poshy poshy la la

Bored on the internet* I decided to check out my old High School’s website. Boy have they gone all flash. No more selling drugs behind the old canteen eh? Okay, sure I admit that although I went to a state high school we were probably more posh than half the local private schools. By “we” I mean the powers that be rather than the students themselves (who were mostly bogans). But when I was in year 9 we merged with another local high school. I guess I didn’t realise just how far our poshy poshy la la attitude extended until then. What we called “the canteen” they called “the tuck shop” and what we called “environment duty” (this is where every student is required as a rotation to do a whole day of picking up rubbish instead of being in school. TRUE!!) they called “scum”. What we refered to as a “bitch” they refered to as a “fucking moll” or “scrag”. It was a bit like Neighbours meets Prisoner Cell Block H (and all of them were “Frankie, the overacting lesbian who threw down shelves and coerced Doreen into being her ’special friend’”).

After that though, the school grew together and we turned into a super high school and that reflected in the prices of property in the school zone (yeah, people still lie about where they live to get a place in the school). Looking back, it was lucky I was in the zone to get in there. Academically it was an excellent school with a good rep – which proves that you don’t have to go to a private school to get a good education. But I guess they followed alot of private the school ethos: I remember being in grade 6 and having to go and do a piano audition for them in order to qualify for the music program. puh-lease!

Anyway, the website had a newsletter on it and I came across this menu for the school canteen (tuck shop for all you molls out there!).

Week Ending 02/06/06 Monday
Soup
Potato and leek $3.00
Lunch
Penne matriciana $3.10
Vegetarian
Cheese and spinach filo triangles $3.10
Gourmet roll
Pastrami, semi dried tomato and lettuce $3.55

Tuesday
Salad
Pasta salad with tuna and pesto mayonaise $3.25
Lunch
Thai red chicken curry with jasmine rice $3.10
Vegetarian
Cheese and spinach canneloni $3.10
Gourmet roll
Virginian ham, swiss cheese and seeded mustard baguette $3.55

Wednesday
Canteen closed due to Report Writing Day

Thursday
Salad
Rice salad with fresh basil, capsicum and balsamic vinigarette $3.25
Lunch
Penne with fresh chilli, bacon and capsicum $3.10
Snack
Baked potato with sour cream, cheese and colesaw $3.10
Gourmet roll
Turkey, swiss cheese and pesto mayo $3.55

Friday
Soup
Carrot and coriander $3.00
Lunch
Calamari n’chips with tartare and lemon $3.80
Snack
Hokkien noodles with Asian vegetables $3.10
Gourmet roll
Salami, roasted capsicum, spinach, onion and fetta cheese $3.55

ooooo la la, that’s a bit high falootin’ innit? Where the fuck are the sausage rolls and meat pies mate? What about the steamed dim sims with soy sauce and chiko rolls? WHERE ARE THE CHIKO ROLLS? No Redskins? (too politically incorrect I suppose). I am highly disturbed by this menu. Sure, who doesn’t want a Rice salad with fresh basil, capsicum and balsamic vinigarette for lunch? But do teens really want that?

I am reminded of canteen lunch when I was in year 9 at high school and standing in the line at the canteen making up a song about chicken burgers.
yummy.
yummy.
chicken.
burgers.
and.
a.
sunny.
boy.

..no more

* translantion: procrastinting writing my reports!

Embarrassing crushes of the past

I wasn’t always this cool you know…what? oh right, well okay maybe I was always an embarrassment but I think it’s time I really came clean about just how embarrassing.

Pretty much every young lass has a crush or two on a TV celeb or other. The 80s were ripe with good ones; Michael J Fox, Kirk Cameron, ..Rick Astley.. err, okay maybe not all were plum pickings and let me tell you I had a few secret little crushes that I look back on how and laugh hysterically about.

It’s about time I came clean on my pick of the embarrassing crushes I never talked about in public.

Alex Papps I’m talking about his character in The Henderson Kids. Yes, that’s right, the leather jacket wearing “bad boy” from the wrong side of the tracks. hahahahahaHAHAHA

Alice Cooper What’s that you say? Alice Cooper is totally cool? Of course he is, but not if you’re 10 years old! What the hell is so attractive to a 10 year old? Was it the eye makeup? The fact that he’s an …older man? The threat of being whipped by chains? The future career as a crack whore? Who knows!

Astro Boy Is it the girly eye lashes? The bullet proof undies? The fact that he has no hair, just spikes? Or maybe the fact that he was both a robot AND a cartoon (you decide which is geekier!) No, he wasn’t real, but god I loved him so much. edit: I just remembered that when I was 7 I used a blunt instrument to scratch an image of astro boy into the bathroom wall (new paint job!). I got into so much trouble.

Cameron Daddo Two words: Perfect Match! From the moment Greg Evans left the show I could stop focusing on Dexter the match making robot and start up with the REAL MEN (err…Cameron Daddo, apparently!).

Scott Baio I want charles in charge of me!

Obviously I was completely obsessed with men in positions of domesticity. Hold me closer Tony Danza!

David Lee Roth Give me some of that shaggy, peroxided hair and crab infested leathers! okay, it was only for about 2 minutes when I was 10 but I saw him on some video clip and mistook myself for a backstage groupie. Don’t worry got over it v.quickly.

craig mclachlan I am so ashamed.

The Fonz He could operate juke boxes AND GIRLS with one single click. God I was such a whore!

Inspector Gadget I had a little fetish for extending bits…

KITT I had the fucking hugest crush on the car from Knight Rider. No, not Hoff – the CAR. I loved the car. I was going to marry the CAR.

THE CAR AND ME GETTING MARRIED ON THE BEACH!

New kids on the Block When I was 11 I decided that I was going to move to Boston so that I could stalk New Kids on the Block. Yes I deserve a wedgie for that.

Starsky and Hutch Rather disturbing but this is not a crush of the past. I still have the horn for S&H. Yep.

the curse of being a just a friend.

warts and all

A while ago treespotter pointed me in the direction of an article reviewing a book (“Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You”) by Sean Thomas which details one man’s thoughts on dating women in 2006.

You can find the article here.

It’s a warts and all reflection on his sex life, online dating and his general thoughts on the banality of women.

He is fairly brutal in his assessments of the women he meets: “Her life seems slightly tragic and she appears to be a little mixed-up, but she’s got a Pulitzer prize-winning bottom.” His opinions about women and sex generally verge on the outré: “To this day I find short skirts and gingham dresses very exciting. I also like girls with bare legs.” And he is alarmingly frank on the question of not having sex for a while: “Once, during my schlep across the Sinai of celibacy, I caught myself looking at a ‘naked’ mannequin in a shop window. With lust.”

…

Here, for instance, describing a date who is having difficulty understanding Queen, The Musical:

“The woman is a moron. She is a cretin. She is, I fear, emblematic; in other words, she is crystallising a question that has been locked in the attic of my mind for some time. Just why are so many women so thick?”

ROFL, how difficult is it to understand Queen the Musical for fucks sake? As brutal as it is, it still sounds pretty right to me. Not surprising at all, but also I wonder whether we all have these thoughts – both men and women, not just men – about eachother? God knows I’ve pondered the thickness of men a couple of (or 10,000) times.

Being new milleniumers (made that one up folks!) are we just all a little too cynical for our own good these days? What exactly are we looking for that is beyond ‘normal human everyday person’ anyway? What exactly are we holding out for? There is only one Cate Blanchett gents! ONLY ONE, and she’s taken. And ladies, there is only ONE Brad Pitt and he’s a complete freak anyway. I mean really, what do we want? Sometimes I just feel that we’re getting a little too frigin high on our horses here. Just how great do we think we are that we (both male and female) just dismiss eachother at a glace (or do only males do that)? OR are we just so finely tuned that we all know what we want (someone better than us. hehehe) when we see it at first glance? Who knows, the whole world of sex confuses me to no end.

In the article, which was written by a woman, she says of the book

If I were a man, I’d be delighted that someone has finally had the courage to say, “This is how we are. You don’t have to like it, but it’s true and we’re okay with it.” As a woman, I am agog: reading Thomas’s book is like rootling around the brain of some random nice-seeming bloke: it’s fascinating, startling and not entirely comfortable. “I have often found that the most successful, affluent and dominant women (in terms of career) often turn out to be the most feminine and yielding when they get the chance.”

Putting aside what I said before for a moment. This paragraph distrubed me because I realised that this is the crux of what I have a big problem with:
Some (many? most? all?) men are fucktards (it’s been in the vocab lately) dressed up in the guise of ‘nice guy’.

You know what? I actually like nice guy – not to be confused with SNAG or crying jag. I just mean, everyday nice guy for fucks sake. By nice I mean a decent human being. Someone you can count on, have a laugh with and totally trust. I hate it when people assume that being nice means being a sap. Who likes saps? pfe. Anyway, the issue is that I have a problem when people pretend to be something they’re not. If men are pretending to be nice just to get laid then I have a such a big problem with that – words can’t even describe it! Then I thought about it some more. So, so many males I know act very nice to reel ‘em in but really delight (and I mean in a “hey, guess what I did to some random chick the other day” kind of way) in acting like bastards when they got catch. You see, when you’re privvy to some inside male gossip then you realise just how calculating the whole thing can be.

yes, yes, yes I realise I am generalising a tad, but it just keeps popping up – this insincerity. It’s not just once or twice either. Women deceive too, but is it a whole movement like it seems to be with men? Do we do it as blatantly or is it more covert? I’m not talking about the kind of deception that is specific ie: I’m going to lie to this person because I want to have an affair with them. That is not the kind of deception I mean. I’m talking about the deception of a whole character…leading someone to believe your whole persona is something that it isn’t.

Anyway, that is the part of gender relations that bothers me. The book sounds like an awesome read. I’m glad someone has finally come out and gone the ‘warts and all’ route on men’s thoughts.

they keep pulling me back in…

Due to the fact that our maternal DNA is full to the brim with the crazy gene, Bro and I are in the process of taking over the family business. Rather than go into the particulars of this, I’ll just say that this involves dealing with fucktards and money. If there are two things in the world that I hate it’s fucktards and money. Things have gotten to breaking point about the business and so I suggested that if we don’t take over soon we’re all going to die because I will kill us all. Yes, I am primed to KILL!

Ma, who is at the head of this whole extravaganza is ..how do I put this nicely?.. um the most paranoid woman in the world when it comes to business (okay, when it comes to anything). Sure, she is a hard arse and actually quite good with money, but she also has been known to ring lawyers, partners, clients, associates ANYONE and yell and accuse people of things they haven’t done! This then starts a spiral of angry letters and the like that I end up having to deal with. This is the main problem – I don’t want to deal with crap that other people have started. I deal with a whole bunch of shit that sends me crazy all day. I am stressed out everyday – and then I deal with extra shit outside of work hours as well. I’m sorry to be a petulant child about it, but I can’t help wondering what I’ve done wrong here to keep getting the short end of the stick in this life of mine. Was I Stalin in my past life? Maybe that’s the answer. Anyway, of course the business itself is an ongoing problem in that it is a living breathing organism, but I figure that if you extinguish the fuse (ma) the main bomb is rendered useless. In all seriousness I have been balancing on the edge of hysteria about the whole thing for quite a while. It’s just been very, very hard

I however, as you may have realised, am generally bad with business and money. Bro is probably better, but both of us have this thing of really not giving a toss about worshipping the cash and coinage. We’re not clueless but we’re just not cut throat – not that you should be in this business…but then maybe every business requires getting your freakshow on. I figure though, the stress of dealing with the problems created by the maternal unit will be abated if the maternal unit is eliminated from the equation. Is this a dumb idea?

Do you ever have days where you feel like you’re about to lose it? Really, truly lose it! I’m not dealing very well with things lately.

ew

I’m on first aid this week. It’s a job I loathe. Everyone loathes it. There is nothing nice about trying to eat your lunch and being interrupted every few mintues with yet another case of “I feel sick”. I have no idea how parents go with telling the real from the fake. They all put on that pouty face and look about the same to me. Sure there are the severe cases where you can tell that the kid is about to die because they’re pale and haven’t even finished eating their sunny boy (best part of lunch eh?) but apart from that it’s all a guessing game really. I guess nowadays kids have less chance of staying home especially if both parents work! Maybe kids don’t want to put the work required in either. I know that Ferris Bueller had the fabulous guide to faking out the parents but who the hell is going to go to that kind of trouble anymore? I did it a few times, of course but I had hard arse parents who wouldn’t put up with any of that shit.

Once, while trying to stay home from school (test) mum plugged a thermometer in my mouth and went to make a coffee. Having read some great advice about running the thermometer under some hot water until the mercury went higher I turned straight onto my side and dipped the thing in my cup of tea. Of course it burst in about two seconds and mercury went everywhere. When mum came in I had broken glass in my hand and a guilty look on my face gee, my temperature must be really high – look it broke. I think I actually said that.

The thing about the school fake out is that you never really know if they’re lying or not. In the end you spend the whole of lunchtime on the blower to the ‘rents discussing whether the kid is lying or not. If you don’t call then you get the parent coming up to school in a rage blaming the teachers for neglect and if you do call them then you get the tut tut of disturbing their day. You can’t win, I tell ya!

Anyway, the worst thing about being on first aid and walking in and out of the sick bay all day, smelling bad smells and coming into contact with germs is that by the end of lunch on a Wednesday arvo you feel like absolute shit..
..and then you realise you have a staff meeting after school. ugh.

*edit* this has nothing to do with the point of the entry (though the entry, like everything else I write actually has no point..) but last night I had a dream that my life was a British TV show (comedy) – they don’t really have ’sitcoms’ but it was sort of like that excellent show The IT Crowd (highly recommend) or Black Books. Folks, my dream had a laugh track! Is this what being on crack feels like? Does anyone else have fucked up dreams like mine? Noone else ever posts their dreams so I have no idea. But I feel like I’m on my own with this one.

the circle game

melancholy guitars and Australian narrative

The Australian edition.

I’ve been thinking of The Go-Between’s Cattle and Cane all week long. I woke to the news of Grant McLennan dying last Monday morning, and this probably should have been my post then but I had already done one. I’ve been listening to Cattle and Cane all week long, at first inadvertantly through radio tributes and then coming across it through conversation or in print. By the afternoon it was already engrained in my head. It’s one of those songs that I go back to every so often anyway. I don’t really know whether it is quintessentially Australian. The phrase is something I tend to cringe at but I guess it is. It’s funny, I’ve never been to Cairns – or walked through a “fields of cane”, but I know what this song means to me. It really is one of those beautiful songs. Maybe you will find a little bit in there that means something to you as well..

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Now, let’s move it down a few cities along the Eastern shoreline to Melbourne where Paul Kelly is a sensation and not just because he sang about the AFL in Leaps and Bounds (who hasn’t looked to see whether it’s 11 degrees while crossing that bridge, eh?). Paul Kelly is a teller of tales and this is a country of personal stories. We don’t have those darn kings and queens beheading everyone. We’ve got the tale of him or her or them – that’s it. That’s us. I highly recommend to her door if you’re a romantic, but I digress, the song that fits this particular moment is a world away from the Cattle and Cane of Northern Queensland. From St Kilda to King’s Cross is an urban love story and I know this because before dx went down this blog was strictly meant for only an urban love stories…

I’ve done both of the things in this song – from “everything shines just like a postcard” to “where the palm trees have it hard” (for non-Australians Kings Cross is in Sydney and St Kilda is in Melbourne). For the record, I pick the same one that Paul does.

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I contemplated Nick Cave (Melbourne) but he didn’t fit and really needs his own entry. Though as an interesting piece of trivia I read somewhere that McLennan wrote Cattle and Cane on Nick Cave’s guitar. Kelly and Cave have also collaborated. There ya go.

And so with two songs I’ve covered the Eastern States (does Tasmania really count?). I hope you like them. They are two of my favourites.

ps: if you have trouble with castpost being crappy it means you need to let the song load first (play/pause…wait a while) – the reason for this is that it’s free and that I’m cheap

the talk..

shorts on the highway.

Tom Cruise
Yeah, we called the crazy police a while ago but it seems a tad too late to “Free Katie” now; she’s spawned him a child. All we can do is back away slowly and never look back. I mean, the man is a Scientologist for fucks sake. ALIENS folks, we’re not even talking humans here! The couch jumping was only really the icing on the cake in the realm of crazy.

The thing is, we can’t back away. He’s always *there*, lurking on every talk show, agreeing to interviews in every trashy magazine and attacking mothers and other normal people with his cheesy grinning rhetoric! It’s become to big to hide from.

I guess, since that and the whole kidnapping Katie and turning his house into a delivery room thing I haven’t really been able take him seriously though. Okay, I lie – I never took Tom Cruise seriously. But there was a time when it was like hey, it’s a Tom Cruise film, I wonder if I’ll go see that. NOW it’s more like ooh, crazy has a new movie. Should I go make fun of it?

So, I enjoyed MI-3 to a certain extent but I really had to suspend reality to do it. Tom Cruise does not play characters in movies, he plays Tom Cruise – that’s it. There are few movies he has done where he plays something other than himself. This is what makes someone a blockbuster, mega hollywood star as opposed to an ‘actor’. He’s a big gun – it’s his job to be Tom Cruise. No one hires him because he’s a stellar actor that can really pull off a role with dignity and superb craft. He’s hired because he brings in the bucks – because he’s TOM!

Anyway: MI-3. The whole ending was so ridiculous that I just started laughing. Actually, come to think of it – there were a few other people around me laughing as well.

Embrace the crazy, I say. Dare I suggest it, but has TC taken over from Michael Jackson as our resident ‘crazy fucker that we can laugh at’?

Who makes your ‘crazy’ alarm go off more. Tom or Michael?