Monthly Archives: September 2001

Spooky Coincidences

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After the terrorist attacks on America, there’s been a whole bunch of people coming out with all sorts of spooky coincidences. Initially I was ready to dismiss it all as a load of bunk, but I did some digging and discovered these spooky coincidences of my own:

This is an actual verse that Nostradamus wrote over 500 years ago!

In the year two thousand and one
Four hijacked aeroplanes will fly
Two will crash into the World Trade Center
And the towers will fall down
One will crash into the Pentagon
And the last will crash into the land

Oh my God! It’s so accurate it’s spooky!

Also, try this out:

Type “nyc” in the Symbol font, which is a standard Windows font. This is what you get:

Spooky, huh? It’s like, the V represents the two towers of the World Trade Center and they’re on an angle ‘cos they’ve fallen down. And the middle character is like an aeroplane and the X represents death. Um, yeah, something like that. But hey, isn’t that totally freaky?

Ok, this is totally freaky:

2001 = 2 + 0 + 0 + 1 = 3

G e o r g e W B u s h
7 5 15 18 7 5 23 2 21 19 8 = 130 = 1 + 3 + 0 = 4
World Trade Center
5 letters 5 letters 6 letters
5 + 5 + 6 = 16 = 1 + 6 = 7

3 + 4 + 7 = 14 = 1 + 4 = 5

Look at those numbers! They all add up, and you don’t even have to multiply them or add fractions or anything!

Some people might say that this is all just a coincidence. I used to be a non-believer, but I think there’s something seriously freaky going on here!

The Next Day

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The next day, after having stayed up until 4.00 am listening to news reports on the BBC’s web site, and switching between regularly updated news sites, I took a bunch of laundry down to the local laundromat to be cleaned.

While I was waiting for my clothes to be washed, I went for a walk around the local shops. Everyone looked glum. I walked past people sitting at tables outside cafes and could hear them talking about it.

I went into the newsagents and for the first time in months I bought a newspaper – two, in fact. Both front pages featured huge photos of the flaming, smoking towers. “War on America”, “WAR OF TERROR”, special editions and red ink. Maybe seeing it unfold on my computer monitor didn’t make it seem real, but holding that pile of newsprint in my hands, touching the photo of the fireball seemed to confirm what was true.

I stopped off at a cafe. There was a radio playing and a pre-recorded piece came on where they played a selection of calls received from the public earlier that morning. An upset-sounding woman spoke of how she woke up her daughters in the middle of the night to tell them what had happened. I was thinking, why didn’t she just wait until the morning and let them get a good night’s sleep? But then I realised that she had needed to talk to someone.

Back at the laundromat, I watched the TV. It’s normally on a music video channel, but that day it had been switched to channel Nine, which was showing ABC coverage from America as well as local commentary.

Behind me, a drunk guy who had seen the TV from the street stumbled in.

“Are they still bombing America,” he slurred. No one looked at him or answered his question, all eyes still on the TV. He asked the same question again so I curtly replied, “there are no bombs involved.” “Well the bloody aeroplanes then. I suppose that’s what you do if you haven’t got any money, eh?” Sick of him, I ignored him. He turned and left, quietly saying, “good on them.”

I continued to watch the TV. Endless replay of plane two, the collapses, the Pentagon. An old lady sitting down from me asked, “what do you think about that?” “It’s shocking,” I replied, realising that this was the first time I’d be genuinely shocked about something in years. “Have you been to America,” she asked. It was hard to carry on a conversation over the noise of the TV and the laundry machines, but I replied, “Yes, I went to Los Angeles.” “Eh?” I moved closer and repeated, “I’ve been to Los Angeles.”

“Ah, when was that?”
“1993.”
“Have you been to New York.”
“No, but I’ve always wanted to. I’d always wanted to go up the World Trade Center.”
“Eh?”
“I’d always wanted to visit the World Trade Center.”
“Where’s that then?”
“It’s in New York. It’s the building that was hit by the aeroplanes and collapsed.”
“Where you there when that happened?”
“No. I wasn’t.”

I couldn’t stand being a participant in this painful conversation for much longer. I excused myself to get my clothes from the drier, then left.

I got back, turned on my computer, and the World Trade Center was still a pile of rubble.

Dirty Pop Saved My Soul

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Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Nsync

When I was 16 years old, the age when most girls listen to music that they later regret, I had reasonably good taste. I was hip, I was cool, I was alternative. I listened to gangsta rap from groups like NWA, I’d wag school and go and hang out in the park with my friend listening to Sonic Youth on her Walkman. None of that teenage pop music for me, thank you very much.

Then ten years later I was in Sydney walking around Darling Harbour, doing a little bit of sight-seeing. I walked past the Imax theatre and something caught my eye. A large poster proclaimed “NSYNC: Bigger Than Live!”. Yes, that’s right. It was an Imax movie of an Nsync concert. This excited me, so the next day I went back and saw it and something changed in me.

I’d never really paid much attention to Nsync before. I’d had a passing interest in fellow boyband the Backstreet Boys, but the only thing about Nsync I knew was a few lines of choruses and that The Face magazine said they weren’t very charismatic.

But seeing that concert movie, seeing them singin’ and dancin’, I found myself liking them. Really, really liking them. This scared me. I tried to fight it, tried to deny it, but it was still there: Nsync excited me.

Back in Melbourne I was idly looking around in a record store. I found myself browsing in the “N” section. Somehow – and I don’t have any conscious recollection of doing this – I ended up buying “No Strings Attached”. That was going to be it, but a few hours later, in another record store, I found myself buying Nsync’s latest CD, “Celebrity”.

I listened to them both a lot. “No Strings Attached” has a few tracks which always get skipped, both ballads, one by Richard Marx, the other by Diane Warren. But other tracks delighted and even shocked me. One of my favourites is “Digital Get Down”. It’s a lame title, but the song is essentially about cybersex. The idea is that there’s this dude who lives away from his girlfriend and he watches her masturbating on her web cam. They also have phone sex. Try listening to that song in bed, in the dark, at night. It’s interesting.

I totally love “Celebrity”. There’s only one track I don’t like all that much, it’s a ballad with guest harmonica from Stevie Wonder (confirming that he’s never done anything good since the ’80s). But every other track is pure pop heaven. Even the big wedding ballad is ok. It’s dirty pop, a recently coined term to describe what I guess is pop music but with an edge (doesn’t that sound lame?).

On “Celebrity” Nsync have written or co-written over half the songs on the album and they don’t suck. One I really like is “Game Over,” which samples sounds from Pacman (how cool is that?). There’s also “Up Against The Wall” which is about seeing a fine young lady at a night club and humping her. There’s also “See Right Through You,” which includes the lyrics “These games they gotta stop/About to get pissed off”. Humping, moderately bad language, it’s all there.

Hey, I know all their names! There’s Justin (Britney’s boyfriend), JC (the really hot one), Lance (the serious one), Joey (the goofy one) and Chris (the funny one). Chris is my favourite. I think it’s important to have a favourite.

So it’s come to this. I’m 26 years old and I like Nsync. I sort of came out as an Nsync fan at Fray Day in Melbourne. I’m taking a further step here by again admitting my love for Nsync. I can not keep it a secret any longer.

It might be really uncool to admit this, but, hi, my name is Robyn and I am an Nsync fan.

A Selection

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Ah yes, it’s that time where I magically tranform my notebook full of maniacal scribblings into a page of witty prose. Here’s a selection of interesting stuff that’s happened to me in the couple of months.
Poster art

I went to an exhibit of rock poster art. It’s really frustrating looking at a cool poster that’s advertising a really good band line-up. Like, there was one designed by Gary Houston for a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Sleater-Kinney concert. Yes, please! And the Chris Shaw designed poster for a triple billing of Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill and The Amps. Drool. You can’t dance to a poster.

Punk arse fashion

Waiting for a train, I spied a young punk arse wearing a t-shirt with “JESUS IS A CUNT” printed in really big letters on the back. No one around seemed particularly shocked or offended by him wearing it. I guess all the Christians were probably happy in the knowledge that he would suffer an enternity of firey torture in hell, and all the non-Christians had little to be offended about, anyway. Instead he just seemed like a dickhead who might as well have been wearing a t-shirt that said, “LOOK AT ME! I SUCK!”

Big Brother doesn’t care

I was getting a Victorian driver’s licence (that’s a driver’s licence issued by the state of Victoria, not a driver’s licence from the late 19th century. Oh, as if anyone thought that.) and the guy who was serving me made a comment that he was pleased that I had brought all the neccessary ID and documents required. He said that some people just show up with no ID or anything and say to him, “oh, can’t you just look that up?” It’s like they think that he has this super computer system that allows him to pull up details on any driver’s license from any country in the world. There are even people who expect that he can access their bank details, or passport information. Big Brother might be watching, but he isn’t watching that hard.

Security guard

There was a guy with a jacket and he was scribbling over part of it with a black market pen. His friend asked him what he was doing. He explained that he’d bought the jacket at a second hand shop. It was a nice thick warm jacket, but had a label with “SECURITY GUARD” sewn on the front. He’d thought it would be pretty cool to wear around, but he discovered that when he went out people actually thought he was a security guard, and he’d get strange looks, and a few times people actually asking for his help. So in the end he figured the best thing to do was black out the label and just be a normal guy.

Shop girl

I was in Ikea and there was a girl nearby holding a bunch of coathangers that she was going to buy. An old lady walked up to her and asked, “excuse me. I think I’ve seen this one with a lighter coloured wood. Could you tell me if you have that available?” The girl furrowed her brow in confusion for a few seconds then realised what’d happened. “Oh, I don’t work here. You should ask someone who does.” The lady asked her who worked there. “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever been here. I’m from Adelaide.”

Under-age cage

At the Melbourne Zoo there’s an old cage that’s been kept as a reminder of how animals used to be kept in zoos. A sign at its entrance says, “A red brick structure built in 1927, it reminds us of how animals were housed, displayed and viewed in the 19th century.” Is this an attempt at revisionist history, or did the sign writer think that the 1900s were the 19th century?

Where’s the bikkies?

I was on a ferry and there was a really fat lady wearing a couple of hot air balloons that had been turned into trousers. She waddled over to her friends sitting across the aisle and said to them, “Where’s the bikkies! Where’s the bikkies!” And her friend chucks her a half-full bag of those shitty peanut brownie biscuits, the kind they always had on school camps. The ones that always taste salty and never chocolately. Biscuits for people who hate food. Anyway, Karen, for that is the name of the fat lady, starts chucking biscuits out the window at some ducks. One of her slightly less fat friends sighs, “Oh Karen, we thought you were going to eat them!”

@nti-c@pit@list

Some graffiti I saw read “ANTI-CAPTIALIST” and then the anarchy symbol. I was thinking that if you were a really hardcore anti-capitalist, you could write in all lower-case. But that would mean that instead of the anarchy symbol being a capital A in a circle, it would instead be a lower case a in a circle, which would look like this: @.