Trysting Fields

Interlude: Possibly Too Much - Possibly Not Enough

Chez Hagakure Tea & Pizza Shapes Meet

Starring this chick.

(Previously; previously; previously; previously; previously; elsewhere.)

B. C. E.

:)

Can't complain.

Although, y'know, in some ways it was almost too easy.

Hmm.

My Housewarming = Tonight

It is going to go OFF.

Here is a picture that this chick posted on my wall, which I like very much:

As you can see, it depicts a longhaired cat sitting atop a moog or some such against a background of stars and bares the motto: "Astro Cat will play for you the Symphony of Space."

Like William Carlos Williams' red wheelbarrow, it is what it is.

No more, and no less.

Liv & Gab Done Got Blogs

Go read them. I got nothin'. Except an interminably unclearable email backlog. (Plus ca change etc.)

And, I guess, the news that after two years of global trekkage, an older, worldly-wiser Toots aka babysis is coming home today! To my home (ie Melbourne)!

Can you say "I'm fucking excited"? Coz I surely can.

Rainbow Serpent (Part 2)

Stuff I Did This Year

(Previously & previouslier.)

I missed most of 2007.

It started excellently, and ended okay. Adventures were had, things were discovered; it was not a total dead loss. But overall it will not be remembered as a banner year on Planet Teigan.

This year, amongst assorted other things (see archives), I:

• Misguidedly started a BA at Melbourne Uni for the second time, and then dropped out after a month for the second time.
• Got kinda down.
• Just about survived winter without going totally insane or throwing myself under a train.
• Gradually got better.
• Got totally ditched, in my absence, by the artist formerly known as Lady J after an extremely Significant & Intense 18-month relationship.
• Spent approximately 680 hours conducting telephone-based social research for money. (The weirdness, the horror, the tedium etc). (Also: The doodling.)
• Somewhat overambitiously applied & was interviewed for a BFA at one of the premier art schools in the country, despite having basically no traditional visual art-type skills or talent at all. Was not accepted.
• Spent what probably cumulatively amounts to several months on Facebook.
• Drank quite a lot.
• Various other things which are none of your damn business. Who the hell are you, anyway? Who are you really? etc

It's Easy To Lose Perspective Sometimes And To Imagine That One Is A Worthless Pile Of Shit

One shouldn't, though.

Coz one Is Really Good at What One Does.

And What One Does is totally Worth Doing.

Really is.

[long pause]

I like these moments.

Happy Birthday Again, Toots

(Previously.)

Actually, I get the feeling you'd deck me for calling you "toots". ("Mistress"?)

Even though I do not know you, etc.

Eating Tears etc

I'd Like To Thank The Academy

And also:

• Ms Emma S. White (so much)
• Ms Danielle "Macenaeas" Freakley (as well, but in a different way)
• Ms Jessica H. etc Kilby (as in "Jessica H. Kilby, what are you doing to me woman" etc)
• Mr Jaye de Koan nee ~ nee Eric Wouters (I don't know what it is that you do exactly - but you're really good at it, and you should definitely keep doing it. IMHO. PS Do not join the army.)
• The Artist Formerly Known As Robert Henley
• Nads
• Ms Megan Faith Motorscooting Evans

Honourable mentions:

• Semi / Robin
• Ads (see Jaye de Koan)
• Li (ditto)
• Ben (as well)
• Dozza
• Rick / American Guy
• Ev
• Jessica K. Reftel Evans
• Martha, somehow
• Dave, also
• Avery Cardoza (in some obscure way; we have at least three quite significant things in common, anyways)
• The Veronicas
• Els
• and, why not, Anna Pearson (we got messy together when she was just a little kiddy, apparently)

And last but not least, my mum. Thanks for having me, etc. I appreciate it.

And various other people.

You are all - in your assorted different ways - special to me, and I love yiz. For whatever it's worth.

That is all.

PS Interview went well.

Summons

(Previously.)

Racing Season, etc

Found in the toilets at St Jerome's on Saturday night:

I've got absolutely zero interest in horseracing, but I love this time of year.

In other news, the artist formerly known as Shemyaza and more recently known as Jonathan Carfax has a new blog-based venture "dedicated to providing an uniquely Australian perspective on absinthe, and to provid[ing] fellow absintheurs with the most up-to-date and reliable information on absinthe varieties and tasting notes, as well as providing a home for Australian Libertines and lovers of bohemian culture, decadence and art, both historic and contemporary."

It looks pretty cool.

He asked me if I'd like to be an occasional contributor. I replied:

Right now I'm extremely busy & preoccupied preparing for a VCA interview on the 21st and generally trying to metaprogram my way into the belief that I'm a Real Artist, whilst attempting as best I can to assimilate the monumental dual headfuck that:

(a) [censored]

(b) for all his sins, I really *like* the crazy, evil bastard.

And I should tell you that as a retiring semi-recluse I have at best only a nodding acquaintance with the Melbourne artistic intelligentsia and bar scene - although I wouldn't be averse to developing a closer one for a cause as worthy as your own.

So yeah - if you have any absinthe you want me to drink / burlesque performers you want me to date / etc from next month onwards, feel very free to giz a heads up (equine or otherwise) (preferably the latter, ay).

That is the news.

Personality Test Redux

(Previously.)

This Month Has Been Totally Surreal

It's certainly been interesting.

Recent Doodles

Click to etc.

(In other news.)

Trains And Sewing Machines

And we're away.

That was unexpected.

Hello, you.

Things We Don't Understand And Are Definitely Not Going To Talk About etc

In Other News: Term Of The Day

Relational aesthetics. Yes.

Note to self, man.

Heh.

It's All About The Early Mornings At The Moment

"On Monday morning, Paxton was woken at five from a claustrophobic, anxious sleep by the weight of his worry. After disentangling himself from the sweaty unwelcome embrace of his patchwork quilt, he padded over to his bedroom window and pressed his nose forlornly against the glass. The sky was clear and dark and sparkling - there was, as yet, no sign of the sun."

Jo (who I won't link coz she hasn't updated since March; maybe it's just me, but I think her blog's dead) told me the other week that my posts had become very cryptic this year.

I knew what she meant. But at the same time I was kind of bemused.

My posts have always been very cryptic. Sometimes they've been so cryptic that I didn't even get them properly myself until ages afterwards.

This one here is a perfect example. I'm really not at all sure why I'm writing this - but I just know I'll look at it in four months time, or in 2012, or whenever, and go "Ah, I see!! Ingenious, Teigs."

Brains are funny.

Braaaiins.

I - which is to say, a close personal friend of mine - keeps getting sent zombie invitations on Facebook.

I don't know what that's about either.

It's Time For A New Post

Today is the first day of spring. Happy spring!

My housemate of the past eleven months is moving out on Monday. Au revior, Jaye. My previous housemate Bentendo moved out around this time last year.

Time, eh.

Now I need a new one. But first the bathroom has to be renovated. The bath is sinking and tiles keep falling out of the wall. It's no good.

What else? Um, I've been selected for jury duty, which is weird. I didn't even realise we had jury duty in this country. I guess they have to get jurors from somewhere.

Watching The Lunar Eclipse

on the roof with Freakley.

It's All Good, Really

It will be.

Yes, it will.

Wortwut Is Staying With Me At The Moment

She is doing a show at West Space. If you are in Melbourne (or have the means to travel), you should come to her opening tomorrow night.

Then go to Freakley's on Friday.

I am. You should too.

Announcement: Everyone's Too Stupid

The Mishukis' much-discussed debut LP Everyone's Too Stupid is available at long last.

You can buy a copy for US$5.50 plus postage, or alternately build your own using these simple instructions.

People Are Always Saying To Me

"Teigs," they say, "your joining Are You Hungry is an extraordinary achievement. You must feel very satisfied that all your hard years of struggle have finally paid off." And I look at them like they are crazy.

Taking their cue from this, they then invariably continue: "But yeah, you know, I guess you're right; somehow the whole thing does seem kind of shallow, empty and meaningless.. without desktop wallpaper."

So I made some.

That shut them up.

My Audacity Has Paid Off

I am delighted to announce that on the strength of my genius, I have been invited by the legendary Nada Awad to displace her sister as the second full-time member of Are You Hungry.

I would also like to announce that we will be embarking on a major European tour next month on the back of our award-winning and critically acclaimed quintuple platinum forthcoming album "Chicken Has Gonorrhea".

It's true! I really would like to announce that.

I Wrote A Song About Adam

It's called "Adam Tenex". From conception to completion, the entire project took six and a half minutes. I am a genius.

I am going to submit this to Are You Hungry as an audition demo. I think they could use my genius.

UPDATE - I made a better version. This one took about an hour.

Here Is An Audio Version Of That Comment

What Would You Do

.. if you could get away with it?

* * *

(UPDATE - Note to the person who just entered "rejoin Neurocam": you can. They will take pretty much anyone. Even I, the most hated-on man in ex-Camland, could probably rejoin if I wanted to. Especially if I used a new name. Why you would want to is a mystery, because it's a laughable shambles overseen by a compulsively manipulative, pathologically self-centred fuckhead from hell. But hey, go for it.)

I've So Finished

.. the long-overdue task of tabulating the fiddly stats in my stuff i did last year post. I was unable to compile them in Manchester because I had (a) insufficient access to the relevant data and (b) much better things to do.

I so have! They're at the bottom of the page, if you're interested. Alternately, you could just follow the link up there. Or, y'know, you could go and do something else entirely. See if I care, dear reader. See if I give a fuck.

Hey, you could go and visit Nada. She just posted, which is an event these days.

I like Nada. But then I'm a Nadaist; I think it's probably compulsory. Even if I wasn't a Nadaist I would probably still like her, though. Honest.

Speaking of returns from the dead: as some people reading this will know, I was becoming a bit concerned about the status of my housemate ~ who mysteriously completely vanished off the face of the earth on Thursday night; I've seen neither hide nor hair of him since.

But all is well; he turned up at about 9pm this evening, looking very sunburnt. Turns out he'd simply taken an impromptu trip to the coast, where his phone died. There's a lot of it about.

After a touching reunion, we watched Press Gang whilst I designed a new logo for my media company on "the old one was a pile of shit" grounds.

Life is good.

That is all.

How To Become A Cult Leader

Adam already posted this, but because it's genius and because I can see that you're special, dear reader, I wanted to share it with you personally. In my opinion, you deserve no less.

No, there's no need to thank me. You're doing all the work. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You're special. You're special. I love you. I love you. Kill your parents. Kill your teachers. Kill your so-called friends. Kill yourself. You don't really exist anyway. Deep down you know it's true. That is all.

(PS You're special.)

Zenarchist Coffee Ceremony II

(See here and here.)

Stuff I Did This Year

• Broke up an eight-year marriage, arguably
• Destroyed Neurocam, according to some (Neurocam continues to function in a lame, shadow-of-its-former-self kind of way)
• Bought my first DVD player
• Visited Sydney
• Took LSD for the first time
• Moved from a cupboard in St Kilda to a house in Fitzroy (the first house I have lived in for five years, fact fans)
• Had a bit of a fucking breakdown
• Collaborated in the creation of a singularly unsuccessful gated community for Neurocam graduates
• Took mescaline for the first time, in the form of San Pedro cactus (and on two subsequent occasions)
• Turned 30, legally speaking
• Took ecstacy for the first time
• Threw my first proper party (and my second)
• Took magic mushrooms (and went to a soccer match) for the first time
• Hosted my first Zenarchist Coffee Ceremony
• Finally gave up and got a MySpace page
• Spent Christmas in Geneva, Switzerland and new year in Manchester, England
• Made my first album
• Started my first business
• Attempted (ultimately unsuccessfully) to write a 50,000-word novel in a month
• Kept one ongoing blog, and co-created & contributed to another, for a combined output of 20,253 words, 344 photos, 10 videos & 31 audio recordings (comprising 16 songs, 12 audio messages, and 3 miscellaneous)
• Wrote approximately 458,000 words of email to 92 recipients (& received approximately 506,000 words of email from 128 correspondents, not including machines)
• Spent 164 hours at the gym
• Held five ongoing paid jobs, of which I lost two, quit one, and currently retain two
• Amongst other things

Greetings From Rainy Manchester

What I Got For Christmas

Yemeni coffee, British cigarettes and Cuban white rum

Jellybeans & chocolate

Facial care products

Art

A scarf

A yoyo

A flipbook

Amongst other things.

Vale Tript

*tips hat*

Sad day.

In other news, thank you to the anonymous person who ingeniously sent me this in a way I couldn't respond to:

If you are who I think you are - you're funny. And if I don't know you, that's even funnier.

Tell me - do you get curiously predictable headaches and phantom mice in your bed at 4am, too?

When Nada Met Bob

If You're Happy And You Know It

Or alternately, if you're miserable and you know it - and it's just no good at all...

CLAP. YOUR. HANDS.

CLAP! CLAP!

If you're happy and you know it,
And you really wanna show it,
If you're happy and you know it... clap your hands!

CLAP! CLAP!

I feel better already.

Despite - he said, by way of explanation - the depressing fact that I have failed.

I am A Failure; one who has failed. That is What I Am.

CLAP! CLAP!

It's the last day of November. And despite my best intentions, I have failed to write a 50,000-word novel.

I gave it a good old Aussie go, though. Really, truly did!

But I didn't write 50,000 words - and I didn't finish it. And it's dead now. It doesn't want to be worked on any more. It has become a stinky moribund dead project that pains me and makes me annoyed at myself. And it's bad when you annoy yourself.

Winces, girds loins, drives a stake through its beloved heart.

It's dead. RIP, first attempt at writing a novel.

The silver lining is, I'm actually well pleased with the 37,566 words I did write. They came out great.

CLAP! CLAP!

Which was really the problem. They were too good. Consequently, somewhere along the line, I forgot to not take myself seriously. Which is the whole big-thing point of NaNoWriMo. You can write a stupid 50,000 word novel in a month. But unless you are a bona fide literary genius, you can't write a good one. Forget about it.

I'm tempted to quote Alanis Morrisette at this juncture. But for everyone's sake, I shall abstain.

The point is: I'm, like, trying to be philosophical and shit. I feel pain now, but I know the venture was far from a dead loss. In the end, I got more out of it than I would have if I hadn't undertaken it. And in any case, I've lost nothing. Just a ride. Etcetera.

CLAP! CLAP!

In other shittiness news, nobody but a handful of stalwarts - it seems - can come to our party.

Again, I don't feel too bad about it. It's getting towards That Time Of Year; everybody has lots of prior engagements. A bunch of people came to the last one - and most if not all appeared to genuinely have a good time. So it's not like this is a sign that all our friends secretly hate our guts, or think our parties suck.

CLAP! CLAP!

Finally, congratulations are in order to Mr Tripto Deluxe, who jumped on board my NaNo bandwagon and then kicked my ass right off the damn thing by actually finishing his book.

Kudos to you, my friend. Kudos to you. No, I wouldn't come to my party either. You have better things to do. Course you do. We're not really going to kill you. That was totally, like, an empty threat. Course it was.

Love your work.

CLAP! CLAP!

Oh, man - that's the shit, right there.

CLAP! CLAP!

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

CLAP! CLAP!

Excuse me, I have to be alone with my hands for a while.

Man, I Just, Like, Voted

I wasn't planning to originally, but Semi talked me into it on the grounds that the Greens will likely take some seats away from serious politicians, which is always a good cause. I hope he is having fun at Earthcore. I imagine that he is.

I just voted for the Greens whilst tripping on leftover cactus, partly in his honor. I'm sure Bob Brown (with whom I once shared a taxi, whilst dressed as a giant koala - i'm sure it wasn't just a dream) would not disapprove. I tried to imagine what John Howard would feel. I tried to imagine him feeling pain in some way. How I tried. But all I could see was him going "stupid hippies; ah well, *shrugs*, they will all self-destruct soon enough anyway", and not understanding at all. Which kind of pissed me off, but did at least make me feel like, in some obscure way, I had not done entirely the wrong thing.

Now I am trying to decide whether to watch The Dark Crystal again. I fell asleep before the end last time.

~ has suggested to me that the girl Gelfling ultimately dies; but I feel sure that this cannot be the whole truth. Henson and Oz would not do that to me. They would not dare.

I will watch their silly movie, in any case. They can bring it. Doesn't matter if the chick dies; the whole healed-crystal thing redundifies such petty concerns.

Yes, it does.

C'est L'Hamish

To make a Hamish, you will need:

Peach schnapps & vodka

Orange juice, sparkling apple juice and passionfruit juice (if you can find it)

Ice

Step One: Mix juices to taste.

Step Two: Add 1 shot of vodka and two shots of peach schnapps.

Step Three: Decant over ice. (The ice is important.)

Et Voila:

In Other News

Everybody should watch The Hamish Show. I have been catching up on old posts episodes this evening; it is a great blog show.

This one in particular is the best ever!!

(In semi-related news: I just reinstated my notorious Neurocam-destroying post from February, in response to several requests I have received over the last little while. If you were wondering what all this 'Phase Two' malarky was really all about - there you go. It was me. I lit the Chicago Fire, I killed the baby Jesus etc. And this here should be considered my absolute final public word on the accursed subject of the Neurocam.)

Should I light my cherry cigar? I just can't decide. I think it may be called for; it really is that good of a post episode.

UPDATE - I lit it. But I can't take a picture, coz ~ has my camera again and there is no waking him at this hour of the morning.

Life, eh?

2nd UPDATE - And now someone is bashing on our front door, but I'm not going to answer it; it's probably for him. Fuck it, they're not going away and it's getting on my nerves; I guess I will. I hope it is not Robin Hely. For his sake, obviously. Heh.

3rd UPDATE - It was ~'s friend Film Student Boy; he was incredibly drunk. He just came into my room and wouldn't stop apologising, because he could see I didn't really forgive him. So I had to look him in the eye and pretend that I didn't mind him virtually bashing down our front door drunkenly at three o'clock in the morning, to make him go away the hell out of my room.

I wish I had some weed.

This cigar is no substitute.