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!

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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