STUFF 2004
It’s the end of the year and, well, it's the thing to do, so... Lists, thoughts and so forth.

ALBUMS I LOVED
Le Tigre, This Island
Kings Of Leon, Aha Shake Heartbreak
The Hives, Tyrannosaurus Hives
Dallas Crane, Dallas Crane
The Von Bondies, Pawn Shoppe Heart
Modest Mouse, Good News For People Who Love Bad News
PJ Harvey, Uh Huh Her [I only wish the song "Uh Huh Her" was also on it. It rules!]
The Datsuns, Outta Sight Outta Mind
The Cops, Stomp On Tripwires
Pink Grease, This Is For Real
The Fiery Furnaces, Blueberry Boat
Interpol, Antics
Ben Kweller, On My Way
The Libertines, The Libertines
22-20s, 22-20s
Björk, Medulla
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Abattoir Blues/ The Lyre Of Orpheus

BANDS I LOVED LIVE
The Darkness
The Von Bondies
PJ Harvey
The Strokes
The Kings Of Leon
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
Franz Ferdinand
The Fiery Furnaces
Pink Grease
The Libertines
The Datsuns
Supergrass
Muse
The Cops
The Pictures
Bit By Bats
Midnight Juggernauts
Snap! Crakk!
The Mess Hall
The Vines
Radiohead
The Stands
Peaches
The Black Keys
The Shine
Cat Power

MOVIES I LOVED
DIG! – Ruled!
The Return
Irreversible
Elephant
The Five Obstructions
Head-On
Safe
Control Room
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Goodbye Lenin
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Dogville – don’t fight me on this!
Napoleon Dynamite – Haylie Duff will survive another six months because of the indie cred she gets for being in this movie, no?

TV I LOVED
The OC
One Tree Hill
Little Britain
The Mighty Boosh
Arrested Development
Family Guy
Greg The Bunny
John Safran vs God
The Chaser Decides [episodes 1 and 4]
The L Word
That ‘70s Show
Footballers' Wives
Angels In America
State Of Play
Nip/Tuck [did you see what they did to Vanessa Redgrave the other week? Shudder. I beg “no no no” when I watch that show. Love it.]
Dawson’s Creek final season
South Park
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart [until SBS lost the rights]

BOOKS I LOVED
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Brightness Falls, Jay McInerney
The War Against Cliché, Martin Amis
Confessions Of An Heiress: A Tongue-In-Chic Peek Behind The Pose, Paris Hilton

MISCELLANEOUS LOVING
Daniel Kitson at the Comedy Festival
The Burlesque Hour at the Spiegeltent
The Milgram Re-enactment at ACMI

SELF-LOVING
Favourite Symposiasts moment was our unintentional poetry collaboration, inspired by the scandal that rocked the world (excluding all countires but Australia), Delta-Poo-Paris;
Ohmygod. Um, like, whoah
Paris Hilton and the Poo?
Wow, that's so
Out of the Blue.

HATIN’ ON
- The ridiculous response to Janet Jackson’s boob flash. The kids are OKAY! Jeez, legislating pontificators are damn creeps.

- The Pauline Hanson revival bullshit. Like, she’s okay now? NO SHE ISN’T!

- Playing It Straight

- That Ash dickhead from the Perth restaurant in My Restaurant Rules. HATE HIM!

- Discriminatory attitudes/policies holding sway instead of civil rights, justice, and all that shit

Hmmmm, what else? Oh yeah, THE ELECTION! Urge to scream, rising. Rising. RISING! AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I was so sure it couldn't possibly happen, that people could even think of, as Guy said, endorsing the direction we are going in. GAH! And now, dear reader, I will inflict one of my rants of 2004 on you;
“I still find it quite incomprehensible that people, whatever class, have been moved to support Howard because he has been at the helm for such 'victories' as a) an expensively mean exercise against desperate people fleeing serious shit, calling them liars and locking them up and traumatising them only to find that, hey, most of them really are refugees requiring asylum, not 'queue-jumpers' or 'boat people' or 'possibly terrorists', b) the continued and growing resistance to granting our indigenous population recognition of their rights, with toxic public denial about Australia's history, and with Howard conducting himself with horrid pettiness when making policy or public statements about aboriginal issues, and approving of the same conduct in others, and c) the move away from the 'let the punishment fit the crime and hey, what about rehabilitation' ethic of sentencing towards a more 'populist' lynch mob kind of deal that nevertheless gives the state more power over sentencing and takes discretion away from judges, [breathe] not to mention all that shit providing increased powers to search and detain and trample on people's rights in response to terrorism, blah.”

Oh god. And don't even get me started on the US election. These two elections make me think everything sucks. I mean, these douches do SUCH A BAD JOB, they don’t work to make things better, their priorities are fucked, they talk such insupportable shit, and yet they get resoundingly re-elected? Fucking. Bullshit.

GREAT JOKES
#1 Nicky Hilton marrying a guy named Todd Meister. His name is TODDMEISTER! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

#2 Drummer from Spiderbait wearing a “No Means No” t-shirt on the Rugby League footy show. Excellent.

#3 My mum bumping into Thorpie in Florence, literally.
She was walking along and, like, bam! She came up against a huge manly torso. My first question was, "What was he wearing?" She said he was wearing a grey hoody thing. And I was like, "Was he wearing any pearls? Could you see his underwear?" And she just looked at me funny and continued her story. She said she was in the midst of apologising to this giant stranger for bumping into him when he started saying "Oh no. That's alright". And because they were both speaking in Australian accents they looked at each other in laughing relief, but then as soon as their eyes met, my mum went "Oh", recognising him. And then he went, "Oh", realising he had been recognised. And then they both just cut and ran. Well, walked.

#4 Me coming up with a name for a hard-rockin chick band who are funny and don’t take any shit/ an all-girl Spinal Tap tribute band... Vaginal Tap

THINGS I LEARNED
#1 Dijonnaise is not a DIY condiment
#2 I am never going to have a drug problem or any kind of emotional problems or a 'need for spirituality' crisis or anything like that, because the only avenues for treatment seem without exception to turn one into an unbearable crashing bore.
#3 After Parky vs Meg Ryan, I do not love Parky

THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO
Joaquin Phoenix playing Johnny Cash
Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing Elvis Presley

SEARCHTERM OF THE YEAR
“jay mcgraw credentials”