This quote pretty much sums up my feelings about hen's nights, weddings, 21st birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and church:
"The most absurd customs and the most ridiculous ceremonies are everywhere excused by an appeal to the phrase, but that's the tradition. This is exactly what the Hottentots say when Europeans ask them why they eat grasshoppers and devour their body lice. That's the tradition, they explain." - Nicolas Chamfort, 1741 - 1794.
And this is how I feel about the opinions of people I might offend by being against said absurd customs:
"Other people's heads are too wretched a place for happiness to have its seat." - Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 - 1860
Yes, I'm reading Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton, and I'm enjoying the 'Intelligent Misanthropy' section VERY MUCH INDEED.
23.2.10
21.2.10
The Outdoorsman
I posted this blog a few months ago on my Wordpress which... yeah I forgot I had it. Since then there have been developments which I will maybe elaborate on later.
Since we bought our apartment, The Library, only a couple of months ago we haven’t been to a strata meeting yet or any of those other fun events where home owners get to celebrate with their fellow flat moguls. I imagine a strata meeting is just a bunch of landlords swimming in the sinking fund, which is a hole in the ground full of money. I have a sound knowledge of the ways of the asset-rich.
So the only neighbour whose name I know is The Outdoorsman. The Outdoorsman is obviously a clever pseudonym for the guy who lives downstairs from us, an aging rockabilly with nipple length dyed black hair who spends all his time, the time he isn’t playing Hendrix-ian guitar solos, that is, standing in his doorway having loud conversations with other members of his band, or young acolytes. Quote: “Hey man, you can do whatever you want with your life, you know? I mean, look at me, I’m forty and I’m… ” *trails off since he can’t say “and I’m doing great” because he’s clearly living alone in an apartment with as many square metres as he has years, playing 70’s style guitar and drinking. Alone*
The Outdoorsman rushes upstairs whenever I hammer something (which is surprisingly often) and shouts at me, “ARE YOU BANGIN COZ YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THE MUSIC? COZ YOU CAN COME DOWN AND SAY SOMETHIN, YOU KNOW?”
Uh, yeah, I know, I was hammering something…
“YEAH COZ YOU KNOW IF THE MUSIC EVER MAKES IT SO YOU CAN’T RELAX, YOU KNOW, OR YOUR DUDE, IF YOUR DUDE HAS A PROBLEM, YOU KNOW, YOU CAN JUST COME AND SAY SOMETHING, THAT’S TOTALLY FINE.”
Yep, umm, ok, I’ll let my… uhh… dude know, thanks, I’m going back to my hammering now…
He continued to assure me, aggressively assure me, that any time I or my dude wanted to relax, we could just knock on his doorframe, and tell him so. Yeah, yeah sure, I’ll totally do that, next time I want to be pushed off a third floor balcony by a small statured rockabilly vampire.
Since we bought our apartment, The Library, only a couple of months ago we haven’t been to a strata meeting yet or any of those other fun events where home owners get to celebrate with their fellow flat moguls. I imagine a strata meeting is just a bunch of landlords swimming in the sinking fund, which is a hole in the ground full of money. I have a sound knowledge of the ways of the asset-rich.
So the only neighbour whose name I know is The Outdoorsman. The Outdoorsman is obviously a clever pseudonym for the guy who lives downstairs from us, an aging rockabilly with nipple length dyed black hair who spends all his time, the time he isn’t playing Hendrix-ian guitar solos, that is, standing in his doorway having loud conversations with other members of his band, or young acolytes. Quote: “Hey man, you can do whatever you want with your life, you know? I mean, look at me, I’m forty and I’m… ” *trails off since he can’t say “and I’m doing great” because he’s clearly living alone in an apartment with as many square metres as he has years, playing 70’s style guitar and drinking. Alone*
The Outdoorsman rushes upstairs whenever I hammer something (which is surprisingly often) and shouts at me, “ARE YOU BANGIN COZ YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THE MUSIC? COZ YOU CAN COME DOWN AND SAY SOMETHIN, YOU KNOW?”
Uh, yeah, I know, I was hammering something…
“YEAH COZ YOU KNOW IF THE MUSIC EVER MAKES IT SO YOU CAN’T RELAX, YOU KNOW, OR YOUR DUDE, IF YOUR DUDE HAS A PROBLEM, YOU KNOW, YOU CAN JUST COME AND SAY SOMETHING, THAT’S TOTALLY FINE.”
Yep, umm, ok, I’ll let my… uhh… dude know, thanks, I’m going back to my hammering now…
He continued to assure me, aggressively assure me, that any time I or my dude wanted to relax, we could just knock on his doorframe, and tell him so. Yeah, yeah sure, I’ll totally do that, next time I want to be pushed off a third floor balcony by a small statured rockabilly vampire.
17.2.10
...and then you die.
'Why don't you wash behind your ears?'
'When you wash there, you just encourage things to live there. They go, "Oh, we'll move in here, it's nice and clean back here. Then let's kill him."'
'When you wash there, you just encourage things to live there. They go, "Oh, we'll move in here, it's nice and clean back here. Then let's kill him."'
16.2.10
Here comes the battery hen...
Narrow and I have to go to a buck's and a hen's night, respectively. We are TERRIFIED.
I don't understand the purpose of buck's and hen's nights. The etymology even offends me. The connotation being that while the man is a free roaming wild creature, virile, powerful and independent, the woman is a clucking, broody, fat little thing stupidly running around in circles, scratching in the dirt and building up her nest to lay her many eggs.
A hen's night is a celebration of the things a hen represents: fertility, dependence, the catching of a man with your tiny malicious talons. A stag night is the mourning of the loss of all the things a man is supposed to want: wildness, freedom, ceaseless rutting of any and all things with tails.
Aside from the names, then there's the actual activities these nights entail. The female party celebrates the impending marriage with rituals of sympathetic magic: the construction of wedding dresses from toilet paper by the bridesmaids (to bring about weddings for the unmarried girls), the sculpting of plastic phalluses (beseeching the gods to endow the groom with rigidity and largesse), and the pinning while blindfolded of the penis onto the poster of the naked man, a ritual to bless the bride with seductive arts in the bedroom. And all the while, huge quantities of strawberry daquiri must be imbibed, to sustain the illusion that what they're doing is sexy and fearless, rather than sad and unimaginative.
In the meantime, the groom's friends must try their utmost to steer him from the path of self destruction he has taken. The method is quite simple - parade in front of him the many wonders he will no longer know once he is married: never-ending geysers of beer and Jagermeister, bars full of roaring drunk men, and of course a naked woman.
Under no circumstances should the two groups meet, regardless of the many other nights which they may have enjoyed as a co-ed group. If they did, the mutual disgust each group would feel for the behaviour of the other would result in an instant break of the union, and those of any other couples therein, a kink in the space-time continuum which would change the pattern of history.
That the happy couple must be divided in order to enjoy the evening, and that there is an air of mourning around the male celebration, and one of self-conscious raunch around the female one, is really just sad. To me, the upshot of feminism should have been that men and women would view each other not as adversaries but as friends, as essentially the same and equal. Instead, after nominal equality was gained, it all went right back to where it started.
Only now, instead of being fetishised by men, we fetishise ourselves. By participating in these outmoded rituals we only entrench the idea that women are worthless if they aren't sexy, and that men are deeply different and apart (although not necessarily superior). Why the hell would you want a stripper at your buck's night? You are going to be LIVING with a woman, who will be naked at least twice a day, for the rest of your life! It's particularly pointless these days, where most likely you've already been living with that woman for years.
The same goes for the hens - dicking around with plastic penises as if you've never seen one in your LIFE and it's so HILARIOUS because it's so NAUGHTY to play with genitalia! Go find me a pack of pink straws shaped like vaginas and I'll tell you that we're on an equal footing. Although I'll grant you they're less conveniently designed for ease of drinking.
Not to mention that if you're a couple with an engaged pair as friends, you BOTH have to go to these nights, or even whole weekends, and it costs a FORTUNE. We're going to end up in the poorhouse, and we're not even going to enjoy ourselves on the way.
I don't understand the purpose of buck's and hen's nights. The etymology even offends me. The connotation being that while the man is a free roaming wild creature, virile, powerful and independent, the woman is a clucking, broody, fat little thing stupidly running around in circles, scratching in the dirt and building up her nest to lay her many eggs.
A hen's night is a celebration of the things a hen represents: fertility, dependence, the catching of a man with your tiny malicious talons. A stag night is the mourning of the loss of all the things a man is supposed to want: wildness, freedom, ceaseless rutting of any and all things with tails.
Aside from the names, then there's the actual activities these nights entail. The female party celebrates the impending marriage with rituals of sympathetic magic: the construction of wedding dresses from toilet paper by the bridesmaids (to bring about weddings for the unmarried girls), the sculpting of plastic phalluses (beseeching the gods to endow the groom with rigidity and largesse), and the pinning while blindfolded of the penis onto the poster of the naked man, a ritual to bless the bride with seductive arts in the bedroom. And all the while, huge quantities of strawberry daquiri must be imbibed, to sustain the illusion that what they're doing is sexy and fearless, rather than sad and unimaginative.
In the meantime, the groom's friends must try their utmost to steer him from the path of self destruction he has taken. The method is quite simple - parade in front of him the many wonders he will no longer know once he is married: never-ending geysers of beer and Jagermeister, bars full of roaring drunk men, and of course a naked woman.
Under no circumstances should the two groups meet, regardless of the many other nights which they may have enjoyed as a co-ed group. If they did, the mutual disgust each group would feel for the behaviour of the other would result in an instant break of the union, and those of any other couples therein, a kink in the space-time continuum which would change the pattern of history.
That the happy couple must be divided in order to enjoy the evening, and that there is an air of mourning around the male celebration, and one of self-conscious raunch around the female one, is really just sad. To me, the upshot of feminism should have been that men and women would view each other not as adversaries but as friends, as essentially the same and equal. Instead, after nominal equality was gained, it all went right back to where it started.
Only now, instead of being fetishised by men, we fetishise ourselves. By participating in these outmoded rituals we only entrench the idea that women are worthless if they aren't sexy, and that men are deeply different and apart (although not necessarily superior). Why the hell would you want a stripper at your buck's night? You are going to be LIVING with a woman, who will be naked at least twice a day, for the rest of your life! It's particularly pointless these days, where most likely you've already been living with that woman for years.
The same goes for the hens - dicking around with plastic penises as if you've never seen one in your LIFE and it's so HILARIOUS because it's so NAUGHTY to play with genitalia! Go find me a pack of pink straws shaped like vaginas and I'll tell you that we're on an equal footing. Although I'll grant you they're less conveniently designed for ease of drinking.
Not to mention that if you're a couple with an engaged pair as friends, you BOTH have to go to these nights, or even whole weekends, and it costs a FORTUNE. We're going to end up in the poorhouse, and we're not even going to enjoy ourselves on the way.
7.2.10
Speed kills
Narrow's been working way out in the middle of nowhere this weekend, like, north of Hornsby, which I'm pretty sure is the arctic circle, or at least the equator. He rang me yesterday to ask if there were any speed cameras between Hornsby and Greenland because he'd probably been going over the freeway speed limit, but it WAS RAINING SO HARD HE WOULDN'T HAVE SEEN THE 'HERE COMES A SPEED CAMERA' SIGNS. Again: he was going faster than one hundred and ten kilometres an hour, in rain so pelting he couldn't see off the side of the road. And when I say, 'You'll have an accident', his response is, 'No I won't, I don't feel like I'm out of control.'
Because every person who's ever had a high speed accident in the rain on the freeway knew that they were not in control of the vehicle well before they lost it completely and rolled towards their fiery doom. The only reason people have accidents is they suffer a crisis of confidence.
Because every person who's ever had a high speed accident in the rain on the freeway knew that they were not in control of the vehicle well before they lost it completely and rolled towards their fiery doom. The only reason people have accidents is they suffer a crisis of confidence.
Hot air
Okay, I know my apartment is really small (so small that every time we walk past the window of the empty apartment downstairs, which is identical to ours, we gawk in and say 'NO WAY is ours that small! No way.'), but still, it speaks to the excessive nature of my hair that whenever I blow dry it the whole flat fills up with steam. We have to stumble around breathing in the hot soupy air for about forty-five minutes before it clears enough that we can see the windows again to open them.
I tutor English in the evenings, and I have a student doing Henry IV this week. Read it, or just google that shit? HA like that's even a legitimate question. 'Read' it, when there are important blogs I could be reading instead, and important nails I could be painting. Although it's kind of undermining my professionalism that every time I sit down with a new student I have to say, 'Now, I've never read this, BUT it seems to me that...', or if I'm feeling crafty, 'Tell me what you feel this text is about.' Then I just have a quick flick through of it while they're writing something down, pick out any old example, and imbue it with significance. Seriously, the more you study high school English, the more full of shit and open to abuse you come to realise it is. I've had to commit the ultimate hypocrisy, 'I know you COULD just make up the quotes, and I know I didn't even notice until you told me, but I would never... err... yeah, just don't, ok?' The higher the level of English they're taking, the sooner you run across this problem. The point where they realise there is not a teacher (and thus, exam marker) in the world who knows all the texts that well, and therefore they can just make up any old shit and bung it in there and nobody will notice.
Not that I think you should do that.
I tutor English in the evenings, and I have a student doing Henry IV this week. Read it, or just google that shit? HA like that's even a legitimate question. 'Read' it, when there are important blogs I could be reading instead, and important nails I could be painting. Although it's kind of undermining my professionalism that every time I sit down with a new student I have to say, 'Now, I've never read this, BUT it seems to me that...', or if I'm feeling crafty, 'Tell me what you feel this text is about.' Then I just have a quick flick through of it while they're writing something down, pick out any old example, and imbue it with significance. Seriously, the more you study high school English, the more full of shit and open to abuse you come to realise it is. I've had to commit the ultimate hypocrisy, 'I know you COULD just make up the quotes, and I know I didn't even notice until you told me, but I would never... err... yeah, just don't, ok?' The higher the level of English they're taking, the sooner you run across this problem. The point where they realise there is not a teacher (and thus, exam marker) in the world who knows all the texts that well, and therefore they can just make up any old shit and bung it in there and nobody will notice.
Not that I think you should do that.
6.2.10
Narrow
I live with the narrowest man alive and for the purposes of the internets I call him Narrow. I have done since I met him, when I ran into work the next day and squealed to my colleague The Large-Living Texan Goth (not a very concise nickname, I know, but she's not a very concise person), 'OH MY GOD I MET THE NARROWEST MAN ALIVE YESTERDAY!' And that was BEFORE I tried to sleep with my arm slung across his torso, after which experiment I barely kept the use of my hand, the bones in his ribcage having cut off all circulation to my arm in the night.
I'm not sure if he likes the moniker, especially since it spread off the internet and into the real life salutations of my Twitter friends, but until he raises a serious objection (or starts eating lots more pies and butter) I'm going to keep using it because it is both apt and pithy. To me, anyway.
Narrow works for them thar railways, and this means when he comes home his knees are always filthy. Also, he's most adept at installing ceiling fans, and jiggering around with the internet so it is better on his computer and inaccessible on mine.
We also have a large burgundy Chesterfield sofa called Karl. I wanted to call it Horace, but apparently that was too remeniscent of corpulent old aristocrats, to which I respond, yeah duh, that's the point. The sofa is only a two seater because that's all we could get through the door of the apartment, but it is still the biggest thing you've ever seen. He appears deeper than he is wide, an incredible feat of sofa physics. I should become a vegan right now, because for the rest of my life I'll be atoning for the thousands of cows which went into making my sofa.
I'm not sure if he likes the moniker, especially since it spread off the internet and into the real life salutations of my Twitter friends, but until he raises a serious objection (or starts eating lots more pies and butter) I'm going to keep using it because it is both apt and pithy. To me, anyway.
Narrow works for them thar railways, and this means when he comes home his knees are always filthy. Also, he's most adept at installing ceiling fans, and jiggering around with the internet so it is better on his computer and inaccessible on mine.
We also have a large burgundy Chesterfield sofa called Karl. I wanted to call it Horace, but apparently that was too remeniscent of corpulent old aristocrats, to which I respond, yeah duh, that's the point. The sofa is only a two seater because that's all we could get through the door of the apartment, but it is still the biggest thing you've ever seen. He appears deeper than he is wide, an incredible feat of sofa physics. I should become a vegan right now, because for the rest of my life I'll be atoning for the thousands of cows which went into making my sofa.
5.2.10
Countdown...
There are managers synchronising their watches in the lobby. 'We'll recce in the boardroom at eleven hundred and fifteen... you have precisely TWELVE MINUTES and THIRTY EIGHT seconds to gather staff and supplies of caffeine - GO'
I have seventy-six hours and forty-eight minutes left of sitting behind this desk, sending my eyes further and further out of focus with every passing second. Fifteen more days to stockpile enough stationery supplies to get me through twelve university subjects, because I haven't bought pens for two years and by God I don't intend to start now. It's really very hard, when faced with six pages of assorted Post-it possibilities, to narrow it down to just the ones you could fit in your drawers. 'I'll get a tower of the recycled 76x76, but do I want them in Original Canary or Pastel?'
I have seventy-six hours and forty-eight minutes left of sitting behind this desk, sending my eyes further and further out of focus with every passing second. Fifteen more days to stockpile enough stationery supplies to get me through twelve university subjects, because I haven't bought pens for two years and by God I don't intend to start now. It's really very hard, when faced with six pages of assorted Post-it possibilities, to narrow it down to just the ones you could fit in your drawers. 'I'll get a tower of the recycled 76x76, but do I want them in Original Canary or Pastel?'
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