Fuck You Dad

Thinking about going to a cat show today. You know, participating in what is known as “real life”. This in itself is an uninviting concept, but, CATS. Fuck yeh, CATS! And cat shows are supposed to attract extremely odd and idiosyncratic individuals. Fuck yeh, WEIRDOS!

People occasionally make obnoxious comments of the ‘crazy cat lady’ variety. I don’t mind. I don’t think I’m quite there yet but I do aspire to achieve certified, crazy cat lady status in the future. There was one time I did mind though, and it was a couple of months ago, during a conversation with my father, who I have been estranged from for more than fifteen years. Sixteen, seventeen, something like that. He’s okay, I guess, but he’s one of those men who shows no courage when it counts. At the end of 2010, when I saw him after all that time, he was just this small stranger standing on my doorstep who I was taller than. He was moving to Canberra at the exact time that I was preparing to leave Canberra. I had several dozen reasons to be leaving already but that one was a solid late entry because seeing him totally unsettled me, all he did was cry and ask me irritating questions about my mental health. Like had I ever considered suicide? We spoke on the phone a few times since then and the last time we did he asked me if I still had four cats and when I said yeh he started, like, cackling, weirdly, for a long time, like he was laying an egg, it was terrible. When he’d stopped and composed himself he said into the stony stretched silence something like” wow, you really are a crazy cat lady aren’t you”. I wish I could have said what I wanted to at the time, I wish I could have suggested that perhaps the reason I find cats preferable to people may have something to do with him turning out to be a turncoat and a terrible father who fucked with my soft bird-bone early-adolescent head and sent sadness and suspicion to settle into my hardening bones.

I didn’t say that though, and, as is the way when you don’t say what you should have said and needed to say, I taste metal in my throat when I think about it now.

Anyway, whatever the reasons, I have an ever-intensifying infatuation with cats and just imagine the fun of moving among other, more motivated enthusiasts who not only find cats to be creatures of unparalleled excellence but believe they necessitate rigorous exhibition.

“They get stretched out so they can be judged on their structure, but if they bite the judge it’s a big disgrace.”  That’s the line that attracted me in the article announcing the show. Also, the special mention that one of the judges was coming “all the way from Minneapolis, United States.”

-I’ve compiled a list of things that could have made this story better – Camaros, corsetry, hills carpeted with flowers, David Koresh, seafood extender, being sprayed by a skunk……… But, you know, then I remembered that Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac were all huge fans of the cat, Bukowski in particular made constant references in his later-in-life letters to the way his bunch of adopted strays lifted his soup-stain suicide moods just by the way they crossed a rug or sat in sunshine and slept. Nothing can get better than that.

Christmas. With Bukowski & Bateman.

1.

"Christmas, ugh. People act on cue, doing it because it's there. They are afraid not to. I've had my greatest Xmases on the bum. Just locked the door of my room and didn't see anybody. It was glorious." - Buk.

2.

"I pause, stand up straight, run a hand over my face, breathe in and then lean back down. "Listen to me..." I breathe in again. "They've got midgets in there." I point with a thumb back at the brownstone. "Midgets who are about to sing 'O Tannenbaum'...." I look at him imploringly, begging for sympathy, at the same time looking appropriately frightened. 'Do you know how scary that is? Elves" - I gulp - "harmonising?" I pause, then quickly ask, "Think about it.""

3.

"-"Oh, stop scowling. You're such a Grinch."
- "And what does Mr. Grinch want for Christmas?" Evelyn asks in a baby's voice. "Has Mr. Grinchie been a good boy this year?"
- I sigh. "The Grinch wants a Burberry raincoat, a Ralph Lauren cashmere sweater, a new Rolex, a car stereo - "
- Evelyn stops sucking on the candy cane to interrupt. "But you don't have a car, honey."
- "I want one anyway." I sigh again. "The Grinch wants a car stereo anyway.""

I've been called a Grinch. By my brother. Although unconstructive, this is a not entirely unwarranted accusation. Last time I had Christmas at home with my whole family (all four of us, a few years ago) I made the announcement midway through the day* that I would not be engaging in such activity again, ever. I love them, but all of us together creates a situation where the hot tong nerves reach my throat and reduce me to a trembling twitchy-eyed wreck; a flogged spirit. Other people can do these things easily, it seems, without feeling like a frog on a dissection table. My machinery is not set that way but in the hell and hell and hell on and on I wish everyone many putrid limping returns and a sweetly-screaming Christmas all the same. Amen, and happy birthday baby Jesus.  


*I can't be sure it was the same year - with good reason -  but I think later on that same afternoon I leaned off the side of my bed partway through a siesta and threw up all over the floor of my teenage bedroom. My brother mixes a savagely strong drink, okay?

Sohie Monk's Camel-Toe.

Something I learned today: Sophie Monk's camel-toe has a powerful internet presence. More powerful than the rest of her parts combined. Space does not permit a comprehensive survey of the many public appearances of Sophie Monk's camel-toe so I will cite just ten or twelve examples below. Part of me wishes we could return to the age of the cave and escape the babbling horror show that is the internet age. The other part of me is busy feverishly opening multiple tabs to assess the evidence for myself. This post is proof that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. 

"Sophie Monk has been trying to make it in Hollywood for ages now, and no one will hire her unless she gets her boobs out. To add insult to injury, now she's facing some mega stardom competition from her camel-toe, which continues to upstage her in pap photos everywhere she goes.
Showbiz Spy quote Sophie fraking out over the latest blog giving her crotch more airtime than her head. "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT. Another camel-toe!" she reportedly moaned. "Everyone is going to think I have a ginormous ***** because who gets more than one photo of camel-toe? I've got a small *****. I'm here trying to work so hard and all I get recognised for is my camel-toe. It's more famous than me!"

Goddamn, she is awesome. Have I made that sufficiently clear that I love this crazy bitch yet? She says 'ginormous'! She says 'gimnormous *****!' (Those aren't my stars, by the way. Foul language floats my boat. That quote was from an uptight American, and we all know what they're like: easily excited. Janet Jackson's partially exposed breast drives them to absolute hysteria, remember?)

In light of her scene-stealing camel-toe, the logic behind her reason for turning down an offer to pose nude for Playboy - because she was worried about the effect it would have on her career - strikes me as slightly skewed. (This is in keeping with the rest of her, though, which is reassuring.) Two points: 1. What career?? 2. Her rack is all over the internet already and due to her love of circulation-restricting lycra-spandex we have seen the anatomical outline of her snatch more times than anyone even cares to count - that thing should have its own postcode by now - what more is there even to see?

Anyway. Apparently plenty of blog people don't much care for Sophie Monk. Bitches. What's not to like? This raises the question that no one seems to ever ask: Why in the name of sweet Christ on a cracker would anyone want to be famous? A quiet life is brutal enough: always some god-damned thing slashing at you, trying to take you out; but having the world tearing at you physically and spiritually on any given day? What a hell. The mere thought of it incites panic in my mind. I don't know, though. I imagine people like Sophie Monk may suffer similar terrors when they imagine a life of obscure annonymity?

It must have been better in days gone by. Show me something that wasn't. Once a charming drunk called Poppy-John told me about being in jail in the seventies and sustaining himself by writing a series of admiring letters to Barbara Streisand. Isn't that archaic and lovely? She never wrote back, and once he got out he went to work as a grave digger in Tasmania, which is also archaic and quite lovely, come to think of it.

Now there is this paparazzi thing, and the camera phone phenomenon, and have you noticed how now every nut with a keyboard has decided they're the next Walter Cronkite? Ha, ha. Also, everyone seems mean and cold as hell now, and if they're not they're wimpy and twee and Sarah Blasko-esque and that's just as bad. The nineties seem like a really nice place now. Gentle, and kinder too; being, as it were, the last decade before the internet came and changed everything. 

Also - and here is proof that it really was a better time - all those fabulous one-name supermodels were still roaming and ruling the world and bitches such as Miranda Kerr were nothing but a twinkle in the eye of Dolly magazine readers. I remember, because I was one of them. I voted for her - using a landline -  in the model competition she ended up winning. I helped make the smug bitch what she is today. The decline of the supermodel was brought about by the ascent of the celebrity - remember when actual models used to be on the covers of magazines, instead of celebrities spruiking their stupid shit? Remember how Cindy and Claudia and Christy and Naomi and Linda and Helena were the suns around which revolved the lesser planets? Remember the George Michael videos, and Chris Isaak's Wicked Game video, with moody skies and rolling clouds and Helena writhing and pouting in a pair of men's underpants? Yes, times were better back then.

Now we have Mariah Carey giving birth to her twins while her song 'Fantasy' played in the delivery room. I feel like this one fragment of information encapsulates everything that is wack about....everything. On a less existential level it's also one of the more grotesquely narcissistic things I have ever heard.

Anyway, all this is only symptomatic of a much wider trend, which is that of things going to shit. *Cough-that old chestnut-Cough*. Sophie Monk's camel-toe is but one part of this. It's a bad time to be alive and an even worse time to have a public profile, and no time at all to wear lycra-spandex workout wear in the streets. Still, when she's not wearing the lycra-spandex getups she tends to look as if she was styled by a pimp in a New Orleans whorehouse, so the girl cannot win. In this way, at least, she is just like the rest of us. The walls surround us all, the history of humanity does not change, and the internet makes this patently and sort-of painfully clear. It inspires in me a sort of manic weariness; which is alienating, because everyone else, everywhere and at all times, seems perky and self-assured and pleased with their lives and I feel like crystallised meat going through a mincing machine most of the time.      

However. On the flipside there is cheap comfort to be gained from the fiery tar pit that is the internet, because without it I would never have known about Sophie Monk's awkward encounter when her ex, Benji Maddern, refused to speak to her in a restaraunt, and my life would be poorer for it:

"I saw him the other day actually but he wasn't as warm or welcoming as I was. I gave him a hug, but no arms came out, it was the worst! It was so embarrasing. I went out of my way to go to his table and everyone was looking at me so I was like 'Ok, I'll just back out.' Then I had a couple of glasses of wine so I went back and did it again, I thought 'Oh hell, I don't care, I'm bigger than this. I've got no issue with him.' It didn't work again so next time, I might not do that."

Bitch is batshit! She has my full approval, even when I am very tired of everything.

Ok, so that is a lot of camel-toe. And yes, you could probably see it from the moon. But so what. She's the bomb. To show my respects, here's two Bukowski bits that I have randomly written in a notebook:

1. " 'Look,' he said, 'do you have to let your robe fall open like that?'.... I left the robe open. I don't like to take orders."

2. " -'Please close your robe!'
-'There,' I said, 'you see?'
-'I know I see. That's why I ask you to close it.'
-'All right. Shit.'
- I very reluctantly threw the robe over my genitals. Anybody can expose their genitals at night. At two p.m. in the afternoon it took some balls."

Just Peachy