VAIN.

Goddammit.

…huh. Didn’t feel bad about that one.

First thought I had was “that’s a goddamn Blues Brother” and then I, an atheist, felt bad about taking the lord’s name in vein in this specific context.

I’m at the Saturday Night Massacre.

I’m at the Wednesday Handy Situation.

I’m at the combination Saturday Night Massacre Wednesday Handy Situation.

He’s not worth the time on the merits, but the work he is damaging is worth defending.

So here I fkn am.

God my brain hurts.

Why are people like this, for fuck’s sake?

(well. except Boston. I absolutely know why that one happens. If an “R” is not at the start of the word, we tend not to bother with it…)

Oh! There is an Adelaide accent, but weirdly I’d have trouble distinguishing Melbourne from Perth, and Adelaide is between us so 🤷‍♀️

I can’t tell if people just don’t know how to pick a less ocker Aussie accent, or if I just default to mimicry for whatever TV show I picked up a phrase from.

yuuup. We’re not as extreme, it tends to be urban vs less-urban. I hang out with my dad in Warragul and for about three days I sound more ocker, and then I’m back to my Melbourne accent which… baffles non-Australians. I’ve been told my accent is
1. English
2. Irish
3. American
4. Boston

Anyone doing an Australian accent, ever, who is not Australian.

I cringe so hard that my soul shrivels within me.

(Special mention for Irish accents.)

Okay, I get all of those except Heath Ledger, but that jawline and those eyes 100% made my personal catalogue of facial features 😅

PS damn, it was a voice call. I don’t know why that makes it worse!

Anyways that’s it from morning. Hot day, got up early, got words to write… and falling asleep as I type this.

Stay safe, write welll,
—Doc out

Hell, if I could figure out at 12 that “no people of any kind of Asian derivation at my country town primary school” and “inner city Melbourne high school” meant I had to pay *close* attention to their features, so I didn’t stick my foot in my mouth around my new friends… surely this guy could.

So if someone is genuinely confusing people because they are of the same race, I think:

(1) they rarely engage with different people of that race on a conversational level, and/or

(2) haven’t made the effort to notice anything about them other than their demographic.

Not mutually exclusive.

And you learn to link that liveliness to faces. It won’t work for people who are more face blind than me (prosopognosia can get really severe), but at my level, when you see enough different personalities across that axis, you start to calibrate across it.

(disclaimer: by “you”, I mean “me”.)

The most important thing is exposure to different kinds of people in real life. Interacting across all levels of diversity.

People’s faces come to life when they speak to you. They become *themselves* to your catalogue, instead of [visible demographic markers].