In Memorium

It’s been an emotionally troubling week. I lost an old and dear friend who I shared a good deal of my upbringing with. Not exactly flesh and blood, but near enough.

Last year I wrote about how overjoyed I was when Mary, the Yamaha PSR 225 that had provided the soundtrack to my highschool years, had come back into my life. It’s been a happy year and a half as we’ve relived old times, rolling out like we used to for the fortnightly prison ministry. Even if it has caused a few arguments between me and Samantha, it's been worth every minute.

It is with deep sorrow and the greatest respect that I announce that two weeks ago Mary lost her battle with old age and a tropical disease known commonly as ‘cockroach corrosion’. She had lived a full and meaningful life and she will never be forgotten.

Could such a devastating loss as this spell the end for prison ministry?

Pffft. No.

It’s true that Samantha’s lack of onboard speakers (you can tell if a keyboard is hard core by whether it has onboard speakers or not. If you can get a sound out of it without a power pack, amplifier and a couple of leads, you’re not trying hard enough) makes her a bad choice for carrying in and out of prison (don’t tell her I said that). But all that was needed was a new portable keyboard. A better portable keyboard. A portable keyboard with such destructive power it…

Sorry.

We’ve all chucked in a bit of money, and I've made a very special trip to the music shop in Casuarina. Prepare to experience the fury of the Yamaha PSR E423! She's in the same series as Mary was, but is fifteen years younger and - being of the next generation -  just a little more tech-savvy, more environmentally friendly and more likely to miss the sunset while playing on her iphone. All the old faithful Yamaha voices are there, plus a new pitch bend wheel, a usb interface and about a billion times more onboard memory.

In honour of her predecessor, I’ve named her Marian.

Make of that what you will.



Garry with 2 Rs

Guest Post: CSPE

A few posts ago, I signed up CTC to an online social network known as Twenty Something Bloggers, in an attempt to catch the wave of virtual good will circling the globe and uniting bloggers everywhere in an interlocking web of awesome. As with most of my previous attempts at surfing, I failed to immediately experience the rush of success and quickly lost interest. Plus, the board kept slipping up and taking all the skin off my chin.

However, recently I received an email from the 20sb team reminding me that it was time for the annual blog swap festival; a time when bloggers from all across the world get to guest post on a random stranger’s blog in order to promote … I don’t actually know what. The blog swappers were supposed to blog on the general theme of “summer”. As keen as was to give someone else control of my blog, unfortunately it isn’t summer here and I missed the deadline anyway.

Not to fear; I never let my self-imposed social isolationism get in the way of a chance to make fun of a perfectly harmless social diversion. So here, guest posting on CTC for the first time, is Katerina from the California Sunshine Pictogram Experience.

Enjoy.

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Wow. A guest spot on Cum Tacent Clament. I’m so jazzed to be here and swapping blogs with Gary. Thanks heaps for the opportunity Gary.

I guess I should start by introducing myself: I’m a twenty something year old post grad law student from San Diego. I live downtown with my roommate and a crazy cat named Muppet. I love writing about my crazy life and all the random things that happen to me all the time.

For instance, this morning I got a call from my baby brother in Boston. BB is still living with Mom and Dad over there and loving every minute of it. Anyway, he rings me up this morning all in a panic because he can’t find his favorite sweater. I guess he thought I might know where it was, despite the fact that I live two thousand miles away, practically on the other side of the world.

I told him to check his camouflage floor. This has been a standing joke between us since we were kids. His sweater is the same shade of blue as the carpet on his floor, and I can think of at least three times as kids when he ‘couldn’t find his sweater’ and it turned out to be lying on his floor, blending in to the carpet.

This time it turned out he’d accidentally set it on fire and fed the ashes to his fish. Craziness.

Shifting the attention back to me… I seem to be breaking a lot of stuff at the moment. For starters I was really sick last week. On Friday morning I coughed so hard I think I broke my clavicle. Seriously, I think I might be allergic to Fridays. How weird is that?

On top of that, while I was having one of those coughing fits, I accidentally knocked a glass of kool-aid over on top of a new sketch I’d been working on. I was a little bummed about this because I’d been working on it for two days, and it was just starting to come together. Mind you, every time I go hang out with proper artists at the pencil club after class on Mondays, I get all depressed because I realise I can’t actually draw. I think I’m going to take up Chinese Checkers instead.

The one thin that keeps me going is my telescope. I keep it at the astronomy department most of the time so it’s handy to all the library resources. I’ve had the telescope so long it’s becoming part of who I am, but more like an extra data interface to my brain than an actual extra appendage. That would be weird. I guess it is anyway.

The thing is my telescope is starting to show his age (Yes, his age. I call him Murray). The adjusting handles are getting sticky and one of the lenses keeps on dropping out of alignment. Sometimes I find myself staring off into other worlds and thinking to myself, “Is there anything in my life that isn’t gradually getting more and more screwed up?” sometimes it makes me want to pretend I’m someone else for a while. Even when I’m gazing into deep space, I can’t get past how annoying the real world is.

Also, I hate banjos. Sometimes I want to throw things at people who play them, but most times I just launch into random tirades about them on my blog.

So I guess that’s about all I can really expect to get away with sharing on some random Australian’s blog. I hope Gary doesn’t mind my discontinuous thought trains and slightly offensive language.

It’s salsa time!

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Right, okay fine. Thanks so much for your contribution Kat. It’s amazing what sort of things you can learn when you open your heart to the internet.

Milkfish.

Garry with 2 Rs

Being Ungentlemanly

A co-worker today described me as “a well groomed gentleman”. I very nearly beat her about the head with the toner cartridge I was carrying for her. The very cheek of the woman.

I didn’t mind so much being called well groomed, although she went on to qualify that remark by saying she was impressed by the fact that I had ironed my shirt, despite the fact that I hadn’t. I believe I did own an iron at one point. Last time I saw it was about seven years ago in Brisbane.

No, my beef was with being called a gentleman. I’m sure she meant well enough by it, but it’s one of those words that never fails to get my hackles up. I can not and will not be classified as such.

“Oh Garry, whatever could you mean by that?” asks an imposing woman in a floral dress holding a plate of biscuits. “How could you be opposed to gentlemanliness?”

To be honest, I do find this state of affairs a little disconcerting. I hadn’t realised there was an anthropomorphic projection of polite society watching over my shoulder, and I’m buggered if I know where she came from. Doesn’t she know it’s bad manners to sneak up on a man when he’s blogging? Good biscuits but.

Obviously it all comes down to definitions, and on that point most people I talk to about this end up disqualifying themselves from the conversation. As I see it, you’re only allowed to talk to me about gentlemanliness if you can define it without using the words “door,” “seat” or “bus”. You would be surprised how many people fail at this, which actually speaks to the heart of the problem more directly than you might think. If a gentleman is defined simply as “someone (presumably a man) who opens doors for ladies and offers them his seat on a bus” then it’s not worth much, is it? Anyone can open a door. So can velociraptors. What’s your point?

“No no no,” says Biscuit Lady, “it’s not just that. It’s about being polite, and showing respect. Being courteous.”

Baloney! Baloney I say! That’s just another slightly more convoluted way of classifying a man by what he does, not who he is. A man may be as well spoken, sophisticated and ‘gentle’ as can be, and still be a complete creep. I’ve heard men speak eloquently and graciously about how they believe the aboriginal race to be inferior, how we ought to just ban Islam outright and how homeless folk on the street really only have themselves to blame, all to the supportive nods and smiles of the ‘gentlemen’ around them. You can keep that, and keep it as far away from me as you can.

So what is a gentleman, really?

A wise man (I think it was Zorro) once said “A nobleman is nothing but a man who says one thing and thinks another”. I think that’s a little closer to the truth than the bus thing, but I’m going to go out on a limb and propose my own working definition. To me, a gentleman is a man who fulfils all the expectations that society makes of him. That sounds like a noble aim, until you start to look under the rugs and behind the cupboards of the society that’s making the expectations. The biscuits may taste delicious at first, but in the end they have a habit of rotting your teeth, turning your stomach and dislocating your shoulder.

Basically, a gentleman is man who does as he’s told.

I, on the other hand, aspire to be a man who tells society where to get off (Yep, that means you Biscuit Lady) and what it can do with its expectations. If that means I don’t get an invitation to your daughter’s coming out party, then so be it. I know who I am and who I am not (so does she, come to that) regardless of whether I fit your preferred mould. And if you think I’m going to do as I’m told by some old bat who isn’t even really there, then you’ve got another thing coming.

Classify that, bitch (you can leave the biscuits, though)!

Meanwhile, back in reality (or what passes for it in my life) the whole revolution is actually a lot less rebellious than it sounds. I’m not going to go around refusing to lift, open or carry things, but if I do open a door for you, it’s not because I’ve been taught I have to; I honestly believe I don’t have to. If I open a door for you, it’s because I choose to, which actually makes it much more meaningful than anything a gentleman could possibly conceptualise, let alone sneer at.

Besides which, I catch busses so rarely these days that it doesn’t really matter. But just be aware that if you call me a gentleman as you sit in my seat, there’s a reasonable chance that I’ll take it back again.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Meme-Free Monday

The blogosphere is a strange, amazing and frightening place.

I’ve been exploring the world of blog networks. I say exploring, but what I really mean is observing from a comfortable distance with a self-satisfied sneer on my face. I would have imagined, from my obviously naive and unrealistic bubble, that writing stuff about your life online would be the resort of people who are fed up with the three dimensional world and need a place where they can wantonly put forth whatever is on their mind without having their performance appraised, motives questioned or grammar corrected (ahem). In short, people like me.

I mean, obviously the premise is flawed from the outset, as the number of blogs out there is huge, and the number of people like me is so small as to be almost immeasurable (and that is probably just as well). But even so, the number of ways people can find to take their own individualised cyber-portal for self expression and make it the same as everyone else’s never fails to amaze me.

There is now a content generating meme available for every day of the week. If you aligned your blog with all of them (and some people do) you’d be writing a meal plan on Monday (that’s not a blog, that’s a shopping list), discussing the funny things your cats do on Tuesday (it doesn’t rhyme or start with the same letter as Tuesday, but apparently it’s a thing. Also, it’s a little bit exclusive of people who don’t own cats, or who do own cats that never do anything interesting (Yes. I’m looking at you, Sis.)), writing wordlessly on Wednesday (that’s not even possible, unless you just post an image with no heading or caption, which is an interesting idea but doesn’t really you help to connect with your readers) being thankful on Thursday (and presumably remaining bitter and ungrateful for the rest of the week) and flogging your blog on Friday. (I’ve already written about how stupid that is). By the time you got to the weekend you’d be so over-memed with your blog that you’d be ready to delete it and start fresh. And I probably wouldn’t blame you.

My first and extremely predictable reaction to this was to declare Cum Tacent Clament a meme free zone. You can take your “Write like everyone else Wednesday” and stick it up your word processor. Unfortunately there is the small matter of the large pink “One Lovely Blog” sticker sitting on my left side bar. There’s more than enough disingenuousness around with regards to things that actually matter as it is, without me getting all hypocritical about something as banal as Novelty Mango Chutney Recipe Tuesday*.

So instead, I’m starting my own meme-based protest movement. I was going to call it “Self-Important Saturday” – a day for people everywhere to show how independent, creative and spontaneous they are by all writing about the same thing at the same time for a day each week. Unfortunately I slept in on Saturday, and then the rest of my day got filled up with opera rehearsal and sepak takraw training.

So instead, I hereby present you with the very first “Meme-free Monday”. It’s a one day in the week when bloggers from all over the community can celebrate the freedom of their online voice by WRITING ABOUT WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT!

It’s such a great idea, don’t you think? Send the message to five people, and let’s spread the word of meme-free Monday to everyone in the blogosphere! The first person to send me a link to their meme-free Monday post wins a free Cum Tacent Clament T-shirt** signed by Brooke Fraser***. <3 <3 <3 Yay! <3 <3 <3.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

*This might be a real thing, but probably isn’t.

**This probably isn’t a real thing either.

***How cool would that be?