Blessed Fat Chips

Some soft news writing from journalism today:

I approach the shop slowly, drinking in the brightly lit display of curry puffs, hash browns and spring rolls. The smell of sizzling oil wafts delicately from the back kitchen. Engorged pizzas drip with cheese. And chips. Glistening, golden brown, oil-saturated chips

I approach the counter, and am greeted by a cheery girl, wearing a yellow t-shirt, boldly emblazoned in red with the name of the shop, Fat Chips. She smiles from behind her rectangular glasses.

The question tumbles from my mouth like a potato cake into the fryer. Why Fat Chips?

“People like chips. Students like chips!” she explains passionately, adding that everyone is “all laughing together” when they encounter the refreshingly irreverent name.

A community is formed around Fat Chips, she says, as RMIT teachers and students (attracted, she reflects, by their cut-throat prices) frequently buy their food there, and come to “know us”.

As we speak I look down, and notice that we are standing at the other side of the store. On display at the bench are sandwiches, vegetarian focaccias, carrot, chicken and beetroot wraps. I buy a fruit salad, a goodwill gesture.

These offerings seem incongruous with the gleaming, salty foods presented at the other end of the store. Yet I am beginning to feel that there is much about Fat Chips I do not understand.

I begin to ask another question, but a sudden flurry of customers down at the chips end of the store distracts her, and I realise I will not even have another chance to ask another question, or even her name – my brief glimpse into this noble institution is over.

As I bite into the apple in my fruit salad, it tastes floury and insipid.

Perhaps the apple is not enough. Perhaps I crave something more. Perhaps I crave... fat chips.

Just Say Hi!

The greeting of a stranger is a lovely thing.

It's one human saying to another 'we are united by the fact that we're both humans, both outside/inside/trapped in this deadly labyrinth, and in this spirit I wish you well'.

But it doesn't always happen seamlessly. I have decided that there are really three groups into which stranger greetings fit:

1. The Warm Greeting - this is the friendly, genuine, greeting. It can occur in any of the following places, though this listing is by no means exhaustive: parks, residential streets, otherwise nearly empty corridors in buildings, stairs, lifts, doorways (though these are usually much briefer). The greeter will usually bestow a smile, eye contact, and a "hey". They will usually maintain eye contact, allowing for the recipient of the Warm Greeting to respond. Both parties then disengage amiably, and continue on their ways, each feeling a little lighter.

2. The 'Let's Do This' Greeting - almost always, a male greeter delivers this particular form of stranger greeting. It begins as soon as the two have identified each other. Their paths will intersect. The greeter and greetee mentally steel themselves, preparing their lines. But not too early! NEVER too early, because then a conversation has been opened, and it may be several seconds before they pass one another. Instead, at the last moment, a 'Morning' is thrown out, reciprocated, and a shared sigh of relief is exhaled as they pass one another, their civil duty done.

3. The 'AVOID GREETING AT ANY COST' - this occurs when one party has an aversion to any kind of stranger greeting, and so will completely avoid eye contact, staring straight ahead, or at a watch, or mobile, or impromptu newspaper fashioned from some leafy detritus on the footpath. This works well if neither parties wish to engage in a greeting, but can cause hurt and embarrassment if one party does not recognise the intentions of the other, and either attempts eye contact, or volunteers a nod and 'Hello' automatically. The other person will usually pretend not to have noticed, and continue walking.

I am so tired that I can't even fully comprehend how boring a topic this was. But I have thought this when I go for a walk in my local park. I wanted to draw some pictures for it, but I have decided that they don't always enhance a post, especially when they are appalling.

Sorry.

Enough Is Enough

Tired Gelati Gecko,

This Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde farce has carried on far enough.

I'm going to be damned blunt here - pull your socks up. Your wallowing and splashing about is unwarranted, and lowers the overall tone of an already troubled publication.

You could take the time to write something humorous, or clever, or even both. But oh no, that's too much effort for crazy old Tired Gelati Gecko. All he wants to do is go around telling people every little bit of our business. Well oh no. Enough is enough.

Not here you don't, no sir!

I am going to change the password to this blog, in the hope that you will not be able to get your demonic (yet admittedly very capable) hands on it.

And if that fails, I shall chain myself to my bed until I am rested enough that I can know you will not rear your troublesome mind.

I regret that I am driven to this course of action.

Yours in severity and responsibility,

Gelati Gecko Proper

It's Not Enough

It's not enough anymore,

To be an excellent student.

To be quick and clever,

Sure or smart or good with rhyming words.

Even if I still was,

It's not enough anymore.

...is what I might say, if this were a blog subject to frank emotional admissions. But I am worldly enough to realise that this sort of thing is 'self indulgent' and that I ought to be doing more practical things, such as polishing my resume for a job, or planning my career trajectory that will catapult me into the stars, or doing other important adult things that will probably take up the rest of my life, and rightly so, unless I want to be a timid nobody.

With school finished, all the rules have changed. It's not about good marks anymore - it's about where I'm going. It's about what I'm going to make of my life. And I only have one life.

I applied for a job today, and they said that we should list blogging if we have had experience blogging. I nearly listed this blog. But then I didn't want them reading this. Not particularly because they'll take one look and firmly cross my name out for being a crazy, but because I don't want it to be used for that. I don't want this blog to be used as a bargaining chip or piece of currency to get me jobs and money.

I'm not saying this is a virtuous, pure form of self expression that would be irretrievably compromised...but it is, in many senses, a record of me. A record of myself. And I want to keep this blog for my whole life.

I want to be able to open it, when I'm 90 (a generous assumption, but let's run with it), and look at posts I made when I was 16, and enjoy some of the most poignant scrumishing that ever there was.

Perhaps I shouldn't be publishing this post - It's 12am and I'm tired - my emotional guard (and of course the blessed competence facade) is down.

But I'll publish it anyway, and give future Gelati Gecko something to think about, hey?

Don't tell him! (Tired Gelati Gecko taps nose conspiratorially, winking as he thinks about the mayhem this may cause to his future self.)

So it goes Part 2.

I wasn't expecting that there would be a Part 2 to my earlier post.

But then Kathy Jones entered this thought provoking comment, which I think inspires a second post of its own:

NIPAPORN said...

I have suffered with bad breath for about 9 years now. I spent a small fortune on bad breath cures. Nothing I tried seem to work even as it said it would. I read this site and think it is useful and gives me something to think about. In any case it is always helpful to just to have people writing about it. I did find this site Oraltech Labs & their advice helped me most, I’ve got a boyfriend now & he said its working, hope it helps you too. Kindest, Kathy Jones. NJ.

It is interesting that this was Kathy's response to my post. I don't think she quite grasped the meaning of the excerpt from Slaughter-house Five. However, it is nice to know that she "read this site and think it is useful and gives me something to think about".

I tried to contact Kathy, so I could further discuss the ideas in the post she expressed such a keen interest in it - but alas, her profile is set to private, and so I am unable to follow up on what was a promising introduction.

Still, I felt I should at least acknowledge the diligence of Oraltech Labs (they will probably give me another comment now for having mentioned them, or who knows, they might even pay someone to read blog posts containing the term 'Oraltech Labs', because they are scared or at least wish to be aware of, the mighty influence my blog wields).

So I went and looked at their website, where they sell an e-book that apparently has all the answers on bad breath, and will make you happy and successful and you will never worry about anything like that ever again and people will like you and that will be enough. I could go and point and laugh at some minor mistakes on the website, but I am unsure if "confidents" is in fact a dental pun rather than an incorrect spelling of confidence.

So it goes (apologies to Vonnegut).

So it goes.

Today has been an unusual day thus far.

I’ve been reading Slapstick, a novel written by Kurt Vonnegut. He’s dead now.

Hi ho.

And I’m having one of those experiences where I’ve become so immersed in a book that I’m not even jolted into the outside world, but instead seeing it through the narrative lens of the book I’ve just been reading. Everything I see, I seem to imagine it through the dry, understated, deadpan humour of Vonnegut.

So it goes.

When I got off the train at Melbourne Central this morning, there was a woman at the top of the escalator. She was handing out pamphlets.

Pretty much everyone went past her, because they were probably in a hurry – they were right lane escalator people – no time to stand still. I took one of her brochures, and looked at it. It said on the front, which was yellow, with a big blue number ‘1’:

“What is the one thing you need to know before you become pregnant?

Take folic acid!”

On the inside it explained that folic acid prevents birth defects such as spina bifida by up to 70 percent. Spina bifida is a neural tube defect and the most common one is when the spinal cord is poorly formed.

I turned around and nearly gave her back the pamphlet, because I’m not going to become pregnant anytime soon. Then I realised that she probably had spina bifida. She was in a wheelchair, you see.

So it goes.

Then I kept the pamphlet and read it cover to cover, because I figure that way at least her time wasn’t wasted. I already knew that folic acid was important, but now I feel like writing about it.

You can get folic acid through green leafy vegetables such as spinach and broccoli, lentils, chickpeas, oranges, and cereals.

The brochure was sponsored by Bayer HealthCare, who I guess want to sell folate supplements. The brochure says that “even if you eat food which has folic acid added to it, such as bread, you will almost certainly need more to obtain the required amount. Taking a supplement will help you to meet your daily needs.”

Hi ho.

And I’m sitting here at university, still in the bookish daze that follows immersion in a novel or written world.

I think I like Vonnegut’s writing because he doesn’t labour. He doesn’t force. He just writes what he sees. Sometimes that’s something bizarre, impossibly far fetched, and grotesque, but somehow it all feels true as well, because the world is crazy like that. People do die in freak accidents, or survive, or find themselves unable to love.

One of my favourite parts in Slaughter-House Five is the description of a book by fictional author Kilgore Trout:

“It was about a robot who had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what made the story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings.

It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground.

Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.”

He also presents a picture of the world that I don’t find completely depressing, even if his conclusions seem to be that humans will always kill each other, use intelligence for evil, and have wars, etc.

And so on.

P.S. There is something to be enjoyed about late night train trips.

Standing at Flinders Street, hoping I’ll see a rat scurrying about the dark, wet tracks,

When a cat at a station pads past in perfect time with my music.

The Competence Facade

The competence facade is a something which a part of my mind is always working at maintaining. I've come to understand that it relies largely on the amount of energy available. When energy levels are generally high, the competence facade is comfortably maintained. More or less, I'll find myself offering upbeat, positive, 'I got my stuff together' statements.

However, the more tired I become, the less expendable energy there is to regulate this, which I can only presume inevitably leads to this exchange between the small cerebral denizens who decide how power is allocated to different brain processes:

"We're running on reduced processing power, what should we do?"

"We need to cut power from somewhere...I guess we'll do the usual?"

"Yep, bring down the competence illusion."

After this, the response to that conversational staple question, "How are you?", can be a very different one:

And the asker is left trying to figure out the best way to extricate themselves from a terrifying monologue of raw emotional and psychological anxiety that should never have seen the light of day (or the light of polite conversation, at least).

On lowered energy, I no longer believe I am competent. I no longer care if I am seen as competent. I cease to trust myself to run my own life, and begin to doubt every decision I have made thus far.

I am overwhelmed with the desire to be a child again, tucked up warm and safe in bed, knowing that the big world out there is out of my control, and I don't need to worry about it.

So usually I do just that, until I have slept well enough that my mind can re-assemble the facade, and 'competent' mental governance of my life can resume.