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April 28, 2005
Today to Date
Dearest and Only Diary
Today I remembered a memory, but now I can’t remember what it was, and I wanted to record it in you. What was it? Rrr.
I did also remember a time I was swimming around in some channel to the sea and I saw some kids poking a damaged sea snake with sticks and being very unsafe indeed, and I went and chased them away so the poor snake could die in peace, or maybe so I could poke it instead, I can’t remember which, but it was fun and there was a snake. But that wasn’t the memory! That was a memory I got when, at coffee today, Jory and JP were talking about octopi. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned these guys in the diary before, so in case I’ve forgotten who they are when I’m old and rereading this, trying to work out what the hell I did with my life, they are friends of mine. Jory is a comic who is bald, and JP is neither of those things, but maybe one day he will be. Jory was commenting that he once saw a little girl poking a blue-ringed octopus with a stick, and this set off a whole chain reaction of poking-deadly-Australian-fauna-with-sticks related memories, as you might expect.
This also reminded me of the time an octopus stole my sister’s thong from right off her little foot and stowed it under a rock. Later, the woman at the shoe shop didn’t believe my parents when they explained, very reasonably, why they only needed to buy one thong. ‘An octopus stole the other one,’ I remember my father saying. ‘It nipped out from under a rock and grabbed it right off!’ ‘We think maybe it thought it was a fish,’ my mother clarified. ‘Riiiiiiight,’ said the shoe woman. But that isn’t the memory I want either.
It was Anzac Day a couple days ago. People like to drink on Anzac Day, remember the sacrifice made in Gallipoli by Australian soldiers and then, inevitably, as drunk people do, buy a Turkish kebab. I think that’s kinda nice.
La la la. I can’t remember what it was, no sweet memory for you diary. Here is a poem instead:
Lost Memory
Down the back of the couch
Oh memory
Would that it were
I could find you there.
Instead you hide inside my mind
Like a needle in a large stack of small metal rods with sharpened tips
Or a fish in an elevator
(Well, you never see them in there, do you?)
Or a clone
In a cloning facility.
Forgetfulness has robbed me of my life’s past
I have no context in which to place myself now.
How did I get here? Who am I?
Are these my shorts? Is this really my expression?
Are these my parrots in this cage, squawking even as I rattle them to make them be quiet?
‘Get off my lawn Bowring!’ shouts old Mr Jeeves.
‘You’re drunk again! Leave my parrots alone! This isn’t your house!
And give me back my shorts!’
He chases me away, waving his broom.
But I digest.
Gone, is a moment in mine own life
A swirling leaf sinking in the River of Regret.
Drowned in the Waters of When and Who.
Taken out to sea by the Tides of Time.
And hunted forever by the Orcs of Mordor.
Begone!
END
Ah. Bed time.
Posted by Sam Bowring at 02:26 AM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
Mid Storm
SO, it’s been a while since I posted in my diary, but luckily I don’t have anyone to apologise to for that. It is my private diary, after all.
I’m at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, doing a show called Mic in Transit. It’s going quite well. We haven’t had to cancel a show, have had some good nights, I’ve seen lots of comedy, gotten drunk a lot, and worked hard. I find the whole experience rather light and dark. It’s interesting.
We give out a lot of flyers. Many varied responses.
Me: Do you like to laugh sir?
Man: No.
Me: Enjoy comedy madam?
Woman: No thank you.
Me: Comedy sir?
Man: What’s that for?
Me: It’s a comedy show sir.
Man: Ah yeah, I’ll have a look. I might just hang here and wait for my girlfriend.
Me: Okay.
Man: Some comics are so wordy and think they’re being clever, you know? I don’t like that, I don’t find that funny. I like a bit of rude humour.
Me: Cool.
Man: You a comic?
Me: Yes.
Man: Yeah? What kind?
Me: You wouldn’t like me.
Man: Well I don’t know, I haven’t seen you. What’s your act like? It’s all observations isn’t it?
Me: Oh, some. There’s all kinds of comedy. Sometimes we tell true stories, like if we met a weirdo or something, we might talk about that.
Man: Actually I was thinking about an observation the other day – maybe you can use it.
Me: Uhuh.
Man: Yeah. You know how when you go to the toilet after sex, and your piss flies out in two different directions at once, and hits the wall on either side of you? So sometimes you try pulling your dick really long, but then you just spray into your foreskin and it flies out all over the place, full of milky semen? Or you can try gripping it really hard and squeezing the piss out like you’re milking a cow? That’s what I did last night, after I absolutely pounded the shit out of my girlfriend, and it made this concentrated stream – but it hit the water so hard it splattered all over my feet.
Pause.
Man: Reckon you can do something with that?
Me: Maybe.
Man: Okay, but you have credit me on stage if you do.
Me: If I ever tell this story, I’m sure you’ll get the credit sir.
Man’s phone rings.
Man: Hey, where the fuck are ya? You were meant to meet me here, I’m standing here waiting, talking to some comic, giving him material.
Me: Excuse me sir.
Anyway. I’m sharing a one bedroom flat with two other comics, Dave Jory and Daniel Townes. The humour is so concentrated you can almost smell it in the air, like armpit stink. The show itself is in the Kaleide Theatre, which is a 200 seater in a university, and is pretty nice. These thoughts are rather unorganized. Like this bag of jellybeans I’m eating. There are too many green and yellow ones.
Here is a poem about that:
The Wrong Bag
Unbalanced flavour distribution
Is like a type of mouth pollution
Yellow is lemon! Green is lime!
Must I taste them all the time?
They are so similar anyway
It’s like they’re out to ruin my day
Grape is what I’m known to seek
But its presence in the group is weak!
And if my problems get much worse
Stress will send me to an early hearse.
End.
Tomorrow is Monday and we don’t do a show, but I won’t write a poem about that.
Goodnight sweet prince (me).
Posted by Sam Bowring at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)