the home page of david prater

softly softly through our krystallnacht geyser bowser crack pop-offs just relax black north face seventies teevee slack hostesse with remote test tubes bivouac jack in at five with first asthma snaps vacate laps tool the tried anagrama bat an independent way the roadsteads whack in maple lanes the seaside pretzel flak emergency hammer laden with drugged axe sues me sonnys walk man pow wow attacks we know the atlantic like no other macs anoraks swear blur philip k dick smacks disaster prediction no longer paperback

three burn cross the breeze breathe out the ski tube closed month admits a mike mad dog official relate my innoculation snazzy smarts dry mouth allege collapse college fund spoken speed worm generals baulk there will be non families tennis banned outskirts strip airport clearing dummy bids diplomacy karaoke insurgents freely admitted to my military hospital animal husbandry sheltered from cruelty not worried shudder bomb plots a russia b irans so far away just for todays mad world mtv iraqs top forty video smashes through to number one in the usa with a bullet yay a clip directed by al crieda

-gunter grass the piledrivers bells ding an ice rink augen auf! (so sieht es aus!) ... yah hell spokes causing a re-examinational alignment curses piano fail satiate me young man young man bucket phil & her, er ... s ... clear! cover me russia in reservoir sparrow plover drive(r) girl he looks like mikey then & gnarly zzzz green gills phonic skilz teamer hovier clever clever cried the bells of sever sheer deleer road barrier it inclement hier sounds of belgrave express alight goes pout her lips jutland junkers bee eye simon tausands wunderbar weltshake bendin & straiten zie gelden ee buckle chuckel boris instigait spazierengehen ps eyes up in such a way it looks usw.

respiratory system planted upside down in our gardens bronchially spouting white money tree flower green tear shaped succulent leaf week-long lastly admonishing the winter blast furnace winds irate five pointed stars cougher lungs white blood brown trunks enough pull good fortune sweetly from these chests of song bird petals twirling through most grey skys mote jazz bee sting even drown spit stubbed butt purple bruise turns green we pick the money trees leaves shot through many seas and sons mothers floating up a memory windpipe scattered confetti flower ten more years ten more years ten more years

horror movie suburbs darkness slashed with shining screamer picket smoking lounge rooms intercept axe overdue rentals trailer demons bong whipping body building boyfriends malt campus ripoffs damaged son o mutilate bathroom sprawling flaw light squeeze toothpaste residue bearded winter busts translate actional apartments connexion multigore (sunday

Roger Federer Part 2: YOU STINK! This is getting really silly. Roger Federer Cosmetics : "The fascinating new fragrance for men who know what they want. FEEL THE TOUCH! Feel the unique touch of the new, elegantly sporty fragrance from Roger Federer! Experience the amazingly radiant and fresh top note of citrus chords and ozone elements. Essential oils and herbal nuances, blended with a hint of green tea, accent the natural character of the fragrance. Transparent floral themes, noble woody notes and sensuous ambergris tones create a lingering background to round off an unmistakable, sophisticated fragrance image." FEEL THE TOUCH? But wait, there's more: RF After-shave balm: The mild balm for strong men "Its mild, highest-quality ingredients make it an outstanding aftershave to pamper your skin. Calms and soothes irritated and overheated facial skin. The refreshing effect helps competitive athletes and everyone else keep a cool head in any situat...

The Sonic Youth gig the other night was really good, life-affirming and out-the-jam kicking. The setlist is here , and I've made a slight contribution to the forum threads. Highlights were "White Kross" and "Karen Pt 2", not to mention the feedback orgies between almost every song. Secondary highlights were J Mascis' guitar histrionics, especially the melt-down at the end of "Just Like Heaven". Yikes, made me want to go out and buy Green Mind all over again.

For some reason, yesterday I found myself on the appallingly boring website of the world's most boring tennis player, Roger Federer . What drove me to tears was the constant stream of entries in Roger's "guest book" extolling his "exciting" style of tennis and requesting a "meeting", for exampel at the conclusion of the Halle tennis tournament (which Roger won in exceedingly boring fashion, naturlich). People, wake up: ROGER FEDERER IS BORING. I'm not just saying this because he beat Mark Goodrem last year. I'M SAYING IT BECAUSE HE IS SO FREAKING BORING. Basically tennis has never been the same since the invention of the double-handed backhand, and while RF certainly plays with the correct continental style, it's his on-court manner (NB: Nike head scarves - please!) and excruciating post-match interviews that really cheese me off. It's one thing to be a winner. It's anotehr thing to be a smart-arsed winner who thinks that just b...

While some airlines might be offering $84 flights to Christchurch, I'm not tempted, coz NZ's colder than freaking Coolangatta at the moment. Yep, I'm a Sunny Boy, no question. And while Lollapalooza may have just been cancelled , mercy would you check out the line up for that Austin City Limits festival. I'm hanging out for a northern summer, where the new B-Boys album will be played outdoors instead of in the fridge. Thanks to Jimmy for the link to Pitchfork - damn fine site even if the menus take up way too much of my screen space. Sniff. Techplaint. SY tonight. Hubba.

With news reports continuing to track the spate of cold weather , this time in northern NSW, speculation mounts that the cold snap may travel even further south, with the attendant risk that Antarctica may freeze over. Melbourne weather, meanwhile, remains as shithouse as ever.

Maybe they should rename it the Cold Coast . Stay tuned for even more pathetic puns ... heh.

You think they can�t smell your depression downwind Dust breathes in childhood�s daisy grandmother musk Practicing burnouts in half-case supermarket car parks Packs of fags stashed beneath these red cotton undies Screen printed instructions drown out the BMX blitzes Chasing crabs in the disallowed artificial white creeks First house on our block quickly joined by neighbours String beans & strawberries rattled by the odd frosts Drive-in garbage tips on a future�s Kmart swampland Lobster pot�s memory rewinds to the end of burning Match stick trawlers struggle & dunk through that bar Old men predict the ultimate immersion of the canal Atlantis is a brand of power come to think of it power Is just another conspiracy tell that to the serpentines Waterslides surf mats & Anzac marches where to wash Your hands of retirement is to hide in cigarette butts

It's here, the new Sonic Youth album, Sonic Nurse ! On the band's website you can listen to a track from the album plus some oldies in a very snazzily designed little media player shaped like a cassette tape and called (oh yes, sweet nostalgia) "Sonic Youth Mix Tape Vol 1". I'm most excited because Sarah and I are going to see them next week at The Forum, which shold be huge. I love Lee Ranaldo's grey hair. Haven't seen them play for quite a few years, and they certainly went through an obscure period for a few albums there (I'm thinking A Thousand Leaves etc) but Murray Street was a great return to form. I visited Murray Street (in downtown NYC) a couple of years back - it's literally a block or two from ground zero. Movin'. It's interesting to see the band revisiting old ground on the new album, with the first track "Pattern Recognition" name-checking William Gibson's latest travel novel, and completing the feedback loop ...

What better way to mark yesterday's 100th anniversary of Bloomsday than to admit I have never read more than twenty pages of Ulysses , due in no small part to the Leavisite method of critical textual analysis introduced in my first days of undergraduate English. Don't get me wrong: I respect the man, and having heard several sections of Finnegans Wake read aloud, can vouch for the fact that Joyce was a funny old bugger. Trouble is, the attraction of reading Ulysses has been sullied by the determination of various news outlets to strap onto the whole Bloomsday shenanigans every freaking year. Like clockwork. I propose an anti-Bloomsday as the antidote. Buggered if I know how that would work though. Anyway, what better way to follow that paragraph than to admit that I recently finished all 758 pages of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow , a book that someone once said (I'm paraphrasing) made most other books look a little simpleminded. Now, I know people say that...

Can everybody read this now?

No results found .

Indie legends The Fauves are set to release a new album on 5th July. Their website gives the low-down, as well as an excellent rant about Jet : "Doug and Doctor may have pulled out but I wasn't going to miss Jet. Mum and Dad had all their records when I was growing up and I was listening to those riffs from the time embryonic ears sprouted from the side of my head. I don't care what people say about them - I owe their music so much. Before Jet I'd never realised just how many more mobile phones, personal computing devices and white goods I needed in my life." Heh, and heh. Also, if you're halfway interested, read my interview with Fauves lead singer Andy Cox in Cordite .

So apparently Peter Garrett may not have voted in the last three elections? Well, tell me how that's worse than the 580,362 people in Australia who voted informally in the 2001 poll . And Howard would have you believe they're more passionate than Garrett. Go defenestrate yourself, wanker.

Thomas Pynchon's new intro to "1984" . Okay so it's not that new but I just found it. Wow.

Simply The Best , 's'all I wanna say. The woman is a genius, having recently sang for Oprah's 50th birthday, which would have been like de ja vu for Tina, having turned 50 herself only twenty years ago. Last week I channelled Tina's spirit at a karaoke bar in Sydney by singing my all time favourite Tina tune, "Private Dancer". The lyrics to that song, they are so scathing, so real. What a life Tina has had. She's survived Ike, Mad Max 3, Rugby League (perhaps the last time a woman involved with the NRL escaped unmolested) and more haircuts than I've had private dances. Sure, "We Don't Need Another Hero" has a few good moments, including that sax solo, but it's not a patch on PD. Yarn and Sarah both reckon, though, and this is my final word on the subject, that "Simply The Best" would be the perfect wedding song. The sax solo is, imho, superior to WDNAH. So SOTAR.

This excellent opinion piece in today's Age is all the more remarkable for its restraint, as opposed to the shrill hysteria spewing from the mouths of politicians on both sides of Parliament this week. Yes, I'm talking about the Play School controversy. The article's final recommendation - that instead of discriminating against same sex couples and their families and vilifying them in the process, the government should consider banning advertisements for junk food during childrens' programs - will, I am hoping, shut the fuckers up for once. Bob Menzies for PM - oh, sorry, that's already happened. Peter Garrett for PM!!

to HSG for this link to some choice Bento Pictures . I have to say, if I had to teach in a school where they served this stuff, I'd be pretty darned happy. Though of course the pandas, cats and dogs could be made of anything, really.

And another return to form: hot soup girl is back! Yay!

Pixies , hot damn, are back. Only trouble is, they're not coming down under. Naturally. Seems like they're in top form, though. Wish I was there.

Rocked the Celtic Club yesterday, it was my first reading for a long while, and possibly my longest reading ever. Good to get a chance to stand up and shout at people for 20 minutes. Thank you to the audience for listening and not leaving.

I'm looking for an escape route. Usually, I fantasise about running off to Wellington (NZ), growing a moustache and getting a job as a dishpig but somehow, Japan now seems a lot better than that. I found a great website where you can download thousands of jobs in a text file (maybe we should do that with Cordite). I'm not sure what the sentence above means, exactly, but I suspect it's got a whole lot to do with roe, giblets and stuff that looks green but tastes like barf.

Ahem. Sorry about that. I promise to be nice to my (s)elves from now on. As you can probably tell, I"m over [d/dn], and it's time to get back to life, back to reality. Hopefully I'll have time to work on some poems over the weekend and upload them here. Got a gig on Sunday too: at the Celtic Club on the corner of La Trobe and Queen Streets, Melbourne, 3pm. Unfortunately, STW is doing a reading at the same time , at ACCA. He's so cool, I think he's going to pull an "audience magnet" out on me. I'm told the Celtic hasn't sold out of tickets yet ... maybe see youse there?