Friday, December 06, 2013

CROAK

Oh hai again. I'm still sick, worse than last Friday when I was on here, having a whinge. Went to the doctor yesterday, got antibiotics, have taken three and would have expected to be feeling a little improved today. Not so.

I sit/lie here in my bed, laptop on lap (hurr, hurr) writing like freaking Babs Cartland, except there is nothing pink anywhere near me, and no dogs are in here.

My voice is a mere croak; manly and deep, and it hurts. Nasty, yet 'productive' cough (as the doctor said) - I feel worse than yesterday but really I haven't been able to rest for the last couple of days and yesterday was a real race-around in the car, doing 'stuff' to get P ready for her departure tonight.

My mum is coming over in an hour before she goes to Ring #1, and daughter is on the way home. We are going to put up the Christmas Tree and pack. Flight is tonight at 3.30am, so at airport at 1.30am, so no bed I don't think, or if so, just for an hour or so. Blech.

This is just a quickie. No edits yet from agent but they will come through I'm guessing on the weekend or early next week. She said we need to move quickly. I love how exciting that sounds.

That's all for now. Sad about Mandela but annoyed at how everyone on twitter is bleating about him. Hope everyone is well, especially you Alex, haven't heard from you for a while. You might be on a trip but do hope you are fine!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Melbz, sorry to cause you concern. There was indeed a trip. Two, in fact. And visitors. And a dastardly deadline. And all sorts of mundane, exhausting crap that I'll only go into if you're really keen to hear it. But I have some time now.

Hope you're feeling better. Awful to have a nasty wog like that during the summer months. Heard any word from Princess? How's she doing in Turkey? How 'bout publishing news? Did you go on your trip yet with your mum? How was your birthday? Happy birthday! (hope you're feeling better)

I listened to some of the Mandela stuff on the radio/telly. I found it annoying that some news channels were just playing hours on end of tiny clips of famous people saying nice things about him. It felt like empty, uninformative, time-filler.

On the plus side, at least it pushed Nigella out of the headlines for a couple of days. "Fuck me dead! You're telling me a celebrity chef took some recreational drugs? Holy shit! Stop the fuckin' presses! Divert all resources to this story for the rest of the week." ... fuckin' stoopid media *grumble* ...

Anonymous said...

Hey, in case you're still stuck in bed and you're looking for something to watch:

ABC iView has a nice little Aussie POV doco on the social issues around labia-plasty (it's called "The Vagina Diaries"). I didn't know Melbourne town had a vagina festival.

Also, SBS has a doco called "Change My Race", which looks to be about what we were talking about the other day with young people of mixed-race wanting to look more "white". Haven't watched it yet, so don't know if it's any good.

Melba said...

Hiya Alex, good to see your face (or the other Alex's face.)

Feeling much better, finished antibiots today, still have a nasty hacking phlegmy smoker's cough but my energy is back. Yay. And the 'summer months'- not down here it aint. Not yet/really. We had one hot day I think 36, but bookended with rain and cold. Fuck.

Princess is all good in Turkey, thus far. She flew into Istanbul, met her dad (aka Ali, they had a night in Ist, then flew south and had a night near the airport there and then drove to where he lives. They are staying at his villa up in the hills, the same place we stayed in 2010, so at least that'll be familiar for her. I don't know if you remember any stories about cats, but I texted her asking about 'cats' and 'hahaha' and she said 'yes, maybe cats.' We'll see. Apparently it's very cold there. They tried to buy a wood heater and so now of course I'm worrying about flue systems.

Publishing news - am waiting on the edits from my agent. She said she'll go through it with her 'finetooth editorial comb' - and she really must be, because it's taking her longer to get back to me than with the first one. She is SO determined to get this one across the line, she said she'll hang up her agent hat if she can't. She's very confident which makes me more confident but she was very confident with the first one. At least now we both really know what it's like to try to sell a debut literary fiction book here.

Trip with mum is next week, looking forward to it. Will be a distraction to be away, but also am planning to write. I have my next thing, you know, the Bladerunner x Spare Room thing.

I've been watching a bit of TV. Rewatched GIRLS, on DVD from video shop, with subtitles. I really do need them, I reckon I lose about 30 - 40% depending on the sound quality and background noise eg music in the production. I LOVE GIRLS, did you watch any of it? Then Clokes and I watched the first disc of Derek - Ricky Gervais. It's fucking brilliant. So moving, I was in tears, but also funny. Man, he's got it all. And THEN we watched first three episodes of Jane Campion's Top of the Lake last night. And that was fabulous.

Labiaplasty - I hate those shows only because I'm a bit squeamish I think. I can talk about all that stuff but do not want to watch. Happy to watch birth videos, anything natural is fine but when there are scissors or scalpels. Hmmm. But thanks for the tips. Interesting about the mix-race kids wanting to look more white. I know it's a beauty standard in India and some other Asian countries that whiter skin is 'better' and there are all sorts of cosmetics and products and procedures... but mix-race progeny wanting it? Maybe I'll look that one up.

Melba said...

Also the whole Mandela stuff, yeah it's sad, yeah he was a good man, we all have our memories and feelings about it, but the way it saturates everything. I don't even watch MSM, I read the papers but didn't read anything about it, it's all so saccharine and kind of amped up.

With the Nigella thing, again, didn't follow apart from forming my own opinions of Saatchi and how he has orchestrated the whole thing. Sure she took some drugs but he has tried to destroy her. I think he is clever and very dangerous.

Anonymous said...

There's very little about the surgery side of things in that ABC doco. It's more about body image and what goes on in people's heads and the cultural factors that lead to it.

I haven't watched the SBS doco yet. Making assumptions on that one.

I taped Derek off ABC when it was on, but haven't watched any yet. And I haven't seen any Girls. Should I get it? Is it really that good? OITNB good? What is it? Basically?

Good to hear P is doing fine on the other side of the world. I remember that story about the cat's jaw being caught in its collar. But that's all.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I don't mean to denigrate Mandella or his accomplishments; it's the coverage I take umbrage with. In a small way, it reminds of when Steve Jobs died. Except that was stupid and wanky on a completely different level.

But the Nigella thing. I just don't feel like it should be headlining serious news shows. It should be a thirty second throw-away, if anything. But because it happened to a "celebrity", that makes it NEWS. Everything's so much a stupid cartoon tabloid now.

Anonymous said...

Just watched the race doco. Wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. Very much focused on Asians/Asian-immigrants/children-of-Asian-immigrants; but still worth a watch, in my opinion.

By far the worst bit was seeing a 17 year old child of Vietnamese immigrants, who was perfectly happy with the way she looked, get bullied into having cosmetic surgery by her parents.

Anonymous said...

As a fine example of why the Nigella coverage is pissing me off so much, take a look at the Dec 04 episode of The Daily Show.

Melba said...

Yes the cat's jaw, you remember. God. I might watch the labiaplasty one then but not the other one.

I don't know what to say about GIRLS, but for me the main character Hannah, while self-obsessed is a fascinating person and I just love the way she is so confident with her body and thinks she is great. There's a line when she's in bed with this attractive older man - btw, this got a lot of kerfuffling going in the US when people said someone as good-looking as him would never get with her - and he tells her she's beautiful and she goes really? And he goes, you don't think you are? And she goes, no, I do, but that's not the feedback I get mostly. Or something. To me that's brilliant. But you might find it insufferable, just download a few eps, unless you need subbies as well. As for whether it's OITNB good, it's different but up there for me. But OITNB has so many ace characters that you're happy to follow, GIRLS probably has less, and there are maybe more annoying ones. But def worth a look.

The Nigella thing, of course such a big deal because of the celebrity, also because Saatchi is famous but not as. Will check the Daily Show later. I've just come back from a friend's BD lunch and I feel a bit wined. Going to have a lie down and read. Have my mum's bd dinner tonight, phew.

Melba said...

god if you have a link to the daily show, i tried a bunch and they didn't freaking work. sah annoying. doesn't he want people to see his stuff?

Anonymous said...

No, I think Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, which is pretty aggressive about copyright enforcement.

Here's the episode I was talking about. Be aware, I can't vouch for the safety of the site. I'm browsing in a disposable Linux virtual machine, so I don't have to worry about nasty websites and the like. I've never had a problem with it though.

Anonymous said...

I just looked at the Wiki entry for GIRLS:

A comedy/drama following a group of 20-somethings in NYC.

...

I almost don't want to watch it on principle alone.

I know that's a silly thing to say, but fuck, you know where I'm coming from, right?