Someday I'll Own This Bookstore

Any way the bank goes

It’s another beautiful spring day. The sun is shining in a pleasant way, not in that nuclear holocaust way that it does in summer. I’m inside drinking instant coffee, listening to the BBC World Service and, clearly, typing.

It must be a slow news day because the last story was how a bunch of bankers in London re-wrote the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody to reflect the current economic crisis. Such gems as “I don’t wan’t to die/ I sometimes wish I’d never left Lehmans at all” and “Any way the bank goes…”

Imagine the scene at the BBC. A panicked radio producer is dashing down the brightly-lit hall to the office of the Person In Charge Of Deciding What’s On The Radio, clutching a stopwatch.

“Sir!”

“What is it, man? Speak up!”

“We’re running two minutes short!”

The Person In Charge Of Deciding What’s On The Radio looks out the window into the bleak British autumn and sips his tea thoughtfully. His eyes narrow.

“Leave it with me. I have just the thing.” He looks to his filofax and the index card that reads bankers, singing.

And scene.

It’s not the only one out there. This is from Area 51 (the website, not the secret government facility/sub-par Australian ska band/ sub-par Matthew Riely novel)

Naan, just killed a man,
Poppadom against his head Had Lime Pickle Now He’s Dead
Naan, Dinner’s Just Begun
But Now I’m Gonna Crap it All Away
Naan, ohhhh ohhhhhh
Didn’t mean to make you cry
Seen Nothing Yet Just See the Loo Tomorrow
Curry On, Curry On Cause Nothing Really Madras

And now for some reason everything is yellow. Great. Stupid Tumblr.

Here’s another from Amiright.com

I’m a long-haired geek, my name is Johnny D
And I’m tired now - been so long -
Must let go - of this song -
Anyway so here goes -
One more parody of this theme,
From Queen

Chucky…you killed me, man
Found your site where I could post, got addicted, now I’m toast
Chucky…”life had just begun”
Not really, ‘cause I’m almost forty-six

Aha! I got my normal font and colour back! Apparently people on the internet know how to make videos and things so here’s a few Rhapsody parodies from YouTube.

I can understand how He Man and the Chipmunks kind of qualify as parodies, but the one with all the movie clips was just weird. And it had over 22,000 views.

How to write a bad poem about poetry

The poetry night at work is every second Monday. Occasionally there’s some good poeting but most of the time it’s pretty abysmal. Since I’ve been around Jess I’ve been finding out more and more about the different types of poet. There’s your Pearl Brigade, older women with a chardonnay in one hand and a ring binder in the other. There are grand old gents, often in Akubras, reciting odes to life in the bush or the silent majesty of the Blackfella. There are the angry young guys, poorly dressed misanthropes with tattoos of Kerouac somewhere on their body, declaiming (that’s poetic talk for shouting) about the size of thier penis or their inability to meet girls. Or both. Often within the same poem.

I’ve seen a few of these now (Jess and her poet cohorts have informed me that our poetry night is one of the best in Melbourne for seeing the worst poetry) and I’m noticing a pattern. Bad poets write poetry about poetry badly. I’m sure it’s possible to write a good poem about poetry, but they all seem to dispense with that and tick the box marked AWFUL.

In light of this, I’ve prepared a poem of my own.

How To Write A Bad Poem About Poetry

First: buy a black notebook to record your poetic ideas. Make sure it has a ribbon. Ribbons are important.

Next: pick a nemesis. All good poets have nemeses but that doesn’t mean that you can’t.

Third: avoid rhyming dictionaries. Rhyming is below you. Plus, it’s hard.

Fourth: When it comes time to write your poem try using numbered dot points like these. It helps organise your poem and people often mistake it for a poetic convention.

Fifth: Avoid graphs. You can’t do them. But if you do, do one where X is the quality of your poetry and Y is the number of shoes you have on. If the value of Y falls below 2 it’s going to affect your parabola.

Sixth: Find a gramatical term and define it. Colon: a series of dots, one on top of the other- an organ. See? There’s a poem right there!

Seventh: Quote Fight Club. Peope identify with not being pants.

Eigth: If you forgot what you’re saying, just make up some nonsensical words. It’s okay. Everyone does it. Shakespeare once said “made up words are just as good as real ones, forsooth.” Look it up. I dare you.

Eigth: Mention Hunter S. Thompson and the impact he had on your life. At least once. At the very least drop in something about tickets and rides. It’s vital that people know that you’ve read his books, or at least an article about him.

Our word.

When I got back to Australia I was informed of a disturbing new trend among young white dudes, and I want it to stop.

I went to a party a month or so back and my friend Matt was there. Matt is the undisputed master of catchphrases and pop-culture references. He’s managed to construct an entire language out of quotes from TV shows or internet phenomena and loud monkey screeches. It takes some getting used to, and if you haven’t been around him for a while (I hadn’t seen him in a year or so) you end up out of the loop of his outbursts. It tends to go something like this:

Me:   Hi Matt!

Matt:   SALAMI BELT, I’LL SHOW YOU MATLOCK!

Me: …

Everyone else: Ha ha ha!

Matt:    Hi Mike.

So when Matt greeted me by saying:

“What up, my digger?”

I was sure to pause a few seconds before asking the question I often ask him: What Was That From?

He explained the whole thing of young white dudes calling other young white dudes “digger”. I’ll say right now that he was using it ironically. The rest of this isn’t aimed at Matt. In the last few weeks I’ve been hearing it a lot, and it has to stop. Because it’s our word. Unless you have been in the army at some point (not the Navy or RAAF) in any capacity there is just no excuse.  I know it’s blokey, and I know you want to be able to identify with the hip-hop music that you listen to in your SS utes, but seriously dudes, this needs to stop now.

You could argue that since we don’t use it, it’s kind of a terra nullius sort of affair. But it isn’t. It’s no better when we use it to describe ourselves, but we at least attended an instituion with the words “Home of the Soldier” written in big metal letters at the front gate and got yelled at for a month and a half. The Army Recruit Training Centre is to us what 370-odd years of slavery is to African Americans: our justification of exclusivity.

All of this is reminding me of some of the really naff things I’ve seen army guys do in their time off. Some things are forgivable, like wearing issued boots to cementing jobs or wearing issued green socks arond the house. But other things are just wrong, and luckily are done by people in my sister batallion, 5/6 RVR:

One guy I know has a hand-sized tattoo of our regimental hat badge on his upper arm. This sort of thing tends to be accepted if you’re full time, but as a Reservist it’s a bit much. For people who don’t know what it means, it would probably look pretty cool. Those of us in the know, however, can’t help but cringe.

Once, at Barcode, when people wearing chromed US-style dog tags was terribly fashionable, I saw a guy come in with his issued dog tags on, outside his shirt, chromed. Normally they’re a dull yellow, but he went to the effort of having them made all shiny so people would think he was down with the streets. In the words of my mate Fitto, “that’s the gayest thing I’ve ever seen, and I fucked a bloke.”

I know it can’t be easy to transistion from one term of blokey endearment to another, so I’ve compiled a few generic ones to help in this difficult time:

Surfer

Footy Player

Tradie

Thinly-Veiled Racist

Greco-Roman Wrestler

There, between all those alternatives none of you should be saying “digger” anymore. It’s our word. Get your own.