He watches when you're sleeping.

So on Christmas eve for the first time in my life I was the witness to someone’s will. It was a very strange experience. I’m up in the country at my parents house and my whole family is there for Christmas. For the first time in a few days I was alone in the house for about five minutes when the phone rang. It was a friend of my parents, someone whom I’ve known for years whom I shall refer to as David. His wife, a very good friend of my mothers, is currently in the last stages of her life after a hard fight against a particularly aggressive cancer. “Are your parents home?” he asked, but not like that, we made small talk ‘n’shit. I told him that weirdly, both of them were gone. “The thing is,” he said, “is that we need a witness to sign Janets will. Are you busy? I’ll come over and pick you up and we can do it now.”

“Of course,” I replied, “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

I hung up, brushed my teeth and removed the comb from my hair that my niece had stuck there as a centrepiece earlier that morning when she had styled my hair into some sort of exotic sculpture.    

He arrived, picked me up and we went to his house. As we arrived a person who I did not recognise was throwing up into a plastic bowl as another lady dry retched into a garden.

“David, help Janet” yelled the lady in the garden between retches. I realised that the person who I had not recognised was in fact Janet, a woman whom I had had known for nearly twenty years. The disease had ravaged her body. Her once blond hair is gone, now she has a short grey fuzz. To say she looked thin would be understating the severity of the toll it had taken on her. David took her bowl, emptied it and bought it back while I stood there in shock. I asked if I could do anything, “Just take a seat inside, I’ll be with you in a minute” David told me. I went inside and sat down. After a while Janet came inside and we signed her will.  Under my occupation I put ‘unemployed’, in reflection it seems rather disrespectful. Then David drove me home. We chatted briefly on the two minute drive, about how he was starting to accept her death and all the legal rigmarole that they had to go through, how he and Janet had only recently started to talk about the fact that she was dying. We arrived home and he left, I went out the back of the house and saw my mother and I couldn’t hold it in any longer and I cried. I hugged my mother and I felt how tiny and thin she is, like a little bird. When I was at the Alfred I saw lot of very very sick people but it didn’t seem to bother me so much, but seeing someone that I knew, someone whom I considered fairly robust whose health had been attacked so savagely broke my heart. I thought of David on the drive home, completely manic, pushed almost to the brink of insanity watching his wife fight and lose. Watching her die and being completely and totally unable to do anything about it. I thought of my mother and how she had watched her best friend die slowly over the last few years and how before that another one of her friends had died a fairly slow and painful death. My mother is a very small woman and I don’t know how she manages to bare the weight of it all. We were talking and she said that Janet only had a few weeks left of being lucid before the drugs took their toll. “She will probably die of a chest infection. The cancer doesn’t get them, their immune system is weakened and something else gets in”. Her voice was almost totally empty, I say almost because in the depths you could hear resignation and a deep, deep sadness.

Christmas day was one of the best Christmas’s I’ve ever had. There was food and 4 generations of my family around the table and hardly any ring ins. Just my sister and her kids one of whom has a kid of their own (my grand nephew), my cousin, my folks and I. There was a retarded amount of food and all I did all day was smoke joints, eat ridiculous amounts of food and fall asleep in my chair. I also pooped a lot. I think I ate too much food which I didn’t know was a thing. I felt fat happy and content for most of the day. It was nice.

On boxing day one of my other cousins came out and stayed the night at my parents house. He’s a weird kid, I can’t deny it. Sometimes I think he might have a learning disability and other times I think he might be one of the most profound people I’ve ever met. One time we went to the pool together and I said that I hated pissing in the pool because I felt like I was just pissing my pants. He sat there quiet for a moment and then said, with all solemnity, “It’s not just your pants you’re pissing though is it, it’s every one else’s”. From that moment on I took great pleasure in pissing in the pool, knowing full well that I’m not just pissing my own pants. Anyway, so this time we hung out and at one stage we were hanging out watching the ducks. I looked over at him and his brow was furrowed like he was thinking deeply. “What’s up?” I asked him. “Have you ever wondered what a duck would look like with a monobrow?” he asked. I wondered how he had arrived at that particular platform on his train of thought, had he started with regular hair and worked his way down or had he started at eyebrows and then thought ‘Ah ha, monobrow, fucking nailed it”. Anyway, he had stayed the night and in the morning we were sitting with my mother having a cuppa when we heard the front gate clang open, my ma went around the corner to investigate and then we heard her call “Boys, can you come and help” so we leapt up and ran around and there was my mothers neighbour bawling her eyes out with a dead dog in her arms. My cousin bravely took the dog from her arms and I ran to grab an old sheet to wrap it in. My mother drove her neighbour to the local vet where the neighbour insisted that the vet listen to its heart in case it was just unconscious. There was no hope, the dog was well and truly dead. I could tell before they left by the tiny bugs that had stuck to its eyeballs.  

So that’s my Christmas, bookended by death, with babies and food in between. We still have no idea what killed the dog.   

ICU

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I’ve been doing this course for the last nine weeks, learning how to become a Health Services Assistant, which is basically like a hospital orderly. For the last two weeks I’ve been doing my placement at a big hospital in the city. I’ve basically been working from 7am till 3 everyday, unpaid, on what has got to be the longest job interview in the world. And I don’t care, because the things that I am doing and the things that I am learning are so incredible that I feel like I am going to shit my pants every time I walk through the doors. I get up at 4.30am, willingly, and I call people sir and ma’am and I mean it. It’s weird, I know, but not as weird as some of the things that I have witnessed in the last two weeks. My placement lasts for three weeks but the last week will be spent working in the kitchens and it’s really not as exciting as the rest of it. Anyway, on with the show.

So on my first day I rocked up, did my induction, then they rostered me on as a cleaner and took me to a ward and I began. I have only been in a hospital about five times in my life and never as a patient. The first ward I went to was the burns unit. If you’ve never seen injured people up close this is a good introduction. You want to look, you want to stare so bad it feels like your eyes have taken control of your body. Some are connected to machines and swathed in bandages. Some are up and mobile. All have pink new scar tissue and lots of it. I talked to a few people as I cleaned up around them. I really didn’t know what to say but I soon fell into the old retail patter. The rest of the day is a blur, as is much of the first week. On the first and second day of my second week I worked in the Intensive Care Unit. I cleaned around unconscious people and their grieving families and saw some things that I’d like to forget but are probably very import that I saw them in the first place. I saw a man sitting next to his wives bed, holding her hand in his, lowering his face to it as he wept. I thought they only do that in the movies, I said to myself as I watched. I watched the nurses turn a patient over so that they could clean their soiled bedclothes as and they turned them they continued to defecate. There is a line from a Louis C.K. piece where he asks “Have you ever seen an ass just shit?” and I had always found the image funny and when it happened in front of me I admit I had to turn away and look at the roof for a while. Also, there were a lot of wet farts which did nothing to help my inappropriate and maniacal grinning.

The two days that I spent in ICU were probably two of the most incredible days of my life. They are a bit of a blur as I’m pretty sure the entire time my eyes were like golf balls. It was like a spigot that stimulation shot out of and I could only catch so much before I had to move away in case I drowned. No one died whilst I was there but as I said to a friend, it was like they were in competition to see how close they could get. I watched them turn one guy and whenever they touched him his vitals would spike and we’d have to wait a few minutes before they could move him again. For someone who thinks about death a lot it certainly made me reconsider some of the notions that I previously held, it also confirmed a lot of things that I had thought about myself. I felt my heart break so many time on those two days that I thought that there was no way that I could go on with it, that there was no way in hell that I could do this for a living. And then I had a couple of really amazing positive experiences and I thought to myself, ‘Why would I want to do any thing else?’

Humans are funny creatures. The human body is an amazing machine, the mind a fragile network of synapses. We all process things differently, we can never be sure how we’ll react to a situation until we are presented with it. Quite often the situation will be a surprise and it will shock us somehow, lurch us off the familiar rails into areas previously unknown, previously unconsidered. This is my favourite territory. The outer limits. Quite often it will be a place of unimaginable misery but there is something to be said about pulling yourself out of the fire to emerge pink and clean. You can either kid yourself and pretend that life is beautiful and full of wonder and see everything with child like amazement, which is fine, because life is beautiful and full of wonder and deserves to be amazed at, but there is that other side, that thing where if you look at anyone, anyone at all, you can be certain that they are dying. Not now, maybe not anytime soon, but they are, inextricably marching towards the night. We all are. We can be scared of it and try and pretend that it doesn’t happen but I have found it better to confront it head on, look it right in the eyes and say OK. By agreeing to life we are agreeing to at some stage die and we are also agreeing to all the shitty little things that happen in between. Buy the ticket take the ride kind of deal. It’s a lot to take on and by the time we have realised that these are the terms and conditions it is too late, we are adults or teenagers and suicide is such poor form, so passé in these modern times.

I walked past a room during the week and glanced inside and saw a middle aged woman sitting on the edge of her bed. One leg had been amputated just below the knee and the other leg just above the ankle.  He bandaged stumps hung unevenly and she was just sitting there, staring down at the ground. It was so awful, so heart wrenching, so terrible that it gave me a sense of wonder, like I had seen something that not many people get to see. My own private horror show, a misery en scène, if you were.

In ICU I helped turn a patient who was quite distressed, possibly suffering from advanced dementia, maybe he was just crazy. As we tried to roll him over so the nurses could clean him he struck out at me and started trying to swat me away. I held him gently and let him have at it, talking to him the whole time, trying to ease his distress. His eyes were full of fear and as I talked to him I could feel him start to relax and soon he was calm. We dressed him and then moved on to the next patient that needed our help. It felt good and it felt right.

Rorriexo

Alright, I want to tell you about something that I’ve just discovered and you’re going to think it strange, not the thing but the fact that I only just discovered this phenomenon. Until very recently when I heard the term ‘camming’ or ‘cam-whore’ I thought it was a reference to either A) girls that got on sites like 4chan and showed their bodies for compliments or B) girls that got on things like MSN chat and showed their tits to strangers or C) a form or pornography where you pay a girl to do a show for you via webcam. Turns out I was right on all counts but what I didn’t realise is that there is a whole industry built around it. You can go right now to a website and watch a beautiful girl from middle America stick a dildo up her arse in real time right now and it’s free! Having no idea that such a thing existed, the first time I went to one of these sites I was totally unprepared for what came next. And let’s get this out of the way, this is not about me in a frenzy of masturbation, this is about me being gobsmacked at life in all its fucked up glory. Saying that, if I’m truthfully honest, this is the only time I have legitimately masturbated in the name of research. It can be done. Anyway, moving on.

So you go to the page right, and then you see all these thumbnails of girls and you pick one. Seems easy enough. They might be sitting there fully clothed, just waiting. So you start scrolling through a few, some semi-naked, some costumed up, some in hoodies and g-strings. Then Bam, there’s a girls squatting on a dildo over a mirror squirting everywhere and you’re like ‘Where the fuck did that come from? It’s the surprise that gets you. But when you get over the whole fact that you’re watching someone masturbate for money on the internet you realise that you’re watching someone masturbate for money on the internet. But not your money. But you can watch anyway. It was about here that I started to feel pretty damn seedy, but undeniably fascinated. I carried on.

So you’ll flick around and if it’s your thing you might go back some other time and notice the same girls working the same shifts and maybe you’ll find a girl that you really like the look of and you’ll watch her for a while and she’ll say some pretty dumb and corny shit but every now and then she’ll do something like be she’ll masturbating with a dildo and as she inserts it she whispers “I hate all of you” and you might be like ‘Well ok, there’s nothing on tv so continue’ and then maybe you’ll start following them on twitter and pretending not to check when their next show is coming up.

The one I chose to follow is an 18yr old Canadian girl who does shows in her parents house after they have gone to bed. She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, an absolute knock out. . She sits around in her pyjamas and talks. A lot. It has this weirdly intimate feel like pillow talk. Sometime I have her window open but I will be doing other things whilst I listen to her talk. It’s like the perverts version of the radio. Sometimes I play ambient electronic music over her and it turns it into the scene from American Beauty where that kid’s watching the plastic bag blow around like a giant fag. And she bitches about other cam girls. Stuff like, “her name is Leah she has four kids and does her show from her mini van a lot”. Or she’ll say something like ‘Yeah, my moms best friend is in a coma so tomorrow Imma go buy a vibrator’. Oh yeah, and she had a UTI.

 

It’s the bits in between the action that I find so interesting. When the girls are just talking, trying to drum up some money. I’ve seen some pretty smart things, I saw one girl who was having a drinking competition with the guys who were watching her. On Halloween I watched a girl in the most amazing zombie make up masturbate and rub what I desperately hope was fake blood all over her vagina. It was deeply disturbing but borderline genius so, you know, credit to her.

This is what they wanted Big Brother to be. Pretty girls talking in an intimate atmosphere and then getting naked for your viewing pleasure.

Wait, I gotta go. My girl is on and she’s talking about her daddy issues and how if she ever does porn she wants to go on Bang Bus. Some guy asked her what her tattoo says but she didn’t answer. I’ve seen people ask her before but she always avoids the question. She has a tattoo above her vagina that says ‘Respect’. Yup.

I'll buy that for a dollar.

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Do you know what I hate? Advertising. It’s pervasive, invasive, and unless you were lucky enough to be born in Såo Paulo, it’s fucking everywhere. On every wall, on every tram stop, on every television station. Constantly spruiking whatever it is that it spruiks. It’s like a child that never shuts up unless you give it attention but when you give it attention it gets ADD and you have to spend the next 4 hours trying to calm it down. “Look at me” it yells from the television, “Look at me!” it screams from the billboards, from the bus stops. “Look at ME!” it hysterically wails from any social media site you might use. Or online newspaper. Or email account. Or the place you go to check the weather.

And the things that riles me up the most is that advertisers have the guile to say that with social media we are now entering a time of ‘conversation’.  To this I say ‘Bullshit’ and when you start to interrupt I yell “Shut your fucking mouth because I’m talking!” A conversation goes two ways. For the last, what, however long print advertising has been around it’s been a one way ‘conversation’. They talk, or print, we listen, or read. Then television came along creating another wonderful platform for companies to foist their wares upon us. I can’t watch television anymore because of how insulting I find the advertising. It is obvious that in every one of these briefs I am described as a ‘consumer’, like I’m some animal with a voracious appetite going around and shoving whatever I can into my mouth, not caring where it came from, not caring what it is. I find this very insulting for numerous reasons, the main one being that I don’t just blindly consume, I am very aware that the resources on our planet are finite and I worry constantly that the footprint that I’ll leave will be much too large for someone my size. Part of what irks me is also the way we are conditioned to consume, like it’s our only goal. And advertisers, if we’re engaged in this so called conversation, how come you did not hear me when I said ‘Fuck off’, why did you just keep talking like I had not voiced my opinion? What part of “I don’t want you in my life” was so hard to understand?

Another thing that irks me no end is this ‘We’ve listened, we care’ bullshit. I just told you that you don’t listen and this thing you call ‘caring’ is not caring at all, it’s protecting your own interests which are, as always, financially motivated. When a company tells you that they’ve listened and that they care what they’re really saying is ‘We thought we could slip that one by you and you wouldn’t notice, what we’ve done is tweaked it slightly and so hopefully you’ll just buy it and shut up’ or ‘we didn’t think that you’d notice that we were being complete arseholes about that, we’ll pretend we’ve fixed the problem but what we’re going to do is carry on and do the same things with just a little bit more subtly’.

I know that this sounds a lot like hysterical paranoia but think about it like this. A corporation is a whole bunch of people who have got together with one aim in mind, one goal and that goal is to separate you from your money. Sure you might get something in return, but they only have that thing so they can get your money. Think of it in terms of prostitution. They don’t necessarily want you to fuck them, they just want what’s in your wallet and if letting you fuck them is how they get it then so be it. Throw in the fact that advertising plays on fears, (you’re ugly, no one will fuck you so you might as well fuck us) and people are beating a path to their door. They way that advertising plays on peoples fears and insecurities is insidious and possibly evil, if not morally corrupt and morally deficient. And you know the worst thing about advertising?

We let it happen to ourselves. For years magazines aimed at women have done nothing more than make women more self conscious, made women more critical towards each other. And we complain, but we don’t do anything about it. On the other side of the fence, we’ve sexualised our women to the point of over sexualisation, turned them into women with baby lady parts, not a pubic hair to be seen. The modern version of masculinity has way less body hair than it did in the 80’s and is so self obsessed that it “body sculpts”.

The thing is, it’s all about manipulation. Say that to any ad man and he’ll grin and say “Of course!” like it’s something to be proud of, “I lie so well and so often that you don’t even know it!” And yet we continue to buy it, we continue to lap it up. It’s like someone serving us a steaming pile of shit on a plate and instead of throwing it back in their face like we should, we eat it up, we keep steady eye contact and nod our head with every mouthful, smiling the whole time.

Wake up.

MWWS

‎"1st get raped den Get hanged u dog den u will know how it fills"

- Freshta Jan, from the Facebook page, naming and shaming the man accused of the murder of Jill Meagher. 

Australia, we have to talk. There are some things that I feel I need to discuss with you, things concerning the recent case of Jill Meagher. Some of what I’m going to say might be hard to hear but I really think you need to hear it. Everyone seems to have an opinion on this so I’m going to share mine.

First up, the way you originally reacted was wonderful. I woke up on Saturday morning and my social media feed was already clogged with “Help find Jill Meagher” posts. Everybody was on it, and it was an excellent example of the some of the good that social media can do. Everyone uniting for the one cause. Everyone hoping for the best. Clicktivism creating awareness. And the days went by and things started to look worse rather than better, the media had a field day, there was footage of her last moments, people came forward and then someone was arrested. The end.

But oh no, you couldn’t let it go. You had to attach yourself to the case like it meant something to you, worked yourself up into a hysteria, made your grief a public platform on which you could stand and shout “I’m sad about this”. And in doing so, in getting caught up in the mob mentality, you let the monster out, the monster that is stupidity. And I don’t mean one person in particular, I mean all of you as a group. You became a hive mind of activity that only got dumber the larger it became. You showed us the de-evolution is indeed possible, all you need to do is sit behind a computer.

You posted the accuseds name and photo on a public website. Then you posted the phone number and address of someone with a similar name on the same website and then you started calling that number. And then you realised you’d made a mistake and so you took the number down and asked everyone to stop calling it. And then shit just got dumber, and I’m sorry to say that I too got caught up in the moment and I’m afraid that the temptation was too much and I just had to participate.  

SOME IDIOT: Hope you dead in jail fucking cunt

Top of Form

ME:ME: Nice use of language.

SOME IDIOT: Hate that fucking , think say bad word about this guy nice use of language

ME: Have you ever been so far even as decided to use go want to look more like?

SOMEONE ELSE: Well said...

ORIGINAL IDIOT: I hate guyz who rope women that is yurk

ANOTHER DUDE: Like think for should go happen when because potato?

IDIOT AGAIN: I don't care what u think , he will get karam at him for what he has done to the poor girl

ME: Not sure if serious...

And then, internet, you created an account in Jill Meaghers name and insinuated that she was a slut who deserved it. Tsk tsk internet. Posting on her RIP page under her killers name and under an account claiming that he was innocent. Ha ha internet, you are so funny, I have not seen that done a thousand times before. Where do you get such comic brilliance? You trolled, oh how you trolled, from early morning to late at night, I watched the whole thing. It was actually really boring, but the only other thing on was the grand final and there just wasn’t enough real emotion in that for me. But online, oh, the emotions flowed thick and fast.  

It’s like you just let go completely. You lost control of your emotions and let it all out, on the internet and on the street. You held a candlelit vigil at the shop where she was last seen? Does that not strike you as a bit odd? You all gathered and shed tears… for a stranger. I’m not saying your grief is not acceptable, what I am saying though is it is inconsistent. What was the last tear stained vigil you attended? What would motivate you to attend another one? Will you do it for everyone who is murdered or just those you deem the innocent? Thank god you don’t live in Mexico where in 2011 there were, on average, 49 kidnappings a day. You’d shit your pants, you’d be dehydrated from all the tears that would pour out of you.

I have read too many “It could have been me” stories this week that now none of them actually ring true. You know what? It could have been anyone, it was a random attack. A quote from todays peace march goes like this "The nature of your passing is not acceptable, and you have bought a community together to show we will not tolerate it.", which is good because what they’re talking about is murder and it would be a terrible thing if it were tolerable. There are already many many laws against it, and infact it is deemed highly unacceptable to kidnap and rape women in most societies and has been for a long time.

I get what you’re saying. The fact that violence against women is still prevalent in our society is a reprehensible thing, but this is not your standard domestic violence, this is a random opportunistic attack.

What you’re all up in arms about is an aberration, a deviation from the norm. Men don’t usually go out looking for women to rape and kill, it is not the usual motivation for going out on Friday night. The thing that scares you is the fact that she was taken from a place that you know and call safe and that has shaken up your world view and you’re all disoriented and lashing out blindly. “It could happen to anyone”, well, not really, this sort of thing is actually quite rare. “But there’s heaps of people around and someone should have seen something”, yeah, well, King st always has heaps of people around and no one ever calls it the safest street in Melbourne, and maybe someone should have seen something but we’re talking about it being nearly two in the morning and everyone being under the influence of alcohol. How much detail do you notice at two in the morning when you’ve been drinking for a few hours? I’m going to go ahead and say ‘Not much”.

I’m not saying that women can’t walk the streets alone, what I’m saying is that everyone is in some kind of danger when they are by themselves at night in an urban environment, it has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with the fact that we are human and humans are fucked and do fucked shit to each other. It would be nice to say “We should all be free and safe” but we just can’t, there will always be the deviations from the norm, there will always be some spanner in the works, because we’re human, and as I said, humans are fucked.

It really bothers me how you took all that grief and let it out, grief for someone you’d never met no less. You openly said things like “I never knew her but I feel there’s a hole in my heart” and you wept for the cameras. You said such inane things like “God needed another soul so he took yours” like you were desperate to be a sound bite.

And where are you now? Do you think about her every day? Do you help hand out wanted posters of all the other lost and missing people?

Enjoy your life.

I tripped balls at the zoo and all I got was more awesome.

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Jesus, where to start with this. I guess I’ll just begin at the beginning and we’ll see how we go. Alright, so, back story, you who know me may know that I’ve had a checked history with drugs, sometimes I’ve loved them and sometimes I’ve hated them, but they have always, in some way or another, been part of my life. So I’ve always been upset when I take what should be a fun thing and it turns out to be a negative experience, and it’s not like I mean bad times just bad vibes and awful jaw clenching. I’ve always wanted to love acid and the few times that I’ve tried it it’s like there’s been something missing. Something that I have always dreamed of doing but have always been too afraid and never had the opportunity to do was going to the zoo on acid. Today I was lucky enough to live that dream.

So it went like this, a good friend of mine whom I can’t say too much about organised a day at the zoo. They came over, we got stoned, we got a train to the zoo and on that train we ingested half a tab of LSD each, then we loitered in the zoo car park and smoked a joint and then we went in.

There was kids. There was people. It was fine. We saw the big cats, it was cool, they were big, we saw the small cats, it was cool, they were pretty, we saw some pelicans and then we went into the undergroundy type seal chamber and things started to get a bit interesting. Colours were nice, the seals looked amazing as they glided through the water and I was particularly taken with the tank of sea horses. We walked out into the sunlight. Alright, we said, it’s on.

We did some wandering, everything a lovely green, all the plant life looking amazing, the brightly coloured birds like something out of a fairy tale. We saw otters, tigers, we did the butterfly house which was lovely but I took it all with such ease that I was beginning to wonder, should I take more drugs? The answer, as expected, as hoped and as feared, was yes. I mean, I was riding this out pretty well, this would just be a little more spice. And it’s always the same thing with drugs, you have a little, wait a bit, think ‘This is not really doing anything, better have some more’ then two minutes later your original dose hits you and then BAM! you realise you just fucked yo' self. It was when we were in the giant aviary that it really started to hit me, and it was also at this time that I recorded this message. By the time we were at the orang-utans it was difficult to tell who was simian and who was human. I was definitely less than human.  

Then this whole next bit is sort of like a blur, let me try and explain it. Imagine a train going into a tunnel right and you’re on the front of the train. The wind is blowing in your face and you can’t see where you’re going but your course is literally set on rails. Imagine that moment just as you enter the tunnel, half bright half dark and the change in air pressure around you. Imagine that feeling for about an hour while you look at animals in cages and try to contain your ever mounting hysteria, the whole time surrounded by strangers. I climbed in a replica wombat cave that kids are allowed to play in and I swear I got lost in the damn thing. It was about a meter long and dark as hell. We got really bad vibes from the emus that were just walking around. Are you serious? Emus just walking around like it aint no thang? Interacting? Don’t they know there’s people with heads full of acid roaming these parts who are likely to be surprised, to say the least, when they come face to face with one of these beasts? Have some care man and think of the damn children.

Then I think we went looking for the bears and they are, aha, barely worth a mention. Then we headed to the reptile bit which was incredible but they were starting to close so we had to skeddadle. I could have stared at those snakes for hours though. Also, do they have a spider section because I would have loved to have seen it.

The thought of being packed into a tram terrified me so we walked to the city and then got a cab home. I say it casually, ‘We walked to the city’. We were tripping balls. Every step was its own adventure. We walked past the Royal Childrens Hospital. Quite an impressive building, such wonderful colours. And the way it subtly moves a bit also quite impressive. The stream of people coming home from their jobs that we were walking against was also kind of daunting at times. Every now and then I’d think to myself ‘Be careful now, these people aren’t like you’ and I’d have to stifle the giggles. The closer we got to the city the more it enforced my beliefs that hallucinogens are always best in a natural environment, or at least, a concrete one that had been sculpted to look natural with animals from all around the world stuck awkwardly in it.

The other real highlight was being shot in the face with a bubble gun that has the brightest fucking lights on it that you’ve ever seen. I swear, I can’t believe they sell this stuff to kids. It was staring into a multi-coloured sun. My retinas will never be the same. And if I could experience that very first moment that it happened I would bottle it up and sell that shit because it was fucking amazing. My friend was together enough to get some excellent photos and they are at the end of this post. I also watched a cloud turn into a fish and as it caught the last fading light of the sunset just so, looking for all the world like a salmon, flicking its tail and disappearing into the void, its scales rippling. 

It truly was an incredible day and I couldn’t have done it without someone I trusted being there, so I thank you unnamed provider, for all the awesome things that you provided for me today. I’ll probably remember this day for the rest of my life, long after the scraps of my sanity have flown. My dim eyes will stare into nothing and I will smile, happy in my memories. I hope to see you there. 

The ship sank and so then I just rode the debris in with the tide.

It’s been a while and it’s not something I’ve really addressed here so today I want to talk about something that has always been a curiosity to me, as I’m sure it has been to all of you. I have worked in retail for a long time. Over half of that time was spent working with womens clothing and let me tell you, it does something to a guy, especially one who’s naturally predisposed to being a little camp. Retail fashion is the sort of environment where you are expected to judge and critique someone’s appearance and in this environment it often helps to assume a pose that is non-threatening to the person being scrutinised so closely. Considering that I was more often than not dealing with women, it was easy for me to assume the appearance of being gay, and considering that I was a guy working in fashion, it was almost always assumed of me anyway.  

This opened up a world of possibilities and allowed me to be in situations that would only terrify the women if they knew what was actually running through my head as they stood there in bra and undies idly weighing their boobs in their hands as they considered their next garment to try on. I’ve seen things that I hope I never forget and things I really hope I do. I’ve had women tell me the most intimate details about themselves because of my “non-threatening” demeanour. The amount of times I have said “Your ass looks amazing in that” or “I’m sorry, but that makes your tits look fantastic” and had positive results is, well, it’s actually almost retarded. I’ve said things that I’d hesitate saying to my good friends let alone a total stranger. Actually, that’s a lie. I have no problem telling my friends they look good. And I’ve approached randoms on the street just to tell them how amazing they look, so, yeah. Moving on.

And here’s another thing about being surrounded by women, you begin to notice things about them, like nail polish. I now have fully formed opinions on nail polish. And womens shoes. And dresses, god, don’t get me started, I’ll fag out all over the place. For instance, I was on the tram the other day and there was this Asian girl and she was smoking hot like, untouchable hot, hotter than a two dollar pistol hot, and she was wearing these yoga pants and the sneakers with heels, you know, the whole bit, and the whole time I was looking at here, and trust me, it was a creeplily long time, the entire time I was thinking, “Someone did a really great job on dying her hair” because her hair was indeed dyed purple, but it was really well done. I actually thought, if I was ever to be able to fuck a girl like this can you imagine what the pillow talk afterwards would be? I’d be examining her nails and asking her where she got her hair did.

 So I can hear you asking, how has people thinking you’re gay helped at all, and I’ll tell you some of the times it has come in handy. For instance, this one time this cute girl, she would have been about 21, comes into my shop on a Monday morning. she’s walking around in a bit of a daze and I engage her in conversation, you know, doing the shop thing and then we get to talking and I swear I don’t even know how it came up but she starts telling me about this lesbian orgy she had at this party she went to on the weekend and about hot it was and all the drugs and it was amazing, you know, just watching her relive it and her youth was shinning through like sunlight and it was so lovely of her to share this amazing story with me. I was like, ‘Oh wow, that sounds like an amazing time, I remember one time me and this girl” and she says “Oh, I thought you were gay” and then she got really embarrassed and told me that she wouldn’t have told me the story if she knew I was straight, and the way she said it was like she thought that the only thing I could see in the story was sex and the instant she was gone I was going to close the doors and run out the back and jerk off over the thought of it. I wanted to say ‘Hey, its ok, I just appreciate witnessing someones awakening, I think it’s cool that you’re out there doing your thing and to be honest, I’m a little jealous’ but you know, these things never come out right and so we made some slightly awkward conversation and then she left.

And as soon as she did I closed the doors and ran out the back and jerked off over the thought of it. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. It’s the truth when I say I felt like I owed it to her not to sully this beautiful image of youth and ecstasy with my lecherous horny thoughts, I swear on my life. I can’t pretend that there hasn’t been times when after a long day of summer serving some of the nicest skin this town has to offer, well, at the end of the day the relief is palpable. If the toilets at my work could talk they would say ‘Yes, he masturbated in here. And would take half-hour long shits just because he could’.

This is a terrible follow up sentence to the last paragraph, but I miss the women most of all. As a man who truly adores women, especially those that are easy on the eye, working with womens clothing is, of course, the epicentre of all that is cool and young and hip and hot. I just wish that I had caught a few more in my trap, you know, snared a few specimens for my own private perusal. Maybe I could have asked them where they got their hair did, if only I’d ever got around to asking them their name.

I was just thinking then about how in summer I used to have cold bottles of water or coke for my customers and I’d stand in front of the fan and spray myself with a water bottle and sometimes for hours no one would come in and the day would drag in the languid heat and I’d lean in the door way and look out the insanity that was Smith st and nod to people as they walked by, olde’ shopkeep like. If I look at it in the right light, I think sometimes that they were some of the happiest moment of my life. I remember leaving on Friday nights as the sun was setting thinking that it couldn’t get any better than this. And for a while I was right, but god damn I wish I hadn’t been.  

The perfect resume.

So yesterday I had to write a cover letter to attach to a job application. This is what I wrote and sent and it wasn't until hours later that I actually went "Oh wow, that's fucked up". You can laugh, it's funny, but your suggestions are not necessary, it is what it is and I am what I am, a fuck up with a sense of self sabotage that gives Mickey Rourke a run for his money. And so, without further ado, here's why I won't be getting a job any time soon.

Hi, my name is ---- and I thought I’d just write a little about myself. From my resume it’s obvious that I have a very heavy retail back ground, it’s something that I have enjoyed and that I am pretty good at, I like to pride myself on my customer service and my affability. But retail is not where my heart lies. I have enjoyed writing since I was a child and haven’t really stopped since then. I write mainly for myself but like everyone else now days I have a blog, a tumblr, a twitter and all those other things that distract us from day to day life. I had my own zine for a while and I have written for a few magazines, I did a small piece for an online magazine called Stimulus Respond and last year I wrote the advertising pages in ‘Harriet’, a free local magazine based in Northcote. My pieces were all very well received and I was a happy with how they turned out. My style is probably best described as ‘young and edgy’ with a bit of humour thrown in, but it’s not zany, please do not describe me as zany. In my opinion, zany best describes people who wear clown costumes and drink themselves to sleep at night, trying hard to be funny whilst reeking of booze, their whole image eclipsed by the obvious wretchedness that is their lives.  I’m tempted to say that zany is just a man with a propeller hat on his head and a shotgun in his mouth but I fear that might be inappropriate in a cover letter. We’ll see huh.

So that’s me, my interests include music and video gaming, I like to ride my bike in nice weather and I thoroughly enjoy a good lunch. I have a pretty good knowledge of literature and I’m fairly up to speed on pop-culture. One thing that people always seem to find interesting about me is I generally try to think outside the box. I find that I have a unique point of view and I enjoy seeing things from a different perspective than a lot of other people and I think that people like being presented with ideas that are out of their realm of thinking.

And so now we come to the end of this cover letter. Considering that you are a creative agency I thought I’d give myself a little reign and try to make this not so standard, I am unsure if that’s what you wanted or not but it is what it is and I am what I am. I hope you enjoyed it and if you’d like to see my folio then feel free to ask, you are also more than welcome to call me on (my phone number) or email me at (my email address). I thank you very much for your time and if you have any questions queries or comments then my details are above. 

After re-reading that I realised that even I wouldn't hire me, not even just to have around to keep things interesting. 

The Newsroom. Episode 4. The fucking one with that fucking Coldplay song. A review.

Oh man, does this show suck giant hairy balls. The worst part is, I’m totally hooked and I don’t think I’ll be able to restrain myself and I’ll end up watching the rest of the series, hating every goddamn minute of it. I don’t even know where to start, fuck it, I guess here will do. Alright, so in the first episode there’s this one classic Alan Sorkin walk and talk scene where these two people are, yup, walking briskly down a bunch of corridors, their mouths on rapid fire as other people come into the edge of shot and hand one of them a piece of paper and say things like “The Numbers” and then scurry away looking frantic. The two main characters stride confidently along and everyone bows and scrapes to get out of their way, the whole time having such spirited and enthusiastic engagements that they look like they’ve spent the whole afternoon smoking meth. To be honest, to me everyone just looks like they’ve had too much coke and are just grinding furiously away at what’s left of their teeth.  Also, they all look like they’re dying to take a shit which really helps with the whole coke thing. And speaking of full of shit, lets move on to the characters, whom nobody cares about and we all know I’m only half heartedly going to talk about one of them so let's get this charade over with.  

The main one, the guy, Will Whats-his-name, I don’t know, whatever, I could wiki it but do you care? Anyway, so the premise is he’s had this ‘moment of clarity’ and they (the powers that be) decide to build a news show about good honest truth and seriously, just wiki it, anyway, he sort of wants to become this news pariah or good ol’ fashioned journalist and for Christs sake, have you wikied it yet? Anyway, he sucks, he’s just a rich asshole trying to make good in the world but really he’s just another rich asshole doing things that satisfy his own self-serving needs. I can see people really aspiring to be this character because they want to be a journalist, which is pretty scary because it’s almost like wanting to be a hyena instead of a lion because you prefer the taste of carrion to fresh meat.

Anyway, he’s bullshit, his character is bullshit and the rest of the show is bullshit, and just when I thought they couldn’t lay it on any thicker at the end of the fourth episode they play a fucking Coldplay song, you know the one, it goes ‘And I will try to fix you’ in a really wailing voice and every time I hear it I want to simultaneously vomit and punch a puppy in the face, you know that song? Yeah, well they play that song in its ENTRITY over an overtly emotional scene and the only reason I watched it through is I couldn’t decided whether I’d rather slam my computer on my dick and run screaming through streets or to try and carve my initials into one of my own turds, with my own teeth, than endure another episode of this awful awful shit. I would rather peel my hand and then feed it, still attached, to cats than endure another hour long cat shit smoothie that is The Newsroom. I would rather crawl up a whales dick hole and suffocate than hear another ‘fiery exchange between people who both want the same thing but just don’t realise it yet’. I would rather stick a hungry ferret up my arse than watch one more episode of that, you know what I’m going do, I’m going to list all the things I’d rather do.

I’d rather set fire to my feet and then be made to kick a peacock to death in front of my mother, I’d rather let soldier ants nest in my bladder, I’d rather bats flew out of my pants whenever I took them off, I’d rather cum baby spiders everyday for the rest of my life than watch one more episode of that god damn show. I would rather eat breakfast cereal made exclusively out of dogs teeth, I would rather skin a live lamb in front of a primary school, I’d rather drown a clown at a crèche, I’d rather crash tackle a premature baby in an incubator in front of its horrified family than be subjected to another episode of that so called television show, The Newsroom.

The thing that I’ve enjoyed most about this is calling the writer Alan Sorkin because I know that the only people that it will annoy are people that I’d enjoy annoying.

For the record, I did not enjoy this show. No stars. 

Jack Passion.

I had a job interview the other day and at one stage the lady interviewing me asked me, with all the sunshine in the world in her voice, 'What would you say you're passionate about?'
I sat stumped for a second then threw out a few givens. 'I like music, literature and film. I write, so...' and I let it trail off as if to mean that I was passionate about writing.
I'm not you know. I would give it up tomorrow if it would help, if I thought it would make a difference. I only do it because it's easy and I can and sometimes if I get stoned or angry enough I can bang away at the keyboard for an hour or two and maybe get results. It used to be more often than not something ok would come out but it seems in the last few years the ratio has changed.
But do I need to be passionate about anything? Do I have to get excited? Things happen, people come and go, life moves on. Is it really necessary that I raise my heart rate above resting just to prove that I am alive, that I am participating in life? Huge Laurie once said that he concluded he had a problem when he realised that seeing two cars collide and explode in front of him caused him to be neither excited nor frightened but instead bored."Boredom," he commented in an interview "is not an appropriate response to exploding cars."
Huge Laurie was talking about depression when he said that, but I don't think its me though. I could watch cars explode all day. I dream about explosions, about gunfire.

You know what I dream about? I dream about war. I dream that I am amongst the rubble watching as rockets arch overhead. I dream that the concussive impact knocks the wind out of me and my skin is stung by building materials turned into dust and pushed out at unimaginable velocities. The percussive thud of artillery punctuated by the sharp cracks of small arms fire fringed with the ting of brass casings hitting the ground, like heavy drumming with tiny bells. Did you know that if you catch a 7.62x39mm before it starts to tumble it will punch a tiny hole in you but won't take anything on its way out? To quote, "In the absence of yaw... the load can pencil through lung tissue with relatively little injury".

Sometimes I feel so safe being white and Australian that it kills me.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to plunge your hands into a wound as you tried to staunch the flow of blood, watch a man bleed out onto the dirt while you apply pressure in a desperate race to save a life? I do. I wonder what it would be like to look up and see a missile slam in to a building overhead, see sky scrapers buckle and twist and cars on fire in the street. What would you do, do you think, if it all went to shit? Would you loot what you could, would you revel in the apocalypse, would you kill yourself and your family so they 'didn't have to suffer'?

On the other hand, I'm reading a book at the moment that is set in Nazi Germany. I rarely read novels anymore. I don't know how authors commit to that length of a piece. Once I start something I can't wait to stop, just to get to the end and be done with the whole charade. I've never written anything that I have wanted to come back to, much like I have never taken a shit and thought 'I could take that again'. Sometimes I think its because my train of thought is never that long but I'm kidding myself, it's because I'm lazy. Whatever, the point is I read this book on the holocaust and it inspired me to watch a few documentaries including one narrated by Alfred Hitchcock which was on the liberation of Dachau. Watching footage of people drag countless bodies to a giant pit and throw them in made me feel a sickness in my soul that I find difficult to describe. But then you hear things, like how they found all those train carriages crammed with bodies yet amongst all the death they found people living, as well as children and in a few rare cases, babies who had been born in the camps. Here's a thought that I could never comprehend as a man who has never been raped and never suffered persecution, if I were one of the women who gave birth to a baby in a concentration camp, could I love it? A child born out of hate and into misery? Possibly, maybe, love would kindle in the darkness like a tiny flame, a life raft that you could throw yourself on so you did not drown in the horribleness of it all.

As you can see, I'm having a hard time reconciling my lust for violent imagery with my disdain for the abject human suffering that it causes. As much as I want to witness wholesale destruction, I am uncomfortable with the idea of its aftermath. Is this what happens when you're raised by action films? The building is always empty, there is never anyone inside and no one ever has to tell the hench mans mum that he's dead. I'm sorry that I find explosions pretty and I apologise for the fact that one day I'd like to be walking down the street and hear gun shots and screaming, but I think the thing I should be apologising for the most is the fact that I'm not willing to stick around and see the repercussions, I guess what I'm apologising most for is weakness.

Quick to anger but even quicker to boredom.

"Christopher Nolan's epic opus The Dark Knight Rises has been marred by what Hollywood insiders have termed a 'viral gone violent' marketing campaign. Although details at this stage are scant, it is believed that the marketing team behind the publicity for The Dark Knight Rises tried to get on the fan-wagon and in doing so coaxed a member of the public into dressing up as one of the characters of the film and performing what was described as 'explosive performance art'. In a statement released earlier today the marketing team has criticized the shooter, saying that his actions were 'disappointing and did not live up to their expectations, we were hoping for more than 12. His performance was as lackluster as Christian Bales but at least his actions had an air of believability about them, unlike the fore mentioned Mr Bale, whose stilted and emotionless dialogue is not fooling anyone. Yes this is a tragedy, yes innocent people died but look at it from our point of view, every time this story gets mentioned the film gets talked about. That's the sort of brand awareness you just can't buy'."

I spent all day yesterday writing this piece. I woke up in the morning, checked the news, saw the story and then in the shower I had the idea. I made the mistake of not plunging right into it and I spent too much time thinking about it so I by the time I sat down to write it the whole idea was over thought, which is why it's short and not very good. I also made the mistake of reading as much as I could about the incident and in doing so I realised that I no longer found it funny, and the reason I no longer found it funny was I was no longer interested in what happened. Don't get me wrong, I didn't have a moral epiphany or anything like that, I just became bored with it. It's not like I cry when I see it on the news, it's that I change the channel and scratch myself. It's unfortunately an all too familiar scenario. Disenchanted person with social problems takes long standing anger out on strangers. Couple that with easy access to firearms and the results are often in the double figures. But the thing is, people die all the time and many of them are innocent. Look at the drug wars in Mexico. Look at Iraq or Afghanistan. The civilian death tolls are way higher than those of  the combatants. Oh man, now I don't even care about this.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to say 'We all need peace' because we do but it's a pipe dream. It is human nature to fight. And yeah, sometimes it's human nature to kill. It is also becoming human nature to wig the fuck out and try and take as many with you was you can, apparently. Whatever it is, the one thing it's not is surprising. Let's see if an out of context clip of Walter White can shed some light on it.

One thing that I was impressed with, and I'm not sure if I'm using impressed right but I was impressed with the speed that the trolls came out. Last night I drunkenly followed someone on twitter who had started a James Holmes account which, admittedly, opened with the excellent 'I'm was always more of a Superman guy' but the jokes did not really improve. I un-followed him this morning if that makes you feel any better. The joke is really a one hit wonder, start a twitter account and be a cunt, not much to it really. What I like even less is the barrage of tweets and messages from everybody else. "OMG pray for those in Colorado, my heart goes out to them." Really? Do you really actually care other than the knee jerk human reaction of 'that's terrible?' What exactly did you do besides post a message on some social media site? You thought about it for 20 seconds? That's fantastic. Now go back to MSN chat and spelling words with letters, you seem to care about as much as I do, which is a bit but then you forget about it. I suppose it's better than going on 4chan and making a meme out of the whole situation.

I think what concerns me most if the people who will be checking the news every hour to find out more information for no other reason than to satisfy some inner craving to know all the terrible details. I'm the same with serial killers, and that too concerns me. Why are we so fascinated by extreme acts of violence? Is it because we all secretly wish we could foist our masochistic desires on others or is it something a lot sicker and darker than that. We are now all voyeurs of violence, we hate it when bad things happen but secretly we love it when bad things happen to other people. Is it a form of pornography? To quote Merriam-Webster: "the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction (the pornography of violence)".


Our free thinking and progressive society loves sex and violence. For a while there we really liked them together at the same time but I have this feeling that in the future we will chose violence over sex because to commit an act of violence often involves no emotional content where as most people have some emotional connection to sex. And it's easier to commit random acts of violence against strangers than it is random acts of sex. And that's not a rape joke, it just is. We have fetishised violence, made it something cool and desirable and edgy. In embracing the dark nature of our psyche we have let the animal out of the cage, unaware of how much damage it might do.   

 Coupled with the fact that the media loves misery and you get a perpetual hurt machine. It goes like this; The general public are secretly fascinated with acts of extreme violence and so when they happen everybody tunes in so the media thinks they're onto something so they report it more and like the dogs we are we lap it up, not realising that the whole time we are being desensitised so that when they next random act of violence comes along we will be a little bit more bored of it so it will need to be ultra violent just to get our attention. And so the next 'shocking and depraved' act comes along until soon nothing is too shocking and nothing is too depraved and nothing is too far from our reality. And then what? Where do we go from here?


This is long and rambling and I've barely made a point let alone had anything interesting to say. If I can leave you with one piece of advice it's this. Don't care. Don't care so much about things that you have no control over. The less time we spend feeding the media the less hungry it will be. Think of it like you're putting it on a diet. Feed it less and it's stomach will shrink and it's appetite won't be so voracious. Hopefully if we do that then the media will take the hint and go back to doing what it does best, being bought out by billionaires and having semi-naked athletes on the cover because the Olympic games are on soon. Retarded as that is, it's better than trying to get photos of mothers holding their dead children.


Authors note: I am aware of the gaping hypocrisies in this piece. But I'm afraid that I just don't care. 

This town needs guns.

Writing when you have nothing to write about is like trying to take a shit when you're really hungry, every time you push you're reminded of that empty feeling that over rides it all. Every strain ends with a gurgle like the last of the dishes water being sucked down the drain and every thing that hits the water feels unsatisfying in size. A good analogy but it does not change the fact that I feel like I have nothing to write about even though the last few months have probably given me more to write about than the last few years. Where to start, whats the most interesting thing.

So I learned to play Super Street Fighter 4 AE and attempted to compete professionally. That was something. A friend and I made a documentary about it. Well, that is to say, I played a lot of SSF4 and smoked a bunch of weed and in between I found the time to do some video diaries which I gave to said friend who then made a documentary about it. To be honest, I didn't really do a lot. I have seen the documentary and it is very good, when I have some sort of link thing or whatever I'll post it.

I got and lost possibly the best job I've ever had. On one hand, I'm super bummed about it but on the other hand it has opened up new avenues and, you know what, that's bullshit. I'm just super bummed about it. I don't even really know what happened. Although a small part of me is glad I managed to escape what was in all honesty, a pretty fucked work environment. I did get to ogle some women so I guess that was nice? Other than that, not a lot of positive things came out of it. I'm glad I bought it up.

Maybe a gun would spice up my life. I've been playing a lot of online games recently and sometimes now I dream about guns. Is that healthy? I was watching some documentary on some war zone the other night and the thing that kept nagging me was I really wanted to know what sort of guns everyone was using. Is there a forum like there is for CoD?

Have you ever had that thing where you're really sick and you've absolutely vomited everything you've ever eaten in your life and all that comes up now is yellow and bitter and sour and heave all you like, the only thing that's coming out is bile? That's what this is like. 

The Dog and Kony Show.

Authors note: This piece is inspired by this article and the events that led up to it. 

Melbourne Comedy Festival Review. 

The Kony Show.

Last night I saw some of the best comedy that I have ever witnessed, in print, in person, on film, ever. Although the crowd was small the message was poignant and most importantly, devastatingly hilarious. There were four main performers, a mother and her two children, Kaylan aged 8, her brother Dylan aged 10 and someone mysteriously referred to as Katheleen. Their lines were delivered deadpan and aside from a few smiles from the kids all the actors took about their task with an enthusiastic seriousness and without a single shred of irony. There were no pratfalls, no crazy antics, no one said the word ‘zany’ and no one got hit in the face with a pie. It was just a group of people going about their business with honesty and integrity with only some t-shirts and posters as props.

I swear, I almost asphyxiated I was laughing that hard. Their delivery was so natural and earnest that I almost forgot that they were performers. They walked that wonderful line that meant that no one knew if they were serious or not and it made the absurd sentences that came out of their mouths all the more amusing. At first the audience was silent, then a few smirks began to play out across the faces as people tuned in to this particular frequency, then the smirks gave way to giggles and before we knew it we were leaning hard on each other trying to breath through the hysteria, struggling to keep our feet.

Sometimes comedy is just comedy, and then sometimes, rarely, it breaks out of its zenith and throws itself out of our sphere of reference to become something else, something almost indefinable. It is sociopolitical, moral-ethic comedy. Because we can relate to what’s happening it makes us question our own lives and circumstances, because we identify with the comedian we can also identify with the subject matter of his jokes. We were laughing not only at the act but at ourselves, laughing at our wretched pathetic loneliness and the ways we try and combat it. Clicktavism, and Social networking, our need to grab on to a cause no matter how far removed or how relevant it is because of our need to feel validated in a digital realm.

The laughter we were laughing was the cathartic. It was laugh therapy at its finest. I’ll probably never get cancer now, no matter how hard I try. The audience became one, strangers were turning to each other and exclaiming, ‘I can’t believe it, how do they keep it up?’ whilst wiping the tears from their eyes. We knew we were part of something special, we knew we were witnessing the birth of something big, the next huge movement that would pick the world up and carry it to a better place. And we were there at its inception.

Later I got to catch up with the actors and they were as funny off stage as they were on. I asked the kids how they felt being involved in the show and they said that they couldn’t be happier, that it was good for children to experience adult situations because it gives them an opportunity to see what exciting adventures awaited them in their adult-hood. I told her that I, for one, can’t wait to see them either. I asked her how she was enjoying her run at the comedy festival and she said “It's bit sad more people didn't turn up, but I feel like I am doing the right thing.” I told her that indeed she was and that I would try and encourage my friends to see what all the fuss was about. “I'm hoping a lot of people see Kony, it is really important,” she said, and I told her that I couldn’t agree more.

Missed conections.

Once again I got an email from, oh I don't know, some fuck face. My spam filter on my email is pretty shit so I get a fair few people trying to phish me. I decided to write back to this one because she sent a photo and "knew" my real name. Tricky.

From: Avrora
To: *************
Sent: Monday, 2 April 2012 2:09 PM
Subject: waiting for your reply!

Hello or G'day to you, **** *****!

In your message you asked only to send you my picture to your personal
email address. Ok, I send it. I hope you like :)

I have some questions. Besides your name, I would like to know in what
city you live. Would you like to meet me as a friend? And of course, I
will be very glad if you send me your picture!

Some info about me:

My name is Avrora (yes, it's my real name).I am 27 y. o. I am a widow.
I don't have kids. I live in the country Ukraine, city Odessa.

I am looking for friendship. I am coming to Australia in 3 weeks. I
would like to find a friend to meet in real.

N.B. I am not interested in virtual sex. I don't need any naked pics
exchange. I don't discuss any sex topics, i.e. sexual fantasies,
preferences in sex, etc. I hope you are not disappointed :)

I will be waiting for your reply. You can write me and send me your
picture to my personal email address

Best regards,
Avrora.

("her picture")




So this is how I replied:


Anal Fissure, how nice of you to write, only, the thing is, I have no idea who the fuck you are or why you're sending me pictures of yourself. You look like a whore or a Russian gangsters wife. Same difference really. You wanna know what city I live in? I live in a midgets cunt and I eat corpse fingers for breakfast. One time I got constipated from all the undigested knuckles. When I finally prized open my asshole and removed the offending matter it looked so much like salami that I cut it up and made it into a sandwich. In doing so I had both a shit and knuckle sandwich all at the same time. It was pretty amazing. If we ever meet I can promise that I will make you one.

Areola, I searched for you on facebook but couldn't find any results. It's cool though, I'll keep looking. I have no reason to stop, currently I am unemployed and besides masturbating, well, there is no besides. I literally have nothing else to do. My fucking arms are like Popeyes'. You know Popeye? You will.

Have you ever been fisted? You look like the kind of Eastern European woman who smells faintly of shit and lube where ever she goes. Like nerds smell like sweat and old cum. One time I laid a fart in my pants that hung around of DAYS but then I realized I had shit myself. Has that ever happened to you?

Have you ever fucked an old guy? I hear that's popular past time in Odessa. That and being sold into slavery. Also, I hear that the percentage of women with fake tits is higher than the percentage of women without them. What the fuck is up with that? Also, whats the deal with all the sexual re-assignment surgery that happens there? I'm pretty free and liberal thinking but I think there may be more to it than that. Perhaps there is something culturally wrong. Have you considered suicide?

I once knew a girl who's breath smelled worse than her ass and once when I was sitting beside her I could smell her vagina. I am actually not kidding about this. It was like old fish on a hot day. But with out that sexy sexy side. I mean, I'd fuck a fish quicker than you could say 'That crooked government official raped me and my sister and will escape punishment because our systems are so corrupt' but I don't live near the ocean so the only thing that I can do is buy a whole bunch of fillet'o'fish from Mcdonalds and pretend. I hate it when the cheese burns my dick though. Then I have to dunk it in cold water. And I hate cold water. It too burns my dick.

You said you didn't want to talk about sex or sexual positions or fantasies or naked pics or sex topics, which is fine, because it's actually one of my fetishes, to not talk about sex topis or preferences. Man, just now when we're not talking about sex my, well, we can't talk about it but let's just say that there was quite a clean up involved. I sure am glad I bought that dog, he comes in handy ;) I mean he eats cum. Which is good, because I masturbate. A Lot.

So I included a picture which I think is a good likeness. I hope you enjoy it. Just so you know, I can fit a whole bunch of shit in my dick. I don't carry a wallet for that exact reason. If we were to meet when we'd walk down the street I'd insist you held my foreskin because I find it much more intimate than holding my hand. Also, that way I could use my hands to signal for help because if I'm walking down the street with you then I've been kidnapped by a Ukranian transsexual and she's here to eat me and absorb my soul.

Do you know where I can find a good witch doctor?

(the picture I sent back)

Pissing in the wind.

At my parents house there are rainwater tanks and there is a hose that’s directly connected to them and the water that comes out of that hose is the sweetest water that I have ever drunk.

I recently quite my job, left after five and a half years in a mixture of shame and disgust, shame at myself not being as good at my job as I thought I was, disgust at the company I worked for, the reasons too numerous and petty to name. I received a pay out of my annual leave and with no real plans or discernable directions in the future, I set off. I didn’t go anywhere, I haven’t travelled, I’ve made a few plans and spent some quality time with friends and I’ve woken up every morning wracked with anxiety over being unemployed.

On the other hand, I’m on a wonderful holiday. I have spent a week at my parents house, seeing parts of my family that I haven’t seen in ages, visiting the places of my childhood and walking down roads that I haven’t walked for nearly 20 years. I pick fresh fruit from trees as I walk past them and blackberries from the mountainous bushes that grow everywhere. They are not quite in season yet, but they are getting there.

Everyday that I spend in the country makes it harder for me to want to return to the city. I keep thinking about the concrete and then I look out the window and all I can see is green. If I wanted to I could lean out and pick one of the plums off the tree, right now the tendrils of a fern are hanging over the screen of my laptop. There is life everywhere here, you can hear it singing in the trees and scurrying through the undergrowth. Last night I went outside and looked up at the night sky and saw the stars as they deserve to be seen. Other people have described it better than me, and they were right. It was beautiful.

Unemployment is a funny one, I have almost started to relax but not quite fully. I think everyday about what it is that I want to do with my life, with my career. I have been trying to help my parents around the house, doing all those little jobs that they have been meaning to do. Everything I try my hand at I consider as an occupation. I was painting a wall and I caught myself thinking, ‘I could be a painter’. I went to lunch with my mother and one of her clients, my mother is a community carer and I had never really seen what that entails. We sat there and had lunch and I listened to a lady with dementia and tried to follow her as she switched subjects mid sentence, and I thought to myself, ‘I could be a carer.’

Sorry, I just had to take a break to pick some salad from the veggie garden. I pulled carrots from the earth and ate them. The day is beginning to cool and I looked around at the trees swaying in the breeze. I thought about the water in the tank, even though it had sat in the sun all day it was still deliciously cool. It was as cold as a running stream, I thought about the rivers in the area, about the top end of Australia and how when I was a kid there was still such things as swaggies. I thought about rainbow trout and clear fresh water streams and I thought to myself ‘I could catch a fish’.