I'm not joking, she actually said this:

"Franzy, I think we just need to get a bigger TV - one of those high-definition ones. I'm sick of not being able to see the Playstation properly and we should just complete our home entertainment system."

I know.

She is awesome.

Thank you very much and suffer in your jocks.

Your love is like a yiros:

Thick, meaty and dripping yogurt sauce.

And when the rainbow jerseys arrive it shall be complete

I always sniggered (quietly, behind my hand) about the amount of latent homosexuality in the Australian football codes. You know the line: all those fit, hard-bodied men, sweating together in and out of their tight shorts, gripping and wrestling each other for a living. It's got to be more than one-in-ten in the national leagues, right? But of course, the Australian male hegemony being what it (still) is, of course no-one is openly gay in professional football. Not in such a way that it was ever discussed.
Until now.
In case you didn't know, Matthew Johns, former NRL player has been stood down from his job for his part in a group sex scandal. Turns out it's fairly common practise for NRL players to have group sex with a woman - "team bonding" is a phrase often let slip here, like a sly testicle from ill-fitting shorts.

I'd like now, if I may to set a reading exercise (does the fun never end?!). Read the following passage taken from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled 'Defiant rep star says group sex romps will keep happening'. At the end, I'm going to ask an open question which I believe, if I'm right, might just change the ugly, ugly face of Rugby League in Australia.

THE comments of one senior NRL representative player indicate how difficult it could be to change the sexual behaviour and attitudes of elite league players.

He warned group sex among NRL players would continue regardless of a warnings from chief executive David Gallop that unsavoury sexual acts would put their contracts at risk. The representative player told the Herald that his colleagues were left stunned by Gallop's hardline stance when no player had been convicted of sexual assault, adding that the caution would quickly be forgotten.

"It's fine for David Gallop to come out and say you can't have group sex but the last thing blokes will be thinking about on a Friday night at the club is David Gallop," said the player, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "I don't know how a chief executive can come out and say we can't have group sex if it's consensual. It's like discrimination because that is a person's private life. It's like saying you can't be homosexual, or you can't have such-and-such sexual preferences. How can he tell us what we can do in our private lives?

"We already have so many rules: we can't drink on these days, we can't go to these places, now we can't have group sex. About the only thing we can do these days is go to club functions, and just hang around other players. That's just isolating us more from the rest of the world, and it could lead to even more violent acts."

Are Rugby League players finally coming out of the closet?
Read the passage again, but this time bear in mind the fact that while these players appear to engage in a lot of group sex, there aren't any women mentioned. Based on this, I firmly believe that the NRL is on the threshold of throwing open the flimsy plywood doors, tossing aside the coathangers and shoe racks and announcing to the world "We're here! We're queer! We have group sex with each other!" Imagine that. Out, proud and scoring tries. I reckon the NRL fans and clubs would breathe a collective sigh of relief: no more scandals, no more 'How to treat women nice' classes, no more lies! Just good, honest, consensual sex between large groups of large men without the apparently tricky and complicated inclusion of a woman.
Of course, the game itself may suffer from the channelling of all that built-up homoerotic tension away from the playing field ...

Not to be taken the wrong way

I'm well aware that I'm supposed to be blogging about the wuvvy-duvvy wonderstuff about being a father, and I will, in time. At the moment though, it's private. If I'm not blogging about the good stuff, it's because I'm too busy enjoying it for myself.

Let me just say this though: lust is not an emotion I expected to feel.
Love, sure.
Excitement, pride, relaxation, joy, wonder, exhaustion, sure.
But when I look at him sleeping, or looking at something, or shaking his chubbier-every-day arms around, or saying that little "Ahwu" at the end of a cry where he's gone on a bit long and got distracted, I feel an intense desire to grab that little boy and press my face into his body, to howl ecstatic yodels into the sky and squeeze him until all the toothpaste comes out. Call it familial arousal. I sometimes fantasise about some vague threat to him, just so I can imagine happily tearing that threat into little, squishy pieces to simply express my lustful energy elsewhere.

Blip blip beep boop

I've got a Xmas party to help cater, I start a new job in less than a week, I have two book reviews for good grown-up books to write, one of which I haven't read yet, I'm supposed to cook tea, care for my wiff and edit my book but all I want to do is listen to Daft Punk's Alive over and over and over again.
I haven't been obsessed with an album since ... hmm ... Tool's 10,000 Days, which I had to listen to about a dozen times on and off before I found myself waking up at night with strange guitar riffs grinding down my cerebellum. Alive is an instant classic. I am absolutely smitten. I just sit here with my ridiculously large headphones clamped to my noggin, bopping my head, tapping my feet, missing phone calls, ignoring family members, waving my arms in the air like I've got two handfuls of glowsticks, a tummy full of ecstasy and a calendar set permanently to 1999. Aw Yeah. I robot dance while washing up. I actually sat Mele down, of all people, put the headphones on her head and tried to get her to nod her head in blissful appreciation of what is essentially the sound of twelve million mobile phone rings played simultaneously through really loud speakers. To her credit, she was very polite about it.

What was your latest music obsession? Not crush - I'm talking lust, people. Points go to most embarrassing story and/or worst taste in music. Bear in mind this will judged by a man whose musical taste reaches its pinnacle at Daft Punk and Underworld, a man to whom novelty songs are equal to songs whose lyrics do not contain punchlines, a man to whom lyrics have no meaning.

***

Many kind thanks to Myninja, Kath, LC, 327, Moify, Captain T and Tess for uniting the blogging world with the real and coming along to hear Mele and I read at Wordfire last night. For all those bloggers who are also large fans of Kath and Myninja's work, I can reveal that in person they are both devilishly handsome individuals and having them in the audience was as gratifying as it was daunting.

Photos pending spousal consultation.

***
GTH - Points go to River for giving me the giggles with her wonderful Hydrantophiliac vignette. Honourable mention to the often silent, but always correct Will for being so amazingly spot-on with his art identification.

Men are generally sneaky fuckers

Here's how it happened: I used to work at The Eagle On The Hill. This was a pub turned Last-Drive-Thru-On-The-Interstate turned fine-dining restaurent turned Schnittie-Tuesday-Local. It turned other things after I was fired for asking for too many Friday and Saturday nights off (every Friday and Saturday), but this story isn't to do with that.

EOTH had a great view over the Adelaide Plane. Evening dinner guests would always try to book the few tables which perched right by the window so that they would have something decent to gaze at other than one other wolfing down chicken schnitzels the size of paving stones. It could even be described as romantic and most nights there were a couple of bookings of 'table for two, rum for four'.
There was even a motel downstairs. You know what I mean. That's right: 'Room for the night, thanks mate. Send down another bottle of Nepenthe.'
Anyway, you get the tone. Romantic and affordable. The way to every man's heart, (but surprisingly few women).
This one night I was on front of house, greeting customers. My job was to say hello, show them to a table, pull out their chairs and (after pushing the chairs back in) take their drink order and any subsequent shit a nervous first dater might feel it necessary to dish out in order to feel like a big man.
These two didn't just arrive, they rocked up. Nobody 'arrives' in a Commodore ute with truck mud guards. He was resplendent in Ed Harry's finest party shirt and she had decided on a dazzling silk-look halter-neck gown complete with black lacy bra, all designed to perfectly accentuate the large piping shrike tattoo on her shoulder blade. A true South Aussie girl and well worth a night of wining and dining at the famous EOTH.

Now pay good attention because it's going to move quickly from here.

I smile.
I show them to the prime table, front row centre for the night lights of Adelaide.
I pull out her chair.
She sits.
I ask her what she'll have to drink this fine evening.
He tells her to get whatever she wants.
She orders a Bundy and coke.
I pull out his chair.
I ask what sir will have.
He remains standing.
Eye to eye with me he says, 'Large pineapple juice, thanks.'
He winks.
He grins.
He sits.
The end.

Men are generally sneaky fuckers.

* If you don't understand, ask a man over the age of sixteen. If he doesn't understand, he's lying.

***

GTH - Mele was close, but Miles takes it away. Two from two. Nobody else gets points because nobody accused me of being a sneaky fucker (even though I just about burst a damn kidney not laughing in the story above) for fabricating the entire tale of Johnny Wade: Stephanie Rice Picture Tearer Upper.

"... finally throwing the pieces into the air and yelling 'Snowstorm'."??

Come on! That's gold!

I often I wake up next to Mele scratching furiously in her sleep after a waking dream that a wolf has dragged us into its subterranean den and is devouring her body while I struggle to wake and save her.

I would be so proud if I turned out like my dad.

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Songstress With Your Digits, Romeo

I'll Kill Her by the French singer Soko is an immensely popular song. I'm not talking about the kind of popularity which it placed at number nine on the Triple J Hottest 100 in 2007. I'm not talking about the popularity that still sees it played on high rotation on Triple J and elsewhere. I'm talking about the kind of popularity that draws admiration from everyone who hears the song.
It's a tragic little shouldabeen love story. Have a listen!



She's cute, a bit dark, she sings in English with a liltingly confident French accent, made all the more powerful and impressive by the fact that she is openly talking about killing somebody. She also outlines her fantasy date with the guy she's singing to and, trust me, guys around the world who pride themselves on reading books and not being into bimbos are falling in love. Dudes lacking in meat-headed self-confidence who are looking, searching, nay pining for an intelligent girlfriend have found their soul-mate in the lyrics of I'll Kill Her.
First, this girl wants to go to the movies, excellent low pressure date option - the quiet intellectual fellows are put at ease. Then she wants to follow it up with dinner, but it's the one that you like in your street. You're on home turf, you're feeling comfortable, relaxed. You'll probably offer to pay the bill ... or ask her if it's okay ... she doesn't specify, so the question of traditionally patronising masculine roles is left out. Non-issue. Relief! Next thing you know, you're sleeping together! Easy! No awkward kiss! No heart on the line! No possible tarring with the slimebag brush because you wanted to have sex on the first date! You're having it already! There it is! It gets better for our imaginary boy, because she sleeps the night (there's probably spooning), you get to make her breakfast, you go for a romantic walk in the park and then boom! You're in love. Easy. No more wallflowering at the pub. No more carefully planning sticky dating situations which never eventuate. You are in! Your feisty forward French girlfriend has landed right in your lap! She drinks! Your friends like her! She's even funny! She meets your dad, she meets your mum and then the rest of your intellectual bohemian lifestyle is complete because mum bestows her blessings upon your union by commanding you both to breed. Even that turns out to be totally Euro-cool because she doesn't want to just have babies, she wants to have them in Japan. Who would have thought of that? So cool. So cute. And you can float around for the rest of your life listening to her lyrical French accent. Ahh ... love!

Except that it's not quite ...
This song worries me. Not worries me as such, I'm not actually concerned that thousands of intellectual boys will be putting undue pressure on their girlfriends to enrol in an English teaching course the moment that line turns blue (or is it purple?). I'm worried about the imaginary object of this song - the person she's singing to. I'm worried because I'm a writer, married to another writer and I do get concerned for the welfare of imaginary people.* I said before that it's a shouldabeen tale, a broken love story, sung by a hurting woman. It's almost in the vein of Dolly Parton's Joelene ...



... except that when Dolly is singing, she's asking Joelene to go away in order to protect her somewhat inexplicable happiness with the fat bozo snoring next to her who doesn't know a good thing when he's onto one ... it ... her (help?). When Soko is singing, she is telling Mr Doesn't-Call-Back that even though they've only exchanged numbers, she has pre-planned their entire lives together - inclusive of 21st Century metro-hipster romanticism and exclusive of pretty much anything this dude (who seems to prefer bleach blonde bimbos anyway) might have planned - like perhaps riding a motorbike solo across Asia or enrolling in a civil engineering degree. So when this unsuspecting dude either hears this song or discovers the chick he hooked up with at The Archer with a bread-knife in her back (Soko looks like the stabby type), I estimate that he's going to freak out very very badly, give his evidence to the police and decide to take the money he was saving for a new SS ute and go on that motorbike trip across Asia after all. Even if that chick somehow manages to avoid crossing Soko's path and does indeed dump the dude for a rich model called Brandon, then I seriously seriously doubt that he's going to want to leapfrog backwards and go anywhere near the dark little Frenchette who had his future fertility all sewn up before she'd even gotten the call back.

*When you're eight and you admit to this they send you to the door with the puzzles and the picture-books who doesn't bother taking your temperature. When you admit it at twenty-eight, you're half-way towards a creative writing PhD and you can defend it as 'process'.

***

GTH - Jono swoops in again and takes the points with his musing of past kindnesses. Lion gets nothing because he wasn't quite enough with his greens recipe.

Sometimes I use the shard to pick my teeth

It's been a day for writing all around. The blog is really coming into its own name! Well ... the blog's author.
In keeping with the last post about the long essays I tend to bombard other people's comments pages with, I duly posted a long screed on Audrey's latest blog post (an article about the criminal human rights abuses that take place in Iran under the banner of 'religion') that actually concluded in an imaginary conversation between a Christian fundamentalist and a Muslim fundamentalist.
I present it for your puzzlement below:

Sometimes I think it's a good thing that fundamentalist christians and muslims hate each other SSOOOOO much, because can you imagine what it would be like if they actually got together?
FC: Ah think thayt women should NOT be allowed to drive! No suh!
FM: Me neither! Those dirty sluts are always choosing their own clothes and thinking their own thoughts! It drives me crazy!
FC: Ah'm with you pardner! Drahves me raht up tha wall! Women in public ... hrm hrm ... BLASPHEMY!
FM: Yes! Blasphemy! Stone them! Stone them to death!
FC: Really? You can do that?
FM: Yes! Our holy book says it's okay!
FC: Is that true? What a great idea! Where does it say that?
FM: It doesn't ... really. Strictly speaking ... but if you read it in the right way it does!
FC: What if'n a woman tries to find out what's goin' on and change that law?
FM: Stone her! To death!
FC: Awl Raht!
FM: Let's be best friends and lock up all the women!
FC: Put her there pal!
FM: Death to the infidel!
FC: Let's get some ribs!
FM: How about KFC instead?
FC: Deal!

But that isn't the only writing in what I promised would be a blog full of it. 327 sent me an excellent link to a writer called John Scalzi, a very successful freelance writer, who has just published an article called 'Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money'. As I wrote to 327 earlier, I'm quite proud to say that I both know and have followed most of the ten excellent pieces of monetary advice he sets out in the piece.
All except number three. And I'm darn proud of it.

And finally, after sharing a sad coffee last night with The Shorter Ginga before her departure for greener, quieter, more round-about-filled pastures this morning, I found myself heart-thumpingly awake and full of caffeinated vim at 2am. So I Googled myself of course (*insert smarty-pants reference to masturbation here*) and I discovered that my first ever properly published story, and also the reason Mele and I met, is now online in the form of a Google Book!

If you haven't read it before, then I must assure you that the main set piece is based upon a true story.

***

GTH - River and Milly went neck and neck with this one, so I'm awarding a point to each (from hazy boozy memory it is the Port Augusta chimney you're looking at there. But I'm also going to award double points to Jono for the most interesting comment. Thus is a new rule added to the GTH Points Tally! Yes, aside from guessing the picture, I'm giving out kudos to the person who leaves the most interesting comment. Correspondence will be entered into, bribes will be taken.