Cum Tacent Clament

More Fun with Spruikers

2012-02-09T21:15:00.002+09:30

Wow!

What an eventful week it’s been. I don’t want to put the mozz on it, but February is shaping up as the best month in quite some time. I really don’t know where to start on this one, but since it’s been a while since I’ve actually sat down and written anything, I think I’ll warm up with a quick run through with an old favourite.

How much fun is playing with street spruikers?

I met a really nice one last weekend, who, despite having come up from Sydney, refrained from making comments about how he had no idea what was going on and how different Darwin was from Sydney and how it was sooooooo hot and how much he liked the markets. I mean those are all valid points (except the markets one. They don’t start up again for a while yet), but you’re not going to convince me to give you money by telling me how weird my home town is. Like I don’t already know. This guy made sensible comments about the charity he was spruiking, and actually listened to my answers and questions rather than abandoning each unsuccessful persuasion technique in favour of a different approach. In the end, I had to tell him I was all tapped out for charity donations for now, but if you have some spare space on your credit card, go check out Mission Australia’s Youth Up program. It looks like it would be really worthwhile getting behind.

Meanwhile at a different charity stall:

Hot German Backpacker: Hi. Would you like to come and talk to me?

Gw2Rs: (checks watch and confirms how much of his lunch hour is left) … Okay.

HGB: What is your favourite animal?

Gw2Rs: The velociraptor.

HGB: The what?

And with that she blew any possible chance she had of being taken seriously, either as a charity spruiker or as a human being. I decided to stick around and see how much free information I could get out of her.

Gw2Rs: Never mind. I like eagles.

HGB: Wow. What an interesting answer.

Gw2Rs: … ?

HGB: Most people say cat or dog.

Gw2Rs: BORING!

HGB: I know. So have you heard of the WWF before?

Gw2Rs: The wrestling show?

HGB: … No. Well, what we are doing is we are trying to save endangered animals from extinction. Do you like tigers?

Gw2Rs: Sure, who doesn’t?

HGB: Did you know there are five different types of tigers in the world?

Gw2Rs: Hmm… Bengal, Sumatran, Siberian, Tasmanian… What’s the last one?

HGB: … I don’t know. But what is really sad is that soon all these different kinds may be extinct. Blah blah blah reducing numbers, blah blah destruction of habitat, blah blah humans are evil. We are starting up a new program to help tigers. In ten years, 2022, it will be the Chinese year of the tiger. We are hoping to save all the tigers in the world by the time that year comes.

Gw2Rs: Sounds good. Apparently this year is the year of the dragon. How many of them did you save?

HGB: I don’t know.

Gw2Rs: (gives up and leaves).

Apparently the missing tiger types are Malayan and Chinese. They aren’t so well known, mainly because they really are as rare as they say they are. Maybe it’s just as well. I was going to suggest Italian, but God knows what the next poor guy would have been told if I’d given her that idea.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

The Rule of Three

2012-01-28T22:28:00.001+09:30

Blog posts, much like sermons, Hollywood witch covens and Super Nintendo boss fights, operate according to a very strict established convention: the rule of three. Sermons always have to have three central points, with bonus points awarded if the headings all start with the same letter. Hollywood witch covens always have to have three sisters, with bonus points awarded if they are actually sisters. Twins and/or triplets is the ideal here. And it’s well established that you have to jump on Bowser’s head three times to kill him. Or grab the hammer. Whatever.

And so it is with blog posts. Before you can take some aspect or happenstance of your week and inform everyone on the internet (or your mum and a few friends) of how worthy of their attention it is, you need to have three items that you can write about, ideally with some thematic link.

As you know, here at Cum Tacent Clament, we’re very careful about the way we value inherent structure, respect established conventions and stick to a finely defined line of argument. This is why it has been a little longer than it should have been between posts this month; I’ve just been so flat out trying to find a set of blogable experiences that are simultaneously appropriate, memorable and threefold. But this afternoon I managed to do just that.

First off on this morning’s thematically consistent Saturday was another trip out to Berrimah Correctional Facility. Prison ministry is still going strong, and continues to be an enlightening, enriching and engaging experience for the prisoners, the officers, and us.

Next stop was the very first practice session for One Body NT, which turns out to be a worship service and intercongradenomenagalactical church network rather than a discount gym franchise. We’re still putting the play list together for the first time, but I’m really excited to be finally getting the idea off the ground, even if it is going to start small. Next Saturday promises to dynamic, lustrous and cutting edge. It may or may not renege on that promise.

Thirdly and lastly I called in at my old church, Darwin Memorial Uniting, to get re-acquainted with the organ there, since they had asked me to play for them Sunday morning. It’s got some nice sounds on it, but the user interface always takes me half an hour to get used to. I mean, obviously the keys and stops and things are the same, but the settings to turn the reverb down and get some kind of decent volume out of the swell needs some experimentation in order to get your head around theconfusing, uninformative and thoroughly non-intuitive settings menu. It’s the only church organ I’ve ever seen that has a remote control. It would be really cool if that meant you could play the processional from outside in the car park, but unfortunately all you can do is turn the reverb on and off, unless you want to start mucking around with the tuning, which given the tone of an organ in the first place, probably isn’t a good idea.

And fourthly I had Portuguese chicken for dinner. Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Getting Things Started

2012-01-15T23:15:00.002+09:30

I don’t know what it was about 2011. It seemed no matter what I turned my hand to, it just didn’t work. Things which should have been straight forward were ridiculously complicated, and things which would have been complicated anyway ended up being flat out impossible. Last year, while I may have had nine and a half resolutions set out on my side bar, really there were only three things I actually cared about. And I didn’t get any of them done.

I’ve wanted for ages to get a combined worship service going in Darwin again. I’ve wanted it to be intercongregational, or ecumenical, or interdenominational, or whatever your preference of term for “all in it together” might be. My friend and I have come up with “intercongradenomonagalactical.” If that sounds stupid, that’s only because it is.

But the point is it’s happening. We’re booked in for the 4^th of February. One way or another, I’m making a start. I don’t have a drummer, a drum kit, or anyway of getting the word out apart from right here on CTC (and maybe Facebook), but come what may the movement is starting in two weeks. Stay tuned.

Probably the biggest disappointment from last year was my utter failure to get myself a vaguely interesting job. Sure, I made the move from staff trainer to operations supervisor, but even though I counted it has half a point on my checklist, it really wasn’t what I was looking for. I tried a few strategies to get into a job with more to do with media, communications or writing, but just couldn’t make anything happen. I started to get pretty despondent about the whole thing towards the end of the year there.

This year, I’m determined to turn it around. I have a two week placement booked with our local paper, the highly esteemed NT News, which is more than I’ve managed to achieve in two years up to this point. I’ve spoken to some friends who work for the paper. They’ve unanimously advised me not to work there, as apparently it sucks the soul out of you. But when it comes around, I’d rather work in a sould destroying job doing something I like than work in a soul destroying job doing something that I have no interest in whatsoever. It’s a pretty bleak view of the universe I suppose, but there again, I don’t imagine there are that many people in the first world thinking “Hooray! Time to go get a job!” anyway.

And then there’s resolution seven. That link goes to some post about Dan geting married. I think it's the only one with an overt mention of resolution seven on it. I was going to write a post about it at some point... but I didn't. Basically last year's resolution seven was "fall in love".

No. Still nothing to report on that front. But the way I see it, it’s not even the end of January yet, and I’ve already achieved a gazillion time more than I had in the two year previous. Two out of three major life goals in the pipeline, and one that I’m not really in control of anyway. Geez, if I could just generate the self-discipline to stop playing with my new computer and actually do something worthwhile, I might just change the world this year.

Probably not.

Garry with 2 Rs

Possibly My Clumsiest Metaphor Yet

2012-01-03T22:25:00.001+09:30

I had intended to post a very moving and reflective post about what a gigantic pile of useless junk 2011 was. But as much as whiny self indulgence is the flavour of choice for the mystery stew that is Cum Tacent Clament, it’s probably easier in the end to point to my handily tabulated list of objectives for the year and note that anything that isn’t theatrical or … buying a phone has been a comprehensive non event. I could have given you two, maybe three good (well…) paragraphs all about the awesome things I failed to do last year, but instead I thought I’d tell you all a story which encapsulates nicely the spiritual, psychological and indeed sociological journey of the year that was.

Our story begins on Boxing Day, when my valiant laptop, veteran of an honours thesis, a trip to Spain and more hours of online gaming than I care to think about, crashed three times in succession while attempting to play the Doctor Who Christmas special. The constant freezing and inability to run anything more complex than iTunes I can live with, but start messing with the Doctor and you’re on borrowed time. I made the reluctant decision to find a new one in the post Christmas sales.

Wednesday lunch time saw me spending my lunch break in an electrical goods store. I probably don’t need to name the specific store, but it's one that would be regarded as hardly normal. It’s not an easy place to get any service, but I find the best strategy is to stand next to something expensive and try to look gullible. A passing sales assistant swooped in like a magpie and soon had me comparing prices, hardware specs and brand names. I told him I’d go check my bank balances and get back to him.

By Thursday lunch time I’d made up my mind about which model I wanted and come to terms with the extent to which I couldn’t afford it. I resolved to buy it anyway and headed back out to the shop. I found the same salesman who had been so helpful the day before and told him which one I wanted. We spent a good twenty five minutes filling out forms and entering contact details into every known database on the planet and then came the killer question:

Salesman: How are you wanting to pay for that?

Gw2Rs: Credit card for now.

Salesman: Yeah, sorry. Our eftpos system is down.

There is something quietly satisfying about being sold a computer by an organisation with chronic IT problems Apparently it hadn’t occurred to him to tell me he had no way of taking my money before spending half an hour trying to sell me something. Or perhaps he assumed I was carrying enough on me to pay for a mid-range laptop computer in cash. He asked if I would be able to hang around the shop for half an hour while they tried to fix the system. I had to get back to work, but I told him I would try to get back after work before the shop shut. Unfortunately all our remote branches at work decided that Thursday would be a good day to implode, so I didn’t make it back until Friday lunch time.

After helping the sales staff settle an argument about credit card payments (operations supervisor to the rescue!), I finally got my hands on my new computer. As always, time was against me and I had to leave it in the car and head straight back to work.

Once again, my attempts to leave the building by five were thwarted by the dastardly powers of general incompetence, but I did make it home by twenty past and took my new toy out of the box. I was shocked and greatly annoyed to discover that the computer I had received seemed in no way to resemble the computer I thought I had purchased. That all the labels had the wrong thing on them was my first clue. I had ten minutes to spare before the shop shut and it would take me about fifteen to get there, so I called ahead to see if someone could hang around and help me exchange the computer.

They refused.

At this point I started writing this post, full of righteous fury at the shop, at 2011 in general and at Karma. Having spent the last three evenings staying late at work to fix other peoples mistakes, the unwillingness of the shop to stay for five minutes to fix their own screw up seemed to me to be just a little unjust. They thought they could push me around like some inconsequential consumer; little did they know I’m a world famous blogger with no less than eight online followers. Oh boy were they ever going to be sorry. However, their imminent downfall was delayed by one evening, as I got an invitation to go have a swim and watch Doctor Who with my friends (It was a delightful evening), so I saved my post to finish later.

Saturday rolled around, as it usually does. At last I was able to confront these villains, these two-bit hacks of the computer retail community. I marched in with all the sense of moment I could muster (it wasn’t much, but I was proud of it) and demanded satisfaction.

It turns out I’m a complete knob who can’t recognise his own computer when he’s looking straight at it. They hadn’t given me the wrong machine at all, just one with unexpected stickers on it. It was the correct laptop all along. I politely thanked them for their time and got the hell out of there.

The moral of the story? I have a new laptop, and 2011 can go and die alone in a dark hole somewhere.

Happy New Year

Garry with 2 Rs

O Come Some Of Ye Faithful

2011-12-27T21:45:00.002+09:30

I have a confession to make: I really like Christmas carols.

As a musician, and especially as a church musician, traditionally I’m supposed to hate them. They’re really old and the same ones get dragged out every year, and no matter how creative you get with them, there’s really no way to do them except in the traditional style; almost every attempt to update them, jazz them or rock them ends up destroying them. Like most people, carols drive me around the twist when they start coming out in shopping centres in October, because those are usually the versions that have been killed by one of the aforementioned attempts to modernise them.

But I still have a soft spot for a good hearty rendition of the old favourites. I've written before about how inherently powerful they are and I still stand by that.

I think some of the reason is that I’m a pianist. The ones who really hate carols are usually guitarists who spend the whole time complaining about how many chord changes there are in old style carols. This has always struck me as kind of wussy. Honestly, if you’re going to insist on playing an instrument that is all about chords, surely the ones with lots of chords are going to be the most fun, if possibly a little more difficult than playing normal church music, which tends to have no more than four chords, in a predictable repetitive pattern. Here’s looking at you, Hills.

Meanwhile, this Christmas has gone a little strangely. Normally it’s a time when I’m run off my feet getting from one carols service to the next for a full fortnight. This year due to Earnest I got as close as Christmas Eve without playing or even hearing a single one. I missed out on Darwin carols by candlelight and accidently slept through the Melbourne one that they always put on TV. I usually like that one, except most of my memories are of trying to listen to the music while my mother and sister, after a glass or so of wine, have arguments about whether the singer’s dress is showing more or less leg than is appropriate for this time of year, and how much weight she might have put on or lost since the last time she appeared on Australian TV, which was probably in Sea Patrol.

Actually, probably not. I don’t think that’s on Channel Nine. Come to think of it, I don’t know if it’s on at all anymore.

I don’t watch much television.

The point is, I didn’t really get a chance for a big nostalgic sing along this year, and although I’m prepared to accept that I have only myself to blame for that, I found myself feeling more than a little hard done by as I read Facebook accounts of the massive carols services being put on by my old church in Kirribilli. That thing has only gotten bigger since I left. It’s out of control I tell you.

My big chance finally came on Christmas morning. All the guitarists had gone on holidays, or fled in wussy fear of multiple chord harmonies. I was just me, Samantha, a drummer and a singer. This was going to be awesome. I conducted an online poll to find the most popular carols (yes, it was on my Facebook wall. shut up), picked the least obscure verses and came up with whatever harmonies I damn well wanted. A Christmas miracle!

Unfortunately the cliché of Christmas being the only well attended service for the year doesn’t seem to hold true in pentecostal churches. The twice-a-year mob all seem to go to the bigger congregations in town, and all our regulars were on holidays, sick or frantically running around trying to organise a nativity play which was supposed to be put on by people who were on holidays or sick. By the time you took all the kids out and put them in the nativity play, the congregation had about a dozen people at most. But that was alright, we still sang with joy and gusto. We didn’t exactly lift the roof. We didn’t exactly know all the words. But we had fun, and we got the service through in under forty minutes, which left just enough time to go home, open presents, finish getting lunch ready and start writing Christmas blog posts. Or whatever.

Merry Christmas!

Garry with 2 Rs

To Live Is Christ

2011-12-22T18:09:00.000+09:30

Sorry, sorry. I know I promised you all a heart-warming Christmas edition. I’ll still do that next week sometime, but in the meantime here’s a piece about death.

I went to the funeral of an old family friend yesterday. I say old the sense of the friendship, not in terms of the person; Rita was taken before her time by cancer and was far too young. It goes without saying that her death was tragic, but I have to say that her funeral was absolutely magnificent. It was held in the auditorium at Darwin Uniting, which was packed to the doors; standing room only.

Rita came from the local Fijian community, and so of course the Fijians came in strong numbers to pay their respects. Rita was also strongly involved with literacy training in remote aboriginal communities, so there was a big turn out from the local indigenous community as well, as well as all the people of various ethnicities from Darwin Uniting Church. In the midst of myriad government programs, schemes and interventions that don’t work, it was powerful to see that all that is required to bring the different communities together is one life of absolutely passionate service. Sure, it’s a shame that it takes the death of a wonderful person to bring the groups together, but it’s also a powerful picture of how a person’s life and legacy can go on affecting people long after they’ve passed away.

The most moving moment of the service came when they carried the coffin out of the church, accompanied simultaneously by indigenous tap sticks and a full Fijian choir, plus a bunch of goofy white people, standing by awkwardly not knowing where to look. Kind of a cross cultural cross section of the way we all handle death.

If I can move half as many people half as much when my time comes, I’ll consider it a life well lived.

Garry with 2 Rs

An Unremarkable Evening

2011-12-19T20:34:00.000+09:30

We had our office Christmas party last weekend. For reasons I don’t fully understand, this year we decided to break with our tradition of taking a harbour cruise for the Christmas party (which has always been fantastic) and to hire an open topped double decker bus to take us on a pub crawl around the city.

I had originally intended to write a blistering exposé on my impressions of the party bus, but to be honest it wasn’t remarkable enough to warrant more than a paragraph or so. We visited a few bars, had some drinks and finished up at Monsoon’s in the city. My distaste for Monsoon’s is well known, so I didn’t stay long. Besides, it was what happened after I left the party that makes for the better story.

I walked out of the pub at about ten o’clock and started thinking about the best way to get home. The night bus service wasn’t going to run until one o’clock and a taxi was going to cost me forty dollars or so. Right at that moment, before I’d even had a chance to walk more than half a block, a white car came around the corner, ran out of petrol half way through the intersection and coasted to a stop about a metre in front of me. A friend from church jumped out and said

“Garry! Thank goodness. I need your help”.

I happily agreed to walk with her down to the service station and fill up a jerry can with diesel, and in exchange she very kindly offered me a lift home. She also asked if I minded stopping by the school where she worked so she could pick up some work she needed to finish up over the weekend. While we were there, she also picked up her bass guitar and offered to help with the worship band on Sunday morning.

And then I found ten dollars.

Okay, so it’s not a really interesting story after all. But after finishing up with Earnest last weekend, I’ve really been enjoying having a week where I haven’t done anything that required too much thinking. It’s been good, but unfortunately it doesn’t lend itself to staggeringly interesting blog posts. Shut up. I’ll write a Christmas post next week. That’ll be nice.

Garry with 2 Rs

The Importance Of Not Being Algernon

2011-12-08T22:58:00.000+09:30

A few posts back I wrote about how thrilled I was about landing the role of Algernon in a local production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Well, we opened last night to great reviews and I’m still extremely happy to be involved, particularly with such an awesome role. But I have to say, ever since I got back from holidays and plunged head first into production week (with a resounding splat, I might add) I’ve been battling the rather disconcerting feeling that, as much as I’m enjoying being Algernon, Algernon seems, in a strange way, to enjoy being me.

The most enjoyable part of the whole play for me is the chance to poke a bit of (thoroughly deserved) fun at the aristocracy and the upper class culture. Algernon’s persona as we’ve come to develop him over the last few months is glaringly ostentatious, absurdly dandyful (shut up, yes it is) and poncy to the point of being overtly camp.

Put more simply, Algernon is English.

I, on the other hand, am Australian and take pride in the fact. It’s one of the few categorisations or labels that I will allow to be applied to me without any objection. So the startling tendency for Algernon’s ridiculous affectations to hang around on my person long after we’ve taken the final bow is causing me an intermediate amount of cultural distress. I don’t have the broadest of Australian accents to begin with, but I’ve taken great care over the years to cultivate the few Strine diphthongs I do use to the ultimate level of inner ear rupturing nasalisation.

Nowadays, thanks to my spending every waking hour either at work or at Earnest, not only do I sound more pompous than Mark Nicholas interviewing the Duke of Edinburgh, I’ve managed to develop a slight labialisation of my rhotics, despite the fact that not even Algernon has that particular speech impediment anymore. We got rid of it about a week and a half ago because it sounded ridiculous. And now I’m doing it.

Earlier this week at a staff meeting I was inviting my co-workers along to see the play when I got this gem from one of the senior managers:

“I was just saying that you’re perfectly suited to the role (take that sopranos). You just look like you would fit right in in Victorian England”.

What. The. Hell?

For one thing, we wear a uniform at work, and it’s about as far from Victorian as you could get without being downright unprofessional. For another, it is a well established fact that if I were a product of any historical era, it would be the Spanish Civil War. Or possibly the Early Cretaceous Period. I certainly don’t belong in England. I have the documents to prove it. Mind you, this was from the same manager who has described me in my performance review as “shy,” “methodical” and “too compassionate,” none of which remotely apply to me. That last one doesn’t even make sense.

The point is I’m a little disturbed by my inability to shake Algernon off when I’m not being him. I’m not a method actor by any stretch of the imagination and I’ve never had this sort of character invasion before. I didn’t start bossing people around or standing around being ceremonial and useless (well…) while I was playing King Hildebrand. It probably has something to do with the fact that a single, twenty-something year old mischievous cynic has a little more common ground with me than a fifty something year old monarch from a Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta in the first place, but I’d love to be able to convince myself that it has something to do with becoming a better actor.

Either way, there were still no messages from fans, agents or pretty girls’ mothers on my phone this morning. But at least no-one in my family got engaged this time. Make of that what you will.

Gawwy with 2 Ws

The Absent Trumpet

2011-11-23T22:25:00.000+09:30

Victory comes in many different guises. Sometimes it looks like a champion swimmer looking back at the clock to discover she’s broken the world record. Other times it looks like the wily old grandmaster staring across the board and pushing his rook up to the eighth rank to announce ‘checkmate’. Very occasionally it looks like an Iranian penguin standing in a room full of second hand trombones while being showered in marshmallows by legions of adoring taxation officers.

Even more rarely than that, it looks like a man hiring a flash tuxedo, suiting up and standing at the end of an aisle to turn slightly to the side and… watch someone else get married.

Last weekend saw the all-important penultimate episode in the ongoing saga of the “who gets married to whom and when” game that has been the subject of countless poems, epic ballads and at least three movie adaptations (ok… two rather hastily typed blog posts, both of them by me). The crucial second to last wedding that would decide who would be the victor and who would take the consolation prize of getting married.

And so it was that I suited up and took my place in the bridal party for the best seat in the house from which to watch the second to last contestant take his vows and concede his claim to the title of last man standing.

It couldn’t have been a more perfect day. It was an outdoor wedding on the outskirts of Perth. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and although the sunny summer day was a little warm for the locals, especially those in black suit jackets, as the only representative of the great city of Darwin in attendance I was in my element. While everyone else was looking hot and bothered, I was just looking hot.

It was a charming ceremony; two songs, a homily, a vow or two and it was all over bar the photos which were by far the most painful part of the whole affair. I can’t speak for what the bride and groom might have been expecting, but I had always thought the final victory might have passed with just a little more ceremony. Nothing that would upstage the happy couple of course; just a simple trumpet blast or perhaps a nice tasteful explosion from a howitzer cannon. But no, we were just a little bit preoccupied with celebrating the wedding at hand, and I suppose I can live with that.

After all, I have been assured that the magnitude of celebratory fanfare that will accompany my own wedding, should such an event ever transpire, will be enough to knock the solar system off its… whatever solar systems sit on. And that’s quite enough responsibility to be carrying around for now, thank you very much.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Backstage at the Capitol

2011-11-18T20:08:00.001+09:30

A few posts ago, back when Cum Tacent Clament was still called Far From Home, I wrote a post about the entirely different social universe inhabited by bass players, especially when compared with the rather anti-social one in which we pianists typically operate. Three and a half years later, while I was in Perth this week for Dan's Wedding, the father of the bride-to-be asked me the following question:

"Why do all the girls go and talk to the keyboard player after the show?"

I answered with "Are they lost?" FOTBTB thought that answer was amusing enough that he didn't bother with the officially sanctioned punch line.

But never mind me. On Thursday night I found myself once agin backstage after a Six60 concert. Six60 are getting bigger and bigger and filled the Capitol Theatre in Perth with only slightly less effort than it would have taken Chris to get his ridiculous rock-and-roll fringe to sit just right. Admittedly, the entire house was packed wall to wall with New Zealanders (and two Aussies) but that is no reason to think any less of them. Indeed, there is a growing trend among the more liberal sections of the artistic community to treat New Zealanders as legitimate people in their own right. And when you think about it, in a way they sort of are.

Where was I? Yes - backstage at the Capitol with Dan, congratulating Chris on another great show.

Gw2Rs: So listen, I need you to do me a favour.
Interrupting Drunk Kiwi Girl 1: Oh My God! You guys are awesome! And so famous! Can I get a picture?
Chris: Sure.

Pose, flash hug.

Chris: So what do you need?
IDKG2: (Butts in and whispers something in Chris' ear)
Chris: I'm actually married. Sorry.
IDKG2: Oh (wanders off to find the drummer)
Gw2Rs: I promised Hannah I'd get her a CD, but your merchandise guy isn't selling any.
IDKG3: Oh my God! Are you in the band?
Chris: Yes I am.
IDKG3: Oh my God! Are you his brother?
Gw2Rs: ... Yes I am.
IDKG3: Oh my God I knew it! You have the same fringe.
Gw2Rs: ... ?

Pose flash hug.

Chris: You should get a photo with Garry and Dan too. They're very good looking young men.
IDKG3: Oh my God!

Pose flash hug.

Gw2Rs: ... ?!

This went on for quite some time. Eventually it came to light that there were no CDs on sale because the tour manager had left them at the airport. A couple of IDKGs later, Dan and I had to leave to get Dan's car out of the carpark before it shut and to let Chris get a couple of hours' rest before his early morning flight to Melbourne to do it all again.

As jealous as I so often am of the high achievements of many of my friends, I still think it's just as well that it's Chris and not me. That kind of lifestyle would probably destroy me in fairly short order, so I think Samantha and I will keep doing our thing over here away from the bright lights for now. I'll leave the rock and roll lifestyle for the happily married church pastors.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

To ask for the bass player's phone number.

Prometheus Bound

2011-11-12T23:13:00.000+09:30

Tonight I went and saw a local production of the ancient Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. I really don’t intend to write this post as a theatre review, but I should point out that it was a very good show, and Kadek Hobman, who played Prometheus, absolutely nailed it. If you’re an adult reading this in Darwin any time before November 17th, then I recommend getting down to Brownsmart and seeing it. If you’re a child prodigy reading this anytime after 2047 in Sulaweyo, sorry you missed it. And if you’re a midget in Bangalore reading this anytime prior to April 7th 1873… kudos.

Aeschylus, it seems, really knew what he was doing in that thousands of years later, the themes that Prometheus expounds on as he is bound hand and foot to a rock at the end of the world ring as true today as they (presumably) did when Aeschylus was cutting edge and all the cool uni students were talking about how he was a visionary while they sat sipping anachronistic lattes at the forum and whinging about how the establishment would never understand them.

In the first place, while it may well be a symptom of my specific cultural perspective, I was struck by the parallels between Prometheus and Christ: The divine friend of humanity, showing compassion and teaching wisdom to the human race, only to be forsaken by the gods and then crucified (the English translation of the text actually used that word, interestingly, although obviously I don’t know what the term would have been in ancient Greek). It’s not unusual for plays about morality and justice to allude to Jesus, but it’s pretty cool when he shows up in plays written at least four hundred years before he was born.

More humanistically, and probably closer to what Aeschylus was on about, I really loved the way that Prometheus, the mythical benefactor of human knowledge and understanding, dealt with the fact that everything around him sucked. Afflicted with every imaginable humiliation, injustice and suffering, Prometheus has the choice to give in to despair and renounce his support of humanity, but even as he is bound to a rock by indestructible brass brackets and threatened with hungry eagles, he is still shouting his defiance and goading his tormentors to do their worst. The image of Kadek shaking the metal cross he was strapped to and yelling “I am one whom you cannot kill!” is going to stick with me all week.

So bollocks to it if my job sucks, my friend’s teeth are falling out, my uncle dies, the Australian cricket team gets bowled out for 47, my pile of job application rejections grows more pathetic daily, 2011 is basically a write off, girls are dumb and I’ve run out of yoghurt; I’m with Prometheus on this one.

I am one whom you cannot kill!

Garry with 2 Rs

A Crisis of Faith at Eighty-Eight Miles Per Hour

2011-10-27T19:02:00.000+09:30

I remember as a child being extremely confused by my utter and consistent inability to remotely move objects around my room by faith. I would read passages from the gospels like “I tell you the truth; if you had faith the size of a mustard seed you could tell this mountain to go jump in the lake, and it would” (or something like that), and later I would come back from some church camp or big youth rally with my heart “totally on fire” (that was our metaphorical expression of choice in the charismatic church during the nineties. It’s a bit odd when you think about it) and so absolutely convinced that I knew everything I needed to take the city for Jesus. I would focus all my will on my collection of lego men and boldly command them in Jesus’ name to fly up out of the corner and onto my desk. It didn’t matter how resolutely I believed that I could do it, it didn’t work. Not even a little bit. There was one time my sister walked in in the middle of it and kicked them all over. I counted it as half a point.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that I was getting Christianity confused with Star Wars. Proper faith has very little to do with telekinesis, and much more to do with finding the strength to keep going and keep believing when things around you continue to suck the big one.

I got another job application rejection letter this week. Normally I would just add it to the pile, but this one was just a little more disheartening than usual. I made it all the way through to the interview stage, and felt like I had successfully put my best foot forward. Not only that, but the timing for this job would have been perfect. I could have walked out of a job which is, inch by inch, killing me and taken off to Perth for Daniel’s wedding and come back to job that I actually might have some basic interest in. I was so determined to get through this time that I got prayer chains in two cities backing me up. I prayed up, suited up and rocked up, and it didn’t work. Not even a little bit.

I think somewhere along the line I’ve gotten Christianity confused with The Never Ending Story, where if you can believe something hard enough it comes true. Yeah I know… find the strength to blah blah blah suck the big one.

For my next trick, I’m going to try confusing Christianity with Back to the Future 2. I don’t know what that will look like, but if I’m going to keep on living my life in a series of complete delusions, I might as well make it a good one.

Let's see if you bastards can do ninety.

Garry with 2 Rs

The Importance of Being Algernon

2011-10-18T22:52:00.002+09:30

I think there may be something seriously wrong with me.

The reasons for this are manifold, but most prominent among them at the moment is that, despite having spent the last three weeks complaining bitterly about how being in a show has been taking over my life, and how desperately I need a rest, I’ve gone and auditioned for another one, rehearsals for which start this Wednesday.

Mind you, you could hardly blame me for grabbing this one by the throat when it came along; Darwin Theatre Company are putting on Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. I’ve wanted the chance to act in this play since the first time I saw it, which admittedly was the recent movie version starring Colin Firth and Rupert Everrett, which varies noticeably from the original text in a few minor ways.

Interestingly, everyone I’ve spoken to about this has told me I should audition for it. In the words of a few members of the Princess Ida cast, I’d be Jack Worthing down to the ground. A group of well meaning yet fierce-faced sopranos made a great show of telling me how much they were looking forward to me trying out for Jack. And, as is ever my wont in the face of so many well intentioned women telling me what to do, I knew there was only one course of action available to me.

I tried out for Algernon.

For one thing, Algernon Moncrieff has been on my bucket list of characters to play since I drew up said bucket list, which was really only quite recently after a discussion on Facebook with Kirribilli Kim about what characters we would put on a bucket list if we had a bucket list. The point is... there is a bucket list, and Algernon is on it.

For another thing, I don’t really know why people would associate me with Jack more than Algy. I suppose the confusingly reality-based idea that I’m a mild mannered bank manager by trade might lead to romantic speculation about what I get up to when I visit my estate in the country. To tell the truth, the idea of a double life does intrigue me sometimes. But this has more to do with imagining what it be like to be superhero than it does with impersonating my recalcitrant and entirely fictional younger brother.

But surely if I’m any character from Earnest, it’s got to be the cynical, mischievous cheeky not-a-gentleman who spends most of his time producing lines that don’t really makes sense and getting away with it because no-one really knows what he’s on about anyway. Hell, I’ve got five years worth of blog entries to support the claim that Oscar Wilde based the character of Alernon on my life. Or at least my blog. He really was a man well ahead of his time, old Oscar. And since in my last three shows I've played a sexually confused construction worker, a turn of the last century French aristocrat and a war mongering medieval king, I think the chance to play a cheeky single know-it-all is something to be celebrated, not avoided.

Finally, the best reason to suggest that Algernon’s place on my bucket list is well justified is that he’s no longer on it. He’s just been crossed off because I’ve got a message from the director to say I’ve got the part. HELL YEAH! Rehearsals start this week on Wednesday and run for the next six weeks. Oh good grief.

So suck on that, soprano face! That’s right! See if that doesn’t make you look even more like you’ve swallowed something extremely sour than usual.

Make of that what you will… and please don’t hurt me.

Garry with 2 Rs

Things You Don't Expect To Be Woken Up By

2011-10-17T20:53:00.002+09:30

So waking up the morning after the first night of a show is always interesting. In my case, I’ve almost always stayed up into the early hours of the morning after the show, waiting for the opening night euphoria to settle down enough for me to be able to sleep. Consequently, the next day I usually wake up some time mid morning with an applause hangover and some vague confusion over the idea of turning around and doing it all again tonight.

Usually, I get woken up by my phone vibrating on my bedside table to alert me that I have sixteen text messages and five missed calls from eligible young ladies’ mothers who have been to the show and wanted to say how much they enjoyed it and that they would definitely be bringing the rest of their families along for the show the following night because they’d all, on hearing their respective matriarchs’ glowing revues of the show, been dying to come, live the experience for themselves, meet the cast and get lost for an hour and half or so in a little bit of theatrical magic of their own.

I say “usually,” but the fact is it hasn’t happened like that the last three times. Or ever, actually. But it strikes me as the sort of thing that should be happening more often.

No. what happened this time around was I woke up to discover a sagely looking mandrill had snuck into my room overnight and was nibbling on the edges of my Back to the Future poster. I threw my pillow at him to make him stop, but he simply dodged to the left, turned and blew me a raspberry, before boldly exclaiming “you follow old Rafiki! He knows the way!” I had to admit, the crazy old primate had a point, so I followed him out the window onto the front lawn where I found Oxfam Girl and Biscuit Lady having a light sabre duel, accompanied by the theme from The West Wing. It was at that moment that I realised I was a seahorse.

Okay, that one didn’t really happen either.

I was woken up by my phone ringing. It actually was a young lady on the other end, but the young lady in question happened to be my sister, which took some of the excitement out of it. That is, until she said this:

“I’m just ringing to tell you… I’ve been cast in the lead role in an Italian version of the Sound of Music, and I’m moving to Florence to follow my…”

Stop it!

…

That is, until she said this:

“I’m just ringing to tell you… I’m engaged”

My typically eloquent response was the product of severe shock, recent awakening and applause hangover and basically came something like:

“WHAT?”

After some incoherent babbling I think I managed a ‘congratulations’ in there somewhere. But honestly, if you’d put all the previous scenarios in front of me two weeks ago and asked me to bet on the outcome, I would probably have picked the monkey one. It’s strange, and possibly a little disrespectful to my sister, not to mention her fiancé, but that’s where I would have put my money.

I’m not really a gambling man. Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Or Castle Adamant

2011-10-16T23:50:00.004+09:30

Wow. What a weekend. No, really. I don’t think I can get all this in one post. So here we go. Part one. I know you’ve also been waiting ever so patiently (or less patiently in your case K.Kim. Geez woman) for the Princess Ida post. Well, here we go then.

After last year’s effort I decided to give Operatunity another go, partially to beef up my portfolio of in involvement in local productions and partly to check off resolution nine from my 2011 checklist. Mainly however, it was an attempt to finally deal with my acute irrational fear of sopranos.

It didn’t work. Nor is it, I maintain, all that irrational when you look at.

I must confess, as recently as a couple of weeks ago I was quite convinced that the show was headed for a monumental collapse. The cast, which is constructed from a motley assortment of chronologically disparate performers in the first place, suffered a huge setback when the lead tenor had to pull out with three weeks to go until opening night. Combine that with an ever dwindling chorus and an orchestra that was still figuring out how the music was supposed to go on the night of the final dress rehearsal and I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence going into opening night.

It's been rather a strange experience, trying to turn myself into a king each night. I'm the least monarchistic (a recent poll of about the only three people I could find whose opinions I trusted has concluded that monarchistic is a word. Deal with it) person I know. For one thing, everyone knows kings have beards. So now I have a beard. Sort of. It puts one more in mind of an unemployed theologian that of an imperial monarch, but as my character is supposed to be at least fifty years old, I think it's best to say the effect is... impressionistic? Thankfully I've been able to draw a lot of extra regality from the deferential endowment of the rest of the cast. And when you think about it, that's really what being a royal is all about.

My autocratic crisis of identity notwithstanding, on the whole, the show has been a great success so far. We’ve done three shows, with two shows to come next weekend. Crowds have been growing steadily, and although we’ll have to sell out the last two shows to break even, general morale among the cast and crew has been great. I’ve been run absolutely ragged taking a small cadre of baritones under my wing, who show great promise in their aspirations to take on the mantle of chief cheek-giver and applecart discombobulator. They’ve some real natural talent, but they do grow up so fast, and unfortunately there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

But the show, as they say, must go on. Twice. And then we’ll pack the sets away for another year and start all over again in a few months time. And just for now that suits me fine, as I have more than enough other things to think about for the next few weeks.

But that’s another post entirely.

Garry with 2 Rs

Winners Are Grinners

2011-10-01T00:01:00.008+09:30

It’s amazing what taking a month off blogging will do for your life. September has been a month full of… other stuff. Not having the nagging feeling of “I should be blogging about now” hanging over me has been great. And although I’ve missed Cum Tacent Clament (Is that weird? It feels like it might be weird), it’s also true that in the absence of blogging, September was month full of victory.

Victory number one came for our Wednesday night C-grade mixed social volley-ball team. I’m now the proud owner of a trophy, upon which is inscribed “Wet season mixed C-grade division winner”. This in spite of the fact that we played in the dry season and we only made it to the playoff for fifth and sixth. And we lost. But a trophy’s a trophy, right? They must have had some left over from last year. So everyone’s a winner. Yay!

Victory number two came in the corporate environment. The company I work for was nominated for an award for excellence in staff training and development. Sure, we nominated ourselves, but that’s beside the point. It’s just nice to be recognised. What’s more, we won the award for employer of the year. What an honour! So in the finest tradition of nominating yourself for an award and then winning it, I’m nominating Cum Tacent Clament for the Booker Prize, my keyboard Samantha for Most Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Metaphorical Anthropomorphisation and myself for Female Eskimo Entrepreneur of the Century.

And last but not least, my cricket team took out the D-grade premiership. There isn’t anything to mock about this one, it was a proper win in a proper competition. I could mention the marked increase in success the team experienced when they finally got around to relegating me to twelfth man, but since this blog is about me and how awesome I am, I won’t. I'll just point out that I am now an award winning cricketer, volleyballer and staff member and a second place getting Inuit woman.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. The next couple of weeks are going to get pretty insane as Princess Ida rehearsals go into top gear. Watch this space for the opening night wrap up!

September Sabbatical

2011-09-05T18:36:00.001+09:30

So I’ve about had it with my blog.

Readership is down, comments are down, interest is down and my ability – let alone inclination – to come up with four interesting things to write about each month is way down.

Actually, if I could have characterised August in a word, it would probably have been “down.” Or maybe “accessorise”.

No. “Down” says it better. It’s nice to be out the other side of that one.

So I’m taking September off. I’ll spend a few weeks writing other things that I care about just as much but have been neglecting (sketch comedy, music, my first novel etc) and working on a few of my unchecked checklist items.

No. Not that one.

I have every intention of coming back bigger and better (this will probably be more accurately described as “similar”) in October, but in case I lose interest permanently, always keep in mind Albert Einstein’s immortal exclamation on conceiving the theory of relativity:

“What the?”

Garry with 2 Rs

In Memorium

2011-08-31T23:40:00.001+09:30

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

2011-08-29T22:57:00.003+09:30

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.

<>< <>< <><

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!

<>< <>< <><

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

2011-08-10T23:43:00.002+09:30

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

2011-08-01T20:39:00.002+09:30

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?

The Show Must Go On

2011-07-25T16:26:00.001+09:30

Last weekend was all about the show.

For one thing, it was the Show Day long weekend. Every year the Royal Darwin Show unfolds itself on to the showgrounds. For three glorious days people stream through the gates, and then walk around in circles trying to figure out what they’re doing there. It seems to me that if you’re not a small child, a carnie or a farmer there isn’t really much to get excited about apart from eating things outside in glorious dry season weather, which we could do anyway. And then three days later the livestock, balloons and rides fold themselves up into temporal stasis for another year, ready to emerge again, unscathed and unchanged, in twelve months time.

I swear: it’s even the same cows.

Meanwhile, there was another show on in town. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, Corrugated Iron decided that show weekend was a good time to put Tease on. Having long since backed away from an acting role, I was quite keen to put on my writer’s hat (I don’t really have a literal writer’s hat, although I do have a black fedora, which is just about the same thing) and sit and watch the words I’d written come to life on stage. I’d never had that experience before and it was kind of awesome.

I really need to give credit here to the cast; Kadek Hobman, Danielle Andrews and Dylan Bennett, and also to the director Alex Galeazzi. Those guys were awesome, and put in performances that made the play seem a lot better than it was.

All in all it was a great success. I got a lot of really positive feedback from people whose opinions I respect and I’ve had more than a few people ask me what my next project is. It’s a bit embarrassing to have to say I don’t have one. Still, I’m feeling more than a little inspired to find one; after all, you know what they say:

A splash of apple cider never hurt anyone.

Garry with 2 Rs

Return of the Fedora

2011-07-18T15:21:00.004+09:30

The hat is back on the track, picking up slack, taking no flack, kicking it back and going on the attack. It’s jet black and made of … felt.

And thus ends my brief foray into the swirling morass of the Australian hip-hop subculture.

Yes, almost two years after the cataclysmic tragedy that was the abandonment of my previous hat, and after several utterly frustrating attempts to replace it, my completely awesome family have come to the rescue, pitching in to order me a new one for my birthday that meets my ridiculously strict requirements for acceptable black felt fedoras.

So I’ve now taken possession of a black felt Akubra international style fedora, custom ordered at the Strand hat shop in Sydney and lovingly hand delivered during my parents’ recent trip up for the DMUC jubilee. Yes, I realise that was twelve months ago now, but it's taken me some time to sort out pics to put on my profile and to think up the rhymes for the intro.

I now feel re-licensed to continue being flagrant, which is just as well, because things around here are starting get just a little bit weird. I've had a number of people (I am not discussing what that number might be) ask me about the now infamous (well... not so famous. maybe just inf) Resolution Seven.

Actually I hadn't planned it that way, but "Resolution Seven" sounds awesome. Like it's a bill that enacts the legalisation of unlicensed hoverboard riding, or legsilates for the decriminalisation of deadly force against English backpackers, or something like that.

Okay, even if its application is somewhat more domestic, it's still a cool name. Furthermore, I've realised that I've been approaching Seven from entirely the wrong perspective. I've been wandering around the place feeling like it's somehow my responsibility to find "the right girl" and then impress her.

Bollocks to that. I have a black felt fedora. And I am continuously finding more and more public ways to be blatantly awesome. The right one can come and find me. I'll be the one up the front signing autographs, whether they have been asked for or not.

In anticipation of your comments, please note the following:

Jess: It's probably worth not thinking about this one too hard either
K.Kim: The typographical errors are there deliberately, just to frustrate you.
Harold: It's an interesting point, but your perspective on plasticine algorithms leaves little to the imagination, if you know what I mean.
Rachel: Relax, I'm fine. Same goes for you, Mum.

I don't really care what you make of this one.

Garry with 2 Rs

Damn. I forgot “wiggedy-whack”. That would have been an awesome rhyme.

The Death of Stroganoff

2011-07-12T00:15:00.001+09:30

Wow. Two weeks without a CTC post. What a breach of trust. Ah well. The plain fact is the last fortnight has barely afforded me time to think, let alone write anything. All of a sudden my life is just a little bit out of control, but not in the good “anything could happen at anytime” way. More in the “stumble from one commitment to another and try not to drop anything” way, which is fun but brings into uncomfortable focus the fact that I’m really not getting any younger and can’t keep treating my mind like this or it will start to triangulate. I mean snap.

Mondays I work until five (usually five thirty) and then attend opera practice from seven thirty to late. I try to grab something to eat in the two hours in between while I’m getting over the stress of starting a new week at work and figuring out how all the vocal parts I’m supposed to have learned during the preceding week go.

Tuesdays are timesheet day at work, which means we do everything we normally do, but we do it with the HR ladies ringing us up every four minutes to ask us why the records being disparately faxed in from communities across several hundred kilometres aren’t perfect and in exact concordance with what the HR ladies think they should be. Then we have to change them to make them what the HR ladies think they should be. Milkfish. Then on Tuesday evenings I have some combination of cricket training, bible study and sepak takraw training, although they tend to overlap a bit, so invariably something gets dropped. Sometimes it’s bible study. Sometimes it’s catches in the outfield.

Wednesdays are hump day and I tend to be waist deep in paperwork by this stage, so after recovering from my customary Wednesday coughing fit, I, in keeping with the theme of the day, am usually fairly comprehensively humped. Wednesdays evenings are a bit nicer as all I have on are a couple of games of indoor beach volleyball. Unfortunately the game times vary each week, so I never know when it’s going to be until Wednesday afternoon. And if it’s really well timed, sometimes I make it home in time to watch Spicks and Specks, new episodes of which are becoming increasingly precious.

Thursdays are a bit of a pickle, which is okay if you like pickles. I don’t. I prefer ice cream. I’m supposed to cram in cricket, sepak takraw, church music practice and opera practice in the same four hour period. So far that’s not going so well, but that’s okay because every second Thursday is pay day. So sometimes I get to have ice cream.

No pickles!

By Friday afternoon I’ve generally had it with my job and I can be heard muttering to myself about finding a new one, or observed posting violent or despairing status updates to Facebook (posting them to the Governor General doesn’t have the same effect, and usually involves a day or so’s delay, plus an inquisitive email from the federal police). So on the one night of the week when I can get out and spend some time not being told what to do by anyone else, I tend to spend my time sitting calmly alone in a dark, quiet room and enjoying having absolutely nothing to think about, at least for one evening. Milkfish. Then it really get’s crazy.

Every second Saturday is prison ministry, which involves getting up on a Saturday morning and pretending to be cheerful, wise and loving. When I get home from prison, there’s usually about an hour before I’m supposed to be meeting someone for lunch, or checking in on the Tease production. Thankfully I’m no longer appearing in that as Phil has also pulled out due to Science. We found two other local guys to play our parts. I use this time to do laundry.

Saturday afternoons are consumed by full cast opera practice, which seems to be gradually expanding to be (milkfish) slightly longer every week, despite the fact that the performance is still three months away. When I catch myself singing the act two finale at my desk at work I’ll know I’ve truly lost it. I estimate this will take about another week and a half to occur.

Saturday night is theoretically sepak takraw again, although this is supplanted more often than not by a wedding, birthday party or quantum analytical chemistry symposium. That last one doesn’t come up that often, but does actually turn out to be a real thing, however ridiculous it might sound, and however doubly ridiculous the idea of my attending it might be.

Sunday is, of course, a day of rest. So all I do on Sunday is get up early for music practice, do church for a couple of hours and then back up with five or so hours of cricket. Fortunately I spend at least half of that time not batting, although not batting in the batting side generally means umpiring or scoring, which requires a level of concentration slightly higher than music practice, but not as high as a kite. The other half I spend not bowling, which just involves standing around in the sun for two hours and occasionally not catching a ball.

At some point on Sunday I call my mother and attempt to convey to her the fact that everything is fine. This is about to become significantly more difficult, as my mother is one of about five people who actually read this blog. Oh well. Yes mum, I’m fine. I ate nearly a whole tomato today. It was a really big one.

By Monday morning I’m ready for a rest to recover from my weekend. So I hit rewind and start the week all over again. It’s getting to be a vicious spiral, and at some point in the next week or two something is going to have to give. Either I’ll triangulate… I mean snap… at work and start singing lines from Princess Ida instead of answering members’ balance enquiries or I’ll start attempting to cover drive a volleyball through the gap between the worship leader and the Governor General. Or maybe I’ll just schedule some time off work.

Make of that what you milkfish.

Garry with 2 Rs

Typecast

2011-06-28T00:20:00.000+09:30

A week or so ago I went along to the university theatre to try out for this years Opera NT production. They’re putting on Gilbert and Sullivan’s Princess Ida (Or Castle Adamant) which has the demographic advantage of having an unusually large number of female roles for a G&S (I say advantage due to the ratio of women to men in our company) and the thematic advantage of taking a cast full of women and using it to poke a large and comically painted stick at radical feminism.

“But what of the males?” I hear no-one ask.

There are enough roles to go around, but rather unusually only two roles for tenors. After last year’s effort, which basically involved me poncing around with an outrageous accent and waving a sword around every once in a while (and hell, sometimes I just do that on weekends), I figured I was going to have to lift my game. It’s just one of those little challenges that present themselves when you join an opera company but can’t actually sing.

Not that I was going to let that stop me. I fronted up to the auditions with my most trusted and experienced accompanist (ie. Phil, who had nicked Pastor Holly’s guitar for the afternoon) and filled the auditorium (well, maybe half of it?) with the dulcet tones of Joss Whedon’s “Everyone’s a Hero”. It went alright, and I totally nailed the big finish, but I’m not sure the casters appreciated it when I called them a bunch of scary, alcoholic bums. It was totally in character, okay?

Much to everyone’s surprise, I got a call-back for the following evening. So now the big question was which part could I possibly be in the running for? There were only two tenor roles going after all.

Would I be Prince Hilarion, the dashing, heroic and completely mental leading man, storming the castle walls and winning the heart of the wilful, demure and completely mental Princess Ida?

Or would I play Cyril, Hilarion’s true, valiant and completely mental companion through thick and thin, who for reasons which seem to have more to do with harmony structure than with plot development, accompanies his master on his quest to Caste Adamant?

If you know me and my theatrical persona well enough, then by now you’ll have guessed which one I came away with.

Neither.

I’ve been cast as King Hildebrand, who is father to Hilarion (I’m only twenty-mumble plus one…), king of all the good guys (that doesn’t sound right either), completely mental (well…) and, most notably, a baritone (?). Mind you, it’s a pretty cool role. At first I assumed it would be mainly speaking with a few ensemble bits like last time, but it turns out I’ve got a few solos to put together before October which will be … interesting. Fortunately none of them drop below what I can sing, so I can get away with it. Best of all, the choirmaster has offered to give me some help improving my singing voice between now and then, which will be awesome and will hopefully go a long way towards making me look a little less silly on the night. In the meantime I’ll just work on memorising lines and figuring out how to approach opera in my own way.

In my own not-that-operatic way.

Garry with 2 Rs

Just Beneath the Surface

2011-06-23T15:43:00.001+09:30

I’ve been doing some thinking lately about what faith looks like. I’ve decided it looks like uncoordinated British tourists in Bouly Rockhole. I expect the metaphor is clear enough, but just in case I’ve made myself a little too obscure, allow me to elaborate. Or you could get over it and go read XKCD instead. Whatever.

Bouly Rockhole is a popular swimming hole in Litchfield Park, just outside Darwin. In the wet season, the current gets quite strong, but in the dry there’s still enough water going through it fast enough to make it really pleasant and not too cold. It’s a series of large rock pools, linked by small cascades and it’s one of my favourite places in the world when it’s not packed with loud tourists. Unfortunately it almost always is.

Most of the rock holes aren’t very deep. The deepest ones are maybe a couple of body lengths for an adult. But because of the way the water rushes, if you keep your head above water you don’t actually see how close you are to reaching the bottom. So every time I go there some stupid English woman swims out into the middle of the current, feels it start to pull against her and then panics. She kicks her legs around like an electrocuted cane toad, but can’t quite touch the bottom, so she gets swept toward the lip of the next cascade. By the time she reaches it, she’s run out puff and can’t do anything to stop herself being swept arse first over the waterfall. It makes me laugh every time.

The thing is, if she would just duck under the water, she would realise that she’s only a foot or so from the bottom. She could kick off from there to the side of the pool without any trouble and save herself some embarrassment and a bruised scapula.

That’s what real faith in a secular culture is like for me. When I’m getting yelled at by all three of my bosses because the three things they’ve asked me to do at once aren’t being done fast enough, I tend to freak out and start kicking around like I’m out of my depth. In the craziest parts of my day, it’s easy to feel like God, the rock, is miles away.

However, I am no stupid English woman. If I pause for a moment and go deeper, just below the surface, there He is, like He always is. I can set my feet, push off and start swimming again. No sweat.

It’s not a perfect metaphor. For instance, periods of intense reflection will not cause you to suffocate after three minutes. Also, living for more than forty minutes won’t necessarily cause the skin on your fingers to wrinkle up. Although I suppose that does happen eventually. Furthermore, in the great rock pool of life, whether you are sitting on the bottom or falling over a waterfall, there are no spaceships. And that’s a problem for me. My comparative philosophy demands more spaceships, both metaphorically and … aquatically?

Shut up.

Garry with 2 Rs

Career Path

2011-06-21T23:23:00.002+09:30

I’m at a strange point right about now. I’ve been reflecting a lot on the things that really matter to me and the things that really don’t.

In March I took up a new position with the company I work for. It’s still in the financial services industry, so it still has nothing to do with anything I’m educated in or passionate about, but it was a step up in terms of money and lifestyle (not so much late notice travel out to the middle of nowhere) so at the time it seemed like a logical step. But more and more lately I feel like I’m in entirely the wrong place. I’ve realised that, as glamorous as it might seem from the outside, I really don’t care that much about the Financial Services Regulation Act.

As a company, we’re having a drive at the moment to update all the contact information we have for our members. We’ve had a lot of trouble implementing the drive because we’ve discovered that most of the staff, including me, have an automatic script that runs in our heads as we verify a member’s identity and tell them how much money they don’t have. It has taken an inordinate amount of effort to convince people to add an extra step to ask members if their contact details are up-to-date. It’s a little bit depressing to realise that your job is running on auto-pilot to such an extent that you can’t change your routine even if you’re supposed to.

So I did something a little bit weird this week. I put in an application to join The Punch as a cadet.

In Sydney.

It would be a dream job for me. After five years of Far From Home/Cum Tacent Clament the idea of writing online articles for a living is almost too good to be true. And in a lot of ways it is. I would imagine that every journalism student in Australia will have applied for the position, so I’m philosophical about the chances of even making the shortlist since I 1) don’t live in Sydney and 2) am a little old to be a cadet (I turned twenty-mumble plus one today. Egads).

So now I have to figure out what’s more important: My dream of actually being able to call myself a writer instead of a blogger, or my dream of investing my time into acheving something meaningful for the local church in Darwin. I felt compelled by the sheer awesomeness of the position on offer with the Punch to apply for it, but if I leave Darwin now, I’m not sure I’ll be able to look myself in the eye.

I’ve got another job application pending with the Northern Territory public service as a media liaison officer. As usual the Business and Employment Department are taking their sweet time about getting back to me. Taking on that would be a much more conscionable idea, although if the unthinkable happens and I have to choose between them, the indecision I’d feel would almost be enough to split me in half at a quantum level, resulting in two Garrii, one of whom could go be a writer for a national website while the other put his head down and got on with actually achieving one or two of the things he’d promised to.

So for the time being I’ll keep banging my head against a wall of FSRA compliance requirements and crazy old ladies wanting to check their balances.

Make of that... whatever you can. Good luck.

Garry with 2 Rs

The Whole World Revolves Around Meme

2011-06-13T21:27:00.003+09:30

I’ve been memed again. Jess has sent me a “one lovely blog” award.

The "rules" are:

1. Choose five other people who deserve this award and pass it on.
2. Tell 7 facts about yourself.
3. Let the people you gave the award to know.
4. Thank the person who gave you the award.

Now I’m really in a pickle. I have to find a combination of sentiments that can, while retaining my trademark aloof disinterest, convey both how grateful I am to be considered for this award and also the extent to which Cum Tacent Clament is way too cool for internet chain letters.

Also, apparently I’m supposed to write seven things about myself. So here we go:

1. I am extremely grateful to have received this award, even though my blog has nothing to do with child rearing, botanic photography or hipster book reviews.

2. I am way too cool for internet memes.

3. I am of the opinion that, while there are a myriad of adjectives that might be applied to this blog, “lovely” probably isn’t one of them.

4. Sometimes I dress all in green and wander the night, fighting crime and planting horseradishes.

5. I am afraid of sopranos

6. I like self referential sentences, such as this one.

7. There is no way on God’s Earth that I am passing this on to five other people.

I think that about covers it. Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

A Bit of a Tease

2011-06-13T13:49:00.002+09:30

I’m edging closer to crossing another goal off my 2011 checklist. So far this year I’ve already appeared in two improvised comedy performances with some local comics. They don’t really take a lot of preparation, and by definition require no rehearsal, so I’m lumping them and the two or three more we plan to run later this year together and calling them one theatrical performance.

Next weekend I have my audition for this year’s Operatunity production. Last year’s audition and eventual production was such a crazy experience I decided to try it all again this year. I’m still working on something suitably classy, impressive and appropriate for the try-outs. I’ll keep you posted.

More interestingly, I’m getting involved with a local performing arts group called Corrugated Iron, who put on a show-case review of local talent every year called Tease. Phil suggested I submit a short one-act play I’ve been writing for a while. I went along with it to humour him, and surprisingly enough they’ve decided to go with it. All of a sudden I’m a playwright. Craziness.

Initially the idea was to just submit the play and possibly assist with the direction. But after agreeing to present the play, Corrugated Iron went and cast two of my good friends Phil and Danielle in the two main roles. That just left them with the problem of who to cast in the third role. I couldn’t help but my hand up for it, so now I’m finding out what it’s like to be writer, director and actor all in the same show. Traditionally, writers are supposed to get affronted by directors’ arrogance, directors are supposed to be disappointed with actors’ ineptitude and actors are supposed to lament the writer’s lack of vision. I don’t know if I can manage all that, but I’ll try not to beat myself up about it.

Once more, with feeling!

Garry with 2 Rs

The New Game

2011-06-06T21:20:00.005+09:30

Way back some time in the last century when I was in high school I was part of an unusually close group of friends. There were five of us in total. It’s not really clear what bought us all together as we didn’t have anything observable in common except for irreverent senses of humour, an incination towards the theatrical and a tendency to call “bullshit” when we saw it (usually emanating from one of the other four) which tended to alienate us a little from other students, not to mention the teachers.

Chris, Phil, Jess, Garry (well…) and Dan.

Actually, the other thing we had in common was that all of us had parents associated with the staff or governance of the school we all went to. It was an extremely poorly kept secret that said parents had a number of informal betting pools running.

1) Which of the five would be the first to get married?

2) Which of the four guys would end up marrying Jess?

3) Which of the five of us would turn out to be gay?

Our school being of the fundamentalist Christian persuasion, obviously there was no actual gambling involved, especially on that last one.

Shortest odds for first married were almost certainly on Daniel, who was the oldest of the gang and had been voted the southern hemisphere’s most eligible bachelor (his parents had objected to the use of the term ‘sexiest man alive’) three years straight, albeit by a panel that consisted of the other four of us. Consensus on which one of was going to marry Jess depended on whose mother you were talking to at the time.

In the end Chris was the first to go, in what was described in hushed tones as something of an upset. However, he had to go all the way to New Zealand to do it, which was agreed by most to be cheating. Jess went next and threw a spanner in everyone’s mother’s works by not marrying any of us (actually, Jess’ mother was probably quite relieved). At least she had the common decency to marry a local. Just a year later it was Phil’s turn.

And then there were two.

Ever since Phil’s wedding back in 2006, Dan and I have been engaged (huh?) in a gentlemen’s wager. I say gentlemen’s wager, but I really just mean friendly competition, as there were no stakes riding on it, and I’m not a gentleman. Basically, we decided to see which of us could go the longest without getting married.

If that seems like a reasonably pointless (not to mention backwards) competition, that’s just because… it is. But when you think about it, it makes much more sense than trying to see who can get married first. For one, it provides an extra layer of disincentive to do something stupid too soon if you get romantically entangled (“Maybe we should take this to the next level… nah, I wouldn’t want to lose a bet to Dan”) and also it has the added benefit that if you lose, at least you’re getting married, so that’s some sort of consolation. As endurance sports go, doing it this way has also made it much more competitive, as remaining single has historically been something both Dan and I have been pretty good at. It’s been six long years, and neither combatant has shown any sign of flagging.

That is, until now.

Yes that’s right, I have an announcement to make, the repercussions of which could shake the very firmament, but probably won’t. It has come out of nowhere and taken more than a few people by surprise, especially me, but… I, Garry with 2 Rs, am now officially…

The winner!

Indeed. Dan announced his engagement last weekend, and I am now The Last Man Standing. It has been suggested that perhaps I shouldn’t be as happy about this as I so obviously am. However, these suggestions have, without exception, come from people who gave up and got married years ago and are just jealous. As Josh Lyman so eloquently put it:

“I drink from the keg of glory. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land”

Or as Horatio Nelson said:

“First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.”

And as Sachin Tendulkar put it:

“You can’t hold a ceramic tiger with a pair of size nine mittens made out of apricot jam”.

…

The point is that, the wager now being won, I can stop playing. All this time people have assumed I am single because I’m a cynical cranky debt-ridden misogynistic bastard (or possibly that I turned out to be the gay one. I don’t know what the odds were on that and I don’t think I want to), when all the time I was just trying to win a bet. And now I have.

So it’s time for a new game. I was going to call this new game “Travel Monopoly Junior” but apparently that’s already taken, so I’ll leave the title open as a work in progress. Everyone else around me having been disqualified on grounds of matrimony, the new game is a variation of solitaire and begins when the person left of the dealer rolls a seven. Winner is the first person not to die alone. Spades are trumps, it’s tippy-go and only one person gets to be the top hat.

Make of that… nope. Just forget it.

Garry with 2 Rs

Home

2011-05-30T23:09:00.001+09:30

My parents sent me a very strange link this week. It’s a real estate listing for our old family house.

Background? Sure!

My parents bought the house when they were first married and lived in it until they moved to Adelaide about six years ago. I was born in Royal Darwin Hospital and from the time my parents bought me home to the time I set off for university some eighteen and a half years later, 22 Kailis St was the centre of the known universe, at least as far as I was concerned. I knew every corner of the garden and was partially responsible for the destruction of a decent portion of it. I knew where to sit after school so as not to let the glare from the afternoon sun disrupt my view of the television. As I got older I learned which step not to tread on when I was coming home late because it went “clunk” and woke up the whole house (I later learned that my mother would lie awake at night waiting for the clunk so she’d know I was home safe). I also knew how close I could get to the motion sensitive light before it would go off, and how fast I could get away with moving once I was in range. I could get up in the morning, walk from my bed to the lounge room, pull out the stool, plug in the headphones and start piano practice without necessarily having to open my eyes first.

I can still remember the incomparable feeling of dislocation I felt the night my parents told me over the phone that they were selling the house and moving to South Australia. I was in my room at St. John's College in Brisbane, amongst close friends I had known for three and a half years by that stage, and yet I suddenly felt completely adrift. An image of Morpheus watching the destruction of the Nebuchadnezzar comes to mind. Thank God my friends, possibly in response to the far away look in my eyes, had the sense to declare an emergency late night pancake run.

There is something frighteningly powerful about the fact that, since that night almost six years ago, I haven’t held any one residential address for more than a year. Even now that I’m back “home” in Darwin, I’ve still managed three separate addresses in eighteen months.

It would be a fantastic story of coming full circle if I could walk into the real estate agent’s office tomorrow and put down an offer too good to refuse. Unfortunately there’s the small matter of “offers of five hundred and seventy thousand dollars or more” to contend with. I’ve done the maths on the bank website's loan calculation wizards. In my current financial situation I could get pre-approval for a home loan of just over eighty thousand, which might buy me half a parking space in Mandorah.

Besides, the current owners have completely remodelled the interior. It looks amazing, but nothing like what I remember, possibly due to most of the walls being missing. They’ve repaved the driveway, added air-conditioning, laid down polished floorboards instead of carpet and changed all the window fittings and … just about everything else. So it wouldn’t really be like living in my old home again. Those days are irrevocably gone. Plus, as my friend pointed out, while I could be the owner of the house, I wouldn’t actually be able to move into the master bedroom, because that’s my parents’ room. That would just be too weird.

No. I’ll just watch with interest to see how the sale goes, and then go back to walking along the street every so often and remembering one of the best upbringings a boy could have. And then I'll reach the end of the street and turn once again towards either the future or Tracy Village Sports Club, depending on whether we’re being literal or whimsical. And, as the great man once said:

“The future hasn’t been written yet. So make it a good one. Both of you.”

…

Garry with 2 Rs

A Collective Sigh of Resignation

2011-05-20T18:09:00.002+09:30

I’ve recently received a revelation about what I’m doing wrong when it comes to getting people to read my blog. The penny began to drop when I noticed my sister had been asked to guest post on someone’s blog. Something about being an Australian in Canada or something, on a blog about female geeks or some such. The drop was complete and made that irritatingly unsatisfying “ping” sound on the concrete of my consciousness when Jess, who is basically my brother from another mother, (or to use the feminine, my sister from a … a blistered … twister? Never mind) started joining up with a network of blogging mums. I realised what my blogging experience is missing: a collective!

The problem is… what the hell kind of messed up collective could I possibly get away with joining? Jess suggested joining the blogging mums’ society and crying to the sexism police if I was refused membership. It sounds like great fun, except for the part where I piss off a whole social network full of pregnant and/or post-natal women. Maybe later.

I’m not sure there really exists a network that CTC would slot into naturally, as the whole point of tacently clamenting is that there’s probably no other place in the cyberverse where I could get away with it. If we did form a cranky, cynical, independent, socially awkward writers’ network, I can only see it lasting a month or so before some prawn decides he’s too cool for the collective, takes his cricket bat and goes home.

There’s a reasonable chance that prawn would be me.

A week or so ago, Laurie over at Hipstercrite republished an old piece listing tips for generating higher blog readership. It’s full of great advice that I’ll probably never follow, but it also recommends an online network known as Twenty Something Bloggers. To qualify for that network you just have to be twenty-something years old and have a blog. Being of the ripe old age of twenty-mumble, I decided to sign up.

It took them a few days to verify the account, but now I have a shiny new 20sb profile. It’s a bit like Facebook, but only for writers. Now the quest is on to find user groups for topics I’m interested in. Having decided to raise the bar for myself, I’ve typed in searches for ‘religion’, ‘philosophy’, ‘linguistics’ and ‘cricket’. There aren’t any groups for those. Can you believe it? Most of the groups were focussed on acquiring followers for their own sake, which seems a little bit wanky to me. Everyone wants more followers, but who wants followers that are only following you because you’re following them? Join the collective and we’ll all go round in circles!

In the end I joined two groups: the Australian Bloggers group (17 members, which might explain a lot) and the “I support Velociraptors” group (37 members). Most of the other interest groups centred on regions of the US or on what colour hair leads a woman to have the most sex. And as tempting as it might have been to join the ‘fashionistas’ group (763 members?) I think I might just keep my blog tucked away quietly in the obscure corners of the internet for a little while yet. The blogosphere, it seems, is still not ready for blogs by men from Australia who haven’t even read Twilight (Seriously! A 20-somethings’ network with a Twilight fan group (173 members) How does that even happen?).

Actually, blogs by men full stop seem a little difficult to come by. There’s a group for us (129 members) but I’m not really sure I could bring myself to join a group called ‘boys’ club’. Especially when we’re outnumbered by the ‘chick-lit lovers’ (363 members) by almost three to one.

Nope. I think I’m just going to have to generate readership the old fashioned way.

Osama, while planking a Harry Potter Fan Fic conspiracy theory, could cover-up the evolution of Dancing With The Stars in the Middle East. Boobs!

Google to the rescue. Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Oh Chaplain My Chaplain

2011-05-16T20:10:00.003+09:30

In the days since the announcement of the federal budget, many writers, bloggers and journalists have been quick to criticise the Government’s proposed increase to funding for school chaplaincy. Critics have been upset on two fronts; firstly the amount of money being invested in the program and secondly on the notion that federal funds should be used to give religion a place in public schools in the first place. And while these concerns are certainly worth discussion, I suggest that this week the role of the school chaplain has been given a bum rap.

There are a number of points to be made here. The first is to highlight the distinction between chaplaincy and religious education. Chaplains are not teachers; they are employed as counsellors and advisors. The notion of a chaplain coming into a classroom and proselytising to your children is utter rubbish. Chaplains are employed to serve, encourage and to provide advice and/or guidance where it is sought or needed. They are not employed to impose, indoctrinate or even (heaven forbid) promote religious values in schools.

Some public schools do allow religious groups to run religious instruction classes. These are always optional; parents who would prefer their children not to receive RI have the right to ask for their child to be excused. Every RI program I’ve ever been involved with has been run under strict guidelines under the watchful eye of a school staff member in order to prevent any hint of “brainwashing”. And fair enough too. But teaching children a few bible stories and encouraging them to obey their parents and treat others as they want to be treated themselves doesn’t constitute the insidious threat to liberty and democracy that is being touted by opponents to the new funding.

Besides which, that’s not what school chaplaincy is about; school chaplaincy is a completely different occupation.

Chaplains are on hand to meet the needs of students or staff who have problems or questions of a spiritual nature. Whether Australia claims to be a secular society or not, it stands to reason that those seeking answers to spiritual (or philosophical, if you prefer a secular term) questions, especially in the formative years, should have access to those able to answer their questions, or at least provide some direction for finding the answer for themselves. Whatever your personal position, the realisation of a spiritual identity (of any faith, or no faith at all) is an aspect of education to be encouraged, not sneered at.

Some have suggested that a religious chaplain couldn’t possibly provide any valuable help for students of a differing religious background. That’s nonsense. A skilled chaplain will recognise and respect the diverse beliefs of any who come seeking guidance. As has been pointed out numerous times, sermonising, proselytising, evangelising and any other forms of religious promotion that so incense the guardians of liberty in our society are strictly off limits. But you don’t have to promote your own religion in order to guide a young mind towards finding the answers they are looking for, or at least towards asking the right kinds of questions.

This is the part of the discussion where someone jumps in with a moving and impassioned testimony of how some RI teacher sent him to stand in the corner because he said he didn’t believe in God, or some crazy fundamentalist tried to cast a demon out of her after playing some rock and roll at music class, and asks how we can possibly spend government money on ramming religion down the throats of those who don’t want it.

I don’t have any defence to that. That sort of vilification, where it occurs, is unacceptable in any society, religious or otherwise. But the answer isn’t just banning religion from schools altogether. Students need to have access to resources to guide them in finding answers to questions that are just as important (some might argue even more so) than anything on a NAPLAN test. It’s not the role of teachers to provide this support, nor should it be. And while the single most important role to be played in the moral upbringing of a child is that of the parents, it’s important for parents to be confident that their children have access to the appropriate support mechanisms while they are at school, which is the majority of their time during their upbringing.

Yes. The system needs work to make sure that all chaplains are properly trained, qualified and experienced and to ensure that all worldviews are being respected and catered for. I don’t pretend to know the best way to do that, but it seems to me that an increase in Government funding – if properly handled – couldn’t possibly be a bad start.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Kicking It Old School

2011-05-10T20:06:00.002+09:30

The Arafura Games are with us once again. The city is full of lost looking athletes with ID badges on, and helpful looking volunteers in green shirts. The restaurants, souvenir shops and nightclubs are all rubbing their hands together with glee and the traffic around Marrara Stadium is above average, but not too bad.

Also, apparently there’s lots of sport on.

Last night I went to watch the sepak takraw. It was a double banger for me, because not only did I get to watch my mates playing for the NT team, I got to watch some of the really good players with the Malaysian and Thai teams. It’s pretty amazing watching those guys hanging upside down in the air and still kicking the ball with so much power.

The NT side? Not so much, but it was still awesome to see them out there representing the Territory and showing what they could do, which was a darn sight more than most people. Once again it made me feel nostalgic for the old days when I used to be able to do that. I went looking for my old NT sepak jersey, but I think it might be in the pile of stuff still in the cupboard at my parents’ house with my scout uniforms, astronomy books and various other pieces of evidence of things I used be good at. Come to think of it, I don’t know how I managed to get through high school without getting beaten up every other week. I’d love to get myself back up to that level, but somehow it seems consigned to the past almost as comprehensively as my maths competition certificates.

As if to punctuate the point, today I’ve been off work nursing a bung ankle. The mild post-viral arthropathy I get from time to time decided that this week is the week (probably due to the rapid onset of the dry season) to not be quite so mild and I’ve been having trouble walking, let alone turning back flips. I have it all under control, with a large dose of rest and an even larger dose of ibuprofen, but I can’t for the life of me figure out when I stopped being the guy out there doing cool stuff and turned into the guy sitting at home taking pills and whingeing about how the weather makes his joints ache. I’m only twenty-mumble years old for heaven’s sake.

What I should really do is stop whinging to my computer and get up and do something about it. Unfortunately my ankle is still having none of that so I guess it’s DVD o’clock. Now let’s see, will I go with Evita, or Four Weddings and a Funeral?

Yes okay, forget high school. I don’t know how I get from here to the weekend without getting beaten up.

Shove it

Garry with 2 Rs

The Rollercoaster - Part Two

2011-05-03T21:32:00.001+09:30

What a week for celebration it’s been. It started with all the pageantry and … more pageantry of the royal wedding and ended with the well deserved end of one of the modern era’s most despised figures.

Committed republican though I may be, it was easy to feel good about joining in with the celebration for William and Kate. Everyone loves a good wedding, even one on the other side of the world.

Less salubrious were the celebrations marking the death of Osama bin Laden. Images of crowds of people outside the Whitehouse waving flags and yelling patriotic chants left me feeling just a little cold. How can killing anyone, even someone as evil as bin Laden, bring us joy and celebration?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying his death wasn’t well deserved, and I’m certainly not sorry to see him go. But when I see crowds of people cheering for a person’s death, even the death of an enemy, I can’t help but feel that something is going horribly wrong.

I was recently party to an online discussion on whether the assassination of bin Laden is better classified as justice or revenge. Some were firmly of the opinion that killing bin Laden did bring a measure of justice to those who lost loved ones in the world trade centre attacks or in the numerous terrorist bombings that followed it. Others felt that it was nothing more than a revenge killing and won’t bring closure to anything, least of all the ongoing feelings of resentment against the West that fuel organisations like al Qaeda in the first place. Still others didn’t think it made the slightest difference. He’s dead either way, and got what he deserved.

In the end, I’m not sure what to call it, but I am convinced that justice and revenge are not the same thing. If those who have lost loved ones to terrorist attacks in the past decade can take any solace from the death of bin Laden, then that’s great. I sincerely wish them peace and comfort. But I’m not convinced justice is the right word for it. Surely we in the West, even our brothers and sisters in America who still endorse capital punishment, have developed a moral-ethical framework that can move beyond “You killed us, so we’re going to kill you right back”. And even if we haven’t, “an eye for an eye” doesn’t really cut it for a man who orchestrated the death of thousands, but whom we only get to kill once. And as Ghandi put it “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.

The hard fact is that there is never a nice, satisfying way to end the hunt for a mass murderer. A sense of real justice in a post-modern world is as elusive as it has ever been. I’m as glad as everyone else that Osama is gone. But just the same, this is not the time for celebration. This is a time to reflect on the people, both good and bad on both sides, who have lost their lives for the sake of the war on terror. Or whatever the other side calls it. Osama bin Laden makes just one more.

But at least he’s one who had it coming.

Garry with 2 Rs

The Rollercoaster - Part One

2011-05-02T14:53:00.002+09:30

As a writer, aspiring journalist and one who takes an interest in current affairs, I do my best to take in my share of news. I generally have a news website open at work (don’t tell my network admin. I don’t want to go back to that month or so where they decided blocking the news would increase productivity) and I occasionally read other opinion sites recreationally.

Unfortunately the dark side of consuming a lot of news is that for every well written, researched and properly considered piece that gets filed, you have to sift through an enormous amount of inconsequential or poorly written or unprofessionally produced garbage to get at it.

And then every so often, a weekend comes around that just sets the whole online media community on fire.

It started out with me being all scandalised and indignant about the ABC being forced to cut the Chaser’s commentary of the royal wedding on account of the Monarchy changing the conditions of the broadcast rights with under a week to go before the wedding to disallow the use of the footage for humour or satire.

I’m still pretty annoyed about that. Not so much for the Chaser, as for the fact that apparently England are allowed to tell Australian media what they can and can’t do with footage of a public event like the wedding. Sure, obviously no-one wants to go around ruining the big day for the couple. But honestly, if England thinks it can’t handle people poking fun of the monarchy, if it really thinks that people having a joke at it’s expense is something that warrants a global ban, then in my opinion there’s really only one word for that:

Coward.

Okay, there are others. I’m not going to print them here because K.Kim gets upset with me when I use mildly offensive language.

But then when Friday night Aussie time finally rolled around, I found I was compelled to turn the footage on. Prior to that, I had been planning to boycott, based largely on my antagonism for all things English and my distaste for the sort of frivolous and vacuous nonsense that goes along with the build up to this sort of thing. I was legitimately concerned about the possibility of damaging my TV by getting frustrated and throwing things at it.

Unfortunately there really wasn’t anything else to do, because every other person I knew was either working or watching the wedding. In despair I eventually caved in and switched on the ABC’s coverage, minus the Chaser.

I’m glad I did. I timed it to perfection, and managed to skip all the pre-service nonsense and fashion commentary and arrived just in time to hear the priest say “Dearly beloved”. The service itself was pretty good, and most of the music was really nice. Except of course “Jerusalem”, which by common law has to be sung at every English wedding, and must be sung in a different time signature by every person in attendance.

I really hate that ‘hymn’.

After all the festivity I was faced with brain splitting decision of whether to blog about it or not. I felt like I should add my voice to the other billion or so, but then, I also didn’t feel like I had anything really consequential to add to mountain of other inconsequential bits of royal gunk getting around. Of course that hasn’t inhibited me from writing a page and a half about it so far without any signs of slowing up, but that’s exactly the point. An event like this seems to generate idiotic ramblings like this one by its sheer weight of existence.

And that really pisses me off (Sorry Kim)

Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. You know what else pisses me off? Waiting just one day to post and then…

The Proper Way to Treat a Lady

2011-04-19T22:48:00.001+09:30

One of the salient points of living in a room with a hole in the roof during the wet season was that I had to keep anything electrical somewhere else. Fortunately, being a man of simple means and small bedroom, this really only affected two things. The first was my computer, which is a laptop and easy to move around.

The other was Samantha, my Korg Triton synthesiser and ever faithful companion through thick and thin. Over the years we’ve spent many an insomnious monsoonal night together, listening to the rain beat down, watching the lightning and pouring our souls out to each other through that special bond that can only be shared between a man and an electric piano.

But recently we’ve started to grow apart.

I first noticed the problem when Mary came back into my life. Mary is my old flame from high school who returned from out of nowhere over twelve months ago now. She has nothing like the bond with me that I share with Sam, but then I guess you never forget your first love. When prison ministry came along, Mary’s lighter body and … ability to run on batteries made her the perfect choice to carry along with me. Suddenly Samantha found herself left at home in her box while I was out ministering with another keyboard.

When we moved into a room with a crack in the wall, it was the last straw. We both decided it would be better if Samantha stayed at the church for a while until I could figure stuff out with … the roof. The roof has long since been repaired, but Samantha seems happy in her semi-permanent position up front at the church. It’s convenient for everyone (well, everyone except Sasha the church’s old Roland piano who has been unceremoniously relegated to the floor behind the wings) but there have been plenty of nights when I’ve come home late and missed the comforting glow from Samantha’s touch screen after a long night at sepak takraw training.

To be honest, things had been rocky for a while before Mary came back. Ever since we started up with the local apostolic church it hasn’t been the same. The music is all guitar based and all in the same key (E major, also known as “the key of alto”, “the key of Hillsong” and “the key of ‘for God’s sake hasn’t anyone told them there are 11 other major keys, to say nothing of the minor ones?’”) and there really hasn’t been the chance for us to expand, explore and experiment with the sounds we’re capable of producing together. Even when I bought her a brand new Roland amplifier for us to play with together, it just wasn’t enough to compensate for a life of repetitive chord progressions and shallow (some might say theologically untenable, but that’s a rant for another post) lyrics.

All that changed last Sunday morning. We amiably and respectfully went through the motions like we do every Sunday morning; two fast songs to get everyone hyped and then two slow songs to get everyone “worshipping” (Why do we even associate ‘worship’ with slow and emotional would-be power ballads?) and then the special guest preacher stood up to speak.

It had been a while since we’d had a guest speaker at church. I had forgotten that pentecostal pastors – especially pentecostal pastors from big flashy churches down south – like to have the big finish to their sermons accompanied by reflective piano and string music.

I’ve managed to convince the worship team at church not to make me do this, because in my opinion if the words the preacher is saying are true and spirit-breathed, then they’ll carry enough impact all on their own and won’t need help from a musician. And if they don’t carry the sort of impact that comes inherently with being spirit-breathed and true, then I’ll be damned if I’m going to lend any power to a bung message with my expertly crafted and emotionally manipulative soundtrack in the background. It makes me into a hypocrite and makes Samantha feel like a cheap prostitute.

Unfortunately, no-one had thought to warn the guest speaker that this church was possessed of a methodologically rebellious keyboardist, so when the preacher reached the end of her talk and realised she wasn’t quite as powerful as she wanted to be, she actually called over the microphone for the keyboardist to come up and help.

Tragically I was out in the lobby at the time, as I had quietly removed myself from the auditorium about half way through the sermon. I found her theology a little wobbly, but didn’t want to ruin it for everyone else, who seemed to think her interpretation of Haggai was fantastic. The worship leader had to come out and find me and tell me to get my butt on stage and fire up the emotionatron.

Ordinarily I would have resented this, but I realised something amazing as I reluctantly climbed on stage and started to play: It was just me and Samantha up there. No guitarists, no drummer and no singers. Just me and my keyboard, together again. We didn’t have to play in E if we didn’t want to. We were free to express ourselves properly and let the music flow into whatever key, mode or range she wanted.

And freak me sideways if we didn’t set that room on fire. Garry and Samantha: the reunion album. Except it wasn’t an album, it was just an altar call. But what an altar call it was. The congregation must have really got into Haggai that morning, because at least half of them came forward for prayer. And we weren’t going to fade out, as if the people who were prayed for last were any less important than the ones who rushed forward to be first. We kept playing until the last person had said amen and the preacher had finished.

Forty five minutes later.

For Samantha and I it was a new team record for endurance altar call backing, but the time just seemed to drift past like a … big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff. Me and Sam were back at last, better than ever. And now that the crack in the wall is gone, we’re thinking it might be time for us to move back in together. God knows I’ve missed her.

You can make of that what you will if you want to, but it’s probably best not to over-think it.

Garry with 2 Rs

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

2011-04-11T19:00:00.002+09:30

I lost another old friend and role model yesterday. And this time it’s not an actor or a rock star. This time it’s personal.

She was a great woman of God, who was part of the team that taught not just me, but dozens of other Darwin Christians roughly my age how to own our faith and be serious about the things we claim to believe. Even as she battled cancer she was a source of joy to all those who knew her, especially her husband and young children, who now prepare to enter a very different world.

It comes as a bit of a kick up the trousers for me too. There’s the pain and sadness of losing an old friend for starters. But something deeper than that twists when I think back on all the truth and charisma that was imparted to us back in the day. And how for the last eighteen months or so I’ve been so vocal and bombastic about carrying on those ideas now I’m old enough to do something about it. And how I’ve done basically nothing at all about it.

Lately it seems I’m dealing with the vanishing or flat out destruction of some pillar of my youth every other week. I suppose that’s how it should be, as I’m far too old to be standing on pillars these days. But when I look around I don’t see many signs of reconstruction. I’m not over-awed by the abundance of great role models like I was when I was a starry eyed teenager at Easter Camp.

Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe I’m just a cranky cynic whining about how they don’t make them like they used to.

The obvious solution is to do it myself. “You wanna see a miracle son? Be the miracle.” And while it’s all very inspiring and self congratulatory to imagine stepping up to become the very hero I looked up to as a kid, the more I look back on those days the more I question whether I’ve got anything like what it takes. They really don’t make them like the used to.

For today, it’s enough to mourn and remember the life of a magnificent woman of God. Tomorrow is a question for tomorrow.

Garry with 2 Rs
In memory of Krysti Etherington

Hump Day Blues

2011-04-07T13:53:00.002+09:30

Wednesdays are usually the time when we celebrate reaching the mid point of the working week. The “hump day,” as it has come to be known, is a time when we start to see compelling evidence that the weekend might get here eventually. What a time to be alive.

For me, the last three Wednesdays in a row have bought on chronic coughing fits. I don’t know why. I’ve eliminated diet, environment and lifestyle as factors, so I’m left with some rather untenable conclusions about what might be causing it. As the great leader of men once said:

“If we eliminate the impossible, then whatever remains, however unlikely, will probably eventually show up on Garry’s blog”.

It started way back when I was on my last week away in Wadeye before starting my new role which leaves me in the city more or less permanently. I was still battling the cold I picked up on my epic weekend of unadulterated awesomeness in Queensland, so when my lungs began a concerted effort to turn themselves inside out after work on the Wednesday, I took it in my stride, hacked up half my trachea, curled up in a ball and cursed my own existence. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

Last week, after a tragically unsatisfying game of indoor beach volleyball, I drove home, showered, and then coughed for a steady half an hour before eventually spitting out a couple of hundred grams of sand.

It’s not unusual to find sand in unexpected places following a volleyball match, but two dilapidating coughing fits in a week left me more than a little concerned. I booked in to see the doctor for a check up. I had some juvenile Asthma when I was… a juvenile, and I’ve always dealt with the fact that I have unusually shallow lungs (not to mention my personality).

Doctors always seem to me to be much more interested in just about anything else than in what their patients think might be wrong. We spent a good twenty minutes discussing my diet, lifestyle, blood pressure and family history, which was all fine as I asked for a general check-up. My body mass index suggests I’m still slightly overweight for my height, which I already knew, but did reveal to me that I’m approaching the solution from entirely the wrong angle. I’ve been putting all my energy into losing weight and eating properly. What I should be doing is concentrating on growing taller.

We chatted for a few more minutes about how I probably don’t need to be worrying about cholesterol, blood pressure (mine was slightly high, but apparently that could be accounted for by the stress of meeting a new doctor. This strikes me as a little odd, not to mention a violation of the Hippocratic oath) or various types of cancer at my age.

Finally the doc told me off for not eating breakfast, instructed me to eat more fibre, do more exercise… and gave me a clean bill of health. According to her I was the healthiest person she had seen all week. Of course, it was only Monday lunchtime, so that’s not such a big deal.

“What about the Asthma?” I asked, helpfully.
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” replied the doctor, encouragingly. “You probably don’t have that.”

So there you have it. Or not, as the case may be.

Last night before volleyball I had another coughing fit. If the doctor is to be believed, there’s nothing wrong with me. So I’m left with only one viable conclusion:

I’m allergic to Wednesdays. Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Operations Supervisor

2011-03-28T18:13:00.001+09:30

One of my goals for 2011 (check the right sidebar) was to get myself a new job. Just three months in, today that dream becomes a reality.

Sort of.

It’s true that my applications to join the glamorous and untouchable ranks of the local media posse have yielded a big fat zero. I’ve also been flat out rejected by the Northern Territory Government (to be fair, I don’t exactly endorse them at the moment either). And Channel Nine’s copywriting team sent me the nicest rejection notice I’ve received in quite a while.

So I’ve gone internal. I’m taking up a new position with TCU. Gone are the days of Garry the training officer. Now I have a shiny new badge that says “Operations Supervisor”. I had to make it myself, and it doesn’t really match my uniform, but that’s not the point.

It’s a slight pay bump, and it will mean a lot less time spent in plastic boxes behind reinforced fences in the middle of nowhere. So in general, it’s an improvement, but there’s no getting around the fact that I’m taking the next bold step along a career I don’t really want in the first place. The senior management announced the promotion last week at a staff meeting, and everyone has been very enthusiastic in congratulating me, which is nice. One of the senior managers even went so far as to say “That’s great. You’ll be one of us in no time”. He meant well enough by it, I’m sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more frightening prediction, and that includes the time my Scripture Union mentor told me if I kept playing keyboard at church, I’d end up married within five years by sheer force of numbers.

That also turned out to be complete rubbish, thank God.

I spent most of today moving my stuff from my old desk to my new one. I’m responsible for the tellers, branch coordinators and receptionist, and it’s now my job to make sure that everything that has to happen each day happens each day. Which basically means that instead of my boss calling me to cover for whatever part of the process can’t happen today, now I’ll just do it myself.

Make of that what you will. I know I will.

Garry with 2 Rs

An Awesome Weekend - Part Three

2011-03-24T18:58:00.004+09:30

I'm not proud of it. I'm not even sure how it happened. As I woke up I felt instinctively that something had gone horribly wrong.

"Sleep well?" asked the not unatrractive complete stranger beside me.

Just kidding.

Somehow I managed to stuff up my alarm two nights in a row. Instead of waking at six, I had woken at half past seven and my flight left at half past eight. Thankfully everything was already packed, so it was just a matter of dashing out the door and calling a taxi instead of walking to the train station. It was going to be tight, but experience told me I had just enough time to reach the airport before boarding closed.

Experience hadn't accounted for the inner city charity bike ride that passed through Corronation Drive and held us up for fifteen minutes, or the road works on the expressway that cost us another ten. Fortunately I only had carry on luggage, so I was hopeful of being able to just check in at the extremely helpful self service machines and then dash through security and onto the plane. Unfortunately the machine threw a tantrum because I was five minutes late and told me where to go (I returned the favour). Unfortunately it told me the wrong thing, and by the time I had been redirected to a different service counter at the other end of the check in lounge my plane had already left.

The Qantas staff were able to rebook me on a flight via Cairns. It meant I had five hours to kill at Brisbane airport and another three in Cairns on top of two two and a half hour flights. But that was alright. That's what airport bookshops are for.

By now my head had managed to completely fill itself with snot. Landing in Cairns, and again in Darwin, I felt like my sinuses were preparing to go critical all over the seat in front me, which is a safety hazard during takeoff and landing.

Finally, just fourteen and a half hours after cursing the births of all recreational cyclists everywhere, I dumped my backpack onto my bed and dumped myself into the shower. Later, as I quietly sneezed myself to sleep, I looked back on 2011's most action packed weekend yet, satisfied in the knowledge that I'm just as awesome as ever.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

An Awesome Weekend - Part Two

2011-03-23T20:20:00.004+09:30

At six fifteen I was awoken by a text message asking me where the hell I was. I had managed to set my alarm for the wrong day. I had developed a tickle in my throat overnight, but I managed to grind out a coherent apology over the phone and my friend graciously agreed to come and pick me up from the motel. In the meantime I stumbled into my suit and threw everything else into my backpack. By the time my lift arrived I was the sharpest dressed zombie in South East Queensland.

I am not well known for my navigational skills. Or, to put it more accurately, I am well known for having a catastrophically poor sense of direction. And that's just in Darwin, which by rights I should know like the back of my hand by now.

Incidently, as a by-product of spending four and a half years typing up these incessant blog posts, my familiarity with the back of my hands is up there with best of them.

The point is that when my friend handed me a print-out of Google's instructions on how to get from Indooroopilly train station in Brisbane to Stanthorpe Presbyterian Church in Stanthorpe it did not bode well for the journey ahead.

Interesting (well...) fact: Despite having a population of just five and a half thousand, Stanthorpe has both a Uniting Church and a continuing Presbyterian church (plus all the others you'd expect in an Australian country town). I don't know what the story is there. And if you don't know why that's intriguing in the first place, don't panic. Within a generation or two it won't matter anymore.

The plain fact is that I'd be utterly incapable of giving you useful directions to either of them without consulting the satnav at least twice. This is one of the reasons I'm so rarely invited to join street evangelism missions.

There are others.

We made it to the wedding with five minutes to spare. The bride and groom had asked me to do one of the scripture readings, which would have been a great honour if not for the fact that the reading was taken from the Song of Songs. If you know your Old Testament then you'll realise that's a magnificently awkward choice for a wedding ceremony. If you don't know your Old Testament, then TURN OR BURN, HEATHEN!

The reception was delightful. As always it was a great chance to catch up with old friends, relive old times and reassure each other that we're still awesome. After spending the previous evening with platinum selling rock stars, taking lunch with assorted doctors, aerospace engineers, international missionaries and federal parliamentary journalists led this particular training officer to the conclusion that some of us needed more reassurance than others.

By the end of the trip back to Brisbane later that afternoon my throat tickle had developed into a dry cough and runny nose. I had planned to spend Saturday night catching up with a few Brisbane friends who hadn't gone to the wedding. I ended up tending to my exasperated sinuses in front of a hastily selected DVD and then turning in at about ten.

But first I took great care to correctly set my alarm for the following morning so I'd make my flight home.

An Awesome Weekend - Part One

2011-03-22T22:08:00.003+09:30

"Whenever I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story." - Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother.

Every now and again I nick off to Queensland for a few days. There's always an official pretext to the trip, but the main point of these south-eastern sojourns is to prove to myself that I'm still every bit as awesome as I was in my uni days. As time passes (and it does, I assure you) it's a claim that's becoming more and more difficult to substantiate.

Recently even the pretext has been becoming increasingly predictable; an old friend will do something silly like get married and I'll trip off to Brisbane to attend the ceremony and concurrently catch some sort of international music act. Last time, I popped east for a wedding and a U2 concert. Last weekend I went for a wedding and found by complete coincidence that New Zealand rock sensation Six60 were playing at The Zoo on Anne st. I'm sure the Six60 boys won't mind me saying it; U2 in Suncorp Stadium is not quite the same thing as Six60 in a converted community hall in Fortitude Valley, but that's not the point. The point is something closer to the incredible coincidence of being in Brisbane for less than twelve hours and yet timing it so perfectly that I got to hang out with Chris for a few hours and finally hear the band live. A coincidence which was further compounded when we discovered that as well as staying in Brisbane at the same time, we were also staying at the same motel.

I've never really imagined myself as the 'I'm with the band' type (That's probably because I rather fancifully imagine myself as the 'I'm in the band' type). Hanging out with Chris backstage after the show I got to experience the crazy collision of worlds that happens when you're chatting with friends like old times but you have your conversation interrupted periodically by fans asking for autographs.

A particularly enthusiastic pair of followers claimed to be Six60's biggest fans ever. They passed a band shirt around and asked us all to sign it. I was confused, but willing enough to oblige her. If she was as big a fan as she claimed, she might have realised she had more signatures on her shirt than Six60 has members, but I guess we'll never know.

In true rock and roll style, after loading the gear into a white mini van (hell yeah!) we continued celebrating a great show into the small hours of the morning. This was another great way for me to demonstrate that I'm still awesome, despite having taken my newly discovered I'm-with-the-bandism to the level of actually impersonating said band to it's own fans.

It was also a really stupid idea because I needed to be up ridiculously early the next morning to meet my lift to the wedding. It was a morning ceremony and lunch time reception in a town several hours' drive from Brisbane. I set my alarm for half past four to make sure I had enough time to get ready and catch a train to rendezvous with my friend at six.

A Soft Touch

2011-03-10T21:07:00.000+09:30

In the last couple of posts I’ve been very excited about the fact that I’ve started going along to sepak takraw training again. I’m very aware that most people in the in English speaking world probably wouldn’t have any idea what that is. As always, CTC is here to help with up-to-date, accurate, un-biased and completely reliable information.

Sepak Takraw is the name of the first independently owned Australian registered interplanetary transport ship. Commissioned in 1942 as a secret plot to evacuate the entire world in the event of a NAZI takeover, it now operates as an orbital tourist resort and the first war memorial to be launched into space.

Would you believe a species of short snouted turtle?

Fine.

Sepak Takraw is a Southeast Asian sport that is like a cross between soccer and volleyball. Thailand and Malaysia both steadfastly claim to have invented the sport, and the modern international name for the sport reflects a compromise between the two, with ‘sepak’ being the Malay word for ‘to kick’ and ‘takraw’ being the Thai word for the type of ball used. Traditionally the ball was made of woven ratan cane, but international standard takraws are now made of plastic.

It’s played between two teams of three (apparently two on two games are played, but that seems dumb to me) on a court roughly the size of a badminton court, and with a similar size and height net between the two halves. The principle is similar to volleyball; three touches on each side, with the goal being to put the ball over the net and have your opponents drop it.

The soccer part comes in the ball handling; you can use your legs and head to touch the ball, but not your torso or arms. It sounds crazy, but it’s great to watch. The YouTube footage available seems to be disappointing both in quantity and quality, but the best and most competently filmed demonstration I could find is this one.

If you’ve watched the footage, you may be of the opinion that a slightly overweight, mildly arthritic, completely Caucasian and utterly uncoordinated fellow like me has no business walking into the same room as a sepak takraw court, let alone getting on it. And you’d be right.

The thing is, I learned to play the game when I was in senior high school and was younger, healthier and had less respect for gravity. While I’ve never been able to turn a back flip or hang in the air like the spikers in the video, there was a time when I could at least control a ball thrown at me from across the room using just my feet and could get my legs up high enough to put the ball over the net with some force. I played for the Northern Territory in a couple of Arafura Games, and was all set to go and play for Australia in the World Cup, but I got foiled by year twelve exams and the fact that world cup was cancelled that year due to political unrest in Malaysia. I remember my old mentor telling me the key to controlling the ball was to stroke it like a beautiful woman. At the time I didn’t really know what he meant by that.

A decade or so later, I still don’t know. But I’ve still got the ball the coach gave me all those years ago, and it turns out I can still kick it. Sort of. My control is all over the place (much like my understanding of beautiful women, come to that), but the new coach says I’ve still got the basic techniques, I just need more practice and to get back into shape (just like… actually, never mind).

The Arafuras are coming up again in May this year. I won’t have time to get my skills up in time to play this time, especially if I’m playing cricket and volleyball at the same time, but I’m looking forward to hanging out with the NT team and watching some of the teams who can play properly (Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia usually send a couple of teams each, and they really mean business). And it’s the one sport I can play that I don’t seem to inherently suck at, and where being slightly bow legged actually provides an advantage.

And if I ever do meet that special lady, I’ll be sure to take my old mentor’s advice, and kick her like a takraw. Make of that what you will.

Actually... just forget it.

Garry with 2 Rs

An Unexpected Development

2011-03-07T20:39:00.000+09:30

Strangely enough, I’ve received a few comments from friends in the three dimensional world regarding my list of goals for 2011. Most have suggested that there’s a certain goal on the list that doesn’t quite seem realistic, or at the very least seems to be well outside my ability to influence it. Given my lifestyle, attitude and general health lately, I would ordinarily tend to agree. However just recently there have been some very promising signs suggesting it may be time to take the red pen to my to-do list a little earlier than we had anticipated. And obviously as a blogger and compulsive attention junkie, I feel compelled to tell you all about it. Aren’t you lucky?

I’ve joined a social Wednesday night mixed volley ball team. I’ve been getting to know the other girls and guys on the team a bit over the past few weeks and we’re getting along really well as a social unit, if you know what I mean. As a volley ball team, on the other hand, we are utterly abysmal, and haven’t quite managed to win a game yet. But we’re having fun.

By pure coincidence at the same as this has been happening, the inter-congregational social soccer game has started up again on Sunday afternoons at my old school. I love getting out and hanging out with folk from other churches, as well as having a run around with some social soccer. You never know who you’re going to bump into there either.

On top of all that, now I’m playing Sepak Takraw two or three nights a week as well. I’m still working on a write-up on that for those of you wondering what’s going on. Stay tuned. Couple that with an intention to get back into cricket once a few other variables in my life get sorted out and we’re looking at the makings of a veritable, if not capable, sports nut. I'm sitting in my room typing this up and enjoying the first night in almost a week that I haven't been out doing something active. It's crazy, I tell you.

And if I can keep this sort of regime up, I should get myself down to 90kg in no time. I never thought it was possible until it started to happen to me.

Make of that what you will. And don’t look at me like that.

Garry with 2 Rs

Rage Against the Machine

2011-03-02T17:40:00.000+09:30

It seems the robot uprising has begun. Yesterday the Commonwealth Bank was bought to a grinding halt by computer errors that caused ATMs to hand out thousands of dollars to disgustingly greedy and opportunistic users. Meanwhile in the US (where else?) some clever cookies have developed a program that can beat human competitors at Jeopardy. And only three hours ago my brother was attacked by a giant robotic canary which exclaimed ‘expatriate’ and began faxing yoghurt to the Bavarian Consulate. Also, my spell check is coming the raw prawn and keeps defaulting back to US English. Apparently it can recommend the wrong spelling of ‘favour’ and ‘recognise’ but still can’t do anything to prevent that sentence about the canary. So that’s one to me, I suppose.

Sorry about that.

I’ve written before about my distaste for the new computerized customer operated check out stations at the supermarkets. Since then, the stations have been installed in every department store (or what passes for department stores in Darwin) in Darwin. I’m sure tech heads all over the city are rejoicing in the advent of the robotic revolution while owners and managers are gleefully rubbing their hands together at the thought of all the wages they don’t have to pay anymore.

I am just about ready to take a cricket bat to the stupid things. I’m all in favour of technological progress when it works. But the self operated checkouts don’t work. Every time I try to use them, they’ve run out of cash, or the weight scale isn’t working, or it won’t recognise the barcode on my biscuits. Generally I show my antagonism for the devices in a way which is less inclined to cause damage to a perfectly good cricket bat. That is, I just boycott them and only use the stations with human beings working at them. But during the last two days I’ve been pushed over the edge.

Last night I went to buy some new shoes for Sepak Takraw. Sometime later on I’ll get around to posting about how cool it is that I’ve taken up Sepak Takraw again, but for now I’m all revved up about evil department stores.

Last night, not only were the automated stations in Kmart beeping at me rudely, but when I went to deliberately and obviously not use them, I found I had no choice. Kmart did not have any human beings working the registers at all. There were two assistants supposedly on hand to help with the machines, but none of them seemed to pay the slightest attention when it took me three goes to get the thing to read my credit card correctly. I was ready to forget the whole thing and walk out, but I needed the shoes. Sort of. Admittedly it was six o’clock at night, so we might expect the shop to have been a bit quiet. But that should also have meant that service was exceptional since there was nothing else to do.

I also don’t want to single Kmart in this particular debacle. As I said, all the department stores and supermarkets, with the notable exception of Coles, have put them in, and no-one seems to have got them working properly yet.

This afternoon I realised that the only food I had in the fridge for tonight was pasta, and that if I cooked pasta tonight, I wouldn’t have anything to put leftovers in (I recently moved house and am still getting some of the basic things sorted out. Like a roof) so I went to buy some plastic microwavable containers which so prototypically embody a single man’s kitchen.

I tried Big W first, and once again was disgusted to find only one human being serving at the checkouts, with a line right back to the ladies’ lingerie section. My desire not to be late back from my lunch break overrode my desire to avoid the inhuman checkout operators and I gave it a go. After being told by a recorded voice that I need to remove my items from the bagging area and then put them back three times in a row I got over it, left the items where they were and made a great show of storming defiantly out of the shop.

No-one noticed.

I went back to Kmart and found that once again there was only one human-operated station open, despite the fact that is was lunch time and the shop was teeming with customers. I queued for twenty minutes and finally managed to buy my plastic containers. The poor check out chick was obviously struggling to cope with constant demand from old ladies who couldn’t use computer terminals and twenty-something year old professionals who just had to be difficult.

I’ve written complaint letters to both Big W and Kmart, but I’m philosophical about the chances of corporate strategists putting the concerns of one old-fashioned consumer over the chance to save millions by not actually providing any kind of service.

Maybe the robots have taken more control than we realise.

Garry with 2 Rs

An Aura of Destruction

2011-02-22T12:16:00.000+09:30

On Friday night I got back to work after a week in Galiwin'ku to discover that not only had I missed the first decent cyclone to come through Darwin in years, but in my absence the roof in my new room had continued to leek during said cyclone and my floor was completely flooded. Again. It was still raining heavily, so for most of the weekend my front wall resembled less a wall with a bad leak and more a waterfall with a nasty case of bricks.

Yesterday I got into my office to discover that the central database program on my computer had stopped working. I tried turning it off and on again, but that failed to fix the problem so, having exhausted my technical knowledge, I called IT. Apparently it was a problem everyone had had the week before, and it hadn’t been fixed on my computer yet. It was a simple job to fix it.

Five hours later the network administrator was still trying to fix the simple problem. Apparently the data program had got into a fight with Microsoft office, and the conflict had escalated to such an extent that they could not both be present on the same hard drive anymore. Both the bickering programs were summarily sent to their rooms for re-installation, which didn’t solve anything, they still kept crashing each other.

The IT lady at work says I have an aura of destruction, and I think she might be right. Computers, roofs, cars, aeroplanes, relationships, job applications or chicken enchiladas; there’s no limit to the things I can render a complete train wreck simply by looking at them the wrong way.

Anyone who has watched me at work in the kitchen will be able to confirm this for you. I could find a creative and astonishing way to boil water wrong. It’s not just that I’m a bad cook. I can follow the instructions for food preparation to the letter and still manage to ruin it. My old housemate once described me as “a force of nature” after seeing me take an instant meal out of the oven, where it had been for thirty minutes at 180 degrees as instructed, only to discover it was still frozen. I also managed to burn my dinner to a crisp last night because I was unaware that I was using an oven with a hyperdrive setting.

The usual protocol in these situations is to swear to use one's powers for good and not for evil. Stuff that, I’m using my powers for AWESOME. I’ve applied for a number of jobs with the public service, just to see if I can use my aura to bring down the government. If it works, I’m going to England. If I can get in.

Meanwhile, my computer seems to be working just fine this morning. No-one knows why. Or for how long. Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

A Token of My Affection

2011-02-14T09:30:00.004+09:30

On this day of love, companionship and general smoochiness for all, I thought I’d do my bit for the cause by posting a few sensitive and poignant observations about the whole St. Valentine’s phenomenon. First among them is this:

Romance is stupid.

Now, before you fire up the flame throwers, let me qualify by adding that I’m all in favour of finding ways to make someone feel special, which is what proper romance, at its core, is supposedly all about. My beef is more with the traditional motifs we’re expected to utilise (just who is doing the expecting is unclear. I suspect it may be department store promotions teams) to convey affection. Here are a few of my favourites:

Flowers: Flowers are the quintessential romantic icon. Nothing shows true love like a dozen red roses in full bloom; they’re vibrant, classical, passionate and they smell great. But I find the whole symbolism of flowers a little creepy. To me it says “My love for you is like this gerbera; bold, colourful and dynamic this week, but by March it will be faded, limp and dead.” But that’s fine. If someone bought me flowers, that would be weird anyway.

Jewellery: Now you’re talking. Buy your love something lasting, precious, opulent and sparkly. (If you happen to be spending V. Day nervously carrying an engagement ring in your breast pocket, just skip over this paragraph). I suppose there’s something to be said for adorning your beloved with valuable finery, but it seems weird to me that we spend all this energy reminding ourselves that beauty is only skin deep and that true love comes from what’s inside, not what’s on the exterior, and then we spend all this money decorating the outside anyway. Somewhere, some would-be Don Juan is announcing,
“My soul mate, from the bottom of my heart I love you just the way you are. Please accept this ornamental chain to help improve your outward appearance slightly. Look, it’s shiny!”

Stuffed animals in curly pink ribbons: I really don’t get this one. I can only assume it’s an optimistic attempt to transfer some of the immediate outpouring of affection (Oh my gosh! A scrub turkey with a pink ribbon! It’s so cute! I’ll call him Freddy and he can sit on my computer at work and I’ll love him forever) from the gift to the giver. And I don’t really fancy sitting on anyone’s computer for very long. To be fair on the fairer sex, many of the women I’ve spoken to agree that this one’s drawing rather a long bow. I guess it depends on the personality of whomever you’re giving it to. To me, stuffed toys are for children and hospital visits, to provide a skerrick of companionship during long periods spent alone and miserable. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but that wouldn’t be my expression of choice for a loved one.

Chocolate: I eat far too much chocolate as it is. As a Valentine gift, it sure puts the ‘token’ in ‘a token of my affection’. It’s supposed to say something like “This gift is sweet, but not as sweet as you”. But to me, it just says… actually, forget it. Chocolate is an awesome idea. Once I’ve finished writing this I’m going to go and find some.

My point is, whatever the ads in shop windows might tell us, proper love isn’t something you can convey with a stereotyped decoratively gift wrapped present. The best thing anyone can give to any relationship (romantic or otherwise) is time and attention. But if that’s something we can only manage once a year in February, then maybe we’d all better just stick with a bunch of orchids.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. If you have just gone out and bought your significant other a stuffed alpaca and half a dozen camellias, don’t panic. There’s a reasonable chance that everything I’ve written above is completely wrong.

Moving Right Along

2011-02-11T23:13:00.002+09:30

It's been a couple of weeks between posts, which is longer than I generally like to go. Sorry about that, but as you may have read a couple of posts back, my life has been a little fluxious of late by virtue of me not having anywhere to live. My good friends Tim and Jess were awesome enough to lend me a spare room for a week while I got back on my feet. But it's taken me a little while to re-establish a base of operations solid enough to support the resumption of my meteoric blogging career.

As I'm sure you're all aware, it requires a great deal of stability, consistency and stoicism to produce the sort of well thought out, thoroughly researched, poignant, incisive and totally-not-scibbled-out-after-drinking-half-a-bottle-of-wine-and-watching-three-straight-episodes-of-Burn-Notice material that so graciously and effortlessly adorns the pages of Cum Tacent Clament.

And for those of you who were wondering: Yes 'fluxious' is the adjective of 'in-flux' and no, it's not a real word.

If it were a real word, it would do a great job a describing my life at the moment. I've just moved in a new place in Malak, and come home to find it half full of water. Some attention is needed in the roof I fear. It's in Malak in the northern suburbs of Darwin and I've been offered a room here with absolutely no help from the local real estate industry. From the time I discovered I was going to have to move out I had two weeks to find myself a new room. In all that time the local real estate websites turned up exactly one room that was suitable and in my price range. I checked it out and applied for it and after jerking me around for a week the agent gave it to someone else.

So I moved in to Tim and Jess' daughters' toy room and put out a distress call at Church on Sunday morning. By Sunday night I had options and by Monday evening I had a new home. So suck it, real estate agents. The local church is better than you, free, and doesn't require me to submit contact details for two references, three previous landlords and my employer along with my passport number and the model of car I drive before deciding not to help me. Shove it!

Fluxation (fluctuation? Yeah, probably) number two: I'm looking for a new job (nb. 2011 checklist on the sidebar). For some time now I've been developing a certain rapport with the human resources manager at the local newspaper. Our blossoming relationship has developed an observable behavioural pattern whereby I send her a charming and eloquently penned application letter and she sends me a heartfelt and passionately photocopied ~~burn~~ rejection notice. This has been going on for some eight months now and I'm considering the wisdom of discontinuing our correspondence before people start to talk. The last thing I need is my name splashed all over the the ... tabloids...

Wait...

Maybe I'll just send her a bouquet of orchids with the next copy of my résumé. I received another rejection notice this week which contained just the faintest hint of lavender perfume - a remarkable achievement for an email attachment, I'm sure you'll agree. The long game continues.

Fluxification number three: My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy, until...

Oh go on. Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

iTunes Sux (Suxty)

2011-01-25T22:28:00.003+09:30

Every now again someone gets up and does something awesome. Sometimes it’s me, usually it’s not. This week it’s my mate Chris.

Chris is one of my oldest friends, who, while travelling in New Zealand, had the misfortune to fall in love, marry a Kiwi and become a pastor. I realise that this doesn’t sound that unfortunate, but the fact of the matter is that he now lives in New Zealand, which has to be a bummer. His wife, daughter, congregation and fans probably don't see it that way, but what would they know? Mind you, he’s made a good fist of it.

When not pastoring, Chris plays bass for a New Zealand band called Six60, which would have to be the most optimistic band name for a bunch of Kiwis ever (Sux-suxty? Really?). This aside, they’ve gone and landed themselves New Zealand’s number one single this week, so full respect to them. Check out Rise up 2.0 by Six60, if you can find it.

Of course you might expect his best mates to all have bought a copy or twelve to boost the numbers along, but incredibly this isn’t the case. The single is only available through iTunes, and you have to be registered in New Zealand to purchase it. Apparently Apple is still figuring out how this whole global economy thing works, being just a small company that hasn’t been around very long and isn’t very good.

The long and the short is, my best friend has a number one single and until recently I hadn’t even heard it.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs
(It is pretty good, isn't it?)

Evacuated

2011-01-15T20:20:00.001+09:30

Well, Australia has done it again; bushfires at one end of the country and floods at the other. If I never hear the word ‘devastated’ again it will be too soon. Across the country, thousands of people are being forced from their homes.

And what do you know? I’m one of them.

No, my house is neither on fire nor underwater, for which I am exceedingly grateful. I’m being forced out by that other great natural disaster; dumb luck. My house mates, including the one who actually holds the lease, are all moving out to new jobs in different states, leaving yours truly in the lurch once again, with just under two weeks to find a new place to live. Again.

For everyone this week, the chief lesson has been a reminder of how small we really are, and how transient even the things we regard as permanent, like houses, really are. As I was filling out application forms this afternoon, I got a real sense of powerlessness as I realise that something as crucial to the next phase of my life as where I’m going to live is going to be decided by an office worker somewhere who has never met me. An office worker who, for some reason, believes that in order to make that decision they need to know who I work for, who my previous landlords were, how much I earn per week and what sort of car I drive (seriously). I might not be burning or drowning, but I feel like I have just as much control over events as I would if I were facing down a fire or a flood tide. I suppose that’s a healthy state of affairs, but just at the moment it sucks.

There again, I haven’t actually lost anything from my soon not to be room. I’m definitely better off than the Queenslanders whose lives have been d… ruined by the floods. There’s a lot to be thankful for. I have a job; a job at which I am treated as an inconsequential child, but a job nonetheless. And I live in a city which hasn’t been destroyed for almost forty years now (we must be just about due). And I’m still able to keep focussed on the really important things in life, as evidenced by the fact that, in a week when thousands of my countrymen are without electricity or even a roof, somehow I’ve still managed to make this post all about me.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Conduit

2011-01-11T21:19:00.008+09:30

I'm sure we've all had times in our lives when a certain word or phrase seems to be following us. Like when you learn a new word while listening to a radio interview and then hear the same word three times in the next two days despite never having heard it before. Or like that time you couldn't stop yelling 'trousers' while you were supposed to be giving the valedictory address.

I've been going through one such experience recently, except it has been going on for two and a half months now. In some ways I brought it on myself; living the lifestyle I live in the questionable linguistic environments I do I suppose it was only a matter of time before I attracted the attention of some of the less reputable lexemes around me. But I never believed it would come to this.

I'm being stalked by the word 'conduit'.

It started back in November while I was writing that crazy Nanawrimo project. In the course of focussing on nothing but a single science fiction story for a whole month it was inevitable that some words would pop up repetitively; words like 'Cavalier' 'calibre' and 'lizardy'. But I was utterly unprepared for the frequency with which 'conduit' jumped in to fill the void whenever I needed a spaceshipy sounding noun.

I realise this doesn't really count as stalking. It's just me taking the lazy, uncreative route around writer's block and not having the time or inclination to go back and fix it.

Furthermore I think I've figured out where it came from. Last week I got in one of my 'bored with the world so I'll lose myself in an entire series or two of some escapist American television program' moods. Unfortunately the season of Boston Legal I'm up to wasn't available at the DVD shop, so I diverted to another old favourite of mine: Star Trek Voyager.

Yes. I have diverse, eccentric and obsolete taste in conduits. I mean TV shows. God damn it.

The thing is while I might have overused the word 'conduit' in my writing, those Voyager crewmen had conduits coming out of their ears. Power conduits; energy conduits; subspace conduits. If there's a made up physical phenomenon, it's got a conduit. But I'm sorry. Even if you live on a spaceship on the other side of the galaxy in a universe that includes telepathic two year olds, sentient nebulae and omnipotent continua with suicidal tendencies, there is no referential framework in which 'temporal conduit' could possibly mean anything sensible.

If all that wasn't enough (and I can see how you might be of that opinion, come to think of it) the next encounter came from a source completely disconnected from science fiction. My old friends the Newsboys put out their first post-Peter Furler album last year and I recently picked up a copy. Imagine my surprise at hearing the Newsboys - now fronted by Michael Tait - sing the following lyrics:

What will people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus Freak? What will people do when they find that it's true?

This has nothing to do with conduits. I just need to get this off my chest. There are some songs that you just shouldn't cover because they can't be improved upon. This goes double for a band that already has several perfectly smash hits of its own.

There again, if we're talking about a vessel, substance or catalyst through which another substance or energy flows, then I suppose you could think of the whole universe as being one big temporal conduit. But it still doesn't make sense in the context of just one localised spaceship.

Meanwhile, in a different song on the same album:

When the 'boys light up you know
Who gets the praise. Who owns the show.
When the 'boys light up it's on
And we ain't stopping 'til we're done.
We ain't nothing but the conduits
He's got the power. He'll flip the switch.
Leaving the dark behind
Light up and let it shine.

See? It's everwhere I tell you. And ... Because... I...

Okay, look. I know this one's not very funny. To be honest I'm struggling to come up with a punchline as I watch extended news coverage of South East Queensland slowly going under water. My phone beeps periodically as my friends in Brisbane let me know they're alright.

I considered not posting this at all on grounds of lameness, but let's be frank. No one other than my family and maybe K.Kim is going to read this far anyway. I'm too distracted to self-censor at the moment, so I guess I'll keep typing and wait to see what tomorrow brings as I use Blogger as a nervous energy conduit.

God damn it.

Garry with 2 Rs

New Year's Morphological Nightmares

2011-01-04T00:10:00.000+09:30

My mate Phil was rostered on to preach at church last Sunday. He was bouncing some sermon ideas off me, and told me that since it was a service for the second of January, he was thinking of taking a New Year’s resolution theme. He was very excited about his idea of changing it to “New Year’s Revolution”. Thankfully he had come up with some better ideas by Sunday morning.

I, on the other hand, have been musing on the quirk of the English language that makes ‘revolution’ the noun of both ‘revolt’ and ‘revolve’. I like the idea that a complete overhaul of the system, and just another spin of the endlessly turning wheel are both represented by the same word. It’s like taking the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” and expressing it in just one noun. Brilliant.

I thought it seemed especially appropriate at this time of year, when so many of them are being made. We all have these great ideas about what we can achieve in the new year, but in the end it’s just another tick around an endless cycle. And then I realised I was thinking about the wrong word. Damn it Phil, that would have made for an awesome, and potentially even moving, sermon. I mean blogpost.

There again, if the verb of ‘resolution’ is ‘resolve’ (and it is), then if we follow the revolution paradigm (there’s a science fiction film title in there somewhere) then ‘resolution’ should also be the noun of ‘resolt’. Tragically that’s not actually a word.

But it’s not that far from ‘result’. I’m sure if I tried hard enough I could come up with something deep about the journey from “Resolve” to “Result” being only a morphological derivation away. Unfortunately, “Result” is already a noun, so the methodology falls away a bit. I mean, it can be a verb if it wants to be (Garry’s pointless and boring morphology tutorial resulted in people throwing potatoes at him and ceasing to read his blog), but even so I think the link is a little thin.

The point is…

What about ‘re-salt’? As in, “after the application of the first pinch of salt, the broth was still too bland, so I re-salted it, in a frivolous act of re-salution.”

Oh never mind. Last year’s running totals have been removed and replaced with a set of New Year’s … goals. Some are more achievable than others, but we’ll see how many of them I can check off by this time next year.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Oh good grief. Does anyone know if ‘resolution’ as in “My monitor’s resolution is set to 1689x1050 pixels” has a verb form? This is going to keep me up all night.

Australia's Too Cool To Be There

2010-12-18T15:17:00.003+09:30

On Sundays my post-church conversations (at least those that don't come after a Sunday when I'm on bass) generally go something like this:

Gw2Rs: So what are you up to for the rest of the day?
Whoever: I dunno. A few guys were talking about getting together for lunch somewhere.
Gw2Rs: Sounds good. Who? Where? When?
Whoever. I dunno. Ask Hannah.

Last weekend, sandwiched between the Brisbane trip and a week in Ramingining (East Arnhem Land) with work, my post-church conversation took a slightly different turn.

Gw2Rs: So what are you up to for the rest of the day?
Phil: A TV producer rang me and asked me to audition for Australia's Got Talent. Apparently they're short on applicants and need comedians.
Gw2Rs: ... ?
Phil: Want to come along?
Gw2Rs: Um...
Phil: Let me put it another way. Can you give me a lift?

For any normal Australian, the fact that producers of prime time national television shows are ringing up and asking for favours would be the stuff of several blog posts in its own right, but for Phil its just one of those things that happen in the universe he inhabits. If John Lennon came back from the dead and announced that the Beatles were organising a comeback tour, the first thing he would do would be to call Phil and ask him to open the show for him. Phil would then put him on hold to check his calendar.

And so it was that I packed up Samantha after worship and drove Phil into town for the auditions. And being a compulsive attention junkie with an electric keyboard in my car, I figured 'what the hell?' and grabbed a sign up sheet of my own.

Much like the producers, I figured there wouldn't be many people there. I hadn't heard anything about it until that morning, so I assumed it would be a low key affair.

Just like the producers, I couldn't have been more wrong. The foyer of the Plaza Hotel was packed out by every wannabe singer, dancer, juggler, comic, rapper and contemporary poet the city could generate. I hadn't heard about it because I don't watch TV, but apparently Channel Seven had been advertising it for weeks.

It should go without saying (but it probably doesn't, so I'll say it to be on the safe side) that Phil and I were both way too cool to be there. But since Phil had been called up specially and since we'd come all the way into town and since sitting around doing nothing was all I had planned for the afternoon anyway, we decided to go through with it.

We were then treated to a parade of young hopefuls walking into the audition room as their numbers were called, each one trying nervously to pretend that they were too cool to be there. Obviously the exceptions were Phil and I, who were neither nervous nor pretending. We just really are that awesome.

Highlights:

1) At one point I saw in the queue a line of three highschool girls dressed identically carrying identical accoustic guitars. I assumed they were a group act, but they all went in identically one at a time and sang identical accoustic renderings of 'Torn' by Natalie Imbruglia. I guess they were all trying to stand out with their distinctive look.

2) Just after Phil went on a troupe of a dozen septegenarian dancing girls in bikini body t-shirts arrived and performed an upbeat square jive. I don't know if they had talent or not, but they were bizarre enough to get their photos in the newspaper.

3) The cake was taken by an elderly cowboy who wandered into the foyer of the Plaza with his horse and began asking young hopefuls, including Phil, if they would like to perform their acts while standing on a horse. Phil politely declined. The Channel Seven crew arrived and offered the man an audtion form, which he then refused to accept. That done, he took his horse and went home. It turns out he really was too cool to be there.

As for my audition, I'm not really sure I'm the reality television type.

Gw2Rs: My name is Garry with 2 Rs and I'm a singer, song writer and stunt linguist.
Judge: A star what?
Gw2Rs: No.

Still, I sang my song, thanked the judges for their time and got the hell out of there. I doubt I made the required impression, but I've been fooled before. So either I'll rule a line under my blossoming reality television career for now, or you'll be reading the mother of all blog posts in February/March next year. I'm not holding my breath for that as it's at least two months away and my current breath holding record is 34 seconds (I have shallow lungs).

And I'm too cool to be there anyway.

Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. I'll be in Adelaide until after Christmas. It's a well established fact that nothing blog-worthy ever happens in Adelaide, so have a great Christmas and I'll see you in 2011! Peace.

Three Sixty Degrees

2010-12-11T22:24:00.001+09:30

I’m a big fan of U2’s work, both musically and humanitarian…ly so last week while I was in Brisbane I went to the U2 360° concert. I’ve been trying for three days since to find the best way describe the experience in writing. I’ve decided that it probably can’t be done. But I’ve always held that just because something is impossible is no reason not to do it. So here, in my typically sophisticated, eloquent, counter clockwise and totally-not-a-squealing-fan-girl style, is my literary portrayal of U2 360°. Enjoy.

We queued up for about five hours but it was definitely worth it because we managed to get a spot right next to the circle stage under the dome set which was freaking huge and shaped like a giant green and orange space invader and once we got inside we watched three guys getting harnessed into the lighting rig and hoisted up about twenty feet above the crowd to run the lights show which was spectacular but even so you would normally think that putting on such a grandiose display would make the band themselves seem small by comparison, but Bono and his mates rocked out and made the whole space ship seem exactly the right size, mainly because all four of them are basically built out of solidified charisma and next thing I know they're out walking along the stage and I'm a metre and half away from The Edge which is just nuts, not to take anything away from the awesomeness of the set which swirled around and set off a light show that would have been literally mind boggling if that was semantically possible and then there was the sound blasting out of speakers that really were the size of my unit playing all my favourite songs and celebrating with Aung San Suu Kyi and then playing “In The Name of Love” and my head just about exploded (that one’s probably purely figurative) but that might have had as much to do with getting a lung full of smoke machine and then Bono wanders out in a leather jacket with lazer pointers sewn into it shooting beams everywhere and two days later my ears were still ringing (really) and I still couldn’t stop smiling and I bought a T shirt.

But I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.

Garry with 2 Rs

Lending A Hand

2010-12-06T17:40:00.000+09:30

I'm in Brisbane this week for a wedding and a U2 concert. Wandering around the Brisbane CBD this morning I realised how much I've missed the opportunity for some sporting backchat with the friendly neighborhood charity spruikers. I mean, sure we have them in Darwin, but not with the same intensity and optimism as in the larger eastern cities.

I met a really nice Amnesty girl named Freda who was cleverly set up under cover out of the rain beside a set of traffic lights, so she could pick off helpless pedestrians waiting for the green man. She wasn't even asking for money, just signatures on a petition demanding an increase in living conditions in Myanmar.

Then I met a really rude one from some child sponsorship agency called The Plan. She didn't even give me her name, she just asked me a whole series of rhetorical questions about the benefits of giving them money. I explained that I already had a sponsor child through Compassion and that I couldn't afford to take on another at that time. She responded by asking how good it would be if I gave more. I impolitely excused myself and moved on. I really don't like it when they force me to be rude in order to end the conversation.

But by far my most unusual experience today came from a spruiker not for a charity but for a manicurist's Christmas package. I guess he thought it was worth a go.

Golan: Hello. Can I ask you just one question?
Gw2Rs: Only one question.
Inside Garry's head: How would you like your remains displayed?
Golan: How long do you think it would take to give yourself a full manicure?
Gw2Rs: I have no idea. You're asking the wrong man
Inside Garry's head: Really? Of all the questions available to you, that's the one you're asking?
Golan: My name is Golan. I'm from Israel. Have you heard of Mount Golan?
Gw2Rs: No
Inside Garry's head: That's two questions, punk.
Golan: It's in Israel. It's named after me.
Gw2Rs: Is it in the Bible?
Golan: Yes
Gw2Rs: What happened there?
Golan: ... Many things.
Gw2Rs: ...
Golan: I'll show you how this works. Can I have your hand?
Gw2Rs: Um... (proffers hand anyway)
Inside Garry's head: That's three on a technicality.
Golan: Is there a special lady in your life?
Gw2Rs: No.
Inside Garry's head: Thanks for asking.
Golan: A mother or sisters?
Gw2Rs: Well...

At this point Golan started rubbing my finger with some sort of rectangular shaped piece of plastic. I still don't know what it was. He made some more chit chat about how although men aren't usually interested, women will spend hours coating their nails with chemicals to make them shiny and smooth. I wasn't really listening, as I wasn't really interested. Blah blah no chemicals...blah blah easy and quick blah blah. He finished buffing my fingers and took his plastic rectangle away.

Golan: Wow.
Gw2Rs: ... ?
Golan: WOW?
Gw2Rs: Oh... yeah. Wow.

My right index finger was now faintly reflective. Apparently this warranted a capitalised wow.

Golan: And that will last for two weeks.
Gw2Rs: It's going to stay like that for two weeks?
Golan: Guaranteed.
Gw2Rs: Um... Thanks for your time.
Inside Garry's head: Challenge accepted.

So now I'm typing away with one ridiculous looking fingernail reflecting my blogger screen back at me. You'll be happy to know I'm making progress on returning to normal with a combination of soft drink and hamburger grease.

On the other hand (see what I did there?)

Garry with 2 Rs

A Night at the Opera

2010-12-02T23:13:00.001+09:30

Okay, that’s enough philosophising about dead celebrities. I promised you all a write up of my insights into the swirling morass of emotion, drama, fame, riches, bright lights and fast women that is the Darwin opera community. And now that Nanowrimo is successfully done and dusted (refer right) I'm in a much better position to do it

Of the above list, “dramatic” is probably the only term that actually fits, being inextricably linked with opera and all, but apart from that it’s hard to find the right words to describe the experience. ‘Aquatic,’ ‘polynomial’ and ‘vengeful’ don’t even come close.

We, the good folk of OperatuNiTy, put on "The Merry Widow from Gumtree Creek," which is a modernisation and Australianisation of the original Merry Widow by Franz Lehar. There were plenty of laughs and a generous helping of good old fashioned racial stereotypes on display. I got to play a French nobleman, which called for my 'unique' talents in accent mimicry. If you can imagine the French peas from Veggietales having a conversation with John Cleese on top of the wall in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, then you probably need to take some sort of medication. But you'll have the basic idea of the vocal effect.

From the outset, it was clear I was always going to be slightly out of my depth with this one. Whereas I was approaching the production from the point of view of an actor who could hold a tune, most of the other cast members came from a background of singers who could hold a plot. That’s not to say that any of them were bad actors – far from it – any more than it is to say I’m a terrible singer – a little closer to it – but it did bring to light some critical differences in the way we approached the preparation for the show.

For me, learning lines and knowing where to stand when you’re saying them was the easy bit, while learning overlapping melodies for vocal ensembles was a daunting challenge. For most of the rest of the cast, it seemed to be the other way around, which made for some crazy upside down rehearsals for me in which from my perspective we spent five minutes quickly going over the impossible bit and then three hours hashing and rehashing the really simple bits. Fortunately I was just the comic relief and most of my time on stage was either spoken our sung with the whole chorus, so if I couldn’t land the musical bits it only really mattered for about seven seconds out of a two hour show.

We managed to get our costumes sorted out just in time for the dress rehearsal. My character was a master swordsman, and one of the other cast members was a fairly high ranking officer in the Australian Defence Force who lent me his military dress uniform sword for the show. It was, without exception, the coolest prop I have ever used. Although the plastic Voltron blazing sword we used during rehearsals was pretty awesome too.

And as always, it all came together on the night. We put on three really good shows to much bigger crowds than I was expecting, and I made it through the whole experience without succumbing to my morbid fear of sopranos or poking anyone's eye out with a sword.

So I guess that's a win for the good guys.

Garry with 2 Rs

Farewell Old Friend

2010-11-29T23:53:00.002+09:30

Famous people are always making the news. They’re getting married, or they’re getting divorced, or they’re going into rehab or they’re going into politics or they have a baby or they die or whatever. It’s all over the mainstream media and it flows straight over me like so much hot air.

Celebrities really don’t interest me. I mean, I’ll pass an approving comment if they make a good movie/song/political point/sporting achievement or whatever. But in general the births, deaths and marriages of the rich and famous go on around me like background noise at a soccer match; you can’t really avoid it, but you can tune out to it if you’re focussed enough on the stuff that matters.

This week was different. This week it wasn’t just another star from a TV show I’ll never watch dating a singer of songs I’ll never listen to. This week I lost a childhood icon. When I learned on Monday morning that Leslie Nielsen had passed away, I was genuinely affected by it in a way that celebrity news never achieves with me. As I read the headline on a news website, I actually exclaimed “Oh No!” out loud in the middle of my open plan office, prompting co-workers around me to enquire as to what was wrong. As I explained that Leslie Nielsen had died, all the cool ones joined me in a reflective chorus of “Surely you can’t be serious!”

Leslie Nielsen taught me how to be funny. Some might argue that he didn’t do a particularly good job, but that’s neither here nor there. I honestly couldn’t tell you how many of our teenaged hours my mates and I spent on various lounge room floors watching the Naked Gun or Flying High (AKA Airplane) movies. Very rarely do the terms ‘laugh out loud’ and ‘roll on the floor laughing’ literally mean what they say, but watching those films, even for the fourth or fifth time, they certainly did. I’ve never heard of anyone literally laughing his or her arse off, but if anyone could have induced such a phenomenon, it was Lieutenant Frank Drebin. They really don’t make films like that anymore. More’s the pity.

It probably says something about my rather non-standard cultural upbringing that I can provide an endless selection of Naked Gun quotes, and yet to this day have never seen Titanic, Top Gun or any of the Terminator movies, all of which were massivly popular amongst my peers during my school years and all of which start with T. Admittedly, Top Gun was released when I was only three, but there again, Flying High was released before I was born. Make of that what you will.

Leslie Nielsen was the one who first taught me the value of saying something utterly absurd and keeping a straight face while doing it. As I grew older my appreciation of this undervalued art would be shaped by the likes of the Monty Python crew and Shaun Micallef, but Leslie will always be my first. His most famous reply: “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley” is still the benchmark for deadpan delivery styles.

“She was the kind of woman who made you want to get down on your knees and thank God you were a man. She had breasts that seemed to say ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ Yep; she reminded me of my mother alright.”

So farewell my old friend. Eighty four was a good innings, and you can go to your rest knowing that you helped shape at least one horribly confused teenager into the only slightly less confused man that he is today.

Good luck, and we’re all counting on you back here.

Garry with 2 Rs

Not So Everyday Rewards

2010-11-24T18:01:00.001+09:30

In this week of North American ceremonial gratitude and North Korean certifiable lunacy, I thought it would be nice to take a look at the historical background surrounding why I get so annoyed when I walk into supermarkets.

I got this new rewards card thing set up at Woolworths the other day. Basically, when the computer reminds me to scan it at the checkout, if I’ve spent over a certain amount it gives me a cheap petrol voucher or enough frequent flyer points to get from Darwin half way to Mandorah. I only ever spend enough in one hit if I’m buying a fortnight’s worth of groceries or a year’s worth of T-shirts from Big W. The cheap fuel saves me maybe five dollars a fortnight, and one day I might accrue enough FF points to splurge on a flight to Katherine and back, but my basic assessment of the card is it’s completely useless.

Naturally Woolworths are keen to encourage me to scan it, because it’s an automatic source of market research, building over time a picture of who I am and what my shopping habits are. As a man who is resistant to participation in such corporate systems (and as a man who just likes to be difficult) I resent being a faceless statistics generator, and have begun a silent campaign to throw as many spanners in the works of their research as possible. I’m out to see how far off I can throw the averages.

So that’s two litres of coke, a loaf of bread, five hundred grams of pasta and a travel edition game of hungry hungry hippos.

So that’s two litres of coke, a frozen pizza, an onion and a pair of fluorescent green lady’s bike pants.

So that’s two litres of coke, a packet of frozen peas, five dozen wire coat hangers and a packet of batteries.

Take that , Mr Corporate Research!

And another thing…

It is a well documented matter of public record that the founding fathers of America, cognisant of the gaping celebratory void between Father’s Day and Advent, instituted the festival of Thanksgiving as an intermediary holiday in order to stop department shops putting up Christmas decorations in October. There’s also some gobbledegook going around about a bunch of religious refugees and a boat, but something tells me that wouldn’t carry much weight around here.

So in the absence of Thanksgiving and Halloween, Casuarina has had tinsel and reindeer hanging from the ceiling since some time in that netherspace between the AFL grand final (both of them in this year’s case) and the start of the domestic cricket season that we like to call mid October. And now the freaking music has started up, well outside the officially ordained borders of Advent (which I confirmed earlier this week by consulting my mother’s liturgical calendar). I’m over it already, and it’s not even December yet.

On top of the plastic Christmas gunk, there are those new automatic checkout devices they’ve installed. You can walk up, check out and pay for your own groceries without the need to wait for a checkout operator. That sounds like a great idea, except that it doesn’t make the slightest difference to the customers, who now just have to line up to use a machine instead of a checkout operator. The only people taking any benefit from it are the corporate owners, who now only have to pay one or two people to run around whenever the things breakdown or have a system error or over charge someone or run out of money, instead of paying people to provide any kind of service.

And the machines can only talk to you in pre-recorded voices, making their sing song chorus of “thankyou for shopping with the Fresh Food People” enough to induce me to punch the thing in its face. Fortunately it doesn’t have one. Any minute now I’m going to announce a boycott of supermarkets altogether, except that then I’d be one of those people who shop at outdoor markets, and if I combine that with being one of those people who whinges about society on his entirely-irrelevant-to-anyone-but-him-and-his-mum blog of and being one of those people who works in the finance industry, I might just have to go and shoot myself.

And so I wish my American friends a happy Thanksgiving. I wish my compatriots in Australia a happy Valentine’s Day, since apparently getting in three months early is the thing to do these days and I wish my friends in Adelaide my sincerest condolences on having to live there. Oh, and in case I don’t get around to it later…

Happy Christmas!

Garry with 2 Rs

The Eleventh Hour

2010-11-11T18:04:00.001+09:30

Gaaaargh I hate my generation so much today.

This morning in my office, it was realised that we had forgotten to acknowledge someone’s birthday earlier in the week. So we got her a cake today to make up for it. All good. At five minutes to eleven they called us all into the tea room for happy birthday and a piece of mudcake. I subtly pointed out that that the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month was possibly not the most appropriate hour to bursting into jubilant song.

My co-workers looked at me like I was the one not getting into the spirit of things, until it gradually dawned on them that maybe we should be observing Remembrance Day. I had a hard time keeping a straight face (Giggloop anyone?) as we all stood for two minutes, staring reflectively into our slices of chocolate cake. But at least we observed it.

Then at lunch time, I was asked by a shop assistant if I was wearing a flower on my shirt for Gay Pride Week. I have no objection to Pride Week, but I had had just about enough of general ignorance for one day, so I explained I was wearing a poppy for Remembrance Day. I dared him to ask “What’s that?”

He did, so I beat him to death with his own iPhone and scattered the pieces as a warning to others.

Okay I actually glared at him like he was some sort of imbecile (which he was) and directed him to the Legacy stand. He walked to the bus stop instead and started tweeting about it.

#dickhead

Lest we forget (and don’t you forget it)

Garry with 2Rs

The War of the Words

2010-11-09T16:39:00.001+09:30

No one would have believed, in the early years of the 21st century, that fictional affairs were being concocted in the timeless worlds of cyberspace. No-one could have dreamed that pages were being scrutinised, as someone with a typewriter studies characters that swarm and multiply in a drop of ink. Few men even considered the possibility of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. And yet: across the gulf of cyberspace, minds immeasurably superior to yours regarded this task with manic enthusiasm. And quickly, and wantonly, they drew their plans and got down to it.

Oh damn. What I would give right now to be able to make my blog articles play music.

Yes yes, at some point, probably next month, I’ll get around to writing about what it was like being in an opera. But for now my literary attention is focussed squarely on Nanowrimo (which is obviously why I’m spending time writing blog posts…).

I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but a certain CTC commenter whose name may or may not start with K and rhyme with “Bali Belly Tim” has been sending me rude emails regarding her cumulative word count. Being American, Tim is obviously approaching the task in the manner of a 200 metre sprint, and as such is under the simplistic illusion that she’s winning, based solely on the fact that she’s written more words than I have.

I, being smarter, faster, more operatic, less red headed and more Australian than Tim, am approaching the task from the vastly more sophisticated point of view of the second innings of a one day international cricket match (Michael Clarke, if you’re reading, you could probably learn a bit from this too). While it’s true I’m about three thousand words behind on the required run rate, I also have weekends in hand and a powerful lower order pinch hitter known as “Rostered Day Off”. I’m also planning on setting a record for ninth wicket stands and ruining your summer, but I digress.

The point is …

Um…

Look how clever I am! I managed to code a graphic display into the side bar! Now those of you reading from America can kid yourselves into believing Tim is winning, while fellow members of the Commonwealth of cricket appreciating nations can calculate the required word rate and try to guess when I’m going to take the batting power play, whilst whinging about the fact that it really doesn’t belong in the game in the first place and keeping an eye on the incoming clouds in case Duckworth Lewis comes into play. But hello, it looks like 2 Rs is about to take the new ball.

See how much cooler cricket is than running?

Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. Don’t even get me started on how many words my roller skating freak of a sister has written. She’s in Canada in winter and has a broken arm, so obviously there’s nothing for her to do except be cold, write and drink hot beverages. Obviously this counts as pitch doctoring and is clearly not within the spirit of the game.

P.P.S. Ashes are just around the corner. Yeah yeah!

Nanowrimo Again

2010-10-31T22:27:00.001+09:30

I’ve been crazily busy these last few weeks. That opera I posted about a few months back? It turns out I got in after all. And consequently I’m spending every waking hour either at work or at the CDU theatre. It’s all great fun, but there are just a few more sopranos per square metre than I can generally handle without tucking my head inside my jacket and crouching down in the corner.

The point is (sort of) that due to this slight over commitment of time on my part, my efforts towards getting sponsored for Nanowrimo kind of became a non-event. Also, apparently the poll I posted on the subject was getting blocked by certain versions of Firefox, so now I’m left pondering who the hell has been voting if it wasn’t my family. I’m looking squarely at you, K.Kim, although I will confess that the one who voted for ‘it is cheese’ was me, purely because I was absolutely determined that someone had to.

So yes… “Nanowrimo against global poverty” was a bit of a flop. However, due my being an attention seeking knob and a glutton for punishment to go with it, I’ve decided to go ahead and try it for free.

Consequently my usual semi-regular dispensing of inane drivel may have to take a slight hiatus here for November, while I concentrate the nonsense generation faculties on a slightly larger goal. But I will try to update the running word total (over on the right) so you can see my glorious progress, or calamitous lack thereof, depending.

Breath and wind. It is cheese!

Garry with 2 Rs

In Defence of Our Stupid Warcry

2010-10-27T14:27:00.001+09:30

Recently news.com.au published an article from Brisbane’s Courier-Mail and a poll calling for the banning of the Aussie sporting warcy “Oi! Oi! Oi!” on grounds that it’s embarrassing. When I last checked, the yeas were outnumbering the nays two to one and I find that distressing.

I’m not remotely embarrassed to say I love the Aussie Aussie Aussie warcry. Some of my most pleasant memories are of watching cricket on TV, hearing Bill Lawry say something insightful like “There’s a hush around the MCG as McGrath comes in from the members’ end” and being able to hear nothing through the field microphones except bay thirteen yelling “Oi Oi Oi!” at the top of their lungs. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face for five minutes after I heard then IOC chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch close the 2000 Olympics by trying the call for himself, and getting a 70000 strong response.

Yes, I know Glen McGrath has retired. Yes, I know the Sydney Olympics were a decade ago. Big deal. Waltzing Matilda is older than both of them. You want to ban that too?

To me, Oi Oi Oi expresses in a most efficient manner the very character of Australian sport; it’s loud, it’s straightforward and it’s awesome. On the other side of the coin, it’s also overly simplistic, slightly annoying and at its most expressive under the influence of alcohol (consumed responsibly, obviously).

What’s not to love?

I know there are those who campaign for an Australia with higher cultural aspirations, free of the cultural cringe of the past and representative of a more modern, intelligent and mature Australia. I’m all for that, and I’ll happily join you for an opera, cello recital or stroll through the national gallery (just don’t ask me to write about it), followed by a rousing chorus of “I Vow to Thee My Country” back at the members’ lounge.

But back off and leave my sports chants alone!

I think some of the problem might be with the over application of the chant. As I wrote earlier, my fondest memories of it are as background noise during a one day cricket final. With the coming of the Olympics in 2000, the chant went spectacularly mainstream and starting appearing in rock concerts, telethons, youth conventions and, most recently and hilariously, the canonisation of St. Mary MacKillop. I have to agree, things have gotten a little out of hand there.

But let’s not get too excited and start banning things like an out of control web filter. Let’s put the chant back in bay thirteen where it belongs and get on with banning something sensible.

Like the Courier-Mail.

...

Garry with 2 Rs

NaNoWriMo

2010-10-18T09:04:00.005+09:30

I’ve been reading back over some old posts recently, and I’ve come to this conclusion:
I have a remarkable talent for generating copious amounts of complete and utter nonsense at an alarming rate of production. This blog is closing out its fourth year now and I’ve come to the realisation that if this random collection of pointless observations, flagrant time wasting and whingey ranting is anything to go by then one of two things is true: Either I really need to get out more…

Or…

November is National Novel Writers’ Month (NaNoWriMo for short). I think the ‘national’ part actually refers to America, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t join in and do it better. The challenge is to write a novel of 50000 words or more during November, which is a pretty big undertaking (it’s an average speed of 1667 words a day for 30 days), but as I said, I’m more or less the king of spamming out large amounts of otherwise meaningless prose in a short time.

The thing is that pumping out three and a half MS Word pages a day is going to put a sizable dent in the amount of time I have to do anything else for the month. I’m not sure it’s something I want to inflict on myself just for its own sake.

I’m looking at trying Nanowrimo for a cause. I haven’t yet decided what cause, but in keeping with my previous socio-political rants I’m looking for something in the global poverty/food crisis awareness line. I’d be looking for people to offer a donation if I can crack the 50K mark, or sponsor me per thousand words written.

Last week saw the presentation of the very first CTC online poll. It was a phenomenal success with a whopping 6 responses flooding in. That might not sound like much, but for a blog with 6 followers it’s an impressive 100% participation rate. I’ve replaced that poll with a new one to find out if this Nanowrimo thing is likely to be worth my time and effort. If you’re so inclined, cast your vote in the poll or drop me a comment and let me know if you’d be willing to get behind me on this.

Otherwise shove it.

Garry with 2 Rs

Is Anyone Not Aware of Breast Cancer?

2010-10-07T17:49:00.000+09:30

Last night three of my female friends posted unusual updates on Facebook about where they liked it.

I wanted to know what was going on, so I Googled it (I often find this approach less stressful than talking to women). It turns out it’s a campaign to draw attention to October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It’s an idea along similar lines to last year’s effort which centred on posting your preferred bra colour on your favourite online social network.

Like most men, I like breasts and I hate cancer. I would prefer it if the two came together as infrequently as possible. But I can’t help but wonder why breast cancer in particular gets a whole month’s worth of awareness. Yes, it’s a terrible disease that according to the Australian Cancer Council affects somewhere in the region of one in nine women. Yes, it is the second most common form of cancer in women behind skin cancer (although it also comes in behind lung cancer, stomach cancer, bowel cancer and liver cancer if you add men to the equation). But come on – a whole month?

Last month in my office we attempted to raise money for prostate cancer research by holding a weekly barbeque each Friday at lunch time. We gave up after the first week due to lack of interest and managed to raise a triumphant eighteen dollars fifty which just about covered the cost of the meat. And don’t get me started on the questionable symbolism of combating prostate cancer by holding a sausage sizzle.

Just this week in the same office we participated in National RUOK? Day in aid of combating the insidious rise of suicide, which according to a federal government fact sheet claims more than 2000 lives in Australia each year. The basic idea was to spend some time making sure your friends and co-workers were feeling okay. We also get behind Daffodil Day, Jeans for Genes day, Red Nose Day and Australia’s biggest morning tea.

They’re all great ideas, but my point is they’re all just for one day. Why does suicide get one day with an awkward acronym while breast cancer gets a month, a viral internet meme and pink lights or ribbons strung up all over the place? And when is it going to be national liver cancer awareness month?

I’m trying hard not to arrive at the cynical conclusion that it’s because breasts are much sexier than suicide. And frankly I’m failing. I know which one I’d rather talk about. I suspect any given group of Australians in any pub in the country could come up with as many distinct synonyms for ‘breasts’ as there are other varieties of cancer. The Australian Cancer Council lists sixteen broad categories of them on its website. The American cancer institute list several hundred different types. Cancer varieties that is, not synonyms.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be aware of breast cancer, or even that the awareness campaign itself is not a great thing. And I don’t mean to belittle the suffering and experiences of those afflicted with this terrible condition. All of us need to be aware of what can and is being done to combat and, more importantly, prevent this disease.

My point is that there’s got to be a more universal way of promoting the need for research and action; some way of drawing attention to the issue that focuses on the cancer, rather than the breasts.

When it comes down to it, I don’t care where you put your handbag and I have only a passing interest in what colour your bra is. If we’re really serious about taking on cancer, can’t we find a campaign we can take seriously?

...

Garry with 2 Rs

I Love You Baby

2010-10-04T11:01:00.002+09:30

I went through a phase a few years ago when I got passionately vocal about my distaste for weddings. It might have had something to do with the frequency with which they were occurring; at one stage I got back from uni break to find four couples had become engaged during July. It was a strange sort of a phase because I enjoy a nice dinner and a catch-up as much as the next guy, and Christian wedding services are usually (depending on all sorts of things) quite nice. I think after my fourth or fifth wedding in quick succession the excess pageantry and forced emotion started to grate on me. Thank goodness, weddings amongst my contemporaries these days are becoming increasingly rare, possibly due to almost all my contemporaries being married by now.

The wedding craze being over, the latest craze is equally insidious in terms of forced enthusiasm. It consists of a couple rocking up to church one morning sporting a newborn baby and immediately being beset by flocks of churchwomen babbling unintelligibly. Said flock then invites their begrudging husbands/fiancés/boyfriends/me into the huddle to meet the newest addition to the congregation and to try to come up with a compliment for the baby that sounds credible and sincere.

I don’t find babies attractive. I find them small, delicate, messy and loud. I can understand why parents of newborns are so besotted; that’s a tangible biological connection. I don’t understand what goes wrong in the brains of the gaggle of clucky womenfolk at each new arrival. Rhetorical questions like “hasn’t he got lots of lovely thick hair?” or “he’s got a lovely strong grip on him, hasn’t he?” or “isn’t he just as cute as a button?” are not only strange things to say, in many cases they’re patently absurd. Babies are generally bald and weak, and buttons aren’t remotely cute. So I guess that last one might actually be true.

The point is, I was pleasantly surprised this month to be informed of two new engagements of old uni friends in Brisbane. Hopefully this signals a turn in the tide of public behaviour and we can go back to fancy parties and church services instead of hospital visits and arranging our social lives around breast-feeding schedules.

We can only hope.

…

Garry with 2 Rs

Word Salad

2010-09-25T23:59:00.001+09:30

Insomnious raffles dedicate a quantum barrage plant in the direction of quiche.

I got a little bit bored last week and resorted to hiring old seasons of Boston Legal from the video shop.

Crackles can’t ever be elected to guard vapid chromatographs, or else the flying capsicums are mute.

One particular episode entitled “Word Salad Days” captured my imagination on a profoundly useless level.

Be not obsequious while flagrant pandas are twining.

In that episode our anti-hero Alan Shore is afflicted with a disorder known as ‘word salad syndrome,’ which garbles his speech faculties in such a way as to produce nonsensical gibberish without his realising it.

When general horticulture sprinkles a gamey bison with an all-too-glorious decision not to skip, it heralds the overbalance of chutney.

And it just looked like so much fun, not least because of James Spader’s delightfully deadpan portrayal, that I felt I just had to give it a go myself. So…

All at once a narcissistic pan will leave a skittled Christmas on the trousers of ironic angioplasty. Notwithstanding the luminous boulder hockey, children avoid the gregarious goose pies with such banal cummerbunds that have taken no joy in dancing with binoculars. And if that’s a ganglion, ground the milkman’s hurricane.

Vertical!

Still, fabulous oaks will ovulate for a time of coffee whilst zealous protagonists envelope a non-binding lamington for the cousins of outrageous tooth decay. Vanishing at the mound of opportunism, she gargles upishly in the manner of an underwater ironing bowl. And we all clip the oscillating factoid.

Yours in plumbing

Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. As soon as I get over the mental stress and – though I say it myself – concentration that went into last week’s post I’ll try to get around to posting something more worthwhile. In the meantime, cast your favourite political ion dispenser a boiled car crash.

The Stats Don't Lie

2010-09-17T10:14:00.005+09:30

We’re coming back around to the time of year when we start making noise about global poverty again. I don’t know why the Australian spring is the designated time, apart from the fact that we’ve just finished World Vision 40 hour famine season.

The global Make Poverty History movement has emailed me to let me know that the Stand Up Against Poverty event is coming up this week. Given my monumentally successful contribution last time, I decided to look into what I could do to add my voice to this year’s outcry.

Unfortunately there are no major events planned for Darwin, where a ‘flash mob’ is just a group of men wearing climatically inappropriate suits on Mitchell Street. And to me, the 40 hour famine has always seemed like an extremely token sort of effort for anyone aged over 14, unless you’ve got some kind of weighty corporate sponsorship. No offense if you’re doing it; good on you for doing something.

Triple Kudos to my friend Hannah, who is undertaking something like a 40 day famine, and collecting sponsors for her effort to live on nothing but typical refugee rations for nearly six weeks. That’s how you do it if you really want to make a point. Check out her blog and drop her comment about how awesome she is.

“And what point is she making?” I hear you ask. I’m glad you asked. I was going to break with convention and embed an awesome video that they showed at my church the other week about what the statistics on global food supplies look like in real terms, but I couldn't find an online version of it. So instead, in more traditional Cum Tacent Clament style here are some boring written statistics (it also saves me the embarrassment of having my html skills fail in a public forum).

Chronic hunger, or the lack of a sufficient amount of nutritious food, currently affects 1 in 6 people worldwide.
13 million children are born every year with growth and development issues due to the mother's malnutrition.
Many of the world's poorest people spend 80% or more of their annual income just for food, and even this is often not enough to provide them with adequate amounts of food.
More than 24,000 people die every day due to hunger related causes.
The percentage of overseas development assistance allocated to agricultural development has dropped dramatically in recent years - from almost 20% in 1980 to less than 3% today.
In the developing world, 50% to 60% of all childhood deaths are hunger related.
More than 5 million children die every year simply because they do not have access to adequate amounts of food and water.

Due to an ever increasing global population, the demand for food keeps going up. But due to disastrous droughts in many countries (including Australia) the supply of food is going down, and the amount of food that governments are prepared to export is decreasing. This makes sense from governments who are interested in looking out for their own people, but it leaves developing countries in a whole pile of trouble.

One of the great initiatives we as a planet are taking to adapt to climate change and focus on renewable energy is the development of bio fuels. This technology uses organic matter to power engines directly, rather than waiting millions of years for them to decay into fossil fuels. But the dark side of this that we rarely hear about is that we are now burning food to run our cars instead of feeding the hungry with it.

At one point a while ago, the global food reserves were down to six weeks’ worth. That’s not just for some Ethiopian kid on the TV. That’s for the whole world, you and I included. Six weeks.

It's hard to know what to do about stuff like that. I know if I tried anything as drastic as Hannah’s effort, there’s a reasonable chance I would die, so I’m taking the coward’s road and writing about it instead. The pen is mightier than the sword, as they say, so in the digital age perhaps the keyboard is mightier than the intercontinental ballistic missile.

I’ve been planning for a while to write to the federal government about my concerns. And now that Australia has a federal government again, perhaps the time has come to make good on those intentions. Unfortunately I wasn’t really sure which minister to write to, as I don’t know whose portfolio global food shortages come under. Trade? Foreign Affairs? Sustainable Population? Looking for answers, I headed for the shopping centre, where to my dismay I could not find a single charity spruiker to help me. What is this world coming to, I ask you, when a man can walk down a shopping mall without being accosted by volunteers even when he wants to?

You’re right. As rhetorical questions go, that one was a bit of a train wreck.

Obviously the idea of writing about the issue here had occurred to me, but I wasn’t convinced that I had the readership to make spending the time on a poverty post worthwhile. But then I came across some interesting statistics of my own.

Google have added a hit counter to the blog creation interface, which records how many page views my blog gets over time, and even more fascinatingly, what part of the world those hits are coming from. To my astonishment, in the past week my blog has been viewed 25 times from the United Kingdom (apparently the drunk Englishwoman I made up in the previous post is real and she’s stalking me), eight times from both China and the US, six times from Australia (most of them are probably me), six times from Germany, twice from Belarus (I don’t even know where that is) twice from Russia (what the?) once from Brazil (wicked), once from Canada (thanks sis) and once from Taiwan. Either someone is playing silly buggers with a proxy server, or Cum Tacent Clament is silently crying out much more loudly than I thought.

For one thing, this makes self-indulgently whiny posts like last week’s effort seem even more stupid than they did before. For another, although, with the exception of my North American cheer squad, I have no idea who could possibly be reading this, Google is telling me that every week people from all over the globe are reading my blog. And Google never lies. So here’s a message from me to the Blogosphere:

Get off your arses and… get back on them again in front of your computer. Write to your politicians. Write a blog article. Write a song. Write a limerick for all I care, just make some noise. People need to know about this stuff, because the only way to fix it is to make the issue too all-pervasive to look the other way, and too big to sweep under the rug. The Global Food Shortage and the poverty that accompanies it are the moral challenge that will define our generation (suck it, Kevin Rudd). For God’s sake do something!

Okay. Please, please, please don’t write a limerick.

…

Garry with 2 Rs

Ten Things That Make Me Happy

2010-09-12T00:06:00.002+09:30

My job often takes me out to remote communities for a week at a time. Sometimes this is an uplifting experience; a chance to get away from the bustle of the big smoke and to spend time with people with a fresh and reinvigorating outlook on the world. A chance to live a more straightforward life, if only for a week.

I dutifully arrived at the airport on Monday morning at half past ungodly in the morning, ready for my flight out to Maningrida. I found out I had actually been booked on the afternoon flight, contrary to what I had been told, so I taxied back home and sat around for half a day waiting for my flight. I finally made it to Maningrida at three, just in time for the branch office to close. So much for Monday’s program.

The council workers generously offered to drive me out to my accommodation for the week. Most of the places I have stayed in at remote communities have been simple, but comfortable. I had heard nice things about he guesthouse in Maningrida, so I thought I’d be in for a nice week.

Nope, the guest house was booked out. I was in the temporary accommodation out the other end next to the airstrip. When I say ‘accommodation’, I actually mean plastic box in the sun, reminiscent of the emergency dongers they bought in for my friends at college that time when Edale block burned down. Except not as spacious. And the air conditioner didn’t work properly.

I wandered into the common kitchen area to find a mean looking lady reading a That’s Life magazine as if it were a copy of War and Peace. She told me she was a nurse with an Ear, Nose and Throat team that had come out with the intervention. I told her I was a trainer with the Traditional Credit Union.

ENT Nurse: So what kind of skills do you train them in? Cooking, cleaning, gardening, that kind of thing?
Gw2Rs: … ? … No, we’re a credit union. I train them to operate as tellers in the bank.
ENT Nurse: Are you here with the intervention too?
Gw2Rs: No, I’m here with the credit union.

She sniffed at me and went back to her magazine. I went back to beating the microwave with a saucepan until it turned on.

We had a new starter at Maningrida, so the next morning I took her over to the West Arnhem Shire Council office to get her a letter from the council identifying her, so we could order a copy of her birth certificate, so the police could run a police check, so we could sign her up officially. A lot of people in remote communities don’t have passports or driving licences, so they get ID from the shire councillors.

Gw2Rs: Could we please get a letter of identification for Anita (not her real name)?
WASC lady: Does she have any ID?
Gw2Rs: No, that’s why we’re here. She needs a letter to get some ID.
WASC lady: I’ll need to see some ID before I can issue a letter.
Gw2Rs: …
WASC lady: Otherwise how am I supposed to know who she is?

Eventually we convinced the extremely helpful shire receptionist to issue the letter by producing Anita’s medicare card. For our American friends who might be new to this concept (That’s another thing. My blog has four public followers and, with the emigration of my sister and K.Kim, they’re all women in North America. How did that happen?), a medicare card has neither the owner’s photo, nor address; simply a government issued number. Apparently that did the trick.

Finally that afternoon we sat down to complete the training program. Of course, the computer crashed. I negotiated with our extremely friendly IT staff back in Darwin (370km away) to fix it. So much for Tuesday’s program.

On Wednesday we finally got some work done. My trainee was pretty good at the computer stuff once we finally got the damned thing working and managed to balance up at the end of the day without any trouble. Things were finally looking up.

On Wednesday night I was attacked by a pack of wild dogs.

Yep. For the sake of dramatic emphasis I decided that sentence deserved its own paragraph. Furthermore it’s true. Whilst walking around the block after enjoying a meal of dim sims and chicken … somethings from the delightful local takeaway I was accosted by an unfriendly band of local canines, possibly due to being an unfamiliar person on their territory, or possibly to the lingering aroma of inadequately processed meat. I felt more alive than I have for months as I stared down my aggressors with cold composure reminiscent of Mick Dundee and Charlie the buffalo and then, with all the dignity and masculinity I could muster, turned tail and ran for my life, with the noisy assailants in hot pursuit.

And there’s another thing. What kind of backwards looking takeaway shuts at four in the afternoon? And furthermore, if you’re going to shut at four in the afternoon, and if I come looking for a punnet of fried rice at a quarter to four only to find the front door locked, then … Blegh! That’s right, I said blegh! So much for… pathos.

So by Friday afternoon you can imagine I was more than ready to board my plane, leave this backwards town of nasty dogs and stupid West Arnhem Shire Councils and make my way back to civilisation. And when by ‘civilisation’ I’m referring to Darwin, you might begin to suspect there’s a problem.

Our plane broke down.

The air hostess (Is she still an air hostess if she’s standing on the ground looking disgruntled?) informed us that the plane had a flat battery. And apparently that’s not the sort of thing you can fix with jumper cables. They had to fly a replacement out for us from Darwin.

The Centrelink contingent in town, who were keen to return for the weekend, rang up their bosses in Darwin who magnanimously arranged to fly out a charter just for them. We gave them all a clap as they climbed aboard a private plane and took off to beat us home by about an hour. That was the fastest I’ve ever seen Centrelink arrange anything, and I suppose they felt there was a really good reason they couldn’t hire a bigger one to pick up the rest of us. We all got on the regular replacement plane and I finally got home at around ten o’clock that evening to find my housemate had once again fallen asleep in front of the television, which was still at full volume.

And somehow, in my absence, the freaking Labor party got back into government. Like my week wasn’t palm-to-the-face inducing enough as it was.

Oh yes, it’s been a while since I had a really good whinge. It’s somehow depressingly theraputic, whether that makes sense or not. Either way I feel better for it. All I need now is to run into a drunk Englishwoman. Or a communist.

I really don’t look good in watermelon pink business shirts.

...

Garry with 2 Rs

Why I'm a Musician

2010-08-28T13:01:00.006+09:30

Kirribilli Kim recently tagged me in a meme. I don’t really know what a meme is, but apparently as a consequence of being tagged, I’m now obliged to post about ten things that make me happy, or consider running for my life.

As is usually the way with me, and in the finest tradition of Australian federal elections, when presented with two possibilities I choose neither of them. There will be no Ten Things post, and neither will I be running anywhere. As daunting as slightly built women on the other side of the world are, I reckon I can take you Kim.

Meanwhile… how awesome is music?

If I were composing a list of ten things that make me happy… which I’m not… then music would probably be at least three of them. Let me give you two very different examples of why music is the coolest thing ever.

Last Tuesday night I went to watch David Helfgott in concert. If you don’t know who that is, then that’s alright, but you should consider looking him up, watching the movie “Shine” starring Geoffrey Rush and generally getting some culture you blockheaded philistine.

Anyway, I went to hear him play the grand piano for two hours on Tuesday night. After taking Samantha along to worship every week to just pump out whatever Hillsong or Planet Shaker variation is in vogue this week, it was refreshing to be reminded how powerful the piano is when you can play it properly. I know a few things about the piano these days, but David’s playing just took my breath away, and took my mind off to some other universe, the way music is supposed to.

At the other end of the technical ability scale, this morning I went with a group of church friends to run a service in Berrimah Prison. I went in with the old Yamaha PSR 225 (which I’ve affectionately named ‘Mary’) under my arm to play some music for the inmates. We let them choose their favourite songs out of the plastic folder of choruses stored in the prison library, and took pot luck on whether I’d be able to play them or not.

Somehow, standing in the prison library, leading a group of inmates in a soft but sincere rendition of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” I once again found myself moved at a profound level; this time not by the quality of the performance (it was just me on an old Yamaha) but by the inherent power of a group of people coming to sing together, even in a place as miserable as a maximum security prison. We lifted out voices to God, connecting on a level that went way beyond the heavy iron gates and barbed wire fences. It was liberating for me, and I’m not the one locked up, although there’s a case to be made that I should be.

Sometimes I worry that church music has become all about making a huge and impressive sound, rather than a sincere and resonant one. If this week has taught me one thing, it’s this; it’s one thing to sound great. It’s quite another to make a great sound.

I should totally become a pop star.

Garry with 2 Rs

Token Election Post

2010-08-22T17:21:00.001+09:30

I'd be a pretty rubbish blogger if I didn't post something about the Australian Federal Election, especially given the dramatic result (at the time of posting I'm still not exactly sure who the prime minster is).

But, to be honest, like most Australians I am utterly sick of the whole thing. It seems to me that a hung parliament is pretty representative of a country that in the end, couldn't decide which party was less rubbish, and accordingly voted them both out.

And that's about all I have to say on the subject. In the meantime, remember: if at first you don't succeed, skydiving is probably a bad idea.

...

Garry with 2 Rs

A Not-So-Brief and Utterly Incohesive History of Time

2010-08-18T22:50:00.001+09:30

Albert Einstein told us that time is relative.

Douglas Adams told us that time is an illusion (and lunch time doubly so).

The Doctor told us that time is more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.

And clever scientists at the Secret Institute for Abstract Thought Experiments have measured the speed of time at a constant velocity of one second per second. However, anyone who has attempted to meet a deadline on an assignment while simultaneously waiting for mince to defrost in the microwave will realise that this assertion is questionable at best.

Last weekend some blast-from-the-past friends of mine and I met up for a ten year high school reunion. Sitting around a dinner table at the Trailer Boat Club and seeing how everyone’s lives have changed since the last time we were all together (spouses, babies, new jobs, new hats etc.), I came to realise just how long ten years can be in human terms. Or indeed, any other terms for that matter. Despite all beginning at a common origin, all my classmates lives have taken them to remarkably different places.

We had people flying in from East and West (but all obviously from a Southern kind of slant given Darwin's location) but the most interesting kick was how many of us still live in Darwin (or have returned to Darwin, in my case). Given how much we used to whinge and whine about Darwin back in the day, I think the amount of us that now call this place home either serves to illuminate the awesomeness of Darwin, or the lack of ambition in the class of 2000. I like to think it's the former.

Coincidentally on the same weekend as the reunion, the school itself had an open day to go and check the current generation of students out. Walking around the same courtyards and walkways where we so often ran, hid, created mayhem and occasionally studied I was amazed to discover that the same period of ten years seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye. The drama room in particular, whose construction I was around for and took full advantage of, gave me the distinct sensation that I had been there for my year twelve production only yesterday.

One possible explanation for this apparent temporal paradox, not to mention the discrepancy between time measured in standard Open Day Inspection Seconds (ODIS)and Empirical Trailer Boat Club Wine Glasses (TBCWG) is the space-time vortex that was well known to have been built into the old demountable block we spent our upper primary years in. That particular architectural feature was what made it possible to make a lunch hour stretch from forty minutes to three years, and also made it possible, when necessary, to teleport from the music room at the other end of the campus back to your classroom without being intercepted anywhere in between (a very useful trick if you weren’t supposed to be in the music room in the first place). I think it also used to bend the shape of space near the canteen, so you never did quite know for sure how long the queue was.

I don’t know how they managed to create such a vortex. Somehow the unique mix of medium density fibreboard and asbestos dust must have reacted at a subatomic level, warping the distributed space differential back along the pavlovian antecedent tangent and making a … vortex.

And then the crazy fools went and tore the building down! God only knows what primal and chaotic universal forces they unleashed when they removed those demountables. Not to mention the smell. Those of us who made the trip out to the open day were shocked and appalled to discover the backdrop to so many childhood memories had been reduced to a bare patch of (extremely) disturbed soil, ready to receive a brand new library courtesy of some economic stimulus money from the former Prime Minister. It sounds great until you realise that future generations have lost the chance to experience the thrill and trepidation that comes from crawling fifteen metres under a dusty (and indeed, temporally paradoxical) building to retreive a monumentally misdirected soccer ball. Thanks for nothing Kevin; you've lost my vo... never mind.

Well whatever. It’s possible those same primal forces were responsible for the curious feeling of time flowing past at an inconstant rate as I sat at the Trailer Boat Club and tried to get my head around all my contemporaries' kids' names. It’s also possible the effect could be put down to a nice shiraz with old friends and a glorious sunset.

Or both.

…

Garry with 2 Rs

How to Recognise Different Types of Social Justice Issues From Quite A Long Way Away

2010-08-10T18:35:00.004+09:30

This morning I was surprised and slightly confused to read about the current policy priorities for indigenous Australians being championed by Amnesty International.

Let me state from the outset that I am generally a fan of Amnesty, and support them financially on a monthly basis. But I’m not entirely sold on this morning’s effort. I appreciate the concern, and it’s certainly a good thing that someone out there is looking out for the rights of indigenous Australians. I would just rather a slightly more realistic and pragmatic approach be taken.

Claire Mallinson, speaking on behalf of Amnesty, told ABC reporters that the Northern Territory Intervention is discriminatory and a violation of human rights. In particular, she was concerned about the basics card. You can find a summary of Amnesty's position here.

And now: Some background.

In 2007 in the lead up to his last federal election, then Prime Minister John Howard announced a national emergency response based on a report into child abuse and other social issues affecting remote indigenous communities. Given the timing of the announcement, it was difficult not be a little cynical about the politics involved in the scheme. Also, activist groups in southern states (made up largely of white uni students who had never met an aborigine in their lives) started jumping up and down, decrying the racist imperialism of the Howard Government, foaming at the mouth and falling over backwards.

Since all that went down, very little has changed. Standards of living in remote communities are still ridiculous in comparison to even the dodgiest houses in major cities. Amnesty International is, quite rightly, pretty annoyed about that.

One change that has been implemented is the Basics Card, which is an income management tool that helps to ensure money in remote communities is being spent on food and utilities and not on gambling, alcohol or other problematic social habits. Given the extent to which the issues of neglect and child abuse are interwoven with alcoholism, gambling, substance abuse and domestic violence (to say nothing of cultural disenfranchisement and wholesale national indifference) this makes a lot of sense, and by and large the response I have seen in my travels to remote communities is that the basics card has been helping a lot and the elders are keen to continue using it in communities where the difficulties in spending money wisely have as much to do with appalling levels of literacy and numeracy as with criminal neglect.

So I was a little surprised to read that Amnesty was so vehemently opposed to it. Their argument is that it is discriminatory and needlessly restricts the freedom of those for whom the program is implemented. And admittedly, it doesn’t help matters that the anti-discrimination laws had to be revoked in order to institute a program that specifically targets aboriginal communities. To find out more, I did what I always do when I’m politically confused: I paid a visit to my friendly local shopping centre charity spruiker.

Garry: Can you tell me why Amnesty are opposed to the Basics Card?
Amnesty Girl: The main problem is that it makes life more difficult for people in remote areas. Women in those areas used to pool their money and once a month go shopping and buy all their groceries in bulk. You can’t do that with the basics card. Also, it’s discriminatory. We feel it’s not right that this system be imposed on Aboriginal communities and not everyone else.
Garry: Surely the basics card is more about preventing the money being spent on gambling or petrol sniffing or something, than fostering convenient shopping arrangements.
Amnesty Girl: The intervention was aimed originally at reducing child abuse. We feel that imposing this restriction on aboriginal communities simply because they are aboriginal does nothing to prevent child abuse.
Garry: But aren’t all these problems interlinked?
Amnesty Girl: Of course. But it’s discriminatory to apply it only to communities because they’re aboriginal. We have problems with child abuse where I’m from, but the Government doesn’t make us use basics cards.
Garry: Where are you from?
Amnesty Girl: New South Wales.
Garry: …
Amnesty Girl: Did you know that Northern Territory has the highest instance of alcohol abuse in the world?
Garry: Yes I did (it was also in the news this morning).
Amnesty Girl: So why don’t they just put us all on Basics Cards?
Garry: Thanks for your time.

The answer to her question is that in larger cities and even in regional New South Wales there is considerably more access to police, health services, counselling services and financial management assistance than there is in East Arnhem Land. It’s not discrimination to tailor specific solutions to specific communities with specific (and chronic) needs. In fact it’s called good governance. To regard me, with my privileged upbringing and tertiary education, as requiring the same care and attention as those bought up in near enough to third world conditions isn’t social justice; in fact it’s called idiocy. Aboriginal people need our support and it is our moral responsibility to provide it, antidiscrimination laws be damned, not least because it’s was us that screwed them out of their land and culture in the first place.

I could have stayed to argue with Amnesty Girl, but I was running out of lunch hour. Also, I’ve been watching old episodes of The West Wing, and couldn’t help but feel it was more Lymanesque to simply end the conversation and walk off smugly in the knowledge that I was much better informed and vastly more intelligent. Furthermore, I needed to return my James Bond comic to the library.

And now: Number one - The Larch

Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. I realise the Amnesty International link is quite dated. By the time I got back to news.com.au to find the quote from this morning, it had been deleted. I'm not sure what to make of that.

Jubilee

2010-07-28T12:38:00.004+09:30

Last weekend Darwin Memorial Uniting Church, the church I was brought up in, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its building’s construction. It was quite a grand affair with performances from the Darwin City Brass Band and the Darwin Chorale, as well as visits from past and present clergy and the odd politician not to mention my family, who made the trip up from Adelaide for the weekend. Fifty years might not sound like much, but in a city that was blown up by the Japanese in 1942 and then blown down by Cyclone Tracy in 1974, a building with some staying power is something to celebrate, especially given the rate at which the city skyline is changing.

Since arriving back in Darwin in November, I’ve been heard to say that walking back into my old church after nine years was a bit like stepping back in time. The same faces were all there to welcome me to the same style of service and same music that we were singing the day I left oh so many lifetimes ago. Having been associated with the congregation since I was born, I really got a sense of having been part of the congregation forever.

It blew my mind and put me right back in my place to see how many people attended the celebration who have been around the church since it was opened in 1960 and had also been part of the seed congregations that went before it. It gave me a real sense of continuity, and of being part of something much larger than even my whole lifetime. Of course, most things in the universe are much larger than my lifetime, but in a society that prides itself on constantly advancing and changing, it was comforting to know that at least some human endeavours have the ability to stick it out.

One of the more moving aspects of the celebration was the music. Someone had managed to dig up copies of music which was composed and performed especially for the opening of the church fifty years ago. As far as anyone knows, it hadn’t been performed again since, until someone slipped a copy to the brass band. Listening to the same arrangement of Abide With Me blended with The Last Post (the church building also serves as a war memorial) that had been played fifty years ago gave me the same sort goose bumps as opening a time capsule, or stepping out of the DeLorean after a flux capacitor malfunction.

Having celebrated the past, the capstone of the weekend was an open discussion on what the future might hold for Uniting Church in Australia. It was fascinating to hear different people’s ideas on what the church might become once the mysterious and unpredictable under 30’s crowd inherit control. I have my own ideas on that front, and I'm planning on putting my grand takeover plan into effect sometime in the next few months. Watch this space.

...

Garry with 2 Rs

The Random of the Opera

2010-07-24T19:26:00.000+09:30

Yep that’s done it.

Last post I suggested that in the comparatively calm wake of the madness that was a Midsummer Night’s Dream, I would find some new and creative way to throw my life into the general chaos that I tend to prefer. The usual techniques for turning one’s life upside-down include tried and true methods such as quitting your job, meeting a special woman or experimenting with a new religion. And as usual, the usual techniques don’t apply to me.

I auditioned to be in an opera.

It seems like an almost logical step, following my re-emergence on the local theatre scene, apart from the small hiccup that I’ve never been in an opera before, and haven’t sung properly since I left college five years ago. A fellow cast member from Midsummers emailed me to say the company was desperate for tenors and invited me to go along for an audition. I suspected there was no way I was going to get into the cast of an opera. But I had also suspected there was no way I going to get in Midsummers either, so I impulsively decided to give it a go. What the hell.

About half an hour before the audition started, it suddenly occurred to me that I would probably be asked to sing something. I started to panic a bit here. Most proper singers, or at least those who’d had any sort of vocal training experience, would have thought to come along with something prepared, complete with sheet music and possibly an accompanist. By contrast, the only time I ever sing these days is when I’m accompanying myself on a piano in an empty church and that’s only when I’m confident no-one else is around. I frantically went over every song I knew trying to come up with something that would sound halfway presentable.

I had it narrowed down to two equally ridiculous possibilities when the audition room door opened and I walked in. I stood in front of a table with three people I’d never met looking back at me. It was kind of like “Australia’s Got Talent” except with out the TV cameras. Or the talent. And then came the $63.50 question.

“And what are you going to sing for us today, Garry?” Snap decision time.

“A Song of Freedom, by Murray Gold.” Odd decision, but it was either that or Psalm number 40 by U2. Besides, it was dramatic, melodic and in Latin which automatically made it sound like a proper audition song. The fact that it’s from the sound track to series four of Doctor Who is obviously irrelevant.

I finished my song and was rewarded with polite smiles form the casters.

“What language was that in?”
“Latin”.
“… Oh. … Really?”

Fortunately the next step was a script reading, which I could do with a little more confidence. That was, until casters asked me if I could read the same part again, but in a French accent. I ended up sounding like cross between Russian and Chinese, so I’m not sure how that all went down with them.

Finally, to check my ability to hold pitch with an accompanist, they asked me to sing the national anthem while one of them played it on the piano. Given my previous performance with other languages and accents, they were kind enough to let me sing the Australian national anthem, and to sing it in English. By this stage I was so tripped out by the whole experience, I very nearly forgot the words, which never happens to me; not with the national anthem anyway.

Having crashed through the final hurdle, I thanked the casters for their time and got the hell out of there. I still don't know quite what's going on with final casting. Apparently I'm going to find out tomorrow, but I think I know what the answer's going to be.

…

Garry with 2 Rs

I offer absolutely no apologies to those affronted by the use of 'random' as a noun. Get over it.

Bed Time

2010-07-15T21:18:00.001+09:30

The biggest disadvantage of my move to Coconut Grove has been shifting from a furnished unit to a completely unfurnished room. I don’t own any furniture apart from a plastic trestle table and a glass top coffee table I ‘inherited’ when a mate moved house and couldn’t fit it in his new place. I don’t currently have any of the more useful items of bedroom furniture like a bed or a wardrobe, or even a chair. I’ve borrowed a thermorest from a friend for the moment, but since it’s tax return time I decided to start looking around for something a little more substantial.

Fortunately my house is just around the corner from the Homemaker Village, which promised everything I could need to furnish my home, including a large chain store which specialises in beds, so I figured I’d be fine. I’d just pop over and see what they had, and maybe pick up a new laundry basket while I was there.

I was well prepared for how expensive beds can be. Manchester stores are quite obviously designed to intimidate people who really don’t have any business being there by putting all the really impressive looking king size displays right at the front, complete with a price tag that might as well say “don’t bother”. But I figured somewhere out the back in a less seductively lit corner they must just have a standard single mattress section.

Not so much, as it turns out. The “specialist” bed shop didn’t stock anything smaller than a queen size, which for me was annoying. I’m still on a fairly tight budget these days, and don’t really have the funds, or space for that matter, for a full-on double bed. And let’s be frank: I’m a well behaved (well…) single Christian, so I don’t really have any need for a double bed.

Don’t look at me like that. It is what it is.

I arrived quite quickly at the suspicion that I wasn’t going to find anything helpful in the bed shop, and just started wandering aimlessly, looking at various bedroom settings and avoiding judgmental glances from shop assistants who obviously didn’t think I should be there either. Some of them were really nice (the furniture, that is, not the assistants), and if I were a recently married billionaire I could have had a great time choosing upholstery for my master bedroom

Without warning I arrived in a section with single mattresses and even single bed frames. They didn’t seem to be too expensive either. I almost smiled to myself, but something wasn’t quite right. As I tried to imagine what each one might look like along the far wall of my room, I realised they were all unrealistically short. I looked around to find a wall full teddy bears and duck-themed wall paper. I had unwittingly walked into the kids’ section and was drawing concerned stares from parents standing protectively in front of their children. I left.

I realise that I am part of an increasingly small minority here, but I resent the implication that once you reach a certain age you are assumed to be either married or lecherous. I’m not judging those who choose those lifestyles (okay, I am a little judgemental of people who choose to be married) but as someone who chooses neither of them I am feeling decidedly uncatered-for. And surely it can’t just be those Christians who bucked the trend of getting married in their early twenties that shop for single mattresses. There must be plenty of folk out there who, for one reason or another, “don’t entertain much”. If I didn’t have my religion as an excuse I’d probably be one of them. I think it’s high time single people all over the country stood up against this sort of commercial discrimination and fought for their God-ordained right to sleep on their own. And in the meantime, next weekend I’m off to an op-shop to buy a second hand single mattress. Thank God for the Salvos.

And then I looked through every single shop in the Homemaker Village and couldn’t find a single washing basket. Apparently promiscuous billionaires don’t do laundry either.

…

Garry with 2 Rs

The On-Coming Storm

2010-07-07T14:12:00.001+09:30

A few posts ago I mentioned an unshakable feeling that there was a lifestyle change coming, but that I wasn’t quite sure what it was. Now, I’d like to pretend I had some sort of premonition regarding the ascension of Prime Minister Gillard, or that I could offer some reason as to why it’s currently raining in Darwin in July. And given the lack of specific details in my posts, I think I could probably get away with it. Whether or not I could convince anyone that I was for real is another matter entirely.

What I have just undergone is a lifestyle change of a geographic nature: I’ve moved out of the unit in Palmerston to make way for my landlord’s sister. I’m now living with two randoms from an internet ad. in a three bedroom unit in Coconut Grove. It’s much closer to work, church and pretty much everything except my cricket club, which I chose based entirely on how convenient it was while I was living in Palmerston. Ironic? Yes. Problematic? Not really, so in the overall scheme of things the whole situation is basically a win.

A win that is, in hind sight. In the middle of it, attempting to work full time, act part time, have a cold and move house all during the same week was, on the balance of it, not a my best idea ever. Consequently my new and exciting life in the Grove seems to be positively pedestrian by comparison. Not to worry. I'll soon find some way to throw things out of control again.

Now that Midsummers is done, my next trick is to get moving on a short film to be shot on location in Darwin. And one of these days I really am going to sit down and get some serious writing done. Probably straight after I get over spamming out self-indulgent rubbish on my blog all the time.

…

Garry with 2 Rs

A Midsummer Night's Dream

2010-07-04T19:27:00.000+09:30

So over the last few weeks I’ve been gearing up for a local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Shakespeare. It’s all been a bit random, as I only auditioned for the play on a whim and on about a day’s notice. I wasn’t really expecting to get in, let alone have a speaking role, but the next thing I knew I was issued with a script, a contact list and a month’s worth of rehearsal dates. They may have been blown away by my raw and untapped theatrical potential. They may also have been struggling to locate enough male players. We may never know for sure. All we can say for certain is that, for some reason, for the last week and a bit I’ve spent every evening pretending to be Francis Flute the bellows-mender. There’s been a bit of life imitating art going on, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell where Shakespeare ends and normal Darwin life picks up.

Flute is one of a group of amateur actors who randomly decide to put on a play, but don’t really have any idea what’s going on. People start behaving in peculiar ways because of love, largely due to the mischievous influence of a tricksy fairy. And it all takes place as the forces of nature and order seem to be out of alignment somehow. Also, just before the actors’ show, one of them gets turned into an anthropomorphised donkey.

Okay, the donkey one doesn’t really work.

Actors and other theatre types are a funny sort. They (I suppose I should really say “we”, but I like to pretend I’m different) seem to spend a great deal of time and effort showing how well versed and experienced they are in matters of the theatre, and the rest of their time trying to show how they don’t buy into it at all, but are really just there for the love of the art. They also occasionally learn lines, but obviously that’s over-rated. I spent most of my time figuring out what the hell was going on and how to make it look like I knew what the hell was going on.

Maybe I’m not so different after all. Either way, we ran the show for a week and sold out most nights. It was all great fun and the director and production staff all seemed really happy. For a cast and crew comprised entirely of locals (it was just the director who was a complete ring-in) I'd have to say we broke some serious legs.

Now, I know I promised you all some juicy backstage gossip but to be honest there really isn’t any. Most of the cast had full or part time jobs and by the time we all finished a day’s work and then put another four hours in for the show, we really didn’t have much energy left for any shenanigans. However, I can make the following observations:

1) Shakespeare is well renowned for his genius use of imagery, rhyme, metre and wit. However, the fastest way to impress an audience is still to have two chicks fighting in a paddling pool.

2) Despite the Fairy King’s assertions that everything had been restored to its natural order, no-one seemed to mind that Demetrius finishes the play still under the fairies’ enchantment.

3) There is absolutely nothing that an audience finds funnier than a man dressed as a woman.

And what with all the high-culture fun going on, there hasn’t really been much else to write about lately. Or has there?

…

Garry with 2 Rs

Milestones

2010-06-21T08:56:00.002+09:30

Well, it’s been a while since I posted a piece on how awesome I am.

Okay, it’s been about three weeks. But this time I’ve actually got something worth bragging about. Sort of. This is my one hundredth Far From Home/Cum Tacent Clament post.

“There’s a roar from the crowd and a grateful acknowledgement from the members. 100 posts in three and a half years, on two different websites and on four different continents. A superb innings in difficult conditions. Your thoughts, Richie?”

“Yes it’s been a marvellous display this. There’s been some stiff opposition at times from the combined pace attacks of England and Adelaide as well as an entertaining battle with the off-spin of AAMI insurance company. But it’s definitely Garry’s aggressive and off-beat approach that has won the day, thanks in no small part to some excellent support at the other end.”

“Yes, that’s right. I thought the partnership before lunch with Oxfam Girl was particularly good. It wasn’t the most elegant or conventional display we’ve seen, but there was no denying the sheer brute power of Oxfam Girl. When she hits them, they stay hit.”

“Yes, but all the attention was at the other end, of course, where Garry with 2 Rs has treated us all to an impressive demonstration of loquacious stroke play. He was seeing the ball as clear as a bell and large as a beach ball, and settled in early to play his natural game.”

“Yes. Now, if you’ll have a look on this replay here, you can see that Hillsong is clearly offside as she launches a cut-out pass to Samantha who backhands it down the line towards deep forward pocket for a birdie. That’s a home run in any pool in Australia.”

“The really interesting thing about it is… wait. … what?”

“Sorry, I think something’s gone wrong with the metaphor generator”.

“Ah crap. Cut to classic catches while the tech guys sort it out.”

…

Meanwhile I’ve passed a couple of other milestones lately. I’ve reached ten runs for the season for Palmerston (unusual), brought my net debt to the bank to under $30,000 (unimpressive) and turned twenty seven (unprecedented). Also, the cool change I mentioned a couple of posts ago is looming like the edge of a monsoonal trough. But more on that anon.

I was hoping to be able to coincide my one hundredth post with my one thousandth hit since installing my hit counter, but I actually passed that back in April sometime, and I’m coming up on twelve hundred now. And I think only about half of them are my mother. The rest are probably me and Kirribilli Kim, but it’s still an achievement, right?

More importantly, the time has come to stop borrowing sign-off lines from other people. This has less to do with passing a milestone than it does with the fact that I’ve pretty much run out of ideas, but that’s beside the point.

Rehearsals for A Midsummer Night’s Dream are going well, and we’re into production week now. When I say well, I mean that the director and stage manager are starting to get a little desperate, but so far it hasn’t exceeded my normal day-to-day operational level of desperation, so I feel like I’m keeping up okay. I might even be slightly ahead. Either way, since the show opens this weekend it could be a while before I have enough spare time to post again, but you can expect a full update on all the goings on backstage, including all the juicy gossip about how many cast members managed not to fall hopelessly in love with Phil Denson.

Once the play is done and dusted, I’ve got a month full of family visits coming up. This means getting my house looking presentable and making sure my car is serviced and spotless before my father gets his hands on it. And somewhere in there, we’re still planning on shooting a short film. So yes, life continues at its normal operational level of desperation.

And just a brief reminder: this post will not feature a carefully selected borrowed sign-off line.

…

Garry with 2 Rs

Half a Dozen Good Reasons Why I Should Have Studied Statistics at Uni.

2010-06-10T16:28:00.000+09:30

A few posts ago I alluded to the possibility of backing up my rather controversial claim that Darwin has too many religious leaders. I say controversial because everyone I’ve spoken to about this idea has had a slightly different opinion on the matter and, in a state of affairs that may be without precedent, only about half of them thought I was completely off my rocker. And when I say religious, for the time being I’m just talking about Christian Church leaders. I have no facts to hand on how many leaders other faith communities might have in the area.

The amount of difficulty I had getting my hands on the figures I do have is almost worth another post of its own down the track a bit, but for now I’m just a little perplexed at the stats in front of me.

According to my guy in the Darwin Christian Minsters’ Fraternal, Darwin has no fewer than 52 different church groups*. And even that list is not comprehensive as it leaves out a few Catholic parishes and small home groups who are off doing their own thing. And then there are inter-congregational organisations like Scripture Union, YWAM, Rhema FM and the Bible Society. In a movement which is, in general terms and with a few exceptions, struggling for membership locally, this strikes me as strange. Why do we need so many congregations?

But then I did some sums. They are only simple multiplications and fractions, but in my advanced state of number hating, it took me about half a day to compile them.

An average Australian church has an attendance of about 65 people*. That takes into account average-wreckers at both ends of the scale, like home churches with only half a dozen people and places like Hillsong with half a dozen thousand or so*. If you multiply those 65 people by the 52 congregations in Darwin, that gives you a local Church of about 3380. Despite my previous assertions, that doesn’t sound anything like enough. So now I find myself, asserting we have too many leaders, but not enough Christians. I haven’t yet made up my mind whether that’s complete nonsense or not.

Then there’s the national average church attendance rate of 11.7 percent of the population* to consider. If you run that percentage through the greater Darwin population of 120,000*, you get a weekly church attendance of about thirteen and a half thousand, give or take.

So where the bloody hell is everybody?

There are two possible explanations for this discrepancy in the figures, which are of course based on averages rather than role calls. The first is that my list of churches is even more uncomprehensive than I thought, and there are actually more like 200 congregations out there somewhere. Somehow that seems unlikely.

The more likely explanation is that the national averages don’t actually apply to Darwin, which is culturally an entirely different country (some might say planet). I suspect weekly attendance here might be well below the national average, given the transient nature of the population and high proportion of military personnel, who aren’t generally renowned for their religious piety. I also think on average, from what I’ve seen, our congregations do better than 65. I’m not sure why. Of course, I’ve only really been around the larger congregations. I guess we have little ones out there too.

So essentially I’m back where I started. I have no idea what percentage of Darwinites attends a Christian church. I have an incomplete, if surprisingly long list of local congregations, but no information on the attendance figures for them. And conspicuous by its absence is a record of the total number of local Christians. I’ve tried to get at that, but short of placing an enquiry with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (a pursuit that experience has taught me to avoid) that information doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. Somehow that bothers me, but I don't know why.

I still think we have too many churches and not enough members, but for now it doesn’t seem possible to prove it mathematically. At least not for this numerically disinclined stunt linguist. And therein lies an issue for another day.

And that’s the good news.

Garry with 2 Rs

*What? You weren’t actually expecting a reference, were you? What kind of legitimate researcher do you take me for?

When is a Rectangle Not a Rectangle?

2010-06-03T11:29:00.000+09:30

Yesterday, my employers booked a group of seven of us into a workshop with a motivational speaker. We weren’t really told what the sessions would entail or even what they were about. We were just told the program was called “Brilliant Attitude” and would be “unlike any other training we’d ever done before”.

The whole thing was run by a guy named Bob Allwright, whose business card describes him as a leader, mentor and inspiring speaker. He opened by showing photos of Richard Branson and other multi-millionaire entrepreneurs whose names I’ve already forgotten. It came with the usual questions about what made these people different from anyone else, and the questionable assertion that the difference between me and Richard is essentially nothing. It was suggested that all I would have to do to be as rich as Richard Branson is do exactly what he does, which I suspect is complete baloney.

According to Bob it all comes down to attitude. Essentially all we need to succeed in life is to believe that we can. The only reason we’re not all multi-millionaires is that most of us are held back by our own fears of failure or judgement. A simple examination of domestic economics renders this a questionable theorem, to say nothing of the global economy. Street kids in the slums of India aren’t going to become millionaires simply by believing they can. They have to go on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” like the rest of us.

I don’t want to be too judgemental about this. The idea of improving your life by starting with your own attitude is a valid one and it is, I’ll grant, an incredibly powerful thing to change your view of the world by changing your view of yourself.

But here is where it started to get weird.

The guy drew three rectangles on the board, and asked us what the drawing meant. My first thoughts were “They don’t mean anything, they’re just rectangles”. But Bob encouraged us all to look deeper, to find what the deeper symbolism of the rectangles might be and how we might apply it to our lives. After we all gave answers ranging in profundity from “a failed domino run” to “the fear of rejection in abusive relationships” we were given Bob’s interpretation. His answer was “They don’t mean anything. They’re just rectangles. Isn’t it amazing, the sort of deep meaning that our brains are able to give to completely meaningless things?”

At this point, I began to suspect that Bob might just be a complete wally.

Then he went on to give us the old post-modern chestnut about how nothing has any inherent meaning apart from the meaning we ourselves give it. His point was that the only person who can stop us from achieving and give us an attitude of failure is ourselves, and that’s all well and good. But since when was I charge of the rest of the universe? If it’s true that I’m the only person who can control me, then it’s also true that I’m the only person in the world that I’m in control of. So not only does that leave me with no more personal empowerment than I had in the first place, but it also leaves me with a rather disconcerting sensation that the entire world is hurtling toward anarchistic self-destruction. Personally, I think that’s of much greater consequence than the question of whose fault it is if I get angry while I’m driving a car, but for some reason Bob didn’t mention the more troubling implications of his philosophical statements. He was too busy telling us to give ourselves more success in life by looking at ourselves in the mirror and smiling.

Actually, from a Christian point of view, Bob got it half right. Unfortunately it’s the half he got wrong that has all the important implications. The Bible is quite clear that outside of God, nothing in the material universe is of any real cosmic significance. The things we fear, the things we trust in, the things we struggle against and the material things we worship don’t actually have any power over us apart from the power we give them in our own minds. The rectangles are just rectangles.

It’s Bob method for breaking free from those cosmic rectangles that left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The idea was to break through the powers that bind us in our lives and keep us from achieving the things we want by believing in ourselves. To put it in religious terms, we can be saved from the troubles we have brought on ourselves by faith in … ourselves.

Now, my self-esteem is as healthy as the next guy, but I’m not for a moment convinced that putting faith in me is a good idea. Yes, I’m intelligent and ambitious, and spirited and deep and all the other things that make humans so brilliant, but I’m also arrogant, deceitful, envious and fearful and all the other things that make humans so full of crap. Furthermore, I’m also the one who got myself into this mess in the first place, remember? This, in my view, is where post-modern humanism falls into a pit of its own construction, and where the notion of an external creator, redeemer and sustainer begins to appear a more plausible explanation for the continued success of the human race.

Bob’s final demonstration was to get us all to write down the things that are holding us back on a piece of plywood, about 18mm thick. I wrote down a few things that have been troubling me lately, but honestly, by this stage I was done with taking Bob’s instructions seriously. On the other side we wrote down the life we wanted to lead, where those problems were gone and we could have the things we desired. Just to stick my point to Bob, I wrote down “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD (Zechariah 4:6).

Bob told us we were going to break through the problems and reach our dreams by breaking through the plywood with our hands. Honestly, looking at the thickness of the wood, I doubted if I would be able to punch through it. Bob told us that the secret was to look past the board, believe in ourselves and know that we had the power to reach our goals.

Actually, the secret was to place the board between two chairs, kneel on one of the chairs and bring our full weight down on the plywood. I probably couldn’t have broken the board with the strength of my arm. I sure as hell couldn’t have broken it with the power of my mind (sorry Bob). But no plywood board is going to withstand 90 kilograms coming down on it through the two square inches at the base of my hand.

So there you have it. I may not have the brilliant attitude Bob was looking for, but at least I came away with the knowledge that, while I may not be able to turn myself into a billionaire by believing I can, at least I have the ability to spot four hours worth of philosophical hokum when I’m force fed it. That, and a broken piece of plywood.

And that’s the way it was.

Garry with 2 Rs

A Change in the Season

2010-05-30T22:09:00.006+09:30

It’s now about as late as late May gets without drifting into June. This is the time Territorians call the Dry Season; imaginatively named to contrast it with the Wet Season. Basically they’re the same except one of them is humid and rainy and the other one isn’t.

Or isn’t it? In the most meteorologically unseasonable display for some time, Darwin’s skies are still full of grey cumulo-nimbus clouds, and the daytime routine refuses to settle into the more familiar 31 degrees, 40% humidity and see you in September. Apparently it’s been the hottest May since the seventies. However, local news teams assure us that the climate will be resuming regular services from Monday onwards. And about time too.

There are other indications that a change in season is on the way.

I really don’t know how, but I got a part in the Midsummer Night’s Dream production I auditioned for on a whim a few weeks back. I’m playing a mechanical flute, or something like that. I don’t know, it’s all a bit modern and bizarre for me. Shakespeare, eh?

And I’m now appearing semi-regularly in the worship band for a local church. I was on keys and vocals this morning, despite not having heard any of the songs before. As is ever my way, I’m not sure I’d ever call this congregation home, but it’s serving as a perfectly functional metaphorical portable tabernacle for the moment.

Tonight I managed to do laundry and cook a reasonably palatable insta-parmy at the same time. Even six months ago, there’s no way I would ever have even contemplated cooking and doing anything else at the same time.

Yes… I know. Shut up. It’s an achievement, okay?

I once again managed not get clean bowled at my cricket game today. True, I spooned a long-hop back to the bowler for a duck, but that’s beside the point. As with so many other facets of my life, I am now finding new and creative ways to go about my day-to-day and week-to-week operations. Next weekend, I plan to experiment with LBW.

Oh yeah, and for some reason I seem to have a beard at the moment. As far as portents that something weird is up go, that's got to count for something, right?

Okay, I’m not good with cricket bats or with omens, and I have an infamous proficiency for missing things that are right in front of me. But I can’t shake the feeling that a cool change is coming. I just don’t know what it is.

Give me your hands if we be friends
And Robin shall restore amends

Garry with 2 Rs

The Eleventh Garry

2010-05-14T15:08:00.003+09:30

I’ve been doing some critical introspection just recently; re-evaluating who I am and what direction my life is taking. It all came to a head the other night as I was …

The next phrase is supposed to be something like ‘glancing over some old photos from college’ or ‘speaking to an old friend who has just returned from a soul cleansing pilgrimage to South America’ or ‘reading from the book of Jeremiah’, but it isn’t. Sorry for the confusion.

… watching Doctor Who. I was watching David Tennant regenerate into Matt Smith and reflecting on the unfair advantages the Doctor has.

If I want to reinvent myself, I have to have money and a new job and some way of keeping myself afloat while I readjust. It’s not enough to just say “I want to be an opthamologist now" and go do it. There’s always some stupid practical consideration in the way, usually in the form of dollar signs or obstinate people. It would be so much easier if I could just stand in the middle of my spaceship, strike a dramatic pose and wait for my head to catch on fire.

If I were a newly regenerated Time Lord, I think this would be the part of the episode where I double over, grab my stomach, wince, cough up some sparkly orange light and say “Oh no… my regeneration… it’s… going wrong,” before passing out to let the other characters squirm for a while, returning to full health at the last minute to save the day with a quick flick of the sonic screwdriver.

When I got back from Europe all full of vision and enthusiasm, I had huge ideas about finally having the stable base of operations I would need to do all the things left on my to-do list that had been taking second place to “travel through Europe.” But then I bunged up my car, discovered that my job was less than salubrious, came face to face with the harsh reality of how much credit cards suck and failed miserably to assign myself to a worship band. I’ve been home in Darwin since November, but I haven’t played a single Sunday morning service since leaving Adelaide. That might sound like a petty or self important complaint, but given that “worship musician” is one of the only terms by which I ever feel comfortable defining my own personality, it’s clear that somewhere in the last seven months or so something has gone horribly wrong.

So I’ve decided it’s time to start doing things a little differently. Tonight I’m joining some church friends in a battle of the bands at Palmerston markets. It’s time to let the old rock star version of Garry out of the cage again, not to mention giving Samantha a chance to cut loose. I’ve also auditioned for a local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. God only knows what will happen if I get to be in that. I have plans to co-write and possibly appear in a short film to be shot in July and a renewed enthusiasm for finally getting my first novel finished.

And at Woodroffe oval last Tuesday, for the first time in recorded history, I batted for a full 15 minutes in the nets and didn’t get bowled once. I have a thumping great bruise on my stomach to show for it, and another one on the back of my leg. Things are looking up, as long as I don’t take my shirt off.

Actually, I could probably just take that last sentence and assign it to a folder marked ‘general wisdom’.

I’m going to be travelling to remote communities with work again for the next couple of weeks, so the next post might be a while coming. But it will totally be worth the wait.

That’s all folks.

Garry with 2 Rs

Games People Play

2010-05-04T09:41:00.003+09:30

If there’s one thing single guys hate more than having unsolicited baby seats installed in their cars, it’s having people ask whether or not we have our eyes on any particular young lady. I mean, it’s alright when it’s someone you haven’t spoken to for years, and they’re legitimately updating all the information they have about you. But when it’s people you catch up with all the time, either in three dimensions or in cyber space, such as family or close friends, it just seems like such a stupid query to have to respond to, mainly because there are only a few possible responses, each as dumb as the last.

1) No. I’m still all alone. Thanks for asking.
2) Yes. I’ve been engaged for six weeks now. You just didn’t notice, you useless unobservant jerk.
3) Yes. Target acquired, and I’m figuring out the best angle of approach (this objectifies women far less than it seems. Guys just like to use military or sporting terms of reference because they are more familiar, precise and less terrifying than emotional ones) and what I really need is for you to try to help me, spread the information around and generally make things more difficult.

Obviously none of those answers ever result in anything other than an awkward silence. As a counter measure, experienced single guys such as myself have developed cunning if unsophisticated ways of responding to the query without actually answering it. It involves answering questions far more literally than is usually a good idea in a social setting, but it can be a great experiment to see how far you get before your friend swears at you and gives up.

Mate: So… any girls on the radar?
Gw2Rs: The radar?
Mate: You know what I mean.
Gw2Rs: I don’t have a radar.
Mate: I mean are there any girls on the horizon?
Gw2Rs: How would I know?
Mate: No, I mean, are there any special ladies in your life?
Gw2Rs: There are lots of special ladies in my life.
Mate: Yeah, but any really special?
Gw2Rs: Everyone is special. I don’t go around assigning people a specialness quotient to record in some book somewhere. What kind of sociopath do you take me for?
Mate: Are you currently interested in someone?
Gw2Rs: I’m interested in a lot of things; cricket, music, quantum physics, linguistics, ending world poverty, chess, relig…
Mate: God damn it, Garry, you’re impossible.

Yes, yes I am. My married and pregnant friends are constantly looking at me sideways, trying to figure out why I’m so stubbornly opposed to the whole romance phenomenon.

Actually I’m not opposed to it at all. Up until now I’ve just I’ve made a habit of never staying in any one place long enough. And I’ve coupled this with a complete disinclination towards the stupid games people expect single men to play. First dates, appropriate phone call etiquette, the ability to retain an air of masculinity whilst dressing like a freaking fairy; it’s complete rubbish. I am firmly of the opinion that ‘dating’ in the sense in which we interpret it through American sitcoms and blogs written by empowered and modern (yet still, notably, single) women is a stupid idea, and I have a fairly low opinion of the media through which society (not to mention well intentioned Christian pop-literature) tells me I’m supposed to communicate affection.

But to Hell with it. If playing Hollywood style games is what it takes to keep my dearest and best satisfied, then bring it on. I quite like games. I have an international chess rating of 1305 and I can kick my friends’ butts at Risk. But don’t go thinking I’m going to just start playing fleeting-yet-knowing glance chicken with the woman across from me on the train. If I’m going to play, I’m joining the premier league (Palmerston Cricket club can shove it). No soft targets for me. Here goes…

1: d4
------------------------------------------------------------------

I, Garry with 2 Rs, address the universal and sub-spatial powers of Ironic Karma under the terms of the Shadow Proclamation. In the presence of God and this… internet and being of sound mind and body (well…) I do hereby affront you with the following assertions.

1) There is no such thing as romantic love – it’s all just a bunch of emotional nonsense and

2) There’s no way it could happen to me.

3) What could possibly go wrong?

4) You won’t get me, because you can’t, because

5) I’m too smart and too tough.

Love from Garry
------------------------------------------------------------------

Your move, Universe.

I’ll keep you posted on the results, so please don’t feel like you need to come and ask me about it. And yes, on reflection that was more BBC than Hollywood, but the point still stands.

So until next week, and then again too, I imagine, this is me, David McGahn, reminding you that the world really is a David McGahn’s world. Sort of.

Garry with 2 Rs

The View From the Middle of Nowhere

2010-04-22T21:10:00.024+09:30

I'm writing this from the visitors' accommodation in Milingimbi, just off the North coast of East Arnhem Land. Stranded from the rest of civilisation, and cut off from the internet (don't ask me how I'm posting this... wibbly wobbly timey wimey), it's just me, the land, the ocean, my bible, my notebook and my iPod.

Okay, okay. I also have a fridge, an air conditioner and a TV. But there's nothing on except repeats of Two and a Half Men, so my iPod's been getting a fair work out. I've been re-living and re-loving Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and I've decided that our lovable and piteous antihero wasn't that far off the mark.

Just before TAAHM, Channel Nine News informed me of the following:

Kevin Rudd's government has announced that after getting themselves elected by promising to open around 250 new childcare centres to relieve the chronic national shortage, they've decided they're going to build 38.

The Melbourne Storm have announced that they've been cheating for the last five years at least by rorting the salary cap system and have been stripped of three minor premierships, two premierships, a million dollars and all points for this season, past and present. No-one would ever have accused rugby league players of being able to count, but this sort of "do whatever it takes to win and bugger the spirit of the game" attitude really belongs in some other country. Like England.

In another brazen display from Rudd's goons, they've also gone and announced that an enquiry into the debacle that was the home insulation scheme has found that fixing the mess is likely to be really difficult, and really really expensive. So they've decided not to.

And did they send out Peter Garrett to face the music? No. He was hiding in an office deep within Parliament House somewhere. So did Kevin, who just two months ago was so keen to take responsibility and show us all how up front he was, front up? No. He was hiding in Tasmania. He would probably have been even further away, if it wasn't for that damned Icelandic volcano. Instead they arranged a press conference with some dubious looking assistant minister for who-cares-what? A man so otherwise irrelevant I'm not even going to bother looking up who it actually was.

On top of all that, and despite a very strongly worded request to join a Saturday league, I've been consigned to an E grade cricket team playing on Sundays, which means choosing between playing sport to do something about my physical fitness, and investing my Sundays in intercongregational activities to do something about the spiritual health of the local Church. I mean, I realise I'm close enough to useless and not getting anywhere, but this might just be the final insult.

I'm also rubbish at cricket.

Yes indeed, as the Horrible little Doctor put it:

"It's not about making money. It's about taking money; destroying the Status Quo. Because the Status is not Quo. The world's a mess and I just need to rule it."

I've been considering the various avenues available to me in terms of affecting the obviously necessary pardigmic social change. I could become a politician myself, but they all seem to be increasingly useless. I could become a religious leader, but, for all I see, we have too many of them as it is (more on that later). I could found an underground resistance movement, but bringing a campaign of violence and destruction of property to the streets of Palmerston wouldn't actually set me apart from the local high school students. And no-one seems to pay them any attention.

So logically the only recourse left is to become a lone-wolf masked vigilante and prowl the streets at night, seeking out injustice and crushing it under the heel of my rocketboots. To the secret lab, Emilio!

No. There's no secret laboratory and no mad yet devoted assistant. And who calls their sidekick Emilio, anyway? Lame. I guess I'll just stay here in the visitors' accommodation and continue to combat the forces of evil by blogging them to death.

And that's the news for this Thursday the 22nd of April. A Current Affair is next, but for now: good night.

Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. I apologise for the overtly political tone this blog has now taken. We will be returning to the regular scheduled service of absurd sexist ecumenical idiocy as soon as possible.

P.P.S. Anyone else think Jonathan Uptin needs a more creative sign-off?

The Ghosts of Made-Up Girlfriends Past

2010-04-06T15:18:00.005+09:30

The most peculiar thing happened to me today as I was walking through Casuarina. I was strolling, coke bottle in hand (He is risen, baby!), through the older section near K-Mart when I was approached and stopped by a misty-eyed exotic stranger. I knew straight away what was happening, having had some experience with shopping mall charity spruikers in the past, but nonetheless having a pretty girl stop me to chat occurs infrequently enough that I just decided to go with it.

Alice (name changed to protect the ignorant; it was actually a really hot sounding Russian name that I couldn’t spell if I tried): How’re you going today?
Garry with 2 Rs: I’m going pretty well. How’re you?
Alice: Pretty good thanks. Would you like to take a couple of minutes to see what we’re doing here today?
Gw2Rs: I suppose I have a few minutes to spare (translates as “I’ll look at anything you want me to, just keep that James Bond villainess accent coming”).
Alice: My name’s Alice, by the way. What’s yours?
Gw2Rs: I’m Garry. Alice… that’s an unusual name.
Alice: It’s Russian. And congratulations: you’re the first person today to pronounce it correctly. Most people can’t do that.
Gw2Rs: I’m a linguist (said with smug confidence that didn’t really match the content, but what are you going to do?).
Alice: Oh wow! I did some Slavic philology at college back home.
Gw2Rs: Fantastic. That sounds fascinating. (Yeah! Suck on that, veterinary science students I went to uni with! Who’s talking to all the pretty girls now?)
Alice: Well… anyway, I am here today representing Oxfam International.

And just like that, the spell was broken. I mean, I kept up the façade of being interested in what she was collecting for (something to do with sexually abused women building wells in Africa), but I knew what her real agenda was. It all starts off with a bit of innocent (well…) chit-chat. Next thing you know you’re buying a block of fair trade chocolate a week and pining over a forbidden love who starts making uninvited and frankly preposterous appearances in slightly embellished accounts of your European working holiday.

Not today, Alice!

Actually, it turns out Oxfam don’t even have a shop in Darwin. This sucks a bit because I left my make poverty history wristband on a table in Brisbane on my way through in November. These guys were based on the Gold Coast and were in town on the Darwin leg of a national tour. Somewhere, charity spokesperson got cross-wired with rockstar and I, for one, welcome the change.

And remember, it costs as little as a dollar a day to send as many cute Europeans to talk to Garry in shopping malls as it takes to buy just one cup of coffee a week. Give or take.

Over to you, ROOOOOOZ!

Garry with 2 Rs
What? Scraping the barrel a bit? Why yes. Yes I am.

Specialist Outfielder

2010-04-01T21:01:00.001+09:30

The extent to which I’ve become an inactive layabout is starting to annoy me. I spend far too much time with my computer (so I decided to blog about it… hmm…) and not nearly enough time outside.

This is partly due to the Darwin climate this time of year. When it’s not 33 and sticky, it’s 29 and pouring which makes outdoor pursuits a little inconvenient. However, the Dry is fast approaching and that means only one thing:

Cricket season.

Yes, I know that rest of Australia has only just got over the monumental waste of time that was this summer’s so called ‘competition’ (although as I’m typing this, Mitchell Johnson has just taken 10 wickets in the second test in Hamilton to clinch the series against New Zealand) and is stolidly pushing on with fanatic devotion to games played with balls that aren’t round.

But up here we do things the other way around: we play cricket in the dry season when it’s slightly cooler, less humid and not pouring with rain all the time. We play football in the wet season because if we didn’t, the guys playing both cricket and some code of football (which is generally half the team; there’s only a limited pool of players to draw from) would be screwed, and also because football players usually aren’t smart enough to realise that running around in the sun in November is a stupid idea.

You may already have read of my previous adventures in international cricket. It could probably be said that as a batsman I make an excellent spin bowler and that as a bowler I make a fantastic… goal keeper. Nonetheless, I’ve decided that in order to break out of the inactive slump that has elevated my pant size to unacceptable levels, I’m signing up for the next season.

The last time I played club cricket in Australia was when I was in high school, playing for Tracy Village, which was just around the corner from our old house in Wanguri. I managed to earn myself the nickname “Kamikaze” due to my distinctive ground fielding style and was renowned as the most consistent number ten in the league (I can’t remember the name of the guy who batted at eleven. He must have been woeful). I bowled occasionally, but spent most of my time running around at deep mid-wicket being noisy.

Not much has changed, except that Tracy Village is no longer just around the corner. I’m living out in the wilderness of Woodroffe and I have a heart rending decision to make.

Palmerston cricket club trains at Woodroffe Oval, which is just around the corner from where I currently live. The logical thing for me to do is to sign up with them. But, as a born and bred northern suburbs boy, it seems a little unnatural. Like a boy from Longreach growing up to play State of Origin for New South Wales, or an Oxford law student rowing for Cambridge. Or a former Liberal leader crossing the floor to vote in favour of Labor’s Emissions Trading Scheme. Can I really bring myself to represent Palmerston on the cricket field?

I think convenience is probably going to win out over district loyalty. I also think the Tracy Village sports club can probably count themselves extremely fortunate. Either way, I’ll be spending less time in cyberspace and more time in the outfield, which can only be a good thing from my current perspective.

This has been another presentation from Nine’s Wide World of Sports.

Garry with 2 Rs

Poets, Librarians and Me

2010-03-19T23:31:00.000+09:30

Last week I was invited to an awards ceremony at my local library. I was a little bit surprised to receive the invitation, but I figured that my tireless work in support of… libraries was finally being recognised at an official level. They would probably unveil a plaque that said

“In grateful acknowledgement of occasional visits, this plaque was unveiled by his honour the Lord Mayor of Darwin, Graeme Sawyer on the 19th day of March 2010, and dedicated to the memory of Garry with 2 Rs, in whose name his beloved Andrea hath erected this monument.

“Sometimes he came here to borrow books.”

It seemed like a huge honour. I’ve always wanted my own plaque. Never mind the fact that I’m not dead yet. And who the hell is Andrea?

Okay, so the presentation was actually for a poetry competition. I was surprised to get invited because I didn’t really think my entry, which I only put in on a spur of the moment decision, would be in the running for anything. And with good reason.

It wasn’t.

I got invited because anyone who had bothered to enter got invited. It turns out Shakespearean sonnet writing contests don’t actually attract that many competitors, so they just invited the whole lot of us so that the winner would actually have someone there to cheer for him.

Actually, it was interesting to see the sort of crowd that would rock up for a sonnet competition presentation ceremony. Mostly older folk, but with a smattering of slightly younger English teachers and one extremely out-of-place twenty-something year old training officer/stunt linguist. In the end I was grateful not to have won. If I had walked out the front and read my entry aloud, I don’t think I could have absorbed the combined hatred of a dozen or so retirees all at once (I could totally have taken the English teachers though).

I’m pretty sure my poem came dead last. It was a Valentine’s Day competition, and my views on romance aren’t what you’d call universally well received. Nonetheless, I still got a free drink and meal out of it, which is more than can be said for most amateur poets.

Today’s episode was bought to you by the letter C and the number 17. Cum Tacent Clament is a production of the Children’s Television Network.*

Garry with 2 Rs

*Not really. They should probably keep children as far away from CTC as possible.