The Write-Me-Back Falls: Episode 3

Previously on Cum Tacent Clament…

“Stop changing the subject and tell me what’s wrong,” I yelled.

“We can’t,” explained OG in a voice that implied I was missing something flagrantly obvious, “We’re not all here yet.”

“Oh good grief,” I groaned. “Who else could we possibly be waiting for?”

“For me, of course,” said a voice behind me. And since I was standing with my back to the cliff edge, that was a little disconcerting. I turned around slowly and realised that it couldn’t possibly have been anyone else.

“Nice of you to join us,” I said to … Samantha Triton.

And now… Write-Me-Back Falls continues.

Ba daah, de dat daah da de dah de dat dat daah – Dat daah de daah de dada daah Daaaaaah.

“Theme music? Really?’ asked Samantha “On a text only blog?”
“Shut up,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“And as if Write-Me-Back Falls would have the theme from A Country Practice as its opening titles anyway.”
“…I was going for the theme from Jurassic Park, actually.”
“You really need to learn to sing better.”
“I really do. How come you can fly?”
“Rocket Boots,” explained Samantha as if it was obvious. She touched down with a hint of overdrive and toggled the rotary speaker effect off.
“Of course,” I sighed. “I suppose there’s no point asking why you’re teaming up with OG and BL over there? I thought you were on my side.”
“Of course I am,” she said, with reverb.
“Then this doesn’t make sense,” I said, by way of plot exposition. “Oxfam Girl is almost completely imaginary, and Biscuit Lady is one hundred per cent metaphorical. You’re real. Or at least, you are when you’re being a piano. Not so much when you’re a flying woman. Also: Why are you dressed like that?”
“I’m a time-travelling space pirate.”
“YOU’RE A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT!”

“I hate to interrupt,” interrupted Oxfam girl. I suspect she quite enjoyed it actually. “But could we get on to what’s really going on here?”
“I’d love nothing more,” I said
“Hmph,” hmphed Biscuit Lady.
“We’re all here because we’re about to be blasted out of existence,” said Samantha, a little too matter-of-factly.

“Don’t be stupid,” I replied, “It’s clear that none of you exist except in my mixed up mind anyway. What have you got to be worried about?”

“That,” said all three of them in unison, pointing out to the electrical storm gathering over the ocean. I laughed at them.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little rain cloud?” I chided. “What kind of tropical girls are you?”
“I’m from a musical outlet in Brisbane,” said Samantha.
“I’m from an Oxfam Shop in Sydney. Sort of,” said Oxfam Girl.
“I’m a sociological metaphor, and I don’t like thunder,” said Biscuit Lady.
“Besides,” said Samantha, rolling her eyes, “That’s no ordinary thunder storm. If you look closely you’ll see the lightning is flashing steel blue, with a band of green around the middle.”
“That is unusual,” I admitted. “What do you suppose is causing it?”
“We don’t know,” admitted Biscuit Lady. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I asked the Bureau of Meteorology about it and they said they don’t really have a classification for it yet either.”
“I have a bureau of meteorology in my subconscious?” I asked.
“Stay focussed,” said Oxfam Girl. “No-one knows what that thing is, but we all know it’s dangerous. We can feel it.”

“We’re calling it Resolution Seven,” said Samantha.

“That’s… an awesome name for a thunder storm,” I said as a brilliant flash of blue lightning, the colour of the ocean at sunset, was followed by a particularly resonant thunderclap. And it was certainly getting closer. I watched, fascinated, as the clouds blew in and hovered over the cliff top. The imaginatrixes shivered beside me, and Biscuit Lady was looking decidedly pixelated.

“Get behind me girls,” I said as I smiled insolently at the storm, “This will only take a second.”

It sure did. Almost without warning, a steel blue thunderbolt flashed straight through my chest. The ground shook around me, but I stood my ground, just barely. As a good Christian Boy, I’d never felt more Weird. And as the fireball dissipated and the rain began to fall in warm, huge splotches (none of this rubbish southern rain, thank you very much. It’s my brain after all), I looked around to make sure the girls were okay.

They were gone.

In their place stood a piano, a 'make poverty history' wrist band and a plate of damp biscuits with a 'highly commended' certificate. I smiled, nodded once to say goodbye, and left them behind. As the storm of Resolution Seven closed in, without looking back I stepped to the edge of the cliff and jumped.

This is the part of the dream where I’m supposed to wake up and get on with writing. Apparently I still haven’t. It’s possible this blog is about to get really strange. Either that or I’ll be back in 2013 with more of the usual nonsense. Who knows?

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

Keeping Busy

It’s been a little bit too long between posts hasn’t it?

My problem at the moment isn’t so much that there’s nothing going on for me. It’s more that I’ve got so much on the go constantly I don’t get any time to sit and write any more. And nothing going on that’s really worth a whole post in its own right anyway. Well… nothing that I’m prepared to post to my blog yet, but that’s a non-post for another day.

Meanwhile the Christmas season continues to cartwheel along. I’ve got my usual array of carols services to attend, plus the never ending procession of Christmas parties, housewarming parties and weddings. It’s a hard life, isn’t it?

It looks like of I’ve got work lined up for at least the first six months of next year. Meanwhile I’ve joined the committee for the Australian Sepak Takraw Association and applied for a place at the Uniting Church National Young Adult Leaders’ Conference. I’m really extremely busy and important, don't you know?.

I’ve had a few – okay one person – ask me when the next Write-Me-Back Falls episode is due for production. Unfortunately the Mythological Creatures and Imaginary Women’s union have staged a strike and are demanding a pay increase of eight per cent over three years and an end to single episode contracts. I attempted to recast, but the production crew voted in solidarity with the imaginary women (I think they’re a bit frightened of them, which is understandable) and aren’t working until the dispute is resolved.

So bollocks to the unions. They’re a pack of bludgers, the lot of them. If I’m keeping so busy that I don’t have time to write, I can’t see why they can’t deign to show up in a post every now and then. Bally Bolsheviks. So…production on the Write-Me-Back Falls is on hiatus until the cast see reason and come back to work. Apparently they can’t be moved at the moment because they’re standing by the waterside. I pushed Biscuit Lady in, just to make my point, but I don’t think it improved the general situation any.

I’ll keep you posted.




Garry with 2 Rs

The Write-Me-Back Falls: Episode 2

Previously on Cum Tacent Clament…

“We’ll always have Paris!” yelled Oxfam Girl as she vanished into the blackness. I don’t think I ever wrote about her in Paris, but that’s women for you.

“That wasn’t very sporting,” I said indignantly.

“Who said I was going to play fair?” asked the woman in black, as with a nonchalant flick of her head she slipped back her hood revealing…

And now, the next thrilling instalment of Write-Me-Back Falls:

“Oxfam Girl?’ I spluttered in surprise.
“Of course it’s me,” said the woman in black, who did indeed appear to somehow be Oxfam Girl. “Don’t you ever read your own blog? You must have figured out by now that any time a mysterious unknown woman shows up, it always ends up being me.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “But I just… Did you just push yourself off a cliff?”
“I did,” she said cheekily, “but you must have known I’d be back. You can’t push someone off the Write-Me-Back falls in the middle of a thunderstorm and expect that she’s not coming back.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I conceded, “it’s just that normally people wait until after they’ve disappeared before they reappear. And they don’t make a habit of paradoxically making themselves disappear in the first place.”

“Quite right,” said an indignant voice behind me, with the sort of tone that would make people who like the sound of finger nails on black boards wince. Just my luck. What was she doing here?

“Biscuit Lady. How lovely to see you again,” I said, in my most gentlemanly voice.
“That’s Ms Lady to you, young man,” sniffed BL, “and how dare you let me catch you out here with a poor defenceless young lady in the middle of a thunder storm. For shame!”
“What do you mean defenceless?” I asked. “Last time I saw her, she was having a light sabre duel with you on my front lawn. And she was winning.”
“Silence!” demanded Biscuit Lady.
“I don’t think that encounter was actually real,” added Oxfam Girl unhelpfully.
“Shut up both of you,” I snapped. “This is my blog! I’ll be the one who decides what’s real and what isn’t, thank you very much.”
“My dear boy,” said Algernon Moncrieff, who had materialised beside me, “You’re currently standing on top of Write-Me-Back Falls in the middle of a storm, having an argument with an imaginary girlfriend and an anthropomorphic projection of out-dated societal expectations. And, might I add, you’re losing. Are you sure you’re in the best position to be making reality judgements?” I turned around to punch him as hard as I could, but he had already disappeared. Besides, he did have a point.

“Okay, fine,” I said, since doing anything other than agreeing with them probably wasn’t going to get me anywhere. “If you’re both here and ganging up on me, it’s obvious that something fairly heavy duty is going on my subconscious. What’s on your minds?”
“It’s your mind, not ours,” sniffed Biscuit Lady. Trust her to expect me to take responsibility for everything.
“And how do you know you’re not just wasting time while you’re supposed to be writing NaNoWriMo?” asked Oxfam Girl, who was developing a nasty habit of missing the point completely.
“Stop changing the subject and tell me what’s wrong,” I yelled.
“We can’t,” explained OG in a voice that implied I was missing something flagrantly obvious, “We’re not all here yet.”
“Oh good grief,” I groaned. “Who else could we possibly be waiting for?”

“For me, of course,” said a voice behind me. And since I was standing with my back to the cliff edge, that was a little disconcerting. I turned around slowly and realised that it couldn’t possibly have been anyone else.

“Nice of you to join us,” I said to…



TO BE CONTINUED...

The Dog-Eat-Giraffe World of Competitive Biscuit Assessment

When it comes to blogging, there’s often a fine line between reality and fantasy; between the concrete and the absurd. Sometimes I blog about real world issues and things that actually matter, at least to me. Other times I just blab out whatever nonsense seems like a good idea at the time. And sometimes when we look at reality closely enough, it turns out that it’s more absurd than the fantasy to begin with.

But does it ever work the other way around? If I spend enough time writing about something ridiculous, can I make it real?

Probably not.

Take Oxfam Girl for example. It didn’t matter how many situations I wrote her into, she remained steadfastly made-up from the day I adapted a random encounter with a chocolate sales girl into a fully-fledged imaginary girlfriend until the day she jumped the shark in Santiago de Campostela. She hasn’t been back since, in this reality or any of the others I inhabit. And on cold winter nights, when the fresh snow is falling over Leanyer and the caribou are singing to each other in the parnsip trees, I really miss that woman.

...

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that a different figment of my disturbed imagination had come to life and started wandering around, handing out prizes.

Biscuit lady is real!

It all started, as these things frequently don’t, at the Royal Darwin Show. My friend had entered a few plates of biscuits into the biscuit baking competition and we were all gathered in the Foskey pavilion for the official judging. The assembled competitors took their seats, and the show councillors introduced the judge.

Not even in my mixed-up delusions of being criticised for ungentlemanliness could I ever have imagined that there existed a person who was as so enthused by baked goods. I mean, I have a passing interest in them, in as much as I enjoy eating them. In fact, it turns out sometime a few years back when I was bored and started editing my blogger.com profile, I even listed “biscuits” as a blogging interest. I’m not sure what I was thinking there.

But oh my sweet carotid arteries, this woman could define an objective (well…) standard for the assessment of ANZAC bikkies, using such properties as flavour, shape, relative crunchiness (a controversial area, to be sure), syrupiness and even colour. She could tell you just by looking at them which biscuits were ineligible for the competition because they weren’t biscuits at all but were, in fact, cookies. Although, when pressed by a certain outspoken stunt linguist there present to explain exactly what the difference between a biscuit and a cookie was, she did struggle to articulate it, which leads me to suspect it might all be a complete sham. Apparently one of the assorted biscuit plates was disqualified because they were actually meringues.

Meringues? What the hell? That’s like being disqualified from best-in-show because it turns out your German Shepherd is actually a giraffe. Anyway, the real live biscuit lady judged each plate by slicing off a hilariously small piece of each one and trying them all, and then supplying various comments on the inherent biscuitful quality of each one.

Seriously, if they were paying this woman in anything other than biscuits, then it’s the greatest con since the time me and ten of my mates stole everything out of the vault of the Bellagio Casino.

Or was that…? Never mind.

As far as I’m concerned, the only difference between a biscuit and a cookie is what continent you’re eating it on. One of them goes “OOOOOOOOOOHM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM, OOOHM, NOM NOM NOM NOM,” and one of them doesn’t.

I don’t even want to think about what noise the Meringue Monster would make. Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

P.S. She came second. They were some nice biscuits.

Things You Don't Expect To Be Woken Up By

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

Being Ungentlemanly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what is a gentleman, really?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs