HI

I'm a tumbleargh gal now

http://alextolhurst.tumblr.com/

Me: Oh your dog is sooo cute! He looks like Chewbacca, I mean in a really adorable way!
A: What is Chewbacca?
Me: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Oh, no

A few weeks ago I moved in with a friend and her boyfriend, and I just realised something terrible. Something awful. Something that will impact me in untold ways.

My friend's boyfriend's name starts with an I. HOW AM I GOING TO WRITE AMUSING STORIES IF I REFERENCE HIM AS "I" ALL THE TIME? Example: Today I and I decided to clean the carpets. YOU SEE? IT DOES NOT WORK.

As I see it, there are only three solutions:

- Convince I to change his name to Herbert (OH MY GOODNESS SEE HOW ANNOYING THAT "I" THING IS ALREADY?)
- Give him a substitute name on this blog
- Kill him and make someone with a SENSIBLE NAME move in

My brother: You probably don't remember this but you came into my room at about 3am and raged at me because I had the TV too loud and it woke you up. You looked like you'd suffered a psychotic break... I was genuinely scared. (Thoughtful silence) If you ever go to uni you should avoid shared accomodation.

Today I was sitting at my desk, reading lamebook and eating yogurt. I missed my mouth, smearing mango ski all over my chin. Probably should invest in a bib.

L: I'm like Joan Holloway because I have big boobs and am outspoken. You're Peggy because you're quiet and smart, and K's like Don Draper except he's gay and nobody here would sleep with him anyway.

Sometimes I worry that one day at work I'll answer the phone "Dunder Mifflin this is Pam"

Today

Today I feel really grateful for my friends and everything I've shared with them. Even the first time we drank gin and my mobile phone fell out of my pocket and A threw up on it. For about 20 minutes she puked like Brundlefly, unable to move. Needless to say my parents were not impressed. Even the time we were so bored we balanced open cans of coke on top of N's car and took bets on how long one would last without spilling. Even the time E and G told us we were going to McDonald's and instead took us to their sexy math teacher's street and we hid in the back seat while they tried to work out which house was his. Especially the time we convinced S that we saw an alien at the headland and she wanted to call the police. Or the time A and I convinced S we found blood everywhere in an abandoned building and bloody writing on the walls and when she went in to take a photo we both started screaming hysterically and she nearly had a heart attack. I'll never forget how hard we laughed as she said she hated us and drove off, leaving us on the side of the road in a small country town hours away from home, laughing too hard to care, and how when we eventually calmed down we found her around the corner eating honey soy chicken chips and trying not to smile.

My Dad

My Dad emails me to tell me he's going to call me, sends me a text message to tell me he sent me an email, then calls me and tells me to skype him.

I can't be the only person my age who has cut their fingers twice in as many days, both times with a butter knife, and bandaged themselves with The Wiggles bandaids... can I?

Listening to sad new Adele song on the radio at work

My Supervisor: Can you believe this song? She's wishing her ex happiness. Nobody wishes their ex happiness-
Me: The rest of us just prefer to stalk them on facebook.
My Supervisor: -you hate them and silently wish them dead
Me: Crying into your mashed potatoes, we've all been there
My Supervisor... you wish them pain until you find your own happiness-
My Boss: wah wah fucking WAH, I hate this song. She sounds like a dying squirrel

For ages I have thought that I am really unfit because I'm always out of breath after walking up the meager one flight of stairs at work. I thought that was strange because I walk for about an hour most days and feel just fine. Just noticed that I hold my breath from the warehouse door to my desk every time I go up the stairs.

Inner monologue: Every single time? Why are you like this?

At the moment my family is scattered all over the place. My Mother is in France for a few months, gallivanting about and eating almond croissants. I tried to Skype her and accidentally scared the nice French lady she is staying with.

My brother is at Uni. He lives on campus, has started drinking beer and recently painted himself blue for an Avatar-themed party. His entire college have been banned for life from Mini Waters.
My Dad (ever the rational thinker) assumes my brother is selling drugs to afford alcohol. I think he is good at budgeting and most likely drinks a lot of goon.

I recently flew home for a few days and got to spend time with my Dad. We played the x-box, drank beer and watched Aliens vs. Predators 1 & 2. Much coffee was consumed. Without my Mum around, I noticed my Dad (who already swears quite a bit) has replaced most of his vocabulary with "fucking cunts".

We went for a few walks and being a small coastal town, every single person knows Dad and wants to have a good old catch-up on the side of the road. Roughly 3 people recognised me, probably due to Dad "forgetting" to introduce me a lot of the time. Most people gave me strange looks, which I assumed was due to my lack of tan. However, Dad recently told me a few people have mentioned the young woman he's been seen with since my Mum has gone overseas, hinting at him having an affair.

Dad thinks this is hilarious and has decided to play dumb, occasionally dropping comments about his friend "Helga" visiting from Germany.

Ever since I realised that Scott Disick is Patrick Bateman I've been obsessed with watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians and all variants of this show.

That shit is amazing. Best parody I've ever seen.

Clues that you may not be the most exciting person

It's Friday night. Your friend calls you to come out and drink, like most other 19-21 year olds. You ignore the call. You are wearing mismatched socks with holes, dirty pyjama pants and a torn mens hoodie in XXL. It has unidentified stains on the sleeve, possibly tomato paste. You are watching The Biggest Loser. You are alone. You are eating a family sized bag of M&Ms and crying because Lara looks so happy. This is your idea of an exciting evening. You aren't trying to be ironic.

Stealing company time is a type of theft

I haven't blogged in forever. I use the excuse that I don't have internet access but nothing is stopping me from getting one of those USB thingies or writing on my lunch break at work. The truth is that I am so boring that writing it down is equal parts annoying and boring to that fucking Friday video.

All I do is eat, sleep and work. This week for lunch I have eaten:

Monday: Silverside on stale bread with rotten tomato
Tuesday: Forgot lunch. Drank coffee and sulked.
Wednesday: Expired Mac & Cheese
Thursday: Cold baked beans from a tin
Friday: Biscuits poached from the staff kitchen

I am highly exciting and have a vested interest in nutrition.

This week's activity:

Playing with the dog at the house I am housesitting. By this I mean screaming his name while both of us jump excitedly.

Walking to work. I have three speeds: My Normal (which is often surpassed by old people with walking sticks), Is That A Candy Store Ahead? and Super Fast, AKA Someone just yelled Hey Baby at me from their car window. I use that third speed a lot in Sydney.

I also yell at the TV alot while watching 16 & Pregnant, so there's that.

Sometimes I wonder if there's a special place in hell for people as boring and self indulgent as myself where they'll play Nickelback on a constant loop and Sarah Palin will be my roommate.

Don't be a drag
Just eat some beans

Whether they're soy or long and green
They're black-eyed, lima, in a pan
Refried, four-kind, from a can

Whenever life's trivialities
Leave you hungry, broke and lean
Rejoice and eat some beans today
They're cheap and you have rent to pay

Anywhere else but Somewhere

Two days ago I saw Somewhere. This film can be summed up in two words: fucking awful. Now in saying that, I should mention that I'm a big fan of Sofia Coppola's other films. I even liked Marie Antoinette (which could have used actual character development and the edit of a lifetime). The thing is, Marie Antoinette was still relatively enjoyable because it was shot beautifully with stunning scenery, wonderful costumes and set design accompanied by an amazing soundtrack. Coppola's movies are generally intimate glimpses into a character's life, subtle, aesthetically pleasing, interesting and slow (the good kind of slow. The Mad Men kind of slow). Somewhere was basically 2 hours of Coppola using excrutiatingly long continuous shots to demonstrate how boring and monotonous the main character's life was (which, thanks to a glaringly obvious visual metaphor in the opening scene, a monkey would have realised about 60 seconds in). I know this was a technique she used on purpose but that somehow makes the whole thing worse. Every scene felt like it would never end. Think Family Guy long, but just not funny, not even terrible funny, just cringe-inducingly awful. There was also a painful absence of a soundtrack throughout most of it, which might have partially redeemed the meagre visual offerings. But no. Bland town.

This film pissed me off in a way I haven't felt since The Postman. I was so bored I actually felt offended. It felt as though Coppola was saying "well, now I have all you artsy types wrapped around my little finger, I'm just going to make a movie about NOTHING and throw in the younger sister of a Hollywood A-Lister and you will all come and see it and say it's a genius minimalist work of art and I will laugh spitefully into my big pile of money until I am sick into my own scorn". I feel like I need to watch it again (even though I would rather swallow glass) because I really can't believe that the same person who directed Lost in Translation could ever make such a movie and think "Fuck I'm good". I read the reviews for Somewhere and most of them went something like "Brilliant seductive hypnotic sensual dream-like modernism blah blah blah". I think they were actually describing the Cate Shortland film Somersault and just got really effing confused. Was this movie some kind of social experiment? Did I accidentally walk into the wrong theatre and see a continuous loop of boring home movies? Was this some sort of ironic hipster film about the significance of deleted scenes? Are you supposed to be ripped out of your mind before you watch it?

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily cruel, but in my opinion the only redeeming quality that Somewhere possessed was that I was so incredibly bored that the relief from escaping the movie theatre gave me a new appreciation for life.