tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85456243649765122472023-11-15T23:11:43.995-08:00PAPER CRANE CATASTROPHEPenelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-17736453709562235292010-10-30T04:20:00.000-07:002010-10-30T04:46:59.597-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifoiLCmxcvurJI_U4OwvOVr9LdtL77y8cxXkGofpAxGhe0Tzjr7PdynanGOn-IJSsrOBWgTZjj3fkWKtyrLG3lOtpmSAYHjQUcPZf4mqSNK0Q5IU1GWlbV43998_es7AG2chLn3YG7URY/s1600/2010_1010pinkwick0092.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifoiLCmxcvurJI_U4OwvOVr9LdtL77y8cxXkGofpAxGhe0Tzjr7PdynanGOn-IJSsrOBWgTZjj3fkWKtyrLG3lOtpmSAYHjQUcPZf4mqSNK0Q5IU1GWlbV43998_es7AG2chLn3YG7URY/s320/2010_1010pinkwick0092.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5533804002779541346" /></a><br />This post is dedicated to a small and noble and utterly beloved beast who I have known since I was ten. Who would have thought such a tiny creature could wreak such havoc with a heart a thousand miles away? I wouldn't normally put this kind of thing online, but in this geographic inability to scritch behind her ears and will her through the night there's nothing much else I can do, besides dropping tears all over my essay notes.Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-42323062256009404322010-10-03T02:42:00.000-07:002010-10-03T06:04:17.555-07:00TatterdemalionIn honour of my newest favourite word, and of the sudden summer sun so recently unfurled from the steel-woollish flummery covering Melbourne for the past four months, and of all things superlative, I'm going to rip large and unnecessary holes in some old t-shirts and experiment with variegated sunburn all summer. Reason being, my very first day of not being cold has left me with an infuriating baby-pink bib around my neck and the same four options I have to stare down every spring: a) move to Finland until April, b) plumb a giant tub of sunscreen into the shower head until April, c) dress like a Mormon and endure heatstroke until April, or d) embrace the bib (and the sun-gloves, and the freckles, and the sandal-burn) until April. So this summer I'm going with e) carefully cultivate a collection of ripped t-shirts such that I am more or less evenly sun-kissed all over. <i>Sun-kissed</i>, not roasted: I spend most of my outdoor hours under umbrellas/parasols as it is (I'd rather be a mushroom than a spit-roast). I'm also kind of obsessed with fur at the moment (<i>second-hand</i>, before you start throwing things) which is somewhat unfortunate at this time of year; perhaps while I'm ripping the shirts up I'll make a dilapidated fur umbrella as well and start my own collection. Spring/Summer 2010: Tatter.D. by Penelop.E. Keep an eye on <i>Vogue</i>.Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-52621367710724737092010-09-30T01:43:00.000-07:002010-09-30T02:56:59.069-07:00The bashed wife teaches best.A wee shopping spree has left me somewhat of a beggar, but a beggar gloriously rich in (amongst other things) Russian fairy tales. I found a hefty tome lurking down the bottom of the children's section, and since I quite adore fairy tales and other bits of pre-modern literary ephemera I picked it up and opened it at random to find, in a delicious moment of irony, this: <div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>HOW A HUSBAND WEANED HIS WIFE FROM FAIRY TALES</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>There was once an innkeeper whose wife loved fairy tales above all else and accepted as lodgers only those who could tell stories. Of course the husband suffered loss because of this, and he wondered how he could wean his wife away from fairy tales. One night in winter, at a late hour, an old man shivering with cold asked him for shelter. The husband ran out and said: "Can you tell stories? My wife does not allow me to let in anyone who cannot tell stories." The old man saw that he had no choice; he was almost frozen to death. He said: "I can tell stories." </i></div><div><i>"And will you tell them for a long time?" </i></div><div><i>"All night."</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>So far, so good. They let the old man in. The husband said: "Wife, this peasant has promised to tell stories all night long, but only on condition that you do not argue with him or interrupt him." The old man said: "Yes, there must be no interruptions, or I will not tell any stories." They ate supper and went to bed. Then the old man began: "An owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water. An owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water." He kept on saying again and again: "An owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water." The wife listened and listened and than said: "What kind of story is this? He keeps repeating the same thing over and over!" </i></div><div><i>"Why do you interrupt me? I told you not to argue with me! That was only the beginning; it was going to change later." The husband, upon hearing this - and it was exactly what he wanted to hear - jumped down from his bed and began to belabor his wife: "You were told not to argue, and now you have not let him finish his story!" And he thrashed her and thrashed her, so that she began to hate stories and from that time on forswore listening to them. </i></div><div><i><br /></i><div>After that, of course, my feminist hackles were bristling about my ears and I didn't know whether to laugh or scream so I just bought the book instead. I like how it's pretty much the story of Scheherezade in reverse: just think how many virgins would have been saved if King Shahryar had been a woman with an attendant man to bash her into submission. Or how terrible Scheherezade's stories could have been if only she'd been male. Anyway, a quick flick on the tram revealed quite a collection of similarly beleaguered ladies; they'll probably be popping up anon. </div></div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-86277159759152751272010-08-30T04:17:00.000-07:002010-10-03T06:09:26.495-07:00Call me Duck, or Lulu.Let me rephrase the ol' woodchuck chestnut: how many blogs is too many blogs for one boggled blogger to have? ... three blogs, four? Six? Ten? I guess you have to weigh the relative benefits of having multiple discrete interests against the possible appearance of having multiple discrete personalities, the latter increasingly exponentially past point <i>x </i>where <i>x</i> = <i>possibly too many blogs.</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Apologies to any mathematicians reading this. </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyhow, I guess what I'm trying to confess is that I have four blogs, and, perhaps, therein lies the answer to my initial question: <i>x</i> + 1<i> </i>blogs is too many blogs for one boggled blogger to have (I was trying to work a mathematical <i>log </i>into that, but it made my head hurt), where <i>x</i> = <i>the number of blogs one boggled blogger can maintain single-handed</i>, equalling, in my case, 3. </div><div><br /></div><div>Apologies to <i>anyone </i>reading this. </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyhow, my three other blogs might be described as 1) naughty; 2) nice; and 3) neglected. I guess what I'm trying to say is, 1) the tumblebug bites baaaaad (hence 3) above); and 2) after due consideration I have decided to let Duck and Lulu loose on blogspot for the briefest of moments; that is, if you were to head tumblr-ward via ducknostrum or lulu-legs, you might just find Penelope's sisters. </div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, week 6 is Judith Wright and Penelope-as-Class-Presenter week in my Australian literature subject. Strangely it was her short stories I discovered first, after appropriating a copy of <i>The Nature of Love </i>from my Mum's bookshelf, and I never really looked at much of her poetry - probably a high-school-ambivalence hangover thanks to Year 11 English. But there you have it: hair of the dog can work a treat. Particularly this one: </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>NIGGER'S LEAP, NEW ENGLAND</div><div><br /></div><div>The eastward spurs tip backward from the sun.</div><div>Night runs an obscure tide round cape and bay</div><div>and beats with boats of cloud up from the sea</div><div>against this sheer and limelit granite head.</div><div>Swallow the spine of range; be dark, O lonely air.</div><div>Make a cold quilt across the bone and skull</div><div>that screamed falling in flesh from the lipped cliff</div><div>and then were silent, waiting for the flies.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here is the symbol, and the climbing dark</div><div>a time for synthesis. Night buoys no warning</div><div>over the rocks that wait our keels; no bells</div><div>sound for her mariners. Now we must measure</div><div>our days by nights, our tropics by their poles,</div><div>love by its end and all our speech by silence. </div><div>See in these gulfs, how small the light of home.</div><div><br /></div><div>Did we not know their blood channelled our rivers,</div><div>and the black dust our crops ate was their dust?</div><div>O all men are one man at last. We should have known</div><div>the night that tided up the cliffs and hid them</div><div>had the same question on its tongue for us.</div><div>And there they lie that were ourselves writ strange. </div><div><br /></div><div>Never from earth again the coolamon</div><div>or thin black children dancing like the shadows</div><div>of saplings in the wind. Night lips the harsh</div><div>scarp of the tableland and cools its granite.</div><div>Night floods us suddenly as history</div><div>that has sunk many islands in its good time. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Chances are the lecture will uncover some vast postcolonial problematic to dull the sheen, but I'm happy to bask unawares a day or two more. </div><div><br /></div><div>Excuse me. I have 97 tumblr updates to attend to. </div><div><br /></div><div>Love Pennylop. </div><div><br /></div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-27350406203421759362010-08-25T04:29:00.001-07:002010-08-25T06:19:21.314-07:00Two things novel<div>1) The tiny hordes of bacteria-eating warriors I've been swallowing three times daily are finally gaining the upper hand; my blood must be running with little white flags because I'm positively trumpeting<i> </i>with the feeling of Health stealing back through my limbs. The lead's gone out of my head, the jelly from my legs, and I can't wait for tomorrow because there's nothing makes you appreciate uni like being too sick to go for two weeks. </div><div><br /></div><div>2) Meanwhile (because writing a poem a day for a year wasn't quite gimmick enough) I am now officially writing a novel in November. It's an online, international kind of gig (www.nanowrimo.org) preaching quantity over quality to the tune of 50000 words, which works out at 1700 per day. I'm apprehensive to put it mildly, so I'm reluctantly spreading the word such that, come mid-November when I want to put my little half-novel quietly to death and plant a rosemary bush over its grave, I won't dare for the glare of scrutiny by all my nearest and dearest. I'm not sure if anyone ever comes to this dusty corner of the universe, but if you're a person and you're reading this, feel free to bother me alllll November about that novel I was meant to be writing. I'll love you come December. </div><div><br /></div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-17814567228496333592010-08-22T21:18:00.000-07:002010-08-25T04:23:02.851-07:00Penelopitis<div>A spectacular (I was going to say 'fluorescent', but TMI, right?) case of bronchitis has laid me off work for the day, and since my brain is MUCH too addled to contemplate two weeks of neglected Bourdieu readings, it looks like I'll just have to spend the afternoon in bed writing and sipping vegetable-and-barley soup. Bliss. <div><br /></div><div>I started compiling a list of kick-ass ladies a while back; the criteria are fairly ephemeral (even tiresomely predictable) but could probably be summarised thus: Originally Nuts Ladies with a kickin' aesthetic, who don't give a fuck what the world thinks of them. So far the list (far from complete) looks like this:</div><div><br /></div><div>Bjork / Vivienne Westwood / Yoko Ono / ?Dita Von Teese? / Madonna / Lady GaGa / Lydia Lunch / Kate Bush / Grace Jones</div><div><br /></div><div>Not so sure about Dita, she seems kind of clean-cut/formulaic compared to some of them; then again, she did play a not insignificant part in bringing good ole-time burlesque back from the dead (AND she's a total babe), so let's leave her there for the moment. Also, I've restricted myself to still-living ladies for simplicity's sake, but I suspect Simone de Beauvoir and Anais Nin et al might slip in with fake I.D.s when I'm not looking. </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyhow, said ladies might be making cameos at times like these when there's not much going on besides bronchitis. And since YouTube and me are onto such a good thang with Lydia at the moment, here's a lil more. Perfect for sultry days in smoky, dim-lit rooms. </div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><object style="background-image:url(http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/eIbumFHE_Tg/hqdefault.jpg)" width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eIbumFHE_Tg?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eIbumFHE_Tg?fs=1&hl=en_US" width="425" height="344" allowscriptaccess="never" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-34270555217674732872010-08-22T01:31:00.000-07:002010-08-22T05:16:14.272-07:00gloomy sunday<div>it must be time for some words from my namesake and divine-woman-of-the-moment, lydia. and just fancy, i'm gloomy AND it's a sunday. take it away, grrrl. </div><div><br /></div><object style="background-image:url(http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/Iip3yTTWVZI/hqdefault.jpg)" width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Iip3yTTWVZI?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Iip3yTTWVZI?fs=1&hl=en_US" width="425" height="344" allowscriptaccess="never" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-80340349376205091522010-08-16T04:47:00.000-07:002010-08-16T05:08:36.664-07:00Penelope's Medicinal Potion aka Mud Tea<img src="http://www.stockphotopro.com/photo-thumbs-2/stockphotopro_87251528XAB_no_title.jpg" /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41QmCEPZgfL.jpg"><br /></a><br />After spending the day at work feeling like a hedgehog's died inside my throat, I've resorted to desperate measures inspired by my friend the witch who dosed me so well last week I sweated garlic all the next day. So,<div><br /></div><div>1/2 lemon, thinly sliced</div><div>2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped</div><div>an abundance of ginger, sliced</div><div>pinch or two black tea leaves </div><div>fennel seeds, to taste</div><div><br /></div><div>Simmer in a saucepan of water until it reaches desired muddiness. It all slips down pretty easy given the somewhat ghastly stench, though a nip of brandy sure wouldn't go astray. </div><div><br /></div><div>Love Penelop. </div><div><br /></div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-16034565066422142822010-08-02T04:58:00.000-07:002010-08-25T04:24:47.280-07:00lipstick laksa<div>i lost my laksa virginity yesterday; i lost it wearing bright red lipstick on the greyest windiest drippiest day of winter yet, and i will never complain about being cold and damp and cramped again if only there's a bowl of laksa at the end of it. the whole experience might have been a little more enjoyable without the lipstick - if i hadn't been aiming each mouthful with military precision to avoid looking like i'd just been making out with one of those rotating meat pillars you get in kebab shops - but hey, my lipstick survived, and now bowls of laksa down cobbled lanes on days where the sky is dribbling down window panes and the wind gets at all your corners is my new favourite thing in the world. </div><div><br /></div><div>on the subject of lipstick, my beloved bubble tea shop has this mystery flavour, "lipstick black tea". i bought one once; it tastes a lot like black tea and not very much like lipstick at all. then i thought maybe i'd missed the lipstick essence the first time, so i bought another one. then i tried googling it, all to no avail. it remaineth a tasty mystery.</div><div><br /></div><div>and on the subject of weather, en route to the laksa i called it 'bleak'. bff had a dictionary definition to hand: <i>devoid of hope, </i>ie, <i>this weather is devoid of hope</i>. it also means (for useless knowledge and general edification) a european freshwater fish, <i>alburnus alburnus</i>, possessor of silvery scales used in the production of artificial pearls. </div><div><br /></div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-85635016927670476162010-06-15T05:32:00.000-07:002010-06-15T05:39:43.809-07:00peppermint love<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.forum-naturheilkunde.de/uploads/RTEmagicC_Pfefferminze8_01.gif.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 160px; height: 276px;" src="http://www.forum-naturheilkunde.de/uploads/RTEmagicC_Pfefferminze8_01.gif.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><div>take 1 tsp dried peppermint leaves or 1 peppermint teabag</div><div>lovingly add 1 cup boiling water</div><div>allow to infuse 3-5 mins</div><div>remove leaf/bag </div><div>add 2-3 tbsp (yes TABLEspoons) sugar</div><div>stir</div><div>= liquid sunshine. </div><div><br /></div><div>love penelope. </div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-66537944065688415162010-06-13T06:13:00.000-07:002010-08-25T02:34:10.290-07:00toad-in-a-hole... this is why Me and Home Internet should never have met.<div><br /></div><div>i've been sitting here, window open, slowly chilling like a toad going into hibernation at the bottom of a pond, crossing and recrossing my legs to alternate the pins and needles, looking and clicking and not writing the essay that was due a week ago tomorrow, dressed like an american cheerleader in summer in a room i can see my own breath in, so paralytic with shivers i can barely move, for the last five hours (minus one-hour Masterchef and curry-making interlude). this is why i need to be a hermit with a parrot on my shoulder and a beard. this is why i need to live in small hut at the end of the earth, at least until next week. gawd. <div><br /></div><div>meanwhile, there's this daffodil growing in a pot on my windowsill. it only sprouts at night when it thinks i'm not looking. it's so cute, i think it's trying to surprise me with some flowers one morning soon. <div><br /></div></div></div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-17761594932949658172010-05-24T20:27:00.000-07:002010-05-24T20:40:24.064-07:00The SlugHow long have I known the word? Ten years? Fifteen? Sluggish: <em>adj. </em>slow, indolent, torpid. And there I was, walking to uni one day and thinking, gee, I feel so slow, and indolent, and torpid. Like an upright slug dragging along the pavement. Slug-ish, I thought. I feel slug-ish.<br /><br />And then it hit me. Sluggish: <em>of or like a slug</em>. From Middle English, <em>slugissh. </em><br /><br /><em>Un</em>-believable.Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-80803598932843141812010-05-02T22:43:00.001-07:002010-08-25T02:35:38.440-07:00The BoyfriendSo the banshee went one fury too far and suddenly I could never spend another night in that place where she lived, which just happened to be the place where I lived too. So I spent the next week in my bestie's bedroom, hunting for houses and stealing his clothes. I guess I've been dabbling in the giant shirt/jumper + hypothetical skirt look for a while now, but by the time I left (with a bottle of his cologne, a Westwood Man jumper and new banshee-free accommodation to boot) I had to admit to being a newly-converted, fully-subscribing practitioner of the 'Boyfriend' look. The moment of truth? I opened my wardrobe. Skirts, dresses, things I'd been missing all week, but "I have nothing to WEAR," I moaned, and ran to the nearest op-shop to find a giant mens' business shirt.<br /><br />(Seriously, this guy (the bestie) should open a business or something. A B&B-cum-Tupperware-Party kind of thing, where you go stay at his house with minimal clothing and unlimited access to his wardrobe. He'd make a killing.)<br /><br />Anyway, so there I was in this op-shop, avoiding the womens' section like small boys avoid girl germs, and damn was it good. Racks upon racks devoted to all possible permutations of shirts + trousers: short-sleeved/legged, long-sleeved/legged, in-between-sleeved/legged, summer-sleeved/legged, winter-sleeved/legged, overalls, singlets, suits, <em>finito</em>. So easy. So <em>simple</em>. None of this short-medium-long-dress/skirt/shorts/slacks/trousers/jeans-button-up-button-sideways-zip-down-zip-up-high-neck-low-neck-turtle-neck-jackets-coats-cardigans-teacosies-too-baggy-too-tight-too-floral-too-bright-everything's-perfect-but-for-THIS. Nuh-uh. It's all too big and it all don't fit and I love it.<br /><br />I liked to think I was being a touch ironic at first, given the prevalence of the 'Boyfriend' in marketing campaigns of late, but it's so easy to be all superior and think you're mocking a 'look', isn't it. I mean, in the absence of a boyfriend, it's probably the look that's mocking me.Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-40897843754335396482010-04-12T21:25:00.000-07:002010-08-25T02:38:50.788-07:00Puss-in-BootsThis post is dedicated to my poor, innocently bystanding feet, upon whom a classic case of Girl vs Boot was inflicted this morning. It happens every year: some summer garage sale yields a miraculous pair of damn fine, perfect-for-winter and EVER-so-slightly-too-small boots for the price of a coffee or two. I try them on and strut around, casting admiring looks at my ankles in every available semi-reflective surface, figure my feet'll shrink in winter anyway, and take them home, where they sit smug and good-lookin' by my wardrobe. Then winter comes. It's their time to shine. I crack them out, build an outfit from the feet up, and limp home two hours later with giant blisters where my heels used to be. <div><br /></div><div>It's not as masochistic as it sounds because I'm pretty sure I have the world's most blisterable feet. A pair of carpet slippers once put me in flip-flops for a week (and then I got blisters on my toes, just to balance things out). But these boots were their own particular variety of hell. They're (too) solid, (too) well-made, and lined in sheepskin. "That'll cushion things nicely" I thought when I bought them. It didn't. So I spent most of the morning lurching around on my toes, like I was wearing high heels after two too many drinks, wincing and staggering every time I had to stand up. In Round One of Girl vs Boot, Boot was the outright winner. </div><div><br /></div><div>Normally under these kinds of conditions I'd give in, you know? I <i>like</i> my feet. I spoil them with the occasional massage and lick of toenail polish. I wear orthopedic shoes almost every day. I'm only prepared to inflict so much on them in the name of fashion. But these shoes are amazing. They're hot. They're everything I ever wanted in a boot, and then some. They're not the kind of boot you'll ever find anywhere again, let alone in a half-size larger. They were made in Italy at least twenty years ago and they look like they'll last another fifty. Substitute Brisbane for Italy and the same could be said of my feet. So we're even, right? Let Round Two begin.</div><div><br /></div><div>In maybe a month. </div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-81773464773072971202010-03-21T01:09:00.000-07:002010-03-21T03:07:04.219-07:00Man/GirlSo I realised recently that I'm just a grumpy old man trapped in the body of a twenty-one-year-old girl. "Oh, <i>you</i> don't know grumpy," said Forty-Two at work the other day, "you just <i>wait</i>."<div> "<i>You </i>don't live with a psychopathic witch," I grumbled back at her, and it was true, she didn't. She ceded the point. And so doth youth ever deny age the wisdom of experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>In honour of this new self-recognition, I'm smashing some last lingering youthful ideals. I figure the grumpy old man in me's gotta die at some point, I mean men only live so long, don't they? And assuming some kind of karmic regeneration process it follows that I'll probably end up as a six-year-old kid in the body of a thirty-year old or something, and that suits me just fine. So there'll be time to be all young and reborn later on. In the meantime I'm cultivating a doughty pessimism, pronouncing drearily on everything from the weather to sex shops, making an art form out of daily glasses misplacement, and lingering over-long around tobacconists. I'm also THAT close to buying a kitten, but I better not. I'd probably trample it or something. </div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-53034023831134016362010-03-19T00:48:00.000-07:002010-08-25T02:42:29.287-07:00build 'em up, cut 'em downone of the inherent functions of being young and female, apparently, is to be unwitting instigator/audience member of the comments flung from car windows, pub huddles, construction sites and so forth by (mostly) men you've (mostly) never met in your life. i mean, it's just an educated guess - i've never been old and female, or male of any age - but in the meantime, i live in eternal hope of hearing something truly original amongst the generic babble of wolf whistles, "show-us-ya-tits" and critiques of various parts of my anatomy. the best i've gotten so far was the slightly perplexing "i fuck chicks!!" back in 2006 (implication: he'd fuck me? or a spirited defense of hegemony?) and today, when two cars sidled up to the intersection i was crossing on my way home. the guy driving the first car met my eye, whistled deliberately, said, "fiiiine legs, lady," and turned the corner. the guy in the combi van behind him pulled up and yelled, "fat bitch!"Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-61623729017853747332010-03-05T18:48:00.000-08:002010-03-05T19:06:10.510-08:00In Back of the Real - Allen Ginsberg, 1954railroad yard in San Jose<div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>I wandered desolate</div><div>in front of a tank factory</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>and sat on a bench</div><div>near the switchman's shack.</div><div><br /></div><div>A flower lay on the hay on</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>the asphalt highway</div><div>- the dread hay flower</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>I thought - It had a</div><div>brittle black stem and</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>corolla of yellowish dirty</div><div>spikes like Jesus' inchlong</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>crown, and a soiled</div><div>dry center cotton tuft</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>like a used shaving brush</div><div>that's been lying under</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>the garage for a year.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yellow, yellow flower, and</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>flower of industry,</div><div>tough spiky ugly flower,</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>flower nonetheless,</div><div>with the form of the great yellow</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span></span>Rose in your brain!</div><div>This is the flower of the World. </div><div><br /></div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-48808618659977093122010-02-18T00:45:00.000-08:002010-08-25T03:14:25.258-07:00Of (Mark) and (Anne)I had a book binge last week, which included a second-hand copy of 'Winter Trees' by Sylvia Plath. It was SUCH an unnecessary purchase, seeing as I already own her complete works in a single volume, but there's something about a novel-length collection of poems that I find endlessly daunting. Not to mention the way it seems to obliterate the individuality of each separate collection. So it looks like I'll be making up the complete works a second time. <div><br /></div><div>It's a nice-looking book. I was pretty happy. What I didn't notice in the shop was the inscription. It's written on the first page, in loopy blue biro. </div><div><br /></div><div>(Anne) to the most adored, loved, mentally bejewelled person this side of anywhere - with lots of frog-freckled love, not to mention hugs, kisses, smooches, cuddles, the odd rummage and so forth - Mark xxxx 9/11/81</div><div><br /></div><div>The romantic in me wants to believe they had some star-spangled giddy love affair culminating in the untimely death of Anne (Mark) and the dispersion of all her worldly goods (given her by Mark) to the winds by her (his) grief-stricken lover. The cynic in me suspects they had a star-spangled giddy love affair culminating with graduation and disillusionment with the real world, followed by a period of cold unnecessary bickering and painful drift. Then they would've parted ways; Anne probably found some lover in the corporate sector, got engaged, and came across this slim blue volume while cleaning out all her old junk in preparation for moving into her fiancee's sleek inner-city digs. Preferring to disavow her romantic/literary/bohemian past, she chucked it on the 'out' pile along with some Ginsberg, Kafka, Beauvoir et al. Not usually one for sentiment, she couldn't quite bring herself to throw them out; instead she bundled them up and left them outside a second-hand bookshop in the dead of night. She drove off slightly flustered and stopped for takeout on the way home. </div><div><br /></div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-869599766930039552010-02-17T15:29:00.000-08:002010-02-17T15:49:55.579-08:00There is a particular term, Valerie, which strikes terror in the heart of small Penelope:<p class="MsoNormal"><i>early-onset Alzheimer’s</i>. Does that not send <i>chills of the highest order </i>down your spine? Now as you surely know dear, I have always been one of the more <i>scattered</i> of <i>brained beings</i>, but not so long ago I was beginning to have serious doubts about whether, in fact, this affliction were less incidental than <i>pathological</i>. Take, for instance, the time I accidentally booked a flight to <i>Bangkok </i>instead of <i>Brisbane</i>. Or the way I <i>consistently </i>confuse tomatoes with potatoes, cherries with grapes, washing with shopping. Or any one of the <i>several </i>times last year that I accidentally made <i>saucy little hatinators </i>for staid old biddies, and <i>giant feathered monstrosities</i> for the high-at-heel and young-at-heart. Or the way I can never seem to remember what I did yesterday. Or what the book I <i>just finished reading</i> was about. And then there was the <i>mortifying</i> confusion of Susans <i>Sarandon </i>and <i>Sontag</i> at a dinner party once. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I was spiralling into a <i>full-scale</i> <i>panic </i>about my mental faculties until I read an editorial by a lady who is prone to leaving books in the vegetable crisper. She could trace her absent-mindedness right back to her grandmother, who one day was chopping soap for the copper and vegetables for the soup at more or less the same time. Needless to say, the soap ended up in the soup, and the laundry turned into minestrone.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Until such an occasion eventuates, darling, I <i>think</i> I can relax a little.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">A learned woman I met once had been reading a book about the human brain. She told me that the brain is plastic: in other words, mutable. When parts of the brain sit disused, they are trimmed away to allow development in other areas. What worried her was the state of education in relation to our cranial development. When <i>she</i> was at school, she said, students were forced to memorise large chunks of poetry, Shakespeare, the Bible. Most of it was irrelevant, of course. Whoever quotes tracts of <i>Hamlet</i> in everyday speech? What counted was the <i>process</i>. The <i>act of recall</i>. How are younger generations supposed to gain the capacity for<i> sustained, concentrated thought</i>, she asked, when memorisation is reduced to an English oral with palmcards, television is presented in bite-sized chunks of entertainment and advertising, and the internet is a tangle of hyperlinked info-bytes?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have heard a similar argument put forward in relation to literacy in ancient societies. Someone once told me that some civilisations preferred to <i>maintain</i> illiteracy amongst the general populace so that their <i>memories </i>would remain supple (amongst other, <i>less noble</i> reasons, I’m sure). Now, I haven’t been able to verify this yet, darling, but it <i>is</i> a fair point: writing something down <i>immediately</i> gives us license to forget it. Why bother <i>remembering</i> when your Blackberry can remember <i>for</i> you?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Really, Valerie, I ask you: is it any <i>wonder</i> our memories are getting worse by the day, when our brains are trained to receive and dispose of morsels of information within the same heartbeat?? Like the time I walked through customs on my arrival from an overseas trip, chatting merrily on the phone to one of my dearest friends. An official kindly informed me that I could earn a $250 fine for having my mobile on. Hadn’t I seen the sign? Of course not, or if I had I'd forgotten: I was jet-lagged, and blinded by the posters promising duty-free delights around the corner. Another time a railway official <i>roundly abused me</i> for taking my suitcase up the escalator. I was meant to use the lift; hadn’t I <i>seen</i> the sign? Of course not, or if I had I'd forgotten: it was obliterated by ads for Frangelico and a forest of whipper-snappers waving copies of <i>MX </i>in my face. Valerie, we are simply <i>glutted</i> on a <i>neverending smorgasbord</i> of textual<i> </i>fragments which are so small that we <i>cannot help</i> but read them. Most of them, of course, are useless, so what happens? We become <i>trained forgetters</i>!</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I went to Taiwan not so long ago. I don’t know a <i>word </i>of Mandarin, and I can’t <i>begin</i> to tell you the relief of not being able to understand a single sign in the city. It had its navigational disadvantages, of course, but oh! The serenity! The sense of calm that comes from not having <i>words</i> flashing into your head wherever you look! The luxury of following a train of thought from A to Z without the distractions of inane, unrelated text (shop names, ads, slogans, news headlines, latest offers, menus in the window, <i>today only</i>s, bargain buy now cheap cheap cheap)! I came home and almost began to <i>wish I were illiterate</i>, just to enjoy the freedom of a <i>single uninterrupted thought</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Darling, I think I will pretend to be blind. I’ll walk around with my eyes shut wearing dark glasses and swishing a cane at people’s ankles. I will starve myself of <i>all written materials </i>save those that I <i>e</i><i>xpressly</i> choose to partake of. I will <i>take control of my cerebral diet once and for all! </i>And just <i>think </i>what will happen to my intellect! </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yours in <i>imminent genius</i>,</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> Penelope.</p>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-46442806284661929032010-02-09T06:23:00.000-08:002010-02-09T06:32:49.843-08:00Literary Orgasms: A Brief Footnote<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">… so I wasn’t reading erotica. And I wasn’t hunting down once-banned books. But I was still pretty surprised at how hard actual orgasms are to come by in your average novel. Most authors seem to draw a tactful curtain over that particular aspect of existence. It reminds me of a letter I read in a newspaper once, from an old lady complaining about the explicitness of sex scenes in the movies nowadays. And she wasn’t being prudish. Things were way more saucy, she said, when the hero and the heroine shut the door on you and left it up to your imagination. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">She had a point. I’m endlessly intrigued by the seen/unseen divide. The ways the hinted-at can be so much more erotic than the explicit. Maybe the Victorians were onto something with their floor-length skirts and oft-elevated necklines. In the absence of cleavage and acres of skin, apparently, the humble shoe achieved unprecedented erotic significance:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the merest curve of an instep or gli</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">mpse of a shapely ankle was enough to make a Victorian gent cream his woollen drawers. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So in the spirit of the gently seductive, I’m widening my search. Expect metaphor, innuendo and plenty of drawn curtains. But in the meantime, here’s a little gem I stumbled across in the course of my summer reading - </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“then he pulled his fingers very slowly down my face, lightly tracing from my jaw to my throat and then all the way down to my waist. My eyes rolled back into my head a little.” – Stephanie Meyer, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">New Moon </span></span></i></p>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-86460563210525713072010-02-02T18:55:00.000-08:002010-02-02T18:58:49.511-08:00Have you heard of the Rushdie Affair, Valerie?<p class="MsoNormal">If not, I’ll condense it for you: Salman Rushdie published a book that angered a far-away man and many adherents of a not-at-all-far-away religion. Then, in an <i>utterly ridiculous </i>twist best contained within the bounds of <i>awful fiction</i>, a <i>bounty </i>was placed on his life.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Now I don’t want to quibble about his suspect innocence here – although personally, I think he could have been a <i>wee</i> bit more sensitive – but you <i>have</i> to feel for the man: the <i>state</i> stepped in to keep him under <i>armed guard</i>, sleeping in a <i>different hotel</i> every night, staying<i> </i>away from the windows lest someone catch a <i>glimpse</i> of his <i>infamous head</i>. People in the publishing industry were stabbed, shot, killed in the name of a <i>novel</i>. Imagine the <i>weight</i> on his shoulders, darling!</p><p class="MsoNormal">Now the salt<i> </i>in the wounds of the <i>offended</i>, dearest, was that before he defected to England, Rushdie grew up in India, immersed in the <i>very culture</i> that he criticised in his book. What was he <i>thinking</i>? they cried, and, how <i>dare</i> he?! and, he should have known better! And as if <i>that </i>weren’t enough, people in his <i>adopted</i> country started griping about the cost of his <i>protection</i>. Turn him loose! they cried, and, let him fend for himself instead of wasting taxpayer’s money on his <i>room service</i> (he wasn’t, incidentally. Being a famous author has <i>some</i> financial perks). Now, it <i>probably</i> didn’t help that in said novel he’d referred to their – <i>his </i>– prime minister as “Ms Torture” and described a nightclub where her lifesize waxen counterpart was ritualistically <i>nuked</i> – amongst certain other unfavourable comments upon the English. <i>Nevertheless</i>, darling, the poor man was caught in quite a remarkable bind <i>unique </i>to the emigrant: first you get criticised for turning your back on your birthplace, then you get <i>eaten up </i>for daring to make insinuations about the culture that has so graciously accepted you as one of its constituent citizens.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It makes me <i>sick</i>, Valerie! The very <i>concept</i> of emigration is predicated on a <i>myth</i>: the myth of nationhood. Firstly, we don’t get to <i>choose</i> where we’re born. Secondly, we have never met about 22 million of the people we share our vast continent with, and we never will. Yet this <i>myth</i> is perpetuated to make us think we have <i>something in common</i> with <i>every one of those 22 million others</i> (except the paedophiles. And the rapists. And the serial killers, street artists, crack addicts, shoplifters, armed robbers, gang bashers, gang bangers, child pornographers, photographers of naked children, and Collingwood supporters). The myth says: this is what Australians value! You live in Australia! Therefore, this is what you and everyone you know values!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Do you know, I used to think I was immune to that myth? I <i>refused </i>to attend Australia Day celebrations, I <i>scoffed </i>at overt displays of patriotism, I even donned a jersey with the <i>stars and stripes </i>when everyone else was wearing green and gold for some <i>sports-related hoo-ha</i>. Then I went overseas. It is interesting how subtly nationhood insinuates itself. The only times I’ve ever felt <i>Australian</i>, dear, were when I wasn’t <i>in</i> Australia. People say, Oh look! An Australian! and, Say something in your accent! and, We bought kangaroo steak because we thought you might be homesick! And it’s all fun and games laughing at people’s stereotypes of us until someone says something <i>critical. </i>All of a sudden you become <i>staunchly loyal</i>. It’s like the bathmat wars of 2000, dearest. Have I told you about them? It happened like this: my mother was away and a relative stayed over to keep me company. Now, I am a solemn believer in leaving the bathmat on the floor after use. It is, after all, a <i>mat</i>. <i>She</i>, however, preferred to drape the bathmat over the towel rail. I was, at the time, very defensive of my household systems. On finding the bathmat on the towel rail, I would <i>immediately</i> lay it flat on the floor. On using the bathroom after me, she would <i>immediately </i>pick it up and pop it back on the rail. This continued for some time. And don’t think it was a twice-daily occurrence, dear. That mat would have shifted <i>fifty times a day</i>. It was a case of <i>all-out passive-aggressive bathroom warfare</i> that only ended with her visit. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What did I learn from that little episode? Simply that we are <i>outrageously</i> defensive of our own little systems and <i>outrageously</i> incapable of weighing two methods impartially if one of them is our own. Now, if <i>I </i>had decided to hang the bathmat on the towel rail, I could have left it there <i>all day</i>. I read a little editorial the other day by a man who had just returned from England, where ATM withdrawals are <i>free</i>. He complained about his accumulating $2 fees to a friend, and do you know what his friend did, Valerie? He <i>defended</i> those pesky little fees, just because the alternative was to acknowledge the <i>English</i> way over the <i>Australian</i>. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">See? This is what we need <i>writers </i>for, Valerie: the dissemination of <i>perspective</i>. A <i>reprieve </i>from the political, national-mythical biases of the popular media. And we need to give the poor writers a <i>break</i>. Calling them <i>ingrates</i> for critiquing their culture, or their adopted culture, or somebody <i>else’s</i> culture – <i>so long </i>as they do it with balance and sensitivity – is just one step away from <i>censorship</i> and <i>propagandism</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yours from a very<i> </i>high horse indeed,</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-AU;mso-fareast-language:EN-US; mso-bidi-language:AR-SAfont-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Penelope.</span></span>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-12552152685507251512010-01-26T20:00:00.001-08:002010-01-26T20:59:10.243-08:00I have recently finished reading a certain quartet of books with red-edged pages and decidedly vampiric content, Valerie dearest.I am sure you know the ones to which I am referring. In case you were wondering, the writing – need I say it? – is ex<em>ec</em>rable. Occasionally nauseating. There are only so many times you can hear about the neverending bliss of eternal vampire sex without feeling just a <em>teensy</em> bit irritated, my dear. And yet they are outrageously, <em>obscenely</em>, addictive. Example: circumstance required me to lay the first book aside for a day when I was only halfway through. And let me tell you, I had my <em>very crankiest pants</em> on for <em>every</em> minute of that <em>blasted</em> twenty-four hours, darling. Excuse the French. The other three I read in a single night each. And they are <em>not</em> slim volumes, dear. I was snuggling down to sleep just when the birds were stretching their voices for the morning.<br /><br /><em>Thankfully</em>, dear, I am not alone in my obsession. By Christmas 2008 the whole series was temporarily out of print. Bookstores had been <em>bled dry</em>. Teenaged boys began buying copies to keep up with their female counterparts. Movies began to be made. Collectors’ Editions appeared. Fans proudly admitted to being <em>twihards</em>. Nor were they limited to the ranks of the young. The kind lady who loaned me one of her four different editions (<em>five</em> if you count her audio books) was middle-aged. <em>Husbands</em> were sheepishly buying for their <em>wives</em>. I even saw an <em>old man</em> reading one once.<br /><br />Have I mentioned, darling, that the writing is <em>atrocious</em>?<br /><br />As you know, Valerie, I get cranky when I don’t get my beauty sleep. Lord knows I need it. So I was <em>very keen</em> to understand how these books were keeping me up past <em>breaking dawn</em> (apologies) when other works of <em>far superior</em> <em>literary merit</em> can sit meekly by my bedside whilst I snore.<br /><br />Or snuffle. I’m sure I don’t snore, dear.<br /><br />Now, Anne Lamott, in her book <em>Bird by Bird</em> (to which I have committed the injustice of reading only half a page, and offer my sincerest apologies if I misremember it) opines that true plot, <em>literary </em>plot, emerges from characters. The more complex the characters, the more naturally plot will emerge. After all, plot is what happens to all of us everyday, simply through the interactions of our differing selves. <em>Questionable writing</em>, she says, occurs when an author sketches out a plot and then tacks some underdeveloped characters to it.<br /><br />E.M. Forster would call such underdeveloped characters <em>flat</em> (as opposed to their more complex <em>round</em> counterparts). Now before you have me on toast, Valerie, flat is not necessarily a <em>bad </em>thing. Indeed, it is essential to almost <em>any</em> work of storytelling. Even in <em>real life</em>, darling, the people we casually encounter and judge on a handful of personality traits could be called flat, simply by virtue of us not knowing them. Look at <em>any</em> work of literature, darling, and I’m sure you would find at least <em>one</em> flat character amongst all the carefully-developed Forsterian rounds.<br /><br />But I think you will <em>also</em> find, darling, that the most <em>popular </em>genres of movies and fiction are comprised <em>entirely</em> of flat characters. Think of the old Italian Commedia dell’arte characters you still see in <em>every</em> sitcom ever made. Think of the characters of romance, crime, adventure, comedy, war, thriller, sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, pornography, western, mid-western, sou'western, middle-eastern. Think of Edward, Bella, Jacob. Flat! All flat!<br /><br />And why would this be, dear? Simple: escapism. The less complex a character, the easier it is for us to identify with them. Now, in a work of serious literary intent, where the characters are im<em>peccably</em> rounded and just as complex as they please, pleasurable character- identification can be damn near impossible. What if we don’t <em>like </em>the protagonist? Being dragged through the intimate psychology of someone we normally wouldn’t talk to on a <em>bus</em>, dear, requires a certain amount of <em>sticking power</em>. Not many people are too comfy about living through someone whose thoughts, desires and morality are utterly foreign to their own. Commercial success depends on the <em>simple</em> characters. The flat ones. People with enough humanity to capture the reader, but not <em>so</em> much as to alienate him. Or her.<br /><br />But darling, this <em>worries me to no end</em>. If I am correct (and you know, dear, that I am <em>always </em>correct) in saying that the vast majority of commercial storytelling (literary or cinematic) depends on the vicarious pleasures attainable through the use of simplified characters, then the stuff of popular culture must therefore be <em>built upon</em> and <em>limited to</em> the experiences shared and shareable by the <em>majority of society</em>.<br /><br />Now this, in itself, is no problem. Indeed, it is the basis of all human interaction: stepping off your individual perch and finding common pecking-ground with others. What <em>worries</em> me, darling, are the <em>unprecedented</em> methods of mass-production and dissemination available to us now. At what point do texts cross a line between entertainment and prescription? At what point do all our possible <em>ways of being</em> become limited to those that we are shown by the mass-market? Typical ways of being a mother/father/teenager are beamed into our loungerooms every evening. Typical mums spruik "You'll Love Coles". Typical beauty is prescribed in film, music, books. Typical characters say typical things to each other amongst typically tangled plots.<br /><br />We are agreed, Valerie, that we seek to emulate what we admire; also, that emulation is made easier by simplicity of character; also, that the dissemination of stereotypes has reached an unprecedented high. We have seen the devastating impacts of propaganda in countless wars; is mass-production its insidious counterpart? Does the mass-marketing of flat, prescriptive character roles inform the creation of mass-produced personalities? Is society beginning to lose value in individual thought, experience, insight? At what point does mass production become homogenisation?<br /><br />Yours in unusual flummox,<br /><br />PenelopePenelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-11173689195929832072009-12-25T04:24:00.000-08:002009-12-25T04:30:45.486-08:00Waiting for SantaA row of coloured lanterns glowed,<div>a stripe above a tree. I considered turning</div><div>them off for the night but the light</div><div>was all that Christmas Eve should be and besides,</div><div>I was waiting for Santa.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the absence of a chimney, a landing strip</div><div>could only be a good thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>I hadn't left cookies, or milk or beer, but I wanted to honour the night,</div><div>the sleepless child-me of Christmas Eves past,</div><div>so I turned my back on the gold-wrapped packages</div><div>and let them bask</div><div>all the night. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the morning the light</div><div>fanning through the slats of my blinds, my eyes, was</div><div>hot, eleven o'clock</div><div>ish</div><div>yet checking my watch it was scarcely seven. </div><div><br /></div><div>I thought of the light</div><div>of the night before, and the shells</div><div>of wrapping and discovered gifts that would litter</div><div>the floor tonight, and realised</div><div>that Christmas had already gone. </div>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-37648647496154985422009-12-06T04:32:00.000-08:002010-08-25T04:11:41.730-07:00When summer comes,and heat bleeds into reluctant night, we'll go down the road and buy $4 wine. Slip dips into shoulder bags, paying for the bread and an apple or two. Slink into alleys with papers and crates, make toast with the flame of a lighter and count the slipshod stars through the glare of the city at night. We'll talk and drink and scrawl on the walls as the world gets warm and liquid blue. If we have to move we'll find some unlocked door, square spirals of piss-smelling stairs and a ledge at the edge of the seventh storey. Watch drunks stumble from strip-clubs and neon panties flash. And when we're quite, quite broke, we'll head down the beach and smoke dune-grass by the sea.Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8545624364976512247.post-29835374864124994882009-12-02T22:33:00.000-08:002009-12-02T22:57:31.896-08:00Misanthropy is the new black,<p class="MsoNormal">Valerie dearest. Kindly bid adieu to your meek and mild Penelope. She is <i>gone forever</i>. I am proud to announce that I have embraced my inner black.</p><p class="MsoNormal">What happened, you ask? You will recall, darling, that I work for the most <i>exclusive</i> milliner in town; also, that a certain <i>horsey event</i> of national importance occurred a few weeks ago. Need I say more? Suffice it to say, I have often suspected the horses of running <i>not</i> in deference to the whips of their riders, but as a mad attempt to escape the tipsy hoards of <i>watchers </i>tottering around the racecourse. A good quarter of whom, you may be <i>sure</i>, passed through the doors of our little boutique in the preceding months. I have been out of sorts ever since.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> Matters came to a head – if you will pardon the pun – last Wednesday. I was attempting to enter a building at precisely the same moment that a young man – of, it must be said, rather a <i>surly</i> disposition – was attempting to exit it. We did a little door-dance – you know the one, Valerie, where you both dive out of each other’s way <i>but in the same direction</i>, and then you both duck back the other way, and then you try to do the opposite of what you think they’re about to do but then they’ve gone and done the same to you, and the only way out of the whole damned debacle short of adhering yourself to the wall is to stand <i>still</i>, but then <i>they </i>stand still, and you’re back where you <i>began</i> – well, we did <i>that</i> for a little while, and <i>I</i> said a very demure little sorry, and do you know what he said to me? He said “outta my way, bitch!” – fancy, <i>bitch</i>! – and I am now, officially, utterly <i>through</i> with the everyday charities of being <i>nice</i> to people.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">By <i>misanthropy</i>, of course, I mean <i>misanthropy-that-doesn’t-bury-its-head-in-the-sand-pretending-to-be-something-far-prettier</i>. Because you know what I think, darling? There’s a little bit of misanthrope in <i>all</i> of us. I mean, don’t we all just <i>love</i> to hate <i>someone</i>, but in the <i>sneakiest</i> little ways? Like <i>customers</i>, for instance. Or rather more nebulous entities like “the bureaucrats”, “the youth of today”, “politicians”, “the tax department”. All those petty little scapegoats for <i>everything </i>and<i> anything </i>that goes wrong. Or the things people say about <i>celebrities</i>, the poor creatures. Or even: “don’t you just <i>loathe</i> the hatinator!?” which somehow confers upon us the right to mock anyone we <i>ever</i> see wearing one (and let me tell you, darling, they were <i>all</i> the rage last Cup). It’s des<i>picable</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Do you know what Aristotle thought of misanthropes, darling? He said that because they were such solitary creatures, they <i>couldn’t</i> be men (or women). Therefore, they must be either beast or god (dess). Those of the Renaissance defined misanthropy as a “beast-like state”. It’s <i>quite peculiar</i>, isn’t it, because most of the beasts <i>I’ve</i> met, <i>like</i> each other. Just take a look at our collective nouns: a <i>herd </i>of cattle, a <i>pod </i>of whales, a <i>swarm </i>of insects, a <i>bed </i>of oysters, an <i>unkindness</i> of ravens, an <i>implausibility</i> of gnus. A <i>c</i><i>rowd of people</i>!</p> <p class="MsoNormal">But let’s not niggle, darling. Let us suppose that Aristotle and the Renaissants were referring to the <i>true solitaries</i>: the tiger, the lion, the werewolf howling at the moon. What tickles your fancy the most, dear: a fish, or the silhouette of a coyote against a skyful of stars? A hungry cat, or a panther prowling the prairies for prey? A cow being a cow surrounded by other cows, or a lion being lionish on its own?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">See? We <i>revere</i> the solitaries. They send <i>chills</i> down your spine, to be sure, but they’re <i>delicious</i> chills. So I am <i>embracing the hatred</i>, darling. I have immense respect for those who <i>openly loathe</i> their fellow human beings, and what’s more, you’re never left wondering if you’ve done something wrong, or if they’re about to pull out a weapon and <i>massacre</i> the entire <i>street</i>, because you just know that the <i>only</i> thing you’ve done to upset them is <i>exist</i>, and seeing as they aren’t troubling to hide it they’re hardly about to surprise you with a little machete, now are they?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, I say, it’s time we let our inner misanthrope out! Wear it proud! <i>Flaunt it</i>, even! Of course, I don’t think we should go <i>overboard</i>, darling. I’m hardly advocating a mass-recall of the repressed Freudian unconscious. I’m just asking for a little more <i>honesty</i> in the world. A little less patience with preposterous people. A few more timely hangings-up and shutting-of-doors. A little more <i>me</i> and a little less <i>them</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> And next time I meet that <i>great </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">ape</i> in a doorway, he’ll be getting a <i>hatinator</i> down the gullet. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Love Penelope.</p>Penelope Sandwichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836692623278751754noreply@blogger.com0