lost relics

I love going through my computer to find photos of things I can barely remember doing. This is from last years Halloween, which has recently become a big thing in Australia. Chris is a Zombie, I'm Coraline. We have piñatas on our heads. I seem to recall that moments before this, I gave a red wine induced lecture about the gender politics of piñatas and then proceeded to belt the shit out of the poor orange thing, much to the horror of all the men there. Awesome night, despite the devil child on the jumping castle.

I have no idea what is happening here, but I suspect Chris was accidentally misogynistic at me. Serves him right.

conversing

Mother: Who was I reading about in the newspaper?
Father: Is this twenty questions?

sometimes, living at home isn't that bad.


x

Me: Erm....
VideoStoreGirl: OH! TWILIGHT! This is such an awesome movie!
Me: Oh, really?
VideoStoreGirl: Uh huh- The story is so romantic, and the acting is awesome, and the direction and (I tuned out until I realised she was looking at me expectantly)
Me: Yeah, I hear its up there with Fellini.
VideoStoreGirl: Who?
Me: Nevermind. Can I have the dvd, I have a Twilight party to go to.
VideoStoreGirl: That's such a cool idea! I'm going to do that for the next movie - which is out November 17th, by the way.
Me: ................thanks.

I don't know whats worse - that the conversation wasn't the weirdest or most awkward conversation I had last week, or that she didn't know who Fellini was and she worked in a video store.

Can we still call them video stores when then now primarily stock DVDs?


Oh, and for the record? Twilight made me insanely angry. Angry in the pants.
And drunk in the liver.

Stop stalling. Make a name for yourself.

I've been putting this entry off for about three weeks. People have started to hassle me about it. I really really don't want to write it. Well. It's more that I don't want to have to put picture of a certain someone on my blog, but I know that it's kind of inevitable if I'm going to explain myself.

....I just realised that in order to put the pictures on my blog, I'm going to have to actually look at this person. Christ. Fetch me a neat whiskey. No, I don't want ice. Make sure it's at least 30 years old and smells like formaldehyde. I want to be able to wipe the next hour out of my brain. There's probably only one person who is going to be able to help me cope with this. King Ridiculous, otherwise known as Brandon Flowers. Quick, put Day & Age on. It might help. Sigh. I'm ranting, sorry. I should just come out and admit it.


I own a dress named after a member of Panic at the Disco.

This guy, in fact. Ryan Ross.


Yeah, I know, right? You're thinking, why would Maddie, who regularly complains that these protégées of Pete Wentz are out to cause her maximum damage and death, name a dress, let alone willingly wear said dress if it was named after a member of the aforementioned band? It must be a pretty ugly dress, right?

Um. It's actually my favourite dress.(See? It's adorable, even if I do look embarrassed about the name of it.)

Clearly the universe has chucked a shit fit, right? I know. Which is why when Georges christened my dress "The Ryan Ross Dress” I scowled so much that I actually did look like Ryan Ross. I got better though.

Ryan Ross Scowling (pouting, wtf. with minion, Brendon Urie who looks like someone I went to school with) (jeremy and i just discovered that RRoss may actually have been HSelicks inspiration for Coraline)
and look, i can do pouty too!!!

It couldn't continue. I had to rename the dress. And also, Georges had some serious explaining to do. He's French. They're supposed to be masters of seduction and subtlety. Coming out and saying “that dress looks like something Ryan Ross would wear” doesn't exactly cut it. He then tried to explain why the dress held special Ryan Ross repelling powers. I was a little more receptive to this idea, which is why the dress was renamed (Except by the Fail-tastic Frenchman, who still asks how RRD is. Every day.). The new name was designed to be a slight crack at the enmity between me and Ross. Which has been going on for nearly three years now, and seriously, Ryan, if you're reading this, could you cease trying to kill me? Please?

Oh. The name. Right. It's taken from the bridge to what wikipedia informs me was the bands third single, “Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off”. (One of the many songs that has a title almost as long as the song itself). The bridge runs as follows：

“I've got more wit
a better kiss
a hotter touch
a better fuck than any boy you'll ever meet,
sweetie you had me
girl i was it look past the sweat, a better love
deserving of exchanging body heat in the passenger seat
no no no you know it will always be me”

and the rest of the lyrics are here

Really, the thing that strikes me here is not the vindictiveness of the vocab, but total desperation and the absolute campness of the word “sweetie”, I hate being called sweetie by anyone except old gay male hairdressers. The last boy to call me sweetie got read a riot act. It's demeaning. But I'm tangent-ing in my own special fashion again. Aha. Fashion. Clever segue back to what I was originally talking about. The renaming of the Ryan Ross Dress.

It's now known as the “More Wit, Better Kiss”Dress. Because sweetiehoneydarlingryan, I guarantee my wit's more clever, better integrated, has hotter aim and leaves a better scar than you could ever hope to. See what I did there? Yeah, very fucking subtle. I must be French.

At this point, you've got a few queries, yeah?

Firstly, you want to know why I'm convinced that four people I've never met would want me dead.

Secondly, you want to know why the dress reminded someone of Ryan Ross.

Thirdly, you want to know how the dress has magic powers.

The first one is the easy one.

In 2006, I started at Mac Uni. And didn't like it. So I smoked a lot of dope, drank a lot of booze and listened to a lot of bad music, for reasons unknown (I blame Brandon Flowers for not living next door and putting on a gig for me every day). And then one morning I woke up to a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song that slapped my hangover away and threw me across the room. I slipped on a copy of NME that turned out to have the scowling faces of Panic at the Disco on it.

And then I started noticing them. EVERYWHERE. on the radio. on the teev. in the newspaper, on the internet. I saw people wearing their shirts, I saw people who looked like them. I began to have nightmares about them trying to kill me. I then took some illegal substances and had a horrid hallucination in which they actually did kill me and I couldn't convince myself I was alive even though I was. That was a pretty fucking horrible night.

So I wrote something about how I wanted my rock and roll back, and it got published in a small zine in America. I don't know if they've read it, I don't want to know. But Panic at the Disco are still everywhere. I dare not go into a JB HIFI alone. Or Dangerfield. They even got me at the Opera House once.

The second query basically, it comes down to Georges rather bizarre interpretation of paisley. Ryan Ross seems to favour paisley.
Georges thinks the More Wit Better Kiss Dress is paisleyprinted . Therefore, in his small brain, the two are linked. Which lead to much scowling on my part. And incidental mirror posing.

However. I don't really think my dress is paisley. Paisley is defined as “intricate interlocking curvilinear pattern originating in India” And I think that my dress is more angular. I don't know, any takers???

Third query – magic powers of protection. Yes. I have to say Yes, this is true. The dress is magic. I feel fantastic in it. Everyone loves it, and everyone (except, we can assume, members of Panic at the Disco) loves me in it. It's my most complimented dress. And there are few greater weapons than a piece of clothing that makes you feel superb. Add some red lipstick and danger heels, and you're invincible.

Also, I have recently noticed that when I wear this dress out, the number of Panic at the Disco-panics decreases. Perhaps I just don't notice them because I'm too busy feeling good? I don't know. I don't want to question it too deeply.

So. There you go. An explaination of my favourite dress' name. And an insight into why French boys can be bizarre. And also an insight into my small mind. Make of it what you will. I'm off to bleach my brain by staring at this:

this is the most manly i've seen him look without the tache. more manly than a burst sausage, as Jeremy Clarkson once said.

one time around the ballroom slow

"sometimes things happen, and they're really scary." my usual eloquent, articulate nature is muted. from shock and gin, probably. a cool change has surged through, smelling of salt and relief. respite.

today Spike couldn't stand up, couldn't stand up and wouldn't respond. he's old, and deaf, i know i know i know, but he's never looked right through me and whimpered. i thought i'd be as sick as him, vomit all over our courtyard like he did. i let him lie on top of me while i called my grandparents and couldn't tell who was shaking more - me or him.

so we took him to the hospital, muzzled because he didn't seem to recognise us, seemed like all his muscles hurt. we carried him to the car on a towel, a neardeadwieght that had me nervyedgyscared, and my grandparents tensetersetightlipped. barely a wag of the tail from a dog who normally goes into overdrive when the chance to get in a car presents itself. and when we got to the vet's, he had to be carried in a stretcher, whimpering.

Dr Leah tells me it's probably heatstroke. my grandparent's tell me it's probably heatstroke. they all say he's going to be fine. they arrange to keep him in overnight, and i fork over $200 so that they can do blood tests to make sure he's ok. i want to ask if i can see him, but i'm aware that i'm twenty, not twelve, that i should be behaving more responsibly. so instead i go home and pick an arguement with my other grandmother about how if she'd let me keep him inside like i wanted to, he wouldn't be spending the night with strangers.

and i speak to Jason, who worries about my eloquence and articulation until we squabble about stress displacement. my family comes home from new zealand and in ten days i have forgotten how noisy they are. we eat pizza with blue cheese on it. despite six people hollering over it, the house seems like it's missing something. someone.

someone big and hairy and smelly.



x

this is very wentz-esque, i realise. tough shit, i'm upset. you try dealing with your dog being sick and see how you like it.


x

i just finished Schlink's "The Reader", which was quietly breathtaking. it's technically a holocaust novel, but i think it's more of a study of guilt and denial. i can't wait to see the movie version with Kate Winslet. also read Orwell's "Down and Out In London & Paris" which is so starkly lyrical and raw that it made it on to my top twenty books i've ever read. next up, that peter cameron and grace paley, please.

glamour

i did something very stupid last night, and in the warm fuzzy morning, when the hangover is being kept at bay by enough water to fill sydney's dams, i feel very stupid.


i went out without my phone last night.


ten years ago, this probably wouldn't have been an issue. (although if i did what i did last night ten years ago, well. i would have been one fucked up 10year old) but now, in the dying days of 2008, this is a dumb thing. because i didn't come home last night and i still live with my parents. so i'm feeling a bit guilty. they left the alarm off and were probably wondering where i am. they're pretty cool with me rocking up at all hours, but six am?? i haven't done that since the disastrous macq uni days.

so now that my make up has been washed off, i'm beginning to worry about how much of a hooting idiot i was last night, when the champagne was for free and the people were rather nice. when i'm drunk i become the bastard love child of Patsy (from abfab) and Bernard Black (from Black Books) apparently this is hilarious. but at the moment i feel old. old and a bit embarrassed that i didn't know better.

i mean, you can sprout all the Bret Easton Ellis bullshit about disenchantment and distant, but when it comes down to it, kids my generation (are we still children, i don't know) have everything but we don't want it. sometimes i think we're all desperate to be back in the sixties with the threat of the a-bomb on our heads, or the forties with ration booklets in the supermarket. we've had everything given to us, and that's still not enough. so we drink and we take drugs, we stay out all night and act unrepentant.


so i was looking good last night, i know i was. with my newly brown hair (it's not black, shut up) and my heels that i can barely walk in, my cinched in waist and red lipstick. a force to be reckoned with, bait on the hook. but now that doesn't really mean anything, with my mum coming past my room to give me that look that every under achiever has catalogued. that disappointed, "what are we going to do with you" look. i could play the pity card and tell you that i'm used to this, no one expects brilliance from me, just drunkenness. but that's a lie and i'm an honest hungover harpy. i don't like disappointing people, especially when it's something stupid like not coming home. no, not letting them know that i wasn't coming home.

now wide awake and tiptoeing towards the moment when my stomach grumbles and demands food, but instinctively i know it's a bad idea. i threw up last night, in whoever's house i ended up in. their bathroom was huge, and as i tried my best to puke quietly, i wondered about what makes us, makes me, drink so much. everyone does this when they over indulge. they make promises never to touch the stuff again. i don't do that, because i think about giving up sunday afternoons, or post lecture bevvies or having to deal with family gatherings sober, and i think that it's more about boundaries than denial. as a member of a generation who has no boundaries, learning to set them, implement them is a difficult thing. i know, logically that three glasses of white wine is probably more than enough. but when i'm presented with free alcohol and people that i don't really have anything in common with anymore. well. some little part of me (the Patsy part) goes "yippee" and before you know it, i may as well be Ivana Trump.

some people get angry when they are hungover. apparently i get contemplative and philosophical.


if i'd gone out with my phone last night, would it have been any different? would i have rung and said "i'm going to be staying with Hayley at her boyfriend's house."? or would i have waited for them to ring me? would i have come home and tried not to wake anyone up? would i? but thinking all those things doesn't matter, because i did none of them. i got stoned at Hayley's boyfriends place and was probably embarrassing and ridiculous. and god, it felt good at the time, but now its got me wondering how i can expect to be treated like an adult if i refuse to behave like one.

x

and then there's hangover music. normally i play Sigur Ros and Plaid for hours on end, but today all i want to listen to is Skinny Love by Bon Iver, which is one of the most heartbreaking songs i've ever heard. (yes, it totally tops that stupid Chasing Cars song.) it's quiet and desperate and the imagery conjures up cold winters waiting for the sun again. it's the bottom of the whisky bottle, when you're wondering why you went to all that effort when it was always obviously going to end like this - a three week beard and nine packets of cigarettes that you haven't smoked because smoking is bad, but it's supposed to help these moments and it doesn't. it doesn't and regrets a bitch, hindsight's a whore. normally i'd be more coherent, but i'm doing my best to think in a straight line here, so trust me on this. go listen to it.

oh god. someone in my house is making coffee. erk.


x

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted?
Then who the hell was I?

--bon iver.