Lizzy King, Human - A Study. Box 4, Part 1.

2004 – the fourth box, better known as the ‘Why the Fuck did I Keep this Shit Box?”

(If you're wondering what the flip is going on, start here).

For the most part, this box is kind of boring. NO WAIT, DON’T LEAVE. I will try to pick out some of the more interesting bits for you. I think by this stage of the hoarding adventure I was thinking more along the lines of “accurately representing my life” like some kind of time capsule, rather than “keeping things that are of genuine or significant value” like some kind of interesting blog fuel.

There are bus tickets and receipts, RECEIPTS for fuck’s sake. There’re programs for music concerts I wasn’t even involved in, and a giant plastic bag for no reason. So this is just a smattering, a hand picked few, a small selection of vaguely interesting things from my life circa 2004.

Item – Notes taken in Study of Religion – 2004

So we are fast approaching what I have suddenly decided to call the “Atheist Event Horizon”. At this point I was still a Christian, but damn was that faith wavering. I had a lot of questions, and Christianity was quickly failing to answer them. I was studying other religions and belief systems and some of them were answering them, and some of them weren’t, but they sure as hell were convincing me that just one religion couldn’t be the be all and end all. I was also, *obsessed* with death. I don’t even know why. I know that somewhere, possibly in this box, or possibly not, there is a list of things I wanted said at my funeral. I was afraid of missing out on life, afraid that cool things would happen without me, afraid that heaven would be a sap-fest; full of happy stupid people.

These notes are quotes from my textbook. I think they sum up how I was feeling at the time quite nicely:

Item – Headbands – 2004

I wasn’t even that into sport, but for some reason I kept two headbands bearing the name of my sports house, “Cawley”. Our house was named after Evonne Goolagong Cawley, the famous tennis player. Of course, Cawley is her husband’s name, but it would be a cold day in hell before my fancy private school will name the house, “Goolagong”.

woo sport

Photo – Semi-formal group shot – 2004

I won’t include any of the other peeps in this photo, because I can’t be bothered to ask them all permission (or actually track them down in some cases) but damn, look at those shoes. The flower in my hair is also in this box.

Claw hand?

Item – Signed Poster – 2004

VaPar was a pretty awesome thing I was involved in. I got a main role in the play much to everybody’s surprise including my own. We did our own telling of the King Arthur story in a physical theatre piece. It was actually not anywhere as awful as that sounds. I played the lady of the lake and had bells in my costume, it was fucking awesome. This is the poster for the thing, everyone signed it.

The whole poster didn't fit in my scanner but you get the gist.

Item – School Diary – 2004

Grade 11 was probably the first time I was properly comfortable in my friendship groups. That’s not to suggest I had bad friends before that, but things did shift a bit in grade 11 and a number of the people I became friends with that year are still my friends to this day. Most notably my friend Mim. I don’t know why I mention that, it’s not relevant to the diary, I just thought you all might like to know. Hi Mim.

No but what I’m getting at is that this diary (which is just like a daily planner by the way, not a “ow my feelings” thing) kind of reflects my own development into the person I am today. I mean, I still had a long way to go. But here we find evidence of my love of planning and studying (yeah, nerd 4 lyf). Things are colour coded and here and there you’ll find ideas for essay paragraphs or notes to self about assessment. (Oh there’s a cute one here about Darcy’s pride and Lizzy’s Prejudice). My friends birthdays are all written in by them, happily and amusingly. No one is crossed out, there’s no snipy little comments from yours truly, and there are fun things cut out of magazines.

There’s no real evidence of the 5-week derailment of my life that was Glandular Fever at the end. Not unless you’re looking closely. There is less daily homework written in (because I wasn’t going to school) but all the assessment and exam stuff is still there because I was frighteningly (and fairly stupidly) determined to get it all done in spite of the fact that my spleen was four times its usual size. I spent most of my time in bed, waking up every four hours for medicine and bizarre juices my mother had made. I had tonsillitis, laryngitis and the aforementioned giant spleen. I still managed to do those exams, though, and I remember being almost hysterical by the last one. Which was biology. I drew a smiley face for the final answer and left with my shoes around my neck. Good times.

Item – Creaming Soda wrapper – 2004

Here’s a perfect example of the random shit I kept in this box. Why, why, why, would I keep something like this? I have a vague recollection that we thought it was funny how giant the creaming soda is compared to the dude holding it, but even still. Just what. Juuust what. 

I mean I guess it is kinda funny...

Lizzy King, Human - A Study. Box 3 Part 2

Item – Really Bad Poetry – 2003

I think it’s meant to be funny but the title of this poem is “Don’t Judge us You Stupid Hypocritical Stereotypists” and to be honest just writing that out makes me want to jump through time and strangle Teen Lizzy until it is no longer possible for me to have done so due to a paradox.

Item – Bag of Letters sent to me while at Ironbark – 2003

Hot damn there is a tonne of letters here. I honestly am not going to read them right now. I mean just look at that. How did I get so many letters in 5 weeks? I especially enjoy that the handful of the ones I did read from my mum all make jokes about my lack of response. There are lots here from family, but most are from friends. I think there’re so many because mine was one of the last classes to go so everyone else in our grade knew what it was like and how exhilarating it was to receive a letter (or 5) on mail day. Pleasant.

Item – Handwritten Story – 2003

Well it’s the start of a story. I think I may actually have a later draft still saved somewhere on my laptop. This was one of my first novel ideas. It was a love story between my 16-year-old protagonist, Matt, and a girl at his new school called Eminine. She hates her name, obviously. This is an ~interesting character trait~. It’s really not very good story writing, but it was the first time, I think, I put pen to paper and actually allowed myself to create stories. And therefore, this is one of my most treasured possessions.

I didn't choose the thug lyf etc

Photo – Sleeping small Lizzy – c. 1993 maybe?

Not sure why this is in the box, as it’s obviously from a lot earlier, but it is. It’s adorable. My parents took this photo, I think, because they wanted to document one of their favourite things about me: how I always fell asleep reading/with books on me.

Items – Collection of Birthday cards – 2003

Fifteen is a good age to be I think. My favourite card is the one on top. It’s from my family, but Charlie (aged 6) drew and wrote in it. It says inside, “Happy Birthday Lizzy. Lizzy it is your 15^th Birthday Love from Daddy Mummy Charlie BANO xo

XO bitch, XO

Some notes:

- “Bano” is Charlie’s spelling of “Banko” which was our family’s pet name for the as yet not born Sally.

- We do actually have another sibling but Charlie seems to have decided he is not a member of our family.

Oh no wait there is another card here that was most likely drawn by the 3-year-old Patrick. Perhaps the scribble is his angry, artistic response to be being left out.

P is for Patrick and Poking your brother with a stick

Items – Letters and Photos from Felix – DESTROYED in 2003.

The funny thing about having small siblings when you’re a teenager is that everyone is jealous. They want to come over and play with the babies. They offer to your mother to feed and change your siblings. They ask incessant questions about cute things they do. And hey, don’t get me wrong, I LOVED having baby siblings when I was a teenager, just as I love having pre-teen and teen siblings now as a young adult. It’s a very different experience to most people’s and is a defining feature of my idea of myself. BUT can you imagine?! You’re never sure if your friends actually like you or they just like kiddies. You want to hang out and do teen girl things and they are FUCKING OFFERING TO LOOK AFTER THE SQUIDGY THING, you get to look after her anytime you want and that means it’s not something you just offer to do.

And here’s the big thing. Kids wreck shit. My full-length mirror: SMASHED, my fancy blue jelly candle: ANNIHILATED... with a SPOON, and my favourite childhood book, Letters from Felix: RIPPED, DESTROYED and made STICKY with some sort of lolly.

These are some of the ripped out envelopes and letters from the book. Basically, a girl’s toy bunny gets lost at the airport and then goes on a world tour, sending her letters along the way. It is pretty much the most adorable thing and I was SO CAREFUL with it my whole childhood. Never lost any of the bits, never even used the stickers that were in the suitcase on the back page and then one day I discovered it RUINED by SQUIDGY CHILDREN.

This story has a happy ending. My mum looked everywhere for a replacement book for me, and never could. And then one day she saw it in the bookshelf at my brother’s kindy and bought it from them. So now I have a copy. And no squidgy small people around to ruin it.

Dear squidgy not so small people that I am related to, I love you, I do.

So anyway. I’m beginning to think that I will stop analysing these boxes at the end of Grade 12 (2005). I’ve kept one every year since then too, but I feel like it’s too soon or something. But I just love this project, and I hope you do too. I’ve had an idea that you are welcome to get involved in. I’m going to make a tumblr page that you can submit YOUR hoarded photos, letters, etc to, preferably with a little story to go with it. I will be putting this together in the next week or so, so stay tuned.

A Rant about Food

We interrupt your regularly scheduled reminiscence about Lizzy’s past to bring you this entirely unprecedented and largely unexpected rant about farming.

A very strange thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I suddenly started caring about animals. This isn’t to say that I didn’t care beforehand, but I went from answering the question “are you a vegetarian?” with *scoff scoff scoff* “NO. I love eating dead animals” to “um, sort of” in literally a matter of days.

And this strange behaviour is compounded further and made even stranger by the fact that I live in the country now. I work with pig farmers. I see trucks full of cattle every day. There are people around me whose livelihoods depend on people eating meat, and eating it daily.

But here’s what happened. I watched a video. I watched a ten-minute video about how meat animals are farmed, and I suddenly couldn’t ignore it anymore. I’m not about to start throwing red paint on people, I’m not even going to give up meat entirely, but knowing what I know now, and realising that it was knowledge that changed my mind, I’m going to impart some knowledge onto you, my readers. I do this not because I want to create an army of vegetarians, but because I think you are all clever people, you are all people who enjoy words, who enjoy knowledge, and who are capable of making good choices with the power of FACTS.

Warning: what follows is pretty effing graphic.

Chickens:

Chickens taste delicious. Their meat is relatively cheap and versatile, and they poop out an ovum once a day that can be used in really important things like cakes.

If they are lucky enough to be born male, chickens will be killed instantly, either by being gassed to death or crunched up alive in a big machine. If they are unlucky, and are born female, they will spend their short lives in a giant shed. Sometimes they have their beaks chopped off, they have no room to move, and stand in their own excrement all day. They are bred and fed to grow to full, very large size, very quickly. So they often can’t support their own weight. When it’s time for them to be eaten, they are caught by the fistful and shoved into cages, often breaking bones on the way in. They will see the outside world just once, on their way to the abattoir. In the abattoir, they will be electrocuted into unconsciousness and then have their necks cut. It’s probably the kindest thing that happens to them.

Egg chickens live a very similar life, except they get to live longer, about 12 months. Once they no longer produce eggs daily, they are also killed.

What you can do about it: purchase free-range chicken and eggs at your supermarket. Be mindful that there are no regulations for what constitutes “free range” and that all the ones with “RSPCA approved” on them still live indoors without much room. I’m actually not sure why the RSPCA approves them at all. Don’t order chicken or eggs in restaurants and food outlets when you can’t be sure.

Pigs:

Pigs can be turned into bacon. And frankly bacon is the most delicious thing in the whole world. They also make sausages, pork, ham, and really smelly pets.

The thing is, is that I never thought about how pigs are farmed. I kind of always knew about chickens, and was pretty happy to ignore it as best as possible. When I was in New Zealand I saw pigs in fields, and it was really strange, as I never had before. It’s actually kind of adorable, in NZ they have little tarps up in each field for the pigs to hang out under so they don’t get sunburnt. Did I mention that New Zealand’s farming industry is amazing and even their McDonald’s serve free range? Have you ever seen a pig in a field? I’m willing to bet not. That’s because in Australia, something like 95% of pigs are factory farmed.

They live inside large sheds with thousands of other pigs; many have their tails and a number of their teeth removed without anaesthetic. Sows are treated like bacon making factories, because that’s what they are. When pregnant or nursing (the majority of their lives), sows are kept in “sow stalls” which keep them on their side, unable to move, so that they can push out babies and those babies can get at their teats easily. Sows are expected to produce as many litters as possible and when they stop, you guessed it, they are killed. It’s actually really difficult to explain just how hideous a sow stall is, so I’m going to suggest you watch the video I watched, even though it is quite troubling and traumatic. Only do this if you are ready and not about to eat. I’ll link to it at the end of this blog.

What can you do about it: Free range pig products practically don’t exist, but times are changing. Coles, of all brands, is actually leading the way on this. You will start to notice that all Coles pork, bacon, ham etc is now starting to come with the label “sow stall free”. BUY THAT SHIT. Reward the giant corporation for actually making this change. Because if the big corporations are pushing for this, they will dominate the industry, and the little guys will have to follow suit, and it will be in farmers’ best interests to get rid of those stalls. And let’s face it; it will be in the sows’ best interests too. Don’t eat pig products in restaurants and food outlets when you can’t be sure.

Climate Change and World Hunger:

If you are able to look at these facts and think, “well, there’s more important things in the world”, well I can’t blame you, you’re right, there are. Human rights should surely come before animal rights, right? Well yes, I agree, and I’m making changes in my life and opinions with regards to humans too – I just happen to be blogging about animals today. But the thing is, this is all relevant to people too. Here’s a disturbing fact: more food is used to feed food animals, than is actually produced by food animals. That is, we feed pigs and chickens and cows etc grains and seeds and those grains and seeds constitute more edible food than actually comes out of factory farms. So we’re losing out twice. Pigs are eating all those delicious grains, then they're not even turning into enough bacon to cover the defecit. Meanwhile, people are literally dying of starvation across the world. Those of us who benefit from factory farms need to start considering other options that lessen the burden on food animal production, so that more people can have access to more food.

Plus the carbon produced by factory farmed animals, the water and power that goes into feeding the animals and growing crops to continue feeding those animals is a significant drain on our environment. Never mind recycling, think how much damage your dinner is doing.

What can you do about it: Consider eating less meat generally, or indeed becoming a vegetarian. I am really struggling with the second option, but I am committing to eating as little factory farmed meat as possible, and less meat generally.

I know this is all a lot to take in, and frankly if you’re still reading, thank you, thank you, thank you. Trust me when I say I understand that it is much nicer and easier to ignore all of this information, because I’ve been doing so for my entire life. I’ve already slipped up once, I wanted to eat Japanese dumplings so bad I just had to put all of this from my mind for an evening. But the world needs us to start caring about this stuff. How much longer can agriculture support the mass consumption of animals? How much longer can the environment sustain our eating habits? How much more bacon can you eat without thinking about where it came from?

TL/DR, what the eff do you want me to do here, Lizzy?: Um, I dunno, why don't you think about eating kangaroo meat once a week, it’s delicious, they produce zero carbon and they need to be culled anyway.

Video:

The video that changed my life (so dramatic)

Disclaimer:

I have actually done further research than this one video, I promise. I am a well-informed ranter. If you have other arguments for or against, please share them in the comments or on facebook or twitter. I encourage you to do your own research also, if this is something that interests you. I don’t want you to just go with what I tell you, or completely reject it because it’s some hippy vego bullshit. There’re good, reliable sources out there.

It's just that the Make it Possible campaign has the cutest pictures...

Lizzy King, Human - A Study. Box 3 Part 1

By 2003, I was a veritable memento keeping champion. I'd been doing it for 4 years by this point, and boy did I hoard EVERYTHING, it's going to take a few posts to get through this one. But of course, 2003 was a big year for me. I had a boyfriend, and then I didn't, I got a brand new sister and 2003 was also...

~The Year I Went to Ironbark~

This artwork is way too good to be mine. No idea who's it is...

Ironbark kinda dominates this box, so it’s worth explaining. My school sends its students to live on a farm for 5 weeks and learn about ropes and camping and cooking and animals and god. I did this in Grade 10, it was an amazing time. I learnt about all those things, and have since forgotten all of them, especially god.

Item – Ironbark Handbook – 2003

A heavily scribbled on book that details all the things we were meant to learn while on the camp. It’s a workbook, so it’s filled with my answers. We had to keep a rain chart and learn about knots, there’s info on the flora and fauna of the area (near Crow’s Nest, QLD) and how to treat farm animals. There’s a lot on farm etiquette (closing gates, crossing ploughed fields correctly etc) and pages and pages of Christian Songs. The amazingly tacky ones. Ones like “Lord of the Dance”, “The Blind Man” and “Every Day”!

*clap clap*

Item – Ironbark Journal – 2003

We had to keep a daily journal and I (surprisingly) actually managed this. I just read the whole thing and it’s really interesting. It’s a much, much more honest record than the ones I’d kept up until this point. I laughed out loud in parts too. Best story has to be:

“Claudia’s bed is near a window in the carriage and Kellie and I were on her bed shining torches at the guys. They were shining them back and then Connor, Frenchie and Loos mooned us! Ahhhhh! Then they were pretending to be having an orgy and Mr Morris came! It was hil-ar-i-ous!!”

I mean. It’s a funny enough story on it’s own. But then the hilarious semantic error of using the word “came” in that sentence. I think it must have been completely innocent, and what I meant was “Mr Morris walked past and caught them!” but that is NOT WHAT THAT SAYS RIGHT THERE.

Letter – from Charlie – 2003

I didn’t really get homesick at Ironbark. But I did get sibling sick. My baby sister, Sally was just 11 days old when I left for camp. Patrick was 3 and Charlie, 6. I missed them in an aching sort of way. Charlie wrote me some of the best damn letters, and drew me amazing pictures, all of which I put up on my wall above my bunk. This letter is too beautiful not to share:

Zero scales were given that day

Item – Movie Stub – 2003

I saw Seabiscuit apparently.

Photo – Of Morgan in amazing frame – 2003

I texted him to ask if I could use this, he said, "who am I to censor?"

This is Morgan, my first real boyfriend. We got together in 2002 and dated for 6 months. Look at his adorable face. This man has a wife and a baby now. A wife. And a baby. And also, some really awesome photos, if you like men with wives, babies and photos, he is your man. 

Word Processed Letter – from Caitlin – 2003

Caitlin always had my back. That’s the biggest thing I remember about my friendship with Caitlin. We ended up living together for a time a few years back, and at school, we were very close. She came on a bunch of my family holidays. If I ever told a lie to cover my tracks or my own embarresment, Caitlin would always go along with it, straight away, without question and then never mention it again. She was the best. In this letter she apologises for not hanging out with me much at the school fete (there were reasons), wonders why another girl doesn’t like us anymore and includes a photo of Tahiti to cheer me up. Legend.

Item – Disintegrated remains of The Hobbit – c1970s-2003 RIP

I think this copy was my dad’s originally, but I read it to death, literally.

Item – Poster of shirtless David Beckham – 2003

I don’t remember ever being interested in this gentleman’s football career, so I suspect TeenLizzy’s interest in him lay elsewhere.

I hear he was good at some kind of sport

Another Letter - from Charlie – 2003           

God he was so adorable! What ever happened?!

Photo – of me and tiny Sally – 2003

Why, it must be the first photo of me and Sally, ever! Look at her tufty hair! Her squidgy face! My smug smile that says “yes. This small creature is mine. She is perfect. You may not have her.”

squidge!

Item – paintings by James and Annabel – 2003

My cousins did some damn good art for me in 2003.

Item – Tiny Diary – 2003

First entry mentions Morgan touching my boobs AND the news that Mum is pregnant (with Sally). Second entry (a month later) details my desire to remain a virgin until marriage, bush fires, the loss of a much beloved lip gloss and the fact that mum was hospitalised because she was dehydrated (and you know… pregnant). Such a busy and exciting life I led.