Yesterday I called an elderly man ‘punk’ in the line at the shopping centre. I should explain, I have a very valid excuse. Recently I’ve been trying to cut back on coffee.
For those who don’t know me, this is a big deal. The only comparable instance would be if Charlie Sheen went “I’m getting a teensy bit sick of Tiger Blood, Prostitutes and Crack, I think I might take up scrapbooking.”
There is a wonderful scene in the ‘West Wing’ where a recovering alcoholic explains the appeal of drinking. About how he is addicted to the little things, the way scotch looks as it coats on the rim of the glass, the feel of a heavy based tumbler in your hands, the sound of ice cubes when you drop them from just the right height, other poignant poetic shit etc.
It is the same for me.
It isn’t just about being addicted to caffeine. The whole café experience in itself appeals to me. I really like the idea of taking a moment to myself, of relaxing and reading a book quietly in the corner of a busy café, the latest Michael Buble album hums out of the speakers dulled only by the sound of two middle aged babes gossip about Grey’s Anatomy and the slutty bitch receptionist at their husbands work. It’s not much but its home.
If I’m being honest I also enjoy the act of diving headfirst into stack of pancakes that is bigger than my entire face first thing on a Sunday morning, maple syrup dripping down my face like a stroke victim at Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
The other thing I love about café’s is baristas. I tend to eat at fairly pretentious coffee places, where none of the seats are matching and everything is organic and gluten free but no one makes a big deal about it. Places like this always tend to Baristas with wonderful names like Xeke and Lexie and Persephonie. It is as though it is decreed by the coffee god (who I am picturing as George Clooney in the Nescafe Ads) that as they get their Barista’s License they must change their names to something that would automatically score them above 100 points in scrabble. And before you ask, yes I’m pretty sure there is such thing as a barista’s license; I assume that it is probably the institution where Subway employees get their BA in sandwichery.
Baristas so often look cooler than other people. Hippie dreamboats so often adorned with dreadlocks and lip piercings and astro-boy tattoos. As I sit there drinking my caramel latte I always start imagining that they all have a back-story; saving their pennies to pursue their real passion for folk music, professional juggling and weed. They are just making those latte’s and servin them tofu vegie stacks til they can ‘get the hell out of this no-good-one-horse-town’.
I must confess that despite drinking litres of it daily I really don’t know that much about coffee. I probably would know the difference between a Macchiato and a Cappuccino if they hit me the face. Although admittedly the last you’d be thinking had you just been hit the face by a boiling hot liquid would be, ‘hmm this a quite clearly too frothy for a cap.’
Urgh this is making me miss coffee. Maybe I’ll just get into scotch. That’s sounds pretty fun.
Catholics have the bible. Muslims have the Koran
I have Harry Potter.
It was Christmas and I had just turned 12. I was an incredibly awful child who insisted on opening all my younger siblings before they woke up ‘for efficiency’s sake’ and then would proceed to spend the rest of the morning trying to convince them to swap their new bikes for my pink overalls. I was 12 so naturally I wanted a Gameboy, specifically a pink on which I could play a game called ‘Barbie Underwater Princess’. I had noticed that my parents had made an overly secret trip to Kmart, so naturally I thought it was in the bag. As soon as I saw the small rectangular package I made a bee-line for it, it was just the right size, I tore away its wrapping like I was the Ivan Milat of Stationary and low and behold my mother had given me……the first 2 Harry Potter books. I was so disappointed, granted though now I see where she was coming from. I was an uncoordinated, sarcastic white collar criminal in the making, obviously she thought I’d have more in common with witches than Barbie.
Reluctantly I read the books, and shit got real.
I was whisked into this world of giants and goblins, leaving reality behind me without a second thought like an incredibly irresponsible parent at the mall.
When I turned 13 all the girls my age were only interested in one thing, growing breasts. Self-esteem had just become a ‘thing’ and a lot of it hinged on how much party you had packing in your fun-bags. Whilst this was happening I was reading. In an attempt to be more like Hermione I became more of a bookworm, I carried a large pile of dragon related texts around with me at all times, corrected people when they accidently miss-spoke, basically transforming myself into a tiny pedantic asshole. After years of suppressing my rabid mane of mousy brown hair I let it loose, parading around my school like somekind of pre-pubesant paddle pop lion. All because in my mind, with these small changes so to would come my magical powers. This, not being breasts did not go down too well with my cohort. I waited (with a little too much genuine hope) for my Hogwarts acceptance letter, but like my bra, my mailbox remained empty.
Book after book was released, and I fell deeper and deeper in love. When they were 14, I was 14. It was awesome, they spoke like I did. Not like old-people (those over the age of 16), Not like the pussies in the Enid Blighton books and definitely not like them slutty bitches from the Babysitters club with their mean note passing and over the shirt fondling with boys from the lacrosse team (whatever lacrosse is).
The first movie was released and my love affair with this story flared up worse than Russell Brands hepatitis after a weekend at ‘Rusty Needles Day Camp: For Sexually Irresponsible Teens’. And just like Russell Brands hepatitis it has stayed with me since, a slow burn that gets me at my very core.
Knowing things about Harry Potter eventually became cool and helpful. There was a point in year ten when I copied an entire chapter out of the Order of the Phoenix replacing the word ‘harry’ with ‘jews’ and the word ‘voldemort’ with ‘hitler’. In the comments section my history teacher remarked that my description was comprehensive and descriptive and on a side note thought that the jews would probably have fared much better had Cho Chang been less of a cock-tease.
The release of the final Harry Potter was an event. I woke up early, got dressed and as I stood in that line surrounded by 40 year gentlemen in capes and 12 year olds in school uniforms (usually a suspicious combo) a shocking though crossed my mind, this is it. Its over. Poof, Done, Finito. I had just said goodbye to my Friends from High-School as well as Friends from TV. It was a lot to take in. These books had been the backdrop to my life since I was 12 years old. It was probably these books that made me want to read. They had taught me about loss and commitment. I know it’s bad to say , but there is a good chance that reading these books was a fairly large contributing factor to me spending the remainder of my teenage years hopelessly in love with a friendly and reliable ranga.
How was I meant to go on.
In the months following this, I tried to find a replacement.
I wasn’t cool enough, drunk enough or psychotic enough to truly connect to the words of Hunter S Thompson,
The Da Vinci Code held me over for a little while, but then they cast Ian McKellan as a bad guy in the movie and I couldn’t condone that.
I even briefly dabbled in Twilight, but then I realized that it was pretty much Mills and Boon without all the fun stuff about ‘loins’
I just needed some direction, and so ventured off into the real world unaided.
According to Harry Potter what happens next is pretty straight forward. I have a whole 15 years to find a husband, make some visually impaired children and come up with awful names for them, only to shove them headfirst through a wall at a busy train station.
It has recently been announced that J.K Rowling is writing a book for adults, and all I can think is this …
Laters reality. I hardly knew ye.
Gyms are a fairly intimidating place, and it’s not just because of all the people with roid-rage.
Recently I started going to the gym after deciding (somewhat foolishly) that I wanted to do a half Marathon this year. Do not ask me why I decided this, it could be for the sense of accomplishment or for the fitness, more likely I have been brain-washed to kill the Malaysian Prime Minister who will obviously be attending a conference right next to the finish line of the marathon. Standard. But really, a half marathon requires a fair bit of training, even for fit people. Up until about a month ago my idea of exercise was eating Cheetos whilst watching the ads for the Ab Circle Pro in Adidas tracksuit pants.
On TV gyms look so much friendlier. People in sitcoms often pick up at the gyms. I have never, ever seen this happen in real life. Saying that sitcom people can get a date anywhere, the airport, in the line for coffee, a military hospital deep within the Korean DMZ. In my experience, pick ups only occur in bars, usually by some bourbon-ey dreamboat in baggy jeans when I’m 5 G&Ts down and contemplating hunting down the closest falafel place. In theory Gyms are very similar to clubs, the music is too loud to have a conversation using anything except for verbs, everyone is covered in a thin layer of sweat and the bathrooms are filled with people casually stripping all of their clothes off. But in reality it is much harder to meet someone at the gym than to meet someone at a bar.
I would like to note that I am not going to this gym with the intention to pick up guys. I’m not doing this to meet some kind of Arnold Schwartzanegger protégé who I shall marry and campaign for, only to find quadricep-deep in our incompetent and yet strangely overly confident maid, practicing his squat thrusts. Everyone knows that it helps to have a buddy when you go to the gym, someone to show up for. Its so much easier to get out of bed when you know that there is another person waiting for you. I know for a fact that I would be at least 500% more likely to get out of bed, knowing that if I didn’t there would be someone at least one workout stronger than me, who would be super-pissed if I didn’t show.
Being a creature of habit (see Obsessive Compulsive) I tend to go to the gym at exactly the same time everyday. At 6.30am I drag my catatonic ass into that gym, moaning and drooling all over my leg-warmers, like some kind of zombified Olivia Newton John. After a few mornings of drooling and moaning and attempting to eat peoples brains I started to notice that the same people were at the gym every morning. There was one girl in particular who tended to arrive at the exact same time I did, she was about my age, had a friendly face and one time arrived at the gym with her shirt inside out – obviously I figured we could be friends. For the next few days this continued, I’d arrive and about 2 minutes later she would follow, or vice versa. We would work out for an hour and then head to the showers, get changed and then get ready for work. Together. Now here is the tricky part, the entire time this is going on we are wearing headphones. Literally the only time I would have the opportunity to talk to her is directly after her shower. This is awkward. Do not try and make friends with someone when either party is attempting to put on a bra. Just now it has struck me, I know that she has a preference for boyleg underpants and that she uses the same deodorant as me, but I don’t know her name. If this was any other situation I would be a sex-pest. This is the awkwardness of the gym, it is not really a place to socialize, but it is so much better when you go with a friend.
One afternoon I decided to do a Zumba class. Now for those of you who haven’t been to a Zumba class, it is pretty much a sexy, over-energetic Old El Paso Ad. Everything is ‘Olay’ this and ‘Ariba’ that. Zumba is every South American cliché stuffed into a one peppy little package wearing a lorna jane crop top. Now lets be clear, Zumba can be loads and loads of fun when you do it with friends, you giggle at each others clumsy crumping and marvel at how ‘loco’ the whole situation is. You cannot do this when you go alone. Suddenly this hilarious situation is not hilarious at all, its embarrassing. You start to notice how white your crumping is, you miss a ‘kick ball change’ and suddenly the cougar in the leotard is grinding her camel toed nether regions up on you. Perhaps worst of all you realize how sad it is that you know every word to every Ricky Martin song ever. And a little part of you dies.
So here is my challenge: Do I talk to this girl, introduce myself, potentially risking her finding out that I know that she has day of the week underpants? Or do I continue to go on my own like some kind of female lone-ranger wrapped in lycra?
Maybe I’ll just go for Imitation-Arnie, at least then i’ll get a maid…..
Joy is complicated and multifaceted. People start families, move countries, find religion all in the pursuit of happiness
…… Me, I look at pictures of Basset Hounds Running
(Source: sparklemilk)
Fare thee well sweet prince
I had eyed him off for a while now. A gorgeous looking sort. He had the dark curls of a Moroccan prince and the shoulders of a Professional swimmer. He immediately struck me as being one of those effortlessly cool people, head-to-toe ‘vintage business chic’, with the odd hint of corporate rebellion in the form of cheeky socks and pinky rings.
I had passed him a couple of times at the gym, he tended to get there just as I was leaving -so I got to observe him crisp and fresh and dapper. He got to see me sweaty, twitchy and lank-limbed after being misguidedly competitive in my yoga class. This particular day I had decided to forgo my glasses. I’d be lying if I said that this decision was made without the influence of fashion, although I was starting to look like the love child of Tyler Durden and Henry the octopus so nothing much would have really helped. In my Stevie Wonder-esque state I collided head first into hipster babe as he was entering the change room, his briefcase and my dignity crashing to the floor in a symphony of swear words and half assed apologies.
And then it happened. Out of his briefcase (trendoid satchel), fell the boxset of Star-Trek: The Next Generation. Panic wracked his features and he dove for that series like an Olympic diver with poor depth perception. Moroccan Michael Phelps was scrambling on the floor like he had just accidently dropped a copy of ‘Space Invaders 8: Morally repugnant super-porn that would bring shame upon your family’. He was smuggling those DVD’s in his briefcase like they were two kilo’s of the magic ingredient in the Corby families secret brownie recipe. My question is why?
Why is it that people are so afraid to let their geek flag fly?
I was raised on Star Wars and Monty Python, I watched David Attenborough docos on weekends and was addicted to the kind of board games that 90 year olds find boring and outdated. As an 8 year old, I had a preference for Picard over Kirk. My fate as a geek was set from the very moment I trained my fingers to do the ‘live long and prosper’ sign.
I was a perpetually uncoordinated child. There is a video of me that my parents mailed to my grandparents of the first time I skipped, lets just say… I was well and truly past the age of it being cute. My parents would bribe me to play sports with the promise of playing with dad’s science stuff after. I learnt to read before I learnt to throw a ball. So whilst I could not actually contribute to the team, I could establish a complex metaphor about the game and the human condition. Being a fairly athletic sort of a person my mother would always come to my games, screaming from the sideline “run Caitlin run, just give it a try”. In a tiny sarcasm riddled voice I replied….
“Do or Do not, there is no Try”
Screw Obi Wan, there was no hope for me.
My geek was nurtured from a young age by my supportive parents, who clearly did this as a means to prevent me from losing my virginity before my 30th birthday. From a young age I was a proud geek and have never known another way. I understand that I am not the majority. There is a whole world of geeks out there hiding in plain sight, like CIA agents or that pug from Men in Black.
I thought it was important to look at this from two different perspectives. For this I shall use two friends as a case study. For the sake of their confidentiality (and for a bit of theatrical flair and also a little bit of an in-joke) I shall change their names to ‘Luke’ and ‘Leia’
Leia is one of those cool people who should only really exist in BBC drama-comedies on TV. She is a graphic designer for an online marketing giant, on weekends she learns French and reads cooking blogs and takes artsy photos of alleyways. She rocks a cardi and brogues like they a sequin jumpsuit given to her by the spiders from Mars. Her life is ordered not my hours in the day, but my colours on the pantone colour wheel. If I need a new band to listen to, I go to her. If I need fashion advice, I go to her. If I can’t remember a minor character in the original radio series of the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, I don’t go to Deep Thought, I go to her.
Let’s be clear. There is a certain type of ‘cool-ey’ who pretend to like weird nerd things (Atari, Pokemon, anime) in order to gain the elusive ‘indie street cred’, she is not one of these people. For a good proportion of the time I’ve known her, she has slept underneath a giant Star Wars poster. I once played Dungeons and Dragons at her house until far into the wee hours of the morning. We have had more than one Doctor Who marathons. Too much of our time has been spent analysing the homoerotic subtext of Fantasy Novels, furiously debating who was more into each other: Frodo/Sam or Harry/Ron. There is no way that a hipster could be that committed to anything that wasn’t a near-mint pressing of a B-side Smiths album.
It often takes a long time for people to find out about her nerd proclivities. Its not that she hides it, you just wouldn’t assume that underneath that beret-ed head of hers lies all of the cheats for every Sim game ever made. I prefer to think of her like a geek stick insect. It’s not that she is ashamed to be an insect, she has never at any point purposefully pretended to be otherwise, if people assume she is a stick then they are merely narrow minded and possibly long-sighted.
Luke’s story is different, he is not at all what you could expect from a nerd. For those who don’t know him he is a bit hard to describe. He is sort of like what would happen if Gossip Girl and David Beckham went to the Jersey Shore and had an orgy with Blink 182, only geekier than Pythagoras himself. Whilst that was a massively complicated visual cue, trust me when I say it’s pretty much on the mark. He has tatts and a girlfriend and a functioning aerobic system, which is not what one would expect from someone who owns a functional Darth Vader helmet. He has Star Wars Posters, figurines, collectables, socks, underwear, etc etc…Pretty much anything a self-loathing super-nerd could possibly hope to hide in the back of his closet. Having known him since I was approximately foetal I am one of the few that is a party to his *ahem* condition. In truth he hides his secret away better than an incestuous Austrian basement enthusiast.
Luke is sweet and sensitive and so stereotypically cool, that If people were to find out his shameful secret, his carefully constructed alpha dude image would crumble and he would be left cold and alone, writing some useless blog whilst bits of ‘inspiration-cheese’ got stuck in his hair………*cough*
Surely all of this work isn’t worth it. Surely it would be easier to come out than to remain closed off and secretive. Surely we can get rid of the shame associated with geekhood. The alternative is this: Scrambling hopelessly after your Star Trek DVDs whilst a tall twitchy sweat monster in adidas leggings makes sex eyes at you. And I think we can all agree that isn’t a great option.
So it is time nerds, to rise up and unite and Party like its May the 4th on the Forest Moon of Endor.
Who knows, they might put Firefly back on.
There is a time when a girl becomes a woman.
Libra commercials tell us that this moment comes when we first notice an odd blue liquid in our hello kitty underpants, on the very day we decide to wear our very favourite stark white J-Lo Jeans to school. But they are wrong.
Some girls think that this moment comes when they get their first bra. Sadly, being roughly felt up by a gruff, middle-aged Bras n Things employee, accounts to nothing more than epic strap marks and a lifetime of bizarre sex dreams.
In spite of popular belief, you don’t become a woman the moment you have sex. After my first time I expected a glorious transformation akin to that of an evolving pokemon. But like Pikachu, my moment never came.
The truth is these are all vicious rumours propagated by what I can only imagine to be an alliance of the greatest minds in push up bra’s, moral flexibility and absorbency that Australia has to offer.
The reality is this….
A girl becomes a woman when she first starts being attracted to guys with facial hair.
You may laugh but it is true.
When we are younger we are programmed to like those clean-cut sparkly-eyed synchronised dancing boy band types. Their ranks were dominated by baldies, flaunting their effeminate jaw-lines and naked chin areas to the world, leaving nothing to the imagination. Sa-luts. Saying that, there was always one solitary member with a goatee. Let’s be clear, one out of 5ive members does not constitute an equal distribution of the population (there will be a small proportion of people that get that reference I know). Also, it should be noted that the goatee is the douchiest of facial topiary and should not be considered an accurate representation of beardies everywhere.
So when do we make the big change?
It’s hard to say. Like a tiny fawn taking your first tentative steps in the world after immerging from your mothers womb (only to have her promptly shot by hunters) - however slowly you start to broaden you horizons.
Circa year 10, all the boys start to grow the mo in slow-mo. It would take weeks for their follicles to become visible and eventually they would all have to go through the awkward pizzle phase. If you are unaware of the ‘pizzle’ imagine this: 9 slightly ginger depressing strands of hair, styled in such a manner that is looks like your lip has a tiny comb- over. Yes, feel thy thighs quake. Soon you start to notice that there is a group of boys that look distinctly older and more mysterious than the rest. Next thing you know you’re thinking things like ‘oh gosh that guy looks distinguished and dangerous’ only to have your history teacher say ‘Caitlin, that is Ned Kelly’
*sigh*
This all builds and builds until one day you realise you cannot hold it in anymore. This happened to one of my closest friends. We had just gone on a mate-date to the movies to see sort-of comedy ‘Going the Distance’, it was ok there were a few laughs and you got to see Justin Longs bottom which is fun, but ultimately it was pretty average. Justin Long’s character has 2 fast-talking besties, as they all do in movies (who inexplicably have nothing in common, whatever). Anyway, one of these friends is played by SNL P.I.M.P Jason Sudekis, and he has a moustache. For 2 hours I was in awe of him. I wanted to throw my underwear at the screen and stalk his friggin brains out. But my reaction was nothing in comparison to my best friends; I saw something change in her that day. When asked for her input for this blog, she was fairly timid so I can only give my impressions of that fateful day from the best of my recollection. We exited that movie theatre in tense silence; we both knew that something major had just occurred. We mulled in our quiet meditation for most of the ride home, stewing in our many thoughts. It reminded me of the day of school after 9/11, no-one knew quite why or how it had changed the world, but we knew things would never be the same. She turned to me, stoic and brave like Madam Judy Dench and said the fateful words. “I think I like guys with moustaches”
And that is when she was transformed into a fully fledged moustache hungry sex-pest. I mean really, she is sick. We cannot risk watching episode of Magnum P.I as there is a chance that she will go into super-sayan state of frenzied lust.
Whilst she is severely out of control and probably a harm to herself and others, the notion still has merit. A man with facial hair has the same appeal as say ‘batman’. What is he hiding under that mask/beard you ask yourself? Is he actually a lumberjack? Or is he in fact an elusive vigilante with Trumps cash, Vin Diesels Car and the sort of Ab’s that small african villages worship as their god? It’s all about the mystery.
As I sat in my car home today, an awesome weirdo band called ‘The Beards’ came on the radio. When I heard their song ‘You should consider having sex with a bearded man’ I started to nod my head, not because I had been overcome by the power of ‘ROCK!’ but because I was genuinely thinking ‘you know what? I really should’.
And so I shall.
Even if it leaves me with pash rash so severe that people think I’ve been eating sea anemone.
