Why am I only seeing this now?

I've watched this about half a dozen times, and it gets better every time.

It's my birthday soon, and I understand that Whiplash the dog riding monkey will never be mine, but look at this! It could be mine! Please buy it for me.

One week down, only fifteen to go...

Yay, I got through my first week of having a grown up job without crying in front of anyone! The funnest part of my week was realising that when the office manager gave me the tour on my first day, she  had been referring to herself in the third person the entire time, and because I hadn't caught her name when she introduced herself I thought she was talking about someone else. It took me until Friday to figure this out, but in my defence, it was an odd thing for her to do.

Let's call her...Jilly. As she was showing me around the office she kept pointing things out and saying stuff like 'here's the kitchen, Jilly empties the dishwasher', and 'here's the storeroom, if you can't find anything just ask Jilly, it's her job to keep it stocked'. But she said these things in a really bitter tone of voice that suggested a significant degree of loathing, which led me to assume that this Jilly person was a useless pain in the arse who couldn't be trusted to do her job. All week I waited for her to show up, and eventually figured she was on holiday or something. I finally figued it out when I asked Jilly where Jilly was, if you follow me, which ended awkwardly. Still, I have been much less socially ept in my time, and that was by far the worst that I did this week so I'm counting it as a generally positive week, socially speaking*.

When I wasn't making a fool of myself, this is what I mostly did this week;

• Hid in the toilets
• Made many, many cups of tea
• Washed and dried my tea cup, veerrryy slowly
• Refreshed my emails in the vain hope that someone, anyone, has sent me something useful. I have even subscribed to dozens of vaguely work-related newsletters so that I get at least a few emails every day to peruse
• Went to get coffee at the cafe down the road, veerryy slowly
• Tidied my desk. This is hard as the only things I have on it are pens and my diary, but you'd be surprised at how many different configurations you can come up with, especially when you add in a water bottle and a coffee cup. 

It got so bad that I was utterly thrilled when my wisdom teeth flared up agonisingly on Wednesday morning because it meant I had to go to the chemist, where I managed to have a lovely long conversation with the girl behind the desk about gum disease, thus managing to be away from my desk for a good twenty minutes. 

I have also perfected the art of staring at the computer screen with a slightly thoughtful look on my face, as if I'm trying to decide what my next marketing strategy will be. 

I fully expect to have been given the sack by the end of next week. 

On the positive side, because my job involves getting out to shops and things and talking to people about selling the magazine, I get to see all sorts of things that I wouldn't otherwise have seen. Like the woman in full blackface makeup I saw leaving a pub on George St. at four in the afternoon on Friday. I really hope there was a good reason for her to be doing that. I thought that as a society we had decided that we weren't going to do that anymore, but maybe she just didn't get the newsletter and couldn't figure out why everyone was staring at her in horror. 

And I saw this;

Even as a joke, this is the worst name.

And I love the area I'm working in. I went for a little explore down my street yesterday;

And finally, I have had a bit of a revelation this week about the nature of classical music. It's all a big in-joke, isn't it? I mean, really, it's all a long running meta joke perpetrated by people with filthy minds and  a penchant for the absurd. How else can you explain the things I read about this week? Did you know that  Mahler's wife was called Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel? Say it out loud. It'll cure what ails you. 

Other completely implausible classical music-related things from this week;

• I read an article that discussed the composers Titz and Scheidt
• I read an article about an instrument called the flageolet, which is a member of the fipple flute family, and they were reportedly designed to teach birds to sing. Yeah, like I believe any of that for a second.
• I read dozens of articles about performances of Bach's organ pieces that brazenly and unashamedly used language that should really only be available to mature audiences.

On balance, this was an OK week. My plan for next week is not to get fired. Aim low, that's my motto.

*Actually, this isn't completely true. I did manage to imply to the woman who sits opposite me that I thought her kids were a significantly different age to the age they actually are, but I wildly underestimated, luckily, thus implying that I thought she was much younger that she actually is, so for once it worked out in my favour.

blurgh

What kind of day did you have? Was it like mine? Was it a day when you ended up having to go and have a tiny cry in the toilet because you don't understand your job and everyone is horrible to you? To be fair, just when I was at my snivellingest point one of my FOUR bosses actually gave me some useful information, and then the lady who sits opposite me actually spoke to me for the first time, so it did get better.

But I still ran away a bit early so that I could get home early enough that I don't have to immediately go to bed, and so that I had time to trawl the internet for pictures of baby aardvarks, possibly the only creature on the face of the earth more fragile and pitiable than me right now.

Ohhhh, that's what I'm supposed to be doing

As with most things in life, I can relate something that happened to me to a joke from The Simpsons;

(Sorry that it seems to be in Czechoslovakian (maybe), it was the only version that I could find, but I quite liked it because it seemed oddly apposite in that it is basically total gibberish to me)

I'm still a bit hazy on the whole marketing deal. Apparently marketing for an arts magazine involves spending a lot of time scouring the inner city for possible contacts, then painstakingly writing emails to people begging them to buy the stupid thing. So far there have been no glamorous parties or freebies, and after two days of bewilderment I really feel that I should have experienced at least one of these. I do feel somewhat entitled to them.

So after gallivanting about Sydney all day lugging a bag full of magazines,  I'm a bit footsore and a bit sunburned, and the only freebie I've had all day was a cup of tea, and I'm  feeling somewhat disillusioned with the whole 'having a grown up's job' lark. 

On the positive side, I did see this stuff today;

OMG LEOPARD PRINT

Ah, Spanish graffiti. That takes me back. Not really sure what it says, Google translate has it as 'I have wounded at this difficult stage of life that is the withdrawal'. Really makes you think. 

Fruit bats in the botanic garden

This abomination

Now I am going to have a large drink and go to bed. There's more marketing afoot tomorrow, and I needs my sleep.

Damn huddled masses

Sophie Cunningham on the pesky refugee situation we seem to be having;

‘Lefties’ like me used to blame the Howard government for the trend towards an increasingly harsh treatment of refugees. We can’t anymore. Both major parties are behaving contemptibly. Australia has become a country that I, and many others, are ashamed to live in.

Read it. 

No longer a burden on the state!

Huzzah, I have finally managed to bamboozle some poor trusting fool into hiring me! Using the time honored combination of writing begging letters and exploiting the contacts of everyone I know, I have landed a temporary gig marketing a magazine. Awesome! No, wait. I mean extremely scary. Because I have no experience whatsoever in marketing, and after I accepted the job I had to call a friend who works in marketing to ask him what it is, exactly, that he does all day. And because I've only had one job in the last decade, and I'm terrified of starting something new. In my previous job I was the unquestioned lord and master (at least in my head) and I ruled my tiny empire with an iron fist. And the lure of biscuits and the promise of additional biscuits if my minions pleased me kept unruly behaviour in check.  Now I have to go somewhere where I don't know anyone, and I will have to submit to other people's snacking whims. 

So here's my plan. Bring biscuits. Be awesome. Or at least not totally useless.  And work to win the hearts and minds of the people, thus forming a new petty empire to rule over.

I totally look like I know what I'm doing

Unemployment in all its slightly worrying glory!

I'm still looking for a job, and I am starting to get a tiny bit bored, and not a little bit worried about my mental health. Unemployment has offered opportunities to experiment with a variety of low levels of wigging out, usually by becoming a little bit obsessed with something. 

For a while this was restricted to finding new ways to categorise my books, but the main thing for the last few weeks has been my growing relationship with, and increasing levels of devotion to, a pair of rainbow lorikeets that have adopted our garden as their territory. Somewhere along the line someone started calling them Mr. and Mrs. Stumpy (as one of them has no tail feathers, though it seems to get about well enough) and the name has stuck.

A day wouldn't be complete without a bit of a chat with the Stumpies while I feed them a few grapes or a bit of slightly too squishy peach. Mr. Stumpy in particular is very affectionate and will happily waddle up my arm to sit on my shoulder. I worry about this slightly, because it doesn't seem right that wild animals should get too used to humans, but it's hard to resist. Looking back at what I've just written, I suppose I should  be slightly more worried about the fact that in my head this daily interaction as achieved the level of 'a chat'.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time googling rainbow lorikeets over the last week or so, and have become quite the amateur ornithologist, much to the dismay of my family. 

I have even gone so far as to join the Bird in Backyards website, and have signed up to do a regular survey of birds in my garden. It seems that somewhere along the line I went from being a twenty-something gadabout to a slightly cranky retiree. But at least it stops me from trying to alphabetise the contents of the fridge again.

Lyme Regis! It's not a disease!

My dad has been down in Lyme Regis on the south coast of England  for the past few months having a midlife crisis fulfilling a lifelong dream by taking a boat building course. So before we left England we took a trip down to see him. 

Jo drove. I navigated. I am generally quite good at navigating these days. I have got past the stage where I assume that the landscape knows which way up I am holding the map and arranges itself according to my needs, realising that it is generally simpler for me to turn the map around to match the landscape. And I was on board with the fact that North or South does not equal front and back (i.e. what's in front of you isn't necessarily North. I mean, I've always known that in a theoretical sense. Just not in a practical, or useful sense). But I always had a problem with left and right, which is known in the cartographic world as port and seaboard. No, that's not right. I meant West and East*. So car trips where I was required to navigate often involved fun  detours in the opposite direction from where we wanted to be.

Not anymore. I am now a champion map reader, and have an instinctive grasp of the location of North, or indeed any other cardinal point without reference to moss on trees or the location of the sun or any of that stuff. 

My new, grown-up map reading skills leave me a lot more time free in the car, and I sometimes think Jo longs for the days when I'd spend twenty minutes trying to figure out what road we're on because free time in the car in England gives me a chance (apropos of Bill Bryson, though in my defence, I think I came up with it first) to play my favourite travel game; What is the Most Ridiculous Town Name in England? I have a few contenders; Bishop's Itchington. Wootton Fitzpaine. Tooting Bec. Upper Weedon (what about Lower Weedon, I hear you ask? Probably better that we don't discuss it. Though I do feel honour bound to tell you that there is also somewhere called Weedon Lois). Pratt's Bottom. Wham (yep, just 'Wham'). Keeps me entertained for hours. Jo loves it when I sit there reading them all out to him. I'm sure when he starts to weep and bang his head repeatedly on the steering wheel it's about something else entirely. 

We debated making a detour to Stonehenge, but decided it that we didn't really have time, thinking that it would be too far out of our way. When what should loom over the horizon...

Well, maybe not 'loom' as such. If you squint, you can just about see it there in the background. Drive-by touristing. Awesome. 

Eventually we got to Lyme Regis, and we were extremely pleased to be there as it is a very sweet little sea-side town. We had a pie and a cider in the pub and then had a look at the local scenery. Which was beautiful in a bleak, windswept sort of way;

Then we visited dad in the Boat Building Academy. It was like Santa's workshop, if Santa's elves were a bunch of slightly unkempt looking men (and a couple of more kempt women) with nautical glints in their eyes. To be fair, the unkempt look had more to do with the fact that they were all elbow deep in resins and woodshavings and other bits of workshop detritus than any lack of personal hygiene. 

I liked this half-finished boat because he looks like a grumpy old man smoking a cigar;

Mostly what we did while we were in Lyme Regis was potter about. We went to the pub. We pottered about. Went to the pub again. Pottered again. Which was exactly what we'd wanted. Lyme Regis has an excellent assortment of pubs, and I can recommend The Royal Standard, The Ship Inn and The Volunteer Inn (though that last one loses points for having a menu board up but no actual food available. It's our own fault for going to an English seaside town in January, but when I tried to order some sandwiches the woman behind the bar looked at me as if I was crazy, and told me that the kitchen doesn't open til February. Of course. Good selection of ciders, though).

We also went fossil hunting. You can wander down to the beach and just pick fossils off the ground. The coastline is constantly being eroded, and the more of the Dorset coast that falls into the sea, the more fossils there are to be found. It was a lot of fun, though Jo eventually had to plant an ammonite for me to find because I was getting stroppy about not finding anything (I blame my crappy glasses - it was raining and my glasses got all fogged up and kept sliding off my nose, and I couldn't see a damn thing), after which I perked up and had a lovely time.

We found about a dozen ammonites, a fossilised shell of some sort, and what I think might be part of a fish, all of which I assume will represent major breakthroughs for science when I eventually get around to showing them to a paleontologist.

All in all, a lovely break away from our main holiday. 

But I'm not finished yet. Oh, no. 

On our way home, we went to Monkey World. Monkey World is sort of a cross between a zoo and an animal rescue centre, and sadly, a lot of the animals there have suffered physical and mental trauma, but they are treated and rehabilitated at the centre and they all seemed pretty content when we saw them. Again, January in a tourist attraction in England is pretty quiet and there were more staff than customers the day we went (thought there was a family  there with a little girl who pointed at the tamarinds and shouted gleefully 'look at those cheeky rascals!', which has become a bit of a catchphrase of mine).

It was quite wonderful (though it was a little bizarre to see gibbons swinging through the oak trees), and the place is doing a bang up job. These are some of the older chimps, who were all curled up with blankets;

And this is me with a chimpanzee. I'm the one on the left. This is not the closest I've ever been to a monkey - when we lived in Thailand I was savaged by a temple monkey - but this is the closest I've ever been to a non-rabid monkey, which was nice.

This has all gone on a bit longer than I'd planned, so I'll just finish with a few of my wannabe-artsy pictures of Lyme Regis harbour, because I'm not good at wrapping things up coherently. 

FIN

*Though I still have to go over in my head Never Eat Soggy Weet-bix to get that much right.