Reasons why being a scorpio can be bad for the blogging business...

My friend and I were talking yesterday about horoscopes and their traits. I am a scorpio and apparently, according to the cosmic realm of the stars, I am meant to be firey and emotional with a tendency to bottle my feelings.

This I already knew. The emotional, bottle-my-feelings part seems about right.

"But, firey?" I said to my friend. "I'm not firey! I hate conflict!"

To which my friend looked at me like I had just taken all my clothes off and danced around the room singing tribal worship songs. That is, she looked somewhat shocked and bemused.

To which I then remembered the conversation we had had about six hours earlier where I admited my tendency to pick fights with people I'd just met when I'd had too much to drink. Not in an unnecessarily, over-aggressive, throwing punches, get-hauled-out-of-the-pub-by-very-large-muscled-bouncers kind of way. But in an I'm-right-you're-wrong-let's-argue-instead-of-make-pointless-small-talk kind of way.

To which my friend then pointed out that the majority of my blog posts were related to times in my life when I was really pissed off and needed to channel my firey fury in a sarcastic, but socially-acceptable way.

To which I then felt very sheepish.

And like I didn't know myself at all.

Because she was pretty right (Not entirely, but mostly. She wasn't wrong, but she wasn't entirely right either. There's still a bit of room for me to be right also...) I looked back over my last couple of posts and all of them were courtesy of something that had tickled my scorpian tail and sent me on a stinging spree- not being able to rent a studio in Sydney because I am poor, the bin-bandit who got a bee in his bonet about my throwing my coffee cup in his trash and 7th Heaven's anti-sex clause. All of them a big fat gripe sesh. Just me, up on my scorpian soap box having a nice fat old rant.

So then I thought, maybe I am too firey for my own good? Maybe people don't want to hear about all the things that go wrong in my life or get me in a hot tizz? Maybe they want to hear about the good stuff too? The happy things that happen to me?

So...

Today I went for a walk. And I saw a puppy. And I decided that, no, the puppy was not cuter than Ryan Gosling.

Then I had breakfast with my best boy friend. (My best friend who is a boy. Not boyfriend. Note the space inbetween). And my breakfast was so delicious and the company so wonderful, I felt like I had floated up into the clouds and was bouncing around on their soft billowy white cotton ball-ness I believe clouds would possess if they weren't made out of air and moisture.

Then I went shopping. And I didn't buy anything because nothing fit me and the shop attendent looked like she'd just eaten sourcrout, but that was okay. Because when I looked in the mirror,  I liked the person with the 'great personality' who looked back. And I'm sure the shop attendent only looked like she just eated sourcrout because her boyfriend broke up with her the night before and she tried to drown her problems in a few bottles of Passion Pop.

And then on the way home from the shops, I found a four-leaf clover, picked up a coin that was heads up, caught a Santa Claus whisker, made a wish and had it come true on the spot

Then the heavens opened up and the cosmic stars slapped me across the face and said, "You're a scorpio. Be the bitchin' blogger we intended you to be."

Well, if my horoscopes say so...

KH.

Let's Talk About Sex, 7th Heaven.

Dear Camden Family,

This goes out to the entire family of 7th Heaven - the Reverand Camden, wife Annie, children Matt, Mary, Lucy, Simon and Ruthie and the twins, Sam and David who may not yet know what sex is, but are a product of sex and therefore, this is still relevant to you.

I've been watching your obnoxious family every day at 10 o'clock for the last few weeks. I can't help that the television show which follows the ins-and-outs of your dramatic lives plays every week day at the exact time I like to have my second cup of morning coffee. This is not my fault. It's either you or The View. And as I still harbor a bitter resentment towards Whoopie Goldberg for never making a sequel to Jumping Jack Flash, looks like I have no choice but to be a witness to your sorry lives.

For a christian family, you certainly have a lot of drama. Not that christian families should have any less drama than non-christian families. I mean, if they made the plight of Job into a blockbuster, I'm pretty sure Brad Pitt or George Clooney or Robbie Redford or whichever over-the-hill hottie they chose to play God's humble servant would put in the kind of Oscar-winning performance which made people reconsider the difficulties of being Godly in the face of grief. But you are not Job and Satan has not smited your family and covered you in boils to try and prove a point.

Instead, big-brother Matt is off marrying women on a whim, Mary is behaving like the bad seed, Lucy is a drama-queen, Simon has started an escort service and Ruthie is an A-grade gossip. I can't help but notice that your drama seems a little self-inflicted. Not to mention, the majority of you don't exactly exercise christian values on an hourly basis. For the most part, you're all pretty selfish and self-involved.

And you're all obssessed with relationships. But that's not exactly an uncharacteristic trait of christians, is it?

Except maybe for Mother Theresa, the one woman who's biological clock screamed, "Help the sick" instead of "Have a big white wedding and procreate".

I get it, Camden offspring. Believe me, I know what it's like. I get what you're trying to achieve here. All you want is to find a nice parter, put a ring on each other's fingers, get hitched and get God's gold star for 'waiting'.

To have sex.

To have sex sex sex.

Sex.

The word itself is not hard to say. It's one syllable. We all know what it means and what it involves. We've had the awkward health class conversations and most people have done the deed itself. So, I don't understand why you can't just say the word 'sex' instead of referring to it the way you do - with a knowing nod of the head or shrug of the shoulders or awkward, pointless exchange. For example, 

"Mary and whatever-his-name-is are going to... you know" (wide eyes, blank stare)

or

"When she said 'let's go upstairs' I thought she meant to brush our teeth (turn head slightly and look sheepish)

You're really putting one over us with that ambiguity. I feel positively hoodwinked.

I understand the standard audience who watch your family feud are not typically 24-year old unemployed creative writers with unhealthy coffee habits and a tendency to critique. They're more like PG13 sponges ready to soak up anything that will help them get through their pubescent lives with a bit of dignity. But do you honestly think not saying 'sex' outloud is going to help them achieve that? If anything, it's only further encouraging the sex stigma, a topic made all the more taboo by the awkward eyes you make at each other to get your point across.

What exactly are you encouraging by hiding behind a head nod? That sex is not something they should talk about? That the word shouldn't even be mentioned let alone the act discussed?

As a christian family with christian morals, there's no nookie-nookie for any offspring until your Facebook status officially says 'married'. However, that doesn't mean you have to treat the word like it's the forbidden fruit. Reverand Camden, I understand you're trying to teach your children good values and godliness. But even God says the word 'sex'. He probably sniggers afterwards because I like to think God has a sense of boyish humour about him. But he says it all the same.

So say the word, you prudie protestants or I'm going to start watching The View.

And I doubt Whoopie Goldberg's sex life is as gripping as yours.

In sexual sincerity,

KH.

Trash Talk

I am not an active environmentalist. I don't picket or rally. I don't float in the middle of the ocean protesting against whale slaughtering. I sit in the comfort of my own home and obtusely watch people who are braver than me get credited for acts of environmental initiative on the evening news.

But I do what I can to protect the dolphins and the birds and the lady beetles. I have short showers. I decline the option of plastic shopping bags when possible and I put my rubbish in the bin.

So imagine my surprise, while walking down Forveaux St this morning having just finished off a coffee from Bourke St Bakery, that I got reprimanded for putting my take-away cup in a resident's council wheelie bin.

Granted, I could have held on to the cup for another five minutes before I got up to my own apartment complex, but the bin was on the side of the street so I popped it in and kept walking.

Unbeknown to me, the home owner was standing with some friends right infront of it and didn't smile upon my own small act of environmental initiative. Instead, he yelled out after me, "Um, this isn't a council bin!"
Except that it was. Because it had a red lid. And while residing on someone's stoop is still the property of the council, not the home owner.

The company I was with turned around and politely yelled back, "Um, why don't you chill out?" while I continued walking, slightly bemused as to how I'd received a slap across the wrist for initiating a good deed.

It's not like I'd walked into his house and helped myself to his kitchen trash can. It was on the stoop of his terrace, seperated from the street by a waist-high iron fence. It was a matter of flipping open the red lid and putting the cup inside. Granted, people probably put their trash in his bin all the time. It probably bothers him no end. Everytime he goes to put his trash out, his bins are overflowing with Bourke St Bakery takeaway cups and he waves a fist at God, crying "Why?! Why, God?! Why!?"

But what if he hadn't caught me red-handed? Would he have even noticed my small addition to his weekly waste? My coffee cup would just be another piece of trash in a bin that's contents are going to the same place as my own rubbish bin. No matter who's bin the cup ended up in, mine or his, it was still destined for the same landfill. So does it really matter? Isn't the point that it was put in a bin in the first place?

If I wanted to be a dolphin-killing, lady-beetle blitzing, luting, polluting anti-environmentalist I would have dropped the cardboard cup on the side of the street and never thought of it again. But I grew up watching Captain Planet. I took the vow of the Planeteer long ago and therefore, put my rubbish in the bin just like Kwame, Wheeler, Linka, Gi and Ma-Ti told me too. Otherwise Captain Planet will disown me and Gaia will smite me with lightening.

Apparently, the power isn't yours. The power belongs to the analy-retentive resident on Forveaux St who dishes out a side of guilt with his trashbags and leftover takeaway containers.

Maybe this guy is Looten Plunder in disguise? Better get my Planeteer ring out of retirement...

KH.