I bet you're wondering if I've finally gotten internet at my house, aren't you? Well, I sure am.
After months of ridiculou saga-ness, (more on which another day) we've finally got it connected. Sort of. I can access (very very slowly) google but not wikipedia, my blog but not facebook (!) gmail but not my uni mail. I can load A Softer World, but the pictures don't display, and I can see all of Dinosaur Comics except the last 2 or 3 lines of text in the comic.
It's incredibly frustrating but somehow utterly hilarious, is what it is.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Thursday, August 06, 2009
In Which a Sense of Proportion could only make Life less Exciting.
You know those people who take things just waaaaaaaaay too personally? You know the ones: good things, bad things, the weather in Paraguay, they secretly believe it all somehow reflects on them, and that their opinion is both relevant and interesting to friends, innocent by-passers, and passengers in their taxi? The types with that specialised flavour of deluded self-absorption who can be offended (or irrationally pleased) by such innocent remarks as “Who are you feeling?”, “I’m so tired”, or “My, I hear that weather they’re having in Paraguay is lovely at present! Wish I was there!”. Yeah, I’m one of them. (Ha, I’m listening to my iPod on shuffle as I type and Ben Folds has just informed me that “she’s so sensitive and shit just happens sometimes”; more from the “music which says something to me about my life” frontier.)
This will not, of course, be news to any of you with whom I have been friends for any length of time. Especially anyone who’s ever lived with me, or been in any way trapped with me for prolonged enough periods that I’ve failed to bother hiding the crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that this could be considered a good thing, and it probably often (maybe not “usually”) is. People who have a healthy sense of proportion don’t get quite so pleased and excited by a nice morning, and don’t feel quite so self-satisfied by the mere knowledge that the cafe on the corner of their block is so highly considered that people drive from suburbs and suburbs away, just to have breakfast there. Those people would think “oh, how lucky we are living near a nice cafe, also, I bet the ocean views that cafe gets sure don’t hurt!” not “Aha! Look! A firetruck is parked outside our cafe, even the firemen on duty go there! Awesome, our cafe is the best, we rule.” Uh, hypothetically.
What I’m saying is that this is not exclusively a problem. The problem lies in forgetting that one is coming from a different place to other people (even if they’re self-absorbed, they’re still not coming from Planet Ang, but rather from their own personal planets). Last week I got all upset by something that had absolutely nothing to do with me. And I don’t mean something of the “8 million babies killed in Burma but I don’t know anyone who lives there” (which would be relevant to everyone in the sense that (a) we’re all people and should be moved by the suffering of other... etc. etc. etc. and (b) Burma is not that far away, and anything that kills that many Burmese babies would be bound to get us eventually) or even the slightly tragic “when Princess Di died, I cried for a week” varieties. I mean like “I had a sudden encroachment of awareness of my own irrelevance and ordinariness when I found out that my ex had joined a Swing Dancing troupe”. Caveat: “irrelevance” to the world of swing dancing. My ex is a nice guy, but I don’t particularly mind being irrelevant to him (although being felt by an ex to be deeply, meaningfully and truly irrelevant is never nice either, really).
It cannot possibly be conceived to be anything whatsoever to do with me, but it really seemed like a slap in the face, somehow. That, my friends, is obviously completely insane. Which was clear every time I tried to explain how I felt to anyone; “he’s joined the #$%^&* troupe! I don’t get to be in the troupe! How dare he?!” I would say, and even my dearest and most understanding friends cocked an inquiring eyebrow and waited for the other shoe to drop, for the part where this in any way impinged on my dancing experience or, as we say in the biz “mattered”. (Heh, I love saying “as we say in the biz” about perfectly ordinary words. Sometimes I forget that it’s actually from that Fry & Laurie sketch, and that most people would more or less figure it denoted being a tosser of the worst calibre.)
This (this thing where I take random things too personally) became particularly obvious to me over the last day or two: I did a fair amount of baking with an oven which has been called “tempestuous” by the kind hearted, and unprintable things by those who are not. Baking is thus marginally more challenging than it might otherwise be. Now, I can’t even remember the name of the girl who, when I made cake for something once, had her young man try a piece first and checked the quality with him (in front of me) before she had any: “Is it moist? I only want some if it’s moist.” I know it’s a little thing, but it seemed so rude at the time that every time I take something out of the oven which I’m baking for a potentially critical audience (which is how I inaccurately categorise my PBL group) I hear her in my head. “Is it moist? I only want some if it’s moist.” Good grief. That’s clearly an innocent inquiry and comment. She hadn’t had any, so it can’t be considered a criticism, I don’t know why it seemed so breathtakingly rude to me. I guess it was just the silliness that struck me. I was sitting right there, what was he going to say? “No, good god, it’s so dry that it’s sucking all the moisture from my body! Pass me a glass of water and stay the hell away from this godawful cake! Get out while you still can!”
Not only do I now worry about the imaginary people criticising things I make (which I’m sure makes me more critical of them than I need to be), this sort of it’s-all-about-me thing also means that I tend to read other people’s life decisions as such as well. This made sense that time a boyfriend toyed with the idea of moving overseas but was surprised when I seemed to feel that this would matter to me. But it doesn’t make sense when friends decide to take up things (or people) which I think (because, hey man, I’d totally know, right?) are bad for them. Sometimes I catch myself actually being annoyed with my siblings for their adult decisions which in no way affect me. Maybe it’s always going to be worse with siblings, who knows?
I guess this all goes hand-in hand with the tendency to overthink things people say to you. Criticisms are not something I’ve ever particularly come to relish. Apparently you’re supposed to treasure the opportunity to use feedback to improve yourself or something, but I pretty much tend to get defensive and fail to appreciate it. Did you ever hear that song by a guy called Quindon Tarver, which was in the Triple J hottest 100 in about 1998? It was called “Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen)” and it was essentially a spoken address to a graduating class, advice of various types, set to a background of that song about how “everybody’s free to feel good” or whatever. No? Well, check it out some day. In it, there was a piece of advice which I really remember: “Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults. If you manage this, tell me how.” (Or, y’know, words to that effect. Apparently “really remember” was a trifle hyperbolic.) I’ve always figured that a sort of step-wise approach to this was the way to go, so while forgetting insults remains an elusive dream, I tend to really hoard and treasure compliments.
The problem with this is the same problem you always get when you horde and treasure things; you raise your own standards and want to classify things according to quality. This sort of defeats the purpose, a smidgin. Because when someone says “ooh, you look nice today” a tiny part of me (the part that’s not busy going “gawsh” and twirling it’s toe metaphorically in the dirt in a pleased, bashful sort of way) (so really quite a tiny, tiny part) thinks “why ‘today’? Do I not usually? Am I overdressed?”. I’m almost sure that I’m getting worse about this recently, but maybe I’m just noticing more due to the comparative turmoil of the last 12 months.
Maybe all this introspective blogging is just doing what navel-gazing always does, sending me slowly, but surely, completely mad. It could very well be that. (Also, I apologise for the weakness of this post, I was building to something before, but I had to cut it, so it sort of peters out a little bit. Next time, Gadget, next time, I shall write something with some good honest structure, honest.)
This will not, of course, be news to any of you with whom I have been friends for any length of time. Especially anyone who’s ever lived with me, or been in any way trapped with me for prolonged enough periods that I’ve failed to bother hiding the crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that this could be considered a good thing, and it probably often (maybe not “usually”) is. People who have a healthy sense of proportion don’t get quite so pleased and excited by a nice morning, and don’t feel quite so self-satisfied by the mere knowledge that the cafe on the corner of their block is so highly considered that people drive from suburbs and suburbs away, just to have breakfast there. Those people would think “oh, how lucky we are living near a nice cafe, also, I bet the ocean views that cafe gets sure don’t hurt!” not “Aha! Look! A firetruck is parked outside our cafe, even the firemen on duty go there! Awesome, our cafe is the best, we rule.” Uh, hypothetically.
What I’m saying is that this is not exclusively a problem. The problem lies in forgetting that one is coming from a different place to other people (even if they’re self-absorbed, they’re still not coming from Planet Ang, but rather from their own personal planets). Last week I got all upset by something that had absolutely nothing to do with me. And I don’t mean something of the “8 million babies killed in Burma but I don’t know anyone who lives there” (which would be relevant to everyone in the sense that (a) we’re all people and should be moved by the suffering of other... etc. etc. etc. and (b) Burma is not that far away, and anything that kills that many Burmese babies would be bound to get us eventually) or even the slightly tragic “when Princess Di died, I cried for a week” varieties. I mean like “I had a sudden encroachment of awareness of my own irrelevance and ordinariness when I found out that my ex had joined a Swing Dancing troupe”. Caveat: “irrelevance” to the world of swing dancing. My ex is a nice guy, but I don’t particularly mind being irrelevant to him (although being felt by an ex to be deeply, meaningfully and truly irrelevant is never nice either, really).
It cannot possibly be conceived to be anything whatsoever to do with me, but it really seemed like a slap in the face, somehow. That, my friends, is obviously completely insane. Which was clear every time I tried to explain how I felt to anyone; “he’s joined the #$%^&* troupe! I don’t get to be in the troupe! How dare he?!” I would say, and even my dearest and most understanding friends cocked an inquiring eyebrow and waited for the other shoe to drop, for the part where this in any way impinged on my dancing experience or, as we say in the biz “mattered”. (Heh, I love saying “as we say in the biz” about perfectly ordinary words. Sometimes I forget that it’s actually from that Fry & Laurie sketch, and that most people would more or less figure it denoted being a tosser of the worst calibre.)
This (this thing where I take random things too personally) became particularly obvious to me over the last day or two: I did a fair amount of baking with an oven which has been called “tempestuous” by the kind hearted, and unprintable things by those who are not. Baking is thus marginally more challenging than it might otherwise be. Now, I can’t even remember the name of the girl who, when I made cake for something once, had her young man try a piece first and checked the quality with him (in front of me) before she had any: “Is it moist? I only want some if it’s moist.” I know it’s a little thing, but it seemed so rude at the time that every time I take something out of the oven which I’m baking for a potentially critical audience (which is how I inaccurately categorise my PBL group) I hear her in my head. “Is it moist? I only want some if it’s moist.” Good grief. That’s clearly an innocent inquiry and comment. She hadn’t had any, so it can’t be considered a criticism, I don’t know why it seemed so breathtakingly rude to me. I guess it was just the silliness that struck me. I was sitting right there, what was he going to say? “No, good god, it’s so dry that it’s sucking all the moisture from my body! Pass me a glass of water and stay the hell away from this godawful cake! Get out while you still can!”
Not only do I now worry about the imaginary people criticising things I make (which I’m sure makes me more critical of them than I need to be), this sort of it’s-all-about-me thing also means that I tend to read other people’s life decisions as such as well. This made sense that time a boyfriend toyed with the idea of moving overseas but was surprised when I seemed to feel that this would matter to me. But it doesn’t make sense when friends decide to take up things (or people) which I think (because, hey man, I’d totally know, right?) are bad for them. Sometimes I catch myself actually being annoyed with my siblings for their adult decisions which in no way affect me. Maybe it’s always going to be worse with siblings, who knows?
I guess this all goes hand-in hand with the tendency to overthink things people say to you. Criticisms are not something I’ve ever particularly come to relish. Apparently you’re supposed to treasure the opportunity to use feedback to improve yourself or something, but I pretty much tend to get defensive and fail to appreciate it. Did you ever hear that song by a guy called Quindon Tarver, which was in the Triple J hottest 100 in about 1998? It was called “Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen)” and it was essentially a spoken address to a graduating class, advice of various types, set to a background of that song about how “everybody’s free to feel good” or whatever. No? Well, check it out some day. In it, there was a piece of advice which I really remember: “Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults. If you manage this, tell me how.” (Or, y’know, words to that effect. Apparently “really remember” was a trifle hyperbolic.) I’ve always figured that a sort of step-wise approach to this was the way to go, so while forgetting insults remains an elusive dream, I tend to really hoard and treasure compliments.
The problem with this is the same problem you always get when you horde and treasure things; you raise your own standards and want to classify things according to quality. This sort of defeats the purpose, a smidgin. Because when someone says “ooh, you look nice today” a tiny part of me (the part that’s not busy going “gawsh” and twirling it’s toe metaphorically in the dirt in a pleased, bashful sort of way) (so really quite a tiny, tiny part) thinks “why ‘today’? Do I not usually? Am I overdressed?”. I’m almost sure that I’m getting worse about this recently, but maybe I’m just noticing more due to the comparative turmoil of the last 12 months.
Maybe all this introspective blogging is just doing what navel-gazing always does, sending me slowly, but surely, completely mad. It could very well be that. (Also, I apologise for the weakness of this post, I was building to something before, but I had to cut it, so it sort of peters out a little bit. Next time, Gadget, next time, I shall write something with some good honest structure, honest.)
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
In Which an Upbeat Trend is Unimaginatively Continued
Do you remember how I said the other week that I’d lost my USB? Well, I found it at the traditional time, which is to say “immediately after purchasing a replacement” (also, it turns out to have a lost and forgotten and now wildly out of date post on it! Maybe I shall post from the past one of these days). This (finding it) is a good thing, since apparently I managed to lose that new one this morning, sometime between when I uploaded yesterday’s blog post onto it and when I got to the library and tried to upload it onto the actual internet. Although it’s obviously sad to have lost it, and annoying to have been delayed in posting, a part of me is amused. That’s the part of me that realises that that which is lost is inevitably found eventually, and when whomever it is finds that USB, they’re going to be really confused that all it contains is a document entitled “In Which There Are More Nice Things” containing 1,300 words of upbeat blather. This current high USB turnover mystifies me: until a month ago, I’d had the same USB for about 7 years; what’s changed recently? I changed which bag I was using a couple of weeks ago (because my Crumpler still smells strongly of campfire from the Farm), but only to the one I’ve carried since 4th year, and I never lost one since then. And it counts as being since 1st year, too, since I drafted the pattern of the current bag from the one I made in 1st year. Strange times. Oh well.
Today was somehow charming. The weather was so lovely and temperate this morning that I walked to uni from Moore Park just for the loveliness of it, and it was light (not just lightening, like usual) when I woke up. At uni there was some brief collusion, which is always interesting (this is not some kind of strange innuendo, I was colluding in a conspiracy to organise a birthday present). Then on the way home I listened to my awesome Tarzan playlist. When I got home, I spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen, baking strawberry muffins and hazelnut brownie-cupcakes, making mint lemonade and watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on my laptop. I defy anyone to have come up with a better way of spending the afternoon.
All this bakery and what have you is on the grounds that it’s my turn to bring food to my PBL tomorrow, but I haven’t the cash to buy chips and lollies or whatever it is that one might expect, whereas flour and sugar are cheap. Also, man, baking is a lot of fun, as well as being a more effective and impressive way to buy friendship. What with all these pastries and such (I made olive-parmesan pastry coils too, but they didn’t work out as well, so they don’t merit a mention) as well as the fact that tomorrow is the day chosen for James’ birthday thingy by Jenny and I (so I’ll be bringing in the present, which is also homemade, is my point here), I really feel like being awfully 1950s tomorrow. Unfortunately, being as how I don’t live with my parents and have a job (or have a job, even), I do not have so many pairs of comfortable-yet-stylish shoes that I can wear each pair about once a fortnight, which is the situation of someone I was talking to today. The upshot of this is that I have beautiful shoes and comfy-enough-to-wear-to-uni shoes and shoes that would go perfectly with a 1950s-feminine outfit, but no shoes which are all these things at once. So it’s jeans and joggers as usual.
What I was actually going to talk about, though, was my Tarzan playlist, which is awesome, mainly as an intellectual exercise. It’s called “Tarzan” because it swings along like Tarzan in the jungle, from lantana to lantana, with no idea where it’ll end up. The principle is this: each song (apart from the arbitrarily chosen 1st song, obviously) is picked because of some association with the previous song, but is not allowed to be from the same artist or album.
Thus, “Jeepers Creepers” a song by Frank “Ol’ Blue Eyes” Sinatra is followed by the Fratellis’ “Ole Black’n’Blue Eyes”, followed by “Ruby” by the Kaiser Chiefs, who, like the Fratellis, are a group of Scottish rockers. Cake’s “Never There” starts with a dial tone which (embarrassingly) is how N’Sync’s (hey, we were all young once, right?)”I’ll Never Stop” ends. It’s a lot of fun to put these together and try to be both randomly unpredictable and logically sense-making, so you don’t listen to it later and go “Why did I put Ben Folds’ ‘Still Fighting It’ next to ‘Meglio Stasera’, from the Pink Panther?” (answer: because I’d accidentally deleted Feist’s “So Sorry” from between them). Or maybe you listen to Jason Mraz’s “Wordplay” then Death Cab’s “Long Division” then Ben Lee’s “We’re all in this together” and go “wait, what?” and then realise that all three songs mention long division, which is uncommon enough that it’s satisfying to collect them in the one place.
I particularly enjoyed following “Smells like Teen Spirit” with a song from “High School Musical” about being in a basketball team (geddit? Teen spirit, team spirit from a tween movie? Oh nevermind.) (Hehe, geddit again? Oh, I’m on a roll here...) mainly because of how Kurt Cobain would so definitely have considered himself so, so much cooler than High School Musical.
Also it’s great because it never ends, but proceeds in fits and starts. For a while the other day it had ground to a halt at Nat King Cole’s exhortation not to let our eyes go shopping for our hearts, but then it became clear that that was neatly inverted when Lily Allen explained that she ‘[didn’t] care about clever, [didn’t] care about funny’ (more fool her) in “The Fear”. This naturally lead to The Smiths’ “Panic”, a song which suggests that we should hang the DJs because the music that they constantly play says nothing to him, Morrissey, about his life. So that leads us to The Crustaceans’ “The Ambulance Driver” (because if having ‘a diuretic conversation about the Doppler Effect’ in an Ambulance doesn’t happen to me in the next 7 years, I personally, will be surprised – that song says something about my life, if not Morrissey’s) and thus to Fountains of Wayne’s “Halley’s Waitress” for being another song reference so nerdy you could imagine an XKCD making the same comment.
... So, um that was incredibly boring to read, wasn’t it? Just a list of songs and weird connections. Sorry guys. But my point is that it’s fun to do, and you should try it (and then make me a mix tape!). Also that you should refrain from judging me for having boybands and the High School Musical soundtrack on my iPod (the latter was a gift, I totally swear).
Also, today, on my walk down Cleveland St, I saw a middle aged, average looking man wearing an XKCD t-shirt. I love that, when you see people from a distance and you think “you don’t notice that I exist at all, but I get the reference you’re making, and I think you’re pretty cool”. This was always how I secretly imagined it being when I used to wear my t-shirt that says “A city built on Rock& Roll would be structurally unsound.”
Ben Folds would have us believe that “there are people you meet who’re into something that is too big to be expressed through their clothes”, but quite frankly I don’t think that anything is impossible to express through clothes if you try hard enough (not that I would always recommend it, of course, usually “expressing” things is not a good primary aim in getting dressed of a morning). But what’s that big? The biggest thing I can think of that people can be into is religion, but that’s easily and commonly expressed sartorially (although politicians wearing cross necklaces are always to be regarded with suspicion: it smacks of being sent to prison and getting religion in time for your parole hearing, or some other kind of dreadful insincerity). If you’re into something more amorphous, it could still be expressed if you want, even negatively. Thus, if you’re into not being a douche, then you can refrain from wearing those “Hello Titty” t-shirts with a breast-ish Hello Kitty on it that you can buy from the Raben shop near Central. If you wish to warn people that you have Asperger’s and don’t quiiiiiiite understand how humour works you can wear those ones that say “I see dumb people reading my t-shirt”. I like baking and reading and history and geekery and Disney children’s movies and the BBC and absentminded positivity, and I have the badges on my lab coat to prove it. Maybe when I grow up I’ll just be Pauly Perrette, that lab chick from NCIS, that’d be pretty sweet.
What I’m saying here is (a) although you should never judge someone by their clothes, that doesn’t mean that people don’t ever tell you anything worthwhile about themselves through that medium, and (b) sometimes I really over-think innocent song lyrics. Well, um, most of the time, let’s face it. But at least that means I know to put the Spazzys’ cover of “My Boyfriend’s Back” after Dire Straights’ “Romeo and Juliet”, right? I mean, that’s got to be a life skill or something, right?
Today was somehow charming. The weather was so lovely and temperate this morning that I walked to uni from Moore Park just for the loveliness of it, and it was light (not just lightening, like usual) when I woke up. At uni there was some brief collusion, which is always interesting (this is not some kind of strange innuendo, I was colluding in a conspiracy to organise a birthday present). Then on the way home I listened to my awesome Tarzan playlist. When I got home, I spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen, baking strawberry muffins and hazelnut brownie-cupcakes, making mint lemonade and watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on my laptop. I defy anyone to have come up with a better way of spending the afternoon.
All this bakery and what have you is on the grounds that it’s my turn to bring food to my PBL tomorrow, but I haven’t the cash to buy chips and lollies or whatever it is that one might expect, whereas flour and sugar are cheap. Also, man, baking is a lot of fun, as well as being a more effective and impressive way to buy friendship. What with all these pastries and such (I made olive-parmesan pastry coils too, but they didn’t work out as well, so they don’t merit a mention) as well as the fact that tomorrow is the day chosen for James’ birthday thingy by Jenny and I (so I’ll be bringing in the present, which is also homemade, is my point here), I really feel like being awfully 1950s tomorrow. Unfortunately, being as how I don’t live with my parents and have a job (or have a job, even), I do not have so many pairs of comfortable-yet-stylish shoes that I can wear each pair about once a fortnight, which is the situation of someone I was talking to today. The upshot of this is that I have beautiful shoes and comfy-enough-to-wear-to-uni shoes and shoes that would go perfectly with a 1950s-feminine outfit, but no shoes which are all these things at once. So it’s jeans and joggers as usual.
What I was actually going to talk about, though, was my Tarzan playlist, which is awesome, mainly as an intellectual exercise. It’s called “Tarzan” because it swings along like Tarzan in the jungle, from lantana to lantana, with no idea where it’ll end up. The principle is this: each song (apart from the arbitrarily chosen 1st song, obviously) is picked because of some association with the previous song, but is not allowed to be from the same artist or album.
Thus, “Jeepers Creepers” a song by Frank “Ol’ Blue Eyes” Sinatra is followed by the Fratellis’ “Ole Black’n’Blue Eyes”, followed by “Ruby” by the Kaiser Chiefs, who, like the Fratellis, are a group of Scottish rockers. Cake’s “Never There” starts with a dial tone which (embarrassingly) is how N’Sync’s (hey, we were all young once, right?)”I’ll Never Stop” ends. It’s a lot of fun to put these together and try to be both randomly unpredictable and logically sense-making, so you don’t listen to it later and go “Why did I put Ben Folds’ ‘Still Fighting It’ next to ‘Meglio Stasera’, from the Pink Panther?” (answer: because I’d accidentally deleted Feist’s “So Sorry” from between them). Or maybe you listen to Jason Mraz’s “Wordplay” then Death Cab’s “Long Division” then Ben Lee’s “We’re all in this together” and go “wait, what?” and then realise that all three songs mention long division, which is uncommon enough that it’s satisfying to collect them in the one place.
I particularly enjoyed following “Smells like Teen Spirit” with a song from “High School Musical” about being in a basketball team (geddit? Teen spirit, team spirit from a tween movie? Oh nevermind.) (Hehe, geddit again? Oh, I’m on a roll here...) mainly because of how Kurt Cobain would so definitely have considered himself so, so much cooler than High School Musical.
Also it’s great because it never ends, but proceeds in fits and starts. For a while the other day it had ground to a halt at Nat King Cole’s exhortation not to let our eyes go shopping for our hearts, but then it became clear that that was neatly inverted when Lily Allen explained that she ‘[didn’t] care about clever, [didn’t] care about funny’ (more fool her) in “The Fear”. This naturally lead to The Smiths’ “Panic”, a song which suggests that we should hang the DJs because the music that they constantly play says nothing to him, Morrissey, about his life. So that leads us to The Crustaceans’ “The Ambulance Driver” (because if having ‘a diuretic conversation about the Doppler Effect’ in an Ambulance doesn’t happen to me in the next 7 years, I personally, will be surprised – that song says something about my life, if not Morrissey’s) and thus to Fountains of Wayne’s “Halley’s Waitress” for being another song reference so nerdy you could imagine an XKCD making the same comment.
... So, um that was incredibly boring to read, wasn’t it? Just a list of songs and weird connections. Sorry guys. But my point is that it’s fun to do, and you should try it (and then make me a mix tape!). Also that you should refrain from judging me for having boybands and the High School Musical soundtrack on my iPod (the latter was a gift, I totally swear).
Also, today, on my walk down Cleveland St, I saw a middle aged, average looking man wearing an XKCD t-shirt. I love that, when you see people from a distance and you think “you don’t notice that I exist at all, but I get the reference you’re making, and I think you’re pretty cool”. This was always how I secretly imagined it being when I used to wear my t-shirt that says “A city built on Rock& Roll would be structurally unsound.”
Ben Folds would have us believe that “there are people you meet who’re into something that is too big to be expressed through their clothes”, but quite frankly I don’t think that anything is impossible to express through clothes if you try hard enough (not that I would always recommend it, of course, usually “expressing” things is not a good primary aim in getting dressed of a morning). But what’s that big? The biggest thing I can think of that people can be into is religion, but that’s easily and commonly expressed sartorially (although politicians wearing cross necklaces are always to be regarded with suspicion: it smacks of being sent to prison and getting religion in time for your parole hearing, or some other kind of dreadful insincerity). If you’re into something more amorphous, it could still be expressed if you want, even negatively. Thus, if you’re into not being a douche, then you can refrain from wearing those “Hello Titty” t-shirts with a breast-ish Hello Kitty on it that you can buy from the Raben shop near Central. If you wish to warn people that you have Asperger’s and don’t quiiiiiiite understand how humour works you can wear those ones that say “I see dumb people reading my t-shirt”. I like baking and reading and history and geekery and Disney children’s movies and the BBC and absentminded positivity, and I have the badges on my lab coat to prove it. Maybe when I grow up I’ll just be Pauly Perrette, that lab chick from NCIS, that’d be pretty sweet.
What I’m saying here is (a) although you should never judge someone by their clothes, that doesn’t mean that people don’t ever tell you anything worthwhile about themselves through that medium, and (b) sometimes I really over-think innocent song lyrics. Well, um, most of the time, let’s face it. But at least that means I know to put the Spazzys’ cover of “My Boyfriend’s Back” after Dire Straights’ “Romeo and Juliet”, right? I mean, that’s got to be a life skill or something, right?
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
In Which there are more Nice Things (but not in a Cloying sort of Way)
So, My Flatmate Georgia Who Has Cooler Musical Taste Than I Do informs me that Nick Cave keeps a weather diary. To be strictly honest, this sounds marginally less exciting than almost any other kind of diary I can think of (except maybe some kind of log of the dryness of paint, or the growth of grass or similar, perhaps) but apparently it’s great because not only can he (after checking) tell you for certain whether it rained on the 4th of May, but also because of being an exercise in interesting writing. If you describe things which boil down to “at first it was sort of cold, but later on it got warmer, and it looked like it was going to rain but then it didn’t” every day, I guess you either become more and more boring and bored with it, or you get to pay more attention, and become a more interesting writer. “This afternoon the air was like: a crisp green apple/warm soft syrup, suffocating and sweet/ harsh and brisk as an illtempered jogger/ so windy that it was like being an inch tall, standing on the lip of a hairdryer” or something. Obviously, this is not a knack I’ve got.
Nonetheless the principle of writing things out properly is surely for the best, so despite the misleading promises (well, implications) in my last post, I hereby give you the things which made the Nice Things List today. As usual, lots of other nice things happened, and no-one should feel offended if they aren’t mentioned.
Today, after the small child being a birdplane around the ocean-watching people(which I mentioned in my last post), there were police horses on my street. This is in the same category of appeals-to-my-inner-6-year-old as an icecream truck on my street: thrillingly novel even if irrelevant to me. Also, I suppose you’re probably supposed to talk about Mounted Police (or is that only what you call them in Canada?) or something, but the actual horses are the cool bit. Those are horses with more authority and gravitas than me, and I’m a bona fide biped. Also, at this point, they have more of a career than I do, technically, by a long shot. They actually have jobs. Since I’m a student on Centrelink, if they earned wages (which I’m going to have to go ahead and doubt) and payed taxes on those wages (do employees of the state pay taxes? Surely they must, but it seems strangely circular. I guess they’d have to do so in order to get tax deductions) anyway if all those things, then those horses would be able to say to me “my taxes pay your wages” or whatever it is that good honest annoyed taxpayers say to dole-bludgers (except that now I come to think of it, we’ll have to add “also if they could talk” to the list of “if”s there).
Fortunately this is all by-the-by. The point is; they were on my street and that was awesome. Also, it was clear that everyone in the street was secretly a bit excited. On a nice Saturday afternoon, there are a lot of people hanging around and going to the cafe and going for jogs and mooching in the carpark and generally cruising like life is a movie about youths in the 1950s on my street. Apparently it’s just the Place to Be. So there were all these people about, trying to be all cool and not act like police horses were at all worthy of their interest, but visibly, from my balcony, unable to resist surreptitiously watching the horses. Joggers would jog coolly past, not looking, and then once they had gotten past where it would be clear, just ever-so-casually happen to look to their left and check them out.
There is, it’s true, something strangely incongruous about horses on asphalt. Back in the day, when horses were all the crack (um, so it occurs to me that to be “all the crack” is slang from maybe the 17th Century, and thus not part of common parlance any more. It does not mean that people went about jazzed up on having smoked horses, it means more like “all the rage”. I should change it, maybe, and take out this whole bracketed bit, but I like the idea of using the slang of the time in question when discussing it. It seems neat somehow. Also, maybe a little tragic that this was just the expression that came to me, and that “all the rage” was much harder to think of. I wasn’t even alive when that was a thing people said) back then, as I said, people wouldn’t look twice at horses just moseying about like that, but I suppose with time comes novelty and all that.
Also, how amusing that the thing I was trying to say in the main part of that sentence was so much less than the parenthetical remark that nested in it. Sort of like those people who get tumours bigger than they are. There was one on the news the other day, I think? This chick had presumably just thought that she was pregnant or something, but the thing in her abdomen ended up being 90 kg or something. She was just a tiny woman (after the removal, obviously) so maybe that number is wrong. Anyway, how awful that would be! Instead of saying “oh you poor thing, are you ok, that must’ve been really traumatic for you!” people invariably say “how could you possibly let it get that big?” and judge you. This seems harsh, given how powerful a motivator denial is, not to mention if you don’t speak English well or are psychiatrically ill or something. Also, public hospital waiting lists, maybe? Surely not.
Anyway, later on, once the horses invested in the authority of the state and their rather pleased looking riders (also invested with the authority of the state, but whatever) had clopped out of our day, I caught a bus to the city, and everyone on that bus makes it onto the List. There’s something sort of great about how different everyone is on a bus to the city on a Saturday evening to a weekday morning. Instead of looking sleepy and standoffish in suits and uni clothes, people are excited and the girls are painted and dressed outlandishly and everyone gives the impression of actually wanting to be there, either on the bus or at their destination. No-one has that air of fatigued duty you get at 8am on a Thursday.
Meriting special mention on this bus are 3 sets of people. The surfy dudes up the back, to whom, in Maroubra, one always rather unfairly attributes a vague aura of menace, were sitting talking about how wonderful it was that there was a pod of dolphins in the water with them that afternoon. It was pretty adorable, you guys. Next, the bus filled with sparkly young women in cold-looking dresses and large necklaces, and with hordes of people in red and white scarves on their way to the football. All these people seemed excited too, especially the tiny little girl (maybe a 4 year old?) with her footy-fevered family who clearly didn’t quite know what was going on, but who was nonetheless just as excited as could be. (Heh, I’m noticing a theme here: as a highly excitable person myself, I get all pleased when other people, even ones I don’t know, are excited about things.) Lastly, in amongst all this hubbub, the woman sitting beside me (who was also dressed to go out, as I recall) was reading a biography of Alexander the Great. This seems like a cool thing to be doing, to be all “well, I’m going out for the evening, but I do want to learn about the history of our culture [and Alexander the Great is totally part of our modern culture, his influence was crazy-big] en route!”. I feel like we need more of this sort of thing.
Also, the rest of my evening was perfectly charming and I saw some of my dear old friends and then unexpectedly went briefly to Swing at the Roxbury. I may recount these adventures to you another day, Dear Reader, but in the meanwhile it’s almost 3 (!) so I’m definitely retiring to bed.
Nonetheless the principle of writing things out properly is surely for the best, so despite the misleading promises (well, implications) in my last post, I hereby give you the things which made the Nice Things List today. As usual, lots of other nice things happened, and no-one should feel offended if they aren’t mentioned.
Today, after the small child being a birdplane around the ocean-watching people(which I mentioned in my last post), there were police horses on my street. This is in the same category of appeals-to-my-inner-6-year-old as an icecream truck on my street: thrillingly novel even if irrelevant to me. Also, I suppose you’re probably supposed to talk about Mounted Police (or is that only what you call them in Canada?) or something, but the actual horses are the cool bit. Those are horses with more authority and gravitas than me, and I’m a bona fide biped. Also, at this point, they have more of a career than I do, technically, by a long shot. They actually have jobs. Since I’m a student on Centrelink, if they earned wages (which I’m going to have to go ahead and doubt) and payed taxes on those wages (do employees of the state pay taxes? Surely they must, but it seems strangely circular. I guess they’d have to do so in order to get tax deductions) anyway if all those things, then those horses would be able to say to me “my taxes pay your wages” or whatever it is that good honest annoyed taxpayers say to dole-bludgers (except that now I come to think of it, we’ll have to add “also if they could talk” to the list of “if”s there).
Fortunately this is all by-the-by. The point is; they were on my street and that was awesome. Also, it was clear that everyone in the street was secretly a bit excited. On a nice Saturday afternoon, there are a lot of people hanging around and going to the cafe and going for jogs and mooching in the carpark and generally cruising like life is a movie about youths in the 1950s on my street. Apparently it’s just the Place to Be. So there were all these people about, trying to be all cool and not act like police horses were at all worthy of their interest, but visibly, from my balcony, unable to resist surreptitiously watching the horses. Joggers would jog coolly past, not looking, and then once they had gotten past where it would be clear, just ever-so-casually happen to look to their left and check them out.
There is, it’s true, something strangely incongruous about horses on asphalt. Back in the day, when horses were all the crack (um, so it occurs to me that to be “all the crack” is slang from maybe the 17th Century, and thus not part of common parlance any more. It does not mean that people went about jazzed up on having smoked horses, it means more like “all the rage”. I should change it, maybe, and take out this whole bracketed bit, but I like the idea of using the slang of the time in question when discussing it. It seems neat somehow. Also, maybe a little tragic that this was just the expression that came to me, and that “all the rage” was much harder to think of. I wasn’t even alive when that was a thing people said) back then, as I said, people wouldn’t look twice at horses just moseying about like that, but I suppose with time comes novelty and all that.
Also, how amusing that the thing I was trying to say in the main part of that sentence was so much less than the parenthetical remark that nested in it. Sort of like those people who get tumours bigger than they are. There was one on the news the other day, I think? This chick had presumably just thought that she was pregnant or something, but the thing in her abdomen ended up being 90 kg or something. She was just a tiny woman (after the removal, obviously) so maybe that number is wrong. Anyway, how awful that would be! Instead of saying “oh you poor thing, are you ok, that must’ve been really traumatic for you!” people invariably say “how could you possibly let it get that big?” and judge you. This seems harsh, given how powerful a motivator denial is, not to mention if you don’t speak English well or are psychiatrically ill or something. Also, public hospital waiting lists, maybe? Surely not.
Anyway, later on, once the horses invested in the authority of the state and their rather pleased looking riders (also invested with the authority of the state, but whatever) had clopped out of our day, I caught a bus to the city, and everyone on that bus makes it onto the List. There’s something sort of great about how different everyone is on a bus to the city on a Saturday evening to a weekday morning. Instead of looking sleepy and standoffish in suits and uni clothes, people are excited and the girls are painted and dressed outlandishly and everyone gives the impression of actually wanting to be there, either on the bus or at their destination. No-one has that air of fatigued duty you get at 8am on a Thursday.
Meriting special mention on this bus are 3 sets of people. The surfy dudes up the back, to whom, in Maroubra, one always rather unfairly attributes a vague aura of menace, were sitting talking about how wonderful it was that there was a pod of dolphins in the water with them that afternoon. It was pretty adorable, you guys. Next, the bus filled with sparkly young women in cold-looking dresses and large necklaces, and with hordes of people in red and white scarves on their way to the football. All these people seemed excited too, especially the tiny little girl (maybe a 4 year old?) with her footy-fevered family who clearly didn’t quite know what was going on, but who was nonetheless just as excited as could be. (Heh, I’m noticing a theme here: as a highly excitable person myself, I get all pleased when other people, even ones I don’t know, are excited about things.) Lastly, in amongst all this hubbub, the woman sitting beside me (who was also dressed to go out, as I recall) was reading a biography of Alexander the Great. This seems like a cool thing to be doing, to be all “well, I’m going out for the evening, but I do want to learn about the history of our culture [and Alexander the Great is totally part of our modern culture, his influence was crazy-big] en route!”. I feel like we need more of this sort of thing.
Also, the rest of my evening was perfectly charming and I saw some of my dear old friends and then unexpectedly went briefly to Swing at the Roxbury. I may recount these adventures to you another day, Dear Reader, but in the meanwhile it’s almost 3 (!) so I’m definitely retiring to bed.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
In Which Perkiness Ensues
It has been occurring to me recently that what is needed is a deliberate appreciation of the small good things that are all over the place. As such, for the next... shall we say fortnight? I have decided to make a note of three good things, no matter how small or large, with no repetitions allowed within the fortnight, every day.
Obviously it’s not what you’d call a highly sophisticated plan, but I’m pretty sure that this sort of thing does people good. Here are yesterday’s Things (and don’t worry, I’m not going to insist on posting them all, it’s just that we need a “latest post” which has a higher sanity quotient, I feel, so this becomes a blog post rather than a 6 word entry in my notebook).
Here goes: it may sound silly, but I really like that rustling noise my (and presumably your) hair makes when I walk into a slight breeze with my hair really clean and dry and untied. Maybe this is only a thing with long hair, and obviously it would only work with your hair out, but there’s this lovely silky noise as it lifts and settles slightly with every step. A sort of high pitched “shhsss shhsss shhsss” noise. Maybe that’s a bit odd, but I like it.
Next up, yesterday we had a lecture in which Awfully Nice Jenny and I sat together and listened but also sneakily ate Nutella (of which, for reasons complex, she had a jar with her) off bits of plastic fork. This cutlery-modulated mode of delivery is the best way to eat Nutella. Once you sully it with bread or whatever you’re supposed to spread it on, it’s all downhill (unless you’re making a fantastic dessert pizza, or maybe having it on banana or something). Obviously this is slightly idiosyncratic, as an approach, once you’re older than about 8, so it’s especially nice that other people have alSso feel that it is acceptable, even preferable to eat it thus. But mainly it was just an awesome little impromptu lecture-picnic, and that was lovely.
Lastly (for yesterday) I have, over the last couple of days, been going through my ridiculous collection of earrings, ostensibly to tidy them up (so that they’re not just some kind of tangled sparkly morass in my jewellery box/drawer, but rather accessible, with the two halves of pairs together, and fewer empty boxes, and not all tied together by necklaces) but really, secretly, to find my favourite Bunny earrings, which are completely adorable and which have been lost for months. Last thing yesterday evening (so much last thing that it was really this morning, because we’d stayed up craft-project-ing and watching Audrey Hepburn movies and Rage) I finally found them, and there was much rejoicing. They say “why is it that things are always in that last place you look?” and usually it’s because I take the traditional approach, whereby having found what I’m looking for, I stop looking. In this instance, though, I must’ve gone through easily 100 tiny boxes and pairs of earrings all tangled up, and the ones in question turned out to be in genuinely the 3rd last box to be sorted through. This is good, because it kept me all motivated for the other 96 or whatever, but because they weren't in the very last box I hadn’t given up hope. Also, cannot help but feel that the very last box of all would have been pushing it a bit, just slightly clichéd.
Obviously, there were lots of good things yesterday, (any day on which you watch old movies while sewin’ on the couch is a good day, at least in part) but I think that picking Small Delightful Things is the real spirit of such a project. It’s dreadfully important, surely to remember to be delighted by little things every day, and I’ve been a smidgin off-task in that respect this last week, so this is charming.
It’s only early in today, so I haven’t got my Things yet, (I don’t want to use them up early, or I could be sneaky and lazy later on, and not bother to pay attention to the nice bits of the world), but the beautiful weather and view out my window, coupled with the nice, ordinary neighbourhood noises (waves in the distance, the occasional car purring into the carpark, small children being excitable on scooters and suchlike, and sometimes the distant vague pop of the outdoor military practice shooting range on the next headland) is certainly looking likely to make the cut. Also, it seems like a good thing to use up “it’s a lovely day” now, so I can’t be all “eh, whatever, it’s a nice day, I guess?” to make up numbers in a week’s time.
Maybe I should be more specific, though, it seems lazy not to bother. I think it’s cool that there’s a spot opposite my house, on the edge of the park, where there often seems to be a congregation of folks (different folks each time, not some kind of weird park-based cult) pointing and looking into the middle distance, probably at boats or something. This is kind of lovely, especially when, as now, there is a very small boy running around and around the little group (pretty clearly his family) uninterested in the whales or seagulls or whatever, but rather zooming about with his arms held out flat and slightly flapping them. Like some kind of excitable bird-cross-plane thing. Gives one the urge to go out to the park and bird-plane at some seagulls oneself, really.
Obviously it’s not what you’d call a highly sophisticated plan, but I’m pretty sure that this sort of thing does people good. Here are yesterday’s Things (and don’t worry, I’m not going to insist on posting them all, it’s just that we need a “latest post” which has a higher sanity quotient, I feel, so this becomes a blog post rather than a 6 word entry in my notebook).
Here goes: it may sound silly, but I really like that rustling noise my (and presumably your) hair makes when I walk into a slight breeze with my hair really clean and dry and untied. Maybe this is only a thing with long hair, and obviously it would only work with your hair out, but there’s this lovely silky noise as it lifts and settles slightly with every step. A sort of high pitched “shhsss shhsss shhsss” noise. Maybe that’s a bit odd, but I like it.
Next up, yesterday we had a lecture in which Awfully Nice Jenny and I sat together and listened but also sneakily ate Nutella (of which, for reasons complex, she had a jar with her) off bits of plastic fork. This cutlery-modulated mode of delivery is the best way to eat Nutella. Once you sully it with bread or whatever you’re supposed to spread it on, it’s all downhill (unless you’re making a fantastic dessert pizza, or maybe having it on banana or something). Obviously this is slightly idiosyncratic, as an approach, once you’re older than about 8, so it’s especially nice that other people have alSso feel that it is acceptable, even preferable to eat it thus. But mainly it was just an awesome little impromptu lecture-picnic, and that was lovely.
Lastly (for yesterday) I have, over the last couple of days, been going through my ridiculous collection of earrings, ostensibly to tidy them up (so that they’re not just some kind of tangled sparkly morass in my jewellery box/drawer, but rather accessible, with the two halves of pairs together, and fewer empty boxes, and not all tied together by necklaces) but really, secretly, to find my favourite Bunny earrings, which are completely adorable and which have been lost for months. Last thing yesterday evening (so much last thing that it was really this morning, because we’d stayed up craft-project-ing and watching Audrey Hepburn movies and Rage) I finally found them, and there was much rejoicing. They say “why is it that things are always in that last place you look?” and usually it’s because I take the traditional approach, whereby having found what I’m looking for, I stop looking. In this instance, though, I must’ve gone through easily 100 tiny boxes and pairs of earrings all tangled up, and the ones in question turned out to be in genuinely the 3rd last box to be sorted through. This is good, because it kept me all motivated for the other 96 or whatever, but because they weren't in the very last box I hadn’t given up hope. Also, cannot help but feel that the very last box of all would have been pushing it a bit, just slightly clichéd.
Obviously, there were lots of good things yesterday, (any day on which you watch old movies while sewin’ on the couch is a good day, at least in part) but I think that picking Small Delightful Things is the real spirit of such a project. It’s dreadfully important, surely to remember to be delighted by little things every day, and I’ve been a smidgin off-task in that respect this last week, so this is charming.
It’s only early in today, so I haven’t got my Things yet, (I don’t want to use them up early, or I could be sneaky and lazy later on, and not bother to pay attention to the nice bits of the world), but the beautiful weather and view out my window, coupled with the nice, ordinary neighbourhood noises (waves in the distance, the occasional car purring into the carpark, small children being excitable on scooters and suchlike, and sometimes the distant vague pop of the outdoor military practice shooting range on the next headland) is certainly looking likely to make the cut. Also, it seems like a good thing to use up “it’s a lovely day” now, so I can’t be all “eh, whatever, it’s a nice day, I guess?” to make up numbers in a week’s time.
Maybe I should be more specific, though, it seems lazy not to bother. I think it’s cool that there’s a spot opposite my house, on the edge of the park, where there often seems to be a congregation of folks (different folks each time, not some kind of weird park-based cult) pointing and looking into the middle distance, probably at boats or something. This is kind of lovely, especially when, as now, there is a very small boy running around and around the little group (pretty clearly his family) uninterested in the whales or seagulls or whatever, but rather zooming about with his arms held out flat and slightly flapping them. Like some kind of excitable bird-cross-plane thing. Gives one the urge to go out to the park and bird-plane at some seagulls oneself, really.
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