If I Ever Feel Better

I get really into elections.  Really, really into elections.  It’s partly strong political conviction - I think it matters who runs the country and what they stand for - and the remainder is just pure geekiness.  I love the mechanics and the personalities and I reel off stats and history like other people do with cricket or soccer or rugby.

This time around, it’s been mostly an intellectual pleasure.  There just hasn’t been much of a distinction between the two parties on the things that matter to me.  I know Labor or the Liberals will introduce different taxes, abolish others in different ways, lock asylum seekers up in different detention centres, compensate coal-fired power stations for making minimal environmental improvements according to different mechanisms…but I just haven’t been feeling it.

Fortunately there’s still been the spectacle of hundreds of Australians making fools of themselves in an effort to attract voters and…geek-out of all geek-outs…a hung parliament with no clear winner and the end result in the hands of 5 of the most different individuals you could hope to meet.

I’m satisfied.  But then I’m a comfortable white, middle-class, straight professional and I’ll be pretty much ok whatever happens.  For a lot of other people, the end result might be more important.

After 12 months, 7 or 8 rehearsals and 2 drummers, I think Nikki and my band might finally be going somewhere.  Not anywhere fast, mind, but somewhere.  Last weekend, we had a practice at our place where we nailed our first song (including art rock outro with melodica), got somewhere with our second song and even started on a few others.  We also have a stable 5-member line up.  As in the line up is stable - not necessarily the members themselves.

Our songwriting philosophy at the moment seems to be “write the title first and the song will come”.  This may not be a tried and tested method, but we don’t really have another.

We also have a tentative name - The Telephone Book Inspectors.  Music bloggers everywhere - pay attention.  You will certainly be the first person in the world to be in to us if you get in now.

I didn’t grow up in a “dog” household, or really an animal household of any kind.  My parents bought us cats when we were very young.  The first didn’t accompany us when we moved to Queensland in ‘85 and the last one met a tragic end in ‘89, as did a few pet birds — and that was the end of our pet ownership.

Nikki, on the other hand, grew up with a beautiful Wheaten Terrier who still lives in Canada with her family.  So from time to time we’ve talked about getting a dog.  I’ve been very practical about it for a long time and insisted that the time when we can look after a dog properly will come, but it’s not yet.  Things started to break down when my sister and family bought a bouncy ball of white fluff called Sophie the Spoodle.  She’s won over everyone and made me start to think that maybe I could be a “dog person”.

More recently, we made the mistake of spending a solid hour in a pet store cuddling a Cavoodle that Nikki named “Teddy Ruxpin” because of his resemblance to the creepy animatronic toy.  He broke us both and we nearly paid up and took him home right then and there.  But sense prevailed and we decided to do things properly: get permission from our landlord, equip the house, find a breeder and make sure we got a dog from a good home.

Our real estate agent said that she just needed to check with strata for our building, but had said before that we probably could have a pet.  We managed to find a breeder a few hours out of Sydney who put us down for the little guy in the picture — officially named Teddy Ruxpin II by us.  And then a few days before we were scheduled to meet Teddy, we got the news that our building doesn’t allow pets.  No reason — the owners of the other flats just like it that way.

A few people have told us to damn the man and get a dog anyway.  It’s a bit hard when we have strata committee members on every side of us — and neither of us is keen to have a dog that has to be hidden away at all times.

There will be other places and other chances to get a dog.  But sadly, both Teddy Ruxpins will now be with their new owners and I wish them well.  I hope they are very happy.

Even though I haven’t been posting at all, I still log into wordpress periodically to check for commenters and clear out the spam.  A lot of it is just gibberish and links to porn and Viagra and all that, but there’s a fascinating psychology at foot in some of them.  The commenter links back to whatever they’re pushing but they tempt you to publish the comment with outright flattery.

My favourite of today’s bunch?

Youre so awesome, man! I cant believe I missed this blog for so long. Its just great stuff all round. Your design, man…too amazing! I cant wait to read what youve got next. I love everything that youre saying and want more, more, MORE! Keep this up, man! Its just too good.

Thank you and God bless you, Mr “online gambling”, wherever you are.

When older people make sweeping generalisations about “Gen-Ys with their Twitters and their Facebooks”, I usually think they’re…well, generalising.  I was born in the 80s (at the early end) and I’m pretty comfortable with technology, but I’m not ADHD about it, nor do I feel the need to post daily pictures of my lunch with annotations of “OMG LOL”.  Nor do I think this is how most of my generation are.  But my goodness, today made me wonder.

Nikki wanted to go and check out the Finders Keepers markets in Eveleigh, so we jumped off the train in Redfern and decided to “follow the hipsters” rather than be too particular about directions.  It was a pretty safe strategy.  The group of late-teen girls we ended up tagging behind were animatedly discussing a friend’s relationship where - and I am not kidding - all the action related to changes of Facebook status.

“So she suddenly went from ‘in a relationship’ to ’single’ and I was like ‘What?’ and I dunno…like, maybe I should ask her or something?”

Like they say these days, if it’s not on Facebook, it didn’t happen.

At the markets, it was a pretty mixed group: hipsters, yipsters, parents with well-dress toddlers, schoolkids - a good cross section of White People.  It was cool enough, although even Nikki had to admit that after seeing 15 stalls with design grads theming their work around owls and birds and deer head, it gets a bit old.

While we were there, the live entertainment consisted of a girl who couldn’t have been more than 18 strumming her guitar and singing folky numbers.  The incongruous thing was that half of her set consisted of angsty early-90s covers (The Cranberries, 4 Non-Blondes etc) and the remainder was her own compositions including songs about - here we go again - Facebook.  Arguing with friends and stalking boys online.  Write about what you know, I guess.  But more than anything, I just want to know how someone born in the 90s even discovers 4 Non Blondes.

What I’m trying to say is this: people born before 1975, I apologise.  You were right.  I’m sure people my age have spent the last few decades looking just as absurd to you as these guys do.  I just have one last question: how did you not end up slapping us?

“You’re not blogging anymore,” said my friend the other day, someone I hadn’t seen in a few years.

“No, I haven’t really had the time.”

“I guess the angst is all gone too,” she said.  “You’re married, you’ve got a good job.”

Maybe.  I certainly don’t feel the same way I did when I was 24 and starting blogging.  As I said in my last, very self-referential post, maybe this site wouldn’t work if I ever did feel better.  But that’s not entirely it too.

Mostly I think I just got tired of the sound of my own voice.  The same tone, the same kind of thoughts about the universe.  It started to feel like I wasn’t writing anything that I would want to read if it was by someone else.  Has that changed?  I hope so.  Maybe I need to try a few new things - throw some ideas out there and see if they work.  Experiment a little.

Standing up the front at Phoenix’s Sydney show this month, Nikki turned to me during the opening bars of “If I Ever Feel Better” and said “I just realised where your blog gets it’s name.” This coming from a massive Phoenix fan.  So much for flaunting my hipster cred in my blog title.

It occurred to me that if you don’t know the song then I’m not sure how you’d interpret my title.  To be honest, it probably just sounds emo.  But the song is far from emo - it’s resigned, but hopeful.  It feels like better times are just around the corner.  I guess that’s where I was going two and a half years ago when I moved to Sydney and re-named my blog.

When I moved to Sydney, I couldn’t have expected what would happen within a year: that I’d meet my future wife, lose my job, go travelling, find another, get engaged.  But as it happens, I do feel better than in early 2007, thanks for asking.

A decade isn’t a long time, but it’s apparently enough to trigger some heavy nostalgia among movie critics.  Not only did Popmatters run a gushing feature earlier in the year about all the brilliant films of 1999, now the Guardian is declaring 1999 “a cinematic goldmine“.  I’m tempted to agree.  I contributed to the Popmatters series and it made me realise how well some late century movies are standing the test of time.  But it’s hard for me to assess how good it really was, when it was also the year that I turned 18, moved to the big city, and spent every moment not in class or the pub in a darkened movie theatre.  I lived and breathed movies that year and maybe - just maybe - I’m a bit nostalgic about it.

But what’s going on with the rest of the people writing these articles?  We can’t have all reached adulthood and embraced film-nerdery at the same time.  Have 28 year olds taken over the internet?

The internet makes everyone a critic - but fortunately it doesn’t make everyone a good critic.  Everyone knows the quality of your average Amazon customer review, especially the one-star reviews.

Thanks to the Guardian, I’ve now discovered Cynical-C’s “You Can’t Please Everyone”, which collects the brilliant, misspelled contrarian wisdom of Amazon reviewers.  You’ll need to devote a bit of time to reading these gems, but a few of my favourites are:

“The 80s produced some great artists like Rick Astley, Milli Vanilli, Culture Club, etc. Then this horrible Smiths abomination comes along and makes this cringe-inducing album.”

(Of “Moby Dick”) “Too nautical for me.”

Two thumbs up, guys.

My introduction to post-honeymoon married life was a little bit bumpy.  A stressful time at work, a pulled muscle and a bad head cold all left me a touch grouchy and irritable.  Luckily none of that outweighed the sheer joy I get out of coming home to find Nikki here, rather than thousands of miles away.

I always pictured marriage as being a synonym for “maturity”.  Married people had responsibilities and commitments and children and didn’t goof around.  My dozen or so young married friends have taught me otherwise, but I still saw them as being a little more serious.  Getting engaged to Nikki, I knew that there was no way a marriage certificate was going to make us anything close to “grown-up”.

I get reminded of this when I come home to find that Nikki has bought a decorative metal tree to hang all her earrings (and a metal elephant for her rings) and has spent the afternoon dancing to Passion Pit in a style I can’t possibly describe.  I’ll post a video one day, I promise. Anyway, it delights me and makes me do a little dance myself.

I’ve spent too much of the last ten years wanting to be old and now I’m savouring the feeling of being impossibly young.