Smackie Onassis: Friendship Origin Stories

Sometimes I become friends with people in pretty amazing ways. You have already heard my origin story for my friend Bones, which is one of my favourites. But I do have a lot of other pretty great ones.

I have mentioned my friend Binny a couple of times. He was one of my best friends back in Newcastle, and his was one of the most important friendships of my life. How did we meet though? I'm glad you ask. I'd be more than willing to discuss it at length. Seeing as you asked and all.

We met when we were both at the housewarming party of a mutual friend of ours. She was the trumpet player of the band I was in, I'm not sure how she knew Binny. I approached him and started talking to him solely on the basis that he was wearing a Decemberists t-shirt. Yeah, that's just what I'm like. We realised that we had a lot of common ground and exchanged phone numbers, promising to hang out sometime soon. We were both in relationships at the time, so it wasn't anything romantic. Unfortunately at the time I was always either at uni, or at work, or riding my bicycle from uni to work. I didn't have a lot of free time and as a result we kept missing each other. Our potential friendship seemed doomed.

Until one Monday morning. I hadn't seen him since the party, so I was a bit surprised to see his name come up on my phone. I answered and he explained that he was pretty cut up because his girlfriend had left him that weekend.

"It's funny you should say that," I replied, "My boyfriend left me on the weekend, and as a result my parents had me put in the psych ward at [name of hospital]"

"You know," he muttered, "That hospital is about 100 metres from my front door."

As a result, we spent a lot of time together over the ensuing weeks. Once I was allowed to go for walks I would head over to his house for beers and guitar hero on a nightly basis, despite the hospital's zero tolerance alcohol policy. I didn't really care, and neither did the nurses who apparently once saw me at the pub with him when I was supposed to be in my room*. They didn't dob on me and I respect that.

From there our friendship was well cemented, to the point that even when I was allowed back into society and started working again, I still spent the majority of my free afternoons at his house.

I think that's a pretty good friendship origin story, but don't think there's not more where that came from.

You may have noticed that the manboy referred to by the name Vegatrain (which is what he insisted on being called, by the way) is a fairly significant part of my life. But how did we actually meet? Well, my origin story for Vegatrain is tied into the origin story for some of the other totally excellent people in my life, namely Buglustre and Harrison.

Imagine this scenario: a lonely 21 year old is bored and on the internet. Her days of playing music to not-always-embarrassingly-small crowds are long over. While she is pretty lonesome, the last thing she is looking for is love. On a whim, she signs up to an internet forum. I'm not going to go into detail about how I announced my presence, but let's just say I entered with a bang. I wasn't taking the whole 'internet' thing at all seriously. But then, on an unimportant thread about Christmas presents, I mentioned that I had got my tiny hands on 'Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers' by the National and I was loving it sick. This got the attention of a young man on the other side of the country. He commented how much he liked the National and replied by quoting a Belle and Sebastian song with reference to my username. I responded by saying that my name had absolutely been inspired by the song in question and that I had actually seen Belle and Sebastian last time they were in Australia, even though it meant leaving a university exam early so I could get to the venue on time. He responded simply by saying 'Let's be friends.' At this point I feel like I should thank every band I listen to for forming so many of my most important relationships.

So, anyway, flash forward a few weeks and under strange circumstances I am spontaneously buying a plane ticket at 1.30am on a Wednesday to fly to the other side of the country solely to meet a guy I have been talking to on the internet for approximately 3 weeks. It sounds exactly like a summary of things you are not supposed to do if you want to be responsible, but it was amazing. We got drunk at midday and had our first kiss to Debaser by the Pixies, which we had put on the pub jukebox. A month later I moved here. I am always of the opinion that this isn't exactly how normal people go about things, but have you even read my blog? I am not normal people.

Buglustre and Harrison are both people I met through that same website, along with Sally-Tsar in Melbourne. I haven't been to the site itself in a long time, but that's probably because I actually see the best people I met there in my day to day existence. Buglustre enjoys telling the story of how she wore her 'killing boots' the night she met me 'just in case'**. Of course, she turned out to be about a foot taller than me so she probably could have crushed me between her thumb and forefinger if she had so desired. Luckily, that wasn't necessary. Harrison tells me that he didn't like me at all at first, but was pretty quickly won over by my breasts. This is despite the fact that the pillar of sexual attractiveness for Harrison is Josh Thomas.


-Smackie Onassis

*why is smackie not in her room she's supposed to be in her room why is she out of her room

**Every time I say these words, I can't help myself from wondering what would happen if Neko Case ever had a brother/son named Justin. I know it's stupid, but I honestly can't help it. Every time.

My Friend Harrison

Even though I may not have many "followers" at the moment, people are coming up to me and saying they are liking my blog. Which means that people are actually reading my insane ramblings, which is a nice thing. My friend Harrison even accidentally referred to a certain housemate of mine by the name 'Meattrain' instead of his actual name, and was promptly embarrassed. 

Since then, Harrison has requested that I write an entry about him. If he is kind enough to laugh at my stupid jokes, I feel like it is the least I can do. He has also requested that I write him a song about the SA Lotteries, which I will work on. I mean, I already wrote him a parody song about Pokemon but let's face it. I enjoyed that way too much.

Here are some facts about Harrison:

• Harrison works at a newsagency. I am pretty sure he hates it, based on how much he complains about it. He does love the SA Lotteries though. When we went to Melbourne he and I perused the Victorian scratchies and Harrison was of the opinion that they were not up to scratch SO TO SPEAK. Harrison's biggest work-related pet peeve is people coming up to him and asking for a "winning" lottery ticket, as if he knows which ones are going to win.
• My first thought when I met Harrison was 'My, what an attractive young man'. However I didn't dare vocalise any such opinions on account of my being a bit afraid of him. It seems silly now that I know what a total pushover he is, but at first I was totally intimidated by him. What with the English accent, the generally judgemental demeanor and the fact that he hated Vegatrain for no real reason* I guess I just assumed he wouldn't like me. Luckily he thinks I am great, possibly because I write him "funny" songs about Pokemon.
• Harrison loves dicks. He loves them. Can't get enough. However, he does also have a strange fascination with my breasts, which is something I can't quite explain.
• Harrison also loves the weather. Nothing excites him more than a good, hard, cold front. Just mention the words "tropical cyclone" and his own storm starts brewing, if you know what I mean. I think it is because of this that he has something of an obsession with Storm from the X-Men. I am pretty sure he wants to be her. And when I say "I am pretty sure" I mean he has told me this many, many times.
• His codename is Harrison because of the wonderful Nedroid Comics.

That is Harrison in a nutshell. He is pretty great, you guys. Five stars, would be friends with this guy again.

-Smackie Onassis

* I like to view myself as a key part of Harrison's no longer hating Vegatrain.

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.