A (Bon)Soiled Reputation

I found out something interesting today.

Apparently, all Bonsoy soy milk was recalled not too long ago. Something to do with iodine which has apparently caused thyroid problems in a bunch of people. Naturally, when I heard the news I had a minor panic. I had to have some blood tests this morning to check my parathyroid and I used to work in a café that served Bonsoy as its primary soy option. I had coffees with the stuff most days. Not because I thought it was healthy or any of that but because damn, that stuff is tasty. But don't worry, further research has revealed that the thyroid and the parathyroid are completely different things and, as previously hypothesised, I'm a complete and total hypochondriac.

But I'm glad I read about this Bonsoy thing. As you probably know, I spend a lot of time reading. One area I'm interested in, being a vegetarian and all, is the ethics of food production, including organic foods and genetic modification. It's a very interesting subject. I've read a lot of arguments against genetic modification in food products and, as with most subjects, some are more convincing than others. But there's one argument I've never liked that keeps coming up. When certain strains of fruit or vegetable are modified to, let's say, became more resistant to pests, they obviously test them to see whether they have any serious side-effects on people who consume them. When the modifications are shown to be harmless you often hear someone saying that sure, now it seems like there's nothing wrong with it, but hey! You don't know if it will turn out to hurt us in the future!

I hate this argument. For those against genetic modification I would hasten to bring up the fact that the work of scientists like this excellent dude have meant that crops have been able to be provided to buttloads of people who would otherwise have died of starvation. But whether GM foods are good or bad is not the point here. The point is that if you're going to try and ban something based on a completely hypothetical future where it might turn out to be bad for you, you should apply it across the board. Ban everything that could maybe one day turn out to cause some kind of problem. Oh wait, that's EVERYTHING.

And this Bonsoy thing proves a neat little point. You see, the kind of people who use that argument are usually the kind of people you see drinking soy milk. And no, that doesn't apply to all soy milk drinkers. As I said, there are some of us that just drink it because it's super delicious. But there is a specific sub-section of soy drinkers that can be summed up with one word: hippies.

I'm sorry hippies, but you know it's true.

You see them when you do café work. They come in groups for their soy chai lattes, always with their babies in hand-made booties. I sometimes wonder if those babies are present because the parents also hand-crafted their own condoms. There was a drink at my favourite little café in Newcastle that was a latte with soy milk and dandelion extract, written on the menu as an L.S.D. If that's not aimed squarely at this exact demographic, I don't know what is.

Some of them drink it because they're vegan, some of it drink it because maybe they heard it has some kind of health benefit (I also see that a lot with gluten-free products). Some drink it because, well, maybe it's just the culture. They're the type of people who only buy food with the word 'organic' on the label. And don't get me started on that old pearl. The problem is, you can define 'organic' as any product derived from a living organism. Technically, it's true. It may have been ground up with the hooves of a thousand mutated puppies living their lives in a perpetual hell, but if it comes from a living organism, it's technically organic. Then you can sell that product with the word 'organic' on the label. Maybe you're not supposed to, but nor are you supposed to use misleading pictures to make your food more appetising than it is. If it's technically legal and it can rake in the dollars, people will do it.

Then they bring out 'certified' organic. There are actual certifications that you can get that your food is organic. The ACO certification is, I believe, a good one. But unfortunately, these certifications aren't compulsory for any food using the label of 'organic'. And as a result, there's nothing stopping some marketing genius from making up his own certification to make it look genuine. The word 'certified' means nothing if you don't know anything about who is doing the certifying. You can't just take their word for it. It could just be some guy in a factory taking the packaging and saying 'This bread is organic, as certified by my dick.' That'll be $15 a loaf, don't forget the canvas bags.

But now, as if specifically formulated for me to prove a point, it turns out that of all the things that are making people sick, it turns out it's the soy milk. Even better, the ingredient in Bonsoy that was causing all the trouble? It was the SEAWEED EXTRACT. If you're eating something that contains anything derived from a plant that was grown underwater, that's instant hippie credibility. And then it turns out THAT'S what's bad for them.

And no, it's not all soy milk that was harmful and Bonsoy is back on the shelves now, the problem having been rectified but, really. You can't help but love that sort of irony.

-Smackie Onassis

P.S. There is a new poll, based on the results of the last poll. As requested (by Vegatrain) I am keeping this one open for a bit longer.

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

Vanity License Plates

I'm going to go ahead and say it: I really friggin hate vanity license plates. Or, more specifically, I hate the type of people who think that putting a few different letters on the back of their car for no apparent purpose is a perfectly valid way to spend a few hundred bucks. I can't imagine how much disposable income I would have to have before I was so lost for ways to spend my fortune that I handed over a spare $250 for my car to be officially labelled as 'DJ-5LY'. It would have to be $250 that I found in change on the floors of my many luxury cars. Well, when I say 'change' I mean 'fifties', but that would be change to me, you know?

I always take note of such plates when I see them around, because I love to imagine the type of person who would have thought that was a good idea. I recently passed a parked car in a wealthy suburb that bore the license plate:

WWJD

I really wanted to leave a note that said 'I'm not sure, but I imagine spending hundreds of dollars on a personalised scrap of metal probably wouldn't have been high on his to-do list.' Sadly, I didn't have a pen.

Most of the people I imagine behind those plates are not the type of people I imagine wanting to be friends with. I might even have thrown punches at the likes of 2HOT4U for simply being such tremendous wankers. Although I do kind of want to meet the guy behind BMMEUP, provided that it does mean 'beam me up' and not 'bowel movement me up'. You can never tell these days.

I was wondering about which other things people have paid to have attached to their car and I remembered hearing about a search engine of combinations that are still available. I had a look and didn't find that, but I did manage to find a bunch of ads for registered vanity plates in all Australian states. There were quite a few that had me truly scratching my head.

I understand that a lot of specific names are taken but when you're going to go as generic as MISTER you may as well just stick with the random letters, in my opinion. And is WORKM8 really the most impressive thing you could say about yourself?

There was someone selling one that said 'CIVIC' which I can imagine someone thinking was a great idea when their judgement was impaired in some way, then having to sell it when they woke up and realised that having a Honda Civic isn't really something that you're supposed to brag about. Unless it's the exact opposite of all those Civics with 'PORCHE' licence plates and they're just being horribly ironic. And I'm sure the owner of BADSTI meant... something else. Anything else. Maybe it was somebody's initials. But surely, SURELY, they would have noticed that it could be interpreted to mean the driver of the car is currently sporting an unfortunate and embarrassing infection. Surely at least one person would have pointed that out.

Then there were some that I really couldn't figure out. When I first saw the plate EMAILS for sale, I thought it might have been intended for some kind of business car. But then I couldn't figure out what kind of company could best sum up what they do with the word EMAILS. Do they send emails? Do they sell them? Are they a spam company? Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely and is Emails someone's name? Spoilt rich kids sprung from the loins of eccentrics in the early nineties would be about the right age for receiving name plates as gifts, so that kind of checks out.

-Smackie Onassis

P.S. There is a new poll that I put up the other day. Choose which lie I should add to my CV!

Wine Fight

We had a wine fight once.

When I say 'wine fight' you might be thinking that I'm putting a spin on something, that it's goint to be a more boring event that I'm slyly twisting so I can call it a wine fight. Let's be clear: when I say 'we had a wine fight', I mean that Vegatrain, Meattrain and myself once found ourselves in the kitchen at our old house, covered in white wine and flinging more of the stuff around everywhere.

I've thought before that the house the three of us share (with Richard Melons, who keeps himself separate from such shenanigans) isn't really a grown-up's house. The central room is an entertainment centre that consists of three TVs, multiple gaming consoles, a few couches and a big ol' stack of beanbags*. As I have mentioned, the centrepiece is often a top hat that we keep filled with chupa-chups.

But then I realised, this is a grown-up's house. It's just for the type of grown-up every kid wants to be when they're older, rather than the type they actually turn into when they cave to pressure and start being sensible. And that's kind of a good analogy for the way we act most of the time.

Let me explain the wine fight.

To understand how it started, you have to have a basic grip on how much I love bargains. For those of you who don't know, I really like bargains. I like them more than a friend. If I see a really good bargain, I have to cash in on it. If it's something I can't possibly use, I will try and think of someone I can tell about it. I once called Vegatrain's sister-in-law from the shops because there was an amazing special on tuna and she was the only person I knew who eats it. When a bargain is that good, I must at the very least witness someone taking advantage of it. I call it 'Vicarious Bargain Joy'.

I was out searching for some specials when I found a really, really cheap cask of white wine. It even looked like reasonably decent wine, I guess, all things considered. I bought it, thinking I would drink it for sure. Naturally I had one glass and put it away when I realised just how awful it was. It sat on our kitchen table for some time.

Until one fateful day. Meattrain, bored and restless, sat down at the table and poured himself a full stein of the stuff. He proceeded to look at it like a drunk cowboy looks at a racial stereotype and skulled the whole thing in one move. It was pretty impressive.

I'm not sure who made the next move. It was either me or Vegatrain, but it was a long time ago and I don't quite remember. Whoever it was poured a proper glass of wine, looked at it nervously (neither of us can best our housemate in the being-a-man stakes) and promptly threw it all over Meattrain, who was still sitting at the kitchen table. From there, all bets were off. Several litres of wine were thrown, ending up all over the three of us and any surfaces or inanimate kitchen equipment that happened to be in the crossfire.

And no, it didn't feel that great to be covered head to toe in goon. But I have to say, it wasn't nearly as bad as the time the boys stuck a 1.25L Pepsi bottle upside-down in the back of my pants and then unscrewed the lid. Rotten boys.

-Smackie Onassis

*For awhile the beanbags were working as my chair in the study. When we set up the study, we had four desks but only three appropriate chairs so my section of the study became a pile of beanbags in the corner with my lapdesk/laptop combination. However, after a month or so I found a chair under a pile of laundry in my room (seriously) and now I can sit at a desk like a proper person.

P.S. I haven't updated in ages because I've been heaps sick and stuff. But I am feeling better now so it's all good :)

Driving: It's Not The Greatest

I have been driving for some time now. Unlike many people I know, I got my license as soon as I was legally able to. Of course that doesn't mean I really actually like driving. In my adult life I have been reliant on more modes of transport than most people: car, bicycle, scooter, public transport. And, to be honest, I don't really like driving a car. Quiet country roads are ok, but driving in traffic stresses me out more than you can imagine.

Admittedly, one of the best compliments I ever got for my driving was a guy who said in all sincerity:

"I like driving with you, Sarah. It's like being on a ride."

Th-thanks? I guess?

It's not that I'm not a good driver. I am, at the very least, competent in not causing people grievous bodily harm when I get behind the wheel. I remember talking to my first housemate about this subject once. She confessed that she'd had no less than 12 accidents in her driving career, all of which were her fault. Two of which involved her driving into shop fronts. I asked her how she possibly managed to get insured with a record like that and she informed me that her actual record was clean because she'd never reported any of the incidents. Guys: I'm not that bad.

My dislike for driving a car can probably be traced back to when I was first learning. I was being taught by my dad, driving around quiet streets in Newcastle. One day, we started getting a bit adventurous and ventured onto a slightly busier road. In a nightmarish scenario for anyone who is just learning to drive, the brakes failed. What makes it worse is that my father didn't believe me that the brakes had failed and just thought I was doing something wrong. Luckily, I managed to get us home safely with Dr Dad chastising me all the way for not using enough brake. I parked the car with the handbrake and went inside to collapse in my room in a nervous heap. About ten minutes later, he knocked on the door and confessed that he'd looked at the car and discovered that the brakes were actually completely shot and we were lucky that we hadn't been in a serious accident. Excellent news for any 16 year old L plater.

But I did go on to get my license and drive relatively safely for many years. When I moved to South Australia, I spent a long time not driving simply because I don't have a car. Luckily the public transport here is decent enough that I didn't really need one. Nowadays, Meattrain trusts me enough (for some reason) to let me borrow his car from time to time.

I can remember the first time this happened. It was late and Vegatrain and I wanted to do a Maccas run for some tasty no-meat cheeseburgers (don't knock it until you try it you guys). Meattrain said that if we brought him back some real man's food, I could borrow his car. The problem with that was that I hadn't driven a car in about six months and had spent the last three days playing a substantial amount of Grand Theft Auto. Not a great combination. I climbed behind the wheel and my instant reaction was 'Ok, let's ram some cop cars! What guns do we have in case we see some hookers?'

Luckily, our destination was only five minutes away so nothing drastic happened.

-Smackie Onassis

Adventures Update: The Mountain Goats

I have this habit of foreshadowing my own actions more than seems statistically likely. Admittedly, everyone probably does this and I'm just the only one who has a record of it because I write everything down in a borderline obsessive compulsive manner. Although I must say that picking up amusing patterns in my own life is sort of the aim of the whole endeavour, so I'm quite enjoying it.

Last night, after writing that entry about being an indie wanker, I went to see the Mountain Goats. Vegatrain and I were quite excited about it because, obviously, we're music nerds and are obligated to get excited about John Darnielle.

Sadly, going to gigs is a bit of an ordeal for me these days. I have this awful affliction where I love indie music but I hate all the wankers who are at gigs for the wrong reasons. If you're wondering, the wrong reasons include: to look 'hip', to pick up indie girls, to get drunk and draw attention to themselves to the detriment of everyone who has paid to see a band that probably doesn't often come to Australia, and so on. The 'Mumford and Sons' crowd, as I call them*. It's very conflicting for me, because those people are at every gig I ever go to and it drives me bonkers when I just want to watch a band that I really like. One particular thing that annoys me more than it should is hipsters who spend hours perfecting an outfit that they think makes them look 'creative'.

Here is my message to hipsters everywhere: STOP TRYING SO HARD. I have been friends with a lot of actually creative people and the thing is, they will never spend that long making themselves look cool for a gig. They're too busy writing stories and playing instruments, thinking they should probably start getting ready but getting distracted by an idea before throwing on some clothes at the last minute and running to catch the bus. And while I'm on the subject, there is a major difference between finding something a bit funky in an op-shop and making it work and spending half an hour flipping through over-priced cardigans at American Apparel until you find one that makes you look 'indie' but still shows off a bit of boob.

I get way too annoyed by douchebags at gigs. To the point where it's a problem. I have punched jerky guys at both Splendour in the Grass and St Jerome's Laneway Festival, simply because they were clearly ruining the experience for everyone within a five metre radius of them by being drunk during the opening act, climbing on each other's shoulders, pushing people over who were significantly smaller than them and yelling over the music. At a punk gig that would be fine, but when it's the xx or something it really doesn't fly with me. And while I never want to hurt people, if you're as poor as I am and have spent the last fifty dollars in your bank account to see a band you've loved for years and some total fuckknuckle goes out of the way to make the experience unpleasant, it gets a bit frustrating. I now have to actively remove myself from these situations, just because I don't want to get a reputation for being the 5'1" girl who goes around indie gigs punching douchebags. Except for the small part of me that totally wants that reputation. I could call myself 'Buffy the Hipster Slayer'. But I won't, no more punching. No more.

ANYWAY.

Vegatrain and I missed the bus and we were running late to see the Mountain Goats. I had just written that thing about being doomed to be an indie wanker for all time. We called a cab and jumped in the back. The driver was listening to a local commercial station but because I haven't listened to the radio in such a long time, I sort of forgot how commercial radio announcers operate. The guy was doing his back announcement/promo spot, talking over the intro to some awful dance song. But the thing is, because I listen to a lot of ridiculous music on the internet, I automatically assumed that this was a remix that someone had made of a local DJ making announcements. What's worse is that I wasn't even surprised.

And it gets better. We got out of the cab and were hurrying to the show. As I've mentioned, we were running late and really didn't want to miss any of it. I ran up to the gate, but there was a car driving up onto the path that stopped in front of me. I turned around, slightly annoyed that I was clearly going to have to wait for this car to be let through and thus be even later to the gig. But then, I looked into the window and it's John Darnielle at the wheel with the rest of the band in the passenger's seats. And they were all laughing at me because I really obviously recognised them straight away and was literally caught in the headlights for a moment. Vegatrain and I moved to the side, pretending that we didn't want to go inside yet anyway and just started giggling hysterically like teenage girls at a Miley Cyrus concert.

And sure, they were driving quite slowly and didn't even come close to hitting me but there's a very small part of me that wished they had. As you know, I've suffered more than my share of ridiculous injuries and am still recovering from the latest one. I suffer from a brutal combination of being both a total klutz and a massive hypochondriac, meaning that I actually considered making a list of all the things I wanted checked out before my last doctor's appointment, just so I didn't forget anything. But if the Mountain Goats hit me with their car, that would just be my favourite injury for the rest of my life. You can't top that.

-Smackie Onassis

*Seriously, don't ever mention Mumford and Sons to me if you have anywhere to be in the next half hour. In brief, I think they are a mediocre band who have taken all the groundwork done by significantly more talented and original bands, released a commercial tune that they've labelled as 'indie folk' and convinced every douchebag in the world that they are the pinnacle of folk music. If they weren't so successful it wouldn't bother me, but for the fact that there are so many other folk bands out there who are so much more original and talented who get none of the acclaim and attention and financial rewards that Blandford & Sons get. And I go on like this for about thirty minutes. But the best comeback I've heard to that was from a guy who I went to high school with who responded by saying:

"Sure Sarah, but unlike most modern folk bands, they're successful."

Shot through the heart, and I have only myself to blame.

On Being An Indie Wanker

I'm going to put it out there: I talk about music a lot. I can't help it, it's a subject that really interests me. I also know a preposterous amount about it, which helps. Unfortunately for everyone I talk to, I don't own a radio or generally pay attention to the outside world (much) so the only music I listen to is stuff I've found on the internet. And that's okay, the internet is an acceptable tool to use for that nowadays, there's a lot of great music out there that most people otherwise wouldn't be hearing. And hey, they play some of it on the radio too. But I'm a bit adventurous and experimental in everything I do and, ok, admittedly, sometimes I look up bands because I like their names (I still maintain - Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin are actually a good band). As a result, I've become so obscure that people now haven't even heard of the genres of the bands I listen to. On a personal level, I'm okay with that. I really enjoy the music I listen to. But sadly, if you start talking about a new Swedish folktronica band (seriously though), people will almost definitely think you are a wanker.

To be fair, I'm not denying that I'm an indie music wanker. But I have a little story that I think you should know before you judge me too harshly.

When I was a kid, my parents won a lot of raffles. They were just those awful, lucky people who win everything they enter on a whim. I can remember them winning a 'Mystery Flight' which turned out to be to Perth (gee whiz guys, why'd you make that one a mystery?), and a chocolate bunny one easter that was as tall as I was. There was also a movie/soundtrack pack that they'd won at the local Video Ezy - Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. My parents sort of put it aside and forgot about it. Then one day, maybe a year or so later, I was looking through their cd collection and picked up that soundtrack. I started listening to it and well, I really liked it. It got put on my regular rotation. But then our house got broken into and they stole a bunch of cds, including that one. Or so they thought. The cd was still in the player because I listened to it a lot, they'd just taken the case. Take that, crime!

I kept listening to that compilation, liking it more and more. I was just a kid and the only other music I knew was whatever was being played on the radio. Nothing else I'd heard was really like it. But because I didn't have the case and google wasn't really a thing yet, I grew up not knowing who performed some of my favourite songs.

I looked up that track-listing today. Of the songs that I can remember being my favourites, there was a Swedish alt-rock act who list the Pixies and the Go-Betweens as influences, an experimental dream-pop singer who was also Swedish and, of course, Radiohead. And not even Creep or Karma Police, it was an obscure b-side. Smackie Onassis, age 10, indie wanker.

I'm not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, this confirms that I always have been and always will be a total indie music nerd. On the other hand, this also confirms that it's not because of society, I am actually just like this. And there's probably nothing any of us can do about it.

Look forward to many more years of obscure mix tapes, my friends.

-Smackie Onassis

Adventures Update: Melbourne Comedy Festival

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

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

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

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

-Smackie Onassis

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

More About School

I have mentioned a bit about my time at school. I was always kind of a geek but had the good fortune of being considered funny so most people put up with me. I was happy with this arrangement because it was so easy to be funny at my school. There was just so much comedy gold everywhere to be seen.

Probably the best source for cheap entertainment in the entire school was the librarian we had for the first few years of my time there. His name was Mr Cox, which led to a lot of very obvious jokes from the student population. But in my humble opinion, his name was the least funny thing about him.

We referred to him as the Book Nazi. His demeanor was very similar to the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld except instead of soup, it was books. There had to be total silence in his library at all times. God help you if you were chewing gum. I remember a friend of mine once accidentally dropped a book from the library's upper level and I will never forget how terrified I was for her safety.

But it gets better. Cox the Book Nazi was, in his spare time, a reasonably successful square dance caller. Seriously. A few friends of mine looked him up on the internet and found that he released his own recordings of him calling square dances, giving it a bit of the old 'Dosey Doe and around you go!'. And people actually bought them. When we discovered this, it was an incredible revelation. Word spread around the schoolyard pretty quickly.

At some stage the school found out about this hidden hobby and dealt with it the way that high schools are legally required to deal with this things. That is, the way they are required to deal with these things if you live in a Saved By The Bell-esque sitcom. They put him in charge of our PE class for a week. I don't know if you've ever been given square dance lessons by a psychotic librarian with anger management issues, but it's a strange experience. He would be up on stage in a cowboy hat, dropping phrases like 'square your sets!' and throwing in a few rhymes while intermittently screaming at any student who dared displease him. There were a lot of detentions given that week.

Another of my favourite staff members was a history teacher whose name I won't mention, because it was a bit less common. Like many of the teachers at my school she was widely regarded as being totally and completely insane. Personally, I quite liked her. I remember our first history class in year 7, she asked everyone in the room to tell the class two things about themselves. A simple 'getting to know you' exercise. The girl sitting next to me (the same girl who had the misfortune of dropping that book, now that I think about it) mentioned that her favourite food was tiny teddies. We moved on. But our teacher, not so much. The next class she came in with a huge box of tiny teddies and gave them out to everyone in the class. Except for the girl sitting next to me. I should point out that there was literally no reason for doing this that isn't simply messing with a new generation of awkward teenagers.

She also sent me on the single greatest errand I ever carried out when I was at school. I loved running errands for teachers and it wasn't a brown-nosing thing - it was more to do with the fact that it got me a free ticket out of class for as long as I could stretch the errand out.

"Sarah, can you take this note to the front office?" she asked me in class one day, "Tell them it's from me, they should give you something to bring back."

I nodded and wandered out into the corridor. Obviously, I read the note. I was a bit confused when it only had three words on it: 'Bag Of Money'. I wasn't sure what this meant. Had my history teacher finally snapped and was sending the school office a poorly worded ransom note, using me as a messenger? Or did she just fancy her chances of them assuming someone else had ok-ed giving her a free bag of money?

Either way, I handed the note in to the front desk, telling them who it was from. To my surprise the office woman simply nodded and handed me an actual bag full of cash. I considered trying this for myself many times, just going up to the office with a note that said 'Every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD' or 'Free Maxibons for life' and seeing whether they reached into that cupboard and pulled out what I wanted. I was never game.

I got along well with that teacher, probably because history was one of my favourite subjects. I was always extremely interested in the way that ancient people lived. As I have mentioned, my aunt in England dabbled in archaeology (or, as I like to describe it 'Jetting around Europe digging up ancient remains with Baldrick from Blackadder'. In other words, my dream life) so I had a bit of an inside scoop on this whole ancient history business. It seems impressive in Australia to find something that's more than 50 years old, but over in Europe they're falling over historical artifacts. They can't build a carpark without having to do a full excavation. I remember hearing the story from my mother about how one of my aunt's neighbours had been digging up his backyard and had discovered a human skeleton. It was quickly cleared as not murder due to it being thousands of years old, probably Roman. It was a small country town and the neighbour wasn't quite sure what to do with the discovery, but knew that my aunt was involved in archaeology. He just gave the skeleton to her to deal with. My aunt, being a very busy person, put the ancient human remains in a box under her bed until she could find a spare moment to deal with them. She was that chill, she didn't mind sleeping with literal skeletons in her closet. Although it was even worse because they weren't in the closet, they were under the friggin bed.

Because she lived on the other side of the world, I didn't get to see her that often but I did speak to her on the phone sometimes. I recall a few months later remembering the skeleton incident and asking her how she had ever resolved it. I will never forget her reaction.

"Oh yeah," she muttered, "I should probably get around to doing something about that."

Best relative ever, seriously. Hopefully she did end up remembering to deal with it, because I never did hear what happened with that.

But back to school. As I say, I was very interested in history, but was also a slightly sarcastic teen who didn't quite understand the best applications for her sarcasm. I was in class one day, passing some judgement on an ancient civilisation. My teacher decided to stop me to teach me a lesson, as they tend to do.

"You know, we live in a very different society today. You can't judge those people by today's standards," she mused.

It was a very good point, but I would put what I said next as the single greatest academic comeback I have ever used.

"Yeah? Well, watch me because I think I just did!"


At least that girl who sat next to me got a laugh out of it.

-Smackie Onassis

Facebook's predecessor was called Facemash and I totally would have preferred that

I have mixed feelings about Facebook and its social networking companions. On the one hand, it's free entertainment. I get to be an idiot with my friends even when they are not at my house. On the other hand, I have ended up totally losing respect for people I once liked because of their online behaviour. There was one girl in particular who had been a good friend of mine for years in the past. When I moved to the other side of the country, I tried to contact her in at least five different ways. I tried calling her, emailing her, writing her a real physical letter, texting her and sending her messages on Facebook, all of this spread over a period of about 12 months. She didn't actually take the time to reply to any of them. She did, however, take the time to spam my Facebook feed with endless photos she'd taken of herself in the mirror and constant reminders to see some local amateur play she was in. Now, I don't mind people using Facebook for promoting things they are doing. It's the perfect medium for that. But if you are writing multiple updates a day telling people to come see your show for several weeks before and during the production, I think you should probably seek help. It can't be healthy to need that much constant validation.

When 2009 rolled over into 2010, I culled my friends list to delete all the people who hadn't made any effort to contact me in the last year. As a result, I got 99 friends but a bitch ain't one.

To be fair, that wasn't the only reason I deleted more than two thirds of my friends list in one hit. See, when people talk to me in person regularly they can kind of understand where I'm coming from. They know that most of what I say is a joke and that I find being inappropriate amusing. The problem is that my sense of humour doesn't always translate that well to brief conversations on the internet.

I have a file on my laptop where I write down things I want to say if they seem a bit suss, then think them over objectively and decide whether I can get away with them. I have mentioned it before. It seems like overkill, but it has saved my arse a few times now. My favourite example was when a girl I hadn't seen in awhile asked her friends list about skiing in Japan. Without thinking, I typed out the phrase 'I hear they've got some wicked slopes in Japan!' before realising what I'd said and hurriedly deleting it.

A second incident occurred when Buglustre's brother was being pressured into watching a movie or some such. I hadn't heard of whatever it was they wanted him to watch but I was kinda tempted to add to the conversation, for no reason other than to be creepy in the name of personal amusement. I wanted to chime in out of the blue with: "Yeah, do it or we will all gang rape you". In a lot of situations, I would have been fine with saying such a thing. But considering that I was on a mission to be the first friend of his sister's that this guy was not afraid of, I eventually decided against it.*

I have a few theories about Facebook. Not the people who use it, but Facebook itself. I have a sneaking suspicion that there's more to this beast than meets the eye. I have thought for awhile that Facebook has become a sentient being but I wasn't sure what it was that made me suspect such a thing. Not only am I now quite sure that Facebook has its own personality but, you guys, it's kind of a jerk.

My first clue came when they added those little word things that you have to retype to prove your humanity. There are a heap of websites dedicated to people who have read those two 'random' words and gone 'HEY! Hey, that's mean!'. There are the apparent insults, things like 'Smells Bad' and 'Fart Brains', or the strange and disturbing instructions such as 'Beat Wife' or 'Kill Everyone'. Admittedly I made all of those up, but I've seen the type of phrases that have appeared and none of these would surprise me in the slightest.

Another piece of evidence for my 'Facebook is a Jerk' file came when they introduced Friend Suggestions. It seemed like a good idea, finding people you might be interested in knowing based on your mutual friends. I have since suggested that the slogan for this feature should be 'Friend Suggestions: Reminding You Of Every Awful Thing You've Ever Done'. Facebook keeps suggesting that I contact old flames who I hurt kinda badly, family members I really should have contacted sooner, friends I lost because of some stupid reason and so on. Friend Suggestions is that guy at a party who brings everyone down by reminding them of all the things they'd rather forget about, then proceeds to get mind-bendingly drunk and mistake your TV for a urinal. Nobody wants to talk to that guy, but there is apparently no way to get rid of him.

But the real evidence that Facebook is alive and jerking comes when it glitches. Things get a bit mixed up in unpredictable ways. The biggest example of this that I can think of came when I was discussing something on someone else's photo. I was informed by the person I was talking to that they couldn't read my comments and all they could see was that Facebook was saying I'd posted them on January 1st, 1970. I thought this was a bit strange and inconvenient but didn't think any more of it. Until I had a quick look around me. I saw the lava lamp in the bathroom, the big reflective sunglasses on my desk, the flat shoes I was wearing that say 'Love' on one toe and 'Hate' on the other and heard the sounds of Hall & Oates drifting out of my headphones. I remembered that I write under the name Smackie Onassis, for crying out loud.

"Fuck me," I thought, "Facebook's having a go!"


I'm sure there are a thousand more examples out there of Facebook being a prick but if I had any doubt, that alone would be enough to convince me.



-Smackie Onassis





*I have now been informed that I have succeeded in my mission and it is mostly because of this blog. WHAT IS UP "MARY-ANNE"? :D