Well, I'm not really having a KitKat (unfortunately), but I am having a break from blogging. I have nothing interesting to say and no inclination to just ramble on about nothing in particular, so why bother?

I'm on Tumblr almost every day if you're looking for me (though you probably won't want to follow me unless you're a Morrissey/Smiths fan, since that's the theme of at least 90% of my posts), and occasionally Twitter too, though I mostly only use that for @replies. I'm also still misbehaving at a certain LJ community (and if you don't already know what I'm talking about, I'm not going to tell you! *blows raspberry*) - and for you old-school folk, there's always e-mail.

In the meanwhile, enjoy this lovely but completely irrelevant photograph of (1983 vintage) Morrissey I found in an old Japanese magazine called Gargoyle.


I've become quite fixated on these kooky little Japanese magazines lately. They're like expensive little picture books, since I can't read or speak anything in the language besides these two short sentences:

私の名前はアリです。私はモリッシーが大好きです。

I'll leave it up to an online translator to tell you what that means if you don't already know, but I'll give you a hint: "モリスジー" means "Morrissey".

Adios amigos. Be excellent to each other.

'I do maintain that if your hair is wrong, your entire life is wrong.'
- Morrissey

Well, my entire life has been wrong for years, so in this case I daresay a bad haircut couldn't possibly make it any worse. Ergo, today I finally got one (a haircut, that is - not necessarily a bad one, though I haven't quite made up my mind about that yet) and can at least cross one thing off my list of "things that should have been done nearly a year ago but were for one reason or another neglected". And no, that's not an exaggeration - I absolutely loathe getting my hair cut and rarely do so, for a number of reasons:

1. Hairdressers are generally talkative. I'm not. Unsurprisingly, this makes for a rather awkward situation when they're chattering away about heaven-knows-what and I'm looking awkward and mumbling the occasional 'err...yes, that's good'.

2. The salon smell. Oh God, the smell. I'm sure many brain cells were killed this afternoon from breathing in all the hair dye and nail product chemicals. Hopefully not too many of mine, but prolonged exposure to them might explain why the stylist actually seemed to be enjoying and humming along to the horrible techno-pop music playing in the salon. Which brings me to...

3. The music. Never in my life have I been to a hair salon that wasn't playing the most vile, eardrum-damaging rubbish in the world; usually techno/trance "songs" that have lyrics consisting of about three different words and a tune that doubtfully even involves real instruments - just computerised synthesizers. It's like being trapped in a nightclub, except you can't buy some sort of mind-mangling cocktail to help you block out the sound. I also suspect my hairdresser today wasn't a Morrissey fan, because she just looked at me blankly when I asked her to "supernaturally change me" and "psychologically save me".

4. I really just don't want strange people touching me, okay? (Emphasis on the "strange" - the aforementioned stylist also had the same hairstyle as Cruella DeVille and what appeared to be a cupcake drawn on her hand in biro.)

All that said though, I suppose the end result could have been worse. Of course, I don't know how it will look tomorrow, since the "scrunching" will have worn out by then (apparently this is, in hairdressing terms, the practise of squeezing your still-wet hair in their fist to make it dry wavy), but hopefully it won't be too bad, because I sure as hell don't intend to go back there now for about another year.

The haircut in question, in case you're wondering:



Poorly-lit webcam shite, I'm afraid (and I'm -gasp!- not even wearing any make-up) - but if truth be told, I really just wanted to show off the beautiful necklace daffodil_field made for me. And on the off chance anybody reading this isn't a Smiths fan, that's Morrissey and Johnny Marr on the pendant. I fully intend to be buried in this necklace, and I say that with absolute seriousness.

Unrelated but important heads-up, people: today is Shrove Tuesday, a.k.a Pancake Day, a.k.a the day when the most lapsed of Catholics suddenly rediscover religion temporarily in the name of sweet, scrummy breakfast foods. Of course, if you actually do happen to be Catholic, tomorrow (as far as I know) marks the start of Lent, so enjoy those hotcakes before you have to spend 40 days depriving yourself of everything that makes life enjoyable.

As for me, this Lent I'm giving up meat, sex and cigarettes. I won't need it, but wish me luck anyway...

I told my mother tonight that I'm asexual. She said virtually nothing in response, which leaves me to interpret her reaction as either:

A) Complete indifference / 'So? What's the big deal?'
B) Shock, to be followed tomorrow with a weepy 'But I've already planned your wedding and made a list of baby names!' call, or
C) 'Huh? Wait...what are you on about? I'm trying to watch Law and Order here...'

Of course, it's really not something she should be terribly concerned/upset about. In fact, if it were my (very hypothetical, given the circumstances) daughter, I think I'd actually be relieved. Anyway, having told my mum is simply newsworthy because for a long time I just could never find a way to work it into a conversation without making it seem like a dramatic announcement, which it shouldn't need to be. At least hopefully now she'll stop hinting at wanting to set me up with her colleagues' desperate sons.

In other news:

The new uni semester has started and now, as a philosophy student, I'm spending my days pondering deep, meaningful questions like, Why are we here? What's life all about? Is the answer to life, the universe and everything really 42? (Personally, I have doubts. I think it's 37.) How did Morrissey stop his pants from falling down at The Smiths' 1986 gig in Nottingham?

No, I kid. Actually, the questions I'm really pondering right now are: Will this be on the exam? Do I actually have to read all this?! How did Morrissey stop his pants from falling down at The Smiths' 1986 gig in Nottingham? I'm not sure what to think yet of my new classes, to be honest, but I suppose I'll have something to say about them in a few weeks once I've actually done some work. I don't think it's as airy-fairy as people jokingly assume it to be though, despite having classes with farty names like "Mind, Meaning and Metaphysics". (Way deep, man!)

But in other, more important news:

MORRISSEY IS RELEASING ANOTHER COMPILATION ALBUM AND OMFG I HAVE TO GET IT AND THE GLAMOROUS GLUE SINGLE ON EVERY FORMAT OR ELSE I'LL DIE IN A FIT OF IRRECOVERABLE FANGIRL ANGUISH!!!!1!1!!

Sorry about that. Let me rephrase: there's a new Morrissey compilation coming out on April 25th (yes, I know it's all "reissue, repackage, repackage" - hush, you!), along with the release of "Glamorous Glue" on CDS and 7", and it would make me very happy indeed if I could acquire a copy. :) Not that it's the highlight of my life right now and in fact my sole reason for continuing to exist, no siree... *whistles innocently*

( Psst! There's a celebratory Morrissey picspam under the cut if you're interested, which of course I don't doubt you all are... )

Aside from making dramatic revelations to my mother (*cough*BS*cough*), studying very hard (*cough*BS*cough*) and dribbling over the prospect of new Morrissey releases (actually, that's completely accurate), I've done nothing since my last entry but sniffle, sneeze and try to relieve myself of both lungs via my trachea. I caught a cold a couple of weeks ago, which soon led to bronchitis, which presumably will soon lead to death. Tragic, I know. My will, which is handwritten and contained within the bum compartment of a Mr Potato Head, states that I'm leaving everything to the cats, but since I'm not old enough yet to be a crazy cat lady (and in fact don't have a single cat at all at the moment), I'm now leaving my entire estate* to daffodil_field , marr_velous , yvee_beth and foldedtowels to fight over.

As you can tell, I'm obviously delirious from the ravages of my illness. I think I'd better go and make myself a cup of tea or something.



* My entire estate = about 200 Morrissey/Smiths vinyls and CDs; 52 novelty keyrings; 2 Morrissey bobbleheads; 1 old, smelly dog and $9.65 (about six quid) in small change.

Oh, Livejournal. I have been neglecting you lately, haven't I? Blame Tumblr - that addictive, manipulative little bastard with its sirenic lure of silly jokes, pretentious literary quotes and enough Morrissey pictures to cause eyegasm after eyegasm...

Since it's been a whole week since my last entry though, allow me to quickly recap the last 7 (not terribly eventful) days:

We got a new TV for the living room on Saturday (sad, but yes, this is actually the highlight of the week). I barely even bother with telly these days because almost everything that's ever on is rubbish, but it's awfully nice to watch Morrissey music videos on a 50" plasma screen...

I can rest easy knowing that my brother is going to be out of the country for the next two weeks (and therefore won't be bothering me), on a "business trip" in Las Vegas, Miami and Barbados. Oddly enough, I thought I'd be jealous but I'm not. What the hell would I do in a place like Barbados anyway?!

Received my copy of Suedehead: the best of Morrissey on vinyl. I nearly had to sell a kidney to pay for it (the vinyl version is pretty rare and therefore far from cheap), but it still would have been worth it even then. Observe:


Have barely slept since last Monday. And by "barely slept", I mean I've had the equivalent of one night's sleep in a whole week. Surely I should be dead by now?

Listened to "Ici, les enfants" by The Monochrome Set on a loop for about 17 collective hours between Saturday and Sunday nights, and I'm listening to it again now. Erm...yeah...

I'm heading off to the doctor this evening to get a new prescription for my sleeping pills (refer to the second last point in the above list), which I'm not happy about because 1) I hate going to the medical clinic (germs, ahhhh!), and 2) I know he's going to want to check my iron levels and then I'll get the "red meat lecture" (a.k.a the "If you don't eat a steak, you'll die" lecture), which is utterly ridiculous because the doctor knows as well as I do that my anaemia is caused by an inability to absorb iron, not a lack of brutally slaughtered cattle in my diet.

Maybe I need to go and eat some spinach or something.

Yep, it's Valentine's Day - a.k.a the one day of the year where almost everybody in the whole world gets on my nerves because they're either babbling on blithely about how they're celebrating the day with their sweetheart, or complaining about being single. I obviously sympathise far more with the latter because I can understand that most people don't want to be alone, but at the same time, most people who are alone today are no more alone than they were yesterday or will be again tomorrow. I don't dislike Valentine's Day because I'm bitter about being single (because, hand on my heart, I wouldn't have it any other way): I dislike Valentine's Day because of how it makes so many people feel they are unloveable, undesirable or otherwise defective because no one sent them a bunch of flowers or box of chocolates. It's really little more than Hallmark's way of saying 'haha, nobody loves you!', when you think about it.

But, like I said, it's not something that concerns me personally, so let's move on, shall we?

I finally enrolled in some classes for the upcoming uni semester - I did succumb to the temptations of philosophy, so instead of sitting alone in my room all day, wondering why I'm even alive and trying to figure out the purpose of my miserable existence, I'll be writing essays about why I'm alive and what the purpose of my miserable existence might be. Actually, in all seriousness I have no idea what my classes will involve. I have a feeling it might be a bit more than just some airy-fairy discussions of what the meaning of life is though.

I don't really have much else to say tonight...perhaps I'll just leave you with a (very fitting) little video for Valentine's Day.

'I know I need hardly say
how much I love your casual way
but please put your tongue away

a little higher and we're well away

the dark nights are drawing in
and your humour is as black as them
I look at yours, you laugh at mine
and "love" is just a miserable lie''

Not the best quality, I know - but just listen to that intro! It's exquisite.

I feel like I should apologise for my last miserable entry. Of course, I know logically I shouldn't have to, but I do feel compelled to because I don't like to drag other people down with my negativity. And I'm feeling a lot better now anyway, so rest assured it's back to my usual style of self-indulgent rambling.

I was distressed to realise today that my uni holidays will be over in a little over two weeks now, and that the enrolment deadline for the upcoming semester is Sunday. I don't know what the hell I'm doing with my life. Oddly enough, that's not a statement brimming with woe and despair, but just the factual reality of it all - what might actually be more worrying is the fact that I'm reasonably content at the moment to just bobble along aimlessly, greedily sampling degrees and courses like an alcoholic at a wine tasting event. Perhaps one day I'll unwittingly stumble across one I can stick with. Who knows? Right now I'm leaning towards enrolling in a philosophy degree, which at the moment seems very appealing and quite suited to my personality. Think about it: it's the perfect area of study for someone who likes to think long and hard about everything without actually doing much!

eBay (or more accurately, my addiction to buying Morrissey records on eBay) is still steering me closer to the brink of bankruptcy, but at least I'm going broke happily. My vinyl copy of Maladjusted arrived yesterday and I've already ripped off the packaging (so, no longer in mint condition). It felt like peeing up against the outside wall of a church, but really, what's the point of keeping something like that in mint condition if you never intend to resell it? Nothing could induce me to part with any of my Morrissey records - I'd sooner sell both my kidneys and go on dialysis if I were ever so hard up for cash that such a thing might be considered necessary!

Regarding other acts of fangirlish obsessiveness, I've also been trying to translate some French interviews from old (as in, early 90s old) issues of Best, L'Indic and Les Inrockuptibles, which is proving difficult, to say the very least, since my French is so poor that every other word requires me to fumble for "Le Dictionnaire Français". Irritatingly, I'd struggled through an entire page of one before I realised it was actually a translation of an interview originally published in English, that I happened to have sitting a few feet away from me in an old issue of Q. Argh! At least scanning the pictures isn't quite so tedious. It's simply a matter of sitting them down on the scanner plate and pressing a few buttons. Much more suited to my current levels of concentration!

Speaking of tedious things though: this entry. I'm taking my dog down to the bay tonight (to chase seagulls and people eating kebabs), so I might head off now.

Here, have a pretty picture.



Toodle-oo, folks!

[EDIT: 10/02/11 2045] I just realised this was my 100th entry here. Hurrah! *breaks open bubbly*

I'm in that awkward state of limbo between wanting to reach out to someone (anyone...) and just wanting to curl into myself and sulk.

As much as I value my "me time", every now and then that intense solitude just becomes overwhelming. People are, by nature, social creatures. I far less so than most, I suspect, but that doesn't mean I'm content to be completely detached from the outside world. Being online helps ever-so-slightly, but without being in direct contact with another person, it's like wandering down the city streets by yourself: you're surrounded by others, but you're ultimately still alone. I'm not hoping for anybody to come along and hug me or hold my hand (my "keep your hands to yourself if you want to keep them at all" policy is still strictly enforced as always), but it would be nice to just have someone to talk to. There have been times when I have gone for so long without physically speaking that when I do finally say something, I have to clear my throat a few times before any sound will come out because my vocal chords have gone into such a state of inertia. That's not healthy.

I don't know why I'm even bothering to say this, but it's 2 o'clock in the morning and I can't sleep (as usual), and I just need to get this off my chest before I start arguing with myself over whether I prefer The Smiths or Morrissey's solo stuff (an impossible decision to make, of course). That, my friends, is what such desperate, crushing loneliness will lead a person to.

Even my dog is ignoring me and sleeping on the bathroom floor because it's too hot to sit beside me on the carpet.

Rejected by my dog. For the love of Moz, how much worse can it get?!

Oh dear. It's been well over a week now since I even left for Melbourne, and I've already been home for four days and never blogged. Oops.

Obligatory holiday recap: I spent a bit of time with my mother (obviously). I nearly starved to death on several occasions because I couldn't ever seem to find restaurants that served anything I'd willingly eat, so in the end I spent about five days consuming nothing but tomato toasties, rice crackers and lollies. Despite leaving Brisbane with about $23 in my wallet, I came home with a new mini hi-fi system, two records, the Japanese edition of Our Frank (Morrissey single), a pair of shoes...and an electric citrus juicer. (Thanks, Mum!) I also got chased by a pigeon, lost my bag in Newport Pagnell the food court at Melbourne Central shopping centre (thankfully recovered), and spent several hours playing Ms. Pac-Man for free at some hipster clothing shop. Fun times!

Anyway, my mother is all settled in there now, though I think she's still at a bit of a loose end by herself with nothing much to do (you know...besides work). The last I heard she's been going to Chinese restaurants by herself (oh noes! Find her some friends, quick!), watching Morrissey music videos (having acquired copies of The Malady Lingers on and The Smiths: the complete picture the day after she arrived...hehe), and now tonight I've received a camera phone picture to show me she's put a picture of Morrissey (that I gave her, of course) on her bedside table:


Bizarre to think that instead of me becoming more like my mother as I get older, she's becoming more like me as she gets older... Defies nature, it does! But then again, don't some of the best things in life?

After enjoying some rather pleasant Melbourne weather last week though, it's absolutely horrific being back in Brisbane with all the stinking humidity that makes it feel about ten degrees (Celsius, that is) hotter than it actually is. I keep feeling like I'm choking on plain air - that's how thick the humidity is. I need to move somewhere cold, grey and drizzly...like Manchester. It's the Holy Land for Mozzerites, you know.

In the meanwhile though, I'm going to draw a cold bath, then sit between two fans and suck on ice cubes while watching Law and Order: SVU. Somehow that bloody franchise still reels me in after all these years...

← That emoticon? That's the face I've been making all throughout dinner this evening. We had a bit of a send-off for my mum tonight (since she's moving interstate on Thursday) at a buffet restaurant at the casino here, and two and a half hours of watching my family scarf down plate after plate of prawns and oysters has been enough to make me want to heave. Though really, I shouldn't complain too much - it could have been much worse. I mean, they could have taken me to a steakhouse...

I'm actually going down to Melbourne on Thursday too, to help Mum "unpack" (ie. set up her computer, television, etc.), which didn't sound terribly appealing at first (aside from the obvious, I hate airports and find the whole rigmarole of air travel quite stressful), but I've warmed to the idea substantially due to the prospect of seeing two small theatre productions at part of the Midsumma Festival: a one man play about Oscar Wilde's incarceration and a condensed version of The Importance of being Earnest. I have no idea if they'll even be any good, but for $20/22 per ticket, they seem worth checking out anyway. And I can never resist anything that relates to Oscar Wilde, of course.

Aside from going to those plays and helping my mum move though, I don't plan on doing anything much in Melbourne. I've been there quite a number of times before so I've exhausted all the tourist attractions, and besides, I haven't the money to do anything after spending the last of my pay on a mint condition Maladjusted LP. I could hardly pass it up, though - it's not a record I've seen often at all for a reasonable price (or for that matter, really seen often at all...), never mind for a reasonable price and in mint condition, not even removed from the packaging.

On the topic of Maladjusted though, I really cannot for the life of me understand why so many people (particularly music critics) consider it to be a weak album. I know that as an obsessive Morrissey devotee my opinion is probably somewhat very biased, but in my mind it's an utterly brilliant album and I can see none of the weak spots critics keep trying to allude to (or even name outright). The opening title track knocks you right off your feet (figuratively, of course... ); "Trouble loves me" and "Wide to receive" are both equally breath-taking but in a gentler way, and "Alma matters", the first single from the album, has long been one of my all-time favourite Morrissey songs. It's mind-boggling to think that even Morrissey himself disliked both "Papa Jack" and "Roy's keen" so much afterwards that he removed them from the 2009 reissue, but I adore them both. "Roy's keen" in particular I have a great affection for and I will defend it to the death. Every time I hear someone say the lyrics are 'inane' or 'a bit silly', I just want to scream. They're not. It's an analogy. Of course, perhaps my oh-so-deep-and-meaningful interpretation of the song isn't even accurate, but I do think it's far more profound than its literal interpretation would suggest. Finally, "Sorrow will come in the end", which sadly was only included on non-UK pressings until the re-release, is - dare I say it? - deliciously evil. As a song that's not even sung, but simply spoken in a menacing tone with an ominous-sounding orchrestra in the background, you feel you'd hate to be on the receiving end of Morrissey's hatred. I imagine Mike Joyce still wakes up in the middle of the night with cold shakes as this song replays in his conscious...

Okay, I've got that off my chest now - rabid fangirl rant over. Maladjusted is brilliant, Morrissey can do no wrong in my eyes, rah rah rah. I'm sure you get the point!

But if you actually need proof...

Sometimes - just sometimes - life is good to me.

After whinging and whining to my mother for the best part of a month about my laptop being on the blink, she finally took pity on me and wired some money through to me to buy a new one. After spending a whopping 15 minutes flipping through catalogues for something "good but affordable" (translation: significantly on sale), I settled on this nifty all-in-one touchscreen PC:


Given my penchant for anthropomorphising, I had to give my new baby a name and have christened him Bunbury. Because what do I actually end up doing most of the time when I'm bunburying? Sit in front of the computer, of course.

So, since last night I've been busying myself setting it all up and experimenting with the touchscreen features. I daresay the novelty will wear off soon and then I'll just be grumbling about how hard it is to keep clean, but right now I'm still quite amused by it all and have wasted more time than I should admit to popping virtual bubblewrap, finger-painting and gently caressing pictures of Morrissey (I kid, I kid... ).

If I actually believed in fate, I would be convinced too that I was somehow destined to get this particular computer from this particular shop, on the basis of the name of the street that turned out to be right across the road from there:


No joke: Morrissey Street. I must have looked a total prat, standing beneath the street sign (and actually wearing a Morrissey t-shirt at the time...) to take a picture, but I just had to document the amazing coincidence. Sounds silly, perhaps, but it's the cheap thrills in life I have to relish because, let's face it, there are no big thrills in my terribly dull life!

Cute story of the day: While I was in a café in town this afternoon, a sparrow swooped in and landed right in front of me on the table. I was itching to take a photo on my phone, but I couldn't bear to disturb him/her by leaning over to grab it from my bag (on the opposite chair). It was so sweet though. I was only having a cup of coffee so I couldn't offer it any food, but fortunately there were still a few crumbs left by the last patrons, so he/she just pecked at them until someone got up from the next table and it got a fright a flew away again.

Gosh, the quality of this blog is in a sad state of decline if I'm writing about seeing a sparrow in a café, isn't it?

I think this is a sign I should shut up then. Back to popping virtual bubblewrap, eh?