| Old Man (from See What I'm Talking About, performed in September) |
[Oct. 28th, 2009|11:07 am] |
The idea was to come up with three pieces, each responding to a different photo. This piece was in response to this photo:
Old man, staring at me from across the room
Old man, your face lined with such experience and wisdom
Your back bent from a life well-lived
Your unpleasant smell hiding a noble heart
Old man, your eyes shining blearily
As my grandfather’s once did
Are you anything like him?
He who was always there for me, no matter how many friends abandoned me, no matter how many bullies taunted me, no matter how many mothers set me on fire
He was always there
I remember when I was eight, having a nightmare,
And that was the first time I woke in the middle of the night, to find my grandfather there, spooning me
I’ve never told anyone about it before
Because he said he’d kill me if I did
Are you like him, old man?
Do you, like my grandfather, know what it’s like to kill 16 Germans with a bayonet and a hand grenade?
Of course, that was a long time ago – the early 90s
But now, when I look at you, old man,
Your eyes have that same look I remember from my grandfather as he reminisced about his colourful life and hate crimes
That look I knew so well…
Stern yet caring
Strong yet tender
Loving yet violently misogynistic
He would say to me, is it a crime to hate women?
I told him it wasn’t, but he wouldn’t take my word for it, and insisted on asking a solicitor
We didn’t know any solicitors, so he took me along to abduct one
3 weeks later, as I stood in our cellar, listening to the sirens outside and watching grandfather taunt the sobbing lawyer with a marionette carved from his own arms, giggling at the gasping pleas for mercy, not for the first time I marvelled at how much this gentle man had to teach me
What can you teach me, old man?
What lessons from your life are you eager to pass on?
Can you teach me how to bake?
Your enormous chef’s hat says yes, but the placard around your neck reading I AM A MENTAL PATIENT says, tread warily
Because only 2 kinds of people wear enormous chef’s hats – chefs and mental patients
And only 2 kinds of people wear signs saying I AM A MENTAL PATIENT – mental patients and people who want others to think they are mental patients but have little idea of the best way to go about it
Are you one of those, old man?
Are you trying to convince me of your dementia in a clumsy and inept way?
Like my grandfather, when he attempted to dodge charges of treason and bigamy with an insanity plea based entirely upon his supposed inability to pronounce the word “lackadaisical”
I learnt a lot about life in those three days in court – about the indomitable nature of the human spirit
About the majesty of the rule of law
About the inadequacy of courtroom metal detectors
My grandfather died some time ago
But while he lived, he taught me one very important lesson: cherish the elderly
When he died he one hundred and twenty six years old and could communicate only by vomiting in suggestive patterns on the floor
But he retained the childlike wonder at the world around him that he had since he was just a lad
And it’s that childlike wonder I see in you, old man
Staring at me across the room, as if I were your long-lost son, or the ghost of your long-dead best friend, or the man who molested your granddaughter
Perhaps, in a way, I am
Because no matter how time may separate us, we are all one
The young, the old, the healthy, the infirm, the fun to be around and the repellently liver-spotted
Take my hand, old man
I lost the man who meant the most to me
Perhaps you have lost someone too
Perhaps we can be each other’s comfort in these times of sadness
Perhaps we, too, can spoon
Because if nothing else remains of my grandfather on this earth – not his collection of unidentified hair; not his multiple screenplays about suicidal babies; not his many incinerated wives; there is always a little piece of him that will live on,
In my deep-seated and utter inability to achieve sexual arousal except from contact with extremely old men
Old man, I see it in your eyes
Be my grandfather, just for tonight |
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| Who's Gonna Drive You Home...Tonight? |
[Oct. 19th, 2009|09:51 pm] |
There but for the grace of Cthulhu...
I used to LIVE in this house.
That was 10 years ago, but my mother and sister lived there up until June this year.
Of course, THEY knew how to keep the place in good order. Unlike these new owners, who seem to think they can leave their trash lying about any old place, park wherever they please etc. |
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| FASCISTS!!! |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|10:14 am] |
So anyway I was on Twitter, and I was commenting on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, because we were watching it, and it's like, hey, I have a lot of things to say and I need to EXPRESS MYSELF. So I put my thoughts on Twitter because I was under the impression that that is WHAT IT'S FOR.
But then, I get halfway through the movie and Twitter tells me I have Twittered too much and I have to stop.
What
the
fuck
?
SO I can't finish my comments because the movie keeps going and Twitter has cut me off and made me wait till later.
And then a couple of people unfollow me and tell me it's because I was Twittering too much. Seriously? Fuck you, man, fuck you right to hell.
FASCISTS
So anyway my next LJ post is going to be my thoughts on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, cruelly truncated by Twitter's totalitarian attitude to volume. |
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| Performed at Liner Notes, Michael Jackson's "Thriller", 27/8/09 |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|09:42 am] |
My assignment was Track 7, "Human Nature"
I'm looking out at the night
And every star, Every constellation reminds me of her
Virgo the virgin
Andromeda the princess
Sagittarius the passive-aggressive slut
We used to sit together and listen to Michael Jackson
The song Ben came on, and she laughed and said, this is about you!
And I laughed and said no it's not
And she laughed and said yes it is
And I laughed and said no it's not
And she punched me in the face and said yes it fucking is
And I smiled and agreed with her, feeling safe and warm in the cosy cocoon of my battered wife syndrome.
Why? Because heartwarming anecdotes about domestic violence, that’s human nature
And I can’t help but wonder, What is it to be human?
What does it mean to be part of this maddeningly contradictory race?
What does it mean to be human?
As a human, how is it I can spend my days teaching English to refugees, and my nights wandering the streets stabbing random Indians?
It’s human nature
How is it that one man can devote his entire life to fighting for democracy and freedom
While another devotes his entire life to making long incisions in the carcasses of sea bass for the purpose of sexual gratification?
How is that these two seemingly dissimilar men can later discover, at the age of 42, that they are identical twins, separated at birth, when they meet by chance on a bus, and when they catch each other’s eye, with mutual looks of haunting familiarity, the bus suddenly brakes hard, causing them to stumble, pitching them into each others’ arms, from where they succumb to some mysterious, irresistible impulse, melting into a passionate kiss that initiates a torrid sexual relationship that will end not only in tears, but in murder?
How is it that this happens?
Because Erotic encounters between long-lost identical twins? That's human nature
She once told me her favourite Michael Jackson song was Off the Wall
I asked her why choose Off the Wall?
And she said because when I was little, we had a wall, and one day I fell off it
And I said that’s not much of a story
And she said, well, did I mention I fell on top of a GREYHOUND?
And I said no you didn’t, but that detail doesn’t possess much explanatory power.
And she burst into tears and said, you never let me be me!
And I had to admit she was right
I never let her be her
I was always forcing her to be someone else
Usually I was forcing her to be automotive pioneer Karl Benz
Why?
Because using coercive means to satisfy the desire to see your girlfriend disguised as 19th century German engineers
That’s human nature baby
I never expected her to stay
I never asked her to stay
I was actually pretty irritated when she stayed
But after about six months I could say she was growing on me
And two months after that I realised that I had mistaken her for a cyst
And isn’t that human nature?
Isn’t having cysts what being human is all about?
No, not really
There’s so much more to life than cysts
There’s boils, and tumours, and goitre
And that’s what I loved about her
She was the first person in the world to suffer from goitre of the crotch, but she never let it get her down
She was always cheerful
She wasn’t perfect
She wouldn’t be human if she was perfect!
She’d be some kind of magical talking horse!
She had her flaws
The short temper, the indecipherable lisp, the elaborate nightly duck-hunt mimes
But you couldn’t deny she was cheerful
And if you did deny it, I’d probably disagree
Not in an aggressive way, not in an angry way, but respectfully
We wouldn’t have to fall out over it, or end our friendship
We could agree to disagree, and decide not to bring the matter up again
There’s no need to sever all ties between us just because of a petty disagreement over the level of joviality of a woman with whom I am no longer in a relationship
There’s so much more to talk about
Having lots of things to talk about – that’s human nature
Michael Jackson knew that!
He knew what it was to be human
That’s why he WROTE Black or White
He knew that as long as you’re human, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white
It only matters if you’re Dutch
Because hating Dutch people – That’s human nature
And that’s why I can’t help but think about Michael Jackson while I’m sitting here, looking out over this city, wanting to take a big bite
Just take a big bite out of the city!
And I know it’s impractical, and nutritionally unsound
But unfeasible dietary ambition – that’s human nature
And so I’m still looking out over the city, thinking about love
Thinking about hate
Thinking about the final season of Head of the Class when Billy Connolly played the teacher
Because pointless non sequiturs and gratuitous 1980s sitcom references – that’s human nature
I’m looking out
Wondering
I’ve listened to countless hours of Michael Jackson’s music
Trying to figure out what happened to that woman
The woman I let go (she’s out of my life?)
And I’ve been on this planet for 30 years
And still I don’t think I really know what it is to be human
But if I had to take a guess…
I’d say it has something to do with opposable thumbs
And I hope that someday, all the people of the world can get together, and admit that
It’s a crazy dream
But someday it’ll come true
It’ll come true |
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| Performed at 9/11 Slam |
[Aug. 6th, 2009|03:56 am] |
If I were a terrorist
I'd be the nice kind
The kind that realises that sure, you're flying a plane into a skyscraper
But that's no reason to be pushy
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar
Rather than hijacking the plane, why not try asking nicely?
You'd be surprised how helpful people can be when you're polite
Instead of threatening the pilot with a boxcutter, how about offering him a backrub?
The nice kind of terrorist
The kind who forces his women to cover themselves head to toe in the traditional burqa
But who encourages them to spruce it up with a nice brooch or some wacky stickers
The nice kind of terrorist
The kind who doesn't walk into a Jerusalem cafe and detonate his vest
But who sits down and buys everyone pastries
Because a well-fed Israeli
Is an obliging Israeli
Instead of firing home-made rockets over the border
Why not try a nice muffin basket?
With a note:
"Dear Neighbour/Please stop building your settlements/Love, Palestine"
It's like my own situation at home
I had a next-door neighbour who constantly played his music very loud
But I didn't get violent and blow his house up
I went over there and made friends, said, "Hey, let's talk and reach a compromise on this noise pollution issue"
Of course, in the end we couldn't and I was forced to decapitate him live on the internet
But the point is, I tried
That's what I want all terrorists to do, TRY
Because sure, you're fighting the infidels who want to crush your people and wipe your religious culture from the earth
But there's no call for rudeness
So remember, you can't spell "Jihad" without "H"
Think about it |
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| More before I forget |
[Aug. 6th, 2009|03:45 am] |
Jesus, he's the number one Hebrew
And let me tell you, Hebrewin' up something special
Some people say Jesus, he can't do what he pleases
Let me tell you, Jesus CAN do what he pleases
JESUS can do anything as long as it rhymes
Some people they praying to others
The prayin to Vishnu, they prayin to Buddha, they prayin to Mohammad
Well, you know what Jesus does to Mohammad
He bends him over and fucks him like a little bitch
Cos he's JESUS |
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| Already preparing |
[Aug. 6th, 2009|03:30 am] |
I'm here to talk about JESUS!
JESUS
He's not just for mental patients anymore
JESUS
The imaginary friend who keeps on giving
I'm telling you about JESUS, the push-up bra on the breasts of my soul
If you show your love to Jesus, he will show his love to you
Can't you feel Jesus's love showering down upon you, like bull semen on the face of a cowhand?
Because Jesus takes away the blues
Jesus takes away the jazz
Jesus takes away the light opera
Jesus takes away all archaic musical forms, and he bring us...HAIR METAL
But not just any hair metal, Jesus brings us hair metal for the HEART
Yes, if Jesus were a hair metal band, he would be Van Halen crossed with Poison with bits of Motley Crue sticking out the top
If Jesus played guitar it would be the most heavenly solo you ever heard
If Jesus sang it would be with the voice of thunder and the voice of sunshine
If Jesus played the drums it would be far-fetched
I'm telling you about JESUS, and asking him to come to us tonight and aid us
Lay your healing hands on us, JESUS
Here is a young man afflicted with poetry
Please, Jesus, heal this young man of his affliction
Drive the poetry from this young man, Jesus
Cast out the poetry demon that has entered him
I want you to come to this young man Jesus and help him get a real job
Please Jesus, come down to this earthly plane and FILL this young man with the sweet sweet spirit of your practical training in IT skills!
When I say Jesus, you say Fuck yeah!
JESUS
JESUS
Because if Jesus were a spaceship he would be the Millennium Falcon, covered with sugar and crewed by dancing pirate robots
If Jesus were a 1960s cartoon he would be Roger Ramjet
If Jesus were a naked woman he would be on your face TWENTY-FOUR-SEVEN
And that's why we pray to Jesus today, we pray to him to save us from our own sin, we pray to him to save us from our own depravity, we pray to him to save us from cannibal mutants hiding in the hills
Jesus won't you come bring your light to bear on we poor sinners and drag us up to heaven by the scrags of our necks like the dirty whores that we always hoped we would become
Jesus won't you tell us the mysteries of life and the secrets to happiness so that we can be as joyous as you are as you sit upon your banana lounge rubbing honey into your nipples
Jesus won't you tell your father to stop giving us cancer
JESUS WON'T YOU BE MINE |
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| Explosive Revelations |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|08:36 am] |
There are three kinds of explosive revelation:
1. The literal - "I am going to blow this house up"
2. The figurative - "The honourable member has been accepting cash donations in exchange for granting special favours to Nazi people smugglers from the ethanol industry"
3. The romantic - "There's a time bomb in my pants and it's set to detonate at half past you" |
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| A BIG ISSUE |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|10:02 am] |
Sexual harassment is a BIG ISSUE!
I don't know why sexual harassment is a big issue
In my day sexual harassment was not such a big issue!
We did not make a fuss!
They were more carefree times
We thought nothing of sexually harassing up to ten or twelve people in a single day
Because back then people respected each other
Back then people were not so obsessed with political correctness and communist extremism that they went around condemning others for their belief in tradition and convention and sexual harassment
Back then, you weren't called a "square" just because you'd rather sexually harass each other than go to the latest Rick-Lee Coulter concert slash drug orgy
I remember my friends and I used to play for hours in the street, with no fear of getting run over by the milk cart or bitten by cats
And when we were done we would run to my house, where my mother would be waiting with fresh-baked cookies and orangeade
And we would sexually harass her
And she would not mind, because it was ALL IN GOOD FUN
Is nothing all in good fun anymore?
It seems like everything nowadays is all in bad fun
What happened to good fun?
What happened to sexual harassment?
Now it is a BIG ISSUE
But sexual harassers are people too
Unless they're not
For example, if you wake up one morning after a party to find a sheep performing cunnilingus on you, that sexual harasser is not a person
It is a sheep
But sheep are people too
BUT NOT LITERALLY
Sexual harassment is a big issue LITERALLY
But that doesn't mean we all have to be robots
In fact, that would be ridiculous
How would it even work?
We turn into robots?
We don't have the TECHNOLOGY
Isn't it amazing, we can put a man on the moon, but if we want to turn that man into a robot, we have to send him to the future where the technology exists
Unfortunately, the technology does not exist to send him to the future
So we might as well not send him to the moon at all
What's on the moon anyway?
Nothing, that's what
The moon's a fucking wash-out
No wonder astronauts are always sexually harassing each other, given how bored they are by the moon
Poor astronauts |
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| The Man in the Mirror |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|01:44 pm] |
Let us think about why I am not particularly sad about Michael Jackson's death, beyond a vague, oh isn't that a shame feeling that has not impacted significantly on my mood at all.
Well, firstly, I tend not to get that upset about celebrities' deaths anyway. Farrah Fawcett I barely care about...but then, we knew she was going for ages. Although news of her last days was very poignant. Steve Irwin I was shocked by, but not very upset about. But then I never liked Steve Irwin and loathed watching him on TV - given that I am a great fan of Jackson's music, one might have expected me to be more cut-up, as I WAS about Heath Ledger's death - that one got to me.
But then the fact that Ledger was my age, and Australian, someone I knew about "before he was famous", made it a little closer to home. Also, there was no doubt that he seemed to have great things ahead of him, a lot of unfulfilled potential.
Let's be honest, Michael Jackson was probably tapped out. We may have had great hopes for his comeback tour, but he said that would be the end of it, and I don't think anyone was expecting any more classic albums. Or any albums at all really. So there's no great artistic mourning here.
Also, unlike some other artists whose work I like, I feel no particular connection to him as a person. He was always too alien to relate to.
Finally, what DID make me sad, for years, was what happened to him. He seemed to have such an unhappy life, and to warp himself so in apparently desperate attempts to be happy, that his life seemed to me to be the real tragedy.
And I suppose ultimately, his life made me a lot sadder than his death could have. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|10:08 am] |
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I suppose I should be sad. |
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| This is what I did at the Nick Cave night last month |
[Jun. 19th, 2009|02:57 pm] |
My assigned song was "There She Goes My Beautiful World":
I wanna tell you you're my world
I'm not just saying that because you're roughly spherical
I'm not just saying that because you weigh over 5 septillion kilos
I'm not just saying that because you complete a full rotation every 24 hours
I'm saying it because I want to explore you
I want to climb your hills
I want to dive to the bottom of your seas
I want to negotiate treaties between your face and ribcage
I want to test Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles on the backs of your knees
I don't know what that means, but I want to find out
Because you're my world
Even though you walked all over me
Even though you crushed my heart
Even though I don't know what you were thinking that day when you walked into my life, clad head to toe in yellow rubber, barking incessantly in Norwegian
And for the next few months we were lost in the fever of our hearts
Telling each other those little reassuring things that lovers tell each other
Things like, "You're beautiful"
"You complete me"
"You'd be the perfect woman if you weren't so racist"
You knew how to push my buttons then but it seems now you've forgotten
So let me remind you:
WITH YOUR FINGERS
So you left
And it was after you left that I first met Nick Cave
At a Weird Guys In Black Anonymous meeting
And 24 hours later we were sharing a one-bedroom beach shack in Tahiti
And those were happy days
But as the Bible says, man cannot live by angry tropical gothic sex alone
We walked together down a dusty, hell-blighted road
Sharing a Golden Gaytime
And he told me a story, he said:
I met an old man on this very road, coat made of coyote skin, eyes like coals, and said, let me tell you about a woman I once knew, who said, Once, I knew a boy...
And I said wait, are you telling me a story about a man telling you a story about a woman telling him a story
And Nick Cave said yes, it's meta-fiction
And I saw the opportunity I'd been waiting for, and I smiled and said, I've never meta-fiction I didn't like
And with that Nick Cave took a piece of wood and beat me viciously for three hours straight
And I spent the next 5 years learning to walk again
All for you!
Because I remembered how much you used to like watching me walk
You used to say, walking is God's greatest gift to man
And I said, what do you mean?
And you said, man used to have to crawl along the ground with aching fingers and chafed nipples
Until God gave men legs as a reward for passing his tae-kwon-do exam
And I said, that seems to be a point of view not grounded in accepted biblical tradition
But I don't mind
Because when you tell it, and I look into your eyes
You remind me of a Nick Cave song
A good one
Not one of the weird ones
Probably the one with Kylie
Yeah
When I look into your eyes you remind me of a song about killing a girl with a rock
Because you're my world
And not because you're covered in ice at the top and bottom, and hot round the middle
And not because you're inhabited by thousands of species of beetle
But because when I'm drifting through space, passing all the planets
You're the only one who can give me oxygen
And when it comes to committing to a long-term relationship
I consider a girl who won't kill me by asphyxiation to be
The bare minimum
My beautiful, beautiful world |
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| Recent Twittering |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|10:22 am] |
The Herald Sun: Australia's most popular newspaper. According to it, the most important news this week is Ramsay calling Grimshaw a pig.
4:01 PM Jun 9th from web
Next week on ACA: Gordon Ramsay revealed to be shonky Lebanese builder.
4:01 PM Jun 9th from web
Breaking news on ACA: Gordon Ramsay beats up granny while defrauding her with telemarketing scam.
4:02 PM Jun 9th from web
Latest: Grimshaw reveals Ramsay single mother on dole.
4:02 PM Jun 9th from web
Ramsay's reply: Grimshaw's storage area "fucking disgrace".
4:03 PM Jun 9th from web
Latest: Ramsay points out Grimshaw's expired beef.
4:03 PM Jun 9th from web
Ramsay challenges Grimshaw to cook-off. Grimshaw refuses due to hot date with woman.
4:03 PM Jun 9th from web
Grimshaw demands Ramsay name the fathers of his eight children.
4:04 PM Jun 9th from web
Tune in tonight to find out whether Gordon Ramsay has been wearing the right size bra.
4:04 PM Jun 9th from web
Ramsay to Grimshaw: this is fucking RAW!
4:04 PM Jun 9th from web
Ramsay shuts Grimshaw down for the weekend for re-training and refurbishment.
4:05 PM Jun 9th from web |
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| Are you bored? |
[May. 29th, 2009|12:55 pm] |
Make sure you go to New Matilda right now to read what is almost certainly the most interesting thing anyone has ever written about Australian politics.
Then come over for some drunk Twister. |
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| Cave of Wonders |
[May. 28th, 2009|07:02 am] |
Tonight, at BMW Edge, Federation Square, 7:30pm:
WORDSTOCK - Reinterpreting the songs of Nick Cave. Tickets $20/$15
Besides me, it will feature such talents as Sean M. Whelan, Emilie Zoey Baker, Clem Bastow, Daid Quirk, Damien Lawlor et al.
If you're in Melbourne, you may well regret it forever if you miss it. |
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| Start of a Play? |
[May. 11th, 2009|09:59 am] |
Character 1: It's a funny thing, life. One minute you're running around the park, kicking balls and eating flapjacks, and the next you're worrying about mortgages and blood-thinners and such. Funny old thing. I remember my father, coming home from work, sweaty and with clothes torn and bitten, and he would sit down and make origami with us...
Character 2: Who are you talking to?
C1: Oh, no one.
C2: What?
C1: Well, you know how sometimes you just feel like sitting and talking to nobody in a loud voice about your life?
C2: No.
C1: Hmm.
C2 ...I was going fishing. Do you want to come?
C1: Well, see, the question isn't so much whether I want to go fishing -
C2: Yes it is.
C1: Oh sure, technically it is, but I guess what I'm saying is, I could answer the question, but what would that really tell you?
C2: It would tell me whether or not you want to go fishing.
C1: Sure, if you want to be that prosaic about it. I just don't see things so black and white. I guess in the end, I'm not...I'm not, I'm just not quite as racist as you.
Pause.
C2: Bye.
Exits.
C1: You know, there comes a time in everyone's life when they lose their innocence, when they have to grow up. I think the moment I lost my innocence was when I was 14. I was so excited, because we were visiting the big city in school holidays. And I remember my father took me for a walk through the busy city streets, and we saw all the thrilling sights, and I remember what he did next very clearly, because after an hour or so's sightseeing, he sold me to some Japanese businessmen. And I guess I was very naive in those days, and in many ways I wasn't emotionally prepared for what came next. The funny thing is, I've heard so many people talk about Asians and their small penises, but it's like so many other things in life - something might seem small, but it gets a lot less small when there are three jammed into the same small space. |
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