twentysomething

It’s official.  
Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki are the most stunning tv men alive.

Spare me your Tom Wellings and your Josh Duhamels and your that-guy-who-used-to-be-on-party-of-five-but’s-now-on-lost (sorry Matthew Fox but that’s how most of us know you).

I mean, look at them. 
I think I echo the sentiments of the entire female 18-35 viewing demographic when I say someone should write to those boys’ parents and say thankyou. It’s quite sad for me to know – and I really do know – that I would go all jelly legs if I were anywhere within the immediate vicinity of them…although me and my smart mouth would be overly tempted to use that most subtle of supernatural pickup lines ‘is that a .45 packed with rock salt in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?’.

Sometimes I think it would be much easier to just acknowledge that, yes: celebrities do now and will forever more, marry/pick up with their own kind. They might not do it for long, but I cant help but sense that when one celebrity says after a breakup, to another that ‘there’s more than one fish in the sea’, the sea they are referring to is known in most other cultures as a fish tank.
It reminds me of this episode of Oprah I saw once, where Brad Pitt was a guest. Before she went to the ad break she did the whole ‘and coming up next we have Brad Pitt, live (as opposed to…not) in the studio’, but kept filming the audience during the commercials. All these married suburban housewives and pastel twentysomethings whipped out their make up bags in a frenzy; there was blush flicking everywhere and lipstick being lathered on like it was going out of fashion. And for what? Was Brad Pitt going to look up and go ‘Lady, you’re the woman of my dreams, let’s go get married and have lots of good looking babies’? Works if you’re Angelina Jolie, but otherwise I wouldn’t be quittin’ your trucker/accountant hubby just yet.

Today is going faster than I thought, which is nice. Dee is getting mad at a certain department, changing colours as she does so, pointing her chin a lot with every exclamation and talking to herself. Heggy is pretending to be an American and saying that Iran is actually a province in Tasmania, and subsequently the best place to set up base if the Iraq war continues. Rachel – the most chivalrous of all Scrabble players I have ever come across – is still arguing with me – the least chivalrous Scrabble player she has ever come across – that ‘donck’ is not a work.

Well, it’s late. 2 minutes to hometime and we are feelin’ fine. Off to go to the Priceline sales and spend needlessly on cosmetics and cheap homewares. In a world lacking in gorgeous brooding lads, but brimming with nutty, pompous intellectuals (I get that even if you don’t), to quote an excellent wordsmith: ‘Seacrest! Out!’

My name is Erin.

I am twenty five years old, and would like to continue to be so for the remainder of the flight called life, thank you very much.

I think pate is absolutely foul (no pun intended).

I love hearing little kids laugh but hate it when old people cry.

I went to school with Miranda Kerr – so don’t try and lay all your ‘I just felt so inferior compared the the pretty girl in my year’ crap on me. When the prettiest girl in your year becomes a Victoria’s Secret model and starts dating Orlando Bloom,  then by all means come on over and we’ll weep about her non-post-highschool-frumpiness together.

I was absolutely blown away by the twist in the Sixth Sense – it was brilliant.

I miss the sound of the rain on the tin roof of our farmhouse, and I love my family.

And as for you, mankind -

I am not impressed.

I am more tired, frustrated and grumpier with you than a bear is with a sore head.

And why you might ask? Well, the answer is simple, and not so simple at the same time.

I don’t know how other people’s brains function.

I just don’t. I’ve tried, but I just…don’t. Can’t.

Some people purport to be able to do this with the greatest ease. They make you feel like the greenstick player holding the dodgy hand of cards in a poker game: easier to read than ‘See Spot Run’. I don’t know. Maybe people are actually good at stuff like that. But not me, and certainly not today.

So here I am, once again. It has been a while, but coming here – writing these entries – is remarkably cathartic. So I’m saving it for when I really need to…well, unload for want of a better word.

One of the great things about blogging – assuming you use your brain in building and maintaining one – is that it gives you quite the free rein to purge yourself of all the things that are bugging you, with relative anonymity, if it’s what you want. Some people are quite happy to kiss and tell; they know that scandal sells. Seduction sells. And so they they are more than glad to whack a price tag on their online personas and play fetch with all the other all the other people in the world who want to be reminded daily that no matter how bad they are, they aren’t as whacked in the head as that guy.

Well, modern man: don’t know if you’ve looked in the mirror lately, but between Middle East and Big Brother, dude you are a bit whacked yourself.

Yes. Online journals are excellent, and sometimes necessary to combat insanity (I work in student administration – believe me: I know insanity when I see it). Self-set boundaries, no names and no faces. You can be who or what you want and no one will ever know. It sounds good, at first.

But is it just me, or has the blogging attitude gone too far?

I mean, it makes the word process so easy, but where is the satisfaction for having openly stood up for yourself, against people who aren’t afraid to try and publically flog what you believe in? Where is the honesty if you do it anonymously in cyber space, where part of you hopes your tirade gets lost somewhere in the digital noise.

It’s like dressing up for the Oscars in Harry Winston diamonds and Versace coutour and then watching it in your living room.

Doing everything but. Saying everything but. Does it frustrate you too, when your world gets like that?

Granted, there are times in your life that you would rather have Stevie Wonder try and remove your wisdom teeth, than have the person that bugs you most in the world find out exactly how much they bug you. Seen Fight Club? The bit where Edward Norton beats the crap out of himself in an effort to frame his boss? Yeah – that’s what I’d rather do than give some people I know a piece of my mind.

But it’s not just being angry, is it – telling someone how you feel. It’s not just the being pissed off with the world that makes your brain go to mush, to the point where you cant remember your own name first go, that you need to get off your chest every now and then.

People who know me know that I don’t react well to romantic situations.

Because, my friends, romantic situations are like christmas lights: they look pretty, but trip and land on them the wrong way and you’ll know what pain is.

I wish I had a ‘Groundhog Day’ button attached to my house keys, so at any point I could just press it and start over, erasing the day’s memories of that guy, and the people around him, and whoever he told about whatever stupid thing I did which I did because I thought it would impress him.

Be me for a week if you think one person can’t feel all of that at once without exploding.

Buuut, thankfully, and slowly but surely, I am learning the art of patience, and being happy with what it.

It’s learning not to say a silent ‘be gone before someone drops a house on you’ when the girlfriend walks into the room.

It’s learning how to be the person I am around my family, around other people.

If you are ‘other people’ by the way, it may be awkward at first, but if you wish to aid me in this endeavour, laughing at your own jokes – even if it’s on you – making your kids peel your prawns for you and playing practical jokes that involve cutting random peoples heads out of trashy magazines and covertly sticking them to the work ID badges of your friends before returning them to their wallets for use on Monday, would make me feel so at home and would be greatly appreciated.

Well, I think I’ve rambled long enough.

Take care for the week, people. And no, Aunty Deb. There are no nice, single boys in Sydney who like girls. They are all married, engaged or at Moore College. Or all three.

So, until later. You stay classy San Diego. ;)

Being nice is not cheap.
I'm discovering this now after a long week of being blamed by the client for most everything that's gone wrong in the known universe except the war in Iraq and an ice shelf breaking off in Antarctica (both of which I expect to be added to the 'of course it's your fault, you moron' list by Friday - it is, after all, only Wednesday.) This, my friends, is what it's like to work in the turn-the-other-cheek world of customer service. Being nice is not cheap, because nine times out of ten you will pay for it with either your sanity, your composure or your self respect. And the only thing that keeps your cool cold and your brain cells from turning to the physical equivalent of troll bogeys (use your imagination) is the knowledge that at some point, every single day for the rest of history as we know it, there will be a 5pm. A knock off time. A quittin' time. A signing out. A beer o'clock.
Unfortunately, there is also a 6am on Monday morning and an 'I can't believe my weekend is already over' 9pm on Sunday night. But, as they say: glass half full (although I heard once that the 'they' are the same people who say 'no, they wont ride up'. So be advised at your own peril.)
As for me, I do confess to being a rather confused twentysomething, who oft - though she has 3 reports, 17 return phone calls and a bucket lost of stats to compile - finds herself in the work chair with her monitor happy placed facing away from the office and focused on a cut throat game of Scrabulous or poking someone on Facebook. Five years ago, I can honestly say I never thought I'd be saying that randomly. 'Hey, I poked you yesterday'. 'Well I used the force on you. So, ner!'
Currently as a twentysomething female, I am angry at both the Writers Guild of America and whoever it is that they have their beef with at the moment, because they have sent us into the no mans land that is Grey Anatomy reruns and NCIS episodes where Kate mysteriously keeps coming back to life after being killed off dead as a door nail once every three weeks (only the evil villain Murdoch in MacGyver has the record over her for coming back to life after an apparently fatal death). As far as I'm concerned, if you can duck into Harry Winston and borrow two million dollars of diamonds to parade around in for a few hours at the annual backslap aka Awards season in Hollywood, you have no right to picket the Golden Globes for a freakin' payrise for your already earning very healthy salary writer friends!
Likewise, I do not find High School Musical's Zac Efron to be attractive (merely pretty. Like a ken doll for example), and I find myself being increasingly attracted to homewares, 1000 thread count sheets and actors who are both handsome and Global Warming activists. I like Stella McCartney but only if she's in Target. I like mushrooms and now recognise tandoori and pizza as a natural combination. I think Victoria Beckham's breasts should be recognised as the eighth wonder of the industrial world, and remember when Dylan off 90210 was totally like, the hottest guy, ever, in the history of the like, you know, world.
Now, it's all Team Jolie, and email and Facebook and hollywood men either having babies with models who you'd like to hate but they're really nice so you can't; or who are brainwashing teen soapstars and morphing them into brainspace-for-rent brunette barbies faster than you can say 'Show me the Money'.
(Tom, if you need me to spell it out for you then the aliens have already won.)
These days, I am just another girl in the office, who calls her parents twice a week and is on a low carb, shakes for breakfast and lunch diet that she cheats on with m'n'ms if she is having a crap day. I miss my dog and love watching old movies that make me cry because they remind me of a time when good things were important to people. Things like family, and trust, and honour, and true love that doesn't come wrapped in a fluffy pink box. I want to get married and settle down but have a life as well. I collect Bruce Springsteen records, want a house in the mountains, love going to live rock concerts and think carrying your dog in your handbag all day is ridiculous.
Finally and most importantly, if you want a date, you need to know that for over a decade, men with the surname 'Darcy' have been the benchmark. I won't count you out if you can't pull off wearing a crevat or a reindeer jumper that your mother knitted you whilst recovering from a cateract operation, but looking spectacularly good and manly after exiting the water having swum in your clothes is considered highly desired criteria. 
If you have read all the way to the end, then hi. And if you are one of my aunties pretending to be some nice boy from back home just to lure me back home, the answer is still no. 
There are no Darcys on the phone book. I checked already.
As our alien friends say, Tom: Live long and prosper. Till next time...