Trying to explain my thoughts on the blogging world (aka The Blogosphere)

So yes, as I was saying. If the blogosphere was a gender she would definitely be female. She can be kind, warm, inviting, nurturing and inclusive; hilariously funny and profoundly moving; witty and intelligent and delightfully low brow; strong and inspiring; a mother, a sister, a friend.

For the last couple of years, as an observer playing a safe distance away from the main playground, this was the impression I got. There was something for everyone and everyone seemed to play nice.

Now as I find myself wanting to participate more, the blogosphere is showing me her other side which I find - dare I say - equally female in nature. That is cliquey, bitchy and in some extreme instances bitterly envious. There are sites like this one which seem, at times, positively venomous...

...and then there are the comments boards.







Left: my brain trying to sort this subject out.

So, the good ol' comments. This is where the true nature of the Blogosphere is revealed. I have to admit the comments on blogs have always annoyed me for some reason. On sites like Dooce, for instance, En masse there is something sycophantic about the hundreds, sometimes thousands of comments saying 'best. post. ever.' and the like. There is something reminiscent of the screaming women in the Oprah audience. I can't really talk as I've commented on the Dooce and I think I even said 'I LOVE YOU' (caps and all) so yeah, I'm not having a go at the individual, it's the monster we create together, chums!

So yeah, I have been commenting more regularly and I've been my most prolific on Mamamia. The thing I love about her site is that she encourages feedback and comments and there is a real community feel to it. As a person Mia seems really sweet. I like that she has guest posters which I think really shows a generous spirit. She's self effacing, articulate and is a deep thinker but, yeah, I also have to be honest and say I prefer my writing a bit edgier, a bit more irreverent, a bit grittier, a bit less earnest. Mia has yet to make me piss myself laughing* unlike Catherine Deveny (Whom I wish would start a blog but I wouldn't be surprised if she can't be bothered - and that makes me love her even more!)

Anyway, where the fuck was I (I said I liked it dirty so I better grit the fuck up myself as well!).

So I've been adding my two cents worth here and there at Mamamia. Mostly my comments go unacknowledged (which is fine, really honestly I'm just fine) but there has been the odd occasion a fellow sycophant, I mean commentor, has agreed with my POV and even given me a smiley face (aww noice). The other day, however, I found myself in a bitchfight with none other than the guest poster herself!

Stay tuned! I will give you a clue - it had something to do with my rambling which I'm doing right now.

I shall gather my thoughts and tell you the story tomorrow my invisible little friends!

*Not literally, my pelvic floor is quite strong despite having two kids and not doing my exercises. Ok, I'm doing them right now.

The BLOGOSPHERE

Pinch and a punch for the first of the month!

I wonder how many other 'bloggers' are using that line out there in the... BLOGOSPHERE. Anyway, I am aiming to find my place in it all. Like the new kid at school, I am hesitant yet eager and highly sensitive but as I write more and read more blogs, the true nature of the... BLOGOSPHERE is revealing herself. I say 'herself' as there is something highly female about the phenomenon. Funny that, as actually, the first two blogs that introduced me to the medium (oddtodd and scott, to be certain) are (were in scott's case) written by men.

Then I found out about Dooce by way of an article in The Age and became addicted. I got the idea into my head that there must be lots of rich people out there making lots of money from telling funny stories about their life. I thought People like my stories! I can make some money! (0r mon-ay as Odd Todd would say) How easy! I found my calling! After about, oh, six months to year of preparing myself procrastination I started to write. It was fun. I think I managed about five posts. WooHoo!

Then it slowly but surely dawns on me that there aren't too many blogs out there as lucrative as Dooce. I begin to realise that no, I am not a pioneer blogger. Not the potential Dooce of Australia. So I kind of lose heart and stopped for a while.

Then a year after that I got right back on that horse, I did, and started with a different attitude, indeed I did! While I'd like to have a few people read my blog I don't for a minute think that mine is anything more than the next one. The prime objective now is to write for writing's sake and to have an account of what I'm doing with my life. I also wanted to talk about my experience with my kids as they grow up. I've always been really SHIT at keeping a diary. It's one of my regrets but I also live by mottos along the lines of tomorrow is another day and life is a series of moments. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I'll get there. Tommorrow is another day and I can start now.

Anyway, I have totally gone off on some weird tangent but I've done it! First post for NaBloPoMo!

I did really want to talk about the... BLOGOSPHERE but I'm tired so next time.

And that will be the last time I evoke a drum roll with the use of full stops and caps.

Do I look like I came down in the last shower? Well, maybe not literally but you look like a bit of a chump

That's probably what the Clive Peter's salesman would have answered (if he was injected with some Get Smart-like truth serum) if I had asked him that question.

Holy Mary Mother of God. That's why I hate those stores so much. Those sales people are so Ten Steps of Selling brainwashed that they don't know how ridiculous they sound... and I have to say, in my experience, Clive Peter's staff are the worst of them all.

We are on a mission to get a few things done before summer including getting some proper air conditioning for this place. So while Asa was off talking air conditioners I thought I'd wander over to the TVs. I want to get a flat screen. Asa needs some convincing. We have both been kind of against them on principle but now I am coming around. Just that, aesthetically, they look so much nicer than our old chunker bunker cheap as chips silver 51cm rear projection. Having said that I honestly don't like the HUGE MOTHER FUCKER TV's on any kind of level much to some people's dismay. Not only that, I really, REALLY don't like them on principle (especially Plasma, don't get me started). I hate that in the last few years and in a very stealthy, almost imperceptible way, it's become NORMAL to spend several thousand dollars on televisions. Wasn't it only seven or ten years ago that $1,000 bought you a top of the range TV? Now it appears that's a bargain. A bargain that does not exist according to this 'say it don't spray it' bucky toothed salesman.

So back to Clive Peter's. He's showing me the 40" TV's which basically range in price from around $1,500 to $5,000 and this is where I reckon they get most of us. Even me, with my SUPERIOR PRINCIPLES and my guard well and truly up is wondering whether I should be looking at 'middle of the range' (around $3,000) because if 200 Mhz is great, does that make 100 Mhz shit? We can't affort $3,000 but we could if we really wanted to and we would be able to pay in cash. What about all the people who can't even afford $500 in cash let alone $3,000? 2 year interest free loan, or credit card, that's right!

So yeah, I guess I'm going off on a bit of rant and acting more than a bit superior but I can't help it. Some people can be just so dumb and greedy and materialistic and envious these days and it really does give me the shits sometimes. I want to reiterate that's some people. And I'm sure it's all people some of the time. We have to be vigilante. OH WHY CAN'T EVERYONE BE LIKE ME?!

Just kidding.

Kind of.

Like I said, I almost bought it (the perceived need yada, yada, not the TV). And I know I have in the past, and I'm sure I will in the future.

So, again, back to my man at CP. I'm interested in a Sony but it's $1,899 and I'm confused as I know so many people who have big brand TV's which are 40" and cost them around $1,000. And this salesperson is saying no way. And I so feel like saying 'yes way' but for some reason I can't. I feel embarrassed for him which is just so ridiculous. I ask him what kind of deal he can do with the Sony 40" and a $800 24" (which we need for a computer monitor/spare TV for the spare room) and I pursue the $1,000. I forget my empathetic embarrassment for him and tell him a friend got a Panasonic 40" with a Wii thrown in. Honestly, he did not want to hear it, literally! He spoke over me! Telling me it can't be true! (but it was, I'm telling you!). He tells me he can absolutely do a 'deal' for me. So I say, ok what can you do? He then asks me to come and sit down in the Office (!) while he speaks to his manager but, get this, he will need 'some kind of committment' from me. I almost laugh at him and this is where I would have used the 'Do I look like I came down in the last shower' line if I had the sass. I ask 'Can't you just give me a ball park figure?". No he can't. It's the policy* (VERY stupid, way-to-get-customers-NOT-to-come-back policy, Clive!) He then goes on to say that they have a 14 day return policy so if I do find a better deal AFTER I HAVE BOUGHT the goods, I can come back to CP and they will match the price. Oh, I see! That's a great deal! Why didn't you mention that before! I buy from you, THEN I compare prices in an ample 14 day time period. And I'm sure I would encounter no problems with you matching a cheaper quote.

GREAT DEAL!















Thanks for you topsy turvy offer but no thanks.


*The sad thing is this policy obviously works

Another weekend a'comin

I remember chancing across a late night special on Robbie Williams and he said something that made me kind of like him. He said (and this so not verbatim) 'don't listen to me, I contradict myself with every sentence'...It was pretty much a throwaway line but I loved it as I can so so relate. I loved that he could admit this to himself and others instead of paint himself into a corner with his contradictions as I tend to do.

I thought of this in the shower because yesterday, if I had got around to posting on this blog I was going to defend my addiction to The Bachelor and Bachelorette which is finishing up on the dream channel (for a trash junkie like myself) that is GO! (Channel 99). I was going to go on about how these shows are actually not empty and vacuous because after all isn't love the most important thing in the world? Without Love wouldn't we, quite literally, not exist at all? I was all gooey after accidentally watching the end of three hours of recorded Bachelorette finale to find she chose the poor boy and felt all gooey about it.

Then I googled them and found out they have broken up. I am so surprised!
Yeah, right.

Well anyway, today is a different story. As I let the lovely warm drops shower on me for a little longer than four minutes I realised I just have to stop watching TV, get my notebook out (or laptop on WITHOUT internet connection) and start creating. I have not writen past those first five BRILLIANT!!! lines of my teen Twilightesque novel so I'm getting all angsty again. I also have a couple of other ideas which I'm working on (not writing related) so my brain is buzzing!

I just hope those wearies tonight are not so chronic that I forget that I'm not watching TV.

My active dreamlife

Over the last few weeks I have been having absolutely epic dreams. I always have had very vivid dreams. In fact some dreams go back to, well, since I can remember remembering.

Actually now that I think about it a bit more maybe these epic dreams I'm having now are no less full on than other ones I've had in the past. Like the one where I shot Hitler in his temple (as some kind of right hand man general type character) or the other where I was being chased through a forest by very scary but oh so cool and sexy vampires with a bunch of 'survivors'. (This was about a year before Interview with a Vampire which makes it, what, fifteen years before Twilight and that's what the vampires looked like in my dream, all dreadlocks and long coats but of course there was The Lost Boys about ten years before I had this dream so yeah, er herm, now where was I?)

So I guess what I'm saying these dreams are more full on than the ones I had, say, a month ago. You could say I'm going through one of my epic dream periods.

And the dream that prompted this post?

It was a good old armeggedon dream which started off very cinematically. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if my dream stole this 'scene' directly from a movie. I'm this middle aged business man with dark brown hair and a receding hairline on a plane. I finally get to chat with a steward who I've been admiring from afar over a number of flights (I must travel a lot) and just as I'm feeling quite pleased with myself (when I say cinematically, I mean it - I'm sitting down in the aisle seat while she is tending to someone and we share a shy flirtatious smile) the plane gets into some violent turbulence. The captain's voice is over the loud speaker as the plane dives down into a busy city street. I'm actually thinking something like "great just as I've finally broken the ice with this girl", then it goes black.

Now I'm on the outside viewing it like I am watching a movie. The plane crash is just one of many distastrous things happening. Buildings are crashing down etc etc...and yes, I have seen the trailer for 2012 so it's very much like that.

Anyway, somehow I have survived this crash with just a bit of a bloodshot eye to show for it! I'm in the city's streets (have no idea what city) and heading out from the centre of town where I reach a narrow street of shops and terrace houses. The grass median strips are mostly yellow (suggesting drought) but I look closely and dark liquid is bubbling up moistening the earth and staining the grass. I recoil in horror as I realise it's blood. As I come to this realisation I notice the dogs in the street. There are about ten or twelve in a pack which are/were obviously pets (there is even a pug) but they are whining and getting quite frenzied. They notice me so I go straight to a run down terrace house with a large windowed shop front and ask the people if I can come in. They let me in straight away and we're all like 'What the fuck is going on?' as we check laptops with news blaring on the TV. Meanwhile the dogs are scrabbling outside and I'm really worried that they are trying to get in to attack us. But then the dogs are kind of forgotten.

So now I think I'm me and not the business man anymore. The people who live in the house are kind of sexually perverted. Well, maybe that's a bit too strong as they seem genuine and harmless but they are into something strange. This is more a feeling than anything. Maybe it's because one of the guys is Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I was introduced to him via the film Happiness and sorry, Phillip, you will never shake that character in my eyes!

Anyway, Phillip is not the only character from the silver screen. One of the girls is Dawn from Buffy and she and this other girl are the guys girlfriends. And now I am remembering the kinky thing. Their boyfriends prefer the girls to dress up as guys (like Buck in United States of Tara).. Anyway the Dawn character moved me as at one point she had an expression that was so childlike, even baby like and I thought to myself 'that's the face her mother knows'...

Phew..still more!!!

So now I think I am that Dawn girl or at least I'm viewing her background. (Meanwhile there is still a sense of the world ending). I'm in a commission flat type place and this bogan but good mother comes home to her daughter who exclaims happily that their gas bill has been paid by the landlord. The mother practically bursts into tears and is like "No, nooo!" which confuses the girl (Dawn, who is about eleven) but I know what's going on and understand why the mother might be upset. The mother goes to the landlord (who is a hardfaced bitch with yellow bleached short hair and dangling ciggie) and starts yelling about being able to afford the bill (it was $8.00) and it wasn't even due so why did she pay it? The landlord is just looking down writing in her ledger as she tells her it was due today so that's close enough. The mother knows she can't do anything but accept it. 'It' being the 'administration' fee and interest the landlord wacks on to the total which takes the bill up to $38.00...

Then I'm the girl as a teenager and I finally get out of the greasy spoon I'm working at (to pay off my mum's bills or something) and move, literally, across the other side of the tracks to a funky cafe in the nice part of town. The owner is the landlord's son and I'm so happy that he is not a bogan, and more importantly, not evil anymore. I find out he was just another victim of his mother. Even though I don't remember him in the dream before this point, I think he was a bully and it's a revelation that he's actually nice...but is he?

While the girl (me?) has changed places she hasn't changed jobs and is still a chip fryer. She walks through the cafe that is tastefully decorated. The waiting staff are friendly and clean but as we go deeper into the kitchen the fryer is just the same as the one from the greasy spoon she 'escaped' and she still get's splattered with hot fat. Only more so this time as the vats are frosted over. The armeggedon part of the dream crops up again as the kitchen is tremoring as the girl is trying to fry her chips. As the ice falls in it makes the oil pop and splatter really loudly.

Oh my God. I'm so tired but I'm glad I got it down. There was another part to it but I've forgotten. Actually I don't think my brain has enough space for it and probably has had to let it go...

Far out..what does it all mean!!!

Probably something very boring like processing the almost cooking disaster with the pad thai last night.

This is me building a bridge

Do you ever remember a petty little incident, start stewing over it and get all het up about it again? Like something that happened a week, month or even a year ago? Well for some reason I started thinking about the time we had to pay fifteen bucks for a half serve of very average spaghetti bolognese.

Oh, now I'm sounding like a tightarse as I remember recently going through old posts and noticing a pattern of whinging about money. But anyway...

This happened in Ballarat about two years ago maybe? We went to Sovereign Hill and while we waited for another family we had lunch at a little cafe. Pascal was being very indecisive as three year olds tend to be so I just go ahead and order the spag bolognese for him. I ask the waitress, who was young and friendly, whether they do half serves because you see, I know he probably won't eat it and I don't like wasting food or money and she says sure, of course we can do that. So we get the pasta and Pascal says 'Yuck'. I'm sitting there thinking you and me both as I eye the meat which looks suspiciously like the Campbell's canned shit my mum uses to bulk up her Spaghetti Sauce*. I make some half arsed attempt at eating it but it's mostly left there on the plate. I vow at this point I am not going to force food on Pascal again but, you know, at least it's only a half serve so that's half the $15.90 price right? No. Wrong.

I paid fifty bucks or whatever it was and as I'm walking out, I'm thinking "Hmm, that was a bit more than I expected to pay...and it was crap." I sit back at the table staring at the oily suspicious looking bolognese and on Asa's nudge, decide to go back and sort this out. This older waitress goes through my order and there it is, $14.90 for the pasta. I'm like 'What?! It was half a serve!" and she points to the very literal small print at the bottom of the last page that says something about taking one dollar off the price for half serves. And she has the nerve to be rude about it! The Harridan! She feeds me some line about having to still go to the trouble of cooking the meal as a justification. I just paid up as you do and gave her a little bit of a greaser. Which from me is probably more like a sad clown look.

I get out and that comeback you think of just after but too late comes to me ( 'Oh, you mean the trouble of turning the microwave on')


But today, two years later..another, even better thought comes to me. I should have refused to pay for the Spaghetti Bolognese at all! Here am I sitting in traffic two years later thinking this. It is/would have been brilliant! Even better, I could have given her two dollars for the pasta. I mean what could she have done? Nothing, that's what. Put that it in your thin puckered smokers lips and suck on it!

So now I'm over it and I will know what to do next time.

Almost can't wait. Game On potential future rude waitress moles!

*No doubt a handy hint from Woman's Weekly circa 1976

Welcome banner idea for the idiot (who I'm sure as a little penis) on the Eastern Freeway this morning...

Congratulations! Due to you flooring it at 30 kilometres over the limit, changing lanes about fifty times in a demented fashion and basically risking the lives of men, women, children and tiny little babies, you have arrived at your destination 3 minutes earlier!