Sister Muscle Mary: Faggy Nun struggling with (against?) tensions between repressive monotheistic religions and the sequins and glitter of the gay scene. Often caught straddling the public private divide. Proud masculine aspirations, but not very strong, or toned for that matter.

Sister Mary Clancy of the Overflow: Soft Ungainly feminine character exploring self expression on stage.

Fagulous / Alice Cooper: Faggy thigh-sexual swaggering demeanour. Super-camp.

Gaylourdes: A queer voice, potentially works better on paper than in performance. More manifestation of queer desire than a stand-alone character identity.

It’s a little easier now, to get back to this blog. Over the coming months, I’ll be refining this site to be more representative of performances that I do, and include some documentation, and advance notice of shows etc. Big shoutout to S for suggesting this strategy in the first place. You could say i’ve got my hands on the wheel.

Imperfect Match
Tutu Community Queer Space
Price: $8 or $10 solidarity price.
Start Time: Friday, 28 August 2009 at 8:00pm
Location: The Red Rattler
Street: 6 Faversham st
Town/City: Marrickville, Australia
Email: tutucrew@gmail.com

Leave your name at the door for the chance to date one of the three ‘creme de la cremes’ of the Perfect Match scene:

SISTER MUSCLE MARY is a Faggy Nun struggling with tension between repressive monotheistic religions and the sequins and glitter of the gayscene. Often caught stradding the public private divide. Proud masculine aspirations, but not very strong, or toned for that matter.

FISTY SCENT is interchangeable she can be masculine he can be feminine. either way she’ll do whatever you want. he won’t ever say no. she wants to get a house and settle down if that’s what you want. or he wants to travel the world - isn’t that your dream? really he’s plasticine and moulds to what you want. chicken for dinner? no sweat! he’ll get baking. wanna go for a vegan dumpster dive - she doesn’t even need gloves! what movie does she
want to see? you’ll never know. what do you want to see?

and…? well stay tuned and after the add break we’ll introduce the Mystery Dreamboat…

Hosted by Regrette.

We will also get the answer to this plaguing question: Will Dexter the robot find their perfect match? Or will negative compatibility result in a dance war?…

There will also be Platonic Life Partner Commitment Ceremonies and a Feel The Burn Rejection Booth plus other installations.

DJ’s Huck Spin, Fisty Cuffs, Pony, and Okapi doing call outs and playing love and ‘I don’t need you babe’ song dedications.

This is a fundraiser for the Tutu Community Queer Space at 22 Enmore Rd. Tutu aims to strengthen and politicise the community through events and discussions happening within the space.

This night, as well as the Tutu space, is open to all queer friendly people.

wordle image of this post:

Another profound thing is that Laika has found a mouse. Which is great, and entertaining for her, but rather inconvenient as it’s 2am and she’s barking. dear reader, I’ll leave you here, and try and calm the furrchild down, and shoo the mouse to relative safety.

I remember reading once that it is still not understood how the giraffe manages to pump an adequate blood supply all the way up to its head; but it is hard to imagine that anyone would therefore conclude that giraffes do not have long necks - Robert Solow

Quoted in Mankiw, G. (2006) “The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer”. Available at: So, everything is possible. there remains an imperative to dream like a giraffe. i wonder how big a giraffe’s heart is? hmm, that would be definitely procrastinating. oh, they are beautiful and noble animals, with their piny blue drool swaying in the breeze.

one: The international children’s digital library!
I have read 1 book so far: The Blue Sky which is heartbreakingly beautiful and not one of those stories about making everything nice and happy for the children.

two: An online collection of 19th century concealed hearing devices! Curiously, while there are timelines up to the present of the development of hearing device technology, and histories of clinical institutions for the deaf, there’s no links to any deaf culture sites. Like, it’s all down one path of medical research, patents and breakthroughs, and no acknowledgement that people might create their own communities or solutions for living outside of a medical discourse.

three: quintura - a visual search engine that builds a word cloud as you search. nice.

four: base camp - a free web based project management tool. I might be getting more exicted about the tools than the content though.

five: web directions south - good resource spot for web tools and skillz.

six: palabras_ digital archive, community collaboration project, beautiful interface, counterhegemonic design.

http://www.project10tothe100.com/index.html

from metadata harvesting to ideas harvesting under the charity rhetoric of helping people!

oh my!

maybe I should enter.

I’m not sure i’m a very good storyteller - each step of the way I like to shine a torch down other paths, wonder if they ever hook up again, imply whole other journeys with a syllable. Writing a report for uni yesterday reminded me of the shimmeringness of dreaming and how I like to think and dream while I’m reading. This is the quality that I want my writing to have, except I have a lot of psychological blocks to writing assessments these days and really struggle to complete simple assignments.

But…a recent art exhibition opening for “Avatar”, (at the Australian Centre for Photography) included an installation called “Havidol”, a spoof on lifestyle marketing of medication, featuring lots of images of conservative happy shiny white heteros with clean hair and teeth, and tennis. My younger sister made a surprise appearance as their interactive performative art - dressed as a Prozac nurse in trendy stilettos doling out mints from a large glass jar with a dental mirror. She works for ACP so her role may have more to do with the actual gallery’s value added production effort than part of the official artwork. I grimace when I think about this work, because it was boring and the kind of culture jamming that is no longer contentious, and there’s my sister having a ball dressing up and embodying a gentle critique of the feminised history of the nursing profession, and codes of feminine conduct in today’s late capitalist world.

Shortly after seeing her, I met a fine arts lecturer who made the unfortunate social gaffe of admitting her concerns that young artists today are discovering (20 year old) new media technique/ performance art as though they are the first to do so: “and you think, are they doing it for the right reasons?” An odd thing to say, but certainly related to what I was thinking. New media art history perhaps hasn’t been old enough to warrant codifying and retrieving “lost history”; indeed, perhaps they don’t want to be historicised or drawn into a grand narrative; the stuff and value of temporal artworks is often the inability to record them in halls of of the academe…maybe it’s even zooming ahead and can’t wait for academics to catch up?

Anyway, more platitudes later. For now, a provocative epithet: There is nothing so practical as a good theory, from a curiously named conference site: Balisage

A similar thing surfaced a few weeks ago, different friends described difficult tasks as akin to “pushing shit/water up a hill with a broom/ fork”.

Reminds me of the old favourite “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic”. There’s something nice about getting all poetic on impossibilities and difficulties.

Night time

I went out walking and the cats watched me
All through the back of Newtown along the trainline
On top of terrace walls and under cars
Their heads turned silently or not at all
And I strolled, marvelling at the orange light
And purple dimples of the clouds.

When I started out I saw a boy who was tall and a girl in a green cardigan cross my path at Abercrombie St. I see them again at Codrington as our routes cross over again. I descend into the shadows, closer still to the tracks, quieter darker streets where the cats are. Under the giant old oak tree, past the three proud people graffiti, down the little lane I’m convinced is haunted.

My night companions appear at the end of the lane, just near Macdonaldtown station, I follow them almost to the Imperial. I am glad to see them again.

The air was just so still and the breeze so slight when I took the rubbish out this evening, that I couldn’t let it go to waste and fall asleep on the couch, waiting for someone to get home. Perhaps it was something about the wide open roads on the documentary about the Grafton Jacaranda Queen that make me homesick for big quiet streets. Familiar streets to stroll. It was a night for my new haircut, my soft ears pricked for any sound. I was all eyes and ears, keen to get out and just walk. Anywhere. Wherever I could. Because I could. Because my short hair gives me new kid attitude. I pulled on some jeans and headed out.

The wind buffered the back of my head, gently, as I walked down Union St. It’s a long straight narrow street, one way, which changes direction in the middle. What beautiful big old houses. I bet some are empties. One house is terrible, it’s made of two big terraced townhouses both painted apricot with brown detailing, and in the left hand ground level there’s a giant brown roller door for a garage, and a car in front. I thought about making a movie with model cars which all live in hollowed out terrace houses.

The jasmine and night flowers were out. I considered going to St Peters, or finding a phone booth and calling Ali, but I couldn’t remember her number, and decided that I just wanted to be alone. I sauntered back up King, crossing over at Newtown square and skulking up Eliza. I came to a stop in Camperdown memorial rest park, and sat on a bench.

There are noises all around the edge of the park, the middle is bright and green in the lamplight, clear as a sweeping gesture. Will it last? There is a wonderful bug buzzing around on the grass nearby. I realise later it’s a cockroach, as it crawls along the wall behind me. It’s a beautiful witching hour, I watch a couple of people walk by, I felt happy, I felt at peace. I felt good and free. Less angst. Just eyes and ears. And nose. Jeans and a pullover, and two hands in pockets. A collared shirt underneath. Preppy, with glasses. Happy that the weather made it all so simple. Happy to be alone, strolling. Biding time in a park at night. Loving the Newtown streets, checking up on old haunts.

I walked past Hordern St, past our old house, superlatively done up by the lesbians who bought it. They even renovated the outhouse down the back of the garden. Further on, past the back of the Newtown North and the Trocadero, on the other side of Missenden Rd, is another long line of beautiful terrace houses. Different styles, some of them are positively scandinavian looking, with their steep steep rooves and dormer windows, tiles gleaming in the streetlight.

I turned back up towards King St, up the little paved street with all the tiny old apartments built almost right up to the gutter, letterboxes perched sideways on each window ledge. When I reached Lander St, I stopped again, and stood across the road from our house, looking up at the stringybark tree behind me, and gazing over the orange sky. It’s so beautiful! And the little gallery with it’s white roller door and ivy covered wall, two doors down. I wanted to stand outside for a long time, but it was time to move on. Yes, I think I could be Gaylourdes.

October 2006

They Rule allows you to create maps of the interlocking directories of the top companies in the US in 2004.
The data was collected from their websites and SEC filings in early 2004, so it may not be completely accurate - companies merge and disappear and directors shift boards.

from the friendly neighbourhood newmedia filter