Today's Power of Three

A common ploy used in creative writing is 'the power of three'. It seems to be some talismanic quality that renders three the magic number, particularly in comedic articles. Keeping this little 'thing' in mind, I'm going to write about three things that got up my nose today.

We will begin with the article I saw this morning about the usual 'outrage' because a mother was fined for having a magician entertaining at her kid's birthday party, which was held in an Adelaide park.  It's great that she provided employment to a professional entertainer, who was likely more convincing than Uncle Harry trying to entertain the kids by playing Camptown Races on a wax-papered comb, and whose repertoire of magic tricks start with the magic incantation: 'Pull my finger'. Naturally the Outrage Squad are complaining about the Fun Police, and officious local government bureaucrats. But the reason the councils require permits for professional entertainers in parks relates to public liability insurance. However, what really has me grinding my molars is the woman hosting the party actually enquired whether a permit was required, and was told that there was indeed a permit to be obtained before being allowed to have a hired entertainer perform there, whereupon she decided she DIDN'T want to pay for the permit, went ahead with the party and the professional magician, copped a fine, and WHINGED TO THE MEDIA! Am I getting old, or is the world being overtaken by sympathy-seeking, point-missing, entitled jackasses? I know that if I was stupid or arrogant enough to flout local government bylaws, thus receiving a fine for my own informed decision, the last thing I'd do is take it to the media expecting sympathy. And do you know why? Because I know I would arouse the ire of irritable old biddies like myself, who'd know straight away I'm just an attention-seeking, spoilt twit.

The second thing that annoyed me today is reading about politicians in Ohio seeking to introduce a bill that would have doctors reimplant ectopic pregnancy or face abortion murder laws. My dudes and she-dudes, this is biological balderdash. Ectopic pregnancies are NOT VIABLE! Furthermore, they have the potential to cause fatal injury to the mother. If you want to pass bills policing women's bodies, at least have the common sense to fucking learn about them first. The Handmaid's Tale is not a textbook, it's a work of dystopian fiction, so stop trying to follow it so closely.

Finally, today I read a locally written article about a bail application relating to a crime that was committed in the area last year, and one of the sentences began with 'And'. My fellow grammarians will know this is simply not on, when it comes to sentence starters. Yes, I know my paragraph regarding the first of my annoyances today has a sentence starting with 'and' (to wit, 'And do you know why?'), but here's the difference: I'm writing a creative piece that will hopefully entertain you, whereas the article I read purported to be formal prose. When writing formal prose, my loved blog-browsers,  you do not commence a sentence with a conjunction. It ruined my day, and only a fellow grammar pedant would understand how infuriating it is to see the standards slipping and sliding like a bunch of kids (and drunken beer-gutted uncles) on a soaped-up Slip-n-Slide on a hot Christmas Day.

Well, those are my contributions for the 'power of three'. I hope you enjoyed reading them, and I hope they didn't get up your nose to the extent they did mine.

Being Vocally Vocative

I cannot recall when I last purchased a women's magazine. The ones I regularly purchased were Cosmopolitan, Cleo, and Australian Women's Forum. AWF folded, sadly, and I guess I kind of got over the two Cs when I had a baby because I found I couldn't relate to the headlines ('Does My Bum Look Big In This & Other Dilemmas'). I have never purchased New Idea or Woman's Day. My late mother subscribed to the latter (hiding it before my late father birddogged it and did the crossword puzzle), and was a frequent purchaser of the former, so I'd have a read of her copies, and wonder why I had bothered.

Whenever I'm at the checkout and glancing over the magazine covers, I am reminded why I am not in the habit of purchasing them. The headlines alone are dreadful and obviously totally fabricated bull droppings: 'Kate Middleton Pregnant Again, & This Time It's Twins!' (note to magazine editors: she is the Duchess of Cambridge, and she had probably eaten cauliflower with her lunch, and was rubbing her stomach to ease the ensuing gas attack. If she WAS pregnant, the Palace would have issued a formal statement. My use of the word 'Palace' in this manner is called metonymy, and maybe you twits could look that up, too); Jennifer Pregnant! (note to magazine editors: Jennifer Aniston is in her fifties); Kate & Megan At Loggerheads! (note to magazine editors: they are known as the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Sussex respectively, and how would you know if they were at loggerheads, aside from the ubiquitous 'palace insider'?).

But one of them really had me grinding my teeth today. It reflected some supposed grievances of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie of York against their father, Prince Andrew (there's probably a bit of merit in this claim, I'd be a bit pissed off if he was my dad, too). But there was a quote on the front page, and it went like this: 'How Could You Dad?'

Read that quote, and tell me what's missing. Yes, it's the good old vocative comma! You know, the one that goes before the person being personally addressed. The quote, which is also doubtlessly made up by some shit-gibbon editor, should have read: 'How Could You, Dad?', and when I saw that outrageous crime against grammar, I am sure I looked a little like this:

I mean, seriously, what is 'How Could You Dad' meant to signify? Minus that all-important vocative comma, the question appears to be seeking an answer as to how one carries out the activity of 'dadding'. I don't know what dadding is; do you? I'm thinking it might be some millennial idiom relating to parenting from the male perspective. Before any of you millennials derisively sneer, 'Okay, Boomer' at me, I will take the opportunity to point out I am Gen X.

Well, that's me done for now. Like many, I am heartbroken over the death of Lewis the Koala. The footage of him crying in pain as the kind rescuers put water on him put a lump in my throat. I hoped he would pull through, but his injuries were very severe.  Poor baby. But it's not just Lewis; it's all the wildlife that has perished in this vicious cycle of conflagration. Why couldn't the Government address the concerns raised by the Fire Service months ago? Were they too busy dreaming up ways to be even bigger twatwaffles with their heads in the sand? Hell, we're led by a clown who wants people to work until they're 70, and then practically passes out climbing a hill (and Morrison's 51).

I'm out of here, but thanks for reading.

Legging It

What's making news today? Well, it seems shit has been lost everywhere at the most alarming rate because a school in Melbourne has banned girls from wearing leggings. The excuse for the ban is that leggings are supposedly distracting to boys. 

I'm of a mind that this is teetering dangerously close to the edge of the precipice leading to a sharp and deep drop into total buffoonery. Teenagers are little more than cauldrons of bubbling hormones, and it takes significantly less than exercise wear to distract them. What really gave me the irks is that it potentially plants the seed of, and propagates the idea, that women are 'asking for it' with what they choose to wear. How about just telling kids if they're distracted, to acknowledge their own feelings, and then get back to their schoolwork? 

The school has the right to enforce a dress code, and let's face it, leggings are not a uniformly item. If they're being worn as outer wear, then they're downright ghastly, especially in an institution of learning. If they're being worn under a skirt, then what's the problem? They're not much different to opaque tights. 

Who else is completely over this smoke? My head has been aching, and my eyes are irritated. I have been having flashbacks to childhood trips in the car with my parents, both of whom smoked at the time, and I would be stuck in the front between them and they would be puffing away, and steadfastly refusing to wind down the window, despite (or maybe because of) my constant pleading and whining. We would reach our destination - half an hour later than necessary because my father was a slow driver - and my face would be the colour of an avocado. The other day, I was rostered to work in my childhood home town, and I thought: Great! Looking forward to seeing the place. Got there, and couldn't see a damn thing! There was hazy smoke hanging about the place like a ghostly ectoplasm. It was like an absolute pea-souper of a fog, and the only reason I knew it wasn't fog was that my hair didn't coil and spring like Redfoo's. I had to travel to a farm that was being subjected to the smoke from a national park fire. These fires are a blight, but I should give thanks everyone I know has remained safe during this crisis.

Last night, I took my fifteen-year-old to see an ABBA tribute show. He thought he would show his sense of humour by wearing a Metallica T-shirt. I thought I would show my dagginess by doing the 'clap' and rotary dialling motions on the chorus of Ring, Ring. This made my kid cringe. 

Oh well, I am going to have a quick shower and crawl into bed now. I am very sleepy, and working tomorrow. One good thing this week: I've managed to get a few copies of Howling on a Concrete Moon sold. Click on the link on the home page of this blog, and you might end up buying a copy of your own once you've read the first chapter.

Yule be Sorry

We are halfway through November already, and to use a hackneyed phrase: Christmas is almost upon us. I've already started Christmas shopping (well, buying one gift at a market yesterday counts, doesn't it?). As much as I like Christmas, it's a bloody stressful time of year. The crowds would rival the platform of a major train station in Tokyo during rush hour. You rush around like your feet are on fire and your arse is catching as  you try to get things organised, and the actual 'lunch' is over in a few hours, and SOMEONE has to wash up. The season has sad connotations for me; both my parents and my father-in-law died over the Christmas/New Year period. It's easy to be melancholic, but you are allowed to be happy, and you have to live. Anyway, there are a few constants about Christmas that contribute to the associated stress:

1. Someone will have a moan about some problematic Christmas carol, or song traditionally played at Christmas. Last year it was Baby, It's Cold Outside because some woke as fuck clowns said the song was predatory. From what I can tell, the male in the song is trying to convince the female to stay with him (yeah, he probably wants to bang her, but so what?), but he's not actually forcing her to stay. I still recall Rupert Nureyev performing this on The Muppets in a duet with Miss Piggy. In a gender twist, the shy hesitant character was played by Nureyev, and it was the porcine diva who portrayed the wannabe seducer. If a (then) closeted gay man and a stuffed effigy of a sow, that was operated and voiced by a man, can sing it and maintain their dignity, then just treat the song for what it is: a SONG. Besides, The Little Drummer Boy is much worse. That song totally blows, and if I was Our Lady, I'd grab that kid's drum and force it over his head like a watermelon for bashing the drum and waking up my newborn.

2. Recycling of misconceptions and flawed tropes via shouty memes in my newsfeed. You know, the ones that go We Aren't Allowed To Say Merry Christmas Because It Will Offend Muslims. This popular favourite will be followed closely by the runner-up complaining that any given major department store will not have a Christmas-themed display in their window, and someone will be moaning about 'Happy Holidays' being a portent of doom and the annihilator of Christmas and all other things associated with western civilisation. A few points, folks: by and large, neither Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Rastafarians, adherents to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, nor atheists are bothered if someone says 'Merry Christmas' in a moment of goodwill and bonhomie. They are more likely delighted someone took the time to be polite and friendly. Some people say 'Happy Holidays' because this time of year is sacred to other faiths as well, and it is in an inclusive term. When I look at it this way, it doesn't bother me at all, although I personally prefer the sound of 'Season's Greetings'. But I will keep saying, 'Merry Christmas', and I'm sure you won't be offended. If you are, then that's your CHOICE, and I'm not apologising. But can people please stop buying into the crud that gets circulated every year at this time? Who's doing this; is it people who want to be deliberately divisive? Can you just stop? Christmas is stressful enough as it is.

3. Signs that read: Santa, Please Stop Here. Those twee representations of kitsch that get pushed into the front lawn get up my nose. I know I sound like a Grinch, but I can't explain it; I see one of these signs and have to fight an almost uncontrollable urge to go and snap the damn thing off its spike. But I don't. And do you know why? I'm not a colossal jerk.

Did anyone else read about the tweet sent by Will.I.Am regarding his treatment on a Qantas flight? He's claimed the flight attendant was racist. I don't know if the attendant was racist because I wasn't on the flight, but wasn't it the case he didn't remove his headphones to listen to the safety procedures? There were federal officers awaiting him at Brisbane, which seems a little over-the-top for a refusal to remove headphones, but I'm wondering where is the racism in this? I've read comments by people who purport to have been on the said flight, who have stated the attendant's behaviour was unacceptable, and The Veronicas have weighed in and said they had problems with that same attendant. Maybe the attendant has no people skills, which is kind of a problem if you're working as a flight attendant. I will conclude this blog posting by saying this: I don't think the Black-Eyed Peas ever recorded a song that didn't shit me to tears.

Fire!

I am a member of a local author's group, and we meet once a month to showcase our work. and discuss the whys and wherefores of the literary world.  We also set ourselves a task to bring along a 500-word piece to a pre-agreed theme. Yesterday's theme, darkly serendipitous given the raging bush fires plaguing two States, was 'fire'. 

I could have gone down the 'Fire is the result of exothermic chemical process of combustion...' and all that jazz, but the first thing that went through the vagaries of my mind was Fire by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Arthur is not a name traditionally associated with rock-and-roll, but there is a reason this song was the first association in those vagaries, that float and appear like options in a Magic 8-Ball.

What can I say about this song, aside from the fact that it's the most demented, brainsick, and totally bananas arrangement ever recorded? If you doubt what I say, check it out on You Tube, particularly a black and white clip from Top of the Pops in 1968. I don't know who did the most LSD here: Brown, the backing band, the engineers, the art director, or the set designer.  You are greeted by guy in some kind of apocalyptic makeup, flaming horns on his head, who roars by way of introduction: 'I am the God of Hellfire!'  I daresay when this was aired, Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper, then both likely young men aged approximately eighteen and twenty respectively, sat in their respective loungerooms, gazing at the television and sighing, 'I wanna be HIM!' Seriously, pause the song when there is a close-up of Brown, hold a black-and-white photograph of Alice Cooper beside the screen, and I defy you to tell the difference.

This pyromaniacal maelstrom of a song continues in a series of psychedelic scrambling arpeggios whilst Brown does his best to freak the snot out of everybody. He coos what sounds like veiled threats in a deceptively gentle bridge, and then rips off his robes and, bare-chested,  starts pogoing about. Around this point another young up-and-coming musician caught this performance on television and thought, 'Yeah, that could work! And Iggy Pop would be a superb name, numerologically speaking.' 

Finished with the pogoing, Brown completely blows a spring and goes into full unhinged mode, warning over and over: You gonna burn! Burn! Burn! Burn!, like the most hysterical fundamentalist preacher to ever take the pulpit.

Listening to, and viewing the performance of, this song is akin to being hit by a truck, or maybe fighting a raging conflagration. It will leave you dazed. The only song more exhausting than this is Jim Carroll's  People Who Died.  

They say if you remember the Sixties, then you weren't there. Thank goodness for  YouTube, which enables us to, er, experience numbers like this.

You know something else? I happen to really like this disturbed, dippy, and utterly crackers number.

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A Reminder of Grotesque Series

It is a rare occasion that I watch television during the daytime. Even when I was on maternity leave with my first, I rarely looked at the google box. I would be often asked in jest had I got into Jerry Springer yet, but the few times I glanced at it told me it would be utterly repulsive viewing. Who decided it would be hugely entertaining to showcase incestuous yokel families (with less than the standard number of adult teeth in a set between them), all with hyphenated first names (and the name to the right of the hyphen is always Jo, Joe, or Lee), and all arguing about why the other family members felt entitled to be also having sex with the conjoined twin midgets with whom he or she was currently in a sexual relationship. That last sentence might seem bamboozling, but it still contains more coherence and common sense than the typical episode of The Jerry Springer Show.

Back to my point: I finished work about lunch time on Friday, so I decided I would make a cup of tea and relax. The television was already on, and I gleaned it was the midday movie. There was a young woman in a wheelchair arguing with a home care nurse about the meals she was being served, and I thought: This rings a rather unappealing bell - and I have just realised I have inadvertently made a kind of pun. I picked up my iPad and did some quick googling, and sure as eggs, it was a dramatization of the novel Gates of Paradise by VC Andrews (or more truthfully, a ghost writer churning out Virginia Andrews-style pap following Andrews' demise, which the VC Andrews novel series are). This series featured the family of a girl named Heaven. Like most of the VC Andrews factory, it told of family secrets that seemed to centre around young women being porked by their half-brothers, step-brothers, step-fathers, or uncles. Come to think of it, these families would have been ripe for an episode of The Jerry Springer Show. Women of a certain age will likely remember reading this series around the late 1980s. The books were trashy car-crashes, and the writing was airy-fairy, farty piffle. Heaven was a character I detested with scary vehemence. Her ability to annoy the living snot out of anybody was debilitating enough to stop a charging rhino. On the scale of punchable women in literature, she is matched only by Anastasia Steele from Fifty Shades.

Anyway, the movie I watched last Friday was not about Heaven (who by this time had died in an accident), but her daughter Annie, who had the hots for a guy she believed to be her half-brother. Thankfully, given Heaven's fling with her own uncle, the guy after whom Annie lusts is not a blood relative after all. This makes things so much better. As an aside, I am now wondering why the characters in this keep-it-in-the-family saga all look like airbrushed models, instead of the drooling oafs in Deliverance.

By way of background, Heaven was conceived when her own mother Leigh was raped by her stepfather Tony. Leigh was only about thirteen or fourteen.  Tony is clearly a Polanski-ish child-grooming, predatory nonce. After an icky life, Heaven moves in with Tony and the woman who is her biological grandmother, and starts banging someone who turns out to be her uncle. At some time in the salacious series, Heaven (at the time pregnant with Annie), gets felt up by Tony. Further down the track, we see the orphaned and injured Annie sent to Tony's House of Fun to recuperate, and she also gets groped by the lecherous old perve.

And, last Friday, I sat in delirium on the lounge watching the dreck. I am guessing the movie's budget went on sets or hiring of stately homes, because the staircase in the mansion was magnificent; but there was not much left for anything else. I say this because Tony is played by Jason Priestly (yeah, Brandon Walsh in 90210), and in order to 'age' him for the older Tony, it is obvious the hair and makeup staff upended a 2 kilo bag of flour over his head. This movie is one of a series, as it turns out, and he would have played a younger Tony in the earlier ones. Will I watch the earlier ones? I don't know. As I mentioned, Heaven is seriously one of the most irritating protagonists I have ever encountered, and I doubt being translated into a movie will make her any more fetching.

I needed to cleanse my mind after viewing this, so indulged in some guilty pleasures that were less creepy - I YouTubed Bay City Rollers clips (yes, I know their drummer has been done for offences of a sexual nature, too). One of my favourites is Rock and Roll Love Letter, and it contains the lyrical magnificence that is: 'I see an ancient rhythm in a man's genetic code...'. Clearly, there are not enough references to deoxyribonucleic acid in songs these days.

Total Ickmeister

For the past few days I have been unwell with an infection, but some antibiotics and rest have got me on that hackneyed and cliched path known as the Road to Recovery. I was thinking of the text as I'm typing, and thought don't type that overused phrase, and if you MUST type that overused phrase, at least acknowledge it is as old and boring as shit.

Life can be stressful at times, like when you open your emails and find a letter from your electricity provider warning you about disconnection if you don't pay a certain amount at a certain time. I respect the importance of paying for a service, but is it really necessary to send an email when the bill's not actually late yet? They remind me of black-suited, sunglass-wearing goons hired by unscrupulous loan sharks.

Being a parent also brings its aggravation. Just once, it would be nice to hear, 'Good morning, Mum. God, you're great!', instead of, 'What's to have for breakfast?' This morning, whilst Mr 18 faffed about with the bread and toaster, I asked Master 15 what he was going to have for breakfast. He didn't even look up from his phone as he replied, 'The souls of the innocent.' I am yet to find that in the cereal aisle, and I am very fussy about what commercial cereal I purchase. I will have a look for this next time I'm shopping, and these souls of the innocent turn out to be one of those gruesome confections falsely promoted as food, he will not be breakfasting upon them.

I decided to give myself a bit of a digital detox today. It went okay. Then I checked my social media timelines and read the most grotesque thing I've heard about in a long time (and this is saying something; I'm the mother of a kid who wants to dine on the souls of the innocent). There's some rapper who goes by the name T.I. I do not know what the initials stand for, but I'm thinking it might be Talentless Imbecile or Twatwaffly Imperiousness, but most likely Total Ickmeister. Anyway, he said he takes his daughter to the gynaecologist every year to check if she's still a virgin. Ick. Just ick to the nth power. T.I., some pointers:

1. Hymens can break in various ways, not just penile/vaginal intercourse.

2. Sex takes many forms, not just penile/vaginal intercourse.

3. Surely what you're doing entails some kind of child abuse.

4. What the fuck type of doctor would go along with this type of foulness?

5. Your fetishization of virginity is creepy as fuck, and to extend your fetish to your daughter makes me want to vomit like a demonically possessed adolescent girl.

6. You're one of the reasons I hate rap music.

I had been recovering nicely from my minor illness, but reading about this loser almost had me spiralling into a relapse.  I had to go on You Tube and play Down by the Lazy River by the Osmonds - it's something of a cheerer-upper, and despite the naffness and cheesiness, by crikey those boys could sing and move!

The Healing Power of Dolmades

I'm kind of at a loose end at this very point in time (12.14 AEDT) as I type. Thought I might just toss about a few thoughts. I was rostered for just under two hours this morning, but am tutoring this afternoon. I guess I should plot my next novel, but I think I will plot a letter to my local council and suggest they build a few more drains in our street because we had some very welcome rainfall on Sunday afternoon, but it got quite scary when there was a very concentrated deluge going on.  We have been flooded twice in the past six years, and I am in no hurry to experience it again. It is amazingly distressing. It took me a long time to recover emotionally last time, and if it happens again, I will need some serious help. And you know what else? I feel like an arse for saying this because it's only WATER! It's not like losing a family member in tragic circumstances. Having to replace furniture is a first world problem, and I should remember this.

So, to stave off anxiety about heavy rainfall, I have been pigging into dolmades. Whilst not a recognised medication under the guidelines set to govern pharmaceutical bodies, the dolmades are doing a good job. I bought a tin yesterday - I do love me some of those tart little vine-wrapped fuckers - and as it happens, none of my family are all that keen, so I got to hog the lot. This is good.

Last Friday, between care work and tutoring, I pre-recorded an interview with my local ABC radio branch, to promote Howling on a Concrete Moon. I don't know if it's been aired yet, but the producer promised to email me a copy of the link, and when this is done, I will make a little video of it and share it to my socials ('socials' - am I hip or what?). The producer asked something along the lines of: 'Regarding the book being set in the Eighties, do you have a fondness for that era?' I almost snorted hard enough to send ribbons of snot from my nostrils that would have wavered like New Years Eve party streamers. I almost choked on the water I had been thoughtfully supplied, as I took a sip.  I felt like screeching, 'Are you fried? That was the worse decade EVER! Shit music, shit movies, shit attitudes, and shit hair!' Instead, I chuckled like the cultured yet cynical dilettante I try present as, and replied that I had lived through the Eighties and considered it a particularly horrendous time. Still, looking forward to sharing the interview.

Anyway, I'd better get going and work on my submission for more drains in our street. I'm aware you catch more flies with honey than you do vinegar, but at times I feel like buying a gigantic, weapons-grade can of Mortein, and a fly-swatter the size of a tennis court.

Cheers,
Your Blogger Bingells.