Trysting Fields

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

Dinner Party II

4th December.

Needless to say, went OFF.

Some awesome audio was captured. Unfortunately I forgot to save it, because I'm an idiot. But here is the obligatory formula picture of everyone in the back garden:

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

This Month Has Been Totally Surreal

It's certainly been interesting.

Howard Belatedly Complies With Pulat Vanstone Directive

Semi was right. Victory for the Trysting Fields campaign.

Senator Amanda Vanstone says she will take some time to consider her future, after being dropped from the federal frontbench.

Senator Vanstone, who leaves the Immigration portfolio, says she is not sure if she will see out the five remaining years of her parliamentary term.

It's unclear whether the subtext here is that she's contemplating suicide. But if so, Mandy, know that you have my full support. You fat nasty bitch from hell.

(In other news: Is it just me or is Stan Grant looking, weirdly, much much blacker than he used to?)

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.