One good reason to take stock

Life round this way has been altogether brambly lately, scattered with patches of fleeting sweetness; rather like the weather. Here’s the weigh-in.

Wave ‘em like you just don’t care:

1.
I was able to make a doctor’s appointment this morning, which makes a welcome relief because a) that never happens, and b) he’s not a terrorist, apparently the hobby of choice for some of his colleagues in the NHS. What happened to a civilised 9 holes?

2.
Tequila shots and dancing.

3.
My sweet soon-to-be-ex-housemate’s packed lunch waiting in the fridge for me yesterday morning.

4.
A surprise afternoon in the pub, two old friends and two new ones, four bottles of wine, and a conversation that spanned marital compatibility, Chlamydia, the taking of lovers, and Argentinian buffalo hunting. Rrrow.

Oh no you di-n’t:

1.
Grown-up decisions that make me feel as though my heart is capsizing.

2.
John Howard’s Draconian new approach to child ‘protection’ in Australia’s Aboriginal communities, as discovered in Germaine Greer’s article in today’s Guardian.

3.
How little I understand about the complexities and history of the first inhabitants of the place I still think of as my country.

4.
A one-day summer. Oh, just fuck off.

One good reason to have a back-up plan

In the space of two weeks, the company I work for announced that it would have to lay off three people, my landlord decided to hike up our rent by 25% (prompting the imminent dissolution of the huge, wonderful commune collective I’ve been allowed to enjoy for 4 years), my nanna’s husband has been admitted to hospital, I was referred to hospital, and a house I was on the verge of buying sold for almost twice its listed price.

I’m not really sure how to take all this. Into each life some rain must fall, etc, but seriously – if anyone has any ideas for sacrifices that would be pleasing to the gods, I’d REALLY like to hear them.

Princess Syndrome

This week we’re working on a site for a children’s charity. We need to draw some novelty shoes to appeal to littl’uns, which has proved surprisingly difficult. Are frogs gender specific? Is it just me, or does that elephant look… lewd? In the course of trying to make sure we had the girly-girls covered, the following conversation took place:

Account manager: So, they’re concerned that there’s nothing for princesses…

Me: See? I told you: we need glitter.

Designer: What’s wrong with this one? It’s a bug. Girls like bugs. Don’t they?

Account manager: No, something pink, sparkly, maybe some stars on it, put a tiara on it…

Designer: How am I supposed to put a tiara on a shoe?

Me: On a hobnail boot, in fact?

Account manager: Let’s make it a PRINCESS BOOT.

Me: …

Account manager: For princesses who KICK ARSE.


We’re doing our bit to advance the fourth wave of feminism over here in advertising.

One good reason we have to die

Because we’re alive. Well, some of us are. Others of us are, as Marvin Breed puts it in Cat’s Cradle, ‘born dead… Sometimes I think that’s the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead.’

Kurt Vonnegut – cantankerous, wise-cracking, chain-smoking livewire that he was – is gone now, and it’s a loss to all of us that he’ll never again take wonky aim at some absurdity in our own crooked natures and, in a shower of shells, find that sweet, dark spot. He was an awful lot of things, but one thing he certainly wasn’t was dead in any aspect.

But like he says in this interview, ‘there are a number of dead people out there… but, fortunately, you don’t have to go to Heaven to talk to some of them. A lot of them have left us amazing things on paper, and so their lives persist here anyway. Wonderful words. Beautiful music. Stunning things that resonate.’

So many other people are paying far more eloquent tributes than this sketchy attempt, but in my own wonky way, I want to say Kurt, thanks for all the wise and lunatic conversations you’ve left behind so that we don’t have to go to Heaven to keep having them with you. Thanks for all the foma.

Things I learned this weekend

Technology is fallible.
So is Michael Eavis, even if he is a very nice gnome man. Luckily we did manage to get tickets to what will probably turn out to be my last Glastonbury for a very long time – but only by cheaty, conniving means.

Karmically, I’m now expecting a deluge of biblical proportions to turn the ground to thigh-deep slop, to fight all weekend long with L, and to miss every band I went to see because of how long it takes to schlep from stage to stage in the aforementioned sucking mud. Still, that’s pretty much a blow-by-blow account of Glastonbury ’05, and I had a blinding time then, too.

Be gentler than you think you need to be.
Because you might think it’s funny to prank your still-tender sister by telling her you gave her number to the foxy waiter. But when you don’t admit the joke she might cry, and then you will feel terrible.

Nice + nice does not necessarily = excellent.
Sunday was bright, sunny, and at a whopping 18°C, almost hot! So lovely outdoors was it that I decided to walk for an hour across the park to my friend’s house instead of getting public transport. Lovely, no?

Also, that morning I’d discovered to my delight, that patisserie-standard strawberry tarts are very easy to make. Hooray!

Walking in the sun + eight custardy strawberry tarts = not very bright. Still, I have kind friends who generously pretended not to notice that the filling had started to sweat some sort of fluid, prompting the strawberries to flee in horror down the sides.

It was a lovely walk, though.

God hates America.
According to the crackpots in this documentary. Hey, God, join the queue!

Just kidding, some of my best friends are American, etc.

The Spartans were… Scottish?
Well, one of them, at least. Others were Australian (and formerly appeared in excellent ‘dramedy’ series Sea Change) and some were American. Plus, the mighty Persian army was led by Ru Paul!

That’s history according to Larry ‘Sin City’ Miller’s 300, anyway, and as everyone knows, the movies never lie. Remember Pearl Harbour? We’d all be speaking Japanese if it wasn’t for America! Our nations thank you, Josh Hartnett.

Wowsers. What an educational weekend.

One good reason to love the freebies

I’ve been waiting for years for the so-called ‘perks’ of the advertising ‘biz’ to kick in. Staring down the barrel of a pitch for a razor blade manufacturer at 3 o’clock this morning I suddenly realised that, for the first time, here was a free sample that was about to come in REALLY HANDY.

One good reason why procrastination is bad and must be stopped

(…just as soon as I get around to it. BOOM TISH.)

Meandering aimlessly around the internet at work as I am wont to do, I accidentally toppled into this website and spent a good 18 minutes there pondering its many, many mysteries, including (but not limited to):

1. Whose “lifetime” is it “the opportunity of”? Some kind of celebrity taxidermist? A billionaire drag queen? And how can I meet this person?

2. What “portion” of the proceeds will be donated to charities? Because this could significantly influence my decision to bid.

3. Could this be 2007’s most popular show bag? A Bic lighter! A half-drunk can of Red Bull! A crack pipe (not pictured)! A jarful of hair! Better crank up that production line now. There’s a Paula Abdul product in the pipeline, too.

4. How proud must Tim Berners-Lee feel right now?

5. “ANY HAIR FOR SALE ON E-BAY IS A SCAM, PURE AND SIMPLE.” So true, so true. UNLESS…?

Bets on who buys it? Michael Jackson’s busy, so I’m going for Nicolas Cage, with some publicity hungry “performance artist” a close second.