Freudian Slips

I left my sunglasses in a bag full of spices I bought yesterday. I forgot about them until this afternoon, and now I can't go into the sun without smelling like garam masala.

It's a fairly common contrivance in crappy sitcoms/beef in a lad's mag for one partner (let's call them Partner A) to say to the other "hey, for this upcoming inane event that is vaguely relevant to the story at hand, let's not worry about presents. We both have to save money for whatever it is the writer says we're saving for." Partner B, blithely unaware of the impending doom, agrees to this proposal, because, while he is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, he now and then tries to comply with his partner's wishes in an effort to bring them a brief moment of happiness.

The big day arrives, and Partner A unveils an impeccably selected gift. "I know I said we shouldn't worry," Partner A says, "but I thought that I would get this for you because I love you." Expectation hangs heavy in the air as Partner B realises with horror that the aforementioned proposal was actually A MANIPULATIVE TEST OF LOVE AND DEVOTION that he was destined to fail from the very beginning, simply by doing what he was told. Hilarity/drama ensues as Partner A flounces off in a huff and the dunderheaded Partner B talks about how men are from Mars and women are from Venus, or whatever.

The sitcom/article comes to an end, and you're left thinking "that wouldn't happen in real life. And even if it did, I wouldn't fall into that trap. What a ridiculously inaccurate portrayal of relationships."

To that, all I can say is HEED THIS LESSON, and always have an emergency gift stored away. Trust me.

GOD DAMN IT WHY DID I SAY THAT I WOULD POST EVERY DAY THE DAY BEFORE I WENT OUT FOR MY BOSS' BIRTHDAY AND NOW I'M HOME AND TIRED AND MORE THAN SLIGHTLY DRUNK.

In conclusion: tapas and drinking are a bad combination. Despite what you might think, you NEVER order enough. And while everyone's polite at first, if you don't spear that final meatball or piece of asparagus you'll be even more ravenous than everyone else. I've been eating Easter eggs for the last half hour to stave off the hunger pangs.

I have approximately 50 little plastic sleeves containing a condom and a sachet of lubricant in my bag. I hope they don't fall out all over the place when I visit an important client tomorrow. The obvious thing to do would be to take them out of my bag, but...you know.

Oh god and I don't have a shirt ironed for tomorrow and I shouldn't even be WEARING a collared shirt tomorrow because it's Casual Friday and...oh god it's all too much. I'm going to bed. Thank you for your time.

Hello little blog. Sorry for ignoring you. I am a bad and neglectful parent. I have decided to make a pledge to blog every day for at least a week, so let's see how THAT goes. Because my life is devoid of anything that could remotely be called "interesting," here are the ten songs that got played the most on my MP3 player over the last month:

Girls Aloud - Crocodile Tears. The best song on their latest album, I've told anyone who cares to listen that Garbage could have added a few guitars to this song and chucked it on their third album. Nobody seems to believe me yet. It's bruised and broken but completely spiteful at the same time, and as a psychologist I have to love a whole lot of mixed emotions.

Alba y Marta - Bicho Raro. I had been playing the song on a continuous loop for about a week, and was particularly taken by the title ("rare tiny beast," apparently), so imagine my horror when I decided to look for it online only to find that it was sung by two pudgy pre-pubescent girls in matching stripey jumpsuit...THINGS.

Rogue Traders - The Price We Pay. Ignore the wobbliness on the above version, the album cut is beautiful, with a lovely hiss and crackle over the vocals. Not nearly as obnoxious as anything else they've done, but it hits you between the eyes just as hard. Insane string section for the win!

Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend. OMG AVRIL'S SINGING IN GERMAN. I don't think I will EVER get tired of this song, and I make no apologies.

Dolly Parton - Drive Me Crazy. I always kind of forget how horrifying Dolly Parton looks close up. Sorry about that. Obviously the original is a classic song, but I believe that just about anything is improved with a little bit of fiddle and a hoe-down at the end.

Britney Spears - Get Back. Anyone who knows me will know that I am no sort of dancer. But I tell you what, this makes me want to grind myself against someone like nobody's business. Too much information? Obviously my love for Britney will show no bounds EVER, no matter how hard it gets to defend her.

MGMT - Kids. Mmm, home-made video, complete with KISS make-up and sassy dancing weatherman. NEVERTHELESS, the song has ear-wormed its way into my midbrain; I find this one surprisingly joyous when I'm walking through the city late at night. Try it, you know you want to.

Linda Sundblad - Lose You. Courtesy of the lovely Edward O (come back, the Internet misses you!). Poor Linda, reduced to singing on BingoLotto, or LottoBingo or whatever it is. And grooving quite vigorously to a song that shouldn't be grooved to; this sort of grim inevitability needs you to stare at your shoes and maybe shed a tear or two.

Weeping Wilows - The Burden.  Oh, my breaking heart. Also courtesy of Mr O.

Janet Jackson - Rollercoaster. Even more horrifying than Dolly Parton, and about fifty billion times less relevant, here's one of two good songs off Janet's new album (which has about 50 million tracks on it, last time I checked). That clunky mechanical noise that churn on and on through the song's entirety should technically make me want to rip my ears from my head, and there's almost no bassline to speak of, but this is really quite giddy, thrilling stuff.

What have all of you been listening to?

I remember crying when some other kid in my kindergarten class ate my lunch order because he was stupid and mistook my name for his. At least, that was the story at the time. Looking back on it, I can see why he would prefer my meat pie to his egg salad sandwich (which I was forced to gag on as I sat in the shade and watched the other children play), but I do remember thinking at the time that it was pretty idiotic not to be able to read. I mean, HE WAS FIVE YEARS OLD.

I cried in Miss Madrigal's Music Appreciation Class too. When taking the roll, Miss Madrigal would play a happy tune on the piano and we would be required to sing back at her (it was amusing when I was five, okay?). One day, she thought I wasn't there and played the sad "someone isn't here" music when she got to my name. That was enough to set me off.

I cried at Year Four camp because I was homesick and hated orienteering and bushwalking and bikeriding.

Looking back on things, I was quite the wimp.

I think I've tended to cry less these days, though I can certainly pull out the red-raw eyes and snotty nose when need be. I bawled when I was dumped by Mr Surly, the first love of my life. I trundled up the Princes Highway, my vision blurred with tears when The Aviator went back to America. Cry cry cry, boo hoo etc.

The last time I cried in any significant manner was when the universe conspired to make it look like S would be booted out of the country. On the day we found out, we watched a movie that was essentially Brokeback Mountain: Shanghai Surprise (without Madonna, obv) that, with its lighthearted theme of love suddenly snatched cruelly away, didn't put me in the best frame of mind. We'd spent the whole long weekend together, and as I set off I tried to say to S that "I hope he wasn't TOO sick of me," but to my horror my voice cracked and the tears started. I ran away to the bus stop, and snuffled all the way home.

Today, after a particularly horrific week at work that has left my faith in mankind seriously shaken, and where I would be happy if I never had to deal with any sort of legal representative or business owner EVER AGAIN, I was just thinking how nice it would be to cry and get out all of the stress that had bottlenecked inside me.

The tears never came, and I spent most of today with a massive lump in my chest that refused to shift, and in fact grew bigger as the hostile phone calls kept coming. I fled the office about two hours early and wandered the streets of the city, trying to suck in enough air to fill my lungs and shake the feeling that they'd been compressed to singularities in my chest.

I did tear up a little in the end, though it was on the train on the way home, and it was over a copy of The Big Issue (which is a totally great magazine and you should totally buy if you don't already and I'l lget down off my soapbox now). Comments from homeless people about how the magazine is great because it "helps hopeless causes like me" never fail to do it to me.

I don't really know what the point of this post was, but I'm off to Melbourne for five days so it'll have to do.

Dear S,

It's already been established that you're great. Wonderful, even. And goodness knows it would terrible and selfish of me to ask you to change in any way.

Now that we've established that, can I please ask you to (and I really can't believe I'm writing about this) refrain from grabbing my cock in public? Or, if not refrain, then at least tone it down a little?  I'm getting bruises here, and I'm a little afraid that it's going to start getting all mushy.

Your grabs are both expected and startling, a combination that makes the sensation even less pleasant; as we walk down a main street/stand next to each other on a crowded bus/wander through the nursery at Bunnings, every fibre of my being is primed for your next attack. I did this experiment in first year uni that required me to be hooked up to a machine that administered electric shocks at random intervals, and it was the horrible expectation of shocks that made them SO MUCH WORSE when they came. This is my life with you at the moment. Well, not ALL the time obviously. Just when we're in public. Crotch-grabbing is very much encouraged when we're having private time (too much information?).

I'm really not sure how to rectify the problem. While it is vaguely flattering that you pay so much attention to what lies beneath, it is troublesome at times. You know, when you make a grab at me at the supermarket, only for both of us to be extremely mortified when a little old lady rounds the corner and sees the whole thing. And yet SHAME DOES NOT SEEM TO WORK ON YOU. You will blush, say "how embarrassing" (while I hiss that I TOLD you that this was GOING TO HAPPEN someday), and then make another grab at me in the breakfast cereal aisle as a pleasant Indian couple wander into view. AARGH.

Maybe it's time for some electro-shock therapy of my own. Don't think I won't do it.

In a move to try and suppress my constant hate-filled RAGE make myself a better person, I started going to meditation classes a couple of weeks ago. It's all the rage in psychological practice these days, and after reading article upon article about Buddhist monks with super-thick cerebral cortices, I figured I had nothing to lose. 3NL@RG3 UR C3R3BR@L C0RT3X, @SK M3 H0W.

My resolve was tested from the get-go, as it was pissing down with rain on the first night and my left shoe rapidly started taking on water through a previously undiscovered hole in the heel. However, I squelched onwards, undeterred despite soggy feet and wet branches flicking me in the face.

My confidence in this most noble and sacred of practises was further tested when I walked into the meditation room and saw, front and centre, a fold-out table piled high with books for sale; they all had pastel covers and titles such as "Achieving the Happiness of the Jade Lotus." Next to this was the "donations" pot, which I saw was stuffed with 50 dollar notes. What price eternal happiness?

The stackable chairs were arranged in a tight little semicircle around another, slightly larger stackable chair, next to which was a small particleboard table adorned only with a cheap plastic tablecloth and a small golden bell. Intriguing.

I sat down and avoided eye contact with people until it was time to start. Having read up on these classes before attending, I was expecting someone with an exciting name like Kelsang Dornying to float out in saffron coloured robes and sit cross-legged before us before dispensing his pearls of wisdom to us like the swines we are.

Our teacher's name was Mick. He wore a beige shirt, beige pants and enormous black hiking boots. At least he had a shaved head. As he stomped out to sit before us, I couldn't help but notice that everyone else in the room was breaking into some form of dopey grin as if some sort of stupefying gas was being pumped into the room. My suspicions grew.

This story's getting kind of long and I'm tired, so let's just skip the teaching of the night (the spiritual enlightenment, it is all mine and I am not sharing! Ha-HA!) and get down to the bit where we had to meditate. Upon closing my eyes and trying to focus on my breathing for five minutes, my head erupted into one of those Tesla balls you see at kiddie science museums; it was filled with some sort of static-y screeching, the likes of which I have NEVER experienced before. I assume it was my brain trying to rebel against simple sensory deprivation, and it was downright stressful. HOWEVER, it was easier the second time, and even easier and (dare I say it) pleasant the more I did it. I'm sure there's some sort of lesson in there somewhere, but it escapes me for now.

And yes, the second time I went I had a big dopey grin on my face when Mick walked into the room. Seriously though, you should see the size of his frontal lobe.

I had dinner with Mr Dissertation on Monday night. We went to a Vietnamese restaurant and chose to make our own rice paper rolls. I think it is very canny of Vietnamese restaurant proprietors to julienne a bit of carrot, rip a bit of mint from the garden and surround it with a variety of condiments; the amount of pointless busy work you engage in to create your meal makes it seem far better value.

As we dripped fish sauce all over the table, Mr Dissertation expounded at great length on a variety of topics he found interesting, mainly related to himself: how he felt about love (that he would most likely die alone, but he was okay with that); why he disliked the word "nice" (too general - he liked to know exactly why he was great) and why he did not care for The Devil Wears Prada (not enough discussion about mortality and the fragile nature of the human condition). In short, it was a typical night where he prattled along and I was largely content to nod and agree/disagree where appropriate.

As we were paying the bill, he turned to me and said "it's just occurred to me that in all the time we've been friends, I've done all the talking. I don't know anything about you at all!" Suppressing the urge to say "der," I told him that some relationships just fall into certain patterns, and, well, why didn't he ask me anything about myself anyway?

He said he didn't know what questions to ask. I told him that this was totally lame. Such responses put me in mind of this guy I met online who I'd initially been drawn to because he purported to like the same dodgy pubs as me and seemed relatively nice (sorry, Mr Dissertation!) overall. His statement that "music reflects my mood, so i like almost anything" worried me more than a little bit, but I put my concerns aside to catch up in real life for coffee.

WELL. What a terrible, TERRIBLE mistake that was. This guy had recently come back from six months in Europe, and felt it necessary to recreate the whole thing in real-time for me. The Colosseum, the Tower of London, the Eiffel Tower...I couldn't have been more bored if I tried. And when he told me about the time he was stranded for 12 hours on some tiny Greek island that was completely devoid of anything interesting or even vaguely worthwhile, believe me when I say that I WAS THERE. I said nothing during the many, MANY hours that this coffee seemed to go on for, because lord knows I couldn't have gotten a word in if I'd tried. The coffee ended and I fled to the safety of my own home.

Imagine my surprise when I got home and logged on to the site where I'd met this guy; within 15 minutes between coffee finishing and me getting home, he'd updated his profile to read:

"I go on dates with guys, but he'll sit there and say nothing while I do all the talking...there is no one I have come CLOSE to making a connection with yet. Show me your mind and make me respect you for it!"

It is vaguely flattering to think that my company was terrible enough to inspire this guy to dash straight to his computer and furiously type up the above paragraph with the express purpose of weeding out any future dullards such as myself.

Mr Dissertation was quite impressed with my story, and told me that "that was the most he'd ever heard about me in one go." Awesome. He then asked me, in the spirit of learning more, where I saw myself in five years' time. I told him it was a bloody stupid question because I wasn't at a job interview, and instead let him ramble on about why cats are better than dogs. Which is totally wrong, by the way, and I called him on it.

But enough about me. QUESTION to any readers who happen to know me in real life: am I indeed, as these two would suggest, a non-speaking troglodyte with no mind or opinions of my own (although I'd prefer to think of myself as a mystery wrapped in an enigma etc.)? Or can you not shut me up, despite all your best efforts and tranquillisers? I look forward to hearing more about me soon.

Bumph, etc.

Both Mr Science and Little Miss Welfare are sick at the moment, so you can only imagine the joy I am currently experiencing.

At the moment, they're taking part in a metaphorical pissing contest to see who is sicker, as apparently the winner of this dubious title gets to choose what to watch on television. Because I am able-bodied, I have no say in the matter.

Little Miss Welfare proclaims to be feeling nauseous, though she's still managed to work through two glasses of red wine and some very cheesy pasta. And a couple of segments of sticky cinnamon scroll that I publicly deride (because they're so gross to pull apart and consume and people tend to look like absolute pigs while doing so) but secretly love to eat (see previous).

I was just about to write that I'm generally not so functional when I'm ill, but I just realised that last year when I had strep throat I went in to work every day despite having a low-grade fever and the feeling of needles in my throat for about 14 days straight. AND I did it all without demanding to watch reruns of the The Bloody Ghost Whisperer.

If I sound cranky(-er than usual), I'm not really; one of those slightly spooky omniscient Gmail ads just directed me to the best site on the internet. BEHOLD. And remember who to thank when your Miniature Schnauzer avoids heartworm.

Ooh, AND I've just found my new favourite photo of the moment:

Feel free to add your own caption if you're not Australian and/or aren't sure of the context.