Category Archives: Stuff I’m only ok at

In which I visit a church with mixed results

Posted on by
5

A disclaimer: my interests have become, of late, rather church and religion adjacent. This is due largely to my choice of vocation and also due to, well, my interests. If you don’t dig on or have any care for the whole church thing, or give a shit about how they do what they do, this may not be your cup of tea. Feel free to disregard, or to read solely for the bits where I’m openly mocking some Christians (sorry). I started writing this for an assignment but it got too fun and so I wrote an assignment and a seperate thing for me and this is the result. It comes off angry, but I can deal with that.

Swathes of inexorably cool young things mill about on the pavement outside the Athenaeum Theatre. A-frame signs bearing the Hillsong logo tell us we’re in the right place and two lots of welcomers make sure we know they notice us. As I approach I say “please don’t leave me- I’m afraid” to a departing friend and I am only half joking. I am attending Hillsong Melbourne City Campus ostensibly to write a case study for an assignment but also to assuage the slight guilt I carry with me for feeling, as a lot of folk of a certain age who are into small and manageable emerging worship type churches do, as though I know all I will ever need to about anything that can be described as a mega-church. If I dislike something, I want to be able to do this with integrity thank you very much.

I managed to avoid (possibly by looking abrupt and scared) the first lot of welcomers who were stood about near the large doors, cool and professional in printed T’s and rehearsed, earnest smiles. The second lot, inside the doors, offered me a murmured “hi” but none of the perfectly designed cards they clutched in their hands. The foyer was wall to wall Hip Young People, and I realised I had no way of knowing where I needed to be for the churching itself. I stood near a table, trying to convince myself that despite my immediate internal default position I was not the most awkward person in the room and that I had every right to be there amongst people possibly 15 years my junior. I set about getting the lay of the land, repeating my surveying of the room and the buoyant kids talking animatedly to one another for ten minutes or so until I saw movement across the foyer; through the throng a small trail of people was headed in a direction that seemed likely to be the church-event, so I set off to follow. This trickle led me to the downstairs doors. As I reached them though, a set of Hillsong T-wearing helpers shut them almost directly in my face saying to one another that “they’re not all going to get chairs anyway”. They did not look at me. I did an immediate U-turn, muttering to myself like a crank and they called after me that I should try upstairs. Not a great start, but I made my way up the stairs as I am fairly robust emotionally and was there for a purpose gosh-darn it.

The theatre itself was mostly dark upon entry. I filed into the large upstairs balcony area in a hush that matched perfectly the theatre setting, and saw the lower portion which is free of chairs at least at the front, brimming with young bodies moving around excitedly, pressed towards the stage the way I used to at gigs. A video was playing on a screen; well-fonted biblical text, images of quasi-spiritual significance, flashes of colour. It was very well made. At some point a band filed on in mostly silence and continuing darkness. They started playing something mounting and electronic betwixt sets of white lights installed in matching patterns either side of the screen, drums rolling us along towards a crescendo. The video and the band worked together, building a mounting feeling within the room, we were all involved now, we all were wondering where this train was going, the images flickered into each other rapidly, colours and shapes jarring together with louder and louder keys, drums and guitar until the music dropped at its peak just as the video stopped on the image of a red cross on a white background. The crowd went frigging nuts.

As the applause for the rock-star cross raged on a solitary woman took to the stage. The lights gradually focused on her and the band, and they began playing a song. On the three large screens began another video clip. The clip involved a lion wandering through an art gallery, and a violin player seated near a sculpture, and other bits and pieces, some lyrics. The song built and with it the singers’ voice, which was quite lovely. It was quite affecting and though I found the accompanying video to be baffling nonsense, I did get goose bumps at the appropriate points as I am not made of stone.

This song finished in a flare of lights and the solo singer left the stage. She was never seen again. To replace her, a troupe of eight very stylish and young singers ran on and one who looked suspiciously like Adam Levine took the lead. The band was very, very well rehearsed, and the initial song a very good copy of the horrible, feel-good, we’re-all-just-going-to-save-the-world-by-dancing-and-being-in-love-on-a-road-trip-to-the-desert pop that is around right now. Simple verses leading to a chorus of Adam singing “I just wanna be where you are” followed by a manipulated keyboard sound trilling a cute little melody while all eight singers jumped around like little wood nymphs kicking their feet, twirling on the spot, spinning in place and full of obvious delight to be worshipping. This went on for some time, three or four songs -an eternity, who can tell- eventually the upbeat songs being replaced with thoughtful and emotive power chords. All around me my compatriots engaged in combo worship manoeuvres; hands up head down, eyes closed arms low, hands outstretched, the sway, the twist on the spot.

A Pastor appeared after approximately four songs to introduce a video link- it seems we were to join Hillsong Sydney for their worship. We saw their band, and our band began playing and singing with them meaning we were watching dozens upon dozens of people by now, all engaged in the same exultant, blissed out mannerisms. This carried on for an additional 2-3 songs. The Pastor had wandered off then appeared again later bopping awkwardly to the music presumably so we’d know he was the Pastor, then wandered off again. He wasn’t seen again till a vaguely racist “pastoral word” he delivered at the end of the thing. But we didn’t need him because… Brian Houston took to the stage in Sydney and began a sermon! Brian! The man himself! In Sydney!

He talked about the Holy Spirit for what felt like forty-five minutes but may have been less. As he talked I realised a great many things. One was “oh I really enjoy structure in a sermon”. Another was “you really believe the Holy Spirit is a man, don’t you?” yet another being “I have truly awful handwriting”. I sat, erratically jotting notes that must have made me seem as if I was finally engaged with what was going on but that in fact hinted at the various emotional reactions I was having to the sermon. I wanted to love the preaching. I longed to be pleasantly surprised by a man who has built an empire and amassed millions of followers because, as certain pockets of the church are fond of saying with a shrug and a sad smile that implies they are bravely acknowledging the truth, “they must be doing something right”. However much I was theoretically ready to be taught something, to have the Word explored and expanded in front of me though, this was not to be.

Brian rasped his meandering thoughts in varying stages of passion and quietitude, occasionally referring to a bible verse to back up his opinions of the Holy Spirit. He paced the stage, not our stage of course, but the stage on our big screen TV, his voice rising and falling like an auctioneer. The Holy Spirit is our advocate. The Holy spirit is our Cheerleader. He had the sense to say at least that the spirit is not just a resource at one point, oh that’s big of you, I thought, though at another he said it is “cheaper than therapy”. This particular point I found vastly troubling, not least because of the murmured responses that came floating up from all over the theatre- our crowd were not, it seems, deterred from encouraging Brian by his not being in the building- got louder at this point as they had at many others, as people sensed he had said something Very True and or lyrically resonant. If, I thought, the Holy Spirit is our therapist, what does that say to the statistically probable whole bunch of folks here who have clinical depression or anxiety or any other myriad reasons one could have for talking to a therapist and which in no way mean they’re not a vessel for the Spirit of God? This Spirit, I was to learn, walks with you to encourage you, and is better looking than Brian, with ‘powerful arms’. This Spirit, I came to understand, was around to Help Me With My Goals. Which, sure, Bri did say should be “about building the kingdom”, but though that got another boat load of affirming murmurs from Melbourne which our preacher will never know about, what I would love to know is, how the fuck the Kingdom is understood if the Holy Spirit is sold to me as an aide to making my life better.

How many times we were told “just to invite him in” – him in this case being the Holy Spirit, lest you had forgotten- I couldn’t say but I was left very confused as to just what exactly that meant. Brian did specify that we already had the Spirit, thanks for that Brian, but there was a clear call to get more somehow? A greater influx? More Spirit less No Spirit if you will, which really amped up at the end of the rambling and sporadically hyper homily when we were encouraged I think to invite him in but this time the band will play and you guys just pray and just invite him in and I wanna feel the spirit moving tonight I do feel the spirit moving tonight I think the spirit is going to move on you powerfully tonight (also by the way the Spirit will help me with my financial endeavours so perhaps I should have tried harder to up my Spirit quota when instructed) all this being assisted ably by the band who were urging us to feel the Spirit move with the perfect combination of chords and rolling drum solos.

Look. I know I’m being crass and unkind, and I know I could be accused of not really going in with an open mind at all, but honestly after a month or so reflecting on this, I don’t really want to be kind. I think that kind of theology is at best unhelpful and at worst dangerous. I think using all male pronouns for all names of God is dumb and outdated and can’t and shouldn’t be supported and to do so with so obvious a lack of consideration, such a blithe assumption of what you know about God makes me mad. I think implying that all you really need for your emotional health is to worship harder is negligent. I think worship shouldn’t just be a big feel-fest to get you all amped up and ready for the week. I think churches should be talking about what the Holy Spirit has empowered us to do in the world around us. I think a lot of churches get things wrong, but that to suggest we should be seeking to emulate certain other movements because they get the kids in the seats and raising their hands is naïve and missing a large part of the point because I don’t want a theatre full of kids raising their hands and hearing tidbits about what God can do for them and whipping themselves into a frenzy aided by spirit keys and repetitive calls to ask Jesus into your heart to be what church boils down to.

I will say this: they run a tight ship. If I had felt so moved, I know I could have found a dozen ways to be “connected in”, though I would have had to be the one initiating contact. I somehow missed the ‘welcome zone’ which I found out was near the doors I was tragically barred from, but they made it clear that I could have talked to anyone in a Hillsong T-shirt and been welcomed and joined up to all manner of helpful groups and lists. I was super bothered by the sermon being streamed in but maybe that doesn’t happen all the time. I hope not. I’d like to believe that they have the resources to find preachers if not to help youngins from their enclaves to try their hand at it. All the volunteers, of which there were many, and the attendees were literally the most representative bunch I’ve ever witnessed in a church. All the colours of the rainbow. Lack of cultural diversity clearly is a problem they’ve left for us, the more staid, less branded congregations.

So anyway, they get the kids in, they get them excited, and who knows, maybe I’m just an asshole and they all go out from there wanting to learn more and see God in the face of a stranger. Or maybe no one ever does and I should get off my high horse. I don’t know, as I’m increasingly convinced no one does, the perfect way to do church. And I don’t want to. Perhaps this service was more than a big old feel-fest, perhaps it doesn’t matter. I did learn a little about myself in there, aside from how much I don’t enjoy Brian Houston’s preaching. The woman who used to be able to engage in some sort of internal surrendering of self during sung worship, is gone. At least for now. She’s been replaced by someone who thinks a LOT about different parts of church, about what people say, about how boring so many church songs are to her, who does not want to lift her arms. She can be a bit of a dick. And she knows that Hillsong, chirpy vibes and friendly volunteers aside, is definitely not for her, and that this is fine.

up to the knees

Posted on by
1

Hello. I wrote the below (minus a few edits) in August and then of course abandoned it. I’d very much like to write about a host of things I’ve thought and done over the past year but am a little overwhelmed by the task, so my brother advised me to start small. Here is me starting really small, hopefully more little thought farts will join it later and make a sort of story of my one-thirds-minister-ship, for any that are interested.

—————————————————————————–

I wrote a really terrified confession over 6 months ago, secure in the knowledge that I would be updating my blog regularly and you would all benefit from my learning and from my finding of everything to be marvellous and from the stories of my Wonderful New Life. It’s comforting I guess that I continue to overestimate myself.

I was starting my formation as a minister and was- rightly it turns out, but more about that later- a bit apprehensive. Mainly it was the unknown that so concerned me, but my propensity for laziness and the fact that I’ve never once had a Direction or thing that I was properly aimed for but have changed my mind and floated around etc etc were playing a part.

After I wrote the confession I went off and met the rest of the candidates and had a few days away with them. Which I hated. I had a very mediocre time. Not, thank God, because the others were horrible, but because (in part) they were new, it was all new, and all around me, and I need a bunch of alone time to not be a huge cow it turns out. I heard people laughing companionably or saying ‘no after you’ and like, getting along, and I felt my lack of the desire to be constantly polite as an inditement on my spirit. I felt, too, my lack of experience walk up beside me and place its arms elegantly around my neck, felt my fear that the whole year, three whole years, would be unfulfilled self examination, missed messages and the hiding of my cynicism.

Then I came home and saw my friends and breathed a bit.

The semester started in earnest and I found myself startled by an ocean of knowledge I had been granted access to, by the humour and goodness of my classmates and teachers, by how much I could be myself.

But you see, as much as the feeling of a gorgeous architecture of belief and passion filling up and out in my mind was and is wonderful, going through the motions of becoming a minister is, frankly, super weird, and the stubbornly present, slight but heavy self-doubt which had moved in the moment I met the others and asked myself if I was as clever as them, hung around for longer than I wish to admit.

—————————————————————————

Note: This is not a story about me disliking myself, or my time at college. Far from it. But it is a story about all of it, and all of it includes the times I fumble, doubt and have to talk sternly to myself. And the only way I can get to the cool, shiny parts are by starting small, with the parts that made me go to Sufjan Stevens for healing. Bear with me.

 

Confession

Posted on by
7
Tomorrow I go to a college up the road and meet with some other students, some teachers and some others and we begin a little journey together. We will learn a little more about what it means to be candidates for ministry, go away for three days, get to know each other, begin our year. And maybe sing? Probably we’ll sing.
I decided to do this whole ministry thing around a year and a half ago, and my church decided that was an ok idea last September. I have known this point in time was coming. I organised a desk, because I will be studying, I ordered text books, because I will need to learn things, I quit my job because I will need my time.
I have known this was coming but also not known much at all. I still don’t know what my year will look like, what the blood and bones of it will be, how I will have to function to make it, if I can learn all that I need to, if I can do it.
I am very scared. Partially because I still carry a childish fear of Christians, which is stupid for a lot of reasons, partially because it is new and and I’m alone and partially because I am worried I won’t be the sort of person needed.
I have heard much (so, so much- I am very blessed) from people who love me that I will do well, that I am the type of person who the church needs, that this is a good great thing, that I can do this. Often I believe them, and often I know I’m just one person going off to college and it’s not a big deal and often I’m so excited because I miss the feeling of New Things rolling around in my head, and my mind is eager and I am thrilled at the thought that come three years time I might know how to love people better and to not be such a large spaz. But there are other times when I know who I am and how good I am at sitting in front of a laptop watching sci-fi shows and I worry that the time will come when I will look back and realise I’ve not changed my life at all, I’ve just stuffed some classes in.
These are the quiet fears of someone used to doubting herself, and who has never been trusted with so much faith, so much opportunity.
I really want this to take.
I really, really don’t want to look inside and realise deep down I’m just lazy.
I want to honour whomever gave me this chance.
Let’s hope I do.
I’m going to do it anyway, obviously. I’ve already got the desk.

Dear Facebook, I don’t love you.

Posted on by
3
Hi. I know you’ve probably not even noticed that I’ve been gone, but it’s actually been a whole month since I’ve seen you. And I don’t want to hurt your feelings but I’ve not really missed you at all.
Look. It doesn’t have to be personal. A lot of people love you, I certainly think you’re really helpful, in the right circumstances. I’m really really grateful for the opportunity to tell a close circle of 400 plus people that I’m a bit peckish, tbh but it got too much. I just found myself wondering what sort of person I appeared to be, how I would look to someone who was leafing through my online photos. I was scrolling through others’ profiles and wondering how they got their lives so neat and cool. I don’t need that sort of help to be insecure. I’m pretty adept already.
And you know, I deleted Insta as well. It’s not just you. I’ve not even been on Twitter. I’ve just been… thinking my thoughts, and not caring if I told people. And messaging my really good ones to my friends, obv.
It’s actually been really nice. I have been watching some Netflix, and staring at screens a little, but I’ve also been pausing and thinking and not being able to distract myself from the present and reading books and being alone with whatever’s going on in my head. I’ve sat on public transport and looked at people, relished the fact that I was going somewhere. I’ve taken less photos, and I’ve really, really, loved the stuff that I’ve seen and the moments I’ve seen them in.
Every now and then I was a bit tempted. I’d think a Cool Thing or see something hilarious and ask myself: Don’t the people need to know?? But the answer was always no, they frigging don’t. They don’t need my (attempted) wit, or to know how I felt when I had a coffee the other day, or for my outrage to be added to the whirling cesspool of inflamed opinion. I need that, not anyone else.
I just changed my life significantly you see. I am wallpapering a lot of myself anew right now and trying to figure out if I’m the cream and paisley or the floral and I felt like there was no better time to extract myself from a portal where I can pretend to be whatever sort of person I’d like to be, where everything can be a performance.
So, as much as I appreciate your eery, personalised greetings and promptings to tell all my peeps about my feelings associated with public holidays,  I’d love it if we could see each other casually from now on. I don’t mind what you do with other people, I’ll just pop by every now and then to invite people to things or to brag about seeing Sufjan again. Also we all know you’re just a collection of algorithms designed to market people’s private lives, so.
All the best,
Carlynne Nunchuks
(this is not my real name, just while I’m being honest)

Things I am average at no. 290: Providing

Posted on by
1

My housemate and I purchased steak the other day. I’ve been feeling a little under-meated of late and the sheer size of the mammoth porterhouses selected had me significantly giddy. I chose a day when I knew several people might be home so that we could all enjoy the meat planks and the marvellous assortment of freshly sauteed and gorgeously presented seasonal vegetables that I would have lovingly prepared.

This is what happened after work today.

Got steaks out of freezer, placed on bench. Left the room.

Came back ten minutes later, looked at steaks, contemplated pizza.

Looked more at steaks, still irritatingly frozen and completely uncooked

Sat on bed, whinged aloud about steaks.

Finally opened pack, put steaks on plate and put in microwave. I am Martha.. someone.

Despondently sipped a cider by the sink wishing a housemate would come home and tell me how best to construct a meal/construct a meal for me

Success! Josh home and roped into cooking steaks on BBQ! Things looking up.

Huge steaks still defrosting

Josh is cleaning the BBQ and I am now sitting on the floor of kitchen imagining a teeny race of people who might worship at the foot of our White Pages stack

This is why I shouldn’t have children.

 

Note: while writing, Josh made the salad and politely didn’t tell me to get off the floor.

Sadness can eat my ass

Posted on by
1

Being sad is just a huge load of shit, yeah? Man.

Who, I ask you, needs a deep and heavy pit in their stomach or a frequent and burning ache in their chest that has nothing to do with a night of much scotch? Nobody, that’s who.

It is amazing to me, post-sadness, to recall a day pre-sadness when I looked at the bits and pieces of my life and thought ‘wicked. Solid. Good job, life’. I effing hate it that something can waltz solidly in and shoulder out the magic that made my life really cool and leave it looking sort of greyish, wan and sickly. I liked it cool.

Worse still is the knowledge in my viscera that the magic hasn’t actually been shouldered out it’s just been hidden behind a haze of hurt and memory and my life is STILL REALLY COOL, particularly as I am well fed, employed, able bodied, have access to my iTunes library and remain wholly unpersecuted. How dare I sigh so much? Why is it OK for me to wake up in the night crying? Sadness can eat my ass.

Time wasting jerk.

 

 

Things I am average at no. 453: Music Festivals.

Posted on by
3

OLD PERSON CONFESSION: I have never been to a music festival before. I always wanted to, you know, ten years ago when Big Day Out still looked remotely interesting but it has never worked out. Until, that is, last weekend.

Harvest was the first festival happening near me with a line up that I felt justified the expense. So rock, right?

First off, very exciting. Yes. We all piled in to Kate’s car and sang along loudly to various, sunny-day-we’re-going-to-Harvest tunes, languidly cutting our way through the spring air. So exciting, all the way to Werribee where it was exciting in a 45 minute long traffic jam (spicing up the traffic jam portion of the day up nicely was meeting a car full of young hippie folks and gratefully accepting mouthfuls of mango, proffered by one through the car windows. Young hippies were also gracious enough to lob handfuls of large and scratchy red glitter into the backseat, and to plaster some to Paul’s face after licking it. Bless).

Harvest itself takes place in a super pretty and super large garden. They’d made good use of the space and there was whimsical decorations and performance spaces and delicacies galore which I had intended to like, thoroughly enjoy, and sprawl under and imbibe but after some wandering and a little art session,

Mine and Kate's attempt to fight nuclear weapons.

the Silversun Pickups were on, and like, you go see the Silversun Pickups. And then you know, you get ice cream and you try to sit for a bit but then Mike Patton is yelling in Italian. You don’t ignore that kind of thing. So you wander back to the Great Lawn along with hundreds of other nomadic, dirty footed, sunburnt crazies, but then after he’s jumped around a bit and made Italian pop songs seem just ridiculously edgy, you realise you’ve got fifteen minutes till Cake and you still need to find a toilet and fill your water bottle and pay a dollar to put more sunscreen on because direct sunlight man, what a bitch, and by the time you make your way to the Windmill stage you’re missing Love You Madly which is your favourite, by the way.

So I’m watching Cake, and having just the best time, partially aware that it would be better if I hadn’t misplaced all my friends- the last two on account of the involuntary run I broke into on hearing the aforementioned song, when I of course begin to quietly panic about Beirut, starting in fifteen minutes. I send around a few messages and after five minutes manage to track down three of my companions and we join the large migration spilling back onto the Great Lawn and find a spot to sit and wait. I am by now quite stressed. Several of my group I haven’t seen for a few bands now, and I am plagued by the feeling of disorganization that must haunt the parents of small children at all times.

Beirut are marvelous, I adore them and they are marvelous. They are, I think, a little lost on such a huge stage and their music is perhaps suited to a slightly different venue (SERIOUSLY, I ADORE YOU, BEIRUT) and so when after they had finished and I was continuing my resolute possession of the piece of lawn and my friend Josh found us and was fucking happy out of his mind on the amazing time he’d had at Cake I got a bit pissed off. Josh. Shut up about what a great day you’re having.

I’m a jerk, it turns out.

People were leaving the lawn for Ben Folds, but I refused. No. No more seeing half of bands and watching the time. No. I will sit here for hours, surrounded by banana peels, water bottles and pot smokers. I don’t care.

Soon though, I actually didn’t care because Beck obliging came out and rocked all of my socks off. So that was nice. I don’t usually dig on the mega-skinny white boy thing but, damn. That man. Damn.

Then he left and I remained, parked on our bit of lawn dotted trash heap, aware in my viscera that Grizzly Bear were beginning to play somewhere tantalizingly close by. I just couldn’t do it. After constantly moving for the first two hours of being there, the only thing keeping me sane was my little patch of grass and forgetting everything else.

the magic lawn part we fiercely possessed and lots of legs

How, do people do these things with poise? How do you decide to watch one band that you love knowing that you’re missing another? How are you perched in trees and not stressed out of your mind about locating your similarly tanned friends and getting to some tent or other?

I don’t know if I like music festivals. Or at least not ones with a phat and tasty lineup. Too many treats and Carlynne gets cranky. Others blithely swan from stage to stage or sit in a giants bird’s nest between shows while I am tapping my invisible watch and internally screeching. I’ve always wanted to come to one of these, and I imagined myself bathed in the glow of all of my favourite music, and drinking in the sunlight and laughing with my friends but in reality THERE IS ALWAYS SOMEWHERE TO BE AND THE BEER IS CRAP AND SUN IS HOT, YOU GUYS.

In summation, I’m too old for this shit.

Lest you think it was a crappy old day, I will remind you that I saw the Siversun Pickups, Mike Patton, Cake, Beirut, Beck, and- Oh my goodness, Sigur ros*.

So, Cat Lady whining aside**, I saw some amazing bands, got a mango bite, and, not to be too tacky, may or may not have made my way with a couple friends into a backstage area where we may or may not have drank Moet with the string section of one of the bands and helped ourselves to said band’s leftover fruit and condiments. It wouldn’t do to name drop, but

Maybe I’m not too bad at this after all…

 

*If you can, ever, in any way, using any means, please- see them live. You don’t understand. If you have ever wanted to go somewhere else, Narnia, Middle Earth, Neverland, whatever; do yourself a favour and watch this band. You go away, and you’re somewhere quiet and beautiful and cacophonous and dark and heavenly and you forget that you’ve been standing for six hours and that the group of four who graciously pushed their way immediately in front of you after the band started haven’t stopped talking the entire time, or, that you’ve ever had a real problem in your life.

** Not quite done yet: pot- I don’t like the smell of it. It could be an age thing, but I don’t think I ever have. And, maybe it’s just me but is it polite to spark up a doobie in close proximity to my very pregnant friend Amber? I don’t know if it is.

And speaking of polite, if you want to talk, go sit in the fucking birds nest and talk! Don’t waltz in late, nearly knock me down with your little back pack and have a chat about how much you love the band that you’re missing because you’re talking over them. “Sigur Ros, is my happy music. They sound sad, but they’re also like, happy? You know?”. Honestly. Point me to my armchair.

Things I do less well than other people no 3*

Posted on by
2

Manage to make headphones ‘work’ for me.

I listen to music sort of all the time. Fortunately headphones exist so I don’t have to be as unpopular as the wankers who listen to their Rhianna or LMAO streaming tinnily from their phones on the tram OR suffer the crippling back problems that surely inflict all who popularized the boombox back in the eighties.

Currently I roll a pink set of $20 sony’s or something like that. They’ve got those rubbery little inner ear bits which does make listening a much more enjoyable and more-likely-to-get-me-killed-by-fixies experience BUT they will insist on sliding casually and incrementally out of my ears with beyond irritating regularity.

So as I strut along to the Black Keys or Band of Skulls or S Club 7 I also have to squish the ear-buds back in every twenty metres or so. This as I’m sure you can understand is exponentially more complicated if I have anything at all in my hands to hold whilst squishing. So I’m rocking along, minding my own business, when I feel the tell-tale tickle of my stupid buds wriggling out to the cusp of my ear where they’re held in place by only the slightest amount of touch and a good feeling and will linger for almost as long as it will take to lift my hand from pocket or shift my coffee to the other hand and then fall merrily away. This is even more hateful than the stupidly intricate knots they manage to weave themselves into whilst sitting quietly in a bag (HOW DO THEY DO THAT).

Also it seems I must wear clothes embedded with series of hooks, snags and clever little wire pinchy parts because with the slightest schaffe or flail or regular arm or head or neck movement headphones are yanked violently from my ears leaving me outraged but impotent in the face of the certainty of its happening again.

I feel like other people are able to walk and wear these things and have it not be a huge friggin deal. Like, they manage to make it down the road without grunting in frustration and jamming the buds back in their effing ears for the eff-hundredth time, or swearing brutally as one errant bud swings glibly to their waist, inevitably pulling their twin down to join the fun. Am I so uncoordinated that I am magically transmuting my awkwardity to inanimate objects via spazmosis now? Yes. It seems so. This would explain why my gloves keep falling out of my pockets.

*this is one of the grossly outdated ones I mentioned a couple of posts ago. I now have huge fuck off yellow noise cancelling, ear owning ones that have rendered all previously mentioned issues redundant, have excellent sound quality, keep my ears toasty in the icy Melbourne wind and have also given me a healthy dose of “hey look at me, I’m the shit”.

Things I do less well than other people no 2

Posted on by
Reply

Not get thoroughly and unhealthily attached to people I find on talk shows and somehow fall in love with and who are, for all intents and purposes, famous.

I wanted to watch videos of Catherine Tate and Dave Tennant this one time, because of course I did, so I googled and was rewarded with a clip of the both of them on the Graham Norton show. I’ve watched him before and find him quite the hilarion (I’m trying it out. Shut up). Also on the show was Josh Groban, fine, and this dude with dimples and a fantastically dry wit called Jon Richardson. I instantly was a wee bit smitten and so as we do when we like a boy, bought his book from the Internet without haste or really knowing a lot about it or whether it was actually any good. Two weeks later it arrived and three days after that I was in love with the man.

He’s fucking brilliant, right, but also, quite human, quite insane and sort of manages to deal with his problems with the state of the world by hating on it a little.

Such was the state of my obsession with Jon Richardson that I began the thought processes necessary to a. meet him or b. become a weird, sad stalker lady with spaghetti stains on my moo-moo. I was legitimately believing that something would be made better by our getting to meet.

The most worrying part -my firm and unwavering knowledge that we would be like, sooo perfect together aside-  was when I tweeted him.

Oddly, he did not tweet back. There’s probably a back-log of single women who’ve found him on the YouTubes and who have come the realisation that they are what he needs to fix him make him happy that he has to work through, so I’ll give it some more time.

Side note: I managed to work this into a half-true performance in the style of a blog entry by a sad lonely woman about her meeting comedian Jon Richardson (except she didn’t she made it up because she’s crazy) for a subject at uni. Here’s to life imitating art.

Things I do less well than other people no 1

Posted on by
Reply

Actually when I have a blog, keep said blog in any sort of state even passing vaguely by what could be called “regular” or “interesting”. 

I haven’t posted in roughly twelve years, it seems. A lot has happened (a lot for me, so like, I’ve gone interstate and seen a concert) and a lot has been thought, arranged into sentences and then not posted at all. Mainly cos I’m lame, but also because I’ve been a touch busy and also watching a lot of Gilmore Girls, which I suppose could come under the first excuse.

I started writing this hilarious list of things I’m crap at (because innovation is for chumps and Steve Jobs) and that was several months ago and so now the majority of my witful anecdotes are horribly outdated. But, I am low on ideas and big on promoting my own inadequacy, so here they come anyway, enjoy.

Sorry once again for my tardiness.