Sunday, November 15, 2009
Misogyny, narcotics and financial management skills. The other night I remembered that my brother Matt had a graphics calculator on which was loaded a game called PimpQuest. One summer I played a lot of that game on his calculator, and I wondered if it was online somewhere. Hooray! it was.
The point of PimpQuest is to pay off $100,000 that your brother owes to some mobsters. They have given you 30 days, and you have to raise the cash by pimpin'. There's a loan shark from whom you can borrow money, and there are women on 'the corner' to whom you offer money to be your hoes. However you can't take on any hoes until you have a vehicle large enough to transport them. (I don't know why as they never leave 'the corner'.) You can also raise cash by buying various drugs and selling them at a local nightclub.
Periodically you will be attacked by various characters ranging from "a rabid squirrel" to "Batman", and you will have to either flee or beat them down, depleting your "health". You earn money from killing your foes. There is a mall where you can purchase weapons to win your fights more easily. These range from a kitchen knife to a sub-machine gun. You can also take drugs or drink beer to recuperate your "health" after fights.
The game is pretty racist and misogynist, mostly in the way it depicts the hoes. There's an Asian ho and a Russian ho (who speak in broken English and are among the cheapest to convince to work for you). If you slap the hoes they will earn you more money, although you have to be careful not to beat them up so much that their "happiness levels" will go down so far they'll refuse to work. You can also fuck the hoes, which raises your "health" but instantly empties their "happiness".
I know it is a totally wrong game, but I have been playing it compulsively, game after game, the way I used to play Tetris or Crystal Quest on my tiny little Mac Classic. And I have been consumed by my pimpin' goals to the point where I would feel annoyed when a certain ho (whom you have to remember not to slap too much as she has less "happiness" than the rest) wouldn't work.
How fucked is that? I call myself a feminist, and yet I am feeling annoyed that my assaulting a woman is not resulting in her earning me more money. This is how wrong the game is.
The other thing I found noteworthy about the game is that it's all about money, and the way you play it reveals a lot – not only about the assumptions in the game, but also about the player's attitudes and approaches to money.
At first I was borrowing conservatively from the loan shark, only buying and selling drugs in small quantities, buying the cheapest option from the cars and weapons, and paying incremental amounts into the bank account that the mobsters had set up for me. Of course I was nowhere near being able to pay off the debt, and I was gunned down in a drive-by.
Then I began to realise that the secret of winning the game was incurring more debt. I wonder if this game would be developed now that, post the global financial crisis, there is a sensitivity to debt – a negative association of debt with precariousness and imminent disaster. This can be strongly contrasted with the positive association of debt immediately before the crisis, when it was seen as a set of stepping stones to social stability and mobility; you leveraged your existing debts to get access to more wealth, and there wasn't a catch to it.
You see, the way to win PimpQuest is to borrow big and spend big. A larger, more expensive car will fit more hoes. The more expensive hoes will make you more money. A more expensive weapon kills your assailants more efficiently and at least cost to your health. The loan shark trusts you with larger amounts once you can demonstrate your ability to pay back smaller ones, so I made my priority in the game to borrow and pay him back, and eventually he would lend me enough money to cover the initial debt.
You then spend the remainder of the game making enough to pay him back, plus 20 per cent interest. I still haven't mastered that bit; his thugs killed me last time. I wonder if there is another, less overtly hateful, Flash game that could illuminate similar financial issues.
Update, 11:28pm: Success! Day 25, and I have paid off all my debts and also paid off the loan shark! What am I going to do for the next few days? Have a holiday, ladies! I'm sorry I hit you so much – I was just trying to make a livin'! It's hard out here for a piiiiiiiiiiiiiiimp!*
* Gag possibly only relevant to those who remember the Three Six Mafia performance from the Oscars.
|
The point of PimpQuest is to pay off $100,000 that your brother owes to some mobsters. They have given you 30 days, and you have to raise the cash by pimpin'. There's a loan shark from whom you can borrow money, and there are women on 'the corner' to whom you offer money to be your hoes. However you can't take on any hoes until you have a vehicle large enough to transport them. (I don't know why as they never leave 'the corner'.) You can also raise cash by buying various drugs and selling them at a local nightclub.
Periodically you will be attacked by various characters ranging from "a rabid squirrel" to "Batman", and you will have to either flee or beat them down, depleting your "health". You earn money from killing your foes. There is a mall where you can purchase weapons to win your fights more easily. These range from a kitchen knife to a sub-machine gun. You can also take drugs or drink beer to recuperate your "health" after fights.
The game is pretty racist and misogynist, mostly in the way it depicts the hoes. There's an Asian ho and a Russian ho (who speak in broken English and are among the cheapest to convince to work for you). If you slap the hoes they will earn you more money, although you have to be careful not to beat them up so much that their "happiness levels" will go down so far they'll refuse to work. You can also fuck the hoes, which raises your "health" but instantly empties their "happiness".
I know it is a totally wrong game, but I have been playing it compulsively, game after game, the way I used to play Tetris or Crystal Quest on my tiny little Mac Classic. And I have been consumed by my pimpin' goals to the point where I would feel annoyed when a certain ho (whom you have to remember not to slap too much as she has less "happiness" than the rest) wouldn't work.
How fucked is that? I call myself a feminist, and yet I am feeling annoyed that my assaulting a woman is not resulting in her earning me more money. This is how wrong the game is.
The other thing I found noteworthy about the game is that it's all about money, and the way you play it reveals a lot – not only about the assumptions in the game, but also about the player's attitudes and approaches to money.
At first I was borrowing conservatively from the loan shark, only buying and selling drugs in small quantities, buying the cheapest option from the cars and weapons, and paying incremental amounts into the bank account that the mobsters had set up for me. Of course I was nowhere near being able to pay off the debt, and I was gunned down in a drive-by.
Then I began to realise that the secret of winning the game was incurring more debt. I wonder if this game would be developed now that, post the global financial crisis, there is a sensitivity to debt – a negative association of debt with precariousness and imminent disaster. This can be strongly contrasted with the positive association of debt immediately before the crisis, when it was seen as a set of stepping stones to social stability and mobility; you leveraged your existing debts to get access to more wealth, and there wasn't a catch to it.
You see, the way to win PimpQuest is to borrow big and spend big. A larger, more expensive car will fit more hoes. The more expensive hoes will make you more money. A more expensive weapon kills your assailants more efficiently and at least cost to your health. The loan shark trusts you with larger amounts once you can demonstrate your ability to pay back smaller ones, so I made my priority in the game to borrow and pay him back, and eventually he would lend me enough money to cover the initial debt.
You then spend the remainder of the game making enough to pay him back, plus 20 per cent interest. I still haven't mastered that bit; his thugs killed me last time. I wonder if there is another, less overtly hateful, Flash game that could illuminate similar financial issues.
Update, 11:28pm: Success! Day 25, and I have paid off all my debts and also paid off the loan shark! What am I going to do for the next few days? Have a holiday, ladies! I'm sorry I hit you so much – I was just trying to make a livin'! It's hard out here for a piiiiiiiiiiiiiiimp!*
* Gag possibly only relevant to those who remember the Three Six Mafia performance from the Oscars.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Disco stick it to me! I just got the most hilarious piece of hate mail via Facebook! It was from Mary Kimble, the subject line was "gaga", and it said:
The resemblance, I think you'll find, is uncanny.
But really, I have felt so betrayed this year as people whom I consider pop music literate have abandoned me and now like Lady GaGa. Possibly even Finney! It's like a zombie movie, where you discover that your loved ones have become infected.
Whereas I stubbornly maintain that she corrodes our culture. I don't care whose goddamn stick it is; the fact remains that she has fooled intelligent people into considering her sophisticated and subversive when those same people would jeer at 50 Cent for his similarly moronic lyrics in 'Candy Shop'.
So, why do smart people like Lady GaGa? From what I hear before my own frustrated sobs drown it out, they find her life of artifice aesthetically pleasing: her surrealist outfits (and the determination with which she refuses to let her absurd public image 'slip'); her deadpan, nonsensical interviews; the suspicion that her entire career is a prank on the music industry. Perhaps the notion that she's wildly popular – even among those without the "pop music intelligence" to consider her on an intellectual level, or indeed even spell properly – could even be said to add to her 'genius' because she's an 'accessible artist'.
No. No, no, no, no, no. I think we shouldn't settle for the kind of cynical artifice that Lady GaGa is peddling. Let's compare her to Britney Spears, over whom a pall of idiotic controversy has lately fallen because the masses have just realised that she mimes at her concerts.
Leaving aside questions of the two singers' relative musical merit (personally I believe that a '…Baby One More Time' or 'Toxic' towers over a 'Let's Dance' or 'Poker Face'), I'd argue that while Britney Spears's career, like Lady GaGa's, has been built on overproduced, disposable pop, there's an honesty, somehow, to Britney that makes her more appealing. There's the notion that Britney's artifice is fragile and maintained only with the greatest effort – and, most of all, maintained out of a sincere belief in the transcendent power of pop music.
Whereas I feel very strongly that music does not matter very much to Lady GaGa; rather, it's the vehicle by which she's decided to 'get famous', and possibly outside contemporary art it's the only artform that can tolerate her iron-fisted insistence on subsuming whatever personality she might have into this performance that is her career.
Also, I think that pop artifice at its best comes with a playfulness that I see as being completely absent from Lady GaGa's career. I see her antics as a punishing, humourless regime which we can only bear to watch by injecting our own playfulness and irony. Lady GaGa is an affective vampire, draining us of our ability to feel pop music.
God I loathe her so much.
|
"a friend of mine told me ab this site..ive read alot of neg comments but urs merits attn. songs called LoveGame n she says "i wanna take a ride on YOUR disco stick"Nxt time u diss gaga..u better know what ur talkin bout.eh eh eh.we never heard of roison in USA since started attacking gaga...if roisons so hott then y does gaga have 9 million fans n shes virtually unknown.GaGa is here to stay..get a life bye bye"It took me ages to work out what the fuck Mary was on about, but then I remembered that back in January – JANUARY! – I had written some negative comments about Lady GaGa on a Facebook group called Lady Gaga has led me to doubt the inherent restorative power of pop music. The description of the group, which was written by its founder Tim Finney, goes:
Okay, really, let's just be honest: she is AWFUL.And I had written:
And what's more, her awfulness is actively DESTRUCTIVE, insofar as it retroactively introduces a kernel of unease into all sorts of previously ENJOYABLE faux-glam-sexkitten-pseudo-artistry maneuvers by Madonna, Kylie, Roison Murphy et. al. Like, yes, this is great, but to the extent that it has led to the monstrosity that is Lady Gaga, isn't it also somehow suspect?
I condemn you twice over, Lady Gaga: once, for being so crap, and twice, for spelling the end of the AGE OF INNOCENCE with regard to space age strip club femme-pop.
We never knew how much it meant to us until it was cruelly ripped away.
'Just Dance' is a terrible song. It's not as bad, however, as another GaGa song about "take a ride on my disco stick" that I heard in Supré one time. Is this meant to be some cynical attempt to be a Gay Diva? You get the feeling it's not even her stick - she just saw a picture of it on the internet this one time.Hahaha, I get it now: I got the pronoun wrong! But really, I feel I was justified in believing the stick in question belonged to Lady GaGa, given all the hermaphrodite rumours. Basically, she is Hedwig of the band Hedwig and the Angry Inch:
The resemblance, I think you'll find, is uncanny.
But really, I have felt so betrayed this year as people whom I consider pop music literate have abandoned me and now like Lady GaGa. Possibly even Finney! It's like a zombie movie, where you discover that your loved ones have become infected.
Whereas I stubbornly maintain that she corrodes our culture. I don't care whose goddamn stick it is; the fact remains that she has fooled intelligent people into considering her sophisticated and subversive when those same people would jeer at 50 Cent for his similarly moronic lyrics in 'Candy Shop'.
So, why do smart people like Lady GaGa? From what I hear before my own frustrated sobs drown it out, they find her life of artifice aesthetically pleasing: her surrealist outfits (and the determination with which she refuses to let her absurd public image 'slip'); her deadpan, nonsensical interviews; the suspicion that her entire career is a prank on the music industry. Perhaps the notion that she's wildly popular – even among those without the "pop music intelligence" to consider her on an intellectual level, or indeed even spell properly – could even be said to add to her 'genius' because she's an 'accessible artist'.
No. No, no, no, no, no. I think we shouldn't settle for the kind of cynical artifice that Lady GaGa is peddling. Let's compare her to Britney Spears, over whom a pall of idiotic controversy has lately fallen because the masses have just realised that she mimes at her concerts.
Leaving aside questions of the two singers' relative musical merit (personally I believe that a '…Baby One More Time' or 'Toxic' towers over a 'Let's Dance' or 'Poker Face'), I'd argue that while Britney Spears's career, like Lady GaGa's, has been built on overproduced, disposable pop, there's an honesty, somehow, to Britney that makes her more appealing. There's the notion that Britney's artifice is fragile and maintained only with the greatest effort – and, most of all, maintained out of a sincere belief in the transcendent power of pop music.
Whereas I feel very strongly that music does not matter very much to Lady GaGa; rather, it's the vehicle by which she's decided to 'get famous', and possibly outside contemporary art it's the only artform that can tolerate her iron-fisted insistence on subsuming whatever personality she might have into this performance that is her career.
Also, I think that pop artifice at its best comes with a playfulness that I see as being completely absent from Lady GaGa's career. I see her antics as a punishing, humourless regime which we can only bear to watch by injecting our own playfulness and irony. Lady GaGa is an affective vampire, draining us of our ability to feel pop music.
God I loathe her so much.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
A footnote I wrote. I was looking back over the paper on hipsterism and 'the street' that I wrote for CSAA 2006, and I was intrigued that I had felt the need to write a fairly lengthy footnote about YouTube. This is what it said.
|
YouTube.com was launched in February 2005 and in October 2006 the three co-founders sold the site to internet behemoth Google. Unlike previous online video formats, it doesn’t require users to download any software. Instead it uses Flash technology to allow users with little technical experience to upload video files in various formats for online viewing, sending to others and pasting into blogs or other websites. In a footnote, I can’t do justice to YouTube’s immense cultural significance; but its most important functions are threefold: it archives a ‘long tail’ of previously ephemeral pop-cultural moments from film, television and music to enable nostalgic mining later; it largely removes the gatekeeper function of traditional media, enabling people to see unedited footage of notorious media moments; and it enables certain performances to become floating signifiers which attain cult status among internet users.These days, I wouldn't feel the need to write so much about what the site 'does'; I would assume a certain basic knowledge on the part of my readers. But (and I'm aware I'm blowing my own horn here), I'm impressed by the succinct way I nailed the things that continue to be YouTube's key functions: its ability to facilitate nostalgia; the way it shifts cultural authority from big content producers to viewers (which came to attract legal trouble I didn't anticipate back in 2006); and its memeyness.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Craig David. The Victorian state government has been spending a fair bit of time and effort trying to prevent people fighting on the street. The fact is, though, that the street can be a tension-filled space even when you're not drunk. If you're the sort of person who likes to have the last word (aka: "cocky" or "smart-arse") then you can also provoke a fight based on what you say.
Tonight I had two separate encounters to which my ultimate response was to walk away. We're always told that this is the best way to defuse conflict, but the trouble is that it's a passive move and it makes the walker-away feel disempowered, as though they've 'lost' the encounter.
The first incident was when a beggar approached me on Bourke Street. Unhappily, I was standing outside Nudel Bar perusing the menu in their window, so it didn't go down well when the man asked me for money for food, and I refused.
I don't really have a hard-and-fast policy about whether or not to give money to beggars; most of the time I refuse but sometimes I comply. The whole basis of begging is emotional manipulation; you give because you feel sorry for the beggar's poverty or because you feel uncomfortable about your own relative wealth. Socialists might even argue that beggars are offering a social service by forcing capitalists to personally confront the effects of capitalism, while others might conversely point out that begging is itself an industry which exploits its workers.
Anyway, this guy had a look about him that I found quite chilling, and so I think I said no and started walking, mainly to get away. However, he followed me down the street and started heckling me. I just kept walking, pausing only to say, "You could ask someone else."
When we were both waiting for the lights at Exhibition Street to change, he said, "Haven't you ever been in a position where you had to ask someone for help?"
My response was, "Like I said, you could always ask someone else."
I felt like a real dick after this encounter, and wished I had done something other than just walk away. Later on, I was walking home down Lygon Street. Usually I walk on the east side of the road with the tragic tourist restaurants and their touts, but tonight I walked down the west side and past the block of restaurants patronised largely by groups of young people just hanging out.
I was walking towards one of these groups of youngsters, sitting at an outside table, when I realised that one of them was mocking me. He was looking between me and his friends and wiggling his head, making silly faces and laughing. His friends were also darting glances at me and laughing.
I felt puzzled and oddly humiliated – was there something innately ridiculous about me? – and also quite annoyed, because if anyone was ridiculous it was this pack of fuckwits with their gelled hair and their absurd distressed T-shirts. There was a dull, self-satisfied quality to them that I found quite infuriating, because they would be unlikely to understand if I tried to explain to them how richly ironic it was that I was supposed to be the laughable one.
So instead, I decided to respond in their own language. I stopped dead, looked psychotically at the one who was mocking me and said levelly, "Have you got a problem?"
He went all innocent and was all, "Nooo," and his friends started laughing even more. I fixed my death-stare on the one closest to me and said, "Have you got a problem?"
This one said, "I haven't got a problem. Have you got a problem?" but as he was saying this the smile faltered from his face.
I looked thoughtfully at him and said, "Yeah, I think I do." But as I was saying this and feeling like Han Solo about to shoot Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina, I began to realise the futility of this exercise in brain-dead bravado. I mean, what was next – me engaging one of these doofuses in hand-to-hand combat? Me pulling a knife and saying, "Yeah, baby, cut anything!"
So as soon as I had got that sentence out, I promptly turned on my heel and kept walking. They might have jeered at me behind my back, but I didn't hear anything as I had my iPod earphones in (as indeed they had been throughout this entire exchange), playing 'I Love You Always Forever' by Donna Lewis.
|
Tonight I had two separate encounters to which my ultimate response was to walk away. We're always told that this is the best way to defuse conflict, but the trouble is that it's a passive move and it makes the walker-away feel disempowered, as though they've 'lost' the encounter.
The first incident was when a beggar approached me on Bourke Street. Unhappily, I was standing outside Nudel Bar perusing the menu in their window, so it didn't go down well when the man asked me for money for food, and I refused.
I don't really have a hard-and-fast policy about whether or not to give money to beggars; most of the time I refuse but sometimes I comply. The whole basis of begging is emotional manipulation; you give because you feel sorry for the beggar's poverty or because you feel uncomfortable about your own relative wealth. Socialists might even argue that beggars are offering a social service by forcing capitalists to personally confront the effects of capitalism, while others might conversely point out that begging is itself an industry which exploits its workers.
Anyway, this guy had a look about him that I found quite chilling, and so I think I said no and started walking, mainly to get away. However, he followed me down the street and started heckling me. I just kept walking, pausing only to say, "You could ask someone else."
When we were both waiting for the lights at Exhibition Street to change, he said, "Haven't you ever been in a position where you had to ask someone for help?"
My response was, "Like I said, you could always ask someone else."
I felt like a real dick after this encounter, and wished I had done something other than just walk away. Later on, I was walking home down Lygon Street. Usually I walk on the east side of the road with the tragic tourist restaurants and their touts, but tonight I walked down the west side and past the block of restaurants patronised largely by groups of young people just hanging out.
I was walking towards one of these groups of youngsters, sitting at an outside table, when I realised that one of them was mocking me. He was looking between me and his friends and wiggling his head, making silly faces and laughing. His friends were also darting glances at me and laughing.
I felt puzzled and oddly humiliated – was there something innately ridiculous about me? – and also quite annoyed, because if anyone was ridiculous it was this pack of fuckwits with their gelled hair and their absurd distressed T-shirts. There was a dull, self-satisfied quality to them that I found quite infuriating, because they would be unlikely to understand if I tried to explain to them how richly ironic it was that I was supposed to be the laughable one.
So instead, I decided to respond in their own language. I stopped dead, looked psychotically at the one who was mocking me and said levelly, "Have you got a problem?"
He went all innocent and was all, "Nooo," and his friends started laughing even more. I fixed my death-stare on the one closest to me and said, "Have you got a problem?"
This one said, "I haven't got a problem. Have you got a problem?" but as he was saying this the smile faltered from his face.
I looked thoughtfully at him and said, "Yeah, I think I do." But as I was saying this and feeling like Han Solo about to shoot Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina, I began to realise the futility of this exercise in brain-dead bravado. I mean, what was next – me engaging one of these doofuses in hand-to-hand combat? Me pulling a knife and saying, "Yeah, baby, cut anything!"
So as soon as I had got that sentence out, I promptly turned on my heel and kept walking. They might have jeered at me behind my back, but I didn't hear anything as I had my iPod earphones in (as indeed they had been throughout this entire exchange), playing 'I Love You Always Forever' by Donna Lewis.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Letter from the pastie. Last week I was working from the Right Angle office, and Penny was going through her mail. She thought it was funny how one of the letters was in some ye olde font, so she tweeted about receiving a letter from the past.
Except when she was either naming the image file or writing the tweet, she almost wrote "letter from the pastie", which led to some humorous banter in the office about what this baked good might say in its correspondence.
Anyway, the next day I was teaching out at Monash Caulfield and I got a pie for lunch. I was looking at the brown paper bag it came in and thinking, "Wouldn't it be humorous if I turned this into an envelope for a letter from the pastie?" So when I got home, that's just what I did.
The letter had authentic pastry crumbs inside, and authentic oil stains on it – although these might not have come out properly in the picture. I basically folded the bag almost in half, leaving a flap at the top, and glued up the sides.
For some reason I decided to run with the ye olde font from her previous letter, except I couldn't be bothered running the bag through the printer so I hand-lettered it, working from my screen. I was annoyed that I didn't have the real ye olde font (I think it might be called London or Old English or something to that effect) and I had to use Blackmoor LET.
Of course I didn't want to put my address on the back, so I made a little decorative sticker of a pastie from a bit of paper that was sitting on my desk. I was so proud of my handiwork!
The actual letter from the pastie was pretty much an afterthought once I had made the envelope. I think it said something like, "Dear Penny, My friend Mel said I should write to you to complain that pies get all the attention when they are full of hooves giblets and such, whereas I am full of healthsome farm fresh vegetables…" I signed the letter, "Filo Z Pastie".
I agonised over how to spell 'pastie'. I decided on the 'ie' spelling because I didn't want it to look like "he had a pasty complexion".
Anyway, once I had posted the letter I walked home with such a feeling of triumph that I felt as though my feet were several centimetres off the ground. Now I played the waiting game…
I didn't want to give myself away like that other prank I played on Penny where I set up a fake email account pretending to be Anton Enus's brother Peter, or his friend Barbara Igtitz (there was a third name that was funnier still, but I can't remember it now), and emailed her complaining that rumour had it Penny was mocking these innocent people and that names were no laughing matter.
This was on Tuesday. It got to Thursday and I couldn't resist asking Penny if she'd checked the mail yet. She hadn't, and by coincidence I was actually asking her this in person, so she said, "Let's go up and check it now." So I was actually present for the unveiling of the Letter From The Pastie!
"Hey, it's another letter from the past," said Penny.
"Aren't you going to open it?" I said nonchalantly.
As soon as she saw the sticker she knew it was a Letter From The Pastie, but I had actually glued the envelope up a lot more securely than I realised at the time, so it took her a while to find the actual letter. Penny claims that she didn't realise I was behind the letter until she saw my handwriting.
Anyway, I was gratified that my stupid prank worked. Life is no fun unless you get to turn throwaway remarks into amusing episodes such as this.
|
Except when she was either naming the image file or writing the tweet, she almost wrote "letter from the pastie", which led to some humorous banter in the office about what this baked good might say in its correspondence.
Anyway, the next day I was teaching out at Monash Caulfield and I got a pie for lunch. I was looking at the brown paper bag it came in and thinking, "Wouldn't it be humorous if I turned this into an envelope for a letter from the pastie?" So when I got home, that's just what I did.
The letter had authentic pastry crumbs inside, and authentic oil stains on it – although these might not have come out properly in the picture. I basically folded the bag almost in half, leaving a flap at the top, and glued up the sides.
For some reason I decided to run with the ye olde font from her previous letter, except I couldn't be bothered running the bag through the printer so I hand-lettered it, working from my screen. I was annoyed that I didn't have the real ye olde font (I think it might be called London or Old English or something to that effect) and I had to use Blackmoor LET.
Of course I didn't want to put my address on the back, so I made a little decorative sticker of a pastie from a bit of paper that was sitting on my desk. I was so proud of my handiwork!
The actual letter from the pastie was pretty much an afterthought once I had made the envelope. I think it said something like, "Dear Penny, My friend Mel said I should write to you to complain that pies get all the attention when they are full of hooves giblets and such, whereas I am full of healthsome farm fresh vegetables…" I signed the letter, "Filo Z Pastie".
I agonised over how to spell 'pastie'. I decided on the 'ie' spelling because I didn't want it to look like "he had a pasty complexion".
Anyway, once I had posted the letter I walked home with such a feeling of triumph that I felt as though my feet were several centimetres off the ground. Now I played the waiting game…
I didn't want to give myself away like that other prank I played on Penny where I set up a fake email account pretending to be Anton Enus's brother Peter, or his friend Barbara Igtitz (there was a third name that was funnier still, but I can't remember it now), and emailed her complaining that rumour had it Penny was mocking these innocent people and that names were no laughing matter.
This was on Tuesday. It got to Thursday and I couldn't resist asking Penny if she'd checked the mail yet. She hadn't, and by coincidence I was actually asking her this in person, so she said, "Let's go up and check it now." So I was actually present for the unveiling of the Letter From The Pastie!
"Hey, it's another letter from the past," said Penny.
"Aren't you going to open it?" I said nonchalantly.
As soon as she saw the sticker she knew it was a Letter From The Pastie, but I had actually glued the envelope up a lot more securely than I realised at the time, so it took her a while to find the actual letter. Penny claims that she didn't realise I was behind the letter until she saw my handwriting.
Anyway, I was gratified that my stupid prank worked. Life is no fun unless you get to turn throwaway remarks into amusing episodes such as this.
Mysterious photo shoot. Today I am trying to stop my hatstand from leaning at such an annoying angle that I can't open the door to my room properly, so I am cleaning up some of the stuff around it.
I found this red straw bag that used to be my handbag. It is oddly like proto-Stam. I opened it up and it was like a time capsule – full of bills from when I lived at Donald Street, pay slips from Field Works Market Research, my ancient little black book full of the addresses and phone numbers of people I don't see any more, and an envelope full of the original prints from the Undiez On Tha Head photo shoot, which may have been an early aspect of my rap star alter ego the Incredible Melk or could have been done just for shits and giggles.
There was also an envelope with some notes on it in my handwriting. They look like ideas for a photo shoot, but I have no idea what it might have been about. Here are the perplexing notes:
Oh god! I think I have just remembered what this was. The then-girlfriend of an acquaintance of mine was trying to break into modelling and these were descriptions of some of the shots in her portfolio. I believe that we were laughing cruelly over coffee about how shonky they all sounded and I wrote down the descriptions.
Awww. I feel so mean now. I wonder if she ever got into modelling. If nothing else, high-waisted shorts are in fashion now.
|
I found this red straw bag that used to be my handbag. It is oddly like proto-Stam. I opened it up and it was like a time capsule – full of bills from when I lived at Donald Street, pay slips from Field Works Market Research, my ancient little black book full of the addresses and phone numbers of people I don't see any more, and an envelope full of the original prints from the Undiez On Tha Head photo shoot, which may have been an early aspect of my rap star alter ego the Incredible Melk or could have been done just for shits and giggles.
There was also an envelope with some notes on it in my handwriting. They look like ideas for a photo shoot, but I have no idea what it might have been about. Here are the perplexing notes:
– on beach – wet white shirt, crouched in sand (on thighs)It looks vaguely satirical, as if I was trying to take the piss out of something or someone. Perhaps it was for the Incredible Melk, but I don't think that even in my much thinner days of 2002 I would have been prepared to pose outside someone's front door in sexy underwear.
– red dress lying in front of someone's front fence (vaseline lens)
– her in studio, really bad 1cm lower lipliner, backwds on chair
– high contrast susp belt/stockings/high heels outside someone's front door
– "street" fashion shots, cut off high waisted shorts, jumper tucked in, thumbs out
Oh god! I think I have just remembered what this was. The then-girlfriend of an acquaintance of mine was trying to break into modelling and these were descriptions of some of the shots in her portfolio. I believe that we were laughing cruelly over coffee about how shonky they all sounded and I wrote down the descriptions.
Awww. I feel so mean now. I wonder if she ever got into modelling. If nothing else, high-waisted shorts are in fashion now.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Possibly the stupidest cat song yet. Since I confessed my last stupid cat song there have been many, severely stupid songs, mostly adapted from pop songs.
My Name Is Graham (to the tune of 'My Name Is Prince') This is one of my favourites. I've never bothered to make up the rest of it because these four lines never fail to satisfy me with their utter inanity.
My name is Graham
And I am fluffy
When it comes to fluff
I am the puffy
Supersqueak (to the tune of 'Superfreak' by Rick James) This one I worked on while walking down to North from my house one day. I still remember giggling like a loon as I went past the library, having just come up with the "super-squeaky, MIAOW" bit.
He's a very fluffy cat
The kind that moults upon your sofa
And he will never leave your eiderdown
Once you get him off your feet
He likes the boys in the house
He says that I'm his all-time favourite
When he makes his move to my room it's the night time
He's never hard to please
That cat is pretty fluffy (that cat's a supersqueak)
The kind of cat you feed a lot (he poos on magazines)
That cat is pretty wild now (that cat's a supersqueak)
He's all right, he's all right
That cat's all right with me, hey-hey HEY!
He's a supersqueak, supersqueak, he's super-squeaky, MIAOW!
Puffy Tail (this one, composed after a deadline-busting all-nighter fuelled by maternal energy drink, is more like freeform poetry)
Puffy tail
Puff! puff!
Puffy tail
Puff! puff!
Graham (to the tune of 'Fame' by David Bowie) My main pleasure with this one is repeatedly singing the cat's name and pretending to add those weird distortion effects that Bowie uses in this song.
Graham! likes to sit on my pillow
Graham! he's a very fluffy fellow
Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham
Graham
What's your name?
and finally, the dumbest of all, which I devised this morning:
Jingle-Jangle Pusscat (to the tune of 'Dingle Dangle Scarecrow')
When all the house was sleeping
And the Mel had gone to bed
Up! jumped the pusscat
And this is what he said:
I'm a jingle-jangle pusscat
I'm a fluffy, fluffy cat
I can drink your tea like this:
I can bite your thumb like that:
|
My Name Is Graham (to the tune of 'My Name Is Prince') This is one of my favourites. I've never bothered to make up the rest of it because these four lines never fail to satisfy me with their utter inanity.
My name is Graham
And I am fluffy
When it comes to fluff
I am the puffy
Supersqueak (to the tune of 'Superfreak' by Rick James) This one I worked on while walking down to North from my house one day. I still remember giggling like a loon as I went past the library, having just come up with the "super-squeaky, MIAOW" bit.
He's a very fluffy cat
The kind that moults upon your sofa
And he will never leave your eiderdown
Once you get him off your feet
He likes the boys in the house
He says that I'm his all-time favourite
When he makes his move to my room it's the night time
He's never hard to please
That cat is pretty fluffy (that cat's a supersqueak)
The kind of cat you feed a lot (he poos on magazines)
That cat is pretty wild now (that cat's a supersqueak)
He's all right, he's all right
That cat's all right with me, hey-hey HEY!
He's a supersqueak, supersqueak, he's super-squeaky, MIAOW!
Puffy Tail (this one, composed after a deadline-busting all-nighter fuelled by maternal energy drink, is more like freeform poetry)
Puffy tail
Puff! puff!
Puffy tail
Puff! puff!
Graham (to the tune of 'Fame' by David Bowie) My main pleasure with this one is repeatedly singing the cat's name and pretending to add those weird distortion effects that Bowie uses in this song.
Graham! likes to sit on my pillow
Graham! he's a very fluffy fellow
Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham, Graham
Graham
What's your name?
and finally, the dumbest of all, which I devised this morning:
Jingle-Jangle Pusscat (to the tune of 'Dingle Dangle Scarecrow')
When all the house was sleeping
And the Mel had gone to bed
Up! jumped the pusscat
And this is what he said:
I'm a jingle-jangle pusscat
I'm a fluffy, fluffy cat
I can drink your tea like this:
I can bite your thumb like that:
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Clean Woman and the Masters Of The Universe. I am Mel, princess of Freelancin' and defender of the cleanliness of Castle Pitt Street.
This is Graham, my fearless friend.
Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic vacuum cleaner and said: "BY THE CLEANLINESS OF PITT STREET!"
"I HAVE THE POWUHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
Doo-doo-doo doo-doo, doo doo-doo doo-doo-doo, doo doo-doo doo-doo-doo dooooooo, Clean Woman!
Graham did not become the mighty Hygiene Cat. He climbed onto the kitchen bench and miaowed his Vet Miaow. Eventually I had to let him outside, where he hid under a bush.
And I became Clean Woman, the most powerful woman in the universe!
Only three others share this secret: our housemates Dan-at-Arms and Talor, and the blogosphere. Together we defend Castle Pitt Street from the evil stenches of Smelletor!
Clean Woman!
|
This is Graham, my fearless friend.
Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic vacuum cleaner and said: "BY THE CLEANLINESS OF PITT STREET!"
"I HAVE THE POWUHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
Doo-doo-doo doo-doo, doo doo-doo doo-doo-doo, doo doo-doo doo-doo-doo dooooooo, Clean Woman!
Graham did not become the mighty Hygiene Cat. He climbed onto the kitchen bench and miaowed his Vet Miaow. Eventually I had to let him outside, where he hid under a bush.
And I became Clean Woman, the most powerful woman in the universe!
Only three others share this secret: our housemates Dan-at-Arms and Talor, and the blogosphere. Together we defend Castle Pitt Street from the evil stenches of Smelletor!
Clean Woman!
