This Month in The Perfect Diary

The Perfect Diary is in a week-to-an-opening format, with a work by a contemporary Australasian artist or writer featured every week.

Below you can find the works by our contributors that appeared in the months of October, November, December and some of January 2006 of The Perfect Diary 2005. This is the last Perfect Diary to be published.

You can see works from previous months and years by using the links at the bottom of this page.

26 September 2005 to 2 October 2005

3 October 2005 to 9 October 2005

Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

We don't see [Australia] as a deputy sheriff. We see it as a sheriff. There's nothing deputy about this relationship.
George Walker Bush

Britney Spears & the Evil Bunny of Misery
or
Whatever You Do, Don’t Tell Her Everything

He used to lie in the cool curved space of his empty green bath and he’d call her on his mobile phone. He’d use his mobile phone, because the regular phone wouldn’t reach into the bathroom and he had to call her in the bathroom or more precisely he had to be in the empty green bath while he was talking to her because the bathroom or more precisely the empty green bath was the only place his two spirit guides would appear to him in the entire house.

His spirit guides represented the two sides of his personality and they would give him advice while he was on the phone to her, the object of his desire.

Representing his darker side was the Evil Bunny of Misery, who would appear sitting on the edge of the bath at his feet on the right hand side.

And representing the side of light and goodness within him was a tiny Tinkerbell size version of Britney Spears, riding a tiny pink bicycle. She would also appear at the foot of the bath but on the left-hand side.

They would only appear in the bath and only while he was on the phone to her, his object of desire.

He would dial her number, and she’d answer and she’d say… Hi.

And he’d say… Hi.

And then he would do a quick visual check on the Evil Bunny of Misery and Britney Spears and her pink bicycle both sitting at the end of the bath. Both of them had heard her say hello and in the tone of her voice they could read his immediate future. If the Evil Bunny of Misery turned around and started leaving tiny dark balls everywhere then this was a bad sign. This meant that to continue the conversation successfully he would have to either think of a good joke or have a humorous story about something that occurred to him that day.

However if Britney Spears jumped onto her bike and started riding around the edge of the bath whooping and hollering on her tiny pink bicycle this was a good sign. This meant he could relax and ask her about her day instead and she would use her sing song voice upon him like the flute of a snake charmer and she’d unravel the past twenty-four hours of her life and the bath would become a flotation tank with her stories the means of elevation below him.

And the Evil Bunny of Misery and Britney Spears were never wrong in their estimation of the tone of voice of his object of desire.

But he hasn’t seen them for a while because she doesn’t answer his calls anymore.

Not since he told her about his spirit guides. When she learnt about the Evil Bunny of Misery and Britney Spears listening in on her phone calls, this kind of bugged her out a bit.

But it’s his own fault.

The Evil Bunny of Misery told him not to tell her everything and the Evil Bunny of Misery was right.

Sean M Whelan

Night Series: cats and the moon, an etching by Clem Beer.

Clem Beer - Night Series: cats and the moon

10 October 2005 to 16 October 2005		17 October 2005 to 23 October 2005
A distraught man on top of SIEV4 held out a small girl and was gesturing as if he would throw her into the water. The man was wanting to get the child into our inflatable boat and to safety. Laura Whittle, one of the sailors at the scene We are not going to be intimidated out of our policy by this kind of behaviour ... I regard this as one of the most disturbing practices I’ve come across. It was clearly planned and premeditated. Philip Ruddock		I left him in no doubt that there was no evidence that there were children overboard. Former defence official Mike Scrafton, 2004 I certainly don't want people like that here. Genuine refugees don’t do that…they hang on to their children. John W Howard, angling to get re-elected in 2001
I’ve been Away Can you see? Can you detect any change? Not even a trace of that skin-branding desert sun? Do I look different after inhaling sights of orange spices, camel heads and buzzing sweets? I closed my eyes amidst the crowds deciphering the language before floating down smoky pathways scented with mint leaves Is there more depth to my eyes recollecting those Nubian faces? He held me as a delicacy while I melted my foreign smell onto his musty hands and lips merging our differences Is there no mark on my body from nights of draining sickness and veiled street wanderings? Having had my senses enhanced can’t you see now that I’m back how all this looks foreign to me? Faith de Savigne’		Adam Ford - Durga Vs. Evil Robot Hanuman

24 October 2005 to 30 October 2005		31 October 2005 to 6 November 2005
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. John F. Kennedy		You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy. Erica Jong
SPRING Evening, and I walk my street where doors are open, insides lit. Tonight the earth is glad to be of service for the things we do: some idle talk, a person cycles by, arrangements made, small things happen. So after all we don't need meaning. We can just be human, do our solid stuff, and given that we're small, sometimes look up to see how light falls on the buildings that we've made Megan Wynne-Jones		Amber Hewett - fairytail

7 November 2005 to 13 November 2005

14 November 2005 to 20 November 2005

On the one hand, we'll never experience childbirth. On the other hand, we can open all our own jars.
Jeff Green on the difference between men and women

Those S&M people, they are bossy.
Margaret Cho

I’m Glad They Died When They Did

I’m Glad Che Guevara died when he did.
His death has fed thousands.
All those peasants employed for decades
churning out his t-shirt and poster,
grifting yankee dollars by showing tourists
‘ Che sites of interest’.
His greatest revolutionary act
has been to feed people, even in death.
If he’d lived, who knows what horrors? -
fat old Che living in a Malibu mansion,
appearing on chat shows
and endorsing Taco Bell?

I’m glad Jim Morrison took his last bath in ‘71.
The Doors had peaked, he lived fast, died young
and left ... an only slightly bloated corpse.
The thought of a corpulent, bald, wrinkled Jim
running a Pontiac dealership in Florida
just isn’t pretty.

In the same way I can never again watch
the Terminator without seeing a
Republican Party cyborg,
I couldn’t imagine playing the records of
a Senator Jimi Hendrix with any real joy,
nor draw the inspiration I do
from a non-martyred Martin Luther King,
one who maybe lived to sell
Hawaiian package holidays on cable:
I have a tropical dream!

Dare I say it, I so loved John Lennon
that I’m grateful Mark Chapman shot him.
It’s best he died when he did,
before dotage, contentment and Yoko
conspired to snuff his creative flame
and soil his legend with records
of banal, bland, house-hubby dribble.

Dean, Monroe, Cobain ...
I’m glad they died when they did,
all of them,

they were kind enough
to leave my memories unsullied.
It seems if you’re good enough the gods
pull the rug at just the right time.

At least in most cases.
Jesus is different.
He’s the one I wish had lived.
I wish he’d been pardoned by Pilate,
married Mary Magdalene and gone off to
raise swine on a small farm in Samaria.
I wish he’d had kids and grown wine
and hung out fishing with his disciple buddies
before dying peacefully in his sleep
at a ripe old age.

You could argue that when he died
his best work was behind him -
his gospel poetry is the match of Dante and Blake -
and true, had he lived he mightn’t inspire
the same fervent passion in fans and groupies
that he does,
he may even have come and gone anonymously.

But that’s the point.
We’d have had to find another
pin-up boy to fight our crusades over.
Perhaps a nice benign stone idol
engraved with just one command,
something along the lines of
Don’t Worry, Be Happy.
But that wasn’t to be, and as it is
you can’t beat the allure of a martyred star.

Tug Dumbly

Rebecca Edwards - Narabi Jizô in the Snow - papercut

21 November 2005 to 27 November 2005		28 November 2005 to 4 December 2005
When choosing between two evils, I always take the one I haven't tried before. Mae West		The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him. Graham Greene
Hand and Face i cup the cliff of my cheekbone in the quilted hollow of my hand and they fit imagine if you had a tiny wren-boned hand and a jowly rugby face? (well it must happen) and they simply didn’t fit suddenly i feel lucky amidst the multiple unlucky days that my hand and my face fit Gina Mercer		Barbara Licha - Visit Many congratulations to Barbara, joint winner of The Perfect Diary 2005 Readers' Choice Prize. See Visit in colour here.

5 December 2005 to 11 December 2005

12 December 2005 to 18 December 2005

The US company, Talking Presidents, releases more dolls in its range of talking 12-inch collectable figures, presented in patriotic display boxes and retailing for US$29.99. Press the button on Ronald Wilson Reagan’s back and hear him say 11 powerful and patriotic phrases including: "We won the cold war!" The President Bush doll talks tough on terrorism, and even misspeaks, saying "We're working hard to put food on your family," and "I will not hold this nation hostile." US, 2002.

One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.
Jean Anouilh

summer evening -
no beer tonight
but the moon is full

fading light -
the dead tree is alive
with birds

Myron Lysenko

Big weird head

He Said
I am going to have to break up with you
I feel we just aren’t connecting

I said
I was just about to break up with you
I can’t handle your BIG WEIRD HEAD

He said
it’s just that I feel we are holding each other back

I said
NO IT’S BECAUSE OF YOUR BIG WEIRD HEAD

He said that we are suffocating each other and he
needs some space to breathe

And I said
no it’s because of YOUR BIG WEIRD HEAD
it’s out of proportion to your body

He said I love you very much but I need to find myself right now

I said
great you can use YOUR BIG WEIRD HEAD to think things through

He said he was sorry but it was never meant to be

I said
hey don’t forget this massive hat for YOUR BIG WEIRD HEAD

Emilie Zoey Baker

19 December 2005 to 25 December 2005		26 December 2005 to 1 January 2005
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. John Maynard Keynes		Masturbation is nothing to be ashamed of. It's nothing to be particularly proud of either. Matt Groening
Heidi Jackson		Honda Civic EHN529 Strange, that the windows were black and the burning hair smell of melted carpet Note on the dash we have put out your car any queries to Carlton Fire Brigade. Your housemate car borrower forgot you had to stall it to cut the engine. The wipers gave up in June we drove in the rain your arm out the window smearing vision clear with a sponge rubberbanded to a ruler pulling over for the heaviest downpours. It took us an hour to get to the supermarket. We forgot to top up the water twice daily (because of the hole) we watched the needle point past red then past H steam poured out to fog the windscreen we made it to the vet appointment but had to walk home with the cat. Steaming and streaming through dusk we rumbled to the lookout when you revved too high the radio changed stations And parked. I poked my pocket knife into the catch twisted - sweated - clicked to free you from your belt. Torn foam seat crumbed your pants rain dripped a slow pool in the back seat engine ticked away to silence You held the wealth of my face in your driving hands and indicated our perfect richness. Anna Ryan-Punch

2 January 2005 to 8 January 2005		9 January 2005 to 15 January 2005
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: You send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. Albert Einstein describing radio		It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. Gertrude Stein
Julia Boros - Dangling		IF I STAYED A LITTLE BIT LONGER… Pianos, rain black swans, bass guitar. The apple of my eye has fermented to cider. Radiance. Wind & light are touching in a copse of old-growth fecundity. Everything outside this window is fully situated within its own life. You can tell there’s been tears as a lake waits by the forest’s feet for the storm that’ll send everything smashed towards the sea. Parrots forage across the lawn intense mundanity beneath recumbent, buzz-cut hills. Mid-afternoon moon is a tarnished bird. Nothing is warm or interested. No planned campaign to tease the brain out of its Old Worry Box. Stare at the woodpile, dance on my heels. Cottage art, Hydro-town, crow eyes, golden oldies, village idiot, pine-staunch, gum-bent. I'm the pygmy at the foot of the world & stepping outside, driftwood here (where that is no rare thing, the wild rivers take, then discard unwary trees tripped in gale). I know how those bungling saplings feel - untutored bough, gauche roots… barely time to taste the soil. Old urban songs, the closed files pass like that american convertible rumbling the A10 horizon, gone in a slip leaving rainbows sky-streak of febrile blue. Then a 1974 mustard station wagon carrying a single mum's entire library of life - a job at the salmon hatchery - gimpy new start. Wind & I work the world but just barely hang on. Let ferns open in my hair. Later, watch TV weather reports - cold fronts falling like whips on the island’s west-coast back. We barely own any of this. My body the vertebrae beneath rough-woven grass. Is it too soon to talk about miracles in the hush when the mind stops talking & life is going nowhere? Here at the edge of insight or concession. Les Wicks

16 January 2005 to 22 January 2005
Fuck fame, it's money I want. Alexander Pushkin
Kate Andrews-Day - Jeni

F E S T I V A L A N D E V E N T I N F O R M A T I O N
	http://www.spraci.net

A R C H I V E S
	2001 January February March April May June July August September October November/December
	2002 January February & March, April & May, June & July, August & September, October, November & December.
	2003 January February & March, April, May & June, July, August & September, October, November & December,
	2004 January February & March, April, May & June, July, August & September , October, November & December.
	2005 January February & March, April, May & June, July, August & September