Peeping Tom: Melbourne

Last night I went to see Patton on stage, I got a fairly premo viewing position, though one has to question why a venue has such an obvious point of conflict as a raised step for people to stand on in the front row. Go ahead block every single persons view behind it.
After the support act a guy moved and I got up on the platform, I didn't feel too bad about it because the guy who's place I took would have easily clocked in at over 6 foot. Why he felt it necessary to get front and centre is beyond me.

But the performance itself was faultless. Infact I have to say I was there more for Mike Patton than Peeping Tom, though I doubt I'd go to Mr.Bungle or Tomahawk. By all means experiment you artists out there, but I'm not going to buy an album that requires effort for me to understand and appreciate versus one that has a more easily accecable payload for me.
But yeah I highly recommend Peeping Tom, its sort of like my dream company, just bringing talented creative people from different fields together eg. beatboxing, synth players, punk three pieces, violinists, soul singers, dj's and ending up with something that mos def isn't Linkin Park.
I mean they showcased each component periodically for a solo whilst the band took a break to hang a slash or drink coffee or whatever was necessary and I was impressed. It was similar to coming across a street busker actually doing something interesting.

But man, as much as I love seeing a band live, I hate meeting other fans, I really hate it. I feel no solidarity or loyalty to fellow fans at all. I always look around to see what the other fans say about me. Apparantly I'm a single male loser.
I mean I've got a blog so there's no denying the loser part.
But here was just a few observations I made from my limited experiences with the fans in my vicinity:

1. Don't wear a backpack - are you fucking kidding me, are you out of your fucking mind. Why the fuck do you bring a backpack to a concert and furthermore buy GA tickets and go crowd to the front. You space taking mother fucker. Haven't you been to one of these before? Have you tripped into the big smoke from werribee for the day and packed a cut lunch and some pj's so you can stay at your friends house? fucking think these things through. I felt I was overdoing it wearing a jacket, but I couldn't be fucked waiting for a train in just a tshirt and I felt compromised. A backpack? why the fuck did security let that in.

2. To a lesser extent, handbags. I've been to a few concerts now and stood in enough lines to know that girls, bringing a handbag is just a dumb fucking idea. You don't want to pick up at these concerts. The band member of interest is not going to spot you and seriously invite you to some awesome after party. no need to accessorise. Just wear shoes jeans, if your purse is bulky and full of shit, just stuff some notes into your bra.

3. Upbeat denial - whilst it is inspiring that you press on with your life, really and I've said it before, you are not shocking anyone. If you aren't/weren't in the beautiful group in highschool, there's no need to let it dominate your life. I wasn't and believe me, dressing up as a goth/skank/mcslurry isn't challanging their philosophies and life values. What it is doing is macking me pray some sweaty drunk guy grinds up against me instead of your pimply breasts on your overweight frame into a canterleavered corset and your assimetrical fringe red hair dyed black with liberal foundation trowelled over your freckled complexion.
I wasn't looking my best, I have an undercut for fuck's sake, I didn't shave and grow ginger facial hair but I don't feel the need to shove the fact in everyone's faces and try to redefine sexy as quite offputting.
I mean your talking about Mike patton on stage, a guy that has 24 hours in a day to incorporate image into his performance, with beautiful back up singers/beatboxers. It's a humbling experience for all. So we're not exceptionally attractive fans, doesn't mean we have to do our darndest to be exceptionally unattractive fans. Rebel all you want but just don't go trying to solicit an acknowledgement in a crowd full of nerds.

4. Nerds. NERDS!! I totally, totally relate to you guys. You've invested hours into a band, both listening and researching useless facts like inspirations, side projects and traumatic childhood events suffered by the artist. Maybe your knowledge has even allowed you to contribute to a wikipedia article on the band.
I used to know how every alternative band in the California Bay area knew one another. I probably clocked up over 400 hours of listening to Aenima alone. I read up all the political campaigns RATM supported, I even read 'Our Word is Our Weapon' by subcommandant Marcos.
Fact is almost everyone that would shell out $70 to see Peeping Tom, is probably a nerd. They didn't get that much airplay, publicity here in Oz so you know it figures most people came through on the basis of being a FNM, Mr Bungle or Tomahawk fan which 10 years after Ashes to Ashes means we're talking dedication to recall.
But some nerds, myself included feel secure enough to keep our mouths shut. Yes Mike Patton/Tool/RATM/Audioslave/Deftones/Slayer whatever is important to you. But everyone else probably has that same significant feeling. So as disheartening as it is to see other people put in the listening hours and arrive at seemingly very different conclusions than you. Don't fucking make everyone around you experience a cringefest and feel bad about themselves by trying to establish your superior knowledge.
"You have't heard of Lovage, you're not a real fan, you don't know the half of Mike Patton's talent then"
"I think creatively I'm in the same place as Mike Patton about know"
And wearing a shirt that says 'Mike Patton is God'. Yeah a play on the old Eric Clapton graffiti, and Mike being a bit cooler and photogenic than old Slowhand there is some basis for comparison there. Except that Eric Clapton dates to a time where there was no 'underground' and 'mainstream' really and that 'Eric Clapton is God' was real common graffiti throughout London and New York, heaps of people wore these shirts it was an institution. But the difference as I see it is that you made your own. And you are wearing a backback.
As a comparison to God (mind you if I had devout followers like George Bush, I would use my omnipotence to kill myself) it's not really fair, because if you, you backpack wearing nerd populate my devout fundamentalist base, I feel bad. I think if anyone could pick a god to be it would be Bachus, for the wine drinking orgies with nubile grecian priestesses and athletes of old olympia.
But as I said and judging myself by the Eric Clapton paragraph, the fact I got the reference and provided an analysis for it on my blog makes a good case that I am a nerd, I kept my mouth shut the whole concert with the exception of when Mike was asking the crowd to yell out 'Ohhh' or something for the songs.
Because I was there to see the band, not make friends with fans and feel, no longer alone, or worse, try and establish my rank in a heirarchy of people that due to the limited supply of tickets for any show, are never again going to congregate in one place.

5. That cunt who was spitting at Patton. If it's inevitable that at any concert like that there's going to be people spitting at the band, throwing shit at the band, how come you were the only one. I mean you probably lined up before the doors even opened and parked your arse dead centre front row against the barrier. Stood there for 4 hours through the support band and the sound check, to what enjoy the performance in your own individual way, by your own definition of enjoyment or entertain fantasies that you, you alone are different (not such a fantasy, but different not in the way you think) I was behind this cunt and I have to say, I had a great view, great experience of the band but the sound wasn't actually that great.
but this guy, first during the sound check pulls out his heavy digital camera and goes through about 50 shots of Patton doing an instore at JB Hifi. Which is to say, wearing a hat and sitting in a chair.
Then what does this posse do with their primo position? For the first three 4 songs they just take photos, almost constantly. What do photo's do? say you were there. These people weren't dancing, just taking photos, they probably blew a quarter of the set just muscling people who were there to see the band enjoy the performance so they could take some still shots of the performance to show they're baby bonus kids in the morning.
Then when the dude does put away his camera, he just starts hocking loogies at Mike. to be honest it's the first time I've been that close to a stage to actually be aware it goes on. I'd also read of Mike encouraging fans to spit in his mouth before, I thought it may actually be something that you do at a Tomahawk or Mr Bungle concert. Sort of like yelling 'Primus Sucks' or throwing Mentos at the Foo fighters. But the guy just kept doing it and doing it and didn't fucking stop. And eventually patton noticed and started getting angry.
And it clicked A) this guy was the only one doing it B) this guy was a dick.
I have to say, to some extent I enjoyed the fact that Mike just kept on, worked the crowd and the music was fucking something else, it made me realise just how mediocre the Australian Artists getting signed/winning Australian Idol really are.
My musical knowledge and experience isn't actualy sufficient to appreciate what goes into making music until I see it live.
But this guy? what do you do, it probably would have been easy to pick him up and shove him over the barrier so security take him out of the way but if he swings back you're both getting chucked out of the concert. So you just sort of have to passively take it.
And I guess ironically I felt as I stood in this situation that I could relate to Patton in this particular instant, as he called the guy 'Shirley fucking faggot' or something, hocked back at him (which may have been the sad fantasy the guy was hoping for) and got one of his backing singers to spit at him. Except Mike's A) probably been through this a million fucking times B) liable to be sued if he tries to drop the cunt. Whereas I was just concerned about losing my view/missing the rest of the concert.
So if the question is 'Why did you bother coming?' the answer is because in his own head, and in truth reality he is a fan. the real question is 'What the fuck is wrong with your fucking brain, you fucking retard, you want to get your kicks spitting on a guy you respect so much, you dumbass zone 3 unemployed, Off Ya Tree shoppping motherfuck?'
Because I'm forced into my cowardly passive aggressive state this dude really got to me. Mike did stick out his tongue and encourage the guy to try and spit in his mouth, which I had previously thought was the performance artist side of the deal, but when you see it up close it happens when he's really pissed.

6. Brawling Bitches - If you weigh more than two nerds put together and your female and you are up the front where people barely have standing space, don't start dancing, you will elbow someone in the head and then if a fight starts you gracelessesly fall on your arse and security removes you (if they can)

That was just 6 and I guess it just says on a simple level that I hate fans of anything, and hate being a part of a fan base, but it happens by default when you go to see a fucking band.
But at other concerts like Pearl Jam and Ben Harper I hear it's the teeny boppers that piss everyone off. At punk concerts its going to be the guy that spits, unfortunately for me at Tool and Patton related performances its punk fans and nerds and they don't all get along.

But really all this boils down to is a lack of basic 'social' skills, we live in a society, and communities so these skills are important.
Just basic shit, like treat other people with respect, consider their feelings and empathise with them when appropriate, whether they be a high and mighty rock star on stage or just some person that wants to not be elbowed in the head because you want dancing space where it just aint available, or space for a backpack for that matter.

Even though I may seemingly contradict myself by cowardly attacking people I don't really know on my blog, a blog requires active involvement to be listened to. It isn't me yelling at your face, you all have the ability to choose to read a blog, but when you stick your elbow into me because I don't have a choice about being pushed up against you, that's the difference.

blogging = active media - requires willing participation from reader
being a cunt at a concert/footy match/school play = passive media, we all have to put up with it whether we like it or not.

So work on them social skills.
Here's some first steps -
1. You don't have to say everything you think.
2. Stand in front of the mirror and say 'Some people love me and think I am special but let's be frank, they vast majority don't'
3. Refrain from willingly causing someone physical pain or discomfort every 2nd time you are tempted too.
4. Spit down not up.

Sorry Harvard

I realised after calling Harvard names for not adding me to msn, we haven't had one single msn conversation. Because really, I don't have anything particularly pressing to talk to him about.
It would be good though if I did. Because this would mean I would have something to do betwixt now and when the peeping tom concert starts, where I will finally see Mike Patton perform on stage in the flesh.
That's fucking weird.
What else have I done this week that I neglected to put on this blog?
I ran the run to the G 10km race in a dissapointing 45.23 but this was dissapointing on the grounds of 24 seconds. which over 10k is really woopity doofuck especially when some retarded mother with retarted kids destroys the whole 'staggared start' thing by lining up with a pram in the 40 minutes or less starting line. There goes my 23 seconds making me an illegitimate claimant to the sub 45 minutes start line.
Honesty would be the best policy if it wasn't for lazy ass mums who aren't lying because they don't even bother to read the signs.
But it was good, first run I've done in a long time whereth I have had trouble walking the rest of the week.
Also I noticed I don't really lust after any women any more. 2-3 years ago I was constantly sussing out the talent in almost every aspect of my life, wondering how I could honestly and ethically manouvre myself into a better deal.
These days I just don't, I just get the fuck on with my business. Does this mean my sexual peak is well into my rear view mirror. Hopefully. Mind you of what I've observed from lecherous old men, I had thought the lusting just never lets up.
it's an odd thing.

I have a dream...yeah...who cares...me neither

I read with interest, morley's postings on TV shows he likes, recently Sunday ABC started more or less running the programming he recommended, firmly cementing my opinion of morley in the low category. He ranks there with my brother in the long line of people who download too much stuff from the internet.
I'm guessing though that morley will never stoop so low as to download Boston Legal and tell me how great William Shatner is.
But he makes a good point, about TV in general. I mean TV is just a medium and I a bored guy struggle to put a distinct value on entertainment. But Australian, even the vast majority of American television programs fail to really put any intelligence into their construct.
Some day a future version of Doctor who might TARDIS his arse into 2007 to have a scene where he sits down with the plebs watching big brother laughing with raucos laughter, because thats just how plebs laugh.
Anyway I made morley's point badly to Bryce last night, that is already towing the ABC 'underfunded' line and I allowed myself to get sidetracked way off point.
But Bryce in his infinite wisdom hit a sweet note in the conversation talking about Walt Disney specifically something Walt Disney said 'I never dumb down my movies for children' or some such stuff, and you can see that about where the Disney movies just dropped off the radar, namely between the Lion King, a movie parents could barebly sit through to Pocahontus - a film children could barely sit through.
And its all very well for Walt to say that, sure from the guy who brought us all steamboat mickey.
But that's it, there aren't too many demanding shows produced in Australia, underfunded ABC aside, an intelligent script, with a good story arc and development I imagine costs just as much per episode as a dumbass script.
Even the 'economies of scale' population arguement, look at the quality of output from the Australian film industry vs New Zealand, your talking 'Crocodile Dundee' and 'Shine' vs 'The Piano' and 'Once Were Warriors' and 'Whale Rider' New Zealand seems to hold its own against Australia despite the utter trouncing we serve up to them come Olympic time.
Australia, indeed anywhere are definitely capable of producing good stuff, in fact national boundaries should mean less with the internet shrinking the planet everyday. We should be trying to compete in a global market in terms of output.
The original Doctor Who shows managed to do so much with what was the equivalent of $0 budget.

fuckshit

Spurs won the most boring finals in recent times 4-0, and as much as I think Lebron is overrated, a premature ejaculation rather, I gotta say I feel sorry for the guy getting totally rolled like that. but hey it's a team sport, and I feel sorrier for Nowitzki.
So, the NBA playoffs just fizzed out in a fit of boredom, I watched every game up to the playoffs hoping those two teems wouldn't go through.

Hall of Shame

6 months ago

So after cutting off my long locks I more or less sported a variation of this fauxhawk and shaved various patterns into the side of my head. I like the lightning bolt I managed on this one. And that my breasts seem reel small in this photo.

5 months ago

The fauxhawk gave way to the reverse mohawk above. I debuted this at the christmass party. At this point I ran out of hair to work with, so it regrew out into a fluff ball for about 4 months.

the mighty undercut

this is what I currently sport. A haircut is no good if it doesn't make me instantly laugh. The undercut is powerful. I say the word cunt 150% more than my pre undercut days. I was never any good at spitting. Where to from here tohm? I plan to style it out into a fairly spherical fro by the time I reach Japan and then I will have a tilt at the De La Soul circa 1991.

Warning: This Is A Cup

Morley seldom crosses into the realm of pure artist but when he does he probably could make a living from it, in one of those countries like France.
The said art piece was a polystyerine coffee cup from our Dining hall with warning labels placed all over it: 'Warning this is a cup' and 'Achtung: Die ist Cup' or something.
Who knows what happened to that cup but it made a potent comment about human nature and self interest.
It was during O-week and somehow through the democratic process we had elected a President and Activities Officer that where more interested in being President and Activities Officer than doing a good job of President and Activities Officer duties.
As such when threats were levelled at said roles, they caved unashamedly, almost as if it was the rational thing to do.
It was almost as if they held their positions for priveledge and not on account of being popularly elected to represent the students of IH.
Like their foremost responsibility was to the poor and shortsighted, unprofessional and irrational business objectives of the administrative body and not to the students who financed both the student club and the college.
And as such when faced with threats to make O-week less enjoyable or face 'mysterious consequences' that never were articulated or real, they caved, they accepted the first offer and started scaling back the enjoyment of o-week because they were pussies.
All them paragraphs were summed up beautifully by one cup.
The sort of cup I will one day purchase at auction for $10,000 when Morley is rich enough to live his dream of shooting his televisions with a magnum and replacing them rather than turning them off.
Scared of what? nothing.
It was a cup and we were duly warned...that it was a cup. What else to do, it wasn't like it was a 'sharp cup' or 'cup will become hot when heated' or 'do not squeeze too hard' the warning was simply that it was a cup.
We would possibly as a society benifit more from such warning signs.
Obvious examples would be 'caution: terrorism' terrorism what? what about it? what do you want me to do? be afraid of it.
Or maybe Howard's next campaign can be: 'Warning: Economics'
In the immortal words of some guy Les Claypool quoted - 'Think it's not illegal yet'
there are a whole load of reasons as to why probability doesn't match fear, eg more people are afraid of getting eaten by a shark, than getting killed in a car crash.
People will take more precautions against being mugged at night than preventing a housefire.
A kid dying on any day is tragic, but on Christmass day it's extra tragic.
A kid is safer statistically in a house with a gun than a house with a pool.
A gun is more likely to shoot a family member than an assailant.
Yet fear often runs counter to reality.

If everything was a business and human life had a $ value. Tragically the world would probably be a lot safer.
Example: Flying a plane into the twin towers kills a lot of people unexpectadly.
Work Place Health and Safety issues kill a lot more people even more unexpectedly.

But the first one is more outragous which is why it became a trillion dollar (failed) solution to a billion dollar problem.
Similarly, the sales of gas masks skyrocketed following the twin tower attack, now I believe that not a single person who bought a gas mask believed any organisation short of the US government capable of launching a gas attack on every street corner of every city of every state in the US. People opted though to try and solve the problem of their remote probability of being attacked in this specific way without any real evidence that this kind of attack was probable in the first place.
Hence - 'Warning: Terrorism' is all you really need to say. Then you simply go and invade countries and buy gasmasks, and advertise toll free numbers to report suspicious 'anythings' or 'pieces of information' all in the name of taking the necessary precautions against 'terrorism'
which is likely to be a far too political analogy. I simply want to highlight the disparity between how willingly people subscribe to fear for some things, and not for others:
eg. 'Warning: Terrorism'
vs. 'Warning: Diabetes'
Two unspecific warning labels, but I'm not sure anywhere near the number of people are afraid of diabetes than are afraid of Arabs. (Arabs = Terrorism)
And it could be that similar to cars, the threat of diabetes may only be averted by sacrificing parts of our lifestyle we have grown accustomed to.
Eg. Fast food and sugar in the case of Diabetes (and driving walking distances etc)
and driving over the speed limit, whilst drunk & driving in general for car crashes.
But some of the shit involved in 'preventing' terrorism require sacrifice to lifestyle as well - eg. civil liberties, national dignity, having to actually think hard about a career in the armed forces etc.

The real thing the cup said to me, is, if you are going to be afraid, have a good reason. Don't just be afraid because it's generally thought to be a good idea.
Flashman is a primo example of someone who get's afraid for good reason, he runs away when his life is in danger.
People who run away, sign things over, or pay money when nothing is in danger we call, dumbasses.

The other thing for me is the old definition of insanity - more of a strategic overview overall - 'doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result' this sentiment was also espoused by the sad social climber of a high school principal I had when he used to say the no less valid 'you'll always get what you've always got, if you always do what you've always done'
Which makes assumptions - the best case scenario is 'you'll always get what you've always got' it needs to be qualified with 'or less'
Bill Russell had a take on it too in terms of basketball which was 'if you are doing something right, don't stop it for your oponent, let them stop you' infact if you want a good read, read Bill Russell's nba finals/playoffs blog.
If there is no evidence to suggest a current strategy will stop being successful, this is the best reason to continue. Contingencies sure, and obviously the evidence in a bball match that a strategy isn't working because you stop getting stops on defense and scoring on offense.
Anyway, that is all I really have to say, today.

Celebrity

I was walking down the street on sunday, and this guy dining al fresco started yelling at me. I was wearing my Mambo shirt circa 1998 full of holes and shit so I was pretty sure he couldn't have mistook me for a waiter and I was about to say 'I'm not a fucking waiter' when he said 'you're from brunswick right?'
Anyway this guy started talking to me about my long socks and my crazy haircuts, then told me how I should come to him for haircuts.
We talked about his store and he offered me my first haircut free.
I'm not sure if he was hitting on me but he said he could do the detailing so I'm tempted.
Pity I'm growing a fro out now.
I'll put up my hall of shame, still I'm flattered to join the ranks of crazy guys that walk around brunswick and get noticed all the time.

Baby Steps

Last night I put on my first dinner party as an unmarried young professional.
I like to think it was a step away from adolescence, into the realm of adulthood.
What it was was a fearful range of emotions as I realized the imagined pressure middle age people go through when they do these things for a good time.
I mean the company was excellent, and thanks to the ring in chefs I don't think there's ever been better food served.
It ended up through my own disorganized panic over catered and under attended by my fellows who just aren't ready yet.
Which is odd since I'm the one in a basketball jersey and sporting an undercut.
But I seriously felt the whole spectrum yesterday you know from joy through to despair.
I usually have the attitude that people should be grateful no matter what shit I serve up but for some reason I got real performance anxiety.
I had sold it as an iron chef event, and only I ended up running around stressed out and cutting dishes from my entry.
I destroyed a blender but ended up pulling off all my dishes.
Sonam cooked something shit hot but couldn't stay to eat, I do love that big guy, he cut my onions up for me as I really get done in by their noxious acid.
And I can tell Janice will be talking about Amrish's tofu at dinner parties for the next three years or so.
There was so much good food you almost wished for a vomitorium so you could go for seconds.
Fortunately I will be spared the dissapointment of returning to corner store food for a week or so thanks to the miracle of Tupperware.
But I realised the dinner party was sort of a profound metaphor for my life, that is a wonderful idea with dismal execution. And I wonder, could this mean I will never be organised enough to command my army of ninja's?

Picasso is to Cubes as...

What place does art have in our society?

The answer seems too obvious at first, on walls to be observed by high society who wear monocles and top hats and spats and sashes and medals instead of neck ties. Man those neck tie medals are works of art in and of themselves. It would be awesome if one of them was like a flaming skull with a snake going in one eye and out the other eye.

But I digress,

Art is surely important because it's literally the tip off of the creative process for visual type thinkers. Plus given that art beign definitionless extends to written and audio forms as well I guess as 3d objects which can be felt by people who can neither see nor hear, and since said people won't be reading my blog, I frankly question their ability to appreciate good 3D art in the first place.
I hope nobody invents a computer-type device that can turn text into a 3-dimensional sensation and I get beat up by a bunch of deaf-blind guys that enjoy nothing but working out in a gym all day.

But I digress,

Anything is art, I once proposed in a debate that if we simply declared our Nuclear Waste as an avant gaurd artpiece we could sell it to the Louvre instead of have to pay people to take it.
The art is anything debate was defined by some artist signing a toilet that some artist being Marcel Duchamp and he signed it R Mutt 1917.
It was a challenge to people who thought they could define art.
The versict is you can't. And since most people didn't follow the debate, most people get angry when governments spend taxpayer money on art, with such famous exhibits as the 'nothing' exhibit, which I really wanted to see.

but what function does art have in progress?

I guess for me all art is the tip-off of the creative process, it is inspiration. Or examination, it generally is done with porpuse but no clear sense of direction.
For example Surrealism drew on images from dreams to inspire us, even though often the images portrayed made no clear social comment.
Cubism could have been construed to talk about perspective and perception, yet also carried other messages or told stories within it.
Leonardo invented anatomical drawings.
Warhol mass produced art out of a factory, creatively challanging the need to be creative.
A picture of nothing challanges the notion of what we want to get out of art.
Art clearly examines us, its not quite communication, it's not necessaraly productive.
Similarly though, if sci-fi is agreed to be an art-piece taking the form of a written art composition sci-fi has provided the starting point for many modern inventions, such as cyborgs, cloaking devices, lasers, mobile phones, the internet and so fourth.
Was Da Vinci a scientist or an artist? he made more bread as an artist than as an inventor, though had he been in the patent age that may have switcherood.
But would he have done anything if art didn't have a place in society?
Well I guess like any famous artist, if art didn't exist I guess he wouldn't, because that is precisely what he is famous for.
So take that fucktard.

Oh yeah and Picasso is to Cubes like Anna Nicole is to Boobs.

Salmon Swimming Upstream

Almost three years ago now I met Don. Don was the most whipped guy I had ever met. You met him and thought, man what a cool guy, I bet he gets all the ladies.
Don had himself a very very nice lady. Mary, she was pretty damn cool.
Mary clearly wore the pants.
This became apparant early on when Don would consistantly spend his weekends going to hilary duff films despite being the same age as me.
I have a pretty good track record of weasling my way out of so called 'chick flicks' and the more subtle cousin 'romantic comedies'.
But anyway, the thing that stuck that whipped crown or mister whippy hat on Don's head was that one time when Mary was doing a class presentation as part of the PSP program so near and dear to my heart.
Mary did it on the popular past time of jewellery making, that hobby that justifies the existence of stores that sell beads.
Her presentation was straight forward and lacked any real punch.
Feeling the feedback from the audiance was a little flat, she busted out with a story about how Don enjoyed making jewellery and earrings.
And Don burst out 'Why would you do that, I was just sitting hear?' and Sonam and I just bashed our fists against the table while tears ran out our eyes.
I mean you'd have to know how cool Don should have been to truly appreciate such cruelty for all it's comic value but a couple of weeks ago I walked into a bead shop to check out and see if I could find a cheap plastic ring or something to send my gf in Japan.
And I saw these beads that where little fish. And then over a couple of weeks or so it culminated in my mind this idea for a bracelet. But the bracelet was not for Miki but for me.
Salmon are the simbol of the samurai because they are strong enough to swim up stream to mate, very masculine in themselves, and 'my salmon are all swimming upstream' is a way to say 'yes I'm still fertile' to boot.
So I thought it would be pretty manly to go make myself a bracelet out of beads.
And here it is.

incidently I also saw my friend swanny in a bead shop. But he had his girlfriend take him in. You never think you'll get caught by another guy in a bead shop.
I was there for me, it was a shameful day.

Live as if

Living as if is a simple but necessary philosophy. Living as if is a way to effect personal change, it kind of ties in a guess with the 'law of attraction' as pushed by 'the Secret' although instead of focusing on selfish material goals of average people who want to unlock alladin's cave it's more a philosophy for an altruistic lifestyle.
The way I live as if is that I live as if riding 15km to work each way is the most practical way to cover said distance. And it is, it probably takes double the time it would to drive but it costs me roughly the price of my bike given how long it last:

$450 for the bike plus $130 maintenance a year divided by 25 years.
Or

130
x 25
+450
/ 25
/ 52

Which breaks down to roughly $2.85 a week to cover 75km so even if the onroad costs were to double and adjust for 4% inflation I'm still looking at $5 or so a week or less than 1% of my earnings.
Now that's affordable.
So everybody talks about cars being practical. Now I'm not sure if petrol is still in the basket of goods used to calculate the CPI for inflation, I imagine the ABS would have been instructed to remove it like credit card debt as these things tend to drive up inflation which in turn drives up interest rates which cause recessions.
But anyway about 3 years ago I read the average cost of a car is $100 per week, in insurance, depreciation, fuel etc. and I assume that doesn't include parking tickets (and fines) and that petrol by the sounds of it has been outperforming inflation.
Thankfully true cost economics aren't really applied to petrol so we pay indirectly for the repairs to the environment necessary.
But anyway I'd put the weekly cost of doing the same thing that I do now on a bike at $115 a week. Now you get the added benifit of it only taking half the time.

Car 30 minutes each way at $115 per week
Bike 65 minutes each way at $2.85 per week
Car = $57.50 for same benifit (distance travelled)

Presumably the hour a day you save can be spent, sleeping watching tv or working out at the gym.
Now I already slagged off cars a couple of weeks ago, what is the real travesty is what I recently discovered since I stopped taking the oft promoted viable alternative Public transport.

Unfortunately my 15km each way is not a winding path through Metropolitan Melbourne but a straight line out of town. Said straightline follows the train line from my station onwards and thus presents the train as a viable alternative.
But a straight line of 15km takes you just out into the zone known as zone 2. (1 & a half stations deep no less, which is to say almost too little zone 2 to bother with)
Now let it not be said that metcard doesn't give ticketing options to it's commuters you can choose between:

Full fare 5 x daily Zone 1 + 2 @ $45.20
Full fare weekly zone 1 + 2 @ $45.20

the advantage is that with a weekly ticket you get to use the ticket for your travel on a weekend.
But with 5 x daily presumably the ability to commute one of the daily tickets outside of a 7 day time frame makes up for the fact that you pay the exact same amount for 5 days of travel as you do for 7 consecutive days travel.
Which would lead one to conclude that you don't pay for the weekend travel anyway.
so $45.20/5 = $9.04
A grand saving of 70c per day.
Plus as I said you either lose part of that value any time you have a sick day, day off or offsite day. or if you've done the 5 x daily you have to buy a daily ticket on the weekend to cover that travel (or use one of your 5 x daily in which case why charge as much as a weekly?).
Even if you were to try and amplify the benifit of a weekly zone 1 + 2 it gets complicated:
45.20 / 7 = $6.46 but any weekly ticket gets zone 2 free on weekends so the benifit is half on the weekend because adding zone 2 doubles the price.
So really it's:

45.20 / 6 = $7.50 a day except that on a sunday you can get a sunday saver for $2.50

anyway the point is rather than giving us full value, all the convoluted ways to save money in an overly complicated ticketing situation the discounts frustrate connexs most loyal users.
And the fact remains that connex trains on peak are unreliable (around 3-4 cancelled services a day) over crowded (you never know if you are getting two carriages or one) and as such you lose all the convenience of a car, they are as much as I hate to admit it, not in the same ballpark as far as transpot goes which is why price wise the $12 difference between driving your own car with air conditioning, flexibility and personal space.
I'm sorry but the heirarchy currently ranks:

bike = $2.85
car = $57.50
train = $45.20

right now connex is everybody's dog to kick I know. But they deserve it, add some real incentive.
The Sunday saver is the greatest thing in the world, it should be the daily lynchpin.

On the Upside

I think it's worth remembering, that if a person wants it bad enough they can conquer the world and capture the imagination of everyone.

The Long Walk

It's national sorry day.

I saw Michael Long being interviewed by Voss, but my long walk of reconciliation was followed by a longer walk home so I didn't see what was actually said in the interview. I guess I can't comment on it. But you know if it's going to be Channel 7 coverage then it's probably some mincing of an understanding of reconciliation as well.
I mean I have a lot of respect for both Voss and Long but you wouldn't want them talking about the Middle East situation either. Well scratch that, you would want them talking about it, you wouldn't want them to be the forefront of conversations about it.

Unfortunately for Australia's standing in the world, and possible Deontilogical historical standing a pre-game interview on Channel 7 probably is the forefront of discussion on this topic.

I think the issues are pretty clear establishing that this land was misappropriated from a white supremacy position, and that the indigenous peoples of this country have been poorly treated in by 'white' Australia. Up until the 70's they were legally subhuman (maybe not explicitly but it was Whitlam that got rid of confiscating property owned by an Aboriginal woman).
There are some questions as to how we should feel about this 'Is genocide better than slavery?' but overall we have to say, with the wisdom of hindsight though historically the colonial mindset was probably the best to be expected at the time, we should look back on our past and seek to pay reparations.
Now, sorry day I have to say is less distracting than 'thanks-giving' day.
Here's how I would say sorry*:

Since all wealth in the nation of Australia can be attributed to the productive use of land (less foreign investment of capital) The net present value of the nation is attributable to property stolen from the indigenous people less the efforts of labor.
So what is to be determined is the net value of the unimproved land at the time when it was confiscated, plus any damages to the land by the unauthorized tenants to calculate at what price the land should have been bought under a preferable treaty arrangement, as opposed to the terra nullis policy wereby we simply had the unwilling seller legally declared not to exist.
But this should come up with a principle that can then be adjusted to figure out how much this blight on our reputation that is our stolen nation makes up of our present wealth. Then add interest.
Then determine a payment plan.
I would suggest, switching to land taxation, as in geonomics, as this will minimise damages to the land in the future and create more equality of opportunity as well. Then simply add a levy to said land to start paying off said amount.
It may take a thousand years.
But you know I think it says sorry, and it's possibly workable.

Anyway, I'm sorry about the stealing, the racism, the genocide, sorry about the fear and discomfort, sorry for the dishonesty, sorry about kidnapping, sorry for the injustice, sorry for the violence, sorry for the lack of opportunity, sorry for the exploitation.

*Not of course a practical solution, I would as usual be required to be supreme military dictator or something to swing this.

The American Dream

No this post isn't a scathing remark from a 'bleeding heart' liberal on US foreign policy, global citizenship etc. It isn't about climate change or the rise of religious stupidity.
It's the rags to riches story of Latrell Sprewell.
I was on Youtube last night watching Kareem Abdul Jabbars highlight tapes last night. Now yes there is the occasional dunk or jump shot but it was more just a capture of the amazingly consistent mind boggeling sky-hook. After watching five minutes of dedicated footage I felt I knew less how to pull off this move than I did before seeing it in detail.
Then hoping to find some comedy gold I looked for a Sprewell mix. Now a fan had lovingly removed some of the less flattering aspects to leave us with a tasty cordial of one simple explosive drive/jump to the basket for some rim rattling dunks.
He was a hungry man at a buffet, if there was nothing occupying the space between him and the basket for a split second he exploded into scoring.
He also could nail 3 pointers.
His nickname I find amusing is 'the American Dream' now this is the kind of guy, no matter how idealistic I ever get, no matter what Utopia I create here on earth, no matter how expansive its borders I hope this American Dream stays alive.
Now you have your Rasheed's and your Rodman's and other angry angry millionaires but Sprewell was the only one that would have such episodes of the red haze that when criticised for not making 'cleaner passes' escalated an altercation to choking his coach. Not only that but when the fight was broken up, returning later in the game to try and finish the job.
That's right, in the time you or I would normally spend calming down and getting a hold of yourself he spent planning a heinously brilliant surprise attack.
A plan so perfect that nobody saw it coming, it sort of reminds me of street fights I've seen where 3 big drunk guys rough up 1 small drunk guy. And in their judgement impaired state rather than consoling themselves that they are okay and it could have been much worse. Run at the biggest guy and try and plant an uncoordinated kick in their back thus escalating their beating to one where they will be physically hard.
Just so stupid, so very stupid that's why nobody sees it coming.
So then the American dream was banned by the NBA from playing in the league due to his assualting his coach on two occasions in the one match under provocations that was in fact the coach fulfilling his required role.
He won an Appeal and was traded to the New York Knicks where he enjoyed some success.
When it came to renewing his contract he was offered US$21 million. An amount Sprewell felt was beneath him and his official line of arguement, which may be my new favorite of all time:

'I've got a family to feed'

This puts me in mind of MC Hammer's building a gated mansion in the ghetto's to inspire the kids there that they could achieve their dream.
I mean all those kids out there eating mac and cheese, and cut up hot dogs, doing paper rounds just hoping aspiring to have the chance to become a sporting star just like Sprewell.
Now that's the American dream I could toast to.

Have you any wool?

One of the only reasons I was looking forward to reconnection at home was to once again be able to update my music.
For a long time Black Sheep, the dark side of the Native Tongue hip hop collab. and they didn't dissapoint. Anyone who has listened to hip hop enough to have tastes and preferences, and particularly if they lean towards the De La side of the spectrum, do yourself a favour and get Black Sheep into your vocabulary. Now the group crashed and burned I hear on their second album but 9 tracks into 'A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing' I have to say it is worth spending money on, not that you'll ever find it in JB hi-fi. Going by my old rule of thumb in my teenage years that a good buy had minimum 4 decent songs on it (Foo Fighters being one of the few LP's to fail this test) was worth the $30, faith no more put an end to that low standard.
A Wolf in Sheep's clothing is at least half killer and by the time I listen to the remainding tracks and they decided to unnecessarily fill out the album with some fizzle, then this may be one of the greats of all time.
If you got $15 in your pocket get Black Sheep: A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing.

Semco a case study

I was just trying to nut out something for work, and it's so expansively fragmented I thought I may as well chuck it down here and see what happens.
The 'normal' career is a serious of positions, followed by milestones, followed by a promotion to a new position, followed by a milestone and so on.
Paths can be predefined, flexible, individually tailored.
Now the earliest turn off with my employer occured in my job interview where my prospective manager started talking about the 'ten year plan' for me, and what the career path was. You know how you progress through the organisation and when you start earning the big money.
Fortunately said career path fell to pieces after one year, after another one we scrapped my job title as meaningless and have just worked on my personal development ever since.
So anyway I am trying to figure out a way to make the recommendation that we move away from a mentality of pre-designated career paths.
I was going to start out something like this:

We should move away from pre-designated career paths.

Now the reason I say this is a matter of focus. I'm assuming people if they are developing in their current role will eventually outgrow it and move into a bigger better position. Not essentially different. However I feel a mentality that requires a focus on a career path allows us to blindside the development process, stunt growth or miss opportunities.
It's leaning towards being inflexible. Furthermore there are limited avenues in a pyramid organisational chart for all those on the bottom to rise to the top.
Eventually at least two people will contend for one formal position.

Okay so where I'm stuck is that surely shifting the focus from career paths to 'personal development' that is focusing on the gap between promotions (increasing an individuals ability and therefore value) instead of the process of the promotion itself. My reason being that a promotion is seen as a contest, a contest seems to draw in percieved competitive advantages such as politicking the process.
Now the only way I seem to be able to figure to do this is to make the development of an individuals value aligned with the incentive rather than the promotion to be the incentivater.
Rewind that, that is to say what's the pain that the current system causes - being passed over for the promotion.
It's fine to compete and win a promotion, it hurts to compete and lose a promotion. It feels like ones progress, ones momentum is lost. Its hard to then go back to one's existing role and continue to develope (which is precisely what should be done regardless, the other option is to leave the company in pursuit of opportunities).
But an assumption oft made is that a promotion is attractive. Usually related to pay/rewards, whereas developing one's current role has less dramatic effects on our reimbursement, it can often be seen as a requirement of the job.

So that leads me to think:..... break the relationship between reimbursement and promotions.

Which pragmatism tells me isn't as easy as management saying 'Now your position in the company, your job role has nothing to do with your pay.' people don't trust this sort of thing. My experience tells me people say 'bullshit' because such bold claims by management have to be taken on trust. Unless, unless you openly display wages for all to poor through the books and see that it is the case.
But this too pragmatically has it's problems. This is where some people's palms are sweating because people will see the big pay gap they were previously privy too. Other people's palms are sweating because they will see that after 50 years loyal service their pay will be for all to see, less than the pimply teenage kid sitting next to them.
Which means people have to justify to their community what resources they are taking out of it.

Transparency is a good thing except for the problem of how unfair it is for people to have to justify their wages when they have only a part say in what it is.
In most positions of most companies, the HR department has gone and come up with a valuation of exactly what that person contributes. And said person may have had some variable degree of success in negotiating higher or lower reimbursement than the norm.
Most pay negotiations are indeed made from behind a fog of war (though employers generally make the first offer so you can't lowball yourself unintentionally) however, the salary can be based on numerous distractions unrelated to how much share of the value your work creates you take with you as opposed to the value retained by the company.
Said distractions can be: how much you think you need, how much you think someone else is worth, benchmarks, how much you think the company has etc.
The only real thing you should be contributing is how much you think you are worth.

And the most advantageous way to increase that is if you develop personally to be more valuable through a greater skills base, better effeciency, better integration etc. stuff that isn't related to the position.

So: reimbursement is not related to job description, but the value contributed by the individual employee.

But leaving it there would be half arsed because some people will feel hard done by by such a situation. these people we refer to as hard workers. These people have a conscious association that 'hard work pays off' despite all evidence to the contrary.
Take pistol pete, was required by his father to shoot 100 free throws after dinner each night. Child abuse: maybe. But pistol pete would sometimes get to 99 consecutive shots before deliberately missing so he could continue playing (by his own account).
Now Pistol Pete is listed as one of the 50 greatest players of all time. It would seem his hardwork paid off? Yes & No. Being a great free throw shooter is useless if you never get fouled taking a shot at the basket. There's no more reliable way to get to the free throw line. Pistol Pete was forced through a relentless training regime but he developed all the skills necessary to be a great player, he was not only an excellent scorer (before the introduction of the 3-point line) but one of the best passers and team players in the league.
Now the standard hard work sort of mentality is actually more akin to Syssero's eternal punishment of pushing a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll down the other side as soon as his task was complete.
That is people engage relentlessly in a task and never develope their efficiency or skills. What was the marginal improvement in Pistol Pete's free throw shooting from shooting an arbitrary number such as 100? what if he had only shot 80 in a row? what would his accuracy have been shooting 1000?
We don't know. Similarly what if he had taken one night off a week? how much would this have diminished his ability. A hard worker is unlikely to risk answering these questions, and thus unlikely to increase their value.
Which is an extraordinary leap in logic, but it follows like this - to learn effectively you have to be conscious of what it is you want to learn, this requires an evaluation or reflection on current circumstances (determining A the present situation and B the destination) then time & resources need to be dedicated to the journey.
If you work hard all day there is no capacity left to dedicate to development. This means you can't get beyond that initial learning curve of becoming efficient at the initial process. A big difference to making the process more efficient.

So look at Semco for a working example:

condition one: The companies finances are displayed publicly, and all employees trained to read profit and loss statements, therefore all employees know the financial circumstances of the company.
condition two: all salaries are disclosed publicly, for any employee to refer to.
condition three: the organisational chart is based on concentric circles rather than a pyramid and their are only four titles for job roles within the company.

Semco thus have the capacity to allow self-set pay. They have removed dead end jobs and people are responsible for their own training and development and thus can pursue their careers in accordance with their own ambition.
They add in many other factors over this starting point to remove other problems such as ambition exceeding natural ability.
But i don't need to go into that now... thanks me it's been helpful cognating with you.

Connected

Once again I have the internet at home. and nothing else to say...

missing misaki

I have had to conclude, inextricably that I miss misaki. After a week of eating fried foods and dragging my feet over all surfaces I started cleaning my room on Sunday.
Almost as if Miki was coming to yell at me for letting my room get into such a state.
But there was nobody to throw a tantrum at, and really as the cleaning process involved moving shit off my floor onto my bed and then when it came to sleeping time I discovered I have to move shit off my bed onto the floor so net effect 0.
Anyway I feel like chucking a tantrum, give my Miki back. damn miki.

Words from a bearded hot action type guy

May or may not have been ghostwritten by someone in this picture I know i'll be moving out of Kew into Brunswick for this vote:

check out my patented rebound king jump

Hola,

I reckon it's really really important that we make
sure EVERYONE we know is enrolled to vote in the soon
to be announced Federal Election.

https://oevf.aec.gov.au/verifyenrolment.aspx

For 2 reasons-
1. Often more progressive free thinking types will not
be enrolled correctly as they move around a lot doing
cool and interesting things. Unlike conservative types
who often stay in the same place FOREVER and don't
have to worry about changing their details. So we need
ourselves and everyone we know to be enrolled
correctly so we don't get another spirit crushing 4
years of John Howard.

2. The government has changed the election rules so
that enrolment to vote closes 'ON THE DAY THE ELECTION
IS ANNOUNCED'. This again disadvantages those who move
around, are new to citizenship, are young etc...
people who tend to vote progressively, funnily enough.

So, if we don't get the enrolment wave going, many
will be jumped by the election announcement and unable
to vote. Crucial violation of democracy point
approaching!

So please send this site-

https://oevf.aec.gov.au/verifyenrolment.aspx

out to everyone you know, especially young people. We
CANNOT let this sneaky violation of even the tiny
vestiges of democracy that lives through the election
cut us off from voting for something new and decent in
our mixed up land.

Rant over, happy enrolling,
K

likeatiger

I am not a role model

Well obviously I am not a role model. Or maybe I am, I'm certainly pussy enough to be regarded as a role model. Apart from the language.
But what I'm refering to is Charles Barkley's Nike Campaign 'I am not a Role Model' Charles Barkley was the greatest opinionated player of the late 80's to 90's. He was good at playing basketball, the round mound of rebound. He was a short power forward that outplayed a lot of taller opponents and an NBA MVP.
But he was criticised like almost every other athlete ever for being a poor role model.
I mean we can look at John McEnroe, Bill Clinton, Ben Johnson, Ben Cousins, George Bush and on and on as 'role models' and every now and then the media will flare up about them setting a poor example as a role model.
We act like there is a socially binding contract to success and having a high profile. Infact it may even be worth my time to read up on this whole role model phenomena.
I mean I used to be all like: 'footy players being violent, that must set an example for young players which is why most people I met on football scholarship at my high school, I didn't particularly like them.'
But now when I think about it, what are my expectations of any sports star. Or if I was manager of a bball team what would I expect out of Dennis Rodman, I would expect him to pull down 12+ boards a game and control the glass for me. I would probably expect him to foul out. But if he left the stadium and started preaching the benifits of martyrdom, I guess that would be his business.
I mean I have to agree, just as it seems apparant that we shouldn't be able to place the expectation on a person to be straight in politics, sport whatever. It's less apparant to me that we should not place expectations on them to be nice, modest, mature, responsible, loving athletes, politicians whatever.
In short the only expectation you can put on a player is that they do what they are paid to do. And that goes for any role, ever. Regardless of the impact it has on children.
I mean, we act like we know what is good for a childs character development. Feasibly it is reasonable for a kid to want to be able to bowl flipper's like Shayne Warne without them leaping to the conclusion that part of his development regime is sending dirty text messages to pommy tarts.
Or that Bill Clinton's economic management required him to proposition interns for extra marital affairs. Or that Barkley's ability is directly related to how many people he throws through glass windows.
The whole role model arguement falls down on it's arse frankly. Its like a magical unicorn, we conceive of what it is but it doesn't really exist.

And the Winner Is...

Ben Wallace. aka 'Big Ben' aka 'the Body'. The only player to win the NBA defensive player of the year title 4 times. The NBA's premier defence specialist, and bearer of the most stylish fro in the league. I am endeavoring to buy myself an alternet Ben Wallace Detroit Pistons jersey. Let's face it on the playground I'm finishing top ten in Rebounds, Blocks and possibly steals and my scoring average would be close to 0.8 ppg.

Sorry Kobe, but that romantic side of you put me off, maybe if you drop 81 again.

Lexicon

I just finished plugging the Semco lexicon into inspiration, mind flow software is such a cruch I don't know how I lived without it.
Furthermore the process engaged the learning part of my brain thingy.
Which is to say I had to look up the word 'Lexicon' and 'sabbatical' and you know what? I think I need a sabbatical.

Generation Gap expands

About 2 years ago or something I read Growth Fetish and then I gave it to my mother to read. Predictably she never got around to reading it and my brother eventually did and then I took it back. Now it sits on my shelf as always.
Then about a year later I read the follow up Affluenza. It was pretty good aswell. Both books were highly critical of marketing (something I have a degree in) and particularly the unnecessary "stuff" we feel compelled to buy in order to feel successful.
Then for someone my age having to watch TV commercials by commonwealth saying 'retirement is your revenge' and those adds that should be illegal they are that bad the 'understanding over 50s' I tell you if I was over 50 and saw that add I would just go out and hang myself tomorrow.
Anyway maybe it's me going through a teenage-girl-turns-vegetarian-to-the-disgust-of-her-family type phase but I think the cracks between generations are starting to appear.
I mean I always though my folks were pretty 'with-it' well maybe not mum but dad enjoyed RATM, Soundgarden and other Grunge bands. They've always been pretty laid back and swore casually. Yes they occasionally tucked tshirts into jeans but otherwise were doing good.
But their general attitude is starting to seem really dated, it seems to be the paradox of Australia dated thinking is the way of the future.
Anyway I walk out the other night and my dad's cooking snags on a Beef-Eater BBQ. These things are a couple of grand and are usually marketed as the 'Outdoor Entertainment Area' or 'Outdoor Kitchen' which is to say excessive.
I guess I was wholeheartedly dissapointed to discover said purchase decision, this being capped off by 'it's the lifestyle we want.'
it made a bunch of purchase decisions my parents hade made in the past couple of years click into place.
My parents are deluded.
The fundamental 'truth and lie' that makes our world spin.

truth = if you are naked, in the rain on a cold night having not eaten for days and somebody gives you shelter, warmth and food you go from being sad to happy.

lie = if you double the amount of shelter, food and warmth you have you go from being happy to double happy.

My parents have thrown down and for all their brilliance and achievement in life are going for the 'who dies with the most toys' end game.
I wish when they were setting these lifestyle goals they looked into the mirror and saw that they aren't extravegantly wealthy millionaires.
Just like when I look in the mirror and see a 6'7" african american NBA star looking back at me.

Edgey

I've lost my edge, maybe my memory is fuzzy and I just never had it, but overwhelmingly I just feel I've lost my edge.
No more pointy corners, no more attitude, whilst still being an overwhelmingly negative person. Overbearing perhaps, deconstructive maybe... I think I've spent too much time being friendly and not enough time picking on people weaker than me.
When I read some of Morley's scathing tirades and ability to devide the world into winners and losers I wonder, what happened to me?
If a bunch of starving villagers suddenly had some band of banditos come down from the mountains and start deriding them with cutting insults, would I find the villagers gathered outside my hut asking me to step out and retort on their behalf?
"Good swords should stay in their sheaths" it's true but maybe I need some time to be gangsta.
full time gangsta.

Cars vs Bikes

A simple observation, the convenience of a car is that it can take you to your specific destination and is generally a lot faster than most other forms of transport.
A car weighs roughly just under a tonne (well maybe not just but relatively speaking) for a four door sedan, the model of choice amongst most metropolitan drivers followed by 4x4s. Your average person let's just say weighs around 80kg so it takes something that weighs hundreds of kilo's to move around something under 100 kilo's, considering that on an international flight they only allow you 25 kgs of luggage for arguements sake let's assume most people don't generally haul more than 25kgs around in their car.
Weight wise the car exerts more effort transporting itself than it does transporting you. And that's import in itself, the energy required to move a car is generated through combustion usually an engine.
Engine power is measured in terms of horsepower, a lot of horses. Compared to using horses cars I guess are efficient, 100 horses generating 100 horsepower would weigh a lot more than 1 tonne and take up a lot more space.
To do this it has to consume a fuel that has no substitutes on a free market and requires energy to be expended in its production and transportation plus various suppliers in the value chain require returns on their inputs so their is a margin at each stage of wholesale, furthermore said fuel requires future investment in exploration that needs to be allowed for.
Now the same applies to food but consider.
My bike weighs at most 20kg, UCI regulations say the minimum mass of a racing bycicle is 6.8kg to support an average weight of 80kgs, most engineering practices require a factor 10 safety load that is usually bridges and so fourth are designed to withstand pressures that are 10 times greater than their expected normal load.
Certainly true for cars and bikes do pretty good at supporting weights that far exceed their own.
Furthermore the occupant on a bike has to propel themselves, that is they exert their own energies into the bike to make it go. The bike just makes a persons own efforts more efficient.
I mean yes Lycra is bad, cyclists are generally pussies and unpredictable on the roads, but the bike itself is a marvellous invention, the car whilst an engineering achievement is horribly inefficient and not as convenient as we may first assume.

Loshersh whine about doing their besht, winnersh go home and fuck the prom queen

Which is to say, one form of pure loss I found I discovered was getting your bike stolen, just dissappeared, without a trace, I didn't get to say goodbye, it was gone, I locked it to a steel hoop in the ground and I came back and it was gone.
But that's the middle of nowhere.
Let me talk about competition, as my mind was coiling around the idea of a sports league that worked like Semco, as in players set and declared their own wages, ticket sales takings were open and transparent, fans rated the games and there was no salary cap.
It would make a good double blind type experiment to determine what makes content interesting to watch.
I read an article where some dudes had thought they'd devised a mathematical formula to access how good an event was... but I think it deviated from what I would call exciting as it could be predicting the greatest sporting moment by said formula was an olympic mens rowing gold for England in 2004.

Maybe it was but the founder of the modern olympics said the point wasn't to win or lose but to show the true essence of sportsmanship, struggling to be your very best all that shit...
'Pierre de Coubertin Medal' is considered the highest honour, better even than a gold medal. It only occasionally gets awarded by the IOC.
Anyway I have my own theories about what make a contest exciting or not:

1. Emotional Involvement - if you care it is ten times the experience than if you don't.
2. Uncertainty of the outcome - a close contest gauruntees tension and tension builds to inevitable climax
3. Unlikelihood of the outcome - a one sided match is dull but if one by an underdog it gets more exciting.
4. Skill level - as players are pushed to the limits of their abilities the entertainment value goes up.

And that's basically it, I mean hollywood gets it. And yet most free market sporting clubs go the opposite way, they want 100% winning records. They want their players to dominate so thoroughly that they are 'in a league of their own'
I would contend that the games I enjoy the most, infact if anything are the ones where I am simply pushed to my limits. My brain trips out, my muscles fail and I just want to collapse.
And generally they are right, whilst winning is fun and bragging rights should be tradable in the market place, its not important at the end of the day.
Because of a strange compulsion possibly from the depths of natural selection.
But I like to play against a strong competitor, much, much more than dominating a weak competitor.
Third preferance goes to being dominated by a much much stronger player.

See I would have thought that the contest, the competition is what makes the players better, and increases the fun, that being said rather than having Lennox Lewis and Hollyfield punching on the same team is a lot less entertaining than Lennox and Hollyfield punching eachother.
Similarly Jackie Chan fights are often a lot more drawn out as he the underdog attempts to overcome some fighter with a physical advantage over him until eventual triumph are a lot more entertaining than Bruce Lee kicking some poor extra around like a rag doll.
But that highlights a point in itself, I guess players like Bruce Lee and Jordan are a phenomena of their own, pushed themselves so hard as to ascertain another plain of existence. But they are only created because of that insatiable lust to compete.
In summary it is the drive to be our best and to do so by pitting ourselves against the best competitor we can find.
Crushing ants is fun but only for a while. I say in life it should be about a constant pushing upwards, making other people better through our desire to be the best, and not the best there is but the best we can be. By surrendering no quarter. Giving no inch. Unshakeble unstoppable resolve.

High 5's all round.

I'd rather be a rapist than a christian

Just hear me out, the rapist I refer to is Kobe Bryant and in the interest of non-defamation it was an allegation dropped by the plaintiff, the Christian being Dwight Howard Orlando Magics new big man who isn't an alleged Christian he's a Christian.
Dwight was my front runner for taking my second Jersey honours because my Vinsanity singlet needs to be washed from time to time. I liked his powerful physique and extreme dunking style, Kevin Garnett said he didn't have that much talent when he entered the league. Dwight will be big one day (which is of course to say that he is currently physically very big what I mean is in a celebrity status sense).
But It's playoff time so that means I spend most of my working day watching nba.com's play by play text rundowns of the playoff matches. I gotta say it's been a pretty exciting run in the western conference and the east with the exception of Netz versus Raptors were just about all sweeps including Detroit Piston's wiping Dwight's Orlando magic off the floorboards.
In the western conference I was hoping to see the Laker's bounce back as underdogs to the pheonix suns but after winning one game in the best of 7 round they got rolled.
I wanted them to win because I wanted Kobe to step up, to put down numbers in the 40's and 50's to dish out 9 dimes and rack up 2 blocks. Or at the very least a quadruple-double.
And Kobe does that from time to time, Kobe has close to the worst team in the league, I mean there's Lamar Odom who is a servicable Power Forward but compared to just about every other team in the playoffs there are no other teams this dependant on one man.
Kobe has the best stats in the league, is without a doubt the greatest player since Jordan and is occupying a space between Jordan and Wilt the Stilt. He is a serious contender for greatest of all time.
Yet unlike Michael he has an army of haters slightly bigger than his army of fans, he is viewed as arrogant and spoilt (and in some parts a rapist) but everyone has to hand down maximum respect for his game.
But he raises a point that resonates with me, that has propelled him up my list of jersey contenders from down the bottom as too mainstream (that honour has to go to Lebron, I don't know why he is never viewed as spoiled, I mean if that guy wasn't the most heavily marketed person to have not achieved anything yet in the league...) up to number 2 behind Vinsanity. Because something tells me that someday Kobe's jersey will have as much old school cool as MJ23, KA-J34, CB34 and so on.
The guy's got three rings, 2 consequtive scoring titles, the second highest single game score in history, an equal record 4 consecutive 50+ point game and seems to progressively get better.
I'm told he can't win the MVP because his team doesn't win enough, suffice to say I would wager you could put Kobe in any team in the L and they would scrape into the playoffs.
I can't say I've ever been a Kobe hater but he does highlight the important point, infact maybe he doesn't highlight it but flea certainly did in his nba blog

Confidence Not Arrogance

Posted by Flea on March 23, 2007, 2:20 p.m. ET
kobe bryanti have said it so many timesbut it is something that bares repeating
he is so taken for granted
people often think, oh he is so arrogant because he is so talented, let me tell ya something
people mistake the confidence that comes from a superb work ethic as arrogance
this is not just a matter of talent, or some bizarre genetic gift
some magic fairy dust that was sprinkled on him as a baby
yes,
his will power,
and his discipline,
and his work ethic,
and ability to stay focused and never rest on his laurels,
but always
work on improving his craft are part of who he is
yes all these things come from his god given nature,
and his genetics,
and the way he was raised
but the bottom line is
the guy works hardreal hard
day in day outhe is gonna make the most of who he is
he is gonna fulfill his potential
he will never look back later at his life and think oh i could have tried harder
he is willing to make the necessary sacrifices to be the best
and he is the best
because he cares the most
and gives all he hashe loves basketball
and we are all lucky to witness it
along with that the lakers all played well
they could have the put the clamps down on the grizzlies a little harder that's for sure
they let em score way too much
but luke payed welll
amar played well
kwame made some great defensive plays
smush moved the ball well
the momentum is gathering steam
where was jerry west?

go lakers

go bruins

end of flea's post.

Flea makes a good point, a good good point. I don't know how many movies push the message of believing in yourself but this seems to be the paradox of virtues. To become a champion you need to believe in yourself, but this is a quality to be observed, not said, no don't you dare profess your self belief out loud because that is arrogance.
Really the first person in every case to believe in you is you, not your coach not your teacher not your hair stylest. That's the starting point, others can jump on the bandwagon as the momentum overcomes the friction but really that's what believing in yourself should be all about - once you believe it, promote it. It's not exagerration it's just communicating who you are.
Freakin' humility is just a waste of time, and I find incredibly arrogant. Ian Thorpe demolishes record after record, how humble he is, what great humility from a great athlete. First time he was honest was when he quit - he didn't find it challenging or worthwhile.
Arrogance is going out with a sense of entitlement, that you don't have to compete, don't have to step it up. But arrogance is not believing you have the goods. Because you may have the goods.
Similarly humility isn't saying you don't have the goods when you clearly do.
Humility is being good, but knowing you want to be better. That's the only time it is permissable. That's the word from Rev. tohm.

Undercut Nation

I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I KNOW!!!
Any kid that has an undercut is trouble...the undercut is for bogan kids, drug dealers, kids that spit, shoplift and smoke cigarettes in primary schools. Kids that try to make their own crossbows, kids who use sodium bulbs to blow up things, kids who tagged, kids who wore flannel shirts around their waists...
But I find myself having to admit, the undercut is pretty cool. trouble, but cool. The mullet has had a renaissance thanks to a resurge in websites dedicated to it but the undercut was a similar late 80's early 90's sensation that may represent the suburban graffiti period of white gangsta.
I see white kids with corn-rows and it makes me want to vomit. Then you know the shaved head has made it's way into every sub culture it doesn't say anything anymore. But the undercut says 'stop looking at me old man' or 'keep your hands in your pockets whilst on public transport'.
I guess it went out, like me with the grunge movement. And sure a new generation needs to define itself with a retro take on goth vis a vis the assymetrical emo haircut.
The problem with emo is that it's goth with the romance removed, so what was easy pickings with some ingroup upside before is now easy pickings with all emotional vulnerability downside.
The undercut represented the top bit of an empowered individual, it took dedication, commitment, self confidence. You could accesorize but not overly so., sadly I think my undercut days are gone. Furthermore you punch undercut into google and you find frustratingly few examples for me to substantiate how gangsta it is/was. I don't know anyone these days with an undercut, something happened to masculinaty sometime when friends came in and every white boy became a gel boy.
Let's not forget the importance of the undercut to women though. It can give that same fuck-off vibe whilst preserving femininity. time for some exhibits:

Exhibit A: Mike patton circa Epic channeling pure white cool slightly pre-grunge watch the you tube clip to gain full appreciation

Exhibit B: Trent Reznor circa Head Like a Hole, the dawn of industrial sub culture, check you tube again for appreciation of the 'english headbanger' where dreadlocks and the undercut meet

On cyclists

If a cyclest is irresponsible and unpredictable on the roads they get killed.

If a driver of an automobile is irresponsible and unpredictable on the roads cyclists get killed.

A grievous offense with a car can result in you not only killing a cyclist but killing yourself. But who knows if you hold your nerve the bike goes under, the corpse bounces off the bonnet, a lesson is learned? or is it.
I think if people think execution helps deter crime and that guns can deter home invasion and muggings - maybe fitting all cyclists with C4 could make our roads safer.
I mean if anything having exploding bycyclists is really an exercise in evening up the exchange. You clip a cyclist they blow up you also die in your big car.
Just like guns are the great equaliser "who needs courage when you have a gun" so too could be exploding bicyclists.
I put this revolutionary idea to my housemate...


...i just thought about dinner and it's far too early in the day, now I feel agonisingly hungry...

...and my housemate suggested that people would just try and wing cyclists and drive away causing an amusing explosion at no personal cost.
That's true except I'm thinking more like the cold wars M.A.D. sort of explosive - Mutually Assured Destruction. The explosives would be big enough to vaporise a family sedan or porsche 4x4.
Furthermore it would also make cyclists less tempted to run that red light. To cut across 3 lanes and maybe even look behind themselves once in a while.

And I wonder why nobody takes anything I say seriously? A serious post on this face-off between self powered and internal combustion powered later.

see you douchebags.

The Price of Time

It's a common strategy for companies to offer gifts in kind, probably the most common form of a corporate thankyou (or maybe well known) is the frequent flyer program. Airlines often have excess capacity on flights, the variable cost of having a customer sitting in that seat is let's say $40. Even though a flight to Hawaii might cost you $1100 if you would only take that seat on that flight because you can pay for it with frequent flyer points you get an otherwise empty seat so you get a flight you value at $1100 and it only costs the company $40. This works so long as the system is set up so a paying customer never gets bumped for a ff awardee.
I've been reading on win-win strategies under game theory and I was thinking about the old pay rise negotiations.
Firstly negotiation under game theory (and in practice) is daunting enough, but the thing about pay rises is that they are more or less the opposite of the above situation.
You see thanks to Income tax (and HECS) is that an employer values a pay rise much more than you do. An extra $4000 might represent depanding on your tax bracket as little as $2200 a year or $42 a week to you but it means $76 a week your employer has to pay. That's of course a worse case scenario and generally the more you earn the more you claim back on tax. But to someone like me who has no deductable expenses (apart from donations to recognised charities) combined with short term cashflow problems having half a pay rise locked away for a year (or 50 if using tax effective super contributions) just isn't something I get all fussed about.
So it costs a company up to twice as many dollars to get the same impact out of me, the taxation system not only taxes better performance but it reduces the incentive for a company to say thankyou in cold hard cash.
Now when I was a casual employee you don't talk salaries but in hours, like $9.80 an hour to be seniour management at HJ's and $21 to talk shit on a phone. And it made it clear cut what time was worth, infact pay was related directly to time. Performance measures generally held steady and you had that 1:1 relationship between time spent and revenue raised. ie. for every 1 hour worked you sold 23 burgers. but most jobs and indeed work don't follow this cycle. take retail, for two months of the year (november & december) the value of an hour goes up alot during the christmas retail period, I think it's something like 80% of the years business happens in December. Hence you see the casual staff numbers balloon up at this time and then be cut back massively come February.
And most full time jobs are the same but it gets obscured by the fact that time isn't the only factor that can increase or decrease your value, it can just be sheer capacity, your strategic fit, customer demand, timing, seasonality, business cycles, government investment, overseas interest rates, deregulation, regulation and so on and so fourth, but the fact is that not every hour you put in is worth as much as every other hour you put in.
Your energy and concentration are not as good at the end of a day as at the beginning of the day, or the shipping deadline is 2pm and customers tend to only use your services up until this time.
Furthermore, if people were really honest with themselves they would admit that they only put in at maximum around 3 hours of productive effort a day, yet most of us are at work for 8. Some people do pile on the effort and work a phenomenal amount of hours productively and these people are why Unemployment is high, they should actually be highering graduates to do their book keeping and other things for them that they are currently micromanaging like Donald Rumsfield. Yes they may have to sacrifice their pay but this again comes back to the same question?
What is the value of time?
8 hours work, 8 hours rest and 8 hours recreation is the basis of the 8 hour day. Outside melbourne trades hall we fitted a monument to this notion, it is what many, but not I would consider a 'balanced' day. But If I have to work as many hours a day as I'm sleeping I'm not doing one or the other efficiently.
If say you shift the balance to 10 hours work (pretty common) and cut back to 7 hours recreation and 7 hours rest already we see that the situation is unbalanced. Now you would also notice that this breakdown adds up to 24 hours, lot's of assumptions have been made here, or ommitted for want of simplicity. For example what is commute time? is it working day or recreation day, in the mornings it's more likely to come out of rest time. Say you are the average Melburnite and your commute is 1 hour each way through rush hour traffic - 10 hours became 12. Or even in the balanced perspective 8 hours becomes 10. You may even enjoy driving and good old breakfast radio or like me enjoy a 15 k ride to work whilst listening to music. It doesn't really matter if you enjoy it or not it's part and parcel of your decision to work. And I don't really begrude work for not being sub 1 minute travel time for my place of residence. I'm a realist but really the decision to sell your time to an employer really leaves two things to negotiate at a table and most often we only negotiate one side of the deal and worse give away the other.
How often does work give you money because it may as well or to make a favorable impression? once a year if that, and believe me a company would rather give money to customers to say thank you than employees.
Yet we give away time that is our recuperation time, valuable time to a company and in reality the company probably doesn't value it anywhere near what you or I do.
Infact if anything by the time you sign your first contract you've probably overprovisioned your time for what the company demands in value.
You could probably get out 75% of the output in 50% of the time you work now, and I feel that estimate is conservative. as such 50% of your hours should be negotiable.
So there is time that you value more than your employer does, and then there is pay which an employer values more than you do.
So I would have thought if anything hours would reduce as you moved up in a company but the reverse tends to happen.
That's what I call a lose-lose anyway I'll see how I go at the negotiating table.

Open Stride

A goodweekend is not as easy as intuitively it promises to be.
I find usually I just spend too much time recovering and not enough time doing productive stuff.
but I managed to catch up with a fair few people and stuff. Furthermore I stimulated my brain finding myself drawn into a whole bunch of design stuff.
I was going to say, at some point, something and that something was that if ever you get an invitation into someone else's world, take it.
I mean to say if people want you to take an interest in something do so.
Why I say this is that I was watching Crude Impact on SBS, where they were saying that if China consumed resources the way US citizens did we would need 6 more planet earths.
Daunting enough but I am confident that market forces will painfully reinforce that this simply cannot happen, no matter what WA premiers promise they can dig out of the ground.
Anyhoo, that is to say I thought, each and every person lives in a world of their own. Because perceptions are unique to one person, and if perceptions have an impact on the qualities of any object, person or thing in the universe.
For example, houses and cars are of relatively little value to me, but they are god given rights in the same way lungs are for others (again not a god given right)
Speaking of lungs mine are back to their screaming best.
I was drifting off to sleep last night in my running gear when I said: No! go fucken run tohm you always let yourself down on a weekend.
So then I got up and ran from my house round the zoo and then around princes park and then back home, which is about 9.5k but the real revelation was that it actually got easier, as I ran my legs felt looser and I just sped up and sped up. I was overtaking people for the first time in a long time around the park.
I then headed home and heading along the bike path that hugs the railway line the bells started ringing and the boom gates fell.
I realised if I sped up I could avoid having to jog on the spot waiting for traffic to pass.
So I did and I hit something that I hadn't for maybe 3-4 years. My open stride.
For ages (2 months) even though my heart has been strong, my lungs good I still haven't felt like I was going fast. Last night I hit my stride and it felt fast and it felt good.
Running is good.

A waste of breath...

If you didn't catch southpark last monday (in Australia) possibly last January in the US they played Part 1 of Go God Go! Southpark like John Safran are good at handling issues I find because they never let any one audiance get too comfortable. Plus Mrs Garrison is hilarious in almost every appearance on that show.

Anyway that's how I would prefer the endless debates aboot religion should be conducted, commically and with feces being thrown.
Instead extremists tend to set out to maximise human suffering and moderates simply to consume most of the resources of intellectual capacity humanity has to offer.
I was reading a blog entry that was looking at the 'controversy' of the da vinci code as to whether Jesus could have fathered a child or not and whether in the early days of Christianity they were even organised enough to actually follow and protect this bloodline.
Now immediately my mind clicks into gear to come out with rational arguements for or against this case and my DAV experiences deeply ingrained make me want to pursue it with fervor.
But I read on and then found that the author proposed that this was meerly an extension of a 'deeper' question, a debate that had raged on for years:
Was Jesus Devine?
Interesting? Yes. Was the authors arguements good? Yes. They seemed well thought out, the dialogue was engaging and it was drawing on volumes of research.
I read about two paragraphs and was up to the bit where St Paul was trying to claim he had visions from Jesus and this gave him title to being the 12th apostle, maybe something about the definition of 'Messiah' I don't know. If it had been a conversation I would have been compelled to speak out with my opinion. But instead having really only broken the surface on the arguement presented a question popped into my head:

Do I care?






Well........................no.

No I don't care if Jesus was devine or not. It's of relatively little importance to me. I don't have much personally invested either way. I don't care whether Gabriel or Buddha were devine or not. I just don't care.
The obvious retort is the old 'Why do you talk about it so much then?' which plays on a favorite past time of mine which is to ask someone who's clearly fine 'Why are you upset?' or 'What's wrong Tim?' and refuse to take 'Nothing' for an answer.
I remember reading in a Comic following Lex Luthor's run at presidency the first chapter was called 'The Reason' where without any dialogue or text you followed Lex through his day constantly being confronted by the image of Superman until he cracks and decides to run for president.
This is essentially what being an athiest is like, you live in a world with people who begin with the assumption their personal god exists, or moderates who begin with the assumption that a personal god exists. And work from there.
It's like being put on a committee to solve the 'Reduction of Water in our Bucket Project' beginning with the assumption that the bucket is perfect and there can't be a leak.
I must admit ignorance to a lot of non-Judaic religions but here is a selection of controversial debates that thanks to the beggining assumptions result in a total waste of time (these have actually been debated by professionals):

When does a soul enter an embrio/fertilised egg
Where do children go who die of natural causes before being baptised (resulting in the Catholic Limbo clause)
Anything regarding the Holy Trinity
If two teachings from the Prophet contradict eachother should we default to the earlier or the latter teaching?

And so on and so on...
I mean imagine if your most intelligent friends called meetings with experts around the world to spend their time debating issues such as:

Did Tyrone from TV's good times prefer Sandlewood or Oceanspray?
Can a power ranger coin be used for evil?
Which componant Lion in Voltron is the most intrinsically good?

Imagine if people killed eachother over these issues on a day to day basis, Imagine if some of the worlds most capable (but not brilliant) minds where pouring study day after day into these issues.
Imagine if on Insight and other panel discussion programs moral questions deferred to the president of the Transformers fan club.
Imagine if merchandisers were exempt from tax if they sold anything related to telly tubbies.
Imagine if the highest point in every town had a huge building dedicated to David Hasselhoff.

That's what it's like being an athiest.
Example my former housemate Damo spent a year of his life writing a long thesis on Agency, now he's dedicating some years to writing about modal metaphysics, in doing so he has some pretty interesting theories on what is moral behaviour and he has to read up to find out what progress has actually been made into moral studies and what have been proposed by other academics for the past however many thousands of years.
Infact psychologists and scientists and what not have gotten together and done studies on what does and doesn't constitute moral behaviour.
Now he's probably dealing with an end of the spectrum that is beyond any sort of moral call I'll ever have to make.
I would imagine these sorts of experts are who you should refer to in understanding complex situations in terms of weighing up say the rights of an individual against a majority, the tyranny of majority or where one decision effects multiple parties such as borrowing resources off of future generations.
Complex, the sort of stuff Jimmy Carter used to agonize over.
Compare to say the case of The Bean Farmer's Union vs Pythagoras. What's that I say?
Pythagoras wasn't he the guy that came up with all them rules about the nature of right angled triangles?
Yes, but did you know he was also a bit of a religious leader? It's true. Seldom does anyone question: Was Pythagoras Devine? which is a compelling question I don't care about. I would say probably since he clearly had some sort of devine insight into triangles, timeless and universal. However he forbade his followers eat beans.
Now beans are a low fat source of protein and in terms of the food chain take much less energy to produce. They are vital to mexicans and vegetarians.
Imagine if we paid as much legislative respect to Pythagoras' church as we do to the Judaic one's, we would have 'bean free' on our menu, in certain states you wouldn't be allowed to grow beans.
In africa you can be stoned to death for eating beans.
The list goes on. Furthermore an expert in things Pythagoras did or didn't like would be respected and subsidized in taxation, they would get a seat on discussion panals where poor Damo may never set foot. No cocktails and cupcakes and glamorous models for him, no choirs to lift his spirits in the great hall that he presides over.
No for damian it is just his rustic clothing and study for as long as he lives.

Now most dissapointing of all I logged onto the comments left on this post I was reading and I saw all these specific questions technical aspects of the bible story posted under parky's comment 'this was too long - :)' asking can you trace the lineage of the 12 disciples? more blah blah blah...
Again who cares, these I would have thought may be some important questions:

What is moral behaviour?

That's a good starting point for everyone, the second thing is to resist the temptation to rush to the nearest holy book and find out. Because a much better answer is:

moral behaviour is anything that reduces suffering, immoral behaviour is anything that increases suffering.

Now that's a starting point isn't it, and the real kick in the pants is that religion can deviate from such a simple test, in our society people are wasting their time and energy having all sorts of debates over whether Pythagoras meant beans literally or in a metaphysical sense. One could ask: how did this ever become a moral question?

ANZAC Day greatest day of the year

Ah the traditions of Anzac day are long and proud. What a special day of the year.
I had just done my laundry on Monday night where I confronted the reality that I couldn't make it through the week, even with a public holiday without doing a load.
Anyway whenever I have done my washing it's usually so long overdue that I get a certain luxurious feeling like I've just bought a whole heap of new clothes.
As such I had my pick on Anzac day of bball singlets to choose from to go playing in. I'd texted all my players the night before and in the best Anzac tradition I got up early in the morning around 8.30 (tim brown on SYN by the way is a truly representing youth voice of rare wit and intelligence matched with equal ambivolence and superfluity) and played some NBA Live 07 where as the Houston Rockets I shat all over the Dallas Mavericks with T-Mac sinking 69 points 5 rebounds 2 steals and 2 blocks with 8/8 3 point shots made just to get me in the mood.
Then I went in early to town and even though Vincent & Tosh had cancelled and Daud couldn't make it Rio was still down for it and I had my traditional al fresco breakfast. I sure miss Misaki on days like these because I use to go out for breakfast with her in real classy places and get things called 'The Big Breakfast' or Eggs Florentine or Benedict and occasionally pancakes. Infact we probably went out for breakfast more than dinner. I think Breakfast feels like more of an achievement.
Anyway, suffice to say I just can't bring myself to the skivvy wearing loner state of mind where you hand over decent money for a great breakfast to eat by yourself. Instead I went to a swanston walk cafe and handed over too much money to enjoy an indecent breakfast by myself.
Speaking of indecent the complete absence of all other forms of CBD entertainment outside of the parade sure brings the bogans into this neck of the woods adorned in essendon and collingwood colours drinking a lot of beer (at 11am) and swearing loudly, I know carlton is no exception when it comes to its fair share of unruly fans and these guys are more likely to shell out for membership than people with highly disposable incomes having values of 'loyalty' over values of 'value'.
Anyway I ate my breakfast and Rio texted me to say he was running late and so I had an hour to warm up before our game.
I have been working on my jump shot, well technically its just the regular overarm shot, and I'd be hitting around 45%, I wanna get over 50% but my problem is in a game I'm expected to be down on the low post picking up garbage goals not hitting jumpers.
But After 20 minutes warm up (approximately half of regular game time) I decided to switch to hook shots and found I'm hitting about 30% even with my back to the basket, If I could get that up it would be super helpful on the low postin converting an offensive rebound into a score.
After my shoulder was getting tired I switched to my old bad shooting style which could be called the pass shot, It's my awkward long range underarm shot that I used whin I was a teenager playing and got increadibly accurate. It would be useless except for its deceptive nature.
A) it looks like a pass so instead of blocking the shot defenders rush into the key to intercept the pass or stop the man inside.
B) it gives me extra range so people don't expect me to shoot for 3 because I can't hit it with a jumper.
Anyway I still shoot about 80% with this but it's so easy to block it's useless in the paint.
But that more or less concluded my hour long warmup.
I bought a Gatorade and rode up to melbourne uni where I played with Rio against some chinese guys 4 on 4 half court. The first game me, rio and this other dude made up one team and represented all rebounding options so we won 10-4 then we switched the other rebounding king and I went from grabbing 3 boards to 14 thanks to my superior boxing out, admittedly a lot of rebounds where off my own low post shots but I scored about 3 of the 10 to tuck away our second win.
Then we switched to 3 on 3 when Omar came to play some big guys with some illmatic ball handling skills. We did pretty well and I did surprisingly well rebounding considering a 10 kilo disadvantage I had but we lost.
Second game we lost by a more convincing margin but Rio finally got his low post shooting down. Omar claimed to have too much power from all this wisdom teeth surgery.
Anyway then I ate some lunch and hit boarders for a while. By the time I got home it was 5.30, by the time I got back from the supermarket it was 6. By the time gnocchi kicked in It was 8.30 and I managed half an hour reading before I passed out.
What a fine way to uphold the traditions of Anzac day.

Spam

Because I almost never use my hotmail account, I almost never expect to recieve any email. I've never ever had problems with spam either. In a time when people where leaping from hotmail to yahoo and gmail like there was no tomorrow even using their crappy ISP provided accounts I stuck by because I had no reason, I'd almost never recieved a single bit of spam.
So today I log in and to my bitter dissapointment people I know have instead sent me promo's and advertising material.
Maybe what they say is true, the internet is the end of human contact if the only reason people can think to contact me is to send me mail flyers.
I mean obscure pornographique at least.
Anyway April's been a let down in blogging, but man not because I haven't wanted to post, if you had seen the ideas stewing in my head you'd be all like, man I want some stew.
Anyway I will endeavor to post.
The great dissappearing pancake.

John's Wager

If you look at John's second most recent blog post of his personal life you'll see a well reasoned and lightly entertaining post.
But I remember a wager I made with John, one whose end I fulfilled and he sold out, claiming he had 'already had that conversation' infact I don't even think it was that it was more like 'I already know what she'll say'.
That wasn't the deal john.

that wasn't the deal.

And unlike John I'd like to apologize for not keeping my blog up to date.
I've been busy, but not with better stuff to do.