Oh happy banana, where art thou?

From the 'you don't miss your banana til your supermarket runs dry' category:

Overseas SP readers would probably not have heard of the massive cyclone that wiped out 95% of Australia's banana crop a few months ago. Today I went to the supermarket & purchased two (2) bananas only to discover that said B's would cost me $8!! Eight fucking dollars!! Sadly I decided to return said B's to their nest.

Apparently we will not have decent B's for another 10months. *sigh* I shall miss their calming influence in my life. :)

PS...> a search on Google Image search for 'monkey' 'banana' & 'happy banana' turned up some really silly photos....

"Me want some happy bananas!!"

Other intriguing books...

Other books on my TO BUY list..

<- Salley Vickers, The Other Side of You.. seems to be intelligent writing & great plot.. woman falls in love with her psychiatrist. Sounds juicy. Click here for reviews.





-> William Burroughs, The Yage Letters Redux, is an updated version of Burroughs' journey into the Amazon jungle hunting the ultimate chemical 'high': his search for the sacred ayahuasca. There is a heap of new material in here, a bunch of lost letters have been included that reveal more about the trip than his original text. I've always been into his writing because it is so on the edge of anything that was written then or even now. The problem with Burroughs was that he was so ahead of his time. Pick up Junky or Naked Lunch or any of his others and they are so incredibly contemporary, so rich. Great stuff. Review here... and here's a longer more in-depth one in the Independent.

Book: Cloud Atlas

Currently reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Just into the second chapter and its an intriguing book.. its got me in the first 20 pages. The text is very rich and characters very well drawn out. Actually the reason I chose it was not just b/c its been shortlisted for the Booker, but also b/c of the great cover art... I'm finding lately that like a good wine, you can sometimes intuitively pick a book by the cover... so to get all cheesy, yes, you can sometimes pick a book by its cover!

Next book may be another Chuck, but I've had to space those out lest I read them all at once.

Grumpy no more..

Ok, I'm definitely OVER my grumpy week (see two posts down for my temper tantrum outburst). It was a tough one. Must've been some kind of b.s. astrological alignment messing with my mojo.

But now some good things are happening...

a) am currently fine-tuning my chai recipe, have added organic ginger & am seriously planning to make my own mix & launching a nation-wide advertising campaign.... stay tuned...

b) found out I wasn't accepted for Doha middle-east gig, mainly b/c I don't speak an Asian language, but am cool with it b/c I don't think a raging feminist like me should go to a muslim country & apparently its 45c there everyday and sandstorms blow off the desert... which is kind of interesting, but not for 8 months.

c) am actually submitting something into a literary journal! Eeek!

d) by hook or by crook am heading to the UK as soon as I can get my financials sorted..

e) just ate a Lindt ball - YUM.

f) made brief eye-contact with a very spunky man at the supermarket today - just nice to now they exist!

g) am doing hot yoga twice a week.. & feeling very buff & fit like...

h) live in a very nice pod with a cute Jack Russell doglet named "googie" who visits regularly & is always happy to see me.

i) today the sun has cracked through the Melbourne grey blanket of clouds...

What things are making you happy today? Hello? Is there anyone out there??

art or just stupid?

I just read this in The Age:: I kind of like Damien Hirst, but this thing smacks of the biggest waste of money ever. This is when the art world gets so stupid & up its own arse.. it seems to just exist in its own little bubble unaware of the world around it. Methinks that the money could be better spent... this guy is obsessed with creating a diamond skull at the cost of STG10million, meanwhile somewhere in Africa a child has to hunt rats for dinner. I know he's trying to be all ironic & make a statement, but at what cost? Stupidity is rampant amongst the so-called educated classes...

"The latest project of British modern artist Damien Hirst, a skull cast in platinum and encased in diamonds, will be the most expensive piece of artwork ever created, it was reported today.
Entitled For the Love of God, the life-size human skull, covered in 8,500 diamonds, will cost between eight and STG10 million ($A24.84 million) to create, The Observer newspaper said.
Hirst remains best known for earlier conceptual works in which creatures including a shark and a cow were pickled in formaldehyde inside glass tanks.
"We have been buying diamonds slowly and have worked out that it will take about eight and a half thousand to completely cover the surface of the skull," the 40-year-old told The Observer.
"The biggest expense will be the 50-carat beauty that will sit on the forehead. That one alone will cost in the region of three million to five million pounds ($A7.45 A12.42 million).
"It is certainly the biggest single undertaking by a jeweller since the Crown jewels."
He said creating the world's most expensive work of art would be "a lot less stressful than putting a bloody great shark in a tank of formaldehyde".
"I just want to celebrate life by saying to hell with death. What better way of saying that than by taking the ultimate symbol of death and covering it in the ultimate symbol of luxury, desire and decadence?
"The only part of the original skull that will remain will be the teeth. You need that grotesque element for it to work as a piece of art. God is in the details and all that.
"I've always adhered to the principle that the simplest ideas are the best, and this will be the ultimate two fingers up to death. I want people to see it and be astounded. I want them to gasp."
- AFP

Seriously, what a wanker.

BORED to tears.

[warning: stream of consciousness temper tantrum with lots of swearing]
Oh fuck. Here i am bored again... fuck. I have not heard from Doha yet re: job in middle east. I don't wait well at all. I just want things to change & hurry the fuck up. Yes, bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored with job; Bored with customer service [puts finger down throat & tries to dry-reach, but remembers that she is definately not bulemic & just had very nice tofu, noodles & miso soupy thing & doesn't want to see it again because that would be so boring...]; Bored with things taking so long to CHANGE. I just want to travel, get the flock out of here & BLOW this popsicle stand.... THAT is the problem with Australia, it's so fucken comfortable that its hard to get the fuck out of here and everywhere else is SO FAR AWAY from here. Its not like Amsterdam is just over the water, or LA just down the highway.... I'm out here on the OUTER RIM OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE and I'm ready to go, go, go, go, just got to get the financial challenges out of the way. Fuck. THERE is nothing new in my world, in my life, it all just feels like its spinning around in the same old circles like a re-run episode of Friends, except that none of my friends use hair-straighteners (thank god) -- I can't wait for the dead straight-hair thing to end one fine day, this hair-trend has been going for almost a decade now! I blame YOU Jennifer Anniston!!!! Yes, YOU and the bland sitcom you rode in on]... What the fuck am I waiting for?? Aarrghhhhhhhh!!! HELP!
+ + +
Later... Over my tantrum....But I'm having one of those days where my life doesn't seem to make any sense, even to me. Everything feels futile, useless & pointless. Hello existential crisis #30,947. Fuck it. Even writing, blogging things seems pointless. Why the fuck do I even do this? Tonight I am seriously thinking trashing this blog. It's 12:15am and time to sleep. Goodnight.

DNA stories.

Today I had this thought:

Our DNA is made up of light-encoded threads, like fibre-optic filaments these threads are actually stories that have been bequeathed to us by our parents & ancestors etc. The whole human being organism is just threads of stories woven together. So we each of us carry around a whole library of information from which to draw from or be influenced by. The act of writing is to release those stories, unlock them and set them free to gallop in the fields of the world.

So there.

Baby Uma

Reconnected: I just love the internet... my old friend Claire from India travelling days found me through google, she's now based in Portland, OR. And she has a baby too! Such a cute little button... The baby storm continues... an amazing photo of this little smiling buddha..

Quote Geek

"If you can't annoy somebody,
there's little point in writing."

- Kingsley Amis

a gallery moment...

I work in a very loud, crowded environment with lots of background noise and I was talking to this customer about the Impressionists and he says: “I just saw the Suzanne show in Paris.”

Oh, Suzanne, I’m not aware of that Impressionist. So not wanting to reveal my ignorance I just nod and say: “Ah, yes, Suzanne. Nice... Okay, here’s your receipt & tickets, entry is through the doorway behind you.”

Then I realized that he what he actually said was Cezanne. ;-) Silly me.

Babies, babies, babies everywhere...

All my friends are having babies at the moment, they are coming thick & fast.. there's like some kind of baby storm on at the moment. Here's the latest, birthed by one of my oldest, dearest friends Mz D, just two days b4 my birthday in California. Little Cyran Ysa is so damn cute, I can't wait to see her in real life... i just love being Aunty Meri. xx

More Ultra Haiku

"The rats built the maze."

- thanks for the reminder Ms D!