Over the weekend I asked a good friend of mine if I could rifle through her discarded clothing.

A dignified and reasonable woman, she declined this request with a certain air of grace, even though I wasn’t deterred by her assurances that her refuse consisted mostly of Supre clothes and misguided priorities. This was not an easy task considering I still wear Supre to work and have a particular passion for unscrupulously picking apart the cringe-worthy aspects of people’s pasts – I may be so self obsessed that I can’t remember whether a friend has siblings, but I’ll never forget those frosted tips in a pixelated photo from 2004.

There’s something that is so mesmerising about tipping out the unwanted contents of one’s life and sorting them into piles on the floor. Because while you may still be so poor that you’re willing to overlook a bolognaise stain on a mediocre work shirt, the real gold is analysing what people no long deem worthy of being in their possessions. Most of these things are stuffed into black garbage bags, with the thin plastic denoting the trashy categories their former owner has classed them into and hiding the shame of singlet tops claiming the wearer is the spouse of Ashton Kutcher. The great bottom drawer and top cupboard purges are usually done in secret and with a liberal dose of disgust. People declare such items as too shameful to attempt to give away or admit ownership of and pack them out of sight. The trip to the Vinnies bin is done with the stealth of an Australian kayaker sent to blow up Japanese submarines in the night (now that was one tense bloody documentary) – it’s a well-planned military operation which can have dire consequences if discovered. That’s what makes the thought of a bulging garbage bag so intoxicating – there’s nothing more revealing about a person than the stuff they want to quietly rid themselves of.

As someone who came from a big family of cheapskates and borderline hoarders (my sister still has a candy bracelet from when her and her husband got together about seven years ago), the plastic sack of unwanted – but not wholly soiled – goods was a treat for my sisters and I. Being a family of four children in this day and age, we looked like a tribe of 13 being brought up in the Potato Famine to smaller families, which wasn’t helped my mother’s walking stick and my father being exactly what you would envisage after hearing the words “Aussie”, “battler” and “leprechaun” together. As such, we were often privy to abandoned aspects of teenage lives by rummaging through their tatty remnants of their younger selves. People vaguely related to us with growing daughters presented the opportunity for clothing upgrades, and musty piles of overworn, no longer cool fabric excited us more than a live television broadcast of a Hanson concert.

We would tear at the plastic with the intensity of a pack of hyenas ripping at the flailing body of a wildebeest, squealing relentlessly as its internal organs are pulled from its skeleton and sliced open in the dirt. Hesitation be your downfall: all that stood between your ownership of a maroon turtleneck was that split second in which another set of hands managed to snatch it from your clutches. It was a strictly first in, average dressed. The only exception to the rule was a t-shirt with the words “yeah right” emblazoned on the fabric in glitter. Mum told my sister it should be mine because I was sarcastic and the shimmering sentiment suited me. However, looking back, I can’t help but wonder if I was bequeathed that top because it was the only thing in the bag that fit my plump body and no one wanted me trying other things on and stretching them out.

Needless to say, the prospect of having new(ish) things was exhilarating. But after a while our attention turned to the items that were so uncool even the Maguire girls wouldn’t touch them. We couldn’t help but wonder how such things came to be in the custody of our funky older idols in the first place. At some point it clicked: new things are great, but the humiliating relics of someone’s past are much more valuable. And these kind offerings were really sacks of shame, detailed inventories of indignity.

There’s a reason spies go through rubbish bins in cartoons: there are all kinds of truths in the items we try to dispose of. And an old shirt or knick knack can be just as telling about a person as several binned boxes of choc-backed Tiny Teddies. You could assume, for instance, that the bear-shaped biscuits indicate poor eating habits, a tendency towards child-like items and the sheer number of them would suggest shocking self-control. These three assumptions could lead to bigger conclusions about the person such as them being of ill health, daddy issues and an addictive personality. Of course, the multiple boxes could simply be in the trash because the person had been using them to store hand-woven bracelets and just experienced a popularity rush, selling all the handicrafts in a short space of time. The point being that you can’t really say for sure what that artefact means, but you can certainly have some fun trying to solve the riddle.

A bag of discarded items is the perfect fodder for judgemental over thinking, which just happens to be my favourite pastime. That collection of polo shirts that are exactly the same but different shades of pastel? You’re a boring  Saddle Club fan who would make a terrible wedding guest. Skate shoes with curse word laden personal jokes written in texta on the sides? You were a typical Year 9 floozy who exclusively wears Havianas with diamantes embedded on the straps and says things like “I don’t care, I’ll let my kids listen to Chris Brown – he shouldn’t be punished for getting angry and lashing out that one time”. And your three quarter demin jeans tell me that you’re not to be trusted and that some people should be sterilised for the good of humanity. Yes, the magic of pilfering the contents of one’s past life like a possum in a wheelie bin is interpreting the garbage left behind. The secrets you uncover could be dark, embarrassing or downright boring, but it’s up to the filthy succourer to draw the conclusion.

So perhaps it’s a good thing my glorious friend so swiftly shutdown any suggestion I ransack her possessions, because I can have sinister, friendship-ruining imagination at times – and this young woman hopes to start her own dessert café in Paris during her mid-life crisis and I will absolutely want to sponge off her.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

Nah yeah: Getting to take an early mark from work because apparently everyone is taking it easy ahead of the festive break. I felt like Micky Mouse playing Bob Cratchit when he is kindly allowed to leave Ebenezer Scourge McDuck’s counting house, except for the fact that I’m not a male cartoon rodent – but fuck me I was just as jolly and was rocking the same strut.

Yeah nah: Needing said early mark to soak my eyeballs in Dettol and  scrape the flaky memories off my brain with a trowel after spotting a 65-year-old at the bus stop with his faded blue singlet strategically pulled across his chest to allow his nipple to flop out of one of his armholes. Now, you might mistake this for a happy accident, but the fact that this man held my gaze as I passed and had a silver piercing with both ends glittering gracefully in the morning sun as they boldly emerged from his flabby areola told me that this was a statement. I don’t know what that statement was exactly, it was powerful nonetheless. Because nothing makes you re-evaluate your value system quite like maintaining eye contact with a senior citizen freeing their pierced nipple smack bang in the public sphere. Sure, it was creepy, but in a way it was also a big middle finger to shackles of society and the restraints of our conservative existence. Sometimes we all need to break free.

Maybe we’re all that possibly senile and somewhat inappropriate man, just letting our nips see feel the warmth of the sunshine, finally letting the world see what makes us shine – and it’s not just the senseless puncturing of body parts that can cause us to glisten, but our fearless spirits. Sometimes you need to say “to hell with everyone” and let it all flop out like a skinless chicken fillet popping out of a plastic bag.

Nothing is more gloriously uncomfortable as unsolicited biopics.

That’s the lesson I learned this evening, after sitting down to watch Celine, a more about the life of Celine Dion made in 2007 and filed under the True Stories section at my local video store.

I sat down to watch this movie after a weekend involving a bowls day and drawing the last king twice in a row. My Golden-Haired Sidekick and I were both picking at a barbecue chicken like hyenas cleaning up the scraps of a giraffe carcass. We needed something to bring us back to life, and we turned to Celine and the good folk in Canadian filmmaking.

We were not disappointed.

Firstly, I would like to point out that at the end of the movie (which obviously coincides with the lip synching of My Heart Will Go On because ending it with All By Myself would be too damn sad), a message appears on the screen advising viewers that the person attached to the vocal chords from heaven didn’t participate in the film, but merely inspired the 90 minutes of magic.

That means that Celine didn’t have any say over the casting, the story line or the terrible use of wigs. She didn’t get to tell these people that the majority of scenes had a wildly uncomfortable incest vibe usually reserved for episodes of Law and Order SVU and retrospective airings of The Cosby Show. So I think it is only fair that I put in a cheeky disclaimer of my own: I respect the majesty that is Celine Dion. I would never insult her character, her voice or her ability to convert the power of the fire burning inside the heart of every woman on earth into an all-penetrating sound. Celine is like the Holy effing Spirit, alright. But the movie of the same name is a fantastic flaming pile of piss (yes, I’m aware that those last four words are an oxymoron, but just because liquid cannot be in a pile nor can it burn, does not mean that last phrase was not factual).

So the movie starts off with tense mood-building music in a busy backstage area brimming with paparazzi and official people. A woman in a short, cheap blond wig wearing body glitter and a golden nightie emerges. She hugs an old man, the old woman and has a lingering we-have-definitely-been-wrist-deep-in-one-another kiss with the guy who played Veronica Mars’ dad, only he’s wearing a fake beard and has white grey hair. The woman puts a penny in her shoe, no doubt a meaningful habit derived from some heartbreaking story in her youth.

The camera cuts to a stage with “Celine” written above it. Somewhere a flute starts playing the unmistakeable few bars of My Heart Will Go On and the female incarnation of god appears in the spotlight and begins to lip-synch.

Apparently the grown-ass woman wearing body glitter is the voice of the nineties: she is Celine.

Now we cut back to her childhood. It’s a bit of clusterfuck of storylines here because Childhood Celine is so damn whiney, brattily awkward and downright unlikeable that the writers threw in every narrative device they could to win the audience’s affection for the diva. I’m talking the works: bad teeth, schoolyard bullies, a car accident, hand me down shoes, a fire, being poor, a confusing punching bag scene, a cracked record, a terribly choreographed fall, being labelled as a mistake (who needs condoms when you can breed more workers for your family business?!) and having to share a bedroom with two of her adult sisters who for some reason still decide to live there instead of getting jobs and real lives.

Long story short, little Celine is obviously a powerhouse singer and an over-populated family decide to pin all hope on the shoulders of a whinging 12-year-old. They need a manger. A top-notch manager. So they go to Mr Veronica Mars’ dad with a dead raccoon on his head (some would call it a wig, others would call it a lack of investor interest) to make a record. With the knowledge that Mr Mars goes on to impregnate and marry Celine, every scene in which he interacts with a pre-teen Celine has a healthy undercurrent of incest.

This is the kind of movie that will leave your sides sore, because your obliques will get a work out from the constant cringing it invokes. For example, there’s a scene where young Celine overhears Mr Mars say she isn’t the prettiest girl in the world before he dumps on her for holding her microphone too close to her mouth. Celine is crying on her bed and Mr Mars goes in to smooth things over.

“You’re not the prettiest,” he tells her.

“You want someone who will tell you the truth.”

What we’re seeing there is the building blocks for a confidence –shattering co-dependant relationship on a foundation of him destroying her self-esteem before luring her to him with lingering eye contact. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t watching a crime show when he leaned over the bed to comfort her, because if it wasn’t for the PG rating I would have expected a hand up a skirt. It was just so uncomfortable that if someone told me the scene was initially shot to include him unzipping his pants but was hastily scrapped in the editing room, I would totally believe it. There’s another part of the movie where Mr Mars tells Celine to “be a good girl” and you really have to wonder how many times he said that to her and in what context.

And that’s how the movie continues – unconvincing lip-synching sandwiched between inappropriate workplace relations and poorly-explained plot points. Somewhere amongst that Celine encases herself in a puberty-soaked chrysalis and emerges a blossoming woman. She has womanly curves and even womanlier desires. But not everyone is convinced that she can handle this level of woman. Her mother catches Celine dancing with Mr Mars and makes him promise not to “touch her”. This becomes difficult when Celine makes it clear to Mr Mars that she does not only want to be touched, but that she is in love. She has the feelings.

“The public don’t know if you’re a girl or a woman,” Mr Mars tells Pre-Woman Celine.

“Look at me, do I look like a girl to you?” Celine says.

But Mr Mars can’t get hard for a woman who wears dresses appropriately for work with bad teeth and no nose job, so he decides to find spiritual solace in Los Vegas of all places. Celine, now acutely aware that she isn’t good enough, spends the next year getting plastic surgery and researching how to wear tight-fitting clothes. She has fancy hair brushes and deluxe bedding, but all the riches in the world don’t matter until Mr Mars walks back into her life.

Celine is now bangable and therefore able to revive her career, starting with Eurovision. They mention Eurovision. The then debate the popularity of Eurovision. Then Celine is singing on stage in front of words that say Eurovision, just to make sure that everyone knows she went on Eurovision. And now that she is a success, has a great nose and looks like she puts out, Mr Mars finally deems her fuckable and the pair fall in love. Just in case he wasn’t already aware that this decision wasn’t questionable, Celine calls her mum the morning after, presumably still laying in the wet patch. Two years later Mr Mars is wearing a much whiter carpet sample on his head but their love is as strong as ever.

I wont tell you how the rest of the movie ends, but I will say there is a montage to Because You Loved Me which includes Mr Mars walking dramatically on a treadmill. Let that be the carrot dangling in front of your face to keep pulling that cart and stick out the whole “motion picture”. In summing up, I’d just like to reiterate how strange it is that people are able to make movies about other people without their approval. This wasn’t a documentary or a news story, but a fictionalised version of a living person’s existence that didn’t involve the main subject other than bastardising her story and (hopefully) paying to feature he songs in the film. I really wonder what Celine would have to say about this (I feel like that should become a life motto bumper sticker or something. I think the world would be an infinitely more fabulous place if people thought “what would Celine do?” just a little more often).

I mean, I don’t think this movie was intentionally trying to shit all over Celine’s union and make her husband look like a child groomer – in fact, I think the filmmakers were trying to o the opposite – but that’s the impression I walked away with. There was something that was just undeniably creepy and just a little bit shit about this movie – and I loved every minute of it. Like dad jokes or a bag of goon, it was so bad it was good. And that’s really hard to achieve. I mean, you can make something terrible, but it takes a whole new level of crap to transcend that level of shit to something greater. And, in terms of being so awful you can’t look way, Celine really excels. My major criticism was its distinct lack of It’s All Coming Back to Me. It was well worth the $1 late fee I’m going to have to pay when I next front the video store.

An added plus? The trailers included another (presumably also unsolicited) biopic, this time following the rise of Shania Twain. And it just so happens that Shania was on the same shelf as Celine. The only question now is whether the two films being on the same shelf becomes figurative as well as literal.

Stay tuned!