Funny how a high profile knife attack makes everyone hate living in Tasmania

So something really weird happened today, and luckily that was something weird that you can spin into an anecdote and not someone dying from stab wounds in the middle of a relatively cheaply priced rack of plain white T-shirts (I was going to say "Ts", but lets not speak of that band again). Incidentally, our ever vigilant police force have been on hand to say don't worry, you won't be stabbed by strangers in the middle of Hobart, the stabber knew the stabee, so those plain white T-shirts are still OK to buy. Phew, says Hobart. I'm still not getting on no bus fool, say I. Anyway, so I was wandering through my day, wondering if I should rip up my party photos because I look a bit mental, and I caught the eye of this girl - she had a blouse on that looked like paper mache to be honest, and we exchanged an unremarkable glance, but as I turned away, she's let out this massive squeal, and when I turn around, she's done her knee in the middle of the mall. Now, I'm thinking, did I do that, did my unremarkable glance at the paper (I know it's papier incidentally fans of spotting prose errors, but it's a homage to how a kid at my school used to call it "payperrrrrrrrrr mashie" in his Wynyard accent - old school represent y'all) mache blouse startle her and cause knee ligaments to collapse? Luckily, she sort of limped off unconvincingly, but I did wonder what had happened to make her knee collapse and buckle in the three intervening seconds. As it turned out, there was an even stranger and more bewildering trap for the shoppers today, no, not leaflets (I saw those promotion models off, don't you worry about that) but...wait for it...a cheap and cheerful Salamanca style stall, run by two Asian businesspeople in red T-shirts selling cheap socks off a grubby varnished table. I thought Glasgow was the home of the "sports sawks, two for a pound" cheap sock stall, but there it was in Tasmania. At one point, I'm sure Mrs Asia was staring at my unremarkable black and blue socks, thinking she had a customer. What is going on lately? We're one step away from people setting up a curtain rack stall with clothes hanging, selling those knock off AFL tops with "Colinwood" and "Hawforn" on them...and people will buy them, you just know they will...

Anyway, away from the incredible high octane blogging action around socks and knee joints (good name for an album that), for some reason I've had to today, in my menial real world, deal with a lot of people hating on Tasmania. You'd think the fact that Sam Mitchell mentioned us for 0.3 of a second in his Grand Final speech would have boosted morale, but no, surprisingly, it hasn't resonated. One woman launched into an entire strange rant about how she should have stayed in Manhattan and how she should never have left and moved back here, the weird bit being we were chatting amiably about her dog, and then out of nowhere she turned into the Manhattan tourist board...then she had the misfortune to say that she also lived in Canada, which meant I could say, well, at least no one here gets stabbed and eaten on a bus...which she didn't know about so I looked a bit mental. Obviously with the incident, there's been some feedback too, with one woman telling me Hobart was like an alligator swamp and she was a piece of pork...do alligators eat pork? So this didn't do much for my usually high feelings of local pride, everyone saying they'd rather live in places with David Letterman taped down the road or places with a less toothy crocadillian feel when you are buying Sara Bareilles CDs in Sanity. However, I did see something that made me feel proud to live in Tasmania - a kid called Tyson getting a swift boot up the arse for his troubles after knocking over an old lady who was sipping a lemonade. His bogan mother did warn him in fairness, and then waddled over with her mesh black tracky daks struggling to keep up with her movements, and as promised, give him a good old fashioned kick in the arse, just like the old days of Penguin. Even my friends sounded downcast about going out on Saturday night, which I put down to getting old and tired and inevitably preparing to not get in anywhere after 10pm...again. Me, I plan to try and lift morale around Tasmania at a down time in our history by belting out a drunken tune at Montgomeries...something from the Bananarama collection maybe? Nope, it was still no good, my friend simply texted back the word "shit" - Tasmania, my singing, "Montys" (where even knowing the 9x tables isn't proof of sobriety) or Bananarama? The mystery went unsolved...

My Dad, he found Tasmania really weird when he first moved here - I don't know, I may have mentioned before, he's quite an amiable person to strangers. When he was teaching, he tried to engage one of the school bus drivers in a conversation about the different qualities of recycling bins vs the different local councils, and the bus driver responded by grunting and turning up his Noiseworks CD. Still, he does keep trying. When he first moved to Tasmania, he asked a local what the best thing to see while he was living in Tasmania, like, the best local landmark (he was a fool to himself, the Big Penguin was right there) and after about 10 minutes of deliberation the local said "Well there's this nerfuckin paddock in Latrobe...nerfuckin beautiful it is...better than that Pyramid shit!" - Dad didn't know if that pyramid shit meant the ones in Egypt, the little green ones in a Quality Street box or the kind of money making schemes that always go bad, but whenever he thinks of Tasmania, he's sure to mention "that paddock in Latrobe". About a week after that, he was in the fantastic local meat emporium, Lethborg Smallgoods in Scottsdale, where the bacon was Lethborgianly good (so the sign said). He engaged the Lethborg (the Cyborgs were busy) shopkeep in some idle chit chat, mostly about Scotland, and the proper way to make fruit pudding and he was being his usual quite chatty self, a skill he never really passed on to me. Someone told me a story at work yesterday about rosary beads that made me lose the will to live. Anyway, at the end of this chat, Mr Lethborg has said something akin to "You know fella, yer alright!" and as Dad has gone to leave, Mr Lethborg has said something like "Oh, and if you come back again, don't buy our sausages!" - now, Dad has turned around and gone, er, what was that? "Oh, don't buy our sausages, they aren't very good - just telling you now! So you don't buy them! Cos I like you!" and continued, I don't know, mincing a small vole (PETA just don't care about the Vole). Dad was a bit taken aback by this, and has to this day pondered just what was in a 1983 Lethborg Smallgoods sausage that could possibly have caused such self sabotaging sales tactics...I suspect it was ground up vole, but Dad was so rattled, he never went back...

Of course, we still live here, sausage related foibles aside and I guess since we've been here for so freaking long there must be something good about the place. I made it my mission when I thought about the lack of pride in Tasmania today to find something genuinely good about the place. It was really difficult with all the unease about, not just because of the incident, or the fat bogan kicking her kid up the arse, or the continued bewildered procession of old people getting in my way. I did see blue eye shadow girl and consider her a tourist attraction, but that would be too easy. I was really struggling to capture any kind of positive sentiment out of the day, and then I saw her. A small innocent child, in a clean white dress, smiling serenely as she waited for the bus, so pure, so cute. That was my positive sign - sure, there might be knife fights, the economy might be in strife, and the quality of Banjos sausage rolls might continue to plummet, but as long as there are children with innocent optimi...luckily, as I even sickening myself, the girl gave the bus driver the finger, so I was happy with that, as it stopped my Olympic opening ceremony mental sentiments. Instead, my bliss today came from two old women who were talking at the bus stop quite happily about the world economic crisis. For whatever reason, Old woman #1 was quite excited that the economic crisis was happening, and old woman #2 couldn't understand why as her Terry had said that it would mean people would lose their homes. OW1 was even more excited..."yes! that's good!" she said, dementedly..."all those Gagebrook ferals! They'll be the first to lose their home! That'll teach the ferals!" - OW2 was a bit upset about the lack of compassion OW1 was showing towards the admittedly somewhat undesirable ferals, but OW2 was cackling with glee just thinking about it. "One of them stole my Jeffs Boags out of the esky on the back of the ute...and when they lose their home, it's my payback!" - OW2 didn't quite seem to agree that an entire community losing their homes was equitable to losing a slab of beer, but OW1 had her position and she was sticking to it. "Hey, when Jeffs drunk, at least he's asleep! When he's sober, he bores the arse off me with his football talk...I hate ferals! Send them out on the street!" - and with that, she got on the bus, no doubt about to launch into phase 2 of her Gagebrook final solution...

That's what I really love about Tasmania...everyone really rallies around in a time of crisis...

The trouble with being a Target target

And the day started so well as, er, well...I was happily going about my business, listening to Cambodia, Kim Wildes greatest ever song, and everyone was looking forward to seeing Hawthorn in the Hobart mall with the Premiership Cup (apart from me, I wasn't that bothered, but I was amused by the bloke who got the Geelong tatt before they had even won, and possibly had Rod Quantock been there he might have ten minutes of anti Jeff Kennett material, although even I had to hope Jeff didn't have to talk to our highlarious radio duo Kim and Dave for more than a minute, casino or no casino) and I myself had my very first ever BELIEVE! bar, which tasted oddly like a Mars Bar, but with 90% more BELIEF! or something. However, something went horribly wrong - dark clouds rolled in over the mountain, not just because another old biddie got served before me in the lunch queue, but because someone was stabbed to death in the Hobart Target. Which is obviously terrible, and a completely rubbish way to die, stabbed in a discount store in the middle of Hobart. You wonder what could motivate anyone to stab someone in Target, - an argument about the merits of the Veronicas exclusive line of make up or the price of a T-shirt being 3.99 on the scanner? I always get massively freaked out though when someone gets killed or beaten up somewhere I've been. When I got back to Tassie from London, someone got knifed outside the McDonalds I ate at all the time, and now this. Someone got stabbed in the same store where I bought my "Future Pop" CD and first heard Jenny Wilson - truly a sad day. I've never seen any problems in the mall with my own eyes, obviously apart from the big black girls reign of terror. The unemployed man vs the Chiko Roll was as bad as I've seen it get, and now...I don't know, I'm just kind of bummed out. Target for gods sake...not even in a troubled store like Fullers Book Store...ordinary old Target? Amazing...

Incidentally, the last time I was in Target in town, it was part of my determined search for an 80GB somewhere in Tasmania that ended with wailing and gnashing of teeth inside the Apple store and my getting stroppy and referencing the hillbilly nature of the Apple store, and earlier in Target I went up to a bewildered gerbil faced freckle pants with a blonde pony tail in the sound and vision department (not electronics, sound and vision, like some sort of evangelical experience), who was whittling wood erratically to pass the time of day. She gave me a big gap toothed smile and asked if I needed help. Yes, I said, I'd rather like to purchase an IPOD, and if you could get me one, that would be superb. I'll never forget the look on her face and she looked up at the ceiling, down at the floor, back at the ceiling, directly at the tower of Shannon Noll CDs (Shannon remained stoically mute) and then back at me. "I'm sorry...what's an IPOD?" she said, still smiling but clearly puzzled, as if I had emerged from a cave with a stick and all the tribe did gasp. At first, I thought it was an exetensial question - after all, what is anything really, and if you play Cambodia in a forest and no one is around to hear it is it still Kim Wildes best song, and I thought she was referencing some kind of anti consumerist manifesto, pondering the relative worth of an IPOD against...no, she really didn't know what an IPOD was. This was despite the fact she was staring right at them (when she wasn't rolling her eyes in the direction of the still stoic Mr Noll) and, sitcom style, did a comedy double take as she looked at me again. "I...POD..." she said, rolling the concept around in her mind as a cat may roll around a ball of yarn. I did consider as the wind whistled through her ears starting with a simpler time, maybe asking for a record player or a cassingle? After an age, she looked me dead in the eyes and smiled. "Oh...the box with the music in it!" - I was terrified that I was going to get one of those things with the ballerina in it that you make spin with a hand crank (that'd be a music box, obviously) but I shrugged and said yes, technically, that defined an IPOD if you squinted. She was beaming she had worked out what an IPOD was, and had left it at that, clearly content that we had defined the IPOD as a concept. "Do...you have any?" I said, hopeful that she didn't have a one question limit. She looked at Shannon again, and shook her head. "No...we'll get some in May I think!" - being it was November, I went to Harvey Norman.

I had a mate who used to work at the local paper in Burnie, the Advocate - which as I've mentioned before is the last refuge of Hagar the Horrible, and usually features on the front page a woman who has just managed to knit the perfect sock or a nursing home patient who has turned 88 or something like that (or turned 88 on the same day as a famous movie star). He told me this one time though they had an ace reporter who was great at being wherever the action was on the North West Coast whenever a crime was committed. If some no goodnik punk kids were vandalising, he was hot on the trail, practically catching the rock as it flew through the glass. Anyway, this one day he got a really hot lead that someone had been stabbed in Hiscutt Park in Penguin and so he flew down the road in his Holden Commodore at a rapid clip of about 70 kmhs an hour to get the story, so that resident readers of the Advocate could be scared by the rise of knife crime in the state. When he got to Penguin, he found out that there was absolutely no stabbings, no knife crime, but some customers at the Soapbox had been robbed by the high price of rose smelling bath salts. It was a difficult day for our reporter, as he had probably been deprived of his usual beat, wandering around the K Mart mall counting the kids on a free period and calling them truants. What he did though was write a think piece about how eerily quiet Hiscutt Park was, how he had seen some no good punk kids on the swings being up to no good, and how easily he could have been stabbed if someone had wanted to stab him. His editor wasn't happy with this think piece, so he went back to Penguin, A Current Affair style, and began trying to wind up some members of Lauries Pub to try and get in a fight. As it turned out, all that happened was that he couldn't handle his drink, fell over a stool, vomited all over himself and passed out in the corner. He then woke up with a sore head, told his editor someone had hit him, and crime was rampant in Penguin. Mission accomplished really...

I've never really been in any kind of situation like the one that would have confronted the poor old Target shoppers today, seeing someone stabbed and bleeding on the floor or being in some kind of crisis situation. Probably the worst I've been involved with seeing was outside a train station in Bruges, as the taxi took me away from the city onwards on my adventure. The taxi driver was a Pakistani man with a giant beard, and was making jokes about terrorism which was obviously disconcerting, but we pulled away. As we drove off, I noticed two girls drinking alcopops on a brick wall, no older than thirteen, both in sparkly dresses. The Pakistani cab driver looked at them and said something that sounded like hookers, but I didn't believe that, having lived my little sheltered Ayrshire and northern Tasmanian life. However, at the moment we stopped at the lights, a man came out of the shadows and walked towards them, possibly a pimp, or just a sleazy old man. If he was a pimp, I wanted to know where the cane and hat was - he looked like a biker, with his beard tripping him on the ground. The girls and he had a brief, seemingly unanimated conversation, and then the man with the beard fell down hard on the ground, and as he lay on the ground, the lights turned green and we drove off into the night. I thought as we drove off, he's just been stabbed. The Pakistani was espousing a theory about a particular night club in Eindhoven where everyone dressed in a nautical theme, but I wasn't really listening. I quietly and softly asked "Do you think that guy was just stabbed?" - he looked around, uncertain if he'd missed something, and then realised what I was talking about. "Nah," he said with surety, "he just faked a heart attack, and then he mugs the girls..." - I didn't know what to make of this, but either way I had seen something pretty bad. The Pakistani taxi driver saw my look of concern, and stared through his rain soaked windscreen. "Don't worry," he said firmly, "I see bad shit all the time, you can't fix everything, you just have to keep going sometimes, god, if I kept jumping out the taxi everytime I saw shit like that, I'd be dead quickly..." - it wasn't quit the inspiring moving speech I had hoped for, but he had already mentally moved on. "Everyone is into the 80s here in Belgium...huh? What's all that about? Fucking rubbish! Who wants to bring back the Spectrum! Why! Huh? Huh? Huh?" - and on we drove, leaving the problems of the world back at the train station, all the while discussing why computers in the 1980s were so bad, but in the back of our minds, wondering why for different reasons we had ended up being so helpless...

Since today I couldn't even a way to stop my IPOD from continually skipping over Kim Wilde and going to Moloko, I can't think that I'll ever save the world, or someone in Target, but one day, I might be able to try...IPOD first though...

New Year in the Wilderness

So yesterday, I ended up bringing down a local TOTE outlet, and arguing with my Dad about the merits of Free Range Eggs. Dad made a big deal about buying free range eggs, instead of caged eggs, and I rather annoyingly (to him) pointed out that doubtless they were the same eggs, it's not like some chickens are on a pension plan and laying eggs when they feel like it, and in fact he was paying an extra dollar just to feel a little bit less guilty about the chickens. He then went on a massive rant about my drinking bottled water, how it was out of the tap not a mountain stream, and then we went to the TOTE and put some grand final bets on and the sheets with the betting odds and numbers were just terribly dis-organised and incomplete, and we had to point it out didn't we. I think we broke their spirit. I didn't mean to, I really didn't, I'm just having a bad run with store keeps. Today I've just been asleep. For what it's worth, Dad watched the Grand Final with a 67 year old woman who had a Buddy Franklin love heart painted on her face - which made me question how long I can continue on my current Miley Cyrus phase before I just seem like a demented old stalker. When I lived in Ayrshire, the local football team was routinely hounded by a groupie called Fat Anne (which was either irony or she was treadmilling because she wasn't that fat, or maybe America has changed my standards of fat), a forty something in acid wash jeans who was always trying to get onto the team bus. By chance, one day at the ground I got to talking to Fat Anne (I'm always wary of this since set up + introduction always makes it sound like I'm about to crack onto her, but I was 10, so I put it down to cultural research) who was telling me about her conquests quite openly, and even though I was young (you don't think she was hitting on me was she? I hadn't considered that, that's slightly weird and wrong) I could tell something about her was a bit sad and desperate - or at least I did, until much later, when I saw her at the newsagents a few years later, putting up a sign that said she and her husband (who, of course, played for the team) had just taken ownership of the place. I was proud of her - I mean, she had set out to achieve a goal and she had, she had landed a footballer. She was a WAG, albeit of the mid 90s Scottish First Division kind, selling copies of the Sunday Post rather than buying expensive jewellery. Still, I can't help wondering what might have been for me and Fat Anne...we could have been so happy together...if only I wasn't so judgemental...of acid wash...

When I saw Fat Anne and her new life, it was 1995, and I was on holiday in mid 90s Ayshire. The holiday was an absolute debacle - it snowed for three straight weeks, my friends were all heavy drinkers where I wasn't, they were all into Oasis where my most contemporary musical reference was Black Box (I stand by that by the way) and the people I was staying with had a huge fight and one of them moved out of the house, leaving me to care for my elderly grandmother, who, deprived of her daily source of aggravation, turned her attention to me, timing her vacuuming to start at exactly the moment I wanted to watch the Simpsons. In the midst of all of this chaos, snow and comparisons between Britpop and Europop from 1989 where the girl in the video clip didn't actually sing the song (heartbreaking me like when I found out wrestling wasn't real), we had a trip to a place called Dumbarton, where we went to watch some red hot first division soccer action - the ground announcer told us the players had all been sacked and replaced by twenty-two penguins, a pipe band sprinted off the ground mid performance because of snow, and my friend got hit in the arse by the ball. A woman in a sheepskin coat, when we asked her where the football ground was kept saying "You WANT THE FISH MARKET!" - obviously, in spite of these magical moments of hilarious fish and football foibles, three intervening years had stripped me of most of my relevance to my friends, and vice versa. I ended up for most of the holiday hanging out with the St Mirren supporters club (they gave me a signed St Mirren shirt once, at a game the team lost 3-0 to Hamilton. When I took it out the bag a man said "Pit it away son. Naebodys fuckin impressed wae it the night"). It was just one of those things of course, but I don't think me turning up with my dated references and Australian accent and them sipping lagers and talking about girls as if they were the bass player from the Bluetones and having trendy mod hair was what we in the trade call "common ground" (after all, even Fat Anne had moved on and grown...or shrunk, depending on perspective, and whether you were referencing outer or inner beauty).

As it turns out, and I only found this out much later, my friends went to a New Years party when I was there and didn't ask me to - I don't hold it against them, it wasn't their party, I didn't drink, and my impression of Nathan Buckley wasn't going to help me pick up. And they took me lots of other places, like ten pin bowling. So it wasn't a woe is me kind of moment, although it was a little disappointing. I didn't know this of course when I snuck out (I only say snuck out because of the natural suspicion of my grandmother, who was always concerned you were up to something, even if, unlike this case, you really weren't) the door at 1 in the morning to go for a walk. If you are in Ayrshire, especially if you find yourself by some quirk of fate in the mid 90s, I wouldn't advise a wander around at night. The local paper makes that especially clear. In the bushes it sounded like someone was being bashed up, so I didn't stop to ask them if it was true Blur had lost the Britpop wars.s It was a strange walk, because I was in some pretty miserable circumstances, being alone on New Year should have been cause for a three volume poetry set about alienation and despair, but I wasn't that bothered. What I did find to think about it was that no matter where I had gone, due to my circumstances, I was always the foreigner, always the one who was away, always the one who's out of place. At least I was, until I turned the corner down Hill Street (fans of the 80s may wish to make some sort of Hill Street Blues joke) and saw a party going on in a front garden, which was absolutely insane since it was snowing heavily, but there was definitely some kind of commotion in the front garden. A man called out to me something that was in typically Scottish fashion half accusing and half friendly, and my frozen ears couldn't pick it out. However, what he was doing was askaccusing (not a spelling error, that's the best description for Ayrshire speak in the world) me of failing to possess an alcoholic drink, which is a crime at most times in Scotland, never mind New Year. I had to admit, I didn't drink, and he nearly coughed up a lung in laughing. His wife procured a Budweiser from the fridge (they could just have left it in the snow really) and invited me inside. Now, this is obviously dodgy behaviour, you shouldn't accept 1am invites to parties from snow loving strangers, but I did, and I had a fantastic time - in fact, it was the first time I had something that didn't turn out to be a candy heart, and as they took me into their home, Black Box was playing on the TV in some sort of nostalgic music festival. As for my friends? Well, I found out a lot later that one of them had lost his virginity at the party, however lets just say the four seconds that the young lady spent with him weren't memorable...he never lived it down. Fat Anne put it up in the newsagents window...what it did tell me was that their cool and their unhappiness with my lack of cool was all empty pointless posturing, and they were dorks, just like me. At this point, for the rest of the holiday, I adopted an enigmatic and dismissive grunt...worked a treat...

What the whole holiday did signify was that my life in Scotland, or at least, my dream to move back there and live, had more or less died. Two years earlier when I was there on holiday I had more or less had a complete nervous breakdown in the airport, but now I was ready to move on, move away. I still remember that when I sat up on the last night, after the final night out we had participating in ten pin bowling, being dropped off home and sitting up all night, almost relieved that I had that farewell, and seeing Oasis on the TV and thinking, wow, they actually aren't that bad, still not as good as Blackbox...but I'm sure they won't screw it up. And then my Gran started vacuuming. Learning a lesson about the posturing of the cool, even if it was just from watching the Bluetones on TV or reading and studying the NME, well, it's not easy to learn as a teenager - you always think there's such a thing as the cool kid, but it's not true. Our cool kid at school ended up having sex with a PE teacher in a bath. I mean, she was nice and all, but I wish I'd learned this lesson a lot earlier, had worked at school with more confidence, had been able to look people more in the eye. As it turned out anyway, I had to more or less get straight off the plane and go to Grade 12 camp somewhere in Tasmania, and I can't even remember where we went, but there were rusty swings, games of Celebrity Head...and me, in store bought London clothes, having a vast knowledge of the intimate details of Cool Britannia, I had taken my first drugs, I had been dismissive of people who had been dismissive of me and I had, well, not quite a mod haircut, but whatever it was looked quite cool. I also still had my enigmatic grunt. I was a new man, and the cool kids of Grade 12 noticed, and gathered around to learn my wisdom, to quiz me about Scotland, to just listen to my new accent, and as they gathered, I realised, at least for a brief moment, that cool was just an act. And act I could...as as they gathered closer, I told them that the coolest band in the world...was still Blackbox. OK, it was an act that still needed work...

Oh, and obviously drugs are bad, don't copy that floppy, and teach your kids to swim. Kids lerve wadder (Rolf Harris taught me that, but I'm sure Fat Anne would have as well...)

Shadows, Leaflets, Underpants, Danny, Jordan....

So a woman here in Hobart has been charged with putting broken glass into her husbands sandwiches - and I read this story just, just at the moment I began eating a sandwich at a downstairs table, just at the moment I realised that for once the Mercury wasn't trying to scare us (the latest attempted scare - Killer Flu, which made me think they aint even trying anymore), and as I bit into my sandwich, and read this story, I heard a crunch in my mouth...luckily, it was just my hypochondria, and I had bit into a tough piece of celery, but hey, maybe the crazy lady was waging a war of glass based terror. As I ate my sandwich and though and got up, I noticed something terrible out of the corner of my eye - leaflet droppers, in a pincer movement, moving Space Invaders style to my left and right. This scourge of modern life, the promotional models handing out leaflets, had finally come to my very lunchlap (you heard me, I made up a word). I froze, and realised there was no way out, I was going to be handed a leaflet. I had avoided the World Vision people, I already had AUSTAR, I had completely snubbed any attempt to get me to "taste the cookie" but now, unless I was really rude, I was going to be stuck with a leaflet and engaged in conversation when I didn't want to be. However, I had a plan, and as the promotions model came closer with her forced smile of tolerance, I did a brilliantly mental headswish of pure rudeness, looked in the other direction, and she backed off - success. She awkwardly segued into conversing with a blonde girl in Hi-5 deely boppers in a horrendous jumper but all the while she was looking at me, terrified - frankly, I had no respect for her anyway, if she was going to give up so easily. A girl in Glasgow chased me all the way up the road, into a local pub, saying "But we can be friends!" as she tried to pass me a WWF (the panda people, not the wrestling) leaflet, and she was completely mellow compared to the hard arses in London who curse your existence if you don't take a sample lipstick. The good news is, word got around, and the last two times I went wandering around the mall today, the leaflet givers stayed well clear. I told this to my friend today and she said "Oh why do you have to be so rude! She might have been genuine! How do you know!"...and as I drove home, I got to thinking...well, I was thinking, until the dickhead in the 4WD cut me off...then I got back to thinking...

One thing that I think annoys my friends about me is my complete fascination for what I call "shadow people" - let me explain. One thing that always fascinates me when people die is the way they get broken down to about three characteristics or a single defining event in their life. If for instance I read that the famous juggler who was always busking in the Hobart Mall circa 98 (more on him later) when the giant black girl was in charge had died, I'd think, oh, the crap juggler died, but obviously he had a name, friends, erm...his clubs that he juggled with. He was obviously more complex and full a person than I knew him as, but that's all i knew him for, his inability to entertain tourists. I draw from these shadow people a lot of life lessons (from the juggler for instance, I saw a great deal of persistence and bravery to do his thing), but my friends get annoyed with me sometimes and fail to see how I can learn anything from someone I see for maybe 10 seconds in my entire life. My friend was right - the leaflet girl was obviously far richer and rounder a human being than "the leaflet girl" would suggest, but to her, I'm just "that fucking weirdo who swished his head like Tyra Banks". It doesn't to me mean I can't learn something from brushing past someone in life, something my friends really don't get. To take this even further, one of my life lessons came from someone who I couldn't tell you a single thing about, other than the incident I'm about to type out in default Sans Serif. To set the scene a little bit, 1989 was another one of my bad years. I was alone in Scotland, I did have some friends, but I had a horrible teacher, was a bit sensitive and emotional in a land where that's just asking for trouble and most of all, I was homesick for Penguin. That said, I did have a girlfriend, and a friend who was able to supply me with all the New Kids On The Block news that I could handle, so I was sort of getting through...the thing in Scotland was, everyone, even the coolest kid, was bullied at some point, it was just sort of the way it was. Some days you got bullied, some days a girl called Kerrie-Anne used to wander round and grope everyone - it was sort of the Scottish equivalent of swings and roundabouts...

We went on our school trip in 1989 to the border of Scotland and England, down Berwick way. Our camp was run by a fat sitcom character called Gavin, who ran the camp as Paul Shane once ran Hi Di Hi. He was incredibly camp, and at one point we must have, I can't remember, sneaked into the kitchen at night and got busted and said to the kids he thought were good kids "Gaw I'm ser very disappointed!" and flung his wrist to his head "Why I do declare!" style. The trip wasn't especially memorable - where as all the other kids got letters from home, my Mum send me massive care packages every day, including the paper and hats. The local scouts invited us to watch Revenge Of The Ewoks, and I'm sure at least half our class was thrown out for trouble making, we had our own disco where the cool kids got down to a bit of New Kids, and as a special treat, we played the local school at soccer (I say we, obviously I didn't, cos I was rubbish, but I sure looked good guarding the oranges). What we didn't know was that the local Borders school had really fired themselves up playing "theyfuckinwestoscotlandjessies" (which translated means, goodess, those people from a different part of Scotland from us must be gay, lets kick them in the shins to assert our masculinity) and I think it must have been advertised in the paper or something, because there was cars tooting horns and a bearpit like atmosphere. We, thinking we were on holiday playing for a laugh, lost about 6-0, I got in a fight with my Borders equivalent (that's not a man who works in a bookstore by the way) over oranges, and no one escaped some spit. They didn't even seem to like New Kids On The Block. As our battered and bruised troops walked off the ground, I noticed from my orangey vantage point that a lot of the blame was being put onto a kid called Paul, who had a trendy spiky black haircut and what seemed to be a fake tan. I can't tell much more about Paul, but he certainly was being blamed for a lot...considering he went off with a cut leg after 10 minutes, this seemed quite harsh, but the mob had spoken...

Pauls week was about to go from bad to worse. A kid called Martin (who I just decided then I really didn't like) spread a rumour around that Pauls underwear had been, well, let's say stained, when it was left on a shelf next to Martins clothes. I can't possibly tell you if this is true or not, but it seemed plausible...and, although it had passed by without incident prior to the soccer based fight, Paul had been walking about in his underpants professing his love for a girl called Claire, and had changed popular songs of the day, say, Sidney Youngblood (?) to include the name Claire. Claire wasn't a paragon of virtue mind, given she started the playground groping game, but Martin (I actually really hate this kid now) had assured us that Paul had sullied her somehow good and pure name. Poor Paul was having a terrible time, as every time he tried to come down and eat his lunch no one would talk to him or go near him, due of course to the underwear and the sullying and the underwear sullying. Anyway, we had to go to an arts and crafts session at the local library, and Paul wasn't there, because he was on a different bus. A different Martin (more natural tan, stutter, black hair) decided that it would be really funny if when Paul came in, everyone said "Oooooh Claire!" (you had to be there I guess). And he was particularly keen that I did it too - I don't know why I had to join in, but you know, one in all in I guess. And so, that's what we did, on 3...and when we did it, I've never forgotten this, Paul just...collapsed...just shrunk as a human being before our eyes. He was devastated, genuinely, genuinely distraught, all this crap was coming his way, and he couldn't find a way out of it. He sat almost comatose in his seat, blinking rapidly, while the 2nd Martin tried to talk to him and convince him that he was only joking. And, at the risk of sounding like a kids information film or an episode of Degrassi, I realised then I could never, ever be a bully. I could never intentionally set out to hurt someone - I'm not sure that I've always lived up to that, I'm sure I've had moments of cruelness and gossip, but it's never been deliberate. I can't tell you anything about Paul - what his hopes were, who his favourite New Kid was - and I think after we got back to school he was OK, but I always remember his defeated, dejected face, and what I learned from it...how horrible being part of making someones life miserable had been, and how I never wanted to do it again...

Mind you, if he really did crap his pants...I mean...he probably deserved a little bullying...

Competitive Weaning (State Premiers Award Winning Post)

So it turns out for some reason that I can't understand, I've been given an award for this nonsense which is obviously lovely and greatly appreciated, but the most important thing is, it probably saves my constructing of a difficult first paragraph. That's because nothing happened at all today that I could possibly talk about, so why not get an award! Incidentally, my set text in any instance like this, any instance where I need to learn how to handle triumph or disaster, High Flier by Alisa Camplin, references her first real award, the State Premiers award from John Cain and how proud she was to stand and get an award. The reason I read this book was because if I had to reference standing waiting to meet a state Premier, well, he never showed up, some "aide" turned up and gave me my citizenship certificate, and the old bloke next to me farted an absolute cracker and made me glad that I wasn't smoking. I've been trying to think of anything that happened today, except that my curly headed nemesis at Kmart was out and about again. I was perusing a book in her book section one day, and she's come out with "Ho ho ho, if you like a book that much, you should buy it!" to which my response was "You've just cost your company a sale!" - OK, my response was mostly to put the book down (which I was going to buy) and storm off, and she was sort of chasing me apologizing, but too late, sales pressure had been applied. I was strolling about listening to Daniella's Daze loud on my IPOD, oblivious to the fact I'd won an award by the way, and sort of grabbing people hoping they'd provide some narrative construct for my day, and then, just as DD started to kick into chorus #2, I saw a harried mother splitting up two battling kids, and there it was...the kid was drinking a lime spider! Fant...no...wait...I've had a better idea...just let me rock out a bit on the outro...



Fantastic. So let me state this, as a lesson in Scottish slang - a "wean" is slang for a child, as in "see what the weans daying", "that's a lovely looking wean" or "yer weans a minger" for children with unfortunate faces or "plooks". This lead to quite a traumatic day in your development when you are no longer the wean. Anyway, let me also say that one of the things that defines your life as a wean in Scotland is competition, competition from bullies, from other people from other religions, from family and friends...my Dad used to try and make me a lot more competitive than I am - he's incredibly competitive, and completely beyond all pride when it comes to celebrating his victories (he's not beyond doing aeroplanes around a traumatised child wondering how they just lost at electronic soccer). My Mum, she just loves revenge, she hates games, but she loves revenge (her family motto is "ye've got tae sleep sometimes son"). So my life as a wean has not been adverse to moments of competition. My Dad and my late cousin played me and my friend at two on two soccer on an Ayrshire beach once, and shot out to a tight and competitive 50-0 lead, at which point my Dad drove my cousin mad by saying perhaps he might give us a goal..."NO!" he screamed, they have to learn, and he was right...although my Dad didn't seem to appreciate the day I batted for three hours straight against him compiling a patient hundred while he acted as a one man fielder. One of my main memories of Scotland was seeing a junior soccer game in Ayr, where a bloke nearly snapped this blokes leg off with a tackle, and as this kid rolled around on the ground, his Dad charged onto the ground and squared up to the leg breaker, who calmly and somewhat serial killerishly said "Oh, is it family night at the hospital tonight?" - ah, Scotland, you invented the stamp, the tyre, and the notion of casual violence based on the notion that all strangers are essentially out to get you...fantastic...

I always forget when I go back to Scotland what it's like there, but it doesn't take long to get re-accquainted. Early this year, I went to a golf club (just like the wedding I went to, nothing says class like plus fours and wedges) to attend a party for my aunty and uncles 50th wedding anniversary (I think in Scotland that's not gold, but Irn Bru). My aunty and uncle had two kids, who fight all the time. They have a son with an inflated sense of his own self importance (I once played him at ten pin bowling, and when he won with a 9 on his last bowl, he actually said "Ye see, when ye play me yer never safe!" to which I said "Well...dickhead...I won a Crunchie on the skill tester! So Nuh!") and a daughter who it's fair to say they don't like as much as the son. In fact, when the daughter was younger, they made her do the sons paper round when he broke his foot, and were trying to get her to give him the money for it. She's quite headstrong, and idolises my mother and her theories on people having to take a turn in their bed at some moment...me, I had jet lag, and a terrible stomach ache, and being loaded up on Tennents lager didn't help. So trying to sketch the details of the evening, I find really difficult. Plus, my frames of references in the UK are all off - I keep going to say "So, the Veronicas, what's all that about?" and keep having to change it to Girls Aloud. As I stumbled and bumbled through several awkward and slightly dated popular culture references, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the daughter was banging a spoon off a glass, and was ushering (it would have been super awesome if she had a torch and a jac...sorry, you can take the award back) her kids to the podium. As the son was glowering wildly, the daughters kids got up and read cute self penned poems, that even though I was drunk and now full of Kiev based chicken, were actually pretty good. The significant thing about this is, my uncle is an amazingly grumpy old bastard, in fact he makes Andy Murray look like a laugh riot, and even he was smiling at the amusing references to his foibles set in iambic pentameter. I was going to keep the poetry slam going by getting up and telling everyone assembled about that crazy woman from Nantucket (man, her and her adventures) but instead, I was bailed up by my cousin, some bendy straws, cocktails with rude names and her theories about how all men are bastards...and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the son and his wife engaging in massive and somewhat heated discussion and I thought...no one here knows who Josh Fraser is, I'm dying here...actually, I thought, gosh, this is going to be interesting...

As it turns out, what happened was that the son was bitterly, bitterly furious because his own two kids, two daughters, hadn't been informed that they'd have to do what in Scotland is referred to as "a turn", and obviously with the daughters kids doing their turn, he looked a bit slack in the parenting department. Me, I didn't really care, I was too busy being sick in the toilet and covering it with some "oh, sorry, was I away for 1/2 an hour? I was totally hitting on the barmaid" story that no one was buying. I don't think one of the sons kids had any special talent except for introducing her boyfriend, Miley Cyrus style since she was like 14, as "her special partner" (my other cousins boyfriend said "fucks sake, he must get in a box and let her saw in half, special partner, fucks that!"). However, there was light at the end of this terrible parenting tunnel - the songs other kid, a daughter called Daniella was called over in a daze (see, it all ties in! Daniella's Daze? No...what do you mean you want the award back!) and rather stridently told that she had to get up and do something special for granny and grandad. And what could be more special than a golden wedding saxophone recital? Yes, in the spirit of competition, they made this poor kid get up and play her saxophone to entertain the troops. Sadly, she may have exaggerated her abilities on the sax, or been using saxophone lessons the same way I used job interviews in 1999 (an excuse to go and see someone to get a special mummy and daddy hug). Now, fair play to the kid, she had a crack, even though she was clearly mortified in front of her own "special partner", and even though it wasn't smooth, she battled her way through an acceptable version of "Baker Street". We applauded and went to go back to our bendy straw drinks, at which point the son and his wife have leapt up like salmon out of their seats and screamed for an encore like they had just seen Miley herself sing live. The kid was shaking her head frantically, but the son was so proud, he was preening in front of the daughter, showing up to the world how wonderful his offspring were, how much of a better parent he was to his own parents...Daniella still frantically shaking her head...and broken down, sighing, beaten, she steeled herself, took one for the team...and did Baker Street again...having not progressed beyond page 2 of the how to play the saxophone in 12 easy steps book, it was her entire range on display. And as her parents slunk into their chairs, and the daughter beamed, the son bravely tried to start a clap...

Me? I was trying to ignore the hubbub, slink into my chair, and tell my fascinating Lavinia Nixon anecdote...to the barmaid...she thought it was my sister...

Curleys Bar (The Misteeq Remix and the NIMBYs in my head)

The new Snow Patrol song, it's more offensive than any politician I've seen in the last five years. OK, maybe it's not that bad, but I've never known anything more tepid and mediocre in my life, it makes Jason Mraz look like a sage, especially when they nominally "rock out" on the solo. I don't have friends though that I can discuss this with - what we have been discussing though is, as we've munched on our Believe! bars, the fact that the residents (or the NIMBYs) of Bellerive have been protesting against the installation of light towers at Bellerive Oval - and if the lights don't go up, we don't get any international cricket in Hobart anymore. And where will the bogans who want to make towers out of plastic beer cups go then? This is clearly a big deal for me, not just because I'm probably too out of drinking shape to sit and watch an international cricket game all day on the hill, but mostly because I have to, if my stated aim to work in local community groups is to blossom, pick a side. Am I to be a NIMBY or on the side of progress? I think the progress people have more fun, but the NIMBYs have more passion and better sandwiches. Plus, it's just fun to complain and protest - unless you were part of the great whistle protest at uni in 97 and stole the whistle to go to a rave. It's a tough decision, particularly in a small community. I know from experience that Penguin was torn asunder when "the gay guys" (as they were known, pretty much universally, even to people who knew them) wanted to turn Penguin into some sort of international gaming mecca and were run out of town by a combination of homophobia, fear and hillbillies on tractors, George Jones style. The thing is, you had to pick a side, progress or the same old shit. And I kinda like the same old shit - but the same old shit is basically what leads to people buying Snow Patrol records, and thus the circle of life is again complete, Simba. As the finals bars of the Veronicas Take Me On The Floor filtered from my work day radio, I was unsure of which side I would be on, but I was certain that if I chose the side of converatism and sandwiches, I would never attend a meeting in my retro Lyon soccer top, the one from when Lyon were sponsored by "Le 69"...they probably wouldn't like that...

So I've had a terrible day really - I got stung by a bee that snuck into my washing, I got stuck in traffic and my soccer team lost. As I sat in traffic, rubbing my bee sting, I was greatful that I wasn't the man who's car was in bits by the side of the road, and I felt a little bit better. When you get out of a traffic jam caused by an accident on the road I drive home on, by passing the stationery vehicle that's in bits, it's clear sailing and you can bomb along at about 140 (allegedly). In the traffic jam though, I mostly got to thinking about a similar situation, when getting out of a crowded environment lead to clear air. Let me set the scene a little bit - my friends were feeling adventurous one night out, far more adventurous than they are now, and decided to turn their back on the Salamanca scene. Possibly, my best friend felt like trying his collection of seemingly quite winning pick up grunting and apathy on an entirely new set of girls. One of my rules in life is that I never trust a flier - if someone is handing out fliers, no good can come from following their instructions. Accepting a flier lead to me entering Ayrshires new Fila store in search of orange shoes, and that lead to me being harangued by a trendy something behind the counter that my tops were "so 1991" and me saying "but it is 1991 now you idiot!" and an argument breaking out. So when my friend said that he had got a flier off a promotions model (maybe it was Hayley Moxon?) in the middle of town, that entitled him to a free shot of tequila (with bendy straw) at Curleys bar, I felt an instant acid style flashback to 1991. Incidentally, as an aside, the name of this bar is also the surname of someone I hate very very much, and I was concerned he had invested in a bar. However while I wasn't thrilled about the night out that was planned, I was assured in that usually matey way that the night would be no good without me, they'd get me a chick and all that usual rubbish that leads inevitably to no one getting a chick, and a dismal experience on the way home haggling with the taxi driver. Luckily, I'll a wily old fox now, versed in the Hobart social scene etiquette...I know to pretend to fall asleep in the taxi home. Oh, kids today, so much to learn, with their rock and roll eight tracks...

Anyway, I knew going to Curleys (or indeed anywhere with the promise of tequila + bendy straw) was going to be a terrible idea when I saw the queue. Why do nightclubs have queues anyway? Fire regulations? A love of the velvet rope? Or to make the Maori on the door feel important? As we queued, I saw in the queue my netball playing ex, talking amicably to a footballer called Hayden that I also knew, who was talking about how amazing Lano and Woodley was. As perhaps I have established, I am a terrible small talk maker, so I didn't say hello, but as I looked in her direction, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that my friend - with the coupon - had been nudged stage left and out of the queue by something I've never seen before, even from the punch and judy show (minus the punch) outside Syrup. A line bouncer. Yes, I have never to this day seen anyone not even make it to the front of the queue before they get turfed, but my friend managed it, with the old footwear problem striking again. As he was told that he wouldn't be getting in in those shoes, he valiantly waved his coupon like a flag high in the air and whinged "but...bendy straws!" to no avail. He was out of there, and we proved our supportiveness by staying in the queue and trying to get the coupons off him - he wasn't impressed. The line bouncer passed us, but not a girl with Pippi Longstocking chic, or a girl with a buskers hat, or...out of a queue of 15-20 people, he turfed about 12 people, for various infractions. All that was left from the original Kokoda trail of queueing was me, my two other friends, a girl in a Cookie Monster T-shirt who was whispering to her friend "Shit! Fucking shit! I hope he doesn't find out I'm 14! Fucking shit!" - and of course, she was completely fine, because she had pumps. At this point, one of those turfed, a well built man in a "serve steaming hot" T-shirt, decided that the best course of action was to charge up to the line bouncer, and just start laying into his shoes. "Those are STORE BOUGHT!" he squealed with glee, over and over again, and he was still hopping on one leg, like a cheeky T-shirted pixie, as we finally made it into what the flier called "Nightclub Nirvana"...

Well, it was probably about as depressing as "In Utero" anyway. The club was split into thirds, a loungey bit on which sat several English uni students, one in a Button Moon T-shirt, whinging about how the club wasn't a patch on the ones in London, a dance floor on which danced one incredibly hot Brazillian girl and several bogan chicks, round a man bag to the thumping strains of Mis-Teeq on the video screens, with smoke machines billowing like an 80s edition of Top of The Pops. And out the back, a smoking room, out of which there didn't seem to be much tobacco smoke, and everyone seemed incredibly fond of Xavier Rudd. We settled initially on the lounge area, clearing our own space, feeling slightly uncomfortable in the fact that we were the only people of legal age in the whole place. Outside, it remained chaotic, and we could several people getting more and more angry, one throwing his shoes at the bouncer. The tense atmosphere spread to the dance floor, where the Brazillian appeared to have latched onto one of the bogan chicks men, maybe by expressing a preference for Holden over Ford. As we sipped our seven dollar green "are you sure this is a Boags?" drinks, to my complete delight out of a bendy straw, a girl came and talked to me, asking me to dance. Actually, she asked me to watch her bag, which is a marriage proposal in some Tasmanian towns. She draped herself over one of the nearby seats and looked directly at me, smiling, showing at least five teeth and a lifetime of flirtacious experience based on blunt directness and too much Midori. "So, what do you think of Destinys Child?" she said, pointing to Mis-Teeq pumping away on the video screen. I thought, well, it's an easy mistake (or Mis-Teeq, you bounding pun based cad) to make. So, gently, I said, well, that's actually Mis-Teeq. She hissed venom and her little eyes bulged as she said "I didn't ask for your nerferkin life story!" (that incidentally has a lot less Mis-Teeq and a lot more days sitting in traffic) and stormed off to hit on a mulleted man in an AC/DC t-shirt. By now, the man who had been winding up the bouncer about his shoes had returned with eggs, and was threatening to pelt the club if he didn't get let in. The tension continued to rise, when the video screen briefly went out, and the Brazillian girl said it showed Tasmanians showed no class, and then to amusement of Miss Warrane broke her heel on her shoe as she twisted. By the time an aggravated barmaid had confronted her boss about not wanting to clean up broken glass, it was clear to me that Curleys Bar was really just an average Dodges Ferry pub on a Saturday night, just with a smoke machine. As violence and tension continued to brew to the thumping strains of commercialised UK garage music that had spawned out of an originally quite undergr...no, you are right, you didn't ask for my life story, and we sculled our strange green drinks, and left, only to find our mate sitting on the step of the library across the road, waving his coupon in the air and drinking Boags he had scavved off a homeless man high in the air. "I had a coupon!" he said, loudly, and angrily. And thus, the wily old fox, having been out for about 10 minutes, was about to get in the front of a taxi and pretend...

Incidentally, I think if I do go and protest against the Bellerive light towers, I'm going to go to a protest dressed as a light tower. You see, I was in traffic for way, way too long....too many good ideas...

Daniel Giansiracusa, Carmit PCD and Simba, together at last

So my e-mail isn't exactly flowing with...well, e-mails obviously. If it was flowing with ham sandwiches, we'd have problems a technician couldn't fix. Apparently though (and my friends have sent me this a lot) another guy was stabbed on a bus in Canada, which is really freaking me out, as it was already my #1 fear in life when it happened the first time, never mind now it's happen again - even scarier than a night out in Smithton, even more frightenting than Michael Voss doing 1/2 an hour of stand up comedy at the Brownlow last night. Speaking of the Brownlow, if Hayley Moxon is reading, call me. Oh, sorry, speaking of the Brownlow, I honestly think how much effort you put into playing football should correlate to how hot your date it - Scott Pendlebury is the laziest man on earth, why does he get a hot date? It's otherwise a really dull day, although whenever I start typing, my brain gets distracted by side issues. I think this is my biggest problem with my writing, I can't always come up with a coherent thoughtful summation of what I'm trying to say, especially in longer novel type writing. Actually, that's noth the problem today, it's mostly just that I'm looking at Hayley Moxon pictures (call me) and trying to avoid being bailed up in conversation by girls who think they are all that when in fact they should really have a look at the size of the buttons on their coats - they are absolutely gigantic girl, and when did the duffle coat come back in vogue? Incidentally, I went for a wander while I was in the middle of typing to go and buy a sandwich, and I found the very definition of sales pressure - one shop, one thing to look for, and only me trying to look with three sales staff lurking around ready to pounce. I felt so uncomfortable I bottled and left without my item - still, there's three months to go until Xmas Dad...don't get stressed yet...

One thing that has been on my mind a lot lately is that if I do make 2009 the year I roll up my sleeves and start doing things for the community, I'm going to have to overcome my fear of other people. Now, this isn't "Oh my god, doing a speech is worse than DYING!" type deal, believe me, I can do speeches, but I am absolutely terrible at standing in a room when I don't know anyone, especially if I'm there early. I hate sitting in a pub on my own at a table, reading the Herald Sun like a Billy no mates. I'd rather circle the block than sit there on my own, I really would. I don't know where this discomfort has come from, but (abuse lit book here I come!) I blame my Mum. She always had us at every single party about four hours early, so I'd sit there, and it was always with some kid that I didn't know. Inevitably, the party host would assume kid + kid = fun and we'd just be so delighted to play and frolic, when kid + kid = trouble in most cases. One time, they cracked out the Uno cards and shoved me and this kid in a room below the stairs. One hour later we had to be pried off each other after a bitter dispute over whether a card was a 6 or a 9, but it could have been anything - we would have punched on regardless. It would have been far worse if we'd played Monopoly. Over time my discomfort in a room full of strangers has grown and grown - not just when I had to go and listen to the poetry of the demented goth fairy - but culminating in a disastrous and uncomfortable visit to an 80s party right in the middle of my friendless triangle of 99-01, where I completely freaked out having to stand awkwardly on the edge of the dance floor as a group of friends posed for photographs, and I fled in complete confusion down the road dressed in an op shop outfit that made me look like the lead singer of Flock of Seagulls. I can't rationally explain any of this, but I am far more confident when I get to enter a room with at least one person I know. At the very least, no one is going to yell after me as I get out of the party "Well, he ran..." (I wish someone had said that, but no one did, because the camera when everyone was taking the photos hadn't gone off and no one really noticed...I made my own joke in my head).

Now, about two years ago, I had to face this fear really head on. Due to a wedding commitment, which began in a cigar filled snooker club (the posh kind, not the kind where my old next neighbour used to see how many balls he could shove in peoples exhaust pipe), I ended up in a wedding party, due to my friendship with the groom. Now, I'm sure satirists and terrible stand up comedians have made some hilarious "where's the party getting married" material, so I'll spare you, but I was only in the wedding party because the wife didn't like the original choice, a shaven headed bikie who, like a lot of shaven headed bikies, was actually a fantastic bloke - or maybe they just thought my knowledge of individual Pussycat Dolls would break the conversational ice at slow moments. All week, I was dragged to parties, the groom would wander off, and there I was, stood in parties with strangers, unable to flee. I was also in the middle of some exceptional battles - one of them around dancing lessons, and when the brides Mum was asked for an opinion she said "my opinion is that your fucking bitching is giving me a headache" (and I chipped in with "So...one of the Pussycat Dolls is called Carmit" and she found it fascinating - I think she was hitting on me). Worse, brideside were exceptional snobs, and really didn't take to me. I didn't take to them, and was absolutely delighted when the snobs in the designer dresses all got absolutely hammered and simulated what you might see described in the paper as a "sex act" with a golf flag. Ah, alcohol. I can't really take the moral high ground, because I spent all of that week drunk myself, with what I would describe to a therapist as "anxiety issues" but which I would describe more honestly as "free bar issues". Those tequilas shouldn't come with cute novelty straws. I'm reliably assured that I endeared myself to the snobs and movers and shakers (not least of all because when they told me they had booked Guy Sebastians band, without Guy Sebastian, I said not unreasonably "thank Buckley for that") when they went to great trouble to introduce me to an AFL footballer, Daniel Giansiracusa. He plays for the Western Bulldogs, and since he didn't play for Collingwood, I wouldn't have been impressed sober, but I apparently said something akin to Officer Barbrady on South Park when he said "Well ya aint Fiona Apple, and if you aint Fiona Apple I don't give a rats ass" only with the words "Fiona Apple" replaced by "Nathan Buckley" and rats ass replaced with...let's just say, he hasn't called back. Considering how impressed they were with him being in attendance. and one of the snobs was sending him individual clothing items via her friend to show she was naked in the room waiting for him, it wasn't the best move for my popularity, but it gave me a crazy confidence. In answer to the question "Are you that guy who..." I not only was the guy who, I was proud to be the guy who (it's a shame chat moved onto "Aren't you the girl who" once the golf flag...)

After posing for roughly 617 photos, including some at an unbooked cafe where we stole the tables from real customers and some shirtless men threatened to tip beer on the "posh cunts", we ended up at the reception. As I sat at the top table eating expensive prawn cocktail and stridently not being cracked onto because I didn't play football, one of the stepdads of the bride came up to me, a big man with a big ruddy red face and a big smile, and he really didn't know me, and talked to me for basically half an hour. He was really self confident in himself and we had a fantastic chat about life and dignity and how much he hated everyone at the wedding except us and the price of prawn cocktails in the pre Rudd economy. And then he excused himself to go and get us some more beers, and my friend - who was also in the bridal party but who I hadn't seen much of because he was trying not to stab people with a pool cue - and I agreed that he was a fantastic bloke. As we discussed this, a very wise man called John came up to us and said "Are you serious? He's a fucking used car salesman! He's full of it! He's slimy and doing the rounds!" - and sure enough, as we looked, he was over at Daniel Giansiracusa, and probably telling him about the boring 1/2 an hour he just spent talking to the Tassie bogans. I didn't feel as passionately angry about this as John would have liked (he was most upset because they had chatted for a while with the man and then out of nowhere was given a business card). I thought, I try not to be cynical with people, I just thought he was a nice guy, now I had the other view. Most of all though I thought I could never be like that - I could never walk into a room with an agenda, mingle with bullshit, make the kind of small talk that politicians have to make - it's just not me. As I looked across the dance floor towards where he was, peering over a small glass of some kind of fifty dollar beer, I thought it was just his manner, and while John wanted us to go and take hostages, I thought quite openly that even though he would never return with the beers, and was probably calling us every name under the sun to "Gia", that he was actually more nervous and unconfident that I was, and was filling his alloted time with blustery conversation that went nowhere, the same I do with the Pussycat Dolls and half baked Collingwood theories. My thoughts on this subject were thus rudely interrupted by noticing that, to his partner, Daniel Giansiracusa was quite clearly looking at the politician, pointing, and making the universal wanker sign...somewhere, Simba was learning a valuable lesson about circles...

One of the other Pussycat Dolls was called Harmony - just in case reading this, I still need to fill in a few seconds silence...

Portishead take on the metal version of John Williamson

It was a strange day today, an eerie grey gloom encasing not just my workplace (unsurprisingly, one of my work colleagues went home due to an ingrown eyelash - yes, really, someone with a voodoo doll didn't try hard enough) but the entire city where I work. Despite that, the strangest thing that happened today involved my local McDonalds. I don't often go to the McDonalds where I work, the one where I live being full of depressed single parents with visitation rights sitting reading the paper while their progeny bounces the Happy Meal toy off their head in a plea for attention. The one where I work though is obviously owned by some kind of American motivational speaker, as it's always clean, the staff are uncharacteristically upbeat, and the food is even vaguely food (OK, that's stretching it). For some reason, the girl behind the counter today got immensely hypnotised by her service training (or my fly Scottish patter) and wouldn't let me go. "Thanks!" I said initially. "No worries! You have a great day!" "Thanks..." "A really great day!" "Er..." "Enjoy your food!" and so on until a vague sense of absolute discomfort came over me and I genuinely thought I would have to provide a written report on the quality of the pickles. One of the things I've really been talking about to my friends lately though is that fact that the Australian actor Bill Hunter - a lovely man, who we all thought had a great integrity to him - is doing adverts for the evil empire the AFL. On top of the fact that I read once that there's basically about two acts in the entire world (and one of them the tedious Bob Dylan) who have never done a private party for wealthy Arab sheiks when asked, and I think my search for a hero with integrity and dignity will forever go on. We know far too much about our heroes these days to truly idolise them - David Boon, for instance, is idolised by everyone in Tasmania except people who have met him. And that's before I get to the lovely Monica Daggar throwing her integrity away to date the boofhead from Aussie Home Loans...Jane Fleming, I'd expect nothing more from her...

In the midst of discussing this (and various betting options) with my friend today, I had another discussion about intelligence vs dumbness, my friends oft being concerned with my propensity to be able to remember cast details of Kate Bushs The Line, The Cross and The Curve but not do anything about my career or job prospects or sit and pen the great Australian novel. I can't explain this - but my entire life I've been confronted by the battle between culture and lowculture, and I don't feel my life has suffered because I can recite the last 28 Brownlow medallists and not a single line from Nabokov. However, I will give you an example of a time when culture and lowculture have clashed in my life. My school once had a battle of the bands, hosted by a slightly plump bogan girl who often had the hots for whats in the box with the dots. We all gathered in the school assembly hall, resisting the temptation to spend our lunchtime more productively in the library or avoid knife wielding muggers in the park. The first band were pretentiously arty, a little bit trip hop, but with a mesmerising mainland vocalist who was not only beautiful but had a whole Beth Gibbons Portishead nervy energy to her. They sang this really beautiful song about taking a journey (not the band Journey, that would have been ace) and it was amazing. I really fancied her, but of course, I was much too shy to say anything, and I had a cheese sandwich that was taking up my attention anyway. And of course, they got really tepid applause from the shuffling populace, shuffling like livestock in danger as the chords failed to move them. Then, without warning, on came the school dirt band, a long haired unintelligable headcase called Penman leading the way on vocals, throwing himself into some sub Pantera wailing and screaming. As I stood there blinking under the lights, I realised that everyone but me was thoroughly enjoying the performance, without irony, and rocking out. I hated them for it - could they not see that this was just unintellictual, thoughtless noise - in fact, as I listened closer, I realised that they had actually more or less taken John Williamsons "Rip Rip Woodchip" and turned into a metal song. After about three or four hairwhips that probably showered the front row with grease, the plump girl ran on and declared that Penman was the winner, oblivious to the fact that it probably should have gone to a vote, and incidentally, she was his woman anyway. Defeated, I skulked away from that assembly hall with all the righteous fury and unrequited indignation of a Triple J request DJ. Oh, how could they not appreciate the art instead of...that...that loud artless noise (I of course spat the word noise in horrified disgust)...now all I needed was friends to discuss it with...

I really was angry though that this beautiful music had to suffer in the cauldron of the thick, but just as I was about to write some angry letters to Backchat about the state of the nation, I found my friend Matthew. Matthew was a man who loved his air guitar, and could be relied upon to cheer us all up with a bit of rocking out when he needed to - oh, and sometimes he would cheer us up by rolling a nerd up in a carpet. Always big laughs in Burnie. Anyway, he was kicking a football, and no doubt saw my incredibly tortured sub Morrissey face as I strolled across the playground. "Sup dickhead!" he said affectionately. At least I think it was affectionate? I couldn't explain to Matthew that he was part of the problem - a man who loved his metal, and the simple life, where as I craved far more intellectual fare, far and away from Burnie. Matthew saw me shrug, and punched a Sherrin football from hand to hand as he walked in my direction. "Dicha see that wicked band! Ferkin awesome!" he said, putting his fingers in an air guitar position. I shrugged again (gee, I wonder why I didn't have a lot of friends - I might as well have wandered around with a duffle coat and eyeliner) and he looked me dead in the eye. "I bet you wanted to root that moody chick" he said, smiling. I looked back at him, and said something meaningful like "Er..." "Fucking hell, you are a dickhead! Why you'd want to go out with someone that fucking miserable, you'd have to be a miserable bastard! Go out with a metal chick! They fucking rock!" - he then turned away and kicked the football as hard as he could, enjoying it's flight as it trickled down the hill. "Cheer the fuck up! Metal rocks!" he said, running away giggling - I no doubt had some pithy remark prepared about how metal and rocks were actually different elements that would have gone down a treat on the Left Bank, but this was Burnie, and to say something like that, well, someone get the carpet...

I saw the Penman guy and his missus pashing behind a tree as I walked, the trophy and the Kmart gift voucher he had won propped up against a nearby bush. The more I walked, the more I realised that I was being a bit stupid, and stuck up and judgemental. After all, all of the people I looked down on for their lack of intellectual qualities were, in fact, really happy. They were getting pashes, they were kicking footballs, they were hanging out with their friends and debating issues about marbles, while here I was, unsure of myself, bewildered, lost...sounding like a Calvin Klein advert. As I pondered this moment in my life, I happened to look across the school car park, and there was the Beth Gibbons girl, shimmering in the sunlight, stunning, poised. In every way, my intellectual salvation, a sign of a smarter world...and she had in her hand a large brick, and she was obviously about to break into a car. At which point, a large man in tattoos came, tapped her on the arm, and pointed to a more expensive car for them to steal. I didn't know what to do or say or how to think - this wonderful girl that had moments before been so arty and talented and wonderful was now swearing her head off and calling her boyfriend a cunt because they had missed their opportunity to steal a Selica from a financially strapped school teacher. Her speaking voice sounded a bit like Nick Riewoldts anyway. I stood, watching, wondering about the duality of human expression, the mask she had put on a few moments before, when Matthew came back up the hill, bouncing his football. "Sup dickhead?" he said, shooting me a handpass. "Oh, moody chicks trying to steal a car," I said, softly and sadly. "Is that a metaphor?" he said, raising an eyebrow. I said no, it wasn't, she was really trying to steal a car. He looked across at the car park, at the tattooed man dragginer her away as they argued, stroked his already stubbled chin, and nodded. "Oh fuck, that's all we fucking need...next year, she'll be back, fucking whinging about cars and prison in her songs...count me fucking out!"

I never quite to make of that day, but one thing I do know...The Line, the Cross and The Curve is not a film you want to put on any time of your life...

The Coast is fading like a flower

So it turns out last night that while I was innocently sleeping in my comfy comfy bed, a man was rampaging around Kingston at 2 in the morning in a souped up doof doof mobile (no doubt blasting Noiseworks) terrorising innocent BP workers with a replica pistol and getting involved in a hilarious car chase with pratfalls a-go-go. This is obviously significant because the angry rabble rousing residents now have another reason to ark up about the bottle shop plans, but also because we never have any crime in Kingston - sure, there's some mild prostitution from the girls in the swing park, and you can't put up a phone box bar it get smashed by a bunch of naughty kids but whenever I've got a taxi home, there's never been anyone out on the streets (just in the swing parks) at all, hence Kingstons reputation as a nice retirement village. I think if Kingston is going to start with crime, for instance if someone goes down and cuts down the "Fork In The Road" (quite literally, a big fork - what an attraction) it could be a fantastic way for me to start my career in community groups, petitioning against naughty kids. I thought this was really interesting, because I'm spent most of my years here thinking that one day I'd be standing up and demanding that Kingston got a night club - I spent one Boxing Day sitting on the beach with a carry out of West Coast Coolers with my cousins (the one I don't like, and my adopted Asian cousin, who basically said once without irony the trouble with Melbourne is it's full of Asians) because everything was closed by 4pm. We figured at that point, Kingston could really do with a nightclub - it's not fair to deny the home town the chance to be punched in the head by an angry Maori. The only night out I've had in Kingston was the one I wrote about before, at the RSL when the man and woman virtually got divorced on the spot - what I didn't mention was that we went to watch Richmond vs Collingwood at a fundraiser, and because the game was delayed, the big screen showed Burkes Backyard in HD Big Screen Dolby sound for an hour. Yes, I might not have been able to get a cheap drink or pick up anyone under 60, but I sure learned how to pot a petunia (if you don't grow petunias in a pot, it's the only flower I know, and as you'll see, mentioning flowers is a good segue)...

Yesterday I was so futuristically talking to a friend of mine about back home (I realise that could mean a few places for me, but in this case, it's the North West coast). Apparently, according to the Advocate, the local newspaper taking a rare break from insightful woman knits socks in football colours front cover they specialise in, I found out that instances of the STD chlamydia on the North West Coast have risen 300 percent in the last 5ive years. Obviously, this is a massive concern, if it's not overblown reporting like when the Mercury tells us to lock ourselves in the basement to avoid Asian gangs. I'm frankly stunned that the awareness campaign on the coast failed - a few years ago they basically plastered the streets with leaflets and stickers that said, quote, "chlamydia - it's not a flower" (under which someone put the graffiti "but it grows in a dark place"). I'm staggered that this campaign didn't work, especially at the target group of young North West Coasters who's main word is that word that rhymes with "runt" - incidentally, when I grew up on the Coast, our main awareness campaign revolved around Wally The Wombat (who isn't a flower), a rotund fire safety expert mascot who's stickers were highly sought after. Every year, along with the phone book and the footy season, a new dawn was signified by a new message from Wally, usually about fire, until the obtuse reference to clearing your attic in 1985 that preceded his demise. One year, someone told me once that at the Penguin football oval, someone had a Wally Wombat costume made and was mobbed by kids who for once didn't kick a mascot in the groin, and were paying rapt attention until Wally asked this ginger kid "Hey! Are you fire safe!" and the kid said "Nup! I nerfuckin burn shit!" - at which point, the kids probably kicked Wally in the groin. Yes...kids...other kids...certainly not me....whistles idly...

Anyway, the Coast seems to be in a little bit of trouble with the chlamydia spread referred to in in no way sensationalist terms in the Advocate as "WORSE THAN THE PLAGUE!" - probably. Not helping this plague is the fact that apparently the pubs up there (nice use of the word apparently) continue to serve beer well past the point at which a bouncer at Syrup would smash you in the head and throw you in the street, and nothing says bam-chikka-bow-wow like too much alcohol. A Burnie Dockers football official, he was stripped by his team, and vomited on a pool table, and still was allowed to keep drinking. He's not too happy about this, so the Advocate says, and he blames the pub for allowing him to keep drinking, naked, until he "almost died", spending 23 hours on life support,  to which I say...almost? What a lightweight! Boy in my day you were still plied with beer until Laurie from Laurie's pub called the coroner! Some of the drinking sessions of legendary cricketer/fat bloke Danny Buckingham would make your liver rot, and this bloke is whinging about almost dying? I don't have the stomach for a big chlamydia inducing drinking session anymore - my stomach aches after a few beers now, which is amazingly girly, but I am an old man. I've never almost died, but I did pass out on a nightclub step in London, and work up with an 8 foot Nigerian looking at me going "You want taxi?" - I thought he wasn't referring to the best work of Tony Danza, so I thought sure why not - which given my incredible fear of being stabbed to death, probably isn't the smartest thing, jumping into a taxi from a solicitous Nigerian stranger, but luckily, he was a taxi driver and not a crazy murderer. I for whatever reason have never had a massive drinking session on the NW Coast, but I do know that there are certain rules - don't beat the locals at pool, only play the Gambler and Khe Sanh on the jukebox, wait behind any locals to get served, even if they queue up for 10 minutes less than you, and most importantly, if you are in Penguin, don't go and pee on the local landmark, the Big Penguin. Someone told me once this bloke was having a cheeky pee on it at 2 in the morning, and he was caught and they tied him to a tree and left him there, sans his pants, until morning when some startled church goers got an early morning shock. I'm sure he learned his lesson...

So if the North West Coast is plagued with drinking problems and chlamydia - well, it's not all that different to when I lived there, although I am disgusted that men are winning the Queens Quest competition (what manner of evil is that!) but obviously, if I did move back there as a concerned citizen, to show some local pride, I'd have to move up there with a positive attitude and talk up the North West Coast. I'd be quite happy to don the Wally The Wombat costume if it helped and turn my focus away from fire safety to chlamydia prevention and warning about the perils of drinking. I don't really remember getting too many visits from local groups when I was at school, we got the odd visit from inspirational speakers telling us to stick in at school and work hard (I must have been looking out the window) and someone came in to teach us breakdancing once (I was doing the Running Man much to their disgust) but we didn't get many people telling us about local pride and events and things about our community. The best guest speaker we had at school was...well, me, so I was told. It wasn't so much a guest speech, I just talked this one time reluctantly for as little time as possible about my job at the ABC, and got some big laughs for the story about the broken tap. I don't know, but I suspect it was because if they encouraged me to talk for longer, they wouldn't have to go back to class, but it was the biggest laughs I got outside of my own Dad laughing at me when I had my tracksuit on back to front. It was probably an OK little talk, a bit of a snapshot about what you could achieve in Burnie with a bit of hard work - brought a tear to a glass eye. At least, in comparison the girl after me, quite a serious but flighty girl who told me once about angels and fairies got up and obviously threw her prepared notes away to try and crack some gags. She started with a gem of a story about working with a girl called Joelene..."we all sung at her!" she exclaimed to a compete murmur of indifference (it's all in the delivery). "The Dolly Parton song!" she said, tapping the mic impatiently. She then started singing the song, in a terrible off key warble, before wandering off in disgust, muttering something about "should have stuck to the Janice Ian material"...

So, stay safe North West Coast kids, stay away from the plague, stop drinking when you need to, and listen to the Wombat...he'll at least ensure your loft is flame resistant...

Not dying like Benny Hill (of being 31%)

So yesterday (which I think was when I logged into Blogger - it's only just logged me in after 60 hours of waiting) I went into Banjos (I know, I know, corporate bakeries still suck, but I wanted a sandwich because I'm on a health kick) merrily listening to Adam Green on my IPOD, and there were no sandwiches in the whole shop. So I went instead to get some sausage rolls, and there was none of them either. Pies? No pies. So I'm standing there, thinking really frantically about what I'm going to buy for lunch now and where I'm going to get some food, and getting a bit philosophical about it, because obviously we're Western consumers, and people are starving in the world (they don't even have a home, when I can't live without my phone, as Mel C would say) and I...luckily, this tedious inner monologue was jolted by a girl in giant blue sunglasses who said, I think without irony, "OH MY GOD! It's like a FAMINE in here!" - indeed it was, Bob Geldolf was going to write a song about it. I was going to go and write a slightly poetic post about this at the local library, but I forgot that it's school holidays, so the computers are filled with 15 year old boys trying to look up pictures of boobs without the librarian telling them off. One thing that has changed, librarians are a lot more timid than they were in my day. The old dears at the Penguin library used to tell you to shush up if you ate a chip too loudly - now they tiptoe around, they even wait until the homeless man has got out of the way before they put a book on the shelf. So now I'm on my laptop at home, sitting on the deck, wondering what I'm going to do to fill in the day. I'm certainly going to be on the lookout for local issues to complain about when I go for my walk a little bit later, but for now, I'm just watching funny cats on Youtube. I wonder if I could find a stray cat and train it to do something hilarious so that Shelley Craft can give me a prize...as you can see, it's not the most productive of Saturdays so far...

As it turns out though, according to our local paper The Mercury (taking a rare break from terrifying stories of gangs, Asian gangs, and home wrecking Asian gangs) 31% of Tasmanians hate being boxed into statistics...no, actually, 31% of all Tasmanians live alone. Now the Mercury made this out to be a terrible thing, that anyone who lives alone will die like Benny Hill (the comedy genius of the 1970s who died alone in his armchair watching Teletext) but it's a long bow to draw that people who live alone are all vulnerable weirdos penning manifestos against the government. However, it did scare me, because dying alone and undiscovered used to be my #1 fear in life - prior to it being "stabbed and eaten on the bus home by a mental Chinese bloke" (and now it's "being stabbed 48 times by a crazy bloke at a supermarket"). I realise this is an irrational fear, because obviously you'd be dead and not know that you were slumped in the couch for two years, being discovered as a skeleton in a De Graafschaap top. Incidentally, my auntie, she sometimes likes to pretend to be dead in the armchair when people visit her to see if they care (most people are onto her now, and jab her with a stick). It's one of the reasons though that I want to get more involved in the community - so people actually know who you are, but preferably they miss you from a distance so they don't come and clog up your weekend too much (I've got valuable sitting in the spa time to kill). I'd much prefer to die alone though than be put in a home - that scares me a lot more. Being dragged out of bed to go and play bingo, watch old movies with a group of people whinging because you got the special chair or put in a sailors suit to sing My Boy Lollipop in the old folks talent home, just kill me now. I had this discussion with one of the old boys I had to go and visit during my Grade 9 visitation, and when Renee the missionary who used to tell me off for my lack of commitment because I used to go off and play pool wasn't looking, I rather pompously and somewhat against the spirit of the adventure, took my paints and asked the old bloke what he was doing in an old folks home and how depressing the whole place was. He stroked his wily old beard and pointed to an old woman in a shawl rocking underneath the window - "it's worth all this painting shit, cos I'm shagging her brains out". Fair enough I thought, and went back to the painting shit, trying to paint a cat on a window (mauling Renee)....

Now, I've been lonely, not lonely enough to write an abuse-lit book about my terrible childhood, but I've been the kid eating his cheese sandwiches on his own at the blue park bench looking over at the cool kids. I've also been desperately lonely in big crowds - you should have seen me when I went to see Wolfmother, and was so bored my head started to ache. I was pretty lonely then, because I was the only person going "It's just a Led Zep tribute band! Come on!". Anyway, just because I live alone, doesn't make some sort of sad mental gimp. It's all relative anyway. I thought I saw the loneliest person I'd ever seen at Melbourne airport at about 2 in the morning - this quite tired and emotional girl in an orange T-shirt, with a Red Star Belgrade hat on. She cleared customs and barged through the doors, to find precisely no one waiting for her, and she was obviously expecting a turnout. She slumped against the wall in some kind of dejected state, and I felt really bad for her, because she was close to tears, just a picture of desolation. At which point, about two hundred people charged down the stairs and carried her shoulder high out of the airport. I hope they weren't kidnapping her. Anyway, the point is, people who live alone are mostly OK. I just realised as I type this for instance that I've spent the last four minutes swearing really loudly at Chris Brown and threw some Dairy Milk at the TV - I used to live with this girl in my share house who used to listen to Bob Dylan all the time, and because it was in a share house, you kind of have to grit your teeth and go, wow, that's, er, great...no, really, 18 verses to go...if it was my own house, he can get some Dairy Milk in the head. I got in a taxi once with this cab driver talking about how Bob Dylans the Hurricane was the greatest song of all time because it was a poem set to music with 28 verses - for giggles, I told him The Veronicas were better than Bob Dylan...let's just say, there was nothing to giggle about from his point of view...

I don't think I'd be a good person to live with anyway - my share house flatmates got hooked into me for my lack of cooking abilities, my girlfriend used to say when I sort of lived in her attic that I was lazy and spent all day playing ATARI, and my parents...they used to give me a round of applause if I made them a cup of tea. I also engage, Ed Kavalee style, in a slow process of alienation based around me criticising everyone elses musical tastes while blasting a playlist of Britney and Portishead at them. If I did move back in with my parents, I think that would scare me the most. Nothing against them, but they like to talk about how my day was, and I'm not good at that. Yesterday, this woman was telling me at work all about her zany adventures on the Tasbash circuit, and I literally left my body out of boredom, I couldn't listen a minute longer, it was like on the Simpsons when Homers brain quits on him and you hear a door slamming. It's about three times worse when people ask me how work is or expect me to talk about myself. If I had to go back to live at home, it'd be like I was back at school and sitting on the couch going through my miserable report cards. Mind you, at least they are supportive, Dad told me one of his friends was 14 and his Dad and Mum split up and his Dad said to him "Oh, I've got somewhere to sleep tonight, dunno where you're going" (he should write an abuse-lit book). I knew though I was destined to live alone very quickly when I lived in my share house - not just being robbed, not just having people use my window as an alternative door to the house, and not just being told to turn down Blur at every single moment that I lived there. I realised I was destined to live alone when the fat girl we lived with (who not only stole my money, but a pair of jeans twenty times two small for her and a copy of Jagged Little Pill off my best friend - quite the crimewave) cooked us a casserole that was the most horrendous thing I've ever eaten, a mixture of bird seed and shrapnel to my palate, and she busted us feeding it out the window to unsurprisingly reluctant birds and local dogs. She absolutely cracked it at that point, virtually smashing her own plate on the ground in annoyance, and yelled like a three year old "WELL WHAT DID YOU WANT ME TO COOK!" - I resisted the temptation to say "something edible would be a good start", and was genuinely stumped. I looked up quite innocently and said "Well, I'd have quite liked a Redskin Split"...the reasoning behind this was that our freezer one day had about 2 million ice creams dumped in it which were meant to go to charity, but the bloke never came back for them, so we started eating them - she stomped her hoof on the ground and squealed "A Redskin Split! THAT'S POISON!"...

That's why I'm happy living on my own...I'm representing for the Redskin Split y'all...

Earnest Is Being Important

So my best friend is working in forensics at the moment, standing around taking photographs of dead people curled up in a ball and saying "So, what do you think caused it", oblivious to the giant knife in the victims head. My 2nd best friend (what is this, Grade 2? I feel like I'm doing a project) is going to the Grand Final - he won a ticket to go and see Geelong. Since the musical act is Powderfinger, no thanks. However, as happy as I am for both of them, this is definitely a time in my life when I'd like to be doing something infinitely more exciting than going "Hey! MGMT! Again? They suck!" or spending Coles Myer vouchers on books with terrible spelling errors. I think everyone feels that their moments of real genuine boredom coincide with the precise moment everyone elses life is going wonderfully well - or maybe that's just me. Oh don't get me wrong - I'm in a good mood today, after all, I had a wonderful dream that Metro Station were all involved in a terrible accident, and I've stuffed my face with cake. Blue eye shadow girl is back at work, and all is good - aside from one little thing, which is that I missed the liquor licencing board visiting Hobart to hear local residents complaints about whether or not Kingston (my less than Cyrus home town) should get a new bottle shop. Several local residents, in fact 45 apparently, gathered to rabble about the decline of morality...but where was I? As part of my future commitment to local pride, and indeed my future goal to be on the board at Kermandie, these are the kind of things I should be going to. I do good rabbling, and I've no doubt I'm capable of arguing as a NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) or for progress. So I'm disappointed at myself for not attending - I really need something inspirational to happen to me just to get through the end of the year, and stirring up trouble always works - I woke from deciding my position on this just in time to see a new girl at Gloria Jeans with a trainee badge announce to her new workmates that she there to bring sunshine. Me? I'd have settled for her bringing me coffee...any time...any time you feel like it....nope, still sunshine? You take your time...

The girl goes off to take her sweet time, making ditzy trainee noises to the cooing approval of her supervisor. I stand shuffling from foot to foot, looking a bit tragic with my collection of slices gathered in my hand. As she debates what a colander does, my mind begins to wander. I think sometimes if I was a bit more attractive, or a bit more important (with my self confidence projecting) then my slice would be paid for and eaten by now. Don't get me wrong - I'm not Rocky Dennis or anything (I went to school with Rocky Dennis - she was a girl who always talked about her enormous amount of boyfriends, so I guess there were low standards in Beith). I think it's always emphasised to me in London that I have a reasonably normal social standard. I love London, it's my favourite city, but it's a labyrinth (by which I mean David Bowie comes a...never mind) of social classes, snobby nightclubs and standing in life. My cousin, who even though she's a violinist is a really nice person, took me to this nightclub. It had a VIP section, and behind it was an actress from Eastenders, a Premier League footballer and half of Bond (big in 2004). We took up residence on the dance floor, and i was ecstatic they kept playing "Biology" by Girls Aloud on the big video screen, much to my delight, and the delight of a large Geordie man who swayed his pint glass to the rhythm of Nadine Coyles hips. After I had spent a fair bit of money, a man drunk on his own sense of ego and importance came and said that I had to leave, on account of my shoes (very trendy bowling style shoes...OK, I can see his point). I asked him if he could punch me in the face, like they do at Syrup, so I can get a taste of home, but instead, he escorted me off the premises, down a flight of stairs, and we chatted like a pair of strolling country gentlemen. As I left out of a big oak door, he shook my hand, and said "Don't worry about it, half an hour ago we threw out Peaches Geldolf" - as he shut the door behind me, I stood in the cold night air, wondering what he meant, realising he emphasised that I was less important in life than Peaches Geldolf, even though he meant it in a kind way, and felt awful...by which quirk of fate was I less important than the daughter of a Boomtown Rat? I shrugged, smiled, and then did what no doubt Peaches Geldolf did...almost fell over in the gutter, then went and had a tasty raw kebab and a warm can of coke...

She's still not serving me, I puff my cheeks out, and she looks at me, thrusting her chest out. She's not thrusting her breasts at me, there's no native Amazon greeting going on, but her trainee badge, and continues cleaning her sporks. She's signalling to me that she's a trainee, and I should be greatful to be in her orbit. I need a mobile phone - there used to be a football coach down here in Tasmania who would wander about town on his mobile phone, talking loudly, talking about all the great players he was going to bring to Tasmania. My mate told me that in KFC one day, he was on the phone talking about some ruckman he was signing from the Kangaroos, when the phone rang...the supervisor comes over and serves me, finally. It's only been about three minutes, four tops, but she's apologetic, she's trying to make me feel important. The trainee plainly hates me, but despite her sunshine comment, she's already scowling at her supervisor, plotting to kill her with a spork. I think anyone can feel important, or at least be made to feel important. There was a woman who came into work once, who wanted to see the manager - the FBI was not only hacking into her bank account to steal her money, but also her brain. The FBI was directly channeling deep into her brain, and she needed to urgently speak to the manager about it. The manager, an unpretentious man who was book smart rather than street smart, locked his door, frightened and terrified. So we put her at a desk, and let her write a letter to the manager, which ended up running to eight pages, and she was happy with that, even though it was addressed to Mr Spoog from Planet 294. We made her feel important, mostly out of necessity that she was going to stab us all and feed us to her dog, but it's the best we can do. The supervisor is being overly matey to me, she's asking me how my day is. It's blatant buttering up, to make up for me having to wait. As soon as I go, she'll forget me, but for right now, she's trying to make me feel like a king on earth. She even throws in a biscuit, like I'm a labrador. I accept it mildly but graciously, while behind her, the girl is putting sugar in a coffee, all sunshine stripped, all loathing iced...

I walk out, I see a blonde girl in a low cut top at the front of the queue at Humble Pie, and she's getting excellent service, from a pimple faced boy. She's making him feel important, and it's working, while behind her a queue of disgruntled mothers holding sandwiches and juice sway in time to their own impatience. My Mum used to say that only the self confident would feel important - and if you couldn't feel self confident, fake it cos lifes a wee act - her brother used to push her head forcibly up when it rained, so no one would see them walking around looking sad. Whenever I get round to Dads, he says "Ach, the light of wer life is home!" to which I always say "You need a better bulb". The most important I've ever felt in my life was when I was little, and was a mascot for my soccer team, thinking the cheers of the seven thousand crowd were all for me, awkwardly bumbling along, almost tripping on my own shoelaces. My Dad tells me to this day that I'm important, that I sell myself short all the time. He does too, it's genetic. The blonde has walked off at Humble Pie, and the eyeline of the scarlet pimpleface is following her, further infuriating the mother. I see a girl I know, walking to her car - this girl has an important job, she walks with an important swagger. Without giving too many trade secrets away, she does an important job for an important man on his important plane, and she never fails to tell you about her important adventures. As she walks to her important car, she doesn't notice that an important piece of her important pie has fallen onto her important top, and that sauce is smeared on her important face. She tries to brush the pie off, but it's stuck fast, like the last straggler at a party. She throws her hands up in important anguish. I walk past her, resisting the temptation to tell her about the sauce. I pick up my paper and read it in the sunshine, and read something about Peaches Geldolf, or Miley Cyrus, or something...someones stuck in rehab, someones broken heart, someones accident...and I don't want to be Peaches Geldolf, I'm happy being me. Unimportant me. At least for today.

Mind you, I bet Peaches gets a better quality of lemon citrus tart...