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!

Being A Ridiculous Person: A How To Guide

Ok. Anyone who has known me for more than a couple of days will be able to tell you that I am a fairly absurd person. I have been for the majority of my life. There was a time when I suppressed it because I wanted people to take me seriously, but that didn't end well and now I have gone back to full-time amusing myself in stupid ways. Here are some of the things I have done, usually for no reason other than to amuse myself.

Texting Random Numbers: The first time I did this I used the simple 'Don't do it!', sent to a randomly chosen number that I saved in my phone under the name Henry Soundsystem*. Since then, I have taken pleasure in sending messages of a more confusing variety. The other day I sent the message 'All my insides are made of someone else's hands'. Of course, when they ultimately respond with 'Um, who is this?', I respond with silence.

Winning Arguments: Normally, I like to win arguments by conventional means, but sometimes I am just not in the mood. I have found that an easy way to win arguments without really trying is to state your case, wait for the other person to reply and then, no matter how vehemently they disagree with you, say "Yes, that's what I'm saying." At the very least, they will be disoriented and you can kick them in the shin and run away.

Taking a random thing someone has said and implying it is part of their name:

For example:

Harrison: Wow, how about that global warming, huh? It's really hot today.

Me: Harrison "how about that global warming" Smart

For optimum effect this should be the only thing you say. As always, if they question you, deny you ever said anything. It is also worth pointing out that writing this entry allowed me to fulfill my hobby of both starting and ending a sentence with a three letter palindrome.

Being a Walking Sight Gag: This started unintentionally when I was about 14. I was in a suburban shopping mall when I felt a tad peckish. There was a farmer's market there and I noticed a large, tasty-looking mushroom. As it was probably going to be the cheapest edible thing I would find, I bought it and proceeded to wander around the shops eating it raw. I will never forget the looks I got. The most pronounced double takes I have ever seen in my life. It felt fantastic and from there, I never looked back. Currently, I am enjoying buying the teensy tiny apples that the organics shop near me sells. Seriously, they are smaller than an egg. If people see me eating them and ask about it, I say that I buy them because I am so tiny that next to me they look like a normal apple.

Encouraging People To Name Drop: This is not so much an act of encouragement, but I really struggled to find a short, coherant name for this. Basically, what you do is whenever someone starts telling a story, you do the following:

Friend: So I was talking to my friend Steve the other day...

Me: Was it Steve Buscemi?

There is a celebrity for most names, so this is one that hypothetically works for every conversation, but I cannot guarantee that you won't get slapped if you do this all the time. Unfortunately, if you are like me and have no real knowledge of pop culture apart from obscure experimental folk bands and cult indie films starring Clea Duval, this may not work as well as you might expect.

The Emperor's New Slogan: I have only done this once, but oh man was it worth it. Some friends and I were going to a peace protest, back when the Iraq war was a thing that might not happen. For some reason, we decided to make our own slogan shirts, but with a slogan that naturally didn't make any sense whatsoever. The slogan we chose was 'Now THAT'S a big bag of cheese!', inspired by a recent trip to Coles. However, people at protests don't want to look stupid. We saw person after person squinting at our shirts trying to figure it out, but then when we made eye contact with them, they would smile and give us a thumbs up. It was sensational.

Now, you have all the information you need to start a career of your own in the lucrative absurdity field. Good luck with that!

-Smackie Onassis

*When Buglustre and Vegatrain found out about this, they got the number out of my phone and promptly started sending Henry Soundsystem a few messages of their own. Somehow they managed to convince the poor girl whose number it was that they were a friend of hers. She still texts Buglustre sometimes.

Cast of Characters

If you have been perusing my blog without reading the introductory post, you may have noticed that I refer to people by code names, for reasons of both privacy and hilarity (Meattrain is particularly adament about never revealing his true identity, like the meat-based superhero he is). It has been brought to my attention that the code names I am using are becoming increasingly ridiculous. Personally, I think they have remained at a pretty consistent level of ridiculous, but that's just my opinion.

However last night, while trying to sit out a particularly awful migraine, I started coming up with some potential code names. What I ended up with instead was a list of characters that I would love to see combined in some kind of mildly plausible fictitious setting. They started almost reasonable (for me, at least), but very quickly got more and more ridiculous.

Cast Of Characters:

Little Johnny Applesauce

Baxter Isafence

Jason Faceonacup, the mug collector

Abe L. Trolleycopter

Sasketchiwa Johnstone, the beef haunter

Clones 'The Cloner' Clonington and his seven piece one man band

Holy Jeremiah Heel, the street walker

Lonesome Jim Hula-hoop, the solitary hero

Gentle Dolly, the village proctologist

'Colonel' Ipswich Von Beardington, the clean shaven bus-driver

Old Man Crimestalker, the vigilant vigilante

Beans McGee, the ventriloquist with his charming off-sider;

"Raphael", an allegedly sentient tin of beans with a keen interest in politics

This entry is my written promise to create a piece of fiction that includes every one of these characters. I will probably do it later today, even. I'm not going to lie to you, the idea excites me, just a little bit too much.

-Smackie Onassis

Neck Roberts

I could probably explain how the whole Neck Roberts thing began, but it still most likely wouldn't make a lick of sense*. However, I can have a go at telling an abridged history of the Neck Roberts phenomenon. Because it is a phenomenon, let me assure you.

I was in a local pub when I came up with the idea, as I was examining the display of free postcards. You know the ones, little rectangles of advertising, usually with no room to actually write a message. I honestly think that I might be the only one who has ever actually bothered attaching a stamp to these and sending them on.  But I hadn't, before Neck Roberts.

There I was, examining the postcard collection for any winners. As I often do, I ended up going away with a handful of them. They were doomed for the recycling bin, like so many of their free postcard counterparts, until I absent-mindedly started writing on them. 

See, Neck Roberts was a name Vegatrain and I had come up with a few days before. I think I briefly made it my display name on facebook, for no real reason. If anybody called me on it, I planned to just pretend it had always been my name and I didn't know what they were talking about. Luckily, my friends know me well enough at this point to not even bother attempting to call me out on being an absurd human being. At first I would just label whatever I was doing as 'modern art', and see what I could get any with. Now, I don't even need to. Most people in my life have made their peace with the fact that I don't make much sense a good majority of the time.

Anyway, somehow in the course of that night, I started writing on those postcards. I took a common expression/advertising slogan, replaced one word with the word 'neck', signed it as Neck Roberts and sent them to a guy I went to high school with. Whom I haven't seen in a year.

Later, I asked him if he'd received them. He admitted that he had, but hastily tried to change the subject and pretend it had never happened. Not so fast, pal.

The next incident occurred few months later when I was in Melbourne visiting a friend. We were out and about when I came across a veritable treasure trove of free postcards. Again, I wrote on them, signed them as Neck Roberts and sent them. If you're wondering just what exactly I have been writing on these cards, here are a few examples:

Top of the neck to you!

A neck is for life, not just for Christmas

Have a nice neck!

Necks - it's what's for dinner.

And so on. There have been a few separate batches now, and every now and then that friend from Melbourne texts me new neck-related phrases, which I store away for future reference. The recipient (always the same guy) is still trying as hard as he can to pretend this is not happening which, if I'm being quite honest, just encourages me to do it even more.

Neckfully yours,

Smackie Onassis

*Come to think of it, the saying "lick of sense" doesn't make a lot of sense itself. Licks are for delicious ice-creams, not abstract concepts.