not a turtle

a short list of things you should know, in case you didn't already

1. Audrey Niffenegger is a genius. If you haven't read The Time Traveler's Wife, go and do so. Now. I mean it.
2. Learning is not a noun. Birthday is not a verb. Gordon Ramsay is not an adjective.
3. You should keep to the left when walking down the street / using an escalator / passing someone in a hallway. Just like cars do on the road. Unles you're in another country where everything is all backwards and wrong. Then I can't help you.
4. I haven't blogged in 121 days. Or seventeen weeks. However you'd like to look at it.
5. I'm sorry about point four. I'll try to be better. I promise.
6. I got an iPhone. *squeee!*

in which he writes a letter

Dear Internet,

It's been an awfully long time since I wrote you last. 68 days, 14 hours, 51 minutes and 36 seconds, to be precise. I don't have much to say in my defense, but over the coming weeks and months I hope to make it up to you in some small way.

The world is a very different place to the one I left you with on the sixteenth of November. Many wonderful, not-so-wonderful and interesting things have happened since:

• Our antediluvian moth eaten mold magnet of a (former) Prime Minister and his retrogressive and downright offensive cronies were ousted in the very first Federal Election I have voted in.   

• I started my new job, but you already knew that. It's going swimmingly, and I no longer dread going to work.

• Björk attacked a photographer at Auckland International Airport. Mathematicians have now calculated that Björk can statistically be expected to attack a photographer once every 10.62 years.

• A half dressed, Lynx-scented blonde child by the name of Corey Worthington Delaney threw a party to which around five hundred other half dressed, Lynx-scented children came. Hilarity ensued and police were called. In an uncharacteristically efficient and overenthusiastic response, Victorian police sent a helicopter, several squad cars and upwards of twenty officers in riot gear. One of the children threw a bottle. Victorian Police Commissioner, Christine Nixon announced to assembled media the following day that, despite the lack of any legal or legislative provision allowing her to do so, she intended to bill Mr Delaney's parents for the $20,000 she believes the police operation cost. In the ensuing media furore, nobody pays any attention to Christine Nixon's astonishing claims that she can simply invoice people for the policing of the state. Within a week, everyone has forgotten Mr Delaney's name.

• Celebrities kept dying (Brad Renfro, Heath Ledger, Suzanne Pleshette). Not the ones I expected might (Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, Nick Nolte). Although I'm not a fan of Heath Ledger, his death affected me more than I could have imagined it might. I was a little too young when River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain died to understand why people were as devastated as they were. Now, it makes sense. I suppose these things remind us of our own mortality, and he was only five years older than I am right now.

So as you can see, the world has been busy carrying on its business, and I've been busy with an array of mundane tasks and endeavours.

I promise to write again soon.

All my love,

Byron

anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung

No doubt some of you are familiar with the song ‘Get Here’ by Oleta Adams. You may not think you are, but if you’ve ever listened to adult contemporary radio, you’ve heard it. The song, apart from being a surprisingly comprehensive list of the modes of transport available in the modern world, is a sickeningly heartfelt piano ballad. It is also lodged in some deep and completely inaccessible recess of my brain that I cannot seem to wrest it from.

It’s the kind of song one might expect to hear as an accompaniment to ice dancing, or even some kind of choreographed gymnastic ribbon twirling. It is not the kind of song one wants playing over and over inside one’s skull.

You can reach me by sailboat, climb a tree and swing rope to rope
Take a sled and slide down slow, into these arms of mine
You can jump on a speedy colt, cross the border in a blaze of hope
I don't care how you get here, just get here if you can

I think I might vomit.

in which large persons are persectued on television...

On Sunday night, I nearly expelled my dinner all over the television watching this:

That's right kids, it's a man DRINKING TRIFLE.

The Biggest Loser makes me feel ill. Now, I have no beef with morbidly obese people. Morbidly obese people definitely enjoy beef, but I have no beef with them. I do, however, have a problem with morbidly obese people who seem to believe that something other than their own actions have made them enormous. The first episode consisted mostly of interviews with the contestants, all of whom used a variation on the following - "I just think it's time to fight back and beat this once and for all". Fight back? FIGHT BACK? Nothing attacked you and made you into an enormous lard filled hippopotamus. Drinking trifle and skolling yard glasses full of Cheezels (this happened just after the trifle) made you into an enormous lard filled hippopotamus.

Most of the contestants are lovely. Some of them are beastly (on the inside). All of them will be very pretty once they're thin.

And then, there is Monolith Munnalita:

Munnalita has shopping centre hair. Munnalita has shopping centre hair because she is a shopping centre hairdresser. Munnalita has closets full of baby clothes and assorted paraphernalia for the raising of infants, as we saw in the first episode. Munnalita has no children. Munnalita is clearly unhinged and may begin eating the other contestants at any time.

I'm frightened of her.

*shrugs*

Motivation has been hard to come by recently.
I've been meaning to blog, but every time I sit down to write, all of the great ideas I had just float out of my head. Instead I sit here roaming around Wikipedia and listening to an endless rotation of songs I keep wondering why I ever bought/downloaded.

So... to break the drought, here are ten random facts about me that I dug up from an old email:

•   I used to wander around the cemetery near the house my family used to live in and invent life stories for the people buried there… I’d sit and invent their lives - personalities, jobs, families… just for fun.

•    I was once prescribed anti-depressants in high school. I decided I didn’t need them… never took them… and eventually sold them to a year 8 girl at my school. I try not to think about what she did with them.

•    I am the worst procrastinator in the world. I once didn’t pay my rent for three weeks just because I couldn’t motivate myself to put the money in an envelope and walk down the street.

•    I once (when I was 14) stole someone’s wallet. He found out, and demanded that I return the “$350” that was in his wallet. There was really only $15 in it. Needless to say, I became very poor... and learnt my lesson.

•    I like cats, but cats hate me.

•    There are three women in the world I would sleep with. Alyson Hannigan, Poppy Montgomery and Idina Menzel.

•    I love peanut butter. I f I was allergic to it, and it would cause me to go into anaphylactic shock and die… I would still eat it. Life is not complete unless you have peanut butter.

•    I’ve never taken any sort of drugs… not that it’s against my principles… just that I’ve never really wanted to… or had the opportunity to. But then, I don’t like the idea of not being in control of my thoughts or my body…

•    I once cried so hard and for so long that every muscle in my body hurt… and I went to sleep for nearly 30 hours afterward… and woke up feeling like someone had swept all the cobwebs out of my heart.

•    I stole a set of keys to my high school once. I used them to get into the English staff room late at night and used the internet for a few hours… left the keys inside and went home.

•    I crave the feeling of being on stage.

things I have learned this week

I didn't know how to spell connoisseur. I thought I did, but I was wrong.

All real estate agents are ridiculously stupid.

All real estate agents are called Kirsty (Kirstie / Kirsty / Kirstey / Kirsteigh / Kirsti). Sometimes they are called Melanie, but they still look as though they should be called Kirsty. Also, if they are male they are called Dominic.

My toothbrush has a metal core. I was aparrently in posession of a dangerous potential weapon and had to surrender it to the charming airport security people before I was allowed to fly. Amsuingly, the exact same toothbrush was available for purchase at the pharmacy 150m from my departure gate.