Curmudgeon Award Noms

Hey Zeitgeisters,

Put your thoughts down and respond to the nomination categories for Mr Trivia's Curmudgeon Awards 2009. Go over to the other blog and see what all the fuss is about.

Elevate the Insignificant

Mr Trivia

None Shall Sleep

For reasons that I don’t wish to fully disclose, I’ve only had two and a half hours of sleep (that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care). I pulled a massive all-nighter and worked on a project for 32 hours straight. Because I’m an idiot, that’s why.

And as I worked and occasionally cat-napped over my computer, I found the effects of sleep deprivation were interesting. Interesting in a – I wish this was happening to someone else – kind of way, but the situation and the attendant pain were self-inflicted, so I can't whinge here.

The music from the computer was turned up loud in a misguided attempt to keep me from nodding off. And yet every hour or so I woke in the midst of an 80s or 90s pop song like My Sharona from THE KNACK, wondering what the hell I was doing .

Every time it took me 5 to 10 seconds to pull together the threads. “You’re writing an article, and you are looking to intersperse this paragraph of interview with biographical information to give this some context. The last sentence you worked on is HERE.”

It wasn’t an intelligent working model, but even I could see the wheels were falling off around Hour 27 after I woke from what might have been a three minute nap. I was slumped in my chair with THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS’ Lincoln blaring out at me. I was struck by the lyrics from Track 1 - Ana Ang - as they entered my semi-consciousness. “Who was at the Dupont Pavillion, why was the bench still warm, who had been there?” I knew the answer. After 20 years, I knew.

It was Cosmo Kramer from SEINFELD. And what's more, TMBG’s musical agenda perfectly synched with Kramer’s life philosophy. The optimism. The randomness. The 1964 world’s Fair. Which… was in New York… where Kramer also lives. TMBG were his hipster dufus backing band. It was match made in heaven. And then unbidden I visualised Oreos on a dinner plate. It all meant something...

Even though I was awake, I felt I wasn’t too far from dreaming. I was experiencing something akin to the feeling you get when you wake from a proper night’s sleep and stride out into the kitchen thinking, “Yes, must take the new Cadillac for a spin down the Old Coast Road – even though I’ve never owned a Cadillac and drive a 1997 Toyota Liteace van.” Then the disappointment hits as you slip from the netherworld of alpha waves and into the daylight.

Yes, I see now that the beautiful ‘cosmic’ link that I made with Kramer and THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS was tenuous at best. But it felt right. For one brief shining moment, Camelot, baby.

‘Night!

Mr Trivia


ABOVE: Image of They Might Be Giants

For more TMBG images go here.
For some images of the 1964/65 World's Fair go here.

Re-Branding

Zeitgeisters,

I was in the supermarket yesterday deciding whether I could be brilliant with 800 grams of chicken and how many meals I could spread it over. I examined my Inner-Donna-Hay and thought about the staggering array of recipes that I have on hand IN MY MIND at any given moment of the day.

Pasta - check. Curry - check. Hmmm oh yes... then some bold and surprising combinations a la TV's Surprise Chef. Remember how Chef Aristos would turn up in a supermarket and transform the contents of some Hapless Bystander's shopping trolley into a meal fit for a segment of a network television show?

And we'd watch as the Hapless Bystander family chowed down on Ice-Cream Poulet au Gratin or something similarly domestic but with a daring tinge that was all Aristos. I found myself thinking about Aristos Papandroulakis and wondering why he wasn't back on our screens, yet. Yield, gods of telly - YIELD!

A woman was standing next to me, also deep in apparent thought, when her daughter - who looked as old as eight - whipped a packet into position right under her mother's nose and said, “Mum, can we have some Nitro Cream?”

Mum went through what we scholars call a paradigm shift as she peered at the box. “This is Nutri-Grain,” she said with a slight undertone that could have been about her child’s reading abilities or perhaps some other family member who is cavalierly misnaming popular items of the Kellogg product line and confusing the kiddies. I didn’t see him there, but my money is on the dad.

Elevate the Insignificant,

Mr Trivia

Hard Rubbish

ABOVE: A treasure trove for the discerning collector.

I have a friend who loves those annual verge-side garbage collections run by local municipalities. She and her boyfriend keep an eye out for furniture whenever their suburb, one of Perth's ritzy, western ones, has its call for "hard rubbish."

I find the act of ditching my stuff produces an emotional response in me. I have no problem throwing things away, I just don't like seeing my scaly neighbours and random strangers pawing through my possessions on the front lawn. Imagine your despised next-door-but-one, touching your worn-out Tamagotchi or perhaps fondling your collection of used ointment applicators. Noooo!

As I was taking a walk on the weekend, I went around a nearby corner and gave a quick nod to a woman and her son who were carrying an old sideboard out to the kerb. She ignored me, possibly because I was walking on 'her' verge and also because she was spending a lot of energy getting worked up over the fact that her neighbours had put a couple of old lounge chairs out on 'her' verge. Her teenage son just grunted to indicate "I hear you, but I don't give a crap - this is keeping me away from Guitar Hero: Metallica."

So in a quick philosophical left turn that I need to wrap up this blog post, I conclude that recycling is good. Learn to invest less emotion in objects and see it as stuff that other people can find a home for. Either that or be the sort of person who bitches about the neighbours in front of other neighbours and your kids - or worse still, blogs about it.

Elevate the Insignificant

Mr Trivia

Call Me Mister

I was ordering takeaway food on the telephone and I ended the call by saying my name was Mr (Actual Surname). Miss Pink chortled at me. I hung up the phone and asked her what was so amusing. “Why didn’t you just give your first name?” she asked. I replied that I always leave my surname and that I expected to be addressed as Mister. And then it was on, baby.

Miss Pink pointed out that I have a history of class dissent. Specifically bitching about the treatment of workers by employers and here I was treating the restaurant-wallahs in a high-handed fashion by expecting to be addressed as though I were their superior.

To background this discussion a little further, her family is dyed-in-the-wool Liberal and mine is irrevocably Labor. Although she has been known to swing her vote occasionally and I have sometimes not voted for the benighted Australian Labor Party, I have never voted for the Libs. I could, I guess, around about the time they install a Fujitsu in Hell.

Further, this discussion took place in the car and through several of Perth’s western suburbs as we drove towards the Thai restaurant that we were getting the takeaway from, that Miss Pink particularly likes.

We stopped at the restaurant. She went to the ATM. I went upstairs, purchased the meal, oppressed the workers for a bit by referring to them as ‘you there’ and I met Miss Pink back at the car. As we drove home, I said that when I used to work behind the counter in restaurants, I always referred to the customer as sir or madam until instructed otherwise. I never had a problem with it.

She remained unpersuaded. I can see this particular topic will be worked through the laboratory of friends and family over the coming weeks. Bring it on, I say.

Mr “Mister” Trivia

Mr Trivia's Other Blog Wants You

Oh Yez, Zeitgeisters,

Mr Trivia is back here and he's back over there at mrtrivia.net.

I have posts on Eurasian of the Week, my searing Art and how sometimes they do save the Best For Last at the movies. Check it out, folks.

Or if you're feeling a bit rebellious and just don't wanna, click this link and go to Stuff White People Like instead.

Mr Trivia