Suburban Tales: Graffiti and cougar weddings

Mollie (the turtle), met Helen (not the turtle) a year ago, when Helen’s kids picked the animal out as a present. It was love at first sight, according to Helen.  We haven’t sought comment from Mollie. 

We move on to a tale of two cities and two graffiti artists.

One, a reclusive gent named Arthur Eternity Stace, anonymously got out the chalk and took to Sydney sidewalks with a one-word message, decades before university socialist clubs jumped on the bandwagon.

Contrast this with the improbably punctuated ?Thoughtcrime, an anonymous stencil maker who has started plying their wares in some of the trendier locales in Melbourne’s inner north. Thoughtcrime’s shtick is to spray dictionary definitions of underused words such as ‘perspicacious’ and ‘grimcrack’ on local walls.

It’s a worthy notion to increase the vocabulary of the already wordy denizens of the area. Unfortunately it’s is somewhat undermined by the fact that ?Thoughtcrime’s own stencil-based vocabulary runs to only three words. (I’d like to suggest ?Thoughtcrime’s next explanatory effort should be the word ‘fail’, as no one using Facebook seems to know how to use it properly).

?Thoughtcrime has nevertheless become somewhat of a local celebrity.  Instead of waving a walking cane at this literate outlaw, local storeowners have welcomed the graffiti on their shopfronts, hailing it as exactly the sort of edgy (but in no way offensive) street art that will give their places of business a bit of shabby chic.

So, while Sydney had Eternity, Melbourne now has, well, something that will probably just turn out to be yet another annoying viral marketing campaign. Does this say something about the two cities? I hope not.

We leave you this week a Sydney wedding with a twist.

In a radio-sponsored ‘cougar’ wedding, Kellie Wilkins, 41, and Simon Kimpton, 24 tied the knot. The pair met five years ago while playing the supreme online time-waster World of Warcraft - a happy place where blood-elf sharmens are blind to age difference.

Suburban Tales confidently predicts a long and happy marriage for the couple. This is partly because you can’t be a Warcraft widow if you’re the one holding the +1 mace next to your husband, and you can be sure your man isn’t getting drunk again with his dickhead mates if he’s the one passing around the mana potions.

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