dee - viscerate.com

GIRL
Diana Evans
called Dee
since May 25th, 1980
terrorising inner-city Melbourne
consuming flat whites
producing words, hers and other people's
contact dee [at] viscerate [dot] com

SITE
viscerate.com
consisting of personal reflections
photography by Amy Q
archives here

Saturday, March 17, 2001

And some pina colada Karmic Jellybeans (TM) for this hussy for her contribution to my quote list: "Do you ever have those days when you're hitting yourself upside the head with a frozen sock and you realise that a small hand axe would work so much better?"

For the speed and wonderful imagery of that quote, Megsy-Wegsy also scores a trip over to Susan's house (no points if you knew who the Eels were before Roadtrip). That must be her sister, right?

10:05 PM - link to this - (0) comments

Ooooh, someone in my hall uses the same soap as my father. Well, presumably my whole family uses it, since my father isn't so obsessed with any facet of his personal cleanliness (unlike Mr American Psycho...) to use a different sort of soap than the one already in the shower. It's just that no one smells quite like my father, and the scent wafting down the corridor is Eau de Dad. It's clean, and sort of no-nonsense. No fancy flowers or spices, just getting-rid-of-dirtness. It smells like scrubbed skin and meticulous, but utilitarian fingernails.

I miss my Daddy. *sniffle*

9:13 PM - link to this - (0) comments

Quote that sent me into gales of laughter: What is the sound of one hand smacking you upside your head?

Also funny quote that this reminds me of: Remember, when someone annoys you, it takes 42 muscles in your face to frown. But it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and smack them upside the head.

I sense a list in the making here. Anyone else have quotes using the phrase 'upside the head' in them? I'll pay in karmic jelly beans (black, of course).

8:59 PM - link to this - (0) comments

Thursday, March 15, 2001

So mystic experiences are different only because those who experience them are of different faiths and hence use different vocabularies, symbolisms and mythologies to describe them. Or maybe it's because they are of those faiths, and hence geared towards having a mystic experience of a certain type. Which came first, the faith or the religion? Perhaps the experience isn't the result of the faith, but rather the faith is the result of an attempt to describe the experience. What is a mystic experience, anyway? Is enlightenment always good? Doesn't that presuppose that this divine figure (what I jokingly refer to as DOUG - Deity Of Unspecified Gender) is benevolent, good, light. What about Heaven's Gate and all that? Did they have a mystic experience? Maybe they were enlightened to death.

I love this class. Deeply, spiritually, but not sexually. Give me time, though. It's only week three.

8:06 PM - link to this - (0) comments

My watch keeps stopping. Usually when I'm asleep. As if it was kinetically charged, and being away from my skin makes it sulk and die. It's not that cold yet. I don't know what its problem is. It does raise an interesting issue, though, in the vein of the buddhism lecturer the other day declaring that you knew you had slept because time has passed. If time hasn't passed, have I slept?

Yes, this is a stupid argument. I'm tired. I haven't been sleeping. Or maybe I have.

I had something else to say here, but it seems to have slipped my memory. That's been happening a lot recently. Taking notes and realise I've forgotten part of the sentence that came barely a minute ago. Is this sleep-deprivation?

3:43 PM - link to this - (0) comments

Wednesday, March 14, 2001

Zonked out of my mind in a lecture on karma. The only way to escape the eternal cycle of samsara - birth and death - is to realise that there is no you. (Immediate thoughts of spoons and black leather.) But who is doing the realising? It's a Catch-22, and hence the people closest to it are those who will most likely never attain it. The closer you think you are, the more you think of 'you'. Hah! Sucked in!!

I went home and had a nap. I was so a cat in a past life. Mrow.

Woke up almost too late for dinner, but it was all cream pasta sauces, and I don't like them. They make me feel terribly icky. So a fast food run was engaged in. Waiting in KFC, we decide on 21 pieces, giving us cold KFC (food of the gods) for the rest of the week. Much to our chagrin, they no longer serve the stuff in buckets. We wanted a bucket! The girl behind the counter gives us a lecture on how we only want a bucket to pretend we're American sitcom characters. We just smile and nod, and think she's a blithering idiot.

Loud discussion on the Kama Sutra on the way through the McDonalds drive-thru draws many odd looks.

9:25 PM - link to this - (0) comments

Tuesday, March 13, 2001

I love button-up jeans. They're just so much easier. The fact that I don't actually have to undo anything, just grab and wrench. No, I'm serious. If I do it just right - and I do, because I've had these jeans for a couple of years now and I wear them a lot. Oh yeah, and I have washed them in the last three months, thank you (2 points) - if I do it just right, the buttons come undone in a flash. And I don't have to worry about pulling them off like happens all the time to my other pants, because these are quintuple-stitched into denim, for DOUG's-sake.

Oh yeah, and it only works if you're in the jeans. Trust me, it's been tested. And don't ask by who. It should be patently obvious.

Incidentally, I was going to write this paper tonight, but I've been playing five card Texas Hold 'Em (that would be poker) for the past two hours. We started out playing five card draw and first hand, I get a 8-high straight. Beautiful. And J1 beats me with a bloody Queen-high straight. Fucker! I paid him back later, though, when we bluffed everyone out and I won with an Ace high. He had a Queen high. Woohoo!

11:36 PM - link to this - (0) comments

"Think of Buddhism as ice-cream. There are different flavours of ice-cream, but it all comes from the same root, this milk product, and the basis is vanilla. That's Theravada, the basic, plain, nothing added strand of Buddhism. And then you get Mahayana buddhism, where there are some additives to make it taste better, and you've got neapolitan, with the chocolate and strawberry but still the vanilla too. You start getting into cassata - with cherries and nuts and all sorts - when you get into Tibetan buddhism."

(From my lecture this morning on Buddhist mysticism. Fun eh?)

1:25 PM - link to this - (0) comments

Last night I saw Charlie's Angels, since I missed it at the all-nighter. I know this is probably going to get me lynched by a large number of people, but I thought it was awful. Really and truly bad, in that teeth-grinding, American-sitcom sense of the word. Yes, it had cool bits. No, those cool bits were not cool enough, nor plentiful enough, to overcome the mickey-mouse plot, cutesy girly interaction and general cliche-ness of the whole thing. The fighting was nothing near as good as I'd been led to believe it was going to be, and it definitely paled by comparison with either Matrix or (most definitely) Crouching Tiger. I liked the end credits and Lucy Liu's wardrobe. And, to a lesser extent, other little bits, like Lucy's dominatrix routine, and Ms Diaz's 'crushing of larynx with boot' trick.

But basically, bah humbug and a big thumbs-down from Dee on this one. I came home and found that PB had been going to come, but had stayed here and watched Fight Club instead. Good choice there, boyo. Good choice.

12:23 PM - link to this - (0) comments

Monday, March 12, 2001

I just read the entirety of this thing. I'm quite impressed with it, and I had a damn good laugh. Mostly spot on regional Aussie dialect. Maybe I should direct the people I role-play with to this site, so they know what I'm on about more than half the time.

One inclusion that really needs to be made, however. Dack: to pull someone's pants down very quickly and without their knowledge or permission. Apparently this isn't something Americans indulge in. Or at least, so I was told. Honestly, what do you people do with your youth?

Oh yeah. You shoot people.

(PS: Link from nothing.)

2:09 PM - link to this - (0) comments

I think what I find so knee-weakeningly appealing about John Cusack is that no matter what, he always looks a little fragile. Playing a minorly tough cop guy, just finished swearing a blue streak at morons, and he still looks delicate. Delectable. Mmmmm.

Ahem.

Yes, I've been watching Con Air again. Silliness on legs - Nick Cage's quite long jean-clad legs, in fact. Not that I have a thing for Mr Cage, in fact, I really don't find him attractive at all, and as A mentioned, if he could get through the movie without actually talking, that would be just fine and dandy with me. However, I can't deny that in that specific scene where he's trying to talk Diamond and Cyrus out of killing the guards, and he kicks them in the backs, his legs look incredibly long, shapely, and overall eminently shapely. Shame they're attached to that completely non-aphrodisiacal upper body.

Where was I? Oh, nowhere near a point anyway. Excellent.

Film Group all-nighter. Charlie's Angels (which I missed, tutors' meeting, but I'm steadily wondering if I really want to see it at all), Shanghai Noon (I want to be Jackie Chan when I grow up), The Art of War, Die Hard, Con Air. Ten hours of sweaty guys (and girls) kicking ass. Cool.

The Art of War was... well, it was an 80s blockbuster with some 90s action. Nice action sequences. Some interesting direction. Overall, fairly mediocre, but quite a large amount of fun. Touch obvious in places, especially once I realised that it was following the rules for a blockbuster exactly. Since I practically have the manual on my shelf, there was little that surprised me after that.

The rules being, to whit: (1) High Stakes - the world has to be in danger, or at least the personal world of the lead character in such a stunning way as to render it all-encompassing - in this case, the looming of possible war between China and the US, another Cold War brewing. (2) Larger-than-life characters - they have to be capable of amazing things - Wesley Snipes as a blacker-than-thou UN secret ops guy, need I say more? (3) The Dramatic Question - what you sit through the book or movie to find out - as is so often the case, will he prove his innocence/get the bad guys/save the world and the girl. (4) High Concept - basically involves an unusual look, something the readers or viewers can really get intrigued in - UN secret ops, Triads, high-powered politics... yeah, I think we can do that. (5) And this one was the real giveaway: Close connections between the lead characters, especially the protagonist and antagonist. The closer they are, you see, the more intense the conflict is. And that's what made some of the 'twists' of the plot terribly predictable.

Sorry. Didn't mean to write an essay there.

Die Hard is the classic, of course. The ultimate classic. It's got all the elements. The irreverant Bruce Willis (always much more fun when he's not taking himself seriously), the delightfully sinister Alan Rickman, the moronic cops you love to see get killed (and honestly, how stupid are you when Bruce Willis' NYPD cop guy is that much smarter than you, I mean really...). Mind you, the best bit is still the coke-snorting in the office. God bless the 80s.

Here endeth the rambling. Go outside and get some sunshine, people. I won't be able to; I have a 500 word review assignment to write by Wednesday. Something tells me I should probably read the article in question in some detail. Maybe.

1:34 PM - link to this - (0) comments