Monthly Archives: January 2016

Journalistic thoughts, This one did not

Stamp out this madness

I’m outraged about the fact that no one is outraged over what I am outraged about.

 

Before I start, I want to make this unquestionably clear: I absolutely want to alarm you.

 

I don’t know if any of you tech-loving drones have realised it, but there’s something decidedly dreadful and undeniably underhanded going on right in front of our faces and no one is doing a damned thing about it. We have a national crisis on our hands and everybody is sitting around oblivious to the Armageddon-like reality that will soon send nucleonic winter storms rippling through the country. It’s a disgrace, an insult to the notion of liberty and, probably although I have no evidence back my claim, a bid to restrict our freedom of speech.

 

I’m talking about stamps, obviously.

 

I don’t know if you’re aware (I assume not, because otherwise you’d be out on the streets overturning cars and shouting at CCTV cameras if you were) but one stamp is now going to cost you a hefty $1 a pop. That’s an increase of 30 fucking cents from last year. Not only that, but the standard letter is now going to take longer to be delivered. We’re paying more for a service but getting less than what we used to. Now, I don’t know about you, but this really makes me mad. As a stingy bastard who still believes in the power of print, I am downright livid.

 

Now if I want to send a letter, it’s going to cost me a whole dollar and take the best part of a week to arrive. This means that it’s going to cost me an extra 30 cents if I want to send a postcard to my family members to give them a snapshot of my glamorous life. One hundred fucking cents to send a photo of a footpath with the words “I stepped over a used condom here”. That means I’m going to have to choose between sending 12 postcards and a box of goon. How many people would sacrifice a sack of wine for the purpose of sending depressing, tangible Snapchats to family members?! And with these new changes, the delays are going to be extreme. So if I want to send critically important correspondence, say for example a letter to Stephen Curry telling him how much I enjoyed his Geoffrey Rush camel skit on an awards show, it’s going to be a week late and will largely be deemed irrelevant by that date. It’s a rort and it’s rubbish.

 

I was alerted to this miscarriage of justice by my grandmother, a woman who still sends birthday cards laden down with enough stickers you’d think she was a six-year-old at a free craft activities table. She was absolutely disgusted. As a woman who exclusively drinks Coke, hates Steve Martin and couldn’t see why a landmark called the “Nigger Brown Grandstand” had to be renamed, Grandma and I don’t often agree. But this was something that transcended the generation gap and made our collective blood boil. What was worse was that Australia Post pushed the changes over the festive period, when people are too busy being happy to care about real problems in the world.

 

Being a noble member of the press, I returned to work ready for a backlash. I expected an avalanche of anger to come crashing down, with people chaining themselves to postie bikes and picketing post offices. I was ready for civil war and was perched at my desk just waiting for the letter bombs to explode. But there was nothing.

 

Knowing their tendency to use traditional means of conducting business and their outstanding capability to complain, I thought the older generation was the first place to start. I called my local senior citizens branch, and was met with confusion. The convenor told me she hadn’t heard of any outrage, and certainly was not in the midst of coordinating a large-scale display of civil disobedience to fight the changes. My local state member told me he didn’t know the price had risen and said he hadn’t sent a letter through the post for some time. I went a step higher and tapped on the shoulder of my federal elected representative and didn’t even get a response.

 

I was appalled. We were now being forced to pay through the nose to send a letter and nobody cared.

 

Now, before you keyboard warriors (hi Kettle, my name is Pot) start telling me about the wonders of email, I know that letter sending is down. The prevalence of sending messages via the postal service may have seen a decline in recent years, but it hasn’t plummeted as much as Bill Cosby’s popularity.

 

While it’s still a hot trend for me, I can see the practice of utilising a national public service to dispatch messages catching on to with the wider population once again. Writing a letter to someone is such a catalyst for affection and it requires such minimal effort. Once people realise that they can fulfil the same amount of obligation as attending a party or enduring a long phone call without having to actually hear the person’s whiney voice or be in the same room as middle-aged guests who wear singlets with sleeves down to their belts, the craze will be ignited once more. Sure, you still do have to eventually leave the house to post the thing, but you can use that as an excuse to show off your sick new roller skate sneakers.

 

Letter writing could come back once people remember how delightful it was and crave its return, like that time when Mark Latham didn’t have national platform with which to broadcast his idiotic ideas or Shannon Noll. However, like narrow-minded festival organisers may bar Nolsie from reaching the dizzying heights of commercial success, this price hike may stand in the way of the humble letter’s comeback. And I feel powerless to stop it.

 

I’d attempt to start a letter writing campaign against Australia Post but that will only line their pockets further.

 

These days are dark.

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This one did not

I’m going to penetrate your mind

Sometimes all you need to penetrate a mind is a little bit of magical inspiration.

Yes, I cringed a little at the word “penetrate” too, but hear me out. What I’m talking about here is forming non-superficial connections with someone, taking an acquaintanceship to the next level – deep, meaningful friendship. And when it comes to this whole “getting to know someone” business, mind penetration is really the only way to describe it.* It’s an invasive procedure, which is grossly intimate and can either be incredibly enjoyable or very uncomfortable. Either way, you end up pulling some kind of face you would be horrified to see reflected back at you. To penetrate, according to my computer’s dictionary is to:
1 go into or through (something), especially with force or effort.

2 gain access to (an organization, place, or system), especially when this is difficult to do.

The word implies some difficulty and an invasion of sorts. It doesn’t sound fun when you break it down in those terms, and for the most part it isn’t. Finding out about people is difficult and intrusive, so you need to have a game plan in place before you go in.

The other day somebody asked me whether I was good at asking people questions because of my line of work. They naïve person thought that I would be able to absolutely nail conversations and sneakily coaxing personal details out of people because it’s part of my job.

 

“Not really,” I told him.

“My go to opening question is ‘what’s you favourite colour’, so no.”

 

Incidentally, most people elect blue as their favourite hue. A distant second is red, with yellow and green trailing behind. I’ve only ever had one pink, but then I think people are lying to themselves. I think this is a fairly legitimate question to ask people – it breaks the ice and gives you something you can base completely legitimate analyses of the person’s emotional state, deep seeded motivations and general outlook on life (if you picked scarlet, you’re obviously some kind of psychopath who cannot be trusted and will never learn to love).

 

Regardless of my brilliant, lightly penetrative lines of questioning, it has come to my attention that I don’t often come off as someone who essentially has to speak to people with the goal to elicit fruitful conversation for a living. Actually, it’s down right surprising I get by if you take into account some of my conversational gems.

 

I know I speak of this often, but it’s hard to master small talk. It’s hard to “get to know” people, too. This task requires more probing questions such as inquisitions about the weather or statements about political affairs you’ve added un upwards inflection to. If you want to “get to know” someone, you need to squeeze the juice from the lime wedge, and while Oprah uses her teeth (I once saw the most fantastic episode of Oprah in which she and Gayle went glamping – they drove an RV and made cocktails outdoors and were all round fabulous. I really think there should be a remake of The Simple Life with Gayle and Oprah), I think you have to come at with a different approach when we’re talking metaphorical limes.

 

It’s funny how terribly suited I am for my job: my spelling is appalling, I can’t recount a tale in a logical, linear manner, I don’t like bothering people, and, as it turns out, I am absolute rubbish at finding out things about people’s lives. People have gone though painful breakups before I’ve even been aware they were in relationships. I couldn’t tell you what half of my friends do for a living. I didn’t even know a mate from college lived interstate until I was proofing a page with a photo of him on it.

 

Part of me wonders if it’s because I simply don’t care about other people’s lives unless it directly affects mine. It’s a matter of logic. Why waste precious time pondering the affairs of meaningless plebs when you could be dedicating your brainpower to a more enlightening pursuit, such as basking in the majesty of me? Subconsciously, my mind must discard every shred of detail about somebody’s life that doesn’t relate back to me because clearly anything devoid of essence of me is trash and not worth paying attention to. I wouldn’t put it past me. But if I did put it past me I probably wouldn’t even realise it, since I’m more oblivious to signs of bonfires and breakdowns of affections than a fence post. It is this winning combination of ignorance and self-obsession that renders me useless in a “hot goss sesh” and I’ve really had enough of it.

 

So, after turning over the aforementioned (and by aforementioned I mean the conversation I referenced almost 500 words ago. I told you can’t get from Point A to Point B of a story without making a few detours – hashtag to cut a long story short) exchange in my head while hosting a personal Harry Potter film festival all weekend, I’ve come up with a way to make sure I get to the nuts and bolts of people. I’ve devised a sneaky a strategy to keep up my sleeve should the dialogue run dry. It’s not so much a detailed plan as it is a list of uncomfortably probing questions based on Harry Potter phenomena, but I reckon it will do the trick. And, like an invisibility cloak belonging to a relative butchered by nose-less baldy, it’s time it was passed on to you.

 

Now, please keep in mind that Harry Potter played a big role in my life (I once went out in public with a paper mache snitch on my head and dressed up as the sword of Godric Gryffindor despite being deemed a fit person to enrol in a tertiary course). And, as I do with most things, I assume people have the same intense views towards the outstanding series as I do. Hence why I think this is an appropriate way to interact with someone.

 

So here are my fall back questions sure to form the basis of unwavering friendship:

What would a boggart turn into if you confronted it?

What you see if you looked into the Mirror of Erised?

If you came across a dementor, what would you think of?

What memory would you use to produce a fully-fledged patronus charm?

What form would your patronus take?

Who would you have to rescue if you were competing in the second task of the Twiwizard Tournament?

What would you attempt if you had one vial of liquid luck?

If came across a batch of polyjuice potion, who’s hair would you put in it?

 

So that’s it. That’s my “follow the spiders” for you, golden trio of readers (you know who you are).

 

Use it well.

 

*”I’m going to penetrate your mind” is also a quote from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Alan Rickman says it as Severus Snape, and prompted a significant chorus of giggles from my group of costumed friends in the movie theatre, no doubt thoroughly annoying all other serious audience members. I stand by our behaviour. 

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This one did not, This was terrible idea

On the Tind

I have a Tinder account now, and it’s quite unsettling.

I was At Da Clubz as few weeks ago and one of my friends was doing a lot of swiping on her phone, regaling in online banter with well-groomed strangers and it looked like such fun. So my drunken self, which sometimes takes the form of an excitable toddler, decided to get on board. I believe I said something along the lines of “I want to play” like a small child wanting a turn at a cup and ball game.

Obviously I didn’t download it myself, because that would be embarrassing. Instead, I forced my friends to do it for me so I could truthfully run with the “oh, yeah this is just something my mates signed me up for, I’m not actually one of those people who us Tinder” line. They created my account, installed the app and even chose the photos for my profile, thus eliminating several soul searching minutes trying to determine whether the picture of me dressed as a “sexy pineapple” made me look like a whorebag or a comical party animal who just happened to have toned legs. With my social superiority established and three non-suggestive photos of myself selected, I was ready to take on the world of stylised finger navigation and witty exchanges.

But, like “stopping the boats”, “getting on Tinder” actually had horrifyingly ruthless methods, a gross dehumanization of innocent people and was drenched in hypercriticism. I was as heartless and discriminative as our country’s asylum seeker policy on that app; I was suspicious of everyone and not a soul made it shore. But it’s not my fault.

You see, I’m easily unimpressed.

My disapproval is so easily earned it’s like a Student of the Week certificate in a school with only 30 kids – all you have to do to be worthy of it is exist (although my awards are handed out for even more specific categories such as “most idiotic thing to brag about which should actually be cause for embarrassment” or “worst choice of body spray” and the ceremonies are held hourly rather than weekly). My judgemental distain is so liberally applied it may as well be a bottle of sunscreen at a Weasley beach party (obviously this needs to be made into a reality – imagine the board shorts Mr Weasley would get about in).

What’s worse is that it’s incredibly unjustified, as I am no prize pig myself. I can’t crush walnuts between my sculpted thighs or name all our past prime ministers, and I don’t think Lena Denham is the voice of my generation. Clearly, I’m not a great example of a human being. This opinion is further evidenced by a text message exchange between a friend and me this week:

Me: Want to hear something gross?

Respectable Person: Yas!

Me: My thrice-used gym socks smell like corn chips.

Respectable Person: Noooooo. Why haven’t you washed them?

Me: I’m busy.

Clearly, I’m not really qualified to be one handing down verdicts about other people’s scummy ways when my active wear reeks of cheese-flavoured snack food yet I still deem it suitable for public use. It doesn’t stop me, however, for creating a complex and deeply hierarchical taxonomy of people based on they way they carry their sunglasses.

But the thing is that I don’t do it on purpose – I really don’t. Some people are natural athletes: they can catch a ball flying at their face from any direction on instinct. You can’t explain their abilities other than natural, God-given talent. They can’t help but be good at sports. That’s like me, except instead of being able to throw a cricket ball over a Bunnings Warehouse complex; I can shoot a judgemental glance across seven football fields with the speed of a racing car. If I see someone driving a Commodore with white sunglasses I immediately classify them as a douchebag with lightning-fast speed. It’s just my natural reflexes kicking in. I can’t help it.

Some people would see this as a positive thing. For one thing, it helps us identify threats (whether that be to our street credibility or a our lives by helping us detect a member of an enemy tribe with a flint to ready to be lodged into our brains). It’s our ability to make snap judgments that has helped human beings survive the wilderness and dominate other species to allow us to be the creatures who get to enjoy air conditioning and novelty pyjamas while the others have to live in literal doghouses.

But other people say this talent for immediate classification of people into minute subgroups based on their outfit choices/use of slang/personalised plates/any other aspect of their lives impacted by their free will is actually a bad thing. These are probably also the people who find their live partners online.

Because while someone might have chose a photograph of what looks like a hand-dug grave as a lure to attract future partners (not a joke, I have the screenshot for evidence), that person might just be an excellent cook who makes hilarious observations about the world and doesn’t mind being the designated driver. The person who is proudly displaying a cruiser as evidence they like to party may be an excellent listener who knows all the words to Float On AND Khe San. And that guy who chose three cringe-worthy formal pictures may have gentle hands but a powerful thrust and excellent breakfast recipes. Unfortunately, all you see is a photo. And if one of those photos looks like the pit your mangled body will be dumped in once that maniac tracks you down and cuts you into 11 to 17 pieces, then you’re probably going to swipe left. You’d be a slightly-homicidal dinglebat if you didn’t.

So where does that leave me? Right where I started, I suppose: using social media to judge people for using social media to judge other people on social media, while desperately clinging to a deluded sense of supremacy rooted in the belief that I’m not like any of them. And who wouldn’t want to swipe right on that?

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Daily thoughts, This one did not

Monday thoughts

Yeah nah: Starting yet another conversation at work with “want to hear something gross?”, after which I explained to someone who should be viewing me as a competent professional how I had found a small drop of vomit dried to my bathroom floor close to my toilet basin over the weekend.

Yeah, dried vomit is pretty unpleasant, but that’s not the gross part.

This is the gross part:

Nah Yeah: I haven’t vomited in that bathroom for at least three months.

Yeah nah: In isolation, that last fact is probably something to be proud of, indicating that maybe I’ve developed some sense of self control, limiting my drinking to the point just before I have to evacuate my stomach. If you read that fact as a stand-alone statement, it would seem that I am experiencing personal growth.

But when you add that little bit of trivia to the initial statement about dried vomit, what you are instead faced with is the grim reality that I clearly am comfortable wallowing in my own filth.

That wasn’t event the grossest part.

The grossest part, and something I neglected to impart on my colleague, was that I saw the vom on the floor and just left it there. I saw it, told myself I’d clean it up after I finished showering and then completely forgot about it.  I just allowed my own bodily juices to fester in the place I go to clean myself a little longer until this evening like some kind of maniac. The fact that I was able to forget about it tells me that there is such a things as being too comfortable with yourself. Love the skin you’re in and whatnot, but you have to draw the line somewhere and that line should be drawn somewhere before preserving flecks of vomit on household surfaces as some form of sick tribute to yourself.

They say that bad things happen when good people do nothing, but even one of the most terrifying observations about humanity (I always think of that quote in context of the Holocaust) was not enough to move me to wipe my dehydrated stomach bile encrusted with a chunk of indistinguishable vegetable matter away. I accepted its presence for a further two days. I thought I was a good person, but I did nothing.   I’ve learnt a lot about myself over the last two days, and I don’t like it all.

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This one did not

Wednesday thoughts

Nah yeah: Discovering that the Indian wrap I saw on a poster was, indeed, a piece of naan bread as the wrap and that it was also, indeed, bloody delightful. The best thing I’ll put into my mouth all day, in fact.

Yeah nah: Being told I had to keep my work outfit on for an out-of-hours photo opportunity. 

Me: So do you think it’s professional of me to rock up to this photo in my gym gear when my gym gear consists of a shirt that reads: Merry Christmas ya filthy animal?

Everyone within earshot in the office: No!

If a festive movie quote shirt can’t be classified as corporate dress, then I don’t know if I can continue being a part of this conformist capitalist society. 

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Tuesday thoughts 

Nah yeah: Proudly proclaiming to the world that I a confident in my dining choices after ordering two main meals, and entrée and a rice dish for dinner. I could have easily passed off my order as dinner for two and therefore projected myself as someone who is responsible about portion sizes with some degree of social life, but I decided against it it. I could have skulked into the Thai joint disguising my identity and making myself as unnoticeable as possible, but I had a pint to make.

I swanned into the restaurant, made eye contact AND conversation with the cashier (I told her I liked her hair, because reinforcing gender stereotypes is how girls bond, ok?) and boldly grabbed a pair of chopsticks. Not two. Not a handful. But a single pair of chopsticks with the gusto of Sasha fucking Fierce wearing a golden jumpsuit flanked with tigers on platinum leashes.

I was not going to hide that the slightly irrational volume of food I had ordered was purely intended for the mouth and intestinal tract of Number One (me). 

I would not be shamed by my overzealous order of my state of solitude. 

I was a woman warrior, feeding my hunger for glory with coconut rice, panang and a fuckload of satay sticks without regard for social stigmas. 

I AM CONFIDENT IN SUNSHINE, I AM CONFIDENT IN RAIN.

I am confident in ME.

Yeah nah: Being so full of Thai food I could no longer sit upright. 

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Thy leaves are so soul crushing

Taking down the Christmas tree is like a violent bout of food poisoning: it’s painful, it leaves you feeling empty and it reminds you of the great suffering that is the human condition.

 

That analogy may seem a tad depressing and melodramatic, but the longer I sit in my empty duplex facing a glorious arrangement of shimmering, flammable materials which will take considerable time and effort to neatly pack away, the more I am reminded of the gloominess of my existence.

 

I didn’t always feel this way about my Christmas tree; only two weeks ago I gazed at its twinkling lights with the same longing and hopefulness a C grade celebrity who once was a beloved sitcom cast member but now could only get work on hotdog commercials would look at a contract with Dancing with the Stars. It represented the possibility of lifting myself out of the meaningless ooze I lived in, with Christmas presenting an opportunity to bask in the attention and glory once showered upon me in my younger days. It meant presents and Michael Buble’s smooth, smooth voice and gravy and food in ball form and being around people who were conditioned to love me.

 

It’s amazing how something in any other context would be considered too tacky to be worth risking the fire hazard can make you feel like a person again. Colourful orbs probably created by the hands of malnourished children in sweaty, dank conditions somehow fill us all with the feeling of goodwill to all mankind. Around Christmas time we stop thinking of our elderly relatives as racist divas demanding we endure their presence because their loins bared the fruit that created out existence, and see them through a warm, glittery filter as eccentrically charming treasures to be cherished. We go out of our way to make shop assistants, bar tenders and waiters smile. We hand out plates of baked good to people who seem lonely (or, in my case, force taxi drivers to eat the leftovers of a double batch of gingerbread bickies after drinking more than my share of champagne). Once the wreaths are out and mass-produced cards are hung on strings over our walls, we turn into sentimental balls of love-radiating sunshine, taking time to marvel at the great joys of life.

 

So when we amputate the limbs of our plastic Christmas trees and pack the imitation greenery away in boxes, it’s more than a little disheartening. After putting the last box/bag/sack or cheap decorations away we return to our living rooms and are immediately filled with emptiness (yes, that was an oxymoron but that’s what made it poetic – I’m actually very deep you see). We’re faced with the vacant plasterboards of our meaningless, repetitive lives. As you vacuum up the last of the stray tinsel threads, the overwhelming joy you felt just days before is being sucked into a dark and dusty hole. Now your life goes back to the spirit crushing conveyor belt of normalcy –there’s no shimmering plastic reminding you that love is actually all around or dodgily-wired lighting illuminating your heart. There are just blank walls and your eternal solitude.

 

The silver lining in all this is that, after New Year’s Eve ticks over to New Year’s Day, you’re supposed to be all motived to get your life back on track. Unfortunately for me, my life is based in a comically cold climate and so I’m not so much “on track” as I am “in track(pants)”. And nothing derails the Little Train of Hashtag New Year New Me quite like wearing trackpants. I mean, I’ve already eaten two hot chip sandwiches today.

 

So where does that leave me? Facing off with two meters of green plastic and wiring, that’s where. It leaves me getting all existential about glitter. And no one should ever question glitter, or what it stands for. As I look around the cold-tiled floors and whitewashed walls of my inconsequential life I tell myself I should comply with the norms of society and take the damn tree down. But, before I am able to shackle the chains of reality around my ankles, I glance at my coffee table and see a mousepad I had received the night before after coming home to unopened mail. It may have been just a mousepad to the manufacturers, but to me it is the photo gift of the century. As I fixated on the most practical and tasteful way to commemorate a graduation, I was inflated by the sight of the glowing face of My Fantastic Friend From College triumphantly printed above three simple, life-affirming words: Stay Fabulous Dannielle!

 

Fuck it. The tree stays up for another night.

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