a new orifice

Note: above is not the new office, it's the cat lamp and the cat.

So weeeeee back in Bangkok. Lots of things happening here and from all reports, my cousin is still happily married six whole weeks after my mum wore NO UNDERPANTS AT ALL for the entire wedding ceremony and reception.

Our British Airways flight made it clear that British travel standards haven't changed much since the First Fleet. They charged us four hundred dollars excess baggage then flagged me as a terrorist because somehow I was checked in as having no luggage. Four hundred dollars' worth of no luggage - WHAT?? The flight left an hour late because of bad weather, the toilet floor was covered with urine and smelled like the boys' toilet at school and they served us scurvy-flavoured bread rolls. Good times.

On another note, Suvarnabhumi airport is my new favourite thing. Thai national workers there are reassuringly unaffected by any level of professionalism. To wit: immigration check-in chick reading real estate brochure while checking passport; baggage handler fast asleep on seats; utterly nonsensical management of cabs out the front etc etc. Still, it's good to be home.

As 'he' announced on his myspace page, Ninja contracted ringworm while he was away at band camp. He's fine now - the black, crusty patches are regrowing hair and he seems to have regained the will to live. I did learn to never EVER shampoo him again and if I do to never ever EVER trust a man to responsibly wield the bath hose. I did specifically request that the water pressure be kept low and the stream to point at the cat's head only - the temptation to aim the water at high speed at both me and the cat proved too much for the man in question and the situation wound up at its natural conclusion: man laughing manically; woman screaming hysterically; cat scrambling, mewling, scratching, panicking frantically. End of scene.


Ninja post-hose: dark mood

Obviously we have moved, after a series of covert weekend removals, to a new office. It's in an old crumbly townhouse Rog is renting on soi 23. It had previously been a hair salon and a cafe and had been vacant for awhile, so was not expensive. Had two floors painted despite various Thai work-ethic-related delays. They started out enthusiastic enough, but interest petered after a few nights and they just stopped showing up. One whole guy arrived on the last night but after scooting in and grabbing his guitar (how anyone paints without a guitar is what i want to know), he handed over the final bits of the job to two random motorcycle taxi dudes he enlisted from the street. Thais are insanely superstitious, so who the fuck knows.

Anyhoo, after bleaching the bottom bathroom and most of the new towels and cleansing the fridge of Golden Staph and feeling like I'd dipped my face and hands in lye, we have a shiny new fully equipped orifice. All up there are four floors, the top one even has a small outdoor terrace that no one is allowed on. There's also a critter getting about - see? Grubby paw prints free!



So that's it for now. More on stuff later.

the welcome wagon

Time marches on neverending…

…tiiiime keeps its own time. That was a track called “Finally” by Kings of Tomorrow feat. Julie McKnight featured on, amongst other things, Yoshiesque 2 double CD by Deep Dish, something or other mix, few years old now, still quite relevant however, being that classic tunes by nature endure well past the stage of superficial enjoyment and, if prolific enough, imprint themselves in a lasting fashion on one’s psyche, to be regurgitated unprovoked by the brain some years later, long past the point where any thought about said tune had been consciously entertained.

So! Here I am back in Sydney. I’m not back for good, just for a bit, performing web producer like functions from a small cold room containing worryingly little stimuli. Rog, Jon and I are all living and working together in Sydney until we fly back on October 20 (o blessed, blessed, sweet, blessed day) so we can collaborate more closely with our design team, Collider, and periodically fantasise about bludgeoning one another to death with whatever object will produce the most pain.

My job is now a bit of everything but mostly being the fall girl for whenever shit gets heavy. It’s a thankless task because shit getting heavy is basically the theme of Dallus, but I don’t do it for the thanks, I do it for the embarrassingly extravagant salary. It would be tasteless of me to disclose the full amount, but I can say that I buy at least one gourmet sandwich from the deli up the road per day. That’s crazy money, my friends. Don’t let it come between us.

Aside from not really having mountains of cash (I was being sarcastic in the previous paragraph) and getting my ass chaffed for things that have only recently come under my jurisdiction there are beacons of the ridiculous in this chilly, superficial town that force me to crack my jaded face in a half-smile.

My cousin’s wedding for instance. She’s only 23, Christian to the power of infinity, a gorgeous ingénue and definitely too young to get married, but the ceremony itself was lovely. Rog likened it, with respect and awe, to Kip and LaFawndah’s wedding, for the following reasons:

- the attendance of the bride’s prodigal father, my uncle by marriage, a pox on my family. He’s basically a life-long love felon (see what I did there?) and since walking out on his kin earlier this year, we mention him not. He’s more or less interchangeable with Satan – Robert de Niro Satan, not Liz Hurley Satan – all charming and lovely but 100% Prince of Darkness. Anyway, he insisted on being there and doing the Father of the Bride speech. Icing on the cake (or chocolate on the profiterole tower in this case) was this joke: “There are three rings a woman gets in her life: an engagement ring… a wedding ring…… and suffer-ring.” Cue his arch nemesis aka mum very nearly combusting with pure rage.

- Oma having a nerve attack. My grandma is the type of person who, when you sleep in, puts a mirror above your mouth to check that you’re still breathing. [FYI that’s the official way to check if someone’s dead or not. Put a mirror in front of their face. All that heartbeat/pulse shenanigans you see in the movies is just done for the sake of drama; you’ll find real doctors use mirrors to determine death.] Anyway, it goes without saying that this wedding – the first of her grandchildren’s – was a cause of much anxiety. Long story short, my grandma lost control of her bowels just before the bride walked out, had to be ‘contained’ by mum, aunty and uncle, all of whom spent the entire ceremony in the bathroom. The pinnacle of this was mum surrendering her undies so Oma could have a clean pair. The gravity of this underpants thing can’t be fully appreciated if you’ve never met my mum, since she’s like the opposite of Sharon Stone or anyone else you could ever imagine going sans pants. She asked us not to tell anyone, which is like asking Johnny Depp not to be hot, so naturally we told everyone at the wedding plus some people driving by in cars and now you even know and you weren’t even there. Stop imagining my mum with no pants on, pervert!

- the father of the groom being actually the campest man to ever live. He wore a puffy pirate shirt and skinny leg trousers, rocked a curly moustache, cried almost constantly and played a piece on the piano as a gift to his son. It was really quite touching.

- we had fake champagne for the toasts because it was a Christian wedding.

And that’s just a five-hour snapshot of things since I’ve been back. The rest of the time has included: acquisition of mounted kangaroo’s head; awaiting call from Ray Martin for next Obese Pets: Are We Loving them to Death? segment now that cat practically spherical in shape; imbibing many norce worns; consuming brazillion courses that comprise tasting menu at food wonderland, Rockpool; stealing some Jenolan Cave, despite tour guide’s claims doing so will make caves fall in on head; catching up with everyone (almost there!); spotting middle-aged Aussie celebs (Margaret Pomeranz, Terrence Stamp and as-yet unidentified matriarch); getting five-year licence with pic of self sporting Hitler-esque side part; and shivering 'cause it's fucking cold.


At the wedding: me and the scarlet woman. Guess who's not wearing any undiiiieeessss?

So that’s it in a nutshell. See you soon – if you don’t see me first, natch.

yours sincerely,

bek