In Pursuit of...

I was at a dinner party last night and the talk turned to Utopias. It got me thinking - fuck that. What I want is to live in a Metopia.
My perfect Metopia would be... all about me.
-There would be a reshuffling of the working week so that you only work 4 out of every 7 days.
-Morning television would be illegal, and Mel and Kochie would be serving lifetime sentences.
-Also illegal would be instant coffee - life is just too short.
-The Fashion Police would actually have powers to fine and arrest those committing misdemeanours and infringements such as: yellow that doesn't match the wearer's complexion, skinny jeans on non-skinny legs, and socks and sandals.
-Wine would not produce hangovers.
-Somehow or other I would receive a stipend just for being me.

Hey Kids - Reading is Fun!

Talking Shit

I went to a party on the weekend and got trapped in conversation with possibly the most boring person in the room. Although to be fair, that is quite hard to judge, since I wasn't able to talk to many other people there. The most interesting part of the conversation was due to a misunderstanding (always a bad sign) and things went downhill fast once the mistake was cleared up.

Me: So, what do you do [yes, things were already desperate. We had tried "how do you know so-and-so" as possible conversation fodder and found it went nowhere]

Boring Person: I'm a Shit Roker.

Me: I'm sorry???!!?

BP: [slightly more emphatically] a Shit Broker

Me: Oh... Right. So... um,so... do you enjoy it?

This type of conversation is pretty tedious even when you know what job it is that you are actually discussing, but when you have no idea it is horrendous. How do you string along the conversation? I don't know why it is that I attract like a magnet the sort of person who makes me do all the work in a conversation, but I guess I did something terrible in a past life or something. I racked my brains for leading questions "is it messy?" "Do you find the smell a problem?" But in the end settled for "So how did you get into that?". This resulted, unsurprisingly, in a dull as dishwater discussion.

It turns out that she is actually a Ship Broker, but I still didn't really know what that entails and when I found out I realised that I didn't care.

The next day, I had a hangover. If you want an idea of what it felt like, then listen to Germany's entry for Eurovision from the weekend (I'd link it, but I'm not that cruel).

Untitled

I just got this email:


The University's Equity and Diversity Committee is seeking 5 students to represent the following equity target groups:
1. Women
2. Australian Indigenous People
3. People with Language Background other than English (LBOTE)
4. People with Disabilities
5. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex People (GLBTI)


If you are interested in becoming a student representative on this Committee, please submit your nomination, and brief (max 250 words each) statements on a) why you feel you can represent the particular group you are nominating yourself for, and b) what you hope to gain through your participation on the Equity and Diversity Committee.

Dear Equity and Diversity Committee,
I am nominating myself as a candidate to represent group #1 (women) on your list. I feel that, as a woman, I am able to represent this particular group for which I am nominating myself, because I am one.
If you have already got someone for that, I could have a go at #2 because, as Meatloaf said, "two out of three ain't bad". I am Australian and I am also a person. Similarly, if you are having trouble finding an Equitable and Diverse Person for #3 I could totally be that person, as long as you take out the words "other than".
As for the second bit, what I hope to gain is a position on the committee.
Cheers, Felix for Zosia

Tales From The PG Room

As mentioned previously, there are several oddball characters in my life that I cannot avoid having to deal with from time to time. Shopping Trolley Lady is really getting on my nerves. The trolley is long gone, but my contempt for her isn't. Today I was attempting to have a personal and private crisis as I anxiously awaited my review. I wasn't bothering anyone, I was quietly rocking back and forth in panic in an out-of-the-way corner of the room. I wasn't asking for attention, and I certainly wasn't interested in giving anyone else attention either. Alas, it was not to be.

Shopping Trolley Lady is one of those people who makes you do all the work in a conversation. She is always trying to get conversations started, probably because she doesn't have very many because people get tired of the effort once they realise the single talking point (shopping trolleys for instance) has worn thin. So there I am, rocking back and forth in the foetal position, and there she is, muttering and exclaiming to herself as she reads her emails. "Oh no!!" "Tut, tut. That is unbelievable". "That woman can't do anything for herself!". It is excruciating. You eventually give in and end up saying "What is it?" and then suddenly you are stuck in conversation with her. This week it was something about essays. Last week the family cat had been run over. The only thing these two pieces of conversational material have in common is that I couldn't give rat's left bollock about either one of them.

EDIT: WEDNESDAY 9.30AM: I'm back at uni again and, out of nowhere, she has just uttered "Yep. I really want to feel more manly".

Spin Cycle

I think I mentioned a while back that I was going to take up another thesis project, so that my main one became a source of procrastination, thereby getting more time spent on it. I have a progress review tomorrow and I'm all excited to go in there and announce my new project. I have decided to switch my thesis topic to write about laundry. I want to examine why it is that CC needs to do six loads of washing every fortnight, while I only do about two and a half in the same time frame. At this early stage in the project, my preliminary research suggests it has to do with the surface area of our respective clothes. A further possible contributing factor to this phenomenon is that I may in fact put a larger volume of fabric in each machine, but this theory is as yet entirely untested and purely conjecture. At this stage, the plans are in the air somewhat, but I am quite sure I will include a chapter on handwashing. Background research into why women's clothing often requires handwashing while men's clothing seldom (if never) does will be a foundation of this proposed chapter.

Idiot Box

"If everybody looked the same,
we'd get tired of looking at each other"
- Groove Armada

Last night, after a hard day spent watching DVDs of Love My Way in bed, I turned on the telly in order to relax and rest my brain from all the soap opera antics it had been keeping up. I really didn't care what I was watching, which was fortunate because it happened to be during that black spot where the choice you make is ultimately between Dismal and Crap. So I thought I'd give Gladiators a bit of a go. It was so bad that I didn't even make it through the introductions of all the contestants, let alone to the bit where they start hitting each other with oversized versions of things that little boys get for Christmas (which, in turn, are foam versions of things people get arrested for owning without a license).

Anyhoon, CC walked in to the room in time to see the two white-toothed cocktail-party-appropriatly attired hosts framed by the shiny red set and said "Is this Dancing with the Stars?"

I think there's something in that for all of us.

This is What I Think About When I Close My Eyes

Are there blind racist people?
Can blind people feel someone looking at them?
Do they get seeing drunk?
Or perhaps they get robbed deaf?