THE TONGUE COMMANDMENTS

This morning I woke up and declared myself a God. Why not? It beats a cup of coffee.

Anyway, now that I’m a God, you have to follow all these rules …

1. Thou shalt not Twitter. Twittering art for tools. Twitter not.

2. Don’t forget to breathe.

3. Thou shalt not read Shakespeare, rather, thou shalt speak it, for that was the purpose for which it was wrote.

4. Do something else.

5. In matters of art, do not condemn thyself as a fool by claiming that thou “couldst have done that”. If thou couldst have done it, thou wouldst of done it. Thou did not. They did.

6. Thou shalt devote at least one day of rest in a year to the watching of Marx Brothers movies. Give sport a rest.

7. Melancholia is not an illness. Take brief occasions of time to be so afflicted and reflect upon regrets on the things that may have been but were not, or the things that were that went wobbly. It will pass.

8. Place thy words upon, and speak with and through thy breath and not through thy throat for thy breath is open and thy throat is closed.

9. Forsake all ideologies and indulge not in belief. Be lief what thou art and only what thou art and be no other.

10. Enough with the shoes or shirts already. Buy thyself a very nice hat and wear it often. Thou shalt feel splendid and rather spiffy.

These rules work better than all the other rules do, so obey these ones and not those other ones. Those other ones are shit.

I’m a God, so I should know.

You need to go and find me some girls now and send them to me so that I may bless them. I’d like to bless them somewhere private, so go and build me a big shed or a barn or whatever. With big heavy doors.

Yes. A dungeon would be nice. I’ll pick out some shackles.

A nook? I can’t bless girls in a nook. I’m a God. God’s don’t lurk about in fucking nooks … Oh, alright. If it’s only temporary. Leave some towels out. And a bowl?

Why are you eating fish? You should eat fish tomorrow.

…

…

…

That’s a nice lamp.

I’ll have that.

BY THE WAY, HAVE YOU HEARD? ...

A song in 10 verses from today’s hymnbook …

1. (i) NATIONWIDE RECESSION.

1. (ii) GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS.

1. (iii) GLOBAL ECONOMIC DOWNTURN.

1. (iv) MASS UNEMPLOYMENT.

1. (v) MARKETS CRASH.

1. (vi) BILLIONS LOST.

1. (vii) TOTAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE.

1. (viii) AND THE DEAD WILL RISE … and rip the flesh from our wombs and feed upon the organs of the unborn and the skies shall become black with demons whose wings shall rain poison upon the earth and scour it of skin. Women will tear the heads from their children and use the flayed and ragged face skins for boot-cloth, and the men shall use the excoriated skulls to adorn their weapons and boulders shall fall from the sky.

1. (ix) AND NOSFERATU’S MINIONS, … riding upon a litter of fire-licked hellhounds, will spread through the barren desanctified lands to do the bidding of the black agents of darkest night, to gather the living and render them dead, so that soul after soul after tortured soul can be tumbled unto the flaming red maw of Hades, whilst their mortal bodies are drained of each final drop of thickening blood which shall then plenish the thirsts of the damned.

1. (x) AND A FURIOUS DARKNESS SHALL BOIL … the very skies to dust which shall then cover the earth and blind a defeated God’s eye to all that once reigned upon it, and man and all his works shall be rendered unto oblivion and the ignorance of history, whereupon the planets shall align themselves to the triumphant orbit of an annihilating Anti-Christ and hurl themselves towards this desecrated rock so that it may be blasted beyond the dimensions of all known and unknown time.

After which, things get really bad.

VAMPIRE'S KISS

Ah, bless the bluster of the blockbuster* and all those who act in them. Right down to their no doubt outrageously expensive little designer cotton socks.

Now …

Nicolas Cage has been doing bugger all of late but turn up in these horridly bloated crapfests and undoubtedly takes home an absolute shitload of cash for doing so. Good for him, I guess. I don't have to watch them and I don't. Unless they’re on free-to-air and I’ve got a six-pack in the refrigerator for company on a Saturday night.

And yet, and yet. It is the actor's prerogative to choose those roles he or she may wish to play, and choose them they do. And, if the actor in question decides to plump for a piece of shit for a shitload of cash over a "little" picture that will play nowhere and do nothing but earn a few worthy plaudits from some obsessive film-stock sniffers, who are we to say they should not?

As I have noted elsewhere (here and here), both Robert De Niro and Steve Martin now spend an enormous amount of their time and energies appearing in rubbish. And by doing so, I do not believe they are tarnishing the legacy of the good works they once saw fit to grace us with. For the dross will take care of itself and will soon be forgotten while the gems shall live on to inspire and astonish generations to come. Robert Duvall, for example, will be forever remembered for his sterling work in “Apocalypse Now”, “Tender Mercies”, “The Apostle”, “Lonesome Dove” and many, many others, and not for the likes of “Let’s Get Harry” or “Deep Impact”. Bet on it.

And Nicolas Cage will always have “Leaving Las Vegas”, “Birdy”, “Raising Arizona” and “Vampire’s Kiss”. For these and these alone (and a few others, “Matchstick Men” perhaps), should he be regarded and held in some large measure of respect and gratitude.

“Vampire’s Kiss” is not a horror film. There are no vampires in it. It is a “black” comedy, but not “black” in the sometimes nihilistic fashion of, say, a Todd Solondz film (I absolutely adore Solondz’s “Happiness” and highly commend it to your attention if you’ve not yet seen it). But it is certainly “black”. In a bleakly comic and ultimately quite disturbing way.

Cage plays a complete arsehole business executive whose grasp on reality is going seriously pear-shaped. Having met a woman at a discotheque (Jennifer Beals … drool), he takes her home, whereupon she bites him (perhaps), and he begins to believe that he is turning into a vampire.

One of the funniest scenes in the film, and one that reduces me to helpless fits of giggles just thinking about it, is when Cage’s character, in the full throes of his delusion, dons a black cape, shoves some novelty store vampire teeth in his mouth and goes chasing pigeons in the park for a quick snack. Yet, despite moments such as these, if the film could claim to be the antecedent of similar explorations of corporate psychopathy and its degenerative effects on our souls, Mary Harron’s astonishing adaptation of “American Psycho” would be its closest cousin.

And this sadly under-rated, neglected jewel of a film contains a performance by Cage that is so BIG, so HUGELY BIG that it essentially takes every rule from the various bibles of performance art, that is, the received wisdom that “less is more” in film acting, and turns it thoroughly arse over tit. It’s a major “fuck-you” to the dreary twaddle peddled to the eager and impressionable by so many drama teachers still stuck in their Actors Studio ruts of psycho-dramatic self-indulgence … “Mumble, mumble, mumble, scratch face, mumble, mumble, cry, scratch face, scream a bit, scratch face, mumble, mumble”.

“Over the top” can’t even begin to describe the type of thing Cage does here. For example, the scene with Cage and his therapist. B.I.G. HUMONGOUS. HUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGE, understand?

I recall, upon seeing the film on its initial release in the late 1980’s, a great deal of publicity attached to the truth that, in one scene, Cage ate a real live cockroach. I understand it required a number of takes, that scene.

Well, it would, wouldn’t it?

And why am I talking about this movie now? Because I hadn’t seen it in over 20 years, and it turned up in J&B the other day for 10 bucks.

So, go spend some pennies. Understand?



* Try saying that three times fast when you’re off your knob.

PONDSCUM

Malcolm Turnbull. Sharman Stone. Kevin Andrews. Colin Barnett. Alexander Downer.

You are filth.

I pray you die. All of you. For yours is not the type of blood that should run in the veins of any other human being upon this earth.

And that, in what you may think are your final moments on this earth, you are confronted with visions of such torment, such pain, such interminable hell, that your internal organs burst from your pudgy, puffy little bodies in fear, that blood runs from your ears and your eyeballs, from every orifice and pore, and that the screams you make, the howls of anguish that escape from the scabby, wounded slits that are your reeking word-holes, rattle the very stars in their firmaments, shake planets from their orbits and extinguish the flames of suns, that the torture you feel in these moments will seem like an eternity, will be an eternity, will draaaaaaaag itself out to the bitterest end, an end that will never come, and, in flailing desperation, you reach for the nearest, the sharpest, the heaviest, the most damaging instrument you can lay your hands upon and plunge it deep, deep, deep into your eye sockets to puncture the withered, sucked-out spastic organs, those buckets of rancid sponge that are your gonorrheaic riddled brains and, as it goes further, harder, deeper, ever deeper, your pustule ridden flesh is rattled and wracked with involuntary bone-snapping spasms and you befoul yourselves, your moans and cries reaching such a fever pitch of wailing horror at the fate that has befallen you, that the sands on beaches and the sands of the deserts all turn to glass and shatter into a billion-billion shards, and that green rancid shit, bile, and clotted acid-pus dribbles and runs across and over your prone, shuddering, shattered bodies, burning gaping, festering black holes down to the marrow of your shattered, broken bones and that it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ...

AND THAT IT NEVER. EVER. EVER. ENDS.

You are filth.









God, that felt good.

And now that I've got that off my chest, I shall resume my normal, happy, well-adjusted widdle self ...

La de da …

Oh, look, butteryfly!

Is Puuuuuurty …

THE MEANING OF IT ALL or THE PIG. THE POKE. AND SO …

So.

So I'm poking about this bookshop at lunch, do you see?

Just poking about. Nothing specific, do you understand?

This bookshop.

Something to do. There is always something to do. And so …

I pick up some books. To look at. To see. Are they worth the investment. Of time. Of money. Do you see?

So.

I look at this book by Alain de Botton, “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”. It is $45.00. This is money in the bank. From my wallet to their bank.

For a book about the “pleasures and sorrows of work”. I could buy this book. Yes. I could buy it because it is $45.00 less 20%. For they, the sellers, are having a sale. 20% off.

That is good. Do you think? Yes.

No.

Another time. Perhaps. The “sorrows of work”. I am acquainted with these. The “pleasures”? No. The pain? Yes.

I need a dump.

Fuck.

So.

I pick up another book. It is called “Handling The Undead”. The author is John Ajvide Lindqvist. I have read his work. I have read his other book, “Let The Right One In”. It was fine. Very fine. It was a good book.

Good.

Do you understand?

And this other book. It is $32.95. Less 20%. Therefore, $26.36. I could buy this. This thing.

And, upon reading it, I would place it upon a shelf. Next to the other book. And, after a period of time, a brief passage of time, I would dust it.

For that is what one does with things.

We gather them. In the grand and oft onerous traditions, the customs of old, passed down to us (why down? Can things not be passed up?) from our fathers and to them from their teachers, their fathers (perhaps mothers, if, perchance, the fathers are conspicuous in absence, and thus by their absence do they bring shame upon their forebears and all those who follow in their wake) those in whom wisdom resides (or so we can but hope, the vanity of hope in which we persistently, foolishly, if not impotently indulge ourselves), who have been taught well in the ways of this world, the expectation of consistency in the maintenance of stuff, things have always been gathered. Ordered. And so, arranged.

And thusly, having been so gathered, must they be dusted.

Swish.

Do you see?

Swish.

And so. Here we have what demands be called a “progression”. A “progression”, from one state, one state of being, of order, to the next. Hence …

To sneeze.

And to sneeze again.

Do you see?

We are all naught but trains.

Choo.

DISCOMBLOGUMALATED

It's not that I couldn't be arsed, it's just ...

Not having a computer at home, I write and blog during lunch or whenever I get the chance for a break. However, a whole bunch of things now appear to have been blocked for access and Blogspots are one of them, so I can't log in to Blogger from work or make comments on Google Blogspots anymore.

Which is fine, I guess. I don't mind. What am I going to do, complain? "Hey, let me log in to Blogger from work during lunchtime or whenever so I don't have to waste an hour reading the type of trivial drivel that passes for news these days".

I don't think so. I just couldn't be arsed.

Perhaps it's about time I did get a computer at home. Thing is, I can't see the point of paying close to a thousand bucks for a lump of machinery that becomes obsolete within a year of purchase. And then there's all the ancillary costs, such as broadband connections and software and shit.

I did have a computer at home when I first moved up to Brisbane, but it went belly up about 2 years ago. It was old. And I didn't really care when it went belly up. There was nothing on it of tangible worth. That's the thing with computers. We just fill them up with shit and think all the shit we've filled them up with means something.

It doesn't. It's just shit. Lots and lots of shit.

And I spend my entire working day staring at a fucking computer and I'm not sure I want the temptation of spending entire weeknights and weekends staring at a fucking computer when I could be reading a fucking book or watching a fucking movie instead. Or playing with the next door neighbours fucking cat. He can be quite the entertaining little feller, the next door neighbours fucking cat. He likes to eat bugs.

So.

I moved over here.

See? I can't decide on a template there, either. They have a limited number and they're all fairly static. Can't change colours and fonts and stuff.

And I sorta, kinda couldn't be arsed there. Not right now, anyway. Because I sorta, kinda grew comfy with the way things looked and felt here. You see? It's red and swollen here and if you stare at it long enough, it throbs. I like that.

So I'm blogging from the local internet cafe. Next to the train station.

Shit, eh?

I guess if I had a girlfriend, I'd be out doing useful things. Those useful things that couples do.

But I don't want a girlfriend. I'm old and tired and cranky and I have commitment issues.

George Clooney has commitment issues.

If I was George Clooney, I'd be fine with that. Who the fuck wouldn't want to be George Clooney? With commitment issues? So you're George Clooney and you have commitment issues? Such a life you have. I should have such a life, he writes with the slight, but distinct inflection of a Bronx mensch.

Did you know there’s a company in Michigan called “Mensch Manufacturing”. They make manure vacuums.

Shit, eh?

I understand women have problems with men who have problems with issues of commitment which must be a problem if you’re a woman looking for commitment. I guess if you’re a woman and you want kids with a man who has commitment issues, you’d have cause to have a bad case of the shplikes. Unless you’re a yutzi meeskite, in which case your lot in life is bupkis.

But I’m not a woman. So I don’t care. You think you have problems? Your problems I should have.

A klog is mir, you should try living with a shmeckle.

Feh.