Confession: texting has taken over my life.

  It has recently occurred to me that my life revolves around one very anti-social activity. I indulge in it from the time I wake up until I go to bed at night. The irony is, I consider this activity as the most impersonal and laziest form of interaction. I’m referring to texting.
  When SMS messages first came on the scene, I thought there was no way I could be bothered typing messages on a tiny keypad that barely fit my thumb pads. It’s easier to dial a number. But somehow, over the years, texting has taken over my life.
  It got me to considering some of the pros and cons of sending text messages. It’s hard to go past the lack of warmth and emotion involved in texting. We’ve all received short, sharp messages that left us wondering what we had done to upset the other person. This demonstrates another problem with texting: how easily it results in misunderstandings and miscommunications between friends.
  Along with the damage done to our relationships, texting is also wreaking havoc on the English language. Let me put a final nail in the texting coffin by saying, omg how gr8 wud it be if the next generation cud actually spell? On the upside, when you’re busy, it’s much easier to type up a text than be weighed down by a long conversation. Even when I begin my calls with, “Hi I need to be quick,” my friends acknowledge this at first, but end their quick story an hour later.
  Texting also comes in handy when you have to let someone down. It’s easier to write “Can’t make it” than have a chat where you’re forced to admit you just can’t be bothered. There’s also the beauty of the group text. Instead of calling a raft of people, you can press ‘send’ and go for the scatter gun approach, hoping the recipients never catch on it wasn’t a personal message especially for them.
  Is it my imagination or are the pros rolling off my tongue quicker than the cons? Maybe it’s too late to overturn our reliance on the written word to sustain our relationships. Maybe the phone is best left for call centres. Or maybe this whole thing should be left to someone else. You see, as much as I’d love to continue defending the merits of personal communication, I really need to wrap this up – I have some tweets to send.

Ringing in the changes – phones are for texting, not talking.

  I don’t want to talk on the phone anymore. I used to love it, and in the past there were periods when I only got off the phone for meal breaks. Police would have given my description as “Caucasian, female, about 175cm tall with a black mobile phone attached to her left ear”. But that time is now over. Now I text.
  “See you in five” – done. “What time are we meeting up?” – tick. “Lol…got it” – simple! Convert any of those text messages to calls and I am losing up to 12 minutes of my day. A quick survey tells me that this is the new status quo. Unless it’s an emergency, you text. And to be honest, if triple zero actually accepted SMS as an SOS, I’d do it in an emergency. There’s been a revolution and girls love it.
  Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell men this. Guys make phone calls. I know this because they’re the only ones who still call me. Even if I text them, they call back. “Hi Salvatore, any chance you might be able to swing by this week? Our television is playing up again. Thanks! M.” RRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNG RRRINNNGGG!! Nooooo! A quick “Sure, no problem” would have made my day. But a call-back? I have to talk? This definitely was not the plan. I have a to-do list to focus on and two celebrity chef judges counting down from ten to zero in my head all day long. Why do you want to spoil things and have a conversation?
  And really, what do you need to tell me anyway? Surely just knowing the TV isn’t working properly pretty much covers it. Finding out why the TV could be kaput is information I’ll never retain. You might think girls are listening as you explain things like this, but we’re pretending. Trust me. And while we’re at it, you call me on my landline? What century are you from?
  So, why do men insist on using their mobile phone as an actual telephone? Well, firstly, it’s polite….I suppose. Secondly, guys love explaining things. And thirdly, guys are up for a chat. They’re like My Kitchen Rules judge Manu Fieldel, who comes into the kitchen to see how things are going. This is a classic men are from Mars, women are from Venus moment. The guys seem genuinely pleased to see him; they’re ready for a good old chinwag about the poaching time of their twice-cooked spatchcock.  The woman are silently screaming, “Get out of my kitchen, s’il vous plait.” The producer who thought up that idea is either clueless, or male. Women are time-coded during business hours. Our lives are planned to the minute. Texting is the magic wand that makes the Manus in our world go away.
 I can text and do; I can’t talk and do. Make no mistake, I do use the mobile phone for actual conversations, but it’s generally at 10pm and always preceded  by a text to my friends saying, “Got time for a chat?” And there’s the clue. It’s the end of the night, no interruptions, and no lists. Besides, it’s about really important stuff like food and Mad Men and even Manu. It’s never about anything that involves fixing stuff.

Indie-pendent spirits have their own jam.

  EVERYONE knows teenagers are a different species and need to be studied if we are to find a way to eliminate them. So, in the interests of science I will therefore seek to provide an understanding into the teenage mind. This will hopefully fulfil the twin functions of expanding the horizon of human knowledge and putting an end to parenting columns once and for all.
  Anyway, ladies and gentlemen I present Tess and Ocky. Tess is 15 years old and a neighbour of mine. She is kind of like an indie but her friend Ocky - 14 years old and by Tess’s analysis not as mature - thinks that maybe they’re just wannabe indies, which is to say windies.
  When they are not doing anything they are not chillin’ anymore, they are illchin’, which is like chillin’ but different and doesn’t rhyme with “like Bob Dylan”. Tess and Ocky are quite preoccupied with emos, which are kind of like goths. Some of them are stoners. Some of them make little cuts on themselves. They are called emos because they are rather emotional, which explains the little cuts.
  Not everyone can be an emo. There are wemos, which are wannabe emos, and memos, which are mistaken emos. The latter is someone who is not an emo but is confused for one. I can’t personally explain how this happens but apparently it does.
  There are also lads, who are, to quote Tess, “like mainstream guys and wear, like, the polo shirts”. There are also wiggers (white guys who think they are black) and chiggers (Chinese guys who think they are black). But Tess and Ocky are in no way racist. “We sit with the cool Asians,” they tell me. These are called hasians, which is short for hot Asians.
  There are skinny guys, who suffer from manorexia, and browned up girls who suffer from tanorexia. These are known as tandooris. The feral pretties at Tess and Ocky’s school, for example, are tandooris. It is reassuring that the 14-to-15-year-old demographic does not approve of drugs – apart from the occasional emo stoner. Cocaine, although never sighted, is referred to as the devil’s dandruff. How this comes up in conversation I do not know.
  If they care a lot about something - “I care about the music,” Tess assures me - they might say “this is my jam”. Something particularly good is a breeze of brill, something bad is flag. I do not believe this is an anti-patriotic statement but with kids today you can never be sure.
  They also employ a large amount of French, which I naturally find disturbing, but this is largely used to describe bad things, as in the phrase tres tragique. An unattractive person might be referred to as fugly but I am assured they are never unkind enough to say this to someone’s face. When they are experiencing high self-esteem the girls consider themselves to be indie-credible. I asked them to put this in a sentence and they said: “Tess and Ocky are indie-credible, fo’shizzle.” I am yet to clarify this further.
  On less positive days they wonder if perhaps they are just windies but on reflection Tess is more certain of her status. “We’re on the indie train, platform one coz I’m number one, sucka,” she explains. I had been under the impression that the term juicy was also used to describe something good, however it turns out this is a brand of clothing - albeit, I am informed, a good brand.
  The girls are also philosophical. Holding forth on the interplay between inner beauty and the aesthetic demands of an image-driven society, Tess observes: “You can’t polish a turd.” Asked to expound further, she says: “You can’t make somebody ugly look pretty. I never say that but. I’m not that mean, I’m a pretty cool chick.”
  Should you find Tess and Ocky at a soiree, you might see them crumping. This is a form of dance, as Tess explains: “It’s like in, um, like rap videos.” If you see them you might want to say “What’s the hap?” When you depart, you simply inform them “I’m outie”. I asked Tess and Ocky how normal people were ever supposed to understand them and both agreed they never would. This is, according to Ocky, because “we are the rulez” although Tess thought it was also perhaps due to the fact that “I am a free spirit”.
  But it was Tess’s final words that will stay with me forever, dancing around my mind full of promise and hidden meaning.
“Merc” she said, “make sure you publish my thoughts bee-yatch”.

Fashion

  If I had to come up with one word to describe my fashion style it would be “comfortable”. Others have more unkindly described it as more like “homeless chic”. The sad thing is, they are probably a little closer to the truth. I have to be honest sometimes when I venture out of the house the only thing separating me from the permanently-dwelling-challenged is a cardboard sign that reads: “Will tell jokes for food!”
  Forget accessories like watches and handbags, the only thing most of my clothes would accessorize with would be some cymbals between my knees and a couple of ice-cream containers to play as drums. Fashion experts say the way you present yourself says something about you, even before you speak. I think most of my outfits normally say either: “Keep me away from children” or “Would you like to buy The Big Issue?”
 When some people choose clothes, they dress to feel sexy, fashionable, or stylish. I like to dress to feel…comfy. Put it this way, I have never met a pair of tracksuits pants that I didn’t like. Forget the debate about whether the high waist or the low waist is in this season; I only care about the elastic waist. I don’t care about “the new black” I care about “the new track (ies)”.
  My problem with John Howard (former Australian Prime Minister) was never that he wore the Wallabies tracksuit when he went on his early morning power-walks. My problem was that he didn’t wear them all…the…time. When all the world leaders came to Australia for APEC, forget the Akubras and Drysabones I would have liked to see them all decked out in the Green and Gold trackies. I bet everyone in the room would have been a lot happier and in the mood to negotiate if after a long official lunch they didn’t have to let their belt out a couple of notches.
  You see that’s the thing about tracksuit pants, they are forgiving. If you buy a pair of skinny jeans and put on a couple of kilos, your legs end up looking like someone is trying to squeeze icing onto a cake. Tracksuit pants don’t even notice if you have gained weight, they are like the best friend you will ever have.
  Whether you need them for a jog or yoga, nursing a hangover, or getting over a broken relationship sitting on the couch eating icing sugar and crying at Sorbent ads…they will be there to support and comfort you. And tracksuits pants don’t demand much in return. They don’t need to be dry-cleaned, or steam-cleaned, or hung or folded like some “needy” clothes. Just pick them up from the floor where you left them the night before, give them a quick sniff test and away you go.
  I have to be honest, I think I love trackies so much, I would even consider getting married wearing them. Of course the only downside to that master plan being if you are the sort of person who thinks it is okay to wear tracksuit pants to a wedding…nobody is ever going to marry you. But really, suits and dresses may look good, but they are bloody uncomfortable. Nobody has ever said: “I’ll join you out on the couch in a minute…but I just want to change into my 3-piece Armani.”
  Personally my idea of getting dressed up is putting on my good tracksuits pants (the ones that have the rope tie at the waist as well as the elastic) and making sure they don’t have any suspicious stains on them. Unless you work at home I think there are only two jobs where it is okay for you to wear trackies all the time: professional sports person or professional drug dealer.
  Clearly tracksuit pants need a PR campaign and slogan. And so I thought I would come up with one: 

They are comfy, and dependable, and I think they’re cute. This is my ode to the humble tracksuit:

They are warm, and yet stylish, there is nothing sinister, worn by humble workers, sports stars, and even Prime Ministers. And if you are worried, they make you look crapper, then just add some bling and they become gangsta rapper. You can wear them all day, and there will be no dramas, and then wear them to bed and they become pyjamas. You can wear them while sober, drunk, awake or asleep, oh, and did I forget to mention, they are bloody cheap. They really are super to the humble tracksuits, if combined with some thongs or even Ugh Boots…
  So whether you’re Carl Williams or on So You Think You Can Dance? Let’s all stand and salute the wonder that is trackie pants!