Trysting Fields

Dinner Party V

Saturday 17th July.

Most fiasco-tastic DP evar! It's been a bit like that lately. I almost gave up and cancelled it. But I'm very glad I didn't, coz despite all kinds of stupid problems in the end it still went OFF.

(10:21pm; 4min 59sec)

Amongst other things, the DPP planning committee encountered considerable guestlist difficulty. Despite and at least partly because of no less than three date changes aimed at accommodating them all and genuine enthusiasm from at least some quarters, exactly none of the invitees I'd originally lined up ultimately managed to make it.

(10:55pm; 1min 17sec)

Which might have been considered a fairly abject fail - were it not for the inspiringly circus-saving company of previous-attendee legends who, in flagrant violation of DPP rules, valiantly braved the cold and brought the awse instead: Matt K (DPs I and III), Twyllan (DP II), Henley (DP III), Sarah aka The Major (DP IV), Pablo (DPP virgin), Luke (DP IV), and of course Grimsey (DPs I, II, III and IV). Fucken <3.

(12:24am; 4min 28sec)

It was an unprecedentedly structured DP. As per a preestablished order of proceedings there was soup, then salad, then pie, then the merciless destruction and defilement of an old chair that had unforgiveably given way under DP I alumnus Bourkie at CH the night before. Then, naturally, there were muffins.

(1:16am; 2min 26sec)

Along the way there were tears (not really); there was laughter. It was epic.

(2:34am; 2min 49sec)

:)

Easter Camping

Friday 2nd April - Sunday 4th April.

RIP Beard

Partly inspired by high-calibre acquaintances including Atkins, Danny Smith and Justin, and partly because G told me to (although she changed her mind once I actually did it), I have been growing a beard.

I've never done this before. I hadn't shaved since new year. I quite liked the idea of not cutting any of my hair all year. But I think it looks shit, so I just shaved it off.

I saved the hair. I will give or send some of it to anyone who comments on this post. (I have been getting zero comments lately. Lift your game, people.)

The DP I Audio Is Finally Up

Here.

All of V*cw*e's parts have been edited out - which is a shame IMHO, coz they're golden. But so it goes.

(She got kind of shitty at me about the whole thing, which was a bit upsetting. This is the first time anyone's ever gotten pissy at me over blog audio. There's an interesting post in all of this. But methinks it's a story for another time.)

In happier news: I found out on Tuesday that, against all expectations, I GOT INTO ART SCHOOL.

Wo0t!1! etc

Just, Wow

Whole calendar month without a new post. This has never happened before in the entire history of TF.

The reason it's occurred is that:

• I recorded some audio of Liv drunkenly abusing Henley at my birthday party, which I didn't want to listen to for fear it'd be excrutiatingly embarrassing.
• Subsequently-captured media started to pile up behind it.
• The whole thing became a procrastination bomb of horror proportions.

The stupidest part is I already know I can't actually use the aforementioned audio anyway, coz L has - not unreasonably - vetoed this.

Then I got distracted preparing for art school interviewage, which finished today. (Went well; we're happy.)

But now there's no excuse. We're gonna grind through it this week, before CH Dinner Party II on Friday night.

Please stay tuned.

New York (Four)

With D.

Twisty Paper Piles

Aborted blog/art project FTW!

It was an alright idea. But it was just getting me down. Fuck that.

I quite liked the prospect of keeping it going until I got promoted to a team leader and taken off the phones, which I aspire to do. And then going, "Damn. There goes my project. Ah well, *shrugs*."

But seeing as how I still seem terminally incapable of turning up to work on time, that may never happen. I'm thinking of killing myself*.

[*] NB Not really**.

[**] Well, not seriously.

SRC Xmas Party

Abort Abort etc

(Previously; etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.)

Things To Be Thankful For (Five)

Bitches who know how to treat their slaves right.

One such ultrastar of an individual graced Chez Hagakure's now-vacant second bedroom last weekend whilst on an all-too-brief-and-rare visit to Teh Melbourne.

It was, as always, a total & unmitigated pleasure to accommodate her.

(Previously.)

Things To Be Thankful For (Two)

Dinner parties of awesome.

And everything and everyone associated with such occasions.

Also: punching bags.

Most Fucked Up Easter Ever (Y'know, In A Good Way)

So there I was, attending an uncivilised picnic in the park on Royal Parade, having a perfectly nice time & minding my own and a select handful of other peoples' business when who should call me completely out of nowhere on my - which is to say, someone else's - mobile telephony device but the J-meister.

(Previously.)

We hadn't spoken in the voice since November, when I drunkenly and unsolicitedly facilitated her and Henley's first ever verbal exchange. She's been in the country three weeks, apparently. Now she & the H-Dogg were in my hood. And they wanted to hang.

Headfuck!

The tone of her voice didn't make me feel like something she'd just scraped off her shoe, which was nice. So, throwing caution to the wind as I am wont to do on occasion, I went.

We met at Alia. We talked. We danced. A good time was had. It seems like we're all friends now. Which is totally what I wanted, although if you'd asked me twelve hours ago I'd have said this outcome seemed less likely than [insert comedy incredibly unlikely occurrence which in practice will never ever happen here]. They're totally coming to my housewarming and shit.

I don't know what else to say about all of this, but if ever something seemed blogworthy etc.

Hooray for drugs; hooray for Jebus.

Despite my cynicism regarding his religion(s), I am a fan of the man's work. That cunt was liable for nothing.

Okay.

It's a bit hard to to know where to start.

*thinks*

So my computer's sound recording facilities had been playing up, right. Had been for a while. It was no good. I wanted to make an album.

Thus on the morning of January 15th, I called a taxi and took the old gel into town to be serviced. They told me it would take four days. It wound up taking three weeks. But they did it.

In the meantime, I got totally hacked. First teigan@gmail.com, then [mylegalname]@gmail.com, my blog and my Facebook accounts all stopped accepting their passwords across the final week of January.

On Friday the 8th of February, I got my computer back. On Saturday, I threw a party. This is where we came in.

Upon getting reputered, I created some special email accounts and conducted a few experiments. Via these I established to a high degree of likelihood that my hacker was good old Henley. Somewhat predictably, I lost my shit at him.

On Tuesday 12th, I attempted to boot my newly restored digital handmaiden only to discover that - four days after returning home to me - she had totally, totally died.

I was 'puterless once more.

Then the following night - Valentine's Eve, no less - none other than Henley's girlfriend, a former close associate of mine, claimed responsibility for the hacking via SMS.

Leave the poor petal alone, she said. He's innocent.

I was skeptical at first, but when she told me that teigan@gmail was wide open for resetting (Quick! Jump up and find an open internet cafe at 2am etc), I realised she was probably telling at least some weird Lady-J-since-she-turned-feral version of the truth.

Why had the former love of my life done this to me? She'd written to me at another account, she said - one of the ones she hadn't violated and locked me out of - explaining everything.

Only problem was, I had (of course) been changing all my passwords like a demon - without having gotten around to making a backup or a hard copy of any of them. From my computer. Which had since - you will recall - dropped totally, totally dead.

In other words I was now not only 'puterless and locked out of my hacked accounts, but 'puterless and locked out of all my internet accounts.

Then in the early hours of Sunday 17th, Wouters dropped my last remaining link to civilisation phone in a full glass of bourbon & coke.

Oy.

Various people have eased my journey through this Durdenesque ordeal, and thanks are due.

Mishuki of Hagakure 419 fame was good enough to let me use hir Facebook profile. My colleague in social research, fellow FB tragic and soon-to-be-housemate Celestine has been extremely generous with her 3G handset, enabling me to update my status in something akin to the style to which I've become compulsively accustomed. Thad gave me a safe-haven email account on his server. And last Tuesday, having learned that my dead six-year-old eMac would cost $700 to reanimate, my long-suffering parents offered to buy me a MacBook. Which was very nice of them.

I picked it up this morning. I'm using it now. It's lovely.

(I'd take a picture but since the destruction of my phone I've got no working digital camera, except the one inside said MacBook. And its eye is not prehensile. But here's a picture of the box:

)

And now I have my accounts back.

Things are gradually returning to some semblance of what passes for 'normal' on Planet Teigan.

*flops exhaustedly*

Apart from all of that, I have mostly been going out a lot - having, y'know, not a whole lot else to do - and taking quite a lot of acid.

It's been.. awesome, actually. Can't complain.

Oh, and I got engaged on Saturday night. I think. But that's a whole other story.

Welcome back, blog.

Coming soon: the long, long-delayed multimediatastic Rainbow Serpent post.

Reputered.

At long freaking last.

In the meantime, my two primary gmail accounts, my Facebook account and my TypePad (blog) account were hacked & rendered inaccessible. Oy.

I've managed to resecure the blog account, at least, thanks to a friendly cookie which recognised my machine. Bless that cookie. No damage appears to have been inflicted. The only evidence of intrusion is that the answer to my secret security question ("What is your mother's maiden name?") has changed from "Symington" to "whore".

Charmed, I'm sure.

Cunts.

Here - nested all meta-style - is an earlier entry I scrawled freehand on Tuesday, and was planning to post at the 'ternet caff that evening but couldn't, because I'd been hacked:

Munted.

Is the word of the week. As in "Man, I got munted on Saturday night." And I did. I really did.

At 10pm I was summoned by Wouters to a party in the Brunswick area. I was only going to stay out for two hours or so on account of: (a) I was supposed to be working the following day -

(In other news: I started working at the doodle palace again last week; it's been almost as much of a shock to my system as Rainbow. But in a significantly less good way.)

- and (b) I didn't actually know the person who's party it was or anyone else who was going to be there. Or so I thought..

As it turned out.. ah, it's quite a funny story, but it's also a bit complex and at least four of my five remaining readers basically know it already.

Suffice to say a munting good time was had, this being only improved - and further enmunted - by the semi-random appearance of none other than the mysterious and extraordinary Thad at an advanced stage of the evening. (Update 8 Feb: I've encountered him twice more since then. I think he's stalking me. Or someone I know. But I don't mind at all.)

I didn't make it to work. I'm not sure how I made it home. I'm really not.

In other muntedness news, I'm having a party tomorrow night. It's going to be pretty good. If you are reading this and you know my street address, you can come.

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.

It's All Good, Really

It will be.

Yes, it will.

At Last, Death In The Afternoon

You will need:

The largest bottle of La Fee Bohemian Absinth that you can reasonably afford.

A bottle of 'bubbly'.

A clean vegemite jar.

Step 1: Place a shot of absinthe in the jar.

Step 2: Fill the remainder of the jar with champagne.

Step 3: Drink, without feeling the need to entertain yourself with temperance.

Step 4: I can't remember what comes after Step 3. Or my own name.

Another success story for the Neue Sachlichkeit therapeutic method.

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.

Life Is Good

nb clever peripheral utilization may or may not reveal secret hidden messages

Life is good.

For H

Not having posted any gratuitous pictures of Kate Beckinsale for no particular reason in nearly 16 months is "damaging" my blog, apparently.