No Flowers Please

Please note: Never in my existence have I received a luxurious bouquet. I was given a single rose once. I probably would have appreciated it more if a greater percentage of it was not wilting and also not pricking me with great bloody thorns. The below is just an imagined response. Take it as you will.

Oh you bought me flowers? You shouldn’t have. No really, this is a shit gift. In my humble opinion, you are paying a lot more than necessary for some decapitated plants wrapped in flattened dead trees. (aka paper) They also don’t stay in that fascinatingly pristine state for long. Like a lot of deceased entities, they start to deteriorate and become a lesser version of themselves. You know, just like a corpse.

Is this bouquet really an accurate representation of what you happen to think of me? Of our relationship? Well shit son, it better not be. Oh you got them because they’re pretty? What are you attempting to articulate, that our companionship seems fetching, but has a doomed fate? That this friendship is already dead? That we may as well envelop it within more departed comradeships?

Let me pull a Pauline Hanson on you and shamelessly gripe for truth. PLEASE EXPLAIN. Because I cannot understand why you have given me these blossoms of blunder. I have no damage on potted plants, as they are still of this world and shall be for quite some time. Nor do I have a problem with floral prints in general. I agree with many humans on this point, flowers are picturesque at the very least. However when you wrench them out of their homes in the soil and shove them into my hands, how the hell do you expect to interpret your actions?

Do not even consider the plastic alternative. Oh yes, they’ll last for eons. So will a synthetic model of a corpse. Or an ex-parrot that has survived the process of taxidermy. Or Edward fucking Cullen. If I have not yet rendered this clearly to you; you are still retrieving a model of something that shits me very much so. A garland of dead pieces of garden only exemplifies how much of a fail at being a person you are. Especially if they are fake. To you I say, fuck your flowers. Good day sir.

Please also note: above becomes irrelevant if flowers in question are peonies.

Quick Tips for Surviving University

Congratulations! If you are reading this with the intention of becoming a fully fledged university bawus, it can be presumed that you were accepted into a tertiary education institute. Ku-fucking-dos goes to you my friend. Now you are entering into a stage where you are willingly prolonging your schooling years. In case it wasn't made clear to you, university is voluntary. You have already completed the legally required formal schooling.

Now that we have dispensed of the unnecessary crowd, let's continue. Supposing you are studying a degree that holds a certain level of employability (so not an arts degree) you will hopefully be working in a relevant field, with a higher pay-packet than what you would have otherwise received. This will be incredibly useful when paying off all of your atrociously immense student loans.

Otherwise, I have put together an amateur's guide for attaining prosperity at uni. Keep in mind that I am a first year student, who has not yet been to my first class. It's obvi that I not only hold, but I carved the keys to the door of success. Hey, I survived the final year of high school and I have watched Legally Blonde enough times to gain a legit expertise. So, here we go.

1. Like the Undergraduate Quick Tips - From Previous First Year Students page on Facebook. This collection of wisdom comes the creator/s (?) of the infamous Schoolies Quick Tips - From Previous Grade 12 Students and QCS Quick Tips - From Previous Grade 12 Students
pages. You know this is legit. In fact, for any well wishing student, this will be your Bible. With nuggets of wholesome truth such as "Ginger kids are actually not allowed to graduate from any educational institution in Australia", it's not only irresistible, it's essential.

2. Actually refuse to investigate the finer details of your degree. Your catchphrase should now be "what the shit is a major?" People will realise that you're a lewse bastard and instantly want to be your friend. Even your professors won't be able to help themselves from falling for the fine individual you are. The fact that you're flawed only adds to your entire demeanour.

3. Don the appropriate gear to create the whole "I'm a very serious student" aura. At the very least, chunky specs are absolutely mandatory.

4. It is not necessary to attend all lectures and tutorials. You must however be present at all toga parties, ready to rock out with your very best cake face and bed sheet. Have an exam the next day? No worries, have another rum and coke. You are not honestly prepared for the real world until you have completed a three hour exam with an ample hangover.

5. Instead of buying textbooks and watching hundreds of dollar disparate, chat up the unknowing person next to you and photocopy the pages necessary from their edition. This should probably only cost you half of what it should have, with only ten times the amount of effort. Repeat this process for all of your courses.    

6. Always remember the golden rule. May Daria bless you. 

Homebodies

At homesome on your lonesome? No worries, here are twelve tracks to groove to this fine night. Feat. Redcoats, Feed Me & Crystal Fighters and Noah and the Whale along with many others.

Homebodies from girlwithatopknot on 8tracks Radio. Cover art found via weheartit

A Face for a Funeral

As it was, I was cruising through the Brisbane CBD when I happened to perceive an immense curiosity. Personally I was too mortified to even think of capturing a digital image to show you, so you're actually just going to utilise some brain tissue and IMAGINE IT. It was an amply sized billboard advertising a funeral service. Upon the left of it, was an elderly lady posed with both hands underneath in an angel pose, with a transcendent smile paused on her lips, and her eyes closed as if she was dreaming of better days.

Usually, along with the rest of the human population I would think nothing of it and continue on through my day. Yet it just so happened that the particular photo they used of the eerily tranquil woman provoked my brain into multiple question mode. What was she thinking when she posed for it? How did this company sell the position to her? Was she a past client of theirs? What are the legal and moral ethics of utilising the image of a potentially deceased person for a billboard? Would that mean that they would not owe her any funds for her modelling services due to her untimely death? Holy fuck, was she even alive when the photograph was captured?

What is simply an image of a sleepy elderly lady had potentially disturbed me for life. Assuming that she consented to the use of the image, what would make the poor old dear agree to the whole situation? Yes please, I would like to represent a satisfied corpse, who was entirely placated by my excellent funeral services. I mean, yes please I would like to represent a service for dead people and alive people who knew dead people. It's not completely jocular is it? Imagine this person disclosing to her friends over some dry Arnotts biccies and cups of Earl Grey about how she was a model.

"Oh yes Marjorie, I saw you on the billboard in front of St. Stephens"-
"Yes Gladys. I'm a model now."
"How marvellous!"

Yes how bloody brilliant, Marjorie is now a model of those who passed on to God knows where. It frightens me that someone would be so openly accepting to include their face onto an entity such as this. I keep striving to resolve it in my mind, but all that results are more questions, that refuse to peacefully fade away (much unlike Marjorie). And then, there in bold is the disdainful question of why do I care so much. Perhaps, I would like to think that none of this is foreseeable in my own future. That I will never become a dreary angel of death. All the same, maybe it is the most reckless and audacious thing that I could do as an elder. Messing with death- isn't that something that young people defiantly do whilst they still feel invincible? I guess that this is just a way to present both society and the Grim Reaper with the middle finger, before finally departing off into the sunset that is the afterlife. I honestly do think I could elatedly rest in peace with that in mind.

Alone Again

For the eighteenth Valentines Day in a row, I will be solitary. I will not consider myself alone. Yet in the typical V Day stance, I will be. My relationship status as displayed on Facebook as it has been for the last five years, will be ‘single’. 

I never have been really sure how to react to the lurve day hype that arrives as January departs. People talk about their plans. Buy shit. It has never affected me personally. My parents don’t even participate in it (Dad believes Valentine’s Day is another “goddamn” American corporate scheme to gain international control).

Yet every year, again and again, individuals around me moan about oh how they’re single yet again on the dreaded day and that their life has no meaning and how they are doomed to be forever alone. Every single year, (and every other day) I am forced to empathize with these people like I give a frazzling fuck. Fine. Yes I am in their exact situation; I know the single blues like the bloody crazy cat lady on the Simpsons. And because of their not being able to handle their lonesomeness, something that had little impact on my existence has now instead transformed it to shit.

This is only becomes depressingly worse when you consider my gender, along with the fact that I have a multitude friends that share my gender. I am not meaning to stereotype here, but lonely teenage girls are the scum of the earth come February. If not the whole population of them, the majority. Their incessant whines of “omg does he lyk meh” are enough to render a bystander into a state of considerable mental damage.

Towards the end of high school, my grade was forced into Mean Girlseque workshop confronting the future and fears and feels. At one point we were to anonymously submit genuine anxieties of ours, which were then read aloud. Amongst the reasonably terrifying statements, there was one that went along the lines of “I AM NEVER GOING TO FIND SOMEBODY TO LOVE ME”. And apparently this was shockingly relatable. And the only real consolation for this is that someone will love you eventually. It just hasn’t happened yet.

Pardon moi? Whatever happened to everyone jumping on Beyonce’s empowered wagon and waving their hands sassily in people’s faces and embracing all the single ladies? To everyone repeating said gesture and exclaiming that like The Pussycat Dolls, they don’t need a man? Was that just a cute trend and not a resonating truth for you all?

 I actually cannot understand why we so often define ourselves by other people. As depressing as this sounds, you are born alone. Your soul mate is not immediately allocated to you. If you cannot exist as an individual, oh how life will seem to endlessly shit on you. Honestly though, you are you. You are not the relationship status looming on your Facebook profile. You are you and that to me matters more than who you happen to (or not to) spoon at night. Why should we be made to feel descending qualms for not having someone to constantly swap saliva with?

This Valentine’s Day, I refuse to be made to feel inferior to any pair of face licking deviants. February 14th to me will just be another day just like its 364 brothers and sisters of the year. I will continue to exist, just as I always have. I am me. An individual. Not a half of two names jokingly merged together. But a whole.