OK, so i'm not the MOST 'in' with today's teenage lingo. MSN-speech. Twitter-talk (aka twat). The identity-asserting idiom of our gen. *gibbers and gestures excitedly to her use of the word 'gen'*
It's kind of embarrassing, actually. People around me are always using slang. When they do, i can only respond blank-faced. Or sometimes i take a wild stab at delivering the correct reaction: nodding sagely, laughing sardonically, etc. Although usually i just get looked at strangely. And then the hearty/knowing false laugh gurgles weakly down into silence.
At least when reading something you don't run the risk of exhibiting your ignorance, and can discreetly look up the definition in dictionary.com. As i did when reading a friends blog (Sam groans and forehead-palms)
totes: an open handbag or shopping bag used esp. for carrying packages or small items.
Or was it a juxtaposition between matureness and teenage slang? I DON'T EVEN KNOW.
I even had to look up 'stoob': the insult thrown at those who couldn't decipher 'totes' independently.
STOOB: ........'did you mean STB/stab/stub?'
Wikipedia wasn't any help either:
STOOB- "a town in the district of Oberpullendorf in Burgenland in Austria".
Enlightenment was achieved at urbandictionary.com...
STOOB- Stoned, unmotivated, idiot, boring, fiend, clumsy, greedy, selfish, unsociable, silly, lazy friend/person.
It even gives examples of STOOBS in sentences:
Your blazed out friend says something he thinks is quite funny', eeeeeerrr, shaking your head, laughing at his pointless remarks, "fuckin stoob".
Waiting over-time for pizza to be delivered "where and what the fuck are these stoobs doing with our pizza".
Hmm. This site could be an essential resource for me. It could even by my social salvation.
Hey, awesome! Word of the day:
TESTICULAR FORTITUDE: balls, guts, intestinal fortitude.
Used in a sentence: He lacked the testicular fortitude to stand up to his boss.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The Escape; from humiliation into the shades of dusk
It all boils down to one question really. That's what i realise right now, staring down glumly at my scattered sheets on WA hydrology and soil and the virtues of dung and stuff. Yes, one single question. 'Can I be stuffed.'
No. No i cannot.
A little while ago, i exited my habitual study den and braved the outside elements. Embraced Spring! Well, if you go by date that is. It don't really feel like Spring at this first, fragile turn of season. Yet my hopes have been lifted. It's the opposite of the feeling of impending doom as Autumn withers itself away. From winter to spring is an upward swing, a glorious waxing into sunshine and the bliss of the warmer months. It's all about the anticipation.
Dusk is my favourite time of day i reckon. Everything is so soft-hued and purply. And the clouds! Pink, drifting, golden-gilded. There's a downward sloping alleyway not far from my house and it's almost a spiritual feeling walking down and getting the panoramic view of the humming suburban life being crowned by that radiant disc.
The mood is catching! I saw an old, white-bearded man in dark glasses on a bicycle, playing the harmonica with one hand.
I think i needed Nature's remedial touch after the humiliating state of affairs this morning. You may know by now that i have an incredibly bad memory. My past just drains away. It's rather terrifying really, this things that are lost forever in the chasm of forgotten. Anyway, i have this theory (probably a conceit) to rationalise this poor memory. It's a survival strategy. It prevents me from flinching and squirming myself to death; since i do so for almost every social encounter i've ever had. WHY MUST MY LOOKING BACK BE THROUGH A PESSIMISTIC GLASS? Well, to it. The latest faux pas:
I'm walking towards the lecture theatre for WS. I'm about 10 steps away when i see a girl i've been sitting with so far this semester. She's with 2 other girls and is just about to go through the door. Our eyes meet. 'Hey!' she says. 'Hey!' i say. She goes in with her posse. I trail in behind. As i enter, she sits down in the last row, on the end seat to the left. Naturally, her two friends fill in the 2 seats right of her.
I have 2 options. They flash through my mind in that brief hiatus of indecision, and i teeter on the question of 'what now?'. I can
a) locate a seat alone away from them
b) sit down in the 4th seat to the right.
In the first option, reason is enshrined; risk and madness in the second. Reader, when such a conflict of choice rages within me, i fear to confess reason is sat upon and suffocated by panic and immediacy. Unfailingly, i just give way to whichever course of action will be quicker, requiring less movement.
...
I sunk into the 4th seat.
FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!! And what's more, i could not, dared not even turn my head to the left, let alone TRY to engage. I felt as though the muscles in my neck were locked. Or rather, that they had fused to muscles lower down, and i would only ever in the future be able to look left by swivelling my torso.
Instead, i calmly opened uwa's student mag, The Pelican, and endeavoured to read an article whilst wishing will able my being just to evaporate. Shrivel in my seat. Become a gas and deftly waft myself under the crack in the door.
When the lecture was over, i fled. Missing the workshop that immediately followed. But this time, there was no conflict of choice. Escape was the only option.
No. No i cannot.
A little while ago, i exited my habitual study den and braved the outside elements. Embraced Spring! Well, if you go by date that is. It don't really feel like Spring at this first, fragile turn of season. Yet my hopes have been lifted. It's the opposite of the feeling of impending doom as Autumn withers itself away. From winter to spring is an upward swing, a glorious waxing into sunshine and the bliss of the warmer months. It's all about the anticipation.
Dusk is my favourite time of day i reckon. Everything is so soft-hued and purply. And the clouds! Pink, drifting, golden-gilded. There's a downward sloping alleyway not far from my house and it's almost a spiritual feeling walking down and getting the panoramic view of the humming suburban life being crowned by that radiant disc.
The mood is catching! I saw an old, white-bearded man in dark glasses on a bicycle, playing the harmonica with one hand.
I think i needed Nature's remedial touch after the humiliating state of affairs this morning. You may know by now that i have an incredibly bad memory. My past just drains away. It's rather terrifying really, this things that are lost forever in the chasm of forgotten. Anyway, i have this theory (probably a conceit) to rationalise this poor memory. It's a survival strategy. It prevents me from flinching and squirming myself to death; since i do so for almost every social encounter i've ever had. WHY MUST MY LOOKING BACK BE THROUGH A PESSIMISTIC GLASS? Well, to it. The latest faux pas:
I'm walking towards the lecture theatre for WS. I'm about 10 steps away when i see a girl i've been sitting with so far this semester. She's with 2 other girls and is just about to go through the door. Our eyes meet. 'Hey!' she says. 'Hey!' i say. She goes in with her posse. I trail in behind. As i enter, she sits down in the last row, on the end seat to the left. Naturally, her two friends fill in the 2 seats right of her.
I have 2 options. They flash through my mind in that brief hiatus of indecision, and i teeter on the question of 'what now?'. I can
a) locate a seat alone away from them
b) sit down in the 4th seat to the right.
In the first option, reason is enshrined; risk and madness in the second. Reader, when such a conflict of choice rages within me, i fear to confess reason is sat upon and suffocated by panic and immediacy. Unfailingly, i just give way to whichever course of action will be quicker, requiring less movement.
...
I sunk into the 4th seat.
FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!! And what's more, i could not, dared not even turn my head to the left, let alone TRY to engage. I felt as though the muscles in my neck were locked. Or rather, that they had fused to muscles lower down, and i would only ever in the future be able to look left by swivelling my torso.
Instead, i calmly opened uwa's student mag, The Pelican, and endeavoured to read an article whilst wishing will able my being just to evaporate. Shrivel in my seat. Become a gas and deftly waft myself under the crack in the door.
When the lecture was over, i fled. Missing the workshop that immediately followed. But this time, there was no conflict of choice. Escape was the only option.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Right now, i am fruitlessly and half-heartedly scanning the internet for a good, sexist article to castrate for a women's studies assignment (yes, i do WS, fuck off. I'm no dismembering harpy, ok?)
So i was scouring a plethora of newspaper articles from this UK magazine called 'The Guardian', and one title caught my eye: 'Women: embrace your facial hair!'. Beneath was a black and white photograph of a bearded woman.
A partisan of the 'Hairy Awarey' campaign contributed this: "Now I am proud of my hairy lip. I sit playing with it when I am thinking, or watching TV."
"Del La Grace Volcano, formerly known as the lesbian photographer Della Grace, grew her goatee beard in the late 1990s to much media consternation."
and,
"Maybe it's because I am 40, and men look at me less, but I feel so much better now I am letting it all grow out."
HAHAHAHAHHA
yeah, no.
So i was scouring a plethora of newspaper articles from this UK magazine called 'The Guardian', and one title caught my eye: 'Women: embrace your facial hair!'. Beneath was a black and white photograph of a bearded woman.
A partisan of the 'Hairy Awarey' campaign contributed this: "Now I am proud of my hairy lip. I sit playing with it when I am thinking, or watching TV."
"Del La Grace Volcano, formerly known as the lesbian photographer Della Grace, grew her goatee beard in the late 1990s to much media consternation."
and,
"Maybe it's because I am 40, and men look at me less, but I feel so much better now I am letting it all grow out."
HAHAHAHAHHA
yeah, no.
Mmmm. Basking. As though my pores are drinking up the sunshine. Common analogy, strange image. I have no idea how people can stand living in cold climates all year round. My mood pretty much follows the seasons: i'm cold and bitter in winter, warm and genial and lazy in summer. I think i'd become an evil yetti if there was no warm relief in the years cycle, hurling a sharpened ice-pick at whoever got on my nerves.
Oh! A honeyeater just swooped down and collected some straw from one of our hanging baskets! Springs a'comin!
..............................................................................
Some words you just have to say a certain way:
Snigger: pronounce 'schnigger'. Draw out the schh sound
Nerd: pronounce 'nyerd'. Purse your lips like a turtle while you say it and do your bug-eyed impression.
Excellent: Mr burns style.
Kraken: dramatic, Davy Jones style.
Oh! A honeyeater just swooped down and collected some straw from one of our hanging baskets! Springs a'comin!
..............................................................................
Some words you just have to say a certain way:
Snigger: pronounce 'schnigger'. Draw out the schh sound
Nerd: pronounce 'nyerd'. Purse your lips like a turtle while you say it and do your bug-eyed impression.
Excellent: Mr burns style.
Kraken: dramatic, Davy Jones style.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Flesh Computer
There are times when the power of the computer over my mind are undeniable. For a split-second i go to type in the 'search' function of my mind for certain notes written down tangible sheets of paper. Grotesquely, i had a dream about facebook. And it wasn't an interesting dream, with strange contortions of the cyber-landscape, or bizarre fusions of inside and outside the screen. No. It was excruciatingly mundane: just a vivid pulse of excitement encapsualted in a red banner at the left hand corner of the screen.
I read in an article somewhere that, with the advent of technology, a human's memory capacity is shrinking. With the ability to file away permanent notes on our supplementary brains, it becomes no longer necessary to imprint and solidify knowledge in our private brains. Technological repositories become a crutch, an extension, a safe. Learning becomes a more transcient process. You leak easier. And nowadays, that's ok, because the outlet's for topping up again are just so accessible.
I guess it was kind of the same phenomenon when literary rates exploded sometime in the 18th century, and the concurrent proliferation of the previously rare and sacred text. I mean, imagine the only channel of learning being sound! The spoken word; loaded but ephemeral, so susceptible to decay and deformation by its listeners. Except for the few prodigies, we don't have minds like tape-recorders. Our memories are not only imperfect, but recollection is contingent on a personal context that changes with time. So essentially, we can never articulate what 'was'.
Anyhoo, back to what i was saying. Imagine if you could only learn through listening. How high the value of knowledge and story would suddenly ascend! You'd savour every new tale that entered your ears like drops of honey that dissolved instantaneously into 'then', relish every image and avenue. Eagerly lap it up and encompass it, enfold it to yourself.
Perhaps we've lost some of that appreciation. Grown complacent. Look at the immediate world askance because of the assurance we can review it later through exterior channels.
I also think this habit grows with age. Everything was so much more vivid in childhood. Everything had a mood to it, a tone. It takes a bit more effort nowadays for me to feel a place or an object or a situation. I dunno. Maybe it's just me that's grown complacent. I'm such a generaliser. Projecting myself onto the world to spread the guilt.
I read in an article somewhere that, with the advent of technology, a human's memory capacity is shrinking. With the ability to file away permanent notes on our supplementary brains, it becomes no longer necessary to imprint and solidify knowledge in our private brains. Technological repositories become a crutch, an extension, a safe. Learning becomes a more transcient process. You leak easier. And nowadays, that's ok, because the outlet's for topping up again are just so accessible.
I guess it was kind of the same phenomenon when literary rates exploded sometime in the 18th century, and the concurrent proliferation of the previously rare and sacred text. I mean, imagine the only channel of learning being sound! The spoken word; loaded but ephemeral, so susceptible to decay and deformation by its listeners. Except for the few prodigies, we don't have minds like tape-recorders. Our memories are not only imperfect, but recollection is contingent on a personal context that changes with time. So essentially, we can never articulate what 'was'.
Anyhoo, back to what i was saying. Imagine if you could only learn through listening. How high the value of knowledge and story would suddenly ascend! You'd savour every new tale that entered your ears like drops of honey that dissolved instantaneously into 'then', relish every image and avenue. Eagerly lap it up and encompass it, enfold it to yourself.
Perhaps we've lost some of that appreciation. Grown complacent. Look at the immediate world askance because of the assurance we can review it later through exterior channels.
I also think this habit grows with age. Everything was so much more vivid in childhood. Everything had a mood to it, a tone. It takes a bit more effort nowadays for me to feel a place or an object or a situation. I dunno. Maybe it's just me that's grown complacent. I'm such a generaliser. Projecting myself onto the world to spread the guilt.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Yoowwwwlll!! My hands are all weather-cracked. Tiny little lacerations have appeared all over as though some invisible miniature goblin has been slicing away with a fencing sword throughout the day.
Poor tiggs. He's just had his teeth cleaned at the vet. For obvious reasons (to avoid slightly more painful lacerations than mine) he had to be sedated. Now he's all dopey. His lazy eye is even more lazy than usual. They're so cute like that. Drugged up.
SNIGGER OF THE DAY
Milton Jones: "I was walking along the road today, and on the pavement i saw a small, dead, baby ghost. Although, thinking about it, it might have been a handkercheif."
Poor tiggs. He's just had his teeth cleaned at the vet. For obvious reasons (to avoid slightly more painful lacerations than mine) he had to be sedated. Now he's all dopey. His lazy eye is even more lazy than usual. They're so cute like that. Drugged up.
SNIGGER OF THE DAY
Milton Jones: "I was walking along the road today, and on the pavement i saw a small, dead, baby ghost. Although, thinking about it, it might have been a handkercheif."
Cringe
'So what do you think?'
'Mffffgrmm' i whimpered. With dismay, i realised from my expression in the glass how extraordinarly transparent i am. The face staring back at me was pallid, and bespoke of untold horrors. What vision had it been confronted with should should've made it so bloodless, so aghast? A vile serpent? A sour-skinned crone, gumless, with blood dripping from sagging lips? Had she looked into the eye of a basilisk itself?
It was as though the face of Eve had surfaced from the depths of ancestry, and wore on her descendnts face the very look that had appeared when she realised what paradise was left behind and saw instead the black mineshaft she had dropped into.(Metaphorically, mind).
Considering my first reply was somewhat lacking in eloquence (whilst nonetheless emotionally overt) i tried another on its tail.
'Yes, fine' I gibbered. No, this fringe cut doesn't look hideous. No, i don't feel like snatching your barber-ous instruments and doing a Sweeney Todd on you. No, i don't look like a toy doll with its feafully dead-straight fringe that bounces gently over its dead eyes. No, it doesn't look like this hairy waterfall is just a massive monobrow on my forehead, in grotesque ascent of its designated spot in the facial hierarchy.
'Yes?'
The unease which whined into his voice and was the anxious furrow in his brow was damning. He knew he had created a monster. In that moment, he had his own demons to face; a modern Frankenstein, who would no doubt screech as soon as the (in my mind) batwing doors had swung shut: 'WHAT HAVE I DONE?!!! Lord have mercy on my soul'. Complete with hand wringing, head-whacking and sobbing.
Cringe at the fringe.
'Mffffgrmm' i whimpered. With dismay, i realised from my expression in the glass how extraordinarly transparent i am. The face staring back at me was pallid, and bespoke of untold horrors. What vision had it been confronted with should should've made it so bloodless, so aghast? A vile serpent? A sour-skinned crone, gumless, with blood dripping from sagging lips? Had she looked into the eye of a basilisk itself?
It was as though the face of Eve had surfaced from the depths of ancestry, and wore on her descendnts face the very look that had appeared when she realised what paradise was left behind and saw instead the black mineshaft she had dropped into.(Metaphorically, mind).
Considering my first reply was somewhat lacking in eloquence (whilst nonetheless emotionally overt) i tried another on its tail.
'Yes, fine' I gibbered. No, this fringe cut doesn't look hideous. No, i don't feel like snatching your barber-ous instruments and doing a Sweeney Todd on you. No, i don't look like a toy doll with its feafully dead-straight fringe that bounces gently over its dead eyes. No, it doesn't look like this hairy waterfall is just a massive monobrow on my forehead, in grotesque ascent of its designated spot in the facial hierarchy.
'Yes?'
The unease which whined into his voice and was the anxious furrow in his brow was damning. He knew he had created a monster. In that moment, he had his own demons to face; a modern Frankenstein, who would no doubt screech as soon as the (in my mind) batwing doors had swung shut: 'WHAT HAVE I DONE?!!! Lord have mercy on my soul'. Complete with hand wringing, head-whacking and sobbing.
Cringe at the fringe.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)