Counting Down

Just lately I am under the impression the world is about to implode upon itself under the weight of the sheer stupidity in which it is currently mired.  We appear to be teetering on the brink of a nuclear war following a stupid spat by two petulant childish idiots with absolutely no political nous whatsoever, and who appear to be metaphorically comparing penis size whilst having a pissing contest.  America, why did you elect Trump?  This is somebody who has all the diplomacy of an off-course wrecking ball, the manners of a pig at a trough, and the brain of a discarded hermit crab shell.

Anyway, I've been thinking a bit about music lately, which anybody who knows me well would be aware is a passion of mine, and on Sunday night I watched the 'Countdown' special that aired on ABC2.  Growing up, it was a regular Sunday night occurrence in my household, sitting on the lounge room floor with the Sony tape recorder, fingers poised at the 'play' and 'record' buttons for that moment when a good song came on.  Unfortunately and annoyingly, my mother would be clattering about with pots and pans in the background as she prepared dinner.  Back to the point of this post: the episode I watched focused on 1976, and what an array of clips!  I have categorised the clips I viewed into three sets: Good, Bad, and Unsure.  Let's start with the good:

1. 'I Only Want To Be With You' by the Bay City Rollers.  Yes, some of you would be questioning this choice and saying they're naff, and they're cheesy, and they're daggy.  Yeah, maybe they are.  But they were fun, and I am of the age and gender to have actually been a bit of a fan.  So I enjoyed the clip, and busted a few mum-moves where I was sitting on the sofa.

2.  'That's Rock and Roll' by Shaun Cassidy.  I understand this number to have been written by the talented Eric Carmen.  I wonder would I enjoy Eric's interpretation of his song as much as I do Shaun's.  It is likely the main reason for enjoying Shaun's version is that it's Shaun, and I did have quite the crush on him when I was younger.  He was a total babe, and a talented performer.  Of course when he wriggles his hips as performing - phwooooooar!  From the lounge room sofa I squealed something along the lines of 'Ermagerd, it's Shaun Cassidy!'  My husband rolled his eyes and left the room.

3. 'Jump In My Car' by Ted Mulry Gang.  Look, this might qualify for the 'Unsure' list, but it's kind of a guilty pleasure.  It's a  lot of fun, anyway.  Although these days I have no doubt the song would be torn to shreds by SJWs screaming there is an evil undercurrent of misogyny in it, because the protagonist changes his mind about giving a girl a lift after he discovers she lives a long way away and in the ensuing dialogue between he and the 'girl' proves himself to be something of a tool.  But any suggestion of unpleasantness in this number pales into insignificance when one looks at the diabolical remake by David Hasselhoff.  The Hoff should be subject to a court order barring him from ever covering a song again.  He took this fun albeit naff little number an totally annihilated it via torture and murder most foul, after which he spiked its poor defiled corpse on an arrow-headed pole for all to see.  Then he set fire to it and pissed on the ashes.

4. 'Hollywood 7' by Jon English.  Dressed in a bright yellow jumper and matching skin tight pants.  I believe Jon's delivery of this song is spine-tingling.  The song is a story of unrealised and thwarted dreams with a tragic ending, and Jon, who surely had one of the best rock voices in Australian music, gives it a rawness and poignancy that leaves a lump in the throat.  He does this whilst dressed in a bright canary coloured outfit.  Jon's eyes, set against those dark hollows, hold all the eeriness with a hint of possible malevolence of an unknown creature eyeing you from the depths of a cave or below a rock.  He cuts a saturnine figure as he performs this song with a gravitas and despair that belies his real-life persona of a really nice bloke.  And he manages to do this in a shade of yellow that screams for sunglasses.  This is testimony to the man's character and talent.  It is also an indication that whoever chose this outfit should reconsider whether wardrobe design was really the right choice for him or her.

Okay, now let's move on, shall we?  The next list is Unsure, and there is only one entry:

'I Wanna Make You My Lady' by Mark Holden. I'm kind of unsure because whilst Mark is a genuinely talented man with a prolific song writing catalogue, an acting career, and a nice singing voice of his own; let's not forget he did have a shocking tendency to yell 'TOUCHDOWN during his tenure as a judge on 'Australian Idol'!'   Now that he has finalised his law degree and is practising as a barrister, I wonder does he give out carnations to members of the jury during his summing up.

Okay, now we reach the unpleasant part of the post wherein I address the bad songs played.  I would suggest you sit down and take a deep breath for what is about to follow.

1. 'Ooh Ja Ja'  by Pussyfoot.  This was a follow up to her chart topping single 'The Way That You Do It'.  'The Way etc' had the less than profound lyrics 'ooh na na hya hya hy-YAAAAAA'.  Like its predecessor, ' Ooh Ja Ja' has all the lyrical depth of a teaspoon.  I daresay the songwriter was going for onomatopoeic and catchy, but missed and achieved the lowest point on the scale of banality.  Still, Pussyfoot herself no doubt launched a thousand erections amongst the burgeoning adolescent male audience, sitting glued to the television screen at 6.00pm on a Sunday evening.

2. 'Love And Other Bruises' by Air Supply.  Yeah, I know.  Talented guys, some of whom were alumni of the original Australian production of 'Godspell'.  But their songs are as dreary as the dried bat guano on the floor of a cave.  This one in particular is an emetic set to music.

But that being said, I can hardly wait for next 6.00pm next Sunday to arrive!

Glam Wizard & Shameless Self Promotion

I haven't been blogging as prolifically as I usually do.  This is undoubtedly due to having been as busy as a one-armed fan dancer lately.  Have had lots on my mind, and it's come and gone in dribs and drabs, as vagaries often will.  This week I have been thinking of:

Last Saturday, being 16 September 2017, marked forty years since the death of this utter, total, unmitigated, unadulterated, perfect legend of music:

 

RIP, Marc Bolan.  Forever young (29), forever beautiful, forever sexy.  Naturally, being a struggling author, I must segue to my third novel 'Silver Studs and Sabre Teeth'.  You Marc Bolan and T-Rex fans out there might have made the connection - the title is a nod to the lyrics contained in their hit 'Metal Guru'.  For the uninitiated, You Tube some T-Rex numbers.  The charisma of Marc Bolan was palpable.  Anyway, one of the characters in my novel is a Marc Bolan impersonator.  Or is he?  Maybe he's the very embodiment of the Glam Wizard himself.  Check out this link to the first chapter: http://www.zeus-publications.com/silver_studs_and_sabre_teeth.htm  

Then, if you can find it in your hearts, check out the links to purchase the book, either via paperback or e-book.  I should type a hashtag symbol and then the words shameless self promoter.  

It is of interest that this novel has a subplot featuring same sex marriage, given the postal votes have gone out, and it's EVERYWHERE in my news feed.  I'm not telling you here how I address this issue in the book.  No, you must purchase it if you wish to scratch that curious itch.  I'm hoping like fuck you do. 

Speaking of the marriage laws survey, perhaps you too have read of a young woman who was let go from a place of employment for her views on the topic, those views being she is not in favour.  It's a religious thing with her. This is interesting, but the young woman was a contractor to the boss and not an employee in the accepted sense of the term.  This will impact upon any rights she has regarding unfair dismissal claims.  I understand she might have a claim of discrimination on religious grounds.  I don't think there are really any winners here.  It's abhorrent to dismiss somebody because that somebody holds a political opinion with which you don't agree, yet you are worried this person's public (shared on Facebook) views are going to taint your own 'brand'.  Legally, the business owner has a right to end the person's contract, but like I said, the aggrieved party might have religious discrimination grounds on which to file a complaint.  I am very interested to see the outcome.

So yes, I've just been struggling along, trying to keep the balls up in the air at the moment.  This is problematic because I am spectacularly bad at sports and would miss every ball I'm trying to juggle.  I think I've dropped them all and they've hit the ground, bounced a few times, and rolled away; some under the house and others down the drain and into the sewer, never to be seen again.

Been dealing with a little bit of crap lately, so have to do a playlist to blow off steam.  It will be similar to another playlist I compiled a while ago.  Songs like the tender little Skyhooks number 'Why Don't You All Get Fucked?', and 'Asshole' by Denis Leary.  It's how I cope, and it makes me chuckle - albeit malevolently.  I guess this is my way of saying, 'Fuck you and the horse you rode in on', without being to specific - heh-heh!

Before I go, does anybody else get creeped out when they hear Hunters & Collectors 'Throw Your Arms Around Me'?  Look, I am in the camp that believes Mark Seymour is a spunkrat, but truly, that lyric 'so shed your skin and let's get started...' just sets my teeth on edge.  I wonder is the narrator (1) an amateur herpetologist looking in a terrarium housing a King Brown, or (2) some kind of psychopath like Buffalo Bill in 'The Silence Of The Lambs'.  

Head Shakers

Slowly shaking my head.  That's all I do every time I turn on the television, or log into my social media feeds.  Fools, tools, and brain-dead bogans are everywhere, and they're all determined to take us along for the ride until we are as mad as they are.  So I just keep slowly shaking my head, and my long auburn locks swirl in around so I like the after shot of a shampoo commercial.  Just thought I'd throw in that imagery.

Anyway, set out hereunder is my little list of what's got me shaking my head:

1. Clowns- I mean that literally, not figuratively - are griping that the release of the movie 'It' is damaging their reputation because children are now frightened.  For those of you who've been in outer space, let me explain (oh, and welcome back to Earth and it's great you didn't burn up on re-entry): the movie 'It' is based on an epic Stephen King novel, and the titular,  um, thing is a multi-morphing monster that often appears in the form of a rather nasty looking clown.  The movie is not aimed at the age bracket that would require clowns to entertain at birthday parties, and any parent who takes such a tender-aged sprog to see the movie is a bit of a fool.  I saw it with my 13yo, and as a matter of prudence on the drive home reminded him that Pennywise (being the name of the clown manifestation) is a figment of Stephen King's imagination brought to life by an actor and some talented make-up artists.  Differentiate, folks!  It's like when 'The Hand That Rocks The Cradle' was released, and nannies and childcare workers everywhere were disconcerted.    Anyway, some people do find clowns freaky; they wear grotesque looking makeup, horrible clothing, oversized shoes and their pants are prone to falling down at inopportune times thus exposing gaudy boxer shorts.  I think my first real encounter with a clown was the one played by John Michael Howson on 'Adventure Island', and he shat me to tears because he did nothing by whinge.  Anyway, Pennywise is a horrible looking thing with sharp teeth; children's entertainers are gentle and fun, and come armed with soap filled apparatuses that blow bubbles everywhere.  Get grip, everyone.

2.  Dick Smith saying the ABC is 'basically treasonous' for not giving him the platform he wishes.  Treason is the slaughter or harming of the ruling sovereign, or sovereign's heir.  It's also inciting war against the Commonwealth.  Can't see how the ABC's actions fit under that umbrella.

3. The $122 million postal survey on same sex marriage  Why.  Dear God, just WHY?  Legalise it, already!  If two adults are consenting and love each other, it's not going to affect your life it they marry.  Let me type this slowly for you: It. Won't. Affect. Your. Life.  Haven't got my form yet, but I guess I will by tomorrow.

4.  A fitness celebrity who thinks it's okay to park in a disabled car park because she's never seen it being used by a person with disability.  If you're reading this, lady: it's not okay.  Maybe you don't see it get used because you've already gone and parked your fucking car there.  If you're that damned fit, then surely you can park in the appropriate spot and walk across the car park to your gym.

I think this will do me.  I've got some research and editing to do now.  Ciao for now.

Mal's Beer & Bub Pic

Things I do when I'm bored:

1. Read.
2. Goof around on social media.
3. Write.
4. Play music and dance, sometimes singing into a hairbrush (my rendition of 'Bad, Bad Leroy Brown' is the stuff of nightmares).
5. Walk my dogs.
6. Housework.
7. Things I won't specify in case my children are reading because I don't want to scar them for life.
8. Cryptic crosswords.

What I don't do:

Look for pointless and inane things to be pointlessly and inanely offended over.  Case in point: the whingey purveyors of pussy-arsed sookery who are castigating the Prime Minister over this photograph:

 

To the people who are griping and saying this is 'disgusting' on the basis he is also holding a beer: what ails you?  Seriously, what has climbed into your underwear and is nipping nastily at your genitals in a manner to have you narky over him holding a beer and his grandchild?  This is just being outraged for the sake of it, and I hope your first aid kits contain tweezers with which to remove the splinters from beneath your fingernails where you have scraped the bottom of the barrel.  What the hell are you all looking at?  I saw a nice photograph of a man with his granddaughter.  Perhaps I should have put my glasses on.  

By all means criticise the man for his ludicrous policies such as the obscene waste of money on the same sex marriage postal vote (just legalise it already, you softcocks!), or the nastily flawed Orwellian tactics of the proposed cashless welfare card (I'm sure your mates at Indue who are to have the contract are jizzing themselves over it, you softcocks!), but this is just, just beyond pathetic.  

Hey guess what?  When my youngest was a baby, a relative of mine had his 70th birthday.  I'm pretty sure there is a photograph of me holding my little one, and a flute of champagne in my free hand.  Wow.  Someone call DOCS.  

Maybe the baby was not enamoured of grandpa's beer fumes on his breath, but she most likely won't even remember it.  Christ jumping on a pogo stick fitted with an outboard motor, you'd think the PM was Whacko Jacko dangling the baby over a balcony!

 

This utter lunacy just makes me want to press the stop button and disembark from this planet.  There are worse things the PM could have been holding in  his free hand.  Things like: 

1. A flaming oxy torch.

2. A glass of sulphuric acid.

3. A Rottweiler.

4. A bucket of battery acid.

5. A copy of Mein Kampf.

6. A bomb.

7. A severed head.

8. A freshly laid steaming turd.

9. A gangrenous limb.

10. His dirty, skid-marked underwear.

11. A bucket of sheep intestines.

The list goes on.  Unfortunately, so it would appear, the unnecessary bleating about nothing goes on, too.

That 'Crap' Date, & A Tale Of My Own

The story about the woman on a Tinder date who did a poo that wouldn't flush is clogging (ahem!) my newsfeed today.  And yesterday.  And probably will tomorrow. In a nutshell, she was at her date's house - first date courtesy of Tinder, so I understand - and nature called.  She took a dump that was apparently too voluminous to travel to the S-bend, and decided to throw it out the window.  As you do.  Her grand plan was brought down by the design of the windows; some kind of double-paned creations and the poo landed 'twixt them.  This is so not good.  She told her date, and got stuck trying to retrieve it.  Emergency services had to help rescue her.  If the relationship works out between this pair, it will really be a good story to tell any progeny.

That really is an awful date, and it's almost apocryphally urban-mythical.  It puts the story of my own worst-ever date into some kind of perspective.  Yeah, I had an awful experience many years ago.  The only good thing to come from this was when I used it as an entry in a contest wherein you had to write of your most awkward ever date.  I won an evening for two at a local motel, seven course degustation meal included.

What happened on my own awful date was this: picture the scene - Sydney, 1986.  Look, 1986 was not great in many respects.  We had the Challenger Disaster, and the Chernobyl Disaster, and Bananarama's silly remake of 'Venus' was one of the top selling singles of the year. I was a slender twenty-year old, who favoured pink polka-dotted cotton pants, with a longish white blouse over the top, where my waist was cinched in with a wide black belt.  I probably looked pretty stupid, but the look was de rigeur.  This bloke in his mid-twenties did not think I looked stupid.  He thought I looked a bit of all right, and we went out to the movies.  This isn't the worst ever date, but stay with me, I'm getting to it.  As I travelled home, it occurred to me there was very little chemistry between us.  However, he telephoned through the week and asked me to dinner.  Stupidly, I decided to give him another chance.

We went to dinner at a club in Bondi.  As I chowed down on my chicken Kiev, it became glaringly obvious to me there was a severe lack of chemistry between us, and even worse, this guy was really rather inane.  This was well before mobile telephones, so I could not even have a friend ring me through the evening, thus enabling me to concoct an emergency whereby I had to end the evening immediately.  I suffered through dinner, and for some unknown reason agreed to go to his place and watch a video.  I remind you this was 1986, and DVDs and Netflix were the stuff of science fiction.

We stood in a video store on Bondi Road.  He perused the shelves, and I started to feel very claustrophobic.  I decided to sit on the front step of the store.  I listened to the waves pounding the shores of the beach, and the motion of my stomach started to do the same.  I was sweating.  I knew I had to get home.

My date exited the store with his chosen movie, and I stood, with difficulty.  I told him I needed to get home.  He argued the evening was early and I couldn't possibly be considering leaving yet.  I snarled I was sick and wanted to go home.  He said that couldn't possibly the case.  We argued like this briefly, and then I just knew.  I clapped a hand over my mouth, my eyes bulging in their sockets as I quickly looked this way and that, trying to locate a garbage bin.  To Waverley Council's great shame, there were none.  I rushed behind some nearby parked cars, removed my hand from my mouth, and with a hideous gluuur-uuurrrt! regurgitated a veritable torrent that sent flecks of partially digested chicken Kiev raining down on the bitumen like amorphous, acrid hail stones.

This is awful, but it's not what made the date so bad.  What made it so jaw-droppingly bad was when the guy came around the car, stared in wonder at the mess, and then asked, 'Did any bits get stuck in your nose?'  No, I did not make that up.  What is even worse, he actually wanted to know!  He was genuinely curious about that.

To this day, I am confident I have never heard anything so utterly foul, or so utterly stupid.  I am also confident I have never really eaten chicken Kiev since that evening.  The relationship with this imbecile progressed no further.

Yes, it was a pretty rank evening all round, but it pales in comparison to what happened to this couple, the exploits of whom are - ahem! - clogging up my newsfeed.

Anyway, I'm going to make a cup of tea.  I'm still dealing with an abundance of crap, so it seems, but I think it will be resolved shortly.  I feel there's someone playing games, and these games are not leisurely in nature.

However, I am tutoring a little boy in reading and spelling this afternoon, so I will focus on that and not the total mind-fuck a certain person appears to be attempting to inflict upon me.  I'm much better than I have been about it; her attempts to mind-fuck are being blocked and stymied, so she's probably got the equivalent of 'blue balls' for those who have their odious unwanted mind-fornications stopped in its tracks.

A Round Up Of This Week's Taurine Scat

What your blogger did today:

1. Went to the gym.  This wasn't much fun because first of all I stood on the scales there, and all I can say is the bloody machine's busted.  It has to be.  I cannot weigh that much.  No.  Denial, thy name is Bingells.  Second of all, as I cycled and listened to the piped music, which is tuned into a local FM station, I heard a song that just made me wonder, 'Why?'  It was a remake or interpretation of Rod Stewart's 'Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?'  I don't think it was the N-Trance cover from some years back.  I'm not sure who did the cover I heard today.  More alarmingly, I don't know WHY someone would cover this song.  Who sits at a brainstorming meeting and says, 'I know!  Let's have our latest auto-tune wunderkind cover a naff and somewhat sleazy song by a thirty-three year old bloke who was wearing spandex!  It doesn't matter that the song tends to make people cringe because it's so kitsch, and because people are embarrassed to admit it's a bit of a guilty pleasure.  Even though covering it is pointless because it won't have the same vulgar Studio 54 zeitgeist of the original, we will go ahead and make a cover!  What's that rapper's name again?' - here our intrepid, cocaine-fuelled producer intercoms his assistant Sh'Nae - 'Hey, Sh'Nae!  Get me the number for Tone Def's people!'

2. Goofed around on Twitter.  Not for long, but long enough to read a scurrilous article by a tabloid newspaper about Shapelle Corby applying for the dole.  This putrid piece stated she was expecting taxpayers to fund her 'lush lifestyle' on the Gold Coast.  I do know the name of the journalist who wrote this piece, but I'm not going to bother saying it here.  I do wonder how the dole will subsidise a lush lifestyle, given it barely subsidises food.  I do wonder why such a thing is even considered newsworthy.  Let me break it down for those who have a problem with this: she has a notoriety that is hanging around like a swarm of flies on a humid day at the moment, and finding employment might be somewhat difficult for a while.  Until such employment is found, or she goes into business for herself, she has to eat.  It's a funny little quirk about being a carbon based lifeform: we need sustenance.  So annoyed was your blogger, I responded. The journalist replied, and I have decided to just use a screen shot of this part of our convo.  I removed the journalist's name with my newfound editing skills:

It is exciting and satisfying to take a journalist to task over a misspelled word.  Maybe not to the point of orgasm, but it is exciting nonetheless.

I also took the opportunity to state my view that this sort of reporting is a manifestation of the skid marks in the underpants of humanity.

3.  Sneezed.  A lot.  Possibly it is because Spring is sprung.  Possibly it is the glass of wine I drank tonight, you know, sulphides and all that.  I've never had an issue with wine before, but that doesn't mean a particular brand isn't going to NOT affect me.  I hope not.  I like this wine.  But I've been sneezing and sneezing to the point where I thought my nose was going to fly off, and I would be like Michael Jackson, had Michael Jackson been reasonably slim white woman (oh, wait...).

4. Wondered why Minister for Immigration Peter 'Duds' Dutton has such an detestable and punch-worthy face. My guess is that it's because he is an ex-Queensland copper describing lawyers appearing pro bono for asylum seekers as 'unAustralian'.   Duds, you're a coprophagus prick to say this.  Not only are you attacking the fundamental right of everybody being equal before the law and entitled to representation, you said 'unAustralian'.  This is the most shitful, bog-standard, and stupid word thrown around by people who have no argument to use against people with whom they don't agree.  Get a clue, why don't you?

It's been a somewhat crazy and emotional week for me.  I've been dealing with an inordinate amount of bullshit, the volume of which would overtake that left in the Okay Corral following muster.  I cannot write about the genesis of this taurine scatological situation, but let's just say it's caused much misery.  But it's also forced me to be strong, and use my literary skills to - I hope - my advantage.  Time will tell.

Anyway, happy Fathers' Day to all the dads out there tomorrow.  I no longer have my dad.  It was his birthday yesterday.  He'd have been Two Fat Ladies: 88.  I think about him every day.  Mr Bingells no longer has his lovely dad, either.  Tomorrow we are going to a camping ground and having a BBQ.  The food is marinating as I type.

'