Rusted Gumption

Custard

2008-11-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

Tim Freedman

For me, he's like custard.

Delicious but makes my skin crawl.. just a little bit. Not sure why custard has always had that affect on me. But can kind of understand why Tim Freedman does, might has something to do with the fact that he's old enough to be my father, but I think it's more than that.

There's something about his singing voice that just makes my hair stand on end, not in a bad way, but not necessarily in a good way either. In a way that makes me feel slightly....... sick.
No freaken idea why. All I'm sure of is the only other time I felt sickly attracted, 'custard feeling' was when I was bout 8 years old and sleeping over at a friend's house out in the bush. We got up [see: I made her get up) to go for a bike ride at 2am. We rode for maybe 10 minutes before she wanted to go back to bed. Instead we crashed in front of the TV in the lounge room and started to watch whatever was on. It was a very cheap animation of a Gulliver's Travels story. And something about Gulliver made me ill, maybe it was the pony tail, maybe it was the shitty storyline, or the almost crudely drawn cartoon itself..... but I'm still not entirely convinced. I felt that curious ill/fascinated feeling round the moment when Gulliver yelled at his companion, a young boy for some mistake he made. Maybe there was something about that that struck me as unnaturally, disturbingly sexual, or frightening, I have no idea. Whatever it is/was was a pretty sickening feeling that I also got on the rare few times I ate custard (even though I like the taste, I just hate the way it looks and feels in my mouth).

How the hell has that feeling become entwined with Tim Freedman? Might be something to do with that fact that he's clearly a good looking (older) man who has something.... something kind of not quite right, I guess, about his eyes. Either way the weird arse feeling is there and maybe one day when I start seeing a shrink again I'll get them to elaborate (will probably just open a whole other suppressed kettle of fish memory though).

But I like enduring that uncomfortable 'custard feeling' if it means looking at him and hearing his voice. *shiver*

Drink till he's pwetty

2008-11-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

With them setting up my man bar, life just feels so empty.... unless beer is involved.

That is all.

The Rart Stuff

2008-10-15T06:32:00.000-07:00

Just scrolled down and saw I didn't get arse-fucked around to finishing my Tassie story...

*considers it*

Yeah... that shit has gone stale in my brain now... there's some stuff I know you kids would've gotten a hoot out of.. stuff that happened that I should blog. But I can't be arse-fucked.

There's just a little something I think I need to address, seeing as I seem to be getting so many more hits these days (used to average a couple a week if i was lucky, now average that on most days). I began this blog to serve no other purpose to me but to act as my punching bag on which to both vent, but also to practice. Practice the writing I was told I had potential in but would end up in a gutter somewhere if I didn't work my tits off at it.

Since I've been about 14 years old I wrote pretty much everyday; it began as my only way to vent the hell that was eating away at my insides. Soon it was my only coping mechanism; pages became the only place I could scream, cry, laugh and dream. While my exterior gradually closed further and further in on itself by interior was still able to clutch onto some small aspect of feeling alive even though I felt so dead.

The journals from back then I still have, but I can't read them. I get a childish joy about flicking through the pages and seeing my young self's writing scrawled across every square inch of paper, but I can;t read the words. I don't know how that wound can still be so raw. I believe that time can heal all wounds, but I wish there was some kind of manual on how much time is needed for the intensity of each traumatic experience.

But through that shaky start I started writing as a habit. A habit I needed to be able to function in the everyday world. Using the paper as a means of feeling the opposite of how the world and the people in it made me feel. Writing was the only thing that ever gave me a voice. I'd be able to sift through my torrent of thoughts and extract an articulation of things that astounded even myself. The paper showed me what I was capable of, gave me hope of something bigger than what I currently was. Through the writing and no other aspect in my sad life I ever so slowly grew.

But the more you write the more critical you seem to get of it. Critiquing the words before they're even on the paper. Some days wanting to write so badly but being haunted that what you have to say isn't good enough as though you are writing for someone else.
That is a downfall of blogging. What begins as a means of writing, showcasing what you have to an indifferent audience to gather unbiased, honest views slowly deteriorates into writing for the audience. Thinking about them in every word. Thinking about how many hits you'll get for this post, how many comments. Whether this will be the post to launch you into blogger stardom (aka being on a lot more blog rolls).

I admit that I fell into that trap for a short time. But I think I've successfully shaken it now. I like my blogs to ramble and make little sense. While I don't necessarily want Rusted Gumption to sink into the endless black hole of forgotten blogs, I don't like having a big readership. I can crap on till the cows cum (Pun Fun!!!) about 'writing for myself, not caring what anyone thinks, yada yada yada', but the truth is, while I might generally think that now, some time down the track on a lot more 'favorite's' lists I'll be more aware of my popularity and shy from the raw honesty that has made Rusted Gumption what it is, what I'm proud of.

So to sum up, what I'm getting at, I think, is this. If you are looking for some examples of intelligent, finely crafted, planned blogs, check out my blog roll (yes that includes you Bo), because what I write here I don't write to fit into any of those categories. I use this blog the same way I used those pages back when i was 14. To waffle, ramble, spurt and practice fucking practice. To vent the fucking shit out; being blunt as a brick and as raw as a fly-blown sheep's arse crack.

I don't expect many people to read what I write all the way through, because if they did it'd mean I was doing something wrong (by my own standards anyway).

So I guess that's what I was trying to get out, I think. Or was it? Yeahh.... bugger that thinking too hard crap, I've me some brain cells to go waste.. *runs away*

The Embodiment of Binary Opposition

2008-10-13T01:47:00.000-07:00

Willow

Powerful

Deep

Beauty

Grace

So's your face

Now everyone can see what I do.

The Embodiment of Binary Opposition

Welcome Trash.

TassieMania

2008-10-08T19:39:00.000-07:00

Wh-Heyyyy! And we are back!!! Shit. Back on the mainland, down a few hundred dollars (tassie beer is the best!) and a few hundred brain cells. Meh, I've got so many I can afford to throw a couple of hundred of the lil mites out to sea. Bon Voyage my darlings!
As for money.... yeh, well, can't afford to throw much of that away. I'm scared to look at my bank statement. I know it was nudging at 3 grand before I left, but now I'm just hoping it can reach to 3 dollars so I can buy myself the coke to put the bourbon from my flask into (go me for managing to save it- puked up quite a lot on the ship though. Bloody sea sickness. blahh).

I hit the mainland's shores again on Sunday morning, but have been up to my perky lil titties in school work since then. Had my last SAC for the week today, which I could've used those brain cells for that I threw away at sea, but meh, they are at the bottom of the Bass Strait now which is the same place that that blasted SAC is going to go once I get it back. Ohh... unless I surprise me fine self and get a top mark, which has happened before because my talents can surprise even my fine self by their sheer.....ahh......... awesomeness. Yehh..

I was in TassieMania for a week and me Gawd, it was freaken awesome!! To sum the whole thing up a few words... I'll have to go with: beer, camping, driving, farting, laughing and..... ahh..... ghosts. That's right! Ghosts! More on that later...
But those few words don't do my exciting-fan-tabulous-awe-freaken-some expedition to TassieLandingStripMania justice. So reckon I had better run you kids (both of you) through the highlights (briefly though brew).

Despite using sea-bands and taking tablets I was still sick as a dog on the ship and by 3am I was saying fare-thee-well to everything I'd eaten that day and pulling chunks of roast beef out of my nostrils. I'll pause here just so you can truly get a mental image of that.

Got it?

Great. I'll continue.
Our ship sailed into Davenport at 8am on the Monday morning and the first thing we laid eyes on was the McDonald's across the road, so once on shore we made a bee-line for the cultural tassie dishes of Bacon and Eggs McMuffin and Hash browns with chocolate thick shakes. Once we'd overcome the shock of the chairs in the tassie Maccaz being red we settled down and read the newspaper that informed us of the mighty Hawks being in Launceston that very day. A quick discussion later and we on the road to Launceston cracking open our stubbies of Carlton and trying to figure out where all the tassie devils were. I had expected to see people walking them around on leashes, but alas, what locals were up at the ungodly hour of 8am were walking their mothers on leashes. Paa-poo!

Launceston was only an hour or so down the road and by the time we got there the sun was a-burning our skin through the window of Prick-Poo (my mate's Camry). We hit the caravan park, set our tents up on the hill and proceeded to drink more. The boys went into town to get a tarp and a torch while me and Cint lazed in the sun keeping our cameras at the ready for tassie devils.
A few beers later and I suddenly noticed how steep the hill was that we had mounted our tents on.
"Cinta?"
"Hmm?" came her reply from beneath the shade of her hood.
"This hill *burp* may just prove to ahh..... be a bit of a hazard *burp* later"
"Mmmm"

More beers later and the boys came back.
"We should go down to the oval soon"
"Yeahh"
"I wanna get my ball signed by Buddy"
"Yeahh"
"When we gonna go?"
"Soon"
"When?"
"After this beer"
A few more beers later.
"We gonna go soon?"
"Yeahh"
More beers. More sun. A sleep or two.
"Shit we need to go get more beer"
"There's still a couple left and there's a bottle of Bundy, a bottle of Smirnoff and a bottle of Jimmy in Prick Poo"
"Cool."
More beers. More sun. A sleep or two.
"Shit"
"What?"
"The Hawks would've left the oval by now"
"Ahh don't worry. We'll still get your ball signed. I'm sure they're in a nightclub in town somewhere trying to rape someone."
"Cool"
More beers.
The air became nippy and we hopped inside the shelter of the big tent onto the small fold out table. More drinking, laughing, farting, smoking, sleeping and bullshitting and there was a crack.
"What the..-"
The chair beneath Big Pat snapped in half and the entire table collapsed and we were sprawled on the floor.
"Let's go to the pub"
"Good idea"

Later that night with a carton of VB split between us we were singing and dancing down the main street of Launceston and ended up at Maccaz. I had a burger (apparently), forgot i had it so had another one (apparently) and then forgot I had that one so had another one (apparently), by which point my fellow cow-punchers decided they'd be rolling me back to the caravan park at the rate I was going. So I was booted out the door of maccaz hollering "But I haven't had anything to eat yet!!". And somehow, we made it back to the park.
The others made it up the hill and climbed into the warmth of the tents and out of the freezing tassie night air while I and my portion of VB popped down to the toilets. I then proceeded to climb the hill to the tents and was croaking out "Cinta! Cinta! I can't get up this fuckin hill with these fuckin beers!!" when next minute I was rolling down it, leaving a trail of VB cans in my wake.
Cint stuck her head out the tent flap and found me at the bottom of the hill lying in a gutter of dirt, suspicious liquid and beer cans from that day.
"What are you doing?" she laughed.
"Sleeping"
I know i woke up the next morning in the tent so not sure what happened in between the rolly-polly time and the morning but I'm trying to stay positive.

Over a brekkie of beers we learnt from one of the thousands of brochures we'd taken from the ship that the Boag's brewery was in that town. We cleaned the dirt out of our ears and nostrils, packed up our tents then set off into town.
We payed $25 to do a tour of the brewery, which I naturally assumed we'd do with beers in our hands at all times or at least be able to stick our heads into the tanks and drink our fill, but this wasn't to be the case. We wandered up and down stairs, through corridors and out into the yards of the brewery all with the smell of hops, wort and wheat in my nostrils while I got gradually thirstier and angrier. By the end I wanted to kill the ugly tour guide and drink his blood just to see if it tasted like beer.

Finally we trudged back to the brewery office where there was actually a bar. I nearly fell over with exhaustion from the wait. The fridge was stocked with all of Boag's beers and I licked my lips, mumbling "Come on you rotten bastard" while the tour guide handed around cheese.
If we wanted fucking cheese we would've gone to a fucking cheese factory! Not a fucking brewery you skinny prick!!
We eventually were given a 'beer tasting' (who honestly drinks beer for the taste?) which gave each of us about one standard drink in total. I was fuming. A half bottle of Boags Premium sat upon the bar still once the other people in the tour group had wandered away so I guzzled it.

We went down to the pub for lunch and the other Cow Punchers sat in the beer garden while I chatted to the bar maid somewhat tipsily about being a bar maid. More beers.

Looking at our map of the Great Landing Strip we spotted a large lake in the National Park a few hours drive south where we could fish, camp, have an open fire and make nuisances of ourselves. Back in Prick Poo we headed south. More beers. Sleeping. More beers.
It was strange going through so many towns that looked like they were cut straight from British travel brochures.
"Who needs to go to Europe? Just come to tassie"

It was getting towards the late afternoon when Prick Poo began to climb the mountain that the lake was meant to sit at the top of when we were meeting four-wheel-drive after four-wheel-drive.
"Shit. Hope Prick Poo can make it"
"She'll be right"
Higher still and Prick Poo was growling under the strain.
"Carn Prick Poo" We all began to chant.
The tracks wove higher, became narrower.
"Carn Prick Poo!"
Then one of the four-wheel drives coming from the other direction slowed and wound down his window. He puffed on a ciggie through stained fingers and a dirty grey moustache and looked at me and Cinta in the back with a filthy leer.
"Get's reallllll steep" He slurred.
"It gets steeper?" Big Pat asked.
Filthy Grey nodded and rolled away down the mountain without a word.
We sat on the track and looked up the steep slope of the mountain.
"Reckon he's just being a cunt?"
"I don't want to risk it" Big Pat said firmly.
"He's probably just a cunt."
"All we've met so far are four-wheel-drives. That's a pretty good indication of how steep it is."
"We're come this far though."
Big Pat reversed Prick Poo back down the track and swung around on the elbow, "Well next time we'll bring your car and fuck it up on some mountain."
Spirits dampened we drove back down the mountain trying not to think of the wonderland that could've been waiting for us atop that mountain.

The light continued to gradually fade and and we consulted our map of the Landing Strip again.
"There's no more caravan parks till the outskirts of Hobart"
"Well then."
We cruised into the park at the last light of day and set up our tents in the semi dimness on the edges of a massive lake that supplied us with ducks everywhere.
"Duck for dinner anyone?"

A BBQ dinner and we retired to the semi warmth of our tent for more beer and card games, later finding entertainment in the drunken teenage lesbian show that was happening in the cabin a few meters away. They sang loudly and danced to bad country songs till the owners hurried over to bang on the glass door and yell at them to keep it down. We continued to be loud and drunk with our radio till someone stuck their head out the window and screamed at us to shut the fuck up.

And that's all for now kids. Study calls. By which I mean sleeping in the sun with the bottle of coke.

Red Wine

2008-09-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, and I promise that this is my last post for tonight (wow it's hard to navigate the keys when you're drunk).

Trashy trashy slosh sister- I WANT MY BLOG AND I WANT IT NOW WOMAN!!!!!!

Capesh? You've run outta excuses girlie. Do it or I'll reveal to the blogosphere what you got up to with my 54 year old mum on this fine Spring night in a certain bar in Brighton.

Bahahahaha. That sounds seriously dirty.

Trash.

You.

Definition

Yeah...

Thank Family Guy (my god) that winter is over.
Bastard of a freakin' winter that sucked fat hairy black salty balls. (Not that I know what fat hairy black salty balls taste like...)

But I hear that you're rather talented at the ol' tambourine?

Trash.

I'll be back in a week and I'll be expecting a blog waiting for me. Capesh?

Capesh.

Yay.

Red wine.

*whispers* yay. *whispers* yay. *whispers* yay.

I really should go pack now and stop seeking attention from randoms on the interweb.

Wooooooo! TassieCuntMania!!!

Happy Birthday Mamma Goose

2008-09-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah. And my mum just turned 54.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!!!!!

Even though she doesn't actually read this type vomit.

Gonna stop drinking now...... and start packing.

Ahh.... who the heck am I kidding?

Frick........ where are my fishing rods? Hmm.....

Taking Testies

2008-09-27T05:53:00.000-07:00

This isn't what I want.

This is complete bullshit.

I don't want it.

This:

Is NOT how things are supposed to be.

Why is everything so fucked up?
Despite the sacrifices, the hardship, the endurance? All I've got for it....
is this:

Fucking this.

Hell.

In all its fiery, godless completion.

What I want. What I have only EVER wanted is this:

What I need. What I'd kill for.

And I've had enough.

I'm ready to spill the blood of the fuckers who get in my way.

The fuckers who get in between me and this-

You understand me now you stupid chauvinist bogan arseholes? You got that? No more. From here-on-in shit is gonna be done the right way. You fuckers are gonna give me fair go and just completely forget the fact that I have a vagina.

I work harder than you. I'm stronger than you. I'm tougher than you. And you don't want to fuck with me anymore. Cause I've had enough. ENOUGH

If I don't get this lifelong dream, than I'm getting your testicles with a side of gravy. Fucking delicious.

On the god damn fucking edge bitches.

Yeahh.... that was totally the wine speaking.

WOOOOO!!! going to tassie tomorrow!!

Later bitches.

The Big Two-One

2008-09-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

I've been going to a lot of 21sts this year and am gaining more and more of an education on what a 21st should be like.

The official guests begin to arrive around 7/8pm, while the close friends and family have been drinking/setting up since late in the afternoon.
Everybody screams when someone new arrives. People work out whose driving and who isn't. People ask each other what they got the special 21ster. They eat, drink, complain about the music, drink and gravitate towards a socially safe corner of the room before getting out their phones to text and look important and popular.

The more guests that arrive, the louder the music gets. The food starts to disappear and it becomes gradually harder to find your favourite beer or wine as the guests may take a step or two away from their own safe corners to attempt mingling with a larger proportion of the other guests.

People are standing up more by 10pm and maybe even one or two are attempting a-deranged-boot scoot, stepping from side to side and blushing when they miss a beat in the song.
Guests who were in the safe corners have suddenly realised how much they need to piss so wander off to find the toilets and end up in front of the collage of photos of the 21ster. "Ohh look at her/him there! Sooooo adorable!"

Then there's the endless "So how do you know [insert 21ster's name]?"
"Oh! I go to work/school/uni/cat-flinging competitions with him/her. What about you?"
"Oh! I used to live/play footy/masturbate with [insert 21ster's name]"
"Ahhh"
"Mmmm"
*both drink and look around*
"Oh there's Kate/Joel/fat tosser I hate but rather talk to him then endure this silence with you. Nice meeting you."
"Oh yes! You too"

Around 11pm a shout rings out and a thick murmur settles over the party as everyone seems to instinctively know that it's speech time.
Mum/Dad/brother/sister/perverted uncle stands up and raises their voice, kicking off the introduction to [insert 21ster's name]'s life.
The family tells the story about the time the 21ster ate a bug when he/she was a tot, ran away from home when all the ice cream ran out, shitted on the neighbour's cat, etc and everyone laughs.
The friends get up and tell the story about the time the 21ster got drunk and vomited in a taxi before taking a dump on Mr Lawson's front lawn, the time he/she lost their shoes on a night out, the time he/she got a flat tyre out near whoop whoop and was stranded for three hours, etc and everyone laughs.

It's pretty much a night of showcasing your entire life at 21 to everyone whose opinion you give a shit about (or are meant to give a shit about).
I mean, what do people that have no piss/shit/vomit stories do?
Do they just wake up a week before their 21st and go "right, gonna get me some 21st speech fodder today"?
Before getting drunk and heading out to shit, piss and vomit till their heart's content/camera memory card is full?

It's just so much pressure. I'll be 21 in less than two years and I'm already thinking about the bloody thing and stressing. ehhkkk.
If everything went to plan it would go like this:

Guests rock up to farm whenever the fuck they want to already find already find me smashed and riding my favourite sheep around wearing cowboy boots and some spanking hot expensive dress with a long neck bottle of VB in my grubby hand.
The old man has fired up a bonfire or two and thrown a couple of dead sheep into the flames and assures everyone that the fire will clean out the taste of maggot.
Other guests on sheepback are playing polo cross with shovels, chasing the rats that had been living in the ashes of the fire pit for the past few months across the paddock, screaming "Come up on the wing! He's headed for the fence!"

My best mates are in the wool shed that's been decorated with empty beer cans and drawing up the tally for the farm-to-pub horse/sheep race and arguing over who the favourite is. It's naturally me, but a rumour floating around says that dirty Wagga has been feeding his pony steroids for a week. The jury is out until Wagga rides down the driveway on a big Angus bull and he's tipped $1.25. I try to argue this infringement of the rules but Bode and Rod have taken my farm-to-pub horse/sheep race rule book and used it for rollies. Fuckers.

I then ditch my sheep, Woolly and go get my pony from the back paddock. He's firing from all cylinders after the redbull I put in his feed and before I can yell "ready, set, go!" he's cleared the top rail of the front gate and half way down the road. The rest of my guests soon follow. Some have a sheep as their ride of choice, some have a horse while others decide on riding each other in the machinery shed and skip the race entirely.

And I figure I've still got another two years to create the rest. Have a feeling I'm going to be disappointed by the real thing though.

TassiMania Bound Bar-Maid

2008-09-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Well this Dirty Bar-Maid is shedding her greasy, stale skin for a week to embark upon that grand ocean trek to Australia's little own 'Landing Strip'.
No, I'm not getting my genitals waxed (though I probably should......)- I'm going to Tassimania!!! That sweet little island that is the butt of every mainlander's jokes.
The cousin-rootin', hootin', babba-bootin', disconnected little strip of cunt ain't going to know what hit it this time next week when the Dirty Bar-Maid and her flock of pot-drinking, bourbon-snorting, Cow-Punching associates tumble off the ship and into TassiMania.

I've never been out of Australia before so am seriously psyched about crossing that little strip of sea to see how people outside my own grand mass of turd live. So far I'm picturing things to be a little something like this:-

Meets............

Yeah!

Early Monday morning we tumble off the almighty Spirit of Tassimania amidst our shit-load shipment of empty whiskey, bundy and bourbon bottles with a backpacker or ten to be greeted by the natives of said TassieCuntMania.
Most of who will be the direct descendants of cannibal-convicts who were transported to Van Dieman's Land for napkin stealing or rooting a gutter rat or some trivial crime like that.
The small assortment of natives, after welcoming us with open limbs (hands, fingers and toes need not apply) will invite us through teeth-less gobs with green tounges to a delicious feast of TassieCuntMania's traditional delicacy of their father's/brother's/sister's eyeballs, to be washed down with a pint of fairy urine.

I and my fellow Cow-Punchers feeling rather seedy from this point from all the fairy urine will continue on to meet the native's leader- a giant Tassie Devil called Aaron with TassieMania natives suckling from his teats. We will pass on such an indulgent and insist that we really must be on our way. We had hoped to get in a spot of fishing and native-hunting before nightfall.

Now I'm not 100% sure on this theory, so decided I'd Google image cannibal-tassie-cunt-mania-convicts-incest-bestiality-hairy just to round of the final perfections to this insightful understanding of other cultures. And this is what I found-

Your search - cannibal tassie cunt bestiality incest hairy convicts mania - did not match any documents. Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.

Ahhh I see. Second time is the charm then.

Google image search number #2 with 'cunt incest landing strip hairy' unearthed me this:-

Hmmm.... yehh that's kind of close to what I had in mind. The eyes so close together along with the dunny-brush tail are definite give-aways of inbreeding and cannibalism since 1788, but I've gotta say- the white fur really throws me. I can't seem to put that down to any logical explanation connected to the Tassie-Cunt native's lifestyle. Bathing in cum since 1788 maybe?

The Spirit of Tasmania should make that their motto. If the ads showed cum-bathing as the cultural highlight of this grand island instead of clearly homosexual husbands dancing with their wives on the ship's deck in the sunset I would've booked myself a ticket to Cunt-Mania the day before i was born. Or even worse, Poxy the fat Coxy telling us how the 'sea view is amazing'. Is it? Cause we can't see it with your fat arse, gut the size of Uluru and even bigger head in the way Poxy Coxy.
The marketing fuckers behind this advertisement and Poxy Coxy's humungo gut need to go back to MAWDTM University (Manipulate and Achieve World Domination Through the Media).

But any who, back to my Dirty Bar-Maid holiday to TassieMania.

I think I may have a serious problem. Did I mention that? Because after weeks upon weeks of listening to Kid Rock's sexual assault of 'Sweet Home Alabama' all I want to do is sit by the campfire, drink whiskey out the bottle (even though I don't even like whiskey- make that shizzle Bundy the bloke's best mate Polar Bear), 'smoke funny things, trying different things and sing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long'.

True talent right there- rhyming 'things' with 'things'. I was about to say that if the incest rumours about Kid Rock are true then he must be TassieMania's poster child...... woooahhh.. was that too far? I mean Tassie is still part of Australia after all, well kind of anyway.

[Rusted Gumption is not responsible for any politically incorrect statements and by viewing this blog you understand the terms and conditions of things being all fun and games till someone (i.e- a Tassie native) looses their self-esteem.]

So I Google imaged 'whiskey bottle campfire things things' to once again try and carve out some sort of image of what to expect on my grand expedition and this came up:-

So now I'm scared and am thinking that either the said Tassie Natives are terrorists, Kid Rock is a terrorist or *gulp* I am a terrorist. Which according to Bush means I can't trust myself and should go out and buy lots of guns and locks and be terrified of my own shadow because any minute my own shadow could rise up from the pavement wearing a turban, speaking Farsi and telling me to go get a Qantas plane. So I think it's just easier to decide on Kid Rock being a terrorist and being the Western World's enemy number #67864356 so must be set on fire- not because he's some how responsible for that note, but because he sexually abused Sweet Home Alabama. Fucker.

*takes medication now*

I'll try to bring back all my blogger friends tassie souvenirs. A Tassie Native's tail for the girls and and a Tassie Devil's turd for the boys. Don't say I don't think about you.

Killed ma phone cunt shit crap

2008-09-21T04:41:00.000-07:00

Well I guess that settles it.

I'll get a new phone next year.

The live wire is the only thing holding the entire thing together still so I think I could earn a bit of extra cash by running bets on how long I can hold out without electrocuting myself.
But I hear the whole Afro/electrocuted look is in right now.

And I just want to be as cool as the black kids. They're so cool. Damn my white-girlness.

This happened last night, and actually wasn't my fault. Fungy Toe wanted to play hacky sack. But unfortunately forgot the hacky sack, so just grabbed the next best thing.

But the fun didn't end there. Oh no my children.

After being refused entry to Fungy Toe's toilet cubicle to take photos for facebook I began kicking the door. Which prompted a couple of rich skanks to snort and tell me I was all class, to which I replied that I certainly was and they were up themselves. I had decided by this Jager-and-redbull-fueled moment that this shit was on and that me and my half phone could take them but they bolted from the dunnies. When Fungy Toe emerged from said cubicle we went on rich skank search and found them snorting Shiraz through their plastic noses near the 'ethnic male' corner. We set up camp within the shoe-flinging, poo-hurling perimeter and were on the edge of our trench on the point of attack before we got distracted by free drinks from random losers. Yay. Who needs pride?

So my phone and a couple of brain cells were the only casualties of this onslaught. Reckon I'm fine though. fbhgibkdosdfjmsdjs,ld fuckers. shit crap.cunt.tassie cousin rooters. blahh.

Peace out my tiggers (cause niggers is a dirty word).

1.30am- Instead of Studying

2008-09-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

I watch the beaten brown toes of my boots pick their way through the swirling red dust of the track. The afternoon sun still manages to glare through the thick curtain of dust and sting my eyes so I keep them lowered, my face obscured from the invisible gawkers by my hat.
I glance up at the distant growl of a diesel engine and spot a large truck trundling down the track straights towards me and the weatherboard pub.
This outsider's movement makes my skin prickle despite the pounding heat as I suck in my breath. Eyes down again I continue on my bee-line for the pub, trying to shake off the anxiety that tightens my cracked lips.

My feet baulk slightly as they leave the red dust of the track and step onto the hot rutted concrete of the pub's verandah. The shade slices through the glare and I look upwards, my eyes locking onto the darkened green window of the pub's heavy door-making explicit to my sticky flesh the coolness that lay on the other side. A long desired oasis.

Dogs in the Graveyard

2008-09-09T01:49:00.000-07:00

Working every Saturday night/Sunday morning till 5am in an over 28s' night club on the outskirts of Melbourne's industrial area you come to learn a couple of valuable things about this proportion of the 'human race' (a term I stretch to almost breaking point here):

(1) Charles Darwin was right- only the strong survive. While the weak mightn't necessarily perish in today's modern urban society where any disease-riddled, quarter-brained excuse for a life form can still technically exist, that's all they really do- exist.

(2) Dogs generally have more class, intelligence and are better looking than the people at over 28s' nights. Ohh...... and actually have some imitation of etiquette. (i.e- dogs may sniff every other dog in the park's arse but they don't end up paying for a lick from the dog having 'gender issues').

So it doesn't seem to matter how privileged, wealthy or sheltered a person has been, if your core is weak you're gonna fall. And if you show your weakness to others they will most often than not take advantage to assume a higher place in the pack than you.

The only defence for this seems to be is to fake it. If you're scared, act like you're brave. If you're nervous, act like you're confident. If you feel uncertain, say everything aloud with conviction.
Because the strong really do like using the weak as stepping stones.
And stepping stones despite earning a shit load of money (which they love showing off to bar-maids half their age) can grow out of their youth, but not their weaknesses, not their insecurities with people's perceptions of them not changing. And when the people around you develop an assumption, it can eventually spill over to completely engulf your own self-perception.

So throughout your life you have to maintain that iron inner strength and become nobody's doormat. Face the humiliation, the rumours, the cruelty with the inner strength of knowing. Knowledge is more powerful than any doughy pay packet.

Otherwise you just become another old balding stepping stone at the over 28s night flashing the Mercedes car keys to make the Vietnamese prostitutes flock around and eat greasy 5 cent spring rolls out your palm. A bit of social lubricant here, a grope from a Vietnamese professional's hand there and the stepping stone has cast off the darkness from his lonely, empty weak of being the doormat. As he winks slyly at the barmaid and takes his Gordon's gin and tonics with the beer soaked lemon, telling her to keep the change.

While I watch these weak stepping stones I doubt and fear for the human race. Then I remember that the stepping stone that just grabbed my arm, winked at me, stuck out their tongue was someone's father, someone's mother, someone's uncle, brother, daughter, aunt, sister or even someone's grandparent and I feel sick.

And just when I think I'm going to scream because I can't take these stepping stones anymore! I can't take their weakness! The stench of the life long fear that has rotted them to their flimsy cores is making me gag. They are all victims. Shuffling in. Shuffling out, not fighting, not questioing, folding folding folding. Accepting their circumstances, their fates, their place at the bottom of the steps, the dregs of the dog pack hierarchy. They come every week and sing 'Jessie's Girl' and 'Run to Paradise' all night long, screaming everytime the songs begin as though they have never heard them before.

Then at closing time they won't leave.
"The bar's closed" we repeat over and over again to their deaf/drunk ears as they give us heart breaking looks as we tell them to go home. The lights turn on, silence consumes the club and the bouncers move in, but they still won't leave. I clean the bar, pick up after them and don't look at them as they stumble and fall as they are mustered out like sheep while their notes and coins nestle curled up in my pocket.

The stepping stones crumble out onto the cold wet street and later I drive home to my warm bed and dreams of the life ahead of me that won't settle for any bottom step.

The graveyard shift is getting to me.

3am

2008-09-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

What I should be thinking about at the present time:

And......

What I am thinking about:

Totally gonna ace my exams.

Blind folded.

With hands tied behind my back.

While Drunk.

And Stoned.

With Jensen Ackle's tongue in my ear.

While Miley Cryus songs blare to Japanese Karaoke.

Doing it without the above stimulation could prove a challenge though.

Well I am doing my year 12 at two shitty tafes so I'm sure the weekly bomb threat evacuation will rescue me. Yay yay yay to Government schooling.

Oh and one more 3am final thought-

Mmmmm........weapons of mass destruction found.

tehehe. yummy.

Fucking insomnia.

Driving Wheels

2008-09-02T01:16:00.000-07:00

I love days when all you need is a strong cup of coffee and Jimmy Barnes playing in The Uterus to get you somewhat motivated.

Today he told me about driving wheels.

How I can be like a shooting star across a desert sky if I so choose. That all I need is a wheel in front of me and four beneath me to venture on out in that unknown beyond and follow the broken miles, live on borrowed time and leave only hotel rooms and broken hearts in my wake.

That there is nothing wrong with going up and down the same road many times, that there's nothing wrong with searching for something you're not really sure you will ever find (or even what that something is).

The highway is your friend. It won't desert you, it won't break your heart or let you down. It will always be there; right over the suburban highway, behind that old roadhouse or calling to you through the window of your house while you lie in bed not prepared to sleep when that highway is calling to you.

The searching will always keep you moving, because that highway stretches forever, linking the bright lights of the city to the emptiness of the outback where only the bravest tread. Patience is a virtue in such a life, but the dreams and adrenaline of not knowing what's coming up on the next 50 km of black bitumen will propel your wheels ever onwards.
Because only the road can tame the rebel within your soul, and it knows that, your wheels know that so they keep driving.

For it's the rhythm of the highway as it rolls on by, city lights as they fade from sight with nothing but blackness ahead and that open road. And however cliched that may be; only you understand how it makes your heart pump and reminds you how you are not going to just be another brick in the big ol' wall, because you belong to the highway. Your highway.

Jimmy tells me about the rodeo, about riding hard and never letting go and I see the flash of the coat of some crazed bronco bucking in the heavy swirl of dust of some outback corral and I can almost smell the danger but am thirsty for it.
Dust so thick it grows like scabs all over the sweaty skin of the people's bodies, they squint out from beneath the shades of bloody, beaten and almost shredded hats, have little materialism to their name, but the smile on their faces is to be envied. Exhibiting their iron courage in literally a heartbeat in the pounding haze of that dusty madness; never to be questioned again with the grave lurking only a heartbeat away in such a blood-fueled moment.

The toddler amongst them is more connected to this grit, this earth, this truth than the businessman in Collins Street has ever been his whole life. He fills his void with long hours, money, superfluous possessions and still has to boast for your validation.
With the testament to a life stewing in ignorance being the satin pillow in his coffin, nursing the head that won't even be truly connected to the earth till it lies beneath it.

That is something I'm prepared to wander through the twilight of my life for. Gamble safety, security, money, friends for. I'd have a home, out on the blue horizon because the rebel will always pound in my soul.

Chasing southern stars in the distant sky, roaming the open plains with mountains high, following the road that goes forever.

In this world of push and shove, I'm terrified of loosing the freedom in my blood.

This is the rhythm of my highway.

Thanks to Barnsie for the fuel......... and the lyrics.

Cynical Signage

2008-08-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

I couldn't help grinning when he said he could read everything about a person with only their date of birth as an aid. I told him my date of birth and he nodded and launched into his explanation of me.
"You are very independent."
I nodded, "Kay"
"You are stubborn, you dig your heels in when you are told what to do, but if you are explained something you will go along with it at first before doing it your own way."
I could feel the heat rush to my cheeks as the other bar maids at my side stood listening while they worked.
"You bottle up emotion. You don't let yourself feel. Then eventually it just explodes."
I thought about this year, about the breakdown and winced, beginning to feel like I was naked to him.
"But you are also very optimistic and have a very positive outlook on life. The world would be a better place if there were more people like you in it."
I think that that is true; and it is true because I'm unrealistic, and even when I am being negative (which you would've seen some shinning examples of on here) I'm only doing it as a way of venting anger and frustration or to get attention from the people around me- yeh, I admit it- I can be an attention whore.
"At school you enjoyed analytical subjects that questioned life and the world. You have a fascination for how things began, with history, with foundations."
I continued to watch him as he talked, stunned, not daring to admit to anything.
"And at the moment you are deciding something."
My mouth tightened.
"For the past month or so you have been seriously considering something and your mind isn't quite made up yet."

After he had walked away Jess shook her head.
"Geeze he's lost a lot of weight"
"What?"
"He used to come down to the movies in Chaddie every week for years when I worked there and do all our readings."
"Was he ever right?"
She shrugged, "I'm a cynic. It always seems like very general stuff that he says. Was he on the ball with you?"
I gave a small nodd, "Yeah. Pretty much."

I only wish he could've told me what I should do. I'm still hanging out for some sort of sign and had he given me the slightest one I would've taken it and run with it.

Gary the No-Nonsense Unicorn

2008-08-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

If you live in marvellous freakin' Melbourne you would've no doubt seen the 'Let your imagination guide you' advertisements on tv at some stage.
But for those who haven't I'll run you through it.

A visitor to the city is met at the station by a 12 foot giant who looks like he's just stepped out of the Phar Lap film (well a giant version of it anyway), and from there they proceed to explore the city. Visiting numerous spots where they meet two other people who also appear to have visible imaginations as 'guides'. One girl has a fairy, which is yeah, passable as fitting into the fantasy, imagination category, along with the giant from the Phar Lap film. But the other person that the man and his giant run into has, wait for it, a giant fish.
Okay, I get the fairy, I get the giant. But a fish? A fucking fish? What sort of a person has a fish as their guide, their inner imagination? Probably the same sort of person that has a blog dedicated to scrap booking and photos of their cats- which you'll see many pongee specimens of just by randomly scrolling through blogger.

I can just the imagine the creators of this ad sitting around the board room (all of them no doubt with their own blogs about scrap booking and their stupid snarly cats).
Heads grin and nod in unison when the giant is suggested.
Same goes for the fairy.
Then the smiles fade, the heads stop moving and the faces grow blank again as the noise from the street below can be heard again. They all look at each other empty of ideas.
Someone suggests a dog. "That's not imaginative" one pigheaded suit snarls.
How about a cat? More sneers.
A horse? Same response.
Blank faces look at each other in silence.
A small noise yanks one young buck's head upright towards the direction of the fish tank where a small gold fish has blown a bubble in defiance of not being fed yet.
A gasp, a suggestion and the heads are a-nodding and grinning again as 'fish' makes the list.

And another thing! Isn't it funny how of all the people shown romping through the city, only three of them had imaginations as guides? What the hell is that meant to insinuate? Only a tiny, minuscule majority have imaginations? That the rest of us are brain-dead bores who consume, fart then go to sleep to rest up for another day in conventional society that is giant, fairy and even fish free? I want answers!

If I had been in that board room I would've suggested one beast of a guide and one beast alone that wouldn't have sprouted from some inane object in the room (no offence to any fish reading this. Rusted Gumption- the fishes' friend), but from my very own imagination where a happy little guide lurks and comes out to play often.
I call him Gary the No-Nonsense Unicorn. (Gary the No-Nonsense Unicorn in his natural habitat before he was evicted for indecent exposure. How does a Unicorn naturally naked indecently expose himself you ask? You'll have to ask Gary)

Why is he No-Nonsense? Well it's his middle name for a start, and you'll have to ask his mama, Cheryl the Obnoxious Unicorn regarding that.
Gary the No-Nonsense Unicorn comes out to play often and doesn't just bound in to guide me, but lead me completely astray; he is solely to blame for everything bad I have ever done. Bad Gary, bad!
And he doesn't just meet up with me when we have made prior arrangements, as the people meeting up with their imagination guides quite clearly have, he comes the fuck over whenever the fuck he wants, leaving a path of destruction and overall unicorn poo in his wake.

But having said that, Gary the No-Nonsense Unicorn is more than just a horse with a rock-hard dildo on his head, he's my inner spontaneity and a ball of fun if you catch him just before he gets stoned/drunk. Despite my hating him when he rears his fat, obnoxious head at incredibly inappropriate times (i.e- at a funeral, telling me to do "Stax On" the coffin).
But everyone needs an inner imagination beast, otherwise you're just some zombie going through the motions of life and not really getting kicks out of the simple pleasures with dreams and ambitions; regardless of how mental your inner imagination beast may be (and no, a fish doesn't count).

But, back to the ad. If not Gary the No-Nonsense Unicorn, then why not Boris the Croc?
I'll assume you have all seen the brilliant four-wheel-drive ads with Boris the croc with attitude, "Fetch Boris", you know the ones.

Imagine if he was set loose as some person's guide in the city.
"No Boris! The Asian tourists aren't food! Yes I know it's an all you can eat Chinese restaurant."
What is with advertisers today?
A fucking fish for christ's sake.

Frick

2008-08-19T16:50:00.001-07:00

I called in sick to work today. I didn't have it till 12pm, but I'm crook with not just a hangover, but this acid volcano inside of me that has been erupting as if on frickin cue every few seconds for the past few days.
Last night every gulp of grog-a-log was searing pain through my chest and throat, so I kept at it till the pain was numbed to a gentle roar (Rusted Gumption- the oxymoron's friend). At 3am this morning in the pub toilets, while most girls were drunk and crying about guys giving them grief, I was nearly hurling from the frickin acid volcano in my chest in between thinking about the big media SAC I had the next day (today).

Mum said, with what seemed like with a touch of glee that it was probably a stomach ulcer. Frick.
A Frickin stomach ulcer!
So I'm off to the doctor's today (where I can now tell you the name and date of every magazine on their coffee table) to once again run my doc through my ailments for more drugs! Yay! Drugs!

But right now, my head hurts and I'm farked so reckon I better sleep. I've had something like 9 hours sleep in two days. Oh yeh, and there's the little matter of studying for the big SAC I've got later.
Frick.

This has been a carnt of a year. blahh.

Trashbag I am. What of it?

2008-08-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

Apparently I'm a rebel. I wasn't aware of that.
I do a lot of crazy shit, yes. I drink to excess, yes. I have no respect for authority. I can be pretty rude, obnoxious and a downright bitch when the mood/ fellow bitch strikes me (sometimes literally) so. But 'rebel'?
I don't say this to be boastful. I don't think I'm a boastful person. My small-country town mentality has always taught me not to talk shit with the possibility of the shit being extracted and pelted back at you always being present.

That term 'rebel' has always had a pretty pathetic stigma attached to it for me.
'Rebels' were the kids back in secondary school (according to them anyway) that talked loudly, threw paper at the ceiling fan when the teacher's backs were turned and decided who was 'cool' and who wasn't. It goes without saying I was never a 'cool' kid. I hated all their guts because I saw them as a lame form of authority that were going to try and break me like the rest of the fucked up system and I hated everything about them. Though back then, pretty sure I hated everything and everyone.

But I was a quiet objector, I went about my dark days with a drooped head, staring at the scuffed toes of shoes, thinking about how much life sucked.

After the cattle station, after the year of drifting that followed from suburban cake shop to Agriculture course to horse training property in Northern Victoria, I was 17 and working like a dog with every second weekend off.
In those two days I was granted every fortnight to do as I pleased, I did just that and embraced the fucking fantastic thing of grog that made all my problems, pain and regret go away. My first weekend off from that job I went out to a country fundraising dance in the Victorian High Country. I drove to the dance in "Little Shit", my crappy little manual corolla car at the time that had a habit of unexpectedly rolling backwards when it was in a particular foul mood at me (which seemed to be all the time).

I borrowed another girl's clothes and didn't give a shit that a large percentage of my bra was showing to the whole township of Strathbogie (a handful of elderly people and their dogs aka 'daughters') as I used my fake ID to buy UDL (what was I thinking? Weak as fucking piss), dodging an accusation or two that the photo didn't look like me.

A guy ten years older than us from Perth wandered over to start buying us Passion Pop (the devil) and that's when the fun really started. In a far from glamorous state we were introduced to the actor Tom Long (Sea Change, Two Hands, The Dish, etc) and started betting which girl could have him pin her against the outside of the brick hall by the end of the night with only the horses in the paddock as witnesses, completely disregarding his wife that stood beside him.
When he asked Sarah and I what we did we replied, "Work at the pre-training horse farm."
"We don't ride though, we save that for weekends" I spluttered, thankfully inaudibly.

Three bottles of Pashion Pop later and we decided to head back to Sarah's up in the bogies. It wasn't till I was behind the wheel of Little Shit and weaving my way up a steep narrow mountain road in the pitch dark that I realised how completely wasted I was. To this day, I don't know how I didn't die. I was 17 years old driving on a New South Wales licence that I'd only had for a couple of months. But this still isn't even one of the worst things I've done.

After a few more bottles of Passion Pop I staggered to my makeshift bed and passed out cold and thank god I was lying on my stomach because I woke up spewing my guts out. Sarah, a girl I'd known for less than a week helped me mop myself up, smiling to hide her horrified and disgusted expression (and she worked with me picking up horse shit).

That was the first in a long long line of messy weekends to come that have lasted to this day- until I started working in the nightclub all Friday and Saturday nights to start combating my grog-spending, saving brain cells for year 12 study and piecing back together some sort of a semi-savable-reputation that wouldn't even have been put on life support if I still lived in a country town.

I'd like to think, that while I'm still not 'back on the rails' yet (though, I'm not really sure if I was even born 'on the rails'), now I can do the whole sloshed rebel trashbag with enough class to charm and disarm and enough savvy learned the hard way to control my self-destructiveness.
Luckily my friends aren't the judgemental sort and my family wouldn't notice if I died my hair black, got a tattoo saying "Saturn" smashed across my forehead and joined a blood-drinking cult, so I think I'm safe to keep up the trashbag lifestyle for now with one eye still firmly on the future and my goals.

Choose the dog

2008-08-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

My dog is the only member of my family that I actually like and the only one I come close to resembling.
This morning eating breakfast, quietly minding my own business my wanker brother stormed into the kitchen in one of his many many many many dirty moods. I had triple J playing on the radio, and at the the time, I admit the song on was pretty shit. "You listen to this because people tell you to?" This from the guy who has practically grown up in the shadow of his friends and can't buy a chocolate bar without getting their approval of it. But I luckily came to terms with this fact and the fact that he's a wanker a long time ago so my response didn't intellectually extend beyond "Piss off dickhead".
But he wouldn't relent. He was on his way to work, in which he stands around a pool all day and tries to tell me that it's harder work than rousing in a shed. Dickhead. So maybe that's why he was so shirty, though his moods don't usually need a reason, a point or are predictable when they'll crash down and snow you in in utter bullshit.
"Why the fuck do you listen to this shit?"
I got sucked in. I know I don't have to answer to him. I normally don't. He's a dickhead, and arguing with with a dickhead is like sharing a needle with someone that's HIV positive- the shit inside them once released is contagious. And while I can think independently and remain steadfast when having their shit pelted at me, I still don't want to even risk contracting one drip of their lame little intellectually stunted wave lengths.
So shrugging, not looking up from my fruit bowl I said, "No ads".
The song ended and the morning DJs started talking, they must of mentioned something about some product (I couldn't hear it over the loud squirting of his verbal diarrhoea) and he almost shouted triumphantly, "There! An ad!!"

If the stereotypes of this society are true then I should kick him in the groin and see if he screams, I bet he won't though, the most I'll do is push out a bit of hot air from his arse which needs to be done anyway. Though I'm still prepared to test the experiment..... just to be sure. Fucking idiot.

My dog is so awesome.

So-Long to a Shearer

2008-08-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

I don't understand how this could happen. I can't comprehend it. How? How? How?
He was only middle-aged. He was only in his forties. He was healthy. He was fit. He didn't drink. He didn't smoke. He was strong, incredibly strong.
How could this happen?

"I've got some bad news" Dad said on the phone yesterday morning. I thought I would choke on my own breath as I held it, waiting for the next words.
"You know how Grant had looked crook last time we saw him?"
No. No. No. No!
"Pauline just rang me."
NO! NO! NO!
"He's passed away."
I don't remember what I said. I dropped to my knees on the kitchen floor as I heard something about 'heart valve' and 'fucked'.
I started to weep. "How could this happen?"
He had seven kids below the age of 16 years old. His youngest was born last year. With another two girls back in New Zealand.
Dad said something about Pauline coping, being financially sound. Having just sold their fat lambs, having their farm debt paid off. "She's coping" He said. "She's coping"
"He worked himself to death." He said. "He was never going to make it past 50"

Grant the work horse. That's what we always called him. The best shearer in Western Victoria, possibly all of Victoria. Shearing 220 a day on average, 250 on a good day; solo; without a word of complaint.
In Southern Queensland I'd peer over at each of the shearer's counters at the end of the day. None would read above 200. Even the fittest, the youngest, the strongest of them didn't make Grant's numbers.
"What do you reckon of Queensland shearers?" I was asked over smoko with a smirk one day. I shrugged. "You oughta come down to Victoria one day and see how it's really done."

Since 1988, before I was even born he was out shearing at our place. I don't remember when I first met him. Probably a tot, maybe even a baby. Wandering into the shed amongst the burr of the handpiece, the pong of the lanolin and the clatter of hooves upon metal grid to see the big shearer with sweat pouring from his brow weaving his handpiece over the wool, shedding it as easily as peeling a banana.
When Dad finally let me in the shed to start rousing I'd never tire of watching Grant work. Into the pen, flip a sheep, pull him out, position between legs, yank cord and the handpiece would buzz into life, start on foot, shear belly, legs, butt, head, neck, work down back, first side, second side, finish on tail, push through legs and down the chute, yank handpiece off, wipe sweat off on towel and back into the pen for the next one. It was like the perfect steps of a dance. Never changing, always the same. He'd rarely nick them either. They'd be white as snow, rarely a slick of red would intrude on such perfection in his work.

Sometimes when he couldn't come out he'd send a replacement. Some leering pisspot who'd cut the sheep half way to their grave, whack the handpiece over their jaw every time they kicked and could never, ever reach Grant's numbers. 170, 180 or 190 a day.
As their battered, dirty vehicles would disappear in a cloud of dust up the drive way, Dad would spit into the dust and grumble, "Gonna tell Grant to not send me out anymore of these fuckin' ferals. Full of shit."
He wasn't a gossiper or a pryer either unlike most, but he'd look up occasionally when Dad would be giving me a hard time. I'd rouse, pen-up, do the bellies then skip smoko to go drench and brand the sheep in the yards, all with Dad breathing down my neck, hollering out insults; taking out on me the lice in the sheep, the fly-blown, the failed crops, the lambs coming too early, the rain that drenched the sheep a day before shearing, the rain that didn't come, the broken-down machinery, the flat tyre, the plummet in wool prices, the sheep getting in and ruining the hay, you name it.
One day, while I slogged it out in the heat and the flies, trying to drench old ewes that knew the routine and knew how to jump at just the right angle to knock your teeth out, with Dad as usual screaming from the doorway of the wool shed while I lost concentration and got trampled by a ewe and scratched my arm on the corrugated iron sheet lining the race, Grant said something.
It wasn't much, it wasn't forceful, it was in his usual soft but seemingly indifferent way- "She's a good girl".
Dad didn't say anything else for the rest of the day.
Maybe a year later when I was 16 years old and working on the cattle station in North-West New South Wales, not coping with the abuse, falling apart, Mum told me over the phone what Grant had said, what Dad had told her but not me.
My jaw dropped, "He said that?". Words could not express how much those four little words meant, the strength they gave me to carry on, knowing that the toughest, strongest man I had ever known thought I, despite all the cruel, hurtful things Dad pelted at me in front of him, was a good worker, a good girl.
They empowered me to hold my head high, to let the cowboys' and manager's harassment and cruelty slide off my back, not affect me as much as it should, knowing that back home, a true man, a true worker, a truly good person thought highly of me, in his own way of course. If he could recognise my worth then so could I.

And now he's gone. Never again will I walk into the shed early in the morning still munching on piece of toast to see him squatting on his haunches, in his usual, quiet but dignified way setting up his equipment for the day.
Never again will I be able to giggle at my dog's expression and cautious snarl at his snoring as he naps upon the board at smoko time.
Never again will I be able to watch such true shearing talent and expertise, all from such an incredibly quiet, un-boastful, commanding and proud bloke.

The last time I saw him, only a month or two back, for the first time I had ever known him, he couldn't shear. He said something about gastro, something about eating a Kiwi-dog at his son's footy match the day before that didn't agree with him. He was pale and hunched, but as he sat out quietly on the wool shed step he peered off into the distance and as usual gave little away on his worn face as he softly spoke, "That a lama out there?"
I started laughing, "It's an alpaca. Dad's latest hair-brain scheme and complete waste of money."
He just nodded and continued to stare into the distance.

Last night, or rather early this morning working in the nightclub, a sad song caught me off-guard, rendered me vulnerable from the Dirty Bar-Maid front and I disappeared out the back to the silent toilets, to a cubicle where I sat down on the toilet seat and wept. Wept for my lost mate.

Week (b)end

2008-08-03T22:35:00.000-07:00

Friday:

Worked all day. Found myself not working that night for the first time in many weeks so went home to drink red wine and not do school work and scream at the TV for playing the sequel to Bridget Jone's Diary. Was thinking about how much Hugh Grant reminded me of my annoying, wanker uncle when the annoying wanker uncle rang.
"What are you doing with yourself?"
Me: "Mm.. not much. Working, studying."
"What are ya going to do next year?"
"Mm.. dunno yet. Might go travelling."
"Go to Europe. It's all happening in Europe. C and D are over there."
Me: "Yeah. Nah. Rather go around Australia first."
"No, don't do that. It's going off in Europe! Go to Europe."
Annoying wanker.

At 3am I was awoken by a familiar scuffling, munching noise. I cursed, I knew that sound all too well. I switched on the light and surveyed my pig sty of a room till I found the source. A little brown mouse sat on my desk nibbling on a week old sandwich wrapped in foil. I gasped before attempting to grab it as it jumped at me and I couldn't help yelping with fright.
It disappeared under the mountain of shit on the floor and I went back to bed, laughing myself to sleep.

Saturday:

Worked all day in my favourite part of the Hotel- the sports bar- where super sexy bartender works who I had seen little of in the past few weeks and was going crazy about. Felt my knees crippling beneath me every time he called me 'Larnzy', poked me, pulled my hair, put his hand on my back or spoke to me in a voice that felt like it was dripping with sugar. Had to tune him out just so I could concentrate, just so I could hear the patrons' orders when he'd be at my side poking my hip. Had to refrain from ogling his butt when I walked past with racks of glasses just so I wouldn't drop them.
Then- bang. Heard it.
Bar maid number 2: "Your girlfriend is a lesbian!"
My head whips up from the till, "What?"
She grins, giving him a sideways glance as his head is bent over the till. "She's not!" He mumbles out of whack with his usual charm.
I have to clench my jaw shut and advert my gaze, hide my intense interest.
She smiles at me, "The girl he's seeing is a lesbian"
My jaw drops. "What?"
Hot Bartender: "She's bi!" He protests, "Can't tell you anything!"
This banter went on for a while, while I stood there, laughing as well, pouring beers, working the till, taking money and talking to the drunks. Hiding it, hiding it, hiding it.
Then Kaz sidled up to my side and slipped a wad of notes into my pocket, "What the.....!" I began as she hushed me, "It's from Charlie." I stared, bewildered.
I countered the notes- $400. I gasped, "Oh My Gawd!!"
Kaz: "He gave us all the same". I continued to stare at her, not noticing the customers anymore.
"What?"
Hot Bar Tender laughed and walked behind me to start rubbing my shoulders, while I tried not to pass out.
Eventually I regained my Dirty Bar-Maid composure and was back at it, guiltily enjoying it when the old drunks called me beautiful in front of Hot Bar Tender. Wanting to start dancing around.
Did you hear that? Did you hear that? Validation! Yay!
But instead kept mopping up the beer and working the taps with complete Dirty Bar-Maid respectability, until HBT would touch me again or ask whether I needed his help. bahhhh!

Later that night, drunk in a bar, sitting on a guy's lap I text Fungy: 'I'm in love! But he has a gf! But she's bi-sexual! So maybe I can fix my lil dilemma!!! Make the dyke chick fall for you so she leaves him and I can strike while he's vulnerable and lonely!'

Then later, drunker, I text The Canza: 'Drunk message. Just made out with 2 guys- one is a mate. Going to party at his house now. Hmm.. might try to be not a complete trashy now. Want HBT's babies. Need him like a big mac. Speaking of which- at maccaz now. Tehehehehehe xx'

Sunday:

I'll leave out the next five hours after that, still rather ashamed. But in the morning I woke to a message on my phone saying my brother had been hit by a car and two large bruise like hickeys on my neck. Cursing over the hickeys, I quickly checked my brother wasn't dead before applying make-up to the hickeys before I was due in to work at midday.
The make-up didn't conceal the hickeys or the hungover expression on my face.
Around 2pm I dropped a whole stack of plates and cursed the explosion of noise they released as they shattered onto the tiled floor amidst chips, meat, veggies and salad.
I found my composure and walked out of the kitchen to the whole bistro laughing at me.

And that was my weekend in a nutshell.

The Dirty Bar-Maid Chronicles

2008-07-22T03:42:00.000-07:00

My first night working in the nightclub one of the other bar-maids advised me to "Be a bitch. They'll tip you if they think you're playing hard to get."
The "they" were men who were roughly 50 years old, the patrons of the over 28s' night, out to desperately pick up whatever they could get; whether that be woman, trannie or stale whore that had staggered up the road from the brothel (seriously) that was after any loose change.

It didn't matter that most of us girls behind the large concrete bar weren't 20 years old yet; we were fair game too in their eyes. On my first night I was watching the glasses pile up on tables when I asked whether I should venture from the post to get them and I received the instruction, "Stay where you are. There's dirty old men out there."

When I received my first tip ($5 in the first 20 minutes) I started giggling and holding it up and was told to put it in a glass above the beer fridge otherwise my pockets would be overloaded within minutes. And sure enough, coins and notes began to fill that glass and I looked upon it like a proud mother of her child.
That week I smiled nicely, apologised as I spilled drinks, dropped glasses and had to ask people to repeat their orders again and again and again, straining my already sore ears over the roar of the pumping music.

Last Saturday night I tried a different method from the Be-A-Bitch-Get-A-Tip.
Two wog guys who looked like the only patrons to meet the 28 mark that had obviously rocked up to pick up girls below 30 were standing by the bar looking disgusted as they surveyed the crowd of 50 year old grandmothers in short sequined skirts and high heels and hookers who looked much the same except they could barely speak English.
I sidled up to them with my Dirty Bar-Maid grin.
They were turned away watching something on the dance floor. I followed their gaze and saw one of the regulars; the little, bald, Harry-Potter glasses Evan already grooving his plump little stature amidst the Vietnamese call-girls and Supre-clad mothers as they giggled like school girls and patted his shiny scalp as though he was a pet.
The two wogs snickered things that weren't quite audible, but I got the jist.
I lent over the bar, turning the Dirty Bar-Maid charm on full-bore, "Don't Laugh!" I shouted, "That'll be you in 20 years." They turned around and seemed surprised for a moment before finding their bearings.
"See that old girl over there sculling that wine?" The tall one said with slight indication of his head.
I grinned and rolled my eyes, "Yeh"
"That'll be you in 20 years!" And they started cackling.
"Yeah, good on ya. " I laughed, "Now you fellas gonna stand around admiring the scenery all night or are ya gonna start kicking ya nights' off?"
They asked for bourbon and coke.
Then Jager Bombs.
I was handed a $5 tip.
Then two more Jager Bombs.
I was told to keep the change- $12.
As I rushed up down the bar I continued the banter with them, grinning and pretending to slip like a kid's entertainer in the puddles of beer on the tiled floor, making them roar with laughter. Challenging them to out drink each other, taking the piss out of the loser before asking what they wanted next with a raised eye brow and my lips parted in that oh-so-Dirty-Bar-Maid-way.
"Two more jagers!.....And two more Johnnies and coke!" The tall one announced as he threw a 50 dollar note at me.
I made the drinks, handed them over then stood waiting for them to finish. "Come on!" I teased. "What are you? Girls?!"
Down went those drinks and four more drinks were ordered. I was told to keep the change again- $13.
Now a bit more worse for wear they stood over the bar, swaying slightly.
"What's your name beautiful?"
"Lana" I smiled.... (I've considered coming up with a Dirty-Bar-Maid alias but just haven't got around to it yet).
"You single?" the tall one leered. I was saved by another boozer who came to the bar and ordered 3 pots of Carlton.
After that they moved away.
Shortly after I looked over to see Tall Wog trying to chat up another bar-maid. She was trying her Be-A-Bitch method and I was tempted to go tell her that that didn't work with these guys, but he hung around her for over an hour.
Eventually I got a chance when Tally's bladder was probably almost bursting after all that boozing and standing in one spot and he disappeared. I skipped over to her, "How much did you get?"
She shrugged, "$6.50"
I gave her my secret (there's a Dirty-Bar-Maid sisterhood) and wished her luck then hopped back to my part of the bar just as short wog sauntered over for another drink and he handed me another big tip, telling me I was stunning and my face exquisite, gesturing his chubby hands over his own face to emphasis his meaning. I laughed. Man I love drunk people, especially when I'm the one that has gotten them drunk.

Tall Wog came back again though, bringing a job offer for me at 'his' bar in Richmond along with the same question of whether I was single. I've never been so grateful for ear-piercing music in my life as I sidled away to serve another patron.

At 1.30am I finished for the night/morning and finally stuck my hand in my pocket and gaped at all the paper my hand met. $45 in tips!! The easiest money I've ever made!

I laughed all the way home and on Monday morning I proudly announced to my shrink that part of the money I was handing over to her was 'tip money', which saw her raise an eyebrow and I knew I was going to get a lecture next session.

Face Bulk

2008-07-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

It's funny how we can check our reflections in the mirror a few hours before we are about to head out and be really impressed and proud of what we see. Often think, 'Shit, who wouldn't wanna a piece of this?'
And as the time draws closer to the time of our departure from the safety of our houses, we are still able to catch glimpses of our reflection and puff up like bullfrogs still with a complete guiltless vanity. The time continues to tick away and the promise of what that night will bring all thanks to our fantastic looks excites and escalates us to a dizzy degree and as we add the final touches to our persons; a sprinkle of perfume there, a dab of lippy here we begin to notice tiny things.
Is that a pimple starting to sprout above my eyebrow? .....meh, no matter. I still look hot.

Dab dab, pull on shiny new shoes, pluck off dog fluff, run fingers through newly clean hair. Turn to mirror.... smile.
Ohh, my teeth look so yellow! Must have been from that coffee I had this morning.

Brush teeth.

Much better.

Check time. Nearly time. Check reflection.

Face looks different. Did some of the makeup get washed off when I brushed my teeth?

Apply more makeup. Add more hairspray to hair. Adjust bobby pins.

Check profile in full-length mirror. Notice creases in jacket. Doesn't matter.

Time. Shit! Better add more mascara.

.........And more eye liner..

........Need more blush....

.....oh!! My neck looks so white!! Needs makeup!!

Reflection is scrutinised mercifully until time is checked. Oh my gawd! I'm late.

Grab things and rush towards door. Stop. Check reflection in hallway mirror. Mascara is already starting to run! Imagine what it will look like by the time I even get there!! Shit shit shit!

Get tissues. Dab at eyes. There's too much blush! I look like a fucking clown!

Dab Dab. I'm so late!

Take one last look at reflection. I'm hideous.

Turn face away, drop head. I'll make up for it with my personality. Looks are nothing. It's all about personality. I just hope that HE knows that.

Start towards door. What if HE doesn't? What if HE doesn't see my personality? Only the pimple above my eyebrow, the heavy make-up..... Oh my god!!! The dog fluff on my dress! HE'll think I'm just some stupid, butch farm girl that is so desperate and lonely won't need sweet talking to win over; just a good slap on the butt as a sign of affection just so she won't have to die alone with her sheep.

Slam Door. I'm hideous.

Walk to car. Who'd want me?

Get in. Slam door. I don't need anyone. I'm just gonna get maggotted tonight and everyone else including HIM can just go fuck themselves.

I hate the way we can feel beautiful till we step outside.... or the photos from that night show up on facebook.

Fuck facebook.

Can't wait for adolescence to end.

WANTED: Validation

2008-07-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

Too lazy to add much more. But hope that subtle message hits home. Do it bitches!

Gym Antics

2008-07-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

The other night after a bit of coaxing with offers of treats The Canza got me down to the gym.
I had never been to a gym before, always snorted it off as the weakling's excuse for REAL EXERCISE (which- in my book- includes shearing sheep, wrestling crocs and a good old fashioned bar fight).
I was half expecting to see people frolicking around in purple spandex, leg warmers and fluro headbands as I walked up towards the double doors of the huge two-story complex, but instead was met with something far scarier- rich people!!!!!
While I'm not macaroni-and-cheese-from-the-box-for-Christmas-lunch-poor, I still get freaked out a bit by rich people, knowing that at any sudden minute when I get the urge to yell 'Stacks On!!' and throw the closest victim in the vicinity to the floor the rich people will judge me mercilessly, so I have to place a temporary curb on my Ballsiness for a while. Which doesn't agree with my excessive energy levels.

The guy behind the desk was buff and a true gym junkie and he looked at me in the 'can you please leave without a fuss' way, before The Canza stepped forward with a free-pass for me and as i maneuvered myself through the weird-arse-silver-pole-thingys I wanted to stick out my tongue all primary school and say 'suck on that bitch!'. But alas, I didn't.

As I gingerly sauntered through my first glimpse of a gym I gaped wide mouthed at the fancy equipment and tv screens as perfectly tanned, buffed bodies lifted, jogged, pushed and puffed daintily around me. We walked up to to the treadmills that looked more like spaceships with the ability to launch us onto an inter-galactic mission than contraptions used for burning all those guilty *schoolgirl giggle* (sarcasm) calories.
I stepped aboard like an astronaut onto the moon, checking what was behind me to catch my fall if I happened to fly from the mechanical wonder's clutches while attempting to bounce my blubber around in the chicken-dance fashion; a shiny, hard guy doing sit-ups behind me met my gaze and I made the mental note that I didn't want to fall and end up in that pool of bodily fluid.

The Canza instructed me onto how to use the treadmill-ship and as it slowly whirled into life I clutched desperately at the handrail with "It's moving!", getting looks from various gymies.
The Canza laughed "It's meant to do that you dickhead".
I tentatively stepped on and began to slowly move...... watching my feet as the black rubber ran beneath them, continuing to let out little cries of "ahh! ehh!". But then my eyes went up to the tv screens, "Ohh MASH is on!" and distracted I fell into a steady tread and an agreement with the tread-ship.
I slowly increased the speed, still glancing beneath my feet often to make sure they were still there when I noticed a very fit girl running on the tread-ship beside me. I peeked over at her speed and gaped- 8 KPH! Bitch! Game on!!
I increased my speed. Nothing gets me moving like competition.

We finished up there and made our way upstairs to the weights room where a trainer lent over two women on the floor as they did push-ups.
I gasped and starting snickering.
The Canza looked at me suspiciously, "What?"
"That trainer has a huge erection!!"
She laughed, "Perv".
"I didn't look on purpose! It just jumped out at me!" I protested.
"Yeah, they'll do that." She grinned slyly.

Pushing and pulling at weights for a few minutes saw us with sore muscles in no time with sweat running down into various crevices as we were reminded of other practises that have the same affects on our bodies. Loud, boyish laughing saw the serious gymies giving us dirty looks as they tried to run off that 'naughty, naughty chocolate bar from last week', so we moved on to a different room.

The last room held all these bizarre, metal contraptions that I poked and prodded at trying to figure out what they were, half expecting them to come to life and snarl at me to fuck off.
One object I sat on and accidentally slammed it into the wall, leaving a hole that made The Canza splutter with laughter so violent she dropped from this weird-bird-like-perch where she was doing press-ups onto the floor in a fit.
"Quick, run before someone notices!!" and we scampered downstairs to the sauna, nearly smacking right into big hairy men wearing only budgie smugglers as they roamed between sauna and spa and back again in what seemed like just for our benefit.

In he car on the way home I found a packet of lollies and gorged on them without a lick of guilt, "I deserve these", I told no one in particular.

And that was my first expedition to the gym. Fuck exercise is easy that way, and here I've been running my guts out on a soccer field in the freezing rain for years like a sucker!

Such is Life

2008-07-14T07:04:00.000-07:00

When I was about 14 years old I became totally, utterly obsessed and consumed by The Kelly Gang and the whole saga that went on in Victoria in the late 19th century.
I thought it was the most romantic, adventurous, exciting tale i had ever heard and i fell madly in love with all the boys as well as their story. People thought i was mad as I told of my idol being Ned Kelly; friends felt sick as i showed them pictures of Steve Hart and Aaron ,asking them to pick who was hotter (Aaron always won- he makes Brad Pitt look like the cleaning guy at the MCG) ; my teachers didn't know whether to laugh or cry when every English oral was about Ned and his cruel injustices, every creative story was about the boys out in the bush and on the 125th anniversary of Ned Kelly's hanging I went to the principal and requested him to ask the school for another minute of silence for another fallen (or rather hung) Australian on Remembrance Day (11th of November 1880 for those playing on Mars, in caves with rocks in their ears).
One year I didn't speak for a whole day on each of the anniversaries of Joe, Steve, Dan and Ned's deaths. They were my ultimate heroes, my idea of what men were meant to be like. All the other men around me didn't come close to comparing.
I once told mum that Ned Kelly was Australia's answer to Jesus which saw her face turn three different shades of 'You are not my child!' (I'm supposed to be Catholic, but have kind of rejected the whole institutional notion of religion as most people seem to use it as just a protective blanket keeping them from questioning their true values and selves, with their motivations for doing good seeming to stem only from fear of a vengeful God- but that's another story). I explained to her that like Jesus, Ned Kelly sacrificed himself for the sake of all the poor settlers in Australia who were being persecuted under the squattocracy and police. He alone made the whole world sit up and listen and brought to even the Queen of flamin' England's nose the corruption existing in the police ranks in Australia- causing Australia to launch their first ever inquest into the Kelly Saga (a practise that of course exists and has hauled people of power and authority across the hot coals to this day).

The whole thing is still incredibly complex, but ultimately, it was the Kelly Saga, and the boys uprising to try and establish the Republic of North-East Victoria free from the unfair British Government that didn't answer to laws, as it catered only to the wealthy squatters who wanted the poor farmers out and their land back. I advise everybody to read up on this topic, it is incredibly insightful into the country we once were and I truly believe that being savvy about your own country's history is as crucial as jam on toast, it's our soul, not to mention those unaware of history are condemned to repeat it.
I soon started a Kellyana collection which now consists of around 16 books (mostly non-fiction), two movies (wanna shit bricks? Go see the Ned Kelly movie with Mick Jagger), a couple of (taped) docos, a large plush Neddie (a sense of his pride not included), a small statue of Ned, a sketch based on his photo on the day before he was hung (from a mate who told me to hang it over my bed like a portrait of the Virgin Mary or the Queen), a plush Ned Kelly magnet that I put on my bed head that says "Ned Kelly" on the back (just in case you couldn't work that out from the helmet) a copper engrave of the siege at Glenrowan, Ned Kelly soap and lip balm (birthday presents- my mates know me so well) AND 'Lorna Doone' (the original edition- even bought in the heart of Kelly Country- Beechworth) that was meant to be Ned Kelly's favourite book.
Ned, arise from the dead so I can stalk you, pwettyy please!

I still think Ned Kelly as a 16 year old (pictured above) was one of the most handsome men/boys i have ever seen and if a fella that looked like that (tall, broad shoulders, square jaw, round face, penetrating eyes, serious mouth....... swoons.. ........) strolled into my life I would need a team of wild horses to tie me down to keep me from leaping up to rip his clothes from his hard muscular shoulders and biceps and straddle........... ahh ..... edging towards inappropriateness again.
For a long time I even became convinced that somehow, in someway I was linked to the Kelly story, at first I considered somehow being a distant relative of Ned's, before deciding i was a direct descendant, before I went 'fuck it all' and concluded that I was Ned Kelly's one true love in a past life. Don;t worry, I'm on medication now.
Obsessed really is an understatement.
Now I've found other hobbies, normal hobbies, like..... drinking and picking my nose.

Whilst still rather obsessed and still adding to my collection frequently, I don;t get in blood hurdling fights anymore with people who dare to insult MY man. I simply say "You're just ignorant. I pity you." and walk away the bigger (wo)man while later wishing I had flipped through my bible (Ian Jones' A Short Life) and bahahaed all their transparent accusations with EVIDENCE!!!! AND LOGIC (something most anti-Kelly protesters always neglect when farting out their prejudiced, ill-informed word diarrhoea).

Geeze, guess I still do get my hackles up over this topic.
I still think that North-East Victoria (Kelly Country) is one of the most beautiful places and easy to fall in love with. I've lived there briefly before and plan to live there again, just need to find some sort of means.... other then becoming a bushranger..... god, it's so damn appealing though.

There truly is something incredibly inspiring about Ned and his story; the terrible hardship he endured, the persecution, the loss, the sadness... yet, he came through it all still with this incredible understanding and righteousness, of just knowing he had been wronged his whole life and many people even today reject the notion of him being a remarkable, admirable person, but he was. He was hung with his ''Conscience as clear as the snow in Peru''.

I advise anyone who doesn't know the story to go out and read it. Most historians that deal with the matter remain unbiased through their books as they cover the facts and evidence from the time, leaving readers to make up their own minds- but very few walk away untouched by Ned and his incredible ordeal. I wish I had half the integrity, courage and strength that that amazing man possessed.

I could go on all night but it's 2 am and I have a shit load of school work to do. And I'm getting threatening phone calls from my teaches that have no soft spot for my Dirty Bar-Maid charm (I hate it when your teachers are all chicks). bahaha

Such is life.

Depth

2008-07-11T00:51:00.000-07:00

hmm... I think I'm beginning to make a habit of this. And as my other habits include drinking too much, falling over, saying very inappropriate things, picking my nose and always always being the one to take the joke too far and send every one's faces a sickly green colour that would put Shrek to shame, I'm thinking that this could be a good habit. This could be a constructive habit..
I kind of glanced over the word vomit I've spurted out in my entries on Rusted Gumption (I'm still in lurrvvvee with that name) and realised that this blog hasn't really served much more of a purpose for me then a punching bag.
So now, I'll try and seem happy and nice and not angry or bitchy while I make an entry that delves a bit deeper... into me. I'm not really sure where to start though so I'm taking other blogger's brief summing ups of themselves as inspiration.

Ahh ok, I guess I could start with the physical aspect of myself.
I'm a brunette, but my hair seems to be increasingly growing lighter, becoming redder with streaks from the sun. My hair is long and I haven't been to a hairdressers' in over 2 years because I've told myself I can do just as good a job as any of them (plus I'm a major tight arse), going for the wild bunyip look that has just swaggered out of the billabong, which is achieved by never brushing it, by applying a shit load of hairspray and hair pins to the nest when I hit the town. So successful is my styling towards the wild animal look I've woken up in many a backyard in the early morning with birds making themselves at home in it.
I get told that it looks 'sexy' though, which always makes me laugh, partly because I have the maturity of a 10 year old and partly because the people telling me that always seem to have to give into the urge of nuzzling their snouts into my wild hair when telling me this.

I'm of average height for a girl my age, around 5"9 with a 'healthy' figure. I'm not fat, nor am I thin, I get called 'lean' too, but everybody seems to have a different opinion on my body type as i guess it's kind of a rarity amongst these city folks who don't come from a long line of Western District hay carters and farmers as they ask me whether I'm a good swimmer. I'm an excellent swimmer, but that's not just because of my broad shoulders, long arms or strong upper arms (for a girl anyway- don't get mental images of a female Rock).

I'm pretty strong for a chick after growing up on a farm and doing hard psychical labour most of my life, but I still always get my arse kicked in a fight with my brother, unless I have a pillow handy to fling at his eye and break a blood vessel or two (true story- wasn't on purpose).

I've gotta say though I'm pretty happy with my tits and legs. My stomach seems to have a mind of its own majority of the time, but my tits- well they ain't too big or too small, Goldie Locks says they are jjjjjuuuusstttt right (don't take that as a lesbian insinuation).

On occasion I get told that I'm beautiful; I don't really believe people when they say that though because I have an appearance complex thanks to every fucker I ever met and ever knew calling me everything that was a synonym of bush pig between the ages of 10 and 17. Now, at 19 I'm told that I'm attractive (often by the same people who called me ugly once) and I just want to tell them to go suck my dick- if i had one.

As for me.... beneath the vanity that has taken over my self perception due to my fucking appearance; well I've been described as alot of things- black horse, different, unique, unusual, adventurous, freak, witty, eccentric, crazy, loose cannon, flirt, independent, dreamer, flighty, trustworthy, helpful, deep, complex, withdrawn, confident, ratbag, lazy, determined, loud, quiet, reckless, rash, quick, imaginative, intelligent, stupid, odd, queer, charismatic, energetic, spontaneous, unpredictable, ugly, sad, funny, etc.
Funny how alot of those words contradict each other isn't it?

Cracking, crashing and chatter

2008-07-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

The other day my cousin told me to just write the rest of the year off, like it was car I'd hit a roo with and ordering a new part for was no longer an option for me. And the part that pisses me off is that she only knows half the friggin' stuff that has gone on and couldn't even comprehend the emotional investment it would take to truly endure the sheer brutality of the crap I'm going through; which I wouldn't expect of her, because while I love her like the sister I never had (actually as the not-indifferent-to-me sibling I never had that has replaced my wanker brother) she is pretty insensitive. But I wouldn't want anyone, even someone as close to me as she is to know the full innards and details of what has been going on.

But it's now, as I've been shipped off to a shrink who tells me I have more psychological issues then Pammie Anderson has had tests for STI and I'm forced to dredge up all the childhood crap that I've long since buried that the emotional strain of this life has just about suffocated me.
SO added to the recent stuff that has occurred I've gotta slowly sift through a LIFETIME of shit, I blocked out all those fucking years ago for a god damn fucking reason! Some stuff is just meant to stay buried for a god damn reason. I don't want to have to question every fucking element of my life, every fucking relationship I have that I have ever had. I know that they are all fucked up, I know my life and I am permanently fucked as a result, but that is something I accepted a very long time ago. That is just the way things were, the way things are.

Throw a tantrum, break a hole in the wall with your foot then dust yourself off and get the fuck on with it. It has worked for me my whole life and I hate how someone with a diploma of some fucking description things they can plough through my acceptance and quiet resignation to the fucked up way things are and throw all the shit that are my perceptions of my world at the fan.

So write off the rest of the year, yeh? Right it off, because in the remainder few months I'll be miraculously cured thanks to this shrink who is Merlin reincarnated with tits and designer boots?

I live in a fantasy world majority of the time but that doesn't mean I'm fucking stupid, I can strangely fart out a half-baked realistic perception occasionally when it's needed.

But for now, i can't cope with this crap! I just can't cope. I've had insomnia for the past few months, but now the demons in my head have joined the party and you try getting fucking perspective when those fuckers wanna get you wwaahhhhsstteedd mannn..

This is my crash and burn year. I'm just not sure where the crashing part started and where the burning began. And whether I can rejuvenate from that burning..... I know my wuvly Grampians did those years ago...but last time i checked I wasn't a bush.....(even though the activity on my legs and ....ahem would beg to differ).

I told the shrink I was seeing her for a different perspective on life.....my foundations sucked, they were cracking quicker than the crack in my windscreen... but the real reason? I didn't want to wake up in the morning any more.

Every moment just seemed like more long hangdog tread towards...... the finish line? Towards another cracked inch in my windscreen till the eventual shatter? It no longer seemed like a matter of not what if, but when? And I was exhausted. completely done. 19 years old and ready to throw in the towel? That thought alone just gave me another reason to crack open another bottle of self hatred.

Now I'm on the painy-go-bye-bye-pills everything is just numb. I don;t feel that searing pain anymore, but nor do I feel that incredibly escalating passion and high that wouldn't last long, but long enough to tell a joke that would make my mates collectively piss their pants as all that pent up crap luckily exploded in a healthy way for a while- in the beginning of a Friday night on the rocket fuel in the pretty hair and make up looking like a different person from the ugly jillaroo called 'stupid cunt' and 'fucking bitch' by the misogynist stationhands those 2 and a half years ago. Well the high would fizzle out and flop me into a low that felt like a rock sinking to the bottom of a pond, every few sunken inches would mean another loathing thought.
You're fat. One inch.
You're ugly. Two inches.
Even you're own family hates you. They didn't even try and protect you that night. Three inches.
You are a waste of space. Four inches.
Even you're brother told you to kill yourself. Five inches.
They all hate you. Six inches.
Even your dog. Seven inches.
Just die already. Eight inches.
Etc.

And the longer that crack continued the shallower that pond seemed to get. Till eventually there was no high. There was no drop. There was just the bottom of that murky bond with my surroundings growing gradually darker and darker.

But now I feel suspended. Not high, not low. Just flat. Like the rock has been caught, and is poised mid-drop, held strongly, but if its reigns are given back that bitch of a rock is only going to go in one direction and that's down down down......
A state which is essentially leaving me empty and hollow, some days wishing the rock would just drop so I could feel something again.
And the demons' voices have reduced to this continuous, never ending stream of monkey chatter that goes on and on and on. I can't block it out! It's like having that stupid ginger chick with the brain-grating voice from the health insurance ads taking up permanent residence in my smouldering brain. But instead of bleating out idiotic word vomit, the voices are going through my biography, my life story as though relaying every crumby, sentimental detail to a room full of shrinks who listen, nod and write down words i can't see into exercise before occasionally interrupting me to ask how that makes me feel.
YOU TELL ME!!! CAUSE ALL I CAN HEAR IS FUCKING MONKEY CHATTER!!!

Writing

2008-07-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sponsored by Beyond Blue

The Theme
Look for signs of depression, Listen to your friends experiencesTalk about what’s going on and Seek help together
Using these messages about improving mental health as a theme, compose a piece of creative writing in the format of a short film script, short story or poem of no more than 1,500 words.

A gluey wetness seems to drench every inch of my hot skin. In the second after my eyes have flared open in alarm I think I’ve wet myself in my sleep. With a horrified gasp from the suffocating discomfort from the heat strangling my limbs I fling the sleeping bag off my body in disgust. It limply hurls through the air and drops from my thankful sight behind the foot of my bed. Panting, with my foul smelling hair sticking to my sickly wet face I manage to yank myself upwards into a sitting position from the bed as the fitted sheet upon which I had been lying seems for a moment to want to follow my bare sweat soaked back.
It’s so hot and I think I’m going to hurl for a moment as I suddenly realise that light has flooded my bedroom. The nightmare of the night has finally ended. The strands of my long brown hair obscure my vision but I still gaze around me numbly, my breath still running in and out in spurts that seem to shake my whole body. My mouth is so dry and the gagging taste of my breath suddenly hits me as I fling out my arm almost choking for my water bottle. Snatching it viciously from my bedside table I spit and curse over it’s emptiness before my eyes finally hit the small black digits telling the time on my mobile phone.
9 am. I swear bitterly again. It’s my birthday.

I stagger up the long hall of the farmhouse, my dead tongue running over the roof of my mouth as I look in every room individually as I pass it. It’s all the same as when I went to bed the night before, then the thought hits me bitterly, did I expect it to be different?
In the kitchen I wrench open the door of the old fridge that whines as though in protest. My hand grabs at the first object and I twist the lid off the bottle of milk. Gulping deeply, the cold liquid freezes my tongue as I drink and drink heavily till I have to stop to breath. Heaving, with the dead taste in my mouth now sickly mingled with the thick remnant liquid of the milk I put it back in the fridge as I remember that it’s my birthday. The thought sinks in gradually, I’m 18.
A grimace slices through my face and my brow knots up painfully with anguish.
“Fucking wonderful” I sneer to myself.
The sun is already gushing strongly through the large kitchen window that is so thick with built up dirt visibility through it is no longer possible. It feels like just another day, but it’s not, it’s ten times worse than an ordinary day, the dreaded, cursed day that had been lurking at the back of the mind and loitering in a future that seemed too far away to be even comprehended only a few weeks ago has finally arrived in grandly-shit glory. I give a shriek of anger and pad out of the kitchen with a heavy tread before I start venting my fury on the walls and crockery of the filthy old kitchen.

As I open the back door a fury brown lump instantly flings itself at me. I’m surprised at the sound of my own laughter, “Brandy you stupid mutt”. She stands on her hind legs with the sharp nails of her front paws digging into my leg, her floppy puppy tail that she still has little control over spirals in every direction, her big shiny eyes staring at me mischievously. Her nails begin to hurt so I push her off me.
Maggie is there too, older and more observant to my moods she hangs back till I give her a ‘Good morning your heiness’.
Then, pink tongue lolling she mooches over for a cuddle.
“I’m nearly as old as you are today Magsy” she grins, “It’s not bloody funny!”. She keeps grinning. “Good on ya”.

My pack and I saunter outside into the day. I round the old milking shed and narrow my eyes into the distance. Something white lies near the Woolshed. My head droops as I go get the shovel and some twine from the machinery shed.

We tread through the dewy grass not speaking. Brandy romps ahead while Maggie and I are more sober, remaining side by side at a steady pace. Occasionally her nose drops to snuff something in the grass, but she doesn’t let her small white paws fall out of line with the scuffed brown toes of my Blundstones.
As we near the object lying in the grass, illumination shows its texture to be far from white as any optimistic doubt I had on my final conclusion drops away. Standing over the sheep’s carcase Maggie and I look down at its glazed eyes, swirling with a colourful oily spill.
Still in my bright red pyjama pants I bend down, the pain in my knees forgotten. “Sorry buddy” I whisper softly as I begin to wrap the blue twine around the wether’s hind legs.
I stand straight and wrap the twine around the shovel before I start to drag the heavy carcase of the animal through the dirt, the dogs trotting along behind like a funeral procession.
Pain from my knees seems to seer up my spine with every cursed step. I spin around and begin the trudge backwards, a crude grin making its way across my face, “Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! At least my day hasn’t run, with as much fun, as the poor bugger I’m draggin’ along. Happy birthday to me!”
The dogs both give a few swishes of their tails, but I think it’s only to humour me, so I ignore them and keep trudging in silence, insulted.

At the fire pit I untie the twine from the shovel and start sifting through the bones and burnt carcasses of other long dead sheep before I find a spot that seems to have no big lumps of crap hidden beneath it to block this sheep’s passage into its grave. I start to dig, thinking about every other sheep lying scattered in numerous spots on the pile individually. I dig up skull.
Was that the fella that chased Brandy when she was only a few weeks old?
I hit a leg bone.
Was that the ewe that spat the drench all over my face that day when I tried to dose her?
Eventually I had cleared a sufficient hole for the latest edition to the bone pile.
Superstitiously I look carefully for a long moment one last time for a pulse. Once satisfied on the wether being dead I drag him into the hole and don’t look at his face as I push the fire pits’ collection of ash, carcass and bone over the body as though it were just pure dirt.

A dirty bar-maid was born

2008-07-08T03:28:00.000-07:00

I've turned over a new leaf and am finally delving into the alter-ego I've been fantasising about since I hit puberty and like most young girls developed an infatuation for the leather-clad, big-booted, muscle-upped bad boy. And the best way to get to these bad boys?

Be a dirty barmaid.

You heard it here first folks. I'm officially a dirty bar-maid.

And we're not talking any of that pussy RSL bistro waitress crap, but the fully-fledged, sports-bar, stale-beer-soaked-couches and cleaning up after drunken gamblers dirty bar-maid. And I love every minute of it.

My first day on Saturday arvo saw the drunken old timers swaggering up to the bar as I timidly began to learn my way around the taps with twinkles in their eyes;
'G'day love. You the new apprentice, eh? ' they'd give a tooth-gaped grin.
I'd glance in their direction, cringing as another slop of beer escaped the glass and ran down my already drenched arm with the rolled up sleeve.
"That's right" I'd smile mischievously, gearing up for their next remark.
David, Biff, Charlie or Kev would then extend a grubby hand to shake my wet one as they ask for my name.
"Lana or larn, was it?"
I nod, "Whatever you're still able to pronounce at the end of the day mate."
They'd cackle, ask for another schooner of beer and swagger back to their mates and the plasma screen showing the horse race at Eagle Park or the dish lickers in Shepparton.

Within an hour of donning my dirty bar-maid smile I was on first-name basis with half the bar, had learnt that Charlie's beers were always free because his week's pay was always blown before it had even reached the bottom of his pocket on the doggies, Fred liked a shot of lemonade in his beer and that Dave was a 'stalker'; "It's alright, I need one of them" I tell him not glancing up from the beer I'm trying to get the perfect head on. No puns thanks.

A group of hot guys strut in and take seats around the front window; replenishing their rounds every few minutes as I dash up and down the bar trying to get in clean glasses and not drop a rack holding 50 schooners that are the thin line in between my living to a ripe old age and dying at the age of 19. I'm sent around the sports bar to grab dirty glasses and wipe tables, gliding past the table of hot guys I nervously squeeze in amidst them and don't make eye contact, my bar-maid charm taking a cigarette break as I begin to stack their mountain of glasses into my trembling hands. They have gone from laughing and bantering boyishly to going awkwardly quiet and I skim around their table hoping I don't fuck things up when one (and ugly one--- fuck!!) coyly smirks and tells me about the spillage 'down there' nodding his head in the direction of his open legs.
I give a faint smile, "Yeh, sorry, I can't help you with that' and I wonder if they got the joke as I move back to the bar with the stack of glasses, leaving silence in my wake amongst them. The dirty bar-maid heard no more from then on-in.

Later, zipping past the older blokes through their roars of 'Kick the cunt! Kick 'im!' I accidentally knocked over an empty schooner glass that bangs down loudly onto the wooden table top amidst piss-taking cries of "Ahhhh!!! Geeze Lana!" from the blokes as they cackle. I hold up my hands, holding scrunched up tote tickets and a wetex, "You're all drunk!" I announce, "You're just imaging things!". They cackle for a minute before turning back to their precious doggies and ponies, "Carrn you mousy prick!!".

But from that first day- those mere six hours I decided that pouring beers is just one of the things I was born to do.

Write, drink, pull, ride, drive, rouse, drench, dance, laugh- my life. Fuck yeah!!

Raise your glasses to all of your resident (dirty) bar-maids.

Nostalgia

2008-06-25T05:04:00.000-07:00

There was nothing particularly spectacular about my years back in my country-town primary school, but as the years have ground away, the nostalgia has become a heavy burden, based on this romanticised notion I had somehow acquired in my teens of what my childhood was like. Comparing it to the suppressed, confined and incredibly lonely state I found myself in in my teens in a new 'home' where I even failed to recognise the people who were supposed to be my family.
I suppose it was my subconsciously clinging onto something....anything that seemed like foundations..that were supposed to be strong; as the new world of the big smoke whizzed and buzzed around me as I tried to become a teenager in the concrete confines of the city after growing up in the open spaces and freedom of the country. So intensely bewildered my years of 'innocent youth' slipped by and even now I don't have the fainest about where the time went, remembering only my constant, never-ending overwhelmed and home sick state as I pined away for my farm.

Then came the years of my searching, travelling; looking for a way to fill that deep void I felt, that I told myself wasn't there when I was a kid in the country. It probably was, but I was in a safe and familiar enough setting never to notice it. Over the years the void seemed to grow deeper, wider. The hopelessness of my plight to find that missing link became nothing more than a wild goose chase with unfriendly faces taking advantage of my vulnerability meeting me at every corner.
And through it all I kept telling myself how none of this would ever have happened had I stayed in the country. That place was my foundations; even if my home life was shit, my family was in shreds, I was being bullied at school- I had my farm, my foundations- the only thing that seemed to be holding me up. It was my heart. I believed that it was the root of everything good in me, I traced all my pride, my dignity, my intelligence, my talent, my looks, everything back to that farm- that it was somehow responsible for crafting and carving me into the person I was, the person I am, the person I will become.
I didn't need an explanation either, I didn't need to tell anyone or anyone to tell me, I just knew. I know when I round the hill and see the farm nuzzled into the valley as the big blue Grampians tower over it like a protective veal, as the sun hits the trees in the home paddock and the white shapes of sheep speckle the slopping pastures. I know it's mine, that it's me. And I can't shake it out of my mind and my heart because it has always been there.
And I love the fact that no matter where I go, what I do or what I become It was always be there, waiting for me to come home to it.

Dark

2008-06-19T04:30:00.000-07:00

I've had enough coffee to think I can write. I've been reading the writings of other bloggers that make me feel incredibly shit about my writing and my life. But, disappointment and emotional pain is something I've learnt to deal with over the past few months since my life became as close to a living hell as it was since I worked on a cattle station, but now I'm 3 years older and alot more bitter and cynical, losing the 'everything will be sunshine and flowers in the morning' attitude. I'm 19 years old but feel like 30 and am still writing like a 15 year old with the intelligence of a 13 year old. So it goes without saying that I'm in a self-loathing mood, but one where I can humorously poke fun at myself and not completely self destruct with whatever sharp objects/ hard liquor I can find- that stage will faithfully come tomorrow night.

Yeah I'm bitching. Don't like it? Well fuck off and go read some blog about the middle aged woman in Templestowe who loves cross stitching and can't wait for her book club meeting tomorrow; cause I'm on the edge of adolescence and the cruel weight of the world is crushing my pathetic little soul and I'm gonna join the rest of the whinging saps on this virtual world and bitch till I fall into a slumber and dream about my latest fuck doing some super model girl down the back of some dark alley off Swanston street.

Well this might be a dark mood but at least I feel actual anger at others and not myself for once....and yeh it feels good. I might actually be seeing the light at the end of this dark tunnel. Whooppie!

Update

2008-05-15T23:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't written anything for ages, and I don't really know why I'm typing something here now. Other than that I haven't written anything in ages. This is a pointless entry. Yet I'm still typing. In the last few weeks my life feels like it has fallen completely, utterly to pieces. And I can no longer crack the coldness that has encased my heart. What sentimental rubbish. Even my writing- my coping mechanism in the past is failing me, because I can't get this dead and hollow feeling out of my body. It feels like it is slowly eating away at my innards, like some sort of hungry rust. I don't know what to do any more. Other than to type. Because once I stop I'll have to deal with the unpleasant reality that there is something seriously wrong with me and that my world is still growing darker.

Raaarrrnnnn dickhead! Raaarrrnnn!

2008-04-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was about as constructive as a council worker- the day itself, not me; it's never ever my fault! I had a shit load of school work to do, but even though it was only Wednesday my thoughts couldn't be dragged back from the Friday ahead and getting absolutely maggotted at the house my mate is house sitting that's right across the road from the crustiest pub (crusty is my chosen adjective to describe the fine inhabitants who aren't the most sanitary of Melburnians- but still a long run from possessing the true redneck whiff of distinction) in...... I was going to say this side of town, but I still think my local up the road still takes the cake and candles for the Filth Fest.

But once I'd finished watching Friends last night and the winds that had been blowing like a bitch all day had ceased enough for my dog to not be blown to Perth I decided to venture out and brave being looked at while I attempted to actually run. I'm not overweight, I've actually managed to fluke along with a flat gut despite all the beer I guzzle, but when you haven't actually run for a decent distance in months (can you believe that I actually played soccer last year?) making your feet move in a motion faster than the normal everyday stumbled swagger has them just about screaming What the fuck!? at you.

But I ignored them and ran, man did I run. It felt great to remember you could actually move that fast without your arse wedged into the seat of a car, but on my own! On my legs! But as I neared my half way point of the walk I do everyday, a pain wrenched through my gut that just about threw me onto the ground. I bit down hard onto my mouth to keep from screaming as this pain that felt like a knife through my guts twisted and tugged at my insides. I sat down in absolute agony and actually let the thought am I giving birth? cross my mind. But it would've had to have been a kid the size of a bread crumb.

Eventually I found the strength to pull myself up and limp home while my dog had this expression on her face like you are pathetic.

Once home I collapsed on the couch, "That's enough exercise for this month" and rewarded myself with all the food in the fridge. I'm contemplating trying out for the Beijing Olympics.

Back

2008-04-01T03:05:00.000-07:00

I just looked at the clock and realised that in exactly two hours I would've been back in Melbourne for exactly a week. Yep, that's right, I sauntered home with my tail between my legs exactly a week ago. There were things suddenly coming up back here anyway that I was coming back for, but things just got unbearable in the few days before I suddenly went 'fuck it' up in Queensland.

It wasn't just because my housemate went from funny annoying to shit-scarily obsessive; it wasn't just because all work I had lined up ran dry; it wasn't just because life was as fun as slamming my head against a brick wall- everything just wasn't worth the hell I was putting myself through while still trying to do my year 12 through distance education.

But luckily since I've been back I've kept myself in a haze of preoccupation that's just misty enough for me to not start beating myself about failing yada yada yada.

But anyhoo, I'm back for a bit and will just try to catch up in all my late school work in between getting shit faced every weekend and running amuck with my mental mates till I head off somewhere else. At this stage I'm thinking Mt Hotham for the snow season to be become a ski instructor. The fact that I've only ever seen snow once in my life is beside the point.

Again

2008-03-16T21:05:00.000-07:00

Lately whenever I have put my hand to my chest I have felt the fast, heavy beat of my heart beneath. When I am able to muffle the angry voices in my head for long enough I can hear the raspy quickened pace of my breath that will only slow when I consciously make the effort to pace my breathing.

It's not until I go to bed at night time and try to sleep while hearing my housemates walk past my room and their loud voices in the early morning and I wrap my bed clothes tighter around my shaking body do I realise just how incredibly anxious I have become.

Paranoid too; often while lying in bed I'll strain my ears to hear their voices on the other side of the wall, loud as they are the words themselves inaudible. Then whenever their voices happen to lower I sit up with the blood thudding in my ears and my eyes staring at the vacant wall of my bedroom to desperately make out if they are referring to me.

If really stressed, I'll pad my way from my bedroom where only my computer sits for company to the backdoor where my dog sits upon the verandah patiently waiting for a walk, giving the housemates dirty looks if they have stopped dead in their conversation, on what seems like on my account.

I say nothing to them as I speak softly to my dog while stroking her velvety ears as her eyes swimming with betrayal gaze up at me. "I'm sorry" I say, every time. Before guilt consumes me again and I pad back over the chipper board to my room to close the door and try to seal in some sort of privacy, some sort of sanctuary for my soul and mind while I gaze at the photos and post cards that remind me of home and the people and things I love plastered upon my wall as the nostalgia sets it again.

This feels like deja-vu ....again.

Fury in a D Cup & on Stilettos

2008-03-02T17:03:00.000-08:00

Warning- The following entry contains little creativeness or imagination, I'm just really pissed off. Shame, shame, shame.

....Well, I've been here nearly a month and have been so well behaved it's fucking ridiculous. I had some trouble with this complete fucking psycho that I was working in the shearing shed with for over two weeks (we finished up last Tuesday). And it was made worse by him actually being a 'friend' (a stretched term for 'associate') of the lady I live with and he lived near here so we ute-pulled (My ute is called 'The Uterus'- so, haha Uterus-pulled) together every morning.
And everyday in the shed when everyone else would be running their guts out working he'd just be going at a snail's pace (I had this joke that I reckoned the only time he was fast was in the bedroom) and using all his time and energy to snarl nasty things about me just to impress this other redneck-low-life mate of his.

The sheep also had lice and when that happens the wool goes yellow and stained so one day when I really let the bastards get to me I went up to each shearer individually with the yellow wool from a sheep's belly in my hand and said, "Hey, what do those two Rat-Features have in common with these sheep? Beside from the fact that they are all sheep?".
Every time the shearer would glance up letting a wicked grin begin to engulf their face, 'What?'
I'd lean in closer, "They all have yellow bellies".
Well that made me feel better for a while.

Than one day Rat-Features stopped being so subtle and found some courage to scream 'Your a fucking ignorant thing' at me. Which made the entire shed go dead silent and I was so furious I was shaking and with enormous strength I actually managed to not kick his nuts back to the last century.
Despite alot of the blokes egging me on later to do just that on the cut-out day. But, anyway, I find out (after ute-pulling with him for 2 weeks) that he is a bad bastard that can't get any work in the district cos he's just a psycho.
Haha.....I couldn't believe my luck. But anyway, on the day before cut -out he called me 'Fucking useless bitch' (once again completely unprovoked- like i said he was a psycho), so furious, I yelled back (in front of the bosses and everyone- good one dickhead) that he could just fuck off because he quite clearly wasn't there to work. Than, still shaking with anger I bent down to pick up a fleece and said to anyone in the vicinity that, "I would punch him in the nuts, but he doesn't have any'.

Than we didn't hear another word from the gutless bastard from then till cut-out.

SO yeah...what a great start to my fabulous new life here in the sunshine state.

Next Friday night I'm going to a formal ball that's part of the annual Harvest ball in town.
We're talking freakin' high heels, fancy gowns, the whole kit and caboodle. I'm wearing my 'Scrubber' dress (that my wacko Kiwi house-mate called 'too revealing', but I don't think he's ever actually seen a chick in a dress before so what would he know) and showing these damn Queenies how Victorians do it. Which shouldn't be hard, Queenies don't have a clue, all they do is drink XXXX (weak as cat-piss) and pick apples all day- which explains why having a conversation with them is like trying to converse with a broken record, they don't seem to have any comprehension for what a timeline is.

The buggers won't know what hit em. But, yeh like I said I've been well behaved for farr farr farrr too long and have the feeling that the shit could really hit the ceiling, resulting in my banishment from the district. Which I wouldn't consider the worst thing at this stage.

But if I run into that gutless Rat-Features I'm gonna stiletto his redneck arse.

And just between you and me dear blog, the other day I applied for a 4 week job mustering cattle on horseback in Central Queensland. And if i get it, I'm gooorrrrrnnnnnneeeee!!!!!!

Fuck, sorry this has been so long. And sorry about the fucking swearing :D

END RANT

Please read between the lines

2008-02-29T16:33:00.000-08:00

An email I just sent to a friend..... (all true.....I'm not being melodramatic). Help me!!!

Heya,

sorry about the very delayed response. Everything has just been very hectic.....bad hectic, not good hectic though, haha. I got to tell you Queenslanders are freakin' weird man! (no offence), but seriously, I was warned that they were egotistical nutcases, but didn't believe it and after just a few weeks here I've discovered that, yep, they are crazy.

The area I'm in is like a little city without the big buildings or nightlife, everyone seems to be on drugs with dark pasts and the amount of dysfunctional characters that roam around that are 'friends' with the people I live with does your head in.

The street I live on has only about 6 houses with farmland stretching out in every direction, yet even out here, my street has a family of guys that throw raw shit on this other guy's house, a guy that trains his staffies to kill, a 50 year old mentally retarded man who walks up and down the street masturbating, a filthy old man that gropes young girls whose sleeping with his 30 year old nymphomaniac neighbour and don't even get me started on the wacko Kiwi guy I live with. Haha. {that was an extremely strained laugh..... my dry lips nearly cracked with the effort and after remaining in a frown for so long}.

Freakin' weird arse state. I'm already far behind in my school work and I'm due to go back and work at the boring paper in town on Monday when I really just want to join the damn rodeo circuit or pack up and move further West.

SO yehh......exhausting...... Haha.....anyhoo.......how are you? :D {Get me outta here!}

Is it cold and stormy in Brissy right now cos it's bloody horrible here! {Can I come live with you!!!??}

Anyhoo, speak later bud {help me! help me! help me! Ohhh please, please help me!}

{HELP!} Lana. {PLEASE HELP!}

What did you expect?

2008-02-16T18:51:00.000-08:00

It's finally FINALLY the weekend!!!! Last week I was rouseabouting in a shearing shed everyday from 7.30am till 5.30pm and I thought my back was going to just completely splinster in half and the lice bites upon my arms would eventually just engulf my entire body, leaving me a walking-pussy-red-scabby-creature with no other option but to audition for Australian Idol (because that's what disgusting creatures with no other prospects do).
On Valentine's Day I admit, yes, that I did hopefully look at my phone rather too often to see if any secret admirers had finally given into their burning temptation of declaring their undying love for me (a love proposal through a text message is still a love proposal), but....sadly......nooo....another lonesome year is my fate yet again.
I'm starting to get rather shitty though. Because ever since embarking upon this 'fresh start' in my new home of stormy, windy and all-round yucky weather in South East Queensland, I have done nothing but work or do school work.
It's Sunday morning and right now I should be either hungover on the couch watching Family Guy or fast asleep in bed still in the full going out clothes from the night/early morning before, with makeup that has run all over my pillow like all normal 18 year olds, NOT sitting up wide awake without a drop of alcohol in my blood stream. Madness, absolute madness!
I think I'm going to get in contact with some Brisvegas peeps that peeps I know know in order to weasel my way into the closest crazy-nightlife-city-crowd on weekends.....once my school work is done anyway.
Here's an extract from last week's work, from an English task titled 'Who Are You?'. So, just in case you haven't yet worked out lil me yet this articulate word vomit should shed some light....presuming of course that you do actually care..... :D

This year I am studying my VCE while I continue to stall the decision of what I am doing and where I am going, using the title of ‘studying’ as my cover to keep my parents off my back, friends from thinking I’m a loser and most of the guilt at bay that has been eating at me. But, I’m also studying so I can continue to ‘nurture’ my writing, and am forced to work at it even when I feel unmotivated and uninspired. Then of course there’s the usual reason of more doors opening up once my VCE is done and I might even have some more options too then from the dreaded fate of a 9 to 5 job, weekends of house maintenance and being manipulated into thinking brats chewing at my ankles is the respectable predicament for a 30-something ‘black-horse’-come-another-face-in-the-crowd.
I have every intention to keep plans to the minimum, my feet far from the ground and no intention of having anything that is even possessed of normality.
Like all kids that existed through most of their schooling as ‘loners’ that had a dog as their best friend and dreamt the days away with books as aids out in the back paddock, I describe myself as different and think greatness must lay in store for me.
This idea hasn’t changed much over the course of the past ten years, even though I’m now aware of how many kids think that they are special, and I’ve done the math with my calculator and worked out that we can’t all be famous, but bah, I’ll give it a crack anyway.
My sense of identity has been given permission to leave its’ box in only the past year or two due to me discovering competency couldn’t come with confidence, so because of that I’ve discovered a different side to myself that doesn’t have to exclude a social life and crazy teenage behaviour just because I considered myself Jane Austen, The Crocodile-Hunter and Ned Kelly’s love child for so long.

My theory of how that works is rather messy and I left it out of the english task because I didn't think it was quite appropriate.....but....I think it's much more fun in leaving you dear kids to use your imaginations on how such an event would have transpired. So there's your homework for the week.
Feel free to comment on the visual images that popped into your head.
:D :D :D :D

Cheap wine and not feelin' fine

2008-02-08T02:03:00.000-08:00

Ahhh *burps* it's been a bloody long week and now I'm just a little bit drunk. Marc and I have been on the cheap wine since 5.30pm when I got home from work and it *burp*, yeh has made me not so good. Haha and it's only 8pm. Noice lana, noice.
Well if you can't do this on a Friday than when can you fucking do it?
I've been as busy as a lone rooster in a pen full of horny chickens this week writing stories for the newspaper with little fucking social life. Which is hard when you've just spent the previous year partying and rocking out with ya cock out. Now it's living the sober life of the 8 til 5 worker and studying the rest of the time. Fuck that for a joke.
All my bundy is gone and I didn't buy any more (*pats back*) cause I'm trying to save. What the fuck for I don't know. And back in this depressive little drunk state with sad music playing on the stereo I'm missing my mates back in Melbourne.....not to mention him.
Who apparently asked my mate how I was going in Queensland last Tuesday night *cries*.
He still knows I exist! I love it when people know you exist. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside *smiles and falls off chair*
I'm due to start the rouseabout job on Monday and I'm expecting to be working with the usual Rednecked "ohh I like that cunt" farm hands. I'll either be like a quiet little self-hating mouse or defensive and witty as buggery, I dunno. Better drink plenty of berocca.... make that [V]......... no actually make that VB. Good thinking kiddo.
Ohh I usually go out on the town on a Friday night and now I'm just sitting here drunk playing with my computer with only my dog, the bottle of wine and the stars for company. And, well, yeh, I guess there is Marc.
Ohh boo hoo.
I'm tired.
Gotta get my history work done.
Fuck it for now.

Queensland's finest

2008-02-05T04:29:00.000-08:00

Well we went through four dust storms, 3 lightning storms and a bloody heap of rain that pissed down like the drunk at closing time, but we made it to Queensland!
The beautiful sunshine state has done nothing but rain and storm though since we got here and today I had to type up a news article at work about there being fucking flood warnings issued across the so-called 'sunshine state' and northern NSW (good, drown you bastards in Wee Waa!!! Mwahaha). So cheers to you Queensland for the welcome.
I came up here to getaway from the freakin' Melbourne weather!
But, enough whinging, the settling in has been good. Mum was driven out to Brissy on Saturday where she caught the plane back to Melbourne and left me and Maggie here to deal with the banana fuckers by ourselves (kidding, kidding, kidding- the area I'm in grows apples).

Monday morning I found myself back in the 'cadet journalist/office-Jill-of-all-trades' chair where I spent the day trying to just stay awake after spending the previous two months going to bed at 4am and waking up at 1pm. Noice.
And, (to just whinge...or rather.....comment... yes, let's call it 'comment from recent observations and occurrences') I had to try my hardest to avoid......let's call him 'The Rash'; an annoying lil shit who I met last time I was up here working at the newspaper and we became sort of work amigos (the key word being 'amigos'- completely platonic ones too!). Before I'd even left town to head home once the two weeks was up I was getting frequent, pointless text messages that at first harmlessly began as 'Whatcha up to' (never any question mark too- which really really shitted me), which is fine unless you are sending that same thing every fucking day.
Then the messages became, 'Send me a picture of yourself. Pretty plz' I chose to ignore that one; I'm quite tolerant of weird people unless they get personal.
Soon the messages ran like 'You always been so cute' (note well- No question mark! Wtf!? Rahhh!) Then 'What ya doing beautiful' (no question mark! That nearly shitted me more than the creepy message itself).
I replied to none of these and was dreading seeing 'The Rash', but Monday arvo he waltzes in to speak to Deb while I keep my back to him (my skin crawling with the thought of him just looking at the back of me) furiously typing so we won't talk to me. Well he didn't, but like a bad smell he kept hanging around my work station crapping on like chicken diarrhoea to others while I imagined throwing my desk top computer across the room to crack his thick skull in half.
You see, the difference between Redneck guys 'wooing skills' (if you will) and normal guys flirting is Rednecks see anything without a dick as their birthright and nothing is out of their lead and if they can't fuck it they'll just tell their mates what they'd like to do to the unlucky victim of their attention until blue in the face and they can no longer differentiate between the fantasies in their small brains and reality, before moving onto the next creature that's technically classified as the opposite sex.
So there's a strong likelihood he could walk into work tomorrow leering at me through his dopey eyes and thick lids and mouth like the back end of a staffy and blubber out (in that fucking horrible bogan lilt- not a country lilt- that's attractive- a bogan-'what's a book?' lilt) that he'll buy me a beer at the pub that night, to which I shall respond in kind with a cricket bat across his low-gorilla-like-brow.
I want to kung-fu his Red neck arse.

*Deep Breath........count to ten*

Sorry, I'm a little wound up tonight cause I miss my Local.....it's Tuesday night and the jukebox and pool tables will be in full swing by now. Along with the bundy on tap flowing for $3 a pot. Ohh heaven in a night. The price you pay to be adventerous.

Oh woe woe woe ya whinging bitch. haha

Packing Pains

2008-01-28T21:01:00.000-08:00

Early tomorrow morning I'm leaving for Queensland.
This has happened so suddenly yet so gradually too. I don't how that works, but that is how it feels.
Today I began packing. Which for me, is just a process of grabbing all the shit you think may serve some small purpose in the future and stuffing it into bags. Once the bags are full you put the shit in boxes. Once they are overflowing, the loose crap you're certain you'll have some use for at some stage is just thrown into the back of the ute along with your bike, boogie board (I'll be two hours from the coast, but I'm sure I'll use it), tent, esky and dog that will eventually clamour her way up onto the mountain of crap to dose as the ute flies north up the Newel Highway at 100 kilometers an hour.
Right now bits of pieces of things I'll need still lie discarded in numerous corners of the room. Things I'll eventually need to find and find some place for amongst my 'coming with me' pile.
But, I prefer to call them 'loose ends' that are loose for a reason while I lie on the couch watching ET News and complaining to Mum about my sunburn.
Dad is on the phone every bloody half hour telling me how this whole expedition is a 'wild goose chase' that'll kill my dog, wreck my ute, fuck up my education and destroy my chances of ever becoming a journalist. And I wonder whether he means in that order.
I'm trying to find that fucking thing or this fucking thing that I accuse Mum of hiding just to further aggravate the shit outta me.
Occasionally I wander outside to find my dog for some kind of comfort, but she looks at me with eyes that make me feel guilty for once again taking her halfway across the friggin' country away from Dad's dog Brandy, who will probably have a nervous breakdown after just one week of Maggie being gone. Shit shit shit.
My friends are ringing up on the phone saying they'll be at the pub tonight for farewell beers. And it'll be the last time I ever see....... him. What will he say when he finds out tonight I'm leaving early tomorrow? Will he care? Fuck, I don't want to think about it.
And Mum has just cracked it, "It's going to be fucking 32 degrees tomorrow! Why aren't we leaving today!? This is the last time I ever do this for you! You can't wear those boots working! We are leaving at 7am tomorrow or not at all! Get off the fucking computer!".
I just sit here and wish that I smoked....anything.
The time is ticking by and I'm staring down at my bloated gut that was flat a few days ago and my sunburn hurts. And shit! My Ipod is fucking broken again! Ohh, fuck where's my Cold Chisel cd? My Ute still hasn't been given a once over and Dad went and got me some new work boots that I can't wear because they are the wrong sort, even though he knew what the right sort were and had seen the right sort sitting RIGHT NEXT TO THE ONES HE HAD FUCKING BOUGHT!
Fine don't come Mum, you pain in the arse. I never asked you to come anyway.
"Shut up Mum!"
I wanna find a brick wall and smash my brains against it.
I wonder how pissed she'll be when I stumble home from the pub drunk at midnight.

Another night at the local

2008-01-25T16:18:00.000-08:00

When bored shitless- go to your local. Goes the custom of this country.
Last night I called a 'Lana will you finally piss off to Queensland' thingo down at the local. It's only a 2 minute bike ride (and that's with a flat tire- stupid fucking bike. Was pumping the thing for ages before I realised) from my house so I go there more than I'd care to mention to my more respectable mates.
Last night was a Friday and when we normally go there on a Tuesday the Rednecks are considerably outnumbered by my own lot. 15-20 of us will rock up, the average age being 20 years old, while the 5 or so Rednecks are forced into the corner to snigger about what they'd like to do to those of us resembling the female species. But last night there were close to 35 Rednecks loitering in the front bar.
Then there were us- three 18 year old chicks drinking bundy and playing pool, (and without wanting to sound pretentious or brag about my looks) and looking like our mothers shared purely platonic relationships with their brothers.

Some memorable moments included;-

*telling the fat chick screaming directions at Roger Federer on the tv screen that recent studies had proven the he couldn't actually hear her.

*Having the nightly regular Kirky tell me to 'stop looking gorgeous!' (to which I returned the compliment, 'Ohh yoooouu stop being gooooorgeous!' batting my hand in the air), before pinning me against the bar with his beer gut with the circumference of Uluru to assure me he was well aware of his age being the same as my grandfather's and he wasn't trying out some new pick up line but merely commenting on my 'magazine-cover looks'. I was trying to manoeuvre myself back around the gut without spilling my beer, thinking 'Babes and Bores' was probably the rag he was thinking of, with me not being the former.

*An American Redneck the same age as my Dad (a real Redneck and the ugliest fucker you ever saw- which says something with the ugly bar for Rednecks already being extremely high) getting his Aussie mate to approach me (because we spoke the same language?) to ask for a buck to play pool. Upon discovering I had no buck for him the mate tried to persuade me to play with them. Upon getting my refusal, saying my mates and I were just practising, they sauntered off sulkily to spend the rest of the night leering at us and trying to peer down our shirts whenever we walked past. The Yankee feral finally finding the confidence to sneer 'Nice boobs' at me a few hours later.I kept the pool cue handy all night.

Sorry kids, that's all for now. Gotta go get the ute packed for my weekend in Bell's Beach. My mates are due to arrive in .....ahhh, shit any minute.

Toodles and happy Australia/ Invasion Day!

Gran's garden

2008-01-20T22:20:00.000-08:00

And now on a completely irrelevant note:
This is the yard around our farmhouse. It used to be an award winning garden before my 93 year old grandma was banned from going outside to keep maintaining it after she fell over too many times and had to lie on the ground till help eventually came..... which was often hours because the closest town is 10km away.
It was actually ALOT worse a few minutes before these pictures were taken, thanks to the old man charging through armed with a shovel and ripping up all the scrub for the sheep.
The fluffy little buggers gobbled up every last blade of grass from Gran's once precious garden with the 'rich, fertile soil'.
I do feel pretty sad and guilty about this, but not enough to start gardening. Sorry Gran.

The blood isn't thick.

2008-01-20T21:38:00.000-08:00

Two years ago my cousin died.
My family, including his mother and father found out about it last September. Which they wouldn't even had discovered had my other Aunt not been researching into any family unclaimed Superannuation or something along those lines.
Ross's name had popped up; further investigation told how he was not only deceased, but deceased for two years and a coroner's report suspected it was suicide. He was 35 years old.
Ten years before he along with his sister had packed up and walked away from their parents and completely disconnected themselves from every relation they had (not that they had any reason to contact any of us anyway- I have never even met them) over some 'trivial argument'- My Old Man said.
When Ross died, even his sister didn't bother contacting their parents. She still hasn't.
Upon discovering this, nobody in my family shed a single tear. Nobody felt sad. My dad told me about it in the most casual, 'Oh by the way' note.
It was an unimportant family affair (only by blood), that stirred nothing but feelings of complete indifference in us.
He was my cousin, and he died two years ago, probably leaving no bigger ripples in the world than when he first entered it.
Today sitting at the kitchen table I was looking out the window, watching a fly slowly crawling over the clear surface, occasionally hopping through the air to a different spot. I wondered if his final weeks before his final decision had been slow and thoughtful like this. Whether he'd just sat still taking in these tiny things and thinking how this was life......asking whether he thought it could possibly change and get better soon? How had he wanted life to turn out? Were these tiny little moments so dissatisfying he just eventually decided to give up?
No, it was bigger than that. I was just searching for answers, only caring because he was technically my cousin.... yet I felt nothing but slight curiosity.
What if my brother were to walk out the door tomorrow and i never saw him again, than 10 years later I hear he had died?
Ten years is a long time. What I feel for him now flirts with hate....alot. Ten years is long enough to stop caring, move on, forget.......than one day I hear of his death. Would I calmly listen to the news, nodd, feel shocked, but feel no other emotion?
I think I already know the answer, yet don't feel shocked or even sad over it.
Blood isn't as thick as we've been led to believe.

Rahh!

2008-01-14T17:04:00.000-08:00

I should just note that my New Year's Resolution was to fear only fear itself.

Geeze, that's obviously working out great so far, eh?

Fuck

Fuck

Fuck

Fuck

Still Gutless

2008-01-14T15:52:00.000-08:00

Ehhhk. I'm pretty seedy today so my brain is nicely mashed up enough for me to foolhardily write and maybe even type vomit something that I will maybe want to re-read.
Who the fuck am I fooling with that though?
Anyhoo.

I finally got onto Queensland (aka Deb......who lives in Queensland.....hence the imaginative nickname that took hours of brain sweat).
Every time in the last few days when I've tried to get onto her, after spending hours (I kid you not, I am that gutless) working up the confidence and chewing on the shit that's eating me, I haven't been able to and had to awkwardly speak to her boarder Marc.
Where the very short conversation usually consists of me making stupid sheep jokes (he's a Kiwi) and him chuckling boarder-line pissed off.
The other night: "Ohhh, heya Marc. .....it's Lana..... from down South."
"Ahhh yehhhh. How ye goin'?"
"Not bad....... heard you went home for Christmas." I stutter.
"Mmm, yeh, had an awesome one."
"*snorts with laughter* ....so you...ahhh *snort* caught up with all your sheep than?" I say while kicking myself as hard as I possibly can.
"Yehh... just so many of them, you know. Hard to keep up with them all, so it took a while. Just millions of them"
"*snorts* ....aha, I bet there are" I choke out, barely audible to even myself.
After hanging up I punch myself in the head and throw my phone across the room with "You fucking dickhead! What the fuck is wrong with you!?"

Last night I rang again and tried to be as nice as possible to Marc who probably thinks I'm some sort of pompous pretentious tart. I also unbelievably refrained myself from the sheep jokes.
Deb wasn't there, so nearly choking on my own self-contempt I asked the normal pleasantries before going to suffocate myself in my pillow.

Deb rang back only an hour or two later while I was at a friend's BBQ and well into my drinking.
"There's a job up here all ready for you, if you want it." she said.
"Ohhh...really? Great"
"When you reckon you'll head up?"
I put my beer on the ground. A sure sign of shit getting serious. "Umm.... I.. ahh.... how much notice would you need?"
"Mate, if you rocked up 'ere tomorrow you'd have a job the next day."
"Ohh wow.... umm...."
"I'm about to head off for about a week, but it'd be fine if you came up while I'm not here"
"Ohh, you're going away? What date will you be back?"
"Ahhh after the long weekend....the....ahh 28th I think."
I bit down hard on my lip, "Ohh wow, ok. Umm..... well I reckon I'll come up after that. Just need to get my arse into gear, you know." I force a laugh while dropping my head, thinking the blood going that way will work in some sort of helpful way.
"Yeah, no worries. Well let me know what you're doing mate."
"Yep cool.....I will. I'll speak to you soon."
As I hang up I whine bitterly looking at my white knuckles.

And that's how it ended, with the ball in my court. Actually no, it always was there.
I've got no more excuses. I've got the ute. I've got the laptop. I've got the job. I've got the accommodation. I've got nothing here holding me back.
Ohh bloody hell!

Just bite the bullet.

Just bite the bullet.

Just bite the bullet.

Bit fucking hard.

The Big Hat Theory

2008-01-10T17:01:00.000-08:00

There are alot of mysteries I wish to uncover in my lifetime.
One of these is why blokes in boots, jeans and big Akubra hats are so bloody alluring to me.
They themselves mightn't even be good-looking! Yet I can't take my eyes off them. The situation is always made worse when they have that swagger.
You know the sort, the slow amble of the hips and the slightly bandy legs as though they've never left the saddle.
I think this stupid lust couldn't possibly be more Red-Necked. And it shows that despite the books I read, the diverse range of people I know, all the places I've been- my Red-Neck grains will always shine through when some annoying bloke in tight Wranglers and scuffed boots walks into the room. What is that!?
And the really weird part is, if I had to name the top 10 arseholes I've met in my life, 7 out of 10 of them were those stupid Akubra hatted and, tight-jeaned eye-gluers. Hello, logic, where are you!?
My most recent run-in with such a creature that brought the mystery to the surface all over again was not yesterday, but the day before- on Wednesday.
We hired some contract harvesters to come out and harvest our crop. They were a big group of people who hailed from South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland and every year they met up to work their way down the harvest trail with all their huge machinery.

Wednesday was boiling hot and we'd done our work in the early morning and were inside keeping cool when a great big yellow Header, a truck and ute came down our driveway in a grand entrance of noise.
Dad was like a little kid seeing a new toy as he saw them. We followed them out into the paddock in our old truck. He was a great bubbling mess and he exclaimed again and again about how big the Header was. I only looked at it. Sure it was big, but I'd seen bigger.
We stood out in the paddock amongest the flies and spoke to the contractors. They were a big family business that had been traveling down our way for over 10 years, our district being the final stop on the great Southern haul.
Dad talked to the man and this woman who was his sister-in-law or something while these two little girls they had brought with them sat in the ute beeping the horn and playing with numerous other buttons.
The Header was a few meters off in the paddock. The door had swung open and a figure in a big beaten hat, faded jeans and boots had climbed down.
Everyone was already staring at the Header and I luckily had sunnies on so no one could see what I was really staring at.
He was still too far away to make out how old he was, so he could've easily been ugly and grosse but I wanted to keep up the eye-candy illusion for as long as possible.
Eventually he swaggered over (ohhh that swagger) to be introduced. The big hat shaded half his face while large sunnies hid his eyes so the jury was still out. But I could still see a straight square jaw that always makes a positively chemical reaction when coupled with the big hat. This is the Big Hat Theory, now pay attention people.
He looked anywhere between 25 to 28 years old, but Northerners have a tendency to look older than they actually are.
He didn't have a beer gut so that was a bonus. Hahaha...
He stood before us very briefly not saying anything before returning to his Header to continue the 'fine-tuning'.
Dad and the man and lady continued to talk while I continued to indulge my fantasies.
Soon Dad said we had some jobs to do at the Woolshed so we sauntered off into the heat with my dog at our heels.
Not long after I stood peering through the broken window frames of the Woolshed watching the Header finally fire up and start out into the paddock, before returning to the house to get out of the heat.
I was back at the house for maybe only 20 minutes when Dad came back from the paddock squirming like a little boy again over the big toy, telling me how he'd been given a ride in it and how exciting it was.
I was then told that I had to experience the same thrill.
I firmly said no. Just the thought of being alone in the small cabin of the Header with Akubra-boy gave me goosebumps.
But I was ushered like a small unwilling animal out into the searing heat and into the paddock by Dad, who only succeeded because he unknowingly played on the concept of my courage. Thank you insecurity!
Back out in the paddock I anxiously shifted my weight from one foot to the other as I gradually watched the Header coming closer and closer towards us through the crop. God, why was I so bloody scared!?
Eventually it pulled up alongside the truck to empty the grain into.
And I was again ushered up into the cabin by telling myself I was a gutless wonder.
In the cool spacious cabin, sitting beside Akubra-boy I didn't feel as awkward as I thought I'd be.
As we started up again and headed out into the crop he told me how he was a stationhand/musterer/jackaroo from North-West Queensland, which was already the bleeding obvious between his clothes and lazy northern tounge. I told him about my brief stint on a station two years ago and it was soon discovered there were a couple of common grounds.
"I'm probably heading up to Queensland soon for some rouseabout work" I said trying to convince him as well as myself (the jury is still out on that- thanks to my gutless disposition).
He laughed "Yeah plenty of that up there!".
He'd only gone down one row when he turned to me "Reakon you could 'ave a go?"
I swallowed, "Ahh yeh".
At the fence line he swung the Header around and we swapped seats.
Behind the wheel I placed my hand upon the throttle and edged the machine into speed, while trying to watch the huge harvesters on the front as they spun furiously around and ate up the stalks of the crop like a giant lawn-mower. The rows were zig-zagged and ran in lines that would put a drunk grannie's driving skills to shame. I soon learnt the Header was a slow responder as I tried to steer it every which way to not miss any stalks. Akubra-boy laughing when I did.
As we reached the end of one row I turned the Header around to start on the next to see the crazily crooked lines I had left down the paddock.
Akubra-boy cackled "How much have you had to drink today?"
I grinned, "Not telling".
As we continued he told me more about himself, saying that this was probably the last crop he'd do this year.
I laughed "it's only the 9th of January!"
He nodded seriously, "Yeh, I'm sick of it. I'm going back mustering in Queensland"
I related. I suddenly really wanted to go to Queensland.
I finished off the last of the crop before swinging it back to the truck to empty the grain.
As I climbed down from the Header Dad was shocked to see me driving, but excited.
"What was it like?" Was It hard?"
I casually shrugged, suddenly the ol 'pro, "Nahh, steering was a bit shit, but was easy"
Back outside again, I was once again free to watch Akubra-boy swaggering around. Did I find him good-looking or was it just that old thang? I had no idea, but I couldn't take my eyes off him.
Later that evening I watched the big yellow Header disappear up the drive-way and I felt sad. Was I sad to see him go? Or sad to see someone go with the life I wanted?
I didn't know.
But, my feet suddenly felt itchy and I was suddenly more determined to go to Queensland.

I just need to find the courage first.......

Saturday

2008-01-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

Today is a stinker. I had the fan blowing like Paris Hilton all night and all this morning till I woke up at bloody 12pm. Which has become an early time for me to wake up at.
I can already feel your scowls and crinkled brows of disgust coming in waves through this virtual world. What? I'd defend myself saying it hasn't exactly been a choice but there's probably not much point as millions of people out there have crap jobs that they hate yet hack it every day without any spoken complaints.
So I'm paying my 'sowwwwwys' forward now.

Anyhoo....after the usual daily round of fighting words with my arsehole brother I grew increasingly irritable about how beautiful it was outside- 37 degrees, is yes, my idea of beautiful.
So I did the ol' slip, a slopper and a slapper than emerged from my cold little house into the fierce heat. As I walked along I thought what wimps people were to not be out enjoying it also.
I walked to my old man's house and got my dog forcing her to join me.

Maggie normally loves a romp out in the day but, yeh, she is a dog and as I watched her panting little frame stumbling along on the hot bitumen I began to wonder whether this could be classed as animal cruelty.
We got to the oval next to the Nepean Highway and as I began my usual laps around it I tried to get her to just sit still and wait under the shade, but the defiant little beast was having none of that and bravely padded on behind me, lapping up any cold water she found along the way.
On my 5th or 6th lap around I suddenly turned my head to see where she was but couldn't find her. I stopped and saw her about 40 meters back.
She was hunched over furiously snapping at something and to my horror I could see fur flying up from her mouth and into the air. There was something small and grey on the ground trying to struggle away.
I yelled at her but she ignored me.
I hurried over to her to see a tiny little possum at Maggie's mercy.
I screamed at her and batted her off the possum. She immediately cowered away with large clumps of fur still caught in her jaw.
The little thing was lying in the dirt, still moving its' legs in every direction to try and run in vain but they looked broken.
It's fur was matted and missing many large clumps.
As I squatted on my haunches it stared at me with huge brown eyes, wide with fear. It's whole body was beating and shaking furiously.
It would die of shock if I moved it. It would die of further injury if I moved it.
It would get mauled by another animal if I left it on the ground.
I tried to get closer to inspect it and it suddenly crawled towards me and lunged in the air at me.
I hoped that was a sign of recovery but that was just stupid.
It started to crawl around, it's wide eyes always on me.
It was in a great deal of pain and I knew what the humane thing would be to do. What anyone else would do that had seen as many animals die as I had.
But I couldn't bring myself to break its' neck.
I was scared I wouldn't break it properly and cause it further pain.
It was so helpless and small.
So I just uselessly sat a few meters away from it till it slowly died.
It's heart was beating so fast and I thought it would never stop.
Eventually it's bright wide eyes began to close like it was sleepy and its' little frame began to roll over till it lay on it's side with its' mouth nestled in the dust like a peaceful little puppy napping.
Once I was certain it's heart had completely stopped I stood up and walked away before the rest of the ants came.
That's life though.

Harrrpy New Year!

2008-01-03T17:46:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!
And nothing seems to quite hail in the new year than the constant, repetitive question of "Is it the new year yet?" around the countdown time.
I spent these precious count down moments on the darkened beach of Rye, an hour East of Melbourne, with only the occasional illegal fire work being let off meters from our footfalls to light up my friends' drunken expressions.
Many a juvenile like ourselves had snuck off to this end of the beach free from the large number of cops patrolling the area sniffing the air like dogs for the scent of alcohol which would land the bearer of the substance with an on-the-spot-fine.
From my esky in the back of the ute we had pulled out our tinnies of Bundy and Smirnoff to hide on our persons before skittering off like rabbits into the night with cops lurking only meters away.
Once on the beach we cantered about triumphantly holding up our cans and kicking up salty water in the shallows. Once it had been established the area was cop and bogan free we began to wonder how would we know it when the clock struck midnight?
We questioned others loitering in the vicinity and they gave us estimates of it being anywhere between 8 minutes and 3 minutes til midnight.
"I'm sure we'll know" I assured Nat and Fleece, "We'll hear it"
But noises would suddenly erupt from different spots to signal in a new year at different times.
"Is it the New Year yet?"
"Nahhh" a drunk bystander (actually he was lying down) called out.
Eventually fireworks propelling skywards from numerous areas around the Bay told us it was 2008.
We danced and laughed about on the black beach that occasionally would be lit up with red or orange.
Panting we realised our hands were now empty of any liquid so in nodded agreement we decided to return to the ute to replenish the stock.

Walking back along the road we were approached by a guy who had just been in a brawl and had had his tooth knocked out who advised us not to walk along alone- crazy barbarians were on the loose.

Like everybody else we wandered about aimlessly that night. Down the street, to the beach, into the water, into the park and down to the beach again.
We went swimming about 2am with some Wog Boys from Greensborough who took a shine to my ute and to Nat, whose always had a weakness for the Woggies.

At 4am still wet and sandy we climbed into the back of my ute which had been decked out with mattresses, sheets and towels taped up over the windows.
We opened the windows and closed up the tail gate and tried to sleep while revelers out on the street tried to party on with just their systems full of drugs and grog.
I didn't sleep a wink due to drinking four energy drinks since 10pm and because I was the one lying by the tailgate so I felt like a watchdog, lying with wide eyes and listening intently to every little noise (not that there many little noises).

All up it was rather good New Years, but I've had some really really shit New Years in the past years so I don't have much to compare it to.

How was all your New Years?

Christ it's Christmas!

2007-12-16T18:18:00.000-08:00

In my haze of preoccupation with numerous persuits, I have once again been knocked over stunned to suddenly discover how rapidly the disastrous thing known as Christmas is approaching.
It's not that I dislike Christmas......itself anyway, it's that I hate how people become every year when the bloody thing rolls around like a faithful steam engine (Not a Connex steam engine- Only Melburnians will get that).
Their crazed expressions as they jolt into you in the crazy cyclone that has suddenly engulfed all shopping places of all shapes and forms.
Yesterday while following the Mother like a little lamb into the slaughter into Chaddstone, I was like a small animal reeling in fright against the wall as the torrent of normal every day people mutated into bargain-thirsty shoppers stampeded towards me.
"I'm scared" I whispered, quivering with fear to the Mother I hoped would step forward to shield me. But instead, she grabbed me to pull me into that deep end of human limbs, clutching shopping bags like hunters of the wild cradling their kill for their young ones back in the nest.
I found a small ledge to plaster myself against in David Jones once we had fought our way through the ferocious snarling beasts that are the Christmas shoppers.
Panting I was shocked to see the Mother casually surveying the glass wears, calmly holding wine glasses up to the light, pondering their competency to hold the precious liquid.
Peering around to check the coast was clear, I gingerly stepped out of my safe haven to assist the Mother in the glass search. Eventually finding something to amuse and distract me from my turbulent ordeal- I held up a large glass in the cup of my hand.
"Ooohh what about these Mum?"
She peered over critically from a delicately small and intricately decorated glass that had taken her attention. She sighed patiently, "Ohh that's a goblet" before turning back to her more deserving piece.
"Exactly! Look at all the grog you can get in there!" I exclaimed holding it up to unsuccessfully prove my point.
We wandered on through the walls of glass wear, the Mother watching my tread with an eagle's eye, my clumsy reputation for destroying all things pretty and delicate eating at her nerves.
I suddenly gasped and jumped from the path I had been warned to follow, as the Mother nearly collapsed with overwhelming anxiety.
"Maaarrmmmmm! Look at this!" I held up a heavy silver table ornament that holds candles like the rich people have in movies (I have no idea what you call them).
"Ohh let's be cultured!"
The Mother raised an eyebrow before continuing on her glass quest "Ohh I do worry about you Lana."
It wasn't long before we had to brave the crazed crowds again to get to Borders book store. I had the idea that this might pose as a safe haven with the ignorant thought that the average hungry hunter couldn't read. As I threw myself from the unreasoning rip of shoppers and across the threshold of Borders I suddenly discovered that while the savages couldn't read they still obviously liked to look at the pretty pictures and a line nearly longer than Shane Warne's phone bill snaked its' way from the counter and zig zagged through the shelves.
The Mother had abandoned me here so I had to fend for myself as I decided upon my friends and family not being worth this ordeal for the sake of their store bought presents so I instead went looking for a dvd series to get me through the next few boring weeks of unemployment.
I soon found Seinfeld's season 1 and 2 and used the gift voucher I had just recieved from my school as a prize for getting the 'Academic Excellence Award" (*bows* Thankyou! Thankyou!). Ahh... and there's that old Tall Poppy Syndrome pushing up through the weeds.
The queue was made short by the illusion that preoccupation always loyally supplies, which came in the form of a Where's-Wally styled picture book called "Where's Bin Laden?". Made me giggle till one of the check-out-chicks called "Next!".

Later that day the Mother suddenly full of the Christmas spirit for the first time that year ordered for the dusty, foul-smelling Christmas decorations to be brought down from their hiding place. As the light hit the little Santas and bulbous tree ornaments for the first time in a year they screamed for mercy, but the Mother was ruthless.
The nativity set was arranged properly upon the mantle piece with the donkey and cow as usual looking like they were about to maul and feast upon Baby Jesus. The three wise men looking as seedy as the men down at my local on Friday night and the adolescent Mary still bewildered about where baby's came from.
The 2D plastic Santa was then placed on the window sill looking like he'd really hit the ciggie pack in the past year in his reclusive state with his formerly white beard as yellow as piss along with his normally bright white eyes fading into a yellow that would put Big Bird to shame.
The pathetically tiny tree was dragged from it's box and it's limbs were than given time to be twisted in different directions to try and manipulate some sort of realistic look from it.
My suggestion of doing the traditionally Aussie custom of just getting a little eucalyptus to decorate was instantly soiled upon with the proclamation that eucalyptus stunk- literally.
Tail between legs I returned to putting more decorations on the sad plastic little tree than was humane.
Eventually we stood back to look at our our work.
Bulbous ornaments hung from door knobs and shelf edges, large lights nearly bigger than the tree itself were draped over the sad little green object, a home made star with silver foil on only one side hung from the wooden chandler, thin silver tinsel drunkenly made its' way from the cabinet, across the windows, over the Christmas cards that spelt my name wrong to come to a exhausted coiled end on top of the tv.
A red piece of head gear with Santas wobbling upon springs with lights in their arses that previous years had always seemed to make its' way to my dog's head (to her disgust) now straddled a small lamp upon the mantel piece.
It was like a tacky factory had exploded in my lounge room. I didn't know whether to laugh hysterically or reel in horror, I chose the former and decided to go for the tacky theme boots n' all. I rushed to my room and returned triumphantly holding a small object above my head.
The Mother, The Brother and his girlfriend stared quizzically until I made the movement that I hoped would be the only Australian attempt I'd make to the tack fest to be left undisturbed.
From the nativity set I removed Baby Jesus and put a small figurine of Ned Kelly in his place.

Love Thy Neighbour

2007-12-07T18:07:00.000-08:00

Last night my cuz Fleece and I had just returned from the beach when we got a text message from my mum.
"We're at the Sandy Hotel"
There was a chance she'd be drunk by the time we got there and just the possibility of seeing mum drunk was too good to miss.
We sped down Beach Road in the newly serviced Hilux with even more grunt than it had before.
Through the double doors of the Sandy pub and we were met with Mum (drunk), her boyfriend, his mate- Kevin07 and our neighbour Jill (drunk).
Jill was waddling around in a dress that barely covered her large breasts so at every sudden movement she made we would tightly shut our eyes. Added to that she would also lift her dress to reveal herself to any unlucky bystander and have them screaming from the room with blood dripping from their eyes.
But that's how she acts sober so I wasn't too worried about her well-being until she suddenly leaned forwards and croaked "Laaarrrnnaaa, have you ever tried modeling?"
All eyes were suddenly on me. "Only for dog food companies"
Then Jill got the idea that skinny dipping in the bay just over the road would be a real riot. Mum was up for it too. I was told that I would be up for it. I hadn't been listening to their conversation "What am I up for?", I asked, but the question of being Up For It had moved onto Fleece.
"Nahhh, she's too straight laced" cackled Mum.
Fleece took a sigh of relief, she was off the hook just for being too anal.
The decision was reached to move the party back to Jill's house.
She wanted to come in the ute with us.
Fleece was driving due to me hitting the bottle a bit.
We climbed in the front while Jill fell in the back.
She was satisfied as long as we had the Seeker's song blaring loudly on the AM radio.
Once it ended she grew bored.
As we turned onto North Road, Jill undid her seat belt and began manoeuvring herself in the turtle-fashion into the front between us.
"Move ya arse over Lana!"
I was hanging out the open window and was still wedged between the door and Jill's butt while she tried to get into position.
Next minute the Hilux began to growl unnaturally because in her struggle Jill had kicked the gear stick into neutral.
The journey home wasn't the most comfortable of my life but wasn't boring either.

When All Money is Gone, Family Guy Says So Much

2007-12-05T22:39:00.000-08:00

Today is the Brother's 21st Birthday.
I actually bought him a bloody awesome gift yesterday that I handed to him around midnight last night and not a second before.
We have very few things in common, the Brother and I, but an almost religious love for Family Guy has quite recently become one of the few things (beside from a family member's funeral in the future) that will see us sitting side-by-side for hours, lapping up the jokes like beer on Christmas Day.
So yesterday while wandering rather deliriously through Target, due to eating and drinking nothing for many hours (due to a rather nasty chest infection I've picked up recently through my travels, not some feeble little following in the footsteps of a drastic-giving-into-society's-pressures diet) I found what I had been looking for- Family Guy Season Four.
My heart leapt, before sinking upon the sight of the price. $42. Money has pretty much never been an issue for me. I don't have much of it, but for a long time I've had a decent amount of savings due to working like a dog and having no social life between the ages of 13 and 16, that has never seen me having second thoughts about some new purchase or rather.
Now, for the first time I'm staring down the barrel of being rather broke.
And now I owe my mum 5 grand for the fabulous new ute I just bought.
I had the money already, if you included the couple of grand in my trust fund that mum started the day I was born, but good old mum forbidded this "Money for schooling" to be squandered on a ute.
So she lovingly gave me 5 grand that her tight arse father had shockingly coughed up as way of apologising, I guess, for any number (we were free to take our pick as no words of acknowledgment accompanied it) of rude heartless things he's done in the course of her lifetime.
I'm of course to pay it back (though I did make it clear before I accepted it that would be in some time).
Well anyway, I stood looking at the beautiful dvd that held hours upon hours of laughter, so worth the piss-stained pants and pondered for a moment. Before buying the bloody thing along with 3 cds for myself. What? I haven't updated my music collection in months!
Then on the way home I had to put $46 worth of fuel in my Hilux.
I love not worrying about money......mmm shit, those so sound like famous last words.
But I got the Brother a freakin' awesome gift that made him happy and I can't remember the last time he was so nice to me.

That loving feeling

2007-11-27T21:37:00.000-08:00

I have finally bought THE ute people! My god it's beautiful. There aren't a great deal of things that I can properly appreciate but a big growling Hilux has always been one of them.
Which, I guess, does pose as being a little strange seeing as I'm a chick and I've seen many people snort and turn on their heel upon discovering my not-so-secret passion for the great hunk of rumbling metal that is the ute-dearest.
I'm not sure why some people are unimpressed by this little contrary, but I guess its the same reason why the same sort of people cringe with contempt when I go into a patriotic rave whenever I hear 'Khe Sahn' (Last Saturday night I actually scared some bikies with my drunk dancing to it).
I'll leave it at that otherwise I'll launch into a messy bout of typing-diarrhoea about my misfitting disposition yada yada yada -that can only end in my banishment from this Earth..... Please don't ask for an explanation of any of that sloppy word-poo, there's just some questions you don't ask a raving lunatic.

Anyhoo.....My new ute is a 4x2 Hilux dual cab, that's technically a 95 model but under the bonnet it said 94......so go figure. It's gotta canopy, a big bull bar for running down unsuspecting pedestrians and a heavy back bar that'll make other fuckers think twice about tail gating me.

Why did I buy a ute? Well, I guess, for me Hiluxes have always represented everything that's good, strong and trust worthy in the world. I've always associated them with other things I love. My dad, my dogs, my farm, the country, Lee Kernaghan and big hot farm boys (I've since learnt farm boys are generally arseholes- but the subconscious thought still stands).
Ohh.....excuse that Red Neck Moment.

Yesterday arvo my Mum drove me over to get the ute from Glenroy after she finished work and I drove it for the first time home in bloody peak hour. Even though it's only a 4x2 I still felt considerably higher up there then all the other cars. At first I thought I was just being paranoid......but no.....people really were staring at the chick cruising along in the big bad ute. And I never copped one beep or road rage of any sort- that's another thing about Hiluxes, no one seems to mess with them :D

Full of my own achievement and giddy with happiness (and escalated on yet another Red Neck Moment) I sent all my mates the following message:
"WOOOOOO!! I finally got my big beautiful ute! I'm in love! I've made so much love to it, it's endangered from getting cancer after all the post-ciggies. If I ever love a man half as much as I love this ute, I'll marry him! I'm so not ever gonna get married! *Bats at air* Ahhh! Too....Many.....Exhaust......Pipe.....Jokes! Ahh!"

I drove the ute over to Blackburn last night to show it off to some mates and it was also just an excuse to keep driving it. I had to park it in the drive way and spent the whole night nervously peering through the curtains to check its health still being current.
Eventually after more drinks than I care to mention, I stumbled out toting a glass of beer and wine (try it, it's actually really good) to tell my newest suitor I loved it and would never ever leave it.
Concerned, my mates followed and soon we were all sitting on top of the canopy watching the cars drive past on White Horse Road, me waving furiously at all of them, obtaining beeps and yells from open windows from a small amount considering.
Eventually The Room Mate appeared to tell us we were sending her dog spas (that dog was fucking born spas) and the neighbours would soon be complaining.
"If they do it's cause the jealous bastards are just shitty bout missing all da fun!" I slurred, pondering for the first time whether the canopy roof could actually hold our weight.
"Just invite the silly pricks over and we'll party that anal-ness outta their systems!" I screamed, hoping the neighbours would hear and save themselves a call to the cops.
"SHUT UP LANA!!!" the mates said collectively.
"Shit, now you've done it; they'll ring the cops for sure thanks to that outburst"

We we sent on our way. Three of us decided to walk back to the other mate's house.
I asked for a moment alone with the ute before we left but I was dragged away kicking and screaming.
At the servo we stumbled in to gather some salty goodness.
I wasn't hungry so stood by the magazine rack staring stupidly at the men's mags with the naked girls with their goodies obscured on the glossy covers.
"Hey....?" I announced to everybody in the small servo. "Why aren't there any porno mags for chicks? I mean, do they just fucking assume that we don't wanna perve at exaggerated bits and bobs of the opposite sex?"
I wasn't given a satisfactory response, so I blundered on.
"It's fucking discrimination! Our sex drives are just as mechanically sound as all those pricks!"
The servo assistant blushed and looked away while I was ushered away by the mates, but not before finding an innocent plant quietly minding its own business to sexually abuse.
"That'll teach you to vote Green!"

The mates live right next to a Cemetery along the most pot-holed track in Melbourne.
They are actually more like craters and neighbours going missing along that track was a common occurance. In the dark we drunkardly stumbled along trying to navigate our way through, yelling out our usual greetings to the dead people in the Cemetery next door as we went.
At home we crashed on the couch and were telling our usual dirty jokes when my dickhead brother rang from the city maggotted nearly as much as myself.
"Come and fucking pick me up ya slut"
"Ohh well even though you said it soooooo nicely, I can't, I'm fucked." and I handed the phone over to a mate who the Brother had wanted to root ever since he saw her picture on myspace.
She told him how I did a great impression of him to which the Brother flew into a rage saying I was this and that so the mate hung up.
He rang back promptly, "Tttttt- Tell.... tha' ssslut iif she e-va fuckin' hangs up on meee again, I'll fuckin' sssmash 'er"
"Touch her and I'll rip ya dick off and feed it to my dog", I sniggered back before falling over in a laughing fit.
So went the friendly exchange between loving brother and sister till my phone died.

Phlegmy Friends

2007-11-26T12:57:00.000-08:00

My Saturday night.
I hadn't really been expecting much; I left my house around 8.30pm and walked to the train station. I was meeting up with mates for dinner in the city who had been at the soccer. I'd been invited but I was too much of a tight arse to fork out the $40 for a ticket. I prefer to spend my Centrelink pocket money on beer.
Thankyou tax payers. I had a job once but it was lost along with my respectability.
That day, like pretty much every day since I finished school for the year a few weeks ago has been spent in a cocoon of nothingness with the clock on the wall being the only thing that changed slightly. Time had seemed to pass in great chunks with very little detail being distinguishable between one hour and another.
It was pathetic....... no, I was pathetic. Actually that shouldn't be a past tense.

The train ride into the city was exactly like a thousand ones before.
Saturday night sees only the usuals.
Guys in bright fluro t-shirts with spiked hair, talking loudly and already tipsy, trying to catch glimpses of high-steppers (frocked up chicks) outside their carriage windows. Hooting and cat-calling when one or two is triumphantly spotted.
Girls in bright dresses and high heels, plastered with makeup as thick as icing sugar, clucking amongest themselves like a flock of chooks, squealing and squirming everytime a cock walks through the door.
I always feel reminded of the farmyard when ever I step outside the sanctity of my house.
Material really is the thin line between us and animals. Though I suppose animals wouldn't have waited and subdued their urges had they run into each other. We just wait until later when we are maggotted enough to act on our instincts. Dark alleys and club toilets are natural habitats for such behaviour.

Then of course there was the usual helping of loud bogans that always seem to be on trains but never seem to have destinations.
The ones behind me were loudly declaring their success as drug dealers, pacing up and down the rows of seats screaming into their phones in that famous lilt of theirs' I do love to impersonate.

I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights when I stepped off the train at Southern Cross and was met with flocks and flocks of screaming fans returning from the soccer. Toting flags and scarves they blindly bumped into me, disappointed to see I carried no team colors to be harassed over.
As I pulled myself free, feeling my skin dripping with contamination (haha, yeh bit melodramatic) I found the stairs that were empty due to most favouring the escalators that didn't ask for unnecessary exertion.
In the usual haunt I found my three mates wedged between a wall trying to take refuge from the crowds that flowed like waves, threatening to sweep up any debris that fell in their path.

As we walked I slowly dropped my irritation with the crowds and became more animated, finding great entertainment in watching this little cop grab one drunken looney and pull him to the ground.
"You think maybe he needs a hand?"
"Nah he's a cop"
"But he's soooo wittle!"
"I'm sure he makes up for it"
One raised eyebrow later and the knob jokes began.

We walked to Crown and found an upstairs restaurant that dealt us a Kiwi waitress who didn't smile.
"Maybe she has bad teeth"
"That's no excuse"
"You want to suddenly see yellow, rotting teeth when you've just begun your meal?"
"I've got the stomach"
We added brown sugar to the water and mixed it till it looked like piss, handing it back to her asking for more.
She showed no expression as she took it back.
We tried harder.
The water and sugar was called upon again to make a concoction that disturbingly resembled phlegm.
When Kiwi walked past I would suddenly be hit with a coughing fit that required me to grab the closest napkin (already planted with the yellow substance) and splutter into it, holding the napkin up open and fully visible to her and several other tables in the vicinity.
"Ohhhh that's better!" I'd croak, peering into my apparent creation, "Ohh that's a nasty bugger!"
Kiwi looked on blankly.
Our attempts for a reaction became less subtle.
Our tools were modest but we used them to the best of our ability, but got no reaction and surprisingly weren't kicked out of the restaurant either.

I had more to write bout, but yeh I'm lazy and can't be fucked.

Bon Apetite!

I woman. I vote. You Tarzan

2007-11-24T21:32:00.000-08:00

Haha.....well still nobody has viewed my hapless little ramblings, but I shall soldier on in the hope they will....haha who am I kidding, they won't! So I'm just writing to myself.
Hello lana, how are you? Fine thanks. Yourself? Yes rather good, bit pissed about Rudd being our new PM, goodbye lucky country.
Yeah I probably shouldn't even attempt to begin talking politics, it'd be like a fish describing what flying is like. This year was my first voting. I hadn't wanted to even enroll, hoping I could just spend my life under the radar like some sort of secret person that doesn't seem to exist, cloaked in mystery that keeps fooling the government.
"She seems to exist, yet every election day it's like she was never born! My god man, we must get to the bottom of this!"
But then bloody mum went ahead and enrolled me.
"Mmmmmuuuummmm!!!! Why'd you do that!!??"
"It's the law"
"I don't care, I don't want to bloody vote"
"And I don't want to keep feeding you"
"What?"
"You heard me"
"Your going to disown me because I won't vote? Since when did you get loyal to the government?"
"Don't argue"

So I did a postal vote a few days before hand. I wish I'd known then you could leave it blank, or better scribble a poem or story across it. That would've been gold. Yes, we children are the future. Haha this country is going straight to hell when my lot take over. First thing on the agenda will be laws against decent exposure. "You there! Remove those clothes at once!"

I was on my way out when Mum slapped the voting sheet in front me and my mind was already concentrated on the night ahead (dancing, drinking, boys, etc..... the nuns that taught me in primary school would be so proud to see me today) as I just scanned it briefly, quite shocked to discover there were THAT many parties. I hastily ran through my options. The only minority party I knew anything about were the Greens, because I've waged a personal war against those wankers when they tried to abolish muelsing (long story short they didn't understand what it was and put alot of already poor farmers further up shit creek).
Then I saw "What Women Want". Initial thought- What the fuck?
But then beneath it I saw something that made me laugh. Every party had the surname of it's leader in bold letters beneath the party. And what do you think the party leader's name was?
"LOVE"
So there was a statement is bold print on my election sheet that made a damn good point and made me laugh. "What women want- LOVE". Awwww
I gave them a big 1 for their sense of humour. Why have a leader thats going to uphold our rights when you can have one with a sense of humour?
Cue taking the piss.

I have a dream

2007-11-09T23:54:00.000-08:00

School has been done away with for me....... well for another year anyway. And as I sit here typing with my merry little two fingers I am contemplating....... about what the bloody hell to do now.
You see, a few weeks ago, I was just about bursting with anticipation for what was in store for me when this damned school year was cast to oblivion.
That, imminent fate has now transpired..... as time was the only obstacle there. But....as for those plans? The ones bout buying some big beautiful Hilux, blazing all the way up to Queensland- sleeping out in my swag with just my dog for protection, before reaching my destination to begin a HUGE, EXCITING, ADVENTUROUS lifestyle as a farm worker.

*Dead Silence*

Yes, that does sound like a monstrously ridiculous McLeod's-Daughters-wishful-thinking-theory. But, piss off..those thoughts got me through the last 6 or 7 years of crappy monotonous life.
I've been on farms and stations before, they're no picnic; but I've got enough hope in my heart, skip to my step and enough pent up frustration from the same-old-same-old bullshit to put the realistic dead-weight nonsense back in the toilet and HAVE A DREAM!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm always one to follow my dreams.....9 times out of 10, yes, they do fail and take large chunks of my self-esteem each time, but I still get points for trying. It's un-Australian to not give everything a crack, "even if it's just pissing into the wind" as Jack from "My Brother Jack" said.
Unless the thing your having a crack at is the 40 year old bald bloke in the pub with no teeth and a voice that sounds like a cat running over a chainsaw. You can be let off for just not trying..... just because you can doesn't always necessarily mean that you should (And no I shouldn't be taking this advice myself as far as the McCleod's-Daughters-wishful-thinking-theory goes).
Because, yes...I DO KNOW that following the McCleod's-Daughters-wishful-thinking-theory will lead you to trouble. Like, for instance, I KNOW not all men out on properties have features as finely chiselled as Michelangelo's David, the majority are just misogynist pigs who have spent too long in the best paddock with beer guts the size of their ego's. I wish I had a dollar every time I've been blasted with abuse from those pretentious pricks who gaze at each other in quite the Brokeback-Mountain-way (ignore that).
I could go on and on and on.....I could write a book......I've seriously considered it, mmmm never know, just might one day.
The point is I know the dangers and risks I take to do this crazy shit that often leads to a dead end, but I just don't think that there could possibly be a worse feeling than regret. I am terrified of one day looking back and thinking What if? Or just plain Fucking hell!

Welcome to Rusted Gumption!

2007-11-06T00:20:00.000-08:00

G'day my fellow tinny-swilling, slang-talking, mother-luvin, cousin-chasing (depending on how small and remote your town is), sun-baked, inhabitants of this great ever increasingly growing browner continent -Australia!
This is my first crack at some sort of a half-baked website to vent my thoughts and flimsy feelings into, so I hope you (assuming there is a 'you' out there actually reading this) will bear with me while I overcome being computer-retarded and a shit typer. Seriously, I am a shit typer, I type with two fingers! I think shit is an understatement.

Now, i will continue to ignorantly splurt out this virtual diarrhoea in the persistent hope that someone will eventually read it. Pathetic isn't it? Need the comfort of an audience to garnish some scrap of self esteem.
No, no, no *laughs jollily* don't mistake me for some sad, little misfit living on the edge of a cliff, with the hope that I possess some sort of talent as the only rope I've got left to cling onto and hold me back.
That couldn't be further from the truth! For one thing, I'm not little! So hah! I'm actually 5 foot 9 to be exact and secondly......I'm not dangling from any cliff, so set your blessed little hearts and fears to rest of this being some pathetic emo's blog you've stumbled into.
Well, enough random ramblings said.......or rather written, allow me to give some insight to the two-fingered typer that is yours truly!
My name is Lana and I'm an 18 year old living in Melbourne. Unlike most though, I have done a bit of lonesome traveling in the hope of securing my dream of being a farmer. Yes, now your confused aren't you? Tehehehe.

I won't go into too much detail because if you've managed to read this far I value your attention too much to bore you and send you packing.
In short I have grown up in the Western District of Victoria on a farm, have lived in Ararat, Ballarat, worked on a cattle station (when i was 16) in North NSW, attended school in Whittlesea (North of Melb), worked on a horse pre-training property in Euroa and am currently finishing off the last tiny little incy wincy bit of my year 11 at RMIT in Melbourne before hitting that grand open road again and seeing where the wind blows me.
This website (if I stick to it) shall hopefully work as a record of my adventures and misadventures. Assuming there is somebody out there reading this drivel, I hope you will, NO! I BEG (!!!) you to comment and return.

Cheers mateys with lots of beers (virtual beers of course.... I couldn't possibly.....what's that? You want the real thing? Oh don't be so unreasonable.....how am I expected to.......what? Ohh i see.....well, I'll try to forward you the money for beer as soon as my pay check from Centrelink comes through. Humph, so much for free web).