"Spider poison is PEOPLE poison?!"

What are you afraid of?

Heights?

Snakes?

The ocean?

Dying alone?

Uni enrolment?

Everyone is afraid of something. I myself am afraid of many things. And one of those things is a very common fear, and nothing to be ashamed of. That is, the spider.

I am of the opinion that spiders have sinister thoughts, from birth.

How could something with so many eyes be trusted?

Admittedly, that photograph isn’t entirely factual. Everyone knows spiders don’t learn these things at birth, they actually learn them while they’re growing/harvesting/mutating in their mothers’ freakish silky egg-case.

My fear of spiders began at a young age, when I discovered that my parents had moved me from a country relatively safe from crazy spiders – the United States, to a country with the most ridiculous spiders of the most unimaginable horror – Australia. I learnt about each of these spiders at a museum, including what kind of bite they leave and whether they can kill you or not.
My 7-year-old brain couldn’t handle how scary this was, and I became almost inconsolable – I’d check every toilet seat before I sat down in case I got bitten by a Redback like the cartoon guy in the educational video at the museum. I’d cautiously turn over my shoes and pat them down until I was sure there wasn’t a huntsmen hiding inside. I’d pull all the sheets off my bed before sleeping in case any white-tailed, 8-legged monsters were waiting for me. I would scrupulously check the pool before swimming to ensure that there weren’t any funnel-webbed spiders in their unnatural watery cocoons at the bottom of the pool, anticipating my arrival.

In fact, it wasn’t until my brother sat me down after about the 5th or 6th month of my fear and talked me out of it that I was able to go on living like a normal 7-year-old (whatever that looks like).

However, I’ve never quite recovered, and although I don’t check every item of clothing and every pair of shoes and every toilet seat any longer, when I see a spider nowadays I bring my limbs in close together and feel the urge to vomit, and sometimes I cry or perhaps do the spider dance – the most attractive dance of them all (i.e. when you think there’s a spider on you so you start flailing about in circles uncontrollably). Don’t judge me! I’m a normal person, I swear. There’s just something about the way spiders look and move and bite and the fact that they generate webs from what, their butts?! That’s worth crying over. It’s upsetting, people.

He waited for a response until the day someone killed him with, oh, I don't know. A shoe.

Anyway, with all this important information in mind, I want to tell you about the terrible thing that happened to me last night.

I came home from church, walked through the front door. I quickly deduced no one was home so I went into my room, shut the door and didn’t come out for another 5 hours until DBo arrived from work. Are you jealous of my life yet?
DBo comes home. The time is roughly 11:15pm. I venture downstairs into the kitchen where she’s snarfing scotch finger biscuits and we begin talking about our days.

If you’ve never been to my house before, you wouldn’t know that we have a lot of photos all over the living room. They’re hanging from yellow strings which are intertwined all around the living room and they’re a good source of conversation when silences get awkward. DBo and I were glancing at the photographs and I commented that perhaps it was time to put up fresh ones. I looked up at the photos which are nearly touching the ceiling when I saw a disgusting and fearsome site.

"What...what are th- Oh MY G-"

Spider babies. Hundreds and hundreds of spider babies all over the ceiling. ALL over. And then not only the living room ceiling. I looked straight up and there were hundreds more directly above me on the kitchen ceiling. Just…sitting there. Growing. How long did they plan on sitting there like that? Until they all grew into full adult huntsmen, and there were hundreds and hundreds of palm-sized huntsmen hanging around on my ceiling?

DBo didn’t realise what I had seen until she saw my signature “I’ve just seen a spider” move. My wrists curled in and I pulled them towards my chest, and I bent over slightly. The fetal position is just so comforting at a time like that. The only difference between this move and my other “I’ve just seen a spider” move is that this time, it was so horrifying and panic-inducing that I couldn’t speak words. I just groaned and muttered until DBo looked up and saw for herself what was so deeply disturbing. This is how I looked to DBo when she looked back at me to see if I was alright:

This is what Not Alright looks like

Yes, I aged about 50 years just from seeing those baby spiders. Springing into action, DBo, who is deathly afraid of cockroaches but okay with spiders, gave me a jumper, plopped it over my head and told me to hide upstairs while she sprayed the absolutely crepe out of the ceiling. She grabbed spider spray, cockroach spray and wasp spray just for good measure, and sprayed the entire downstairs area while I crouched at the top of the stairs and watched.

The next morning we bug-bombed the house to make sure the mother huntsmen, wherever the bleep she was hiding, would die with her children. It sounds awful, I know, but remember what I said before: spiders harbour sinister thoughts.
Daddy-long-legs can hang out in my room all year and eat mosquitoes, that’s fine. But the minute spiders start invading my person space, i.e, giving birth all over the downstairs ceiling, a masscare will commence. By DBo, who has more balls than me.

As it were, when I came back after 2 hours, there were hundreds and hundreds of tiny spider baby corpses all over the floor. Disgusting. And there were also still a fair few who had died in their webs on the ceiling and were stuck up there. So I had to get a broom and sweep them all down, whilst occasionally stopping to dry retch and also sometimes spider-dancing, because their dead bodies were falling all around me. Then I had to sweep all the corpses off the couch and cushions and coffee tables and kitchen counters, and dry retch some more, and finally, vacuum up the several hundred fatalities.

Needless to say, it’s been an upsetting 16 hours or so for me.

And so, I’m gonna go take a nap…after I strip the sheets off my bed 7 or 8 times just to make sure there are no spiders.

From Boxing Day to New Years Day of 2011-12, I spent my time at Stanwell Tops for PY Summer Camp. I won’t bore you with my long-winded details of how excellent camp was this year (it is excellent every year, this year was just particularly excellent-er) because I can imagine those of you who were at PY already know how great it was, and those of you who weren’t probably care about what I have to say as much as I care about say, dolphins, which is basically, not at all.

Instead I want to dedicate this blog to a card game that I introduced to some of the other PY leaders, and that our friend Cameron adapted. This card game became somewhat of an obsession over the week – in almost every moment of free time we searched for a suitable place to take out the deck of cards and get cracking.The more we played it the more we loved it, and the boys in the band even developed a hard, rock-style theme song for the game. Yeah, I know, they’re cool, right? So cool that all you ladies are wondering, are they single? I’ll keep you guessing.

The original name of the game was Snap Jack. The rules were simple. The deck of cards was divided evenly between the number of players, and each player would take turns drawing their cards until a Jack was drawn, at which point, each player attempted to ‘snap’ or slap the jack first. Whoever snapped the Jack first got to keep all the cards underneath the Jack. The idea is to gain cards and not lose them.

HOWEVER.

Cameron soon discovered that he sucked at this game, because despite the frequency of his gym visits, no amount of tricep and bicep muscle can make your reflexes faster. So while the rest of us enjoyed the simple version of Snap Jack because we were all pretty even in terms of fast reflexes, Cameron felt left out. And when Cameron feels left out, he ups the ante. He suggests we adapt the game slightly.

Basically, the only adaptation is that now, once the Jack is snapped, whatever cards are underneath the Jack, and the Jack itself, is fair game. You can fight for your right to collect as many cards as possible. What ensued was total chaos, with people using every muscle in their arms to pull the cards away from the others and towards themselves. It wasn’t until a card was up in the air and off the ground did it truly belong to someone, so it was truly game on. The game was no longer Snap Jack, it was Snap Jack ADVANCE. Now, the more we played, the more clever strategies people came up with. If you ever decide you want to play this hilarious and competitive game (it is best with 3 or more players, and preferably under 7, but even 10 CAN work if you’re willing to work up a sweat), you might want to consider one of the following strategies:

The Ben, or, ‘The Exit Strategy.’

Ben, our Summer Camp bass player, quickly learnt that one of the best ways to keep other players from gaining any cards was to snap first, then push the pile as far away from the group as possible. Ben’s snapping skills became ninja-like – the Jack would fall onto the pile of cards and before we knew it, Ben was sliding away like a baseball player sliding to a base, arm in front of him holding down the cards (instead of a baseball), a metre away from everyone else.

He genuinely looked like this often during the course of the game.

This was an effective strategy, because usually only 1 or 2 people were keen enough to jump after Ben and still try to gather up cards while they were under his palm on the ground. However, usually these 1 or 2 people were the more scarily determined ones, so sometimes Ben ended up with less cards than his exit strategy intended.

The Karlene, or, ‘Protection.’

Karlene joined in on the game a few hours after it was first invented. She quickly moved from beginner to veteran after one round, partly because she is incredibly fast and strong, and partly because people were terrified of her rings crushing and cutting up their fingers. Her first strategy was one of protection. Like Ben, she’d snap first, and then she’d quickly pull the cards in between her legs so that it was harder for people to grab them. The was an effective strategy, but only if she was able to snap the Jack first – if anyone else got in there first, she couldn’t perform her protective strategy. Thus, she quickly came up with another, as follows.

The Karlene, or, ‘The WW5.’

This wasn’t a strategy so much as straight up warfare. If Karlene couldn’t snap first, and she felt as though she had no chance of getting any cards, she’d simply retreat from the cards themselves and instead attempt to pull peoples arms away and bash their hands with her fists. Anything goes in Snap Jack Advance, so we couldn’t reprimand her. This strategy left everyone in pain, and often worked, as since she was yanking arms out of the picture, she was able to get to cards that were otherwise inaccessible.

The Dan Boer, or, ‘The Pain Clause/Claws.’

Dan Boer’s strategy was one of my favourites. I’m not quite sure how he came up with it, but it was a beauty. Essentially, whether Dan snapped first, second, third or whenever, his strategy was to flip his hand the other way around and assume a Claw position. Now, he has a human hand, so it wasn’t REALLY a claw per se. But honestly, once his hand was in that position, I swear it looked and felt like this:

I even heard Dan say from his room next door during a game of Snap Jack Advance, “I have a LOT of somebody’s skin underneath my thumb nail after that last snap.”

This strategy worked because it shocked people into letting go of their cards. Where they normally just had to fight off the soft side of the back of someone’s hand, when Dan got involved they were losing bits of skin to his claw-handed ruthlessness.’

The Cameron, or, ‘If you have the slow reflexes of a whale trying to bat away a fly, try this at home.’

As mentioned before, Cameron couldn’t win regular Snap Jack because by the time he realised it was time to snap, whoever had originally snapped was already starting the new pile of cards and it was his turn to draw again. So, he used his strength to his advantage, and would simply snap on the cards, press down as hard as humanly possible and try to pull the cards towards him using strength and violence where necessary. It’s no secret that about 90% of the bruises received during Snap Jack Advance were giving by Cameron – he would shoulder barge, drive his elbows into peoples legs, whatever it took to have people weaken their grip so he could pull the cards into his possession.

I’m still unable to sleep on my left side because of the bruises down my arm, and while those bruises could have been the fault of anyone, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were given to me from Cameron. But, he often finished the game with more cards than anyone else, so, well done him.

The Michelle, or, ‘How to not win.’

I have to admit, I had no strategy. This is because I genuinely enjoyed the game so much I couldn’t develop a means of winning – I simply laughed and laughed and laughed, and laughter = weakness. I would often win 1 or 2 cards (one time I think I got about 5, accidentally, and it was a great day for me) but couldn’t seem to get any more than that, because even if I seemed to have an advantage at first, my laughter would overcome me and I’d lose my grip. I couldn’t help but just giggle like a fool while my hand was on top of the cards, and continue giggling while 4 other people stole those cards away from me. I just couldn’t contain my joy!

The best thing about Snap Jack Advance though, is that you don’t have to have cards to play – you can snap even if you’ve got nothing on your person. The game never ends, there aren’t really winners or losers because sometimes you have half the deck, and sometimes you’ve got nothing. And that is why I never felt bad about how cosmically I sucked at Snap Jack Advance, because it never stopped being the most hilarious thing in the world to behold.

Go now, and do likewise. Play Snap Jack Advance.

(Speaking of sun cancer, remember those billboards with a picture of a girl sun baking on them, and underneath it said, “Skin cells in trauma?” I seriously used to drive past this every day and think it said “Skin sells in trauma.” I really thought it was a great angle, and that the ad was trying to say that if cancer were an evil corporation, you’re giving it money by sun baking, because skin sells in trauma. Trauma wards I guess?

I’m not sure how I got accepted into tertiary education).

With this upcoming Byron trip in mind, I was prompted to think of our last trip up that way, in 2009. Sure, it was fun in its own way, and contained the aforementioned beach-lazing we had hoped for, but it was truly a disaster of a trip from the off.

Day 1:
Our flight was around 11am or thereabouts. We were woken up at around 6am however, because of THIS:

"...Is it just me, or...is it red? It's red out here, right?"

DUN-DUN-DUUUUUST STORM! I’m sure most of you will remember this event. I could be making this up, but I think it was dust which was carried from…somewhere south? Some kind of place in the south which has a lot of dust I guess. Red dust, that is. And, the red dust got blown up into NSW and QLD throughout the day. Wow, I should’ve been a weatherographer. Yeah, I don’t know what they’re actually called.

The morning of the infamous dust storm was truly a craSy time. DBo and I, and our friend Mark who was with us that morning,  wondered if we had somehow descended into hell, or if we were all actually asleep, but trapped inside the same red dream. Then we stopped being stupid, and figured out it was some kind of dust storm.

As you can imagine, this wreaked havoc on our flight times. To start the morning off, we made our way to the train station, walking against the wind and inhaling all the red dust of the rainbow. Then, at the airport, first our flight was just delayed, then it changed gates about 50 times, and then, 2 hours after we were supposed to take off, we were informed that all flights to Ballina, including ours, were cancelled for the entire day due to the storm.

What were we to do? We’d already booked our accommodation and we had been so excited for the holiday, so we made a hasty decision to drive the 12 hours to Byron Bay. By the time we left Sydney however, it was 4pm. Nice.

For the first 7 hours or so, the drive was smooth and enjoyable. DBo and I enjoyed listening to Ministry of Sound album after Ministry of Sound album and being HILARIOUS at the expense of boys’ self esteem (popular to contrary to belief, girls are actually very funny. It’s just, we’re most funny when we are making fun of boys, which, boys never find funny – they just get all insulted and turn into big, ego-damaged babies, so we have to refrain from making the jokes and instead pretend like we’re not funny at all) until DISASTER struck.

Let me set the scene:

"I know we're almost out of CDs, but listening to John Mayer at this hour is torture. Does that guy ever sing about anything else besides how much of a pining baby he is?"

DBo was driving at the time, at about 110km.  It should be noted that for the prior 5 hours, massive trucks had roared across the other side of the road every 30 seconds or so. We drove up a hill and came to the top of the crest, when suddenly we see in front of us, maybe 10 metres away, the biggest kangaroo in the entire world. I’m not kidding, he was tall and fat and evil. If we could’ve been closer to his face, it probably would’ve looked like this:

Frack.

He was sitting there in the middle of our lane, staring at us, with absolutely no intention of moving. In a split second, DBo made the decision to swerve, rather than hit him. To hit him at 110km, when he was sitting that close and was such a fatty fatty? I hate to think of what might have happened.

HOWEVER. DBo forgot that my car, unlike hers, has power steering. So she completely overshot the swerve, and we went faaar into the other lane, at which point she once again forgot my car has power steering, and overshot a swerve back towards the left. What ensued was my car, Axil, doing donuts across both lanes like a hoon, while DBo and I screamed as Axil spun around the top of the crest, wondering when the next massive truck was going to come roaring up the hill and tear my little Festiva in half.

God obviously didn’t want us to die that day, because we ended up safely on the right hand side of the road in the bushes, missing several trees and obtaining not one scratch. Axil was in perfect condition too, his only injury was having some grass stuck in him. But this little…erm…mishap, which followed the dust storm debacle, should’ve been a sign that our Byron trip was going to be… well, not what we expected.

We arrived [safely] at Byron Bay at around 2 in the morning. Check -in for our accommodation wasn’t until 2pm the following day. Blerg. We had been driving for something like 11 hours and were exhausted, but now also homeless. So we pulled up to the backpackers car park and decided to just sleep in there for the night.

It’s no state secret that DBo snores, so from 2am till 3:30am, I couldn’t sleep. I was finally, FINALLY! starting to drift off, when:

Well frankly, sir, I find this town's supply of HEMP scarier.

It was probably DBo’s snoring, let’s be honest. Either way, we had to start the engine up and find somewhere else to sleep – this time, the beach car park. Surely we weren’t the only ones who had this idea! Genius. We managed to get about 2 hours sleep, and then DBo and I practically lived inside the public beach toilets until we were able to check into our backpackers hotel, which meant a police car kept circling to area to make sure we weren’t shooting up in there or something. In the process, I completely lost my voice and literally couldn’t speak louder than a whisper the rest of the trip. Sick one!

At 8am, the local cafe’s opened up, and I knew everything would be better in the world if I just had a nice hot cup of tea to keep me warm and content. I truly, truly believed that if I just had some tea, I would be fine, and all the nightmareish-ness of the trip would disappear and become insignificant.

I ordered my green tea, and DBo ordered a coffee. The coffee came out, steaming hot and tasty, within 3 minutes. My tea wasn’t ready though, much to my confusion, seeing as making tea requires POURING WATER INTO A CUP WITH A TEA BAG INSIDE. A task which takes me about 4 seconds in my own house.

We waited.  And waited. And waited for about 15 minutes before they finally called out “green tea?” from the counter. AT LAST! My sore throat would soon be healed and my sore mood would vanish with my magical green tea!

I grabbed the tea, which had a lid on, and DBo and I started walking back to our temporary home (the beach). I’m not kidding, this is how much water they’d poured into the Styrofoam cup:

Mother-

15 minutes of waiting for this concentrated, 2-inches of faux-tea? I wanna go home.

Thankfully, the trip truly got better once we checked into the backpackers and showered away all our road-trip beach-filth.

And, we had plenty of stories to tell when we got home.

Either way…if our flight gets cancelled this year? I’m throwing in the towel.

Let me explain.

On Friday night, my boyfriend Lester and I went out to dinner with some of his friends. It was a joyous occasion, full of Korean rice wine and mushroom stew, red bean ice cream and laughter. As we sat down on the bus and began the journey home, Lester realised he didn’t have his phone on him, and must’ve left it at the restaurant. Naturally we jumped off the bus at the next stop and ran back down to Pitt Street to see if someone had handed his phone in to the restaurant staff.

They hadn’t. The phone was obviously long gone, residing in someone’s opportunistic hands because of a moment of absent-mindedness. Unfortunate. Un.For.Tunate.

When I spoke to Lester’s friend, Harry, about it the next day, he said to me “I can’t believe Lester just left it there in the restaurant,” to which I replied, “Eh, it could’ve happened to anyone.”
I’m relieved my response wasn’t, “I KNOW! Seriously, who DOES that?!” because my story doesn’t end here.

As a dutiful girlfriend, I told Lester I would buy him a cheap pre-paid phone to use in the meantime, since he doesn’t get a day off work until Wednesday. So, today, I waltzed into a phone shop, bought the cheapest one I could find and nearly told the shop assistant that I didn’t need a bag, but then took the bag anyway. I also bought $30 worth of credit and put that in the bag that I really didn’t need in the first place. Absent-mindedness.

On my way out of the shopping centre I became distracted by the bright lights and mediocre music in ValleyGirl, and proceeded to try several outfits on that I knew I wasn’t going to buy either way. Nice. Worth it.

I kid you not, I was still in the store browsing through the $9.95 racks when I noticed I was no longer holding that bag I didn’t need in the first place. Where had I put it? The change-room? It wasn’t there. The sunglasses stand? Not there either. But surely, SURELY, in the last 10 minutes, someone had picked it up and given it to the shop assistant. Right?

Wrong. Stolen.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Not only did I practically HAND the pre-paid phone into the thief’s’ hands, I also gave them a little starter pack, including $30 credit. That gives them unlimited text for a month. Lucky you, whoever you are.

I trudged back to the phone shop to buy the same phone again. The shop assistant sympathised with me, shrugged and said, “Man, opportunistic people, huh?”

Yeah. Pretty much.

If you’re looking for an opportunity, look no further! Contact my boyfriend and I (on what phones, I wonder?) and apparently we’ll just give you free stuff.

Sigh.

I need a pick me up! From Alec Baldwin.

Usually when I hear this said, I am part of the ‘them’ rather than the ‘other,’ that is, I am a part of the group of people who are not stupid, and am laughing at the people who are stupid and who continually disprove that ‘Survival of the Fittest’ is a thing. However, events which took place last night in my house have humbled me – I feel like my stupidity has topped that of many others – and I myself have personally contributed to refuting any concept of the fittest humans being the ones that survive the test of time.

It all started at around 9am yesterday morning when I broke my favourite mug. No day can end well when a beloved mug is shattered into several, sad ceramic pieces on the floor which you only just NOW realise needs to be mopped desperately.

How long would it have gone unnoticed if my mug HADN'T broken?

This incident must’ve just thrown off my groove for the rest of the day, because as you will soon read, when I got home from work yesterday night I truly was incapable of using my brain by any means.

Let me set the mood. I’m tired and I’m hungry, and I have this thing where I try not to eat after 7pm and the clock is ticking ever nearer to said time. I had just bought some of those packets of rice and pasta that you’re supposed to make as a side dish (but students just use them as the actual meal) so I poured it into a microwave safe bowl like the packet instructions told me to and added in the 1 cup water, no problem. My next task, the instructions told me, was to cover the bowl and put it in the microwave for 10 minutes.

Cover the bowl, cover the bowl…what should I cover the bowl with? Umm….here, this thing looks like it will do the trick.

Besides it's gonna have to do, because it's almost 7pm! HURRY UP!

I set the microwave to 10 minutes and proceed to put the kettle on and play Solitaire on my phone to pass the time (who wants my autograph?).

It is only when the microwave beeps its 5 final beeps and I go to take the cover off the bowl do I realise just what exactly the cover is made of.

RAAR I AM NOT FOR YOUR MICROWAVE, IDIOT!

Well, that was a freebie.

I think the microwave probably should’ve blown up and my Solitaire-playing hands with it, but, hey. Stupidity prevails. I think it’s important for me to tell you here and now that I still ate the rice. Every. Last. Bite. But then again, I was so hungry and lazy that even whilst I was baking a cake and spilt a tablespoon of sugar into my bowl of rice, I just shrugged and continued eating.

Could be worse, could've exploded in the microwave.

Two things are certain: after you’ve cooked up a metal storm in the microwave for 10 minutes your house is going to smell like death so open up all the doors and windows, and…I can safely say I won’t be making the same mistake again, ever.

Unless I break a different favourite mug.

Pinback comprises of two members: Rob Crow and Armistead Burwell Smith IV (Zach Smith). In my opinion, their songs don’t really belong to any one specific or official genre. I realise it sounds ridiculously wanky to say, but the music these two guys make is cosmically good. They can turn a song with nothing but two basses as instrumental accompaniment and make the most beautiful melodies you’ve ever heard. They can turn lyrics inspired by a goldfish into some of the most insightful lyrics you’ll happen across.

Basically, Pinback are better than you.

My brother and I finally experienced the privilege we never thought we would of seeing Pinback live in Australia, at the Manning Bar in Sydney. It was close to 10 years in the making – with Zach Smith expressing in an interview that the only thing holding them back was a lack of funds (http://www.theaureview.com/interviews/the-au-interview-zach-smith-of-pinback-san-diego). Our dreams came true beyond what we could’ve expected in that we got to meet Rob Crow before the gig began:

(Just as an aside, I have been to a lot of gigs but I have never seen a band member out the front selling merch and talking to their fans. It was pretty amazing).

To review the gig in a word, the word would be ‘perfect,’ but I suppose that is too much of a cliche, or perhaps an answer expected from a long-time Pinback fan, even if the gig was in actual fact terrible.
But it wasn’t terrible, and all the Pinback fans there would agree that it was perfect. From their opening of the bittersweet Tres, to their closing in the encore with A.F.K, this was a flawless set. With Rob on guitar, Zach on bass & keys, and a friend of theirs covering drums for the tour, there was truly no note off key or beat out of rhythm.

Rob came equipped with an beer holster which could be attached to his microphone stand – if anyone was worried that drinking would hinder his performance, they didn’t need to worry for long. His vocals were perfect and the alcohol made his story-telling hilarious, particularly when he was explaining the meaning behind Walters, and the moral of his story  made very little sense:
“And I just think, sometimes if you have a dream, you just have to…that’s…that’s all there is and sometimes that’s okay and sometimes…you know, I’m not sure what I’m saying any more.”

There were about 7 or 8 die-hard fans up the front who sang loudly to every word and lost their minds when Rob jumped into the crowd mid-song for about 60 seconds. It was great to be in a room surrounded by all the fans I’d never met before but always wondered about (‘What do Pinback fans look like?’). My brother and I were highly amused to hear someone shout “Play Grey Machine!” in a quiet moment – if only they had played Grey Machine – although, as avid Pinback fans would know, that might have been too much awesome to handle in one night.

Here is a photo I snapped from the night:

I realise this ‘review’ (not so much a review as me raving about how great Pinback are) won’t mean much to a lot of people, because not a lot of people are familiar with Pinback’s stuff. So scope it, have a listen to Tripoli from their album This is a Pinback CD.

I am lucky enough to have 3 brothers: 2 older, and one younger. And let me assure you, some of the funniest moments of my life have been with one, two or all three of them around.

This blog shall now become an ode to my brothers.

Jason

Jason is my only brother by blood. He’s almost 24 and is one of those dudes who live for almost nothing else except skateboarding and surfing. It’s pretty cool, until he cracks open the ‘you just can’t understand the world until you’re sitting in a calm ocean with a surfboard between your legs’ line that all surfers seem to maintain, in that ‘I’ve experienced everything‘ tone of voice they use.

The sea turtle hears it all the time.

Love you, Jase! Anyway, having Jason around from my day of birth has certainly shaped who I am today, and I mean that in the least lame way possible. Jason made sure my childhood was void of any compliments or kind words and instead full of clever insults and elaborate pranks. What else are brothers for? I am truly grateful for it! Let me share some examples with you.

When we were much younger, Jason managed to convince my sister and I that there is a certain place on our backs that, if he pressed it in the exact right way, we would only have 30 minutes to live. Needless to say, many tears were shed when Jason pressed a random spot on Jess’ back a few moments later: “Reverse it, Jason! REVERSE IT!”

On a family vacation, while we were driving in the car, my brother asked my parents if we would be going whale watching at any point. Before they could give an answer he said, ‘Oh wait, THERE’s a whale! And we didn’t even have to pay for it!’ My parents turned around to see he was pointing at me.

As brothers tend to do, Jason used to hit, poke, prod, punch and slap both my sister and I whenever the opportunity arose. I learnt the hard way that I should never retaliate when one day I had had enough and I slapped him as hard as I could across the face. He was taken aback for a moment, then grinned, pinned me down and informed he was going to slap me 700 times in a row so I learnt my lesson. 700 slaps later? Lesson learnt.

After Jason moved to Melbourne and came back to visit, he waltzed into my room before I could move the various, erm, girl-specific toiletries from my bed that I had just bought. He took one glance at them, then said “Has THIS business started, has it? GROSS!” (although it was more like ggeeeerrrr-oooosssse, you know, Ace Ventura style) and walked out.

I once walked into my bedroom only to jump 10 feet when I heard someone from inside the closet say, “Hello Clarice…have you ever wondered what your toes taste like?” Jason strikes again.

Jason is probably one of the funniest human beings I know. Not only does he procure comebacks out of thin air quicker than anybody else, he also is the most down-to-earth, easy going guy you could probably ever meet. I hope you do have the pleasure of meeting him, especially since it won’t involve any of the things his little sister had to experience simply by being his little sister.

Daniel

Daniel is my older step brother, but he’s been in my life since I was 10 and he looked like Harry Potter, so I figure that’s reason enough for me to consider him a brother by blood, regardless. He’s 22 and spends a lot of his time getting paid to be electrocuted as a marine electrician of some sort. I think I made that title up, but I’m close enough.

Daniel is different to Jason in that, since I technically wasn’t his little sister by blood, he had to be more or less nice to me while we were growing up. This meant I spent less time resenting him the way sisters resent their brothers when they’re young, and more time cracking up at his hilarious anecdotes. Here’s one for you that is particularly golden.

We were on an island in Thailand called Koh Samet, where Daniel decided to buy way more Long Island Ice Tea buckets than he could handle.

The eyes aren't an exaggeration.

At around midnight he declares to me that he’s going home to bed, so I tell him to wait right there while I inform the others we were with that I was going to walk him down the beach, home. I wasn’t gone 30 seconds, but when I returned he was literally no where in sight. I walked down the beach to see if he had already started making his way back, but couldn’t see him at all.

The next morning, I find our younger brother, Luke, looking angry and restless at the breakfast table. I asked him how his night was. “Not great,” he replied in a flat voice. He went on to tell us that Daniel stumbled in at 12am and firstly, fell upon Luke in his bed. He then got up, pulled the blankets down on his own bed and proceeded to urinate all over it. He then climbed into the bed (after ignoring (or just not hearing) Luke’s disbelieving cries of “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”) and pulled the blankets back up, and fell asleep.

No part of this story is false or embellished in any way.

The next morning he was as surprised as we were to hear the tale, having no recollection of it whatsoever. Jason announced soon after that no story could ever top this particular one. He summarised it by saying, “You literally pissed on your bed, then climbed in and went to sleep in it.”

Amazing.

Luke

Luke is Daniel’s younger brother by blood, and my younger brother by step…ness. He’s 17, currently undertaking the living hell that is the HSC, and still the coolest younger brother in existence.

Luke has been the brother that I could always count on to mutter a dry, sarcastic and hilarious remark under his breath whenever a family situation got awkward, immediately making it better for me, the one person who usually heard the remark every time. He is also just hilarious in general. I can’t even make fun of him like I did Jason and Daniel, because he is just too cool.

I have always been able to rely on Luke to watch all the shows I wanted him to watch, and then quote them with me afterwards for the years to come. Nobody else in the family took the same liking to the Mighty Boosh, Harvey Birdman and Invader Zim as Luke did when I showed him, and we still quote these shows to each other to this day.

Luke is a voice of reason. When I was about 15 and he was 11 or so, he invited me to make an account on the AMAZING game that was Runescape so he’d have someone he knew to play the game with. I was hesitant at first, since it was a game for uber nerds, but after I made the account for Luke, I have to admit, I became addicted. But not addicted to playing it properly. I got addicted to digging holes around the place to find coins, one by one, and invest them in my Runescape bank account.  I’ve always played games this way. Like Grand Theft Auto – I’d do 2 or 3 missions but then give up and beat up prostitutes and steal their money instead. Or Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I’d just play the same level again and again until I had perfected it and then talk to Jason about what an epic game it was.

Anyway, a stranger in the game approached me and said if I followed him into the woods he’d give me 1000 coins, or something similar. I asked Luke if this was legitimate. Luke promptly informed me that in the woods, the same rules don’t apply and anyone can kill me out there, and I’d lose everything. I asked the stranger in the game if he was planning on killing me in the woods. He said, “No,” so naturally I followed him out there, happy with the promise of 1000 coins. Luke continued to warn me while I was following the stranger but I didn’t listen. Because I’m an idiot. The stranger stabbed me, I died and woke up in the town centre with peasants clothes and no money to my name.  I learnt to take Luke’s advice from that moment on.

I can’t believe I just wrote 2 paragraphs about Runescape. There’s something wrong with me.

Life is rich with brothers, whether they are brothers by blood, step-brothers, half-brothers, brothers in the way Zoolander refers to his male-model friends in his eugoogly, or otherwise. I’m sure you can all agree and attest to this.

I am fond of my brothers.

This is definitely what is going on in there.

I would’ve done what I normally do – grit my teeth and bear it – but, as you might be able to imagine, gritting my teeth would’ve been like handing a certificate over to a stray cat giving her permission to maul my cheek open and devour my gums. So instead, I closed my eyes and tried to find a happy place, which ended up being Nurofen, and imagined what I could possibly liquefy and eat for breakfast later since clearly, chewing cereal, toast or hard fruits would not be on the cards.

As it turned out, there’s not much you can eat for breakfast when you’re unable to open your mouth, besides purified WeetBix. Quite frankly I found that idea preposterous, so naturally I went and bought 4 litres of Up & Go. Man I’m a genius. (What’s the opposite of a discrepancy? A Crepancy? Probably. This situation was just one big crepancy).

Thank goodness I have options!

The problem was is that I thought it’d be a good idea to walk by myself to Coles, buy 4 litres of Up & Go and 6 cans of soup and then walk home. My hands ended up looking like this:

If only I drove instead...

Granted, maybe I should be more concerned that, according to the above artwork*, I have the hands of a strange alien-child, but you get the point. 4 cartons of milky substance + 6 cans of soup in 2 grocery bags is not a winning combination if you plan on walking home. Never have I regretted not driving so much before!** Trunks just don’t feel that kind of pain! And yes I said trunk. ‘Boot’ is a ridiculous word and I refuse to use it.

So I’m going to the dentist on Wednesday, where he will probably tell me to go to the Doctor, where she will probably tell me to keep taking Nurofen until the swelling goes down.

I spend my time so wisely.

*The artwork accurately reflects my real life alien-child hands. Sigh.

**that’s really…really not true. I regret not driving every time I sit down on a train.

Like yesterday morning, when I slipped on nothing (accompanied by a “wwwhoo–ooOoo-ooaaaaAh!”)  in front of a group of Year 10 students, thus losing them forever.

It was absolutely like: "WoooooOOoooooOOooAAAAhhhhAAAHohh!"

Or in Spring last year, when DBo was looking at me whilst walking forward, and slammed, comic-book style, straight into a tree.

It was truly hilarious to behold.

Or at Easter time, when I asked my house mate Ben if he liked Lindt, but he  misheard me and thought I said “do you ever get lint?” He thus answered loudly, “YES OH MY GOODNESS EVERY MORNING I WAKE UP AND I’M LIKE, WHERE IS ALL THIS BELLY BUTTON LINT COMING FROM?” (Incidentally, his nickname now is Benny Button Lint).

I said LINDT. How embarrassing for you!

Or in December, when my boyfriend Lester and I went to freaking DISNEY WORLD and he forgot to put the battery in the camera. And, on that note, when we were about to get on the bus to go into the city to see Sufjan Stevens and I asked him if he had the tickets and he said nothing, but started walking back towards the house because he did not in fact remember the tickets.

We can come here ANYTIME!

Or when a group of P-Plater boys saw me enthusiastically air guitar-ing to whatever was playing on the radio at the time, and literally pointed and laughed from their vehicle.

Damn my windows and their faux tint.

Or when I asked DBo whether kangaroos were marsupials or not, and she replied confidently, ‘No. They’re egg-laying animals.’

But what is the pouch for?

Or when I was teaching my Year 12′s about the Jazz Age in the 1920′s: I started listing off names of famous jazz artists. When I said Louis Armstrong, someone said, ‘What? Isn’t he that guy that landed on the moon?’ To which another replied: ‘No you idiot. That’s Lance Armstrong.’

Neil, guys. Come on.

Or in Year 9, when Bec looked intently poster on a bulletin board for ages, then said outloud “Allages. That sign says allaaaages.” To which I replied, ‘Um. Bec. It says All Ages.’

Uhh...Pretty sure it means what it says there Bec!

Or when DBo and I went and saw X-Men First Class at the cinema. I misheard something, and said to DBo, ‘I didn’t catch that bit, what did he say?’ She answered, in all seriousness, ‘Just rewind it.’

What are you waiting for? Press rewind. I didn't hear it either.

Or when Lester was asked, ‘Which do you like better? Zombieland or Shaun of the dead?’ and he replied, ‘Zombieland for sure. Shaun of the Dead was good obviously, but Zombieland is amazing!’ Only to later see a scene from Shaun of the Dead on TV and say ‘What is this movie? This looks hilarious!’

"...this won't come back to haunt me later!"

Stupid things are pretty hilarious.

A helpless victim, of a terrible crime – of being stereotyped.
Nobody likes being stereotyped, especially because the implication of a stereotype is that it is unfair and inaccurate.
This blog is a plea, to end a particular type of stereotype. If the topic of this blog applies to you – if you apply this stereotype to others, then listen up, because I never want to have to deal with this terrible injustice again.

The injustice I speak of is the stereotype that gets applied to a girl ordering a salad.

YOU HEARD ME BOYS.

It ends now!

Give me a break and just believe me that when I order a salad, I genuinely want to eat a salad, and nothing else on the menu!

It’s not because I’m trying to lose weight.
It’s not because I’m trying to impress you by not seeming like a pig.
It’s not because I’m a vegetarian.
It’s not because I’m one of those “eat one 1cm square of cheese a day and nothing else” girls.

It’s because I want the fracking salad!

I’ve heard every complaint in the book.
“Why would you order that? We’re at a restaurant. You can make a salad at home.”

You can make ANYTHING that is available in a restaurant at home. You ordered a pizza. You can make that at home. The point is that it tastes better in a restaurant, namely because someone else makes it for you. Plus a salad is like 10 dollars cheaper than everything else on the menu, so if you’re paying, I’m doing you a favour!

“Why would you order that? There’s hardly anything in it. That’s why it’s 10 dollars cheaper.”

Come on! They don’t skimp on salads, I sometimes can’t finish a decent Caesar. Bacon, chicken, anchovies if you swing that way, egg – that’s a legitimate meal, don’t try and tell me otherwise! Thai Beef Salad? Same story. There’s iron aplenty in one of those bad boys! And Greek salads might not have meat, but they’re still teeming with enough ingredients to fill you up as much as anything else.

“Why would you order that? I know. It’s because you’re anorexic or something right?”

I like salads, you jag. They. Taste. Good.

Next time you’re out with a girl, and she orders a salad, think of how your stereotyping  is incorrect, and more often than not, doesn’t actually make any sense. In fact, try ordering a salad yourself you mother f-

Ahh, I really feel better about this already