Stompies We'd Like to See

I love overhearing bits of conversation out of context. Sometimes those bits are sad, sometimes they're incomprehensible, and every now and then they're breath-stealingly funny. Several years ago, Trace told me that in South Africa this is known as picking up stompies: 'stompies' are cigarette butts, so 'picking up stompies' means collecting the butt-ends of other people's stories. Excellent, no?

Today, though, I had kind of the reverse experience. Prompted by I-don't-know-what, the phrase 300 bags of saline and a strawberry cupcake popped into my head. Leaving aside for a moment the psychology involved in unpicking that thought process, I did immediately recognise that this was the stompie of my dreams, the ultimate prize. Can you imagine strolling past someone and hearing those words come floating by? It's majestic, the dernier cri. I giggled to myself on the street for several minutes and eventually needed to duck into an alley to pull myself together.

So here's the challenge: I want you-all to come up with your Dream Stompies. Hit me up in the comments. I'm expecting particularly good efforts from Ev, Nath and Anthony, just so you know.

XOXO

Aw.

Good to know my sword gets along with someone.

AUGH.

I am *cranky*. I just had 3 1/2 hours of belly dancing, in which I was spectacularly useless and injured myself besides. The first 90 minutes was rehearsing my new sword piece, which is both my first solo and my first sword anything, and &?@*%#!!!. Last week we did the first half of the choreo, and my sword work was fine but the rest of my body was having the day off (to the point that my very, very supportive teacher could muster little more than, 'um... I'm sure you'll be fine'). This week we finished the choreo, and my body was more or less behaving but the sword didn't want a fucking bar of it. It would not stay anywhere I put it, and I ended up dancing the entire second half with my hand on the hilt EVERY TIME I RAN IT THROUGH. FOR 90 EFFING MINUTES. Oh, and it went crashing to the floor at one point - which it has never done before - and caught me hard on the wrist, right on a nerve, so I had some really fun tingling all through my thumb and will have a whacking great bruise there tomorrow.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, I had another rehearsal right after with the troupe, wherein we were learning a new drum solo. Except it wasn't new to me, as I did it for six weeks in Zehara's class (which is separate from the troupe) a few months ago. But do you think I could get a fucking step right? No. No I could not. By the end, Zehara was openly laughing at me and telling the rest of the girls about how I'd cussed my way through my first lesson with her. Which, I had to laugh too - it was pretty funny - but it was dead clear that she'd just given up on me tonight. I was not to be helped, so she'd written me a pass. But honestly, I was just... I don't even know how to spell the sound, you guys. And I'm performing both of these songs A WEEK FROM SUNDAY.

I need to lie down.

XOXO

Yippee!!

I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job! I got a job!

I'm a little bit excited.

Few of you who read this will have had the chance to meet Roseanna Fernandes, so you'll have to take my word when I tell you how loved she was. She was endlessly kind and generous, even to - or especially to - awkward high schoolers who got in the way by hanging around Room 012 at every possible opportunity. She was a rare and special person, and as good a role model and friend as I or any student could have hoped for; she will be sorely, sorely missed.

She is also the reason I still love gospel music despite all of my objections to religion. In that spirit, then, please take a moment to listen (ignoring the Franglais) and raise a glass to the memory of Mrs. Fernandes. She was one of the good ones.

XOXO

I read the news today, oh fuck...

So Julia 'The Icewoman Cometh' Gillard is PM.

This is a tricky thing to take in. It got dropped on me this morning while listening to NPR on the way to work, and I reeled. I'd only checked the ABC News website not 48 hours before and there'd been no hint that this was in the offing; now all of a sudden Australian's got it's first HBIC and I'm torn between feeling thrilled to the core that a woman - a competent, intelligent, effective woman (i.e., Bishop, Hanson and Palin: not you) - is running things; impressed by her ability to make such a tough choice and act on it quickly and successfully; and absolutely effing terrified that Labor has just handed this year's election to Tony Abbott. I've thought long and hard about this, and I believe that I would rather see John Howard back in power than Tony Abbott. That's how much I fear that lunatic.

This morning I read a piece by Annabel Crabb that said that while Rudd was popular with the electorate, he was never much liked by other politicians, and when his public rating started to slip there were very few people left to catch him. Gillard is, by all accounts that I read/heard, very popular with and well-respected by other pols; however, I'm worried that she's not nearly as well-liked by the public, and they're the ones who'll be deciding if she keeps the job. The problem is, while Gillard is smart and experienced and a hell of a politician, she's also a bit of a cold fish (Josh Thomas memorably referred to her as the Queen of Narnia), a fact that will count against her even more because she's a woman. She's not soft, she's not maternal, and she's not a sex object; she's the boss that the men refer to as a ballbuster because she got further than they did and doesn't put up with blokey bullshit. She can't be accused of having slept her way to the top, so she must have castrated her way there instead.

And she's a ranga besides.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a feminist dialectic. And let me make myself perfectly clear: if allowed to govern, Julia Gillard will be excellent; I do not doubt that for a moment. I'm just not at all sure she'll be allowed to govern.

What's killing me on a personal level is that I had no idea this was in the offing. Even with all my reading I can't get a feel for the timeframe of the whole thing, apart from 'really fucking quick', but I can't help but think that if I were there I would have had some inkling, some insight that things were afoot. And if I didn't, if it had been the shock to me there that it was here, I'd have rung Anthony and Paul and Alison and Hamish and Nikki and Michelle and Amanda and Emily and Stuart and we'd have sat around with our soda waters and beers and Long Island iced teas and absinthe and talked and talked and talked until I felt like I had some grasp on it, like I knew what to think. I feel very, very far from home at this moment.

XOXO

My Beach Holiday

So the Cape was brilliant, and exactly what I needed. The sun, the sand, the salt water... all of these things work wonders on me, they always have. And it was reassuring to learn that I could love Atlantic Ocean beaches too, and that the sun here is strong enough to tan me.

But it was more than that. One finds guidance in the oddest places, and this weekend I found mine on the $1 shelf of a used bookshop, in the form of a book of poems by one of the greatest dramatic talents of our generation, Ally Sheedy. Yes, that Ally Sheedy. Bet you didn't know she was a poet. And that's because she bloody well isn't. This book contains some of the worst attempts at writing that I have ever seen, and I include my own high school journals in that statement.

It has long been observed that nothing bonds people like adversity, and it was in that spirit that six of us came together in the wee hours of Saturday morning, fueled by the finest Ireland has to offer (Barry's tea and Bushmill's whiskey), to share Ms Sheedy's efforts in the only way that could possibly do them justice. You are all in my heart and my nightmares forever, and if you bastards weren't all leaving the country so soon I'd say we should make a habit of it. As it is, we must console ourselves with becoming Internet Phenomena.

XOXO

P.S. Thanks, Oscar! I'll pick you out a really good rock.