The Messenger

One of the great things about not having a day job is … MOVIES! In particular, cheap Monday movies at the Cinema Nova at Carlton, which is one of my favourite places on earth, and if I left Melbourne, it would be in the top 5 things I would mourn openly.

Anyway, yesterday was Monday and off I trotted to Lygon Street, and saw The Messenger, which is … well, it's beautiful. And I loved every moment of it, and I think you should all go and see it. Because if there were more films like this, the world would be just a tiny bit more magnificent.

Oh yeah, and Ben Foster is hot. So there is something for everyone.

Words, words, words

I was a little (read: a lot) slack in my quest to write 50,000 words by the end of the month in the days leading up to the end of the day job. My little word count thing on Nanowrimo was looking sad and malnourished, but I'm fighting back with a vengeance and obsessively overfeeding my word count with words, words, words. They don't have to be good words (and trust me, they are not) but they are words, one after the other. I am going to win this thing if it kills me. And then when I do … well, I guess I'll write more words and try and make them a little better, and then …. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Freedom

Well, I have finally thrown off the shackles of that ghastly institution called a day job. It's been about 36 hours and I still find myself thinking "Jesus. I better do [insert meaningless task here]" or "I hope that [insert name of overpaid lawyer here] gets the plague this week and doesn't come in". But then I snap out of it and think "I'll never have to see these people again. Ever." Which is probably not true. I have a habit of circling back to the places where I think I never will.

But for now … Freedom.

On a side note, Freedom is also a novel by Jonathan Franzen. Which is very good. And you should all read it. NOW!!!

Update

Am finally, FINALLY!!!, ending my god awful day job this Friday. And I don't have to look for another one until next year.

Be careful on the streets on Friday night. I will be celebrating. I will be drunk. I will be a danger to myself and others.

In other news, I'm over my Heidi/Spencer obsession but retain the right to pick it up again at any moment, and I'm over the halfway mark in Nano. I am totally rocking out to my own beat. Don't try it people. You will injure yourself.

Obsession

Oh my god. Save me from myself. In the last few days, round about the time I started this I have become obsessed with the trials and tribulations of two certain people. I don't want to tell you who they are because it's awful that I find them so fascinating. After reading about them, which I do, frequently, I feel like I must scrub my brain. They are lowering my already dwindling IQ every time I click on to the latest article about them. I'm disappearing down the well of these two people and I have no idea how to get myself back out. Good Lord. The evilness of the internet has shown its true power. And I, faithful reader, am no match

Okay, I'm amongst friends. You won't judge me too harshly, I'm sure. Okay. Here we go .... It's ... Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. I KNOW! A few months ago, I didn't even know who these people were but now I'm a junkie, firing up the pipe of these two blonde, very stupid, very fucked up people. And it's not so much the dumb. It's more the fuckedupness. They got me. Oh yes they did. The deathly pursuit of their fame, the way they divorce just to try and get interest in a TV Show, the fact that she has had 30 cosmetic surgeries and her nose or ear or something important is starting to fall off, the fact that they are now living in a studio out the back of a friend's house because they have blown their entire savings, and all this because they were on some reality show that I actually have never seen. It sounds like a terrible TV show and surely, surely, they weren't stupid enough to think that it would go on forever and that people would never get sick of watching them in their constructed version of reality. I feel sorry for them and yet I want to punch them in the face, hence the fascination.

But in good news, I have written over 11.000 words of my novel. So maybe Heidi and Spencer are helping me. Oh god, please let that not be true.

Nanowrimo

I've decided that this year I'm going to do NanoWrimo and write me a novel. Yes, I am. Well, I'm going to attempt to write 50,000 words in a month. While having a day job that sucks the soul out of any creative activity. I figure it's either do something mighty, or consider homicidal rampages as an alternative career. At the moment the novel is about a girl, Sive, that goes missing. Twenty years later, her best friend John and her sister, Meredith set out to find out what happened to their sister and friend.

I start tomorrow morning. I'm unfeasibly excited!

Charles Bukowski, Guru

Oh Charles, Chuck, can I call you Chuck?, you are awesome in your dead, drunk, male way. I would give much to have been one of your mad females.

"The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative."
—Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews & Encounters 1963-1993, 2003

Oh yes. Oh yes, yes, yes. That's exactly it.

I have to go file now and watch my soul seep out through a paper cut.