NO ENTIENDO LO QUE HABLA! (I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!)

I may seem to you guys to be a well-bred, learned and well-rounded lady, brimming to the upturned pinkie with sophisticatedliness. But this is simply not true. I know a selection of things very well (deli meats, Rolling Stones music, Harry Potter, filmographies of English and American character actors and Star Wars), the rest I pick at like a giant life buffet.  This being the sitch, I sometimes embarrass myself by not knowing something that a lot of other people know.
Case in point: I was having a conversation with my friend, Colonel Beardsley, about strip clubs and how I’d never been to one. The Colonel had been to ‘one of these hell holes’ and offered to take me, saying that he would be Virgil to my Dante. This is the point that the conversation stopped making sense to me because I, like at least a bunch of other people, have never read Dante’s Inferno. Even though it was a really very good analogy at the time and probably would have made someone slightly better read than I chortle knowingly whilst smoking a pipe, I drew a blank and looked like a moron.

Luckily I have the ability to retain some information to a point of freakishness, and I really do enjoy discovering new things to learn, squirrelling facts and data till it can be put to good use. So I have totally saved that Dante one for a time where I can bring it out and look clever at a party.

Do other people do this? Talk about things they haven’t read, seen or experienced just to keep up with the rest of the world?  Good, you’re all fakey fakes like me. Here are some things I haven’t read/seen/heard/experienced that I only understand from absorption:

Hip-Hop: As a child of the 90s I know a disturbingly little about hip-hop. Seriously, if you asked me who my favourite hip-hop artist was I would say Kanye West or Snoop because I have no fucking clue about anyone else. I manage to get away with this whole discrepancy by singing along to the sample, enthusiastically making finger guns, going 'oh yeeahh, o'course' during music discussions and dropping like it’s hot at any opportunity. Now that I have admitted to this I will probably get invited to way less parties.

Superannuation: Let me see if I’ve got this right. Rather than being conscientious about my savings, my job will steal money for me and save it should I live till later, instead of letting me spending it now on stuff I need like food and iPhone covers? This means that when I’m old I can spend it all on investment art and guitars? That’s what my parents seem to have done.  I don’t really understand my health insurance either because I’m a human ‘being a grown up’ fail.

Twin Peaks: It’s like Northern Exposure but with murder right?

Fifty Shades of Grey: I would be more interested in the names of fifty shades of grey paint chips than I would be in this whole phenomenon. Really, it sounds like a really boring and serious version of Secretary. Snooze. But! Just because I haven’t read it doesn’t mean I can’t Wikipedia it to get the main plot points and make jokes about BDSM-enjoying, confused, submissive ingénues at its expense right? Same goes for Hunger Games, which is kinda like Hard Target but with kids. 

Deer Hunter: In my limited understanding Deer Hunter means 1.Christopher Walken, 2. red bandanas, 3.screaming in Asian languages and 4.Russian roulette. I can say ‘going all Deer Hunter’ for one or any combination of these things, yes? Note for 2. ‘Rambo-ing up’ is also appropriate if your target is justifiably muscle bound or ironically puny.

American politics: Everything I know about current American politics I’ve picked up from Bad Lip Reading. Mitt Romney =disturbingly stupid. Rick Perry = 'Save a Pretzel for the gas jets'.  Santorum= ewwww. Obama = knows how to drive the car. Fantastic. As Keanu once said ‘I know kung-fu’.

The Break Up Diary

So I started writing this when Tom and Katie split, which was what, like two weeks ago? And now I sit down afresh and the news has passed. Thankfully, this whole RPatz/Kirsten Stewart* implosion has happened so this is all still valid. (BTW in other celebrity news, Michelle Williams’s getting engaged to Jason Segal, and I really approve of that because if I can’t marry him, it might as well be her as she seems sane. Moreover, I think he’d make a really nice stepdad, so go them!)

Annywaay.

Breaking up with people, or them breaking up with you, kinda sucks. Regardless of whether you’re having all your personal Scientology sex secrets are being dragged through the headlines of Ninemsn or just setting fire to each other’s stuff in the back yard of your fibro, when someone decides they don’t like you as much as they did - or you arrive at that decision about your partner -  feelings get hurt, egos get bruised and people are sad.

Coping mechanisms! Figure out your way of handling this shit. Katie Holmes and RPatz** were sensible enough to extract themselves from their situation with as little drama as possible. Kirsten Stewart, in her 22 years of wisdom,  has decided to traipse out her infidelity as publicly as possible like the rest of us actually give a shit, like it’s world flippin’ news. Tom Cruise chose to throw money at the problem*** and continue being crazy, a business plan that has certainly been good to him in the past.

You might choose to tragicraft, experiment with your sexual orientation for a while, or become a cat burglar and destroy a department store for fun. You could also let yourself go in a spectacular pancake flop of hairy jumpery gross.  I chose to keep a diary. Below are some excerpts from the last heinous break up I underwent.

Day 1: Cried in the shower, cried on the way to work. Was told to go home because of the crying. Mother and sister watched me cry and eat. Met a friend in similar position. We cried. The waiter didn’t ask, he just poured the wine and walked away…

…Day 5: Went for incredibly long walks. Began drinking, eating and dressing like John Goodman. Have been crying so hard I think I have dehydrated myself. The purple giraffe put me to bed…

…Day 12: Decided to pack up everything he’d ever given me into a box under the bed. Found it really hard to heat up chocolate pudding with the microwave down there. Went to sister’s to do other stereotypically cliché breakup things. Watching Steel Magnolias is very boring. Ice cream and pizza is not. Ha fucking ha…

…Day 15 Monday: Have finally stopped crying all the time. This is good. May be able to regain dignity now and stop buying frozen Bavarians in bulk...

 You may have noticed a bit of a theme running through that - oh the eating I did! That’s not really a recommended coping mechanism, binge eating. I made it worse for myself by having a nervous condition which makes me throw-up when I’m stressed. That particular emotional stop-gap ended up being an incredible waste of money, equivalent to making a children’s piñata out of fifty dollar notes.  

But this diary thing really helped me. I re-read  passages and chortled myself back into reality. At the end, when you are further away from the horror of realising that someone doesn’t want to kiss you anymore, you can start to have fun because some break ups are kind of hilarious, funny because they can be so amazingly tragic.

I think it’s important to enjoy some of the operatic, deep and ridiculous tragedy of a breaking up; cancelling the romantic holiday you dreamt up, returning your hypothetical wedding dress, killing off a family of imaginary children you’ve housed in your fantasy the castle in the sky. Treat your break up like a temporary end of the world! It’s sad, this is sad, you’re allowed to be sad, so do it!

Enjoy that for a couple of weeks then get your shit together and start behaving like a grown up again. Regardless of feeling frequently confounded, slightly destroyed and a smidgeon relieved, there’s a good reason this has happened. Maybe you’re going to be better off, maybe they will come back when the timing is better or maybe you were just supposed to learn something. Cos think about it, you rarely break up with the person you are meant to be with in the end.

*Kirsten, seriously, what the hell did you think you were doing? You are what, the highest paid actress in Hollywood right now, how did you think you could do anything secretly? Surely you’ve worked out you can’t eat a sammich without someone taking photos of you, how the fuck did you think you’d get away with an affair with a married guy!?! SERIOUSLY, YOU ARE A MORON!

** Apparently he’s ‘inconsolable’ and ‘distraught’, and that’s totally understandable, cos he’ll never find love again or anything like that, cos he’s so unappealing, and I’m a giant spotted elephant named Fritz.

***He must have put down a bit of cash to avoid a crazy divorce circus, I know it’s none of my business, but he must have.

Things you can tell yourself next time you feel like crap

According to my naturopath, when you hold onto bitterness, you get stomach problems, so I feel that positive affirmations are very important. Say you’ve had a shit day. Say you got yelled at during work in front of everyone, or you fell down in a really awkward and embarrassing way and laddered your new tights. Maybe you found out your ex-boyfriend is getting married to an 18 year old and you stop watching where you’re going and sixty yards of barbed wire hits ya right smack in the puss and then a wild animal comes over and runs away with your shoes and your car blows up suddenly and your windshield-wiper ends up in your mouth and ya can’t move and the mud's rising up to your nostrils and you’re sinking fast and ya can’t hear yourself screaming anymore? Is that what’s on your mind, cousin? Perhaps you need to give yourself a good talking to, like I have below….

So other people appear to have perfect lives full of sunshine and flowers. Well, they might have something going on that you don’t know about, like they’re allergic to peanuts or they can’t find jeans that fit - problems that, though small, may be slowly making their lives uncomfortable in some way. You’re definitely not wishing that on them, you’re just saying that could be the case.

But really, your life is pretty excellent. You have so many great shoes and that really nice orange coat that everyone comments on. That is a great coat. Even though the rest of your clothes don’t fit and everything you buy falls apart pretty quickly, makes you look old or like an overgrown high school kid, that coat is still amazing. Well done, you own one piece of clothing which doesn’t make you look like an idiot.

So you think you’ve sent that guy one message too many. So what? If he’s scared by that, he’s a wuss and do you really want a skittish man as the protector of you and your young? No, yo mamma taught you better than that! And it’s not as though you’ve done anything really crazy. You haven’t sent five messages a day or kidnapped any pets. You don’t know if they have any pets anyway because you’re not a crazy Facebook stalker either, and even if you were, Facebook stalking isn’t actually stalking. It’s checking up on friends and that’s what Facebook was made for.

Anyway, if anything, it shows that you are persistent. And polite. So polite, you should teach a course in manners.

You don’t have the time to be stalking anyone, what with your glittering social life full of extra –curricular activities and sophisticated friends. You know loads of interesting people who bring boutique beers to parties and let you try them, and buy you hamburgers on your birthday. With friends like these life is a big bowl of cherries! And you’ve got the spoon man, the silver spoon!

In fact, you staying home eating macaroni and cheese both Friday and Saturday was the respite your body needed after this week. You’re a pragmatic grown-up who takes care of themselves. You make wise decisions regarding your health and finances and that $70 jumper with ‘JUMPER’ written on it was a wise investment in comedy clothing and I’m proud of you. And think of all the weight you’ll lose now that you can’t afford to eat this weekend!

And look at your hair. You hair is perfect, every time. It’s like a realistic My Little Pony’s mane it’s so shiny. But you’re better than a mere pony, you’re a horse, a tall graceful, lithe horse. You are a Silver Brumby of a woman.

So what if today was way stupid? That doesn’t mean that tomorrow will be. Tomorrow might be the best day that ever happened to you,  the beginning of the rest of your life. Just because life usually plays like a guinea pig running in a wheel, around and round with the same old crap doesn’t mean that the same thing is going to happen tomorrow. In fact I know that it won’t, because if most of the day seems like shit, I just found $2 and I’m going to use that to buy you a mars bar for dessert tomorrow. That’s right, you get a mars bar, you’ve earned it.

The Queen of Pain

A note from me: Looking back at this past week, and the things that have happened in it, it feels as though this post has some resounance beyond that initially intended, for me anyway. It’s extraordinary the amount of emotions that a person can experience over 72 hours, and how simply being at a particular place at a particular time can change you. But I am being terribly mysterious and this must seem uncharacteristically sombre. So I’ll just get on with the post.

I did something horrific to my back during ballet this week and have now become the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was my own fault; I think I may have been showing off, so I probably deserve to make involuntary squeaking noises every time I move. Not that I’m moving that much, watching Tim Burton's 1989 Batman should give you give you an idea of my range of motion. I’m wearing a solid rubber cowl of pain.

Pain is a fascinatingly subjective experience, and despite studies and neuroscience and all that jazz, it can still be quite mysterious. Pain is physical, yet it’s emotional, measurable yet unrelatable. Pain is either what makes us interesting, or depending on how much you have, what kind it is and how often you talk about it, makes us real bores to have around.

Physical Pain: Injuries and sickness

As you can probably tell I’m a bit of pain wuss, which is bad because I’m also accident prone. I’m always stabbing myself with scissors, tripping over my pants and walking into poles. Although I am the first to acknowledge that I probably acting a lot more seriously injured than I am, I defy doctors, nurses and other first aid professionals to accurately diagnose me as a drama queen.

Allow me to explain. If you go to a hospital for something, let’s just say you’ve dropped an iron on your face (which I have done) and are temporarily unable to talk, the doctor could potentially try to assess your pain using the Wong-Baker pain scale.

Now, inferring as I can from this image I can only assume that Wong and Baker were a pair of eleven year old girls trying to devise a universal pain intensity indicator for a HSIE project. It’s not terribly comforting to me that a doctor could look at me and say, ‘Nurse! We’ll need to administer 20 ccs of morphine immediately! This woman hurts a whole lot!’

A six year old child could manipulate the Wong-Baker scale! This is a medical scientific thing apparently, yet it could be faulted by good actors and adamant complainers.

Hangover pain: Alcohol poisoning and regret

I wish that I had no memory of New Year’s Day 2010; unfortunately I remember the pools of eviscerated watermelon and the smell of old camembert vividly well. Of the worst days of my life that was one of them and there was no one home to pity me greatly or scoff at my self-inflected liver wounds.

Oh! If only I knew then what I know now! The great secret miracle hangover cure which I am now going to bestow on you!

Have you ever woken up at half past six in the evening with your face in a bucket, surrounded by empty bottles, the sound of the air moving past your ears roaring like a fighter jet? Well rather than making a bacon sandwich and watching daytime TV til it’s time to sleep again, pull up your big girl pants and head to the nearest body of water for a swim! Nothing washes away the sins of the previous evening like a long soak in at the pool or the beach. It’s like a baptism for your brain and liver, delivering you once again to the land of the sensibly living.

However this can backfire if its winter or your local pool is a Ripples style indoor pool, which is like swimming in an extremely loud and incredibly close nightmare even in normal circumstances, and it’s very likely you won’t be the only one to throw up in the water that day. If this is the case, take a bath.

Emotional Pain: Heartache and suffering

Much like hang overs, I try to cure emotional pain, stress, anxiety, sadness etc. with swimming or bathing, but mostly I just end up being sick. There was a week last year where all I did was shower and throw up.

Being sad to the point where it hurts is a terrible thing, and I think the trick is to let your sad and hurt out in a creative way, even if that is ‘creatively’ breaking a bunch of stuff. Write some high school grade poetry, use your tears for watercolours then fold up your work and put it away for a time when you’ve figured out the lesson your sad, hurt time taught you.

The good thing about being sad for a little while is it makes the time when you are happy seem so much more sparkling.

What’s important to remember is that pain is a desperate physical or emotional response to damage; it’s letting us know when something is wrong. Without pain, we could break a leg or break a heart and never know, letting the damage worsen and worsen until it becomes irreparable. Feel your pain, acknowledge it, treat it then get better.

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'.

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.