Got the tits for it?

Okay, so I’m looking for a new job. Nothing new in that. I jump job from job to job because essentially I am one of those people who always wants better and more and I’m not into stagnating in crap jobs because life is too damn short and I’m not scared to take a chance. Anyway, I was at work looking at jobs online, no, I don’t feel bad about that. If you give me access to a computer then you bring that upon yourself. This simple job advert interested me –

Bikini Topless. No experience necessary. Good $$$. Backpackers welcome.

So I was thinking to myself what would they do if someone like me turned up and said I wanted the job? Would they hire anyone over 25? Would they be looking for a particular body type? Can you be too fat or thin? Big boobs preferred or a fried eggs okay? Do men want to just see nubile young things with perky breasts? Are men aware that breasts only stay perky for so long? And if they wanted job experience what sort of experience what you have to have? Give me a drink and I’ll flash you experience or do you have it on a resume or a series of photos you hand them? And if you really wanted the topless gig and didn’t get it, could you have them up for discrimination? Would anyone do that?

I wanted the job but they said I was too droopy and that the nipple rash on knees was a turn off.

Right. We’ll have to investigate. Any witnesses?

Only one guy with a black eye.

A black eye?

Yes, I swung around too fast and one of my boobs took him out.

Hmmm…. 

I'm still standing...

Yes, I am still writing. No, I’m not rushing to get anything out there. I’m writing an ongoing series that requires re-checking the last story with the current and making sure story number five ties up elements in the other four stories. It is romantic but it’s not a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am story. There’s nothing wrong with those stories. They’re just not where I’m where mind is focused at the moment and I don’t feel inclined to followed trends. Is it about growing as a writer? Nah, I don’t believe in all that existential, fluffy bullshit reasoning used to explain why you're wasting time contemplating your navel. It’s simply about doing something different. Will it sell? Who knows? As someone who dabbles in writing, I believe you have to be realistic and accept things sell or they don’t and you write as your conscience dictates without worrying about anything else. That’s how I started this gig all those years ago and that’s how I’ll finish it…whenever that may be. Writing. It can be something you do. Life is something you live. Don't confuse the two.

'Not about to pi-R-square it now...

Last night, while watching TV, I wondered if I could still do the splits. I haven’t done them in years. So I tried and I still could. Amazing, Grace. No, correct, it’s not a great or even marketable skill to have unless you’re a gymnast or possibly a working girl catering to particular fetishes. But the thing is I still could do them at 49. I’m 49. I don’t feel it. I’m not sure what 49 is supposed to feel like but I still feel like I do when I was 13 and doing the splits except now I’m smarter, blonder of hair, no acne and living in Cairns and pretty much doing what I like surrounded by chooks, budgies and errant, visiting bandicoots called Neil.

Age - why do you think people get all emotional and twisted up over a number? My personal opinion is that some people are limited in their thinking. They are people I call A to C types. They run the gamut of emotions and experience between the letters of A to C and they don’t stray any further down the alphabetic chain of life because that’s not who they are. Then there’s there are the types of people who have always been dazzlingly beautiful, smart, rich, desirable, yet not able to do the splits despite their heavenly perfection, who fall apart when the first signs of age kick in and from there they age rapidly because they've never been prepared to be less than the beauty they were. Then there’s us – you and me – the ring-ins, the mismatched, the clumsy and the confusing. We’re the ones that people have always wondered about, looked at and shaken their heads over as we did the splits simply because we could. We don’t age like everyone else because we simply don’t have to. As for numbers like 49? Hell, we sucked at math at school so we’re hardly going to worry about numerical values now because life isn't about pi-R-squaring it is it? It’s about being able to do stuff like the splits at 49.   

Note to self...

I was doing my usual Sunday morning run along the Cairns Esplanade, nodding and hello-ing the usual people and I passed this woman. I always make a point of saying hello to her. She never says hello back. She looks straight ahead like she is totally focused on something. She’s painfully, to my mind unhealthily, stick thin. I’m guessing she’s anorexic. I don’t know. As she runs past, she worries me. A lot. When I see her, I think about how we do a lot of crazy, questionable and hurtful stuff to ourselves in the supposed name of beauty and wanting to fit in and how our mind is our best weapon but also our worst enemy. How do you control that? Fix it? Is self belief enough? Do you stop reading about who and what is perceived as supposedly beautiful so you don’t measure yourself by that?  Too fat? Too thin? Seriously, when you think about it, who made up the rules that have been driving women crazily obsessing for centuries?  When will we allow ourselves to make our own rules and stick by them?

As for the woman? I’ll still keep saying hello to her. Maybe one day she’ll say it back. Maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll want to chat to the crazy haired, sweaty woman who drives her mad every Sunday morning by saying hello. I’m always up for a chat about stuff. 

Not a mathematical problem…

If you got fifty corporate, anally retentive men to lie down on the road in a long line so they were head to toe, in their business suits, with or without their briefcases, it would be really hard not to run them over.

Not a mathematical problem…more a solution to people who piss you off at work.  

Is that you Neil?

So, I walked outside at 4:30am this morning to chat to the chooks and leave some leftovers for them. The chooks don’t actually get up until it’s well and truly bright, day light (they’re scared of the dark) and they certainly don’t get out of bed for salad scraps – bananas yes – but not salad. Anyway as I wandered out I looked to my left and I noticed a garden ornament (see pic) had been tossed onto the grass from where it normally sits. It’s not heavy but it’s also not light. I looked around the yard, spotted the broom - aka handy weapon - and went to investigate what was going on. I could hear the rustling of something big arsed in the garden but I could see nothing. This is my theory, Neil the bandicoot is back at my place and he has an aversion to the head and is letting me know this ornament does not fit in with his conceptual design ideas in minimalist landscaping or I have an elephant that hides really, really well.


Would I have used the broom on Neil? No, probably not. He’s sort of like family. As for the elephant? Well, I was thinking of getting a guinea pig and it’s the other extreme to that – and I do enjoy extremes…  

Coffee cup physics...

Did you know if you put an empty coffee mug out in the rain, you can sit and watch it fill up and speculate on the rate it will fill versus the speed of the rain versus the force of the rain drop falling into the cup all while you eat lunch? No, me neither. I think it all depends on the mind of the person you’re having lunch with versus inherited insanity verses the quirkiness quotient factor versus e=mc2 and whether you’re having a good hair day. Fascinating what you learn at lunch.     

Deliver me not unto temptation I can find it myself....

So, I was sitting having lunch with a friend in this hole in the wall not the slightest bit chic café frequented by blue collar workers. The people who own it are really nice, salt of the earth people. Now, I’m being all goodly on my diet and eating only judicious, healthy food…but then a luscious slice of the most divine looking chocolate cake comes out and is placed on the table as a freebie to us. Oh god. Don’t you just hate/adore temptation?  So, I’m looking at this cake. My brain is explaining to me that “we have worked very hard to be good. Don’t eat the cake, fatso.” My hormones are dancing naked and urging me on with seductive words to eat. “You are not fat. You are perfect in our eyes. You want the cake. It wants you. How can it be wrong?”

Bloody hormones. I ask you, how can a brain compete?

I only had three small bites. I didn’t inhale and I didn’t have sexual relations with that cake…god knows I wanted to…. 

What about…

I was talking to this twenty-something year old woman who said women’s rights are no longer an issue – ‘not like in the old days’ – because women  'can do what they like.’ I said what about women in countries where rape is not considered a crime or if it is they take years to prosecute the men involved because all deny it was rape and she ‘was asking for it?’ What about women who are stoned or who have acid thrown on them because they have been wrongly accused of adultery? What about women who want to hold down a job or get a better education but they are beaten or shot in an effort to stop them? What about when the ‘old’ wife who is thrown out of a village to fend for herself, with nothing, to make room for the ‘new’? What about child brides who are married to disgusting older men usually as a form of payment? What about so called crimes of ‘honour’ where a young woman is killed because she loves someone her male relatives are against? What about female genital mutilation where a young girl is forcibly held down and her clitoris cut out with a crude razor and then be roughly sewn up often with little or no vaginal opening left to her? What about we pull our heads out of the sand and realize all women, regardless of colour, status or nationality, should be allowed to live as they choose, think as they believe and act as their conscience dictates without a man ripping that right away from them?

What affects one woman affects us all. If you think it doesn’t then you don’t think.   

So, I nearly bought a guinea pig…

 ….because I was really restless, for various reasons, so I decided to go for an aimless  drive and wander in and out of various shops and ended up in a pet store and saw some guinea pigs and I thought, “They’d go just swell with the 4 budgies and 3 chooks.” Then, in my mind, I pictured the wholesale chaos that usually occurs on the patio when the chooks and the budgies get together and decided adding a guinea pig to that might possibly be nuts.

But, you never know what I’ll do…

Love is not all you need....

...freedom to live in peace without violence is. 

But we have not ended violence. Today 1 out of 3 women in the world -- more than 1 billion women -- will be raped or beaten.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/one-billion-rising_b_1277501.html?utm_hp_ref=womens-rights


One out of three women...
One billion women... 
One billion women too many...

Splendidly wretched…

So, I was slumped in my chair at work, head on my desk, bored as all get out and crying out to the universe ‘When will this wretched day end.’ Then I stopped, lifted my head and thought about the word wretched. You know, I don’t use that word enough. It’s a simply splendid sounding one – actually splendid is also a splendid word but back to wretched.

Why don’t we use wretched more? While I do enjoy the words pukeable and crapacious, wretched has the dire, desperate tone to it that makes you want to do mad, crazy things to break the wretched pukeability of boredom. I believe I will start to use it more. Can I ask that you consider the splendid alternate wonder of wretched when next you are have to announce the pukeability of your situation. I think you’ll like it…

wretch·ed

adj. wretch·ed·er, wretch·ed·est

1. In a deplorable state of distress or misfortune; miserable: "the wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages" (George Orwell).
2. Characterized by or attended with misery or woe: a wretched life.
3. Of a poor or mean character; dismal: a wretched building.
4. Contemptible; despicable: wretched treatment of the patients.
5. Of very inferior quality: wretched prose.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/wretched 

Despite 'em....

So, I was typing something into a spreadsheet today – I am a spreadsheeting queen – and I typed in the year as 2032 – I’m a fast but inelegant typist – and I thought to myself how old will I be in 2032? Answer 68. Don’t do the math – I’m 49 now. What will I be doing? I expect, given my past history, it’ll be something irritating, inappropriate and whatever I want to do. I’ll expect I’ll still be wearing Docs, dying my hair, wearing mismatched socks and speaking my mind without fear or favour.

Sure, go ahead and age. It’s just a number –but don’t ever let it define who you are as a person. You don’t change inside. Be yourself despite ‘em.     

(****pic is Rob Roy MacGregor's grave. Love it)

Girly girl...

So, I was running along the Cairns Esplanade last Friday for Boot camp. Boot camp means running, sweating, pain and swearing a lot. The last three I do really well. Anyway, our perennially perky, super fit trainer ran a bit with me and she was impressed I was light on my feet – but apparently I run strangely. Of course I do. Doing it normally would not be me.  I’m strange. Peculiar. Different. Anyway, I listened to what she said and took her advice on board because she’s the expert, I respect her words and I'm always determined to do better.

Today at the gym I made a concerted effort to run less strangely. It was hard. Very hard. It then it occurred to me, after much looking at the way I ran in the mirror and almost falling over, that was the way I was supposed to run. I run like a girl. I'm a girly, girl. I’m damn proud of it. Try and keep up with me will ya?  

Gender equality and the lack there of it...

I was watching TV last night and this advert came on about skincare or weight loss or something or other and some plastic looking ‘Doctor’ – and we are meant to believe that because she was wearing a white coat and that apparently makes her credible – came on the screen and gave the sales pitch about whatever she was selling working wonders and to listen to the testimonial of some of our ‘happy customers’. I was interested that each woman who appeared on screen had ‘Mrs’ before her name. Mrs Jane Smith…Mrs Mary Brown…Mrs Susan Jones...etc. Why the need for the title? Is the product any more impressive because the woman is married? I cannot, in any way, see how a title is relevant and, if I was interested in it, the use of the title thing makes me not want it.

If you’re married you don’t notice it, but single women are hard to categorize  I’m single. I know it only too well there’s always that hesitation as to what to call you. Generally people will go you ‘Mrs’ if you are over a certain age because it’s considered the safer option. Why do I have to be a ‘Mrs’? I’m not nor do I want to be one and I find it oppressive that I have to be categorized. You want to be polite? Call me by my first name. Interestingly as long as ‘Ms’ had been around and covers the whole Mrs/Miss thing, people just can’t get the hang of it.  But, to me, more importantly, why the need for a title at all?  

Weirdly enough, all of this fits into a series of four stories I am writing about gender equality and the lack there of it. 

Tied naked to a bed and then...

So, I was talking to a friend about having sex while tied up.  You know – the whole bondage deal which to me always seems weird but whatever turns you on. They recalled a time when a certain person had done exactly that- tied themselves to a bed and waited for their lover to find them.  My question is this – what if you get on a four-poster bed, naked, tie your feet up and tie one hand and then use a slip knot to pull tight the last knot so you are totally vulnerable? What if you lover doesn’t show…for hours…days…What if you have to pee? What if you forget your spinster, Great Aunt Beryl was coming over for arvo tea with her cat Tibbles and those soggy sultana scones you always hated? What if you’re friends haven’t heard from you in days and the police break in? What if, you are lying there wondering all this and thinking why didn’t I have an escape plan?  Hmmm…gotta wonder if it's all worth it.

Anywhere but there...

I was sitting at my day job today, nothing to do but my writing and going through my Blackberry deleting half-arsed photos when I saw this one of my knee at Green Island and I thought to myself I want to be anywhere but at work...  

Playing with yourself....

I find it really weird, at the gym, the women who stand in front of the large mirrors in the ladies locker room and watch themselves dress. What’s that about? Haven’t you done and seen it all before? Why do you have to analyze yourself as you put on your undies? It’s not like something surprising is going to happen like you find out you’ve grown a penis or something.

There was this chick this morning, who was completely mesmerized by herself. So much so that she had spread all her stuff out in front of the large mirror, leaving no room for anyone else as she adored her own reflection. I don’t have time for that crap. I came out of the shower, in bra and knickers, to find my gym bag shoved out of the way so this chick could stare at herself on all angles. I lifted my bag up and put it back where it had been and gave her a look that only a 49 year old woman with tattoos, Docs and tired after boot camp, can give. Bring it and die.

After I finished dressing, she was still slowly putting clothes on and checking out her own body. Is it a need to feel good about your body that you stare at it? Is it about looking for flaws? Is it pig ignorance that makes you take all the room up in your narcissism? Whatever it is play with yourself at home.  

Petunia J L’amor…

Here’s what I think, take it or leave it. If you want a fellow writer to do something for you and you send them an email asking them to do this and that and the other thing, I believe it’s probably a good idea to actually personally address the author in question by name at the start of the email and then rabbit on with what you want and not add them in as part of a group or list of people to use. Sure, sure, copy and paste the email twenty or thirty times to all the different authors but do it individually.

Dear Imelda Bliss-Bottom Snodgrass,

I have this amazing book that I wrote with my own lily white hands and I want you to promo it for me because it’s so damn good and I want sales.

Petunia J L’amor

That I’d respond to. But a generic ‘I want this from you and email me back’? Er, no. Yeah, time is short and you want to promo stuff but where the hell did basic etiquette go? Or as writers is it that we don’t give a crap because we want what we want? I like ballsy people but I also like manners.    

Oh, the unspeakable horror of Monday....

If each day is a gift I'd like to know where I can return Mondays.

Shortest horror story in history: Tomorrow is Monday.

Mondays are God's punishment for what you did during the weekend.

Just once, I would like to wake up, turn on the news, and hear...'Monday has been canceled, go back to sleep.'

On Mondays, I'm always f*cking thankful I don't have a swear jar.

Monday is a dreadful way to spend 1/7 of your life.

It would certainly make my week a lot better if I was off work every Monday...somebody needs to make this happen...

The long and the short of it...

I was reading a thread on facebook and they – writers – you know – them folk -  were talking about the length of what other people write and how can some people write stories so fast? Are they short? Do they bother reading through them and fixing them up before submitting? Then there was the usual writer who brought up that others ‘churn out’ stories, inferring she of course wouldn't.

My response to all this? Look to your own writing. Pay attention to that and not what other people are writing. Some people may consider your wordy epics to be just that. You don’t like short? Don’t write short. You don’t care for long? Ditto. Who gives a crap what others are writing? Look at the chick who wrote that tedious, amateur, oh-god-when-does-this-book-finish Shades of Grey. She spun that out into three long books. Is it any good because it’s long? Personal opinion? No. And that’s it. Personal opinion. Concern yourself with your own writing. 

Boy zombie logic...

So, today at work one of the zombies said to another zombie, “My washing machine is broken.” The response from zombie 2 was “What’s wrong with your wife?” Then they giggled, as boy zombies do. When I took zombie 2 to task over sexist bullshit he said “But women are supposed to do laundry.” He also added that’s what he tells everyone. I said "Ever told an actual human woman and not a blonde, big boobed gamer simulation that?" He said no but "it didn’t matter as it was a woman’s job." I said “How’s that working out for you with women? You must be considered something else by them.” He took this as a compliment. I took it that his mother does his washing.