The Blues

I’ll Have What She’s Having

On September 2, 2010, in Food, by Rosie
View Comments

Pip and Pop Jones have class masses.  The highlight for the children is to invite their parents and grandparents to the celebration and involve them in the rituals of holiness.

Um, yeah, no it’s not. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that ‘the church part is okay, but the morning tea is so much better …’

In the tradition of Catholics throughout time, church is seen as the encore event to eating, drinking (no alcohol with the school masses though) and parties.  I can’t say I disagreed with Pip and Pop on this matter, but like any good parent, I threw them my disappointed, reproving look.  (It’s one of those looks involving a little frown, a shake of the head, and a downward glance).  You know the type.

It’s customary for the adult participants to ‘bring a plate’.  Bring a plate is an expression we often use and joke about down here and I wonder if it’s a worldwide thing.  Historically, ladies would bring a plate to a function, gentlemen would bring a bottle. I suspect that was because women were always in the kitchen with plates and men were not?  Or perhaps men of olden times wouldn’t know where plates were kept?  Or was it that women didn’t want to be seen carrying a bottle?

Whatever the situation, the party following the class mass requires the family member, regardless of gender, to bring a plate.

A couple of hours ago, I decided to make this Rocky Road Hedgehog Divine Looking Thing. It’s easy, no cooking involved, will slice up for an entire class of kids and has NO nuts.  I started the process while listening to a friend rant on the phone.  I melted the chocolate, butter, icing sugar, added eggs.  When it got to the stirring part, I asked my Ms McRant mate to STFU, which she did.  She’s great like that ; )

So, I had the warmed chocolate mixture ready, into which I had to add the coconut, marshmallows, broken bikkies, and just stir them all together and watch them squish and ooooooze and make yummy lovely chocolatey goo.

Finishing the task pretty quickly and spreading the mixture into the prepared tin, I noticed that the wooden spoon had the remnants of melted chocolate and coconut veneered onto front and back, desperately needing a wash.  Instead, I placed the entire head of ye olde wooden spoon into my gob and enthusiastically, although ever so gently, started licking.

Remembering I had a couple more grocery items in the shopping trolley on the front deck, I wandered out there, gloriously oblivious to everything else but what was satisfying me orally.  The front deck is glass in, and when a drop of sun hits, it warms the area, giving it a hazy, meditative glow of warmth.  Unbeknownst to me, time flittered by, I hadn’t yet got the stuff out of the trolley, nor had I done anything but stand on the decking, suckling on the wood of the spoon.

Next thing I knew, a stranger was standing facing me, the outer glass door between!  In my early afternoon lethargy/daze/senior moment/chocolate-wooden spoon orgasm, I must have closed my eyes and lingered, simply living in a culinary utopia that only involved a wooden spoon, some warm melted chocolate and ME. Now, suddenly, there was a younger man looking at me as though he would snatch at my wooden spoon if I didn’t move to open the door.

I hesitated.  Then he smiled, knowingly, and my genetically-inherited temper yearned to slap that indolent look off his face.  I opened the door, was curt and direct, it was something about the gas company, saving money, ‘what supplier are you currently using …’

Oh, for cutter’s sake, I don’t need a supplier!  I have a wooden spoon, melted chocolate and a patch of warmth on my front deck to call my own.  Get the hell outta here, bitch!

Tis what I wanted to say, but I regained my decorum and pretended I hadn’t been caught tonguing a utensil with my eyes closed in the middle of the day.

As the company representative walked away (and I’m sure he was smirking into his clipboard) I moved back towards the glass door that opens on to our front deck.  The light gave me enough of a chance to see that not only was I lathing my tongue against the wooden spoon in ecstasy while he stood there, I was also wearing the remnants of coconuty chocolate delight around my mouth.

Hail, the woman with a moustache.  I just hope I hadn’t moaned out loud!

  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: • • •
 

The Day I Met the Angel Gabriel

On August 31, 2010, in Barrow Pushing, Life, by Rosie
View Comments

If you’ve ever been trapped inside your noggin, you know that there’s not many places you can go.  Nowhere exists that is free from worry, apathy, sorrow, debilitating thoughts, self doubts.  If you’re really ill, it’s like trying to hold a conversation with someone across the table while one person says things in one ear, another does the same in the other ear.

You should try that sometime.  It’s extremely unsettling.  The voice in your left ear might be saying something like ‘you need to get out of this thing.  Run, run, run!’ while the other voice suggests ‘this person wants to lock you up.  This person thinks your evil …’

All the while, a third person sits across from you, asking simple questions like ‘how was your day?’

Last post, I wrote about a society which (rightly and justly) provides individual rights for people, protecting them from being committed against their wills.  The mentally ill person needs to seek help, something that can be impossible to do when they are on the verge of psychosis or in the midst of a depressive episode.

It’s like a double-edged sword — in years gone by, people might have been institutionalized for the wrong reasons, dispatched to the wrong place, and the canopy of treating the mentally ill threw a shroud over our society.  Asylums.  Shock treatment.  Bedlam.

As psychiatric medicine made inroads, so did treatment, to the point where we’ve gone to the other extreme. We seem to be suffering for it.  No beds for emergency care, no intervention when people are struggling and don’t have the insight to ‘seek help’, no medium ground.  Although our country has management (and quite effective strategies once someone is critical) we have no way of helping the nearly sick.

So?  Where’s the balance?  I’ve written the last couple of posts on mental health and have offered no solutions, yet it’s a hot topic in Oz at the moment given The Newton’s interview about Matthew and the recent, drug-based documentary from footballer Ben Cousins.

Not to capitalize on the misfortune of others (or make a statement regarding either case) these recent examples do raise things that are often swept under the Lucky Country carpet.  The link between marijuana and schizophrenia, the idea that ‘addiction’ is obsessive and incurable, the notion that mental health requires monitoring, intervention, continual attention for the patient.

And it doesn’t differentiate.  Scholar, athlete, blue-collar worker, tradie, musician, attractive, dowdy, dorky, young, old.

Perhaps like anything, it’s one of those ‘nasties’ that we don’t really pay attention to unless it affects someone that we know? Fair enough too!  It’s fugly, exhausting, grotesque — a hydra-like monster that never seems to go away, but lurks in the brain until there’s another spot of weakness into which it can plug its tentacles.

Tentacles of low self-esteem, hate, anger, bitterness, depression, mania, hopelessness.  And the list goes on.

September 24th is Red for Ruby day.  It’s a simple initiative but considering the breadth of Facebook, it’s one that could be really effective.  Wear something red on that day and remember young people suffering from mental illness in all parts of the world.  Although RfR day focuses on youth, my thoughts will also be with the elderly and ‘more mature youth’.  Their fights with the bogeymen of the brain are every bit as real and debilitating.

Thanks to Aimswalsh for the link to Red for Ruby.

I know you’ve heard it all before

So I don’t say it anymore

I just stand by and let you

Fight your secret war (‘Joey’ by Concrete Blonde)


  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: •
 

The Day I Thought I was Dusty Springfield

On August 28, 2010, in Barrow Pushing, Life, by Rosie
View Comments

Mental health, in all its polarization, blows my mind.  I’ve written about it a few times, both on this blog and others, so it will come as no surprise that I’ll continue to barrow push about it until I lose mine — my blog that is, hopefully not what’s left of my mind.

A few years ago, the Australian Government introduced a health scheme that allows Aussie citizens a certain number of psychological visits per annum for nuffin.  If it’s worked through a GP, those in need are able to access counselling without stressing too much about the financial burden.

Great move!  Something productive, practical and an acknowledgment that mental illness affliction isn’t based upon socioeconomic standing.

Today, I need to vent a little about intervention. Basic human rights and laws exist to protect the individual. We can’t simply reach out and grab people off the street, intervening in their lives, their minds, their existences.

I understand this.  Commonsense tells us that this could never be the case, no matter what the situation.

However, there are times during the insidious onset of a psychotic episode when intervention would be most beneficial, allow the mentally ill patient faster recovery and lend support to the primary carers.  Red tape (and the rights of the individual) prevent this from happening.  The mentally ill patient, on the brink of the psychotic precipice, must reach the utter pit of the canyon before she/he will receive necessary treatment.

If we equate mental health with physical health (I do.  The brain is an organ) then it’s like letting someone who is nearly having a heart attack reach the point where cardiovascular malfunction occurs and  then resuscitate the patient.

Now that’s absurd!  Imagine going to a hospital with symptoms of breathlessness, chest pain, jaw and arm spasm, being told ‘there are no beds, go home and try to get well.  We’ll see you when you STOP breathing and you turn blue!’

It wouldn’t happen!  There are so many physical examples of when early intervention is given and received. The prevention of cancers through early detection.  The offset of diabetes via medication. The treatment of epilepsy before the victim crashes their car during a seizure.  The insertion of a stent or pacemaker prior to a heart attack.

The mentally unwell person must seek help in order for intervention to take place.  SEEK help. That’s like asking someone who thinks they are Dusty Springfield to stop singing loudly in public.  It’s like asking someone who is sure the CIA is tracking them through Sydney airport to sit down and relax.  It’s like asking someone who believes the internet is talking to him/her to go to the doctors for a hearing test.

The mentally ill person on the brink of psychosis usually doesn’t seek help.  They’re too busy living in their head.

So what of their carers who can see the symptoms manifesting?  Who know the medication has been stopped, the early signs are back, the conversation has become stilted and shallow?

They wait.  And it’s like a bomb is about to go off.

I’m not posing a solution here, it’s almost impossible to fathom one that would ever suit all cases.  The Australian of the Year, Professor Patrick McGorry, believes some of the answers lie in early intervention as the best way to assist detection, prevention, recovery.  It would be wonderful to have a battery of tests — as we do for colorectal cancer, genetic testing for breast cancer, eye testing for glaucoma — in order to establish those at high risk and give help and guidance before the most massive, filthy, gaping, heinous conditions can take hold.

But where to start and how to police the process?  Awareness helps.  Time, perhaps?  An enlightened community that can see the benefit of medical assistance and pharmaceuticals (where needed – but that’s a post for another time.)

Poor mental health?  The most virulent of all enemies, and the most inescapable.

I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind.  I left my body lying somewhere in the sands of time (3 Doors Down)

  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: •
 

It’s All Greek to Me

On August 26, 2010, in Family, Life, by Rosie
View Comments

In the last adventure of Pip and Pop Jones, we discovered the girls’ interest in swearing, particularly ‘what are the F and C words.  You may remember that they knew the F-word already, probably gleaned from listening to commercial radio and an eclectic range of music (that’s what I like to tell myself, anyway, coz I don’t fucking swear!)

The C-word was a nonevent.  It wasn’t revealed, they don’t know it yet (thank fuck) so they decided to devise their own, in Pop’s words ‘C-word, swear word’.

It was cutter.

As in ‘up your cutter’, ‘for cutter’s sake’, ‘who the cutter cares?’  OR the really ribald version ‘oh cutter!  With thorns!’

Pop Jones made me laugh again this week with her regaling of a anecdote from kinder.  She attended pre-school a few years ago and made close friends with Kiki (not her real name.)  Kiki is second generation Greek.  Her parents speak the language at home, Kiki knows some words, but at pre-school age, didn’t read or write it.  She visited our home often, is a gorgeous girl and still comes to play on the holidays.

Sadly, Pop and Kiki attend different primary schools

Yesterday morning, Pop Jones snuggles into bed and starts to chat.  Why on earth kids think you want a full-on discourse about things that happened when they were four at that time of the morning, I don’t know. Anyway, she started talking about Kiki and how she knows lots of words of Greek, how she has a strong culture (as do Mario, Tu, Elena and Vovo in her class).

Then, Pop tells me that ‘we don’t really have a culture, mum!’

At 6.30 am, the only culture I have is viticulture if I’ve had a glass or two of red wine the night before. Frankly, I don’t care about culture much before midday, for the love of a sleep in!

Trying to mumble an explanation about Australian culture and our ancestors, I turn over to face the wall, hoping Pop might realize that we still have another half-hour in bed and that she can, in fact STFU any time she likes!

Not going to happen!

She is totally disinterested in my garbled speech about Australian culture, so she starts to say that she feels lucky that Kiki taught her one word in Greek for the entire two years of their stay in pre-school.

‘It’s the only word I remember.  I think it’s the only word Kiki knows,’ Pop enthuses, as I wonder what STFU is in Greek.

‘Oh?’ I ask, not knowing any Greek, let alone the expression to silence her.

‘Yep,’ she says proudly.  ’It’s naked. I know how to say naked in Greek!’

Oh, that’s lovely, I think to myself.  At least she’ll be quite social if ever she pops over to the Greek Isles. Dearie me.  It seems that Pop Jones only ever wants to learn and retain the important words in life!

‘That’s nice, love,’ I say to her, all the while being grateful I slept in pyjamas rather than a birthday suit.

  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: • • •
 

Tube Tuesday – Hungry for More!

On August 24, 2010, in Books, Internet, by Rosie
View Comments

During the phenomenon that is Harry Potter, I wasn’t inclined to line up and get a new release straight from the press.  Neither am I one to queue at movies, desperate to see a blockbuster on the very first night of screening.  Although I have been known to become overly-needy for the next episode of a television show, there’s something in my nature that loves the thrill of anticipation.

Perhaps that’s too much information about me?

The release of Mockingjay is imminent.  The third and final novel in Suzanne Collins’s ‘The Hunger Games’ trilogy is about to hit the arena, be shelved at Cornucopia, and only the fastest and strongest Tribute will be able to procure their copy.

For those not yet embroiled in the magic of ‘The Hunger Games’, it’s a fabulous read.  Pitched at the ‘young adult’ audience, there’s enough character development and social commentary to keep everyone involved (and the obligatory, angsty, sensual teenaged love triangle to boot!)

I won’t be able to ‘get’ Mockingjay today.  Probably not even tomorrow or by the weekend, but rest assured.  As soon as it’s in my sweaty palms, I’ll be back to imagining myself as Katniss (because she really does rock) and will find anything around the home to use as a pointy weapon — so watch out!

Here’s a clip of Suzanne Collins reading the first chapter of Mockingjay.  There’s a whole lot to like about Suzie.  My favourite thing is that she puts on her glasses before launching into the story.  Thanks to wrldpossiblity and The Mockingjay for the link.

A final word: this is a chapter reading, so it will spoil you if you listen.  Be aware (coz the world needs more wares) that there are full descriptions of the book and its outcome in many of the reviews.  Stay away if you don’t want to know.  Also, friends don’t spoil other friends (apparently, *g*)

  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: •
 

Very Tight Down Under

On August 22, 2010, in Australia, Barrow Pushing, Life, by Rosie
View Comments

Once upon a time, there was a nation at a standstill.  Nope, it didn’t relate to the traffic crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Nor did it speak of the time taken to get an answer from an online operator at OPTUS. Neither did the standstill apply to metropolitan trains facing the peak hour or cheap flights exiting Avalon airport.

Rather, twenty-four hours after the polls have closed for the federal election 2010, we go to bed for a second night not knowing who is leading our country throughout the next term.  It’s neck and neck down under (not a pretty image, but there you have it)!  Any tighter, we’d all be wearing Speedo bathers and trying to spread out in one of those voting booths they allot for us each time we go to the polls.

I wonder if other countries offer such spacious carrels upon which to cast a vote?

There’s a couple of quirky things that happen in Aus on voting day.  Firstly, as soon as you arrive at the designated voting place, you’re descended upon by people with pamphlets and flailing limbs.  I think this might be pretty typical the world over, only down here, you are greeted with words like ‘good onya luv’ and/or ‘grab a snag on your way through’ and/or ‘Jeez, this rain!  Great for the garden, though!’

As well as the chat, there’s also the compulsory sausage sizzle, the place where the voter should indeed ‘grab a snag on the way through.’  It’s the makeshift barbie, set alight out the front, frying up with fat and onions and great wads of sauce in a hope that if the snag doesn’t kill ya, the polling booths will.  It’s a wonderful thing, the sausage sizzle.  This voter would feel cheated if she arrived at the place of polling, only to realize that the sausage in a blanket had found it’s way into a pair of Speedo bathers and splashed away.

Then there’s The Question.  All voting Australians face this telling, mandatory quizzical statement upon presenting at the polling peeps — HAVE YOU VOTED ALREADY TODAY?

The Question never ceases to amaze me, and I find the temptation to say ‘YES, why yes I HAVE voted already today, babe!’ overwhelming.  EACH and every time.  I mean, for Julia’s SAKE!  Why are we asked that question?  Um, why would I bother rocking up, smelling the sausages, chatting with pamphlet-thrusting people, standing in a queue for moments of my life, IF I HAD ALREADY DONE IT TODAY?

ON a freaking SATURDAY in the middle of winter?

Once, when I was immature and ludicrous, I actually replied that ‘yes.  Why yes I have already voted today!’ I regret it.  The lady who received my smartarse answer was probably lovely, working a second job to pay for the braces on her offspring’s teeth, just doing her work on any particular day… but she didn’t even crack a smile.  Whoops.  Polling booths plus cynicism don’t mix.  I have learnt my lesson.

Now, I just bow my head, say ‘NO.  I haven’t voted already today’ and take my place in The Australian Polling Booth. Very like The Question (have you voted already today?) The Australian Polling Booth is ridiculous.  If you are wider than your average gnat, press harder on a pen than a fleck of dust weighs on the window sill, and YOU actually BREATHE, chances are The Australian Polling Booth will probably concertina under the duress of your presence.

It’s that flimsy.  It’s that small and so damned narrow, you might as well get to know your neighbour on intimate terms.  Maybe shout them a sausage?  Perhaps share their pair of Speedos as they swim past the flood of recycled pamphlets and paraphernalia towards the exit area?  But for Tony’s sake, don’t SNEEZE.  The Australian Polling Booth is not insured against such extremes of environment!

Whatever we do, we need to think ahead.  With the state of things on Sunday August 22, we may very well be returning to said polling spots before too long anyway.  Time to prepare a couple of things:  Stomachs, for the onset of bbq onions and snags to go.  Smiles and Nods, for the onslaught of rabids approaching with paper warfare and numbered tickets.  Reduced girth, for being able to cram within The Australian Polling Booth.  And, tight-lipped smile and shake of the head, to cope with The Question.

Election Day, Australia.  Better than a cold pie and a warm beer on a day when your team loses the footy.

  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: • •
 

Fangirl Sings the Blues is One Today

On August 20, 2010, in Birthday, Blogging, by Rosie
View Comments

This time last year, I started blogging.  That’s 12 months of my life straining to plop words into cyber drainage.  It’s 365 days of digesting verbal concepts and expelling them into posts.

Twelve months of blogging is a long time.  No wonder my pipes are tired!

In that time, Fangirl Sings the Blues has changed focus a little.  Initially, I established this place as an adjunct to fictional writing, a forum where I could say things like ‘I have finished another novel!  I am rejected!  I am drafting and I hate writing.’ Or, ‘buy a book, save a student getting me back as a teacher…’

You know?  All those inspirational things one thinks when they are writing!  Also, I wanted a spot to chat about music, TV, movies and pop culturish stuff, however I’ve moved off on a tangent and included lots of anecdotes and RL idiocies.

It’s been fun.  I don’t know whether it’s helped my actual writing, but it’s been a great way to keep in touch with family and friends I don’t see as often as I like — usually because of their restraining orders against me.

Writing on the net often makes you think you’re talking to yourself, especially if no one comments on your post.  I used to care about that a fair bit, now I don’t mind at all.  I talk to myself in RL, so why not do it online?  It’s the first sign of insanity.  Oh?  Really?  Well, I must’av lost my marbles years ago.

Thanks to friend and family who pop into Fangirl Sings the Blues every now and then.  It’s lovely to hear of rellos and mates who read and find something to nod along about, or random people who’ll pipe up in the middle of the doctor’s surgery and say ‘hey, don’t you do a blog?’

No wonder the doctor will prescribe laxatives.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FANGIRL SINGS THE BLUES!  Sometimes, only an Abba Megamix will do.

  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: •
 

The Strongest Woman on Earth

On August 17, 2010, in Family, Life, by Rosie
View Comments

There are people in this world that will come and go.  There are folks that will annoy you to the point of oblivion, peeps that you love with all your being, those that you develop a crush on for a time.  There are even special someones you might take a bullet for (provided it’s painless, and you don’t have to join the Secret Service) or others that you will forgive anything.

There are friends that can cook or sing, make you laugh, burden you, help you relax.  There are relatives that cloud your aura, create a panic, or sit with you when you’re sick or downtrodden.  Some rellos can fix your car, fill your teeth, give you an injection, oversee your legal documents or balance your books.

Then there are relatives who can pick you up.

Actually render you airborne!

Hoist you from the cushion of your buttocks, grasp you to the girth of their rippling pectoral muscle, and leverage your flailing limbs to the sky.

I’m proud of my relatives.  I boast about them online — sure, I may disguise that as mocking fiction, but hey?  I find it hard to express myself.  I chat about them with friends, and I love to hear about their achievements and whatnots (not so much about their whatnots!)  It’s amazing to be related to such a group of talented, dynamic individuals, and in appreciation of our diversity, I’d like to introduce you to:

the strongest woman alive!

She’s younger than me.  She’s not in the Guinness Book of Records or starring in body building magazines or in movies opposite Sly Stalone.  (She couldn’t.  Unless she was playing Sylvester’s granddaughter!)  She doesn’t appear as though she is the strongest woman alive, her talent hidden deftly behind beautiful grooming and luscious curvature.

She believes that had she been born in days of Olden Times — where freakishly talented and S.T.R.O.N.G women were not lauded — she may have ended up in a travelling show, her unfixed forward jaw and armfuls of tattoos complimenting her unbelievable SHOWS OF STRENGTH.

But in 2010, she’s integrated.  She might be working next to you, biceps straining beneath your shared desk space, but you’d never know it.  She might descend next to you in the lift.  Or stand near you in the train. She might even live in your neighbourhood, but because she’s blends in with the fabric of life, you’re just not aware.

Until the day you’re standing in line, waiting for your kilo of prosciutto, your buffalo mozza and your bunch of basil, and you’re lifted up by one hand, watching the queue from above.

Although she’s not random like this.  She picks her target, but when a lift is ON, the outcome is very, very funny.

Nigh on 30 years, I’ve seen the strongest woman alive:

• swim an entire reservoir in the middle of winter when her parents told her not to get wet

• swing from ropes across rivers, singlehandedly

• pick up her 100 kilo, 70-odd year old grandfather (no play on the word ‘odd’ there!)

• and swing him about a bit!

• pick up her mother and whiz her about.

• pick up her nearly 80-year old grandma and nurse her like a baby.

• rock her, and spin her and rock her again.

• maintain the frontage of a modern, attractive, lady-about-town, all the while harbouring this ability to lift and spin.  Bodies, crates, groups of people, but not cars (I guess that only happens with vampires, and as far as I know, this relative is not supernatural).

We applaud her power. Not only is it a physical attribute, the strongest woman alive also has strength of character and a loving stronghold within the family.  One thing I do know is that when I’m walking down an alley with the strongest woman alive by my side, no one will call me a (clean and) jerk. And no one would dare snatch my handbag.

And if we couldn’t lift the varmint out of the way?  We could lick him/her with our tongue — a network of very, very strong muscles indeed!

  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: •
 

Box-Set Blues: The Lapel Pin Edition

On August 15, 2010, in Television, by Rosie
View Comments

Because the little details are always the best.

You don’t need to watch Dexter to admire the lapel pin here!  Its message cuts to the chase, for sure. Thanks to the lovely Jenny for the striking find, and welcome back to our box-set screens Mr Michael C Hall.

(please don’t trust a man wearing a knife as a lapel pin, regardless of his appeal!)

  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: •
 

Winners are Grinners

On August 12, 2010, in Family, Life, by Rosie
View Comments

There are a lot of great things associated with being part of a large family.  There really are!  It’s just a pity that I can’t quite remember one of them today.

Nah, seriously, it’s ace.

Consider:  if you’re not a popular person, but you’re turning 16 or 21 or (even) 50, you simply ring around and there you have it — Rent A Crowd. If you’ve got to sell those Cadbury chocolates for fundraising (and you haven’t thrown them off a bridge or eaten them yourself) then your family is obliged to contribute.  Similarly for lapathons, Good Friday appeals, attendance at dance concerts, music recitals, gigs where you’re a groovy drummer, surprise parties where you might be sozzled and sleepy by 9pm, but your sister slaps your face and tells you to ‘get out there’.

The benefits of The Big Family (or Familia Grande) are endless.

Sure, there are the downsides.  Not enough room to sit around a table and rest your plate down at the same time.  Having to share amenities, clothes, space, friends.  Having an aunt who could be your older sister, or a cousin who is young enough to be your own child, having to laugh at Funky’s jokes (provided that Funky is real and not permanently attached to his model aircraft).  Then he wouldn’t have time for funnies!

Reports just to hand suggest that the amputation team has visited Hygiene Heights and Funky McFunkster has been physically removed from his newsagent-based, matchstick model.

Another quirk of a bigger than average clan is the ‘gathering with a theme.’  Christmas, Easter, birthdays, baptisms, you name it.  We have it.  However, we also have specially-devised theme categories too, and usually this type of get together involves competition of some sort.  It might be a car rally, where a special someone drives like a lunatic, shouts at the other drivers and finds a way to cheat for the win.  It could be a family cricket game, played in such lovely spirits, no one ends up being shoved over or with a broken bone.  And that was the adults.

*tuts*

Then there was the family (once off) softball match … but I think that event either needs burying under the shagpile or an entry all its own.

Which leads me to the reason behind this post:  The Trivia Night.

These quiz-type challenges of entertainment are held all over this city.  They are used as fundraisers, school-based social nights, even part of club fun for tables of ten.  BYO wine, nibbles, brains and hang about.  Answer a few Qs and have a giggle.

Whack the word Family in front of Trivia Night and you’ve got an entirely different event.

It all stems from a problematic few in amongst my people.  There are at least a half-dozen individuals who are pathologically competitive. Not your normal ‘Hehe, I’m gunner beat you’ competitive, but the type who will find a butter knife to use as a weapon if you’re not on their team.  Sadly, these folk can’t relate to old adages like ‘it’s not the winning that’s important’ or ‘there’s no shame in finishing last’.  They prefer the mottos of ‘winners are grinners and losers can please themselves’ or ‘go hard or go home’ OR ‘You suck, loser!’

So much intensity!  It’s a pity that these one or two family members can’t learn from people like me. Gracious in victory, elegant in defeat.  In fact, Henley (from Henley & Cass fame) and I are offering a one-off chance at role-modeling our exceptional, temperate approach to competitive situations.  Hypotheticals will be performed just prior to the Family Trivia Night and anyone wanting further instruction is invited to join the ‘(The) Henley and Rosie Winners Can Be Humble Too’ convention.

Unfortunately, there are also a few blokes and sheilas wot reckon they know everything.  Mostly blokes. They are often referred to as know-it-alls, but I will mention them here as smart arses. Nobody likes a smartarse. Ask any politician, they’ll (probably) tell you.  In my clan, these smart arses also tend to be loud.  Nobody likes a loud, obnoxious smartarse. I should know.  I knew one once.

Again, as a service to the family community, I’m happy to run small seminars for those struggling with a supercilious attitude, an ego the size of Christmas dinner, or an inability to close their mouth even when entertaining a fine champagne.  We don’t want anyone to turn blue with hyper-stimulation.

Finally, there will be no laughing at own-jokes.  This can be a common occurrence amid the individuals mentioned above (ie: loud, obnoxious, smartarses, ferociously competitive, thinking self is funnier than in actuality).

Otherwise, it will be a fabulous night.  (When I win every prize, shoutdown everyone else in range, stab my parents with a butter knife — whoops, messy — argue with each answer, slap someone’s face, throw a non-alcoholic drink at Mac for getting an answer wrong, and laugh about it.  Till he storms out and I say ‘I knew that would happen eventually!’)

That’s Trivia!

  • Share/Bookmark
Tagged with: • •
 
« Previous Entries