under de sea!

This update brought to you by Sebastian from the Little Mermaid. For no real reason.

Hello, Josh here, bringing you the latest missive from the conjoined minds behind Too Easy. Today we were supposed to be going to see the Neighbours set on a tour of Ramsay Street, home of the popular soap opera. We got up early and set off with our little hearts full of dreams of meeting "Dr" Karl Kennedy, but when we got to the designated meeting point we were placed in an emotional quandary. Apparently the tour was overbooked by one, and the person who was causing the overbooking was leaving Australia the next day so we were asked if we would mind going on another day to allow this poor wretch her one chance to realise her lifetime ambition of going to see Toadfish and the rest of the gang. Faced with such a tough choice we did the only thing we could really do, which was laugh heartily in the face of the booking staff and tell them to send her packing. Not really, dear readers; we said yes, and left the premises with tickets to go tomorrow instead and some (frankly desultory) merchandising bribes in our bags.

Left with the prospect of a potentially endless chasm of day to fill we went and sated our hunger for international cuisine with a hastily scoffed Nandos chicken meal before heading off cheerily to the local aquarium which (for those of you unschooled in its wonders) is a tiptop fish hostel in the middle of town. They have a fantastic array of undersea dwellers (Hi, Sebastian!) who are all a great deal more active than the apathetic denizens of the zoo down the road. Particularly outstanding were the penguins and the rays:







We took a trip on a glassbottomed boat which was interesting although slightly marred by having to share a very small boat with the second coming of Veruca Salt and her intensely dense little brother, but we did come very close to touching some very large fish and the guide, Katarina, was informative. We also got to hold a ray's tooth which is just a giant grinding flat molar. Well, I was impressed anyway.

We left after that and headed home for baked eggs and pasta sauce, a new delicacy which we have been forced to create due to the continuing nonarrival of our replacement hob, and now we sit updating the internet with our news and photos of the day.

What have you guys been up to anyway? Let us know.

Peace, love, empathy,

J.

Josie Long, I love you...

The Melbourne Comedy Festival has begun, so last night we went to see Josie Long's first performance of her show 'Be Honourable'. She was wonderful; waxing lyrical and anecdotal about Nye Bevan, Billy Bragg and those people who post pictures on Flickr of all the food they make and eat. We both left the show feeling a little bit in love with her, accompanied with her self-made zine/programme that she dishes out to anyone who has the sense to go and see her. It was utterly refreshing to see someone who is so genuinely obsessed with life and other people's opinions on absolutely anything and everything. Essentially she embodies everything I'd like to be myself; charming, witty, warm, engaging, enchanting, erudite and bizarrely enough I find it impossible to hate her. I just want her to go for picnics with me and skip around in the sunshine, drawing whimsical pictures of iconic Socialists whilst discussing Sleater-Kinney and fad diets in equal measure.

Ps. Can someone give me a job please?

if you are a jellyfish, don't read this article.

oh i do like to be beside the seaside. unless the seaside happens to be strewn with the bloated bodies of a million halfdead jellyfish, their vile moronic forms making a dip into the crystal waters all but impossible for anyone without a deathwish. what is the point of jellyfish anyway? if your entire premise is to aimlessly float around the ocean without even the dignity of some sort of propulsive arrangement, causing misery and pain to anything unfortunate enough to invade your personal space then you seem like a pretty sorry excuse for a lifeform in my book. can a being with an apparent lack of sentience be considered to have "personal" space? in conclusion what i think i'm trying to say is that i hate jellyfish. because they are rub.
the second peeve of the beach would be the fact that whenever we go there i manage to get sand in my earphones meraning the bass distorts to an intolerable level, so have spent the last few days listening to a cacophonous din because i can't afford to keep buying new ones. also rub.
the sun was out which was nice, but seeing as i appear to be venting spleen i would like to posit the opinion (can one do that?) that the sun is a glowing ball of death cancer, and i hated it on principle; smug and selfsatisfiedly spewing its unbidden uv haterays on us whenever it likes. mega rub, the sun is a loser.

zoo easy

hello,

today we went to melbourne zoo which was actually quite a lovely day, despite the zoo traditionally being a fairly miserable place. i'm not a vegetarian, never have been, never will be, i think it's tantamount to some kind of mentalist breakdown, but that said the idea of animals looking forlorn in cages hasn't been my thing either so for a while i was pretty anti-zoo, but when we went to berlin zoo i kind of got over it.

the weather has been exceptionally warm today (and continues to be even now at the ungodly hour of 01:32) so all of the animals were being exceptionally lazy. can't blame them really i suppose but when you've paid $24 you expect a little more bang for your buck or whatever it is that people say. essentially animals in hot weather could be more entertaining that's all. we're all hot you know? anyway, mr jason and mr s jason joined effy, j tho and the senior mixologist for a wander around on the hunt for primates and red pandas, and a very nice time was had by all. i had to leave early to go and do some work which was tedious, i missed out on seeing pelicans and lions and tigers, oh my! but even so it was a very nice day, and the airconditioning on the train home was a delight. i apologise for the rubbish nature of this update, perhaps you should revel instead in frances' lovely pictures of the events aforementioned (click through to see more from the day):











tomorrow we will be going to the beach. if you want to come then you can but i doubt you will.

sleep for a while and speak no words

I present you with a list of some things that I have learnt about Australians and Australia since arriving in Australia:

1) Absolutely no one seems to be able to drive probably. No matter what, night or day, whether you're walking down the street or simply lying in bed, you will hear/see a car zoom past and then the shrill, shrill noise of those ever-screeching brakes. Think bandits with ripped tea-towels-masquerading-as-bandanas standing and shrieking through sunroofs and out of windows as paint-less cars go vroom vroom vrooming at inhuman speeds leaving behind a mini-sandstorm.

2) The streets aren't lit at night; I'm from London, the very idea of this is so stupid it's obscene to me. Maybe I'm too quick to suspect anyone who walks past me of a life of crime, but demz de wayz i wos raiized. Just the other night I was admiring a pair of criminally overpriced ankle-boots in a shop window when from the shadows a lurking-lairy drunkard appeared both shouting and scaring me, simultaneously.

3) They don't sell pickle; there is certainly a wide array of chutney and no shortage of ketchup, just no Branston or Branston-replica. This is much more Josh's qualm than mine, but I'm sure they sell Vegemite in Tescos these days, where's the love?

4) The television is terrible; so bad in fact that I've resorted to buying a British IP address so I can get my fill of Jonathan Ross et al on iPlayer. I hadn't watched Eastenders properly since the days of Steve Owen (we're talking 2002 here), but now I'm behaving like an obsessed fanatic. I tried to like Australian television, I really did. I thought I could grow to like 'So you think you can dance, Australia?', but it's presented by Izzy from Neighbours (you know the one with perma-flaired nostrils) for god-sake.

Then there was the commercial for a wonder hoover, which then became a lengthy film, this is something I just can't tolerate.

5) Healthcare isn't free; forgive my ignorance, but for a long time I had assumed Australia was of the having a National Health Service school. I was ill-informed and wrong. See my previous post for my tale. Throughout my encounter with the doctor he kept on asking me questions along the lines of "do you have job?", "does your boyfriend have a job?", "when did you last have a job?" etc. I UNDERSTAND THAT I HAVE TO PAY FOR YOU TO PRETEND YOU KNOW WHAT IS WRONG ME AND I HAVE THE MONEY TO GIVE YOU. OK!

man about town

tonight i saw a man at the bar that i am working in. he walked past me with a slightly limby gait, and then announced too himself, "i am so fucking cool". he wasn't, he had big flesh tunnels and bad clothes, but i was rather taken with his attitude. good work that man.

and the winner isn't...

We held an 'Oscars Party' in our glorified bedsit on Monday night. We had streamers, party poppers and gold stars strewn across the floor (a move I soon came to regret) and Josh adorned the wall with our very own Oscar. I drank my first glass of the horrendously sweet Passion Pop (a more glamourous Passionfruit version of Lambrini). And we all booed and hissed when Colin Firth didn't win.

Unfortunately I woke up the next day with tonsillitis and a spider bite resembling a gunshot wound. I applied for roughly 40 jobs from my sickbed, but not a word back. I went to see the doctor this morning, he charged me $80 to tell me I had tonsillitis and a spider bite resembling a gunshot wound and send me off with some penicillin. Daylight robbery, I tell thee!

We are going to try and find a cheap frisbee and then run around Fitzroy Gardens for the remainder of our day (wounds permitting).

our house is very small,
it has bunting on the wall,
and when the fish in the fridge goes off,
it doesn't smell too nice at all,

today we went to the pictures,
to see a single man,
not actually a lonely gent,
but a film, you understand,

colin firth was in it,
and he was very good,
i thought for a few seconds,
we would see nick hoult's manhood,

but in fact we didn't,
it was all very tastefully done,
although having said that,
there's a lot of c.f's bum

this afternoon was stormy,
it rained and rained and rained,
tomorrow might be similar,
ie pretty much the same,

i prefer it sunny,
but i don't control the weather,
if i could i'd make lots of money,
and be considered very clever.

thankyou.

greetings

A brief hello because I haven't thought this through at all yet:

There's been some incredible storm action in Melbourne today, which bring an entirely new meaning to my interpretation of 'extreme weather conditions' and the mother of all spiders is waiting for me outside my front door.

We've just returned to our glorified bedsit after a visit to the cinema to see Colin Firth look exceptionally dapper in 'A Single Man'. It was unfortunately marred by an audience of idiots laughing inappropriately and Josh's salty popcorn.

More to come soon, I expect...