Art School

I was on my way to meet a friend for coffee this morning, walking past the so-called National Art School, when I passed two women talking. The younger one said to the older one in exasperation:

"But Mum, it's Art School, noone wears anything"

Phone.

As the weekend wore on I became more and more despondent. I'd mope about feeling sorry for myself; I'd walk around dragging my feet. I was miserable. "Why?", I can hear you ask...

Well, I'd been brought abruptly face-to-face with the realisation that nobody likes me. "Huh?", you ask, "but isn't your life at the moment one long, glorious picnic?".

That's what I thought too. But on the weekend I felt shunned.. spurned... at one point late Sunday afternoon I worked out that I'd sent texts to 8 people that day and only one of them had replied (she called back, but I said I was in too bad a mood to go out). And on Saturday... same. I had made plans to have lunch with a very good old friend of mine but when I texted to confirm.. nothing. And on it goes. I wore my "I judge you when you use poor grammar" t-shirt all day.

Now, just to clarify, it's not like I did nothing all weekend. I went to a fabulous and strange pool party on Friday night and then got an unexpected call from a new friend who needed someone to talk to, which resulted in me having a very pleasant drink on a balcony overlooking the harbour. And on Saturday I got a new bed and I played tennis. But it's not enough.

Early Sunday evening I ran into a friend (the one I call Neighbor Girl) and I asked her to send me a text... nothing. She tried again... nothing.

I fixed my phone. When I say fixed, what I mean is that I turned it off, opened up the back, took the battery and the sim card out and then put it all back together. And, sure, enough, messages! My balance has been restored!

Name.

On a dating site I'm on I got a message from someone called 'Piscesbutterflychick'. She seems fine but I couldn't possibly respond to someone with a name like that. Someone (and that's not going to be me) should tell her to tone it down a bit.

In the same vein, I once helped a woman friend of mine by getting her to remove all the references to her cat from her dating profile. It worked.

Poseidon

When we were in Flinders I went for a run early one morning and found this (I went back later to take the picture; I don't run with the bloody camera). It's a tasteful modern house, and just outside is this. You just know the owner knows better but he just couldn't help doing it.

Hard Rock Letterbox

I saw this on a letterbox outside a terrace house in Surry Hills yesterday afternoon:

NO JUNK MAIL
PRETTY PLEASE
WITH A CHERRY ON TOP

Of course this annoys me, as most things do. (As an aside, I was recently in an airport departure lounge with my sons and I was pointing out things that annoyed me about the other passengers and my older son remarked that it would be quite a lot quicker for me to find the handful of people who didn't annoy me and just point them out instead.)

So back to this letterbox. Whoever lives in this house doesn't want junk mail, clearly. So far so good. But instead of a sticker that says sternly "No Junk Mail", they've gone for this lighter, let's-try-to-make-a-joke-of-it-sticker. Why? I'm guessing that they thought the plain one was too harsh, too negative, too judgmental. Too heavy.

It's like that loathsome sign they have in all the Hard Rock Cafes, "No drugs or nuclear weapons allowed inside". Which really just means no drugs allowed inside, but rather than just saying that and letting it be they had to make it sound a bit more whimsical. I doubt very much, though, that if you were caught with drugs in a HRC a defense along the lines of "the sign's clearly not meant to be taken seriously" would do a lot of good.

My oldest son and I found this car in a parking lot in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne. This is a superb example of the genre. Points to note:
- really impressive menagerie of stuffed animals, front and back
- P plates
- Hello Kitty headrests
- almost total lack of visibility out of the back window

Passport

I renewed my passport today, which was a lot less work than I'd imagined. I filled in a form, got some photos taken, went to the Post Office with the forms, my beloved old passport and some money and the whole thing went very smoothly.

On the way I ran into my friend Ian who, when I told him I was going to get a new passport, wanted to see my old passport photo (where I look impossibly fresh-faced) and my new one. In my new one, I told him as I handed it over, I look quite a lot like a Dutch serial killer. He looked at the picture and said "more like a Belgian serial killer", which is, as we all know, infinitely worse.

For what it's worth, the lady in the Post Office said that I looked handsome with the beard.