The Promise

After year twelve I made a solemn vow. I vowed never to work that hard again. It could be said as as solemn as I've ever made a vow, I've certainly never been more serious in all my life.
In reflection this was naive of me all that 'work' I did in year 12 was not that much in the broad scheme of things. I mean apart from scant patches of intellectual property from particulalry remarkable projects and competition entries which are truly far and few between, students produce very little.
I'm not lobbying for more Nelsonesque funding cuts for education, but all students do is consume resources for those years and the consumption expenditure is theoretically recouped in later years with a more productive labour base.
But I work 9 to 5 and don't believe in overtime at all. Overtime in my book is like bragging that you're incompetent and barely managing your workload, exaserbated if you don't take your annual leave (which pisses employers off because the value of your annual leave appreciates over time). but that already an 1 1/2 more than I used to 'work' at school and I had longer breaks. And I can tell you now with the shoddy concept of 'homework' seriously what kind of fucked up fucking concept is homework. They can't efficiently teach you concepts such as differentiation or the functions of money or grammar in class time they have to load you up with homework to take home weekly on top of assignments. I'm sure it fucking enriches the learning experience, infact I'm sure I'm fucking positive it doesn't since I expended more energy coming up with excuses not to do homework than energy put into doing homework. Home time is Tom time.
Where was I? what the fuck did I bring up homework for. Oh yeah some school in Briton got rid of it, that is a positive step away from unproductive workaholics right there.
But that's not why I raised it what I meant to say is if you added up all the time I spent doing homework in my entire school career it wouldn't average out to shit.
So I'm sitting on 6.5 hours and three times a week I had to go to cross country training until 5 so I'm still sitting pretty when I made my vow. I wonder how much more productive our economy would be if work time built those 4.5 hours of extra curriculae exercise into the Industrial reforms.
Someone should seriously do a study. Most studies already show we work more hours than we can justify even in the limited concept of GNP. My brother had a mate who was an IT PhD developed a theory that the average person works 3 hours of productive time a day so even if he was paid for 8 hours he would dedicate himself to working only 3 hours with complete commitment and then walk out. His employers loved him. I love him even though I've never met him.
I'm not saying I'm lazy. I just think there's things I'd rather be doing than work. Even if my work was painting which I love I'd never dream of spending 8 hours a day doing it. I mean what kind of person can do anything for eight hours with the odd break? What moron came up with this system?

Xual

My bike, I love my bike, is A shogun Metro SE I presume the SE stands for Special addition as really as far as bike models go there's no real recognised model like the 'louden boomer' etc.
But those Japanese in their unassuming way have given a bike that I ride a name that is four letters short of being Metrosexual. This pisses me off. I'm very pro testosterone. In high school I formed a beard union since my private school didn't let us grow manly beards as was our right when we man blossomed above the year 7's with their bad haircuts oversized blazers and dirty sanchez moustaches.
I tried not shaving for lent and got sent home, I walked in after a school holidays and got sent home, I represented the school in a foreign country and awed all with my ability to age 7 years while on Christmas break.
SO riding a bike called the Metro, fucking Metro anything doesn't appeal to me. The japanese don't know better they love beckham and Ian thorpe and regard them as real men. In fact in Japan the more androgenous you are, the more lipstick you wear, the more angle in your fringe and highlights in your hair, the more hardcore.
I don't get it.
Anyway I love my bike. There is no more perfect machine than the bike. A device that inhances our own anatomy more than any other.
The city the last two days has been coating in a hazy cloud of black in an otherwise pristine sky. I wonder as I always do what drivers are thinking as they drive towards it. Those filthy particles in the sky brushing up against all our lovely buildings, coating the inside of the mouth you use to perform oral pleasures.
Word on the street of oil is get fucking use to it.
Furthermore even if oil does miraculously become more available Keynsian economics tells us why would anyone put prices down? We know you can afford it.

Face of an Arsehole

I was reading some passage in my book about gene's being passed down a line of logic so if you look like your father and your father looks like his father and his father resembles his father then you resemble your great grandfather. You see it all the time in cartoons and movies and shit were the same actor plays the ancestor when they travel back in time.
I have been told since I was young that I bear a striking resemblence to my maternal grandfather, I just realised I can't remember his name. Anyway this was great gave me a feeling of connectedness and my grandfather was described as quite the dashing young man in his time.
To me he was a fun, warm, active, wrinkly bald old man with green tattoos from war and a malaria yellow complexion curtesy of WWII.
At some point though the other half of the picture comes out, that he was a drunk irresoponsible arsehole that dished out a few love taps in his time.
I've found this hard to take because it's totally against my values and nature. I was a teato before I found this shit out, had a brief stint at pacifism (provoking more violence amongst my friends than previously) and was stingy with the coin.
I don't like sharing a face with this man. I remember being angry with mum when she told me of the darker side for 'ruining a hero' but he wasn't and I got angry at the wrong person. He was a great grandpa and otherwise a fucking arsehole.
Point of the story I feel sorry for anyone who bears a striking resemblance to Hitler they have bigger issues than me.

There's a party in my Mouth and the KKK is invited

No not hollandaise sauce or carbonara but harissa:

250 g red chillis
1 garlic clove
dry mint
dry cumin
olive oil
lemon juice
salt

chuck in blender and blend up then put in a jar and you have a delicious spread that due to the unique nature of the chilli will speed up my metabolism if I have it on anything.

So here's what I did:

Assume if you are specifying red you mean those baby red chillis and clean out 3 supermarkets trying to get 250g of them (this cost me less than a buck though I was real impressed) 250 g is a lot of those little red chillis. So who can be fucked removing the seeds from like a million tiny little chillis? I cut the stems off and skinned a whole bulb of garlic and threw it all in the blender. Then I squeezed in my lemon juice and then added some olive oil and blended it all into a salmon pink.
Now I'd been told to taste it in order to determine how much spice I needed to add, so I cautiously dipped my pinky into the now stationary blender and dabbed it on my tongue.
The shit stuck to my face like napalm and burned for an hour and a half.
My nostrils burnt just lifting the lid off the blender.
I know you go to restaurants and shit and people tell you wasabi and chilli and shit is real hot shit and you see cartoons where people jump up and down and flames come out and shit. It's not like that but it is the hottest thing I've ever made and the sensation is more like having an ingrown toenail bumping against something wherever the mix touches your flesh whether that be lips, nostril or tear duct.
So follow that recipe except mix in some red capsicum for some of the chilli. Remove the seeds and look after yourself instead of just relying on chilli oil to spead up your metabolism.
If you've ever wondered why thai people always look like they need a feed, yo.

Brisbane & Sydney

Coming from International House, having friends all over the world from every single obscure nation, religion, sexual persuasion etc. I forgot how much culture shock there can be just travelling in Australia.
I headed up to Brisbane to see my best friend, I hadn't seen him in ages and had promised to be his family a couple of years back and more or less done nothing up until then about it.
So feeling guilty, tired and excited, a potent combination even for someone as versatile as gumby I got off the plane and walked into the arrivals lounge. First off what I like about my friends is they are laid back, they are laid back because they are capable of rational thought and use this process to create confidence. I hadn't arranged to be picked up yet Q was there we shook hands, got talking were in the car and chowing down on breakfast in no time.
Brisbane is overwhelmingly green to me. I couldn't get over it. Running around the hilly district of wherever the fuck I was staying, I saw no other runners, plenty of trees and cyclists and it was beautiful. Brisbane was beautiful and wasted on fucking Queenslanders in their Bundy rum paraphenalia and handle bar moustaches. Crows garnished the trees too and they are an unbeautiful bird, waking me up every morning. The trains too had spikes coming out of the ceilings in the doorways so in rush hour the people clusttered in the doorways had a central object to hang on to, which was great because it was an admission of defeat that they can't cater in rush hour.
In melbourne ticket inspectors are an admission of defeat that train tickets don't deliver more value than risking a fine.
Anyway in brisbane 20 minutes out of the city I was in bush, bush plots like some people lived on in ballarat. Decking, Big free form garden, an acre of bush sloping downhill and no sign of your neighbour. It was my dream house. I chowed down on some tasty prawns and tuna just thinking that. I really chilled.
I could relax in Brisbane. The roads made no sense to me. The surroundings were beautiful and compared to melbourne it was quite quaint.
But you know that episode where homer goes to New York and has the worst day of his life trying to get a clamp off his car wheel. This is how I feel in Sydney.
I read a good weekend article about how some minority of yuppies had hijacked Sydney's culture. They had written 'People in SYdney are cool, going to nightclubs, wearing trendy designer clothes and drinking cocktails. They do not engage in anything tribal like football or drink beer.' It was in-fucking-sane.
I am always overwhelmed by how beautiful Sydney is. Again it seems much greener than melbourne, the harbour is beautiful and their architectural triumphs are architectural triumphs.
How can Melbourne have been rated the world's most liveable city? (that really is some fucking title not to be taken for granted) I've had many a friend say they've had a relative visit them in Melbourne and they couldn't do anything there. Two days I spent in Sydney. In two days as a tourist I had to conclude that Sydney has nothing more to offer than views of the harbour and eating seafood.
Like Kyoto in Japan where you get overwhelmed followed by 'templed out' Sydney gets old fast. It's roads are crazy, you need a seperate ticket for every form of transport. I've had it explained to me the ways to get around town in order to tolerate it, but in melbourne even with shitty public transport you'd never be expected to make the same sacrifices.
People don't seem to care about anything either. Most of the people I try to hang around with are big AFL fans, most of the people I end up hanging around with are left wing pinkos who just don't appreciate what a great thing AFL is to our culture. You go to Sydney, people don't care about anything. That was the overwhelming impression I got, just scratching the surface I know but even cruising the harbour most of the audio tour commentry started with 'On your left is one of the most expensive properties in SYdney harbour foreshore...' seriously every minute was another real estate tidbit.
If there is anything that defines the baby boomers it is real estate fever but I don't give a fuck. There was no multicultural vibe in the CBD. No visable graffiti, posters for rock concerts, nothing. Just a beautiful ornamental tourist snap town. Like being stuck in the docklands. I've camped in Sydney, 'worked' at the ABC and stayed at a university college the place still makes my skin crawl.
I'm feeling hostile even now home again.
Brisbane is endearing I could retire there and take it easy and talk to bogans on the train. In Sydney I would be hunted down and put on a cattle truck for going bogan and my skin would crawl from my face into my colon.
Fuck you Sydney and your fucking impolite shabby service and overpriced beer.

Jetsetting

This entry is suspiciously like an actual journal entry letting you know what is going on in my life. I went to brisbane, I will write more about brisbane later. Tomorrow morning I get up and go to sydney.
The jetseetting globe trotting life sucks. It fucking sucks. I have a bag that is too big for these two day trips and a backpack that is too small. Since last time I got a plane they really have become the flying bus. Like the Magic schoolbus except less educational. I can't wait till they have ultra violet lighting and semen stains on the seats.
Anyway I go to Sydney tomorrow, I get up early in the morning to go to Sydney. I really don't want to go to Sydney tomorrow. I wonder what breakfast will be like on the plane. It better be good or else I'm going to attack somebody.
The guys from Broadmeadows I sat next too were real nice though. I didn't even get lice when he put his head real close to mine only to shake his head in disgust that I was listening to Bach.
Bach is the shiznizzel of Music that is pleasing but unexciting. Unless you get a hard on for fruges or however it is fucking spelt.

Optimus Prime

Life is simple for the Transformers, there are good and evil. A cartoon devised in the Reagan years, Optimus is the definitive leader for me. Uncompromising values, a close collaborative team and the ability to transform into a truck with a trailer mysteriously appearing out of nowhere.
I hear there are plans to make a CGI transformers movie which if like the Japanime revival of recent times it will be phenomenally shit, focussing on the powers of heart and friendship blah blah blah. If it’s like the recent Comic revival, epic and moving in it’s storyline and pitched at the generation that grew up with them well it could be something else.
I once told a girl that I would rather have Optimus Prime on my side during Armageddon than Jesus. This still holds true. Jesus performed miracles sure but a walking talking robot warrior that can turn into a truck and shoot lasers, nobody can beat that.

Semantics and God

Semantics tells us that words have no intrinsic meanings, that means a word written must have a meaning associated with it by a person. I.e. nodachi cannot be understood by everyone who sees it, it is only if someone tells you it means field sword (refering to a sword greater than 5 shaku in length) can most people understand what a nodachi is. Likewise you notice shaku is presumably a unit of length (based on the meanings attatched to the words around it) that you can't quite comprehend in terms of it's exact distance and you begin to feel like you need to learn Japanese.
The problem is apparant in translation and in education where kids look at flash cards with words like cat, dog etc matched up to pictures of the objects they represent starting to associate meanings with words after having first learnt to associate sounds with words.
It becomes less apparant in sacred texts however. The Quaran/Koran is reprinted word for word with no deviation tolerated (the only interpretation allowed arises in translations) books of the bible preserve the word less so (changing Pharoah to King etc depending on the target audiance etc) and pretty much every holy book associated with a religion. The assembled words have no meaning whatsoever in themselves and cultural values such as homophobia in Catholacism are based on such words 'flimsy interpretations' I would dub them if I was quoting myself but I'm sure others have said it.
There is no magical inherant value in the particular sequences of words because you couldn't chuck the holy books in the back of a plane and drob them on some previously isolated amazonian tribe and expect them to pick up the gist of it.
When Jesus said 'I shall return' did he mean 'I'll return...with milk, anybody need anything while I'm nipping out' or 'I shall return on the day of armageddon where we will wage war on the forces of evil.' I don't know because 'I will return' is meaningless in and of itself, we choose the meaning we want to attach to it.
Catholics have come out with the Gospel of Judas and more or less said 'at the end of the day we will believe what we want to believe'
My boss's job is interpreting the Head office's boss' philosophy who in turn is interpreting the philosophies of the founding father. The fact that they were written down means the message probably lasts longer with less disparity between interpretation and intent but fundamentally is little better in the long term than an oral tradition.
Would the world be a better place if we could just admit:

If god does exist, his/her/their words are interpreted by man, who in turn speaks on behalf of god, exercises judgement for god and by extension controls god.

Which I think is true of absolutely all religions even if my blog was to become the basis of a religion for as Paul Atredies said 'The moment one accepts godhead one loses control of it' Faust got fucked out of his answer to the meaning of life when Mephisto tells him 'I would explain the answer to you but it is only possible in a language you would never understand'
Isn't anyone else pissed off the pope gets to sit in the Vatican where Dali paintings struggle to get wall space and all he does is attempt to interpret whatever the fuck god is getting at in the fucking Bible?

Pimp my Blog

I remodelled the site when bored, sorry for the lack of potpurri and petunias and shit.

The Sand

For the record, if ever I fucked up and had to admit I'd made expensive, expensive mistakes. Expensive beyond my means or morality - I'd go into the desert to die. You know run away from problems rather than confront them or have to apologise.
Except I wouldn't go to a real desert. I'd go to the dune known to me as 'the dune' in my camping ground. Every year I climb 250m of soft sand heated up to a cool 45C without stopping. I only use my feet not hands and when I reach the top and walk aways until I reach a dead grotto. It kind of reminds me of Lord Byron's 'Ozymandias' which I think was the Greek name for Ramasis or one of them egyptians with the funny hats which is about a broken shattered plinth with some feet on it that was engraved 'I am Ozymandias, look on my and despair' a poem about the mighty falling with the passage of time. I say kind of reminds me of it because I can't remember it except for that last line.
Dimitri Martin said if you have a cactus and it dies that means you are less nurturing than a desert. I think thats why I'd like to sit and think about what I did until my body packs in on top of the dune. Of course if it is winter I would probably die of pnuemonia which just wouldn't be satisfactory way to die in a desert so I'd hope my collapse would come in the summer months if it ever did at all.
I mean really I hope it never comes at all because I'd rather not have to spend time contemplating my stupidity I'd rather succeed to the point where I create my own Authentic Saloon and sit at the bar listening to Robert Johnson woundering what he has the blues over.
But on the other hand as Topol would say I can see the spiritual value of the desert, I understand those fools who wander out to find themselves, I'd be sensible though and wander out to peacefully end myself*

*and hopefully work in some kind of spectacular explosion like the plastic shark in the Adam West Batman Movie. If I just keeled over from a sitting position and then BANG! when I hit the ground, that would be awesome.

Eccentric

This guy at work reckons I'm eccentric. The very word 'eccentric' the mere fact that it exists is an embarassment to the human race. That the fact I wear a headband to hold my hair back and keep it out of my eyes makes me 'eccentric' says there's some pretty structured guidelines on how to live your life out there. That's sad, its more than that its tragic. Pink shirts, shaved heads, long hair, donating money to a charity, wearing odd socks, eating donuts for breakfast, going to bingo, owning a guitar all these things I have heard people use in labelling someone eccentric.
It's fucking ironic 6 years I spent trying hard to avoid the label of try hard, no bleaching my hair, no piercing, no dreadlocks, no surf clothes, no mobile phone, no skateboarding n shit. Then you get called an eccentric for not trying at all just fucking putting a headband in your hair. The amount of time and money wasted trying to be different could probably feed the third world.
If you want to get noticed, ride a bike through a MYER's store. If you want a friend feed any animal. If you want to be eccentric shop at Target.

The Arguement

I'm really letting April down. I've been distracted since uni went back and being poor. I'm poor enough now to let people take photos of me licking their leprous feet for $1. There's no justice in the world. I know there's people with real issues out there but seriously I'm a girl with expensive tastes I don't like to have to think about money.
Enough of that though. There's one line, in one book that hits the nail on the head 'An armed man will never obey an unarmed man' said by Machiavelli in the perrenial amoral handbook 'The Prince' I also recommend 'The Little Prince' as a worthwhile read.
Arj Barker would say Machiavelli excepts the isness of the buisness. A lot of people hate Machiavelli, a lot of people hate their uncle playing low to the ground well placed shots in back yard cricket. Yet they both exist and frankly better the devil you know.
So anyway why is that line important? Environmentalism. I wrote about my favorite campsite a few posts back and some of you may have got the impression that I love nature. This is true, but unlike someone who believes in getting naked and mingling amongst the trees in the moonlight to abandon oneself to their feral nature and appreciate the ambiance of the environment because my parents were hippies or something, I approached environmentalism from a megalomaniacal angle out of a disturbed youth.
Basically when I see someone spit on the ground I don't think of it as everybodies ground but MY ground. For example close your eyes (and somehow manage to keep reading the instructions isn't it amazing how many times those instructions are written in print) so keep your eyes open for now and just think what I'm writing.
You bake a cake, a delicious cake you ice it and leave it on the cooling rack. Some snotball runs his finger through the icing. Your pissed off, your bigger than your snotball so you wack them with a wooden spoon and when they threaten to call the police you tell them that's fine, they'll send you to a foster home where your new parents will rape you and post pictures on the internet. Alternatively you get down on their level look them in the eye, explain what they've done wrong and sit them on the naughty step. They both work.
So now you're an all powerfull conquering warlord, you invade a cake, it's your cake you take it, but some snotball ran his fingers all through the icing, so you cut his ear off as a warning to future sabotoers (sabotage people) who will ruin things you intend to one day own.
So say the cake is Europe or the Middle East or the world, at some point in the future someone is going to claim rights to that land that is not who has rights to it now whether that be future generations or some world superpower or the Wiggles. They have the power to take that land from another in possession to it.
Like Australia dispossessed all the native inhabitants of the land and went one step further and declared they didn't even exist when clearly they were there. And we freely buy, trade and/or rent this stolen property enjoying full ownership under our legal system, never contemplating anyone would claim a brunswick or werribee dwelling as their birthright and knowig full well any trouble makers would be handily handled by the police.
We all enjoy this. So why can't someone really powerful just make the laws that only they have the power to enforce and others cant stop them?
Seriously if I was as big as I am now and a bunch of preppies formed a committee to say I had to pay a toll to walk on a footpath I would laugh at them and if they pressed the point tossed them aside like teddy bears.
That's the crux of what Machiavelli is saying. When he wrote amorally it wasn't with evil intent. It was amoral which means non-moral as in he wrote extensively on the mechanics of politics and in a time dominated by the church didn't presuppose what one should use political power for.
So the arguement would go something like this (and a belive throughout history it often has) some one sits in a chair and argues rationally, logically, conscicely and passionately about some cause, a moral injustice and positively suggests a remedy that may be counterproductive or merely inconveniant to his opponants position in the debate. He can draw on utilitarianism, economic schools and theories, exciting new Harvard research, new age philosophies. He can reiterate his arguements and provide precedent after precedent for his remedy.
The oppositions arguemen involves breaking his teeth until he can no longer talk. No logic no rational, no rightness or wrongness, he/she does so only in the knowledge that he/she can get away with it because ultimately it is his/her choice, they have afforded themselves a mandate that means they don't have to listen to anyone tell them what to do.
Compelling television I don't know depends who's debating and I guess that's all relative.
But seriously if I ruled the world I wouldn't tolerate PBS commentary on my policy because I wouldn't seek legitimacy through democratic election. I'd seek advice for sure, I'm no expert on fiscal policy, sustainable energy, health & infrastructure etc. I take this stance because I see the US spend several times more than probably 30 of the worlds poorest nations GNP just to get elected.
You can arm yourself pretty well with just a brain, anyone can, and if there's certain things you don't provide no leader can retain power for long, yet effective leaders can emerge in almost any system and be successful simply by understanding how to balance and sustain their power. Power just as a word sounds so totalitarian and testosterone charged that it immediately sounds bad.
I don't think it has too. Polittical parties in Australia fight out benign election campaigns on drab issues with unappealing personalities and far too much coverage in order to retain the power, not to oppress, maim, butcher but instead to decide how to spend the budget and which bigger fish to kiss arse to and the extent of that arse kissing (Do you stick out the tongue or just peck and hope minimal residue gets inhaled when your lips part again?)
Power's useful and nothing goes anywhere unless someone has it. The US mantle as world superpower isn't under threat by terrorism, in this day and age they should be afraid of competence.

Hail the Conscious crush the unconscious

You know what, I was sitting on the train with this Goth girl that had to be 16 or some shit. She had a long nose so her black mascara made her eyes seem really sunken into her head. And sometimes I think I should just say to these people 'Come over to my camp, you'll like it it's pretty cool, we're easy going, just enjoy life.'
Then I remember I don't have a camp, or an estate or anything to support these people. I'm tempted to try and just finance a school in Africa through Oxfam not because I particularly want to help Africans over other people in the world but because I can afford to in Africa, it'd cost me $200 to set up a school there verses $1.7 million here (Capital plus loan money) and then it wouldn't make money unless I taught what the fucking government wanted me to teach I couldn't go unlocking humann potential that way.
When I went to see Joe my Psycholigist it was fortuitous that his office was located in the Brunswick Incubator. Just a small space to allow startups to take place. I thought Paul Rubens woould love this place.
That's what I really want to do. I was talking to Damo on the train last night on the way to Haruka's farewell and commented how nobody was really shocked or surprised at his news that he was going to do a PhD in the US.
He started laying into how a lot of people wouldn't think much of my dream of going to Japan to make lots of money. Which tells me that not many people really know the essence of my dream. I mean that isn't even a dream no more than riding the corkscrew at seaworld is someone's dream.
My dream is to be a finacer or the fancier term I was using in Damo's presence: financier.
I had a lot of good ideas when I was 16. Nobody would back a 16 year old though because a lot of bad ideas come from 16 year olds and a lot of them cant get past the 'let's build a skatepark idea' which was what lead to me getting so frustrated that I quit Ballarat City Youth Council.
I want to be a Medici, I want to bankroll actual human development. I want to have a building with crazy people trying to make there ideas and dreams feasible realities under my roof. Like some kind of umbrella which I don't personally ever use.
An estate a legacy, to build something in my time here and contribute something visable and tangible even if I'm just some name in line three of thankyous that contributed cash that in itself has no inherant value.
Like Lao Tzu's ideal I want to take this and give that. A true sage. I got that ring commisioned, for the same price as a school with textbooks in africa. Was the money ill spent? I don't think so because the ring represents this camp, this building that houses dreams like a rubix cube that I want to sprout out in the frontrunners of humanities search for meaning. I'll build the school aswell as soon as I find out who to give the money to, but I want it to be under the umbrella of that idea sitting there on a finger reminding me of the bigger picture.
A syndicate of dreams.