A Wild Young Under-Whimsy

The main achievement of my day. I have only been working from home for two days now, and it is already killing me. It just sucks your time away. I am already pining for the energetic, carefree days of getting up and catching the bus or the tram into my office and beginning my working day by devouring a coffee and a ham, cheese and tomato bagel at my desk while reading the day's emailed instalment of The Way We Live Now, courtesy of DailyLit. Now that I have to work from my overcrowded desk in my overcrowded room that desperately needs a vacuum, much of my time yesterday and today has been spent trying to clear some space to work in, and to find room on my desk for all the stuff that used to sit on my work desk.

The thing that makes working from home particularly dismal is that I swore this time was not going to be like the last time I did it, when I lived in Wetburgh Street and it was a kind of Dickensian parody. Layers of clothes; fingerless gloves so your typing fingers don't seize up in the cold. Worst of all, Freelance Food: Vegemite On Toast, Honey On Toast, Peanut Butter On Toast, Baked Beans On Toast and Tuna On Toast. I said to myself, "This time will be pleasant! Afternoon walks in the park! (To lose weight in order to be attractive to men.) Lingering over coffees and novels in Brunswick Street! Making yummy meals! Snuggling up on the couch for a DVD!"

However, my days have somehow got away from me without these lovely diversions. Annoyingly, I have to do actual freelance work, go for job interviews, pay household bills and do Is Not Magazine drudge-work. And my lunch today was spaghetti with Dolmio sauce heated up in the microwave with lots of chopped-up basil. Breakfasts have been vegemite on toast and honey on toast; I had to throw away my peanut butter yesterday after discovering moths had somehow nested in it. (How did they get in?) And probably six or seven cups of tea a day. GOD I MISS THE TROLLEY.

Thus, I luxuriate in today's two main achievements: ordering a Mac off the internet (BOLD. NEW. ERA) and making liquid soap out of old cakes of soap.



Ta-dah! You see, while clearing my desk I found various soaps I've been given as gifts over the years. I actually threw away some that date from my childhood, but I had the idea of salvaging the others by turning them into liquid soap. You know how when you leave the soap in a soapdish with water in it, it goes all slimy? Well I figured that if I grated up some soap and then mixed it with water, it would emulsify into a liquid consistency.

I grated up most of an ordinary-sized cake of yellow soap, plus a small amber-coloured gift soap, and put them into an empty pump pack that was kicking around in the bathroom. The gratings filled it about two-thirds full. Then I filled it up to about four-fifths with hot water. I thought it might take a day or two to melt together, but it got to the right consistency after about an hour.

Logic 101. Your tutor: my mother. From an actual conversation yesterday:

My mother: You know, lots of people think their dog is the best dog in the world. But that's only because they don't know about my dog.

Me: They probably say the same thing as you.

My mother: But they're wrong!

On lost cockatiels. I'm quite glad now that I photographed Archie's little shrine because it is all gone now, except for a shiny strip of tape still clinging to the tree. I don't know if the people who live in the nearby houses were uncomfortable about having a cat shrine outside their house, or if the council got rid of it, or maybe Archie's owners had second thoughts and took it all away.

But something about the bathos of lost pet posters really gets to me, which is why I was intrigued by this poster for a lost cockatiel. These have been plastered to poles all around my neighbourhood, carefully encased in clear packing tape to protect them from the weather.



In case it's difficult to read, it says: "Missing since 26/03/08, Carlton area. Max is 4 years old. He is grey and has a yellow crest and orange cheeks. He says 'Good boy' and sings little tunes. If you have seen him or know of his whereabouts please call [phone numbers]."

But then last weekend I was reading the paper and came across the following Michael Leunig cartoon on the back of the A2:



Now, Leunig generally likes to purvey a kind of cuntish lefty cynicism, generously larded with whimsy. When this works, it comes across as humorous or poignant. But I can't really work out what the point of this cartoon is, apart from making fun of people who put up lost pet posters. I mean, the names of the cockatiels vaguely connote public figures (I instantly thought of "Alan" as Alan Jones, whom Crikey nicknamed "The Parrot"; "Kevin" and "Julia" are the PM and deputy PM; "Kylie" is La Minogue), so I read the descriptions looking for veiled comments about these people, but only the most obtuse jokes suggested themselves to me.

Also, it immediately struck me that Leunig surely must have seen the poster pleading for Max's return. Ugh, the thought of Leunig creeping around my neighbourhood... NIMBY! NIMBY!

Another look at my predictive text list. It's grown since the last time I did this exercise, even since the mugging last May. So I thought I might arrange the words in categories, omitting people's names. It's quite revealing of the way I use text messaging - apparently I like to tell people where I am, to make plans to eat, drink and carouse, and to send messages filled with venom or lolcatty sympathy.

Telling people where I am and/or where to meet me:
Adelaide
Alderman
alderman
Athenaeum
balwyn
bourke
brisbane
charltons
collingwood
dantes
ddc
Dong
elgin
Empress
empress
fitzroy
Flinders
flinders
Ivanhoe
ivanhoe
libertine
kilda
Lygon
lygon
northcote
Pushka
Rathdowne
rathdowne
swanston
Troika

My dissolute lifestyle
boob
Boobs
boobs
DJ
dj
djs
favela
ferris
fettuccine
hendricks
Gingers
gladiators
gozzip
jager
karaoke
kebab
lager
macaroni
nachos
norgs
nudie
parma
pashed
pashing
pasty
pesto
piked
pimms
pissed
pissing
pita
poncho
Tacos
tacos
Toga
toga
tzatziki
Vino
woozy

Words of which my mother would not approve
bitch
cunt
dick
dickhead
Fuck
fuck
fucked
fucking
Shit
shit
Slut

2 MENI LOLKITTEHZ
graet
Graet
Has
moar
Moar
noes
RLY
rly

Ways to convey my speech in a text message:
Ahh
ahh
artsy
Bah
Bof
bourgie
chooks
crap
daggy
dammit
dissed
doable
Doh
doofus
dorky
Duh
fuggeddaboudit
Goddamn
helluva
Hooray
hott
hoy
Meep
Miaow
mobilular
mojo
moolah
Nah
nana
Nuh
pussies
retards
sassy
smutty
sooky
Spazz
spazz
stoopid
Yowsers
yum

Work-related words
abc
Basics
Crikey
Email
Frankie
homme
Jay
jmag
Jules
jtv
kris
muso
pnau
rapper
Robbie
ROBBIE
robbie
Robyn
subbed
Wikipedia

Abbreviations I often use
appt
arvo
bbq
bday
dvd
evz
fave
ffs
hostie
hwy
melbs
nite
Omg
pde
peeps
pjs
Rsvp
rsvp
servo
sth
tix
Tmrw
tmrw
txt
vegie

Actual words my phone didn't know
accent
agonising
bawl
berated
beret
bergamot
bulgarian
busker
busking
clueless
cougar
damn
Damn
damning
debonair
denture
fantasising
generic
gouge
harping
koala
maudlin
mersey
mugged
piquant
pygmy
reconnected
shambolic
slayed
slurp
snob
Still
stupidest
surfed
The
uncool
unmask
verve

I really like Terminator: The Sarah Chronnor Conocles. Yesterday morning I was walking into the office from the tram stop when a man walking in the opposite direction turned his head and looked at me quite intensely. I noticed he had very blue eyes and a massive scab down the side of his face.

Naturally, my first thought was, "OH MY GOD HE'S A TERMINATOR!"

I also worry about terminators every time a dog starts barking hysterically at someone.

(chorus of people)
"It's not real, Mel, it's just a moofie!"

(me)
"You have no idea who you're dealing with. You just made your last mistake. She's gonna blow! Fire in the hole! Incoming! Who turned out the lights? Ice to seeeeee you. 'Shit' - that was one of his."

Final thoughts on food and wine snobbery. By 'final' I mean that have lost much of the indignation that led me to write the letter (which may actually be published, I discovered yesterday). However, I am still a little worried that the letter I wrote doesn't encapsulate my precise thoughts on the topic. I realise I'm verbose by nature, but 100 words really wasn't enough for me to get to the meat of it.

People have commented that it is redundant of me even to criticise this story, because Good Weekend is written by snobs for snobs and even reading it is to admit to a certain snobbery in oneself. People also dismissed my alternative suggestion (of cherishing the simpler pleasures afforded by food and drink) as an absurdly naive ignorance of Good Weekend readers' priorities and interests.

I think my real problem is that Durack wants to have it both ways. He wants to set down a list of food shibboleths: experiences by which the food snobs define themselves in opposition to the banal eating habits of their peers. I would be fine with the article if it were couched as a "foodie's Holy Grail" or "the best 20 food experiences of my life" - because that acknowledges that not everyone necessarily aspires to these things. And in that context, it does indeed look pretty ridiculous to posit Vegemite toast and cleanskin red as foodie touchstones.

However, Durack is not just interpellating foodies. The structure of these listicles necessarily interpellates EVERYONE by explicitly saying that you haven't lived unless you have done this stuff. That is a deeply objectionable statement because it asks people to find their life wanting on the basis of criteria that aren't of their choosing. And the entire purpose of this genre is to make you buy into it.

So in that context, I was not making the reactionary suggestion that we instead valorise dreary, banal food experiences. Damn him, but I think Glen has a pretty spot-on summary of what I was arguing:

She argues that what the magazine article misses are the simple pleasures in life, or rather the meaning produced within situations that does not come from how exotic the ‘thing’ is. This is a kind of bottom-up valorisation of events that in turn relies on valorising a certain social machinery of valorisation. It needs a mobile disposition for selecting worthy moments from the everyday and an ethics of cultivating the way such moments accelerate and carry you along, so the everyday folds into itself and crosses some sort of threshold felt in the body and remembered in its emphemerality.

At least Glen is kind enough not to claim this mobile disposition and ethics as another form of snobbery. But he is correct that I personally don't valorise exoticism in my food experiences, whereas I do valorise a sort of remembered ephemerality. Ultimately - and this is the part I wish I'd nailed in my letter to the magazine - the food and drink experiences that enrich your life according to your own definitions of happiness (regardless of what these might be) are the ones we ought to be cherishing, rather than one rich old foodie's idea.