Monthly Archives: August 2003

Excuse me, sir

Posted on by
Reply

The bus was pretty full and the aisles were full of people standing. A seated person got off, leaving their seat empty. The guy standing right next to that seat didn’t sit in it. Instead he offered it to the girl standing in front of him. She refused it, saying she was getting off soon. So he next offered it to the next girl standing ahead of her friend. She also refused it. The man insisted, saying “ladies first”. She said, “mate, those rules don’t exist anymore.” He replied, “they do for me.” The seat ended up being taken by a man standing behind the guy.

This reminded me of the lifts in the building where I used to work. They were really small, and there was only really enough room for one person to exit at a time. So when a large number of people were leaving a lift, it was really only comfortable to do it in single file. Most of the time this worked out well. But there was this one man who’d stand to the side of the door, holding it open with his hand (like he thought the doors sensors were perpetually broken) and say “ladies first” meaning that I or any other lady in the lift would have to brush past him as we left. I got sick of it and ended up telling him it was “not safe” and insisting on him going first.

There’s a difference between being courteous to a stranger, like holding a door open that would otherwise slam in their face, and doing extreme things for “the ladies”. I can understand offering a bus seat to an elderly, disabled, or pregnant person, but to have a seat offered to me just because I’m female is like suggesting that I’m weaker or less able to stand up on a bus. I’d rather see the empty seat to go the nearest person.

Required reading

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been to three New Zealand tertiary institutes. I completed the first year of a bachelor of media arts at Waikato Polytech, then half of the first semester of the second year before I realised that film and television production was not my forte.

I then moved onto Waikato University and enrolled in three papers, one one popular music, one on basic computer skills and another on media criticism. I passed the first two, but got bored with the third one and didn’t sit the exam.

Next I moved to Auckland and started doing linguistics at Auckland University, but I soon realised that linguistics was really boring and not worth three years of my life.

Three strikes and I was out. I put my university life behind me and joined the workforce.

A couple of nights ago st00 excitedly informed me that his girlfriend was studying me at university. At first I thought she had chosen me as a case study, but no, I am required reading for students at Auckland University doing a second year English paper on autobiography.

I went along to the English department office today and paid $5 for the photocopied book full of autobiographical pieces of writing from various literary women. As well as Virginia Wolfe, Janet Frame, Maya Angelou and others, there’s some stuff I’ve written on my web site. The “About” page, “Ja Rule” and “A Play” have been reproduced for the students to read.

st00′s girlfriend says that there will be a lecture that looks at my writing. If the class isn’t too small, I might sneak in and take notes. I think there may also be students writing essays on me at a later stage.

It’s really cool but also feels really strange. But I think that being studied at a university pretty much cements my place as a non-graduate. I could never go back now.

Missus

Posted on by
4

For future reference, here is a list of surnames that have a disastrous comedy effect when paired with the name Robyn. If I were ever to marry a man with one of those surnames, I so would not take it as my own:

Robbins
Robinson
Roberts
Robertson
Dobbyn
Williams
Hood
Banks

Yeah, and that includes you, Dave Dobbyn.

Food show

Posted on by
Reply

I went to the Food Show today. To make things easy, I vowed to stay away from stands with the following kinds of food samples:

  • Cheese
  • Wine
  • Salami
  • Anything “wild berry” flavour
  • Anything involving a piece of bread/corn chip/pita bread/cracker being dipped into olive oil/hummus/aioli/salsa

These rules made things really easy. The cheese stands had hordes to people pushing and shoving, grabbing a toothpick and skewering little cubes of cheese. Then there’s the obligation to make the people manning the stands feel like all their free samples aren’t for nothing. “Mmmm,” the cube eaters say. “That’s very nice.”

The first thing I sampled was some chocolate ice cream. It was horrible. It tasted really watery and more milky than chocolatey. I threw the rest of it out and felt really punk.

At the Delmaine stand I tried some gherkins and discovered that I really liked them. I never used to like gherkins. I’m now the proud owner of a jar of sliced gherkins. Rockin’.

I walked around looking at stands. It seemed that anything that came out of a can or was made from adding dried stuff in a packet to ingredients didn’t look or smell particularly appealing. But people queued up to get little plastic cups full of some sort of mock curry.

There were samples of Hoegaarden served with mussel fritters. I would have happily spent the rest of the afternoon there, but I thought I’d better move on and let others experience the Belgian delights.

In the middle of it all I saw a woman wearing a t-shirt reading “fuck you you fuck’n fuck”. I was offended. Not by the curse words on the t-shirts, but by the inanity of it. Yeah. empty insults as fashion.

Then I was delighted to find the Abe’s Bagels stand. Three bags of bagels for $4. That’s bloody good value.

Kellogg’s had some bins that they put free samples of K-Time bars into. One of the Kellogg’s people tipped some bars in the bin and a swarm of people swooped down and started grabbing handfuls of bars. Within seconds the bin was empty.

I discovered that rice crackers that proclaim to be 100% fat free are horrible and dry and would be endlessly improved with a little bit of fat. Same for those dry, tasteless low-fat biscuits.

My helpful rules were keeping me out of trouble. Stands with samples of fruit and vegetables were lacking hysterical crowds. I picked up a baby carrot and dipped it into mayonnaise, experiencing some weird deja vu.

Three years ago it was all about the hummus, then last year I discovered the delights of broccolini. This year I noticed a lot of things with coriander. On the way out I broke one of my rules by trying some coriander bean dip on a cracker. It was really good. With that good flavour lingering in my mouth, I took my bagels and gherkins and went home.

Toot toot

Posted on by
Reply

On Saturday morning at around 3.30 am, I had the following text message exchange with DRZA:

DRZA: Omg its teh r kelly wot a rapist
Robyn: He wants to stick his key in your ignition, baby.
DRZA: Omfg no
Robyn: Toot toot. Beep beep.
DRZA: Haha im so drunk

Then about 12 hours later I got the following IRC message from st00:

I eagerly tuned in and the first video I saw was R Kelly’s “Ignition Remix”. And – oh, I can’t believe this is happening. It’s just started playing again.

Yeah, so Juice TV is going free to air on its UHF frequency, which seems to be Auckland only. I think it’s fair to guess that this is to pre-empt TV4′s upcoming transformation into a music channel.

Juice has never quite satisfied me. The presenters are either really good or breathtakingly shit. The playlist seems to be sort of based on what’s in the charts and what’s popular, but there’s a tendency for crap songs from bad artists to get high rotation. But then where else would I see the video for that song by the ex-Mr Shannon Doherty? The Juice studio sets have always looked crap, like someone’s cleared away a corner of the office, dragged the reception couch over, put up a few posters and made that the studio. I think they’ve got rid of the rented pot plants. Well, I hope they have.

I’m glad that Juice has come along. I was getting hooked on infomercials.

I went along to the King’s Arse and saw Marystaple and Soda. Autozamm were also on the bill, but I missed them.

Marystaple had some great, loud, obnoxious songs. Unfortunately due to the singer/guitarist’s tendency to bash his guitar and mic around, they sounded bad. Vocals and guitars would randomly cut out. If you’re making a video, it’s cool to jump around and smack your equipment up because it looks really rock. Or if you’re a big rock band and can afford a new guitar every night, then yeah, throw it to the floor. But if you’re just a little band who uses the same equipment every show, then if you throw your guitar around, it will sound bad. And the audience will never quite get into your band.

I’d not seen Soda before. They had great stage presence. All their guitars worked. However, their songs were a bit boring. There seemed to be a whole lot of slower ones. It doesn’t quite work having a band like that following bands like Autozamm and Marystaple. Their last song, “Falling Faster”, was lively and fairly rockin’, but by then it was too late. The audience had thinned out.

Oh yes, st00 is filling in as Soda’s guitarist. He didn’t want to be mistaken for an emo ho (and he so has an emo haircut), so he wore a Megadeth t-shirt. He also sang backing vocals, which was really exciting. I was like “OMG! st00 can sing! He harmonises!”

So now I will sit back and wait for “Ignition Remix” to be played again.