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Can we buy popcorn?
And watch the war unfold from our rooftops?
'Featuring GI Joe and the War Mongerers'
One night only!
Watch them nuke Iran!
Do you want to be there?
When the world ends?
Sit with me and watch
As the curtains fall,
Over their faces,
Devoid of beauty,
Filled with horror,
Watch it end,
Begging,
Down on their knees.
Down they go,
Show ponies gallop,
Into the arena of death
The show can't go on
Let's break a leg,
So many legs,
Broken,
Break their hearts,
Break their souls.
They won't need them,
The show ends here,
Will you be watching?
When the world ends?
Fin.
Do you think the title is sagely advice? Yeah? Me too.
Trouble is, I'm the person who said it. I just don't remember saying it. Apparently these are the pearls of wisdom from 'sleeping Sheree', who occasionally dreams big and delivers timely anecdotes and advice to those who seek it/have no choice but to endure, as I tend to ramble when I'm cutting up some Zs.
And that was my coherent sleeping declaration last night. So poignant, so telling, considering how last night I went to my first live comedy gig.
It was a moment of subdued epiphanies.
I discovered what hecklers were. I learnt about awkward silences. I saw the comedians before and after. Before they looked nervous and sad. And after they performed, despite not having a good run of it because they weren't really making jokes just putting words together in sentences and pacing back and forth (some of them), they were still euphoric and delighted to be there in that room. Because they had found something they loved, even when the going got tough and silent and heckle-ish.
Sometimes I laughed politely and softly but if I wasn't sure how to react, I simply looked around the room to kill some time. Mostly I laughed a little too loudly and involuntary and possibly at something highly inappropriate (me and this guy at the back seemed to find the most random things funny and we coincidentally emitted a similar and distinctive horse belly laugh). And sometimes, like with headline act Jacques Barrett, I was laughing so hard I may have regurgitated water, like an excitable seal.
Which brings me to my next point.
Don't drink and comedy.
So to conclude, it was an eye opening experience, highlighting how immune I am to controversy these days. I can appreciate how tough the life of a comedian actually is and a little part of me wonders if I could ever get up and give it a go.
Since then I've secretly been 'comedy routine'ing everything in my head. Taxi drivers, am I right?
I hate bandwagon-jumping-clichés - see: this blog dedicated to murdering them.
And yet, there’s something about the year 2012. I feel it already pulsating through my veins like an incandescent, fleeting burst of energy. I thought now might be a time to reflect on possible changes for the year ahead.
It may be because 2012 is the Chinese year of the Dragon and I’m an infamous Dragon sign. I've always had 2012 in my peripheral vision. Admittedly, I possessed a very romantic vision of what it would entail - travel, eloping, adventures, being a famous novelist or journalist, the end of the world. Then again I was a nerdy 13-year-old with her face enmeshed in books and a head in the clouds, which would look funny if it were literal.
But I digress. Here are 20 resolutions from Future Sheree to Present Sheree.
Dear Present Sheree,
1. Stop buying dresses, what's wrong with you, do you have some kind of DRESS WEARING DISEASE? Dressyphyllis, let's call it.
2. Turn your 37,000 word first draft of sheer diatribe into the final draft of a novel. Pack it up into an envelope and send it to people who can fashion it into some kind of reader friendly apparatus/book. Send it with chocolate for the element of surprise.
3. Look after your skin, give it some water, slap on some sunscreen, soak it in rose hip oil, whatever, just don't abandon it. Your skin will be your best friend in ten, twenty years' time. It will go to parties with you. It will sleep with you. It will look good in photos. Heed its call.
4. Write some political articles. Don't just comment on your political writing friends with 'oh this is a brilliant article, I wish I had written it' - WHY DIDN'T YOU SHEZ? EH? WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE? Do some research, spill your opinion onto the page and press publish or get someone else to press publish: see number 2 about the usefulness of chocolate in this scenario.
Most of all, be part of the revolution.
5. In line with the above, put your money where your political beliefs are. Join a political party. One that's green in colour preferably.
7. GOOD FOOD. OKAY. GO LOOK AT YOUR FRIDGE. IT'S GOOD RIGHT? THAT'S RIGHT. YOU HAVE ALREADY HEEDED (past tense of heed?) THIS ADVICE. YOU BOUGHT SOME JAMON AND FRESH VEGIES AND CAMEMBERT AND ORGANIC FREE RANGE EGGS AND GUESS WHAT? They're still good to eat. No more sniffing them out with fear, trying uselessly to cut mould off the bread, accidentally eating old food etc. This is the year of paying attention to what's in your fridge. Stop making friends with the Thai takeaway people. Their children will still go to university whether you continue to be a loyal delivery customer or not. Food lazy ends here. I want fresh food Joseph, even if that means that this little piggy went to the market.
8. Travel. You do this every year, so much so in fact, that when you attend gatherings, people are surprised to see you there and enquire as to how you came to be back, ‘don't you live overseas’? And you say, ‘that was three years, thanks for noticing my return’, and they pat you on the back and say 'you're a jet setter Shez!' and you stare at them coolly, because that's what jet setters do.
Let's face it though. You don't do this enough. It's the thing you love to do more than anything in the world. It robs you of all the money you have worked hard to earn. But you come away from it, the happiest person in the world.
2012 is the year of roaming to places starting with the letter B: Beirut, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires and Boracay (the last one is an island starting with B, what? I need an island holiday, particularly after writing this resolution list).
9. Join a health fund. Let the dentist bills of 2011 be a lesson to us all, but mainly to your bank account.
10. Let's face it you're never going to the gym. When the membership is up for the love of god, do not renew it. I don't care how chummy you are with the smarmy sales guy, you are not his friend in real life, and no shiny membership will ever change this fact of life. And if he says ‘hey, we’ll throw in this free backpack’, don’t say, ‘YOU HAD ME AT FREE’, or ‘BACK PACK ME RIGHT INTO YOUR BUFF EXERCISE SANCTUARY’. Walk away from the free incentives and keep walking for at least 5 kilometres. Don’t stop there tubby, expensive gyms may be out but walking is always on the agenda.
11. Invest in a bicycle. Oh go on, you know that there are days when you're walking from your apartment to a train station and all you can think of is what it would feel like if you could fly down the street, before imitating the exact motion of doing such ('weeeeee'), arms out, managing to both confuse and frighten onlookers at the same time. Take the middle lazy man out. Put a bicycle there instead.
12. Take your friendships with writers and the glitter literati, to the next level. In 2011 you made some ridiculous headway here, all randomly befriending awesome writers on the interwebs and in real life too. Some of them noticed you for your ‘humour’ or what not and one of your writer heroes even sent you a package in the bloody mail, she liked you that much and let's not forget winning the internet when Salman Rushdie tweeted you.
Good job, you unintentionally exceeded everyone's 2011 expectations of you in this area. Now do something with it. Attend their poetry readings. Swap manuscripts and talk about how it ‘made you feel’. Go to writer festivals. Throw decadent parties where you pour whisky into each other's mouths and role play Hemingway and Fitzgerald, I don't know, get creative because that’s what you do, foo’.
13. Twitter. It’s the future, the way, the light, the tiny bird on the top hand corner of your screen. Give it a warm, consensual embrace.
14. Bloggity blog blog. Done. Winning at life.
15. Conquer the Tumblr mountain – it’s your Everest but it can’t defeat you forever.
16. The things you vowed to do in 2011 but didn't do? Yeah all of those. Pay attention to anything in your life that requires change and make it happen. Don’t get stuck in a rut because that sounds darn painful. Keep moving, keep the energy going, let water flow through your life and wash all the stuff you don’t want away. If you keep up this spirit of renewal, you’ll find that really, almost anything can happen....
17. Join a comedy improv group. Oh yeah. I’m holding you to this one. You had a dream that you did this in 2011 and Dream You was awesome at it. I like Dream You. She does things. She's going places. Be more like her. That was point 18. and 19. and 20.
20. Be more like Dream Sheree (it’s the you of your dreams).
Sincerely,
Future Sheree (I think you'd like me if you took the time to get to know me)
Happy one year full time writer anniversary to me!
In that time I have written thousands of deals, hundreds of commercials, tens of thousands of EDMs, edited and fact checked a million more, posted a googol of social media comments and still manage to freelance in my 'spare time'/lunch break/after midnight
[ Click here to read more ]
I close the book and feel the overwhelming urge to write words for the rest of my life. I know, I think triumphantly in my post-awesome-book-daze, I’ll write a blog post reviewing this book. NO, I’ll tweet about it, but first I’ll write a novel and send it to her! NO! WAIT! STOP THE PRESS! SHUT UP BRAIN.
I’m talking about my literary lady hero Marieke Hardy, the author of the book I am about to review (or something to that effect). Thanks to a chance encounter with Ms Hardy, who signed my copy of the book and wrote her email, promising to send me her designer political left-wing clothing range, I can send her these words and see if I get a ‘right of reply’ (this is something Hardy allows the people she writes about, to do in her book, a clever way of saying 'Hey! These people I'm talking about are not fictional! They're three dimensional AND have sufficient literacy skills, hazzah
[ Click here to read more ]
‘That’s Manhattan’, says the cab driver in a monotone voice, simply pointing out another landmark on the unofficial tour.
I turn and see light dancing from a hole in the clouds across an urban vista of buildings I have seen a thousand times over in films and photos and on television and yet I may as well have never seen it before in my life, such is the impact rendered. A peachy haze sits above the skyscrapers; the last sunrays of the day illuminate them. Mist settles and rises all at once. Thousands of white crosses from a cemetery in the park span the foreground and I have never seen a sight more breathtaking, as it quietly burns a fiery blaze in my memory bank
[ Click here to read more ]
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Comment by Sheree
on The Gripes of Wrath – World Youth Day
Cliche Murder
I guess you could do a google search. But it's when the Pope comes to town and the pilgrims follow. Oh and it's for young people!