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.