August 23, 2003 @ 6:16 p.m.
In which our heroine tries to prove that life isn't all bad, but sort of gets sidetracked by ranting

Despite yesterday's complete suckage, I've actually had a pretty good time of late.

Today I went to the launch of the new book by my creative writing lecturer, which was part of the Melbourne Writers' Festival. I caught up with a lot of people, including Harold (whom I've mentioned on here before as being one of my personal heroes and the best fucking tutor I've had during my time at Uni, because he is both of these things). Chatted to my creative writing tutor, Juliet, for ages, and met her brother in law. He's just split up from her sister, because after 14 years of married life, he's realised he's gay. There's a lot of family enmity at the moment, because my tutor is still great friends with him. He's a fantastic guy. It was nice to see someone at the festival who isn't a writer and doesn't buy into the whole writing-as-cult thing. As such, we hit it off tremendously, and spent a great deal of time after the launch standing off to the side of everyone else and snarking our black little hearts out. Juliet told him I'm interested in queer theory, so he was asking me a lot about that ("I'm new to this whole gay thing. I don't really know anything, except that I want to have sex with men.").

I also found out why I missed out on getting one of the editing positions. Well, I got told a reason, I hope it's true and not just a feelings-saver, at any rate.

What happened was that I met the other creative writing tutor for the first time. Juliet introduced us and she clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide, and said, "OH MY GOD! YOU'RE [REV]!" I was understandably a little confused. But as it allegedly turns out, both she and Juliet were really impressed with my CV (and the word "saucy" was thrown around, which is always a good thing), with Juliet even emailing the lecturer to rave about me. I'd assumed that, despite my experience, there must have been people with more experience than me. It was kind of the opposite. The idea of the anthology is to give people experience, so it was decided that I already had experience and thus other people should get a chance to get some experience. Personally, I think this is a really crappy reason not to give me the job, but I can understand the position from a subject co-ordinator's, let's-be-fair-to-everyone point of view. Now, though, I think I might be even more bitter about missing out than I was before. It's like being punished for actually having interests and passions and bothering to get off my arse and work on something I care about, rather than sitting around whinging about how the literary competitions are rigged and the publishing industry is so fucking nepotistic. I know they told me about all this as a way of complimenting and reassuring me, but I almost wish I didn't know, now, because I'm completely pissed off. This is so fucking unrealistic and typical of academic sugar-coating too: no fucking employer in the writing and publishing industries is ever going to turn around and say "well, you have no experience whatsoever, but we'll give you a job! It's the nice and fair thing to do!".

I thought before that I wasn't bitter about this. I guess I was lying to myself, huh? I'm not trying to say that no one else in my class is qualified to work on the anthology; that's not the case and there's a lot of really nice and really talented people I'm looking forward to working with in the coming months. I'm just pissed off that I'll be working with them as part of the launch committee rather than as an editor.

Speaking of which, I was also told I was put on launch duties not just because I've done launches before but also because it was thought I'd be good at it because I'm "outgoing". This amuses me greatly, because I don't see myself as outgoing at all, quite the opposite in fact. I guess Juliet thinks I am because I speak up a lot in class and all that jazz. Well, to tell you the truth, I talk a lot in class because there's a lot of stupid people in my class, and my opinions are better and more valid than theirs and must be aired. Pffft. Yeah, I'm talking about YOU, monobrow girl, and your quaint little assertion that we can't learn anything from the past and thus, every work of historic fiction ever written is useless and boring. You stupid git. Also, while I'm on a roll, I'd like to comment on the number of people in this subject and its first-semester cousin who openly admit that they don't read, sometimes going as far to say that they don't like books at all. What the fuck? Why are you taking a writing subject, you pompous, untalented, mouth-breathing MORONS?

Oh my. I was going to write about the good stuff that's been going on in my life lately. Of which there is a lot. I really didn't intend for this entry to degenerate into ranting. I was going to tell you about getting hit on by a schoolboy while at work the other day (my inner dirty old lady is still grinning maniacally). I was going to tell you about meeting Diaryland's favourite sickening couple, Dutchwink and Nous, and the fact that I seem to be becoming some sort of Diaryland-inspired socialite lately. I was going to tell you about later this afternoon, as I walked through Southbank after the festival, all black-clad and high-heeled and flowing blonde tresses and oddly immaculate (for my scruffy self), and suddenly felt like some wanker Melbourne cliche (but then it started raining, and I didn't have an umbrella, and my hair went curly and my mascara went goth chick, and I felt my facial expression change from blank serenity to ill-tempered scowl, so things returned to normal, really). I had more stories than this, but I seem to have misplaced them. Plus, this entry is long enough as it is, and Stuart has not long rocked up and is very seductively lying on my bed and reading the Financial Review. Rowr, baby.

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