Flashing Around

Published on August 31, 2010 in Cranky/Dopey Bitch, Married Life and Queen Me. 9 Comments

Second love heart-break came in the middle of spring and at the end of my university career. It was confusing being lovelorn when the smell of jasmine wafted from the bottom of the garden on the damp, creek air. It was muddled to be devastated when the jacarandas in the hills brought all the silver eucalypti to contrasted life.

It was hard work being that mopey but I gave it a really good shot. And he helped me along by finding another girlfriend within the space of two weeks. And when I mean finding I mean, she was already waiting in the wings for her turn on stage, although I am sure that she got to play understudy a couple of times.

I had a degree that everyone jokingly said came with the words ‘Do you want fries with that?’ and I had no job. Every day I walked the River Road, where I would buy the newspaper to look for gainful employment. The walk was always balmy and breezy, no matter the time of day but walking along leaves too much room for thoughts. And introspective Piscean Literature/Creative writing graduates have an overabundance of those, especially in times of abject grief. It was beautiful and warm outside but I was cold and bleak inside, as only a 20 year-old who still lived at home with her parents could be.

I often played a game on those walks, when I wasn’t cowering from swooping magpies. I would flash myself forward 6 months and imagine the same walk. What would I be wearing? Would I have a job, a new boyfriend? I never thought to think I might not be taking the same walk, but it was my fantasy.

As I grew older sometimes I still played the game but in reverse. Pretend I was me 10 years ago, flash forwarded into this car. Would I be shocked, surprised, disappointed to see the small, dusty interior of a moderately priced car? Ooh – look! I am married! Are those my thighs? The hair isn’t bad but I am not sure about the lines around the eyes. Hey at least I have learnt how to use eye-liner. Is this what passes for music these days?

My flash forwards get smaller and chronologically correct in scope again as I wait for the next thing that an old me in a future scenario would expect. A bigger car, tired eyes and something very precious in the back seat.

Angry Blog Posse

Published on August 27, 2010 in Cranky/Dopey Bitch and Pop Culture. 36 Comments

The reaction to this review has been highly amusing.  I totally agreed with Shiner’s review. I went over and had a look at the reviewed blog; it was not, shall I say, my cup of tea. However, what many of the reviewee’s ardent followers did not seem to understand was that when they decided to stand up for their Queen, was they were stepping into the Ask and Ye Shall Receive realm. This world is a carefully constructed one. It is mean, it can be shallow, but it is very bloody intelligent, sometimes thoughtful and always hilarious. Good Writing is King in  AAYSR Land. Manage it and you will be paid handsomely. To submit with inferior skill is asking for a new bottom-hole.

Crazy Brunette’s minions barged in half-cocked, not understanding the premise.  You have to know the lay of the land before you go breaking the rules. That is how dumb bogan Aussies get put in front of firing squads in Bali. Idiots.

There were responses such as:

  •  Umm question, who gave you the “higher than god power” to sit and pick at everyones blogs?? Fair question right? Seems like you just wasted a whole lot of air and time bitching about cb, when it could have been better spent fuck umm choking yourself? Huh? She ASKED for a review!
  • Much like when the radio is playing a song you don’t like, and you have the ability to switch the station, so goes the blogger world. If you don’t like CB, don’t read her. For the rest of us who faithfully read her posts, keep it up. How can one change the channel when one has been asked to spend a lot of time perusing the scheduled programing?
  • My bad. I thought this was a review site. All I’m reading is blatant bashing of another blogger. Though I give you guys a lot of credit. You wouldn’t bash just any old blog. You’re criticizing a wildly inventive, popular blog with tons of followers. That way you guys get noticed. Kudos to you. But I’m curious why do you spew all hate and not do a real review. Give us readers real insight about the blogs you discover. Being nasty just to be nasty? To me that’s really boring. FYI…I do like your skull logo. How is Shiner’s spot on feedback NOT a review?
  •  CB, hatred is the biggest form of flattery…clearly this blogger spent a good 45 minutes (give or take depending on how much their Mom helped them with the big words) making an ENTIRE post about you. I’m jealous! :) Madam, PLEASE. The reviewer does not take the position lightly. I have heard a scurrilous rumour (That’s how you spell it right, mum?) that they can spend at least 6 hours on a review. Fancy that.

 

Many people who read the blog (and write on it) have been reviewed or are waiting to be reviewed. And of course they know they are going to get fucking torn apart.  The process definitely gives one a bit of back bone and a dose of humility. I understand the need to stick up for a friend but unfortunately it just came across to me as a Southern ladies mob mentality circle jerk.

ps: (Circle jerk was for you MoFoKA!)

40 Hours of No Internet……

Published on August 23, 2010 in Beloved, Cranky/Dopey Bitch, Pop Culture and Queen Me. 16 Comments

Here in Australia we have a fund-raising even called the 40 Hour Famine. Traditionally you give up food for 40 hours and people sponsor you. But the beast has evolved and you can choose to give up anything. Some give up furniture or transport or technology or even shoes. I decided to give up the internet. A bit piss-weak I know, but I was gonna make the money whether I starved myself or not, which would have been very ugly for husband. So that is what I did this weekend. Of course my lil facebook addicted brain couldn’t let go of its status update habit.

If I was near the net, it might have gone something like:

  • Deep breaths, I can do this.
  • Wow! I have so much more time to get ready this morning!
  • Do you think I could make money out of a dog corral at polling places at election time?
  • I can’t believe how nervous I am just to go on a stupid course. ‘Writing for Young Adults’ at UWA with Deb Fitzpatrick, AJ Betts and Cate Sutherland.
  • Fuck I despise nodders. The chick in front of me looks like a bobble-head dog. One or two timely nods of agreement will suffice lady.

….this all took me till about lunch time on Saturday. And then I gave up, just enjoying lunch at the Left Bank with Nursey Chick then a lovely election dinner of Little Caesar’s pizza with MoFoKA and family. The company was sterling and Little Caesar’s is actually the best pizza in the world. Like they won an award for it. You haven’t lived till you have had the Greek Lamb pizza or the Eskimo Joe dessert pizza. (See why I couldn’t give up food for 40 hours?)

I know how much time I fart-arse around on the net and it really has to stop. Perhaps I need a 40 hour famine every weekend?

ps: Go listen to the latest song ‘Love’s the Reason’ by Jasmine. Tis awesome. Just like her.

An Easy 16 Bucks

Published on August 17, 2010 in Nostalgia and Queen Me. 6 Comments

If I reach back into my memory and put the pieces together, the dinner was for Mrs Mouse’s birthday. She was named so because my father nicknamed all my friends for the woodland creatures they resembled. We all met at the restaurant in the hills and sat on the deck, overlooking the twinkling valley. All but four of us were coupled up and I felt especially sad, as Beloved and I had recently uncoupled. Even so, the company was nice and there was wine to be had. And as we all know, where there is wine there is whizz.

‘Does anyone else need to go to the loo?’ I asked, glancing at the back of the restaurant, past a large group of late-teen boys, towards the facilities. Sis caught my glance. Now she is not one to be adverse to a paired wee-ing but she was feeling mischievous this particular evening.

‘I dare you to go alone!’

‘What?’ I scoffed ‘Course I can bloody go alone.’

‘Really?’ she asked, looking pointedly at the noisy boys. ‘I want  to watch you, go to the loo, by yourself, past those guys. I wanna see if they have a perve.’

‘Aw man, do I have to?’

‘I’ll pay you’ she says, putting two dollars on the table.

‘I bet those guys are at their end of year footy dinner too!’ say Porcupine, reaching for her purse.

By then the rest of our table had got wind of this odd pseudo dare/bet and started forking out the coinage. By the time that there was nearly $20 on the table there was a lot of pressure, so to speak, on me going to the ladies.

‘Fine!’ I huffed, patting down my 2001 outfit of a knee-length pencil skirt, red top with ruffled sleeves and black wedge heels. Face crimson and eyes resolutely ahead I steamed towards those dunnies. I didn’t spare a backwards glance to the cat-calling smart-arses who called themselves my friends, nor did I cast a sideways look at the rowdy table gone suspiciously silent.

When I returned, refreshed and  released, Sis was beside herself with merriment.

‘You should have seen them all stop and stare! So funny!’

Only funny if I was really worth staring at, even to a bunch of barely pubescent boys allowed to have an under-age beer or two. I am just glad I could prostitute myself for their tipsy amusement .

100 Word Post: His Second Love

Published on August 13, 2010 in 100 Word Posts and Beloved. 6 Comments

I dare not write this unless he is ensconced somewhere safe.             

I wish that I could forbid him to sit astride those two wheels ever again, but he loves how it frees him from the grind.

 ‘Ride safely!’ every day – an amulet.

‘I will!’ is the reply. Maybe it is his too.

When he is a little bit late, a thin blanket of unease gently tightens around me. If I hear a car door open and shut, twice, my heart stops as it listens for the creak of the front gate. When the doorbell doesn’t ring I can breathe again.

100 Word Post: Your Friends, My Fault

Published on August 9, 2010 in 100 Word Posts, Cranky/Dopey Bitch and Queen Me. 8 Comments

You freely admit that once you found it hard to make friends. The closest to your heart were flung far around the country, so when fledgling friendships took flight I was inordinately proud. You surrounded yourself with the articulate, nerdy-cool, successful, and popular.

Five years on they shun you and it is because of me. I never thought to burn with shame could be a real thing. But it is. It prickles, effervescent and red.

I want to yell ‘Fuck them!’ but how dare I, when I am cocooned in true mateship, so soft, safe and close ?

I’m sorry.

Remembering James

Published on August 1, 2010 in Depression and Nostalgia. 21 Comments

‘You know what Grumpy? Life just sucks sometimes!’ you would say with your exotic American accent. We would laugh about it but if I knew know what I knew then perhaps I wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss those ominous words.

I met James in my final year of high-school. He was an exchange student from Virginia. On a scorching day in 1995, I made a bee-line for the stranger in our Theatre Arts class with only the knowledge of how sucky it is to be the new kid guiding me. Luckily he wasn’t psycho but a true gentleman, with dark hair, dark eyes and a ready smile. When we had class together last period we would walk and talk to the bus-stop where my boyfriend would be waiting. Now that I look back on it, the exchange in company was tangible –  like having a beautifully cooked roast  replaced with a Happy Meal. But when you are a teenager, who can account for your taste? Brand loyalties last long.

James was a lovely young man and he would often bemoan the lack of a lady in his life. This is when I did what I do best and interfered. I decided that I would set him up with my sister, in a ‘Hey! Let’s all go out to Pizza Hut in a group’ way. However, it was pretty clear what my intent was. James certainly didn’t mind as my sis was hot and she didn’t mind because he seemed nice. The person who did mind was an asshole who decided that he would cement his airy fairy designs on my sister the very night of the outing. So the group date did not come to pass. I feel like a dickhead and James a bit of a loser though through no fault of his own. The idiot who snaffled up my sister ended up screwing with her head for 6 months and ‘turned out’ to be gay.

That year we were in a play together and he was doing the lighting for my individual production until he wussed out on the night due to nerves.  He hung out with the freaks and I hung out with the geeks and at lunch our paths would often cross.

At the end of the year we all geared up for graduation and the rest of our lives, while James geared up to go home. He wrote in my year book “Thank you for being so nice!”  and in those days before email I told him I would write. But I didn’t. My head was too full of summer and love and university. It was a 5 fickle months before I wrote to him and probably not a coincidence that I was single and sad. I didn’t have any designs, I just had nostalgia and more room in my head.

 I agonised over the address he wrote, being unfamiliar with the US format and his messy writing – would it get to him okay? I didn’t hear back from him at all with a shrug and a sigh and on with life I went. Then one day a phone call -

‘Hey, you remember James?’

‘Yeah – I wrote to him a while back but he never answered me!’

‘He killed himself. 3 months after he got home.’

I think he shot himself - bloody Americans and their lax gun controls I recall thinking, as if that would stop somebody from killing themselves if they really wanted to. His parents found him. His poor parents. And the letter. The letter sent after his death. I cringed. How awful to get a letter in the mail for a son who was no longer there to receive it. But now I think maybe how nice it might have been; to get a letter that showed what a pleasant young man they had raised, who was liked and remembered a whole hemisphere away.

Sometimes I wonder though. In the days before email and facebook and sms how ‘confirmed’ was the horrible tragedy? Maybe, it was just a rumour gone wrong. Is he 15 years gone, or is he enjoying his own summers full of love and family and good times?

Are you still here James McClary?

Dear Rihanna

Published on July 28, 2010 in Cranky/Dopey Bitch and Pop Culture. 15 Comments

I get it. At the moment your pop incarnation is cool and edgy with some sort of pseudo-lesbian vibe. I mean, who wouldn’t after that dick-head you were with beat the living crap out of you?

But do you know what else you are? A silly bitch. Normally I couldn’t give a shit about what others do, each to their own and all that; as long as you aren’t hurting anyone.  Technically you aren’t holding a gun to anyone’s head but when you are a role model for the impressionable young, the criteria of ‘not hurting anyone’ has to be expanded.

The question I ask you is this; Does a woman who has been a victim of domestic abuse have to sing a song with the lyrics ‘I like the way you touch me there/I like the way you pull my hair’? I get that ‘Rude Boy’ is about sexy-time and supposed female empowerment (pfft – by objectifying men and taking on a domineering persona?) but you can’t imagine that people don’t take the knowledge they have of you in ‘real’ life and apply it to what you sing about. ‘Oh ho – that Rihanna, she likes it a bit rough eh?’

Then there’s your latest offering, a collaboration with renowned bad-boy Eminem. Disregarding the words, I like ‘Love the Way You Lie’ but I don’t like that the message it sends is that you are complicit with a song that glorifies physical and emotional abuse.

I just don’t get it. Sing about your experiences – let us know how confused and hurt and scared you were. But to willingly be part of the aforementioned songs? It is insidious.

You need to get a clue cos at the moment you may think you are coming across as hot, strong and confident but to me it is just sad, brittle and distasteful.

Love,

Grumpy

I Want to be on Thirsty Merc’s Team

Published on July 24, 2010 in Pop Culture. 14 Comments

The venue was a huge barn-like structure with a bar at one end and a stage at the other. The roof was adorned by large Chinese lanterns and red parasols. Beetlejuice-esque pieces of art such as a giant gnarled hand protruded nightmarishly from the wall. I nursed my ginger beer, tapping my foot.

     ‘Tramp Stamp is on your team’ said Snazz.

     ‘Huh?’ I replied, smothering a yawn. It was 10 o’clock and normally I would have been ensconced in my bed with a book for half an hour, not at a gig. We had already had greasy Mexican, frozen margaritas and Spanish hot chocolate, which for me is a night out in itself.

     ‘You pick ‘interesting’ people to put on each other’s team’ explained Snazz ‘It is mean and shallow but it passes the time.’

     ‘Well in that case,’ I said, scanning the room ‘Teen Wolf is on yours.’

We had already been through 2 support acts; Village Kid who were fantastic and Ali Towers who grew on me and pissed me off with his one-man band talent.

     ‘Nana Mouskouri for you’

     ‘I raise you Ranga Man’

     ‘Drug aware hoodie’

We could have played the game all night, so varied the crowd was but finally, finally Thirsty Merc took to the stage. Thank god for that because I was already trying to plan my late entrance to work so that I could have a 30 minute sleep-in.

Once they started though, going to bed was the last thing on my mind. Well mostly. That Rai is cute for a dude that looks like a pirate. (Love you husband!) Absolutely electrifying. Tight, accomplished, engaging and rocking. They played one of my favourites as well as a heckler’s request for ‘No Sugar’. Rai threatened that they needed to do an obscure B sides tour, which is what Snazz was bemoaning they should do as the gig she has seen in Bunbury the night before was a little too mainstream for her taste.

It was near 12 when they left the stage for the final time, even though I could have danced and sung for at least 2 hours more. With the house lights on, dazed, deafened, and delighted we made away across the rapidly emptying drink-spilt dancefloor.

     ‘Hey’ said Snazzy spying a familiar figure as we emerged into the chill night air ‘Teen Wolf is actually kinda cute!’

Hardly Normal

Published on July 17, 2010 in Cranky/Dopey Bitch. 13 Comments

A while ago I had a whinge when I went to Harvey Norman (an Australian furniture/electrical retailer) to buy some ink cartridges. If you recall I was pissy because they charged 10 cents extra for a double ‘value pack’.

Today I returned there for yet more ink. I saw that I could buy my one blue ink for $17:95. Hmm, not bad. Then I wondered, ‘The others are BOUND to run out soon, do I buy more?’

Perchance what did I spy next? A value pack containing all required colours for $99. As per usual I had to do some laborious mental calculations to figure out that why, yes, that was a saving. Point number one to retail superstore. I was walking away from the wall of ink when I thought ‘Wait, let me just check if these inks do the same amount of pages.’ Meh. Maybe 50 less. Still a goer.

By this stage the cute foreign (Spanish perhaps?) salesdude came over and asked if I needed help. Before I could even open my mouth he told me he could do me a good deal. Dude – huh? It was pretty clear I was already buying the stuff. Are you new at this? Then he proceeded to show me that I could in fact get the same value pack PLUS 120 pages of photo paper. For the same price.

Wait, no – NOT even the same price, because he took $10 off before I could blink. No mouth-opening or eye-blinking was to be taking place in front of this gentleman obviously.

I thanked him and walked away quickly and bemusedly. Was that another point for Harvey Norman, or minus 2 for having lovely but soft-nosed salespeople?