Happy Birthday Mr Plog

If I ever give you the impression that Mr P is anything less than perfect, it's because well he is. Who isn't? But he is a mensch-and-a-half, and that, my friends (and internet strangers), is all that matters when it comes down to it. We bitch and moan, kvetch and stir, niggle and nudge (not you, Mz. K), but transcending everything is a set of shared values and beliefs, a consensus about the world, and an appreciation of each other that will set us in good stead for, at the very least, forever (one should hope given all the zillions people are shelling out for the Wedding Of the Year TM at the end of the year TM.)

Happy Birthday, my love. I am sorry if my rejection of the cultural script makes me seem like an ungrateful bitch at times. I am sorry that I am a bitch at times. But I love you and I'm so glad neither of us are passive aggressive birthday monsters! (Click the link for a WTF?!)

Dr P xxx

Sit, Ubu, Sit!

I so want this as my "walking down the aisle" song (if we have half as strong a relationship as Elyse and Steven we will be blessed) but Mr P has put a blanket veto on all TV theme tunes, which sadly includes Angry Anderson's Suddenly because of its association with you-know-what.*

*Charlene EDNA? Who knew?

Celebrity Swine

Only in the UK where "celebrity" is a broad, inclusive umbrella term encompassing people famous for all manner of things including (but not limited to) wanking livestock; sleeping with a footballer once (and having him throw up on? in? you); self-penetrating with a wine bottle; having a lot of boob jobs and "dogging".

(The "K" in UK stands for "Keeping it Klassy" ...)

Doctor Plog Is Fast Losing Faith In Humanity

(How's *that* for a Status Report?)

1. Click here to see why.

2. Post comment to EXPLAIN why, if you could venture to guess. I mean, really?! Give me an oy! OY! Give me a vey! VEY! ...

Banksy Vs The Bristol Museum, Part Deux

Some more of the work that you wanted ... Apologies again for the poor quality of the photographs ( = no flash allowed + nisht my forte)

Love, your reader-responsive Dr P xxx

ps. I wish I could caption them but my blogger does not seem to allow me to vary the text/ image combo. The fact that it allows me to type at all is a modern miracle: most technology is stubbornly plogphobic ... :(

pps. Whenever I express 'emoticon' I feel about twelve. Do you know what I mean?

ppps. Whenever I multiple p-s, I feel about eight. And then the sudden desire to use acronyms like TFNE or whatever we used to use way back when overcomes me ... or was it TTFNY? Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

I Don't Like Cricket, Oh No ...

Mr Plog's Facebook Status Report (as of an hour ago):

"Mr P ... is very happy to be leaving Lords early. First defeat of the Aussies there in over 70 years. Come on!"

I commented "Seventy years? Bless!"

It was meant to sound patronising but my buddy from home, J, quickly wrote:
"Don't buy into this, Doc!"

So not!, J, my brother from another mother, no need to worry. But I am schlepping naches from the fact that Mr P is facebook friends with friends of mine from home. How effing sad is that, People? I am thirty-five-long-drawn-out-mostly-mentalist-years-old and I sound like a tweenager. Still, friends have always excited me more than sports. Like Mr P says, I'm not a real Australian. I don't like sport, I don't like beer. That's about all our national identity is based on, right?

You'd think it if you lived over here. Representations of Australianness in Britain are unbelievably outmoded, simplistic, and monolithic. I've been making notes in the five years I've lived here and thinking about a larger project, tentatively titled From Cocking Fosters to Sheila's Wheels. It's mad that in a supposedly postmodern, postracial, postfeminist (???) world we continue to obscure the fact that beyond every bullshit construct, we are all human. Surely that fact is more relevant than the place we were born or the accents we affect?

Strewth!

[M]advertising

I love David Mitchell (his columns in The Observer are laugh-out-loud funny) and Robert Webb, but I love even more when men get on board with recognising inequality as the mishegas it is. The fact is that feminism liberates us all. It is so perverse that we have come to be represented as "man haters" when it is so bleeding obvious that men who are with women who subscribe fully to outmoded restrictive gender roles (which invariably inhibit the development of a fully-realised self) are actually the ones living less than love-filled lives.

And I know we're better in bed. Please. I found my clitoris way before it was fashionable ...

Recommended Reading

Some of my best friends are books.
No, seriously.

Over the years I've become a little lax at times when magazines and newspapers constitute the bulk of my reading. Lately, though, thanks to Bennett's book (see above), I'm pushing myself. It is so worth it. You're worth it!

These are a few that have brought me joy of late.

Fuel

They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan
And they discovered a slave cemetery there
May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon
And we've moved on to the electric chair
And I wonder who's gonna be president
Tweedle Dumb or Tweedle Dumber?
And who's gonna have the big
Blockbuster box office
This summer
How 'bout we put up a wall
Between the houses and the highway
And then you can go your way
And I can go my way
Except all the radios agree with all the TVs
And all the magazines agree with all the radios
And I keep hearing that same damn song
Everywhere I go
Maybe I should put a bucket over my head
And a marshmallow in each ear
And stumble around for another dumb numb week
For another hum drum hit song to appear
People used to make records
As in a record of an event
The event of people
Playing music in a room
Now everything is cross-marketing
It's about sunglasses and shoes
Or guns or drugs
You choose
We got it rehashed
We got it half-assed
We're digging up all the graves
And we're spitting on the past
And we can choose between the colors
Of the lipstick on the whores
Cuz we know the difference
Between the font of twenty percent more
And the font of teriyaki
You tell me
How does that make you feel?
You tell me what's real
They say that alcoholics are always alcoholics
Even when they're dry as my lips for years
Even when they're stranded on a small desert island
With no place in two thousand miles to buy beer
And I wonder is he different
Is he different
Has he changed
What he's about
Or is he just a liar
With nothing to lie about
Am I headed for the same brick wall
Is there anything I can do
About anything at all
Except go back to that corner in Manhattan
And dig deeper
Dig deeper this time
Down beneath the impossible pain of our history
Beneath unknown bones
Beneath the bedrock of the mystery
Beneath the sewage system and the path train
Beneath the cobblestones and the water main
Beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals
Beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels
Beneath everything I can think of to think about
Beneath it all
Beneath all get out
Beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel
Ther'es a fire that's just waiting for fuel

-- ANI DIFRANCO

What Does A Hippie Horse Eat?

Hay, man ....

Happy Birthday Dad

You would have been 63 today.
Correction: You should have been 63 today.

I love you so much.

The hole in my heart is fixed, unyielding.

This will never be ok.

xxx

Happy Birthday To Me

Happy Birthday Mr Plog

If I ever give you the impression that Mr P is anything less than perfect, it's because well he is. Who isn't? But he is a mensch-and-a-half, and that, my friends (and internet strangers), is all that matters that comes down to it. We bitch and moan, kvetch and stir, niggle and nudge (not you, Mz. K), but transcending everything is a set of shared values and beliefs, a consensus about the world and an appreciation of each other that will set us in good stead for, at the very least, forever (one should hope given all the zillions people are shelling out for the Wedding Of the Year TM at the end of the year TM.)

Happy Birthday, my love. I am sorry if my rejection of the cultural script makes me seem like an ungrateful bitch at times. I am sorry that I am a bitch sometimes. But I love you and I'm so glad neither of us are passive aggressive birthday monsters! (Click the link for a WTF?!)

Dr P xxx

Revisionist Hair Stories

Sarah Haskins = Smart

Hair Commercials = Dumb

............................

Would Sarah Haskins front a show like Jon Stewart's if she had a peenie?

Discuss.

Dr Plog Goes To Wimbledon

... which is actually antithetical to all that I stand for and makes mockery of my hippy-dippy love all (ahem!) bullshit: I am actually a bigoted anti-sportite. Hate it both as participant and spectator. But I do like any excuse to drink all day so I did the District Linedance - and actually ended up enjoying the games/sets/matches! Saw the Williams sisters but couldn't make out the balls after they thwacked them as they were rendered into that total cartoon imagining of something literally zooming by. Saw Martina The Great (Love her! She was in fact the first person I ever knew was a lesbian when I learnt the term so I've always had a positive association with the word.) And as an Oystrayliyan it was fair dinkum bonza, mate, to see the bloke Mr Spooner would have known as Cat Pash! And whodathunk there was still a market for his sweaty headbands?

So the moral of the story is? Don't judge a sport by how mindnumbingly boring it is on television ...

Farewell To A Father

Thinking today of my friend, A, whose father just passed away after a long illness. I never met him but he was by all accounts a wonderful character, a wise, twinkling, gregarious, Greek (there is a scene in her wedding video that contains the most vibrant, riotous version of the "Zorba the Greek" dance with him at the centre!), kind, warm mensch of a man.

His funeral tomorrow morning will be the first I am attending since my own dad's in October 2006, so I am having the requisite bad dreams and sudden, sinking, sickly day sweats. I am remembering the feelings that A must be feeling: that unreality, heavy waking nightmarishness of going through the motions, accepting condolences, smiling wanly at the platitudes ("No, it's not a relief!"; "No, he's not better off now he's not in pain, he would be a lot fucking happier being alive and in pain with ME!!!"*), the realisation that nothing will ever be the same again, never would I feel as complete again, never would I be loved so thoroughly, so unconditionally ever again. That even happy times, from this day until the day I die, would be tempered with sadness, fracturedness. Maybe that's part of why I rail against the Wedding Industrial Complex to the rabid degree I do - as much as I love Mr. Plog - and by Jove, I do! - it won't be the goddamned Happiest Day Of My LifeTM (C) The Walt Disney Corporation 1956 because my. dad. is. dead.

Apologies to A. This was meant to be a missive of healing, of solidarity. Look, it does get better - it has to. The vomit-inducing cliches are the truest: Time Heals, Life Goes On. Those initial days, months - that unreality, those Moments of Magical Thinking** (mine involved me getting upset each week that passed after he died, because the longer time went on, the less likely it was that I'd get a call saying it was all a mistake - even though I had literally watched him die) - seem like semi-distant memories mostly. But today, this minute, I am reliving them, and the rawness feels stinging, searing.

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*Which in hindsight and with reflection is sadly probably not true (I mean he joked constantly about wanting to make an appointment with his "good friend, Dr Kevorkian" -- but hey, I guess it proves we all see what we want to see, especially when it comes to our parents ...)

**Please read Joan Didion's The Year Of Magical Thinking if you haven't, especially if you are grieving. I bought it at Hong Kong airport on my way back to London after my dad's funeral and was so captivated that I read the whole thing before landing despite the cocktail of Mogadon, Xanax and Nytol I'd taken to cope with the solo 22 hour journey in that frame of mind.

***Please note that the image of woodworking tools is a tribute to one of my dad's greatest passions, not a lazy shorthand equating masculinity with hardware. As if I wood do that!

Mrs Slocombe And The Power Of Pussy

Last week on Facefuck ... sorry... book, my friend E's status report had her between a rock and a rock. A mutual friend S offered her a hard place, saying he had a few to spare. I commented (as one does in these forums) that his response was "a bit Mrs Slocombe's pussy". S replied that some days everything feels like Mrs Slocombe's pussy.

I share this anecdote to illustrate the power of the collective reference point and a testimony to the talent of Mollie Sugden, who just passed away, yet whose characterisation was so potent as to remain a euphemism for innuendo decades after Are You Being Served? ended. Also as a little shout out to S, big brother of my good friend L, who shares a very similar pop-culture sensibility with me. I love how connections are made across people and communities for myriad reasons. One that tends to draw me to people is "the funny". So to S and all of you out there - in memory of the Marvellous Mollie - keep bringing it. And do put something funny in today's comment section if you feel so inclined, oh wondrous lurky stars.

xxx

Inverted Violet Heiffer

I'm just on my way to see the fabulous 4 Poofs (again not perjorative - I don't think) when I noticed the directions at the bottom of the ticket.

Trippy!

British Cuisine

Mushy Peas.

Mushy being merely a descriptive, not perjorative, term.

I love my adopted country.