Just Give Us The Information

I think I have a problem with focusing on the task at hand. I was in the process of trying to post a flier promo image on the shop's website tonight when I came across this photo.

Hands up who remembers my Owen The Penguin post. Hmm, not many of you. Anyway, there was a shot of a real fluffy penguin that was the cutest image ever, and I got my panties in a bunch because no one was leaving coments, so I threatened to Guantanamo the little fucker unless you left comments. It was all a bit weird because everyone started leaving comments saying I was a sick fuck or go on give it to the little bastard.

Fast forward many many months and I find myself in Brighton. There's a basketball throwing game on the pier where you can win a fluffy penguin bearing an uncanny resemblance to Owen. The Dreaded One and Bird said they didn't think I could win an Owen. As usual they were wrong and walked home with Owen tucked into the back of my purple poncho (shut up - it's Brighton where all the best people wear nothing but purple ponchos and fluffy penguins called Owen).

The oddest thing about this photo is that it is the result of two reasonably intelligent people spending the next two, maybe three hours Guantanamoing little Owen Hicks. Sure, it looks pretty bad for him now, but he was a stubborn little bastard and it took us hours to escalate the torture to this degree. He simply would not give us the information we wanted, which was... all he had to tell us was where the... information was. The information that we wanted. Which was very important information. But noooo. He was all, "But Missah Queeck, I don't have no infahmation. Ahm jus a liddle stuffed penguin wi' stitched up liddle penguin lips."

And Bird - playing bad interrogator - came over all, "CUNT! That's what you are, you little CUNT! Now give us the information before I kick your fuckin' face off and break that other bendy flippery thing... CUNT! By the time I've finished with you you'll have two FINGERS growing out of YOUR arse too!"

And good interrogator Quick said, "Chill, my delightful little minion. We've only just begun. How are your noose-tying skills?"

Right. I'm getting a little too into this. As we did on that day. Millions of photos. Ridiculous.

There really was a professionally-tied noose around Owen's neck by the end of the day. If only he'd given us the information. And if you click on the link at the side that says Remembering Argos, scroll down to the end (read the story if you want) you'll see a picture of me with Pigeon Christ looking over my shoulder, looking a little pissed off while his partner in torment hangs from a wall on the other side of the planet.

Sweet story huh?

Right, back to work.

Confessions Of A Sweaty Perv

I'm in my shop for three days this week. I like being here, as I've said before. I'm getting better at being pleasant and smiley and chatty. By and large the people the store attracts are pretty good people. They like the clothes and they like the music. Party people.

Yesterday, though, I felt like a sweaty perv. Actually, that's a bit harsh. Not a sweaty perv, just a bit pervy. A frustrated perv? Maybe. But there was definitely a slight degree of some sort of perviness at play.

Girl and her friend walked in. Girl was wearing low slung hipsters and had a gorgeous stomach and a near perfect arse. We get lots of good-looking people in here so it was nothing out of the ordinary. I smiled and said hello and she had a really sweet smile too. I said if she needs any help to just let me know, then I left them to it.

I looked up a couple of times and noticed the collection of items she was putting together... she apparently had a fondness for tiny little lycra things. Teeny little shorts and miniscule, sheer tops, and I found myself thinking in a pervy voice, "My god she is going to look so hot in those... can't wait till she comes out to show her friend."

Then I thought my god - does that make me a perv? Am I, in fact, a sweaty perv? I don't want to be a sweaty perv. But surely that thought was the thought of a total degenerate.

In the end, do you think Lycra Girl came out of the changeroom at all? No way. Not once. Each time she tried on another piece of tiny lycra she called her friend over to the changeroom, and the fact that I was disappointed by this just reinforced this whole pervy thing. Especially when I whimprered in a sweaty pervy voice, "But don't you want a guy's opinion?" (Okay, I didn't actually say that, but I thought it, and in my pervy state of mind it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to think).

She bought loads of stuff and as she handed it all to me I totally didn't have the urge to bury my face in them, breathe in her warm body scent and go phwoar, so I figured I wasn't such a sweaty perv afterall.

I told The Dreaded One about it and asked if it made me a perv, and she said, "You're a guy. Of course you're a dirty filthy sweaty perv. Complete and utter degenerate. Like, duh."

On Air

Went to the Earthdance launch party on Saturday night after work. Was bloody fun. Caught up with so many doofers, danced my arse off, drank lots of beer. The highlight for me was when I picked up my beer from the ledge on the DJ booth, I caught the eye of the DJ and gave him a thumbs down, pulled a sour face, let him know that the music he was playing sucked arse. The dance floor was rammed and the music was excellent. He totally fell back laughing. Gave one of those clutch the sides, head-tipped back, hearty jobs. It was bloody satisfying. Does it get any better than making someone laugh like that? He's a friend, just not one that I know all that well. Glad he was on the right wavelength.

Ooh - if you live in Australia, pick up a copy of the current issue of Men's Health. Page 96, feature about tattoos by me. It's my second feature for them, both have been outside their regular story types, which is satisfying.

Right. Have to try to put my links back after this silly business with blogger going down.

Off Air

I am having major dramas with this blog. I cannot open the main page. I cannot log onto any other blog that ends in blogspot.com. Fuckers. Other people have had the same problems. I've tried changing the template, fiddling with the feeds, whole bunch of stuff but I I can't get it working. Apparently others can see my blog, I can't. Any other website is fine, blogger homepage is fine, just not blogger's blogs.

Until I can get it sorted, there will be few posts. Might have to give this one away and start a new one somewhere more reliable, which is pooh.

Sorry. Bye for now.

Quick.

"Earthquake In Antarctic, Penguins Affected."

Saw the above headline on MSN. Clicked on it because, you know, it's penguins. The story basically said that the earthquake was so remote and so deep under the Earth's frozen surface that no humans would have felt it. An expert (in remote and deep subterranean earthquakes, I suppose) went on to explain, "It probably just frightened a few penguins."

There should be more headline humour like this in more mainstream media.

Talking Loud, Saying Nothing

Still no time to blog, been spending too much time in my (rather fetching) chef's uniform. Also been spending too much time on buses lately, and what the fuck is wrong with people and their mobile phones on public transport? Buses used to be quiet, meditative places. A little capsule you could sit in, gaze out the window and think about stuff. Or you could pull out a book and indulge in the luxury of a bit of a read. And not just newspapers but fiction. Don't know when reading fiction started being a luxury for me, but it is.

Now you get on a bus and every fucker is talking into their phone, and I've yet to sit in on a conversation that can't wait until said fucker gets the fuck off the bus. Currently I am really getting into Jeff Noon's Vurt, and there is always some oyster brain telling their phone about their job or what they plan to do for the weekend or how funny some movie is... FUCK OFF!

Tomorrow, I rebel. For tomorrow, I read Jeff Noon's Vurt... out loud.

Busy week, but wrote this, for anyone interested in a very good play showing at a cool little theatre in Sydney.

The Hilt

No time to blog. Just wanna say, Paris Hilton has made an album? Fucking hell. What next? I think The Hoff and The Hilt should make babies. I think that would be very funny.

It would also be funny if everyone started calling Paris hilton 'The Hilt' in honour of The Hoff who is an equally silly sleb, but if that happens, remember that you read it here first.

Cold Mashed Potato

I just ate a bowl of cold mashed potato and told myself that it really wasn't a bad as I expected it to be. Ate the whole lot, went yum.

Then I thought to myself, you lazy fucking fucker. You didn't really enjoy that as much as you're pretending to, did you. Well no, not really, I admitted to me. You were just too lazy to get up and put it in the microwave oven for a couple of minutes, weren't you. Yes, I was. Lazy, lazy bastard.

The conversation with me about the cold mashed potato made me think about my writing. I've been telling myself that I'm writing all these theatre reviews as a way of studying them before writing my own play. This may be true in part, but then I'm putting energy into trying to get better paid review and feature writing work rather than putting any effort into writing something creative myself. It's either laziness or fear of failure.

I'm out of practice. I feel like I'm not going to come up with anything worthwhile, so I'm copping out. That's what I'm doing, isn't it. Yes, it is. Well what am I going to do about it? Huh? HUH?

Cold mashed potato really isn't all that bad.

Extras

I haven't been excited about a telly show for ages, but the new Ricky Gervais series Extras sounds good. Anyone seen it? It starts in Sydney on Wednesday. Should be fun.

Also, I read a review about this show and the writer was going on about the viciously cruel humour and everything, kind of saying that it's so ground-breaking. I dunno. For the style it is, I recall Best In Show and Waiting for Guffman. That squirmy'because-it's-true style of comedy.

Still, I'm sure it's going to be funny.

Negativity

I did an email interview with a prominent playwright this week. In reading up on him I came across a story about him punching someone who had said some negative things about him. The original story I read said that he hit the guy because he had written a negative review, but the playwright insisted that the reviewer had actually made some racist remarks and that was why he'd popped him. Fair enough.

Either way, I thought I'd ask what he thought about reviewers, and his answer was "I haven't read a review in years because quite simply most reviewers can't tell the difference between the written work and the performance."

Is it just me, or is that answer a bit bigger than it first seems? In reviewing, aren't we looking at everything? We're listening to the written work and we're watching the performance. It's quite possible for an excellent script to be mangled by bad actors, but you'd probably still recognise that the dialogue was good.

And then I wondered if he wasn't somehow blaming any bad reviews on the performance. Like someone giving a bad review should be able to tell, if they had half a brain, that it wasn't the script's fault. Weird, if that's what he was saying, because he works with top flight people.

I thought it was an interesting comment anyway. Wonder what most reviewers will think about it.

Went to the opening of a play last night. Pretty bleak stuff. Good overall, just bleak. Right towards the end a pretty important prop fell down. Huge curtain pulled right across the stage just completely fell down and fucked things up. Someone was doing some death stuff or something and suddenly the audience is stifling sniggers and the actors are trying not to smirk. Funny shit.

I got an email from the company director who was one of the actors on stage at the time. She said she really wanted me to write an honest review even if it is negative. Said she saw me in the audience but didn't come out after the show because she was in hiding. Said she'll still talk to me even if I write a bad review. I think she was amused by it (the curtain played a huge part in her final scene - a death scene) but also thought it was about the worst thing that could have happened.

I thought that was a really cool thing to do. Some people are just cool in small, really cool ways. She gave me the greenlight to rip the shit out of the play, so that's what I did.

(Kidding).

Pair On

Someone was telling me that they were having computer issues and called up a help desk They got someone with a thick Oirish accent. The conversation went something like this:

Not Oirish Person: "Hello. I'm having trouble with my computer and hoped you might be able to help me."

Oirish Person: "What seems to be the problem?"

Not Oirish Person: "It's just not working. I want it to be on and it's not on. I need it to be on."

Oirish Person: "Okay, first of all, have you paired up?"

Not Oirish Person: "Excuse me?"

Oirish Person: "I said have you paired up?"

Not Oirish Person: "I'm sorry - I have no idea what you mean by pairing up. I've never heard of that before. What does it mean?"

Oirish Person: (exasperated) "You know. The pair! At the pair point! Have you switched the pair on!"

Census Night - Woo Hoo!

It's census night in Australia and we have to tell the government who we are and what we do, and it's just drawn my attention yet again to the way in which I just never cooperate so that I can be neatly categorised. Left school in year 10, got a trade certificate in bricklaying, have no higher education, currently divide my time between freelance writing (I'm a sole trader), working in my clothing shop (I'm a company director... sounds nice but half the time we can't afford to pay ourselves even basic shop assistant rates), and doing food prep and service at the Sydney Opera House (I'm an employee)... like, my main job last week monetarily was the three days I cooked, I probably spent most of my time thinking about shop stuff, but my main job as far as interest and motivation goes is writing. It's completely pointless my filling the damn thing out. There should be a box to check that allows people like me to be exempt because information gathered about me is utterly useless. AND they've asked for the address of my main place of work last week. Who the hell knows the address of the Sydney Opera House?

Okay okay, the address is probably Bennelong Point, Sydney Harbour, I just felt like a bit of a rant. Don't like being asked so many questions that appear to have been designed solely to point out how not normal I am. Pricks.

A Review Of A Review

There is a theatre reviewer contributing to one of the things I contribute to, and his writing is so awful it makes me angry. Really angry. Urge-to-stab-marsupials angry. I can barely make it through the opening lines. In fact his opening lines are almost as bad as the closing ones, which are about as bad as everything in between. I just want to scream at the painful awfulness of it. There is no flow. He insists on breaking up as many lines as possible with parentheses containing what are clearly intended to be witty asides but which are in fact witless distractions. And fuck me the bastard loves a semicolon... semicolons are okay, but it helps if you know how to use them - and if you're not sure how to use them it's probably a good idea to keep their use to a minimum. It's like he writes his reviews, scoops up a fistful of sticky semicolons and throws them at the review, and wherever they land, well that's good enough for him.

Same goes for humour. You don't just interrupt the flow of the point you're making because you've just seen the opportunity to make some stupid little pun or irrelevant observation. In fact that's the whole problem - he's going for some avuncular old chappie tone in an obvious attempt to be likable. Well I for one don't like you one bit. Especially when you end all of your reviews with an exclamation mark. Fuck off!

Thing is, I can't be alone in my seething contempt for this guy's reviews. Others must be thinking the same. But can I tell him? Given that I write for the same publication, is it my position to tell him that his writing prevents me from finding out what he thought about the production? Would I be out of place to tell him that reading his reviews is like trying to listen to a favourite song when the reception on the radio is out of whack and in the end you'd rather turn it off?


I know a review is just a review and not a literary masterpiece, but it's gotten to the point now where I see his name and I refuse to read on... no, that's a lie. I see his name now and I read on to see if this one is more awful than the last one. Invariably, it is.

Right. Now that that's off my chest, I got me some marsupial stabbin' to do.

The Sydney Season Of Varekai Has Been Delayed

Funny. Deleted my previous post after a couple of days. I was being a self-pitying, whining little bitch. It was embarrassing. How cool would it be if you could do that with life, just delete the bad or embarrassing bits? That would be cool indeed. But you can't, so it's better to focus on the good bits, innit.

Wrote this on the weekend. Some reviewers seem to relish doing scathing reviews; I find it hard. Not that I needed to be scathing with this one, it wasn't that bad. But it is on the negative side. Weird thing about this performance is that I haven't read any other reviews of it. I usually check them out after writing mine to see if I got it badly wrong, but there's nothing, as far as I can see.

Also, I got a media invite to go to the raising of the Grand Chapiteau of Cirque du Soleil yesterday. They said the date may change and I didn't hear from them, so either it went up in spite of my absence or it's been delayed. Personally I like to think that everyone was milling about for a while before the announcement: "Look, sorry about this everyone. Thanks for coming and everything, but it looks like Quick isn't going to make it. He must be... I don't know, rescuing orphans from burning orphanages or saving whales or something. You know what he's like. Anyway, thing is, we're going to have to delay the setting up of Cirque du Soleil until he can make it. We'll get in touch with him, find out when it's convenient for him and we'll let you know. All right? Thanks everyone."

The deal was that media people get to stand inside the giant blue and yellow tent wearing hard hats while the riggers hoist the the thing. Like, did that excite the little boy in me? Fuck yeah. I mean, a hard hat! Too cool.

What's Going On

One of the things I enjoyed most about my job as editing and writing for the mag I left in March this year was reading submissions and deciding whether they were good enough writers to contribute. I was pretty selective but managed to spot a few good ones. Some have stayed in contact and send me their writing from time to time and I do the same when I need feedback. I've been asked to contribute to different projects some of them are involved with and that's as satisfying as anything can be. Just the other day a guy in Queensland wrote to say that he would like three of us who have been in contact over the last couple of years to contribute some leftfield stuff to his new mag. I like the mag, I am happy that he included me, and I'm happy to write for free even though I said that had to stop. There's just a kind of mutual respect at work, and that warms the cockles.

On the flipside, what is up with editors who can't be bothered even acknowleding receipt of queries? Like, I know how busy it can get when working on a weekly magazine, but there's always time to reply. I don't care - have a draft letter ready and just insert my name and hit send to let me know you're not interested. Even when I knocked people back I took the time (frequently too much time) to do it properly. Fuck it - hit reply, type thanks but no thanks. Delegate. Get the mail boy to tell me to stop pestering you. Wankers.

Just looking at a couple of queries sent recently and seeing that they can't be bothered replying, I just feel like saying (again) fuck it, I can't be bothered with this.

But it will pass. I have to focus instead on things like the fact that an editor of a mag keeps asking for my monthly humorous column and bothers to give feedback every time (he loves it), and that I have got work coming in, poorly paying as it is, and that writing is a thing I love, and that out there in the sea of wankers there are a few good people. And yes, it's not much money, but I have a couple of stories to work on today and a play to see tonight for review, and my mini play to re-write and send in in the next four days (eek), and it's all pretty good really. Guess I'm just temporarily fed up with dicking about and would like a proper, solid, actual bona fide Big Break. Ooh, poor me.

Came across this site the other day. Hilarious and quite surreal that a muppet like this is in such a position of power. What is going on? http://www.slate.com/id/76886/

Sub Woofing

Glancing in the mirror this morning I noticed something weird about my left eyebrow. There was a gap. I vaguely remembered deciding that I really must trim my eyebrows now even though it was late at night and I was a liddle dwink 'n wobbly. Lesson learned (for now).

The theme of the weekend was "Not Clubbing." I recall a lot of time spent talking to people about how we're over clubbing and happy to move on to new things. Some of these people were in my clubbing clothing shop buying tickets to a party that was on that night, and our conversation was largely about which parties we were particularly looking forward to going to in the coming months. Yeah, never going clubbing again. EVA!

Went to a club on Saturday night, the one everyone had been buying the tickets to. Fucking funny. Put a bunch of psytrancers in a city club that usually plays R&B and it tweaks everyone's brain into overload. I was straight but had fun, got told that I have always been a moody bastard once, got hugged & handshook a nice amount of times, explained to a friend that the wet patch on my pants (spilled drink) was a result of my vibrating testicles... I forgot to explain to her that the joke was that when I was standing in front of the speakers the bass was so intense it was making my testicles vibrate, but that's okay because she just about fell on the floor laughing anyway ("I dunno how the wet patch got there. My testicles were vibrating and then there was a wet patch."). Someone who I didn't know told me that if I ever need LSD to just give him a call any time... needless to say, I don't have his number, never had his number, would never call his number if I had it.

Anyway, so that's me not clubbing.

Main thing that haunts me is that a person turned up who I hadn't seen in ages. Lovely person, but I just couldn't recall why I needed to have talked to her more. I only remembered this morning that we had a chat about a year ago and she had said she was actually giving up the clubbing thing to focus on producing music. She was a DJ who felt lost, creatively. I'd been saying that I also need to put more effort into creative stuff. She left that day saying that we should hook up a year from now and see how we're going on the creative front.

The clubbing/doofing scene can be so transient. The fact that we saw each other and didn't have that chat... the fact that in that 12 months I left my job and that stuff has slowly moved in another direction... crap. Wish it had all come back to me immediately, but it didn't. Hope I catch up with her again soon.

Meantime, if you have testicles, introduce them to a speaker stack. It's nice.

Positive People

I'm reeeeeally not in the right frame of mind for telling amusing anecdotes about gay hairdressers at the moment. Head is in a very weird place. Why? Because this half page story has done my head in. Really juicy topic, brilliant sounding performance, director doesn't want to be interviewed, called the choreographer at 2.30, he said he was just going into rehearsals and would call back at 4pm and it's now 5.pm and I've been sitting by the phone when I could have been doing stuff... grr. And I've just spent the past hour or so doing more background reading on the David Hicks case. Man, that is heavy, horrible stuff. If Orwell were alive today he'd definitely be writing about the US government. "Honour Bound To Defend Freedom" are the words written across the gates at Guantanamo Bay military prison. It would be funny if it were not so repugnant.

If I were in a better frame of mind, I'd tell you how when in the hairdressers yesterday, Guy asked me what I did for a living. I told him I'm a writer, told him about the tattoo story I did for the glossy that's out next month.

"Really," Guy squealed. "That's fascinating. You know what you should write about? You should write about the problems faced by positive people who want tattoos."

Initially I thought he meant optimistic people, even though that didn't make much sense. I quickly came up to speed though.

"Because my friend's positive and he said to me, 'Guy' he said, 'I'd love to get a tattoo but I can't because I'm positive', and so I said to him, I said 'Screw that, just be open and honest with the artist because, you know, lots of people are positive today..."

He went on about positive people lot, pausing to tell me that he wasn't telling me what I should write about. In fact he just paused, period. The scissors were just inches away from my hair, but idle. I considered lowering my hair towards the scissors as a subtle hint. Subtle, like shut up and cut my hair goddamnit.

"... because you know, even my clients could be positive. I could be positive. I could be positive and cut myself and bleed on the client because anything's possible."

Fucking hell, I thought, how do I end up with them.

Somehow, when I got a word in, I managed to tell him about my clubbing clothing shop and this, quite naturally (?) set Guy off on a monologue about his drug exploits, prefered drugs, best drugs for different times of the day... during the course of the conversation music came up (I know - I wondered what the hell music had to do with clubbing too) and it turned out that he's just recently cut the hair of a promoter friend of mine. I then got the lowdown on the drug problems my friend's flatmate is having, something I'd previously known nothing about. It was amazing.

Anyway, he washed my hair after cutting it and on the way back from the sink he asked if the pants I was wearing were from the shop. I said yes, and without skipping a beat he turned to one of the other guys and said "They are from his shop." I had no idea they had already discussed my pants. Could they gossip telepathically? Is that what happened? I sat down and the pair of them leaned over and started inspecting my pants and asking about other colours, and then guy fondled the fabric on my top and said how much he loved that too and I just about had to swat them away like moths.

Also, he did give really good head massage, which made me wonder this morning while in the shower, why is it that when you try to give yourself a head massage it feels like crap compared to when someone else does it, but when you poke yourself in your eye with your finger, it feels exactly the same as when someone else does it.

That's what I would have told you if my head was happier.

Oh great - the publicist who was going to sort out the choreographer has gone missing in action. Brilliant.

Play Update

The bit at the top of this blog about seeing funny shit in almost anything hints at the kind of therapy (if that's not too strong a word) that this blog is meant to be. Ideally I want to look around at the big and small hings that happen in my world and focus on the light side. Feels a little lame when all this stuff in the Middle East is breaking out. We are the most retarded species ever.

Still, the small and funny things are... small and funny I guess. And hopefully that's how my play will turn out. I was supposed to write up the story about the David Hicks theatre performance today, but the director is stressing and doesn't have time for any more press. Understandable, but a little inconvenient when I've promised a half page story to the mag by tomorrow. I'm now focusing on the choreographer instead and think it will be fine. The new publicist is really lovely and kept apologising for things not working out as they should have, and she laughed when I said I never expect things to work out as they should. It's not being pessimistic, more just falling back on the wise words of the great Douglas Adams who said, "Don't Panic." He was also pretty memorable in his views of deadlines when he said, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

Anyway, material is coming back from the choreographer tomorrow so I decided to have another stab at the short play. Went back to where I thought it was falling over, cut into it, changed course and new stuff emerged that had me laughing out loud. This is a good sign. First draft down, I decided to check out the list of tips the Short & Sweet competition organisers offer (yeah yeah, should have done that first but that's not how I work. I love doing things like this on instinct).

Anyway, all seems good. There's not one of their recommendations I go against, which still doesn't mean it's in, but it's a good sign. That and the fact that there were fine droplets of laughspittle on the screen during writing bodes well. And I'm glad The Dreaded One was undwerwhelmed with the previous version. Wonder what her reaction to this version will be like.

I still have 10 days to tinker, but I don't think it will take that long. If I can enter it early, I might even try banging out another. It's fun.

Ooh - and drop by tomorrow. I got my hair cut today at The Gayest Hairdressing Salon In The Known Universe and it was very funny.

The Turkish Purple Poncho Meets West Pier

This is me in my purple Turkish poncho standing before West Pier at Brighton. I wanted a shot of me before the pier because I have been quite fascinated with it for some time. Not sure why. I even recently wrote a short story set around it. For me it was just like seeing The Eiffel Tower for the first time, or how I imagine it must be like to see the Pyramids or The Great Wall Of China for the first time. But for the pier there has always been something about its wilful destruction that has fascinated me. And its refusal to give in. It can't last forever, of course, but for now it's still standing and has become iconic and I was really very happy to see it. I was in Brighton for one short week and kept wandering down to the beach whenever I could. You know when you finally arrive at a place you've always wanted to go and you keep thinking, "I'm here, I'm really here." It was like that, especially that morning.

I wanted a shot of just me and the pier, but this random jogger came into the shot, thumping me in the ribs as she ran past and shouting "Cunt!" for no apparent reason.

Weirdly, this strange person appears in other shots in Brighton, always raising her finger at me or pointing and laughing.

Ooh La La

Jesus in a G-string, what a hangover. Not sure how it happened, but I'm so hungover that I can barely raise the back of my hand to my forehead and moan in pain. My toenails even feel hungover. Spectacular.

I've been neglecting the trip photos, so here's this. It doesn't really capture the essence of Brighton or anything, but Brighton is where it was taken, and it does amuse me.

When we were in Spain people kept asking to have their photo taken with The Dreaded One and me... well it was just her they wanted their photo with, they just included me so as to not hurt my feelings.

On her way into the Opera House where she works as a chef, a group of traveling Americans did the same thing. THEN yesterday when leaving the supermarket apparently some woman who now owns The Kirk (an old church that used to be owned by a certain Madame Lash) ran after The Dreaded One and asked her to be involved in a regular Burlesque show she runs. The show is called Circus Burlesque Erotic.

I'm living with a damn celebrity. And a future erotic burlesque performer. You can't blame the woman for asking The Dreaded One to be involved. I mean, look at her. She just oozes eroticism.