There is truth in fiction.

So anyway, this morning I was sitting at the dinner on the corner and I was waiting at the counter for the guy to pour the coffee and, get this, he fills it only halfway and before I could even argue he was looking out the window at somebody coming in. Like seriously dude, pay attention. I only got half a coffee because you were checking out a piece of ass, I mean, really? Anyway, so the lady comes in and the barista is all "Oh its so nice to see you" and she shakes her umbrella all over the place and then they are kissing their hellos and by this stage I'm feeling pretty pissed so I just lean over and grab the milk and pour it myself.

I can feel them staring at me but by this stage I could give less of a shit. I ignore them completely and open up the paper, there's some article about some actor, apparently he had died while he was drinking but it was no one I had heard of. I'm like 'fuck this' so I turn to the horror scopes and I'm looking for the funnies when I get that weird feeling you get when someone is watching you and so I raise my head.

There is some lady on the outside looking inside, but I'm not sure if she's looking at me. She squints for a bit and I realise that she is looking at her own reflection. I realise that she is hitching up her skirt and while she is straightening her stockings her hair has gotten wet.

Man, this rain it will continue through the morning as I'm listening to the bells of the cathedral. I am thinking of your voice.
And of a midnight picnic once up on a time before the rains began.
But I finished up my coffee 'cause it was time to catch the tram.

Hardly worth dying for.

So I gotta tell you about how I was watching this fantastic documentary the other day on this ‘hero cop’ in Los Angeles. It was freakin’ AMAZING! Did you ever hear about that hostage situation that happened in the late 80’s at some place called the Nakatomi Plaza? The story is that some guy, a policeman, was there visiting his wife for her corporate Christmas party. Man, shit went off the hook. First up a bunch of German guys took the whole place hostage, demanding that the executive of the company opens the vault. Apparently there were a whole stack of ‘bearer bonds’ (whatever they are) inside that they wanted and when the executive didn’t open the vault, the executed him! Man, that shit was fucked up. I mean, it’s like if someone came into my shop and shot me because I couldn’t open the safe, I mean, Jesus, I don’t even have a key!

I tell you, the human spirit is one to be reckoned with. I mean this cop, I think his name was John, he got stranded with no shoes and no gun in a building he’s never been in and what does he do? Does he lie back and say ‘fuck, guess I’d better play some getting-to-know-you games with the other hostages’? No, he mans the fuck up and goes hunting, that’s right, hunting the other terrorists.

I don’t want to give too much away but lets just say that this guy is like MacGyver meets Stallone. I mean, he’s resourceful and kicks ass like it ain’t no thang. For instance, mother fucker is so pissed at this posse of terrorists that he kills one and then dresses the corpse up in Christmas lights and writes a message on its jumper and then puts it in a lift and sends it to the floor where all the other terrorists are hanging out. No joke, these guys almost literally shit they are that scared. I swear, could you imagine their faces when the elevator chimes and then out spills Corpsy McMessage-written-on? I mean, you couldn’t write this stuff if you tried.

So while all this is happening the terrorists have made the building look like nothing is happening, they cut off all the phones and they even put a pretend security guard out the front. After Mr McClane sets off a fire alarm the police do the pissyest drive by ever, the cop drives up, doesn’t stop and almost drives away. I was on the edge of my seat at this stage, I mean, I knew that somehow Mr McClane had to survive (to sign away the rights to the documentary) but man, I had no idea how. Wanna guess how he did it?

He threw a corpse out the window and it landed on top of the police car. That’s how that mother fucker survived. Like, damn, that is some serious shit. It’s almost like that plane crash years ago in the Andes, you know the one where the people had to eat each other? I mean, it’s a bit like that, but not as extreme. I mean, if someone came to you and said “So here’s that corpse that you have to throw out the window” surely you’d be a little bit like “say what?” I mean, its pretty impressive that this guy did all of this and hardly bats an eye lid.

The thing is though, as the hostage drama progressed you could tell that it was starting to wear ol’ J.M out, I mean, just the mental pressure must have been almost unbearable. Could you imagine being so focused for so long? Whew, makes me tired just thinking about it.

I think the thing that impressed me the most was the amazing camera work. I don’t know if it was CCTV or what but it was excellent. If anything, the more CCTV cameras the better, because look at how good the footage is, I mean, a few more documentaries can’t hurt right?

After all of this though, I can’t remember what the damn thing was called. I’m tempted to say ‘One day in December’ but I’m pretty sure that’s not right. ‘Hardly worth dying for?” something like that? Anyway, check it out, one of the better non-fiction film I’ve seen in ages, almost as good as the one they did on that island off South America, you know, where that guy did all those experiments and ended up creating those giant lizards? Man, that was awesome.

Late again

So I just found my new favourite website. Wow.

Pretty much all true except for the lies.

After I walked past the gaggle of cute 16 year olds I thought “thank god I don’t have to serve them today, I just don’t have it in me”. Then later they walked into my shop and I didn’t so much as thank god but curse that mother-fucker out.

Hey hippies, yeah, you, hippie girl with that awful haircut, you know, the one with the dreads and the undercut with the lines in it, sort of like a mullet gone feral, I understand that you are making a statement, but do you realize that the statement is “I have rats in my vagina”? You don’t have rats you say? Explain the cheese then.

Also, you dancing barefoot after the show, you are the reason I’ll be sending my kids to a private school and making them read books on the corporate world, maybe books by Malcom Gladwell or Jack Welch. They will know the ‘Art of war’ backwards. Sure they’ll be wankers, but they’ll be rich wankers who wash.

Hot girls who drive vans make you wonder if perhaps getting kidnapped might be a little bit worth it. I got room on my body for a cigarette burn or two.

I’m having a mini holiday soon but I’m not telling anyone about it because all I want to do is smoke joints and play video games and I don’t want to be disturbed.

I saw a band last week and I was so high that I can’t really remember them. I’d call it a waste but I know that I had a good time so, call it even?

I went to the Tote on Sunday. It is always good to indulge in a bit of culture tourism. Needles to say I felt a bit out of place.

I had a dream the other night that me and a bunch of actors from action movies were all wearing power armor and getting ready to rescue some politician from some terrorists. I told my friend about it and he called me a child. I told him, “Nah uh, you are” and ran off before he could respond.

Jenny Craig (the weight loss program) is owned by Nestle (the people who make chocolate and whose negligence results in mass infanticide in third world countries). I swear you couldn’t make this shit up. David Letterman said it best last night when he said that while we (first world countries) have entire channels devoted to food, 24/7, children in other poorer countries (ie the rest of the world) are often forced to eat dirt or newspaper to sate the gnawing in their bellies. Think about that next time you can’t decide between Mcdonalds or KFC.

I just had a customer tell me that sodomy should be illegal. Someone’s girlfriend has issues in that department I’ll bet. Has anyone ever heard of the Church of Euthanasia? I like them. A lot.

Has anyone ever reused a condom? If so, can you tell me about it? I’d be interested to hear and also I have a rash that needs explaining. No I don’t, I’m so sexless at the moment I’m basically a virgin. I’ll keep talking about it though, I hear that’s what entices the ladies these days, that magic acronym, self-pity, apathy, desperation AKA S.A.D. And being broke, I heard that works too.

At least I have a sense of humor, I mean, I just made that shit up. If anyone ever needs a comedy writer that specializes in self-deprecating humor, call me, just incase you happen to be writing a show with a lead character that hates himself. I got that shit down pat yo.

So I’ve been watching this show called The Wire, I forget who I’ve talked about it with so lets pretend this is the first time we’ve had this conversation. Anyway, it’s all about drug dealers and cops. My language is suffering terribly. I now sound like a cross between a valley girl and a corner boy. I don’t know whether to sling rocks or gossip about Paris Hilton. Bitch be givin’ it away like they was tatter tots at lunchroom yo, word negro, she be vile and shit.

And another thing.

So the other day I had to run across the road to the 7-11 to grab something to drink. I run over there and at the counter is this crack head lady wearing an overcoat, tracksuit pants and some sort of ineffective singlet, every time she’d lean forward one of her breasts would fall out. She was buying something’s, I think a packet of garbage bags, some other random crap. In her right hand she had a packet of cigarettes and a Tupperware container with a mix in it ie weed and tobacco. She had something cradled under her left arm and it was making it awkward for her to put all her random shit in her bag, so she takes the thing out from under her arm and pops it on the counter.

It’s a bong, but not just any bong, it’s a giant pink cock shaped bong with balls and all. The Hindu lady behind the counter just stares at her while I start laughing. I hang around because, frankly, I want to see where this is going. Ol’ cracky can’t seem to get her head around putting all her things into the one bag so she gathers everything up and goes over to corner of the 7-11 and lays it down on the floor, spilling the bong in the process. Obviously, the water has not been changed in some time so it is like mud as it oozes out across the floor. Suddenly the entire 7-11 smells like a student house. I’m at the point where I’m just shaking my head doing the slow clap, ‘bravo’ I say, ‘bravo’. Crackhead lady still can’t work it out so she gathers everything up again and takes it outside onto the footpath where there is more room to lay everything out. On the way out of the Sev I step over her, laughing.

So then last night I’m waiting for the tram and there is this other smack head lady waiting also. She is totally on the nod, is built like a fridge and has a face as ugly as you could possibly imagine. Like, surprisingly ugly. That ugly that makes you go ‘maybe there is a god and maybe he does have a sense of humor. I bet if we were to get drunk together he’d do all that shit that’d make me cringe and worry about being beaten up or arrested but doesn’t make me stop hanging out with him, because he is just that funny’. She also has a massive herpes outbreak on her lip. She looks like a dugong and is lurching around the platform in a similar manner to Frankenstein’s monster. In a word, she is hideous. Just disgusting.

The tram comes and I get on, she tries and fails to butt her cigarette out on the ground, she gets on with one end still smoldering. At this point I am desperately hoping that she will put her lit cigarette in her pocket and set herself on fire because that would juts be fucking hilarious. No such luck, she realizes it’s lit and bends down to grind her cigarette out on the floor of the tram. Because, for once, ‘god’ is finally listening to me she falls and face plants into the ground, huge ass up and semi exposed. I laugh, loudly, without trying to cover it at all. I am the only one. Dugong lady moans ‘I hurt my shoulder’ in that hilarious smack head drawl and I tell her ‘’S’alright lady, the heroin will cut through it’.

I get the distinct impression that the people around me don’t like me. Someone helps her up and, get this, someone else give her their seat. I’m thinking, are you fucking serious? If I were to get all iced up and then get on the tram and start masturbating, would you lend me your hand? Would you be all “you can look my daughter in the eye while you do that”. No, you fucking would not, but if a chronic smack head falls face first on the tram, people leap at the chance to help.

‘Fine’, I tell myself, ‘I’ll just go home and watch Bumfights’.

You've got mail but thankfully no Meg Ryan or Tom Hanks.

I have a pen friend. Did you know this? We’ve been writing to each other for about 5 years now, maybe even longer. We’ve met I think all of twice. Our relationship is not based on fact nor does it have any grounds in reality, our relationship charts the unnamable. We never talk about what we are doing with our lives, the closest we come is sometimes we talk about what we’ve done, but only in passing reference. More often than not our postcards are random and of the bizarre, one of the last ones she sent me was a mathematical equation for how many molecules of iron there are in the human blood stream. She’s smarter than me that’s for sure.

The thing is, I want to tell her how much it means to me that someone will take the time out to write to me, will sit down and make a card out of scraps and then take the time to walk it down to the mailbox. But I can’t you see, because it seems an unspoken rule that we never discuss what’s happening, I can never call her up and say “How cool is they hey? How much are we like Griffin and Sabine, we are literary characters in a novel of our own devising, the end remains unwritten, maybe someone will make a film about us later” but I never can because A) what we have only exists between us and no one else and B) I am not that sort of wanker that would want a film made about him.

As much as this friendship exists, it doesn’t. I guess this is the closest I’ll ever come to real magic, something that is both real and imaginary at the same time. I could write to her today and then maybe never hear from her again and the only thing that I would have to prove that she ever existed would be a stack of beautifully written postcards.

And this is not some ‘postsecret’ type thing. That shit sucks.

Really wild life

I went to the country on the weekend and on the drive back I saw a dead kangaroo with what I thought said 'Slut' spray painted on it. Needless to say, this killed me. I puzzled over it for a while before I saw another dead kangaroo with 'Slow' painted on it. I figured that the first one must also have had 'slow' painted on it, because the alternative was far to awesome to have been real. Typing this now I sigh and think 'if only, if only the dead kangaroo had said slut, that would have been so much better'. Hilarious. Anyway, then I started thinking about what strange turn of events had led to a dead kangaroo with 'slow' spray painted on it by the side of the highway.

Firstly, what did 'slow' mean? Was it a comment on the kangaroos themselves, had someone been hurtling down the highway and seen the kangaroo on the road and had they perhaps locked eyes and for a moment and were they both somehow connected, was there some sort of psychic nod where they both agreed, "This is it, a race for death, car and kangaroo and only one winner", did the kangaroo lower its head and charge, perhaps the driver was screaming a war cry, foot to the floor with a death grip on the steering wheel.

Was it maybe a new initiative by the T.A.C. to warn drivers of the consequences, maybe other kangaroos had placed them there to warn each other. Who is dragging these carcasses here and why are they spray painting 'slow' on them. Is there a law against it? Should there be? Is it wrong to kill an animal and then paint on it, to mark it as yours, even if you killed it accidentally? What is right or wrong in this situation?

To be honest, I really don't know where I'm headed with this one. Where do you go with dead wildlife that has been vandalized? It's beyond a level of weird that even I have trouble comprehending. So I leave you with that while I reel out of here in a fog of incomprehension with mild brain damage, goodnight.

My moon my man(tra)

You know what passes my lips most often? And ha ha if you said ‘a dick’ because that’s actually funny, well played. No, what passes my lips the most often is my up until now secret mantra that I repeat about 20-50 times a day and that is a fairly conservative estimate. My mantra goes like this, it goes: “I’m going to shoot myself in the fucking head”. Or a variation of. It does not actually mean that I’m going to shoot myself in the head, although true, I was trying to buy a gun there for a while, no, what it means is something is happening that I can not cope with, something is going on that my little brain is unable to handle. And it is usually the simplest of things. In fact, its usually only the one thing and that one thing, of course, is women. Women, always women.

It is the smallest things that get me, a girl will toss her hair or cock her brow and I’ll think “that’s right, that what I’ve been missing” and out comes my mantra, ready to defeat me incase I even try. Maybe I’ll see two people holding hands and they’ll smile at each other like they are in love and I’ll think “you are pathetic for even watching”. It’s like emotional pornography, watching two people happy is almost as enticing as watching two people fuck. Yah I know, weird and creepy right? And then there is the ‘you’re not good enough and never will be’ interpretation of the mantra, the ‘end it now before you embarrass yourself’ mantra.

Oh it is pathetic, I know, and it will not get any better unless I stop thinking like this and start thinking a little more positively. (I just stepped away from the computer to think and I felt my lips moving of their own accord, what was it they were saying? Ah yes, my other old favorite, ‘I wish I were dead’, for when the other one won’t do). Where was I? Talking about how I need to think more positively. It’s a bit tough you know, to think positively when you are aware of how pathetic you are. One of my finest traits is to be able to look at something and criticize it. Doesn’t matter how good it is, I can shit all over it. And probably will given half the chance. Even if I like something, I am much happier criticizing than praising. Why is that I wonder? This is the sound of me thinking.

So anyway, the other night I got home and I was thinking of this last decade that we just finished. Was it good for you too? It’s bad enough looking back at one year but then ten of them? Here is an analogy. Me looking over my last ten years is much like a man looking at a room that he has just destroyed. First up, there is shit everywhere. Everywhere. Everything is broken, all the clothes are torn up and strewn around, all the books have been ripped from the shelves and kicked about, broken glass litters the carpet and there is what looks very much like fecal matter smeared on the walls. The man is breathing heavy, thinking, ‘what the fuck did I just do and why?’. His pulse races and his finger twitch for more things to break but his searching eyes find nothing.

A man amongst the ruins that he has created. Shitty low paying job, single, drug problems, fat, unhealthy, bored. The best thing about me? I have some very nice friends. Which is nice.