I was
Watching the door
Turning circles
Wearing holes in the floor
Sitting upright
Staring Straight
Waiting
It wasn’t supposed to be like this
I lost the way and
You started writing instructions for me
Whispering hints in my ear
I’LL FIND MY OWN WAY
OR NOT AT ALL
I stood by the window
And saw nothing
I thought of you
And felt nothing
I said the wrong thing
And became nothing
I’ll find you again
Just give me another year.
New boy: Calum. Is very funny. Can be abrasive in an amusing way, and even though it might appear that I take people seriously when they are paying out on me I almost never am. We had a good time today. I wonder how many more times Spike is going to say to me “I thought I told you to stop smoking!” GOSH. Like I’d listen to you anyway, and even if I did, I DON’T SMOKE.
I’m thinking maybe I will have to go back to the hospital. But things always get better, so I don’t want to go because they’ll get better. And there’s nothing they can do about it anyway, so what’s the point of going? they can say “oh well you know we can do this or we can do this, or you can have these and that might reduce the severity of the pain.” But nothing is an actual solution, and it’s not going to change unless medical science discovers a way to knit bones together and re-align vertebrae. ’sif.
I don’t understand why, in the second xmen movie, Mystique’s scar from Wolverine stabbing her in the first movie showed even when she transformed. Like, if she’s a shape-shifter, why would that one part of her not alter? Why? Because it’s scar tissue? That’s lame. It doesn’t make sense.
I irritate myself.
I’m tired. Not really looking forward to work tomorrow. I’m hoping that nothing proverbial hits the fan. Things can look pretty bad in the cold hard light of yesterday, and hindsight is not always 20/20. If I’m not making any sense then I’m not surprised.
I hate disappointing people.
Lauren is watching State of Origin and she sounds like a chicken. Gogogogogogogogo! That might not look like it would sound like a chicken, but it does. I’m never really sure which side to go for in State of Origin, because on the one hand I was born in NSW, but on the other hand my heritage would suggest that I should be cheering for the maroons. So I’m just not going for either of them because I have no interest in it anyway. It is kind of amusing to see how riled up people get about it, and how overboard they go. It’s like there’s a continuous loop of that song “That’s my te-e-eam” from the footy ad playing in their heads.
I’m so tired. This cough that I have makes my back ache and makes me feel exhausted. I had a bad day today because people make things more complicated than they need to be, and sometimes I don’t explain things sufficiently so it must be my fault that everything went wrong. And sometimes I joke but it sounds like I’m serious and it might be in a situation where I could be serious, but I’m not, because i’m joking, but people take me seriously and that causes all kinds of problems. And sometimes I sound sarcastic. Sometimes I should be masking sarcasm, but today, I really didn’t have the energy for it. And today I dont’have the energy for anything.
I know I said that I heart broadband, but right now it’s annoying me because I apparently downloaded too many GB and so now the speed has dropped to 64kb. That’s as bad as dial-up! My messenger keeps signing out automatically because the connection is so bad. It’s almost like having wireless, except that I am paying for a dedicated cable line. ugh. I think I’ll change my plan.
This weekend dad might be coming up. Mum might be going down to NSW. So they might pass each other on the highway. If they did I bet they pretend not to see each other. Or else they’ll stop and say hello and then maybe start arguing. Or else they just do that little driving signal that’s the equivalent of tipping the hat. Mum said that if she is going to NSW I can go with her, because I haven’t been home in ages, but if dad isn’t there there’s not much point because it’s not like there’s any public transport so I have no way of getting around other than walking, and since everything is so spread out there it takes like a half hour just to walk anyplace. Plus, the whole reason that dad is coming up is to do work on Lauren & Nathan’s house, and I said that I would help out whenever I can and there’s no reason I can’t so I probably should. I would really like to see the ocean again though.
Anyway. My brain is telling me it’s bedtime, and I must listen.
GUTE NACHT JOHN-BOY!
Today I went to work. I met up with Noelle after work. She had caught the bus over, and messaged me to say, ‘when I get off the bus, look at the guy behind me and tell me who he looks like!’ So I looked, and he looked kind of like someone from a band. But I’m not sure who. I actually thought he looked like the girl with the black hair from the new freaky friday movie….
But I didn’t say that. I think I said something about some band that I couldn’t remember, and Noelle said, “no, he was totally Johnny Depp!” and then I misunderstood and thought she was talking about the tryhard Johnny Depp person that we saw on our radler/beer-experience attempt in Berlin, but she actually meant Johnny Depp from his role in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory.
But anyway, we went to Govindas for lunch, and felt totally stuffed afterwards, and both ended up admitting that we felt sick. I was hyped to be going there at first, because we were going to go Labour Day holiday, but they closed just as I got off work so we couldn’t. But yeah, the food was great but made me feel ill, and I still feel ill now (though there could be more reasons for that). Afterwards, we walked over to Southbank, bought our movie tickets for Da Vinci Code, and then watched people go in for the preliminary auditions for Australian Idol in the Piazza. We didn’t actually get to see the auditions, but we did some people-watching, and I think I enjoyed that much more than I would have enjoyed the actual auditions. When we went back to the cinema, the line to get into the cinema was so long.
Luckily Rosie showed up just then, and used her powers of pushing-in to get us decent seats in a sold-out session. She is seriously the best pusher-inner that I’ve ever seen. She has no shame. We just stood to the side and watched her work. It was very impressive.
The movie was ok. I fell asleep during it, but I must say that I am very tired. Audrey Tatou is so beautiful, she has the skinniest legs ever. I’m surprised she couldn’t walk on water, since she looks sort of like one of those stick-leg birds that walk on the surface of the water without breaking it. Noelle kept nudging me throughout the movie, because I kept drifting off. I hate being that tired. It’s like I don’t want to be anywhere but asleep, and anything I can do to get to that point is too much effort.
After the movie, we wandered around Southbank for a while and then just went to the restaurant, where we were waited on by a strange boy who always looked as though he were telling you a secret when really he was just saying “the king meal is great for big groups of people. It’s similar to the prince one but the king has more.” But he always looked… like he was going to wink at you, or make that clicking noise with his tongue. Clk clk!
I’m so glad I’m home now. At some point throughout the dinner (it might have been when I was coughing so hard that I couldn’t breathe – I don’t know why, just came on all of a sudden) I just felt like I didn’t want to be anywhere. No matter where I was at that point in time, I would want to be somewhere else. Now it’s not so bad because I am home and I’m going to be in in a minute. But when you’re tired and you’re out, there’s really not alll that much you can do about it. I’m falling asleep right now. I should go to bed.
A couple of links as peace offerings to make up for the fact that I have to leave so early (haha).
http://snapshot.cade.com.au/thumbnails.php?album=6 My nightmare…. In Brisbane no less!
http://accent.gmu.edu/ Speech accent archive. Pretty funny. You should all check out the one for Queensland/NSW… I am in love with Ukrainian accents after watching Everything is Illuminated… *sigh*
Is it really that difficult to structure a sentence? Is syntax the most challenging thing in the world? I think I’m looking at this the wrong way. Does anyone see correct spelling and grammar as important these days or am I a literary pedantic? 
I hate my blankets. They’re like hospital blankets. They remind me of being in hospital. I don’t have a quilt, all I have are two of those hospital blankets, one blue and one brown, and now that it’s getting colder I have to fold them over to stay warm. They’re stupid because they’re not soft, and because they have holes in them. Not holes as in they’re so old they’re falling apart, but holes as in they’re made that way, with a really loose weave. I think they’d be great in summer, with flow-through ventilation built-in. But the point of a blanket is not to keep cool, it’s to keep warm, and as such it is better to trap the heat than to let it escape through stupid holes. I have two other blankets on the bed, they are like baby blankets. They feel like clouds. I like them much better, but they’re really short so they can only be used on top of the dumb blankets. I see them as a weak gesture, a sort of half-hearted conciliatory pat on the back. I mean, I do like my baby cloud blankets, but I would much rather have a quilt so that I could stay warm.
It’s strange how one dog will start barking, and then all the other dogs join in and it’s like they can’t stop. It’s like barking is contagious, like laughter or yawning, and once they’ve joined the fray there’s no going back. They have to bark until it runs it’s course. And it never stops at just one, especially at night time. And there’s always a leader dog, and he will start the others off again.
I’m really tired. All I want to do is just fall asleep. I still need to brush my teeth. And I think I should clean the plates from dinner because I don’t think anyone else will. But I’m just so tired. Maybe
I use up all my energy by having so much caffeine during the day, by putting myself on fast-forward I use up my alertness much faster, then by the end of the day I’m sort of exhausted but hyper in a contradictory kind of way, then when i get home and wind down I just end up wishing I could close my eyes and fall asleep right where I am. Then I stop making sense, like is happening now. Sometimes I feel like falling asleep at work, usually at around 2pm. I just want to find a quiet place and lay down and just sleep for an hour or so. I’d so suit somewhere they have siestas.
Anyway. I’m going to bed. Now that todays mystery has been solved I should be able to sleep soundly. No more nightmares about Rosie tonight, please! I hate waking up crying.
I had an I Heart Huckabees-esque experience a couple of weeks ago. I think it was a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it’s still going. If it happens again, then it’s still going. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
Anyway, what happened was that I was walking home from the bus stop after work one afternoon, and I saw an Uno card lying on the ground next to the path. I picked it up, and it was a red draw-two card that looked as though someone had crumpled it up and laid it flat again, because it had all these crease-marks in it. Fairly inconsequential right? Anyway, it was either the next day or a few days later that I found another Uno card – this time on my desk or under my desk at work (I’ve got a really bad memory). This Uno card was again crumpled-looking, but it was a green ‘8′ card. What does this mean? I’m probably searching for a meaning where there is none, but you know, it is pretty strange. Could it be that someone who works with me and takes he same route home as me is crumpling up and dropping Uno cards at random, and I just happened to find two of them? It could be like a couple of years ago when I used to stick green toy soldiers onto things while I was out and about, like onto bus stop benches and walkways and shelves in the supermarket, and then one day I went to the cinema and they had found one when they’d cleaned out a movie theatre and stuck it onto the computer at the register, and I was so excited! It was like in that Mandy Moore movie “Chasing Liberty” (which was a cheaper but far superior version of the Katie Holmes one…ugh) where that crazy english dude gives mandy moore and the secret service guy stickers of the Six Million Dollar Man, to stick wherever they wanted, and one day they’d see one of those stickers and just know that they weren’t alone in the world, that everyone is connected somehow…
I’m bored and broke and I won’t have any more money until next week. I’ll have quite a bit of money next week, but that doesn’t help me now. I want to get a loan to consolidate my debts. So I think I might try that. If I can’t get individual approval I might see if mum will go guarantor for me. But I don’t think that there will be a problem. I want to be in a good financial position when I go to China. I’d like to keep working where I am because it’s a stable job and those are pretty scarce these days. It may be boring but there’s room to move and I really like the team I’m in at the moment, and our boss… everything is good.
I’ve got a cold so I’m feeling slightly down. Only because of that though, everything else is good. I’m not used to being sick. I was talking about it with Laura and Noelle and I think Abbey was there too, and Laura was saying that I seem to have been sick for every family gathering, and Noelle said that maybe it’s something psychological, like stress-induced illness, and I said that I didn’t feel stressed and
I was having fun. But I was thinking back over the years and I have been sick for every family gathering… every recent one anyway… it started when we went to Leeton a few years back, and I got so sick on the way that I couldn’t stand up or even move, and I was curled into a little ball in the back seat of the car, and mum had to take me to hospital in some strange town and I didn’t know where we were and I just lay on the floor of the emergency room in the foetal position, and I never actually got to see a doctor but we couldn’t stay there any longer. So Uncle Trevor gave me some of his painkillers (I can’t remember what they were… something strong) and we kept driving. When we got to Leeton I immediately felt better. I never did find out what was wrong with me. I thought it could have been appendicitis, and that I was feeling better because my appendix had burst or something and I was terrified that I was going to die. But I didn’t. Obviously. And it never happened again.
The next time was when we went to Sydney for Uncle Vic’s 50th birthday, but I don’t think that was psychological because I do have a broken back and that was the problem – I had a really sore back most of the time. So then the most recent one was this weekend, when I was sick with a fever and a cough and exhaustion and aching joints. I don’t know what it was, but I feel better now and all I have is a blocked nose. Which should go away soon. And it’s not like I’m all that worried about it.
So… I don’t know. Noelle said so far it’s been a trifecta, and we’ll have to see what happens at the next one to know for sure whether or not it’s psychosomatic. I hope not. That would be stupid.
Some things that I am fascinated by and can’t remember how I came across them :
Memes still confuse me… But I think I have the basic concept. And I find it really interesting, and:
Snowclones because I love neologies. And this one is cool, and I like having a word for it.
It’s a strange phenomenon, this notion parents have that they always know what’s best for their children, in every aspect of their lives and at any given stage. The belief, this knowledge they hold, seems to be a given. It just… is. But no one is infallible. Surely at some point perhaps a parent’s ideals may not be in the best interests of the child… surely at some point the child has to break away and make their own choices independent of what the parent thinks is the best step… What a parent may see as a golden opportunity, something to grab onto with both hands while thanking God for the once-in-a-lifetime chance, the child may see as something too difficult, too onerous, and could even come to view it as a punishment for past bad behaviour or something lacking in their personality. The truth is, it may be a great opportunity. But whether or not this great opportunity is worth the heartache, anxiety, feelings of not measuring up… that’s another thing altogether. I don’t think that parents should be so quick to judge their children as lazy or taking the easy way out… It could more be a case of damage control, self-preservation, or not wanting to set themselves up for a fall.
Anyway… I hope Rosie knows that I like the person she is. I hope mum learns to show her a little more respect and treat her a little more like a 17 year old capable of making her own decisions and accepting the consequences, than a belligerent and apathetic 12 year old who doesn’t know what she wants. I hate it when parents say that. “You’re only (insert age here), you don’t know what you want.” Let me tell you what I want! I’m so glad I’m past that age. But I wish that I had fought with the knowledge I have now of life outside parental control and dependence.
So I just got home from Townsville today. Feeling better and worse at the same time. My eyes are irritated now, and my sinuses are blocked up, but I don’t feel so nauseous and if I have a temperature i don’t know about it because it’s so nice and cool here. Also my throat is better, my knees don’t hurt so much, and I my cough has eased off a bit. I think I’m allergic to North Queensland. Pointless piece of information for the day: today was my first solo flight. I’ve never flown by myself before. I felt overwhelmed by the things I had to find out because before, I’d always just followed whoever else was there and assumed they knew what they were doing. Anyway, it’s not a big deal or anything. I realised that I hadn’t relied THAT much on other people I’d flown with, because I had figured things out for myself before. Big deal right? yeah, i’m an idiot.
Yesterday mum drove up Castle Hill in Helen’s Forrester, and halfway up got so scared that she slowed to like 5km/hr. We came to the first car park and she had to stop and get out, because she said she didn’t mind walking but she couldn’t drive anymore, it was too scary. I was stunned. I used to be the one afraid of heights, but I think I got over it because I wasn’t scared at all. Mum was terrified! She said “I won’t be able to go back down again. We’ll have to get someone to come and drive us back.” We got out and started walking up to the next level of carparks, and mum started crying and called Helen. We got there, I climbed further up to the top of the Hill while mum and Yvonne waited in the carpark. Helen and Cherie came to pick us up a little bit later. I was laughing the entire time, but I felt kind of bad about it. Standing on the top of the rock was beautiful. The view was amazing, the air was so clear and finally cool. There was a strong breeze blowing and everything was fresh. Also, you could see the rain and stormclouds moving across the city from up there.
At the party that night, everyone was given a piece of paper with a name on it and also the name of the partner they had to find. My name was Susan Sarandon, and my Partner was Tim Robbins. I talked to quite a few people and ended up asking an elderly man with a white moustache.
Me:”Are you Tim Robbins?”
Him: No.
Me: “Who are you?”
Him: I’m Tony McDermott
Me: “Oh… have you been given a name yet?”
Him: “No…”
Me: “Well, Noelle is giving them out. Go get a name, and you’ll have to find your partner.”
In a strange twist, about 20 minutes later the same guy came up to me and said “I’m Tim Robbins”. I thought he was joking at first, and I said “Hahah! yeah right.” and he said “I am!” So he showed me his piece of paper. Then we had to work on the questions. Answering IN CHARACTER: What was your most embarrassing moment as a couple? What do you like best about your partner? If you could change anything about your partner, what would it be? Tony/Tim suggested we get up on stage to tell our answers, as they were taking answers from various couples gathered around the microphone. So we did. Mum was apparently really surprised, and the next morning said to me, “You were a little social butterfly! You were talking to everyone! I didn’t even talk to as many people as you did!” To be honest, I don’t remember all the people I talked to. Whenever I have alcohol, I get this anarchistic urge to make incendiary remarks or challenging comments to people I don’t even know very well. I think it’s funny. I want to play pranks on everyone… I don’t think I did, and I dont’think I have that great an imagination when I’m drunk anyway. I was very drunk last night, in front of almost the entire family. I think everyone expected me to be sick today, especially Laura, because they all seemed surprised that I was up before anyone else, showered, dressed and packed and ready for my flight. Right now I am tired as tired can be. I need to get some sleep.
View from the top of Castle Hill. I kept calling it Castle Rock. Really it is just a great big chunk of orange rock dumped right in the middle of an otherwise ridiculously flat area. There are NO hills in Townsville. Castle Hill has a white figure painted on the front of it, that you can see from a long way off. We saw it from the plane coming in. The story goes that one night some people got very drunk and lowered themselves down the cliff-face on ropes, and painted an angel/s onto the rock. I don’t know what happened to the people. I guess they were ok.
The view from the window of the plane flying into Townsville. This was Rosie’s first plane trip ever, and she was fairly anxious when we took off. By the time we landed however, she was nonplussed.
Me with blue hair before getting it cut (only the highlights are blue/green).
The Matriarch & Patriarch of the family: Yvonne & Norm. Norm told stories like Grandpa Simpson – that is, he’d often start them halfway through, they usually had no point, and they usually had no discernable end either. Often he would just trail off, or you’d wait for a lull in conversation and look for an exit. I adore them both. I have no grandparents alive so they fill the role temporarily as surrogate grandmother/grandfatherly type figures.
Tell them you’re scared
You want it to be like
When you were younger
You played spotlight
And hid amongst the trees
They’ll tell you that it’s all in your head
And fear is just a compromise
But you’re still afraid
Of your own shadow
And the darkness it suggests
They’ll tell you it’s common
And now you hold hope in the palm of your hand -
It’s small and white
But if life is not worth the effort now,
How does this change a thing?
They’ll tell you it’s all about perception
While I am strung out and medicated
I’ll perceive the passing of days
And my own relief I don’t have to be a part of that
Anymore
Rosie and I went to see Final Destination 3 today. It was funny, by about halfway through we were laughing when the people got killed. We laughed when the football guy’s head exploded when it was smashed by two blocks on a weights machine. The whole premise of the movie is pretty ludicrous, and the fact that it’s done as a hollywood teen thriller just seals the deal on two hours of colourful mediocrity. They did come up with some interesting ways of killing people off, and very *now* as well… They had the image-obsessed girls in the tanning salon accident (but everyone nowadays realises that tanning salons are no safer than actually sitting out in the sun, right? I mean, it’s still exposure to concentrated UV rays. People are idiots to believe that just because it’s artificial it’s not dangerous) and the emo kid McKinley (if you could even call him an emo… I think it was a half-hearted attempt to capitalise on something that’s had a surge in popularity lately… but the studios just don’t get it… I don’t think anyone gets it who isn’t in “it”). But anyway, a movie was a nice distraction on an otherwise boring Sunday. The boringness of today was amplified by the fact that this has been an otherwise very busy weekend. Friday night shopping for about three hours, and then I ended up being too exhausted to go out (we were meant to go to the valley). Then Saturday night was the party, which was a lot of fun except for the music, which sucked worse than anything I’ve ever experienced before. It was made worse by the fact that I had to listen to it over an extended period of time, while trying to have a conversation with someone. Today my voice was hoarse as anything from all the shouting. We stayed at the club until they kicked us out at closing time, and then we stood in the taxi line for about half an hour and froze.
I didn’t have a jacket with me, because the afternoon and evening had been warm, and I didn’t expect the sudden cold change that came through while we were inside the club. So when we got outside, the cold air came as a shock that crept up on us as our sobriety did.
There were a couple of funny guys standing next to us in the line for cabs, one was complaining about how he wasn’t let into the Exchange because he wasn’t wearing white shoes, because he had let his friend borrow his white shoes for the night. And we had been refused entry to the Exchange earlier on because we were in costume. So I said “they can hardly be picky when they got closed down for having a mouse-eating competition”. And they didn’t know about it! Then there was a mock-fight, or rather just a poor attempt at a fight between a girl who looked like she had grey hair and looked like she could have either been 22 or 72, and some tall gangly guy.
So all in all it was a pretty good night. I had an interesting conversation with a guy called Peter who came dressed as Darth Maul but was disappointingly not an actual nerd as he borrowed the entire outfit (save for the face-paint), and then another interesting conversation with Jeff/Geoff who was dressed as god-knows-what in PVC pants with a whip and red devil horns. He gave me his devil horns to wear when we left, then waited in line and caught a cab home with me & Noelle. When we were standing in the cab line he said “so what was the theme?” and I said “cosmetic…. I can’t believe you didn’t know! how did you know what to come dressed as?” and he said ‘I just threw something together” or something along those lines haha.
Work tomorrow. I think I should go to bed at a reasonable hour, like I keep suggesting everyone else do, because I never do it myself. I only have three days of work this week, then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday off, and go back to work next Wednesday. Woot! I’m so looking forward to it. Not just to the time off (though that is awesome) but also to the party where we get to see everyone. Noelle and I saw Mark in the city yesterday and he said he’s not coming to the party because he has a corporate football game on the Sunday. Slack as. Lauren is being slack as too. Everyone has such crappy excuses, they could at least make an effort to think of a decent reason for being such lamos.
Anyway, I’m probably going to go to bed, and mourn my lack of a functioning PS2.
Funny: http://www.wemadeoutinatreeandthisoldguysatandwatchedus.com/
Work today was funny as… very entertaining. I got quite a bit done, and this week is our last week of overtime for now. Kirra and I were talking about this tonight, and I agree with her that they seem to be very reactive with the implementation of overtime, whereas they need to be more proactive so that it doesn’t get to the point where we’re at a four-day turnaround.
Anyway. I don’t feel like writing.