Crisp new tennis balls

Slumber Party Power Plays

Gatherings are a difficult affair.  And despite some good formulas developed over the years, I still get nervous when I have friends over for a casual drink, BBQ, brunch, sit down dinner, quiz night or drugged up lock-in.  But no matter what goes wrong, things will never get as awkward as they did back in the day, back at those slumber parties.

Whether one on one or with a whole group, the slumber party had a bad tendency to become a power struggle.  Here are some of the big plays as I recall them;

Getting owned by Mum

Whether it was trying to roller-blade on the trampoline underneath the basketball hoop with the sprinkler on, or simply talking back, there was one line that your mum could always deliver to crush all the esteem and respect you had;

 ‘Stop showing off in front of your friends!’

No, actually I don’t want....oh ...I guess.

At a friend’s house.

Friend: Do you want a coke?

Me: Yeah.

Friend: Hey Mum! Nilo wants a coke!

Knowing the egg

Basketball was big in the 90s.  Huge.  And if you were lucky enough, your dad might have paved the fuck out of some grass so you could shoot some hoops and break some bones.  My friends and I each had a basketball or two, but it seemed nobody could resist the distinctly Australian urge to kick the shit out of them.  The result was that every basketball I handled as a kid had an egg – a bump of air pertruding from the sphere.

I knew my egg well, I could angle that irregular bounce sit right under the hoop for me.  But as for someone else’s, well I had no idea, and when you throw in cracks and uneven surfaces.....

A game of basketball was really about knowing the egg.  Understand the egg, and the power followed.

Forbidden Fruit

Particularly at group slumbers, some hard arse would always have to go next level.  Egging houses was big at first, then booze and cigarettes came in and egging went out.  Then once the booze and cigarettes weren’t so incapacitating, egging came back in.  But by far the weirdest of such plays (and I might be getting specifically male here) was porn.

I’m not quite sure why young boys watch porn together (or, indeed, why grown men don’t).  You learned things about the body, not least your own, that you probably weren’t ready to know.  There were a few rules though; pretend like you know what’s going on, and fast forward the bits with too much dick – that’s gay.  Get this wrong, and kiss your power goodbye.

Appliance Affairs

I love my fridge, toaster and kettle.  It took me a while to get to understand and appreciate the oven, but as I mature into more of an adult, we get along better with every passing year.  These appliances are my family. 

And as for the microwave, well he is like an obnoxious friend who harasses bartenders – I know he is bad for me, but sometimes he cheers me up.

Overall, I’m happy.  But a man needs love.

Most affairs only last a few months. 

I fell in love with a juicer as a kid.  Each afternoon I’d slice and skin and churn and slurp my way through a fruit bowl.  But I didn’t care for cleaning the seventeen different elements and the whole thing got so clogged I needed nineteen oranges for half a cup. Then one day a bit of citric acid seeped into the skin I’d chewed off from beside my finger nail and I decided to end it.  I haven’t seen the juicer since. Now I’m smart enough to pay somebody $6.50 to perform the task for me.

My last affair was with a portable pizza oven.  Every night was like our own little trip to Sicily. I ate little else for two weeks.

I felt things were going well so I invited some people over for a meet and greet. I rolled the dough inside and then passed it out to my friends who created their own master pieces from the bar of sauces, cheeses, meats and roasted vegetables.    The little red oven was a smash hit.   But as I looked out my kitchen window and saw all my friends with their greasy hands all over the oven I had adored so much only a few hours earlier, I knew it wouldn’t work.

We all have appliance affairs, and maybe I’m being cynical in saying that they must come to an end.  I know some people that have had long and rewarding relationships with their toasted sandwich press – but that’s just a bit boring for me.

I guess you have to choose you appliance carefully to avoid disaster.  On the weekend, a bloke at the pub was raving about his snow-cone maker; that is sure to end in tears.

Tipping rage

I started to write this as a normal post, but decided I'd try my hand at rage comics instead.  

Like Bruises on the Fruit?

Are you tired of checking Bruises on the Fruit constantly, never knowing when new material will be posted??

Then why not 'like' the FACEBOOK PAGE?????

Where you can stay informed on all the latest posts, prove how interesting you are by reccomending BotF to attractive co-workers, and probably lots of other things that the administrator has not been bothered to organise.

So, what are you waiting for?  LIKE THIS SHIT!

Make Charity History

There are two kinds of pests that hang out on footpaths and produce shit; pigeons, and those fuckers who try to sign you up to charities.

They jump out with disturbingly friendly greetings and that little spark in their eye that suggests they have a little too much eagerness for life.  An eagerness that could have led them down a path of religion, athletics, or hardcore drugs, but has instead led them here – standing on street corners making people feel guilty and awkward.

The key to their approach is to lock you in with eye contact, a hand shake or a even a high five.  Then they get you talking.  An opening question might be;

‘Do you think it is fair for innocent humans to get tortured for no good reason?’

 They talk about political prisoners, or starving children, or mistreated animals.  Your heart starts to sink so you give them your email address, then they email you some more distressing facts, with pictures and personal stories this time, so you give them your credit card details.  Then they call you and ask if you’ve changed credit cards when really you’ve just maxed it out, and now feel even worse so up your monthly contribution and apologize for the BANK’s error.

I’d like to say that I have some witty routine for evading these urban warriors of do-goodedness.  Like a sharp one liner that makes the whole situation ethically unstable.  Or that I could just storm through them shouldering them off like The Verve did in the film clip to Bittersweet Symphony. Remember that?  That song that we all liked from Cruel Intentions but later claimed we’d always been into The Verve.

But I’ve got nothing.  Sometimes I pretend to be on the phone, but generally I just try to look cool when I’m actually, noticeably, intimidated – sort of like when you’d get in trouble from a hot teacher in primary school.

This might all seem a bit sinister.  After all, surely it doesn’t matter that I’ve been a slightly inconvenienced when the ultimate goal is to save lives, or help those who are far worse off than me.

So the question begs, is it okay for charity organisations to harass unwilling pedestrians?  Do the ends justify the means?

I say no.

Along that sort of logic, interns could line the street corners out the front of hospitals trying to guilt you into donating organs.

Also, the question also begs, why not just give some money to the homeless people who ask for it?  The counter argument suggests that they will spend it on alcohol or drugs, but if they are in fact this way inclined, will your refusal really solve their problem?

In both instances, someone is asking for our money and we are to decide whether we are willing to part with it or not.  And in both cases, the primary motivator seems to be guilt. 

I don’t think charities are evil, or pointless, but certainly a bit manipulative.  And if the less admirable but more honest reason we give to charity is to feel good about ourselves, well, these corner lingering, clip board swinging, sparkly eyed kids in their Chuck Taylor’s and pastel coloured t-shirts...they just piss me off.

Portmanteaus

A portmanteau is a combination of two or more words that produces their combined meaning.  Common examples include brunch (breakfast + lunch), cankle (calf + ankle), and smog (smoke + fog (I didn’t realise this until I read it on Wikipedia, which is another (wiki + encyclopedia))).  Sorry for all the parentheses.

So basically, portmanteau is a big extravagant word for a concept you have known and used your whole life.  This makes it an excellent addition to you arsenal of conversation prompts with people you’ve just met, provided they are pretentious blog reading folk (as in the kind of people who feel it important to call this ‘(‘ a ‘parenthesis’ and not a ‘bracket’ (and to know that the plural is parentheses)).

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’ve got a particular soft spot for banoffee (banana + toffee (both the thing and the word)), and gunt (gut +cunt (just the word, definitely not the thing which is in itself a somehwat of a soft spot).


But the best portmanteaus often get blurted out somewhat unconsciously.  A couple of the best I’ve been witness to are:

‘Geogressive’ (geographic + aggressive): adj. Aggressive about matters of geography.

  My geogressive friend fucking hates coming to Newtown.

Or

When contested on the subject of barometric pressure, Prof. Brown was known to violently attack his colleagues.  He was most geogressive.

‘Shitower’ (Shit(ter) + Shower) : n. A small bathroom in which the toilet and the shower are within the same cubic meter.  Found in boats and small Hong Kong apartments.

v.  The act of shitting and showering simultaneously.

Emma’s shitower was never quite the same after Tim stayed the night.

OR

Taboo or not, there is an undeniable convenience in having a shitower.

Portmanteau, originally a French word for suitcase, is actually a portmanteau itself (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau#Origin), but in English this gets a bit lost.  So to get ironic you can portmanteau it up a bit yourself.  There can be shortmanteaus, sportmantueas.  In fact these would be excellent categories for the portmanteau game you will play with your new friends over a sticky date pudding and a few bottles of dessert wine. 

‘How about you get bonus points for a triple worder?’

‘As in a trortmanteau?’

....dead silence....

The best concoctions from the night can be framed and placed on the portmantlepiece.

Okay, so this is getting a little far into the territory of the postmanteau.

So if this is new knowledge to you, I hope it brings you closer to the aforementioned evening of linguistic silliness.

Conversely, if you sense I’m not the first to blog about the topic, then I confess, it has been done before.  So I’ll pay homage to Milkybeer, my portmentor.

Sorry again for all the parenthetical explanations (parenthexplanations?......nah)