she works hard for the money

I need money. That’s what I want. Money makes the world go round. Money Money Money. Show me the money. And so on.

Money has been around, in one form or another, for nigh on thousands of years. The Yen, the Euro, The Australian dollar, Vietnamese dong, the British Pound, the Turkish Lyra. Money indeed makes the world go round. What started out in ancient civilizations as bartering a sheep for, I don’t know, a wife, gradually evolved into the practice of using carved rocks, in some societies; sharks eggs, and gradually metal and gold as a tool for purchase, which laid the groundwork for modern commerce. 

But who’s bright idea sparked the fire that lit the way for future generations? Ignoring the metaphoric imagery for a moment, I have often pondered this to great extent, usually when I am on the verge of bankruptcy because I’ve got no change to buy a Golden Gaytime at the petrol station and I have to spend my money on something boring, like fuel. As a young person, it is generally accepted, and generally true, that we shouldn’t have much, if any money.

I’ve come to this conclusion: 

I work 9am till 5.30pm each day to receive my pay packet on a Monday so I can put fuel in the car which, coincidentally, I had to buy with my own money, so I can drive myself back to work to earn my pay for that week, so I can put fuel in the car which I had to buy with my money, so I can drive....Can you see where I’m going with this?

Here in Australia, we use plastic notes and ‘silver’ and ‘gold’ coins to buy what we want. Yet my lunch comes wrapped in bits of floppy plastic, and I’ve got some earrings at home which are made of metal, why can’t I take these into IGA and buy some two minute noodles? What makes these seemingly worthless objects so valuable and important in our world today? It’s not like money is made from proper gold; interestingly there’s only about 1% true gold in a $2 coin. We don’t trade for Rubies or Diamonds, and our notes aren’t made from real gold leaf. And I don’t always have useless little pearls rolling around as small change in my purse; rather it always rattles with the gentle clinking of all those 5cent pieces of change from my countless trips to Safeway.

 I can’t just walk into my local Retrovision and purchase a new iPod touch with an antique 18th century chest of drawers from ye olde England which, coincidentally, would be worth much more than the iPod any day. But instead I am asked to produce from my wallet a few pieces of ridiculously coloured plastic reminiscent of Monopoly money to complete my purchase.  

If you have a little bit of money, you’re poor. If you’ve got a lot of money, you’re rich, and thus you’re going to be greedy. You’re going to want more money, and you’re going to get it. Prison’s around the world are filled with countless criminals; murderers, gang men, hit men, drug dealer, thieves. What fuels these peoples actions? You don’t steal a 80inch television and a washing machine because it’s your Uncle’s birthday and you couldn’t think of what to get him and it would be a nice gesture. No, you steal something because you want it. You can’t keep it at home because if the Fuzz rock up you’re in a spot of bother, so what do you do? You sell it. Sell it for money. Am I making my point yet?

 About 50% of what we do each day revolves around money.  What you eat, what you wear, what you drive, where you’re going, how you get there, and what you’re going to do when you get there all depend on one constant around the world; money. Nothing comes for free. For instance, I go home every working day for lunch at my mother’s house, because it’s free. Yet in reality, it’s not really. Someone had to put the food in the fridge, it didn’t just appear there, unless my Mum is a closet kleptomaniac who steals from the fresh food people, which would explain it. But apart from that, someone had to pay for it. And they had to pay for it with our ridiculous bright Monopoly money. That’s how worthlessly valuable it is.Yet we stab people, rob banks, go on the dole, lie to Centerlink, inherit, win at Bingo, gamble it at the pokies to get more and occasionally go to work and earn our money. 

Seriously, I could understand what the big fuss was about it we were trading for silver and sapphires, but we’re not. I liked the ancient way better; two goats for some granite stone to build your house with, or some fresh strawberries which I harvested myself for an oxen to pull the yoke to plant next seasons crop. Trading for goods with objects of equal value was much better. I’ve got this Canon computer printer that’s been used only once before sitting beside me on my desk. It still works fine, and there’s nothing wrong with it, I just don’t use it. What’s stopping me swapping this with Fred over there who’s got some dvd’s which he doesn’t want anymore, but which I’d love to watch? Abracadabra; I’ve solved my printer issue and got some new movies to boot. Excellent system. Enough of this ridiculous money business.

I tell you, if it was me in charge of this planet, I’d be making a few changes...after I’ve finished my Golden Gaytime.

plastic fantastic

For reasons unbeknown to me, this weekend I read a paperback, popular fiction novel ‘Sinners’ by Jackie Collins whom, according to my mother, was quite a scandalous author in the 1980’s. I’ll give you the general gist of the text; Collins explores the ups and downs, the ins and outs of several fictional Hollywood actresses and actors, some veterans, some new shining stars. Oh, and there’s sex. A lot of sex. Not that I am a prude or a nun or anything, but seemingly Collins has attempted to hide an erotic fictional tale beneath a thin guise of popular fiction. After perusing our home bookshelf, it seems that Ms Collins has written quite a number of books, all with other creative and compelling titles such as ‘Hollywood Wives’ and ‘Lucky Star’ which, amazingly, are also about Hollywood actors and actresses. Where oh where does Jackie Collins talent end?

I read several of these books; and they made me feel a bit funny inside. Again, not because of all the sex. No, actually, what seriously put me off was Collins’ descriptions of her central female characters. It seems everyone was either ‘Blonde, buxom and beautiful’, or ‘an exotic beauty with a wide sensual mouth’ or ‘a fiery red head with a body to die for’ ect. 

You get my drift. So what’s so wrong about that? Well, in essence, nothing really. 

But then I picked up the next book, and the same women appeared again. And the same thing with the next text. Here I stopped reading. Are all women the exact same? Do we all fit into the same categories? Or is it simply in America? Or in Collins’ limited imagination? I was confused. 

At the end of ‘Sinners’, Sunday Simmons, a poor girl from the slums of Rio who climbed her way into the hearts of all Americans and the beds of several veteran actors, rode off happily into the sunset with her new handsome lover Charlie Brick, whilst the overweight and underworked Maria with red hair eats poisoned chocolates and dies. Do you see what I mean? No, well, I’ll explain. 

What made me feel funny inside is that, in this authors imagination is that all the slim, beautiful women with the large breasts all live happily ever after with their handsome husbands, whilst the fat and unsightly suffer death by chocolate. Well, perhaps not all of them. Is this purely a twisted reality of one Ms Collins being brought to life through her writings or does this also happen in our society? We are all aware of current issues surrounding adolescent teenage girls suffering from diseases such as bulimia and anorexia and the apparent heavy influence of todays media on these people. Everywhere we look, there are frail, waif looking women on television and in our magazines. That Miranda Kerr, for example. Everyone goes on and on about how attractive she is and how ‘good’ her body is, but I was looking in a magazine and she is seriously just skin and bones. I’ve seen prisoners of war look better than that. But she has got nice hair, I’ll give her that.

I’ve gone off track. I apologise. 

If life where a Jackie Collins book, I would probably be lying dead by now in a pile of un-eaten poisoned chocolates. I’ll elaborate. I don’t have big breasts. I am not blonde, nor do I have a ‘wide, sensual mouth’, whatever that is. My legs do not go on forever. I don’t sleep around just to climb to the top of the ladder. I don’t wear false lashes. And I don’t find sexist, chauvinistic men attractive. At all. If this was ‘Sinners’, I would be Maria and Miranda Kerr would be Sunday. I would be fat and dead and she would be glamourous and alive. There’s quite a difference. 

But really, do I actually think that these books are a reflection of reality? Because there are  lot of unfaithful husbands and wives in those books. There are drugs, and murder, and plastic surgery. There are wife swappers and rapes, dreams smashed and broken by oily 50-year-old men who date 19-year-olds. And whilst you have to be beautiful to be successful, just what is the cost of your success? A cheating husband, strangers hands groping you in the cinema, unhappiness? For me, I’d be much happier lining up in Safeway with my jeans and old woolen jumper and my hair up in a scrunchy and just be myself as opposed to being all dolled up in shorts (even though it’s winter), skimpy t-shirt and lethal lashings of mascara. Hey, we all know which one is going to get hit on by that sleazy 16-yea-old with the awful piercings. And that’s fine with me. I’ll just grab my milk and bread whilst you try to wriggle your way out of that one.

Plastic ain’t so fantastic.

i'm happy being me. and me. and me!

I am a girl and thus it is an accepted fact of life that is would be embarrassing for me to admit that I, Madeleine Clare, like cars and motorsports. It would also be a social faux pas for me to thrust hand upon heart and declare that I also do not possess one speck of interest in my entire being at all in fashion, clothes, or anything pink and girly. My mother saw me getting ready to go to a 30th birthday party and told me that I dress like a lesbian. Thank-you Mum. 

My main point: it seems to me that social conventions and stereotypes over the years have become so strict and quite sever that whilst no-one was looking, our lives have suddenly become ruled by them. 

I’ll put my social life (what there is of it) on the line and use myself as an example. I, according to my mother, “dress like a lesbian”. I quite like cars and I like driving them, and I can change the spark plug in most vehicles and know that a ‘chassis’ is not some 17th century undergarment. Yet in juxtaposition to all this, I like doing my hair and wearing mascara. I like reading and I know what the word ‘Regicide’ means. I also own quite a number of evening dresses. I’m a bit bipolar in that sense. Kind of like a female Indiana Jones but without the whip and hat; all leather and sensible walking shoes. But then I might wear my pleated navy skirt down the street whilst I shop in the book exchange store for a new dictionary. I’m ever-changing, which I’m happy with, but society isn’t.

When I was in year 12, there was a text that we studied in Literature called ‘Hedda Gabbler’, which basically is about a wealthy aristocrat who had suppressed her true being to confine within social conventions so much so, to the point that she married for money, hated her husband and ended the play by shooting herself in the head. That’s the same situation that I find myself in; bar the shooting and marrying for money bit. And the aristocrat thing as well. But apart from that, identical.

You see my predicament. I am rough and sensible enough that I could slot quiet nicely into the ‘Tomboy’ category of life, yet the moment I put on some nice shoes and purple lace underpants for a night out with the girls all the feminists and butch women disappear and are replaced by sexist men and giggling pink people waving their ‘Girly Girl’ banner at me. Then I come home, put my glasses back on and sit down to watch the Discovery Channel and then nerds rock up at my joint with gluten free cookies for their allergies and Ventolin inhalers.  (It’s never dull round at my house.) But apart from my house filling with freaky people on the weekends, unless I want to suffer the same fate as old Hedda, then I’d best sort myself out from...myself.

Surely there is a way that all these aspects of my persona can co-exist in peace and cheerful harmony without recking death and destruction upon our strictly ordered and socially sound lives? The answer is no, because I’ve tried this and all that happens is that on a Friday night my house fills with nerds, butch women and manly men passing around tea and biscuits.  It's driving me insane.

You would think that it would be easy to just simply isolate on element of my persona and feed off of it for eternity? No. I tried being a girl for a week and I failed. I took the fuse out of my Dad’s car because he kept playing horrid 80’s tunes on the way to work and it irritated me, and now he thinks he’s broken his car. Which thus destroyed my attempt at being a girl. I then tried just being a tomboy. Which also failed because I don’t like manual labour and I also rarely go outdoors unless I am extremely motivated, such as on the odd occasion there is no more food in the fridge. I then tried being a nerd for a while, which worked ok until someone asked me to times $.75 by 2, and I pulled out my phone to use the calculator because I can’t add up. They say just try being yourself? It’s harder than it looks people.

Argh, perhaps it would just be easier to marry into money?

yankee doodle went to town

Can I just shock you? I dislike Americans.

I’ll elaborate for you.

There is no celebrity, president, musician, actress, director, inventor, writer, artist or car manufacturer that appeals to any of my senses at all. And I can absolutely guarantee that nothing imaginative, quiet, classy, elegant, intelligent or affordable has ever happened, been thought of or attended to in America. It’s a fact of life.

This brings me neatly to my main point: they’re all rather stupid. I’ve met mushrooms growing in public toilets that have more intelligence than some Americans. 

No, that’s not fair on mushrooms.

It has always confounded me as to how this nation of oversized, over-exuberant and unintelligent people have risen quickly to the top of the universal ladder and have stayed there for quiet some time.  

My second point. There is an insatiable and unexplainable lust that is deep seeded in all Americans for everything to be bigger and better than everyone else in the entire universe. Here in Australia, a nation similar in geographical size, we have a humble 7 states and territories. America? Around 50. And I cannot give you an exact figure of states because I simply cannot be bothered going onto the internet or looking in my atlas and wasting my precious and limited energy doing anything in regards to America and its citizens. But you get my drift. The cars are bigger. The cups are bigger. The people are bigger. Would you like that super sized? Sure, that’ll be 1 million dollars. Howdy par’ner! 

But is bigger always necessarily better? Nay, dear reader. More is not always better. 

No-one wants to hear from their doctor that what was originally a broken rib is actually kidney failure or that the total bill for your recently renovated bathroom is not actually the quoted $500 but is $50,000. You see? More is not always better. But don’t you dare try and tell the Yanks that.

I am sick of turning on my television here in Australia and learning about a boy in a balloon over in the states. I also don’t need to be notified on the radio every time Obama gets up from his office to take a leak.


 People of the world; correction, People of America! Do I interfere with your life? No I don’t, so stay the bloody hell away from mine.

PS: Just letting you know America, you spelt ‘color’ wrong. There’s a U in it.