Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Oh For Heaven's Namesake

I have a pretty common name. Just today I was picking up my new glasses (you guys have no idea how good it feels to be able to read without straining my eyes again. I look very "Perfection as a Hipster" right now) and the woman informed me that I had the same exact name as a girl her 12-year old son had a crush on. As much as I would like to think of myself as a pre-teen heartthrob, this girl was also 12 and in her son's class.

Like most people, I have googled myself numerous times. I myself have never done anything significant enough to merit being a top google result, but some of my namesakes have. There was a jazz singer with my name and an actress who was on Heartbreak High, apparently.

The best one, however, is possibly among the greatest results anyone has ever received when typing their name into google. I got on Triple J breakfast talking about it once. All the callers before me were pretty boring, things like "Yeah apparently there is a pillow with my name" and "There is a PORNS actress with my name!". Of course there's a porn star with your name. There is a porn star with everybody's name.

But mine, mine was great. I found it in some kind of historical archive recounting old legal documents from centuries past. My namesake lived in Salem, Mass. a couple of centuries ago and, as the documents say, "she would be a burden on the town for many years to come". It seems that after her husband died, this woman decided to spend her time being publicly drunk, having illegitimate children and wasting many of the town's dollars in having her "cared for".

There is one thing I don't quite get though. I mean, this was Salem. And she wasted a lot of the town's money. Do you think there was one guy in all those council meetings who ever spoke up to say:

"Hey! Um, hey guys? I know this is a touchy subject and all, but this is Salem. We could probably get away with just, you know, burning her at the stake? It would save us a lot of money."

But, she ended up dying years later from something alcohol related. One of the many reasons I would count her as my favourite namesake.

-Smackie Onassis

Disability Pension

So money is a thing, right. Now that I'm going to be studying Psychology I will get youth allowance but to be honest I have always been a bit curious as to whether or not I qualify for a disability pension. Don't worry, I am not going to apply for a hand-out that I don't really need.  But it has made me wonder. See, when most people think of disability pensions their mind is filled with images of people in wheelchairs, people with no face or perhaps those who have hooks for hands

However, there are a bunch of things that are apparently classified as a disability that I did not know about. I remember once knowing a girl who was so short she classified for the "midget pension" as she called it. She wasn't actually a dwarf or midget, but apparently the only classification for that one is height and she was so tiny she could have claimed it if she so desired. I have also heard that in some places being unable to use a mobile phone is classified as a disability.*

If those things are disabilities, then my afflictions are DEFINITELY worth claiming benefits for. These are some of my ailments:

Typing Issues. I am not sure what the deal is with this one, but I have noticed since I started writing again that sometimes I will make a strange typographical error. The weird thing is that instead of mistyping something with letters that are placed near to them on the keyboard, I often find myself typing a word that sounds similar to the one I was trying to type. For example, I have caught myself typing "head" for "hand", or "life" for "love". I have no idea why or even how I do this. I don't know if it's my eyesight or what, but it must be a disability. I am sure of it.

Interpreting things the worst possible way. Again, this is some kind of cognitive functioning issue that I have. When information is presented to me I have a habit of interpreting it in the strangest, most unlikely possible way before realising what is going on. It is absurdly early (I am awake because I just drove Meattrain to the airport so he can go do some science) and the best example I can think of right now was not something I myself did, but is along the same lines. I was in a small, independent music store buying an album by the name of 'Dinosaur Sounds'. The guy behind the counter looked at it strangely before laughing.

"For a minute I thought this was one of those relaxation cds and I was wondering how they recorded the sounds of the dinosaurs," he chuckled, shaking his head.

And sure, maybe he was just having a difficult day thought-wise, but that is a classic example of the way I respond to most stimulus material. Although considering his response, I am not sure that this man was not actually Ryan North.

Losing Things Instantly. No-one is better at misplacing anything than I am. If you ever want to dispose of a body or something, just hand it over to me and it will have vanished within the minute. Seriously. It is probably the most frustrating of my disabilities. I cannot understand how I will spend ten minutes looking for something, find it and then turn around to find it missing again. I don't understand how I can even do that.

"Turn Around". This is probably the phenomenon that most inspired this entry and I think it might be an actual mental problem. I'm not sure how to explain this in a way that will make any sense whatsoever. Essentially, I have a complete inability to understand the command "turn around" in ANY context. I am not kidding. I don't do it on purpose, it takes me a while before I realise what has happened. When I hear someone say "turn around", my brain sort of freaks out about which way I am meant to be turning around and I do it wrong every time. It doesn't matter if I am turning my physical person around, or if I am rotating a loaf of bread (this was a big problem when I worked at a bakery). I can never correctly understand this command, to the point where Vegatrain has started substituting more specific instructions ie "rotate to your left please Smackie". He has seen me get too confused too many times.

So are any of those certifiable disabilities? If centrelink doesn't link* them, I can always sit on the street holding up a sign. The only problem that I can foresee with that is if someone can't see my sign properly and they ask me to turn it around, in which case I will be fucked.

-Smackie Onassis


*I can't claim this one as I do know how to use a phone, but I would ask if being so grammatically pedantic you have deleted an entire text message to avoid using a split infinitive is a disability? Because that might be a winner for me.

**I found this typo during editing. It was supposed to say 'like' but I am going to leave it there because it is a perfect illustration of what I am trying to say!