Use Your Imagination

The real reason why Telemarketers are hated. They pry into love lives.

Talking on the phone all day can be really dangerous to one's mental health, here is an example.

I had been hanging out at home, contemplating another method of procrastination, so I wouldn't have to do my homework when the phone rang. I usually never answer the phone because I hate making small talk when you can't see the person's face. Anyway, I picked the phone up and no one spoke for a little while, immediately bringing to the forefront, the suspicion that it was some overseas caller. It was. Some weird Indian guy, you know from the phone company or whatever. And he was saying all this crap about phones, while I was ignoring him and thinking how long it would be before he lost interest and hung up, while my mouth occasionally murmured monosyllables like, "yeah" and "fine" etc. Anyway, he finally clicked that I didn't pay the bills and here's our conversation since then, I swear I am not making it up:

Too cool for school.

Hmmm, now I have to think of something really cool to write about, to top my last entry.

Once again I need to add a note at the beginning, just in case my fellow scholars ever read this: Don’t worry, I haven’t named names, ha ha.

Schoolies is an interesting concept as it has polarised public opinion. (I stole that line from my issues writing days in English) Some believe schoolies is the chance to completely relax, while others take it as the opportunity to enjoy a permanently intoxicated state. There are those who believe that the intent of people on schoolies is to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the law-abiding citizens, and others who just don’t care at all.

I personally went on schoolies to enjoy a time of guilt free laziness. There were a few hiccups however, in my meticulous plan; namely, I was living in a house with 11 other girls and a lot of alcohol.

The first cause for eruption happened before our week away even began. It centred on the very important but delicate issue of…toilet paper. Yes, that is right, people were arguing about toilet paper. To be fair, it was more one girl talking very loudly at others while they stared at her in disbelief and suppressed laughter. After all, she was serious.

As you can imagine, one would find a variety of personalities encompassed in 11 girls, and, this fact is the basis of all conflicts. Now with the toilet paper; one girl was compulsorily obsessed with planning and began doing so at least six months before our schoolies trip. Myself and two other girls however, could quite possibly be called anti-planning and packed on the day of commencement. So, our obsessive planner wanted everyone to bring their own toilet paper, however the anti-planners could not enlist themselves to feel so passionately about the issue. At the anti-planners refusal, the obsessive planner planned her revenge, by disallowing the anti-planners to share in her toilet paper. The anti-planners found this rather ludicrous, so they thought vaguely about stealing all the toilet paper in the house and selling it back to the obsessive planner at an inflated price.

This argument came to its climax or perhaps its anticlimax, when the obsessive planner forgot her many rolls of carefully planned toilet paper and had to degrade herself to the use of communal paper. Her plan of carrying her paper under her arm had unravelled, much to the delight of the anti-planners.

It is quite easy to believe that a group, mainly consisting of pampered princesses, would not be able to survive the harsh environment of having no one to cook for them. However, survive we did. It was a case of pasta, pasta and pasta. Our variety of food was extensive. There were ferocious, swearing filled battles with uncooperative ovens, sticky spills and nasty, aggressive dishwashers. Not to mention that we had no hot water for the first three days! We strived onwards and upwards (lame school motto) and I was crowned The Egg Queen, due to my improvised fried eggs without the egg rings. We all learnt that taste is what is important and that if you squinted your eyes the egg looked less like road kill.

            It was an interesting time to go on schoolies as we received our VCE score while we were there. This was a terrifying experience, or would have been if a) I cared or b) I had been sober. In an effort to spare all those whose lives depended on their enter score, from a night of unbearable tension (we received our enters at 7 in the morning by text), we decided to get completely smashed. I, ashamedly, only made it to 3ish before I fell asleep on a piece of couch with a fellow drunk. The only discomfort I felt from that night was when I fell of the couch. Despite my dismal effort at the all-nighter, I was later told that the pain of the thought of impending doom was considerably lessened due to the entertainment I produced in my drunken state.

            And so, I was free from a night of torture, but for those who could hold their alcohol, the few hours before the dreaded 7 o’clock was intensely uneasy as a result of the unending drone of one girl “omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod”

            That morning was a time of joy, almost like Christmas, except that you had been scared that Santa wouldn’t bring you anything the night before.

Road Rage Once Removed

Now, just before I begin, I should mention that I love my mother dearly and am incredibly grateful for having such a normal adult to whom I owe my life. However, no one is perfect, though some people are perfectly arrogant (as we find out later), and so my mother has a flaw (though if this ever leaks back to her, I will deny everything and destroy the evidence).

It was time to drive to netball, at MSAC and I went to get into the passenger seat when I was given my first shock of the evening.

"You can drive today."

Now this statement may not seem, to the ordinary observer, to be that fantastic however the last time my mother was in the car with me driving, she had her eyes clenched shut and as an extra precaution, for fear of even glimpsing something that appeared to have a remote resemblance to another car, she had her fingers crossed and stuck to her face. In addition to this, she had earphones on and broke my sister's hand (bones can only endure so much squeezing).

So you see, it was not so strange for me to gape at her in astonishment.

Now I don't want you to get the wrong impression of my driving, there has been countless others, who have had the courage to get into a car with me and live to tell the tale, so my mother's irrational fear of my driving, is just that: irrational.

So mum had finally decided to take the plunge.

The first obstacle that we ran in to (not literally, don’t worry) was the position of the L-plates, that’s right, we hadn’t even started the engine yet.

“You won’t be able to see, it’s right in your vision”

“Mum, it is a 5cm squared piece of cardboard stuck in the corner of the window, I think I will be able to manage”

Miraculously we were able to start the car and reverse out of the driveway without a fuss. It was soon after this, on Warrigal Rd, where the screaming began. During this I was reminded irrevocably of a quote I had read somewhere.

“Have you ever noticed? Anyone going slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster is a maniac”

This is quite possibly the truest thing I have ever heard.

As we were heading down Warrigal Rd I was struck with the complete arrogance of other drivers i.e. non L-platers. No matter how fast I go, no matter how obsessively I stick to the speed limit people always find it to be their duty to overtake me, despite having to go over the speed limit in order to do this. Anyway, we were driving along when the first infuriating thing my mother saw was a bike rider. She exploded.

“These bike people shouldn’t be on the road!!! What the hell are they doing!!! They should be banned!!!” etc.

So we carefully went around the bike rider, however before I could even begin to get over the latest outburst mum spied that the bonnet of some “bastard” was poking out into our lane. What escalated the situation was that I still had my indicator on, from moving back into the left lane around the bike, so the “bastard” though that I was turning and began to more out. The next 15seconds were a blur of sounds. Unnatural high pitch orders were being given, which for a while I could not comprehend their meaning

“turtheindicatoroff!!!turtheindicatoroff !!!TURN THE INDICATOR OFF!!!!!!!”

Finally I understood and the ten car pileup, which my mother expected was avoided.

From this point on the drive went fairly smooth. I kept my hands super glued to the steering wheel and my eyes vigilant for the deadly “bastards” and I was only hindered by the continuos muttering coming from my mother, which sounded scarily like my grandfather, about “drugged pedestrians, arrogant drivers, bastard truck drivers and crazy taxis”

Mum eventually lost interest in the “other” drivers and turned her attention to me.

“What are you driving so fast for?! Slow down! Slow down! You’re like a bat out of hell!”

“Mum! The speed limit is 70, I’m doing like 68!"

“You don’t have to DO 70, it’s just a suggestion!”

My favourite part was when I was approaching a traffic light, when mum began yelling once again.

“Slow down! Slow down! It’s a traffic light!!!”

“MUM!! It’s a GREEN traffic light!”

“So?”

Well, as it may not be expected, we actually made it home without crashing, with everything except my mind in one piece. And as I was relating our journey to my dad, he was laughing and saying that mum will never go driving with me again, it’s too stressful for her.

I said “Her?! What about for me?”

To be truly merry

Hurray! I have thought of something to write, which should satisfy my pedantic cousin Pat. Ha ha.

It is concerned with the overwhelming commercialisation of Christmas, and other such important money making days.

Firstly, I am continually annoyed by the advertisement of products that are “new and improved”, how can something possibly be new, if it is improved? It makes absolutely no sense. If something is improved, then it obviously has already been in existence and therefore cannot be new, it is in fact, old. The ads should say “old but improved”, but I guess that just isn’t appealing enough, even though it is true but since when do ads tell the truth? That would be like having an honest politician. Ha ha, what an oxymoron!

Fourthly (these points are not in strict numerical order), the commercialisation of Christmas is sad. I mean decorations were being put up in the middle of November! Soon it will be September, then Christmas in July will actually be celebrated. It seems to me, that the more commercial Christmas, or any such like event become, the less special they feel. Sure getting presents is nice, but isn’t it the opening of the presents with your family and friends that makes it so exciting and fun? And besides that, where do you get the presents from if you are not with the people you love? No people equals no presents. So instead of looking forward to presents or dreading the Christmas rush maybe people should just try to enjoy the simple happiness of being together and not worry about the future for once.

It would be a nice change.

Name Day

In honour of orginality,

it seems to me that there is a serious decrease in the capacity of one's imagination in correlation with an increase in age, which is often associated with intelligence. I believe that there would be an r squared value of around .96 (that value is formed with the assistance of the .04 that is due to other factors). Anyway, there must be some kind of period during high school, prehaps even in primary school, when a person's creative juices seem to begin to gradually leak out of their ears. What I find ironic about this is that, especially in high school, kids are expected to express their individuality (often in very conformist environments) and be marked on their creativity. It seems that the more creative we are expected to be, the less original we become. When so much information is stuffed into us, something must give, and often this may be creativity. So climb a tree.

The actual beginning point that i was going to make was that 'ylime' is 'emily' spelt backwards. An anagram of sorts. I was trying to be creative.