Pope: “AIDS? Schmaids!”

Pope Benedict looks like the devil. Those dark circles under his eyes, the hunchback posture, the aging face and yet suspiciously lustrous hair. There’s something not right going on there, and that’s not just because he’s a geriatric virgin dropping hell bombs on condoms. But! Now that I’ve brought that up, shall we consider his latest words of questionable wisdom?

It’s fair to say that no one really likes condoms. They smell odd, ruin the mood and don’t add to sexual pleasure (don’t believe the hype, they are not ribbed for her pleasure). The majority of sane people realise the necessity of these rubber fiends and you understand that the payoffs of not leaving them by the roadside are manifold – inclusive of not getting AIDS, various creepy and visually horrifying STDs and/or babies. Sex and condoms go together like single use hypodermic needles and alcohol swabs: any rational person has a stack of them and disposes of them responsibly after use.

You! Suck!

I’ve often considered suing Channel 7 News because of false advertising. Whatever they’re presenting, it definitely doesn’t appear to fit into even the most lax definitions of “news”. For ten minutes, it jumps from idiotic subject to even dafter report covering such pertinent topics as roundabouts harming possums, the epidemic of old people dying from old age, there’s no! more! water!, the government stalling on regulating bike helmets that eat hair and won’t someone please think of the (white) children! After that, they pay some lip service to bombs, guns, tragedy in the middle east, Obama being black and then a heart warming snippet on a cat nursing piglets on a farm in England. After that it’s sport sport sport and the weather proclaims that it may rain but it’s probably sunshine because we live in the “Lucky Country”. It’s a pathetic excuse for news and right after, Today Tonight gets going with their exclusive reports on cracks in the pavement and chasing ethnics down the street. Considering most Australians get their news from free-to-air television, the Channel 7 News is doing a great disservice to all citizens of this country.

The Worst is Never Coming.

I’ve spent some time realising that new relationships are the best kind of awkward satisfaction: you spend your first weeks sexing, telling them how much you love their third nipple because it’s so unique and not at all weird, over-thinking whether to fake an orgasm or telling them you like scat porn and really not saying anything at all but riding the sexual endorphin high. Based on these principles, you could pretty much have a functional relationship with anyone you meet in a bar; it’s when you meet their friends and drop some god-awful politically incorrect bombshell of hilarity and hang your head in shame hoping that they’re giggling out of mutual amusement, and not giggling because they’re about to pull out their handy pocket sized bible and condemn you to some fictional hell.

A Lover of Antiquity.

A half-blind monkey on LSD could identify George Clooney as a genetically attractive human being, but it takes a certain calibre of person to look at the likes of Nick Cave or Steve Buscemi and want to get down and dirty (and possibly, creepy) with them. Luckily, a person of such calibre happens to be writing this blog and, after the jump, has cobbled together a motley list of her top picks of drinking, smoking and kinking partners.

Periodic Madness.

There are two new commercials out in Australia for feminine hygiene products (stupid term, total unnecessary downer on vaginas). While one company has taken tampon manufacturing to new heights, the other seems at a loss as to where to go next with pad technology. Let’s examine:

Whither All the Children?

I was on the couch eating a bowl of cabbage and marvelling at the deliciousness of this rather innocuous vegetable when I wondered why it is that adults in developed nations are trying to dupe their children into eating vegetables by hiding them in brownies? It seems like a daft idea, but Jerry Seinfeld’s wife actually wrote a cook book about it, and then was subsequently sued by someone else who claimed to have the idea first. Hey ladies, I’ve got an idea for you, what about just feeding your kids the damn vegetables rather than being all underhand about it? Surely all this conspiracy vegetable feeding is just adding fuel to the fire of the anti-veg crusade lead by these little brats. If they’re so awful they need to be hidden, well duh, who wants to eat them in all their original glory?

All the vegetable musing led to the general contemplation of the state of childhood today. When did we all start becoming so terrified that the darlings endure the usual childhood rites of passage? My roommate has friends who are primary school teachers who fully support the daft notion of not marking their pupils work in red, lest their precious self esteem is offended by all those red crosses (apparently the positive notion of red ticks isn’t considered). I wonder what colour they use instead, and what the possible damaging connotations of purple or green could have on their delicate psyches. Perhaps they’ll have an aversion to royalty, or grow up to be extremely jealous and totally environmentally apathetic.

Things I Love Edition

I’m in a particularly happy, sweet, sharing mood today, and before I inevitably get around to ruining this marshmallow cloud, here’s some happy stuff I love and rarely talk about because I fear it humanises me:

photo credit: Rupert Singleton

My brain is an ass-et.

My head has special needs. I have seen more specialists about my head than all my other body parts combined – and I am fairly average where body parts are concerned. Not satisfied with the all the psychiatric attention it receives, (oh, like you couldn’t figure out I was slightly unstable by yourselves?) it has discovered a new way to garner attention: it aches. So simple. It aches from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. It aches through a haze of weed, it aches through the fog of whiskey. It aches through prescription pain killers, and through the over-the-counter ones as well. And it aches through all of these aides combined, although it was a little more fun. (The image makes sense after the jump, I swear.)

Like Mother, Like Daughter.

I’ve never been one to fuss much about mess and general disorder, as long as I knew that what was underneath was reasonably clean. Granted, I’ve been living alone for the last few years and, like a pig, became comfortable in my own filth. I could tell you how long ago the deserted tea cup by the couch actually contained tea, the number of hours the dress draped artfully over the kitchen chair has left before it’s necessary to wash it, even where the very important piece of paper resides amongst the disorder. Despite all this slovenly behaviour, it was my mess, and my mess and I coexisted quite happily together; most importantly my toilet was always clean. Alas, that was then, and this is now.

Of late, I find myself in the somewhat awkward situation of co-habitation. Apart from the obvious readjustments one must undertake so as to make living with others bearable, I’ve found that I have started to slowly morph into my mother. Perhaps being alone meant that I was able to quash any domestic abilities that threatened to come to fore as there was no need to please or appease anyone but myself. It could be location, it could be situation, it could be some warped version of maturity. None of which, however, comes close to explaining why I’ve started turning into my mother.

Don’t feel bad (it’s time for bed).

There’s a time in life when things just work out and conform to every chick flick, chick lit and chick shit cliché and you find yourself living the quintessential rebound scenario – the one that is supposed to be so bad for you, but temporarily feels so right; when all odds conspire to make life shite and difficult, you throw caution to the wind and embark on what should be the most disastrous relationship ever, and it works out just right.

I’ve been musing on the concept of a “prebound”, in perfect opposition to the rebound, ie: the seemingly mature and adult relationship where you discuss living together and babies vs abortion and validate marriage for more logical reasons than love. From my vast uncredited study in the pop culture and economy of woman, I’ve deduced that a protagonist is required to have one solid and ultimately failed relationship (the prebound) before she unexpectedly (and somewhat reluctantly) submits to the wisdom of the eccentric aunt, marginalised sassy black bff and harassed mother of pooping toddlers and realises that what she was looking for was there all along. Such is life.

So, I’d like to say to my ex: thank you. You were a fucking arse, but at least I realised that what I wanted was waiting for me; he was here all the time – it just took you to make me see that I deserved better, and that I deserved Schmoo. In a way, you gave me the world by testing me, trying my heart and making me understand that what I believed was inevitable in life is actually a total farce. Loving someone is not meant to be a trial or battle of patience and forgiveness, it’s supposed to be fucking awesome. And it is.

Every single moment I am with Schmoo I want to be there, and every second he sleeps by my side is the most perfect, encapsulated and linked in a never ending sequence of inhales, exhales. No more the fear that sleep is an escape from reality and present company. Maybe I would have found this eventually, maybe one day in some unknown future. All I know right now is that without the emotional suckass of that prebound, I might never have known this happiness that sleeps next to me tonight. If a prebound and all the attending bullshit is necessary to be sure that in the here and now, even midnight flatulence (his, please) is going to make me laugh as I drift off to sleep, I’ll wager it’s worth it. It’s time for me to not feel bad for what was supposed to be, and go to bed smiling because this is the way it is.

And I will wake him up in a bit and whisper in his ear and we’ll shuffle off down the hall and fall out of our clothes and tumble asleep, knowing that tomorrow will always be sunshine.