HRH Maresy of the Dotes, High Priestess of Smut

Yankee Date

morganaus — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:10:53 GMT

Last October, I was in Aussiestralia with Catt, aka givemethegun - *whom I love dearly - and we flew up to Sydney to spend some time with dr_nic, helluvatough, and a cavalcade of other rock stars.

[*She said she'd dump me if I didn't say that.]

Anyway, Nic and his lovely housemate, peculia, were kind enough to let us crash the night and also to serve up a cookout feast for us at theirs the next day. After a scrumptious breakfast of Portuguese tarts and other delicacies, the 4 of us went for a walk around the corner to stock up on provisions. Nic had graciously purchased Kanga Bangas for me (hot dogs made of kangaroo meat) but since I'm a vegetarian, I couldn't partake of their marsupial goodness so off to the market we went for fresh vegetables et al, where "et al" equals "booze".

On the way back to Nic and Kitty's, we passed by a toy store that boasted so many collectors' items, it was mind-boggling. Intrigued, we went inside on the excellent advice of the locals. I briefly saw a Siegfried & Roy ~~monstrosity~~ guy manning the counter, then proceeded to make my way around the shop, commenting inanely on everything from The Addams Family figurines to the Mr. T paraphernalia.

We got back to the house and had some nice chats before Nic and Kitty wowed us with the most gorgeous food on the planet. And oh, there was drink--beverages galore. misshavisham, devillionaire, lillim, and helluvatough showed up and when I informed Ms. Tough about the bevy of Mr. T goods right around the corner, she and Catt made a beeline posthaste.

About 15 to 20 minutes later, they were running back and giggling hysterically. They had something to tell me. Apparently, when they'd gone into the store, the bizarre fellow behind the counter started talking with Catt about the The Greatest American Hero again. She had asked him about it earlier when I was there; she wanted to get me something cheesy, and he said he hadn't heard of the show.

He was also asking about "her American friend" and how I was a "nice piece". He asked Catt to bring me back to the shop and he'd take me out on a "Yankee Date". After a volley of laughter, I decided to stay at the party after all, go figure. It looks like I'll never have the opportunity again: *Beat it.

RIP, Richard Blackie. May you go to the big Yankee Date in the sky.

*Les Kennedy
July 31, 2006

FREDDY KRUEGER and Homer Simpson have not spoken since Sydney's Michael Jackson died.

The near life-size toy figures, whose voices are activated by electronic sensors, have stood silent for two months in the shop that doubled as the home of their owner, Richard Blackie, a Michael Jackson impersonator.

Mr Blackie's body has lain unclaimed at the City Morgue in Glebe since it was discovered on May 27 at the Antique Toy Trading Company in Petersham. Police believe his death at the age of 41 was the result of suicide.

They have been unable to trace any relatives, even though Mr Blackie often talked about his mother and sister, and even a girlfriend, whom no one ever saw.

The fate of one of Australia's largest collections of antique and modern toys, comics, television and movie memorabilia - which Mr Blackie dreamed would be displayed in a museum of his creation - is now uncertain.

In an interview with the Herald two years ago, Mr Blackie, who more than a decade ago had plastic surgery to remake his face in the image of his teen pop idol, Michael Jackson, said there were more than 3.5 million objects crammed into his tiny shop.

"I've been called upon to round up all the old toys in the world," he said of his 20-year obsession, which friends speculate grew out of a childhood deprived of love and toys as a ward of the state in Queensland.

Marrickville police were stunned on entering the shop.

"Out the back where he slept, we came across John Wayne - no kidding, a life-size mannequin of John Wayne sitting on a stuffed horse," one officer said.

Antenella Azzopardi, an artist and friend of three years who lived above Mr Blackie's shop, spoke with sadness of the last month of his life. Miss Azzopardi said his mood swung from depression to paranoia.

A week before his death, Mr Blackie came to her with a bruise on his head, saying he had been assaulted by a man demanding money, and he was also worried that he was behind in the rent.

"A couple of days later he changed his story and said a group of men had assaulted him in the grounds of a church. Then he said someone was gassing his shop because his four chihuahuas and German shepherd were sleeping too much," she said.

Later, she heard Mr Blackie's dogs crying. "Now we know why," she said.

Miss Azzopardi said Mr Blackie craved attention and loved it when people remarked on his resemblance to Jackson, with whom he corresponded. He would proudly show customers and friends Jackson's letters to him.

"He was a great character, he could talk all day about his collection. At night you sometimes heard his Homer Simpson doll talking," she laughed, adding "but Freddy Krueger freaked one of my friends out when he talked, especially at night when you would hear them together."

Miss Azzopardi said Mr Blackie was one of Jackson's authorised imitators for shopping centre appearances. He said he had been on a television talk show as Michael Jackson.

But in the past year, with the crash in popularity of his idol amid claims of child molestation, Mr Blackie's dream of a national toy museum was shattered.

Police found no suicide note. They said it did not appear that Mr Blackie was in financial difficulty.

With no known next of kin to claim his body, police said he faced a "destitute funeral" in an unmarked grave.

With no will, his collection is in the hands of the public trustee.

Anyone who has information that could assist police should phone 9281 0000.

Travelogue

morganaus — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 15:07:25 GMT

I have traveled to 97 Cities in 15 Countries
See all my travel pages

2003

Sedona, AZ: 3/21 - 3/27

2004

Bantry / Cork / Galway / County Clare, Ireland: 3/25 - 3/29, 4/1 - 4/8
Edinburgh, Scotland: 3/29 - 4/1
Washington, DC & Northern VA: 6/11 - 6/13
New York City, NY: 10/14 - 10/17
Sedona, AZ: 11/20 - 11/26

2005

Reston, VA: 1/21 - 1/23
Las Vegas, NV: 2/9 - 2/14
Pompano / Ft. Lauderdale / Orlando, FL: 5/28 - 6/4
New York City, NY: 9/9 - 9/11
Washington, DC & Northern VA: 12/2 - 12/4
Melbourne / Sydney / Country Victoria, Australia: 10/2 - 10/15

2006

Boston, MA: 3/24 - 3/26
Venice / Verona / Florence / Siena / Lucca / Cinque Terre / Pisa / Rome / Naples / Pompeii / Sorrento / Positano, Italy: 4/21 - 5/7
Manchester / Hull / Lincolnshire / York, England & Duns / Edinburgh, Scotland: 8/4 - 8/13
Chicago, IL: 9/21 - 9/24
Moline, IL: 10/27 - 10/29
Las Vegas, NV: 11/22 - 11/26

2007

Washington, DC: 1/19 - 1/21
San Francisco / San Jose / Santa Cruz / Los Gatos / Sausalito / Carmel / Monterey / Napa / Sonoma, CA: 4/6 - 4/15
Dominican Republic: 6/30 - 7/7
Moline, IL: 9/13 - 9/16
Las Vegas, NV: 12/19 - 12/23

2008

Amsterdam, Netherlands & Paris / Loire Valley (Chambord, Chenonceau, Cheverny), France & Bruges, Belgium: 3/7 - 3/21
Philadelphia, PA: 5/24 - 5/26
Pittsburgh, PA: 8/9 - 8/10

2009

Chicago, IL: 6/24 - 6/28
Chicago, IL: 7/15 - 7/19
Denver, CO: 12/16 - 12/19

2010
Chicago, IL: 1/15 - 1/18
Denver, CO:
London, England:
Denver, CO:

Baaaaaaaa.

morganaus — Fri, 09 May 2003 06:47:18 GMT

I'm such a sheep. So far, lemur_man, andrewwyld, and classytart have completed this.

(falls off the cliff like a lemming)

Instructions: Take a band. Answer the following questions using only the titles of songs by that band.

I'll be using XTC, my favorite band.

Are you male or female?:
Church of Women; Ladybird; That's Really Super, Supergirl

Describe yourself:
Brainiac's Daughter; Burning With Optimism's Flames; My Bird Performs

How do some people feel about you?:
Fruit Nut; I Can't Own Her; Pale and Precious; Vanishing Girl

How do you feel about yourself?:
She's So Square; The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul; Super-Tuff

Describe your girlfriend/boyfriend/interest:
Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her

Where would you rather be?:
This World Over; Towers of London

Describe what you want to be:
Stupidly Happy

Describe how you live:
Senses Working Overtime

Describe how you love:
Love On A Farmboy's Wages; My Love Explodes; The Pot Won't Hold Our Love; When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty

Share a few words of wisdom:
We're All Light; You And The Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful

Book Bitch - Updated 11/20/10

morganaus — Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:53:11 GMT

I'm compiling a list of books I've read since starting entries in this journal February 23, 2003. This is an ongoing list and I'd recommend all of the following books, except where noted.

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
A Girl Named Zippy, Haven Kimmel
The Death of Vishnu, Manil Suri
Sailing for Dummies, JJ & Peter Isler
Finding Fish: A Memoir, Antwone Fisher
Mother of Pearl, Melinda Haynes (didn't finish, awful book)
Cause Celeb, Helen Fielding
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
Naked, David Sedaris
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams
Icy Sparks, Gwyn Hyman Rubio (boring)
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, Bruce Campbell
Silas Marner, George Eliot
The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
Choke, Chuck Palahniuk
Candide, Voltaire
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays, David Sedaris
Under the Greenwood Tree or The Mellstock Quire, Thomas Hardy
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller (re-read for a book group discussion; still reviled)
Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott
Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
The Poetry & Short Stories of Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
Lost in a Good Book, Jasper Fforde
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
On the Road, Jack Kerouac (made it halfway, total snoozefest)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss
Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
Princess in Waiting, Meg Cabot
The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Well of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
The Outsider aka The Stranger (L'Etranger), Albert Camus
Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray (second attempt, gave up again)
Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh
Project Princess, Meg Cabot
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho
The House on the Strand, Daphne duMaurier
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
The Pearl, John Steinbeck
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw
The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger
Struwwelpeter, Heinrich Hoffmann
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
Everything's Eventual, Stephen King
He's Just Not That Into You, Greg Behrendt & Liz Tuccillo
The Master Cleanser, Stanley Burroughs
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson
Perfume, Patrick Süskind
Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories, Chuck Palahniuk
The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim
Superstud, Paul Feig
Demian, Hermann Hesse
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
Self-Reliance and Other Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson (didn't finish, he's a wordy bitch)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
Something Rotten, Jasper Fforde
Daisy Miller, Henry James
The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood
Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes
Italian for Dummies, Francesca Romana Onofri & Karen Antje Möller
Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, Frances Mayes
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, Neil Strauss
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
The Pig of Happiness, Edward Monkton
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
The Buccaneers, Edith Wharton
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski (ultimately annoying, don't bother)
Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk
Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Mary Roach
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Moon-Face & Other Stories, Jack London
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
The Journey to the East, Hermann Hesse
O Pioneers!, Willa Cather
The Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto "Che" Guevara
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Abarat, Clive Barker
Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War, Clive Barker
The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel, Hermann Hesse
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell
Wicked, Gregory Maguire
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Cousin Bette, Honoré de Balzac
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach
You: On A Diet, The Owner's Manual for Waist Management, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Michael Roizen
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: A Novel, Susanna Clarke
Blindness, Jose Saramago
Long Way Round: The Illustrated Edition: Chasing Shadows Across the World, Ewan McGregor, Charley Boorman
Existentialism And Human Emotions, Jean-Paul Sartre
Skinny Bitch, Kim Barnouin & Rory Freedman
Contact, Carl Sagan
You Are What You Eat, Gillian McKeith
Slim for Life, Gillian McKeith
Goodbye, Mr. Chips, James Hilton
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander Mccall Smith
Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore (still reading)
Fool, Christopher Moore
A Feast of Snakes, Harry Crews
Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance, Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith
People Are Unappealing: Even Me, Sara Barron
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
Time's Arrow, or The Nature of the Offence, Martin Amis
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties, Rainer Maria Rilke
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor, Pablo Neruda
No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories, Miranda July
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
These Children Who Come at You with Knives, and Other Fairy Tales: Stories , Jim Knipfel
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris (didn't finish, tedious)
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, David Sedaris
Pictor's Metamorphoses: And Other Fantasies, Hermann Hesse
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Erik Larson (still reading)