all in a night's work

time to get quasi-loaded.
saturday was interesting. a brief rundown:

tale of the cowgirls
weather girls - it's raining men

it was a balmy night in melbourne, and i had to head off to my favourite consultant's birthday. the party had a western theme so, obviously, it just had to be held in a boatshed on the banks of the Yarra. After smashing my shoulder on a metal bannister (i have a lovely little scar building up off that one...) , i managed to down a couple of beers, watch as the fire brigade decided to turn up, hang out with the birthday (cow)girls, dance with them to it's raining men, take a few fotos of the group, say hello to some guy i went to school with, say goodbye to everyone, slip on a train and head over to newmarket...

poisonous bushes
ella - imagine my frustration

...where my dear friend L was having his birthday drinks. now L occasionally moonlights as a drag queen by the name of Oleeander ('cos she's a poisonous bush, sweetie') - but Miss Olly was nowhere to be seen. instead, i caught up with my melbourne gay boi posse (aka. the 'mgbp'), had a few drinks, bumped into an old friend, took a few photos and managed to introduce a couple of drag queens sans makeup to mame. as you do. of course, that meant only one thing: the peel.

crazy ass pool 'playaz'
michael sembello - maniac

at the peel, the party was joined by the rest of the mgbp. given we have not spent time together as a whole group for almost a year, of course it was fabulous.

until L's sis T decided that i had to play pool with her. which, stupidly, i agreed to.

all of a sudden we were playing against this strange little old man. he was in full '70s get up: the tight grey pants, the white shirt open almost to the waist, the overtanned skin, the white-gray hair in a floppy 'do. and i think he honestly spoke five words of english.

he kept doing this thing where he tried to show off how much of a hustler he was. except he wasn't. he'd spend about five minutes lining up shot, doing that whole 'fake shot' thing where you rub the cue up and down along your fingers for ages. still, he fucked up more shots than me, but somehow his team won. which was great for me - there's nothing more disconcerting than having someone tell you that you have two shots by giving you the good ole two-finger salute (and we ain't talkin 'v for victory' kidz) and then repeating it until you basically scream 'i get it - two shots!' at them.

fuckin weirdass bastard.

so i went off for a drink, then danced for a little bit til i got bored (it seriously took five minutes) then headed back to the pool room, where the mgbp was seated.

immediately, crazyass pool playa walks up to me and starts gesturing in his hyperactive way that i'm playing this game, that i have no choice, and that this time i was playing on his team. fucking T - she copped it later.

somehow, we won; but i feigned drunkenness and said i couldn't possibly play another game. instead, i ran off to the dancefloor to a catchup with old friend A and a free line of speed.

so far, so strange.

to market, to market...
armand van helden - my my my

So L decided we were all heading to the market. the sun was rising at that point, and luckily i had taken my bag with me, cos all of a sudden everyone was utterly green with lust for the pair of sunnies i had just put on.

market was ok for a couple of hours, but at some point i tried to start a conversation with a coupla guys who were totally out of it. which i wouldn't normally do, except that one of them was wearing a full suit with dirty cross-trainers. when i tried to ask him why he was wearing them, he started some long boring tirade, that next thing i know, i had woken from a five minute nap.

heh. five minute man.

time to head home.

we be dreamin

i caught up with an old friend last night. we decided to go off to pick up all the stuff i have lying around.

first stop was my great aunt's farm. except she'd sold it and it had been turned into a motel. we booked in under a false name, making sure to steal the maid's keys.

finally, we found the room where all my old clothes were stored. We literally had 10 seconds before someone came in. thank fuck it was long enough for me to rip through the wardrobes and stuff it all into my big bag (which was under one of the closets).

We ran out through the front, a fish and chip shop, where there was this girl who looked like Mena Suvari.

Next stop was a chance to visit a few old friends in this little country town but we couldn't find anything there.

stupid thought

oh minnie driver, whoever told you you could get away with a black leather catsuit?

karen walker

why does barbara streisand dislike minnie driver so much?

20 days to Sydney

song of the moment: new order - slow jam

i'm sick of being the bitter, twisted brat who lets the vicious cycles continue for the sake of convenience.

i realise that my posts are increasingly repetitive but bear with me: they're the only place where i can honestly vent my emotions. i mean, my friends understand that i'm not happy; but their general response is to either 'ride it out' or that 'things will get better.'

except they're not, at least not while i'm here.

you have to understand that i haven't always been this angry twit before you reach that point where you get that this is torture for me, taking responsibility for the decisions i've made.

yes, i chose to come back to melbourne almost two years ago, knowing full well it meant dealing with issues i hadn't had the strength to overcome before i left in the first place.

yes, i chose to live at my parents' house, knowing full well i wouldn't be able to deal with la famille for an extended period of time.

i also chose to attempt every possible avenue for overcoming those issues, and to attempt to develop better relationships with family. every possible avenue short of patricide or escape to try to break the power games and vicious manipulations that constitute life in my family.

i'm the first to admit that the problems are much bigger than i could ever fix on my own: other family members really need to realise what they do and how they do it before anything happens. seems like they're more lost than me in that dark clubhouse - cept they can't even remember what their friends look like.

what does it take to get the world to change if you don't like the way it is?

groping

ever had the experience of being in a crowded bar or nightclub, a busy venue, looking for someone? i'm there. now.

what i usually do when something like that happens is stop to catch my breath. sit down. maybe chat with some people. that way, if i can't find my friend, i've made a new one (or four).

except right now, there's no place to sit down. and the dj is playing shit music. sides, there are always twelve more things to do before i can leave the club.

last night, a case in point:

after a brief conversation with a potential employer, i had a short window of time to send my CV off to him. so i headed home.

cept, everyone all of a sudden decided they really needed my advice or help or whatever. my sister couldn't get something working with an image she was working in photoshop, my mum was having her fortnightly breakdown. my brother decided this was the moment he had to tell me about his fears about moving to london or something and dad desperatelyhad to have a conversation about some banal topic.

despite the fact i was quite clearly needing to do some work of my own, none of them let off til i told them to all get fucked.

which of course, would make everything my fault.

i can't describe how humiliating it is to feel all of fifteen again, nine years after the fact.

why can't people get that sometimes i'm just not that drugfucked little party kid constantly on the dancefloor? don't they understand that i need my own sit down time?

ready or not, i'm leaving the club soon.

try try again

i've had better days. i've been the star of many plays.

reading t's blog, i feel like my life is missing something.

i guess it started last night. my friend r, who has the same birthday as me... no it was earlier than that.

shit, i've been reading way too much winterson lately.

oh yeah, it could have been the family dinner on tuesday. no, that's ground well covered over.

or could it be the world's most pathetic text message, which i still keep in my phone for stupid reasons?

one of my oldest and dearest friends decided to tell me she wasn't coming to my birthday drinks last weekend - at 1am on the night of the drinks - with the following message:

Dearest Bads33d. Happy happy birthday. Hope you're having a wonderful time. Ciao :-)

What the fuck was that?

(did i mention she didn't even bother to call me on my actual birthday?)

back to mine

song of the moment: christina & missy car wash

I'm feeling better than I have been for a while. I actually feel half human, and am contemplating whether or not to head out in a little bit for a touch of the boogie.

This last week has been fun. i've gone out a little bit, caught up with a different set of friends every night (except sunday and monday) and survived the whole family thing.

Plus my CV is looking majorly kickass, and my options re: houses are looking amazing.

I've finished a report I've been working on for a year and a half.

I managed to impress a friend whose work I idolise, which is pretty cool, too. I caught up with him when I decided to ditch an industry lecture on wednesday, and we were chatting away about all the stuff that's happened since i saw him last (about a year ago). He was telling me about his travels, I was telling him about the whole move thing. Either way, it was a good convo, and I kinda sensed a little urst-y thing going on. Which is very cool - he is an incredibly hot boi, but I've never got that impression from him before.

Anyway, back to life as I don't want to know it.

I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch...

I turn 24 today.

I got offered something of a surprising offer for a position at the company I work for last week. I actually spent most of the last five days thinking about it, and the same response keeps welling up inside me.

No.

No, because the position is too unstable, too much just an extension of what I’m already doing, and not the chance to work in a new, different area.

No, because my home life is too unstable, making me incapable of creating enough perspective to really get a bearing on my life.

No, because I’m not happy in Melbourne.

So why am I smiling and wanting more from this city right now?

Bring it on.

no sex thankyou, i've had my fill of sangria

day count: 2 sleeps to my birthday. 30 sleeps to sydney.

three nights of celebrating is getting to me.

1. i went to my friend S's for a dinner party. somehow, after the huge pitcher of sangriawe all drank, i managed to sleep in til 10am the next morning. i got given way too much shift from my CRM's at work. so this is what happens when you don't have a life...

2. i went to catch up with my fave temp consultant, A, for a few drinks after work on friday - without realising it was her birthday. after turning up at 11am for work, i was so busy that i didn't have lunch. not having dinner, either, meant that all the drinks we had REALLY got to my head. so...

3. i woke up saturday afternoon still drunk. i vomited in the shower, spent the next eight hours making myself presentable, and then headed off to my birthday drinks with such a jelly stomach i can't describe. oy vey.

birthday drinks were good, but i'm sick of people who say they're coming and don't turn up. oh well... their loss. :P

so i'm not feeling very human at the end of the weekend. at least i have yet another week of dreary administration work to look forward to.

another day less

so my computer is working again. typically, it was some hardware error.

anyway, it's been another typical melbourne day.
i woke up to find there was no hot water - my sis had decided to wash all her clothes while everyone else was having showers. so, cold showers and no shave for me.

after getting much pollen blown through my hayfever ridden eyes, i got to work feeling nauseous. then i found that there was only filing, letter typing and envelope stuffing to do all day.

i hid out in the little shopping centre across the road from the office for lunch, but kept having annoying colleagues walk up to ask me stupid questions now that they've *finally* clicked i'm one of the 'gay ones.'

i got home to hear my sister whinge about the day she's had and how i'm not helping because i don't want to watch who wants to millionaire, and my brother to tell me how much i need to take other people's feelings into consideration.

and people wonder why i want to leave melbourne?!

fucking up

song of the moment: rem - bang & blame

my computer is dead, so i'm using my mum's.
john howard is PM for another three years.
oh, and my cd player is playing up.

all i need is for some abusive fucker to come in and screw with my head.

my head hurts.

wishlist

• space
  

interesting thought

time for a touch more poststructuralist french philosophy. i quote directly:

If there were only perception, pure permeability to breaching, there would be no breaches. We would be written, but nothing would be recorded; no writing would be produced, retained, repeated as legibility. But pure perception does not exist: we are written only as we write, by the agency within us which always already keeps watch over perception, be it internal or external. The "subject" of writing does not exist if we mean by that some sovereign solitude of the author...The subject of writing is a system of relations between strata...

turning the body without organs (pt ii): immanent transgressions to the brooksian universe

song of the moment: keep it gay (from The Producers)

this week has been hectic. and i haven't really done a huge amount.

first tho, i must say that i have a set a date for RTS (aka Return To Sydney): Nov 16 I fly out. Now all i need is some decent movalists, a plane ticket and a job. pretty straightforward, one would think.

thankfully the fabulous MsK is organising househunting - provided i can find a decent job asap.

yet again, i digress. i wanted to talk about deleuze and the body without organs.

it's taken me a while to begin to understand deleuze. my honours thesis was steeped in his work, and i have felt like i'm only beginning to get some of his concepts only recently. one of the problems with my thesis was that it was more about a dynamics of space and spatial relations rather than about space (which is what i defined it as) - the difference may seem minuscule, but it's a world of difference within academia.

one of the things i've come to interpret of his work is that deleuze is about immanence and dynamics more than mechanics and transcendence. big words that i don't really understand; i can only contemplate their meanings in different contexts. i guess the example he gives of the body without organs works nicely to explain this: essentially it's a body that folds itself up into a purely immanent presence. the point is that it is no longer existing as a series of interconnected organs, of mechanical parts; instead it's a presence that insists its presence only on a certain plane. ok, now my head is getting boggled.

obviously, this is some overly philosophical concept that is useful only in thinking through a tiny amount of work - but i like it. it interests me. makes me wonder what i'm doing, sitting in some darkened room in suburban melbourne and waiting for the right time to leave.

in the meantime, i get to do crazy things like spending a whole thursday night getting drunk at st jerome's with friends to celebrate one of them leaving their job, and like seeing The Producers in melbourne. if you are in australia, and have a chance to go see it one night, i highly recommend it. it's funny thinking that Mel Brooks is already talking about doing a remake, and it would be great to see Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in the lead roles. Though having the joke of the gay male lead in a plot which satirises the gay male lead of Broadway productions would be too good an opportunity for him to miss, no doubt.

i'm leaving soon, is that enough?