5/4 Trampolina & The loudest man on Earth

Quote of the day: "Adam, you're a great argument for lesbianism."

What the fuck. Seriously. What. Today started out with a wet dream and three hours of excruciating line edits on The Old Cartoon Writer, then progressed to a pointless seminar with an American pain-in-the-ass literary agent. A quick trip to Woolie's for a box of goon (Golden Oak this time-- we're moving up in the boxed wine world!) and I was back home for Rachel's 21st birthday party.

This included Kristy, the #1 ranked trampolinist in all of Australia, who will soon be competing to qualify for the 2008 olympics in Beijing. She's absolutely stunning, though the pictures don't do her justice. Her mother is involved in both publishing and the creative writing community, and the conversation we had was terrible. Worse than terrible. Abysmal. She asked what I wrote. I said mostly poetry. She said "Don't write poetry, there's no money in that." I admitted I'd been writing more short fiction lately and she said "don't write short fiction, there's no money in that." Children's books, the same. Non-fiction literature on music and marriage, the same. There was an awkward silence the size of a pregnant whale suffering from elephantiasis, and I just got up and walked away. I found Megan and within five minutes had upset her so badly that she wanted to leave the party (I told her she had fat feet and should stop eating if she wanted decent looking feet-- concentration camp survivors didn't have feet that looked like a baby rhino's, I pointed out. She was not amused.)

All of that was but a prelude to the most asinine part of the evening: Nathan-- the loudest man I've ever met, especially after half a bottle of Wild Turkey. He began arguing that Aboriginals were worthless because they refused to learn from the white man's example and showed their ultimate hypocrisy by charging people to climb Uluru-- the holiest piece of ground in all of Australia. (Granted, the fee is for entrance to the park, not specifically for climbing, but same same, basically.) I kindly pointed out three things:

1) Making money for doing nothing, essentially, is the ultimate example of capitalism (ie. the "white man") so good on them for finally getting on the ball.

2) Uluru is THE HOLIEST PIECE OF GROUND IN AUSTRALIA. They don't want ANYONE climbing it, but since they can't possibly stop people (they don't actually own it-- they are black, after all), at least they can charge money to dissuade some from climbing, and receive some form of renumeration for the transgression.

3) Just because you talk louder than anyone else doesn't make you more right than anyone else.

He hung around for fucking ever, only disappearing about 2am for a drunken swim in the river (I'm hoping). No amount of alcohol will make a person like that tolerable.

Drink Count: 10

Pictures tomorrow. Not in the mood tonight.