Quote changeover time

I'm getting lazy.
It's been so long.
And I'm going to recycle the original quote.
Seeing as it explains my blog name a little.

Outgoing:
"Nouns and books and show-and-tell."
The White Stripes
("We're Going To Be Friends")

Tiny terrors

After the wondering & thinking & talking & dancing around whether or not to live together, comes the free-falling feeling of house hunting.

I'd forgotten about that feeling.

Handing in notice and then hoping for the perfect new house to become available.

Looking at open houses on sunny Saturday mornings with 30 other people clattering and jostling through hallways and rooms.

Finding the perfect place, and wanting to dream ahead and get attached to it, but not being able to in case someone else gets the lease instead.
My hippy past comes back and finds me doing creative visualisation, and watching what messages I'm putting out to the universe with my thoughts and actions.

And when we have a new home; then comes the hard work of cleaning & packing & cleaning & unpacking & cleaning.

I'm a bit freaked out, but certainly feeling alive at the moment.

An example of a bad career move...

Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions are looking for a Chief Librarian.

Uh. And that'd be in Guantanamo Bay, folks.

From the ad:
"The Chief Librarian is responsible for selecting and maintaining a range of reading and recreational materials to reflect the needs of the patrons in terms of languages and appropriate/approved topics. " [my emphasis]

*cringes*

Snippets

The music was pretty good at Biversity.
I haven't danced that much in a while.
Though the sad thing is - it wasn't much of a dance.

Mr M and I had a gander at a few houses on the weekend.
Talking about what sort of place we would, and wouldn't, like to live in.
We both agreed that we wouldn't like to live in the place that had a toilet held together by duct tape.

I got cruised at work today.
Until I remembered that I wasn't in queer world, and he probably saw me as a straight girl.
*sighs*
I guess we have to call that flirting instead eh?
How boring.

There were actually dykes at Biversity on Saturday night.
Ones that I had seen earlier in the evening at the Slit mag launch!
A few of them probably came with Sveta.
But not all.
Sweet!

During the weekend I grabbed 2 boys in an agro fashion because I saw red.
That's probably a habit I shouldn't encourage in myself.
To paraphrase Mr M: I should let my actions write cheques that my body can't cash.

Tomorrow I shall wear my top hat and tulle to work.
'tis one of the joys of being a children's librarian.

One of the sweet high school girls that comes into the Library to do community work for her Duke of Edinburgh Award has the beginnings of an earlobe stretch.
She's also one of the group of asian girls that come in dressed in their camos and berets after cadets and polish their boots in the kids section.
*breathes deep*
I shall expect to see her on the scene within a year.

Foolish but fabulous. *shakes head*
Yes I wore my new red bandanna dress to Feastability on Sunday.
Yes it has a full skirt.
And yes, it was a pretty bloody windy day, wasn't it.

Femme as mental illness

Or perhaps a symptom of?

Is this what happens when a predilection for fabulous frocks gets mixed with anxiety issues?

The story:
I bought a new pair of cute red flat shoes a little while ago. And today was a good day to first wear them. They look best with jeans, and then, being lazy I throw on an old t-shirt and head out the door, hair still unbrushed.
I figure I'll get a couple of quick chores done down King St before I have to go babysit some Qart.

*shakes head*
Of course, Murphy's Law strikes with a fury.
I run into an old workmate.
And yes, gentler readers, she's gorgeous and a dyke.
I feel dumpy and frumpy, but try valiantly to talk with some zing.

Then I run into a friend, and old friend, and a crush. (Oh the horror, how can one look fabulous and sexy in an old t-shirt that's lost it's shape. I know I don't have the body or chutzpah for it).

Then I chat with a friend of Mr M's, see the old workmate again (make sure it's rubbed in eh), then a friends' girlfriend, and an acquaintance.
Then I run away to hide in the Qart gallery.
After my art-minding shift is over I dash home via the back streets.

Then, of course, remember something I forgot to pick up on King St. *argh*
I have only a few minutes to collect it, but I'll be damned if I'm going out dressed so daggy still.
So out comes a frock, jewellery and heels.
*phew*
For naturally I run into another couple more friends, and then, lo and behold, my first girlfriend.
Oh God.

By now I'm starting to think the Universe is trying to tell me something.
And even a fab fifties frock isn't enough to counteract the weirdness.
For the second time in the day I dash home via back streets, stomach gripped in a queasy band of anxiety.

The moral of this story?
Always be fabulous.
You never know who'll you run into.

My dilemma?
I used to feel totally comfy in jeans and an old t-shirt.
But what slippery slope to hell in heels have I started down now?

Bandwagon? Where?

So it's a tad late for Talk Like a Pirate Day.
*meh*
But I did do a few pirate storytimes at work the other day. And taugh to kids to say *AAARGH!* at the top of their lungs in the Library.
And we made pirate hats.
Mine was a rainbow one.
And my post-flu voice was perfect for telling pirate stories.

My pirate name is:

Red Bess Flint

Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

I got love...in the music...

It's one of the stranger side effects of having an office many floors away from my colleagues, an office next door to a study room full of gossiping, flirting teenagers.
I am rekindling my love of music.
I'm rediscovering forgotten bands.
Listening to new bands that sure I've read about, but never bothered to track down, and now I listen to the notes, the lyrics, enjoying the occasional inclusion of brass and surprising turn of phrase.
Rambunctious teens. They're too busy talking about last weeks party fallout, to study for the HSC. Failing one hour at a time. Too many cigarette breaks and phone calls.
So to get any work at all done I put a CD into my computer, put on the headphones, and turn up the volume. Sometimes turned up too high to actually concentrate on my work. Just to drown out the voices.
But oh, the music is so good.
Belle and Sebastien making me want to travel.
Joy division not surviving the translation to my tinny compueter stereo system.
Old albums from the Dandy Warhols and White Stripes that I've not listened to before.
Waiting in the queue is some 90's regression in the form of Reel Big Fish and Frenzel Rhomb.
A few oddities that I'm hoping will take me by surprise. Aboriginal Hip Hop and a random classical CD or two.
Aaah, who needs to get any work done.
Sit back and practise my air drums instead.
Or air trumpet.

Black and white books, grey fuzzy areas, and a red dress.

So somewhere in between the busy-busy that is both my paid work and my community work and the rest of my life at the moment, I received a parcel in the post.
Oh and how wonderful! A book.
Self-Organising Men; concious masculinities in time and space. 2006, J Sennett (ed). Homofactus Press.

Now you'd be right in thinking that I've got enough books in my life. But this is particularly cool. A free book.
No. Not like 'library-free'. I get to keep this one. But I should I tell you all about it.
So here is part one of my brain dump while reading through it the first time.
In reading order. Not table of contents order.

LesbianHighFemmeFaggot
by Gaylourdes

Of course I was going to read this piece first. Fancy getting a book from around the world and finding a piece of writing from over the hill (literally, folks).
The words washing and dancing over and around me. The familiar cleverness of hir personality. There's something to be said for reading a book and being able to hear the authors voice. Not in that 'famous newsreader' sense. But in the way that I expect to hear hir break into one of hir explanatory offshoots or wonderfully terrible puns.
A niggle-hint in the back of my head while reading; how will others, around the world, interpret hir words differently? Without knowing her context as much. Without know some of the names mentioned* or having seen some of the fabulous (yes fabulous!) costumes.

I can't be male
by Nick Kiddle

Nick's piece reads with a voice somewhat quieter. A certain politeness in the tale being told. But not apologetic. Not the story structure of the usual 'here is something, here is crisis, here is working through, here is shiny rainbow and happy bunny ending'. The end of this piece delivers some tied up threads - but many more teased out.
Messy - not ugly or the sort of mess that makes you want to look away (turn-a-page), but instead that which conveys the realness of life. There are no neat boxes for the reader to put things in. This isn't a kindergarten shape-recognition game. This is a beautiful clear story of a part of someones continuing life. And for that it has power over many a typical transition tale.

Cartoons - various
by Jay Sennett
While I delight in the changing pace and sizes of the words and tales in this book.
I also laugh out loud with the recognition of Jay's wonderful cartoons. Each one making me recall my original thoughts on them. And indeed some memory-snippets of the original accompanying post.

Body in Progress
by Eli J VandenBerg
But oh what a delight (if one can use such a word here) to see Eli's woodcuts.
I have a soft spot for printmaking - as someone who was accepted into Uni for her printmaking. But my life took different tumble turns as science won over art, and words won over science. But moving along now.
I will write something coherent later here.
The artworks so powerful it takes me 3 passes over before I notice the accompanying text. No doubt there will be more written later on this.

And Yet
by Eli Clare
This piece demanding re-reading beyond most.
But what a delight to let the words wash over. The delight of reading good writing.
The poignancy of the subject.

And this is as far as I've read. And I want to finish flicking and start re-reading properly. I want to start having more informed views on what I'm reading.

A part of me finds myself unpacking (*shudders* damn insidious corporate-speak infiltrating my life) more of what's inside me; the more I read the FTM 'genre'.

An unexamined life is not worth living sure. But I am also finding myself in a space where I see aspects of my world being analysed. I watch from the inside. Peoples' theories on the lives of my friends.
Thinking: analyse, sure, but don't forget to live eh.

This academic take on what I see in my daily life isn't something I found often in my time in heteroville. Apart from a smattering of feminist arguments and attitude from my mothers, and a drop of sociology at Uni.
And then later, no matter how hard I searched, I couldn't find a level of writing that echoed life, regarding the bisexual experience. It was/is all too amorphous and broad.

And so I will end this ramble with the frivolous femme-y news that I have bought a new dress for more than I realistically should've paid. And it is made entirely of red bandanna material.
No dilemmas about flagging left or right for me folks.
I'm flagging with my whole jiggly body!
Bring on summer!


*You think Glita Supernova is a fantastic name? - but oh that's nothing compared to her shows, her laugh, her makeup, her outfits, her tattoos, her skin...her skin...oh *slides under table*.

Waving through fog.

Coming out of the other side of an i-don't-know-what-that-was-flu-thing.
Re-emerging into a world where people are making plans or waiting for me to make plans.
Starting to remember peoples names and faces again.
Wish I could've written down some of the crazy half-dreams I had. But really couldn't've for lack of gainful use of limbs, let alone the ability to see/read properly.

What a time for my health to go AWOL.
Phone calls from work mercifully short. I'm back there tomorrow (sucker), so am being optimistic that everything's fine and there's no mountains of urgent work piled up.

Bi Week plans are going ahead at a rapid pace.
Mr L, Miss J, myself and a few others, are running the Spanking Booth at the next Hellfire. That's after the opening of Qart earlier that evening too.

There's a tonne of other events on that week. Including another Biversity on the 23rd.

But the one I'm looking forward to is the Sex Trivia night.
Anyone want to join me? I'd love to get a group of friends together again this year. Wednesday night at Aurora Gallery, 7pm.

I wanted to say more, and it's not the most coherent post; but hey, cut me some slack, I'm just warming back up to the idea of correct sentence construction after a while in the world of 2 word answers.

Laid bare

My Personality

Neuroticism	88
Extraversion	48
Openness To Experience	43
Agreeableness	56
Conscientiousness	4

Test Yourself Compare Yourself View Full Report MySpace Surveys, MySpace Layouts and hi5 by Pulseware Survey Software

Unbalanced? Moi?

Things to take away from this folks: I am an anxious kitten at times and am probably not talking to you because I'm shy and don't know what you think of me this week. Not because I'm a snob. And I do have a conscience. Honest. Especially when it comes to people. See how agreeable I can be? And I have a terrible protestant work ethic in some areas of my life. The problem is, I just don't have great motivation all the time, and sometimes that anxiety stuff fouls up my ability to get things done.

Okay. Enough apologies.

Fuck eh. I didn't think I was that neurotic though!

Wow.

It must be Spring!

Walking home from the pub the other night I stole some locquats off a tree hanging over someones fence. When the branch sprang back a couple of flying fox were frightened off into the night sky.
I delighted in biting into the super tart flesh. Rolling the smooth brown seed around my mouth.
Remembering climbing up to gather this juicy yellow fruit, from the tree that hung over my childhood chook-shed.

In the front garden Mr M has helped me plant some lavender. It's taken well, and is enjoying the season change, with new buds poking through. I show the flowers to the dogs, who think it smells good enough to eat, and try to taste a bit.
I had snuck a few sunflower seeds into the edge of the garden bed and now they're pushing up their fleshy stems and leaves in pairs.

The jasmine is in full glorious bloom around the neighbourhood, and I can't go on a walk to the corner store without filching some from the overflowing masses hanging from back brick walls and garages.

The clover is flowering. Round, white tufts poking up through the tiny hillocks of rapidly growing clover leaves. Any moment now I can see myself stopping on the footpath and collecting enough for my first clover wreath of the season.

The neighbour is 'blitzing' her front and back yards while her girlfriend is away. Dutifully walking the fluffy dogs, and arranging cute 'cottage' furniture on the patio. Awaiting her lovers return.

Aah yes folks.
The fruit is ripening, plants are growing, the flowers are blooming, and the dykes are nesting.
It must be Spring!