It's Claire as mud

Is it temporary amnesia? Is that why I don’t recognise you? Or was it the fact that you said I love Michael Bolton/ Steve Price is an intellectual super power/ I think Campbell Newman is a fair and responsible leader/ Vaccinations aren’t necessary?

Steve Price: intellectual super power or bizarrely popular blow-hard?

Sometimes your friends or family members just come out with some comment that renders them so completely unfamiliar and unrecognisable to you that you wonder who it was that you’ve been spending all your time with for the last 18 years.

Of course time passes, people change, but usually the changes are so gradual that it takes five years for you to properly realise ‘Hey, Uncle Barry is completely bald’, when he’s actually been bypassing the services of Advanced Hair Studios all this time and shedding his crowning glory with every shower and gust of wind. You’ve probably just noticed properly because for once good old Bazza’s noggin wasn’t ear deep in the esky fishing around for the last imported beer.

Or it could be your good-time gal pal – who probably needs several days notice before conducting a blood test – declaring that she’s off the turps and her favourite food is no longer pizza, but quinoa and kale salad. Sorry, we can’t be friends anymore. What is it about kale that sends people so completely batty and seems to give them license to pontificate endlessly about green smoothies? Shut up. I should stress though, these changes are usually temporary and she’ll be passed out in a vat of chocolate mousse before you can say ‘shall we open another bottle?’

Sometimes these realisations come as such a shock and land with such a loud clang that the possibility of even continuing to tolerate the person becomes an impossibility, as it reveals their true colours for the first time. And it’s not a lovely peacock blue. The colour is usually brown, because they are a turd.

I experienced one last night. I think I have to defriend this person – not just on Facebook, but in real life too. A comment they made about a picture I posted online was so g-darn bitchy, superior and insensitive it enraged me. I think she was trying to be funny, but it just came off as nasty and made light of a situation that has caused me a bit of grief over the last 18 months. Should have seen it coming really, she’s always had a scrag streak. Well, game on, moll.

Michael Bolton: soulful crooner or exceptional cultivator of mullets?

So is it just one single comment that can completely change your mind? Or is it just the final straw that makes you recognise, ‘Oh no, you actually are a flaming beeyotch’? My husband tells me I’m overreacting and to just ignore her hideous insensitivity, but wouldn’t life be boring if we all just shrugged our shoulders and said ‘whatevs’ all the time?! I’m just bringing the entertainment.

And don’t think this concept of lapses of recognition doesn’t apply to you. You don’t have to have middle-stage dementia to not recognise yourself. Don’t tell me you haven’t woken up, looked in the mirror and shrieked: ‘Who the eff is that?” I was a smokin’ hot bitty when I went to bed last night. We’re all smokin’ hot bitties after five sav blancs.

It doesn’t even have to be visual. Saying no to a night on the tiles in favour of a chain restaurant curry and a Graham Norton rerun recently left me in tears, despite his guest Miriam Margolyes being the funniest person alive, because I no longer recognised myself… what kind of sad sack am I choosing to stay at home, in my jimjams, eating curry, to watch a bitchy Englishman? Actually when you put it like that it sounds pretty good.

Hey, Victoria Secrets! Did you know that there are ways you can describe your clothing and accessories other than sexy? Who knew a pea-coat or ugg boots could be sexy, until they stumbled upon the US underwear site? I understand VS has made its name by selling ladies undergarments and unmentionables, but they have since branched into clothing that isn’t really sitting at the sexy end of the sartorial spectrum.

While looking for a pair of yoga pants – or fancy tracky daks if we’re being honest – I was stunned to see them described as sexy. Along with a suggested t-shirt, which was also meant to be sexy. I could have also bought a pair of sexy sports socks. Well my oh my, a bit of terry towelling can heat things up, but I was thinking more in the ‘geez, it’s cold, I’m going to put some socks on’ kinda way and not the bow-chika-bow-wow way. Soxy.

If there is such a thing as a sexy onesie, this might be it.

Getting my cleavage out is the least of my concerns when I’m at the gym, so why are so many sports bras at Lorna Jane and its ilk boasting about their boosting qualities? Gyms ain’t sexy. They certainly don’t smell sexy. And I don’t know about you, but staving off hernias while heaving weights over my head certainly doesn’t get me feeling amorous… so I don’t really feel the need to waggle my boosies around while concentrating on not vomiting or stopping my lungs from exploding. I’m curious to know why you would want your sports bra to have the ability to also boost your cleavage right out of your sweaty gym singlet. I’m not even blessed in the chest department, but I still want those suckers strapped down when I’m hopping up and down in gym class like a deranged jumping bean. Better our fun bags be bound and bandaged and still sitting on the right side of our belts in 40 years, rather than hoisted high with more engineering that required for the Story Bridge and being tucked into our underpants on our 70^th birthdays.

Why on earth does everything have to be sexy? I’ve never been one to aspire to be sexy. I’m usually happy with merely presentable or ‘look, she managed to get out of the house without wearing her breakfast’, but I’m starting to get exhausted by the constant expectation that everyone and everything needs to be sexy all the time. I’ll tell you what, cleaning the cat’s litter tray ain’t sexy and neither is having to drag out the very full garbage bins – not everything can be sexy.

What I’d like to know is, if you go about your day dressed in a sexy manner and acting in a sexy way, what do you do if and when you turn it on? This must be what it’s like to live in an episode of Jersey Shore. Cue the stripper shoes and copious confidence drinking. Vom.

Or, hey erotically-interesting, incredibly intelligent and endlessly fascinating woman!

I don’t mean to bag out being sexy, there really is nothing wrong with it at appropriate times and places (yes, I am a prude), but must it be all day, every day, with everything and everyone?

Sisters, surely we can aspire to be more than just sexy day in, day out or at least use more imaginative adjectives.

Autumn has arrived, well, slightly less warm Summer has arrived in Queensland.  Everyone knows we only have two proper seasons here.  Nine months of Summer (including three months of slightly less warm Summer – it ain’t Spring, because it’s still humid. Who needs a percentage? Just look at my stupid hair) and then three months of autumn with a week’s worth of slightly colder autumn thrown in.

And with a new season arrives new considerations.  New wardrobe choices, new television viewing schedules, new fruit options – or less fruit options (come back mangoes!), and new drinking choices – yes, I will start drinking my white wine without ice in it. 

While change can be exciting, it can also be inconvenient.  For example, my online shopping habit is getting out of control, but there is so much stuff out there that I need.  And everyone knows that stuff makes your life better.  Duh.

My (apparent) previous style muse. Get it girl.

I think I’m having some sort of rainbow-hued clothing backlash, because following several years of accumulating a wardrobe that looks like a gay pride parade exploded in my cupboard, but with less glitter and tight, short pants, I cannot stop buying black clothing.

It hasn’t been a conscious decision, but I think I must be now trying to channel a glamorous-mysterious-woman-at-a-wake vibe to counter the packet-of-fruit-lifesavers vibe I’ve been giving off in recent years.  However, there has been a disturbing amount of leather panelling making appearances in my purchases.  I’m either thinking about taking up motor-cross in my spare time, or I’m trying to sartorially embody the Sons of Anarchy and Suzy Quatro.  And to go with all this black wearing, it means I now MUST wear make-up, lest I look like some superannuated emo. 

Gee, my life is hard.

Leather Tuscadero… she knows what’s up in the sartorial stakes!

What has the new season brought you?

I am loving my new digital radio sick!  There is a Pop Asia station, a Pop Arab station, the stock standard radio stations and my most favourites: the 80’s station and the 90’s station.  Oooh yeah, give me some of that Spandau Ballet and INXS ‘The Swing’ while I’m cleaning the house.  I’m sure my neighbours are thoroughly enjoying my shrieking of ‘You are GOLD – Ahhhhhh!’ over the top of the vacuum cleaner din.  There’s something so enjoyable about discovering an old song that you didn’t know… it means there is (sometimes) a whole back catalogue of that artist or band you can delve into and you’re not just stuck with the one album, waiting impatiently for the next one to come out.

While I always knew I was a pretty big dag, my discovery of the delights of Chaka Khan and The Commodores left me wondering where I sit on the trend-setting scale… or ‘Seriously, How Big a Dag Am I?’ scale.

I’m trying to remember back to my uni days and our mass communications subject and recall the different groups that develop and adopt trends and which order they come in, but seeing as that was grumble-grumble years ago and I threw out all my uni notes in a ‘ha-ha I won’t ever have to feel bad for watching TV when I should be studying again’ fit, I can’t tell you exactly what they are.  But I’m hoping I can remember the gist and it might find me an answer:

1)      The Trend-setters… if we’re talking fashion and make-up; true trend-setters should look almost unsettling to the average person’s eye.  They would have started wearing the latest round of crop tops probably six months after they were declared a fashion faux pas last time.  For bringing them back, they should be shot.  Lady Gaga is a true trend-setter – it’s probably been about five years since she stopped wearing pants, and look at your local bar or even shopping centre today – there are now plenty of people not wearing pants.  Bad Gaga, but boy do you make a catchy tune.

Maybe she’s going out shopping for some pants?

2)      The Aspirationals… this is probably where Hipsters fall on the trend setting spectrum and represent about 20% of the population. See hipsters – you ain’t that cool.  They’re all yammering about how awesome Snap-Chat is, while the rest of us are still trying to figure out what the point of Pinterest is.  They’ll be at the opening of new bars and telling you that cider is so 2011.  Meanwhile, the Trend-setters are running some password only night club that can only be entered through an abandoned port-a-loo and drinking Oval-tinis (that is a martini made out of Ovaltine) out of spray guns, while wearing bustles and monocles.  I make fun of the Aspirationals, but they bring the trends to the masses and make wearing no pants in public and dressing like a hobo a perfectly acceptable proposition.

3)      The Herd… you might think you’re Aspirational because you’re into Argentinian BBQ, drinking cocktails out of mason jars (I swear if I hear about mason jars one more time, I will pickle the offenders lips in a mason jar), wear shoes with no socks, and call your daughter Ruby, but I’m afraid you’re not… you’re part of the masses.  You’re amongst the herd.  You’re 60% of the population.  You ain’t cool.  You’re average.  Get over it.  It’s really nothing to be embarrassed about.  While you’re sitting at the local pub – in pants – waiting for your turn at karaoke or bar trivia, be grateful you’re not at a dodgy bar lining up 20 minutes for some spiced rum and warm cola (because they have no fridge, because using electronics is like so bad for the environment) with a pack of Aspirationals with questionable hygiene habits and stoopid hats that could poke you in the eye.

4)      The Followers… please don’t mistake these folk for Kool-Aid drinking, friends of Tom Cruise just because of their name.  These folk are bringing up the rear of the trend-setting pattern.  These 10 percenters are doing us a big favour in telling us when enough is enough, ie: put your pants back on.  This probably includes things like references to ‘Gangnam Style’ within the last 12 months or people who still think saying ‘yeah, baby’ and dressing up like Austin Powers for costume parties is relevant.

No, baby!! No!!!

5)      The Tail-enders…I think they were properly referred to as Stragglers, but I don’t think that’s fair.  My belief is, the true Tail-enders will never adapt to a trend.  They live beyond trends and just do their own thing.  This five percent are truly unique… so much so, they are probably making the trends and could possibly be confused as Trend-setters… just with pants.

Listing this hasn’t helped me work it out.  I think I could qualify as a Tail-ender, but I know I care too much about what other people think of me to truly be that, it’s just that I’m too scared to venture out without pants.  I’m probably bringing up the rear of the Herd.  Moo.  I always thought I was a total cow anyway.

Where do you fit on the ‘Seriously.  How Big a Dag Am I?’ scale?

Oooh, public transport you are a treat.  Annoying, unreliable, smelly and downright uncomfortable at times, but good gravy are you entertaining – kind of like a Lindsay Lohan on wheels/tracks.

I understand why people loathe the bus, train, jalopy ride home at the end of a long day in the trenches, but I love it.  I don’t even need a book to pass the time, because it’s so damn amusing.

Smokes-a-lot-lady doesn’t look quite this glamorous and probably has a few less teeth…

Smokes-a-lot lady isn’t a regular, but she pops up every now and again and is quite the treat even if she is giving herself and everyone around her cancer.  Smokes-a-lot lady is a resident of the halfway house on our bus route and I am assuming she has had a pretty hard life, so I think she figures: if I wanna smoke on the bus, I’m gonna smoke on the bus.  And she does, much to the upset of the driver and all asthmatic passengers and much to the amusement of everyone else.  Smokes-a-lot-lady grabs her seat up the front, lights up her dart, ignoring the protests of the driver and then proceeds to hold a one woman comedy show, dishing out classics like: ‘Can men get pregnant?  Of course they can, Bill Shorten’s in Labor’… boom-tish.  She’s here every Thursday, folks.  You might say ‘why doesn’t the driver toss her off the bus?’, well she is frequently asked to put out her ciggies or to exit the vehicle, but her tiny 50kg frame manages to scare off the burly bus driver’s 120kg frame when he sees how few teeth she still owns and thinks: ‘you should see the other guy.’  Yes, I might exit the bus smelling like I’m exiting a night club circa 1999, but it’s worth it for the Nicotine Queen’s antics.

Loud-declarations-of-love man (LDOLM) is a relatively new addition to the bus gang.  A clean-cut professional looking gent in his early twenties catches the bus each morning with Helen of Troy… well, you’d think she was the way he carries on.  It would be quite sweet if it wasn’t so vomit inducing.  LDOLM spends most of his bus trip burying his nose in Helen’s (not her real name) hair, whispering sweet nothings in her ear and lovingly stroking her cheek… I spend my bus trip trying not to lose my cornflakes.  He gets off the bus before Helen and outside the bus, plants his hand on Helen’s window and screams ‘I love you, Kaylene!!’  Kaylene at least has the nous to look completely mortified each and every day this happens, yet he continues to do it.  I never knew a woman called Kaylene could inspire such an outpouring of adoration.  No offence to all the Kaylenes out there.  I figure this is great stuff when I write my new millennium Thorn Birds.

Sadly, my favourite bus buddy seems to have moved (or got wind of the fact I was obsessively posting about her on FaceBook everyday).  Some of you may already be familiar with Inappropriately Aged Hello Kitty Lady or IAHKL, but for those who aren’t, IAHKL is a gift from the overly eyeshadowed gods.  I guessed that IAHKL held a job in a fairly professional office environment, as she carried a smart-looking handbag and satchel with her every morning… oh, but did I mention that her satchel and handbag were adorned with everyone’s favourite Japanese feline, Hello Kitty?  Perhaps the level of professionalism drops a notch with every embossed Hello Kitty on your Louis Vuitton rip off bag (maybe it was the kitties that gave it away?) and every speck of glitter on your eyelids at 8am.  IAHKL is a lady in her mid to late 30’s and she’s definitely a girly girl, so much so she’d make Dolly Parton look butch.  I didn’t think it was possible to dress in a way that makes you the human embodiment of fairy floss, but IAHKL proved me wrong.

This is the very bag IAHKL used to carry to work everyday…teamed up with her stripper shoes!

Now don’t go thinking IAHKL was some sort of pushover, just because of her penchant for pink.  IAHKL did not jump on the bus dancing on rainbows, humming ‘Girl from Ipanema’, handing out lollipops and having her Kitty handbags carried by some accommodating Disney bluebirds. IAHKL was a perfumed steamroller.  Most days she would manage to yell at the poor bus driver who was just having trouble computing if it were possible for a human being to wear more jewellery or how she kept her eyelids open with such monstrous eyelash extensions.  Granted, our buses were usually late, but whaddya gonna do?  It’s Brisbane public transport – it’s always late and if it wasn’t late, I wouldn’t get my morning fix of entertainment if IAHKL didn’t come crashing on the bus in her clear Perspex stripper-platforms and sparkly sassy pants and yell at the driver.

So please take these tales as a sign of hope for your own daily commute.  Put down your phone or your book and open your eyes to the wonderful characters around you on the transport system.  Of course, you might be praying ‘please don’t let them sit next to me’ and you would be right to do so, but it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy their company from a distance.

What are your favourite public transport tales?

Apparently we all need a past-time, but what happens when a hobby or interest rears its ugly head and becomes bad for you? I had to ask myself this question now that all my favourite past-times have passed me by.

My new favourite past-time is figuring out different scenarios where I get to punch the smug off Tony Jones’s face.

You might ask if my hobby was headbanging to some speed metal, seeing how long I can stand on my head or perhaps repeatedly running my noggin into a brick wall, but it was none of those things. You see, I enjoy yelling at the television. And unfortunately I got myself so gee-darned worked up – I was watching Q&A, don’t tell me that’s not the televisual equivalent of a red rag to a bull – that I must have busted some capillaries in my personal hat rack. Luckily I was watching it in bed and just crawled under the doona to leave my very left leaning husband to continue groaning every time the LNP panelist dare utter a word. But maybe it’s the start of my new favourite past-time, which is getting cranky at Tony Jones. That man is the most useless facilitator, with the most heightened air of self importance and misdirected smugness I have ever witnessed.

I’ve also recently given up voting on election day. I used to LOVE election day. I love the power we wield. Oh and the cake stalls and sausage sizzles ain’t bad. But…our polling booth at the local high school is a crap sandwich. Do not have me stand in line, in the sun for an hour, pretending to be interested in the flyer being pressed into my hand by the poor, deluded soul working for the Palmer United party, and then when I get out not even have one piece of coconut ice I can buy. You giant dingbats! So now I postal vote – whether I’m in town or not. Because I am not getting skin cancer just to vote, or find out there are no BBQed onions to enjoy at the end of that rigmarole.

Because I’m sure pulling out riding-up underpants and digging-in underwire makes you an AWESOME footy player.

My final favourite past-time got completely destroyed by the sisterhood I was trying to (non) heroically defend. At the races, I was arguing with a former workmate about how disgusting the Lingerie Football League was, and he was (not very convincingly) arguing that he was going to enjoy a night of sport and the ‘athleticism’ of the participants. I indignantly insisted he wouldn’t be attending if it weren’t for the ‘uniforms’ the players were required to ‘wear’ while playing, which made him a sexist pig and why did so many sports being played by women require them to end up in skimpy outfits that were completely impractical for the activity they were engaging in? Feeling pretty smug and satisfied at my participation in my favourite hobby of the feminist rant and with a captive audience no less, three ladies from our group stumbled up, fascinators askew, to gleefully inform the entire group that there were male shirtless waiters over in another marquee ‘that you wouldn’t kick out of bed for farting’. Thank you, sisters. My former workmate said these could be the new recruits to my blue stocking brigade. Oh shut up, boofhead. Feminist rant smugness and self-righteousness OVAH.

What past times have you had to give up and why?

So there are kooky friends, irritating and unreasonable neighbours, odd bods on the bus, fruitcakes on the train and cuckaloopas at the bank, but I believe the cream of the crop, when it comes to fully fledged nutbags, are the more eccentric of our workmates.

Some people might equate spending at least eight hours a day at work with passing time in an insane asylum, but having a complete fruit loop for a colleague definitely moves the workplace into sanitarium territory.

Real workplaces are so much worse…

Anyone that has spent any time in paid or voluntary work has spent time with a certifiable nut bar, but a small (not even that nutty) incident today made me think about some of my favourites over the years.

1) The woman who sent a dirty email to me by accident then got angry at me for reading it when I replied to it saying ‘I think this was meant for someone else’. Ew and oi… my mind was just poisoned with thoughts of your next encounter with your man of the moment; I don’t need you sending an abusive email to follow it up. Don’t blame me for writing the precursor to 50 shades of the biggest load of crap I’ve ever read – that’s on you, Anais.

2) The woman who accused one of our lovely workmates of trying to kill her because she’d Glen 20’ed her desk

Glen 20? Or murder weapon?

after previously working at it. Of course our innocent friend was supposed to know that in addition to being allergic to chocolate, gluten, dairy, and fruit rendering her unable to drink a can of lemonade lest she die of anaphylaxis from all the ‘real lemon juice’ in Sprite, Sneezy McFakesit was also horribly allergic to Glen 20. Her chronic hypochondria ended up with our workmate receiving a formal warning for her attempt to ‘murder’ the victim in question. This is only one chapter in the book of cray cray and her wonderful, litigious adventures and this is a blog, not a tome so I will save the rest for another time.

3) During cultural awareness training, I was lucky enough to encounter the gentleman who took it upon himself to share his ability to do sign language along to the tune of ‘My Island Home’. Ok, a little odd you might say, but when the resulting performance resembled more of an interpretive dance it exercised more than just the room’s cultural awareness, but also their ability to not laugh at one of the most hilarious things that existed on the planet. I still have ulcers that flare up every now and again from how hard I had to bite the inside of my cheek, lest I shriek with laughter and slightly wet myself. Mind you, should I be surprised at this behaviour, when this is the same gentleman that:• thought antiperspirant deodorant is optional in a Queensland Summer. Tip, it is not;

• frequently announced to the room that he needed ‘to go pee pee’. No he was not a five year old boy;

• upon his first day at the workplace, proceeded to introduce himself to a full team meeting with the Vulcan hand signal. Oh dear; and

• chucked an actual hold-his-breath tantrum when people had the audacity of giggling during his workplace health and safety talk. Well, whaddya want from us? You talked about how a workplace accident caused someone to pull a muscle in their ‘buttocks’… you’re talking about bums and said the word buttocks. Hilarious!

4) The beeyotch that had the audacity to ask me why I hadn’t started one of her pet projects, in a team meeting this morning. Well, I haven’t started your stoopid crappy project because:

• you’ve never come to talk to me about it;

• it’s not due until November; and

• I have slightly more pressing items – like a document required by law to produce and managing six people.

Since when do team members get to say patronising things to managers like ‘we get the picture, you’re busy’… yeah. I am, Scrag-face. So back orf.

Ok, this last one wasn’t that bad, but it still gave me the poops.

As infuriating as all these individuals with multiple personalities are at the time, I can’t help but look back at them with some fondness… even if it’s just to use them as a straight-jacket yardstick.

*Thank you to the lovely friends and family who made wonderful blog topic suggestions. They have been filed away for future lack of workmate douchebaggery.

Why can’t real life be more like a television show? So unfair.

While my friends are completely delightful, I would relish the opportunity to spend my days lolling around a bar or coffee shop Happy Endings, Friends or Sex and the City style exchanging snappy one-liners with my super trendy, zeitgeisty pals in fabulous clothing, not having a real job and not turning into a fatty boombatty from all the cosmos or lattes I’m drinking.

‘Oh my God, Samantha, I can’t believe you’d sleep with Tony Abbott.’

And why, when I sing karaoke do people not jump up and clap along and spontaneously dance to my crooning, like they would if I were a contestant on the Voice.  By the way, why won’t Delta cover up her side boobs? – makes me puke.  Sorry, I digress.  The reason people don’t clap along when I sing might have more to do with the fact that it sounds like someone is twisting a cows’ udder around a rose bush than the fact that I don’t exist in a tv show.  But then again, the inability to sing never stopped old Madge now, did it?  And besides, Pump up the Jam is more of a rap than a song, so I’m still good.

And when I’m cooking things, why do my dishes look like poop on a plate, with a side of garden clippings, not like those peeps on My Kitchen Sucks Balls.  And tell me how come they never look red and sweaty when they’re cooking?  I generally look like a beetroot when I’m pottering around in the kitchen: my least favourite room in the house, other than the epiphany toilet which is our modern day outhouse, used by boys only – yucky.

The wistfulness for living in a teev show came after what started as what was meant to be a completely uneventful Sunday morning walk with the dog, but resulted in a concussion, a grazed chin and a mushed knee-cap…mine, not the dogs. In my defence, it had been raining and the ground was slippery, but I am also atrociously clumsy.  Always have been.

I have talked about very mild super powers or VMSPs before and I should include another one on my list: the ability to trip over nothing.  I have broken my toes/ feet three times from walking into doorways, running in a straight line and getting my toe caught in a gym’s cross trainer then fainting; I burned my leg so badly I had to wear burns dressing for three month; and I am usually harbouring some sort of large bruise on my person from walking into things or falling over things or just falling over and no, there generally isn’t alcohol involved.

Goddamn you ZD! You still look cute when you fall over in the most heinous outfit known to man.

It was when I was rolling around on a wet driveway, trying to stop a squirmy spaniel from running away and thinking ‘late-early thirties is too old to cry when you’ve hurt yourself’, that it dawned on me that if I’d stacked it on a tv show, it would have been a little bit more cute, quirky and endearing and I’d probably be Zooey Deschanel and have perfect winged eyeliner, even though I was just walking the dog.

Why oh why can’t my physical misfortunes be charming like those delightfully klutzy tv characters – not only would people stop saying ‘Claire, why are you such a spaz?’, but I also probably wouldn’t suffer grazed knees – an injury no one over the age of 12 should suffer.

So what happens on the teev that you wish happens in real life? Or am I the only square-eyed tragic?

I always knew Miss Piggy and I were kindred spirits – we both do yoga

Ohhhhmmmm…my God, I’ve become someone I don’t even recognise.  I have started doing yoga and I’m actually enjoying it.  Hate to say it, but I tend to enjoy the type of exercise that involves being yelled at by someone, punching things, whipping skipping ropes and shipping ropes around a room and biking/jumping up and down at the back of a class, giggling, while others up the front woohoo through the endorphin high.  Nerds!  Being the very unbendy person I am, I was also surprised I was able to do most things the lovely Jacqui teaches us and I like any exercise you can pretty much do in your pyjamas and involves 10 minutes of lying down at the end.

But, all this cobra-ing, downward facing dog-ging, and lotus flower-ing is not helping me with my anger at the moment.  I can’t remember being this effing cranky for quite some time.  That’s because, while I have been doing yoga, I have also been forced to do the most pointless and ineffectual activity known to man and that is trying to reason with a completely unreasonable person – correction – people.

So why do I continue beating my head against the proverbial wall, when banging my head against an actual wall would be so much more pleasant, because at least I’d knock myself out eventually?  Because I’m not a millionaire.  That’s why.  If I was rich, I wouldn’t have to work and I wouldn’t have to talk to flipping pooheads, who have no idea what they’re talking about, but seem to continually tell me they’re awesome at their job.

While I sat on a teleconference this afternoon, I’m ashamed I considered letting the sisterhood down by faking a cry to end the insanity.  Sorry girls, but I can’t vomit or faint on command, so I was left with having a sook.  You’ll be proud to know I didn’t, but I now having a splitting headache because I didn’t get to do anything dramatic.  NO FAIR.

Is there anything more frustrating than listening to someone telling you they’re listening to you, when they are so obviously not?  Grrr.  I feel like kicking something… mainly a six foot American who uses way too many exclamation points and smiley faces in emails for a man.

I will not go into details of the other person who is annoying me, but I will say that karma better be a bitch.  A big fat, vengeful, nasty, arse-kicking bitch, with long nails and bad breath.

Maybe I need to follow more closely in Piggy footsteps and take up karate. Heeeeeya!

Anyway, so now I’ve had my rant, I’m wondering how I can get the Zen happening and reap the benefits of yoga and become someone who talking in that nice breathy, yoga way and be all ‘whatever will be, will be’.  I shall ponder this while I stomp home listening to something really relaxing like Metallica or the Presets.

Anyways, namaste, beeyotches.  I’m going to go and punch something now.

It might be hip to be square, but it seems to be even hipper to wear a tutu with an Abraham Lincoln hat and Dunlop Volleys at the moment and read Jack Kerouac, while riding a fixie, smoking a pipe and taking photos on your vintage Polaroid.

Oooh, Bondi Hipsters, I love-hate you.

Yep, this is how hipsters dress and behave.  Maybe I’d save myself a lot of time in the morning if I just went over to my Mum’s place, pulled out the ol’ dress-up box (weren’t they the best?!), dump the contents on the floor and roll around in it for a while and just wear whatever I come out in.

Maybe if I wore paisley palazzo pants, with a turban, a brocade vest, giant smoke effect glasses with jelly sandals to work every day I would have a totally cool job like creative director for a lifestyle agency, copywriting ninja (I am not joking, I have seen the business card) or queen of the wankers.  Instead, I am currently wearing a jacket, dress and court shoes and wishing I had a split TV screen so I can watch My Kitchen Sucks and Masterchef Egomaniacs, I mean Professionals, at the same time instead of drafting up a terribly exciting media statement on parasitic worms – sexay!

Okay, she’s adorable, but why is she wearing ears?!

I mean really.  You cannot have a normal job if you wear stuff like this or if a hat is part of your daily wear and you’re not a park ranger, construction worker or Village Person.

Hats aren’t even the worst of it… those little cat ears on headbands.  What is that about?  Is everyone going to an animal costume party and I’m not invited?!  Nofair!!  I have a bee costume leftover from Halloween that I’m dying to wear.

My bee costume… as if that’s not more adorable than cat ears. It even has a fat tummy to hide my food bebe.

Did any of you see the episode of Happy Endings, where the hilarious Penny mistakenly got into a relationship with a hipster?  I say mistakenly, because he picked her up in the Laundromat (do they even exist in the real world anymore?  Or is it just in sitcom narratives?) in her laundry day outfit thinking that was the way she normally dressed – ie like a hobo, without a dog on a string.  See, apparently that’s attractive to hipsters.  What the what?

Oh Penny… you’re one dog on a string away from being a hobo.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but I do not get how young people dress today.  I’m definitely getting old, because I’m about to sound like a great aunt or a granny, but why don’t young people want to look nice anymore?

Yes, I have shallow tendencies, but I would imagine most people agree with me when I say that if you look nice, you feel nice.  I’m not saying that life isn’t worth living if you don’t look like Miranda Kerr, but a bit of effort, brushed hair, a slick of lippie – I’m not here to judge, the fellas can go for it too – makes you feel so much better.  Maybe this is why hipsters don’t like much.  They’re in a terrible funk, because they smell so funky and look like they got caught in a tornado at St Vinnie’s.

What I find funny about hipsters is that they would never admit they were a hipster… they just have subversive interests and have always had a passion for ant farms in vintage terrariums and crocheting underpants.

I swear hipsters are taking over the world and I think there are so many of them now, that they’re not even cool anymore.

I’m the cool one… yep, me in my Target dress, with my Sportscraft handbag and Cancer Council sunglasses.  I don’t use Instagram and I listened to Rick James, non-ironically, on my walk into work this morning.  Yeah, suck it hipsters.  Your days are over.  Me and my mainstream buddies are going to ride our geared pushbikes, in our polished shoes, listening to MP3s right over the top of your bootlegged vinyl, jump up and down on your Dr Zhivago hats and make you dance around our handbags to Kylie Minogue.  So there.  Hipster revolution OVAH!

I am so playing this next time I go to the West End markets!

** Apologies for all the pics, but hipsters offer rich pickings when it comes to visuals and I cut down as much as I could!