Chapter 51: Peter's Miscellanea

Miscellanea: miscellaneous things, especially pieces of writing, brought together as a collection

A lesson in happiness:
A fantastic quote from the Buddha himself (sent to me by Shirley Temple)
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

A piece of music that will change your life:
Chaconne in D Minor, by Bach. I can't stop listening to it, can't believe how beautiful it is, have to listen at least once per day. If you want it, contact me. Following Buddha's advice above, I'd like to share it. Thank you Robert Murray for sharing this revelation with me.

The temporary end of Pete's Pretty Prose Pussy Posse My writing class has finished and I'm soon off on my annual travel jaunt. But I'm sad to leave too because it means no more meetings with Pete's Pretty Prose Pussy Posse, the trio of beautiful and talented women with whom I sometimes write. We went to an awesome play, The Art of War, based on the ancient Chinese philosophical text recently. In the picture at left, that's Mary Paul (with her porn-star boobies, completely obscured by her scarf, who said "Shouldn't we have the words 'ping pong' in our group title as well?"), Lisa (just who is she looking at?) and Jane (a real-life MILF). At night, when I can't sleep, I wonder what my child would look like with each of them.

Completely unpredictable predictive texting
I don't understand why my phone's predictive texting doesn't know "prawn" but knows "spawn". Do you think people often have cause to text the word "spawn"? Perhaps, they do as in Dear Wife, it's clear you've been unfaithful, because evidently our children are spawn of the devil," as opposed to "Please pick up prawns for dinner".

My underwear have rebelled
En masse, overnight, my underwear have decided to go baggy on me. When I put them on, I look like I'm wearing diapers (full ones) or, worse yet, a skort (see pic at left). But how did my underwear coordinate the attack of bagginess like this? And why? What does it mean?

The selfish pleasures of recycling
Very few things in life give me both satisfaction and a feeling of virtue at the same time, but I've finally found one: taking my collected cans, bottles and miscellaneous plastic containers down to the recycling bin. It's virtually orgasmic, when I dump the bag into the container. I like to let the load build up for a particularly large dump.

I'm addicted to TV and I blame my friend Duncan MacKinnon
It was Duncan who taught me how to use Utorrent to download TV programs from the internet, and now I have a serious problem. I'm addicted. And I'm pretty sure they don't have a 12 step program for this. The only two good things that can be said about this are (i) it's free and (ii) I think I can replace ALL my physical addictions with TV. For example, I gave up smoking. When I wanted to smoke, I just watched an episode of Entourage instead.

Oh, it all started off innocently enough with a few episodes, here and there, of Ugly Betty. But then my friend Ruth Slieker (of the long crinkly gray pubic hair fame, see Chapter 40 of this blog) put me onto Dexter (about a serial killer who kills other serial killers), and things got a bit worrying as I stayed up until 4am three nights in a row watching all 12 hours of Season 1 of Dexter in just 3 sittings. (I was like a crack addict, unable to say no to the next hit.)

So I thought I'd died and gone to heaven with Dexter, but then I discovered Entourage (about the entourage around an LA movie star - thanks again Duncan - which gave me a hideous case of lifestyle envy) which was even better. And now, most recently, Weeds, which as far as I'm concerned has delivered me into TV paradise. Mary Louise Parker (left) and Elizabeth Perkins (right, and an absolute goddess of bitch) in one TV show. I haven't laughed so hard in years. MLP plays a recently widowed suburban mom who takes to dealing marijuana to make ends meet, while EP is her best friend - an uptight alcoholic councilwoman, who has no idea and wants to turn the neighbourhood into a drug free zone. Example of the crackling script:

• MLP (speaking of EP's husband): How are things with Dean?
• EP: Well, let's see. He's a fucking loser, with a body shaped like a Cadbury egg. With hair all over it.

But now I have a terrible dilemma: what next when I finish Season 2 of Weeds? (And I'm going through my stash quickly.) Do I move on to Nip Tuck, or Brothers and Sisters, or Carnivale or Rome, or try to finish Battlestar Galactica and My Name is Earl, which I've also been dipping into from time to time? Help me!

Why do we feel more with TV than with real life?
Now, with all this TV watching, I've noticed something really interesting. When you watch good TV, the feelings are pretty intense! In fact, they are often stronger than in real life! I have cried twice watching Ugly Betty, and that hasn't happened in real life for a long time. When I reported this to Ruth Slieker, she made a deeply profound comment "Yeah, why bother going out and doing anything, when you can stay home and watch real life on TV?" Indeed. But after much contemplation I think I have the answer: it's because nearly everything in real life is so emotionally ambivalent, and nearly always comes piecemeal whereas in TV it comes in a sudden whallop, and they've also got the music to tell you how to feel.

To stay or not to stay, that is the question and the phenomenon of "sun pressure"
As I gear up for another 4 months overseas trip, I am really struggling with the issue of "to stay or not to stay" (here in Sydney). There are pros and cons. On the pro side:

• I'm already here, so I don't have to move my books anywhere
• I've got an excellent group of other writers around me
• The weather is absolutely flawless. Today, it's the Southern Hemisphere equivalent of mid-November yet it's so warm and crystal clear and blue that I'm wearing (as I always do) shorts and T-shirt. It's like living inside the music of a xylophone. I'm playing tennis in the sun and getting tanned, in November!
  

(Important caveat: Of course, good weather has its downside, as my friend Clinton pointed out: horrendous sun pressure. This is the phenomenon where you feel hideously, horrendously, catastrophically guilty if you stay indoors to be lazy and watch TV or have a nap, or recover from a hangover. One constantly feels "I should be outside." Sun pressure can be absolutely exhausting.)

On the con side:

• The immigration process if I want to stay here permanently is a huge bureaucratic headache. It makes me feel sick just to think of the paperwork.
  
• Sydney is so very far from so many people I care about. It takes at least 24 hours to get to Vancouver, New York or London, which combined with jet lag means it's not plausible to visit for just a week, which means you can't help but lose touch, slowly. For example, I missed my friend's Adam and Tom's weddding in London because I just couldn't get back and forth in time and I'm gutted by that. Now I'm staying away four months so as not to miss Ian and Agu's wedding, or Ken and Vinicius's in Europe.
  
• The gay scene here is seriously screwed up. I'm trying to be less cynical and more positive in life, as I do believe you get back what you put out, so I won't say any more about this, except that I feel that I don't really fit in here. Maybe it's because I feel utterly European in my sensibility.
  

The strange thing about having lived in so many places and having ties of affection in so many places is that one can feel kind of rootless, a citizen of the world but with roots in no one particular place. But I have no idea if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Does having roots in no one particular place mean I'll blow over in the slightest wind? Anyway, regardless, I'm off on 31 May. Next report likely to be from Vancouver, where I'll be thrilled to have a month with my Mammasita. She better cook some good food for me.