Observations and conclusions

  • warning: Creating default object from empty value in /home2/standing/public_html/modules/taxonomy/taxonomy.pages.inc on line 33.
  • 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.
  • 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.

people

On the weekend, I was an extra in Robin's film, which was filming at Bar Open in Fitzroy. It was a lovely set, and making stuff is so much fun - all these people doing all these little things which end up making a movie. Pretty cool. On the way there, I was walking down Brunswick Street when I saw someone ahead of me, walking along, bent over a walking frame on wheels.

I thought, wow, he's kind of young to be on a walking frame.

Then I realised he was carrying beers. Down Brunswick Street. Carefully. On a Saturday. Lots of beers.

I told my grandma, who has a fame of her own, and she smiled. "Good on him", she said, "they're very handy, these things".

Now I wonder what my grandma gets up to when I'm not visiting her on the weekends.

In other news, I looked through the photos from the screening the other night, and they certainly are interesting. Lots of empty wine glasses, and a rather interesting shot of me and Rita which, given it happened on tour, shall stay on tour forever more.

They'll be up soon. We're getting there.

Thanks

Dear the tallest guy in the world,

Congratulations on getting into the Guiness Book of World Records and everything. I guess that must be pretty exciting in terms of things to tell people at dinner parties.

Does it necessarily mean, however, that when you go to a Whitlams gig you absolutely have to stand directly in front of me?

When you push past everyone, just as the gig is really warming up, and tread on their feet so you can see Tim Friedman better, must you do it while wearing a hat?

Do you have to jerk your head unpredictably and drink your huge large-man-beer right in front of me, deliberately blocking my way when I try to get past - back to the place I was in before - so that I start to hate everything about you, including the jumper you are wearing, which in happier circumstances I may have found comforting, but which now I am convinced was purchased in a boutique shop down a back lane for more than the cost of the wool, the sheep that made the wool, and the farm that reared the sheep that made the wool?

What I resent the most about you is the back of your head. It betrays your arrogance and your insensitivity: it's not looking - it's not seeing - it's not even listening to the music. It's just holding your head together like a bulldog clip.

The couple next to me suggest that I should take your hat off and hurl it backwards to the bar so you would have to trawl through the crowd (excuse me, excuse me, sorry, excuse me) and fetch it back to cover your pin head. But you're a big bloke and I'm a small woman and you realise that just as much as I do, which is why I drop my chewing gum on your vintage converse shoes and do a little twisty thing with my foot when I pretend to accidentally stumble onto you on my way out.

You'll also find that you have a new entry in the Guiness Book of World Records, too. Same category, though. "World's Largest..."

So, congratulations. I guess I'll see you at the next gig I go to. Before then, I'm going to befriend your colleague, the World's Strongest Man, who (I predict) will not enjoy prats in expensive jumpers and will take whatever action he deems fit in the circumstances to remove the back of your head to some other place, where I am not.

(And yes, everyone, I am getting older. And yes I did notice that The Corner won't allow smoking in the venue anymore. I obviously whole-heartedly approve of that decision, and did briefly consider writing a letter to add to what I hoped was a groundswell of public support. I also wondered why they don't serve cups of tea at the venue, whether they were mandated under health and safety regulations to sell earplugs, and why on earth they have to start gigs so late when clearly we all need to be in bed soon because the morning is the best part of the day).

Small section of someone else's life

So today I was getting things ready for the cast and crew screening we're having on Thursday night, for our film, I Could Be Anybody. I'm halfway through my list of things that need to be done by then, so the glass is half empty, or full, or something.

Anyway, I decided that I needed to go to gym, even just for half an hour, even just because if I don't it will become a metaphor for life merging into work. So I did. And there were these two teenage girls doing weights together. One of them said to the other, "Did you see that guy upstairs in the cardio room?"

The other one said, "No. Why? Was he cute?"

"Yes"

"Would I think he was cute?"

"No"

"Nya. Then who cares?"

That reminded me of these drama games we used to play. You had to establish your status somehow. One day we worked out that in Australia, laid-back can be the most powerful position you can take.

Just prior to that, I'd been parking my car in Collingwood (dropping something off at the awesome DVD place, Eskimo Productions) and there was this guy taking the front off his terrace house. He was sweating and covered in plaster and paint. He heard me pulling into the car park out the front of his place and he turned around. His T-shirt said, "information is power". The car in his driveway was an old green ford with a bumper sticker on it that said, "my other car is the met".

For those of you not living in Melbourne, that means "my other car is the state-owned public transport system before it was privitised".

So anyway I got out of the car and there was a cat hanging around the back wheel. I said hello to the cat who then did what all cats like to do when you say hello to them, which is get under your feet.

"Come on Nietzsche", said the information is power guy, "leave people alone".

... sometimes it just writes itself doesn't it?

Stupid

There are some Ani Difranco lyrics that go like this:

They say goldfish
Have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle
Is a surprise every time

... which is not necessarily a song about how bad my memory is, but it is yet to be conclusively determined that it isn't a song about how bad my memory is.

Why do I forget things? Why have I carried a letter, hand-written, addressed and with a stamp on the envelope, everywhere I've been since February? Why haven't I posted it? It's a nice letter, it talks about my plans for the year, about the weather being too hot and about the Christmas dinner starting to wear off.

Why did I carefully fill out the Women's Health Survey I get sent every couple of years, and then leave it on my desk for four months? Why go to the trouble of filling in all the little boxes (DEFINITELY, LESS DEFINITE, NOT SURE, PROBABLY NOT, NEVER) and then leave those medically significant answers lying face down against an old program for the Astor Theatre and a postcard from someone in Noosa?

I don't know why I do these things. Sometimes I think I should do yoga and sudokus and cryptic crosswords and low impact weight training so my mind becomes a steel trap for facts and bits of information like where I'm actually going and what I'm doing on the 96 tram when in fact the plan was for me to get on the 86 tram and pick up my car and drive it home.

Which is of course why I find myself asking all these questions. I find it deeply depressing that I can't even remember the correct procedure for getting myself home of an evening. Tonight, I was supposed to go to the car. I forgot about the car and went home. The reason for this? Well, because I was distracted, of course. Why? Because I was doing a sudoku so my mind would be sharper and I wouldn't forget things.

Don't you think that's cruel?

The Chocolate Wars

There is some contention as to quite how this happened, but it appears that at some point during the early hours of this morning, after arriving home from the comedy festival, a chocolate egg appeared in my bed.

Whether this was intended as a delightful surprise or as some sort of prank, or whether it was accidental, has not yet been conclusively determined. Several people are assisting police with their enquiries.

I was awoken this morning by the doorbell ringing and the subsequent silence of no one being home to answer it. I arose with enormous dignity, hair akimbo, and staggered to the door in my pyjamas. My sister, with whom I live, was apparently expecting a visit from her boyfriend and his dad, who live on a farm and had been up since just before I went to bed. With a kind, gentle and caring air about them, as if looking after someone ill, they came in and made me a cup of tea.

As I slowly woke up, I grew more chatty and by the time my sister arrived home I was positively performative.

My sister took one look at me and said, "Why do you have chocolate all down the side of your face?" at which point her boyfriend's dad suddenly expressed his relief, admitting, "I thought it was a birthmark".'

The moral of this story is, if someone says you have chocolate on your face because you have apparently slept in an easter egg, don't protest that it isn't chocolate, because the alternatives would require signicantly more explaining. Also, when you subsequently find yourself being asked why you have a hickie on your neck, and whether you have a weirdly shaped mole half way up your arm, it's probably best to have a shower, do the washing, and ban chocolate from your house altogether.

Reasons to go outside

Cool thing to watch, when coming to a stop at the lights today: person walking, slowly, wonkily, across pedestrian crossing with private but palpable expression of mirth on face, looking greedily through freshly printed photographs.

When driving past a bus stop, notice that an advertisement for soap is written in confusing font, such that it appears to be advertising "poo" rather than "pure" skin. Notice this only because two teenagers in school uniform, one girl and one boy, are holding each other in helpless laughter in middle of footpath.

Go to bread shop and deliberate for so long about what to get that bread selling woman feels she is complicit in your choice and throws in the other loaf of bread for free on account of not wanting to be held responsible in the event of disappointment.

Also, isn't autumn nice?

Living the dream

Last night I had a dream that I sent a text message to a friend of mine telling him how great he was. I remember thinking, "Oh! I must tell him" and then scrolling through the phone to find his number.

These sorts of things have been happening in my subconscious more and more lately. When my grandma moved house, she told me her new phone number and I absent-mindedly wrote it down on a piece of paper. That night, in my dream, I was inundated with questions about grandma's phone number, so I recited it several times and I've never forgotten it since.

This is very pleasing to me, because I can't remember anything, least of all numbers. However, from the reliable assortment of "dream dictionaries" online, I'm told that to dream about having telephonic contact with someone you know signifies "an issue that you need to
confront with that person". More alarming, "this issue may have to do with letting go some part of yourself". I wonder which part. Sounds expensive.

Anyway, the whole reason I raise this (a dangerous move given that the two most boring conversational topics in the world are other people's pets and other people's dreams) is that I would like to remember something useful in a dream, that I can't forget later. Not that
Grandma's phone number and the fact that Simon is a great guy aren't useful facts, but frankly I could have either remembered them or looked them up without the help of my subconscious.

So, if I could please dream each of my pin numbers, in relation to what it is they allow me to access, and also what I need to get from the supermarket the day before I go so that when I get home I don't suddenly remember that I actually went out to get toilet paper and came back with
some onions, twenty dollars worth of antipasto and a bath towel.

Ok. Enough about dreams. Have I told you about my dog?