...but boys grown tall

Others will no doubt have more interesting and in-depth things to say about this non-story, but there are a couple of points I feel compelled to make.

1. If you treat a 16-year-old boy like a rock-star, he will behave like a rock-star.

2. You cannot aggressively reward a 16-year-old boy's behaviour with the exact response it was hoping to garner (i.e. bucketloads of attention), and simultaneously condemn that boy for continuing said behaviour. That is a contemptibly exploitative form of hypocrisy.

3. A 16-year-old boy is a minor. Surely any situation involving a minor - particularly when that minor's adult guardians are absent - needs to be handled by the media with utmost sensitivity? Apparently the media of this country abide by no such ethics. (Incidentally, this minor now appears to have, for all intents and purposes, run away from home; I hope his parents realise they have the media exclusively to thank for this development.)

4. The media seem to love drumming up furore along the tediously familiar "what's gone wrong with today's youth?" line. Perhaps we should consider that what's going "wrong" with today's youth has a lot to do with the fact that every time they turn on the television or open a newspaper, their minds are filled with repugnant mindless drivel.

5. Sometimes, the media make me feel physically sick.

just another day

After two weeks off, one looks forward to a nice relaxing first morning back at work - a morning where one can ease gently back into the daily routine...

When I walk in, before I have even put down my bag and lunch, five people want me to do five random things for them: Show me how to photocopy this! Approve this leave form! I want a 2008 diary! Change my payment account details! Get me a new pair of boots! (Response: Figure it out yourself! Not my job! I plan to, once I've reached my desk! Sure thing, once I've reached my desk! NOT MY JOB!)

Simultaneously, five other random people are reaching out to shake my hand and wish me a Happy New Year, asking me how my New Year's Eve was, regaling me with tales of their New Year's / Family Court session / fishing trip / restraining order.

The shop on the corner (with whom we have an account) forgot to order any milk. A milk bar. With no milk. So there is none for the staff-room. Of course, everyone assumes it is my fault there is no milk. I give a workmate $20 from petty cash, asking him to return with enough milk for today, a paper, change and a receipt. He returns with milk. $20 worth of milk. And nothing else.

The entire network has crashed and none of the computers will talk to each other. No-one else in the office can do anything until I resolve this issue. It turns out to be the delightful combination of Telstra fucking up our internet account, and Norton deciding that all computers are evil menaces vying to corrupt each other (even ones that are part of the same network). This takes a good hour to fix, before I can even begin to confront the pile of mail, timesheets, leave forms, invoices and job files teetering on my desk.

But first, of course, I take a short break to vent my spleen on the internet.

So, business as usual then.

8 simple rules

1. Do not go clothes shopping if you are already inexplicably feeling depressed.

2. Do not go clothes shopping if you are hideously overweight.

3. Do not go clothes shopping in "The Basement" section of Myer, which is designed for hip young things, plays irritating music, and has lighting so low you can barely see the clothes you're perusing.

4. Do not trust size tags; most are deliberately undersized, presumably just to make you feel even fatter than you actually are.

5. Do not drag your boyfriend along on your expedition, lest you treat him like a bitch and end up hating yourself even more as a result.

6. When finalising your purchases, ensure the doped-out teenage staff-member removes all the security tags, lest you have to traipse all the way back to the counter five minutes later, after setting off the alarm.

7. Do not exit via the normal Menswear section, lest you see a whole bunch of other nice, well-priced items, and begin to doubt your own purchases.

8. Wait until you arrive home before you start crying, especially if you are a grown man, lest your fellow tram commuters assume you to be some kind of fat, pathetic weirdo.

~~~~~~~

Guess how many of these rules I broke today!

and so it begins

I kicked off last year - lazily, of course - with a New Years Meme, so why should 2008 be any different? Here are twelve miscellaneous sentences from this blog, one for each month of 2007:

January
For anyone wondering, this process involves a shitload of money, several wheelie-bins full of discarded packing material, and approximately 37 man hours dedicated to the construction of items from Ikea.

February
Every February, the Netherlands-based World Press Photo organisation honours its choices as the most significant press-photography of the last 12 months.

March
Now let it be known that unlike mosquitoes - which I would happily purge and exterminate even from the deepest uninhabited depths of the jungles, merely out of spite - I have no problem with ants as a rule.

April
In short, he was young, cute, small and completely non-threatening – the kind of stripling I found irresistibly attractive when, at the age of twenty-four, I finally plucked up the courage to post a profile on a dating website and Go Out With A Boy.

May
If you had asked me to make a list of one million topics I thought my Nanna might ever raise in conversation - especially with my little sister! - I can assure you that genital piercing would not have been on it.

June
As always with these self-reflexive narratives, many fascinating issues - free will, life versus art, the validity of creative process - are thrown into the mix.

July
A bunch of my beloveds and I are all gathering together tomorrow, to have the book read aloud by Ms Snazzles (whose reading-aloud skills are well documented), so we can ooh and ahh and grr together.

August
Howard's pledge to "clean up the internet" just seems like yet another flashy vote-grab: making it look like he's doing something, when in reality he's made no effort to even understand the issues, let alone tackle them.

September
My mother sometimes sat amongst the willow trees, waiting for hours to catch a glimpse of the platypus that lived in the river.

October
But just the other day, while driving around and listening to The Velvet Underground's song Heroin incredibly loudly, it occurred to me that - while to make a film you need a shitload of money, a crew, a cast etc, etc - all you need to write a book is something to write with.

November
This morning, for the first time since I was fifteen years old, John Howard is not my Prime Minister.

December
The rich apricot-coloured light of sunrise spills through the front window onto the Christmas tree, making the ornaments sparkle.

One thing that becomes painfully obvious while constructing this meme is just how lazy a blogger I was in 2007. Will 2008 bring about a new era of diligence and commitment? It looks doubtful!