This was going to be a post titled ‘things to not say to your fiancee’. Apparently I say lots of things I shouldn’t say. Every time I say something I shouldn’t say, fiancee says I should write a blog post about it. I couldn’t be bothered this morning because it was raining, so I told her to write it. She did.

–

Matt: You look pretty today, what have you done differently?

Fiancee: Put make-up on.

–

Fiancee: For our ‘Save the Date’ photo, I thought I might wear the dress that kind of makes my hips look a bit big?

Matt: Oh yeah, your engagement party dress?

Fiancee: No.

–

Fiancee: Delta Goodrem is such an idiot. She’s so obviously insincere. I don’t know why they’ve got her on this show. She’s a moron.

Matt: She is a moron. Look at how she’s sitting on the chair. She thinks she’s so hot.

Fiancee: I know, right?

Matt: Actually, she’s pretty hot.

–

Fiancee: How was the brownie I made you for lunch?

Matt: Good darling.

Fiancee: Was it nice?

Matt: Well, it was just your average brownie, so yes.

Fiancee: Okay.

–

Fiancee: Zooey Deschanel is so pretty even without make-up – look!

Matt: *Takes a look, reads a bit of the article* Oh, so that’s it – she wears false eye-lashes.

Fiancee: Yep.

Matt: *Pauses and looks at fiancee’s face for 10 seconds* Have you ever tried false eye-lashes?

–

Fiancee: Shit. My sunglasses are broken. Someone must have stepped on them in the park today.

Matt: I didn’t really like those ones anyway.

–

Matt: Darling did you know that your pupil in your right eye is enlarged and kind of split?

Fiancee: What? That’s a bit concerning *trying to find a mirror*

Matt:I know. Maybe it’s a brain tumor.

–

Matt: Did you choose those new sunglasses because they looked exactly like your old ones?

–

Fiancee:  How big do you let pumpkins grow before you pick them off the vine?

Matt: Pretty big.

–

On discussing plans for the weekend:

Matt: There are a number of important things I’ve got to do today, like book our honeymoon, sort out the quotes for the wedding cars, write vows and that sort of thing, so I’ll spend a lot of time doing that.

Fiancee: Okay sweets, no worries – I’ll read the papers.

*Five minutes later*

Fiancee: What are you up to?

Matt: Huh?

Fiancee: You’re carrying boxes into the car. Lots of boxes. Why are you carrying boxes into the car?

Matt: Oh, right, yes, they’re to mark the corners.

Fiancee: What corners?

Matt: Of the rally track. I’m building a rally track in the backyard.

–

Matt: Want to come and watch me play guitar?

Fiancee: Sure!

Matt: OK, I’m going to play Stairway to Heaven for 45 minutes.

Fiancee: OK, I love you.

*45 minutes later*

Matt: Why are you looking at your phone, that’s so rude. I think you should be looking at me.

–

Fiancee: Now, are there any requests you have, any at all, for how I do my make-up on our wedding day?

Matt: Just no red lipstick.

Fiancee: I have worn red lipstick every day you’ve known me.

Matt: Yeah, I don’t really like it.

Did you know that tomatoes were the only fruit Roman emperors permitted to be sold and eaten during gladiatorial battles at the Colosseum? The colour of the fruit symbolised the warriors’ blood, and the struggle of the tomato vine itself represented the determination of the Roman people to rise up against the savages and bear fruit to a civilised new world.

Actually, I completely made that up. In much the same way as I tried to win an argument against fiance last night by ‘reading’ from a Wikipedia article which attested to the ‘fact’ that John Candy died during the making of Cool Runnings and that the two films listed in his filmography as being released after Cool Runnings were actually made before Cool Runnings, so I was right. I don’t really know anything about tomatoes at all, other than the following, actual, facts:

• Tomatoes grow in the country
• I live in the country now
• I like tomatoes
• I like relish
• I should grow some tomatoes and make some relish
• I should grow heirloom tomatoes because I wrote about them in my book and they are hipster. And even though I am a reformed hipster, I never actually got to eat an heirloom tomato because the ones I bought ended up sitting in the backyard for a week after a big night out and they turned into heirloom tomato paste

Hence and soforth begins, The Heirloom Tomato Project™ – a gardening adventure for children in which I grow heirloom tomatoes and turn them into relish.

Week one began two weeks ago, so now I am now at the end of week two. Here are photos of the results:

The Heirloom Tomato Project: Week One

The Heirloom Tomato Project: Week Two

The results will get more interesting as the tomatoes grow and I have more to write about. For now, the most interesting thing to happen in the garden has been a heated debate about whether rocket (the salad herby, better-than-lettuce plant thing) would grow better if I continually played it Rock It by Little Red, or Rocket, by Def Leppard on Sunday afternoons for two hours. The debate was a lively and interesting one involving one-armed air drumming and some claps from a crowd of bemused local farmers over the back fence. It was eventually decided, by a show of one arms, that up until about 1994 (around the same time the sun dried tomato and sushi were invented), rocket did not exist, so rocket wouldn’t know who Def Leppard was, and Little Red was therefore best choice.

That being settled, what music should I play my tomatoes? The two varieties I’ve planted are called Grosse Lisse and Rouge De Marmande, but, as a published, if not totally reformed, hipster, I have refused to entertain my plants with anything by Christina Aguilera, so that obviously rules out the Moulin Rouge inspired Lady Marmalade. Any other ideas?

So I’m moving to the country. Not England, I thought about moving there a few times, but they don’t have any economics there. Or any sun. Or any genetically-matching parents for free babysitting when I have children. No, I’m moving to the actual country. The one with utes. And RM Williams clothing. Specifically, I’m moving to Toowoomba.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Matt, Toowoomba is a city. Specifically, Toowoomba is Australia’s largest non-capital inland city.” And you’d be somewhat correct. And yes, whoever has written Toowoomba’s Wikipedia article has gone to great pains to point out that Toowoomba has both a university AND a cathedral, which are features generally associated with metropoli. But you’d be wrong. The local Council website you see, is ambivalent and goes to even greater pains to avoid the ‘C’ word and refers to the area simply as the Toowoomba ‘region’. And I admire them for that. In fact I think it’s cunning, because they’re doing their civic duty to ensure Toowoomba is still eligible to win tidy towns awards. You can’t win a tidy town award if you’re a city. And if you’re in with a shot at a tidy town award, you darn well take it. Like Toowoomba did in 2008. Legends.

Either way, whilst Toowoomba will be the place of my work, fiancée and I have decided that if we’re leaving the urbane safety of our concrete jungle and heading west into the actual jungle, we might as well do things properly and find a place with enough hay to give us whatever it is hayfever turns into when you have actual bales of dried grass in your backyard. Hayrabies maybe. So even if it does turn out that Toowoomba is, in fact, a city, we’re going to be far enough away from it to still be genuine country people. Folk. That’s what we’ll be — country folk. But I’ll still wear hipster glasses, so we’ll be alt country folk. Like Ryan Adams. It is possible that one day Mandy Moore may even marry us.

And so, in preparation for my pending folkdom, I have prepared a list of things I know about the country.

Things I Know About the Country

• People in the country are called ‘folk’. I know we’ve already established this, but I felt it was worth re-iterating. Folk rock.
• Mumford and Sons are folk, but they’re not from the country. They are from East London.
• There are cows in the country
• Milk comes from cows
• Cows eat hay
• Slim Dusty is from the country
• The country is harsh
• And wide
• Like Miss Ramsay, my grade one teacher
• People write better poems about the country than they do about the city
• Banjo Patterson was from the country
• The country is very similar to rural
• The towns in the country all try to be tidier than each other, and every year, the tidiest one gets a prize.
• The country has B&S balls. Although, according to Wikipedia, “today the future of B & S balls is in jeopardy as rising insurance costs take their toll and more young people from country areas move to cities. However thousands of people make the effort to drive for many hours to support something that they love and wish to continue for future generations. There are many websites dedicated to the future of balls.”
• The country is dedicated to the future of balls
• People are much friendlier in the country than they are in the city
• The country looks smaller than the city from a distance, but once you get up closer, it’s actually a lot bigger. Like my cousin Sharon after she’s had her third helping of turkey at Christmas lunch.

I think that’s everything I know for now. I will add more things I know about the country to the list once I move there.

Do you ever get random SMS messages from people who have mistakenly typed your number into their phone, thinking the message was going to someone else? I do.

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.

“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”

“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’”

Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”

“Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.

The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ‘cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”

The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”

“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

–

I didn’t write this story, of course. It first appeared on National Public Radio three years ago (you can listen to it at that link, it’s even more amazing). It’s been doing the rounds on Tumblr and Nick Crocker passed it on. I thought it was worth sharing.

Fiance

Me: *scratching my back with brush thing in shower* Hey darling, this back scratcher is awesome!

Fiance: It’s an exfoliater.

Me: What does that do?

Fiance: You’re not supposed to use it wet. It exfoliates.

Me: What’s that?

Flatmate

Me: Morning! I love that dress!

Flatmate: What? Sorry, I’m late for work, I have to go.

Me: I was just saying that I like that dress.

Flatmate: I don’t know.

Me: You don’t know?

Flatmate: What?

Me: I said I love that dress.

Flatmate: Oh! Thank you.

Me: Are all the tags supposed to be on the outside?

Flatmate: Huh?

Me: The tags. They’re on the outside. I think your dress is inside out.

Flatmate: S***

Dog

Fiance’s dog, Molly: Where have you been?

Me: Hey, I just had my book launch, it went really well!

Molly: You’ve been gone for almost two hours. This is ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. I’ve been on the bed sulking the whole time.

Me: Sorry.

Molly: I did wee-wees in the corner as a protest. And not the corner with the newspaper, the corner with your hat.

Me: Really? You could have just gone on the newspaper.

Molly: You’re lucky I didn’t do wee-wees on the bed. I only didn’t go on the bed because it’s Mum’s bed. If it was your bed, I would have gone. You need to pay more attention to me.

Me: No, you’re right. My fault. Sorry.

Molly: I’m never ever forgiving you.

Me: Hey, look, Schmackos! Do you want a schmacko?

Molly: OMG!!!

Me: How is it?

Molly: OMG!!! AMAZE!!! GIVE ME ANOTHER ONE OMG!!!

Me: OK.

Molly: NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM!!!

Me: Do you forgive me now?

Molly: What are you talking about?

Me: Do you forgive me now, for leaving?

Molly: When?

Mum

Me: Hey Mum.

Mum: What’s wrong?

Me: Nothing’s wrong, I just thought I’d call to say hello. I haven’t spoken to you in a couple of weeks so I thought I’d call.

Mum: Oh, OK, I thought something was wrong.

Me: How are you?

Mum: Good.

Me: Good.

Mum: I’ve been thinking about that tattoo you got. Is it because we didn’t let you get the haircut you wanted in grade nine?

Me: No Mum.

Mum: OK.

Nan

Me: Hi Nan, guess what, I’m getting married!

Nan: Who to?

Me: To Rebecca.

Nan: Oh, lovely. Have your parents met her?

Me: What?

Nan: We’re off to the shops today, we need some new tea towels because the old ones are getting a bit frayed so we thought we’d buy some new tea towels from the shops. I was thinking of getting blue ones but your Grandpa wants red ones, so we’ll have to decide, but I think I like the blue ones. Do you remember the tea towel with the windmill on it? That was always your favourite. I thought we might get something like that.

Me: OK.

Nan: Your cousin’s boyfriend got promoted at work, he’s now foreman.

Me: OK, well, just letting you know, I’m engaged.

Flatmate

Me: Do the cushions on my bed look a bit, well, you know, gay?

Flatmate: No, the cushions on your bed don’t look gay.

Me: Good.

Flatmate: The lace draped over the four posts, on the other hand…

Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas, is only my second favourite corporate villain. The first is Howie Hubler. Howie lost about $9 billion of Morgan Stanley investors’ money in a single trade during the American sub prime mortgage crisis a few years ago and managed to leave the bank with a payout of several million dollars. Qantas is only worth $6 billion. Granted, Alan Joyce might be able to lose the whole thing down the toilet and walk away with a $2 million pay rise, but Howie’s effort is far more spectacular. So Howie is my favourite corporate villain.

Their efforts are alarming, and scary – not even Scrooge McDuck can visualise what nine billion bucks looks like – but in reality, they might as well have been playing with monopoly money if you compare their balance sheets with those of America and everywhere-in-Europe-that-isn’t-Germany. Some American companies are doing well of course, but while Apple might have more money in its bank account than the US Government, for much of the rest of the world, things are looking decidedly pear-shaped. The problem isn’t so much that we’re going through a downward cycle, the problem is that the whole system we’ve been using turns out to be seriously flawed.

Capitalism worked great in the 1950s because people didn’t want to buy anything more exciting than a bottle of Coke and the idea of an extravagant holiday was going to a caravan park in Gosford, but then we invented credit cards and everyone got greedy. For 60 years we’ve been paying for things ‘later’. Now it’s later. Now people are finally asking some questions.

They’re asking questions like ‘Why are US banks, which were stupid enough to lend money to people who couldn’t pay it back, who got bailed out of bankruptcy by governments, still paying their senior managers millions of dollars in bonuses?’ They’re asking questions like ‘Why can a CEO of an airline increase his salary by 70% and then shut the whole company down because he doesn’t want to increase the salaries of his staff by 3%?’ They’re asking questions like ‘How does Australia owe $200 billion in sovereign debt when we’ve got enough gold sitting in the ground under Kalgoorlie to fill Fort Knox? They’re asking questions like ‘How come we’re letting mining corporations dig up our countryside, sell the stuff they find to overseas countries and then keep the profit for themselves?’ and they’re asking questions like ‘Why is a country with vast mineral wealth and a large, smart, productive workforce unable to manufacture anything bigger or more complex than a Paddle Pop?’

They’re not dumb questions.

The problem is they’re not getting answers. The problem is our politicians can’t keep their own parties or political ambitions together long enough to move forward more than ten centimetres at a time, and when they talk to us it’s with patronising 10 second party-line soundbites. Their policies are, for the most part, populist rubbish. Our representatives in Canberra are too scared of losing votes to tackle anything contentious, let alone change the system. We lost a Prime Minister AND an opposition leader over the carbon tax and we still have a British Queen as our head of state for goodness sake.

It was inevitable that a movement like Occupy Wall Street would come along and it was inevitable that Australia would follow suit with Occupy Sydney, Occupy Melbourne and Occupy Brisbane. It was also inevitable that, like any good music festival, a camping-based political movement with no leaders and no solutions would start promisingly as a motley rag of fun-loving ideological hipsters who would then either get kicked out by security for trying to sneak backstage, or eventually give up and go home, leaving nobody but a bunch of hippies drinking fair trade coffee and arguing about who stole their quinoa muesli. If you’re going to create a political movement that involves living in a tent for two weeks, avoiding work and not bathing, you’re going to attract the kind of people who enjoy living in tents, avoiding work and not bathing. I’ve got nothing against hippies; it’s just that they’re not very good at changing the world anymore. If you’ve got a Vietnam War to stop, it’s hippies you’re after. If you want to end corporate greed and start a revolution, you need a clear list of goals, an actionable set of solutions and a groundswell of support from all walks of society who want change.

Political rallies are a good way of making the wider population sit up and take notice, but even 250,000 people walking across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of an apology to the stolen generations couldn’t convince the Howard government to say sorry. The Occupy protestors are kidding themselves if they think they’re going to make a difference by sleeping in the nation’s squares. We live in a country that won’t allow gay people to marry each other and the person at the very top of the political tree is an 85-year-old British woman who only got there because she didn’t have any brothers. We’re hopeless at changing even the easiest things, let alone the problems of the world.

The world needs changing, but it’s going to take generations to make it happen, and if it does, it will be because smart, savvy, socially conscious people are shaking up the political and corporate systems from within. People will see the issues more clearly if they’re not blinded by the smell of your two week old undies. If you want to end corporate greed and change the world, you should start by occupying the shower.

I first wrote this story a little while ago after consuming rather too much coffee one evening when I was on a quest to become the ultimate hipster for a book. The book is now out and about, so if you’re keen to take a dip in to the world of HipsterMattic, here’s a little glimpse. Oh, and if you live in Queensland and can pick up a copy of the Courier Mail, Q Weekend are publishing another exclusive extract today. Yay!

–

Most people go through life not knowing the precise number of louvres on every venetian blind in their entire house. Fewer still decide to solve the puzzle at 2am. Thanks to my new friend caffeine, a whole world of opportunities had arisen. Some people clean things when they’re having a bit of a coffee buzz. Others exercise. I had decided to count. It started with sheep.

My brother had dropped me home from his café at about 10pm and I’d showered, cleaned my teeth three times, re-laced every pair of shoes I owned and had a private skipping contest with the cat before turning in. I say ‘turning in’ because I went to bed and then turned and tossed for three hours before realising I would not be sleeping for a long time. Possibly Christmas time.

My Dad always used to tell me as a kid that the best way to fall asleep was to try and think nothing. If your brain is so retarded that you can think nothing after 12 cups of coffee you are either dead or a Justin Bieber fan. So I counted sheep instead. All of them. There are 12 million sheep in New Zealand and 20 million sheep in Australia and I tallied every single one. When I ran out of sheep, I started counting pigs, but I could only remember four – the three little ones and Babe – so I moved on to venetian blind louvres.

The problem with counting louvres is that you can’t blink or you lose track of where you’re at. Ordinarily this would be something of an issue, but after 12 cups of coffee, I was only blinking once every hour. This made it exceptionally easy to count louvres, but it also gave me a blinding headache.

Hipsters don’t have a whole lot of vices. Alcohol and coffee are the obvious ones. They’ll throw down a bunch of pills at a music festival too if there’s something dancey on, and they’re certainly not worried about inhaling if someone passes around a joint at a party, but of all the drugs in the world hipsters are known for taking, it’s the legal ones which are the most notorious. The cool kids are all on something . The Queens of the Stone Age indie anthem (and festival pharmaceutical field guide) Feelgood Hit of the Summer sums it up perfectly in one chorus: “nicotine, Valium, Vicodin marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol”. Two of those are illegal, four are not. I rest my case.

I’d never been a user or abuser of prescription drugs, but after 12 coffees, 392 louvres and no sleep I had a headache which required serious amateur medical attention.

Luckily I had been was quite sick a few months ago. Not man-cold sick; proper sick. I was in a lot of pain and after three days of not being able to eat or sleep because of the hand grenade gently exploding in my stomach I had decided to go to the doctor. She told me I should have gone to the emergency ward three days earlier but that if I’d come this far I probably wasn’t going to get any worse. In case the grenade turned into an atom bomb and my pancreas literally exploded, she gave me a note saying that if I turned up at an emergency ward they had to let me in and give me head pats and sympathetic looks and their very best stethoscope.

As far as important pieces of paper go, a note from a doctor is out-ranked only by a diplomatic passport. You can get out of a parking ticket with a note from your doctor. You can get out of wearing a helmet on a motorbike. You can get out of the Commonwealth Games. You can use one to get a disabled parking permit. Should you and 32 colleagues ever happen to find yourself stuck down a South American mine, a note from your doctor will even get you cigarettes.

I didn’t end up needing the note from my doctor to get me into hospital (luckily) but I did have one of those other fabulous doctor notes up my sleeve. One of the ones that gets you pain medication. The prescription said I could have pretty much whatever drugs I wanted from a chemist of my choosing. I have drawn a table to illustrate where, in the scheme of pharmaceuticals, the ones I ended up with slotted in, in terms of potency:

1. The vial of morphine they give the dashing young private when he’s been shot up real bad in every war film ever made. Not the first vial to ease the pain, the one after he keeps sobbing for ma and the medic knows he’s going to die because his insides are outside and they have to put him out of his misery and the medic looks at the sarge and the sarge nods and the medic nods back and then rips a package open with his teeth and sticks a vial in his leg; those drugs.
2. The drugs that killed River Phoenix
3. My drugs
4. Whatever Joaquin Phoenix has been on
5. Crack cocaine
6. Crystal Meth
7. Whatever you can scrape up off the steps of the Opera House after the ARIAs
8. Magic mushrooms
9. Medicinal marijuana
10. Panadol

My drugs, I swear, contained 60% medicinal LSD and 60% hydroponic heroin. You could have performed tusk canal surgery on an elephant after one of them. My doctor had prescribed me two every four hours and said not to be shy with them. I took four in the first two hours and waited for Alice to throw the grenade down a rabbit hole and take me along for the ride. Sadly, she didn’t turn up, but at 2am, someone, or something else did. In my delirium (I couldn’t call it sleep because medicated dreaming after three days of being awake isn’t so much rest as it is a severe neuropsychiatric syndrome) I began hearing a god-awful, gutteral, groaning noise in my backyard. It sounded to me like someone had been stabbed repeatedly and left for dead under my bedroom window.

On any normal Wednesday evening I would have put on some pants and lights and gone to investigate, but I hadn’t eaten since Sunday night and I was too weak to piss standing up, let alone fend off marauding murderers. I live across the road from a mental hospital which mostly treats people with eating disorders, but I’d checked their website the other day and noticed they also cared for ‘psycho-geriatrics’. I also live a brisk 10-15 minute stumble from 90% of Brisbane’s homeless drug addicts. They never tended to wander as far as my place, but for all I knew some crazed old Vietnam vet had broken out of his straight jacket, gotten on the bourbon and lured a few stragglers down our way for some casual smiting.

After a couple of minutes the groaning began to get louder and, fearing seriously for my life, I dialled ’000′ and asked for the Police. I wish I had recorded the conversation, but it went pretty much like this…

Me: Hello?

Policeman: Yes, hello, what assistance do you need?

Me: Well, I think, there’s like a groaning sound. In the backyard. Sort of a moaning and groaning.

Policeman: What’s your address there.

Me: Unit 3, 248 Oxlade Drive

Policeman: *taking notes* Unit 3, 248 Oxlade Drive

Me: No, wait. 284. I only just moved in a bit over a year ago and I forget sometimes

Policeman: You only ‘just’ moved in a bit over a year ago?

Me: Yeah, I forget sometimes

Policeman: OK. And what’s your phone number there?

Me: Oh, I thought you would have had it because of caller ID

Policeman: Can you just confirm it for me please

Me: Umm, yep. It’s 04…

Policeman: OK, and what’s the problem?

Me: Well *whispering* I’m whispering so they can’t hear. There’s like, hang on, I’ll move away from the window. There’s like a moaning. Sort of a moaning. Groaning. It sounds like someone is dying. Umm. It’s a really weird sound. Sort of like ‘aargh, eeergh, aargh’.

Policeman: Right.

Me: Kind of an ‘eergh, eerga argh’

Policeman: And how long have you been hearing the noise?

Me: It’s been going for about five minutes now. It’s really in-human.

Policeman: Sorry, did you say it was human or in-human?

Me: No. Well, yeah. Sort of non-human. But I’m sure it’s human. It’s like the weirdest human sound ever. It kind of sounds like an animal, but coming from a human. I studied music technology at uni so I know about frequencies and things and it’s definitely a person. Definitely. Almost certainly. I think someone has been stabbed or something.

Policeman: So, where is the person. In relation to you?

Me: It’s out the back. Near my bedroom window.

Policeman: Can you see the person?

Me: No. It’s really dark. I think they’re near the tree.

Policeman: Near the tree?

Me: I think so. Kind of, I think they’re in the tree now.

Policeman: In the tree.

Me: Yep. They were on the ground before, but I think it’s in the tree now.

Policeman: Did you hear an altercation?

Me: No, I was asleep and then I woke up and heard this ‘eerk argh’. It was really loud … There it goes again. Can you hear it? It’s really loud. I’ll hold the phone up.

Policeman: OK

…

Me: Did you hear it?

Policeman: I don’t think so

Me: Really? It’s really loud. It’s like an ‘ach, argh argh’.

Policeman: OK

Me: Hang on, I think it’s wandering off.

Policeman: Has it stopped?

Me: No, it’s just wandering off. It’s kind of chanting now.

Policeman: Chatting?

Me: Chanting. Kind of ‘acheyah, ooyah, acheyah’

Policeman: OK

Me: It’s just that I live near a mental hospital and there’s lots of drug addicts in the Valley and I thought maybe one of them had been, *whispering* killed.

Police: And so you can just hear the one, ah, person at present?

Me: Oh, it’s kind of getting higher. Near the tree out the back. It’s kind of shrieking now.

Policeman: Is it in the tree?

Me: I can’t see it. I’m too scared to turn the light on. I’ve been a bit sick and I haven’t eaten and I had to sit down to pee before because I thought I was going to faint so I’m a bit weak and I’m on some really heavy dru… Nothing. I’m fine.

Policeman: Sorry, what did you say you were on? Are you sure you’re OK?

Me: No, I’m a bit sick, but I think it’s moving away.

Policeman: In the tree?

Me: Yes. Maybe. No. Maybe. Yes. In the tree. I’m not sure.

Policeman: It’s not a possum is it?

…

Me: Yeah. Could be.

I had the privilege of talking to ABC Radio National’s Life Matters program this week about my new book HipsterMattic. Host Richard Aedy seemed a little bemused by my quest to become the ultimate cool kid, but it was a fun interview and if you’re thinking of buying the book and want a bit of a preview on what you can expect, this is a nice little overview.

The producer even managed to dig up a 1940s jazz track called ‘Harry the Hipster’ which I’d been dying to hear after researching it for the book. They played it at the start of the chat, which I was chuffed with. I don’t think many people realise the word ‘hipster’ has been around for over 70 years now, so it was nice to delve into a bit of history with the Life Matters audience.

I got in trouble from my publicist for insinuating that some of them may have been around in the 1940s when this song was first released, so if you were listening and you are under 90 years old, I do apologise.

Here’s the audio:

Miles Davis, probably the greatest musician of the 20th century, would have played live to, I don’t know, a few million people in his life. He toured the world, he recorded a small pile of brilliant jazz albums that are regarded as seminal works of music history, and he also recorded a large pile of obscure ramblings that didn’t go down in history, but did go down on tape, so they have become little footnotes to history. I’m not going to add up the total hours Miles Davis spent in the studio, but I would presume that, if you wanted to listen to the complete works of Miles Davis back to back (and you wouldn’t, because Miles Davis spent a lot of time in the 1970s taking drugs and experimenting with wah-wah pedals, the results of which are, let’s be honest, rather terrible), but if you wanted to, you could probably listen to Miles Davis for a week or so without any toilet breaks.

The interesting thing about this is that although Miles Davis gave a lifetime of recorded music to the world for our collective listening pleasure, he didn’t like having his photo taken. “If you take my photograph, you take something from me,” is what he used to say.

I didn’t understand this at first, but he’s right.

History is the sum of the things we create and the pieces we leave behind. The more we create, the more we control history. Everyone wants to control history.