quick quiz

about whom is the following quotation:

"My understanding is that he wasn't wearing any undies, his fly was open and some of the lunch meat fell out of the sandwich,'' Jabba told Confidential.

1. that dude from one of the idol shows a few years ago. or was it big brother. i can't fucking remember.

2. axle whitehead

3. this guy





















this has to be one of the most unpalatable things i've ever heard and i love derek and clive.


where did this incident occur:

1. the arias

2. that music show that people in australia make a big deal about


why do you care about this:

1. i don't

2. who gives?


me either. just trying to keep off the hardcore news.

final derek and clive. warning: language and violent concepts


but my favourite bit is when peter's voice goes dangerously quiet and he says: "dolly, you've tested me in the past."

i also love it when dudley gets the laughs and has to hide his face. and just tries to keep up with the psychotic genius that is peter cook's mind.

a very special day, the best in 7 whole years.

1. daniel chirico. you make the best bread in town. thanks for breakfast.

2. my dentist, you do the best fillings in town. thanks for the no-pain session.

3. thanks jane for being at malvern central today so we could run into each other, have a quick coffee and chat, and set a night for our inaugural writers circle meeting next week.

there was one cloud: no thanks to you, dude on your mobile, who i gave way to so you could do a u-turn in the middle of glenferrie road, malvern. you in your green jeep, with rego omu 782.

where was my thank you wave?

you didn't even have a spare hand, did you?


but the best news, the best thing follows. i want to share it with you, for this is my journey and you are part of it now.

the best thing about today was hearing something i haven't heard for 7 years, had given up wishing and hoping for.

when i got home from my busy day of having teeth filled, eating fantastic toast, running into friends, there was a message on the phone from mum. she was at the hospital, peter mac, and said the scans were all clear.




THE SCANS WERE ALL CLEAR.


THE SCANS WERE ALL CLEAR.



this is a woman, my mum, who has fought and battled and survived and worked so hard to stay alive. we have ridden the rollercoaster, my family and i. for seven long years. she has had periods of wellness, and times of terrible illness. she has lain in intensive care, so pale and thin, hallucinating that there was a little girl sitting on the chair by her bed, who when mum felt very, very bad, came and got into bed with her.

she hasn't given up. she has been so strong. she is amazing. i feel very lucky that we still have her. one of my friends, her mother was diagnosed with cancer after my mum, and she died a couple of years ago. different cancer. my mum has one of the better ones. but still, her type has killed a king.

so, i told princess and she did her happy dance. she shouted her wish had come true. turns out one of her friends had told her, write your wishes on a piece of paper. fold up the paper and put it in the garden, cover it with flower petals. and the wish will come true. so she did it. i helped her, but i didn't see what the wishes were. she is so sweet using up her wishes on her grandmother, instead of wishing for a pony, a lolly shop, different hair. every birthday, every star-light, star-bright, first-star-i-see-tonight, princess and i have been wishing on granny. seven years of wishes. that's a lot of wishes.

if i could tap dance, i would.

if i could fly, i would.

if i could give each and every one of you a big, squeezy hug, i would.

when a girl loves horses

it's the melbourne racing season, oh joy. we get to see regular visions of loveliness in their frocks, shoes and fascinating headwear, spewing, and stumbling along the road with goosebumps on their arms from the cool melbourne breeze.

stallions and fillies, aka tools and toolettes.

but for me, the real interest lies in the stories about relationships between man and beast. as a young girl, i owned picture story books about horses, i endlessly drew them, of course i wanted a palomino, but my second choice was a bay, around 14'2 hh. i was thrown at 7 years of age and got 12 stitches in my leg. it was my fault, i'd never ridden, talked the kid out of having to lead me, joined the trail ride unsupervised, and tried to turn my plodder who was homing home, to get him to go back into the wood we'd just passed through, so we could jump over a log. of course he fucking bolted. and of course i fell off. onto a log, with a sticky-out bit of branch. branch meet upper thigh, leg meet branch.

i got back on the horse, of course.

i read jill's pony books, i loved bill in malory towers. i rode whenever i could. my aunt agisted a couple of old nags at her property in woodend. i rode them. i travelled to cairo, i went out one day with my friends and we rode all through the hot day, a day so hot that even though i drank 3 litres of water and wore a hat, i still weed dark orange. i went through three horses that day, each one faster than the last, until finally, i was racing across the sands, galloping as fast as i needed to. i learned to do jumps, i hated children who had jodhpurs and went to pony club. i took carrots to whichever horse i could get to; the paddocks near my grandparents' house in barwon heads, my friend's sister's horse which was on a block in ashwood, where the smorgy's is now.

and when i was a little older, i read all my father's dick francis novels, wonderful books where the protagonist is always connected to horses in some way: jockey, artist of horse portraits, horse vet, trainer.

and i never have really given up my dream of one day having my own horse.

this is why that photograph of tommy woodcock, lying in a stable in 1977 with reckless's large, gentle head on his lap moves me every time i see it.




this same man was phar lap's strapper and by all accounts had a very special and close relationship with the giant champeen -

"He loved him just like a, your pet dog would. You'd go in the yard and he'd just, he'd follow him everywhere without, he didn't have to put a, head collar on him or a lead or anything like that. There was a tremendous rapport between them. Just trust and love. " - Tony McSweeney

trust and love. it's all any of us need.

phar lap died in 1932, hemorrhaging over woodcock, who held his head.

"I don't think that Tommy Woodcock was ever the same after it. He died in his arms. He had his head cradled in his lap. But I think that all Australia wept when Phar Lap died." - Tony McSweeney

a few months ago, my dad told me a fantastic story he'd heard on the radio about an old jockey. this jockey had ridden 39 races in his career, and had 40 falls.

how can that be? you ask.

well, after one fall, they were carrying him off on the stretcher and he fell off that. so they counted it as a fall.

i'm laughing at this right now, remembering my father's laugh as he told me this story, laughing and gulping, he could barely get the words out; my dad's laugh is large and wild and so infectious.

the story runs like an old vaudevillian take-my-wife routine.

there was some fund set up for jockeys and they had to tell him to retire from it cause he'd cleaned the fund out.

more laughter.

he used to ride alot around the country, and some of the nurses in hospitals where he was going to ride, they'd look up the form guide, and if he was racing in their town, they'd make up a bed for him.

i can see the nurses, can't you, standing in their starched white uniforms, having a smoke and reading the form guide.

i found this jockey after much googling. his name is les boots, and there is another story that his wife would pack his pyjamas for him on racing day, so that when he inevitably went to hospital, he'd have them with him.

i love stories like this. don't you?

back to phar lap, you know the story about how his heart was so big and heavy. so much bigger than any other race horse which had been, i guess, autopsied? people would cite the size of the famous horse's heart as an indication of his greatness, as if it were so big it made him some super horse, some freak of nature, and it was because of that heart, its size, its power, that he could not only perform such physical miracles, but he also gained a special personality, a form of anthropomorphism which we saw, again recently, with makybe diva.

let me tell you something about race horses and their bodies. i spoke to a vet who was involved in research at melbourne uni a couple of years ago, and this vet told me that hundreds of horses die, collapse, without warning, on racetracks and in training around this country, every year. that they are pushed and pushed and then their hearts and lungs can just stop, and they die on the tracks. of course, there will be more figures for races [lower] and less or none kept for training [higher?].

this explains, taken from an online animal liberation document

Exercise-Induced Pulmonary Haemorrhage

Between 1% and 2% of horses have blood flowing from the nostrils after a race. The first time this happens they are banned from racing for 3 months, the second time they are banned for life.

However, the situation is actually much more serious than people have realised. Researchers at the University of Melbourne have shown, through the use of an endoscope inserted into the horse's throat, that 50% of horses have blood in the windpipe, and 90% have blood deeper in the lungs. In post-mortems of racehorses, one fifth have bruising at the back of the lungs, with the bruise more prominent the more recently the horse has raced. Racing regularly causes blood vessels around the lung to rupture.

The speed at which horses run makes a difference. When horses were tested within 2 hours of racing, 75% had blood in the upper respiratory tract, and 9% had blood at the nostrils. However, when horses were examined after only cantering, 38% had blood in the respiratory tract and 2% had blood at the nostrils. Those that bled at the nostrils did not always have the most severe internal bleeding.

In another study, 44% of horses had blood in the windpipe within 2 hours of racing, but only 0.8% showed blood at the nostrils. Horses over 5 years old were more likely to have haemorrhaging, possibly because the lungs could not repair damage during continued training and so, over the years, the problem became chronic.

One theory is that it is the force transmitted through the legs which damages the blood vessels in the lungs. In humans, lung trauma is common after an impact to the front of the chest, as in a car accident. Such an impact can lead to pulmonary oedema and localised haemorrhaging. In horses, a very large impact force is transmitted through the front legs to the shoulder blades and chest wall, and then to the lungs. The faster the horse is running, the greater this impact force, the more damage is done to the small blood vessels, and the greater the bleeding into the lungs and airway.

so basically, horses are bleeding internally more than people (trainers, owners, riders, all those people with a vested interest) will admit.

so, if you're the type to get dressed up and go get pissed and trip around in your frippery, please think of the horses. who are trying their hardest to win races, noble beasts that they are, for people who want to make money and have a day at the races.

me and the media

i have decided to part ways with the daily newspaper and the wireless radio. i will no longer be listening to jon faine while at the gym. nor will i be reading the age over my breakfast each day.

why?

because it all makes my head hurt too much. i need to turn away, in order to preserve myself. some people might be able to read about all the things in the world, and not feel anything. but i can't. things stick in my head and my heart. i want to fix the world, and i can't. things make me angry - politics and all sorts of social and environmental issues - and i can feel the toxins in my body. i waste energy thinking over things, getting frustrated by things. energy that i really need to save so i can smile at my kids, help them with their homework, play the occasional grippy ball game with them.

so i have decided to be kind to myself, and leave the things that make me feel like this.

on the weekends, however, i will be buying the age and the australian.

I'M NOT A COMPLETE FOOL.

i'll see how i go with the australian. i stopped reading it cause it was too right-wing, but as i will be avoiding articles that shit me, i'll just keep to their interesting life style sections.

i still want to be able to access the articles on literature and the arts, and the human interest stories. i will avoid the stories on iraq, terrorism, george w, howard, children dying, bombs, racism, murder, mayhem.

i will turn my eyes to the light.

i will concern myself with what really matters in my life, with my family and friends.

things like:

1. why oh why the fuck can't the neighbours scriptwriters do a better job when integrating the new characters of fraser, pepper, wil and rosetta into the show.

why oh why the fuck couldn't they have come up with a better name than johnny smith, JOHNNY SMITH, oops BROWN FOR FUCK'S, as the unseen person who rosetta and carmella's mother wants rosetta to marry.

2. should i start having brazillians again?

3. i wonder whether ebay has any how and why books?



x

ps. i have rejigged my blogroll, and included a few new players.

pps. i am waiting to see whether i will be the inaugural big blogger winner of 2006. check it. i can probably get you an invitation to the finale party if you really want.

ppps. final derek and clive is coming soon.

the black owl

3 minutes ago my mother and i were standing in my kitchen. she told me about a dream, and then went back outside to cut some roses.

and i rushed in here.

she said she had a dream a few weeks ago, about a native american woman sitting in the dirt, connecting with the earth. there were large birds walking around her. and there was a black owl to the side, a huge black owl, that would stand hip-high to a human. the owl had a wide wing span and was moving its feathers in a motion that swept up dirt over itself; it was giving itself a dirt bath.

mum sees a dream analyst, who talked it through with her. he thought it might symbolise connecting with the planet and the ground, those sorts of things. he said he would look it up in his big book at home.

next session he told mum he'd found the black owl. apparently native americans believe that a black owl is a harbinger of death.

are you getting shivery?

mum had no idea about this metaphor. neither did peter, he said he'd never heard of it before.

i am shivery.

but he assured her he thinks that rather than her thinking death is imminent for herself, that death is close to all of us, it's in all our lives, but that she more than most might have it a little closer to her mind than others, as she continues to live with cancer.

but how freaky is that owl? where did it come from? is there such a thing as archetypal memory?

whales, and derek and clive


this is quite charming, i think. i just love the way dudley kind of sees where peter is going with this, and then hooks into it.

this is the second-last one, i'm building up to the one that probably made me laugh the most.

you know, you tube is fantastic just for the fact that this stuff is there, available. it's like having a personal archive of my life, my history.

i wonder if there are clips of adventure island, the magic roundabout, and the original bill and ben the flowerpot men?

i could take you all on a personal history of mg's media delights, starting from when i was 4.

first ipods meant that you could have your ultimate collection of music, all in the one place, all accessible at the touch of a finger.

now it's anything you might have seen on tv. or, as is the case of derek and clive get the horn, heard on a crappy cassette back in the early '80s.

and i have my own youtube ideas, oh yes i do. but i won't be telling you about them. i'll give you a hint: lipsync.

but it will take me a while to get my project up and running. john thinks i'm mad, i think, but i am creatively excited.

just about to take the gigi down to elwood beach to meet a friend. i've been to the gym, and i had a job interview yesterday as well, so my lovely pottery life of "leisure" may be about to change. more details as they come to hand.

WARNING: THIS PROBABLY THE WORST OF THE LOT, DON'T WATCH AGAIN IF YOU'RE RELIGIOUS, ESP. CATHOLIC.


but i'm sorry, i find it hilarious.


what gives you the horn?

i love dudley's voice right at the point when he lists all the things that give him the horn, after stating that his wife DOESN'T, he says "everything gives me the horn."

i have never seen this footage. we had it on tape, so obviously i had no idea dudley leaves his seat and has a crack at the blow-up doll.

it is crass. it is distasteful. but it amuses me muchly.

so tell me. do you hate me?

you've got to be joking

WACKY but semi-serious nonetheless. One of Melbourne's leading architectural firms has proposed a radical redesign of Parliament House, complete with rooftop public park, lollipop-like solar collectors and John Batman's immortal words, "This is the place for a village," in lights.

this is the first paragraph in the age today, on page 3.

semi-serious?

lollipop-like solar collectors?

just put a fucking dome on top, or leave it alone.

bloody architects. tools. if they're serious. and if they're not, if it's just a game, a race to be more and more controversial and provocative, then WHY ARE THEY IN CHARGE OF THINGS LIKE BUILDINGS?

more derek and clive to come. be patient, my pretties.

Derek and Clive week part 1


warning: this might be offensive to people who are religious and don't like swearing. but i love it.


when i was in my late teens, early twenties, somehow i came across derek and clive, aka dudley moore and peter cook. dudley moore had appeared in crap, but at the time funny and enjoyable, movies such as 10 with multi-braided bo derek, and arthur, with wife of director blake edwards, julie andrews.

so it was a delightful, and a very, very adult thing, to stumble across this highly offensive and irreverent material.

enjoy.

ps. there are so many political and social issues this week that are shitting me big time, and i want to comment on them, but it's taking time to get posts together. so i guess this is a kind of stay tuned.

you probably think i was kidding

when i said i bet martha stewart never had to tape shut her oven.

well, i wasn't.

it's taped shut now. with clear tape, instead of the brown stuff that was used last time, which i had to scrub off.

fuckitty fuck. it has to be the worst oven i have even had. even the one in osaka was better, because it was a toaster oven and therefore i had no high expectations.

now before you feel too sorry for me, i have this to say. along with there being trevally in little alfoil parcels in there, with tomatoes, tarragon and oil, around the house there are vases and VASES of freshly-cut fleurs that my wonderful garden yielded me today.

birds of paradise. which i'm not too partial to, but john adores. on the mantlepiece above the fireplace.

pink blossom in a fetching japonois arrangement next to the ceramic buddha in the entry space.

gorgeous peony roses, of scarlet, with their blowsy petals adroop in the bathroom.

and overblown and fullsome peach roses (usually i abhor peach, but in a rose it is charming) nestled with some jasmine beside my bed. our bed.

i enjoyed the garden today. while the gigi lolled in the shade, i tidied up the bird she had somehow caught, plucked and chewed. i sprayed the roses for aphids. they weren't there last year, why now? and i put on gardening gloves, so retro, and pulled out suckers that were attacking my roses. i picked lemons, six of them. filled the wheel barrow with weeds and flowers. and i was so happy.

need to tackle the tennis court yet.

and i am flirting with the idea of a great gatsby type partay sometime. on a sultry, hot night.
i see gin and tonics, white dresses and hats, and some badly played tennis. fluffy i think has suggested such an event, and it is very much to my liking.

what do you think?

my inner hoon

true confessions time. last night i went to get the next dvd of lost from the video store. i can't wait until we are up to date with them, because then i can go and read the reviews bevis has put together.

i took john's car.

this is john's car:



my sister and i call it electric blue, only when we say it we actually sing it, like in that icehouse song.

so i drive out into the night. window open, cause it was so warm. this would ordinarily be an unspectacular moment. and it was. until i put on the radio.

this is what was on:



now, i grew up in the 70s listening to my cousins' black sabbath, led zeppelin and deep purple albums. when i listen to wolfmother, it takes me back to my childhood, times spent running wild, playing with scalectrix cars, cb radios and skateboards. and listening to this type of music.

yes, it's derivative. there's kind of this status quo riff running right through the back of a lot of the songs.

but i find it intoxicating, especially when driving that car. so intoxicating i dragged off a man in a station wagon who tried to take me on, at the lights on nepean highway, but then i missed my turn. and had to do a u-turn, which wasn't very wolfmother.

there. i've said it. i didn't think i would, but in much the same way that i have crossed over after taking the piss out of john's car, now it's happening with his music.

but it will never NEVER happen with the football team. i will never, ever barrack for collingwood. again.

do you have an inner, or indeed an outer, hoon?

gone fishing*

back later in the week






* not really.

learn some street sign with filthywhore


something for you to work on over the weekend while i'm busy.

test will be monday morning at 10am.

happy days

the day before yesterday, princess and i had a bath together. it must be over a year since we did that. the bathroom got all steamy and we laughed about how we weren't really fitting in that well together until we found a position where my legs were over the edge and she was half lying on me.

then i read her storm boy. my mum had given it to her for her birthday, and had prophetically bought it before colin thiele died.

what a magnificent story it is.

this is a 40th anniversary edition, and has a section in the middle with illustrations.

when i got to the part where storm boy releases messers proud, ponder and percival as he and his father can't afford to keep feeding them, i cried. then of course mr percival flies back to them, and stays with storm boy and hide-away tom, his father.

princess stood up while i read and wrote in the steam on the mirror

I HEART MUM

X O X O

we haven't finished it yet, but we sat there in the bath, for over an hour, putting more hot water in, and letting some out, until we were wrinkly and overheated. princess hasn't asked me to finish it, i think because she smells a sad ending. she gets so into the story it really upsets her when sad things happen. so she likes to put them off.

then yesterday we went into the ngv for some art. we saw the picasso exhibition, we wandered, me loving the way princess goes so close up to the pieces that i just wait for a guard to tell her off. i stop myself from telling her to move back, i want her to get close, to really see what's in front of her. i love that she's interested. i love that she predictably says that "i could do that!". we marvel at how guernica evolved, we are interested in the negative photographic prints of picasso, taken by dora maar. we smile over the scraps of notes and doodles that are displayed, especially the small piece of paper with dora, dora, dora written on it over, and over, and over.

i love the holiday movie, taken when a group of them were somewhere warm and relaxed. picasso clowning around.

but we both agree that his art is not to our taste.

we check out the rembrandt sketches. she gets bored.

we look at a few rooms of european art. i get teary over a couple, particularly the one with the mother sheep standing over her dead lamb, the crows circling them. also the beauty of the potato picker's face. i stand under her. she is glorious, with a little beauty mark that makes me think of the same mark on the face of my daughter.

and finally. i saw on sunday al gore's movie, an inconvenient truth.

i want you all to go and see it.

and she cooks a cake

it's ten years ago today since i squeezed out my precious one.

i'm feeling all martha stewart, with baking and whatnot for a family dinner tonight.

but i bet martha never had to gaffa tape her oven closed, did she?


other domestic news:

IF THERE IS BLUE CASTELLO IN THE FRIDGE, BY GOD IT SHALL BE EATEN.



that is all.

have a loverly, sunny day.

some random sunday thoughts

this morning i woke up thinking about germaine greer and the whole steve irwin controversy that she sparked with her newspaper article. i was wondering why it is that so many people hate her. why do we fear the greer?

this is a theme that i visited early on in this blog's life, with a promise that i would write something on it. germaine has long been a prickly figure, who seems to make everyone pissed off when she opens her mouth. i want to explore the reasons why this might be, and why she seems to have the status of someone who's embarrassing and you roll your eyes whenever she publishes. it reminds me a bit of the former saint helen de garner who fell from the pedestal when she published the first stone. it became apparent to me how much vitriolic reaction she was attracting because of it when i was at a party and tried to discuss the book with some friends. they were all most hateful, and totally condemned her, while i said things like, well she tackled a difficult subject, she admitted her weaknesses and was brutally honest, not the least with herself and i love her candour. but no one would give me an inch. and when i asked, none of them had read the book.

i started writing the greer thing this morning, on my laptop in bed, feeling like carrie. then i got out of bed, had some toast and then john returned back from a trip out to get a birthday present for princess (next tuesday everyone. TEN YEARS OLD.) he brought the papers home with him.

i had a quick look at the front page of the age, and wondered why my reaction to peter brock's death has been so neutral verging on not-much-sympathy, in comparison to the croc man's death, where i felt sorry enough to encourage the kids to write cards to bindi.

i can say what the reason was. put simply, brock recently left his partner of more than 25 years. i'm being a hypocrite when i say that i felt sorry for steve because although he was flawed, you could say he had a good heart and was a very authentic "bloke." but why am i more accepting of his flaws (which were kind of in the "tool" basket) than brock's?

we are all flawed human beings, but i guess we tolerate some flaws more readily than others.

then, also on the front page, there's an article, small, bottom left corner, reporting that THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT SADDAM HAD ANY CONNECTIONS TO AL-QAEDA.

let me ask you a question. did you at any time think there were links? why did you think that?

when i disussed it with john a while ago, with me saying, and there's no evidence that saddam was connected to al-qaeda, he said oh, i thought there was.

so people obviously thought there was. because it had been suggested, repeated, by governments around the world, the media dutifully reported what the pollies said, and just like that, with a wave of the wand and a shower of glittery stuff, an idea is planted, and grows in the public's mind. if you read the news thoroughly and follow stories, you can get a glimmer of what might be the truth. but if you rely on talk with others, and reading headlines and/or first paragraph stuff, then you are missing out. likewise if you read the herald-sun. i also think that the australian, being a murdoch paper, is much more tabloidy and less solid than people realise. the australian has the formerly-deserved reputation of being the most high-brow, generalist paper available in melbourne, which i think is bunkum. it's getting more low-brow by the day. look at their selection of images, and their use of headlines and you'll see what i mean.

i couldn't read the article in full, i was already feeling the pain. then i turned the page, and there's an article about a school reference book which contains text about state-sponsored or organised terrorism, with mention of the united states and israel amongst several other nations. and about how the government is demanding it be withdrawn from schools.

if this isn't attempted censorship, then what is?

if this isn't evidence that our government, like all governments around the world, is trying to creating its own history by taking certain perspectives, and by doing this, manipulating us, then what is?

i just had to leave the paper. i can't stand it. i just can't stand it. that people either can't see it, or just cry conspiracy theory when you try to talk about this sort of stuff.

does anyone share my brain ache about all this?

the three things meme

sublime tagged me for this meme. so here it is.

1. Three things that scare me

- someone I love dying.

- spiders.

- the majority of the voting public of australia. hopefully, this is no longer a current concern.




2. Three people that make me laugh

- my brother.

- g.o.b. on arrested development.

- princess.




3. Three things I hate the most

- people who drive aggressively.

- people who abuse children, either mentally or physically.

- people who are intolerant of difference, ie racists.



4. Three things I don't understand

- maths beyond year 11 vegie-type.

- why the liberals got voted in again. this is not flippant. I really don’t get it.

- people who don't love reading.




5. Three things I'm doing right now*

- wearing new shoes which are blue, velvet, round-toed ballet flats. I am so pleased with myself.

- waiting for john to come home.

- feeling pretty damn good in my tight, mid-calf jeans.




6. Three things I want to do before I die

- finish writing a novel. just one of the fuckers. is that too much to ask?

- walk the bridle paths of england and scotland.

- become a grandmother.




7. Three things I can do

- ride a horse.

- make a fantastic vodka martini.

- tie a cherry stalk into a knot with my tongue.



only joking. i can't.

- what i can do is listen really well to your problems, and make you feel better.



8. Three ways to describe my personality

- introverted

- intense

- complicated



9. Three things I can't do

- SEW

- keep my mouth shut when I really should. i'm learning though.

- make pastry.



10. Three things I think you should listen to

- my ideas. all of them.

- oum khoulthoum, egyptian singer.

- all of evita, both albums. the version with julie covington.





11. Three things you should never listen to

- anyone who puts you down and tries to completely dismantle your self-esteem.

- howard and costello bagging muslims. and yes, that is what they are doing. you see, the more they can make you fearful and scared, the more they can control you. read 1984. go on.

-bad talk-back radio. just turn it off. same goes for shows like today tonight. they are messing with your mind.





12. Three things I'd like to learn

- how to play the piano.

- how to become more self-disciplined.

- more about australian indigenous culture.






13. Three favourite foods

- pasta

- ice cream

- seafood





14. Three beverages I drink regularly

- water

- wine

- coffee





15. Three shows I watched as a kid

- i dream of jeannie. i wanted to be jeannie.

- get smart.

- the partridge family.





16. Three people I'm tagging

bevis

clokes

i’m not craig




* these were all true when I wrote this the other day. but they are not true now.

so an update of this question:

three things I am doing now.

- procrastinating about doing work.

- wondering how much it's going to rain on saturday and how that will affect princess and her birthday party.

- trying to remember I have the dog-washer coming to make gigi a beautiful, fresh-smelling pooch at 2.30 today.

put simply

who is the best hairdresser in melbourne?

apologies to male readers who have recently started joining me here. if you are going to hang out at all with me, you need to just put up with my occasional girly-whinges. bevis copes, i don't know, maybe you could email him for tips.

no, i really want to know. who is the best?

i think i have come up with a "final solution" for my hair. readers who have been with me for a while will know of my hair iss-ews.

think phyllis diller on a good day.

no. it's not that bad.

[laughs]

i embrace its "volume" and ignore the "strength"*

hairdressers have told me they have never seen such thick hair. the most direct one, a man but not gay, told me it's like horse's hair. i laughed it off but inside, yes i died a little. they have fucked up the colouring, they have fucked up the cutting, they have complained about the weight of it, the way they always run out of colour and have to re-load the little trolley.

i have had a brilliant idea about what to do with it, which i will keep to myself for the moment.

but can you tell me?

who is the best hairdresser in melbourne?

i don't care about cost. i need someone who can take me in their capable, professional, experienced hands, and tell me, nay assure me, they won't fuck up my hair when i explain to them my bold plan.

other bits and pieces:

1. what do you say to an-almost-ten-year-old child when they tell you they want to make their will, and want their "body to be burned" and half the ashes to be scattered at a particular park in istanbul and the other half "you can keep, mummy."

2. what the fuck are howard and costello on about with their fomenting of fear of muslims etc?

3. does fomenting mean what i think it means? i can't be bothered looking it up.

4. are optus going to charge me another late-payment fee, because now i haven't paid the last late-payment fee by the due time?

5. i confess to being possibly the only person who has never, until now, watched an entire ep. of sex in the city. you see, i read about it when it was headed our way, in um around 1998? and rubbed my hands together and cackled at the thought of it, knowing i would adore it. then i went overseas and they didn't have it on the tv where i went. when i came back a year later my world had been turned upside down, and i'd missed a year's worth of shows. the other night we got the first shows on dvd. i am really really loving it.

6. princess has gone to camp. for two nights. it'll be a piece of cake considering how i coped in january. remember those days, dear readers?

7. removed

8. i went out with a group of girlfriends on friday night. we ate indian and then went to a bar. our bar bill was $460. we were only slightly out of control. only one of us vomitted the next day and it wasn't me. i had to co-host an 8th birthday party. boys. football. say no more.

9. i'm cooking spaghetti bolognaise tonight. i'm off wheat and dairy, but the soy milk looked very strange in my coffee this morning. we'll see how long it lasts.





* euphemism for "similar to horse's hair"

naguib mahfouz

egyptian nobel-pize laureate for literature naguib mahfouz, the "balzac of egypt" died this week.
i read his cairo trilogy [palace walk, palace of desire, sugar street], he wrote so beautifully, his arabic translated into english still with a lyrical and poetic fanfare.
he would have certainly been a fan of oum koulthoum, egypt's most famous singer. people would sit on the streets, in shops, around dinner tables, listening to the radio, or watching her tv appearances. cairo would stop for her music.
here is a sample.

i am so shit at sewing

recently the delightful fluffy asked people what they are bad at.

i forgot to say i really suck big time at sewing. this can even be sewing a simple, simple thing.

just now i did princess a favour and sewed up the two gaps in the teddy bear she made at aftercare on monday. she is going on school camp next week and had the great idea of taking it, along with a message written on it from moi, saying love you, have a great time, etc. and then getting her friends to also sign it.

so, i sewed up the seams which had been left after she had shoved the stuffing in. this went well. see, i can do some things like this, and then it gives me confidence, so then i try something a little more complex, and get myself into a "situation."

then i thought i'd do her another favour. she's sewn on a button on the teddy's front (why are bears always boys?) and a bell somewhere near his belly. she said she wanted to make his nose, in a triangle, with brown thread. you know, like the traditional bears.

so i thought i'd do that for her and give her a surprise.

i couldn't fucking do it.

i tried.

twice.

both times i got myself into such a knotty place that i had to cut the thread, swear, then try to get the tiny knots out where i'd sewn through the thread.

i'm so good at bad sewing.

ps why won't blogger load more than a couple of pics at a time? it's bothering me something awful.

monday crush

on saturday, in the age good weekend magazine, there was an article which featured several men of different ages being interviewed about their lives, and specifically about the male experience.

now, i've always liked danny katz, but i've never fancied him before. i've enjoyed his wry form of observational humour, in his columns, for several years. but in the paper, there was a photo of him, with very nice, smart glasses, that gave me a small frisson of something-or-rather. and he wasn't holding his chin. you look. most photos of him, he has his chin in his hand. don't know why. but if i ever get into conversation with him, i will ask him and tell you straight away.

when princess moved schools last year, she moved into the grade of mr katz's son.

earlier this year, i went to a parents' morning tea, held at the house of the writerly one. he wasn't there. i'm sure he shipped out, expecting it would be insufferable with all these loud women standing around eating cake and gobbing like turkeys about school and the like.

or maybe he was there, listening at an ajar door, gathering material.

anyway, i cooked this to-die-for chocolate torte, and then gave out the recipe at school the next week. i went up to him, as he was standing with someone who had been at the morning tea. i was introduced to him as danny, and he proceeded to prove the following:

what do you like most about being a man?
i adore women. i adore flirting with women. in fact, i don't think i can talk to any woman without flirting, even if i'm not attracted to her.

and he was a bit flirty. kind of just looked right at me, big smile, handshake. i even made a joke that he chuckled at, i can't remember now what it was, something about the torte. you know, tortes are hilarious. and he made a crack back. can't remember his either.

anyway. he's often at school for pick-up, more often than mitch, his loverly wife. and she is tall. something he referred to in the interview, in a most charming way:

if you could make a major life change, what would it be?
i need to become a better partner to my wife. we're best friends, we get along famously but i'm absolutely appalling at romance. i have no sense of romance whatsoever. i know she needs it because she says it to my face, not even hinting. it doesn't come to me naturally. i'm not a hand-holder, i'm not a hugger. i'm not an intimate person. i wish i could be like that for her, and yet i can be like that with my kids. i don't know why. part of our hand-holding problem is that mitch is considerably taller, so i always feel like i'm holding hands with my mother.

so in a slightly stalkerish way, i look-but-don't-look at him at school, as he lingers mostly on his own, the creative, wordy smallish man, the loner. i usually am on my own too; not being there from prep means i have kind of missed establishing myself as one of the gobblers at the gate. but we have about two degrees of separation, as one of the mothers who chats to him sometimes also chats to me. but not at once, so i can't engineer an opening for that question about the photos and the chin.

have you ever met someone, and pretended not to know who they are?

what are you having for dinner tonight?

soup and bread rolls always complement each other nicely, don't you think?

want to come over for tea?

where were you when...?

for me there are three specific events that define the origins of my internet use.

the first time i think i ever went online was using my dad's laptop when he was away overseas. this must have been around 1997 or something.

i don't have any memory of email or the internet before sitting in my mother's kitchen while staying there when princess was a baby and we'd just come back from overseas, with the phone cord plugged into the laptop. i would cruise around, checking stuff out. i remember the search engine of choice was alta vista i think, and i remember i had madonna's ray of light playing in the computer at the same time. to me, this was the ultimate techological sophistication. i remember going into a chat-room associated with dad's isp, i can't remember the name* i remember there were these chat-rooms with different names, like hot-tub and barstool. in one of these rooms i watched someone do a strip-show. even though there were no visuals, it was so erotic and the atmosphere was so charged. i felt like i was peeping at someone, and i backed out of there, heart thumping.

the next lot of internet use was around the monica lewinsky scandal. by this time, i had an office set up. i was doing freelance work at home, and spending hours and hours at night playing games such as harry the handsome executive** and warcraft which my brother had put me onto. i also read for hours and hours about monica and bill.

also around this time i read an article about jonbenet ramsay, a 6-year old "beauty queen" who had been found murdered in her family home basement, on boxing day 1996. her father found her, there was a ransom note demanding $118,000. because the father, john, had found her and carried her up out of the basement to where the police were searching other areas of the house, much forensic evidence was destroyed. rumours began, and people thought the parents had done it, either separately or together. or that the older son had. or that blah de blah had done it.

occasionally over the years i would google jonbenet to see what there was to read. amazing conspiracy theories.

which have been put to rest today, i guess, as i see a man has been arrested in thailand. this man is a teacher, who said that he loved jonbenet and her death was an accident.

a thai policeman is quoted as saying:

they fell in love with each other... so he kidnapped her and killed her by accident.

this sentence is so, so wrong. they fell in love with each other? excuse me, at 6 years old, little girls fall in love with kittens and puppies and the colour pink. they have probably fallen in love with their daddies around the age of 2. they do not fall in love with 31 year old men.

the saddest thing about this is jonbenet's mother, patsy, died of cancer 2 months ago.

things like this freak me out. last night i had a conversation with princess on the edge of her bed about how she says she is scared someone is going to come into the house and hurt her. she said she felt very safe when we moved in here, and she doesn't know why lately she's been scared. she told me she had a dream about her cousins being in a toilet and a man hiding behind the door, wanting to hurt them. i told her it was clear to me that she has been upset by what happened to the girl in perth, in the shopping centre toilet.

what do i say to a 9 year old who is the same age as a girl who was raped and murdered in the space of ten minutes in a shopping centre in our own country? not somewhere overseas. then at least i could consider a lie, and say "that wouldn't happen here."

how do i reassure her, when i myself worry about these things happening too? how do i respond when she asks me whether it would be better to scream, or to try and run away, or to play stupid, or to pretend to be asleep if someone comes into her room? or to fight.

i don't think i could fight a man, mummy.

so i try to tell her about the flight or fight instinct. we talk about david***, and how she's seen him talk about animals running away or fighting. i tell her she's smart and she would work out what to do. as i'm saying this, i'm wondering whether i should be telling her not to worry. am i indulging her by responding? am i feeding her fear, making it credible by not cutting her off and saying "don't be ridiculous. nothing's going to happen to you"? because that's a lie, i can't guarantee that nothing will happen to her during her life? how can a parent say that?

so i tell her i don't think she needs to worry about this. that i don't know anyone who this has happened to. that she is safe safe safe in our house, with john and me to take care of her. i tell her that bad things can happen in life, but we can't worry about them too much. like granny getting cancer. you deal with it. like mum and dad getting divorced. things work out.

then i tell her the best place to kick a man is in his private parts. she laughs, incredulously and tells me about a boy at school accidentally banging himself there and rolling on the ground.

the scary mood is broken and we smile as we acknowledge the male vulnerability.

and then today i pick up the paper and see the story on jonbenet. i will be making sure it's not lying around for the kids to see. she doesn't need to know that some crazy fuck somehow brooke into a little girl's house and raped her and murdered her. even if it did happen almost ten years ago.



* what are some names of early ISPs in australia other than bigpong. it wasn't those fucks. something with "super" in it i think.

** can someone please validate me here. has anyone else seen this piece of superb gaming?

*** david attenbrough, whose docos have been, and continue to be, a staple of princess' life education.

not an ordinary day

this morning i thought i'd cook a chicken curry for dinner. nothing especially outrageous about this.

i got the recipe out, mr oliver's book, the first one, where he's in a blue shirt on the cover. from way back when, before he became jamie DOT com. i still have a soft spot for him.

so i turn to fragrant green chicken curry, which begins on page 122 and crosses to the next page.

page 123.

this is where fluffy's meme comes in. not that i knew it at the time.

look here.

so following the instructions here is my meme response:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people*

let me confess, i did pick up one of the two closest books, which is "getting started with microsoft frontpage". i turned to page 123 and saw it was a really boring corporate web page blurb.

so then i reached for the other closest book, just next to my computer. it was already open. to page 123.

if you think i'm fucking with you, get your copy out and check. or call whoever it is you know who has this book. you will find the second half of the fragrant green chicken curry on page 123.

and THEN, when i find the fifth sentence [3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil] i think to myself, huh, how weird would it have been if it had been about the limes? [see previous mini-post]

well fuck me dead, i have just had another bizzarro world coincidence.

look at instruction 4 above.

i have to post the text of the next four sentences...

here they are:

zest and juice of 4 limes

Put all the green curry paste ingredients in a food processor and whizz to a smooth green paste. Marinate the chicken in a little of the paste for 30 minutes, then add a little oil and the chicken pieces to a hot casserole-type pan or wok. Fry for 4 minutes, then add the remainder of the marinade - it will sizzle and spit.

but that's not all, folks**

before i realised all this weird meme stuff, i went and did my food shopping. i went to safeway. i bought the ingredients. while shopping, and getting lemon grass stalks, fresh coriander etc. i was thinking to myself, this is fairly blogworthy. comparing how much it would cost to make a curry from scratch, to getting a ready-made jar of curry stuff.

so what i did when i got home was add up the ingredients for the curry. i got to limes and saw that i was charged $16.98 a kilo. do you know how many limes i got? 4. do you know how much they cost? $9.90.

$9.90 for 4 limes

so i went back up there with my limes and my receipt and got my money back.

i came back home and got lemons off the tree.

i did the mini-post about the cost of limes. i'm not craig and fluffy kindly responded.

i sat down and read fluffy's blog.

i marvelled at the weirdness of the meme and the recipe being on page 123.

but that's not all.

i went into the kitchen. i chopped up the curry paste ingredients. then i tried to whizz them with my bamix. no good. then i tried to pound them in my seriously large mortar with my seriously large pestle. no good. i knew i needed a food processor.

i have never had a food processor.

there, it's out. i've said it.

a few years ago i bought one for my mum, and have had long borrowings of it when i needed to. i used it more than she does.

yesterday a myer catalogue came and it had a nice beville food processor in it. i liked the idea of something that is just a food processor. not with a milk shake maker. not with a cake mixer. just a food processor.

so i went to good guys and bought one. they're pretty good, those guys. and you know what? there was a woman there, and she bought exactly the same one as i did. she had all her research written down on the back of an old envelope. i think we affirmed each other's choice.

so all up, even factoring in returning the $10 limes, i figure this curry has cost us:

four freerange chicken breasts - $24.93

bits and pieces for curry paste (spring onions; basil; coriander; ginger; lemongrass; lime leaves; green chilli) - $13.11

handful of pistacchio nuts, i don't know how much, but i got a bag for $8.92

i got some roti to go with it, 2 packets @ $3.67 each = $7.34

food processor - $235 (they undercut the myer price by $4, down from their own price of $269.95)

so, this curry has cost $280.38 without the pistacchio nuts.

and i figure a jar of ready-made would cost about $4 something?

tell me you have moments like this as well.





* i tag whoever wants to do it.

** i bought some steak knives today as well. i really did.

so tell me, how much do you think limes are, per kilo?

i'm going to tell you a story but first, tell me (without cheating) how much limes are a kilo.

also, tell me what the difference is between lemon juice and lime juice. has anyone done a taste test? is there a palpable difference? will a recipe be ruined if one uses lemon juice instead of lime juice?

i await your comments.

Napoleon Dynamite Dance Scene

we just watched this movie again tonight. this scene is beautiful. happy to see it's on youtube. my new best friend.

background to the scene. napoleon's friend pedro is running for school president. it seems he has no chance, for he and his buddy napoleon are dork losers. each candidate gives a speech and then presents a "skit". you can see the competition; the blonde girl in blue outfit, who gave a very uninspired speech, then followed with her girl gang doing a cheer-leadery dance with mime moves.

pedro ends his speech with "if you vote for me your wildest dreams will come true."

and napoleon helps him out with this dance he's been working on in his bedroom.

tonight, we have bananas

my mum is staying with us, cause she had a wrist operation for carpal tunnel. at the same time, she had a ganglion (!) taken off her other wrist. so, now she has two wrists in bandages, one in a sling. yesterday i had to dry her after her bath. this is something i've never done, not even when she's been so sick after chemo, and any of the number of infections she's had following or during treatment. that was a first, and not nearly as hard as i might have thought it would be. i am learning i can be tender and caring and kind in ways i never thought possible for myself.

i took her to the dentist today. we had lunch at prahran market and saw gabriel gate with a box of fresh produce. why when i see a celeb are they of such minor proportions? sorry, gabriel, if you happen to google yourself and see this. i did enjoy your taste le tour recipes last month.

at the market, i had wonton soup and then mum said she'd shout us some bananas. i was very excited. we went to one of the stalls and carefully chose the best bananas. we got six of them and it cost $13+.

then the stall person had the fucking gumption to brag about how she can eat bananas whenever she wants, when she heard me saying politely and conversationally that it was such a treat for us to have bananas, and how excited we were.

so when she said she could eat them whenever she wanted, i thought she was bullshitting. so i said, really? surely not, unless you're the wife of the owner [then thinking, how sexist] or the owner of the shop yourself?

no, i just work here. but i can eat them whenever i want.

fucking smug bitch.

do not, when you are faced with someone who hasn't had a banana for ages, brag to them how you can eat them whenever you want. just be gracious about it.

the underpant poll - results

this is a non-discriminatory blog. it is not the author’s wish to pathologise in any way the underpant-wearing conventions of the readers. some participants indicated they felt “abnormal” for wearing underpants to bed. if you feel that you, or a loved one, may be distressed by this, please seek professional help.


Abstract
The intention of this research project was to investigate the underpant-wearing conventions of a sample of bloggers, with specific reference to their bed-time attire. The genesis of this study lies in a conversation which the researcher was involved in a couple of weeks ago, where she was challenged by others present; simply that not wearing underpants to bed was somehow not the normal thing to do. The discussion was initiated after the researcher laughed at the idea of someone wearing underpants under pyjamas, which was met with howls of “of course, that’s what you do! you HAVE to wear underpants underneath your py-JAMAS!”

As the challengers were catholics, and all came from the same family, this researcher decided to take the question to a wider group of people. Participants were asked to volunteer information on two questions:

1. whether they wear underpants to bed

2. what religion they are

Data were collected in the form of comments, and using qualitative methods (Miles & Huberman, 2000), were analysed in an attempt to tease out themes and patterns. A visual data matrix was constructed* which enabled these themes to be cross-referenced, so that conclusions could be drawn.

Participants
The size of the sample group was 53 participants including glenn’s wife.

Results
After careful analysis** of the data volunteered by the 53 participants, several statements can be made. It is important to note that the researcher has made some assumptions, which she will defend if readers wish to criticise. Following is the major assumption:

- citing that you wear undies to bed with a t-shirt if you are a girl does not count as wearing undies to bed. This researcher feels that while technically this sort of answer would be included in the “affirmative undie-wearing” class of respondents, in this case the underpant has become something other than underwear. It has become like shorts, or similar. In this way, the researcher has chosen to count as primary “affirmative undie-wearing” data only those participants who explicitly state that they wear undies under pyjamas. Secondary “affirmative undie-wearing data” includes people who wear undies under nighties, as distinct again from people who wear undies with a t or another top.


31 people stressed they wore no undies to bed. Of these, some said they would occasionally wear undies, if at someone else’s house.

15 people said they wore undies, this ranged from wearing them under pjs, to just wearing undies (mostly men), or wearing undies with a t-shirt (5 people)

Of the undie-wearers, several (3) emphasised the underwear was clean.


"when you’re on your ladytime"

I had trouble deciding whether the above quotation, or “when the painters are in”, was the more delightfully quaint euphemism for menstruation. Nevertheless, 6 respondents specified that while they were non-undie wearing sleepers, they would wear undies when they had their periods.


the converts

There were three stated converts, who have moved from undie-wearing at night-time, to not. Cuntman shared with us a story of how he slept with undies under pjs until a somewhat traumatic caravan holiday he had with friends. The 8-year-old was deemed “wrongheaded” by his friend’s family who then “made” him do the “nocturnal freeballing”. Cuntman is, however, glad they did. Now he would prefer to sleep naked, but kids in the bed make this difficult.

Another convert who also said she was glad she had changed her ways was michellesarah, who stated that she used to wear pjs with undies, but recently did a similar poll amongst friends, realised she was “abnormal” (michellesarah’s own words”, and changed. As michellesarah said:

“feel much better for it, actually. Shits got time to BREATHE. I wear baggy PJ pants. Yo!”

Clokeeey was another participant who also stated he used to wear undies under pjs but recently has changed this practice. He offers no indication of whether this has been a positive experience, or indeed whether the choice was fully made by him.

“a good airing”

Finally, one theme that emerged from this study was that mothers had told their daughters to not wear underpants to bed, as they needed (presumably) to air their vulvas. Some cited that it’s the “most hygienic option” while others (6) came right out and stated that they don’t wear underpants to bed because they need to air “down there” and specifically, their mothers had told them that. Anne Altman was perhaps the most evangelical about this issue, saying:

“[you’re] not supposed to wear underpants to bed”

“shit’s gotsta breathe”

Anne even invokes jesus, saying “no doubt jesus didn’t wear underpants to bed.”


Interesting anomalies, further research ideas
- some people indicated that undie wearing was connected to whether a person was a morning or evening showerer.

- the issue of hygiene was raised by a couple of undie-wearers, which directly contradicts the non-undie wearers following mother-advice.

- yublocka shared that she has a kind of underpant-demotion system, where once day-time undies get a bit ratty, they move into the job of night-time underpant and then eventually get thrown away. it would be interesting to see whether this featured in any other participants’ selection systems.

- dj stated that even when he was a child, he would take off his clothes in bed “seconds after” he was tucked in by his parents. it would be interesting to explore whether patterns were set early on, whether they have changed over time, and what factors have influenced any conventions.

- the man at the pub stated that while he had a “no undie wearing in bed” policy in his household, for lovemaking reasons, “oddly, a warm jumper is acceptable on a chilly night”. interestingly, delightfuljen also stated sometimes wearing a jumper to bed. is this a trend?

- nailpolishblues stated that “at the most – socks” were worn. it would be interesting to do a follow-up study on socks in bed.



Conclusion
The religion aspect of this study quickly became irrelevant. Anecdotally, there seems to be no evidence to support my original hypothesis that catholics would be more likely to wear underpants under their pyjamas. Thanks to everyone who shared about their religious connections.

Postnote
The weird coincidence that I mentioned a couple of days ago is this. Someone told me that at their work-place, people had been discussing this issue: ie, wearing underpants to bed or not. This was kind of freaky, and I wondered whether it was someone who’d read this blog, making their own little poll. I’ve never heard of a blog bleeding into real life in that way.





* this is a lie.

** this is also a bit of a lie. But the results speak for themselves.

only four to go

thanks to everyone who has contributed to the poll on whether people wear their underwear to bed. i am busily working through all the data while john watches the footy. i still need, however, FOUR more participants. then i will have my even 50, an ample sample.

the next post to follow will not be a comment on the dog that ravaged teddy bears, nor on the fucked-upness of lebanon and israel. it won't be a piece on the racist-tool quotient of mel gibson, nor will it contain any narrative on how much i want to EAT A FUCKING BANANA!

it will be all about the poll. who wears what and why. i will try to draw some conclusions, and answer any questions that people have had about the origins of the study. plus something interesting, and perhaps not so coincidental, that happened during the week, relating to the study.

so four more people. to please say whether you ordinarily wear underpants to bed. and in what manner. or not.

two women. one lebanese, one israeli.

these are emails i've received through a newsgroup i belong to.

the first one is from liza barki-harrington, a jewish woman living in israel. The second is from zena el-khalil, a lebanese woman living in lebanon.

interesting reading.

first, from liza in israel:

Hi,

Thanks for everyone writing and asking about us. I decided to write an update of what it all looks like from my perspective (not a news agency). So I appologize that this is not a pesonal email.

First of all, I finally surrendered to ongoing pressure from the south and left Haifa for Beer Sheva tonight. This was after Haifa was hit by 10 rockets today, one of which hit a 3 story building. I was at the universityand heard them falling. The Haifa area is particularly dangerous because of the petro-chemical industries and oil refinery located right at the foot of Mt Carmel and surrounding area of over 270,000 people. Since people are being pretty obedient about entering the shelters, no one was killed today.

By the 6th day, the northern part of Israel has been hit by over 1500 rockets and missiles targeting dozens of cities and villages, Jewish and Arab alike. Up until now, our toll count is 13 civilians and 12 soldiers killed. In addition we have 3 kidnapped soldiers, one in Gaza (by Hamas) and 2 in Lebanon.

I think the Hizballah were very surprised by the force of retaliation of IDF. They said they identify a weakness in Israel and that is the "great regard for human life"and that is why they kidnap soldiers. They thought we'd immediately engage in negotiations and refrain from attacking them.

However, it seems that Olmert and Peretz ( P.M. and Minister of Defense), who are not former army generals for a change, are doing a good job at staying calm, quiet and are letting the army do its job. The army is attacking only Hizballah infrastructure and rocket/missiles launchers.

It must be understood that Hizballah are Shiites that use the locals' homes/schools, sport facilities etc to hide an arsenal of over 10,000 rockets and missles, some with a range of over 100 miles. IDF continually warns the local population of areas that are going to be targeted (bridges, Hizballah neighborhoods etc). None the less, any attemptsof the Lebanese or Syrian army to help Hizballah are stopped immediately.

It was the Lebanese Army that used their radars to give Hizballah the exact location of one of our ships, which led to the death of 4 soldiers. These radars do not exist any longer. This is a wide operation that we hope will put an end to the violence of Hizballah against Israel and against Lebanon. Not one country in the Arab world is supporting them because they bring harm not only to us but also to our neighbor. It is that clear understanding that "enough is enough" that brings Israel to refuse negotiations to release prisoners and to accept the on going assaults by Hizballah.

We have reached the point where we are all united in our understanding that we must endure the on going missile attacks on Haifa and other cities so that the army can do its job and make them understand that enough is enough. We are not cold blooded killers that target innocent people but we cannot and will not accept this any longer. So personally, we are ok. Now all of us are in Beer Sheva. I suppose living in the south of Israel has to be justified… however, having had a just a taste of what the habitants of the border cities in Israel are subject to throughout the years on a daily basis makes you appreciate them more. I hope these days will be over soon, with as little innocent casualties on both sides. However, we will endure whatever necessary so that Hizballah understands that this is not the way to talk to us.

Thanks again for writing and please stay in touch,

Liza.



---------------------------

now, from zena in lebanon:

Dear Friends,
The account by Ms. Zena el-Khalil was sent to me via a Turkish-Lebanese friend of mine in Istanbul. She sent it on Friday, July 28th, several days before the unfortunate attack on Qana.
Stuart

From Zena el-Khalil: I have started coughing, but I don't know why. I am not sick. I don't have a cold. I think it's a reaction I'm having to stress. My body feels weak. My mouth is always dry, no matter how much water I drink. And I'm afraid to drink too much water because I don't want it to run out!

Last night was probably the most frightful night I have ever experienced in my whole entire life. I was so tired and exhausted... have not slept in days. When there is finally a quiet moment, the tension in my stomach and heart prevents me from falling asleep.

Last night we counted at least 15 bombs falling into Dahiyeh (Beirut Suburbs).. and these were just the ones we heard. At some point during the night, I said to myself that if I didn't at least try to get some sleep that I was going to go crazy from fatigue; and that that was what was going to kill me. Haven't been able to eat either, so am losing physical strength. It's all psychological at this point. I know I have to be strong, and I will be, but I can't deny what I’m going through.

And I think it's important that people hear about the downside as well as the bravery. So many of us are already working hard to fix things, we are running around Beirut trying to get food and water and medicine to people, we are doing things online, etc, but it doesn't mean we are not scared, sick or tired.So, last night amidst the worst shelling we've had so far, I realized that I was not afraid of the noise anymore; how quickly you get used to it. I realized what was hurting the most was the "UNKNOWN". What is going to happen tomorrow? When will this all end? How are we going to start re-building again? Are the refugees going to be ok? How are the people in the south? And why punish a whole country? What is the real plan behind all of this? How much worse is it going to get?

My husband and I have been housing foreign "refugees" helping them to find their way out of the country. Two managed to leave this morning, a German and Swiss. The other two are British and American. The craziest thing is that out of all people, the American embassy has been the LEAST helpful to its citizens here. The phone line to the embassy has been practically out of service. My friend, Amanda, (whom I just met a few days ago, by the way) had to hire a cab to take her to the embassy (which is a ride out of Beirut) and all they could tell her was that they didn’t know what they were going to do and to keep checking the website. Only thing she has gotten on the website is that she now knows that there is going to be an evacuation (5 days later), but when it happens, she is going to have to pay for it! Yes, they are saying to their citizens that they are going to bill them for their ride out! Can you believe that?!

Trying to evacuate people has put me under stress. The question is what am I to do if I had the opportunity to leave? Would I leave? What do I do with my friends? My family? My art studio? I have a British passport; I could be evacuated with my husband. But what would happen to my best friend Maya? She has a very rare and bad case of CANCER! I have been taking care of her since she was diagnosed a few months ago and I know that my care for her is what has helped her do so well. Her type of cancer is "untreatable", but ironically, the day the shelling started, her doctor told us her tumors had shrunk! Unbelievable- a true miracle. I can't leave Maya!What about art work in my studio? What about all my brushes and paints and glitter and books! All my books! Again- the crazy things that cross your mind. What about our photo albums? All our family pictures? The memories...What about the doodles I drew on my balcony a few summers ago when I was suffering from a bad break up? What about all the love letters I have saved? Letters that document my youth that I wanted to some day give to my daughter.

What about my other best friend? My dog, Tampopo? My beautiful Jack Russel Terrier who has never let me down. Who has always been a source of purity and compassion... Who has eyes of an angle... Dogs are not allowed to evacuate. My American friend Christine is going to have to leave her dog with me; a black pug named Baousi (means Kiss in Arabic). She is heartbroken! She almost didn't want to evacuate. She went to so many embassies to try and register with them and see if they would take her dog. Don't worry Christine, I will take great care of Baousi.


My sister has been volunteering to help the refugees who are being sheltered in public schools. Right now they are calling on Lebanese citizens to help out with money, medicine, food, water, blankets and mattresses. She has been going to people and asking for money and then going out to buy medicines for refugees- her own initiative! My mom has joined in too. A friend has put together a website for accepting donations:http://atrissi.com/helplebanon/

Biggest cynical statement of the day: I

srael has told people to evacuate from the south because they are going to annihilate the south of Lebanon. However, the people can not leave because all the roads have been destroyed/blocked. And yesterday when people did try and leave, the Israelis opened fire on them! A massacre is happening!

Update on the attacks, as of yesterday:

- Israelis have been bombing the south of Lebanon with phosphorus and other chemical bombs.
- Israelis have bombed all ports along the coastline of Lebanon.
- Israelis have bombed all our local army radars and some outposts
- Israelis have bombed/attacked the fire fighting brigade and the Search and Rescue Brigade in the South. Innocent civilian lives were lost. It was a massacre - the buildings were also housing refugees.
- Israelis have continued to bomb the suburb of Beirut, Dahiyeh & Haret Hreik
- Israelis have now killed over 100 civilians and there are several hundreds wounded - and they continue to bomb the south
- Israelis have started hitting roads that lead to the mountains. They hit a main one leading to the Shouf.
- Israelis have hit a gas plant in the mountains... I can't keep up with what they have hit. ***

Israel has begun to target Lebanese army outposts. They have killed Lebanese soldiers. They are no longer just targeting Hizuballah. They mean to kill all of Lebanon.

The reality: Israel is trying to bring Lebanon to its knees. Israel is trying to destroy Lebanon and the Lebanese spirit. Israel is trying to turn Lebanese against each other. Israel is trying to turn us into animals scrounging for food, water and shelter.

Israel and the United States of America are trying to drag Syria and Iran into this too. They are using Lebanon as bait. Lebanon is stuck in the middle. The Americans and Israelis are trying to launch a regional war!!

Please help in any way you can.

Please pass on the message, this email - reprint if you wish.

Please tell people what is going on.

Please put pressure on your respective governments to step in and do something.

Lebanon is a peaceful country. We are the only country in the region in which people of all religions co-exist peacefully.It is unbelievable how biased the news is. They are not reporting the real damage being caused. They don’t report that the Israelis are killing innocent civilians. It seems from this end that all they are focusing on is G8!

Are the Israeli & US government really just trying to wipe us all out?? Well, you can tell them that I'm not leaving. And there are many of us who are not leaving. We love Lebanon. We love what we have spent our lives building. Tell them about people like me.. who build culture and tolerance. Who work for peace and understanding. Who work to educate. Who work to promote love and compassion. There are thousands like me here. What about us?Tell them about people like me, that despite all of this, I have still not learnt to hate. They can take everything from me, but not my dignity. Not my morals and beliefs.

They will never never break my spirit.

Tell the Israeli citizens what their government is doing to us. Tell them that violence begets violence. Remind them that Lebanon is their neighbor and that co-existence is possible. How are we going to ever reach an understanding through violence? We were so close... We were so close...

Please stop this brutality!

Still with love, Zena el-Khalil.

i'm waiting on another 20 or so pollsters to kindly leave their comment on my undie poll below

but in the meantime, evidence the world has gone crazy.

i didn't even know this existed, until now.

what's your blog worth on the "fantasy blog stock market"

http://blogshares.com/blogs.php?blog=http%3A%2F%2Fmelbgirltakeonthings.blogspot.com%2F




also i really really want to buy the red espadrilles from husk. just looking at them makes me feel summer is on the way.

friday poll - I NEED HELP (please)

last night, i found myself in a conversation where i was outnumbered, four to one, on the following question:



do you wear your underwear to bed?


this means, explicitly, do you keep on your underpants in bed, either under pyjama bottoms, or a nightie. or do you take them off, and then put on your pyjama pants or nightie, or whatever.

now, i don't, as a rule, wear my undies to bed. by the end of the day, they need to be in the dirty linen basket. but the people i was with all most strenuously and loudly argued the undies have to stay on.

men and women.

catholics all.

i would like to know what readers think about this. if i can get 50 people to tell me their position on this question, next time i see these people i can either validate them, or myself. if possible, i would like to be able to group results, ie if you can indicate basically what you wear to bed, varieties if any. and also, if you wouldn't mind, an indication of whether you are catholic or not.

is that too much to ask? forget the religion bit if it offends thee.

and i promise i'm not a pervert. i'm just curious. and a compulsive researcher.

have a great weekend.

* i thought maybe they've been trained to keep as many layers of fabric between themselves and their hands at all times. whereas, in my family, non-practising church of englanders, anglicans now? my parents walked around in the nude, well from shower to bedroom. there was no coyness. to the point where one of my childhood gags with the kids down the street was to mimic my dad and his swinging penis. the penis was simulated first with fingers, then with a ruler until finally the joke got out of control and i remember doing the dad walk with a rake swinging from side to side. of course, there was a silly noise that went with this visual. kind of a duh-duh-duh in time to the swinging movement. i hasten to add the neighbours never SAW dad's nude walk, as performed by him; but it was my duty to reveal all sorts of secret-family business to my friends. what is princess telling her friends about me? actually, i was reading her homework book and she was putting words in sentences. this was one of her sentences:

smooth. My dad's hair is soft and smooth but my mum's hair isn't.

tim fischer, i think i love you.

tim fischer has got it down. the man is talking sense.
he's saying israel is targeting civilians and the un positions. he says it's happened before, that israel bombed/missiled a un outpost in exactly the same place as the one done a few days ago. the previous time 104 fijian un peacekeepers were killed. he said, there is "form" on this subject, and there is a "rogue element" in the israeli "military machine." he also said he is getting lots of emails from israel-supporters, which is what always happens when anyone speaks out against israel, the government. not israel, the people. [this is not necessarily in the article above; i heard him on the radio. and apart from him not being able to pronounce 'reco[G]nise' he was pretty damn good.]
anyway, it's just not like me to agree with a national party politician. because i'm one-eyed, biased and clearly can't look at both sides of an argument. i also like to wholly embrace stereotypes, and paint all people with the same conservative brush, including alot of labor people.
things that have shitted me so far today:
have you noticed the plastic bags in supermarkets are getting thinner? I KNOW, I KNOW, THE GREEN BAGS. stop shouting, i use those, but on the occasion where i have a leaky jar of golden syrup, like today, i ask for a separate plastic bag. so kill me. and then once i have that plastic bag, i want to load it up, make the fucker work in penance of the environmental havoc it is going to cost our planet. so in goes a bag of bread, in goes 2.5 kilos of meat, and then it starts to break.
the other thing that shits me, but not today [yet] is this. has anyone noticed that "verse" is now used as a verb? ok, we have geelong versus collingwood. and we have "verse" as a noun, ie writing some verse. but now kids of today are saying things like "we versed the other team and beat them". am i the only one who is being constantly deranged by this phenomenon? and it is a phenomenon. it is happening all over melbourne i bet. can we do a small survey? any readers with kids around melbourne please report back to me: do your kids say this? and in which region in melbourne do they go to school? you don't have to say the second bit if you don't want. and if you are overseas and have kids, is this travesty of english happening over there, wherever you are? do you correct your kids? i've corrected princess and she resists me, calls me old fashioned [this is like a slap in the face. moi? old-fashioned?] and says "that's what all the kids say. mum, move into the modern times!"
so, to my today.
i am not taking the gigi to dog training classes.
sad gigi.
i'm also not going to gym.
sad melbournegirl.
reason = i am sick, again, and this is another thing that's shitting me today.
what i am going to do is make boeuf bourgignon (again) and spaghetti bolognaise and upside-down pear cake (this is the best, people have orgasms when they eat this cake. really!). john's family are coming over for dinner. usually we go north to his parents' place on a thursday night for the big italiano feast. but his parents are away in qld having a holiday so i thought it would be nice to have his bro and family and sis and family down south to eat.
it was a good idea, but unfortunately my work has cranked up. the research stuff i am on top of, and thankfully i don't have to go into uni on monday for a meeting, but i am doing stuff for my brother as well, and he has a symposium he's organised at a uni interstate, and i am debugging his software as he writes it, as well as making edits to the userguide. it's really hard and makes my head hurt. i am a text girl, not a computer geek. though i try, and i can use latex and know a bit about using linux. i feel like a hacker when i talk like this. it's like that scene in a fish called wanda where john cleese is wooing jamie lee curtis with his russian and italian etc. and she is going wild. for some reason, hacker-talk does the same to me. i. don't. know. why.
anyway, away. to boeuf. to pears. to mozilla. and to the rest of the day.

creativity

[warning. what follows is long, rambling and self-indulgent. i hope you won't detest me for being too revealing. i never was good at playing elusive and hard-to-get.]




yesterday morning i woke up really early with period pains and couldn't get back to sleep. i got up. got some books from my bookshelf in the other room, one of which is the black book, by orhan pamuk.

i took panadol and i got back into bed and lay there in the dark with the books on my lap. i intended to put on the lamp and read, but didn't want to bother john.

i lay there in the dark, and somehow started thinking about a story i started writing about 6 or more years ago, when i was in istanbul last.

now that's a long time. 6 or more years, to have started a story, written 60,000 words, felt very pleased with alot of it, inspired and magical, and then to leave it.

there are reasons why i left it. it's like it came gushing out of me, like a torrent of words and ideas, then i dropped it. it didn't run dry. i turned away from it.

several things happened in quick succession that left me no space to write. no space to even contemplate.

my mother was with us in istanbul. she was diagnosed with cancer while we were there. suddenly, pleasant days filled with pottering, and drifting through bazaars and having lunch and absorbing the beauty and sounds and smells of sultanahmet became a jarring mesh of doctor visits, tense ferry rides, trying to keep positive, and worry.

we were given the diagnosis over the phone on christmas eve. our sad little christmas tree, which i had found down a cobbled and twisty alley way, sat fully decorated in the corner of the room. presents were beneath it. plans were made for the midday meal the next day.

it was horrific.

fast motion now. mum flew back to melbourne dec 27 or 28, for more tests and treatment. i struggled on in turkey, guilty and worried. princess struggled with her turkish childcare centre. my marriage was a disaster in itself.

i made the decision to come back to melbourne, in july of 2000. i had no idea of how much time my mum might have. we were careful not to ask that question. when i arrived back i developed pneumonia. my mum was very sick. alot of it was on my shoulders. then my husband came out around january 2001 and told me he wanted a divorce. this was a long time coming but the fact he said it in response to me saying i wanted another baby was pretty cruel. he left, princess had to deal with her parents splitting. my mother was sick, really sick. my sister was pregnant and couldn't really help much with mum. i had gotten a job within 3 weeks of coming home, a great job at a graphic design company where i was studio manager. it was cool, funky fun young designers. the boss was a woman younger than me, but she was great. we had a ball, i loved my job.

it helped me survive.

there were times when i was so depleted. as a parent, as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend. lots of people helped me, i had some wonderful friends.

i struggled with money, but i managed. i insisted on buying ali out of his share of our secret-life-of-them flat in st kilda. he tried to buy me out, but i told him that wouldn't be happening. i would be buying him out. this was a huge achievement for me. i out-manoeuvred the best salesman i had ever come across.

there were endless rounds of treatment for mum. visits to peter mac. cooking for her. periods of her living with me. it was really hard, there were times went i felt i was going mad. and i felt so guilty because here was my sick mother, the woman who had helped me all my life, been there for me in times of need, and i was struggling to give her what she needed from me. everything was turned upside down. now i was the mother, she was the needy one. and i wasn't coping at all well.

i did all the right things as a parent to princess. swimming lessons, ballet classes, read to her every night, let her sleep with me when she needed to, gave her hugs and kisses, encouraged her to speak to her dad on the phone, was reasonable and controlled when he brought a girlfriend out here, let princess spend a lot of time with them, let them take her to tasmania for four days when she was only 5. we spent a lot of time talking about feelings. we still do. now princess can say to me, mummy i feel that [this or the other]. she is genius at talking about her feelings. i put a lot of effort into helping her develop her sense of humour, her compassion to others, her generosity and her self-esteem. i have worked really hard at all those things, as a gift to her. and as part of my role as her mother.

princess was having difficulty with her reading at school, i was worried, i was pathologising everything. her school was crap, indeed, but she also had some sort of learning difficulty. i was desperate. i was thinking things like oh well, not everyone is academic, in an attempt to take the parental pressure off her. she's artistic, i thought. how wonderful.

then everything started to go wrong at work. the boss had put me on a pedestal. i'd seen her do this to other people, suppliers etc. and seen them fall. as i inevitably did too. i hung in there as long as i could. i needed to be in a job to rejig my mortgage to pay ali out. on the friday i signed the paperwork, the following monday i gave notice. i got out of there before all my self-respect had completely gone. i did the right thing by her to the end, creating work for myself because she had stopped my work flow. i cleaned the fucking venetians in the coffee room.

the family took a trip to byron bay. it was great. i decided i was ready to have someone in my life. i had felt so alone during the years. even during my marriage, at times i'd felt very alone. so john came into my life and i felt things were possible again. i enrolled back at university to do a postgraduate diploma. i did really well, four subjects in one year, and three top class H1 results. i was also toying with a career as a cop. i sat the entrance exam and blitzed it. my application was halted because i wear glasses, so that was that. i wasn't prepared to have laser surgery and then maybe fail the psych exam. or the fitness exam.

john and i became more serious. things were going really well. taking things slowly, making the kids a priority.

i applied for a scholarship and got one to do a masters. this took off some of the financial pressure. i'd been keeping things together by doing consultancy work for my bro - he was a lifesaver with sending work my way. my credit card was inching up to the limit of 10K. things were pretty dire, but i slept fine at night. luckily.

i moved house to move princess's school. needed to be in a zone for a better school. did that, moved her school, found someone to help with her learning issues. we got a puppy, the gigi. my mother's health had been really up and down, culminating in her being on crutches. she came to live with us again. during this time again i became really really stressed. but then she improved and now she is brilliant.

moved again, this time in with john and his two kids. we are in a fabulous big enormous house with huge garden, tennis court, such a feeling of space. the kids are happy enough. we are happy enough. it's still early days, but we are getting married next year and i have started a scrap book.

i finished my masters thesis a couple of months ago, i've joined a gym, i have some research assistant work and even two days work this coming week for my brother. i have discovered the joys of curb your enthusiasm, the beauty of arrested development, and waved goodbye to six feet under. today at prahran market i looked at how beautiful my mother looks, with her hair grown back all curly and done up in a girly-type of do. i argued with her about how she has decided to give my brother our grandfather's gold rolex for his birthday in september. see, our relationship is back to normal! me ungrateful and bitchy daughter, she patient and loving mother.

i've been blogging since last june i think it was. or even may. i've not written a post dedicated to this, like i thought i would. i've met wonderful wonderful people on here. like a whole new world of friends.

but i think what blogging has done for me that is more important than anything was get me writing regularly again. i kept a diary for years when i was younger. i have more than twenty volumes, all different sizes and bindings, all hand-written, mostly filled with tripe, but alot of my history is there, on the page. and now i have another journal, online, of the last year of my life. not everything is here, but alot of the day to day stuff is. i was looking through my archives the other day, and marvelling at how some of the stuff is really good and i put so much effort into some posts. it got my creative juices flowing again.

so that when i woke up at 6.30 yesterday morning, and the whole house was quiet and still, instead of turning on the light and bothering the ever patient, totally tolerant and wonderful john, i got up, got my laptop, and opened a file on my computer, in my documents folder, called the sugar men. it's 60,000 words long so far. i am proud of it, and it's not finished. i thought i would get back to it in another 20 years or so. but the time has come, perhaps. now.

i opened the file and i wrote a couple of pages. cause while i lay there for ten minutes in the dark yesterday morning, i thought of a way to reorganise this story, a new order, a different way to present it.

and i was excited and inspired.

i never get up early if i can help it. this is evidence of how this matters to me.

wish me luck.