With ers Without You

Out of all of my issues with Q, of which Adrienne addresses thoroughly in this piece in The Atlantic, the main one is how Q is revered for dropping bombs about child abusers, but Q doesn’t just call the police or FBI on them.

Hey, I’ve just downloaded a random date generator app to my phone if any news agencies want to interview me about when everything’s going to be back to normal again.

I’m so proud to be her dad

Tomorrow is my 11th celebrant birthday, 11 years a celebrant, wow, and today I’ve been thinking about all the funny/stupid things the wedding industry bought into my world over the last 11 years.

Here’s a few that have been rattling around in my head.

• It’s hilarious how far photographers and videographers will go to make it look like no vendors, including the celebrant, were ever at the wedding. I see some wedding photo galleries and films, and there’s not even a slither of my arm in frame lol. What’s with the weird fantasy that no-one was working on a wedding?

• You’d be surprised how much time of my time is spent confirming which year a wedding enquiry is for, and where the wedding is going to be.

• There’s a heavy link between people who won’t pay a fee that allows me to maintain a sustainable business, that will still be operating when their wedding comes around, and people who are in Facebook groups after their wedding bitching about how terrible their wedding vendors were.

• Facebook Groups are the devil.

• The best wedding vendors have an inner drive to be better. They’re attending workshops, listening to podcasts, upgrading their gear, learning, teaching, mentoring, being mentored.

• Wedding vendors who aren’t doing those things are probably in a Facebook Group undercutting everyone on price then leaving the wedding industry in a year because “brides are expletive”

• I once had a groom’s dad threaten to beat me up before a ceremony. I’m always keeping one eye on the groom’s parents at a wedding, statistically speaking, they’re the crazy ones there.

• I think a lot about how in the context of planning a wedding, the words “traditional” and “formal” actually don’t mean anything. People say they want a completely non-traditional wedding then do all the traditional things, and people say they don’t want a formal wedding but state a dress code as black tie.

• At weddings, more than half the time I’m there I’m trying to patiently wait for things, without looking like I’m waiting. At these times I’m normally singing Wiggles songs inside my head.

• Finally, beware of anyone who says they “love weddings”. No sane person “loves weddings”. Sane people love that person A and person B are getting married, and that is being celebrated at a wedding, but across the board weddings can be some of the strangest, weirdest, and most wonderful things you could ever see. I’m surprised there aren’t more reality TV shows about weddings. In-fact, I’m surprised I haven’t paid a camera crew to follow me around, it’d be a rip-snorter of a TV show. Sane people don’t love weddings, but they love being a part of the creative process that makes a moment where two people can get married in a special and meaningful way.

• Facebook Groups are evil.

• Listen to my podcast, The Rebels’ Guide To Getting Married, because honestly, someone has to listen to it otherwise it’s probably just going to get archived by the podcast host.

Beach babes @ Tugun

“Someone in the apartment block is cooking lamb” is the reason I’ll probably be locked up tonight for scaling the balconies of this apartment block trying to find some lamb chops.

🏄‍♂️

Very GC

I drove through a recently bushfire affected region last week. The ground was still blackened, but not as much as the tree trunks. The foliage and grass that would normally cover the bush floor was slowly achingly coming back to something that resembled life, and those trees that survived, still stood tall.

The stand out from the drive though were the two things flourishing today.

The weeds. The surviving trees.

I’m guessing the weeds were the first ones in after the fire trucks rolled out. They love abusing the voids in our society, the empty holes, the spare ground, the unused lots. There will always be weeds, in the bush, and in business. We can’t change the weeds, and history tells us that any concerted effort to introduce other species to eradicate weeds, is a plan fraught with danger and failure. The best way to get rid of weeds is to make the rest of the garden/forest/marketplace as healthy as possible because then there’s no room for weeds.

As for the surviving trees though, they were the most impressive displays.

Obviously their trunks were burnt, and their spirits were dampened, but they metaphorically held their breath long enough for the bushfire to burn through and today thanks to their deep roots, and their strong trunks, they had the leaves just inside them ready to spring out back to action when the fires calmed, the rains came, and the sun shone again.

Any efforts to regrow during the bushfire would have just resulted in more burns. But today those deep rooted, strong trunked, trees are alive with the deepest colours springing out of their leaves.

Be the surviving tree. Be a part of a healthy forest. This too shall pass.

The first and second world wars weren’t called that when they happened. 9/11 wasn’t called 9/11 on the 11th of September 2001.

What do you think this pandemic will be called in 20 years time?

The path less travelled

Our bookless future

Version one of May 10, 2020, was supposed to be flying business class as a family to Rome.

Version two sees us with a first class beach upgrade.

So much legroom, and the passengers up the front here are much friendlier.

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” — Carl Sagan

The Blue Mountains on. a Wednesday sunset

For a guy who boldly asked “how many dudes you know roll like this” and " how many dudes you know flow like this" and then answered “not many, if any” you’d really think Scribe would have released at least a few popular albums.

Apple and Google will both ban location tracking in apps that use their contact tracing – Reuters

Sun, set

South by South West Rocks

Australian street gang approached me last night