Adventures Update: Melbourne Comedy Festival

You may have noticed that I haven't updated in a few days. It's ok - I haven't died in some kind of ridiculous accident. I'm in Melbourne! I haven't been writing at all, both because I have been very busy having adventures, and also because I lost my glasses the instant I arrived in Melbourne. I don't know what it is, but every time I'm in this city I lose something ridiculously valuable the moment I arrive. Last time it was $300 in cash which was especially fun as this happened shortly after realising I'd left my wallet, complete with ID and credit card on Vegatrain's bed, thousands of miles away. This time it is my glasses. I also lost one of my mittens, but no-one can help me find it because they just get so distracted by how adorable that is.

Here are a few thoughts I have had during this trip:

• I am terrified of pigeons as it is. Most birds are pretty scary (except cockatoos, they're fantastic. I guess any bird that can sing, dance and insult people is ok by me), but I especially don't like pigeons. People call this an 'irrational' fear, but they're wrong. It's not irrational, they're terrifying. I don't trust any creature that is incapable of feeling fear. But at least in some places I can look at the pigeons and be reassured that they're just fat, fluffy little morons who will probably leave you alone if you throw a crust of bread far enough away. But see, in Adelaide we feed our pigeons bread rather than heroin, which is the only way I can explain Melbourne pigeons. They look like the living dead, all scrawny and crazy-eyed and they fly right into your face. I'm not sure that they're not all actually zombies but no-one has noticed yet because they're so used to ignoring them. Terrifying.
• A thing that happened to me in the airport: I was walking through the metal detectors when a security guard starts looking at me funny and gestures for me to stop. I instantly got a bit nervous. I thought that I wasn't doing anything illegal, but you can never tell with airport security. He gestured to my water bottle and asked what it was. I stuttered out that it was water, remembering that water bottles have been banned in the past because of the possibility of liquid explosives. He glared it me and told me to take a drink, which I did without hesitation. He waved me through. I was relieved. The thing is, I would really like to know why they didn't just do that in the first place, rather than going through all the hoopla of banning water and then charging $5 for a tiny bottle on every flight. Commercial flight has honestly become a competition between airlines and passengers to see who can rip each other off the most, and as a result I no longer feel bad about stretching the definition of 'cabin baggage' to it's loosest possible terms.
• I have been a bit anxious recently. Well, ok, a lot anxious. Vegatrain has been telling me that I should take anti-anxiety pills and I kept telling him that I didn't have a social anxiety problem, it was just the fact that the majority of people who are in public places are totally and completely awful. However, then I had this assignment due for Psych 101. I had a lot of technological difficulties that I'm not going to go into, but the result was that I was too stressed to even look at what the subject of the assignment was. I eventually did look at it and discovered that it was on stress and coping methods. If there is one thing that is going to make me learn my lesson, it's poetic irony.
• I was in the backyard of Sally-Tsar's house (where I am staying) the other day and I saw a shape in the sky. I looked up to see whether it was a bat or a bird, because I have the same curiousity levels as your average five year old*. It was a goose. A motherfriggin goose, flying across the night sky. I asked Sal if this was a common thing to see in Melbourne and apparently it's really, really not. The problem with being a tourist is that if something amazing and unusual happens, you're not quite sure it doesn't happen every day there. Like the time I was in London and it started snowing while I was on the top level of a double-decker bus. I thought it was a very pleasant English scene, not realising that it's extremely unusual for it to snow in London at all, let alone in April. Wizardry, obviously.
• I really like Melbourne. When I was growing up and had to go to Sydney to see any major bands that came to Australia, I always thought I hated big cities. It turns out I just hate Sydney. Seriously, the only reason there is even a debate about whether Sydney or Melbourne is better is because there are so many people who live in Sydney. They seem to take pride in the fact that they can always pick a tourist on their turf. What they don't realise is that everyone else in Australia can pick when somebody is from Sydney and it's because they're usually awful. But they seem to think that their city is just the bee's knees, always going on about how they have the harbour bridge and the opera house. Yeah, well, we have human decency but you don't hear us harping on about it. Melbourne, let's be best friends.
• A list of people who have a show at the Comedy Festival that I would probably make out with: every person who has a show at the Comedy Festival. But especially Andrew Mclelland and Deanne Smith. Which is infuriating because I met her and spent the whole conversation trying to figure out why she looked so gosh darn familiar, then realised I have only watched all her videos on youtube. Friggin facial recognition issues.

But now, I'm leaving on a jetplane, don't know when I'll be back again. See you this afternoon, Adelaide.

-Smackie Onassis

*Coincidentally, I also have the shoe size of your average five year old. The shoes I am wearing now I just bought from the children's section of a shop down the road and they're pink boots and they're fantastic. Kids get the best clothing options these days. I made a friendly comment about how great it is to be able to fit into children's shoes to the woman behind the counter, who responded by developing an instant and irrational hatred of me. I really don't get why woman are embarrassed to have big feet. No-one cares, you guys. Admittedly, I do have feet small enough to qualify for a position as a geisha so I haven't ever experienced this first hand, but I still don't get why having big feet is apparently something to be ashamed of.

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.