My bad "habits"

I was having a giggle earlier because my friend Robyn blogged about her bad habits and she loves me to comment so I thought it would be fun to reply by posting my bad habits. Her post is funny. You can read it here:

She's got one particular habit that cracks me up totally and that is that she has 55 lipsticks! I thought she was joking but the last time I went to her house she showed them to me - all stuffed into a drawer in the bathroom and all well used! I have only two lipsticks and regularly forget to use them! How it is possible to actively be engaged with 55 lipsticks is totally beyond me. She says it is because she has them to match her clothes. Dear God! If I did that I would have 55 black lipsticks.

Anyway what terrible bad habits do I have? Hmmmm.... well some of these aren't exactly habits but they'll do.

1. I am a horribly absentminded.
There's a popular joke that INTJs are so out of touch with reality they are prone to walking into walls and are incapable of wearing matching socks. I don't do either but I am a horrendous daydreamer and so absentminded a herd of elephants could run through my office right now and I wouldn't notice. Or perhaps I should say "what office?" Case in point. I went to my friends' new house yesterday and they asked me what I thought of the Fire Station next door. I was surprised.

"There's a Fire Station next door? Where?"
"That would be the large building RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU with the big red trucks in it that you had to drive past to get here!"

Once when I was 8, I was engrossed in reading a book in school and I looked up and the entire class had completely disappeared! Imagine that. Poof! Gone! Just like that. Apparently the teacher had tried to get my attention but couldn't so everyone just buggered off outside without me. They were gone for an hour before I noticed. Not that I cared. I was going "Yay! No people!" (see No. 7)

I can't even get my own attention half the time. There are two universes - the one in my head and the one everyone else inhabits!

2. I can't stop going why why why why?
It's probably a good thing I don't have any spare money otherwise the house would be overflowing with books on anything and everything because I can't stop reading either. I have an insatiable appetite for wanting to know the answers to the most impractical quetions; what caused evolution to happen? Why does time exist? What is infinity? How did the conditions for life come about? What is consciousness? How do you know you actually exist? Are archetypes real? What is the incompleteness of formalized number theory? ... Totally fascinating but don't ask me what the point is for needing to know all this stuff! I have no idea. I just wish it made money!

3. I get lost easily.
I've written about this before. I have absolutely no sense of direction. None, zero, nada. A few days ago I was supposed to meet my friend Lee at Borders about 10 minutes drive from my house. I got lost just looking for the entrance to the car park and had to drive around for an extra quarter hour figuring out where the hell I was. Then when I got inside I couldn't find Borders and even looked for it on the wrong floor. The stupid thing is I go there nearly every week! And it's the same for everywhere I go. Robyn (who has a superb sense of direction) loves this. Her favourite game is taking me somewhere new on purpose and losing me!

Years ago I went to Germany and learned that they put cowbells on the cows so the farmer can find them. So I bought myself a silver minature half centimeter cowbell and I wear it on a chain around my neck. Now when I get lost I can ring the bell and go "Ooooh look! Here I am!"

4. I am a caffeine addict.
I drink bucket loads of coffee. I have never met anyone in my life who drinks more than I do. I am sure that if I cut a vein pure espresso would pour out instead of blood! I could supply cafe Massimo. I am afraid to stop in case it turns out I am made totally from caffeine and would disintegrate without it. I justify my excessive consumption by reminding myself I am an "angel" without any other addictions. I only drink about half a glass of alcohol every few months, smoke a cigar once a year and don't do any drugs at all.

5. I don't eat or sleep.
It's so weird that I have truck loads of energy because I am not very skilled at getting the fuel for it - with exception of my caffeine fix. I've always thought if I were a car then I would run "on the smell of an oily rag". This is definitely a really bad habit of mine. I get up in the morning, go about my day, forget to eat anything until someone cooks dinner at the end of the day - and then I eat half of what is dished up. Then I stay up all hours of the night and only go to sleep for a few hours before getting up the next day and repeating the same thing. Sometimes I only go to bed because the birds start singing their morning chorus and I feel stupid for still being awake. I am writing this at 4am in the morning and I am still bouncing off the ceiling without food!

6. I am too outspoken for my own good sometimes.
I am horribly outspoken when it comes to injustice towards other people - particularly standing up for the little guy against large corporations, bullies and internet trolls. Bullies are my pet hate in life. Several large, intimidating corporations and internet trolls have recently been on the receiving end of my extremely undiplomatic and blunt language for their sins (trying to squash their competitors unfairly, mistreating their staff or trolls aggressively insulting and upsetting people on the net). Sometimes I think I make Gordon Ramsay and Richard Dawkins look like pussy cats. I always wonder what sort of monster I am and go read Dale Carnegie's books to figure out how to reword my wrath "politely" - but then I figure bullies deserve exactly what they get. They don't sugar coat their meanness.

7. I like my own space a bit too much.
I won't be winning Extravert of the Year any time soon. My Mum told me a story that supposedly one of our relatives was a hermit that lived in a hut by himself and I used to think "God what a nutter!" but now that I work by myself I realise it's much more fun being alone or spending quality time with a few people I really like than say being out in an room with 50 vacuous advertising agency people I barely know and are never going to see again who are being loud and demanding non stop trying to impress each other. Maybe the relie wasn't a nutter afterall! Don't think I fancy the shack on Moonshine Hill though. The fact I like people might be a slight hinderance to becoming a hermit as well...

8. Er, I like weird nerd things.
Like binary code. When I am bored I get a blank page and write binary code all over it. 000000, 000001 ...... 0011110 etc... Totally meaningless and fun and definitely not something to do in public!!!

9. I am usually late everywhere.
It's a bit of a joke now with everyone who knows me. But I guess point 1. explains it! The universe in my head doesn't have clocks in it! Also I am pretty crap at telling the time. I only learned how to read analogue watches when I was 29 by buying myself a kids watch with 5 past, 1/4 past, etc written around the edges. When I was a kid I had a cute little analogue watch for a while. Kids used to come up to me and ask for the time and I'd stare at it for half an hour and then go "dunno" and hold out my arm so they could read it for themselves. Years later when I started learning foreign languages the teacher would draw clocks on the board and ask us to translate the time into the other language and I'd always have to ask for it in English first! Hence buying the kids watch - it's a bit of a pain explaining to people that you can't read analogue faces!

10. I am a giggling gertie.
I have a totally absurd sense of humour and laugh myself stupid sometimes. Often in the middle of movies in the serious bit that's not even supposed to be funny! I've gotten used to whole movie theatre audiences turning around and glaring at me now. Even better is spontaneously cracking up at absolutely nothing which I do regularly (a consequence of working by myself probably!) But I have a good excuse "sorry, one of the voices in my head just cracked a really good joke".

Recently my friends discovered my propensity for losing it when they were showing me some funny stuff on YouTube and I couldn't stop laughing at it. And I have a really stupid laugh as well! So then they started playing me stuff just so they could laugh at me laughing! Eventually I went home because I thought if I didn't stop I would throw up.... which isn't unlike me! (I think it says something when you are running around making your friend's 2 year old giggle and his mother says "Don't make him laugh too much, he'll throw up! AND THAT GOES FOR YOU TOO!!!")

11. Blah blah blah....
Ask me about anything I am passionate about (especially in writing) and you'll get blah blah blah blah ^1,000! And since I am also one of these introverted intuitive types none of it will make sense or reveal how I came to any of my conclusions. I blame it on all those science books I read. Bloody nerds. None of us know when to shut up.

On that note I am finished!

Creepy Water-Treading Animals

Anyone who knows me knows I have strange tastes in pets, animals and insects. As far as insects go my favourites have always been preying mantises and wetas. Wetas I like so long as I don't have to touch them (because they are violent, grumpy little buggers and will take you on even if you are a million times bigger and holding an axe.) But when I was a kid I had a pet mantis for about a month that I named Burt. Burt was possibly a strange pet for a 'sweet' little girl who would never consider cruelty to anything, including bugs. I used to catch flies for him in the morning and then watch innocently as he ripped the body parts slowly off his live wriggling victim, munching away enjoying his meal completely unaffected by the writhing creature trapped in his vice-like grip. (Who would guess that I would grow up to have favourite songs like Mein Teil!) Burt must have been a real member of the family just like the cats because to this day if anyone in my family sees a preying mantis out goes the cry “Look! There's a Burt!”

Last year I had a pet weta for a while who lived outside on the rose bush underneath my office window. I met him when I went to put the clothes in the dryer one day and he was stuck to the door and wouldn't get out of the way. I called him Rover. I called him Rover because he's a big bugger. If you want an idea how big he made a big clunk as he landed on the ground when I flicked him off the door – with a spade. He looks like you should put a studded collar and lead on him and provide him with a kennel for a pit bull. I haven't seen Rover for a while though so maybe an extremely large bird ate him. I haven't seen any Moa's in the garden lately but whatever ate him must have been at least that big.

Aside from Rovers and Burts the other animals I like are lizards and bats. Lizards are easy to come by. You can buy one from the pet store that will grow to the length of your arm. (Probably also looks good in a studded dog collar). I cuddled one once in the local pet store and was surprised how much personality it had. Bats unfortunately you have to go to the zoo for where they just hang upside down and glare at you but you can't cuddle them, which might be a good thing because I heard that they smell bad. I mean otters look cuddly too until you go near them and then it's like “Holy Hell – who forgot to empty the rubbish bins?!” My other favourite animal is Indonesia's Komodo Dragon – a type of 5 foot monitor lizard that drools poisonous saliva and eats small children and livestock. OK, I draw the line at wanting to cuddle one of these! But they look cool.

Anyway what prompted this blog wasn't mantises, wetas, lizards or dragons but rats. And of course I think these are cuddly and cute as well. A friend of mine has several as pets and they are rather sweet. But at the same time these guys are a pain if you get them in your roof. There was an ad on TV for a humane pest control unit that just scares the rats away. (Plug In Pest Free) I like this idea because I hate killing stuff and it's available from my favourite organic store – IE Produce. These guys had some really interesting facts about rats on their site that I didn't know about.

• One pair of rats and their offspring can produce 15,000 rats yearly.
• Rats eat enough grain annually to fill a freight train 3,000 miles long.
• Rats can gnaw through metal, lead pipes, and cinder blocks.
• A rat can squeeze through a hole no larger then a 50 cent piece (US not NZ!)
• Rats can survive being flushed down a toilet.
• A rat's teeth will grow from 4-6 inches per year.
• A rat can swim one half mile and tread water for three days.
• A rat can jump off a five-story building unhurt.

OK, so if you are not like me and you are trying to get rid of someone's pet rat rather than cuddle it - flushing it down the loo, throwing it of the Sky Tower or paddling out into the middle of the harbour in a kayak to drop it off at it's new “home” is probably not going to cut the mustard. These facts are pretty impressive. I think the only thing that can beat this is a cockroach which can reassemble itself with more legs than it started with after you've squashed it three times and even after that go on to survive a nuclear explosion.

Perhaps the only pest more difficult to get rid of than this is “Hillin Cluck” (say fast in a Rove voice and it will all make sense!)