Let me tell you about my Mr Parish. The one you have here in what you call the blogosphere is stunningly sane. Mr Parish has hit hard times and is so tired of reading his own posts, he is not quite begging passersby to contribute – but almost. So almost, that this piece of trivia may make it past his censorial academic eye – not – and have him happily thinking with his cock.
My Mr Ken Parish is basically an endearing geek who has just recently learned how to pay his own bills. You must be aware, the man has been held together body and assets by a woman who would make minced meat of ‘She who must be obeyed’ – I can imagine a supermarket scene, and a fight to the death in front of the ‘red spot special’ frozen peas.
So the escape from marriage took place, the conclusive (as far as he can tell) escape, around last December.( wrong again – November) He knew just where he was headed, home free and running headlong into his next wife -oops life. Alas independence is not his strong suit, almost from the outset Mr Parish had two quite amazing women in mind, after ceding defeat in the the case of the preferred model he was genuinely and quite rightly encouraged by everything below the belt to pursue Model B. He has since convinced both himself and the B model that this was meant to be.
Ken is bright, no doubt about that one either and his mind is where his future will lie after he’s been forced into retirement – Eternally optimistic, I think he believes he will simply continue to point everywhere until all of him goes down. Back to the matters of mind, Ken realised after a few months of presiding over sharehouse hell from a Jason Recliner Rocker as big as my whole house that 20 years of marriage does not equip you for the rigors of the share household – no matter how good you once found it to be there is, regrettably – no going back.
Fortunately, the canny wife was watching his back and developed a bee in her bonnet about the tenants in no 1. So it’s a hop skip and an eviction notice and Ken is conveniently ensconced in his very own bachelor pad. He is as happy there as a pig in shit – ask him about home improvements and he positively beams – full beam.
I am enjoying myself considerably here but I have to stop due to some home improvements that involve a TV aeriel he has swiped from the vandals next door. I have to watch the TV – so it is to this onerous task I go willingly before it gets too dark.
Signing off,
The B model baby.
OK if you lot ever get to read this, just know, concessions were made, words, phrases whole ideas removed holus bolus. It seems to me that I may not be altogether welcome in the rarified Armadillo archive
Um?
Mark,
This post is by way of gentle retribution that “B” decided I deserved for certain conduct involving dinner at a Thai restaurant. Entirely unmerited punishment, of course, but them’s the breaks. Luckily the rules of the game now allow me the next right of retaliation. I was thinking of maybe a tasteful manipulation of an image of her using Adobe Photoshop, but the trouble is she could do the same to me. And, given universal female characteristics, her effort would inevitably be a lot more ruthless. More thought is needed.
Anyway, don’t worry too much. Non-self-indulgent posts will resume shortly. Geoff Honnor is even promising to post something later today.
Someone could get a quick MA out of all this. I will resist temptation but only because I don’t want the HECS bill and, quite frankly, I have read a pile of MA meedja studies theses and they don’t have that much more intellectual muscle than I can find on the internet. Yes, Gary, I am talking about you.. brain the size of a planet..
It’s about public v private. I love both sides, and I reckon that Geoff and Wen are balanced and illuminating in that mix. But our Ken, effective public intellectual that he is, keeps putting up incomplete pieces of startlingly private stuff.
The soap opera is fun. But I want the end of the story, or sometimes both halves. And it is storytelling.
For me, this is a literary text. I sit here in front of the screen and receive it as words. I have built up a portrait for myself of who you are. Now I want to know how to reconcile Ken the geek new to the world of commerce with Ken the landlord whose empire expands daily.. and I want to know how Ken’s ex, the pea amusing gladiatrix, feels about this..
I have been spoilt. I have a sneaking love of reality television. Is Ken the real internet answer? With a bit more attention to story and denouement, will he bring to Troppo an audience of millions? If so, would we up the ratings if Suzie is recruited as a kind of digital presenter?
Ken the internet word-drawn character is surely not going quietly into a middle aged post-marriage autumn of tropic desire. Instead, he seems to have opted for a whirl of lust and home improvements.
What else is left in popular culture?
Public v Private.
Public and Private.
Stating the bleedin’ obvious here, but it’s a long term fascination – the ways in which one informs the other. I will never sit easy with the notion of public ‘versus’ private. Anglo culture went that way 150 years ago when we all adored Queen Victoria and her marvelous little family – and before that when industry da da da social consequences of western industrial culture.
I think it is really the legitimisation of the public over the private that I am objecting to here. Or does that go too far and are my feminist insecurities showing?
“B”
You can only ever be public on the internet – there is no private, domestic self because its all in published words.
One of the small oddities is this question: if we are friends with people in the blogosphere, what happens if and when we mee them? It reminds me a bit of Dylan Thomas’s story of meeting T.S. Eliot and how his opinion of him changed because he was drunk and fell down the stairs. And yes, we all know the ironies of that..
…you can talk about strange bedfellows, Ken. (No offence, B Model Baby, just a cheap shot.)
i like it that Ken mixes in the personal – someone else in Nabakov’s (surfdom commenter) blogging category of ‘cats, cooking and bastard boyfriends’! well, almost.
…you can talk about strange bedfellows, Ken. (No offence, B Model Baby, just a cheap shot.)
i like it that Ken mixes in the personal – someone else in Nabakov’s (surfdom commenter) blogging category of ‘cats, cooking and bastard boyfriends’! well, almost.
And that’s praise from a real expert…
David,
You might be interested to know that B Model Baby (who henceforth wants to be known as “B” in the interest of brevity) is working slowly and painstakingly on a long-ish post about the distinction between public and private in the blogosphere, and the establishment, maintenance and challenging of (i.e. taking the piss out of) a blog persona. The first draft suggested it’ll be worth waiting for. However, when I politely enquired by email a few minutes ago about how the post was progressing, I was met with a completely gratuitous personal attack from “B”:
Unlike you who can swan around the tenants, wives, and tradesmen of Darwin while you are being a lecturer at the CDU. I am obliged to attend to the curriculum and students at the school in which I am employed. The blog is a luxury that us workers may indulge in our free time. You lot on the other hand don’t seem to need to make those kinds of distinctions. Holidays, workdays – it’s really all the same to you, isn’t it Mr Parish. I’m so glad you aren’t bald – the kids reckon that’s pretty much what happens when you’re 50, so look out.
I suspect it means she was too slack to do any more work on the post after I left last night.
Now I am afraid that Ken has leapt from a dominatrix to dame slap.
When I was a very small child at Darwin Primary School, we had a teacher who used to BEAT US. She was scarey.
Hey, Tiley
I haven’t hit anyone for ages, but I might be tempted – oh and I am not Suzy Khruse.
Curiouser and curiouser – you really do love reality T.V. don’t you? Me? – well I’m a fuck’n ideal audience. Oh dear. Being sensible for so many words has made me worse than usual.
us workers
Watch out, Ken, I think she’s about to go Marxist on you…
I think not James, – although I do harbour a healthy envy of our ‘leisure’ classes which is inconsistant with my persistent tendency to be downwardly mobile…. no.
But not even a little bit Marxist. Just jealous and facetious.
the mirror of bloggery
Diary blogging is another strand of this whole insane daily post obsession. I like to post about the public world, with the occasional frisson of something more personal when it relates to the wider world. But the public and private…