Snakes On An Everything

I actually haven't seen Snakes On A Plane. It's not that I wasn't interested. It's just that I saw a lot of the meme action leading up to it and by the time the movie came out, I felt like I'd pretty much seen it already.

To be honest, the idea of snakes on a plane isn't the most bone-chilling plane scenario I can think of. I quite like snakes. Even when I was a kid, trips to the Reptile Park were the highlight of any holiday period. Personally, I've always found the idea of Outbreak of Gastroenteritis On A Plane to be a whole lot more terrifying. What would you do?? There's only those two tiny little cubes of bathroom space for the whole plane. There would be bodily emissions going everywhere. And not in a good way.

ANYWAY. Snakes.

Liking snakes in Australia is probably not the most intuitive thing. If you see a snake in your backyard, you're not really supposed to want to touch it. You're basically supposed to get as far away from it as possible, because that bitch can and will straight up murder you and then slither home to laugh about it with its little snake friends.

One of the best news stories I can remember happening in my home town took place in our local David Jones. It was unfortunately timed; the store was located on a strip of mall where all the shops were closing down and being replaced by crackheads dragging their girlfriends along the ground by their hair. The council had this big campaign to try and encourage people back into the CBD. I remember writing a bunch of letters to the editor trying to explain how putting more meter parking on the street (without any parking garage options apart from the David Jones carpark) while at the same time talking about cutting the public transport options really isn't the best way to attract people to any given area. Unfortunately, it is against the law for a local council to do anything that falls under the categories of 'logical' or 'productive' so the CBD was in pretty bad shape.

It was around this time that they had to temporarily shut down the David Jones unexpectedly one day. Because there was a brown snake hanging out (literally) in the automatic door. Just dangling there, setting off the sensors, preventing anyone who wanted to continue living from shopping for perfumes and such. In the end they had to get animal control in to remove it, where they discovered that a family of the bastards was living in the roof. Not the best for business.

But still, I love snakes. The venomous ones aren't so much my favourites, but that doesn't mean I can't have a soft spot for the ones who don't do all the killing. My old friend, who I have referred to in this blog as 'Binny' on the insistence of my housemates, had a snake in his care for some time. It wasn't his; his old housemate had absconded to Queensland for a job, but had left a great majority of his things in Binny's house. Including his pet snake, Precious.

I loved that snake. I can't count the number of times Binny and I came home drunk and decided to get the snake out to play. I also can't count the number of times I said that to people who asked what I'd done the night before and then refused to believe that it wasn't an innuendo.

Precious did bite me once. Apparently she was a bit temperamental that day. When I reached into the tank, she reared up and fanged me. I showed off that wound for as long as it lasted.

"Oh what's that? Oh, just a snake bite. Venomous? Well technically yes, but I'm so naturally hardcore that I already have venom running through my veins instead of blood and it doesn't have any effect on me."*

Precious was not venomous. Sadly, I am not really that hardcore. I am not even a little bit hardcore. But Meattrain, if you will recall, is made of nothing but steel and brawn and testosterone. He is part Dr House, part Indiana Jones, part guy from one of those CSI shows that I have never watched and thus cannot efficiently reference. As part of his big fancy job, he had to do a component of 'snake awareness' training, which turned out to have nothing to do with how to pick your hookers in Bangkok, as I first assumed.

He recently undertook a series of tests out in the outback which I believe also included driving cars off cliffs. I'm assuming, as with all of these tests, it was considered a pass if he was still alive at the end. The snake test also sounded pretty intense. Basically, my understanding of what happened is they gathered a bunch of Australia's Most Venomous (including one pissed off python they'd simply found on the road on the way to the test) in a small room and threw them at my housemate. They chucked a bunch of snakes at him, and he had to deal with them without dying.

I'm assuming he passed.

-Smackie Onassis

*Disclaimer: this is not true in any way, not by any definition of the word 'true'. Except perhaps where 'true' is defined to mean 'false'.

Bonus Image

Things You Can't Get Away With In A Small Town

Anything.

It's hard to pull any kind of antic in a small town if you don't want everyone knowing about it by the morning. Believe me. Even the people you don't know are probably good friends with everyone you have ever met. It soemtimes makes it kind of hard to get away with... well, yeah, anything.

Here are a few things you should especially try to be careful with:

1) Online Dating
Some people still try to use websites like RSVP when they live in places where everybody already knows everybody else. Places like Newcastle. I know, because I tried it once. To be honest, I wasn't really looking for a relationship at the time, I was just kinda curious about the whole thing. As it turned out there were actually quite a few local profiles on there and I even started chatting to one guy. I thought he seemed nice, but then I asked him what he did for a living. It turned out we worked for the same people. In the same location. It could happen to you.

2) Repeating Gossip
Yes, people do this even more than usual in smaller towns. It's unavoidable. The problem is that they really shouldn't, because you never know who can hear you. I remember once I was waiting for a friend of mine at a cafe. There were two girls chatting nearby and even though I wasn't intentionally eavesdropping, I couldn't help but hear what they were saying. Because they were talking about me. They could see me perfectly well - the problem was that they didn't realise it was me they were talking about. They were telling a story about something I had done, not knowing that I was sitting a mere couple of metres away from them. I responded by feeling incredibly awkward and deciding to wait for my friend outside.

3) Cheating
Cheating is a strangely powerful thing in relationships. Some people don't see it as a big deal, but others view it as some kind of dating apocalypse. It is strange to then see the things some people think they can get away with.

The bass player of the band I was in was just One Of Those Guys. When we would go touring he had this thing of saying "Not my state!", "Not my country!" or "Not my postcode!" depending on our current location. The implication was that he thought being in a different postcode meant he could cheat on his girlfriend and not feel bad about it. Someone really should have told him that this doesn't work quite so well if your girlfriend is in your band, something I found out about the most awkward way possible. I had joined only recently and we were on tour. He had drunkenly come on to me before we'd left and I'd told him I thought it was a bad idea. In an attempt to bond with the only other girl in the band, I mentioned this to her over a drink.

"Has he ever hit on you?" I asked.

"Actually, we've been going out for two years," was the reply I received.

Kind of awkward, yeah. Although, admittedly that is not so much a small town thing as a 'Don't cheat on your girlfriend who is in your band with the new girl you have hired to be in your band' thing. I think that's good advice regardless of where you live.

-Smackie Onassis

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

A Turnipseed by any other name would probably have a more promising rap career

The other day I found myself reminiscing about one of my favourite shows from when I was a kid. It was an American show called Ghostwriter, and it was about a bunch of inner-city kids who solved mysteries with the aid of a ghost who could only communicate through writing. I remembered it because I was reading about the parts of the brain for my studies and it reminded me of a rap they did on the subject to help one of the kids pass a test.

I checked out the wikipedia page for this show and it was even better than I remembered. The ghost could even time travel. Apparently there was also an episode where it travelled through the internet, which I thought was pretty special for the early 1990s. But the best thing I found out about this show was the story of one of the main actors. A young African-American guy by the truly wonderful name of Sheldon Turnipseed. 

He received a lot of accolades for his work on the show, before going on to pursue a career in rap. From what I saw, it didn't look like he'd been very successful and last year changed his name to Tyrone Gabriel. Which means that for as long as 15 years, there was a rapper going around using the name Sheldon Turnipseed. It made my day.

I've always had an interest in funny names, ever since my father told me about a women he knew by the name of Olive Pitt (she'd married into that one). When I lived in Newcastle my favourite part of the local paper was the birth notices. I would read through them every morning, purely to laugh at the awful things people were naming their children. The only one I really remember (because it was the best one I had ever seen) was a baby boy. For the first name they'd given him something I can't quite remember, something along the lines of Tiger. But the middle name I remember with crystal clarity because it was J7. The letter J, the numeral 7. Nothing else. As if they were in the middle of a game of Battleships and couldn't be bothered stopping to think of a middle name. You may think that surely that's a typo, but it is unfortunately not. My mother worked in paediatrics at the local hospital and she knew that the baby names were the one thing that paper actually seemed to double check.

The best one my mother told me about was one that seemed to get pretty widely circulated afterwards. This was the kid whose parents decided to name him/her Abcde, pronounced 'Absidee'. A lot of people have heard this one, although most seem to discount it as urban legend. Well, I can tell you right now kids, that one is for real because my own mother has seen the birth certificate.

As for others that I knew about in Newcastle, there was certainly no shortage of those. I remember a girl at my primary school who was named Cola, only it was spelled 'Koelah'. I remember that vividly, because there was another girl at the school whose last name was Beveridge and I always secretly hoped that family would adopt her.

There was a rumour when I was in high school of a girl at a neighbouring school whose name was apparently 'Shagina Lamb'. I always dismissed this as a myth fueled by high school rivalry but having thought about it a bit more, it would honestly not surprise me. These days, I could not say I would be surprised if a couple named their daughter solely for a cruel joke. Horrified, sure, but not surprised. 

There was another great one that I never verified. I heard about it from my boyfriend at the time, who apparently had some connection with the family. They had recently had a new baby and were introducing the child to their friends.

"Carosenee?" their friends repeated, "That's a nice sounding name, where does it come from?"

"We saw it on a tin in the garage," they replied casually.

It was then that everybody figured out that while they were pronouncing it 'Carosenee', they had actually named their child Kerosene. That's not begging for your child to grow up to be an arsonist, not at all.

-Smackie Onassis

Newcastle: Keepin' it Classy

I don't know if you saw the article, but apparently my hometown is now some kind of STI capital of Australia. Before commenting, I will be quick to say that this has happened since I left the town.

But I bet I know what has caused this sudden spike in infections. And I could track it down to a little place usually called 'Number Five Union Street'. Number Five was a strip club. I'm not sure if it was the only strip joint in Newcastle when I lived there, but to be honest I can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would go there if they'd had any other options. 

Number Five wasn't the actual name of the place. It didn't really have a name, just the letters XXX painted above the door. As a result, people started referring to it by its address. I never went there myself, but I have heard enough stories to know how seedy it was. When I was in high school it was something of a rite of passage for boys who had recently turned 18 to have their first stripping experience at Number Five. I've always thought that African tribes must feel pretty ripped off that their rites of passage consist of painstaking feats of strength, wrestling lions and all that, when their Western equivalents get to do shots off naked women and call themselves men. But in the case of this particular rite, I don't think the comparison to lion wrestling is that much of a stretch.

As I mentioned, Number Five is pretty much just a door in the side of a wall. Inside it doesn't get any better. A dimly lit room awaits you, with a circle of plastic lawn chairs. The women come out and from the stories I have heard, these are not the kind of strippers you want making any large degree of physical contact with you. Yellow teeth, needle tracks, stretch marks. Exactly what you'd expect from the surrounds. Apparently they're aggressive too. A guy I went to high school with told me about how one of them decided to give him a lapdance against his will. He ended up fending her off with one of the chairs. Like a lion tamer.

I do want to be clear that I have nothing against strip clubs in general. If that's what people want to do then I don't see a problem, provided people act responsibly. However, if you live in a town where reported incidences of gonorrhea have quadrupled in the past year, maybe these are the things you should be looking into.

-Smackie Onassis

Newcastle: It Really Was That Ridiculous

I try not to talk about my home town too much but I obviously don't have much success. The problem is, my hometown is the most ridiculous place in the entire world. I am frequently reminded of just how ridiculous it was. Just now, Vegatrain was wheeling me around the courtyard in the wheelchair. Being wheeled around in a strangely misleading vessel from boring sight to boring sight reminded me of one of the stupidest things about Newcastle. I am, of course, talking about the Newcastle Tram.

The first thing one might notice upon discovering the Newcastle Tram is that it is very clearly not a tram. It's a bus, ok. It has wheels, it follows the roads and there aren't even any tram tracks in Newcastle. Stop trying to pretend you are Melbourne, Newcastle, you are not fooling anybody.

It was a tourist thing, and supposedly took the bewildered traveller from historic sight to historic sight. Now, I actually rode the Newcastle Tram once and the only "historic sight" I can remember seeing was a wall. They drove us past it, claiming that it was the oldest wall in Newcastle, built by the convicts. It was no Sistine Chapel.

But still, Newcastle particularly fancied it's chances as the next big Australian tourist attraction. We had Bootmen, after all. Most Novocastrians could point out their house in at least one scene of that one. Then, there was Silverchair. A good friend of mine was personally pointed and laughed at by both Daniel Johns and Natalie Imbruglia when her dog had decided it needed to be carried home on a particularly hot walk. There was a Superman film done there as well and as a result of their location choice there are cars exploding in the background of many of my year 12 formal photos. For real, you guys.

And yet, Newcastle always missed the bar with their tourism ideas. I remember one television ad featuring picturesque locations at sunset. The song they had chosen to accompany these images was "Love This City" by the Whitlams. Naturally, the only clip of the song they used was the bits with the lyrics "You gotta love this city, love this city, love it". I would love to know if anyone involved in the production of this advertisement ever actually listened to the rest of it.

But my favourite attempt at tourism is by far, the infamous Penis Tower. This was an observation tower on the foreshore which adorned many a postcard. Apparently the architects had been really proud of it. They failed to realise at any point in the building/publicity process that it was a giant dong:

I do love the fact that I moved from a town where the most recognisable structure is a giant phallus to a town where the most recognisable structure is a pair of giant silver balls. There's a kind of poetry in that.

-Smackie Onassis

EDIT: I found a picture of "Newcastle's Famous Tram". Note: not a tram.

Some of my craziest alcohol-fueled tales

I don't really drink that much these days. I am what most people would refer to as a "two-can Sam" or, alternatively, a "total pussbag". Basically I will have a couple of drinks before I start feeling a bit sick and want to go sit by myself in a dark corner for a while. But this wasn't always the case.

Back in Newcastle there wasn't a lot to do if you weren't drinking. And because none of my living situations were that great I found myself going out a fair amount. As a result, I have some pretty ridiculous drinking stories, most of which I was informed about the day after.

The first one that springs to mind was a house party I went to when I was a teenager. I don't remember the actual event particularly vividly, but I do remember everyone asking me this question the day after:

"Hey Sarah, do you remember how you nearly chased that goat off a cliff?"

No. I don't. That is not the type of thing that you do if you are in any state to remember it the next day. I do remember the goat though. For the record, I have no fucking idea where that goat came from, or what the hell it was doing there. All I remember is walking up the very steep driveway, falling down and rolling all the way to the bottom before getting up and finally making it to the street. And finding myself face to face with a goat, just kicking back in the middle of a suburban street, doing its general goat thing. I think I must have chased it because I was so confused as to why there was a goat unsupervised in the middle of the street and I wanted answers, damnit. And well, yeah, apparently there was a cliff nearby which I nearly found myself plummeting from because that is the direction in which this goat was leading me.

Another one of my favourite drinking stories comes a few years later when I was at Guitarstrings Wilson's 21st. Let's just say: there was an open bar. And then, after the bar had been open for a good few hours, someone decided to bring out the jelly shots. I could not have been any less ready for that jelly, but I consumed more than my share of them. It was my first experience of jelly shots and I was not expecting them to get me quite so blind drunk. I figured that anything that tasted that palatable couldn't contain enough alcohol to have an effect. I was so wrong.

After the party a few of us went to a local club for a spot of music and dancing. Being someone who totally enjoys kissing, I found myself making out with a random boy. I was fairly pleased with my seduction skills when the guy kept coming back to me for more makeouts. We would kiss, split up to go dance, then come back for some more kissing. Or so I thought. I was talking about the night to my designated driver the next day (he was actually present at the goat chasing incident as well, come to think of it) and he stopped to look at me funny when I mentioned this. When I asked him what was wrong, he informed me of this:

"Sarah, that wasn't one guy coming back for more. That was four separate guys."

I don't think I even need to say anything more about that one.

Now, let's flash forward another couple of years. I was at uni and one of the few courses I could be bothered doing was a really great screen-writing course. My teacher for this course was the greatest guy. I don't remember his name, but he was fantastic. For the last class of the semester, when we had our major works all finished and handed in, he put on a bit of a do for us in class. He even provided the cheap wine. And yes, it was four in the afternoon and I was in class but well, I got somewhat drunk. And made out with some guy. In class. In front of my teacher. But that's not the crazy part, believe it or not. From there, I went home. I was expecting to stay in because it was a Monday night and I wasn't really expecting there to be much going on. However, this was Newcastle. Every night is an acceptable drinking night in Newcastle. 

I received a text from a guy I didn't know very well. I remember him because he had the stupidest tattoo I have ever seen in my life. It was a surfboard with wings and it looked like it had been drawn on in crayon by a three year old. But hey, I was kinda drunk. I was feeling adventurous. I went over to his house.

He lived in a big open-plan loft kinda deal in the middle of one of the worst suburbs in Newcastle. I was always surprised that every time I went there I found the house completely open and unlocked, despite its close proximity to the local crackhead population.

Anyway, the last thing I remember that night was sitting in their lounge room, talking to a girl I hadn't seen since high school while a bearded man I knew only by the name of 'Flower' sat in the corner playing the guitar. He didn't say a single word to me, choosing to speak only through the medium of music. That is the last thing I remember before waking up in my own bed with my shoes still on. I have no idea what happened that night. I have even less of an idea how I got home. All I know is that I didn't die and that is enough I guess.

I think I eventually realised that I was probably going out a bit too much when the bouncer from one of the pubs I used to visit added me on facebook. Yeah.

-Smackie Onassis

"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.

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.

Why is the world so ridiculously bizarre? Is it just me?

So today I was a total loser and saw a comedy show by myself. Basically, I needed to get out of the house and thought a light-hearted bit of cake-related stand-up might be exactly what I needed. And it was a great show. The only problem was that I spent the whole time being a bit freaked out by how eerily similar the comedian was to a guy I knew at uni.

At first I thought that it was just me, over-reacting as usual. I thought perhaps it was just the fact that he simply wore the same kind of clothes and that both of the guys were guitarists who used the word 'motherlicker' and made jokes about the same indie bands and had the same haircut and the same general comedy style and... then I realised that wow, that's a lot of similarities.

Anyway, it got me thinking about this old friend of mine, let's just call him 'Bones'. As I mentioned, he was a guy I went to uni with and I always got along well with him because we were both musicians with odd senses of humour. I can't remember a single conversation we had that didn't turn into some kind of absurdist comedy piece with no audience.

The way we met was a classic example of a phenomenon known as 'Newcastle Disease'. Yes, the ridiculous hometown of mine was Newcastle but from what I have said about it, anybody could have guessed that. Newcastle Disease was a phenomenon that meant that everybody knew everybody, usually through several different connections. Bones and I were introduced to each other because we were both in bands that had the same drummer, and we were both studying journalism and not taking it very seriously.

Now, we didn't realise it at the time but our official introduction was not the first time we met. We were introduced, exchanged pleasantries and went on our merry ways but I went away with a strange feeling of deja vu, a feeling that I had met this guy before. My suspicions were confirmed when I looked through my phone and discovered his number there. My first thought was 'Uh oh, have I hooked up with this guy before?', but thankfully for our future friendship, that wasn't what had happened. I later remembered that we had actually met while on holidays and exchanged phone numbers with the intention of catching up later that night but due to crappy reception it didn't end up happening. I will admit that I was totally planning on hitting on him though.

When I realised I had his number, I had to make an evaluation that I find myself making all too often: will it be creepy if I text him and tell him what has happened? Being me, I decided that yes, it probably will be creepy but I'm going to do it anyway. Luckily he was a great dude who found the whole thing funny and we ended up becoming fairly good friends. I'm pretty sure I interviewed him for a uni assignment once, just because there were a bunch of musos doing the same course and we were all lazy jerks who interviewed each other for all our assignments. I seem to recall him being the support act a couple of times for the band I played in.

Anyway, he is currently sharing a blog with a girl I only knew briefly but am totally facebook stalking and it can be found here.

Also, he will more than likely read this so: hey man, how's it going? Long time no see, eh?

-Smackie Onassis

Smackie Onassis: Not A Lesbian Since '87

My relationship with my parents was always a little strained. It's not that they were bad people, but rather they had no concept of how to talk about any kind of personal issue. I went through my teenage years with my parents avoiding personal discussions at all costs. Every now and then, they would make something of an attempt, but it was usually a swing and a miss.

I can recall one incident where my mother and I were waiting in a parked car to pick my sister up from the movies. I must have been about fifteen or sixteen at the time. I was happy to listen to the radio, but my mother decided she was going to attempt to engage me in conversation.

"I hear so-and-so's a lesbian," she began. My mother was known for having about as much subtlety as a swift kick in the kneecap.

"Yeah," I muttered in response.

"I get the impression that it's harder for women to come out of the closet than it is for men," she said, avoiding eye contact with me.

"Um, I'm not sure that's true," I replied.

"Well, it seems like it's harder for girls to be open about being lesbians," she persisted.

"Ok."

"It's okay to be gay, you know."

"Yes, it is."

It was fairly clear that she was trying to encourage me, in her own strange way, to come out of the closet. Which would have been all well and good, if I were a lesbian.

I have always thought that sexuality was something our society tends to over-define. It is a commonly accepted psychological opinion that while most people have a preference to one gender over the other, people who are exclusively attracted to one gender are actually in the minority. You will probably find a lot of insecure bogans willing to debate that to the death, but let's face it, this class of people are not known for their expertise in psychological academia.

Regardless, I am not a lesbian. Tomboy, yes. Minor weakness for girls with excellent hair, sure. I will accept that gladly. But lesbian? Not so much.

I remember telling this story to some of my lesbian friends (maybe it was the fact that I was also a social outcast in my hometown, but at one point it seemed that a good majority of my friends were gay). They laughed harder than I thought was necessary.

See, apparently I exude heterosexuality from my every orifice. It isn't something I actively aim for, and to be honest, I really have no idea what it is. I mean, I sometimes wear square-framed glasses, have short hair and listen to Ani Difranco. I could at least pass for a lesbian, right?

Apparently not. I used to go to the local gay bar* reasonably often with the aforementioned lesbian friends, and it wasn't long before we observed a strange phenomenon. Every time we went there, I would be quickly approached and hit on by the one straight guy in the whole place. We ended up making a game of it, taking bets on how long it would be before the straight guy found me. The game ended when it happened less than five minutes after entering the bar. I walked in, went to order some drinks, and was immediately asked to dance. I actually asked this guy how he knew I was straight. We were in a gay bar, after all, and I was there with a group of lesbians. He said he wasn't sure how, but he could tell that I was straight. I did a brief survey of the rest of the bar, and got the same answer from everyone I asked. 

To this day I can't explain it. Maybe I was sub-consciously giving out some kind of body language. Maybe I was wearing my 'Ask Me About: Heterosexuality' badge**. I don't know. I really don't.

-Smackie Onassis

*I kind of thought it strange that a regional town that built its economy on such manly exploits as steelworks and coalmining even had a local gay bar. But, my hometown was not known for making sense. This is a town so stupid that there are buildings there that are PARTIALLY abandoned. As in, first floor: abandoned, second floor: abandoned, third floor: discount sporting goods store. How does that even happen?

**I kind of want a badge like this now. I collect badges, and have spend many a late night on ebay, trawling badge shops like the memorobilia junkie I am. I would love so much to have my own badge press. I want to make a badge that says 'Pancakes Are Flippin' Sweet'.