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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 149: Fine-tuning my handshake

27 Jan


THE handshake’s not up to scratch; it’s a damp squib. Too apathetic to be insincere, it’s laughably underqualified. It’s like sending Jessica Mauboy to mete out destruction instead of General McChrystal.

I’ve been having a read on the various meanings of the handshake across different cultures – the custom stems from demonstrating you are not holding a weapon – but to my mind there are five to avoid.

1.The Two-Hander: Rife in church groups and AA meetings.
2. The Alpha Grip: Commonly found at school reunions and sales conferences, usually accompanied by a clap on the shoulder. Screams “overcompensating”.
3. The Sly Palm Tickle That No One Else Can See: Beloved of child molesters and senile grandfathers.
4. The Sharp Shake: This dismissive gesture mimics that observed at a urinal.
5. The Arthritic Claw: The domain of sociophobes who won’t commit to the full palm for fear of having their foul secrets leeched out of their fingers.

To this end, I’ve come up with some alternatives. I offer journo Mikey a selection to see which he prefers. He’s pawed everyone from Pnau to the Malaysian prime minister, so he should know which I can get away with.

1. The Don Draper: After the grip there’s one urgent jolt down the forearm, to make them meet your eyes in alarm.
2. The Slapper. By delivering a loud slap, I ensure I’m the centre of attention and instil a hint of don’t-push-me insanity.
3. The Last-Minute Cheeky Squeeze: A normal, firm handshake with a last-minute cheeky squeeze to convey warmth. Hey – fake it till you make it, right?

“The Cheeky Squeeze sends morse code down to my balls,” Mikey gasps, although I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. He confirms that my usual grip is shithouse. “It’s insipid,” he says, banging his own hand repeatedly against the wall in protest. “It smacks of middle management.” Of all my new moves, he picks the Don Draper, which is probably quite revealing.

Keeper? Yes. Coming soon: I iron the creases out of my gobbies.

DAY 141: Baring my soul on a dunny wall

19 Jan

Oh, you can't quite make it out? Shame.

I HAVE scrawled stuff on a toilet wall before, naturally, but it was always limited to the words ‘Gaye Bykers on Acid’ – a band so universally hated (“they’re that shit it’s carved on the side of a mountain somewhere” some wag once declared to stoke my ire) that I felt it my duty as a fan to redress the balance.

Opening my heart and letting the blood flow freely through permanent marker? No, haven’t done that.

“Write the MOST romantic thing you can on a toilet wall” is the suggestion of Matt, whose less workable ideas (from a list of about 100) include: “Get your chainsaw licence (can arrange)”, “Spend a day with the Mafia (been a long time, but might still be able to arrange)”, “Spend a night in the lockup” and “Join the Young Liberals”.

I conscientiously decide to choose a joint where the walls are already defiled. I’m thwarted at first ― believe it or not, the walls of the Exford are unblemished ― but a quick phone call to a seasoned barfly tips me off to another joint in the city.

When I get there, though, I discover their loo walls are black, so I’m forced to take a pen to the bathroom mirror. I feel terrible about this prospect – and even more terrible that I go ahead and do it anyway. The owners were smiley, they went and made me one of the nicest drinks I’ve ever had, and then I go and scrawl my trite observation all over their décor. Despite the sentiment being enough to move the most hard-hearted bastard to tears, this defeats the point of my mission – of doing something I’ve never done before, but with good intent.* I might as well have joined the Young Liberals.

* I do have an Evil Intent list, but that’s just for my amusement.

 Keeper? No. Anyone know how to get marker off mirrors?

DAY 140: Fearing heights really bad

18 Jan

LOOK, there are some absolute corkers of adventures coming up, just not today. Today I am curing my acrophobia.

‘Acrophobic’. What a fitting term for someone who sways like a seven-day pisspot around acrobatic equipment – and only finds this out after they have booked in for a 12-week course. (See also: ‘Fuckstick’.)

Week one’s trial trapeze lesson was just pretty bad, which made me cocky enough to hand over my credit card details. Week two is really, really bad.

It starts halfway up the ladder and ends when I leap off the platform, at which point I’m kind of busy with other stuff. For the 10-minute bit in between I’m shaky, sick and smelling a bit ripe. Internal dialogue goes along the lines of: “You’re going to fall. You’re going to faint and fall. Or you might just fall. You could just get down. But on the way, you’ll fall. Why am I here? This is your fault.”

I try a bit of positive reinforcement: “Look how strongly you are climbing this incredibly unsafe, only-room-for-one-foot-at-a-time ladder, despite the fact that your grip is slick with sweat.”

“That’s it – now you are at the top you can simply hook one leg casually around the pole like you’re a chick in an Elvis Presley movie, and observe with interest how the other girls are doing. So long as they’re not anywhere below eye level.”

While the physical effects are real, I suspect I’m hamming it up Gary Oldman-style by clinging to the pole with such a dramatic expression. In some respect, phobia is a safety net – if you make it clear you have a problem, it’s okay to back out should you need to. To get around this I’ll use an ACT technique, whereby you give an unwanted train of thought a name, and then whenever it comes up, acknowledge: “Aha. This is the ‘Can’t Do It Because I’m a Special Case Story’.” Then you should give a bit of a wry chuckle.

I reckon the best bet is desensitisation though. For the next week I will stand atop things of increasing height, like this table.

Keeper? If these don’t work it’s exposure therapy: having a good plummet.

DAY 114: Becoming more observant

23 Dec

I’VE often thought that death will be swift and rude, like a 110km/h roo bar of retribution. This is on account of me not being observant.

Ma used to say I live in a dream world (NB if actual Dreamworld would like me to live in it for a day, I’m game), and not much has changed. Occasionally, when meandering into the road* I’m jolted by a vision of myself plastered to the front of a bootscooter’s ute as it thunders down the highway. I’ve got an expression of outrage and a slightly askew skirt.

It’s clear that becoming more observant will have to be a matter of training – not only to ensure long life, but to make the most of it. I start things off by totally observing a bunch of things I’ve never observed before on the way to work. Here:

Who knew these things were on the top of engines?

This reminded me of some of the embassies around Park Lane in London.

My boots look good.

This was in the air near Etihad Stadium. Forgot to observe why. However, according to the internet, the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence.

Another reason I love my town.

Have observed this would be a perfect tree to climb when not wearing a tight skirt.

* This is why I should get my licence – walking’s far too dangerous.

Keeper? I did step blindly into the road a few times to take the pics, but this will improve with time.

DAY 113: Updating my vocabulary

22 Dec

How to describe good things.

“AWESOME,” opined my learned friend, as he leant handsomely upon the bar, “would refer to a star going supernova.” He stroked his beard. ” THAT’S awesome.”

To give you some background colour, I had just that minute described his mate’s stand-up routine as “awesome” – which was disproportionately generous, but which seemed polite, considering the comic was standing beside me.

He’s quite right, though. I need to tone down “awesome” by several gigajoules. I ask people on Facebook for their thoughts, and they suggest:

* Grouse (too Victorian)
* Youf (too skater)
* Mintox (only Perthians know of this)
* Killer
* Cosmic
* Power
* Splendid/Marvellous/Brilliant (I use the latter two quite a lot, but I suspect they might be irritating)
* Tops (too twee)
* Fully sick
* Bonza (too ridiculous coming from an English)

And at school we said “skill” and “ace”. I’m partial to “skill”, but when I first started using it my brother told me it means the inside of a sheep’s bum. I’ve been looking for confirmation of this online, but none so far.

I think I will go bonza. Ridicule is nothing to be scared of.

Expressing mild approval.

When responding to reasonable suggestions or signing off a blah conversation, I am likely to respond with “cool”, like a baby boomer trying to be HIP. I used a thesaurus for this one and found: okay.

Expressing disapproval.

My “bollocks”, I notice, have turned to “bullshit” after spending some years in Australia. Yet another example of Americanism blighting this big brown land. I’m going to go true blue with pig’s arse.

Expressing surprise.

I’ve had “stripe me pink” and “stone the crows” suggested – and my grandmother used to exclaim “Gordon Bennett” – but I see nothing wrong with my default fuck me dead.

Saying hello and goodbye.

When bidding people farewell, I invariably say, “seeya” – or “seeya later” if I have no intention of ever seeing them again. However, I notice that seeya’s natural counterpart, “wotcha”, seems to have been lost along the wayside. Let’s bring back wotcha and retain seeya. The universe is aligned once more.

Keeper? Yes. But will update again in six months.

DAY 58: Learning The Secret

28 Oct

“Everything happens for a reason.” OOF.

“It is what it is.” OOH-YAY.

I’m as vague as the next old dear, but even I need a bit more direction than “throw it out to the universe” as a roadmap to run my life.

Still, according to the Oprah-endorsed The Secret by Australian Rhonda Byrne, everyone from Plato to Shakespeare to Beethoven to your next-door celebrity Scientologist is in on a magical formula to get everything you want, so I’d better jump onboard quick-smart.

The Secret is essentially the law of attraction: visualise brilliant things happening to you and those brilliant things will be helpless to resist speeding towards you, like “iron filings to a magnet”.

A quick email around the office instantly conjures up three copies of The Secret, although everyone groaningly insists their copy was pressed upon them by some chump. Sure. I take one down to the beach for a peruse – not for an extra spiritual experience, but so nobody catches me reading it.

Opening the book at random, P59 explains how to visualise yourself thin. Even though you may have stuffed yourself stupid on a Greek fatfest the night before (see Day 57), “food cannot cause you to put on weight, unless you THINK it can.”

You can also think yourself well and think yourself a million bucks. Don’t be anti-something, be pro- its positive opposite. And don’t resist! I’m confused, though… how does ‘visualising’ what you want differ from ‘fantasising’, which I’m already doing every waking minute? All that’s brought me is a tendency to not hear a word you’re saying.

Look, maybe there’s something in this. A ‘positivity can’t hurt, and people around you seem to prefer it’ sort of something. When I was a child, home life was a cacophony of tuts: Dad’d get started and Mum would fall in, and now we’re all at it. On trips away, tension would do a Mexican wave around the car at the bloody unfairness of it all, whatever that was.

“Are you sure?” Mum had a tendency to ask doubtfully of any great idea, before forecasting impending doom. Hence my current constitution: C’mon life, you bastard, give it to me with both barrels – you know you want to.

So anyway, let’s see what we have here.

Funny – I’ve always been told I’m NOT the centre of the universe, yet here on p46, within a jolly metaphor about Aladdin’s lamp, it clearly says: “You are the Master of the Universe, and the Genie (that’s the law of attraction, or the Universe) is there to serve you.”

I’m advised to “place an order” to the Universe by writing it out on a piece of paper in the present tense.

Step two is to believe that it’s already mine. I guess I already do this when I go shopping. I look at a dress and imagine myself parading down the street wearing it, looking fine, with my hair bouncing around. Talking of which, this afternoon at the hairdresser I plan to visualise my hair looking glossy and brown, despite having previously bleached the fuck out of it.

Of course, The Secret does have itself a get-out clause. You’re to believe with “complete and utter faith”. So I guess if you don’t get the hair you wanted, your faith was lacking. You infidel.

That’s essentially it, although there are about 200 other pages. It’s pretty repetitive. I’ve written my thingo down, so I’ll let you know how I fare.

Keeper? Can I really expect positive results when my fingers are itching to type out cynicisms for your delight? (“Come on, you fucker,” I snap, when my predictive text turns “fuck” to “duck” while writing this entry on my phone.) I am doubting my commitment, which means I’m doomed to fail. How convenient.

I come from here, Rhonda. Do you really think the universe can be arsed?

DAY 52: Introducing conker fighting to Strayans

22 Oct

THIS is a noble British tradition that has been having children’s eyes out for centuries. I got Mum to send me a few deadly specimens without customs noticing.

Wow!

DAY 51: Starting a rabbit fanciers group

21 Oct

MEMBERS thus far: one. If I don’t stand myself up, our first meeting will include a vote on whether or not to petition The Daily Bunny for ignoring my submissions of Mr Thumpy…

Mr Thumpy.

Mr Thumpy.

Mr Thumpy.

Mr Thumpy.

in favour of the barely legal tail they’re currently toting.

How very predictable.

Keeper? You could start all manner of fool groups on that site!

DAY 46: Analysing my co-worker’s handwriting

16 Oct

WHEN I read Michelle Dresbold’s Sex, Lies and Handwriting, it really got inside my head – to the point that I dreamt that I was staring at the scribble of a guy I’d started seeing and it was fraught with warning signs. Then again, my own script marks me as a sexual deviant with a vicious temper, which is unfair.

Anyway, not many volunteers come forward when I decide to try out Michelle’s theories, but co-worker Ben agrees confidently to submit a sample. I lift a couple of pages from his notepad to see what makes him tick.

Size: Ben’s scrawl is not exactly shy and retiring, even if it does stay within society’s boundaries (that would be the lines on this notepad). “When the middle zone is overly large—” and I’m saying it is “—the writer has a tendency to be childlike and self-centred,” says Michelle. “It is difficult for them to delay gratification. What they see is what they want… right now!”

Angle: Leans forward slightly, meaning Ben leans towards people and his “actions and reactions are based mainly on feelings.” While that can manifest itself in friendliness, he could also be a needy, impulsive chap who has trouble holding back his emotions.

Baseline weightings: Some writers emphasize the upper zone – that is their upper loops and extensions are more prominent than the lower. Upper zone writers tend to be abstract, fantastical, flighty ideas people, while lower zone types have “an oversized need for material, physical or sexual gratification”. Ben’s is dead centre, which means he thinks with his gut, worries about his social and practical needs,and is concerned with day to day matters. Like his hair.

Gaps: Gaps in the upper zone are the terrain of hypochondriacs and neurotics, while broken lower loops suggest sexual trauma or dysfunction. Ben has gaps in his middle zone – check out those ‘e’s – but I have no idea what that means.

Curves or angles: Ben’s curvy writing suggests he is open and nurturing – which makes sense, as he has a photo of a baby stuck to his computer. However, the excessive curving suggests he is a strangler. According to Michelle.

Signature: The ‘x’ in Ben’s signature signifies a need to cross oneself out, a self-destructive urge. Ben, you’re in the company of Nixon, Bonaparte and Hendrix there. And me.

So there you have it: generally speaking, a nice guy, with the odd urge to throttle you and drink himself stupid.

Keeper? Yes, but in secret – like when you try and get a bloke’s starsign out of him without letting on. Feel free to send me your samples for a private consultation.

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