Tag Archives: Shit I like

Things I have learnt in the past week

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-I can be an “active” person

-getting out of bed when ones alarm goes off IS actually possible

-I crave approval like I crave hot beverages

-cheese; yes

-beer is still awesome, though

-when one comes upon a beer named “black lung” one should follow ones instincts and walk away

-protests can be tricky and rough and odd and divisive

-giant demon babies populate my city

-I am not as good a dancer as I think I am

-intentions don’t write essays

-the heady thrill of making friends with fun people is still like a drug to me

-balloons are magic

-tram inspectors are people too

-naps get better with age

-my memory is shit

-Paul Mercurio checked me out

-that last one was a lie

-flight booking ladies (I can’t remember their name) are very personable

-married men are good company (and I don’t mean that how it sounds), though

-being bid on and purchased by a married German is not not awkward

Accidentally Relly St

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So a couple of weeks ago I got respectably tipsy with a bunch of my cousins in a shed in Port Lincoln. Novelty hats were found and donned, arms were thrown around shoulders and the lyrics to Livin on a Prayer were proudly screamed into Strongbow bottles. We kicked things off quietly, I thought- I certainly had no idea that six hours later I would be swaying gently on the back of a ute as one of my cousins cavorted with a cut out horse- with a glass of wine over lunch and then essentially we didn’t stop.

My family is fun.

Not uncommon, I’m aware, but you see I didn’t know this. Don’t get me wrong, I’d always liked them when we managed to see each other, a couple of us used to live near each other and so were friends when we were younger (six hundredth viewing of Wayne’s World, anyone?), but things change, people grow up and move and mortgage things, or something, and you end up being one of those people who knows she has an extended family, but can let four year periods pass where you don’t see any of them without even thinking about it.

I guess I’d always thought that those immediately around me were my family, that the people that take care of you, that listen to your shitty stories and laugh until they pee a little with you mean more than people who just happen to have similar genes (for additional points, guess who spelt this word like the denim garment on first draft?). An on purpose connection surely means more than an accidental one.

I have, though, on occasion been jealous of those families that dig each other. My mate Amy always sees her cousins when she visits Melbourne and they laugh hysterically and get each other and it baffles me. My old housemate has cousins that are like sisters to her. How does this happen?

Last year, I made a wee note for myself as part of my list of things to do before I was 30, because I saw people like my housemate, and my friend getting on with their fam and it struck me as odd that my family connection for the most part stopped with my mum and brothers. Then of course after I made the list I forgot about it, and like, did things normally (read: in a manner both slovenly and oddly frenetic) and let nearly a year pass without anything happening. Because that’s how I roll, yo.

Aunts

Then, my Grandma. I hadn’t seen her in a while, and she’d moved back home to Port Lincoln where she used to live, and then in the space of just over a day, she got sick and she died.

It was pretty strange.

(This will sound dumb, which I know is something you’re not used to from me, but I am not the person that this happens to. Which is exactly what I thought back when I was 13 and my Dad moved out or back when I was 19 and my Uncle Rick died. Out of the ordinary, dramatic things don’t happen to me, they happen to People That I Know, Friends of Mine; generally Other People. I did not, and still do not, I think, understand what it means that I no longer have a Grandmother because she stopped being alive. And just as I processed my parents marriage breaking down by confessing it to my school friends in quiet, giggly whispers and imagining the wonderous things my Dad would buy me now we were a “broken home”, I absorbed the reality of my grandmother dying with the quick, no mess no fuss “let’s just get on with it then” manner which I’ve realized is how I do things.)

So one day I’m at work, telling clients not to be racist and then the next I’m in another state, feeling bad that I haven’t cried yet, and then the next I’m chasing bottles of Moscato with bottles of cider and just the worst shot I’ve ever had in my life (sorry Mel) with a bunch of people I barely know.

The whole drunken day was quite the surprise for me, and just beyond surreal at points. My cousins Mel and Catherine were distant memories of mine, two small girls, one blonde, one brunette, filed away from a time when we were all too young to care that the others existed until I entered my uncle’s house and saw them on the couch, looking for all the world like two grown up women.

(Catherine didn't know what time it was.)

Whut?

And they have jobs and opinions and long pretty hair and stuff and I was initially intimidated because the idea still had not occurred to me that maybe, just maybe my family could be one of those ones who enjoy each others company and I of course assumed they’d think I was a douche.

That was before Catherine started pouring me tumblers of wine and I knew we’d all be ok.

(there was something over there)

And we’re out in the sunshine, them and me and my other cousins Ro and Kelly talking and laughing and drinking and I realize that I like my family. That it’s been hours now since I felt remotely uncomfortable (I was so comfortable that though I paced myself and actually was significantly less drunk than others I could name- I’m looking at you, Ro- I still joined in the loud singing and mad dancing to mid nineties pop BECAUSE THAT’S MY JAM). I realized that my cousins had become my friends, either again, or for the first time.

throwing some shapes

 

I realized that I was one of those people.

A couple of points- My cousin Kelly is the shit. I love her and her wife Ro and they will come and visit me in Melbourne I hope. Hoorah! Hilarious, kind and accepting ladies.

Mel and Catherine exceeded all my expectations. I didn’t have any really, aside from my usual unvoiced certainty that people that aren’t nutbars won’t like me. Turns out they are nutbars so we’re ok.

The Uncles and the Aunts, are all crazy, and a little inappropriate when drunkish (stern looks towards my mum’s brothers). Albie and Helen were effing guns of hosts and I felt loved instantly by all, which surely, is a convenience that you should be able to go to your family for.

Uncle Albie. A good man with a penchant for impropriety.

So. It’s shit that it took my Grandma dying to bring us all together. It’s shit that she didn’t see us falling about laughing or hear us screaming lyrics raucously from her position inside with the grown ups for she would have loved it.

Cousins

But this time taught me a number of things, mainly that life can actually, just, end and so now would be the time to love those about you and find the ones that aren’t about you to love, but it also taught me that family is kick ass. The only real thing we all had in common aside from Bon Jovi, was our connection to a lady called Merle Ransome, and though we are not a part of each other by choice, we are a part of each other. And this is a real, solid and wonderful thing.

I wonder

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what this will look like.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately…

 

about creativity.

About wonderful ideas

 

and things that people make

and do.

 

I’ve been thinking about exploring.

About finding more trees.

 

I’ve been thinking about yarn bombing,

about note posting

And

about

form.

About

how

creativity

is


bottomless.

  I love it.                                                                  I think we were made to make things.

I’ve been thinking about how I, like so many others, want to make things that make people want to make things.

and make them want to laugh

and to sing

and to smile

dance

paint

walk

look

listen

hear       touch  pause      breathe    make

write readunderstandthink

live.

I’ve been thinking.


 

My Technical Romance

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Just over a year ago I was having a really shit time. To say it was all about a break up would be stretching the truth a little but it certainly started that way, and the wrong, ripping grossness that is that time became snowballed with feelings of dissatisfaction with myself and my life and of horror at years of solitude stretching in front of me like a barren forest path and it ended when I grudgingly woke one day to the thought that perhaps it would be better if I was not alive any more.

I have, fortunately, enough sense inside me and inside my wonderful friends to not let myself have too much headway with thoughts such as this, and it was luckily a momentary thing, but it did shock me a little. More shocking, and more persistent than this, was the realisation that I had forgotten how to like my life.

So I decided I needed to be reminded, and that I was just the person to do that.

I began to take a photo a day, the only rule being it had to be a photo of something that I dug or something I loved or something that made me smile. The results can be viewed here.

365 photos of flowers and skies and streets and trees and friends and strangers later, yesterday I posted the last. The day before I got confused momentarily and thought I had finished already, and was surprised at my feelings of loss. I felt like I was parting with someone I love. Which is a bit stupid when you remember that I’m talking about a photo blog but I’ve grown so used to looking about me wherever I am and writing captions in my mind and falling in love with all the small but wonderful things that are everywhere around me. And I will miss it.

What I guess I wanted to get down here, as well as a huge thank you to the world for its continued brevity and charm, is some sort of notice that it worked. I once again dig my life to the point that it could seem irritating and self indulgent to those around me. I am, and, dear reader I suspect you are, surrounded by, showered in, positively crowded with joy. It is there, small and large, ugly and glorious, magenta and yellow, clouded and bright, foreign and dear. I am not making this up.

Things I didn’t ever get a photo of but wish I could:

My nephew walking or the sound of my nieces voice

The perfect magnolia flower (I know it’s still out there)

A young man helping an older lady with a walker onto a tram

Old men greeting each other in the street with a handshake and a grin

The dude in the popcorn suit who freestyle rapped at me in a bar

Ladies with fairy lights inside the bottom of their delightful, vintage frocks

Any of the life changing, heart aching music that is like oxygen to me daily

Smiles on strangers faces that are oddly familiar to me

The majority of totally awesome sandwiches eaten

The night the moon was apparently really frigging huge, even though I didn’t actually see the biggest part

So many clouds in so many wonderful, decadent skies

The smell of morning

What I’ve learnt:

I have not lost the near hysterical love for clouds I fostered as a child.

I am if anything, a little too blessed.

I am not as gungho about taking photos of strangers as I would have hoped.

Peoples faces are lovely.

Noticing things takes up a good deal of time.

The camera resolution on the iPhone 4 is just so much better than the 3.

Smiling is helpful and just about the easiest thing to do in the world.

Food is totally fucking great, though it’s possible photographing it makes me a wanker…

and

There is always something.

Thanks everyone and everything, I hope to take a photo of you all at some point.

C.

steak, steak and more of steak

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I am vurrry tired. I should be in sleep town, hitching my horse (he’s a lovely cream colour) to a post at the local inn (it’s made entirely of pillows, save the skirting), tipping my hat to the local barmaids (am I a man in this scenario? Possibly) and hitting the old sack, as they say.

A couple of things first: This guy. Seems funny. I’ll let you know when it’s confirmed, apologies for the simply awful font. Also, this film = great. If people are telling you, and you’re all “oooh but it’s just about a speech, right? How good could it be? No one ever made a film about my speech in third grade”-you’re right, they haven’t, it’s cos you’re boring, but more importantly read this review (serenely ignoring the spelling mistake in the second to last paragraph) which says everything I would say if I could be assed and wrote well and someone hadn’t written it already a million times or just GO AND SEE IT NOW.

NOW.

Thirdly, have you ever stopped to think how scary it would be if people, and, I suppose dogs and budgies and guinea pigs, could turn invisible? Could sneak and swarm and slither their way about with only the faintest of stirrings on a nearby bush and their insidious creakings and the scrape of their demonic feet to betray them? No? Think that over before bed time, yeah?

Perhaps not the budgie one. Or the guinea pig. The dog, I guess, would find it frustrating to not have people greet him with a “ooojuuusagguuudbooyyeeejheessjyoooaaah” whenever they saw him. So he’s not so scary after all. But the people, the shuffling, creaking and I’m assuming vastly unattractive people? *shudder*.

I’ve been reading a little Stephen Fry lately, and I want to be a friend of his. At least an acquaintance who could feasibly shake his hand and perhaps illicit the occasional well meaning titter in a public forum. Ah well.

I was angry recently, very much so, and it was bad for my health. For reasons both vain and entirely unrelated to aforementioned anecdote I’m cutting out the carbs for a week, to see how I go. I anticipate much broccoli in my future.

To bed. Rest well, friends.

x

Ps, though, don’t you hate it when someone comments on your blog, right, and they don’t actually leave a name? and like, you just have their naff little code name that means nothing to you at all, like mine is my girl betty, and that’s because of a painting on the wall of our lounge of this big old naked chick called Betty that my mate Jess painted for me, but no one outside of, well, me would know that. Consider this a hint, oh Last Comment Leaver of Myst-ery. Thanks for reading and seeming to enjoy, though. Good of you.

Some stuff

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I have too much in my head. A small taste platter of what lurks within:

The world is so lovely, so lovely. And I spend a lot of time on facebook.

I jest about my mediocrity, but am concerned that it means I will fail at the things I find most important.

I read some of the work of this girl in my short fiction class and nearly disliked her based on envy alone and the envy threatened to close my throat.

The smell of rain today was wonderful and heavy.

My tooth may be in serious peril.

Opinions are important. Maybe. I don’t even know. But I don’t have mine all laid out like some people do and I wonder if that’s a big deal.

I love Melbourne.

Sometimes the wish that I could lose some weight nearly overtakes the wish that everyone would realise how cool they are and stop hating things.

My friend made some caramel slice and it’s basically just condensed milk with chocolate on top and it’s awesome.

I want to go away somewhere and think and breathe for like a week. Without facebook there to observe stoically.

Do you ever wish you could just tell people when you want to be mates with them, and ditch all the “oh, hey maaann..” bull? Me too.

I want to research anarchy and the bible and to start sticking shit up in public places.

I don’t feel well.

thanks for you time, interweb! You’re a doll.

There’s no business like

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I have no right to enjoy my activities from the weekend as much as I did. Which obviously sounds dodgy, on reflection and so I will hasten to ad that what I meant by that is the level of enthusiasm experienced when attending something I had up until an hour prior had next to no interest in attending was out of order. Particularly when the something attended was effectively a carnival also attended by billions of despicably consumer driven and obscenely hyper children and their broken spirited parents.

No one goes to the show any more. Of course people go to it, someone’s got to keep the small Malaysian children who make orange novelty wigs in a job, or wander about in a stunned morass, wondering why they brought their spawn to such a plastic-lust inducing seizure tank but no one that I know, really goes or wants to go to the show. We just seemed to get over it.

But this year, oh, this year, Kate and I got a free ticket. Which brought the ridonkulous price down a little so we wouldn’t have to sell our kidneys/first borns/drugs to enter the blessed gates. So we went.

That was a long intro to what will be a fairly short, probably erratic and overly uninteresting anecdote, but I’ll persevere as I don’t know yet what I want for dinner.

Look! A teeny tiny donkey child!

We approached the task at hand like the money challenged nanna’s we are by bringing our own food (Kate BAKED BREAD. Pull-a-part cheese and ham bread if you DON’T mind. The things people do, on a whim seemingly, usally whilst I’m re-loading facebook or sleeping, make me shake my head in wonder. Shake shake.), deciding to only purchase one treat (FAIRY FLOSS! FAIRY FLOSS!! FAAAAIRY FLOOOOSSUUH!!!) and heading in the afternoon to avoid the feeling of crapulence that comes from wandering about all day.

And like the money challenged nanna’s we are our entertainment came chiefly from meandering about, gazing at huge eyed baby animals, various and sundry arts, crafts and cakes that looked like other things than cake and generally hoovering up as much free entertainment/food as we could find in our voracious quest for satiation.

this is in fact a cake, not an echidna. I know it's difficult to come to terms with.

While this might sound like no ones cup of anything, I actually had a lot of fun. As I’ve mentioned I had nearly too much fun, which owes a lot to the company I was with. Kate is HILARIOUS  and we are good at providing low budget entertainment for ourselves. And it was educational.

Things I learnt at the Show:

1. Children are mental

2. Violent Orange does not a nice hair colour make

3. Oversize wigs rarely look good or humorous

4. When your friend hands you a baby lamb and says “he might pee on you” this should be viewed as a prophecy

5. Monster trucks are HUGE. And awesome.

6. Bertie Beetle is still excellent value at $2 a showbag

7. People still make things. Like, with their hands. Somewhere in the world are people who want to sit and lovingly craft intricacies out of wood and and metal for hours because they want to make something new

8. The things people make with their hands, out of wood etc, are often really inspiring and beautiful

9. Fun is cheap

So effing cool


Things I’m average at no. 398: Not being a sook- an addendum.

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So I got word earlier that I didn’t get this job that I really really really wanted. It was a Good Job. It was a Grown Up Job. I wanted this job a lot. When I didn’t get it, I cried and made for myself a small cave within my bedding and lay there and cried some more.

I was full of woe because this shit brings to mind many other things I’m average at like, having a real job, being employable, being an adult etc. And though usually I enjoy the charm of being completely average, embrace it and nuzzle its neck even, sometimes I want to just like, be good at something. I feel this is normal.

And so I got super excited about this job, and imagined myself doing it, and loving it and thought about changing my study to fit around it, and then they said they didn’t want me and the world once again looked at me and shook its head “no, you aren’t good enough”. Damn, man! That shit is cold!*

Any hoo, the part of the story I didn’t mention (along with any details at all) in my previous post was that I was offered a job the other day, just not this one. This was my bestest, I Can Do This Job job, shining like the light of the sun, and the other job says “hey!” and I was like “Oh…I guess..” *hair toss*.

So here’s me, in my bed, not doing assignments or like, washing myself, reminding myself of my shittiness while wailing into my pillow because one place found someone better qualified while another said they would love to have me. SOOK MUCH?

Gosh.

So I’m in the Cave of Sadness, and I look at my wall through the Slits of Misery (my eyes) and I see all the crap I’ve stuck up there. Crap that I dig, to remind me of things that are diggable. And I realise my life is pretty effing sweet. You can read about it here, on my other blog (ohmygoshpleasedon’ttellwordpresshe’llkillme) where I post photos of things I’m glad about.

I think it’s ok to feel sad, obviously. Sometimes I think it’s really helpful. Personally I love to crank the Damien Rice and bemoan my existence. I certainly don’t want to imply that I think it’s wrong to grieve or to mourn, even things like not getting the job you thought would be so right for you.

It’s just that I’m self aware enough to know that this job wasn’t just a job. It was me saying to me, “this is your chance to get something on your own, something hard and good and worthwhile”. And I was saying back to me “dude does that mean if I don’t get it..” and then I would reply “Yep. It means you’re shit. Officially.” And then I blew it, and that means every crappy thing I’ve ever thought about myself came true in that moment.

But the thing is, I know other stuff about me, and I know I got one job, and I know I have a wall full up of pictures of travel and friends and love and light so maybe just maybe I was wrong about me, maybe I should suck it the hell up and maybe it’s not worth staying in the cave tomorrow.

Maybe..

*Apologies. I watched some Dave Chappelle earlier, it gets under my skin man.

I just, I need to get this out of my system

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There is, friends, a great and a glorious thing that exists among us. Humble, unassuming, taken daily for granted, but beautiful beyond reason. The very face of God staring at you from your Royal Doulton dinnerware.

ham & cheese on multigrain- elegant in its simplicity, no?

The sandwich, man. Can’t. Go. Wrong. What, I ask could be better at being a meal in your hand? The Sandwich. Splendid, mighty, piquant.

The Widow Maker (ie tomato, cheese, avocado & cucumber. not for feint of heart.)

If you can’t grasp the lofty concepts I’m tossing about like so much baby spinach, allow me to break it down for you.

Sandwiches are one of the better things that exist in the world.

They save my life and they do this by being totally awesome and also edible. I suspect that there may be some who are still unconvinced of the vast and boundless magnificence of the sandy, and for those, I will now drop some knowledge.

double decker PB&J (no I am not an American, I am however a fan of the acronym and potentially lethal sandwich filings).

Why sandwiches kick other things asses:

1. It’s everything you need, and it’s all together in bread, that’s why.

2. It’s the food of the working class. No piss-farting around with knives and forks and all the other bullshit the bourgeois wants us to think is necessary and impressive. You just pick it up and you jam that sucker in your face.

smiley face fritz & salad on white -note the controversial "horizontal cut"

3. The sandwich is the single most impressive invention of the modern age. What’s that? Penicillin? Oh, oh, the printing press?

You can put anything you want between two slices of bread and eat it for your lunch.

Boom.

Things I’m average at No. 365: Liking the right stuff

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I was having a little Facebook tete a tete earlier, via the comments section on a link a friend of mine posted. Apparently the video, an allegedly hilarious clip of Cowboy Hiphop as yet unwatched by me, has been removed from YouTube because of a violation of its use… or some such . Anyhoo, a friend of the original poster commented that he had seen the video briefly on Glee before violently throwing up and passing out, a response to his obvious hatred for the show. I wrote that I was bummed that not only had I missed the original video, but an episode of Glee too to which he replied (in a sort of companionable tone, one show choir hater to another) that Glee is the worst thing in the world. At this point I had to confess to him, and also to anyone who is reading this, that I was in fact, serious.

I love Glee.

There. I’ve said it. And actually I’m completely unashamed. It’s fun and light and involves singing and dancing, which I love (except when involving children under 12 as that is only creepy and uncomfortable) and it doesn’t take itself too seriously and I am ridiculously entertained by it.

Now, the crowd I run with (side bar to state that I don’t run, am not a character in The Outsiders and am not sure at all why I chose that phrase) are often a little bit cool. They’d deny it, say surely I’m talking about someone else, but they know deep down, that a lot of their opinions and tastes are the “right” ones to have. They hate Muse now that they’re doing songs for the Twilight soundtracks, they love Arrested Development and use text lingo ironically. I say all this not to make fun of them, I share a lot of their loves and their disloves, but to point out the kind of people I’d be offending if I came out as a Glee fan. As it happens I don’t actually care and most of them are interstate which means the subject doesn’t come up much, but if it did I’m sure I’d get some heads shaking. That’s just the way I roll. I’m a maverick.

More things I shouldn’t love but do:

Kevin Costner

Romantic Comedies

Possibly Beyonce, although she hovers over acceptable sometimes. So hard to tell.

Vampire related books, movies and TV shows

Kevin Costners Field of Dreams

Friends, the show not the people, although of course I love that kind too.

Rod Stewart

John Denver

Guy Sebastions Like it Like That

Some R’n’B

Cougartown

Some Hip Hop

Kevin Costners Waterworld

And I could continue. I used to say (as recently as last week) that I’m allowed to like some shit because I like so much good stuff, but it’s more accurate to say who the hell cares.

When it comes to film and television I’m supposed to like Seinfeld and hate the Vampire Diaries. I’m supposed to love the indie music, except when it gets too popular, and hate the Miley (I do, hate her, by the way..). I’m supposed to roll my eyes at misspelled text messages and if I’m really good, I’m supposed to forsake Facebook all together because of its obvious affiliation with all that is naff and its clearly pro-Stephanie Meyer leanings.

I don’t do all that very well. And this post is actually a good reminder to myself to quit once and for all taking social currency so seriously. Liking shit along with the not-shit keeps me in fun pretty much constantly. It is almost inconceivable how easily entertained I am, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Cool means too much work, not enough show choir.