EARTHQUAKE! EARTHQUAKE!

illustrated By Phuong-Nghi Le Pham

HOLY MACARONI. Yesterday was a hard day for us all – or at least the one million Victorians who literally felt the earth move under their feet. Melbourne City rent-a-bikes fell over in their shiny silver racks, One Direction posters dropped off tweenagers walls… and all because of a mini-GODDAMN-earthquake.

Within the first ten seconds I’d grabbed my cat and limited edition single of The Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘1979’. (Useful for bartering purposes in the event of an apocalypse. That failing, the inside cover depicting Billy Corgan in skin-tight PVC pants would be enough to shock anyone into handing over their last bag of Mission Extreme Cheese Corn Chips.) We took to the deep depths of my wardrobe for the half minute of terror which consisted of me pleading with the closet to transport all three of us to Narnia for a sec (sans The White Witch).

While everyone fired up the Twitters, posted photos of themselves under mattress shelters on the Zuckerbooks and began work on stupid 19/6/2012 memes, I was thinking long and hard. About life and death and whether the stench of my cat’s breath was a normal thing or a sign of kitty kidney disease. But also about the things, I, at age 21, was regrettably yet to achieve.  And considering inside my head the world outside was turning to ruins in slow-mo like that episode of (the highly underrated) FlashForward where cars collide and people drown inside buses which have driven into lakes as Bjork sings ‘It’s oh so quiet’ – the things I NEVER EVER WOULD GET TO ACHIEVE.

Thus, in the dark cavern I came up with a concise mental list of my human being shortcomings. I say concise, because before long the trembling stopped and I + cat + Billy Corgan emerged to discover… well, nothing. Nothing had changed besides the fact my sister had shifted from hypnotically typing to an LCD screen’s glow at the kitchen table to doing the same thing under a sheet and chair fort.

Nevertheless…
THINGS I SHOULD HAVE MASTERED AT THIS POINT OF MY LIFE, BUT HAVEN’T YET (IN ORDER OF PRIORITY):

-  How to handle chopsticks with ease.

-  How to do that “Well, hi thur” flick of the head.

-  How to blow bubble gum bubbles.

-  How to wake up when an alarm goes off during hours I’d prefer to be sleeping.

-  How to wake up when an alarm has long gone off and Mum is pulling me by the ankles and my arms have instantly reacted by death-gripping the bedhead.

-  How to cook meals that are not salad, toast and two-minute noodles.

-  How to remain friends with someone after discovering they non-ironically listen to Airbourne.

- How to avoid giving my number out to undesirables (ie. Those who assume we’re already boyf/girlf; those whose whoa-how-do-you-function-in-real-life weirdness is at first mistaken for quirkiness; those who seem to have had no previous girl relations; those actually dangerously badass, those with a legitimate interest in AFL, those who use words like ‘Gazza’, ‘Bazza’ or ‘mayte’).

- How to drive a car.

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