Danger? I laugh in the face of danger!!

Don't believe everything you hear. For example, leggings are NOT pants... but either are skirts so go to town on those bad boys, I say. Also, Antonio Banderas may look like he's headed for 'washed up' status (He’s doing chewing gum commercials! That’s his JOB now!) But guess what? The guy owns 50% of a winery! A winery that makes WINE! If that's not winning at life then what is? Really? Maybe also owning a brewery would be the true definition of absolute winning but... he's half way there. How many of us can say that? And finally, the whole 'exercise is good for you' conspiracy is about to be blown WIDE open. That's just how I roll, y'all. I push the envelope. I'm here to tell you that exercise is lethal. It's a dangerous, loathsome activity that is killing our children, taking our parents from us far too early, and spitting in the face of democracy. Well... maybe not that last one but you know how these slippery slope things go... it's just a matter of time. And if you don't believe me, I have proof. It is because I care about my fellow people that I get right down there in the trenches so that you don't have to. Knowing that I might possibly save someone by enduring such torture is my real reward, followed closely by the reward of escaping with my life. Some people have not been so lucky. 

The scene: A sporting complex in the 'school-of-hard-knocks' suburb of Marden. The instigator: My brother, who may or may not be Lucifer incarnate. The torture: Netball. When you're about to die they say that you see your life flash before your eyes. I didn't get anything quite so glamorous. All I got was a flash of yellowish white as the elbow smashed into the side of my face. I knew my time was coming but I pushed on. After all I had driven all the way out there without getting lost. Also, as a treat for getting through the hell that is netball, I'd promised myself that I'd spend a whole hour the next day on photoshop replacing Rita Wilson's face with mine in her wedding photos. One day, Tom Hanks will be my beloved and so I need to see how our wedding will be. So did I give up after that blow to the head? No. Should I have? Perhaps. 

My face was bright red, the muscles (what few I have) in my legs were shaking out of protest and I felt like I was going to throw up. But I am nothing if not stubborn. If someone tells me I can't eat an entire sara lee sticky date pudding then I'm going to eat that whole thing and then another one, just to prove I can do whatever the flip I want. You ain't gon tell me what to do! You're not my real dad! So as the ball came towards me and the girl I could never keep up with ran for it, I stayed back. My plan was to bypass the whole 'trying to stop her from scoring thing' and stop the OTHER guy from scoring. He was so good that he'd shoot most shots single handed… Showoff! Me and my team mate covered him like a sparkly silver tank top covers a Hindley street hooker.... not very well. But as the ball rebounded off the side of the goal I saw my opening. I saw the glory that would soon and most certainly be mine. And I reached for that glory hungrily. But then so did one-handed-shooting-guy. If I'm stubborn, this guy is a killer in disguise. All laughing and joking and pretending not to care but when push comes to shove, that guy is like Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men. He's CRAZY! Some people would just try to grab the ball out of my reach and go for the goal again. Not one-handed-guy, no no, that's not enough for him. His eyes, which I swear turned into two little fire balls when he realised that I was attempting to thwart his plans, locked onto mine as his slammed his fist onto my thumb, pushing it back so far that I thought 'my god, I'm double jointed!'. That was until the pain started and I realised I am not double jointed but just bleeding internally. Severely too, I might add. It is a wonder I'm alive to write this. 

The next issue was my lack of fitness. I was trying to keep up; I was not just standing around tapping my toe and thinking about cats wearing costumes, I really really wasn't, you guys!! I think that honestly I just didn’t want to be the least fit person on the team. As a fill in player, I know that’s what people expect from me; total lack of skill and competency. But I hate living up to people’s unfounded assumptions about me. That’s why sometimes, just for fun, I’ll start screaming compliments at people in German. See the brilliance of it is that they think I’m insulting them but I’m actually saying something like “You have the most beautiful ears I’ve ever seen” just very loudly, and in a language they don’t understand. So I worked really hard during the netball game to make people think that I frequent this thing called ‘exercise’. People were checking in to make sure I was okay and I was bravely smiling through my wheezing and reassuring them that this was nothing to me; it was so easy it was a joke. But a body can only put up with so much until it rebels. Occasionally I would have to quickly sit down while the play was at the other end of the court and shoot back up if any of my team members looked over. In addition to my recreational sit-downs, I would also do this thing I invented that looks a lot like running but is actually just me moving my legs while they remain on the ground; giving people the illusion that I was running on the spot. Brilliant, I know. It’s tough being this smart. 

I expect that this is what it’s like to come back from battle. You feel deflated and paranoid thinking that death is around every corner. You can genuinely scowl at people’s first world problems before muttering “you don’t know pain. I’ve SEEN some shit!” Also, there are the nightmares and the sweating, not to mention the occasional Tourettes-like outbursts that you can’t control. Exercise is a dangerous epidemic that seems to be consuming our population. Heed my warning, kids… there are better ways to get your kicks. Glue sniffing, for one. Prank phone calling is also good. And if all else fails there is always cask wine. But don’t you even think about getting caught up in this exercise business because if you do, you will die. 

THE END!

I don't know how to tell you this but... those are not pants. They are cheese.

Chuck Wendig said “Failure is an instruction manual written in scar tissue.” Ouch, Wendig... shit just got real. But I agree. Sometimes I think back on all the mistakes I’ve made (and am currently still making) in life and I start to believe that if I look real hard, I can see them all carved into my skin. The ones I repeat are darker and deeper and angrier looking than the others. The other ones are barely visible; in fact you gotta search hard to find them. Unfortunately there are only a few of those scars. 

I know its insanity; doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result but I also can’t seem to stop doing it. It’s like every time I think about what I’ve done in the past and how I could maybe try something different in the future, my brain tricks me into thinking that my ‘new approach’ is just that; a new approach. In reality it is just the same old business dressed up in a tuxedo and top hat, caressing my ears with its deep and soothing Barry White impersonation and promising me a better existence. It’s confusing! And mix that with a pretty limited memory of my past crimes and you’ve got the perfect combination of ignorance and stupidity. Kills 99.9% of all good intentions, guaranteed or your money back. 

I feel like I’m on that weird cusp between sane and insane where I’m definitely a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but I’m not quite gone enough to not know that I’m gone... you know?! Perhaps not, it might be like that movie ‘I Know Who Killed Me’, unless you’re in it, you don’t know what the deal is.

But most recently I’ve discovered that my need to always be a ‘yes’ person is where I’m causing the deepest scars. I can’t just go “nah, that sounds dumb. I aint buyin Sir, what you be sellin”. Instead I go “Yeh.... that sounds.... interesting? Sure you can perform surgery on me to add a little flair to your resume, why the bloody hell not?” And I regret doing it AS I’m doing it! It’s crazy! Loco! It’s David Hasselhoff eating a burger. It’s Anna Nicole Smith at the American Music Awards. It’s Anne Heche flouncing into a secluded ranch in the middle of nowhere wearing just bra and shorties and asking to take a shower. It’s MADNESS I say! And it must end. Because while those three winners didn’t repeat their mistakes (in the media at least), I do indeed repeat mine like they’re reruns of ‘the Simpsons’, except unlike ‘the Simpsons’ no one, but NO ONE wants to see them again. 

So in an effort to end all of the ridiculous problems I create for myself in just one Incredible Hulk sized declaration, my one and only new years resolution for 2014 is this-

Don’t do what you would usually do. Try something else. 

I like it. It’s to the point, it doesn’t mince words, it isn’t overly preachy and it has that certain ‘Je ne sais quoi'. Which, those of you who speak French will know, means ‘T&A’. I know that to keep this resolution I may hit a few hurdles at first. This is fine. I once spent the night with Danny DeVito. I am no stranger to a few false starts. But if I really pursue this, just as I did with Mr DeVito, I know for sure that I am eventually in for a sufficiently gratifying sexual release. Same thing, yeah?! 

Love, Confusion and other psychological games...

It’s such a lovely notion that when you see or talk to or think about someone you love your heart races. How romantic, right?! We’ve had this concept shoved down our throats by poets, writers, singers, songwriters and horny bastards looking for a shag at 3AM. It’s nice, really. It sounds so deep and meaningful. But let’s face it kids, it’s all just hormonal. It’s your brain giving you hits of adrenaline, epinephrine and norepinephrine which makes you all crazy and weird and forces your heart to beat real fast. I get that same feeling when I open a bill or hear that Elijah Wood is going to star in a new film, so it is NOT always a positive thing. But even though the science tells me to stop reading into this whole “your heart tells you who you love” phenomenon, I still can’t shake that romantic side of me. You know... the little girl who watches ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ over and over again and thinks that the guy who serves her coffee is actually her soul mate. She’s soo annoying, that bitch. But I’ll give her this; she’s determined. No matter how many times she gets proven wrong or slapped across the face by love, she keeps on truckin. 

The motivation behind this rant is that I keep in contact with a couple of my exes and one of them always has this affect on me when I hear from him. My heart races and my stupid, half-dead, almost-always-drunk brain takes this as some kind of sign that we’re supposed to be together. We’re not, obviously. If we were supposed to be together, we’d be together. If we were truly meant for each other, we wouldn’t hurt and frustrate each other as much as we do. If he was really the love of my life, I wouldn’t sometimes impersonate him in the mirror and then laugh manically. I know it’s not to be, like Britney Spears as an actress... that dog just won’t hunt. But all the logic and reason in the world doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’m about to have a heart attack whenever I see an email or text from him. 

And my mother is no help whatsoever. She takes this heart racing thing way more seriously than she should, screaming at me to do everything in my power to get my ex back. She adores this man; she would marry him in a second if my dad wasn’t around. Seriously, she’d get all ‘Death Becomes Her’ on my ass (minus the eternal life thing) if she were single. She’d get super hot and steal Bruce Willis from me as I slowly age and my showbiz career flops, and she wouldn’t feel a single pang of guilt about it. Obviously I am Meryl Streep in the scenario and she is Goldie Hawn, because if given the option, I will ALWAYS be Meryl Streep. She is amazing and looking at her makes me feel like I am swimming in a pool of strawberry cider with Billie Holiday serenading me from the patio. And let’s be honest, that’s what TRUE love should feel like. Which is not how I felt with the ex. 

Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty close. I loved him a lot, but near the end it was more like swimming in a pool of coopers sparkling with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones singing from the patio. But after a while, you realise that they only had like... one or two really awesome songs and the rest sounded a bit generic. And after a while coopers sparkling gets really heavy and hard to drink, plus it makes you stupid drunk. 

What I’ve discovered is that this whole heart racing thing is nice. It reminds me that there are people out there who are so fantastic and unique and special that it will cause my body and mind to have powerful feelings of love (or something like it) towards them. It reminds me that I will not be apathetic towards relationships and love forever. It gives me hope and optimism and also a wicked case of hyperactivity. But also it reminds me not to take it all so seriously. It’s not the be all and end all; it’s really just your brain being a kind of over-perky cheerleader for love and as we all know, cheerleaders can be right bullies. The best way to deal with a bully is to ignore them. Eventually they’ll get bored and leave you alone. Either way, you’ll survive. TRUST me, you will. If we, as a society, can survive the films of Vin Diesel then we can survive anything.