Four Corners last night – Belmore Park

It was about youth remand centres and rehabilitation. A bloke said he “rolled” people for money in Belmore Park as they walked to the bus.

A couple of years ago I was walking through Belmore Park and was feeling very grim and preoccupied cause I was in agony with endometriosis pain AND on my way to a Lifeline counselling class. A young guy snuck up and grabbed the strap of my handbag.  I didn’t flinch or fight, just kept on walking, didn’t even look at him and he seemed really freaked out by my non-reaction. He started lecturing me on “how dangerous this area is” and it wasn’t safe for me to be walking alone (it was 5.30pm on a sunny weekday) and how people get their handbags snatched.

I didn’t answer but I was thinking it was very hypocritical since he seemed to be the only danger around. I wasn’t chatty so didn’t tell him where I was going.

He got me safely to Central.

The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

Finished it last night. So depressing*. I hadn’t read anything about it before except knew John Hinckley and Mark Chapman were fans. My summary written at 3am: “Am amazing study of someone who feels crap all the time.”

While checking how to spell Hinckley, I just found this post that says serial killers have great taste in literature. Dunno if I’ll read Stranger in a Strange Land.

I didn’t realise Holden had ended up in an institution at the end – I just thought they had a psychoanalyst at his next school. And that he just “got sick” as a temporary thing. A bit disappointing.

Fave bits:

“Boy, I really fouled that up. I should’ve at least made it for cocktails or something.”

“People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet.” [NB:  subjunctive.]

“And you could tell his date wasn’t even interested in the goddam game, but she was even funnier-looking than he was, so I guess she had to listen. Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes.”

“Which always kills me. I’m always saying ‘Glad to’ve met you’ to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”

“If you think I was dying to see him again, you’re crazy.”

“Newsreels. Christ Almighty. There’s always a dumb horse race, and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship, and some chimpanzee riding a goddam bicycle with pants on.”

“You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart. I’m not kidding.”

“… I’d meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we’d get married. She’d come to live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she’d have to write it on a goddam piece of paper, like everybody else.”

“I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being perverty when I’m around.” 😉

*Not as depressing as The Game by Neil Strauss, though it’s a great read.

Phil Scott: ‘Hello, I’m a deviate.’

From Phil Scott’s column on Same Sex marriage:

“So I have a plan. Before the next ALP conference, let’s each of us get out there and befriend one member of the public who has never met a poof or a dyke. It’s not hard. You just bowl up to some beige little person in the street and say, “Hello, I’m a deviate.”
“Oh really?” they answer. “I’ve never met one of youse before. Youse don’t look much like Carlton Kressley. Why don’t we grab a coffee and talk? I’ve often wondered when someone says, ‘Go fuck yourself’ if that is actually possible…” and so on.
Of course, you have to pick the right person. Lebanese boys in souped-up ’90s cars are out. They might think you’re after sex. Fifty per cent success rate apparently, but only if you get them alone.”

Australia produces 1% of carbon dioxide emissions

I’m all for being “anti-pollution” (as it was called when we did primary school projects in the 1970s, featuring many cut-out and pasted pics of dying fish in rivers and dead forests and stories about acid rain).

Miranda Devine points out: “Australia produces just 1 per cent of the world’s cardon dioxide emissions so if we were to shut down the country, the impact on the global climate would still be negligible.”

I’m a graver

The UK Times: term for someone over 40 who likes going to dance parties. I still like the occasional party.

I don’t stay until dawn. I’m a short-sprinter, only a couple of hours. I don’t go to Recoveries, am tucked up in bed by then.