Hello friands!
What’s up? There are so many things up around here that I don’t even know where to begin!!! I say this not to boast, by the way, but to complain. Usually, you see, I choose to live my life very much like an Ingmar Bergman movie, or John Cage’s 4’33”—i.e. with absolutely nothing happening. If I have even one social event on a weekend my preference is to take to my bed afterwards for 24 hours to recover in the manner of a 19th century lady with a delicate constitution, moderate anaemia and a serious undiagnosed mental illness.
Unfortunately, for the last few weeks I have instead had to be a 21st century lady with a busy social and professional schedule that has included, amongst other things, finishing up at my job and hosting a six year old’s birthday party. The number of pleasant social interactions I have been forced to endure with delightful friends, charming colleagues and beloved family members…my god. Nobody knows suffering like I do. Obviously I have looked into whether I might be entitled to a full medical exemption from LIFE ITSELF, but apparently there is nothing medically wrong with me other than mild eczema and a severe enthusiasm deficiency??? Modern life is fuuuuucked up.
Anyway, I got through it all and finished up at work, and I am now officially unemployed self-employed!!! Exciting times!!!! As you will see from the below, I am using my new freedom very productively.
Television
We started watching Australian Idol this week, which is super entertaining in only a mildly troublesome way (by which I mean that the makers of this show are not as preposterously evil as whoever is in charge of Married at First Sight—like in my opinion being a producer on Australian Idol is the moral equivalent of doing the occasional burglary; I mean, it’s not the most noble profession in the world but you could probably get let off with a warning/community service if you didn’t have too many priors. If you’re working on MAFS, on the other hand, you’re basically committing war crimes on a daily basis and deserve to be tried in the Hague).
Australian Idol is a fun show because you get to watch people living their dreams, and you ALSO get to watch people having their dreams brutally snuffed out!!! Quite impressive how one show can simultaneously cater to both the best and worst aspects of human nature. My favourite contestant is Royston, a crazy talented Torres Strait Islander who used his first live performance to call for action on climate change. I love him! There is also a guy on the show whose name is Jasey Fox, and one of the judges is called Amy Shark, and this is making me think about what I would call myself if I were choosing an animal-based nom de plume. I couldn’t decide, so I did what any sane person would do and made an AI generated author photo for my two top options:
Eleanor Elliott Octopus
[Image description: melty-faced person with arms/hands that look like mangled flesh sausages sitting in a library and holding up a book that may or may not have an octopus growing out of the top of it and which also seems to be partially fused with the flesh of the mangled sausage limbs.]
Eleanor Elliott Elephant
[Image description: black and white image of elderly woman with a tiny elephant trunk for a nose, clutching a book in her grotesque, ropey hands. She is either smiling or growling, honestly it’s impossible to say. The book has a picture on the cover of a different woman with a single eye in the centre of her face that is black and unsettling, a little window into a seething, bottomless pit of profound despair. If you look at it or think about it too long these women will start appearing in your dreams. Their intentions are not good.]
I still can’t choose!!!!
I am actually having an author photo taken tomorrow IRL and honestly I am so un-photogenic that I would not be surprised if the pictures end up looking pretty much like these AI ones. It’s a mystery to me why I always look so bad in photos. Obviously it can’t be because that is what I look like in real life—no. The only plausible explanation is that modern camera equipment lacks the sophistication/pixels required to capture my matchless beauty.
Books
I haven’t read a whole lot over the last fortnight, mainly because my rigorous schedule of reality TV is tiring me out. I’m currently keeping up with not just Australian Idol and MAFS, but also Australian Survivor, so basically it’s like I’m completing a full triathlon 3-4 times a week. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been training for this for years, I’m basically a professional athlete—but even for me it has its challenges.
One book I did read was Natasha Brown’s novella, Assembly, which was electrifyingly good. It follows a young black woman working in finance in the UK, and engages with an amazing range of ideas about language, race, class and colonialism in only 100 pages. The cool, still rage of it, the precision of the language—it blew me away. The only thing I didn’t love was the ending, which…well, I won’t spoil it, but the narrator makes a choice which I think I was not wholly convinced by. But I probably would only have been satisfied if it finished with her setting fire to her boyfriend’s parents’ house and running screaming into a distant storm. I suppose I was destined to be disappointed.
Other Things
There has been a lot of kerfuffle in recent times about the Roald Dahl rewrites which are intended to make his books less outdated.
[Image description: black and white photo of a young Roald Dahl wearing a suit and looking both hateful and objectively hot.]
Curiously, unlike most things in life, I don’t have strong opinions about this—I mean, I love his books, he is my favourite Dahl apart from red lentil, and I can see why people object. But it’s also pretty boring when you’re reading aloud to your kids and you have to interrupt the story to explain (again) why fat-shaming is fucked up! Basically, I think it’s probably not the worst thing in the world to have different options.
The whole thing reminded me of this tiktok, which made me laugh (NB maybe don’t listen to this with the volume on while you’re at work). And while we’re here, please enjoy this entirely unrelated tiktok that might be my favourite tiktok of all time (this one is safe for work) (unless you work in a philosophy department).
I should note that I don’t really use tiktok much, because I am older than time itself, and tiktok is only for young people and elder millennials who have not yet accepted that they are no longer young people. However, sometimes I go on there post videos of my cats—pretty groundbreaking stuff—feel free to look me up.
That’s all for now—I suppose I better go and write a novel? Because that is my job now?!!! Lol.
Until next time,
Eleanor xx
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