The Mad World

So, I just found this little review I wrote of a day out in Maitland, where we had an excursion for a sociology class. It was such a formative experience, which still to this day peppers my regular conversation, that I thought I’d paste it below:

Yesterday was one of the formative experiences of my life. It was the day I went to Maitland Gaol, a place closed down in the late 90s for being too inhumane and archaic. It is now used for traumatic prison tours, ghost sleepovers and weddings. Because, you know, places of misery and incarceration bode well for a future marriage.

We drove there in a big tour bus with our fellow apathetic Gen Ed classmates (”Why are we here?” “Maitland is gay”, “I prefer Korean pop to Japanese”). We watched a very graphic video where a man told us about being raped by a skipping rope. We stopped at Mount White for some frittatas. So far, so good.

Eventually, we got to Maitland and trooped wearily to the Auschwitzesque gate, shaking blood back into our limbs and hoping we didn’t have Deep Vein Thrombosis. A bug-eyed woman told us to divide ourselves into two groups, then mocked us as the future of Australia when we failed to do so quickly. Our group was told to wait in the yard for Dave, an ex-inmate, to come and talk to us.

Our first taste of Dave was of him leading a group of ashen-faced primary schoolers outside and telling us to get out of his way. And then Dave was back and the tour was underway. In the next two hours I learnt a few things about gaol: it turns you into a scary asshole (if you weren’t one already). Some Dave-highlights include:

- finding the token tall girl of our group and constantly referring to how tall she was. At one stage suggesting she was a lesbian and being genuinely surprised when he found out that she wasn’t.

- showing us his fake eye, cut out in a prison fight.

- getting a group of 6 to line up against a wall and rest their weight on their foreheads, exhibiting a typical punishment in gaol. He assured them that he was a good few metres behind them so not to worry and that “oh no, they’d have to pay me more than that…”

- Waxing lyrical over the pretty drawings in one of the cells and then telling us that they were done by a pedophile who, when released, used them to lure children into public toilets and molest them. Followed by a gruff, “any questions?”

- Told us that anyone of Asian appearance automatically got a job in the kitchen, even if they’d never cooked in their life because “well, you all look the same; we assumed you could all cook. Come on, you do all look the same. I mean, I look different to him and him and him. I couldn’t tell any of you apart. And you speak another language”. All of this was directed to an Asian girl in our group, who continued to smile serenely at him. Part of me silently begged her to say, “I was born here, douchebag”. But another part of me was scared. Very scared.

- The highlight of my trip: Dave showed us how to make a razor blade out of a cigarette filter. A girl asked him to show us how it worked, handing him a piece of paper to demonstate on. HE SLICED THE BACK OF HIS HAND OPEN.

The bus was pretty quiet on the way home.

I just discovered the most amazing feature of my blog. I can find out what people have been googling that then led them onto my site. And since these answers may not be readily available, I thought I’d help out and offer my opinion or ideas.

Try never get drunk outside your own house
I still feel strongly about this. You’re spot on, my friend.

Things to do with a camera
Do they mean fuh-reaky things? I guess you could…hug it?

Ode to old people
Poppa, poppa, you so fine,
You’re flame resistant like melamine.

Fun things to do with a camera
Uncomfortable, my friend.

Things that are unforgivable
There are only two of them: queue-jumping and murder.

Difficulty swallowing vitamins
Join the club, brother in (malnourished) arms. I wish I could help.

Powerful odes
Last one wasn’t enough?
Poppa, poppa, like Sydney’s streets you are ‘mean’
You’re hard to crack down on, like polypropylene.

Was rachel bilson a shy child?
Maybe, but hasn’t she blossomed!

Final fair well to the world eat my shit
If it helps, I could give you some spelling classes? Are you still “around”, Reader? This is awkward for everyone.

Myrtle wilson’s blind ambition
Don’t even get me started on this. If she had just CHECKED that violent blind ambition, she wouldn’t be lying dead on the freeway between New York and Long Island, a mass of jellied organs and missing one boob. No, she wouldn’t.

How big is westfield bondi junction
Big enough for all of us to bask in its glory.

bernard fanning so thin
I KNOW, RIGHT?

ugly molls
I am the THIRD RESULT when people google this. Holy shit.

can i get spider eggs on my scalp?
Oh man, I hope not. Good luck.

Barometer 2, March 2009

Hello to my old friends and my new friends, and those of you who aren’t sure where you stand, who await an effort of cajoling, of flirtatious prising from my end, until you finally hop onto the Barometer Boat, until you are a firm, steadfast sailor of HMS Jessica. Hoist the anchor, scrub the decks, puke over the edge, cos you’re here and you’re staying.

This week’s Barometer might be a bit kerazy and out there because I’m sitting in a really hot room listening to the new Guns n Roses album, trying to concentrate on my Important Literary Endeavours, but instead rocking out to Buckethead’s flamin’ riffs. But enough about my Saturday night in. Time to set sail.

HOT
Facebook notes
I have a bit of a routine in the morning. It goes: get up, get the bus, stare at the blind guy who takes my bus while imagining his inner monologue, get to work, drink a cup of coffee, delete my new emails, then go on Facebook. One of my favourite things on Facebook, apart from stalking those fuckers from school who called me Bell-armi Salami, is to check out who has written Notes lately.

There is a new ‘meme’ (nerd-speak for: ‘list of shit’) sweeping the internet at the moment, where people have to write twenty-five facts about themselves like, “I’ve never felt comfortable in crowds” or “I have loved twice and lost twice” or “I still haven’t kicked that paedophilia thing”.

Because I am a massive FB-friend-whore who ‘friends’ people I’ve met only once at parties, I get to read a whole bunch of incredibly personal and awkward confessions from virtual strangers. These are amazing, not only as a source of inspiration for future writing, but as a chance to build up my arsenal of ‘people whose lives are not as good as mine’. Because that’s what makes life rewarding.

Seachange
I’m not normally in the habit of staging 90s nostalgia revivals, but this show is AMAZING. It has Sigrid Thornton’s lopsided smile, David Wenham’s shaggy stubbled charm, cute bratty kids and Kevin Harrington who isn’t JUST my favourite character in Neighbours, but my second favourite character in Underbelly (a close second after the hilariousness that is Roberta Williams). Our house has recently invested in this box-set and let me advise you to do the same if you are a fan of HAPPY WEEPING and UNCONTROLLABLE EMOTIVE THIGH-SLAPS.

NOT
Waiting
Those of you who know me (and let’s face it, you’re probably the only ones reading this because you know I’ll test you on the contents later) will know that I have an attention span best described as ‘fox-terrier on crack’. I can only clean my room if I’m watching a TV show at the same time, something like the aforementioned Underbelly, where there are drugs and guns and angry sex to distract me from the fact that I’m doing something constructive. Similarly, if there were a prize for facebook-time-wasting, I would come second only to my friend who niftily CHANGES NETWORKS WILLY-NILLY in order to stalk as wide a pool of people as possible.

So you may understand the inherent difficulty of someone like me performing a simple task such as waiting for a bus. Therefore I have set myself a challenge for every time I find myself waiting for a bus that is running late, since challenges are known to make life more fun AND rewarding. I make myself write the first line of a crap romance novel, and so far have come up with two openers:

1. Things were frosty back at the ranch. It had come to a stage where the only place Jenny could get any thinking time was in the bath.

and

2. Ethel wondered if every marriage would feel like this, or if, yet again, she had managed to snag a dud.

And don’t get me wrong; they’re good lines. However their majesty didn’t quite make up for the time when the bus I was hailing DROVE RIGHT PAST ME despite my enthusiastic flagging and even pausing Flo Rida’s new single on my iPod. It drove right past me, this empty bus; the driver sort of shrugged at me in contempt while doing so, and I bubbled with rage best described as “primal yet ladylike”.

Only one thing could calm me down and let’s just say the theme song starts with “I don’t wanna live in the city, my friends say I am changing” and ends with “The time is right, now I’m going through a seachange”.

Ahh. Better.

I’m back at Tharunka writing a Hot or Not column. Here it is, bitches. LOVEJESS.

Barometer #1 February 2009
The Barometer is back for another year because I am back for another year, spending more time studying my very lucrative Arts degree, just waiting to nose my way into hundreds of waiting jobs in the even more lucrative Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Irish Literature Industry. Until I’m head-hunted though, here is, for your entertainment and disgust, a regular instalment of the Barometer.

The Barometer is a Hot or Not column that will help you live a socially acceptable, or at least less-nemesis-filled life. In 2008 we dealt with such important topics as: Coca Cola, ice-cream sandwiches, wedding presents, and Channel 10’s ill-fated yet brilliant programme: Taken Out.

I look forward to another year of discussing similar topics of grave interest; things with psychological and political and philosophical resonance, things like Lindsay Lohan’s new eating disorder, nougat, and why I hate public transport.

HOT
Melted cheese
My housemate did something really nice the other day. We were cleaning the house in preparation for our TOTALLY ROCKIN’ OUT AUSTRALIA DAY PARTY(!!!1!) and my other flatmate who is diabetic needed to stop and eat something to prevent passing out, whereas I needed to stop and eat something to prevent turning into Hungry Princess Bitchface. So my kind anonymous housemate, let’s just call her Waroline Callace, made us a plate of ‘quick nachos’, also known as a bowl of guacamole and some corn chips with melted cheese on them, yeah I know, it was delish.

Now I don’t know about you guys, but I would eat grilled cheese on cardboard if I ran out of bread, crackers, amusingly-sized melba toast or rice thingymajigs. I have an embarrassing obsession with the stuff; now that I’m old and musty, cheese has replaced shortbread biscuits as the sort of food my Mum used to need to hide from me as a kid if she didn’t want me to sit there, eating them solidly until I had to lie down and sob for the next four hours. I still feel a repressed pang of longing whenever I see a packet of Glengarry shortbread. Rest assured that the week I spent in Scotland over New Years was a very challenging and delicious experience.

Anyway, these nachos were amazing and then when we finished eating the corn chips, we ate the little globs of melted cheese that had dripped all over the plate, like piggy little dishwashers. And that just set the scene for a fun and patriotic Australia Day of eating, drinking and soaking in our own filth, to be outlined further below.

NOT
Falling asleep in the daytime while drunk
And here I shall continue on my little odyssey, quickly becoming quite a blatant attempt to basically tell you what i did on the weekend. We had our Australia Day party on Australia Day and decided to kick it off at noon so that everyone would be out of there by dinnertime and we could sober up for work the next day.

Things were going to plan. People got drunk by 2pm and were gradually being trundled home by their loved ones. Those of us who lived there, instead of being good hosts, had taken residence in one of two blow-up pools where we mixed two excellent things – glass and bare feet – by drinking lots of alcohol while stewing in increasingly champagne-filled water. Slowly, one by one, we staggered out, to have drunken showers and then “totally just lie down for ten minutes”. And then suddenly, we were asleep in Waroline’s room, totally dead to the world for two hours of potential partytime, and all because we were drunk and stupid and maybe had exerted ourselves too much from the continuous lifting of mugs of cider up to our mouth and drinking from them.

And here is where our cunning plan had failed. Daytime drinking, for all you impressionable first years, is an AMAZING thing to do if you stay awake for the gradual sobering process, allow yourself to be hungover between the sleeping hours of midnight and morning, and then wake up, fresh as a daisy, unaware of the World War III you liver has been subjected to overnight.

We had broken two of the cardinal rules of life:
- Thou shalt not nap after 6pm if thou dost not want to feel like crap when thou wakest
- Thou especially shalt not do this if thou is drunk to start with, thou dumbass.

We woke up hungry, sober and smack bang in the middle of a raging hangover. It was awful; we sat in front of the TV watching the people who didn’t sleep playing Wii (surprisingly un-fun), ate our body weight in pizza and paddlepops and then lay prostrate on the couch, groaning for the next two hours.

It was a hard, cold process and it will stay with me as a guide for even longer than this damn Australian flag ‘temporary’ tattoo that I stuck on my leg and now can’t seem to scrub off. Learn well, first years. Let my ongoing grievous mistakes be your opportunity for a life lesson.

Jess: So how was the fancy-dress for Purim on Wednesday?

Co-worker: It was great! I wore a tophat and a boa. There were some good costumes. Danny dressed up as Al Jonson

Jess: …in blackface?

Co-worker: Yes! He had a black suit and painted his face black and wore white gloves so his hands were white!

Jess: And no one had a problem with it?

Co-worker: Well, the kids thought he was Barack Obama.

Jess: WHAT???

Co-worker: How silly, right!?

Jess: Terrible!!!

Co-worker: Exactly. As if Barack Obama would have white hands!

There is a blind man who takes the bus.

I take the bus now. It’s a challenge.

But anyway. This blind man is always on the same bus as me. He counts out the stops with nothing but an inner ticking of logic and recognition, and depends on this and the driver’s assistance to make his way to work and back home. We all stare at him with unbridled curiousity. You know how they say that your other senses are sharpened when you lose one of the 5? Well his back must be absolutely red, raw and sunburned with curiosity right now.

But that’s not the thing I can promise you.

I can promise you that one day my curiosity will get the better of me, and I will follow the blind man home, out of an aborted and ill-thought-out urge to see if he’s:

a) faking it

b) a serial killer

c) just a nice old man.

And I will report back to you.

I have walked on hot coals, and while it was not a traumatic experience, I would not jump to do it again*.

* (That’s not meant to be a pun. I don’t mean I’m physically crippled. It didn’t hurt me or burn my skin (well not that much). It just wasn’t, like, amazingly fun the way eating icecream, seeing movies or popping those seed pops on impatients is).

It doesn’t matter what time of the day you offer it to me, I will eat grilled cheese. Day or night, on a full, bloated stomach, after a week’s worth of being bed-ridden or even if I’m super-super thirsty, I will eat it. Try me. It will be a confronting experience for you, and a delicious challenge for me.

1. Someone stumbled upon my blog after googling the term: ‘being hosed down’.

2. The following conversation I got to take part in today (I was ‘C’):
A: I had a great dream last night. Really great.
B: Oh yeah? What happened?
A: ….It’s private.
B: The only thing worse than over-share is when you say it’s private, you know.
C: Was it about Sean Connery?

FTW you guys.