Teretz Syndrome

Saturday, July 19, 2003. 2:06PM

All right, here we are. Log is back. Why did it ever stop? I don't know. Really, I had a lot of spare time on uni break and I could have done a million amusing logs. Anyway, as it stands, you had no log, so now I'm going to provide you with one massive, all powerful log. The point here was really that my parents were away, and I'd much rather spend my free time not wearing a shirt and playing loud music than typing logs. Now they are back, and here I am. Basically, every time I have a break like this, I draw up a small calendar, and use it to timetable my life. Here it is:

Now, I'm fairly confidant none of you can read this, which is good, because if you could, you could quite easily find out the real names of all the people I'm about to talk about. Basically, what I'm going to do, is work through day by day, and tell any anecdotes I can remember, and muse in a vague fashion about life and girls I want to fuck. All right, here goes.

The first day of the calendar is blank. It was seven weeks ago, I can't remember what happened. On the second day, however, it says "Uni Presentation." Yeah. Actually, the first couple of weeks of this might be pretty boring. My uni presentation was this thing for Systems Analysis and Design, where we had to go in and explain this and that about our assignment, we being me and my good friend Anh, my partner. Now, as we saw other people's presentations, we started to realise how shit ours was. As luck would have it, we went absolute last, and halfway through the lecturer stops us and asks us to show him the program. Now, the program took me 20 minutes. It was just a program from last year, which I got a High Distinction for because to change everything, all I had to do was change some text in a database. Anyway, he ripped the crap out of it, and told us to try hard on the exam. "Wow," I thought. "I think we just failed."

Basically, in the next few days, I'm sitting at home 'studying' (read "playing computer games"). On Thursday (5th of June) I went to the Hong Kong movies. Can't really remember that, either. I go to the Chinatown cinema on the first Thursday of every month and see a "classic Hong Kong double." I think maybe that everyone went home after the first movie this month, leaving me alone with Robert Chen. Not that I mind Robert Chen, mind you, he's a totally decent bloke, but he's more of a large group friend than an individual friend, and it was sort of strange being alone with him. The first film was Eastern Condors, which was badass. The second was something about a golden sword. All I can remember is it made no sense.

The next day is annotated "Second Last Blues Brothers", and "Claire." The day after has written in red just one word; "Victory!" All right, now is the moment, I think, to come clean. For some time now, you regular readers will be aware that I have been spending some time with a young lady. For a while, I called her "Girl A", and then she became "Sandy", well, I'll tell you now, her real name is Claire. Now, I've been romancing Claire for some time, however, on this particular evening, no romance was planned. At about seven thirty, my good friend Allan rings me up and says "dude, you have to come to the Blues Brothers." Now, the Blues Brothers is a Melbourne establishment - been going for twenty years, where they show the movie (The Blues Brothers) while a bunch of clowns in dark suits shout out jokes and act scenes out, and have no end of props. I've been going on and off for years now (probably four), and have even been a clown myself a few times. It has proved somewhat of a romantic Mecca for me, and no less than three of my major romantic relationships have been integrally linked to it (although, I suspect that it is more the power of the Westgath cinema, which is responsible in some way for every major romantic encounter of my life, and a few minor ones besides). Anyway, I agree to go, and the second I hang up the phone, I think "Claire!" I call her, and she's not home, but that don't matter, because I know where she is, and I know approximately when she'll be done. I head over there, about 10:00, and she aint there. "Fuck", I think, and I walk the few blocks to her house. By the time I get there, it's probably 10:30, and really too late to be rambling in (mothers scare me so). Anyway, I stare at her door for a few minutes, and, devising the basics of a plan to get one of our mutual friends who I know is in one of the bars in the area to call her, I head back toward the city. Halfway there, I run into her, all alone. I draw a comparison between my timely arrival and the timely arrivals Superman often makes. She says "your words, not mine." Anyway, we go to the Blues Brothers. It's all right. I've been a million times, and it's nothing extraordinary. Afterward, however, I walk her home, as I always do, and finally, after forty one days of serious courtship, she becomes mine.

That Sunday we all go to someone's house to have lunch and celebrate one of my friend's birthdays. It's all right. Very mature. Very refined. After a while, the house owner's little brother rocks up, and the dude is stealing the table. I mean, I'm a funny guy, and I've been rolling along nicely all afternoon, keeping everything entertaining, when this little fuck rocks up and starts stealing all my gags. This means I have to try harder, which means I have to take more risks, which means, ultimately, that I make a dick of myself a whole lot more often. What a little mother fucker.

The next entry is that Wednesday, which reads "NOS Exam, 9:15 - 11:30." I beat down this exam like a little bitch. On Thursday I've written "Study like hell", which I suppose is because on Friday the entry is "SAD Exam, 9:15 - 12:30." Yes, you picked it, SAD is Systems Analysis and Design, the subject I had to try hard in from a few paragraphs ago. I basically made stuff up for most of this exam. There was only one multiple choice answer which I was sure about, but they'd done all this shit like "both A and C", and hence, deprived me of my one piece of knowledge.

Rocky Horror the next day. This is another thing I go to a bit at the Westgath. Basically, it's The Blues Brothers except, the people dress in fishnets and corsets, the movie is The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I practically always catch an eyeful of incredibly fat woman's nipple. It was all right. I took Claire. My friend Allan wore pants (something he doesn't do all to often for my liking). I snapped some kind of rubber strap across Will's arse.

Anyway, I've been doing this for an hour now, and I've only done two weeks out of seven, so I'm going to go away and have a drink, rest my eyes and what not for a while. I'll finish this off either tonight, or in the next few days (we're at about 1300 words, by the way).

Some time later... (5:21PM)

All right, we're back. I've just spent a few hours reading the paper, playing Vice City, I had a phone conversation, and generally mooched around. So where was I? Ahh yes, Sunday the 15th of June...

I've written here "Maybe some study is a good idea," which I wrote because I had my Commercial Law exam the next day. Commercial Law was one of the few subjects in my academic career in which I have actually repeatedly lost consciousness. I didn't get home till after 4:00AM, and it was an open book exam, so basically my study consisted of downloading the suggested solutions to the sample problems, and sort of thinking generally about law for a few hours. It paid off, however, as the next day I had the exam, and it did not prove problematic (it is very hard writing this, as I already know my results, and I am trying to write how I felt at the time, and not in retrospect).

That Wednesday I have written "Birthday of Mine, Warwick Firearms." Yes, it was the birthday of mine, but as I woke up in an empty house and went about my daily business, it was of little significance. My daily business that day was to head out into deepest Holmesglen, a suburb on the Glenwaverly line, and pick up my USAF Captain's uniform from Warwick Firearms. Warwick Firearms is a totally bitchin' store that provides military uniforms and equipment to the entertainment industry. Basically, it's a hard arse warehouse filled with uniforms, guns and swords. Their receipt said that they also rent military vehicles, so I can only presume that there was an Apache Helicopter Gunship out the back. All the time I was there the store guy was chewing me out over my long hair and facial growth, and then later I folded the pants wrong, and he gave me no end of shit about that. He let me hold an M16, however, so I forgave him everything. The only other thing in Holmesglen apart from Warwick's appears to be a massive arse TAFE and a McDonalds. I guess it was about 2:30 when I got to the station, and after waiting a while, an announcement came over telling us that the train was delayed 20 minutes, and then it was delayed a bit more after that, so all up I was sitting there reading my book (Don DeLillio's 'Mao II') for about 40 minutes with the TAFE idiots (I mean, not only did they not get the TER of 50 required to get into Victoria University, but they couldn't manage the 25 needed for one of the inner city TAFEs. I think it's fair to call them idiots. Unless of course the TAFE had the course they wanted and they just happened to live near Holmsglen, and they went there by choice. Then I guess they're not idiots, but inbred. Ahh, my elitist ramblings). By the time we'd got on the train, and made it a ways down the line, it must have been getting onto the time school gets out, because as we passed Saint Kevin's, the train was inundated with school boys. Now, I used to be a school boy, and I know I used to piss people off (I once hit a blind man with an empty coke can, and did an English accent to avoid his wroth), but there was no way I was half as much of a dick as these fags. God damn. These guys were almost as dumb as the fucking TAFE kids, and far more obnoxious. Anyway, eventually, I got home. I fooled around for a while (I think I went to see my next door neighbor), and then had dinner with my sister. Pizza, it turned out to be. She didn't tell me, and there was this moment when I opened the door to see the pizza guy there, and just stared at him, before calling out "did we order pizza?" to my sister. Looked like it scared the shit out of the pizza dude. A bit after that a few of my closer friends came around, and we ate cake and played monopoly. It was a heated game, and it eventually came down to me and Jonathan, and he took me for every dollar I had. Bastard didn't even let me win on my birthday.

Two days later was the Fifth Annual Pulp Fiction Party-o-Rama. I think a rocking night was had by all. We got a lot of people, many of whom were women, and I spent a few hours trying to balance being a good host and being my charming self to a plethora of young ladies with avoiding the jealous cat like gaze of my new woman, before eventually packing it in and retiring to my parents bedroom to neck. We were just getting into things when in bursts nine of my friends. It took them a second to find the light, so when they turned it on to find me sitting on the couch with the biggest grin of my life, and Claire a few meters away looking totally worried. The realisation was priceless. I can't remember how the rest of the night went so much, but if you're interested, these pictures have been up for weeks, but never linked to. I've written "dead" on the calendar the next day, but really, that never worked out, because there were a bunch of fuckers who had a good nights sleep at my house, and stayed till six o'clock the next day (I had not been to bed). I stayed up till about nine, while my sister had her friends over, watching a Michael Jackson concert, but eventually I decided that even the King of Pop lacked the energy to keep me awake for the slow end of 40 hours and went to bed. My sister tells me that she and her friends got drunk, and played sardines, and were screaming at maximum volume right outside my door, but I didn't hear a thing, so I guess I was pretty dead to the world.

I haven't written anything until the next Wednesday (June 25), where it reads "take back uniform." I did, and my train ride was much more efficient. I made an effort to fold the pants right, and the guy noticed and said "you know, every time you fold a pair of pants from now on, you're going to remember this store." The bastard's right; I will. I stopped at the McDonalds on the way, just to do the whole Holmsglen tour. My hand was shaking a whole lot holding my coke, which kind of worried me. The trip home was much more efficient.

The next day me and my sister made the trek out to see my Grandmother and my Great Aunt in Camberwell. I remember that I had to take cookies. It was kind of strange being there without my parents - we actually had to talk to them. They made me and my sister play draughts (I won - see, strategy computer games are good for you). My sister was having a party that night, so I had arranged to stay at my man Marcus' in Kew. Now, I had printed out a set of directions from whereis.com.au, that gave me the "on foot" way, about 7km. Now, I knew I could probably walk that in about an hour and a half, but I thought, well, why not see if a tram can get me closer. In the end I caught three trams, all filled with private school girls, and ended up somewhere approximately near Marcus'. I reckon I could have made it the whole way, but I decided to give him a call, just in case he wasn't home or was in bed or something. He came and picked me up, and we played computer games all night.

Dinner's ready, I'm going to take another break now. We must be getting around the 3000 word mark, and just over half way. I think I may have to make this a two parter.

Some time later... (9:21PM)

In fact, yes, consider this part one. I'll finish this off in a few days.

Back to logs