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DAY 222: Flagellating myself

10 Apr

DOING this blog, I’ve all but lost the gentle art of self-flagellation. Once upon a time I’d muse lengthily on the bleak implications of my existence, but these days I’m too busy.

I’m in a terrible mood today, though, and I reckon I’ve karmically passed on that feeling of being shat on from a great height; although to my credit I haven’t actually shat on anyone’s desk from a great height in return.

Apart from general fumings, I’m deeply facially unpleasant to the man next to me on the train home, who merely wants to get up three minutes earlier than necessary so that he can stand in a queue for the door. There’s no cause to slam down Dave Graney’s autobiography and cross my arms, infusing the poor chap with black molecules of bad juju as he wends his way, inch by inch, down the crazy carpet.

So to avoid getting karma back again twice as hard, I’m going to flagellate myself with a bunch of sticks and mortify the deeds of my flesh. Pip karma at the post, as it were.

I’m not Catholic, so I only feel bog standard guilt, but still it seems fitting to follow the path of rogue Catholics who enjoyed a good flogging. I don’t want leaves all over my house, so I’ve fashioned a handbag-sized ‘birch’ rod I can take out with me tomorrow. Now I can give myself a smart thrash on the wrist whenever I come over all self-righteous.

You put something down for a second 'round here.

 

Keeper? Am available for flagellatings.

DAY 204: How to talk to boys

23 Mar

WHEN Dianne Todaro’s How to Talk to Boys landed on my desk, I immediately had a good fossick for some tips. Seeing as they’re all written in text-speak, I contacted Dianne directly to help me out with my own situations in grown-up sentences.

Sitch 1. Too many balls on the dance floor

When I’m attracted to a fella, I tend to ignore him in an angry fashion. This hasn’t progressed much since primary school, when I’d lob tennis balls at the heads of boys I liked. Since the relaxed, friendly approach doesn’t come naturally, what’s a more subtle option?

Dianne: You could always smile as you are lining up the balls. Being the ice queen will actually say more about you than it does about him. Knocking fellas over may work for a while, but you may get fed up with this approach, even bored.

Have you considered it may be time to let him throw the ball to you and take you off guard? Do you really have faith that your man will come and knock you out? If you don’t, let me believe it for you. And start looking in that mirror and telling yourself “I am enough”. Start simply by enjoying playing your own game and doing your own ‘thang’. Its just too hard doing back-flips to try and make ‘him’ appear in your life.

My thoughts: Di’s right, I do knock fellas over with my stupendous back-flips. I’m doing my thang pretty hard already, but I’m going to leave the mirror stuff out of it. NB: As positive affirmations go, “I am enough” seems a bit lacklustre. Especially in the age of:

Sitch 2. Keen as mustard

What’s a good way to hint that you’re ‘up for it’ without being too blunt?

Dianne: if you laugh at his jokes, you touch his hand when he offers you a drink, you gently get him to talk about himself and you have decided you have got that ‘zing’ tingling inside, say something like, “I am really enjoying your company. I wish I could stay longer but I really have to go right now.” If he says nothing, keep walking directly past this male species and don’t stop. Do you really want to be with someone that can’t pick up on your sexuality at its best? No. We don’t want that! You can do a whole lot better. The man who is into you will have no trouble at all reading your ‘flirting’ code of attraction. He will be so into you it will be so incredibly obvious. Men can be irresistible when they do the hunting. If you haven’t experienced this yet, be warned!

My thoughts: It’s suddenly got a bit hot in here. But about that “I really have to go right now”… presumably you waggle your eyebrows and tongue your cheek when you say that? Otherwise a bit subtle, no?

Sitch 3. Bring on the nubiles

When I was younger, I thought men preferred women to be lisping, knock-kneed and pliable. I can’t pull that off any more… but is it even true?

Dianne: No, that’s not true for all our men, but be aware, girls – a big percentage do love boobies. And if a girl is young and naïve, men can have more of what they’re naturally drawn towards.

Talking to boys will come naturally when you understand that you are totally the woman you want to be when you look at yourself in the mirror. Love is not a concept. It is actually a real thing. And each of us deserve to be loved and be able to love. That’s deep, but at the end of the day snuggling deep into his strong caressing arms wrapped around your hips feels a whole lot better than just dreaming about it. Leave the brains trust on hold till Monday when you get back to work, relax and enjoy being the girl.

My thoughts: …

Keeper? I think I need to get outside again. Chop down some trees.

DAY 191: Learning poetry for those after dinner gatherings

10 Mar

The fact that Philip Larkin looks like Eric Morecambe is a bonus in my book.

BACK in the olden days, everyone could recite poetry after the dessert course, but now it’s a lost art.

A quick poll of Facebook associates reveals one person can recite Wilf Owen’s ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ while the rest are caught embarrassingly short at soirees that call for poetic expression.

Personally, I know half a ‘Jabberwocky’ and that’s about it.

I like poems written in layman’s language with a grudging sentimental humour, like those of Philip Larkin and self-proclaimed hack John Betjeman; no metaphysical meanderings or frothy layers of meaning here.

I won’t lie, though – I’ve only heard of Betjeman because he wrote a slightly self-righteous ode to my hometown, which is the one I’m going to memorise, while Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’ (“They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to but they do…”) people don’t so much recite as hold up as evidence.

Doesn’t matter. It’s made me go out and read more by them.

Oh no. Pixie Geldof has a Larkin tattoo.

Betjeman’s ‘Slough’ (pronounced “ow!”) was written back in 1937, when I would have thought the town was comparatively lovely. Having said I like layman’s language, I’m particularly fond of the Biblical-style line “Swarm over, Death!”. NB: Funnily enough, bombs did fall on Slough a couple of years later, during World War II. Not enough, though.

Slough

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.

It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Keeper? You know it now, but you can still test me – I did learn it.

DAY 183: Telling a good yarn

2 Mar

NO offence, right, but I’m more charged in my own company. When I’m around people I feel like my brain is idling in neutral and I can’t get it to engage. People drain my battery. They may not mean to, but they do.

In my teens I’d experiment with how long I could go without talking, and now I keep things ‘economical’. Needless to say, then, I’m rubbish at telling yarns. My mind goes a-meandering, distracted by my ever-present desire to physically wander off. An anecdote is likely to peter out at first corner like a faulty motor, belching smoke and a final “um”. Oh to be effortlessly erudite and witty like Lucille Ball, or Ronnie Corbett, or Kochie… or anyone, really.

While some people are born raconteurs, others – I’m sure – work at it. Like a muscle, verbosity needs to be developed or you’ll get anecdotal sand kicked in your face.

With this in mind, I hit up notorious stand-up comedian, media rabble-rouser and enfant terrible Catherine Deveny for her tips on how to deliver.

Catherine says:

1. Give someone one word to remind you of your point before you start.

2. The more you lose confidence, the louder your voice should get and the larger your hand gestures should get.

3. When in doubt apply the words ‘moving forward’ liberally.

4. Type the story out and listen to it on a speech-to-text device. You can buy one on iPhone called Speak It. Best way to commit to memory is listen or read aloud while moving. Gets into your muscle memory.

5. If you break your yarn down to five bits you can attach those bits to your fingers. Write the word, then just the first letter on your finger and eventually you will just remember: Goldilocks, bears’ house, porridge, chair, bed.

Dammit, I should have asked Catherine to help me with my expansive hand gestures while I was at it.

Thanks, Dev. I’m going to try all the above when it comes to remembering classic anecdotes that ought to make me sound legendarily but currently make me sound really vague. For more everyday, unexpected stuff, like being asked a joke or what bands I’m currently digging (what? Beyond 1996?) I will learn the answers by heart, or at the very least stick them in my iPhone Notes application.

Keeper: Ask to hear my one about the old lady at the ATM.

PS – Catherine’s one-woman show, ‘God Is Bullshit’, is back for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Go along and shake her hand – you might rub the cues off her fingers.

DAY 167: Talkin’ bout you and me and the Games People Play

14 Feb


FIRST published in 1964, Games People Play is one of the lasting texts on the ways in which we manipulate one other. My folks even used to have a copy lying around the house… which I shan’t pass comment on.*

In any given scenario you might act as child, adult or parent – these are your ego states – and it’s the child and parent personas that can be most misused. While the different interactions Dr Eric Berne identifies might all elicit a sheepish “aw, yeah” response in the reader, his refusal to be personable himself makes this a slightly patronising rumble through his various classifications.

I reckon if I’d gone to see him way back in the day, he’d have sat at his mahogany desk with leather inlay, fiddled with his fountain pen, cleared his throat a lot and looked distantly over my head before prescribing some Valium. His script would be inscrutable and his hands would smell of cigarettes, brandy and cologne, much like my father’s…

But anyway, I digress. I’m going to observe how many Berne-approved games I play in one day.

6.25am, on the train

There are no seats left, so a man and I are forced to lean in the corridor opposite each other. Even though I am concentrating on tapping this sentence into my iphone, I cannot help but notice through years of experience that he is glancing at me. Damn his eyes. I’d like a kraken to swoop down and peck them out of his skull. Without pause, I respond with a sweeping look that also manages to take in his shoes and fly. I think I only need to do that once.

Game: Second Degree Rapo, more colloquially known as Buzz Off, Buster. (I didn’t come up with these names, incidentally.)

Adult rationale: My fellow commuter has nowhere else to look and is probably feeling awkward, having not had the foresight to bring a book or his own form of entertainment. Alternatively, he might be playing a hand of Kick Me. I’ll give him a civil smile… oi, you fucking pervert, what are you looking at? Oh dear.

8.30am, at the coffee stand

It’s not that I’m needy, but I do find it odd that that the French bloke who serves me my coffee every morning not once gives me a flicker of interest or recognition. I mean, it’s not just that he’s French – he seems to actually lack the ordinary human impulses that make us ponder “yes, no, maybe” when interacting with a member of the opposite sex. I’m simply curious as to what personality disorder he might have, which is why I hold his gaze a fraction longer than is necessary.

Game: I’m Only Trying To Help You.

Adult rationale: He’s probably gay.

6.30pm, driving lesson

I’ve had heaps of trouble with instructors. They get a bit… clingy. This one’s not too bad but he always keeps his foot on the brake, so that I mysteriously slow down whenever taking a corner. This attention-seeking tactic provokes an indignant reaction from me, which thus allows him to apologise profusely, thereby making me feel bad, which then allows him to get away with further behaviour, like critiquing my parallel parking. Foul!

Game: Schlemiel.

Adult rationale: As soon as I pass I can go as fast as I like.

Eric went on to write 'Bodice of Love'.

Keeper? In troublesome situations, I intend to keep asking myself: “What would an adult do?” Deal me…

* This was a quick demonstration of Now Look What You Made Me Do.

DAY 165: Healing my embittered soul with song

12 Feb

OVER the years I’ve learned not to trust people who say “close your eyes and open your mouth”, but today at the joyful voice workshop I’m assured I’m in a safe environment.

This one-day course aims to help you heal yourself (your soul, rather than your gout) by the power of your own voice. Sometimes I’ll dream I’m singing, and it’s the most beautiful sound I ever heard. Something pure and unspoilt from years ago… You know… before the music DIED.

Anyway, in waking hours I’m in possession of a plaintive squawk with a blatant disregard for consonants, and my friend Esther is terrified of singing in public despite ordinarily being a gobshite, but with some gentle coaching (“gentle” is the operative word today), healer Chris gets all 15 of us here sounding like human panpipes.

After about an hour of cooing “ooooooooooooh” my head’s vibrating like I’m on a cheap pill, and this pulsing sensation starts travelling down my spine until all my cells expand and I feel like I’m going to fall over.

As soon as we’re all duly hypnotised, Chris whips out a synth and starts playing songs about angels and butterflies in minor keys. Eventually I feel a tear plop out down my cheek. This is supposed to happen.

“Was that just you feeling sorry for yourself, though?” Esther asks during snack break. I knew I shouldn’t have filled her in on the previous few days’ unbloggables. I persist that there’s something undeniably restorative about singing, especially when you’ve a tendency to hammer yourself into the ground. I mean, maybe some regular joyful song about angels’ wings could be the long sought-after antidote to drugs and booze.

“You might want to take up cutting,” Esther says. “Or bulimia.”

After the break we’re told to pair up with a complete stranger, take both their hands, stand about 2mm apart, and drone at each other until we’re both resonating like a bell and pulling off harmonics. This should be hideously excruciating, eyeball to eyeball as we are, but it’s just one of those rare situations where there’s no room for self-consciousness. And hey – everyone’s had the curry dip and poppadoms.

Next step is to become a human theremin, with one person leading – dipping and warbling over octaves and making bizarro shapes with their mouths. The other person, intuitively, is just a split second behind them. Third step, we mirror each other’s freaky arm waves while doing all the above. Fourth step, hugs.

After lunch and a giant coffee, I find my patience is tested. “I bet Chris comments on the coffee,” Esther says as we tromp back in with our haul – and certainly he does. He attests that the power of gentle breathin’ and lovin’ allows people to quit all sorts of substances cold turkey though, so we may as well have this last hurrah.

With another two hours of ultra-vague discussion about good vibes and negative energy, and lots of head-buzzy sing-songs around the synth, I find I’m fighting waves of violence, while Esther later admits she was muttering the serenity prayer to make it through.

“Why is it that people think spirituality always has to involve angels and butterflies?” she tuts as we sprint off to the car afterwards. “What’s wrong with being a human being?”

Keeper? Adapting to such in-your-face intimacy was quite an eye-opener, and I did like the singing as a way of, um – ugh – getting in touch with yourself. I was banned from singing sweet hymns in the car as a child (ask me for my rendition of Give Me Oil In My Lamp), but no one can stop me now.

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 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 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.

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