PLATINUM GRITTTTTTTTTTTT!

One of the best comics I've ever read, period. The art's somewhat Jaime Hewlett and the plot is just wonderful.

I am currently typing this from my Dad's house in Geelong. The computer has a "Harry Pothead" screen-saver and my dad and younger sister are in the lounge room getting stoned, watching Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and doing tarot readings. I ate custard two-months past its use-by date.

Well all my assignments are finished and I have a month to relax and get some reading done for next semester. I've started Perfume by Patrick Suskind, which is pretty interesting. It's about a man with a preternatural sense of smell living in 18th century Paris, stinkiest of all epochs. He's set-out on a mission to be the greatest perfumer to ever live, basing his formulas of the alluring scent of a young girl he killed. It's funny and interesting and I kept sniffing things out of curiosity while I was on the train. I smell slightly of tomato and oregano due to my diet. Odd.

Speaking of the train, the toilets on it are so incredibly space-aged. I wonder how dated they'll seem in ten or twenty years? Every single function is accomplished by pushing a little button with a cheerful picture and label describing its purpose, and displays light-up while weird mechanical hums vibrate out of the walls. It doesn't make peeing on the train any easier, though. You need a degree in engineering to avoiding having to change your shoes.

On the tram coming into the city this evening, I witnessed a couple of Irish girls being accosted in a well-meaning manner by two very loud and partially drunk young men, who kept trying to charm the girls and made some ill-advised jokes about leprechauns. The girls accepted their number as a part of a carefully-devised ruse to make the men go away, and as soon as their antagonists were off the tram started giggling their heads off about how they had to put this in their book they were writing, and how generally ridiculous the entire thing had been. Does this sort of thing happen often? I have witnessed it a couple of times myself, but I'm not too sure. I have a feeling that it would be tricky being a woman, pretty or otherwise, due to the incessant pestering by all the guys out there filled with directionless lust. Not to say girls aren't similarly overflowing, but I seen fewer crazy scenes in public as a result.

I have put more thought into this whole "Art Project" thing. Not much, though. The key things seem to be keeping it local, focused and with the numbers small. I am in favour of getting a group of four or five people, each having them put together a dozen or so pages worth of art and stories and articles and their general interests, and then approaching the person I know whose father is a printer about trying to get a nice one-off edition put together at a reasonable price - contributors would pool the necessary funds. The whole thing would aim for class, though - more along the lines of those nicely done amateur comics you see in Minotaur than the scruffy, schizophrenic idea-dumps that litter countless record-shop 'zine desks.

I think A6 would be a good size maybe? Who knows?

Tags: magazines, marijuana, perfume, public transport, robert downey jr
Current Location: Geelong
Current Mood: contemplative