If I Ever Feel Better

It’s funny the music and musicians that can completely escape your notice.  Right now I’m wondering how I missed Kaki King for so long and why I was so dismissive when I first heard her.

Actually, the second question is easier to answer than the first - the first couple of bars of her debut album from 2003 were enough to make me think it was going to be a disc of easy-listening acoustic fluff.  It was only months later when I listened to “Close Your Eyes…” that I realised that this was something special indeed.

I think it’s the way she includes notes and pickings that sound accidental or even plain wrong, but are so effective at subverting your expectations and triggering an almost physical reaction.

It’s reminding me that even after the thousands of songs I’ve heard and loved, there are still surprises to be had.

To the anonymous reader who found my site by typing “john laws dickhead” into a search engine, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Do yourself an enormous favour and read this delightful article from those crazy Oregonians over at the Burnside Writers’ Collective entitled “How to Use God to Get What You Want“.  I’m most impressed that they, like me, use the term “Christian bling” to describe things like these.

I was interested to read this new blog post by Tim Keller on inner-city church planting because of how much it linked in with some conversations I had yesterday.

So often we take a view of ministry borrowed from 19th century overseas mission and apply it wherever we go. This includes a new kind of “commuter” church where Christians, usually from more affluent, white areas, set up church plants in new areas - but conventiently don’t even move house.

This may seem like an ok idea - bringing church to areas that are underserviced. But it treats church merely as a “service”. There’s not much chance of community building when you live thirty minutes away (on a good day) and can’t just drop by a new friend’s place for coffee. So it ends up making the locals feel patronised (bad) or become passive consumers (also bad).

But in such a tribal city as Sydney, who is ever going to move to a different part of town just to be Jesus’ hands and feet?

Paul has tagged me to share eight things about me. Where to begin?

1. I’m the middle of three children. Both my siblings live far away from me, although the one without small children is able to come and visit me next week.

2. I come from a highly educated, intelligent and opinionated family. We have always held to the maxim that religion and politics are the only topics worth discussing at the dinner table. That might be the Irish heritage.

3. In 26 years of life, I’ve called Sydney, Ballarat, Mount Tamborine, the Gold Coast, Drouin, Melbourne and Canberra home. I’ve just recently come full circle and moved back to Sydney.

4. I used to want to be an engineer, so I did an engineering degree. Four years in, I decided I didn’t want to be an engineer after all and applied for government jobs. Now I’m a lobbyist for a non-engineering-related company. I guess you change a bit post high school.

5. I’m a Christian who’s never felt very much at home in the church or with other Christians. I’m still trying to work out if that’s my problem or someone else’s.

6. When I was twelve, my Top 5 recording artists were Johnny Diesel, Hunters and Collectors, Bryan Adams, Billy Joel and Tommy Emmanuel. When I was eighteen, they were Radiohead, Ash, Supergrass, the Stone Roses and the Manic Street Preachers. Now I’d have a hard time limiting myself to fifty.

7. I used to avoid confrontation to a ridiculous extent. Now I can be pretty assertive.

8. My all-time dream job would be to be a full-time author, columnist and general rent-a-quote. Words and opinions come easily to me - I’d love to be paid for them.

OK, now I tag Heartichoke, Sarah, Andy, Jen and Meg. I know that’s only five, but I couldn’t think of three others.

My workplace has been doing a whole range of health checks for free during the day. So on Tuesday I strolled along to get my cardiometabolic risk factors measured. “I got a big surprise when they told me I was morbidly obese,” I said to my co-workers when I got back.But the truth is, the test showed blood pressure a fair bit higher than the healthy range. Part of that was my tension going in for the test, but that kind of tension has been a part of my life for several years now. It confirmed what I’ve always suspected - that my worrying and anxiousness is taking years off my life.

Today, I had a sofa bed delivered to my apartment. It’s a beautiful bit of furniture but it’s also a beast of a thing to lug up several flights of stairs. One of the delivery guys didn’t seem to be having fun getting it up here and he stopped every few seconds to utter “fuck” and variations on the theme, abusing his colleague periodically and just generally being a jerk. After what was really only a brief struggle the sofa was sitting nicely where I wanted it and the job was well done, but he continued with his rant against apartment access and customers ordering big things for little units.

The overpowering negativity of it all just astounded me. How did this guy get by from day to day? I don’t imagine my sofa was the hardest thing he’d ever had to deliver and if he was cursing his life at 11:30am, I don’t expect he was wearing an ear-to-ear grin by 5. “I’ll end up in a mental institution for sure,” he commented at one point. Too right, but it won’t be the couches and beds that send him there.

The little booklet we got following the cardio check-up gave helpful hints including “Relax and try to stress less”. Easier said than done, true, but it’s not hard to see where your attitude can be improved.

Last week was strangely full of people - visitors from out of town, emails and phone calls from old friends, good conversations. By Friday night, I was feeling almost overwhelmed by a sense that I’ve been very lucky in the people that have come my way. While I had few close friends at the age of 17 when I moved out of home, every few years since have brought with them people who I suspect will continue to feature in my life for some time.

In fact, I can picture myself sitting on a porch somewhere, drink in my shaky hand and wrinkles on my face, mouthing off to one of my lifelong mates about some bollocks or other.

It’s a nice feeling.

Apparently someone got some cables mixed up and killed my broadband, so I’m on dial-up for the next few weeks while they attend to all the people up in the Hunter without internet and then sort me out.  Blogging may be a bit scarce until then.  Sorry!

On Saturday, the lovely Tova and I found our way into a little second-hand bookshop with a room full of old vinyl. We were trawling through all the gems when we stumbled across an album of country tunes about trucks by famous radio host and all-round dickhead John Laws. The shop had put a sticker on the cover saying “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid”. How could we resist?

We spun the record on the shop stereo and as John’s golden tonsils trucked their way through ““, the owner put her head around the corner to ask in a troubled voice, “Is this John Laws?”

When we confirmed that it indeed was, she shared a story about a previous bookshop she had worked in. She had found a John Laws book lying on the desk, so she moved it onto a pile of books for sale. The owner of the shop noticed it and screamed “No! We are not selling that. It’s meant to go in the bin!”

So this woman responded, “But we sell Mein Kampf.”

“I don’t care. I hate him. I’m not selling it.”

The moral of the story? John Laws = Worse than Hitler.

Of all the disturbing trends in modern society, few have the truly mind-bending wtf-ness of the Hair Metal Covers Album. It may be too early to call it a trend, but with the last year brining us both Def Leppard’s and Poison’s “efforts” - and Twisted Sister’s truly appalling Christmas record - it’s three albums too many already.

And I’m not kidding when I tell you that Poison’d features covers of Bowie, the Rolling Stones and the Cars - clearly they are the inheritors of those rock giants’ legacies!

Someone please start a petition before Mötley Crüe bring us their “unique twist” on the Beatles.