cry me a river

"they" say that grief manifests in weird ways and at unexpected times. "they" are right.

on monday night i cried (some would say "blubbered like a baby") while watching:

- the big brother final

- queer eye for the straight guy

- law and order

- the news

and then i cried again at least 5 times over the next few days when explaining to people what it was about each show that made my eyes water ever so much.

and so now i'll tell you, oh blog minions, why each show brought me to tears:

- the big brother final: ok, so i can't really explain this one. i barely watched the series, and had no interest in anyone except this boy, but i found myself crying trevor a river of joy nonetheless. or perhaps i was crying for gretel killeen's parents for having such a brainless trash-bag for a child. hmm...

- queer eye for the straight guy: the fab 5 transformed the house, wardrobe and attitude of a widower in his 60s who had spent 3 years caring for his sick wife, and then another 3 years mourning her loss. he was so happy and grateful that he started crying, and i hate to see someone cry alone.

- law and order: the story of evil insurance brokers who sold life insurance policies to jews in eastern europe in the 30s banking on never having to pay up. the performance of one particular actor who played a polish survivor was so believable i was reminded of my late grandfather who shared a similar history. and i cried.

- the news: this story about a firefighter who died while trying to save a 2 year old boy from burning to death in his family home was too much for me to bear in my already fragile emotional space.

i think maybe i need to stop watching television. 

"everyone deserves a treat"

this was the slogan upheld by myself and my mates - keera, ellouise and alice - whilst holidaying in melbourne for a few days.  if my memory serves me well, the phrase was coined by ellouise during an existential conversation about cookies. it quickly became our motto, used in justifying excessive eating, drinking, shopping, and any other method of consumption presented to us throughout our time in that wonderful city. i think its a keeper, and am sure i will be using it on a daily (or perhaps hourly) basis from now on.

cause i felt like it, thats why

10 defeatist responses to ‘10 ways to boost your courage and get what you want out of life’ (nine to five magazine, issue 808, 19.7.04, p19):
 
holiday on your own
 
sure, just make sure you find someone to cling on to for dear life as soon as you reach your destination. someone who only went  on vacation alone for lack of anyone else willing to go with them. just like you.  and hey, maybe they'll be just desperate enough to shag you.
 
make the first move
 
are you insane? and forfeit the only thing keeping you (me) going through the dismal reality that is your (my) existence? without your (my) constant companions - painful longing and self-deprecation – you (i) have nothing. nothing.
 
ask for a raise
 
why not? the worst that can happen is you end up unemployed, homeless and hungry because you didn’t realise that management was on to your intra-office internet porn ring and your demands for more money gave them the perfect excuse to fire your lousy arse without causing a scandal.
 
learn to say no
 
especially in regards to silly demands placed on you in the name of "friendship" and/or "obligation". and to all activities that may take you out of your pessimistic little cocoon and induce you into experiencing horrid feelings of happiness and enjoyment like some sort of tree-hugging hippy.
 
get rid of a toxic friend
 
so maybe its time to bid farewell to your dealer, but this doesn't mean you have to kick the coke habit altogether. once you're rid of the scumbag, his body decomposing peacefully at the bottom of the harbour, you can take over the business, get rich, get laid, and get killed by one of your badass cronies who wants your money and your fly bitch for himself.
 
stand up for yourself
 
unless of course you're a one-legged midget and have in fact been trying to do just that your entire life but people just don't take you seriously cause you keep falling into their crotches every time you try to stand up and be counted. and if you're not a one-legged midget, don't bother, noone cares what you have to say anyway.
 
send back a bad meal
 
as if the pimple-faced 14 year-old night manager at mcdonalds gives a f*#k that your big mac is "a litttle dry" and your chips "rather soggy". who do you think you are, royalty or something? eat your food and stop complaining. if you send it back, they'll just spit in it and serve it to you again.
 
ask for a refund
 
go ahead and try, but last time i checked drugs, whores and stolen firearms were all non-refundable. although i have heard that you can now put them on your visa.
 
push your limits
 
you can do anything you set your mind to. so leave the couch for more than 10 minutes today. get salt'n'vinegar chips instead of plain. watch dr. phil instead of oprah. ring a psychic rather than a phone sex operator. use your left hand instead of your right. actually, why bother trying to shake up your life? you're just going to end up fat and alone anyway.
 
change careers
 
great idea. we should all quit our bottomfeeder jobs where we aren't appreciated or respected so we can find new jobs in which we aren't appreciated or respected and spend all our days  dreaming of machiavellian ways to murder every person in the company with better positions than us (which sadly includes the coffee chick and the guy who empties the rubbish bins once a week).   

the search continues...

it was suggested to me at a recent dinner party in celebration of the birth of "the baby that stole my birthday"* that if i want to find a husband post haste i should advertise my cause in backpackers' hostels. this plan is pure genius, as these tree-hugging-hippie communes are rife with sunburnt foreigners desperate for residency in this land girt by sea.

my only concern about this strategy is that i'm sure that foreign royalty do not stay in dodgy hostels when they visit australia, and therefore my chances of snagging me a crown prince and being dubbed "our nadstown" are severely diminished.

but i don't have time to wait around for prince charming to come along, and so i will hit the youth hostel strip asap. and although the urgency of the matter requires that i lower my often unreasonably high standards (hey, its not my fault that most of the available men in this country exist within the confines of mediocrity), there are some things i can still afford to be picky about.

and so after much deliberation i have selected the top ten preferred nationalities of my future snuggle bunny/husband-of-convenience. these are (in no particular order):

argentinian: i left my heart in buenos aires. along with thousands of cute boys. and my hairbrush.

scottish: i find the scottish tongue knee-weakening.

senegalese: anyone who saw the 2002 world cup will understand why.

italian: hello, tuscan villa.

uzbekistani: it has been a long-standing ambition of mine to marry a man from uzbekistan. really i just love saying 'uzbekistan'. try it. its fun.

brazilian: my time in rio and also my beautician have convinced me that all things brazilian are worth having.

croatian: word on the traveller street is that croatia is the new greek isles.

russian/egyptian/polish/hungarian: my cosmic twin of destiny.

icelandic: iceland is way cool, man.

hawaiian/native american/japanese: once lala and i met a boy of this description. he was the most boring boy that ever lived. but boy was he beautiful.

so there you have it. there are of course several other desirable ethnicities that will be taken into consideration throughout the elimination process, but the above are the most immediately appealing in my mind. i am also aware of the dismal chance of finding a uzbekistani backpacker or a jewish icelandic traveller anywhere in the world. but hey, a girl can dream can't she?

*this is my sister's godson, byron. he stole my birthday. i will forgive him one day. "they" say time heals all wounds.

greener pastures

its moving day! blog moving day, that is. i'm all packed up and ready to go. the trailer's been hitched to the ute and cousin jethro is gunnin' the engine and hollerin' for me to hurry my fat arse up already.

due to the generosity of blogdaddy boud and the elusive elmo, as of tomorrow my little blog will be located here.

please stop by for a cup of joe and check out the new site, free of banner advertising and soon to include happy snaps taken by gus, my new best friend/digital camera.

un beso grande, y nos vemos muy pronto...

its possible i have some issues

i just watched yet another movie with a happy ending in which a person of supposedly average appearance and no social life pines away in silent anguish for a ravishingly attractive and ultra hip love muffin who they believe to be out of their league but then through some zany twist of fate the two meet and after a series of misadventures and a large crisis the apparently mediocre hero learns that beauty comes from within a push-up bra and the gorgeous one realises that the beautiful people are all sluts and schemers and that the loser they've been doing their community service with is really their one true love and they kiss and the credits roll and everyone walks out of the cinema without bothering to read the names of the key grip or ms. whoever's assistant because the only people that matter are the two stars who are in fact ken and barbie and live together in real life in a pink mansion in malibu with their dalmation called sparkles and their collection of antique toasters and have the kind of life that the rest of us will never actually have because even if we take off our prescription glasses and realise that its whats inside that counts we will still be mediocre and the objects of our desires will never want us because even though they aren't even all that girlfriend the fact is that they think they are and therefore they are not going to one day wake up and realise that they are head over heels in lust with us because we have to ask ourselves is it really love we are after or just sex and if its the latter then we might as well just go to the corner shop and buy some exfoliating gloves and save ourselves the torment of thinking about what might be with someone who will never want us and even if they did would never live up to the expectation we have created that they will complete us and suddenly our lives will be perfect and our sad will be happy and our empty will be full and our loss will be gain and we will never be lonely again which means it is love that we want after all and thats no comfort at all so i think i should either stop typing or start using punctuation...

not so centre stage

Tony: "So, you're not gonna go to law school? What do you wanna do then?"
Mike: "I wanna dance."

- Dazed and Confused

when i was 5 years old, my mother enrolled me in jazz ballet classes at the rochelle dykstra academy of dance. in my first class patron saint of the school miss shelley proclaimed me a "natural", and in my first recital i danced front stage centre to the tune of 'copacabana', resplendent in multi-coloured taffeta skirt and a headpiece of plastic fruit. a star was born.

for the next 10 years or so i danced my little heart out, dreaming of the day i would tour the world with madonna, prince and janet jackson. i would let nothing stand in my way. not the fact i could only ace every third attempt at a triple pirouette. nor the fact that i consistently failed to place first in esteddfods (nor second nor third). and not the fact that by 11 years old i had breasts big enough to launch missiles (most dancers are still waiting to hit puberty when menopause sets in.)

that was until i discovered those cursed things that ruin so many a dream: sex, drugs and rock'n'roll (or perhaps in my case boys, vodka and crash diets.) for a while i tried in vain to keep the flashdance dream alive. but turning up to rehearsals hungover and starving is not exactly the most effective way of striving for dancing glory. and so the dream died, along with several million of my brain cells.

and then a few years ago the urge to dance again overwhelmed me. i began open classes at the sydney dance company. i have since been reliving the dream, attending as many classes as time and money allow. however it seems that the more classes i take, the worse i get. admittedly, having changed styles from jazz to hip-hop, i have entered a whole new world, and i'm not sure i belong.

there are no high-kicks in hip hop. no pirouettes. and definitely no step-ball-changes. now its all pops, locks and body rolls. the standard jazz uniform of leotards, fishnets and jazz shoes is eschewed for acceptable hip-hop attire: baggy pants, trainers and trucker caps. and unless you're wearing missy elliot-endorsed brands, forget about it. and gone are the poppy tunes of madonna and prince (janet remains), replaced by the fragmented beats of missy, justin and all artists produced by the neptunes.

"they" say that practice makes perfect. i used to agree with "them". not anymore though. now i think "they're" liars. practice just takes away the illusion of perfection and replaces it with feelings of inadequacy.

cry baby

last week i went to see the world press photo exhibition at the state library. i encourage everyone who reads this blog to do the same, and then to tell their friends to do the same, who will in turn tell their friends to do the same, and so on until we're all part of one big exhibition-viewing daisy chain of friendship and enlightenment.

this incredible exhibition of photojournalism by the world's best has left me pondering. ever since i went, i have been disturbed by the strange reality we exist in in which one person's horrific plight on one side of the world becomes another person's act of voyeurism on the other side. i am troubled by the level of desensitisation we have achieved as a society, whereby images of human misery can hang comfortably beside shots of sport, weather and festivity in a photography exhibition. a society in which people can walk around such an exhibition sipping free beer and talking on their mobile phones in ignorant bliss.

i'm not questioning the validity of the exhibition, nor the photographers' brilliant work. it is indeed an important method of communicating to the world just what is going on in those faraway countries whose names we often can't pronounce. i'm just kind of thinking aloud. or rather thinking a-blog.

as i walked around the exhibition, i felt an army of tears forming behind my eyes. at first i resisted, ready to go into battle against a teary public shame. but soon i surrendered, deciding that if it were my picture hanging in such an exhibition, depiciting my suffering, i would hope that someone somewhere would be crying for me.

i love a good smear campaign

so apparently mark latham once hit a guy, cheated on his wife and had a raunchy buck's night. this is unfortunate. unfortunate for the guy he may have hit, the woman he may have cheated on, and...well...i'm not quite sure who was hurt by the buck's night (perhaps some poor medical student who had to take a sexually exploitative job because youth allowance just wasn't enough to pay her bills.) these alleged incidents however have nothing to do with the rest of us, and certainly have no bearing on the man's ability to run this country.

perhaps if he'd sent a whole bunch of young australians to a foreign country to kill innocent people and die themselves in a ridiculous "war" in order to demonstrate his eternal love and devotion to a texan fool masquerading as the us president, then i'd question his prime-ministerial abilities.

if he consistently refused to acknowledge that the cycles of disadvantage experienced by the aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples are the direct result of bad government policies of both the past and present, and if he decided that it just wasn't a matter he could be bothered addressing any more, then i probably wouldn't vote for him.

and i imagine that if he was responsible for inflating the cost of education to such an extent that university degrees became akin to luxury consumer goods, affordable only to the upper stratum of society, then i might be forced to write bad poetry about him on public toilet walls.

hmm. i'll admit i'm still wary of latham's politics and unsure of his suitabilty for the role of pm, but does anyone else see the irony of the situation? maybe i should ask bill clinton when he finishes his book tour.

what i realised this weekend

this weekend i realised some things. they are:

- that if i want to find a husband in a hurry, i should probably expand my social horizons beyond chatting to people who work with or near me, hanging out with my family, and drinking tea with my girlfriends.

- that i want to be mary-jane watson, because not only is she the classic comic book love interest - the cherry lips, the high-pitched screams, the victim/seductress duality - but i'm thinking that spidey knows how to rock a girl's world like no mere mortal heterosexual male can.

- that despite the many painful outcomes born of human contact, there are certain gestures of kindness that can defrost one's heart and remind a person why its all worth the effort.

i need a hot single doctor, stat

as my quest for a husband begins, i have been considering those venues i must frequent in order to meet males of the marrying variety. i acknowledge that my regular haunts are certainly not conducive to finding a husband. they will however come in handy when i'm looking for a cheap and taudry affair in later years.

forced as i have been to spend a great deal of my time in hospitals this year (as visitor mostly), one would think that i would encounter an unlimited source of gorgeous single medics hoping to take advantage of me in my most vulnerable state.

but no. the myth of the hot doctor seems to be one of the biggest farces propagated through the various mediums of popular culture in recent times. i have
found no dr. doug ross lookalikes lurking in the corridors, no dr. john carter dopplegangers lunching in the cafeterias. damn you ER for setting me up for disappointment!

and before any of you berate me for being elitist, i'm not. okay, so were i to bring home a good jewish doctor, my mother would be the happiest woman alive. but i'd be content to find a male nurse or a spunky paramedic, jewish or not, but no luck in these fields either. i know i can't really afford to be picky if i want to be hitched by new years, but come on, a girl's gotta feel some kind of spark for her fella.

i guess i'm going to have to try other avenues of husband-snagging. but am i really ready for the 'desperate and dateless' scene? no nasty comments please.