I have been vicitimised by ninglun here. Instead of suing for this, I will actually look at this as an opportunity to avoid doing the assignment I have due tomorrow for however long this will take, and list my eight random facts. On a side note, I expect that I have found a way to make a somewhat enjoyable and light-hearted game into a depressing and 'blah' game (blah being the technical term there).
1. I despise university. I abhor it. I would quite easily trade in the next three years of consciousness to wake up with my degrees in my hand.
2. I am extremely afraid of death. Not so much the process of dying (that is, the pain of being stabbed for example) , rather, actually being dead. Fear of not existing is probably a more apt description.
3. I believe that JFK was shot by a group of people associated with the Skull and Bones fraternity, and that George H. W. Bush was involved.
4. I have seen a shrink for the past year, and expect I will continue to see said shrink for the rest of my life.
5. There are days when I wake up and endeavor to not have to talk to a single person. There are also days when I succeed in this task.
6. I have never smoked (much less tried one drag on a cigarette) or tried any illicit drugs. I never will either.
7. Apart from Elvis and Roy Orbison, I don't follow any musicians, rather, I just like the odd songs. In saying that, my MP3 player has well over 1200 songs.
8. I have brought fifty or so DVDs without having ever seen the film before. Surprisingly, out of those fifty or so, I have only ever not throughly enjoyed two - A Streetcar Named Desire and Goodnight and Good Luck.
Now, because I haven't found eight blogs that I like enough to link to them, nor am I aware of eight people who consistently read this blog, I'm just going to go ahead and leave it up to anyone who has the stones to comment this post with the eight facts. I don't particularly mind if it doesn't happen, but it would be extremely interesting if you did and I'd certainly remember that you did it.
Thomas.
5 comments:
Hi Thomas.
Here are 8 from me.
1. I hate my life at the moment and I don't see it getting better for at least six months until I can quit the current job I am in. (Driving a tram all day putting up with the most obtuse, rude, stinking, arrogant members of the general public all day).
2. I am also afraid of death...well sort of...I just don't want to miss out on anything actually exciting happening in my life...it hasn't yet so...I ain't too afraid because I can't remember anything before the age of 2 or before I was born either. So I guess death is like that. Sorry about all the full stops...
3. I don't believe in conspiracy theories. People are just too stupid in general to pull anything off successfully without someone else finding out. Moreover, I abhor any 9/11 conspiracy theories.
4. I saw a shrink when I made the mistake of joining the army. I kept seeing her because I fantasised about her sexually. As a shrink she was shithouse.
5. Most days I endeavour not to talk to any passengers. I have not succeeded in this. I have succeeded in calling one a "Fat F---ing Bitch" though.
6. I have given up the evil drug called tobacco. By far the most insidious of legalised drugs.
7. I follow the music of Roger Waters although I hate some of it.
8. My father buys DVDs that will never be watched and are usually found in bargain bins for 99 cents.
*Because I drive trams it doesn't mean I like them or the company I work for.
Actually, I have started a blog, but nobody knows about it yet. So you are my victim. All of these are in the distant past, and this first gave me pause, since such dwelling in the past seems a rather pathetic. So it is, really, but here goes, all the same.
1. In the year I turned 5, our family travelled to England on the occasion of my father spending a year’s sabbatical leave at Birkbeck College, University of London. We lived in a Queen Anne terrace in Twickenham (London real estate was cheap then) rented from a director of BP who was spending a year in the Bahamas. I loved it and it was a source of great disappointment to me that, when the opportunity next arose, a combination of factors (including the fact that by then our family also depended on my mother’s income) prevented us going away. I started school while I was there. The playground chant I recall from Orleans Street Infants School was “We won the war in 1964.”
2. I learnt ballet for a couple of years as a child. I loved the music but had no physical aptitude for the dance. There is a famous (in our family) photo of me in a white skivvy and black tights and purple cummerbund holding an arabesque, taken in our rather shady back yard, except that, allowing for the slow speed of colour slide film at that time, the shade and my sense of balance, I am actually supporting myself against a tree with a broom held in one hand. I stopped doing ballet when I started piano lessons. The ballet school was run by two sisters. The pianist was the husband of one of them, a man called Max Aronsten. He befriended me, and for many years after used to send me music for Christmas (he was also a manager at Chappels Music). In later years I sometimes visited him at Chappel’s office in the city. I last saw him, briefly and in passing, at an eisteddfod in about 1985. I have since found out that he was a much more interesting character than simply a ballet school pianist or even music publisher. There is an interview with him in the oral history archives of ScreenSound Australia, but I doubt if I figure in it.
3. In 1970 I won a children’s story-writing competition run by Puffin (ie, Penguin) Australia, and judged by Ivan Southall (the things authors need to do for a crust!). The prize was 50 Puffin books. I was allowed to take other Penguin imprints; I still have a few of those books today. The first third of my story was printed in the Australian and I was interviewed by Robert Drewe, who, tongue-in-cheek, imagined a future of literary awards for me. In fact, it was Robert Drewe who had such a future.
4. In year 8 Geography, I proved unable to hand in my homework, and was given the lowest mark possible on the school computer report system: 30%. I was on a scholarship, and when things didn’t particularly improve by the next year, the headmaster threatened to take the scholarship away. Fortunately or not, this didn’t occur, and I managed to stay at the school until the end of year 12.
5. In my teenage years I briefly learnt the ’cello. My first teacher was Henri Penn, once a pianist and accompanist of some renown on ABC broadcasts but by this time (obviously) fallen on rather harder times.
6. In 1984, at the end of my history honours year at ANU, I arranged for all of my fellow students to make Freedom of Information requests for documents relating to our assessment. There was little reason for me to make such a request other than the trouble-making of youth, as I had been treated well. I have reason to believe that this act of ingratitude on my part backfired insofar as the unavailability of my file appears to have prevented an application for a scholarship at the Research School for Social Sciences being considered. I made the first request. The case appears in the textbooks, but not under my name, because of an anomaly in the university’s response to my request which meant that another student’s request became the lead case.
7. I have performed in two productions of Benjamin Britten’s Noyes Fludde: first on the descant recorder (doubling handbells) and the second playing the piano duo primo part. In the first production, one of my handbells was defective and inclined to just click rather than ring; in the second, my left elbow was fouled by the secondo player’s right elbow at a crucial moment, and a leap down to the D just above middle C, which was a vital cue for a singer, came out as an E. The performance, recorded by ABC, was never broadcast.
8. In 1994, after a whirlwind romance, a colleague and I proposed to marry. You had to fill in a form at the Marriage Registry which had to be witnessed by an eligible person. As solicitors, we were both eligible persons, but the clerk baulked at our witnessing each other’s signatures. The woman in question (yes: I am a man, and the law necessarily meant and still means that the other party had to be a woman) called the whole thing off in the week it was due to occur. When I announced the impending engagement to a colleague, she said “but we all assumed you were gay,” to which I beamingly replied that I was a “closet heterosexual.” (I have since retired (hurt?) from heterosexuality.)
As this is just a comment, I don’t think I need to pass on this meme to anyone. I’ll shelter behind the invitation you have already given.
Since we're all being so honest...
1. I want to be a motorcyclist, and I think I will be some day.
2. I really don't know what do to with the stupid children.
3. I love my dog more than almost anyone.
4. I get very jealous of my friends.
5. I have, indeed, had inappropriate thoughts about certain students. Sorry.
6. I stole about $20,000 from my former place of employment over about 2 years.
7. I saw a psychiatrist for a while when I was about 16 and again when I was about 20. In neither case did any good come of it.
8. I wash my hands at least 10 times a day... and I think everyone should.
I am eating myself to death...
Re #6. You stole 20 grand from your employer over two years. Is that all?
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