Royal wedding, schymoyal wedding. I'm a tiny bit of a closet monarchist (Republic? NEVER!), I do love a wedding, and I genuinely hope that the happy couple (Prince Baldylocks and My Little Pony, as they are known in our house) have a long and contented life together. They seem like perfectly nice people, and good luck to them. But I just don't care about it that much, and it bugs me that EVERY story on the Sydney Morning Herald website today is about the bloody wedding. Yes, it's exciting. But also there is stuff happening in the world that is actually important, and not just shiny. There's a good round-up on the Foreign Policy website.
Here are some other (mostly shiny and not important) things that I've been reading instead of wedding gossip;
2D Glasses - yes, I need these! I'm so glad someone has thought of it no wait actually it seems like a waste of money and why wouldn't you just see the movie in a non-3D setting and now I'm conflicted
I was walking to work when an older gentleman sitting outside the train station waved at me, smiled, and said in a hearty tone; 'cheer up sweetheart, it can only get better!'.
This is not the first time I have been accosted in such a manner by a random old man. When I was eighteen and in Belgium (both fairly miserable places to be), I was wandering around trying to figure out what on earth I was doing in Belgium when an old man on a ladder shouted at me 'tu es très jolie,nesois pas triste!' (you are very pretty, don't be sad!). Both times that this has happened to me I have not even been feeling especially sad. Both times I have just been wandering along, minding my own business, maybe daydreaming a bit, and total strangers have told me to buck up. The other thing that many, many strangers and people I don't know very well have felt the need to tell me is that I am an 'old soul', which I don't really know what it means. Both of these things have made me very self-conscious about the way in which I present myself to the world. Apparently I look sad and old. Terrific.
Anyway, I happened to see the train station old man again later that day and I gave him a big smile and a wave, and he said 'that's the way, I told you it would get better!'. It hadn't, but it did feel like it for a moment. And that's why crazy old men are awesome.
You DO NOT attempt to take a picture of yourself with your new haircut after you've had a glass of wine. It will end badly and you will feel sad; I took a lot of pictures, and none of them made me look even slightly human. It's OK though, my new haircut is the same as my old haircut, so it's not like there's much to see. As an additional tip: don't read a book that isn't Twilight at the hairdresser. Reading a book in the hairdresser's will make them make fun of you. I know this because hairdressers are not very bright and they tend to forget that mirrors reflect things so that, even though I'm facing away from you, I can still see you behind me whispering to your little friend and pretending to open a book, while looking terribly amused.
What you could do instead of punching a size 6 bleached blonde high school drop out in the face is take the ferry home and stand outside, even though it's cold and rainy. It will make you feel much better about the world in general. Especially when you see some backpackers get splashed by a huge wave.
I've lived in Sydney for long enough now that I suppose it counts as being my entire life, but I still get a thrill out of going across on the ferry, especially when it goes through the heads and the sea is especially rough, as it was today. There's something so soothing about being out on the open water, away from crowds of people and traffic. Does anyone know how to get a job as a ferry captain? I'd even be first mate for a while, if necessary. They must be the happiest guys alive.
BTW, I'm quitting my job soon, so there will probably be fewer of these whiny posts and more posts about cake and monkeys. Actually, how can I combine those two things into a career? Monkey baker (as in baking for monkeys, not baking monkeys)! Perfect!
I think I have a problem. I was rootling through my box'o'stuff, looking for a birthday card for someone (because I am very organised and keep a stash on hand in case of emergencies. Aside from a mortal fear of appearing in public in unironed clothing, this is the only life lesson I have learned from my mother). And I discovered that I have no less than FOUR monkey cards to hand;
Is this normal, or do I need a twelve step program?
Being a selfish, childless pagan, Easter for me usually means 1) socially sanctioned chocolate orgies (I don't even really like chocolate that much, but I do have deep respect for Jesus and I take very seriously the question What Would Jesus Do?, to which I assume the answer is 'gorge himself on sweets') and 2) time off work. So it was really nice this Easter to have a child on board, one who, despite his often very serious and grown up demeanour, is still enough of a kid to want to do an Easter egg hunt.
Which was nice.
For my part, I have been sitting here in front of the computer with a bag of Cadbury eggs. Or with the wrappers from what was once a bag of Cadbury eggs.
It might not look like much, but that right there represents sixteen standard issue chocolate eggs, all eaten before lunch. My hands are actually shaking. I can see through time. I'm going to lie down.
I was listening to a New Yorker podcast the other day, and they started talking about Hoover the talking seal. This is him, and I think I love him;
This is the Wikipedia entry on him, but there is also an entry at the fabulously morbid website Find a Grave here which is much more extensive and satisfying.
I am no fan of fashion magazines. Sometimes if I'm getting my hair done I'll flick through one at the hairdresser's, but most of the time I avoid them because they tend not to contain information that I consider interesting on any level. I don't really care that much about what's fashionable right this minute, besides which I would rather spend my money on books and meals out than the latest must have dresses/sock suspenders/fake glasses accessory*. I don't wear much makeup or spend all my time obsessing over my weight, and I really do not give a shit about which celebrities are sleeping together/breaking up (in fact, I’d be hard pressed to name most of the people I see on the covers of these magazines in the supermarket, but then I don’t really watch TV or many movies).
Now I'm not saying that people who read these magazines are shallow and intellectually vacant. I never actually said that, and you can't prove it. Everyone needs their mind candy, and I know that there are plenty of smart, switched on women who read these things. My choice of mind candy is books by Terry Pratchett and PG Wodehouse, and there’s nothing inherently better about my choice (pssst: I’m lying, my choices are obviously better). I did buy Cleo, Cosmo and the rest fairly regularly at one stage, but it’s been a long, long time and I can honestly say that I’m happier without them. I can't even enjoy them on a kitschy level anymore, and I just find them repellent these days.
All of which is an introduction to me saying that today I have been on the Glamour magazine website, after I was directed to an article there by another website. And sweet zombie jesus, it's even worse than I'd remembered. Looking at that website was simultaneously hilarious and horribly, bleakly depressing, sort of a mix of mumsy passive aggressive nagging about doing something nicer with your hair, and obvious padding written in a sort of desperate ‘aren’t we having fun!’ tone. The overall result reads like what would happen if you fed every copy of every fashion magazine from the last twenty years into a computer and had it randomly spew out headlines based on what it had absorbed. The sentences make sense, in that they are usually recognisable as sentences, but that’s about as much as you could say for them. These are some of the fascinating 'articles' featured in the online edition;
The Crazy Place to Apply Blusher That Will Have You Looking Ubersexy in Seconds!
Daily Outfit Idea: Try Sneakers With Your Skirt This Weekend
Which of These Eco-Friendly Outfits Would You Wear on a Date?
Can Oversized Sunglasses Be TOO Big?
Why Blue is Now the Official Eye Makeup Colour of the Week
Yet Another Way to Wear Lavender This Season
Bread and circuses, mascara and shoes. This is why humanity is doomed, and on the basis of crap like this, that might not be that much of a tragedy.
* By the way, I know that this isn't as much of a trend as it was a few years ago, but I'm still outraged. When did it become OK? I wear glasses, and am pretty much blind without them. I don't like contacts and am not a candidate for laser surgery, so glasses are my only option. I actually don't mind wearing them most of the time, but let's be frank here - my crappy eyesight is a (very, very minor) disability. So why is it OK to be all 'oooh, glasses are cool' and pretend to wear them? Seriously, you wouldn't wear ornamental braces or use a crutch from Sportsgirl, so why pretend to have a problem that you don't have?
Jo's friend Little Lord Frenchelroy was round for dinner last night, which gave me the opportunity to tell my French puns to a real life French person. He was not impressed. And neither will you be, but you're going to hear them anyway!
Why does cheese go mouldy? Fromage!
What's the most dangerous fish to eat? A poisson fish.
What happened to the three kittens who went swimming? Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq.
Why do the French only use one egg in their omelettes? Because one is an oeuf!
Your sides, do they split?
There is another one here, but I managed to totally butcher it when I told it and I'm not going to try again. Enjoy!
We went out the other night to get some groceries, and as we pulled out of our street and onto the main road (which is quite a steep hill), I saw a man in a short-sleeved white shirt and a tie on a bike coming down the hill quite quickly. Yes, we have Mormans in the neighbourhood, and they seem to be everywhere.
Not that I really care. I'm always polite when they approach me, but I make it clear that I'm not interested, and they tend to wander off. I've given up on saying 'yeah, and we should go round to people's houses and tell them how awesome atheism is!' like it's really clever and funny because 1) it's not clever or funny, and 2) the fact that most atheists don't feel the need for everyone else to think what they think is what separates us from the many of the deeply religious types out there. As an atheist my position is live and let live, just don't try and tell me what I can and can't do with my reproductive organs and we'll get along fine.
Anyway, as he pelted down the hill his bike hit something and stopped dead. The Moman, unfortunately for him, kept going, and flipped quite spectacularly over the handlebars. We screeched to a halt and jumped out of the car to make sure he was OK. He looked a bit sheepish, but was otherwise fine.
The most striking thing about him were his shiny gold teeth. Mormans obviously make a lot more than I had realised. Either that or there is some religious edict about what colour your false teeth may be. We made sure he and his bike were both OK, and drove off. As we rounded the corner we saw what was obviously his partner in evangelism standing by his bike, looking worried. I waved in a sort of 'he's on his way' fashion, but I don't think he quite understood.
Jdack and I went and saw Terry Pratchett in conversation with Garth Nix at the Opera House last weekend. It was all kinds of wonderful, mainly because I am a massive Pratchett nerd (and also a pretty big Garth Nix fan), and I had a slightly surreal fan-girl moment of giddy I-am-not-worthy-ness at being in the same room as someone who ranks so highly in my personal pantheon. It almost makes me wish I’d dressed up, just to get into the spirit of the thing, like these people;
Pratchett talked a bit about the new book (yay, it’s a city watch book!) and there was a reading of an extract from it. But he mostly talked about his condition (a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s) and his advocacy for assisted dying. I’m a little bit ambivalent about the idea of assisted dying. On the one hand, I absolutely think that people with fatal illnesses should be able to choose to end their life with dignity when the suffering gets to be too much. But I disagree with people who think that assisted suicide should extend to people with depression, for example (not that Pratchett seemed to be suggesting this, but just to explain why I’m iffy on it). Like many people, I’ve dealt with depression for years, and occasionally take medication to help me keep on an even keel. I understand the pain of depression, but I worry that if it was considered grounds for assisted dying that many people who could be saved would take the option. I’ve been so down that if someone had offered me a sure-fire, painless ticket out, I would have taken it (don’t freak out, I’ve never planned to kill myself and I’m getting better and better at riding out the dark times as I get older, mainly because I don’t feel embarrassed about asking for help these days, and also because I’m lucky that the people who are close to me are very good at noticing when I’m starting to spiral downwards). But Pratchett makes an interesting case that is hard to argue with, and he is well worth listening to. There’s a great interview here, on the ABC Book Show.
We really need more media coverage of people like him on highly emotive issues like this, instead of the sensationalism and fear mongering we generally get. He’s intelligent, eloquent, and in many ways you could think of him as the non-threatening face of this movement. He’s an irascible old fart (and I mean that in the best possible way), a sort of exasperating but cuddly grandfather figure and it’s hard to argue with his point of view. And I completely agree with him that as a society, we need to stop allowing ourselves to be held hostage by a few shadowy religious types, on this topic and many others. Time and again we see that, along with assisted dying, the vast majority Australians are in favour of the decriminalisation of abortion, and are in favour of gay marriage, yet there is a tiny core of nutters that stops us from moving forward. I’ve really never understood why these people care so much what goes on in the bedrooms and bodies of other people, and who knows why the politicians are so scared of them, but I say to the nutters out there, if you care that much about this stuff, feel free to go and form your own society somewhere else, where you can repress whoever and whatever you like, and let the grownups get on with the business of making decisions rationally.
Ahem. Sorry, I got a bit off topic there. Where was I? Oh,yes. Terry Pratchett. At the end of his talk he handed out plastic teeth (if you’re familiar with his books you’ll understand why. Otherwise, I direct you to Hogfather).
We were too far back from the stage to get any, but it was a wonderful spectacle nonetheless; how often do you get to see an internationally best-selling author hurling handfuls of plastic teeth from the stage of the concert hall in the Sydney Opera House? Then we all sang Happy Birthday, gave him a round of applause and that was that.
The latest in my series of Conversations I've Overheard That I Hope Made More Sense in Context. A very well dressed, extremely well spoken elderly gentleman sitting with a younger woman in a cafe;
"Of course, in my entire married life I never let my wife wash my socks or underpants...
So far so good
...I used to wear them in the shower and wash them that way"
First chocolate egg consumed: 9:35
First drink 3:30
Feelings of shame: high
Headache: moderate
Hangover meals consumed: four so far, but it's only early afternoon
I was perusing the internet as I am wont to do of an evening (or morning, afternoon, etc) and came across a reference to Jeannie C. Riley. It took a while for me to remember why this name meant anything to me, but when I did, whoo boy did it bring back memories.
When I was about twelve, mum went back to teaching. This meant that I sometimes got home from school before she got home from work, which meant I could watch afternoon TV, which was a very big deal. Not to go all Angela's Ashes on you, but we were really not allowed to watch TV (or eat refined sugar, or have a Cabbage Patch Doll, not that I'm still bitter) and aside from a few pre-approved educational bits and bobs, and, for some reason, Australia's Funniest Home Videos and Hey, Hey it's Saturday on weekends, I really didn't have much exposure to the wonder of the modern age.
As a result, I am the perfect example of why you should expose your children to advertising under controlled circumstances from a young age. With my trusting little mind and the lack of supervision, I was totally unprepared for the lure of those thirty second inducements to buy, buy, buy, and there was one ad on high rotation which managed to totally brainwash me. It may even possibly have been one of those Demtel* ads, and it was for a box-set of cassettes (!) called Hits of the Sixties.
As commanded by my infomercial overlords, I asked my parents for this box-set every. damn. day. And eventually they caved and bought it for me. The collection actually was quite wonderful and though I've long since thrown away the cassettes, I remember the music so clearly. I can still remember every word of Needles and Pins. Of Itchycoo Park. Of Summer Afternoon. While my contemporaries were discovering Nirvana, U2 and REM, I was obsessing over Downtown and Summer in the City. Because I am a nerd.
But there was one song in particular that set my twelve year old soul on fire. And of all things, it was Harper Valley PTA.
I still don't really know why. I mean, that voice still sends shivers down my spine. And the story of the song - spunky woman takes on a bunch of mealy-mouthed hypocrites and gives them all the finger - still makes me cheer. But I couldn't for a second tell you why I liked this particular song so very much. Anyway, time went on, I got a bit older and started to feel embarrassed by my humiliatingly unhip music tastes, and threw away all my tapes, and I hadn't thought about that song in (god, now I feel old) fifteen years. But a passing reference in a blog post brought it all flooding back and I've been happily belting out this and other Hits of the Sixties for the last few days, much to the dismay of my family, dog and neighbours.
Instance of Nostalgia #2
More internet perusing, this time for work related reasons. I was cruising about the websites of Sydney-based chamber music ensembles for reasons too tedious to go into when, on impulse, I opened the 'About Us' section of a certain group's site. The first profile that popped up made me squeal like a teenage girl at a (whoever it is that the young people like - I think I've established that I am not your go-to music buff) concert, which attracted the attention of various people in my office who came over to find out what all the squealing was about. The photo was of someone I used to know very slightly, and who I used to have a massive, all-consuming, unrequited crush on. I hadn't thought about him in years, and yet here he was on my computer screen, gazing at me soulfully in a way he had never done in real life, as much as I'd wanted him to once upon a time. I found myself trying to explain to my colleagues why I had been so swoony over this particular chap, who these days is really not my type. But the era of this crush was back when I was just out of high school and living away from home for the first time, and seeing this person's picture reminded me so strongly of that time in my life that it took me a good minute to talk myself out of contacting him just out of a sense of wanting to be reminded of who I was then, because so much has changed since then. It's just as well I didn't email him as he would have no idea who I am, but just being reminded of who I was at eighteen was completely terrifying and also strangely comforting, especially now that I'm hurtling towards thirty.
Instance of Nostalgia #3
The other night at dinner, apropos of the ongoing crisis in Japan, we started talking about Children of the Dust, a book we'd all had to read at some point in high school. Holy crap. Turns out I've been suppressing a lot of what this nightmarish piece of apocalypse porn did to me as an impressionable pre-teen, because as soon as the topic came up the horrors of the book came flooding back. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of reading it, Children of the Dust is a novel for children aged 9-12 about the aftermath of nuclear war. Included in its rose-tinted pages are the following; lavish descriptions of radiation sickness, multiple lingering and messy deaths, the "marriage" of a teenage girl to a much older man and the death of all of the babies she conceives with him, and just to round things out, mutants, mutants, and more mutants. God only knows why they thought this was appropriate reading for a bunch of eleven year olds. At about the same time we were also required to read Z for Zacharia and When the Wind Blows, also to attend a screening of the film version of Children of the Dust.
It's funny how intense my reaction to the discussion of the book was. It was a physical reaction as much as anything else; butterflies in my stomach, cold hands, just as it was when I read it more than half a lifetime ago. As a child I was very 'sensitive' ('highly strung' how my mother tactfully describes it) and given to frequent bouts of extreme anxiety during which I would get myself so wound up that I brought debilitating migraines on myself (and still do, though much less often these day), and these books tore a hole in my fragile little psyche. I actually remember lying in bed one night sobbing uncontrollably at the thought that this could really happen. I wasn't scared for myself so much as terrified that everyone and everything I knew and loved could be taken away so easily. Ah, for the days when you could inflict this sort of thing on a child without having to have counsellors on hand.
So all in all, it's been a bit of a backwards looking week. I really didn't mean to write this much, I just got swept up in reminiscence. Now I'm off to watch The Neverending Story in my bike-pants-with-matching -t-shirt-and-scrunchie outfit while I play with my pogs. And Fido Dido, remember that?
*BTW, did you know that this company still exists? The fact that it marches on, even in the face of the global financial crisis tempts me to label it the cockroach of finance. It will never die. Even after humanity has been mercifully extinguished, Demtel ads will continue to exhort whatever life remains on the face of the earth to purchase steam mops.
Only David soddin' Malouf, author and all round national treasure. And very nice he was too. I went to a talk he gave at the library up the road from my office and was in the line to have my book signed afterwards, but as I got closer to the table I was seized with a sudden panic - I've never been in the position to meet a writer I admire so much before, and had no idea what to say. 'I liked your book. It was really, really, really...good' doesn't quite cut it. I ended up asking him a question about something he'd mentioned in his talk, and he gave me a short but gracious answer, and pointed me towards the source material. So hooray, I met David Malouf and managed not to make a total dick of myself. Win.
Oonagh Moodling, a writer and speaker on the desensitisation of the workplace, tells me: "The most seemingly innocuous words can cause subconscious limitation or damage. The term "human resources" is a limiting term because it commodifies people as things to be used instead of genuine assets to be nurtured. Language has such a deep influence on people because it patterns and dictates how we think. This is why I suggest Human Resource departments are renamed Human Potential. All you need to feel is your own emotional response to those two phrases to notice the difference."
I may be floundering in the very shallows of the world of grown up employment, but at least I'm not spouting nonsensical crap like this.
I consider myself to be a scrupulously rational person. I'll happily stand under a ladder and smash mirrors over a black cat without worrying about anything other than the fact the the RSPCA has me on file.
And yet. I have 'those days'. Maybe when I get up in the morning there's not enough coffee left and I have to stab myself in the leg with a fork just to wake up properly. Or maybe I've forgotten to wash the shirt I wanted to wear that day. Maybe it's that I make the mistake of reading the paper first thing and find out that some knuckle-dragging mouth-breather has decided to give Andrew-twat-face-arse-head-Bolt his own TV show (REALLY? This is a thing now?).
Whatever it is, sometimes I have those days where nothing seems to go quite right from the moment I wake up, and it feels as if the day is somehow doomed.I had one of those days today. Everything just felt wrong, right from the start, and just as I expected, I had the kind of day that is mildly inconvenient without actually being catastrophic. Today's unedifying parade of mediocrity consisted of;
What should I wear today? (forty-five panicked minutes of costume changes later) Fuck it, the first outfit I tried on will do. Jo (trying to be helpful) 'wow, you sure like trying on clothes!' Me (in tones of rising hysteria) 'my legs don't look right in anything!' Jo; 'ummmm...'
Bad Hair. Look like Worzel Gummidge. Straighteners only make it worse.
Bus is thirty minutes late and my seat is buckled on the corner, which makes my back hurt.
No replies to important emails at work. At a loose end. Sit around trying to look busy. Nod off in front of computer, try to make it look like intense concentration. Fail spectacularly.
Try to sublimate increasing sense of impotence at work into enjoyment of shopping. Shop does not have my size trousers. Why am I being punished for having lost weight? I am now AVERAGE size, and subsequently, can never find my size in any shop ever. Must lose/gain 10kg.
Go to library on lunch break. Everything I want is on loan.
Lunch is unsatisfying because microwave at work is crap and because I feel pressured to let other people have a turn with the luke-warminator before I have heated my food to optimal temperature. Tepid zucchini gives me a stomach ache.
Brother makes dinner, forgets that I am vegetarian. Have toasted cheese for dinner. Everyone else has chicken.
Mum and I went and saw In the Next Room on Sunday, and it was completely and utterly wonderful and I do mean to post about it eventually. But I'm lazy and I'm knackered, so for today I'm just going to post some pictures I took from the Opera House restaurant near the Playhouse, where we had a perfectly adequate meal before the play (Pssst. I'm being polite. It was fucking awful, but it was worth it for the view). I was playing around with the different settings, and I'm quite pleased with them.
I was in the Museum of Contemporary Art the other day and there was a piece (I don't remember what it was now) that quoted the line 'the internal difference, where the Meanings lie'. I was sure I recognised it from a poem, but wasn't sure what the poem was until I looked it up. Turns out it's by Emily Dickinson, and though I can't remember where or when I read it, it feels as if I must have read it at a very impressionable age, because it resonates with me in an odd way. I'm not great with poetry - most of it goes over my head and I'd have a very hard time explaining what it means - but I wanted to share this one.
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons --
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes --
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us --
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are --
None may teach it -- Any --
'Tis the Seal Despair --
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air --
When it comes, the Landscape listens --
Shadows -- hold their breath --
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death --
So a few weeks ago I asked for people to buy me things. And no one did. But that's fine, because I have spent a lot of time looking at art gallery websites this week (for boring work reasons), and I have found these things and I love them more than monkeys on dogs or flamingo costumes.
Jeremy Kibel
Sam Leach
Karlee Rawlins
Mikaela Castledine
I need a minimum of $3,000 so that I can buy at least one of them, but feel free to give whatever you can afford. Cheques are fine, cash is better.
Last week we were in Manly for our anniversary dinner. It had rained all day, but by the time we got to there the sun had come out and the beach looked absolutely beautiful. Gosh but we're lucky to live here.
