The day I left my phone behind: A tale of Gen-Y anguish

Friday morning I left the house in a hurry. I had woken up late and had to wash my hair and was very preoccupied by the requirements of the coming day. I am not trying to excuse what happened, I’m not a bad person, I was just distracted, ok? I’m sorry.

I carry two phones most days, my work phone and my personal phone. By pure coincidence they are both the same model. This makes it so easy to make mistakes. I knew that the work phone went in the bag that day, and when I put my hand in my hand bag to check during the walk to work, I swear I felt two. I assumed that everything was as it should be, as it always was. It wasn’t until I got to work that I realised there was something was actually very wrong.

I opened my bag. I looked. I looked again. I took items out and placed them back in. I began to rifle through my bag like a starving animal rummaging through a bin, strewing it's contents across my desk. Nothing. Cold fear gripped me. It was as though I was missing a leg. I felt without. I felt incomplete. I felt stranded and alone. And so was my phone.

I picked up my desk phone and started to dial my number. Insane I know, but panic makes mad men of us all. What did I expect would happen? That the phone was going to answer itself and tell me where it was?

I imagined it ringing in my flat, the first few bars of Bend It plunking out, bleating sad and alone in the empty room. Unanswered What if the neighbour heard? I was embarrassed to think that they might hear it crying and think I was irresponsible, forgetful, undeserving of a phone. I pictured their judgemental glances in the hallways, their knowing whispers. ‘Neglectful phone forgetter’.

It rang through to voicemail. I heard my own voice. The sound was unrewarding and hollow. I still had no idea where my phone was.

I used my work phone to text my mum. ‘It’s Joey, Forgot phone, if needs be call on this line’. She texted back ‘ok, shall do’ and it read like damning disappointment. I thought of her, and all the other people who could possibly be trying to contact me today, and could not get through, assuming I was ignoring them, or dead (my mother has assumed this before). Was I missing emergency calls of urgent importance? What if my apartment was on fire and no one could tell me. What if I had won that lottery and claiming the winnings was dependant on my instant response? What if the Prime Minister was calling was calling, faced with an international copy-writing emergency which required my specific expertise to avoid nuclear chaos!?!

What if I hadn’t forgotten my phone, but lost it on the way to work? I pictured it dropped and laying in a gutter somewhere, the cracked screen soaking in dirty water. Perhaps it had already been found by a kind stranger with a caring smile had picked it up and was right now taking it to the nearest police station, or calling my contacts to establish a connection.

What if it was not a Good Samaritan, but a mean unshaven stranger, with malice of intent, pushing its poor little buttons with big dirty finger, scrolling though its contacts, interfering with its settings, stripping it down and removing its memory card? The thought of my phone in some foreign filthy pocket made me feel sick. My helpless phone had been already sold into slavery and there was nothing I could do!

But then I remembered my voice mail. I called it again,expecting at any second for a gruff voice to answer and demand a ransom, else they’ll be sending it back one key at a time. It went through to voice mail, either it was still at home, or I was way too late.

There was nothing I could do but wait. When my boss told me to take an early mark, I was gone. I walked fast. Half way home I began to run. I vaulted up the stairs, keys in my hands. I fumbled with the keys and swore, every second was crucial, another moment where things could be getting more and more dire. I opened the door and… There it was on the bed where I had accidently left it. Without touching the keypad I picked it up I looked at the sleeping blank home screen. Three missed calls, all from me. As I held it in my hands, the notification lightflashed like a fluttering waking eye. The reminder tone chirruped to me as if to say ‘hello mummy. Welcome home'.

Australia, Australia, Australia. We love ya.

So it’s Australia Day, we all got a holiday and another excuse to have a barbeque!

I’ve finally come through my adolescent activist angst surrounding this day (an angst that coincided with the Howard years funnily enough, because what wasn’t to hate back then) and come to thoroughly appreciate the celebration of living in a moderately egalitarian country with a decent healthcare system, great public education and weather that generally doesn’t necessitate a large coat.

But, in addition to these blessings that have been afforded the lucky country (and very much avoiding problems like poisonous creatures on land, air and sea and a tendency to say ‘somethingk’) there are a couple of things that I am particularly happy to celebrate this Australia Day.

-Lamingtons

Whilst there are many different version of when, how and why the lamington was created, one things for sure, it’s as Australian as Vegemite and flat white coffees but not Pavlova, apparently New Zealand had dibs but I’d like to see them prove it! I found out on Tuesday that there’s such a thing as a lamington eating competition and Papa, I want in! I’ve often dreamed of entering an eating competition and unlike pie or hot dog eating competitions I think I could kick a lamington eating competition in the arse with a glass of water and an empty stomach.

-Thongs

There’s nothing more satisfying than the ‘slap, slap, slap’ of thongs against feet. Chuck on a pair of double pluggers and you can go pretty much anywhere and still be well dressed. I totally get why people overseas might call them flip-flops, especially if their already using thongs to describe underpants, but we call those G-strings, call erasers rubbers, call ‘rubbers’ frangas and call everyone mate. If you’re from overseas and are at any point lost in the lingo, call someone ‘mate’, we’ll hear the ridiculous way you shorten the ‘a’ and understand you’re not from round here.

-Fireworks

Australians will celebrate anything with fireworks. Seriously.

‘Cool, I just opened a can of beans!’

‘Yay! Fireworks!’

‘I just brought the cat back from the vet!’

‘Catherine wheels and those Saturn wavy ones that go PAATT-EEEW!’

‘I just passed a clean urine sample.’

‘Whoooo! Golden shower off the bridge!... wait… Eww!’

Australia is renowned for our fireworks, which is weird considering we're a wide brown tinderbox. Our Sydney NYE works started the tradition of insane pyrotechnics and we will continue setting more things spectacularly on fire for years!

-Flying your flag

On Australia Day, you are obligated by law to sport the Southern Cross somewhere on your person, worn on a bikini or temporarily tattooed on your face, if you haven’t gotten it and your post code tattooed on your back already.

We wear our flag on our backs like a cape, which is very enterprising, turning every drunken sunburnt teenager into a dashing superhero. If Australia had a superhero, Aussie Man, his super powers would be getting drunk, starting fights and speaking with a rising infection or somethingk?

-Being drunk

We Australians are number 1 drunkest nation in the world (according to a study I made up). We have an appauiling reputation overseas as Foster’s swilling sots and do nothing to tarnish it. Heck I’m drunk right now, and it’s a Thursday! I would have been drinking since 10 if I had gotten up earlier. But that’s what Australia Day in about. Eating sausages and being drunk. Check and check my friends.

Costume Drama-Mama

Ladies of a particular generation and type! It’s Sunday evening yet again, and I don’t know about you but I am feeling the undisputable adolescent twinge that only comes when the Sunday night ABC costume drama should be only two hours away.

The first costume drama I remember watching during that time slot was Pride & Prejudice back in 1996 when I was 9, the one where Colin Darcy comes out of the lake wearing the wet shirt. After that I assumed that all costume dramas were enriching epic romances which were as good for the intellect as they were the soul. However, now that I am older, and perhaps wiser, I can see how insidious they really are, and how they given me a slightly skewed perception of romance and life.

Unrealistic Expectations I have developed by watching costume dramas through my formulative/adolescent years

1.All English dudes are handsome gentlemen who explain themselves eventually.

It’s true that there’s no ‘he’s just not that into you’ in costume dramas. If you are the heroine, everyone is into you, and they're all really hot in a sexually repressed way. All you have to do is pick the one with the most money. Even if a dude appears to actively dislike you, it’s only because he’s so besotted with you. Being incredibly rude, ignoring you and making your father bankrupt is the only thing keeping his propriety.

And at the end, once you’ve emerged unscathed from the siege of death, disenfranchisement and misunderstandings that constitute your life, you will get an explanation so eloquent and lovely and convenient that all the suffering worth it. Unless you’re Tess of the d’Ubervilles, because by that time, you’re already dead.

2. Your life as it is would be really great if it was transferred into that setting

You’ve seen Lost in Austen, where a modern girl goes into Pride & Prejudice land and manages to fuck everything up so amazingly that she can’t possibly fix it and Jane ends up Mrs Collins? Well the experience on the whole would be something worse than that.

Whilst I would be the daughter of a wealthy Industrialist, with two older sisters married, an allowance of 50,000 pound a year and a house in town, I would also probably be far too old to be married, far too single to be proprieties, far too sarcastic to be demure, and far too well educated to be content. I can’t play the piano forte, embroider or sing and I think I’d get so bored I’d start racing the servants for fun.

3.Bad guys are obvious from the beginning

A musical sting, an odd filming angle, a nose and a beard skulking around a corner. Oh, that must be the bad guy! I wonder who he’s about to beat with a cane or knock up or send to Australia? Dickensian baddies are just so obviously bad they make the lipstick on pantomime dames look subtle. When I moved to the city I was so busy listening for bassoons and watching out for pock-marked men with club feet lurking in doorways, I could get pick pocketed by green camels and not notice.

4.Ioan Gruffudd can act

He can’t. He just can’t. We all wanted it to be true to give us an excuse to demand his sculptured cheek bones and expressive eyebrows be in more things. Well, we got that what we wanted didn’t we, Rise of the Silver Surfer exists and we only have ourselves to blame. And you know what, I watched Hornblower the other week and not only does his name have hilarious homoerotic implications, he comes across as a bit of a weeny. Sorry.

5.Woman may be soppy objects for barter but at least we had lovely things

Are you kidding me with this one? Women those days had about four dresses that were supposed to last them years of their lives. They bathed infrequently and had no such thing as deodorant, shampoo, toilet paper or feminine hygiene products. Their silk, lace and linen dresses may have been beautiful masterpieces of haberdasherical engineering but they would have smelt worse than a dead tramp in January. More to the point, your hat offered little or no sun protection.

For an authentic experience of the Georgian wardrobe, wrangle your way into the BBC costume department. After years and years of being passed from Emma Thompson to Billy Piper to Gemma Arteron to Julia Sawalha, reused in endless productions from Fanny Hill to Watership Downs* those dresses would probably be so crusty with sweat, make up and soup from the catering van they would varily stand up by themselves.

*Before you say anything, I know, it's about rabbits, okay?!

Curse of the Cool Kids

So I’m catching the train to Parramatta to go see The Muppets (which was just delightful by the way) and it’s hot and sweaty and full of grown-up people who just wanted to get the heck away from their work-a-day lives and relax for a 48 hours. A train of hardworking, world weary adults which qualify as proper humans.

The train pulls up to Central and six or seven youths get on, in the blush of fifteen and very serious sunburn. The girls are wearing only their bikinis and shorts, the boys aren’t wearing shirts. No one appears to be carrying a bag or sunscreen. They have clearly spent their day at the beach. Bastards. But it gets worse. One has a cigarette behind his ear, another was swearing a lot, this one’s made a snarly remark to an old woman and another has an unorthodox piercing. I'm on the train with a bunch of cool kids.

Suddenly I am seized by a sudden cold panic. Am I sweating profusely? Am I making that squirrel face again? Is there anything about the way I look right now that these kids could use against me? Why is this happening here? I have been out of high school for more than six years! I am a grown ass lady. I rent things and have a special card with my face on it which gets me in and out of my place of work. I worry about my vegetable intake and discuss energy costs. But the presence of cool kids slingshots me back to a nerdy 13 year old again, the prefect target.

The cool kids at my school drank first, fought first and fucked first. They were the kids that stole things and got expelled for setting fire to people’s rats tales. Not only were they delinquents but they were cunning. Not witty, but thorough, there’s only so many times someone can ‘accidentally’ stab you with a compass until you crumble. Their taunting could reduce to one to absolute dust, and once a teenager knows how to upset you, they will continue to do it until you end up having to repeat P.E.

Maybe you weren’t the kind of youth that got picked on, but I was 1^st Lieutenant of the Superdork squad for the majority of the time (that’s right, wasn’t cool enough to be Captain). High test scoring, student representing sanctimonious little spocky git, who’s really easy to rile up. So needless to say, the cool kids took me down with the keenness I deserved.

Oh gosh, one of them is looking at me! What do I do? Look away or stare them down? If I stare they might think I’m making some sort of misguided cougar attempt. Good, how embarrassing, especially given their teenaged girl friend is as unlumpy and tanned as a card board tube! Look away! Search in bag! Yes search for something in your giant nanna hand bag, maybe you’ll find your hearing medicine in there

Shouldn’t they be terrified of the fact that I older than them? Does that count for anything anymore? When did kids stop respecting their elders? Did I just refer to myself as an elder? Oh my god, I'm freaking out! It used to be when I was younger that you would pretty much break your back trying to get out of the way of a grown up, but now they just stand around with their unburdened, unfettered, unspoilt lives...

Oh god, one’s looking at me! Quick, conspicuously check phone. I’m cool, I have a phone! No messages, they’ll never know as long as you fill out those complicated forms in your bag. Yes, your grown up complicated rentals application forms… yeah, that’s impressive. Not.

Oh thank goodness, I’m at my stop. How do I get past without them lampooning me or acknowledging my exsistance? Don’t they realise it’s hard to negotiate a skateboard strapped to a backpack?

‘Erm, excuse me’.

One kid turns around and looks absolutely aghast. ‘Oh, god, I’m sorry, beg your pardon Ma’am’

‘That’s alright… thanks’.

That’s right… I just got ma’amed… by a cool kid.

Ma’amed.

Remind me again

I woke up this morning and looked in the mirror and thought ‘you know who I remind me of? Miss Piggy.’ I’m essentially a slightly less glamorous, brunette version of Miss Piggy… with teeth. Like if Miss Piggy had been a hamster… Miss Guinea Piggy. Now, whilst some of you may think I have some tickets of myself to compare myself to the Devine Swine; I’m definitely less stylish, less high maintenance and less skilled at hitting people than she is. But like it or not, at some point we all remind others and ourselves of someone, or something else.

People often tell me that I remind them of someone they know, to which I usually reply ‘I’ve just got one of those faces’. I may very well have ‘just one of those faces’, you know, the kind with two eyes, a nose and a mouth that could pretty much be anyone. I totally see why folk are frequently mixing me up with completely disparate people. If you’ve ‘just got one of those faces’ it likely that you don’t care that you look just like their sister’s boyfriend’s second cousin either but will politely agree that you look just like some person you’ve never meet as long as it lets you get on your life.

Having said that, I really don’t mind if I remind you of someone, especially if it’s someone you like or think is fun and tells good stories. It’s kind of nice that there’s another version of me. I hope we meet up one day and mess with everyone in a series of wacky misunderstandings.

I am also totally happy to remind people of celebrities, as long as they are vaguely attractive, intelligent and sane celebrities. No one wants to hear that they're a dead ringer for Mickey Rouke. Someone once told me that I reminded them of Maggie Gyllanhaal and I was like ‘that’s such an insane leap of reasoning that I’m actually flattered that you’d attempt it just to make me smile’.

Comparing someone to a celebrity is a weird pick up gambit because it could go so terribly wrong. Forgetting subjectively attractive celebs like Sarah Jessica Parker - those ones that really divide people- you could just pick someone who’s played someone unattractive once. Saying ‘you look just like Charlize Theron’ to a person who has only seen Monster would probably crush their living soul.

I use like to use celebrities as a point of reference; say if I am trying to describe a hair cut or a clothing style or some person that I know. It makes life easier because they’re a visual reference that most can recognise or Google. It also helps because I use up all my adjectives here I actually run out during conversations. ‘You know Whathisface? He looks like that dude in that thing with the monkeys... Franco! That’s the one! He looks like James Franco if he was ginger and had a hunch.*

*I know no one who even remotely looks like Franco, so stop asking.

Hack Literature: The Celebrity Story

I just finished reading The Bryan Ferry Story by Rex Balfour (1976), an unauthorised biography about my equal 1st favourite rock-star

For those of you that don’t know who Bryan Ferry is, he’s the front man of the 1970’s rock band/ art project Roxy Music, with a simultaneous solo career that’s been going on for about 35 years now. He was the guy who caused a bit of trouble about ten years ago when he was misrepresented as a Nazi sympathiser, when in fact he had just expressed a liking for the work of Leni Riefenstahl. Not the same thing, but deffinately not great publicity...

Whilst they may be no argument as to Ferry’s musical innovation, inspiration and slight genius, this biography portrays him as the mad stylish reclusive wizard who single handily invented music. An all-round toadying piece of fanatic clap trap.

Moreover, the book was written only three years into Ferry’s career and since then he’s had many more hits, fox-hunting children, divorces and affairs, not to mention the whole Nazi thing, and I can’t help but think ‘wouldn’t it have been better if they had waited?’

Something I have learnt about biographies is that they should be all about mystery, scandal and intrigue. A Kim Kardashian book would just not be interesting because we already know EVERYTHING about her. I don’t think there’s anything I could find out in a book about her and her deepest darkest personal life that I couldn’t find out by simply walking past a news agent. Her life is not so much as open book as it is a large billboard on Broadway, and I don’t care.

Biographies are also all about timing.

It’s strange when young or uninteresting celebrities get biographies about them before they’ve had enough life lived to fill them. I just looked on line and discovered that Justin Bieber has a biography, Justin Bieber: First Step 2 Forever- My Story. Isn’t he about five? To fill a 100+ page book he would have had to start doing coke and getting divorced in kindergarten. All I’m asking is wait until the story is at least two thirds through.

Having said that, it would be wrong to say that celebrities should put out biographies until they are dead, in fact it’s probably good that they don’t, because we know how the story ends and because it means that they can do a big old money grubbing sequel when their lives go to shit. Take for example Rolling Stones Guitarist mark III Ronny Wood, whose biography Ronny came out for Christmas 2007. Not even a year later later he was in rehab, on sabbatical from the Stones, broke and divorced living with a 21 years Old Russian model. I can’t wait to read about that in Ronny 2: Oops, my bad.

I picked up where The Bryan Ferry Story ended in 1975 with another book, the autobiography of his erstwhile fiancé Jerry Hall, Telling Tall Tales. In this ‘book’ Hall goes into great detail about the cuckolding she did to poor Bryan with Mick Jagger, as well as everything she didn’t like about Ferry and how mean he was. Not only was this the airing dirty laundry to the equivalent of putting shitty undies on your doorknob, but it made her come off as a naive, foolish, mean, vain and self-sensationalising moron, which is a shame because I actually like her. Tell all, but don’t be cruel, or people will laugh derisively at the fact that the perfect home life you were so happy about by the end of your book will end in within 20 years.

By contrast Keith Richard’s Life is a beautiful book, one of the best autobiographies I’ve read. It’s told in the spare and wandering style of Richard’s own words, which aren’t half as confused as one would expect. Love, fame, fall-outs, appalling excess and deaths creep into the narrative in a quiet, funny way without wallowing in appalling excess or praising his fortunes. Richard’s neither attempts to rationalise or descends to self-pity.

In short, I would advise you to read this book, and if you are a celebrity considering a biography, I would advise you to wait for your life to become more interesting and so that the disadvantages of hindsight don’t come back to bite you in the arse. I would also recommend a good ghost writer, my services are available.

Studio Sounds

From what I gather, people who don’t live in studio apartments have very different ideas of what kind of dwellings they are. Some people imagine giant spaces in restored warehouses with mezzanine bedrooms and bathrooms cordoned off by huge neon fish tanks, the kind of thing you’d see in a Rosanna Arquette movie about Desperately Seeking After Hours Life Lessons for Susan.

Other people imagine roach infested tiny dank dark rooms with enough space for a single bed, where you wash in the sink and there’s a leaking toilet in the corner. When I tell people about my studio, I try to describe it as a large, light bedroom, with a tidy bathroom and kitchen/dining area. Big enough to swing a cat, small enough to open the fridge without getting out of bed.

I read somewhere once that walking into someone’s studio apartment is like walking into their personality cos everything about them is in your face and on display. One quick trip around the room will tell you everything about them, their music tastes, their favourite food, their grooming equipment. I find this a mixed blessing cos whilst visitors can admire my great taste in DVD’s, ornaments and rock biographies, they can also see I haven’t done the washing this week.

Compacted living also gives you an idea the inhabitants priorities. Have they sacrificed owning an oven in order to keep decorative china cabinet? Does their weights machine also double as their bed? Do they have a giant TV and hang the rest of their stuff out the window in a bag?

Yes storage is often an issue. There are only so many places to hide secret things in a studio. Underneath beds or on top of the cupboards is fine to clear some space, but the minute you actually need something your entire life dissolves into a really dusty version of Tetris. Everything might look neat and organised in my house, but open the wrong cupboard and you’re likely to be buried under an avalanche of random shit I’ve stuffed in with a shovel.

Unless, like me, you’ve got a large roof space or a balcony, you might as well you can forget about parties in your studio too. There’s no room for a couch, so entertaining does take place on the bed. I’ve found that this makes bringing dates home exceptionally awkward, even if you were just going to have a cup of tea. With literally nowhere else to sit it’s no wonder some people have got the wrong impression and said ‘well, we’re already here…’

Moreover, whilst bed entertaining (or bedertaining) is fine for watching TV, it’s really terrible for dinner parties. I once went to bed to find someone had stashed pizza crusts under my pillow. Not to mention, if you cook a lot in a studio, all your clothes start to smell like food and you end up with dogs following you around and not one will sit next to you on the train.

Now that I’m considering moving back into a share scenario, I’m gonna have to kerb some of my studio dweller habits. No more storing facial toner in the fridge. The five minute house clean will also be a thing of the past. And my preference of post shower air-drying, naked TV watching and stripping off the minute I get through the front door will also have to stop. Unless my future housemate is exceptionally liberal, I expect my nudity quota to plummet dramatically. I might still be able to get away with naked blogging though…

Oh brother...

To say that I am a bit of a day dreamer is a bit of an understatement. I like to see myself more as a modern day Walter Mitty with a fringe. Usually what’s going on in the real world isn’t half as fun as what’s going on in my head. When I’m out walking, on the train or trying to sleep I get myself into a kind of reverie that can totally block-out the rest of reality. My favourite day-dream is the one about my imaginary twin brother, Johnny.

John Lincoln would be a tall gawky dude named after grandpa, who looks like my dad with eyes like my mum. He’d wear scarfs in the winter, and cut down singlets in the summer, and grows a beard just to annoy Scooter. He could be sent into space as Earth ambassador for ‘guys’.

Johnny and I would live together in a messy home somewhere in Sydney’s inner west. He could look at the kitchen and it would be filthy and, despite my best efforts, our mum would always look disappointed at the state of the toilet. Every other month I would rage and decide I will move to a nice clean girl’s house, but the ever changing parade of Johnny’s hung-over mates, strange girls, rescued kittens and children he teaches guitar in the living room would keep me there, to be their hostess with the mostest.

My dad would have made sure that Johnny was musical and if he wasn’t in a band, he’d working in JB, Billy Hyde’s or Allen’s Music. The discount he gets is worth it and our music collection would rival all. Eventually we’d run out of storage space, and would have to sell the keyboard he bought me one Christmas to make more room. We’d use the cash to buy a slab and drink it in the garden and make up country songs about the people we knew.

Johnny would be handsome, in a hipsterish, groomed way that men are when they were raised with sisters. When we were teens, he was Dingo and my personal Ken doll, with the distinction of being the first guy at school to wear skinny jeans. I would constantly be fielding questions from girls of my acquaintance about him. I’d tell them that he was hopeless, they’d only get hurt, but I knew that it was him who was always falling in love every Friday night only to be heartbroken on Sunday.

We would jokingly resolve that that brother and sister were enough for each other and to spend the rest of our lives together, knowing there was no way we would ever let that happen. I would keep making morning cups tea for girls that I secretly resented and he would keep telling me about his friends that said I was cool. Eventually we would go our separate ways, partner up and marry. He said he'd be a groomsman, because to be a male maid of honour is weird.

I have three sisters, who are the best sisters in the world but if Johnny was there, life would have been different. Johnny would be able to be brave, to deal with life. His eyes are calm and clear. Johnny is all that I am, and all that I’m not.

Weird Stuff on the table Part 1

You know that building in the first Ghost Busters movie which was specially designed to be a magnet for supernatural activity? Well my building is kinda like that, it was even built in the same time period (“Deco… very nice”) except that instead of ecotroplasmic temples and rabid Rick Moraniss, my building is a magnet for crap!

There always seems to be junk mysteriously turning up and lurking around. There was this huge blue velvet winged arm chair that someone chunked out two blocks down and a flight of stairs away for my building. For three weeks it sat there mouldering in the in the rain, I’m pretty sure a neighbourhood cat started to live in there. It changed colour, swelled up like a dead whale and started to smell of cheese. Then, one day, it was gone only to mysteriously appear on our roof, next the flaking veneer sideboard, the water swollen chipboard table and the rusted through barbeque. See! There’s crap everywhere! And I have no idea who puts it there.

There seems to be a culture of putting crap on places in this building. In the Art Deco foyer of my building is a coffee table which has become the unofficial trading post of the building, where people leave anything from CDs to lamps, bags of rice to corduroy paisley shirts. I’ve gotten some of my best 2009 Men’s Health magazines there. Things are arranged in artful little piles, orderly towers or strew across the joint like someone like someone was trying to escape a fire. Today I found this tantalizing object d’art.

Inside were a bunch of old cd’s which is laughable in itself, (CD’s, scoff! As if anyone has those anymore, you might as well have put a pile of 8-tracks and a Sega console out there!) but the selection of rejects was bizarre.

Amongst old Triple J top 100’s and a Matchbox Twenty album were four Queer as Folk CD’s, the soundtrack to Sex in the City Movie 2 and Fame Monster, see?

…. It’s like someone gave up being gay for New Year’s! The bottle, I should mention, smelt suspiciously like vomit. I figure it was worth a mention. I’ll be documenting the weird stuff I find on that table, if I find anything really good, I let your guys know about it before I swipe it.