Spring is here

I had one of those days today where I woke up and the world was full of potential.
It was full of serendipitous sunshine and the Party was everywhere.
It was in my favourite musky-smelling pillow. It was in my clanky old keyboard with the letters worn off the keys. I was allured and searched for the Party further. It was in my rose, geranium and olive oil soap from the four toothed lady at the markets. It was in the wine glasses from last night with shiraz sediment in the bottom. I turned – and lo! There was the Party hiding in my closet, beside the tangerine indulgence cocktail dress and the aquamarine one-day acceptance speech number. The Party was in the red lipstick I had forgotten I had. The Party winked at me from behind my camera. The Party twirled me and pointed my toward one of its many favourite hiding places in amongst my cds.
Then the Party give me a kiss and a squeeze and took my hand and said “Welcome to September – Spring is here.”

Humanity

Brewing inside my soul, I feel it.
I crave it.
We need it.
Revolution.
We need to stop this avalanche of consumerism before it obliterates everything anyone ever stood for.
A Chinese sweat shop cannot make us a new Pacific Ocean.
An Indian call centre cannot tell us how to love each other.
And no amount of Coca-Cola or MacDonalds can feed the starving African heart.
In Australia this year, there was a coup. Our streets were silent. People flicked the station and watched some more goddamned masterchefTM.
In America this year, a private company dug a dirty hole and gave a fast spreading cancer to the people’s southern east coast. People waved their hands a little bit and went back to their too-mortgaged homes.
In Iraq and in Afghanistan our husbands and brothers and fathers and lovers fight a war that has no strategy, let alone any exit strategy.
For ‘Nam – people bled their hearts on the streets. They shook off their forsaken jackets and the silk business noose around their necks and they bled their passion and power and pain on to the streets and they made the change happen.
And now?
We can’t muster the care to buy The Big Issue from the cheery homeless man on the street.
In this, you and I are equal. You and Obama are equal. Steve Jobs and I are equal. Joe down the street and Robert Mugabe are equal. Korean and Chilean are equal. Australian and English are equal. Irish and Spanish – all equal
We are all equally to blame.
What will it take for us to understand this disposable life we lead will not sustain us?
What will it take for us to realize we are poisoning ourselves?
Will it be the last moment when there is nothing left, an infected abdomen and an empty head? Dust, and useless litter and disintegrating possessions?
Or can we muster the courage and the strength to do something before then?
In the late 1800s they had Romanticism – an enamor with the Surreal and a resistance to industrialism. In the 1960s they had their hippies and free love and a resistance to the war and oppression of civil rights. And now. In the year 2010 – we need it again. We need a commitment to community and a resistance to the destruction and the disposability of our way of life. We need to take up our arms and heed the call to Revolution one more time.
This Revolution is about Humanity.
Without our humanity we will not make it through this cruel winter we have brought upon ourselves.
Without our humanity our brothers and sisters will starve. They will kill each other and we will rip out and torch the soul of the earth that raised us.
No more disposable fashion and music and art. No more replaceable wars and politicians and corporations.
Bring back our Humanity.
We need this Revolution.

At a jazz club

Electro jazz played too loudly to talk about anything that needed soft voices. So with no soft voices, lovers were silent. Too much can happen in this silence of bass and keys and dirty saxophone alto. An intoxicating sensation of presence envelopes the room of people who are here to be seen. It was not too early, not too late. There was too much red and wet wine lists.

She felt the fire and ice rip through her in the way that made her laugh too loud and her gestures too animated. He was there. Across the way.
The lighting wasn’t dim enough here.

And he knew.

He knew about the way she showered every night religiously before bed. He knew about the dark mole she had on her left butt cheek. He knew she liked her eggs poached. He knew about the soft down between her breasts and he knew she arched her back. He knew her aunts and uncles by name. He knew her scent and taste when she hadn’t showered.

For happy hour they were perfect strangers. Flawless at it. Each with new prizes the other had never seen.

She noticed he didn’t laugh too loudly or gesture gregariously. He moved her soft hair away from her neck to whisper something in her ear.

She flinched. A little. The pain wasn’t so much a slap but a growing gnawing.

She was silent.

How impressionable are kids?

From the age of five until I was eight, I seriously believed that Creedance Clearwater Revival’s Down on the Street was the Australian National Anthem. I also used to think Captain Planet was based on true stories and that one day I would meet Nancy Drew.
Parents, I think often take advantage of how impressionable kids are. My parents had me convinced that a toasted cheese sandwich was a very special treat only available when I had demonstrated some extraordinary act of pleasing child behaviour. (Meanwhile back at the ranch, I learnt all too well as a struggling, time poor, finance poor student exactly what this toasted cheese sandwich business was about.)
I also used to think that catch’n’kiss was a dangerous way to catch a deadly disease and that the boogieman (who was also, conveniently for my parents, our neighbour) would really come and get me if I didn’t eat my broccoli.
All this came flooding back to me when I read an article that girls as young as 6 years old are putting themselves on calories controlled diets in a bid to “get skinny”. How impressionable are kids. I was 6 years old twenty years ago, and there was no way I knew what a calories was, nor cared enough to control my consumption of them. I feel like I sound like that bitter man who sits outside the butcher at my local shopping centre, but really – are kids these days growing up too fast?
Or is it not growing up at all, but just a response to environmental stimuli. We are part of that stimuli people, we owe the kids.
And bring back Captain Planet.

Hey Fat B!tch :)

Goddamn Atkins, low-carb, low-fat, portion distortion, blood type, skin type, nationality type – for heaven’s sake how many diets are there?
Fact:
1. We are all fat b!tches who work in office and barely have time to remember who our friends and family are, let alone go to the gym.
2. We are always ready, willing and able to consume our body weight in chocolate.
3. Who gives a f*ck about an Oxford Comma?

The point is – who the hell can count calories, remember what is low-carb, hi-GI, mono-unsaturated, insoluble, protein rich with Vitamin A and selium? It would be a full time job just eating healthily! And I have far more numerous and riveting things to occupy my thoughts than how many riboflavins I’m getting in a day.
Here are the three easiest diets you will ever hear of:

1. Weight loss
Things you can eat: the colour green and anything protein.
Things you can’t eat: anything white.
Two rules. That’s it. No fancy-shmansy whiz bang low fat pretend carbs, taste like cardboard. If it is the colour green (apples, zucchini, spinach) or protein (steak, eggs, chicken) eat it.
If it is the colour white (bread, cake, biscuits, rice) don’t eat it.
Continue until desired weight loss is achieved.

2. Flat stomach
The rules of this diet are very easy – no solids after 10am.
That’s it. Eat what you like, drink what you like, but NO solids after 10am.

3. Detox
Eat foods that are only one food.
Steak is made of steak. A banana is made of banana. A carrot is made of carrot. A cracker is made of rice, potato, vegetable oil, sugar, salt, vegetable powders, flavour enhancers, dextrose, food acids, yadda yadda.
It is possible to combine your one foods as long as they stay one food. For example, a salad is lettuce, tomato, cucumber on the same plate. A stir-fry is capsicum, broccoli, chicken on the same plate. A cake may be made of banana, sugar, milk, eggs and wheat – but the banana is no longer a banana and the milk is no longer milk.
Promise you will feel the world of difference after just three days.

So throw the calorie counter away, screw the pre-packaged meals (they are miserable). Eating should be easy and fun, not taxing and stressful.

So go green and protein, liquids or one food. Easy to remember, easy to follow.

Love Ede xx

It's all in a bathroom

I can forgive almost anything about a club if it has an amazing ladies’ loos. Seriously I have been served shit martinis been leered at by some no-friends jackass someone decided to let in and been trodden on by kmart couture heels, but stepping into beautiful bathrooms redeems all evils.
What makes a good bathroom? It’s quite simple really and club owners world wide would by doing themselves a service to heed this simple recipe:
1. Mirrors
2. Cubicles
3. Couches
Mirrors – when I say mirrors I don’t mean those dark reflective squares you picked up for a bargain at ikea. I need all angles people! I need at least one full length, preferably a series of full lengths so I can check my back and side angles as well. I need a mirror with sufficient lighting to apply and check make-up without emerging from the bathrooms looking like I’m auditioning for Cabaret. And I need plenty of them! Do you want your club full of girls or not?
Cubicles – you would think this one would be a no brainer. But the number of mens’ toilets I have been in over my years when I have given up on the unmoving queue to the ladies – there are the same number of cubicles in the mens as there are in the ladies? WTF? Guys need a slash station and maybe one or two cubicles. Girls need thirty – forty. I’m serious.
Couches – the ladies’ loos are like our sanctuary. Why do you think girls always go to the bathroom in a pack? It’s because it provides us with an opportunity to do what we do best – dissect and analyse the events around us. And for important activity, we would really appreciate at least two couches.
Trust me, mirrors, cubicles, and couches and your club will be a raging success.

I find cover charge offensive

That is all I have to say.