Cranky cranky cranky.

I, AuntyB, expert coffee maker-and-meeting-room-wrangler-for-random-Korean-professionals, ponytail-wearing, hair-drying novice, dance fetishist, word-smith, ghost writer, snack-providing-inner-urban-hostess-with-the-mostest , have got the utter shits.

I shall not trouble you, gentle readers with the cause of this angst. It would not be becoming of me to do so. I shall merely share with you some possiblities of, comment-vous-parlez, "anger-management" as we refer to it in the modern junk-pop-speak.

1. Write lengthy, bitter sarcastic email(s). Hm - not so good as they tend to have a permanent life out there in cyberspace. Upside - immediate vent. Downside - tends to make one look like a complete twat with OCD. And who needs email anyway when you have a BLOG? Ta da!

2. Eat a meal consisting of doritos, salsa, samosas (deepfried), and dumplings, all in one sitting. Did it. Just made me feel full and slightly sick. Still pissed.

3. Take it out on colleagues. Now there is an idea. They're all completely pre-conditioned to tiptoe around young women in the workplace for fear of charges of harassment, bullying or
discrimination. But then those suity tend to act nice to your face then go away and nurse their simmering resentment until they get a chance to shaft you reeaal god. Been there done that, not so flash.

4. Relfect on how lucky, safe, rich and blessed with good health one is, and really what does one have to complain about?. BO-ring.

5. Smash something up. Anyone got any interesting old stuff what needs destroying? Post in comments kiddies. We could make it art , you know. Take some ditigal photos and make a montage for the punters. We could stage "group-rage-therapy" a new completely misguided self help cult that I just invented. Yeh. Pass it off as some kind of peace-creation by venting all those daily aggrevations, insults, and pyscholoical cuts and wounds one suffers living in the harsh world that we do.

6. Wait for it to pass, and exercise adult restraint in not posting to blog read by some of one's best friends who are bound to check in on ones' state of mind and ask embarassing questions. Well that realy would be sensible wouldn't it? But part of the whole "Story of B" seems to be about getting less sensible as one gets older. As Marcia would say.. "Just go with it, darling"

7. Cultivate a hermit-like , intellectually rigorous and witty persona online with a multitude of fans and a bright new future in the Americas? Nope, the Christian already has the corner on that market.

8. Jog, swim, walk, or do something vaguely aerobic? Are you kidding, that would actually like, work, in flushing out the anger hormones, and I like to wallow, dammit.

9. Cultivate some totally absorbing mental activity that encourages a "state of flow" as espoused by Ross Gittins like writing, painting, doing a thesis, etc etc. Is it okay if this pursuit isolates one from the rest of humanity, creating a cocoon-like impenetrable shell of distance? Coz I've always seen that as a bit of a boy thing really. Maybe that's why blokes often seem to have their shit together more.

10. Drink. (hic) Er , not this week - my liver is silently screaming and trying to book online for a vegan detox clinic in the Blue Mountains.

Well there you have it - Aunty B's top 10 options list for getting out those frustrations. Let me know if any work as I'm off to blob on the couch, Ta ra.

Meme Shmeme

I tried to nonchalantly drop the term "meme" into a conversation today. Then I had to define it. So I actually looked like a bit of a nerdy dufus rather than a nonchalant cool web-savvy chick. Cest la vie. So because I mainly pinch half my ideas from Miss B. Sue. Here's my (slightly modified) 2004 run down. You may want to view it as a game of "pick the odd one out". Or not.

1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
Took a language class, ate a tequila worm, swam at Bondi Icegbergs, kept up a webdiary for 12 months.

5. What strange frontier Australian towns did you spend the night at?.
Cooktown, Laura (where I met the one-handed, dirtbike riding "Joe"), Cardwell (rockabilly haven of the Far North), Coffs Harbour (right nextdoor to "Mermaids" brothel); Pt Douglas.

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?
Style, decorum, wisdom, painless periods, tact, world peace.

7. What dates from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
The one at the tequila bar in Surry Hills. Not telling.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Coordinating my skirt and my shoes. Camping for, like, 2 nights in a row. In two states.

12. Whose bee-haviour merited celebration?
Arhundati Roy.

13. Whose bee-haviour made you slightly cranky and gave you something meangingless to carp about in airports?
Those trashy tramps who made the Von Dutch brand ubiquitous. A curse on both their houses! Look, really what is with that label, it was a damn motorbike parts guy who hated consumerism. I mean is that just the final word in bullshit appopriation of counter culture or what?

13A. What were your most oft-referenced authors or commentators that you haven't actually read much of?
Naomi Klein, Germaine Greer, Ms A. Roy (whoops), John Quiggin.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Savings. And into the ocean via our industrial revolution-era seweraage system, my kidneys and more beer than is healthy for a woman my age (in reverse order).

16. What song will always remind you of 2004?
Anything by Little Birdy.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Bitching and moaning. Club-hopping and cocaine snorting. Procrastinating. Making shit up.

20. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Cleaning the flat. (See earlier post on flea control). Dancing.

22. How many one-night stands?
I made a coffee table that doubles as a lamp-stand.. does that count? Oh hang on, probably not as it was in the new year. It was entirely constructed from found objects though. Neat huh?

23. What was your favourite NSW Government program?
Er.. the one they didn't shut down. The Christmas decorations, oh no, wait, that was the City of Sydney. (ha ha little local insiders joke that one, fellow emerald city locals). No really, the one where they decimate the level of service on the trains then put more inspectors on stations. Or the one where they amalgamate all the environmental agencies to create super-departments with less funding overall but bigger policy areas. Oh its just too close to call.

25. What was the best book you read?
Oryx and Crake

27. What did you want and get?
A new computer. To be distracted by other people's problems. A brand new pair of rollerskates.

28. What did you want and not get?
To win an argument with Bizarro.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?
"The guy threw a Birkenstock, he doens't even understand fashion yet"

33. What special new skill did you acquire?
Knitting. I made a whole scarf. Yay me.

33.a Who was the best teacher of sacred female arts and crafts in 2004?
--Mango Mitzu
33.b Who had the most patience for arabic fantasy whims, bad taste stage cossies, and workplace overanalysis?
--Betty Sue
33.c Who did the bestest post card correspondence from the most variety of locations?
--Miss J
33.d. Who made the best Calzone in the Inner West?
--Bizzo Bomba
33.e. Who made th most triumphant return to the antipodes with natural accessory talent in-tact?
--Missy D

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004.
Spanish has two words for the verb "to be".

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
"They laugh because they know they're untouchable, not because what I said was wrong" - Sinead O'Connor.

40. What is the meaning of life?
Practice, practice, practice.

Greer escapes from reality TV

Hey thanks for the link. But how depressing, that 30+ years after her crazy mags and super books torpedoing into the public domain, some English twats promoting a special brand of mass media humilation seem to have put one over our gutsy first lady of being smart and disagreeing with the mainstream. See the thing about Germain is she's rooly FUNNY. Why do the brits not seem to get that, and they have to punish her? The sperm comment was hilarious, the Cleo lady she was talking to was giggling.

Check these quotes:

The professor of English literature at England's Warwick University wrote in 2001 that watching Big Brother was "about as dignified as looking through the keyhole in your teenage child's bedroom door" and getting hooked on it was "downright depraved".

The beginning of the end may have been the medieval role-playing the housemates had to act out in the last two days in which Greer was the cook and was involved in petulant spats with Nielsen over who ran the kitchen.

"Germaine is off a bit, but the rest of the group is having fun, we're a real team," Nielsen said.

Greer revived her firebrand bra burning days when she tried to lead a revolt against Big Brother, but failed to convince her housemates to stage a naked sit down protest.

Man I wish she'd got the sit down protest going. Just goes to prove my theory that Big Brother has exactly the same effect on people as in "real life" oppresive control. Ordinary and even smart people behave as if it matters if you do what some disembodied voice says even though you are clearly on a make-believe set full of windows and trick doors and god knows what, designed solely to get advertising and money from sms. Bummer hey.

Oh and great discussion M Risa and Dr D, keep it up! (I'm almost embarassed that my main motivation for that last post was a cheap laugh at willies and yr lonely author being a kind of inverse howard hughes).

True story.

Tuesday night, my first night back after 2 weeks schlepping around the south east coast. I've got into the house midday and had a shower, tidied up, checked in with the girl possie, put my washing on, had a nap. Happily wrapped in my cosy blue nanna dressing gown, I settled into the couch for a bit of teev at about 8.30.

Avidly watched the sbs world news to find out what's happening in the region. Then was mildy pleased to see our Ms Greer appear on the screens, hosting the video-doco version of "The Boy", which turns out not to be a pervy old middle-aged foray into adolescent sexuality but instead quite a considered and conservative critique of art in the 16th/17th century (as far as I can tell, I don't know much about art..etc).

I'm actually enjoying the intellectual side of it, been watching for about an hour when my housemate, redleadership, appears. So he walks into the room for a greeting, just when Germain is commentating on the long history of "the gaze" in art, and exploring it for the viewer in modern times.

She's opened the show with a glamour photo shoot for cosmo of this rather husky young 18 yr old bloke with the pre-requisite six pack, wavy dark hair and faded demin, etc. She's been making quite a compelling argument towards nude young men in art being a celebration of form and not blatantly homosexual, throughout the show. She's shown Raphelite art, Michelangelo and a host of renaissance paintings and sculpture so far. But of course just when my housie walks in the room (about 40mins into the show), there's the same teen model, posing for a group of middle aged painters, sans pants, glorious todger in full view, in the most lurid pose I've ever seen for a life drawing class.

And there's me on the couch in dressing gown, freshly outta the shower. Nice.

While redleadership is trying to catch up and chat, I'm kinda trying to keep up with the commentary around his shoulder .. at which point he turns around and cops an eyeful of the "old birds" enjoying "art" and in his eyes, me, checking out nudie boys when no-one's home.

So while I don't do the banter justice now it has come up as a topic of conversation twice at dinner with friends. Sadly, the art-lover defence just doesn't cut it. I even tried to give him a synopsis of the show up to that point..but alas.. he was not convinced. Let this be a warning to you fellow serious young insects!

Aunty B signs off from the world o' (f)art .

Dot slash dot

Oh ha ha, Betty Sue , thanks for the email .. Here's a geeky fun game for all you other retrotech lovers...

Oh, and thanks -

- to everyone who expressed concern about the parasite situation at casa Sharp. Its been a lot better thanks, there was a back up charge from the cavalry pre-Christmas, and we're gradually winning, although we deeply regret the length of the conflict.

For the record, the more people have responded to me off-line about the flea post than any other missive, and miraculously not to sever the friendship due to unreconcilable differences of hygiene standards. Astounding. You're all a bunch of freaks.

Er, Happy New Year

Well hello again gentle readers, I am back in the Emerald city. Having covered the equivalent of approximately 3,375 km since Dec 23, most of it in the air. Events of note for Chrissy /NY were:

• a beer or two at the Grace Emily;
• an event-free family Christmas despite (or due to) the 2004 inclusion of not-one-but-3-new-male additions to the table following the 2004 pecadillos of the grown-up girl cousins. Aside: you didn't have to listen too hard to hear the unspoken "oh thank goodness, we were getting worried they would all be 30-something and still on the shelf, perhaps we shouldn't have spent all that money on a good education" of the extended fam;
• a hasty departure of one afore-mentioned male companion to tsunami-ravaged SE asia to distrubute aid;
• a rapid change of travel plans and jettisoning of the heavier camping items;
• the new route to Falls festival... plane, bus, shuttle, train, bus and shuttle again (and that was one way) - THANK GOD FOR DRAMAMINE;
• camping with 14,000 bogans;
• Playing a very high class game of scrabble with the erudite Miss J under the big top at the back of the valley stage (I only won b/c she let me have QED [an illegal move scrabble fans] to complete a 3-way move for about 50 points, otherwise she totally kicked my ass). Nb. Travel scrabble courtesy of Santa - oh, alright, it was the incredible Mr Biz - all round grumpy-assed legend;
• Billy Bragg giving it to da man - solo, pot bellied and proud;
• Mellibourne - trams, cafes, Art, Glick's bagel shop, pots o' beer, and the Divine Wide-eyed kid and her incredibly convenient pad at zero notice.
  

So phew, time for a nanna nap for Aunty B, hi to fellow travellers and those far from home, love and peace to youse all, I'm off work till Monday - give me a ring, text, instant message thing, smoke signal or morse. (Except if you use the latter I won't be able to understand. But it would be cool).