...(Slight Return)

Fair Warning

I experienced culture shock, it wasn't pleasant and it was the worst culture shock I've experienced in my life. Even worse than my brief stay in Mumbai where I was increadibly ill and struggled with how over-the-top in your face amazing India is.

So I know, I haven't been a fucking picnic since I got back, and likely at some point if you read this post you'll think "if you hate it so much why don't you do us all a favour and fuck off back to Mexico!" And I'd be lying if I didn't say I want to, and it's still where I see myself being, despite all the places and people I love everywhere else.

I share because I think what I share is of value. The impressions that drove my culture shock contain valuable insight. Right. It's feedback and it has always been my attitude that all feedback is a gift.

I also acknowledge that the sentiment is widespread that Australia is going wrong. That first-world problems are in fact real and concerning. Some are even contemplating voting for Dutton over Albo, because they are becoming disillusioned and don't understand how inflation works.

I've caught up with people since I've been back that are less happy to be here than I am, and I'm the guy who has had a picnic of a time as a stateless non-citizen living on a shoestring budget in Mexico for three straight years, and on many fronts I'm inclined to agree and again, why coming back hasn't been easy.

First Impression

If I recall correctly, the first thing that struck me in the face upon returning to Australia, was correctness.

Now, Australia is a big country, and not all of it is a port of entry, I returned to Australia at a specific time and place - Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, two weeks prior to "The Voice" referendum. That is important to keep in mind, I did not anticipate enjoying my return to Australia. I was not excited to return to Australia, nor if I'm honest, even that curious to see what was up.

It is good, in partings that are such sweet sorrow, to find an intermediary place to transition through, a place in which to feel safe in feeling ambivalent. Ambivalent is a term that has been skunked into a synonym of indifferent, but I mean it in the original usage for which we do not have a good alternative - to feel contradictory passions. 

Of course, somewhere like Bondi is not going to be the place for me, this is not Australia's "honest feet" but ground zero of Australia's natural manifestation of the "Jevon's Paradox" where Bondi is so naturally a nice place to live, it attracts a lot of awful people, so awful one of the scariest things to contemplate is the possibility that people who live in Bondi may not even be the worst people in the world. If you are a fan of the Netflix psycho-drama "You" a season could be set in Bondi. It is the carefully curated face of Australia, performatively concerned with Australia's foot disease.

I love my sister, she has a great dog with her own adorable idiosyncrasies, Australia has cheese varieties and Fish and Chips, although harder to find, can still be found and are great. Australian great with Dim Sims and Flake, not Cod and mushy peas. There's the song of Magpies, Whale watching, people who speak at a tempo suitable for when you aren't about to shit your pants and need to wrap everything up as quickly as possible in order to get to a bathroom. There's also abundant and accessible parkland and running trails, even in Sydney. And of course, consistent with Jevon's Paradox, there's no two ways about the intrinsic goodness of not seeing homeless families on the streets, though I suspect why Australia doesn't have this and Mexico does and how good that is, is more complicated than first blush.

And this is probably going to be my first attempt to explain something unintelligible: what I mean by Australian "correctness" that so slapped me in the face about the culture. Mexican's are first and foremost Mexican, even factoring in the aspirations of the middle and upper class to be some new kind of sophisticated cosmopolitan Mexican like rich people everywhere always. 

By contrast, and a contrast I felt particularly strongly, Australians are just a few purchases away from being correct. 

For some reason, perhaps no reason, I had a hankering to draw a piece about Mexican movie "Ya No Estoy Aqui" (You are no longer here). I mean just given the title, it's a pretty obvious reason I'd be thinking about that and writing this. Here's the trailer:

Now, what I'll say is, I don't think it's a movie that an Australian could watch and just understand something about Mexico. I'm not even confident I understand what the film is about. I forced my parents to watch it with me, and I don't think they enjoyed it. I suspect they were largely bored, and my parents aren't your grandad's parents who found pre-ground pepper spicy, knew tuesday night was for chops and wednesday night was sausages and thursday was steak night and friday was fish and chips out of some vague deference to Jesus, and sunday was a lamb roast. My parents are cosmopolitan adventurers, if anything bored by the prospect of yet another foreign culture.

Which is to say, I'm not sure I'd recommend Ya No Estoy Aqui for your "to watch" list because there's a high likelihood you'll experience it as a slow, tedious movie with an insufferable protagonist in which nothing really happens and nobody learns anything. This is a pretty lucid reading of the text, and I'm not a believer in subtext, I don't think subtext exists, at least in any objective sense, and perhaps not in any intrinsic sense. Fittingly, I think once the text is written, the subtext is no longer here.

What is resonant with me though, is that it is a movie about what it is to love Mexico. Unlike media producers in LA, New York or Bondi, who in making "The Blue Beatle" might want to show other white people that white people should understand that LatinX people care about family, Ulises isn't returning home to Penelope, or any of the rest of his family. When he returns home his tribe is gone, everything has changed, he's lost everything in his exile to New York, which was never his dream. And yet, Ulises is home, he has returned to Mexico. 

It's my projection, but I swoon to play that trailer and hear that cumbia beat, even though my Mexican friends probably understand me to be the Australian, who doesn't get, and just plain doesn't dance. Long after Misaki and I had ceased to be a couple, when I caught up with her in Japan and showed her some photos of my life in Melbourne since she'd been gone, she cried out in nostalgia for "Safeway" [Sei-fu-u-ei] (now Woolworths) one of the two most numerous supermarket chains in Australia, something it might seem bizarre to feel nostalgia for, if you don't appreciate how different shopping in Japan is. In the same way, I suspect, I swoon for Mexico's distinctive surfaces, evident in the clip, though admittedly it can be hard to tell which scenes are shot in New York and which in Monterrey.

When I forced my parents to watch "Ya No Estoy Aqui" the thing I was most able to articulate, was just how Mexican people have the music in them. 

It's the difficult thing, because I don't want to discount the social issues Australian's face. I think the wealthy nations of the world, are in a genuine crisis, the crisis faced by greyhounds that catch the fake rabbit. Equally and oppositely, Mexico is a country with real problems, from the horrific (disappearances) to the practical (drinking water and potholes) and everything in-between. 

So having said that, I do believe Thomas Wolfe (or his publisher) was onto something with the Title "You Can Never Go Home Again" and it's true of Ulises, and it is true of me regarding Japan, Italy, Mexico and Australia, this is the plight of the vagabond that not even fans of the pinche hero's journey succeed in conveying.

The Big Lie: Consume Correct

So, it is important to point out that in all my time back in Australia, I have spent it almost exclusively in the affluent Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and my first impressions upon return were formed in the affluent Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. Even when I ventured out to say Ballarat, I am likely to be catching up with friends in Ballarat who voted Yes to an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament changes to the constitution, want Palestine Freed, only vote Labour if they can't vote Greens and put their pronouns in their email signature. 

Which is to say, I'm in an Australia that is a reflection of Australian media, but doesn't reflect Australia because it's that affluent demographic that is targeted for their affluence by the part of propaganda Chomsky identifies as "advertising" and this demographic largely moved in step with the advertising that surrounded me when I first got back.

This shouldn't be so surprising a thing to notice, particularly in Australia. Before I divulge what "this" is, let me give it the cultural context of the analogous discourse on "housing affordability", a subject that is nowadays sporting roughly a 30% chance of being the top story on broadsheet rag The Age/Sydney Morning Herald's landing page. (In a recent heated argument about Australian housing, my mum declined to take the bet that The Age's landing page would not feature a combination of stories about the "housing affordability crisis" and a story about how [insert demographic] purchases [insert suburb] townhouse for $3.74M! as though it is great news.)

Housing affordability, briefly, basically refers to the problem of houses being too expensive and one could be forgiven for thinking that an obvious solution would be for prices of houses to go down, that if housing were to cost less that may indeed make housing more affordable. Conversely, one could legitimately ask the question that if people are willing to keep buying houses for ever higher prices, is housing affordability a real issue? BUT the Overton window on "housing affordability" permits one solution and one solution only - increase the supply of housing, generally by cutting out red tape in the construction industry. 

And I shit you not, prior to writing the above two paragraphs, I just went to theage.com.au website and pulled this straight off the top of the homepage:

By the way, it is my understanding that "thousands of homes" will have 0 impact on rents. (In fact during the pandemic, Melbourne literally produced a natural experiment where the impact of adding 100k+ new dwellings, enough for over a quarter million people, had a short term impact of a 12% drop in rents, which disappeared within a year despite a lower population and growing housing supply.) Yet, we simply cannot entertain any policy response that isn't building more dwellings.

Furthermore, if there's any thing that there's a 100% chance of seeing on theage.com.au's website, it is this archetypal story in the "Property" section:

Right. Right? First of all, how is this newsworthy? With a quick substitution it reads "Young man nabs $5 bottle of Nudie Juice in weekly special." Furthermore, a quick fact-check of the headline says a 3 bedroom house in Kingsville's median price is under $1.2 million, in which case, how is this a "deal" apart from the literal sense that a transaction took place? The property section, I can't say definitively is propaganda, but it has several hallmarks of propaganda - 1. It's typically presenting "good news" 2. Whether the market is going up, or going down, the conclusion is the same - buy now. 3. The stories featured do not really need to be covered at all, compare for example, how the share market is covered for stock investors.

Anyway, enough digression, context established. The big lie, probably not unique to Australia, but apparent to me in an appalling way, is that we can consume our way back to Eden. I've had a month or two to acclimatise and stop noticing this shit, but upon landing these missives from fantasy land just screamed at me:

So, okay, you've probably heard terms like "Greenwashing" and "Pinkwashing" and so on, that's not the point I'm driving at. The big lie is more the Overton window again, which is to say, people want problems that make them anxious, addressed, but solutions that involve consuming less are off the table because our economies are generally based on production and we measure progress in terms of increased consumption. 

Much like the housing affordability discourse, it is likely for all the eyerolling about the various forms of corporate [insert colour]washing, consumers also do not want to stop consuming because the pursuit of material vanity is not all they know but all they can comfortably stomach. 

For one, it is likely that consumption is part of a near daily self-soothing or self-medicating for the aforementioned anxieties. For two, to stop consuming would probably break most Australian's social contract, they work hard for their money, they should be able to spend it on stuff, and if they can't buy a house they may as well pay $20 for some mashed avocado on a piece of toast while they consume "atmosphere" that reassures them that they worked hard and made good choices. For three: a large number of people in Australia, despite its wealth, are financially insecure and a drop in consumption causing a recession would likely spike their anxieties. 

I have a little more to say on this point. But the big thing, the big noticeable thing is just the constant suggestion in Australia, that there is an a) attainable, b) correct way to be was probably the singular most noticeable piece of culture shock. And it feels tense, uncomfortable. It's not a good culture to be in. It's very...

Puritan Culture

"I'd rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong." ~ John Maynard Keynes, liberator (briefly) of Economics.

So again, my general impression of people's complaints about corporate greenwashing, is that in some ways companies are cynically co-opting causes to move product. 

Having a marketing background, I can't really fault companies for doing this. It is in many ways, what companies are meant to do. They are meant to go out, and figure out what people want and find a profitable way to do that. Probably the bitterest pill of greenwashing, pinkwashing etc. is that these wealthy organizations have done their research and determined that what people want is cost-effective esteem. Which is to say, they will sooner wear a t-shirt or pair of sneakers, than change their behaviour in any way that involves real self sacrifice*.

*(I actually did my best to "Decolonize my bookshelf", and my impression is that most of my friends might label me, the most right-wing person they know. Yet, I have watched "The Hate U Give" whose $35m at the box office, would suggest that less than one in ten people actually have. and often my crime is that I actually consume the material that inform my opinions. Most of my affluent tertiary educated friends are educated enough to know that you aren't supposed to do this.)

When I was an angry young man, coincidently the golden-child in my family and Grandma's favourite, unaware of what my lifestyle was doing to me physically, emotionally and psychologically (I do not have the fortitude to endure what most Australians do, yet I do not qualify for the NDIS either, and rightly.) My favourite release was to yell at the contestants of "The Biggest Loser" making my housemates laugh as we watched blubbering fatties break down over having to climb a single flight of stairs...until about week 4 when the contestants were alarmingly in better shape than we were after 4 weeks of eating pizza and watching The Biggest Loser. 

The Biggest Loser had a very clear message - the path to weight loss is to stop eating shit and get exercise. Calories out > calories in. But The Biggest Loser was brought to us by sponsors that all had a very different message, often featuring popular past contestants themselves - don't change your lifestyle - lose weight through consumption of diet shakes and bread with fibre added and gimmicky machine you can store under your bed and use while you watch TV.

If Australians (and probably all WEIRD populations) could address climate change, or slave labour, by buying a coffee in a keep cup, or a trendy car, they would much rather do that than quit their jobs and reduce consumption Much like hit reality show "The Biggest Loser" is a show trying to boost the message that meaningful change requires hard work, but is brought to you by easy answers.

With this in mind, for me there is a big culture shock experienced by coming from a Roman Catholic Culture, that is an incoherent mess of a religion, which in Mexico has massive amounts of syncretism with indigenous and other local folk lore; to Australia which is a Puritan culture, a much more severe and unpleasant culture to live in.

By this I mean, it has the fatal conceit that there is an attainable correct way to be.  The reassuring idea, is that if we just say, read all the books in our local library, I'd know what that correct thing was, its not that any individual has all the pieces of the puzzle, it is the perception that other people do have it based on the confident baring they have.

This translates into an idea that it's okay to wrinkle up your nose and say "ugh" if someone orders the "wrong" thing for lunch. Affluent Australians are precisely wrong, veering towards being wrong with infinite precision. Australian culture further fosters the idea, (and it is somewhat true in a pluralistic ignorance kind of way...) that we are all being watched and people are noticing if we are incorrect, if we are bad puritans. 

Of course, I'm talking about affluent Australia, I recently joined a gym that leaves its TV monitors on captioned Channel 9. I'm not sure I know people who watch free to air TV if it isn't ABC news 24. Maybe a sports match like the AFL Grand Final, but I really don't know anyone who watches Channel 9. Channel 9 is more or less how I remember it, though they have a wheel chair athlete on the Australian Open commentary team. Sure, why not? I only have questions about Lleyton Hewitt being on the commentary team, given that I was under the impression he could barely form full sentences. 

It seems to me, that Channel 9 have embraced diversity and inclusion in the way it is generally sold. Like someone came to the producers and was like "hey there's this guy, para-Olympian plays tennis, loves tennis articulate and likeable, you know, how Lleyton Hewitt isn't, might be a good commentator for the Open?" and the producer has gone, "Sure." 

This whole navigation of inclusivity could of course be argued as the very enrichment process itself. But now lets flip it. The fact of my secondary school existence, was that I didn't know anyone wheelchair bound. There were certainly not enough disabled students in any year level to supply the number of student cliques in any given year level.

So when Just Jeans, or Cotton On, Country Road, or Scotch College, Wesley College, MLC, St Kevins, Xavier, Melbourne University, Monash or RMIT herd together a diverse group of people for their promotional photo shoots, they are promoting a lifestyle for many as unobtainable if not more so than much maligned body image ideals. Before you know it, George Costanza is having dinner with a pest exterminator to try and convince his colleague he's not a racist.

I've told the story before here on this blog, of a time I went to a gig and the frontman of a band publicly flagellated himself for not doing enough to get indigenous artists in their lineup. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he followed up on this shortcoming and investigated getting indigenous artists and groups onto future line ups. I think he would have struggled, not just because of a year or two of lockdowns, but because in Melbourne the indigenous population is somewhere in the vicinity of 2~3%, they are quite in the minority, and Melbourne has some 60+ live music gigs on a night, probably averaging 2.5 acts a venue, and yeah if this is the only guy trying to get indigenous acts onto his lineups, maybe he could help some inspiring but marginalized artists...

Except I'm not sure being indigenous is any obstacle to getting a gig at the Tote, or The Old Bar, or The Toff in Town, The Wesley Ann, Northcote Social Club, The Espy, The Retreat, The Grace Darling, The Rainbow, The Pinnacle, The Gasometer, Yah Yah's, The Curtin... I would struggle to name a venue of any renown, where an unsigned band consisting of white people could provide anything but incidental help in getting an Aboriginal artist a gig. This is the arts sector we are talking about. My feeling is, that like George Costanza, any indigenous artist or act would most likely be doing a small unsigned indie band a bigger favour by being on the lineup than the reverse.

This diversity of friends is hard, if not impossible for most members of society to obtain. An individual's best bet is likely during tertiary education. Looking at my alma mater's stats of roughly 90k students enrolled 60% are Australian (75% of which are likely white, or of European background, so 45% white european in total) 9% NE Asian (Korea, Japan etc.) then 25% are SE Asian (that have significant South and East Asian populations themselves), so Thai, Vietnamese, Malay, Singapore etc. 3% are South asian (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka etc.) I will have to Assume China is included among one of the prior three groups, though generally I feel China and India are often referred to as East and South Asia respectively.

Basically, if you wanted a statistically representative photo of RMIT enrolees, say 5 students sitting on a lawn laughing it up, it would have 4 white kids and an Asian. So if you are a 20 something that embraces the Puritan aspiration of DEI, this is realistically the best you can hope to obtain (on a university campus). This is not even true outside of a University campus. 

Taking Australia as a whole, 75% are white, not 75% of 60% and while I can't get a breakdown of ethnicities cross referenced by age brackets easily, I feel it is a safe assumption to say that ethnic diversity likely is greater for younger Australians, and lesser for older Australians. This means the Puritan ideal is exclusive of most boomers, unless making friends with your age care facility nurse counts, what I would guess is the most probable way to cross generational lines.

I'm probably trying to overdetermine the broad point, a Puritan culture is something I want no part of, and it's something I'm not used to after three years out of one. Culturally, Mexicans aren't hung up on trying to be correct. 

Way back in the 2000s, probably before flight of the concords came out, my girlfriend and I went to see Arj Barker who was a big deal here if not in the US and probably from the AUNZ comedy markets, why he ended up in flight of the concords. Anyway, he had a bit about how Australian's were always telling him to "take it easy" to "chill out" (en espanol "tomala con calma" one of my catch phrases in Mexico along with "soy blanco" and "lo siento") and he'd remark that as he was targeted with this advice as he was lying on a couch smoking pot. That almost infuriating insistance that people chill-out, chillax or take a chill pill, aspect of Australian culture is as demolished as non-heritage colonial brick share houses replaced with a cheap subdivided modern apartment block currently housing less tenants.

Mexicans, for the 110k+ and counting "forcibly disappeared" people (almost 1% of it's total population), it's femicides and rapes, it's ample amputees, it's homeless families, inadequate school places, child labour etc. etc. maintain that "chill-out dude" attitude generally. A chilled out bigot is actually easier and pleasanter to deal with than an uptight puritan.

When and where Mexico attempts to "go woke" it becomes very clear, very quickly how superficially aspirational this is, because as bad as things are and have been for indigenous Mexican ethnicities from the Yaqui up north to the Mayas down south, it would still be virtually impossible to claim that Mestizo Mexican Men enjoy mestizo male privilege when they are homeless, sometimes pants-less smoking meth and getting bullied by cops everywhere. Mexico bright as its prospects are, cannot afford the luxury of being woke when you have fucking drug cartels leaving bodies for page one of the newspaper every day.

The elites of Mexico, just don't have the context in which to claim fragility, perhaps a silver lining of more pronounced wealth inequality, so it becomes clear when a Mexican talks social justice, as in plainly transparent that they are trying to pull off that affluent je nais se quois of coastal United States. Something UK, Canada and Australia can plausibly deny with their established but eroding middle classes.

I invite you now, in an attempt to get this train back on track and to the terminal station, to consider quite literally the prospect of the words "Stay Woke" which I will assert "Woke" refers to a state of not being asleep. To stay awake is not good for anyone. It literally impairs brain function, decays mental health, it is not a sustainable way of being and we think in metaphors - there are reasons we "look up to people" and find people we meet "cold" or "warm" and "staying woke" is probably having similar metaphorical impacts on regular Jos, Joes and non-binary j0z as sleep deprivation does.

Consider, as an alternative to trying to keep everyone, everywhere, all the time awake, a proposal that was likely the very foundation of primate society - watches. Trusting others to keep watch while we get some sleep, and taking our turn where qualified to do so.

"Some people don't understand that sitting in your own house, alone in peace, eating snacks and minding your own business is priceless." ~ Tom Hardy, memequote, unsourced.

It was probably a slow boiled frog situation, but I think affluent Australia's cultural cringe and desire to move away from itself, its own self image has been a tragic success. Affluent Australia in becoming what it wanted to be, has lost what was good about being Australian, a very real embodiment of the Japanese philosophy expressed in Hagakure:

 "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly." Master lttei commented, "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously." ~ Hagakure.

Australia that really cares about the AFL is charming, whereas Australia that really cares about repairing historical inequity is crass. And last I heard, the number of professional indigenous AFL players was declining*, it could be because all the top indigenous prospects are now becoming doctors and lawyers instead, but I can't rule out that lifting the esteem and aesthetic of social justice may have attracted a bunch of narcissists wanting to game the causes; is proving the wisdom of the Hagakure (at least on that point).

*The tragedy of this situation may be, I don't know, that the AFL is currently facing a reckoning in the form of a class action lawsuit regarding the mistreatment of AFL's indigenous pioneers - it turns out heroes that may have inspired generations of future indigenous stars were having a terrible time at work. What is tragic, is that while I would expect the AFL to be a demographic whose social attitudes track somewhat behind the times (I mean tuning in to the Footy show in the 2000s was like seeing reruns of a show recorded in the 1950s), that it is a much better time in the 2020s to be an indigenous player than it was in the 1970s and 80s, yet the publicity of how truly awful it was in the 70s and 80s may be turning indigenous talent off playing AFL even though it is likely to only become a better and better work environment for indigenous athletes.

If I reflect upon words I said probably back in 2016, maybe 2017 regarding body image ideals post my 3 month stay in Italy, my position then was one that thought what I would then have referred to as "progressivism" was a mental health disaster - memes like trigger warnings and safe spaces, the patriarchy, white supremacy etc. (and this shit only hit mainstream news media in 2014 at the earliest) but I was agnostic as to whether the benefits would prove to outweigh the personal cost. 

8 years on, abetted by culture shock that agnosticism is hard to maintain, while I feel no need to revise my belief that what is now probably referred to as "woke" politics, are a mental health disaster. The data as I can access it, appears to suggest that being woke makes the individual miserable and anxious, whilst simultaneously being counterproductive to the causes it nominally is trying to address. 

So why then would I arrive in Australia in 2023 and feel like I'm swimming in a sea of Puritanical messaging whose adherents are both miserable and making things worse?

I feel it is a symptom of the hedonic treadmill. Being back in Australia, particularly the first few days running around Centennial park to work out the frustrations of being there/here, my economist nerves were tickled and I began to question the whole project of enriching the middle class. The Eastern suburbs of Sydney are quite confronting in this regard.

Bringing me to:

Fighting to Death over Macaroons/Fucking Salted Caramel - Rich with N.V. (No Vision)

"Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. ... And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!” ~ Dostoyevski predicts the 21st century Australian social contract.

Question: do you think anyone, ever, anywhere, tasted caramel (essentially melted sugar and cream) and remarked "this is under seasoned."

Now, salted caramel is not a direct aspect of the culture shock I have experienced. It got under my skin when it appeared prior to my departure to Mexico 5 years ago. It is also, not a unique phenomena. 

Just as salted caramel supposedly solved the problem of not-delicious-enough-caramel, angus beef solved the problem of not-delicious-enough-hamburgers, unless Grill'd solved the problem of not-delicious-enough-hamburgers, like Crust solved all the chronic problems we had as a society with not-delicious-enough-pizza, and Gami solved the problem of KFC-being-not-delicious-enough. 

Maybe truffle-oil is your thing, or vanilla-beans solving the problem of vanilla-extract. Maybe it was the word "umami" solving the problem of "MSG" being esteemed-Asiatic as opposed to reviled Asiatic, or maybe it goes all the way back to bottled water. Salted caramel I find the easiest to explain via my senses because I'm so confident that nobody, ever, anywhere, tasted caramel and complained it wasn't delicious enough. I'm confident in fact that caramel's main criticism would be "it's too rich" and perhaps an apt description of "The Lucky Country" also.

Salted caramel is a solution to an imaginary problem. You can buy products with salted caramel as their main selling point in the local supermarket, assured that our society has solved a fake problem, in lieu of solving the real problem like the homeless guy camped out the front of your local supermarket.

What salted caramel says to me is: that if existential angst persists, double your dose.

I saw a manifestation of salted-caramel in Mexico and commented on it to my partner of the time. I joined two gyms in my time there, as I lived in two places. The first gym I joined was unisex, Mexico is already spoilt for male gaze, Mexican gyms can be too rich, even for a pervert like me. This young lady joined and she was just hopeless. Absolutely no mechanical aptitude for gym equipment with literal diagrams depicting "do this." often condescendingly demonstrating that after you lift your arms or legs or whatever, you should lower them back down. Furthermore, the gym was filled with people demonstrating constantly how to use the equipment. This young lady needed a personal trainer to help her figure out the leg press, because "pressing her legs" didn't occur to her. 

Suffice to say, she made two impressions. The first was that she was beautiful, probably in the top 10 percent of tapatias, which is like being a model amongst a general population of models. The second impression was that whatever was holding her back in life, was probably emotional/psychological and she wasn't going to find the answer by growing her booty. Yet, all she wanted to work on, was something that was likely already working for her. There was basically no executive at her work, or no wealthy bachelor in the city that was going to say "when you were merely stylish and beautiful and vapid, I didn't think you were the right fit for us, but now that your booty is 20% bigger, and you're still stylish and vapid we decided you were it."

Now judgement being what it is, I could have made an analogy out of me, because I'm good at planning and strategizing and my real weakness is sales, I spend most of my energy on planning and strategizing and avoid working on selling myself like the plague. So... human after all.

I mean, I doubt Jesus was even the first thinker to assert that the pursuit of riches is hollow, can you name a philosopher that found wisdom consists of trying to be as rich as possible? Crato the Elder maybe if his "how to profit from slave labour" guide can be considered philosophy. But almost nobody who tried to figure out how to live a good life, from Buddha to the Greeks, the Lakota to the Incas ever seem to conclude hedonism. 

I found a name I'd never heard before, that of Aristippus who viewed pleasure as the highest good, and perhaps founded ethical hedonism. However, his most famous phrase "I possess, I am not possessed" is not the culture of contemporary Australia. Your grandma or someone similarly annoying probably said at some point "own your possessions don't let them own you." as an anti-hedonistic piece of moral instruction. So I have to plead ignorance as to the full breadth and depth of Aristippus' views, his schools and later thinkers on ethical hedonism like Bentham, I am fairly confident that they neither advocated nor envisioned a world where people would add sea salt* to caramel to try to get people to consume more of it for the benefit of society.

*(any day now someone will add Himalayan salt to caramel, and Australians will buy it.)

And being an individual, assigned to a demographic that has on my own behalf chosen to politely listen and silently read rants about the oppressive nature of life under the patriarchy - one of my wishes contingent on magic existing, or some coincidental psychedelic trip, would be to give the gift of the emptiness of existence on the top. Margaret Atwood seems to get it, when she portrays the ruling class of Gilead the dystopian theocracy of the Handmaid's Tale as not believing in the utopian ideals that founded the new state, they are simply and cynically interested in power. On the other end of the spectrum Jordan Peterson seems to get it, when he asserts the more pertinent question than "why are men overrepresented amongst CEOs?" as "why the bloody hell* would anybody want to be CEO?"

*(god how I wish JP would just swear instead of these undignified Canadian substitutes.) 

The observation that "money doesn't buy you happiness" is absolutely, positively, nothing new. It's just seemingly eternally ignored. Again, my time in Italy had me questioning the discourse around women's bodies, where the lifestyle means for women, particularly in what in an Australian context I'd call the vulnerable years of 13-35 (I should say, maybe peak vulnerable years) are not bombarded by media with unobtainable body ideal messaging, because by my estimates 1:2 young Italian women are more attractive than most (predominantly US and UK) fashion models.

On top of this, and Australian travel habits, and travel journalism suggests, that many Australian's wish they lived in Italy. Life in Italy for many people, just seems better for many Australians, perhaps preferring the pace, the community, the climate, the cuisine, the businesses, the fashion, the architecture whatever. I guess all I need is to assert, is that Australians don't find Italy such a desirable travel destination purely because of the climate, the geography, the topography etc, things that Australia could not imitate if it tried.

Yet as much as many love, or would love to go to Italy for 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months, a year etc. nobody seems to suggest that maybe Australia should try and imitate the economic policy of Italy. Nobody would argue for more unemployment, less construction, more pensioners, lower economic growth and more government turnover with increasingly convoluted coalitions between fascists, communists, environmentalists and stand up comedians who formed a political party as satire. 

Similarly, while life was definitely more pleasant for me in Mexico, and much of this could be attributed to a mild climate year round meaning there were less than 80 hours a year I could justify wearing an outer layer, and you know, I more or less didn't have a job, so even though I lived on a meagre budget for those years, I also, did not have the displeasure of a job, we had an 80 year old friend that lived in our local park, who had foregone housing and a government age pension in favour of washing cars and sweeping sidewalks for local residents, and salvaging junk and selling it most likely in my estimation to maintain an addiction to smoking crystal meth, a habit he'd have to kick to avoid being evicted from public housing.

And you see, I suspect he is generally happier, day to day, than many quite wealthy, even obscenely wealthy Australians. 

Obviously, the comparison is unfair, I cherry pick a Mexican I cherry pick an Australian or US citizen, Trump is probably miserable despite mansion residences and private jets, Gina Rinehart too, you know both of these billionaires are probably quite stressed not because they are billionaire's per se, but because they have ongoing legal battles and deep rooted psychological issues exacerbated rather than relieved by their wealth or perception thereof.

I was in Mexico long enough to have scales drop from my eyes and as good as day to day life is in Mexico, when it gets bleak, it can get bleak real fast. Living a simple life with simple pleasures in a park is all fine and dandy until the day the police turn up and move you along, or until the day you get into an argument with your dealer or customer who turns violent. 

When Mexican life gets real, it gets really real. There are things a modernizing Mexico should fix for its citizens, they should start with the 110k+ disappeared citizens who in most cases will likely not be found until a satellite can find human remains buried in a desert or under a construction development from space, but you know, they should try and stop another 1% of the population from disappearing. They should probably do something about workplace safety and traffic regulation so you aren't guaranteed to see an amputee any time you leave the house. They could get their healthcare humming, so preventable diseases are prevented and like denghi fever and rabies are eliminated. 

Basically Mexico deserves for human dignity's sake, to have food clothing and shelter for all its people or near enough to, like Australia. Access to healthcare and education and an end to exploitation of child labour. 

Having returned to Australia though, I genuinely question whether there is a point to going beyond that.

I mean, Australia like many wealthy industrialized democracies had that post war to 70s period where the middle class grew as a proportion of the population, the working class shrank, home ownership went up and real wages (adjusted for inflation) increased. Then from roughly 76 onwards like other wealthy industrialized democracies, some metrics started going backwards - real wages stagnated, home ownership started falling, unemployment rose and wealth inequality increased.

From '76 or whenever onwards, Mexico should not run the Australian program. I would probably concur that since the Keating Government, Australia can be characterized as having no visionary leadership. If anything Liberal or Labor the vision has been "stable macroeconomic growth driven by mineral and commodity exports" and hence we have ended up with salted caramel, sushi in the supermarket, fucking macaroon pick-and-mix in the supermarket, but there's nothing Australia is or does, even less so than the past, apart from wanting to be someone, seemingly anybody, else. 

I believe it was in documentary "The Corporation" but I couldn't find it, but somebody in one of those Bush-Era late-capitalist documentaries said something like (me paraphrasing):

The whole thing is based on a truth and a lie. The truth is, that if you take a person who is naked, cold, hungry and give them food, clothing and shelter, they will go from very miserable to very happy, very quickly. The lie is, that if going from having nothing to having something makes you happy, then having twice as much stuff will make you twice as happy.

I have no doubt, that I can find Mexicans caught up in that lie. Australia has 44 billionaires (USD I assume) and Mexico has 12. I'm sure one of them has tried a dessert that had gold leaf in it, and found the experience hollow and sad and wondered if anything could cure their malaise.

All of this is to say, that I suspect Australia has a tiger-by-the-tail economy, that's why the people who solved the problem of not-delicious-enough-caramel which in turn solved the problem of not-delicious-enough-ice-cream were probably well compensated for allowing the top 20% of Australian Household Income members another hypothesis that they felt dissatisfied because they didn't have everything they need in life.

I feel it was asserted at least 20 years ago, that the Australian home was the greatest source of Australian wealth, which is to say Australian house prices are the major determinant of Australians net worth. When I say tiger-by-the-tail economy, what I mean is that if nobody turns up to tomorrow's auctions, and people just stop buying houses, the house prices won't stagnate sitting at a median price of $1.4 million in Melbourne or whatever, they will crash. 

In that sense, salted caramel is a real solution to a real problem, I am somewhat incensed that caramel has been made more delicious, but there are still homeless people in Melbourne a growing number probably, but it is for this reason that I am not carrying on like an activist. We need to keep this economy moving because if it stops, the wheels will fall off. Which is a terrible place to be. A Sandra Bullock keeping the bus above 50 miles per hour economy. 

I just wish we didn't have to lie about. I have a job which is solving money problems for me. It's not a job that many are passionate about, I'm happy to be professional, but what gets stressful is when people act like I should be passionate about it and working on my jump shot so to speak with Mamba mentality...holy shit the Western Conference Finals, I haven't checked the scores in hours...Mavs win!

An Unbearable Softness Of Being

You may have heard Australia described as "the lucky country" which to my understanding, was first intended as a pejorative. Returning here, it feels very much like a gated community. One of George Orwell's lesser known quotes is:

 "Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf." ~ George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism (1945)

He also commented on Rudyard Kipling's "Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep." with:

 "He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them."

Which likely led to the misattributed quote where he was paraphrased by  Richard Grenier as recently as 1993 "As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

As it pertains to Australia, having spent a long time out of Australia, coming back to it, is like entering a gated community. I'm sure the Australian coast guard, Navy etc do an admirable job of mostly peaceably protecting the nations boarders, but the big factor being that Australia is a long-haul flight from India, and every other major continent, with our fellow residents of the southern hemisphere being South America and Africa. Our most recent existential threat in terms of needing uniformed men to guard us in our sleep, was Imperial Japan in World War II.

The Chauvinism of Xi means we have pacific neighbours in Taiwan and Hong Kong SAZ to be canary in the coal mine for the nation that is most probable to be of serious consequence to national security and they happen to be Australia's major trade partner.

Then there's the fact that Australia's economy involves growing things for export and digging shit out of the ground for export. I am genuinely unclear as to all the shit that happens in Australian cities, needs to happen at all.

Australian's are very wealthy without having to manufacture superconductors, create innovative hardware-software platforms, culture (Furiosa is not looking good at the box office) etc.

It is just a fact that while Australia convenes a body to try and end violence against women by 2050! Meanwhile in Mexico about 60 people go missing everyday. Comparing apples-with-apples is hard, in Australia 38,000 missing person reports are filed each year. The big difference being all but 2,600 are located within a short period of time, or 7 per day. Mexico's population is about 5 times the size of Australia, it's daily missing people are 9 times that of Australia.

My interpretation, and why I keep referring to Mexico's disappeared people, is that Mexico's missing persons are a more accurate indicator of Mexico's homicide rate. Australia's homicide rate contemporarily is 0.87 deaths per 100,000 per year, the US homicide rate is 7.8 homicides per 100,000 per year and Mexico's is 25 per 100,000 in 2023 down from 28 in 2022 (meaning in one year they saw a drop greater than all of Australia's homicides in a one year period, and Australia is only trying to eradicate by 2050 the proportion that is women killed by men 60/247 or 69/247 including women killed by women) however, the big thing and I've laboured this point too much, is my impression that most of Mexico's missing persons are actually unsolved homicides and I just don't know at what point Mexico presume someone dead and if they then roll that into their homicide statistics, but they are probably regardless quite understated.

Where I lived in Mexico, I would describe as safe. What happened to Ballarat mother Samantha Murphy earlier this year in Australia was always happening in Guadalajara, just instead of massive news coverage and huge official investigations coupled with massive community volunteer efforts, there are murals that highlight one particular case among hundreds of other missing person posters.

So I get back to Bondi Junction and I feel somewhat like Tom Hanks from Castaway:

I mean I'd gone from living in a nice neighbourhood of Guadalajara, with my former partner and our pets living in another nice neighbourhood of Guadalajara, with one of those charming aspects of Mexican life, my life of the past 4 years being a major freight railway intersecting the short walk between abodes where there's a community of homeless people living in makeshift housing that hop those trains and try to pull anything of value out of it. 

Mexico is really nice, and Australia has its homeless, its drug addicts in every affluent suburb, you can find people sleeping rough in Australia and out the front of a supermarket holding cardboard signs. You can even see what we might call homeless communities in Australia.

What sticks out though, is simply the shear size of the communities in Australia that can debate Panini's and Lattes as if these things are in any way shape or form important.

It was really hard to cope with, and my main means of coping with just how on the nose Australian affluence is, was running around Sydney's beautiful Centennial park and up and down Anzac Parade by the SCG and Allianz Stadium working on characters of the residents of Bondi. I'll try now, to put it into words:

"Don't go to Positano's their coffee is soooooooooo baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. You have to try the lattes at Alegrino's their coffee is sooooooooo goooooooooooooood." 

It's not sidesplitting, ground breaking stuff. If anything it's pretty weak. I needed it to survive psychologically being in Bondi after three years in Mexico. And look, I'm privileged, there are so many, so very many Mexicans that if transplanted into Bondi would think they had died and gone to heaven with the Virgin of Guadalupe, Santa Muerte and El Nino Jesus Christo, right up until they saw the price of tortillas and then would go and drown in the undertow of the relatively pedestrian Bondi Beach after this end of the Pacific put them into hypothermic shock.

But the point is, they would love it I'm sure almost as much as I hate it. I'm certain Mexican immigrants to Bondi become the same horrible athleisure wearing latte sipping ***** **** ****** ***ts that Australians of European descent become living in Bondi. I'm sure if I saw Lance "Buddy" Franklin at Bondi Junction, I'd be somewhat disillusioned.

And I've alluded to the other thing that was happening to me, in my most severe case of culture shock I've ever experienced. My internal monologue used the word ***** over 1,000 times a day. It was constant: look at this *****, out of my way *****, hurry up *****, do you know what a ***** you are? I swear if I see another *****... and so on, incessantly for like the first three months until the cognitive behaviour slowly went extinct.

I felt like Genghis Kahn forcibly retired and having to live as a civilian. I literally had impulses, physical impulses to simply push people out of my way. Like place both hands on them, and toss them aside.

Again, I feel this is ordinary human psychology when you switch social environments to one in which people are taking things for granted. I also had intrusive thoughts when I, as a Melbourne veteran cyclist went to Roppongi Hills in Tokyo and would see $3,000 AUD road bikes, carbon frames and forks and everything locked up to ground floor balconies with bike locks I'm fairly confident I could have ripped apart with my bare hands. Unbidden I would think that I should steal an expensive road bike to teach the naive Japanese a lesson and had to remind myself that I'm not a theif, I wouldn't steal a bike if it had no lock at all.

But I didn't, and I haven't shoved anyone out of my way since I got back from Mexico, I didn't shove anyone out of my way in Mexico, nor was I shoved by anyone in Mexico. It just feels like shoving a Mexican is a very very bad idea, whereas shoving an affluent Australian feels like a victimless crime.

It's about time that I transitioned my culture shock from Affluent eastern Sydney to Affluent eastern Melbourne where I managed in October of last year to catch the tail end of 2023s Winter fashion:

So obviously an exaggeration, but what I feel is important to convey, is how, for many Australians you may not have noticed that you are now literally wrapped in bubble wrap and wearing cushions/pillows on your feet.

Okay, I assume you didn't notice it happening but here we are. Like evolution's island effect it is understandable that Australia, particularly affluent Australia has undergone some kind of insular-dwarfism.

Mexico's homicide rate is some 5 or six times that of the United States and hundreds of times higher than Australia even with school kids stabbing each other over Pokemon or pronouns or some shit. Mexico doesn't feel dangerous though when you are there, because in Mexico you don't become a dodo, you are aware the greatest danger isn't sore feet or even cholesterol. Most mexican's aren't fucking hardened sicarios with bullet cases for fals teeth and neck tattoos. Most of the Mexican's with neck and facial tattoos aren't cartel gangbangers, they are something much scarier - insufferable hipsters, but it is sufficient to be a mostly flightless chicken in a world with rats and foxes, than a dodo on an island waiting for the Dutch to discover it.

That Australia is safer, cleaner, more accessible etc. is not in dispute, but I would guess there's a sociological debate that goes with antifragility, acclimatization, where maybe I have a cartoonish impression derived from movies, but I can imagine soldiers returning from Afghanistan and struggling with "why did I want to give those kids in villages that might grow up to try and kill me with IEDs chewing gum and high fives, and I come back home and want to kill my own children for playing Nintendo Switch at the dinner table?"

The video above, I almost can't take, but it should be confronting for Economists, Psychologists, Poly-sci doctrates etc. 

This kid receives what for me, is the equivalent of forgetting my nephew/nieces birthday and quickly ducking out to a service station to get them gifts. It's a box, mostly filled with baloons, a packet of chips and a 500~600ml bottle of coke, then a bunch of toy story masks, stickers, some colour pencils, a novelty pencil and the kid has the secret sauce - the kid is thrilled. It is the best birthday in his life. 

If you are like "but Nintendo Switch, Legos, Bicycles, kid spa treatments are all way better than a box of stationary and $7 AUD worth of snacks." You are probably a rarefied idiot. We've known for years that grilled cheese sandwiches and a tennis ball to hit against the wall are sufficient to bring us joy. The question is why can't we act on this knowledge.

Everyone who watches the video understands that the kid is right. He's having a really great birthday, and that something has gone wrong with everyone else. Even Mexicans watch that video and understand that their own kids don't need the hired jumping castle and the battery powered unicorn/micro SUV to drive around their local park to be happy.

An independent student could have used the house I lived in for my last six months as a shooting location for a prison scene. Not because my apartment was horrible, but just because most Mexican residents have a bunch of barred gates and buzzers and security doors to pass through. I've held them open for people I don't recognize and people have done so for me, although as one of less than 1% of the population with blonde hair, everyone probably does recognize me, I'm the guero in the neighborhood, sometime known as guerito and sometime known as gueron. 

And like, when you go to leave the safety behind those gates maybe to hit up a taco or hot dog stand when you are feeling peckish at 11.30pm, you don't tie a mirror to a stick and look both ways before you exit the security gates. 

After 6+ months back, I still feel strange at how physically/materially insecure Australian households are. The other day AustraliaPost delivered a package to the wrong address and my good deed for the day was walking it up to the proper address. (One of these houses with a buzzer on their front gate that likely has a camera and intercom that connects to their phone ap.) The first time I tried there was no answer, but their front gate was wide open, I could have walked in and just dumped it on their front doorstep. I didn't and tried again later and they just told me to open the gate and leave it on the front doorstep. And that house had been broken into in the last year in order to steal a fob to steal their car. 

Like for all the seeming security concern of having a smart doorbuzzer on the front gate, they don't lock that gate.

My understanding is that in Australia, bullying has gotten worse, not better much as I find it hard to imagine kids still doing swirlies and shit. I think bullying of the 80s and bullying of the 20s are perhaps two very different things, oranges and apples and it might be worse because in the 70s if someone scarred your face with a pocket knife your parents might say "what are you a **************ess?" and now if someone sad reacts to a social media post your parents get you diagnosed with PTSD, we used to be chickens, now we're dodos adapted to the dangers of our environment. 

Australian commercials though are like the underappreciated 1990's movie Pleasantville where the gated community of Australia just doesn't believe suffering is a thing, and they portray as an ideal a world in which all the cool people, the mean people, the bullies, the charismatic, the people average people used to hate having to compete for resources against - are simply gone now.

Maybe, maybe that is in some way the ideal. We evolve into the soft squishy things from Wal-E and that's what we are supposed to want.

I would exit my apartment, or be on the roof hanging laundry and the little girl across the way would yell "Hello friend!" out her window regularly, where as far as I could tell this little girl only 5 or 6 didn't have a bedroom, her bed was the couch in the living room by the window. We'd chat about dogs and cats, and she'd invite me to her birthday. She wasn't scared of the scary world full of murderers outside those gates, because the world outside those gates wasn't full of murderers. 

Mexico is better described as being full of toys and candy and food and music and yes, the occasional murderer. It's that hint of uncertainty that demands we actually engage with life somehow, and for some reason when you take it away, it isn't the softness of Australians that is the problem (my dogs Usma and Doki were both incredibly soft and they were Mexican dogs, they had to interact with actual junkyard dogs on their daily walks, and Doki's macho dance is seriously the least masculine thing you have ever seen), it's that that softness manifests in a way in which it is unbearable. Like please dude, tell me more about your ADHD.

Conclusion: Polite Lies

You have feelings, I have feelings. You may not believe me, but I sympathize with you when you hate someone who doesn't have anything nice to say about Australia. I don't find it particularly enjoyable to catch up with friends who then just talk about how they hate it here in Melbourne and how everything is fucked.

I'm not even that pessimistic, in fact, if I was that pessimistic I probably would have voted "Yes" to the last referendum figuring there will not be another chance. I think what critical and judgemental people like me don't do a good job of selling to others, is that the point of the criticism and judgement is in figuring things out and that this is often for me at least a font of optimism that things get figured out, people sell others on the solutions, problems get resolved and progress is made.

What I guess is hard, is the actual process of discussing ambivalence, about how we can feel both ways about something. This actually exacted a toll on my relationship when I returned to Mexico to begin my three years away. I arrived both sad and happy, both relieved and exhausted. 

I'd been through a harrowing ordeal in not just the Covid lockdowns, but having to experience the worst of human nature via facebook during the lockdowns. People stuck in the equivalent of a 5 month long long haul flight, making a tough situation worse by trying to make it better.

I'd had to leave Melbourne pretty much as soon as it reopened, meaning I missed the opportunity to catch up with so many people I already hadn't seen for 2 years by that point. I left my whole family behind, and now I was with a new family.

I was glad to be back in Mexico and sad to be gone from Australia. Ambivalence.

The thing is, I didn't need to "get over" anything I was glad about. I had a great Christmas with my partner, and we went out dating again. The food was amazing, I met my buddy Doki who adopted me super quick. We went on daytrips and excursions, I settled in, got new shoes, started running, cooked meals every day for someone I loved.

And I was also sad and tired. That part needed getting over, because it made it virtually impossible to be excited.

It's kind of the same coming back. I was fortunate that my sister knows me super well, but I think it even hurts her, that you know, I'm not just glad to be back but also sad to be back, and it was super helpful that I don't have to fucking pretend with her, that I'm not sad. And that much as I like her dog Sophie, and Sophie likes me, it makes me sad that she isn't my dogs.

Also, if anything, I kind of fucked myself by functioning so well. By rights, given my circumstances I could just now have ended 6 months of barely getting out of my bed with depression, to just now sign up for centerlink payments. There are many days where I feel I could actually do with the bigotry of low expectations, instead of having to explain why I'm not the CEO of Bluescope Steel yet.

I think between you and me, pluralistic ignorance is our common ground. If we could just admit that the first world problems are real. That there's a reason we can relate to this and this and probably more to the point, that Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" had some prophetic value, even Marx. Now I will personally fight you if you suggest the answer is decalcifying our pituitary glands or pursuing a utopia. 

What I think would do wonders is if we could relax the whole demeritocracy such that we can admit that maybe our job is bullshit and doesn't need to exist, without feeling an existential threat like they'll make you walk the plank tomorrow.

This is how I treat myself, like I know that I eat a lot of crap and it is crap, and I plan on stopping but probably not today and not tomorrow but sometime between now and the Melbourne marathon because I just want to deal with as much as I can handle at any given time and eating some sugar bombs helps me survive the more stressful stuff going on right now.

I don't need anyone to be like "yeah tohm, I'm going to sell my house and join your under the bridge community." I don't expect Australian's to just jump off the treadmill that really is the only viable lifestyle option you were ever presented with. But if we could just share honest opinions about the treadmill life, I think we could both relax even if we disagree.

I don't want to be a miserable ***** but sometimes the way out is through. And believe me, I also entertain alternate strategies like saying "fuck it" and getting on with it. My experiences on Job Seeker were that it was motivating to get off Job Seeker by it being such a ****** ***** ***** poorly designed ****** of ***** to deal with. 

Things are difficult, for everyone as far as I can tell. Let's relax and just figure it out.

And now, Hendrix. Because Hendrix is awesome:

(Last Word-less):