Helpless

I emerged with a coke from the shadows of QV food court into the bright spring sunlight. I don't know how I got this tired and was contemplating lying down on a couch or park bench to sleep. Somehow I manage to call Zaman I'm calling him early this week because his daughter has been in pretty bad shape.

I didn't realise till now, but just how reluctant I was to call him every week the past two months, I just emotionally and selfishly didn't want to deal with the plight of Shafika's fight with cancer. I didn't want to hear the worst.

Today I heard the worst, Zaman was not good, and then he told me 'my daughter is dead...' and I can't really remember the rest, but who cares nothing else matters. I told him I wanted to visit and he told me he was in emergency where his wife had collapsed exhausted from the physical toll watching her daughter fade away must have taken.

As I walked to the hospital I couldn't cry. Couldn't comprehend and strangely even though nothing like this has ever happened to me before I felt like it had happened thousands of times.

I hadn't seen Zaman since the day I visited him in hospital when the first discovered Shafika's cancer, when I bought a 'get well soon' rabbit and learned I should have bought a bigger one, though none can ever be big enough to cure cancer I guess.
He looks terrible, and we are little comfort for eachother, when I tell his wife I'm sorry she starts crying and father and son go to her. Everybody looks and feels terrible, I make what small talk I can desperate for answers to those questions 'were you there with her when she died? was she in pain?' and some I can ask like 'are the others okay? are you getting fed? is anybody looking after you?'

Shafika has been buried and I missed it, which is what I was afraid of, in just four short days and its killing me that I was too scared, too tired, too timid to call more often.

But alas, I am little comfort to the living, Zaman would gladly lose a 1000 of me to keep one daughter, and that's not malace just being a parent. But me they have, and Heather, and David and Florence and their friends and family and eachother and hundreds in the community.

When I leave the claustrophobic darkness of emergency the day is undeniably beautiful outside. It's all surreal and I still can't cry.

Here I have to confess, Shafika is in part stranger to me, in part family. Unlike Zaman's other children I saw little of her due to her ongoing health problems, but what little I saw was her smiling and laughing of her seeing her family recieve their Citizenship papers and when all seemed to finally be righting itself in the world for Zaman's family senseless meaningless cancer comes along and takes her life away.

This is how I'm selfish, and how to the same extent as everyone I'm just another ugly human being, but I am upset for Zaman, I wish this tragedy hadn't happened, in part because Shafika is just a child 19 and just free from the life of a refugee, Zaman's first born and somebody he would die for gladly if it would do any good but it doesn't and so he must watch her die in front of him. This is a large part of my grief, but then there is the ugly part, the part of me that needs Zaman, needs Zaman to be happy and smiling and calling everything beautiful like he did when I just taught him english and it made me feel good about myself. And now I'm no good at all, just useless, just somebody else who feels bad.

Within 3 minutes I am in the park of Atherton Gardens heading to that heart of mine, the sanctuary, the Fitzroy Learning Network where people know Zaman's story and Shafika's and will possibly have the answers to all my questions.
In the park children are laughing, comprised of refugees (relatively) safe and free to be children, and it can't help but warm your heart. I remember Claire remarking that parks are Utopic places, and it's true, if life is worth living it is worth living for days in the park like this. I remeber days in the park like this with Miki, who got angry when I joked about recycling her petname 'pretty cake' that she never forgave me for and her overreaction to seeing a dead magpie and wishing I could react that much now. But I'm subdued and unable to cry.

I walk into the FLN and knock on the door of the office which turns out to be empty. As a volunteer is asking me who I'm looking for Heather walks into the hallway and points at me as I point at her and we both say 'just the person I was looking for' Heather begins the hard task of telling me about Shafika's death and I can at least spare her some sorrow temporarily by informing her I know.

Then we get to sit in the sun of the courtyard and Heather who visited the family every day answers all the questions I can throw at her. Yes they were together, Zaman slept on a cot in Shafika's room every night she was never alone. She died on the saturday from an infection that took over because her immune system was shot, her lungs filling with fluid and her body just shutting down. Her pain was managed although the morphine gave her hallucinations that scared her so they switched to methodone, and then when the pain was too much, morphine again. The most pain was psychological knowing that she was going to die and leave her family behind. The family knew she would die the doctors had told them that the only question was if it would be a couple of months or a couple of years. She had kept that characteristic hospitality of the family making sure heather always had a pillow for her back, even though she was the one dying. The funeral was segregated with the men closest to the grave, but one of the men had words to the Imam and the women were allowed closer. The children were distraught to varying degrees. The community turned out in numbers. Because it was the end of Ramadan the grieving, stress and emotions were amplified by the physical toll of fasting.

She answered one question I didn't ask too, and the answer is that the world is still filled with beautiful people, more than you would ever guess.

I try to stay in the sunlight as I walk back to town. I still can't cry and then for some reason I think of the 'Sending our love down the well' episode of Simpsons, where Bart ends up trapped in the well and laments at all the things he'll never do like smoke a cigarette and shave a dirty word into the back of his head... words that move homer to a furious rage and he digs Bart out. And that gets me finally, except I have no furious rage and I don't know what I could do. Cure cancer? better folks than me are trying, single handedly bring peace to Afghanistan and the greater middle east? Maybe. I got nothing better to do with my life.
But the day is just too beautiful and the tears stop. The truth is, I'm not the bereaved one here. I don't even really understand whats going on. I can't regret meeting Shafika or her life even with all its heartbreak and suffering because she was a beautiful child that got to live and bring joy to her family. Zaman and his family need to grieve for as long as they need and they will never be whole again, they will be scarred but the scars are from healing, from getting better. Not whole, just better.

'Life goes on' is a cliche because it's true. Life is for the living, and it's another beautiful spring day in Melbourne, children are playing and lovers are strolling and dogs are sniffing things to their great intellectual stimulation. That too, I can do nothing about.

There's not enough philosophy on wikipedia

It occured to me shortly after writing the title of this post that I don't actually know what philosophy means, and so I went and looked it up on wikipedia:

"Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.[1][2] It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions (such as mysticism, myth, or the arts) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.[3] The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), which literally means "love of wisdom"."

so there you go, and there isn't enough on wikipedia. That is when you look up Zack De La Rocha you don't necessarily get a section that is a long rant on his reason for being. Albeit there is an apology for why he doesn't eat meat.

But this isn't just limited to the political figures of wikipedia if you look up George W Bush there's no reason for being section either and you can't get somebody less political than Dubya, whom I've become a huge fan of now he's safely out of the way. I may even read his book, since his reason for being isn't on Wikipedia.

And while in general I'm averse to the expectation that peeps should have to apologise for their existence and generally hold that peeps and all creatures don't have to explain themselves to have a right to exist and just be. I like philosophies, and like inspiring philosophies that's what I like to see.

I guess if wikipedia also contained peeps philosophies then there would be no need to waste hours watching Youtube interviews with peoples.

Little Spoons

Bryce thinks I should suck a cock. That once I take that cock out of my mouth I will stop being so scared, appreciate new meaning in my life and all of my problems will be solved. Bryce and I go waaaaaaaaaaaaay back and he perhaps more than anyone knows how to exploit my insecurities and confound my reason such that I can accept such a plan as a good idea.

Accept I can't, to embark on such an endeavor requires an answer to the question 'how?' as in how will sucking a cock solve all my problems? It's a real Stage 3: Profits! type solution to my real or imagined problems.

Rowan though sees an indie film and possible book deal in the 'diary of a straight guy, sucking a cock to solve all his problems' market and thus votes yes. Again with a profit motive perhaps.

Fortunately there is Ann, who votes no, don't suck a cock tohm. And if life tells me anything it is to listen to Ann.

Don't get me wrong, Bryce played a crucial role in getting me to ask out my first real girlfriend and subsequent first kiss. He also played a crucial role in setting me up with my worst ever kiss. I take full responsibility of course, I don't blame him. I'm just saying following his advice and recommendations has sort of cancelled eachother out in terms of risks vs. benefits n shit. I guess I should thank him though, before hooking up with 'J' I thought 'being a good kisser' was a completely vacuous complement applicable to everyone. Apparantly not.

By contrast Ann takes home the trophy for getting me with Miki and also having frequently dispensed excellent advice when it comes to my core incompetence in life: women. Again don't get me wrong, I hope Bryce never stops coming up with advice such as taking a dump on the ground and telling a girl I like 'this is how you make me feel' I'd rather hear these pearls of wisdom than miss out.

I wasn't going to write this post because it felt indulgent and narcissistic and quite possibly hurtful, but I ran into the butcher and talked about most of what follows with him and we could relate so well to eachothers situations that I thought, I will, I will write this post and maybe you too dear reader can relate as well. But I apologise in advance for any narcissism, self-indulgence, misogeny or whatever worst aspects of my Id show up, because this is a facebook invite to the contents of my mind and you just don't know which douchebags will show up.

My 'Search' for a little spoon.

You see there's two kinds of peeps in this world, in a very specific kind of way. There's those that bet dollars and win cents, and those that bet cents and win dollars (but more often, lose cents) I have come to the conclusion that i am the latter. But like lefty's vs. righty's the former is far more prevelant - at least from where I'm standing.

The analogy was originally in an investment context, but I'm going to talk relationships. Various peeps are flatteringly concerned about my persistent singleness for a variaty of reasons and motivations. Mother dearest for example is concerned, for reasons I don't wish to know.

A lot of peeps urge me to 'just have fun' which I was under the impression I was already doing, what these peeps often mean is 'lower your ridiculous standards tohm and just date anybody! somebody! get a fucking girl' (or suck a cock, from some quarters). Which for a lot of peeps is probably good advice, but perhaps not for me (though I always have my doubts).

See this is the kind of person I am, and perhaps you are or aren't like me. I can't walk away, I can't leave. I just can't do it. I've tried to 'have fun' and pick up somebody at a party, or have a short time fling, one night stands etc. I can't do it. I can't take it. I call up Mr. Burns to see if he'll still give us that drink.
I end up in a relationship and many would argue that I A) either have commitment issues. or B) Isn't that what you want?

Well let's steer back towards the 'standards' topic. Standards feels very judgemental, 'what I like' or 'look for' seems too specific. Specifications is what I'd refer to when I throw in the towell and just build myself a girlfriend I call the 'Lovetron 3000' a robot so fine it needs courting. So I'll stick to standards/stuff I like okay I'm not sticking to anything at all...

Let's talk Venn diagrams, nerdy, cold, inappropriate I know and that's why I'm not going to draw one but basically you got two circles. (Yes I mean you, because I'm fairly confident this applies to just about everyone) These circles are 'peeps I like' and 'peeps that like me' and then all the white space around these circles is the vast majority of peeps we are indifferent to and whom are indifferent to us.

The circle of 'peeps I like' and it's relative size mayhaps reflect your and my standards, small means you got real 'high' standards or as I prefer 'specific' and large means as one of my highschool buddies put it standards that are close to 'has two legs and isn't {insert your local moron's name here}'.

But maybe the size doesn't matter really of your 'peeps I like circle' because as much as I hate Tim minchin, his song 'If I didn't have you' I totally agree with which is to say, even if your likes are very specific there's still probably more women out there you do like than you could ever date in your entire life-time. So really both circles without being narcissistic as regards anyone are potentially infinitely large.

But my growing concern is that the circle containing the peeps that like me (which I cannot really prove exists at all, though I do have my suspicions) and the circle 'peeps I like' don't overlap by much, if at all. That is to say A VERY SMALL PERCENTAGE OF THE PEEPS I LIKE ARE THE SAME PEEPS THAT LIKE ME. Really if there is any commentary on how high or low your standards are, it's by how much the two circles overlap. This indeed is the dilemma or issue that causes everybody on earth to stress about relationships and invest in colognes called Sex Panther, or get bogan blonde streaks put in your hair.

Now, here is where Butcher and my conversating got interesting at least to us, I can't gauruntee this blog will get interesting ever.

A couple of weeks ago I started having recurring dreams about hooking up with, going on dates and having sex with girls I suspected that liked me (I can't prove anything).

Now as pleasant as the 'having fun' stage of the dream was, I woke up feeling terrible because I could remember that the majority of the dream was me feeling guilty about the fact that I realised the varying cast of these dreams then expected me to be in a relationship with them and that I had to break up with them and then they would call me a cad or worse for simply using them or stringing them along.

This is me, this is why I can't simply 'have fun' I feel terrible, I sit at home having an emotional breakdown that that girl expects me to call them and ask them out for a second date. I don't mind being used for fun myself per se, but I personally am just like 'what's the point?' I'm not sure if this is how all introverts feel, given the amount of energy it takes to socialise I don't see why I would ever invest the time and energy to pick someone up just to throw them away.

I said something to butcher, or Rowan or somebody that I can't repeat here but you can probably guess. Hopefully though you can't.

And here's the real trap, requiring sadly that I narcissisticly talk about me some more - for me you can be attractive, intelligent, fit, kind and generous and not be in my 'peeps I like circle' which sounds like incredibly high standards. Here me out though, You can be dumb, borderline average, super un-fit, kind and lazy and be in my 'peeps I like circle'. Because there are things that are deal-breakers for me and things that aint.

I can't describe it but for me the most attractive quality in a woman (or indeed man, though I don't swing that way) is that they 'speak the language' which no, is not Japanese, it is an ability to conversate in such a way as to be constantly surprising and entertaining. If peeps can speak 'the' language to me it is immediately apparant even though I couldn't define it here. I can't really say what it is because it's surprising in nature and therefore, if I could predict what it sounds like, I wouldn't be surprised.

For example, I fell in love with E almost instantly when we were setting up our first date and I asked her where she wanted to go for lunch. She said 'The Pancake Parlour' this was back in the day of landlines, and I had to walk around the corner and hide so I could silently make joyous undignified dance movements, wrapped in a phone cord.

Now, if you are curious, if you think that you should ask me out on a date to the Pancake Parlour and I will fall in love with you - you clearly don't speak the language. Much in the same way as if you've ever been sitting in a bar with a group of mates and one of them said something incredibly witty and insightful and everyone burst out laughing and you instructed them to repeat the joke for Matt who was off buying a drink at the time then once again you clearly don't speak the language.

The language makes up 50% of my piechart of love because I like to be with peeps that I actually enjoy spending time with, since I know once I'm in a relationship I'll basically stay there till I'm ditched.

After that it's probably kindness, even though I'm naturally inclined to be a cunt, I fight it as much as I can and I don't really like bitter vindictiveness in other peeps and hey, who does. Then attractiveness, intelligence, blah blah blah whatever. The first twix are the only real dealbreakers.

And because they are dealbreakers I can't lower my standards, what I can do is date somebody nice, intelligent, kind and healthy or whatever except... except that's a trap, and I'm supposed to learn from experience. Plenty of people myself included fail to do so. Hence hencely people have such a common habit of marrying people that are just like the people they recently divorced (according to Dan Gilbert) anyway, and sometimes your 'type' is not good for you.

I hope to learn from past experience and not just date people because they like me and I can. This decision ain't for everyone. I'm sure Ann who voted 'no' don't lower your standards and whom I listen to I'm assuming wouldn't advise all her friends to do the same.

It works for me because I bet cents to win dollars, that's the plan at least. My life, and this the butcher related to (I think), is not so unpleasant that I can't stand the loneliness. Infact my life is good, I do too much exercise, too much socialising, too much creating and too much giving to feel bad for any prolonged period. (Recently I've actually been having trouble feeling bad when I feel I'm supposed to). Which is a good problem to have. I can handle being single for long stretches (waaay long stretches) not just because of what I said to Rowan or butcher that I can't repeat here but because like Harlen Elson astutely pointed out there's a difference between being Alone and being lonely.

For the right lady I'd make time, but not for the wrong one. I'd rather work on the other things in my life that give me euphoric satisfaction.

The thing though about betting cents to win dollars, is that your numbers come up far less often than when you are betting dollars to win cents. They may tis true never come up at all. So most of the time you lose cents, which is fine because you can afford to do so. But the fact is that for most of the time you look (and subsequently feel) like a loser, this doesn't just apply to relationships, but pretty much anything be it trying to become an artist or musician of note or making a scientific breakthrough or inventing the next sliced bread.

It takes a certain somebody to be able to hold out amongst the others living on the other side of the fence that most of the time look like they are doing pretty well for themselves and occasionally lose big. (humiliating and expensive divorce and what not).

For me I know from experience that playing it safe career wise and relationship wise don't work for me. I wake up feeling a deep sense of malaise, misdirect my anger and find myself jealous of friends going to clown college and counting their pocket change to see if they can afford a hotdog.

Maybe you can relate, maybe you can't.

This is disjointed but Butcher made the point that where those circles overlap (peeps who both like us AND we like) we are confounded by our own terror. I realised this isn't true, I'm terrified of everybody in the 'peeps I like circle' humiliatingly terrified, which has lead to my ungraceful and unpatented 'burn the ships of retreat' tactic to force myself to approach these peeps. But it's true and concerning for me in particular because I should add that relationships ain't about what we can take, but are equally about what we actually have to offer.

Where I relate to my friends that tell me to 'have fun' is that it does seem like a waste when I have (not much) but something to offer somebody but instead I'm all alone. At the very least there's my body warmth on a cold winters night, that's just a scientific fact. But yes, I murder my own confidence over the question of what I actually have to offer and it's partly why I entertain the theory that perhaps the two circles don't overlap at all.

Most tragically for me is that my fear of peeps I like actually hampers my ability to speak the language myself (or at the very least say the things that keep the conversation conversating) I used to overcome this with negativity and vindictiveness, but since Claire dumped my arse (thanks again Claire) I've gradually been trying to be less of a cunt each day and I don't have this defence anymore, which means I just end up a plain old retard.

Thus thusly, there are many obstacles to finding a little spoon for me. Not least of which is how rare women who speak the language are, and how unpredictable they are to find/meet. Sadly men much more commonly speak the language, like 1/10 vs 3/50 for females and this is the sort of observation that makes Bryce's cock sucking reciprocal arrangement (not I should state with Bryce) semi-appealing, until I realise that all the guys that speak the language are also tragically straight, so yeah I'm going to roll with Ann on this one, not lower my standards, and keep the cock out of my mouth.

I've had some amazing women in my life, and the experiences can't be taken away. But I do have regrets and most of them were when I 'just had fun' and missed out on opportunites (that may or may not have been real) that haunt me to this day. I boasted with uncharacteristic bravado once that 'i'd rather be rejected by her, than hook up with all the others' or something like that, and though it doesn't reveal my true terror or ineptitude with women, nor just how unpleasent getting rejected is, it's still true.

But Bryce does make a hypnotically persuasive argument and as Black Sheep said 'I never say never because I know I just might.'

Success is like a Cafe

So I talk about failure a lot, peeps know I'm obsessed with it. It is my mistress I court at every corner. But what of it's twin sister - Success?

I was sitting in a very nice cafe today, the name of which I don't know and it was so nice I kind of thought it would be a nice life, running a cafe. I don't know shite about coffee it's true, nor could I make good muffins or sandwiches and whatever. But seriously, having your business as a nice relaxing place for people to unwind would provide one with a nice relaxing place to work.

Anyway, I thought 'Success is like a cafe.' And maybe it isn't. I don't know what I'm saying...




Now I remember, success could be like a cafe, but really what I'm talking about is the vague and abstract concept of 'making it' that is the breakthrough. I've been told in any creative pursuit you are a pro when you don't actually have to do anything else to support yourself. That is you are a writer when you tap out a story or article from time to time and don't serve coffee at Starbucks to pay the rent. (it just occured to me that I know a writer literally doing this, fortunately he's probably too busy with starbucks to read my blog). You are a musician when you earn money from blowing on the end of a tuba and not when you give lessons to some fat kid from private school. You are an artist when you go to your studio and paint a rotting fish still life and sell it for your years wages, not when you go to a call center and conduct computer assisted telephone interviews for the collation of statistical data.

Thus the concept of 'making it' through this frontier has tremendous appeal. Anyway I'm going to stop explainanating and just talk about cafe's now.

If you are some kind of creative, you want to be the cool cafe. The hidden secret place to chill out. You just want to be a good cafe, that makes good coffee.

BUT you want people to find out about you and flock to you every lunchtime and pay your mother fucken rent by loading up on lattes. You want to be successful.

You could once successful, buy out your neighbours and put on more staff and service more customers. You could get an electronic cashier, you could have a seperate staff member for ordering and paying and pay somebody else to be your barista and send them to official barista competitions.

Or you could just keep being that cool cafe you always wanted to be. You can't service your demand, but you are doing what you love. You won't get all the customers you can, but you will keep all the customers you can handle. That is, no matter how many people hear about this cool cafe, this great atmosphere, you just keep being what you wanted to be. You get some money, not perhaps as much money as you can wring out of the short term, but you get it and you get to keep the atmosphere, the vibe you wanted to create.

That's mother fucken success. Success is like a cafe.

Open For Business*

*I'm not actually open for business. yet.

Before I know it I will have graduated and will be legally able to dispense financial advice. I think as a mature student sitting in the front row because my eyesight has already gone I also think about my future clients a lot more than the green uni students that surround me with no real practical experience in the workforce. I think about my future clients often and I have become increasingly aware that in the future I may have none, none that I can help anyway. Here (hopefully) briefly is why:

#1 I don't think like the majority of clients out there.

In Business Finance (Finance101) the lecturer asked rhetorically why we buy a share, the answer being 'for the entitlement to future dividends' which is fair enough, but in a departure from this (and my usual emphasis on practical outcomes rather than semantics) I am considering one day putting in large lettering on my wall a different answer 'we buy shares because we wish to assume the risks of ownership.'
I don't believe in partitioning the mind, my last post looked at how believers could have minds such that they could design a scientific experiment that earned them an A+ in year 12 physics then go and listen to a priest give very specific explanations of the origin of the universe with no scientific evidence whatsoever.
Thus I don't see why I might go and support a sporting team may or may not win, or see a band that may never get signed or buy a zine of a friend that may never get a publishing deal then buy shares in a company I don't want to succeed.

Put simply, for me the question of ownership begins with whether you want the company to succeed or not. Not what its riskyness and expected returns are. Sure you want the business to be good, but first don't you want it's core value to be something you support. Thus I don't give a shit if a bamboo bicycle manufacturer offers more risk and lower returns than a brown coal exporter. I want brown coal to fail and I want bamboo bicycles to succeed.
From there I'd try and pick the best bamboo bicycle company, the most viable, the one likely to beat out its competition in the long run and so fourth, but that is where I begin my thinking not where I end it.

In this regard I'm much like Ben Graham and Warren Buffett - I think of buying a share in a company the same as owning the whole thing, and treat the investment decision as such.

Most clients though, shares are just numbers, and my lecturers teach me thus to reflect the industry practice. We spend hours talking about Beta's, covariances, variances, standard deviations, CAPM, CLM, RFR, Modern Portfolio Theory and almost exactly 0 time talking about companies. We assume that a clients criteria for investing consists of two variables Risk and Return and they don't give a shit how the optimum is achieved.

I give a shit, I don't care how strong BHP is, I don't want to own a penny of it.

#2 I can only help the rich.

I have friends that have the rich gene, they may not actually be rich but they are candidates to be rich. Why? they are willing to back themselves. They are willing to sink money into an uncertain venture and put up with the consequences if everything goes pear shaped. These are a slim minority of my friends that I try to spend the majority of my time with.

These friends one day I hope will be my clients, and I can help them. Most people I can't help.

Thus when I open my doors for business I imagine many of the people who walk through my doors will hear these sweet words from me 'get the fuck out of my office.'

I sort of don't want to touch superannuation money, even if there's a lot of it out there, and it is tax effective. I don't want it because it's money that has been saved for people, not by people. It's passive money in the possession of passive people.

People who think about their destination and not the road they want to take. People that will come to me with their own answers and just want me to tell them they are right.

People who want to buy property.

See I think my lecturers and the industry have got it all wrong. They invest tremendous amounts of energy into calculating risks and devising 'optimal portfolios' that in practice often underperform the market index (or no effort fund.) It costs people money to underperform the market and it is immensely popular.

But my chief concern is that uncertainty is uncertainty, and certainty is certainty and after the event you can be certain that whatever happened happened. That is the odds that something that did occur occured are 1.

Thus pointing out that something has an expected return of 14% with a standard deviation of 6% is a waste of everybodies time. Whether you get 8% or 20% are the consequences to concern yourself with not the odds of either occuring. Can the client deal with getting 8%?

Rich people can, they will give me money to play with they can afford to lose. They will say things like 'did I beat the market? who cares, I earned enough to buy this big house!' where the morons I will throw out of my office will say things like 'You charge 1% and you only achieved returns of 8% but MLC achieved returns of 12% this financial year so what are we paying you for?' and I will say 'I don't know, take your money and get the fuck out of my office. Keep chasing the annual winner because it won't be MLC next year.'

Actually that would be more than I can hope for, most people lacking the rich gene just listen to whatever moron at their dinner group is proud enough in the good times to advertise how well his investments are doing where he will shut his mouth all the times he has done poorly. Most people are concerned with keeping up with the Jones, independant of what the Jones' can buy or how they got there.

That's all I can think of right now, apart from the thought that is dominating my mind which is: it's lunch time.

What is an Athiest?

Athiest is a label thrust upon you for being consistent. Hear me out! There is no real belief system in atheism apart from this: you don't accept an assumption that explains phenomena when the only (unreal) evidence to support the assumption is the existence of the phenomena it attempts to explain.

Confused? You see a puddle of water on a table, basically an athiest can't say 'I assume there was an icecube there but hours ago' because there are other concievable and perhaps more likely explanations for how that puddle came to be. A leak in the ceiling, a spill from a glass of water.
Sure you could run a bunch of tests to shorten the odds, but an athiest can't/won't say 'there must have been an icecube there' because they can't prove it.

An athiest doesn't stress too much about where puddles come from in the same way that generally they won't stress about how gravity works. An athiest doesn't need to understand gravity to live in a world characterised by gravity. Gravity reinforces itself day in and day out and aside from taking up a profession as a physicist, an athiest doesn't feel any particular desire to inject energy into understanding and revearing the mysteries of gravity.

By contrast a deist can look at a puddle and say 'god put it there' and without knowing the slightest thing about gravity can attribute it's mysterious functioning to a design by the 'cosmic architect' or whatever.

That's all an athiest is and isn't they have a consistent mind set where they approach the mysteries of life all the same and assume no knowledge. They can question everything as a result of this non partitioning of their rational process. What's really most amazing is deists that are perfectly capable of studying physics and biology yet have partitioned off a corner of their brains dedicated to religion where they apply the exact opposite rational process of assuming knowledge and rejecting evidence that contradicts it.

But this is important, one of the key differences between athiests and deists is that athiests don't really exist, as I said it's just a label foisted upon you for being consistent, thus there's no real unity or bond of belief that holds together an athiest community and this is just how I like it. Two people that hate eachother may be thrust together by their shared spiritual belief but not so with athiests. To each their own.

Brakeless

No I haven't bought a fixed gear, I'm just thinking that for a while now I've been coasting through life without any brakes. What are the brakes? well remember 'catch me if you can' where Leo Di Caprio meets with his father in a restaurant and begs him to ask him to stop (a life of cheque fraud and running from the law) and his dad just wants him to keep sticking it to the man?

Well I'm doing nothing so dangerous or irresponsible but it occured to me that in the long monotonous process of getting over my ex Misaki has resulted in their being nobody in my life that could ask me to stop what I'm doing.

I mean, I didn't like working at Honda, I did like it, but deep deep down I knew a big part of me was unfulfilled I wasn't charging headlong at the wall of my limitations, I could succeed at Honda and thus had to leave.

But I knew that if Misaki asked (at that time) I would have stopped, settled and accepted a life less ordinary just to be with her. I got enough happiness at the time simply from her that I would trade the rest to keep her.

Fortunately/unfortunately she needed to leave to work in the family business. So my brake system was being dismantled anyway. But the thing about getting over somebody is that you don't really notice when it happens, because part of it is that you don't think about them much anymore, so I was kind of caught offguard when I last spoke to Miki that almost a year had gone by, and that she was engaged and thus, there was no (I sincerely really hope there isn't) chance she'll call me up one day and ask me to stop. And if she did, nowadays I'd probably ignore her.

It's a bit daunting, but I feel like I'm becoming myself, for better or worse and nobody can ask me to stop.

The First thing To Do When You Panic

...is nothing. Today I was reminded of what it felt like to have my wallet suddenly dissappear in a foreign country and find yourself with no means of supporting yourself whatsoever.

I went through shock and denial very quickly, they get out of the way with a few searches of every possible place I could have misplaced my wallet or whatever. Travelling if it teaches you anything, teaches you that you simply don't exist except for the fact that you have money in your pocket to exchange for goods and services.

So I imagine losing your wallet when travelling alone in a foreign country is much like how Ariel Felt when Ursula took her voice in exchange for legs.
Except I don't have great legs that can nab me a handsome patriarch to look after me. Nor singing crab companions for that matter.

But in Abe Lincolns tradition of 'If I only had 5 minutes to cut down a tree I'd spend 4 of them sharpening my axe' or whatever, when you panic I highly recommend sitting down and letting time pass. 5-10 minutes is plenty. It isn't so much about planning or getting your shit together or whatever - it's about running an empirical experiment where you can prove to your own mind that the world isn't going to fall apart instantly.

Once you realise you have space to move it's much easier to come up with rational solutions. For me it was cancelling my card and stopping pending transactions from going through. Ordering emergency cash, and a replacement card. Then I just had to go to the police and arrange a 'pay on checkout' deal with my hostel.

The second time, I just had to devise some collatoral to offer to the hostel (because I dimwittedly arrived in town with no money having stuffed up a transfer of funds) which was refused on account of my trustworthy face and then digging up some old Japanese currency so I had enough money to eat a meal.

The thing was that in hindsight these situations were pretty easy to survive, and I could have survived a lot worse by sleeping on the streets or something.

Panic flares up to drive us furiously away from something unpleasant, but often it doesn't inspire the easiest, most graceful or even most immediate solutions to passing through our current state of affairs. Often the easiest and simplest thing to do is to endure the unpleasant and take it from there.

Having said all this if you can see the thief making off with your wallet, chase him down, don't do nothing.

Getting Used to Being a Loser/Don't Be In a Rush to Succeed

James was skeptical of my triple encore theory but then like Kanye ruining an acceptance speech Ali Shaheed Mohammed had retaken the decks and cranked out 'Award tour' and the crowd that was in the process of departing hit the roof.
Except they didn't which was why Tribe stopped and rewound like 6 times until they were sure we were hitting the roof.
And it's not like they fucked up, after 20+ years of performing their shit was tight, we were apparantly fucking up our role as the crowd and it was really hard to determine what I was doing wrong as a member of it and further more I began to wonder who was paying who.

But I totally respect the will to do it over until its done right. And they did it over and over, and they did it multiple times through the show and it was totally the opposite of unprofessional.

24 hours later I'm standing in the reopened Tote's bandroom as men with ratstails and women with mullets pushed passed with plastic cups of bear reminding me never to stand between the stage and the bar again. One girl even even spilt her beer running into the back of me but I was wearing my terrance towel hoodie so I wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been so apologetic.
Barbarion took the stage and started playing and more or less didn't stop. My ears are still ringing 4 days on. They had their original bassplayer Yuri back and boy were they tight. Tight yet loose and there a band I was lucky enough to get on the wagon of on their 3rd or 4th gig, they have a couple of new songs where they've clearly taken what they've learned but what really impresses me is what they've done with the tracks they've been playing for year(s) now.
They've pretty much amped them up, they've evolved, improved and basically injected more energy wherever they can.
They move about the stage better, command the space better and they aren't afraid to yell out instructions to their sound mixer to correct the balance throughout the show.
They've come along way in a short space of time and I can hear (and feel) the difference. The highlight though was when during 'Running From the Law' one of my favorites, the lead singer Myles a mighty man made a lacklustre attempt to crowdsurf which resulted in him singing from the floor.

The irreverant gracelessness is a big part of what makes this band successful and allows them to shape themselves and grow.

I'm sitting with 150 in a food court as usual (but unusually since we hadn't met for 6 months or so) waiting for the other members of the real gayle king to arrive. He's jotting down something I said which is kind of the point of this post, it's not something I said originally and sadly I can't remember who actually said it because I trawell through that much shit searching for references but whoever said it I resaid it and it was this: 'good is the enemy of done'

And 150 was writing it down, he seems to like my business management cliches that I like to recite to creative peeps. But this one was actually said I'm like 90% certain by a creative peep and that's what makes it so poigniant.

When the Real Gayle King first formed we wasted like 6 weeks of meetings (truly wasted because nobody documented the hilarious arguments) having infuriating arguments between 150 and me about online campaigning. I couldn't believe that 4 creative peeps had come together and the first thing 150 wanted to do wasn't to create but to online campaign and use trolling and forums to max out our web hits.

To be fair, this blog is my forum and 150 can't really defend himself, so in an attempt to do so, 150 was sort of the most successful of us at the time having quite a following of his zines through Sticky and was thus the least excited about creating tangible pieces and most excited about having a blog which the rest of us already had and not much more.

But while 150 is excused the rest of you ain't. Everybody coming into the creative scene is too impatient. How do I know this? Because I'm impatient, and yet whilst I know I've wasted years and it will take me years still (and years longer than I can ever anticipate) simply to get on track very few people think like this. They need to succeed and succeed now.

And I think that's what makes the old school acts, be they bands from the 90's or bands that should have formed in the 90's or earlier special.

H-wang when he eventually arrived at our meeting concurred about the photography world, saying that many of the old hands at photography had taken 20 years to establish themselves and nowadays the newbies worked 2 years before they were teaching classes on how to be a pro-photographer.

The mentality is everywhere despite the success of Malcolm Gladwell's outliers, and mayhaps that's just the facebook/myspace generation mentality. What the fuck is wrong with it though? There's a time to 'go professional' but not till after you cut your teeth. I remember in Year 11, Jacob yelling at Chris for missing his queue that it was 'un-fucking believable' this was a crappy house music competition of no consequence that's not the time to go pro but that's what so many creative peeps feel like to me these days.

I'm guilty as well, I once ripped shit through a friends manuscript (it was like fan fiction of some of my friend and my's fiction that in hindsight was too complicated to produce and never going anywhere anyway) because I was too attached to my own baby to see that everyone else just found it annoying.

Well the Beatles played in Hamburg for like 3 years just earning their stripes. I've seen Sutcliffe's or Lennon's sketches of Paul McCartney attempting to take a bath in a mensroom sink.

"We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He'd tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and could we possibly manage to wear proper trousers, but he didn't want us suddenly looking square. He'd let us have our own sense of individuality ... it was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on stage." - John Lennon - after 3 years playing strip clubs in Hamburg is the time to consider turning more professional.

Bobby Chiu one of the lead concept artists for Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland talked about when he first set up Imaginism studios and how hard it was lugging books around to comic cons with no money and reflecting 'these we will look back on as good times'.

I'm not sure if anybody in the Real Gayle King is doing the work necessary to make it, but regardless I certainly will look back on our listless sporadic and disorganised meetings in QV food courts as good times. Sitting in front of the state library checking out girls necks at Butcher's insistence were good times. Having my phone go off with one word text messages that simply read 'late' were good times.

Rather than turn to Malcolm Gladwell I'll turn to an author I actually have read being Nicholas Nassim Taleb's Black Swan that talks about how to choose the right brother in law.

Basically there's two kinds of people in the world, the vast majority stake their dollars on a daily basis and win a long succession of pennies, encountering a major loss once a decade or so. It's a metaphore so you can basically substitute dollars with 'important things' pennies with 'small pleasures' and major loss as 'any kind of hardship'

Then you have the creatives, the risk takers, the 'losers'. But a very special kind of loser, they are a minority they bet pennies on a daily basis and typically lose them setting up a long string of successive losses all in the hope to win dollars, once ever decade or so (or perhaps never) they win big, real big.
Again the metaphore, should be easy to translate, it's the struggling artist, the research scientist whatever. They are convinced that grand prize is out there to be won and they've inherited this conviction from that common risk taking ancestor.

Whilst most of us would prefer a long succession of small pleasures, others can never be satisfied unless they win big. Many or most never succeed, but its hard to tell because we never hear of them the ones that do win big misrepresent the odds of winning big because we hear about them all the time convincing other losers that their dreams are possible.

And this is good because this is how progress is made. If nobody attempts to hit the jackpot then it just keeps sitting on the shelf of possibility and never crosses over into our reality and enriches our lives.

But maybe the balance is shifting, I just meet too many people that are less patient than me to succeed. Most creative peeps have done more work than me so power to them, but in the spirit of 'good is the enemy of done' I think the biggest leap I made towards actually getting somewhere with my drawing was to give up on the idea that I could ever actually get anything done right.

Looking back on my sketches for the early Real Gayle King Stuff I cringe, but I also see a lot of progress now. Looking at how terrible my drawings were then makes me feel a lot better about how terrible my drawings look now.

FYI I'm publishing on facebook mostly because I'm too ashamed to put any of my stuff up on deviantart yet, I'll get there though with a lot more work and it will be good to kick the facebook habit.

But maybe I'm lucky I never went to art school, and I don't expect much of myself, (the little I do expect is more than I can deliver) I think some of the professionally trained peeps expect more of themselves and expect to get their creative produce right the first time. They don't fuck around and experiment and screw up and evolve anymore because they just want to be pro's right now, they've been trained to be pro's and they aren't ready. 'the perfect is the enemy of the good, the good is the enemy of done'

I'm lucky I tried being one of the majority of peeps, and have a regular steady paycheck in a secure job earning steady small incremental accolades and whilst I wouldn't consider it a total waste of time I met some great peeps and learned a bunch of stuff and what not, I know it's not for me. I'm for living in a garage to minimise my living costs whilst I make ill concieved attempts to create things of meaning hoping one day I'll make something that will resonate with somebody whilst not being sure if that/those resonating somebodies exist.

I feel though if you're not a loser like me you should be putting down your pencils, your plectrums, your stylus, your tough new Lumix and buying a milkbar. If you want to succeed and you're in a hurry go to a real estate seminar and be a real loser. If not take the time to fuck around, fuck up, feel fucking terrible, get back on the fucking horse, fuck shit up old school, and fucking enjoy it.

To end with a cliche, it's the fucking journey after all, not the destination.

Profiling Risk

My risk profile is something I think about, it causes me great uncertainty. So when my Pricing Theory class addressed it it was probably the first time I've been glad to see human behaviour depicted by a graph.

You see, I'm trying to be a risk taker, but I don't think I'm a natural gambler. For example, I wouldn't gamble. But my obsession with failure has lead me to an unnatural risk profile.

So first let's just look at the most broad risk profiles:


This person is risk averse, the curve of the graph indicates that their 'utility' or 'consumption satisfaction' decrease faster than it increases. So for each dollar of income or whatever they gain the feel nice, but for each dollar they lose they feel terrible. They are more scared of losing out than they are of winning.

Now here's the risk enthusiastic:


This person due to the shape of the curve, gets more utility for an increase in income than they do from a decrease. They are all like 'woohoo' when they win a dollar and all like 'whatever' when they lose one.

So which one am I? Well it depends...

My attitude is this - 'I'm not important enough to worry about failure' if I went bankrupt tomorrow nobody and I mean nobody would lose out on it (except me). There would be no front page story on the Age, Herald Sun, Financial Review or Wall St journal.

Furthermore if somebody was like 'tohm you have to go live in a park now' I'd be able to deal with it (until I died of pnuemonia) but whatever... I have a high pain/discomfort threshold with a few caveats I'll come to later.

But I get these natural highs when I succeed. Like if I draw good and people like it I'm buzzing. I'm willing to sacrifice the income I could potentially be earning to give myself an opportunity to draw. Success at something I want to do (even the smell of it) is much more rewarding than 'successfully failing' as I've come to dub it.

So this is what I mean by being 'unnaturally' risk averse. I don't care about the consequences because I don't really care about me.

Now the caveats, I think our risk preferences have something to do with our broader behavioural prefences aka Jungian psychological profiles. I'm INTP or something I haven't done the test in a while, but on the simpler one I'm an 'Amicable' or an 'Amicable/Expressive' person.

So let's start with the key differentiator - Introvert/Extrovert. This is one of those counter-intuitive things where people assume an extrovert cares more about other people because they are more social. But when you dig deeper its infact the opposite. Extroverts socialise so more people can care about them, introverts are the opposite they care little about themselves relative to other people, hence they hang back, they observe they whatever.

I'm an introvert, I've trained myself to act extroverted over the years but I know that meeting people socialising etc drains my energy. I get rewards out of it but it costs me. Others get energised by meeting people and talking to people and what not.

So here's the boundaries of my risk profile. I'm happy to take risks for myself, where the brunt of the consequences effect me and me alone. I balk at the idea of taking risks on others behalfs. The thought of hurting somebody else kills me. So I am risk enthusiastic with myself because hey whatever shit happens I'll deal with it, I can crawl out of the abyss anytime. But as an Amiable person the thought of causing hurt or embarassment to somebody else in any capacity I am very averse. I'll do almost anything to avoid it.

BUT then I need a second wave of caveats.

I kind of feel contempt for people in my quasi professional capacity as financial advisor (I'm not qualified yet, but people keep asking me). Talking investments is unflattering to most people, it's not a good look and it breeds contempt in me.

Because most people are risk averse, they fear losses more than they relish gains. But they aren't idiots, most peoples biggest fear is a loss of income (except that very few take out income insurance) and that is because they are focussed on retirement. They aren't (particularly) stupid and understand that inflation may erode the purchasing power of their savings and thus a paradox is created.

Peeps want as much profit and money as possible with no chance of losing. They see not making big profits or returns as risky (because of inflation) but they see the risks associated with high return securities as risky. Thus people are naturally attracted to 'sure things'

In investment Law we are looking at the case study of Westpoint mezzanine finance group scandel where many retirees were dooped out of their savings by what in essence was a ponzi scheme. That's a world of hurt, but I do feel a kind of contempt for the victims - they invested in property development for high interest payments of 12%, they were reassured by the fact that for every $100m borrowed there was $110m in presales. Thus a risk free 12%. Nobody stopped to ask 'If they honestly have $110m presales, then why wouldn't a bank lend them money at 10%, 8%, etc. why take the additional burden of mum and dad investors money and pay them exorbitant interest when a big capable institution can assess risks for themselves?

So more paradoxes, there's this cliche of 'the greatest risk is taking no risk at all' or in a sporting analogy 'you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take' but people who keep their cash under the bed because they are scared of bank insolvency will have all their savings wiped out by inflation if not burglery.

My plan if I become a fund manager, hedge fund, financial planner is to drive these mum and dad investors away with extremem prejudice. I don't want to do business with people who don't want to be accountable for their own decisions. I could take risks with other peoples money if they have a similar attitude to me. I imagine I will only end up with the small change of people I can only make richer, but I'd rather play with $10k of pocket change from a millionaire than $10k of savings for your average joe.

Then again, as I actually achieve stuff through risk taking, my profile will probably change, I will feel vulnerable on account of my achievements and start to fear losses rather than gains. My plain is to live a fairly spartan lifestyle, like Buffett only draws a $100k salary even though he's worth 60+ billion or something now.

Anyway confusing, it's hard to take risks when you don't know how you feel about them.

The Utility of Prices

Okay so I'm back at Uni, and after what feels like months and months of not thinking about economics and finance at all, my brain is reengaging. Anyway this semester is actually looking pretty good subject wise. I only have one economics subject 'Pricing Theory' and it looks like it is taught 'well' by my definition unlike my Macro subject last semester which oversold its difficulty and employed too much coercion.

So Utility one of the central concepts of economics, it pretty much underpins all the decisions we make and all economic policies. Most often utility is taught as basically meaning 'happiness' which whilst I'm all for avoiding big technical language Orwell style I make an exception when lecturers simplify utility to 'satisfaction' or more painfully 'happiness'.

I'm fairly certain that they (John Stuart Mill and the classicists) employed utility because to suggest their models could explain or satisfy 'happiness' would be an outright lie. But similar to the behavioural management school - which manages behaviour because behaviour can be seen as opposed to 'attitude' which we can only infer.

Thus similarly I kind of assume that we use 'utility' because we can see people using shit, but can only infer whether it makes them happy.

So anyway, the past two weeks have been spent (not) drawing indifference curves. (I don't take notes in classes unless I absolutely can't avoid it) which are basically a two axis graph of X and Y (which can be anything) and a bunch of non intersecting curves that bow towards the origin. If you can't imagine it click this link.

And they kind of work well. Particularly when you add budget constraints, you get a nice neat world where people try to maximise their utility by maximising their consumption as far as their budget allows. Thusly thuserson you can even suggest that good X represents savings while good Y represents consumption and so forth.

People aspire to the 'highest' indifference curve. Are you following?

Now they've introduced three types of goods. A 'normal' good is a good that as your income increases or its price decreases you increase your consumption of it. Then you have 'inferior' goods which as your income increases you consume less of it (in favor of some substitute - eg. public transport, the richer you get the less you use it) then there are 'giffen' goods, these are goods that get cheaper but people consume less of them. They are treated as strictly hypothetical...

And this is where I always get interested in a lecture. The oddities, or when people see fit to introduce something that is only hypothetical - because this is perhaps my favorite half-baked theory of why economics is fucked yet.

See budget constraints, indifference curves and utility are all well and good if you keep utility and price away from eachother. But you get a quasi goedellien self-reference when you suggest that people derive utility from a price itself rather than the good it is affixed to. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmahuhuh?

Imagine you got a pen right? right. You can use it to write right? right. So typically you would say the utility of a pen is its ability to write. But suppose you had a magic kind of pen that you could use or not use and it went up in price. All you had to do was hang onto it and it would go up in price. Now I guess we could call the appreciation of its price an indirect kind of utility, you can sell it and then use the proceeds to buy goods that have their own utility. This is kind of an opportunity cost or something, indeed money itself is worth only all the various things it can purchase if you want an on hand example.

But magic pens that go up in price regardless of how used don't exist right? wrong. This pretty much describes any speculative behaviour and it's corresponding wealth effect. Whether it is tulips, tech stocks or 'houses' speculation describes people deriving utility from price itself, rather than 'real' utility of the underlying asset. And these behave like giffen goods.

If people are consuming for price reasons, that is they buy a house anticipating further price rises and don't bother to live in it or rent it out (and worse, renovate it) then they are buying for the utility of the price and not the utility of the actual accomodation/location/infrastructure.

Now, this is another paradox I intend to deal with the 'risk averse' designation of consumers that inevitably drives them to risky speculative behaviour, but basically when people derive their utility, their pleasure through the 'wealth effect' which is the feeling one gets when sitting on an asset that is going up in price and then it drops in price - people consume less of it.

Which is all well and good, but whats exciting to me is the self-referential nature of goods that can impart utility from their price, or prices driving utility which makes it hard to ever fully explain consumer behaviour, rational prices etc.

Will ponder more... I need to get back onto Naive investor too.

Small Australia

As I write this Julia Gillard is telling me 'not a big Australia, but a sustainable Australia' new approach to population all that shit.

As somebody who has attended multiple Sustainable Living Festivals, I always thought sustainable population Australia were a bit of a joke. I still do, but unlike Prosper Australia which got a nod from the Henry Review and the fiasco that became the Resources Super Profits Tax, 'Sustainable Population' seems to have gained traction not just with the conservative side of government but the supposedly liberal side too.

I hate these population capping advocates, why? well they range from bigotted to vacuous. People who talk about keeping the human population down always, always lack any real vision - their arguments always hinge around some silent status quo ideal. Few ever articulate it.

All I'd ask is some guiding principal eg. 'Our objective should be to maintain the largest biodiversity the planet can sustain.' I like that, I don't think population controls are the solution, but it would certainly help somebody build a case.

Instead nothing is mentioned thus 'Little Australia' or 'Small Australia' arguments come across as bigotted and fail to acknowledge the myriad issue of 'who' who gets culled. I thought I'd look at some of the woeful oversights of population arguments because its starting to piss me off and get personal.

Resources

Basically the 'non-racist' stance comes from the simple observation that resources are finite. The planet earth simply cant yeild the resources necessary to satiate everyones material desires, therefore you can presumably cut back the population and needs will be sated.

We already have a methodology for dealing with allocating resources, it isn't perfect but its called the market.

When I say it isn't perfect, that's reflected by the fact that some 10% of the worlds population control upwards of 80% of the worlds resources. Infact I suspect 1% of the population controls 80% of that 80%.

Then there's water, land etc. all of these have markets in which immigrants have to compete. They have to compete against people who own 3-5 'investment' properties, they have to compete against coca-cola, aluminium manufacturers etc. for water.

Amartya Sen points out in 'Development As Freedom' that almost no famine in history has been the result of inadequate food supply. It is typically characterised by inadequate food access. What's the difference? Well one is where there is no food. The other is where people are priced out of the food market.

Even in Ireland, during the great potatoe famine, Ireland was exporting food to England. Famines are generally a failure of government to intervene in market prices in an economy where most of the population can only trade on its low skilled labour.

The point being that most resources problems are a question of how they are distributed amongst a population, and these issues are rarely related to the size of the population itself. Fact is you could try to 'stop the boats' by I don't know spreading peace and prosperity throughout the world, or you could say tax rent seeking mining companies on their super profits and redistribute that income to the community and achieve a better resource distribution outcome much more easily, effectively and morally than offshore processing.

Economic Arguements

Generally fall down, lets break it into two groups though - skilled and unskilled migration. The easy one is skilled. Australia's academic institutions are not world class, we can't compete with Ivy League Universities in the US or their equivalents in Europe. What we can offer is a lifestyle that many wealthy nations can't compete with.

US we have healthcare, UK and Europe - space. Same goes for Japan, China etc. Take Japan, last time I was in Japan I thought that it would cost close to $20 to recreate a typical Australian home lifestyle in Japan. Why? First you have to buy all the property, then all the adjacent property, then pay to have the powerlines buried, trees planted, roads widened even then you don't have access to the acid free rain or any way to stop right wing propoganda trucks cruising round your hood playing 'yuki ya kon kon' over and over again.

Skilled migration is cheap, people who have paid all their education et to come to Australia, help business and pay taxes for the community. So cutting back on skilled migration is not much of an argument at all.

As for unskilled immigration, that's trickier. Generally though, business like high levels of immigration because they feel it undermines workers salary bargaining position. But having a larger population does provide more labor for new industries when times are good, stimulates construction, etc. Plus they send their kids to schools and those kids can be anything. Their kids can be anything...

Allthough unskilled migration is tricky, it brings me to my next point -

Morality

Countries don't exist, not in the way water exists, dark matter (doesn't) exist, stars exist, continents exist etc. They are artificial constructs acknowledged only by humans that are trained to see them there. Fancy sounding?

Well yeah, but what I mean is that nationalism is ultimately transitory and illusory. Those ANZAC diggers we (supposedly) go out and support for example were fighting for Queen and Country, a COuntry where an Aboriginal Woman couldn't own her own home, where employers could discriminate against homosexuals and any number of pre-reform characteristics of our society. My Grandfather presuming he didn't diddle Japanese girls himself when stationed in Hiroshima would probably have had a hard time predicting that his grandson would date a Japanese girl one day.

'Nations' characters evolve and shift between generations and are essentially indefensible, you can't stop the children of tomorrow from valuing different things not without severely hampering their education by excluding what is constantly being discovered about life the universe and everything.

One thing remains relatively constant though, a nation is a social agreement to command exclusively some resources, most notably land.

Any resource on earth imparts some usefulness, some utility. Many called 'natural' resources are not created through human endeavor, they are a natural bounty.

The decision as to who has access to these resources (and community created ones like health, education and infrastructure) is relatively arbitrary. It is decided principally through the 'Ovarian lottery' that is, where you are born.

You have a 1/4 chance of being born CHinese for example, which means a quarter of the worlds children are born without any basic freedoms, you have a less than 1% chance of being born in Australia and if you want to enjoy the 7.2 hectares of resources in an Australian's average carbon footprint (sustainable consumption is 1.2) free health care, civil liberties, public education, wide open planes, fresh air etc. you have to move here.

People don't choose to be born, and they don't choose where to be born. But what fucks me off is that people who talk about immigration and sustainable population never have there hands up to leave these shores.

There's a suggestion of 'we were here first' of which I'm all like 'who's we?' well this quote from an excellent crikey article explains:

"‎Nearly all Australians are the children or descendants of immigrants. To demand a slashing of immigration is a staggering example of inter-generational opportunism on our part, in effect denying to future immigrants and their children the advantages that we ourselves have accrued as the result of the generosity of generations past."

Then there's NEVER any question of emmigration. These people want to suggest that living in Australia is a privelege not a right yet they don't then go on to say that we should pack low skilled Australians on a boat to make room for greater immigration from high skilled migrants. That we shouldn't Cuba style send all our convicts to the shores of Florida. Nor that we should send our poorest to countries where their meagre savings make them incredibly rich and take on some of the worlds poorest to provide them with the opportunity to become relatively rich.

Now, I know these arguments are untennable as forced emmigration obviously creates some obligation on the destinations. In the question of refugees we do have a moral obligation, as one decent human being to another we should offer shelter. Refugees don't 'want' to be here, they aren't like 'oh great war has broken out, I can leave my community, my ancestral home, my livelihood have fun in an offshore processing centre, and finally move to Australia!' that's not how shit goes down. People are never glad that war gives them a 'queue jumping' excuse to emmigrate somewhere. The loss of a homeland is devastating, so devastating we should as gracious hosts try to make them feel as at home as possible.

But more broadly, people should be able to move around the world, unharrassed and unmolested as the world is our common heritage and our ward. All this cordoning off into fences and divides is nothing but in-group/out-group gang mentality. If somebody is dangerous it is up to their immediate community to reject them, somebody on a permanent protection visa really has the same opporunity to do harm to the community as a backbacker on a 30 day visa does.

Why punish somebody just because they weren't born on the same patch of land as you? Why reward somebody because they were? This nationalism masquerading as environmental/economic concern is so sickening I turn to Bill Hicks:

I was over in Australia and everyone's like "Are you proud to be an American?" And I was like, "Um, I don't know, I didn't have a lot to do with it. You know, my parents fucked there, that's about all. You know, I was in the spirit realm at that time, going 'FUCK IN PARIS! FUCK IN PARIS!' but they couldn't hear me, because I didn't have a mouth. I was a spirit without lungs or a mouth, or vocal cords. They fucked here. Okay, I'm proud.'"

You can't pick your parents, your family, in many places you can't pick your government, or who your government works for, but people can and should be able to pick their country and be unharrassed by people who don't even bother to check whether the arguments they raise have any factual basis.

My Heart

I remember on warm September nights riding to Napier St in Fitzroy and thinking I'd entered some kind of fairy land. It's an old suburb with quaint little houses and oldschool hotels on the corners. It was different from Brunswick, this is probably no real news at all to people who lived in Melbourne all their lives, but when you move here from Ballarat to go to Uni you don't really take time to explore all the hoods.

Plus my normal cocktail of brain chemicals was ascue because I'd just really got a handle on my grieving process. At that time I felt like a worthless bug just waiting to be crushed. I remember listening to 'Smaller and Smaller' by Faith No More over and over again. On top of that when you spent 9-5 in a drab office under flourescent lighting McDonalds upholstery is going to seem like Disneyland.

I spent every Thursday night with a group of cool people learning how to tutor refugees with the Fitzroy Learning Networks 'Community Networker' program. I think it was like 6 weeks of 3 hour training, police checks etc.

We learned how people deal with the trauma of being tortured, about how men are often too old to get work in Australia when they bring their families here and the problems of having the wife become the major bread winner while the man just stayed at home becoming chronically depressed.

We had a Sudanese lady from the community come and speak to us, and I was blown away when she talked about the jobs her and her friends got 'cleaning, driving taxis...' pretty much every bottom rung ladder job you could name - I realised unlike my parents 'sacrifices' to give me a good education, these refugees were working to give their kids a chance at a shitty education so they could get better jobs so that their grandchildren may have a chance at a decent education. These people were looking forward to their grandkids, it blew me away.

Also the vegetarian pizza they ordered was amazingly delicious.

So training was great and eye opening. And then I got assigned to Zaman, I had assumed my student would be somebody close to my age. I was informed by Sara the coordinator an amazing person that as far as anyone could guess Zaman was between 50 and 60, he had no idea of his age but his papers said he was 40. At any rate I was immediately terrified of having to teach somebody twice my age.

Zaman was somewhat of a local celebrity at the network so they showed me his picture before I met him in the flesh. I remember at our first meeting he cleared space on the seat by flicking this cat really hard in the ear that was sitting there. I had instantly forgotten every single lesson plan I'd prepared in case he wanted to know something and he pulled out a Fork Lift Drivers instruction manual as part of his scheme to get a better job and hopefully get off the cursed Temporary Protection Visa.

I met Zaman when most of the hard work had been done, he had been detained on Nauru as part of Howards' Pacific solution, where the only way to call his anxious family was via Telstra phone cards that cost about $7 per minute. It was brutal and inhumane, and fortunately there are wonderful people in the world that care enough to help out complete strangers like Zaman by writing them letters and sending them phone cards.

Apparantly he'd been suicidal when he first came to Fitzroy and found out he was on a temporary protection visa which meant he was stuck in Limbo for 5 years before he could be reunited with his family who were moved constantly between Jordanian and Pakistani refugee camps. When he got work and could send money to his family he improved dramatically.

So Zaman ironically put me at ease really quickly, he turned out to be quite hilarious and describes everything as 'beautiful' even when I write a word out for him like 'accelerator'. From the get go he pretty much runs all our lessons. I just turn up, listen and try to explain how english works, often discovering that I don't really know.

Saying bye to Zaman when I went travelling was the only farewell that moved me to tears. I'd just discovered he'd never actually met his youngest daughter, and had attempted to cook me dinner, we ended up drinking tea and eating mandarins.

Yet beautiful as Zaman is, he is but one of thousands upon thousands of refugees created each year by discrimination and neglect the world over. The whole of Fitzroy plays host to a community that has become my heart.

Nowadays Zaman and I meet up in the library and walk home to his place in the Atherton Gardens housing complex. We often run into his kids, and thats the amazing thing about this corner of Melbourne. Kids are everywhere, outdoors in winter playing in the parks. Indoors at Fitzroy Learning Network playing on the computers until the teacher turns the lights out and pushes them out the door.

The community is vibrant, not without problems which happens when you've been raised to believe the police are only there to beat and brutalise you and that nobody looks out for you but yourself. But to be honest, I never see these. I feel safe wandering those streets at night and I feel welcome in refugees homes.

I admire these people like no others, because they are nobodies and they are everybody. They have nothing I don't possess in my basic humanity, a will to survive, infinite capacity to love. They are put in positions so horrible I can't concieve of them and survive. So many have walked away from their family homes, the towns their ancestors lived in for generations to escape persecution and deprevation. They have done it not for themselves but for their children and their childrens children.

They have given everything they own to people smugglers for a dangerous and inhumane journey by boat to the shores of Australia. Australia's 'Boatpeople' policy under Howard was condemned by the UN. Temporary protection visa's are a nightmare, holding people in limbo in one of the worst situations of their life and prevent them from becoming settled and constructive members of the community. Mandatory detention is frowned upon, and mandatory detention of children was a direct breach of UN conventions. It is a sad indictment of the Australian community that these policies lasted so long.

Yet these people stood it all, in pursuit of a dream. They made the kind of sacrifices the world requires right now, above and beyond what needs doing in fact. Reducing our carbon footprint is a breeze compared to the depravity with which a safe and civilized country treats 'boat people'.

They take it, stand firm and do what they can. Study english, work shitty jobs and cope with hours and hours of loneliness and depression. Beautiful people like those at FLN help them, and I guess frauds like me and you can see the result walking through the towers of the Atherton Gardens, my heart, you see kids being just kids running and playing and getting in fight and backchatting old clowns like Zaman and me. I saw a kid pick a fight with a chicken, a literal chicken.

And sure they can be annoying and demanding in the library, but these kids man, its like they are oblivious to what their parents have been through. And they are, I remember fondly Zaman complaining that his kids 'have been to Zoo, have been to Aquarium, have been to Farm... nobody takes me anywhere.' Which is true, I never managed to get him to the Parliament house tour for his citizenship test preparation, not that that is as fun as the zoo.

And then there's stories that break my heart too. Like his friend who was sent to Perth whose kid dived off a bridge into a river and broke his neck becoming a quadraplegic right when he'd just gotten safe to Australia. Or his old housemate that gambled away his earnings and never spoke to his wife or bothered to apply for citizenship.

But there's nothing really dangerous about refugees, I don't even understand how its a fucking issue. The only problems to me stem from the lack of resources available to help new Australians feel welcome and integrate into our evolving community. Its when a refugee is isolated, socially, financially and by language barriers that they are going to do what any person would do, try and survive by whatever means necessary.

By contrast, the temporary protection Visas meant Zaman's eldest daughter had to recieve chemotherapy in Pakistan in the poor quality healthcare available to refugees, she has suffered complications as a result and been in and out of hospital almost constantly. The delay in bringing her to Australia was unneccessary and inhumane, and I sincerely hope it doesn't cost her her life.

But seeing fucking twerps and cunts like Abbott and Gillard working ignorant and irrelevant members of the general public into a frenzy to 'stop the boats' and subsequently make these human beings suffer more. I mean what are they fucking talking about? less than one percent of refugees arrive by boats with the vast majority flying in. Those that do arrive by boats are overwhelmingly found to have legitimate claims to seeking refuge. The 'queue' they are supposedly jumping doesn't really exist, furthermore the queues that do exist, like Australia's interview process and the UN refugee charter process less than 10% of the demand. The vast majority of Refugees are offered refuge by the worlds poorest countries. Why is this an issue? Why do people fucking care? Why do we have to be so distrustful and uncharitable to some of the neediest people in the world?

These people are capable of building a beautiful community. I see it every week, its my fucking heart and its one I really don't want broken.

Give and Take

Okay I'm a little late to the party but Lebron and Bosh are now members of the Miami Heat along with Dwayne Wade. That's a motherfucken powerhouse and promises several of the most worthless and meaningless chamionship rings the game has ever produced.

Pretty much the sole exception to that scenario is that for anybody who beats the Miami Heat in the next 5 years will hold some of the most hard earned championship rings the game has ever produced, similar I guess to the Detroit Pistons 2004 rings against Shaq-Kobe lead lakers.

But where the Lakers had Shaq and Kobe the were padded out with fading champions like Karl Malone and Gary Payton, Miami is a whole other story.

Wade, Lebron and Bosh are all more or less in their prime, they are all franchise players, that is to say any one of them can hold together a franchise on their own.

Whilst admittedly Shaq and Jordan couldn't win their championships alone, nor could Kobe, this is another kettle of fish. This is a cartel, this is a decision not to compete and simply share the rings.

I've never really liked Lebron, he can play basketball, he has an impressive physique, but his mental game is not there. I just see an infant, and I guess like Wayne Carey in AFL one of his least attractive qualities is that he's been given everything since he was 16 (possibly earlier).

For me Lebron's move to Miami ends the Kobe-Lebron argument. Kobe wins, hands down. Lebron thinks he is making the right move for his legacy but infact has killed it in the womb. He'll never be a champion. Even if he scores 100 points a game.

As Jordan himself said 'when they put the triple-team on you night after night, that's when you've reached that level' which will never happen on a team with Wade and Bosh on it. Wade and Bosh are each worthy of a double team, It's going to be numerically impossible to triple team Lebron and have any outcome on the outcome of the game.

I've always felt Wade had more 'Jordanness' in him, and I guess the one upside for Lebron in moving to Miami is that he won't be wearing another man's number anymore. That's about it. This move isn't about getting help, this isn't about getting a Pippen & Rodman, this isn't getting a Pau Gasol, this isn't in Shaq's case getting a Kobe or Wade. This is getting some ruby red slippers and a Yellow Brick road paved all the way to the finals.

I don't blame Lebron for leaving Cleveland, I'd probably think he was a bigger moron for staying. The fact that they have to play crowd chants over a PA system would be enough to make any super star leave it's a big achievement that the Cavs had such a good home game record in such a horrific stadium.

But I do blame Lebron for copping out. Words like 'undeniable' won't apply to anything Lebron does while playing with Dwade and Bosh unless Dwade takes over and he is described as 'undeniably better than Lebron'. Lebrons legacy is now very deniable, that he is great as a player is undeniable but he simply wont be comparable to Kobe or MJ because he isn't playing in the same league. He's playing in the under 12s now.

If I wanted to be 'like Mike' like Kobe did (before he started to just be Kobe) and Lebron so clearly does I would look for the strongest competitors to play AGAINST and jump over them, that's being like Mike, not trading yourself to their team.

Lebron is Give, or perhaps 'gimme, gimme, gimme.' which isn't to say he comes across as a spoilt brat or immature. He's been treated like royalty by pretty much everyone for pretty much his whole adult life, courted and pampered and what not. He probably can't concieve of a world where you have to take something for yourself.

By contrast you have Kobe, who played in Italy then skipped from highschool to the NBA refused to play for the Charlotte Hornets (or whoever) got himself traded to the Lakers and sat on a bench for a year.

Kobe has had to take everything for himself, that's the difference. As Jack Nicholson said in the Departed 'nobody gives it to you, you have to take it.' Kobe has taken all his rings, his 5 delicious Champion-chip cookies. Because he was truly hungry. To my knowledge Lebron has only ever shown the hunger once, and that was in the Eastern Conference finals against Detroit where he scored the last 35 consecutive points to win the game and go to the finals against the spurs where the Cavs were swept in one of the least watched and least entertaining series in history.

What I'm waiting for is Kobe's take on the Wade-Bosh-James triumvirate trade, I hope he's feeling hungry, I hope he sees the opportunity to cement himself once and for all as the greatest player of his era. I hope its like a rag to a bull, he can smell Lebron's weakness/immaturity and know he owns him now.

I hope Phil Jackson recognises that winning a championship against this heat team will be one of the few opportunities to actually top one of the greatest finals series ever.

I hope every team in the league can see the anti-competitive behaviour and go out hard to crush the Heat. NBA doesn't need a Real Madrid, it doesn't need a Manchester United. It needs a champion, and Lebron probably won't ever be one, and it'll be his own damn fault.

People I would swap lives with

I think my self esteem is pretty solid, if not remarkably high, and whilst I am annoying even to myself like the 2nd season of true blood I can't bring myself to stop watching how things will turn out.

I'd never trade youth for experience (particularly since I'm now in the best shape I've been since I was 18) I never send food back at a restaurant and there are very, very, very few people I would actually trade lives with. Here's both of them:

1: Les Claypool.

Sure he's got a big nose, but so do I. Why swap with Les? It's a no brainer. He lives on a property called 'Rancho Relaxo' has put out like 10 albums of some of the most awesome and out there (and admittedly an aquired taste) music of all time. Happily married, owns a boat and oh yeah! He's the greatest bass player ever. He has to be seen to be believed, but the way he moves conveys a real joy in music. Over the years he's got real tight at performance too but I can tell* he still loves it.

Here's some awesomeness from Les:


Plus he is able to get away with wearing whatever the fuck he wants. I love people that have reached that plane of existence. I spend too much time explaining my clothing choices lately.

2: Cheeks Galloway.

Fucken log onto his blog and see if you don't agree with me instantaneously. http://gotcheeks.blogspot.com/ He can draw, colour and design. He works like a workhorse or something, his style of speek is endearing and funny and he has a smoking hot wife.
I'd be surprised if cheeks had any haters really (though mathematically given all the douchebags in the world who think anything different from Jack Kirby's style is not good drawing, I assume they must).

Now sure, Micheal Jordan, Mike Patton etc. are tempting to say 'I'd swap lives if...' (I'd probably swap my entire life just to be able to dunk once from the free throw line (don't hold me to that!)) there are plenty of awesome people out there, but something about the above two. There's a kindness and generosity of spirit, a kindness, a 'I'm happy being me and fuck the rest' That ironically is what makes me happy to be them.

Hopefully that reflects that the key quality I'm trading for is one I already possess, therefore this was all pretty pointless. Including this pointless post.

Enjoy baby.

*percieve that...

Orientalism

I'm currently reading the Puffin 'modern classic' "Orientalism" by Edward W. Said. It sounded really interesting, like how it might contain answers to questions I have about why Asia (and in times past the 'Orient' now generally seperated into Asia and the Middle-East) is so fucking fetishised.

I read ti though and am wholeheartedly confused. The book seems academical managing to say very simple things in thousands of words with heaps of supporting references. Arguably my preferred manner of simply proferring conjecture to be weighed up by a reasoning mind based on it's intrinsic likelihood or 'well-formedness' is how the Orient came to be and all the modern day headaches with it.

So currently the book stands at having declared 'by giving name to such a vast region as the Orient (encompassing the Levant to China) Europeans (westerners) created an us & them mentality.

Which took 72 pages. Sure there are supporting examples, but to an anarchist its like 'big woop - nations don't really exist except in the minds of folks. Tell me something new.'

But you see, I still have questions. See I don't think I'm a racist, but now I'm not so sure.

Here basically encompasses my view:

If in 100 years there are only 250 people left alive, I will be glad because that means the human race has survived.

I don't give a shit if those 250 people are all black, or asian, or jewish. I don't care if the european-caucasion is extinct in 50 years, I will simply be glad in this interconnected world that somebody survived.

That's honestly how I feel.

End - my encompassing view of race.

Now - I find generalisations about races useful. There are observable, cummulative effects of race... or are there?

That in essence is what I'm hoping to find out from Orientalism. See I have been to Japan 3 times, I speak Japanese and have travelled fairly extensively up and down Japan setting foot on 2 of it's 4 main islands, which is more than I can say for Australia (I have spent less time in Australia but outside of Victoria than I have in Japan).

So the idea is this (has anyone else noticed how inarticulate I've become lately? I must have reached a critical mass of anti-knowledge) Say I go to Japan, do I experience Japan? OR do I experience my idea of Japan?

For example, if you accept some generalised premise of Japaneseness eg. 'The Japanese people have a deep love of nature.' it's pretty easy to go find corroborating evidence in Japan. Just visit one of the Edo period Gardens, or Meiji Jingu or any of the Shinto temples, or look in the museums and galleries and read haiku for their nature based themes.

But alternatively you could accept another generalisation 'The Japanese love of concrete' and again if you are looking for it you will see all the evidence (and there's a lot), like people remarking that autumn leaves are 'kitanai' whereas parks constructed of concrete are 'kireii' (dirty and pretty respectively) the bamboo railings that on closer inspection are infact fabricated out of concrete and painted bamboo colour...

So I've always scratched my head at people's ability to go to Japan and wander through it like it's a utopian fantasy land. And in many ways it is, it's hard to beat for comfort, cuisine, convenience and security. But people seem to overlook the glaringly horrible shit - like the retail staff that work 14 hour days 7 days a week. That's brutal. All the homeless dudes in the park, the omnipresence of pornography and the fact that everybody is tired all the time.

Same same with China, people rave about 50c beers and $4 banquets and all the DVDs you can eat. Most people can completely overlook the complete absence of basic human freedoms and basic human dignity.

I thought it was maybe a function of time, people who haven't spent enough time in Japan haven't had all the small suspicious things irk them, and maybe that's true. People who haven't spent enough time abroad don't stop to think about the impact of government on people's lives. They don't think 'rich' and 'poor' just 'expensive' and 'cheap'.

Maybe, or maybe we experience the narrative that we've been sold. I've lived in international house, which was a great opportunity. It never really worked, no rainbow gang as such... I also travelled and my experience is that the more time you spend with people the more conclusive it is that they are just people.

Like my ex Misaki, just a person, a person from Japan. Same emotional spectrum, same emotional triggers. Her nationality formed a part of her identity, but as a functioning human being it had little to do with it.

For example, she spoke Japanese - that's a product of being raised in Japanese society. She had other memetic imprints from being Japanese (eg. she was offended by sharing food via chopsticks, it is however okay to feed somebody else directly with your chopsticks, but you cant accept the morsel with your own).

Anyway, these aspects of race are not say genetic so much as they are cultural. I believe that the beliefs shared by people that can be deliniated by national boundaries are generally what I dub 'reinforced' beliefs. What do I mean by that?

Well take gravity, okay so if you have a new born child, that child doesn't need any real reinforcement of the idea of gravity. Gravity reinforces itself, every moment of everyday. That kid NEVER needs a concept of gravity or its specific explanations to understand why the fuck it shouldn't jump off a cliff.

Now take a kid and give him to a Morrocan family to raise and observe whether that kid spontaneously turns into a Japanese person just as it spontaneously understands gravity. Provided the Morrocan family aren't migrants from Japan, that kid won't even be able to speak Japanese, let alone all the subtle and complex cultural nuances of what it is to be 'japanese'. Why? Because these (I surmise) are reinforced beliefs that require considerable energy expenditure to put in a kids head that they stick there. You basically need everything in their community to reinforce the memes through conscious effort. Teachers, postmen, talkback radio DJs etc.

Thus its clear to me that race is an idea invented like religion and countries in general. People have tree-mendous investments in these ideas but it doesn't make them any less invented.

But! Why do some/(most) people fetishise other cultures and a few are just like 'Oh they are people just the same, except they wear different hats?' and can other exogenous cultures invent 'what you are' in the same manner adults thrust Catcher in the Rye on unsuspecting teenagers and say 'here, understand yourself'???

Guess I'll just have to keep reading.

'I'm a Poet and I don't even know that I am one'

[As an aside I'd like to apologize on my tardiness lately, even though I've been on facebook for years now it seems recently I've become addicted to blasting status updates instead of writing blog posts and my attention span has shrunk considerably. I'm trying to get back to more substantial posting.]

Last night I went to the launch of the 'New Poets 2010' it may have even been a society, though it didn't strike me as such. The event was free, it was packed, there was standing room only. An old acquaintance from my TNS call center days was one of the New Poets and in fact the closing act.

I had a chance to read through her poems this morning. The evening wasn't all great for example some of the more natural-world inspired poems were hard to concentrate on and visualise what was being talked about because my vocabularity wasn't up to it.

Plus at random times I kept thinking of Mr. Show's 'Monsters of Megaphone' skit which I had watched earlier that day. But those are my personal failings not the poets themselves.

The poems generally smacked of work, but in a good way. Sure the creative process is mysterious, but at some point work must be done to push anything even the humble poem to elite new heights.

See I was expecting some kind of cringe-fest like Def-poetry,with pretentious people nodding to pretentious orations by otherwise cool rappers.

Alas, (thankfully) it was not. It was a beautiful event aside from what i feel was unnecessary Masterchef Judge George bashing.

Anyway I don't really know what to say about poetry. It's poetry, and probably best captures the indefinable nature of art. I can say it was high quality poetry, but I wouldn't know how to convey the quality to you.

I bought a book of poems of one of the performers, got it signed and all. But I don't think it would be cool to reproduce her material here.

ONe thing I can talk about though is the heirarchy of crowds.

It is my intention to one day do standup comedy...again. My first experience was pretty brutal and mercifully failure is met with forgetfulness. Comedy crowds are tough, particularly when they are made up of other aspiring comedians and or people who are there just to drink or have some kind of corporate function.

You need to entertain or shut the fuck up.

Contrast this with public speaking crowds, whenever you are making a formal address the crowd is there through some sense of duty or simply a desire to kill time. They don't expect to be entertained they expect to be bored. Thus any jokes you crack have ten times the currency than they would if you were presented as a stand up comic. People shouldn't fear public speaking, its like shooting fish in a barrel.

The 'home crowd' is the friends in the school yard, work colleagues in your cubicle, thats your safe secure environment where you can experiment and fail to little consequence. You can go volume not quality and so forth. It is still probably not the ideal place to test material but it is the most forgiving crowd you'll ever have.

Then there's the poetry crowd, aside from doing strange things to people's haircuts, it's like the public speaking crowd times 10. Because if the rest of the audience is like me their mental energy is totally preoccupied trying to visualise the subject matter of the prose as it works its way into our brain through its artful coding.
Thus thusly, jokes here have ten times the currency they do in public speaking. It's like completely deleveraged from the gold standard (stand-up) or even some kind of reserve ratio (public speaking) this is SOuth America people!

So whilst I've been once bitten and twice shy of standup, I may long term ease into it via the poetry scene, I may even wind up doing poetry rap.

Also to reiterate, supporting people is really easy, If I can rearrange my roster to go see a poetry reading, you 9-5ers can just turn up and support. Do it!