Concept vs. Execution

Peeps can be categorized in 4 ways, predictably predictable, unpredictably predictable, predictably unpredictable and unpredictably unpredictable.

My fondness increases as we progress from the formermost to the lattermost category. The vast majority of my dearly beloved friends are in the predictably unpredictable class. These peeps are usually called 'intelligent' and 'funny' and stuff like that. They speak my language. It is hard to say where I fall on the spectrum given that I find EVERYTHING I do predictable, because to me everything I do makes absolute sense and is clearcut to me.

However while having lunch with a friend yesterday I hadn't seen in a long time, I had been complaining about peeps who are 'hard to read' when I was informed I was apparantly 'hard to read' myself.

Anyway, I digress. Truly unpredictably unpredictable people are so rare I have in fact only met 4 in my lifetime. They make me laugh so much my face hurts. I feel stupid around them. Yet they are to be treasured for that fact.

The latest of the 4 I only met recently, they were perhaps the first person I have met that when I tried to remember what they had said that was so funny, I just started laughing without ever getting around to remembering what they said.

Okay so the point of all I have said thus far is to simply establish how funny this person is. I invited them to collaborate on my webcomic, and here in lies the lesson for all.

The lesson for me is a reinforcement of the learning cycle - I had become unconsciously competent in this and hadn't realised it until going through this collaboration experience.

The Concept is easy, it is fun and exciting and energising and grandiose. The execution is hard, it is gruelling, tedious, painstaking and draining. Over the past two years, I had unconsciously come to accept this fact of life.

See the thing about being hilarious is when you are standing in a bar talking or where ever, you just have to mention the concept that is funny, and your mind fills in the rest. But when you are making a comic, cartoon, screenplay and all of that, you have to fill it in yourself. All the details, not just the hilarious dildo gag, but what direction they walk up the street to the dildo store.

You can't skip it over, and well you can't put less effort into the setting...

let me put it this way, If I am good at drawing a character in the foreground, the picture will still look shit if you don't put as much (and in most cases, more) effort into the background.

Most of the time I leave backgrounds out.

It can be unsettling, for indeed unpredictably unpredictable people are fairly spontaneous, fairly non-sequiter, and being forced to second guess things that will be said with some kind of permenance is a big departure.

I don't really have any way of dealing with it, I have just adopted the motto 'good is the enemy of done'

Uniquely though this applies to comedy, comedy is impossible to judge yourself in much the same way as I can't tell if I'm predictable or not. I just completed a commission seconds ago where my patron was sure I 'would come up with something hilarious' having completed it and sent it off, I have no idea whether it is hilarious or not, nor did I even try, which sounds bad but really I just have to do what makes sense to me. I never laugh at my own hilarity with the exception of when I find something I had totally forgotten I had written.

Anyway, I think once you have 'executed' once, it gets easier from then on. It's just the grind and you know how to grind. But still this most recent collaboration has reinforced a lot of stuff, and it's been one of the most productive ever.

I shall have to devise some new vehicle that we may collaborate more.

Much Bad Advice is Offered Freely

As a potential future financial planner, I'm sure I will spend the rest of my life suddenly shutting my eyes at social gatherings and gritting my teeth while trying not to break the glass in my hand whenever somebody offers some particularly terrible and naive advice about investing.

The thing I've come to learn about advice though, is that people almost never ask for it, and as such you should almost never offer it.

One! I'm a firm believer that nobody has the answers to our deeper, inner questions but ourselves. Another person is no more the answer than a puppy is. They can be a comfort, a distraction but not an answer. You gotta figure it out for yourself, you can't be told the answer. Thus with matters of the head and heart, when peeps ask you for advice, you really should be giving them questions. Your answers aren't their answers, even if the decisions to be made are identical. Your experience doesn't fit.
My psychologist asked me startelingly simple questions and eventually I arrived at answers I needed to figure out myself.

Two! My brief experiences in consulting, and pretty much every experience anybody ever has in marketing is that when people come asking for advice often they are asking for permission. I'm a firm believer in taking responsibility, so I try to refrain from giving people permission. I sow doubt, which I'm not sure is helpful for anyone, see point one. But what I mean is that peeps ask for your advice in the same way they may ask 'how was your day?' as a courtesy and what they want is not your honest opinion, insight or even clarifying questions, but for you to agree with them so they feel better. Or to be taken to some meeting and back them as a genius. If you don't, and are honest about it, you can be taken as discourtious. The trick is to learn when it is concerning a matter of import or not. If it is important, you should risk being seen as uncouth, if it isn't just be courteous.

Three! Dan Gilberts work shows that whatever decisions we make aren't really that important in terms of our percieved long term happiness. We will simply backfit our lifestory to pretend things worked out for the best. This is an evolutionary marvel. It allows us to dread things that may threaten our survival, such as becoming paralised, but if we do it ALSO allows us to avoid things that would threaten our survival by not accepting our new circumstances and becoming suicidal. Once your back is broken, it is no use to go on dreading the lifestyle, it is much more useful to accept it and start dreaming within its confines.
This doesn't as a prospective financial planner let me off the hook legally - you can't say 'it doesn't matter that I invested your mothers retirement fund into a Ponzi scheme, now she has lost all her money she'll start appreciating the opportunities that destitution affords her!' no. But legality aside, this is why we should be cautious and conscious when offering advice, just because somebody can survive a situation doesn't mean you can get away with putting them in it. The thing is that you can give somebody objectively bad advice (something that makes their life more challenging) and they may thank you for it. It's not that it doesn't matter, its that its their choice not yours.

I endeavor to offer Advice in the form of a question. But lastly, it is very flattering to get asked your opinion by anyone, ever. The temptation is always to give it. Asking questions is the cornerstone of listening, and its hard. That is why there are professionals who give advice on shit. Peeps should use them.

Phase #3

I'm entering a new Phase of my life. I've held for a while that at 16 people are probably as mature as they are ever going to be, and I've since heard research that in terms of how people deal with their emotions and other people is set much earlier.

I have met 40 year olds with less 'maturity' than some 16 year olds I know. I don't think one 'matures' as you get older you just make more mistakes.

Phase #1 of my life then went from 16-23, in terms of raw working material my IQ, EQ, SQ, height, genetic predispositions, personality, behavioural preferences haven't changed.

This phase though was characterised by a defensive insecurity, putting people done, pushing others away and retreating into myself. I bridged the gap with girlfriends whom I depended on for esteem.

Phase one ended 5 years ago, Phase #2 began with councilling.

Phase #2 was the revelation that I had no actual self-esteem. It was like being woken from a life I'd sleepwalked through, I was 'successfully failing' that is doing everything I was supposed to do so peeps would leave me alone. Because I was in a grieving process I was not supposed to make in bold sweeping changes. And phase 2 has been a gradual building of self esteem over 5 years.

Phase 2 has been good, I became a more supportive person, I started with tutoring Zaman and volunteering at RMIT REW running social basketball. I made a bunch of friends and suff and I spend a good deal of time being single. The majority in fact. I worked through my issues and tried to become independant. Putting more trust in peeps.

If in phase one I thought things like 'I'm an introvert, so people should get used to it.' in phase two I thought 'I'm an introvert, I have to make an effort when socialising.' that is I started adjusting my behaviours. I have heaps upon heaps of bad habits still, but this was what characterised phase 2 - adapting and adjusting my behaviour. Thus at core nothing changed, I was still me, I didn't get any stronger, wiser or purple coloured. I just started giving more of myself to others and what not.

As recently as two months ago I articulated my fundamental motivation, that is if one were to 'figure tohm out' the answer was simple 'I don't give a shit about me, I only care about other people.' It occured to me in the past fortnight, that something was wrong with this. I saw a councillor that wasn't great but was also free. After a long 'chat' which was basically me trying to catch up to what had happened with my personal development from phase one through phase two she gave me one string of feedback.

One blinding flash of the obvious.

She said 'You are very critical of yourself' right now I am really upset I backed away from a flaming car that had nobody in it. Because I didn't know there was nobody in it, and I didn't reach in and burn myself to check.

Also there were like more than 6 people standing around taking pictures of it with their phones. Why didn't anybody help me? Even when I fell over my own bicycle. Why didn't anybody else call triple 0?

Phase 3 is this. Phase 1 tohm supported nobody not even himself. Phase 2 tohm supported everybody but not himself. Phase 3 tohm has to learn to support everybody and myself.

I don't believe in myself and I have to start. I think Miki and I worked out because we mirrored eachother. Motivated by others before ourselves. That worked out while the 'others' were her and me. I cared about her, she cared about me, neither cared about ourselves. Then her family needed her and she left, and I let her leave because I accepted that I wasn't important.

It worked out how it worked out, I just raise it as an example of my refusal to stand up for myself. I don't need to be selfish or narcissistic, I just need to not let people walk over me, exploit me etc. At some point I'm going to have to ask for money for my work.

Phase 3 has begun, and I have the seeds to progress. I don't believe in many of my abilities. But I do believe in my ability to learn.

Too Much Perspective

For some reason Hoddle St became Nicholson street in my head and I went to far. I'd forgotten that exhibition st turns into Nicholson once you cross victoria parade. So riding along Hoddle as soon as I remembered this I turned down the first lane that presented itself.

There I was riding along.

An SUV parked in front of a business on my left had smoke come out its window. Like it was just a glance but it was like a white smoke signal emerging from this car it was too big to be cigarette smoke and too small to be a sheep.

I thought 'I better check this out' or I 'have to check this out.' Now I have to stress here, up until I fell over my own bike, I really didn't think at all. I WASN'T THINKING, a bunch of decisions were just being made so when I try to rationalize what I did it may sound dumber or smarter than it actually was.

Firstly in hindsight when I pulled up and got off my bike I felt reluctant, it was like doing something I really didn't want to do. Like kissing a bearded aunt hello but times 10.

The smoke was white and it didn't occur to me there was a fire. I could see white smoke billowing at the windows, but that was it. Perhaps its the movies I've seen biasing my judgement, but what I 'thought' was happening (not thinking) was that somebody was committing suicide. I walked round the back of the car and all the windows where opaque with white smoke. I smelled the air and it smelled kind of funny, but not like fire funny and I don't know what monoxide smells like.

Then I recall I had my phone in one hand dialling 000 and my other hand outstreched palm to the passanger side and it wasn't hot. I remember that. The metal wasn't hot.

Then I saw the passenger door was actually ajar, like open just resting there. I touched the handle thinking it would be hot, it wasn't so I opened the door and I don't really remember what happened next. The plan was to ask if anybody was in the car. But the white smoke turned black and the car was just full of black fucking smoke, and it was black and I couldn't see an inch into the vehicle and then I saw orange and then I was on the phone to 000 behind the car.

Now I'm pleased that I stopped, and I'm pleased that I went to check if anyone was inside the car. But here is what bothers me, without thinking my mind was like 'I can't deal with this.' and I backed up and, what was funny afterwards, like maybe 20 minutes afterwards THEN I got upset about the prospect of having to HAUL a dead man out of the car. And it wasn't like I ever thought 'child could be in there' or 'that could be my sister in there' or anything like that. I just envisioned this heavy middle aged balding guy in a navy dress shirt laying back committing suicide. And that upset me even after I knew, that wasn't the case and worse than that having to help somebody who is on fire. I'm grossed out by burns and burning flesh and people on fire. So maybe it was an unpleasant but have to do it x 1000.

But the moment I saw orange flames I didn't leap in to see if anybody was actually in there or what. I just gave up and backed off. I wasn't thinking, I don't feel like I got a chance to decide. I just did things and I'm not sure if that would have been a fail.

Anyway I left the door open and connected to 000, told them fire. Then I'd assumed they'd know where I was, so I was asking this other cyclist that had stopped across the road what street we were on and he gave me some names and the 000 peeps were like which state? And then I was like 'Victoria, Collingwood' and then they connected me to the firebrigade.

I hadn't started thinking yet, I wasn't panicked or anything I felt like I sounded calm but it occured to me that standing next to a car that is on fire is a dumb idea so I started backing away as I talked to the fire brigade peeps and tripped over my own bike and dropped the phone and that ended my first call to 000 ever.

My second call to 000 took place across the street and I had started to think. Some locals had come out one with a bucket of water and I got different street names off them. Got through to the firebrigade and gave them the details, they asked me if the car posed a threat to any buildings whether it was LPG or petrol, diesal etc. I asked them if they wanted the licence plate and they were like NO WHAT FUEL? and that was the first time we actually established that it wasn't my car. Anyway ... they told me the fire trucks are on the way.

Now these are the things going through my mind still:

1. Should I have called 000 first because opening the car door in hindsight gave oxygen to the fire. The answer: Hindsight is useless I did what I did. Plus until I saw the orange flames I really didn't think it was on fire, I REALLY thought it was full of exhaust fumes. Like it seems to me that if you call 000 they could have said things like 'don't open the car door' and shit that plainly didn't occur to me. But it sounds stupid but I didn't know I was dealing with a fire until I opened the door. I thought all the exhaust fumes would spill out and I'd have to resuccitate a fat old dude.

2. If there had been people trapped inside would I have let them die? This question occurs to me, and I have no answer for it.

So I was standing across the street with two women that lived in a terrace across the road and one of them with the bucket actually wandered up and threw some water on which just made the windows shatter. So I wasn't the only person naive when it comes to fire and shit. But It was one of those things as the car roof burnt off and the engine caught fire where I couldn't look and couldn't look away because I didn't want to know but I had to know whether there were people inside.

Something blew up and burned off in a massive jet of fire about 6 meters into the sky and you tell yourself that if there were people inside with that much smoke they would have been dead already. At least mercifully unconscious.

The fire trucks came and parked and looked really casual and their truck blocked our view and by now all the local residents were clustered around watching. I gave my statement to the officer and admitted I was stupid in hindsight opening the door and giving the fire all that oxygen and apologised. He was really nice and said it was a good idea to check if anybody was inside.

And that's as far as I'll say describing the incident.

I do just want to say though. You have to stop. Somebody always stops and somebody always checks and it was disturbing to just be on autopilot. I now know anybody in a situation with fire, explosions whatever just doesn't have the luxury of thinking. White smoke black smoke? I don't know shit about smoke anyway, I call it white smoke, but I thought it was exhaust, not smoke. In hindsight, if the engine wasn't running it wasn't going to be exhaust. But I can't remember hearing anything as in I wasn't listening I was just doing stuff.

But there were heaps of people some who arrived seconds after I did, and others after I'd called the fire brigade who just took photos on their phones and others who fetched pro-arse cameras. But the point is somebody stops, and it didn't have to be me it could have been anyone and takes control, in as far as they moronically can of the situation and calls for help. If nobody did, the human race would have died out a long long time ago.



I think I'm proud of myself, but I'm not sure if I am who I want to be just yet. Hopefully I'll never get tested again.

Peeps are Amazing

There are some people that just blow me away. I don't know why I don't spend more time with them.

Tuto Posto!

I just returned from the supermarket having a sudden overwhelming desire to drink orange juice. Cold orange juice, which I didn't own at the time of craving and wouldn't drink if it was in our fridge anyway. Yet another object that needs cleaning before my sis returns.

Anyway the bottle cap had a 'liddle fact' in it, specifically no 183. Ant's dont sleep.

I presume they have checked their facts, and this blows my fucken mind and made me overwhelmingly tired.

I was tired all weekend. It was a self inflicted tiredness, insisting that I needed to fulfil my facebook RSVP's and maintain my integrity as a reliably reliable person rather than sleep and recuperate.

It had been a long week, heroin addiction, lung cancer diagnosis, dropping out of school, all real problems, all not mine but of loved ones and loved ones loved ones. The sort of week that makes you want to insist on having fun, even if you don't enjoy it.

So I did, and I enjoyed it. As per usual I drag my feet to gigs and find myself envigorated the moment the act starts playing. I exploited a loop-hole in my system and skipped out on a gig I had intended to go to, but hadn't actually said I would and went to see Alexie play his bass to finish off my weekend.

It was funny because recently I realised I'd never actually been out in my own suburb or those ajoining it, even though I've lived here for 2 years. Anyway the Hawthorn Hotel let's say is not the venue to make one feel they have wasted 2 years.

I got there and the band was awful so I quickly left. I ran into Alexie on the corner who concurred that the band playing was awful. I asked him when his started and he said in 20 minutes.

Approximately 20 minutes later I sat down to enjoy some acoustic pop from Alexie's band. It featured acoustic guitar, bass guitar, xylophone and refreshingly these days, no synth.

The Hawthorn* Hotel has this horrible disco-esque lighting on the stage that flashes around periodically blinding you in alternating primary colours. It created this strange effect though which cast the singers face in complete shadow. So all the vocals seemed to emerge out of this strange negative space. And let's face it accoustic pop is relaxing.

And I had a catharsis**, not a vision as such, but a feeling. A revelation.

I realised that right then and there I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

And even though I was tired and shit, and needed sleep and whatnot, it was an incredibly relaxing sensation. Arguably better than sleep. I imagine that this sense of being in the right place is what ants feel when they are never sleeping.

I can't describe it, I imagine its like being shipwrecked and swimming all night and then finally washing up on the shore of some island populated by a nubile and primitive people. Except I imagine most people on finding terra firma would immediately proceed to sleep. Also I have no actual experience of being shipwrecked, so it really isn't my place to comment on how similar that felt to taking in an accoustic pop set at the Hawthorn Hotel.

The good people of Naples*** have a veriation on the classic 'sto bene' (I'm well) response to 'come sta' (how are you?) which is 'tuto posto' that is 'everything in its place' and there briefly for a while, I was in my place.

*for some reason I really want to spell Hawthorn 'Hawthorne'

**I hope this means what I assume it does.

***but seriously, keep one hand on your wallet when they are around.

I Make Airconditioners

The title of this post is taken from somewhere within the rambling pages of Ricardo Semler's 'The Seven-Day Weekend' it is a rambling book making it hard for me to find the exact quote, furthermore Semco is a rambling company that produces everything from biscuit factories, to oil pumps to cleaning products. So I took a punt and guessed it was the industrial airconditioner branch. Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnyway... the words come from the mouth of a Janitor whom when asked what she did at Semco responded 'I make airconditioners.' That is she recognised that her menial role of cleaning the Airconditioning factory was a vital part of the whole production process. It is beautiful she recognises this.

On Friday I went to the first of three live music performances I took in this weekend, and was told by my friend in the band that my presence ment a lot to him. Which was touching, and I know exactly how he feels. Attached is a picture I didn't end up using as my profile because it disgusted me too much:
so disgusting I didn't even bother to finish it off

Anyway I was going to caption this picture 'tohm lives off a diet of feedback and he is starving.' I also felt bad about trying to shame people into making comments. I do get plenty of feedback and am lucky I can display my work through media like facebook where a 'like' from someone goes a long way in motivating me to keep drawing.

But seeing live music is different, slightly, I mean I'm duplicitous, in that going to see a gig gives me an excuse to go to a bar when I'm a non drinker*, and at the end of a day cooped up drawing, it gets me out of the house. BUT, what I dub the airconditioner philosophy holds true. I draw comics so they will be read by people. My readers are in fact the real final part of the process of creating a comic. Bands play music to be heard by people, the audience is a crucial part to the performance.

Check it, I LOVE Faith No More, and if it was possible for easily replicable and replaceable digital data to be 'precious' I would say my live bootleg of FNM in Cologne is the most precious album on my ipohd. The track 'midlife crisis' brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. Yes the drum intro is my favorite ever, yes I am in love with Mike Patton greatest vocalist ever but my first emotional response is to the sound of the audience screaming with excitement:


The sound quality isn't the best on this video but hopefully you get an impression. Think about it, when have you seen a gig being performed to you and one tired drunk guy in the corner of a bar that was truly 'great'. (It's concievable, if the band took the attitude 'okay there's two people here and the bar staff, they all use facebook so we are going to blow their fucking faces off!') but fact is any given performance, and even yes a track can be made or broken by the audience.

Let's not delude ourselves, peeps don't deserve band credits just for paying a cover charge and clapping politely. Nor even getting drunk and screaming enthusiastically and inappropriately at the band. But fact is the audience is a crucial part of the performance.

I had my birthday drinks sunday, and as I am to be honest uncomfortable with the idea of peeps celebrating 'me' I thought I'd combine it with the skylines whose music is like some intoxicating form of liquid-funk-happiness:


These guys make people dance, I did not end up dancing, due to the intimate conversational number of peeps that turned up and probably the overcast weather too. I plan to sneak back next week though and see them again, so I might dance away from prying eyes. So there the role and objective and importance of an audience is clear. But when I have like a party I find myself stressing about who's going to turn up and who isn't and whether one of these years two friends will meet that produce the statement 'I'm gonna drop that cunt' and which way that statement will go and hopefully it won't be directed at me.

Anyway, I don't envy these bands that when they are really doing work must go through the sensation of organising a party every week wondering who's going to turn up. (I do envy them their musical abilities and general coolness though)

But really it's simple. Before I did anything creative and most importantly put it out in a space where people could actually see it I kind of looked at these people creating things and producing things and recognised that they were strong willed competent people and thought 'they'll be right' as in 'it doesn't matter if I go to their gig, they are still going to play if I'm not there' or 'I don't need to comment on this picture, he'll keep drawing anyway' or 'No need to get to that book launch, the books already written after all.' which is even fine in theory,

for example, Tool are probably not going to miss my presence at their next concert in Melbourne. They aren't going to gaze out and say 'I wonder why tohm didn't come tonight, he came to the last two concerts we did?' because they can sell 50,000 tickets in like a minute. But that's the thing, the phenomena of concerts selling out fast takes so many people, interlinked but acting independantly. They make up their own minds to go, to fork out cash and stand around in Sydney Myer Music Bowl enjoying some of the shittest sound quality ever.

Think of it like a wall st crash, everyday this phenomena of buyers and sellers coming to the market in their millions is happening from a bunch of independant pieces. Then when you have a crash suddenly a bunch of peeps independantly decide not to go to market (on the buying side) and heaps decide to go on the selling side.

So you should go is what I'm saying. If you are just another face amongst 150 or just another comment among 570 on a post so be it. They will notice you in the whole if not the individual and it still means something. If you are one of 5 people, sure it's awkward but it still means a lot, perhaps more even.

I must confess I always always drag my feet to these gigs. It's part and parcel of being an introvert, but by now I know rationally that I always enjoy myself when I get there, and there is no shitty mood that can't be fixed by chugging down disgusting gatorade before you leave the house. That's my advice.

Most importantly don't underestimate your own importance to the creative process. You too could make airconditioners.

*for those that hastily will point out they saw me drunk yesterday, I don't mean I don't drink. I mean I never go out to drink and drink alone**.

**As in sole purpose 'alone' not 'by myself I'm an alcoholic' alone.

Rock Acid Rock

Yesterday I was drawing this picture:


I really struggled with the composition and ended up using a technique I'd read about but never really use. It's called gesture drawing or perhaps expression drawing. It's where you are specifically drawing an action, and is meant to be a very quick fluid scribbly drawing.

I wanted to specifically capture the explosiveness of the guitar, and when I did, it set me off on an almost instant tirade. I was going to put this post into the caption where I normally post these. But since it is a picture of a friend I didn't want to detract from his moment of glory.

Anyway here is the tirade:

what the fuck is with music of the last decade. In fact if you want to get specific I can specify the exact moment I felt alien and alone in the world of music - June 8th, 1999.

The day Californication came out. You see I'd been looking forward to that Album, having spent most of my high school years catching up on Bay Area music. Red Hot Chilli Peppers' One Hot Minute and Blood Sugar Sex Magic were on high rotation. When I heard RHCP had finally replaced Navarro with Frusciante I was expecting big things.

The big thing though turned out to be 'Scar Tissue' and is perhaps the perfect illustration of exactly what I don't understand. Scar Tissue is a surfie-esque ballad for Rip-Curl wearing motherfuckers parked on the Lorne boulevard with their windows down. It is musically good. The Frusciante solo is nice, melodic, soulful. the lyrics picturesque, the promo video had some vision. It's a neat and tidy song.

It is however, utterly and horribly unexplosive. It is restrained, disciplined, lacking in energy. Aside from 'Get On Top' and to a (much) lesser extent 'Around the World' the album lacked that epileptic explosion of funk-rock-metal-punk that had been perhaps a little too much on Mothers Milk, just right for BSSM and OHM and was now almost absent from Californication.

Anyway, I had expected these guys to come back with something akin to BSSM, at the least, not this... and I remember distinctly voicing my dissappointment in the album to a cluster of guys that liked Metallica, ACDC, Regurgitator (this was 1999) that I had shared Faith No More albums with and you know what they said? YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAID?!!

'I think it's good/I like it.'

I felt outgunned, cornered, alone. Had everybody lost their senses?

Within 2 years I had come to accept that the bands I was into at the time were simply getting old. I bought this 'lifestyle' progression argument that said when musicians were young they just wanted to be technical masters, play as fast, loud and complicated as possible and eventually they all settled down to write... well scar tissue presumably.

I know MY SHIP HAS SAILED. I know it. I get it. I just don't understand why.

Let me put it this way, what I choose to believe is that if Mozart was born today he wouldn't have chosen Piano Forte as his instrument of choice, and he wouldn't have been trying to get sponsored by Austrian Royalty. He'd be picking between the East and West Coast of USA and would probably play a combination of guitar and synth. He wouldn't be doing classical, he would be trying to emulate Trent Reznor or something and more than likely surpassing him if he was indeed Mozart born today.

And by that the view I'm projecting onto the world is that which says seeing somebody play a face melting guitar solo on stage is just so much more exciting than watching a flawless recital of Rachmaninov's 3rd (or whatever), it's explosive. Thanks to magnetic coils and electricity a tiny piece of wood becomes a soul-destroying weapon. A piano forte or harpsichord, remains the same instrument.

That's what I expect of everybody else, this same vertical appreciation of explosiveness.

Now that I've painted myself as fairly parochial, let me say, I do appreciate Bach, the piano, folk music. I simply don't understand why it's so popular right now.

We live in times where the defenders of freedom are flagrantly invading other countries with little pretext and fucking shit up, where the internet makes it hard for institutional crimes to be consealed from those passively perpetrating them. This is a time to be angry and passionate. Why oh why then is the music in vogue so apathetic?

That's what I don't understand. Don't people universally have the same response to the energy levels in music. Isn't it pure physiollogy. I mean you don't see people listening to folk music ever get up and agro and get in your face. You don't see peeps headbanging at an Angus & Julia Stone concert. You do at a Pantera concert. Why do so many people want to take it easy? Why is this meme dominant. Why has it dominated for so long?

I don't understand.

wtf?

I have no fucking idea what is going on. This is refreshing, but a little sickening. Like eating a whole bag of peanut m&m's, which I just did. Except eating a whole bag of peanut m&m's isn't refreshing.

Strange and Beautiful

So all said and done apart from wonderful, delightful free meals throughout the week, the only actual physical, non perishable gift I got was from my sister in the form of lycra - and I can always use more lycra.

Anyway I probably, well definitely didn't help myself out by as usual answering the question 'what do you want for your birthday?' with no list of consumer durables to fill the void in my life.

Instead I answered 'I want to dance with a deaf girl.'

I wasn't trying to be funny or clever, I'm serious. It's an experience I want to have.

I want to do it because I think it would be strange and beautiful, think about it. We don't really understand why the brain enjoys music, and why furthermore when we hear music it reaches into the motor-functions of our brain and makes us want to move in sync with it.

Cut the hearing off, and what is dance - completely strange, the phenomena observed without music of somebody suddenly changing their motions for no apparant reason whatsoever. Don't think its strange watch this with your sound turned off:


with sound it all makes sense, without it it seems perverse.

But apparantly and here I reveal how little I have to do with the deaf or blind communities - blind people innately make hand gestures. Thus on some innate level people that have never heard music I suspect, understand it, enjoy it etc.

So I would like to guide somebody through the dance, through the motions of the music and see if they enjoy it (all consensual of course) and can connect with the music. I'm sure, deaf people go dancing all the time with their friends and shit, I'm sure in this day and age deaf people can do most things.

I just think it would be strange and beautiful, and thus I'd like to do it. One day.

Step one: learn how to say 'do you want to dance?' in Auslan.

Twelve Moments

So today's my birthday, blah. On monday I launched my new webcomic called 'twelve moments' when I say mine it's really 'ours' and it involves collaboration. It should take you some time to check it out so I won't say much here but what I will say is this...

The whole thing was designed to force me to work and become better (possibly upto decent) at drawing comics, layouts and shit. To stop me from being lazy, but it also created an opportunity for the peeps that write the comics to be creative and in particular create something they would otherwise be unable to create.

Those coming from a media background used to storyboards and what not take to it straight away, those who write in more literary traditions not so much. But I have been surprised at how good the contributions have been from people who universally have little to no experience with comics.

I think western comics have a huge untapped advantage in having a traditional model of writer-artist teams rather than the Japanese tradition of writer as artist. But this advantage has amounted to little, or much less than it should. Why? Because it is an artist dominated industry as my brother puts it. Artists want to work on their own thing and block peeps who can write from entering it. Everybody if offered the chance should write a comic, particularly with a risk averse hollywood only really making adaptations, if you are an aspiring director or screenwriter soon will come the days when you have to first release your film as a comic before anyone will produce it in order to establish a following.

Okay I've said my piece, this project has felt good, really good:

twelve moments by us.

Group Assignment Asshole

For the second time in almost as many weeks I turned up to a tutorial solely to collect my mark. This time though I wasn't confident of actually passing. This wasn't an open book test with multiple choice section, this was for a report I only started the day it was due and handed in the next day.

I got 17/20 marks, and didn't even get pingged 10% for being late. I thus once again resolved I didn't need to be there and left.

Let me elaborate on this project. This project involved answering questions about two legal cases sighting the relevant legal issues. It had a word limit of 1600 all up. It was a group assignment, with max 4 members, minimum two.

Had I actually had the foresight to check when the assignment was due before the due date, I still would have immediately leapt on the opportunity to work by myself.

1600 words doesn't warrant enough effort for a group assignment. Group assignments generally cost me more effort than is saved by sharing the workload.

Interestingly in the lecture before the tute there is this guy that complains, habitually and since complaining about the number of 'asians' in our course I habitually avoid him without being impolite.

For reasons I can't fathom this douche cares about marks. He complains about our lecturer and thus was surprised when I told him this subject was my favorite. 'Because I don't care almost as much as the lecturer doesn't' being my justification.

This invited a discussion of other subjects and the group assignments. This guy complained about doing 95% of them. This complaint I would expect maybe from a first year, not somebody in their second year of their second degree.

I tried to espouse my 'yeah but you don't want a credit student doing a credit standard contribution when you could do it to a distinction, you're lucky to have them not contribute and the only way to buy them off is offer them 100% contribution.'

For those not at RMIT I don't know how other uni's work but with group assignments you get an assignment cover sheet and you can put next to each group members name their contribution - 100% is the status quo, which implies everybody contributed equally and thus recieves 100% of the mark. The only time you penalise somebody is when they contribute nothing, or if you just want to discourage somebody from asking to work with you again.

Anyway, this guy cut me off, and told me in his last report he asked a guy to rewrite his section 5 times then dropped him from the group when it 'wasn't up to scratch' this tough talk presumably impresses somebody but I just blurted out without thinking 'it's just marks...'

He responded 'it's just your future' which is something alarmist my mother might say. This immediately sent me into a reverie contemplating my future but that's a different post right there. He then made a spitting gesture and turned away. So that killed the conversation and I possibly should be thankful for my impulses.

Anyway, what future in this guys shoes is worth treating people like shit and dis/un/anti?/compassionately ditching them from a group for something as inconsequential as an assignment mark. Get some perspective.

For example, what are you actually trying to achieve through good grades. If an employer looked at your academic record they would see a high GPA or something and HD's a DI's and whatnot all over your report.

Presumably employers recruit by taking the GPA of every applicant and picking the highest one? Would you want to work for an employer that did that? No. You have to survive a job interview, here you see huge differentials in the effort:reward ratios.

The effort to reward of getting a good GPA is minimal relative to the effort to reward of not being an asshole. It takes very little effort to not be an asshole. You just have to be patient and understanding and compassionate. You have to smile a little and relax. It takes hours and hours to learn a bunch of theory of which you will apply 5%.

Furthermore the most oft repeated tragedy of recruiting is being hired for technical reasons and then fired for personal ones. You are 'brilliant' BUT your team hates you. This is why the interview is far more important than the resume review, and companies know it. They don't trust references, they don't trust grades and quite often treat the academics that instructed you with contempt.

So why the fuck be an arsehole over grades?

Anyway, I learned never to work in a group assignment with this dumbass, 1. he'd probably insist on doing work I'd be better off doing for him and 2. He'd probably demand I put equal time into it and 3. He's an arsehole, shit comes out of him.

So I'm Superstitious

Last year I was taken by despair upon finishing the 21.1km half marathon. The sudden massive sensory destimulation got to me and I was crying sweat heading into the baggage collection.

This year it was the reverse. My emotional/mental breakdown began for reasons unknown at 6pm on Saturday night. My only theory is that I'd reached a point in time where I actually could let go and not be letting down other people as a result.

I went Yossarian and was overcome by a sudden desire to not wear clothes anymore. I shut myself in my room and drew, gradually getting more and more overwhelmed with emotion.

Consciously I told myself to hold off on the breakdown until I'd done the run. Then I eventually realised that if it was going to come now I should let it, there was no gauruntee I'd be able to tomorrow.

Thus I let the full weight of Shafika's death and the fact that tomorrow when I finished the race I would once again be all alone with nothing to do hit me.

This was depressing.

Then I opened up a new .txt file and wrote all the shit I had to do to feel better about myself. This made me feel better about myself, and I intend to keep working through that list.

I think more than anything though, I have these breakdowns when I get sick of being me. It takes energy being me, and thus every now and then I just need to retreat back into myself, be alone and recharge.

I also get superstitious at these times. I look for external sources of energy and inspiration. This is somewhat hypocritical of me, because I firmly believe the answer is never somebody else, the answer is something we have to create ourselves for ourselves by ourselves.

So I got creative.

I took one of my surplus sharpies and penned the number '23' on my left wrist. This is an accessable place to keep reminders. '23' should need no explanation, but in case it does it is Michael Jordan's number. Jordan is characterised by his relentless desire to win, relentless. He drives toward the basket, he expects all his shots to go in. It is the perfect mindset when you are trying to run a half-marathon faster than you have run any long distance race before.

I've done this before, but it was not enough this time, I switched over and wrote '37' on my right hand wrist. 37 is the number of weeks Thriller was number one, it is also the number Ron Artest wore in the 2009-2010 NBA season, Ron Artest after winning the championship in Boston with the LA Lakers turned to a news reporter and said 'I would like to thank my psychiatrist' Ron Artest is crazy, but got his head checked and kept calm to come up big when they needed him in the playoffs and particularly game 7 of the NBA finals. Ron Ron was on my right wrist in case I went crazy, incase I had an emotional episode before the finish line.

I also had some beads sent me from South Africa that had been blessed by an African Priest, now I'm not religious, but I am it seems superstitious. And I had recieved a card with the blessings on the beads I now wore upon my neck. I took my sharpie and wrote these words on my chest for the run, believing that once labelled I would indeed possess these qualities 'Faith, Hope, Love, Courage, Trust, Endurance, Protection...'

For those lay to the marker community, Sharpies are a breed of texta, not a knife just incase you were starting to worry.

Anyway, turns out sharpie ink isn't that easy to wash off.

But when it came to the run, everything inverted. I felt fantastic. I overtook people the whole time. I thought I might be a chance to do it in 1 hr 30 minutes. I overtook the 90 minute pacemen before the halfway mark. The more I ran the better I felt, the harder I ran.

I also decided last minute to wear my giraffe stockings, even though the nylon doesn't breath well it just felt a bit somber wearing all black. It turned out to be the biggest competitive advantage. Every spectator complimented them. I got massive cheers from a cheersquad dressed in pink. It was the biggest boost.

I only got overtaken in the last 800m or so by guys that turned out to be marathon runners. If you are running a marathon in under 2:30 you are seriously fucken fast, so I didn't mind. I sprinted across the line to finish in 1:25.33 (1:27 something by the starting gun) In ballarat speak that's 3.5 laps of the lake at 24 minutes per lap. It was the run of my life. All my best runs have been characterised by superstitious trinkets and emotional breakdowns.

I'm superstitious it turns out. What of it?

Equity vs. Efficiency

Just 14 more sleeps till the next NBA season tips off. I want/need NBA back in my life but I'm honestly not too excited about this season, at least nowhere near as excited as I was last season for the starting date. Last season the offseason brought Ron Artest to the Lakers and Rasheed Wallace to the Celtics, it promised to be epic and sure enough 80 regular season games and 3 playoff rounds later we saw possibly the greatest finals series in recent history.

But this year is different, Lebron pussed out and went to Miami along with Chris Bosh in a move that promises some of the most meaningless championships to the Miami franchise ever. Conversely all the excitement doesn't come from the Miami Heat super line-up but from the prospect that anybody that beats the Miami Heat this year or in the next five will win one of the most meaningful 'David v Goliath' championships in the history of the game.

Because in one free agency season, the NBA went from something midway between AFL and English Premier League to English Premier League.

In professional sports the relevant league can take two paths - equity or efficiency. Equity is promoting a level playing field presumably with the aim of ramping up competition. Efficiency is to concentrate talent as densely as possible and remove losers from the mix.

In AFL you see possibly one of the better 'equity' sporting models in the world's professional sports. They have measures like the Salary Cap and Draft to ensure that teams are roughly equal. A 'winning' team is penalised in the draft and has a harder time attracting new talent to rejuvinate the club. A 'losing' team is rewarded in the draft and over time can build a list of talented players that can mature and reverse their fortunes. Similarly the Salary Cap prevents too many of the leagues elite joining the same team and becoming some kind of super team. Sure it still happens - the three-peating Brisbane Lions with 3 Brownlow medallists in the mid-field and just about the best player in the league in every key position comes to mind. But on the whole it works pretty well.

By contrast the English Premier League the richest team can sign all the best players, hence you have 4 or so big teams (I must confess I'm speaking from a largely ignorant base here) and then a bunch of also rans that can get relegated out of the league. That's an effeciency model for you. The extreme going to the Spanish League with Real Madrid...

The NBA has a salary cap and arguably a superior drafting process to the AFL (it's a lottery with the odds based on a teams performance, the weakest team has the best odds, but no guaruntee- this prevents 'tanking' in theory) however if you are a rich team like the Lakers you can exceed the salary cap and just pay a luxury tax on those players contracts. If you can get a super eam together and sell out your season then it's certainly worth paying the tax. The Lebron to Miami wasn't quite this situation though, it was almost a voluntary/collusion decision by the players to become the Real Madrid of the NBA and potentially ruin the sport.

Enough has been said about Lebron such that Lebron is better left forgotten. The cruel thing about free agency though is that you can have a star player one season that gives you the leagues best record, then they leave and you get nothing in return (except for a big pile of money you don't have to spend on that player anymore) and you have to suffer through a season before you get any draft consideration.

This is true also of the AFL except that the AFL isn't really conducive to one player being able to take over a game like the NBA is, thus the departure of a superstar isn't necessarily going to push you from first to last, but maybe from first to 8th. Yet in a league with more teams, it's quite possible (and probable) that the Cavs can go from a regular season 1st to 30th just like that.

I prefer equity in sports. I would have rather watched Wade and Bron face off for a championship than cooperate. Just as last season watching two teams of seasoned champions duel it out was just about the most stressful and rewarding viewing experience of my life. I can only hope the Celtics manhandle the Heat out of the playoffs this year and we get a rerun of last years championship series.

The Big Assumptions

Why am I in school?

I feel my school assumes I want a job. I can't look after myself and thus I need somebody to emply me. How best to disguise myself as something they actually want. How to standardise me so they can make an objective decision on who to take. How to numerise my knowledge so it can be measured with a tape measure. The longer my knowledge the more employable. That's the assumption.

They assumed wrong. I want an education first, a job second. I only want a job for its education purposed. I want a job I can learn from, otherwise if I'm not learning I'm happy enough to shake a cup on the street.

Why did I go to high-school?

I feel my high-school assumed I wanted to get into university. They assumed correct, but I wanted to go to uni to have fun. But reflecting on it, this was the general assumption, almost every interaction a student had with my school held the university objective in mind. Thinking back there were a lot of students that this was entirely inappropriate for. Possibly me.

Why do we go to primary school?

I honestly don't fucking know. To learn to read and write? maybe. there's a lot of students that don't even by the end of year 12. I suspect we go to survive. School is in large parts day care. Our parents need to be back out earning money, we need somebody to take care of us. We go to school once we have reached an age where our communication skills enable one person to manage 30 kids or so.
Primary school was fun though. I wish University was more like Primary school. More finger painting.

The Thing Is This...

This sentiment was contained in yesterdays post, but I thought I'd scoop it out of the water with my dirty hands and give it attention now.

I'm happy.

That's the kicker. These days I really only have two moods: happy and competitively aggressive. The others are still there but they are a very thin slice of the pie. I'm not even that angry cycling anymore.

I did in an abstract way enjoy my old lifestyle of working all day, looking forward to lunch and yelling at the contestants on the biggest loser, but since basically '06-'07 I've gone from not liking myself to quite liking myself. Being an angry, sad man to being a pretty happy dude.

How? Abe Lincoln has the secret I think: "I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." and that's more or less what I've done, I've decided to be happy.

There's some other things I've done too, like made a concerted effort not to be a fucking cunt.

I sought feedback, I tried to build up self esteem... blah blah blah it's really not much. Not much at all.

But all those articles you read about how happiness has nothing to do with money or possessions. Those articles we read backed up by empirical studies and what not, that are all true but we routinely ignore. They are all true. I'm living those articles. It is hard to apologise for my existence right now, as Yogi Berra said: "If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there." is a definite risk to my current happy lifestyle but fuck it, when I come to a fork in the road, I'll take it. That's my plan.

I can always become a billionaire astronaut cowboy later.

Wisdom from BMX magazines

I remember sitting in Honda's lunchroom back when I read business books, but evidently not 'Never Eat Alone' by some networking douchebag, and occasionaly shy on reading material I would actually read one of the motorcycle magazines the motorcylce department left around for us.
These magazines are like the worst, ever. I assume their staff consist of a layout guy who literally copies and pastes press releases from the manufacturers. So really I didn't expect to find good reading in my BMX magazine that I bought along with the gay mag the other day.

But straight up the editorial hit home for me in an act of serendipity that reflected my 'getting used to being a loser post' except far more articulate and straight forward. I quote:

Hurry Up & Wait...

...Waiting in line in a supermarket behind two people. The lady paying wants a different bunch of bananas because she notices one has gone bad. The guy behind her, but in front of me lets out a huge sigh and looks at me with disgust towards the woman. Chill out man, it's going to take a minute to get some bananas and by the look of your torn shirt and flip-flops no one is in a hurry to hang out with your impatient ass.

I see the same hurry up and wait attitude going on all over the place, and I definitely see it affecting the BMX world. And it's no individuals fault; it's more to do with a society that shoves coffee and energy drinks down our throats each day. The constant need for something new, the latest and greatest, the next up and coming pro, the most innovative trick, chew up the input and spit it out before you get in the shower that day... often I feel like I've blinked and missed out on something important. That important something to me is the fact that I'm still on this bike after all these years, I'm riding, which is slower than driving (unless you're on an LA freeway), I'm out with my friends, I'm not rushing to go to work, I'm not worried about bills or stressing about daily life, I'm on this bike hoping that time will slow down and I can enjoy every second of it... the only thing I would have changed 10 years ago was not worrying about getting a sponsor, and trying to remember to live for the moment.

There's more, I snipped a bunch out, but left a bunch in. This reminds me when I broke up* with Claire but was still addicted to her I would find out that we would catch up on like say a Saturday, and I would find out on a Tuesday. Because at the time I was obsessed with getting back with her for the sweet sweet endorphins I would then just become obsessed with Saturday, and how to get there.
That was the most extreme case where, thankfully I was seeing a psychiatrist and new I had to consciously train myself to actually make sure I enjoyed Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday AND Saturday, and all the days that followed.
Basically I learned then in a concrete way: don't look forward to anything. Not in a negative way, as in 'life's a bitch and then you die' but just don't miss your life looking ahead to a destination you may never reach.
We never got back together anyway, and eventually I got through the chemical addiction and 'got over' the break up. But the same could be said in a much more banal way of the 9-5 grind, if you are living for the weekend, quit your job and get on centrelink for a while till you figure out a way to go to work with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. Do whatever it takes.

Anyway, editorial aside, was there any other gems to be offered up by my BMX mag?

Then in a stunning pictorial section of a bike trip to Nicaragua there's the article 'compare and contrast' which had this keen insight:

So when my crew lands in Managua and wants to go street riding, I'll tell them: "The people here, well, they are much different than we are. They are not bad people, but can you blame them for wanting to have the huge amount of wealth we flaunt. Watch your iPhones and your bikes. And when we meet up with the hospitable and friendly local riders, watch what you say... what you assume. We need to drink water a lot while riding in the blazing sun here, so, when are at the gas station every hour spending $3 on on snacks and beverages, realize they are outside, drinking out of a dirty hose because they can't afford to spread that $3 out over the next week. And when you are appalled by sketchy accomodation, by the lack of consistent water and electricity, by the the inconvenience of daily functioning... when you are ready to scream, remember they live like this on a daily basis. These people, some smiling and some staring, understand poverty and wealth in a way we have never experienced.

And I guess to be fair to the author 'these people' in this context isn't Nicaraguans per se, but people in object poverty. This is like some of the best travel advice I wish I could have been told before staying in Mexico, Cambodia, India etc. I tend not to complain much, so I don't think that was bad, because I love to avoid conflict but I was really wasteful, I never bothered to eat or stay close enough to the street to really help out the local scene and not some foreign investment or foreign bank backed eatery.

Anyway, I haven't finished reading it yet. I bought it mainly for the pictures. Maybe that's the difference. BMX is an artform, as James said to me last night 'BMX takes a good picture' looking at static images of peeps suspended in the air in some strange relation to their ride makes one wax a little philosophical, if not just ponder how they will stick the landing, since lets face it from the pictures perspective the landing ain't really necessary.
*she dumped my arse, technically.

Being Gay, and not Being Gay.

(I should say this post is possibly NOT SAFE FOR WORK)

So today I bought my first ever gay mag, no not porno, just gay, a magazine for gay peeps. Like man on man, the 'G' in 'GLBT'. That's what I mean. Contrary to my expectations the hardest part of the process wasn't the actual purchase, but the selecting the mag that was best value for money. I mean there isn't much downside risk, so I went with DNA the cheapest one. All these mags contain the same advertising material and advertising material makes up like 90% of the content, so it wasn't a hard decision. It's just the standing and flicking through and comparing in the section of Mag nation between the hetero hang outs of Sport and Tittie Mags was difficult. Well relatively difficult. All rationality aside, I felt self conscious and I don't know why, because all rationality has been put aside.

Such that I am reminded of Carson Kressley table of things that make you gay vs. things that don't make you gay, the punch line of which was that being attracted to and having sex with men makes you gay. Which I know rationally, still for some reason it's like I don't want peeps to think I am gay. What do I care? This is the question I cannot answer.

I'm not gay. Nor do I currently own a BMX, I also bought a BMX mag, and the cashier I could tell was giving me a look that said either 'this guy doesn't look gay...' or 'this guy isn't a BMX enthusiast...' It strikes me that I often buy odd combos, like Dolly Partons Greatest Hits and Cypress Hill's Los Grandos Exitos in Espaniol, is it a defence mechanism or do I really have eclectic taste?

I bought both for reference, and frankly I will admit few peeps would look at me and assume my purchase decisions are clear indicators that I am some kind of quasi-artist.

To be honest, the most embarrassing (and I mean burning with shame) purchase was when I bought this magazine:

I bought it in Japan, also ostensibly as reference, and also because it was soft-core porno. (I should point out that whenever I am in Japan I have an easy time of buying hard core porno that I give to my friends and relatives as gifts, Janice loved her christmas present.)
When you buy a magazine that has for it's cover the soft wet arse of a girl in bikini bottoms, it is hard to pretend you are not a pervert. This made me more uncomfortable than buying a gay mag because fact is I AM a PERVERT. Furthermore, I had to make the transaction with a Japanese female employee of Maruzen in Nagoya, well I didn't have to I could have dropped the magazine back on the rack and run away, I just knew that this girl was the perfect reference for my Wish graphic novel's protagonist (and yes, there are more than just close up pictures of her arse inside I'm not doing no girls arse comic), and that this magazine due to Japan's large pervert population would probably sell out, because all the other past issues featuring different girls (possibly for different perverts, possibly for the same ones) also sold out.

By contrast I know I'm not gay, I'm old enough to know that buying a gay mag doesn't send a report to NASA that is then sent around the world obliging me to suck a chode if asked. Even if the cashier ended up being a gay sexual predator I am still confident that this is yet another problem I can run away from.

Really my only concern is that I might be perceived as buying DNA magazine as some kind of joke, some jibe, some ironic diss of the gay community. Personally I think that finding out where the models get their underwear is justification enough for a straight guy to buy this mag.

Yeah, I could have just bought GQ, which has pretty much the same advertising material, and pretty much the same demographic and the occassional article on basketball or clint eastwood, but really I wanted unashamed reference material without it actually being gay porno.

In fact looking at DNA magazine's covers, overall if young straight guys were to look at these guys as their ideal it would probably be healthier than whatever they are looking at now. I know somewhere before I have written about how men's ideal body images are generally derived from sporting role models. Whose body image if not realistic is at the very least utilitarian, that is they can put their hard earned physiques to use in more ways than attracting some sexual partner to look after them. They can for example earn $120 million dollars per year playing for the LA Lakers, and look after both themselves, their wife and several mistresses.

By contrast women are made to feel ugly, by fashion models whose only use for their body ideal is to act as some walking coat-hanger and can aspire to one day having some wealthy old man come look after them, or their cocaine addiction, whichever comes first.

Now, guys are adopting the heroin-chic look and to my old fashioned fashion values, I find the whole thing emasculating.

Of course, this post could easily be self defeating, I bought the magazine for reference, because I want to do a companion pin-up calendar to offset the chauvinistic 'Balifornia Girls' calendar I did, plus artists always strive to be original right? and it seems every comic book artist does girly pin-ups which are bought for some reason by girls as well as guys. So I thought I would do a set of guyly pin-ups. BUT, I'm aware I have revealed that I find toughness as some hetero-masculine ideal. Let me clarify that I don't lose too much sleep thinking about gender roles, or even how I feel about sexual orientation.

So if I wasn't an athiest I would hold that 'God would not create a love that wasn't beautiful' and possibly qualify that love with *consensual* which bestiality despite the 'Doctor Doolittle' defense cannot be. I honestly wished I lived in a world where sexual preference was a total non-issue, and that's how I act and feel about it most of the time. The only time I fret about sexual orientation is when I'm attracted to a girl and worry that she may be a lesbian, realising that if I were gay I would probably fret much more often that guys I liked were straight, for sheer statistical reasons, this is probably the only argument I have for enjoying being heterosexual. Being Bi would be least stressful of all, but I'm not and will just have to live with that.

As for gender roles, this I treat as even more of a non-issue in my day to day life. This is probably due to the largely negative reason that I get to enjoy all the privilege of being a straight-white-male in a world ruled by straight-white-males. Thus I don't get the booty end of the inequality stick. But vicariously, I do have to taste that shit stick occassionally. Like Misaki felt she was ugly despite being one of the most beautiful women in the world. Yet I lost two whole weeks in the time we were together just to the time she spent applying and removing make up every day. In that sad irony of it all, I actually preferred her spots which showed up when she wasn't wearing make-up, but I've come to learn that if a girl doesn't think she is beautiful, you can't tell her she is. This is largely I suspect due to the billions of dollars of advertising spent telling her she isn't you just can't compete with. If I had a billion dollars I would buy a golden pyramid and live in it on the moon, not put up 'my girlfriend is beautiful' billboards.

So what I mean to say is not that men should be tough and virile women rapers, just self-assured. I am opposed to the large amount of dollars made from companies that profit by making women, and increasingly men feel ugly and stimulate a need to bridge the ever growing gap between their reality and their ideal with products. I would like to see women advance, but I see men degenerating, that's all I see.

If the myth of masculinity is derived from some historical 'conquerer rapist' ideal, then that needs improvement too, but I'm not sure if the answer is to 'get in touch with your feminine side' but rather 'drop the rapist antics, drop the thug antics, just be some person who can stand up for themselves.'

Anyway sorry for the mixed messages, but being gay makes you gay not buying a gay magazine confusing as that is. If buying a magazine made you something, then I would be a rad BMX cyclist too as of yesterday.

The More I Study Finance and Economics...

the more I appreciate what Nicholas Nassim Taleb meant when he talked about the obsession to be 'wrong with infinite precision' rather than 'approximately right' I'm too tired to elaborate, but hopefully I will get my comprehensive bitch rant on education done soon...

good night now.

Passing Strange...

Since learning of Shafika's death, I've experienced a grieving period so strange I'm not even sure if it's a grieving period.

The most noticeable thing is since tuesday it's like some sparkly ball of energy fueling me just switched off and I've felt tired with the exception of about an hour after I wake each day. But by the time I'm done walking the dog, I just want to sleep.

Because it isn't my daughter that has died, I still have to fulfill my obligations, when all I want to do is crash and burn in my bed. The 'highlight' of my week was dragging myself (almost literally) up 7 flights of stairs (I insist) to my Law tute where I collected my test results 18/20 and realised promptly that I'd been studying too hard and didn't need to be there, so I walked out.

I just can't be fucked doing anything, I have a strong desire to crawl into a small space and hibernate until someway somehow it's all over.

I just don't know what 'it' is, I sense that I also have some long overdue emotional breakdown pent up and waiting to come out. But try as I might I just can't release that valve. I thought it might happen today, when my body woke me up in the early hours of the morning to be alone with my thoughts.

But instead I managed to sink back into the fractured dream that involved waiting for a train and reading the blog of a father who was dying writing notes to his daughter and posting drawings of fingers intertwined that he drew with his son. I woke up and felt like something sad had happened but it was not the sadness I need or think I need right now.

I find myself thinking about Shafika and the family often, I suspect that try as I might to accept the reality it keeps cropping up because I haven't. I realise in hindsight why I dreaded calling Zaman every week to check up on him and Shafika in what feels like a whirlwind between everything is okay and now everything is over. When I first got the news from Zaman, he said they had found cancer in her liver. I then got a conflicting report that it was in her pancreas from another volunteer.

I never bothered to clarify, actually I deliberately avoided clarifying because I know pancreatic cancer is regarded as a death sentence and liver cancer can be fought and overcome with early detection. It makes me realise that we almost always hope for the best and really don't prepare for the worst. I think this form of denial from me is what has allowed me to keep it from overwhelming me till now.

But I'm not overwhelmed with grief, at risk of sounding melodramatic, I just feel dead inside. It's similar to when Misaki broke it off with me, because I'd been through everything with Claire before hand, I had nothing really to do or adjust. There's like nothing for my mind to come to terms with, so I just feel tired and run down. Hopefully I can cry this sadness out at some point, hopefully it will be somewhere queit and alone, not public with nowhere to retreat to.

My dog knows that all is not right in my world, yesterday she was particularly mopey, and yesterday was probably my worst day thus far. I just can't imagine anything making me feel better, more concerning perhaps is that I can't imagine anything making me feel worse.

Thus thusly, these are strange times for me and I see no escape.

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.'