Epidemic of academic. A polemic.

So, in between playing tennis with small children, listening to Step Up soundtrack (something for which I will never be ashamed. Slightly more embarrassing was my week in which all I could listen to was Carrie Underwood songs, for which I totally blame Glee.), youtubing Bon Qui Qui videos, and inventing every way possible in which to insert "next minute" into a sentence while still remaining vaguely coherent, I have managed to write TWO PAGES of my dissertation.

I know right.

To be fair (though I have a feeling my supervisor would be less than sympathetic to any of these reasons), quite a considerable margin of my time has been taken up with constructing flow diagrams of rugby world cup probabilities, and writing short poems in iambic pentameter* about how stressed I am**.

But, now that it seems that NZ will be out at the semis (Joke! Joke! Don't shoot me!) and nobody has ever read Keats (and only seen the movie cos of Fanny Brawne, ding DONG!), it seems to me to be about time to finish up in Dunedin and move on out into the worrrld. Get a job in public health. A lovely socially-acceptable same-sex relationship (ideally involving a great deal of interior decorating and home-made preserves). A six pack like Jillian Michaels. All very likely occurrences. (Sarcasm here is variable according to political persuasion; I try to cater to all masteries of ironic cynicism. You hipsters. I have a bike, too. And one time I bought organic shampoo. It made my hair smell like like SBW's armpit in Ramadan (dead lemons mixed with rexona, for the curious) and clump in an interestingly vertical yet aesthetically displeasing manner).
(I also want to learn to spell occurrences without spellcheck, that is up there on the wish list, just beneath unpasteurised cheese and rhyming better.)

Babe, amiright. I would be fat anyday to put on gym shorts and be abused by her.

Anyhow;
[brief sojourn into apathetic politics.]

Do other people worry about these things?

I mean, not cheese so much. The future. Do you worry that you may not have matching sofa cushions one day? Or that you will never own a home? I am somewhere between the two. Unfortunately, I also acknowledge that it is not only what I do that will make me who I become; it is where I came from and the people I (and my family) know. I have been a little occupied, you could say. I'd like to do something about it. Explain to people that they are all part of a larger functioning society, and what is paid back comes full circle. But I will have to muster my thoughts somewhat. Cut down on Glee time. And maybe read something not containing "pooled relative risks were controlled for intra-examiner measurement error and eighty-three other adjustments, rendering the secondary analysis completely worthless haha shame you had to read 30 pages to figure this out, loser postgrad". Before I can figure out exactly WHAT is wrong (if anything) with the world.

[Over now. Well done. Continue.]

To conclude; I get to go in a plane on Tuesday. I am very, very excited.

Some people hate planes (David. Hysterical*** woman off Bridesmaids. Terrorists (I assume, from the evidence.) It is safe to say I do not. In fact, I get so excited by planes that one time Dad seriously offered me codeine in order that he would not have to play eye spy with me one more time. Eye spy (in the sky) is often difficult once we get beyond the regulars of W is for wandering albatross ("you did not!" "Dad! They fly more than 100,000km/year! They obviously move a hell of a lot faster than you can see, it's not my fault you're old and decrepit, one point for me. Hah!"), S is for slipstream, and C is for circulating air generating differential  lift.

I absolutely LOVE looking out the window. (I always request a window seat, and if anyone takes it I just look at them. Like this. Until they move. Heh.)

I ADORE free coffee! Even though it is very shitty and requires addition of three tiny sugar packets and UHT milk (fondly reminiscent of the time I accidentally ate melted spatula off the stove-top because I thought it was just old cheese.) and also makes me have to pee. Which I love as well! The hilarious noise! Vacuum-cleaner loo!

I TOTALLY get off on (inappropriate? Too late.) landing. So exciting! I know (from PHSI102, which I passed. I know physics gets all up in your grill disproving magic but I swear to the Higgs boson they were just impressed by my patronus. (It is a bear. Just in case you were wondering. One of those sunbears they have in Wellington Zoo that look like cuddly little snugglebuddies but would rather eat your kneecap than watch Gossip Girl with you. I assume. (Dear androgynous outmoded primitive self-help system, I want a bear. I will call her fluffypants and take her jogging and yes, maybe she will eat Jack Russells but I will kick her bone-filled poo off the path afterwards and give tearful ex-pet owners a stolen airline mint each.)) that planes stay up coz of like, the wind goes faster underneath than above? But still, YOU ARE IN THE AIR ON NOTHING! Awesome, right.

And I think this sums up nicely exactly what points I have been trying to make!

1) Tennis is fun. But do not play the day after you play squash unless you want to have to chase balls down Opoho hill for 20 minutes. Hannah, one day I will beat you. (Dad: you; I probably never will.)

1a) I want a job. (Employ me. I am fun and can make pina coladas. Fact.) But, I would like a bear more.

4) Cheese is the best thing ever. (Yeah really? Typical. And yes it is. I would totally rather have sexy cheese than cheesy sex. (This sounds vaguely unhygienic also.))

16) The end. Have a nice day.



*why do people not know things. It mystifies me.

**Hemm heeeemmmm:


Iambic pentameter thesis.

I did receive a mail that said to me


"I do believe the page has not been writ"


I hit reply "I fear it will not be...

complete before the date that was foretold."


My lecturer then sent another mail

"if you do not hand in on time; you fail."

I now return, from net to word, to try...

and type some words. Against my fate I rail.

***THIS is proper usage of hysterical. Thank you.

My childhood. Was not boring.

Despite what some (clearly jealous) people think, growing up in a white suburban upper middle class home, and all the privilege that that entails, with a doctor and a housewife (with two tertiary degrees) as parents, three siblings, a dog and a cat, is not exactly a walk in the park. (Though I did, often, walk in the park, the one over the road. With the gleaming child-friendly playground and sea views; attractive blonde women walking various animals and pet children about, sipping chai mocchalattefrappes and tweeting on i-phones, or whatever the 2002 equivalent of an i-phone was. A cellophone with no aerial. A home phone with a really long cord. A tin with a string. What did people DO in 2002? Did they still wear bootleg jeans? I know I wore orange and pink skivvies and leggings (possibly, yes, with teapot motifs) until high school. And then it was on with a continuation of the orange theme with USA hoodies and dickies shorts. Orange. Giant backpacks. Che shirts.)

From the start, I think that, growing up, I had a fairly non-conventional attitude towards various necessary childhood activities, which could have been summed up in two words “my way”. I did not wear shoes until I was four, and my mother was nearly arrested for child abuse as she pulled me, barefoot and hysterically clinging to street signs and spelling them out in sobs, tears and snot (this has always been a pet joy of mine. I once slapped a small child when she refused to admit that cupboard was spelled “cup” + “board”. I was also a small child at the time. But I would do it again. The fight against stupidity accepts no parameters.) through the knee-deep snow in Bristol in December. 

People, too, annoyed me quite a lot. I would viscously verbally attack any adult who dared to challenge me on any view whatsoever. My primary school teachers would not argue with me about grammar. Or anything. Especially Mrs Jones. She was a smoker, and when I saw her smoking after class one time I explicated with such persistence about the negative consequences of this abhorrent behaviour (with, I have no doubt, extreme usage of fictional anecdotal evidence) that I was made to sit outside the principle’s office for two hours. I wrote a story about drug abuse (“She stopped, there, at the top of the stairs. Something, dark, called from below, and she slowly stepped forward, into the abyss that awaited”) and got a gold star for using so many commas.

I also broke my nose doing a cartwheel. To this day I still do not fully understand in what way, exactly, this is possible.

In intermediate I had to come to New Zealand. So I sat under a desk and read. 

It was a nice desk; it faced out of a window, from which I could watch everybody else riding in tiny circles on scooters and hitting people with scooters and holding hands and getting pregnant and so on (Evan’s bay intermediate. Need I say more.) I did not have a scooter. I really wanted a “RAZOR!”, which was metallic and shiny and (I assume) could corner extremely sharply. But my mum did not believe in scooters. Or trans fats in school lunches. Or TV. So, these being the primary measures behind acceptance into pre-teen society, I remained a non-homogenised child, and read War and Peace (boring. But they shoot bears and fuck peasants) and the Satanic Verses (fucking boring. Everybody has the same name) and Annie Proulx and Margaret Atwood and Mark Doty and other various tomes I collected from the shelves of my parents' bookshelf that were reachable for a 120cm child (I actually grew a whole 40cm in high school!) and occasionally teachers would approach me (moderate trepidation in their voices) and ask if I would like to emerge and participate. And I would look at them. For a bit. Then utter a measured “no”, and return to Bill Bryson or Forster, and they would dither for a bit, then leave me alone for another week.

In addition to this scooter-related failing at life (I fucking swear, EVERYBODY had a scooter! It was a seriously big deal. Not having a scooter was kind of like not having a favourite dinosaur; unimaginable, inexplicable and unacceptable) I never had a bedroom. I feel that there is some sort of adolescent rite of passage in which one is required to retreat and lurk for four to six years in a dark, somewhat acrid-smelling cave filled with posters of guitar-clasping individuals in eyeliner and vaguely explicit jeans and tissue boxes and broken cd cases and pieces of ego, to emerge, wearied but not spotty, an unsullied fresher with a limitless alcohol tolerance and positive outlook on life and ipod. 

But all I had was an alcove in the hall. It had a bed and a pinboard, but the amount of angst possible without doors and walls proved severely limited. I tried my best with surly lesbianity (and goddamn did I try! Waistcoats, lip piercings, the entire Tegan and Sarah back catalogue) but after five years of emotional anguish and not a single tattoo, I gave up the premise and turned away from drama class and cask wine, and set off to find my place in the world. LOL. Jokes. I went to Mexico.

After being sufficiently (catholically and cathartically) heterosexual for a year or two, I cut my losses, bought some scratchy tweed pants, eighteen scarves, and a longboard, and went off to some cold place to sit.

And so I became.... Not a child. Called Brian.


Called Ruby. LOL. Enjoy.