Stop wining [yes wining!] and do my tax?

So Mr Kettle is heading off to Melbourne for a long weekend at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Go Mr Kettle!

Since cloning technology has not (surprisingly, yes?) advanced so far as to enable me to be in both Melbourne living it up and Sydney raising the next generation I find myself trying to decide how best to spend the weekend here in Sydney.

Should I:

1. Buy half a dozen bottles of wine and invite some friends over for a few hours of crapping on and ad libbed performance poetry, or
2. Do my 2010/11 tax?

Please, take your time, it's not an easy question to answer (and, also, it's the question that does actually face me). Your thoughts?

And when you're done with that, can someone please explain to me what the fuck happened with the Greens today?

Once-diligent blogger 'got peckish', forgot to post

Goodness me I've become the world's least-posting blogger.

Luckily there are a few oft-searched words in posts from earlier years so to my delight this site still pops up in the Googles every now and then.

And to my extra delight the most commonly searched terms that lead people here are 'nice boys' and 'good hair,' which I'm cool with (the search phrase that does actually worry me a little is 'how to survive a dust storm'; true story. There really is nothing here that can help you if you've got a dust storm bearing down on you. Please! Leave now! I don't know shit about sand!).

Anyhoo, so here we are in April already. While it may look like I've completely neglected this site for months now it's not entirely true that I have. You see, I've been annoying dear friends and family taking photos of, well, bloody everything, all with the intention of posting them here. I've stopped meals, halted martinis mid-sip, made people pull over, ignored dear companions for whole chunks of evenings while I've set up just the right shot... All for what? For nought, because I've posted none of them here.

Urgh, I really am the world's worst blogger (and possibly friend/daughter/Mahjong partner too).

So, time to re-engage. Here's a little something we can talk about tomorrow. See you then?

Things I should probably work on:

1. Emotional resilience.

(So. Very. Tired.)

Here's a picture (why not?):

Christmas* wrap

* I'm not sure if it's possible (or advisable?) to begin a post with an asterisk but look! It's where we find ourselves. I do hope you'll forgive me.

I've called on the asterisk in a half-arsed attempt to excuse away my laziness.

You see, I'm more (as in entirely) an atheistic type so wishing everyone a 'merry Christmas' is a bit non-sensical. But as we have just returned from a week interstate and I'm feeling, well, lazy the prospect of writing a few nuanced, sensitively worded paragraphs outlining a few nuanced and sensitive thoughts on the significance of multi- and non-denominational end-of-year celebrations is entirely beyond me.

Let us, in the absence of such commentary, agree to agree that there is something very lovely about getting to the end of the year, about eating wildly excessive amounts of food, and about watching the cricket (just joking Ramon. I haven't actually watched any cricket!).

So in the true lazy-montage-spirit of all B-grade films from the 1980s, here's a bunch of photos from my end of year/wildly excessive food/non-cricket celebrations.

There were martinis with lychee (singular) and blueberries (no way!).

There were a-happenings at the beach (where does the water end and the sky begin, and etc.).

There were ridiculously happy children at water parks.

And Christmas carols, performed ped-style.

There was a long discussion about which was the worst sheet music to admit to owning from childhood (our vote was tied; your thoughts?).

And another long discussion about 'couth' and 'uncouth', for which the Penguin dictionary was absolutely no help whatsoever (at least there were prawns).

There were neighbourhood Christmas lights by people with really, really too much time.

And of course, wanky hipstamatic photos taken willy nilly by lasses who really do know better.

There were badly framed Christmas trees, with surprise elbows!

And curious tins of biscuits at the local supermarket...

...in even more curiously labelled sections.

But best of all, there were lots and lots of happy, blurry photos (aww shit).

Now tell me about your break while I quietly vomit about the sentimentality of my own.

Completely self-indulgent photos from my trip to Melbourne (because I can, that's why)

So I went to Melbourne on the weekend, and while I love my family dearly and couldn't live without them I would also be ok staying in Melbourne for ever and ever and never leaving. Ahem.

Anyway, I had such a lovely time. It was so good that I took a whole bunch of wanky hipstamatic photos and I would dearly love to share them with you. Will you indulge me a moment or two?

If you do not have a moment for such indulgences I thank you for joining me to this point and I wish you well for the rest of your day.

If you do have a moment, hurray. Let us revel in the awesomeness that is Melbourne together.

So, photo the first:

I think there's something in this for all of us. Yeah that's right, Melbourne's Environmental Management Team totally sucks. I took this photo around 8:30am Saturday morning; what kind of city leaves this sort of poetic detritus from the previous night's revelry lying around until that time of the morning? Sheesh.

This might be too small to see? The sign says, 'Captains of Industry: Gentleman's Outfitters and Cafe,' which I liked very much.

This shit is about coffee and ukuleles. Oooohhhh yeahhhhhh.

Gills Diner and The Commercial Bakery do the best of everything ever. You should go there.

Check out those cheeky tomatoes on the middle shelf. Poking their tongues out. I say.

Next suit I buy (following the next offer of employment I receive) I'm buying these cuff links for sure (unless I get a job at The Commercial Bakery, in which case I'm gonna get me some cheeky tomato cuff links).

So I went to the National Gallery of Victoria to see the Mad Square exhibition. Firstly, I still can't figure out how it can be the 'national' gallery of Victoria, and secondly, which is sexier: the hairy arm-pitted woman in the banner or the man-in-the-checkered-shirt's arse?

This is the other side of the gallery entrance. As you can see I accidentally bumped the filter on hipstamatic so we somehow landed in Copenhagen in 1957. Who knew time travel was possible with a $1.99 app?

These teeny weeny chairs were on display in the gallery shop. I have a thing for tiny chairs; I only wish there was time to go into it now but fortunately not. This is a shit photo and I couldn't get it to work but the tiny chairs were magnificent.

This was lunch at the gallery. I'm embarrassed to say I wolfed it down (and I may have sculled the wine too). It was the tiny chairs what did it to me.

This is the nicest piece of street art I've seen anywhere ever.

The framing on this kills me but what's not to love about a sign for an ocular prosthetist? Nothing, that's what. (And wouldn't you love to meet Mr Russell?)

And so we come to one of the trip's golden highlights: beer, lemons and chips with Ramon, Melba and Mr E from The Site Formally Known As. You three characters bloody rock. I was very pleased to meet you.

Then surprise jazz gig! With crepes and sangria! Who knew crepes and sangria went together? Well they don't, so no-one I guess, but the jazz was good.

Post-jazz it was Salman Rushdie and tempranillo at the Punch Lane Wine Bar. Fark. By the end of the night we three were totally best friends.

At closing time Salman and I stumbled along Bourke Street past our favourite bookshop in Melbourne, The Paperback Bookshop, where we bought the seventh edition of the Sleepers Almanac because we both love and support new Australian writing. Go Sleepers. Go Salman.

Sunday morning brought this, before anything else.

After a decent amount of time, Sunday morning also brought this: a chappy playing a 'hang' (Dave this is for you).

Then I met some darling friends for lunch and we planned a book we hope Littlefox Press at Alice & Co. will publish for us. I love Littlefox Press almost as much as I love tempranillo and Salman Rushdie.

There was more of the trip after that but I have clearly reached my wanky hipstamatic photo quota so will stop here. The end.

Late-night ramblings about Fourth Generation German-American writers (now deceased)

I've just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five for the first time (well, second; books that good deserve immediate second readings). Vonnegut's prose is the best I can remember reading for at least a decade.

I thought, after 354 pages, that I loved Vonnegut completely then I came across the following and fell in love with the dear man all over again and then some:

In the mid 1950s, Vonnegut worked very briefly for Sports Illustrated magazine, where he was assigned to write a piece on a racehorse that had jumped a fence and attempted to run away. After staring at a blank piece of paper on his typewriter all morning, he typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and left.

Mr Vonnegut, you're alright by me.

Motor Ace is still the shiz

So I used to love Motor Ace. You remember Motor Ace? With their angsty pop-rock they were the perfect band for the melancholic early-twenty-something. I remember going to a gig (ok several gigs) at the Metro in Sydney where I clutched my BFF's [sero] hand and we screamed the lyrics of 'Budge' as Patrick Roberston, in all his diminutive loveliness, sang them just for us (we were so sure).

Anyhoo, so a recent wave of the nostalgias has inspired me to dig out Five Star Laundry, and sitting here listening to it and wondering what the shit happened to Motor Ace, I came across this on Wikipedia:

The individual members remain on amicable terms. Robertson now professionally scores for film and television, while Ong still occasionally performs around Melbourne with his Joni Lightning project. Costin continues to work in the music industry. Matt Balfe is currently a freelance lion tamer.

Matt Balfe is currently a freelance lion tamer? This is not so much what I expected as not what I expected? Can anyone verify this?