what rhymes with chaos?

If loving you is wrong, I'd like to be partially incorrect.

This week, I'm going to give you some advice on romance. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's either A) How did I end up at this page when I was looking for videos of cats playing keyboards??? or B) Why on earth would J. M. Donellan be qualified to give relationship advice? He seems to just post about getting dumped all the time. 

 

I have no answer for A) but in regards to B) I'm hardly going to be the first amateur to deign to impart ill-founded advice. I mean, the Situation wrote a fucking book with advice on dating, I'm pretty goddamn sure I'm more qualified than he is. Not least because of the fact that I realise that a book should consist of more than just 133 pages of narcissistic, misogynistic ranting. And fashion tips. 

Sure, love can be a beautiful thing. But let's face it there are plenty of times when it can also be gross, stupid, frustrating, painful and sometimes, just really fucking inconvenient. Maybe they're your housemate. Perhaps you just have the wrong anatomy for their romantic preferences. Or they just said the sentence "I don't know who David Bowie is." Maybe they're dating your best friend and the three of you hang out all the time and once in a while you'll all have a little too much to drink and he/she will suggest you all head into the bedroom together and by the time you realise they were only joking you're already half undressed and then you have to pretend like you were only joking too but they both know you weren't and it gets super awkward and even worse they've seen they embarrassing tattoo that you keen meaning to get removed...

Whatever the case. There are times when being in love in just a terrible idea, so here are my strategies to help you not love someone.

 1 IMAGINE THEM AS YOUR LEAST FAVOURITE POLITICIAN

Simple but effective. If the politician in question is ugly and/or the wrong gender for your preferences, even better. Just imagine someone who really sums up everything that's wrong with politics and modern society in general, someone like, oh I don't know...

2 DEVELOP A NEGATIVE PAVLOVIAN REACTION 

"Jenny? Oh no, I'm WAY over her. She smells like transmutational butterfly larvae."

Sounds weird, I know, but weirder than tying all your hopes, dreams and happiness to one single human being who is just going to end up decomposing in the ground some day? I think not. Keep a packet of something disgusting in your pocket, like canned chrysalises for instance. Every time you see or think about your soon-to-be-not-loved one, shove something putrid into your facehole. Once you associate the object of your desire with squirming, crunchy larvae, IT'S BYE BYE ROMANCE!

3 INTRODUCE THEM TO YOUR PARENTS

I know this is often what people do when a relationship is going WELL, but this is primarily due to the fact that people are idiots. By the time dear old dad asks them for the sixth time if they got that nose ring because they were hoping to more closely resemble a swine or just to antagonise their deadbeat parents you'll know that all hopes of a happy, successful relationship are dead in the water.

4 THINK ABOUT THE LAST TIME YOU BROKE UP WITH SOMEONE

"Oh god! I can't do crosswords anymore! She used to use words like, all the time! Sometimes in sentences, or paragraphs even! It was our special thing..."

Bear in mind all relationships end, the only variables are when and how badly. Just try and picture that last time, when you listened to the 3 Smith Kings of Misery (Elliott Smith, The Smiths and Robert Smith) on repeat and lived on a daily intake of three bottles of cheap red wine and a family sized block of cadbury chocolate. Actually that last bit doesn't sound too bad, but then there was the bawling over summertime photos, the dividing of possessions, the places, songs, books and movies that were forever ruined. Yeah, that's right. You've got all of THAT to look forward to. Maybe in three months time, maybe three years, maybe three decades but whatever the case we all know that breaking up with someone feels like having your heart torn out of your chest, ripped in half, spat on, then forcibly reinserted via your colon.

So there you have it. Next time you start falling in love and it's going to be the worst idea ever you can thank me for reminding you that's it's the worst idea ever. Send me a thank you email. Maybe with a photo attached. Perhaps a facebook friend request.

Are you single?

 

Dearest Academy Floral OR STFU Valentine's day

Dearest Academy Floral

Thanks so much for your suggestion for me to send more flowers to my now ex-girlfriend for Valentine's day. And yes, you are right. That first bouquet I sent back in September did indeed ‘WOW!’ her. The problem is that the flowers I had delivered to her have now withered and died and been tossed into the nearest trash receptacle.

 Much like our relationship. 

For a brief period which future literary historians will doubtlessly refer to as ‘J.M. Donellan’s “SWEET MOTHER OF GOD WHY IS EVERYTHING SO UTTERLY AND INCOMPREHENSIBLY HORRIBLE ALWAYS AND ALL THE TIME?’ period I was temporarily transformed into a quivering and mildly alcoholic wreck spending most of my time lying on the floor listening to the Cure’s Disintegration on repeat and consuming a weekly average of twelve packs of oreos.

 

Thankfully I’ve now more or less recovered, reduced my oreo intake to a much healthier and more sustainable pack a day habit and returned to an emotional state of which Oprah would be far more approving. After all, as the old cliché says, there are ‘plenty more fish in the sea.’ (The fact that the search for love is so frequently compared to tricking a small water dwelling animal into spearing a hook through its face and then subsequently forcing it to asphyxiate in one final furious fit of fatal convulsions before removing its outer layer and internal organs before cooking and consuming said animal does, however, somewhat concern me.)

I suppose I COULD still send her more flowers, but that would seem kind of weird and pathetic. I am both of those things of course, but I’m trying to pretend like I’m not. So far I am attempting to accomplish this by doing push ups every morning, but I’ve been doing this for literally DAYS now and I still don’t have rippling biceps so I’m not really sure what the point is when I can just be my normal scrawny self with absolutely no effort whatsoever.  

I’m sure your message was well intentioned, but the fact is, for a great many people Valentine’s day is just a reminder of the fact that they are tragically alone. It’s a day when single people feel like the entire world has conspired to say LOOK AT US! LOOK AT WHAT WE HAVE! LOOK HOW MUCH HAPPIER WE ARE THAN YOU!

"I wuv you honey baby sweetie pie!"

"Not as much as I wuv YOU my little muffintop on stuffed crust pizza base with double cherries on top and a side of bacon fondue pudding!"

Of course I can always take solace in the fact that the vast majority of those couples are either going to break up at some point in the near future or alternatively edge incrementally towards their graves despising each other slightly more with each transpiring hour until they are just a pair of nonagenarian husks that stare into each other’s gimlet-like eyes with an odious cocktail of disdain and boredom whose potency is outdone only by their own body odour and crippling ennui.

In conclusion, unless you feel like adding a ‘deliver large box filled with vodka, cheesecake and Stevie Ray Vaughn’ albums to your Valentine’s day package options I don’t think I will be interested in your services.

+      +  =  YES.

In fact, after I finish writing this email I am going to instigate a campaign to have National “I Am Still Single Because I Refuse to Settle Down with Anyone Who Won’t Make Me Supremely Happy and Allow Me To Do the Same for Them in Return in Order to Allow My Already Astonishing Levels of Awesomeness to Attain Even Greater Heights” day. This will basically involve a host of astoundingly wonderful single people getting together to drink vodka, eat cheesecake, air guitar to Stevie Ray Vaughn albums and indulge in guilt-free make out sessions in the utilities closet.  Feel free to attend.

Kind re:Guards

J.M. Donellan

 

 

The Price is Free

Dear the Government,

How are you?  I know that you are rather busy unreasonably oppressing refugess in direct violation of the UN charter that you signed, but I wondered if you might address something for me.

 

The thing is; I love libraries. At a library I can instantly attain one of the things that I love most in the world: books. Not only this, but I can sit and read them in air conditioning with a view of the river and really weird fluroscent lighting, all for zero dollars. This is convenient as it just so happens that free is my favourite price. Not to play the poor starving artist card, but as it happens I am a poor starving artist. It says so right here, where I wrote it in purple texta:

    This is a picture of a piece of card with the

words 'I am a starving artist' written in purple

texta.

This ironically means that I can’t afford to buy lots of books. Thus libraries are wonderful. The only problem however, is that whilst reading a book I am temporarily prevented from writing books of my own. If I were to attempt to do such a thing my books would basically just be regurgitations of whatever books I was reading in a specific time period. This kind of thing is called plagiarism and is generally frowned upon, unless your name is James Cameron in which case people like to give you academy awards and several billion dollars for being very extremely good at plagiarism.

I would like the goverment to set up other services where I can get things that I enjoy for free. Here is a list for your convenience:

Booze.

Nature (this used to be free, but is not mostly owned by rich jerks who build giant fences.)

Sex.

Food (but not the dead animal flesh kind).

Art (the good kind, not the I-went-to-art-school-because-I-wanted-an-excuse-to-wear this-yellow-lycra-jumpsuit kind.)

Video games.

Foot rubs.

If you could get right on that it would be very much appreciated. In turn I will continue to pay my tax dollars which I earn through selling my books to people who are allergic to libraries. By current estimates by tax contirubtion is 0.00000000000000000000000000000000314% of the national GDP and in light of this fact I would think that you would take this suggestion very seriously.

Thankyou and I hope you have a lovely day incarcerating people who are escaping from war-torn countries.

 

Yours Since Clearly,

JM Donellan

 

This is an artpiece made of art by an artist that says' Todo Esta Muy Caro' which is spanish for 'everything is very expensive.' If the artist had been working in Australia, he may have instead written 'todo esta muy, muy fucking caro.' Except that we probably wouldn't have let him in account of that fact that he spoke foreign talky sounds. And even worse, is an artist.

 

FROZEN FACE OF POLAR BEAR reviewed by JM Donellan (of Frozen Face of Polar Bear)

You might think it somewhat inappropriate for a musician to review their own gig. If this is the case you should be aware of the fact that all music reviewers are invariably one of the following:

1 Friends with the bands they see

2 Sleeping with one (or more) of the band members.

3 Would like to be sleeping with one (or more) of the band members.

4 Total jerks

The act before us is a girl with a name that I don't remember due to the fact that I was busy eating $1 tacos and being slightly concerned by the fact that Dave was finishing the lyrics to Trouble  approximately 28 minutes before heading on stage.

We had a lot of gear to set up, so while we were plugging in and tuning up Darragh entertained the crowd with an eighteen minute freestyle gangster rap on the theme of the potential sociopolitical ramifications of the large hadron collider. By the end of this the crowd had acquired a rudimentary understanding of quantum mechanics and we were ready to get started.

We opened with one of our more obscure b-sides from the early eighties, not our best song I'll be the first to admit but to be fair it was written when we only had a collective age of one Bieber (that's 16 years for those of you who aren't popular culture mathematicians.)

Soon after this point Dave got so excited that he smashed his guitar into a wall in a spectacular explosion of steel and strings. Whilst this certainly drew a rousing response from the crowd, it did unfortunately force him to play air guitar for the rest of the set, luckily Dave is an expert air guitarist and it didn't negatively affect our sound too much.

dramatised re-enactment:

Around midset Kate decided to sing the lyrics to Bluescreen in Swedish. This was an inspired move and no doubt would have lent a truly beautiful, classically European lilt to the song if not for the fact that the only Swedish that Kate knows was acquired from a childhood watching the Swedish chef on the Muppets. A Swedish diplomat who was by the strangest of coincidences in attendance began shaking his fist at us and yelling. Unfortunately, because none of us can speak Swedish we had no idea what he was saying, one can only assume it was some sort of fervent praise and adulation.

As we neared the end of the set I decided that we needed some sort of grand finale so I decided to climb on top of the speakers and perform a backflip. Tragically, it was only after I was airborne that I remembered the fact that I have no aerobatic skill whatsoever and I ended up breaking both my legs upon landing and had to finish the set playing bass on my back.

On a scale of one to eleventy thousand, I give this gig a high five. I would thoroughly recommend this and similar products to anyone with a healthy interest in either haberdashery or kierkegaardian philosophy.

Our next gig will be at SHOOT art party on October 2nd. We're planning to perform a 2 hour operatic piece based around the life and times of Rick Astley.

SHOOT art party!!

                                     

The 4c arts collective is hosting another one of our (in)famous art parties, and you had better be there. I could explain to you why you need to come, but why bother when I can just get two cartoon robots to do it for me?

GETCHA TIX RIGHT HERE!!!

A celebration of new growth, sudden actions and distilled moments. The latest & greatest 4c art party explores all those strange and wonderful ideas that have been blooming deep in the delicious depths of your psyche. A evening filled to the blissful bursting point with music, visual art, performance and all kinds of other joys, wonders and frivolities.

Best night of your life or your money's whack.

4c arts collective. We put the 'art' in party.

BANDS

BONFIRE NIGHTS
FELINEDOWN
FROZEN FACE OF POLAR BEAR

DJs

AUKISTRA
DJ #DAVE

VISUAL ARTISTS
James Lyall / Emily Devers / Clinton Cunningham / The Bookery Cook / Andrew Forsyth / Monica Rohan / Mealie Bardo / Liana Evans / Jason Fitzgerald / Deborah Parker

PERFORMANCE ARTISTS

Emily Devers / These Lovely Creatures / Genevieve Butler / Mckenzie Briggs / Sandy Hsu / Liesel Zink / Guns and Kids - Kimie Mizuno /

SIX DEGREES

Six Degrees is a campaign initiative of Friends of the Earth Brisbane Co-op Ltd. The Six Degrees campaign works with communities and groups across the state to reduce Queensland’s dependence on the coal industry, and to ensure a just and measured transition to a safe climate future. We are working towards the creation of an ecologically sustainable and socially just society through community action.

http://www.sixdegrees.org.au/

BP: A disaster in cartoon form.

You know how for the past something many years, people have been yelling "Taxi!" Whenever someone spills a drink at a party? Remember the last time that was funny? Yeah, me neither. I'm proposing that from now on we substitute the term 'BP' for the act of spilling, for example:

"Man I can't believe I BP'd red wine all over my favourite

white shirt!"

"Did you hear how Alice BP'd tuna casserole all over the couch?"

"Yesterday James BP'd tequila all over my dog." 

Look, even Urban Dictionary even agrees with me.

Here's an example in cartoon, the best method of explanation for any subject ranging from urban slang to quantum mechanics.

      

I've temporarily adopted my disguise as a full-time worker in order to vanquish the debt demons and stock up on mi-goreng to get me through writing the next book. Don't worry though, I'll still be the same cynical hermit with mildly alcoholic tendencies. In the meantime I'll be appearing as part of Black Cat Books 'meet your local author' event on Friday the 23rd of April from 6.30pm. Other much more important and probably better looking authors will be there too; Richard Newsome (Billionaire's Curse) and Rebecca Sparrow (Find Your Tribe).

My write up of the inaugural West End Film Festival:

http://4zzzfm.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/west-end-film-festival-2010/

CHARLES DARWIN VS 99 BOTTLES OF BEER

"Yeah, ah, gimmie...white russian, heavy on the Russian. Oh man, I need a kebab...HOLY CRAP I love this friggin' song! Wit my mind on my money and my money on my...Yo! Alexander that chick was sooooo checking you out..."

This story has been lurking on my hard drive for a while, so I thought I'd give it a digital airing just for kicks. I've been focussing so much on finishing up my YA novel and working on the next adult novel, (tentatively titled Adonis Comma Coma), that I haven't done much in the way of short fiction for a while. I thought it only appropriate to post a story about Charles Darwin in a drinking competition on a religious holiday.

Enjoy.

Or don't, what the hell do I care?

HARLAND'S DICE

Download Harland's Dice by JM Donellan

THIS IS THE EIGHTH OR NINTH WORST THING THAT COULD POSSIBLY EVER HAPPEN.

 

A bad thing happened last week. One of the worst things that can happen, actually. Well, almost. If you wrote a list of the 100 worst things you could possibly imagine occurring with ‘stepping on a thumbtack’ at the bottom and 'nuclear holocaust' or 'waking up next to Kochie'  at the absolute top, then this particular event would probably rate around an eight or a nine, depending on your personal preferences. Perhaps your entire family was killed by a rogue thumbtack and everytime you see one it triggers a wave of emotional anguish that leads to a three day rampage of drugs and grand larcency, who knows. But we aren’t here to talk about your problems. It’s the internet people, I want to whine about ME.

Ever since this the eighth or ninth worst thing that could ever happen to me did I've been working my way through the 7 Stages of Grieving. Not that textbook list that they give you, I mean I'm working through MY list, which is immensely superior. If the eighth or ninth worst thing that you could think of happens to you, then you may find it useful.

1 POSTING A SHAMEFACEDLY ATTENTION SEEKING STATUS UPDATE

 

Come on, we’ve all done it. Maybe you prefer the unsubtle approach, something along the lines of: “OMG I AM GOING TO FUCKING KILL MY BOSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” or maybe, much like westpac bank, you’re the cryptic kind who favours generic melancholic statements such as ‘oh so over it today.' I'm sorry Westpac, we've all been so caught up with minor concerns like global warming and colony collapse disorder that we haven't had time to spare a thought for those poor little corporations that only posted 1.6 billion dollar profits last quarter. Text me later. We can eat cookie dough, talk about boys and watch 'Beaches.'

2 TRYING TO CAUSE LOVESICK COUPLES TO SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST

Sure. A week ago you were my allies. I would look at you and think, "dawww…look at those two crazy kids; sniffing the rosebushes, sharing their sandwhiches, picking nits out of each others' hair." But no more. You have all become my nemeses. If I see hear ANYONE using any kind of ridiculously sappy pet name (honeybabysweetiemuffinsugar) in the  next few days I am going to just speed up the whole combustion process by means of a can of petrol and some cheap, illegal fireworks.

 

"Here darling, I bought you a

present to sweeten you up before 

I tell you that I gave you the clap."

 "Oh that's a relief,

it'll give me some return fire

ammo for when I tell you I've been

sleeping with your mum."

3 WRITING BAD POETRY

4 REMEMBERING WHY I SHOULDN'T TRY TO WRITE POETRY

5 LISTENING TO THE 3 SMITH KINGS OF MISERY

              

   Robert smith.             Elliot Smith.            Steven Morrissey.

    (of the Smiths)

6 CHECKING MY AMAZON.COM SALES RANKING

This is a somewhat risky game of Russian roulette. It may offer me a tenuous rope out of the depths of the abyss, but more often than not I may simply find that the rope in question comes in the form of a tight fitting noose. That episode of Bored to Death where Johnathon says that "those amazon sales rankings are very misleading" ain't no joke. Somedays my book can jump a MILLION slots. Which I think means its sold around 3 copies that day.

7 BURNING COOKIES

 

Much like my now non-existent relationship these cookies were once sweet, colourful and nourishing. Under my careful watch however, they became burnt, deformed and fit only for the rubbish bin. END METAPHOR.

It'll get better. OBVIOUSLY. I mean, it's not as though I had my legs devoured by flesh eating ants or had my brain surgically transplanted in Pauline Hansen's body or anything as horrible as that. In the meantime I can be grateful that as a writer I have the only job in the world where being a depressed drunk is actually an advantage. Well, writing and detective work perhaps.

Feel free to post your own grieving practices, although I'll probably be too preoccupied with lying on the floor drinking cheap vodka, listening to 'Roman Candle' and eating burnt cookies to read it.