Oh yeah, and I put comments on my wiblinks…

Ok, I got one of those emails this morning… You know, the ones your mates send around because they clearly don’t have enough work to do.

I got tough on them last year and emailed everyone who sent me stuff like this and told them I no longer wanted it because it outstripped the regular email I was getting!!!! But there are a couple of friends I send mail to and accept it from … Tez is one, and Miss Lisa the other!!

Anyhoo… I got this one yesterday from Shoe (another exception) and I laughed so hard I thought I may never stop… Apparently, and I say apparently because most explanations like this are bogus, but apparently, these are genuine quotes from Year 12 (grade 12…) high school english papers from the Higher School Certificate exams… Even if they are not legitimate exerpts, they are well funny and I couldn’t resist sharing the laughter.

I won’t make a habit of it…

Promise

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
3. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature prime English beef.
4. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
5. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
6. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
7. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
8. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
9. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
10. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and “Sex in the City” comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
11. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
12. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot oil.
13. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
14. Even in his last years, Grandad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
15. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
16. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
17. “Oh, Jason, take me!”; she panted, her breasts heaving like a Uni student on $1-a-beer night.
18. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
19. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
20. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
21. She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword
22. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
23. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

I’ve turned off the telly!
Not because I’m giving it up for lent or any such self disciplinarian reasons. It’s just that there is nothing startling on till 8.30 and it seemed that my cd collection could use an airing.

So, I’m listening to hmmm… what shall it be? Sting? Harry? Matt Redman or Darlene Zschech? Evanesence? Miles Davis… Nik Kershaw? (who is a personal favourite by the way)…

Egads, I don’t know…

I’ve got it… I’ll put on Charm’s cd, some very cool piano type jazz… which you can check out here… if you like!

ed] I listen to Nik Kershaw’s recent (yes, he has released music since the ’80s) albums, “15 minutes” and “To be Frank” – completely excellent songwriting…

Have I mentioned that I am a singer? It’s true, I’m a soprano, drawn towards the jazz end of the musical spectrum, Jazz, gospel, stuff with rhythm… Rythym and harmony … Looooooove harmony.

Singing is my joy, I can’t help myself, sometimes I find myself singing at all sorts of weird moments but I am pretty ok at it, so usually people smile when I launch into a chorus of “Summertime” or “Paper Moon” rather than look at me like I’m off my nut… (they save that for other times… )

Anyway, I came to Sydney to study singing and completed a three year course at the end of 2001. It was great, not just the singing but the best mates I made, Surf was one of them actually, but he’s not a singer… Kirky was another, she’s my best mate and the mother of my godson… and a singer too.

But I digress…

… I mostly employed my skill in our church, singing on Sundays, or Saturdays, both in the choir and on the ‘frontline’ where the big singers sing. But… (you knew there was a but coming right?)

But… one of the casualties of the rather difficult work situation of the last 3 years was that there really didn’t seem to be any way to do all the things I needed to do and so unfortunately, and against my will, I gave it up.

Fully… no singing… Not a bit.

Ghastly.

I used to sing in a real live black gospel choir in Montgomery County, Md, USA and with the Whangarei Harmony Chorus where foundations of my love of jazz harmony and a capella music were set. Passions? they seek to be indulged and here I was, harbouring an itch without a scratch…

Because there was a New Year, and because the state of work resolved itself in 2004, the urge to do something with the singing thing become unbearable, so I began to explore options to exorcise it, this time outside of church context.

I answered an ad in the paper and went along to rehearsal. As soon as we started to sing I felt as if I were an amputee whose arm had been sewn back on.

So? Now I sing with ‘Jonah and the Wailers’. (Sorry about the name, they had it before I got there… ) an amateur chorus which has about 60 members who rehearse in separate locations across Sydney and all get together to perform gigs once a term. It felt so good to be doing it again that I called Kirky all excited and told her all about it, and you know what?

Now she’s a Wailer too…