Why new year’s eve blows: an essay by me

I think it all goes back to when I was little, and that first new year’s eve that I managed to stay awake until midnight. You know what happened at midnight? Bloody nothing. All this anticipation and excitement amounted to a countdown followed by disappointment and bed. No flashing green light. No magical leprechaun. I don’t know why I was expecting these things. My 5 year old self might have confused the new year with St Patrick’s day. That, and I just really like magic.

I didn’t get excited about it again until the 31st of December 1999 when there was a chance that all the planes were going to fall out of the sky at the stroke of midnight and after all the other machines failed we’d end up living in a post apocalyptic wasteland. Again, disappointment and bed. I wanted to take my money out of the bank and bury it in the backyard so that after the millennium bug destroyed the banks, my childhood savings of $200 would be the equivalent of millions and everyone who didn’t think to do the same would make me their god. Curse you, new year’s eve. Another dream shattered.

This year my rage is already being fuelled by the man next door and his party preparations. He’s put up one of those temporary gazebo thingies in the back yard, which is all well and good, but he’s spent way too much time trying out his brand-spankin-new sOOper loud speakers. Remember the band Creed? I do. Now. How about Puddle of Mudd? Yeah. They spelled it with two D’s just to be extra badass. If I get home before that party’s over, which I’m assuming I will, I have to try to fall asleep with that pumping out over the fence. He also gave Hoobastank a run.

~THE RESOLUTIONS~

Last new year’s eve I was still living in the back room of my parents’ house, still single, and still had no real career prospects. This new year’s eve I’ll be celebrating the fact that I’m another year older and still living in the back room of my parents house, still single, and still have no real career prospects. No one ever keeps their life changing resolutions, which is why this year there will be none of this ‘give money to charity’ or ‘waste less time on Facebook’ business. This year I’m making resolutions I’m going to keep.

1. Don't eat so many chips that I get chest pains.
2. See Europe (trip was booked a few months ago for guaranteed success).
3. Stop typing my Facebook password into every other website I try to log in to.
4. Stop trying to deactivate the house alarm with my pin number, and stop trying to get money out of the ATM with the alarm code.
5. Finally become the proud owner of the complete box set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (start saving for this after Europe, unless item is seen on sale at an earlier date. May result in last minute run to the shops on December 31 after I re-read this blog and realise I completely forgot about it).

The new adventures of Mr Potato Head

It's the most wonderful time of the year! (someone should write a song about that). We've almost reached the day where the whole family gets together and eats way too much food while wearing ridiculous paper hats. For me, that's the true meaning of Christmas. I love it. I love the decorations, I love the giving of gifts, and I love how everyone eats so much that they fall asleep in someone else's loungeroom. There's really no need to bring Jesus into this.

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It's also one of the busiest times of the year, and I think I speak for all of us when I say 'what's Mr Potato Head been up to?'

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Rocking out

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Carjacking Barbie (with a sword for some reason)

Frequenting the gay clubs

Being badly photoshopped into a photo I took of some lemurs at the zoo last week

Re-enacting scenes from popular films

Getting into the festive spirit

Being part of Santa’s freaky Christmas mutant experiment

Terrorising the villagers

and hiding from the authorities.

Merry Christmas, y’all!

Lauren goes to the zoo

I was once urinated on by a lion.

I usually stop telling the story at that point, because it loses a lot of its kick-ass-ness when it comes with an explanation. I was 6, it was a school excursion, and everyone was stoked that the lion came right up to fence. Then there was some unexpected moisture and a small group of stunned 5 and 6 year old children. I’ve tried to forget it, I’ve tried to put it behind me, but my mum was one of the parents helping out that day, and still thinks it was the funniest thing she’s ever seen. She brought it up again yesterday when we went to the zoo together for the first time in what can only be described as 'years,' because that's how the human race measures time. As we got closer to the lion enclosure, she became visibly excited, pointed to the far end of the fence and said, in a voice that was louder than necessary, ‘That’s where you got peed on by the lion!’

She didn’t take me there just to reminisce, we were on a mission. From God. If God has nothing more important to do than take hundreds of photos of BABY ELEPHANTS!!!

Elephants are awesome when they’re full size, so tiny ones are, like, even more awesome than that. Which is a kind of awesome that Maths can’t even measure. Yeah. Suck on that, Maths. They even brought the Man-a-phant out to hang with the lay-deez for a while in the hope of seeing some sexy time. Turns out the poor bugger was so young when he came to the zoo that he’s never seen the mating process and doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. The two babies they’ve got are from artificial insemination, and they’re hoping for a naturally conceived baby. Nothing happened. He sniffed the lady bums for a bit then buggered off, and I find it hard to believe that it’s really that hard to sit an elephant in front of the Discovery Channel for a bit, then chuck on some Barry White and let nature take its course.

The visit took a turn for the worse when we found out the Pygmy Hippo had died. The devastation was short lived when my mind wandered over to the area of ‘what do you do with a dead hippo?’ Even a pygmy one is pretty freakin big. Then I wanted to know what do you do with the bigger animals, like where you would bury a dead elephant (I’ve excluded giraffes from this thought process because we all know they rise from the dead and stalk the earth for the sole purpose of eating our faces). Then I realised I didn’t care enough to find out, and went to look at some monkeys.

When I was little my favourite part of the zoo was the underwater room where you can watch the seals swimming around. It’s responsible for my desire to one day own a house with an underground seal window, though it seems like the type of thing you could only have if you were some kind of super villain. Now I need an idea for what will become known as ‘Operation Super Villian.’

I think I might steal Christmas. Pretty sure that hasn't been done before.

SOAP BOX

I’ve been watching Home and Away since I was six, have spent the last ten years drifting in and out of Neighbours, and occasionally drop by The Bold and the Beautiful only to become really confused about this family policy they seem to have where you have to sleep with everyone who isn’t a blood relative, even if that person is a blood relative to one of your blood relatives. ‘You’re my half brother’s mother’s long lost son’s daughter. Let’s make out.’

My new found addiction is a New Zealand soap opera called Shortland Street. It started out innocently enough, the show was on at 4:30am, which two days a week is the same time I have to get up for work. Then on one of my days off I discovered it was on another station at 9:30, only there were all these characters I didn’t know. The chick who was about to give birth at 4:30am was now mother to a kid who looked about 18 months old. I was so excited because I was finally going to find out who the serial killer that had been terrorising the hospital was. And I did. And it was when they said his name that I realised something: I had no idea who that was. While I have an in-depth understanding of who everyone is related to/dating/friends with/in shady dealings with, I don’t actually know any of their names.

The chick who has the baby is softly spoken, cute, always looks sad, and is incredibly annoying. This is why my mind regards her as ‘Bambi’. Bambi is a lesbian and has a crush on a straight woman who looks like a hard nosed bitch but is actually alright. So I named her ‘woman who looks like a hard nosed bitch but is actually alright.’

Other characters are known to me as Disabled Nurse (who isn’t disabled at 4:30am and now I watch every episode waiting for him to get kneecapped or fall into a black hole or something); British pub owner who I spent ages trying to figure out if I thought he was attractive or not before deciding that no, no he wasn’t; Flamboyantly gay guy, or ‘FlamboyGu’ for short; Bad nose job lady (currently only seen at 9:30 and having some kind of affair with British pub owner even though he was engaged to Bambi’s sister a few weeks ago, but they broke up after she found out he hired a hit man to kill the guy that Bambi ended up killing because he was secretly filming himself having sexy time with Woman who looks like a hard nosed bitch but is actually alright and putting it on the internet, which made Bambi mad because Bambi has a crush on her, remember? He also gave Bambi’s mum cancer, but I’m still not sure about the details of how exactly he did that); and Sexy silver fox who runs the hospital or something. I dunno. But he wears a suit and I fancy him.

So at the end of this morning’s episode, Hard nosed bitch told Bambi’s mum that Bambi killed the Internet sexy time cancer man. And I won’t get to see the fallout because I have work tomorrow and genuinely considered calling in sick.

Summer In The City

December is here, which means 1.the Christmas decorations are going up and 2. I’ve started preparing for another Melbourne summer of having my face melt off one day, then freezing my ass off the next. Right now, it’s dark in the middle of the afternoon and pissing down with rain. Either be summer, or don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I love this city to death, and if you ever say anything bad about it, I will kick you in the shins. That’s right, you heard me, both shins.

My issue with Melbourne and summer is that they don’t go well together. The days of running under the sprinkler in the backyard are gone forever on account of how we have no water anymore. Even when it does rain, it somehow manages to magically avoid the catchments. Water restrictions have taken away our water pistols, our slip ‘n’ slides, and our will to live. And, because I inherited my mum’s fragile British skin, I can’t go outside for more than five minutes unless I want a skin tone that suggests I’m the love child of Satan and the Pink Panther. One year I got sunburnt so badly that my arms actually cracked and blistered. And last year, I got a tan in Scotland. There is no sun in Scotland. The Scots hear stories of this big bright burning ball of gas in the sky and think it’s just a myth. And yet… it found me.

My summer got off to a brilliant start when my friend and I returned to my car last night to find what can only be described as a FREAKIN GIANT SPIDER on the windscreen. As far as we can recall, the situation looked quite like this:

Please note that items in the artwork may not be to scale, or well drawn. And by ‘artist’s interpretation’ I mean ‘I drew this on the back of an envelope. Poorly’.

It’s common knowledge that Australia is home to some of the world’s most dangerous spiders, and while everyone is banging on about the Funnel-Web, the White-Tail and the Red-Back, very little attention is ever paid to raising awareness of the Giant-Hat-Wearing-Car-Clinging-Spider, whose natural enemy is the windscreen wiper (foreigners should write that down, and only visit our country with extreme caution. Really. It’s amazing any of us are here at all).

I also threw up in a drain at one stage, but there’s no need to go into that.

And if the title of this blog made you think of Regina Spektor, we should hang out more. Coz... coz that's where I stole it from...