If I Must

Looks like I’ve been pinged for an internet meme. Well alright, I’ll play along, but only because it’s been over a year since the last one. But I reserve the right to mutate the meme as I go along…

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

• Advertising salesman. Back in Sydney I got a job selling advertising space for an IT magazine. Most depressing three months of my life. I quit, vowed not to take a job for the next three months, and spent the time meditating, reading and sitting in sunny coffee shops. And those were the happiest three months of my life.
• Hypnotist. Okay, I’ve only ever been paid to do it once, but it still counts.
• Guitarist. Upstream, my regular University gig, kept me in drinking vouchers for two years. We’re in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame as the least creative band that ever got on a stage, but we played solid tunes to dance to, so we always had work.
• Checkout girl. Well, checkout boy, but what the other girls taught me about life screwed my head up about as well as anything can.

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But we knew that.
• Little Shop Of Horrors. Is this the last good film that Steve Martin did? Why I think it is.
• Labyrinth. Did you know that Michael Jackson was first choice for The Goblin King? How awful would that have been?
• Moulin Rouge. The most creative musical I’ve ever seen put together. I want to see it staged in the West End. It’s just a matter of time.

Four places I have lived:

• Dinkytown.
• Sydney. During the aforementioned three fat months of fat and three months of lean.
• A Greek Island. I can’t remember which one. Crete I think. Fran & I lived there for six weeks. One day we were there and the whole island closed. Everybody shut their doors and closed down. Mid-morning a huge speedboat docked at the port, and groups of men with large moustaches went through the streets knocking at every door and demanding money. They spent the whole day gathering, and then jumped into their ship and sailed away. Pirates? Apparently they were tax inspectors, but it’s a rose by any other name…
• Bob’s Youth Hostel, Amsterdam. While I was travelling Europe I used hamsterjam as a junction, and I must have clocked up two or three weeks at Bob’s, all told. Bob got to know me. We didn’t talk much, but he’d give me free boiled eggs every morning, and you can’t say fairer than that.

Four things I’m on the verge of learning:

• AJAX. Or, how to make a web-browser pretend it’s something much more whizzy, using existing household tools. When I finally do get up to scratch, I shall be enhancing this here blog with ajaxy goodness.
• Recording. As you may or may not know, my New Year’s Resolution was to get back into songwriting, and – crucially – record to a level where I’d be prepared to let someone else hear it.
• How to schmooze and drink at the same time, without going overboard with either. And if at first you don’t succeed…
• How to breath. I’m a stress-case on the inside, and I often forget. It also ties in with the singing and recording thing quite nicely.

Four things I’ve done to try to impress a member of the opposite sex:

• Sing.
• Cook.
• Write poetry.
• Tell fortunes.

...and I’ve done all four of them successfully and unsuccessfully. But I’m keeping schtum about who, what and when.

Four nationalities I’ve been mistaken for:

...in order of frequency:

• Spanish.
• Italian.
• French.
• Chinese. Seriously. By a Thai woman. You’d think she’d be able to tell…

Four places I would rather be right now:

• Travelling through a transporter beam that runs on Perrier. I really am very hungover, and I’m sure it would be refreshing.
• Sydney. Seriously, between Pete and Kirsty travelling around Oz and making me jealous, and the bitter, bitter cold in the town, I’d love to be back over there. Just ‘til spring, mind.
• Greenwich Villiage, back in the 60’s. I’ve just finished Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, and he makes you think it’s the only true place in history.
• The kitchen. Making a cup of tea. ‘scuse me a second…

...

...still here? Okay, last orders:

Four bloggers whom I shall try and pass this memetic-infection to:

Brian, James, Pete and Kirsty – do you want to give it a whirl?