-to-be late wife, Anne Bancroft; this adds a sad aura to the episode, although – and of course this is how they wanted it – it is still funny as heck. View it, babies, view it!

What else? I’m looking forward to finishing uni. for the semester; next week is the final week. I’ve still got quite a bit of work to do and am a bit stressed by it but I guess I’ve just got to keep my eye on the glistening horizon, upon which platform I bask come Friday the 2nd of June.

I’m looking forward to getting back on track with my real - AKA artistic - work then, as well as getting home and other everyday jive in some kind of reasonable order. That will hopefully help get my mind into a likewise state of good sense!

I go to Queensland during the break, too. With Shantoozy. See our families who all live up there, the crazy fools. Well, it won’t be disgusting weather for us at this time of year; in fact, winter up north is actually quite pleasant. The culture, general populace, prices, lifestyle, etcetera, on the other hand…! I get to fly in an aeroplane. I get to fly really fast through the air billions of kilometres (well, it may as well be) above the hard ground and the watery surfaces in a big heavy lump of humanmade wackiness called an aeroplane. I’ll never get over the fact that this is possible. It’s just not possible for me to.

Now it’s up, up and awayyyyyyyy with this post!

Revolving, Evolving

2006-05-19T23:32:00.000+10:00

What can I say? The government does evil work. I'm going to join the gym up the road. Shantoozy has already joined the gym and goes regularly. Um, what else? I vacuumed the floor on Saturday to remove the coating of cat fur and lo and behold, there was carpeting underneath. I've written some quite good lines for the current piece of writing I'm working on, still called "Envelope" at this stage; a theory of the spiritual and species development of the creatures that are currently human but that will eventually evolve into ??? I signed a petition yesterday against the plan to dig under the precious glaciers in the Valle de San Felix, Chile and steal the gold and other shit there, destroying the lives of those dependent upon the fresh water they provide, as well as destroying that beautiful area of the planet. I am drinking a glass of filtered water now and am grateful for it - water is one of my favourite things. I also love books, paintings and drawings, movies, music, toys, animals, and nice warm beds in Winter. And other things, of course, but the point is ... well, one thing can be stated quite emphatically and that is that there is no reason why there shouldn't be - that, of course, there is indeed - enough for everyone on this big bouncy ball of whizzing energy, the Earth. Will those who are arseholes please desist from being so? Ta.

An Essay In Taxidermy

2006-05-16T23:37:00.000+10:00

The following is how I originally, without a proper thought in my noggin, began my essay on Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull"; frankly, I found it a bit funny when returning to work sensibly upon the essay, so I thought I'd 'presarve' it here.

'Chekhov’s "The Seagull" is an old play featuring a dead seagull and some people. It was written by Anton Chekhov who must have masturbated, of course, although I do not know how many times. I am not sure whether or not the seagull masturbated when it was alive. Certain university lecturers masturbate over the plays of Chekhov; it is a delightful sight and can teach us much about their species.'

Well, that is all. Back to work I go.

Good As 'Presarved' Turnips

2006-05-15T19:44:00.000+10:00

Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a brick across my head. Ha! That’s how the brain of a friend of mine always forces him to recite those The Beatles lyrics.

Anyway, I woke up and watched “Li’l Abner” on Channel 31. What a coincidence, in light of my recent post on the Shmoo and Al Capp, to discover yesterday that this 1940 movie adaptation of Al’s strip was due to be screening on television this morning at 10AM – and here in Australia, no less! Yet, Channel 31 can certainly be relied on to screen some groovy, lesser-Australian-known shows and movies from the U.S. of A.

This film was an interesting experience, although I don’t imagine that anyone not already familiar with the world of Dogpatch would find it very entertaining. One’s knowledge of the strip and its characters tends to fill in the gaps and breathe form onto the somewhat bland basic skeleton propped up on the screen here. This was a B-production from RKO studios and the cheapness shows. I mean, the sets look quite lovely but they are too small and restricting – this is supposed to be North American mountain land but it seems more like a leafy quarry. The direction is lacklustre, the editing atrociously ill timed for a comedy, and many of the actors seem to be thoroughly disinterested. Plus, unlike the strip, it's not very funny.

On the other hand, the casting is amazingly precise in many places and with a bit of help from prosthetic make-up characters such as Li’l Abner’s diminutive folks, Pansy and Lucifer, and the extremely hairy-headed Hairless Joe look exactly like they had jumped off the funnies pages and into real life. The actors portray human characters who look half real and half cartoon, and I cannot off-hand think of any other cartoon adaptation that has adopted this approach; if there are such examples, I doubt they predate this bizarre production of 1940.

Another feature of this film is the appearance of several comedians from the silent days, such as Bud Jamison, Edgar Kennedy, Chester Conklin, Billy Bevan, Al St. John and the great Buster Keaton, who is far from his glorious days as an independent artist in the 1920s but he acquits himself well here in what is a limited appearance.

Overall, not anywhere near as bad a movie as some people say. In fact, I’d say it compares favourably with Dogpatch’s famous gastronomic delicacy, 'presarved' turnips!

Keyboarding A Cloud To Valhalla Or Heaven or Wherever

2006-05-14T20:43:00.000+10:00

Well, my computer was down for a while there because the keyboard died. Shantoozy spilt coffee on it! Admitedly, it was my cup of (cold) coffee that I had left precariously close to it but I am an human being and so of course it cannot possibly be my fault and must be someone else’s. I don’t know about the other type but the lesson learnt here is to never spill liquid on a Mackintosh keyboard. Shantoozy took it apart to try to fix it and, my, it’s all complicated looking in there, what with its silicon pathways or whatever. Well, a replacement keyboard was purchased yesterday and thus here I am again, what-ho!

Actually, I am pretty good at admitting my own fault, or even possible fault. This is a trait we all should possess but unfortunately few do. Because of this, I sometimes come across as weak in debates or arguments, I fear. This can be frustrating for me.

I am also pretty good at admitting which qualities I possess that are pretty good.

It’s pretty good, actually. Go on, give it a go!

School, Dentistry, Movies, Food, Sex, Art, Sleep, Etcetera

2006-05-08T21:02:00.000+10:00

Some shit what's been happenin' to me in the past li'l while goes a little somethin' like this:

Got a bloomin' assignment paper due on Thursday, a critical analysis of Anton Chekhov's stageplay, "The Seagull: a comedy in four acts". Haven't done much work on it as yet. Must finish reading the play tonight!

Am currently undergoing a 'root canal'. Well, not directly as I type but as an ongoing current event in mi existence. This adventure in dentistry is being undertaken over three or four sessions, two of which I have had already. Last week I was in that bloody chair for an hour and an half as the dentist was cleaning out my tooth tunnel but because it is, I am told, unusually long and unusually narrow he couldn't even finish that part of the job then! Got to return for session number three in a couple of weeks.

Been watching some movies, such as "The Last Laugh" (1924) directed by F. W. Murnau, for example, which was well-made and depressing until the final act which was bad and unrealistically uplifting. A title-card did, however, inform us that the filmmakers were aware that in real-life the old ex-porter's tale would have (probably) ended in the misery just depicted and warned us of the unrealism of the happy ending to follow. A strikingly photographed film, one of the most beloved of the period's German Expressionism, and I recommend it.

Plus, the usual gang of idiots, like eating vegetarian meals, having sexual intercourse, having verbal intercourse, working on artistic stuff, sleeping, etcetera. (Etcetera is actually the most interesting of them all, perhaps, and involves two tablespoons of et, half a cup of cet and thirteen pig snouts full of era.) (What the hail is I talkin' 'bout?) (Yeah! Get lost, S. Gregory!) (Okay, but I already don't know where I am so does that mean I have to find my mind again?) (Shut up.) (Oh, okay, sorry.)

Shmoo Am I?

2006-05-06T19:03:00.000+10:00

Who nowadays knows what a Shmoo is?

It is, at least, hard to find someone here in Australia who does. People here have rarely even heard of the comical strip “Li’l Abner” from which the Shmoo character hails, or its creator Al Capp. “Peanuts”, sure. “Calvin And Hobbes”, yes. Even that stupid garbage, “Garfield”, which is honestly probably more well known here than any of those others, surprise, surprise. But “Li’l Abner”, uh-uh. I don’t know if it was ever even printed in the papers in Australia; for it to be so little known here my guess is that it wasn’t or, if it was, that it was not published widely. Perhaps the backwoods idiots of Australia found the backwoods idiots of Dogpatch too American to understand or relate to. Well, anyway, just try finding any Al Capp in a bookshop, new or secondhand, or a library, in Australia and you’ll discover the hardship I’ve had to endure in tracking down “Li’l Abner” and the Shmoo.

I first encountered this white, seal-like, squash-shaped li’l critter as a young-un in its incarnation as a TV cartoon character. This was the Hanna-Barbera interpretation of the character where for some reason or other they turned him into a shape-shifter and gave him a job as a detective! Odd. Still, there were similarities in this Shmoo of “The New Shmoo” and “The Flintstone Comedy Show” cartoons to Al Capp’s original version, like his loving nature, his strange, moosical voice and, of course, his basic physical appearance. “The New Shmoo” is currently screening in Australia on the pay-TV channel ‘Boomerang’, incidentally.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I began finding out more about the character, and Al Capp and his “Li’l Abner” strip. Very amoozin’, as they say in Dogpatch. Quite profound, too.

Here is how “The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary” (1993 edition) defines the shmoo: ‘A fictitious animal invented by the U.S. cartoonist Al Capp in 1948, represented as small, round, and ready to fulfil immediately any material need; a model or toy version of this.’

Yes, if you looked at it hungrily it would die out of a loving willingness to please you. It tasted like various meats depending upon the method of cooking you used. Its eyes made perfect suspender buttons. Its whiskers, perfect toothpicks. Its hide could be used as top-quality leather or, if cut more thickly, an excellent substitute for timber. Nobody needed to pay for entertainment anymore because Shmoon (the plural of Shmoo) were so very entertaining to watch frolic. Big Business saw the Shmoo as its greatest threat and wanted to wipe out its existence…

The Shmoo is the kind of symbol any pagan could certainly appreciate. As Capp wrote, ‘…[T]here is a real live Shmoo. This big earth itself will give us everything we want, just as the Shmoo does, if only we’d let it alone – if only, in our passion and hatred and intolerance, we don’t tear it apart.’ (“New Republic” magazine, March 21, 1949, p. 15) Hear, hear!

The drawing in “Li’l Abner” is truly impressive. There is a poetry in Al Capp’s line that I dare to suggest is at least as good as Pablo Picasso’s. Capp worked with ghost-illustrators, as was common practice in that era, and their work was generally excellent, too.

This is my 48th post (excluding that one that Blogger lost a while back) and the Shmoo debuted in 1948, so what ho! for really tenuously connected coincidences, eh? Anyways…

If you would like to read and find out more about the Shmoo I recommend “The Short Life And Happy Times of The Shmoo” (pictured here as published by The Overlook Press in 2002). This great book contains two Shmoo strip continuities by Al Capp, “The Life And Times Of The Shmoo”, which in its singular, 1948 publication was the first comic strip ever to attract ‘serious’ literary attention in the U.S.A. (and, indeed, the world?), and “The Return Of The Shmoo”. It also has an excellent introduction by Harlan Ellison.

Have fun!

25 Sexual Facts About Me

2006-05-01T23:47:00.000+10:00

Darkneuro done gone and tagged me – my first tag ever! – so here goes…

25 Sexual Facts About Me:

1. I much prefer vaginal to anal sex.
2. I sometimes like to engage in non-sexual chitchat whilst fucking.
3. My favourite position is her astride in facing position.
4. On average I masturbate about once a week.
5. I’ve partaken in a double girl threesome a few times.
6. Apparently, according to popular opinion so to speak, I am good at performing cunnilingus.
7. I am, I believe, one of the few men in the world who has never had a bona-fide homosexual experience. Just never had the desire, personally. (I’ve kissed men as a dare but that cannot be counted as there was no sexual motivation or arousal involved.)
8. I have been busted, by a gay man, having sex. I think he was a bit repulsed at the sight.
9. I enjoy sex with many women (well, whenever I can!), not just my partner (…although that is the best, of course, and anyway a totally different experience.).
10. I have always found the women in MAD Magazine’s ‘The Lighter Side Of…’ sexually arousing.
11. I enjoy having a finger inserted and moved around between my foreskin and glans.
12. I do not find the so-called “super models” sexually appealing.
13. My most erogenous zone is my penis.
14. Shantoozy has nick-termed my penis, and she is the only person who ever has given it any kind of moniker. It’s not a name like Arthur or Harold or something horrible like that but rather an alternative to “the penis”, as in “the _____”.
15. I’ve never utilised the services of any kind of sex worker.
16. I would possibly like to utilise the services of a sex worker someday, but only if I deemed it ethical.
17. I’d like to be able to experience having the body of a woman for at least a day.
18. I had a dream two nights ago where in I had two penises and was only just realising that that was not the norm.
19. I believe that sex with Darkneuro would be fun.
20. I try to be upfront about wanting or liking to have sex with someone.
21. I don’t ever want to have sex with Rupert! I’ve seen it and it is not a pleasant sight. :-)
22. I don’t see the point in dancing with someone unless it can be followed by sex.
23. Sometimes I prefer quickies.
24. Sometimes I prefer spending a long time on foreplay.
25. I would wear a pith helmet during sex if asked.

Well, I don’t have many people on mi blogroll to tag. Rupert writes enough about sex as it is. There’s no way that scaredy cat Hissy Kitty would do it. Um, let’s see… I’ll just tag Shantoozy this time around.

Portable Thoughtables

2006-04-30T22:38:00.000+10:00

I was depressed today because of some o.c.d.-related (at least I think it may be correct to term them as that, but then this here bracketed clarification may well be o.c.d.-related in itself – arghh, I HATE this aspect of my mind!) worries that had been overwhelming me but I’ve chatted to Shantoozy who is wonderful at helping my brain, and helping me get into a state where I can think up ways myself for helping my brain, and now I’m feeling a lot better. Of course (and this is not being pessimistic but rather just realistic, borne of much past experience), the worries will return but hopefully I can quash them forever in good time.

On another subject, my writing is coming along okay but in the next week or two I’m going to hopefully have a laptop computer, which will really help me. It shall just be a dirt-cheap older model that I (hopefully) find at the computer swap meet at Collingwood Town Hall. I’m expecting the battery to be dead or dying so I’ll need to plug it into to a power outlet but, still, I’ll be able to move it around the house, have it in bed with me (on top of my lap) or even, with the assistance of an extension cord, out in the yard if I want to. There’s something about being portable – I don’t know, maybe it appeals to the trampishness in my nature – but somehow it really seems to help inspire me in my literary endeavours. I like the feeling of freedom it gives – free range to venture anywhere in the multi-coloured universe of my mind – anywhere, that is, where three slanty little holes incise the eternally stretching brick wall at the parameters of my cosmos of cognition.

Writer's Block Outside The Apartment Block

2006-04-27T02:31:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I posed for that young scamp, Toxic Lash, in a beautifully disgusting photograph series detailing a writer sitting at his antique typewriter suffering writer's block who starts vomiting alphabet pasta letters and ends up spewing up a storm of carrot and tomato chunks mixed in with the 'Alphaghetti'. He started out blocked but before you know it the pasta phrases "BULLSHIT" and "TRUTH AND BEAUTY" have poured from his mouth.

The shoot was undertaken outside the apartment block across the road where the afternoon sunlight was still good. It was peak-hour and the traffic would come regularly to a standstill, allowing the commuters fine opportunity for inspecting the activities. I noticed several smirks. At one point my neighbour walked past with her daughter and stopped to view the spectacle of me soaking my shirt and grey woollen vest in faux vomit dribbled from my cheesy, tomatoey gob, and tried to explain to her young-un why the hell we so-called adults were behaving this way in public. When Hissy Kitty, assistant to the photographer, offered them the unopened tins of 'Alphaghetti' that were left over from our endeavour, they declined. I can't imagine what may have turned them off such a culinary treat.

It will take about four weeks for the photos to be ready so that's why there is no example here to show you at the moment. And your stomach heaves, yes, but 'tis fortunately only a sigh of relief!

Focus, Mi Lad

2006-04-23T22:33:00.000+10:00

Put bluntly, it is difficult for me to deal with the fact that most humans are stupid and are arseholes. Shantoozy was watching that hideous piece of vile filth, ‘The Biggest Loser’, on television just before and such shows, and their raison d’etre, are wont to inspire such difficulties for me. It shakes my nervous system up. I really am quite a sensitive creature. Pity me.

(No, not really. But you can buy me fun presents, if you like.)

Ah, but it’s important to try to remain focused on the good things in life, and the good people and the friendly dogs and the great poets and artists of the ages (good friends between wraps or hard covers, on DVDs and in CD jewel-cases, etc.).

Well, of course I would say something like that. The name of mi blog is ‘Daisies In The Gutter’.

Now, though, my mind is down the drain. I’ll dredge it up for more stimulating erudition soon, ol’ chums.

Mary, Marty, Larry

2006-04-19T23:14:00.000+10:00

I got around to watching “Sparrows”, starring Mary Pickford, on an evening last week. It was my first Mary Pickford movie and I must say that I found it excellent; a beautifully photographed and captivating thriller where a villainous family run an hideous baby farm in the swamps from which Mary must help the maltreated children escape. There were alligators and quickmud quagmires and even a vicious dog with a continually wagging tale that dispelled any illusion that it was in any way actually vicious. But that’s okay, it was an enjoyable movie.

I had never felt particularly inspired to watch “Little Mary”, as she was known contemporarily, because her real-life personality put me off somewhat; she was politically right-wing and I know what Chaplin meant when he said in his “My Autobiography” that her business and legal acumen saddened him. I was aware of the flaw in this attitude of mine, for a person’s real-life silliness does not necessarily preclude an ability to be appealing as a performer (although, I have never been able to enjoy John Wayne in any respect - to me, the Duke is a Dork), and hence it only put me off somewhat. I found hers to be quite an appealing on-screen personality, so now the affection she elicited of silent cinema scholars like Edward Wagenknecht and Kevin Brownlow makes a bit more sense to me than it did.

I highly recommend this classic 1926 film. Yes, I do!

A quick word on the print I viewed: This was one released by ‘Kino On Video’ on videotape. The picture quality was quite good, although not excellent; it had a somewhat muted and contrasty picture that leads me to suspect that it was not transferred from an original negative. Plus, having been manufactured in the U.S.A., the tape was in the N.T.S.C. rather than PAL format and that will, of course, always diminish pictorial quality.

… Recently I also watched the complete third season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, Larry David’s already-classic TV show. Martin Scorsese was one of the guest performers (as himself, of course) and was amusing. Oddly enough, I don’t recall noticing his eyebrows during these shenanigans. His eyebrows were always the most unwieldy I can ever recall having seen on an human being but perhaps he finally decided to trim them for this stint in front of the camera. Hmm…

Happy Birthday Anniversary, Sir Charles!

2006-04-16T23:56:00.000+10:00

Yes, it’s that day of the year again, the 16th of April, the anniversary of the birth of Sir Charles Spenser Chaplin, great clown-poet of human times. He was born to music hall parents at 8PM at East Street, Walworth, in London. He made sweet and funny movies. Happy 117th Birthday Anniversary, Sir Charles!

Today we visited with friends and ate plenty of good food, being as it is also, coincidentally, Easter Sunday. The best culinary treat was, however, the incredible coconut custard cream pie Shantoozy made in honour of Sir Charles. Although Chaplin was Hollywood’s first comedian to eschew pie-throwing humour, he certainly was a skilled slinger in his earliest films, and the custard cream pie is still a nice symbol of old-style silver screen merriment.

In the photo you can see (now that I've actually posted the photo here, a day after writing this!) that I am wearing my Charlie necktie, Charlie cufflinks (well, you can see the light's reflection on a cufflink, not really the cufflink itself as such) and bowler hat. I had my bamboo wigger-wagger cane with me today also.

This evening, back at home, another friend of mine popped over and we drank red wine and watched the Chaplin short “Pay Day” from 1922.

Magic Lantern Tomes

2006-04-05T23:18:00.000+10:00

I took a jaunt along High Street recently with Shantoozy and Hissy Kitty and I lay-byed some film related books at a bookshop there. I’m getting back into compiling my film reference book library. I am a collector. I face that fact. I embrace it. I personally like collecting things that have a practical purpose, like books and DVDs. There are collectors who go too far and one mustn’t go too far, of course. What is ‘too far’? I suppose buying a book on the overrated Tom Hanks or the rubbishy films of Michael Bay would, for examples, be going too far.

I appreciate and can personally relate to what Martin Scorsese said about his own film reference book library - he finds them inspiring. Of course, his medium is solely film, whereas mine is writing of various kinds – stage-plays, screenplays, novels, poetry, reviews, short stories – I ain’t choosy – but the inspirational effect is similar. In fact, my writing has generally always possessed a cinematic quality. Apparently, James Joyce concocted his novel “Ulysses” in the form of a movie.

My first novel was originally conceived as a film but if you want total creative control over your work then film is probably the last medium I’d recommend – unless you are extremely fortunate, you are going to have to compromise and bow down to the demands of many other people who also have fingers in the pot of what is at best a collective art form and at worst a collective industry – or else you’ll be forced to make poorly funded garage-style movies which generally can’t but help look cheaply made and whose budgetary constraints also dictate much compromise. I’m certainly not against working in these ways; indeed, I plan to make a couple of short, poorly funded films in the near future (there are benefits to be gained from such work) and have plans for co-writing with Shantoozy what we hope may be a commercially viable feature film, but my most serious work shall still be of the printed-on-paper variety, I think. At least, at this juncture.

I also have eventual plans for a novel about a bullying film critic.

I realize that I was feeling somewhat displaced having turned away from my interest in cinema history. A great benefit of my continually growing knowledge in this area, through personal as well as tertiary study, means that I will be able to teach about it when I attain the appropriate degree/s. Of course, it’s early days yet and so who knows? I may end up becoming an hobo instead.

The Old Fart's Brick Path

2006-04-03T23:04:00.000+10:00

Tired, so tired, Mademoiselles and Monsieurs. Nonetheless, I felt I should update this humble blog. There are some things I want to talk about but I shall leave them for when I am more energetic of mind and fingertips. I offer here now just some small dalliances along the brick path of my life of late.

University is going fine. Handed in my first assignment - a review of some stage-play about what it means to be un-Australian, with especial regards to sports competition. Are you as enthralled as I at that theme? Zzzzzzz...

Got two porn magazines as junk mail recently. My whole street did, I believe - except those fools who had 'no junk mail' stickers on their letter-boxes, hee-hee! Porno as JUNK MAIL, I tells ya! And not one, but TWO!! Why? I don't know. How did they get away with it? I don't know. One copy of "Playboy Vixens" and one copy of "Score" ('Loaded with big-tit babes' ... '#1 in big boobs'). We're not talking 'Bras 'N' Things' catalogues. We're talking wide-open beavers. I wonder what the little old Greek ladies along the street felt about those shaven pussies and all.

One of my best friends moved to South America on the weekend, for about a year and an half. He hosted going-away drinks at two pubs in Brunswick on Friday night. I didn't get home until about 3:30 AM which is unusual for me these days, old fart that I have become. My friend shall be sorely missed. But, like most people who make such dramatic overseas moves, I suspect he shall return before then. Or maybe that's merely selfish hopefulness.

I tried to watch "Madame de..." (1953), directed by Max Ophuls, tonight but the subtitles were often white on white which made it too much of a strain to continue watching. It is screening soon at Cinémathèque so I shall try to see it there as it shall almost surely be a better print, with better subtitling. I'm really getting back into watching movies and I shall explain my rationale for such in my next post - when, as I've said, I am more 'with it'. Tomorrow night I think Shantoozy and I shall watch "Sparrows" (1926), starring Mary Pickford and directed by William Beaudine.

Talking Tacos

2006-03-23T22:58:00.000+11:00

Feeling considerably better today. Went along Sydney Rd looking for a good, inexpensive secondhand ceramic teapot and also some luggage for Shantoozy. She wants a good piece of luggage with wheels. I'm happy with my daggy big old cardboard suitcase from the Sixties with the plastic handle snapped off and a new one just screwed right on in there, buddy! Hay, I just thought: maybe I could screw some wheels onto it, too. Hmm.

Was able to do some writing work today, too, which was relieving. I hate it when I let too much time elapse between writing and yet do I hate it even more when I'm willing and raring to work but am physically unable? Grr.

Had tacos for dinner tonight. The U.S.A. style. The Australian style. Brittle corn crisp shells filled with lettuce, tomato and (in our instance, fake) mince meat, spiced, and topped with salsa. Nice. Now, there are many TV advertisements that annoy but one of the stupidest would have to be almost all of them actually, but relevant to this bitch is the one where the prospective diners are all in befuddlement and complaining that the crisp taco shells won't stand up on their middles, that is the curved end where the shell is folded. They even try the ol' nails-in-the-tabletop routine to try and create a stand for the shell but, lo and behold, any nails that you might try for this device shall invariably buckle and bend and wind up just being useless defacement to Mom's fine veneer mealtime surface. So, thank our lucky stars, for they (i.e.: some company or other) have now released taco shells that are flat along the curved side. Well, gee-whizz, Mom, that is sooooo much of an advancement over SIMPLY LAYING THE DANG THINGS ON THEIR SIDES AND FILLING THEM AND EATING THEM THAT WAY!!!!!!! Grr.

Anyway, I shall now watch a fillum. On DVD. With NO advertisements!

Games Fever

2006-03-22T13:21:00.000+11:00

Forget that last one I wrote about – this current virus is ‘hardcore’ as they say on the streets when discussing viral infections, as you know. I support the supposition that the Commonwealth Games is providing elite pathogens from every country in the Commonwealth to try their vile sport on my home turf, that's the body of S. Gregory Hedgehog.

Shantoozy got it Sunday morning, in the wee hours. Couldn’t stop sporadically vomiting, etc. Then I got it, Tuesday morning, wee hours. A wrenching stomach expulsion of violent force. Locum came soon after and gave me an injection to stop the vomiting but, arghh, the agony of that night, trying to get to sleep, my body aching horrifically! I’ve been sweating it out since; had feverish images of Eisenhower and Stalin and Hitler in my brain; a mammoth headache yesterday but that’s gone now and hopefully won’t come back. I couldn’t even really watch ‘The Simpsons’ last night and I’ve got to be pretty dang ill for that to happen.

No work on ‘Envelope’ since. I’ve got to get an extension on the uni. assignment due tomorrow. I certainly can’t keep reading the Ernest Hemingway book. It’s very difficult to get things done when your body accepts viruses so often, and on top of all the other ailments!

Today I am feeling somewhat better, and hence this lil' blog post, but it’s still a struggle to get through each hour. Well, that’s an improvement from each second. But, what the hay, I just have to see it through and get done what I can when I can, I suppose.

A Fresh One

2006-03-12T15:22:00.000+11:00

I think I’m going to change the story I’m currently working on into a stage play. It’s just a short piece. I think it should work nicely in that medium. Or maybe a short film script. Hmm, I’ll have to think more on this, actually. The title at the moment is ‘Envelope’; that may change but I don’t think it will. (Yet, will it? The envelope please…) (Yeah, yeah, pathetic, I know, but guess what? I’m getting sick again! Just about over the virus I’d been suffering with and now along comes a fresh one. So, my punning ain’t up to its usual lowbrow standards, I’m afraid.)

Shantoozy and I have both been sick, as a matter of fact. And this has sucked because when you are sick, you want your partner to be there for you. Brothers and sisters, let us recall what Jerry Seinfeld said,

‘For me, the best part of a relationship is when you’re sick. And the best time to be sick is in a relationship.

If I have to get married, you know all those vows, “For richer or for poorer, for better or for worse …”

All I need is the sickness part. That to me is the most important one. “Do you take this man in sickness?” The rest of the time go out, have a ball, do whatever you want – but if I get the sniffles, you’d better be there.’

(from ‘SeinLanguage’ by Jerry Seinfeld, p.22 1993 Bantam Books, U.S.A.)

The Trickiest Animal

2006-03-08T01:10:00.000+11:00

My sleeping pattern is really fucked at the moment. So, why am I up drinking coffee at 1:11AM when I should be trying to catch up on sleep? Because I need to calm down a bit but I need the energy to do stuff to take my mind off things - organisational or artistic stuff is good for me at these moments - as well as to get my mind thinking a little better so as to better ponder certain life problematics. Besides, I quite possibly wouldn't fall asleep soon even if I tried because my body clock is set to keep me awake at this hour.

I had a fight with a good friend earlier. I hate this sort of thing. We'd agreed he should come around for coffee and to discuss our problems. For various reasons, our communication has become very stilted lately and he came here looking for warfare, unfortunately, which was not a productive exploit and he wound up leaving abruptly, in anger. I think we have both been somewhat too self-centred in the analysis of our current problem and need to broaden our minds and hearts to a clearer understanding of the other's point of view and so arrive at a truer, more accurate and objective perception of the situation. We seem to be able to sort these kinds of problems out and so I am confident that this shall be no exception. Well, I hope. It is certainly a complex issue and will require some hard work.

We human beings are tricky animals. I like the idea of having a good, sturdy doll around - a passive, inanimate humanoid pal to rely on for comfort and support when the unpredictable flesh-and-blood humans all become too baffling. I think it can be therapeutic as well as a kind of innocent fun, which is something far too under-appreciated in hardboiled 21st Century societies. I have a pop-rocker friend who told me he wants to be buried with his Alfred E. Neuman doll. I can understand the comfort he must derive from such a thought.

Hey! Look out! Here's an human being now...

A most beautiful specimen, i'n'it?

'Pop In' Goes The Weasel

2006-03-03T22:19:00.000+11:00

Shantoozy and I celebrated our 8th anniversary the other day. We went over to Hissy Kitty’s, where she laid on a luscious gourmet feast and there were brainwave alterations and laughter. I showed some Chaplin routines on DVD and Hissy seemed duly impressed, I think. Shantoozy is a convert from way back, of course.

I started uni. this week. Just the one subject this semester – easing my way back into the academic world – Drama. The seminar is held in a building like old Hollywood screenwriters’ bungalows. I am the eldest student of my group. Not that I find my return to studies an unpleasant experience, but already I am itching to get onto post-graduate study and, frankly, be rid of the high school like atmosphere of it.

I have a head cold. Have been sick for a couple of days now. ’Twas but a quick ‘pop in’ post. I’m going to watch an episode of the best new show I have discovered lately, the re-imagined ‘Battlestar Galactica’. Ta-ta for now.

Did you hear the one about S. Gregory?

2006-02-25T04:58:00.000+11:00

Went to the rodeo today. I saw the cowgirls lined up on the fence. No, not really, just listening to ‘Harvest Moon’ (album) and they are some lyrics from it. I’d really much rather be here listening to beautiful acoustical sonics from the lovably daggy, Muppet-voiced Neil Young than at a rodeo, actually. I don’t even know for sure what a rodeo is. Is it where people ride bulls that wish not to be ridden and try not to get knocked off the bulls and whomever stays on a bull for the longest wins a trophy? Anyway, all the dust raised would get into my CD player or if I had an iPod.

I’ve had a fairly unproductive time this week due to depression. My last few posts fairly reflect my ignoble state of mind. Suffice to say that I am feeling okay at the moment, thankfully. Hope, hope, will I always live merely in hope? But let’s not dwell on that – it’s depressing. Also, it is boring.

But what IS boredom? One person’s thrill is often another person’s tedium. I’m going to brew up a cup of Irish Breakfast tea. (Seriously, I really did feel like one before I thought up that boredom question.) (Lovable dag?)

Last Tuesday, I procured a copy of ‘The Ingenious Hidalgo, Don Quixote de la Mancha’. The reason why the title is only partly translated into English is because ‘Penguin Books’ wanted to be a little pretentious but not a lot. This suits me because I only want to be a little pretentious and not a lot. I’ll only loudly pontificate about how superior my taste in literature is at HALF as many cafés as I would reading any other great classical tome while slurppping my semi-caff wheat-germ officially-licensed designed-in-Sweden/ made-in-out-the-back-amongst-the-saliva-drenched-dishes latté.

Seriously, though, this recent new-translation (already revised for this 2003 edition) by John Rutherford seems excellent. Apparently, whereas it had often been translated into English as a sombre tragedy which the author never intended it to be, Rutherford turns ‘Don Quixote’ back into the often hilarious tragicomic book it is in Cervantes’ original Spanish. That is why I have chosen this translation to read, and read it soon I shall begin to. (…and he gallantly and unpretentiously ends his sentence upon a supposition!)

I am currently reading ‘The Sun Also Rises’ by Ernest Hemingway. It’s a smart-assy kind of book but simple (not simplistic), and apparently quite revolutionary back in 1926 in its prose style. So far along, Ernest is seemingly being coy about the lead male World War I veteran character’s missing genitals. Was this just produce of the prudishness of the times?

Am also finishing reading 1933’s ‘The Private Life Of Charlie Chaplin’ by Caryle T. Robinson, Chaplin’s press representative from 1917 –1932. Interesting piece about the great man’s love-affairs but not enough descriptive hardcore fucking action. I mean, for ME, that is – Shantoozy’s asleep and that’s why I have to read books, hee-hee.

If only I could obtain some of that home-porn that Chaplin supposedly made. I’m serious, I would love to see that stuff. I think that, deep down, any fan would like to sneak a dirty peek, even the most conservative or prudish. I wonder if any of the footage features his third wife, Paulette, the sexiest screen star of her era, in my opinion...

Black Comedy

2006-02-24T03:28:00.000+11:00

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Black Comedy

In your life, things are so twisted that you just have to laugh.
You may end up insane, but you'll have fun on the way to the asylum.

Your best movie matches: Being John Malkovich, The Royal Tenenbaums, American Psycho

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

Well, that's just great, isn't it!

Chemical Sanding-Planes

2006-02-24T02:16:00.000+11:00

Why am I so dizzy? Is it due to the ‘Coke Zero’ rubbish I am drinking? Or is it due to those fucked-up ‘Restavit’ sleeping tablets I took two nights ago? They didn’t help me to sleep until the next day when I found I barely had the energy to breathe. On the night, they mainly just spotlighted all my bodily aches and pains and helped my mind win a violent race against nothing. Chemical sanding-planes. Where’s the poetry in it all, I asks yo'?

Arrr-ararararrr-ararararrrrrrr! Kuthunk!!! Ow

2006-02-17T03:01:00.000+11:00

I just took this revelational quiz (at Darkneuro's precept) and the mystical outcome shows that the movie I belong in is...

Tarzan!

What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
brought to you by Quizilla
The still displayed shows my physique in a uniquely positive light, I think, for I am more your Elmo Lincoln interpretation than your Johnny Weissmuller, I'm afraid.

Another Bloody Post By That Idyller Idjit

2006-02-13T19:35:00.000+11:00

I’m feeling good today. I was feeling terrible yesterday. I’m more hopeful today. Yesterday was one of those days when you (or I, at least) feel you will never feel happy ever again and the only thing you have to look forward to is death, which isn’t really much of an exciting thing to look forward to, not knowing, as we do, what it shall behold and whether or not it will be anything particularly gratifying and fun for you (or I, at least). Anyhow, that down patch is over – at least, for the moment. I don’t mean that pessimistically but I just ain’t countin’ no downy hatchlings yet, however 'over easily' things may seem to be.

Today, I was going to trundle off to Richmond on the other side of the river to purchase a copy of ‘Don Keyoatty’ by Savanties for a mere $3.00!!! (The spelling, incidentally, is Shantoozy’s, used here in honour of the endearing dyslexic interpretations so often expectable of this ‘philosophic bad speller’!) But I was so tired this afternoon and had lunch/breakfast with Rupert, Hissy Kitty and Shantoozy instead, and so I shall procure the book tomorrow. It ranks high on my to-read list.

I enrolled in university a couple of weeks back. Don’t know when it starts, precisely; I’m sure I have it printed somewhere around this papery interior I employ as hobbit-hole dwellings. Am going to La Trobe University, where they may be surprised at the discrepancy between calling me a ‘mature age’ student and the way I plan to act around the young first-year female students – growwlll! Doing a Bachelor of Creative Arts (theatre, writing, acting, English literature.) Most of the credit I accrued many years ago for Bachelor of Arts in the Humanities at Griffith University in Queensland is being counted towards this course so I've automatically nearly finished my first year here, which is splendid news, mi hearties – it’s getting late and I haven’t even finished the first year of a first degree, so I need to speed things up wherever I can afford to, and first-year subjects are rarely as interesting as the later years’. Rupert the muffboxer is actually starting the same degree this year! With our artistic interests being so generally similar, it seemed an obvious manoeuvre, although some of the subjects we take will differ in accordance with a divergence of certain specific tastes and what we want to gain from the course. I am looking forward to it.

And regarding that lost post of mine, Dame(?) Blogger Support has informed …well, ME, I suppose …this time there was no ‘Hi’ or greeting of any sort …that unfortunately, they (this ‘Blogger Support’ fellow must be really big!) are unable to recover any posts that were lost during the outages. “Your post will be exterminated! Resistance is futile!”

Ooh, Such A Bitch!

2006-02-07T19:26:00.000+11:00

Well, I seem to have lost my previous post. It was called, ‘Small Talk’, and fortunately was short and not all that interesting. A couple of comments got lost, too. This is the message I deployed to Blogger Support:

‘Hi. I was just wondering if I (at www.idyller.blogspot.com) could please have my latest post back now? You know, the one called, 'Small Talk'. I don't know why you would want to take it and keep it just for yourself anyway. It really isn't all that interesting - I have written better ones. You could have taken 'Wild Colonial Boys', for example - that was a pretty good one, I thought. Anyhow, if I see that you are auctioning it off on eBay I will be most displeased. Especially if I get outbid. Sincerely, S. Gregory.’

They wrote back, informing some generic ‘Hi there’ character that they ‘had a number of unplanned outages over the weekend, resulting in various problems accessing Blogger and BlogSpot, as well as publishing blogs,’ etc. Coincidentally, however, that information was mildly relevant to me, as well as, I assume, to this mysterious ‘Hi there’ fellow.

Of course, yes, I do understand that accidental fuck-ups occur, and I appreciate Blogger providing free blogs for us to utilise, but don’t you just love the interpersonal warmth of our modern times? Human interaction should never be electronic communication but, rather, HUMAN communication that is electronically transmitted.

I wrote back, asking, ‘Am I able, though, to get my post and comments back?’ and I await the robotic reply of Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. or Miss or Dr. or Sir or Lord or Darth or ??? 'Blogger Support'.

Cock And Blah

2006-02-03T18:45:00.000+11:00

They don’t call me ‘the hedgehog’ without due merit! (They also don’t call Ron Jeremy ‘le hedgehog’ without due merit but that’s another story steeped in coincidence.) I move slowly. I don’t actually know how fast or slow hedgehogs are, now that I consider it, but they SEEM to move slowly, what with their hogging of hedgerows and the like that I imagine, as do my friends who call me one. Anyway, I am not of a fast and furious breed. I don’t mean I walk slowly – actually quite swiftly for one with such comparatively short legs – upwards beyond those two muscular stompers I have the body of a considerably taller man (“And I’ll bet he was glad to get rid of it,” I hear Groucho Marx interject) – with a considerably bigger penis than one might expect, I here find myself stupidly interjecting, but certainly the Ron Jeremy coincidence stops a bit shorter here, enjoy the pun – but it’s these doggone legs what keeps me the exact height of Charlie Chaplin. …Whose startlingly large penis, incidentally, became Hollywood legend as the eighth wonder of the natural world. But I digress! In fact, this whole paragraph is a digression intended to lead me into – no, not a dissertation on short men’s penises – but another post, which I have, as usual, been slow to publish.

And here it is…

Blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah-bah blah (blah!) blah. Blah, blah. Blah, blah, blahblahblah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, bah-blah (blah, blah!) blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah, blah, blah blah blahhhh. Blah. Blah blah, blah – blah blah, blah – blah blah, blahblah-blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! Blah, blah-bah blah blah. Blah, blahblah blah, blah blah. (Blah?) Blah, blah, blah, blah, blahblahblah, blahblah blah. Blah, blah, bah-blah (blah, blah, blah blah!) blah – blah – blah, blah blah blah, blah, blah blah blahhhh. “Blah,” blah Blah, blahblah blah. “Blahhhh!” blah blah, blah blah, blah blah blah.

Blah, blah, blah. Blah; blah; blah; blah. Blah blah. Blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah-blah, blah; blah blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah-blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah – blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah. Blah, blah, Blah Blah blah. Blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah Blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah blahblah blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah – blah. Blah blah blah, blahhhh. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah. Blah, blahblahblahblah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, Blah, blah Blah blahblah blah, blah! Blah! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blahblah-blah. Blahblah. Blah…

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah blah – blah, blah blah blah. Blah blah? ‘Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah,’ blah, blah. (Blah, blah, blah; blah blahblahblahblah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blahbah.) Blah.

Blah, blah blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blahblah, blah. Blah.

33 And As Yet No Third

2006-01-29T22:58:00.000+11:00

If there were a stick to poke me with …it would probably hurt, actually… Well, anyhows, here it is: a new post.

Truth be told, I have been quite busy this past week’n’more. Naw, really, it’s true. At some point last week there were birthday celebrations to be had for I turned 33. (Is that what you call ‘busy’, S. Gregory? How about gettin’ a job? No, not in Arts, ya poofter! A REAL job! Like truck-drivin’ or housepaintin’ or any other such job what let’s ya get the ‘blow’ type off another tradesMAN in the front seat of your transport but ya conveniently rationalise to the Kinsey-like reporters that that doesn’t count as a homosexual experience because you ain’t no bloody poofter, ya just like havin’ ya prick sucked and if ya close your eyes it feels just the same as a woman’s mouth.) It was a disgustingly hot and humid day so I didn’t do much, except for a tasty pizzeria dinner with a few friends. Got some funky pressies (never a bad thing!), including a lot of printed Chaplin material (items like songs, programmes, books) from money Mum gave me, ‘Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls’ soundtrack c.d. with liner notes by the film’s co-author, Roger Ebert (from Rupert), ‘The Tragedy Of Hamlet, Prince Of Denmark’ (as embarrassing as it sounds, I’ve ne’er yet read it) (from Michael), a six d.v.d. set of Groucho Marx’s ‘You Bet Your Life’ (from the Bru’), ‘The Poems Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’ (a lovely gesture by the lovely Darkneuro) and, most impressive of all (I must declare), a first edition copy of ‘My Autobiography’ AUTOGRAPHED BY CHARLIE CHAPLIN!!!!!!!! (This was from the most beautiful, wonderful Shantoozy.) So, thank you one and all!

(Only thing is, regarding the Chaplin book: It came with a Certificate of Authenticity but we have so far been unable to locate the ‘Saville’s of London’ who authorised it. Shantoozy contacted the seller, who claimed they bought it in London but that the shop may no longer be there for such is the way, claimed they, of Charing Cross Road. Hmmm. On the other hand, the book is inscribed to Arnold Haskell (famous for liberating the ballet from aristocratic snobbery, rightly promoting it as anyone’s domain, not just that of the so-called ‘upper-class’) and has (what seems to be) his bookplate laid in. Shantoozy was willing to take a risk on the purchase as she was getting the book at a much lower price than such an item usually demands. So, I feel that I must, to an extent, reserve my enthusiasm about it until we can procure more definite indication of its genuineness, which hopefully we shall; yet, at the same time, I lean pleasantly towards the belief that it is genuine until reasonably doubtless otherwise.)

Right now, I can hear Iggy Pop coming in live through my open front door. The weather is hot. Pop is in town performing just over the way. Henry Rollins was performing, too, earlier, spoken-word. (There’s a delightful tidbit for you, Darkneuro; or a bit to delight your tids, hee-hee.)

I went to see the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at The Australian Centre For The Moving Image this afternoon, with Shantoozy. Props and scripts and sketches and motion picture equipment and film snippets, etc. from the great filmmaker and his films. The costume Lord Olivier wore in ‘Spartacus’. The helmet from ‘Full Metal Jacket’ saying, ‘Born To Kill’, while sporting, also, a peace medallion. That crazy lens used to film the entirety of ‘Barry Lyndon’ in only natural light and candlelight. Moonwatching apemen costumes, an H.A.L. computer eye, the starchild figure and the model of that really, really long ‘Jupiter mission’ ship from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Masks from ‘Eyes Wide Shut’. A typewriter that Jack Nicholson used in ‘The Shining’. Selections from the world’s largest book collection on Napoleon, which was owned by Stanley. (Will I someday hold a similarly mad record for my Chaplin book collection?) And much, much else. The event had been previously presented in Berlin and Frankfurt and today was its final day here in Melbourne in what is actually the largest Screen Gallery in the world, and possibly the messiest for someone had scrawled ‘REDRUM’ on the walls in a couple of places, wouldn’t you know? …Huh? Shouldn't I know...? Ohhhh, yeah, right…

Well, this is Arnold signing off for now and wishing you all a wonderful acceptance of the fact that obviously my name must now be changed to that for my copy of Chaplin’s ‘My Autobiography’ says that’s who I am ’cause I own it and it says ‘Dear Arnold’ and so, yeah, okay, I’ll shut up now and let you all get on with it or get it on which is actually more fun if you know the ‘wrong’ positions, you dirty scamperers.

My ga-ga continues soon…

Sigmund, Realised

2006-01-16T08:13:00.000+11:00

I saw the edit so-far of ‘Realising Sigmund’ on Friday and it is almost ready for its first screening – a private screening at ‘Glitch Bar’ in North Fitzroy in two weekends’ time. (It can have no public screening before the Tropfest awards.) The music score is being recorded today with a five-piece bluegrass combo led by the talented and eccentric banjoist, Chuk C. Thornley. Above is a still from the production.

Also being screened then is the video clip to Mr. Owen’s song, ‘I Don’t Want To Go To Nashville’, which is now complete. I play a randy bull hick in a moustache who enjoys cactus rootin’, Shantoozy plays a whip-cracker, Rupert plays a weird guy in a yellow velour jumpsuit called Rupert, Frank Baressi plays the cactus, and there’s a talking vagina in there somewhere as well. “Howdy stranger!”

I am now working as actor (Elliot Gould is one, for example) again in another short film. ‘So, You Have An Idea For A Film?’ is written and directed by Travis Sutherland and produced by Rupert Owen. It shoots on the 25th of this month. More about it later on.

So I must thank Messrs Owen and Sutherland, film producing duo of Son of Marshall/Snuffboxfilms, for the recent acting opportunities given me. (…Realizing, as they do, my supra acting talent, of course.) Thank yers, chappies.

12:01 AM And The Clock Strikes Twelve!

2006-01-11T04:17:00.000+11:00

Screw posting in order! My New Years’ Eve wasn’t anything spectacular. They usually aren’t and that’s pretty much how I like it. A bottle of creaming soda and a good movie with a good woman is fine and dandy by me (she, fine; I, the dandy). And, also, behaving as a New Years' Adam and Eve under the fig tree out the back would be nice for us to do. There were 240 arrests made in Melbourne this year - but you know they probably weren't for anything as pleasant as outdoors sexual intercourse. We were in the city centre but the crowd was rowdy and banal and we were actually in a cab homewards when 12:01 AM struck and then it became 12:00 AM suddenly again – all to do with the need for the planet to catch up with the sundials this year or something, as those goated chronologers tried explaining to those of us less aware of solar clock-hand resynchronism.

My New Years’ Day was something else, however, but I’ll post about that in the very near future, when a relevant accompanying photograph can be taken with Shantoozy’s new digital camera (a Xmas gift, from her Mum).

Now Rupert is over, sleeping on my couch. He is an idiot. (Hee-hee.) He wants to enter the Archibald Prize for portraiture and he doesn't even paint. He wants to enter a painting called, 'Sperm On White Canvas: Portrait Of An Unborn', or else another equally white work entitled, 'Portrait Of God.'

He chuckles as I read him that.

No, he actually does have a serious idea for an artwork and I want him to create the piece. It is a clever idea. He says he will start it when he moves house next month. He had better!

Well, well, well, what have we 'ere to say else than that? Nothing for now. It's 4:30 AM. Fluid is drizzling down my nasal passages and my brain feels like vinyl with migrating plasticizers. I start coughing. Oh, bloomin' heck!

Silly Ol' Xmas

2006-01-04T04:13:00.000+11:00

I am a tad behind in my blogging so I’ll start now, posting in order. Okelee-dokelee…

All I wanted for Xmas was my two front teeth to be brushed but I didn’t have the energy, nor to brush all my other teeth, something I’d also wanted to do as part of the ‘all I wanted’ package. As a matter of fact, I had a lengthy afternoon sleep in the spare room at Hissy Kitty’s, at which venue we were for Xmas gormandising. The aforementioned package also contained other desirables – some, like books and d.v.d.s, I received as gifts from family and friends, but the energy I wanted just never arrived in mi socks to thus motivate feet and legs and body, let alone my mind. And I HAVE let alone my mind, as must be obvious to you reading this, and so now that it’s on the mantel permit me description of what also I've recently started displaying there – in other words, my Xmas gifts.

From the most lovely Shantoozy, I acquired a cute 1963 French Charlie Chaplin comic book, ‘Charlot: Charlot au Regiment, et Charlot et les Gangsters'; I can’t read French but I am going to learn, hopefully beginning at university this year. Also, a 1921 French Charlie Chaplin biography, ‘Charlot’ by Louis Delluc (the French filmmaker), but in its 1922 English translation by Hamish Miles, ‘Charlie Chaplin’, so I can start reading it soon; it is a paperback book which its former owner, probably back in the 1920s, promoted via custom-production to a gorgeous-looking hardback with golden embossing. This is a rare book and I have been wanting to read it for a long time; this book was, I believe, the first ever to be a biography of a film personality. Also, ‘The Picture History Of Charlie Chaplin’ by Gerald MacDonald, published in 1965. (Yes, I think that Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin was not exactly a poo-poo head!) Plus, also, she gifted me a copy of ‘Flying High’ (a.k.a. ‘Airplane!’) on digital virtual disc, although it feels quite real to MY tentacle ends.

Other gifts Edels also received include ‘The Goodies: The Tasty Box’ 4-disc d.v.d. box-set (possibly my all-time favourite t.v. show, or tying with a couple of others - it was certainly one of the most amazing events of my life to have met the three legends when they toured last year), an l.p. recording of Harpo Marx playing the harp, a book on the films of that man who wouldn't drink water because fish fuck in it, W. C. Fields, a book of Woody Allen comic strips drawn by Stuart Hample, and one marzipan candy bar by the name of ‘Edel’! Humourously enough, they were mainly all comedian/ comedy related gifts! Someones have been readin’ mi profile here and they learnt I ain’t just a toss-pot.

But wait, there’s more! Two joint gifts to Shantoozy and I were Hissy Kitty’s INSANEly lovely present of a d.v.d.-player with a very eccentric remote-control (to stop a disc simply press the 'KARAOKE' button - what else, dunderhead? - and it's the 'DISPLAY' button, obviously, if you want to shuttle backwards), and Toxic Lash’s lovely present of a copy of her favourite book, Dr. Suess’ ‘Oh, The Places You’ll Go!’

Yes, well, quite a score for this Hobbit-hole dwelling, hedgehoggin’, Womble-like accruer of things. I don’t like to keep what I deem TOO much stuff; just the good stuff, like books and d.v.d.s and music-platters and glittering nic-nacs and good ideas… I think everyone liked their gifts from me, especially since I decided not to go with smacks in the mouth, as the saying goes and I wish it would for good.

I spent the next couple of days recovering from the festivities leading up to silly ol’ Xmas, treating my liver well again 'n' all.

Turkey Moist Fowl

2005-12-20T04:21:00.000+11:00

Jeez, S. Gregory, lighten up! That last post was really depressing. Of course, you already know that, S. Gregory, because you wrote it and just reread it again and you are me and so I can say to myself right now, “Boy-o-boy, am I glad I’m over that depressing spell!” (A special thank-you to Darkneuro for her comforting comment, by the way – you’re probably right, D.N., that I’d have walked off thinking foul things but they wouldn’t have been aimed at you.)

Fortunately, dear reader, Shantoozy and I have sorted out, or are clearly on the way to sorting out, those circumstances inspirational of my state of upset and it basically comes down, we agree, to a combination of my stress and nervous tension, her difficulties in explaining herself accurately on the spur of the moment, and my liver condition. So, what the fuck DID I know, after all? Things are good between us now. They rarely get out of hand like they did then, which is a blessing of good fortune from the spirits or eternal, infinite energies or (with all due respect) whatever, that I genuinely appreciate. Yes, I am now feeling much more hopeful than at the time of my last post.

Now, and no relation to walking off thinking ‘fowl’ things (insert vomit here, anti-punsters), what are all these sayings involving turkeys that I’d never heard before? Seriously. Let me explain the deeply pertinent situation.

See, I’d become a little upset at some rude jerk on eBay who had stupidly failed to understand Shantoozy’s clear and concise payment instructions.

“Don’t let the turkeys get you down,” advised Shantoozy.

“Huh?” I replied with all the swift wit of a stale croissant.

“You know, it means something like, don’t let the arseholes get you down,” she explained.

Are these verbal Australiana? I was born here but I’ve never felt at home in this country. (And she is a citizen of U.S.A. as well as of here!) One reason is that, to my observation, Australians have the poorest sense of humour in the western world – and I love to laugh, so it is a BIG reason.

Yesterday, I was introduced to the game, ‘Two-Up’, for the first time – a supposedly Australian game (but I suspect it was pilfered from the Germans). I think I’d heard of it in passing but certainly couldn’t have told you it involved the complex strategic skill of being able to toss two coins in the air from off a wooden paddle and the trenchant intellectual eurhythmy to be able to watch them plummet to the ground. There’s betting involved, too – that admirable art of guessing whether or not you stand to lose everything you own for the most uninteresting and flippant reason possible. I’d have thought that 'Two-Up' was a game involving one hand’s foremost two fingers being held up to the face of John Howard, and that would seem to me to actually have been a more worthwhile game for an Aussie, or at least slightly non-boring.

Yep, I’ll be leaving Australia for good as soon as I am reasonably able. Somewhere snowy, perhaps. I’m dreamin’ of a Xmas that is the shade of Snow White's milky breasts. Which reminds me, the thought of Xmas does, of … the turkeys.

Well, my Mum, who is quite an ocker (I was adopted, semi-incidentally), although really, truly lovely and only a turkey herself in the sense of being too silly or worrisome sometimes, said a few years ago, “Grr! One day that dog’s gonna send me flying head over turkey!” Now, I’d laughed heartily at what I’d deemed to be a mis-warble because Mum does have a number of large turkeys roaming her property and they tend to cluster around one’s feet when they’re hungry, but in time I discovered that this is an actual saying. To declare that one went ‘flying arse over tit’ I can comprehend because the human has an arse and a tit (a breast; a chest region) but this ‘head over turkey’ business makes me confused. We don’t have an appended turkey. Well, maybe a naked man suffering from brewer’s droop may look as though…

Hmmm. This saying, eh? Many a turkey loses its head at Xmas time; I suppose this could possibly have something to do with the saying’s inception, implying that during the wonderfully gluttonous ‘silly season’ we may end up by substituting our heads for the roast turkey’s if we lose too much control of ourselves.

Hey! That season is now upon us! I am no pagan - well, maybe a little bit - but I am no christian or Santa-suited coca-cola addict or other big-business advocate or any otherwise religious personage but I like twinkling lights and present-giving and -receiving and eating yummy tummy-scrum’s and such and so Merry Xmas, all! (Except the arseholy people – youse can get stuffed, turkeys!)

A Good Time Was Bad By All

2005-12-17T23:31:00.000+11:00

My partner returned on Wednesday night and it was really wonderful. I'd missed her and she'd missed me. We had a fantastic pork, ate tasty food and chewed the fat. It was a good time.

Tonight is the fourth night she has been back and it shall be the third night in a row that we do not share a bed. I couldn't do it. It's just too depressing and certain other crap emotions. I am quite upset at her. Certain ways of hers have been deeply frustrating me; some of them have even been seriously upsetting me. Maybe we shall be able to sort them out. Maybe it's mainly my liver instigating my anger, upset and frustration. I doubt it, though. And yet, what the fuck do I know? My brain feels cramped.

My face's skin is of poor quality, what with its propensity for redness and flakiness, as it is currently experiencing yet again. I can't stay asleep at night because of the deep, searing pain of my body. And there are many other life turds. Many shitty ordeals. Makes me wonder what's the point of going on. I have to, of course, but it's most annoying.

People - well, most of them - are, in general, arseholes. And genuinely stupid. I'm more intelligent and self-aware than the majority of people and that, all considered, is not saying much. We are all, let's be honest, pathetic little shits. We need to feel loved. We yearn to be respected and well-paid, and considered attractive and talented. Grr! Emotions are crap! Pathetic! The whole matter makes me sick and it makes me angry. I wish I had no conscience and could just kill people but, of course, because I do have a conscience, which it is right for humans to have, I don't really wish that.

In the fig tree in the backyard a bird's nest has fallen down and all the eggs are smashed upon the ground. We are supposed to think that this is not bad because nature is supposedly neither good nor bad.

Hmmph!

I wonder if I'll die in the coming bird 'flu pandemic?

Gone Troppo

2005-12-14T03:22:00.000+11:00

My partner has been up in Queensland (Gold Coast and Brisbane) for almost the past two weeks. She has been going semi-troppo from the ordeal. Disgustingly hot and humid sub-tropical Southeast Queensland, how despicable art thou!

They have insects up there – bugs and mosquitoes and cockroaches and some unbalanced, passive-aggressive ex-housemates of a friend who, each in separate incidents, ventured down from there, moved in with my friend, fluttered their inane vagina-sensing antennae whenever females visited him and then left, the grotty critters they, to return to the dank bedwombs of their parents’ home turf, where you can sweat yourself stir crazy to the soul pillaging drone of lawnmowers – millions and millions of lawnmowers – a locust-like swarm on any given Sunday afternoon!

There were warnings of race violence starting this night time on the Gold Coast, similar to that currently pounding the streets of Sydney. She is at the Gold Coast tonight but she is staying indoors, where the Blu-Tak melts and the poster edges curdle.

Well, she comes home this evening next. Yay!

In the meantime...

Last night time, Rupert and I ate fish and chips, squirting tartare sauce whilst watching and critiquing slick, factory-made porn. I agree with what he wrote at Muffbox - that 'there is something sexy about regal orgies performed in period court scenes but this particular one chucked together a bunch of actors with no flow of response to the imagery, the setting or the movement of bodies.'

Twas an amusing night we had. On his mobile telephone's video camera we recorded the most ridiculous mock advertisement for frozen potato chips imaginable. I haven't laughed so heartily in numerous weeks! We'll see if we can adhere it to our respective blogs soon and so share our glorious rubbish with you.

A Lecher In Physiology

2005-12-11T22:26:00.000+11:00

The filming is complete. The studio voice work is complete. Now’s there’s post shooting work to be done but that’s nothing to do with me. It should be edited within about four weeks, I’m told, and then there will be a closed screening for cast and crew before its submission into February’s Tropfest Film Festival 2006. After that, it shall ‘do the circuit’, I would imagine. That’s ‘Realising Sigmund’, a short film written and directed by Rupert Owen, produced by Travis Sutherland and starring yours truly. "I'm a lecherer in physiology. I mean..." Well, you'll just have to wait and see!

It was a swift, smooth shoot. Two nights (Wednesday, 30th November & Thursday, 1st December). The biggest film production I’ve yet had major involvement within. (There’s no counting ‘The Extra’, starring Jimeoin, as I was not a main participant in that film – just an extra, in fact. …And now, referencing that film’s plot, I shall shoot THEM, although not with a camera…) ‘Realising Sigmund’ had an hairdresser, two make-up artistes, a clapper-board, food catering, cat-o’-nine-tails, an egg whisk… Eleven crew personnel in total (including my partner, Shantoozy, as costume coördinator, who had to leave for two weeks in Queensland directly prior to shooting), seven other actors (one of whom was the producer, acting as a dead character) and one rabbit, the writer-director's renegade pet, who would occasionally bound into shot.

Then there was one short night in the sound studio with myself, a fellow actor and minimal crew. (Thursday, 8th December).

I must say I’m ultimately content with my performance. I think. Well, the rushes look pretty good. It was quite a difficult rôle, attaining the right tone and balancing the contradictions of a fairly complex character, whilst adhering to Rupert’s fairly stringent vision, and in the limited space of a seven minute film. We should hopefully end up with a pretty funny little movie, though.

I shall be working as lead actor again in a new production with Rupert next year. Something like a raunchy comedy of mistaken identity! And hopefully some other rôles, big or small, that I might find around the traps, the boards, the curtain, the rigging, the auditorium, the concessions stand, the toilets… I got mi mop and bucket, sir.

Seek Comfort

2005-11-18T09:11:00.000+11:00

I can see that it is a pleasant grey-skied morning outside, as the kettle is a-brewing in the kitchen of the 1800s terrace house that Shantoozy and I rent off some anonymous impropriator. I think how peculiarly impersonal is our society.

Although it is almost malevolent summertime again, there are still lovely cool days like today to be had way down south here. The ice has tinkled to the bottom of this fragile hemisphere.

But, as life's day draws on, the ice is melting. Ours IS a strange society – tellurian propulsion from the tickertape whir of green paper. Into the apocalyptic void, I suppose.

However, I sit sipping from my caffeinated cup and simply try to be calm and enjoy the while, cosily. A good friend of mine used to end his letters to me with the advice, ‘Seek comfort.’ To survive, this is part of what we must, with propriety, do.

Ah, listen. Here comes sweet rain.

Cruel Humans

2005-11-17T01:11:00.000+11:00

I’ve recently become a vegetarian again because I hate the cruelty that humans inflict upon other animals and so I just refuse to participate anymore. Plus, the whole concept of flesh eating has gradually become unpalatably vulgar to me. This vegetarianism also, it seems, has been a good move towards reducing my waistline.

This last night I was feeling so depressed, though, that I selfishly toyed with the idea of ordering a pizza with pig in the form of ham or bacon. I asked Shantoozy whether the pigs really were treated inhumanely but she didn’t know, and having partly grown up on a farm her experience was that they were not – apart from the ultimate extermination of the animal, of course. Anyway, I flung myself onto the ’net to do a little investigation.

Before I became a vegetarian I wouldn’t eat veal, or, with some exceptions due to shameful unconcern, battery farmed chicken, because of the ludicrous cruelty. So, I checked out the situation with the pigs and it turns out that here in good old backwoods Australia (and God knows how many other countries besides) they are battery farmed. Needless to say, treating pigs (or any other animals) this way is completely unacceptable! I believe that we need to reëvaluate our habit of eating animals, for this was a habit formed millennia ago, before the modern, industrialised methods of torturous impoundment that are currently in practice.

I suggest that you check out this site for more info.: Animal Liberation .

And maybe reread ‘Charlotte’s Web’.

Now it's back to those halcyon days of toddlerhood for me, when I'd eschew slushy, tinned baby fodder for fresh garden salads (’tis true) and then mi Mum would plonk me onto the potty in front of the telly where, apparently, I’d fall asleep watching ‘Days Of Our Lives’.

Uncorked Whine

2005-11-16T09:01:00.000+11:00

My email provider is inaccessible, as it has been every time I’ve tried to access it for a day or two now. This is just the cold, hard iceberg tip of my current frustration in life. There is also the fact that I live in one of the most backwoods countries in the Western world, and possibly the least cultured. And that my room is a dusty mess. And that the human is an highly destructive parasite. To further make this a fun li’l post for youse all, what follows are details of one of several major fucked-up-nesses. (I apologise - well, to the extent that my self-indulgent whining allows me to while not nullifying its own existence.)

I used to feel that with time and devotion I would, before too long, become a successful writer (and possibly also, actor). Successful enough, that is, to comfortably support myself and partner financially through my art, and to be renowned and critically supported enough to no longer feel severe doubts about my talent and skill and the validity of my work, or like some God-forsaken amateur. Then I grew up a bit – that is, got a bit duller with age – and nothing had changed for the better regarding my position artistically. Some things had improved, sure – my skill, for example, and the projects with which I became involved were somewhat less unprofessional; but other things had declined – my delusion that I was destined to make the ‘big time’, for example, and the energy of my creative focus. So, all in all, it about equals out to the same squalid situation I’ve been in ever since, at age 19, I realised that I was a writer (as well as, to some extent, an actor – which I’d already held to be so).

Who knows? Things may yet suddenly change and I’ll have finally more or less ‘made it’, but life always seems to behold for me at ’most every turn a new and unexpected nasty surprise. What will I discover next? That I’d actually just been writing, over and over, for years and years, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’?

I hope things are easier and pleasanter after death. Doth death (how funnily clumsy soundeth those two words adjoined? – I’ll start the sentence afresh)... Does death, life’s opposite, await with pleasant surprises? I’ve only approximately 15,800 days left ’til I find out. How long have you?

Wild Colonial Boys

2005-11-11T23:34:00.000+11:00

I've been feeling somewhat more energised this week thanks to healthy living - take that, fatty liver disease! (That's a generally curable hepatic condition, so not quite so severe as its name implies.) And I should ammend my previous post in relation to this and say that, of course, the major problem caused by this condition is to the health of one's liver and not a lack of energy, which would actually be merely the major secondary problem, I guess - at least, for myself. (For further information about all this wonderful liver wackiness, see my comment in the previous post's comments section.)

This past week or so has been fairly good over-all, in fact. I have been working on my second novel; don't wish to give anything away, of course, but it is coming along okay so far and if it maintains its current qualities it should end up being quite unusual and amusing.

My partner, Shantoozy, has now finished school (University of Melbourne) for the year. Yay! Now she can make me dinner every night and bring me beer whenever I dictate it and if you take me seriously then I'll get YOU to bring me the beer!

I heard that an old and very good friend of mine (from high school) was getting pissed on free beer at a Sex Pistols reunion gig or some such in London with its bassist, Glenn Matlock!!! Paul has been a Pistols fan for decades and I remember even giving him Matlock's memoirs for a gift one year, so I know he would have been quite impressed with his evening! Paul is currently involved in a year-long English tour with his band, Vanlustbader, incidentally. The record company has the whole band packed into a tiny apartment, apparently, but I don't think he minds from the sounds of his crazy nights so far. Thor knows the amount of times he's tumbled down venue stairwells over there! But this guy needn't be on tour with any band to be bar-chatting with renowned punk rockers. On a solo holiday to the United States of America a few years back he ended up having a drink with Jello Biafra, whom he'd encountered unexpectedly in a San Francisco bar. I'll add a link to Vanlustbader's site so you can check it out if you like.

Writing of wild nights, I won bingo the other night in Brunswick. The host is a drag queen and the night is called, 'Barb Drops Her Balls'. Her prizes feature such lovely articles as a Sadaam Hussein talking doll, 'The Cunt Colouring Book' ("Good bush," she tells us) and 'The George W. Bush Colouring Book' ("Bad Bush," she says). I won a beautiful(!) tablecloth with a map of Australia on it. Made in China. According to this map, Victoria is not much bigger than Tasmania, Queensland is about as big as, err, well, two Queenslands, actually, and the Northern Territory's most significantly novel animal is a dark-skinned man who wears practically no clothing and carries a spear in each hand, and Tasmania still contains Tasmanian tigers. It now lies gaudily atop our dining table, which is a beautiful(!) '70s fake veneer piece that Shantoozy recently found on the sidewalk.

Stay glue-orbed to this venue for more exciting updates, m'lovelies!

Limbo To The Lowdown

2005-11-04T04:30:00.000+11:00

I’m sick and tired of being those very things! Arghhh! When you have a fatty liver condition like it is professionally assumed I do (but in process is the discrediting of anything more serious, which, I am told, is rare) it makes life’s very basics somewhat of a struggle. Lack of energy is the major problem caused by this condition but there is also a dizzying nausea with which to contend, and a grumpiness borne partly of frustration from not being able to fully function and partly from the angry energy pumped out by the upset liver. These symptoms are not unrelenting, thank fortuity, but they do hit regularly. When your energy for thinking is as low as mine gets at times and you can't be bothered finding a better word to use there than 'gets', then you know that something is amiss! When you can’t read or write, and when that’s of the utmost imperativeness to your life, then all too easily may you slump into the murky, swampy blues. It makes the mind feel like concrete. Of course, I am working towards rectifying the ailment by eating healthily, losing weight, drinking plenty of dandelion root beverage, etc., but it takes time. And I’m forcing myself to read and write, at least somewhat. I plan to write a page of my novel a day.

Anyway, it is basically this fatigue that has hindered my efforts to post anew in this gutter of the daisies. Such a cunt! Such a cock-and-balls! Actually, I get great enjoyment from those odd-looking organs of lovable sin so I should cuss elsewise but where’s the energy for such? Burp! Fart! George W. Bush! Saddam Hussein! Neo-Nazis! Faeces! ...Oh, groovy, I somehow found it.

...Limbo now to a brief lowdown, if you will.

Rupert and I attended a dang fine hair salon hosted Hallowe’en party in South Yarra on Saturday night. We’d given ourselves nicknames for the night – he, ‘Fly Cassanova’; I, ‘The Baron’. However, the host insisted upon introducing us as ‘the pervert’ and ‘the paedophile’ respectively. My rather disconcerting title extended from the fact of the unusual moustache-less goatee I am cultivating for my short film rôle of later this month, and the fact that he felt I needed something to make me seem creepy (as Rupert had neglected to mention that it was a Hallowe’en party I had just dressed boh-dandy), and what with Rupert already a pervert our host, dressed as a skeleton, hatched his evil plan and monikered me thus!

Afterwards, Rupert and I cabbed it to a photographer’s warehouse space and gibbered with hairdressers and hair models. We attempted some sort of action plan for seduction but the rings of Saturn, along which we were both happily slippin' and slidin', proved far too distant from any activities available on Earth just then and so it was impossible for anything to eventuate.

Next, having parted ways with all the other stragglers, we went to a café and asked if they had ‘writer’s rates’. “You know, for unemployed writer types,” I asked, or something like that. They didn’t. We breakfasted elsewhere. Twice.

We reflected on the two girls who were at the warehouse. “Which girl did you prefer?” asked he. One had appeared a tad 1920s to my bric-a-brac brain. “The Twenties one, but I would have been happy with either, of course,” I said. “It’s funny you should say that,” he replied, “because I got the impression with the other one that I was …looking at her, …drunk.”

Rupert bumped into a shop front. “Oh. Oh,” he slurred. We would pass the odd drunken hobo. “I wish those bums wouldn’t walk in the same manner as us,” he humphily declared. Soon enough, still wearing his tasselled fez, he lay across the gutter as we waited for a tram beneath the morning sun. Home wasn’t very far, yet it sure was a long journey back there.

I slept. Arose. Life goes on.

Wednesday evening I attended a li’l park picnic in honour of Shantoozy and Hissykitty being ‘ace’, which was hosted by their friend Toxiclash. There were balloons and swings and wine (not for MY liver) and cake and other snack treats. Certainly not an unpleasant way to hoist the moon up.

My main work of the moment is regarding the short film, ‘Realising Sigmund’ – to keep learning my lines and develop a suitable characterisation over the next couple of weeks. Oh, and to keep this comical, hircine tuft sprouting from my chinny-chin-chin; and the drivel running down my chin and onto this here blog for you.

Over A Week And Far Away

2005-10-28T13:25:00.000+10:00

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

2005-10-20T13:17:00.000+10:00

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...

2005-10-17T08:30:00.000+10:00

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

2005-10-16T15:44:00.000+10:00

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...

2005-10-15T10:39:00.000+10:00

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

2005-10-10T03:41:00.000+10:00

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

2005-10-08T02:11:00.000+10:00

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

2005-10-06T04:42:00.000+10:00

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

2005-10-02T22:20:00.000+10:00

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!

With Head Upon The Writer's Block...

2005-09-27T23:39:00.000+10:00

I wanted to post today (and, lo and behold, I AM posting!) but I could think of nothing to write – probably because of my being sick (something like tonsillitis, is it?) but maybe because I’m an ingenious dullard, which is one who has a genius for being dim-witted, or maybe just because I am a great man showering myself with false modesty like petals from the flowering of my wondrous, vagina-whetting wisdom. Any ol’ how, I told my partner that I knew not what to post and she replied, “You’re a writer – make something up!” I retorted, “Oh, yeah, I can see ’im now – T. S. Eliot talking to his wife – ‘I have writer's block!’ – (in feminine tone:) ‘You’re a writer, T. S. – make something up!’” And then my partner told me I should write that here and so I have.

Now I shall write the word ‘penis’ because the pen is mightier than the sword, as the cliché goes. And I'd rather my head upon the writer's block than that! ...But which head? Arghh, the confusion! When I'm less tired and sick I'll get back to you on that one except that by then I'll be able to wax more eloquwein, er, quollocial, um, more gooder, yes, and shan't need to resort to speaking such drivel as you have here been served today and wasn't it delicious, you rotten, vomiting bastards!

A Knievel In Dressing Gown And Slippers

2005-09-24T13:37:00.000+10:00

Like most boring people, I haven’t really been doing all that much over the past couple of days to delineate or comment upon. I ate some pizza washed down with fizzy Chinotto. I applied to return to uni. next year, after a ten-year hiatus, to study literature and such. I’ve been reading ‘White Nights’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (English translation by Andrew R. MacAndrew) – his description of spring in St. Petersburg is amusing and depressing. I bought Irish band The Fureys’ ‘Twenty-One Years On…’ compact-disc for AUD$1.99 (gee, they must be popular!); this, the band of the recently released ‘Chaplin Sings/ The Fureys Sing Chaplin’, of which I look forward to procuring a copy. And I discovered the first clothing shop that I can confidently say I liked – a boutique above Central Station featuring designer dandy-wear made right here in this fair(ly acceptable) city! As soon as I am well-to-do, I’ll be dead, but I want to be cremated wearing some of this finely wrought silkiness.

Actually, I don’t really consider myself a boring person, if only because I have some exciting thoughts and dreams and am rarely bored (and am going to have sex with superstars someday). I simply just don’t like partaking in the exciting activities that make exciting people truly uninteresting when you get down to bones and regard their sloppy brainwave configurations as evinced through prosaic references to anime and female ejaculate at engagement parties and installation-art openings and the like. Also, I have done some fun stuff, like, in a chemically contortive mind-state, danced low-down to the floor like a crab to a blaring Alice Cooper ballad whilst the male of a couple entering this party is talking to his partner, “…and then the windscreen…,” virtually stepping over me, “…oh, watch out for this weirdo…,” and continuing, “… yeah, the, er, the windscreen wipers were...” And now it’s time for a lovely cup of organic black tea. Ahhh… Where’s mi crash helmet?

Ingratiation

2005-09-21T13:29:00.000+10:00

My brain feels peppered with aluminium filings and my pores feel as though clogged with petroleum run-off. I think that I am sick. Well, we’re all sick, we humans, for it is, of course, part of that condition of being; although, some are sicker than others, such as people who own millions of dollars or Australia’s Liberal Party members (conservatives) or people who nowadays have multiple children (except by genuine accident despite the very best efforts to the contrary) or who shoot Californian sea lions in the head (yes, there are such people, and I don’t mean using a camera), and the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on – like me just now, in fact. My primary point was that I may be developing ’flu but don’t worry, that’s one virus you can’t catch over the internet (although I’m sure some sick prick is trying to discover a way how). My various ailments, which currently include but are not confined to fatty liver, heel spur, sinus problems and a form of obsessive compulsive disorder (o.c.d.), make the job of author an uphill battle, and that’s just the writing part; then there are the problems of agents and publishing and a lack of any real camaraderie.

However, I am working on my second novel and trying to get my first one published, as well as writing the odd poem here and there; odder, indeed, than society’s usual automobile, football and sodomy concoctions and so they, therefore, sometimes earn me the classification of untouchable – or, at least, if I find myself accidentally enmeshed within a crowd of yuppies or suburbanites or urban ‘hipsters’, unfuckable. I shall be splotching this blog with some such poetry soon, so get ready to toss your Keats; but remember, my head is NOT an ashcan.

Also, I shall probably be continuing performing around Melbourne as backing (wind-chimes, steel-string guitar and mouth noises) for spoken-word artist Rupert Owen as part of Boh-Dandy and The Cranks, maybe even adding a poem or two of my own to the mix. Our performance in Richmond earlier this month went very well – frankly, we were the most popular act of the evening – and so this is either encouraging or a sorry story for the state of live performance in this city. But my Mum thinks I’m cool.*

*Actually, she thinks I am odd.

Glade You Came!

2005-09-16T09:29:00.001+10:00

Welcome! “Daisies In The Gutter” is a venue where I can express ideas and observations regarding the poetical in this human life – specifically my own, of course, given that I am me, despite the fact that being so sometimes precipitates inner scuffles over who gets the last soul cookie or some such nonsense, and, yes, also focusing on the humourous aspects of life and not just the serious or tragical, and ultimately maybe even reflecting something, however trifling, of the essence of humanity. ...That was me rambling idylly just then – hello! – but, put simply, the focus of this site is the poetical in life - with, where possible, a lightness borne of good humour. So, venture to this electronic glade, dally Pooh-like or trampishly, and peer inside the head of this writer/poet …which mayn’t be too bestirring if mi noggin proves hollow …I mean, rather, come to this luminous hollow in the centre of the smoggy city and dilly-dally with contemplations poetical …yes, that sounds profound, S. Gregory; now give myself half of that ‘Oreo’, soul brother…

Idling

2005-09-12T20:06:00.000+10:00

This blog is new and under construction and therefore currently quite an idling bore.