Brangelina love Ayn Rand.

I need no more proof that the spawn Miss I-love-the-childrens-and-the-motorbikes-and-my-brother is popping out in some Namibian colonial estate while Brad sips quinine and oversees the plantation is, in fact, the antichrist. God. Why do people find that woman attractive? She has nothing our Lyndsay.

Via Bookslut.

"Hey, who wants to dress like we're out of Reservoir Dogs and stand around in the back yard cradling celery and wine, looking sad, while men in dresses cavort around us?"

"FUCK YEAH!"

I went to sleep with my Sharpie smeared hand pressed against my neck and now I look like I've been attacked by lipstick-wearing hicky fairies. There are worse things, I suppose.

I just bought a Flickr Pro account so, in the words of Danger Doom, drink up, bitches! I'll continue to post photos I find especially striking in the Photo page, but it's getting to be kind of a drag and I want Flickr love. I got my first comment last night and I plan on getting many more. Also, am thinking of replacing LibraryThing sidebar with Flickr sidebar, which I don't want to do because I love LibraryThing, but I also paid for Flickr and want some traffic.

As an aside, attention all designerators. I know you're out there. Any of you want to give me a hand with redesigning this clunky, homemade wreck of a blog? I want something with serif fonts and jellyfish. I will find a way to reward whoever comes to my rescue. It may involve cakes. Or some kind of biscuit. Hell, why don't I just buy you a lap dance and get it over with?

This morning I actually woke up, looked at my desk and the piles of books and notebooks on it, and pulled the covers back over my head as though if I only closed my eyes tightly enough, it would all go away.

I've never felt this nauseated over school work. It might be because it's been drilled into me that my life is over if I don't get an H1 and a dean's award, it might be because the first semester is close enough to over it might as well be, and I've only got one project finished and after that I was such a wreck all I could do was lie down and twitch for a few hours, it might be because I really don't want to fuck it up.

It doesn't help that the other kids in my classes drift into class all, hey, wassup? Reading? I don't need to do the reading! I'll knock off the essay tomorrow night, or pay a small smart Cambodian child to do it, HA HA HA HA HA HA! Hey, Rach, think you might need a new concealer 'cause you look a mess! DON'T STRESS IT MAKES YOU OLDER!!

I think I might go have another lie down...

I have to work today. Another day of Comic Sans.

*twitch*

I'm blaming the Howard government for the latest indignity inflicted on us at work (actually, I kid, this is the first indignity, I have a rather lovely job and on Friday the reception lady bought us all pizza). They just changed the system we use, from a broken down databasey thing that delegated tasks out to broken down Word, to a whole series of broken down databasey things that freeze, crash and lose things with monotonous regularity. Frankly, broken things at work I can deal with, because such things can be fixed and I can read 'Who' in the meantime, but they had to redesign the whole thing in Comic Sans.

Fucking Comic Sans.

Can you imagine what kind of effect staring at screen after screen full of Comic Sans might have on a person? CAN YOU??

I swear, there's more in my head than just fonts, but COMIC SANS. GOD.

Actually, at the moment I'm mostly wondering how sparrows get into our kitchen every morning, even though the doors and windows are closed. I am so down with the sparrows around our house. They all have a bolshy, Oliver Twistish air about them, and they sit in a vast chattering cabal outside the kitchen window in the morning. The sound of a dozen twittering mice-with-wings is a lovely thing to eat toast to, but lately I always find one zooming frantically about the kitchen when I come down. How the fuck do they get in? Did they dig a tunnel beneath the tiles so they can plunder the crumbs by the toaster? Do swallows have powers of astral projection or telekinesis? And why do they freak out so damned much when they find themselves in an enclosed space? Clearly the put a lot of effort into getting in, they really shouldn't complain.

Silly birds.

I wonder if I don't just have a vitamin deficiency or an illness or some shit like that 'cause my skin feels wrong, kind of like someone sandblasted me then rolled me, lamington style, in a crispy layer of dead skin. Dead skin. Ew.

Someone's been listening to Mogwai. I like Mogwai but not all the time. Is that smell pot or is it a different kind of smell?

They really do sound like Mogwai. Not too sure I like it. Maybe I'll tell the guy I came with.

(he says they sound more like Explosions in the Sky)

Oh, man, I've only ever heard bits and pieces of Explosions in the Sky in people's cars and living rooms and shit, and I've never paid attention. Should I listen to Explosions in the Sky?

Nah.

Are those two girls holding hands together or are they just holding hands? I like her hair. I wonder if it's naturally straight or if she, too, singes her earlobes in the morning? Aw, I hope they are together, I love it when cute girls are together. I hope they make each other pancakes in the morning and wear each other's clothes and send each other funny, strange text messages about zombies and how the 'Big Issue' guy asked for their phone number, and I hope they stumble home tonight, drunk and silly and giggling, and shag each other senseless.

Sigh. I wish I had a girlfriend.

I wonder if the cab driver from the other night, the dude who played bhangra and told me about his gynaecologist wife and his master's degree, recovered from his headache. Actually, I don't really care. My feet hurt. Oh, you're using a sample of an old man talking about the pokies, how... artistic.

I wonder if the trams will still be running by the time we get out.

Hell-o, boy in a Sleater Kinney t-shirt. I totally have that shirt and it's totally the reason I'm living in the house I'm living in. I dig on your sleeve tattoo. Maybe I could ask you about it after the show, and we could buy each other drinks and talk forgettable shit, and you could ask me what the thing is behind the guy in the tattoo on my arm, and I could be all, hey, shut up, and then, and then...

I AM THE WORST LESBIAN EVER.

This is taking a long time. I want a cigarette. The hole in my lip is crusty. It's too dark to notice, isn't it?

I don't want to write my RPP paper. I don't want to go to the gym. I don't want to sit fidgeting in front of my computer for endless hours staring at the flashing insertion point whatsit feeling my insides heave and my eyelids twitch.

Egad, that lady's cantilevered bosom is a glory! Look at her standing there, all, hey, I'm watching a band and I'm, like, not bored at all, and there are her chesticles all soft and lovely and out there and it's like she doesn't even notice! I wonder what she's thinking about? Why does everyone keep going on about these guys? It's such droney stoner music.

Sigh. I wish I had boobs.

I would like to go home and do some stretches and go to my bed with a cup of tea and find out what happened to the Prime Minister in this week's Agatha Christie.

OH FOR FUCK'S.

I was vacuuming my room when I heard a friendly toot outside. There was the Toll Ipec man! Hello Toll Ipec man! I ran downstairs and opened the door to see him driving away.

*insert mental break here*

I have to catch a bus out to Port Melbourne this afternoon aroud 6.30. I'm not going to lie, several of my arteries are now a little harder. I feel better after going to the markets, buying virtuous, Rosemary Stantonish quantities of leafy green things, huffing a bunch of basil and having my weekly mental debate about the pros and cons of taking home a ducking (pro: duckling, con: none I can think of). If I could be permitted an overwrought moment I suspect this is one of those times when the universe prods me the way a kid prods a washed up bluebottle on the beach, and with gritted teeth I'll try and just deal with that.

10.12 - Finished John Frow. Sat tapping my piercing against my teeth for a while until I decided it was far too obnoxious, so I took photos of my cameras. I also used the last few frames on the roll of Portra in the Holga photographing the Canon, 'cause I have good priorities. If you squint you can see my Barbie pink nails in one picture.

9.17am - 'Consumption is the that set of tactics by which the weak make use of the strong,' John Frow paraphrasing Michel de Certeau. Neat quote and I think I agree. The day doesn't look new any more and I just realised a book I borrowed for a paper has an essay by Catherine Lumby in it. Eugh. I feel dirty, especially since she'd probably hump the leg of that quote I just emphatically underlined. I've called Optus twice to see if I could pick up the damned phone as I need to go to the markets and don't want to wait around. One shudders to think of the phone bill. I keep thinking of emotionallly unavailable people who won't call you back when they say they will, but THIS IS IRRELEVENT.

9.23am - One of the advantages of my putting my desk, Rear Window style, against the window is I can see what happens on the street. A courier has just parked opposite me. Is he my courier? He's reversing into an alley and pulling away. He is not my courier.

8.14am - It's a beautiful morning! I've been up since 7am but didn't get to the gym 'cause I didn't want to miss the Optus man just in case he came with my new umbilicus, erm, phone. Optus have been ever so helpful, and all I've got to do is wait at home from 8am to 5pm for the delivery. I have piles and piles of reading and laundry and whatnot to do, so it'll be great!

My birthday Tuesday was good. There was a hefty amount of suck involved, but it was still good. Those good things include but are not limited to:

• Watching a giraffe wee for a really, really, really long time,
  
• The pink nailpolish a friend bought for me,
  
• Free scotch and cigarettes,
  
• 'So what do you serve at a dog cafe?
  'Oh, you know, pupaccinos, Schmackos, things dogs like.'
  'What about the soup?'
  'What soup?'
  'I hate that soup.'
  'Tell her about the soup!'
  'I HATE THAT FUCKEN SOUP.'
  'TELL HER!'
  *sigh* 'We also have border cauliflower soup.'
  *chortle*
  *defeated sigh*
  
• Staying up til the wee hours with my housemates getting delicately crunk on wine that just kept appearing in our kitchen. We talked about God, Britney Spears, and while male friends are different to female friends.
  

Waiting for the Optus man isn't going to be a horribly inconvenient waste of a day at all, I can feel it in me waters.

Birthdays suck cock, such a litany of pissiness and whatnot. Mr Jamie and Miss Cheney are no longer coming down as they've run out of money, I no longer have my phone so I can't call anyone/have no one's numbers, I'm a week behind on work, BITCH MOAN BITCH.

I'm going to go see some Cronenberg gore tonight, old school. Maybe that'll cheer me up.

Fucken birthdays. Hate you so fucken much.

Yesterday Blockhead and I were literally locked into a cage of kittens. I'm not making this up. We were wandering down Sydney Road when we happened upon a pet store, and since I can never let a pet store slip by me we went in. One of the kittens had giant white paws and gnawed on my little finger with the grim vigour of a small cat rehearsing carnivorehood. I'm thinking I might get a cat.

Question 1: Should I, an employed but poor student living in a house where we smoke in the kitchen, nay, while cooking, commit myself to a small, fuzzy, finger-chewing life at this point?

I read Agatha Christie novels before bed because her protagonists always appreciate a good tea set, crimes are solved quickly and neatly using only the haziest of mental deduction, and the British upper classes are soothing and stuffy. I used to read Margaret Atwood, but now I need something a little more emotionless.

Question 2: What's your bed time book?

I'd like to read some fiction while I have moderately more time. I'm tossing up between Ali Smith's The Accidental and David Foster Wallace's Consider The Lobster, which isn't fiction but it seems unlikely to have footnotes so it counts, damnit.

Question 3: Pick which book I shall buy.

Blockhead and I went to see a film the other night. For some reason still beyond me the cinema was in the Crown Casino, which I don't recommend as casinos are the sad neon underbelly of human life. Anyhoozle, the film was V for Vendetta, and while I'm always up for a bit of sword fightin' and Natalie Portman shavin' my enjoyment tumbled irrevocably into a plot hole about two thirds of the way in.

Question 4: V for Vendetta: sucks or blows?

How great is tea?

Question 5: Earl Grey or English Breakfast? I do not acknowledge Lady Grey.

- The Mountain Goats were teh raddest and John Darnielle is charming and funny, and Peter (I can't remember his surname) is snappily dressed and lovely. There are photos here at my new and under utilised Flickr account. Man, they only let you put up three sets if you don't have a pro account. Anyhoozle, I took many a picture that night and still haven't edited/uploaded all of them, so there's only one or two of Mr Darnielle but quite a few of the white robed opening act. Sadly I've totally forgotten their name, but if you were at the Corner Wednesday night please, please enlighten me.

- Blockhead is here to enjoy her holiday, and she and Miss Chloe accompanied me to a debate/talk whatsit on the Sydney riots last night. There were five speakers, but the reason I went was Ghassan Hage, author of White Nation, which I seriously can't recommend enough. White Nation is as much an indictment of liberal, cosmopolitan intellectuals, who deploy the language of multiculturalism and 'tolerance' to disguise an implicit and deeply held racism. He points out that claims to 'tolerance' depend on the idea that you're in the position to be intolerant but, kindly, choose not to be. If you claim to welcome others you're assuming that it's up to you to decide who's welcomed and who isn't. In effacing their own racism, the cosmopolitan multiculturalists Hage criticises make white, working class men bear the burden of all racism. In making themselves the tolerant class they create an intolerant class. It's a nuanced way of thinking about nationalism and multiculturalism in this country, especially in light of the riots.

- I can't stop listening to Aesop Rock. I think I need help.

- Ross Noble is a funny, funny, funny, funny man. It's a wonder I didn't rupture something during his surreal riff on exploding vaginas. BH and I are going to see Demetri Martin this Saturday. It should be rad.

My favourite font to write things with, scholarly or otherwise, is Hoefler Text. It used to be Palatino Linotype. Indeed, I have a tattoo in Palatino Linotype, 18pt, on my left hip.

What's your favourite font? Anyone who says Helvetica will be punished, punished by God.

I finally updated my woeful and embarrassing about page to something more accurate and appropriate.

It's my birthday next week. I'm half excited because in my imagination there'll be fun and presents and txt msgs saying 'happy birthday, Rachael!' but my birthdays, without fail, suck cock. Huge disappointment cock. However, I always have very satisfying farewells. Like when I was about to leave the 'States, my friends threw me a white trash themed going away party. They had country music and gave me a wifebeater which everyone signed. My best friend/non-heterosexual life partner/future father of my children Wyatt wrote 'I bottom for Jesus' on the back. It's above my bed.

I... don't want to do any work tonight. But I will anyway, by gum!

I love this town! Miss Chlo and I got howlingly, stumblingly, messily drunk last night at an art opening. This thrills (and shames) me for a couple of reasons. One, did you know that if you just front up to a gallery opening they'll give you all the free Chardy you can snort *and* they won't complain when you leave lipstick prints all over the glasse? Two, some people can take any cultural event (in this case, conceptual art featuring office chairs and grey plastic wastepaper baskets) and turn it into a juvenile piss up full of jokes about burning things and shoes.

Oh, what a messy night. I even got to make out with someone in a taxi, dousing any undifferentiated randiness I might have been feeling earlier. Fortunately a collection of affectionate drunkards and one sober American came to my house with more free wine and saved me from disgrace/an awkward morning.

I had a dream last night that I covered my whole body with huge, badly done tattoos of superheroes, panicked, and searched frantically for the phone book so I could call a surgeon to remove them. I woke up in a panic, checking to see if I was actually covered in big, ugly tattoos. Is this a new subconscious way of dealing with drunk shame? Perhaps. Or maybe I just really want a tattoo of Superman on my bum.

Oh, and as an aside I'm posting like a maniac in the photo section, so reward all my earnest curves tinkering by having a bit of a gander, maybe even a bit of a comment.

My proposal done and it is a thing of beauty or a pile of academic doublespeak depending on how you look at it. I'm listening to The Mountain Goats and if you're in town y'all should come to the free show at Melbourne Uni on the eleventh. I'll be the lovestruck girl up the front with an armload of books on governmentality.

There's a movie called 'Snakes on a Plane,' starring Samuel L. Jackson and featuring the line 'I want these motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking plane,' and I was not informed? You go now.



Go!

'Perhaps it was this incomprehension to which Barney alluded in the title of his next major work, Blind Perineum, a performance piece in which the artist used mountain-climbing gear to clamber about naked on the walls and ceiling of the Barbara Gladstone Gallery. Still, the public and the critical establishment seemed resistant to the power of the work, unable fully to grasp the radical nature of Barney's explorations.'

'Two pairs of naughty testicles make a slimy escape attempt from their master's leather pockets as they race about the Isle of Man on motorcycles. A tightly withdrawn scrotum fills the screen, painfully clamped with multicolored ribbons that stream back through the goatman's legs to a pair of motorcycles parked on ovular platforms.'

I hate you, Matthew Barney.

(I know it's satire but it's just on the mark enough to illustrate my deep hatred)

...you just want to pick up a seagull with both hands, thumbs behind its neck, fingers beneath its breast, and hold it for a minute or so while its bewildered orange feet paddle the air. Just sometimes.

In times of strain, such as now when I'm struggling through reading three articles on hip hop and the Black Atlantic, four on racialized spectatorship, one half-unwritten draft that must be sent to someone by 11 tonight at the latest, and a 2,500 word essay due in a week and a half on Bourdieu and why, for a Frenchman with a florid turn of phrase, he was a friend of the proletariat, I get a little toey. I don't mean 'toey' as in 'healthy, red-blooded sexual appetite,' I mean 'I can't deal with this shit, you there, with the mo and the haircut like a pile of lawn clippings, let's forget everything and rut like weasels' kind of toey. Right now I'm a roiling mass of hormones and tension in a brown cardigan and glasses. As a result I have the pinched, ferrety expression of a flasher or panty snatcher. Attractive, no?

I've been thinking for a while now that I'm a dirty, twitchy, perverted man trapped in the body of a regular looking girl. I've been wanting to see 'Crash' by David Cronenberg for the longest time, ever since I saw it recreated with teddy bears on 'Eat Carpet.' I finally found it on closed reserve at the library here, so, ignoring the words 'erotic thriller' and 'car crash fetish,' I settled in to a video carrel to watch it. The girl to my right was watching 'Lantana' while feverishly taking notes, and the boy to my right was watching 'Three Colours Blue.' I was watching a plasticky mid-90s blonde rooting a faceless man over the wing of a light aircraft. And it got better from there. I squirmed uncomfortably as James Spader gave Elias Kazan a head job, Holly Hunter and Roseanna Arquette made leg bracey lesbian love in the back seat of a wrecked car, hookers were hired and utilised in the back seat of a moving car, and a man with Jayne Mansfield boobs was decapitated in a car crash. I would have enjoyed it if I wasn't in a very public place. Out of anything I had to suppress snorts of laughter at the most sterile pillow talk in the history of cheesy sex scenes when James Spader's wife asked him 'What do you think his anus looks like? Does his car smell like semen?' (for the record, James Spader replies 'yes, his car does smell like semen,' and I chortled).

In other news, a man let me hold his chubby, wriggly, soft-eared staffy pup today. Just so you know it's not all sexual frustration and public indecency in these parts.

So I got the 350D and it's lovely and also not lovely at the same time. Lovely because it's a big (but not too big), solid (I don't know why all those reviewers said the build quality sucked, it feels fine to me, not as good as my F-1 or OM10 but still good) hunk of high falutin' technology, and not lovely because it's a big, solid hunk of technology. It somehow feels too good for me, and the photos I've taken so far have suffered because there are too many buttons and I don't quite know what to do with them. I'm getting there, though. The 18-55 kit lens is a waste of time. It's noisy and slow and it hunts for focus, so I'm getting a 50mm prime pretty soon. By all accounts they're cheap and good and small, good for wandering around with at night.

Anyhoozle, I got to take pictures of the pelvic exam ladies and now I can share them with you. I walk to the gym past the site for the Melbourne Wimmen's* Hospital, and the plywood fence is covered with the pelvic exam ladies. It doesn't say anything about pelvic exams. I think it's meant to be about the Diversity and Strength of Wimmen, as there are a few old wrinkled ladies, a lady in hijab, an Indian lady and a couple of spunky, short-haired types in glasses. I find them hilarious for reasons I can't entirely explain, mainly because you know the Wimmen's Hospital is entirely concerned with various medically disciplined lady parts, your cervixes, your boobs, your perineums and your babies. Every service they provide would involve at least a pair of rubber gloves and some lubricant, and these ladies just look so happy about it. Especially the old duck on the right. 'Sigh,' she seems to be saying. 'My uterus has fallen out three times in the past year, but you better believe I still get my pap smears done.'

It should be said that a number of construction workers were perplexed by my photo taking, giggling, childish ways, but that's neither here nor there.

*It's actually spelt 'Women's', but you know they wanted to say 'wimmen.'

Here's the first ever photo I took with the Canon of Uncertainty. It's the stuff on the mantlepiece above my bed. Yes, that gentleman is holding his doodle.