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 LadyVom Manifesto

Once in a life time a band comes into existence that threatens our core ideals of music, artistry and taste. Spume Records are proud to introduce their newest, most dynamically dangerous acquisition, LadyVom.

An all-girl acidelectropopglamrock group in the style of Peaches, The Runaways, Devo and Minty these five luscious ladies deliver gut-wrenching, leg leaping, bile inducing music energy like a punch up the bracket. A volatile mix of raw female sexuality and bone rattling rhythm, these girls are on a jet powered piston into music history!

Spume Records owner Bilious T. O’Really discovered playing in a secret tunnel party in Errskinville and was immediately taken by the group kinetic, laser like intensity and their determination to keep playing even after the audience left. Described by critics as ‘five Iggy Pops, except some play instruments, and they’re girls too’, LadyVom are a force to be reckoned with!

Expaktro Vulgaris - Vox and Theremin
Not much is known about enigmatic lead singer Expaktro Vulgaris. Some believe she was raised by a family of mutes in far hidden village in the Las Hurdes region of Spain. She communicated only through Theremin till she spoke her first words at the age of twelve - ‘Benedict Cumberbatch’. Expactro’s dusky voice infused with mournful theremining and sensual, guttural screams lead LadyVom’s rich abrasive sound.

Alex Vomette - Bass

Known to the press as ‘the funny one’ Alex Vomette is indeed hilarious. She has been known to set the LadyVom tour bus on fire as a joke. But when it comes to her bass playing, Alex is as serious as the plague, standing on the corner of the stage like a stone Aztec goddess of pulsating cadence. Her lurching, grumbling bass line forms LadyVom’s heaving, queasy core. Guaranteed to make your stomach skip a beat.

Lizzie Whizzie- Drums
The first thing Lizzie Whizzie did when she left reform school was steal a drum kit and start playing for LadyVom. Unfortunately the band’s then drummer, Kaka Spiv, had no idea that she’d been replaced and the next couple of months were really awkward for everyone. Lizzie’s drumming thrashes and crashes like an American bull terrier in a steal cage, bring an animalistic rabid frenzy to the heart of LadyVom that’s oh so danceable!

Lady O’Barf- Lead Keytar
Daughter of nobility, Lady ran away from the gilded cage of O’Barf Manor at 16 and has been playing in underground acidpopelectropunk outfits ever since. She penned the iconoclastic ‘Give me all your cash, Stupid’ during her time with Haggy and the Dumdums, but soon left after a creative and romantic argy bargy with titular Haggy Von Moron. Her retching keytar riffs and explosive licks drive the steaming, speeding juggernaut that is LadyVom.

Pukesie Collins- Tamborine and percussion
If someone can beat a tambourine like it owes her money, it’s Pukesie Collins! This spicy unsettling firebrand of pure throbbing rhythm gives LadyVom its subtle mystery and delicate timing. The none-to-secret love child of Stevie Nicks and Rudi Van DiSarzio and Spider Dijon, this bangin' beauty is a multi-instrumentalist, master of the triangle, square and dodecahedron.

LadyVom’s demo single ‘Sick with Love (Hold my hair)’ is available to download on iTunes now, with their debut album Ewww due to launch on April 1^st, 2012

Pour vinegar on the thorn in your cardboard heart... whoa! That's depressing!

Google is a wonderfun thing. I’d like to think if I was unemployed, or in hospital for a long period of time (say for argument I had suffered a terrible fall after trying to jump my Shetland pony, Morgrim the Wonderhorse, over a matchbox in a steeplechase) I would happily wile away the long futile hours in traction with only my left hand in tact by going on the Google and looking up things.

I love that Google will just hand me interesting things to look up. Hey there Joe, did you know it’s the 100th anniversary of water? Find out what it’s made of! It’s a distraction engine.

Yesterday, of course, it decided to tell me all about Valentine’s Day, and the ensuing five minute Wikipaedia break lead to the discovery of a twee little tradition known as the Vinegar Valentine.

For those of you who don’t know what this is (and haven't already clicked through) participate in this scenario. Imagine this, the dude that you like, let’s say for my example, the tall cute beardy one from Commercial Kings, Rhett, wants to meet you on Valentine’s Day. You see him approach; he might even be wearing a subtle red shirt for the occasion. From the sheepish, promising smile that you know is only for you, you can tell that the small pink envelope he’s handing you is the magical key to all the wonders of a long term, serious and outlook-changing relationship that is seconds form being yours.

You giggle demurely as you snatch the espial out of his hand and tear it open only to find this...

What a slap in the left, right, lower and all other ventricles. I can't think of a more delightfully weird and wonderful way to tell someone that you hate them than give them a card on a day usually reserved for love, niceness and special sexy underpants. I cannot believe that someone would actually give someone this and not expect to be paper cut eviscerated.

I mean Valentine’s Day was concerning enough but I had no idea that instead of just being plum ignored I could be handed a deceptive, hope-raising item which will then viciously lampoon all my character flaws in a concise little card with an unflattering and painstakingly accurate caricature.

The vinegar valentines I’ve found have been olde worldy, stuff like ‘shiftless man’, the ‘bookworm’ and the ‘busybody’. It seems like such a weird thing that in a time where snark is the go to attitude, people swear in wedding vows and people play sarcastic songs at funerals, I surprises me that these haven’t replaced genuine romantic cards. Why don’t we give in nasty cards to the ‘constant status updater’, the ‘competitive dieter’ or the ‘glued to your iPhone guy’. The person who comes up with the best one in the comments gets a Kit Kat

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.

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.