The Whole World Revolves Around Meme

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

The New Game

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 us 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

A Collective Sigh of Resignation

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

Moving Right Along

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 of describing my life at the moment. I've just moved into 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