Recursive Inside-Out Garment Nemesis!

To me, life is far too complicated and challenging to spend much time figuring out clothing.

I love abstractions and philosophy. Clothing is at the bottom of my priority list.

This blog post is my confession:

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#1 Pyjamas.

I walked into Kmart, and bought the first pyjamas I saw. When I arrived home Rachel couldn't believe her eyes, rolled her eyes, and has been giving me grief ever since.

This is why:

Happy monkeys! Yay!

What's wrong with fluorescent orange PJs with happy monkeys and bananas? I'm 34 years old, I don't need to worry about fashion when asleep, do I?

I only noticed a few moments ago when I took this photograph, that the arm sleeve is badly ripped. I don't notice these things.

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#2 Shoes + Artliners

Some would say you can't go wrong with shoes. Rachel helped me buy a normal, non-monkeys-and-bananas black pair to wear at work. The problem came after many months when they became scruffy and the black faded to gray/white.

Yes I have heard of polishing, and I've even succeeded in the past. It just seems like too much effort for mere clothing.

So, genius that I am, I grabbed a permanent black marker and coloured the white bits in instead.

They haven't looked quite normal since. This is their current state - you can see the fading ink:

I'll have to polish them I suppose.

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#3 The wrong trousers.

Every now and then I have a moment where I gain new insight into my clothing-impoverishing brain.

I snuck out the back this morning in my undies to fetch my jeans from the line. There they were:

I went back inside and put them on. They wouldn't go on. I didn't understand. Had they shrunk? I kept trying to pull them on.

I said "Rachel, I think I have the wrong jeans."

Indeed, here are my real jeans:

Here are Rachel's jeans in comparison to my jeans.

It just took me more time than it ought to to figure it out, that's all.

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#4 My nemesis:

the jumper that is SUPPOSED to look inside out.

Rachel bought this for me in one of her occasional attempts to reform me. It was a mistake from the start.

The rule I have in my head is this: "I know the jumper is on properly when it looks inside out. That's what this jumper is. It's an inside-out-jumper."

This is what it looks like, by the way:

It looks inside-out right? How cool, you're saying!

But the problem is, if I turn it the other way around it looks EVEN COOLER, to my eyes, AND you can see the tag that way, which is what you're supposed to be able to see when your jumper is on inside-out, right? See where I am heading? So this way around, to me it looks inside out, and nice and smart:

(See the tag on the lower-left...? See...? It's inside-out, right? i.e. the right way to wear it?)

Add to this the fact that the jumper is relatively symmetrical on the back-to-front axis as well, and you have my nemesis. I wear it correctly about 25% of the time. The other 75% of the time, if I'm lucky, Rachel notices and says:

"Steve! You've got the inside-out jumper on inside-out!"

Obviously, I reply: "But that's they you SAID I should wear it!"

Nothing good ever comes from this conversation, as you might imagine. In the end I do what she recommends.

Adventures of Steve Collis in 2010

Bits and pieces from 2010 so far.

Advertising

Let me start with advertising. I must note I grew up with dad yelling "mental midgets!" at the television screen. I am now equally narky with the media. There must be a gene for it. I can't bear turning the tellie on at all nowadays.

Anyway, exhibit A

Long overdue! My cokes have been slipping out of my hands for years! Finally, some decent tread!

Exhibit B

The Simpsons keep doing that joke. So art is imitating art, I suppose. Argh, also, while we're at it, why capitalise 'New'?

Exhibit C

This is what I found at Centrepoint Tower in Sydney. Seems you can't go up the tower without also investing in a newspaper. It is hardly free, if they add it to your ticket price, is it?

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Art

In other news, while on school camp with Year 10, we ended up camping on Cockatoo Island on Sydney Harbour. By sheer luck there was a huge art exhibition on the island at the time. The exhibition is called "Biennale" and this is its 17th year.

Exhibit a: crap art

Just some metal balls strewn across a deserted room.

I don't really mean it is crap art - I'm insulting myself for not being to access it. I guess if I could be bothered posting it here then it must mean something to me.

Exhibit b: great art

There were 9 or 10 screens in an otherwise dark warehouse. The screens often showed different footage, or were dark, or all showed the same footage... all deliberate and making up one overall film. I loved every second of it. It was by Isaac Julien and called Ten Thousand Waves.

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Real Life

In other news, I got in a car on Saturday and drove to Bourke. Bourke is a small country town on the edge of the proper Australian 'outback' where the roads become unsealed and the land becomes scrub, tending to desert.

It's a very long drive - over 800 km from Sydney, or about 10 hours drive.

It was worth it. After arriving at Bourke, I promptly drove another 30 km down a perfectly straight unsealed road heading west:

Then, I parked the car and headed off into the scrub with my guitar. Pure bliss.

The sun set, the shadows lengthened.

On the drive back to Bourke, at dusk, I shared the dusty road with various families of kangaroos, and one silly bunny rabbit. No photos, unfortunately.

There is an artificial above ground reservoir not too far from Bourke, just where the road goes from sealed to unsealed. You may be surprised to hear I am not a professional photographer, and that these shots are from my crummy mobile phone.

Anyway:

Maybe you had to be there. It was gorgeous. I shared the view with a fox.

I drove home in one go, arriving home at 9pm, smelly and sick of cars. Then I booted up the computer and played Test Drive Unlimited. Simulcra and simulation!

That's enough for now.