First Daylight Saved

7.30pm - Hyde Park, Perth - Christina, Chris, Lauren
Mutual Love Club

Remastered, Repackaged, Rereleased.

As even the most casual of readers would have noticed, we at the Standard Line Delivery Corporation have sought to rejuvenate our image and souls with a fresh new layout. This is a strategic move which we felt would, in a utopian reality, persuade us to once again fall in love with the "blog" medium, and this "blog" in particular, and maybe lead to our scribbling more on its walls and skin, with more frequency and less despair about any monotony a Perth life may or may not lead. The artist whose trees and humans line the background is Marcel Dzama, who is Manitoban and uses root beer to paint with and is a member of the Royal Art Lodge.

So, now that this post has served its primary purpose, which is to inform you of something which is plainly visually obvious, no one should have cause for complaint if it now degenerates into a late-night attempt on my behalf to piece together a quick abstract of life, recently, for me and those around me.

• Tonight is the final night of Movember, and the potentially unhealthy men of Australia are $330 richer thanks to the rich generosity of a small handful of kind benefactors. Thank you to you all. As there was next to no visible change in the quantity of hair since the below photo (taken almost a month ago) I have opted not to post an end-of-month update, and you'll have to believe me when I tell you it wasn't that good. Surprisingly.
  
• I have decided that the closest thing I have to a chapel (or alternative place-of-worship) right now is the underpass below the Narrows Bridge, right on the side of the Swan, where the sea-breeze whips and gusts where the concrete pylons and the road above perfectly frame the old brewery and the lightly rippling river and the magic-hour sun leers just above the cliffs running up to Kings Park as I am riding home from work, and there are silhouettes of anglers on the banks, and the rays of light fall sharply between the grey slats of the bridge's underbelly and even when I am in the foulest of moods and every motorist and most pedestrians I have passed since leaving work has attracted my swelling hosility, even then it still feels (just for a moment) as though if a manifestation of Yahweh might exist anywhere at all in Perth, this is where it must surely (surely!) be, at this exact time.
  
• Which will be an hour later next week because: daylight saving trial!
  
• Life right now = approximately 25% sleep, 10.7% bookstore, 12.5% afterschool care, 7 - 15% CISV, 5% reading, 2% socialising with housemates, 10% socialising with other friends, 2% chores, 8% wasting time on computer, 5% transport time... the rest=other.
• In the last month I have been threatened and chased on my bike by five guys in a car with no lights on, at three in the morning; I have seen a motorcycle-car accident; I have requested a police welfare check on a drug-fucked guy passed out on the verge outside my house (a job they only half saw through, leaving the woken guy angry and violent outside my front door); I have witnessed a major car collison; I have seen three police cars busting kids who had been harrassing neighbourhood homes; I have seen a thuggish looking guy holding another guys hands on his head and making him kneel next to a sports car on the pavement.... all of this within three blocks of my house.
• Oh, it's late, there's work tomorrow; I will continue my directionless scatter soon enough.
• x Out.
  

Mo' Money

Hi there,
I've never been all that much a fan of the moustache... It's not been something I've considered strongly as a worthwhile addition to my face, not without accompanying stubble anyway. But, this month is Movember (the month formally known as November) and along with beer swiggin' males all over Australia I have decided to (attempt to) grow a mo for one month only. All the money goes to organisations working on men's health - focusing on prostate cancer and male depression mostly - and you too can send me a couple of bucks if you choose, by visiting http://www.movember.com.au/au/sponsor and then entering my rego number, which is 22309. Meanwhile, you can expect to see occasional photos here on this blog of the progress of the growth, although I'd warn you not to expect all that much, as I am not all that adept at facial hair growth, depsite long term asperations to a Sam Beam style beard, or at least Colin Farrell type stubble. But I will do my best.

Anyway, at the moment I look like this:

24 Hour Comic

The comic I did a few weekends ago for the 24 Hour Comic project is now printed and ready for reading. If you would like a copy, please smile in my general direction, or even better, give me some sugar in any way you deem appropriate.

The comic is about the conflict situation in Colombia and is based partly on my time there, but also on recent reports by Medecins Sans Frontieres and Human Rights Watch.

A Location, A Menu, An Adventure, An Image

You can tell summer is here, because there’s moths whapping across the iridescent bulbs in the bookstore, and posters stuck with Blue-Tac are curling from the walls and by 10am its already too hot to be still in bed on a lazy Saturday morning like today’s. But here at Hyde Park, where I have come to type the afternoon away, the sun is bright but the wind is still strong and the air is filled with dragonflies and with falling leaves and with whole swarms of dancing blossom, buds of which are dropping onto my laptop and getting stuck between the keys. I am seated on my rainbow rug, alone, with a makeshift picnic consisting of White Rabbit milk and rice paper lollies (from China), SOTO cuttlefish flavoured snacks (from Malaysia) and a Berri 2.4L Family Pack container of Apple Juice (from Australia). The crows caw in crescendos, ducks preen, Italian men gather in brimmed hats, glittering ribbon hangs from the twigs of trees, remnants of a long faded park-based celebration. A lone, dumpy woman sits still, slumped slightly forward, on a bench nearby, staring off blankly across the park, white, knobbly legs poking out from a pale blue skirt like broken pegs. Groups of rosellas, swirling oaks, a wedding limousine, a girl’s laughter. The White Rabbits are not anywhere as good as I remember them to be.

Last weekend I cooked a dinner party for some people and although I had some valuable assistance from a few key individuals it was, I think, the first time I could honestly say that I had done that, of my own accord, in my lifetime. It was all Middle Eastern food, as will be the successive dinner parties or picnics which are planned to occur on a fortnightly schedule from this day forward, and to which you might be invited if you are both within proximity and particularly strategic in your dealings with me (Let us assume, for the purposes of this blog, that the food will be at least, somewhat, good). The previous menu, which all but eight of you missed out on, read as follows:

Mezze
Warm Lebanese pita bread
Olive Oil
Za’atar
Fresh Hummus (made from hand-peeled chickpeas, kids)
Muhammara (Red pepper and walnut paste)
Baba Ghanoush
Eggah (Parsley omelette)

Mains
Moghrabieh (Lebanese giant couscous) with chicken and lemon zest
Stuffed red peppers & stuffed tomatoes

To Drink
Chilled Egyptian Karkadai (hibiscus infusion drink)

In summary, I have decided that cooking can be rather fun and isn’t all that stressful after all.

In other recent news:
I have, in the course of three weeks, twice had to foil attempts to steal from the bookstore. The first time we were tipped off by a nearby store owner who suspected that the woman had just stolen some cards and maybe a tshirt from him and that she was now in our store, which she was. I watched as she tucked a number of books into her bag and then made sure than she realised that I was watching until she sheepishly, and not altogether stealthfully, removed the stack from her bag (3 x Jodie Picoult novels and 1 x WA lesbian magazine) and tried to balance them on a nearby display shelf as if nothing had ever happened. She then bought two other books and mumbled something non-sensical which I presume was aimed to throw me off making any comment about her poor attempt at crime. The other time was last weekend, when I was again tipped off, this time by the kebab store guys from next door, that a girl had just stuffed a calendar in her bag and walked a little way down the street. My reponse this time was somewhat more direct as I approached from behind and took the calendar from her bag before threatening, rather hollowly, to contact the cops. Her excuse went something like “Oh some girl just GAVE it to me to put in my bag. I dunno WHO she was! She just said ‘Here, put this in your bag and walk away’. Yeah, I don’t know what that was about”. And really there’s not all that much you can say to an alibi as strong as that.

I leave you now with a Clip-Out-And-Keep souvenir photo of me which I will take right now, with my computer, of me sitting in the park in my traditional Colombian hat. Good day.