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I cannot believe that I am on a bus, going to school, after my horrendous, torturous sickness, still so sick. I was in surprisingly good spirits about the whole thing, not that my mother could vouch for me on that, as I did spend most of my time whinging about feeling physically dreadful; but once it was established that the GAT business was OK, I was able to relax and get better. But that’s still not that well. I really shouldn’t be back it school, the doctor gave me today and tomorrow off, but I just can’t justify that much time off. As strange as that sounds coming from a teenager, I really do care about school. I called up three times asking about the GAT stuff and work I missed, much to the surprise of my teachers, especially since I could hardly talk. They all told me to slow down and get better. My mother was too busy harassing me to do the dishes, hang out the washing, clean up the table, and just generally stop resting, to have the for me to tell her they said that.
Everyone on the bus has gone quiet, even the girls whose conversation I was quite enjoying overhearing. Most of them just spout inane rubbish but this group actually seem to have an imagination. I don’t know where it came from but one of them must have been talking about dieting, and the other said something about rationing out the food. So another said that the first should control the second’s food. And the second said ‘Yes, with ration cards. Please may I have some corn thins?’ with pleading eyes and hands clasped over the seat she had to look over to see the first girl, who replied ‘No ration card, no corn thins!’ and hit her playfully on the back of the wrist, and it went from there. They’re really quite good to watch if you’re in the mood for it.
Mr. Emo is actually listening to something that sounds half decent, as opposed to the usual heavy metal. But the unfortunate thing is that his music is loud enough for me to hear, over a metre away. Of course it was too much to ask that he have his hearing and luscious porcelain skin. I would turn around and start a conversation by asking what he’s listening to, but I just had a coughing fit and my eyes wept into my eye shadow and I don’t sound or look to pretty with my aggravated mucous filled nose. Of course by the time I got around to writing that I was sitting on my second bus next to the most androgynous person I have ever laid eyes on.
I couldn’t figure out whether they were male or female until someone addressed them by name. I was thinking oh shit, what if they’re called something equally ambiguous like ‘Sam’ or ‘Alex’ but they weren’t - he wasn’t. And he reluctantly moved his bag so I could sit next to him after I had made my second trip up the bus looking for a seat. That’s what it’s like here. Insolent bastards.
Speaking of which... I am currently sitting in a school assembly. They have brought us here, more than a month after Sorry Day (the day where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the Aboriginal peoples of
Anyway, another thing that struck me today was teenagers’ tendency to repeat things that have just happened. I was walking along and I dropped my muesli bar in front of some guy who was laughing, it surprised him and he stopped laughing suddenly. And as I walked past his friend finishes his sentence, then goes ‘Heh heh she dropped that and you were like hahaha-oh. So funny.’ It happened three seconds ago! Is your memory and attention span that bad? It’s the culture, if one can all it that, of teen society. Wil Anderson said it best, I’ll see if I can find the Sunday paper article online.
No. Bastards. I thought the Herald Sun archived everything, obviously not. Wil Anderson doesn’t have it on his official site either. I think I might send him an email, since I can. Grrr, it was so good and I spent quite a while looking for it. I’d never express it quite like he can; he’s very funny and witty…
Fuck yes! I found it when I got home. Blu-tacked to my frigging wall. Genius. You can read the whole thing off my scan here, since the whole article is very amusing, but the choice quote I wanted is this:
“Sometimes sit seems that technology has changed the entire purpose of taking photos. You see, when I was young, photos were reminders of times that had actually passed. These days, people will snap off a dozen photos and examine them straightaway. “Hey, you remember this? And this?” Of course I do, it was only 30 seconds ago and I was there. In fact, I’m still here. That photo would only be useful if I suddenly suffered brain trauma or became a goldfish or Ozzy Ozbourne.” Love it.
The entertainment for the assembly has arrived, and I use that word lightly. They always use assemblies to give the music students somewhere to practice performing. Today’s victims include that girl who broke my self esteem regarding singing, and the only person doing music or drama this year with an ounce of showman in him. Pity it has no place with this crowd. They really weren’t that bad. The boys behind me are giving people hell again. I’m a bit guilty of that too. Sitting here blogging (texting), applying lipgloss, with sparkly nails, a scowl on my face, mp3 player in my ears and wanky bottle of water at my feet – I look quite the juvenile delinquent.
The day progressed and I had a lunchtime IT class, which meant I only just got to nibble on my half toasted spaghetti and sauce and cheese sandwich. The amount of people who were lusting after that sandwich! One of the teachers even went so far as to exclaim and lick her lips before remarking ‘I’m just going to do this, and if any part of your sandwich gets in the way…’ then proceeded to open and close her mouth slowly and hungrily moving towards my sandwich. She stopped, as it was just a joke, but she really liked the look of it. It wasn’t as strange behaviour as you might think, I am on very good playful terms with most of the teachers, and one even brought me a coffee from the staff room at lunch time; a staff room into which no student except myself seems to be permitted. No-one would believe me about the coffee since the teacher concerned was thought very strict and bad tempered. It was awesome. But the sandwich chomping wasn’t weird for the action itself, or the fact it was a teacher to a student – but because of the nature of the teacher herself.
She seemed to take an immediate dislike to me as my Maths teacher. Not only do I dislike Maths, but she didn’t exactly give me any reason to like her either. After she was my Maths teacher she became senior school leader, which means she deals with all the trouble makers and organisational stuff for years 10-12. So when I was bullied on the bus I had to go see her. And apart from reporting it to the district’s bus co-ordinator and my bus driver, she felt it was all part of the service to psychoanalyse me. During which time I found out that my issues with persecution/exclusion paralleled her own, both at work among the teachers and at home with her none-too-intellectual boyfriend, who only plays footy and isn’t interested in anything she does during the day, so they have nothing to talk about, but she continues to date him because of her own insecurities. Fascinating. I also can’t see how she could be friends with my English Language teacher, whom I like very much. They actually share a house and get on very well. I couldn’t imagine two more different people. Then just my English Language teacher, who was also present during this said “Gee a lot of people seem to be after that sandwich of yours.” and turned the corner, the sport co-ordinator walked past and eyes on the sandwich said “Have you got something for me there?” My goodness.
Then I had another singing lesson. Or I didn’t. Or I did… we just sat around and listened to her music and discussed musical tastes. We listened to some Ani DiFranko, whom I has heard of but never heard, which I liked a great deal. We talked about musical tastes, older bands we liked from before we were born I told her about finding out the breadth of my range and being surprised, she said she was glad I finally believed her about things like that. But then I got home and I told my mother what I had done in my singing lesson she told me it was total bullshit and that she wasn’t going to pay for such a nonsense lesson. I mean, it isn’t exactly a singing lesson, I did learn some stuff, but it’s not… something you would pay someone $27 for. I’ll have a great time explaining that situation to my teacher.
I’m feeling good at the moment, later in the day. It was pretty good apart from the eye watering throat splitting coughing fit I had in the middle of Art. It was the same tickle in the throat that I had had last night that kept me awake. Because I had to breath through my mouth I couldn’t avoid irritating it, I just start to drift off to sleep and one breath too many has me hunched up spluttering.
I was on the internet last night, looking at blogs, I read some of Angela’s like I said I might. She mainly writes for and about her high school/college work. But her writing style comes across very well in all of them, and it’s a strong authoritative one with a diverse vocabulary which I like a lot. I found one of Time’s online friends MJW who is still blogging regularly; I might leave a comment asking after him.
It was
And another thing that I discovered in my research, on one of the particular pages I visited it suggested that the simplest thing to do in order to create podcast was to use this free software which creates an audio file of an electronic voice (one probably not unlike Microsoft Sam) reading your blog. Who would ever want to listen to that? What could be better than the voice of the author themselves reading the piece with all the expression and idiosyncrasies it was intended to have? Anyone can instruct Microsoft Sam to read a web page to them. What’s something insulting that means the opposite of Luddite? Someone so wired in they can’t breathe or think or communicate without an electronic interface, someone from the Modern Moonlight paradigm… this word doesn’t exist and it needs to be invented! Anyway, fucking… them!
Also I found on a different site, a tutorial of a standard kind and some advice of another; suggesting what kind of people start podcasts, a type of which the reader must be as they visited this site to learn how to create one. The options were thus:
1. You always wanted your own talk show but you don’t own a radio station or work at one.
2. You’re a musician and you want to build up a fan base by providing some of your music to potential fans.
3. You’re a speaker and you want to sell a multi-part audio seminar but don’t want to create CDs, labels, mail them, etc. (Yes, you can use podcasting for profit, too.)
4. You already have a radio show but you want to make certain segments available to the world to increase your reputation and reach.
5. You’re a book author and you want to interest people in buying it by offering a few spoken pages each week to entice them.
6. You’re a school Principal and you want to create your own weekly message to the students.
7. You’re a raving lunatic and you want to rant to the world about conspiracies, UFOs and Men in Black.
First of all I would like to congratulate the writer on his correct use of apostrophes, since he has not used one to indicate the plural of UFO. Second of all, and this is the reason I included this here, the one that best seems to fit me, out of all of them (since I must choose one!) is the raving lunatic. I’m not doing it like radio, the main purpose isn’t music, I’m not a speaker, a radio host, an author or a principal, so by process of elimination…
It sort of fits too, because in a very roundabout way I have found my way back to the same thought, through two different topics.
Last night as I was reading over Time’s blog and I found this excellent quote (love quotes, have the worst memory for them though). He said in his blog entitled 14: “I want to be on a plane...or a beach, i want to be standing on a balcony in a big anonomous city drinking shitty instant coffee with somebody i dont know yet.”
I fucking love this. This is the reason I want to find him. He gets ‘it’, the indescribable ‘it’, the type of thoughts that reside in ‘the place’ as Amanda puts it (see hideously long quote of hers in Fade To Black) just hits on it on a soul deep level, like the girl I don’t talk about anymore, like Amanda, like you guys – just gets it. It’s fantastic and inexpressible. And I suppose it’s the same motivation, to find someone who gets it, that drives you to seek out new and interesting friends; I guess, or I hope, that it’s the same thing that makes me want to find him, to read his blog, that brings you to my blog, and that’s as good an inexplicable explanation as there is. I pondered this thing about interest in blogs and random internet friends at length, since I didn’t have a chance to write at length about it till later; and I kept wondering, even though I’m happy for the mere fact of it, and you both sort of answered this question previously – what keeps you coming back to my blog? What does one possibly get out of it? I wondered and wondered, in both self-obsessed and impartial ways, and I fail to divine the product or service which I am providing. But like I was saying before, I don’t even know what I get out of other people’s blogs. I like it when a person writes well and has good insights, and they get it. If I lived under a rock with an internet connection and someone had directed me to Amanda’s blog, I would have loved it just the same, regardless of who she was. It’s sad to think how many unappreciated bloggers there are in this world. People with real and interesting thoughts who gave up because the internet is too vast to afford attention to everyone. I’m one of the lucky ones.
And then, again tonight, I wondered about the value of my blog, particularly since I had been practicing my podcasting, and had discovered just how mundane the events of my life really were. All this stuff I was and am still writing about, that I thought was so interesting because I was so wrapped up in it. Maybe it’s not all that interesting. So why do I have so much to talk about?
Because I have a very low dullness threshold.
The dullness threshold, as I have now christened it, is the line which divides what you think is interesting to other people, from what you think no-one would give a damn about. Was in a car accident today – interesting; and as an example of uninteresting… oh no I’m really struggling to find something I haven’t talked about on here! Um… wore my favourite shoes today (did not do this and is very boring even for me). Quite a lot of people have the line fairly high and don’t think they’re very interesting at all, but generally the louder, more talkative, more self absorbed person is going to have it set a bit lower.
I know that I am one such person. My blog is probably becoming tedious as all hell as I settle into it, this great big nest of self-indulgence. Blaaaaagggh! And such noises of nonsense and dismissal.
Then, as a negation to this I thought, well people like sitcoms. They love and follow these people’s lives, they know their names, they feel for them, they cry and laugh with them. There is a huge market for that escape, and that insight into another person’s life. Maybe my blog is more like this. And that’s not such a bad boring thing after all.
☆Anika☆
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