Hello. Greetings. Welcome. Nice to Meet You.
So the idea of
making a zine had been suggested to
me and grew in appeal to a level which provided satisfactory motivation to
actually do it. The main purpose of this is my own entertainment but if you
also are amused by my ramblings and relatively unfounded opinions then hey,
we’re all winners. I might first point out that I am not much of a writer; my
friend sarcastically accused me of being a linguist, in response to which I
asked what linguist meant. I think the above is a relatively comprehensive
“introduction to Mary”: indecisive, unmotivated, selfish, winner (yeah!), and
not really a linguist. So have fun and good luck to you.
Now that we’re
past that, what to put in this thing… that as yet is something I have not
really decided on. I can think of a whole lot of rants that I could go on that
would take up a whole lot of words and pages but I don’t know how interesting
the produced words and pages would be to myself or anyone else, thus my
hesitance.
Well, people seem
to be rather intrigued by my family so perhaps I will use them as a starting
base. Throughout reading this you may find yourself asking questions like who
is Mary? Why is Mary? What is Mary? How is Mary? Where is Mary? Ect.
First of all, I
am Mary. Since my immediate family consists of 3 people, me being one of them,
I think it is appropriate to include myself in the explanation of my family.
I’m seventeen, the oh-so wonderful age of nothing except the last year of
childhood and it took me a good six months of being seventeen to even work out
that it stood for that one. It kind of sucks; sixteen you get to be sweet
sixteen and eighteen you can finally get into the stuff you’ve been getting
into illegally for the last three years without being illegal. I don’t really
see any great appeal in anything beyond 16 to be honest, its all kind of
downhill from there, but only a little bit steep, once you hit 25 it’s going
down at almost a 90 degree angle. I go to a Christian school and have grown up in
a “Christian environment”. I like music and things that I think are good. I’m
an only child, which is a pity because I think my brothers and or sisters would
have been very interesting people. Consequently I am probably the most horridly
spoilt person I know, but I figure it makes up for my parents not having more
children. Most of the things I like, eg photography, art, music, ballroom
dancing, ice skating I am extremely under-talented at. But oh well, fun is fun,
it just means my favourite things pose no career potential. I seem to live an
oddly different lifestyle to the other people in my year level at school and I
can't really work out why. People have a tendency for finding me fascinating
and peculiar and, once again, I can't really work out why, and, to be honest, I
don’t understand why everyone doesn’t think exactly what I think.
Next of the list
of Mary’s Family would come my mum. Up until just recently I have lived with
her out on the “farm”, which I am only referring to as a farm because everybody
else does, I personally profess that my house is not part of a farm, which by
definition according to the internet (which is always FACT) says: a tract of land,
usually with a house, barn, silo, etc., on which crops and often livestock are
raised for livelihood.
This
disproves the farm theory entirely as we have no barn, no silo, no crops and no
live stock except for one horse that is actually
like 35 years old and will probably die super soon so, for the purposes of the
argument and simplification, doesn’t count as anything. And we are not raising
anything for livelihood, unless you count my mum’s recent obsession with
growing trees as “livelihood”, but I don’t. Therefore, all arguments of “Mary
lives on a farm” have just been put to an end. I would however, allow, without
any objections, people to refer to my house, or place of residence rather, as a
lifestyle property. I DO live on 47
acres of land out in the middle of sort-of whoop whoop (not boganville, all
kids who live anywhere not south assume that anything remotely south is bogan –
IT’S NOT) and the people next door do have cows and there are quite often
kangaroos in our front garden and on our drive way. Things on my driveway have
been shown to front some problems in the past; especially next door’s freaking
cows. Arriving to school an hour late and writing “cow on driveway” on the
“reason” section of the sign-in-late slip is an occurrence I am still yet to
have lived down. I remember at the time not actually thinking it was that an
unreasonable excuse or particularly out of the ordinary, but the reaction of
the lady at reception and the people around me when she read it out in a
cynical tone indicated otherwise.
[Yes that is my mother; yes she is waving a flag in
the middle of a paddock with her friends. Yes that is her idea of a fun and
constructive situation. And yes she is wearing a drizabone.]
Continuing,
I lived on the LIFESTYLE PROPERTY with my mother. Her name is Christine. Yes
she is relatively a lot older than other people’s parents, I’m not exactly sure
of her age, I think its somewhere around 57 give or take a few years. Her age
has resulted in some rather awkward conversations regarding people, mostly
hairdressers or people in shops, making comments like “Having a nice day out
shopping with Gran?” to which I would smile and nod in response and mum would
quickly correct them by saying “mum actually” and they would usually smile and
laugh uncomfortably. Such were the years of my early to mid childhood. What
good times they were. The perception of my mothers’ identity in the minds of my
friends is largely dependant on a small number of outrageous, but completely
true, unfortunately for my sake, recounts that they have been told. These, in
brief, include horn blowing, moving to China, becoming Jewish, disallowing
Christmas trees, chasing me around the house with a tea towel, producing a
dance-drama production entitled “The Dance of Psychosis”, Q-chords (don’t even
ask, trust me your life is better having never heard one), attempting to cast
demons out of an extremely unwilling (and undemon-possesed) 13 year old me,
hiding magic anointed hankies under my dad’s pillow, calling the police when my
dad drove me to the shops to meet a boy, the
police then telling us to tell her to go see a psychiatrist, spending $20000
dollars on getting rid of olive trees from our property because Jesus told us
to, even though we don’t have an air conditioner and then complaining about the
heat, singing to my friends, singing over the microphone at somewhat
inappropriate times in church, flag waving, and horrible fashion sense. She is
probably some one I could quite easily write a book about, but that would make
me a terrible daughter and also she would probably read it. I do not think that
would go down at all well. She could be described as, though perhaps a little
(or a lot) crazy, an overall good person.
[At this point you should note that this is a photograph of mum,
myself and her two brothers (guess which ones gay!) and that every single
member of her family, myself included, this photograph a prime example, has
been a victim of the mullet.]
The
last person to make the amazing list of
three is my dad. He has also developed a rather biased impression amongst
my friends that has, yes, also occurred as a result of the numerous stories I
have mentioned to them. This impression could also be a result of “his” Myspace
which became quite popular amongst my friends. Apparently it was also quite popular with acquaintances. I
speak to people who know a surprising lot about my dad and I often briefly
wonder why. This Myspace is something that, to my knowledge, the existence of
my dad is unaware. My cousin’s discovery of this website lead to me deleting
about 90% of any writing that was there in fear of them being like “hey Barry,
saw your Myspace the other day, its pretty rad. You’ve got some fair
young-looking friends” to which his response would be, “What is Milespacse?
What friends?” and that would pose an inevitable downhill situation that would
ultimately result in me getting in lots of trouble and hurting dad’s feelings.
Myspace
is an extremely entertaining network. I will sadly admit to having gained a lot
of entertainment out of simply looking at profiles of different people that I
don’t know. Some similar-aged lady to my dad appears to have discovered him on
Myspace and now they are friends.
From
her space I have discovered a whole network of 50+ women who have and regularly
use. This is very amusing to say the least. The best part is that she has left
dad an “uplifting” comment every week or so for the past 5 or 6 months despite
his continual lack of response. It is also a network that has gotten me into a
considerable amount of trouble; take for example the making of a Myspace for my
principal. What a simultaneously good and bad idea on so many levels. That,
however, was the ending point of my
making-other-people-myspaces-they-don’t-know-about phase.
So,
back to my dad, he is good. He is most renowned for his apparent phobia of
things wearing out. This is something that I, having grown up with, never
actually realized for myself. I only noticed this harsh reality when it was
pointed out to me by my uncle who had lived with my parents for a number of
years. I still continue to notice things I have deemed as normal activities in
which my dad engages are actually ridiculous attempts at stopping things from
wearing out. My uncle said that dad told him to, when he had a shower and was
washing the shampoo out of his hair, to move his head around in a circular
motion. Apparently this was so that the water would land on all the different
tiles instead of just landing on the same one and wearing it out. True story.
He has also taken all the latches off of the pool-fence gates in our house so
that they can’t wear out. Once he got angry at me for using the stove “too hot”
because “the handle of the pan would get overheated, wear out faster and
eventually fall off”. I responded to this that if the handle fell off in 10
years time he could blame me and I would spend the whole $5 and buy him a new
one. He has had the same pair of glasses for 30 years. He never folds them when
he takes them off, ever, because this would wear out the screws. He won’t use
the windscreen wipers when it rains because it will wear out the windscreen.
Dishwashers wear out dishes (ours is full of plastic bags, which until not so
long ago I thought is what lots of people did), toothbrushes and toothpaste
wear out teeth (dad uses bi-carbonate soda), washing machines wear out clothes,
running wears out your heart, and the list of ridiculous and useless theories
about methods my dad pursues of not wearing anything out, ever, continue.
He
also seems to have a phobia of saying no to me and will do anything I ask him
to that is within his capability. I have tested this theory out and it has been
proven right. Saying this makes me sound like a terrible person but really I’m
not, it’s just that dad is a super nice person. I don’t really understand his
logic on giving me everything I ask for but hey, I’m not complaining!
[This is a wonderful example of when a “picture says a thousand
words” in describing the relationship between myself and Nanna.]
He
lives with his mother who is 90. She’s old and has dementia and I don’t know
how he can stand it. I stayed there for a week once when I was angry at mum for
reading my diary and calling my then boyfriend’s mum, and Nanna drove me to a
point where I would rather sleep in the shed outside than inside with her. She
is lovely yes, but very very very very very repetitive and forgetful. Dad has
put signs up all around the house saying what day it is and whether she has a
shower or not that day and when the next shower
day is just so that she will stop asking him. Shower day is pretty much the only event that ever occurs in her
weeks. I would really much sooner die than live like that. Dad is amazing
though, he spends more or less all of his time looking after her. I have a
feeling this is the future heading towards me, being an only child and
presently having parents who do a lot for me. I have a sneaking suspicion that
they are intending that I return the favor.
[Me, aged 12 and my dad aged maybe 15, a terrifying prediction
of what is to come]
Basically,
put my parents together in some weird and warped mix and you come out with me.
How that works I don’t really know. It makes sense to some degree but on the
other hand doesn’t really make sense at all. It is possible that I should be a
whole lot less sane than I am. But hey everybody has their quirks; perhaps I am
just super good at amplifying those of my parents. I sometimes wonder if my
parents are aware of their weirdness and thus wonder if people wonder that
about me. Because people do often consider me some what of an abnormality
amongst other girls my age but I don’t completely comprehend what element of my
personality is so dramatically different to everybody else’s. And this, see, is
my theory of what my dad is like with his obsession with making things last. He
tells himself the rational “nobody wants their stuff to wear out quickly and to
have to throw it away” and has taken that to extremities but I don’t think he
realizes that this is the case. Thus I wonder what things I have done this
with. It was pointed out to me today, the inevitability of my turning out the
same as my parents and that even in trying NOT to turn out like them, that was
just proof that I was already like them. I find the truth in this a little
bleak. Apart from the significance of the above photograph, I recently went
sunglasses shopping. I spent a substantial amount of time deciding on what pair
of sunglasses I thought was a good idea and made me look the least like someone
who didn’t pull off sunglasses well, which is what I am. A few days ago I was
looking through some random drawer in our hall way and came across an extremely
similar pair of sunglasses that I have since learnt belonged to my mother when
she was my age. Ahhh such is the path I have begun to head down.
This
is a picture of where I lived. It is taken from the amazing programme known as Google Earth. It has, without debate,
provided me and my friends with literally hours (or at least one) of
entertainment. I will admit that this was the first time I had tried to find my
house for myself though and it did take me a good 45 minutes to get there. This
photo is useful because it demonstrates the isolation of my place of residence,
I mean how many other houses do you see there? It also demonstrates my super
long, speed hump infested drive way. (Speed humps are yet another attempt made
by my father to not wear things out). You will notice that there is at the end
of the driveway, a continuing road. In the picture you can’t see where it leads
to but it actually leads to a dam. Once me and one of my friends thought it would
be a great idea to drive down this semi-road. It was not a great idea, not only
did his piece-of-crap car get bogged at the bottom, after getting it unbogged,
it also had a great amount of trouble getting itself back up the hill. That car
was indisputably the worst car I have ever been a passenger in. the door didn’t
shut properly so it was, of course, tied shut with a t-shirt. The other door
that did shut was impossible to open. The windows, which were automatic – how
classy, had ceased to work automatically anymore, and consequentially the
effort of moving the, now manual, windows up and down became somewhat
strenuous. When it rained the car would fill up with water, the natural
solution in my friend’s mind, to this problem was to drill holes in the floor
of the car. This car was harbor to many adventures but eventually ended in
tragedy, breaking an old man called Clive’s fence and hitting a tree. That was
the abrupt and tragic end to that pile of junk, dare I call it a car. I have a
secret desire for someone who is driving me home one night to unknowingly
continue down the semi-road towards the dam instead of the driveway that leads
to my house. The best part of this plan is that once you start going down the
road you can’t turn around until you get to the very bottom, and even then it’s
kind of hard; making the entire experience more adventurous. Sadly now that
I’ve written this the plan will be foiled for any former potential victim who
happens to read this.
Roller
skates, and any form of movement on wheels that is not a car I think is
something that is vastly underrated as well as underused and to some extent
frowned upon. I have made it my mission even from a very young age, to resolve
this issue in today’s society by setting an example.
I have decided
that I am never going to drive. I hate it. My life plan is to move somewhere
near town and ride my bike everywhere. If I get super-desperate I will resort
to buying a scooter but not a car because driving is scary and expensive, thus
outweighing any possible benefits. The only downside of not having a car is
that public transport becomes considerably more expensive when one finishes
studying, but I expect that in my personal situation that will not be for
awhile. I will just cross that bridge when I come to it. At least if I get a
scooter I can feel like I’m out of another scene from Garden State. One of my
missions in life is to in some way reenact as many scenes from that film as
possible. I think that it is an achievable goal (especially since it is very
open ended in saying “as many as possible”) but so far I’ve done the
screaming-off-a-cliff thing, and the walking past the taps going off thing and
the having a garden of dead pets thing and burying one. I’ve ridden on a
scooter too and at the time I sort of felt like that counted. I intend to
eventually make a list of all the things I want to do before I die. They are
all of course, rather useless things but still they’re stuff that I really want
to do. An example of these things (along with entire reenactment of scenes from
Garden State) is being lifted up and floating away with lots of helium
balloons. I have a lot of them but I can never remember any except that one.
That makes me sad because if I forget them then I won’t be able to do them! I have also recently acquired a new ambition upon the
discovery of the existence of such a place as LEGO LAND. No I am not kidding,
it really (apparently) exists. And thus I have decided that I am and will at
some stage be going there and riding the Lego boat and going on the Lego rides
and walking amongst the real-life Lego men.
Now I
feel that you have been sufficiently introduced to me, my family and various
other useless pieces of information about me I will move onto other topics.
[This is the back of a
flyer I got advertising The Science of Sleep. My friend read it and proclaimed
that it didn’t make any sense and that none of the paragraphs actually ended
properly and I thought that she was just being picky. It turns out that she was
completely correct by no exaggeration. Whether this was intentional or not I’m
not sure but it is, I think, an excellent representation of the film itself on
a number of levels.]
THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
So the
latest “arty” movie out is The Science of Sleep. I went and saw it a couple of
weeks ago. It’s by the same director as eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,
which is definitely to it’s credit and perhaps a little to the discredit of
eternal sunshine. But despite this I actually really enjoyed it.
Me
saying that a movie is confusing is admittedly quite a common occurrence and
thus has been disregarded in any significance by most people, however, may I
stress to you that this movie truly and honestly DIDN’T make any sense. I think
that that was the intention; part of the “artiness”.
Generally
not making sense is not a good thing and makes the movie a huge waste of two
hours and $15 but this time the lack of seriousness, reality and things that
make sense made me feel happy and warm inside. It could be described as simple
and childish and if these are elements that you appreciate in a film then you
may well very much fancy The Science of Sleep.
I will
admit that I am highly biased towards movies which have good-looking actors in
the as opposed to movies which have an entire cast of slightly less than
fortunate looking people and was quite happily swooning over Gael García Bernal and his
hot French accent and boyish good looks for the majority of the movie. It is
quite possible that if he had not been present I would not have enjoyed the
film anywhere near as much as I did. But his character was generally well built
and intriguing. Actually no, his
character was all over the place but he was very very intriguing and Gael
played him well. This might however, have had a little bit, or a lot, to do
with his mighty fine looks.
It was a pretty
film but there was no depth or really story line at all. This was compensated
for, however by the granted enchanting feelings generated inside. It provided
magical realism minus the general “happy Hollywood” storyline which was why I
appreciated it.
Boys, if you are
looking for a movie to woo a lovely lady, this is the one. And if she doesn’t
like it then she is a boring heartless menace with terrible taste in men. She
is also possibly a little less shallow than me.
Coffee.
Coffee. Give Me. I Need. Coffee. More Coffee.
I am in town a
lot. When I say a lot I do mean a lot with no exaggeration. My school is near
town and home is far away from town thus town becomes my home for times when I
don’t have time to go home. My monotonous presence in the city has resulted in
a number of things such as severe back problems, not very much money, and
extensive
we-know-who-eachother-are-because-we-see-eachother-every-day-in-town-but-we-don’t-ever-talk
basis relationships with a large number of persons who also are frequently
spending large amounts of their time in the city. These people have acquired
names like “angry girl” “Asian with a ukulele” “fat guy on the bus” “bum who says he used to be a pilot”
“filthy but arguably hot rock star boy in JB” “blind Narnia man” “kid who can’t
juggle” and “yoghurt guy”. The truth is to them I probably have names like
“raspberry bullets girl” “bald girl” “unsure of gender person” “loud voiced and
disruption”. My frequent presence
has also resulted in the development of some sort of routine of food and beverage
purchases that has varied over time. For the last six or so months the things
to buy have been killer pythons, white chocolate raspberry bullets, mixed berry
yoghurt and coffee. The first four are fairly straight forward as there are not
too many options there (except for the tough choice between loyalty to killer
pythons and the newly introduced starburst Double Headed anacondas) BUT coffee,
and finding coffee which meets all the requirements has proven to be quite a
dilemma.
The requirements
of coffee are:
Less than $3, take
way available, comfortable seating options, nice setting, nice atmosphere, good
cups, preferably not part of a
chain, interesting chatty good-looking people who work there, prompt service, convenient
location, and strong coffee.
To my genuine
surprise, these requirements I have found nearly impossible to meet.
Hudson’s: coffee
pricing just scrapes in as long as you get a small one. The seats are
comfortable if there is no one sitting in the comfortable ones, however, if
there is then you get stuck wit the crappy hard black plastic ones which score
a big fat ZERO on the comfortableness scale. Buying a drink from Hudson’s buys
you a little bit of status and a little bit of “look at me I’m drinking
Hudson’s coffee.” But not really that much as it isn’t all that respectable.
The coffee itself is rather mediocre. In my opinion it is way too weak. Never
buy a hot chocolate from there either; it’s like drinking poo-water. They do
have a rewards system though which is always incentive to come back. I have
worked out a way to scam them as well. I have a theory anyway, I haven’t
actually been gutsy and conniving enough yet to try it out. It could back fire
and that wouldn’t be very good. The staff there are usually really nice but
they’re boring and impersonal.
They
score: 6.5/10
Gloria
Jeans:
I may or may not have a slight prejudice towards Gloria Jeans #1 because I
tried out for a job there and didn’t get it and #2 because they are owned by
Edge Church and I, somewhat ironically don’t like contributing money into
supporting their money-scamming church. I personally would much rather invest
my money into some small struggling coffee business than a mass Christian-owned
chain. Yes this is my way of rebelling against my upbringing. In all other
areas they are very much similar to Hudson’s. The staff are perhaps a little
more interesting than the Hudson’s staff but still nothing worth coming back
for. I often find myself going there in the summer months though amidst the
discovery of the VOLTAGE. If you haven’t tried one and you like strong coffee
then you definitely shouldn’t die before you try one. The best thing about
Gloria Jeans and my only incentive for going there is the sprinkles. YOU GET TO
PUT ON YOUR OWN SPRINKLES and they have different colors and it makes anything
and everything fun. Nowhere else that I have ever been to does that. If I ever
own a coffee shop I will do that and then it’ll be no more customers for Gloria
Jeans! Oh and the one next to toys R Us always has a riddle on the black board
and if you answer it you get a lollie out of the jar and some of the guys there
are cool and tell us the answers so we can have free lollies. The Hindley
Street branch is much less impressive so that makes it hard to rate them all
fairly.
They
score: 6.9/10 (only because of their sprinkles and lollie jar, other
wise it would have been a 6.4)
Starbucks: The
most horrible and over rated, over priced coffee shop I have ever witnessed.
Their coffee is actually bad. It’s not just mediocre, it is BAD. It is weak and
the only reason anyone buys any is because of the “look at me I’m drinking
STARBUCKS coffee and I wish I was as cool as the American movie stars who drink
it too.” They have taken a hold of the “the more you pay the better it is”
concept and reaped it for all it’s worth. The reason their coffee is so weak is
because the less coffee they have to use the more money they save. But the
overall “coolness” achieved by drinking Starbucks outweighs the fact that it is
horrible coffee and alters people’s perception of what true good coffee
actually is. The amount of customers they get paying $25 just for two coffees
and a sandwich is ridiculous. I am astonished that people are willing to pay
that much for such low quality. It is such cheap attempt at buying a little
piece of social status and ego booster. I do have respect for the person who
thought up the whole thing and managed to promote it so well, it’s genius,
playing on people’s necessity for acceptance with coffee. Every other coffee
chain in the world wishes that they had achieved it first. I have respect for
them just like I have respect for the acclaimed atheist who owns Koorong
Christian Book store. Of course Christians are going to be willing to pay
ridiculous amounts of money if you tell them it’s going to make them closer to
God. Admittedly there is one good drink that I have discovered at Starbucks, it
is the Strawberries and Cream Frappe but at a good $5 each it’s hardly worth
it. I will admit here and now though that I have become a victim many a time to
the ego boost achieved by purchasing anything with the Starbucks label on it.
The staff are nice but boring and there are always too many desperate customers
for them to pay any attention to you, they just want to take you order, your
money and then get to the next person in line as quickly as possible. This is
fair enough because it is their job but it’s no fun! The setting, lighting,
music and atmosphere are all pleasant and their seats are comparatively comfortable
and pretty (provided that you get one). The truth is, apart from this they are
too expensive and their drinks suck.
They
score: 3/10
Bean
Bar:
is one of my all-time favorites. I don’t recall having ever bought anything
from there that I didn’t like. They have a rewards system *which is another
thing Starbucks is lacking* and the people who work there are friendly,
interesting and nice. They pay enough attention to their customers to be able
to recognize the regulars. They have good cups, good seats, quick service, a
nice atmosphere and layout and strong
coffee. Their only downfalls are not having any music playing in the
background and being slightly expensive. Their expensiveness is almost
excusable because their coffee is super strong. They make a fine hot chocolate.
They
score: 8/10
Chocolate
Bean: I
discovered a few years back and thought that it was the highlight of my life.
It is one of the best, if not the best looking coffee shop in Adelaide. It is
very homey, quaint and pretty. It used to be better a few years ago when they
had really cool couches but they took them away and replaced them with the
dreaded black plastic chairs like they have at Hudson’s. This lost a few
potential points for them and is definitely the difference between me going
there or to Cocolait, their arch rival. Their drinks are very nice but also
very pricey, exceeding the $3 maximum, often by a considerable amount. They do
have a large range of chocolaty options (as one would hope with a store called
Chocolate Bean) that you can’t really get anywhere else. The staff there are
neat, all of them are friendly and meet my criteria for good staff. They are
also good because they aren’t part of a chain, which I think gives them a
little bit of license for slightly more expensive drinks.
They
score: 7.9/10
Cibo:
I
find Cibo’s coffee to be relatively unmemorable and over priced. It is very
much on the same level as Starbucks. Their gelati, however, is an entirely
different story. There are just so many flavors and all of them are so good!
The only problem is that said gelati is ridiculously expensive. Cibo’s is a
place for rich Italian businessmen and women and not really anyone else. I find
it a little confusing since everything on the menu is written in Italian
instead of English. The Rundle mall one is stupid and I don’t know why anyone
would go there because their coffee sucks and it’s not even a shop it’s like a
little booth on the side and you’d have to sit next to all the emo kids who
hang out next door at Gloria Jeans. The Rundle Street one is much better.
Downstairs is super-cramped though, especially if you have a school bag. The
seats upstairs are well set out and there is art on the walls but they’re not
very comfortable. It does have big windows though which is a bonus. I rather
like the atmosphere there. The staff are nice but I feel a little unworthy of
their service, me the mere high school student.
They
score: 6.8/10
Café
Blanc:
this is the golden gem of Adelaide that no one except me appears to have
discovered. Up until last week they had $1.50 coffee take away which was a
dream come true. I don’t know what the price will be now that they’ve decided
to take away the special and I must admit that I do feel a little bit betrayed.
They get you all in and attached to the place and then they take away the thing
that drew you in in the first place. The guys who work there are very laid back
and chatty. I do recall having a rather extended conversation with a particular
staff member about the uselessness of high school and how he dropped out in
year 10 and look where he is now (in a coffee shop riveting! He did mention
something about doing something else as well though). He also offered to come
to my school and give the students a similar talk but I failed to suggest this
to any authoritative member of school as I didn’t think it would go down as
well as he seemed to think it would. Anyway the cheap coffee and the highly
entertaining staff have won me over for good. They meet all the requirements by
and by far: setting, which consists of amazing booths near windows that look
out onto the streets, service, music, prices, strong coffee, and convenient
location. The open hours can pose a slight problem as they seem to shut a
little earlier than usual. They are not part of a chain, always a good thing.
Their cups aren’t so good; they’re ok, just nothing special.
They
score: 9.5/10
Cocolat:
my
favorite thing about Cocolat is that they have paper on top of all their table
cloths and down the front of the shop they have a big container full of crayons
that you can take and you can draw on your table cloth while you sit and drink
your amazing classy hot drink. They are very very good; they have the best
atmosphere, and the most comfortable seats. Their staff are a little bit
interesting, same level as Gloria Jeans. They have Kinder Surprise flavored
ice-cream which was a very quick way to my heart and my approval… and my
wallet. And there comes the issue: they are the most hugely overpriced out of
any that I have mentioned. Also, if you want take away you might as well just
go somewhere cheaper because all the appeal is in the setting. If you want to
meet someone for coffee or hot chocolate though then Cocolait is the place for
it. I wish I was rich enough to go there all the time.
They
score: 8.5/10
In conclusion, it
seems that there is no perfect coffee service in all of the Adelaide City. I have
searched long and I have searched hard and I have found none. Disagree? Prove
me wrong. Go on. Do it. You can’t, can you?
Why? Because it’s
cheaper to be cheap.
What is This World Coming
To?
Today my mum came
home with her bags full of new shopping. This is always an exciting event in
the life of Mary. The sight of shopping bags is forever coupled by the hope of
finding something exciting and unexpected like Nutella or Hot Chocolate or
cookies and cream ice cream or a cheese cake inside. I was, as usual, mostly
disappointed by the general contents of the bags, consisting mainly of mundane
groceries such as cat food and butter. The highlight was a box of Coco Pops.
Mum proclaims Coco Pops to be an abomination to the name of food itself and
says I’m better off not eating at all than eating them. Despite this she
continues, on occasion, to buy them for me. She also appears to be under the
impression that a better solution to Coco Pops is Nutrigrain. I really don’t
see the logic here at all. Just because they’re called “nutri” grain doesn’t
mean they have beneficial nutrients in them.
Upon seeing the
inviting yellow box of delicious cocoey poppy filled Coco Pops I was feeling
feelings of overwhelmedness and excitement. I was instantly intrigued by the
advertisement on the front telling me that I would get some kind of space
gadget if I bought this particular box of Coco Pops, which my mum had done. My
natural assumption was that inside the box would be the space gadget. This, to
my dismay and great disappointment was not the case. I searched the box,
including inside of the packet of Coco Pops incase it was like on the movies
where you are pouring out your cereal and out plops your amazing toy, but to no
avail. THERE WAS NO SPACE GADGET. Upon closer inspection of the cereal box I
discovered that in order to obtain the space gadget you had to purchase another
box of Coco Pops (more like coco poops) and then send in the “space gadget
tokens”, like it was a good and exciting part of the adventure of getting the
space gadget. For the next five or so minutes my day was completely ruined.
So I ask you, what
is this world coming to? Don’t you remember the days when the toys were in fact
inside the cereal box? When the toys were cool things like Tazos and you could
collect them and they had specific uses like playing Tazos? Whatever happened to that?
And what about the
neat stickers under Nutella lids? Or the Nutella jars that you could reuse as
glasses once all the Nutella was gone. I’ll tell you what happened: they
realized that they could conduct exactly the same advertising scam by implying
an instant reward that in reality doesn’t exist, e.g. “space gadget tokens” Who
on earth wants tokens?! And by not including a special prize inside that means
they only have to pay for the very small majority of people who actually bother
to send in their tokens. Because for a crappy space gadget it’s really not
incentive to go to all the trouble of collecting and sending that is required
and they very well know that. They also know very well that if they put the
pictures of the space gadget on the box poor, young, naïve people like me will
assume that they have already won them and they are inside the box. Really all that
they are doing is making money by spoiling people’s days, not to mention jading
them for life.
Kinder Surprises;
what the heck is the business with freaking CYBERTOPS. They are the worst toys
ever invented and I have never ever met a child who has been like WOO I GOT A
CYBER TOP its more like oh no I got the crappy jippy toy that I don’t even get
to put together but OH it has a light and a special name so that’s supposed to
make everything better. There seems to be a reoccurring trend in selling things
to kids and selling things from space. Well
I’d just like everyone to know that they haven’t sold me yet. I don’t care
where it came from I just want to put it together and have fun!
My final
observation of disapproval in recent child marketing scams is Happy Meals. What
happened to the days when the toys were just toys; completely unrelated to the
latest crappy new Disney movie that their lack of ideas had forced them to
stoop to. WHAT HAPPENED? Where did the string that you twisted around your
fingers and made into shapes like the Eiffel Tower and bridges go? What
happened to those alien eyes that did nothing except sit between one of our
fingers and transformed your hand into a real, live, talking alien? How did
mini-Bratz dolls ever seem like a better idea? I hate Bratz dolls. At least
Barbie is pretty, man, those things are ugly!
PERFUME.
SMELLS. SMELLY. SMELL ME.
I have discovered
in recent years that the number of existing horrible perfumes far out weighs
the number of existing nice perfumes. Some of you may be away of the existence
of a perfume by Demeter called Dirt. Upon discovery of this perfume entitled
Dirt I recall making some remark along the lines of: “why would you make a
perfume called dirt? Then everybody would think it smelled like dirt and no one
would buy it because who wants to smell like dirt?”
Turns out that
Dirt title is also dirt scented. The question of why anyone would want to smell
like dirt still remains unanswered. I didn’t even think that dirt had a smell
but trust me, it does and if you smelled Dirt you’d know it was Dirt straight
away. It appears that Demeter aren’t particularly creative with their names
basis. They have a rather extensive range of perfumes. Just a few of the
titles: rain, lemonade, chocolate chip cookie, salt air, grass Laundromat,
jelly bean, baby powder, play doh, rainforest and one of my personal favorites,
sex on the beach, which is apparently their best seller. It interests me also,
that Laundromat is their fourth best seller. It also makes me wonder just how
many sales they get.
I would at this
point direct you all to the David Jones perfume section to go and see for
yourself because it really is quite amazing, (It is so amazing in fact, that I
have on numerous occasions been very close to purchasing Dirt purely for the
gimmick and only declined because it costs $40 and that’s $40 I don’t really
have just to buy Dirt.) however
unfortunately, and I cant imagine why this
would be so, but David Jones are no longer stocking any Demeter products. Keep
it in mind though, if you ever see one, go and have a sniff. You won’t believe
your nose.
FACIAL
HAIR ISSUES
My recent trip to
the small and wondrous place commonly known as Tasmania brought forth numerous
concerns around the issue of facial hair, on both males and females. I spent
the week with my Great Aunt Patricia and her lovely friends, most of whom were
aged somewhere generally on the higher end of 60 and 90. It made me ask myself
questions like:
What is ok?
How much is too
much?
Do people notice
when girls have moustaches?
What if they’re
really light; is it ok then?
Is it acceptable
for an old lady to have a moustache?
What age exactly
defines old?
Does establishing
the title of old give you permission to stop caring about your appearance?
Is this point perhaps
defined by when you reach a point at which your appearance is below the point
of valuable improvement, where even drastic methods such as plastic surgery are
of little benefit?
What if you start
growing an excessive amount of long grey thick chin hairs?
How would you go
about removing said chin hairs?
Would it hurt
lots?
Would the achieved
dignity be worth the pain?
Could you ever
make female chin hair cool?
If you had
disgusting chin hairs wouldn’t you be a little self conscious about readily
kissing friends and relatives? (Apparently not)
Why do people with
moles on their face so often fail to pull out the long thick black hair that
grows out of them?
Why do old men
feel the need to have hair on their face when clearly there is none on their
head?
Do they think it
will draw attention away from the previously mentioned lack of hair?
Does it?
Are there actually
people in the world who genuinely feel that they look better with a moustache?
These are some
important questions that we will all be forced to ask ourselves at one stage or
another in our lives.
My personal
feelings regarding this issue are that all people should go to great lengths to
ensure that they are free of any and every sort of facial hair*
Boys seem to have
some kind of unprecedented fascination with growing beards, and moustaches and
goatees and other monstrosities formed with the hair on their faces in what
appears to me to be an attempt at increasing their manliness. This is something
which I struggle to understand. IT’S HAIR ON
YOUR FACE. So what? You have lips on your face that are different to a
girls lips but no one feels super manly about that do they?! And around that
point, the manly chest hair thing – no. Bad. Chest hair is quite possibly worse
than facial hair bar its less frequent visibility. Perhaps it is like growing a
beard to hide bald ness, growing chest hair to disguise their lack of toned
abs. And this is similarly ineffective.
Another issue of
facial hair which I find greatly distressing on both the womanly and manly members
of our population is eye brows, and more concerning mono-brows. How can you get
up and look at yourself in the mirror and not notice the giant furry
caterpillar crawling across your forehead? I remember seeing an Italian boy,
maybe 7 or 8, at the train station who from a distance I though had a mask
lifted above his eyes, but upon closer inspection I realized that it was in
fact solely his eyebrow hair. This greatly concerned me. Admittedly it was
somewhat humorous, but shame on his parents. Just because you have super hairy
children doesn’t mean that you can convince them in the days of their youth
that this is normal and that having a mono-brow is acceptable just so that you
don’t have to go through the pain of plucking their eyebrows for them. Seriously,
have these people never watched Bright Ideas? Don’t they know about the hair
zappy thingy that, although you have to zap the hairs hair by hair, once
they’re zapped they never come back! They could entirely change the outcome of
their child’s with that zappy thingy. They have the power to alter his nickname
from caterpillar or, brow-boy, or mono-jonno to coolio-pete or jo-nie.
What Movie Did You See This
Week, Mary?
This week I saw
the fantastical mind-blowing abomination that is TRANSFORMERS. Perhaps it
wasn’t quite as enjoyable for me as it was for those whom watching the film
brought back sweet childish memories. I had no previous connection with the
concept of Transformers apart from a blurry memory of a show I wasn’t allowed
to watch and a McDonalds toy which turned from a soft drink cup into a robot
that my parents, after a great deal of their pondering and my crying, deemed
acceptable for me to possess despite its’ strong correlation with the forbidden
television show. I can say almost undoubtedly that I went into the cinema
unbiased and open minded.
The entirety of
the film made my head hurt. There was pretty mediocre action for about three
quarters of the film, at which point I was bombarded with so many explosions
and bombs and shooting and robots that I felt that my own head was about to
explode. They need to work out a way of making story lines that don’t climax
all at once for the entire second half of the movie, movies need to go in
pleasant waves of action and gentle love scenes. Speaking of love scenes, that
girl would never have gone for that boy, he is disgusting and nerdy. And she
was stupid anyway, she was like a big ugly Barbie doll.[1]
My primary
observation of the film is that if the robots didn’t talk, and didn’t have such
awesome voices and awesome lines like “I am Megatron.” And “I am Optimus
Prime.” Then the movie would have totally sucked. But given, they did talk so
it really wasn’t so bad and as much as my arty farty prestige disallows me to
do this, I must say that I quite enjoyed the film overall. Somehow I managed to
miss some vital plot information points but that added to the mystery and
intrigue so not to worry.
I think that
Optimus should have died at the end. Then Christians could have used it for a
lovely analogy of Jesus in Sunday school and at youth group. Perhaps the people
who made the film thought about that and didn’t want their film to be the
victim of the many Jesus analogies that has become so many others such as The
Matrix, The Tigger Movie, and Bambi, and more or less any other movie ever.
Playing the make-up-an-analogy game is always fun. It feels slightly
blasphemous but also slightly Christianly justified as we are only making
correlations between two truths in a potentially humorous manner, nothing wrong
with that, is there?
That is not really
the reason I wanted Optimus to die though, the real reason is because I am sick
of happy endings. Nothing in real life ends as nicely as that, in fact it
doesn’t end. Everyone always gets married and the plot implies that they live
happily ever after, but no, the truth is apart from that they wouldn’t have
gotten married in the first place, they probably would get divorced within a
year of their crappy beautiful romantic marriage.
If I ever make a
Hollywood movie everybody is going to die and break up and be miserable in the
end. The audience will be left dissatisfied and offended that their pleasant
escape from reality didn’t work out as they wished it had but I don’t care
because that’s how things really are. At least it’ll give a lower comparison
for them for their own lives and they will later find themselves feeling
potentially better about their own lives.
But back to my
main point, Transformers was fun. You should go and see it just so that you can
hear Optimus talk. It is totally worth it, even just for that. You will get the
added bonus of witnessing youthful angst, explosions and alien robots making
that cool noise they make when they transform.
