Deodorant that makes you smell

I went to Penguin and was pointed at by Pip Smith which was nice. I was going to talk about PAN magazine but what seems more important right now is my deodorant. I have not always been a fan of the spray-on kind of deodorant, I found propelling air into my armpits too much of a shocking experience and ended up jumping around like a lunatic. I still jump around but there has been a fundamental shift in my thinking. My new and experimental tin of spray-on deodorant increases my naturally occurring body odour in the same way that an amplifier transmits the sound of a guitar. And I like it. I am going to spray again tomorrow and become one of those people that smells just precisely like themselves.

Fine then let's make a deal - I'll give you ten for your eleven

Tomorrow we might talk about the magazine and just why it is called PAN.

Generally my preferred Elvis is Costello not Presley

Well Elvis is something else. He was wearing an expensive suit two sizes too large. He was shambolic yet dapper and he occasionally danced across the stage. Elvis likes stepping away from his microphone, not afraid to strum his guitar and just sing, really let rip like they used to before somebody stuck a cord into a black box and discovered amplification. Once or twice he got a little experimental and made some art noise with his loop machine and pedals. I feel like I'm being haunted by loops at the moment. Everybody wants to stand on stage with a loop machine and make a band of themselves. I think its because we've forgotten how to go solo, almost everyone's plugged into someone else all the time. I suppose it's only natural that they take this to the stage where traditionally it has been lonely or it was until somebody figured out how to multiply one person into the sound of many.

Daisy from Bridezilla played a solo set at Oxford Arts Factory on Friday night, before Spencer's band and then The Mess Hall. I like Daisy, she's grand because she stands like she means it and just fucking sings. The Holy Soul were, as they almost always are these days, better than the audience deserved. I didn't stay to hear The Mess Hall play, I managed to not call Jed Dan and that was enough for me.  Radio Man was buying me drinks, I should have thought to drink something a little more expensive than water but it didn't occur to me at the time. I'm sure I had something else to say but I've forgotten what it might have been.

I've been saving my words lately. I've been holding back all effort that doesn't further the future of PAN magazine. I'll stop doing that eventually or maybe tomorrow but right now I'm riding that first wave of excitement just as far as it can take me. I'm hiding pens and notepads under my pillows in case I think of something in the night, I'm carrying two kinds of briefcase, working on three computers and tuning my footsteps to the sounds to the triple tap of magazine. I'll kick this habit at the launch party but for right now please don't wake me from this magazine dream.

In the morning it would be better if you've gone

Sometimes the very best way to spend a Saturday morning is sitting in bed with a nice cup of tea listening to Bob Dylan's Christmas album and reading Nylon magazine. It helps to make a tiny bubble to stop in for a moment, even if the bubble doesn't really make sense.

Double denim

Need I say more?

Lacquer my tunnel

In case you were wondering why the pictures of trains in the tunnel at Central are so shiny. It is because they clean then lacquer them every Monday night.

I suppose I should have suspected this

Editing a magazine is a little like herding kittens into a volcano of doom.

[disclaimer: neither the contributors nor the magazine are like a volcano of doom,  the magnitude of my mission is like a volcano of doom.... sort of]

Salami shower (instead of two kinds of classy)

I was feeling kind of pleased with myself because I was planning on having a bubble bath with the bathroom window wide open. I was going to lie back in hot water and watch the rain. I was thinking of smoking one of those long thin cigars and pouring the smoke from my lungs out the window but then I remembered that cigars are made of tobacco and I quit smoking three months ago.

I changed plans and went with a shower in order to avoid not smoking but I must have made a pit stop at the refrigerator. It was one of those thin flat pieces of salami, the kind large enough to cover a piece of bread. I was holding it curled like a cigar in my teeth while I peeled off my clothes. It was freezing in The Peach bathroom this afternoon, cold enough to hurry me straight into the shower with less than three seconds passing from the removal of my last sock until the hot water hit my face. I turned around to let the water warm my back when I realised the rolled up slice of salami was still sitting in place like a meat cigar hanging out of the left side of  my mouth. Today is the day that I ate salami in the shower and I loved it. I'm doing it again tomorrow.

Kind of like a hoppy sort of sideways moonwalk combined with a running man and also some kicking?

This morning I woke up, only very moderately hungover, and decided that today is the day I learn how to do the Melbourne Shuffle. Clearly the music is horrid and the shufflers seem mostly to be men but what the hell it's about time I developed a new hobby. I briefly considered converting my black pyjama pants with yellow electrical tape and downloading horrible music but on reflection have decided to simply perform Slamma style shuffle to Talking Heads wearing my pony dress.

Do a Loni Cha Cha

Him: You should freeze your eggs.

Me:  

It seems to me like this might be the place

Yesterday of course I had twelve tantrums in the rain but everyone arrived at all of the meetings and I believe what I experienced was progress with umbrellas, boots and a magazine. Newtown will in the end deliver what you need whether it's a poetry editor, seven and a half burritos or a permission to reprint something already delivered.

I had thought to sit quietly in a bookshop and lay down one convincing argument after another but as usual I ended pretending to tap dance in the doorway of a Mexican takeaway waving my umbrella and shouting at the rain.

Peter, Paul and Mary seemed to have each other

Everyone knows they've been fucking but not everybody knows that he doesn't know her name. I decided to call her Mary. Last week I heard somebody say 'we lost Mary' and there's not one person in Newtown who looks more lost than her. I was clutching ten records to my chest and walking in the rain when she rolled past me on a bus staring at nothing, not even blank space. I imagine she lets her handbag sag in her lap.

There's no one taller, she's got those toothpick legs hooked on to the end of a floating bone pelvis. Black hair hanging clean and straight. I feel like setting obstacles in her path just to see exactly how much those long legs can step over with breaking their elegant stride. I suppose she looks like a model or something but when you see her in a crowd she seems planted from outer space. I've seen her almost everywhere in Newtown, on buses, street corners, bars, pubs, shops and supermarkets. She is always alone. Last month I saw her picking up teaspoons in Vinnies. She would hold one close to her face, turn it over then put it down again. I never picked her as the type to make off with the silver.

I would have assumed that I had imagined her, conjured out of the viable air space in my head but people talk about her. I'm not the only one that sees in corners and out on the street. I'm going to keep calling her Mary but I think I've decided that instead of watching stand hollow and decorative as a crystal vase I might just walk up to her and say hello.

So why are they saying this isn't true?