You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead (5 page)

Use of the phrases ‘big cheese' and ‘cold feet' in such close succession would indicate this letter was clearly written with toothpick in mouth whilst waiting for Big Moe and the boys to do a little bada bing with some violin cases or whatever it was gangsters from 1950s cinema got up to in their spare time when they weren't slapping their ladyfriends meatily on the backside. If the Pettingill family is ever looking for a new matriarch they need search no further.

I mean,
really
.

Disappointedly,

Marieke Hardy

‘I mean, really.' I was twenty-two years old in 1998 and already sounding like the sort of stitched-up biddy who distrusts the coloureds ‘because they hum to themselves while they sew'. Nothing like rounding off the argument with a motherly tut to really make a large corporation sit up and take notice.

Interestingly enough, far from writing me off as a complete nutjob who pays a worrying amount of attention to the intricacies of their television commercials, some poor soul at Uncle Tobys sat down and patiently dictated a response.

Dear Ms Hardy,
Thank you for contacting us in regard to one of our products . . .

Now I'm no Nancy Drew, but I strongly suspect that the consumer relations department may have been phoning this one in. ‘One of our products'?? IT WAS THE WHITE WINGS CAKE COMMERCIAL AND YOU AND I BOTH KNOW IT UNCLE TOBY IF INDEED YOU ARE MY REAL UNCLE.

. . . Uncle Tobys is a company that takes pride in the quality of our products and services and appreciate the time you have taken to contact us . . .

. . . ‘particularly since the rest of your busy day must be filled with pressing appointments for biting the heads off pigeons at Flinders Street Station and standing outside the window of random restaurants drooling onto the glass and shrieking MISTER DONUT ATE MY SOUL at startled diners.'

. . . and the interest you have taken in our company's products.

It is only feedback from consumers that enables us to measure the ongoing and long-term quality of our products.

Please accept our complimentary parcel of products for your enjoyment. We trust that you will continue to be a valued White Wings customer.

Yours sincerely,
Incomprehensible scribble
CONSUMER RELATIONS DEPARTMENT

And there it was, delivered by a likely wary courier (‘don't make eye contact, and don't let her touch your skin'): a cardboard box full of Uncle Tobys quality foodstuffs. Cynics among you may think that my sole reason for writing these deranged missives was to score free comestibles. It's untrue. I swear it. Symptom of a strange and lonely headspace it may be, but letter-writing of that type is often driven by a burning passion to right a perceived wrong. Seeing that White Wings advertisement had stirred something significant and furious in me, the perception of an error that I felt needed to be immediately redressed. I didn't want free muesli bars. I wanted them to
change the commercial back to the way it was when I liked it
.

20.9.1998

Sax International

5/278 Ferntree Gully Road

Notting Hill 3149

To Whom It May Concern,
This is just a short note to congratulate you on an excellent
product. I came across your stay-on colourstick quite by
accident . . . my local chemist didn't stock Revlon, which I have
used for some time . . .

Bam! Take that, Sax International! I haven't always been your bitch! That's right, I sleep around! Heed my feelings!

. . . and was told to give Sax a try. Since then, I have worn
your lipstick out about three times . . .

Three, no less. Obviously I felt I needed that extra outing to truly ensure the odds-on experiment had proven successful.

. . . and each time have found it to be absolutely wonderful.
For someone like me whose beauty routines are strictly
low-maintenance . . .

What led me to briefly and mysteriously channel the spirit of Ita Buttrose with that particular sentence remains unknown. I have never uttered aloud the words ‘someone like me whose beauty routines are strictly low-maintenance' in my life. It's as though I have just arrived in a foreign country and, unable to speak the language, parked myself in front of a television screening nothing but commercials for the Ponds Institute on high rotation. Which suggests I would later weave the terms ‘nine out of ten trial participants agree' and ‘clinical tests prove' effortlessly throughout the letter.

. . . it is a pleasure to find a lipstick I can just put on and forget
about . . . least to mention, not having to ‘top up' after eating
meals . . .

Good to add the verb ‘eating' in there lest the good people at the Sax factory had pondered exactly what it was I may have been doing with my meals. Staring mindlessly at them, perhaps? Cavorting naked around them in an ancient Wiccan ritual and/or smearing them upon my flushed and perspiring torso? Nobody likes ‘topping up' (inverted commas model's own) after that sort of activity.

. . .The second time I wore colourstick, I ate oysters for dinner
(how terribly decadent this all sounds) . . .

Note wry self-deprecating comment upon one's lavish lifestyle lest Sax HQ presume one is unaware of how dreadfully Gatsby it all is. Oysters! For dinner! Next thing she'll be telling us she's mainlining gin and trading eloquent barbs with Alexander Woollcott at the Algonquin.

. . . and was amazed to find that after the meal my lipstick
looked absolutely untouched.

I am certainly not someone who writes letters like this often . . .

Liar.

. . . in fact, I hardly ever wear makeup at all, so I'm quite
unqualified to comment on professional textures and standards . . .

This is one of the most intensely obnoxious sentences I have ever written in my life. And I once wrote a feature film called
Digital Duck
about a duck who could surf the internet.

. . . However I thought it was worth writing to let you know
that you have found a very satisfied customer who will be
purchasing more of your products in future.

Cheers,
Marieke Josephine Hardy

I'm sure Sax appreciated the classy additional touch of my middle name in the sign-off. ‘We're dealing with a real lady here!' they must have whistled to themselves in awe. ‘No wonder she has no time to “top up” after her bacchanalian feasts!'

The Sax piece was an interesting letter to find as it proved that I wasn't simply a burning ball of indignation, firing off angry missives to whomsoever captured my disapproving eye. No, I was also a generous soul, spreading corporate love and goodwill to those deserving. This character trait continued years later when I personally crafted a card—there was glue stick and glitter involved—for the nice company (Uncle Tobys again—there's a fair chance they had a photocopied picture of me up in reception with the words ‘UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES' written somewhere on it by this stage) who distributed my favourite breakfast cereal, Oats Temptations. ‘It's so exciting to put a hand into the box and retrieve the flavour that will shape my morning!!' I wrote enthusiastically and dementedly in bright green texta.

30.9.1998

Dear Ms Hardy

RE: STAY-ON COLOURSTICK

Thank you so much for your letter received last week regarding our SAX Stay-On Colourstick. It is great to hear you love the product.

It is very satisfying for Sax International to receive positive letters from the public. For your efforts in writing to us, please find enclosed with our compliments an ‘Earthy Me' Colourstick and an ‘Earthy Nude' Stay-On Lipliner.

We are confident you will enjoy wearing them.

Kind regards,
A Arvan
Sales and Marketing Coordinator

The process of sifting through the ringbinder of my old correspondence was both horrifying and curious. Who was this person, compelled to engage in lengthy postal debate with faceless strangers about lipsticks and advertising campaigns? What drove her beyond the step of complaining loudly at dinner tables to actually sitting down and crafting meaningless long-winded written diatribes?

September 15th, 1999

Dear Mariek [
sic
]
Thank you for contacting Ocean Spray.

As indicated in our phone conversation, please find enclosed the information you requested. We hope you will find it helpful. We appreciate your interest and will continue to work to bring you the finest products available.

Sincerely,
Mary
Consumer Representative

Mortifyingly, this letter reveals that I had taken my love of food and drink a step further and actually called the Ocean Spray offices to have a chat with them about one of their products, presumably their range of delicious cranberry juices. Given my state of mind in 1999—I was by that stage living alone in the country and had seen a demon standing next to my bed—it was likely done at three in the morning on the consumer hotline and lasted for about seven hours, with brief intervals for bouts of noisy sobbing. I don't doubt Mary still wakes up in the middle of the night on occasion drenched in sweat and screaming my name.

Finding the Ocean Spray reply in my letters folder was the equivalent of waking up after a night on Stilnox to find two entire roast chicken carcasses and a dead hooker on the floor of the bedroom. It was an indication that I took my interest in products and marketing that tiny step too far.

Politicians were a focal point of my deranged pen too. Ex-governor-general Bill Hayden clearly felt the full force of my wrath when he seized the occasion of a defamation case involving author Bob Ellis and ludicrous political duo Tony Abbott and Peter Costello to make some fairly salacious comments regarding former prime minister Paul Keating's private life:

26.10.1998

Mr. Hayden,
Are you quite mad??? . . .

A fair enquiry to be certain, guaranteed to capture the attention of even the most uncurious reader.‘Am I mad? Well, this seems like a correspondent ready to engage in a robust intellectual dialogue with neither preconceived notions nor judgement. Please, do go on!'

. . .Your recent behaviour re: the Bob Ellis libel case sadly
leaves me certain that time has left you a very bitter man when
it comes to the Keating era . . .

Hardy Psychology 101. Please note that even Bill Hayden's Wikipedia page clearly states, ‘He had a particular animosity towards Paul Keating.' Why I was congratulating myself on pointing out a fact that had been freely available to the greater public for over fifteen years is anybody's guess. I'm looking forward very much to finding the letter I wrote to the people of Berlin excitedly informing them that they are now free to roam about their city unimpeded by large concrete barriers.

. . . In future, please confine your revolting childishness to the
privacy of your home, and stick your archaic policies with it.

People like you, sir, make me ashamed to support the
ALP . . .

So ashamed, in fact, that I will sign the letter by using a pseudonym.

Stacie Mistysyn (Ms)

Those with a particular love of late-1980s pop culture might note that Stacie Mistysyn is the name of the actress who played attractively passionate student Caitlin Ryan in children's series
Degrassi Junior High
. Whether or not she'd approve of some rabid idiot from Melbourne sending letters to political figures under her name is yet to be ascertained. My guess is she'd probably despise Bill Hayden and congratulate me on my forthright approach.

Interestingly, Bill Hayden responded to my letter, bringing to mind the mathematical puzzle ‘if one person with too much time on their hands meets another person with too much time on their hands, how many snippy, self-serving letters will they write before one of them suffers an aneurysm?' He responded by photocopying a whole lot of articles with titles like BILL HAYDEN'S ‘DEVASTATING' TRIAL BY MEDIA, LABOR MAKES HAYDEN PAY FOR ‘DEFECTING' and WHY HAYDEN'S CRITICS GOT IT WRONG and then put them in an envelope along with a little note that simply read ‘With Compliments: The Hon. Bill Hayden, AC' which is a fairly decent and admirable sort of ‘go fuck yourself ', really.

The ringbinder of shame proved I made beginner's mistakes, of course.When boorish shock jock Stan Zemanek was still alive and hosting daytime talk show
Beauty and the Beast
I—like a fool, like a fool—bought into his red-faced baiting of the pious left:

2.2.1999

Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing with regards to a channel ten program aired at one
thirty pm on Tuesday, the second of February . . .

To be precise. Jesus christ. Nobody should be that pedantic about dates and times outside of Emmett ‘Doc' Brown and/or the entire Mayan population.

. . . titled
Beauty and the Beast
. It involves a male host (Stan
Zemanek) and a panel of female celebrities solving viewer
dilemmas and commenting upon general media . . .

Oh,
that Beauty and the Beast
from one thirty pm, Tuesday February 2nd.Way to clear it up, Cleary McClearenstein.

. . I have been watching for fifteen minutes now and am
absolutely appalled. No more than five minutes into the program
the host had not only called the women ‘pooches', but had also
told a panelist she could never be mistaken for a boy ‘with those
tits'. He then began lewdly referring to a necklace she was wearing
as ‘balls around her neck', and addressed each panelist as ‘darling',
pin-pointing Julia Morris as a ‘lesbian' because she had a short
haircut . . .
.

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that at the time of writing I was hosting a radio program on community radio station Triple R called
Best of the Brat
, which involved a segment named ‘Celebrity Rooter'. During this particular segment musicians would play their top five songs to fuck to, whilst talking lewdly and openly about intercourse. Yet I obviously had—and still have—my limits, at least when it came to daytime television and other such moral bastions. We all do, which is why sordid little cockstains like Alan Jones are allowed to pass judgement on the behaviour of young women in burqas whilst simultaneously being arrested for acts of indecency in public toilet blocks. No glass house left unshattered.