I do actually have a new apartment, actually

... except it's a federation semi in Marrickville and I haven't moved there yet. I have a garden that's like a mouth I'm gonna put my money in the same location as. I've talked so much about growing things that I better damn well do it. I have three hay bales to start me off. I went to an opening tonight that I really enjoyed. Talked to some people I know well, talked to some people I don't know well ... the little things, y'know? I find my mood is always dependent on contingencies - situations, environments, hangers-on, passers-by ... blah de blah banal. A few drinks this evening, [what's the singular of folks?]. It was a nice feeling.

Isn't the word 'blog' such a downer? some marketer should come up with a less unsexy-sounding word. "I'm feeling a bit bloggy today, I can't come to work". It must be the double g.

I wrote some graffitti in the toilets tonight. I couldn't resist; there was grammatical argument taking place. In combination with some art bitching. Not a helpful addition to the discourse but hey. Ever had that feeling that you should get off your arse and become invoolved in the discussion, only to realise that it is none the richer for your participation? Blogging and toilet cubicle grafitti: something in common at last.

There's this whole thing with the performance of blogging (especially after having lurked for so long), about who might be reading, who knows what or thinks what about what's written. The whole anonymity thing seems pretty silly to me, aside from the frankly unlikely in most cases threat of personal harm or physical stalking or whatever. Your ego doesn't go away, and you still have an identity. I guess you just have more than one. It's like when you travel to get away from whatever's going wrong; sooner or later it comes back, because you always take yourself and your problems/pattens with you.

I am so sleepy that I have to go to sleepy sleep now.

I've got a new apartment, baby

OK, you can tell me if this is just normal, but I feel it to be a somewhat tragically abnormal series of coincidences and ... dunno, paths crossing type occurrences. It's very late and I've had a big weekend so it won't be written well.

My magazine features an a guy in the upcoming issue who makes pictures out of liquid nails. He wanted to get into the Archibald Prize so he made some liquid nails portraits of his favourite band, the Go-Betweens. He wrote this frank and amusing piece about meeting them, about his working process and his snubbing by the Art Establishment, man. It's my favourite piece in the magazine. It's insightful and accessible and self-deprecating. We liked the works themselves so much we decided to put them on the cover. So.

I've got a new job at a gallery. We have casual preparators who come and help us hang the shows every month. The first day i met our regular guy (who is an excellent person and a good preparator to boot) I asked him if he was an artist (many of the preps are). He said he used to be, but now he was a musician. I didn't ask him who he played with because I (stupidly) assumed I wouldn't know them and that that might be embarassing. Then I spend the next few days taking sideways glances at him to try and work out why he looks so familiar ("could he be ... no ... MAYbe ... should I ask him? nah ..."). So my boss tells me at lunch later that he's a drummer. For the Go-Betweens. Huh. Funny coincidence. I go home and look said preparator up and find out I've actually seen him play a number of gigs in one of my old favourite bands. (Custard! He was in Custard! hence the unplaceable familiarity). Then of course I am too star-struck to say anything about it, and lo, the working week is done and we see our casual preparator no more. Flukily, I had been listening to Custard and the Titanics that week in my car, after having not listened to them for years.

Today i've been designing the fliers for the launch party for our new issue, featuring the Go-Betweens images (they're so great!). I'm looking at the boggle-eyed head of Grant McLennan as rendered in bright orange paint and liquid nails all evening. My flatmate comes home, goes to the Herald online and announces Grant McLennan died in his sleep last night.

And we're about to put out a magazine with his portrait on the cover.

Poor preparator. I'm not sure if I know him well enough for a condolences email (or maybe that's the best way to offer condolences to someone you don't know). And do we, as publishers, become exploiters of the sentimental response to this poor man's premature death? Is it wrong to feel happy that we have this great work about him, that's somehow made weighty now, and sort of more important? Or that a death can make you feel, even superficially, more connected?

The net seems to expand all the time. I think if you were immortal, you could eventually have a connection to each person on this earth. Assuming you had good social skills. I do feel uncomfortable though. It's pretty pathetic to feel connected to famous people. That's how stalkers get started.

Anyway. My condolences, world. I'm exhausted and must sleep.

Question

Do all these shitty little posts put people off reading? Or do great swathes of text do that?

I'd really like to know.

License flashing before eyes shock

I am fucking starving and quite late. Should I:

a) eat, but what and where
b) take a cab to this opening and get drunk, then eat
c) drive to the opening and be restrained, then eat,
d) stay home and do work (just kidding), d) i don't know what other options there are.
e) drive to food then to opening and be restrained

Basically, I'm fishing for a ride to Paddington. Via Fatimas.

Not going to happen, is it.

Wait! Epiphany ...
f) eat toast, then consider future

I drank lotsa wine the other night then got breath-tested on the way home. Didn't lose the ol' license though. Does this mean:

i) I'm naturally lucky and should therefore continue to drink and drive
ii) It's a warning sign from the universe that I've been blessed this once and I should mend my ways before I get zapped with a lightning bolt, which will DEFINITELY happen next time
iii) nothing whatsoever

toast it is.

Late-adopter banalities

I got a comment. Thanks Li. I know you but you don't know me. Don't you find that strange? Or is that what type B bloggers are, like, into? Not to be rude. Ooh, all this new etiquette to get complexes about!

Beddibyes and Jimmyjams no I mean really

Does anyone have any statistics on what percentage of blogs are started by people going through breakups? Anecdotally, I'd say, like, at least some. (See how I'm asking questions to encourage involvement? It's all this psychology I've been studying).

And will this post finally push the In Happier Times photos down far enough ... out of my face, shiny happy people holding hands!

Look, now you're just being SILLY

(see title for content)

...

this is funner than I had imagined!

I'm like a little kid in the car making the electronic windows go up and down up and down up and down

Muse muse muse whimsy muse stop

The other day my sister looked up her old friend's blog and trawled it thoroughly looking for references to herself. Is this normal?

Note to self

Be less referential in new blog. Must. Impress. Blogerati.

I don't know what I'd do without you, Kitty. You're a true friend.

Chilly, the elf who cannot love

Are you fucking kidding me?

Rigorous STANDARDS?

I mean, that's sweet and all ... Teigs, I'm genuinely touched. If only that you cared enough to check on my spot. (OK, you probably had some sneaky e-thing that emailed you to tell you I had posted). Nonetheless, though. STANdards. RIGorous.

Because I was feeling pretty down in the dumps. I've had a superficially light meal with the ex tonight, so now I fucking hate everything again.

OK, I'll go out on a limb. Generalities are not intereresting, now are they. We ate for about 30 minutes and then that was that. He didn't even want to have a drink with me (and this is someone who can drink). Now I'm a goddamned obliGAtion. I felt so miserable after I came home that I looked up this which caused me to burst into tears (I SAID it was a limb) and go all foetal on the couch. Until my flatmate rang. I said, I've got the sniffles. And THAT's all I'm GONNA say about it.

I'm SICK of feeling crappy. Time to goddamned well cheer up already. I'm losing my sense of humour n all. I only laugh at things in a snide, bitter kind of way. You know that bit in Napoleon Dynamite? That scene, when he's with Trisha at the dance, and she waves to her friends and they wave back excitedly and she goes over to them? And then Napoleon comes back from the loo and is all alone and sees HIS friends and waves to them and acts like he's gesturally communicating with them but really they don't see him because they've having a good time without him?

That makes me laugh like crazy.

AAAAanyway.

This is a bit weird - I mean, I hardly know you. Or - god, worse - I do know you ...

But the upshot is I'm not a lurker any more. Now I have a half-life to call my own!

(beat)

!!

I feel better now. Thanks.

Sometimes I forget to title posts

Today I watched two full movies and two second halves of movies.

I watched Dogfight and it made me want to go on a date (okay) in San Francisco (still maybe possible, with planning) in the sixties (alright, fantasy it is). But not with a marine. Unless he moves like River Phoenix.

It's a beautiful movie and I'd fucking well recommend it to anyone.

Ditto Spiceworld (for totally different reasons of course), which I watched earlier on. "Hi, I'm Barnaby. So, are you part of this 'Spice' phenomenon?"

"Blah, blah, girl power, feminism, blah"

Nineties nostalgia begins right here.