AUDREY AND THE BAD APPLES

Moving house

2011-01-30T17:28:00.000+10:30

After much preparation, most of which involved extensive procasturbation and the watching of TV, I have moved the home of this blog.

Thank you all for reading Audrey and the Bad Apples these past years. I think you'll find the layout of Howling Clementine to be very pleasing. Little Audrey Apple will always be dear to me, but it's time to retire the nom de plume once and for all and try and get some actual work.

You can find me now at www.clementineford.com.au. I do so hope you drop by for some tea and brownies, or perhaps just a vat of wine and some witty ripostes.

Best,

Clementine

Internet Hating

2010-12-01T18:45:00.002+10:30

I received this email from a fellow on OkCupid a couple of weeks ago. The subject line was simple 'Really?'.

I presume he took offense to parts of my profile, because he not only apparently failed to read any of it but also surmised incorrectly that I am a hipster. This may be based on the strength of my preference for left wing men with beards and/or drinking tea. I would say that I'm not a hipster - but then, don't they all deny it? What I am is feisty, and I didn't take kindly to receiving this:

"Don't be fooled, the beardy, fixie-riding vegan novelist is every bit as vain as his Ed Hardy wearing douchebag counterpart. In fact I'd say our man-tanned friend is actually less of a hypocrite.

Look, I think hipsters are full of it more often than not, but you're smart and pretty and I do dig that. In case you don't recognise it, that's what's known as 'sincerity'."

I admit, I wasn't sure how to respond. What kind of person thinks a vague stab at insulting someone is the way to their heart? In his profile, he waxes lyrical about the careful grooming of his stubble, his attraction to noted anal pornstar Belladonna and his ability to 'get women to tell him things they don't want to'. Aha! I thought. I've got your number...

I wasn't going to respond, because frankly I involve myself in far too many internet slanging matches as it is. But I couldn't let it go because I am what my father has always referred to as 'incorrigible'. Thus, I just penned this response:

"I hate fixie bikes and find veganism highly unappealing. Don't assume I'm not interested in you because I can't recognise 'sincerity' or the winsome qualities of a scooter riding wikipedia addict with carefully tended stubble.

It's more likely due to the fact that you're an arrogant twat who thinks insulting women is a unique and clever way to pique their interest. I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark here and say that you own a well thumbed copy of The Game.

The beardy, fixie-riding vegan novelist may be every bit as vain as his Ed Hardy wearing douchebag counterpart, but men like you are every bit as predictable as the scores of other Neil Strauss wannabes running around the place.

Thank you very very much for finding me smart and pretty enough to set aside your disdain for 'hipsters', but I think I'll pass.

Oh, and in case you didn't recognise it, that's what's known as 'pwnage'."

ZING! Internet dating, why o why do I always return to you? For moments like these.

In other news, I know it's been a long long long long stupidly long time since updating here but I shall be moving this site in the very near future to its own domain. My theory is that if I have a professional website I may be inspired to actually do something resembling professional work. I look forward to seeing if I can fulfil my own potential, or if I shall have to fire me and employ someone else to live my life more efficiently.

The new website address shall be http://clementineford.com.au. It was meant to be a www address, but I forgot to put that in when registering so we are clearly off to a bang up start.

Veiled Sweat

2010-06-25T12:22:00.000+09:30

Well hello there blog. It’s been sometime. You look…different. I would like to say that my absence has been due to Earning Lots Of Money While Doing Something Fabulous, but alas! that would be both a fib and a fanciful delusion.

The truth lies sadly in a wasteland so far from that reality that one would need to trek for hundreds of pages in order to find it. The person who undertook that quest would be required to battle thousands of orcs while looking dashingly handsome and masculine, and their bravery and tenacity for undertaking such a perilous but above all boring task would be rewarded with a royal crown, a hot Elven babe and the largescale manufacturing of cheap plastic ‘goblets’ to be gifted with purchase at all participating Burger King establishments.

On Tuesday, I lined up once more at Centrelink and signed on to the demoralization train. I’d forgotten how ridiculously cheap payments to the great unwashed are. As reward for being constantly rejected for jobs I’m perfectly capable of doing, I can have the pleasure of receiving the vast sum of $538 per fortnight.

As other dirty dolebludgers well know, $538 is barely enough to cover rent and foods that carry a nutritional quotient let alone the requisite cigarettes and cheap medicinal liquor that one must take in order to stave off the crushing sense of self loathing that comes from being a societal reject. I shall therefore spend the next indeterminate period of time foraging for nuts and berries in the urban undergrowth as it were, ie making my friends buy me coffee and tinned soup.

I have to say though, I’m somewhat sad that the Torrensville Centrelink seems to house less illiterate wastrels than the Free Money Place I used to patronize on Currie St. How will I keep up to date with the tumultuous goings on of Tequi’na-ia and Deryk’s relationship now, last seen debating the linguistic merits of ‘fat cunt’ as both a noun and adjective? Where will I go to appreciate the rich tapestry that comprises Australia’s births registry, and the unique minds that see superfluous apostrophes and literal phonetics as less of a literary tool and more as a lifestyle? All Torrensville offers me are old Greek gentlemen in urgent need of ear trumpets and the occasional Westside hipster. To be fair, these are two demographics not without humourous merit but sure to prove largely more annoying in the long run. Hipsters are called James and Matilda and never Donna, unless ironically. One never need guess at how a hipster’s name is spelled. Where’s the fun in that?

Speaking of Matildas, I enjoyed this quote from Tilda Swinton when asked about the possibility of becoming a Dame one day:

A dame? I'd so much rather be a knight… It would, of course, be a great honor to be asked whether one would. I don't know. But I think Sir Tilda sounds so much better.

Indeed it does. And thus, as if the world were my Marcie, I shall insist on being referred to as Sir Clementine from now on. Unfortunately, there is yet to be an option for Sirs or Ladys on official documents, but I shall probably just create my own little box and tick it.

Anyhoo, let’s talk about this article which appeared in the NT News with the byline “Nigel Adlam”:

Veiled Threat [1]

A MUSLIM woman has complained after allegedly [2] being told to remove her face veil during a job interview at a Territory hospital.

Territory Anti-Discrimination Commission officers have launched an investigation.
Acting commissioner Lisa Coffey has refused to discuss the case - or even confirm that a complaint had been lodged.

But the Northern Territory News understands the young woman went for an administration job at Royal Darwin. A doctor asked her to remove her veil during the interview. She refused - and filed an official complaint.

The case comes at a time when several western countries are following France's lead in banning the wearing of the hijab in public. [3]

The doctor is believed to have engaged a lawyer to represent him. Discriminating against someone because of their religion is illegal. But whether insisting a Muslim woman remove her hijab is discriminatory has not been tested in the Territory. [4]

NT Islamic Society president Adil Jamil said less than 2 per cent of Territory Muslim women wore a veil. He said it was considered "offensive" to ask a woman to take off her hijab.

"It's against their religious beliefs," he said. "It can seriously hurt their inner self.

"Under traditional Islamic view, a woman cannot show her face to any man except her husband and male relatives." [5]

Mr Jamil said there were about 2000 Muslims in the NT from 23 countries. Three-quarters of them are of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indonesian heritage.

Mr Jamil said a few Territory-born Muslim women wore a veil.

"They see it as reinforcing their religious beliefs and inner satisfaction," he said. [6]

1. VEILED THREAT? LOLZ! It’s funny, because those Muslims wear VEILS and are a bit THREATENING but also when something has the potential to be dangerous without our REALISING it, we might refer to it as a ‘VEILED THREAT’!! Double entendre, folks. The NT Newsroom is overflowing with mad skillz.

2. Allegedly. I mean, we can’t even be sure it happened. Even though the NT News are definitely not certain it happened, because the Acting Commissioner refused to confirm it, we will definitely go ahead and assert that one of those troublesome Muslim women who are both simultaneously oppressed and meddlesome had the temerity to complain about something that mayn’t even have happened.

There is no 362 in this hotel! Sometimes, the complaints will be false.

3. Memo to Nigel Adlam – research usually goes a long way in producing accurate journalism. France did not ban the hijab in public. It banned the wearing of the hijab in public schools. It has so far failed to extend that ban to universities, let alone the general public. And as far as “several countries” following France’s lead, Tunisia and Turkey have had a ban on the hijab in place for several years. Uzbekistan recently imposed a similar ban to France on the wearing of hijab in public schools. Belgium, as we know, passed legislation earlier this year banning the wearing of full burqa or niqab, but not the hijab and the Netherlands are considering following suit. I would hardly describe this as ‘several’.

Additionally, Adlam doesn’t even seem clear on what piece of Muslim dress he’s referring to. Is it the hijab, a modest head covering which does not veil the wearer’s face? If so, why would it be reasonable to request that the woman remove it? If it was in fact a face covering, then Adlam might at the very least have the decency to get his terminology right.

4. Discriminating against someone because of their religion IS illegal. But apparently the NT News doesn’t consider it even vaguely unethical to print a beat up story encouraging xenophobia, misinformation and racism on the front page of their newspaper – and the Herald Sun definitely doesn’t consider it irresponsible to take that story and further encourage small minded Australian bigotry by reprinting it with this teaser on their website:

5. And then there’s you Adil Jamil. Traditional Islamic law is, like most religious law, open to wide and varied interpretation. Citing ‘tradition’ in religion to excuse patriarchal oppression is unacceptable. There are plenty of Muslim women who choose not to wear a veil or head covering of any kind. Are you suggesting that their interpretation of Islam is somehow false?

6. Do Muslim women see it that way – as ‘reinforcing their religious beliefs and inner satisfaction”? I would certainly hope so, if they’re actually choosing to wear the veil, or the burqa, or the niqab, or a burlap sack.

But I guess I’ll never really know for sure – because the superior journalistic wisdom of Nigel Adlam dictated that there was no need to actually ask any of them. After all, what could veiled Muslim women be expected to bring to the discussion? They’re just the poor oppressed victims of a dogmatic, patriarchal religion and even if Nigel Adlam were allowed to speak to them he probably wouldn’t because, you know, it’s just so weird and shit to actually have to interact with a woman who makes it impossible to objectify her.

I strongly advise against reading any of the comments, lest you feel the need to make haste for greener and less ignorant pastures. But just so we all remember the kind of stupid, bigoted, moronic population that makes up Australia, here’s a sample, starting with the Hun:

mick Posted at 10:51 AM Today
And still the boats come !!
Comment 6 of 21

Yes, all Muslims are illegal immigrants, none of them have been born here etc etc.

paul Posted at 10:58 AM Today
ban the bloody stupid thing and make these Muslims conform to out way of life.....now! Or go back to Muslim-land.....
Comment 13 of 21

Does Qantas have a direct route, or must you layover in Singapore?

Nothing to do with religion of Victoria Posted at 11:00 AM Today
What a load of garbage. It sickens me to think that there are people living here who want to do nothing but abuse and exploit Australia. If she wants to wear a ridiculous repressive disguise and not show her face she shouldn't be here........Who would want to employ THAT?
Comment 15 of 21

Ewww. I know. Especially when she could be wearing make-up and earrings and maybe even get breast implants to empower her instead of wasting her time exploiting and abusing Australia. Poor Australia.

Mary of ringwood Posted at 11:01 AM Today
I do not care what the NT Islamic Society President has to say... Most Australians feel that the Hijab is offensive the Hijab is a personal thing and nothing to do with the religion... so we have to ban it in Public arears like many Countries including two Muslim Countries have done. Inner satisfaction is not a reason to come to interviews for jobs...wearing a complete covering of a face. If the Hijab wearing womenresent that, they could go to a Country that allows it.
Comment 16 of 21

Was there a poll taken? Because I certainly didn’t answer. I *would* probably argue though that most Australians don’t have a fucking clue what a hijab actually is.

And from the Darwin News:

Maybe she was a fugly and was doing everyone a favour
Posted by: Frank of Darwin 8:29pm Tuesday  Comment 107 of 112

LOLZ! See what he did there?!

Dave of Millner an example of the Great Australian Cultural Cringe, But we don't know that Dave is an Australian (maybe pom) for he displays no affinity what ever for the preservation of AUSTRALIAN cultural heritage or customs. He is in fact a typical apologist, the sort that runs around apologising for things he's not done, and generally undermining Aussie values and customs. He's the sort that turns the other cheek, and he'll spread them as well, and have vaseline for the comfort of others.
Posted by: The Stump of Alice Springs 10:05pm Monday  Comment 81 of 112

Dave and his unwillingness to take up a pitchfork against the Islamic Mafia... What a fag!

If she was to be my nurse i would ask for someone else i dont want some damn covered up thing that i cant see there face
Posted by: GRRR 1:32pm Monday  Comment 17 of 112

Apparently doctors and nurses have stopped employing the use of surgical facemasks. Huh.

Will the madness never end? After all, you know there’s something fishy in the state of Denmark when even Miranda Devine gets it but the rest of the population remains oblivious.

But then, perhaps I’m being too sensitive? Perhaps I’m seeing oppression and bigotry where it doesn’t exist? After all:

it's not discrimation. if a non muslim had that tea towel thing on their head when they go to a job interview they too would be asked to take it off. so it's not discriminating muslims since anybody would be asked to take the towel off when they go interviews.
Posted by: james of darwin 12:25pm Monday  Comment 4 of 112

*headdesk*

Preferences for a Bad Apple

2010-03-19T17:16:00.001+10:30

I have spent the better part of this afternoon cross referencing all of the candidates' preference lists to try and determine some way to vote tomorrow. The results are below. There are some surprises, such as the fact that I didn't put Trevor Grace last, but at 72 just above the Democratic Labor Party. They are more offensive in my mind than someone who uses misleading pictures of unborn fetuses as anti-choice propaganda. So yeah. I think they're pretty bad.

I also put a few independents between Family First and Trevor Grace. Based on their appearance in numerous conservative preference lists, I assumed that they were all the kinds of people I hate. At least Family First has to answer to some kind of public - right wing independent nutjobs need to be kept as far out of power as possible.

So this is just how I'll be voting for the Upper House tomorrow, after a few hours of fairly irritating research. You are more than welcome to use my preference list if you are confused about the independent candidates.

1. Tammy Jennings (Greens)

2. Simon Jones (Greens)

3. Sandy Montgomery (Greens)

4. Chris Prior (Gamers4Croydon)

5. Jenny Wheaton (Pro Euthanasia)

6. Denis Haynes (Pro Euthanasia)

7. Ian Wood (Pro Euthanasia)

8. Craig de Vos (Pro Euthanasia)

9. Kirsten Alexander (St Clair’s)

10. Lynette Alice Crocker (Independent SA)

11. Dylan Coleman Mastrosavas (Ind)

12. Joseph Williams (Ind)

13. Gail Gago (ALP)

14. John Gazzola (ALP)

15. Rita Bouras (Liberal)

16. Jeannie Walker (Dems)

17. Gary Mighall (Ind)

18. David Winderlich (Ind)

19. Paul Collier (Dignit for the Disabled)

20. Kelly Vincent (D4D)

21. Michele Thredgold (D4D)

22. Ronni Wood (D4D)

23. Sandra Kanck (Dems)

24. Tom Salerno (Dems)

25. Deb Munro (United Party)

26. Darian Hiles (United Party)

27. Paul Holloway(ALP)

28. Bernard Finnigan (ALP)

29. Tung Ngo (ALP)

30. Jim Katsaros (Save the RAH)

31. Mark Taplin (Save the RAH)

32. Ken Rollond (Save the RAH)

33. David McGowan (Save the RAH)

34. Jing Lee (Lib)

35. Sarah Jared (Lib)

36. David Ridgway (Lib)

37. Stephen Wade (Lib)

38. Terry Stephens (Lib)

39. Peter Salu (Lib)

40. Kelly Henderson (Ind)

41. Michelle Drummond (Ind)

42. Corrie Vanderhoek (Ind)

43. John Tregenza (Ind)

44. Neil Armstrong (Ind)

45. Paul Tippins (Ind)

46. Frank Williams (Ind)

47. Joe Carbone (Ind)

48. Doug McLaren (Ind)

49. Paul Kuhn (Free Australia)

50. Ki Meekins (Free Australia)

51. Michael Hudson T (Shooters Party)

52. Deb Thiele (Nationals)

53. Kym Webber (Nationals)

54. George Kargiotis (Fair Land Tax)

55. Andrew Haralampopoulos (Fair Land Tax)

56. Barbara Pannach (One Nation)

57. Robert George Edmonds (One Nation)

58. Robert Brokenshire (Family First)

59. Bob Randall (Family First)

60. Toni Turnbull (Family First)

61. Nathan Ashby (Ind)

62. Joe Ienco (Ind)

63. John Michaelmore (Ind)

64. Frank Hunt (Ind)

65. Brenda Bates (Ind)

66. Peter Panagaris (Ind)

67. Howard Frayne Coombe (Ind)

68. Michael Daniel Noack (Ind)

69. Stewart Glass (Ind)

70. Helen Aldridge (Ind)

71. Mark Aldridge (Ind)

72. Trevor Grace (Ind)

73. Paul Russell (DLP)

74. David McCabe (DLP)

I thought about putting Mark Aldridge a little higher because he's probably not AS offensive as Nathan Ashby - but the fact that he disguised his anti-choice views at the Trevor Grace protest just so he could electioneer makes me sick in my mouth a little.

Here's to another four years of mostly mediocre governance!

A Bad Apple's Partial Guide To Voting

2010-03-19T01:47:00.007+10:30

The South Australian Election will be held on Saturday, and it’s shaping up to be a nail biter. While I would love nothing more than for the hubris of Rann’s Labor Government to be deflated like a pair of poorly constructed silicon knockers, the only other option as we all know is a Liberal Government.

Now, the Liberal Government in SA is not wholly bad – new candidate John Gardner (who, full disclosure, is a university friend of mine) is the type of social progressive that I think all our Governments need more of, regardless of political allegiance. Similarly, Michelle Lensink (Liberal Member of the Legislative Council) is someone for whom I have a lot of admiration.

But the ALP also has reasonable representatives in the form of Gail Gago, Steph Key and Jay Weatherill.

Decisions.

This election has been fought on the fairly aggressive battlegrounds of water and health. Unbelievably, a lot of airtime has been taken up over whether or not it’s a wise decision to build a new stadium. People, surely there are more important things to worry about?

Looking through the preference lists today (which can be found here), I was disturbed by a few things. Firstly, the ALP has preferenced Family First third on their ticket, after the Greens (who I currently work for but am not a member of). Family First’s website lists, among other things, the following treatise on marriage:

“The marriage of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, is much more than a private emotional relationship - it is also a social good.

While not all marriages thrive, research confirms that married people live longer and are healthier, wealthier and more satisfied with their lives than their cohabiting or single peers. Their children also have better health, they do better at school and are less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.

At Family First we are committed to promoting and preserving marriage as the essential foundation of strong marriages and communities.”

At the recent YWCA of Adelaide Election Forum, I asked Robert Brokenshire (FF’s lead candidate for the Legislative Council) to explain how Family First could actively promote the mental health benefits of marriage while denying those same benefits to the non-heterosexual portion of the community. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t have a very clear answer except to say that it was Family First policy.

Under their ‘Life’ platform, Family First says:

“The most basic human right is the right to life.

In Australia today this fundamental right is tragically denied with more than 100,000 unborn babies being aborted each year. The right to life is also under threat for the aged, infirm and vulnerable with a growing chorus advocating euthanasia.

At Family First we passionately believe that human life is precious. Armed with this belief, we are committed to the preservation and protection of life from the womb to the grave.”

"While I still have breath and a brain cell in my brain, I will fight for him..."

I would say that the most basic human right is the right to clean drinking water and education, but to each their own. Whichever way you look at it, Family First has a regressive agenda which includes, but is not limited to, policing the reproductive rights of women and denying equal rights to non-heterosexual Australians.

And the ALP has preferenced them third on their ticket.

The Liberal Party has gone one step further and preferenced Family First second, meaning that all of the bunk they’ve tried to spread this election about being a more progressive, modern party is just that – bunk. Family First is a divisive, anti-choice, anti-homosexual, anti-society political party whose highest representative in political office openly trumpets his views on creationism and has astoundingly denied the fact that his religious beliefs influence his politics.

If you want even more proof that Family First stand not for family values but an assault on human rights, equality and a progressive Australian society, just look at their own preference deals.

They’ve preferenced Save the RAH second (who have reciprocated the favour in what seems to be a straight deal). After Save the RAH though, Family First have preferenced the Democratic Labor Party candidates. I think this page perfectly sums up the DLP’s views on things.

I quote:

“Legislative measures that will uphold and protect the inalienable and fundamental rights of every person (1) [my emphasis] - to life, to the essential liberties of conscience, to equal treatment under the law (2) [my emphasis], to the ownership of property and to a livelihood that enhances the dignity and security of each person.

The DLP unequivocally supports legislation that will preserve and protect marriage as the voluntary union of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others, in a commitment for life.

Absolute opposition to legislative or administrative measures that undermine or degrade marriage by conferring on homosexual, lesbian or transsexual pairings any form of legal recognition of their relationships, per se, whether through "civil unions", "relationship registers" or other legal device. (3)

Abolition of the Family Court of Australia, exposure of its destructive ideology and its harm done to children through easy divorce and the court-instigated break-up of their families and recision of all court rulings that serve to undermine marriage or degrade it by conferring on homosexual, lesbian and transsexual pairings equivalent standing with marriage…. (4)

Statutory recognition of the principle that no child should be conceived to be borne and reared deliberately deprived of a mother or father as in the cases of single women, lesbians and homosexual couples accessing artificial reproduction technologies including IVF and surrogacy or adoption overseas or within Australia (5).

An acknowledgement in all legislation affecting families of the need to preserve and protect the institution of marriage and of the need to maintain the moral, social, legal and economic support of the traditional family unit as the most effective (including cost-effective) means to safeguard children from the harm of exploitation, violence, pornography, drugs and crime.

The DLP upholds the traditional family as the ideal for all to aspire to (6). This is not to condemn others who may find themselves in other family models through no fault of their own (7). We admire and support single parents for example, and recognize their particular needs and difficulties in raising children alone."

(1) Note the word ‘every’. Not ‘some’. Not ‘most’. Every.

(2) Equal treatment under the law. Not ‘moderately equal’. Not ‘almost equal’. Not ‘somewhat equal’. Equal.

(3) Homosexual, lesbian and transsexual people should be denied equal access to not just marriage but legal recognition of their relationship under the law, meaning only that the DLP does not consider homosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals to fall under the banner of ‘every person’…

(4) …and in fact that the assumption that they MIGHT be equal to heterosexuals and deserving of equal rights is in fact ‘degrading’.

(5) Equal treatment under the law? Well, only if you are…

(6) …a member of the kind of traditional family which we all should aspire to…

(7) …but their sympathies are with you if you happen to find yourself in a ~~degrading~~ different family model ‘through no fault of your own’, ie being a godless homosexual.

The DLP’s outrageous views continue:

“The DLP proposes a permanent embargo on all tax funding for procured abortions, destructive human embryo experiments, and the artificial reproduction of human life for any utilitarian end.

We also propose a substantial increase in the allocation of funding for palliative care facilities for the terminally ill, and the active promotion of public policy in opposition to the legalisation of euthanasia (1).

We also recommend enforcement of the criminal law with respect to procured abortions and euthanasia through the prosecution of medical professionals who violate human life (2).

Establishment at Federal State and Territory levels of an office of Advocate for the Unborn Child with all the functions, powers and duties necessary to promote and protect the life of the unborn, to afford legal voice or representation in all pertinent forums, to investigate impending medical and other threats to the child's natural right to be born and to instigate prosecutions for offences under relevant laws (3).

1. They want to use government funds to actively oppose the legislation of euthanasia.

2. THEY WANT TO PROSECUTE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS WHO DELIVER ABORTIONS. Unlike what Family First SAYS they won’t do, the DLP are open and honest about wanting to recriminalise abortion, and…

3. …make it a prosecutable offence.

The Democratic Labor Party are, despite their claims to the contrary, very much in favour of denying equal rights to sections of the community. They also seem intent on reintroducing backyard abortion alleys to

Australia

and actively using public money to campaign against reproductive and medical rights.

They are number 3 on Family First’s ticket.

****EDIT****

I had said that right behind them, at number 4, was Trevor Grace, but I missed one. Right behind the DLP, at number 4, is One Nation.

And right behind THEM, at number 5, is Trevor Grace.

Family First is preferenced second on the Liberal ticket, and third on the ALP’s. We have to vote for one of them, but I’d advise everyone to ask some pretty searching questions of representatives at the polling booths on election day.

To help you further in some of the decision you’ll have to make if you vote below the line – which you absolutely should – are some of the results from Family Voice Australia’s (formerly the Festival of Light who famously campaigned against allowing equal recognition for same sex de facto couples under SA law) survey given to all candidates.

Most did not respond, but those who did are listed below in the order I will be preferencing them.

These were 4 of the 10 questions asked. The rest can be found here.

Prayers in Parliament

Christian prayers in parliament is part of our Australian heritage - reminding MPs, like all other people, that they are imperfect and need guidance. This tradition recognises that most South Australians identified themselves as adherents of Christianity in the 2006 Census. Opening each day of parliamentary proceedings with prayer is a helpful reminder that members of parliament are accountable for their actions.

Q. Would you support the continued opening of parliament each day with Christian prayers?

Abortion Law

Recent gold standard research in NZ and elsewhere has shown that abortion is more likely to lead to mental health problems than to alleviate them. The current South Australian law, in Section 82A of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935, which allows for abortions to be performed on mental health grounds, may therefore be contributing to mental health problems.

Q. Would you support the removal of mental health grounds as an excuse for abortion?

Same sex relationship registers

In South Australia, the only couple relationship registered by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages is true marriage – between a man and a woman. Some other states have laws allowing same-sex relationships to be registered, thereby giving them equal status with marriage. Only marriage provides public benefits by creating the best environment for raising children. Its unique status should be preserved.

Q. Would you oppose any bill to allow the registration of same sex relationships?

Euthanasia

Euthanasia means the intentional killing of a person who is suffering pain or mental distress – instead of providing medical treatment or palliative care. It does not mean ending treatment that is futile or burdensome, since treatment can always be declined. Where euthanasia has been legalised, patients have been killed even in the absence of an explicit request for euthanasia, instead of providing treatment and care.

Q. Would you oppose any bill to legalise euthanasia?

THE WORST OFFENDERS, I'M PREFERENCING THEM LAST:

Family First and the DLP candidates all answered “DEFINITELY” as did Independent candidates Trevor Grace and Joe Enco.

Independent candidate Peter Pengaris answered DEFINITELY to everything except Mental Health and abortion, to which he answered “PROBABLY”.

Independentsr Mark Aldridge and Helen Aldridge answered DEFINITELY to introducing prayers to parliament and opposing same sex marriage, PROBABLY to mental health and abortion and UNSURE to euthanasia. I find Mark’s stance on abortion particularly interesting as he used the anti-Trevor Grace protest as a platform to talk about reproductive rights. Does this make him a political opportunist with no policies? PROBABLY.

Independent John Michaelmore answered DEFINITELY to prayers and opposing same sex marriage, and UNSURE to abortion and euthanasia.

MID RANGE AWFUL:

Robert Hudson of the Shooters Party (5^th on the Family First ticket) answered DEFINITELY to prayers in Parliament, UNSURE to abortion and PROBABLY to same sex marriage opposition and euthanasia.

GETTING BETTER, STILL WORRISOME:

Neil Armstrong (Independent) answered DEFINITELY to prayers, UNLIKELY to abortion and euthanasia and PROBABLY to same sex marriage opposition.

NO APPARENT CONVICTION BUT DON’T WANT TO BE MURDERED IN THEIR BEDS:

Liberal candidates David Ridgeway and Terry Stephens and Labor’s Bernard Finnigan and Paul Holloway answered UNSURE to everything except opposing euthanasia, to which they answered DEFINITELY.

NO APPARENT BELIEFS AT ALL:

Liberals Sarah Jared, Peter Salu, Rita Bouras and Jing Lee, and Labor’s Tung Ngo answered UNSURE to everything. Why are you running for Parliament?

SKERRICK OF BELIEF:

Liberal’s Stephen Wade and Labor’s John Gazzola are UNSURE about everything except euthanasia, which Wade would be UNLIKELY to oppose and Gazzola would be DEFINITELY NOT.

MORE PEOPLE LIKE THIS IN PARLIAMENT PLZ:

Independent Craig Devos is UNLIKELY to support prayers in Parliament, UNSURE about the gayz, and would DEFINITELY NOT seek to repeal the mental health excuse in abortions or oppose a euthanasia bill.

Labor’s Gail Gago (Minister for the Status of Women) is UNSURE on prayers in Parliament and Same Sex Marriage, but would DEFINITELY NOT repeal laws on abortion or oppose a euthanasia bill.

Independent Michael Noack would DEFINITELY NOT introduce prayers, oppose abortion or same sex marriage and would be UNLIKELY to oppose euthanasia.

******EDIT:

I had listed Chris Prior of Gamers4Croydon as replying UNSURE to everything. This was incorrect. He was given a score of 1 for all questions, translating to NO COMMENT. Kat Nicholson, Gamers4Croydon candidate for Croydon, informs me that Chris didn't reply to the survey at all. So why was he listed as giving a NO COMMENT answer (and point scores of 1) when other candidates who didn't reply were given scores of 0? Gamers4Croydon, I'd advise you to take this up with Family Voice. I have also fixed the broken link to the survey results page.*******

It can be notoriously difficult trying to figure out which independents to preference when there’s no information available (readily), so I mostly end up putting them around the middle somewhere. Now I can happily say I will be putting many of those who answered the Family Voice Australia survey favourably LAST – and, as a side note, I wish hateful, regressive organizations who would seek to discriminate against large sections of the community would stop giving themselves names like “Family Voice” and “The Australian Family Association”. I have a family and YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME.

Happy voting.

Teen Angst Diary Readings

2010-03-15T10:46:00.001+10:30

On Saturday, I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at Lisa Dempster's Literary Experience at Format Festival. After a very interesting panel on how writers mine the personal and what drives them to write (ie for me, it's incredible narcissism), I read out teen angst diary entries from my time in England.

Many things were revealed during this reading:

1. I was an obnoxious brat who thought she was far too clever by halves

2. There is something very wrong with a girl who thinks certain kinds of bulimia are excusable

3. Pedophiles are everywhere

4. What kind of 13 year old imagines themselves to be in 'upper management'?

The diary entries below are recreations; I did keep a diary during this time, but I threw it away some years ago in a fit of stupidity. WHY? I've faithfully rewritten these from memory - at the very least, it is DEFINITELY what I sounded like as a teenager. Some clarifications:

1. I am not making up the stuff about Satan. I used to have panic attacks over it and everything.

2. I truly did believe Martin the Pedophile was amazing; to this day, I still don't regret that feeling of being trusted and 'valued', and that's the worst thing about groomers.

-------

October, 1993 – 12 years old

Dear Diary,

England is rubbish. I can’t believe mum and dad made us move here. It’s so cold and it’s always raining. I miss Oman, and especially all of my friends there like Sarah, Joy, Chris Segers, Katya and especially Chris Blanchard. I don’t miss Jemima because she is a bitch and she also thinks she’s really good, but I guess in every group there’s always one person who has to be crap.

Raining again. At least the TV is good here.

October, 1993 – 12 years old

Dear Diary,

There is a girl who lives at the end of our road who has a weird, bony head and a hearing aid on it. There is definitely something wrong with her and she makes me really uncomfortable whenever I see her, like, sick almost and a bit scared. What if that happened to me? She was probably born like that but still. What if I ended up with a deformed head or deaf or something?

They have Neighbours on TV here. It’s really good.

October, 1993 – 12 years old

Dear Diary,

I am never going to get my period. I really never well. I’ve accepted the fact that I’m just one of those girls who will never get her period. (Ed's Note - Apparently I didn't realise that 'one of those girls' might also make me 'one of those boys') It’s so embarrassing. Charlotte thinks she’s so good because she’s had her period since she was 13. She acts like she’s so grown up but she doesn’t even have a licence, plus she has to share a room with me which makes her a baby. She’s soooooooo messy – I had to draw a line down the centre of the room with scarves to make sure she knows which side of the room all her rubbish needs to be kept on. So I make sure I always throw it back on her side when she leaves it on mine. My side is super clean, but hers is always messy because she’s not as neat as me. I think she smokes too, probably at the college. I wonder if she’s met any boys yet? I’ll never meet a boy because I’m fat and they always want to go out with my friends. Life sucks, hey diary?

November, 1993 – 12 years old

Dear Diary,

Went for a walk around the town today. Cold and miserable AS USUAL. But I caught this boy looking at me. He was really cute – I guess my hair did look kind of pretty today, flapping about in the wind. I wonder if I’ll see him again? He might go to my school.

Wonder what it would be like to have a boyfriend. Would you do things together? Probably go to the cinema and then get off with each other afterwards. Some girls do more than that, but that’s because they have no self esteem apparently. Silly to think about it because no boy will ever want to go out with me, especially when I have no boobs and a fat bum.

This year I will lose weight and get really pretty and popular and then all the boys will want me and it will be just like that movie Teen Witch. I wish I had magic powers. I would definitely get rid of my freckles and make my stomach disappear. And also maybe make a new bedroom for Charlotte so she can keep all of her CRAP outside of my SPACE!

Still no period.

November, 1993 – 12 years old

Started school today. It was pretty scary. The halls smell funny and all the classrooms are untidy. There are loads of girls wearing really short skirts. I wish I could wear a short skirt.

Sarah sent me a letter. She’s going out with Chris Blanchard and she says she totally loves him. I can’t believe her. She’s supposed to be my BEST FRIEND and she knows that I have been in love with Chris since last year and yet she goes and STEALS him from me! I hate her. I am never going to talk to her again. I hope he dumps her because she’s obviously not a very nice person. She got her period in June and brought a note to school for Mrs Parker. She thought she was so good to, clutching her stomach just so everyone could tell that she’d gotten it and think she was really grown up. Stupid freckled Scottish bitch.

Still no period.

December, 1993 – 12 years old

Hey diary, guess what? I got my period!!!! It came last night. I woke up and it was just there. I’ve been using mum’s pads all day. I can’t believe girls who are freaked out by it – it’s not that big a deal. Joy Beecroft didn’t believe us when we told her about periods. She thought we were lying, because her mum hadn’t told her anything about them. She is sure going to be really shocked when it happens to her. How can a 12 year old not know about periods?! But I guess she’s just not as mature as some of the rest of us.

I definitely do feel more grown up. I suppose it’s because I’m a woman now. I looked at myself in the mirror today and thought I seemed a bit older. I wonder if other people will be able to tell? Charlotte hasn’t said anything yet, but if she has noticed it’s probably because she’s jealous that I got mine at 12 and she was 13 which I think definitely means that I am more mature than her. Some people are just ready to grow up faster, you know?

It’s a bit crampy I suppose, but it’s a good kind of pain because it’s something that only women get so it’s almost like it’s a bit of a secret. I wonder if you can still fiddle with yourself while you’ve got it? Joe Stewart once asked me if I masturbated but I told him NO that it was GROSS because apparently masturbation is when you stick a finger inside yourself and wiggle it around, and that is just really weird and dirty. But I don’t think that the other thing I do is that bad, although sometimes I wonder if God is watching. I have prayed to him to ask him to forgive me, but it’s difficult to stop. I’ll try harder.

Alright, better go and have some panadol.

December, 1993 – 12 years old

Mum found out I got my period because I’d been flushing the pads down the toilet and the plumber had to be called out. It was sooooooooo embarrassing – she asked Charlotte if it was her and she said no so there was only one other person it could be and she looked at me and I had to tell them it was me and Dad and Toby were in the room so now they both know that I HAVE MY PERIOD and it’s just completely embarrassing!!! Toby teased me about it, but I told mum and he got in trouble. HAHA!

March, 1994 – 12 years old

Dear Diary,

Sorry it’s been aaaaaages since I’ve written. Dad’s moving back to Oman to work. I really wish we could go back with him. I hate England and I hate this stupid seaside town we live in. And I really HATE Anna Chesney.

I’m so fat, it’s disgusting. Why can’t I just lose weight and just stop being such a pig? I am starting a diet tomorrow for sure.

April, 1994 – 12 years old

Still fat.

May, 1994 – 12 years old

Still fat. Monstrously fat.

September, 1994 – 12 years old

Dear Diary,

I got a job at the nursing home washing dishes. It’s good because it means I’ll have a bit of money to spend. I really want to buy a CD player, and maybe some new clothes because guess what? I’ve actually lost a bit of weight! I’ve started walking everywhere, like to school and back and doing these exercises I found in a book. I think the secret is also not really eating much, which just seems so obvious! So now I have a yoghurt for breakfast and then I make sure I don’t eat ANYTHING at school, which is getting a lot easier and then when I come home (walking) I do my exercises and then I let myself have four Ryvitas with some jam on them. And I’ll have a little bit of dinner, but definitely NO DESSERT. And it’s actually started to work! My clothes are definitely looser and I think I can see it in my face. It’s funny what happens when you just get a bit smarter about things, isn’t it? It’s so obvious. Fat people really only have themselves to blame.

Anna Chesney said she’d take me shopping. We’re friends again. She’s alright I guess. She told me she’ll take me to the park on the weekend where the boys hang out. Bit scary, but feel lots more confident now.

December, 1994 – 13 years old

Dear Diary,

Dad came home for Christmas. He was so surprised when he saw me because I’m really thin now! We had a beautiful tree and mum was really happy to have dad home. I was worried when he went away that maybe they were splitting up and I don’t think I could cope with that at all. Charlotte says not to be stupid, but what would she know? She’s still messy. She’s also a total cow. She told mum I had cigarettes in my drawer and mum got soooooooo angry and asked what they were doing there. I had to tell her that I was looking after them for a friend, which I think she believed. But seriously, like she can talk – she smokes so if she says I can’t it just makes her a HYPOCRITE! Krystal’s mum lets her smoke at home and she’s my age! Her mum is so cool – she just treats her like a grown up and I think that’s really amazing because HELLO! We’re not kids anymore! ELkie Brooks’ mum even lets boys stay at her house, but I don’t know about that. It does seem a bit young to me, besides, what happens if she gets PREGNANT? She might have to have an abortion or she might even keep it and then her life would be RUINED. Besides, boys only want one thing. I would never have sex with a boy unless I loved him.

I think I have a crush on one of the boys in the panto, but I’m nervous because he’s a bit older. And then sometimes I wonder if he’s been sent here by Satan to tempt me. Satan scares me, and how can you know whether or not a boy is a real boy or if he’s a devil? Because they exist. What if Satan is trying to get me? NO. NO NO NON NONONON YOU CANNOT GET ME SATAN! IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN.

I am thinking about becoming a Catholic.

Still haven’t managed to stop touching myself, but I DO feel guilty about it and have promised God I will really try hard to stop doing it.

PS Olive from the nursing home gave me a block of Cadbury chocolate for a Christmas present because she likes when I visit with her. It was really nice of her, but I can’t eat chocolate. I gave it to my brother because as if I’m going to reverse all the good work I’ve done by eating a block of chocolate. Didn’t tell Olive.

March, 1995 – 13 years old

Dear Diary,

I am sooooooooooo in love with Ben Pert. He is the most cutest, nicest boy I’ve ever met in my whole life. I have liked him for three whole months, which is longer than I have ever liked anybody so I know it’s really serious. His girlfriend JOANNA is such a bitch. I don’t know why he likes her but it’s probably because she has massive tits and is easy. She’s in year 7, so she’s TWELVE and he’s 16! I can’t believe her cheek. And she’s so boring. I don’t think she’s had sex with him but I did hear that she let him put his hand in her pants so she will probably have sex with him soon which is DISGUSTING because she is TOO YOUNG.

I think that Ben could like me as well. We all went to the cliffs the other night (I’ve been hanging out at the park – it’s the easiest place to go when I just NEED a cigarette) and I was sitting there and I was a bit cold so I was shivering, and then Ben must have noticed because he took off his Adidas jacket and gave it to me to wear! HE IS SO ROMANTIC and SUCH a gentleman. I will just die if I don’t get to kiss him. Why can’t he see that I am much better than Joanna, even if I don’t have big boobs? IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE THAT COUNTS.

March, 1995 – 13 years old

I HATE ANNA CHESNEY! SHE IS THE BIGGEST FUCKING BITCH IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD! SHE HAS RUINED MY LIFE!

She told Benji that I liked Ben and now Ben knows and he will never talk to me ever again! Benji laughed at me today in the High Street so I just know that they all know!

Of course, Anna has denied EVERYTHING but then she would because she is nothing but a SNAKE and a JEALOUS BITCH. I know it’s just that she’s jealous because she thinks she should be the only girl who gets to hang around them. Stupid fucking tart, with her dumb house and her crap haircut.

I AM NEVER TALKING TO HER AGAIN.

April, 1995 – 13 years old

Still humiliated over Ben situation. We went to Oman to visit dad and it was well different from when we were there last time. I didn’t tell anyone I was coming because I wanted it to be a surprise, but then no one made any time to see me! Sarah is now best friends with Jemima and they had a party but they didn’t invite me because Jemima is a mean fat bitch and she just wants all the boys to herself. HAHAH! As if! No one wants to kiss a minger.

Chris Blanchard has moved back to America. I really wanted him to see the new, thin me. I think everyone was surprised. Chris Segar told me I had really changed a lot. I bet that’s why Jemima didn’t invite me, because she’s JEALOUS. Also why Sarah didn’t want to talk to me. They need to get over themselves and GROW UP.

Hated Oman. Really pleased to be back in England with my REAL best friends, Kate, Rachel, Ruth and Andrea. We are going to have a sleepover for my birthday. Kate is my new best friend. She understands about the weight thing because she is also concerned about her body. She is totally beautiful though. I wish I had her body.

Mum is really worried about me, but it’s like, GET OVER IT. She saw me in my school trousers and bra and started freaking out and telling me I had to eat. Like, no way am I going to start eating all that crap again so I can just get FAT and DISGUSTING! She just wants me to get fat because she doesn’t like the fact that I actually LOOK GOOD for once. Besides, I am not near enough too thin – I still have a massive gut and a huge arse and I definitely need to lose at least 5 more kilos, especially after all the ice cream over holidays. YUK.

June, 1995 – 13 years old

I got a job at the Sweet Shop!!!!!! Yes, I have wanted to work there for AGES! Martin the owner is soooooooooo nice and he really loves teasing all the girls. I was in there the other day and he brought in some of his friends and he told them all how lucky he was to have such a gorgeous girl working for him! He is really charming and really treats all the girls like grown ups. His wife just had another baby – they live upstairs in a flat, but he spends a lot of time sitting in the shop smoking cigarettes and watching football. I am going to try and become one of his top girls, like Leanne Stasi, so I will have more responsibility and get to be the boss when he’s not in the shop. It’s good to have ambition.

June, 1995 – 13 years old

Dear Diary,

I definitely have become one of the top girls at the Sweet Shop. Martin totally trusts me now. He’s really cheeky – he came up behind me the other day when I was selling some cigarettes and started crawling his fingers up my leg to my skirt. I had to swipe his hand away and tell him to go away, but it was really funny! He took me out for a pint afterwards and started telling me about his marriage. Poor Martin. His wife never has sex with him anymore because of the baby and the fact that he says his wife is frigid. He told me that sometimes he sees prostitutes, which is probably not really like cheating because it’s not like it’s an AFFAIR and everyone knows that men have needs. I was really glad that he trusted me enough to tell me – that’s the good thing about Martin. He doesn’t treat you like a kid, but like an equal.

The only problem with the shop is that I eat a lot of icecream. The hazelnut is my favourite, But – and I know it’s not GREAT diary – I have started just eating a bit and then throwing it up straight away. It’s not like it’s THAT bad because it’s just the ice cream, not like it’s EVERY SINGLE THING I EAT like real bulimics. They are gross, but this is totally different.

Leanne Stasi came home from Italy. She will be coming back to the Sweet Shop but I had to tell her the other day that since she’s been gone I’ve sort of taken on her role. I know she will also have power in the shop, but I just wanted her to know that I do too because it’s best to just be honest about things because I just don’t want things to get petty, plus she needs to know that Martin has made me one of his confidants and not get weird or possessive about it.

July, 1995 – 14 years old

Dear Diary,

I really think I’m in love with Andrew Gleeson. At first I thought I liked his brother Christian but now I know it’s definitely Andrew that I like. He is friends with Sam Farrow and she and I have become really good friends working at the shop together. We go to her house after school and smoke behind the flats. Her parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses, which means they don’t celebrate Christmas. Isn’t that SO WEIRD?! Samantha isn’t weird though – she’s really cool. Anna Chesney is soooooo jealous that we’re friends but if Anna wasn’t such a stupid cow maybe Samantha would be friends with her too. She only has herself to blame, because she is a backstabbing bitch and eventually if you backstab too much you get what’s coming to you.

Andrew has red hair (like me!) and we have a love calcuation of 99.7%!!!!! I gave him a super sized ice cream the other day and only charged him for a normal size. I think he appreciated it because he asked if I was going to go to the amusement arcade after work and play the fruit machines. I wonder if he’ll become my boyfriend? Anna would be SEETHING if that happened, she’s liked him for ages. SUCKED IN ANNA!!!!!

July, 1995 – 14 years old

Dear Diary,

I got soooooooo drunk last night with Leanne’s cousin Tracey! We drank a six pack of cider and bought some cigarettes. Then we ran into these two guys from the sixth form and drank some more with them and went to the pier and watched the sea crash on the rocks. Tracey got off with one of them but I was too scared to get off with the one I was with. He put his arm around me though and didn’t try anything, so he probably respects me which is different to Tracey’s boy – she told me later that she let him suck her boob which just means that he’ll think she’s easy and he probably won’t want anything but sex from her. Some girls really don’t get it.

I’m working heaps at the Sweet Shop, and it’s been cool with Leanne back. There is definitely room for two of us there, and it doesn’t have to be bitchy or difficult. We have a new sanitiser for the ice cream scoop water, but Leanne and I are the only ones allowed to pour it in because it’s really delicate and we don’t want to poison anyone. I had to tell Laura the other day not to do it, because she wasn’t one of the bosses. Honestly, why can’t people just follow the rules?

Martin was telling me about Ouzo the other day, which is a Greek alcohol. I told him that I’d never tried it and he said he had some in the flat upstairs if I wanted some. So I went up with him after work – his wife wasn’t there so it was just us – and he gave me some. It tasted shocking! But I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t handle it, so I drank the whole thing. He started teasing me and telling me that I didn’t know how pretty I was and that I wasn’t brave. I laughed and told him that wasn’t true, and then he dared me to come over and give him a hug and said that he bet I wouldn’t do it. I told him that of course I would and that I’m much more grown up than he thinks, and to stop being cheeky. So I gave him a quick hug and then went back to the couch and finished my Ouzo. He is really funny. I feel really lucky to have him as a boss and to be treated PROPERLY like a grown up for once in my life!

August, 1995 – 14 years old

Dear Diary,

Charlotte has moved into Norwich. I know she had sex a few months ago, because she was swanning about like she was the greatest thing in the world. Honestly, it’s just sex. Some people need to grow up – anyone can have sex, it’s not like it’s difficult. She will probably have lots more of it in her new flat because everyone knows that when you move out of home you have sex all the time, with lots of different people. I hope she doesn’t become a slut or get pregnant, because to be honest she is just not mature enough to handle that right now.

At least I have my room back to myself and all of her CRAP out of it. If she wants to have sex and then boast about it she can do it somewhere else.

September, 1995 – 14 years old

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! We are moving to Australia! I HATE MUM AND DAD SO MUCH!!!!!!! Why do they keep making us move, right when I’ve settled in and things are going really well?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!? We are moving in Brisbane in October and it’s going to be SO SHIT I CAN’T EVEN BEAR IT!!!!!!!!

I have to leave my job and Kate and everyone and my life is OVER! I hate Australia! I can’t deal with starting at another school, especially not in stupid fucking Australia.

I hate my life.

October, 1995 – 14 years old

Five days until we leave. Charlotte’s not coming with us. She is so lucky. I am so depressed. Visited Kate today and we cried all afternoon. We have promised to write every day and never forget each other.

October, 1995 – 14 years old

Australia is rubbish. I can’t believe mum and dad made us move here. It’s so hot and humid. I miss England, and especially all of my friends there like Kate, Rachel, Ruth, Andrea and especially Andrew Gleeson. I don’t miss Anna Chesney because she is a bitch and she also thinks she’s really good, but I guess in every group there’s always one person who has to be crap.

Hot again. At least we have a pool.

------

I am so embarrassing.

Trevor Grace, what a disgrace!

2010-02-26T08:21:00.002+10:30

I'm all a skitter with nerves ahead of tonight's debute performance of Frock Rock and Radical Cheek, the Fringe show I'm presenting with the lovely Emily Davis. Eep! I was struggling with multi media shiz into the wee hours of the morning - I ask you, why does technology have to be so complicated? Rendering, rendering, rendering. It's enough to make a technologically incapable woman tear her hair out.

Anyhoo, it's going to be a spectacular show, largely because Emily Davis is a talent and I am but a clown she allows on stage with her who occasionally makes the audience laugh by performing self deprecating tricks. If you've nothing to do tonight or tomorrow, it's on at the Church of the Trinity on Goodwood Rd at 8pm. Oh look, here's a link!

Emily Davis and Clementine Ford are robobabes, if you don't believe me come see for yourselves, kthxbai.

It's funny what the link automator puts in for text, isn't it? Imagine the silly computer calling us robobabes!

IN THE MEANTIME, I'm sure Adelaide based folk are familiar with the ~~fucktard~~ political candidate running for the Upper House in the upcoming State Election. Trevor Grace is a former Family First candidate whose Abort SA campaign is peddling the worst of the abortion debate's misinformation - I particularly like his segment on "Why Women Abort". I particularly, particularly like this bit:

For many years, it has been argued that abortion is being used by Australian women as a means of contraception. Whilst this accusation has been rigorously denied by abortion advocates, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2001 Year Book states quite clearly, in light of its findings, "…abortion is being used as a form of contraception as well as a way of protecting rights of women …"

Oh well, if the ABS states it in an elipses bookended statement, given with no context as to the sentences immediately before or after it, meaning it COULD quite possibly say "there are fuckwits who claim abortion is being used as a form of contraception as well as a way of protecting rights of women, but they are wrong", then it MUST be true. I know from personal experience that it was just...I don't know...heaps more convenient to organise two abortions and go on a waiting list and feel emotional and sick and scared and conflicted than it was to throw on a johnny and go for it hell for leather.

I also like how Trevor Grace refers to 'abortion advocates' throughout his website - meaning, I presume, anyone who claims to be pro-choice and has ever expressed so in the past. Meanwhile, Richard Grant - his so-called 'expert' - is quoted heavily and with authority as being a 'social analyst and writer' from the National Observer. Sounds fancy, don't it? What Grace fails to point out though is that the National Observer is an online 'newspaper' (so....a blog) for right wing nutjobs whose latest edition features articles on the threat of Islam and the 'lie' of climate change. Rational thinking people who believe in protecting women are 'abortion advocates' (KILL ALL BABIES! BWA HAHHAHAHA!). Richard Grant, an illogical, right wing loony bin, is a 'social analyst and writer'. Note to Grace: anyone can publish anything on the internet. It doesn't make them an 'analyst', and a sad majority are far away from being 'writers'.

Anti Trevor Grace groups have been popping up all over Facebook, which is heartening to say the least. Rationality wins the day! It's good to know that there are hundreds of people online in little old Adelaide who jumped on the protest wagon mere hours after the campaign was launched. What they should know - in fact, what everyone should know - is that Trevor Grace is most likely a preference feeder for Family First, for whom it would be political suicide to so obviously advertise their anti abortion stance. Grace attracts the hard line wing nuts who are looking for some 'action' on baby genocide, gets knocked out in the first round, and all his directed preferences flow on in percentages to Family First.

I had wanted to organise a protest against Grace and his posters, but my boss advised me that the best option would be to attend as many election forums as I could and ask questions of Family First about their connection with Trevor Grace - is he affiliated with them still, do they endorse his views and his candidacy, where do FF stand on abortion? At the very least, we can hope to make them sweat a little bit. If Grace is indeed a preference vehicle for FF, they deserve to be kicked in the shins hard for it, politically speaking. Not only is his website grossly incorrect, the tactics of using potentially traumatising images to women who've not only had abortions but also miscarriages or late term still births or just have a fucking conscience and don't want this crap rammed down their throats are absolutely despicable.

Anyhoo, I wrote a piece today for The Punch - a letter to Trevor Grace from a fictional supporter. Go ahead y'all and read it and leave comments! There are bound to be some crazies out on it.

If you're Adelaide based, I very much hope you're enjoying the Fringe. If you're visiting the Fringe and you are bearded and tall and delightfully strange then I think you and I should find a quiet corner of the garden and make out with cider tasting mouths and our eyes closed.

In defence of young feminists

2010-02-24T16:44:00.000+10:30

To whom it may concern,

I recently attended the Domestic Violence Death Review Panel organized by the Southgate Institute and found it to be thoroughly stimulating - an excellent exploration of the failure thus far of Australian state based legislation to seriously adopt any measures towards preventing domestic homicides.

Having said that, I am surprised and saddened to see that the Gender, Power and Revitalising Feminism Forum is guilty of one of the cardinal sins of the modern feminist movement – that is to say, in discussions regarding revitalizing feminism, you seem to have ignored the inclusion of any young women working within the field of feminist academia or activism.

So often, young women are accused of being disinterested in feminism or activism simply because their activism is conducted differently (ie online or through networking) - or worse, they are ignored entirely by the groups for whom it would seem to be in the best interest to engage with them. Dr Zora Simic seems to be your youngest speaker on the panel. Where are the Emily Maguires and the Rachel Hills? It’s extremely frustrating to be told by the academic feminist community over and over again that feminism needs to be revitalized and repackaged when they seem to consistently ignore the amazing work being carried out by young feminists.

As a young feminist activist, I am inclined to ignore your forum because it seems to me the antithesis of revitalising feminism - instead, it continues to peddle out the same speakers from the same demographic who will all presumably be saying the same things about young feminists - that they either don't exist, or they need to be 'reengaged'. Perhaps if you ceased the round table hand wringing over the state of modern feminism and actually looked around you, you might realise that it is not us who need to be courted into the movement, but you who needs to find your place within ours.

If you continue to ignore the strength of young women's ideas and contributions, you will be guilty of nothing less than exhibiting the same paternalistic dismissal of our abilities than the patriarchy you all fought so valiantly to crush so many years ago.

Sincerely,

Clementine Ford

Raunchy gifts and Minxy misses

2010-02-05T14:47:00.001+10:30

In the past few weeks, handwringing Australians have concerned themselves with little else besides the precarious State Of The Female and our terribly delicate sensibilities.

There has been speculation as to whether or not sportswomen (and the allure thereof) would be crippled without tantalizing outfits to draw the crowds in, or if they are merely pawns in a nefarious global plot to further objectify women. Particularly prevalent amongst this line of questioning was the considered and measured response of many that “people would watch chicks’ sport if it weren’t so boring, innit?”

Well, quite.

Tony Abbott, bless his rubbery face, was somewhat unceremoniously thrown into the muck last week when it was revealed he’d rather his daughters wait until marriage before bestowing the precious, precious gift of their virginity upon just any old village squire who happens to pitch up outside their door with a few winsome words and a packet of johnnies. The nerve of him!

Last Friday, Federal Member for Kingston Amanda Rishworth called for the toxic exposure to raunchy music videos to be wrestled from the sex crazed eyes of our vulnerable young. Punch editor David Penberthy echoed her sentiments in an article for The Advertiser, claiming “If the upshot of Ms Rishworth’s proposal is that Akon or whatever other unreconstructed hip-hop misogynist can only have his crass videos screened after 9pm, I don’t think it’s a body blow for our collective civil liberties.”

Double points to Mr Penberthy for exposing the quaint sensibilities of an Adelaide readership to the notion of an unreconstructed anything, let alone a misogynist. (Which, if all my efforts over past years are any indication of, is a concept almost as foreign to them as the idea of ignoring Robert Doyle every time he talks yet more predictable smack about our fair city. Note to Doyle: interstate rivalry is so last millennium.)

But I digress.

The latest shitstorm, if I may be so bold as to quote PM Rudd, concerns a certain online video game to have emerged from deep within the putrid cesspool of the internet’s underbelly.

My Minx has come under fire for creating an online world that invites its players to “become the most stylish Minx the whole world over!” The aim of the game is relatively simple, provided most of the neural pathways in your brain are functioning properly: create a ‘minxy’ avatar, dress her or him in as much or as little as you like and go forth and prosper. In the world of Style City, ‘prospering’ amounts to winning things like Style Offs, being Minx of the Week and earning Pink Pounds (which sound rather like the kind of thing creator Chris Evans would be encouraging his starry eyed poplets to be losing). Pink pounds can be earned by winning aforementioned ‘Style Offs’ (voted on by other Minxes), playing games and answering surveys, working in the online job center, signing your friends up and, my personal favourite, ‘finding a generous lover’.

And generosity is key in the Minxiverse. As Evans says in his mission statement, “We believe that you, the end-user, should enjoy top quality web entertainment that stimulates, educates and excites your sense.” The fact that Blighty Arts chose to abandon such lofty values and instead create the turgid brainfart that is My Minx is a bit of a mystery, but one we can gloss over for the time being.

Evans goes on: “It is you, our community, that is the most important aspect of our company and it is our mission and honour to serve and entertain you.” Did you hear that? Serve and entertain YOU! It’s an honour, you guys.

Online news forums and their inhabitants have predictably been up in arms – mainly because most news sources have chosen to present the game as being somehow aimed at small children rather than just accessible to them. ‘What is the world coming to?’ they’ve fretted, despairingly. WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!

Which is precisely what I’d like to know. When, in amongst all the fearmongering, interfering and moralizing claptrap, will somebody start thinking of the gosh darn children?

Because here’s the thing. My Minx is actually no different to the convoluted, aesthetic obsessed, drama filled games of Barbie I played as a child. There may have been some subtle nuances that changed from week to week, but invariably my storyline stayed the same – Barbie has a fight with Ugly Barbie over Ken, scene abstractly segues into a school dance or the workplace, Ken and Barbie make up, have sex. Occasionally there’s a threesome.

As a Barbie obsessed freak until the age of 12 (it was the early 90s, everybody was doing it), I was merely using my dolls to reflect and explore the world around me as I saw it. And pretty much the way I saw the world between the ages of 8 and 12 was through videotaped episodes of Beverley Hills 90210. You do the maths.

The fact is, we can bleat on all we like about banning things left, right and centre. It won’t change the inescapable facts that a) children are like sponges (often smelly, but porous as all hell) and b) WE’VE created the culture they’re so readily absorbing and spouting back at us like obnoxious miniature fountains.
Of course female tennis players gain value for how they look. Every single female on the planet is rewarded for what she looks like. The whole tired concept of ‘this is what a real woman looks like’ (and excuse me while I vomit into my wastepaper basket) is ruined by the fact that actual real women don’t really look like anything other than a human body with lady bits.

Tony Abbott, for all that his words may have been the well intentioned ‘advice’ of a father, is only reflecting a widely held societal belief that sex is something that happens to women and therefore they need to take steps to protect themselves from the undesirable elements of it. Viginity as a gift? Loathsome. But how many people who quite rightly disagree with that would still consider a woman who’s had TOO MUCH sex with TOO MANY men a slovenly tramp? As Emily Maguire says in her excellent polemic Princesses & Pornstars, “The real definition of a slut is a woman who’s having more sex than the person calling her a slut thinks she should be having.”

And as for banning raunchy music videos in the daytime hours…well, it’s a nice idea, but the advent of You Tube has pretty much called all bets off on shielding our little darlings from the evils of the televised outside world.

Here’s the hard truth – if we want to protect children from a culture we see as being damaging to their psyches and development, we can’t just put a blindfold over their eyes and hope they don’t peek. We have to change the actual culture. If we want women in sport to be appreciated for their prowess on the field, we have to change the culture that says their greatest asset is how they look. If we want women to regard virginity as a gift (and I don’t, actually), then we have to stop telling them that they can use sex to get what they want, and showing them how to do it.

We have to stop telling men that sexing someone up is akin to conquering them and therefore they need to do it to as many foreign bodies as possible. We have to hope that the person aiming for the highest office in our country would treat men and women equally when it comes to valuing their bodies, and not continue to peddle the idea that women are porcelain objects whose fragility can be compromised with improper handling from calloused hands.

The intellectual horror that is the My Minx website is really only a reflection of what transpires in our culture every day. Are we really so naïve as to think we haven’t had a part in ensuring its popularity and marketability? As American writer Latoya Peterson wrote about Evans first outing, My Bimbo, “We can ban a game. What are we going to do to fix the culture?”

The Gift of Giving

2009-12-23T14:57:00.002+10:30

As far as Christmas festivities go, beyond using them as an excuse to skive off work and drink before noon, I'm not really that interested. Ever since my mother died, it's lacked a certain je n'ai c'est quois, if you know what I mean. In fact, this year I'll be spending most of it on radio, speaking to other depressed and lonely family-less sad sacks, after which I plan to ride my bicycle to my very excellent house and drink cocktails with Lula over some highly competitive scrabble.

Christmas, that old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be.

But every old grey mare has a little bit of lustre left in her, even if it comes in the most unexpected places. And so I want to share this cute little glimpse into my relationship with my father, which has gone from strength to strength since my mother died (an ironic upside I suppose), and the Christmas gift he assembled for me.

Yesterday, I dropped the Old Man off at the airport so he could travel to the sunny climes of Queensland. He casually mentioned that there was a bag in the back of his car - which I shall be enjoying very much for the next two weeks, hello beach etc - with a few things in it that I might need or like. Being the gift fiend that I am, I loitered illegally in the parking bay to unpack it that instant while he hovered about in the exceptionally cute manner of someone manly and tough who hopes that their thoughtfulness has pleased someone.

Here, in an astoundingly astute demonstration of how well he knows me without even having to think about it, is what my father gave me for Christmas:

1.The Practical

I, like approximately 95% of the rest of the thinking world, love coffee. I also love guests on summer mornings. Ergo, a coffee plunger that services six is rather practical and perfect in every way.

It occurs to me also that my father might think it a nice thing to have in case I have 'company' over, because it is his desire that I become married post haste to a dashing man so that I may a) avoid spinsterdom and/or suffocating under the crushing weight of my fading looks i.e. Miss Havisham; and b) find someone else to deal with my irresponsible approach to finances i.e. "Don't look at me Tony Jones, she's your problem now."

But at least while Tony Jones fretted over the woeful state of my bank account, and the copious number of bills I 'handle' by 'not opening', he'd have delicious fresh coffee from a plunger for six. We'd need that when our friends Maxine, Denton, Safran, Myf and Hamish B came around. (The observant will note that's seven people, but Hamish B is a tea person. Darjeeling, if you must know.)

2. The Feminine

Because I was raised in the exotic locales of the Middle East, I have grown accustomed to my father passing through international airports and more importantly the Duty Free shops found therein. Hence, I have been fortunate enough my entire life to be kept in a steady supply of perfume and various other accoutrements of womanhood.

Perhaps to expedite the aforementioned task of finding a husband, my father continues to bestow upon me the gift of Smelling Winsome. Regardless of motive, I like especially that this satisfies the more feminine element of gift giving to your daughter - having taken care of the practical aspect with the coffee plunger, I am now free to waft about my kitchen in a cloud of deliciousness while brewing legal drugs for my friends and future significant other.

3. The Absolutely Effing Necessary

When your father gives you a gigantic jar containing $218.65 in ten and twenty cent pieces, you realise instinctively that he a) knows you better than you thought; b) thinks you're slightly ridiculous; and c) yearns for the day when his 28 year old daughter will no longer consider a jar containing $218.65 of spare change the financial equivalent of "a lifeboat", or will at least have someone else for whom these problems can become Worrisome.

4. The Card

This I saved until I had safely left the airport, as the Security Guard began throwing his weight around to move me past the hordes of invisible cars attempting to drop off invisible passengers. I expected a heart squeezing declaration of love - something along the lines of 'My dear possum: I'm so proud of you and hope you have a lovely Christmas. Love from Dad x'. What I got was even better though; the icing on the cake of a perfectly insightful Christmas gift:

"Merry Christmas Clementine. Please pay all the bills outstanding particularly any with my name on them. Love Dad."

I'm thinking of framing it.

Happy holidays all xo

There's no 'St' in Eve

2009-12-17T17:38:00.001+10:30

"Passing test of time

The Advertiser is to be commended for its coverage yesterday highlighting the benefits of marriage to wellbeing.

It is a timely reminder of why we must preserve marriage and resist attempts to radically alter its definition to satisfy political fads.

Jerome Appleby, Australian Family Association, Fullarton"

Dear Mr Appleby,

I write to commend you for the heartfelt letter published in today's Advertiser (17/12/2009). So overcome with emotion was I upon reading your stalwart defence of all that is sacred and holy that I simply had to write and extend my congratulations, and indeed my gratitude.

For too long now, the Homosexual Mafia have been peddling their indecent propaganda in an attempt to wrest from the Side Of Good one of our most sacred institutions. Referring to themselves as 'Gay' when you and I both know there is frankly nothing "keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits" about them is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the HM's duplicitous agenda.

It's bad enough that we allow them to exist at all - Jerome (may I call you Jerome?), I simply died inside when I realised they were being permitted to teach in our schools. Teach! When everyone knows that the number one priority of the HM's plan to spread Satan's evil throughout the world is through the systematic and rigorous recruitment of impressionable children! It simply beggars belief that a group of people as sexually depraved and amoral as the Gays (and there, even I have been tricked into their co-opting of one of the English language's most glorious words) should be allowed ANYWHERE near children - or animals for that matter!

But now, not content with having been granted recognition as a 'people' (and Jerome, I can barely bring myself to grant them even that, but of course it's good folk like you and I now who must bow down before immorality lest we be ejected from our jobs for so-called 'hate speech' and 'discrimination' - talk about a wolf in sheep's clothing!) they continue to insist on trying to infiltrate the last vestige we God fearing Christians and anyone else normal enough to realise that God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve have against their Agenda Of Social Destruction.

Marriage, as I'm sure you'll agree Jerome, is a beautiful institution rooted in the great tradition of the transferral of property from one man to another. As everyone knows, man cannot be property of another man (unless he is a slave and unfortunately 'Affirmative Action' means that's no longer allowed..). Women, however, are the natural property of their husbands because a) that is how God has decreed it and b) being naturally subserviant and nurturing, we require the strong hand of a man to protect and govern us and open jars and call us cute when we're cross.

Additionally, women like knowing that there's a man around to make tough decisions for them and to lay down the household law, so to speak. As a nautical type myself, I like to use this analogy: a household is a ship, and everyone must play a part to ensure smooth sailing. But you can't have two captains on a ship because that would be anarchy. And given that women are incapable of reading maps, we are naturally not going to be given the helm of a powerful metaphor like seafaring-as-marriage. Now, that doesn't mean we can't make the ship look pretty and clean and have a steaming hot plate of food on the table for when the Captains Of Our Hearts come home at night - far from it! A good wife knows that the way to her husband's heart is through his stomach, and for all those who would claim that a Christian marriage lacks 'spiciness', I tell them this - you wouldn't be saying that if you saw how my husband reacts everytime I serve him dinner in a silk penoir with my crucifix nestled between my you-know-whats! God doesn't hate sex, He loves it! As long as it's between a man and his wife and the Australian Family Association approves.

Love making brings a man closer to his wife and strengthens their bond and mutual happiness. Why, just the other day I made the daring move of leaving the lamp on (I know, Jerome, I'm FRIGHTFULLY NAUGHTY but sometimes I do like to spice things up a bit) and my husband loved it so much that he not only increased my household allowance for that week but he gave me a little bit on the side and told me to 'buy myself something nice'. So I bought a new Laura Ashley dress with some divine lacework on the collar and a copy of Susan Boyle's new CD, which just made for an absolutely lovely day because I listened to it all the way through - twice! - while dusting the china and making a steak and kidney pudding for dinner, which I served in the Laura Ashley dress. We even had some champagne as a special treat! Well, in actual fact it was Maison because Satan doesn't take 'special occasions' into account when it comes to imbibing his devil juice, but it felt a bit cheeky all the same!

So my point is that marriage is an institution that needs to be protected from the likes of the Homosexual Mafia. I can well see why Science would discover that marriage leads to healthier and happier people, because after all that kind of lifelong commitment between a man and a woman is part of God's plan, and the legal superiority we enjoy is His clever way of enticing more of us into it (although, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I approve of non-Christians or childbearers having those rights because as Believers it should be Our Kind who reap the rewards of our faith and moral judgment, both here and in God's Everlasting Eternal Kingdom but I suppose at least it prevents the kind of wilful promiscuity that seems to be the modus operandi of both the Homosexual Mafia and the young women I see wearing all sorts of frightful getups that, if you ask me, lead to one thing and one thing only and they have nobody to blame BUT THEMSELVES and that's about all I have to say about that, except I will say one more thing and that's that women need to remember their place and their great gifts of subserviance and devotion - Jerome, don't even get me STARTED on the 'feminists'!)

Anyway, I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the crux of all this hinges on marriage creating happier and healthier people - and basically, the thought of creating 'happier' and 'healthier' Homosexuals sends a shiver up my spine! Two men loving each other is an ABOMINATION and as such they deserve to wallow in SELF HATRED and LOATHING and be prevented from enjoying and sense of SELF WORTH. And before anyone mentions 'lesbians', let me just say that I cannot even UNDERSTAND what that means because it is impossible for two women to have sexual relations with one another. I don't think I need to draw you a picture of female anatomy Jerome for you to agree that two women making love is about as effective as rubbing two chalk dusters together, so the idea of them being able to get MARRIED is just ridiculous! You may as well allow a woman to marry her pillow because the only thing she would get lying next to another woman is a Good Night's Sleep!

So bravo Jerome for once again standing up to the political fads that are seeking to take over our world. I for one am so grateful that I have you and the entirety of the Australian Family Association watching out for my interests and directing policy makers on what makes a Good and Just society - and indeed a healthy one! We none of us can rest easy while living under the constant threat of a Homosexual Tidal Wave. Health and Happiness is a Privilege and not a Right, and as such should only be enjoyed by those whom conservative religious lobbyists deem respectable members of society. Brava, Jerome! Brava! VIVA LA RESISTENCE!

Yours in Christ,

Mrs. T Abbott, Canberra

Dear Burger King

2009-12-09T14:45:00.002+10:30

Dear Burger King,

While I appreciate that it may be getting more and more difficult to sell your products, given that the discerning food consumer appears to have developed tastebuds in the last decade, I'm not sure that resorting to low grade sexual objectification is really the answer.

I'm just a-singing in the shower in my burgakini, as all hot sexy up-for-it chicks do.

Granted, I'm not from the UK. Perhaps a country almost completely ignored by the sun will take any opportunity to leap into both a bikini and the ensuing straitjackets of gender stereotyping for the most tenuous of reasons. Who can say?

While I wouldn't be so close minded as to suggest that you assume ALL of your intended audience are neanderthalic, sexist and slightly stalkerish - I'm sure there are some absolute GEMS for whom the pursuit of enjoyment in stimulating conversation, fine wine, the arts and an agreeably equal relationship with women is not mutually exclusive from perving on near naked women behind the veil of anonymity as a treat over breakfast - I'd hazard a guess that your little ad campaign falls in that little category I like to call 'problematic'.

Sexy AND violent! Win!

Don't get me wrong. I'm willing to admit that there are some women who consider it an honour to have anonymous men gawping at them through the good graces of an unimaginative advertising team for whom the lowest common denominator is all the heights they'll ever aspire to. They consider it 'fun' and 'flattering' or, as one lady on your website gushed, 'really original' (which frankly suggests to me that she's spent her 23 years on this earth being raised by dolphins and has therefore had zero access to any form of electronic or print communication, in which case it's awfully irresponsible of you to use her because such stellar ignorance of the basic tenets of pop cultural construction effectively renders her a) retarded and thus b) unable to grant consent to film porny images of her in order to sell greasy, lank breakfast burgers.)

No, I would certainly never suggest that you or the vacuous society we live in FORCE these women to strip down for strangers. And if you're not forcing them, what's the harm? I mean, let them CHOOSE their CHOICE right? It's EMPOWERING? I'm probably just jealous, after all. Perhaps if men wanted to watch me shower in my bikini while they ate their breakfast then I wouldn't have such a giant stick up my big ole fat feminist butt about it, and then we could all just GET ALONG.

Somehow, the lack of an exclamation mark on this turns it from 'Nova FM' to just plain 'creepy'.

No. It's not really the blatant sexism that bothers me so much. As a human being with a brain that functions beyond a 'ANGRY', 'HAPPY', 'HUNGRY', 'DROOL' switch system, I'm used to it. It's the technical failure that bothers me more than anything.

I mean, come now. If you're going to resort to the predictably boring objectification of women, could you at least provide a little context to your ad strategy? Because the only connection I can make between 'Burger King's new breakfast menu' and 'hot babe in a shower' is that when I think of all the money, jobs, bandwidth and braincells destroyed by this pathetic, patronising and retrograde ad campaign, all I want to do is puke up my breakfast violently and then scrub away the tainted scent of corporate failure.

Yours sincerely,

Clementine

****

Write your own letter here and then republish on your blogs and facebooks like the crazy, fun ruining paleo-feminist killjoys we love to be.

Nick Cave: The man, the myth and the misogynist

2009-12-04T17:02:00.003+10:30

I was prompted to write this in response to Anwyn Crawford’s excellent article on Overland regarding the trajectory of Nick Cave’s own brand of misogyny, and his elevation to the Australian Royal Court of Artistic Genius.

For those who don’t know, Cave personally selected the cover photograph for the Australian release of his new novel The Death of Bunny Munro (which he has claimed was written in two months and on his iPhone). Whereas other releases feature this or this on the cover, the delightful image Australian consumers are treated to is this:

A debate is raging at Overland over the subject matter of Crawford’s article; however, very few opponents are actually responding to any of her arguments. Instead, she has been branded with the same pedestrian insults used whenever anyone (especially a woman) finds offence in something pounced upon by a section of the community insistent upon loving it. The difference in this case is that Overland’s audience are generally intelligent, articulate folk with, I would argue, liberal values. That some would reduce themselves to the same kind of sexist, tired arguments employed by the slavering masses who regularly misspell things in the news.com forums is depressing beyond belief. As commentor Kalinda says:

When will people learn to respond to polemical, engaged intelligent women without reducing them to sexless stereotypes?... It’s unacceptable for people who consider themselves radicals or left-wingers to conduct themselves in such a sexist way, completely reinforcing all the dominant modes the right uses to silence and dismiss women.

Indeed, Crawford’s original article was not the offended spoutings of an hysterical wowser unfamiliar with her subject matter. She demonstrates a very intimate familiarity with Cave’s career, and even confesses to a conflicted love for his earlier work. I can’t help but suspect that what Cave’s proponents are really taking offence to is not Crawford’s accusations of Cave’s misogyny but of his laziness and ultimately a neogothic pomp and circumstance whose ostentatiousness disguises his desire for admiration and artistic plaudits.

It’s his transformation into an antipodean Elvis Costello – growing old, mild and respectably bourgeois along with his audience – that really makes me mad. Not because I believe that Cave has sold out or betrayed his musical talent – he had precious little to begin with – but because the deference paid to him and to his work grows in inverse proportion to its increasing mediocrity, to its juvenile silliness and self-parody.

Crawford highlights what so often goes unmentioned within cultural circles (who at times seem as incapable of rational debate as the fiercely anti-art philistines they presume are incapable of recognizing genius) – that very frequently, cultural cringe leads us to not only ignore the Emporer’s New Clothes, but declare them avante-garde, pre-emptive and ultimately a fine reflection of our own cutting edge artistic values.

Ultimately, even if you disagree with Crawford’s analysis it is undoubtedly a well thought out and articulate one. It exemplifies the kind of interesting writing featured on Overland (which, incidentally, is holding its Subscriberthon this week - $39 concession for the year, go on I dare you..) and doesn’t deserve to be sneeringly dismissed, as reader Fotis Kapetorpoulos did today, as “pure undergraduate feminist critique from the 80s – worse, it smacks of Anglo puritanical, sexless debasement of the art.”

Kapetorpoulos goes on to say:

Ms Crawford writes, 'like many women, I have troubled relationship with the sexism and, yes, misogyny that continues to shape pop music'- she must mean like the very few sexless Anglo middle class women I represent - as most of the Greek, Spanish, African and Italian women I know love Cave’s sexually dark malaise, his overture to death and lust.

Sexless. Anglo. Puritanical. Pearl clutching. Sensationalist. Hysterical. Frigid.

In addition to these (expected) accusations is another one: that of inferiority. For all his embrace of Spanish culture (which he documents in detail), Kapetorpoulos is exhibiting cultural bigotry that oppresses not only Anglo women but also the Latin women he’s seeking to define as hot-blooded, up for it, feisty, dark sex machines. The orientalism of Asian women is very well documented in Australia, but less so is that of Latinas and the ‘Jungle Goddesses’. Greek, Spanish, African and Italian women are not inherently more accepting of (read: able to appreciate because they don’t let their frigid white Anglo chastity belts get in the way) radically confronting sexuality in art. To make such a blanket statement is about as stupid as saying that most of the white men I know ride bicycles, vote Green and hate sexism and therefore all white men must be like that. I mean, if only, right?

But perhaps most infuriating is the refusal to engage with any of Crawford’s arguments. What she is essentially doing is questioning whether or not those with a feminist philosophy or a concern for equality can ignore blatant misogyny when it comes to art – and if they can, is that even a bad thing?

Instead of labeling her prudish and puritanical (YOU INSULTED THE KING! YOU DON’T GET IT, HE’S DARK AND SHIT AND YOU CAN’T HANDLE SEX, PRUDEY PRUDE, WHY DON’T YOU GO AND CLUTCH SOME PEARLS!) why not respond rationally to her arguments? If Nick Cave (or any artist under criticism for capitalizing on oppression to sell their work) is indeed so good and so subversive and so clever, it should be extremely easy to mount an argument based on why that is the case.

I suspect, however, that the majority of people criticizing Crawford (and note, I’m not suggesting a defence of misogyny in art is impossible) are either actually incapable of articulating convincingly what it is they find so exceptional about Cave’s work and WHY it isn’t misogynistic in nature – or they're incapable of articulating convincingly why it’s exceptional IN SPITE OF its misogyny and indeed why it’s possible for the twain to coexist.

It’s frustrating that what could be the basis for a fascinating conversation on the how far should be the limits of morality when it comes to art has descended instead into something so superficially defensive. As Karen points out, it wasn’t until Roman Polanski’s arrest that she sincerely started questioning the morality of loving his films. Crawford’s article should have been the starting point for a conversation about the truly confrontational nature of art – loving it in spite of what it draws upon and refuses to apologise for.

I, for one, am not particularly familiar with Nick Cave’s ouevre. I read the first chapter of The Death of Bunny Munro and found it to be as predictably cock-focused as lots of other inane texts dressed up as deeply confronting explorations of masculinity (more on that in a follow up post).

But the image chosen for the Australian edition of TDOBM (which is vaguely where all this started from) is offensive to me. I think it’s just another example of a disembodied female body part being used to sell something while pretending to be ‘high art’. It offends me as a writer, as a woman and as human who thinks we can all be a little bit better than that, a little bit more imaginative.

I find the defence of blatant sexism in art to be more infuriating than the defence of it in marketing and pop culture. It’s a calculated attempt to excuse laziness and titillation as irony. It is no different to the educated men I attended university with – men who were well versed in gender studies, media, liberalism and social justice – talking about going out to ‘find some sluts’ and claiming that their innate left wing goodness meant that their sentiment couldn’t possibly be aggressive or violent.

But ultimately, I’m offended that should I, or Crawford, or any other woman from any other part of the world, express the opinion that we are offended by imagery used specifically to disembody women and turn them into nothing more than a passive sexual object to project frustrations onto, that we are by turns ‘sexless’, ‘frigid’, ‘too ugly to fuck anyway’, ‘jealous’, ‘angry’, ‘humourless’, ‘uncultured’, ‘not getting it’ or, my favourite, ‘missing the point’.

What, pray, is the point of a crotch shot of a girl of undetermined aged lying spread eagled on a bed? Explain that to me - I'll listen, I really will, but not if you call me a frigid bitch who just doesn't get it. Because I'll be forced to believe what is probably the truth - that you like looking at disembodied female parts because you find them sexy, and you don't want to have to defend that to anyone so you'll pretend its culturally advanced in some way to sidestep the fact that what you're actually doing is getting off on misogyny. Frankly, I'd have a lot more respect for people if they just put it like that rather than trying to pretend that what they're doing is challenging the masses.

As Crawford writes:

Cave is both a rampant misogynist and an arch-snob but it’s actually his snobbery that bothers me more – or rather, the way that his snobbery, amplified and encouraged by others, lends to his misogyny an air of respectability, as if it were something to be admired.

Well, call me a frigid, sexless, Anglo, jealous bitch – but I’m more inclined to find it dull, predictable and tiresome rather than admirable.

I guess I’m just not as cultured as a lot of other people. Or sexual.

What do you think? Can we separate art from misogyny or racism or oppression in general? Can something be specifically glorifying these things and still be good? Would we not accept it from racist art but excuse it when it comes to sexism?

Next post: A consideration of the misogyny and subsequent celebration of 'high art' literature.

Competition winner!

2009-11-19T11:39:00.000+10:30

After some deliberation, I have decided to award the $60 buysterlighting.com voucher to......

Meva of Bills and Moon!

There were some cracker entries - I admit, honourable mention must go to Daniel R, who appealed to both my sense of righteousness and my intellectual vanity - but in the end I had to give it to Meva for being both of-the-moment and critical of pop cultural bandwagons that behave as if an untalented, slightly deranged upstart has not only reinvented the wheel but decoupaged it in sparkly glue.

Thank you all for entering and joining in the great tradition of accepting free promotional gifts from companies looking to expand their market.

Competition time!

2009-11-17T15:58:00.005+10:30

Some time ago, I received a very nice email from a lady who works at www.buysterlighting.com. Through said nice lady, I was asked if I might be interested in reviewing one of their products. Given as I am to jumping aboard anything remotely resembling a Free~~dom~~ train, I of course replied that yes, I would be very interested in reviewing anything she wanted to send my way.

Having a little peruse on the site, I found many lovely lighting things including this ode to retro living. Sadly, the budget allocated to my humble little blog did not extend to retro excellence. Not for the first time do I curse my inability to turn a hobby into a millionaire's playground, and while I'm at it I also curse my inability to resist eating large slabs of cake at inopportune moments i.e any time that I hope to continue fitting into my jeans.

Thanks to buysterlighting.com, I have a $60 gift voucher to give away to one very lucky reader of ye olde Bad Apples. I myself will be reviewing this functional-for-the-office product in the next week or so, which is most fortuitous as a) I like to read late at night but am scared of the dark and hate jumping out of bed to turn the light off and b) I tend to enjoy things that are free with approximately 50% more enthusiasm than things that are not.

So to win the voucher, all you need to do is email me on audreyandthebadapples AT gmail DOT com and tell me in 25 words or less why I shouldn't be embarrassed about being afraid of the dark or sometimes sleeping all night with the lamp on when I've ill-advisedly begun thinking of the girl from The Ring and more recently the trailer for Paranormal Activities, which I'm still going to see even though it is a Bad Idea and will mean that I have to start sleeping in the daytime and living at night, and possibly have to move to northern Alaska or one of those other weird regions where the sun never sets.

UPDATE: Competition closes at 4pm on Wednesday 18 November.

Anthems and odes

2009-10-26T10:44:00.001+10:30

Sometime in the past week, the upper part of my left thigh has achieved an admirable state of tumescence. First a mere trace, then a deep, mottled violet and now a blushing lavender, the lump is obvious and tender, causing me to wince every time I accidentally brush against it. Such are the perils of fresh meat training – in an attempt to imitate some version of a vaguely athletic person, I’ve set my sights on being a roller derby girl.

No, I haven’t seen Whip It and yes, I do like the short shorts thank you very much. Wrapped up in those deliciously obscene little numbers with socks rising up my calves to meet the protective knee pads and swishy black and red ankle skates on, I feel powerful and Bodaecia like – even when I’m smacking down on the same left thigh spot for the fourth time that evening.

Everything I’ve ever heard from derby girls about their sport makes me want to be a part of it – the strong focus on feminist principles and athleticism coupled with a cheeky coquettishness makes it a sport I can really get behind. On the first night of training, Barrelhouse Bessie (from the Adelaide Roller Derby League) stood before all the freshies and in her great, booming voice told us in no uncertain terms that anyone caught saying anything negative or mean about another girl would be asked to leave immediately and never allowed back into the league. Preach it, sister!

100 nervous ladies competing against each other could so very easily lead to the kind of bitchy cliques that diminish women on the whole, but it’s amazing how simply being warned against it on threat of expulsion helped everyone to relax, get along and focus on the task at hand – namely, moulding ourselves into some semblance of a competent skater in order to pass muster at the first round of testing. Perhaps because of this, it suddenly became so much easier to approach virtual strangers to arrange casual skating outings – we’re all in the same boat, so we may as well sink or swim together. There’s a camaraderie about the sport (or at the least the way Adelaide practices it – I’ve heard it can be different elsewhere) that’s very appealing to me. I can see why some derby girls end up devoting their every waking hours to it.

And tangentially, I want to use this recent exposure to the derby culture to talk more broadly about the relationships women have with each other; specifically, the things we do to or for each other that create lasting impressions without our knowledge. Obviously it’s important to live your life in a way that is gracious and kind towards others – but often it’s the seemingly inconsequential actions or statements that can help or haunt people for years to come.

After my last post, I received an email from a lovely lady I knew at school. Until a couple of years ago, we hadn’t had any contact since we all gratefully left that panopticon of hormonal angst. I had always liked her, even though we moved in different circles. Sarah had been friends with that particular brand of school folk glibly christened The Beautiful People, while I ran with the kinds of untamed brumbies who devote their lives to debating and drama, and the dedicated pursuit of school prefectdom.

In the grand scheme of school politics, the former manage to irrationally hold onto absolute popularity despite being not well liked by pretty much anyone outside of their own strata – the latter are tolerated because they’re fairly inoffensive and can always be relied upon to bring cigarettes to parties and school camps out of some kind of secret desire to engage in a skerrick of rebellion. Mutually, they regard each other with a kind of respectful indifference, able to exchange pleasantries one hour and absolute disregard in another.

I liked a few of them though. Sarah ended up in my drama class and delivered a sterling performance of Abigail in one of the many annual performances of The Crucible that seems to be favoured by year 12 classes. I remember the night we found out Sarah had been given the highest mark by the moderator. To her face, I was supportive and congratulatory; but backstage, I wasted no time exchanging bitter and basically cruel words with another friend. How could Sarah have been given the best mark when she hadn’t even been doing drama that long? It was clearly ridiculous and she didn’t deserve it but everyone knows the moderators are corrupt anyway and besides, we do drama for the love not the grades, though it would be nice to be recognized for our clear and enviable talent.

Just as I was finishing twisting the knife in the back of this girl who, despite being completely entitled to ignore me based on social standing alone, had always been nice to me, I realized she had overheard everything. Obviously upset and betrayed, she ran to the bathroom to compose herself while I, caught up in a drama of my own making, proceeded to work myself into a wailing lather. My reaction then was borne out of a 17 year old girl’s desire to engage in meaningful activity (which, to a 17 year old girl, usually consists of crying, arguing, issuing forth lofty platitudes, and then crying some more).

But over the years, I thought more and more of that night and how deeply cruel and selfish my reaction was to Sarah’s success. She had clearly delivered a better performance than me and everyone else in the class – it was obvious. And why shouldn’t she enjoy the pleasure of that? How could I have participated – nay, led – something that tried to ruin that for her?

At more than one point in my life (countless, if I’m honest), I have said or done something to another person with the deliberate intention of hurting them; of chipping away at their self esteem and tarnishing their golden moments.

Strange, the things we choose to remember. I remember that night so clearly, and the shame of that behaviour has only grown with the years. But funnily enough, when I met with Sarah a few years ago for brunch and finally took the opportunity to apologise for it, she confessed she had no memory of it whatsoever. Instead, she told me that she hated high school; that despite what other people thought of those Beautiful Folk, she (and many others) had been miserable the whole time. Sarah especially was a sad person for a long time, and had little to no faith in herself. I’m talking serious depression – the kind of bone draining, black fog driven by a sadness so deep it can seemingly not be soothed.

More than my own mean actions towards her does it sadden me that such a nice, beautiful person spent so many years in hidden anguish. And here’s the thing – while I was remembering the one thing I did to betray a girl I genuinely liked and admired, Sarah remembered me as someone who always stood up for what she believed in and was nice to be around. Half of the incidents she’s thinking of are completely lost to me. We focus so much on the formation of our own memories. We forget that we have just as profound a role to play in the formation of other people’s.

We have all of us done things out of cruelty. If we’re lucky, we’re the only people who will remember these ill advised descents into jealousy or pettiness and we’ll use the shame of these memories to help us become better people.

But occasionally, we are the bearers of actions so pure and well meant that they don’t even register with us as being meaningful. A throwaway sentence here, a compliment to a stranger there or just a moment of comfortable silence in another’s person’s company – as the radiant Sofia would say, there are fairies in this here garden.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank a few people who have, in ways I imagine they have no recollection of, changed my life for the better.

When I was in year 11, I confessed to my sort of friend Jaci (I say sort of, because she was much cooler than I was, way more beautiful and definitely more worldly – at 16, I was still far too terrified to talk to a boy let alone kiss one or do anything else that teenagers enjoy) that the prospect of taking my clothes off with a fellow struck the fear of God into me. “Jaci,” I said, “all I can think of is that he’ll take one look at my thighs and be absolutely repulsed.”

With all the knowing confidence of a more experienced woman, Jaci turned to me and said, “Clementine, you shouldn’t worry about those things. Trust me, the last thing a guy’s going to be thinking of if he’s naked with you is how big your thighs are. He’s seen you with your clothes on – he knows how big or small they are.”

Less than a minute’s worth of conversation that I’m sure Jaci has completely forgotten, and yet I know it’s had a long lasting impression on me. Clothed, I fret about the size of everything – does my face look fat from this angle, is anyone looking at me and thinking I should be embarrassed to leave the house, does this skirt make my legs look like tree trunks? But since that conversation with Jaci, I have (without consciously recognizing it) never worried about what my body looks like when the clothes come off and the lights dim low. That kind of self confidence where it matters should be bottled and force fed to girls as soon as they hit puberty.

Then there’s Siobahn. What can I say about Siobahn except that she is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met, and her entire way of being makes my heart retreat to innocent games of hopscotch and making daisy chains in the garden. Siobahn and I were both Wendy’s girls during high school. Perhaps it was enforced servitude to bright pink shorts that bonded us. I don’t know. We were never particularly close in high school. I liked her but didn’t trust her social ranking. Another of the Beautiful Folk, she seemed too blessed and pretty to actually be as nice as she seemed.

Then school finished and BAM! Siobahn became a different person. She shaved her head, moved to Darwin, traveled around Australia and the world, lived in South America and grew her hair back and knotted it into dreads. Last year I ran into her at a women’s film festival in Adelaide and was captivated. She is a treasure waiting to be discovered, shining bright but hidden within a map made not of geography but of time.

In January, I literally walked into her in a convenience store in Barcelona and was again bowled over by that luminescent creature before me. Together, we huddled over glasses of wine and crawled beneath the top layers of conversation to discuss everything blanketed beneath. We traipsed around Barcelona, taking silly photos in alleyways and getting lost in claustrophobic ghettos. I remember thinking that she was one of the most interesting and warm people I’d ever met, and that I was so lucky to have her skip briefly in and out of my life in a small corner of the world.

Now she’s returned to Adelaide with the beginnings of a small person inside her. She’s going to be the most wonderful mother. Some people do not appear often in our lives, but flutter around the edges. Occasionally they duck across our paths to give us the briefest of touches, pressing their palms against the wall of our memory to find a way in once more and settle in the comfy chair that will always belong to them.

And so finally to Sarah, the girl who started me on this line of questioning in the first place. She may not realize it, but she exists in my mind as a pillar, occupying the same clearly defined lines that mark out people of my daily acquaintance. There are few to whom I haven’t recounted the story of that brunch – the revelation that, despite what others may have believed, her so called easy life was laboured and painful and that what we choose to believe isn’t always fair or real.

Knowing what I now do, I treasure her smile even more. I remember that once upon a time I allowed jealousy to harm her, but that she turned out to be a better person than I by forgiving and ultimately forgetting; and that despite even all that, she still does me the honour of offering me her friendship and admiration. She may not believe it, but it’s people like her who make the world a nicer place to live in for people like me, who have so often bowed to the temptation to make it a meaner one.

Perhaps it’s true that those who cause us to make changes within ourselves are not those we see everyday but those who force us to turn inwards. The echoes that they leave behind reverberate on the vast landscape of our souls and only occasionally reach audible frequency. They are both memory and reminder that we were once held in the palm of a greater kind of beauty and that, if we follow their example, it’s possible to take others to that wondrous place too.

Wine wobbling widely

2009-10-08T22:34:00.004+10:30

Good lord but it's been an age. Call it post holiday brain dysfunction, call it longing for warmer climes. Either way, it's been a good break. As Adelaide shuffles slowly towards something resembling spring, I can only hope I have a few deliciously coy love affairs heading my way. Spring flings are definitely the best way to celebrate the season.

Tonight I gave a speech at the SA Writers Centre for a poetry competition run by said Writers Centre and the Mental Health Coalition. I was asked to speak to the theme of challenging stigmas through writing. Unlike most of my speeches, I wrote it well in advance of the deadline - at least 5 hours before delivery. What can I say? It's not flippancy which makes me act thus but the constant inability to do anything outside of a pressure cooker.

Predictably, I spent the time leading up to proceedings loitering around the food table with a seemingly bottomless glass of wine in hand. It might surprise some to know I'm terribly shy, at least at first, and find it quite awkward to converse with strangers unless I'm two and a half sheets to the wind. This might explain why I make dreadful decisions concerning the pursuit of romance while half plastered and riding high on the good humour of Dylan Moran...but that's a story for another time...

With a bellyful of cheese and vino, I was introduced by SA's Channel Ten Sports Reporter Mark Aiston, who is quite simply one of the loveliest and most humble men you'll ever meet. Really and truly, I was blown away by his complete lack of pretension and sensitivity. What a guy!

And being unable to deliver witty, pithy speeches off the cuff, I proceeded to deliver said speech with my laptop balanced precariously on the lectern and one eye on the crowd. I reproduce said speech for anyone who may be interested. I cut out some of the proselytizing (which it turns out, I did seek to do after all) and some other bits here and there, but this was the original version. I shall be interested to know the thoughts of other writers out there. Part of me suspects it may be hopelessly self indulgent, but I suppose that's part and parcel of being a writer as well so perhaps it's prevalent in some way. This is possibly why I've signed myself up to a Fringe show that involves me reading out recreated diary entries from my early teenage years.

I say 'signed up' as if I'm being coerced when really there's no one involved in the production or decision making process except me. I'm such a douche sometimes, but luckily for you, a douche prepared to make a complete and utter humiliation of her formative years. And if recent events are anything to go by, pretty much every year that has fallen subsequently since then. I AM SUCH A DORK and should never be allowed near wine or men again.

Anyhoo, here she is:

****

For as long as I can remember, I’ve written things down – my teenage diaries are littered with embarrassing entries whose content all either invariably ended with the declaration that my life was OVER, or that I was in love with yet another impossibly attractive and unattainable boy who didn’t even know I was alive because I was FAT and UGLY and therefore my life was OVER.

I have sheets of song lyrics and poems I would be too humiliated to even show to my best friend – and she knows about the time I publicly molested a fellow outside the Crown and Anchor.

I could literally show you reams and reams of terrible things I’ve written over the years. As I said, I've always written things down.

But it wasn’t until I started writing things down for other people that I actually became a writer. And when you become a writer, you start to realize how your words can affect other people. A good writer can move people to laughter or tears or outrageous fury – a great writer can move them through all three stages in the one piece.

I don’t know if I’m a great writer, but one thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that the first step one needs to take on this path is to become an honest one. You have to be willing to open yourself up completely regardless of what people may think of you. Much like falling in love, writing is less about telling someone something you think they ought to know and more about discovering hidden parts of yourself – confronting them head on and experiencing all the beauty and pain they have to offer you; staring your detractors square in the eye to say, “This is me, and nothing you say can shame me into being any different.”

So I find it difficult to wrap my head around the concept of challenging stigmas through writing. To challenge is in itself a deliberate act, and while I have made many deliberate decisions as a writer, I have never done so purely with the intention of challenging the status quo. When I wrote my column for the Sunday Mail, they were fond of couching me as the ‘controversial’ columnist. In turn (though not necessarily because of this), a large chunk of readers often responded to my pieces with the accusation that I was being consciously provocative to court outrage and page views.

I have to say that I find very few things more offensive than the suggestion that the urge to write, to share ideas (and yes, to additionally challenge opinions I believe to be incorrect or misguided) is somehow motivated by a desire to be contrary or supercilious. Such accusations are nothing more than thinly veiled attempts to render you and everything you stand for as meaningless – to say that someone courts controversy is essentially to say that they believe in nothing other than that which will isolate them from the flock, regardless of what it might mean.

I have never written anything I don’t believe in 100%. On occasion, I have changed my viewpoint, such as following the Bill Henson affair. Part of being a great writer is also being willing to allow others to open your mind; to lift you from a place in which you thought you had laid down solid roots and instead transport you to unfamiliar territories – to lay you down on disconcerting lands whose beauty inherently lies in its promise to show you something you never previously would have thought possible.

My most ‘controversial’ column was written early on in my stint as a Sunday Mail columnist, and for the purpose of tonight I’ll use it as an example. Please understand that my intention is not to proselytize but merely to provide the most obvious example I can think of of challenging stigmas, whatever that might mean.

It was prompted the week prior because someone had sent me an outraged letter objecting to a comment I had made supporting reproductive rights and access to state funded, legal abortion. Frustrated by the modern day scarlet letter that all those who’ve had abortions seem destined to be forced to bear, I wrote an unapologetic piece detailing my own life – over a period of 18 months, I had not one but two abortions. I didn’t apologise for them then and I won’t apologise for them now.

But the point of my column at the time was not only that I wouldn’t apologise for them, but that women in general shouldn’t have to. That a large proportion of women who do speak of them in trembling, apologetic tones are merely responding to the general social expectation that they SHOULD wear their decisions like a scarlet letter, trumpeting familiar claims that it was the hardest choice they’ve ever had to make and so on and so forth.

As was to be expected, I was slammed widely from all quarters. People I’d never met took it upon themselves to call me, by turns, a slut, a whore, a bitch who should keep her legs closed, an abomination, an evil baby killing machine and (perhaps most amusingly) someone who was so repulsively unattractive that it was a wonder I’d found anyone willing to sleep with me at all let alone impregnate me. I even had someone write to inform me that the good Catholics of Rome were praying for my soul.

Most disappointingly, people who claimed to be pro-choice lambasted me for going through the procedure twice – after all, hadn’t I ever heard of contraception? Because as we all know, accidental pregnancies are like acquired immunity – once you’ve had one, it just can’t happen again! To whatever extent your pregnancy was 'accidental' or the result of contraceptive laziness is really irrelevant to me - if you agree with the right to choose abortion, it's none of your business how or why that decision comes to be. It frustrates me to this day that some people who claim to be pro-choice seem to treat abortions like get out of jail free cards – in their world, a woman is entitled to one (provided she demonstrates the requisite self flagellating regret, crawling on her belly to beg forgiveness from the court of public opinion).

The point of my column was not to shout from the rooftops that I’d had two abortions and refused to apologise for them (which is not the same thing, as some people argued, as being flippant about them) – it was to demonstrate to the public that, despite what we are led to believe, when it comes to such things I am but one woman in a sea of many. I wanted to stand up there and say that I will not be crippled by a sense of shame foisted on me by a society that forces me to qualify decisions made regarding my own body and mental capacity. That, more than anything, what I felt was sheer unbridled relief – and that I am by no means the only one who feels this way.

Despite that column and despite the work I continue to do today regarding abortion activism, I cannot change the minds of people who insist on seeing a person like me as some kind of hideous succubus intent on enacting genocide against the poor defenceless babies of this world who are unfortunate enough to be conceived in the bellies of the strident, man hating feminists who refuse to accept the god given truth that their bodies don’t belong to them but rather to those who are better placed to make decisions regarding said bodies – widely (and deeply) held convictions that are so outrageously extreme as to be laughable.

It’s true that there are none so blind as those will not see. The act of writing something meaningful, challenging or not, is wasted on those who are willfully incapable of empathizing with the words. Writing for an audience – great writing – is an invitation. A great writer asks her audience to consider something from a different perspective, to view the world through a lens that may not be palatable to the reader but is at least interesting in some way if only because the work is honest.

But one of the greatest strengths a writer can have is letting others know that they are not alone; that feelings they may have had which seem abhorrent or unacceptable are indeed not isolated to them alone. That their desires and dreams are not ridiculous; that their fears may be lessened simply through the knowledge that someone else has experienced them and come out the other side – scarred, perhaps, but intact.

Our society is entrenched in fear of the unknown, and of being different – for example, nobody talks about death in a way that is tangible or visceral. Nobody talks about what it’s like to want to die as a philosophical base for pondering. Nobody talks about what it’s like to want someone you love to die, sooner rather than later, because later means more pain and anguish for them.

Owning a fascination with death, sex, love, desire, good, evil and shades of grey in between, vengeance, hatred, compassion, selfishness – the most base emotions that add up to who we are as people... These are the things we don’t talk about, not really. We don’t talk about them because we’re afraid of seeming different, harsh, emotionless, damaged, wrong somehow.

The things we don’t talk about could fill a book.

I am not afraid to write about things that other people find uncomfortable, because writing is in and of itself a challenging medium. So perhaps it stands to reason that when I began writing this speech, I couldn’t really come to grips with the concept of what it meant to challenge stigmas – but the process of writing, examining my own thoughts and laying them bare on the page, has opened my mind to what it might mean.

Challenging stigmas is not only done for the benefit of an audience willing to engage and alter their viewpoint. It’s also done to provide others with a voice; a point of recognition in which they can see they aren’t quite so alone. I may have been called every name under the sun by people who couldn’t understand why a woman would not bow and scrape for forgiveness because she happened to fall pregnant twice and had the determination to deal with it in her own way – but I also received countless letters from women offering their thanks. Thank you for telling my story. Thank you for making me feel like the decision I made was okay. Thank you for letting me know that I have nothing to feel ashamed of.

This room is filled with writers, all of whom challenge stigmas in every piece they write not because they are deliberately provocative or seeking to change the world – but because they are honest and capable of speaking to the people who feel they are terribly alone. If we wait for social stigmas to be broken down by the people who are desperately holding on to them, we’ll be waiting forever.

We challenge the system and eventually rebuild it by giving a voice to the people oppressed by it. In writing for others, we are actively working to create and explore a new world – and that is the pursuit which has always been the fundamental purpose of reading.

***

I closed the night by eating more cheese than is humanly possible and flirting with some kind of short filmmaker wandering about the traps. LEARN YOUR LESSON ALREADY WOMAN.

ponderings

2009-09-18T08:04:00.000+09:30

You know what're weird?

Bears.

Love in the time of cauliflower

2009-09-16T10:33:00.009+09:30

There are perhaps few things prettier than a quaint New England town in early fall. The leaves hover betwixt the decadent richness of summer and the sparseness of autumn, poised to break away from the towering branches they’ve clutched to since winter’s icy grip was loosened by the first rays of a spring sun. Though still largely green, clusters of orange are beginning to appear in the dappled foliage, belated freckles popping up on a face set to wither.

I’m enjoying what will probably be one of Boston’s last really warm days before hibernation occurs and the townsfolk rescue their North Face jackets and snow boots from the closet where they were, in a moment of triumph, banished to so many months ago. Nowhere else have I experienced the seasons more vividly than in North America; each one operates as a perfect bookend on a circular shelf.

As the church bells chime above me, I amuse myself by adopting the same casual stance as the Harvard students surrounding me. Colourful chairs are scattered about the lawns, studious folk sprawled across them with the various accoutrements of those engaged in the activity of learning – laptops, textbooks, iPods and dreamy, far off reveries. For a moment, I can pretend at least that I’m one of them and reach out for some kind of connection and sense of belonging on a trip that has largely been absent of such feelings.

Douchebag Warren: "YOU....got into Harvard?"
Elle Woods: "What, like it's hard?"

I never thought I’d say this, but I’ve grown weary of New York. I like to think of it as a city that stimulates the intellect, while Barcelona arouses the soul. I once thought I couldn’t wait to be submerged again in the thrum of Manhattan; to be carried along by the unquestionably strong heartbeat of that city and wash up on the shores of perfect happiness. But ever since leaving Spain, I’ve felt nothing but anxiety about a need to return.

I’m sure it’s partially to do with the way things finished with the Chileno. There are perhaps few more tragic romantic trysts than the ones that drown under the weight of their own false promise. By the end of my trip, the Chileno and I struggled to find words to say to each other. Stranded in the curious jigsaw of burgeoning relationships, we lacked the implicit ease with which to find comfort in each other’s silence. A naturally quiet person, he remained tightlipped while I fell further and further away.

When we found ourselves saying goodbye at the airport, it wasn’t with the fevered desperation of lovers on the brink of separation but with an unacknowledged melancholy. Anxious butterflies had heralded my arrival four weeks prior; this time, when I walked through that airport gate all connection would fade away and we would become two people who knew each other once.

Of course, it didn't help that he flew to Greece that day and promptly fell in love with someone else.

But these are some of the memories I take with me from that city of wonders: cigarettes smoked over café con leches amongst jovial Catalans while the August morning unfurled languidly outside; gazing at architectural feats of such perfect beauty that, were words even necessary, they would have been hard pressed to emerge from a mouth fixed wide open in amazement; the musical rhythm of the city, feet on pavements keeping beat to the tune of staccato conversations and yells of ‘hey chica!’ and ‘guapa!’; floating about in the cone of silence created when one partially submerges their head in the Mediterranean sea, just contemplating the life and listening to the ocean’s murmurs; vibrant Peruvians feeding me ceviche while fellow diners, arrested by the music, fashion a makeshift dancefloor and let loose to the whoops and cheers of their audience; the spark of satisfaction that came when my mediocre Spanish began to resemble something approximating conversational, and the realization one day that if I just let the lyricism of others wash over me, understanding would come in with the tide; riding my bicycle through the quiet streets at midnight, thinking of Daniel Sempere and the Cemetary of Forgotten Books and wanting to believe that it really exists; watching the sunrise on a northern beach with a motley crew of impossibly attractive musicians, singing ‘Baby I love your way’; and that delicious feeling of possibility that this could be the point where your life changes completely, that you’re about to jump off the precipice and land in an Oz of your own creation with a road paved not from yellow bricks but cobbled stone.

So perhaps it turns out that I fell in love after all, but not in the way I expected. As someone remarkable once said to me, ‘falling in love isn’t about discovering someone else but about discovering yourself’. The Chileno and I may have exchanged a passionless goodbye that Friday morning some weeks ago, but beneath the shadowy veneer that cloaks a world of fantasy, Barcelona and I were locked in the kind of embrace that turns cynics into believers and breathes life back into hearts of stone.

And as far as love affairs go, that ain't bad.

Mallorca Nights and Your Essential Guide

2009-09-02T09:46:00.002+09:30

As far as days went, it was shaping up to be pretty perfect. The Mediterranean reclined languorously before us, a plump and undulating doyenne wrapped in a sheath of turqoise, each murmuring wave a new secret whispered in our ears. Above her, the sun cast forth his golden arrows, trying to penetrate the surface of that glittering beauty whom he saw every day but who as yet remained devastatingly out of reach. How he envies the sand! An unremarkable wastrel, blessed to spend an eternity beneath the ocean and her tempestuous mood; to enjoy not the sensation of her crashing upon its shore but the insistent tug of her caress as she continues to whisper secrets to those watching from beyond.

In possession of a small jug of sangria, I considered the scene before me, marveling at how one place could be so full of imperfect beauty. I brought to mind oh-so-eloquent monologue delivered by the inimitable Shug Avery in Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple when she illuminates Celie as to the true nature of this entity we call God.

Ain’t no point in worshipping the white man’s God, Shug tells Celie, because there’s no room for you in their world. Do you think their God would make it so some folk were better than others just ‘cos of the colour of their skin? God ain’t no He – he ain’t some white man in the clouds. Whatever God is, it’s all around us. It’s in the flowers, in the trees, in the beauty of a sunset. Those white folks, they spend they whole lives tryin’ to please God – they don’t realize that all the time God is trying to please them right back.*

“Yer, but tha’s the problem wiv café food, innit? You dunno wot yah gonna get. Tha’s why I reckon that, even vo it might be more expinsive, your be’er off eating in the ‘otel.”

“Yeah, tha’s right. ‘Specially somewhere like Spain, innit?”

And snap. Reverie scattered with the instant application of British Package Tourist. Quelle sur-fucking-prise.

I imagine British tourists are to Spain what Australian tourists are to Bali. Undesirable, scandalously ill bred and completely lacking in any kind of cultural sensitivity whatsoever, but drowning in the kind of extra money that people who truly love flat screen TVs always unfortunately seem to have. They are also tiresomely predictable yet endlessly amusing because of this.

The basic itinerary of the British Package Tourist is not without its subtle nuances and complexities, but armed with the right information it’s fairly simple to follow. If you plan on ever becoming one but are unsure of what the protocol is, never fear – I have compiled a complete guide for you. As with anything in life, the motto is BE PREPARED. And thanks to me, you may now avoid the kind of embarrassing faux pas that will have you questioning whether or not it’s more appropriate to drink your companion’s pina colada through a straw or simply lick it directly off their breasts.

BRITISH PACKAGE TOURISM GUIDE FOR FIRST TIMERS

Pitch up to Gatwick for the 6am red eye, bleary eyed but already coated in tanning oil in anticipation of the weekend’s festivities. You sideeye your fellow passengers, ranking them in order of Shaggable to Handsy Uncle Reg or The Fat Friend. You make sure to consume at least four drinks on the flight so that you can hit Spain in style, bonding with your fellow passengers in the process. Handsy Uncle Reg is in fine form, knocking back seven cans of lager and showing off how loudly he can belch. Remember to applaud. It’s good manners.

You arrive at your hotel in the bus arranged by the travel company, new best friends in tow and duty free liquor already cracked open. Shaggable is surrounded by a posse of besties ranging from almost-as-hot to they’ll-do to only-if-the-others-are-taken and one friend who will, before the week is over, inevitably don one of those novelty aprons with plastic breasts (for the men) or let Handsy Uncle Reg shag them on the beach but only from behind (for the women). Full of piss and vinegar and an unbridled sense of sexual optimism, you check in amidst the sounds of girlish squeals and football songs.

By now it’s almost 11am and the ferocious Spanish sun is well overhead. This means it’s time to head to the beach with all your essentials – cigarettes, tanning oil, latest Dan Brown novel (for the tour’s intelligensia) and Union Jack beach towel. Because England experiences approximately 93 hours of sunshine a year, you’ll want to jam all your tanning time into this week - never forget that the basic aims of a package tour to Spain are to return with a killer tan that will inspire envy in all your co-workers, cornrows (or another variation on an exotic hairdo) and a treatable STI. Thrush doesn’t count, unless you acquired it through drinking too much beer and forgetting to pee in the sea after that incident with Handsy Uncle Reg.

With that in mind, you’ll spend the first two hours lying on your back and carefully turning every 30 minutes. This is Spain, so ladies, feel free to remove your bikini tops. Not only will it help avoid any unsightly tan lines, it might just help grab the attention of Shaggable and co so that they know that a) you have a great rack and b) you’re up for it. Don’t worry if you hear a slight crackling sound – it’s just the sound of your skin aging 20 years. BEAUTY IS PAIN.

If you’re organized, which you’ll want to be – you’re British after all – you’ll have appointed someone to act as alcohol runner to the chiringuitto. Unless Shaggable is up there engaged in a competition to see who can build the highest tower out of beer cans (for the men) or comparing breast augmentations (for the ladies), make sure the runner is someone else (preferably the second most attractive speciman in your group because competition is competition and it’s a jungle out there). Forget that Spanish sangria rubbish – you’ve been looking forward to this holiday for months and it’s time for you to indulge! The chirringuito will no doubt have a selection of fancy cocktails, so feel free to be a bit wild – although if I might make a suggestion, Sex On The Beach is an appropriate choice because it’s not only exotic, it’s also quite pithy and clever.

You should be a bit tipsy now, which is exactly where you want to be. If you’re a lady, you’ll have already read your airport purchased copies of Heat, OK! and Woman’s Own, but it’s probably best to leave Cosmopolitan and Sugar for day two – you like to keep stimulated and you don’t want to run out of reading material.

Now that that lovely sun has made you all toasty and warm, you’ll probably be thinking about a dip. Time to grab your best girlfriend and head to the water, offering silent thanks to Maybelline for creating waterproof mascara – it’s unlikely you’ll putt your head under because you’ve just had your holiday highlights done, but there’s a high likelihood you’ll end up rousting with some of the lads. You’ll want your eyes to remain come hither in case Shaggable decides to splash you.

If you’re a lad, keep an eye out for when the ladies head to the water. They’ve had ample time for tanning while you’ve been walking around with your Union Jack towel draped around your neck pretending to be a matador, but now’s the time to think about moving in for the kill. You’ll no doubt have your eye on the best looking bird in the flock, but here’s a sly tip – flirt openly with her less attractive friend. It will drive her crazy with the kind of jealousy that can only come with entitlement, and will (if applied correctly) almost certainly guarantee you a blow job behind the karaoke bar later on.

By this stage of the proceedings, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed with all the holiday hijinks. This is completely normal – you’ve spent the last ten months living in the geographical equivalent of clinical depression, and all this sun is probably going to your head. Pace yourself (not too much!) – you have all week. Why not go and spend some time by the hotel swimming pool? That way you can lounge about in the water AND have the perfect view of the sea.

5pm rolls around (where does the time go?!) and it’s time to start thinking about freshening up for dinner. Proper British people eat dinner no later than 7:30pm so they can fit in more time for drinking, and if you want to fit in you should behave no differently. While casual dress was fine for the beach, you’ll want to look a bit fancier for the first night’s festivities – particularly if you’re planning on heading to the Britannia later on. Ladies, this means you’ll want to don your best, most sparkliest drapey halterneck number. It may be tempting to wear everything you own in white, but let’s not be too hasty – there’s still a few days of tanning left before you can capitalize on just how good a white minidress with criss-crossed back looks against your brown skin.

Lads, this one’s much easier for you because the only variation you require to your normal Home outfits is some kind of sombrero or cargo pants that detach at the knees. Ignore the lay in your bag – it’s not Spanish and you only packed it because you’re planning on going as a hula girl to the costume party the hotel will be hosting in the Mermaid Bar later on in the week. For now, all you need worry about is whether or not your collar is popped correctly. Don’t fret if you’ve forgotten your hair gel – one of your friends is bound to have brought some so there’s really no need for anyone to miss out on potential bathroom sex because their widow’s peak wasn’t teased to perfection.

You’ll find it’s easier to congregate in the hotel lobby ahead of dinner time. By now you’re all old friends and selecting dinner mates is just a matter of course. Having said that, you still want to maintain a modicum of decorum – this means no belching at the dinner table unless it forms the punchline of a joke or removing someone’s knickers with your teeth. There’ll be plenty of time for that later when DJ Ricky Z gets the party going.

Here things will start to get a bit hazy. There’s no point in going on a British Package Tour unless you spend 95% of your time at least slightly drunk. But come 11pm, all that Sex On The Beach starts to catch up with you and you’ll find yourself approximately 135% drunk. This is okay in and of itself – preferable even. But here’s where things get tricky – to be a proper British Package Tourist, you have to take care to be as acutely offensive as possible to everyone else bar your fellow BPTs. Sounds simple in theory but can actually take a bit of practice to get used to. For example, it’s okay to yell obscenities at some scrag tottering down the street, but what if she’s part of your tour or shagging someone in it and you didn’t notice before? This defies the natural sense of camaraderie that will befall any BPT group, and must be avoided at all costs. On the other hand, when handled deftly, it can work in your favour to call someone a cheap and nasty bitch because it could actually be a compliment indicating to them that you understand they are willing to let you suckle on their breasts as part of a drinking game.

If you’re not confident with being able to tell the difference – and anyone other than a seasoned British Package Tourist or an Essex local would not be remiss in admitting confusion – then I find it’s simpler to follow what seems to be the essential rule of British Package Tourism, and that’s to be as rude as possible to anyone who appears to be an actual resident of the foreign country in question. Not only does it solidify your connection as a group, it reinforces to the subject of your approbation that their reliance on their own mother tongue is an inconvenience you did NOT request when parting with hard earned pounds (and the exchange rate!) as part of YOUR holiday, and that if they will INSIST on being a Spanish chimmy changa chocolate dago bar, they could at LEAST have the DECENCY to learn how to speak proper. CAPEACHY?

Let one of those rip on your first night and that STI is as good as yours. Probably a few of them.

As for day two and the rest of the week? Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

NOTE: The Essential Guide to being a British Package Tourist is also relevant to Australian Tourism with a few minor word changes.

*Paraphrasing from Walker's text.

Dinky Di Barcelona Part One

2009-08-28T22:23:00.005+09:30

*I began this a few days ago, so have aktch already been to Berlin and back. More on that later.*

The woman totters around behind the bar on thick wedge platforms, cork heels wrestling with the sticky intractability of a floor whose most intimate acquaintance is always spilled alcohol.

Poured into the kind of dress a flapper might have worn had the style tended towards vampish rather than boyish, and legs criss-crossed by the spiderwebs of nude fishnets, she gives the appearance of someone who does not quite seem to know where they are or what they’re supposed to be doing there, but keeps looking around to try and figure it all out. It’s as if somewhere between deciding whether or not she should damn it all to hell and just paint her living room walls chartreuse already or wait to consult the tarot first, she simply fell asleep in her living room and awoke to discover her shabby yet chic abode had been unknowingly converted into a dive bar catering especially to lesbians and the British; however, lacking the language with which to converse with either group, she now finds herself being forced to make endless cocktails in whatever glasses she happens to have lying around her kitchen while trying to resolutely explain to people that, look, she knows she lives on a ground floor in La Ribera (and that can be confusing), but tonight she was really just looking forward to dying her hair with teabags and watching the Astro show on teevee so could they all please vacate her house and leave a middlish old woman in PEACE for ONCE in her wretched life because if they REALLY want something to drink there are any NUMBER of illegal merchants in the street who would be only TOO HAPPY to sell them a few cans of “sexy beer” at a VERY reasonable price?

“Sorr-ee! No understandy! I want TWO *sticks fingers up in peace sign* mo-hee-toes POOR FAV-OAR SIV OO PLAY. Moo-choss grassy arse!”

At which she begins an under-breath muttering likely to last well into the next day and possibly beyond.

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan Princess and I argue over whom our fair bartender resembles more. Sri Pri seems to think she’s reminiscent of Penelope Cruz’s character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. However, I feel (given the demonstrative evidence on offer) that my argument is more compelling.

Ghowst-bustahs. No, I’m sawry, Venkman’s nawt avaaailable.

The Sri Lankan Princess has come to Barcelona en route to Berlin, where we will both be in a few days. In a crazy kind of reverse stereotype/amazingly self aware political correctness/unracism, it is *I* and not *she* who does they ferrying around on two wheels. Having secured for myself a few days prior the luxury of una bicicletta (while mine mourns my absence at home), I took no time in depositing Sri Pri on the back and proceeding as the two gadabouts that we are.

Amusing on day one and slightly diverting on day two, by day three I am prepared to outlaw all forms of dinkying, ferrying and/or transferring that involves two wheels, cobbled roads and a blazing hot sun. Navigating your way around bloated tourists for whom having a passport involves forgetting the rudimentary rules of functioning in society is hard enough without having to take into account the gravitational force of a pillion passenger.

Day two of Sri Pri’s visit sees us getting extraordinarily drunk at a late night tapas bar in La Ribera. With bellies full of sangria, we spend the next half an hour trying to remember which way is home and swerving along streets designed solely with the aim of confusing their inhabitants. I am reminded of the labyrinthine quality of Rome, a city in which the streets quietly move about like puzzle pieces, delivering you to the exact point you started at despite the fact you KNOW you have been walking straight for the past 45 minutes. As with there, I keep expecting David Bowie to pop up in some tights to hypnotise me with his devilish eyes.

Sarah…fuhget about the buyby.

Eventually we end up in another late night tapas bar, albeit one decorated in a thin film of grease and apparently labouring under the impression that fluorescent bulbs are the most preferable form of lighting for 2am on a weeknight. To Sri Pri’s discomfort, we encounter there one of those especially unfashionable forms of skinhead whose wardrobe naturally consists only of drainpipe jeans, long laced boots and a pair of braces purchased at least 20 years ago in the Eastern Bloc. Being white, I’m naturally only suspicious of his sartorial choices. But for a petite, dark skinned woman, I can understand that concerns probably extend beyond whether or not the lad has showered in the past week.

The difficulty of course with modern skinheads is that one can never tell if they are white supremacists, post punk anarchists waiting in vain for the revolution or middle class hipsters slumming it in public before going home to their carefully decorated hovel to congratulate themselves on having a subversive haircut. I observed a tableful of them the other day having afternoon tea with plates of yellow frosted cake, so quite frankly I don’t know what to believe.*

Regardless, it makes Sri Pri feel infinitely better when our skinhead traipses out into the night and we are left in peace with the rocket fuel masquerading as drinks and the tinkling soundtrack of a pokie addict disposing of his rent in a corner machine.

One thing I’ve learned about Spain is that they are fans of the free pour. While Australia doles out its spirits with the exacting fury of an autistic despot, in Spain the basic rule of thumb seems to be that as long as the spirit fills at least 50% of the glass, you’re doing okay. This translates into the kind of drinking experience which sees you fill the tiny cavern at the top with whatever mixer you’ve requested, close your eyes and pray for God’s mercy before taking two gulps of almost pure liquor. Having performed this little ritual, you will thus have adequate space in which to transform your drink from something that could power a small vehicle into something that becomes marginally more pleasant to drink. It’s truly brilliant, and one of the reasons why Spain has Penelope Cruz and we have Nicole Kidman.

Transfixed by the sound of the pokie addict’s soul being crushed, we remain in that grim watering hole for the better part of an hour before unwisely cycling through the jigsaw that is Barcelona – the Sri Lankan Princess reclining in style and me pedaling through the mental fog of ten alcohol units too many on streets whose incorporation of traffic lights is arbitrary at best.

TO BE CONTINUED.

* Apparently food concerns are quite common amongst skinheads if this is to be believed. I don't know. I always expected they had slightly bigger things to concern themselves with than whether or not peanut butter sandwiches are wrongtown usa.

Ser o no ser...esa es la pregunata.

2009-08-11T07:04:00.007+09:30

I'm sitting in an apartment with the french doors open and the sounds of a Spanish street filtering in from below. Every so often comes the roar of a scooter shuttling forth from the traffic lights. The Spanish television may be supremely bad, but the balmy night air is more than making up for it.

Spain is unquestionably beautiful.

I spent most of today wandering through the gothic quarter, revisiting parts of it I discovered on my last trek through this city. My Chilean has disappeared to Madrid for a few days so I am At Liberty on the streets of Barcelona. This roughly translates to me making extreme mistakes in Spanish and most probably being taken advantage of by shifty shopkeepers who can tell that I don't know what the real prices of things are. Honestly, two euros for a couple of bunches of coriander? I KNOW YOU ARE ROBBING ME BLIND YOU SPANISH HARPY. Still, without the proper tools to argue, what can I do? Grin and bear it, and bide my time until I can take her down with an impeccable grasp of the vocabulary for "you are a thieving wench and I know what your game is."

When I arrived last week, the Chilean fetched me from the airport. He greeted me with a very manly hug and a bottle of water, because "I thought you would be thirsty after your long flight." He then took me to a local Peruvian restaurant for lunch and then to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Indeed, he has been feeding and watering me quite adequately since I arrived. I'm just about to start sprouting flowers I think, possibly in some shade of cerulean.

On Thursday, Chile took me to the beach and laughed as I marvelled at all the magnificent breasts on display. Old, young, big, small, fake, real - they really let it all hang out here. He seemed mildly amused when I told him that such a thing would never occur in Australia. The Christians For Conservatism would have all their best agents on the job, filing calls to shock jocks all over the country to engage in a mass hand wringing over declining moral values and their devastating impact on children. I mean, imagine if a child were to go the beach and see actual breasts just.... there. NAKED. As if they were normal or something! As if they were in fact not something that children see all the time (because their mothers have no doubt continued to wander around the house topless, away from the prying eyes of the morality police) but were instead dirty funbags with the power to turn men into raging sex machines and steal the souls of innocent babes. Anarchy, social decay and eventual apocalypse would almost certainly be destined to follow. The human race as we know it would go tits up.

Anyhoo, Chile and I discussed the difference in gender relations between the two countries and their respective conservative values. I can't speak for Spain at all having merely a few weeks observation under my belt - and I'm sure there is rampant conservatism here in parts - but there is definitely a joie de vivre that is lacking in Australia. I don't think you could ever suggest to a Spanish person that work was as important as family, music, food or sex. They would probably laugh in your face, and then go and make a baby with someone while eating tapas off each others torsos.

I suggested to the Chilean that Australian men were different to Spanish men in that they weren't particularly adept at wooing women, and seemed to have a swaggering sense of their own right to exist. He said that it sounded like they were muy machista. But aren't Spanish men also muy machista, I asked him? Yes, he replied, but it's different. Here it's more about how women can't drive cars, which is why you can't drive mine.

I had to laugh. Hey, nobody's perfect. If someone's going to be supportive of me writing about gender relations and generally being a hoyden then I can't really complain if one of his few failings is that he refuses to let me behind the wheel of his precious baby. And I much prefer to read books while in the car anyway. If he won't let me drive, then I won't let him converse.

Besides, he's lovely. In a fit of pique the other day, I told him how frustrated I was at my poor (read: pathetic) Spanish. I tried to explain that it was frustrating for someone who makes a living from communicating, and generally probably does a bit too much of it if anything, to be unable to properly express herself to people. He kept reassuring me that it would all come with time, and I can't get angry because then I'll just give up. He said I have to recognise that it's a process and that the hard is what will make it rewarding in the end.

It's supposed to be hard! The hard...is what makes it great.

On Saturday, we went to Ocata (north of BCN) to engage in some specifically excellent activity. Chile's brother - a musician of grand talent and who spreads it around - was playing with one of his bands Dinatatak at a tapas restaurant on the beach. I don't mean one of those restaurants in the sense that Gringos is on the Glenelg foreshore, and if you're really lucky you can be verbally assaulted by some schmuck cruising outside the Grand before having someone puke on your shoes. This kiosk was set up on the actual beach, in a kind of cabana. The patrons sat on plastic chairs and tables, and the band played from beneath a tent like structure.

When we arrived, the moon was hanging low and full bellied in the sky, burning the colour of burnt amber. It reminded me of my favourite passage in the whole world, from Cormac McCarthy's The Road: "By day the banished sun circles the Earth like a grieving mother with a lamp." If the sun is a grieving mother with a lamp, this moon was the mother who watches over her well loved children until they fall asleep. The music, the food, the passion of the people watching against the backdrop of a beachfront of towering apartment buildings with laundry adorning the balconies - it all transpired to make for a perfect evening.

After Dinatatak was finished and the kiosk had packed up for the night, we all sat near the water and played music until the sun came up. With their crazy fingers, those musicians worked their magic on all manner of guitar strings as we laughed and sang and drank copious amounts of liquor. We finally tumbled into bed at about 9am, bellies full of sweet rum and hearts as full as that amber moon, the Spanish sun beginning its slow burn on a perfect Sunday in Barcelona.

Brother Chile is playing on Thursday night at a restaurant in Barcelona with his three piece. Because we've been practicing songs together on my ukulele (which he could play perfectly within about three seconds, rendering my own attempts pathetic and shallow) I'm going to sing a couple of songs with them. This is officially one of the highlights of my trip, because I both love to sing and am a showpony, and singing in English is at least considered far more acceptable than insisting on speaking in it because your Spanish brain is the equivalent of a retarded two year old's.

I was made that way....

Also, Brother Chile is just simply one of the nicest people on the entire planet so it's always a pleasure to do anything with him.

Ah, Barcelona. Right, Brother Chile is teaching me ukulele now. Time to be humiliated.

Barcelona bound

2009-08-05T08:27:00.001+09:30

In anticipation of some hot romance and midnight beach swimming, I’m sitting in the airport lounge at JFK waiting to catch a plane to Bar-the-lona. I am almost 100% certain the Chilean is meeting me at the other end. At the very least, I’ll be staying with him for the duration so I shall be very strict with myself about learning some form of Spanish conversation over the next month.

This may or may not transpire entirely through a superior ability to order drinks, discuss the delicious qualities of Spanish food and praise the concept of siestas, none of which have yet been covered by the learn-through-irritating-jingles language cd I bought yesterday. I am now able to talk about seeing the colours of my life when picking out daywear (“mire los colores de mi vive!” sp?) but remain ignorant as to why this particularly floral turn of phrase is necessary in anything other than an off-Broadway musical number.

What I *can* be certain of is that I will likely never need the seemingly extensive construction site/building vocabulary that seems to form a large part of many of the Spanish textbooks available in this fair country. Whilst I’m sure there are some people for whom the Spanish translation of “that’s an effective way to sand a plank of wood” is helpful, I am not one of them. I make it my business to avoid discussing menial labour in English. I therefore see no reason to start conversing on the matter in Spanish, unless attempting to speak with handsome carpentry types in admittedly single entendres.

I imagine there shall be much flirting to be had – with or without the Chilean, as this is Spain after all and I am both human and cheap – but as we all know, the language of love requires not working vocal chords but simply a masterful grasp on the power of doe eyes and a lilting hip.

Speaking of doe eyes, I am sad to report that I have (as yet) failed to upgrade myself on this leg. I blame this entirely on the surly and frankly tiresome attitude of my check-in attendant. ‘Rotan’, if that IS his real name, could barely wait to tell me I’d exceeded my luggage allowance and gleefully watched while I was forced to empty half of the Strand’s back catalogue onto the airport floor. I am now carrying approximately 436 books on my back, none of which I shall read on the airplane as I plan to engage in some fairly committed drinking and then passing out. So they are effectively useless, and therefore I hate each and every one of them, even the David Sedaris ones.* On the other hand, I did manage to talk my way into the pre-flight supper club at the BA lounge and am thus gorged to the brim with garlic prawns and asparagus sears. The silver tongue, I has it.

With any luck, there will be some form of mindless movie on the TV menu starring Paul Rudd or an equally hysterical definition of handsome. I *don’t* plan on watching (500) Days of SummerNew Moon comes out. When I can summon the energy to think of it without wanting to kill both its stars and then the writers and then myself for good measure and then the stars again, I shall summarise it for you.

All you need know is it is the kind of addictively terrible schlock that needs to be discussed but not seen, because seeing it will destroy the remaining part of your soul that managed to escape the hamfisted hipsterdom of nauseating films such as The Darjeeling Limited, Lost in Translation and, the grandwizard of self indulgent hoohah himself, Garden State. Natalie Portman, Braff? Honestly? Honestly? With your chin? Also, Reality Check called and told me you need to stop skipping your appointments because he is sick and tired of your BS.

Right-o, voy a Barcelona. Tengo veintiocho! Quiero un bocadillo de quesa!

* Not really David! Don’t leave me!
if it’s on the TV menu, as I had the very great misfortune of seeing it with Dot the other night. We agree it could possibly be the worst film ever made, at least until

baffling

2009-07-30T12:09:00.006+09:30

Could this be the most counter-intuitive advertisement ever?

I mean...they've actually used Comic Sans MS. To tell you the truth, I'm a little surprised they haven't whacked the ubiquitous clip art sillhoette on for good measure. I hesitate to imagine the folk exploring their creativity with this number, but I suspect it will include a lot of scrapbookers looking to make the transition to the www.

Live from Hoboken, NJ!

2009-07-30T04:58:00.009+09:30

After tramping around the city for a week, I hopped on the PATH train yesterday to visit my darling friend the Baby Mama in Hoboken, New Jersey. It is therefore from here (there?) that I currently write. Specifically, from the insides of the Frozen Monkey Cafe, a particularly Melbournish cafe resplendent with formica tables, coloured lamps and a much desirable free wifi connection.

The sky is having a mothu uckin stroke outside. Much as it has been doing off and on all week, the intense humidity and grey skies have combined to produce one almighty thunderstorm. You can't really tell from this picture, but the rain is coming down in sheets while a low rumbling alternately pulsates through the heavens.

It seems to have settled in for the duration. Previous thunderstorms this week have wandered in and out of the city like an itinerant alcoholic at a small and intimate dinner party. The sky will open to send raindrops the size of buckets from within its belly. New Yorkers rush around with utilitarian rainshields draped across their bodies - plastic slickers, the kind designed specifically to make the wearer look both hideous and sweaty. They are invariably doomed once the rain stops and the sun appears in all its blazing glory.

One woman hid beneath the shadecloth at Fairways (a local supermarket on the UWS) the other day with a rainhat fashioned out of a plastic bag. It looked most uncomfortable and even more unflattering. I've seen tourists don slickers at the merest whiff of rainy provocation, so intent are they on protecting their precious Abercrombie and Fitch duds that they'll risk turning their bodies into a sauna just to avoid a few drops. Me, I like the rain in summer and enjoy the sensation of standing beneath it while everyone else rushes for cover. But then, I come from a country where rain has been a fantastical myth for the better part of half a century and so probably treat the experience of it much as one might a mermaid suddenly emerging from the sea and asking for directions to the nearest Starbucks.

As far as living goes, it doesn't seem to get much better than in Hoboken NJ. A mere 20 minutes (if that) by train from Penn Station on 34th and 6th in Manhattan, residents can enjoy a much more relaxed pace of life this side of the Hudson. Known as the Mile Square City, brownstones line the residential lanes either side of Washington St and rent can be managed at a fraction of the price one will have to pay to live in Manhattan. Dot and Blaine are currently househounting on the Lower East Side and are looking at around $1800 a month for a studio, POST economic downturn. But in Hoboken, it seems you could rent a sunny one bedroom for around $1300 and have the luxury of your own balcony with waterfront views. Baby Mama owns a condo between 2nd and 3rd Sts and has her own private deck on the rooftop that lends itself perfectly to summer night barbecues (or 'cook outs') and romantic second date kissing.

Although there are lots of negative views of Noo Joisey (Blaine did a particularly splendid impression of the average NJ guy the other day. It involved talking a lot about footbawl and beeya, and how to achieve the poifect tayen), Hoboken seems to exist as something separate. Home to the first officially recorded game of baseball in 1846, it boasts a population of slightly less than 40,000, most of whom are aged between 25 and 44. Of course, the population is also almost entirely white which is either a result of or a reason for the system of gentrification that began to occur in the latter part of last century. 23.8% of people living in Hoboken are married couples, but they need not fear their partners looking across the river for something better - Hoboken loves romance you see!

Say it with butt plugs

The most recent Mayor of Hoboken is the city's youngest ever - at 33, Peter Cammarrano III began his term on July 1, 2009 and is the city's 37th Mayor.

Peter Cammarano cares about YOU!

But before you get too excited about potential victories for youth in politics, things aren't as rosy as they might seem. On July 23, after just 23 days in office, Mayor Cammarrona was arrested as part of a major corruption and international money laundering conspiracy probe known as Operation Bid Rig.

Whoops!

He was charged with accepting $25,000 in cash bribes from an undercover operative. Amongst those arrested in the op were several rabbis in New Jersey and NY, another local Mayor and an Assemblyman. Way to go team!

As well as being the home and birthplace of Frank Sinatra (who wasted no time in declaring his love for New York - loyal much?), Hoboken is also home to Maria Pepe, one of the first girls in the US to play Little League baseball. When Pepe joined the same neighbourhood team as her friends, the coach kicked her off which caught the attention of the National Organisation for Women. A court case followed, which resulted in a ruling declaring that Little League must allow girls to try out. Little League then began a program specifically designed for girls. Pepe may not be as internationally famous as Ole Blue Eyes, but in a world where women tend to be ignored in history, I'd like to introduce all of you to her now:

dirt in the skirt, maria!

Being as I have a nose for vintage stores and the like, I discovered a little dressmaker/vintage clothes seller a few doors down from Baby Mama's house. We got to talking and she revealed she doesn't really know what it is 'the young girls' want these days. I assured her that she could make a killing if she made wearable vintage style dresses for girls of all sizes, and told her about a particular dress of mine (the green one with white spots for those in the know) which is a guaranteed winner on all lady bodies. Because I am a wheeler and dealer, I told her I'd bring it in for her to make a pattern out of. In exchange for some website help and a bit of advertising know how, she's going to fashion me up a few. Am I resourceful, or what? Perhaps I'm just awesome. WHO CAN SAY?

I'm heading to Brooklyn tonight to stay with the delectable Gin and Tonic. I realised that I can catch exactly one train between there house and Dot and Blaine's, which is almost amazing considering they live in different boroughs. I hope BlaDot don't move too far away from the AC line and spoil this massive convenience. *crosses fingers, looks winsome*

In preparation, I have brought along A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. It is my hope that in addition to reading an American classic, I shall be able to recognise the various historical elements of Williamsburg featured in the book and thus come to feel I am some kind of academic expert by way of appropriating a false level of knowledge with strangers. See also: the TenMus, the UWS, Central Park and the Australian System of Government.

Oh yeah, I also got a new tattoo the other day. I returned to Addiction NYC on St Mark's Place in the East Village, the same place I had my russian dolls done. Fortunately for me, the surly bastard who inked me last time was gone. I am told he quit in an alcoholic depression, his girlfriend having left him because he is, among other things, a monumental cockhead. This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I instead had the great pleasure of working with Beanz (Beans?), a chap of great good humour and talent. Although he confessed to being not much of a reader, he allowed me to recite to him from David Sedaris' Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim, and while he didn't share my belief that "Us and Them" might be the funniest thing ever committed to print, EVER, he did seem to enjoy "Six to Eight Black Men", even contributing his own little tidbits of information regarding European Christmas traditions.

As for the tattoo, it is a picture of two autumn leaves swirling around on my upper thigh. I'm unsure if I exactly love it just now - it needs to heal and come down in colour a little bit. Plus, I have monumentally fucked up body issues which I am possibly going to explore shortly here because they are really mentally screwing with me at the moment BUT THAT IS A STORY FOR ANOTHER TIME. Anyhoo, here is the pickchar.

Also, I am experiencing some form of tingling in my right fingertips. This concerns me, and gnaws at the propensity towards hypochondria that I've held in check for the past 6 or so years. Multiple sclerosis? Parkinson's? Oncoming stroke? Too much caffeine? It is likely one of them, but who's to say which. I hope it's the last one. I did have three big mugs today and a diet coke. In light of that, it's probably NOT Parkinson's.

Rain has stopped. Alcoholic sky passed out in the heavens somewhere. Off to Brooklyn.

melon head

2009-07-27T08:39:00.010+09:30

After the TenMus, Dot, Gershwin and I walked around the corner to eat lunch at Katz's. Locals know this as New York's oldest and best delicatessen. On the other hand, you'll probably know Katz's from this classic movie scene:

According to Katz's website, to be considered a true delicatessen you have to "continue a tradition of meat preparation and preservation predating refrigeration". Located on the corner of Houston (pron. House-ton) and Ludlow, the deli was established in 1888 by a Russian immigrant family. For a local community forged on immigration, Katz's food was a link to the Old World. In a New World so heavily populated by transient eateries, fast food outlets and corporate domination, it's reassuring to know that one of New York's most lasting and popular restaurants remains family owned (although ownership transferred to Fred Austin and his wife Juli in 1988).

I ordered what turned out to be a $15 sandwich. This sounds ridiculous until you realise that a sandwich at Katz's basically translates to stuffing half a (cured) cow between two slices of bread. Observe:

Needless to say, I had to give half of mine away but I derived great pleasure out of sampling some of the finest pastrami the world has to offer. As the old dad joke goes, "Two Chinamen walked out of Katz's. One says to the other, 'The bad thing about eating here is that two weeks later you're hungry again!'

I'm uncertain as to why the joke references Chinamen in particular as I've certainly never come across a Chinese restaurant where an abundance of food hasn't been consumed. Perhaps the joke would be more accurate were it to feature WASPs, or perhaps the lady who serves ~~a lettuce leaf and half a tomato~~ salads in the David Jones food court. But then the joke would have to include something uncomfortably close to home about value for money, and she might have to start confronting herself with some home truths.

Then again, she IS Chinese, so perhaps there's something in that after all.

Hey, here's another funny joke!

Q. What's the difference between Bono and Jesus?

A. Jesus doesn't think he's Bono.

Classic.

After Katz's, we wandered into the sixth circle of hell, better known as Century 21. A discount designer department store, the average person can handle about four seconds inside before experiencing the very real urge to kill themselves. Describing it here is giving me terrifying flashbacks, the memory of crazed women grabbing for shoes and DKNY mini skirts having me reach slowly towards a knife, or perhaps a heavy blunt object of some description. Even their website is offensive, the mind numbing musical beats a portent for the throb your head will experience once two feet inside the store's perimeter. It's like what would happen if Supre married David Jones and insisted they hold the reception in a basement with extremely surly caterers.

Later, we picked up Blaine and headed to JG Melon, a burger and beer staple on the Upper East Side. It opened back in 1972 and has been serving some of the best burgers not-that-much-money can buy ever since. In amongst everything that New York has to recommend, its command over the humble burger has to be near the top. In Australia we get bogged down by the idea that a hamburger has to be overflowing with gourmet ingredients who all then end up competing for to be the most dominant flavour. Do we really need to adorn a beef patty with a fried egg, relish, beetroot, sweet onions, cheese AND a fucking salad? No. We do not. We definitely don't need to then stuff said burger contents into an impossibly unwieldy bread roll.

But New York, it knows what it's doing. Patty and a soft bread roll, cheese if you're after a bit of a kick and onions if you don't mind something messy. Personally, I prefer to chow down on a patty and bun while railing at the years I spent eating inferior imitations.

Of course, every time I want a cigarette I have to go and stand on the street and endure the moral judgement from other patrons, their pursed lips and shocked faces saying it all. She's doing what now? Smoking? Right here, on the sidewalk, by the gutter when I am clearly sitting four metres away from her and TRYING to enjoy my low carb beer and conversation with similarly nasal New York Dames Who Dine? That is just the MOST.

All of this is a mystery to me. I mean, how else do they stay so rigorously thin? No one likes running that much and even if coke weren't so hopelessly passe the economic downturn would have seen fit to destroy the industry. The well-to-do ladies of the Upper East Side might smoke most of their calories, but they sure as shit don't let anyone see them do it.

Tired of the humiliating excursions outside and done with our (admittedly delicious) burgers, we headed back to the UWS for some Responsible Early Bedtimes. This put me in good stead for the next day, when I headed out in the blazing hot sun to wander around Greenwich Village. I had hoped to see some kind of hopelessly cool celebrity lurking around a coffee shop so that I might duly ignore them and pretend to be a real New Yorker, but alas such a treat did not greet me. Instead I had the great fortune of meeting a crazy dude in Washington Square Park who spent approximately 45 minutes explaining to me the hidden secrets of the cosmos.

According to Kevin, it's due to a government conspiracy that the 13th zodiac sign of Ophiuchus has been covered up and abandoned. A brief search on Google reveals that Ophiuchus is known of (and probably exists, I guess - I mean, you're getting an excellent insight into my research skills here. Someone on Yahoo! answers says it does, so I'm prepared to believe that's true) and lies somewhere between Scorpio and Sagittarius. Nostradamus predicted that 2012 will see us living under the sign of Ophiuchus, and that great famine, war, terror and all sorts of crazy shit will become de rigeur. This pretty much ties in with the Mayan predictions of the end of the world, and also mental Christian stuff about Jesus returning and smiting us.

Kevin didn't tell me any of this though - that came from "Claire" on Yahoo! answers (thanks Claire!) and I'm just going to go with it. Kevin didn't really seem to know what he was talking about, except he knew that it was bad and it had something to do with Men In Power Being Cunts. Or whatever. (He also went into great detail about the mosquito bites he'd gotten on his upper thighs, going so far as to peel his trousers back and show me. Apparently they all live in a puddle outside his apartment that he can't get rid of. So....that was nice.)

Kevin told me that time isn't real, and that we're all actually living an hour and 58 minutes in the past. Which either makes me REALLY late for everything I turn up to, as opposed to just moderately late, or incredibly on time. I'm not sure how that works, because unlike Kevin I am not a cosmologist.

As far as Ophiuchus goes, I suppose it could be possible that the Son of God will return to Earth in a blaze of righteous glory on Dec 21, 2012, to send most of us to hell and take the believers back up to Heaven Land for corn dogs and twister. But I kind of prefer "sos89"s version of how the sign was lost:

"Probably because most people wouldn't be able to pronounce it. As bad as sagittarius seems, I think that Ophiuchus is the hardest of the zodiac signs to say/prounounce/spell. I mean it isnt anything like saying cancer or leo."

Well, quite.

Next time, in the amazing adventures of audrey in the big apple!

Audrey gets another tattoo, charms tattoo artist.
A brief and possibly only semi-accurate guide to the names of neighbourhoods in Manhattan.
How to speak like you're from New Jersey.
Random meetings with interesting men in parks and shoestores. But not in a whorish way.

97 Orchard St

2009-07-26T23:28:00.009+09:30

One of the best things about staying with Dot is that she's a wealth of local information. Because she has a degree in Art History, she's naturally interested in discovering a lot of local shit. And because I'm a lazy scholar, I'm naturally interested in draining her brain of facts and pretending the subsequent knowledge is the result of hours of personal study. It helps to make me appear both smarter and more interesting while having to expend the minimum amount of time required. Some people live by inspirational mottos - be kind to others and it will come back to you; every cloud has a silver lining; life is like a box of chocolates. I prefer to live by the creed that if you can't make it, fake it.

On Friday, Dot and I went with her visiting sister Gershwin to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum to learn a little about immigrant history in late 19th century New York. The Museum offers the kinds of tours my best friend mtk would go gaga for. I imagine that when she eventually visits the Tenement Museum, she will fall to her knees and beg it to marry her and spend the rest of her life trying to defy nature so that she may bear its children. The basic story of the TenMus (this is not an official abbreviation by the way - I just made it up, so best not to use it in conversation in an attempt to appear local and In The Know) is thus - between 1863 and 1935, the tenement building at 97 Orchard St was home to an estimated 7000 people from over 20 different nations. Orchard St was known as a Jewish enclave, and the eight city blocks it covered was lined end to end with similar tenements - the iconic buildings you think of that are multi storey featuring fire escapes on the visages.

The actual definition of tenement is 'dwelling', but its use refers here to a dwelling that is occupied transiently from one person to another. Multiple families lived within the tenement's walls in sectioned off apartments of two or three rooms. Essentially, tenements in the mid to late 19th century were what we would refer to as slums. With no official city housing code, fire escapes didn't become de rigeur until the turn of the 20th century. The first patent for a fire escape was registered in the US by Anna Connelly in 1887. As our excellent tour guide explained to us, the lack of interest in the health and safety of tenement residents (read: the poor) went a long way towards establishing a city code in New York.

As the years progressed, codes were established around housing, sanitation and safety. The creation of New York City became a model for the rest of the country, meaning that the establishment of city codes for all citizens can largely be attributed to the history of the tenements on the Lower East Side. The particular tour we took recreated the life of the Moore family, who lived at 97 Orchard St for about a year at the end of 1869. Although we were initially shocked by the conditions preserved at the house - all the residents shared outhouses in the backyard, with only a small spigot of water to flush, wash with and use for cooking and drinking - our tour guide surprised us with the information that, as far as tenements went, 97 Orchard St lay more on the middle class scale of tenement living.

Basically, the fact that they had a spigot at all made it a more well to do residential property. An Irish family living in New York during this period would have considered it a step up in the world to live in Kleindeutschland (the name given to the Orchard St neighbourhood). Prior to moving there, the Moore's lived at 65 Mott St which was located in the notorious Five Points area, a much poorer Irish neighbourhood and historical basis for the movie Gangs of New York.

When the Moores moved in to Kleindeutschland, they brought with them their three daughters Mary, Jane and Agnes. Bridget Moore (nee Meehan) was, we are told, likely a former domestic like many of the other single immigrant women at the time. After marrying Joseph Moore, it's probable that she ceased going out to work but possibly began taking in other people's laundry. Unfortunately for the Moores, even living in a relatively 'middle class' slum still made them poor - and that meant they were subject to the prejudices and disregard of a city that at the time also boasted extravagant wealth and opulence.

While living at 97 Orchard St, baby Agnes succumbed to marasmus, a disease common amongst babies at the time. Because immigrant women were likely to be undernourished and overworked, it wasn't always possible for them to breastfeed their children. In fact, it was staggeringly implausible that most would have been able to manage it. As such, their children were fed with the milk that was brought in from farms outside of the city and taken to the slums. Because people will always try and pull a fast one over on the poor, being as they are clearly not as important as the rest of us and certainly don't deserve the kind of basic level of human respect that those in power do, you'll be unsurprised to discover that, among many other crimes against humanity, the milk they were forced to drink (by sheer virtue of the fact it was the only source) was essentially poisonous.

Called 'swill milk', its story goes a little something like this: the sick and malnourished cows living on farms outside of the city would be drained of whatever milk they had to ferry over to the slum dwellers. However, in order to make it spread a little further the milk sellers would dilute it with water. This made the milk an off grey colour, so they would then mix chalk into it to bring it back to a milky white. But as if this weren't bad enough, once they got to the city (especially through the summer heat) the milk would be obviously bad and smelly. So to counter this, they would then mix in ammonia to remove the stink. Basically, they were serving up poisonous skank water dressed up as nutrition to the folk on the Lower East Side because hey, who gives a fuck about the poor people anyway? As a result, many children failed not only to receive vital nutrients they were actively be poisoned by the 'swill' that was being fed to them.

But what was anyone to do? They had no other alternative at the time. I mean, this was a city that waited until 1879 to enforce a housing code prohibiting windowless rooms (a code Dot thinks has been overwhelmingly ignored if the amount of apartments she's viewed recently are anything to go by. Though perhaps the buildings are 'pre-code', which is an abbreviation you may feel free to use being in actualy circulation and not just the result of my lazy typing). In a country that is still afraid to talk about socialised medicine for fear of being branded communist, I find the story of swill milk to be a stark reminder of our responsibility to those who cannot afford the luxuries many of us take for granted.

After Agnes' death, the Moores moved out of 97 Orchard St and to a considerably slummier dwelling at 224 Elizabeth St. At the time, burials were reasonably expensive. The $25 it might set a family back to properly bury their child could ruin everything they'd been working for up until that point. It's likely that the reason the Moores moved yet again (as they were a transient family to begin with - many tenement owners lured residents in with the promise of a month's free rent, so families would find themselves moving once or twice a year just to cut down on costs) was because of the financial strain of Agnes' burial. Bridget would go on to have five more children, of whom only two would survive. Bridget herself died at the age of 36 from a weak heart (probably brought about by the intensive labour of 8 children in less than desirable conditions).

Sidebar: It's stories like these that make me rail so much against idiotic sites like Joyous Birth. I am very much in favour of home births and midwifery, but the idea that it is a woman's natural instinct to give birth and she should just be allowed to toddle off into the bushes to do it and anyone who tries to stop her is OPPRESSING her and making her a victim of BIRTH RAPE is fucking bullshit. You know what the difference is between being allowed to do that willy nilly and having actual professionals involved? Not dying.

The Moores' story is just one of thousands at 97 Orchard St alone. It's amazing to think of so many people entering and leaving a residential dwelling such as that. It's more amazing to think of the countless others who do it across the Lower East Side in significantly less well-to-do environments, with no sanitation, fire escapes or basic plumbing. 97 Orchard boasted a saloon in its basement - I found myself wondering the other day just how much trouble that caused for the young girls and women living in the tenement.

On the other hand, I was struck by the sense of community that such living conditions would engender. While life would have been undoubtedly hard and unenviable, there would (I imagine) have been a certain level of camaraderie amongst its residents, particularly the women and children all working and playing together in the tenements' hubs. While it's not a life I would want to live, I do think we miss out by not taking the best parts of it such as the concept of family as a community rather than a bloodline.

The most incredible thing about 97 Orchard St however is its preservation. By sheer luck, it has been preserved as it stood in 1935 when, rather than continuing to modify it in accordance with radically changing housing codes, the residents were evicted and the building boarded up. Only the store fronts were left open for business. It was left unoccupied and untouched for a further 50 years until it was rediscovered again in 1988. Layers upon layers of peeling plaster work adorn the tenement's inside walls, while cracked linoleum and exposed boards form the floor. It is truly an incredible example of living history.

(After the tour, we took part in Kitchen Conversations, a session which allowed the tour participants to discuss their thoughts with a TenMus facilitator. Alex told us that the TenMus had purchased another tenement further down the block and would be recreating the life of, among others, a Dominican family living on the LES in the 1980s. Dot suggests that in 20 years time they can purchase another former tenement and recreate the fascinating home life of 21st century hipster.)

Much as I experienced while standing outside the Tower of London of the Colloseum, I felt the ghosts of 97 Orchard St moving around me. Not in a literal sense, but figuratively - I like to imagine it as layers up on layers of history, all operating within the same space of time but with different spatial awareness - the wallpaper we erect over the existing patterns in no way negates that they exist, and in certain spots you can see where they stand together, crackling and peeling away as one.

The glimpse into history that 97 Orchard St provides the modern viewer is so precious, and the work the TenMus does in preserving it as laudable. I can't help but think of the many thousands of other families fucked over by the system and struggling to live within what were essentially slums. The Moores would be blessedly ignorant that their lives have become one of the historical fixtures for modern visitors to New York City, and yet they have touched the lives of millions of visitors to the TenMus over the years.

And then there is this little story. Long after the Moores had quit 97 Orchard St, a Russian family moved in. The Katz family suffered no infant mortality rates as the city had by this stage vastly improved their health and sanitation codes, as well as enforcing a system of checks in city schools. One of their daughters would grow up to be married and have children of her own, no trace of the marasmus that took Agnes' life so many years before.

But here is her name, scrawled in tentatively new cursive of a child and peeking out behind the peeling wallpaper of one of the upper rooms at 97 Orchard. A little girl leaving her mark on the world as so many children have done in so many living rooms across so many years. Ruth Katz.

We all of us contribute to the world, no matter how big or small we are, and we can never be sure if actions that seem to us mundane and everyday will fade away to dust or be gifted to future generations as a testament to how people like us lived in a time people like them have difficulty imaging. At the first entrance to 97 Orchard St, a sign stands bearing the words:

"You are walking in somebody else's footsteps. Who will walk in yours?"

Adventures on the UWS

2009-07-24T01:26:00.006+09:30

O, how gratifying it is to lead (probably briefly) the kind of life in which one can boast early morning intense productivity and be ready for playtime by 11am! I have spent an entirely pleasurable New York morning that has seen me:

1. take a little stroll in the UWS;

2. drink coffee in the kind of improbably tiny cafe that somehow manages to be indelicately snooty while enjoying the contradiction of selling boiled eggs on the counter;

3. read the New York Times at said cafe in what was no doubt the manner of a hopelessly self-conscious lady tourist trying to appear as if executing a natural daily activity; and

4. applied for this job.

Please to all be crossing your fingers and toes so that I might muscle my way into the hearts and minds of the nation's youth through the power of enforced library time educational TV!

Dot's UWS walking tour was everything it promised and more. Through Dot's exceptional tour guide capabilities, I learned the following:

1. The San Remo building (located at the end of Dot's street on Central Park West) has at various stages been home to Glen Close, Donna Karan, Mrs Kutcher (nee Demi Moore), Bruce Willis, Steve Martin, Aaron Spelling (RIP you dead, mad genius), ~~Oh No Who Invited Him?~~ Bono, Steven Spielberg and Dustin Hoffman (who still resides there). I like to think of them all in committee meetings, arguing over mundane residential trivialities such as could Demi and Bruce please stop having such loud, animalistic fornication and could Bono please stop ministering in the building foyer, because while they get that the situation in Africa is shit and would love to help, they might remind him that he's not exactly giving up all his worldly possessions to do anything other than annoy the entire world with his preaching pomposity and highly overrated music and perhaps it's come time for him to move on because, really, he can be such a drag.

Then we came to the Dakota, which many of you will know as the site of John Lennon's assassination. It was built in 1880 and is a monument to Germanic, gothic design. Yesterday, some workmen were painting the iron Santa gargoyles out the front an imposing black. It therefore does not surprise me that entry to the Dakota is extremely strict and overseen by a residential committee. Famous residents include Lauren Bacall, Roberta Flack, John Lennon (obvs) and Sean Lennon. Rejected by the board? Gene Simmons, Billy Joel, Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. I think they're all living somewhere on Sunset Boulevard now.

The Majestic is an art deco building that was the former home of the Luciano crime family. As such, many shady dealings have occurred there including the shooting of one Frank Costello in the Majestic's lobby. Dot instructs me to say 'maffia' instead of 'marfia' if I want to fit in. I quietly advise myself not to wander around NY saying anything about the maff/marfia at all if I don't want to get shot.

The Ansonia (see below) was built in 1904 and is famous for many reasons. Dot confirms my suspicions: that it's Beaux-Art (an architectural style she taught me about moments before), a flamboyantly designed and slightly ostentatious towering building that seeks to appear much swisher than it is. It's probably one of my favourite buildings in the world. Its original Turkish baths were converted to an infamous gay bathhouse and in 1977, a heterosexual swingers club opened called Plato's Retreat. Plato's Retreat was the launching pad for none other than Bette Midler's singing career. The Divine Ms M was accompanied by that timeless and most excellent musical genius Barry Manilow, of whom I won't hear a word spoken against. Because he is MUSIC! and he writes the SONGS!

Sidebar: These are just some of the reasons why it fucks me off to no end when people try and whitewash Bette Midler as some sort of pathetic, suet pudding 90s musical muck whose sole purpose was to appeal to an easy listening crowd of dull, middle aged shiksas. The Wind Beneath My Wings is not her entire ouvre, you ignorant numbskulls! She was a gay icon before Kylie Minogue even had a forehead in which to pump full of botox! She is a musical maverick! Educate yourselves!

Ditto to anyone who likes all kinds of music "except country". You don't even deserve to live.

Anyhoo, the Ansonia was also the filming location for Single White Female, which means it was the site for one of the greatest schlock films of all time and has had Jennifer Jason Leigh in its folds which makes it officially awesome.

It was beautiful..but I can't go around looking like you anymore.

And to conclude the highlights of yesterday's tour, here is Jerry Seinfeld's carpark:

Following Dot's tour, we ate lunch at a local Jewish diner where I ate a cobb salad that was roughly the same size as Bono's ego. Unlike Bono though, it was supremely satisfying and delicious. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that the diner's 'large' diet coke came in a glass almost as long as my forearm. Along with being situated in the arse end of the world and boasting Shane Warne as a citizen, under distribution of post mix soda is one of Australia's many cultural downfalls I feel.

After lunch, Dot and I headed to SoHo. (Well, she headed there. I sort of rolled, the enormous lunch providing a circular tyre in which I could comfortably propel myself down the city streets. Because of the inordinate amounts of fizzy drink consumed, I had no fear of losing pace with Dot, being able as it were to achieve short burst of acceleration through the release of bottom gas.)

We quickly bypassed the tourists vying to take photos of the half naked models parading in front of Abercrombie & Fitch (possibly the whitest store known to man - you can famliarise yourself with it here) and joined the other tourists convulsing in Forever 21. Truly, you don't appreciate how gross mass consumption is until you've been in a store stuffed to the brim with poorly made monstrosities shipped straight in from China. I really want to buy an F21 patchwork dress but all I can think of is the 3 year old girl who's stitched it in exchange for a low grade chipped lollipop and the promise of a night's sleep in a cardboard box. Ethical quandary...

The dirtiness of F21 was quickly eradicated when Dot and I visited my favourite bookstore in the entire world: The Strand. 18 miles of books and all of them joyously priced. Keen not to be outdone by my former NY jaunt (which saw me parcel home an entire box of Strand treasures for the low, low price of $100 - so, not so low after all), I loaded up with David Sedaris' "Holidays On Ice" and "Dress Your Family in Courderoy and Denim", Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea", Alice Sebold's "Lucky" (a memoir about rape! fun!) and Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" of which I have heard much about and have always wanted to read. I plan to return to purchase some extra pretty postcard collections of turn of the century men being 'affectionate' with each other.

The day was marred somewhat by a run in with one of the kinds of douchebags one has the unfortunate luck of running into occasionally. In New York, women will often find themselves stopped on the street by spruikers paid to try and lure them to beauty salons with promises of cheap 'dos and pamper sessions. This particular spruiker thought he would charm us into reversing our initial 'not interested's by telling us about his recent trip to Australia (and who, incidentally, upon learning that I came from South Australia asked if that was where Canberra was..). Things went from bad to worse when he began to tell us about all the many Australians he'd met.

"Australia? I've been there. I've met Abbos and Lebbos and...."

....at which point I interrupted him to say, "Right, we're going then."

Having second thoughts though, I persuaded Dot to wait for me while I went back to explain the offence in his statement. After all, I reasoned, he may not know that it's incredibly uncool to refer to Aboriginals and Lebanese people as such. I reproduce our conversation for you here in full:

Me: Look, I just thought I should let you know that it's really inappropriate to use the terms 'abbos' and 'lebbos'.

Douche: You know what, I'm actually part American Indian so it's okay.

Me: It's not okay. That's like saying it's okay for black people to talk about 'niggers'.

Douche: Yeah well, what about yobbos?

Me: That's a totally different thing! It's not racist for a start. You just can't talk like that!

Douche: Yeah well, I'm American Indian so I'm an abbo.

Me: Fuck dude! Shut up with the 'abbo' comments!

Douche: Look, I'm American Indian so I can say what I want.

Me: I don't give a fuck what you are, you cannot talk about Aboriginal people and call them 'abbos'!

Douche: You know what? I lived there for four years, so bobs your uncle. I hope you have a nice life.

Me: If you'd lived in Australia for four years you fucking moron then you'd know that Canberra wasn't in South Australia.

At this, I executed a perfect storm off, leaving him to scramble in embarrassment by trying to cover it up with cocky bravado. Cunt.

The worst part is that he'd vaguely mentioned something about comedy earlier on. As in, I think he considers himself a working comedian. Dude, a) racism is only funny if you're exposing the ignorance of people like you, not revelling in it; and b) if you were actually a working comedian you probably wouldn't have to stand on the street trying to sell haircuts to women who don't need them.

Later, Dot and her husband Blaine and I went to the Hi Life to drink pitchers of beer and inadvertantly disrupt the service by giving our orders to people not assigned to our table. We are so provincial like that.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must away to the outside of Dot's house - or, in the American shorthand Dot and Blaine have been teaching me, "I need to motivate". I have a date with a certain Israeli fellow tonight and it is absolutely vital that I find something to combat the humidity frizz that has assailed my hair. Preferably sans the help of a racist, low rent 'comedian' with delusions of hilarity.

audrey in the big apple

2009-07-22T22:22:00.013+09:30

Those of whom aren't following me on twitter (and thus being exposed to my ~~questionable~~ awesome twaikus) will be unaware that I'm currently indulging my pleasure zone in New York and generally being a gadabout in slip on shoes and jaunty summer outfits.

I know, I know. I'm effectively unemployed, I have basically no savings and should probably have considered turning 28 to be some kind of sign that I try to get my life in order. But what they hey, right? When Qantas posts ridiculously cheap sale prices on their website, it's practically compulsory to take advantage of them. I take no responsibility for responding as intended to their seductive attempts to woo passengers.*

Actually getting to New York turned out to be a breeze. I didn't even need to take the valium pills I'd stowed away in my wallet for just-in-cases. (Sidebar: Amusing Dad Moment - when I told him I had some backup valium, he became very stern, took a deep breath and then said, "My fear is that you'll become addicted." Meanwhile, all the middle aged women having dinner with us began raving about how amazing the big V was. It's almost as if men are from Mars and women are from, I don't know, Venus or something!)

But I digress.

Because I'm a mind magician, I seem to be quite adept at getting myself upgrades here and there. In the past, it's only ever been to premium economy which is, as the name suggests, just like economy but ever-so-slightly less shit. I really lucked out this time though - Brisbane to LA was spent luxuriating in the space age pods they've reserved for the folk rich enough to pretend that 20 hour flights are at all conducive to business dealings. For your benefit, I've included a picture below of the mini houses they provide for this class of traveller:

A complicated array of buttons on the pod's armrest will, when massaged correctly, collapse the entire inside tray into a bed. This comes in especially handy after consuming the copious amounts of highbrow liquor they provide, the ceremonial presentation of which is kicked off before the plane has even started cruising the runway. There are little shelves to put your books in and cubby holes for the various accoutrements of travel - pawpaw lip cream, evian face spray, nuclear strength anti-aging hand cream.

Unfortunately, I forgot that last one. As a result, my hands currently resemble what I imagine the withered claws of Miss Havisham would look like were she to strap herself into a long haul flight and drink far more red than was necessary before passing out in a dehydrated stupor to dream of new and more inventive ways to crush the souls of young lovers.

Of course, now I'm ruined for future travel expeditions. How can I wallow with the peasants back in strap now that I've seen how the other half live?

After 27 hours in transit, I landed at JFK last night in the midst of a summer rainstorm. The air was muggy, the sky was grey but driving through the city as the sun was setting was one of the prettiest times I've ever seen it. Although it's been seven months since I tramped through these streets, it felt like I'd never left. There was Grand Central, towering over 42nd street like it always has. Here's where you cut through Central Park to get to Columbus. There's Dot's house, tucked away on W74th street amidst tree shrouded brownstones with stoops and iron railings. The air always seems alive with possibility in this city, and the great gulps of it I drew in last night replenished a spirit in me that, I'm sad to say, has been drowning a little bit in recent months.

Two glasses of wine later and I promptly passed out on Dot and Blaine's couch with my earphones plugged into the musical stylings of Michael Giacchino. (Yes, I love the music in Lost enough to buy it from iTunes, WHAT OF IT? I like to listen to There's No Place Like Home and get a bit swept up in the delicate crescendos while daydreaming about Desmond's half naked torso. LET ME CHOOSE MY CHOICE. *distracted*)

Now it's mid morning. I've been up for almost five hours after jetlag pulled me out of a comfortable sleep at 5:30am. Because the light was streaming through the windows and I have some summer clothes that have been begging for action these past four months, I sprang out of bed and Went Exploring. Dot and Blaine live one street away from the Strawberry Fields entrance to Central Park, so I spent an exceptionally pleasing hour wandering up and down the little hills in the park, watching morning runners and dog walkers and generally feeling like if I don't move here for keeps within the next three seconds then my life will be meaningless and sallow and devoid of all notions of pleasure.

The weather boasted that perfect combination of humidity being held at bay by the crisp remnants of morning dew on grass. As I walked, it began heating up in the way that summer mornings do - slowly but surely, the air turning thick with summer swell, sweat droplets almost but not quite forming on one's decollatage, the exposed limbs of runners glistening in the morning light. As always, I was amazed that this oasis of nature lies smack in the middle of a city as intense and urban as New York. Adelaide can waffle on all it likes about its parklands, but until they build a baseball field and a zoo in the middle of Victoria Park, I will determine to remain unimpressed.

Must dash. Dot's taking me on a self devised walking tour of the Upper West Side, resplendant in important facts about local celebrities and the history of nearby buildings. I keep telling her she should charge for these wacky tours she creates - without her by my side in the Met last winter, I would have remained the ignorant, unartistic dullard I am inside and written off everything remotely abstract as 'shit, more shit, utter shit, shit that's taking the piss, shit'. Of course, I remain an ignorant dullard in many other areas, but I can at least now appreciate the notion that negative space in art is not always a case of the artist having a laugh - although, I maintain to this day that The Art Gallery of SA's 'Red On Black' is the artistic equivalent of brewing instant coffee in a plunger and calling it espresso. While wearing a beret.

In two weeks, I'm flying to Spain for a month to play with the Chilean, swim in Barcelonan beaches and become well versed in the art of Gaudi, Picasso and Dali. I anticipate lots of bicycle riding, broken Spanish and afternoon siestas. Then it's back to New York for two weeks before flying home to begin preparing for Adelaide Fringe 2010 - this year, Emily and I are writing a show about the landscape of love. (With Ms Davis' supreme talent, it will naturally be excellent so please do come along for some storytelling and more odes to old male rockers like the J.Cash and the Stones.)

Even though promises to blog more are really indicative of nothing more than the author's own (perhaps misguided) assumption that anyone actually cares if they blog less, I know I've neglected the apple barrel of late. What can I say - it's been a tough few months. But for those readers who have remained loyal, and for those who just pop in on occasion, I will be blogging this overseas jaunt relatively intensively to make up for the fact I wrote barely a skerrick about the last one.

So, you know. Come on by if you're interested.

Now, off for walkies and talkies. Later, I may call on the Israeli and kiss him on the lips while the summer heat settles outside. I may definitely do that.

* (Besides, when I think about it my employment situation isn't all that dire. I'm writing for a TV show now, don't you know.. *brushes fingernails against lapel foppishly*. And I'm heading to Queensland in November to work on a digital storytelling project for the State Library up there. On paper, things are looking pretty good.)

28 bottles of wine on the wall..

2009-06-30T00:58:00.001+09:30

Ah Melbourne, thou dost always bring a warmth to my heart even in the dead of winter...

I met with the lovely Mel Campbell this morning and chinwagged about the execrable articles in the new Sunday Life magazine, why white people love Mad Men and the none-too-tiny nugget of genius that was Germaine Greer's epitaph for MJ.

You may know Mel from A Wild Young Under Whimsy or just generally being an interesting Lady About Town. Anyhoo, we put away truckloads of coffee and I felt slightly anxious for the remainder of the day, which was primarily spent poking about overpriced antique markets and tacky, overpriced shitholes on Chapel St.

I was also beset by an unfamiliar sense of shock when I realised that the Footscray Coles would be packaging my goods for me in a *spits on fingers in manner of Catholics warding off evil eye* plastic bag. Truly, I had the same reaction I might have done had someone wandered into The Elephant Walk and lit up a cigarette. I mean....you just can't do that. Clearly the Great Plastic Bag Ban SA Edition can already be declared a successful social experiment if after only a few months people are already brainwashed into believing that the world prior to it existed in some kind of Carrollian dimension populated by talking eggs and this man:

Ah Depp. I thought that Willy Wonka might be a one off, a strange anomaly in an otherwise ordered and correct world - but no, it appears that you are capable of assuming multiple guises in which the likelihood of desiring boudoir intimacy with you would be virtually zero. Curses.

On Saturday night, I exceeded all prior levels of tacky white trashness when I attended my dear friend's birthday dinner and got blazing drunk on overpriced-but-shitty red wine. I then proceeded to drink two more of said bottles in the gutter outside with a motley crew of fellow trashbags who, tangentially to this experience, all claimed to be suffering from swine flu. Some other hijinks occurred which I think may have involved raucous discussions about slut shaming at The Union and possibly some ferocious haggling with a taxi driver. I woke up on a floor in Fitzroy the next morning with a cat curled next to my face and my liquid eyeliner still in place.

Yes, I'm nothing if not neat in my fooliganism. I may be a boozehound, but I like to think I'm a remarkably well preserved one.

This will come in handy, as I am one year older today - today (which is I suppose tomorrow, sort of, it being past midnight but today by the time you'll be able to read this) being my beeday, my 28th one. Which sounds a lot older than 27, and veering dangerously close to the dirty thirties. I wonder, will it still be acceptable for me to read Sweet Valley High books in the bath when I'm 30? Now that I'm old, will I have to give up watching ABC afternoon kids dramas? Is 28 really too ancient to consider party make out sessions one of the highlights of the week?

I jest, of course. One is NEVER too old to read Sweet Valley High books in the bath. That Jessica is such a scamp. A manipulative, sex crazed, wonderful bitch of a scamp.

tweet tweet...

2009-06-25T14:17:00.005+09:30

Ahead of my rapidly approaching descent into the jobless market, I have made somewhat of an astounding decision. While it fundamentally goes against most everything I believe in and will almost certainly lead to total brain rupture and spasmodic arthritis of the hands and wrists, I cannot in all good conscience avoid this path.

I have *hem hem* joined Twitter.

As Mr Collins would say, let me outline my reasons for marriage.

Firstly, it will serve as a great time filler in between geeking out over DVD box sets (speaking of, I'm almost up to date with Lost - suggestions for next celluloid obsession below plz) and peddling my wares to printy type places about the country. Secondly, it occurs to me that it may be some kind of career minded thing to do, given that I can use it to peddle MYSELF to any kind of public that chooses to be interested. And thirdly, which perhaps I ought to have listed first, it is the very great wish of my honourable patroness the Lady Catherine de Burgh that I do so, and in return she has promised to build shelves in my closet.

To be fair, that second part works well in theory but we're all friends here so I can be honest. I am less likely to use it for anything of substantial merit than I am to post photos of poorly thought out fashion choices like this, and attempt to solicit people's thoughts on the inherent tackiness thereof:

I refer of course to the tattoos, though the dubious choice of a singlet in June would understandably warrant its own discourse.

In conclusion, if you do that whole Twitter thing or just like to follow raging egomaniacs like myself, you can find me on www.twitter.com/audreyapple.

It could be fun. I'm considering making my 'thing' to update about current events and anti-feminism but communicate only in haiku. Maybe. Here is an example of a 'retweet' (check me out with my lingo...) to rachelhills re the media's reaction to the NRL sex 'scandal'.

Clare, she was branded

A slutbag who lies.

And Johns? A man amongst men.

Genius. Who can say?

And so, if you like

You can follow me right here

And lo! See me tweet!

That is all.

an exercise in non sequitur thinking

2009-06-24T01:05:00.009+09:30

Well, it's been a while but the time has come to revist an old friend. I say friend, but obviously what I mean is she of the horrendous-vile-harpy-contributing-to-the-destruction-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-through-the-use-of-mind-numbing-online-columns-and-poorly-researched-(if-at-all)-columns-on-gender,-dating-and-why-women-are-really-nothing-more-than-batshit-crazy-marriage-medusas-intent-on-trapping-men-by-filling-their-empty-depressed-wombs-up-with-~~collateral~~-babies!-and-then-giving-up-on-sex-because-now-the-ring-is-on-the-finger-they-don't-need-to-do-it-anymore-oh-and-also-men-are-heaps-nice-and-shit-and-women-just-won't-give-them-the-chance-because-they're-stuck-up-bitches-yay-pretend-feminism!

I am of course referring to Samantha Brett or, as I like to call her, That Fuckwit.

After all this time, I'm still uncertain as to what exactly qualifies Brett to speak with any kind of authority on relationships. Is it that she's been in some? Because I've been in some too, but you don't find me peddling misinformation and stereotypes online to a mostly moronic public. Which is a shame really, because I could teach people a thing or two about a thing or two - namely, that it is unwise to date a man who genuinely believes himself to be a Sith Lord and that men who take road trips when you've scheduled an abortion and then forget to call to see if you're okay are probably not what you'd call 'keepers'.

Luckily, you have me to read That Fuckwit's crap so you don't have to.

*hem hem*

This week, Brett asks the incredibly on-trend question of whether or not the anti-feminist movement is back in vogue. Only four hundred million similar articles or television segments have been produced on this in the last week, so we're fortunate that Brett has added her two cents to the vacuum of considered thought on this matter.

I had expected that she'd make mention of 60 Minutes' heinous report last week that suggested more and more young women are embracing 'traditional' roles of femininity - spurning the workplace to stay at home and look after Their Men, attending trite tupperware style retro kitchen wear parties and generally ignoring the fact that they've failed to borrow rampant alcoholism, sexual oppression and gut wrenching melancholy from the decade they've decided to idolise.

(You get the sense that reporter Ellen Fanning is doing all this through gritted teeth here. As an older woman in a sexist industry on an especially sexist network, it must have felt like chewing glass to construct a report on a 'phenonemon' that is essentially bogus, overblown wishful thinking and reflective of nothing other than some people's desires to will it into existence. I'm sure the presence of Germaine Greer was the studio's only concession to her complaints.)

But if there's one thing we've learned about Samantha Brett it's that she's fond of posing initial questions and not only blatantly failing to answer them, but in fact failing to tie them in any way, shape or form to the actual content of her ~~bilge~~ columns.

She begins by recounting the ~~fabrication~~ tale of a dinner she shared with a male friend recently. While dining on 'sushi and sake' (oh Sam, you are like, soooooo Sydney and cosmopolitan! Get down with your bad self!), she asked him why, if it was so easy for women to find men to sleep with, they couldn't find anyone to commit to them.

Interesting question, Sam. Of course, my initial response would be that you shouldn't seek answers to it from someone who'll offer you the following:

"Oh that," he replied. "Well, that we'll only do when it becomes obvious that a girl we're pseudo-dating proves to be the perfect girlfriend. With so many options these days, why settle for anything less?"

He went on to explain that while he'd happily bonk his dutiful f--- buddy, the thought of committing to her (and ditching the other three women on his speed dial) was enough to make him cringe...

Apparently his bonk-buddy didn't possess enough sex appeal, didn't have a great sense of humour, didn't talk enough about interesting topics, wasn't ambitious enough, didn't flatter his ego enough and wasn't - what he deemed key to getting him to commit - feminine.

"She dresses too much like a man," he exclaimed.

Ah-huh!

See, your friend is a fuckwith. While I understand that you're That Fuckwit, you need to be aware that he's That Other Fuckwit - and his essential douchery when it comes to sleeping with women he has no respect and no discernable admiration for yet considers himself better than is not explanation enough for the disconnect between sex and the willingness to commit that it requires an 'Ah-huh!' on your part. I mean, are you actually that person who believes every lame thing an emotional fuckwad says is indisputable evidence for Why The World Is What It Is?

Here is a verbal painting of your brain.

"He says he won't commit because she's not feminine, meaning that she doesn't flatter his ego enough. Ergo, this must be true and she must be Letting The Side Down with her comfortable shoes and inability to pander to the emotional needs of childish men with a penis complex. Ergo, this must be true of all situations in which men are reluctant to commit to women.

I am now equipped to pen an ill-conceived and spurious treatise on something unrelated to this matter but pretending to be. As usual, I shall offer up no conclusion but leave it to my readers to try and spin some kind of cohesive thought structure out of this mess. Also, I shall cash my ridiculously large check which I continued to bank when other Age writers were on strike, because I have no morals or sense of unity."

She continues:

So was this the issue of contention when it came to the modern female single epidemic?

Brett then goes on to discuss the work of Helen B. Andelin, a Mormon mother of 8 and general thorn in the side of women with, you know, brains. Andelin founded the Fascinating Womanhood movement, which basically instructs women to defer to their husbands in everything, act girlishly and deny their own essential sexuality. Andelin wrote that:

"Sexuality in a woman does not arouse love in a man. Love is aroused by wholesome feminine qualities."

But Brett's hypothesis as always fails to deconstruct the rubbish she's actually talking about. She provides a whole bunch of quotes which, both on their own and in context of Adelin's book, are certifiable garbage - yet the only hint she gives at her disapproval of these ideas is labeling the book 'tedious' and at times hilariously outdated.

Eff, she can't even discern the theoretical difference between the random opinion of some twat she's drinking sake with and actual in depth studies on the views of men and women.

"Perhaps. But when I delved deeper into the topic, it appeared that it wasn't only their dress sense that was sending men away in droves. And it's not even something recent either."

See what she did there?! Firstly, she lied because she said she 'delved' when we know that at best she's conducted a pathetic straw poll of one. She then assumed that That Other Fuckwit's one example of cuntish behaviour was actually the result of some kind of vast action on behalf of women everywhere. WE are sending THEM away in droves with our expectation that love means never having to say you're sorry for wearing sneakers and enjoying financial independence! In droves!

Surely the appropriate response here would be, 'Get over it you self absorbed, arrogant douchebag. Admit that you don't want to commit because what you really want is a woman who'll submit to your assumed brilliance, let you be smarter than her, funnier than her, more powerful and more successful, and who will look good hanging from your arm in front of all the other smart, funny, powerful, successful men you fancy yourself to be in competition with. Fuck this shit, I'm off home to drink vodka and tell everybody I've ever met about what a wanker you are."

But instead of dismissing her friend's views on femininity and commitment as outdated claptrap AKIN to the kind of malarkey pedaled by Adelin, she assumes that his explanation is both correct and universal.

I mean, FUCK. It's offensive enough that she's even provided with paid writing work but you'd think the woman would be forced to actually follow the basic tenets of opinion writing. Namely, have one.

Personally, I like what commentor Ms Magoo has to say.

"I think that for anyone who wants to become a Mormon, give birth to eight children, marry a dentist and pretend they are living in the 1960s, this could be a useful resource."

I'd like to amend this slightly to apply to Brett's site as a whole and say that for anyone who wants to lose a few IQ points a week, learn how to give birth to nonsensical theories, commit themselves to following the inane babbles of an imbecile with too much air time and pretend they are living in Sex and the City, this is an essential resource.

After all, where else could they read such stellar material as this:

"Women don't give enough men a chance any more," a twentysomething male single friend told me over drinks last week. "That's why so many women are single. You should do a column on that: 'Why more women should give more men a go.'"
I was intrigued as he continued: "You see that woman talking to my friend over there?"

He gestured over to a short, balding bloke with pale skin and a leather jacket who was attempting to chat up a bored-looking busty brunette.

"Now, he may not be the best-looking guy in the club, but I happen to know that he is a really great, decent dude. But look at her - she's not even going to give him more than two minutes of her time before she walks away. That's modern women for you."

Obviously it came as no surprise that Brett didn't bother to question why the short, balding man thought he deserved a busty brunette when there are far more noticeable absences of short, portly women being given the time of day by chesty men.

But what could you expect from a woman who describes vomitous marketing tie in and hideously dated battle of the sexes film vehicle He's Just Not That Into You as "Zeitgeist-defining"?

Samantha, your brain called. It wants its bond back.

GFC. I knew him, Horatio...

2009-06-19T16:41:00.003+09:30

For the first time in what seems like an age, I'd actually planned to do some site maintenance today. I was up practically at the crack of dawn, bunkered down at the kitchen table and sifting through some websites of varying interest.

Having finally fast forwarded to the future and hooked my house up to the World Wide Web, I took some time to appreciate the ease in which most other middle class people live. Good food, fast internet, warm houses. Life was pretty good. For me, at least.

I was even resisting the urge to submerge myself in season 4 of Lost. Last night, we learned that the island is mad wack when it comes to time, and that Hot Desmond narrowly escaped time travel related nutjob brain failure by anchoring himself to the lovely Penny. We also learned that Kate is not the bundle of awesomeness tha we previously assumed her to be, but rather a vicious harpy who toys with the emotions of that fine hunk of manhood, Sawyer. (sidebar: perhaps one of the funniest moments ever had Sawyer interrupted while reading Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. He found it 'predictable'.)

In amongst all this learning, we ALSO learned that Locke is going progressively mad as he becomes more obsessed with the island's secrets, and Juliet purses her lips too much. Oh, and that Hurley is just about the cutest thing to have ever been created for television, ever.

But any fan of Lost would know these things already, and would in fact be about a season and a half in front of me. SO DON'T SAY ANYTHING.

Anyhoo, I was ignoring Lost in favour of my shiny new internet connection and the myriad of different things there were to get mad about today. There was the Liberal staffer caught groping the breasts of his colleagues and superiors at Parliament's mid-winter ball. Is it facepalmishly amusing that he worked for the Opposition's Spokesperson for Women, Sophie Mirabella? No, it just makes it sadder. And by that, I of course mean Cirque de So Lame. Honestly, dude? If you're going to be a gross douchebag who assaults women in public, do you think you might attempt to do it with a little more finesse than a 12 year old schoolboy at his first mixed-party-in-a-basement? You don't ask to grab someone's 'boobs' at a ball.

Then there was this lovely speciman (and doesn't he look a treat in his Today Tonight-esque mug shot there?) who's seriously attempting to pass off running a puerile cyber bullying website as some grand defence of free speech.

"Many of the victims are teenage girls who have had their name, photo and phone numbers posted, accompanied by invitations to bombard them with abusive phone calls and text messages or ask them for sex."

But what does Andew Pallant have to say about it?

"I don't put the pen in anybody's hand!"

Dude, that's the defence equivalent of responding to anything your sister says with "I know you are, but what am I?" and farting in her face. Grow up. These are real people's lives, you scum sucking misogynist douchebag.

This morning, I also learned that calling your fetus a 'fetus' and choosing to abort it might mean that later down the line when you actually want to keep your pregnancy, your crazy lady brain won't be able to distinguish between the two. So, you might actually HAVE your baby and think, but hang on! isn't it a fetus?

*confused*

And then you'll kill it. So ladies, make sure you NEVER refer to the thing growing inside of you as ANYTHING other than a BABY because you just might find yourself facing a life sentence and not quite knowing what happened. This message has come to you courtesy of a male columnist with no discernable fucking idea of what it feels like to have something growing inside of you, fetus or otherwise.

So there were all these anger-making (yes, I've read Scott Westerfeld) things to write about this morning, and I was all set to do it and spurning Lost and everything in favour of being a PROFESSIONAL person with GOALS and MOTIVATION.

And then I got a call from my editor telling me my column has been nixed. The paper is taking a new direction and I apparently do not fit in with that vision. Pants.

To my credit, I did not at that moment collapse into a heaping wreck and decide to take refuge in the warm, inviting hollows of Sawyer's dimples. Instead, I've done more work in one day trying to line up freelance work than I have in the entire past 14 months. Complacency is a terrible thing, but the removal of it is a fantastic motivator...

Ah well. I have a hollyday lined up to New York and Barcelona in August. Maybe I'll just stay there and ply my wares on the streets. I can change my name to Lila and acquaint myself with the world's oldest profession. Considering I've been doing just that for the last six months in this job anyway, I should be a dab hand at it.

And now I'm off to get blazed and excuse myself for smoking.