My Hyperreality

I’m a bit of a night owl. I love to stay up late into the silent hours of the night, when the city goes to sleep and I feel like I might be the only person awake. Now, I know that this isn’t the case - there’s always somebody else awake. Usually that somebody is my terrifyingly old neighbour who likes to pee in his back yard while groaning loudly and staring over the fance at me while I take the trash out.

Luckily I don’t have to worry about my crazy neighbour for a good long while because I’m house sitting for some friends of friends in Subiaco. This house is so nice that there’s no way that two school teachers can afford it - they must be drug dealers. It’d be easy to find clients in their classrooms, I’m sure. Not only is the house huge and location fantastic, the place is decorated with beautiful works of art. My favorite furnishing is the spa bath. During my three months here I plan on drinking champagne in the bath at least once - possibly while munching on chocolate covered strawberries and caviar. I must admit that I’ve already had a bit of an accident with the bath though - let’s just say that there were bubbles everywhere, including the ceiling.

For once, though, I’m not finding it particularly calming to be the only one awake late into the night. Here, in this strange large house I find it a bit intimidating. There are strange clicking noises that echo through the house. I don’t know where any of the light switches are. The sheets don’t smell right. I know that all of this anxiety merely stems from the fact that the house is a new place, but I can’t shake the eery feeling like there’s a serial killer waiting to lurch at me from the walk in closet.

I think the biggest issue I’m having is that I’m just not used to being completely alone anymore. I’ve lived in a shared house too long. Even when my housemates aren’t around, and aren’t coming back for the night, their presence is still throughout the house. There’s the knowledge that they will be coming back, some time in the future. Here, though, there is simply me. And this is an awfully big house for one person to rattle around inside of. I feel a bit like a pea inside a barn.

I really didn’t think that I would be missing company so early on into my stay here. Hopefully this will pass, and I’ll quickly grow comfortable being largely on my own again. I am loving the freedom to blast music, walk around naked, and leave my shoes in the middle of the hallway where just anybody can trip over them.

I’m afraid I don’t really have anything particularly interesting or riveting to say here today. I had plans on writing about how watching The Bucket List tonight set me off, and how obviously I’m still having trouble dealing with my father’s impending cancer related death, maybe rant a bit about hopeless university students who want me to fail our group assignment, perhaps mention my inability to cook without making a huge mess to clean up, but to be honest I just can’t be bothered. I’m emotionaly drained and all alone in a huge house, so I’m just going to mindlessly watch some South Park, go to bed, and wake up to a better day.

Really, I got the title wrong. It’s so early that it’s late.

Which is a bit of a record, even for me. Although I suppose I can plead extenuating circumstances. My last post on this fantastic blog of awesomeness was September 3rd. That same night, my parents called from India to tell me that an MRI had revealed a tumor in my father’s brain. On September 5th, they arrived in Perth and raced over to the neurosurgeons office. He comfirmed the presence of a tumor (although when it’s the size of a baseball it’s a pretty certain thing), and told Dad he’d be dead by Christmas if they didn’t operate. On the very auspicious date of September 11th, they cut him open.

These past five months have been a whirlwind of events, and emotions. The things that have happened could rival the content of the most melodramatic of soap opera’s. One day, when things are a little bit more distant, I plan on trying to write about the experience. But for now, everything is still a bit too raw.

Last week we went to see the chemotherapist with a new MRI. The results were better than we had dared to hope - thanks to surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy the tumor is being beaten into submission. Walking out of the building, tears in my eyes, I looked up at the clear sky and felt the hot sun beating down, and thought to myself, Oh, that’s right. This is what hope feels like.

As life returns back to some semblance of normality, I find myself a bit at loose ends. One way I plan to deal with this is by returning to my poor, neglected blog and showing it some tender loving care. After all, it’s a terrible thing that I’ve done, wasting the generosity of friends who helped me set this up in the first place.

So expect at least one post a week from now on. I give no promises as to length or content, but trust me when I say that it will be awesome.

Welcome to the future: My Hyperreality 2.0

The internet is littered with my failed attempts at keeping a blog. Over the years I’ve had accounts with angelfire, geocities, livejounal, insanejournal, xanga, and blogspot, just to name a few. I’ve tried writing on everything from short stories to writing inspirations to recipe’s to random daily happenings. Hell, I’ve even tried to create a vlog (granted, it was a joint vlog, but a vlog nonetheless). But for some reason I seem to lose steam pretty quickly (Although I did manage to keep my livejournal going off-and-on for over two years. And on a funny aside in order to get that detail I had to hop over to good ol’ lj.com and accidentally typed in “liverjournal.com”; it was highly amusing).

It’s sort of like how every Christmas my mother gives me a journal, and gives herself a journal, and we both swear blue that we’ll at least write something down every day, but end up forgetting about the whole thing around mid-February. I think it has something to do with habit - ie; how easy it is for me to fall out of the habit of doing things. Or perhaps it would be better to say that I fail at being obsessive - I have many interests but am so easily entranced by new-shiny-awesomeness that they’re all a bit surface. I think it takes a lot more single-minded determination than I possess to successfully maintain a blog.

Of course there’s also the fact that I am so very aware of the things that I do. When I try to write something I always find myself asking “does this sound too contrived? too cheesy? will anybody even care about this?” On the flipside I am a mild egotist, and don’t really see the point in keeping a blog going if I’m not attracting millions of readers - hence why I always failed at written diary keeping. While I’m sure that someday people will be gagging to read my memoirs, autobiography and fictobiography, watch the documentary, the Lifetime afternoon movie and the Hollywood blockbuster reimagining, buy the memorabilia and bake the dedicated dish, these long term rewards are not nearly satisfying enough for my Gen Y “need-it-now” mentality.

It is, of course, highly ironic that I’m currently blogging about my inability to blog. Blame my tossing and turning for that one, folks. I eventually decided that it would be slightly more productive for me to sit on my laptop and write this than lay awake, staring at the ceiling (which is surprisingly hard to see without my glasses on), thinking about all the university work that I could be, should be, doing. Besides, dribbling via the keyboard ultimately stops me from dribbling all over my pillow - and right now I’m trying to be particularly hygienic, what with the broken washing machine and all. Nothing grosser than a drool covered pillow and no easy way to wash it.

If you’re feeling a bit bored or looking for a fun method of procrastination, I challenge you to go forth and see if you can follow my breadcrumbs over the internet. If you find any of my old haunts (that you didn’t previously know about, of course), I will bake you delicious cookies, or maybe even cake! And if there’s one thing that people should know about me, it’s that I make delicious cookies and cake. The second thing is that I’m incredibly modest.

So … After all the drama of moving to a new location (both online and in real life) and then finally sorting out why I couldn’t actually log on as an administrator to actually write anything … I’M BACK!

Try to contain your enthusiasm, please. No no, really, put down the indoor fireworks, there’s no need to go all out just for little me. Oh, why yes! I will accept that check for 9 million dollars!

Watch this space, people - big things are coming. BIG THINGS!!!

So today Josh, Andy and I decided to be brave and watch the Pain Olympics video. Of course, us being the narcissistic freaks that we are, we videoed ourselves watching the video. How very postmodern and self reflexive! And now, you can experience our experiences by pressing “Play” below. Don’t worry, it’s not the ACTUAL video - I wouldn’t force that upon anybody. Well, except my house mates. Who have already been forced.

Now, I must admit I wasn’t expecting the clip to be that disturbing - as you probably guessed from my calling Andy a “wimp” right at the start. But oh my god - surprisingly the sight of somebody castrating themselves was pretty damned disgusting - even though I don’t have a penis of my own to shield protectively, I was still grossed out beyond belief. I think it may have had something to do with the .. erm .. “things” that came out when the testes were forcibly removed from the body.

Then, in yet another stab at procrastination, I got Josh to watch the “2 Girls 1Cup” video, which I’ve heard all about but never actually seen. I only managed to get through this one by telling myself over and over again “It’s okay Serena, it’s just chocolate ice-cream”. But then the vomit thing happened and all my illusions were lost.

You’ve got to ask yourself though, what sort of person DOES these sorts of things? I just can’t fathom the motivation - I can sort of understand the Jackass-type stunts, but when things go to this extreme .. What’s in it for them? I know I personally wouldn’t chop off my penis (okay, don’t have one, but still) or eat another girl’s bodily secretions just for cash. And I can’t imagine that the internet fame that one would get from this sort thing is the sort of internet fame that starts you on the trail to your dream profession …

Now, I suppose the most important thing out of all of this is: Should I be worried about my dear and darling boyfriend Josh’s lack of reaction to this? Or is he just so darned manly that watching another man chop his own balls off doesn’t really faze him that much? Or perhaps he went and cried in the shower afterwards - cupping himself as he hysterically mumbled “Oh god, not the family jewels!”