Archive | February, 2011

DAY 160: Leaving cryptic messages

7 Feb

One of my lovely missives.

THE English love cryptic messages, from Stonehenge, to Hawkwind, to Lewis Carroll, to backwards exhortings on Judas Priest records.

Yesterday I just kept coming across them, from a nonsensical egg-based riddle on the toilet door at work, to a giant rabbit up a tree in Collingwood (where a few streets away I saw a chap tip out the contents of a wrap onto the pavement and then attempt to snort it up) and a miniature fanzine on the tram.

If I subscribed to “everything happens for a reason”, I’d be buying gift subscriptions for all my friends.

Suitably inspired, today I decide to plaster my own confounding messages around town. At first I wrack my brains to think of some, but then I remember the fortunes from my fortune cookies. Four immediately go up in the toilet stalls at work. I listen intently when someone enters the cubicle next to me, but there comes no delighted “Oh!”

An hour later when I go in to check, all four fortunes have unfortunately been removed – presumably for health and safety reasons.

Keeper? Yes, enjoyed this – but got distracted from making it a more exhaustive mission.

This was stuck to the toilet door yesterday.

This was on the tram!

This was up a tree!!

DAY 159: Dancing go-go

6 Feb

“DANCE as though no one is watching you,” Alfred D’Souza once said. (He also said “life is a journey”, but I’ll let that one go.)

However, tonight there’s a whole saloon bar full of men watching, pressing their filthy noses up against the yellowed glass separating them from Anna’s Go-Go Academy class in the Bendigo Hotel. Still, let them wheeze into their schooners – us gals are having FUN.

These are nothing like my usual dance moves, I must say. We’re following a jerky routine of mashed patatas and James Brown-style gambits: thumbs up, knees out, knees in and bucking like the Duracell Bunny. Mine are a bit more… avant-garde. And injurious to third parties.

I’ve tried regulated dancing before; I’d occasionally swing dance in London pubs with grizzled rockabillies who were too cool to look at you, let alone catch you (wouldn’t want to spill their pints, would they?). Being unwieldly, I had a tendency to go bouncing off the walls when left unchecked, which, like I said, was most of the time.

Go-go’s all about the girls, though, and by the time our hour’s up, I’ve got it pegged. Basically, you have to act like a pony – swishing your ponytail, trotting with your hooves up and gurning for a sugar-lump – so all this horsemanship I’ve been plugging away at is going to pay off. Grouse!

Keeper? Sure. Great excuse to buy some white boots.

Check out retroroxy.wordpress.com for the story behind these way-out pics.

DAY 158: Nailing down my psyche

5 Feb

Do a Google image search for Jung and you get loads of girls in corsets. This is Jung, though.

THERE are all sorts of personality tests designed to pigeonhole you these days, and you’re liable to be pranged by them anywhere from job interviews to dating sites. They’re kind of fun, though, and slightly more technical than horoscopes.

These tests are all about asking you the same questions again and again in different tones of voices, in an attempt to confuse and trick you. They’ll generally take around 20-30 minutes, with hundreds of questions. They’re very blandly worded, but really they amount to things like: “Do you want to scream when someone accidentally brushes their elbow against you?” or “Would you like to crush everyone in your kingdom like little ants?”

I pack some sandwiches and sit down for a few hours of assessment.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Developed by a mother-daughter team in 1962 and based on Jungian theory (love a bit of Jung), this psychometric questionnaire identifies character types based on how people perceive the world and make decisions. I’m an INFP: Flexible (you should see my backbend) and laidback with aggressive outbursts, quick to take criticism (see aggressive outbursts), a talented writer (their words, but I won’t quibble) but an awkward verbalist, rubbish with hard logic, and “might go for long periods without noticing a stain on the carpet”. Spot on!

The Validity Indicator Profile
Designed as a tool to support psychological evaluation, the four response styles are Compliant, Inconsistent, Irrelevant, and Suppressed – which sounds like they’ve got a downer on the interviewee right from the start. This particular online test, however, focuses on your strengths. Mine make me sound suspiciously like a grinning imbecile – curiosity, appreciation of excellence, gratitude and energy – but at least they don’t come right out and say so.

eHarmony Compatability Test
The company behind the dating website has analysed different personality profiles that make up a successful marriage, and has designed questions to weed out those ‘good’ profiles (enter your own derisive descriptions of said profiles here). My psyche must be starting to shatter from psychological profiling fatigue, because over the course of a zillion questions I’m suddenly veering between personas: new and old, good and baaaaaad, what I should be saying and how I feel about myself in my darkest hour. I can’t stay consistent and might be politely profiled as a sociopathic liar. And doesn’t eHarmony know it.

“Unable to match you at this time,” comes the response. “One of the requirements for successful matching is that participants fall within certain defined profiles. Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you.” 

Bap-baaaaaap. Never mind.

Keeper? With the exception of eHarmony’s typology, I find these labels quite comforting – slap em on, I say.

DAY 157: Putting my stamp on everything

4 Feb

IT’S now the year of the rabbit – my year – and while I don’t seem to possess any of the traditional characteristics of this noble beast, I’m still keen to celebrate appropriately.

I go to Chinatown and buy some red packets. If you’re married, you’re supposed to put money in them and give them to children or single people you feel sorry for. There’re no instructions I can find for if you’re technically married but not in any position to be encouraging others, and I’m not made of money, so I buy a packet of fortune cookies to fill the envelopes. That’s nice, isn’t it?

Then I head down to Southbank, where some celebrating is already going down, I pose awkwardly for a set of commemorative Valentish stamps… and end up looking like a jaundiced Sylvia Plath. Not a sign of things to come, one hopes.

Keeper? No, because I will be posting them out to people – and just affixing the stamps to lampposts.

DAY 156: Psychic and parma night

3 Feb

Get ready to rock that bottom.

“SO how long have you known you’re a white witch?” the psychic asks me over her shoulder as we hurry through the pub for my 10-minute sesh in a back room. As opening lines go I reckon it’s up there with “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me”.

One archangel, a medieval past-life and a recommendation that I sit star-shaped in grass later, I’m moving on to the tarot reader. She bears an unnerving resemblance to Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom as she pins me with a stare and says: “You think you’ve reached rock bottom already, but you haven’t.”

Predicting a spell in rehab and a short-lived career selling drugs for bikers, she doesn’t pull her punches. What’s more, she seems to be almost imperceptibly vibrating her head as she cranes closer, giving off a weird strobe effect. Although my friends didn’t report the same.

“You’ve had two abortions … no … miscarriages … no … you can’t have children because of all the drugs …  no … you don’t WANT children!” she finishes triumphantly as I finally give a weary nod.

“You think men are only good for one minute; you tend to flip either way [for the record, I’m quite particular about only flipping one way] and you’re fed up of being told to just get over it.” She fixes me an extra beady one. “I hate the way the English treat their children; you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Jeez, when psychics see your tattoos they usually just deduce you’re “creative”. Someone’s been watching too much Underbelly, I’d wager. ‘Jacki’ did nail my upbringing with further detail, but then, I can immediately sniff out someone with a story like mine, too – you don’t have to be a psychic, or a grifter.

Keeper? I’m kicking myself for not asking the psychics what I picked off the menu. Dinner was nice though, and the combination of the coffee and being told I was soon to gorge myself on hard drugs left me buzzing.

DAY 155: Cracking that whip

2 Feb


WHEN I saw girls stalking around the Deni Ute Muster last year, cracking whips and swigging warm VB, it planted a seed in my bonce that’s pushed through the top soil.

Months later, my own bullwhip has finally arrived from Bert’s Outback Bargain Bin and I’m keen to get, uh, cracking.

As with most things, it’s harder than it looks – you’ve essentially got to break the sound barrier with your forward flick. After 50 attempts in the backyard I’ve produced one sharp thwack that’s the genuine article, and a lot of accidental flogging of my arse and forearms. Supposedly you can take someone’s eye out with one of these things, or break their jaw… I’d like to know how.

This dude makes a sonic boom look easy:

Keeper? For the time being it’s been relegated to the Ab King Pro file in the spare room, where all useful things go to rest.

That wardrobe was already pink when I moved in.

DAY 154: Playing bingo with Andrew WK

1 Feb

SPOOK magazine have put on a bingo lunch hour with Andrew WK in the city, so the workmates and I troop down for a turn. As the numbers are called out, Andrew entertains us with improv numbers on his keyboard, trotting out snippets of baroque, oompah and film tunes with huge aplomb and composing little ditties.

One winner, when offered a choice of T-shirts, instead quaveringly requests a hug.

“You’re very easy to please,” Andrew booms amiably at him. “Almost too easy. You’ve got to want more from life.”

Keeper? I do enjoy a spot of bingo, if anyone wants to start up a regular night?

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