The article on this link is long and one of several, but it is incredibly good. Researching this film means I'm going through an amazing learning process about my sexuality at the moment and stories like this remind me why I'm doing it. If you have 20 minutes, do take the time to read it.
Article
Maybe it is because I grew up in a place called Gidgegannup, but I have an obsession with crazy place names.
Western Australia is a veritable glory box of stupid place names. Kudos to our Aboriginal fathers for names that have been Anglicised into Wyalkatchem, Koolyanobbing, Mukinbudin, Bullamakancka, Perenjori, and Dalwallinu.
But this secret delight has now taken a new twist. I am compiling a list of crazy name places that I want to travel to. These are places around the world that are worthy of closer inspection, simply because they have a stupidly beautiful name.
I then plan to travel to them all in 80 days and I challenge the best (wo)man among you to a race around the world!*
The first such name to spark my attention is Bulawayo. I’m also fond of Soweto and Okavango. To be fair, I’ve pretty much been to the Okavango Delta. I got as close to it as Chobe National Park and Kasane, on the Botswana/Namibia border. But I’d love to go back, so that makes the list.
“But Dan,” I hear you ask, “aren’t you going to the UK?”. Well the answer is yes. I am going there to visit Chipping Sodbury and Chipping Norton and several other delightfully named places, including Brans Hatch - a town which is just begging for me to adulterate its signs for my own edification.
Anyway, all suggestions for Dan’s crazy tour of death based on superficial nomenclature are welcome.
*may not actually happen.
A good friend and I have invented a word. That word is "deliteration".
It refers to instances where the English language is treated with all the respect of an aborted bastard foetus ripped from the guts of a southern suburbs crack-whore that has been thrown in the gutter outside a busy Centrelink or St Vinnies soup kitchen. Yes... that's a damn lot of disrepect.
Now I can handle people abbreviating "laugh out loud" to "lol" (even though they probably did no such thing) and I can handle net-nerds failing to capitalise or punctuate. Hey, it's a busy world we live in and hitting that shift key takes valuable nano-seconds in the chat-room.
But what I have great trouble handling is raping words of the letters that rightfully belong to them.
U no wot Im talkn bout?
Again, while the above example is straight from an inane MSN Messenger conversation or SMS, that's not particularly what I mean. Those are borne out of a need for brevity - sometimes as a measure to save money. But when you are registering a business, surely to Christ you can manage to spell "new clean" correctly, instead of "nu-kleen"? I mean for crying out loud, you molest words like that and they'll never again feel clean in the same way any seven-year-old who has met Gary Glitter doesn't.
To some extent I blame the Jews. Before you set Hezbollah on to me, allow me to explain: They killed Jesus. (And boy, haven't they paid the price for that little mistake?). Anyway, what happens when you kill a jesus? We get a Christmas, that's what happens. What happens at Christmas? We get Xmas. We get Xmas everywhere. I think it is possibly the first example of genuine wide-spread deliteration. Probably followed closely by "thru" in the popularly-used stakes. (For "thru" we can thank McDonalds and assorted "drive thru" outlets. Sure is seems cute... 'til I run Ronald "thru" with a MacKnife you MacFucking wankers).
I cannot possibly be alone in detesting this practice, so I present a challenge - a call to arms, if you will. Lets fix these bastards for good. If the pen is truly mightier than the sword (sord?), let us prove it. Let us raise (rayz?) our chemi-pens and permanent markers (markaz?) to the deliterate signs of the world and correct (korekt?) the spelling. Our world is at war with their world people and we cannot afford to let this drop.
A shy-nee nickle 4 each fotograf'd x-ampl.
(Next week: War on grocer's apostrophes)
It's a big day for me today. It's my birthgay. My third birthgay.
Yep, it was three years ago today that I came out. Came out to myself, at least.
It should be a time for reflection, but I probably can't be bothered except to say I'm damn proud of the faggot I've grown up to be.
How nice that I can celebrate this day knowing I'm working on a project that will hopefully make a difference to so many other people going through - or about to go through - that same process.
My life would have been much easier if someone had been there to show me the way out. There should be gay sherpas.
That's what I hope to be: a gay sherpa.
(Now I can't get horribly graphic images of Hillary and Tensing out of my head. No-one needs that. Especially at altitude).
I think there is a huge market for this, someone with the know-how could make a lot of money from this idea.
Unfortunately, I do not have the know-how as I am not Japanese.
I want a machine that goes ping.
Well not just ping, I want a machine that goes "boom-boom!" every time some tells a shit joke.
I want a machine that goes "wha-wha-wha-whaaaaaa" every time someone says something that falls flat.
I want a machine that makes that "whammy" sound from Supermarket Sweep every time someone does something dumb (or Ian Turpie tries to enter the room).
I believe the possibilities for this pocket-sized device are endless.
Why not include "strut music" (Like George Baker Selection's Little Green Bag) for when you're marching up the street with a smile on your face and the world feels fantastic?
Why not include a laugh track for when you say something deliriously funny an no-one is there to hear it? Why not include a laugh track for when you say something funny but people ARE there to hear it but they don't laugh and then you remember you work in the MIDLAND office?
And this device could be programmed to introduce sound effects and soundtracks into other parts of your every day life. What if you heard thunderous applause and cheers of encore every time you flushed the toilet, for instance?
What if every time you walked backwards you heard reversing beeps?
What if every time you lit a cigarette it started coughing uncontrollably?
Yes, this idea is gold. Gold I tells ya!
I am not remotely a fan of science fiction.
I match the definition of the word geek in many ways but sci-fi is one area where I collapse into terminological inexactitude (big-it-up to Thomp’s Donkey for that remarkable lexicographical treat).
I think Star Trek is possibly the saddest television ever made. I think Star Trek devotees are possibly the saddest people ever made. I don’t understand Battlestar Geraniums or those stupid Andrew Ridgeway Scott Alien films.
But there is one noted exception: Dr Who.
I was a massive fans of The Doctor as a kid. I remember watching Jon Pertwee in the role and then being amazed as he regenerated into Tom Baker.
Now Tom Baker’s Doctor was one of my childhood heroes. He fended off Daleks, Cybermen and – most terrifying of all – the planet of the spiders.
I was excited by the Paul McGann movie the 1990s (and then devastated by the absolute tripe that it was) and even more excited by Christopher Eccleston taking over in the new millennium.
Last night, the new version, with David Tennant as the Doctor, hit Australian TV.
Now I must confess I am in love. Not only is he dash-it handsome but he’s also every bit as good as Tom Baker. Eccleston may have had Baker’s bass-baritone bollock-soaked booming voice, Tennant has more of the innate eccentricity. (I don’t want you to think he does funny things to my sonic screwdriver or anything. I’m a fan, but I’m not about to start dribbling over ‘sexy’ aliens the way Trekkies do).
Baker was the definitive Doctor. No-one will ever beat that. But I think Tennant will come a lot closer than Davison, McCoy, or McGann.
And seeing as we’re playing with blue police telephone boxes, and seeing as the new Doctor Who focuses much more on London than in the past, and seeing as it is a year since the London bombings, and seeing as… well, you get the picture…
I stole this from another website. Kudos to whoever is behind it. Peace out. (Unless you’re a Dalek. No peace out to the Daleks).
I have news. Great news.
Unfortunately, I'm not quite allowed to share it properly yet.
But those who need to will know what I mean by the following:
As you know, I work here:
Until recently I wrote for this paper:
But to get time as a grade three under my belt I moved here:
And I also work here quite a bit:
Well all last week I worked both jobs... excitement enough, you would have thought.
But no. Something else has come-off. A little project I've had in the pipeline has been given the go-ahead, and I'm very excited.
I can't say too much, but those who already know will understand this:
I feel very very priviledged and lucky that this particular venture has paid off and have a lot of people to thank at the appropriate time. I just have to finishing pissing myself with excitement first.
And with any luck, it will make me much more employable to:
and my life-long dream will have been achieved.
But of course, that's not WHY I'm doing this particular project. Anyway... more on that later.
Just congratulate me if you see on the street, that's all I ask. Oh yeah, and pay some strangers to come up to me and tell me how good I am. LOL.
So last Friday night Linds and I put on our glad-rags and trotted-off to Fremantle.
You may recall, I am now one of the reporters covering that basic area, which means I should be evolving a brilliant fully-integrated inner-cranial GPS and UBD.
Unfortunately, it has eluded me to-date and let me down when it was most needed.
We were heading to the MC Lars concert and we were running a little behind our 8pm ETA. As it turns out, we could have caught a lift on Space Shuttle Discovery and got there earlier. (Or Challenger II, for that matter).
Driving down the highway we sailed over the Queen Victoria Bridge (most people sail under it) and I calmly said “Now I have no idea where Metropolis Fremantle is, do you?”.
“Computer says no.”
I understood it to be on South Terrace. She opened the map book. At that point we had maybe five minutes up our sleeves.
Lindsay directed me onto Parry Street. After some several hundred metres we decided we were heading down the wrong end of Parry Street. About-face. Re-trace steps.
“We’re still not coming to Adelaide Street,” Lindsay said.
“I think it’s over there.”
“We can’t get over there.”
“Well let’s just go down here.”
So we went down there… and found a harbourside car park. We pulled into it, stopped the car, switched on a light (Linds had up until this point been using the glow of her mobile phone) and stared at the map.
“Turn it up this way.”
“No we’re facing this way.”
“Well this is Elder Street, and that’s Elder Street there.”
“So how do we get to South Terrace?”
“We need Parry Street.”
“We were just on Parry Street… that’s it there.”
“Actually, if we drive along this road and turn left there, it becomes South Terrace.”
Can I just stress for you all, South Terrace is the MAIN street of Fremantle - it is the extension of Market Street – and we couldn’t bloody find it!
When we eventually did find the street, we sailed past it (what a silly phrase, I may as well have said I “hovered” past it or “aquaplaned” past it for all the accuracy it relates) for several kilometres and had to do a U-turn and stop and ask a stranger for directions.
We paid for parking, Lindsay got verbally mauled by some kind of rat-haired primitive with an erection but no breeding and we joined the longest queue imaginable outside a Zimbabwean food aid van stop.
So we got in late, but managed to see the whole gig.
MC Lars gave fantastic concert of his best work and then casually chatted-up Lindsay when I went up to introduce myself to him.
I don’t mind her pulling my friends but pulling my heroes is a new twist on an old favourite.
Well he might have enjoyed discussing TS Eliot’s The Waste Land with her but I’d love to see him navigate Fremantle with her.
That’s not Lindsay’s fault, can I just stress (lest she murder me for my pelt). What I’ve discovered is, while the map makes it look like Fremantle is designed on a grid pattern, in reality all the streets run at triangles.
I am also not entirely convinced that they don’t shift like the staircases in Harry Potter while no-one is looking.
