Let's Cyst Again

I have detailed a few of my more interesting ailments here. In some ways I feel like this blog is starting to read like a medical history. Admittedly, I'm a bit of a hypochondriac. This is true. But I have had quite a lot of medical dealies that weren't the result of my own paranoia. When I broke my hand, I remember denying for hours that it was broken on the basis that I didn't want to have broken a bone in such a phenomenally stupid manner. As you probably know, I would go on to much bigger and stupider injuries. My medical woes aren't always the result of me being an idiot though. I was thinking about this the other day, and it reminded me that I haven't yet mentioned that time I had a bit of the old plastic surgeries.

Yes, you heard it hear first folks: Smackie Onassis had plastic surgery. When I start off telling this story, even when I preface it by explaining that plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery are not the same thing, everyone has the same reaction:

"Boobs, right? I knew it."

No, I did not have breast augmentation. Look through my school photos if you don't believe me. I was already being catcalled by boys in my class when I was 12 years old, something I found more than a little strange and frightening. I have back problems as it is, I can't imagine anything I would want less than big old fake breasts.

The surgery I had was not cosmetic. There was a cyst growing in an unfortunate spot on my forehead and even though it posed no real threats to my health, it was getting bigger and it was a pain in the arse. Also it was in the middle of my damn forehead and all my friends kept trying to squeeze it. So, I was booked in for minor surgery.

It was just a local anaesthetic. I could understand that - general anaesthetics are much riskier. Unfortunately it meant I was wide awake while a surgeon cut open my head. I'm not going to lie to you, it was pretty awful. The worst thing is, it grew back. I was booked in for a second operation.

About halfway through the second procedure, I felt the surgeon stop what he was doing. It was then that I heard the single last thing you ever want to hear when a medical professional has a scalpel sticking into your head.

"Huh."

Something had surprised him.

"So that's why it grew back," he continued, muttering to himself. And yes, even though this was many years ago I can remember exactly what he said. It's not the kind of thing you forget.

"Hey! Awake down here! What's going on?" I would have spoken up if I could manage to get my vocal chords working. I didn't actually say anything, but I guess the doctor remembered where he was and decided that I would probably want to know what had happened.

"Don't worry," he said, "There was a little nest of them in there. I'll be able to get them all out."

Admittedly he was talking about sebaceous cysts and not horrifying spiders, but that's kinda the image that is conjured up by that particular turn of phrase.

The rest of the surgery went off without a hitch and I got to walk around for a bit with my head bandaged up like an old-school slapstick actor. My only disappointment was that he had been such a good surgeon that my scar was barely visible. You may think that's a good thing, but keep in mind that the tiny excuse for a scar that I do have is at the top right of my forehead, just below my hairline. If he hadn't done such a neat job, I would have the exact same scar as Harry friggin Potter. I can even remember my little sister telling me I should ask him to cut it in the shape of a lightening bolt, but I wasn't game to make jokes during a surgical procedure. 

There is still a scar there, it's just not one you'd see unless it was pointed out. I guess that's kind of ideal, really. Facial scars aren't really viewed as the pillar of feminine attractiveness. Still. Harry Potter.

-Smackie Onassis

The Sporting Life

Most people who know me probably wouldn't expect me to have played a sport regularly at any point in my life. This is partly because I show very little interest in watching any kind of sport and partly because I am the clumsiest person in the known world. I do actually enjoy exercise but have no real interest in any kind of organised team business. I never want any company, preferring to walk or jog or lift weights by myself. I guess you could say I'm not a team player. This wasn't always the case. I actually played a fair amount of sport when I was in high school. For those keeping track, this was when I was working on cementing my position as 'Most Overcommited Teen Ever'*. 

The main sport I played was water polo. I had done a lot of swim training before (we lived down the road from the beach and my parents wisely decided I should be good at swimming) and it made sense for me to play a water sport. I had all the grace and co-ordination of a newborn fawn who is also drunk somehow, but I put up a mean egg-beater kick. 

I was never that good at the game. I played in a mixed gender league and while I discovered certain advantages in the double standard that none of the boys could hurt me when I hurt them (official water polo motto: It's not whether you win or lose, it's how badly you injure the opposition), they were still much bigger and faster than me. And could catch a ball. That probably helped.

On land, my main thing was running. I have always loved running, although I have had a lot of knee trouble from doing too much of it while my bones were still growing. I can remember how surprised everyone was at school when they first saw me sprint. I only had tiny legs, so no-one was expecting me to actually be fast. From the way they described it to me afterwards, I'm assuming it looked like something out of a Warner Bros cartoon.

The problem was that I didn't care much about competitive running, but my teachers did. It was an academic school and the entire PE department had a huge complex about it. They would pump their fists and insist that they didn't teach at a nerd school, that there were heaps of jocks who were all just wagging class that day. I remember one year I hadn't bothered showing up to the school cross-country. I don't remember what excuse I gave, just that I wasn't there. I'm not sure what the system is elsewhere, but at my school the criteria for going to the regional cross-country was that you'd achieved one of the fastest times at the school event. Imagine my surprise when my teacher handed me a permission slip.

"I... you realise I didn't actually compete? I can't have qualified. On the basis that I wasn't present," I stuttered, legitimately confused.

"Yeah, I know," she replied, "We know you can run so we'd like you to go anyway."

I was flattered, but as it turned out I couldn't go anyway due to a music thing that was on the same day. "Priorities". But I was lured back into the world of school sport when the girls' rugby team started recruiting. They desperately needed new members and I guess they figured I was better than nothing. I had one training session before the first (and last) game of my rugby career.

As always, I wasn't taking it seriously at all. I thought it was all a big laugh until I saw the girls I would be playing against. All of them were twice the size of the biggest girl on our team. Then, the game began. I had never before seen a school sports event that turned into that big of a bloodbath. And I know I'm not exaggerating because the boys' team were on the sidelines, gasping in horror.

"Geez, girls play dirty!" I heard them shout as yet another player left the field, too badly injured to continue. I gulped and took my position again. Keep in mind that I was one of the smallest people on either team, so I knew I could be in trouble. Usually the aim of sport is to get the most points, but after the first half of the game or so, my aim was to get out of it without sustaining any permanent damage.

By the end of it, there were more players off with injuries than there were players left on the field. I'm not even kidding. It was like Roman gladiators. The only thing I remember about the last portion of the game is seeing the fear in the other girls' eyes during the scrum. Everyone was terrified.

I made it out alive that time, but I never played for the girls' rugby team again. I still watched their games though. Sensational entertainment.

-Smackie Onassis

*If you don't believe that I deserve this title, this is what I was doing when I was around sixteen: studying for my school certificate, going to weekly after school lessons for singing, piano, saxophone and drama, rehearsing for a local amateur musical, swim training once a week, water polo training twice a week, water polo game once a week and also I was working part time at Video Ezy. I also somehow managed to write a novel that year, although I never had the confidence to show it to anyone.

Catch My Phenomenon

You may have noticed that reading about obscure diseases is a hobby of mine. Maybe it's because I was raised in a medical household, but I find them fascinating.

You remember that kid I knew that was allergic to sunlight? How it had to be explained to the school that he was special because he couldn't go out in the sun without his skin reacting? I always felt sorry for that kid, he was a sweetie and would probably suffer a lot because of his condition. But then I remembered Twilight. With a bit of quick mental arithmetic I worked out that this year that little boy would be around 18 years old. I cannot fathom just how much sex he would be having. 

I did remember recently that I actually have a reasonably obscure medical condition myself. I never thought much of it because I was diagnosed with it so long ago and it wasn't until I saw it mentioned in a Cracked article that I realised it wasn't that common. 

I have a condition called Raynaud's Phenomenon. To be diagnosed with a 'phenomenon' is pretty cool to begin with. What happens is that as a response to extreme temperature changes (especially cold weather for me), my fingers go completely numb and start changing colour. For real. It's a circulation thing, apparently both my mother and grandmother have it as well. I discovered it when I went skiing with my family and found that if I didn't wear two pairs of gloves I sometimes couldn't hold my stocks properly. As you will read on that wikipedia page, the fingers first go white, then blue, then red when you warm them up. If I were American it would be the most patriotic medical condition ever. I would almost definitely be elected president, even without ever mentioning a single policy. They would ask me my stance on universal health care and I would be like 'Well, I could talk about that. Or I could show you my AMERICAN FLAG HANDS AGAIN!' 

But I was glancing over the wikipedia entry when I came across a phrase that I would assume were a hack if I didn't know it was true. Under the 'treatment' section:

"If triggered by exposure in a cold environment, and no warm water is available, place the affected digits in a warm body cavity - armpit, crotch or even in the mouth"

You can see how that would appear to be a crank, but that is actually the best way to fix it when you're out in the snow. Although the crotch is not usually the area I go for. But this didn't stop me from realising that hypothetically, if I presented to a reasonably cool doctor with this condition, I could get a prescription for fisting. I would frame that.

And I'm not a lesbian. But this knowledge has made me wish just ever so slightly that I was, on the basis that I would have the best pick-up line ever.

"Hey cutie, I don't know if you can help me out, but I have a legitimate medical need to place my fingers in a warm body cavity. I even have a prescription. Care to help me... fill it?"

Realistically, I would never have the guts to say that to anybody I hadn't known for a long time. But it's nice to have it in the arsenal*.

-Smackie Onassis

*No pun intended, you filth merchants.

Hey you guys

Hey! I have done a little bit to pimp up the blog. Not much, but there is a search bar now so you can check to see what I've said about you. You can search for anything, but I figure that is where it will be most useful.

There is also a poll, although not one that I will be using the results for anything. I just thought it would be funny to take myself out of context, and make it easier for anyone who wants to accuse me of crimes.

-Smackie Onassis

Senator Mousington

A while ago we had a mouse in our house. We would see it darting under couches and hear it scurrying around at night. I nicknamed him Senator Mousington, which stuck.

"Senator Mousington, how do you respond to allegations that you are a dirty rodent?"

"Mousington, what are your policies regarding eating our cheese?"

We weren't really sure if it was just one mouse, or if there were multiple Senators Mousington around. We figured out that it was just the one when the Senator was finally impeached by a mouse trap in the study.

There was only one night where Mousington really bothered me. I was in bed and I could hear him scurrying around somewhere. I would turn the lights on and the noise would stop. Looking around, I would find no mouse. The problem was that as soon as the lights were out, the noise would start up again. I never found where the mouse was hiding.

Flash forward to the other day when I was getting ready for the Pixies. I have these fantastic black boots that have a platform wedge and a bunch of buckles and laces. They make me look much cooler than I have ever had the ability to act. I hadn't worn these boots for a while, but I thought they would be perfect so I started putting them on. When I put my foot in them, something was not right. I peeked inside. These are reasonably high boots so it was hard to see what the problem was. When I put my hand in to feel around, I discovered that there was a hole in the sole and the entire inside of the platform had been eaten away. It was suggested that I had just worn them down, but there were a good few inches of shoe that were missing and it was all torn up. It had clearly been eaten.

I realised with a start that this meant Senator Mousington had at some point been trapped in my boot and tried to eat its way out. Vegatrain was the one who figured that it would probably have been that night where I couldn't find him. The whole time, he was almost definitely right next to my bed, eating my favourite boots.

Horrifying. Just... horrifying.

Autonomy Day

If you live in Newcastle you're kind of expected to be a raging alcoholic. Of course there are a lot of people that aren't, I'm in no way that saying teetotalers and moderate drinkers don't exist. I'm just saying those people are looked down on.

People drink a lot in my hometown. I remember when we all graduated school and started drinking in other parts of the world, we were all shocked to discover that it's not socially acceptable in most places to get absurdly drunk on a Wednesday. Or more accurately, every Wednesday without fail. I'm not joking, we were all honestly surprised. We talked about it. Wednesday night binge drinking was so acceptable in Newcastle that it actually seemed strange that it wasn't a big thing anywhere else. If you drank on Tuesday you had a problem, but Wednesday was fair game.

All of this drinking culminates in one absurdist university holiday. They call it Autonomy Day and it marks the celebration of Newcastle Uni splitting off from Sydney Uni and becoming an educational institute in its own right. Kind of like an Independence Day. And Newcastle uni students celebrate their independence the traditional way. By waking up early, going to school and getting mind-bendingly drunk.

Every year there are students who set their alarms earlier and earlier purely to be the first ones to start drinking. The earliest I ever heard was 4am. Autonomy Day is the only day of the year where it is socially acceptable to be passed out drunk before ten in the morning. The best thing is how well this activity is tolerated by the other townsfolk who all have to go to work as per usual. See, it's not actually a holiday in any official sense. It happens on a weekday and classes are still held. It's just that the few people who actually go to class are drunk and usually wearing togas. It really is amazing how well this event is received by the community. I heard a story a few years ago of a drunk student who got off a bus, threw up, and then got back on the bus. Considering this happened around morning tea time, an old woman on the bus complained to the driver. The driver apparently just shrugged and said 'It's Autonomy Day' before telling the woman to take her seat.

I only went to Autonomy Day once, during my second year of uni. I had been working the previous year and from all the stories I'd heard, I was quite excited about it. I started planning my day. How I could spend as little money as possible, how I was going to get home afterwards and just how drunk I wanted to get. Then the topic was raised while we were eating lunch one day.

"Hey Sarah, I hear you're playing Autonomy Day this year?" one of my friends mentioned, casually.

"Ha, what?" I asked, not really thinking anything of the comment. But then someone handed me one of those 'What's On At UoN?' leaflets and sure enough, the band I was in had been listed as entertainment at Autonomy Day.

"Huh," I said, making a mental note to call one of my bandmates and make sure that at least one of them knew about the gig. 

It turned out we were playing quite late in the day, and this posed a dilemma. Could I still get drunk?  In the end I decided that Autonomy Day comes but once a year and that I had an obligation. It turned out that being in the band was quite advantageous for the whole drinking thing. I didn't have to wait in line to get in, didn't have to pay entry (especially nifty as this was the first year they had charged an entry fee) and I had a whole instrument case to work with for sneaking my own cheap vodka in. I was set.

I have to say, it was pretty cool. There was an area surrounding the bar that was fenced off in an attempt to contain the event. I remember the inside being like no event I'd ever attended before. All I remember about what I was drinking was that it was blue and no-one else would go near it. They would go to taste it but recoil in horror when the smell hit them. I guess it was pretty strong.

This was around the time of those Nicorette commercials with the motivational anti-smoking squad. The first thing I saw when I walked in was a whole group of people dressed up like the cheer squad in that ad. When I first saw them they were running around in single file singing 'No, Gary, No!'. I later saw them approach any person they saw lighting a cigarette and recite the whole ad in perfect unison. 

I also made out with Jesus. It wasn't technically a costume event but it was the one day of the year where you could get anyway with anything that wouldn't normally be tolerated. There was a guy that year dressed as Jesus. I saw him drinking and mingling, then later found myself running into him.

"Hey Jesus! Wanna make out?"

I'm not sure if those were my exact words, but that was pretty much how I approached the situation. Luckily, Jesus was up for it so we had a quick pash before shaking hands and going our separate ways.

There was a part of me that had hoped I would have sobered up before the gig, but there was a larger part of me that I could still feel laughing while I typed that. Let's just say, it was not my finest musical hour. Nothing dramatically bad happened, apart from the fact that I don't think I played many correct notes. The good thing about Autonomy Day is that not only does the crowd expect you to be drunk, they are so drunk themselves that they don't care what sounds you are making. They just hear the noise and know they are being entertained. I'm just glad no-one filmed it.

-Smackie Onassis

Seeing People Play Music Is Fun To Do

When I heard the Pixies were coming to Australia, I flipped out a little bit. I read the details of the tour, getting more and more excited. They were not only coming to a place where I would get to see them play but they were going to play all of Doolittle, in order. 

"Holy shit," I thought, "Doolittle is not only my favourite album, but the one with the most personal significance to me. It's like this tour was custom designed to suit my Pixies needs!"

But then I logged onto the internet and saw every indie kid I knew saying that exact thing. Doolittle was EVERYONE'S favourite album. It is a joke I've heard a few times from Pixies fans that the band could release a new Best Of and it would just be Doolittle with a different cover.

When I arrived at the venue, I realised that it wasn't just the indie kids who were excited about this. While waiting for the doors to open, I cast my eye over the crowd. I can honestly say that I have never seen a more diverse group of people all so excited for the same band. People of all ages, representing every musical and societal subculture you can name bumped shoulders trying to get to the merch stand.

Sometimes when you go to a really important gig, there are a few people there that you wish had stayed home. I remember when I saw Belle & Sebastian, it was a huge deal for me. In the years I'd been listening to them they'd never once come to Australia. Then in 2006, they finally came to promote the Life Pursuit. The nearest show to me was in Sydney and I even had to leave a university exam early to catch the last train that would get me there in time. Luckily it was a multiple choice linguistics exam which involved having to correct the grammatical errors in set sentences. I was done in about fifteen minutes.

I was ridiculously excited. We had standing tickets and ended up staking out a spot about a metre from the stage. It was amazing, being so close to this band who had been so influential on my music tastes. The only problem was this group of awful girls. There is a type of person who goes to gigs with the strange need to make themselves the centre of attention. It's a level of narcissism that gives me no end of the shits, especially when it's a band I've loved for that long. Everyone else has paid to see the band, not you being a tool. But these girls. They got Stuart Murdoch's attention between songs and cried out that they wanted to come up on stage. He laughed it off at first, but they persisted. Murdoch has quite a good sense of humour so he giggled and told them they could come up for a song if they wanted, but they had to act it out. They squealed and pulled themselves up in front of the crowd. Asking to get onstage with one of your idols is one thing, I can understand the appeal of that. The problem is that these girls had clearly only listened to the most recent album and jumped on the bandwagon. And it's fine if you want to go to a gig in that situation, I just don't understand why this type feels the insatiable need to draw attention to themselves. You see them all the time, trying for some reason to act like they are the number one loyal fan, screaming when the one song they know the words to comes on. If people seeing you enjoy the band is more important to you than actually enjoying the band, kindly stay home next time. It's obnoxious. 

When the girls were on stage, Murdoch made a joke.

"What would you do if I started playing the Chalet Lines or something?" he said with a smirk. The crowd burst out laughing, knowing that this particular song opens with the line 'He raped me in the Chalet Lines' and continues along that vein. But the girls on stage? Blank looks.

Ok, I thought. That's fine. Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant was in no way their most popular album, I could see how that reference could slip through. But then the band started playing Judy and the Dream of Horses. If you are a Belle & Sebastian fan, you know that song. It was from one of their most critically acclaimed, influential early albums and it's a beautiful song. The crowd went wild to hear it but the girls on stage who were supposed to be acting it out had obviously never heard it in their life. They didn't have a clue what was going on and Stuart Murdoch was loving it. He played it slower, repeating lines when he wanted to see them struggle to act them out and laughing to himself when the girls made strange horsey gestures, having no clue what the song was about.

Admittedly, it was pretty funny and Murdoch approached the situation in the best way possible. But more than that, it was annoying. This was a band I had been waiting with baited breath to see for a long time, and these jerks had picked up one album and decided that they needed to go to the gig of the band that very rarely comes to Australia and make it all about themselves. 

Luckily, there was none of that at the Pixies. It was something that was really noticeable about the crowd - this gig was extremely meaningful for every single person in attendance. There was no-one I could see that was there for any reason that couldn't be expressed by the phrase 'It's the motherfriggin Pixies'.

And it really was amazing. They opened by playing a bunch of b-sides, silhouetted in fog. I was in the seats up the top (not brave enough to face being crushed in the standing room) and it was a strange and wonderful thing to see unfold. When the band came on stage, a sea of phone screens appeared in the crowd. People were taking photos, filming bits of songs and then putting their devices away. But for the duration of the gig, as soon as one turned off, one on the other side of the crowd would turn on. The effect was a sea of dancing, intermittent lights appearing randomly throughout the crowd. I liked it. 

The crowd lapped up every moment, but it was when the first few chords of Debaser started playing that people started seriously losing their shit. They played through the album as if they'd never spent any time apart. The songs still had the quality of the recorded versions but the live performance added a whole new element of raw sound. Even though it's not my favourite song on the album, Tame was a huge highlight for me simply because of the way it sounded being shouted across the Thebarton Theatre by Frank Black, whose voice has gotten more intense if anything.

I'm not going to describe every song in detail. All you really need to know is that it was good enough to procure two separate standing ovations. Before the second encore, it seemed like something went wrong. There was a unusually long gap in the music while the stage was invisible through the intense amount of fog that they'd used. It could well have been that there was too much fog and no-one could see anything, because they played the last few songs with the house lights on. This meant that for their closing song (Where Is My Mind, as if it was ever going to be anything else), I had the strange experience of being able to see the faces of every other member of the crowd. People were closing their eyes, swaying to themselves. People were dancing madly in the aisles, not giving a fuck what anyone else thought of them. People were grabbing each other, staring at the stage in awe.

That was when I realised that this was a defining moment in the lives of every single person here. A once in a lifetime experience, seeing the Pixies playing what was probably their favourite album, one they assumed they would never get to see performed. Every one of these people was from a dramatically different background to the person next to them, but they were all experiencing the exact same thing.

This did lead me to start thinking about how the music of the Pixies could create universal harmony a la the Wyld Stallions in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, but that's not something I need to go into. You must admit though that if one band were going to do that, it would be the Pixies, right?

-Smackie Onassis

A Rare Moment Of Seriousness

I was in the middle of working on a more whimsical and light-hearted entry when I found myself distracted. There were a bunch of little things appearing on my facebook feed that seemed to be bagging out Nestlé. Obviously not up to date on my current affairs, I hit the streets. As the streets these days are paved with the internet, I started with google, entering the search term 'Why is everyone all up in Nestlé's mustard?". This returned little more than a bunch of questionable recipes. I adjusted my search terms and discovered that the controversy is centred around Nestlé using a product that's been pissing off a bunch of environmentalists (and orangutans, one would assume) for having an adverse effect on the native habitat of a certain species of orangutan. I thought it sounded like an interesting issue but when I saw that Greenpeace were at the helm of the campaign, I stopped reading. If my previous experiences with Greenpeace (as a former member and supporter) were anything to go by, I was about to be hit by a wave of stories that focused more on guilt-tripping the general public than providing any real, objective facts on the issue.

For the record, I do support taking actions to preserve the habitats of endangered species. Unfortunately I can never condone the actions of organisations such as Greenpeace, or even worse, PETA. As someone who gave a regular, monthly donation to Greenpeace for a number of years, I have been following their activities for some time. Eventually I decided that I can't put my support behind any organisation whose director has admitted to "emotionalising" the issues for which they campaign. Regardless of the way this is done, adding an unnecessarily emotional element to a public campaign is the easiest way of misleading people into agreeing with you. Just look at any piece of political propaganda from any point in history. While not always the intention of the creator, I completed enough media studies courses at uni to know that this tactic almost always leaves the viewer with a warped understanding of the issue. 

Some may say that the ends justifies the means. In my opinion, there is no end that justifies the use of emotional manipulation on a large scale. If your arguments are not convincing enough to get people's support without having to make them feel personally responsible for the destruction of the planet, maybe you should rethink your arguments.

Gerd Leipold, the aforementioned Greenpeace executive who made those statements, later lambasted the BBC for misunderstanding what he meant by the quote. However, as someone who has received Greenpeace newsletters and emails for a long time, it is clear to me that by "emotionalising" the campaigns Leipold meant distorting the issues, leaving out facts that don't serve their campaign and essentially guilting people into putting support behind them. These are not the actions of an organisation dedicated to the pursuit of objective, evidence-based environmental protection.

This idea is supported by the fact that Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace, now speaks out publicly against them. In that particular article, he was quoted as comparing one of Greenpeace's campaigns to a "Trojan horse", accusing them of using the issue "to deliver an activist agenda that is not in line with science or sustainability."

This is the reason Moore claims he left the organisation he helped create, and the same reason why I now take everything Greenpeace publishes with a grain of salt. They have stopped being about real environmental progress and have instead been overtaken by politics, to the point that finding out the real facts and figures of environmental issues is less important than promotion.

For the record, I would class myself as an environmentalist. People who know me will tell you that I don't eat meat due to my objections to large-scale factory farming and the environmental and social impact that it creates. However, while I will gladly argue in favour of a vegetarian or semi-vegetarian diet, I understand that this is a matter of personal choice. If someone disagrees with me, I'm not going to accuse them of murder and throw a bucket of red paint over them. Those kind of aggressive, immature tactics are not going to win any respect for the cause. 

I find myself in the difficult spot where I am a vegetarian and an environmentalist and yet, I cannot bring myself to support the main institutions that claim to represent me. For me to support such an organisation, they need to stop using these tactics. All they are doing is destroying the credibility of both themselves and, by association, the issues for which they campaign. I support a kind of environmentalism that makes sure to research their facts objectively before shouting their position from the rooftop and making blanket accusations. I support a kind of animal activism that doesn't take what I see as important issues and ensure that no government will take them seriously due to the sheer dodginess of their methods. I support any organisation that puts rationality over spin.

-Smackie Onassis

Handwriting Analysis: I Call Bullshit

I'm going to put it out there: I love Penn & Teller's Bullshit. It's fantastic. They take a bunch of issues people usually have strong opinions on and then call everyone on their, well, bullshit. It is one of the more honest and informative documentary shows I've seen and it's also totally funny.

I have an idea for something I could probably debunk, Penn & Teller style. Has everyone heard all about the people who tell you they can analyse your personality through your handwriting? It's called graphology and it's been around for some time. I actually once read a whole book on the subject and I thought it was interesting. It was a whole lot of 'on unlined paper, optimistic people write on an upwards rising slant' and 'creative types use more loops!'. It seemed to make sense, only I couldn't see any evidence that this wasn't just something they'd made up. With a few more years of experience under my belt, I'm now pretty sure that this is because one day, a long time ago, someone actually just made the whole thing up. I imagine it happening a bit like that recurring Mitchell & Webb sketch with the two writers brainstorming, a sketch I can't seem to find online so just buy the dvd you cheapskate. Anyway, this is how I pictured it:

"We can tell them your handwriting says something about you."

"What?"

"Like, your personality. What you're into."

"So a bit like astrology?"

"Yeah, a bit like astrology. Only it can't tell the future. Just stuff you already knew."

"Will people pay for that?"

"It's not like it'll cost us anything to find out!"

Either that, or someone wanted a ransom note written in someone else's handwriting. They must have realised they could tell a person to write whatever they wanted if they told them they could analyse their personality with it. If this is true, I would love to meet the guy who decided to charge for the service.

But here's what makes me think it's a crank: I'm cross-dominant, meaning I can write perfectly well with both hands. When I was in high school, I broke a bone in my right hand. I tripped over and instinctively put my hand out to protect my face, cracking it on a nearby doorframe. What was funny was that the particular fracture I had is called a 'Pugilist's Fracture' on the basis that it is almost never caused by anything other than punching. When I told my friends, they were convinced that I was lying about the tripping and that I had in fact raged out and punched a wall. I tried to deny this, but then realised their story made me sound a lot cooler. 

"Yeah, the x-rays were expensive. Nothing compared to how much it's going to cost to fix the wall, let me tell you." 

Regardless of how it happened, I had to study with a broken right hand. Out of sheer frustration, I learned how to write with my left and as a result I can now write with either. The thing is that I have different handwriting for each hand. I don't know if this is common among people who are ambidextrous or cross-dominant, but this is the case for me. And I'm not sure what this means from a handwriting analysis point of view*. 

Here's what I want to do: Tell a graphologist that I have a couple of friends who want their handwriting analysed. I will say that because I don't want them to get any visual clues about them, I am handing in the samples on their behalf. I will give them one sample from my right hand and one from my left hand.

Then, then we will see. I would be very surprised if the results came back with 'These two people are so similar they could be the same person'. And I know some smartarse would try to tell me that maybe it's just because I have split personality disorder or something. For your information, hypothetical smartarse, it is a common theory among psychologists that split personality disorder isn't real at all, that it's usually just clinically induced in people who have narcissistic or histrionic personality disorder. In other words, people who have a chronic need to be the centre of attention so bad that they start making up new personalities.

I may actually try this little experiment. There seem to be a bunch of graphology sites offering free analysis, so maybe I will try it out.

-Smackie Onassis

*Although I do know what it means for an instant alibi if I ever found myself a suspect in a case where handwriting is being used for evidence. Don't think I haven't thought about that.

The Best Shop That No Longer Exists

I did another shift at the op-shop yesterday. It's great because volunteering means I get excellent things even cheaper than I normally would. Two sweet rockabilly dresses and a great jacket for $20 is the sort of charity work I can get behind. Yesterday I didn't find as much funny stuff as last time (although there was a pair of pants with a built in bumbag, for people who don't even want the option of not looking like an idiot), but it did remind me a lot of when I worked at the clothes shop back in Newcastle. I mentioned it briefly in my entry about insane role models, but that brief couple of paragraphs doesn't really do justice to how amazing a job it was.

As I mentioned, the shop's owner hired me pretty much out of the blue, on the basis that I came into his shop sometimes and he thought I was cool. For the sake of a joke, we will call him Bernard. When I started working for Bernard it was just a shift every now and then when he wanted to go do something else. When he realised that I was able to turn up for shifts at short notice (I lived around the corner) and that I had a knack for convincing people to buy things, he started giving me shifts all the time. He was dramatically underpaying me - we both knew it. I didn't care. It was a cushy job and he was a funny guy, so I never pushed the issue. I got to dress how I wanted, read on the job and play my own music. I viewed it as a bonus that I was even getting paid at all.

It was a small shop, with a lot of really unique stuff. Barramundi skin boots, polka-dot tops with suit-style tails, you name it. Because there was a lot of stuff that you wouldn't find anywhere else, people were always very disappointed when I didn't have their size.

"Can you check out the back?" was the most common question I would hear. I would agree to have a look, but it was almost always to humour them. Admittedly, the shop did look like it had a back room. It didn't though. There was a little corridor behind the till, but it didn't go anywhere. Customers, however, didn't know that. Whenever someone asked me to have a look for something out the back, I would just go and stand in the corridor. The whole thing was out of view of the shop, so to the customer it would look like I was disappearing into a vast, stock-filled area. In reality, I would be half-heartedly flipping through the one rack of clothes that we had there. I would open the little bar fridge, the only other thing that was hidden in the corridor, and see what Bernard had in stock. For the record, I never saw anything other than wine and random condiments in that fridge. There might have been half a kebab for a while, I'm not really sure. You can see why I gave my boss the name Bernard. I always pictured him telling a customer that he was going to look out the back for something, only to pour a drink and laugh to himself. 

We used to spend a lot of time laughing at our customers. While there were some great items in the shop, there were also some seriously awful ones. I remember coming in one morning to be shown the latest item of stock. It was a handbag, designed for carrying around a tiny dog. We had hysterics, joking about the kind of person who would buy that. Later that afternoon, I checked in with him on my way home.

"Did anybody buy the dog purse?" I asked. He looked at me with the utmost seriousness.

"A woman has gone to buy a dog so she can use that bag."

I kid you not. I only wish that I could have seen that unfold with my own eyes.

The thing about Bernard was that I could never quite predict what he was going to say. He never felt the need to give his conversations any kind of prior context. Instead, he would jump right to the point. I remember one morning, I came in to open up the shop.

"Do you like dead animals?" he asked me, straight up. I was a bit taken aback. I figured that this was some kind of pop culture reference that I wasn't getting, a band that I should be familiar with but wasn't because I didn't listen to the radio.

"Um..." I stuttered, thinking fast about how to bluff my way through this situation. Luckily, he didn't seem to expect a reply, leading me to a locked cupboard at the back of the shop. He opened it and as it turned out, he meant dead animals in the most literal possible sense. It was a mink stole, the kind with the stuffed head and feet still attached.

"Someone donated it to the shop," he explained, "I'm not sure what to do with it."

I'm not sure what ended up happening to it - it was never put on display. I'm honestly not sure if he was actually against fur or whether he was aware that a lot of his customers were the type of people I call "corporate hippies", the type who are happy to drive an expensive 4WD halfway across the country to attend an anti-coal protest. Although, just because it was never on display doesn't mean it was never sold. He often brought special items out of that cupboard for certain customers and I didn't see it again after that.

Hey. Hey you guys. Maybe it was STOLEn. B-because it's a stole? Guys?

Guys?

-Smackie Onassis