Category Archives: Musings

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Sufficient unto each day is the evil thereof

Some not-so-good things, in no particular order:

1. Skidding into the Union Street traffic island in the rain and doing mumblehundredworth of damage to one’s very great friend’s car while he is in darkest Africa saving the world via welding

2. Getting to November 25 with less than 25,000 words of NaNoWriMo under one’s belt

3. Having the sole of one’s current favourite shoes start to peel off

Some mighty nice things, in no particular order:

1. The pleasing facial expression adopted by one’s current favourite shoes as their sole starts to peel off (sort of a cross between Audrey II and a greenlipped mussel)

2. Write or Die, srsly. One can do 1,000 words in twenty minutes

3. Having a boy person friend who allows one to perform minor surgery on him with tweezers

4. Reading one’s blog stats. A few weeks ago the only search terms were related to Angel and Buffy, but recently they have included searches for “steampunk”, “Claire Danes”, and my personal favourite, “streep teas preteen video”

5. Finishing one’s final Pilates certification written exams (total time, about 11 hours)

Therefore:

1. Life, on balance, is pretty much peachy

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Thomas has autism and Alice is a goth

Speaking of cult status, which we were — try to keep up — there are several luminous examples among the screen media — among literature in general, in fact — of titles with especial resonance for certain niche groups. Let me be precise: groups which are obviously united by their neurology or their response to societal norms are often, in ways that are sometimes only loosely intuitive to the outside observer, drawn to specific works of literature. It’s true.

alice-burton-wonderlandFor example, it’s fairly easy to understand why those who identify as Gothic would also identify with, say, Tim Burton. It’s all the black scary things. Simple. But the part that is actually intriguing is the fact that goths everywhere (a certain type of goth, anyway) have an uncannily strong affinity with Alice, adventurer in Wonderland. Crazy blonde hair, powder-blue frock, poor self-control — it is easy to imagine her appealing to some groups. Pre-teen Disney fans, yes; socially inept bookish children, yes; lonely mathematicians with questionable motives, indeed. But the fact remains: dive into the world of Alice appreciation and you’ll inevitably find yourself rubbing shoulders with a gaggle of Gothic fans. Some will be delightful whimsigoths hanging out at Gorey Details; some, enterprising artists sharing their Tenniel hairpieces on Etsy; some lining up to see (and note the felicitous congruence here) Tim Burton’s adaptation, or Erich Hoeber’s, or one by Marilyn Manson too ghastly to link.

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Cult beauty products that are secretly horrid

History records a list of things–whether they be tragic novels, children’s movies, chocolate bars or strengthening exercises–that have achieved what is pleasingly referred to as cult status. You know the ones–Wuthering Heights, Babe, the Reese’s Piece, the burpee, this type of thing. Their virtue is respected regardless of personal preference; they transcend their decade of production; they unite consumers, and reveal oddities like Vegemite-haters and PB&J non-combiners and people who don’t like the Dixie Chicks.

Some cult beauty products, however, have achieved this status inexplicably. I do not refer to those products, like 8 Hour Cream, which are regrettably Wrong but Wromantic (apricot-scented petroleum jelly, sadly, cannot really be deserving, despite its loveliness), but of those that have all the actual charm of the Emperor’s clothes. Following, therefore, is a short list of beauty products that deserve to go the way of the Branch Davidians. Read on.

St Ives Apricot Scrub. This so-called cult product is essentially cheap sunscreen mixed with ground-up swimming-pool bottom. The smell alone is sickening, but the texture is the fascinating part: St Ive may as well have stuck with orthodoxy and pointed his disciples to a Brillo pad.

Clarins Beauty Flash Balm. It is, similarly, the smell that gives this one away; it’s reminiscent of an early stage in the manufacture of rubber cement, and feels a little like the goop that is customarily tinted blue and poured onto contestants on children’s television shows. Like all of these things, it should have been disposed of safely and respectfully in the 1980s.

Blotting papers of all kinds. The favoured ones when I was a gurl were from The Body Shop, but there are umpteen variations — lilliputian rectangles of rice paper, dusted on one side with powder and designed to absorb tiny droplets of sweat or oil from one’s mid-afternoon nose. People will buy anything, srsly. For interest’s sake, the correct product to use in this situation is a Starbucks napkin.

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Jewellery school, and other pipe-dreams

The other day I did a spot of judicious Googling and found a jewellery-making school that I want to go to. It’s in Titirangi, for one thing. Titirangi, as readers may know, is drop-dead gorgeous and contains good things like a fire station, an art gallery, and a woman named Wilhemeena, who, back in the day, used to give me a massage every fourteen months or so when one of her somatics workshops was cancelled due to underbooking. Such were the days. I haven’t seen Wilhemeena for months, and even then it was just a fleeting glimpse of her choreography at the Famous Spiegeltent in Aotea Square. And another thing. There are implements involved, and there is nothing like an art form that requires flames and hammers and death-grip pincer devices, is it.

Alas, however, I sadly recall the following facts:

Monday: leave at 0715, get back at 1800, teach until 1930 or later

Tuesday: leave at 0715, get back at 1800, teach until 1900 or later

Wednesday: leave at 0645, go straight to student group, get home around 2300

Thursday: leave between 0645 and 0845, go to other work, finish at 2230, get home who-knows-when

Friday: leave at 0615, finish at 1430, attempt social life

Saturday: leave at 0745 depending, do killer mat class, maybe teach, go to library, write like the dickens, get home around 2300

Sunday: leave for church earlyish, go to work, finish at 2230, get home who-knows-when

[Timetable is wildly variable due to high levels of security awareness and should not be relied upon for abduction or social networking purposes, but you get the idea.]

Also, it is distinctly possible that budgeting difficulties could be encountered when trying to factor in extra alloys and such-like. Not all of us can play with gold and get away with it. But still. Girlies can dream.

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More NaNoWriMo plans

So the National Novel Writing Month plans are coming along slowly. It was probably only a matter of time before the boy person friend, bless his tiny heart, realised that NaNo contributions don’t have to be individual affairs.

Boy person friend: Can we collaborate? Ooh?

Moi: No.

BPF: But don’t you want to help me to succeed?

Moi: But I did Script Frenzy with Smokey last year and we wrote about a hunnerd words.

BPF: But Smokey has a child and a husband. I am unencumbered.

Moi: It would be like when we try to buy peanut butter together.

BPF: No, no. [Thinks briefly about that experience.] Your ideas are legitimate. You can decide things. You can decide the colour of the toothbrush the main character uses.

Moi: You see?

BPF: No, no. [A pause, and then he gives a rakish sideways look.] Will it be red?

He is a sweetie.