P.J. GUY

 

Dear The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt

A few years ago I started to wear pyjamas in bed. My current pyjamas consist of a trendy top and shorts. These are nice and comfortable but I find sometimes that when I get up I forget that I'm wearing them and don't change into day clothes. This morning I was halfway to the shops before I noticed. What's that about?

- P.J. Guy

Dear P.J. 

Jung described your behavior as the manifestation of metaphysical essentialism deriving from the collective unconscious. Broadly this means that deep down you are yearning for simplicity in your life and wish that complications like change of clothing and daily routines didn't exist - (change your underwear frequently though). Perhaps just wearing a simple overall or boiler suit might be the solution. A while ago, one of my contributors invented the 'boiler suit wardrobe' which could give you some ideas. See: HERE

Either that or you are just getting a bit doolally with age. I suggest that you get your wife to sew your name and address into those pyjamas - just in case.

- The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

Dear The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt

I love you.

Why can't everyone love everybody?

- Rob from the dark ages

Well Rob, what an idea eh?

Imagine that. Everyone hugging each other and saying "I love you Mr Policeman" or "I love you cute girl next door". Wouldn't that be nice?

But ...

What about the guy who mugs the old lady as she's getting her pension from the post office?

What about the pedaphile who has children tied up in his or her basement?

What about the landlord who decorated a leaky shipping container and fobbed it off as a flat to immigrants?

What about  the security guard who kicked you in the bollocks just because you asked why you can't come into the pub?

What about the dodgy manufacturer who cut corners in production of baby strollers which snapped closed and suffocated children?

What about the guy who lurks in public parks and attacks and rapes young females?

What about ....?   You see where I'm going here don't you?

- The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt.

A FEMINIST MODERNIST STUDY

Dear The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt

I'm confused, really confused.

My parish priest, Father Manly Withadresson told me, via a sermon (I don't actually talk to anyone in church except for the Virgin Mary) that feminism and modernism are not mutually exclusive.

How could I be a feminist and a modernist?

I don't like women and I mistrust anything modern.

Women are scary and getting scarier. They got the vote a while ago and now they want to kill babies and are anti motherhood! Where are the nice women like Mrs O'Connor who I used to watch through her window at Garden Road when I was young?

 - A. Sinner

Dear A. 

You touch on the fact of women's spectacularly visible status in feminised mass cultural domains in the first decades of the twentieth century. Feminine spectacles are commonly understood to invite viewers to access women's bodies, as you did when you were a young perve hiding in the bushes outside Mrs O'Connor's house, yet early twentieth-century spectacles paradoxically called renewed attention to women's illegibility. Women's visual prominence made apparent their 'unknowability', recasting an ancient ideational heritage in modern terms. Representations of women as opaque in the early twentieth century constituted a challenge to ocularcentrism and reveal the centrality of femininity in mass mediations of epistemology and ontology. Drawing on written accounts of women's opacity in the fashion and beauty press, it is arguable that attention to spectacles of unknowability can be productive for feminist modernist studies. The texturing of histories of feminine spectacle challenges some tenacious dichotomies that continue to inform accounts of women's place in the modern, including those of subject and object, and visibility and invisibility. Focusing on opacity leads us to a productive account of the variable visibility of women in the modern, which foregrounds the multiple historical relations of different groups of women to regimes of visibility and keeps in view the diverse ways that differently classed and raced women were positioned vis-à-vis spectacle. This suggests that an attunement to the unknowable not only nuances our understanding of a discrete historical period, but can lead the feminist researcher to confront and expand her own gaze in the era of capitalist modernity.

I trust that this is helpful,

The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt

HATS ALL FOLKS

Dear The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt I'm excited, really excited. I just bought myself a new hat. This is the first 'proper' hat that I've ever bought. I think it makes me look cool. It makes me look like Paul Newman or Robert Redford or, even, James Dean. I'll be beating women off with a stick. Here's a pic. What do you think?

- Hat Boy 

 Dear Hat Boy. Is that what you think? Really? Look, I don't want to take the wind out of your sails but sartorial elegance isn't in your repertoire, OK? And as for Paul Newman, Robert Redford and James Dean, those guys looked good with or without hats. They were fucking handsome dudes. You seem to have a strange idea of what women like. The only 'beating off' that you will be doing will be in the privacy of your bedroom. 

 Yours, with the intention of being helpful, The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt.

UNINFORMED IN A SPECIAL AREA OF KNOWLEDGE

 Dear Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt.

I know someone who used to work in the wine industry and who writes a wine blog. He knows a lot about wine and in his blog posts uses high falutin' language to describe the wines he's tried. These wines are usually far too expensive for the normal person to buy and quite frankly, horrible. Once I saved up to buy one of the wines he dribbled on about. It was an Australian shiraz - Black Pepper something or other. It cost a fortune! I tried it and it was too damn thick. I don't know where that pepper stuff came from in the name as I couldn't taste any of that. all I could taste was red wine. Thick red wine. It was too dark to see through as well. I prefer my own choices which I buy at Pak 'n Save, usually from the specials bin and never more than $10 a bottle. Am I wrong?

- Phyllis Steine.

Dear Phyllis. No, no, you're not wrong À chacun son goût I say or, in your language "I know what I like so there."

If it weren't for you and people like you then where would we be eh? It would be near impossible to get a table booking at a good restaurant and the car parks in decent supermarkets like Farro Fresh and Moore Wilson would be full (like Pak 'n Save). The shelves of these would be stripped bare of decent cheeses, meats, breads and vegetables and we'd all be forced to eat that fast food shit that you no doubt love. This is why McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Nandos and all those other poison factories exist - to cater to you and your ilk. If it weren't for you and yours then wine shop shelves would not be able to keep up with stocking decent, well made (and labelled) wine. It's no accident that most of the wine industries offerings are in bag-in-the-box format or in cheap sub $10 bottle packaging with 'cleanskins' being ever more popular. This is so discerning people can go about purchasing their preferred beverages in a quiet and orderly manner while you lot squabble and fight over the cheap shit on special.

No, you're not wrong. Carry on as you are.

- The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt.