Tramsformation

I don’t do well on public transport. I do especially badly on the single tram that Adelaide possesses. I’m not sure if it is thecombination of a severe lack of control of anything ever coupled with extreme close proximity with many people, but even just thinking about setting foot on that demon caterpillar of terribly planned awfulness fills me with foreboding.

It hasn’t always been this way. About ten years ago the tram was maroon, squishy and arrived when it said it would. The seats weren’t arranged by a deranged person deprived of Lego as a child, instead they were most likely imagined by someone with some semblance of skill and imagination,as when the tram changed direction at the end of a trip, the conductor would merely walk down the aisle flipping the backs to the other side, and voila! All seats were now facing the other way.

The track was also shorter, ending before the city, thus avoiding the mass influx of people who were too lazy to walk the 800 metres from Chinatown intothe main CBD (sometimes this was me, but back in the day there was a bus for that).

Now, track length, passenger number and inefficiency has increased resulting in a useless, expensive piece of WHY?! which has not only messed with traffic in the city, but breaks down more regularly than me watching ‘Titanic’, and even factoring in two trams as a buffer, still involves an individual embarking on a game of punctuality Russian roulette.

The seating also encourages strange social interaction. At the very front and back of the tram are the most highly prized seats. Tucked against a wall, you can hide yourself in a corner and hold the handy yellow bar which seems toserve no particular purpose other than to steady yourself in a vain attempt to avoid violently smacking your head against the front of the tram when the driver inevitably makes sudden stops to avoid hitting death-wish holding pedestrians. Behind this are the “blocks of four” which usually result ineither four strangers awkwardly playing footsies, or two people trying valiantly to not stare at the overly affectionate couple sitting opposite.Sometimes the result is small-talk, or, as I once witnessed, deals to exchange cigarettes for shower time. Behind this are the guilt seats. Here you can lookback at all the people standing, and enter into the unanswerable struggle ofwhether or not you should give up your spot. That woman isn’t pregnant, and sheisn’t decisively elderly. However she’s on the threshold, so you stand to offeryour seat. She gets offended, declines, and whilst you are still standing, asurly teenager plops into your place. Winning times.

Individual awesome experiences I’ve had include a woman sitting next to me filing her nails directly onto my bag, and being cornered by a woman I became eventually convinced was planning to kill and eat me. Possibly not in that order.She didn’t.I just don’t understand how something that is trapped on a single line, withits very own traffic lights and boom gates is capable of being so consistently infuriating, or how the injection of money and time has resulted in the deterioration of a service. Adelaide Metro: I mind this gap.

This is why I don’t write poetry any more.

Wikipedia defines love as “an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment.” I recently re-discovered my 1999 diary and apparently this is what 9 year old me felt for ‘Dawson’s Creek’. In amongst the vaguely threatening privacy message at the beginning, a self-made address book which only goes up to ‘T’, specific information about what I did on “13 Janurary 1999” (9:30 wake up, 6:50 P.M. See Babe Pig in the city.) and strict homework/tv watching timetable, opposite a page of “Self Trivia” I found this:

Reading that made me feel a bit like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLgI-qbrWVo

Norman will never abate

In year 10 I decided to study drama. The scenario in my mind involved being given opportunities to write, direct and potentially demonstrate my one redeeming acting talent of doing a mean bloodcurdling scream. Instead, reality had me watching Hitchcock movies, making posters about the Stanislavsky method of acting, and playing a fairy called “Tizz” in the worst play ever to be inflicted upon supportive parents.

From this experience I gained self awareness (about being extraordinarily shit at making posters), widened literary exposure (having for some reason the ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ speech from Macbeth being part of my lines in the fairy play), interpersonal insight (about what a loon Hitchcock was*) and, most significantly, an apparently lifelong paranoia about showers (thank you ‘Psycho’).

I have mentioned this fear on more than one occasion. Looking back at the film itself, I don’t really understand where the horror comes from. It’s all a bit lame, the blood looks too thick, and all you actually see is a knife stabbing at an improbable speed and angle whilst a woman screams and is touched inappropriately by shower curtains. I also vaguely remember close ups of the killer’s crazed, wide eyes, but I’m not sure if this is just something my imagination has added over the years, and I’m not going to check. Whilst accuracy is ace, despite my rambling rationalisations, I cannot bring myself to look it up and re-watch on YouTube.

My germaphobia induced suspicion of both shower curtains and shared bathroom floors is not sufficient to explain my undiminished psychological response to this film. I guess something could be said about the almost unique vulnerability we have in the shower. If you couple being clothes-less and phone-less with years of Marple-induced conditioning that everyone everywhere is waiting to murder you all the time, you end up with one eye constantly on the door, and palpitations for the twenty seconds that all you can see is your hair as you hurriedly rinse conditioner.

This vague fear does not show any signs of abating at any time soon. I can’t remember the last time I showered without at least fleetingly thinking of ‘Psycho’. I just don’t understand; why is this film so special? I can (sometimes) look in a mirror without imagining Bloody Mary emerging from it, I don’t (always) check my back seat for murderers, I can (usually) tell people that I’m phoning home without putting on my ET voice, and I can shout “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” even at times that I’m not fighting a Balrog.

Oh well. There are worse things than regularly thinking about homebody taxidermist murderers.

*exhibit A: deliberately trapping your daughter on a ferris wheel on set and then packing up the crew and leaving.

Methods to cope with an anxious wait

It would seem that a not indecent percentage of my year level is currently camped out on Facebook whilst simultaneously refreshing their emails with an increasing level of urgency. The annual hive-mentality-of-fear-of-being-the-lowest common-denominator is a time of year I dread. Somewhat contrary to what I’m currently doing, I am generally loathe to admit that I’m very very afraid of what results might be. Of course I joke that I have spent all day keeping one eye on my 214 unread emails, terrified that it will hit 215, and dying, every so slightly on the inside when I get an email from Amazon telling me that the time is ripe to buy the Beiberography ‘just in time for Christmas’, but seriously, every beep of my phone is another ten minutes shaved off the end of my life.

I don’t know if this is just me, but either way, I thought that I would compile a list of ways to cope with an anxious wait of any kind.

1. Take an unnecessary shower. Give yourself elaborate ‘fashionable’ shampoo hairstyles and swear, ever so slightly, when you tenderly shampoo your eye. 
2. Listen to three songs on loop all day. Preferably two manic or energetic, and one slightly more subdued. Turn up extra loud whilst on step 1, despite the fact that through the doors, noise and fear of Norman Bates and Bloody Mary you won’t be able to hear the difference between Gotye and Journey.
3. Exercise. Seriously. When I’m stressed, I can be so distracted by disquieting thoughts that for a few golden moments I will forget that I’m extremely unfit. Until I realise that I’m choking to death on phlegm.
4. Text people in the same situation, trying to maintain a casual balance between expressing fear and trying not to demonstrate the twisted thread of anxious terribleness you have become.
5. Extremely overreact to unrelated things.
6. Adopt irrational compulsive behaviours such as avoiding certain words and not allowing yourself to think of the worst possible outcome.
7. Take a nap. On the floor.
8. Develop polar eating habits. Skip lunch, then power through a packet of ‘Hello Panda’ in the space of three minutes.
9. Watch TV. Today I chose “Upstairs, Downstairs” which contained more period drama than an all girl high school swimming lesson.
10. Switch from the previous three songs to one superangsty song and play it on loop. Example: in the time it has taken me to write this I am currently on my 7^th iteration of “Set Fire to the Rain”.

Anyways, that probably didn’t help. Maybe this will: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBcMKwbMEcQ

Chariots of Dire

“I’m going out for a run. Be back in about three minutes.”

People who know me, know me as a fitness machine. Of course by this I mean, much like a treadmill, I remain in one spot whilst others exercise. And occasionally beep.

This aside however, I have recently (and by recently, I mean sporadically over the last few years) tried to build up some semblance of exercise tolerance, as a) I don’t want to be a dirty filthy hypocrite, and b) I don’t want to drop dead at 30.

There are numerous ways I’ve gone about this. My personal favourite is to declare small bits of extra exertion as “exercise”. Forgot what I stood up and went into another room for? Two points for the extra unnecessary double trip. Friend didn’t hear me call out to them (loudly, across a small but full-ish room)? One exercise point for the mini jog to catch up to them, and nine for the calories burnt off with the embarrassment of witnessed rejection.*

The second approach I’ve taken is a lot less attractive (on multiple levels). It involves actual exercise, and doesn’t happen very often for a multitude of reasons. At the heart of the problem is that I’m really, truly, terribly unfit. However, I have a grain of pride, which means I do not want other people to know this.** This combination of factors has pushed me into a corner where the place I go to run is a small room with one treadmill, one bike, one elliptical and is apparently where all mirrors go to die. There is a mirror in front, behind, and to the side, so that whenever I run, I’m always running in a marathon of n00bs – some of whom are going the wrong way, and all of whom look sheepish.”

This semi 70s porno fishbowl of embarrassment is also located directly adjacent to a pool. This has benefits in that my paranoia gets a workout when I become convinced that the swimmers (usually couples or disquietingly oily-looking men) are watching and judging me, whilst in actual fact they are probably just hoping that I will leave so they can play jenga or roll in butter.

It is hard enough to make myself exercise. For one, I don’t know what to wear. I can’t wear “proper sports clothes” lest people think I’m actually fit, thus potentially giving them a laughter/shock induced aneurysm when they witness my flailing limbs and general suffering. This results in me turning up looking like I’m slightly too late to an 80s aerobics class…for men. There’s also the apparent conflict in technology of the treadmill in the room of awkward. On the one hand, apparently some people are so fit and strong they can’t help but punch through the flimsy button which increases the speed, thus giving all subsequent users a one in three chance of a slight electric shock whenever they dare touch it. Then, there is the unnecessarily rocket-like complexity of the controls. You want to just see how long you’ve been running, and have the option to change the speed? All of a sudden the incline is increasing and the screen screams at you to “touch the pulse bar.”

I will not be touching the pulse bar. Not just because it makes my inner 12 year old want to shout “that’s what she said”, but because (probably the same  fit and strong) someone decided that it would be a good idea to fling their sweat everywhere. Hot.
*:(

**evidenced well by my writing about it on the internet.

My Early Work

Apparently for the most part the official critera for diagnosing mental diseases cannot be used in children, as you would get too many false positives. For this, I am grateful.

As someone who spent an embarrassing percentage of my under 10 years doing well adjusted things such as “making wardrobe forts to read in””, “learning how to catch coins I fling off my elbow”* and “hoarding butter in case of earthquakes”, I can see how this may not have ended well for me.

Apparently I also found it necessary to record most things I was doing or thinking, which is why I have a large stash of notebooks, diaries and miscellaneous other pieces of writing (as well as a disquietingly large number of drawings of ducks and ‘Pressed Scottish Cheese’, whatever that is).

Anyway, one such thing I found was a story I wrote about Sailor Moon.

That seems to be the end. Potential publishers: please form an orderly line.

*Over thirty 20c pieces in one go. Just for the record.

Head Over Heels for Coordination

I have a special circuit in my brain. Initiated by the song “Staying Alive”, I have to immediately quash the urge to strut down the street and violently force myself to stop imagining that I am carrying paint. Or a woman’s man.

This negative feedback loop is important for two reasons.

Firstly, I don’t want to look like a douche. Since my normal walk prompts comments such as “do you go through a lot of shoes?”, adding a strut, swagger, saunter or any other “s” started adjectives would probably not do me any favours.

The second reason, and arguably more important reason is one of personal safety. I have a propensity to fall on, up, into or down things when I’m walking normally. Change anything, be it my shoes, an unfamiliar set of stairs or my general sense of oneness, I fall. Or stumble. Or hit my foot against something, and then embark upon a journey creatively devised pseudo-swearing.

This sounds even more ridiculous when coming from within the suitcase I’ve just fallen into.

NOTE: I just realised my graph is wrong.

Do You Sink it’s a Good Place to Live?

Holiday [hol-ie-dae]: a word with french-latin roots, originally arising from the Saxon “Hollus Dei” festival, centred around a bi-annual celebration of “Hollou” (things which are empty bar space and air) where a selection of 10 villagers of varied ages would repeatedly fill large wooden boxes with pointy green leaves and berries, and then empty them whilst shouting “harlow!” (interestingly, thought to be the original source of our modern common initial greeting of one another).

So what does one do whilst on a break from the regular routine dictated by little coloured boxes? Other than making up highly plausible definitions of course.

Well, if you’re me, you choose a cupboard at random and make exciting clean-up discoveries. Today my cabinet of choice was the bathroom. Usually housing items such as “toothpaste”, “medications” or “hair curlers”, it was only natural for me to discover the following…

Exciting holiday clean-up discovery #1: Bucket of Rocks
Because what is a bathroom without a an assortment of rocks?

Exciting holiday clean-up discovery #2: Five different, variously shaped, containers of talcum powder
Prettttty sure some of these have been around since I was 2.

Exciting holiday clean-up discovery #3: Menagerie of plaster, shell and crocheted animals + Iwannabe Barbie (but in reality I’m a toilet roll holder)
Zoos are not just for family outings. They’re for bath-time too.

Tomorrow? I’m thinking of tackling the fridge.

What’s the strangest place in the world?

The houses are all the same; white brick with blue trimmings. Graffiti covers the walls, despite each property being surrounded by a razor wire fence.There is not a car to be seen, and each home is only big enough for one. Instead of the orderly winding roads of suburbia, a giant circle of houses surrounds the village green. In the centre rises a large stage, and a crowd of vaguely familiar people jostle to get to one of the many microphones positioned around. One girl finds a gap in the throng and pushes herself forward. She clears her throat. Hush rings out, as the town PA system screeches on.

“Anthea Levy – is nver dirnking aginn”.

Welcome to Facebook: where it isn’t stalking – it’s ‘networking’.

The township of Facebook has paradoxical views on security and privacy. The council has decreed that no one may visit unless they own property surrounding the green, and one may not visit others unless they get their Mines of Moria on. However, once one speaks “friend” and enters…

…It’s on like a stereo in a late model Douchemobile.

In the outside world, if you haven’t seen someone in a while, you rejoice. Or call them to catch up. Whatever. Here however, without them being any the wiser, you can stroll through their gate, enter their house, rifle through their photo albums, listen to their answering machine messages, flip through their CD collection, and peruse their address book.

You could even scribble on one of their walls. But you probably won’t.

Fun as this healthy and social activity may be, chilling alone in someone else’s house can get old pretty quickly. Long term residents know that the real action is out on the village green.

Heading outside, you pass the council workers, busy working on the next seemingly-obligatory-yet-redundant major revamp of the town. Small clusters of people eye them suspiciously, whilst talking about “the good old days”. One man declares that it is “inconceivable that the council can so blatantly ignore the public wishes in this way”. There is a hearty orchestra of responses consisting mostly of “hear hear” and “where’s our dislike button?” Towards the back, a young man determinedly tries to convince the crowd that the “the hottest kid in school will fall madly in love with you” if only they will pass on the story of a young girl who was eaten alive by an army of mutant cabbages. Failure to do so will, of course, result in a similar fate.

Needless to say he is surrounded by a gaggle of 15 year old girls, all shouting about leafy vegetables.

Further along, two girls are chatting together about what they did on the weekend. Another girl sidles up to them. They stop. There is silence.

“I LIKE THIS” the third girl blurts out, before running away. She almost knocks over two men as she flees, but they’re too busy laughing about how witty it is that they have declared their marriage to one another over the PA system to all their friends.

See, it’s funny because they’re not really married. Ha.

Off in the distance, a man is being handcuffed and placed into a squad car. Facebook keeps the grammar police busy.

Suddenly, you feel a sharp pain in your side. “Can’t stop to chat”, shouts a sandy haired acquaintance over his shoulder as he runs off towards his house.His door slams, and you are left alone.

You have been poked.

What’s on my mind? Mostly: W.T.F.

No Shia for Sez

Message to all: it is now ok to roll down your sleeves. You will no longer be receiving slightly socially inappropriate requests to have you pulse taken.*

However, with an OSCE practice shaped void now in my life, I found myself filling my day with not as much sleep as previously expected, two visits to David Jones, an unhealthy level of enthusiasm for buying new bus tickets, a killing streak and 50 minutes worth of textbook perusal, leading to a now ridiculously sore left arm.

That, or I’m having an MI as thoughtfully pointed out by my parents.

Anyways, I have not much to say, and even less ability to say it, mostly because my left hand does 50% of the typing. Strangely, it is attached to my left arm which is seemingly on strike. This leaves righty to pick up the slack, and I can’t afford the overtime. Plus he’s getting cranky.

Why my right arm is apparently male now, I have no idea. Maybe today’s lack of sleep is starting to kick in…

…a door.

Edit: I saw Sez today and it/ she was/ is rad.

*for the next six months.