Elvis Telephones Gaga

Alright, I'm not the typical listener to popular music. I barely know what people are talking about when they mention T Pain or Miley Cyrus, I am guilty of not knowing who Justin Beiber is. That's just the way I am, more of a Triple J and Fbi fan...

I am still aware who Lady Gaga is. And so is the Queen.



THE QUEEN! For the love of all that is good, how cool is that? The QUEEN herself watched a personal performance from Miss Gaga and met her... We have a terrifically up to date monarch! (I love the Queen, what a fantastic woman, she is like a communal Grandmother)

I've never really loved Lady Gaga, or hated her for that matter. I've been aware of her and her style, at first I thought she was a bit of a fruit loop who forgot her pants... But then I realised that this woman has created herself in a business so overrun by autotune that its insane, and while there are obvious signs of editing within her recorded music to enhance her sound (why wouldn't you after all? It sounds like an awful thing to do to a talented musician but its really a smart move in a business based around sounding good, it just needs to be done right). I heard her song Paparazzi live and acoustic, and thats what attracted me to her. I'm still not the biggest fan but I can appreciate Lady Gaga's real voice and I admit she has talent. Her videos have a high production quality and while she doesn't always look naturally beautiful, she has the guts to make an impression at a time where veering from the norm is usually despised... The American music industry has a predictable and safe formula that works for them after all...

The same goes for Beyonce, not my style. But her performance value is amazing and she deserves what she has.

I read an article today about the release of Lady Gaga and Beyonce's new video 'Telephone'. It mentioned the video was vulgar and horrible and had strong nudity and references to lesbianism.



I had a look for myself and no, I wouldn't show it to small children, of course its influential and kids aren't looking for irony, they're looking for idols (as are most teenagers). It's very sexual and I want to say before I begin, I completely understand why we wouldn't show it on daytime television for the kids in between ads for barbies and lego.... I'm with you there.

I have to say while it isn't the sort of music I listen to, the production value is still astounding, AND the video had a narrative (a very Tarantino-esque one... I mean, the video has a cameo from the Pussy Wagon from Kill Bill!!!).

I thin kwhat draws me to it is that it seems like a rip off of what Gaga would do, and she's having fun with it. She wears a pair of sunglasses made from cigarettes and even has a bikini made from an American Flag. There's blatant advertising for Virgin Mobile and PlentyofFish.com, there's lesbianism, naked ladies and murder... And while all of this has been done before in various music videos before now... The comment thats being made is wonderfully ironic, its supposed to shock the audience and make them go 'Look at what the world has come to: Gaga and her studded bikini... shame shame', its SUPPOSED to be one of those things you see on tday Tongith or A Current Affair blaming this popular culture for the poisoning and curruption of your children's minds...

But you can't blame her, sexualisation and Americanisation within the media has been happening for decades and it didn't start with Lady Gaga, more adequately it started with Elvis -the Pelvis!!!- Presley in the 1950s...



Look!!! Look at his outrageously lively hips!!! For the time period, THIS was controversial... And dear Elvis didn't even have a Tarantino inspired murder in HIS video... Just his sexy dancing. (Which he learnt from Forest Gump himself by the way!!) It's enough to make you want to write to the ABC about it, what a perverted young man!

I will admit, Elvis in his younger less fatter, less dead days was absolutely gorgeous and its a tragedy that I was born into the wrong time period so I will never have the chance to be one of his poodle skirt wearing, screaming fangirls... he was also a bit like Miss Gaga, not afraid to sex it up and break the mould, even if the sex mould is well and truly broken now. And even if he were alive today (and hiding out with Michael Jackson, Big Kev and Steve Irwin as they say), he'd have had a few too many peanut butter and bacon sandwiches for my liking anyway...

The thing is, social conventions will be broken. And if it takes naked lesbians in prison making sandwiches and wearing the U.S flag to cover their boobies and girl parts to do so... Then I think Lady Gaga is the perfect person to be approaching the situation with an ironic twist. Its like Marcel Duchamp with his work, the Fountain... he tried putting a urinal in a gallery as a Dada artwork, just because he could, as a dada qwork it had no meaning whatsoever. And because of that, critics kept referring to some deep meaning behind the work to do with plumbing and the urinal representing a female as a receptacle for male fluids... If there are people out there having a go at Gaga, they've missed her point completely that this is what is becoming acceptable in society, and thats rather unfortunate and quite funny too.

I think what I'm trying to say is that I think Lady G-G is pretty neat, almost as neat as Elvis.

But I still don't listen to her music

Things that my Mother does and says that have probably scarred me for life

Upon returning home from a long, rainy day today, I was forced to use my mum's new set of house keys to let myself in.

The reason I don't have my own keys is because when I was twelve and had my very own set, they disappeared within two hours of very proud house-key ownership and NEVER resurfaced. Since that very day, my mum hasn't trusted me with another set of my own keys and I have been forced to enter my house by going over the gate, through a small alley between my house, several overgrown plants and the fence and then through the glass door... and on occasion, when the glass door was locked, I resorted to the dog door.

Unfortunately I have grown and cannot use the dog door anymore and while I am physically mature, my mum STILL won't give me my own set of keys.

Her resolution to my growth and house-key-responsibility issues?

1. Buy a small, plastic rock with a hole in it

2. Hide the keys in the small, plastic rock

3. DON'T place the small, plastic rock in the garden like a sensible adult, but in the cactus plant outside of the front door so every time her daughter reaches for the key-rock (which is already useless when the keys could be hidden under a REGULAR ROCK like a sane human being) I have to mutilate my poor hand and stab it continuously until I grasp the key rock and release it from its spiky prison in order to open the door!!!!

Needless to say, today's experience drew blood and ended in a very hurty way.

Mum's reasoning for such a painful and over protective key-hiding process is that while someone may suspect the key is under a rock (or in a small, plastic replica of a rock), they'd never plunge their hands into the cactus plant expecting to retrieve a key, because a cactus is a horrible and painful plant that people generally avoid contact with to spare their digits...

But it is perfectly necessary in her mind for me to send my hand to war each and every day, and wound it in spiky-plant-related battle to let myself into my own house.

This is not the first time my mum has done or said something to make my life a little bit more of a living hell than everyone else's (except for perhaps those people who get abducted by terrorists while they're on holiday, or Tony Abbot's children). Let's reminisce...

• She has been known to show new friends and potential boyfriends photos of me as a child, often pausing in the process to say things like "Missy used to loooove eating flowers" or "Here's my girl wearing big girl pants for the first time! She used to lift up her dresses to show everyone how smart they looked on her!"

• When I have dyed/cut my hair, asked about a piercing or attempted to defile my body in any way she doesn't deem fit, her excuse was "I made that body myself and it is rightfully MINE, don't you ever ruin it or I'll do bad things to you in your sleep!"

• She like to tell almost everyone she meets about how I was born and she 'Skwuzzed me right outta her!'

• I'd never met anyone of another culture until primary school, where I made the mistake of walking up to an Iranian girl and asking her 'Why did your mummy paint you?'. My mum isn't a racist, it just happens I never met anyone who was foreign for the first four years of my life... and for that I blame her.

• We didn't have a computer in our house until I was ten. TEN!!!!!!!!! I had no idea what the internet was! It was like living in a third world country. I don't recommend it.

• She once grounded me for five months. The only reason my punishment was FIVE MONTHS LONG was because she forgot I was being grounded.

• When she was a single mum, her cooking abilities extended to defrosting pies and also making tuna pasta. The end. Now she is married she is no longer trusted in the kitchen, and her dinners are rarely missed.

• She drags me into psychics and hippy shops, making me listen to how the oracle predicts that Archangel Michael is within my aura and how I will turn into a raging lesbian drug addict (Which was just a role I was auditioning for in a TV show... funnily enough I didn't get the role, and I'm pretty sure it was the witchcraft of that evil psychic after I insulted her and her magic crystal)

I say all this about my mum, but he thing is, no matter what, I really do love her, and as much as I like it or not, she has helped to make me the person I am. I just hope that one day I may as cruel to my children as she is to me.

Ways to Look like an Idiot on the Internet #1

How would you like to make a complete arse of yourself on the internet on your very own blog?

(Boy, would I!)

It's very simple, all you need to do is NOT post for nearly an entire month after promising an attempt at semi regular posting!

Thankfully I don't have an intensely close-knit group of followers hungry for my blood and I've been able to get around to this apology in my own time rather than being harrassed for it (which although is a nice thought, harrassment on some basis would constitute as some form of attention being paid to my writing, which would result in my endless joy... But ulktimately, the bottom line is please don't harrass me... which shouldn't be too hard, you're already SO good at it)

When I try to think of reasons why I have neglected to say anything for three weeks, there is wide range of varying excuses that I could draw like a pistol in some form of Clint-Eastwood-like showdown, here are some favourites of mine:

1. I was deconstructing Dracula for an urgent assignment

2. I was also very very ill for a few days (out of three weeks, I'd say six days)

3. AC/DC were in town and this had a very unsettling effect on me like a man bitten by a werewolf to the full moon. Except instead of turning into a raging, hairy, dog like freak of nature... I became all of those things wearing a flannelette shirt (see: Bogan), which greatly impacted my ability to write

Thankfully I'm over that now.

4. I endured a break-up on Valentines Day. I'm not hurt in any way and it wasn't him, it was me. However according to the law of Beyonce, it means I have been 'putting my hands up' an awful lot lately, to no avail, not that I want one, I'm very happy being single** and I hope my now-ex is as well.

5. I've generally been so outraged with Tony Abbott that its been diffuclt to find things to blog about that aren't 'How about you mind YOUR OWN virginity Abbott?!' (and several, much ruder words of justified hatred towards the man).

Anyway, I can now go a few more days/weeks/years neglecting this blog like an unwanted child without too much guilt. I hope you're smashingly well and you sleep a little easier if you're reading my little blog, and if you're not, you're probably a communist.

Bye bye



**Until the very fetching Hamish Blake rides up on his magical steed and whisks me away to Melbourne where we'll live happily ever after with dual radio careers, our very own columns in the newspaper and all the tea we could possibly drink (sigh)

My Weekend (i.e. Reasons why the world is an awesome place)

1. Arguments with best friends over what to have for dinner at midnight, culminating in a mop fight

2. Outwardly gay comedians using the phrase 'Flop out yer Poon!'

3. Using the Front of a Stage as a Coaster

4. Adam Hills being Polite enough to pause his show and let us take a 'Bon Jovi' Photo

5. Witnessing the 'Sombrero-Bumbag' Fashion Combination in Coles

6. Making Retarded Cupcakes

7. Awkwardly named Drama Games like 'Passing the Clap' (yes, Chlamydia Euphemisms... Very intellectual)

8. An in depth discussion of how the Parrot Sketch from Monty Python could be used as a Tragic Monologue


Makes you feel good to be alive

An Experiment in Faithfulness...

Today I find myself in more or less of a compromising situation...

After all, by starting this new blog, people might assume this is my first blog and that I am in fact a blogging virgin who is new and unexperienced to this brave new world of publicly and electronically shared ramblings...

This would be wrong.

I am *as embarassing as it is to admit* quite the opposite. I'm not just an unfaithful blogger, but a blogging whore, having written several blogs only to tire of them quickly or run out of things to say about my life.

Starting this new blog scares the pants off of me, but I'm looking at this new blogging adventure as necessary, as the last blog I tried did not conceal my identity very cleverly and sadly I happened to have some very strong opinions about Edward Cullen (as I remember... things of the sparkly-pale-fuckwit variety were said) and having people know my identity forced me to realise that I perhaps wasn't so safe after all from thirteen year old girls weilding rather heavy hardback copies of Twilight that were not only made by Stephanie Meyer with the intention to impress small minded females, but also to harm me in the face. Thank you Miss Meyer.

This experience opened my eyes to the idea that maybe not EVERYONE happens to agree with everything I say. And to save myself from further assassination attempts by the various people I tend to aggravate, I'm now relishing my newfound pseudonym.

I'd also like to clarify that the name 'Smaller than Jesus' does not:

1. Mean I'm a bible thumping maniac with the intention to 'SAVE' you or your oh-so-dear ones (I'm agnostic)
   
2. Mean that I am having an electronically-literary stab at the bloke... he has after all not done anything to me to incur such softcore revenge.

It simply means that I am just not very cool, popular, influential or particularly clever... and much like John Lennon, I consider Jesus/The Beatles an acceptable contrast to just how great I am.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what I expect from my new blogging endevour, but hopefully it will be an experience for both you and me.

Yours lovingly,

Miss Anne