Wannabe chef requires new space:

Right now I am cooking. I have a green curry on the go and my laptop in the kitchen with me, pumping out my favourite grooves while I keep half an eye on dinner-to-be. There's a beer within reach at all times and I should be in my element.

However, I hate my kitchen. With a passion. In a few weeks it will not be mine any more and somebody else's headache of no space and terrible seventies-print tiling (not to mention the curtains). Somebody else can deal with the fact that it isn't much bigger than a toilet cubicle. Hopefully that somebody else will also live with two other people and know that if you want this kitchen to be clean, you're going to have to wash up three times daily. I can't wait to get another. The problem here is that I will be utterly kitchenless for I have no idea how long. I'll be camping, travelling and staying in other people's houses until I decide to settle down somewhere again.

In the meantime, I can dream.

What does my ideal kitchen contain?

Stainless steel. Plenty of it. Appliances, splashbacks, the rangehood. You name it. That stuff is sexier than an freshly vacuumed onion display. If I could move the prep area from the veggie shop into my new kitchen and kit it out, I would.

Knives. Not just pokey little housewifey knives. I want the big fuckoff knives that feel like you're holding something real and effective to chop with. On a magnetic strip, with a steel hanging next to them because using a freshly sharpened knife is even more exciting than the sight of stainless steel. Or the removal of onion skins.

An island. I want to look up and have a view when I'm in the kitchen, possibly have some friends around that I can chat to while I'm making dinner rather than alienate them in the loungeroom while I disappear and do my stuff. I also think that you appreciate a meal so much more when you're involved in it in some way, whether it is helping, or just watching. That's so much better than just having a plate slapped in front of you.

A kitchen garden. This isn't necessarily in the kitchen, but I'd like to be able to see it from the kitchen, and have easy access to it. In the house before this one, I had a grape vine and a fig tree right outside the window. I watched the fruit mature through seeing it daily as I made my morning coffee, talking to the figs - hell, buddy you're getting bigger. Keep it up - and marvelling in the greenness of it all. My garden will have fresh herbs, garlic and a bunch of vegetables. The corn I grow won't even make it in the door, and neither will half the beans or snow peas - so maybe the outdoor garden can be classed as a kitchen in itself...

I think that's about it. The rest is just icing.

So what do you need for an ideal kitchen?

Half-Nekkid Thursday

McDirtiness

Take one look at the sign and you just know it's going to be all wrong inside.

One: It's red.

Two: It has no nuts. It isn't a bull, it's a steer.

Come humour me. Let's take a tour.

This was once the Club Hotel. It used to be populated by dirty, grumpy old men who spent all day betting on the horses and stared at you when you walked in the door, as if this was their loungeroom and you were invading it. Every table would have scrunched up TAB tickets on it and an ashtray with one butt in it. I remember the lady who ran it then. No wonder these guys felt like they were at home - she was a crotchety old coot just like them. I used to sell her crumbed cutlets once a week when I worked at the butchery. In three years of seeing her regularly I did not once see her smile.

It moved up in the world, breifly, when another publican took over. There was enough space in the back room to squeeze a band in between the pool tables and have about fifteen people on the dancefloor. I played there a few times. Nothing spectacular - in fact the only thing I really recall about it was that the carpark was the home of a family of Potholes From Hell that loomed up in the headlights like bottomless pits.

And then it was closed. No more. It was bought out by somebody who, like every other bastard these days, decided it was a brilliant idea to buy an old pub, rip the guts out and make it into something that is trying to be trendy. Instead of a counter lunch for seven bucks, you get cuisine from a top chef and pay twenty-three dollars for a couple of stalks on a plate.

Gut it they did. The entire pub, bar the front wall, got knocked down. The front wall had to stay because it was heritage listed. Not the entire thing. That cracks me up no end. Only the front wall was heritage listed. The rest of it, after rebuilding, is a travesty of trying to be sauve and modern that ends up in flat concrete walls creating a sound box that is deafening if you get more than five people talking at once.

On entry, you're funneled straight into the line-up at the bar. I've fought my way through it many times. The drink of choice here tends to be Smirnoff Double Black (premixed double shot vodka) or Pulse (energy drink laced with vodka). That says it all. These things go down like lollywater and it gets very messy very quickly. Especially when you dump a busload of barely legal twits from one of the uni colleges into the fray.

There's a jukebox. No DJ. Just a jukebox that goes on autoplay and a dancefloor the size of a shoebox. Everybody crams onto it and attempts to fight for their space. Mostly, I groove on the edge of it, or just give up and groove outside in the smoker's pen. Why do I go here? Sadly, there's only three places in town with late licences. One is usually dead, the other is a little too redneck for my safe comfort levels. So it's this one.

But let's move on with the tour to the final destination.

The toilets.

If you're a bloke you have the profound pleasure of pissing on a red bull (ahem, steer). In a brilliant design concept, they've replaced the normal stainless steel trough with a painted bull (steer) on the wall faced over with perspex. (Yes, I have been in there myself). What happens when it's wet? The water turns it into a mirror.

Now, if you're female... Well. You might be one of those idiots that decides to leave an empty Pulse can in the toilet bowl. Oh gee. That's a good place to put it. You might be one of those drunken young twits being held up by her friend while you vomit because those half dozen Pulse cans you've had in the last hour because some guy who wants to lay you is shoving them down your throat, those drinks have sent you past active and hyperactive and into hypervomitrous. You might be like me and just be hoping to get in and out of there as quickly as you can, trying to keep your pants out of whatever liquid happens to splashed about the place while you're at it.

Or, you might be there because some local lesbian slut is intending to fuck you.

McDirtiness.

Dress Shop Hell

I drive past a formal wear shop every day. They change the dresses in their display weekly, so I'm always checking out what's on display. Not for me, mostly. But because I'd like to imagine somebody else in those dresses. I broke the "not for me" ruling a few days ago.

Gayman and I, armed with a camera and a lie, walked into the most unfamiliar territory I have ever been in. There was fluff. There were sequins and shiny things. There were pointy pointy shoes and my mind was screaming to run for shelter. But I had a project.

Hi, I've got a formal dinner dancey thing to go to in January. So what we thought that I'd try on a few different things, and take some photos so we can go home and show the options to my partner.

So do you want a cocktail dress or a gown?

I dunno?

She looks at me in my jeans and t-shirt with bare feet, looks up and down and says:

Well a cocktail dress would probably reach your toes anyway.

It ends up that Gayman runs a few dresses in to me, taking a few sneaky little shots in the changeroom*.

Try this.
And this.



Until I decided that no, I was not cut out for this at all.

*Apologies for the poor quality, but I was not parading in public for a decent shot.

Oh, and the dark blue thing? It's the skirt part of something with a waistcoaty bit. It just reaches up to my neck anyway.

Challenge and Intrigue

"Take a picture of something you find intrigueing and write about why."
I put a challenge on the table, and then I was stuffed. I can't make a challenge without doing it myself - that would be a little unfair.

I found myself asking people I knew for help. Define intrigueing? What would you find intriguing? I googled it, possibly in a vain hope that the age of too much freely available useless information might be able to assist me. Instead I went onto a run of useless linking and wasted an hour of possible photo hunting time. The day was wasting.

There's plenty of things I find interesting or visually appealing enough to capture as a photograph. I find patterns in industry appealing. I find patterns in nature appealing. Look through my backlog of shots and you'll find a shitload of trees. In particular dead trees. And telegraph poles. I've just lately started to realise that unless you're a botanist, trees are cool for a few shots and then you're over it. I need a record of my people, as well as my places. This is what I find intrigueing lately. Faces, detail, personality.



A funny thing happens when you point a camera at a person. They try to hide. Or pose, if they're extroverted. Or be a dickhead, if they are somebody like me who is too lazy to hide. I've lost count of how many shots there are with me giving the finger. I've started trying to find the people, but not always the smiling for the camera people. I want the bored person, the pensive person, the captivated person and the contented person. The flash of a genuine smile. The reality.




These are my friends, people I can drag along on random trips to nowhere because I have a car and they don't. Come on. We're going somewhere. Where? Dunno. People who are happy to hop on into the car and waste an afternoon with no set destination. Who will find something amusing no matter what. These are my people. Real people.

The Monday Melee

And here we have yet another Monday Melee. Where the hell did last week go?

1. The Misanthtropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
There's a few people in this town who I have just snapped with. When I snap it means that's it. Come near me and it is wordless anger. I will speak if spoken to, but I won't say a word otherwise. There's a few reasons for this, the first and foremost being that I have far better things to waste my time on that take precedence over me talking to them. It also betrays my anger. More than likely I won't unleash the torrent of abuse I'd love to direct at these people - I will be nice and therefore betray my actual feelings. I hate the anger.

2. The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent or bogus.
Just plain bogus is the iTunes random selection. Some days it is brilliant, intuitive. I can throw on the music while I'm cooking and have just the right music, song after song. Here's the bogus bit: some days it is utter crap, and gravitates to the same utter crap. No, I am not in the mood for Steve Reich. Skip. Dammit, there's another. Skip. Ligeti. Skip. John Adams. Not while I'm chopping vegetables. Bogus.

3. The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
I want to see more art. I'm sick of the stupid Rhinocerous at the art gallery and the mouldy doughnut bridge gives me the shits. Bring it on. I can't wait to move - I've got my eyes open.

4. The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
The Hugnry Espressohead and Gayman for accompanying me on a photography mission that dragged them past snakes, spiders and through muddy paddocks in search of oddities and new perspectives. It was a hell of a trek but they seemed happy to come along.

5. The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I am anal retentive when it comes to packing boxes. Why is this good? My life will be packed away, categorised and neat and stored within the smallest amount of space possible, ready to be accessed when I next need to access it.

6. The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
To be gagged and blindfolded, tied to the bedhead by my wrists....

Photohunt: Hot

It's my third PhotoHunt and I'm already starting to fall behind. I was supposed to do this yesterday, however stuff got in the way and suddenly it was Saturday night - time for drinking with friends.

Hot



This is sugar cane fire. Soon to be outlawed, they've been a feature of the area I grew up in all my life. During the harvest, the farmers burn off the plots of cane the night before harvest in order to get rid of all the rubbishy bits and just leave the cane stalks. They go up in huge flaming, crackling, roaring raw beauty.

NOT Hot



This is from my home, December 21st last year. Four days before Christmas. The problem here is that this is Australia. It is supposed to be summer and stinking hot. This picture is the aftermath of a hailstorm that stripped every tree and decimated the entire east side of my home town. The ice covered the ground for days, and the cold in my house was worse than winter due to the fact that I had no roof in one section.

Give thanks?

"Only a few breeding companies now supply most turkeys reared worldwide - British United Turkeys, Nicholas and Hybrid Turkeys. Reproduction in today’s turkey industry is by artificial insemination (AI). The modern turkey, like the broiler chicken, has been genetically selected to put on weight twice as fast as its counterpart in the wild. Now, male turkeys are too broad-breasted to mate naturally. In the wild, the turkey can fly up to speeds of 50mph, yet the modern male farmed variety cannot fly. Breeding turkeys can weigh as much as an 8-9 year old child."

So, male turkeys can't do the deed any more. The demand for big meat-laden turkeys has caused the ability to reproduce to be bred out of the bird by humans. Their chests are so big that they cannot mount the female. So how do they do it?

2-3 times a week the male turkey, the tom, is milked for his semen. This is done by a human worker who basically masturbates the bird and then sucks the cum into a syringe with a vacuum pump. After that the hens have to be inseminated at the rate of one hen every 12 seconds - making for fast, rough handling. This happens once a week for more than a year. Here's a description from a worker:

"Once you have grabbed her with one hand, you flop her down chest first on the edge of the pit with the tail end sticking up. You put your free hand over the vent and tail and pull the rump feathers upward. At the same time, you pull the hand holding the feet downward, thus 'breaking' the hen so that her rear is straight up and her vent open. The inseminator sticks his thumb right under the vent and pushes, which opens it further until the oviduct is exposed. Into this, he inserts a straw of semen connected to the end of a tube from an air compressor and pulls a trigger, releasing a shot of compressed air that blows the semen solution from the straw and into the hen's oviduct. Then you let go of the hen and she flops away."

We humans are fucked up. Our demand for the product allows us to forget the process and its impact.

The only thanks I will say is No, thanks.

Half-Nekkid Thursday

I will be okay.

Last night I ate Gayman's dinner.
I ate chocolate, too.
Gayman cooked me more dinner.
I munched my way through the last of a bag of corn chips.
I was still hungry.
Not good. Notgoodnotgoodnotgood.

Today I feel sick to the stomach.

My breath catches in my chest before I get it.
Stop. Breathe out, try again.

I look at my hands as I am working and they are pale and shaking.
Dammit.
Not good.

The image that occurs in stress situations lately - the knife in the side of my throat - is becoming more clear, more defined. What was once hazy flashes is gaining solidarity.
At least it is better than the one in the chest you used to have, Vic.

I say goodbye to some of my most favourite students today. I should be excited about moving on... but I am so scared about facing this today that I want to curl up in a mound of bedding and cry myself back to sleep. I want to be held, more than anything.

Exhaustion: It's only Tuesday

Signs that Vic is nearly asleep:

Head on an angle, only to the right. My head never droops to the left when I’m exhausted.

Eyes half closed, but more on the right also.

When I attempt to smile, the right side is more responsive than the rest.

When I stand up, I appear to be more drunk than I was on Saturday night.

Three hours to go in a fourteen hour day. That means six more students and possibly three caffiene hits. If anybody can make sense out of me after that it will be a miracle.

Standing on the edge

Yesterday I stood on the edge of a rock at the beach and looked down past my toes to the waves below me. I looked down, past the still painted toenails that are a sadly fading physical reminder to me of the new world I seem to have landed in, that I have embraced and never want to let go. I looked down past those toes into the waves that swirled and crashed below.

Over the past few weeks I have known happiness, anger, sadness, excitement and uncertainty all contributing to - and also being a product of - my decision to leave the town I have spent the last eleven years in. This is the town I came to boarding school for and never left. Fear has been the most prominent emotion in the mixture inside my mind. I'm scared that once I leave the saftey net of Armidale that I will not be able to make it. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to self-confidence. Don't bother cutting me down, I already did that on my own, thankyou.

Then I spend my entire weekend in bliss. I meet new people who I like, I see new friends who are family and I see love that will only grow. I look down at those waves beneath my toes and I think bring it on! Bring on this world. I want to feel alive again. Go ahead! Crash against the rocks, splash me and wake me up even more to this place.

Bring on the world. I got the girl. She's there, watching me as I challenge the waves, and as I turn to her I'm smiling. I've got my eyes open, I've got nothing to lose and everything to see.

PhotoHunt: I love __________

This week's PhotoHunt gets personal with something I love and determine to be necessary part of me, as well as my AntiPhotoHunt twist - the opposite.

I LOVE _______


I love water, and lots of it.

I DO NOT LOVE ________



This one need not make sense to anybody but me. Boxes and arses should never mix.

Quote of the Day

Gayman, offering to wheel a menstrual cramping whingeing Vic around the supermarket in a shopping trolley while we grabbed a few things:

Honey, if it buckles and makes a funny noise, hop out because you're a fat cunt.

Half-Nekkid Thursday

Fuck your dress code

A woman came into the fruit shop I work in this morning. She's a regular customer, but I've always viewed her as a bit of a social weirdo. She has difficulty speaking, and always appears taken aback when I ask her how she is.

Today I was wearing something different to the unnoficial uniform of black collared polo shirt. This woman, normally quiet, decided to point out that she liked my blouse. I thanked her, but it started me thinking - why? This is probably an innocent comment from a socially awkward lady, but I have known others in the past who consciously try to nurture me into dressing in a more feminine way. They tell me things like hey you look good like that and you should dress that way more often. I go out in something vaguely feminine and suddenly it's a trait in me that has to be nurtured, like there's a glimmer of hope for my poor poor misguided soul.

Why? Why should I dress that way more often? I don't like to. It is very rare that I will dress in a feminine way and like it. Sometimes I will, for something special - as much as somebody might keep that tuxedo in the back of the cupboard and pull it out every now and then, for something special. I put on jeans and a collared shirt and to me, I look like Vic. I'm comfortable. I am not a being who has strayed of the path and needs to be retrieved. Expressing masculinity is not a bad thing. It is not an error in my ways. It is simply the best way for me to feel comfortable as Vic. It seems that because I possess the bits that define me as female I'm expected to behave within some socially defined set of parameters for that gender.

I am not a rescue case from the "dark side" of masculinity.
I have fought so fucking hard to accept myself and allow myself to express who I am externally. I've fought through all those layers of social expectation that have been woven into my life since birth.
I don't to fight any longer, I just want to be me.

Raised eyebrow moments.

I take fruit to work when I teach at the private boys' boarding school. I'm there three days a week, so usually I've got some sort of goodness from my morning vege shop job stashed away in the staffroom fridge. Whatever I see that is appetising while stocking the shelves of a morning, I'll grab to munch on later in the day. Not only that, but I'll offer it around to the other staff. I feel rude to be eating around the other staff and not offering any - just like I feel it is rude to just waltz in and make a coffee without offering any around.

So I waltz into the staffroom in this afternoon, and another female music teacher is sitting in there already. She's well older than me and looks a bit prudish, but looks can be decieving, right? (bear in mind that I look like a teenage boy a lot of the time). I decide I'll break the silence by reaching into the fridge, grabbing my fresh produce of the day and offering her some.

My fresh produce to day... Dates.

Wanna date? is not a good icebreaker.

Retreat!!!

The Monday Melee

Ho hum.
Today the return of the weekly Monday Melee signifies that I am one week closer to blowing out of this arsehole town. Celebration is in order!

1. The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
Christmas Carols. The brass band I'm with plays them as part of the Christmas cheer fundraising efforts. Just before Christmas I think it is a fantastic thing - the band actually does a "pub crawl" where we trek around to all the different local pubs and play carols on a Friday night. But that's just before Christmas. The band had to play carols at a fete on the weekend just gone. Yuck. That slots in with all the falseties and commercialism that goes with Christmas and annoys the absolute hell out of me.

2. The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent or bogus.
Why is it that kids are afraid to admit that they don't understand a concept to me during a lesson? In a`one on one situation they feel the need to fake it and answser me yes when I ask do you get it? and consequently have to fake it week after week until I find the source of the problem? What the hell is happening in the school system that these kids feel they can't speak up and ask for help as it happens?

3. The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
The speakers in my car are absolute crap. Since I have a tendency to groove out and sing at the top of my lungs while driving, I need a backing track at such a volume as to support (aka drown out) my vocal style. As soon as I push for a little volume, I get distortion.

4. The Meritorious: Give someone credit and name it if you can.
Honourary housemate IcePick for lifting my solid little form into the air every time he sees me. He seems so happy to see me that it just cause me to grin stupidly back at him.

5. The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I love to prepare a good meal and present it well, even if it is just for me. When I can be arsed to do it!

6. The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
The package of online shopping goodness I ordered to just hurry up and arrive, so that I can stop stressing that the little ADHD shit from next door is stealing the mail again.

Top of the list:

Scout has set a challenge: List some phrases that bring your blog up as the number one on a Google search.

Tough question.

Here's what I came up with:

floordrobe mountain
pink floyd week
the world should just fuck off
a crocodile ate my baby
you are the groover (Thanks Dive)
What Is Happening In My Roof?

And there endeth the experiment.

PhotoHunt: Flexible

I'm new to the PhotoHunt thing. It's kind of like Kate's ABC Wednesday challenge that she does brilliantly every week - but in this one there's a new word rather than a letter each week, and you have to photograph that word.

Of course, I like to be different, so my personal challenge is to post not only the PhotoHunt picture, but an Anti-PhotoHunt picture as well.

FLEXIBLE


This is a bag of fruit snakes, stretched out and tied together. Actually there were two bags before I started the project, but a few got lost in the way...

NOT FLEXIBLE*




*Note: This is a brilliant example of "K is for Karma" for all the tall people who find it necessary to make jokes regarding my height. May your heads snap off also.