Hate Everything About Me

I’m messy. I’m lazy. I’m unmotivated. Sometimes, I have trouble just getting up in the mornings.

I’m painfully shy; in fact, I’m a misanthrope. I hate people. And the worst thing is, I actually feel hurt when they hate me back.

I’m shallow and a complete looks snob. I would never get between the sheets with an ugly bloke…and yet I expect the Brad Pitts of the world to throw this ugly dog a boner.

I’m self-conscious and a nail-biter. My hands and voice tremble when I’m nervous. People think I’m cold or stupid or just plain crazy. All of those things are probably true, but mostly, I’m just scared of them.

When I’m pissed off, I have the kind of vocabulary that would make Gordon Ramsey and the writers of Underbelly blush. There is no middle ground with me—when I’m not numbed by apathy, I either build all the way up to heaven or destroy all the way down to hell. Usually the latter. I look (and feel) completely insane when the rage takes over, and have been known to hurl objects, furniture and small children. Alternatively? I just repress it all and let the anger build up until I end up cutting myself.

I’m an egotistical bitch. I exaggerate my abilities, my intellect, my achievements. I’m the Ernest Hemingway of bullshit, and frequently buy my own manure (sadly, I even thought that was a good metaphor.)

I’m depressed CONSTANTLY. I have no energy for anything more strenuous than lifting the remote, or the Playstation joystick, or possibly the phone to dial in for a pizza (I’m a lousy cook) or some gay phone sex hotline (because all the phone sex hotlines available cater only to straight MEN, and I can’t segregate myself from everything male and sexual for too long in case the old axe wound heals over, but it gets a bit difficult to fantasize about straight sex when you’ve got Papa Bear on the other line telling you he wants to use your arse as a pussy-proxy).

I’m also ugly. I know I’ve said that already, but it bears repeating because today one of my Year Nine boys spied my skinnier, perkier, blonder colleague giving her class a lecture in the room next door, and complained, ‘Aw, no fair! How come we don’t get the HOT teacher!?’ Compared to some of my colleagues, I’m a feral bush pig. My acceptance of this fact doesn’t make it hurt any less.

There are many many many more things I could list, but I’m too tired and you’re too coupled and happy. So I’ll leave you to the loving arms of your sex poodle and retire to my cold solitary single bed alone, and fiddle myself into a (hopefully) dreamless sleep.

Buon a notte,
Me.

Knobs

I’m taking the day off today because my all-boy class has been driving me fucking mental. They’re such knob-heads sometimes. I think that if I don’t get time away from them, I just may cause one of them grievous bodily harm. They’ve been asking questions about my sex life recently and making wildly inappropriate remarks, and I’ve had it. So I planned some relief lessons and phoned in sick. Yeah, call me slack, but sick days are a sanity preserver at this school.

The parents always complain that they have too many relief teachers, but what do they expect when their sprogs treat the staff like the irritating white noise that gets in the way of their oh-so-important pronouncements about so-and-so’s consummate skankiness? The next person who tells me teachers have it good because we ‘only’ work 9 to 3 and get the school holidays off can go piss up a rope.

Female Snobs, Male Slobs

I would love to play the slob in a comedy like Knocked Up. Hollywood needs a female Seth Rogen. It’s just not fair that men always get to be the crude, dirty-joke-telling slackers, while the female characters are the uptight prudes who always spoil the boys’ fun. It’s such a dumb, sexist portrayal. Ok, so it probably reflects real-life dynamics to some extent, but in real-life women aren’t always the fastidious, humourless, responsible ones. And surprise surprise, I’ve even met a few blokes whom one could describe as easily offended, even (gasp!) humourless. And isn’t the goal of cinema to represent as many realities as possible, no matter how anomalous? (I’m not even sure the female slob/male germphobe is that much of an aberration, at least not these days when some male Gen Yers may’ve attended feminist boot camp and their female counterparts are equally as likely to be so indulged by doting parents they’ve never had to lift a finger around the house, but that’s a rant for another time).

I’ve wanted to play the slacker in a screwball comedy since age twelve. I’ve always identified with the Playstation-addicted, unemployed couch potato who got kicked out of his girlfriend's apartment at the beginning of the movie, gazing morosely at the suitcase she’d chucked in his face before gathering up his stuff and leaving to go on a crazy adventure without the bitch. And we know she’ll get her comeuppance: As the credits roll, he’ll be cavorting around with a bevy of titular babes, and she’ll be the humourless sow who has to spend the rest of her life alone because she didn’t love him for who he was. I loved those movies as a kid. It never occurred to me to wonder at their somewhat dodgy gender politics. It was only in my late teen years that I started thinking, ‘Ok, where are all the women in the funny roles? Why do they just stand there looking pretty/offended/pretty offended, while the boys tell all the dirty jokes? Well, that fucking sucks.’

Cameron Diaz was never going to cut it for me. Yeah, she was bubbly and fun-loving, and she did win a burping contest at the Nickelodean Kids’ Choice Awards, but, the odd smutty double entendre in There’s Something About Mary and Charlie’s Angels aside, Diaz’s role in virtually every comedy she stars in, romantic or otherwise, is clear: she is The Pretty Chick. In your standard Hollywood comedy, The Pretty Chick is the girl the slacker lusts after and either obtains through trial and error, or willingly relinquishes for a generic blonde non-bitch who understands him and loves him warts and all. Oh, she may get the odd rude line here and there (never as rude as the guy), but mostly, she’s strictly for decorative purposes.

I want to know why so few screwball comedies grant their female characters full human status. I want to know why male comedy writers seriously expect female audience members will identify more with the Katherine Heigels and Jessica Albas and Michelle Monoghans than with the Steve Carrells and Will Ferrells and Jonah Hills and Jim Carreys and (yes) Jason Mewses. And if anybody seriously believes that these Pretty Chick pieces of eye candy are perfectly acceptable substitutes for fully-realised female characters, please give me her number so I can get her over to my place stat and commence the corruption process. Cheers.