Observations and conclusions

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  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.

Fame and Fortune

Standing There Productions had a big weekend this weekend. Rita came down from Sydney and we saw The Hayloft Project's fringe show, Yuri Wells. It were lovely. One man show. North Melbourne Town Hall. This week only.

 

We also saw our very own Paris Hilton, Miriam Glaser, in A Black Joy - another fringe festival show although one I should have seen earlier, given it has now finished and me telling you to go and see it would be somewhat pointless/cruel/unfair.

 

Anyway. One of the more important developments Standing There Productions made this week was the establishment of a new tradition: Fortune Cookie Monday.

 

The results of the inaugural Fortune Cookie Monday were as follows:

 

Rits fortune

 

 

Lozz fortune

 

Stew fortune

 

Bodes well. Don't you think?

Horses (hilarity pertaining to)

Look, I know this has nothing to do with anything but sometimes the comedy just writes itself.

 

Check this out.

 

My favourite bit is the last line: "It remains unclear why Gracie put her head in the gap".

 

Poor Gracie.

The Vicissitudes of Life

If Life were a database, you would currently find me under "Vicissitudes of life, activities pertaining to".

 

In law, which I studied in order to understand the ways in which the world doesn't quite work no matter how hard people try, the word "vicissitudes" is used to describe the unquantifiable, unpredictable events that occur in life by chance. In a budget, they'd be called contingencies. It's a way of trying to quantify the unquantifiable. Like, how much should we compensate this woman for her injury? Well, how much does she earn? Wow, that's quite a lot. So she's a highly-paid business executive then, is she? Good for her. Now, she's still young enough to have a child, so let's factor in five years of her not earning any money whatsoever. There you go lady, have a nice life!

 

There are many presumptions made, as you can imagine, about how your life is likely to pan out. I often wondered what a court of law would decide the vicissiitudes of my life would be. Personally, I find them quite hard to predict.

 

The other day, for instance, I was in a parked car, waiting for someone. It's interesting how people don't look into parked cars. They walk past picking their noses or having loud conversations, and nobody looks at the huge chunk of metal with the person sitting inside it. Some of them even slide their fingers along the bonnet.

 

One guy, in Adidas tracksuit pants and a long-sleeved top, walked briskly past my car towards the rubbish bin I had parked in front of. I waited to see what he was putting in the bin. He was carrying a plastic bag full of shopping. He put it on the ground. He took out a litre of no frills long-life skim milk. He opened it. He put the tab from under the lid in the rubbish bin. He reached back into the bag and produced a white bread sandwich wrapped in gladwrap. Had he bought it? Had he prepared it earlier? Had someone else prepared it for him?

 

He put the sandwich on the plastic, on the rubbish bin, next to the milk. He didn't notice me. He noticed other people, peered at them through his thick glasses. Hungry, organised, pedantic, he alternated the drink and the sandwich, the drink, the sandwich, all the time watching the people crossing the street, walking past the bin, chatting in the shopfront. Having a private moment, lunch on the rubbish bin, right in the middle of a thoroughfare. He touched his glasses at odd intervals, a gesture I associated with a professor, a smart kid, somebody Trying His Best.

 

When he finished, he folded the gladwrap and posted it into the bin. He finished the litre of skim milk and posted that too. He cleared his throat, touched his glasses in the direction of a man walking a rather large dog, and walked in the opposite direction.

 

If the court ever needed to, I daresay it would be fair enough of them to factor in great chunks of time during which I would be well expected to sit around in parked cars watching people watching other people, thus detracting from my life's value.

 

Interesting set of priorities we live to, isn't it.

 

Grandma

My grandma is in hospital today. News today that grandparents are important in a person's development. Well, as my grandmother used to discourage me from saying, er der.

 

Here are some things I learned my from my grandma:

 

1. How to write an essay (she wrote it down on a piece of A4 paper. It's never lost a customer).

 

2. How to hang washing on the line.

 

3. Banana on toast is nice with cinnamon.

 

4. Teachers are people too (and sometimes grandmas).

 

5. Nullus bastardo carborundum allegedly means don't let the bastards get you down. Whether true or not I think it's an excellent thing to learn from a grandparent.

 

6. How to take up the hem of one's pants (sadly, a lesson I have subsequently forgotten).

 

7. Being an octogenerian vegetarian is way cool.

 

8. Quiet people are quite often noticing things. Lots of things. A lot.

 

9. How to work hard and enjoy, thoroughly, cups of tea as a just reward.

 

10. How to make somebody feel better by giving them a nickname and make someone from Telstra who should have been here nine hours ago feel terrible simply by mentioning your disappointment and offering them a cup of tea.

 

 

I'd say those lessons are fairly important lessons. Bring on the grandparents and get well soon Jean.

 

Why?

Why, when you're about to take time off work for three and half weeks to write and think and plan and produce...

 

Why, when you're about to take four days to drive up to Nowra from Melbourne...

 

Why, when the film festival is in its final week and you've just spent seventy extra bucks on tickets...

 

Why, four days before your birthday...

 

Why, when you've been working full time and you could have been sick AT ANY POINT DURING THAT TIME...

 

Does your head decide to infest itself with throaty, snotty I-need-to-lie-down-and-be-useless-now style illness?

 

Why?

 

PS Yes I am aware there are wars and famines and that I have a cold and a job and a writers residency and that I should pipe down and stop being such a drama queen but shoosh please. This is clearly some kind of law of nature and it is my job as a writer to report it. 

 

PPS. I saw a really good film last night at MIFF. Boy A. Apart from a few mental Japanese films (huzzah!) it's been mostly doccos that have piqued my interest, but I can't get Boy A out of my head. Look out for a release.

Context is everything

Place someone in front of a coffee machine and give them an amusing or inexplicable T shirt and they instantly become cool and borderline attractive.

 

True or false?

 

Am currently taking a survey.

2:1 in the office this afternoon in favour of cute and cool. Someone from our coffee place was seen out of context and appeared, devastatingly, to be normal, borderline unattractive.

 

Am thinking of other contexts in which this is the case. Certain bars? Bookshops? Some may say behind microphones and under lights but I have significant experience to indicate this is a delusion and should be ignored with every fibre in one's body. Maybe that's the case with bars too. And cafes. Or just maybe... it's the case with cool.

 

Profound. I just had a coffee.

Platypus

On the side of my bottle of carbonated water, a description of the springs from which the water is sourced:

 

"Often under snow in winter, the area is surrounded by huge granite boulders unique in the Australian bush. It is a haven for wildlife including the native platypus."

 

A platypus, this is what they are telling me, weed in my drink.