Best. McSweeney's. Ever.

I went to perform my cat aunt duties last night, but the fluffy little bastard, to be known henceforth as Kilgore Trout (if not to Mattay and Monkey, then at least to me), didn't want anything to do with me. Even Bizui bit my hand savagely when I poked her fuzzy, fuzzy belly. My pussy mojo be busted. I am sad.

After coming home from a particularly draining day at work, I looked in the mirror to see a little popped blood vessel in my eye. That's it. I'm going to go eat pizza and make jokes about midgets with mah posse, and I'm not coming out untl my eyes are normal and the world feels like a better place.

It's 8am. The Smiths are on my sister's jellybeanish CD player. I've been up for over half an hour, and spent most of that pecking away at Word. I've only had one cigarette and two bananas. Dude, what the fuck is up with that?

I'm in the clutches of Procrastathor, the demon goddess of procrastination. Fortunately I only have to go to work tomorrow, so there's no need for me to, like, sleep. On the way to the gym I had this great diatribe going in my head about how I'm really good with cats, like, really good, because I have pussy mojo and admitting that is about as appealing as admitting that, while you're not good with people, you can embalm a corpse like whoa. After coming home, rinsing the gym off, flicking through a few pages of a book on the Ladies' Home Journal and consumer culture, and generally feeling incapable of constructing coherent sentences I realised jokes about embalming are never okay. I think I've achieved something tonight.

Scene: Jamie (sausage-fingered hobbit man of awesomeness) and I (spiky haired gay cowboy of doom) in Civic on a Friday night. Giving in to peer pressure, or at least a need to do something with our hands, we decide to obtain cigarettes from that bottleshop near the hobby store full of men who will never know the touch of a woman because they play with little painted figurines of orcs and dwarves and that's nerdy.)

Me: Hey, why don't we get a bottle of Moët and swig it out of a paper bag in the gutter? I hear that's classy.

Jamie: Maybe. Or we could get a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and drink it in Fadden Pines.

M: In the half pipe?

J: Is there any other kind?

M: Oooh, look, they have weeny, tiny packs of cigarettes! They're so cute! I could try an entirely different colour!

J: Which colour would you try?

M: I dunno. Blue?

J: Eww. Blue is for old, old men.

M: I meant the baby blue one.

Helpful shopdude: They're sixes.

M: You mean they're girl cigarettes?

H.S: Yes. They are girl cigarettes.

M: I'm totally getting girl cigarettes!

J: Why? It's such a waste of money.

M: I'm getting girl cigarettes and then I'ma have a hazelnut latte and then I'm gonna ovulate and have babies because I'm a girl and that's what girls do!

J: You shame me.

God, I was happy to get out of work today. I collapsed on my bed with TamsonCat, Babes in Toyland and a pile of books, grateful to be away from children and idiotic questions. It's a filthy, filthy lie that there are no stupid questions. There are plenty of stupid questions, many of them asked by sloe-eyed children scampering about the store sticking their hands in tanks and prodding the axolotls, many others asked by slightly manic mothers grateful to speak to an adult at least once in their day. For example - "Are the bubble eyes sick? Why are they like that? Does it hurt them?" The very name 'bubble eye' implies that they are meant to have those great sagging, flaccid balloons sagging beneath each eye. And, yeah, it's kind of interesting to wonder why someone would create a creature who, from the age of 6 months, lives in morbid fear of sharp objects and mainly sits at the bottom of the tank weighed down by its novelty eye growths, but such things are out of the scope of a mere shopgirl.

It wouldn't be so bad if people asked questions because they were interested in the answer, but they don't. The little kids, many of whom clearly hail from the Land of the Nigel, want to be clever in front of a grown up and gain some attention. They want to drag you around the store showing you things over and over, and they want to be praised for it. The parents aren't much better. It's the mums who get me the most. Some of them are clearly so starved for adult company they'll say anything to be rid of the kids for a few minutes. And they all want you to agree that, yes, the seahorses are very pretty. Le sigh. Such are the perils of low level casual employment.

Still, there are some cool people who buy fish. Like the guy who brought a duckling in today. Have you ever heard two women ovulate simultaneously at the sight of a squeaking brown and yellow ball of fluff? It kind of sounds like bubble wrap popping. Oh, the noises that were made. The duck's name was Diesel. He had been rescued from a diesel spill in Sullivan's Creek. We put him in the koi pond and let him paddle around, peeping away, and the cuteness nearly caused my brain to implode. It occurred to me that a duck must be an advantageous thing to have with you. A kind of adorable credit card, if you will. You could go into a pub, put the duck on the bar, let it peep around for a little bit, then mention that the duckling really wants a rum and coke. Or you could go to a servo and ask for a tank of petrol for your duck. Hmm. I wonder if you can get wallet sized duckling?

... were booner guys in a WRX wolf whistling at The Girl and I, and me trilling back "thank you!" in my perkiest, girliest, sweetest voice ever, and tall men with beards pointing out that the word 'sex' can be heard in every conversation I ever had, ever, and running into one of my best friends from high school - who I hadn't seen for years and years and years - in the Phoenix and swapping stories about how our Stupid Dumb All Girls Catholic School was shit and everyone who ever went there is now pregnant or drug addicted or married or generally fucked up and how we include ourselves in that number because we're fucked up, too, but we're fucked up in a cool way and at least we have interesting hair, and then wedging myself between that low, hobbitish table and the python lamp to talk about scissors with strangers from Melbourne, and then when we made the heinous mistake of actually going back to Cube, that place filled with judgemental lesbians clinging, barnacle-like, to the walls and pool tables, my boy Leon held me in a bone-crushing hug and said he was proud to be my pseudo heterosexual life partner, and while I have few ladies, I am always taking applications, fo shizzle.

How ace are run on sentences? Like, really.

Well, I've finally become a woman. After two years of hormone induced female castration, I finally had a period. This might sound like too much information, but I've been whining about it to my friends from the get-go. It's not fair! I had the good sense to get a glory rod inserted creepily into my upper arm. I shouldn't have to worry about such things. The Girl suggested we have a glass of champagne to toast my newfound fertility. I say nuts to that. Screw this 'natural' shit, I want to pump my body so full of hormones it barely does anything offensive.

There's a public fencing display today to raise money for the tsunami. Why anyone would be more compelled to give money after watching a bunch of people dressed up like sperm poncing around and shouting in French I don't know, but they're doing their best, darnit. Folks from my club have left several plaintive messages on my phone asking me to come, but I'm not sure if I will. I'm all kinds of burnt out after the Melbourne comp, and my fencing science ain't too tight lately. It's one thing to fence like an idiot in the warm, neon-lit embrace of the ANU hall, it's another to do it in front of a collection of strangers in Garema Place.

I dragged my posse along to Cube last night for the ladies' night. It was hella lame. They were being Nazis about letting men in until 1am, which sucks because, while I have many heaps ace friends, I have few ladies. Fortunately after 1am I could bring Schultz, who isn't a person as much as he is the Lord Krishna in a striped shirt and Birkenstocks.

I brought home yet another fish. His name is Manuel. He makes Eduardo and Hernandez look like the scrappy, ill-bred urchins they are.

I own so many black ribbed singlets I could wear the same thing every day for weeks and weeks without ever having to do the washing. Like Superman, or Homer Simpson, except much more boring.

Hint: the ladies' chesty Bonds, currently being flogged by the lissome and evil Sarah O'Hare, are shit. They're too short and ride up over your gut in an unflattering, body shortening way. Buy the smallest size in the guy's singlets, the ones that come in the old-school cellophane packet.

Every part of my body is dry and/or peeling. Behold Girl Lizard.

My sunburn and I curled up to watch Adam Sandler stutter and fret in 'Punchdrunk Love.' My sunburn and I sat up all night bent into uncomfortable angles to find the coolest parts of new white sheets. My sunburn and I suck the water from the fishtank which never clears despite countless water changes and furious scrubbing. My sunburn and I are a little delirious this afternoon. I think I'll go to sleep in the pool.

Blockhead
Big B
Furious B
Furious B & the Nasty Bunch
The Blockmeister
Splodge*
Splodgehead
Splodgepants
Splodgealot of Splodgonia
Baron Von Splogdenheimer
Mary Splodgpoppens
Becca

*I also call TamsonCat Splodge. As I've mentioned before, I'm not sure if this means I think of my sister as a housecat or of my housecat as a sister.

Eduardo is sick. He blew the rays in his dorsal fin and tail, and there is dark patchy fungus on his body. He's still eating and flaring at Hernandez, but he looks like he's been run over. I've given him formalin malachite, and am debating putting him in a separate tank so Hernandez doesn't get sick. I probably won't, though, because all I have are jars and I don't have a spare heater floating around. Putting him in a jar would only freak him out, and he doesn't need stress right now.

GrrrrrrrrooooWWWWrrrrrr.... I feel so goddamned unfocused. It's around 1pm and all I've really done is medicate Eduardo, watch Invader Zim, and get through a suicidal amount of coffee. I should be doing things, by 'doing things' I mean 'writing things,' but, as my last few posts will attest, my writing science ain't the best at the moment. I'm trying to get an article finished by the 25th, and I'm going to need to interview some people. I've written a very sketchy first draft, but I'm not happy with it. The tone is all wrong. I haven't taken a photo in weeks, nor have I posted any, and I haven't come close to writing a single poem (*tangent* I have hella issues admitting that I even write poetry - odd, considering the entire poetry blog I have. I have a fear of pretension. */tangent*) I'm just in a nasty brain slump, and I don't know how to get out of it. I'm looking forward to next semester, my first as an honest-to-God arts student. It still thrills me to think that I won't have to take another psychology class ever again - ever!

I should be picking up this sexy beastie by the end of next week. I can't wait.

In other news - I heard the wonderful Shauny's very sleepy voice the other day. I'm so excited about her engagement to Dr. G. It couldn't happen to anyone better.

Could someone please obtain for me this book thank you very much have a nice day.

I spent a good hermit-y few hours at a cafe in Civic meandering through some of the really neat stuff I'm working on, watching the booner and car show ho runoff from summernats and reading the most excellent 'Gould's Book of Fish' by Richard Flanagan. I'm really enjoying it because (a) it's a novel in twelve fish and how cool is that? and (b) it is littered with ampersands. I enjoy this because, as any cursory glance through my journals will attest, I use squashy, amorphous ampersands with abandon when I'm writing for no one but myself.

And I quote -

At best a bicture, a book are only open doors inviting you into an empty house, & once inside you just have to make the rest up as well as you can. All I can show you with any conviction is a little of what happened to me here - the whys & wherefores, that's so much waffle for the judges with their black caps & powdered wigs, for the criticasters & their like: guilst, sin, motivation, inspiration, what is good, what is bad - who knows? Who cares?

TamsonCat is sitting with the fuzzy flat of her head wedged beneath my chin. She purrs in wheezy little bursts, and drapes her tail over the keyboard. This is her way of telling me to go to bed.

(nerd note: as I was about to go to bed I previewed this entry and noticed that, silly me, I hadn't actually put a blockquote class in the stylesheet. Being the lazy shit I am I quickly ctrl+ced a .normal class and threw in some span tags, the same span tags I used to spend hours painstakingly removing from Dreamweaver files when I was a professional web troll. This is a good time to mention that I'd been nominated for best design in the Australian Blog Awards. Didn't win, obviously. Still, I am most flattered.)

I miss school. I miss lectures. I miss being told to read things and learn things and write things. Nothing gets me randier than a good long research paper. Nothing. There's nothing better than spending hours in the stacks reading things and writing things and thinking things. Now that school is out my brain has atrophied and words aren't... good... now... Damnit. Although I am working out a helluva lot more, and even eked out my first ever one armed push-up the other night.

I went swimming tonight for the first time in way, way too long, and had this great long diatribe about the wonders of Jay Prosser, and how I could just lick 'Second Skins' it's so damned good, but that's faded away with my fifth set of stomach crunches. Now my belly hurts and I'm playing 'Post' by Bjork and I can't think of anything.

Hmm. We'll talk later.