NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

*sob*

If you'll excuse me I'm going to go track down the SuperLadyFriends so we can get drunk and wail like Greek widows. HOW COULD YOU ABANDON ME, CORIN?

Okay... so we have Sublime-ation, Toby, my friend Pete what emailed me, and MSKP, for some serious Nigella-style spoon licking, zucchini fellating action. What we need, friends, is a name. I literally can't come up with one. Every time I try I just come up with another synonym for cunnilingus and start laughing like Beavis and Butthead. So, yes. Food, eating, thinking. S'pose one could just crack open any book by Jeannette Winterson and come across a suitably saucy, androgynous phrase, but I haven't read Jeannette Winterson, or listened to Ani DiFranco, in far too long IF YOU GET MY MEANING.

Ahem.

Meanwhile, look at how successful I was at poaching eggs!



They didn't turn into a pan of slime! I actually try to cook breakfast (for myself,** because I'm a spinster aunt eating dinner)* as often as possible, but I usually scramble my eggs when what I really want is poached. But I schemed last night before I went to bed (someone please get me some real problems) and this morning, success!

* Via Amy, the best one sentence bio I've ever read.

** Eggs, toast and more garlicky, salty mushrooms than a sane person could ever imagine are one thing, but pancakes are sacred. Pancakes I keep in my gustatorial hope chest, as it were. Which is a shame, because I make some damned good pancakes, y'all.

Buck 65 is playing on the 7th and I totally have tickets and I'm totally going and it will be most decidedly rad.

Apropos of nothing, guess how many albinos I saw today? Go on, guess.

Things I am highly motivated to do right now:
- Sleep.
- Apply lipstick.
- Cook things with lots of ginger and fennel and niceness until the whole kitchen smells like good and I can bask in the glory of my own food-producing goodness.*
- Reapply lipstick.
- Read British Vogue, Wired and The Quarterly Essay in the student union supplied library what you can dick around in.
- Reapply lipstick.
- Sleep on a desk somewhere.
- Watch sparrows dart around and choreograph my very own, all sparrow version of 'Oliver Twist' in my head.
- Reapply lipstick.
- Smile at babies.
- Sleep on a tram.
- Go into the MAC counter to smear eyeshadow onto my wrist and investigate less shit lipsticks.**
- Sink comfortably into good-natured apathy.
- Watch movies and eat pancakes wth blueberries.***

Things I am not highly motivated to do right now:
- Prepare for my meeting with my supervisor.
- Fix up photos for this, uhm, thing where they're gonna be put on walls and shit.
- Write statement for above mentioned thing.
- Figure out what the hell is going on with the sword of Damocles dangling above my head, aka my thesis.
- Do anything at all to advance my thesis even the tiniest, weeniest little bit.


*Food blog! Toby's in. Is anyone else?
** Recommendations will be appreciated. I like a good, honest whore's red.
*** While I now technically know it's not pronounced 'A Boot De Soo-flay,' I'm going to keep pronouncing it like that.

Here are five phrases Merlin wishes he could use more often:

foxy boxing
bitch slap
jack-knifed big rig
junk in the trunk
hot stone massage

Being the squealy internet fangirl with a copy of 'Getting Things Done' and a binder clipped deck of index cards in my bag I naturally couldn't agree more, but I would like to add the following:

The word 'peloton.'
'Get out of it!'*
'Retaining water like a good divorce lawyer.'
'Attack by prise du fer.'
The word 'head gasket.'

* The other night I noted a clutch of emo kids were wandering past our house, and my housemate immediately leapt to the window and growled 'get out of it!' in a loud and frightening manner. Needless to say it was most satisfying.

'... so it's, like, art, right? So you've got this chick, and she's naked, and she's in a kiddie pool outside. Like, real bright colours, like David La Chappelle but full of skanky Joan Rivers crack. And the chick is smoking her cigarette, legs akimbo, but she has a snapper over her cooch.'

'Battered?'

'No, raw.'

'Why not crumbs?'

'Because I don't want the poor soul who ends up as my snapper twat girl to get crumbs in her pubes.'

'That idea is genius.'

'I know.'

'We should totally do it tomorrow.'

'I know.'

'Want to run with scissors and wear boots over our jeans?'

'Whatever you say, kitten.'

Speaking of which, remember when we were all posting recipes on each other's blogs? And then people would say 'let's form a food blog?' I think we should do it. Who's with me?

I have a problem, Internet, and I'd like you to help me out.

I've been feeling a bit glum lately, something that was infinitely helped by a lovely person dropping by and doing this



as well as going to the markets to get some of these.



I am very much looking forward to going out tonight with a band of lovely companions to see these guys,



which I suspect will put rather a spring back in my step. I also suspect that wearing these lovely shoes out for the first time in Melbourne



with this twirly new dress (rather more shapely than my bed lets on) will make me a happy girl instead of a needlessly grumpy girl.



However, complicating everything is the fact that at the time of writing my left knee is like this.


LIFE IS SO HARD.

Pro: handed in my last piece of coursework today.

Con: in the process of booking it to school my knee packed it in. That wasn't cool. For no real reason my left knee began to really, really hurt to the point where I couldn't straighten it, as though there was stuff floating around behind my knee cap. A hurried visit to a GP and one X-ray later and it turns out there is shit floating around in my knee. Whether that is of any consequence remains to be seen, but I must have looked a site, lurching around campus like Quasimodo, pausing to giggle hysterically, as that's what I do when things hurt.

I've been feeling kinda crap ever since I got back from the 'Bra, hence yesterday's whiny message. I think it has more to do with schoolwork than anything else. All I want to do is Tubigrip my knee and go to sleep, so I shall do exactly that.

I'm one of the most clinically insecure people I know.

I guess other people might be more insecure on the inside, but mine is the kind of insecurity you can't hide. If I was to let myself go I'd be one big reassurance succubus, constantly, constantly seeking security from any and all. As it is now I'm just a little reassurance succubus. That's probably why I write on the internet and whatnot.

As I've grown older I've become slowly, slowly less insecure. I've even started to build a little stockpile of confidence of my very own. A modest little stockpile, a confidence sand castle if you will, one that doesn't come from (a) getting drunk, (b) working out constantly, or constantly worrying about not working out, or (c) sleeping with regrettable people.

I'm doing good, but as the clinically insecure will know it doesn't take too much to kick that sand castle over. All it takes is one, maybe two rather traumatic conversations with people you care about and there you are, whining and fretful and nervous as ever.

Oh, Canberra. You always find a way to pimp slap a girl around.

I think I'd be a lot more motivated if they played the Philip Glass soundtrack to the Fog of War in the library while I did work. At least I'd feel like my essays about Nicole Richie and Victorian education policy were more important on a global scale. Heck, I might even Brylcreem my hair down into a natty centrepart, just like Mr Robert McNamara, to give the whole thing authenticity.

I was staring at your ass.

It should be said that I was also staring at your bubblegum pink folder with 'Amy's binder!!!' written in fat texta bubble letters along the spine, but your ass was kind of unavoidable. I got used to voting adults wearing sweatpants and pyjama pants in public when I was living in the 'States, and while I prayed the trend wouldn't drift over here I resigned myself to knowing it probably would. So, yeah, I totally understand how you think floppy, virulently green trackies make you look cutely dishevelled and whatnot, but I've gotta tell you the serious eyeliner action you have going on kind of gives the whole 'relaxed' thing away. Hey, I'm not having a go. Lord knows it's been a long time since I didn't throw a bit 'o slap on after brushing my teeth in the morning.* And I'm not averse to dressing comfortably, either. As you may or may not have noticed as gave me the greasy eye for looking at your ass I'm currently clad in a $15 Target thermal shirt and any number of scarves and Nanna cardigans, so, yeah, comfortable.

But here's the thing about sweatpants, 'Amy.' If you wear a g-string with them, as I couldn't help but notice you were, they take that as an excuse to cling to every contour of your asscheeks. They sink deep, deep between them, and while I'd say you have a nice ass, Amy, when you walked it still looked like two wombats fighting in a hessian sack. A bright, bright green hessian sack, cut and sewn in the Juicy Couture mould.

At least you didn't have the word 'Juicy' aligned with your crack. I think everyone in this nation agrees that that's a bit much.


*It should be when I went to hand in one of my papers last week I was wearing a pair of impossibly ripped jeans, no bra, unwashed hair, and a large green cardigan that came to below my hips. I hadn't showered in at least two days and I may have been muttering to myself. It was a terrifying vision of hte future.

Shut the fuck up and pack your bags, I'm shipping you out of my concerned little head if it kills me.


But...

NO BUTS. OUT!

Kisses,
Rach.

Hooray for...
- Totally rad people to do school work with. It makes a world of difference, believe me.
- Getting school stuff done, and done to a degree of satisfaction. I'm feeling a lot more positive lately, or at least more in control of what I'm doing.
- New shoes. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful new shoes.
- Tofu curry and tea at Don Don opposite the state library.
- Dumplings and red bean buns and veges in oyster sauce and more tea at some place in an alley way off Little Burke.
- Going back to the 'Bra next week.
- Feeling, against all expectations, that if I didn't go back to the 'Bra I wouldn't be all that disappointed because I like my little life here.
- A gnarled, defoliated old apple tree sprouting turtledoves, sparrows and mynah birds (I know they're a pest, but let me have my moment), all chattering away.
- Long, satisfying weight liftin' and treadmill runnin' and rower rowin' sessions at the gym.

Whores for...
- Insecurity, of all shapes, forms and shades.
- The man who walked into our house the other day and sat down in our living room. No one had asked you in, Man, please tell me where that would be even remotely okay.
- Carrying at least two bags full of computers and books wherever I go. I feel like Sherpa Tenzing.
- Not seeing Gretel give Michael a good working over on national television.
- Did I mention insecurity?
- No Doz. I'm chewing them like Pez and they no longer have any effect on me.