Bek's blog

This just in: all heterosexual women with partners are miserable

2009-12-09T18:09:00.002+11:00

And the only reason we support gay marriage is because we want everyone else to be miserable too. No really. Apparently, someone forgot to send LindaRadfem the memo that says half of Australia's gay and lesbian population wants to get married, and that 80% want the option to be available.

Because actually, those of us who aren't gay but support our gay friends and relatives in ending discrimination and having the same options as the rest of us, according to Linda (who as we know, can't be wrong because I have privilege and she has no privilege, so she's *always* right, and my opinion is invalid) aren't supporting our gay friends and relations, we're being heteronormative (oh no not again. D'Oh!). And we're trying to "create an illusion of sameness", and encourage "friends to join them in the married lifestyle by getting married themselves. Misery loves company!" Because all married people are miserable? Give me a fucking break.

I've got no wish to get married. The history of marriage makes it unappealing to me as a feminist. But unlike some, I don't think my views are the be-all-and-end-all of what's right and what's wrong. I've got gay aunts and gay friends who'd like to get married, and currently, they're discriminated against and can't. So of course I support an end to discrimination.

It's not "heteronormativity", it's actually listening to what people want, rather than deciding I'm the fucking oracle of what society should be like. No-one on their own gets to dictate that. And how fucking arrogant to think you could or should.

And marriage is actually something more than a legal contract, because it has a social import. Imagine suggesting it's only straight people who want to signal their committment to each other in a socially binding way that involves recognising that committment in front of friends and family. Because that's just what she did - apparently, she's not not only the person who gets to decide what's feminist and what's not, but also the person who gets to decide that gay people shouldn't want to get married. Even if you do. TOO BAD! LindaRadfem said you shouldn't want it. STOP BEING SO HETERONORMATIVE.

PS and how's this for a comment from someone who claims that they won't critisise other women AT ALL until teh patriarchy is gone, finished, over: "middle-class feminists don’t seem to utilise their power to effect change in the long term – they have too much to lose in the short term. *shrug* Let them live as they wish but let them also cop shit for it too."

Garden

2009-12-08T10:33:00.002+11:00

We ate some peas from the garden last night. Much excitement. Home-grown peas are WIN.

There are nearly-ready zucchinis (this pic was taken on the weekend, they have easily doubled in size since):

Small green tomatoes:

And quite a lot of herbs:

In the recycled wine barrel is a bay tree.

I've been researching keeping the NPK ratio right naturally, and I think I need to add some wood ash (easy peasy, can ask my PUs to save ashes from the fire) and bone meal to ensure lots of fruit. It's getting plenty of nitrogen because we compost the kitty litter.

What really happens in byelections?

2009-12-07T11:25:00.002+11:00

It’s political dogma that byelections always result in a swing against the government. But like most dogma, this bears little resemblance to fact. Of 25 byelections in the last 20 years, there have only been 7 where the two major parties went head to head, and one where Labor and the Nats faced off.

It’s hard to read a byelection result where the government of the day didn’t field a candidate as a swing against the government of the day.

In the seven where the government did field a candidate, there were wildly inconsistent results – from a swing of –23.6% against the government, to a swing of 4.97% to the government. It’s not possible to generalise from figures like that. You could claim that was an average of –9.3% against the government – but would that give you an accurate idea of what would happen in a byelection next week?

If we look a little harder at the more recent figures, without merely reciting the article of faith that byelections swing against governments (and I’m leaving out Gippsland because Nationals seats are Nationals seats, world without end, amen) we can see that actually, they follow the polls:

When the polls were disastrous for the government, so were the swings in the byelections. When the polls were great, so was the result. And what’s the latest? The latest Morgan poll has the Rudd Government ahead on 58.5 to the Opposition’s 41.5.

Looking at the table above, what could we have possibly expected to see in a byelection? A swing to the Government of around 5%.

Screw you, STA travel, and the horse you rode into town on

2009-12-03T16:26:00.003+11:00

I've booked holidays with STA travel before. But I can tell you, I won't be again since they published this stomach-turning anti-woman list of things we need to do before summer.

Apparently, it's essential that we have pretty toes, a "base tan" (have you ever heard of skin cancer, you ignorant arseholes?) a gym body, and no body hair (arrgh! Hairy pits! run for the hills!), and that we run down the beach like "baywatch babes". Oh, and make sure it's not in last year's wardrobe, because that would be totally unacceptable. Fuck you, STA, a woman's purpose in life is not to be "hot" according to your arbitrary and fucked up standards.

Oh, and skin cancer? Not actually fun and sexy.

Idiots. You know who buys holidays? Women. And you know who you've just pissed off completely with your arsehole list? Yes, that's right, women. You do the maths.

Tell them to go fuck themselves here.

The devil or the deep blue see? Or the guy who wants to build a bridge over the deep blue sea?

2009-12-03T10:33:00.003+11:00

On Saturday I'm going to have to vote for someone other than a Labor candidate for the first time in my life. Since the first federal election after I turned 18, where I cast my vote for the Keating government (which shows my advanced age), I've voted for a Beazley government, a Latham government, and Rudd government, through a variety of local Labor candidates both good and, er, ungood (to steal a line from Nick Cave).

So you'd think the Greens would be making like bandits in this byelection, right? Not really - thanks to a quaintly amateurish campaign which seems to centre on bashing the media, and whingeing that the Liberal candidate won’t fall into their clever trap by appearing at a climate change “forum” stunt to make a fool of herself.

The Liberals deciding not to play silly games with the Greens? Well, whodathunk that!

The Greens have chosen a blow-in from Canberra, climate change guru Clive Hamilton, as their high-profile candidate. His election blog has been essentially a sterling how-not-to guide on political communications. Here he is bagging the Age and the local Leader newspaper (in a post that he has now had the sense to edit – slightly – but which you can still find here):

“The national daily has devoted more space to Higgins than the Melbourne daily. Mind you, even The Age’s nugatory coverage beats that of The Stonnington Leader, the local rag that puts advertising revenue before any sense of civic responsibility or, for that matter, any regard for its readers’ interest in who represents them in federal parliament.”

Nugatory?!?

As I posted earlier (but am reposting so we can link from New Matilda), basically, Candidate Clive commits the seven deadly sins of political communication on his folksy blog page:
1. using words like nugatory. If your audience needs to dust off the dictionary you've lost them. John Howard, much as we loathed him and everything he stands for, used a vocabulary of about 200 words. This is about right.
2. reproducing your opponents' campaign materials. Hey Clive, why would you think that was a good idea?
3. sentences four lines long. This is never a good idea in any context.
4. repeating your opponents' points against you so as to reinforce them: "smelly, feral, dole-bludging tree-huggers".
5. criticising the media.
6. sledging the local paper. This is like criticising the media x 100. Or possibly even x1000.
7. comparing your political opponents to disabled kids: “With a CPRS compromise, will Kevin and Malcolm be the Krishna and Trishna of Australian climate policy? Joined at the hip.(sic)”

He also seems to be developing a bad case of candidatitis. Check out the last two pars on his latest post. “If we do manage to pull off the unexpected…” Dr Hamilton, you cannot win Higgins. No matter how polite the voters are to your feral doorknockers (and our Higgins locals are almost always polite, even when they're looking at you and thinking they wouldn't vote for you if you were the only candidate), you are not going to win. It's not "unexpected", it's Not.Going.To.Happen.

We enjoyed reading Dr Hamilton’s books, Growth Fetish and Affluenza. But as for his blog… well, let’s just say Clive must have had a really good editor down at Penguin Publishing.

Not that you’d read all those nasty words from Candidate Clive about the meeja now. Funnily enough, Candidate Clive has tried to tidy himself up over the past few days, deleting his harsher words. Thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, we can compare and contrast Angry Clive with new, Reasonable Clive.

Just compare what he originally said about nugatory coverage and a local rag deeply interested in advertising revenue and not much else (still on line here) with what his blog says now: “The national daily has devoted more space to Higgins than the Melbourne daily. Even the local paper, The Stonnington Leader, has failed to show any regard for its readers’ interest in who represents them in federal parliament.”

So having established that Tony Abbott is not the only politician who only wants us to consider what he says today, and definitely not what he said last week, and that the Greens are capable of a bit of greenwashing themselves, how close can they get to seizing Higgins on Saturday?

That is up to the electors, not that Dr Hamilton shares the view that the voters should decide:
He cheerfully tweeted after the leadership spill: “Abbott's ascendency leaves Greens as Higgins & Bradfield voters' choice” http://bit.ly/5hWw4u #spill #higgins

Malcolm Mackerras reckons the Greens are going to steal the seat. I want what he's smoking.

Run for the hills! It's compulsary feminism for kids!

2009-11-26T14:13:00.003+11:00

You've gotta love the screaming hysteria that accompanies any whiff of feminism caught by the Murdoch media. This sounds like a perfectly sensible program in schools in which kids role play scenes involving sexual coercion and then find alternative, less, er, criminal ways of behaving by, you know, discussing the stuff.

"Compulsary feminism!", "Feminised education", "falling number of male teachers in schools", "Strident feminist propaganda won't wash with boys", "We need to ... [be] careful and respectful and don't make boys in particular feel blamed and demonised for the problem", "shoving capital 'F' feminism down their throats".

So boys shouldn't feel "blamed" for sexual violence against women? Because of course it's all the fault of those demon slut teenage girls. *headdesk*.

hnnnnnnnuuurgh

2009-11-24T11:03:00.002+11:00

This was the sound I made last night when, after walking around the whole of Ikea, I discovered they were all out of the bookshelf extensions I went there to get.

Also, do you like my new blog banner? For ages I've thought if we're going to have genetic engineering, why the hell aren't they using it to make REALLY COOL THINGS. Like tiny mutant hippopotamuses or pigs the size of rabbits or a horse the size of a toy poodle. You know, small things.

Speaking of which, I met a Boston Terrier this morning on the way to the train station. They're like French Bulldogs (or le bouledoge francais, as the French call them, no shit), only smaller. IF THEY CAN DO IT WITH DOGS WHY NOT A HIPPOPOTAMUS, ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.

I nearly died of cute. It was so soft. And teeny. And it jumped up and licked me. This last is only cute when soft teeny things do it. When our pug licks me, not so much. And if a St Bernard licks me, even less so.

And things that are less cute brings me to Clive Hamilton's election blog, on which he provides sterling examples of how not to do political communications. Dude, nugatory? Bascially, he commits the seven deadly sins of political communication:
1. using words like nugatory. If your audience needs to get the dictionary out, you've lost them. John Howard, much as I loathed him and everything he stands for, used a vocabulary of about 200 words. This is about right.
2. reproducing your opponents' campaign materials. Dude, why would you think that was a good idea?
3. sentences four lines long. This is never a good idea in any context.
4. repeating your opponents' points against you - "smelly, feral, dole-bludging tree-huggers".
5. critisising the media.
6. critisisng the local paper. This is like critisising the media x 100. Or possibly even x1000.
7. he seems to be developing a bad case of candidatitis. Check out the last two paras on his latest post. Dude, you can not win Higgins. No matter how polite the voters are to your doorknockers (and our Higgins locals are almost always polite, even when they're looking at you and thinking they wouldn't vote for you if you were the only candidate), you are not going to win. It's not "unexpected", it's Not.Going.To.Happen.

I enjoyed Growth Fetish and Affluenza like anything. Dr Hamilton must have had a really good editor.

And tree-huggers leads me to rainbows, which leads me to a rainbow cake. It's a week and a half til my birthday. Cough*Hugostartbaking*cough.

My thought processes may be strange, but you can't deny there is a certain logic....

Spare room/study before and after

2009-11-21T17:39:00.007+11:00

These are from just before we moved in - everything was a variety of hideous shades of grey, the room had no curtains or blinds, and the first thing we did was paint the bedrooms white.

Here's the light fitting. So attractive.

Here's my PU#1 painting a cupboard.

It was the middle of winter and utterly, utterly freezing, thus the hat.

Here's Hugo, surveying his new domain.

And another.

Now. Here's what it looked like this afternoon:

This is the new lightfitting. It was a brass chandelier, bought on ebay for about $10. I sprayed it white with fridge enamel, and got energy-saving candle globes for it.

The rug is the ancient rag rug from my bedroom at home. The PUs were throwing it out when they moved house. Hugo dyed it green (sneakily) at the local laundromat.

Looking into the room, you can see my study area at the back of the room, the bookcases, and the sofa bed.

A different angle. The filing cabinet was my SIL's PUs', it was typical filing-cabinet grey. It took three coats of enamel paint to make it green.

The sofa bed was my friend Pete's aunt and uncle's, they got a new one. It now has a new sofa bed mattress (thanks to ebay - practically new, $30, actual inner spring mattress). Princess Kate gave us the two cushions on the right. My PU#1 embroidered the snail for my bedroom when I was a kid, and the bear is also from when I was a kid (he used to growl when you turned him upside down (as you would) but his growler is broken now).

The bookshelves are just Billy bookshelves from Ikea. For some reason, second-hand bookshelves are ludicrously expensive. You can see a white framed pic of my various KITTEHS above the lightswitch, and a tiny bit of the wooden box that used to be one of my bedside tables, but didn't fit any more once we moved.

These two pics are above my desk. The one on the left is from Inside a black apple, the one on the right is a picture of bunnies that Granny hand-coloured.

Here's the desk in some more detail. The actual desk is vintage Ikea, rescued from the Parental hayloft when we moved house. The wooden trays on top of the filing cabinet I found on the nature strip, the brown desk chair ditto. The brass horn in the corner is an antique coach horn - I bought it in England for about ₤15. The whiteboard is also vintage Ikea, it was in my room as a teenager. Green stationery is from Smiggle, light is a really expensive Italian glass light that looks magic on - I bought two of them when I bought my first apartment.

Plantation shutters on the windows, and a matching vertical blind on the inside window where we couldn't get a shutter. These were the most expensive thing in the room!

This is the area you can see PU#1 painting in the before pics. Dressing table mirror was Granny's. You can see a brass samovar reflected in it, which my other grandmother gave me - she was going to give leave it in her will to my sibling unit, but he described it as "the brass monstrosity" so she gave it to me in a fit of pique. The white dish is 60s, was my PUs (I think they probably used it as an ashtray), the other bowl an ex-boyfriend gave me. Peter the handyman built a cupboard under the drawers last week - before that, you could see all the pipes from the bathroom under here. We did it so the front of the cupboard can easily be unscrewed so if we need to, we can get to the pipes.

The door (now silver like all the doors) and my two Chinese-y paintings. PU#2 bought the panda one back from China for me, and I had it framed. The swan is from the op shop - I think it was about $5. These used to hang above my bed in the old apartment.

Here you can see the bedside light - $12 from the op shop - sitting on the wooden box. You can also see a collection of family photos.

And here. I've made the bed because Zoe is coming to stay the night tomorrow night - the sheets are all vintage except for the European pillow case, which used to be part of a pink/green lot (not set!) of sheets that I used to use on the bed before I realised that Hugo was never going to be able to change the sheets and use an actual set of sheets rather than three different sets mixed up. I got rid of all the coloured sheets (except for one flannelette set for if it's really cold) and replaced them with bits and pieces but all white - from op shops, ebay etc. That way it doesn't matter when they're not a set, they still look coordinated (it's also a really cheap way to buy sheets).

Anyway. Is all ready for Zoe - and for Stef at the end of December, except Nathan the aircon man is coming to install an airconditioner next week so Stef doesn't die of heat exhaustion.

Things I am loving today

2009-11-18T13:37:00.002+11:00

I often use the blog for having a whinge about the things that are pissing me off, so in order to resolve some of the negativity, I am going to write a post entirely consisting of things I am actually really liking.

Peter, our handyman, is here putting a new cupboard in the study/spare room, to hold the spare bed bed linen. So I'm loving that we won't have nasty looking exposed plumbing in there any more, because the new cupboard will hide it.

I'm also loving his cheerful singing. He sings the entire time.

I just spoke to Nathan, the aircon man, who is coming to install an airconditioner, also in the study, next week. So I'm also loving that on 40 degree summer nights we won't boil any more.

I love how this family is living in a small apartment, and has rejected the idea that you need a heap of stuff for a baby.

I love working from home with the cat sitting on my desk and the dog snoozing at my feet. I love pugs! We met another pug in the park this morning. It wasn't *quite* as cute as Casper, but it was pretty cute.

I love the fact that I've cleaned out the study, that there's a heap of stuff sitting there waiting to go to the op shop, that I've recycled a whole heap more stuff (including first semester uni notes - it's not like I'd ever look at them again, since I have them on computer as well), and that the study is now, well, inhabitable (photos later). I love my garden. We've had salad with home-grown herbs two days in a row now.

I love that I'm going to a conference on medieval and early modern studies of religion and spirituality tomorrow, instead of going to work, and that Hugo's borrowed Aunty Carmel's car to drive me there and pick me up, because it's going to be 36 degrees, and that we're going to go for a swim afterwards.

To sleep, perchance to be woken up by those idiot teenagers across the street

2009-11-12T16:16:00.002+11:00

I am in a daze. Not because of the hot weather, which actually makes me sleep like the dead (at least since we got a ceiling fan) but because the students in the student accomodation across the road have decided that since exams are over, EVERY night is party night.

On Tuesday at around 11pm Hugo went to aks them to be quiet. They complied - for about 30 seconds. He hadn't even finished walking back across the road when the random shrieking started again. It's not even the music that's disturbing, it's the yelling, the squealing, and the laughing at the top of the lungs like a hyena. At 11.30pm we called the cops.

Last night, they were at it again. I'm visualising revenge, involving a high-pressure hose. If only Melbourne wasn't on stage 3A water restrictions.

Anyway, speaking of water, we went for a swim last night at the Carnegie pool, which is all outdoorsy and lovely, except for the showers where I have to close my eyes and not touch the walls. I always wear thongs at the pool anyway, but these are fairly high on the gross scale. It's only $3 for a concession swim though, which is cheaper than any of the other pools in the area. And the Harold Holt outdoor pool is shut.

The decluttering process has been slightly held up by the fact that it's been eleventy-three degrees upstairs at our place. Most of the clutter is upstairs and it's been too hot up there to go through boxes. I have freecycled a few things, though. And resisted the evil urge to go mad in Howards Storage World (and why doesn't that have an apostrophe anyway?) because really they are just over-priced, and the solution to storage woes is to have less stuff, not buy fancier containers.

What an idiot

2009-11-09T15:53:00.003+11:00

This column has to be the stupidest thing I've read so far about the Higgins and Bradfield by-elections.

First, she says "The Australian Sex Party are not alone - the Christian Democrats, Family First, One Nation and climate sceptic Independent Leon Ashby are all joining the circus. A race with an almost guaranteed party winner should be boring, but this time it has brought all sorts out of the wood work."

This happens Every.Single.Time.There.Is.A.By-election. Out come the fruitloops. Now with extra fibre and 345% of your daily sugar allowance.

Then she says "Presumably, not many pro-porn voters will be living in these seats. "

Because nice rich Liberal-voting people don't ever look at porn... wait, I'm confused. Is she seriously suggesting that it's only Labor voters who watch/read/have a wank over porn? Or is it only poorer people? Brain... hurts...

Then "But with Labor not running in Bradfield or Higgins and with lots of media attention on the race, it is peculiar opportunity to see a quasi mardi-gras of minor politics, complete with independents and extremes of the left and right."

Peculiar? See previous comment: This happens Every.Single.Time.There.Is.A.By-election.

Of course if you ignore the assertions that the variety pack of candidates is somehow unusual, and that apparently nice Liberal-votin' folks don't ever look at naked sex pictures, then it's a great "colour" piece.

I can't believe people get paid to write this sort of dross, and yet I have yet to be offered a job as a highly-paid contentious columnist.

House progress

2009-11-09T13:04:00.002+11:00

The PUs came round yesterday afternoon, and kindly took away six bags of op shop stuff with them. The declutter continues apace. I then put some stuff on the hard rubbish, did *another* op shop bag and put away a box of books. Callum came round and put a new bit in the grey water system (he did explain what it does, but anyway, it all works now, and the garden is being watered, thank goodness, because I didn't think it was going to last a week of 30+ days without irrigation - I am way too lazy to water it sufficiently by hand).

So that's my list for yesterday.

Today I have put the guinea pig cage on freecycle (since we sadly no longer have a piggy), as well as the "chipper" the PUs used to cook us chips in when we were kids. I'm about to go upstairs and sort through another box.

Decluttering is really hard for me (I guess for most people). I want to hang onto things because they have some value in my memory, or they came from someone I'm fond of, even though I don't necessarily like or have use for the objects themselves.

I sat in Borders the other day reading a book on decluttering (note to authors of book: buying more stuff in order to get rid of stuff = counterproductive) and although most of it was useless, one thing resonated with me - it said "you can get rid of the stuff without getting rid of the love". If I throw out something Granny gave me, I'm not diminishing the love I had for her, or the love she had for me. Must keep remembering this.

Also, assorted crap will *not* be useful come the revolution/apocalypse, so I might as well chuck it. Ok, I am psyched up now. Going to tidy!

The bathroom, part II

2009-11-06T18:44:00.006+11:00

So, the "after" shots you've all been waiting for (if you missed the before shots, click here):

Welcome to the Municpal Bath & Wash-House. It will cost you 3d for a first-class bath. Note, if you will, the extended bathing times for men, and the only-three-hours-on-Wednesdays for ladies. I mean, we all know men are smellier than women, but come ON! (I bought this sign years ago in Bath)

But I digress... Right, bathroom. Here's the laundry corner - front loading washing machine, with pull out indoor clothes line above it (cleverly placed on the wall that contains the heating flue from our gas heater downstairs - this wall gets REALLY hot in winter). On it, you can see (styled for the photographs!) an assortment of Hugo's holey t-shirts, my undies (oo err) and a tea towel that came free with a delicious magazine.

Looking into the room, we kept the existing bath, the shower is exactly where it was, and the mirror cupboard is the same cupboard. This helped minimise costs.

To your left, the vanity: made of an old table bought for under $15 on ebay, and reusing the door from the old vanity (now painted shiny white); basins also bought on ebay (around $150 for both), taps from ebay ($200 for all the taps for the bathroom). The two boxy things with our everyday stuff (sunscreen etc) I bought in Paris, the pot the plant is in is from Ikea, and the small silver pots with hair things in I bought in England.

Above the vanity is the mirror cupboard - you can see the art on the other wall reflected in it. The big jar at the end is for soap, it used to be in the kitchen, the green glass bottles were my great-grandmother's (I am named after her) and there are a couple of Moroccan tea glasses the same colour that I bought to match. The two boxes at the end - the bottom one my friend Robbie bought me back from India, it has incense in it, the top one has essential oils in it, Annoi got it for me at the Fairy Shop when she worked there.

And I can't resist showing you a shot of the inside (don't worry, all the really gross stuff is in the cupboards underneath, which I am not going to show you!) just because it was so disorganised before (yes, there are eleventy three tubes of toothpaste because they were 80 cents off so I stocked up):

Next to the mirror cupboard is a porcelain art work by Katie Parker, she's a porcelain and cut paper artist (you can check her work out here, I think she's amazingly talented). You can also see the pipe - that's part of the grey water system, the water is pumped up through this pipe, across the roof, down the other side and waters out garden. WIN! Next to that you can see the end of the old towel rail - I got Peter, our handyman, to put it up above the bath, so now I can dangle handwashing off it on coathangers (whenever I actually get around to doing some):

Under this is a hook for my shower cap - I love this, because it has a happy little person on it. I've had it for years and I've moved it from house to house (or apartment to apartment, to be more accurate). I think I bought it in England in 1995, there was a boy one too, but I think an ex-boyfriend has it.

Then if you glance upwards, you'll see a fan/heater/light - and also the plantation shutters on the window.

Then at the end, the far-less-festy shower, with water saving showerhead (free from South East Water) and corner shelf thingy ($20 from Ikea)

Bottom of shower, now coated in river pebbles ($5, ebay, factory seconds). Slightly damp in the pic cause Hugo had a shower at some point during the afternoon, which makes some tiles look a different colour. They're not, they're all dark grey.

Then on your right, a lovely painting of ducks (from the op shop), towel rail (ebay, $10), mirror (factory second, $25)

In between, only you can't see it in the previous shot because I'm aiming higher, there's a stool/washing basket (Ikea, don't remember how much, because my aunt bought it for me as a gift, but let me tell you, they are bloody flimsy and I have had to glue the stupid thing back together several times - the last time I took it apart and glued the whole thing with wood glue, so hopefully now it stays together) - let me tell you, it is MADE OF WIN being able to sit down while you brush your teeth (yes, I am lazy). Two other essential accessories for any bathroom - rubber backed soft fuzzy bathmat (strangely also a gift from my aunt, she's good with the practical bathroom gifts) and a Siamesey. Note how colour-coordinated with the bathroom she is. This was not actually deliberate.

The tiles, which no doubt you have noted throughout, were free - they came out of a skip. Hugo and I were with my PU#2 one day at the local shops, and we happened upon a skip outside the local pharmacy. Now, neither the PU nor I can resist skip shopping, so we loaded the car with eleventy-three floor tiles and voila. They have been grouted with dark grout, because it's heaps easier to clean* than white grout.

Paints are mostly Porters Paints - Silver "Alchemy" paint on the door, untinted white everywhere else (semi-gloss on walls) - the white gloss on the cupboards etc isn't Porters because they don't do one, it's Wattyl IQ (I think).

And I hope it's not disappointingly bland! There's a lot of colour in the rest of the house, I really wanted the bathroom to be restful - white/natural, and silver, and wood with touches of green.

*By which I clearly mean, it doesn't have to be cleaned because you can't see the dirt. Clever!

Further to my previous post on bogans

2009-11-06T16:59:00.001+11:00

May I direct you to this blog all about things bogans like?

http://thingsboganslike.wordpress.com/the-full-list/

Anyone want a free electric towel rail?

2009-11-05T13:45:00.002+11:00

We got this to put in the bathroom, but unfortunately turns out there is no possible way for the electrician to put a powerpoint where we need it, and I'm not willing to have cords draped all over the bathroom (safety fail!)

The idea was we'd put it on a timer switch - it uses 75 watts, so about the same as a brightish non-energy saving lightbulb - from, say, 5.30am to 7.30am so I'd have a warm towel in winter (luxury!)

So anyway, it's white, it's still in the box, it's a wall-mount model (not free-standing), and if any of my readers want it, it's yours free - as long as you can pick it up (or you can pay for the postage I guess... probably cost about $15).

Otherwise it will go on ebay if I can be bothered or freecycle if I can't...

The bathroom, part I

2009-11-05T12:58:00.006+11:00

So, I think what I'll do is post the "before" pics of the bathroom today, and you can have the "after" pics tomorrow. That way you get a bit of a sense of anticipation - not dissimilar to the very long wait I've had for it to be finished (more than two years!) only much, much shorter. Same, same but different, as they say.

So, here's what it used to look like:

The wall tiles had been painted grey - and not with tile paint, someone had just slapped ordinary paint over the tiles. FAIL. the cupboards, woodwork, doors etc were painted the same dark grey, and the walls a drab lighter grey. The bottom of the shower was brown mosaic tiles (I have a mosaic tile phobia, I can't stand them - literally, I can't stand ON them, so you can see my thongs in the bottom of the shower to protect my feet from the icky), the door of the shower was one of those three-panel things that get mouldy in the middle. There was no ventilation. So when I say moudly, I mean MOULDY.

This was the vanity - grey doors, grey laminate top a washing machine tub on one side and a grey basin on the other. Did I mention the whole frigging thing was grey? Way to choose a depressing colour for everything, previous owners. You can see the grey door and the daggy 80s doorhandle in the corner of this one. The washing machine drained directly into the sink.

You can see the paint peeling on the wall behind the towel rail, if you look closely.

Everything was very disorganised because it was too depressing to try to organise anything when everything was so... grey.

Close up of the icky mosaic tiles, with the grey pebbles I planned to replace them with (ok, a *small* amount of grey is not so bad).

And a general sort of shot, showing the bath, shower and towel rail.

In fact the grey was so depressing that it made me just long for shiny whiteness, so the new bathroom (really just an updated bathroom - do you know how much it costs to rip everything out and start again from scratch? I nearly fainted when I got quotes!) is mostly white. As you'll see tomorrow - same bat channel.

I have done none of my things for today

2009-11-04T15:55:00.002+11:00

What I have done is call a man about an airconditioner. Of course it turns out, as with everything else, that installing it will be a fucking ridiculous exercise that will involve making holes in the roof, walls, floors and ceilings.

Nothing says good design like a complete inability to access anything like essential plumbing or electrics. Fuck.

Spring cleaning and spring renovating

2009-11-03T18:24:00.008+11:00

Some photos for you of the hallway and toilet (before and after pics of the bathroom, coming soon):

This is the door to the bathroom, painted silver (it's really shiny IRL, even though it just sort of looks grey in the pics) and with the notice I got years ago in Bath about how much it costs to have a bath (3d including use of two towels and a cake of soap, or 1d if you just want to use the lavatory).

This is the toilet shrine - two Marian icons, a pleniary indulgence covering my Great-Grandmother, Marie Therèse Power and all her family, so we don't have to confess before we die, we're fine as long as we say Jesus, or even just think Jesus. And they say there are things money can't buy. There's also a curly plaster shelf thing, which is for incense, and the mirror was from the local op shop (I think it was $15) - it used to be the door of something. The small things you can see attached to the mirror are tweezers and nail file shaped like a superhero. She has a mask and looks like she eats villians for breakfast.

And the back wall of the toilet is painted red and has a small yelllow antique cupboard on it, used to hold the standard bits and pieces you find in toilets.

This is the top of the corridor, showing my signed Timothy Leary "Timothy Leary in Wonderland - An Exhibition of Blotter Acid Art" poster, with an example of blotter art (presumably sans the acid) underneath it.

This is the new hall light, which PU#2 just changed the globe in, because it wasn't coming out for me, along with my printer's trays, which hold an assortment of small things from political badges to china figurines I had in my room as a child.

Painting by an elephant that my PU#1 bought at an elephant sanctuary in Cambodia (she watched the 'panti painting it, and swears it was enjoying the process) - it's hanging opposite the Tim Leary poster.

Masks from PNG - also bought by PU#1, in the 1970s when she visited - she was going to get rid of them (and the two spears you see in the next shot, and the big bark painting and the bamboo painting in the shot after that) when the PUs moved house recently, so I nabbed them.

The PNG spears - one has a special dead bug in one end that makes it work GOOD. The other doesn't, so is less speccy. There is an empty space that's for the arrow PU#2 got me in the Solomon Islands, if I can find it. I know it's somewhere in the apartment...

The one on the left is African (I think) and the one on the right is on bark and is also from PNG.

This shot is looking up the stairs - the purple is actually more purpley in real life - it looks quite blue in the pics but it's not. It's Porters Paints "Purple Rain".

Shot of the vintage plastic light above the stairs, before the pics etc went up.

And a closer up shot...

And this was the old light fitting in the corridor that has now been replaced by the big silver one. I think the big silver one looks heaps better - I despise oyster lamps as insipid. I am not into inspid decorating. No "think of the resale value - everything neutral" here, thank you very much. If the next owners of the apartment don't like it, they can bloody well paint over it. Not that we're going to be able to afford to move in a zillion years anyway.

This is the magic calendar on the back of the front door - each day, date, and month has a little pocket that you can put things in - tickets for specific dates, cards with vet appointments, that sort of thing. Is v useful for being organised.

So, on to the spring cleaning. With all the painting and decorating going on around here, I have a bit of a new regime happening. Every day I am trying to:
1. get rid of something out of the house
2. clean something
3. plant something
4. put something away
5. fix something.

Today I have got rid of three bags of stuff (including some clothes, some housey stuff, a couple of books and some magazines) to the op shop (stupidly, I forgot to give the PU#2 the really big bag of op shop stuff to take away), plus one bag of plastic bags with holes in them that Hugo has just taken down to the recycle bin at the supermarket.

I handwashed what Sean very kindly calls my "hobo cardigan" (I'm sure you can picture it from that description - it's large, black and kinda daggy), I planted a whole pack of California poppies (I love poppies best of all flowers) and I put away a bunch of Simpsons figurines in my newly-re-hung printer's trays in the hall. I also got the PU#2 to put an energy saving globe in the hall light, because for some reason I couldn't get the old globe out (this counts as fixing something, in my book). So I'm done for today. Yesterday I think I forgot to plant anything, but I did a bunch of throwing stuff out and also the handyman, Peter, was here and so much stuff got hung up/fixed to walls/etc that by the time he left I was exhausted - and I was only showing him where to put things!

If you're very lucky, I might post pics of the bathroom tomorrow...

Halloween

2009-10-31T10:46:00.003+11:00

This is as close as I'm ever getting to a wedding, folks. Weddings are scary. BRAAAAINS....

Everything I say is wrong, because I'm too privileged

2009-10-29T15:58:00.004+11:00

It occurs to me that I owe my gentle readers an explanation of just exactly what I mean when I say "bogan". I mean, obviously, as a bastion of heteronormative middleclassyness*, I hate the workers and want to grind them under the heel of my very expensive shoe**, but I would like us all to be "on the same page" (as they're always saying in my middle-class professional work-place, where we are all paid enormous wages and laugh at the thought of poor people and their monetary struggles).

As I sit here in my Toorak mansion*** with the stables out the back****, it must be admitted that the thought of a bogan does make me feel somewhat queasy in my pilates-toned stomach#, but nevertheless I press on, as my readers must become as educated as me, otherwise we might all be forced to mingle with the hoi polloi instead of inside one of those delightful corporate tents at the races##.

So, the bogan.

What exactly do I mean by bogan?

Is it, as LindaRadfem accuses me, a term of class disparagement? I think not. In fact, it has fuck all to do with class.

As I sit here in my kitchen, in a leafy inner south-east suburb of Melbourne, I can hear something that sounds suspiciously like Slayer being played at top volume in the apartment out the back of ours. Now listening to Slayer is not, in itself, bogan. I say this as someone who has, in fact, listened to Slayer myself. Back in the day, I was know to wear a boyfriend's Slayer t-shirt, on occasion###.

Playing it so the neighbours are all forced to listen to it (other than, say, at a party about which you have warned them previously)? That, my friends, is bogan. Yes, I am forced to admit, I live in an apartment block with not one, but two lots of bogans (the man and his son in apartment one are utter, total bogans. And not just because they steal our Herald Sun on the weekends - also because of the time the son wouldn't stop screaming abuse at me and I had to call the cops).

Owning a large dog with large teeth? Not bogan. Letting your large vicious dog roam around the neighbourhood killing cats and smaller dogs and mauling passers by and small children? Bogan.

Putting your rubbish in the bin? Not bogan. Dropping your rubbish on the ground? Bogan.

Getting drunk? Not bogan. Getting drunk and then standing on the street having a conversation at the top of your bogan lungs? Bogan.

Driving a beat-up car? Not bogan. Driving your beat-up car 20 kms an hour over the speed limit in a side street and then yelling abuse at pedestrians you've nearly run down? Bogan.

I would go so far as to add, driving a ridiculous great four-wheel drive (that's an SUV, for my foreign readers) around the suburbs? Bogan.

Pushing in queues in front of people? Bogan.

Taking up more than one seat on a peak-hour train? Bogan. Also, not standing up for old people, disabled people, or pregnant women? Extra bogan.

Boganosity, as I see it, is about an attitude that says you are more important that other people. So important that the car you drive can destroy the planet and mow down pedestrians, and that's ok. So important, you don't have to wait in queues, so important your conversation or music is more important than everyone else's peace and quiet, so important that it's more important that your handbag has its own comfy seat on the train rather than another person. So important that if your dog wants to snack on other people's pets, that's just fucking fine, and screw you if you don't like it, you're just being MIDDLE CLASS.

Excuse me while I pop open another bottle of expensive imported wine, to indulge in moderately because we all know alcohol abuse is a lower-class thing. Oh, don't go away, I'll send my butler to do it instead.

Oh no... I hear the footsteps of the Man Of The House! I must go put on some lipstick, high-heels, and a French maid outfit, and start cleaning the house furiously, because of course I am his domestic/sex slave (as are all women in "heteronormative" relationships) - and am enjoying all the privilege that this status implies.

Of course if I was a "proper feminist", I wouldn't be living with a man. If only I was attracted to women and didn't have so much privilege (it's amazing, the status that being a domestic/sex slave brings with it) then I could be a "real" feminist, like LindaRadfem. Oh, the shame of being me.

Why, WHY was I not born a working-class disabled lesbian? Then everything I said would be right, ALL THE TIME, no matter how fucking ridiculous it was to start with. Privilege, it makes you wrong.

Right, that's all from me, I'm off to put on some sexy suspenders and be spanked by a man - any man, doesn't matter really, because my worth as a heteronomative middle class woman is defined by such things.

*For the benefit of any extra-stupid readers, LindaRadfem I am looking in your direction, this is said firmly tongue-in-cheek
**Which was made in a foreign country using cheap child labour, because you just don't get fine enough stitching unless it's done by foreign children.
*** Which unfortunately, is neither a mansion, nor in Toorak.
****Because we all know us middleclassy types, we like to bathe ponies in pink bathtubs and plait pretty ribbons into their manes because they are STATUS SYMBOLS. Sort of like the Jag, darling, but more hay and less premium high-octane fuel. And you take them to be serviced at the vet, rather than with Tony at the Jaguar specialist garage, dontcha know.
#ha.
##And by delightful, I mean populated by drunk corporate whores.
### And by occasion, I mean if I'd stayed the night and was slobbing around his house the next day.

Costumes

2009-10-26T16:19:00.001+11:00

Just tried on my costume for the costume party we're going to Friday night - is WIN. Can't say what it is, because would ruin surprise, but I will post photos on Saturday.

Sunday update

2009-10-25T19:15:00.002+11:00

It's been a busy weekend. My big essay is finally ready to hand it, all I have to do is print tomorrow and I'm done for the semester (yay!)

The grey water valve that I couldn't turn off is fixed (thanks to Callum, who came and showed me what was wrong with it) and now we can turn it off if we're washing chloriney bathers or the garden's getting *too* moist.

The bay tree has been planted (yay!) and - double yay - the passionfruit vine has a flower, the blueberry bush has two (as yet green) blueberries, and the tomatoes have flowers too.

I have applied for a Monash Alumni scholarship for next year (it's $1000, and they're awarded to the top however many students from each faculty - I don't know how I compare to the other coursework postgrad students across the whole of Arts, but I'd have to be up there). I've also applied for a bursary to attend a conference next month (it's only in Melbourne, but it costs to attend) on Trends, Methodologies and Resources in Studying Medieval and Early Modern Religion and Spirituality.

Fingers crossed.

I swan 12 laps. I bought new running shoes. I freecycled stuff. We dyed a rag rug green (it looks great). I op-shopped stuff. I was nice to my grandmother (harder than it sounds) for a good three quarters of an hour. I read a book (non-uni!), walked the goggeh, glued things back together, and now I'm going to eat a roast chicken dinner (cooked by the lovely Mr H - I think *he* may be the "domestic/sex slave" in our "heteronormative" relationship) while watching Wuthering Heights (finally, we get a Sunday night costume drama again ABOUT TIME, ABC).

Once I hand in my essay tomorrow, NO UNI TIL MARCH. Hi, friends I haven't seen for months. I can now catch up with you (if indeed you remember who I am). Although, it's only no uni til March if you don't count the two essays my superviser wants me to turn into articles for submission - one needs 4000 words cut out, and the other needs 2000 words added in. Unfortunately, they are on completely different topics, and so I can not take words from one and add them to the other.

Right, I am off to sort out another bag of op shop stuff while Hugo puts the chicken on - I have decided the main reason we can't keep the house tidy is too much stuff. I am determined the house WILL BE TIDY.

Oh, and I have to give the cat her heart medicine and her blood pressure medicine. One is "palatable", the other? Not so much. It takes cunning to make her eat it.

WTF?

2009-10-19T14:01:00.003+11:00

Ok, I just have to question this: Barbie Shower and Showhorse. I mean, yes, I kind of want one because as a child I would have been screaming "HORSE! WASHABLE! GROOMABLE MANE!" but hi, I've actually seen them wash show horses, and it's not in a pink bathtub with a pretty pink shower curtain.

AND ITS MANE CHANGES COLOUR.

Part of me says that's MADE OF AWESOME, the other part wants to kill things. I am hopelessly conflicted.

Bogan idiots

2009-10-19T11:05:00.002+11:00

I just can't imagine how I'd feel if, like this man, I was walking my pugsly, and he was attacked and killed by an American Pit Bull.

I do know that I'd want to do something particularly nasty (possibly involving a cactus) to Colin Muir, the complete dickhead bogan president of American Pit Bull Terrier Australia, who claimed after the incident that "There are a whole range of breeds that would have similar problems in an incident like that."

Yeah, idiot, I can just imagine the savage attack of a Toy Poodle, or a King Charles Spaniel, or a Pug, or even a Labrador with their jaws locked on a person's hand for more than 20 minutes until paramedics had to put the dog down, a person covered in blood and a smaller dog dead.

What a fuckstick. Just because there are other dangerous breeds of dog doesn't mean American Pit Bulls aren't dangerous. Neither does it mean people should be allowed to own them. The Victorian Government did a good thing when they restricted ownership of dangerous breeds. Time to take it a step further and outlaw these vicious killers completely.

And people who want to own this sort of dog anyway? I can't think of a word bad enough. Brain-dead bogans. I think I'd like to taser them until they're curled up in the foetal position whimpering.

A brief thought on breastfeeding that won't fit into my essay

2009-10-18T16:21:00.002+11:00

One of the books I read for the essay I'm writing is Jan M. Ziolkowski's Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies, in which the author argues against a particular tale being one of the type in which animals suckle children, because the child is too old: "... a service that a five year old girl would not need in any case..."

Yet Gervase, my main essay man, describes the dracs, who “put on human form”, and who carry off nursing mothers “to nurse their own wretched progeny”, keeping them for seven years before paying them and returning them.

In fact, Gervase is not the only medieval source that suggests the typical length of nursing a child was seven years. It seems Ziolkowski has made the (all too common) mistake of assuming that because (western) people now don't often breastfeed their children for seven years, that no-one else has, ever, and that what we do is somehow natural and right and extends throughout human history.

Yeah, not so much. Even now five year olds are still commonly breastfed in other parts of the world.

On a similar vein, and I also can't fit this into my essay, but have sort of mentioned it in a footnote (cause footnotes, they don't count towards word limits...) is the distinction another author I was reading made in talking about light - he claimed that in the medieval period, they didn't have "artificial light". Cause candles, they grow on trees, but light bulbs, they are UNNATURAL AND POSSIBLY INVENTED BY SATAN? I mean really. Being old doesn't magically make things more natural.