Bratmobile and the Donnas are two very similar girl bands that share a similar background. So similar they played gigs together when they were fresh-faced and hot and weren't played on any radio station that celebrated 'Rocktober.'

Bratmobile, to the best of my knowledge, still hasn't been played by a radio station that celebrates 'Rocktober.'

I really like Bratmobile a lot. They are cool and have nice hair. They have lyrics like 'all the fucken boys in the fucken bands/just shut up and get outta my car.' I like that because I'm so sick of boys and guitars I could punch someone. In fact, I think I might next time the urge strikes.

I don't like The Donnas at all. They are vapid. Instead of telling the boys in the band to go fuck themselves they wheedle for them to 'take me to the backseat.' Ignoring the fact that making out in the backseat is awkward and wrong, this is queasily mainstream.

The Donnas have unicorns and fluoro colours in their music videos, the same kind of unicorns and fluoro colours that might be used to sell tampons or deodorant to impressionable teenage girls.

I haven't seen a Bratmobile video clip, but I did once drive through the darkened streets of a small Californian town with my friend Solana rockin' out old school while we talked about abortion laws in the US, so that could be their video.

My question is, why are the Donnas easily found in the large discount music emporium, and Bratmobile are not? I know Bratmobile aren't together any more, but their worthy contemporaries Bikini Kill still have something of a following.

I don't get it. This world is fucked.

I made a mini-pact with myself to post something every day in order to amble out of the howling maw of ambivalence that threatens to have me permanently bug-eyed on the couch watching Hogan Knows Best and muttering about how I coulda been a contender, but it's fuckin' hard when the only thing you want to write about its yourself.

To that end, I provide an extract of the daily correspondence I engage in with my favourite country squire, Mr Leon. We keep ourselves sane by talking about girls, boys, haircuts and Tamagotchis.

I wonder if my permanent flip out/paranoia about such things as sex and relationships is just programming. Like, I'm not doing it right if I'm not obsessing or wringing my hands over some part of it. Maybe, when I'd rather think about my family or puppies or the insane new car sitting in our garage, I'm thinking about what I'm always thinking about, which is some permutation of 'nobody loves me, I hate/love/hate/love/hate/love/hate/love you all, I wear black on the outside because black is how I feeeeeel on the inside, take me out toniiiiight, frankly, mr shankley.'

Journey of a 1,000 miles begins with one stepcakes.

I've been reading about how to improve one's handwriting. It's thoroughly pleasant.

I direct you all to Bible Porn.

Someone make me think something, please.

Today I have disentangled myself from a growing mass of increasingly dense cats, rocked up to boxing and 'trained' (feebly; sometimes I come over all self conscious and, therefore, all Keystone Cops and it's not pretty), found my iPod and my copy of the unfortunately titled 'Emergency Sex,' and consumed so much caffeine and nicotine I could well turn into a hummingbird at any second.

I eschewed the company of people tonight, and instead swore to send off a summary of my 'thesis topic' (read, a few choice buzzwords ensconced in a dense wad of throat clearing, hand wringing and brain snot; done), finish stuff for the HORRENDOUSLY OVERDUE CRAFT SWAP I signed up for (ahem, not done), clean up for once in my pitiful life (heh, not done) and slump on the sofa watching Six Feet Under (done!).

I also posted stuff in the photo area, so go look at my jaggy, noisy digital efforts and give me your sweet comment love.

Tomorrow I'm going to loiter in the dark room until I get pupils like a candy raver and start to look like Gollum.

MOST STEREOTYPICAL BLOG ENTRY EVAH!!

If there's one truth drilled into Australian youth, it's that the sun kills. It's true, it does. It gives you cancer, it gives you wrinkles, it makes you age prematurely and should generally be avoided. Now, if this were taken seriously I would expect sunscreen to be some serious, readily available, highly researched stuff. I'd expect sunscreen pills and aerosol sunscreen and sunscreen added to the water supply. I'd expect to find a sunscreen dispenser in the dashboard of my car (note: can be achieved with duct tape), and to see ads for new, improved forms of sunscreen sprinkled liberally through the pages of women's magazines.

And what do we get? We get white goop that feels like slightly off cream mixed with cooking oil which stays sticky for hours (so you can tell it's working!) and makes you break out into offensively greasy, pustulent zits the likes of which you haven't seen since you began experimenting with pancake makeup in year seven. You go into Priceline expecting to find a nice selection of sun protection products and all you see are four feeble bottles of Banana Boat in a sea of tanners, bronzers and after sun lotion. I mean, what kind of good is slapping a bit of aloe on your red, excoriated skin when you could have just bought a non-greasy, quickly absorbing 30+ and skipped out on the whole melanoma part?

I must admit to being a little biased. Not only am I fluorescently pale, but I had the kind of acne in my younger days that could only be treated by a paper bag and a mild case of agoraphobia. I've been through two, count 'em, two courses of roaccutane, aka chemotherapy for blackheads, and I'm still a little greasy and prone to breaking out. I'm going to burn, I'm going to get pimples; can't sunscreen make it easy?

The only sunscreen for the facialular region I found to work was Clinique City Block, which is rather expensive and works best with another expensive Clinique product with a name so long and ridiculous it does not bear repeating here. I'm contemplating trying the Ultraceuticals sunscreen, which comes in a bigger tube but may well be just as expensive, but I don't want to end up with a $40 tube of glorified margarine. There was a pretty good spray sunscreen floating around, but I can't find it anywhere, and I'm obsessive enough to have spent a fair amount of time looking.

I think there's only one solution, really. Next time you're outside enjoying the sunshine on a beautiful spring day, I'll be the one under the burqa huddled under a tree reading Margaret Atwood.

I've finally updated my links list. I've been reading ever so much new stuff, especially as I'm stuck behind a desk for the latter half of the day, so it's about time. Everything comes highly recommended, ie I actually click through them, so clicky clicky!

I've been listening to the soundtrack for Drawing Restraint 9 while sitting here and I can tell you it's a great study album. Atmospheric, moody, but it doesn't completely blow me away. The opening track, 'Gratitude,' is rather special, and I don't think Matthew Barney is Bjork's Yoko or anything. Still. The film itself sounds like a pretentious waste of time, although it could be rather pretty.

Statue made of vaseline? How Joseph Beuys. Not that that's much of an insult.

Ironically, it is performance poetry that is eating away at the universal characteristics of poetry. Voice has become, not something that is welded into lines of language on a once-blank page, but a fetishised thing of personal ownership - my voice, with my accent and all I have to say with this voice is to do with me, me, me. That's why the only way you can experience this language is if I personally perform it for you.

A-fucking-men, sister.

Ignores the fact that all has been unsettlingly quiet on my poetic fronts. I swear, I'll feel lyrical tomorrow. Perhaps when I'm not posting from a computer queasily in the line of sight of about five different people, including an impossibly tiny, impossibly cute, impossibly Russian girl and some shaggy, pierced thing with a Cypress Hill ring tone on his phone.

'I've pooed more interesting things than that.'

'Not now, I've got pubes are down to my ankles.'

'Geeze, your tits look fantastic in that. A girl could lose herself in those.'

'Do you have any gum? I have onion breath that could strip paint.'

'You're right, you don't have an arse. You can have some of mine, but.'

In other news, I'm updating the photo section at last. In the words of the Beastie Boys, ch-ch-ch-check it out.

In other, other news (I didn't want to bump this entry) this interview with Kurt Vonnegut reminds me why I have his words literally tattooed into my body.

I have been stricken with a serious bout of Taking Oneself Seriously. A thousand judgemental eyes turn upon me, the apple I ate for dinner churns uncomfortably in my stomach, and my life becomes unliveable and strange.

The only solution is to run around and around and around the carpark outside in big retarded circles, pretending to be some kind of antelope or horse or cheetah.

Excuse me a moment.

(as a sidenote, it's true. Authors don't get enough play.)

(a) I took a photograph of an elderly woman at a train station. She didn't see me take it, I was on the train, but her legs were grossly swollen and cracked and yellow and bleeding. I took the photo so I could ask my sister, a nurse-in-training, what was wrong with her legs. Looking at it full screen the picture is melancholy and beautiful; she's calmly having her coffee while her flesh decomposes on her living bones. This is...

(b) Very pretentious but Christ on a bicycle I ain't got nothing on some of those kids. I had a lovely time there in general but I'm still sour and broken out from many hours of travel, :. cranky to the power of 11. Tomorrow I'll write a big long post about the wonderful workshops I went to and the lovely people I met but right now all I can think is...

(c) Hippies are horrible and spoken word artists have displaced DJs as the lowest form of life, in my opinion. I say this only because...

(d) Student media people are driven, creative and inspirational. I bow down to anyone who can get a publication off the ground.

(e) My travel plans to go to one of Shauny's much-anticipated weddings, ie, buy a ticket to Bathurst once I get to Newcastle, fell through wretchedly, classing me as a grade A turd. Earlier this week the Countrylink lady said the train to Bathurst was booked out, but I could catch another train to Arsecrack NSW, then a bus to Nutsack NSW, then a rickshaw to Ingrown Hair NSW, followed by a camel ride to Cowra. I would also end up in Cowra much too late, so I thought 'nuts to you, lady' and went on my merry way anyway. She was right. Who knew trains could be booked out? I sheepishly call Monkey, my contact with the olde Canberra blogger crew, who levels me by telling me I shouldn't apologise to her but to my friend who I haven't seen in years.

I still can't quite get the smell of 'flaky shit' off. I might try Napisan.

(e) If you call an event a trashy dance party, and the trashiest music you can come up with is Joy Division and Peaches, and requests for 'Groove Is In The Heart' and Salt n' Pepa go unfulfilled, it is not, in fact, a trashy dance party.