Except the last three people, I don’t know you. But I’m sure you’re very special.
It’s all (virtually) happening! We have pathos; we have bacchanalian excess; we have uncircumcised dick; we have happy snaps. We have crazy pink paedophile fun.
And look, I bought some new bowls:
New bowls! It’s all happening!
I dreamt last night that I was bitten by a tarantula at the behest of Chris Titan. It really hurt. Woke me up.
Perhaps I have underestimated him.
Perhaps not.
Jojo & Lady J have both updated, finally.
Neither of them had anything much ‘Cam-related to say either.
A certain someone – who is not human either – has made me a mix CD. It is called “dogwHistlinG in the dArk” and it is too perfect. (Very naff in parts, but perfectly so.)
I have taught you well, he said, with characteristically insufferable arrogance, arching his fingers in a villainous fashion.
Thank you so much.
It’s obviously been compiled with your correspondent in mind, but because it’s very accomplished so great and because I’m so proud, I can’t resist sharing.
Anyone who fancies a copy: don’t ask why, just ask.
Filed under Music
Number of people who followed the ‘revolting menstrual sex’ link: 21. You know who you are.
I love this blog.
It’s strange. The hits on my old neuroblog used to stay pretty steady, but this one seems to be getting more popular all the time. I’ve been whoring it more I suppose.
Filed under Weblogs
I just had a novel encounter with a drunken Irish girl who I met on a southbound 112 tram. She reminded me a bit of my second favourite ex (she of the revolting menstrual sex) (amongst other, less totally horrendous things). She’d lost her friends somewhere between Burke & Collins Streets and insisted on buying me drinks once we arrived in the Kilda, where she is staying in a hostel.
She was really nice, and pretty, and funny, and alarmingly flirtatious. And that is the end of the story. It could potentially have been a much more interesting story, but as part of my ongoing bid to rejoin the human race I felt like I should try and behave ethically. She was falling-over drunk and lonely and far from home and nine years younger than me, and stuff.
I didn’t actually *feel* any kind of moral compulsion.. just a desire to do what a normal, non-possibly-sociopathic person would do.
Am I wrong?
I have been feeling all romanticky lately lately for some reason, which was heightened this evening by having been to see Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (incredible mess, btw.. not absolutely the worst conceivable Hitchhiker’s movie – it had qualities – but they screwed it up pretty comprehensively); the chick who played Trillian (who was also the Cameron Crowe analogue’s sister who runs away to become an air hostess in Almost Famous.. here she is.. her name – I shit you not – is Zooey Deschanel. She also played ‘Gas Station Girl’ in a movie called It’s Better To Be Wanted For Murder Than Not To Be Wanted At All, which I have just added to my must-see list for the title alone) was a babe of stupendous proportions (although that was no excuse for the whole romantic subplot.. what the hell were they thinking? Then they had the audacity to dedicate it to Douglas Adams. He must be turning in his grave. Cunts. But I digress…), and I just can’t figure out at all if I did the right thing or not.
I half wonder if God – who, of course, I do not actually believe in – is sighing exasperatedly down at me even as I type. “Honestly, young man.. I do my best, you know.. I really do..”
It seemed especially providential since I shouldn’t actually have been on that tram at all. I left my bag behind in the cinema and only realised once I was half way home. I had to go back and retrieve it, then get a third tram south again.
It sounds like the sort of story people tell their children. The kind that’s meant to be sweet and charming, but actually probably just frightens the crap out of them, confronting them as it does with the horrifyingly arbitrary, random nature of existence. “If I hadn’t left my bag behind that night.. YOU WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BORN” etc.
It’s been a night of stuffups all round. Irish girl (she was so lovely.. sigh) misplaced her friends, I misplaced my bag, and my sister and her fiancee Martin the Swede got hopelessly caught in traffic and missed the movie. And they both left their mobiles behind, so I had no idea what had happened to them. I had visions of having to call Mum in Geneva to find out their rego number, and calling the police to see if they’d been in an accident, and them both being dead.
To be perhaps inadvisably honest, the prospect seemed quite exciting. And it would have been a fantastic excuse to blow off work tomorrow.
Ah, who am I kidding? I’m not human. I’ll never be human.
Next time, ethics can get fucked. So to speak.
So yeah, I’m going to do NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve taken this decision now so I’ll have lots of time to prepare, and flagging it here so it’ll be harder to back out when November rolls around.
I bought this notebook to put thoughts and ideas in.
Because I’m a sucker, I’m going to acquire & read Chris Baty‘s NaNoWriMo bible No Plot? No Problem! I like the title.
It’s also a good excuse to re-read a few favourite books.
(138 pages of The Magus to go, weary sigh.)
Another preparatory project will be salvaging old writings dating back to the early 90s from my old Mac Classic II (pictured below), currently awaiting carriage to these people, who are going to put its 40MB hard disk onto a CD for me.
Indispensable Australian censorship news & reference site Refused Classification has a transcript of the Office of Film & Literature Castration Classification‘s Des Clark being grilled in Senate Estimates last week.
The proceedings were somewhat less colourful than usual this year, thanks to the absence of the insane and abominable Senator Brian Harradine, who is, pleasingly, unwell. But it still makes for most interesting – if irritating – reading.
Particular attention is drawn to this exchange:
Senator McGAURAN – But moving on, Madam Chair, many years ago I was involved in a movie called Salo, which was eventually banned.
Senator LUDWIG – Did you appear in it?
Senator McGAURAN – Pardon?
Senator LUDWIG – You said you were involved in it.
Senator McGAURAN – I was involved in getting it banned.
Senator LUDWIG – I see.
Filed under Current Affairs, Movies
Exhibit A: The Draughtsman’s Contract.
However jaded I may have become, I still heart this movie so fucking much it hurts.
First saw it when I was about 14. Completely changed my life.
Latterly, before making the mistake of allowing baby sis to borrow it, I used to have it on as audiovisual wallpaper from time to time, but I can’t have actually watched it properly for maybe three or four years.
No wonder I’ve been so miserable.
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MR NOYES: Mr Chandos was a man who spent more time with his gardener than with his wife. They discussed plum trees. Ad nauseam. He gave his family and his tenants cause to dread September, for they were regaled with plums until their guts rumbled like thunder and their backsides ached from overuse. He built the chapel at Fovent, where the pewseats are of plumwood. So the tenants still have cause to remember Chandos through their backsides, on account of the splinters.
“It is said that the Duke de Courcey invited his water mechanic to the top of an elaborate cascade he had constructed, and asked him if he could build such a marvel for anyone else. After offering various thanks and pleasantries, the mechanic finally admitted that – with sufficient patronage – he probably could.
The Duke pushed him, gently, in the small of the back — and the wretched man plummeted to a watery death!”
(raucous laughter)
MRS HERBERT: Thomas, why is Mr Neville interested in my sheets?
MR NOYES: He is to draw them wet outside the laundry.
MRS HERBERT: Wet? Why does he want them wet?
MR NOYES: Madam, I cannot answer you that. Perhaps he has fond memories of being a baby.
MR NEVILLE: Madam, who is this child who walks the garden with such a solemn look on his face?
MRS TALMANN: That is my husband’s nephew, Mr Neville.
MR NEVILLE: He attracts servants like a little midget king. What is his patrimony, Madam?
MRS TALMANN: His father was killed at Ausbergenfeldt. His mother became a Catholic, so my husband had him brought to England.
MR NEVILLE: To be reared as a little Protestant.
MRS TALMANN: He was an orphan, Mr Neville, and needed to be looked after.
MR NEVILLE: An orphan, madam, because his mother became a Catholic?!?
MR TALMANN: It is imperative, Augustus, that in representing me, you ask of yourself the very best. And you do not fraternize with whomsoever you choose. Chasing sheep is a tiresome habit best left to shepherds. If Mr Neville chases sheep, he is not to be emulated.
Drawing is an attribution worth very little – and in England, worth nothing at all. If you must scribble, I suggest that your time would be better spent in studying mathematics. I shall engage you a tutor. And who knows – one day you, Augustus, may add the Talmann name to the Royal Society.
Augustus?
Your tutor, of course, must be German. There are far too many English influences on your life as it is.
MRS TALMANN: Mr Neville, I have grown to believe that a really intelligent man makes for an indifferent painter. For painting requires a certain blindness; a certain refusal to be aware of all the options. An intelligent man will know more about what he is drawing than he will see. And in the space between knowing and seeing he will become… constrained. Unable to persue an idea strongly; fearing perhaps that the discerning – those who he is eager to please – will find him wanting if he does not put in not only what he knows.. but what they know as well.
Fucking.. fucking.. I love you, The Draughtsman’s Contract. Still. Will you marry me? I’m serious.
..got her wish, apparently.
And the day after I put my old, ‘Cam-only blog to bed on the basis that Neuroblogging is dead in the water, she comes out with this.
Be afraid.
You know, in a good way.
I had an email out of the blue the other day from memeticist Howard Campbell – not the one from Kurt Vonnegut‘s Mother Night, but the one from Ben Mack’s fairly astonishing “consciousness thriller” Poker Without Cards, which can – and should – be downloaded as a .pdf here, or purchased here.
You could also listen to Joseph Matheny interviewing Ben here (part 1) and here (part 2). And watch this video, The Pitch, Poker and The Public.
You really could.
He asked if I knew any reviewers. I could only point him to Elmo – but the two of them were already acquainted.
