The Getting of Wisdom Teeth

In my first year of college I had two of my wisdom teeth removed from my lower mouth. They were wrapped around my nerve endings and needed to be removed before I lost sensation in my lower lip and tongue.

All went well, but my upper wisdom teeth were not close to developed yet and so were merrily passed over.

Now I have my upper wisdom teeth. They started punching through my gum tissue before I went away, half exposed from the gum.

Now they are out, and causing some discomfort as they fuck with my biting pattern. And I wonder, if ever there was one uncontestible refutation of intelligent design it is wisdom teeth.

Why are they there? And furthermore why do the develop in your mid-twenties? That's the killer, what the fuck are you supposed to start eating in mid-twenties that you would need new teeth for?

All I can come up with possibly is entering the corporate world they are somehow 'cock-sucking' related?

...Yet

frontal aside - I hope Harvard enjoyed my Sing-A-pore shout out, which incedentily had both more pictures and more words than his recent blog posts. More likely he cringed at my blatent riffing off Brett Easton Ellis.

I cruised through a bookstore in the naive belief today that if I just gave the RMIT computer lab an hour it would get less busy and I'd feel less guilty about using the computers for non-school work.

Incidentily it didn't calm down.

Extra-incidentily I was looking at a lot of books trying to figure out where the fuck someone would shelve "The Men Who Stare at Goats" about the MK (Mind Control) unit of the US Army Corp that was born out of not wanting to leave anything remotely to chance.

I couldn't find it, at border's it was in-stock and shelved under 'journalism' a shelf that doesn't exist, border's catalouging system is starting to piss me off.

And in Reader's Feast I just plain couldn't find it. I checked under history, non-fiction, popular science and then just gave up and left.

But I did come across books like 'Hot, Flat and Crowded' by Thomas Friedman, and other books by Tim Flannery, books on the Science of Fear, The downfall of the Bush's, more books on Atheism (glad that monkey was finally gotten off our back) etc.

Something clicked today though, a bunch of things that had been clinking around for ages in my head after watching the dullest fucking Presidential Debate ever.

I've been thinking about if I started a political party what I would call it.

I still haven't struck on anything good, apart from the witty 'Also Ran' Party which would be ironic if it won.

But I thought of a great campaign line for the current state of affairs in the world. "You don't deserve to live"

Brutal, cruel and surely unpopular. The more I thought about it though, the more I thought its what politics really needs.

Such a tagline may be a political death wish, but for that very reason for me it sort of reasonates as a NLP sort of question.

I think everyone is getting tired of nobody taking responsibility. Politically our dilemma is the oposite of our every day lives, where so many of us just need someone to tell us that we are special, doing a great job and appreciated, we need our leaders to turn around and say 'You are fucking up everything! You are a fucking greedy moron and I hope you die' Maybe Samual L Jackson is the man for the job.

I'm thinking Anzac parades, something I don't partake in, where an entire generation put everything aside to go fight in Europe and the Pacific just to preserve our current order of life. Young people giving their lives, living in Trenches being shot at and shooting people. Doing murder to defend a Queen from a little German guy, and then being ditched by said Queen and depending on the yanks to fight off the Japanese.

Flash forward 60 years and suddenly we have people who aren't willing to forego their car, aren't willing to go without airconditioning, aren't willing to tolerate casualties in a war on terror, aren't willing to let bankers pay for their own mistakes, aren't willing to let people pay the consequences of their own greed.

If human nature was fixed, it would be easy to pass judgement on the Human race, with the campaign tagline "You don't deserve to live" the irony of the line is that if MY party was defeated, a party with the balls to actually follow through on climate change, foreing affairs and financial crisis, and subsequently endure the pain of correcting those mistakes (which is pitifully little in my view) then effectively even in defeat that campaign would be a success.

People would have by their vote indicated that yes they "don't deserve to live"

But human nature isn't fixed, it is capable of learning and so, I must affix "You don't deserve to live, YET" there is hope. We could indeed prove ourselves worthy of living on, we could sit down, look at ourselves and come to some conclusions about how we live our lives.

I stand in the RMIT business computer labs, and since my time their, only a short time ago things have changed, for one thing crazily there used to be one of those 'velvet rope' guard things along one wall that said 'queue here when lab is full' so that people could recieve a computer from an outgoing student in an orderly manner on a first come first serve basis.

Furthermore those sitting on the computers mindlessly browsing their facebook or myspace pages could look up and realise people were waiting to do work on said computers and feel guilty.

Someone has removed that and student society has fallen apart. People don't queue anymore they wander around the lab endlessly hoping to grab a computer that opens up before anyone else can.

In further troubling development, now there is no queue when the lab is busy, people don't so much as feel guilty for tying up machines but bask in the glory of tying up machines, abandoning the computer logged in for 15 minute breaks with their books and food spread all over the place. This causes despair for the endlessly circling students looking for a free computer.

Maybe we need to look at our antisocial behaviour and collectively decide whether we really deserve to live or not.

A Post for Sing-a-pore

I went a-travelling this year and went so far and wide that often I forget that it mostly took place within this Calendar Year of 2008.

I've been everywhere man, and finally I can reassure you that the world has truly globalised, come together and unified in the common pursuit.

First stop was Beijing China, one half year early for the Olympics this didn't stop CCTV from having 24 hour coverage, and I was informed by all that the motto of the Beijing Olympics was 'One World, One Dream'

My mind boggled, wondering how this could possible be true. But soon after I was a little more travel worn and seen the rest of the world, I know that the universal purpose of life right now is the pursuit... of...

Of Sneakers, man I really HAVE to get these sneakers lah!
Nike Airforce Anaconda's

They are made of Anaconda skin, and all WHITE! Yes White! That's so creative, of course, buying such Sneakers that are no doubt expensive must come with a price that isn't just my disposable income...

No it's a psychological burden too, yes they will plug that hole in my soul that makes me feel unfulfilled now. But then once I have them, what then?

Do I wear them? Do I shelve them, as a sneaker head would preserving their resale value? I mean it's a real sensible investment. Particularly in these uncertain times.

In these uncertain times, we must all PANIC at the impending collapse of the financial system around the world. As we discover what has always been true, the banks don't have our money!

What if we lose our money? Then I definitely won't be able to buy these:
the most expensive chocolates in the world

And my new sweetheart won't forgive me if I don't give her what she really wants this summer, a pair of shades big enough to display her affluence:
conspicuous consumption

Which reminds me, I was going to get myself a new bike. I'm thinking of getting one of these fixed gears I've been hearing about. What are they?
Practicality made art, what's your carbon fun print?

You see the truly great thing about the exciting range of products is that simultaneously I can fulfill my desire to express myself as an individual, but am free from being judged by my peers.
By buying pre-customised accessories, I can finally be free to be the individual I am told to be.

Of course, maybe my honey will be less excited about my new totally chic "counter culture" ride, and need me to step up to something more practical for escorting her around town:
is that that ghost whisperer

Finally a mode of transportation that demands respect. Sure people may not respect me, but they can respect my ride, and they can respect my clothes.



I mean this way I have the best of both worlds, Armani, Zegna, Hugo Boss, Yves Saint Lauren, Hilfiger etc. These are suits that let girls know I'm all grown up.

On the other hand, I have my fixed gear for touting around in my Zoo York t-shirt, Sneakers by Le Coq Sportif, Nike (So long as they aren't those awful practical ones), Onitsuke Tiger, K-Swiss, Vans, Royal Elastic, Puma, Adidas (again so long as they aren't practical, maybe them colour in ones) and custom shirts from T-bar, all to let the good people know, along with my forearm tattoos that I'm still young.

I mean ever since I noticed my receding hairline my need to prove myself a young and vital man by buying overpriced co-opted youth culture brands has grown in step.
Alas finally I may have found a way out, the hair ego booster:
enjoy the confidence

I'm told this is something called chindogu, a Japanese art form of designing things that won't work or nobody would ever use.

I guess it's kind of like that rejuvination method I tried where I bath in baby blood.


I mean what pissed me off about that dead end, was that the same friends that had been picking on my 'baldness' making me all insecure in the first place then told me I was 'crazy' a 'lunatic' and a 'psychopath' to believe this would actually work.
To them I just say:

"Have you ever tried putting blood back into a baby?"

And to be fair my pores do feel slightly more elastic.

But you know, aren't we all just a little bit crazy? In these uncertain times? I mean I have a humvee which may come in handy with the coming collapse of the financial system (the irony being I purchased it on finance) but with the generous drops in the interest rate I can also squeeze these little babies onto my credit card:



When the apocalypse comes, I'll know I can step out in style as I hack my neighbours to death with a machete to steal their supply of Evian bottled water.

I mean really, it's all Chindogu. It all has been for 16 YEARS, and then there was only a brief respite corresponding with Grunge going back into the 80's when the events of American Psycho were set.

I mean, sure I made my new girlfriend up, I may as well. I can barely tell girls apart these days apart from what they are wearing, and they keep changing those.

It's all useless shite, and particularly young people have been caught up, working harder and harder to afford it all.

And what strikes me as most crazy is that it seems to be more a symptom of 'We buy because we have money'

ie. young people earn more money than they have things to spend it on.

And yet we work harder longer in order to have more money. Hence the consumer has put pressure on companies to come up with creative ways to charge us more for stuff.

You only get rich once, after that, there's no need for more. And it's my position that this probably happens for most people sooner rather than later.

Whether you are the Japanese businessman of the 80's getting 10,000 year old glaciel ice in your whiskey at $1000US a pop in downtown ginza, or the wall street analyst buying $1,600 chocalate with flakes of gold in it. It's all pointless.

The debt is triple the world GNP when earnings probably only ever needed to be 30% of world GNP to support actual real lifestyles.

I'm sick of fucking consumerism and looking forward to people losing a lot of money. I feel for the poor people getting hit hard though, who never got to enjoy consumerism beyond an impractical plasma screen tv.

There will always be Art

Last night I remembered what it is like to damage my hearing. I went to see Barbarion. A reminder of why I still like words like 'rad' and 'bodacious'.

Yes there music gripped my scrotum. Apart from the self consciousness of standing in the front row of a well lit audience, I thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

Namely, long winded guitar solo's in every single song. Riff driven pieces with profound lyrics such as 'Infamy has it in-for-me' (note that infamy can easily be pronounced 'informe') and the powerful ballad of 'Matilda, my favorite wife'.

I saw new and exciting guitar toting techniques, like the 'rifle' and also a bass solo that involved playing the bass in the violin position. I couldn't actually hear said solo perhaps because the two largest speakers in the building were pounding it directly into my testicles, but it looked impressive.

Furthermore, I've always hated bands that are 'gimmicky' like KISS, KISS and Slipknot. But the costumes really added something to Barbarion. They were dressed like varieties of Barbarian ethnicities. And rather than being a confusing homage to demonic powers, like Slipknot and Kiss, and lets face it I think nobody really knows what satanism and witchcraft are really about, other than trying to pretend you are shocking and wish it was halloween every day of the year.

But this was a harking back to simpler times, where instead of Wall Street 'Masters of the Universe' people dressed more like He-man from 'Masters of the Universe' and instead of cashing in on short term asset bubble leveraging schemes. People cashed in on short term raping and pillaging of neighboring agrarian societies.

And so one could simply enjoy Barbarion. Something else I've simply been enjoying is Ren & Stimpy.

John K, creator of Ren & Stimpy may take the title of first ever genius I don't want to meet. But that said, his work speaks for itself. The nonsensical interludes, superfluous scenes and everything else breaking from the convention of just about everything a cartoon is supposed to be about.

Wanting to settle an argument I had with my brother as to whether the voice of Stimpy was clearly the voice of 'Fry' from Futurama, I stumbled across the quote on Wikipedia of early meetings with John K...

Bill Wray said that he and Kricfalusi met to "sit around and discuss how really good cartoons died in 1961." Kricfalusi and Wray attributed the decline to the rise of parent groups asking for cartoons to take "educational" approaches. He added that the creators of Ren and Stimpy did not want to create an "educational" series and that the stance bothered Nickelodeon.

In other words, Ren & Stimpy avoided the basic assumption that a story has to be about anything.

I have to say, the episodes I like most now that I'm all grown up are one's like 'visiting Anthony' where half the episode is about the tension of Anthony's aggressive father intimidating Ren & Stimpy, shouting a hail of spit at them.

Or the old favorite, 'Stimpy's fan Club' most of which consists of Ren reading Stimpy's fan mail, and then his corresponding decent into madness.

I enjoy Ren & Stimpy as pure art, probably why I'm in the minority that still prefer the 1989 Batman by Tim Burton to The Dark Knight. Furthermore, its probably why I'm in the minority that still prefer the Adam West Batman Movie to all other incarnations of Batman.

Pure artistic genius.

Then I have to say having seen the works of Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dali, Magritte, Van Gough and so fourth, their works really don't look like any other paintings.

And they are all to varying degrees about something or about nothing.

In all, I don't believe that Art critiques will ever be considered experts in the sense that scientists are considered experts.

Art is undefinable. Absolutely anything could be art, pointless or not. Created or not. In away everything is a subset of art. Critiquing any form of art is in itself an art form.

Hence it is my position, that Art in all its forms will always have a place, at any time. Even if the world was cracking in two, its molten core ruptured and expanding into noxious radioctive flecks, contaminating our lungs as the atmosphere splits into two amorphous bubbles. Somebody will probably want to use their last breath to express something.

And that something needn't really be about anything.

But in a way we shall all be gripped by it, in the scrotums of our souls.

Take Two for Sport

One of the few things my brother has ever said that stank of quoteworthiness is this:

Sports important because it is unimportant ~ Old man Sam

And tomorrow in the lead up to the Grand Finale of AFL's season, one of my two favorite sports in the whole world...

I don't know what I'm saying.

Okay 1. This week is the week that precedes the AFL Grand Final. AND 2. Now might be the time to reflect on what sport can teach me about life.

Yes, sport is pointless. As captured in the wonderfully instructive Catch-22:

To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else. ~ Catch-22 OR tohm's New Testament

You know, last year after watching what must be remembered eternally as one of the most boring Grand Finals in AFL history as Geelong mercilessly crushed Port Power into the drought crunchy ground of the MCG, we saw flashed before us (and 15 minutes before the end of the match) footage of Billy Brownless in tears as he waited for the siren to confirm the dream of a lifetime.

The match was brutal and after 1st Quarter Time more or less a foregone conclusion. Excitement could muster around the only real question left in the game 'who would get the norm smith medal?' For the emotional outsider, like me. Some slight sense of relief to see a Victorian club win the Cup back was overwhelmed by a large amount of not giving a shit.

It's matches like those that can have me praying to a divine being to intervene and make the losing side competitive that there may be a reason to continue watching.

To someone emotionally involved it is riveting to watch Geelong beat a dead horse to death.

In the context of the game, such emotions are reasonable, expected no less. It is the most satisfying validation of your support, of a team regardless of what form it takes that finally for just one day, one minute of one day you can hold the cup aloft and say 'We are champions, the best team there is!'

And that's the whole point. The point of sport is to win, within the confines of the rules.

Okay another perspective, some kid who watches his family die due to polio gets a fire lit inside him, a burning desire to one day become a doctor. A doctor that saves lives. The kid works and works, studies, overcomes adversity, and one day at the age of 71 is presented with a lovely dinner by their medical colleagues and some nice things are said about their dedication to the health profession, causing this now old kid to break down in tears.

Conversely:

Micheal Jordan goes to camp, realises he has a distinct combination of athleticism, basketball IQ and mental tenacity that could make him a champion. He goes to college (to play basketball) works out for a bunch of teams and gets drafted at No. 3 to Chicago Bulls franchise.
For a few seasons despite being the most explosive player in the league, he gets bounced out of the finals repeatedly to his frustration.
The Chicago Bull's manager combines to give Jordan Scottie Pippen as a versatile swingman team mate and Phil Jackson as coach.
He finally wins his first Championship and breaks down in tears.

Okay, one could make the case that Jordan did a lot for the world, certainly a lot for Nike Athletic footware, but did he save lives? Only with the ridiculous amounts of money thrown at sports stars, this is kind of an 'aren't we lucky that when we overpay people to do something of no real benefit to anyone, they give some money back' sort of mentality.
Yes in our own way there is a little Jordan in all of us, pushing us to be the best whatever it is we can be. But by and by, its just a trophy, for playing

A GAME

That people are paid millions to play. Yes ultimately sport is entertainment, its unpredictability more subtle and infinite than the best scripts or plots our most creative minds can concieve of.

The point is, in both the case of Geelong, Jordan and all the other manifestations of sports ultimate payload why has our society produced this? Why do they care so much? Why do they consider their lives well spent? Why when they get that trophy do they break down and cry?

I like to think, its because we all have the ability to give our own lives meaning. And that sports people, especially elite sports people just give themselves a meaning that is actually attainable, where most of us don't.

So now let's look at this beautiful concept in the context of doctor kid. Because this is what nihilisticly occurred to me the other day. Say you define yourself in terms of saving lives.

What lives? Who's lives?

If we take it that the most worthwhile thing to do with your life is to be a doctor and save lives, what's left for the lives being saved? That's what I can't comprehend.

If you save the life of someone who's life serves no purpose. Like somebody who manufactures upmarket napkin rings for example... what's the point? Have you actually done anything for anybody?

You see, what I'm saying? To validate the doctors existence, society must have a greater purpose from which saving people on average allows others/the community to pursue its purpose.

If not, then what of it, in my view the Doctor is just a slightly convoluted construct of the same purposelessness, like a CDO in the Subprime mortgage crisis.

Take a bunch of pointless people, then add a level above them of someone who preserves the life of pointless people and rate them AAA.

I'm not having a dig at doctors.

I guess the only recourse I can come up with, until I can somehow comprehend why society needs so many people, so many more people than was necessary before economies of scale, mass production and efficiency was invented.

Anyway my recourse is that life, certainly at least for me, is an intrinsically enjoyable process. And its things like sport, and flavour that give life the enjoyable flavor.

Our pleasure spots are just geared up for living. And living therefore is preferable to being dead.

There you go, there's room for sport and for doctors.

Useless stuff.

I must confess, watching Wall St. implode, the sheer panic as our elders watch their superannuation portfolio's shrink, the financiers being turfed out onto the street no longer gainfully employed.
It all strikes me as particularly funny, and am quite enjoying it. Because to me, it reeks of justice.
To me it brings a brief glimmer of hope. That maybe, once people have lost their jobs, their houses, their credit cards they may...

Just maybe, reflect on all that bullshit they pursued relentlessly for almost two decades.

They may reflect on why they worked longer hours.

Why they put their kids in daycare.

Why they got sensible haircuts, and wore semi-casual attire.

Why they sat up at night, or on weekends in front of a laptop.

Why they made that extra cold call.

Why they drove so far.

Why they took on so much debt.

Why they paid other people to walk their dog.

All of it, to buy stuff they had no use for at all.


Please forgive me for feeling so wonderfully validated as a human being, as all our imaginary wealth suddenly evaporates into thin air.

Come on, you actually thought you would get paid $100,000 a year to own an empty house?

Come on, you actually thought this would go on forever?

Come on, you still believe you can earn money without having to work for it? What else do you still believe in? Santa Claus? Wrestling?

Come on, you thought you could lose weight without diet and exercise?

Come on, you thought you could reverse the anti-aging process? Why would people even want to keep you around longer?

Okay, maybe I said too much.

I went a little too far.

Forgive me.

Drivers and Cyclists Unite

Maybe it's time I swallowed humble pie. Or something equally humiliating.

Like feces.

But alas, for all the anger at the tragic killing of a young woman by one of those annoying tour buses that take up the whole non-tram lane in Swanston st. I actually have had a good week on the bicycle.

No near crashes, not even abuse.

One incident that sticks out clearly in my mind though, was coasting down Studley Park road, thinking, a pro-cyclist has to actually work down the hills in order to reduce their time. It's no fun, they don't get to enjoy gravity.

Anyway I'm thinking this and I have a lot of time to think it because I'm just coasting , not racing and I emerge on Johnson st, and right near the corner where one would turn in to visit the Collingwood children's farm there's this SUV sitting mid turn. Then adjacent it at the intersection is a guy in a ute or something also waiting to turn.

But they are in a strange standoff, all as I approach the intersection.

The ute had plenty of time to turn in front of me, even if I have right of way, I was a long way off approaching the intersection.

But the SUV is parked in his turning circle, and not completing its turn.

Perplexed I coasted into the intersection, tapping my breaks to try and give a patented cyclist glare to the driver only to discover.

There is no driver.

The SUV has just been parked mid turn and it's driver vanished.

SO I turn and shrug at the driver of the ute.

And the ute driver pulls a face, the universal facial expression 'what is that douchebag doing?' and I imagine it's the same expression I am pulling.

And the universe just got that little bit more united.

And I pedalled on to the city. The incident not taking more than 30 seconds.

It's just so refreshing to be able to share a piece of driver stupidity with another driver. Instead of being the cyclist having to have exchanges with some hero in their big tank of a car that feature gratuitous use of the term 'mother fucker'.

The vehicles are a-moral tools of stupidity.

Cars don't kill cyclists. Stupid people in cars kill people on bicycles. Alternatively, people in cars also kill stupid cyclists.

A Zine consisting of Unsent Letters

Prompted me to think of this post, although that makes it sound like a reflection whereas I guess it was more like a premonition. Or more accurately just blatant plagiarism. Prism.

Dear Miki,

Bryce doesn't get me. Neither do I, really. But he does this annoying thing (or as you would phrase it "I really hate about it") almost everytime I see him now which is try to hook me up with someone or somehow get me laid.
It was refreshing the last time we dined together that he merely suggested I should take up drinking.

It's a shame you never met him. He really is a great guy. sorta.

Anyway, Bryce's problem with me: my lack of interest in sex (not that he has propositioned me to have sex with him) or what Bryce quantifies as a lack of interest in sex and I would quantify as a lack of interest in ejaculating in a long succession of different women's bodies.

Anyway I'm not sure if I'm comfortable writing to you about ejaculation.

...anyway this "problem" I just take as a general lack of libido. But you slightly complicate it. Largely because while right now I'm not particularly interested in getting into a relationship per se, I do find myself curiously hung up on you.

And that I just can't figure out. Intellectually I understand our situation. It isn't like straight after breaking up with Claire, any time I got introduced to women I turned away irrationally anticipating Claire to come running back to me.

We've been broken up a long time. This I know. We dated for a meagre 6 months. But I still can't figure out a lot of why's. Like I don't know why precisely I fell in love with you.

It's safe to say with 2 exceptions, my 2 pitiful attempts at one-night...well one-night hook ups, I was a teenager. Anyway those 2 nights of pity aside just about every girl I've kissed I've been in love with already.

You seared your way onto my brain like burning magnesium sears the retina though. Our mutual aquantence who introduced you to me, made the mistake of calling you 'cute' instead of beautiful (that I had been thinking). When she called you cute I started thinking you were which for me is an immediate turn off. And I acted appropriately, brushing you off in my usual callous way and sticking with my close circle of work buddies.

And then I went to talk to you, and in all honesty it was because George bought me a drink I really, really didn't want and thought it would be convenient to offload it on you.

And you turned out to be very charming and highly amusing. And all you did was laugh. And our mutual friend who wrote herself off completely that night proved an easy target.

I remember growing fond of you early, when reading your amusing text messages to Liam as we set up our first date. Which I pulled out all the stops for. I was 23, had just noticed my hairline had receded and thought this might be my last chance ever to get a girlfriend.

I remember you stating 'I don't like italians' as we waited for a seat at Tiamo's and how funny it was to point out to you we were standing in the middle of an italian restaurant.

And I can't remember how many times I fell in love with you since then. Like when you flipped out with euphoric exclamations the first time I cooked you breakfast. A tip for Japanese women I passed on to Brenton that apparently paid dividends.

Or when I first stayed at your place, and I had to get up at 6 am to ride to work. You lived in Prahran and it was hugely impractical for me to stay there on a week night really. It added about 6 km to my commute. But anyway, as I lay in your shitty bed trying to comprehend how long it had been since I had gotten up at the theoretical 6 am, I heard you bashing my bike on the side of the house as you got it out for me.

Or when I was telling Masa and Hide I was dating a Japanese girl, then you rang me, and I thought it would be funny if Hide answered the phone, and he asked if you were my girlfriend and APPARANTLY your response was "Yes, we had sex last night." and I'm inclined to believe it because Hide cracked up and made suggestive clapping gestures at me. Perhaps you used the phrase 'we bumped uglies' or it's Japanese equivalent.

Or when I came round that time in early summer and you were hanging out the washing. And we just stood in the middle of your clothes line and talked about our days.

Anyway, over the time I came up with lots of reasons I fell for you. Like how despite your cute girly exterior you really are one tough cunt. Or how naturally supportive and enthusiastic you were of everyone. Or just that whilst I was with you, there was no higher priority than actually living our lives. Or your smile. Or your laugh.

But for some reason, whilst I don't long for you. Don't cry myself to sleep regularly waiting for you to call. I don't even particularly want to see you on any given day, given that I live in a garage and work on economic reports. Anyway, I just wonder how you can still be the most interesting girl I know.

Who are we kidding? the language barrier is a long and deep trench between us having complex conversations. Yet somehow it didn't matter. I'd rather talk to you again than meet any new girls.

For me I understand this really means I will probably wait a fair while before at some random party I end up talking to someone really interesting as a matter of circumstance and end up having a bigger better relationship. A function of evolving tastes, preferences and personality as well as pheromones.

But anyway, on the weekend my brother and I made a speech at my sister An-chan's 21st and afterwards Bryce walked up and said something to the effect that he just hadn't laughed like that in years.

And that's when I realised, that as of right now, and pending the arrival of someone else, of all the people I have ever met I enjoyed making you laugh the most. And it simplified my life a great deal.

Maybe that's what I'm hung up on.

Anyway as my sister would say "buckets of love"

i-piki kampeki miki. nobodies perfect.

tohm.

Career Path Implosion

Okay so on arriving home via LAX after two weeks or so in splendid Mexico, I decided to try my hand at being a consultant. I'd already tried to design a logo for all the business paraphernalia to make me look bona-fide through Harvard a man who possesses some real talent but no real time between work and existentialist books that may provide insight into how a Malaysian can pass themselves off as Japanese.

I am the first to admit though, that for all the marketing hype, the blame laid at the feet of marketers for corporate/consumer evil and such, that fundamentally it isn't how you sell the product. Eventually everything has to perform. Even Real Estate.

And I think a healthy way to be is trusting of your friends and not of yourself. I fundamentally believe in Jung and Freud's proposal that the purpose of life is to harmonise and unify our conscious and subconscious desires.

So I booked in for career councelling.

Here's the notes:

1. I feel I have a good resume.
2. I felt I both enjoyed and was good at what I did.
3. I didn't feel challenged.
4. I had savings enough to buffer me for a while.
5. I had various ideas of what I wanted to do and be.
6. I had trouble reconciling these things.
7. I wanted to 'own' my own output.
8. I wanted to take more risk.
9. I wanted more diversity on the things I work on.

Not to shit on the career counselling profession, but it has gotten a lot better since I was a tadpole in highschool.
She went straight to my Jungian psychological profile. Also known as the Myers-Briggs personality type.

I am INTP, borderline ENTP.

And when she read out the 'ideal working conditions' it seemed I knew myself well and had it all down. She merely suggested I research how to start my own business.

Something I haven't done.

On the upside writing this post has highlighted how I really do add value to my current contract...articulation. It also provides insight into why I blog.

But enough of that.

I need to square it up, particularly with how I feel. Because the best decisions at the end of the scrotum, have to be emotional.

I feel nothing, most of the time. I feel guilty about not having a 'real job' that I define narrowly as a 9 to 5 job with inbuilt routine and relatively straightforward understanding of where the demand comes from.
Namely that the value of a 'real job' requires little selling on an ongoing basis. Like accounting and so fourth.

I twinge more at feelings of guilt that I don't really have a semi-real job. Namely one of those stop gap jobs to earn pocket money, like tele-marketing, market research, busing tables, working retail etc.
I get sweaty panic attacks looking at the grown individuals working fast food jobs just to give themselves the opportunity to complete their masters in Info-sys, return to India and get a 'real-job'

For me I think its a guilt symptomatic of self doubt and the corresponding reassurance of groups.

Most people, just work real jobs. They are cogs in a huge machine that pumps resources through arteries into cities where most of human civilization takes place.

And I don't see a way around the need for that to happen.

I am confounded by my choice though, to be a cog, or be some peripheral parasite.

I can be a peripheral parasite so I assume this allowance in an efficient system of society is because I may have some latent value by slipping through the cracks.

Put simply I am struck by the notion that what I do now, has an implicit guaruntee that I produce something by it.

I get nervous that by self-indulgently or even self-righteously 'discovering my-self' I am racing against a ticking clock.

I am meant to deliver something.

Which brings me hopefully nearer to the conclusion of this post on my career path.

I now doubt even my desire to be a business consultant. My stop-gap business plan on how to build up an industry. And here my fears and aspirations correlate.

I wanted to start my own business to create a business environment to my liking. And the purpose of that was to make an environment that would attract similar minds.

I am most reassured when working with what I would describe as 'like minds'. That they find my work funny, or poigniant, or original reassures me that I am simply not delusional.

I seek a career path where I have a small reassuring group of individuals that differ from society in the same way I do. I'm just not sure where that is.

I also think in the real/semi-real/bullshit job department is fundamentally of little concern, a detail. An afterthought. I guess eventually it has to be financially viable. But one thing I really don't fear is being poor.

Procrastabater's Lament

Okay I have been lax, and can rationalise it all I want. The gale winds beating the shit out of the garage roof. The inexplicable headache. Wanting to curl up in a ball and cry.

Point of the matter is, I've dropped the ball over the past week and spent most of my time reading 'American Psycho', touching up scripts and in places sexually abusing scripts and watching old episodes of House M.D. when I can grab the chance.

In procrastination terms the chance came far too often.

But that doesn't mean I stopped thinking.

The real concern of procrastination is that I stopped acting.

Perhaps a better word is 'doing'.

So now let me do something and salavage what idle thoughts I have had.

First question needs to be refrased, can't restrict it to 'What's happening to me?' undoubtedly something is happening to me as a result of sleeping in a garage, if nothing else a heightened risk of contracting TB.

But simply if it were as simple as 'what's happening to me?' then I could answer that right now, 'I started living in a garage' I could take steps to remedy that situation. I could dust off my resume, apply to several jobs per day, take interviews. Come to some agreement with a prospect and form a contract of employment. After a paycheck or two I could start shopping around for a room to rent, move in and go back to what I was before I started living in a Garage.

SO clearly, while not being confident enough to rule that out entirely, I need to reframe the question as 'What happened to me?' i.e. something happened to me, that caused me to resign from a good job. Travel for 8-9ish months, come home land a consulting gig short term, on a massive paycut and spend all my time working on zines and scripts.

I can't rule out, that something was a catalyst for my present circumstances long before I reached them.

I get suspicious because I feel no compulsion to change my current circumstances.

I am reminded of Abe Lincoln:

"I may be a slow walker, but I don't walk back."

Trouble is, I have no idea where I'm walking to. Just a deep seated almost sub-conscious feeling that I don't want to live that life that I had.

Tomorrow I will talk career wise. And something I have actually got counselling in.

Garage Society

One area of my life now I find the most notable adverse effects of living in a garage is in my social life. I've talked about it before.
In short though I just don't want to spend time with friends. Not because I don't like my friends, I just would rather bury myself in work.
I have about three projects going on, so I don't mean 'work' in the conventional sense of paid work, I just mean I'd rather work on 'stuff' like drawing, writing, exercise etc. than hanging out with people. The people I most want to see, are those that can help me work.

I've started cognitive behavioral therapy on this aspect already. Namely, I started socializing again. I still think it wont be till I'm living in my own place again that I'll get seriously proactive about getting laid. My libido is pretty low.

In fact I had a revelation the other day. There are plenty of people out their to date. But not in a 'the world is my oyster sense'

I mean a nice girl doesn't need me to be nice to them. There are plenty of nice guys for them. Thanks guys, for freeing me up.

But yeah, overall I find since moving into a garage, my life has become socially one dimensional. I'm probably most concerned about that though, I don't want to become a recluse.

If my brain snaps out of this garage mode eventually I don't want to suddenly turn up wanting to be best buddies with people I ignored for 6 months, 1 year, 10 years.

I hypothesised before that maybe it was pride. Maybe I am hiding from my friends because I feel inferior due to my living conditions.

In that regard the behavioral therepy is working, when I inform my friends of my living predicament, I am usually met with curiosity.

Eventually it seems I will become conscious that what my friends seem to assume 'I'm doing this out of choice' is precisely the case.

On the upside I know I always wanted to befriend a homeless person, hear their story and not talk down to them, so if that's common to any of my friends they should be crowding around me now.

An average boring friend that has become homeless.

Let's start with Money

I understand money. I know for example that money is a 'medium of exchange' it has no 'intrinsic value' is worth more today than it will be tomorrow thanks to 'inflation' which is kept under control by keeping the supply of money relatively scarce whilst generally acceptable 'legal tender' in other words. That means our coffers in the reserve (that guarantee our money is worth something) have to exist.

I understand savings (sacrifices today to make tomorrow easier), the relationship between risk and return (profit and risk are directly related in proportion in an efficient market) and how banks make money, the categories of investment products and so fourth.

So financially I would describe my literacy as above average. I've done Economics and finance subjects over the years, I've written about them, I could potentially teach them.

But I just don't feel the desire for it anymore. And let's put that in further contextualisation...

I do understand that money being exchangable creates more choices for me in the future. That in ten years time I may want to get married, buy a house, get an expensive operation, put my kids through school. I comprehend that the more I put away now, the easier it will be to make those decisions. The more choices I will have and the less sacrifice I have to make to choose one over the other.
Those are all important BIG things you can spend money on.

And I understand them. I'm not particularly worried about them though. I don't wake up in the night worried about my future financial position. It makes perfect sense that I should. I just don't.

What I worry about more, is the fact that I've chosen not to make a certain amount of money. I could only estimate what that would be right now.
But if I sit back and try to imagine myself still doing my old job, I just can't. I've moved on. I'm out of that rut.

Furthermore, I believe there's some thing I should do with my life, which isn't just spending it preserving my own life and ushering in another life form to do the same.

I should do something with my life. Something. That something is what I worry about, not being some hobo on a street corner swearing at random people.

Ideally I would be able to do that something, and also someday usher in some other living people to be able to also do something with their lives.

So symptom number one, is that while I understand money, I find it even in the most rational uses of money, a lower priority at the moment.

My Blog may finally be about something

A riddle, obscured by an enigma, wrapped up in a conundrum. I have no idea what I'm doing.

And I intend to figure it out.

Here's the hypotheses as far as I can tell:

1. I'm a self-righteous pussy that can't hack real work.
2. I need psychological reassurance by working towards things I'm not sure I can achieve.
3. I crave validation through celebrity, like everyone else hence want to work towards things that deliver fame rather than money.
4. I am deteriorating into some depressive state through lack of self confidence.
5. I am afraid of committing to one career path or lifestyle, and would subconsciously prefer not to do anything.
6. Money has lost all interest to me.

This should be fun.

Howsing

A house is a magical cash machine. Build a house and it will suddenly appreciate in value by 10% a year! You then use this money to buy more homes all appreciating at 10% per year! Because they are going up in value the bank will lend you more money because you own the profits!

Would somebody explain how this works?

How?
HOW?
HOW?
HOW?
HOW?
HOW?
HOW?

Nuremberg & The Mechanical Pencil

I couldn't believe the difference, I didn't even notice, nor could figure out when I went from the Cheq Republick through to Germany. I just ended up in Nuremberg. Suddenly the whole world was different.
I should qualify that Prague it seems avails itself of all kinds of experiences, and if you luck out and get good accomodation, good restaurants it may just be the best place in the world.
But I couldn't wait to fucking get out of there because for me, it was the worlds most beautiful rat infested pit. A place where I felt I had to look over my shoulder constantly. A place where you couldn't even trust money.
Of which I had run low on my account that I could actually withdraw money from. So I simply transferred more money in. Honda still pays my lifestyle technically, that's how good I am at saving.
But on the morning of the day that I got up incredibly early, got locked out of the hostel reception preventing me from checking out. Said 'can't help you buddy go to the embassy' to a guy that told me he got drugged and robbed on the train and asked me for 60 euros for a ticket back to Germany. The same day I was thrown off the train with my bike (that got a flat) and put on a bus, to drive to another train station, and then apparantly put back on the same train. To almost crying when told you could take a bike on every single train in germany.
On that day I had about 18 euro's in my pocket.
But to be on the safe side I went to the bank (which they have in every trainstation in Germany) and withdrew money. And then they informed me I had none.
This left me with 18 euros, and with time zone differences - 48 hours before I could get any more.
The awesome Hostel in Nuremberg allowed me to pay after I left, once I'd figured out my finances and didn't even ask for collatoral. This allowed me to eat lunch/dinner.
But it was funny, just for that brief moment... two days with no money, it totally changed everything. Not only did I not have to lie to the numerous beggers throughout europe for once, but it is just strange sort of self righteous poverty when making a 3 euro purchase is a really big deal.
These were the real experiences of abroad, of travel. The adventure is never in booking ahead, arranging three different forms of finances. The adventure is always in turning up not knowing anything and having to figure shit out.
Here in Australia, since I returned I've been letting my account run down, I haven't logged in to any of my online accounts for months.
Yesterday I withdrew my last cash I could from an ATM leaving a bank balance of $2.64. I then went and bought a mechanical pencil.
And you know what, two weeks ago I would have bought the $10 one without even thinking about it. But suddenly the difference between $10 and $3 became a big deal, because it represented saving 30% of my net worth (for 24 hours) and finally I'd got that feeling back.

Interestingly I probably made a good decision to go cheaper, percieving (no doubt correctly) that until I'd fucked around with a cheap mechanical pencil for ages, I wouldn't be able to percieve the benefit of a good one.
It also feels really good just to use a mechanical pencil, more on that later in the next fowp update.
The other side, when I have more time to write about what I think may quite possibly be going very wrong with me, is that it was the medicine to all the meaninglessness that is stifling me.
I mean specifically, the complaints by people about how expensive housing, or petrol, or bananas, or anything is when they are all walking around in $180 shoes, and $60 (cheap) neckties! Neckties aren't even functional. Kids are still incredibly rich! I don't understand this recession. Maybe we really need it, when all we do is work 14 hour days to afford stuff that has little to no practical value at all.
but anyway, buying a mechanical pencil felt really good yesterday, because it was a big investment. Even if it only lasts a day.

Tenacious Disney

Insight comes from all kinds of places. Yesterday it came from a poster, I believe it was for one of the Disney High School Musical's or clones or some such shite. Anyway it had some clean looking kid kicking out a foot and some tagline that featured 'ROCK' prominantly. That's when I thought, what the fuck does that image have to do with rock?
This question caused some chemical reaction in my brain and within less than a second I finally appreciated the place and purpose Metal serves in our society. Coincidence or no, I had been listening to Tenacious D's pick of destiny and on it was 'The Metal' an inspiring track about the longevity and dominance of metal.
Metal perhaps has always made sense. It was the music that wanted to harness percussion and electricity and craft it into a high energy aggressive form, as opposed to the well crafted easy on the ear compositions of the classical masters and schoolboy pop.
Face it, if Wagner, Beethoven, Bach and perhaps even Mozart where around at the time, they wouldn't have opted for stale standardised classical music, they would have been some of the forerunners in Metal. They wouldn't have wished for a piano. They would have begged and screamed for a fender stratocaster.
But now, I think more so than ever, Metal is needed. Because just like in its origin, it is...
something different to look at.

I was thinking about my daughter that I don't have, and whether I would actually want her watching something like 'High School Musical' as a young impressionable teenager.
And I thought, no. I wouldn't because crazily enough the kind of guys that are going to try and emotionally pressure her into giving them a blowjob in the bikesheds, and the kind of girls that derive their self esteem from the ability to give good blowjobs in the bikesheds, are the kind of kids featured in the cast of highschool musical.
Good looking, clean cut hitler youth. All my life experience tells me that these are what truly nasty, coniving, ruthless and stupid people look like. They look like manufactured products.

In this frame of mind I went to seek out the closest thing on my ipod I had to Heavy Metal, I had System of a Down. 'Chop Suey' was the only song of theirs I ever came close to enjoying, so I chucked on Toxicity and rode home, listening to the album like 1.4 times.
This reminded me that if you were ever to enter someone in a beauty pagent who was gaurunteed to lose it would be the band members of SOAD. And this led me to realise that probably the least sex obsessed, wholesome genre of music, is SOAD.
When I think about it, my experience of most Metal Fans, and rarely do I come across true metal fans that listen to metal and nothing but metal, most of them are the nicest friendliest people I've ever met.
Generally well adjusted, self assured people.

Toxicity is quite beautiful by the way, I'm probably last to know but they may even be the closest album I've heard to a Faith No More offering (not like any of them are the same) and just a little to the Mr. Bungle side of the spectrum.
Infact, I also ponder how one becomes a vocalist for a metal band, beatboxing for example offers one really famous guy, Rahzel who probably came closest to having a successful album release in the US. Yet heaps of people line up to take beatboxing classes, workshops and even restructure their identity.
They practice all sorts of tricks and line up for Australian Idol auditions. But you never see anyone battering down doors to sign up to be a metal singer.
And I doubt its as easy as its made out to be.
I can't think of other genres that switch quite as much, from shouting and screaming, to melodic operatic singing to shouting 'Pogo' over and over again.

Metal must live on, its too vibrant, too good, too different to be lost. And I want my daughter to have somebody safe to hang out with.