grey day

Damnit, it’s not yet nine in the morning and I’m in tears of exhaustion: the phone bill has come in with a $105 charge for a repair call-out (my phone was out of order for a week and I have to pay?), there is a rat in the house and I hate killing them, I hate hearing them wheezing in agony somewhere in the garden because they came in for food and I gave them poison… my granny doesn’t have much time left, I visit her every week and I’m supposed to be going today but I have a cold, which means I shouldn’t go, my best friend is out of the country, I think (she was going sometime but the dates got changed and now I can’t reach her and she must’ve gone, at least I hope so because she’s not answering her phone, but she didn’t tell me – she probably thought she left a message on my answering machine but it’s not working), and I can’t seem to get on top of my workload and I feel like I’m just getting weaker and flabbier and sicker and tired-er and less successful and darling Eug is not well either and goddamnit, last night I dreamed of Drew again.

Sometimes life is just all the worst things that can happen to you. I wrote that first as “the worst thing that can happen to you” trying to imply that some form of oblivion, any form of non-living, would be better… but it didn’t look right, because I simply don’t have any of those options. If I could opt out I’d be long gone by now. Without the illusions of my youth, this world no longer holds much allure much of the time. But people need me, and I can’t help respecting that, both their need and my neededness. It’s enough to keep me here, but not enough to make it all worthwhile.

I need a manager. Someone to steer my ship for me, keep this vagrant energy, this stupid, haywire talent, on course. Then I could get somewhere, instead of forever chasing my tail and the prevailing wind, so to speak.

lost links

This blog exists in a strange sort of limbo at the moment. I’m working on content for a new website that should be up and running in a month or less; in the meantime I’m journal-writing again but even my nearest and dearest are only just finding it, since the blog has moved hosts and is no longer feeding its former RSS clients.

I plan a big party for the website launch, and at that time most or all links should be re-established, but until then I send my thoughts out like space probes, into the great void.

saggy pants and prison terms

From time to time I think it would be fun to start a blog collecting news reports illustrating the grossly hypocritical nature of US ‘democracy’. But I suspect the fun would wear off after a week or two, as recording the avalanche of examples became a daily reminder of the futility of our finest enterprises. So let’s keep it to the level of joyous fascination, with occasional, apparently isolated incidents…

US State passes droopy pants law

Now you could just shrug off the predictable absurdity of the uptight ‘land of the free’ regulating just how low its citizens are allowed to sling their daks, but the real farce only becomes apparent as you read on. The Democrat promoting the new law defends the repression on the basis that the fashion has a forgotten but supposedly unsavoury origin: it’s claimed that it was popularised by rap artists after originally being code in prison for sexual availability. I thought rap artists were notoriously homophobic, but there you go, life is complicated and so are politicians’ justifications. But here’s the irony: where are they proposing to send offenders? Yup, prison – for up to 60 days.

Well, boy, if that don’t teach you to pull your pants up…

appleseed criteek

You know, if you ever wanna figure what a character is written to personify, look at the logic of the character’s behaviour. If the way they act doesn’t have a clear internal logic – if, for example, they are one of the most feared and respected killers on the planet but possessed of a limpid sexuality so passive as to appear timid – this isn’t a person, this is an abstract value in a sexy-girl suit.

Cute as.

why?

…because it takes me to the moment when absolute mortification

becomes absolute shamelessness…

Salvation.

consistently publishable thoughts

You see, when you keep an open diary like this – putting yourself on the line online, so to speak – you have to have consistently publishable thoughts. And for a while there, mine weren’t even printable. Sometimes the mere thought of the effort required to depict the dark mountain you have to move just to get out of bed – well, you wouldn’t get up at all.

It takes a while to rebuild after a year that includes a de facto divorce, two deaths in the family, a hard drive burnout, a car crash, and a period of illness. But I had excellent support in my time of retreat, and I bless my friends for their unshakeable patience and love, my medics for their wisdom, and my enemies for making me laugh.

Speaking of un/publishable thoughts, the discovery of this frothing-with-hatred enemy brought it home to me what kind of risks one takes being honest on the ‘Net. I’m still giggling over being labelled a ‘drug nut’ (I’m an occasional weed smoker but I’ve tried to be brutally honest about the dangerous attractions of overuse). I think the carefully anonymous creator of Greenswatch, a hate site dedicated to destroying the Greens, sent me an email when he put up the entry about me, but I clicked on the link, read the headlines and a side box or two and simply went ‘ew – what fool would send me such a link?’ – and clicked away without finding my own name. I found it belatedly a week or two ago when googling ZenSiren in search of my then-dormant blog. It’s a shame, really, that it’s such a crap site – I wish we had a real (ie, balanced and considered) independent watchdog for the Greens.

At least it’s been useful in reminding me that my Greens membership isn’t paid up at the moment. I must rejoin… otherwise the mysterious Mr Greenswatch might take down his links to me, poor goose.

and on again

I’ve just watched Appleseed and it feels like the last piece in a very big puzzle. Something just clicked. I swear I heard it – and it wasn’t a massive weapon aimed at my head.

If I’m lucky, it was my life.

Violence: can we vanquish it? That question’s as dumb as God. Violence, c/overt, is integral to survival – a divine command within the animal brain. And when survival is ensured, violence is integral to overcoming – to each overcoming – to the divine command to get bigger and better. It’s in our anger, it’s in our urgency, it’s in our programming, and Appleseed’s better-programmed ‘bioroids’ are a long way off. But ai – the sofa-biting battles between the machines and their makers, between machine humans and human machines, between those who reluctantly condone violence to preserve peace, etcetera, and those who love to hate…

I mean, that precarious balance is what it’s about, innit?

& mh-m, what style. Anyone know any manga artists in Sydney? I’m hot to get myself mangafied. Mangarised? Manganated, if it’s up to me.

This year, I’m using the windfall from a series of more-or-less commonplace domestic tragedies – capital emotional, spiritual and fiscal – to splatter a brand new trajectory in performance careers. By August I’m gonna be all over this town like a scandal – on the radio, on the web, in the postcard racks, on public walls, on people’s chests – and on a skanky cabaret floor near you.

Watch me.