I’m way too tired to think of a witty post title

Hmm…so I’ll be away for a bit and will not be posting/checking in/going anywhere NEAR the internet, and much as I loves me net-access, I’m saying a giant WOOO-HOOOO to that prospect!!!

Off for seven days of beachy goodness.

Have bags to pack tonight, and clothes to dry, and a unit to restore order to (as it’s currently in a disarrayed state with presents strewn in piles here and there, suitcases cluttering the living room and various articles of clothing and a tiny pop up tent drying in the bathroom – cos every holiday needs a tiny pop up tent).

I survived Christmas, and no one went ape-shit over family stuff. My sisters and I enjoyed a little quiet passive-aggressive smart-arse-ery here and there, me shouting ‘LIES’ out of Dad’s earshot as he made crap up to entertain his son-in-law, and me getting a dig in when Dad mentioned a cousin of ours who ‘needs a kick up the arse’ by dropping in a wry ‘Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around’. But other than some haughty stares and flinching here and there we got through it and enjoyed those things we love about Christmas with each other…

I didn’t sleep much though and the place was mega dusty so I was itchy, snuffly and headachey the whole trip. I don’t know what to do with that…I’d be up more if the place was cleaner as I have allergies and my son has allergies that trigger his really rather serious chronic asthma…but how do you say that to an already sad/depressed Mum? Sheesh.

Went shopping with littlest sis where we both squinted in the harsh lights and shrank under the bombardment of images of maniacally enthusiastic airbrushed 16 year olds, or pouting ‘rock chick’ goddesses and tried to remember what it was we’d come to buy and that we weren’t hideously ugly bushpigs. Shit shopping is hard work sometimes.

So this morning I’d booked in for a haircut…more of a trim really, I’m not one for maintenance of hairstyles and usually go once a year and ask them to cut off the dead ends and skip all the ‘extras’ such as shampooing/blowdrying as I just wanna go home, wash it, do it as usual and see how it looks…but today I looked at my tired pale face and thought ‘fuck this shit’. So  now my hair is cut quite short, and kinda curls around my face and has highlights in it…I’m never too sold on the idea of ‘foils’ but we’ll see. My hair is kind of a deepish brown with dark goldy-brown highlights…it was fun to say ‘Hang the expense, knock yourself out’ on the spur of the moment.

Anyway…where am I going with this post? Absolutely fucking nowhere…

But I did watch two shows last night…the first was Rain Shadow which intrigued me from the beginning with its sparcity (is that a word?)…all long pausing shots of scenery/wildlife, and following vehicles, and quiet pauses and some very classy cinematography. It’s an understated little show, and to me highlighted what can be good about Aussie cinema – that slow drawn out hook that makes you wonder where you’re being lead, but you don’t mind where because you’re interested enough to follow wherever. There were some stereotypes of country folk being relied upon I guess, but it also got at some of the kind of hard-edged mannerisms of some Australian folk, with single sentences dropped like bombs in ways that clearly did not invite further discussion even as they divulged quite shocking personal disclosures…watching the ‘new girl’  from the city adjust to this and take it in her stride was interesting. I liked her ripost to a sleazy country vet that “When I decide to become a prostitute? It WON’T be for a couple of x-rays and some heavy lifting!”.

I also loved Rachel Ward. She *almost* tipped too far into ‘I’m such an enigmatic and cool tough-arsed country chick’, but so far teetered just far enough on the right side for me to dig her smart-arsed quips.

Anyway, it was a nice meander and still left me none the wiser as to where it would go, but I’d like to keep  watching.

And then we had McLeod’s Daughters which I watched with Mum to keep her company. First it should now be called McLeod’s Neice’s Good Mate and Co since the daughters have long since buggered off (well one died, but you know, they kill off half the cast). Second…GAARGH. Hamfisted overacting, cliches out the wahzoo, alternating bland and saccharine dialogue…and just the utter extreme OPPOSITE of Rain Shadow, even though both were allegedly about drought-stricken country life. It made my headache a gazillion times worse. And yep – emotional manipulation. (My sisters have never forgiven me for telling them I didn’t want to see I Am Sam as I’d heard it was total emotional manipulation – I stand by it).

My sister and I revisited the idea of a younger, drunker version of  Margaret and David’s At The Movies. I still think it would work. I hated The Majestic and she loved it, I loved The Royal Tenenbaums and she LOATHED it. In my vision for this show, we’d sit around drinking red and getting increasingly incensed at each other’s dismissal of our respective favoured movies until we started hurling abuse and eventually furniture at each other. I see this being a hit! Plus we have overlaps, so it wouldn’t ALL be drunken violence.

Anyway…that’s my world for now, I’m off to pack. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO beach times!

Christmas and why I’ve been silent a while

So it’s taken me this long to be comfortable blogging about this here, but my father is an alcoholic. I’ve blogged about a recent associated drama elsewhere, so I won’t repeat myself, but it had me thinking about secrecy in my family.

I’ve been preoccupied with work, and with a lovely time in which my son was away being spoiled and I was playing ’ grown ups’, so I haven’t posted…I almost posted at 2:30 a.m the morning of Christmas Eve.

I’ve been anticipating the tension of Christmas in the light of dad’s dramas, and other family shit that’s been going down, and I was due to leave for the family home that day. I’d woken up from a dream in which I’d told a big-mouthed friend about what was going down (because she’d have understood and I needed to discuss it). She’d managed to let that slip. In the dream my mother was just wounded – she was so hurt and angry, and I was sad and scared to make the trip up given her anger.

When I woke up I thought: “Well, it’s only a dream, it’ s not real”. Except that it is. Because of the dynamics set up, if I talked about it and that was found out, THAT would be more of a source of anger and direct confrontation than what my father did to mean that I needed to talk.

And suddenly the immense tragedy of the whole damned thing overwhelmed me. I rolled onto my belly hoping to calm myself and get back to sleep but instead I started sobbing. I tried to be quiet but I clearly shook and sniffled so much that I woke my partner up who said with sleepy wryness: “Something I said?”.

So here I am. And I love Christmas, and I love my family…but it’s not easy to be here in this space, with the recent debacle hanging over us, and the ramifications of years of drinking, lies and self absorption, the roles we’ve each had to assume, the games we’ve had to play, the coping mechanisms we’ve each developed.

It feels so fucking traitorous to discuss this, but I just can’t pretend that I’m okay with not discussing things fully.

I don’t like the ethics of secrecy about family issues. If you treat people well you’ve nothing to hide from others. If you’ve nothing to hide, it shouldn’t bother you that it’s being discussed. For me it’s a matter of mental health. If I don’t discuss this, if I don’t leech off the more toxic feelings I feel cooped up, anxious, overwhelmed.

Discussing problems doesn’t reduce my love for my family, it allows my love for them not to be tainted by those things I have issues with, for me to seperate these things out…

So anyway. That’s what’s the what with me, why I’ve been so quiet, what I’ve been thinking about.

I’ll be posting a little, but lightly over the next few weeks. After a few days with the family, I’m heading down South for a week with my wonderful lover and our kids. Oh my god, how delightful!

Sam Brett sickens me

Sam Brett is so FULL of bullshit contradictions. Let’s sample just a few shall we? Let’s call it the degustation approach.

A wise friend once exclaimed that a woman’s emotions become a man’s burden. When she says those three magic words – the ones that contain eight letters, three syllables and enough baggage to weigh down a 747 – and he’s not ready to hear them, a man can suddenly feel as if he’s been trapped inside a velvet prison. Especially if she’s lying on top of him, butt naked.

Just a warning. If you EVER use the phrase velvet prison in front of me I will wholeheartedly barf on your shoes. If you write it and I read it, I will barf on my own and mail them to you.

Oh yeah, then there’s the whole boring, overdone blah blah, women always say/think I love you “too early”, blah, “I love you from a woman=baggage not actual love” (because women can never be straightforward)…blah blah, if you say it ‘when he’s not ready to hear it’ you’ve done wrong/committed a relationship sin/he’ll run a mile (because women are ALWAYS at that point before men, because men are emotional cripples, because men’s “readiness”, men’s timing, men’s comfort is the ONLY readiness/timing/comfort that counts. If he says it and you’re not ready…well Sam can’t comprehend this notion, I think her head would explode…can we try it?).

[More fake 'Only in the world of Sam' conversations]

“Women always try and put things into boxes,” explained a male dating expert when I asked his opinion. “They’re always trying to define things way too early when it sounds like this woman has only just met this man. If she even so much as mentions the ‘L’ word, he’ll run the other way. He’s only thinking about getting laid. Not having her babies. Ever.”

Ah, yes. Thankyou Male Dating Expert. Because:

sex=totally meaningless, devoid of emotion, just about the orgasm=masculine desire=all men everywhere are the same

Anything ‘more’ than “meaningless” sex automatically equals BABIESBABIESBABIES. Women don’t have lives/careers/desires beyond OH BAAAAAAABEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESS!!!!! SO CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!!! (We don’t likes sex, we just wants to make teh BAAAAAAAABEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS)

And of course babies=meaningful=EVERY WOMAN’S DESIRE IN HER HEART OF HEARTS WHETHER SHE KNOWS IT OR NOT.

Cos (they’re telling us) that all men SEE women as tits and vag on legs, but all men KNOW they’re walking talking uteri  just ACHIN’ (yup yup) for some reproduction (yup yup).

Because women never want just sex (and when they do they’re sluts and we should punish them for being man eaters).

Women want LOVE and BABIES and MARRIAGE and FOREVER…they want your SOUL!!!

And men NEVER want companionship/friendship/laughter with a woman, men can never conceive of the woman they want to shag as a whole woman, men NEVER see women as women, in the logic of Sam they seem them as holes to jerk off into.

Sounds familiar? That’s because scientists reckon this irrational female response to sex isn’t exactly her fault. Instead it’s the fault of the female limbic system, which, after sex, or flirtation, or even a text message with one x too many, releases a bunch of irrational hormones leading to the belief that she’s met her soul mate. Even if he’s only after some late-night nooky

Which scientists? Which hormones? What limbic system? What papers? What evidence? What the fuck are you talking about you dipshit?

Here we cross into the section on “Invitation to sex”. Now…you and I move in the world where men and women do actually manage to have discussions (hell, in our world men and men do and women and women, but you know, we’re dealing with SamLand here) but in the land the Dating Experts ’study’:

Which brings me to the moment two people first lay eyes on each other. You see, men abhor rejection. They’re unable to make the first move without a clear signal from the opposite sex. Hence scientists have come up with the top ways to tell if a woman is into a man and it’s mostly through her sexual body language.

A woman will show a man she’s into him through a range of physical cues: by licking her
lips, touching her lips, putting on lip gloss or pretty much doing anything that may require her mouth, such as sucking seductively on a straw or eating her food playfully. More subtly, she’ll cross and uncross her legs, play with her hair and make lingering eye contact. But don’t take her smile for an indication she wants to sleep with you. Oh no, that’s strictly the male’s domain.

So her sexual body language as studied by “scientists” (ahem) show that she wants you real bad when she does all this.. (lending scientific credibility to the notion that women might say one thing and mean another borders awfully close to propping up rape logic). Again, WHAT science, which scientists, what study. But going against the ’science’ she just used to back herself up to prove that a woman doing these things wants teh seks; Sam surmises that she doesn’t want teh seks.

Now read THIS:

Dudes, on the other hand, will frequently smile, talk to a woman while looking at her eyes and face (if he actually focuses on what she’s saying, then it’s a telltale sign he’s into her), while any form of touching, asking for her number or calling her the next day are signs he not only wants to sleep with her, but he might actually be interested in getting to know her first.

But HUH??? Men NEVER want anything beyond “just sex”, and WOMEN mess things up by being interested in men as people!!! That’s the LAW, it’s SCIENCE!!!

Again, that lovely false dichotomy (because she likes to pretend she’s hip to the Man-logic but she’s actually a fucking prude): if it’s in any way ‘real’ sex must wait, if sex happens too soon, it’s meaningless, *just* orgasms, the woman will make a fool of herself and the man will go cold. By this stage I’m crosseyed at her ‘logic’.

Blokes can forget those poignant opening pick-up lines they so habitually practise, because it’s the first kiss that says everything to a woman. From the very first snog, men need to beware: women are judging a man by his genetic compatibility. Yep, according to psychologist Professor Gordon Gallup at The State University of New York, Albany, women are searching for olfactory, chemical and tactile cues from the very first kiss in order to “make a determination about instances of potential genetic incompatibility”.

Damn straight the first kiss is important…but that’s cause I want to know how we kiss together. I want to know if it makes me reel with dizzy anticipation, if it makes me grab that person and pull them to me, or if I go…’Ewww….that was wierd’. It’s only happened twice in my life, but it was distinctly…not happening. But “GENETIC INCOMPATIBILITY”????

I want to know if the kiss will light my fire, I want to know the effect my kiss is having. And that is ALL. If I am not intending to breed again then WTF is with genetics? And compatibility? Well call me old fashioned, but I’d rather determine that sort of shit by years of jokes, discussions and laughter…that’s the only way I can think of TO discover it…and WHY is she making the AIM and measure of all things, the LONGTERMNESS? Can ye not be compatible for a six week fling?

Nope, grunt, grunt, it’s all evopsych bullshit here.

Sounds a little complex to me since men, on the other hand, can actually forego the first kiss altogether and instead head straight to the sex part. Or, if they have to engage in a pre-sex snog-fest, may do it only as a “means to an end”, Professor Gallup says. “Males tend to kiss as a way of trying to gain sexual favours, and also to attempt reconciliation.”

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!

Ok, WOMEN are allowed to like sex, and MEN are allowed to like kissing.

What about all those wonderful hours spent smooching in adolescence? Were the boys who kissed me for hours deficient/not real boys? Would they have grown out of this now? What the fuck is with this wierd hardline delineation between sex and kissing? And wow…men are all manipulative, and are so unmoved/left cold by kissing that they only deploy it as a tactic of manipulation? WHAT. THE. FUCK.

After sex, a man’s dopamine levels drop dramatically, making the woman he’s just bonked less attractive, less desirable and with a less of a chance that he’s going to call her in the morning.

Well, for thos of us without your dazzling familiarity with science Sam, could you perchance include links? To this proven scientific FACT? To hard evidence that dopamine means waking up and being revolted by the chick you banged? That men are all just hormonal dupes?

If men are all hormonal dupes, then why is it that women are painted as irrational for being influenced by THEIR hormones? If we’re equally slaves to our genes/hormones, then perhaps Sam has it all backwards? And MEN are the ones fucking everything up? OR we could all be capable of being fully functional humans??? Influenced by hormones and other factors, but not utterly at the mercy of them?

I just really hate this woman and her writing, the disgusting dismissal of women as rational beings, the revolting reduction of men to total animal status. The reduction of all human sexual interactions to the guy gets his rocks off and just wants the chick to ’shut up’ now she’s done her job. It’s sickening

Oh, SMH, you’re class all over

Sydney Morning Herald cover the ‘news story’ that Mercedes Corby has posed for Ralph with the headline Mercedes shows a little chassis.

You know, chassis, as in:

A chassis (plural: “chassis”) consists of a framework that supports an inanimate object, analogous to an animal’s skeleton, for example in a motor vehicle or a firearm.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chassis

The editor of Ralph, Santi Pintado, said he was “surprised how well she looked”. “She grew up on the beaches so she’s obviously comfortable wearing a bikini. She is actually a hot little mumma,” he said.

Fever!

And not in the sultry, sassy, sexy Peggy Lee way.

In the “Wow, it’s HOT in here, is it hot in here? Whoo, schwetty! Who’s got the paracetamol” way. The woozy, wonky ‘I sick’ way. Fuck it!

Aargh!

I’m trying to eat better, less processed, sugary, carb-high foods, more fruit, more grains etc. I’m just tired of headaches etc.

Anyway, it’s all great right, and I’m noticing I’m just not as hungry as I used to be…I used to be ravenous at 11:00 a.m – today, a couple of weeks into different eating I ate a few raw pistachios between breakfast and lunch and just wasn’t that hungry at lunchtime. BUT…I keep getting to say 5, and being beside myself with this tired desperation. I’m not *feeling* hungry, the first sign I’m getting that I’m hungy is that I’m kinda ANGRY! (???)

At which point my solution is nutella toast and a mug of ice cold milk. YUM!

But this is wierd, right…why doesn’t my BELLY tell me I’m hungry before I start wanting to punch people?

I didn’t forget

Strange that insistence on being taken seriously in your personal experience of the political is so unsettling.

You speak your pain, and people rush to soothe it, settle it, quiet it; but if you speak again, to say ‘That’s not quite right’, consternation seems to arise. Frustration: be a good girl and play quietly please the adults want to have a nice settled time.

Do you think I’m claiming victim status? Because I put the blame where it belongs? Because I try to show you that I didn’t invent this in my silly little head? That I insist on pointing back to the source of the pain (and I know I am not the only one who feels it, that is the point entirely) – shining my feeble penlight in the dark at the webs? Trying to remark on points of connectedness? Trying to articulate what I see, trying to keep moving without drowning, without being bound by what I feel sticking to me? Discussing the patterns I’ve noticed? Pointing them out since they’re there and others *must* have noticed…

Why do you think that admitting pain is the same as claiming a bereft sort of weakness. Whatever I am it isn’t weak. I am tall and strong, rangy and loud. I stand with my feet firmly planted and my tongue ready – this body is tired because it has been through more than enough for each of its years. But why should acknowledging that be read as being ‘weak’, claiming the ‘benifit’ of victimhood. Fuck. I survive, I flourish, I throw my head back and laugh. To feel pain is not weakness, to really feel it, to honestly grieve gives strength.

But you know, don’t you that it’s bigger than any of us? That I can be as strong as I want, “Strong like an Amazon” but nothing changes, the webs are still there? So why make it about *victim mentality*. Isn’t it easier to just look where I point, to acknowledge that you’ve seen it too? I’m not asking you to solve it. But stop pretending that I’m crazy, or ‘just angry’ or wallowing, or wanting ’special treatment’.

Does writing on what makes me angry reduce me in your eyes to only anger? Do people not see that I have joy? Can they not see that through my writing? In the barbs, and the twists of words? In the tongue in cheek puns? In the sheer ferocity of my writing? It isn’t clean, pure, polished writing, it is writing that pours forth, I try not to hold it back, it shouts, it roars, it pours forth like a stream, it contradicts itself, it splits and fractures and it LAUGHS. It isn’t writing that will change the world…but I have found my voice and I will always speak, shout, laugh and sing.

What I say will change, will flow, will split and morph, will fold back upon itself and gush forward again. I refuse the linear narrative path set out for me, I reject it (even as it has already constituted me), I say no to jumping for class approval, I spit in the face of The Canon and I laugh when I sin against The Holy Church of Grammar. I embrace the insult hurled at women…we prattle, we waffle, we drift. Yeah? Take a face full of prattle then and see how it feels. No I am not One of The Greats, but I am great. Me, all of me.

Arrogance? No, joy. I have love and rage and deep bellowing lungs, long limbs, and teeth that flash like knives though we both know I don’t bite to draw blood (very often). And at night I remember that strength lets me lie like a baby and croon to my lover.I enjoy the strength in being bare and vulnerable, happy and warm. I love to love.

I didn’t forget any of this when I spoke of what the world does to women. I know who I am, who I am becoming, I know I am bigger than this, that this will pass…but I am smaller than it also, a cog, a unit, a flea in a system that does not care, and that thrives on silence, acquiesance and politeness.

Hence the blog name, hence the posts. Do I think I’m a revolutionary? No. But I think if we all talked more – really really talked, talked without fear of being laughed at, spoke the things we thought were crazy, told of the things we hid away, it could be an explosion of sorts.

Scots Principal Blames South Park, dad blames Forrest Gump

Scots principal Ian Lambert blames television shows like South Park and Summer Height High for his students being involved in anti Semitic facebook activities. If you’re paying that much for an education, someone should have taught the fuckers about satire, and while we’re at it do NOT give me that crap. Wealthy white society has a long history of racism predating the creating of Kenny and Mr G.

Dad busted cashing up the teacher to bribe his kids way into a selective high school blames…having watched Forrest Gump. “I am the victim” he proclaims.  And a hearty chorus of “WHAT???” goes up from the crowd. This now takes the place of the Twinkie Defence and ‘the dog ate my homework’  in lame excuses to be mocked.

Abdul stalker allowed on Idol for ‘entertainment value’

You know the noise of stunned incomprehension Dr Evil makes in Goldmember upon seeing The Mole’s mole? How he goes slackjawed and makes a sound like “ahhbuuuuuuuuuuhhh!!!’?

Well that’s the sound my brain made when I read this article. Despite Paula Abdul informing the producers of American Idol that Paula Goodspeed had been stalking her for years (eighteen years in fact) and that Abdul had a restraining order, the producers ignored her pleas for them to not have Goodspeed on as a contestant, as they felt it would make good tv.

Beyond “ahhbuuuuuuuuuuhhh!!!’ I’m not sure I can say anything more that isn’t a long string of cursewords with a couple of twitchy consonant sounds between.

Oh yes, did I mention that Goodspeed killed herself near Abdul’s house not long ago?

[Oh and I really did forget to mention that Abdul alleges that Fox gave Ms Goodsped Paula Abdul's home address, though she had found it herself as well by following Abdul home from one of the auditions to which Abdul had pleaded for her NOT to be allowed to attend]

The MCA extension – I like it

The SMH is reporting that one grumpy architect hates the new design for the extension to the Museum Of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay:

and says it’s attention seeking, jarring and ‘too obvious’…which is odd since he’s said it doesn’t respond to its surrounds or take account of its sandstone surronds of The Rocks. Meh.

Areas grow and change. Yes, it’s in front of The Rocks, but also part of Circular Quay, fronting a dynamic harbour with a couple of iconically unusually designed structures (Bridge and Opera House anyone?). It’s also the design for the Museum of Contemporary Arts, not The Museum of Ye Olde StoneMasons For the Preservation of Tradition at all costs. (Lucky…MYOSMPTaac? Not the catchiest acronym)

I give it the tick of approval. If only they could remove that shonky shopping mall clock tower in the background. Bleurgh!