Thanks to Jo for the phone pics.  We had to wait in a sweaty line full of students to view this vegetal hulk and convey its magnificence to you, constant readers.
 
​YOU'RE WELCOME.

Bra shopping.  It's been a while but I seem to remember being happier to dash a jug of sulphuric acid into my own fucking eyes than have to find an entirely new brand of bra.  Turns out I was right.  I've been looking for a new one since bloody Kmart decided to rejig the cups on their $9 T-shirt jobs, the fucking bastards.  In honour of this shitty duty I commissioned, directed and shot a highly symbolic series of images around the item in question juxtaposing exploitative intersectional commentary with the fetishisation of ritualised interpersonal violence and gendered objects in the domestic context.  

Your gratitude is my oxygen. 

Anyways, all you titty-blessed girls know where my journey is headed; to the flash bra place/department store.  Where there is nothing under $60 under any circumstances.  Where an older lady clasping the pitiless tape measure of judgement will listen patiently while you try to explain your specific needs i.e. there's no tactful way to say I want a nice slutty bra for my giant rack that really puts it out there and gets me better service in the electronics shop, so I just admit as much in plain language.  Sort of like the one I'm wearing now, only not so fucked-out and suicidal.   Special occasion?  Er... no... not really.  Her nonverbal leakage turns slightly-to-decidedly disapproving.

No, you don't want the sort of lace that rips the shit out of your nipples or looks like a tribe of confused, mysterious serpents mating awkwardly under you clothing.  Yes, you're aware that every single fucking lingerie manufacturer has a different idea of what DD looks like so you're going to be standing under changing room lights that are like the sun during the Rapture, turning beetroot red and itchy from all the new-bra starch while the mirror titters at your naked flab for three. fucking. hours, robing and disrobing over and over and over.  You'll be informed that you are in fact an E and not a DD cup and that all the lightly-padded plain black balconette slash plunge bras stop at D.  Sorry about that.  

It's the Mormon moo-cow erection-snuffing bras for you, you bossy big boobied harlot.

Are there any black ones, then?  No, they won't be back in stock til next year.  Do you detect a fleeting note of inveracity in this slightly too-glib assurance?  You don't know any more.  You walk once again past all the three thousand fucking kinds of awesome bras specifically designed for the people who don't really need one; they are all currently half-price.  You will try to load your junk into jade and cerise Ds in the only styles you would vaguely consider wearing; they will defy you almost laughingly and slyly pinch your armpit fat into a sort of disappointed operatic Mandarin face.  And in the end you will accept that matronly minimiser bra because it's black and not the colour of a floating corpse or pickled endometrium and you will pay that $70 like a grateful survivor.

Then you'll go home, try it on despairingly and then fling it onto the ottoman at the end of the bed, uttering the first immortal line of the poem you are about to write and your partner will laugh because he is a man, balls can be saggy in the privacy of male attire and nobody dies.

On a far more tasteful note, we finally saw Only Lovers Left Alive last week and will review it pour vous soon.  In the meantime, here's the very lovely Yasmine Hamdan and her enchanted vocal stylings from the soundtrack, which is just as much a gorgeous trove of atmospheric righteousness as the film itself.

For all romantics, both hopeless and still hopeful.

(Translation by Deniz Doğan)
I adore you, even  if a day passes by without seeing you i forget you? How come this time I drew you the Longing moves the nostalgia in my heart the night gets longer and the day passes backwards oh my fragile heart the separation is killing me I have no solution (hal) I have no solution.

Are you like me, i.e. impressed against your will by slick and/or gaudy graphic design changes on the basic-arse items that've haunted your shopping list for years?  My senses were both assaulted and delighted by this amazing Macleans toothpaste update featuring-

- new highly-embossed aspirational tooth with superimposed science grid
- full metallic lustre on main body printing
- realistic gold segments in a faceted ring of protective assurance
- eight incredible benefits delineated by tricuspid symbols and individual rainbow swoosh
- golden fulcrum resolution of all rainbow swooshes indicating comprehensive beneficial integration

Holy shit.  All this for sub $3 on special.  I thought I'd bought the wrong toothpaste.

Small towns, eh?  To me, gossip is a comprehensive sensory experience just like everything else, possessing the gently luteal glow of ear wax or scorched formica (darkening with the degree of prurience); it feels like broad-gauge distressed underwear elastic or the textured glass of mid-century ashtrays, and smells like hat sweat.

We have little to no idea what prompted this massively ambitious (check out the page numbers in the upper right hand corner of each sheet and marvel as we did) account of (alleged) darksided nautical-themed shenanigans, but someone took a break from their meds, bought all the staples and decided to fuck brevity right in the arse with an epic non-linear passive-aggressive public j'accuse, distinguished by both the breadth of its scope and the tenuousness of its literacy (yes, they go together down here too).  

Abused boat builders, agendas, fathers, the Queen, cop brothers, embroidered heavyweight ratchet strops, shit on ute, world war two trucks, secret meetings...  By pole three I was gagging for some sort of dense revelatory nexus but had to settle for roomers, air fairs and panicing.  I almost paniced myself.  And I was definitely getting a burning, bunched up sort of cheesy odour in my head. 

Hell is other people.  Exhibit A. 

Burdening the cost of any fraudulent case is a definite platutative insurnomibility.

If Queen England dose feel anything right now, it's probably intense disillusionment with colonialism per se.

Yatching.  Sounds... furtive.  And a bit sexy.  Perhaps not something you'd admit to; more like something you'd get caught doing in front of a computer while your underwear gets chewed up in a wheel of your pleather office chair.
It also sounds like there's a national team.  No surprises there.

And I was told that north end shed tagging stuff was about someone getting ripped off over drugs but whatever.

When Normality blanks you on the stairs, she has her reasons- accept them.  And now I really do want to know; what the fuck is a yatch club and how many kills do I need to document before someone slips me the door code?

Okay, yes, while our baser instincts prevailed, we took pictures and nearly wet our pants over this shit, it's only funny until someone screams he's got a knife.  So Portarians, if you know who spent their sunday morning venting Old Testament-styles up and down Wicky terrace, it might be time to intermediate.  Just a suggestion.

Are you laughing or crying?  Is this the failure of the democratic principle or its logical conclusion?
Are we getting exactly what we deserve?  Is this what you want?  Where are those eighty five guys (because you know they're all men) and how many of them like busty redheads?  Is Marx farting on Friedman's meringue in hell right now?  Will I be able to afford Molotov cocktails when all this shit comes down?
So many questions.

Alliteration is perhaps the most noble of all literary embellishment and metaphorically speaking, it is the tinsel stuck to Santa's sweaty balls, so let's do this in the spirit of xmas.

Patriarchal pudenda-pounding poltroons pontificate profusely, pointless peregrinations pestilentially prolonged per pedestrian parameters.  Wearisome wenches wither winsomely within whiny fuck it, nobody cares.


You're welcome.

No, I don't think they are here for your unborn children, but that was my first thought too.

HOUSE  Hermès
STYLE/FLAVOUR oriental fougere.
DATE OF ISSUE  2006
LISTED NOTES peru balsam, vanilla sugar, amber, sandalwood, tonka bean, patchouli, siam resin, caramel, oak, incense, orange peel, cedar.

I often only glance at one or two reviews before buying a new fume, since, as I might have already mentioned, I prefer not to load myself with other peoples' expectations and disappointments.  Thus I came to Elixir des Merveilles without any preconceptions, apart from the side-eye I reserve for Hermès as a house in the round; they have never impressed me beyond their ability to induce certain people to pay alarming sums of money for possibly the ugliest bags on the planet.  Slow clap for that, I suppose.  I mean, Ambre Narguile is solid enough without being distinguished; there are a few others that were... pleasant... inoffensive... but that's part of the problem, is it not?  Their fragrances tend to not even bother me and that is almost incontrovertible evidence of mediocrity, no matter where your tastes happen to lie.  All this fuss is of course ephemeral to consideration of the perfume in itself and was something that merely confirmed my impression after the fact anyway.

Elixir des Merveilles is a pungent detonation from the moment it escapes the glass and wraps around your head, a spongy wad of dirty, syrupy, slightly decomposed citrus; rubbed kaffir lime, bruised lemon blossom, the last mandarin in the bowl - you get the idea.  Accompanying this dubious melange is an almost aged if not decrepit vanilla, battered with a plank of splintery sunbaked resin.  This fume is thick in almost every possible sense of the word; something to choke on- something to get both hands around- something that might need help finding its way home, and while it hoes the same row as other monster scents like Lutens' Chergui and the original Poison, it doesn't share their IQ, having more in spiritual common with Clinique's Aromatics Elixir, that drooling sleeper-hold of a thing, that infant migraine in a bottle.  It doesn't so much smell like the former pair as possess their frightening tenacity and penetration, so keep that in mind when considering a second spray.

Along with all this fuzzy, dense citrus comes something grey and I can't quite put my finger on its origins since I'm still pretty much smelling what I did half an hour ago.  Yes, Elixir is what you might call linear, so much so that it really just oozes slowly forward in a spineless kind of way, banging on the jellied orange like a favourite toy until you want to crawl out of the window or at least hit the mute button.  Wherefore art thou, alleged cedar, because I'm gagging for you at this point.  After half an hour or so the fruit bowl starts to sag and you're permitted a small peep of something drier, a flat amberous resin struggling through a vanilla turned both lactic and melon-y (yes, ew), a smothering toffee and something resembling bad rum and raisin icecream (I'm picking fake sandal and budget tonka) that have squeezed into a world that's starting to feel like the satin-lined interior of a white stretch limousine.  Possibly not the intended destination.  The whole thing settles into a decidedly MOR fly-spray amber in the end, the orange rising, undead, in dried peel form like a piece plucked out of a chai blend and wedged forcibly into one nostril.

So to summarize, Elixir des Merveilles is inorganic, asphyxiating and inarticulate.  There, I've said it, and I feel much better.  And for the price ($100+ 50ml) you can do so much better that I don't even know where to begin.  That's not a popular opinion; the darn thing scores 100% on Basenotes, but I'd rather swallow the bottle than spray it on my wrist.  Yes that is an exaggeration, but the sentiment remains.
Available online, if you insist.
© céili o'keefe.