Moment to Moment

Conversations, overheard

1. On the train

Woman doing crossword:  I think all the people who make the crosswords must be Jewish.
Companion: Why?
Woman: Well, listen to this. 'Jewish skullcap'. Eight letters. How am I supposed to know that?
Companion shrugs.
Woman: There are always Jewish questions in the crosswords.

Pause.

Woman: I'm just saying it's probably a Jewish thing. Crosswords.

Random stranger: It's called a yarmulke.

Woman: Oh. Thanks.

2. On the street

Man one: I was thinking I could use the voucher for some boardies.
Man two: What? From David Jones?
M1: Yeah, I need some new boardies.
M2: But it's for $500 - why not get a suit?
M1: I want some boardies.
M2: Yeah but you can get boardies for, like, fifty bucks at City Beach. What are you going to do with the rest of the money?
M1: Dunno.
M2: And anyway they have shit boardies there. You should get a suit.
M1: What am I going to do with a suit?
M2: What about Bob's wedding?
M1: Like I'm going to buy a suit for that.
M2: Why not?
M1: Well I'm in the wedding party and I'm not going to make the whole wedding change its ***ken colours just 'cause I bought suit at David Jones, right?
M2: Yeah but...
M1: Anyway, I want some ***ken boardies.

3. At work

Colleague L, who is about 33 and has two children: I'm glad I had kids but I wish I'd had them younger.
Colleague M, who is about 21: Yeah I'm going to have one by the time I'm 27.
Colleague A, who is 28: That's younger than me, M.
L: I tell you, A, you're already getting too old.
M: Yeah A.
A: God, you know I don't want kids. Anyway, 28 isn't too old to have kids even if I wanted them.
L: It's just that I'm so tired all the time. If I'd had kids younger maybe I wouldn't be so tired.
A: And you never what's going to happen, M.
M: I've already got a good job and a boyfriend, so all I need to do is get married by the time I'm 25 and I'll be fine.
A: (Sarcastically) Well let's hope everything goes to plan then.
M: I just don't want to regret it.
A: I'm not going to regret not having kids. Anyway, I can always go and look after L's kids.
M: How do you know you won't regret it?
A: I'm 28 years old, M, I've got a pretty good idea of what I think about things!
M: Well don't say I didn't warn you.

Deliberately Barren!

!!!!
!

!!!!!!!
!!!

Yeah, that's about the sum total of my intelligent analysis about that whole debacle.

And here's another disgustingly sexist retrograde thing I've encountered lately: the TV ads for Zoo Magazine, whereby a bunch of be-suited guys sit around in an office being given neck massages by women clad only in lingerie. I have never looked inside an actual copy of Zoo, but I have a pretty good idea that I wouldn't approve of the content.

In fact, I think I would disapprove of it like so:

That's from the disapproving rabbits website, just in case you thought I'd traded my dog in for a wabbit.

That's all for now kids. Tune in next time for more shatteringly incisive political commentary and laffs that will make you cry!

I forgot a thank you

And a very special one indeed: thank you to Nicole and Sondra for looking after Jasperella Whingerella the Uber Chewer-hund. Apparently she only kept them awake for one whole night and only chewed one of Sondra's thongs. And dug one hole.

Sadly we have had to reclaim our pet as much as Son and Nic begged us to let her stay with them forever. We are heartless, I know, and cruel. But you know, she's my annoying whinging hyperactive dog, and I won't share her with anyone. Well, except JW and whoever volunteers to look after her next time I want a holiday.

Home again

I am immediately struck by how much my life is just as it was before the holiday.  Exactly the same, except I am the proud owner of not one but two new pairs of very expensive Spanish shoes. (Pictures of which will follow shortly.)

Have also collided headfast with all the things I was Putting Off Until After Melbourne. The list of which seems to be growing by the minute.

JW is back for about half an hour before he leaves again to his home away from home, the Karratha International, where the sheets are always fresh and the rooms are cyclone proof. He is making lamb for dinner and listening to the Kings of Leon. I don't know why I thought I should share that with you, but there it is.

My holiday was very good, thank you, I like Melbourne very much. Thanks so much to our friends C and B who put us up and put up with us.

Thanks also to Laura and Dorian and TimT who came out to Heide for coffee and paninis with us -- it was lovely to meet you all.

Thanks to harry for having lunch with us.

Thanks to A and L for taking us to the airport and the best cafe ever.

Thanks to the weather for being nice.

Thanks to the evil staff of General Pants for annoying me out of buying the ugliest pair of jeans ever, a thing I now realise was a complete blessing, as skinny leg jeans are the work of the devil and I was only buying them 'cause all the cool kids are doing it, and damn if I am not old enough now to realise that just because the cool kids jump off a cliff doesn't mean I have to jump of a cliff, etc etc.

Thanks for JW for putting up with ill-advised trips to East Malvern to buy yarn. And lots of other things as well, of course, but mainly for that.

Blogger meet-up that wasn't

I am so crap at organising things. And blogging. And finding yarn stores. But that's all a story for another day.

Anyway, I'm going be at Heide at 11am tomorrow. I have no idea of any conspicious landmarks there -- perhaps a cafe? -- but there I shall be, with some friends, and if anyone wants to meet us they are welcome.

Since I am anxious and crowds make me nervous I think it's just as well that I suspect no-one will turn up! Though I am hoping Laura comes as she is one of the people who inspired me to start blogging, several years ago, in my blog's first dismal and fairly uninteresting incarnation. As opposed to the thrill-a-minute extravaganza you are currently reading.

Anyway, I am in a 7-11 near Flinders station and JW is a lovely patient man who does not deserve any more trials today, particularly not of the 'waiting for girlfriend to get of the effing computer so we can go and have some beer' variety.

Melbourne is Very Pleasing

And not at all freezing, as I had anticipated. So far we have eaten, drunk, shopped, admired some public art, caught some trams, and been having a fine old time.

I also made the mistake of visiting the Camper store at the GPO first thing and blowing my holiday budget on two pairs of shoes. But let's not talk about that.

We also met the redoubtable harry of For Battle fame who is gorging himself on the comedy festival. I am surprised his face isn't frozen into a huge smile from all the comedy he's been seeing.

JW is very keen on a game of footy (but not to see the Weagles) and and I am very keen for more shopping.

Anyway, we are also going to Heide on Saturday morning and I* thought it might be a nice spot for a blogger meet-up, if anyone wants to come along. I am thinking of a brunchish time, so possibly around 10-11. I shall confirm the time tomorrow.

Back to the shops, I think.

*Actually, Laura suggested it, so it was her fabbo idea and I'm running with it, as our evenings are looking quite heavily booked so grog-blogging is a bit out of the question.

Melbourne

We're going to Melbourne on Wednesday, and returning on Sunday.

What should we do when we're there?

I want to go to Heide definitely (how does one get to Heide anyway?), and there will be shopping, there will no doubt be drinking and eating, and possibly a visit to the MCG to build a shrine to the gods of footy-tipping (I have slipped to third in the work comp after a woeful weekend, damn you Swannies!).

Any other suggestions are welcome.

I am also open to blog-drinks should it be arrangeable. Drop me an email: deborah dot kate at gmail dot com.

Things I have learned today

Being a brunette has not made me any smarter.

(Like a packet of hair-dye can reverse a lifetime of making idiotic remarks. Sigh.)

Writing: why I have not been blogging

I have been doing some extra-curricular but non-blogular writing, of the fictional (some may say, creative) variety. A story, perhaps. I have a broad idea in my head, and some characters, and a setting, so I suppose it is a story. We'll see.

When I was around 15 I wrote about 200 pages of a very ordinary novel. Given that I was obsessed with science fiction at the time (ed- what's changed?), it was unsurprisingly a science fiction novel.

It was set on a desert planet, where a woman (named Ballard, after a certain SF-ish writer) had been exiled by the nasty despotic galactic government. She was a secret agenty type person and was hired by another woman (who was a human, but had been infused with plant genes so she lived from the sun and ate fertiliser for dinner) to assasinate the regional governer of the desert world for revolutionary purposes. Ballard was conflicted because she was not an assassin and did not think very highly of killing people but of course she said yes, I think she was blackmailed into it but I can't recall the details and don't feel like wading through my own purple prose to find out.

Of course there was a (heteronormative, of course) love interest in the form of a tall handsome dude who was one of the ruling class of the despotic government. Being the future of course all sorts of genetic experiments had been done and so humans could be like plants or like the ruling class, who were effectively vampires who lived off the blood donations of the rest of the galactic population. But you know, the love interest was a good vampire! Or half a vampire. Anyway, he had black hair and violet eyes, which I am sure I nicked from somewhere.

I think there were also cat people and wolf people and flying people and every sort of chimaera you can imagine. Stem cell technology gone mad!!!!

Anyway, as for the plot, there was lots of espionage and fights and explosions and getting lost in the desert ala Dune, only with no giant worms. Plus tasteful love scenes of course enlivened with a bit of banter between our heroine and her faithful sidekick Sal, who I think was one of the aforementioned cat people.

Rather predictably the thing about having a brain stuffed full of Vermillion Sands and Star Wars and Dune and sadly a whole lot of Anne Rice made the whole thing remarkably ordinary.

But I spent two years of my adolescence living more in this  make-believe world and it became as real and as detailed to me as the dusty streets of Nowheresville, NSW, which probably explains why I can remember it with far more clarity than I do my actual real life of the time.

I am not sure quite what that says about me, but I'm sure it isn't good.

When smart people believe not-smart things

I found out the other day that a smart, young, talented colleague of mine doesn't think global warming is a real, man-made phenomenon.

I've come across plenty of people with that same opinion on teh interwebs, but you know, the internet is to contrarianism what liver treats are to my dog.  But to actually come across someone who I like and respect and also holds a view which I think is not only silly but also a bit dangerous? In the real world? That's quite new.

I don't mean to suggest that I live in some sort of lefty-enviro-communal-bubble. I don't. I know a lot of Howard voters, free-market loving libertarian types. But I genuinely don't know many people who don't at least worry, a little, about what we're doing to our environment.

Anyway, we have now begun emailing each other news stories and other bits and pieces in support of our respective views. I try to keep it all light-hearted, because we have to work together pretty closely and I like him, so I don't want to release my inner Left Wing Attack Dog (tho. I suspect my inner Left Wing Attack Dog is more of a Left Wing Attack Puppy these days).

But it's not a topic I feel light about.

This is serious, dammit, and this smart intelligent young man who has no doubt got a glowing career ahead of him in journalism just doesn't see it. That's incredibly frustrating.

This comment by Judith Brett in the March issue of The Monthly really articulated my own sense of frustration and anxiety about the current situation:

"Many people, I am sure, feel as I do, that they are living in two clangingly discordant timeframes. In one, life goes on as usual, turning on lights and taps, driving cars, complaining about the weather, organising holidays, bringing up children, calculating superannuation....

In the other, we know that the scientists are right, are haunted of images of polar bears swimming between melting ice floes, and feel powerless to do anything ... most of the solutions are far beyond anything people can do as individuals, and if you think too much about the future, you just get depressed. Howard says he prefers to be optimistic about the future. So we would we all."

My colleague is an optimist, too, and I think he really prefers to believe there's no need to worry. As much as I wish he was right, I'm too scared of the consequences to believe otherwise.

As an aside, I've just organised for our electricity to come from renewable sources via Synergy so at least I can put some of my money where my mouth is, in a minor way at least.