I really like the word 'hobo.'

Why is it that squid and octopus can fold themselves up 'til they're really small and squeeze through, like, bottles and shit when they have a big 'ole bone in their head?

I really do think I've become a lot less smart than I once was. Soon I'll be watching Jerry Springer and wearing track pants with snaps down the side, maybe licking a few windows. I'm not going to lie, I'm concerned.

As an aside, Sleater-Kinney were teh radd, as were my concert going companions.

..it's sensible, according to Miss Cheney, and I agree.

I spent Australia Day crying my little heart out over 'Brokeback Mountain,' and I was mightily impressed. Fortunately pretty much everyone I went with emerged red eyed and sniffling, so I wasn't the only one affected/aroused.

Sleater-Kinney tonight! My ovaries can barely contain their excitement! Indeed, this is really more an excursion for my ovaries than for me. They're feeling neglected lately, what with all the hormonal contraception and the dearth of feminist fury going around. On Saturday I'm going to buy them Golden Gaytimes and take them to the zoo. They like the penguins. I like the seals. It'll be fun for all.

I listen to the news because it's comforting to know that there are big, important things happening all the time that are far more important than you and the things you worry about. Like earthquakes. And the gas pipeline between Russia and Ukraine.

I'm getting tattooed next week. I'll finish the design this week and get it done after I get paid next week, so I drive to Melbourne with an onion skin arm. I used to get all my tattoos done alone but now I'm people have been coming with me, so you're all welcome to join.

Apparently today is the most depressing day of all.

Actually, it hasn't been too bad for me. I've already had a bit of a shit week, but I perked up after lifting heavy shit in the gym to the sounds of Danger Doom and reading about fat (phat) people in the library. That was so gosh-darned good I think I'll do it again tomorrow, and the day after that, and not just because I have an interview with my future supervisor in a little over a week and I want to tell them more about my thesis idea(s) than a few lame weasel words and some shrugging.

Actually, I'm rather excited about this new idea I have. I met her in a bar the other night, and she was, like, totally intriguing. Partly because of her big ole ass, partly because she wasn't my other idea, a vague cluster of loosely related abstract concepts and references to Suimone deBeauvoir. Today I took her out for lunch and she totally let me put my hand on her knee. Basically my idea is about fat people, and about looking at the historical context of our moral attitudes towards fat people, and tying that in with medical/medical insurance rhetoric about fat people. I plan on using the term 'bargearse' liberally.

As an aside, has anyone used Copywrite? I find it intriguing, and I hate Word with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

As another aside, I got my copy of the Hay(na)ku Anthology in the mail today. It was a great thrill to see my name in print. Thanks, Eileen and Mark!

As another aside, I try not to ask the internet for too much ego stroking 'cause she's either too heavy handed and I get sore or her mind is on other things and I feel neglected, but my word this is shaping up to be a questionable sort of week. If any of you have a comment in you it would be greatly appreciated.

I Googled 'neck pain' to see if I could buy some prescription RX from Mexico so my neck won't hurt/my penis will be large and erect, and I found one of the most disturbing pictures I've ever seen. More disturbing even than the one eyed, noseless kitten and the frog baby from Yemen.

You want to see it? It's, like, a distillation of all the bad children's books in the world combined with all the occupational health and safety posters of the world and all the Communist propaganda the Soviet Union, China and North Korea has ever come up with.

Are you ready?



OMG OMG OMG!

The pumpkin-headed doctor lady has exerted so much force on that mute, unsmiling man's neck that his cranium has actually distorted! On top of that, he's clearly wearing a prisoner's uniform, so maybe it isn't medical treatment. Maybe this is, like, an artist's impression of some extraordinary rendition torture camp in the remote Mongolian Steppes, where grim young men are tortured in fiendish men by pumpkin-headed bespectacled women!

I also bought a $2 disposable camera today from my favourite krappy kamera outlet, The Reject Shop. Technically it's a Polaroid camera, and rather more sturdily built than the rest of their krappy kameras, so I'm looking forward to finding out why it's so gosh-darned cheap. Maybe they replaced the film with duct tape.

I had my first properly done bikini wax this morning, thus violating my own rule of minimizing all professional contact with my crotch. It was just the garden variety no-pubes-out-of-your-swimmers wax, which I normally do myself, but I'm just not that flexible/there's only so much wax you can tear off your cat before you realise some things are better left in the hands of others. It was pretty awkward, but not that bad.

I graduated this morning, which is to say I got my degree in the post. It comes in a swanky blue tube. I didn't want to go to the ceremony for my undergrad seeing as I'm toddling back to uni this year. Like my wedding, I want to graduate for keeps.

I've been suffering from a flaccid personality the past few days. I'm blaming work. And smoking too much. Either that or my own personal universe has let herself go and is just not that attractive any more.

"Is it true what they say about every fourth son in Samoa?" Antony asked the crowd. "That there are all these little girly boys running around?" He stared thoughtfully at the keys for a moment and started to play. Then stopped. "You know, I really fear for those little islands, what with global warming and all. I'd hate for them to be gone before I get a chance to go there."

I saw Antony and the Johnsons and >Cocorosie over the weekend and it was amazing, brilliant, witty, just about every cliched superlative reviewers like to use. Cocorosie was definitely the highlight for me, though. My God were the Casady sisters ever hot, especially, uhm, the one with the shorter hair and the earrings and the rather delectable tummy, the one who sounds like Billy Holiday. She sang a song by Kevin Little and with the grinding of the air and her voice and everything else there wasn't a dry seat in the house.

Apparently they're playing at The Basement next Saturday. I'm not going to lie, I'm seriously tempted to go back up to see them again. But I don't want to pay the money to stay in another dodgy, oddly Christian hotel again. Any Sydneysiders willing to let me mooch?

As an aside, there's a cafe near Centennial Park that serves the best baked beans I've ever tasted. I'm not at all familiar with Sydney but the CBD makes me want to destroy humanity, so with a couple of hours to kill on Sunday I got on a random bus and decided to stay on it until the city was no longer ugly. It was great. I had a conversation with a cyclist, met a knuckle-headed Staffy with the appropriate name of Spud, and the water came with slices of strawberry and lime in it. I think it's called the Hub and I have no idea where it is, but if I'm ever marooned in that dreadful city again I'll definitely try and find it.

As another aside there's a new Kevin Dolgin dispatch up on McSweeney's. I love Kevin's dispatches, and I can't help wondering what miracle in his life makes it possible for him to travel to all these places.

You might remember my kvetching about the dearth of decent sunscreen available on our shelves, something that still irks me. I mean, come on, we have no ozone layer above our continent and it's too damned hot to stay inside all the time. You'd expect to find sunscreen in the water, but no. Our apathetic society would prefer if everyone fried themselves to death.

On that note, I shall review the sunscreens that passed through my life in 2005. Trust me, there were quite a few.

Some Neutrogena moisturizer with an SPF rating. Neutrogena moisturizing can be compared to the colour beige, or to Swiss people. They're effective in that they don't really make you break out; indeed, there's no real evidence that they do anything at all. When it started to warm up my nose turned a flattering shade of alcoholic pink. Next.

Ella Bache Great Block. Take some margarine, the really cheap kind full of lots of saturated fats and trans-fats and other things that'll make you die really young. Cross it with the yellowy, oil-streaked, stinky sunblock of your youth, then cram it into a blue tube and sell it for $30 bucks. I was looking for the Ultraceuticals person when the Ella Bache woman attacked me, all lipliner and viciously scraped back hair. 'It's oil free,' she said. 'You can use it on your face and everything.'

If you were ever to heed one piece of advice from me, ever to take one word I say to heart, it would be this: Ella Bache sunscreen is cheap, oily, wrong crap. It was also practically used up by my cohort at Falls, so I don't have to bother with it ever again.

Ultraceuticals poncy sun defying cream of immortality and ponies. After the Ella Bache trauma I went back to the Ultraceuticals counter and talked to a severe, authoritarian young woman, a kind of cosmetic dominatrix if you will. She spouted off the triple barrelled names of a number of products that would undoubtedly flatten my eye bags, enable my skin to reflect light, increase my IQ and make me irresistable in the job market. I told her I just wanted something to prevent sunburn. She gave me some samples, which was nice of her. I asked how much a full tube cost. She said $60. I laughed and went on my way.

Megan Gale invisible zinc. I bought this in a blind panic from a pharmacy the morning I left for Falls. It's a dense, dryish paste, not unlike toothpaste or caulk. The zinc isn't so invisble, but I don't mind the Noh theatre look. It's not too greasy and it's named after some chick with amazing norks. Two thumbs up.

I understand:
Reality TV.

Iron on hemming tape.

Belconnen (aka Belcompton), as both a concept and the place where I live.

The difference between an attack and an advance in foil according to current FIE rules.

Jessica Simpson/Lachey. I know the woman is dumber than a bowl of mice, and that her torture of 'These boots were made for walking' has Nancy Sinatra spinning and spinning in her grave, but put her on a TV screen/in a dodgy gossip magazine/in a vat of chocolate sauce and I cannot look away.

Kurt Vonnegut.

The musical stylings of Bratmobile.

Turtles.

I do not understand:
Why police in Florida had to taser a bear.

The copy in poncy fashion magazines. 'Channel Ghengis Khan this spring, feel the sweet taste of your enemy's blood running down your chin as you bite into his still-beating heart like an overripe peach in this Fendi hand-embroidered goat hair djellaba, $25,000 from selected outlets.'

The difference between a French seam and a flat felled seam.

Why, after hundreds upon hundreds of years of swordplay, fencers still dress like sperm.

Angelina Jolie. She has weird fish lips, she can't act and she keeps buying babies from impoverished countries, which just isn't cricket.

Spearfishing. Just seems a bit mean.

Judith Butler. Oy, the clever lady with the made up words and the sentences and the essays that go on and on and on and, glaven, they hurt me.

Axolotls. They feel like snot.

• There are two versions of Gilette's three bladed razor model, one for men and one for women. In the 'States, for reasons still unclear to me (although the ample availability of beguilingly fruit scented shaving creams marketed to women might explain it), I went for the ladies version. It was... okay. The insultingly large bumper cushions around the blade made your standard legs-armpits-try not to slash your ankles morning shower kind of hard, and the handle was weirdly Barbie-ish and pastel coloured. When I came back to Australia I went back to using the lad's version, and I tell you what it didn't muck around. A few swipes with a non-padded blade attached to a non-ergonomically curvaceous handle and one's extremities are again suitable for our oppressive heteropatriarchy.
  
  Misogynistic conspiracy by Gilette? I think so.
  
  
• The ladies upstairs at work smells a hell of a lot better than the ladies downstairs at work. Downstairs is like a truck stop; upstairs is like a fancy hotel. Do they employ better cleaners for the capitalists upstairs? I think so.
  
  
• I can't think of another conspiracy, really. My life is untroubled at the moment, save for a sudden inability to get it up, email-wise, which is to say my emails are of a bland and sometimes hostile tone when they should be glib, hopefully endearing and loaded with synonyms for genitalia. Hopefully this shall resolve itself soon.
  

Not only are gastric bypass elves having their way with me as I sleep, by all accounts there are panty-snatching gnomes in my undie drawer (note: to date no actual panties have been snatched. Hee. Panties.) The other day I was looking for a pair of brown stockings to go with the blue frock that goes with my blues shoes and found some black micronets, a pair of blackish grey stockings patterned like flocked wallpaper and a veritable gross of black opaque tights from my Godard phase. Not one of the countless pairs of coffee, tan, chocolate, burnt umber and brown stockings I have poured my money into in recent months surfaced. Not one!

Oh, well, I thought. At least there's my Superman-like collection of regulation black moulded bras, the ones that make the under-endowed lady look like she has norks and help prevent the dreaded nipples that could cut glass look. Ladies and germs, I do my laundry regularly. I fold things, put them away, run an iron over what needs ironing. I'm no slouch in the clothing maintenence department, but do you think I could find one bra that was not made at the same time 'Puberty Blues' was released? No, I could not, because the friggin' gnomes had got at them all. Stupid gnomes. Maybe I should install a wall safe to keep my smalls in.

In other news, robots are awesome.

Edited to say: I just realised I'd originally typed 'gastric bypass elves are having their way with me as I speak,' instead of 'as I sleep.' Rather changes the meaning/creates irrepairable mental damage, doesn't it?

One of the best days of my life involved my friend Solana, a revolving cast of shaggy-haired American anthropology students, one of those glowingly green lawns they have in California, sunshine and a ukelele. Ukeleles always make for a great time, really.

I need:

• An Antony and the Johnsons buddy for next week. I heard through various not-particularly-reliable grapevines that Cocorosie is supporting this Sydney Festival gig, which is why I ran to the internetweb and scored myself a ticket straight away because Maison de Mon Reve is embedded in my stereo (now, sadly, rather literally) and in my heart and soul. Anyway,I know only a couple of friends-of-friends who are going, and while it's A okay with me to hang out in Sydney all on my lonesome it'd be nice if there was someone else around to share the fun.
  
• A place to live in Melbourne, preferably within spittin' distance of Melbourne uni. So does my lad Travis. I'm small, neat(ish) and make a mean stir fry. I have about a month to find somewhere suitable, or not suitable as the case may be, so help a sister out.
  
• *eep, coworker just walked past with the blogger window open on my screen.*
  
• Who's going to Sleater-Kinney at the Gaelic Club? Woo! It'll be great! I can smell the oestregen from here!
  

I *heart* lists.

I'm eating cookies out of boredom at work, something I'm actually not in the habit of doing. Worrying, considering I just discovered I've lost around two or three kilos in the last month through no conscious intervention of my own, and have no real desire to put said weight back on again. Possible causes of unconscious weight loss include tapeworms (too, eugh, multi-segmented and horrifying to contemplate), gastric bypass elves visiting my in the middle of the night to gradually reduce the size of my stomach, and the summer heat making most non-icy pole food unattractive.

The family and I threw ourselves into the CSIRO diet about a month ago, and we're still half-heartedly following it in the sense that we all eat All Bran combined with Wheatbix for breakfast. It was actually pretty good. I don't really need to lose weight, but not eating so much processed stuff and sugar did make me feel a whole lot perkier.

Oy, now I'm musing about the relative size of my ass online. In fifteen minutes I get to go to the gym, where I watch prime time TV while jogging on a treadmill. For reasons I have yet to fully explain to myself I find this comforting.

(In case it wasn't blindingly obvious, writing anything of late, even a feeble blog post, is a lot like chewing a wad of cotton. It's frustrating and shit gets stuck in my teeth. To cure this I need some falafel from Kismet, the best damn falafel maker in Canberra, a dress to go with my new blue shoes, some form of short and/or ugly dog to keep me company, and the entire SBS news team naked and oiled. Actually, I don't think any of that would get me writing, it'd just mean I'd be satiated in the sartorial and carnal senses and I'd have a dog. Still, better than a kick in the teeth, hey?)

The Falls Festival was teh radd. Truth be told, I'm not the greatest fan of music festivals. If the line up's really good then you descend into some kind of musical ADD, where you mind is only half on the band in front of you. If the line up's not so great then there's the heat, the dirt, and the unholy wrongness of the toilet trucks (...shudder). But Falls was good. The crowd was friendly, if a little on the booner side, the valley was gorgeous and there was a beach. It was more like a camping trip with a beach and a few bands than a music festival, and that was fun.

Highlights included:

• 'I need to find the medical tent.' 'There's the medical tent, over there.' 'Where?' 'Over there, see? There's a red cross.' 'That's not a red cross, it's a white cross on a red flag.' 'What's the difference?' 'That's a Swiss flag.' 'Oh. Maybe you could open a bank account.'
  
• True Live. I've heard snippets of their stuff on radio and wasn't too fussed, but a double bass on stage surely does get me going, I tell you what. They shit all over the haggard, overtoured corpses of the Cat Empire, and I'm glad of it.
  
• Stranger talking to friend: 'It's going to be pissing down soon.' Me piping up: 'No it's not!' 'It so is, look at that lightning.' 'But there's no thunder.' 'It's still going to piss down.' 'It's really far away. If there's no thunder there's no storm.' 'I reckon you're full of it. Would you like a beer?'
  
• Going in to Lorne, on the pretense of going to the beach, on a bus full of tanned, lithe, bikini-clad things with bottoms like peaches and instead reading the paper for three hours with my lad Travis.
  
• The fuzzy, pudgy, wriggly chocolate labrador puppy encountered during said paper reading expedition.
  
• Ugly Duckling playing to a sea of floodlit, bouncing people.
  

This morning I decided to celebrate the new year by finally, finally getting my eyebrows waxed. I sneeze when I pluck, plus I find tearing hair out of my face a little offputting, so I had a fine set of Jack Nicholson-esque furry tadpoles going on. While I must say having someone else fiddle around with your eyes is a touch invading, I now look like a real girl. Farewell, Jack Nicholson. I'm sure I'll see you again when I run out of money to have my body hair tended to.