Picture this

Me in said office environment - at Christmas party, hiding behind the cabinet during boring speeches. Note plastic cup of chardonnay and spot the office clown.

and the proof....

Here's a rather saucy photo of me taken on a balmy NZ day only a few years (28 or so?) back. I know it's dangerous to let your viewers see so much skin, but I'm prepared to risk it.


I don't look a whole lot older now... how could a face like that ever get old?

Dorian Gray

At the risk of sounding really smug, I’m sick of looking young. They should introduce legislation to outlaw perceived-age based discrimination. I constantly get asked at work if I’ve just come out of university – no, I’m thirty-fucking-one and a bit. My ex-boyfriend’s mum darkly enquired: 'is your new girlfriend legal?' after first being introduced to me. He was younger than me! It was worse when I trowled on the face paint in an effort to look sexy. ‘Now you look 12’, she’d laugh.

I was sitting on the tram this morning when I recognised a balding, suited man as a guy who’d been in my year at university. When I realised that he was the age I ought to look, I felt peculiar. I’m sure he’s the guy that bosses the kiddies that look my age around at some top tier firm. I’m sure he owns a string of properties tenanted by pink-haired kids who have discovered PIL, the Sugarcubes and the Wire where I might have been doing the same 15 years ago. His face wore the heavy expression of years of grimacing through tedious mediations, binge drinking at office functions and dragging on the B&H and the odd cuban at business lunches. For a moment I felt I was Dorian Gray – looking at a gnarled representation of how I feel underneath my childlike features. And believe me I have lived hard enough to look like Phillip Ruddock on a week-long ritalin bender.

Being a young looking sheila is not the ticket all those tight-faced LA types with their tits hoisted up to their earlobes would have you believe. At least, not in an office block in Melbourne. I recently got a promotion to a fairly average job from a very shitty one at my organisation, and there were many there who thought I’d risen far above the position I looked most suitable for – that of intern/office junior/clerk. Twenty-three year olds ask me if I remember movies I saw before they were born. Nineteen year old barmaids ask me for ID before blanching at the truth, ducking glasses I lob at their right-age-looking heads. You think I want to look young? I don’t. On the inside I’m old, I’m ropey and I feel I’ve lived a thousand sad lives filled with rich and bitter disappointment. I want the respeck – and yes, I want the sympathy, that goes with people realising that.

It probably doesn’t help that I still dress like a 70s teenager and have an impossibly round, smiley, dopey face with an expression that shrieks ‘I don't do responsibility’ and looks as if it should be saying ‘would you like fries with that?’ – yet yearns to quote pretentiously from a life spent reading, tinkering, listening, watching, dancing, philandering – a life spent accumulating useless knowledge and psychological disorders which should have long since started to show on my face goddammit.. Am I starting to sound a little disingenuous now? Wanna punch me yet? Oh well. Youthful appearance is of little consolation when youth itself has gone. Remember that, kids.

Ashes fever

What's not to love about the cricket? It's like life. You even make around about the same number of runs as the average lifespan, i.e. anywhere up to and a little bit above 100, depending on how lucky and/or skilled you are - like life! I don't think I'd like to have lived a Phil Tufnell innings though - much as I love Tuffers. I wouldn't have made it out of the womb. Hmm... I think I must be at about a Ricky Ponting batting average now, which is the wrong side of respectable (in cricketing terms, of course).

Anyway, let's get on with the shameless (and Shane-less) Office Sheilas' Cheeky Calendar part of the proceedings:

Here's the reason I love cricket #2:





Simon Jones. The ridiculously lush Welshman was the star of the first day's play at Old Trafford. When I first went to a cricket match as a little tacker - getting icecream on people's legs as I weaved through the stands at the G - he would've been.... even younger. Anyway, Simon knows how to pitch it in the blockhole, as it were.












and here's the reason I don't go for Oz:


Shane Warne. I'm not going to waste the nice white space with a picture of him. Here's a much better blond to fill the space:

















Freddy's not really my type...
He looks a bit like a U-Boat commander, with a name to match - but he's a cracking player, what!? Freddy bats and bowls - which is, as we have learnt, never a bad thing.

And before I really start to turn into Julian Clary, I'll quit perving and go back to the match..

But before that - I realise I've just accidentally played a game of cricketing 'Cliff Shag Marry' (though in the wrong order). Examples of more of these triplets, in the right order of course, include:

JLo, Kate Moss, Monica Bellucci
Tom Cruise, Vincent Vaughn, Christian Bale
Chris Martin, Pete Doherty (I'd dust him off and give him back after Ro, promise!), Alex Kapranos
Dan Brown, DBC Pierre, Douglas Adams
The Bravery, Human League, Depeche Mode
The Olympics, The Eurovision Song Contest, The Ashes

Umm... those aren't the best examples, but it goes something like this:

Cliff - Shoggin disgrace. Shag - Fleeting Genius. Marry - A long term winner. Or you can just be literal. Shag and Vincent Vaughn do seem to go together quite literally, after all.

I guess I ought to tag those unfortunates who sometimes stumble across my blog during quiet moments at work - do your worst.

Why I like cricket....

Steve Harmison plays it. And he's fine.

Look Both Ways

Wonderful film. Remind me to elaborate soon.

Farewell Robin Cook

I will never forget Robin Cook's resignation over the UK's decision to go into Iraq, and the brilliant speech he made to the British Parliament to announce it. Until then he'd struck me as a pragmatic workhorse of a politician - and certainly no passionate trailblazer for peace. Indeed, many of his Foreign Office initiatives when he had held the portfolio had been far from inspiring.

But that speech to the Parliament.....
It vindicated all those millions of voices against war. He was the public, authoritative voice of dissent - far louder, more credible and more articulate than the fence-sitting Clare Short.




At a time when the world needs more conscientious, clever, kind, humble public figures; not less - what a terrible time for you to go, Robin. You will be missed, and never forgotten.



To see Robin set down in print for eternity:

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Archive/0,9328,-1682,00.html

Turncoats

A footnote to the story about the nasty little Big Brother housemate who thinks ‘men kissing is disgusting’. Not being a viewer of the show, I was unaware of the full hypocrisy of the situation. This rampantly heterosexual, genuine Aussie sheila had, throughout the time she was in the house, indulged in ostentatious girl-on-girl action for the edification of the males in the house and in pursuit of a few million straight erections out there in TV land… great for the ratings hey?

It’s annoying enough that this girl is more than happy to play to that boring, lame but persistent heterosexual male notion that when women kiss, they do it for men… but to let out a little Paris Hilton style ‘eeeww’ when gay men do the same thing for love, or lust, or even just because they are bored – and let’s face it, any reason is more noble than ‘because loads of sleazy straight men will be watching’ – goes beyond hypocrisy.

Straight women and gay men have always stuck together – in solidarity against the oppression of straight men, for whose slavering, leering gaze most televisual twaddle such as BB is manufactured in the first place. There’s something really depressing about those women who shamelessly cross the picket line. They’re worse than men.

Feminist or Dead

In recent years it has dawned upon me that, for the first time in a century or so, to be older is to be more radical. An increasing number of the really young are complacent, ignorant and conservative. A bunch of stiffs. It’s a ridiculous situation. A couple of news articles and a conversation confirmed it to me today:

Music Buyers 'are growing older' - BBC 03/08/05

About how the over 30s are the ones who buy the most music now. In 1999 the under 30s still bought most of it, but six years later things have changed. In the 1999 sample I would have been 25. I am now in the over 30 demographic. It’s clear we are the last lot that care about music. I know the ipod generation probably just don’t acquire their music that way… but I also suspect they don’t care as much about music as we did.

Gender Unbenders - The Age 03/08/05

About how the younger Liberals (UK readers read: Australian Tory equivalent) are against the affirmative action brought in by that craggy old bigot Menzies 60 years ago – yes, compared to these trailblazing young neo-cons the old monarchist was a shade too pink.

But today’s clincher was my chauvinist of a father – who for years condemned me as a ‘moonboot-wearing, university commie’ – singing the praises of the refreshingly plain, nerdy film buff Megan Spencer of The Movie Show.





Megan strikes a blow for smart, plain people.




Unprovoked, Dad announced that the thing he liked about her was that for a change she was not particularly pretty, but seemed genuine and had a damn good brain. I was so proud of the old buzzard! He then went on to admit that he was thoroughly sick of dolly birds on the television. This from my 79 year old father – who started life watching the Berkeley Beauties and graduated to Carry On and Benny Hill. Hardly the type to begrudge a pretty face on the television. He always left that to me.

We are living in dark times. Old radicals attend what we know are useless marches against tyrannies at home (the new Workplace Relations legislation) and abroad (ongoing conflicts we never asked for and unchecked globalisation). Glossy plasticated nobodies with nothing to say assault our personal space from all sides – leering out of New Weekly; prancing like monkeys (though no monkey ever seemed this desperate to please) on pop idol; blankly mouthing the latest ‘news’ about the War on Terror – decorative funnels spouting views that are never their own.

And look at the mainstream pop world. Prettier and prettier, duller and duller. If you want to know why I don’t believe the under 25s really love their music – take a look at their musical contemporaries*. Miss Britney “I trust our president” Spears is preggers at 23, and the only thing she’s worried about losing is her figure. At 23 she’s stopped rocking – if you could ever describe what she did as that… and who else is there? The hopelessly moronic barbie doll Jessica Simpson? A handful of British blondes that might as well be working the cabaret circuit, plying as they do their trade in tinny cover versions – and leaving after half an album to pop out some brats? A few manicured, micro-dermabrased ex-Spice Girls? These girls represent a new, young, conservative generation of women, who recoil from the word “feminism” like vampires from garlic. Girl Power? Pfffft.

Instead try the inspiringly old, childless Debbie Harry, who is still gigging like a teenager, and her feisty compadre Chrissie Hynde…. and remember that these women, far from retiring with hubby and brat, hadn’t even commenced their ascents to stardom at the age of 23. Along with the at-one-time-terminally-single Madonna, they hit their straps in their 30s (though Mads was admittedly in her musical prime at around 26). Married women Frida and Agnetha, hardly the image of nubile availability at the best of times, shot videos featuring close-ups of their crooked, smoke-stained teeth and post-pregnancy figures. They just got up there and did it. Sure these women were all pretty hot but they were largely uncompromised by smarmy male intervention. OK – Benny and Bjorn might have been smarmy and male, but you know what I mean… and the girls were hardly humping each others' legs and pole dancing - as they might well be if they were to shoot a video today. ...and, in spite of the encumbrances of life - kids, no kids, husband, no husband, youth, age - they all still managed to rock...or swing...or something.

In today's political, cultural and social dark age you are likely to see young women on Big Brother who think ‘humiliation’ is being filmed without makeup…or maybe (ohmigod) with a touch of armpit stubble. They seem oblivious to the sneering, callous remarks and sleazy gestures of the males in the house. They don’t know their worth or their rights (or anybody else's, judging by the recent evictee's comments about watching men kissing making her sick) because they think rights are, like, sooo for hard-faced, hairy old bags. The word feminist is as unwelcome as VPL in this brave new world, where expressing an opinion and backing it up - owning it - is anathema to any self-respecting It girl. These girls are so removed from what their mothers and older sisters fought for that they seem to be succumbing blindly, slavishly, rightlessly to the vision those sinister men at Endemol have of young womanhood. That is, plucked within an inch of its life with a thong permanently wedged in place – and unable to tell its male counterpart where to really stick it.

*Yes, yes, I know about Missy Elliott, Missy Higgins, and that chick out of Scissor Sisters. I wasn’t really making a point about music, so much as the general trend of conservatism in young women. Couldn’t resist a little swipe at it though.