it's hip to be square

Did you know that David Bowie’s real name is David Jones, and that the Model T Ford was the first Automobile to be mass produced? No, I bet you didn’t. And I cannot tell you how I stumbled upon this knowledge. I just know it. But don’t you dare share these new facts with anyone else. They’ll just think that you’re being a clever little arse and throw whiteboard markers at your forehead. Or at least that’s what my boss did to me today after I told him these trivial facts. He then proceeded to call me a fool.

I’m straying from my main point before I’ve even made it. I shall explain. 

You see, I have always been a bit of a storyteller; a joker. All of my co-workers thought I was really self-effacing and shy when I began six months ago until Everett’s 30th birthday party when I entertained them all with my anecdotes of my simply getting dressed and ready to get to the party in question; which involved my mother calling my dress sense ‘lesbonic’  and then me nearly running over a wombat on the back roads of Phillip Island. They all found it amusing. Now I am called upon to recall tales of mischief and misconduct whenever we all get together for a drink whereupon I hold court at the table and entertain young and old with my words.

I possess a great mass of interesting and yet useless facts and figures. For example, Alfred Hitchcock always made an appearance in each and everyone one of his films, even if it only was for a few seconds on screen, and did you know that on an average day a cow produces around 40 litres of milk? No, I didn’t think you would. But please do not even begin to think that I am attempting to lord it over you with my ‘impressive knowledge’. Oh no, because you see, I am an ‘autodidact’. (You see, I even know a word that you may have never heard of.) An ‘autodidact’ is ‘a person of self-taught knowledge.’ Which quite neatly summarises my life and brain power.

Upon first meeting me, one would presume that I am quite intelligent. All the signs are there. I wear glasses sometimes. I did well on my VCE exams. I am planning to go to university. 

Then ask me to perform any simple Math’s task, and watch me explode and burn up upon re-entry. All systems down I’m afraid. No hope of getting a speck of intelligence out of me then. Which I find rather embarrassing, as I get complimented on my lovely speaking voice and how I am a confident public speaker and my vast vocabulary, but ask me to times 8x3 and I fall to pieces. I just can’t fathom numbers, it’s beyond my comprehension. 

So what do we deem as intelligent? What equals to an education? 

I am a firm believer in that everyone is intelligent, yet we all show it in different ways.

Take my own relative. My uncle, who dropped out of the local high-school in year 9, and who by today’s standards should now be living as a tramp somewhere on a park bench, has gone on to own his own transport buisiness and can add up square metric tonnes of super-phosphate in his head within milliseconds whilst I am still busy pulling out my little calculator. A lady whom I work with jetted off to Europe as soon as she turned 18; no university or TAFE education, yet she is a jedi with such wisdom and knowledge of life that I have nothing but the upmost respect for her.

On the other hand; having intelligence down on paper in the form of a degree does not always make you King of the World either. A man I know has been to five different universities, and thus has around 7 or so degrees. And he works as a milker on his parents dairy farm. Why bother with all the university then? “I just like learning” he replies.

Just because I can’t perform any mathematical task of any kind does not make me stupid or unintelligent. Just because I know what ‘regicide’ means does not mean that I am a clever little sod. There are so many different books, sciences, sports, arts, different types of music, different types of mathematics and so much of the English language to learn that it is impossible to be master of it all. Which is good I feel. Because what a boring world it would be if we all knew what the square root of 45 was and if we all knew how to speak Spanish. How would we ever learn? What would we ever talk about? Everyone is intelligent in their own individual way. Except for people from America...because we all know what they’re like...

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.

"Yes, we are all unique!" "I'm not". "Shhh..."

I was watching Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ on Tuesday night and got to that classic scene where all Brian’s followers are outside his window early in the morning to seek his guidance and Brian tells them “you don’t need to follow anyone! You are all individual!”, to which the crowd replies; “Yes! We are all individual!”. (Again, apologies for the shocking grammar. I just needed to quickly get my point out there.) 

(Also if you have not seen ‘Life of Brian’, please treat yourself and rent it from Network Video. You can rent 3 DVD’s for $3.50 a week.)

Anyway; my main contention; I’m growing very tired of all these people with their ‘quirky’ blogs; with their pretty pictures and funny metaphors and vain photographs of themselves which they have clearly taken with their camera set on self timer and quickly thrust upon some tree or bed-stand before the timer goes off.

They all go on about their individuality and how they’re different from everyone else, but after reading ten or so of these blogs not one clearly stood out in my mind. There was no meaning; no point. No discussion of worldly issues, or even issues important to the writer. Bloggers of the world: I don’t want to read a letter about how chairs are awesome, or how your teacher for maths today was “really shit but whatevs”. I don’t care about this “cool and quirky pair of shoes” which you saw in a shop window “and I could just see some magical person wearing them in a forest”. Please. Stop.

Now please don’t get me wrong. Some of these people can actually write. I just finished reading a very imaginative short story involving a bulimic Hermione written by an old school peer. Three cheers to Charlotte; that was the best piece of writing I have read for a very long time. It was dark and witty, but also drew a spotlight to the very real issue of anorexia and other related body image issues in today’s society. If you would like to read; thevelveteenhappiness.blogspot.com/Bravo and kudos. This is what I want! I want cleverly articulated pieces which discuss current issues. I want people to discuss the thematic preoccupations and hidden connotations of, I don’t know, Star Wars or Sale of the Century, if that’s what floats your boat. I want to read short stories and weirdly beautiful poetry.  I don’t care what it is you write about, but if you are going to go to the effort of putting it up there in cyberspace, make it something different to the other millions of bloggers out there. Please do not fall victim to this new genre of blogging which seems to have captured (literally) the imagination of everyone. For it seems nowadays that there is only one type of writer out there; the “Quirky Individual”.

In support of today’s piece, I pulled out the trusty dictionary and looked up the meaning of the word ‘individual’.  ‘Individual’ means: 

-characteristic of a particular person or thing : individual traits of style.

-having a striking or unusual character; original : she creates her own, highly individual, landscapes.

In what manner is discussing what you did in the KCF carpark on the weekend with a person named ‘Splonk’ or whatever his name was striking or of unusual character, when the very next blog I read will discuss pretty much the exact same thing? How is discussing the theoretical magical properties of the quaint teacup you drank from in a cafe characteristic of your persona, unless you have a career in the tea industry or are an antique dealer who specialises in crockery?  

Yesterday I read an editorial letter in my local paper written by an 80-year-old man in which he expressed his thoughts on the desalination plant being built in town. He discussed how his family for generations has only ever used tank water and have never had to rely upon the towns main water supply. This gentleman’s main point was that a desalination plant was totally unnecessary as it is not an issue of not having enough water, but using the water that we do have more efficiently.  Sir, I tip my hat to you, presuming that I am wearing a hat. Jolly good and all that jazz. Sure, the letter was very long winded and a bit boring, but you spoke with passion and you wrote about something that is dear to you. 

Now that I have finished sounding like a VCE English teacher I am going to apologise. Firstly, once again for my terrible prose for this piece, but I was far too distracted and consumed with...not anger, but an emotion very close. More like, ‘passionate discomfort’.

Second apologies go to all you bloggers out there; the ammatures, the professionals and the rest. I sincerely love reading all sorts of blogs. Truly I do. Some of you out there are immensely humerous and witty, and you make me laugh. Some people have fond some unbelievably beautiful photography and artworks out there which I am glad you have decided to share with the rest of us. But please! If I have to read one more blog that is the exact same as the last 23 I read, I might end up going nuts and eating all the cereal in Safeway in my underpants before being carted off to the asylum. I also thank-you. Thank-you all for making me reflect upon my own writing, and for making me re-evaluate what I want people to think when they read my works. Perhaps ultimately I don’t want to be the individual. Perhaps I don’t want to be different. Because it seems it is ‘cool’ to be weird, to be eclectic and odd. Maybe I can be normal and middle-class, middle-man and middle-back seat. And in that way I will be different from everyone else. In the end I will be unique; just like the rest of you.

Now I’m just starting to piss myself off...

bridge over troubled waters

As a child of the much contested Generation Y, I am familiar with technology and all its follies.

 I listen to music on my iPod whilst I lodge my tax claim online and simultaneously download the latest episode of my favourite television program which I foolishly missed last night whilst I was you-tubing that hilarious cat which plays the keyboard. You could say technology, were he a person, and I hold hands frequently and are about to tell our friends that we are ‘getting serious’, and are thinking of buying a dog. Or possibly a new computer.

Needless to say, much like a young couple embarking on a serious relationship, technology and I frequently have our differences with result in shouting and hammers being thrown about, after which we ignore each other for days at a time. 

Like that time I got excited about Simon and Garfunkel touring Australia and, through my rather vigorous arm movements, knocked my coffee all over the keyboard of my computer (whom for some reason was known in my household as Byron; but that’s another tale for another day). 

Byron didn’t believe me when I apologised and promised it was an accident, and swiftly reposted my pleas by shutting down and refusing to turn on for three successive days. On bended knee I begged and pleaded with Byron. I showered him with gifts of new printer cartridges and I even cleaned all that feral dust off his face. I even flirted with the idea of buying a newer, more advanced laptop and leaving Byron in my technologic dust as I skipped off with my latest love Mr MacBook Pro. 

But, oh joy! Byron, after his week-long slumber, arose from the sleep of the dead and rejoined me in our harmonious world of Facebook-ing and word processing, and together we made our first purchase together; Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest hit’s album from iTunes.

Yet while I can accidentally spill coffee over my electric other-half and drop him on his head when re-arranging my bedroom, Byron can give it as well has he takes it. I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world who gets frustrated by their computer telling them what to do. You know what I mean. You go to delete an old discarded word file or photograph from three years ago that you no longer need. Simple. Or so you thought. 

Before I delete anything, just in case I’m not sure, Byron likes to just confirm that I do indeed intend on deleting this file. Yes Byron, I’m sure. 

“This file will be sent to the trash bin. Are you sure you wish to continue?” 

To all you computers out there; hear this. I have pressed the delete button; I am pretty sure that I intend to DELETE SOMETHING.

It’s much the same as my Wii game. Every 15 minutes or so, Wii likes to ask, no not ask, more like demand: “Why not take a break?”; which is accompanied with a pleasant image of curtains swaying in the breeze by an open window and a table, where presumably I will be taking my ‘break’. 

Listen here Wii, if I was in need of a break, I would have TAKEN ONE!  This is where, sadly, the fractures in the bedrock of my electric relationship begin to show. This, is the beginning of the end.

I, much like many involved women, can hold my own in my technologic relationships, yet every time Byron did that annoying thing where he freezes and needs to be restarted was just once too many; and that squabble we got into over the possibility of deleting that file titled ‘hot Hollywood dudes’ from Year Eight was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

Byron and I have had to part ways once Mr MacBook Pro came on the scene with his promises of simple deleting processes and his remarkable ability to dry out quite quickly. Wii and I have also experienced similar artistic differences and I have once more reverted to my old Playstation 2 and Crash Bandicoot game which never tells me to take a break, but rather orders me to pick up my game and SHOOT THAT BADDIE! Bazooka guns and simplistic 2D graphics, come unto me as the evil Cortex yields to my furious shooting efforts. Gen X eat your heart out.

So, as for technology ruling my life; thanks but no thanks. I like you, but not in that way.