Monday, September 7, 2009

I am a ... what?

I garden most weekends, fall asleep in front of ABC crime drama, know about lawn mowers, own more tracksuit pants than those suitable for the public eye, have a subscription to ABR, listen to 891 Mornings with Matt'n'Dave, complain at the video store, call the place where I rent DVDs "the video store" as though it were some retailer of Betamax tapes from beyond the black stump, own antiques, enjoy shopping for antiques more than clothes, drink lattes, maintain facial hair on purpose rather than a result of laziness and buy and drive Toyotas because my mechanic recommends them.

5 comments:

  1. I never garden, I fall asleep in my bed after watching youtube serials, own many pairs of trackpants (but only one with working elastic), have a membership with electronic frontiers australia, never go to the video store, own no antiques unless you count my clothes which are all from 1990, drink chocolate milk, maintain facial hair because shaving sucks, and I cycle everywhere because I'm a greenie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're a man, in one of his many complex forms. Somehow puzzling, often simple but still vaguely attractive and occasionally needed by us womenfolk.

    I never garden, I struggle to fall asleep in BED let alone in front of a telly show, own many pairs of trackpants that I do wear out of the house because I don't care anymore, have a membership Greenpeace, The Big Issue and - irony of ironies 'InStyle' and Gourmet Traveller, never go to the video store, own no antiques except my grandpa's clock from 1933, drink iced coffee or room temperature water, luckily have no facial hair yet, but am dreading the old-lady-with-chin-hair phase of life, and I walk everywhere because things are so close and I'm not a keen driver and hate getting lost in Melbourne. What does that make me?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shippy - Laugh it up, you dog ownin', mortgage havin' hydrocarbon recoverin' hockey player.

    DK - I would class you as a benevolent greenie who must work harder to save us all from the League of Morons.

    Kath - Conflicted and busy?

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32