FUCKING STUPID PEOPLE EVERYWHERE WHY DON'T YOU ALL JUST FUCK OFF

SO, I thought I'd change the tone around from the last few entries which have been distinctly melancholic if not downright angst ridden, and switch myself over into angry hellbitch ranting raving mode.

Basically I hate stupid people. Everyone who knows me knows I hate stupid people, it's a core tenet of my personality. And quite frankly I don't care if you think that makes me sound elitist and rude, the fact of the matter is that you have a brain with just as many cells as mine or anyone else's and if you can't be bothered to use those cells to some effective purpose then essentially you are just taking up valuable oxygen and I see no use in your existence.

Now let me just qualify all this by saying that the opposite of stupid is not smart, it's aware. I don't really care if your IQ isn't at genius level or if you just plain hated school; as long as you take an active interest in something in life other than excessive drinking and can express an opinion on it using at least one word of more than two syllables, odds on we'll get along fine. But if you insist on being one of these unfortunately all too abundant people whose only discernible aim in life is to consume your body weight in alcohol/narcotics and then talk loudly about it afterwards in a manner that implies all those who choose not to indulge as though we are substandard beings, THEN YOU ARE A FUCKWIT and I probably think you are a waste of space.

We're in a WORLD here, people. Shit is going on ALL THE TIME, near us and far away from us, good stuff and bad stuff, trivial stuff and serious stuff, fun stuff and boring stuff, important stuff and filling-in-the-gaps stuff, but it's STUFF. Some of it is really, really interesting. Your little world, on balance, is probably not. Grow a personality, honestly. This may come as a shock to those who consider me occaisionally shallow, and I'll be the first to admit that I skipped over the newspaper articles on government corruption to read the reports from Paris fashion week, but at least I went back and read the articles on government corruption - and I also have strong opinions about this seasons skirt lengths.

So that's one kind of stupidity.

The next kind of stupidity can best be exemplified by the variety of charming excuses for human beings I work with and for. I cannot pithily describe the many levels on which these people are pissing me off. Lack of communication probably best sums it up. I am regularly sent into situations on which I have no background information and am expected to work miracles. I am apparently also meant to attend in a supervisory fashion to men more than ten years my senior and have them do my bidding. I am being asked to be in charge, and being treated like a child. I am being shown the deep end and told to swim - and then getting told off when I don't. Along the way, I've been forced to listen to some personal stories that far overstep the boundaries of what people who have spent less than 14 hours in each other's presence should feel comfortable in sharing. Which is SO emotionally manipulative because it makes it virtually impossible for me to conscionably resent or dislike this man, which I am totally entitled to do because he is making my life difficult. Stupid co-worker #2, on the other hand, has not even been intelligent enough to tell me emotionally manipulative stories, but has instead simply waltzed into MY shop and raised his eyebrows in a snooty fashion, and implicitly questioned the way I do things, and demanded I close early so he can catch his bus, and taken too long on his breaks, and not hung up any of the multitude of clothing items thrown on the floor by YET MORE FUCKING STUPID PEOPLE, and then, only after giving me the impression that he might have some sort of right to do these things, do I discover that this is a man who cannot even cash up a till at the end of the night.

FUCK.

Let's please not forget my charming boss, who is the one for getting poor misguided me into these situations, getting me flustered and upset about the fact that I spend my Saturdays in a tiny room filling up with bags of junk faster than I can empty them, with a middle aged man who seems to have all the motivation and foresight of a 13 year old McDonald's employee (quote: "You don't want to do too much today, or they'll expect you to keep doing that in the futute.") I'm NINETEEN! I'm a SALES GIRL! I AM NOT TRAINED FOR THIS! OF COURSE I AM GOING TO FAIL MISERABLY!!! This is NOT my main priority in life! I don't want to be worrying about this during the week! During the week I am an intelligent, capable, interesting, friendly and successful person with friends and interests and books and things to do and places to go! THIS IS WHERE I COME TO EARN THE MONEY TO GO TO THOSE PLACES! YOU ARE NOTHING TO ME EXCEPT A CASH MACHINE! I will do my job to the best of my ability. I will be polite and corteous to my customers and provide the service I am here to provide, because my job itself is actually reasonably enjoyable. BUT TREAT ME WITH SOME SORT OF DIGNITY OR I SWEAR TO GOD, ONE DAY YOU WILL ARRIVE AT ST VINCENT DE PAUL GLEBE AND FIND NOTHING BUT AN INCINERATED BUILDING AND A DERANGED TEENAGER SCREAMING "I DON'T WANT ANY MORE FUCKING DONATIONS!!!!!"


So that's another kind of stupidity.

And it's just...UGH. It makes me feel small and frustrated and wound up in knots that so much idiocy exists in this world. No wonder the human race is doomed. Obviously this kind of behaviour is going on everywhere, all the time, in all sectors of industry, from street cleaners to government. How utterly depressing.

Sigh. I think all is not lost, however. Because there are some non stupid people in this world. Me, for one. I mean, obviously if I were running the world everything would be better. People who are even less stupid than me are my friends, who are the best, and my family, who are pretty good, if only because they passed on their non stupid genes to me. And I know instinctively that there are a whole host of non stupid, very interesting people out there in the world, who I would love to meet. It's just a shame that all the stupid are preventing this from happening.

Fat

I feel fat today. Notice I said feel, not look, because I believe fatness is, or at least can be, an emotional state. I mean I don't think I look much fatter than usual - I just did an hour and a half's dance class so logically I should not look fatter than usual.
No, fat is definitely a state of mind. I have excess mental activity and deficient physical output. I am a thinker, for certain, but this detracts from my ability to be a doer. I am not by nature a doer. I don't do half the things I say I will, leaving me with a persistent sensation that I really could be the greatest thing in the world...if only I could be bothered.
What is it that prevents us from enacting all the amazing plans in our head? Why do nine out of ten of my friends rate "procrastination" as one of their primary talents? Why do we constantly sabotage ourselves from being better, doing better, feeling better?

My "to do list" runs from here to eternity, including items such as "Call IKEA" [see previous entry], "Change uni enrolments" and "Clean desk" right through to "Go for run!!" "Call Jenna!!!" [incredibly close friend who have not spoken to since New Year's] and "Book tickets for STC show!!!!!!" Why do I never do these things? Why are my days instead spent watching Friends reruns when there are things to be done, problems to be solved, lives to be lived?
What the fuck are we so afraid of?

The vagaries of IKEA

Anyone who knows me should probably know that one of my favourite places in the world is IKEA. I love the boxes. I love the way that everything goes cleverly with everything else. I love the fact that everything is labelled and indexed, leaving no room for confusion. I love the idea that with enough purchases, my life could stop being one endless search for keys/bobby pins/bank statements/meaning and instead be a luxurious and enjoyable wander through various stages of the day - cooking, studying, dressing, entertaining, travelling, etc.
Going to IKEA tends to make me feel pretty relaxed. I just like looking at all the pretty things. I find it soothing. And reassauring. I like telling myself that, one day, in the imaginary future, sometime around the time I become a respected actor and find myself in a loving and stable relationship and capable of paying bills on time, my house too will be a series of clean lines and well ordered magazines; extensive bookshelves and interesting art; comfortable couches and a wellstocked kitchen; clothes on hangers instead of my floor, and all the associated glory that comes with said.
However, after spending four hours in the place yesterday, surrounded by boxes of all shapes and colours, I think my passion has temporarily faded. For one thing, the whole reason I went to IKEA was to buy a desk. I knew which desk I wanted. (My next favourite thing to visiting IKEA is reading the catologue.) I went to the desk section. Damn desk is sold out. I mean, when does IKEA sell out of anything? Most discouraging. Then I bought a bedside table, and a lot of boxes, the uses of which are contingent on me building this bookshelf that I bought from IKEA sometime just after I came home - September probably. The bookshelf IN ITSELF is a WHOLE SEPERATE ISSUE (why did I get it in dark brown when everything else in my room is a pale beech colour???). And currently my room is just knee deep in boxes, packed and unpacked, of clothes that need to be altered, bookshelves that need to be created, photos that need to be stored and such a dazzling array of miscellaneous paperwork I hardly know what to do with myself.
The chasm (I think this is my new favourite word) between my dream home (compartmentalised) and the reality (shit spewing out of drawers and cupboards as though it were genetically mutated and trying to take over the world) is so depressing as to actually make me simply want to crawl into bed (IKEA sheets, naturally) surrounded by a pile of junk, and just...disappear.

Just hypothetically

What do you do when you think you know exactly how you want your life to go but you know that, essentially, it's not really up to you?
What if you can see all these amazing, perfect things in your hypothetical future?
What if none of them come true? What are you left with then? Were the dreams foolish? Or was it in fact you who was foolish for not chasing the damn dreams to begin with? For waiting for them to chase you?
This may seem like a solid contender to win the Statement of the Bleeding Obvious 2008 gold medal, but it is only really dawning on me - in a real, meaningful, fist in my gut sort of way - that I can't imagine my life into perfection. That creating conversations in my head does not lead to their eventuality. And that all I do by doing so is create an even greater and more dangerous chasm between reality and...whatever it is I think I'm headed towards.
It might not happen. It probably won't happen. But what will happen? And why does it scare me so much?

Blackwatch

I should have written this a week ago, when the emotional impact was still fresh in my mind and heart, but I think I couldn't write it last week when the emotional impact was still fresh in my mind and heart because it's literally taken me that long to absorb and process it.
As part of my New Year's "Be Involved" campaign (see entries below) I fought tooth and nail to get tickets to Blackwatch, one of two works by the National Theatre of Scotland being performed at CarriageWorks as part of the Sydney Festival. I literally managed to score the last single ticket left in Sydney. This production has already toured extensively around Europe and America and has received universally positive responses wherever it went, which is obviously part of the reason I was so intent on getting a ticket. On another, concurrent yet perverse level, however, it also made me sort of apprehensive, because I have had some bad experiences with art/theatre/literature/etc that is meant to be The Best Thing Ever and then is somewhat underwhelming (or, in the case of The God of Small Things, just plain hateful.) So I approached the performance - on Friday 25th of January - with excitement mixed with just the tiniest bit of cynicism - "surely no theatre is that good" and trepidation -"what if I'm the only person in the known universe to not like this show?"

Well. Suffice to say I shouldn't have troubled my pretty little head. I can safely put my hand on my heart and say it was one of, if not THE, most amazing peices of theatre I have ever seen and I am sure it is an experience that will stay with me throughout my hopefully long life in said industry.

Because the National Theatre of Scotland have unfortunately packed up and departed our fair shores without most of my constituents having been privy to this performance, I feel no hesitation in spelling out any plot details.

The play is derived from interveiws, conducted by the writer, with a particular group of soldiers who had left the Black Watch after being on a recent tour of duty in Iraq. The Black Watch is the oldest regiment in Scotland and possibly in Britain - important facts like this tend to escape me, go Google it or something. Anyway. So they're in Iraq. And these are tough, Scottish highland boys who want to be soldiers - who have been soldiers for many years - who have been to Iraq before, and Kosovo, and other places. They're not stupid. This is their job. They enjoy it and they're not expecting it to be easy. But from the begining of the play, we know they've left and they're not going back. Why?

The play explores this issue in conjuction with the fact that part way through their mission, the Black Watch - previously a distinct and distinguished and honoured regiment of the British Army - was being amalgamated into the general corps. So they're out there, in a desert, 42 men doing a job that hundreds of Americans had been doing before them, wondering why they're doing it, and then the one thing that they're fighting for - their identity as The Black Watch - is taken away from them.

Combining verbatim interveiws, fictional scenes, battle sequences, video projections and more expletives than even I could shake a stick at, Blackwatch is not really a political play. That is, it does not set out with a political agenda (and thank fuck, and someone should tell Australian thespians to sit up and take note that not all theatre has to Be About An Issue to be about an issue) but it cannot help but come to the conclusion that the Iraq war was and is a monumental fuckup. But more importantly, it is about the people. About why these men are fighting, and what it is like to be fighting. The characters refuse to be pigeonholed, which made it so unbelievably watchable. And emotional. And...connecting.

By the play's wrenching conclusion - the audience watches three characters blown to pieces by a suicide bomber and they fall, suspended on wires, from scaffolding, covered in blood, for a full minute - I felt truly bound to every person in that theatre and in that cast. I wanted to turn to the woman next to me and offer to give her a hug.

As a theatre student, you here a lot about actor-audiences conncections and the catharsis of theatre and all this sort of thing. You know, that truly great theatre involves the audience in a genuine and truthful moment and allows us to surrender ourselves to a different reality. That by allowing theatre to generate certain emotions within us we can feel a certain therapeutic release. You know the stuff. And it all sounds great in theory, on paper, in class. And sometimes you even get close, watching stuff in class or at the STC or wherever. But in the back of your head, you're thinking, it's probably just a little bit of crap. Theatre can't really change the world. This is a self indulgent art form. There will always be a point at which the audience stops and the stage begins.

Well, ladies and gents, I am here to tell you, it ain't so. It doesn't happen very often, but truly, there are diamonds in the sea of shit that theatre can be. Sitting there in this old warehouse, watching these young Scottish men mime the words of love letters, I truly believed that if I could make one other person feel as intensely as I did that night with any work I do in the theatre, life will have been just that little bit more worth it.

You know that feeling

When you sleep in, and there's no pressure to get up, and you can just lie in bed, undisturbed, and the sun is coming in through the windows, and there's a bit of a breeze as well, and you're just lying there, letting the day wash over you, letting the fact that you have nowhere to be just wash over you, this comforting thought that you are exactly where you want to be, just in this second, this moment in time, and you just feel this twinge of complete and utter happiness, and it's actually quite a scary, overpowering feeling, so whole and undiluted that for a second there you could actually cry you're so happy. Does anyone else ever get that? And you just want to laugh out loud because everything just seems so perfect and safe. And the only thing that could possibly, possibly make this moment better is someone to share it with.

Specktacular!

My dear darling cousin Naomi, being the kind and generous soul that she is, for Christmas/birthday bought my sister and I tickets to the Spicks and Speck'tacular - the live show of Spicks and Specks - at the Enmore Theatre on the 12th of January. It was a highly entertaining evening and was a brilliant remedy to my somewhat tired and work-weary mind. Adam Hills is a lovely fellow - very sedate and likeable while being funny at the same time. Good old Myf and Alan slot in nicely to the whole act too.
What DOESN'T slot in nicely are STUPID audience members who get up on stage (they played the game with audience members as contestants) and think they are funnier than the three professional funny people COMBINED and spend the entire evening trying to out do them, thinking that regular expletives and stupid dances will somehow win over the crowd. Sweeheart - NO ONE PAID $42.90 TO SEE YOU. GO HOME.