Elijah Wood in queer penguin shock!

After doing my monthly googles of "Elijah Wood News", I have learned that young Lij has decided to do something completely anarchic by being in a movie with

1) penguins
2) Nicole Kidman
3) Magda Szubanski

I am in deep shock. He's doing the (potentially singing) voice for the character of "Mumbles" (a rather dubious name if you ask me), in some Antarctic arthouse animation for kiddies involving tapdancing Emperor penguins, alongside Ice Queen herself, Nicole. The film is called Happy Feet and is leaving me feeling suitably unimpressed. Will Nicole have a bath with Elijah? Will Nicole toboggan nude from an iceberg with a prepubescent penguin? And claim Mumbles is her dead husband? Or will Magda break out in hives when Lij waddles on set? It is but a mystery to me.

From Frodo to Mumbles? Please, Elijah, why can't you star in some broody black-and-white Frenchie film, set in the twenties, playing some angsty writer who wears lots of velvet jackets and smokes clove cigarettes and has Audrey Tautou as a love interest?

You vill be taken to a convent school, outside Heidelberg, vhere you will teach zee young girls Home Economics!

After reading the recent post of fellow blogstar CracklyPork about sewing accidents, I recalled with more that a shudder and squirm a most nasty business involving my Hideous Home Ec project - the denim pencil case.

In a world long long ago, when I was huddled in a grey classroom with creaky radiators and leaky gutters in North-east England, I was hunched over my Hideous Denim Pencil Case (nastily embroidered with my name in hot pink thread) sewing away with the pencil case spread out upon my lap, with my tongue sternly sticking out of my mouth (a frequent pose of mine when concentrating in a stern manner). As the room was poorly-lit, I went to raise my Hideous Denim Pencil Case so I could inspect my work more closely, when I realised that I'd sewn directly through my pencil case into my skirt, and not only that, I'd sewn down through my skirt into my thick woolly tights, and into the first precious layer of skin. That's right, the hot pink thread from my pencil case had penetrated not only my skirt and my navy stockings, but it had passed through my epidermis! What bigger crisis is there for a young girl than becoming physically attached to one's Hideous Denim Pencil Case?

Well, when I realised this fact, I whooped and I hollered and I gnashed teeth, causing all fifteen sewers in the room to drop their needles. Mrs Armstrong, seeing what the matter was as I writhed about in agony with my Hideous Denim Pencil Case flailing about on its long thread, simply flexed her strong arms and snapped the thread off. On inspection there was no blood at all, but the shock remained for weeks and that is why to this day I cannot even sew on a button. However, even when I moved to Australia at 8, I could not escape the Home Ec teacher's love affair with denim, and throughout my primary and secondary years I was forced to manufacture Daggy Denim Aprons with complementary denim oven mitts and other darn-right disgusting denim accessories.

Since those Dark, Denim Days, I've never looked a needle in the eye again.

Precious Things

Old friends. New friends. True friends.
Shoeboxes full of hand-written letters and torn envelopes.
My mother's teacup and octagonal saucer.
A cat's love.
Love letters. Dried roses. Scrolled poems sealed with candle wax, unbroken.
The black dog's whisker kept as a memento in an old tin.
Photographs of forgotton times.
Battered Christmas ornaments gleaming in an old box, like pirate's treasure.
A lover drenched in moonlight.
A baby's fingernails.
The laughter of the elderly.
An unspoilt blanket of snow on the grass.
Blue speckled eggs. Autumn leaves underfoot.
Solitude.

japanese whispers ... javanese hipsters ... janet's slippers

My peregrination to Japan is set to happen this coming August! Not exactly sure where I'll be landing in my bright red plane, but desirous destinations include Kyoto, Hokkaido and Fuji-san. I would like to experience the Japanese countryside during my initial time there. Sydney is probably a small town compared with Tokyo, but I'm hankering for a quiet life surrounded by seasons, clean air and forest or sea. Sydney has become a whirl of noise and irritations to me this past year, and the only thing that's been keeping me happy here is Good Friends. I want to take lonely walks in unfamiliar landscapes and soak up silence. For this reason I'm not inclined to begin my travels in Tokyo, although at some point I intend to sample its neon wilderness and find out if all those rumours are really true (underwear vending machines, faux-goths, subway sleaze etc). Also, everyone I know seems to know someone who has lived in Japan or is living there now. So many interconnections. It makes me want to join the dots ...

Bring on Nihon! And to quote the dashing Captain Flashheart - goggles on, chocks away, last one back's a homo - hurray!