Project: Pair

I challenged my sister Kat to yet another photo project. She's doing a bucketload better than I am this time - the project was to use pair as an inspiration. On the whole I'm stuck in a rut. Mentally, photographically, physically.

I've taken a few shots, but the concept in my head for those shots has not translated into the physical. They lack interest, definition, focus. Kind of like my thoughts at the moment! Never the less, I'll slog on and see if something comes out of brutal bullheadedness today. So far this is one success that I've had:

In which Vic huffs and puffs and swears a lot

Lately, due to the unfortunate demise of my car (an incident involving large amounts of oil loss, a sleep on the side of the road, a few kilometres walk and eventual abandonment of the offending vehicle), I have resorted to the "Track and Treadley" method of getting to work on those days that the Roster Gods decide to bestow a shift upon me.

Generally I'll hop on the bike at about half past three in the morning and zoom on down to the station. It's about a ten minute ride. Not far, and only one bitchy uphill in it all. The rest is exhilaratingly downward - especially when you've not long been awake. Actually, when you're still really not awake. A quick sling of the treadley over the shoulder, slog up and over on the stairs and I'm there: a platform that seems like it's on the edge of nowhere. The Last Outpost Before the Crossing of The Great Swamp. But here's where the fun begins. Here there is no ticket machine.

Well you just hop on don't you? There's no such thing as turnstiles at the other end around here. You get on, you get off. Mostly it's honour and policing.

Honour. Pffft. I could buy a ticket at the other end. There's a ticket machine where I step off. But why buy a ticket when you know that you've already scored the ride for free?

It's also become a bit of a fuck you stance on my behalf. We're pushed all the time to utilise public transport, yet it takes you four times as long to get anywhere. And cost? You want me to pay my taxes and then shell out on top of that another four bucks for a ten minute trip on a train that runs only once an hour and sometimes, occasionally, gets to the station on time? Fuck you.

Uhuh. Fuck you... until the potential of getting busted looms. Lack of honour meets policing.

Like last night. I hopped on at my station, contemplating what I was going to do with myself being nearly an hour early for work. I was in the midst of a hazy locker-organising dream when I spied the pair of befatted blue uniformed transport cops working their way toward me from the back of the carriage. Fuck you became Aww FuckIt! rather quickly. I'd cleaned my wallet out completely at home and left not a cent in there, so I couldn't even fall back on the idea of buying a ticket at the other end. What if I pretend I'm asleep? Nope, they saw me get on with my shining silver steed. What if I say I'll buy a return on the way home? Nope. These people are pretend cops, puffed up on their own authority. Not a chance in hell. BAIL!!!

Luckily, some poor bitch was in the same predicament as I was, and a little closer to them. She held them up for just enough ticket-writing time for me to get lined up at the doors to bail at the next station. So fine was the timing that one of them even offered to help me with my bike at the door.

Escaped! Phew!

Now I am at a station halfway between home and work. My regular station, The Last Outpost Before the Crossing of The Great Swamp has been left far behind and we're now right in the middle of it. I am now at The Birthplace of Mosquito. Seriously, the people here have followed the Australian supersizing tradition and have stuck a big mosquito likeness on a pole to show what they are famous for. The next train is a whole blood-draining hour away. And it will arrive after I am due to start work.

Aww FUCKIT!

So I huffed and puffed and swore a lot. I slogged away on the trusty treadley, headed for work the hard way, huffing more and puffing more and swearing quite a lot more.

Have I learned my lesson? Maybe enough to carry four bucks with me just in case. Probably not. The danger of being caught is still by far outweighed by my views of if the system is fucked, fuck the system.

Juvenile?
Probably.

Cost-effective?

So far.

Quote of the Day

Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue.

You're Welcome.

Domesticity

Confession:

I've never made muffins before.

Or a cake.

Not even from a packet.

I've never felt the need to. If I cook a dozen or so muffins, who is going to eat them? Me? But I only fucking wanted one. By the time you've hauled about and cooked the things, the craving is well over anyway. So, better off not eating them in the first place.

I had a girlfriend a while back who would conveniently do all that for me. She was the dessert queen. I've never been much of a dessert fan, but occasionally get that little craving for a nice ice-cream/cake/pastry creation in the late hours of the evening. Look in the fridge, and there'd be nothing there. But she could make it appear out of thin air. And the best thing was that you didn't really have to ask her to do it. I had her worked out. So did our flatmates. All you had to do get a nice fresh dessert brought out to you, without even lifting your arse an inch away from your precious lounge space, was mention the word to her. It would start a little craving time bomb in her head that she couldn't ignore, and off she'd go and create some taste sensation out of a can of peaches and a bit of pastry. When she left the scene, I stopped with the desserts altogether.

But just every now and then, a twinkle of domesticity appears in my mind.

This afternoon, for the first time ever, armed with a (shameful) packet mix, I hunted around for a muffin tin. And the results were pleasing. I still only really want one muffin out of the dozen that popped out, but what the hey. I could get used to the baking side of life.

Every now and then.

This Week's Pictorial Equation

Ugh.

I'm touring out to my psych's office this morning armed with a list of things I want to do this week and also this month. Also, with a bit of evidence of having started to try to do these things. I'm scared, because her knowing these things will place an expectation on me to actually do them (in my own mind) and therefore an expectation to do them well (also in my own mind).

I'm also petrified that I will be sent to hospital for psych treatment and not allowed out.

Irrational? Yes. Maybe.

Can I stop it? I'm trying, but my mind isn't backing down really easily.

Some days are really good.

Some days are shit.

Maybe I should enrol in a horticulture course. Perhaps learning how shit can work as a fertiliser will make this all a little easier!

For now, though. There's happiness in there. It might be tiny sometimes, but it's still worth finding and holding onto.

Quiz Time!

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Coffee Effiminate?

Taken from A Character of Coffee and Coffee-Houses published in 1661, ten years after the first coffee-house opened in England.

The other Sex hath just cause to curse the day, in
which it was brought into England, Had Women any
sense or spirit, they would remonstrate to his
Majestie, that Men in former times were more able,
then now, They had stronger Backs, and were more
Benevolent, so that Hercules in one night got fifty
Women with Child, and a Prince of Spain as forc’d to
make an Edict, that the Men should not repeat the act
of Coition above nine times a night, for before the
Edict, belike Men did exceed that proportion; That in
this Age, Men drink so many Spirits and Essences, so
much Strong-water, so many several sorts of Wine,
such abundance of Tobacco, and (now at last)
pernicious Coffee, that they are grown as impotent as
Age, as dry and as unfruitful, as they Deserts of
Africk. Having remonstrated this, they would (were
they wise) petition his Majesty to forbid Men the
drinking of effeminating Coffee, and to command
them instead thereof to drink delicious Chocolate.

Be more masculine. Drink chocolate.

Etymologically

In researching the origins of the word Cappuccino I came across this explanation:

Cappuccino means ‘little hood’ or ‘little monk’s cowl.’ Capucchio is ‘hood’ and –ino is a common Italian diminutive ending, hence ‘little hood.’ Capucchio is from Late Latin cappa ‘cap, cape, hooded cloak, small head gear,’ possibly shortened from the Late Latin noun capitulare ‘headdress,’ ultimately from Latin caput ‘head.’

Originally Cappuccino was the Italian term for a Capuchin friar. This Roman Catholic order of friars wore brown robes with pointed hoods. The full title of the order was Ordo Fratrum Minorum Capuccinorum, which translates to The Order of the Friars Minor of the Little Hoods. Their ideals emphasised poverty in order to appeal more to the people. This must have fallen by the wayside a little, because the order is still kicking today and they have their own website. They are apparently still the strictest of the orders, so who knows what the other orders go for in terms of the internet? Preaching via webcam? Podcasts?

The first cappuccino served had little peaks of foam that looked like the hoods of the Capuchin friars, and the colour of the coffee also reminded the Italians of the brown robes the friars wore. In other words, the popular cup was named by visual analogy. Likewise goes for the Capuchin monkey.

"This borrowing of a formal ecclesiastical term to name something secular and lowly is part of the broad, quite healthy, anticlerical, usually anti-Catholic humour that is widespread in Italy. Hundreds of words and phrases mock the omnipresent Roman Catholicism of Italy."

There is a feminine Italian word cappuccina ‘Capuchin nun.’ But on the Roman street it almost always means a salad of mixed herbs and is a not-too-sly reference to the supposed texture of a nun's unsullied pubic hair.

So really, every time you have a Cappuccino, you're participating in taking the piss out of the Catholics. Brilliant!

The commandments in relation to coffee

...and there began the working week. And she decreed to those followers who rise early for the great olfactory gift the coffee bean hath giveth:

Thou shalt not covet tea, the lesser
Thou shalt have a preferred vessel for the partaking of the elixir, and mourn such a vessel in it's absence
Thou shalt abhor styrofoam
Thou shalt not speak before partaking of the first cup of the elixir
Thou shalt not use the hand that holdeth the vessel of elixir for any menial task, lest the elixir be spilled upon carpet
Thou shalt not waste
Thou shalt not order decaf
Thou shalt not douse fellow workmates with the contents of an entire cup
Thou shalt not taint thy own elixir with foul and evil soy
Thou shalt depend upon this life-giving substance daily

Here endeth the lesson, she decreed.

Regarding bad coffee:

Waitress: "Looks like rain."
Patron: "Tastes like it too. Bring me some tea."