Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love

Valentine’s Day is a wonderful day where we can all come together and realise just how bitter and lonely we really are, and reconfirm our hatred of everyone who isn’t. Some spend the day waiting at the mailbox, hoping for the mailman to finally arrive and deliver their massive box of lubricious chocolates which they had sent – self-addressed – several days before. Others make hurried calculations to determine how many cats they can possibly spend the rest of their life with before the risk of a vicious cat uprising outweigh the benefits of a life where being mauled by Mrs. Tinkles marks the end of a sordid feline existence. I still don’t have a cat, so I’m spending the day updating a blog that’s frequented less often than O’Malley’s Bar. (Yes. Nick Cave references, everywhere).

Now, I have nothing against the score of lurid romantics. I enjoy nothing more than a good story involving romantic, but tragically inclined nightingales (niche market, but Wilde delivers). I’ve got nothing against the flurry of half-price sales on February 15, where people as romantically moribund as myself can drown themselves in an orgy of sad chocolate. I think the annual influx of love-heart toting bears and anatomically incorrect balloons might be an elaborate cover for an ursine invasion; or simply a little hackneyed, but that’s just me.

If you’re lucky enough to have someone today, make the most of the holiday. It might be a corporatized, meaningless holiday as abjectly romantic as a gun-slinging polar bear with the words ‘I wuv woo’ emblazoned on its blood-stained chest; but it comes only once per year, and you should enjoy it. Try to spare a thought for the hapless souls who aren’t as fortunate.

We will be, and we hate you for it as well. :)

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I don't feel amorous
I knew you'd misconstrue.

Plaster Powder

It’s been a while since I last posted a blog.

It’s also been a while since I last gained weight. The bathroom scales have begun to mock my belated attempt at gluttony by displaying acridly encouraging messages that yes, once again, I’ve lost 100g. Most people would be thrilled by this; I’m considering sticking my head in a bucket of lard, with the hope that the failure would go away. With my luck, not only would I consume the entire sordid mass without gaining a single skerrick of fat, I’d also lose a kilo from the vigorous exercise.

I could make a healthy living by shilling out fad diet books; making television appearances, and assiduously avoiding placed palm trees out of fear that I’d disappear from sight completely. They could make it a recurring segment entitled ‘Talking with Cameron’, where the regular viewers would primarily include pelagic cetaceans able to discern bass mutterings, and wondering just how they can strip away a few unsightly tonnes from their dorsal posterior. The market segment for whale viewership has been positively untapped.

I’ve developed a strong and vehement distaste for Sustagen, a diet supplement which would have had far more success as a makeshift substitute for walling plaster. The noxious goop has become a perennial fixture of my waking nightmares, overriding the normal human instinct which prevents innocuous food substitutes from becoming part of a continued vendetta. I’ve had fantasies consisting entirely of the powder’s graphic, and unnecessarily excessive demise. I would stretch it out on a train track, and laugh while it burned.

A week's worth of Sustagen. Finished.

The only upside I’ve found in making relatively svelte stick-insects look surprisingly rotund has been in sour cream. Sour cream improves any meal, without exception. There comes a time every day when I ask myself ‘Should I have a little sour cream with this?’ The answer comes back, quite clearly: ‘No. I should have a lot of sour cream on this.’ This is the high point of my day.

I’m aiming to gain weight considerably by the end of the year. Until then I’ll need to be content in making diffraction patterns every time I pass by a series of doors.  Goodnight.

Yes, I exhibit wave/particle duality.

Slave Called Shiver

Stupid Dream has arrived. I’ve spent the afternoon reading Anais Nin, and deciding quite prudently not to include any quotes on this blog. Ever. Septembre et Ses Dernières Pensées is still in transit, several months after I first made an order. If I could how incredibly, utterly, drifting-into-hyperbole-but-still-ridiculously keen I am for its arrival, I’d be far better writer than I am right now.

I’ll break from the usual blog rant/terrible poetry for a moment to ask that you take a look at Samantha Holford’s fundraising page. She’s running a half-marathon in the Twilight Festival on March 18, and hoping to raise at least $200 with proceeds going to Cure Cancer Australia. Even if you’re not overly interested in donating, or are about as charitable as Scrooge before his late night epiphany with a ghostly ménage a trios – have a quick look, if only to send mental and psychic support. This is a thing, as far as I’m concerned for this endorsement.

Today marks the second consecutive day off I’ve had since New Year, and despite all signs to the contrary – it doesn’t look like I’m about to be called in at 9 o’clock at night. To celebrate the occasion, I thought I’d give a few pieces of advice I’ve learned from a month and a half selling phones, which will only serve to show how little I actually know about selling phones to begin with.

Firstly: If you work at a trade, buy a protective cover and insurance for your phone. If you do not - bad things will happen to it. The number of customers we have in with cracked screens, chipped motherboards and assorted miscellaneous phone-related trauma is staggering. A decent phone case will put you back around $60. If you’ve recently entered into a $2000 contract, and are working at a site where dropping your phone is not only possible but likely – now is not the time to quibble over a sum you’re likely earning in less than a 2 hour period.

Secondly: If you work at a desk, buy a cover for your phone. The rules are slightly less relaxed here. If you’re working at a desk (so long as it’s not a desk inconveniently located out in the middle of a quarry, overlooking a precarious drop and exposed to the elements – in which case, you should defer to Rule 1) you likely do not need to be sporting a bulky piece of hardened rubber and a protective screen. Even a light case will offer it a far greater level of protection than allowing it to brave the elements naked. The one thing that you should remember is to have the case level higher than the edge of the screen – it will help break the fall. After this it really doesn’t matter whether it’s a leather flip case, or a case flowery enough to put a kimono to shame.

Thirdly: Now that you’ve bought your case, do not test its durability by throwing it against the wall. Just don’t.

Fourth - Coverage issues: If you live with a metropolitan area, chances are that you’ll receive excellent coverage with Optus or Virgin. If you’re constantly travelling out to the mines, or frequently complain that you can’t receive Optus coverage where you live – do not attempt to an Optus contract. If you need to stand out in the middle of the street to receive coverage, it’s a safe bet to assume that you might want to switch carrier. Stubbornly refusing to mention that you need to dangle off a ladder in your backyard before you’ll receive even one bar of coverage, until we’re halfway through a contract, all because you ‘Didn’ wanna go with Telstra,’ is an excellent and productive use of an afternoon.

Vodaphone coverage is less than exceptional in Mackay, at least until they erect a few more towers. If you want to go on a plan with them, expect a few raised eyebrows.

That’s about all. I stopped listening to Porcupine Tree to finish writing this. I’ve started it up again, and that’s as good enough a reason as any to bring this blog to a close.

Black Coffee

"On page eleven I found a poem titled 'Florida Dawn'. I skipped down through image after image about water-melon lights and turtle-green palms and shells fluted like bits of Greek architecture.
'Not bad.' I thought it was awful." Sylvia Plath

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I'd avoid the bitter poetry that makes reading blogs like this an exercise in inanity. I intend to break that promise as quickly as I've made it. As before, a great deal of this means nothing - some of it does, but that shouldn't get in the way of reading it. I've spent the last week pretending to sell phones, secreting away a copy of 1984, and abysmally attempting to gain weight. So far I've lost 1.5kg - success. For those that expected something better than badly written poetry: Jimi Hendrix. For those curious about the blog title: The Seatbelts.

'Pressed up against the beetle
Alone in the dark electric box;
Turning out Labyrinthian explanations
For the mangled mass of Skinner flesh.'

'Blame the pretension of enjoyment

On this sudden onset of depressive anxiety;
Confirmation, affirmation
Proselytizing, analysing;
Throwing words out without the rhyme or reason
Of a madman walking to the gallows
To deliver his final vapid verse
Plucked straight out of Corinthians and a scribbled toilet curse.'

'Laying flint against the mettle;

Lighting spark after spark of fizzled fury
Fortuitous meandering verse
From mental stone plucked
As meaningless as gravel
That lines the path
And leads straight
To the manure at the rose’s verge.' 

Pulchritude

'Where is the beauty in your heart
Which sees the world through fickle eyes
And turns a love to vapid lies.
Where the lascivious kiss
Was nothing but a lecher’s wish;
Or a once romantic day
Nothing but a children’s play.

Where is the beauty in your soul?
Directed by such terminable desires
That used to ignite the midnight fires
And are now empty at the core;
The fruit that Adam spurned and Eve then turned
Rotten evermore.'

Missive Missed

'What is it?
What do you hope to find
By clawing at the head of some poor wretch
To find memories that a heart couldn’t etch;
Dragging at the clasp of some mental latch
Spinning off words that simply will not catch.

What is it?
What do you hope to find
To break a masochistic soliloquy
So that you could ramble with brevity;
Not once, not twice – not three times or four
Not again will it cross my lips,
Not ever, anymore.'

ビキニ・スポーツ・ポンチン

A few weeks ago, a man came into Mount Pleasant with an interesting tattoo on his neck. Curious, I asked him about it. ‘It’s me name,’ he replied proudly. The Asian characters scrawled on his neck read命名, which sure enough mean ‘naming’ (neither here nor there, I initially misread it as 冷名- lit. ‘cool (cold)-name’ - instant poker face for the rest of the contract).

I’m writing this not because I want to dissuade people from getting tattoos, or even getting hastily scrawled Chinese characters permanently inscribed on their nether regions. I understand the attraction having a symbol which appears to distil the well of meanings, shades, nuances that a word like ‘Love’ carries into a simple, elegant character like 愛. I’m not trying to discourage it; the personal meaning it carries is by far the most important thing in a tattoo. I will advise however that you do your homework first: concepts do not translate easily into different languages. It’s not appealing to suddenly discover that your expression of pulchritude is instead a commonly used euphemism for prostitutes; less so to find that it’s misspelled.

I’d advise anyone planning to get a tattoo in another language to do one simple thing: check your design. Find a native speaker (I wouldn’t recommend a student, unless they’re exceptionally proficient in the language, or it’s a commonly used word/expression. Even after a few years of study, it’s easy to get caught up in ‘Hey, I understand that!’ and miss the point that semantically, it’s a piece of drivel that a native speaker would never utter in a million years). Have them check the meaning, especially if it’s a longer phrase, or a colloquial expression. Never trust character charts at a parlour - you’re paying for someone to canvass your skin, not provide an accurate transcription in Cyrillic. And never, under any circumstances, believe anyone that claims your name can easily be transliterated. If you see a chart listing ‘A愛B 晩C気’ you can rest assured that it’s complete gibberish, and can nope out of the store safely.

The exception to this, of course, is if you have a sense of irony. I saw a woman walking the other day with the words 朝人 printed on the back of her neck. Literally: ‘morning person’. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t translate well; or that it’s likely to get a few confused stares from native speakers – it’s original, and funny (I’ll guess she’s being facetious, as no one is actually a morning person.)

I long ago decided that if I got a tattoo, it would be something completely vapid and meaningless. I would be personally thrilled with a tattoo reading ‘Should have spent more than $17.50.’ If anyone asked me what it meant, I could simply reply: Prosperity.

Babushka

They turned down the coat at the edge of the bath-houses; prescription pants mislaid, and allegations of theatre imitators forthcoming and rightfully so. There are few men who would stop a train to look for a hat; but they were successful, as the birch trees snapped their branches and the engine spits noxious boiled sap from the fire. Time moves interminably when you're living in the bathroom, and the landlord forbids partitions. A life defined by fickle memories; broken, rejected, discarded, erased, improved. Harsh vitriol spills from work houses, and into the street where wise men debate the folly of lottery divided by seven. Words cloaked in new meaning, turned down – vivacious meanings discarded, as if suddenly found salacious as a lecher’s evening stare. Trulls, trollops, dullards; piquant writers condemned to spurn never-ending filth, to be repeated by lesser men with the vivacity of freshmen. Wearing stolen robes; garish pieces which do not fit quite well and draw fits of deserving ridicule.

"To laugh with Pity at the crowds that press
Where Fashion flaunts her robes by Folly spun,
Whose hues gay-varying wanton in the sun."

From Russia, With Love

I’m currently listening to Arkona. I’ve started the poor habit of starting these posts with whatever-I-seem-to-be-listening-to; however it’s felt relevant – at least to the extent that this rambling blog actually has relevance. The esoteric Russian folk metal group remains one of the most passionate and powerful bands I’ve heard to date. Never mind the fact that the lead singer Maria (Masha Scream) Arhipova has a voice that could leave Catherine the Great quailing, and a pack of wolves suddenly seem impotent. The unique combination of folk and metal maintains the evanescence and power of each respectively. Yarilo is one of the few songs I could ever see myself dancing to. It shares this ignoble designation with Japan X’s Kurenai.

The mental images this conjures should involve long-legged spiders tap-dancing across a hot-plate. It shouldn’t be pretty.

On an unrelated note, I’ve almost reached a thousand page views. While I’m convinced that at least 50 of these are from when I tried to format the first entry, I’d like to thank the people that have clicked on this site, either mistakenly or intentionally. The few Russian views lead me to believe that ‘mistakenly’ might be more often than not, while the high number of American hits makes me confident that at least a few people are running proxies through a small flower shop in Phoenix.

For those interested, Google Chrome users far outweigh the lot, and 22 views have been from Android phones. The one view from a Samsung was likely by me, on an archaic flip-screen phone that rendered the page in tiny little vertical lines of text. It wasn’t repeated. On that phone related note, I’ll bring this to a close. For the couple of Russians, I’ll leave you with this:

Наказ писала, флоты жгла, 

И умерла, садясь на судно

"Decreed the orders, burned the fleets

And died sitting down on the toilet”