Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Hijinks and the like

I've always liked kissing strangers.

There's something thrilling about spontaneous passion. Meeting someone, striking up a conversation (not compulsory) and kissing for awhile before hopefully never seeing each other ever again. Or, at the very least, never speaking of it.

For me, the moment that best summed up this idea was with a guy who was, I guess, an acquaintance. He was the cousin of a guy I went to school with and we used to see each other about quite a bit. It was usually at uni, gigs or the pub, and it was always in a group with mutual friends.

One night, I was on my way home after a night out. As I passed by the pub that stood between the bus stop and my house* I ran into the aforementioned acquaintance. He was with one other friend who was too drunk to really participate in the conversation. We said a few words to each other, I don't remember any of them, and somehow found ourselves kissing. Afterwards, he walked me the rest of the way home, we kissed again and then parted ways. We never spoke of it again, and I was always quietly pleased with the way our friendship remained completely unchanged for it, the way we didn't even need to talk about it to know better than to make anything of it.

Of course, when I found out that he had an identical twin it did put something of a question mark on the whole event.

There were an absurd amount of multiple births in Newcastle. I honestly don't know what it was, maybe it was something to do with the coal. Or the steel-works, back when it was still running. I guess all that sheer manliness in the air started making the men's sperm super powerful, impregnating women with twins or even triplets every time they so much as held hands with them. It seemed like every year when school went back, we would see a headline in the local paper reading "Three sets of identical twins in same class!". I personally knew two sets of triplets.

Actually, the one time in my life that I ever babysat was for one of those triplet sets and their older sister. I'm fairly sure the only reason I agreed to it was because I read a lot of the Babysitter's Club when I was a kid and I thought that 'sitting' for triplets could only possibly result in wacky adventures, possibly even the solving of a mystery. Imagine my disappointment when we just played hide and seek for a few hours. I never did like children.

Of course, the sheer volume of identical twins meant that zany sitcom-esque misunderstandings were pretty commonplace. I remember when the band I was in played an all ages gig where it turned out the drummer of the support act was our guitarist's identical twin. Or when I was working at a league's club and a new girl started. A new girl who happened to be the identical twin of a girl who'd been working there a good few months. Naturally, she was placed in the same section, required to wear the same uniform and not issued a name tag for at least three or four shifts. Or the pimply, choir-singing twins at my high school who had the misfortune of having a last name that sounded a bit too similar to the word 'poo' to avoid hilarity, hilarity that was only increased when it was revealed that one of the twins was gay, but the other straight.


Sometimes I wonder whether my entire childhood was just a complex series of practical jokes.



-Smackie Onassis



*There are a ridiculous amount of pubs in my hometown, even by Australian standards. If you walked two blocks from my place you would hit at least one or two pubs in all but one direction.



P.S. Heat one of my band name poll is closed, with both Goddamn the Rhythm! and The Sentient Entities going through to the next round. Personally, I'm hoping to put Parsley Disaster through as a wild card, because come on you guys.

'Tea Party' used to be a phrase with such positive connotations...

Recently, I've been drinking more tea than I used to. At least, I'm fairly sure there was a time when I drank less than a million billion cups of tea a day. I only really started drinking the hot stuff while working in a tea shop with Meattrain and Vegatrain. You might be thinking that the three of us living together while also working in a tea shop together would make us the quaintest share house in the world, but you're probably only thinking that if you've stumbled across this page by accident and have never actually met any of us. Most people, when asked to recall the first time they visited our old house (which I believe has now been demolished?), will tell you a story that will almost definitely involve one of the boys throwing kitchen knives at a target. Just the other day I found myself asking Vegatrain why exactly it was that he set Meattrain's bookcase on fire that one time (it was because Meattrain had been using a deoderant can and lighter to throw him some flames). I have done my best to train them out of it, but pyromaniacs will be pyromaniacs. The best I can do is encourage them to throw wine around instead.

But back to tea.

I've been drinking a lot of tea lately. I have both a wonderful selection of teas and a wonderful selection of tea pots available to me. I've been drinking it for the taste, for warmth, for relaxation and even as an attempt to prevent myself from flying into a fit of murderous rage. Although my choice of crockery for that last one may have been a tad counter-productive:

Exhibit A

I've also learned a lot about the various types of tea. One thing in particular I have learned is that man, oh man, do I want a slice of the chamomile teabag industry. What a sweet, sweet pot that must be. You see, what a lot of people who buy chamomile in teabags don't realise is that for the price they would gladly pay for a cup of the stuff in a cafe, or for a small box of pre-packaged chamomile teabags, you could buy a whole pillow-case full of loose chamomile. All you need to do is whack a bit of string on that bitch and you can sell it for an utterly insane profit. Genius.

I've had a think about this and I'm pretty sure there are two reasons why you can get away with this type of nonsense. First, because most people don't know about it. The second reason is because amongst the people who drink a lot of herbal teas and chamomile and the like, you find quite a lot of a certain type of person. For argument's sake, let's just call them 'hippies'. You see, hippies are used to paying exorbitant prices for organic produce. And often, there are good reasons for those prices. But sometimes, I think it's just because the sellers of those products have realised what they can get away with. There is no easier way to sell someone anything than by agreeing with their politics. 

Customer: Bit pricey for a bag of leaves, innit?
Me: That's just because of the new tax you have to pay for not killing puppies. This flippin' government, I tells ya.
Customer: Damn straight! Here, have all my money. Keep up the good work!

There you go, you've just completed Marketing 101. And don't go thinking I'm having a crack at hippies because I'm anti-environment or some rubbish. As you probably know, I'm a vegetarian. In fact, I'm so dedicated to recycling that when I make a typing error, I'll only delete the letters I can't reuse for the phrase I was trying to write. It just feels so wasteful to delete perfectly good letters like that.

-Smackie Onassis


P.S. I hope you've been enjoying the updates from this blog's newly appointed 'Future Reporter', your friendly neighbourhood Vegatrain.

Hey It's The Future II by Vegatrain

Did I already mention that it is the future? I am pretty sure I did. Well, either way, it totally is. And here's why.

Deflexion(tm) Technology Textiles


This stuff is totes totes crazy. This range of silicone based impact protection gear is SUPER crazy, and they use it to protect everything, you can even wear it out cycling, and if you crash, it acts like silicone armor. Silicon
armor is no bronze armor but dude, you're on a bike! And they can make this crap into t-shirts!
This is especially useful for motorcyclists, because when they crash they tend to do not so well. Testing of a limb cover of the material showed that it reduced the pressure of impact by about 33% by absorbing and dispersing the energy. That's pretty important when you're, well, halfway through a motorcycle accident.

I don't know how I'm going to top th-

PHIRTUAL BEES
What? Oh man.

You know when you think, 'I like physical bees! But I can't have those because they will sting me. So I will get virtual bees. But the bees are too virtual. These bees are not physical enough!!!'? Well if you do think that, like I do, you'll love Phirtual Bees.