27 June 2012

On Sodcasting, or Why I Sometimes Want to Kill People

At least this guy probably knows by now 
that he's a dick.
Warning: grumpy old lady rant follows...

There aren't many things that make me furiously angry. If you know which your/you're to use, don't beat on animals, little kids or your significant other and refrain from being openly racist or xenophobic, I'm pretty much a harmless kitten. 

Today I decided to add another trigger to the kitty-with-claws list. Protect your puny adolescent balls, kids, if you're a fucking sodcaster.

Sodcasting (apparently derived from some amalgam of "podcasting" and "sod you") is the act of playing music through the speaker on a mobile phone in public, usually on public transport, and seems to have exploded in popularity on Christchurch buses over the past six months.

Basically it involves douchebag kids sauntering onto the bus, holding their phones and blasting unrecognisably tinny crap-rap at all and sundry for the duration of their journey. Requests to turn the volume down are usually ignored.

Research seems to agree that it's a territorial thing - pretty much the asshat teen's version of spraying the couch, peeing on a lamp-post or roaring and beating your chest. It's saying "this area is for me and others like me - anyone who doesn't like it doesn't belong." Others suggest that kids who engage in it lack empathy or social awareness.

Either way, they make my cellphone-smashing, selfish-idiot-punching finger itch. (Stop imagining what a one-finger punch would look like. It isn't pretty.)

So, since polite requests to cease and desist haven't proved effective, and physical assault is legally frowned upon, what can we actually do about this?

Well! I'm glad you asked. (Pretend you did.) I do have an idea.

One thing I've never witnessed is competing sodcasts. The sodcast seems to do its job - others feel powerless, and seethe silently. Only like-minded individuals sit near the sodcaster. But why? Isn't this like us saying "yes, I acknowledge that you own this space"? Screw that.

Perhaps, unless the offending sodcaster looks particularly stabby, we should whip out our phones (which are much nicer and louder, because we have brains and jobs) and broadcast our own brand of sodcasting. Some Spice Girls, perhaps? Aqua? Placido Domingo? For those with kids, The Wiggles? 

Even better - what if we crowdsourced lyrics for a song mocking sodcasting, recorded it (very badly - it should be annoying as all hell), and made it freely available for download so everyone who's sick of sodcasting could sodcast it in protest of sodcasting when sodcasting occurs?

Tell me what you think!



18 June 2012

I dream of... WTF?

A baby llama. Just because.
Smoking friends! If you haven't tried Champix yet, do. Oh, it hasn't made me give up smoking - I'm still puffing away guiltily ("tomorrow, tomorrow" has become a kind of mantra for me) - but it gives you the most amazing dreams!

I've given up smoking before (more than once...) and the nicotine deprivation has always given me vivid dreams. But Champix is on a whole other level. 

I'd been warned that my dreams would be both vivid and scary. Both of these things have been borne out. But it's oh, so much fun! I'm loving waking each morning and thinking "nice one, imagination, HIGH FIVE!". Even those, ah, 'special' dreams are enhanced. Ladies, you know the ones I mean.

Sadly, I've not had any midget llamas yet, as I did last time I kicked the cancer sticks. But I have had strange, labyrinthine underground apartments, a terrifying dream seizure (which just happened to coincide with an actual earthquake), and an epic mystery involving a university, a helicopter crash, the Vice Chancellor, aliens, a bunch of lecturers and current crush as my crime-solving sidekick. The key to that one turned out to be a tiny ugly black kitten who I at first mistook for a dead bird in a spiderweb and then adopted, which turned out to have magical powers.

And then there was the time I went into Glassons looking for a costume base, and couldn't try on the dress because the changing rooms had been red-stickered for earthquake damage and cordoned off. I decided to go to another Glassons instead, and encountered CC outside in a black SUV, who offered me a ride to the mall. And before we'd even left the carpark,  he decided to call me a "hoary mole" and said he didn't want to ride with me - and stormed off. I got a bus instead. 

This randomness is a kick all of its own - I'm getting to the point where I can't wait to get to sleep, and can't stand to wake up...!


17 June 2012

Be mine, be mine, tonight...

Oops. It appears I've forgotten to post for a very, very long time. If I have any subscribers left, hi! What have I been doing? Well, I tried to write a book and that didn't happen. I tried to write a new song and that didn't happen. I tried to keep my job, and that didn't happen - and then I tried to get a new one and that didn't happen either. I tried to have meaningful interactions with a male of the species and well... you can guess.

Following an unfortunate creepy stalking incident, I also deleted my NZDating profile. It's all fun and games until someone approaches you at the pub after recognising you, and won't take "fuck off, it's a joke profile" for an answer. So to those readers who followed me only for my (if I may say so) hilarious NZDating stories - sorry. The joke had run its course.

But while we're on the subject of relationships, I have been thinking about this subject a fair bit lately. A couple of weeks ago, on a cold and stormy night, I huddled under the heatpump with a blanket and my clichéd cat to watch the movie "He's Just Not That Into You". I'd seen bits of it years before on pay TV in a hotel room somewhere, but fell asleep before the end.

Everything they say makes sense  in theory. If a guy likes you, he'll ask for your number. If he doesn't, he won't. If he doesn't call you, he doesn't like you. Blah blah blah. The upshot of it is, we should just wait around for someone to like us enough to get our numbers and call us. If the girl does either of these things instead, she's needy and doomed to die alone, with her many cats eating her face.

All well and good - but is there a country in the world where it's still normal for guys to ask girls on dates? Or is it the domain of romantic comedies alone?

Case in point: me. Thirty-one, not entirely horrible to look at, I dress ok, have an alright job, can converse on current affairs with some competency and have been known at times to be funny. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been asked on a date, and still have enough fingers left over to open a beer. As for being asked for my number... well, I'm pretty sure that count currently stands at zero.

So it stands to reason that I can make eyes at the guy I'm currently drooling over as much as I like (knowing me, it's likely I appear rather more drunk or gassy than seductive) - it just isn't going to get me anywhere. And a male friend confirmed the other day "that's just not how it works anymore."

So, no matter how much it offends my inner romantic, it seems the 'kiwi way' is here to stay. You both get drunk at a party, one of you says "go home with me", and then if you don't hate each other in the morning, do it again. After a while one of you will either update your relationship status on facebook or start sleeping with other people. And that's pretty much it.

Sigh. I'm gonna need more cats...