Incredibly cool and beautiful singer Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls fame) has been forced to search for a new record label after Roadrunner refused to promote her latest single, video and album. Why? Because she refused to let them remove shots of her “fat” belly from the video for Leeds United (see above), and is therefore “uncommercial”. This comes from a metal label where, I have it on good authority, “you can count the number of women on the fingers of one hand and most of the people on the label are decidedly chunky hairy dudes”. Amanda’s fans are quiet rightly outraged by this shoddy, sexist behaviour and have begun a Rebellyon, posting pictures of their own bellies on fan forum Shadowbox and sending them to Roadrunner in protest:

This issue is not just about Amanda Palmer’s belly. This issue is about all the bellies of the world: big, small, hairy, stretch-marked, scarred, pregnant; every single belly. The aim is to reclaim the belly, to promote a healthy body image for everyone (not just females) and to protest against the “barbie dolling” of artists by record companies and the media.

Hell yes. If you fancy adding your belly to the growing collection, email Jordan at doritojoe89 [at] gmail [dot] com. I know I’m more than happy to support a woman who appreciates the value of southern comfort.

Link.

Have you been keeping up with George Orwell’s Diary?

27.11.38

One egg.

25.11.38

Two eggs.

24.11.38

One egg.

Cylinder of Butagaz gave out yesterday. That makes 5 weeks. It has supplied pretty regularly 3 gas-jets (one of them higher candle-power – I think 60 – than the others) & a fourth occasionally.

23.11.38

Weather fine & warm, not particularly hot. Fires some evenings. When it is reasonably clear the snow peaks on the Atlas now seem so close that one would think them only a few miles away (actually 50-100 miles I suppose.) Nearly all the seeds, except marigolds, sweet peas & nasturtiums have done very badly & most have failed to germinate, no doubt owing to having been kept for years in stock. It seems difficult here to grow any small flowers, which are easily killed by the heat & drought. Gardens mostly specialize in shrubs.

Paid Frs. 31.50 for a measure of wheat (round about 40lb. = about 1d a lb.)

Have been ill (chest) since 16th. Got up yesterday & somewhat better today.

22.11.38

One egg.

VILLA SIMONT, 22.11.38

Some days back visiting the British consul. The latter (named Robert Parr) is man of about 40, cultivated, very hospitable, married, appears to be in easy circumstance. Speaks French, very careful and grammatically very correct, but very strong English accent and manner while speaking of mentally going over grammar rules. The Assistant Consul or Vice Consul is young Englishman son of missionary, who has apparently been brought up in Morocco. Nevertheless has more characteristically English manner and accent than, eg. an Englishman brought up in India.

Parr considered I was wrong about the local French attitude to the crisis. Thinks they really believed war was coming and were prepared to go through it though thoroughly fed up. Their apparent indifference was mere surface stolidity. He believes that there will be no general election for some time to come. Says the scandals about the Air Ministry were very bad and known to everybody,[a] and the Government would prefer to make this good before risking an election. Says he has been struck by the number of more or less ordinary Conservatives he has met who are becoming perturbed by the Government’s foreign policy. Thinks a likely development in the near future would be an attempt to revive the old Liberal Party. His own opinions seem to be moderately conservative. Could not be sure, whether, as a government servant, he has any inside knowledge of what is going on, but gather not.

Ref. Note on wheat prices above, a quintal equals about 2 cwt. Recently paid Frs. 31.50 for a measure, a decalitre I think, which appears to weigh about 40 lbs. This works out at nearly the same price, ie. about 70 centimes a pound. Seventy centimes equals about a penny in English money, so that the price of wheat here is at about the English price-level. Have not been able to secure full price lists, but it would appear that the things cheaper here (ie. when franc is taken as being equal to its exchange value) are meat, certain fruits and vegetables, most of the products of the local hand-workers (leather, earthenware, certain kinds of metal work and heavy-quality woollen° cloth) and, of course, rent. Imported goods, especially manufactures, are all expensive. Oil of all descriptions notably expensive.

It appears that the negroes in Senegal are French citizens, the Arabs in Morocco not, this province being still called by a fiction the Cherifien Empire. All negroes are liable for military service just the same as Frenchmen. In Morocco only French subjects, ie. mostly Europeans, do compulsory service. The Arab troops are voluntarily engaged men and enlist for long periods. They appear to get a (by local standards) respectable pension for long service. eg. our servant Mahdjoub Mahommed, who served about 15 years in an Arab line regiment, gets a pension of about Frs. 5 a day.

Forgot to mention earlier that at the entrance to Marrakech there is a toll-station where all incoming lorries etc. have to unload and pay a tax on any goods being brought in for sale. This applies to all the vegetables taken in to market by the peasants. Do not know amount of tax but it makes an appreciable difference to the price if one buys vegetables etc. outside the town.

[a] Possibly a reference to the demand by M.P.s on 12 May 1938 for an inquiry into the state of Britain’s air defences.

21.11.38

Two eggs.

19.11.38

Two eggs.

17.11.38

One egg.

16.11.38

One egg.

14.11.38

Planted out nasturtiums.

Link.

Guns N Roses new album, Chinese Democracy, opens with Axel Rose comparing his obsession with music to what, I can only imagine, is his view of communism in China. Or something like that. I mean, maybe he’s making some kind of important politically motivated opinion on the country, but it’s kind of hard to tell when he keeps referencing himself, masturbation, and his fascination. Also, Iron Fists are mentioned. Truthfully, it’s all a bit on the vague side.

Look, there’s some nice guitar work.

I guess.

I mean, the song sounds a little over produced, with nothing raw or loose or crunchy in it, and you can kind of feel thirteen years worth of polishing in it, even if thirteen years weren’t actually spent on this one track, but there really are guitars there. Somewhere.

I don’t know truly what I expected to find when I tried this new album, but with the majority of the band that made Appetite for Destruction gone, I figured it wasn’t going to be anything like that. Of course, I also figured it wasn’t going to be the unapproachable mess that was their cover album, The Spaghetti Incident, or the sprawling and occasionally cool mess of the Use Your Illusion albums. And you know, it’s not like any of those albums. This new incarnation of the band, and this album, is less a cohesive whole of Guns N Roses, and is instead a vehicle in which Axel Rose can explore his relationship with his public life, his ex-band mates, and do it in a self absorbed, egotistical, stadium rock kind of way. Occasionally, there are some cool guitar rifts, a couple of rock ballads and, though you may think I’m making this up, references to easy High School Literature such JD Salinger and Martin Luther King. Oh, and that quote from Cool Hand Luke that was used in the front of ‘Civil War’ returns, this time spliced in with the good doctor King. Someone might have an obsession with that film.

It’s not a bad album, really. There are some nice moments in it, but you’ll either dig, or you won’t, depending if you’ve adjusted to the over produced feel that hovers round the album. To be honest it took me a couple of spins to find things I liked–but I kept at it because I was trying to find a feel for the album, hate or love. Truth is, I think I’m coming down on the ‘eh’, where I don’t feel much of anything, and think I’ll just quietly forget about it after a few weeks, and move on.

May not even take me a couple of weeks, really.

This morning I got an email telling me that this kid I knew four, five years ago, killed himself. He’d be maybe a year out of High School, maybe two, and fucked me if I can remember his name. It’d be an easy thing for me to learn, really, just an email to send, but it bugs me that I don’t remember. It shouldn’t, I suppose, but the kid’s dead now, and it does.

I’m in a shitty mood today, if you can’t guess.

There are times when I miss having a comic.

Take for example, yesterday. I got this message on my phone from Cas, who is on holidays at the Gold Coast in the moment. I don’t think he fully thought about his time, because as anyone in Sydney knows, the Gold Coast becomes a tragic wreck of teenage hormones for two weeks in what has become affectionately known as Schoolies.

Here’s a photo:

In case you’re not familiar with Schoolies, it is the time when, having completed their final exams in High School, year 12 students run away for two weeks to indulge in every moment of fucking, drinking, drugging, and video taping of it all that they can find. At least, this is what the media tells us. They media is very big about the wild teenagers of Schoolies. Fear them! They’re on the loose! Your daughters are having sex! Your sons are buried up to the neck with a can of VB and unable to have sex! Do you know what your children are doing?!

There’s even a website, so you know someone is capitalising on the unimaginative who can’t organise their own sex, drugs and alcohol.

In case you’re wondering, I’m just nicking these images off google image search. They’ve come from news outlets, so far. The above one comes from the Australian, who wrote,

THE warning “Don’t bother, I’m not drunk yet”, printed on the tight, white T-shirts of two young girls celebrating Schoolies’ Week on the Gold Coast this year seemed to have little effect on the drooling, eager boys around them.

With outstretched hands trying to touch the young girls’ breasts and bottoms, the mottos the boys wore on their T-shirts - such as “Plastered” and “Good Evening Bitches” - were perhaps a fairer representation of their true intentions.

“We are sober. It’s unusual I guess, but we are pacing ourselves and playing it cool,” Brisbane girl Lejla Becirbasic said as she and her cousin Zejna Vojic brushed off the male attention sparked by their cautionary T-shirts. “Well, at least for tonight.”

Many of the other 26,000 school-leavers that took over Surfers Paradise on the weekend were unable to match the cousins’ restraint, choosing instead to get “maggot”, “wasted” and “hammered” on the balconies of their high-rise units on Saturday afternoon - screaming at fellow schoolies on balconies below, above and across from them - before hitting the bars and the beach till sunrise the next day.

Schoolie Darren Guthrie, who said he was a hit with the ladies on Saturday night, was also keen to point out his friend Andrew Rae had no such luck. “He hasn’t kissed any girls, he’s shy, but I have been with a dozen. They’re everywhere,” he said.

For some, the heady mix of sun, surf, booze and drugs was too much. Several teenagers collapsed in Cavill Mall on Saturday night, others were carried away from the hedonistic party on stretchers, while some curled up to sleep on the beach, oblivious to the rising sun.

Police said the Saturday night crowd - traditionally the biggest and most troublesome - was well-behaved, with officers arresting only 12 schoolies on public-nuisance charges and issuing 111 on-the-spot fines for drinking in the streets. Three teenagers were also arrested on Friday night.

Can you pick up the disappointment in that final line?

Also, my favourite line is, “Well, at least for tonight.”

Still, the real amusement is Cas is up there for it, and if I had a comic still, I’d totally do a whole piece about him being up there and feeling like a dirty old man. It would be even better if he came back with one.

Yes.

“This is an awesome fucking show,” Cas said to me. “I love it.”

He was talking, of course, bout the show Dexter, a kind of crime show where the protagonist is a serial killer who only kills serial killers. I kind of hedged around the thing because the concept didn’t really appeal to me–to be honest, it sounded cheesy and stupid–until one day he gave me the season one collection on DVD, and told me to watch it. Now, years ago, Cas discovered South Park, way the fuck before anyone had ever heard of it, before it became big, then small, then what it is now, and I love South Park, and he’s never let me forget that he found it before me. When he tossed me the box set of Dexter, he went as far, even, to say that he had found South Park, and that I ought to listen to him because this new show is fucking awesome.

Yeah, well, it wasn’t.

I’d like to say it wasn’t, because that’s how these narratives work, isn’t it? You feel apprehensive about something, then you watch it, and it turns out to be sweet, but this wasn’t the case. I was right: the concept was cheesy and stupid, and it wasn’t helped at all by the fact that, in my opinion, the guy playing Dexter had all the charm and acting ability of a cardboard cut out. Also, he looked like a second rate Stephen Dorff. That should let you in on how much I thought about him. Every scene with the father and the young, just learning about his serial killer thing Dexter, set my teeth on edge because it rang so false and unconvincing. I figure the show is meant to be some kind of black comedy, and usually I can get into this, but I just couldn’t. The sister annoyed me. The cops annoyed me. The girlfriend, a rape victim who fears sex, and enjoys Dexter’s company because he’s not into fucking (cause he’s a serial killer), annoyed me also. I guess it’s safe to say I didn’t gel with the show, and that it just shat me, on all its levels.

Maybe you’ll dig it, though. One of the guys I teach thinks it’s awesome. He’s using it in an essay about subversive genre use, and it is that, which I suppose a few people will get into, but way I figure, if you’re going to create an anti-hero serial killer, you’re going to have to do it differently to get my support.

But, since it’s reportedly up to season four, it doesn’t need me.

There’s been a lot of talk about piracy of late, as it’s under going a certain revival.

It’s come out of Somalia and is, from what I understand, the result of an increasingly lawless area that very few articles seem to want to spend a lot of time discussion. Still, regardless of this, I welcome the return. I don’t want to be misquoted here, okay? I think piracy is awesome. I’m seriously thinking of changing my career, actually. The recent hijacking of a Saudi supertanker and the demand for twenty five million to be paid in ransom not only gets my entire nod of approval for proper piracy, but cause a sense of simplistic longing to form inside me. The new piracy doesn’t have any of this terrorism nonsense that we’ve become accustomed too. None of this, ‘For Allah, for Jesus, for Buddha, for freedom, for virgins,’ rhetoric that runs in the back of those organisations, none of these political and ideological concerns that lend each side a greyness that makes serious discussion or reportage difficult. None of this stuff that makes ditching your job and signing up for a rocket launcher seem kind’ve, you know, distasteful. Oh, sure, you might want to point to the situation in Somalia, and the economic status that drives men and women to become pirates, but no matter which way you spin the causes, at the end of the day it’s being done for money, and I admire that.

My hope, of course, is that these pirates give in to the full swing of pirateness when (or in this case, if), they get their money. I’m talking whores, I’m talking rum, I’m talking sodomy, I’m talking parrots. I don’t think I’ll be alone in my sadness if the pirates here do not spend a few weeks fucking and drinking in a town where their cash ensures that no one asks questions about their newly purchased parrots. Perhaps New York. I mean, that’d be cool: pirates head to New York, where they drink, fuck, and pass out in the streets with cages of green parrots around them. Then, when the cash begins to dwindle, they return to Somalia to plan their next act of piracy.

With any luck, these acts are not part of some flash in the pants revival of piracy, since, according to the Guardian and their unknown analysts, “the long term the key to ending piracy is establishing an effective authority on land in Somalia. Piracy all but disappeared in 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union controlled most of southern and central Somalia for six months, bringing in law and order for the first time since the early 1990s.”

But I’m fairly sure such acts are a long way off.

Viva la piracy!

This is early Steven Seagal:

You’ll note the accent, the slimness, the breaking of teeth.

It comes from a film called Out for Justice, which I’ve seen, but don’t remember much of. Anyhow, in the grand scheme of things, I give a nod to the use of a cue ball and whatever cloth he has there to break teeth.

Below is Steven Seagal now:

This is from a film called Kill Switch, which I haven’t seen and, y’know, probably won’t. I don’t think I could survive that accent.

Reportedly, in later films, Seagal has taken to having his voice dubbed, because–I’m making the leap here–he’s barely understandable in his mumbling on camera. Maybe he’s actually doing this voice, but I’m not sure if this makes it better, or if this makes it worse. However, there is a moment in which he breaks some dude’s teeth rather impressively, so despite the weight gain, the accent–have I mentioned that enough?–and all that, we know it’s still the same Seagal.

Watching videos of the later films is rather like watching this awesome wreck in which no one gets hurt, and everyone walks away fine, and you say, “Fuck, you are lucky you are not dead,” and then the same dude does it again, just to prove it wasn’t a trick. Clips from later Seagal films seem to suggest that he shouldn’t be acting, that he’s lucky to have this film, but there he is, again and again, and even in interviews where he is misquoted and said to be claiming to be God (he is claiming all sentient beings are Gods, at least that’s how I took it). Of course, in the same interview he’s also claiming to be clairvoyant. Maybe he is. Who knows.

Does anyone know where I might be able to pick up a cheap version of Octavia Butler’s third novel, Survivor?

It hasn’t been in print since the eighties since, from what I understand, Butler didn’t like the book, and it didn’t have a lot to do with her series it was set in, but I’m tracking down the stuff I haven’t read, and second hand copies of it are going for seventy five bucks and ridiculous shit like that. I’m doing a bit of poking round on the net, but I thought I’d ask in general just in case someone’s seen it cheap round; not that I’m against paying such costs in the name of research, mind you, I’m just exhausting my other choices first. I haven’t tried Sydney library databases yet, mostly because I think that will be a long shot, but would there be, by any chance somewhere, a cheap second hand copy or a file of it online that I could get pointed too in the name of research?

(Also, it seems while removing spam off the main blog, I have accidentally deleted a bunch of comments. My apologies if yours is gone now–it wasn’t intentional.)

A few weeks or so ago, I mentioned I was writing a new story that I planned to call ‘Convicts’. I had a good opening line. I had a good premise. It sounded good.

Shame it was shit. I spent a lot of time trying to make it work, especially the voice of the piece, but it was too much like narrators I had done previously (mostly, it resembled the narration from Beneath the Red Sun (which is the novel Across the Seven Continents of the Underworld, but with a new title)). Worse, it wasn’t saying anything new: I could see how I had said the same thing in previous short stories, and the structure was one that I just couldn’t get jazzed about. Sometimes a short story will work for me because I’m doing something different, technically, than I have done before, and that makes it interesting. But this thing, this thing was dead in the water, and I spent a few weeks flipping it round, trying to make it work. I gave a voice to the girl, though I initially wanted a single view point from the male narrator, but she turned out to be dull and without purpose. The main narrator wasn’t dealing much better. His main characterisation seemed to be that he was detached. Well, he was. Detached from being interesting, from plot, from style, from narrative, from purpose. I was a victim of my own success, it seemed, in creating detached men.

Yesterday, I was staring at the words, rewriting the first thousand words again, and I realised, finally, that the thing had to be trashed, so I did it. It happens, and I moved to another idea, this one more interesting, ambitious, and technically challenging. It involves essays of Octavia Butler’s work, in fact, but as to how that will work by the end of the piece, I’ve yet to decide. Still, it feels better, feels more solid, and more importantly, it takes me away from doing the things that I have been doing for the last year. About time, really.

I have no idea if other writers are conscious of the shape of their body of work. Perhaps it’s pretentious even of me to talk about it, or to think it, but there’s a kind of arrogance mixed into writing, and my particular arrogance is not to view my work as this piece or that piece, but as something that comes together on extra levels when viewed as a whole. What that means is that I’m always conscious of the work that I’ve done behind me; whether it was good or bad doesn’t hugely concern me, as a lot of it is taste, and I tend just to spot the flaws in my stuff once it’s done. But what I do keep in my mind are themes, interests, types of narrators, styles, forms, and the like, and I do this so that I can watch for repetition and sag in my body of work. To keep going, to keep being interesting, you need to change things up, to push the boundaries of your interests, to give different takes, to make, within all of your work, a set of arguments, themes, and obsessions that continue to inspire. Now, I don’t mean that this is something that is done for the reader, because I honestly have no control over he or she, but I mean that it is something I need, that I want. If I’m not doing it, I feel as if my work is stagnant, and maybe that, really, is the most pretentious thing I’ve said in this post yet, but just kind of go with me here, because what I’m saying is that that story was all those shitty things, and I had to scrap it.

It’s life, I guess.