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!

Warning: This Story Is Pretty Depressing

You may have noted that a lot of crazy things seem to happen to me. It might be that crazy things happen to everyone and I'm the only one who notices. I have wondered briefly if my entire life has not just been some kind of long drawn-out acid trip. As you have seen, a lot of my stories are very light and whimsical. But there have been a lot that are much less fun and games, and more of the inevitable eye loss. The story I am going to tell you now is, well, a bit dramatic. Any story that ends with the protagonist sitting alone late on a Friday night in the gutter outside an emergency room, wearing a formal dress and crying really usually only has it's place as the music video for a bad emo song. Yet, I once found myself in this exact position.

It was the night of my oldest friend's 21st birthday party. I went to her house all dolled up with a bottle of wine in my hands, ready for a night of fun and nostalgia. But as the evening went on I found myself more and more depressed. I kept trying to talk to people I had known for years and finding that I had nothing to say to them, or they to me. We'd grown up into very different people. They responded to this by talking around me as if I weren't actually there. I responded by sitting by myself, not having a good time at all. I didn't want to bring everyone down, so I slipped away unnoticed.

There was one friend I had at the time to whom I actually could relate, and who even made the time to see me reasonably often. He may not have been big on talking things over, but when I was upset he was always there with a beer and a guitar hero controller, sometimes even a remote controlled tank that shot actual tiny bullets. That was enough for me.

The codename that my housemates have insisted on for this guy is Binny, due to the fact that a lot of my stories involve him and they are a bit convinced that he doesn't actually exist. For the last year or so I spent in Newcastle, he and I spent most of our time together. We were both social outcasts who needed each other for our minimum daily requirement of human interaction. All of my other friends hated him for the way he jerked me around, but I needed him. My life had reached a point where I didn't really have anyone else that I could rely on, even if he wasn't the most emotionally stable of people.

When I left the party I found myself unsurprisingly heading towards his house. I arrived just in time to see him crash his motorcycle. He had only been wearing shorts and a t-shirt, with no helmet. Apparently he had been drinking alone before I'd arrived. I don't think he hit his head, but his leg was cut up pretty badly. I freaked out and grabbed my phone to call an ambulance, but he yelled me down and told me to leave him alone for just a minute. He didn't want an ambulance. I don't know why, but he didn't. When he went into shock, he conceded to let me call a cab to take us to the hospital.

I paid for the cab and helped him to the ER. I bought him a bottle of coke, thinking he could really stand to keep his fluids up. I sat down next to him, freaking out for the safety of one of the few remaining people in the world that I actually really cared about. It was then that he turned to me and told me he would prefer it if I left. He told me flat out that he didn't want me to be there.

I stormed out of the ER frustrated, alone and trying not to make a scene. Unfortunately the situation was well past the point of not turning into a scene. And, well, if you are going to make a scene an ER is probably a pretty reasonable place for it. They'd be used to it, if nothing else. Once outside, I collapsed in the gutter and started bawling my eyes out. I don't know how long I was there, sobbing, still wearing the cocktail dress from the party. No-one from that party ever asked me where I'd disappeared to that night. I assumed that my absence hadn't really been noticed.

I eventually managed to compose myself enough to arrange for someone to come drive me home. To add insult to injury, when I got home I realised I'd left my wallet on the footpath outside the hospital.

I did get my wallet back, though. And Binny did apologise to me for the way he'd acted. He admitted his pride had got the better of him. Apparently after I left he started bleeding quite profusely and had to be rushed to surgery. He admitted that my actions had saved his leg, maybe even his life. I had sworn to myself that I wouldn't forgive him, not this time, but we somehow found ourselves slipping back into the way things had always been. It was as if the whole thing had never happened.

It wasn't long after that night that I left Newcastle for good. It's now been more than a year since I've been back to my hometown and I'm kind of hoping that I can continue to make excuses to avoid going back for as long as humanly possible. People are always saying that running from your problems is not the best solution, but sometimes it's pretty much the only option.

-Smackie Onassis

From The Desk Of Smackie O: Useful Advice

Re: Sharehouse groceries. Sending your housemate to the shops is a bit like using google. Sometimes when you send them out for milk, they will come back with milk. But every now and then they will return saying "When you said milk did you mean Batman Pez Dispensers?"*. Unfortunately the results aren't always that awesome.

Re: Instant Self-Esteem. Are you feeling a bit down on your self? Here is a handy hint guaranteed to give you the mistaken impression that you are actually quite great. Tell a bad joke to someone in customer service. See, I have worked in this industry and if you don't laugh at your customers' jokes, well, that's BAD SERVICE. People in these jobs are obligated to make you think you are totally funny, regardless of how godawful your joke was. Here's one I like to whip out when I'm feeling a bit low:

Shopkeep: Ok, that comes to $19.20

Me: A good year, that.

Shopkeep: HAHAHAHA.

Re: Pickup Lines. Some women take the time to be offended by pick-up lines. I think this is silly. All you need to do to make sure they don't get away with being a jerk is to openly laugh in their face. Usually this is easier than you might think because most people's pick-up lines are really pretty amusing. The people who use them generally do so because they can't think of any other way to express themselves. They usually have a bit too much confidence about what they are saying. I was once approached by a stranger who asked me if I "had a license for those". Yes, I completed a two year course and as a result I am qualified to have large breasts. Good one, representative for the male gender.

Re: How to have great anecdotes. Vegatrain recently postulated to me that perhaps I sometimes do things just so I can tell the story. He would be wrong. There is no 'sometimes' about it. Most of the things I do are purely so I can tell the story afterwards. Why else would I have gone to Apocalypse Party? I am well aware that I am too introverted for all that jazz. But let's face it, that's a pretty ok story. The only downside is that sometimes this involves making impulse purchases and ending up with a cavalcade of items that I am not sure what to do with. Vegatrain and I are planning on setting up an ebay store very soon ("paying the rent"), but I'm not sure there is anyone out there (apart from myself) who would be remotely interested in a tie that has pictures of ties on it. Anyone? It's very meta.

Re: Don't Listen To Anyone Who Has Studied Journalism. It's an awful shame, but somehow studying media leaves you with an insatiable urge to be unnecessarily, misleadingly terrifying. I remember once a friend of mine was talking about feeling sick after going for a swim. Most people chalked this up to stomach cramps, but I thought it would be best to mention the Dracunculiasis. I told him how it gets into your body while you swim and then grows to a ridiculous size before creating a painful blister from which it will ultimately burst out to go infect others, a la "Alien". I did add the disclaimer that this parasite is now pretty well restricted to bodies of water in Sub-Saharan Africa, but by that time he was substantially terrified. This is what studying journalism does to you. The only reason I am able to prevent myself from doing this all the time is because I dropped out before the end of my degree.

Re: Making Money From Justice. This is not one I can vouch for from a legal standpoint, or from an actually working standpoint, or even from a not getting the crap beaten out of you standpoint. But what I CAN vouch for is that I think it's a great idea and can someone with more balls than me please try it so I know if it works. So, I'm no lawyer. But when I was at uni I did have lunch with people who studied law every now and then. Sometimes they talked about their homework and well, I listened. I took notes. From these notes, I am under the impression that a citizen's arrest is a thing that you can do. So, here's my idea. What about a citizen's on the spot fine? You can't let people just get away with jaywalking, can you? In the name of keeping our streets safe, you should ask them to hand over their $50 on the spot fine directly to you. Some people call this "mugging". I call it "justice".

Re: Selling things on ebay. Here is something I have observed: just about anything will sell if you tag it with the words "PUNK/EMO". I am assuming this is something to do with there being a lot of people out there who don't really understand how to fit in and need an ebay product description to help them out. Of course, this is something you can and should take advantage of. I have seen Hannah Montana products with this tag attached. Sailor Moon as well. Admittedly I am so far removed from popular culture that these things could well be considered some kind of ironic form of hip with the kids, but I don't know. I don't think I can really classify Miley Cyrus as a punk and feel ok with it.

Hopefully these hints will help you a lot in your day to day life as they have helped me.

-Smackie Onassis

*Admittedly, that was me. But come on you guys, Batman Pez Dispensers!

The World's Stupidest Allergies

On some level I guess I have always thought that people with allergies were faking it. As a gut reaction I kind of resent them, but this is only because I used to work in catering. I remember we would be serving up an entree of satay chicken skewers and some awful human would inform the waitresses that she was deathly allergic to peanuts and needed a meal that had never been in the same room as anything that had ever touched a peanut. Hey, here's a thought: if you are that deathly allergic maybe, I don't know, tell someone when you are RSVP-ing to the function? I mean, it's not like we need any notice to prepare a special meal for you. We are wizards, after all.

But over the years I have witnessed some real allergies, and some real bizarre allergies. I have met people with allergies that I did not even know were possible.

My introduction to the world of bizarre allergies came when I was in primary school. Our school was participating in 'Jump Rope For Heart' at the time and as part of this some of the older kids were paired up with the younger kids to teach them how to use a skipping rope. The kid I was paired with was allergic to sunlight.

Sunlight. Light from the sun. And no, Twilight fans, his name was not Edward*. He didn't so much sparkle in the sunlight as break out into large, unattractive sores. Even in the middle of summer he was seen wearing long sleeves, long pants, gloves and a wide-brimmed hat. The parts of his body that weren't wrapped up in a protective cloth barrier were covered with sores. I found it hard to understand why a kid allergic to sunlight was being raised in one of the sunniest places in the world. I mean, I'm sure there were circumstances, but maybe England would have been a better idea? I don't think they even have a sun over there.

So, that was pretty bizarre. Sunlight is not a thing that you would think people would be allergic to. But then again, I also used to know a guy who was briefly allergic to his own sweat. Not just sweat, but specifically HIS OWN sweat. I don't even know how that could happen. This was a guy who was riddled with allergies of all descriptions but this one really took the cake, I thought. Apparently he had been moving furniture one day when he noticed that wherever he sweated, a rash formed. He went to the doctor and yep, sure enough, he was allergic to his own bodily fluids. This only lasted briefly (if I find out it lasted only for the duration of time that his furniture moving skills were needed, I will be suspicious) but still, what?

There is one more I'd like to mention, one of someone who I know reads this blog. I will call her Sally-Tsar as that is the name under which she has commented. I mean, I could have come up with a wacky codename of my own but there is something to be said for continuity. Now, Sally-Tsar is pretty great. She lets me stay with her when I visit Melbourne and we have super special party times together. At some point last year she visited Adelaide and we returned the favour. She crashed on our couch and because I am that much of a crazy party animal, I took her to the art gallery. We had a pretty good time too, until she started coming out in a startling rash.

"It's weird, this always happens when I go to art galleries," she commented.

"Is it just art galleries?" I asked, my limited logical capacities working overtime, "Or is it just old buildings?"

"No, it's specifically art galleries," she explained, "I guess it's the chemicals they use to restore the paintings, or something."

Yes, my friend Sally-Tsar is allergic to art galleries. Which is a shame, because she loves art. But I have seen it with my own eyes, she comes out in a rash when exposed to high culture.

I'm sure there is someone out there who is allergic to just about anything, but those are some of my favourites. If anyone has any more to contribute, I would love to hear them!

-Smackie Onassis

*For the record I attempted to read Twilight when someone left their copy in the cafe where I used to work. I figured that if I was going to bag it out, I should at least have a go at reading it. I got seven pages into it before I could not physically endure it any more. Hey Stephanie Meyer, who told you that you could use 'greenly' as an adverb? Because they were having you on.

McNaughty: All you could ever want in an English teacher

I have been meaning to do an entry about my school days, but I inevitably end up deleting them. I think there is just too much material. But I guess you have to start somewhere, so I will do my best. I will start with my teachers.

Now, unlike most hipster types, I loved high school. I was smart so my teachers liked me but I was also considered funny so I got along with my classmates just fine as well. After awhile I realised that for some reason I could do just about anything and my teachers would let me get away with it. I have no idea why this was. I think it was because I was charming or something, or maybe it was just the fact that no matter how much I acted up in class I would always hand in my work on time and get excellent grades, so there wasn't much they could do to stop me. After awhile I started actively seeing what I could get away with.

The best example of this came one day while I was wandering the halls absentmindedly during class time. I ran into one of my English teachers.

"Shouldn't you be in class, miss?" I said sternly. She got embarrassingly far into a rambling excuse before she realised that I was the student and she was the teacher, and not only did she not have to explain herself to me, but that I should probably have been in class too. I'm not sure how many people could have got away with that, but I did.

That was my favourite teacher, hands down, ever. She was a lady who we will call McNaughty. This was actually what I called her when I was at school, but I figure it's not something she will find by googling herself so I'm safe. She was sensational. Every year when her birthday would come around she would sit at her desk and sigh loudly. With one arm lazily supporting her head, she would say that if anyone was going to buy her anything could it please be a bottle of Jack Daniels? Obviously no-one ever did. In the circumstances that high school students get their hands on full bottles of Jack Daniels, they are not turning it over voluntarily to their teachers.

But me, I'm a social rebel. I defy conventions. I kiss when I have coldsores. Yes, I'm that badass. In year 12, myself and a friend of mine had a free period directly before her class. I had turned 18 by this stage so I decided to actually buy her that bottle of Jack once and for all. I can still remember walking in to class and putting it on her desk. She had this strange way of laughing where she sounded like she thought whatever you did was very funny, but she still hated her job and wanted to kill herself. She would shake her head and roll her eyes, but she would still be laughing.

From there, that friend and I went out in our free period every second Tuesday and bought her some kind of gift, the more bizarre the better. We would trawl the local op-shops and discount stores looking for the ultimate prize. Every fortnight we had the pressure of having to out-weird our previous finds. The last one we found was the only one I really remember, but it really was the best one. It was a cigarette lighter, but when you went to use it a tune would play and lights would flash. There was also a topless man on it who would change position when you adjusted the angle. It was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen. Every time we gave her one of her gifts, she would laugh that same laugh. I like to think that it sounded more sincere every time, but it's hard to tell based on memory alone.

The biggest sign that she appreciated our efforts came on my graduation day. She caught up with the both of us after the ceremony and handed us each a little bag, the type you put birthday gifts in when you can't be bothered with the endless frustrations of wrapping paper. A variety of wonders were contained within. I remember mine included a plastic lei, a small bottle of sparkling wine (which we were on strict orders to not reveal to anybody) and a mix cd of her favourite songs from the 80s. It was the best thing. I also remember her borrowing my phone that day to send a message to one of my friends, masquerading as me. The recipient knew straight away that it was a phony because she had used a lot of text abbreviations and my messages were always completely grammatically correct. I find this ironic, considering the message had been written by my English teacher.

The year after I graduated I ended up going to her house and getting drunk with her. We turned her living room rug into a dance floor and thrashed away to trashy 80s pop. She was a lesbian, but don't worry, it wasn't anything like that. She was just really freakin cool. Every now and then I would text her when I was out drinking, encouraging her to come out but she never would.

Naturally, we lost contact after awhile. I have no idea if she is still teaching at that school, or if she has decided to cut herself off from everyone whose name does not start with 'Jack' and end with 'Daniels'. I don't have her number any more, but I probably have her old email address somewhere on my computer. Maybe I will drop her a line someday.

-Smackie Onassis

My Totally Sweet Badge Collection

I have been collecting badges for some years now and my collection is fairly impressive. It would be more impressive but what with badges being small and flimsy, I lose them all the time. I shed them. If you wander around my house at any given time you are more than likely to see little badge deposits scattered in various positions about the house.

I'm not sure why I started collecting them. I think I just kept finding badges I liked and then when I had more than fifty I decided I might as well call it a collection. I know most people aren't interested in collections. They seem to be associated closely with being both boring and crazy, an unlikely and unfortunate combination. But my badge collection is one that people always seem to take to with interest. I wear a good amount of them on the strap of my shoulder bag and people always comment on them. There have been a few cafes I have frequented where I have been known simply as 'The Badge Girl'. Just this afternoon I was picking up a few winners* in the op-shop down the road and the woman said with a grin that she would keep an eye out for more badges for me.

I think people take to them because they can cover a variety of areas. Nostalgia, humour, music, there are no shortages of designs. Also, my collection is that excellent. Here are a few of my favourites that are currently in circulation:

• 'Obama Pug' and 'Iguanas for Obama'. Looks like a joke, but these came from a serious website. Apparently this woman actually thinks pets should express political opinions.
• "Go fork yourself" with a picture of a fork.
• A cartoon of a Panda that says "Wanted dead or alive! This is a bad panda"
• "Satan Was A Lesbian" and all the others in that set. It was a set of all kinds of retro cult movie posters. Other winners included "She Learned The Hard Way", "Nautipuss" and many others.
• "WWSJD?" This is actually a Dr Who badge but my name is also Sarah Jane so yes.
• Andrew McLelland's Finishing School badge. One of the main reasons I would move to Melbourne.
• Assortment of indie band badges. I found this website once that had all these badges for obscure bands, TV shows and even authors that were all a dollar, with free international shipping. I have no idea why in the name of hell I did not bookmark this site. I think it might have been like the internet equivalent of the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter.
• "Hitler was a Nazi"
• "NO PIPELINE COMMUNIST THIEVES" I have no idea what this even means, but there is also a skull and crossbones on it?
• "The Comedy Of Errors by Shakespeare Motor Cycle Club" One of my favourites. This is from around 1974. The Shakespeare Motor Cycle Club where a group of motorbike enthusiasts who used to have rallies named after Shakespeare's plays. This was one of their official badges.
• "Hello! My friend" with a picture of some kind of child devil.
• I have about six badges that are all weird comments about gnomes, usually puns. None that I can find right now though.
• A roadsign that says "You Shall Not Pass", picture of an approximation of Gandalf
• "No Woman No Chai"

So yeah, that's the part of my collection that is "currently on display". As you can see, my badge collection is the best. And it makes me really easy to buy presents for. If anyone wants to get me on side, all they pretty much have to do is lay down five bucks on some sweet badges.

-Smackie Onassis

*The badges I bought today: a Healthy Harold badge, a picture of a racecar that says "flossing is for winners", a circa 1985 african american teen named 'Zack'. I don't know who he is, but he sure has 'tude, a cow's face that says moo a few times and has some bubbles and stripes. All these were in the 20c box which made me feel like I was doing excellent shopping.

"Irrational" fears

Vegatrain has this thing where he loves startling me. See, when I'm startled I make this noise that Vegatrain seems to think is funny, although Meattrain thinks it is the single most annoying sound in the entire world. I would describe it as a cross between Chewbacca and a bad Louis Armstrong impersonation, only louder and more gutteral. It is half involuntary stress reaction and half hammed up for comic effect. But that noise is not the point of this entry. This is more about Vegatrain's efforts to stress me out. Usually these efforts consist of running up to me suddenly making some kind of horrifying sound (good lord our neighbours must love us).

Last night he did something very similar, only wearing sunglasses we have dubbed "The Douchebag Glasses". You know the types. Orange frames, kinda wraparound style. Dr Cox wears a pair exactly like them in Scrubs at some stage. Anyway, Vegatrain jumped out at me from behind a door wearing those glasses. I found myself reacting by covering my face and screaming the following:

"Oh my god you look like Bono!"

Conclusion: I am afraid of Bono.

That brings my sum total of fears up to two: Bono, and birds. And I am aware that most people would probably view the former as the more rational of the two.

When I tell people that I am afraid of birds, they usually respond with one of the following:

1. "Haha, no seriously."
2. "Isn't that a tattoo of a bird on your leg there?"

Yes, I am serious. And also the tattoo is SYMBOLISM YOU GUYS. I will not be afraid of it until the day it flies off my leg and starts flapping all in my face in which case I will be terrified and it won't just be because of the bird thing.

But my fear of birds is not as irrational as most people would guess. I didn't always* have this fear, until the birds near my high school decided to go a little bit insane, Hitchcock-style. The magpies in the surrounding area had always been fairly awful. I remember one swooping me when I was just going for a walk. I tried to run away but it actually chased me down the streets, even around corners and down side streets. It was awful.

But when I was in year 12, the birds at my school went extra hotsauce crazy. During my HSC exams, the quad was roped off due to "bird hazard" as the surrounding signs proclaimed. Apparently something had gone down in the bird world, and as a result they were attacking students at random. One girl got her eye pecked and had to be rushed to hospital. I swear to god, I am not making this up.

After awhile, the "bird hazard" resolved itself. The birds went back to their business as usual. But I have since had something of a fear of the creatures. If they are chillin' in cages I am ok with them, but the minute they start flapping their wings, coming towards me in any way I basically duck and cover. Don't even get me started on geese and swans.

-Smackie Onassis

*While I am writing this Vegatrain is watching the Big Bang Theory and Sheldon just started talking about his fear of birds. MAN.

What's In My Bookmarks Bar: An Update

• Official website of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
• This video
• A store in Brisbane selling flying v ukuleles (I have not intentionally been searching for ukulele related websites. Coincidence?)
• "Piano chords made easy" for when I am writing/playing a song and I forget a really embarrassingly basic chord.
• A gif of a skeleton playing the banjo (fantastic)
• Richard von Krafft-Ebing's wikipedia page, still

Role Models, or, A Possible Explanation of Why I Am Such A Spacecase

I often refer to myself as an "absurd human being". I will admit that I do practice a form of rational insanity in everything I do. I will tell you that for free. I have tried a few times in my life to act like a normal person, but it inevitably ends up leaving me feeling empty and depressed. I have a lot more fun being absurd. But I have been thinking and I have noticed that this could well be because I have had a great deal of role models in my life who have been nothing short of totally batshit insane.

For example, at the last job I had before moving to Adelaide, my boss was this crazy Czechoslovakian guy. He had the same name as a very famous surrealist painter so I am going to call him Breton. He was absolutely insane. A usual day working with Breton would consist of him storming in, waving his arms around wildly, yelling incoherantly and then running off again. Needless to say, he wasn't the best boss I've ever had. I also got the impression that at work we were getting the LESS crazy side of him. Apparently he had a cannon in his front yard. An actual, working cannon. In his front yard. The police told him many times to remove it, but he did not listen. How did I hear about this? From the boss I had before him, who apparently knew him because Newcastle is like that.

Before the job with Breton, I worked in a small independant fashion retailer. I was only being paid $10 an hour which I knew was well below minimum wage but I didn't care. It was the best job I had ever had. I got the job in a strange way. The shop was around the corner from my house and I wandered in one day and started talking to the owner. This is how the hiring process went:

(inane chatting)

Boss: You know what, I like your style. You're hired.

Me: But I didn't apply-

Boss: You start Monday.

Me: Sure thing boss.

For a while, I was the sole employee. They had another shop over the road and when I was hired the owner took the chance to spend his time in the other one. I would scoot in every morning on my little razor scooter. They would give me the keys and I would open the shop, "work" and then bring over the takings at the end of the day. I was alone in the shop, free to do my own thing. One of my favourite things to do would be to make mixtapes to play while I was working. I do recall a woman once making a rude comment about the song currently playing and I took way too much offence. I was very proud of my mixtapes. I remember this way too vividly. The song was "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying" by Belle & Sebastian and an old woman said "Well! I wish he would hurry up and die already!" I didn't kick her out of the shop on the basis that I wanted to make money off her, but when she turned around she got the dirty look of a lifetime, let me tell you that much. 

The shop itself was fantastic. I got some of my favourite items of clothing from there, including my metallic silver boots and candy pink trench coat. I seem to remember once selling a pair of barramundi skin boots, which I thought was fairly random. My boss was exactly the kind of person you would expect to sell that kind of item. I seem to remember him once telling me about his Christmas party. Apparently he had honed this recipe for a punch that was extremely alcoholic, but didn't taste it at all. So, at his party he had two bowls set out: one was the obviously alcoholic eggnog, the other the seemingly innocent punch. Apparently, he got way too much of a buzz out of people who weren't planning on drinking supping on the punch thinking it was non-alcoholic and then driving home. He laughed maniacally when he told me this story. I laughed too but my laugh was not so much maniacal as it was awkwardly humouring him so he wouldn't drug my coffee. I'm sure there are a bundle of other stories about how insane he was, but there is already too much material for this entry for me to drag those out of my memory. I do remember that I ran into him a year or so after I stopped working there and was duly informed that he didn't have a facebook, but his goldfish did.*

As for other insane role models, you need look no further than the educators I have had over the years. In high school I had an abundance of crazy teachers, but I would rather save that for it's own entry. Let's talk about uni for a moment. The first lecture I went to was taught by one of the most openly insane people who has ever attempted to teach me anything. He walked to the front of the hall with his eyes much wider than anyone who is not a serial killer is physically capable of. I don't know, they have some kind of gene. He spent the lecture gesturing wildly and stroking his big bushy beard. If I recall correctly my notes from this lecture looked something like this:

• A dog / A not a dog
• What is this man talking about
• What am I supposed to be writing down
• What is even going on
  

I thought maybe this was just the first lecture, and that things would improve from there, but no. There was no discernible point made in any of his lectures.

Now, those are only three of my "role models" and of course I had a lot that were completely sane. What I'm saying is, they were in the minority.

-Smackie Onassis

*This fish did not accept my friend request. Apparently even goldfish think they are better than me now.