Antisummary

We met at university,
We sat and watched the ABC,
You know so much about the world,
I’m glad this friendship came to be

All you do is play guitar

 

I like these people. The fact they’re from Melbourne makes me like them even more. Stupid awesome Melbourne.

On Form

I made the mistake of trying to write something that sounded semi-serious for English, and it came out a bit like a horrible car accident. I decided to return to what I like for this second one; absurdism, or fantastic realism…. I can’t tell which it is yet.

As Yet Untitled Fantasy Tale

I pushed the door open and stepped into a slightly less grimy room.

“Alright?” a rather chipper voice enquired.

A heavy, wooden table stood in the centre of the room, maps and books spread across it like frosting on some sort of knowledgeable cake. Around the table were four slender wooden chairs (which in my delicious baked-goods-analogy, I saw as delicate flans… I should’ve had breakfast before this meeting.) Three of the four chairs were occupied by three of the most interesting people I had ever seen. The one who had spoken was pale of skin and hair, except for a shock of tomato red in his fringe and a mauve tint on his lips, suggesting he had a taste for the harder violet liquors. To his left sat an elf, skin green like summer grass, clothes green like forest floors, eyes green like slime-moulds, or emeralds. Emerald was probably a nicer image. Let’s go with emeralds. To the elf’s left sat a slight girl, probably sixteen, her pretty features obscured by a black hood and veil.

“Come on then! Don’t hover in the doorway.”

I realised that in my nervousness, I had levitated about an inch and a half above the dusty floorboards. Embarrassed, I willed myself back to the ground and made my way to the empty flan. I mean, chair.

 

EDIT: This tale is now titled (although hastily) and posted under the sub-heading Something Better (which is actually the hastily chosen title, referring to the fact that it is something better than the last piece I wrote). There’s more of it there than here. Go! Click it! Look, up there, right-hand corner! Or here, this link. Lazy.)

Triple J is a bit of a waste of time…

…because it’s totally mainstream and all that. But this came up in their feed and I feel that it is kind of a big deal.

Yo Yo

A Rhyme

Sparrow on my windowsill,
Oh won’t you shut your beak?
Your singing makes me love you so,
I feel like such a freak.

You flitter through the morning air
Your beady black-eyes glazed,
A clueless bird-brained little twit,
Forever fly unfazed.

White whale on that distant line
Between the sea and skies,
Pleasant looking from afar
But what does that disguise?

Are you rich in whale wit?
Or is your skull packed full
With flowers, feelings, hats, and bells,
With clouds and cotton wool?

To chase a fox or drown a bird,
Or watch butterflies play,
I’d hurl a harpoon at you, Whale,

But let’s face it, you’d probably just end up in somebody’s sushi.

 

 

 

This diver is thinking about his dinner.

And over to you, Subconscious

The other night, I dreamt this:

I was at a beach (with the Weasley twins initially, but they’re not relevant to the plot), sitting in the sand with my back against a huge stone cliff, let’s say, 100m tall. The waves were washing in and out and everything was quite relaxing and nice.

Then the tide swept in, freakishly quickly, and I found myself being thrown against the cliff by waves. The water had surged up against the stone, about 50m deep now, and I was clinging to the cliff, terrified.

I had this conflict, you see. I didn’t want to let go of the wall because I could be pulled out into the ocean. I didn’t want to keep holding onto the wall in case the tide swept out again, leaving me 50m in the air with only my poor upper body strength keeping me from falling to my death.

The only thing to do, as far as I could see, was climb to the top of the cliff. So I began my struggle, pulling myself out of the water and onto the stone wall, finding purchase for aching hands and feet. I got part way up, tumbled back into the ocean, and had to start my climb again.

Up and up, I pulled myself, the ocean surging beneath me, until finally, I reached the fence at the very top of the cliff, dragged myself over it, and collapsed on the other side. I was exhausted, but proud. I had single-handedly escaped death by drowning or falling.

So at this point, I thought the message was clear. When necessary, you can accomplish anything. Anything at all.

That’s not what my brain had in mind for me. The dream continues;

I’m home with my family, still shaking from my harrowing journey up the cliff, when the news comes on.

The newsreader talks about the freak event, where the tide swept in 50m deep, causing mass panic and damage to boats. They cut to footage taken from a helicopter, and I recognise myself clinging to the cliff. They’re going to show the inspirational climb!

They show my fall. The few metres I slipped before climbing the rest of the way. It is the humorous conclusion to their report. There may as well have been a laugh-track.

The moral, it would seem, is that you’re more likely to be remembered for the few tiny mistakes you make than anything else.

Thanks, dream-fairy.

 

As an aside, this is a nice song:

Skinny Jeans

An Appreciation or You’ll Never Understand

What is there in this world
That rivals the majesty
The might
The scarily tight
Form-fitting functional plain black
Skinny jean?

The versatility!
The changeability!
The uphill struggle
To fit feet, calves, thighs,
Then inhale and zip.

But breathe with caution…
The ricochet of a button fly has velocity enough to embed shrapnel in human bone…

“A man should be able to support his lover’s weight,

And that guy looks like he’d topple over if his backpack was a little heavy…”

No. You will never understand,
The mark of a man is no longer his wits,
Or words,
Or haircut,
Or ability to rock a T-spin in a time-trial-Tetris-tourney.

If his legs are wider than his wrists
And his jeans don’t cling with ferocity
To his too-easy-to-break ankles
He is nothing.

Our fair Evolution didn’t see this coming.
An era when the spindly and delicate
Would triumph in genetic competition…

But Evolution can just shut up and take a back-seat to our new Dictator of Nature.

The plain black skinny jeans.

The Butterfly Effect

…or This Is A Really Clever Name For A Poem If You Understand The Joke

Oh Butterfly,
You’ll never know
The lives you’ve touched and how
You’ve changed the flow of friendships
And the skies we fly through now

You never knew
The way we watched
You floating from afar,
It’s thanks to you so many of us
Landed where we are

So don’t be scared,
I recognise
The weirdness shining through,
You may not know that we exist
But Butterfly, thank you!

 

 

Some super hot slash

What? ‘Jon Richardson Russell Howard fic’? Please, lord, tell me that’s not ‘fic’ in the sense I immediately assumed it was…

Because that is just too far. Even for you, internet. Even for YOU.

For people who don’t quite know why this is bizarre and wrong, ‘Jon Richardson/Russell Howard’ could be compared to ‘Hamish Blake/Andy Lee’, or ‘Dylan Moran/Bill Bailey’. Two comedians being paired off because they work together.

Is this really what you were searching for, you mysterious creep? Do you just want some erotic literature with a side-helping of light observational comedy?

I can get behind some slash, honest. If you want to read or write about Harry and Ron touching each other a bit, go right ahead. (I do, however, find Harry/Draco a lot more plausible. One cannot deny the tension that exists there, and let’s face it, Ron and Harry shared a bedroom for the better part of six years. If they wanted to explore ‘special feelings’, they probably would’ve gotten it out of the way early on. Maybe they did, and J.K. just gave them a little privacy. Complicated teen years.)

But when you start to invest in slash about real people, it gets a little beyond hot speculation and strays into that most twisted and feared category…

Niche.

I’ll take a gamble now and Google ‘Jon Richardson Russell Howard fic’.

…

Oh no.

What have I done.

Why.

British panel show slash.

I mean, it’s livejournal. I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I was hoping that it wouldn’t exist. Rule #34 has hit me hard. I thought it was hilarious speculation.

It’s not.

For people who don’t know, they used to do a radio show. A lovely, Sunday morning radio show, with happy music and fun little segments. This person has decided that the world needs to know what would happen if they slept together. It’s actually a good read. It’s short, to the point, the author has captured Jon’s character alarmingly accurately, and it ends unhappily…

What? There wasn’t even any decent action in it! Why does this exist? Is this written for people who are titillated by awkward friendship-turned-gay-sleepover-mistake stories, where beloved British radio personalities end up dejected and emotionally crippled?

I mean, it made me think. It raised questions. Also, Russell Howard did leave that radio show pretty suddenly, with rumours of a falling-out…

Maybe there’s something there.

Maybe it’s a true account.

Maybe I need to close that livejournal tab and never, ever return there.

Might close that deviantArt tab too.