And yes I am aware of the fact that it is poor form for a writer to blog primarily in images but I've spent last 48 hours being drunk, hung over and scrubbing gallery walls with sugar soap so you'll forgive me if I'm uncharacteristically laconic.
I also want to let Brisbanites aka Brisbanians aka Brisneylanders aka Brivakistanians know that you can now get my book from Black Cat on Latrobe Tce in Paddington (formerly Mary Ryan's Paddington) This means you can stop buying it from those horrible corporate bookstores that
charge you too much and have staff that think that Dostoyevsky is a
brand of vodka.
THEM: "Oh hey there guy! Well, you know, pretty good, Carol's been redecoratising the living room and my little girl got a triple double goldstar trophy sceptre for her report on Miley Cyrus."
YOU: "Um...I'm pretty sure that there's no such thing as a triple double trophy sceptre..."
THEM: "what about you?"
YOU: "I'm going to FUTURE SPECS with all my heart and most of my liver!"
THEM: "Future Specs? I don't know Jimbo Jones, that sounds like lefto hippie commie pinko bullshit propoganda juice. Will there be....arty things?"
YOU: "All the types! Sound types! Look at it with your eyes types! Touchy touch with your fingies types! Watch the people do the things types! Plus there will be super cheap booze."
THEM: "Well Jackie James, that does sounds like all the fun things in the world. I guess I'll go. How when why wherefore?"
Daniel Santangeli, Giema Contini, Kieran Law, Gen Ganner, Thomas Quirk & Manda Boyd, Leena Reithmuller, Emma Schofield, Robert Millet's Amazing Time Machine
I had an abortion this week. I was halfway through my follow up novel (for adults at least, my kids book is done and dusted) when I made the difficult decision to prematurely end its life. It was entitled Junk Quay: A Modern Ghost Story. Basically it was a story about blues music and quantum mechanics. This guy featured pretty heavily:
So far I haven't had any christian fundamentalists at my door, but I'm
keeping plenty of death metal albums, gay porn and hardmount prints of Piss Christ on hand to ward them off if neccessary. The good news is that this has given me the chance to dive straight into my next book which I was much more excited about anyway. Expect God in a Coma to hit shelves sometime before the end of the world.
Lately I've been accused by many people, my girlfriend among them, of being a self-promotion whore. I justify this by the fact that this is my first art baby. I'm a bit like that annoying friend you have who's just had their first kid and starts working it into every single conversation you have with them by the most implusible segue imaginable:
You: Hey, have you read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart? I think, for me, it epitomises the pinnacle of African literature and perfectly encapsulates the feeling of fear and confusion that faces a ancient culture dealing with the plague of European colonisation.
Them: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PHOTO OF MY BABY???
You: Uh...yeah I think you should me one last week...
Them: Oh! That was when he was three months and THREE days. This is him at three months and SIX days! Doesn't he look so grown up! Look at the way he's looking at that Caravaggio print on the wall, I think he really has a basic grasp on critiquing and appreciation Baroque era Chiaroscuro painting!
"waaaah! Caravaggio's excessive use of shadows exemplifying chiarsocuro painting displeases me! I'm having a pre-naptime existential crisis!"
In any case, it's only two weeks until the Australian release of A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India and in preparation I've been drinking too much and spending an unhealthy amount of time playing xbox, much like my literary heores George Orwell and Anthony Burgess did before the release of their respective masterpieces.
"I pwned yr droids with my l33t skillz!"
I've been asked if I'll sign copies when it is released. People, seriously, I will lick, bless, baptise and sign in my own blood any copy you want to obtain in exchange for your not very hard earned cash.
Both stores ship anywhere in the world except Sarah Palin's house. Plus
they have heaps of other amazing books like the Bell Jarand Of Mice
and Men that TV characters sometimes mention in a very obvious and
unnatural way when the lazy script writer is trying to make them appear
educated in the space of the few minutes of content between coke
commercials.
If you write a review for me I will be forever in
your debt. Seriously I'll give you a kidney or something. It may not be
MY kidney, but nevertheless...
The
art of writing is by its very nature hermetic. It’s one of the few jobs in the
world where being a depressed, introverted alcoholic may actually be of
assistance. Well, that and claims adjusting perhaps.
+ + x =
this is a summation of everything I learnt in 3 years of studying literature.
In
any case, as much as I love being cloistered away in my literary lair
accompanied byonly the dull blue glow of my laptop, a near infinite supply of
mi goreng and the sounds of the dirty three, I do occasionally need to venture
outside into the great wide world with its billboards, traffic jams, ikea
stores and balloon boy hoaxes.
In the last two years I've busied myself with the chalk project, and the 4C arts collective and I’m working on a new
abandoned building project. In the interrum I decided to assist my
incredible friend, Anna; (the only person I know who is a brilliant
scientist, environmental activist AND artist), with her 350 project.
Anna
stitched up these patches which a few of us then covertly distributed around
Paddington in the dead of night. Okay, it was more like half nine, but
seriously, graffiti artists take note: Paddington at 9.30 on a Monday is like
Rupert Murdoch’s conscience; completely silent.
The genius of using these patches is that they are not only incredibly eye
catching and made from recycled material but they also cause no permanent damage
to property. We really didn’t have to worry about police presence because
although we didn’t exactly write to Campbell can’t-fucking-do-anything-right
Newman for permission, I doubt we would have had too much trouble from the
po-lease even if they had spotted us.
A brief but essential guide for those making the difficult transition from solitary living to cohabitation.
1 Air guitarring way too enthusiastically.
Obviously a small amount of air guitarring is permissible, nay, REQUIRED in good company. However, full on, down on your knees ‘guitar face’ soloing is highly ill advised. This goes double for head banging, particularly after that time that I slammed my head into the coffee table during the solo to ‘good times, bad times.’
2 swearing at the toaster
This probably shouldn’t be done in any case. I mean, it’s not the toaster’s fault that you slept in because you were so busy dreaming that you could speak French and had to save Scarlett Johansson from attempting to sing Tom Waits songs only to awake and find that only the first part of that particular nightmare was the invention of your imagination. It’s not the toaster’s fault that the fucking toast takes so fucking long to fucking cook fuck fuck shit FUCK! And no throwing the toaster at the wall doesn’t help, it’s not the wall’s fault either.
Was it all just a horrible dream?
3 Wearing embarrassingly effeminate underwear that your ex girlfriend bought you and you really, really wouldn’t wear anymore if it wasn’t so goddam comfortable.
Okay, so the relationship was an absolute train wreck (and I don’t mean page 12 footnote mention train wreck, I mean prime time, front page, widespread devastation and carnage level train wreck) but I did get this one really comfortable set of boxers out of it. Sure they have what I would LIKE to refer to as stallions but am aware most people would prefer to identify as ‘ponies’ printed on them, but damn, so comfortable! Might have to stick to wearing them underneath other clothing items of the slightly less humiliating variety. Such as my brown flares with the 'Bowie’ patch sown into the bum.
when I say: y'all say:
4 drinking alone
Thankfully, drinking alone becomes substantially more difficult when surrounded by other people. However, this will mean an end to passing out on the couch whilst watching Black Books with a bottle of cheap red wine and a bowl of half eaten microwaved pasta four nights a the week. The other after affects of drinking alone, such as karaoking the fuck out of heartbreak classics, particularly those that explicitly refer to oneself as a woman, are also now banned.
5 incessantly asking editing advice
Does this scene work? Is this characters voice appropriate for their cultural background and level of education? I’m not sure about the ending…Do the supporting characters need tweaking? Should it have ninjas? Should it have zombies? Should it have pirates? Should it have zombie ninjas pirates who take over a condo in California that neighbours a cemetery on one side and a celebrity rehab facility on the other?
Gets annoying doesn’t it? Well, if you live with me you sure as hell better get used to it. I have to bring these characters to life and I need your help. If you don’t help me its like you aren’t helping to raise a child. WHICH IS ALMOST LIKE MURDER!
Besides, for every one question I verbalise I have another 10 748 buzzing around in my head, just imagine how annoying that gets.
Okay that’s all for this week. You may resume your meagre existence til then.
THE END
Was that okay? Did it read 'glib' or 'self-depreciating'? Do you think they’ll like it?
The last time I wore this suit was to a funeral. Yesterday I wore it to a wedding. In many ways it’s difficult to see the difference between the two events, save for the fact that at the former I was mourning the loss of one life, whereas at yesterday’s event I mourned the loss of two. Or more correctly, the transformation of two once highly functioning, successful, outgoing human beings with healthy social lives into one androgynous, socially retarded, mildly agoraphobic morlock with an unhealthy fondness for Ikea catalogues.
(x 2) +
=
The invitation promised ‘a celebration of a perfect union’ which I initially mistook for the opening of a new ‘perfect donut n pancakes diner’ in my area. I was bitterly disappointed to discover this was not the case. Furthermore, ‘a perfect union’ requires a somewhat unforgivable stretch of the imagination in order to describe two people who met as the result of a minor car accident, and got engaged as the result of a second accident. This time located in the uterus.
The food was on offer was the culinary equivalent of a Kenny G b-side; lukewarm and unsatisfying. I think I may have obtained a mild case of gastro from the shrimp cocktail, then again this may have merely been by body physically protesting to the insipid and insufferably saccharine vows. These included lines such as “I would walk barefoot for a thousand days across burning sands to bring you my love.” I have a feeling they may have been written by the team at ‘Days of our Lives’ during an extended cigarette break.
Then of course came the obligatory: “If anyone has any reason why these two should not be married” bit that I’m fairly certain was invented specifically by movie studios as a plot device. At this point I did consider raising my hand and mentioning Cynthia’s fairly irritating habit of chewing her nails at the same time as her food, but decided it best to let the young lovers discover this in their own good time. Perhaps over a nice meal of caviar, destined to be imbibed with a small garnish of keratin protein from Cynthia’s index finger.
As I watched the girl I once shared a bed, apartment, bank account, rolling stone subscription and one minor but painful case of VD promise herself to another man, I couldn’t help but think: I wonder if the bridesmaid is single? Five Black Russians and a badly made Manhattan later her tongue being inexpertly shoved down by throat answered my question. Our brief romantic encounter ended with the two of us uncomfortably fumbling under clothes in the back of her Daihatsu, an exchange of numbers and a mutual promise to call each other that we both quite clearly knew was disingenuous. In many ways, this two hour long romantic collision was entirely superior to my last; it lacked both the painful redistribution of assets, and the rather ghastly task of having to pretend to enjoy family get togethers with drunken slightly racist in laws.
In total I give the whole affair three stars. Out of fifty. And those are only for the bartender who made up for his lack of blending with his generosity in alcoholic content. Those drinks had more ethanol than a mills and boon novel has tawdry clichés. Let’s hope the results of the wedding day are somewhat less lacklustre than the event itself, although the facebook photos of their honeymoon on a contiki tour of Thailand certainly aren’t a good indication.
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