July 7, 2007, is the 100th birthday of Robert Heinlein.

Heinlein wrote some very good books, and some very terrible books that I prefer not to think about. He's best known for Stranger in a Strange Land, but wrote a vast number of other books. I like to think that I did a little bit for his sales last week when I told someone, all smiles, "Yeah, he wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, but he also wrote all these fantastic books full of incest!"

Ayup. It's no wonder I have a bad reputation.

It is also, by a happy coincidence, the 35th birthday of my precious Ethel.


(NB. I don't live there anymore. But when I did, everything was pleasantly colour-coordinated).

Oh, yeah - and my best friend Em's 24th birthday. But mostly Ethel's birthday.

I took Japanese in high school, for something in the region of four months, and all of a sudden I wish I'd stuck with it. Why? I just came across this.

I know it's wrong to think this, but I'm sure it can't be just me ... Does that quim (third frame, second and third rows) not look like an inexpertly constructed tuna roll?

Today I visited the Sydney Writer's Festival. For the curious, some of the content is being streamed here; I'd particularly recommend Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones - it's a beautiful book, and while I didn't get tickets to the presentation, looking at that video is going to be one of my first priorities when I get to a broadband connection tomorrow at uni.

I had written myself a nice little list of speeches and panels I was going to see today, starting with a panel of crime writers - both true crime and fiction - talking about their methods of research. Interesting stuff; I was thinking vaguely about the possibility that modes of research informed by fictional contexts could open up useful spaces in the context of academic discourse (something that's very much on my mind at the moment, as I try to settle on a thesis topic for next semester). Anyhow, I'll have to keep thinking, as it's on tomorrow morning. I haven't quite decided whether to go or not; I've been looking forward to it, but I do have a class on, and I'd really only allowed myself one day off, it being crunch week at uni. What to do, what to do? The decision is hampered by the fact that Friday is my late-start day, so getting up early sounds unattractive. (Later: it turns out that there's also a talk on the bodies-in-barrels case, one of my favourite crimes. Decision made!)

The great tragedy of my (not atypical) lapse into dyslexia is that I was also looking forward with bated breath to hear Philip Nitschke (as opposed to Nietszche, as I misspelt it in at least one email). I thought it was going to be great - had even dug out my ratty copy of his book and was going to have it signed. Alas, it's tomorrow night at 5, and I'll be at work.

However, it all worked out rather well, as I got to see a number of panels today that I thought I'd missed yesterday when I went to uni. You may have heard of Nancy Pearl, a Seattle librarian who can claim, in a way the Beatles could only dream of, to be bigger than Jesus. Honest!

The absolute highlight of the day, though, was meeting Gwynne Dyer - aka god. You may have heard of some of his books - he's best known for War and Future: Tense - but I'd encourage you to read some of the columns on the website. They're syndicated in a number of places, inexplicably not including my local paper, but including the Canberra Times, which is where I was first exposed to his work. He's refreshingly clear-minded and I've always found him a really engaging writer. I was also impressed that there was only one question from the loony left - some woman raving on about the 'genderisation' of war - that's not often the case in public fora dealing with questions of public policy and war. Anyhow, I went to get my book signed after the presentation - I resisted, barely, the urge to have him sign a part of my body like a rockstar - asked a few questions, and found myself having a beer with him and a few other nerds at the overpriced festival bar. Life is so good.

So, while today was a write-off in terms of what I'd planned to do, and also in terms of what I should have done (uni work or, failing that, grocery shopping), it was still right up there as one of the best days ever.

Everyone's seen Paris is Burning, right? No? See me after class - I'll lend you a copy.


Image from Paris is Burning, 1991.

The film, by Jennie Livingstone, was made in 1991, and is an in-depth examination of ball culture in the US - which is to say, of drag competitions in ghetto communities. It's a real celebration of this fabulous, flamboyant and fascinating subculture, and for the past fifteen years has been the text used to open up discussion of Judith Butler's ideas of gendered perfomativity. For what it's worth, I find it an interesting choice of text given Butler's resistance to readings of performativity which privilege drag over other, everyday instances of sexed, gendered performances of identity - but that's a discussion for another day.

The fact that the movie is still being shown in classrooms should give you some indication of its quality - to be clear, I'm not talking about the quality associated with, say, watching The Land Before Time VIII during rainy lunchtimes at primary school. It is a very, very good film. However, it tends to assume this strange, archival status; the fact that the film is fifteen years old and still being shown suggests that the culture it documents no longer exists, or at least not in its original form. My understanding of ball culture - garnered from this film and the popular and critical body of work surrounding it - had led me to believe that it was a fairly isolated (in both time and space) phenomenon; a great pity, given how much fun it is to watch, and how much fun I suspect it would be to participate.


Contemporary ball culture.

You can imagine my delight, then, at coming across this article on the New York Times site this afternoon between classes.

Beats reading postcolonial theory - even if it was livened up today by the discussion of Pauline Pantsdown. Remind me sometime to come back and talk about drag and the politics of performance.

Anyone catch Iron Chef tonight? No Engrish - not so surprisingly, they're pretty good about translation on that show - but I did hear this instance of Yoda-speech.

'Where do you get these ideas? A genius you are!'

Cleaning up, for me, tends to be an effort in moving mess around. The first few hours of cleaning seem to generate more mess than they remove, and being all ADD-y and having the attention span of a gnat, it's rare that I'll get beyond those first few hours. I'll decide to clean up invisible messes (the one under my bed, the one in my pantry, the one at the bottom of the wardrobe), and as a first step pull everything to where it can be seen. Then I'll lose interest.

In the best case scenario, I'll get things done, but rarely the things I intended to do. In much the same way that I find it vitally important to read physics texts when I have a gender studies essay to do, and that I used to find it vitally important to read slashfic back in the day when I had physics assignments to do, the prospect of cleaning up fills me with the urge to alphabetise my bookshelves instead of picking up the reams of paper that are typically all over my floor.

Today was a sad day. Nearly two years ago, I bought a bright, patterned backpack, which I referred to as my happy-pants-bag, out of the bargain bin at the camping supply store on campus. Oh, how I loved that bag. I sewed a giant Sesame St patch onto the front, and never had trouble finding it in an exam room. It was great. Needless to say, I was devastated when the bottom fell out of it after about a year of hard use. I ignored the holes for awhile - what's the loss of a few pens, after all? - but when they progressed to the point that my glasses were falling out, it was time for a new bag.

I went back to the camping place. I rummaged in the bargain bin. I was enormously surprised to find another, identical happy-pants-bag there. It served me well for another year, and a couple of weeks ago it started to disintegrate, too. I went back to the camping place. It's not there anymore.

Anyhow, for a week or so I've been the bored owner of a plain, dull, black backpack, which I fully intend to tart up as soon as I figure out what I want to do, and today I decided to bite the bullet and install my stuff. Not in my usual way, either, which generally consists of upending one bag into the other. No, I was going to throw out the useless junk, put stuff that didn't need to be in my bag away - the whole nine yards.

What an undertaking it was. There wasn't so much junk as I'd thought - a few bus tickets, some receipts, a phone number with no indication of who it belongs to - but an astonishing array of the little bits and pieces that make life bearable (and bags mysteriously heavy).

Dozens of loose pens and highlighters - also a perfectly serviceable pencilcase with a box of pacer leads, a tiny padlock and a bulldog clip in it.

An empty water bottle.

Folder and course brick. Three novels - two for uni, one for fun.

Discman and headphones. No CDs.

Phone.

Two sets of keys - 'B' for Beck and 'E' for Ethel.

One set of glasses and the case for the other.

Tiny tape deck - has made a real difference to the haphazardness and incomprehensibility of my lecture notes. Listening and writing not so much my forte.

Wallet.

One lemon. No, not in any sort of metaphorical sense.

Last year's student card with the photo cut out for use in this year's student card (still invalid due to not being laminated or having a photo attached).

Payslip from work.

Bud earphones that I can't use, due to having one ear pierced in such a way that the earphone is either uncomfortable, or too precarious to bother with.

Two kinds of cigarettes and three ways of lighting them.

Notebook-cum-journal-cum-scrap paper.

Glustick.

One AA battery - dead.

One watch battery - status unknown.

Phone number written on a post-it, with no identifying marks whatsoever. Am not game to phone it in case it's the Lebanese bus driver named George that tried to pick me up last year by telling me that he 'ran over a woman once ... not very much, just over her foot'. I got off the bus at the next stop.

List of people that people phoning my house have been looking for ('Uh, hello, is this CARE Australia?')

Tiny key - no idea where from. Does not fit tiny lock found in pencilcase.

Sheet of paper with three potential thesis topics on, plus link to dirty website courtesy of an engo mate.

Mobile - always on, always on silent, never answered.

Too many bus tickets to be worth counting.

One muesli bar. Cherry flavoured. I hate cherry.

One sock. Total mystery, beyond saying that I lose socks at a rate of knots. Seriously, I currently appear to have two pairs of socks. One pair of which is made up of two mismatching socks. I swear I had more at one point.

It is probably not to my credit that I put almost all of this stuff into my new bag.

Someone sent me a colour version of my dirty picture. I can't decide if I love it or hate it, so I've hidden it away here.

On the one hand, it's easier to see what's doing, but on the other, it's kind of lame.

I got my computer back today.

To celebrate this joyous occasion, I've decided to post a dirty picture for y'all.



Never let it be said that I'm not a loving, caring, sharing, giving sort of a girl. I came across the image about a year ago, nearly died of laughter, and have been resisting the temptation to show it to my pure-minded, high-handed, Disney-obsessed nutcase of a sister ever since.

You can get in line (behind me) for the poster here, and you can find the story of the image here.

Pluto is pissing on a portrait of Mickey Mouse, while the real, bedraggled Mickey is shooting up heroin. His nephews are jerking off as they watch Goofy fucking Minnie Mouse on a combination bed and cash register. The beams shining out from Sleeping Beauty’s Castle are actually dollar signs. Dumbo is simultaneously flying and shitting on an infuriated Donald Duck. Huey, Dewey and Louie are peeking at Daisy Duck’s asshole as she watches the Seven Dwarfs groping Snow White. The prince is snatching a peek of Cinderella’s snatch while trying a glass slipper on her foot. The Three Little Pigs are humping each other in a daisy chain. Jiminy Cricket leers as Tinker Bell does a striptease and Pinocchio’s nose gets longer.

It's like poetry. Tripped out acid poetry, yeah, but poetry nonetheless. Just fantastic.

I've spent a lot of time this week telling stories.

Today in my 'Cultures of Masculinity' class, we were given an assignment to tell a story - a story about how 'sports/leisure cultures foster certain forms of embodiment and feeling'. We wrote them down, a hundred words or so (mine is too long, of course), and then went around the room and read them out.

I love telling stories - the wilder and wackier the better - and it's sort of fortunate, as for some reason stories just seem to happen to me. I like the feeling of sitting down, face to face, and talking to people, and with people. I like the immediacy of storytelling - while I enjoy writing, there isn't the sense of realness to words on paper that there is in the storytelling circle. There are certain favourites that I tell again and again (getting kicked out of Brownies, being unable to play a triangle, my sister setting my car on fire, staying in a Beiruti brothel ... just to name a few), and then there are tiny stories that I would never, day to day, think of telling. So, I thought I'd share the story I wrote today, just to prove that my life isn't so hyperbolic as it may sometimes seem - especially to those of you who listen to my stories!


I've never been able to dive. There's always that urge to pull my head up at the last minute - to see where it is I'm going - and you know how it is: if you don't keep your head down when you dive, you bellyflop.

Smack.

Water everywhere.

Stinging stomach as I tear off down the pool. I couldn't dive, but at least I could swim.

I once spent an instructive hour or so in private coaching learning how to dive. I'd become quite a competent butterflyer - one of the best in my squad - but my bellyflops shaved vital seconds from my time.

The coach tied my legs together. Tied my arms together at the elbow. This kept my head down - it was trapped below my shoulders and the strap binding them together. I sat on the edge of the pool and tumbled in. I stood at the edge of the pool and tumbled in. I pushed off the rim of the pool. I kept my head down. And at the end of the hour, I dived off the blocks and took off down the lane in record time. My coach was thrilled; my teammates were thrilled; my parents were thrilled. I'd never been so proud of myself in my life.

At the next meet, I strode confidently to the blocks and stood tall upon them. Crouched low, one foot behind the other, hands to the ground. One deep breath, my shoulders behind my head, and the starter's gun went off.

Smack.

Water everywhere.

Stinging stomach.

And me floundering around at the start. I made good time once I pushed off the wall. Not good enough, though. It's never good enough to push off the wall. Fourth place.

I gave up swimming, at least comptetitively, not long after that meet.

And I still can't dive.

Dear fuckers at my friendly neighbourhood Apple service centre,

You're funny guys.

No, really.

That bit where I talked to you on Friday, and you told me, yes, the Service centre is open on Saturdays? And then I went there on Saturday, and sat in the back alleyway behind the shopping centre, and waited for you to open? For about twenty minutes, before I decided I'd probably gotten the opening time wrong. So I went to get something to eat, and came back half an hour later, and you still weren't open. After that I went round the front to talk to the retail guys. Turns out - oh, so funny - that you service guys don't come in on weekends. And they don't know why anyone would have told me that you're open on Saturday, because you're not.

I know why, though.

It's because you're funny. Really funny.

And then I phoned you guys this morning to ask how long it'd be before I had a quote for what this laptop disaster is going to cost me.

'Oh,' you said, 'our assessment period is seven working days.'

Seven. Working. Days. Funny.

'You're kidding, right?' I said. 'Seven working days before you'll even look at it?'

I'm not sure why the chick I was talking to didn't laugh. I mean, really, nearly two weeks? That's hilarious.

Then I - perhaps foolishly - asked how long the total period that I was going to be without my laptop was.

'Oh', she said, 'I couldn't possibly say until someone has had a look at the machine.'

In seven. Working. Days.

Guys, you're killing me. And I'm not so sure I see the humour.

No love whatsoever,
Beck

PS - That seven working day assessment period reflects really badly on either your staff, or the quality of your product. Pick what you like, but for my money, and given my experiences with a) your staff, and b) your product, I'm going with both.