The Modern Day Riff-Raff

The Chisel & the iPad

2012-01-14T19:40:00.001+11:00

I don’t know if anybody has noticed, but at the moment, the technology-world is at a bit of a stalemate with our elderly generation. We’re stuck. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an elderly person at a computer, but if you have, you’d know that old people are basically apes when it comes to anything that requires them to be the end-user. Which is all understandable, however, what’s unfortunate about this is that whenever a corporation looks to the masses for direction when considering an upgrade, the elderly seem to be the ones calling the shots, which is bad news for technology. Basically, I’ve come to the realisation that the world, technologically, is being held back by the world’s grandmas and grandpas.

If you’re like me and you’re twenty one with parents that didn’t have you in their teens, then you most likely have a grandparent over seventy. You won’t like reading this as much as I don’t like saying it, but I’ll say it regardless, they don’t have too long to go. The reason I mention this is because the corporations are, in a way, waiting for that to happen. They know that at this point in time, any proper implementation of the available technologies could essentially mean the elimination of an entire demographic of people from their market-base, a generation whom not only are unable to use today’s technological offerings, but refuse to. But here’s the kicker, if the corporations don’t keep up with the times and just twiddle their thumbs until today’s moderately tech-savvy middle-aged generation replace our elderly tomorrow, that would mean depriving a far greater fraction of the population of cheaper and simpler modern alternatives by maintaining costly antiquated methods.

Case in point: the one problem that has always plagued McDonalds here in Australia is the fact that they don't really want to pay their employees, but unfortunately, you can't have your Big Mac and eat it too. So when they pay their employees just enough so that Fair Trading doesn’t come calling but not enough to account for the work that’s done, a trip to McDonalds is just shit; ask anybody, they’ll tell you. Much the same way that the cashiers can't put a sentence together, the cooks can’t put a burger together, all the while, disposing of any common courtesies we as civilised-human beings enjoy treating each other with. So a while back, McDonalds tried remedying this by trialing self-serve, touchscreen registers at a few stores here in Australia and, big surprise, it didn't take. Apparently, people didn't like it! I mean, what wasn't to like about them? I used one of them and I can tell you, it wasn't hung over, it didn't make a train-wreck of my order, it wasn’t impolite, nor was it coughing like a fucking mongoloid, plus it could pronounce werds and sentensez, and yet, it wasn’t good enough. I can’t act like it’s some big surprise though, especially back then with more old people being alive and all, and that was it, the reason. It wasn’t that the registers were poorly designed or that there is no demand for doing away with human cashiers, it was that it was a potential discouragement to elderly customers. How were the Olgas and Henrys of this country expected to order their Apple Pies and Cappuccinos with a touchscreen they can’t use? It took my nan ten years to come to terms with the fact that she needed a microwave in her house, and another five to learn how to use the dial.

This isn’t just tied to fast food either, it applies to any business; take Australia’s banks for instance. They have had internet/ phone banking since back in the Windows Millenium days. This is just staggering to me, especially considering the fact that today, aside from the one or two net-banking terminals in each branch and the cornucopia of ATMs on the streets, we somehow still have just as many human tellers in our banks as we did in ‘90s when a home internet-connection was for the rich. If it isn’t obvious, the staggering part is that after over a decade of more convenient and cheaper means of banking, the employment rates at our banks, by some divine miracle, have remained unscathed. And here comes the why? Because in every suburb, there happens to be a small group of people who still hop on buses to do something with their bank books that I could do in five minutes without leaving my bed. I'm not embellishing on that bank book thing either; my bank still offers them and owns the antique equipment needed to print on them, but they only offer it for one certain account, and take a wild guess what that account happens to be called, the ‘retirement access plan’, a pensioner's account for the elderly. Let’s get real, by offering bank books exclusively to an account that is primarily aimed at the well-aged, St George Bank are clearly saying that they are just on tenterhooks waiting for these people to depart, all so they can finally save the paper, trash whatever single-purpose printers they have and rid themselves of both the consumables and maintenance costs that are attached when offering something that was around in the nineteenth century (no bullshit there).

Needless to say, we’re in a bit of a chasm. We’re currently smack-bang in the guts of an awkward changeover period where companies know that it’s time to upgrade and know that there aren’t many reasons why they shouldn’t, but then of course the question of what to do with the elderly is always raised and a brick wall is hit. It’s kind of like we’re playing an adventure video game and we were going along fine through a few levels with our pencils, paper and petroleum but now we’ve gotten ourselves caught in slick mud and we are only very slowly trekking through it to get to the other side where the technological wonderland is happening. This isn’t to say I too am on the edge of my seat waiting for the elderly generations to die, I still have grandparents around. I also don’t think it’s their fault that they can’t properly assimilate into today’s technological world; they grew up in a world of the pen and the pad, and now they live in a world of the iPad. I just find it a tad irritating as a tech-lover knowing that the elderly are the only thing left clamping pre-computer methods to the way things are done – or should be done - today. I can also sense a bit of this same frustration from the corporate-world. Regardless of how inevitable the road is, they know that by taking it too prematurely now it could mean the possible death (excuse the phrasing) of a whole demographic of people in their profits. I know that the day when this generation are history, it’s going to seem like this world turned into a balls-out technology park overnight, that’s how fast the corporate-world will hop off the old band-wagon and jump onto the hovering one; mark my words.

The Girl Down the Street

2012-01-02T16:38:00.001+11:00

Small Wounds & Big Scars: I’m a firm believer in the whole-character building, lessons in life approach to the downright shitty situations. I believe that every one of them is just life setting you up for the next one (and there will be). There are a garden-variety of minor things that happened to me as a child, mostly misunderstandings and injustices, which more or less scarred me for life; these relatively small instances that I’ve never quite been able to put in the emotional trash can. These are what I attribute to my building process as a child - basically, the things that made me who I am today. They’re why I have the views I have, why I react the way I do to things, why I let some things go and not others, why I get lonely when I do and happy at other times, and even, why I write about the things I write about. Unfortunately, despite whatever positive way they contributed to my life, they’re still scars, they can still have me tossing and turning at night.

To preface this entry in the series: I was a strange kid. I was misunderstood, I was shy and I was, for a lack of a better word, a colossal pussy! But like I said, from all of these little incidents, to some degree, I’ve managed to overcome most of those things. The biggest eccentricity, I guess, is the whole thing where I pretended to be a spy, which I stopped doing as late as my first year of high school, believe it or not; I go into more detail about that here. A mother of a friend put her faux-therapist pants on and told my mother that these little things were just coping mechanisms to help with her separation from my father…I never liked her, nor did I ever ask for that stupid bitch’s elementary-level psychoanalysis (it’s just too bad that her son turned out just like her in the end). Others thought, and perhaps still think, that I am just bell-tower insane (myself included).

Whatever the reason, this is the first entry:

The first notch on my child-size straitjacket was the girl down the street, Tara Hammill. Tara was a couple of years younger than me when we met; I was seven. Even at such a young age, I knew that there was something a little off from day one with Tara. Any other friend of mine at that age would be over my place, I’d be over their place, even ones in my street would ride around with me on our bikes, but when it came to Tara, I only ever got to hang out with her with her front yard gate between us, I never went in and she never came out, it was sort of like I was friends with someone that was in prison…well that’s a lie, she left once to ride the new Razor scooter my folks had bought me for Christmas. I told her not to but she left anyway, and because I’d surmised that her parents were crazy about the whole front yard rule, when her father noticed that she had made a break from her prison and he was now standing near me watching her and demanding her to go into the house, I felt so scared, I had no clue what to say, I just wanted to ditch the scooter and run the fuck home. At that age, I didn’t know what to call the feeling I felt around Tara, I didn’t really even know what sexual predators were, but I kind of felt like one, at least that’s the tack her folks seemed to be taking with me.

Over the years, when we would hangout, I think I may have brushed the spy stuff once or twice, but I don’t remember. I would always sing out when I wanted to play because, let’s face it, I was too scared to cross that front yard to get to the front door, even when Tara wasn’t even in it. But aside from the scooter thing, she would always just speak to me from her front yard, and I was so proper back then that I didn’t even swear, so I can’t see where I was giving out rapist signals, and that’s all the god-honest truth, plus you know, there’s that tiny detail where I WAS AN INFANT! But then there was the day where I spoke to her uncle. Story is: I was sitting on the gutter outside of her house where I stopped him as he walked passed me. I said ‘hello’ and asked him something along the lines of ‘what do you do there [at the house]?’ It was a strange question, I know, but I was more or less trying to introduce myself as a ploy to gain some trust, since I knew that for whatever reason I had none of theirs, and all I was merely trying to ask was of what relation he was to Tara. Was he her cousin, uncle, family friend, math tutor, basically, the question was ‘am I introducing myself to family or not?’, but I guess I didn’t know how to word it properly, so it came out strangely, but, like I said…I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD! Anyway, I can’t remember how he left that question, but he went into the house without answering it. This is where I assume was the tipping point, where, in the way I like to say it whenever I mess something up, this is where I fucked it!

In a bid for fitness, my mother would go on powerwalks, and because she still wasn’t too comfortable with leaving me at home by myself for anything more than two seconds, she would always encourage me to come with her on my bike. This particular day, not too long after my botched introduction, we did just that, however, half way down the street I must’ve decided to just ride around the street and leave mum to exercise by herself instead. Mum walked off out of eyeshot and as I was nearing Tara’s house, I spotted the man who at that point I didn’t know was Tara’s uncle in the distance, but I wasn’t bothered, that is of course until he passed Tara’s house and began to jog toward me! I was eight years old and a person that knew the family that doesn’t like me and a person who I had only recently asked a strange question was now running toward me, so naturally, I went into a panic – I threw the gear on my handlebar into six and bolted back home like the guy was spraying machine-gun bullets into the air or something. The gates on my driveway were open so I was able to just speed down, drop my bike and quickly hide in my backyard. As I poked my head around the corner, I could see him out the front of my house. I wasn’t too scared to look because I figured even if he saw me, this was my backyard, I was in safe-territory, plus I thought that he would extend the same courtesy to me that I had extended to Tara for the last two years by not entering their front yard, so when he spotted me and started walking down toward me, I was thinking ‘what the fuck are you doing, this is my safe-territory, mate???’. I guess I also thought that whatever he had to say to me would give me the opportunity to clear things up, but it…it didn’t. The way he spoke to me that day…I don’t know, that was the first time anybody had ever spoken to me like that, and even today, I don’t get spoken to like that. The only specific thing I remember him saying amongst the spray of profanity coming from his lips was the threat ‘go near my niece again and I’ll [call the cops or something a tad more violent, I don’t remember well enough to land on a quote]’. After he got through every curse-word ever coined, he left; I never asked what I had done wrong, all I got from the conversation was emotional-scarring…and that he was Tara’s uncle. What needs to be mentioned is that, up until high school, I lived on a strict ‘respect your elders’ policy, administered by my parents and then drilled into me by my catholic primary school, so the mixture of fear and the fact that this guy was my elder was what stopped me from sticking up for myself and, basically, it’s what had me convinced that I had actually done something wrong.

I never did anything wrong, and I think that’s where I’m scarred - being too weak to know what I’d done and what I hadn’t and not actually opening my mouth to say that he had no right. The whole respect your elders thing is absolute bullshit. Respecting my elders got me nowhere, not just here, but anywhere when I was kid. All it did was get me into fucked up situations because I couldn’t speak up for myself. I was what medical professionals call a pussy! A major-pushover and scape-goat, but I’ll save that for a rainier day. Kids should be a taught a ‘don’t take shit from nobody’ policy.

My street’s not a long street, in fact, at number sixty-five - Tara’s house – it is only twelve houses away from mine, and after that day for the next few years, that end of the street was a no-go zone for me. I felt like if I ever accidentally made eye-contact with any of them again that I would just shrivel up and die right there. I couldn’t do it, I was eight years old. I was so scared, I didn’t even tell my mother for years, which was a mistake, because she could’ve done something about it. Tara still lives in that house. In fact I see her, I’ve shared buses with her, shared footpaths, I served her at work once, I see her at her work all the time, I see her in the street, at the bus stop, sometimes when I’m setting her house on fire (only kidding), I even hung out with her once when I was fifteen. It was strange; I didn’t say a real lot to her. What do you say to someone who quite possibly lied to her parents about an assault? They always advise alleged sexual offenders not to approach their accusers since actual rapists and murders tend to be pretty volatile and angry, and an angry altercation can incriminate you, or at least that’s what I’d advise my client if I were a lawyer anyway. I did end up asking her what happened with the whole thing, I think I asked a few times before she acted dumb (well, I think it was acting) and said that she didn’t know…but she did. I could just tell; it was written all over her face. I figured the only way that she was ever going to spill any details was if things got to some sort of boiling point, and that just wasn’t an option, so I refrained.

This is probably the toughest pill to swallow, the reason why the scar that has been left is so big. The fact that I didn’t stick up for myself back when I was eight, and the fact that, in a way, I still can’t due to the possible repercussions of a screaming confrontation. I guess I feel like the cowardly eight year old is forced back out of me whenever she’s around. Then there are the unanswered questions that leave their own mark. For instance, how old did they think I am? Did they know that I was seven? Because they were treating me like I was the age I am now fourteen years later. And what fucked up rape shit happened in their family in the past in order for them to make an infant feel like a predator? And, most importantly, what fucking lies did that little bitch tell them?

Tara is the first person I ever hated, and seeing her everywhere is a constant-reminder of that. It’s also quite possible the reason why my impending change of address sounds so very sweet. Ah, look at me, running away from my problems; ignore that, it’s just eight year old-Ryan talking again.

Fuck Tara Hammill!

The Bogan-People

2011-12-20T23:50:00.001+11:00

I often sit back, relax, sip my caramel latte and wonder if Bogans own mirrors. Is it just me or do you often wonder if they are aware that they are exactly the same as every other Bogan? They are all so unmistakable, it’s uncanny. They have that leathery, brown skin that looks as though it was just draped over a doctor’s office skeleton that had a can of bourbon and coke propped in its hand and then sent on its way at ten in the morning; and when they aren’t under-weight, they’re over-weight. Then there’s the poor-speech and lack of pronunciation; the forward head posture; the ‘it’s never my fault’ mentality; those white ten dollar hoodies that are noticeably pilled with that dirt-yellow tinge you get in your whites when they don’t get washed; the trash Aussie pride that puts me off being proud myself (see blog) and, how could I not mention, that…[slow exhale]…classic mullet. But, even though they are the succubus scum of our country and we essentially fund their habits with our taxes, I kind of love Bogans. They actually perform a bit of service to the country. Somehow, they have inadvertently established themselves as a minority here; almost like a new race of people, and yet because they aren’t actually a different race of people, we can still tease the shit out of them and laugh at their frequent public-shenanigans without looking prejudice.

I don’t know about other Australian cities, but here in Sydney, a lot of the Middle-Eastern youth seem to feel that their ethnic-roots obligate them to act like morons and turn our roads into racetracks. The problem here is that it’s hard to have a laugh about any of that without looking like you’re launching into a racially-motivated attack on every Middle-Eastern person in the world, and there are people that I’ve met who genuinely believe that all of them are trouble-makers…all of them. I may make jokes, but I’ve never shared this belief. But despite all of that, at heart, we are all a little prejudice, no matter how open-minded you think you are. The general belief that Asians can’t drive is probably the best example of this that I can think of.

Like I was saying before, you’ve seen one Bogan and you’ve seen them all, and I know that, but do they? Because the young Arabs that I speak of seem to live on a ‘my brother/sister/friend does it so I’ll do it’ attitude, and that’s how it has become this widespread trend, but I get a feeling that Bogans don’t share that same level of self-awareness, like they all stumbled into it by accident or something…y’know, because they’re stupid. A Lebanese kid trying to assimilate himself into a friend group will stand in front of a mirror for hours, making the conscious decision to look and act like his friends in a bid for acceptance, but I don’t see Bogans doing this, especially considering that being Bogan is probably the last route you’d want to take when seeking acceptance.

This is the beautiful service that Bogans offer us Australians. They give us a group of people who aren’t different enough to be officially established as a minority group, but just different enough to be generally-recognised as a deviated group regardless, a group whom we can distract and unload our own racism on without actually being racist at all. The delicate art of loopholes.

And there you have it, a prejudicial post without actually being prejudice – a distraction for anybody who has something negative to say about Middle-Easterns, Europeans, Asians, Blacks, Whites, the disabled and the homosexual.

Gay Purgatory

2011-12-11T19:46:00.001+11:00

I'm as straight as they come, so the whole gay marriage dispute doesn't really affect my life at all, but that doesn’t seem to stand in the way of it getting me as frustrated as Lewis Black on a rainy day. In the past, I figured it would be something that would never actually happen so I've generally been pretty blaze about the whole thing, but recently, something changed - I had a bit of an epiphany. I started putting myself in a homosexual's shoes (but not their pants) and I've realised how fucking irate I would be if I had to put my life on hold because of something I was born with to fight a battle that will inevitably be won anyway.

It usually starts with the hypothetical question 'what if heterosexuality was the weird thing and being gay was seen as ‘normal’?' And as I ponder for an answer, I realise that my life would be as follows: birth in a time slightly more discriminatory than it is now, confusion for a little bit, then discovery of the vagina, meeting one I want to be with for the rest of my life and then, while all my gay friends are pairing up and getting married, some bunch of fuckwits tell me that my girlfriend and I can't live as man and wife because it makes them and their god uncomfortable. So then for the next decade, I have to sit in the government’s version of a doctor's waiting room, living in some sort of pseudo-marriage waiting for actual marriage to be approved, all the while taking time out of my day to attend protests, lobbies and rallies. If I were gay and I found out that my love comes with a homework assignment, that vein above my right-temple would explode, with my chairs, my moisturiser bottles and my Sex and the City box set being hulked across my house.

My biggest gripe, I guess, is realising the fact that it can either happen now or later, but either way it's going to happen. Everybody knows that right? It's becoming more abundantly clear every week of fighting that the gays are nearing the pinnacle of this same-sex marriage mountain they've been climbing for decades. Since 2001, there have been a number of national and state legislation passed allowing same-sex marriage, with more adding to that list every year. Federal recognition in the United States is also currently under review and here in Australia we are seeing more and more politicians warming to it (wish I could say the same for our party leaders though), with the possibility of a conscience-vote. So, if it's going to happen anyway, why not just do it? It’s so simple, so why do governments insist on wasting people's time, that's my question? If not for the people, how about for their own image? I'd hate to say it but if I were a public-figure, I would rather forfeit my principles than appear as a dismissive and prejudicial person.

Ah! How silly of me; it’s religion!

Religion is the petroleum that keeps getting thrown on this fire. It's my personal opinion that religion is really becoming irrelevant in relation to this issue. I don’t even see the whole notion of marriage as a spiritual act anymore – it’s not about God, it’s about the chick I want to bang for the next eighty years. People may not agree with me here but I feel that somewhere along the line, marriage got severed from religion and became secular in people’s eyes. That's the way I see it anyway, I mean, I'm quite anti-religious, but I'd still get married, in a church even; the ceremonies are beautiful. So, if it’s not just me and that is the general-consensus on marriage, can we really keep playing the religion card? A card that, of course, doesn't come without its holes. Murder me for repeating what has already been said, but an article I read recently brought up some good points that if the whole gay marriage issue boils down to the fact that a woman plus another woman won’t equal offspring, then what's the word on people suffering with infertility? How about elderly women? Or elderly men, for that matter? Our politicians don't seem to be drawing any attention to the men who shoot blanks who get married, but when two people of the same-sex who will probably end up taking a kid who was abandoned by his 'normal' parents out of foster homes and into healthy ones, that's no good. Unfortunately, I say this, not to tease or force my views on religion, but to illustrate that not only are people's time being wasted here, but it's being wasted on the basis of broken-logic amplified by broken people.

I guess it's a little silly to be complaining about this now. Homosexuals have definitely seen worse days, but what it is that I have a problem with is that, even in today’s western culture’s unfastened acceptance of race and sexual orientation, people are still saying no to same-sex marriage when we have clearly reached the point at which a winning verdict is foreseeable. There is no doubt that the means are no longer justifying the end. The troubling thing here is that the only thing we have to blame for the delay, and the whole thing for that matter, are the world’s sacred texts. It would seem that they have managed to breed a generation of bigots akin to those that still support genocide and slavery, bigots who can hopefully be superseded in conscience voting. Guys, it's time. It's time to identify with the fact that there are still Hitlers in the world that need ignoring and it's time to realise that now we are simply just biding time 'til gay men and women anywhere can marry without the need for plane tickets, so just do it already and let us get on with...ah, I don't know, withdrawing the troops, fixing the economy, running the country? Those are just some suggestions, just as long as it’s not unnecessarily preventing people from living their lives.

‘Civil-unions are basically the same as marriage.’ Fuck you.

12/12/11: Added photo, because, let’s face it, I had to.

St Pauls Catholic College

2011-12-04T21:27:00.001+11:00

If my high school ever had a reunion in twenty years’ time, the rsvp on my invite, in addition to the traditional two, would need one more option: 'attending', 'not attention' and -the one I would tick – ‘I'd rather be dead!’ People often ask me why I hated going to St Pauls Catholic College, Greystanes so much, and sure, I always mention conflicts with other students and the relatively minor bouts with bullying, and that all goes without saying, but that's only the half of it. The biggest stone in my shoe I always had to deal with being a St Pauls student was that the school itself wasn't so much an educational facility as a business masquerading as one. From an outsider’s perspective, this may seem like a petty administrative issue in relation to a student, but in actual fact, a money-obsessed undertone was always at such a constant that it had some influence over every ridiculous decision that was made, be it regarding the students or not, and I was done with it.

Businesses have mottos, and like a business, St Pauls’ motto is: preserve self-image at any cost. This meant that, while other students were getting crucified for minor things done while off the premises in the public-eye, the universal approach to any incident that happens within school grounds, no matter how severe, would involve little punishment for those responsible and a cover up operation akin to a gangster-hit in a Scorsese film. Essentially, to the principals at St Pauls, students were just meat-bags with family bank accounts, so if things aren’t looking picture perfect to the prospective public, fewer parents will enrol their meat-bags for the following school year and, thus, fewer parents can be billed.

And let’s not pretend that St Pauls doesn’t have a history of cover ups. In fact, get this, the name ‘St Pauls Catholic College’ itself is the result of a cover up operation, orchestrated five years before I was enrolled. The story is: back in the days when the school was known as Newman High School, its parish priest was a man named John Gerard Patrick Sweeney. To say the least, Father Sweeney liked little boys…and he’d been liking them for eleven years before he and his pseudo-catholic ring of paedophiles were publicly exposed around 1994. Sweeney was later convicted in 1998. That same year became Newman High School’s final one. That’s right, as opposed to bearing the responsibility of foolishly turning a blind-eye on sexual assault for over a decade, operation St Pauls Catholic College came into effect that following year.

That’s basically the school I attended for six years - Newman High School. Don’t get distracted by the new name, the warming tagline, the pretty emblem, the welcoming school song or the amended school history found in every standard-issue diary, because that same business-mentality that existed in Newman lives on in St Pauls - a mentality where school fees become more important than the life-long trauma that is inflicted upon a student when the very people they trust molests them.

This constant fear of public-perception is the number one reason why all of the issues the school had with me were never regarding things that had gone on inside of school. For example, I used to have a load of trouble regarding my uniform when getting to and from school. Anybody who lived close-by or were picked up from school would’ve had little to no trouble here, as they’d be home within ten minutes, but for me, it often took me well over an hour to get home due to bus connections and other bullshit I’ll get to later. Not only did it take that long, but I would sometimes stop off at the library on my way home to do some homework, which meant that sometimes I wouldn’t end up getting home ‘til dark that night. But St Pauls being St Pauls had this no excuse policy that you either wear the uniform fully and properly or get your fingernails ritualistically removed, regardless of circumstance; it was a full stop, ‘I don’t give a shit about your life’ policy. So, this library was only fifteen minutes from my school and some teachers, for whatever reason, would sometimes be in the vicinity to see us walking around. So what this meant for me was that I basically couldn’t even loosen my necktie until I got home late that night unless I wanted to risk an eye-piercing pink detention slip, which happened time and time again. I mean, how ridiculous. And it wasn’t just me, others did the same and were punished all the same. Meanwhile, in my last year there, there was this boy who had been having some sort of escalating playground back-and-forth with another boy, both in my grade. One day in class, one taunted the other so badly that he grabbed a pair of scissors and stabbed the other in the arm. I’m not sure how severe it was or the specifics of what happened next, but what’s important here is that neither of the students were expelled and there was, what I like to call, a really big hush-meeting, which was basically a strategic move in operation cover up. They basically pulled my entire grade out of class, gathered us around and told us not to tell anyone, like all one hundred and fifty of us had to keep this dirty little secret for the rest of our lives…but I digress. The hypocrisy is gleaming, where at six at night, I can’t walk from the library to a bus stop with my blazer in my bag without earning a detention but somebody stabs somebody else in one of our classrooms and they got…a stern talking to? Questioned by the police? MY point is if I was getting detentions, they should’ve gotten expelled. So, were St Pauls really meaning to say that missing an item of clothing outside of school is a bigger offence than a potentially dangerous assault inside? In a word, yes, because it was never about what happened, it was about where it happened.

That brings me to my final point: the transport to and from school. My primary school was a lot closer to home than St Pauls and when I was in my final year there, St Pauls was the school that visited us to try and sell the school to us (a.k.a. the prospective market). Because they did this every year, and St Pauls was, I’m ashamed to admit, one of the better schools in the area, a considerable amount of the male students would go on to become St Pauls students; to my misfortune, I was one of them. One of their selling hooks that day, and at a parent information night months later, was that the wheels were in motion for a direct school bus route between my primary school’s suburb, where I reside, and the St Pauls grounds. In fact, they actually talked like it would come to fruition sometime in my first year. That was 2002. When I left school in 2007, they were still using that same business hook. I’m not sure if it was all talk on St Pauls' part, if they just kept having issues with the bus company or just the fact that coming up with a direct route from home to St Pauls isn’t something that can be done in under a decade, but it just never happened and nobody ever explained why. Nevertheless though, having to catch two buses to get to school wasn't the problem, as for me there were an ample amount of services, it’s what happened after this where it all just got a little too ridiculous for words. Six months into my first school year, either because the bus company got sick of the misbehaving group of St Pauls students who caught the buses or because the school did it as punishment to those students, the two buses we had each in the morning and the afternoon got cut down to one. This meant that, in the morning, there was now a forty minute gap between my connecting bus arriving and the overcrowded school bus departing, but that's still not the problem. Mind you, I was still on tenterhooks waiting for this direct bus from my area, merely treating this connection as a meantime alternative. So the following year rolled around and some kids from Greystanes High School waiting for other buses at the same stop began giving me some trouble. These kids were just arseholes and to prevent things coming to blows, I began to catch the public route to school, which was similar to our school route only that it meant a five minute wait, as opposed to a forty minute one. Long story short, this was an ideal resolution to all of my AM transport problems. The bus drivers never asked questions, they accepted my bus pass, it got me to school early, drama-free and I did this for years. The following year I made friends with a boy in a younger grade from up the road, which would catch this bus with me for the same reasons. Who knows what prompted them, but then a year later some St Pauls morons came along and fucked everything up. They started doing what we were doing, the only difference was that they were doing it noisily and disruptively, and within months, the school held one of their 'you can’t eat' lunch meetings telling us that we were no longer allowed to catch the public routes from that particular stop. I didn’t feel like it was there place to police how I got to school, so I continued, but because our principal was now on the case, St Pauls stonewalled us. Whenever I would try to get on one of the buses that wasn’t that one designated bus for my school, the drivers, who knew my face from years of no trouble, would mention my dick principal, Chris Dutfield, by name and tell me that he had told them that we couldn’t catch that bus anymore. I’d argue and argue but there was never any use. So when I tried politely explaining to Dutfield the full story about the trouble I was having and my elaborate journey between school and home, I basically got the same responses I got from the bus drivers, an ‘I don’t care’ response. I pretty much felt like he was saying ‘if you don’t like it, don't catch the bus to school’, and he had the audacity to make me feel that way after dangling the direct route infront of me for years. The way I see it is they can do what they want inside there grounds, hell, they could've expelled me, toward the end I was encouraging that, but as long as they still had me down in the roll book, they had no right to tell me what forms of transport I could take to get to school and which ones i couldn't, as long as I got to school on time.

The situation itself was just ridiculous, and it ties in with everything else I’ve mentioned – St Pauls wanting to police us anywhere, anytime. I mean, they had some guts telling us what we could and couldn't do outside of school. I mean, where does it end then? Will they start telling us that we can’t catch taxis to school? What about what shops to eat at and what footpaths we can and can’t walk? And what’s the cut-off time there? Is it really ethical for somebody to be getting punished for wearing a uniform incorrectly after the sun has set? It was just such a silly set of ambiguous rules. This is no joke, but once when I was jigging school, I caught a public route to Parramatta wearing my uniform and no body batted an eyelid, but catching that same bus going the opposite way to get to school, that wasn’t allowed!

Unfortunately, that was the tip of the iceberg when it came to transport, because then there was the whole I have a penis and you’re a Muslim problem. If I could count for you how many lunchtimes this whole thing stole from me, you’d wonder how nobody ever put a bullet in their brain, what I can tell you was that for a while there, it seemed like we – and when I say we, I mean any student who caught this particular school bus - were having meetings once a week. The catalyst to these meetings was that the afternoon bus had recently been merged with Holroyd High School’s bus, which meant that the bus would first pick us up and then we would stop off there on the way. For anybody who doesn’t know, Holroyd High welcomes a lot of refugees and migrants and is specialised in teaching their foreign students how to speak English and, for what I’m assuming is a precipitating factor of this, this meant that the school had an abundance of Islamic students, male and female. St Pauls, however, was an all-boys Catholic school. The problem St Pauls had with us was – get this – that we weren’t getting out of our seats when we arrived at Holroyd. According to our teachers, according to Islam, 'practicing Muslim females' cannot sit next to males. Firstly, I did Islam for my HSC and I never found any hard facts to support this, is that even a thing? Secondly, regardless of how fabricated the facts of their case, let’s get this straight: they decide to mix an already crowded bus that an all-boys catholic school has been comfortably and privately catching for years with a school which consists of a large number of Islamic girls, who, allegedly, are not allowed to be next to males. So, after we’ve settled into our seats, because they’re Muslim, we’re in trouble because we won't cater for them. Let's call it the entrapment of St Pauls - a conspiracy contrived so that we don't eat lunch. Not only was I losing lunchtimes because of this shit, but we were once parked on the side of the road for forty minutes being lectured by an inspector and getting our bus passes collected, causing all types of trouble when catching my connecting buses and any buses the following day. I mean, talk about being bowled over by the weight of your own balls. And what does it all come down to, how we look in the eyes of everybody else. God forbid, can’t be the school who won’t forfeit their seat for Muslims!

And those are just a few things that I hand-picked from the batch. I could write a separate blog on my five years at St Pauls.

You see, St Pauls want to make themselves look like a great school, but the irony here is that their methods in trying to achieve that prevent them from being so. St Pauls’ attention was just always too busy to concentrate on education, for example, too busy creating mind-pretzeling verbal policies, too busy keeping count of how many students are attending and making sure everybody knows about it, and too busy smuggling Mr Dutfield and his mail-order wife out of the country after he makes a mess of a student’s HSC exams. And, I know, the teachers won't admit it, but some of them were around when those boys were molested in the ‘90s, including the aforementioned principal. So, don't be fooled; when it comes to a student-count mantra, cosmetic-trickery and educational slight-of-hand, St Pauls are the experts. Sure, private schools need money, but it shouldn’t be the focus and that’s what creates a significant disparity between a well-run school and St Pauls Catholic College, Greystanes. Don’t send your kid there.

“All it takes for evil to succeed is for people to say 'It's a business'.”

Just for the search engines: St Pauls Catholic College Greystanes, Chris Dutfield, St Pauls Catholic College Greystanes, Our Lady Queen of Peace, St Pauls Catholic College Greystanes, Newman High School, St Pauls Catholic College Greystanes, Our Lady Queen of Peace, St Pauls Catholic College Greystanes, Chris Dutfield, St Pauls Catholic College Greystanes, OLQP, Newman High School, St Pauls Catholic College Greystanes, Our Lady Queen of Peace, St Pauls Catholic College Greystanes, Chris Dutfield, Christopher, St Pauls, St Pauls, St Pauls.

Hide & PCeek

2011-11-12T11:46:00.001+11:00

A few posts back, I very lightly brushed the topic of the Windows Phone market share in Australia – by that, I refer to the virtually non-existent market share. Within the walls of my house lives a Microsoft ecosystem and when it comes to forking out money for electronics that fit cohesively in that ecosystem, it’s always met with some nervousness on my end. You see, it needs to be understood that ever since the second generation iPhone, Australia has become one of Apple Inc.’s most prized bitches, this unfortunately pushed Microsoft Australia to the way side. This wide-adoption of Apple means a national absence of the latter, and if Apple has taught us anything, it’s that presence means ease – the very thing that drives the success of any piece technology on the market today.

Sure, Bill Gates’ brainchild, Windows, has charmed its way into the homes and offices of many, but that doesn’t change the fact that the name Windows Phone 7 means little nothing to Australians, that retailers are yet to even start offering Zune devices (‘Zune’ being Chinese to anybody that I mention it to, if indeed it still exists, even Microsoft don’t seem to be sure on that one) and that we are so far from having our very own Microsoft store that I don’t see it ever happening. Meanwhile, you could throw a rock into one of our city streets and hit someone who’s carrying an iPhone, probably even an iPod too if we could pry it from their person, and that doesn’t even graze the fact that we have eleven Apple Stores nationwide, with three more in the works, giving the company the ability to offer every product they offer overseas here; and there’s the biggest kicker, the Apple Stores. These outlets allow for face-to-face support and a try-before-you-buy mentality of every product under the same roof – and that's just buying and repairing your device, I haven’t even mentioned the products themselves. When it comes to Microsoft, if you want a phone? Visit the phone store, not just one either, I mean all of them; An Xbox? Go to a gaming boutique; An MP3 Player? You’d have to get that off the internet; Windows? Go to a computer store. And how will you find out how well all of these devices communicate with each other? You won’t, at least not until after you buy them all and stick them together. Then if one of them breaks, it means a plethora of phone calls and sending your stuff to Acer or Dell or HTC or the US to be looked at. However, if I walked into an Apple store, I could see how an iPhone can be used with Apple TV, I can see how an iPod will connect to a Mac, Christ, I could probably test drive a MacBook’s performance while running Final Cut Pro; a whole family of products, all under one roof. Needless to say, being a loyal Microsoft customer in Australia is a pill that gets tougher to swallow each day that I continue to reject the idea of purchasing an Apple product.

Not only that but I watch the recent Windows Phone event in New York City and that, like many other overseas technology related events, just reminds of Microsoft’s national absence here, in fact it reminds me of the absence of technology in general. That’s not to say that Australia is a bad country or anything, but if you’re a tech-geek, sadly this isn’t the best-suited country for you, for any corporation really, it just so happened that Apple were able to become the high point in our low market.

So, anybody like myself who chooses to deny the allure of a company that essentially spits out products that are shrouded in how easy they are to use and, instead, adopts a corporation who probably think that our continent is just kites and Amish farmland, you’re basically choosing to play a consumer version of hide & seek.

Baths are like Space

2011-10-30T22:23:00.001+11:00

I’ve always avoided any real interest in the universe and outer space like the plague, simply because unanswered questions really bother me, so… By the same token, I’ve never been a fan of baths, because lying in my own stagnant filth really disgusts me. However, the reason why I would one day like to live beyond the sky and the reason why I occasionally take a bath and not a shower are oddly enough the same: because I want to live in a world where stuff just floats around, and barring any unforeseen apocalyptic shit, a bath is the closest I am ever going to get to a world such as that.

There’s not a lot I know about living on a space station, but the way I understand it is that the gravity isn’t as dense as ours and - I’m just going to say it straight-out - if I ever had the privilege of living in one, it would be my sickest and most perverted time. Honest to god, I can’t be held accountable for the sick shit I’d get up to, I’m talking trying to smash glass, lighting a match, trying to drink water out of a cup, seeing how far one of my farts can propel me, dropping deuces mid-room like a fish, standing on the wing firing off a semi-automatic I smuggled on board…needless to say, it’s going to be a strange time for the whole crew. So, I guess the equation is: zero gravity + me = the most annoying housemate you’ve ever had. And I say ‘don’t judge’ because you can’t tell me that Buzz Aldrin never ~~walked~~ floated in on a butt-naked Neil Armstrong while he was checking out his own junk and how it sort of hangs, but not really, y’know, like it is when you’re in the bath. With a face like Armstrong’s, I wouldn’t put it past him really, I mean, they don’t call him ‘Armstrong’ for nothing…but I digress. In fact, if NASA or the Russian fellows did an International Space Station version of Big Brother without telling them, I’m willing to bet we would just be seeing unclad genitalia all the time. If it were me up there – fair warning - it’d be mine all over your screen; hands down. Well, that’s me in the bath, checking myself out naked with everything I need, not on the side, but in the water with me – the bar of soap, the shampoo bottle, the loofah, the razor – it’s all just floating around me…somewhere. Anyway, the message here is that my mother calls it the bath; I call it ‘My Little Space Station’ (only because I can’t think of a name as cool as SkyLab!).

Fuelled by my curiosity of the weightlessness of space, I personally think that Richard Branson should stop trying to get consumers to space and just bring space to us. I’m not talking about everywhere, maybe just a few countries, you know, we’ll start with the socialist ones, like China and Egypt and then we’ll work it out from there. I mean, do surfaces even get dirty in space? Can liquid spills and dust truly attach themselves to anything? Who knows really; all I know at this point is that the only thing putting dust and liquid all over my fucking furniture seems to be gravity; maybe gravity is the world’s problem. Maybe the Chinese government have a dust problem and that’s why they hate everyone, because they have dust-frustration like me? I mean, there’s no communism in space is there? No wars either, apart from the ones in George Lucas’ mind and that weird one at the end of Moonraker. That’s the reason why we should have zero gravity on earth, because nobody likes dust or Chinese politics, and definitely not because I want to be thrown across the room by the burst of my own natural gas.

Things I Loved About Gaddafi

2011-10-25T21:24:00.001+11:00

I often sit back and wonder if terrorists and dictators only exist so that comedians have material. It’s true what they say, they are just about the lowest and most evil breed of human lady parts have had to offer the world so far, no doubt about it, but without them, where’s the humour? There's the thing where Hitler thought that you could catch Judaism if somebody sneezed it on you; bin Laden had that major objection to chilled water – it’s shit like that that makes this dude just chuckle. So, here’s a short list of the laughable shenanigans that Gaddafi got up to in his life that I love (and probably had Saddam coming in his insane pants):

The Mythical Berbers
Ahhh, the Berber thing. I was never much for leaving the best 'til last, so here it goes: Gaddafi’s attempt at suppressing Libya’s indigenous people - the Berbers. Berbers are a non-Arab people who settled in Libya long before any Arab populations arrived there. Here in Australia, when we decided that we didn’t like our indigenous people, we just tried to breed them out, inevitably driving them to an eternity of anarchy and substance-abuse. In Germany, when Hitler didn’t like the Jews for whatever mixed reason he had, all he did was fumigate them. But when it comes to Gaddafi and his ethnic cleansing, he certainly takes the cake: he told the Libyans that they didn’t exist! He tried to have them believe that the Berbers were just some mythical group of people thought up by the West (big surprise). I mean seriously, what did he think, that people wouldn’t notice them walking around on their donkeys? Makes no sense.

The Gaddafian Calendar
One of Gaddafi’s many feats of insanity during his autocracy was the changing of the Libyan calendar. Gaddafi, like everyone else that is as ugly as him, despised the West, and Libya, at the time, followed the calendar we follow, the Gregorian calendar. He hated the West so immensely and was so egotistical in himself that he couldn't just change the calendar to another existing one, so what did he do? He created his own. Even though he strangely chose the English translation over the Arabic, it was just one big fire sale on anything Western – ‘July’ had to go as it pays homage to Julius Caesar, so it was changed to ‘Nessar’ to honour this other crazy guy Gaddafi thought about vigorously in his private time; August had to go too, as it was named after Augustus Caesar. But it didn't stop there. To accommodate the crazy leader's Islamic roots, on the first of December 1978 in our calendar, he also changed what year it was so that it coincided with the death (or birth – who knows) of the Prophet Mohammad; a system similar to the Islamic calendar, but not quite. Now I just love this, because it's one thing for a leader to change the calendar to one that he prefers, but it’s ‘pack your bags and get on a plane’ time when your leader starts renaming months and changing what year it is. However, not only did he change the year, but he was never quite clear on what year he changed it to and, thusly, neither were his people. Now, that’s fucked up, I mean that’d be like if I were to say that it’s 2009 right now, but then you ask somebody else and they say that it’s actually 2019. It was pretty stupid, and insane, to say the least.

The Real Footloose
Up until now, I never realised it but, under Gaddafi’s rule, Libya was a real life, albeit sandy, Footloose town! This article from the National Geographic Adventure magazine just says it all:

“’Nightlife’ requires a new definition in a country without alcohol, where the population abides by strict codes of male-female conduct that require both sexes to stay virgins until marriage—there are no dance clubs, no bars, no young couples strolling down the street, holding hands. And in conservative country towns like Ghadamis, the subdued air feels like perpetual Sunday morning. I go in search of the town hotspot and discover it to be the local internet café, where crowds of young men play video games, enter English-language chat rooms, and examine—however surreptitiously—Western porn sites. It takes me a few minutes to notice that there’s not a single woman in the place. Away from the progressive cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, women stay largely in the home, out of sight. A local man, Mahmud, tells me that women here aren’t allowed to see or interact with males outside of their immediate family, including any would-be husband.”

I mean this shit is uncanny. It’s like Gaddafi read the Quran and watched Footloose all on the same day and then he became some sort of Muslim John Lithgow, who thinks that a ban on dancing and sex is the only thing standing in the way of a total meltdown in Libya, but a forty-plus year dictatorship is a-okay!

Needless to say, Muammar Gaddafi was one twisted and horrible treasure trove of laugh-worthy ridiculousness, and that’s the funny thing about people like him. Without politicians that sniff women’s chairs and terrorists that like water but will go on a rampage when it’s chilled, what would I have to do? Comedians would need a permanent marker and the careers section of a local newspaper; I’d have to write about my feelings; it would just be a sad, sad state of affairs - that’s why I loved Gaddafi, because he was just a psychotic dose of humour for all of us make fun of.

You Had Me at ‘Religion’

2011-10-17T23:24:00.001+11:00

I’ve been blogging for about four years now and I’ve been biblically incorrect and a devout agnostic for a little longer than that. Excluding the post about religious healing I wrote years back, the one reason I’ve never combined the two and used this blog as a soapbox for how much I oppose religion is the same reason I stray away from writing about drugs and cigarettes: because there’s no point repeating what everybody else is already saying.

I post what I write so that I have a platform on which I can bring new things to the table and expressing something that every atheist, realist, rationalist, political talk show host, comedian and whoever else is already saying is just a waste of my time, and frankly, a waste of your time if you bothered even reading it. So, instead of presenting my universal opinion on religion, and by that I mean directly putting it down, I might as well just present to you what I think, only from somebody else’s lips, and who better to choose than one of my hero’s, Bill Maher.

If you’re interested, I suggest you go and watch Religulous. That’s all I’ll say.

$1200 with a Rubber Band

2011-10-13T22:00:00.001+11:00

When the screen on my flip phone ended up on one side of the room and the keypad was on the other, I knew that I wanted my next phone to be a high end smartphone, but now all I want is to stick what I ended up getting up HTC and Microsoft’s hind-ends. The story begins the day I grew irked of the very long and very exhausting line of mediocre handsets in my past. I figured that since I now had the money for a better one that the more I spent, the better quality product I'd get - sort of like a 'you get what you paid for' deal - well, when it comes to technology, it would seem that you don't get that deal. I didn't want a safe iPhone, so I ended up getting myself a dangerous HTC Touch Pro2 and danger I got. With the aid of my false logic, I spent more money on this phone than I did on the top of the line computer I bought midway this year. That computer has been nothing short of a dream, everything that I paid for, this phone, however,...well let’s just say I've had better experiences with a two-hundred dollar Nokia I bought eight years ago which sported Snake 2 and WAP internet. Honest to God, I've taken shits in my toilet that have performed a better service than this phone.

I'm loathed to mention this, but I think the onus is on Microsoft rather than HTC in the overall scheme of things. It's been about two years since I bought this phone that came stocked with Windows Mobile 6.1 and, I'll give it to you straight, I've seen better software on my microwave dial. Windows Mobile 6 is a little like Windows 98 - it was great in its time but has no place in this era of computing and, comparing it to everything else that was on the market at the time, it was basically extracted from Bill Gates' toilet; pure and simple. It should be mentioned to those that don't know that Windows Mobile was such a bad product in fact, that Microsoft literally hurled the brand and the entire underlying program code into the virtual trash, began new coding on a blank document and out popped Windows Phone 7. WP7 is essentially something that doesn't cost an arm and a thermos of horse semen to own and yet has a product quality commensurate to iOS and Android. But, more importantly, Windows Phone holds not only a candle to Windows Mobile, but a fucking cauldron, so much so that even Steve Ballmer, the current CEO of Microsoft, was on television chuckling at the very mention of the product, he even said elsewhere that Microsoft ‘screwed up’ Windows Mobile. Straight from the devil’s mouth.

However, for my handset in particular, Microsoft can't take the whole wrap for its disgrace. HTC as a whole shouldn’t have continued carrying a broken operating system in the first place! What’s more, they shouldn't have been producing phones that couldn't handle running the OS, better yet, Microsoft shouldn't have still been offering it to HTC and any other hardware manufacturers, for that matter. Nevertheless, what they did with Windows Phone was a great idea which was executed years too late. The very moment the first iPhone was announced, either Ballmer or Gates should've been on the phone closing the Windows Mobile department down to replace it with Windows Phone, but instead that ended up occurring years later. It was a strategic mistake and they all know it.

So, now I have the inevitable conundrum fueled by the very capitalist in me that started all of this: do I wait ‘til an Australian carrier offers a Windows Phone handset that I like into the limited market we have in this country - which at this point could be years, riskily obtain that handset unconventionally over the web – paid outright, or go with the answer to all my problems and just bite the forbidden fruit - an iPhone? The answer isn’t as obvious as it may seem, and with every day that passes, I only draw closer to the day where I make my decision and rid my pocket of a product that even Microsoft thinks is a fucking joke.

Who Saved What Now?

2011-09-16T21:12:00.001+10:00

Just in time for the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a memorial was unveiled at the site where, ten years ago, United Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the flight famous for its passengers who allegedly revolted against its hijackers. “They [the passengers] gave the entire country an incalculable gift. They saved the capital from attack. They saved god knows how many lives. They saved the terrorists from claiming the symbolic victory of smashing the centre of American government…and they did it as citizens.” Bill Clinton said in his speech at the unveiling held last Saturday. Clinton wasn’t the only one to speak at the memorial, George W. Bush and Joe Biden made speeches about the passengers also, each of which I have watched several times out of complete bewilderment. Call me crazy, but can somebody please explain to me when it was decided that the passengers being responsible for saving Washington D.C. from attack is factual? Call me nuts, but do we really have enough hard evidence to transform that theory into fact?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to dissuade you of this or back some paranoid 9/11 Charlie Sheen conspiracy bullshit. In fact, I'm not even saying that a passenger revolt isn’t what happened on that plane, but by the same token, nor am I saying that people inexperienced at flying Boeing 757s at low altitudes can do it without burning up in a fireball. What I am dismissing, however, is anybody who treats the brief and ambiguous evidence we have regarding Flight 93 as solid and conclusive testimony to support that the passengers became hostile with the hijackers, which lead to the plane crash. I'm no lawyer, so correct me if I'm wrong, but any evidence they do have is speculation and heresay, is it not?

First, let’s lay the cards out on the table - we have passengers saying on their phones that they're considering 'rushing' the cockpit and then we have the terrorists in the cockpit screaming 'They're coming; they're coming'. Around the same time also, the plane was recorded as, what I understand, bobbing up and down and from side to side. So, we have two recordings that don't tell us much at all and a plane flying erratically; wow, they've cracked the case wide open haven't they. I mean, are we really doing this, saying this is what definitely happened?

Now to explain the hands - what anyone fails to say out loud is that whenever the media uses quotation marks to 'quote' what was said in the sixty two calls that were made from the plane by passengers, they aren't quoting the actual passenger, they are quoting the passenger's husband or wife or relation's testimony. And, given that, how valid could these quotes be, even if the source is trustworthy? Let's look at it in context: Within the hour, two airliners have just gone into buildings in New York City, with a third plane crash at the Pentagon in Virginia, now somebody you love and adore is calling you saying that there are men on their plane whom have attacked the pilots and claim to have a bomb. If there is anytime you're going to have a euphoric mix of emotions, it's right now. Let me ask you, could you properly quote what was said in any of those conversations, given the circumstances? Not only that, but at the time you would be quoting this, there's also the added trauma of losing your loved one and finding out about it from the news. You see, I’m quite positive that nobody has heard these calls. The only phone calls we have actually heard and can accurately transcribe are voice mail messages that were left and maybe (a big maybe) we can trust the GTE operators who claim they spoke to passengers...but even they have emotions, so who knows. Heresay.

Secondly, the recording of the last half hour in the cockpit is just something so open to discussion that we might as well just forget it; in fact, lets just nix it, right now. They said 'They're coming; they're coming', that very well could be referring to passengers, but it might actually be referring to fighter jets they thought they could see in the distance, it could mean that they were watching porn, who knows, that's what I'm saying. As for the plane going all over the place and then crashing: of course we can assume that they were trying to stop the passengers who were about to knock the cockpit door down and that when that failed to stop them, they realised that the operation was going to shit and decided to crash the plane into the ground. But let’s not forget, apart from the theoretical knowledge, Ziad Jarrah's (the head hijacker) skill at flying those planes was novice at best, I mean they all thought that they were speaking to the passengers on the intercom when, a matter of fact, they were talking to some control tower, that's how well they knew the controls. Any skill Jarrah did have was learnt by flying two-man, light aircraft, not Boeing 757s that can carry two hundred. So when heavy aircraft is flown by someone who hasn't so much as been in a simulator for that plane, whatsmore, at such a low altitude, isn't some struggle with the controls and a subsequent crash quite a big possibility? Can we really say for sure that the crash wasn't just a mishap? On that note, can we say for sure that Jarrah didn't just have second-thoughts? I mean, the shit is fucking nuts. In fact, the only evidence we do have here is that the auto-pilot was redirected to head in the direction of Washington D.C., another theory factualised by Clinton & Biden at the unveiling, which still isn't what one would call 'solid'.

See? If we happened to put this handful of victims on trial in any western court on charges for heroism, the jury would come back and read 'Not guilty! Not Guilty! Not guilty!'. The law system would use words like 'inconclusive','speculative' and 'heresay'. It would be like one not-guilty orgy down at that courthouse. So what I'm saying is that it's certainly quite possible that those passengers did ‘rush’ the cockpit and it's quite possible that the plane crashing into nothing is a precipitating factor of that; I won't lie, the evidence indeed points that way. In fact, you could say that I'm about ninety percent sure that’s what happened, but what I'm asking is this: is ninety percent really enough? Is it enough for two former US presidents and a former US Vice President to talk at a memorial unveiling like we can be a hundred percent certain of what occurred? I mean, a seed of doubt, no matter how miniscule, is still a seed of doubt. The dumbest part of any of these speeches was when Biden said ‘we are here to honour those whose courage made history’, if ninety percent is all you need to go down in the history, then I question the legitimacy of America’s history. The smartest part of the speeches, surprisingly, came from Bush when he used the phrase ‘most likely’ before speaking about the plane’s alleged target, which is something that each speaker should have said before pretty much saying anything regarding United Flight 93. It's just really childish to try and put some sort of positive spin on this just because people have lost their lives, especially when the positive spin is potentially a fallacy. I don't care what anybody says - Obama, Bush, Billy Bob - remember this: there is and only ever will be enough evidence available to support a theory here, not a fact.

>> Clinton & Bush Speech Snippets

People Say Things

2011-09-08T19:09:00.001+10:00

It’s true. I pride myself on writing honest post titles. People do say things. I say things too, like ‘I have respect for religion’ and ‘I don’t cheat at Words With Friends’, they aren’t particularly true, but I’ve said them nonetheless. Just the same, those things that people say usually end up being pretty erroneous when you actually look into them. It might not be because they are trying to be disingenuous, but mainly because they have unwittingly succumbed to some half-baked theory. So without any further ado, here are the things that I often hear people say, in descending order of frequency, that are in need of some serious debunking:

“Macs don’t get viruses”
If there is anything that trumps everything that is illogical and shallow-in-thought in the world, it’s this. For those that aren’t aware, the theory that Macs don’t get viruses was manufactured by a retarded phenomenon of thought, born inside the mind of some envious indie kid in the hopes of winning over Gates supporters about a decade ago.

The whole theory is just a paperweight on people’s intelligence; a grinder of thy bones. It’s sort of like if somebody were to one day discover a huge hole in the vault wall of a major bank, giving just about anybody free reign to just walk in and make themselves rich. The discoverer doesn’t take any though; the discoverer just tells people where the bank is and its closing times. So, as the word spreads, the hole still doesn’t get repaired, money continues to flow into the vault and nobody but those authorised ever touch the money. Over a decade later, Justin Long has made everybody aware of the bank and the opportunity that surrounds it, yet in all that time and all that publicity, nobody ever pockets any money; not one cent. Ridiculous, you say? Bullshit, I say. We live in an exploitative world. Before the word even spread, the bank would’ve been cleaned out. Well, that unlikely tale is actually just this virus-free Mac theory, just applied in another scenario. To translate: Mac OS is the bank, the fact that if a hacker wants to do something, the hacker can do it is the hole and the people are us.

The whole point that I am driving towards is this: Sure, Mac OS probably didn’t have any viruses in the early adoption stages, but that would be true of any new operating system, at least until everybody starts boasting about how it doesn’t get viruses…oh hey! That’s exactly what’s happening now. In fact, a few years ago, an anti-malware feature was sewn into the lining of the platform. See what I mean? Do you really think – and I mean really think – that everybody believing that ‘Macs don’t get viruses’ and then leaving their machines unprotected in light of that belief wouldn’t prompt hackers to exploit the shit out of it?

“All soft drinks have caffeine”
Time and time again has somebody tried to convince me that all soft drinks have caffeine in the mix and it's time I rung the bullshit-bell. I'm not sure where along the line people got the silly idea that carbonating somehow goes hand-in-hand with caffeinating, but it’s a total fallacy, I mean, cups of coffee don't have soda in them, do they? As a teenager, I made it my life's work to guzzle as much of anything fizzy possible, and even though I have seriously toned down my consumption these last couple of years, I like to think that I know what it is I’m about to drink whenever I crack open a bottle, but to cover my black ass, I did my homework anyway.

Whenever I was exposed to this misinformation, my standard argument I'd always give these morons was that only cola-flavoured soft drinks contained caffeine. Admittedly, after reading into ingredients on the web, I found that my defence to the theory was as incorrect as the stupid theory itself - in Australia, Dr Pepper and Mountain Dew contains caffeine. The fact that Dr Pepper has caffeine failed to surprise me, but when I read about Mountain Dews caffeine content, it blew my freakin' mind, so the following day I picked up a can of my own and only after reading the ingredients on the back for myself did I realise that I'd been dooped (so if you ever stumble across this site, take anything it says with a grain of salt.) That leaves us with Colas and Dr Pepper, and I won't fuck around, should the latter even be counted in this? Australians don't drink it and it's seldom found in our refrigerators, in neither the shop nor the home.

So, in review, lets have a look at Australia: soft drinks that contain caffeine include cola-flavoured ones, Dr Pepper,…oh, wait; that’s it; hmm, that doesn't sound like all soft drinks, I mean, off the top of my head, that leaves the entire Fanta range, Sprite, Mountain Dew, Ginger Ale, Sunkist, 7 Up...need I even continue?

“Reverse your PIN code at the ATM to call the cops”
This shit has ‘R.I.P. Jackie Chan’ written all over it. The idea is if somebody's mugging you and wants you to empty your bank account at the ATM, you can secretly call the cops by typing your PIN code backwards, while the offender is none the wiser. At first glance, the theory sounds like a smart and plausible idea, but then when you analyse it for any more than two minutes, you realise that it’s just as stupid as door handles in a restroom. Now, I don’t know about you, but whenever I go out mugging people at quiet ATMs, I do it after they’ve typed their PIN in, sometimes even after they’ve taken their cash out; it's just a rule of thumb in my robbery repertoire. What good is someone that might be calling the cops under the guise of typing in a PIN code? Besides, this saves me using my gun. Hey, I know a neat trick: next time you go out to get some fast-cash, type your PIN backwards three times and see what happens.

“It’s safer to work in a prison than anywhere else”
This probably doesn’t even deserve to be on this list. It could be discussed ‘til the end of time. The argument is that working in a high-security facility, manned by armed guards, is safer than working in a place that has no armed guards, and in that respect, I give this observation a stadium-applause. The part that I struggle with is the part where the guarded workplace is a prison, frequented by burglars, murderers and rapists; meanwhile, any other workplace is just a peaceful and conventional location, which would rarely come across any of those sorts of people. It’s a little like standing near a guy who is erratically firing a machine gun in your direction, but you argue that you’re safer than everybody else in the world, no matter how far away they are, because you’re clad with Kevlar; it’s hardly looking at the big picture.

"No gherkin and the McDonalds Cheeseburger is a dessert"
Myth, myth, myth – ~~even the thirteen year old cashier selling it to you knows that~~ there is nothing supporting this; case closed.

“Lenseless glasses look mega rad!”
What moro…enough said.

So, there's some food for thought. Unfortunately for us, there are so many myths, old-wives tales and urban legends flying out of people's mouths and into earshot that we can't possibly fact-check everything without some sort of assistant to guide us through every interaction. My main goal here was to do the fact checking for, not only your education, but for mine too. The disrespectful tone in this post, however, is the tenth-degree burn I feel in my brain whenever a large group of people haphazardly bow-down to and then spread theoreticals that really don't require an internet connection or an encyclopaedia to realise that whoever sneezed it on you is clearly a moron, it only requires some good 'ol common sense, something that we as a people have become so bankrupt of. I mean, ‘Macs don't get viruses’? Really, people? Where are we living? A fairy tale land? Think about the shit you're spreading, guys.

Kids are Dipshits

2011-08-31T00:49:00.001+10:00

Cats are awesome. When I get married, I'm adopting...a cat. They clean themselves. They don't need clothing, schooling or a great deal of food. The males fuck around, but that's okay; they're animals, that's what animals do. It will never call me to bail it out of prison and rarely will it have me up at all hours of the night worrying. Plus, they'll keep the birds from shitting all over the car, not to mention, the mummies from haunting the household. Why the hell would you want a kid? I'm never having kids; I'm having cats, damn it!

People often have a fear of commitment; I have a fear of having a kid that I can't in good conscience drown in the bath tub. Fuck kids! It's a jungle out there and kids are dipshits. Why the hell would I want to be a parent? So I can be up at all hours of the night wondering if my daughter is out doing a re-enactment of ‘George of the Jungle’, but with cock? What kind of parent would I even be? The last thing I'd want is to be the corseted helicopter type parent who runs there household the same way the Chinese run their country, but on the other hand, in this day and age, not being one of those parents could actually been seen as negligent. Boys live with their dicks in their hands; most young girls are living with them between their legs, not because of will but out of some clever male trickery. God forbid, if I have a girl, under ‘name’ on her birth certificate will read 'Touch My Daughter And You Die Quinn'. Carved on the inside of my son's door will be 'If you're penis is out while there's a chick in here and she's not your girlfriend, you might die; if she's somebody else's, then I'll frame you for your sister's boyfriend's murder.'

In all seriousness though, I'm living my whole life in a comically-large condom, like the ones in the love scene in ‘The Naked Gun’, because honest to god, there's no telling what I'd do if I had kids. Bringing life into this world is no doubt a wonderful thing, but from watching girls and boys my age living in a world built on penises, vaginas and drugs; having any rug-rats of my own sounds like an act of self-harm.

The thought of a daughter of mine going to clubs half-naked, being offered drinks and drugs and, more importantly, being in the cross-hairs of the male population scares the hell out of me. Is this the Saturday night her drink gets spiked? Has she tried pot yet? Why does she have so many guy friends? The constant questions and the constant worry would be enough to drive you insane. My only hope is that either she is so ugly that she'll be disillusioned to sex and die a virgin or she meets a good guy to date before she leaves school. And I don't use 'good guy' loosely - I mean somebody I've met multiple times, whose parents I've met and broken bread with, whose house I've been in, who I've had a conversation with, and then from here I'll be able to judge whether the girl has struck gold or cum. Dating a nice guy would mean half of the worrying would be removed from my job. Let’s not dance around it, though, the odds of her beginning a long-term relationship in school, let alone, a wholesome one, is slim, but fingers crossed for my, hopefully, hideous future daughter.

That brings me to if I had a boy. If I found out that my son was walking around with his tongue half out and his brain in his dick like some arsehole, I'd thump him. I want other parents to look at him and see that same good guy that I'd like my own daughter to be with; someone who isn't solely interested in depositing as much spunk into the world as humanly possible. If I was the parent of some of the boys I've met over the years, their shit would be on the lawn! I want my household to be one of substance and good values and I won't accept anybody to act like Shane Warne while baring my surname.

Even though I consider myself to be that 'good guy', when you look at it from this perspective, it's a little hard to blame parents for being draconian with their teenagers. I'll repeat it again - kids are dumb; they have no clue what they're doing. I really empathise with parents these days, mostly because the thought of being one myself is already spine-chilling, and I'm not planning on having children for another decade. That's why I want a cat, because cats can’t end up on the show ’16 and Pregnant’.

Mama’s Early-Bloomer

2011-08-10T17:14:00.001+10:00

I’m not too far from my twenty-first birthday, and every year so far has been a journey on a yellow brick road shrouded in presumption. Often I’ll say that if a motherfucker wants to make a presumption about me, then let the motherfucker presume away, but there are a couple of things that I feel have come to a place where they need be set straight, the first being relatively trivial and the second one being on a heavier note.

Firstly, the whole late-bloomer, twenty year old virgin thing - When I was in high school, I was the victim of a lot of misguided presumptions regarding my sex life. I’ve never been one to brag, so rarely did I ever feel comfortable defending my man-parts in that respect, but it was always a massive blow to my ego. The hypocritical thing here is that I often made the exact same assumptions about other students at the same time. I would always just assume a bulk of any of the advanced academia classes were one hundred percent unexposed, unkissed virgins and would stay that way well past there eighteenth birthdays. When it came to my year twelve exams when everybody actually did start turning eighteen, I had been proven wrong left, right and centre. By then, a number of them either were in sexual relationships, got diddled somewhere along the way or, at the very least, had had their tongue down someone’s throat. Exactly like the others who had wrongly assumed about me, some of them had been sexually active for years, even while I was ignorantly casting the dispersion that they wouldn’t for decades.

This transformed my entire judgement process. Whenever I meet somebody now, I just always assume that they are buttering somebody’s toast, regardless of their circumstances. I let the surprise be that they aren’t having sex, as opposed to being surprised when I find out that they are. Believe it or not, eight years on from when the assumptions first began in the school yard; they are still made about me. I don’t understand what it is, I mean, people know that I’m twenty. They must just see the dental braces, the skinny, pale body, the thirteen year old fuzz on my face that takes a week to grow, not to mention, the strong bond I have with my mother, and they’re brains immediately scream ‘virgin!’. Regardless of the reason, I thought it was insane back when I was fifteen, so imagine how my ego feels now in my twenties.

That brings me to my next point – Parental relationships. I am a self-proclaimed mama’s boy; there is no doubt. I live with my mother and life at home is great. She’s a caring, hard-working, understanding and loving parent. There isn’t anything I can’t speak to her about, and vice versa. She’s trusted me enough to let me do whatever I like since I became a teenager. We even do lunch; we do movies; we do concerts, et cetera – in other words, she’s more of a really good roommate that I’ve made a habit of freeloading off, as opposed to a parent.

Two things: the first being - Having this sort of relationship with my mother is in no way and never has been indicative of the fruits that fuel either my social or sex life. I have meals out with my mother because we wanted to try out a restaurant; I see movies with her because we both thought the trailers looked good; I see concerts with her because we both happen to like the artist; not because I’m single, and not because I’m friendless. This may be hard for some to understand, but strong platonic and sexual relationships can coexist with strong paternal ones; if there is anything you take away from this post, don’t forget that.

The second thing – People who find the strong paternal relationship I just mentioned unconventional or peculiar, I really feel sorry for. Just because your parents are part of some tightly-corseted faith or you can’t hold a conversation with them or your dad’s always on the turps or whatever, does not make me the unorthodox one, nor does it give you a free pass to look at me strangely. I apologise to the ones that have been unlucky in this respect, but to those that have the opportunity, I think every child should have this sort of relationship with their parent and their parent with their children; I mean, this isn’t the highly-strung 1920s anymore; c’mon.

Just take it from me, no matter how disgusting the attitude, how pasty the skin, how strong the family bond, how utterly boring the conversation, there is always - at the very least - a few people out of seven billion out there who want to touch their genitals, and probably already have; write that down, motherfuckers.

Doll-Headed People!

2011-07-29T22:34:00.001+10:00

Australia’s first child pageant is on and has been since earlier today, so if you need me, you can find me in my room with the lights off, rocking back and forth in the foetal position until this shit is over. Normally I am a major supporter of just about anything that aggravates the prudish hoi polloi that resides in this country, from something an uneducated radio presenter has said to biblical-blowjobs in Californication, by all means, if it’s pissing someone off, keep doing it, but I’m going to have to go with the prudes on this one – child beauty pageants are fucking creepy!

Yes; not just creepy, fucking creepy.

Like a clown to a coulrophobic, you can pretty much say that I have another fear to add to the emotional line-up. When I see images of the pageants, even if it’s just of one contestant for a few seconds, my stomach churns. I get the same feeling I get when I watch a poorly adultised sitcom with a child actor in the cast or Willow Smith in the ‘Whip My Hair’ music video – the aura of paedophilia. I feel like I’ve typed the wrong thing into Google Images and I need to hit the back button quick before someone sees (or before I throw up), but there’s never a back button…because it’s on the television…or on the magazine I just happened to open. I feel like I’m being forced one step closer to selling child porn and the cops are about to beat down my door with M16s to tear out the hard-drive from my computer so they can indict me. It’s wrong. It also plays on the fact that it would really freak me out if someone walked around with a doll’s head instead of their own, which is basically what these girls are doing. I don’t know about you but I’m not into the whole doll-headed thing; that sounds horrible…I’m also not into kids, just for the record.

Originally, I had a plethora of clever and degrading ways to describe pageant-parents which I was more than keen to share with you, like ‘child abusers’, ‘wacked bitchezz’ (okay, maybe not so clever), but I don’t see any point in saying what a number blog search results can already tell you. All you need to know here is that child beauty pageants have haunted me since I was old enough to get the gist of the nightly news reports and now the doll-headed people are in Australia and frankly, being in Australia isn’t the country’s biggest fish to fry, in my opinion, so I don’t mind too much, that said, I’m real, real scared. But hey! Big ups for the paedophiles in this country, congratulations, guys! I know that when news broke, earlier this year, they all jizzed simultaneously, but for me, these kid’s glowing, little, pouty smiles makes this smiley-guy less of a smiley and more of a trembling blank-lipped dude trying to pretend that there isn’t a five year old in a bikini on his screen.

No Action for Transport 2020

2011-07-04T22:55:00.001+10:00

All aboard the bullshit train, folks; the NSW state government is at it again…

If there is anything that I take with a grain a salt, it’s anything that comes from a bogan’s mouth and railway proposal talk. Railway proposals are the lesbian pornography of the New South Wales government – a lot of noise gets made, but it’s almost always followed with no results. Whenever some state politician starts talk of some elaborate billion dollar rail proposal they’ve put in front of the professional head shakers of our government, all I see is the start of yet another string of cancellations, broken-promises and completion dates predicted to be so far in the future that the plans being proposed won’t even be remembered by the former Minister for Transport who proposed them in the first place. It’s an all too familiar song and dance we do in this state.

This whole thing has been happening for as long as I can remember. I mention this of course in the dawn of the proposal for the North West Rail Link, another possibly doomed idea which has already been on its own thirteen year rollercoaster. The number one issue I always see with NSW transport is square one; let me explain. This square one issue doesn’t lie with CityRail, RailCorp, the indecision of our government or the reality that there has to be a square one in every plan, no, the issue lies with the fact that our government changes our minister for transport like it’s a weekly agenda, and with each new one, we always end up back at square one. This is the genesis to our long list of short-lived ideas and cancelled plans. We’ll always start at square one, then one minister will announce these plans that are expected to be completed by 2020, but by the time the 2017 construction rolls around, we’ve already gone through one or two different ministers who, let’s be frank, will be gone too quickly to care, meanwhile all having their own turn at toying with these plans at their own disposal, sometimes quashing them completely, and funnily enough, more times than none, it all ends with us either returning or remaining at square one.

In the respect to our political issues with square one, the North West Rail Link has been a political harlot. Since the proposal was first put forward (or started putting out) in 1998, it has been through six different transport ministers and two political parties over a thirteen year period. Since then, in chronological order, it was first announced with a 2010 completion date, then revised to be completed in 2017, then back to 2015, then they changed the name to the North West Metro, then extended the plan to somehow include the Sydney CBD via Drummoyne with the possible use of Hogwarts witchcraft, then they decided against that because it was clearly impossible, so they shortened their plan to extend the original plan, then it was cancelled, then they went back to the original 1998 plan in 2010 (the year the ’98 plan was meant to be finished) for construction to begin in 2017, renaming back to the North West Rail Link and now this year, 2011, our newly-appointed state premier has begun to seriously consider the 1998 plan…in 2011...thirteen years later.

If you’re still with me and haven’t yet passed out from just reading about the CityRail yo-yo that half a dozen ministers have had a go of, this is just one of many. The North West Rail Link was part of a position paper released by the government in 1998 which outlined seven projects, with three possibles, which were to be completed or at least started by 2010. The paper was called Action for Transport Plan 2010, so you’d think with what the paper was promising and having a name like that, if not all but most of it would essentially be put into ‘action’, ERRRRR! Incorrect. Of the seven proposals, one and a half were completed: the Airport Link, because it had already started construction, and the Parramatta Rail Link which was actually never truly finished, so they just threw it under the bed, said it was completed and called it the Epping to Chatswood Rail Link; none of the others have started construction. So, just to juice the comical and ironic element here for all it’s worth, a paper called ‘Action for Transport 2010’ was released back in 1998 outlining projects that were meant to have at least been started by 2010, and now it’s 2011 and majority of those projects haven’t even seen the light of day, let alone been completed…and it’s 2011…thirteen years later.

That’s just what was in that paper; as well, since the mid-90s, there was also the proposal for Bondi Beach Station; the CBD -Metro, -Relief Line and -Rail Link; the Anzac Line; the South West Rail Link; the North West Metro (mentioned above); the Western -Express, -FastRail (this would’ve been awesome) and -Metro; plus everything mentioned in the ‘Christie’ proposals and 2009 Blueprint. There is also currently an extension to Circular Quay on the existing Sydney tram line which is still floating around, possibly awaiting cancellation. By the way, did I mention that it’s 2011?

I’m no politician, but speaking as someone who has lived in Sydney all of my life and has witnessed promise after promise only being made to never come to fruition, the NSW government needs to change two things:

They need to stop haphazardly proposing these piss-weak, impractical and over-expensive ideas for our rail network with the rapid-fire approach. For well over a decade, it has seemed like we are just vomiting out any number of ideas in the hopes of hitting a bullseye, but instead, all we have managed to actually complete is some underused, semi-private train line to and from our international airport and the Epping to Chatswood section of the Parramatta Rail Link. What we need is to start working on some practical ideas which are properly and seriously thought out, are cost-effective and aren’t just spat out and proposed the moment the thought is born. Even if this means only having one proposal announced every five years, I’m confident that this slower approach will deliver more results in thirteen years than half a train line and another line that nobody really uses. High speed rail and train tunnels everywhere sounds really awesome but they cost too much money; we need to get real with our propositions.
In turn, if they actually want to see any plans get completed, they need to bring a halt to this rotation of ministers they’ve got going on; it’s what has marred the proper growth of our transport system since the ‘90s. We need a minister who can commit to the job in the long-term and not one who is just biding their time before becoming the NSW Treasurer. When it does come to leaving the position, which is inevitable, they need to be replaced with someone who will respect the proposals already in place and not one who wants to apply their own touches to all of them, creating a mess as a result. The bottom line of it is that nobody can effectively grow a complex rail network while playing a twenty year game of musical chairs; we’re getting nowhere with this shit, stop it.

Despite the dismissive tone, I personally don’t want to make too many predictions about the North West Rail Link. By building an information centre and actually having some sort of plan of attack, the government are making an obvious point of saying that they are serious this time, but only time will tell if we are just hitching another ride on the bullshit train or not. It should probably also be noted that the government have taken a crack at satisfying areas without rail with rapid bus services and that a lot of the bus (and road) proposals made in the ’98 paper were implemented, so it seems that our bus network doesn’t suffer from square one like our trains do. I know that I’ve already said it twice but it needs to be emphasised again: with thirteen years and only really accomplishing a large paper-stack of ideas and one and a half rail lines, it’s getting increasingly difficult to see state rail proposals as anything more than just a fireworks display, and that’s really sad.

The Smog When Smoking

2011-05-31T12:54:00.001+10:00

Whenever I hear someone use the term ‘minority’ or ‘minority group’, my mind immediately jumps to those who have been subjected to discrimination, be it a result of race, religion or disability, but there is one particular group of people that my mind has never gone to when minorities are the topic of conversation, and that group is smokers. If there is anything that I hate more, it's when smokers try to minoritise themselves as a group. We have Africans, Asians, Natives, people suffering from Cerebral Palsy, Parkinson’s, Epilepsy, Down syndrome - all examples of people under unavoidable circumstances - and yet smokers have this audacity to speak like smoking is as unavoidable as a paraplegic having to use a wheelchair. I look on talk of that nature with a big ‘shut the fuck up’ painted across my face.

On the special occasion, out of leisure, I’ll smoke a cigar; with that said, I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. I mention this for two reasons: to illustrate the fact that I am not a smoker and to make the point that if I had a particular place where I have always smoked when I’m out and about, and management decides that it would be best to ban smoking there, I would ash my cigar and stop smoking at the place straight away. Simple. Don't get me wrong, I would be more than peeved, but I wouldn’t disagree and I wouldn’t argue, because what would I dispute if I did? That I need it for my health? No. I realise that I say that from the stand point of someone who isn’t addicted, but be that as it may, addicted or not addicted, I don’t understand when, where and how smokers acquired this bullshit mentality that it’s our tolerance that needs to mould around them, not their dirty and unnecessary habit around us. Please tell me, because I can't even pull a cynical remark out out of my arse to solve that mystery.

Considering the basic facts that smoking is socially acceptable and that governments around the globe chase their own tales in where to stand on big-tobacco, here’s another hypothetical to put things into perspective: we live in a parallel universe exactly the same as the one we live in now, however, the advent of drugs never came about, the world is absolutely drug-free, but instead people become addicted to lighting up small fire crackers. These aren’t normal firecrackers though; these ones release toxins into the air which are harmful to the user and anybody nearby, but they are big business which is why the government doesn’t outlaw them. I know; it sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I have a strange imagination, ‘people in the street lighting up toxic fire crackers’, what a bizarre idea, but can anyone demonstrate to me that toxic and irritating fire crackers is anymore ridiculous than cigarettes? That letting off loud cracks in public which are a nuisance to our sense of hearing and detrimental to everybody's health is anymore absurd than people burning sticks of smoke that are an insult to our sense of smell and have adverse repercussions to the health of not only the smoker but those with the displeasure of being in the vicinity? The short answer is no, it isn't, but whenever somebody wants to ban smoking somewhere, that little nugget never seems to stop smokers from jumping up and down and carrying on like children, no sir. Whenever some apartment building owner wants to ban smoking throughout or some educational facility is considering remaking itself as a smoke-free facility, they all band together like Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels and waste precious breath about phony rights they have that seem to ignore everybody else’s existent ones. Fuck them if they think that that shit is on, because it isn't.

The brass tax of this post is that just because something is popular and has become a social norm does not, on any level, make it a human necessity and, therefore, is not something that we – non-smokers - have to deal with. As a wide-practice, Australians used to kidnap Aborigines; the Americans used to enslave Africans, if we took this rationale that smokers have and applied it to how we eventually dealt with those particular widespread social norms, well, they would still be normal. How about we apply it to murder? People get murdered every day; should the bible prepare for a tweaking? 'thou shalt not kill...but y'know, if the international figures begin to peak, then...yeah, it'll be fine'? Speaking of murder, speeding in our cars is always popular with people my age, should we start petitioning to just turn our streets into speedways? We could just turn this whole country into a circus, just turn Sydney into an all-out downtown Baghdad if we applied this thinking to everything, but we don't, so why do it with smoking? If only smokers, at the very least, could find a patch that stops them from complaining when human rights come into play, because if they did, I’d stick it right over there obnoxious mouths. That’s all I have to say, so I will leave you with something that I have been saving for quite a while: the next time they ban smoking somewhere and a smoker even twitches a lip, remember...

Happy World No Tobacco Day
Thank you, Larry David!
…and, you know, if that still hasn’t helped, check this out.

Insecure Interregnum

2011-04-22T19:42:00.001+10:00

In saying what I am about to, people will probably disagree. They may say things like ‘I don’t think you’re stupid’ or ‘it was them with the problem, not you’, but I just don’t know. Without glorifying the truth, I haven’t had a real lot of insecurities since I finished high school. Without a doubt, my high school years have been my healthiest thus far. It marked the very period of my life where I grand-theft-auto’d the vehicles needed to overcome the fears and insecurities I enrolled with. Nowadays, I do my best at maintaining that with a head-up-high outlook when caught in the teeth of confrontation and reminding myself that words spoken by idiots don’t necessarily need to have anything to do with me, and thusly, will not have anything to do with me. It upsets me to admit, however, that no matter how much I have tried to act like it has, that same mentality has never truly extended into the workplace. My self-esteem has never been a great match against the scrutinising eyes that rest inside the faces of my employers, even the ones that have liked me. My previous boss happened to fall into the category of bosses that want me dead, so I resigned. Now I find myself in this familiar financial interregnum, terrified of what’s ahead and trying to pinpoint on the workplace calendar where it all went wrong, ultimately asking myself the question: was it them with the problem, or was it me?

In short, my recent boss thought that I was a moron. She didn't need to say it straight out, I just knew from reading between every smartarse remark, every comment delivered with a tone and every question which was never quite rhetorical but not exactly answerable either. I know what was being said behind her eyes when I would walk in and behind my back when I’d walk out; she thought that I was stupid. I could have simply chocked it down to an isolated incident with a person that didn’t know how to be a manager, because let’s be blunt, she didn’t - she was a non-communicative woman who blatantly bitched about employees to other employees, who never properly trained anybody and who was too afraid to fire people – but it was hardly isolated, as I had similar issues with the managers at my position before that, however, the same can be said about them as well. They were two brothers who were fresh out of hating their lives and new to running a business, who failed to properly schedule a staff-wide training day which meant that I simply missed out; to my misfortune, this was never something that was considered whenever I was having my first go at anything and that’s why, among other things, I was the least favoured. After I left, one of them were quoted saying that I was ‘the shittest worker’, however, they then followed that statement by impugning trivial things like my taste in music and such, which says a lot about how much their opinion was worth. The bottom line of it is that these people are children, plain and simple.

When I was younger, my father would always say that no matter where I go, there will always be a dickhead, and ~~at these last two jobs~~ at any job I have had, that has rung true. In my previous two, it just so happened that those dickheads had been made or had made themselves managers without having any managerial training to go on, and I don’t take that personally; from that perspective, it was them, not me. Up until here, my nights generally go unscathed, but then I consider the employees who didn’t run into the problems I did, the people I observed as being better trained than I am, who got along with the managers, who got tasks done quicker and better on their first try than I could on my first. Initially, I was asking myself why they picked up things when I couldn’t, wondering what the fundamentals are that I seem to be without, but then I realised that I care less about that sort of comparison when it’s only being made in the privacy of my own mind and care more about my employer making that same comparison in their mind. For some bizarre reason, my brain has simply cut a rope and let my superiors transcend like a helium balloon above all of my peers and all of the teachers that are paid to assess me …and the fact that I have made their opinion matter so much is stealing precious shut-eye from me at night. Like I said - I can’t shake it, and the thought of it is just killing me.

It’s not an easy task admitting a substandard self-worth, that’s why getting this particular subject off my chest has been like pulling teeth. These last few months have just been a persistent battle with an unusual stint of low-esteem, a nasty demon who incessantly asks me how this has happened twice now; who inquires as to how I could leave two jobs and three bosses in my dust without any references to show for it; who, more importantly, wants to know if some sort of tally will soon be necessary. Last night I was writing a cover letter for a job application and every time I had to retype it, I came ever closer to the realisation that I am just terrified, terrified of another workplace and another dickhead who will label themself my boss and me an idiot. That has been my defining thought this year, my future employers, because as the ratio between the jobs I have had to the amount of employers who I can reference on my CV gets more and more unbalanced, I can feel the ice start to thin from beneath me, and I just can’t seem to get off the fucking lake.

Samsung are Idiots

2011-04-19T15:43:00.001+10:00

A couple of weeks ago, in a rare occurrence, I watched regular television for a few hours and managed to catch a few viewings of a stupid Samsung commercial for a campaign of theirs called ‘Turn on Tomorrow’, in which Australia’s own Simon Baker became the ambassador for last year. From the title alone, it’s not a strain to imagine what this clip will entail before you’ve even watched it: a semi-conceptual, near-futuristic concept about the future and how their products will shape it - a platitude that every electronics company has to its name in some way, shape or form. This isn’t why I think Samsung are idiots though, watch for yourself and see if you can spot something that just doesn’t seem quite right in a commercial blabbering on about ‘tomorrow’:

Did you see it? Because aside from the Android phones, 3D televisions, internet tablets, internet capable digital cameras, clever fridges, automatic floor cleaners, device networks, you know what people are really on tenterhooks for in the future? Windows XP! It would seem that either everybody who worked on this advertisement, especially the marketing team, should be fired immediately or that Samsung actually think that an operation system which has been surpassed twofold and is four months shy of celebrating its tenth birthday is the future; idiots. I must admit, XP was certainly something Bill Gates can proudly put on his mantelpiece, but it is not ‘smarter’, nor is it ‘more efficient’ than, say, Windows 7 or Mac OS X, and certainly not something easy to screw up in a campaign which I am sure cost quite a bit of money; idiots. I guess the question that Baker should really have been asking was if tomorrow had already been delivered ten years ago?

Girl-on-Girl

2011-03-29T15:57:00.001+11:00

I don’t know about you, but I am male, so naturally that means that I am a major advocate of girl-on-girl action. Being the proud owner of male equipment means that I am only obligated to raise an eyebrow (and something else) at one girl straddling another, cleaning out the insides of each other’s mouths with their tongues, unfortunately that's the law set by the dude-police...or so I believe. You see, that stuff is treated like gold, but it isn’t gold. I have never understood the male predilection to lesbian behaviour - girl-on-girl is bore-snore!

Without falsely making it sound like my life is like living an American Pie flick, I have been the witness to the sensual union of many female tongues and often it’s met with ample-anticipation and neandathalic-excitement from the male guest list of whatever social-gathering I am at, and I never get what the hub-bub is about. Behaviour like that over something that will essentially go nowhere just gives me the drive I need to revoke my penis. Lesbian action shouldn’t even be considered ‘action’, it’s not even a comedy, it’s more of a b-grade drama about Elvis; in clearer terms it's boring. Whoopty-do! Two chicks are kissing, now what? Are they getting naked? No. Will it eventually lead to sex? Probably not. Am I embarrassed to be part of a gender distracted by the smoke and mirrors of it all? Yes. Those same guys who edge straight girls on for lesbian acts or gawk at actual couples like little R. Kellys in training, I guarantee are the ones that frequent (chose that word carefully) a lesbian porn collection at home.

Speaking of, for something that is designed to excite, lesbian porn is even more uneventful than these petty shindig hook-ups. Not to say that I watch a great deal of porn, especially when I'm involved with someone, but in the little lesbian porn I have ever bothered exposing myself to, nothing ever happens! It’s just two girls who never truly come to a close and look just as bored as I am, and after it's done, I am only ever left with an impulse to switch on an episode of Sesame Street.

In a nutshell, do you want to know what happens in any gratuitous lesbian behaviour, be it some lip-service at a party or in front of the camera? Nothing. When it does actually come to...clears throat...watching pornography - and this will sound several different kinds of wrong - I really need a penis in there somewhere to make it at all exciting. Let's face it, gratuity is a car and that car is best driven by a man; it’s the truth.

Angry About Birds

2011-03-23T14:53:00.001+11:00

I love Hollywood and all of its spawn. Even if I need to rifle through a dozen romantic comedies and talking-animal animations in order to get to one great film or television show, it never ceases to engage me. I've watched movies since I was an infant and have since built up a phrenic list of my all-time favourites, films and shows that I can see myself showing my own infants one day and even looking on with geriatric eyes in my much wrinklier years. The unfortunate thing about Hollywood is that it happens to also be its own worst enemy. It now has a knack for ruining anything great that has been done and then milking it for everything it's worth. This is exactly what’s happening with the Angry Birds brand right now. Every plan they have for the Angry Birds franchise is a clear reflection of this same mentality, not exactly Hollywood's but just a reflection in general of the whole cash-cow business strategy that goes on, and that mentality makes this bird truly angry.

Needless to say, screenwriting is a creative process. It’s all about thinking outside of the box, about making people like me go ‘whoa!’, but I’m beginning to feel like a lot of movie-makers and screenwriters are going down a path where they attempt to make people go ‘whoa’ without having to step out of that box. What exactly is it that I am referring to? I am talking about every remake, reboot, adaptation, spin-off, prequel and decade-waited sequel out there. Nowadays, when a screenwriter opens up a blank cover page to a yet-to-be-written script and begins to type up some superhero flick or a reimagining of Gilligan’s Island (it's only a matter of time), half of what makes the creative-process just went out the window. It’s a creative epidemic, all a result of money-hungry laziness. Angry Birds is worse, because at least when you begin to convert a comic book into a feature film there is a conceivable story in it, but Angry Birds is a video game, one that was born in the iPhone App Store no less, and they plan to turn that into a physical board game and, more importantly, an animated feature film with the possibility of a television show. Let me say it again, Angry Birds, a mobile phone game about sling-shooting wingless kamikaze birds at pigs that reside within poorly built structures is going to become a feature film – you know, ones that run at the cinemas for about an hour and a half – and perhaps even a television show – like ones that make a hundred episodes and get syndicated around the world. They're desperate!

Angry Birds is just a prime example of what the film industry does when it strikes gold, polishing until the lustre is lost, especially consider that investors have a confidence in it worth forty two million American dollars. At the moment there are also a litany of ridiculous films in their early stages, namely: Footloose, The Bodyguard, RoboCop and Total Recall remakes; Shakespeare in Love, Clerks, Mad Max and Die Hard sequels; and then anything Will Smith has done, including I Am Legend, Hancock and Independence Day (two planned) sequels, and don't get me started on the Annie remake he's lining up to star his black daughter. A remake of The Bodyguard? Really? Footloose too? What the fuck, Hollywood? Who remakes a fantastic film that stars Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, one that was made in the last twenty years no less, that's asking for trouble. To make matters worse, it's rumoured that Rhianna might be taking Houston's character. What does this mean exactly, you ask? It means that they are considering someone who can't actually sing (or act probably) to play a character that was once played by a singer slash actress who can; excuse me? Same goes for Footloose too. I guess I just want to know why; apart from money, I would like to know why producers are so hell-bent on ruining the good. Want to hear something else that makes me gag? The Buffy movie in pre-production at the moment. That's right, don't worry about rereading the previous sentence, I said a new Buffy movie. Here is a breakdown of everything that is wrong with that idea: it will have nothing to do with the original creator, it will have nothing to do with the original story, perhaps not even the original characters, it will be a new cast, there has already been a Buffy movie like that and it was so bad that even the makers hated it, it's been nine years since the show ended (eight years since its spin-off, Angel, ended) - which is way too soon - and, because of all that, the end result will come out looking like another Twilight. I'm not sure about other fans, but another more personal reason the thought of this makes me sick is because I absolutely loathe the whole vampire thing that is all the rage at the moment, it's just another cash-cow. The one thing I appreciated about Buffy and Angel when the first Twilight film came out was that the shows were no longer running and, therefore, were unable to be tarnished by that ugly foreheaded guy (I couldn't care enough to look up his name) and the deadpan chick who can't act (Kristin Stewart); this whole new Buffy remake thing completely undermines that! If this movie goes ahead, what I held sacred about the Buffy and Angel series will be washed away by the drool dripping from the crowds of undersexed teenagers who will frequent the theatres that show the film and fundamentally finance another god-forsaken sequel.

An example of an unsuccessful milk of the Hollywood cow which i have just been itching to share is the My Big Fat Greek Wedding disaster. Personally, I have never had a real lot against romantic comedies unlike the hoi polloi that do. I have heard the films increasingly cop a lot of slack, and sure they're low production, recycled, predictable and are being released left, right and centre, but nonetheless, they're a bit of fun and I enjoy myself a good rom-com on occasion; My Big Fat Greek Wedding falls into that category. For those that haven't seen it, it basically follows a somewhat sheltered, Greek woman who lives in America with her family who happen to be very well vested in their cultural roots. She meets an American man. It's a romantic comedy so naturally she falls for him, there is a clash of cultures, they all get over it, the two get married and everyone lives happily ever after, and the same goes to how I left the theatre - happy...but no! It couldn't just end there. Hollywood whipped out its mighty erection and just blew it by creating My Big Fat Greek Life; a situation comedy continuing from the film. Now right off the bat, I was never exactly sure who thought the transformation from romcom to sitcom would be at all smooth, but I hope they got the sack. Yeah, they're both comedies, but that doesn't mean anything. From the pilot episode, I wasn't seeing a show from the movie, I saw a completely different show with the same cast members that were in the movie; the show just had a completely different feel and a completely different theme. The thing is: a romantic comedy that runs for eighty minutes is reliant on both the romance and the comedy (go figure), which means that we can deal with five minutes of straight out romance and no comedy, however, with a sitcom that runs for about twenty to thirty minutes, five minutes of no laughs is Nelson suicide. And that's just the show itself, the cast were an issue too. A US sitcom typically needs a comedian, it's a mould in any show that's been a success, just at least one comedian that can deliver words off a page in a way that will make people laugh - The New Adventures of Old Christine has Julia Loui Dreyfus, Seinfeld had Jerry Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond had Ray Romano, Rules of Engagement has David Spade; all successful American sitcoms. My Big Fat Greek Life had none, and therefore, once again, the delivery that worked in the comedic film just wasn't cutting it for television. The story differences between the film to the show were a little difficult to grasp as well, not only that but I found them unnecessary as well, for example, the minute changes in some of the character names and locations, things that matter enough to ruin the flowing illusion of the story but not enough that the details needed to be changed for any reason at all. The biggest difference, one that I feel should've been taken as a bad omen, was the replacement of co-star Jon Corbett. I don't know about you, but when the second on the cast list can't do it, you forget it. Not only that, but for some insane reason they then had Jon Corbett guest star on the show as another character, which just confused the hell out of everyone…idiots.

Much like the Buffy thing, I am becoming more and more uneasy over films that still exist on their lonesome. I’m beginning to get the sense that the films that haven’t had some remake or sequel attached to them are just sitting ducks and that it’s only a matter of time before the armed, fatigue-clad Hollywood rises from the bushes and starts making a mess of something else I love. One of the worst things about it are the audiences that either don't know or are too forgetful to know about the original, usually the same bunch who unwittingly offer praise of remakes and subtle sequels without its origins to compare it with; it's always a big shame in my eyes. It just seems that there is no room for two films with the same name in some moviegoers minds. I just wish that there were films that can be thrown in a metaphorical vault and be left unscathed and untouched for eternity, because when it comes to show-business and money, it just doesn't seem to me like anything is sacred anymore, and believe me, if they are considering adapting feature films from iPhone apps, then whatever film or show you hold sacred is just another bird waiting to be picked off by the pants-pockets of Hollywood’s producers, mark my words.

I Love Arseholes

2011-02-20T16:27:00.001+11:00

And that statement isn't me with my fingers stuck in the splendid jar of sarcasm, no, I do love arseholes, we all do - I call it the ‘Letterman Syndrome’. The syndrome is where, no matter how much of an arsehole or lunatic someone is, you excuse their short-comings because another element of what they do compensates for it. In this particular case, I'm focusing on those arseholes that our televisions, radios and cinemas expose us to - in a word: celebrities. Our whole lives, advancements in technology have allowed us to worship people that in reality we would probably want to make punches with, but in the realm of fame, we admire and support these...well, these pricks; it's a double-standard of society. So here's a list - and we all know how much Letterman loves his lists - of all the arseholes that I, personally, love:

Eminem: I think Eminem deserves first mention, because for a cheekily-crude-minded, wife-beating, hate-ridden, murder-obsessed, misogynistic rapper, Eminem is a hard guy to dislike. On one hand, Eminem is no doubt talented - he has the mindset and articulation needed to put a brilliant new-age rap song together as if it’s some sort of reflex, but on the hairier hand, he distastefully names names. Now, I’ve never been too phased when he begins to make cracks at Lindsay's drug problem or Michael Jackson (enough said), because let’s face it, one of the reasons we buy his albums is because he's a psycho person who calls other famous people crazy, and that is seemingly awesome. It's when he begins to take shots at honourable people who aren't total crackpots that my principles and my conscience begin to sustain some injury. In 2009, I eagerly found myself buying the long-awaited Relapse album fresh off the shelf. Even though I did like it, I found that some songs were basically a demonstration to us as people that, even after Christopher Reeve's death, Eminem would continue to take shots at his paraplegia. It was one thing to comment on the late actor's illness in his earlier records while he was still alive, but it's another to exploit the disability of someone who has passed. Another example, and probably the one that hurt the most, was listening to his latest CD, Recovery, released mid last year, which on two tracks he jokes about Michael J. Fox's illness. Not only do these little quips belittle both Reeve and Fox as people, the latter I consider to be talented, bravely-optimistic and quite honourable in comparison to the rapper, but it is also demeaning to anybody who suffers from Parkinson’s disease and paraplegia or the like. Who knows, The Michael J. Fox Foundation may well be the very people who discover a cure for the disease that has cut Fox's acting career short and if that does actually happen - which we cross our fingers for - Eminem will forever be known as the guy who blatantly went on record to make fun of the very man who made that cure possible.

Meanwhile, while Eminem is laughing at the severely disabled, I still buy his albums and listen to these songs. It's not just me either, the bulk of Eminem's records have all been well-received and have pulled in more than adequate sales, with over five and a half million copies of his last album alone being sold, and that’s in less than a year, and I’m willing to bet that majority of the people who have a copy have watched the Back to the Future films with profound emotion on some level regarding Fox's illness; I know I have. The whole of Eminem’s fan base, myself included, are the epitome of the Letterman Syndrome at play.

David Letterman: Late Show with Letterman has been a drug ever since I was old enough to stay up late and watch it. There are no surprises as to how he has survived two networks and almost thirty years on the air. From the drawn out stand up jokes at the beginning, Paul Schaeffer and his band, and the wit of David, all aided by big names, the show is a gem...but let’s face it, he’s a dickhead, perhaps an even a bigger one than Eminem (even he called David an arsehole). Why is he a dickhead? For two reasons: one, he has no regard for women and women's rights and two, he is a bonafied hypocrite. In 2009, Letterman came out on the air to say that he was being extorted for money. Letterman would go on to admit that this person, later found to be a CBS producer, was privy to affairs that Letterman had been having with multiple female interns on his show over the years.

Firstly, people knew about the affairs. The extortionist was later found to be a CBS producer on a different show, so it’s clear that the affairs had become such a common occurrence that it became general knowledge, even breaking the gossip boundaries of his show. With that in mind, the question that needs to be asked is what sort of workplace politics was being set by Letterman in behaving this way. Let’s say you were a woman and you worked for Letterman knowing that he was taking a stroll down the female pay roll with his penis, wouldn't you feel like you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't let him take advantage of you? Wouldn't you just wonder if there will be a day where those that have been involved will begin to lead better advantaged careers than you? I'm sure the female members of his staff felt this way, and by setting the kinds of standards that raise those sorts of questions, women's rights have ended in that workplace.

Secondly, Letterman really showed his hypocritical hand in all of this. When Letterman received the letter - attached to a screenplay about the affairs in the backseat of his car - I can imagine his head crashing to the steering wheel with the realisation in mind that everybody was just about to find out how much of a hypocrite he really is. Many times has Letterman humorously indulged in the news of some politician being caught out having sex with someone in office. He would make snide remarks and make out like he was above it and meanwhile he was doing the exact same thing himself. So the next time some celebrity or politician's sexual indiscretion becomes water-cooler talk, he'll no longer be able to make wise-cracks on or off the air about them because now we all know that he's just as bad, perhaps worse.

Not only that, but he showed us what he really thought of women in general, which includes the ones in his staff, and more importantly, the one that is his wife. Let's not forget what kind of misogynistic role model he is being for his five year old son too. You see, we tend to ignore Letterman's insensitivity and sticky fingers for the almost always entertaining guests, both musical and otherwise. Fortunately enough though, for those of us who haven't succumbed to celebrity-inspired hypocrisy, Jimmy Kimmel, Craig Ferguson, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Fallon and ~~Jay Leno~~ are all examples of people who too have quality talk shows and are not major douche bags, so perhaps give them a whirl first...well, maybe not Leno, but the others.

Australian Football Players: I don’t follow football as much as I did when I was younger, but I still watch the major games on occasion so it’s worth the mention, because be it NRL or AFL (or maybe even Rugby, but not so much), this syndrome applies. Let’s not beat around the bush, our football players get one drop of alcohol in them and they turn into a pack of rapists. The thing with football in Australia is that the game doesn't require you to be intelligent, just muscular, and when you get a bunch of half-witted strong guys on national television every week, they get this complex that every woman wants their penis, and when they come across one that doesn’t (because, for most of them, why the hell would you?), the cogs that make their rational decisions for them begin to skip teeth, that exenterated by the loosened inhibitions and arousal that comes with being intoxicated.

With that said, though, sometimes I feel like football players are sometimes wrongly accused. A good example of this would be the Matthew Johns thing a few years back. For those that don’t remember, Matthew Johns spent years building a name for himself, especially in his post-football career. Unfortunately, in 2007, that name was somewhat tainted after he was accused of sexual assault in an encounter with the accuser, a nineteen year old, five years earlier. He denied it, of course, stating that the sex was one hundred percent consensual. Fortunately though, with the personality already well-constructed and his robust denial of the allegations, public-opinion remained in his favour.

The terrible truth about the Matty Johns accusation was that it was a story that we’d heard a million times before, especially when it comes to NRL players, which he was. It is always some impressionable young girl who stays silent for an extended period of time and then drops a bomb shell of noise about how she was raped by one or more players in some hotel room when they were playing away from home one night; the only thing that set Matty Johns apart from the rest was the fact that he’d spent years building a positive name for himself, which is the exact thing that helped many people believe Johns when he said that it wasn't rape. My point in that was that Australian football players are being accused of sexual indecencies all the time, and sometimes it’s another Matthew Johns thing, but sometimes…it isn’t, and they will get fired from one team, but then will get an offer from another, and people will cheer these players on again, as if to say that they’ve been absolved of a heinous crime that we will never be one hundred percent aware of the facts. That is why they don't lose their jobs as NRL players, because the football teams know what we're like when sticking to our values - it's the Letterman Syndrome.

Tom Cruise: 'Arsehole' maybe isn't the first word I would use to describe Tom Cruise; ‘nut job’ maybe; ‘loon’ perhaps. However, despite the clear struggle he has with not coming across as an idiot, with that ridiculous display on Oprah, having a child with Katie Holmes (which is insane for all of its own reasons), and that ten minutes he spent on television talking about scientology while laughing at absolutely nothing (seriously, watch it – he starts laughing here), he's actually a fantastic actor and has a brilliant filmography under his belt. In essence, I'll still spend the fifteen dollars to see one of his movies, even though his crazy, albeit, subtle shenanigans sort of frighten me.

South Park: I've never routinely watched South Park, but I appreciated its existence. The show is just one of the many things in this world that I feel keep people tame and teases the shit out of them when they aren’t. Unfortunately, South Park had that episode that made fun of Steve Irwin’s death back in 2006 and that was it for me. It’s pretty much the Eminem thing all over again, just that the death that they were teasing only happened less than two months before the episode was aired and that there was no actual conceivable humour in it, not anything that would inspire laughter anyway, no matter who it was about. At least in Eminem’s songs, he teases people in a clever way, which is what often helps me excuse it. This South Park crack at Irwin’s death was in no way clever, just seemed to me like it was thrown in there at the last minute to cause a ruckus of pissed off people. I still appreciate the show and the underrated service it does to the world though, but the joke was made out of the poorest taste, and the same can be said for the taste left in my mouth after watching the episode. In other words, they're funny, but fuck them for doing that, I mean, that’s somebody’s husband and father…but people still watch it, regardless.

The list could really go on and on, I mean, there are a few bands out there who could be named, plenty of actors, hip hop artists too, of course. Those that have been mentioned are the ones that are evidently the result of my own Letterman hypocrisy. When it boils down to the indiscretions of our celebrities and sometimes even people we know personally, we've become modern day Pharisees, dumping our own convictions to support people whom have none of their own, it would be the same if you were Jewish but still supported Hitler because he was a good public speaker, doesn't make a real lot of sense now, does it? So, I really want to end my spiel with some crazy nonsense and the Mission Impossible theme, here’s Tom Cruise to help me out with that.

To Find the Words

2011-02-02T00:16:00.003+11:00

He was never a fan of the word ‘lonely’. To him, one that is lonely is one that is always lonely…in any scenario. He denies the eclipse that they’ve called ‘loneliness’ – loneliness, to him, is an impairing darkness, a distracting and fruitless figment in the imagination of others. He cannot possibly be lonely. He has the friends who stave off such ideas; a family unit who have helped him take walks through life; all people who take pleasure in a company that is his own, and possess the desire needed to embrace it - he knows this. He also knows these other creatures, another breed of human that have found what he so desires in another, just a different people who have illustrated a goal that he could never accurately author; he looks on them with great enthusiasm. Yes, he may hunger for what they have, but that hunger is never met with envy or jealousy. Solitude was never a problem, either. If anything, he enjoys it. His solitude is most often spent with a friend named ‘Johnnie’, a pitiful playlist of love and a page freshly filled with words sipped from a glass of Scotch Whisky – an aged beverage whose infancy was at a time when this believer was just learning of the existence of love, a phenomenon only yet witnessed through silver screens and not with his own eyes. Intoxicated by the thought of love with another, but yet to be experienced, that boat hadn’t even sailed at the time, much less endured the rough seas as it has now. A sip so sweet, that it has seen a better time; perhaps. A sip so profound, that it’s just as old as the yearning in his heart; no doubt.

Well aware that a sail-boat with no water inside of it is one not yet pushed to its pinnacle, his boat has sailed, and, sure, it has its fair-share of puddles and slippery spots, but it’s not enough for him – he yearns. He huffs and puffs at the brick wall of many faces - the faces of every battle lost, and every battle he failed to fight. How could he have thrown something like her away, he questions; how could such a specimen be in his presence without him sparing the thought, he wonders. Every female of his past, every figure left touched or untouched, they are all a market of questions, all marvels that walk the foundations of his past. Does he gawk at such faces? No; he scribbles with muse, constructing sentences that come from a place deep down but are only intended for the eyes of tonight’s obsession. The eyes that sparkle, the smiles that thicken the blood – sublime. He doesn’t love these girls, but the thought of such depth, a depth far greater than the one delivered by an image on a computer screen - exhilarating. They are just LCD smiles, all a watermark of two words, one that begins with ‘y’ and one that ends with it. To yearn, in his case, is to be lonely. He often doesn’t like to admit it, but even though he doesn’t always feel it, he yearns for someone and that’s what makes him lonely - if only finding that person was as easy as it is for him to find the words.

Fantastic Country

2011-01-26T10:55:00.001+11:00

So, it’s Australia Day today…and that’s pretty cool, especially for those that aren’t actually Australian since they tend to get more festive about this holiday than some of us actual Australians who, at times, take it for granted. My genetic cocktail is a simple one: Nine hundred and fifty millilitres of Australian with a dash of Maltese. I was born here and have never really left, with that said, I’ve never been overly patriotic when it comes to being Australian. I have always felt that Australian patriotism is one of those things that goes without saying, and therefore, is almost always over-stated. Also, I’ve felt that true patriotism has sort of been lost in this country, especially on days like today. Unfortunately, we have these people who walk around with clichéd Australian insignias like the Southern Cross and the Australian flag tattooed on their skin, people say rubbish like ‘Australian pride for life’ and any other sound bite they stole off the last guy, and these people think that makes them an appreciator, but let me tell you a little something about those who boisterously make themselves known as proud Australians, their patriotism is as fake as those Australian flag tattoos they stick to their faces. They wave our flag around, incessantly beep their horns and get absolutely faced on the twenty-sixth of January every year because it's easy - someone with a learning disorder can do any of that - however, the moment you ask these people any basic questions regarding our founding settlers and the indigenous people of Australia or ask them to recite the second verse of the Australian anthem even, they flinch; I don’t even know that verse and this is my birth place. Not only that, but the moment an actual full-blooded Australian does something wrong, these faux-patriots immediately retreat back to their native origins. Whenever a crowd of Australians attack a Middle Eastern looking man at Cronulla Beach or something, suddenly whatever foreign blood sitting in their line becomes the place where their pride disappears to while they call us names for a few weeks. My point is that I don't appreciate faux-patriotism and this somewhat appreciative post is not in the same spirit.

So, at the risk of sounding like an Australian patriot myself, despite having the right to be, here's a conflict that I have been battling. Ever since I was young, I have watched American sitcoms and I’ve been in love with the lifestyle depicted in those shows ever since, namely ones that are set in New York. Watching them has fuelled my desire to one day live in New York City, but there are things that I know I will miss about Australia if I did actually go through with moving overseas, things that might essentially keep me here:

An Economy with Biceps
With the recent economic recession that waned on the minds of every CEO in the world, the country you lived in really defined how much the recession affected you. Here in Australia, thanks to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his party, the recession hardly even put a dent in the way we lived. The Australian public and Rudd’s own party seem to have forgotten what sort of role Rudd played in protecting this country, and that thinking is what lost him the role of Prime Minister. The guy essentially saved Australia from the crisis by keeping us spending. He managed to set up an array of different incentives, from the student bonus to the first home owners grant, and as a result of that, he saved a lot of jobs and saved this country from the turmoil which plagued US spending. Sure, we’ll all pay it back eventually with taxes and such, but what the hell, we can’t expect to be spared a recession for free. The fact that this country had a Prime Minister which followed a great idea in the worst of economic times and that his successors now have an example to follow in terms of handling our economy is something that I will need when in hot pursuit of a career. Would I have that same security overseas in some places? Not everywhere.

Freedom and a Warless Soil
Freedom - what more could you ask for in a country? We had Saddam ordering the slaughter of people in Iraq, we have the Chinese government pulling wool over its people’s eyes and then there's the Taliban stoning adulterers to death in the Middle East. Here we can cheat on anybody we like, we can do a Google search without government intervention, we don’t need to worry about being bombed and we can pretty much do whatever we like, so long as it remains within Australian law which is a more than reasonable one. Sure, we totally screwed the Aborigines on the whole freedom deal, but hey, if you’re a white Australian like me, life in Australia is spent grudge-free. There are also no wars on our soil and no major terrorist attack in our history. The living conditions here are pretty close to ideal; makes it hard to leave.

Free Medical
This is one of the biggest things putting me off living in the US. When I was younger, I was pretty naïve to the fact that Medicare was more of a privileged gift from our government than a human right. Personally, I think that every human being should have access to socialised medicine, especially in civilised countries, because it rules…seriously. When I have a tooth ache or something, I avoid the dentist at any cost, and that’s because I have to pay for dental; I’m not paying a hundred dollars for a pain that might go away in a week! It’s that same thinking that would stop people from calling the ambulance if we had no public option, because, believe it or not, not many people are willing to spend money on a maybe. Chest pains? Not worth the cost for doctors and nurses, especially on top of the ambulance fees you get charged for now with the Medicare system. Cut your hand? Wrap a bandage around it and hope for the best? I just think that it’s amazing that in this country, you could be in a hospital for weeks, you’ll have a nurse and a doctor, both being paid, the latter being paid well; if you have surgery, there are heaps of people in that damn theatre, they all have to be paid. Then your sheets are being changed, you’re getting juice and biscuits brought to you, meals too, and you’ve got that television, and it’s not in front of you either, it’s hanging from the ceiling, and you don't have to pay for any of it! Moreover, the reason you’re there is because you’re not well, and when you’re not feeling your best, the last thing you want to be thinking about is money. What a service this country does for the unwell.

The Government aren’t Barbarians
I’ve never been for capital punishment. The only benefit of capital punishment that I can see is…ah, gotchya! There is none. Australia isn’t a supporter of capital punishment, and I couldn’t be happier about that. I personally feel that nowhere in the world should be giving anybody a death sentence until the day that we have a machine that can read people’s thoughts, and even then, I don’t know if I would support it. For a world where anybody can be bought, and I mean anybody, be it leaders and members of the judicial system, for a world where people can be wrong and for a world which, in some parts, have judicial proceedings which end on the simple word from a jury of people, the concept of capital punishment shouldn’t be embraced by anybody. Besides, seeing someone rot in gaol for the rest of their lives without the option for bail is enough for me. This maybe the result of over a decade of catholic schooling, but, the same way that no one has the right to murder, nobody should have that right to sentence someone to death, no matter who you are. I could go further on a political tangent, but I’ll save it, this isn’t the place.

We Dig Refunds
Up until recently, overseas refunds were another thing that I was naïve about. In this country, there is an unspoken leniency when it comes to refunding a product that has already been purchased. Ordinarily you would think that companies would feel uneasy about having to hand money back to the consumer, but we do, and we do it with virtually no questions asked. What I never realised is that in some countries, that unspoken leniency doesn’t exist, they don’t have that same obligation that stores here have to their shoppers. It’s strange, but I get it. It’s all about different cultures and their attitudes toward things, but I used to just figure that it would be the same in any full-fledged capitalist country. I recently bought something from a company based in the UAE for a hundred and fifty Australian dollars, none the wiser to the fact that if I wasn’t happy with the product I wouldn’t be able to return it with the same ease that I would be met with if the company was based here. Long story short, I fought and fought, but never ended up getting my money back. So, I’m just happy that I am able to take comfort in that I could hurl an Australian-bought iPhone down a flight of stairs and still get my money back; it’s awesome.

Alright now - time for me to graze in the sun over a barbeque and, hopefully, someone brings some beers, because today is maybe one of the only days that I will drink it. Anyway, to celebrate a country cannot be done out of some half-arsed boast, it needs to be done out of appreciation, because you’re privy to that fact that there are things here that cannot be found elsewhere. Not only do we have public health care and freedom, but we have so much: Sydney Harbour, with the bridge and the Opera House, the Great Barrier Reef, Ayers Rock, great beaches and fantastic cities. Travelling is something I have always wanted to do, and the same goes for living overseas, but Australia’s shoes are hard ones to fill, that’s all. Happy Australia Day.

The Secret to Better Sex is in your Christmas Tree

2010-12-25T09:39:00.001+11:00

The mark of the Christmas season can mean only one thing: that 2010 is at its zenith. How do you sum up an entire year in words, not just personally but in a generality? It’s one thing to say a year was ‘good’ or ‘great’, but it’s another in knowing what you are truly describing, the year as a whole or just the last few months of festivities? Don’t be bias. How have you grown personally - emotionally, physically, spiritually? Have you digressed at all, is there an area that needs improvement or repair? Are you proud of the person you are entering the new year as, or are you potentially marring it with hang ups before it has even begun? How has the world treated us as a species, was it with kindness and compassion, or has it shaken us with cruelty, testing our mortality? Most of all, have you truly dissected the year so that you are able to accurately determine the thoughts that will run through your head and the feelings that will course through your body during that final countdown next week?

While the developed world poured billions of dollars into a Haiti further set-back by an earthquake in January, the US poured gallons of the world’s precious Veblen-good, oil, into the Mexican sea. The comedy world suffered the loss of parody-king, Leslie Nelson, however, the political-world gained an asset (to us, anyway), Julian Assange, who has evidently shaken fear in the golden slippers of the world’s leaders, perhaps putting an end to corruption and political sneakiness. Only last month did the same hopes and prayers that managed to pull thirty-three men from a caved-in Chilean mine fail to save the twenty-nine lives that were lost in a New Zealand mine. While all of this was happening, the world soon realised that Obama, apart from becoming the first black US president and reciting a litany of long-speeches, hasn’t really done anything, especially on the forefront of the forgotten heroes of 9/11 (Got proven wrong on that one, however, Obama continues to forget those heroes, who have remained abandoned for nine Christmases now). Like any year, we suffered some great losses, but that’s the beauty of a new year. In this festive season, many of us, I trust, have had the inclination to spend generously on our loved ones, but, today, spare a thought for the Haitians, and at that, any other under-developed country-people; for those living near the shores of the Mexican sea; for ~~the families~~ all the families who have fallen short a loved one in the last twelve months; for the less-fortunate; and for anybody else who might not be celebrating Christmas the way they would like to today. The spared thought does not need to be met with anguish; it just needs to be a moment of appreciation for what we do have, and what allows us to celebrate the way that we please, after all, that’s what Christmas is for.

So – global issues aside – the question remains: who am I entering the new year as? I’ve thought long and hard about this year, even before we even came close enough to graze the festive season. It’s been a year of growing. I feel that the person that lived last year died this year. He was bored, blind and bitter, but it was a building experience. The new year helped me shed a layer of dead skin that I had been clutching onto for such a long time. I was already rid of a drawn-out rocky-relationship that was hurting both me and the person I was with; then this year’s milestone-virginity was penetrated when I left a job that I didn’t like, and thusly was not liked at; that resignation only lead me into a year occupied by a small-time job that I enjoy doing and a course with people that I relished being around; I only recently rediscovered a romantic-presence which took me years to realise I’d misplaced; toxicity was disposed of; lost friendships were rekindled; and a minute number of new ones were made, more so than before. Need I even say that it has been a fantastic year on my side of things? The same way that twelve months ago I said goodbye to a painful streak of bad times, it was a year where I essentially laid the first brick of a path to a newer version of myself, I will enter 2011 with the emotional-equipment needed to lay that last brick and hopefully celebrate perpetuated friendships and some form of flourishing relationship by this time, next year – fingers crossed.

The thing is this - an entire year cannot be equally channelled into a word or even a single sentence; I didn’t even get it in nine-hundred of those words. My point in writing this is that there are questions we must ask ourselves in a week’s time. Have we paid the proper, non-partisan respect to every up and every down when giving a sum-up of an entire year our very best shot? Have we considered everything from this year and learnt from it enough to take that first baby-step into the next? If those questions are difficult ones or you dislike the answer – and I assume this will be the case for some - the time is now to get your house in order – use this next week to take a step back and take a look at your own personal 2010 portrait; is it a pretty one? If it isn’t, well, I suggest some basic photo editing software…and quick. Have a very Merry Christmas, guys, and, more importantly, a happy and a cathartic New Year.

Facebook & Cigarettes

2010-12-20T03:53:00.001+11:00

Sewn into the lining of any successful smartphone on the market today is social-networking. If social-sites didn’t exist, smartphones would still be in those awkward Windows Mobile 2003 days, just with improved graphics. Kids, teenagers and adults today - we all walk around with these devices that have the ability to call, text, compose documents, organise us socially and financially, yet we have providers who simply market them as social-networking devices with some bonus features on the side, and we use them that way too. There was a time when if you found yourself on a street or at a busy train station and couldn't see someone with a cigarette in their hand, it would be high-time to try that luck with a lottery ticket or a dollar in a poker machine. Today, it would prove a difficult task for one of those same smokers to flick their cigarette into a passing train carriage and hit someone that isn’t visiting a social-networking site at that exact second. On that note, the more train carriages I walk onto and the more I see people on their work-breaks indulging in a smoke while reading about how some guy they haven’t seen in years had to go down to the store to get milk, the more I realise that online social-networking has become so addictive and so widely habitual that it is now the new-age cigarette.

From the previous paragraph alone, I'm sure that you've already surmised that I am a non-smoker to some degree. If we get down to specifics, I vigorously oppose cigarette-smoking. One of the many reasons I protest them so strongly is due to my view on dependency, to be more specific, my view on people bowing down to flakes of ash wrapped in little squares of paper. Once addiction dawns, you’ve backed yourself into an inconvenient corner; you sign yourself onto having to light up the moment you get up in the morning, having to make breaks at work just because you’re itching for a fix, and having no option but to make use of the outside areas of establishments that are more than happy to offer the inside areas to non-smokers; in other words, becoming a routine smoker, to me, sounds like a massive pain in the arse. Not only that, but it also forces your bank account into the minus with nothing but a cornucopia of health defects, bad lungs, bad breath and a displeasing body odour to show for it – well, this is how I am starting to feel about Facebook and any other social networking site.

I have never believed myself to have an addictive personality, not chemically anyway. In putting on my hypocrite-pants, the one and only thing I can admit having a mild addiction to is technology and the internet - I am a colossal geek when it comes to the social-networking and the gadgetry of this beautiful age that I was fortunate enough to grow up in. Evidently, like everybody else, I too had been taking massive drags of the Facebook-cigarette. Several months back, the mobile service which breathes connectivity into my own smartphone began to split the internet data usage into two categories: ‘Mobile Internet’ and ‘Social Internet’. Upon noticing how little precious bandwidth I had been spending on sites that can actually boost my intelligence, I realised that I had furthered a few steps on the hazy path to becoming just like a smoker. Before this epiphany, checking Facebook was like a reflex to me; I was on it while I ate breakfast, before work, on my break, immediately after work, at the train station, on the train, before class, after class, the ride home, and then when I got home...well, you get the picture. I was using my phone for Facebook so much, in fact, that, earlier this year, I had to upgrade my bandwidth allowance from two hundred and fifty megabytes to five hundred just to cater for my habit; it was getting pathetic. In a nutshell, like it would with a smoker, with the exception of the physical consequences, social networking was costing me money, it was costing me time and, essentially, it had become something that was hard to be without. So, in an effort to take a few steps back on that sad and wretched path that I had been strolling down like some moron, this last month, I self-imposed a ban on any social networking website that's not on an actual computer, which includes running to public internet cafes and class computers to get a fix and excludes posting status updates, simply because I use a separate program to do so. Admittedly, it hasn’t put a huge dent in my social-internet use, but it has certainly helped in making my time outside of the home much more productive, and in return makes me feel less like a tool in the public-eye.

It has only been these last five years that the internet has truly been able to jump from our computer screens and into our pockets. We have our Apple's, RIM's, Google's and Microsoft's contributing to the liberation of the internet, but with that said, is that same amnesty liberating us at all? It seems to be doing the opposite. With every second person having a smoke between their index and middle fingers, cigarettes are the cliché of any busy street, and now the Facebook logo is coming in at a close-second, almost like Mark Zuckerberg has us all under some sort of zombie-like psychosocial-hold. I bet you’re wondering where online social-networking can damage our health, well, with smoking has come cancer, and with the growing adoption of online social-networking will come a generation of attention-divided and socially-isolated people, who will then in turn pass such ridiculous social-values onto their offspring, that is, of course, assuming that Facebook has the ‘Procreate’ feature it will most certainly need by then. So, in getting to some sort of an ending, the success of social-networking brought the success of smartphones, and with that, these devices gave the addictiveness of sites like Facebook and Twitter more mobility, thus just adding another internet bill that needs paying and more time wasted outside of the home that needs to be made up for later on. So, finally, without condemning two things that I enjoy too much, social-networking and smartphones: have these two things joined forces only to become another thing that needs to be added to the bucket along with smoking and drugs? Is our society on its way to seeing a segregated group of Facebook-ers, the same way that we see smokers now? Because it would seem like our society has become one that is primarily filled with said smokers and Facebook-ers.

Blood, Sweat & Tears

2010-12-09T21:39:00.001+11:00

Okay, scratch the blood part of that…and the tears…okay, there may be some tears, after all, it is Australia’s first month of summer this December and, to put it in harsh-terms, I loathe this season. It’s a bias of my mine, but of course, does not come without warrant. Not only is my part of Sydney notorious for being the hottest over other parts, but it is hardly within distance of even a healthy patch of sand. So even though some like to glorify it by calling it ‘beach-season’, I personally prefer to stick to more realistic terms like ‘sticky’, ‘humid’ and…‘hell’.

One of my main arguments for my unfavourable view on summer, aside from my distance from the beach, is that in the hot weather, controlling temperature is a significantly bigger challenge than in the icier season. I personally love winter, and I think that it sucks that I have never spent a Christmas with snow on my window seal, it’s certainly one of those things that sit on my metaphorical ‘Things to do before I die’ list; Christmas in winter. The thing I enjoy most about winter is having the ability to simply pile on clothing and be warm, even when it’s cold. I can’t put into words the euphoria that comes when unpacking my woollen cut-off gloves, scarves, ugg boots, thermal socks, heater and even just wearing jackets that I haven’t worn since the previous year. Here’s the thing - I get why some prefer summer; winter is cold, our fingers and toes suffer, people are sneezing and coughing influenza back and forth like a tennis match, but it could be five degrees Celsius outside and all you need to do is put on a couple of layers and incorporate some vitamin c into your diet, and you’re golden. The situation differs in summer. In the hot weather, you could keep stripping off clothes and you will still be hot; hell, you could get butt-naked, which would be hot (pun intended), and, aside from the fact that you are now most probably sitting in a gaol cell, nothing would have changed!

Just for some helpful-imagery, here’s what a typical summer day is here in Western Sydney: it’s about ten days at a beach that is at least forty-minutes away, but when reality intrudes we realise that the one hundred other days of blood-bubbling-temperatures are spent estivating in our homes, worshipping the air-conditioner, working in the heat, virtually getting cooked walking to the mail-box, being grinded by smelly, perspiring men on the train, swimming in dirty public-swimming pools, seeing me with my sexy abs out (say what!), having a 7-Eleven mirage in the middle of a suburban street, having your face gang-raped by flies, not to mention, the food that you’re about take a bite of, having your blood thieved at by disease-ridden mosquitoes after you've finally gotten to sleep after many hours of flipping your pillow over and trying to figure out in your head if there is even a point to a lone bed sheet; it’s essentially having the realisation that it’s…it’s just hot and you don’t like it! Apart from that handful of fun days spent pretending that you have enough money to be a northern Sydney-sider, catching waves and relaxing on the sand, summer just isn't exactly my cup of iced-tea.

So let’s review: In winter, with a mandarin a day and some practical attire, it can be a joy. In summer, ~~with an air-conditioned car~~…wait, I don’t drive, let me try that again; ~~with a portable air-conditioner~~…wait, no, they don’t exist; ~~with a whole three months spent inside in the the air-conditioning~~…oh, wait, that’s right, I have class and a job, one last time; with a…well, hmm…I’d hate to be the bearer of bad news, but does it seem like hot weather is just something that has no practical solution? You’re only real remedy in our heat is to be so rich that you never have to work again, that way you can move your arse to the northern beaches of Sydney, hire some people to build you a garaged-house on the sand, get central air-conditioning installed, buy a nice car, hire a maid to do your groceries, hire some fanners to follow you around the golf-course you probably own or from your car to whatever millionaire’s ball you are attending and you will never be hot again, however, if you never end up being that rich, or rich at all, then no summer of ours will ever be a pleasurable or comfortable one. I also have no doubt that, even if you do live close to a beach or try to spend every second of free time at one, there still will be multiple instances weekly where you will be caught down on your knees, begging the powers that be for nothing short of a cool-breeze. My point in all of this: you could be a hermit crab or you could even live like one in your home, but when it comes down to it, our summers will still only really ever consist of a bunch of salty-saturated people thinking the exact same thing that you are: that they hate being hot!

Parra-matured

2010-11-28T13:13:00.001+11:00

The Sydney suburb of Parramatta has been many things in my eyes: a playground where dollars are earned, a playground where consumerism is practiced, an actual playground and a playground where the better part of a holiday can be spent. My lifetime has seen it referred to as the second business district in Sydney (second to the city) and, for the last thirty-five years, it has been the home of, what is currently, the third largest shopping centre in this country and formerly the largest in the southern hemisphere, Westfield Shoppingtown. My parents started taking me to Westfield Parramatta when I was very young. My furthest memory of it is from around 1994, just after their second and largest redevelopment. With the aid of an infantile mind, I was always pretty naïve to the existence of anything but Westfield in Parramatta; in fact, when I’d bring up one name, it was never without the other. Since then, Westfield, along with the city that it’s foundations were laid on, has matured much like I have: chances have it that just about anywhere that I regularly visited as a child has since been remodelled, redeveloped or overhauled in some way, shape or form; stores that were once there have probably been closed and reopened more than once; their tenants and residents now deceased or moved on, all paving the way for a new generation of people simply unaware of what has preceded them. So, in a world where change is of the norm, I’ve always been the type of person that has the habit of attaching memory to location, and as a natural repercussion of that, whenever I walk any inch of a place that I have visited in my past, such as Westfield Parramatta – a place that was prominent in my infancy and has now become routine in the infancy of my adult life– a landslide of those memories come tumbling behind my eyes. I admit, new stores are certainly a pleasure, but at the same time, I also see an element of melancholy in it. The memories that are glued to those places that no longer exist get lost in the natural progression of time, we never mean it to, but our eyes quickly adjust to the present and what once seemed so peculiar becomes a part of scenery; it's a real shame.

Unfortunately, if to make matters worse, companies have a tendency not to note down history, which, in my opinion, turns residents into tourists in their own hometowns, limiting their vision to the now. People may see it as a non-issue when I speak about it now, but the moment somebody puts up some sixty year old sepia photograph of some nearby suburban main street, those very people that were once blasé about such history start to exhibit some interest. There was one of those photographs framed on the waiting room wall of my old dental surgery and I found myself saying 'Hey, that's where that pizza place is now' – I think that there are so many missed opportunities to inspire that same type of curiosity in others. Ignorantly, Westfield failed to keep any history on their Parramatta centre, a centre that is well over a quarter of a century old and has been through three major transformations to date, the most recent of which was completed four years ago. The same can be said for Stockland with their Merrylands centre, another mall that I regularly visited as a child, currently going through its own redevelopment. The final day that Stockland Merrylands had every store open before the phasing in of new sections, just over two years ago, I managed to get quite a few photographs of the rest of the mall (except Hoyts Cinema) so that I wouldn’t let happen what Westfield had only years earlier. Evidently, nobody had done this with Westfield before the last redevelopment – in the end, the only photographs I managed to get my hands on were taken of celebrity appearances or for architectural and heritage purposes. The sentimentality that I hold must have been absent the day Westfield began to tear down the walls of what was a symbol of my childhood. So here is me doing what I can to paint a word picture, copied and pasted from my memory, of what I see mentally whenever I walk any inch of Parramatta and some other locations around Sydney. Rewriting what has been overwritten - here we go:

Intencity & Hide & Seek – Westfield Parramatta
Closure: c. 2000

Intencity is my fondest and most favoured memory of Westfield Parramatta. Intencity is an Australian game arcade chain and was one of the things that made the shopping centre, in my young eyes, more of a theme park attraction than a place to shop. Intencity once accounted for the entire furthest wall of the level five food court, the wall being split up into two open levels. Also, on the second level of Intencity resided a playground called Hide & Seek. The word 'playground' really doesn’t sell it though, think tubes and ball-pools everywhere – on the walls, the ceiling, everywhere. I loved Hide & Seek over…well, anything at that age; it was amazing. Since it did business from within the Intencity space, when it closed, so did Hide & Seek, sadly.

I don’t know why it closed, money most probably, but it really mellowed the excitement I felt when visiting Westfield. Afterwards, there was this strange period where there was just sort of a black hole on that wall of the food court, the only thing that was there were two dormant escalators leading up from one of the five eating platforms. When Westfield began to overhaul the place over five years ago, anything that marked that Intencity was once there gradually disappeared; first it was the first floor where they placed a Galaxy Quest, a Pizza Hut (strangely enough), another shop that I don’t remember and that mini-merry-go-round with the carnie; then sometime later, they boxed off that entire section in order to remove those still relatively new stores in order to make better use of that wall, including the still vacant second floor, taking the escalators and that one eating platform with it (the other four platforms still remain) – in other words, the last remanence of Intencity was no more. Some of the food places along the side disappeared too - Subway and Red Rooster, to name a couple - they then would go to open a Goodlife Health Clubs gym on the upstairs (with windows looking down on fast food places, funnily enough) and a JB Hi-Fi (and a few new food places) on the bottom floor – that brings us to date.

Level 3 McDonalds – Westfield Parramatta
Renovation: c. 2005

I often forget how different level 3 McDonalds was before the redevelopment. The image I have printed on my memory is quite a fragmented one in the way that some parts are clearer than others, you could say that the McDonald’s part of it is in high definition, but the part that surrounded the fast food outlet looks as though it was taken on a camera phone from that time. What I do remember is that the McCafé had been an added section, so it was just a small booth facing the McDonalds entrance, with the exclusion of that, the layout almost remains the same: the entrance and kitchen are all in the same place, the outer eating area is almost the same too, and there were still panes of glass dividing the inside eating area from the rest of the centre. The most discernable difference, aside from the décor which was common among all McDonalds outlets at that time, was that there was the outside eating veranda for those shoppers that wanted to fatten up while watching the trains pass. I’m not too savvy on the details, so bare with me: I’m pretty sure it was where Freedom Home is now (pictured here), looking down onto Argyle Street. What I do remember about that veranda is that somewhere between five and ten years prior to the overhaul, there was some sort of incident involving a young child. Now, I don’t think the kid jumped, but I think he almost did, all I know is, ever since that day, they wrapped a chain around the two doors that opened onto the area, padlocked it and they never opened those doors again - that is, of course, until they threw a new shop on top of it.

Now for the surrounding area, and this is where the details ascend to a whole new level of uncertainty: I can say for sure that there weren’t any that went up to Borders before, because, one, I’m pretty sure that’s where the McCafé stood, two, there was no Borders store (duh!) and, three, that’s where the cinemas were as they took up a large bulk of level four (and I assume level five). The part that confuses me most is the lighting and the other escalators. Prior to the overhaul, I remember being able to look over the railing from McDonalds and have an unobstructed view of the level one food court, aided by a substantial spill of light from outside, my only obstruction being the escalators connecting levels one and two. Currently, things are a lot more cluttered looking down from that same railing; there is no longer the same amount of natural light and I am pretty sure an extra flight of escalators joining level two to three were added in the overhaul, however, that only raises the question of where that flight of escalators was before. What it is exactly that now obstructs the light and my clear view of the first floor is an enigma. It’s one of those things that I will never know - like I said, if only Westfield or somebody else had taken some still photos.

Village 8 Cinemas – Westfield Parramatta
Closure: 28/4/05

Village 8 Cinemas in its last years was probably the worst cinema I’d ever visited, in both hygiene and interior design. Its obvious issues always made Hoyts in Merrylands the preferred choice when going out to see a movie. Village 8 once sat in the entire area starting from Swarovski to Borders book store. There were two ways you could get into Village 8: the first being the entry from within the centre with Swarovski on the corner (Swarovski still exists in that same position today) and those three televisions atop the double-doors that were never quite as clear as they could’ve been, showing trailers and such (I sort of remember them just being static in the later years, though). Through the doors followed a long, L-shaped corridor, which eventually lead you to the ticketing booths, a small candy bar and, quite amazingly, two office elevators that still exist today (Level four, in the corridor leading to the restrooms closest to Borders -pictured here). This entrance was always a bit of a design flaw as it was awkwardly narrow and you had to pass the actual cinemas to get to the ticketing booths, which I don’t remember being such an issue...at first (cue suspenseful music). Then there was the second entrance, from outside on Church Street, where Café Dela France is now (across from where Coffee Emporium is today). It was a steep flight of stairs, pretty wide in comparison to the rest of the place. This unfortunately suffered the same fate as the McDonalds veranda, as it was closed forever; not too sure why. This meant that the other entry was, now, the only means of getting in, which only augmented its design flaws. After closing that street-entry, I could liken trying to enter Village 8 to being in the mosh-pit at a concert - it was unnecessarily dark, pushy, cramped and quite dangerous. Not only did it exenterate entry issues, but I'm pretty sure that it also raised the frequency of ticket evasion as there was no real effective way to discern who was trying to get a ticket and who was just trying to see a free movie, nor did they have the space to check your ticket stubs, especially in peak times. This only meant that those last years, the checking of tickets mid-movie got quite anal which is where (like I mentioned a while back in this post) my mother was removed from a viewing because she couldn’t find hers. Because of these obvious issues, the change of location in the Westfield complex and its operator was way past-due. According to what I remember, it was about a year after closure until Greater Union opened, thus completing the final phase of the Westfield Parramatta redevelopment in 2006.

Warner Bros. Store & Disney Store – Westfield Parramatta
Closure: N/A

The Warner Bros. Store and the Disney Store only complimented my childhood joys of a Westfield visit. The Warner Bros. Store was located on level two, near the main stage, where City Beach currently is. Not only was the store quite large in comparison to its neighbours and that there was a massive multi-monitor display on the back wall made up of several CRT televisions showing various Warner Bros. flicks, but what drew me to this store the most were these tunnels that they had. They were located to the back of the store, in what is now the DJs platform in City Beach. Crawling into these two joined tunnels would reveal little screens also showing cartoons and some sundry WB stuff. For some reason, these particularly small tunnels were like Christmas morning every time for me. Like Hide & Seek, losing this was quite upsetting, however, when the store closed isn’t real clear to me, nor are my memories of the Disney Store (some say that it was around where Glue is today, but I don't remember).

Hoyts Cinema & Video Ezy - Merrylands
Hoyts Demolition: c. 2008
Video Ezy First Move: pre-2000

Like I said, it was always either Village 8 in Parramatta or Hoyts in Merrylands. Hoyts Cinemas once sat on the corner of Treves Street and McFarlane Street in Merrylands, protruding into the Stockland car park. Many movies were seen there, many memories had, and that all goes without saying. My furthest memory was when Hoyts was not there and Video Ezy was. It’s difficult fathoming the image of a large building not towering over that corner, but in my memory’s lifetime, a time when the DVD wasn’t yet mainstream and hiring movies was still a serious concept, it was once a quaint little standalone Video Ezy outlet before it moved to its newly-built and larger store just up the road on the corner of Burford Street and Merrylands Road. Since the market for physically renting movies up and hopped into its deathbed, roughly the same time that everybody realised that renting easily-scratchable compact discs is like playing Russian-roulette with the entertainment aspect of your night, Video Ezy once again relocated virtually across the road a couple of years ago into a cosier store that Blockbuster had only just vacated (who, funnily enough, have recently filed for bankruptcy), only to live out, what I suspect, is the Merrylands’ store’s final years.

Utopia Records - George Street, Sydney
Relocation (to Broadway): c. 2006

Utopia Records is currently located at its new home near Town Hall in the Sydney CBD after living in Broadway for a few years. Before the move to Broadway, it was located underneath Greater Union Cinemas (now named Event Cinemas) on George Street, where Sportsco Direct (a sports gear outlet) is now. Like all of the places I have mentioned, my sentiment doesn’t typically lie with the business, but more the place where that business used to be. In this particular case, my sentiment exists partly because Utopia was just more of a common meeting place and somewhere to shoot-the-shit when I was fourteen. You see, I always remembered Utopia as being horribly overpriced, which never made it worth buying from when it was on George Street and definitely not worth the leg when it moved to Broadway. Now, I couldn’t care less about sports gear - I’m no athlete - but despite that fact, I still occasionally find myself in that Sportsco, only that I never buy anything…you know, like a nut. The same way that I sometimes sit in Borders, Parramatta reminiscing about how less than ten years ago I would’ve been in the same spot visiting some piece of shit cinema, I often walk around that sports store trying to place where everything used to be - the stage where garage bands would perform; the CD racks that I would awkwardly lean on during; the place they used to keep all of the Marilyn Manson albums, his autobiography sitting just above them; admiring the pieces of wood that are where the in-floor display cases used to be; the people that I saw in there that have since passed on; and, probably most importantly, some drifted friendships. So, no matter how expensive, I do miss Utopia being there.

Aside from the pre-2000 style sign outside the level three restrooms and the design on the back of the main elevator shaft in Westfield, which both somehow managed to survive whatever makeover The Westfield Group had thrown at them these last sixteen years, other note-worthy relics of my home city include: The Roxy in Parramatta, which was once a historic single-screened movie theatre before being downgraded into a...[takes a deep breath]...a nightclub. JB Hi-Fi on Church St, Parramatta, once the only entertainment retail store worth visiting in the area, despite it's inconvenient placement, they then remedied this by opening another, more convenient store in Westfield (where Intencity once was), then soon after that, the now smaller JB Hi-Fi outlet by comparison moved around the corner into a bigger store on George Street, matching the décor of the others. The old Parramatta Station (partially pictured here) which didn’t have the big awning that it does now, nor did it have the underground concourse from Westfield’s level one food court, the ticket gate section or the bus interchange that the concourse leads to (however, the other, less popular, set of ticket gates did exist); those things of which are thanks to the most recent Westfield overhaul. The Church Street thoroughfare, between Marsden and George Street, which had that run-down playground and that circular water play-thing that would randomly change what section would release water which, to my amusement, would be the cause of many wet children. The Family Fun Centre on Church Street in Parramatta, which was actually more of an arcade fun centre for Parramatta's scum than somewhere you would take your family; recently just opened up as a vitamin store. The Asian Bakery that once sat at the Sussex and Goulburn Street intersection in the city which my dad used to take me to as a child, far superior to the Barbys that is there now. Also worth a mention is the AMF Bowling alley in Parramatta, which I visited as a child and miss seeing on the way into Parramatta train station from the east.

So, there…I finally finished it. After a year of nostalgically pondering the subject matter, a few months of cerebral bulimia, a lengthy visit to the heritage centre and two frighteningly messy word-processing documents later, it is done. There’s no doubt that Westfield Parramatta has matured over the years, especially in the last decade, replacing shops that virtually played cartoons and had tunnels for you to play in with stores that simply sell clothing, and closing down a mega-sized game arcade and opening up a colossal-sized book store; with the exception of one or two stores, it really has grown into an all-shop and no play sort of centre, a lot different to what it was when I was growing up. So now, assuming that the internet doesn’t die out on us one day, and same can be said for this blog, these little snippets of local history that had been otherwise lost due to the narrow-mindedness of others have a home and are, in a manner of speaking, safe from extinction.

Qantas’ Broken Record

2010-11-21T21:20:00.003+11:00

If you live here in Australia, then it’s playing on your television. All you need to do is turn it on to listen to that record rant on about how Qantas has just broken theirs, and make no mistake, that broken record is spinning. They had a good run for a while there; Qantas’ record hadn’t played in a couple of years, but now, to their misfortune, someone has applied enough pressure to that ‘on’ button for it play, and it just plays on and on. The lyrics of Qantas’ broken record, which the media dusted the cobwebs off and have played over our airwaves on loop for the last few weeks, are simple: that Dustin Hoffman has now been proven wrong and the Australian Airline’s ‘safe record’ is at stake. So, the question is, why does it seem like the exact same thing is happening that only happened a couple of years ago in 2008? Is it just the media rehashing a sensationalised story or is this a biannual gag that Qantas enjoy playing on everyone?

Firstly, let’s take a step back in time: In July of 2008, a Qantas jet flying from Hong Kong to Melbourne suffered explosive decompression, which literally punched a hole the size of a small car in the baggage section of the fuselage. Now, normally this would have been seen as just one of the many things that can go wrong that did when engaging in air travel, however, what followed was the coming true of any Australian news producer’s most intense and vivid of wet dreams - more midair incidents on Qantas-run aircraft. Three days later, a plane of theirs had to turn back and land because it’s landing gear failed to retract. Early the following month, another plane had to do the same and land because it leaked hydraulic fluid. Now, the two previous things and the myriad of other quite minor incidents - too great in number to even mention - were all an obvious result of Qantas being under media-scrutiny, until two months later in October when one of their planes nosedived unexpectedly due to a computer malfunction, this one resulting in several serious injuries. After all of this, not only did every journalist devour Qantas like at an all-you-can-eat buffet, making out like Qantas are full of morons and routinely making use of the phrases ‘string of issues’ and ‘series of problems’, but many took the ‘tarnished safe-record’ route as well, the ‘can Australians still trust Qantas?’ headlines come rolling in, often aided with the all-too-critical Rainman reference where Dustin Hoffman’s autistic character refuses to fly anything but Qantas due to the fact that the company have never had a crash or a fatality in its history. At present day, almost like the media are doing reruns of the news, this exact same thing is happening again. Almost every ‘t’ is virtually being crossed here with the exception of injury, from smoke in the passenger cabin to the ruined Rainman quotes. It all started earlier this month when a jet flying over Indonesia had an engine explode, dropping pieces on one of the Indonesian islands. That’s where the play button got pressed - there followed, just like in 2008, a litany of small incidents, one of which includes smoke entering the cockpit, just like in 2008. Like I said, all of it just has that familiar-déjà vu feeling to it.

First and foremost, I point the finger at the manipulative-manipulated Australian media. We all know that when it comes to the media, be it in Australia or any other country, once someone or something falls into that spotlight, they’ve just been sentenced to months in a prison of close media-scrutiny, so close in fact, that anything that they do in those months makes it as headlining news six o’clock the following night; is Qantas suffering this treatment? Do they just have these incidents all the time yet the media only notices them when they are watching Qantas, concocting some fabricated rough-patch? Or maybe Qantas are in bed with them, and that’s why negative news reports are so infrequent. That is always a possibility, I mean, assuming that incidents like rapid drops in altitude and mid-air explosions are happening all the time, how would these things just simply go unnoticed? It seems that even the more minor incidents go straight over the media’s head, so to speak. If indeed there have been transactions of money between the media and the airline, some might ask why there have been these two ‘strings’ of issues if the media are meant to be silent. The way I see it is, in this day and age, the media can still be silenced, but that doesn’t take care of personal accounts and, thanks to the revolution of the internet, those accounts can now go a long way. I can guarantee that the next time there is an incident on one of these planes, if not tomorrow, it’ll be in two years time – mark your calendars, guys – a quick Google search will bring you blogs and Twitter feeds recounting mid-air Qantas blunders.

Hey! Maybe Qantas have and are being treated correctly. Maybe Qantas did have a one hundred percent preacher’s sheets clean slate for a couple years and then all of a sudden, within three weeks, have numerous incidents (and counting...), on several different aircraft, all of which are reported on the news; I hope you could sense the sarcasm there because this just isn't possible. Seriously, is Qantas having a laugh? Is this the Qantas version of April Fools’? Do you reckon they all went ten pin bowling for a work-outing one night and realised that they just really love streaks, be it a winning one or a losing one? What I am trying to say is that there is no way that it just happened this way, and for a second time, at that.

Something doesn't smell right here and the grand question is, who’s the arsehole who reeks of foul-play - Australia's trusted airline, Qantas, or all of the Australian and worldwide journalists whose pens and word-processing programs seem to all cease operation simultaneously? Ask yourself that question when Qantas break their perfect ‘safety’ record for a third time.

Interesting:
‘Rainman’ Reference (v. 2008)
‘Rainman’ Reference (v. 2010)
Qantas’ Reputation (v. 2008)
Qantas’ Reputation (v. 2010)

Snoop Dogg to the Rescue!

2010-11-14T18:26:00.001+11:00

As much as I enjoy ranting on about my issues with music whenever I get the chance to, I would normally refrain from writing about it, simply because once I start I wouldn’t quite know where to stop, but when it comes to Snoop Dogg’s career, I have been satiated with things that cannot possibly be left unmentioned. This last month, I've been watching the music video for the song Get 'Em Girls by Jessica Mauboy which amusingly enough features the aforementioned rapper. Now, from the first viewing to the last, I am reminded of something that I can’t quite put my finger on, I don’t know what it is...oh, wait a minute, that's right - I'm reminded of every other female pop song Snoop Dogg has been featured in this last decade!

Ever since I started listening to rap, I have watched Snoop Dogg, in amazement, go accelerando from a successful rapper who you might say was one of the building blocks in the golden age of rap, being placed alongside names like Dr. Dre and 2Pac, to what he is today, some sort of icon of the retarded love child between pop and rap, placing himself alongside names like The Pussycat Dolls and Katy Perry; that's right, not even male pop stars. It would seem that Snoop has earned himself a seat in pop music, becoming some sort of white knight for the genre. This way, whenever some female dance-group have the misguided idea that their moves have something to do with having what it takes to make a musical record or some female pop star wishes to throw her convictions away and dabble in misogyny, the pop-business now know exactly who to call when they want these otherwise doomed ideas to make a profit, and after all, making the most money that can be made is something that pop knows how to do better than any other genre. So, if Snoop Dogg is the thing bringing in cash, which not only draws in pop lovers but rap lovers too, pop is sure to squeeze every drop of juice out of him until we are utterly sick of the sound of his voice.

When it comes to pop, I’ve found that the cosmetic-side of things often gets first priority over the music-side. This inevitably means that any pop music video ends up looking like a video with some music attached to it, as opposed to a music video that was attached to a song, even if it isn’t so. So given how important music videos are to pop and to compare Snoop’s latest venture with our own Jessica Mauboy, I indulged myself in every pop video for a song that he has been featured in since the first in 2000 and, in doing so, I noticed that they are all much alike: firstly, he will always appear in the initial twenty seconds, either to pop off a few lyrics or to simply state his presence in the song, much the way that they do in any rap song; after that twenty seconds, he will either repeat words like ‘yeah’, ‘what’ and ‘aha’ faintly in the background or, more commonly, make like Houdini in a disappearing act until, three-quarters into it, he makes his awaited return in his brief and tacky ‘rap’ verse. This way people are intrigued by the sight of him, yet they are forced to wait out most of the song and the headlining performer’s vocals in order to hear Snoop do his thing; it’s all business.

This transformation from '90s gangster to the pimp of girl-pop is a bizarre change of direction in Snoop Dogg's career, and would be in any rapper’s career, for that matter. This would be like if in five years time Eminem began featuring in pop-songs, and I'm not talking about being featured in an Akon song or featuring the occasional pop star in his own songs, I am talking about all out ‘Britney Spears feat. Eminem’ type stuff. In ‘Get ‘Em Girls’, Snoop says “I walk you down the runway of success”, so this begs the questions, after virtually assisting The Pussycat Dolls in their debut success by featuring in one of their first hit songs and bringing instant-success to every other pop song he has been involved in since, does this mean that it is only a matter of time before Snoop is grinding up against some other pop-glamour? With two songs being released within months of each other (‘California Gurls’ in May and ‘Get ‘Em Girls’ in September), can we see a trend beginning to form? I guess the larger question is has Snoop Dogg now become a brand name on the pop-palette because it guarantees a song hit-status when it gets attached, walking pop stars down that ‘runway of success’, so to speak? We shall see. Aha, aha, yeah.

Check it out for yourself:
Still D.R.E. (2001) and then California Gurls (2010)
The Next Episode (2000) and then Get ‘Em Girls (2010)
Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang (1993) and then Buttons (2005)
and the list goes on…

Lock Up Your Females!

2010-10-31T03:23:00.001+11:00

I used to think that females were the only gender with the psychological-labyrinth inside their heads, with their all too common body-issues and such, but I’ve realised that us guys are just as bad with our macho-jealousy routine. When it comes to boyfriends and their girlfriend's male friends, the very thought of such a thing turns even the Joseph-Gordon Levitts out there into psychopaths. You start to deal with such a profound strand of testosterone-induced neurosis that nothing can convince the person that some guy isn’t about to come crashing through the glass-ceiling, just like Batman often does before he swoops in to snatch the damsel away from the villain; in this case, the villain being the boyfriend. In all seriousness, though, I am growing a little sick and tired of the whole thing. Jealousy is a human thing, but the male testosterone must really aggravate that electrical wave in our brains that says 'Well, they just hugged, that’s what friends do.' making it say ‘Well! They just hugged, that means that they are having sex! Case closed.’.

So, what it comes down to is a decision for the girl: do you stay or do you go? The tough ones will most likely go, but if they do stay, they do the right thing and not put up with the ridiculousness of sacrificing friendship for some tool on his man-period. The softer ones, which account for most of them, stay, leading themselves down a path of constant argument until every friend-bridge with the opposite sex has long-since burned, and only then do they finally realise that the towel should’ve been thrown in ages ago.

The reason why it sounds as if I am talking like I'm not one of these idiot guys is simple, it’s because I’m not. I don’t say this for sympathy or whatever, but I’m a guy who has been through a litany of horrible relationships with people who have either lost interest or cheated, one of which did so with my best friend, yet I still don’t carry on like a child whenever one of my girlfriend's friends just happen to have a pair of testicles. Never have I told my girlfriend that she cannot speak to someone because they’re male and they might fancy them; never have I monitored my girlfriend’s web activity, tallying up in my head how many times a certain guy leaves a comment; never have I been that jealous that I've had difficulty in trying to cloak it; and yet, lo and behold, I either see or hear about some new conflict every week. That isn’t a relationship; that’s a dictatorship!

My hypothesis: low-confidence is the bastard at play here; it has nothing to do with me or the guy getting the third-degree for maintaining a friendship. When a boyfriend starts acting up, it’s his own issues that are messing with him. Low self-confidence inspires thorough self-assessment, which focuses on two areas: the first being his own dwindling self-image of how he has been as a person and, more importantly, as a partner, and secondly, his lack of trust in his partner. In simple terms, their behaviour regarding friendship with the opposing gender is a clear reflection of how self-assured they are in terms of the strength of their union. Now, just a tip to any boyfriend I have had any issues with - you know who you are - because you are so weak with worry yet enraged with male hormone, you may not realise it yourself, but i know the general equation – it is: if I am the victim, it means that you've been a terrible boyfriend.

Let me just finish up by saying that with every catastrophe in my romantic past, I don't go after other people's girlfriends...I just don't - gospel. I admit, once or twice I have foolishly tried to play like Batman, rescuing the damsel from some jackass-abusive boyfriend, I also got my nose caught up in a rough break-up once, but I certainly wouldn’t like somebody testing the waters with my girlfriend, so why would I with someone else's, that wouldn't make any sense. On top of that, destroying other people's relationships really isn't something that would look any good on my social-resume. So, next time I cast your girlfriend in a film-project that I am involved in, the next time I comment on your girlfriend's profile a few times, and you begin to feel that twitch in your bicep that you just know is a sign of something else in motion and you feel that inclination to walk yourself into my home uninvited or whatever, here’s a healthy tip, sane-male to insane-male: stop wasting your time being wrong about me and focus a little harder on your fucking girlfriend, you silly fools!

Vicious-circle, guys.

'Be Faithful': The Summary

2010-10-04T14:38:00.003+11:00

In order, this is Fatman Scoop’s ‘Be Faithful’ summarised into point-form:

If I have a $5, $2 or $1 note, I may not put my hands up.
Fatman Scoop has selective-hearing.
Some screaming about oral sex without anybody really knowing it's about oral sex.
Faith Evans was previously unaware of a love like this.
Ugly females are not allowed to sing-along to Faith Evans.
Fatman Scoop has an interest in astrology.
I should watch where I’m walking.
If you have long hair, you should put your hands up.
If you have short hair, you should make noise.
Fatman Scoop has no objections to hair weaves.
His black friends that like doggy-style intercourse and wish to have it casually have trouble letting him finish his questions.
Fatman Scoop’s hip hop friend from Black Sheep thinks that because he says it three times, that we can lift trains that weigh several tons.
Fatman Scoop would like the names of those who will be having sexual intercourse tonight.
You should stop playing but keep moving, simultaneously.
Females should sing-along, then males, and repeat a few times.
Fatman Scoop is visually-impaired.
If you’re a girlfriend, it’s your birthday.
This song has nothing to do with being faithful.

Listen:

That is all from me.

We Will Lose

2010-09-19T23:00:00.001+10:00

This is where I poop the party –If the last ten years have taught the world anything, it’s that terrorism can never be stopped, let’s not kid ourselves. Oh, it can be delayed…it can be delayed, but there is always someone else at some other location who is next in line and willing to give their lives to destroy a few more in the name of extreme-religious views. Let’s not have any misconceptions about that.

It can be years since the last terrorist attack; we can think that we’ve somehow won the battle against extremism, or at least reduced the risk, we can send every suspect to US soil to be tortured and/or gunned down for the world to see, we can start manufacturing commercial aircraft so that you can only enter the cockpit from the outside, we can do that, we can remove bins from our train stations, we can remove every fucking trash can in this country, and there will still be some idiot with a bomb in his hand and a convoluted idea in his head with plenty more places he can hide himself and a packet of explosives. In clearer terms, if somebody has the will to do something, they will do it. That doesn’t just apply to terrorists either, that’s everybody. The only thing separating them from a petty criminal, though, and prepare yourself for the part that frightens me, is that a terrorist is willing to die. Iwan Darmawan, who was one of two who helped plan the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Indonesia back in 2004 and has been sentenced to face the firing squad, still is yet to show any contrition for the lives that he destroyed six years ago. If anything, him and his accomplice, Ahmad Hasan – also on death row, show pride in what they did, and more importantly, pride in dying for it. Recently, Darmawan said in a news report "God willing, I will die as a mujahideen [holy warrior],". Why we will lose this battle is because, you can quite possibly stop a criminal with threats of punishment, but once a person is willing to die, there is no longer anything in their minds that can get in there way.

I apologise for being blunt but it’s the ugly truth and it needs to be said. I once had the subconscious naïve birth of thought that we would once be able to overthrow terrorist activity, but I’ve realised that when you’re dealing with this type of mentality that is so abundantly embraced, that just isn’t a possibility. Australia haven’t been attacked since the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, and that was thirty years ago, but that isn’t because of an improvement in intelligence services or anything, it’s by choice, let’s just hope, knock on wood, that the day when they do choose to attack us never comes.

Just Do It Right!

2010-09-18T03:12:00.001+10:00

Two things that have been on my mind - I’ve had next to nothing in the way of managerial experience, however, one thing I do know is that if I had the top-job and I started being non-communicative, sneaky, suspicious and, even, coercive with my employees, I’d know that I've failed, and I wouldn’t need to have sat in a classroom to be aware of that. The same way that employees should be honest with their bosses, bosses need to be on an open-forum with their employees - enough of this subliminal managing bullshit.

I once worked with someone who was forced to resign because the more the weeks progressed, the scarcer their weekly hours became, and it was all because our manager wasn’t exactly their biggest fan. This, unfortunately, was not an isolated incident. I’ve seen this from most of my managers from the past; in fact, the reason I had to resign from my previous job was because I somehow fell victim to this treatment. I admit, the intentions of these actions are just my own speculation, however, the cause and the consequence are not, and they always remain the same – in other words, dwindling hours are always followed by a resignation.

I just don't see how someone thinks that plastering on a fake smile and having to deal with an employee that they don’t particularly like for such an indefinite amount of time is simpler than just giving them the sack and then, chances are, never having to worry about them ever again. I’ve often wondered if those in the managerial role worry about our Unfair Dismissal laws in Australia, but even then, considering the alternative, how hard is it to justify a dismissal? Regardless, those laws aren’t even applicable in any situation that I have witnessed anyway – which only leaves personal courage to be placed under the microscope. What concerns me more is why so many managers are adopting this method. I don’t even have the stomach to label it 'management', looks and feels more like workplace bullying, to be honest, and that, I think, is much more of an offence than some justifiable unfair dismissal claim, if it ever did come down to that.

I don’t know if I understand this breed of manager that don’t have the balls to at least speak to employees in a way that they can understand, let alone doing something as mundane and synonymous with being a manager as firing an employee. Bottom line of it is, if you're a manager then it's your job to either fire or not fire, there is no third option, so grow some guts and start doing your job.

Another thing that has bothered me is employers that treat their employees like criminals. Time and time again I have seen bosses install surveillance cameras in staff areas and implement mandatory bag-checks upon leaving the workplace simply to keep tabs on all of their workers. What I don’t get is, if you’re so paranoid about those that you’ve employed, then what was the point in interviewing them in the first place? Personally, and I say this with complete empathy, if I were a manager, my rule of thumb would be 'don’t hire criminals', and it’s that easy. If you feel so inclined: do police checks, ring all of their referees and if those two things fail to raise any red flags and you end up employing them, that’s where it should end. If I were an employee and I was being surveilled and bag-checked like it’s some sort of workplace edition of 'Big Brother', I would be ~~humiliated~~ mortified. Once again, this is no way to manage, and I'd rather risk a few dollars than make my employees look and feel like they'd been hired straight off some parole board.

You know, there was a time where I thought that everybody worked among professionals, but now I know that finding a decent boss isn’t the stroll down Easy street that I once thought it would be. I realise that managerial responsibilities aren’t exactly effortless and straightforward, I can empathise with that. I can also empathise with the fact that nowadays you need to be wary when giving someone the sack and when trying to discern whether or not you can trust a person, but like I said, I'd rather not alienate the people I chose to hire with overzealousness, and I don’t see that as a very difficult feat to accomplish. In the words of my favourite manager, Kris Aceski, I give the same advice to all managers out there in regards to their job: 'Just do it right!'.

Better to Have Loved

2010-08-30T01:54:00.001+10:00

Alfred Tennyson once said “'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.”, we’ve all heard this, and I’ve always stood by it. Whenever someone that I have some form of profound connection with has walked out of my life or I’ve done the walking, I’ve never known myself to take any of it very well at all. I often go through every emotional reaction in the psychiatric handbook, however, one that I amazingly manage to skip, perhaps not at first, but later on down the road, is regret. I’ve had more social blunders than the amount of times Letterman makes a bad joke on a single run of his show, but despite the inconveniences and the pain those blunders have roused, there isn’t one thing I would change about what has happened in my past.

I won’t dance around it, with everything that has happened, I was left with a bitterness that made it difficult for me to recognise myself when I would look in the mirror; I was left with a rage that made me say and do things that, yes, on the topic of reactions, I do have deep, deep contrition for, and some nights, that rage and that bitter person do have a habit of stealing a few minutes away, but in the times that they don’t, it’s because I find an appreciation that is far greater in worth than the worth that any anger and remorse can collect. Sometimes I just think back and, bar the issues and all the bullshit, I appreciate the fact that I once had those friends, those good times, the jokes and, for the most part, the love. I may get mad and I may say horrible things, but never have I wanted to turn back the clock and eliminate an entire person from my memory simply on a bad ending – the way I see it is, the severity of your feelings following a friendship going belly-up is indicative of how much that connection meant to you, wanting to erase it based on that severity would be nothing but a great injustice to yourself on your own part.

I have a friend that loves a guy, and I don’t say that loosely, the only problem is that they are no longer together. She says that she wants to forget him; that she wishes that the whole thing never happened, in fact, she opposes the above quote, but I don’t share that emotion at all. I’ve pondered ‘what-if’s, but like that quote, I’d rather be heartbroken for years than to have been spared love; I’d rather love a girl that hardly notices me than not to feel love for her at all. Friendships, relationships – even the ugly ones had a beautiful period, and that period of bliss, joy, comfort, invigoration, infatuation and whatever other emotion you had felt, it’s out of love and that’s a gift, and I don’t see how anything would make somebody want to give that gift back.

Dear Old Friend

2010-08-09T00:32:00.004+10:00

I don't like to eat my own words, but a name got attached to this and since that wasn't my intention, it was best that I delete it - 27/8/10

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

2010-08-06T00:11:00.001+10:00

I’ve been escorted out of stores by managers and security guards on more than one occasion, I’ve been approached by people that work in the store I’d just walked out of for a bag-check, my own mother was once asked to leave a cinema mid-movie because she couldn't find her ticket - in the dark, I might add, and were we breaking any laws or doing anything out of the ordinary? No.

Are my mother and I criminals by hobby? Course not, I mean, she scored herself a parking ticket once, does that count? I wonder, if I stand in a convenience store for five minutes and I don’t end up buying anything, is it so inconceivable that I am just horribly indecisive? If a thirteen year old is disconnecting computers in the neighbouring electronics store, does that mean that I wish to steal computers from the store that I'm in simply because I happen to be thirteen? You see, this is what often makes me nervous about the world and those that feel that it's warranted to treat everybody like they could be a criminal. We can't blame them though, I know that I don’t - well that's a lie - in hindsight I don’t. In my opinion the onus is on those that are in fact criminals - the very people at the root of any security measure and microcosm of paranoia in someone's mind. Things like security scanners, security tags, security wands, surveillance cameras, the copious amounts of identification that is required just to prove who you are, ticket inspections, these are all watermarks of that one person who did it first and those that followed. The fact that I, and every other law abider, feels even mildly mistreated by those laws that are meant to be here to protect us just goes to show how much injustice breeds within the tunnel-minded world we reside.

It's a given, criminality is in no way a good thing, but the larger problem is that those that aren’t criminals suffer too as a consequence of the very actions made in trying to deter and remedy wrongdoing, and that isn’t right at all. Also, it seems that the more that a crime occurs to a certain person or an entity of people, the less concessions they are psychologically able to make for those that, for all they know, could be genuinely innocent. I know how it feels to be the accuser, I’ve been that arsehole, it’s never 'perhaps, you did just misplace your ticket or leave it at home' or 'maybe you did just decide not to buy something'; it’s hard to turn the other cheek. Take the Bali judicial system, for instance, they are so set in their ways that it seems like they just itch to put vacationers away for drug possession. Don’t get me wrong, when reading up on the facts, they had just-cause to put Schapelle Corby away, but I won't dance around it, there is still a very small part of me that doubts her guilty verdict. Since Corby was sentenced, laws have been tightened even more and people have even been executed, and it’s all because of the addicts and dealers that roam the streets of that poor holiday island; they ruin it for everyone. If you knew what my views on drugs were, you'd know my stern view on how dealers should be treated, but still, it’s the general closed-mindedness of Bali's law procedure which concerns me most. I feel like as the years go on and there are more and more incidents of a certain crime, innocent people like me lose more and more of the headroom that once allowed us to make simple mistakes. By the way, when my mother got home from that humiliating day at the cinema, she found that ticket, sent it to them and they apologised; just goes to show.

I realise that my thinking on this is very idealistic and that rules always need to be followed impartially in order for them to function properly, and I’m not asking anybody to cut corners, but more just to lose this mentality that everybody is capable of crime, especially when you begin thinking that way on the simple basis of stereotype and past experience. So lastly, and this goes for that Indian prick who manages (or once did) Officeworks in Parramatta, just because I was thirteen does not mean that I was doing anything other than purchasing stationary. Bottom line is, clear your head and be a little more compassionate.

Urinating Publicly!

2010-07-21T23:30:00.001+10:00

I know that there are some that may say that this, perhaps, is the lowest activity a human can engage him or herself in, and fuck, can you blame them? It’s pretty much relative to walking, then coming to a halt and leaking your own brand of E. coli all over the sidewalk, but gees Louise, do I love it! Aside from my lack of a foetus-baring uterus and monthly menstruation, public urination is by far the thing I enjoy most about having been endowed with a penis.

I could relate the annoyance of trying to find one of my female friends a toilet to dragging my friends halfway across town in the wrong direction in the hopes of finding a cash machine that is owned by my bank, simply to avoid the two Australian bucks I would be charged if I were to use the machine only metres away. So since I have the habit to inconvenience the people I am with in search of the only ATM that isn’t in eyeshot and the fact that all that I need is a wall or a tree – which are everywhere – makes this just one less inconvenience I don’t have to constrain myself with. Now, if only there was a St George Bank/ Westpac ATM on every wall and behind every tree, because that would be awesome.

Having said that, I must also add that female public urination, or any non-conventional form of female urination for that matter, is without a doubt the most sickening and unattractive image my eyes have ever been subjected to, and I have seen films written (and directed) by James Wan! I mean, I find it so repulsive that if somebody were to make an hour compilation tape of that stuff and then forced me to watch it, I would have no option but to turn homosexual until the day that I have a breakthrough with the therapist I will need to hire after watching such horror. Two films sprung to mind when writing this: that scene in The Full Monty where Mark Addy’s character breaks into the men’s restroom of the club where his wife is attending a ladies-only night, and she walks in so he hides in one of the cubicles, where just outside, mucking around with friends and half-drunk, she proceeds to use the urinal to pee and then there is that sequence where everybody is leaving the horse races in Kenny and you see a shot, no longer than five seconds - yet five seconds too long, of that well-dressed woman doing basically the same thing; those two scenes tickled my gag reflex.

So some people make a face, and I understand because in theory, it’s disgusting, however, in my opinion, as long as you’re a discreet male, I don’t see a lot wrong with it in the practical swing of things, and as much as I enjoy it, I would never do it unless it is absolutely necessary. It’s a bit of a double standard of mine, I know, but really, public urination is an activity of the male genitalia which I proudly embrace.

With Absolute Pride

2010-07-09T16:17:00.001+10:00

In job interviews, I’ve been asked questions like 'are you a fast learner?', 'would you say that you are good with customers?', 'do you deal with stress well?', and I have always found these questions to be quite redundant, which is only an accurate reflection on the answers I give to them in response - I mean, anybody who answers these questions negatively might as well put ‘don’t hire me’ in bold-capitals on the header of their resume - however, there was always a typical question which I could retort positively with one hundred percent confidence, 'are you a hard-worker?’

I’ve worked part-time for a little over three years now. I've had a few jobs; two solid ones. Although at times it’s been taxing work, it’s never been overly difficult, with that been said, I can say without a doubt in my mind that there isn’t a cent that has ever been credited to my bank account that I didn’t rightfully earn. Why does this need saying, you ask, well, there’s this funny little tale, it’s about me and how I spent five months last year earning money by being a minimalist employee, about flying under the radar or some such nonsense. Why anybody would think of me as someone who slacks off has me scratching my head, I mean, I may not be the quickest of all learners and I am pretty clumsy - how I lasted so long in hospitality is beyond me - but in no way does that say the same for my ability to keep busy. I’ve done ten hour shifts through a dinner rush on a fifteen minute break; I’ve gone all out for single customers without hesitation; I’ve gone beyond the job description; I’ve extended and taken shifts; I've given up staff parties, Christmas eve and New Years eve afternoons, even when I have asked otherwise; so no dick-witted manager is going to tell me that I am any different. I will not be bullied by ignorance.

From the first shift of my first job to the last shift of my last job, I never once thought that this type of self-analytical writing would be necessary, I never once thought that I would need to defend my work-ethic, but for a reason that’s a mystery to both me and others I have told, it seems that I now have to make this sort of thing clear. Anybody that disagrees with anything I have just said, I can say with absolute pride, is sorely mistaken.

My Gut: The Clairvoyant

2010-06-28T21:32:00.001+10:00

Having a gut like mine is like having a superpower. If I were going to try and sell it to you, this is what I would say: It may not be big, but don’t let that fool you, it’s smart and it can tell the future. It tells you that bad is going to happen and its one and only user, yours truly, guarantees it to be a hundred percent correct every time, so if you find some other nutter selling a gut as good as this one, I’ll give your money back.

It's really that simple. Whenever I've been dumped; whenever I've gone out and the night turned sour; whenever I enter a relationship with someone and it has ended with me wishing that they were dead, there was always a very small part of me that knew it long before my brain chose to, and it was my gut. I am not just talking about a few hours here, any half-witted inkling can predict that far ahead, especially if some sort of party event is beginning to die down, I am talking anywhere up to a week here; it’s amazing.

Here's the kicker: when it comes down to making decisions, especially ones regarding my social life, I am a total moron, and for a good gut to be of use, you need someone who is willing to listen to it, that person is not me. I know that if, say, one day I did end up losing my mind, I would be the last person I’d be selling it to (like all the cool-kids are doing nowadays), whoever it is that gave me my gut - a god, planet Krypton or whoever – is obviously some sort of numbskull. The fact that I never listen to it is one of the reasons why I know how good it is; I would have no clue about its abilities if I didn’t completely exclude it in my decision-making.

So, that’s my gut for you. He’s what makes me the guy that always says ‘I knew this would happen’ or ‘Man, I knew that she was going to be a complete dud’ or even, ‘Fuck! I knew someone was going to show up with a gun’. So, the day where I learn to listen to my gut will be the day that I’ll be the most powerful man alive! ...okay, scratch ‘powerful’…and okay fine, I’m still rather boyish too.

Stall-man

2010-06-18T22:09:00.001+10:00

I'm a self-confessed stall-man. You see, when it comes down to men’s rooms, my penis isn’t very social with other penises. He likes the cubicle. In the land of non-female genitalia, my johnson embraces isolation. In the party of the bathrooms, my junk is that antisocial dude who would rather be elsewhere, and shows it by sitting in the other room glued to a computer screen or his phone.

I’ve found that the urinal is a dangerous place if you intend on looking down at any point. "Hey, what’s that on my shoe? AHH, PENIS!" In fact, when I actually do find myself in a public bathroom draining the main vein, I often avert my eyes to such an extent that I end up casually admiring the ceiling. I once had a conversation on the urinal (yeah!) that was based on why I was looking up. Now granted, I wasn’t very lucid, and come to think of it, I don’t think he was either, but this is one of the many reasons that I need a little partition when I am urinating.

As a stall-man, I’ve never wanted to make it known that I am a stall-man, either. I’m not macho or anything, but being a stall-man is a little emasculating, it’s a little like if you were to get caught rocking-out to Pink or be seen gripping your seat in that scene when the kid runs to the top of the Empire State Building in Sleepless in Seattle. My point is, that I see so many guys using the urinal that I can clearly see are only using it out of sheer desperation because all the cubicles are engaged. It’s always obvious - these guys are never quite centred, they're often hunched over looking down like they’re gear is prone to misplacement and are sometimes so obvious that they angle themselves away from the common area of the bathroom, but not me; I’m not saying that I have anything that would inspire awe, but I make sure that my whole body language at the urinal screams a male so blasé that he was made to use it. So, my question is, why make it obvious? Looking like you are doing a thorough inspection of the urinal that you’re using at the time is like wearing a sign that says that you enjoy watching The Princess Bride.

Sometimes the state of the urinal plays a part in my preferences too. The best urinal I have ever attended was one in Harbourside Shopping Centre in Sydney Harbour. It was a trough-urinal as opposed to a row of individual ones, which would usually be a deal-breaker, however, it wasn’t one of those horrible looking tin things, instead it was some sort of marble, matching the entire decor of the bathroom too, so matching, in fact, that it seemed as if I was just hosing down the wall; I loved it. I also enjoy the strategically-placed urinal-advertisements, as well. There's nothing like reading quick facts about the clap, weak-streams, premature ejaculation and gastro-issues while you have your wang out.

So the next time you’re out and nature calls - hold your head up high, line yourself up like you’re about to land an aircraft and sell it like having your family-jewels out is a good thing…even though it may not feel like it.

‘Penis’ euphemism counter: 7

Deli (No) Choices

2010-06-05T19:54:00.003+10:00

I’m going to have to say that the current prices at fast food outlets are our own fault. Let’s face it, fast food is too over-priced for what it is, especially McDonalds, and why is that, because Australia, and, from what I assume, the rest of the world who followed, is full of moron consumers, that’s why. Let me tell you a little story: Meet Bob. Bob’s dictionaries do not have the words ‘fast’ or ‘food’ in them, nor do they have a combination of the two. Bob isn’t a person - he is the epitome of every silly Australian that are to blame for the twelve dollar (AU$12) McDonalds meals you can buy today. It all started back in 2004 when Bob ate Subway for the first time as he watched Super Size Me. To his surprise, primarily due to his lacking brain activity, he then realised that the food he’d been enjoying at McDonalds for over thirty years was, for lack of a better word, shit, so he got up on his soapbox that is our national news, took one deep breath and screamed so loud that McDonalds in Australia were doomed. Unless the McDonalds Corporation became less of what they are, a fast food chain, and more like Subway, Bob wasn’t going to spend money at McDonalds anymore, spelling Ronald’s doom in this stupid, stupid country of ours – so they started Deli Choices, and thus initiating the cogs that made McDonalds go from selling great inexpensive fast food across the globe to selling restaurant-quality food at a price that only gives me the incentive I need to go to a place that still serves actual fast food.

I would sum up fast food as the two dollar shop of food. A quick Google search of the term ‘fast food’ will show you show you the following terms at least once in a single page: inexpensive, served quickly, low quality, low value, pre-prepared, junk food; you get the picture. This is where I'm confused, it took me a few seconds to type the search term, a quarter of a second for it to be processed and then a few more seconds to notice that those words were prevalent in the dictionary results, the point I am trying to make is, in 2004, how the hell did Australians completely miss what the definition of it was when it is only so many seconds away? I do realise that in the grand-scheme of the food business that fast food is probably near the bottom, but seriously, are we idiots? Or was this whole health thing just the grudge-burdened malnourished-brainchild of those that had really been eating it since the seventies? That would be understandable. The thing is that fast food is fast food, and, with the exception of sneaky marketing tricks, McDonalds never presented themselves as anything more than just fast food, just the same as Burger King or KFC, so why is the definition of fast food too complex for us to understand? The Americans can still at least faintly draw the line that divides fast food from good food, so why can’t we? We now just have this hybrid restaurant that just does business under the name of McDonalds, but it isn’t McDonalds, it may sell a Big Mac but that isn’t the same Big Mac which was sold six years ago; it is just a fast food outlet crossed with a fast food outlet that’s trying to be a restaurant, now. I just think that it’s ridiculous that once upon a time, everything at McDonalds was the price that today’s McValue Meals are, and now, in the comfort of an Italian restaurant, I could spend around five dollars (AU$5) more than I would on a large Chicken Bacon Deluxe meal and get a more than decent, chef-cooked pasta , better yet, it’s even hard to conceive that I could go down to any local RSL or sports club and buy a dish for less than that.

McDonalds is now a byproduct of an obvious health issue that was blown out of proportion by a bunch of people that are unable to see fast food for what it is and who think that we are too ill-equipped to make our own decisions on what we will and won’t consume. So what’s next? Will candy stores begin getting bad press for not selling healthy-candy and salads? Will desert restaurants get grilled for basically selling sugar as a menu item? By the rationale of a page titled “Food Quality” on a fast food corporation’s website, those two statements aren’t an exaggeration. So now, thanks to that same bunch of people, I will always have a quandary when looking to eat while I'm out: fast food or an actual restaurant? You see, when I want fast food, I’ll go to a fast food place, but if I wanted one hundred percent Australian Angus beef, Ingham chicken, Dairy Farmers milk, Arabica coffee, or any other expensive quality ingredient, I’d make my own decision and go to a restaurant.

Follicle Physicians

2010-05-29T19:06:00.001+10:00

I am hard to please when it comes to my hair and the hairdressers that I visit; always have been. When the time for a haircut rolls around, I look at it as a bit of a chore, simply because it just means the reboot of a series of good and bad periods of hair, particularly due to length, and also a trip to a hairdressing salon that seems to have walls made of glass. I’ve always just wanted to eliminate that series of differing hair-lengths altogether, either by growing it long, getting it cut more regularly, or waiting for a gypsy to curse me with the power to freeze my hair in time, but unfortunately, these either prove to be impossible or collectively expensive. So with the absence of a wealth and a magical endowment, I’ll need to deal with the many drawbacks of not being bald. Knock on wood.

First and foremost, I hate the week following a haircut. To me, that week is a bad time for every short-haired male. Like shoes and clothing, a haircut needs time to be worn in, so to speak. You need that week for people's eyes to adjust to your hair so that it’s no longer a head of hair that's just had a cut. You might even need that week for your scalp to correct any imperfections which were overlooked when your silly barber took that phone call (they always have to take it). If it wasn’t for work and class (and perhaps even life) these weeks would probably be best spent indoors. The other issue is the immediate time after. As you know, haircuts are messy, which is why I see them as the inconvenient end to any day. It’s always a risk if you foolishly carry on with your day as normal - your neck is still partially covered in little bits of hair, it'll look like you’re molting each time the breeze picks up and there is also the chance of itching, so as a general rule, I always spend the time after a cut hanging out in my shower at home before I start hanging out anywhere else.

Secondly, I would compare getting my haircut to having my pants down, so the last thing I would want is to be seen…by anyone. Think about it - you’ve got several different hair styles happening at the one time, your hair is wet, you’re covered in your own hair, your neck is sometimes contorted into a strange position, and you have a dressing-gown on, meanwhile, there are these panes of glass allowing the one hundred different people walking by to have that laughable sight of you in clear eye-shot. Aside from price and quality, finding a hairdresser that doesn’t make me feel like a clothing-dummy was once the biggest influence on my final decision, but it was a bigger challenge than I anticipated, so I gave up, which is more than evident. My loyalty now lies with this local place, and has for a few years now. What makes my forfeit more than evident is that this place is the epitome of the display-room-salons that I speak of. Not only does this place have a hefty amount of window to it, it's outside, it’s beside the entrance to big shopping centre and it’s on a busy street which buses frequent, so whenever I get a haircut, rest-assured, everybody can see me.

I don't know about you, but I could also liken a visit to the hairdresser to visiting the doctor. First of all, you usually have to wait in that queue for an endless amount of time, then you’re seen to by the professional and you get done what was intended, however, there never seems to be that hairdresser-customer confidentiality that you get with your physician, quite the contrary, actually. You see, while I’m in there, I don’t want someone bursting through the door of that doctors office, the same way that I don’t want people looking at me while I get my haircut, I mean, I’m hardly comfortable with the doctor being around, let alone others, and I’m just the same with my hairdressers; the least amount of eyes - the better, in my opinion.

Personally, I feel that the ladies are pretty lucky with hair, simply because, by tradition, they have long-hair. Aside from the hair treatments that they get done, they’re lucky because I’ve found that long hair typically doesn’t need to be cut as often and when they do get a simple cut, it’s often hard to spot.

So, that’s my whole spiel on hair – and hopefully now the next time you go to the hairdressers you feel as threadbare as I always do, even with that gown on.

Like Gold

2010-05-13T23:47:00.008+10:00

If having a relationship end and experiencing subsequent loneliness has taught me anything, it’s that every opportunity is precious. An opportunity could mean a life-changing journey and it’s amazing how it’s all up to you if you want to open the door to that road and find out how precious it is. Do you make the opportunity so or do you go on living your, possibly, lonely existence out of sheer convenience?

Anyone that knows me probably is aware of the sixth sense I have for the opposite sex. I love females, as Hank Moody would say ‘I have all their albums’. I merely sense beautiful ones now; I don’t even need to look anymore, like I have some sort of sonar. It’s a gift, really. To the point, there was this girl on the bus today and she was hot, yet conservative; what a combination, right? I spent the entire twenty minute bus ride talking myself into an introduction, opportunely waiting until we were both getting off the bus. So as we approached the last stop, my heart started to pound so intensely that it was probably visible through my shirt, this was where I put on my hypocrite-pants and aborted the whole operation. Yeah, I know, right? Not to brag or anything, but my introductions never usually go down that way, but to my dismay, the task never seems get any easier with practice and that’s why this type of thing still happens from time-to-time. Anyway, in high school, I always preached courage to the guys that have never even considered in their life approaching a little lady of interest. Often on my soapbox, a place I loved being - especially coming from a guy that was never huge with the ladies - I would often paint the word 'rejection' in a much less frightening light as I've always done in my mind before actually going through with speaking to someone for the first time. To the core of that, I would always remind them about my theory on the quality of opportunity and how, for something that can be so consequential, it's a now or never sort of deal. So coming back to today on the bus, hypothetically in the universe where I didn’t momentarily dissect my manhood, just say that I said hey and she liked what she saw or, better yet, I find out that she was thinking the exact same thing that I was thinking, in that universe, I might just have thrown away my potential wife for all I know, but I ~~won’t know~~ will never know, simply because I didn’t take action. Are you seeing my point on how precious these babies are?

With that in mind, and a pair of testicles in pants, I am able to summon the will to walk up to any girl in Sydney, I know because I’ve had relationships start on a single greeting. You see, here’s the thing: if she/he is interested, sure, I’ve gained a date and nice work, Ryan!, but if I get rejected, which has been the wretched conquistador of my many pursuits, I’ve not lost but gained the peace of mind in that the opportunity that has now passed was, unfortunately, not so precious, and where am I other than back at square one where I initially started. My point is: Don’t take your opportunities for granted; that shit is gold.

This had to be rewritten - 20/5/10

Morale in the Flesh Business

2010-05-12T16:43:00.001+10:00

Not the most pleasant of subjects but today I was thinking about the morale in the porno industry. I couldn’t imagine a hooker being at all happy with their life, but are porn stars happy people? And if they are, is the happiness dependent of their gender, like is one happier than the other? What about the crew, are they pleased with themselves or disgusted? How about those who deal with fetishes like scatophilia? Although the quality of acting is always nil, ignoring the obvious - you have to ask, is the joy in any of it just an act?

I know that I might just be the first guy to actually analyse the life of a porno-actor, but I’ve just always had a curiosity into the segment of their lives that, amazingly, has managed to stay private, the things that go on behind the closed doors when the camera isn’t rolling. For this reason, I’ve always wondered if Boogie Nights was a statement about the industry (at the least, in the context of the era that it was set) or if it was just an excuse to see Heather Graham without a shirt on. It could go either way, really. It’s been said that the film was based on real porn actors, but who knows to what extent that it influenced the story, I mean, we all know what Hollywood’s like, but, just the same as in that film and the time it depicted, does drug abuse and porn-production go hand-in-hand, especially in terms of today?

Another take would be on their home life. Can someone who enjoys, or at least pretends to enjoy, the pleasures of the flesh on screen function normally within society? Psychologically, can they pursue relationships or are they just so numbed of emotional intimacy that they no longer know what it means to make love with someone or even hold down a relationship? On that note, are the males even interested in sex anymore, or does that whole animalistic attraction that is embroidered into our DNA just disappear after twenty or so films? And that’s just during. Is the industry something you can just walk away from and live like Jan Brady? Or is it like a bad car accident that emotionally, and perhaps even physically, cripples you for life, especially if it was a long career? Someone like Sharon Mitchell is a good example of someone who could probably answer that type of question. Maybe it just comes down to the type of person who would pursue this type of career, which unfortunately would make a lot of what I just said redundant, but as per usual my curiosity gets the better of me.

So, with all these queries in mind, finally it comes down to my initial question of morale. At the core of it all, the larger question is what the initial intentions were: to make money or sex? Is it male actors because hey, unlimited sex, or is it women who’s high morale is perhaps driven by their more than adequate and substantially larger pay check at the end of the day? It’s possibly males, but I still hold a hint of doubt because no matter whom you are, there’s always such a thing as ‘too much’, but what do I know; only the actors know what it’s like to have as much sex as they do unless you’re Paul Stanley or something.

Like I said, only those involved could accurately quench my curiosity and answer all of this. I personally conceive pornography to be a more commercialised, and therefore, a tad cleaner version of prostitution with a different spin, but that answers nothing in terms of morale. If I were going to condense all of these questions down into one question in a serious attempt to find answers, it would be about where the line gets drawn between pornography and prostitution, and how significantly those two worlds differ as a result; I feel that would be the ultimate question that could answer most, if not all, of these curiosities.

Faculty Fibs

2010-05-07T21:19:00.001+10:00

Back in school, I never quite understood parent-teacher interviews. This annual ritual was the one night that, to me, made every teacher a liar. For those that aren’t familiar, at my high school, parent-teacher interviews always consisted of cramming every teacher from your grade into the school hall, you and your respective guardian would then work your way around said hall until your guardian has received commentary from every one of your teachers regarding your overall performance. This would happen once, maybe twice a year and was compulsory. I always dreaded this one night in the year, not because I misbehaved in class, nor were my marks something to be punished on, I just dreaded hearing from every teacher, year-in and year-out, the same choose your words carefully overtone that I heard in my interviews and, more importantly, overheard in others.

Some years, I would often wonder why I didn’t just fake illness so that I didn’t have to go, I guess I just had a glimmer of hope that it would be the year that one of my teachers would sit the both of us down and say "Your son is lazy. His school work is his last priority. It was a colossal pain in my arse when he missed that exam and if he is consistent in his marks, he's going to be a janitor." That’s all I wanted, just something that indicated to me that what they were saying was accurately reflecting what had actually been happening, no matter how overstated, the interviews needed an approach that would be the influence behind some solid parental discipline. Instead, the things they would say were always worded and sugarcoated in such a way that their optimism often drowned out the raw truth. Whenever a teacher does this, and they all do, I think that they could just about say anything and it would sound good. I mean, if you're going to bash my mother and I over the head, doing it with a metaphorical candy-cane isn't going to get the job done. In all seriousness, I'm not saying that they need to be rude or insulting about it, I’ve just always felt when a teacher has been stuck with a class where the only reason that students choose to sit in the front row is because the back row is full that having an equal understanding with parents is key; doesn't that make sense?

Parent-teacher interviews were/are just another redundant form of communication. Teachers needed to be taught to leave their hearts at the entrance along with everything but their firearms, and not the other way round like they have evidently always done and failed with. Having a classroom of disruptive morons, then denying that fact come interview night will only leave you with the same classroom of disruptive morons. Unpunished morons, I should add. I've said it before; you can’t deal with an aggressive situation with a non-aggressive solution.

Please Respond…maybe

2010-04-08T15:27:00.001+10:00

Ahh, ‘maybe’, now there’s a word that really grinds my bones. It has to be one of the most pointless and under-achieving words in the history of language. It’s a non-answer, it invokes no action and no real effort, it only triggers an internal-process that can’t be read by an external entity. Allow me to garnish you with some questions where ‘maybe’ is useless: “Doctor, am I going to die?” “Am I a boy?” “Do I still have a social life?” “Was that a ‘yes’?” “For five marks, did Stalin kill a lot of people?” “You bolted these wheels to the chassis of the car, right?” Here’s the punch line: I have a family friend, a young woman, older than myself, she has never been the one to stay in the same country for an extended period of time, and with that comes her credible insight into different forms of culture. Quite a while back, I confided in her about my declining social life. I explained that I was finding it difficult to meet someone who I could trust to show up to plans we had made or to get back to me about something that got a massive ‘maybe’ stamped on it. I even told her that one of the many reasons I almost cancelled my eighteenth birthday party was because I was already predicting that half of the guest list who had told me that they were attending weren’t actually going to attend, which they did not. Anyway, comparatively with her past experiences as a slightly older female who has also travelled, she was able to shed some light on what had been troubling me. She said that between Sydney and other cities around the world, she found that the youth here in Sydney, Australia tend to ignore the traditional first-in, first-served policy (much like in restaurant queues) and are now becoming more concerned with plans that could come up between then and now than the plans that they already have, like they are always waiting to see if something better will come up. Her observance really inspired some comfort, affirmed a lot of my suspicions and, more importantly, broadened my thoughts that disregarded other parts of the world that would behave differently (and perhaps, more maturely) in the social spectrum of things.

Evidently, it would seem that with the youth here, socialising has become a numbers game. At first, I thought that perhaps there were personal factors at play, but as the previous year progressed further and transformed into 2010, I still find myself at parties where there is a fifty-head guest list but only twenty people are physically present at the party. The basic first-in, first-served rule that I either thought once existed or I deluded myself into thinking existed and even, at present, still try to follow to the best of my ability has been lost. Now all you get are big ‘maybe’s which are just about as worthless as not RSVP’ing at all. What good is an RSVP deadline if there is a third option?

It works all the same in casual plans too. As the name suggests, the protocol is more casual as it’s a process of negotiation and consideration, however, in this case ‘maybe’ is never a valid answer because ‘maybe’ is Bullshit for ‘no – there are far better things that could come up between then and now’. Sure, in something as casual as just meeting up, plans can simply be cancelled, but as long of course, it’s done for the right reasons and hopefully some notice.

So, what would my plan of attack be? Firstly, I would change ‘Please Respond’ (the RSVP English translation) to ‘Please give me a straight answer’ in Sydney-alone, and then to wherever is having the same issue, however, I won’t bother translating it into French, nor would I abbreviate it. I would then write a blog (woops, already did that) and drill it into these kid’s heads that the word ‘maybe’ needs to be pulled from there vocabulary in order for organisation, guest-lists and the actual RSVP system to be at all effective. I will then make sure that it is clear that when you are holding an invite in hand that the RSVP section indicates two boxes: a ‘yes’, which you do your best to make an appearance or notify otherwise (even if it’s going to be a cameo appearance), and then under that, there will be a ‘no’ box, which leaves you open to screw around all you want without holding anybody else up; it’s quite simple. No more of this ‘maybe’ bullshit, especially when it comes to parties, I think I speak for anybody who has had to plan a party’s guest-list when I say that.

So, if one day you plan to live here and make some friends, understand that plans are too fluid to be carved into Sydney’s stone, be it your eighteenth, twenty-first or drinks at a bar. If you make plans, being left-hanging is a high-risk factor here, all at the hands of the youth who tonight alone will probably blow a hundred Australian dollars downing alcohol as opposed to spending three dollars on a calendar and remembering that they had something on tonight that they would’ve stuck to. A city where everybody can use a calendar and un-ulteriorly say ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ when prompted, now that’s where I’d like to live…maybe.

First Step for Chinese

2010-03-25T16:29:00.001+11:00

Well, it’s official, Google are my new best friends, not that there services and I haven’t been romantically involved for years now anyway, but on Tuesday, after many months of contemplation, Google have finally told China to get stuffed. It is the first real significant step toward putting the Chinese Government in its place.

On the 20^th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre last year, I wrote about how disgusted I was that the Chinese were being misdirected and silenced in regards to their history in such a modernised world like the one that exists now, you can find that post here. If you’re too lazy to read it, I most notably pointed out the fact that the internet and, namely, Google China are essentially a censored by-product of the government to hide anything they oppose, including the events of June 4^th, 1989, but Tuesday marked the day where this is no longer the case. Google have decided to no longer censor there search results by closing Google.cn and having it redirect you to Hong Kong’s Google which is uncensored. In Twenty Years of Silence, I was essentially driven by optimistic media reports, I had hoped that this first step would have already occurred by now in the form of a Tiananmen Square memorial at the actual site around the time I wrote that post, unfortunately this was hardly evident in my eyes once I’d managed to read reports posted later that day; that’s what makes this particular event so very significant.

The Chinese deserve this, a large non-partisan entity telling their government that it’s 2010 and that bullying will no longer be tolerated by fascist-minded politics. I’m not too clear on the details of the why as of yet, Google seemed to state that they have cut censoring to protect themselves against cyber-crime originating in China, which that excuse makes no real sense to me, I mean, surely strengthening security would be a more logical-decision over evading a country’s censorship, especially considering that this move could end up killing Google access in a country that essentially has the largest population in the world. Personally, I feel that Google are just using the event of Chinese hackers, which did happen, to disguise their underlying qualms with having to censor, but I’m just speculating really.

So, with a significant amount of noise surrounding it, the first step has been made, now the next step would be for other corporations to follow suit. Go Daddy, a popular domain registrar, began cutting down on .cn registrations yesterday; however, Microsoft, who operates Bing – a service competing with Google, have stated that they will continue to follow China’s laws as agreed (perhaps for the wrong reasons says Google co-founder, which is troubling). So time will only tell what the future holds for the Great Firewall of China; will corporations follow Microsoft’s lead and help it continue its attempt to shield mainland China from the rest of the world, or will it perish just like the Berlin Wall did? My optimism lies with the latter.

Other Links:
Google kills Google.cn, no longer filtering results
Google's Sergey Brin disappointed with Microsoft's China stance
Google’s Mainland China service availability summary
Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989

Blog Therapy

2010-03-19T17:56:00.000+11:00

Among my many idiosyncrasies and the scarce amount of insecurities, I tend to get pretty offended when my intelligence comes into question. It isn’t a huge deal, but at those times that for some reason I am feeling inactive, sterile and ‘for lack of a better word: dumb’, I often find myself turning to a blank word document for…well, some blog therapy.

I think what I am getting at is that I have reached the realisation that one of the myriad of reasons I write, especially to a blog, is to prove to myself and, ashamedly, others that I am smarter than I am witless.

This hardly surprises, constant production has always been one of my pleasures. Any large amount of time I spend on fruitless activities such as video games or social-networking, which I love and enjoy doing, can also influence some agitation, especially when I realise that it has achieved nothing but kill precious time I could have spent on finishing off lyrics or creating some hard-data that will prove to me that I am not wasting my life away.

Of course, primarily my songs and blogs only exist because writing has become an outlet that I have a deep-passion for, but both have also inadvertently turned into utilities that help keep me convinced that I still consist of a functional brain, regardless of image.

The Flick of a Page

2010-02-28T18:06:00.001+11:00

I am a glutton for technology; I am the complete opposite of a Luddite. I often fantacise of a day where even our bomb cars will have an onboard computer, that’s what I am living for. Smartphones, RFID Barcodes, affordable GPS navigation systems, a computer system is in pretty much any young person’s home, some carry them next to their junk or in their handbags, that’s where we are now, and I love it. In a nutshell, I find it difficult to find an objection in any advancement presently or to be available in the future, except this tiny little thing that I can safely say will be a concept exhibited behind glass in a museum within the next century, the market that the Amazon Kindle, iPad and any other eBook reader are building to eradicate this little thing that I would love to see impervious to our ever-changing world, and that concept is the flick of a page.

Don’t take my preference to hard-copy as bias, as I mentioned, I possess a massive moaner for technology, in fact, a great portion of my reading happens in front of the screen of my computer, which is alright but you see, when I have felt more than inclined to read a large piece of writing from the web or sent to me by a friend, I often have the impulse to read it on my phone so that I can simply hold what I am reading, however, not even that seems to suffice because once I open whatever it is on my phone, I similarly feel the need to see what I am reading splashed down onto a piece of paper. I’m not writing this to bash eBook reader devices either; they are a great little innovation and it would be fantastic to have to carry around with you, it’s just what they are provoking that I fear.

It’s just that physical element in possession that I, and the many others that I assume can agree with me, am responding to. It goes the same for films, music, tickets, and perhaps even in the further future, newspapers; they are all going down the same path. Personally for me, a fraction of the joy in any musical purchase is, as I have mentioned before, flicking through the album art while the new music is playing; I love running my fingers across the cover of a book and looking to the back for the blurb; I like being able to walk into a convenience store early morning and grabbing a paper, despite the fact that I could pull up the same headlines on my mobile; even sticking concert tickets up on my wall has become a ritual, no matter what anybody says, nothing beats those little things that make these types of purchases just that little bit better, but now with the implementation of online digital movie/music stores, news sites beginning to charge for its content much like they do with their newspapers, and of course, the eTicket option, those joys now have the foundation under them that is required of them to be forgotten. Sure, today these methods of possession are just another option in our day-to-day lives, maybe even in thirty years this will still remain the case, but one day that option will no longer be present, and I never want to see the day where trying to buy a newspaper or an album on CD is like it is trying to buy a new release film on VHS at present day.

Technology is great; don’t get me wrong, I bow down to it. Thanks to technology, we no longer even need to leave our homes to do activities that thirty years ago would have been considered impossible to do without leaving your home, not only that but it gives us twenty-four hour access to libraries of information no matter where we are in the globe, however majority of the digital advancements that are simply abolishing the demand on paper which, although I do realise are assisting in the preservation of the earth, also have the potential to wash away the sentimentality in such purchases that I personally hold dear. For my own sake, I am just hoping that this sort of advancement is something that is implemented after I am long gone, I mean, people don’t have vinyl record collections for nothing.

Focal Points of Attraction

2010-02-16T01:40:00.000+11:00

When my eyes are open to the female persuasion, apart from the obvious, these eyes are often looking to see two things: casualness and youthfulness.

Without sounding like a potential crime scene, I shall begin with youthfulness. I’ve found that when my eyes are wondering, that my focus can often be broken more frequently by a young teen of any level of attractiveness than it is broken by a good looking older woman. Why? It’s most likely that my subconscious is simply weighing my chances, for example, say I see a business woman, perhaps in her late 20s, great figure, fantastic legs, but let’s be honest, I’m no Mark Wahlberg from ‘Boogie Nights’ here (hint: he had massive…proportion…in a certain area), what chance would I have with an older and probably unavailable woman, however, perhaps a slightly less attractive teenager were to walk by, the probability of an encounter is far more greater on account of her age, therefore, my attraction which is dependent on a successful confrontation is somewhat heightened in comparison to the woman who probably had her multiplication tables down by the time that I was conceived.

Now for the casual; this one is a hard one. I have always had a liking for Tina Fey and Janeane Garofalo, perspectively they are no Paris Hiltons or Carmen Electras, but I have never been the wet-shirted, shirt-skirted kind of guy that has his tongue hanging out of his mouth, salivating over men’s magazines, I am quite the contrary in a sense that I’m after a lady-friend who can put on a t-shirt and some jeans, lightly apply some make up and what have you and still look great, and quickly at that; having said that, of course I would still prefer them to be hygienic nonetheless. Like many things about myself, I’m not too sure why this is so, perhaps I just don’t want to awake next to a mask of make-up on my pillow and a woman that I can hardly resemble from the one that I fell asleep with the previous night. To put it bluntly (and sound like a homosexual), I want my woman to be like a man, by that I mean, low-maintenance, but a female nonetheless. I have also often found myself attracted to those that wear dark eyeliner, that color their hair and blast heavy metal music, those that some might call punk-emo; this, I suspect, is simply due to my predilection for the casual. In my travels through childhood, I have found these girls to be very casual, although they still are very premeditated which is the unfortunate deal-breaker by my own rationale, however when it comes down to face-value, this focal attraction of mine still comes into play.

Here is where attire plays a large part. The aforementioned jeans and t-shirt is an ideal trait in a casual member of the opposite sex (of course, I use ‘jeans and t-shirt’ as a phrase to refer to common casual dress; I am not saying that they are restricted to those two things). Garofalo and Fey are examples of such people; I myself am even a jeans and t-shirt guy. You see, here’s the thing, I have always found formal dress to be in the hit-and-miss category, meaning that the likelihood of a female looking her best in formal attire is a big gamble to me. With school formals still fresh in mind, I remember out of over a hundred girls at each of the formals, only a small handful of them got their outfits right in my opinion and I don’t see those odds something to be dating on. On that note too, some girls evidently have trouble adapting to the occasion too, i.e. a shopping centre is not fitting for some of the stuff I have seen, I mean, I am talking so overdressed that I would be embarrassed to be with them, to be blunt about it, regardless of how good looking they might have been too. So when in the market, I find that someone who is casual and an owner of a wardrobe abundantly populated by denim, I see that as safe ground, I won’t need to worry about being humiliated while doing the groceries, I won’t ever have to worry about what the hell she’s going to where this time; screw that, I mean how wrong can you go with jeans and a t-shirt, really? Think about it, unless she owns a t-shirt with ‘Whore’ printed across her love-puppies, I don’t see me or anybody else running into issues. As well as all that, when the occasion rolls around that actually calls for formal wear, I think that it’s fantastic; I love it. I think that when a casual girl is dressed formally, the impact of the outfit is far greater due to her default attire and even if she gets it wrong, she’ll wear it once or twice in her life so what does it matter? Plus this will show that she can adequately detect when an outfit is appropriate. I personally love chucking on a suit purely because ninety-nine percent of the year people are always seeing me dressed casually...and I won’t lie, the compliments are good too.

So in short, what you have just read basically spells out my trivially-perfect woman: one that essentially is around my age and doesn’t dress like she is going clubbing or to the horse races every single day of her life. Jeans, a t-shirt and a birth-certificate (just kidding about that last one) that’s all I need to see in order to notice an individual female from the midst of them.

The Exploitation of Vulnerability

2010-01-29T01:52:00.006+11:00

Lets think: What’s the worst possible thing that could happen after being rescued from beneath the rubble and ruins of what was once your home? I’ll let you cogitate on the question for a moment…now think a little harder, however don’t conclude…now, assuming that you now have an answer, multiply that answer by one thousand.

Have a read:

Child predators target Haitian orphans

BABIES and toddlers were plucked by brutes from the rubble of earthquake-devastated Haiti, The Sun reported today.

Even those praying for sanctuary at field medical centres set were not safe, as aid workers warned child-trafficking gangs were springing up across the shattered capital.

Fifteen children were snatched by men, later found not to be relatives, after being treated.

UN teams raced yesterday to find children being preyed on, as an official warned how the quake chaos was being exploited for evil.

"As well as the health concerns ... we are now concerned unaccompanied children will be exploited by unscrupulous people who may wish to traffic them for adoption, the sex trade or domestic servitude," UNICEF spokesman Kent Page said.

US troops also beefed up security at the docks after reports children were being smuggled out to sea.

Looting, violence in desperation, disease, lack of aid, aftershocks – most of which are things that are likely to have happened again in Haiti by the time you are done reading this – are one thing in themselves, all natural side-effects to starvation and the aftermath of a disaster area with the nature of which Haiti’s situation is, but child-trafficking? Really? This would mean that people are walking in with despair in sight yet without conscience, doing what looks to the casual-observer as rescuing a helpless child but then taking them for personal-gain, only to horribly exploit human fear and further an already horrible catastrophe.

The term ‘catastrophe’, I used that in the last paragraph, also in my previous post, then I was only referring to the initial quake itself, but now it would seem to me like another event of perhaps an even greater wavelength of catastrophic nature is on its way for Haiti, and it deeply upsets me to think that even one human on the same earth that I reside would further devastate families at such a critical time of country-wide vulnerability. The above article, which made me wise to what has ruined my night, states that security has been increased, I just hope that they catch or somehow deter these predators so that it will ease this unnecessary addition of fear for Haitians, I really do; I am so very sympathetic. So to pull the plug on another paragraph that could possibly send a tear down my cheek or my fist to a pillow, the now-new question on every Haitian’s lips is: Would you rather die from the weight of concrete crushing your bones or the weight of forced-prostitution, drug addiction, adoption or forced-servitude? I only ask because no human should have to ask that question.

This Just In...

2010-01-27T02:18:00.009+11:00

Okay, the title is a tad misleading – Just sharing some of my thoughts on what has been happening around the world for the most part of this month.

Our ~~Roads~~ Battle Zones
A shocking Christmas Holiday road toll is something that Australians could mark on their calendars each year, that’s how predictable it is. In the time frame of about two weeks which is dubbed our ‘holiday season’ (within the overall Christmas Holiday I suppose), seventy people died on Australia’s roads; the highest toll in four years, not that any other time is better with the toll being in the 50s and 60s anyway. Let’s put that figure into perspective, shall we: That would be like being in high school, going on one of our two week breaks, and only half of my grade returning when classes resumed. I think it’s disgusting, and according to news sources, so do our police department.

Arson
Any regular onlooker would view our bushfires as an innocent act of nature, however, like most around the world, here in Australia we have these things called ‘arsonists’, they are a bunch of bushland psychotics (however, may or may not be pyromaniacs, contrary to popular belief) that for god knows what reason recreate this annual disaster every single year. This year we had issues with bushfires in Western Australia due to arson, however, last year was our worst dubbed 'Black Saturday', also a victim of arson. Black Saturday killed over three hundred Australians and incinerated acres upon acres of property, and all for what, a cheap thrill? Now I am not a huge fan of capital punishment, but I personally feel that for three hundred innocent human lives, a slow cremation of living arsonists is a fitting punishment.

Haiti
Whenever these natural foreign catastrophes are being played out on a screen in front of my eyes, I only ever have one thought running through my mind: Man, Australia is such a lucky country. Where we live is really something that must not be taken for granted. No natural disaster that has taken place on our soil has ever come close to the magnitude that has been reached by the earthquakes in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunamis in Indonesia, to name a few. Our land tends to break-even with the earth’s many forces and that’s something that will always keep me residing in a country that lacks the dictation of war and the loss in disaster.

Prince William of Wales
Yeah should’ve stayed in Wales, buddy. For those of you who are unaware, the great balding prince gave Australia a little visit recently. This is the thing, it would seem that in the days leading up to his arrival that people were already going hysterical at the slightest thought of meeting him and I am so lost as to why, much like how lost I was trying to figure out why everyone was so very distraught for the years after the passing of his mother (don’t even get me started on that woman), I just don’t get it, even though my own mother attempts to explain the, in my opinion, impossible personal connection that her and other such mourners around the globe somehow developed with a woman that even Queen Elizabeth had killed (okay, that was just a cheap shot, Ryan!). In all seriousness though, the part that has me lost about the people’s reaction to Prince William, and any other member of our royalty for that matter, is the part where he has done nothing in his life except fall out of his mother’s soon-to-be busy birthing canal, yeah, that’s right, him and the entire royal family are renowned and fallen in love with simply for being born. So my question is, if he isn’t anything but lucky to be born into a family of expensive maces, castles and maids, then why is he treated like he split the atom or something?

'Brangelina'
Okay, I just needed to point out that I keep forgetting that when they say 'Brangelina' that it refers to Brad and Angelina and that Brangelina is not some country that I have never heard of before that is having some civil war causing them to ‘split’.

The Me: Part II

2010-01-12T16:21:00.011+11:00

It's a new year, it's beginning a successful one, so I felt that for the very first for the new decade that I would post this. Before Facebook abducted me and wiped any memory of how I ever used MySpace, I crafted two (maybe three, I can't find the other) blurbs regarding who I felt I was and where I thought my head was, one that overwrote the previous, when that refresh took place I posted a blog in it's place to commemorate the self-defining handful of articulation that I soon realised had passed it's time, so since this is the first time I have visited my MySpace page since Bush was still the US President and thus a rewrite being near impossible, simply to stand on ceremony, I felt that I should do the same for this piece:

Ryan William James Quinn
Remember The Name.

Essentially, I adore each and every aspect of my world; my buddies and my family make life worth living; music keeps me listening; my computer keeps me occupied; and chocolate makes me money.

Blue eyes; I get emotional watching romantic comedies and I am a poultrarian; Some have said that I am pessimistic and nostalgic; I love to make people smile and I hate when LOL is used outside the chat room; I don’t consider a hug a hug unless both hands are flat on my back and I can feel my lungs being compressed; I don’t like having a beef with anyone so if I don’t hate you, I probably love you; if I could turn back time, I would go back to when good Adam Sandler films were made and I think that computer graphical design should be a visual art.

Brown hair; you may know me to be a frightfully unhappy person, you may know me to be one of the most awesome people you have ever met, or you may not even know me. I like to think that it’s the second one; because if it’s otherwise you may as well not know me at all.

Fair skin; throw something at me; a stick? A cigarette? An insult? Some people don’t understand, I wasted so much energy on caring what other people think about what I say or how I look that I am exhausted and numb to worthless actions. I’d love nothing more to be friends with everyone but why worry when people don’t wish to be. Chances are my long list of people that have a beef with me will go on growing…let it.

Slim Build; I love words, and the people that have the ability to use them well; novelists; play-writes; song-writers. Anyone that can make someone shiver with what most people are taught at birth are legends in my eyes. Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Chad Kroeger of Nickelback, Script Writers of shows like Boston Legal and Californication, of films such as, Fight Club and High Fidelity; these people aren’t just writing well, they are brilliant at cutting the shit and writing about reality and any aspect of the world we live in.

177cm; I write lyrics, rap lyrics, because I one day want to make people feel what those rich minded people have made me feel. I want to be on stage rapping about love and hurt, joy and anxiety, the whole lot of it, I want to be able to make people smile and make people scream - It’s a dream.

Know this
If you drive me, I will boil.

If you want me to join you, I disdain.

If I haven’t made you smile, I’ve failed.

If I wanted to play games with you, I would buy an Xbox.

End of Exam.

~http://myspace.com/p4r4d0x

Composed When Composing

2009-12-30T11:39:00.000+11:00

So this will most likely be my last one for this year and my first for a little while now, for both of those I have reasons for. There have been a multitude of things going on this last fortnight, I am sure that it has been like that for most around the world, however, there still have been times where it’s been necessary for certain thoughts to be suppressed and times where they have needed to be squeezed out, hence why blog material has been in the lacking and I also now have an idea as to what this dying year should see from this blog's exit from the current decade.

Me? I read many blogs, some that reach a more profound level of sincerity than this one ever has, but one thing I tend to always notice that those people do wrong with some of their posts, often making it hard for me to even return, is that you can tell that they had written them while under the nasty intoxication of anger. Ideally this would be fine, but unfortunately as humans, our moods have a tendency to overcome us and when an angry one strikes, we, and by ‘we’ I refer to humans, are notorious for reacting quite over-dramatically and when in such a state, you're better off sleeping on the dissertations for the day, if you ask me. Take it from me, negative feelings can often reflect poorly on the sentimental quality of your emotions and the words you use to express them. So about my posts or lack thereof - when I am angry, I’m as over-dramatic as humanly possible, this is why I haven’t posted too much of late. Despite having written a lot privately, I have been struggling to birth something that I feel comfortable about others reading, not because of the content but more the bad mood I was in when writing the pieces. You see, in light of my past dramaticisms, a year ago when creating this site, I made it a strict rule not to write when I’m not feeling as composed as I could be, I mean, I wasn’t prepared to create a blog to fill it with what I’ve dreaded reading on other peoples blogs, that would be illogical. It’s just my method of prevention, I don’t wish for anyone to switch on the page and see paragraphs of insults or to see how utterly miserable something has made me with no resolve, nor do I want to wake up the next morning in the hangover of moody-writing only to read paragraphs of profanity and self-sympathy. So I suggest that you consider that when you find yourself about to post, ask yourself: Was I composed when composing?

The reason as to why this might be the last post date-stamped ‘2009’ is for similar reasons. This year I haven’t been the happiest of campers, hence why I have been hiding my thoughts, although, I must admit that I am very pleased with how my Christmas has turned out. So as a result of my vocal struggle, there is now a good list of different things I need to get off my chest (and off of my incomplete blog list) which were notes that I really didn’t want to end the year on, and more importantly, the decade. Leaving it negatively, especially with the recent Christmas season, really isn’t what I want, written angrily or not.

So ‘09, I don’t have too much more to say for it really. Although not a lot has changed, I am beginning to take some of the things that have worried me into my stride and all the other things I will deal with in due time, so for now I will just say that I hope you had a great Christmas and that you have a fantastic New Years.

The Prescript Life of a False Persona

2009-12-19T14:29:00.002+11:00

I have a theory about the lives of certain characters in the run of a storyline, however, it particularly refers to the main characters and the life they lead prior to (and lead after) the beginning of that story; it applies to the majority of the books, motion-pictures and TV shows that are available to date. The theory simply states that most characters in a story lead somewhat unfulfilling and boring lives in the time that they do not spend in front of our eyes, which I feel misrepresents real-life. In the scripted life of any character, life is a segment, not a flow of events that we experience in reality.

Trying to explain this and then back it up with an example is not an easy task as most narratives vary and some tend to even attempt to cover themselves of this in some fashion, however, the best I think I can come up with is the action-drama television series 24. For those that aren’t familiar with this series (god forbid), this show in its early stages was semi-enjoyable, despite the fact that it’s always been a total crock in terms of characteristic realism, not to mention in terms of anything else. 24 is a show which follows a government agent, who seems to always be on his cell phone when he is meant to be driving, through a day jam-packed with events. Each season denotes one day, twenty-four episodes are in each of those seasons, each representing an hour in that day. Reason that this example does not perfectly back-up my point is because major changes seem to always be happening in between each season, however where the realism is not so strong is the fact that it is very segmentary in the way that any other crime seems to be at a stand-still during one of these seasons, and for an extensive government agency, not one person seems to be working on anything else other than this one case, like whenever Jack Bauer isn’t hunting down some terrorist-mastermind the agency might as well just close until he gets over his depression or gets pardoned out of prison and shaves that funky beard (all of which was done in the span of ten minutes, by the way).

Realistically, our lives generally smoothen out and things happen over time, however in the life of a character in its entirety, everything only seems to happen in a small fraction of their fictional lives and then they live ‘happily ever after’. Often I notice in television pilot episodes that everybody has conversations like they have just met or like one of them has been on one big overseas holiday for a few years which has prevented them from conversing about past events, it’s usually a conversation that builds the premise for some sort of story arc or something else particular to that character’s past, however, it would turn out that they have remained in close proximity and have been friends with these people long enough for an opportunity other than the one shown in the pilot episode to have such conversations; this is where 24 managed to cover themselves somewhat, in the pilot and the first episodes of the following seasons.

I have no real issue with it, it’s just a theory of mine that I think will always be what prevents a writer from truly capturing life in its most sedulous form. So, unfortunately when you are dealing with the limitation of a time slot or your words on a notepad, there is only so little time to demonstrate so much about a character.

A Few Things

2009-12-12T00:48:00.001+11:00

Just a few small things that have been my mind lately.

Horror Movies are a group activity
I am more of a comedy/ drama guy when it comes to films, but on the odd occasion that I find myself watching a bunch of teens smoking weed out in the bush only puffs away from being gutted, a guy in a contorting-contraption that is literally dividing each bone in his body or even a woman being raped by mutated-males just so that she can shoot out a mutant baby of her own, I feel that those moments are better enjoyed with company than on my lonesome like it’s some personal montage of muscle-clinching instances. It isn’t a fear thing, but I prefer to stomach such horror with someone that is going through the exact same psychological trauma that I am going through, that’s all.

Slang regarding Food
I have discovered that I love any term related to food. Some of my personal favourites:

Peckish (meaning ‘somewhat hungry’)
Chow Down
Polish off a box of…
Devour
Attack

Flavoured Milk on Soy?
Gladys and I came up with this one: We know that it is possible to buy it in a carton from the supermarket, but we were a bit puzzled as to why chilled flavoured milks in a bottle were only available in light milk as an alternative to full-cream, however, not available in a soy alternative. So subsequent to this mystery, in the imaginary land that is our brains, we plan to open a company, much like Oak and Moove, with the typical flavours of Chocolate, Strawberry and Ice Coffee, however, to serve those that make up the fragment of the population that have issues with the digestion of lactose.

One-on-one beats all
My social abilities are much-like writing a script, I prefer only two people in the conversation, including myself, that way there is less people to keep track of and therefore less chance of interruption in the overall flow of a potentially fantastic conversation. I always feel like more can be achieved as the conversation remains on more of a personal level, whereas with a group, things said are more like announcements than spoken-words between friends, therefore things are always left unsaid and bottled.

Aldi & IKEA
How many people are these foreign companies hiring? These places are sometimes below understaffed. In Aldi, I have literally walked in and there has been one checkout-chick and that’s it, almost like that day on the roster was just blank with the exception of her name; I am serious, that simple guy unpacking boxes you would usually find at Woolworths was nowhere to be seen, not one person was just walking around looking busy, like you would see in any store. At times it has gotten to the point where I have become more intent on seeking out assistance than I did in finding the item I was initially looking for.

Rappers without anything to say
Two things that really grind my bones when I am listening to music, rap in particular:

I am sick of hearing black guys talk about how once upon a time they hardly had any respect and only a few dollars to their name, and now they have more money and respect than a god. One person said it in a song and that was enough, now some artists find it hard not to include how they went from rags to riches in a song; it’s sure to become the new ‘yo, yo’ phrase that they say before each track.
“I’ve got my mind on my money and my money on my mind” This is not a lyric! It’s a clever way of stating a somewhat obvious and general fact. Tell me, excluding Buddhists, what person doesn’t have their mind on their money, not to mention rappers?

Stickers that Elvis had issues with
So, it’s the 21st century, and most of everything that we use day-to-day is usually a refined version of its predecessor, we have learnt from our mistakes, new materials are being used and new methods of how those materials should be manufactured have been discovered, however, it would seem that there is one minute intricacy of our daily use which has managed to remain impervious to our advancements over the last century: those damn stickers that come on newly purchased items. For some reason, nobody has invented an affordable sticker which won’t leave a sticky residue when you try to take it off of your CD cover; I am still waiting.

Fictional Wedding Day Clichés
Every time I see a wedding scene in a film or on TV I am just like ‘here we go’ then I follow it with a roll of the eyes, I can always just taste something about to happen when I see that church. It would seem that writers don’t know that people actually have normal, successful wedding ceremonies. This is the usual formula for these clichéd fictional-weddings: The priest, the groom and the rest of them are waiting at the altar, they play that song which has never been played at a wedding I have attended, and then the bride walks down, if she showed up of course - you can’t forget that milestone. So she’s at the altar, he’s at the altar and of course then some guy shows up and everybody must STOP THE CEREMONY AND LISTEN TO ME, I am only seconds away from whipping out some eloquent, ceremony-ending speech about love, I mean someone correct me if I am wrong, but is this happening as frequently as it does in the fictional universe, if at all? Who here reading this right now would wait til the wedding day to profess their feelings only to look like some douche in front of a congregation of people to a woman that looks to me like she has already made up her mind? Anyway, some of my favourite movies have this scene, usually at the end, but the next time I walk into a cinema and see this, I may just walk out, especially if she ends up with the guy not wearing the groom’s outfit.

Ten Missed Calls

2009-12-02T15:11:00.006+11:00

I’m not clingy, unless of course the situation calls for it. You see, there are two types of people, the clingy and the not so clingy, but you see, there are also these people that do this thing, I see it as the coward’s outlet of an easy escape, only problem is that this methodology can turn even the not so clingy into full-blown stalkers, it’s called avoiding. When you aren’t replying to messages, when you are letting calls ring-out in the hopes that it’ll be the last or even when you just pass by without a sign of acknowledgement, what do you expect to happen? This is the thing I fail to apprehend. In lieu of just being forthright with people, others are willing to make things worse and cause trouble as a tool used to get rid of people.

As I said, I don’t consider myself to be generally clingy, but I know in myself that naturally if somebody isn’t replying to my messages that I will most likely message again in a few days, maybe even that day, if a call goes unanswered that I will try again, and if somebody ignores me out on the street that…well, the amount of calls I’d be making to that person would have just multiplied considerably; are you catching what I am trying to demonstrate here? Understand that if you are one of those who has tried to avoid someone presuming that they will just give up eventually, those people, at least for a while, are just going to persist further, it’s a little like a shell that is stuck to a rock with a creature still living in it (a Patella vulgate, to be all technical), think of it like you’re the creature, at first you would only be grasping onto that surface with neutral pressure, but once somebody comes along and tries to pull you and your shell off of it, you grasp harder, and then when they try again straight after, you grasp even tighter. See? The thing is, the more you grasp onto that rock under your little coward sanctuary that is the shell, the more someone is going to want and try to take you off of that rock, and then you’ve only created this little vicious cycle for yourself, whereas you could have just ended it all forty messages ago with a f*** off, you are annoying me, although, make sure that you rephrase that in the nicest possible way, I am not condoning that sort of approach – if you do, you might as well slash their wrists for them.

I’ve been on both the receiving and the giving end in this situation. Being completely truthful, I once served an ex-girlfriend at work that treated me exactly like I was just another employee at that place, I have also had friendships and even relationships end simply because they began to avoid, some of which have succeeded and I haven’t heard from in years. Some have indeed won with me, one day I have just thrown down my phone and decided that it was the last time that I was going to try, but I spent a little more than a few months trying, believe me, I am the type of guy that if I don’t understand something or if I need a few questions answered that I am willing to go out of my way in order to culminate that desire for affirmation, so don’t be a douche. So when the tables have turned and it’s come down to me befriending somebody that has dropped a few too many messages my way, I can honestly say that I have never just begun to avoid someone, unless there has been some form of discrepancy. I could never just abruptly leave somebody hanging over there phone for three months waiting for a call that will never come, I have always been upfront, and usually pretty promptly too; the earlier the better, I say. So, if I can do it, and I am still alive and still friends with those that I have had a talk with, why can’t you? I have always gone into one of these conversations completely aware that I am potentially putting a nasty negative above my head and will possibly be called an arsehole for as long as I see this person and their friends, but I have jumped into it anyway, and every time without fail, the clinginess has consequently subsided and the negative name-calling has worn off in less than weeks. So with all of that being said and my experience with it now out there, let’s weigh the options: When I have let people know when they are being a little intrusive, any negativity to my name and anything else regarding the situation has washed away within a week, however, when someone has avoided me and I have been forced to be clingy myself, well, let’s just say that it’s been years since and I can’t even envision a scenario where I will ever even share a look with these people ever again; which one is more appealing to you? At the moment it would seem that people prefer years and years of tension and ill-loathing.

So finally, a piece of advice, coming from somebody that can empathise with both parties, silence can hurt and scar a lot deeper than being straight-out ever could, as long as it’s done correctly. Just know that, in order to avoid questions, you keep them answered, and if you don’t want to ever pick up your phone again with ten missed calls on the display, then you answer that first one. Its simple logic, so grow some fucking fortitude and don’t be so horrible to those that enjoy your company.

You're Not Alone

2009-12-01T19:30:00.007+11:00

Usually I wouldn't post media and such but this video, although just a promotional for The Biography Channel, is inexcusable in excellence. Artistically it lays out a good fraction of the stages, milestones and water-cooler conversations that have occurred within recent western history, be it death, revolution or petty gossip; it's a beautiful demonstration of those that have made some sort of impression in the last fifty years.

The Art in Departure

2009-11-30T01:35:00.001+11:00

If you live in Ramsay Street,
keep out of the bush!

Girls wear make-up to impress boys;
Boys wear tattoos to impress girls.*

Owning a Danger powered device is a kick to the Side.**

Getting off of a bus well puts the
art in departure.

There is the possible,
and then there is getting Who’s The Boss? season two on DVD.

Only one faith drives Toyota Taragos.

*Smartest thing I have ever heard somebody with a mullet say.

**Pun Inten...Woops, Danger software does not allow you to finish
that sentence. Sorry for the inconvenience.

<-- Previous: Futon is Fondue

Alone

2009-11-19T08:21:00.001+11:00

Today is Thursday, that’s actually quite amusing, the memory of the last time that I actually did something with friends is quite vague, that might be because it was last Friday. Looks like I can safely declare myself a loner, a forced one at that. The cause for this proclamation of negativity, as I sit slumped in my chair, is the fact that I am depressed about it, not heavily, just a little, because to put it simply, I am not built to be this way, alone that is. I am not a one-man show, I need ~~some~~ lots of consistent social stimulation, fuck, I need some friends, and I have no idea how to go about getting them.

For those that didn’t know me before, let me tell you what I once had - I used to have multiple best friends, a handful of people that I was able to message and plan something spontaneously within hours and whatever was planned would be a success, I used to have a group who I could laugh with and be funny, I had a friend whose house I could sleep at for nights at a time, it was like a second home to me, I had friends that would turn up at my door at strange hours, I had a handful of people that I could’ve planned a party with days before, I had a bunch of people that I would do things with almost every night, and not one Friday or Saturday night was spent alone unless I chose to, and this was, at most, while I was at school five days a week. Evidently, those days have passed for me, since that bunch of great mates have departed, I have never been able to reform an adequate bundle of people that are able unlock that treasure chest that keeps me happy, I just have a few people here and there that hardly call and because of that, just to plan something in even a few weeks time means me messaging several different people without success, it means sitting at home Friday and Saturday night bored out of my mind, it’s midnight rides on my bike to nowhere, it means that I no longer have any stories to tell other people, I have no body’s house to crash at when I am in a certain area, no body that I can just call and speak to; I feel as if I have no one, and this is while I’ve been taking the year off to hang out and relax; ironic, right? The friends I actually do have, which consists of only one male, are always too busy with study or too tied up with other people so it’s virtually impossible to grow close with anyone, no matter how eager I am, as I said, I have virtually been home in front of this screen for six days now, with the exception of eight hours of work and when I went out to get a few things.

I bet I know what you’re saying ‘Just go out and make some friends’, if only it were that simple. It has now become clear to me that, now that all of this has happened, I have no idea how to make new friends, not that I am saying I can’t, I didn’t do too badly for myself back then, I mean I am a very conversational person, a good flowing conversation is like sex to me, and because of that, I can make friends with anyone as long as the activity calls for it, by that I mean, work mates at a new job, weekend sport, pushing weights in gaol, whatever, but when it comes to things like saying hello in lines at the supermarket or a how’s it going? while getting a drink at a bar I have recently discovered that I am atrocious. I can do it, of course, I have no qualms with going up to a girl and speaking to her, but what if she sees it as a pick-up or what if I want to befriend a guy? This is where my social issue lies. You’re probably also saying to yourself ‘But he did it before?’, I actually didn’t, you see, every friendship I have ever had I have fallen ass backwards into, they have either been friends of friends, work mates, school mates, family friends, and the reason that this method is now failing me after so long is because of this social life I no longer have, in other words, you need friends to have friends of friends and I am shit out of them; it’s a vicious circle with a slap in the face half way through.

So, I started a new job and started sailing on the weekends, both of which have given me next to nothing in the friend department; what to do, what to do. I realise that the alarm bells are ringing and that it’s time to stop pussy-footing around, complaining and being unhappy about how socially under stimulated I am, I just have to work out how to meet new people without a middle-man introducing me, like I’ve been used to. It looks as if I have a bit of a battle ahead of me, I think.

Facebook-ing & Paranoid

2009-11-17T01:23:00.001+11:00

If you are paranoid about people knowing things about you, then delete your Facebook account. Some people that I know are majorly paranoid about their information getting loose yet they have a Facebook profile to their name, funny I should say that because one of which is so paranoid that she can’t even bring herself to disclose her surname, which is ironic as Facebook’s database of full names is a signatory feature of the service, a matter of fact, she is so paranoid that I sent an SMS asking her for the name and I was forced to prove that it was indeed me who was using my number in order to get an answer from her. Why somebody with paranoia that extends to that magnitude would join a site which makes use of thing called a ‘lifestream’ and is purely designed so that everybody knows what you are up to when, I don’t understand why you would join in the first place; just delete it.

The Music Industry

2009-11-16T13:35:00.005+11:00

I just downloaded Harvey Danger’s third studio album Little by Little… – for free – off of their website, and it got me reading their explanation as to why they were doing it and it brought up some thoughts from back when Minutes to Midnight by Linkin Park got leaked before its release. So now it begs the question, is the music industry surviving the holocaust of sales that is peer-to-peer music sharing?

More realistically, are our beloved musical artists now depending on and grasping tighter onto live concerts and guest-appearances to compensate for lost numbers, as opposed to what they release to Compact Disc where the sales should be coming from? Logically, judging from the considerable difference in cost between walking into an entertainment venue and walking into a record store, I would assume that the most money has always come from live entertainment, I mean when The Beatles were around, they did shows for Queen Elizabeth II, but does this advancement into the future have musicians breaking a sweat about ticket sales in lieu of record sales?

The downloading of music is illegal, yet socially acceptable, but only because it wouldn’t be easy enforcing that law. I download…everything. Let’s put it this way, my music library is nearing two thousand songs, my physical CD rack has fifteen albums on it; yes, I am quite ashamed. To my defence though, most of the albums on that rack were initially downloaded and listened to but were then subsequently bought by me in the act of support years later. So when Harvey Danger said that ‘plenty of music lovers in the world will buy a record once they’ve heard it’, I am semi-righteous in that sense, and who knows, one day I may walk into a store and decide to grab a copy of Little by Little… or Day & Age by The Killers or any other album that I downloaded and loved in the same act of donation when I was buying the other albums, but let’s just say that I don’t, am I, and everyone else who has done this, crippling what is essentially people’s careers? Record sale figures aren’t exactly the most full-proof way of finding out; they differ from album-to-album for all types of reasons. However, it would seem that each time a big artist is bringing out an album in a week’s time, it gets leaked onto the internet and it is quite easy to find someone that possesses a music library much like mine, which is a clear enough indication to me that this is a growing problem, I might even go as far to say that most of the people with an internet connection has some sort of illegal collection of tracks. In that light, kudos to those that spend their change on iTunes music cards and such, but that springs some more thoughts.

I love the effect that technology has on our lives, but on music, not so much. Paid downloading is something that I refuse to contribute to. It seems to be the way the industry is dealing with illegal downloads, which in part, I have contributed to such a change, but it’s probably the only part of technology that I am not so happy with. When I pay for music, sure the tracks are what I want, but it’s also that physical element, the experience even - waiting months and months, finally walking into the record store to see the same album cover you’ve seen in your dreams sitting five-times on the shelf, holding that case with that name on it, flipping through that booklet with those people in it with art that those same people created, the album logo filling that empty space on your CD rack; the click of a link just doesn’t have that same effect on me, unfortunately. You see, some people may say that this is thinking far down the track, but the existence of things like the iTunes music store and the fact that I can no longer walk into a JB Hi-Fi and purchase a music single indicates to me that this ball has already begun rolling.

“Whether or not people will buy something they can get for free is obviously a big question, and there are facts and figures to support both sides of the argument.” This is why I ask these questions. I don’t believe that people will ever stop making music, but as time progresses, will what we call the music industry further age until it no longer has any money value? I mean, the money means nothing to me, but if that time comes, will it mean that all of our rich pop stars will pack up shop (which would please me) or will it mean that even our good musicians will seem less prominent, not gone, but perhaps harder to find (which would please me less)? If that were to happen, then money would have a more considerable meaning to me. As well as this, in fifty years time, I don’t want clicking a link on an online music store to be the closest we can get to physically pulling out a booklet full of album art about the songs that I would be listening to at that exact moment, I want that slot filled on my CD rack, even if it’s filled on my media player too. I may be a serial-downloader, but for those bands that I am actually willing to empty my wallet out for, I don’t want MP3 to supersede the disc, just like CD did to vinyl. At the cause of what I have done and how technology helps us do what I have done, I fear for the music industry’s future.

~Quotes: http://www.harveydanger.com/press/why.php

My Bread & Marbles

2009-11-13T15:05:00.000+11:00

I had this friend, I have seen her everywhere; she’s been a customer at work, a girl coming out of a pub restroom in the city, but at second glance, she has been a bunch of girls that aren’t actually her. It’s peculiar, for someone that I haven’t seen for years, I’ve seen quite a lot of, and I am not too sure why.

A girl on the opposite side of the road - I was fourteen and she was my best friend and maybe my only friend at the time. She was the type to walk around with a short-skirt, liquid-thick eyeliner and black-stained hair. Thing was, she was a user, in all the ways that you could imagine, she wasn’t healthy and you could probably say the same for our friendship. Confidently, I could state that the friendship that spawned itself in 2005 and withered away the following year was the time where, with her, I met all the people and built all the foundations that have made me the person I am today. So as a result of this augmented version of myself that was born that year, I grew some sense and ended it, and I haven’t seen her since she was committed to hospital around that same time.

A commuter on a passing train - This is the thing, as far as I know, I don’t miss her, I’m not hung up on her, our friendship ended way past it’s expiry date so I have no regrets, so why is it that when I see someone that looks as if they have dressed for a sexy-funeral, like she always did, that I start to freeze up at the thought that it is in fact this girl from my past. Perhaps, I am thinking too far into it as I always do; it might just be that between each member of this dark subculture that the attire of each individual is much alike, or even just the fact that, between her and the rest of the people that I once held close, she is the only one that I fail to bump into on the street. Who knows? Who cares, really? It makes no difference to my life.

That girl in the group photo - I guess having these previews of what it’d be like to be face-to-face with her is just a shock to my system, seeing someone that I was so close to and that I disposed of so quickly such a long time ago. Since last seeing her, I’ve pretty much forgotten about her, but for these brief moments, I am reminded that she ever existed, it hits me pretty hard. To be quite honest, with the way things ended and the way I suspect things are in her life, I would prefer to leave the past in the past and keep seeing these imposters, because the day that I am actually staring into her eyes, I’d be staring into the print of a chapter in my life that she wrote and that I concluded, and I want that chapter to remain at that conclusion.

Issues with Tissues

2009-11-04T15:55:00.005+11:00

We all have our idiosyncrasies, those little characteristics and habits that are particular to our day-to-day lives, some good and some bad. I consider myself to be quite idiosyncratic, aside from your usual page three fear of heights, clowns, spiders and whatever else, I am quite picky in the activities I involve myself in and how I do them.

Tissue Phobia
I know myself that this belongs in first – I avoid tissues, always have. It isn’t a germ thing, clean tissues bother me too. It’s that soft, flaccid ply of paper that can be torn apart, soaked and fused together into a ball; describing it to you right now is even making me a little ill. It’s been a prominent issue since before I can remember. At the behest of this phobia, I am forced to make use of hankies, as it is my only option. It’s not only restricted to tissues either; when I was younger I would often eat at Red Rooster, and there would be those little wet towelettes and they would similarly make me want to be sick; what a disgusting invention. Serviettes are fine as long as they remain dry, that goes the same for paper.

Public Pools and Beaches
Public pools is another big one – I don’t take public pools very well. I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy swimming in water that hasn’t been changed in months which is the home to thousands upon thousands of other people’s filth, fuck that! If I wanted to unintentionally swallow a mouthful of somebody else’s piss and step on used bandaids, I’d go stick a used needle in my arm. School was the worst with forcing me into a pool, I am a fine swimmer but if the pool isn’t in someone’s backyard or in a complex of units or hotel rooms, you most likely won’t find me in it.

Going to the beach isn’t such a big deal. I love going to the beach with mates, and to me, nothing beats sitting on the sand and watching the waves crash. What I have always had an issue with, however, are those beaches that have moored boats just behind the waves, most likely leaking out oil and other chemicals, or some old sewerage (most likely no longer running I will add) pipe running into the surf (one of our Sydney beaches have this), like I said I can think of other fun and colourful ways to get diseases.

Can I have a sip of that?
Ah, no. It’s called meningococcal, and it sounds awesome and all but it doesn’t appeal to me, so I try my hardest not to share drinks.

Twenty-Minute Late Rule
It would seem that I have befriended every chronically-tardy person in Sydney, and for that, I came up with the twenty-minute rule. Only applied to those that I deem notoriously late, the rule is simple: If our meeting place is a place other than my home, if the person has not communicated to me that they would be late and if they have not shown up within twenty minutes of the time that we were meant to meet, I leave and consider myself ditched, no questions asked. At times I have broken the rule and called them on the twenty minute mark and then ended up staying, but for a select few I haven’t been so generous.

Boxers and Briefs…together
Yerp, I wear both…together. Well, I am slowly phasing out this unnecessary habit and am making good use of trunks, but for years now I had always worn both. The way I saw it was, the briefs would offer me the support and protection I required and the boxers would allow me to comfortably wear my clothes over my underwear. I know it’s strange and to be truthful, I can’t really justify it.

'BEEP, BEEP'
I am a guy that loves his cereal. I can have it no matter what time it is (like Jerry Seinfeld). I also find it boring just eating one cereal at a time; I usually mix every cereal that I can find in the pantry. My standard bowl contains Weet-Bix, Nutri-Grain, Honey and one or two bananas, but it varies at times. Although sometimes I eat my cereal cold in the summer, I have always found that the intricacies of my cereal bowl in the morning are better enjoyed hot (and not just the milk; everything), especially in, but not restricted to, the winter. I guess I got the idea from porridge, but pin pointing a definite reason or even the age in which I began microwaving my cereal would be difficult.

Fear of Cows
Just kidding. This is my mother’s doing - I am a soy drinker, but I am in no way lactose intolerant. My only intolerance with dairy is the way that it causes me to have minor cold symptoms, and I suspect it has been the culprit behind some of my flus, so as long as I have thirty cents more in my wallet, I can easily avoid it.

Peas and my fake disease
My gosh, I have an ill-loathing for peas. Tissues and dirty beach pipes may only be enough for me to dry-reach but peas have actually been successful in being spat out with the rest of the meals I’d eaten that day. I am not a foodie like some are, but personally when I am eating texture can sometimes become a more distinctive trademark than taste is in some cases, and this solidly applies to my hate for peas. That little squishy burst of whatever the hell it is in my mouth, I can’t stand it, its torture. Love corn; hate peas.

Problem with this is, I also like my fried rice, and what does fried rice commonly have in it? Peas! Usually I have no trouble with asking for fried rice without them, plus it usually means that they will make a specialty batch for me which improves the dish, but on the odd occasion that I get refused (which has happened!), I have been lost-for-words mid-argument; this is where my fake legume disease was born. Even though I know that legume diseases only in normal cases extend as far as peanuts, but what I do know, however, is that if I were to be in their position, I wouldn’t want to be arguing with someone that claims to have a disease, I mean, the cost of making a new batch of fried rice is considerably less than a loss of business and a discrimination lawsuit if you ask me.

Right, right, right
When telling long stories, I am often told that I say ‘right’ a lot at the end of a sentence, for example, ‘So I just said whatever and got into the car, right?’, right? It’s a bad habit, and I think that I do it just to make sure that you are still following.

Food of the sea and boneless meat
I am what you might call a poultrarian. Basically, I have never eaten seafood and now as a result, if the meat didn’t breathe air, then I don’t eat it; once again, my parent’s fault, not that they don’t love their seafood. I also prefer to eat meats that don’t have bones in them, but it’s simply just an ease-of-eating thing so it isn’t a big deal.

Fear of Heights
Any need to explain? Looking out the window of a plane has never bothered me and I do one day want to skydive but when it comes to looking down that little gap at the centre of stairwells or looking straight up at skyscrapers, I get a bit tense and a little dizzy.

Right?

McJanitor

2009-11-01T19:10:00.001+11:00

I have a big problem with fast-food employees. When I see someone sporting a McDonalds, KFC, or any other fast-food corporation’s logo, what I see is laziness, and the fact that it’s difficult to walk into one of the aforementioned food outlets and point out someone that isn’t currently going through puberty denotes a growing laziness among today’s youth. It goes janitor, garbage collector and then fast-food employee; it doesn’t get much lower than that. My question is, when there is an array of alternate jobs available out there, why do kids still insist on whoring themselves out for six dollars an hour only to do what every other bite-sized minion of this don't-give-a-shit generation has done before them, in other words, be lazy?

I’m not saying that I am some intellectual, I’m not even saying that when it has come to job hunting myself that I have done so proactively, I haven’t, I myself have even looked for easy opportunities for jobs in times of numeric desperation just so that the tedious task would end, but nevertheless, it's still as easy as dropping in a resume and by doing just that I have had opportunities at casual positions that pay over twenty dollars an hour, so when it's that easy for me to earn such a considerable amount by just chucking a few pages around, then why have people gone 'ah well, I’ll just waste eight hours earning chump change'? It’s either people are just too stupid to realise or too lazy to take advantage of opportunities that are virtually being given away. The only excuse that I will ever accept is if you aspire to win yourself a managerial position in which on multiple occasions I have heard that McDonalds (to pick at one) gives great experience for future employment, and to those of which have chosen that path, I say good luck to you, but for a steady job, even if you gave me an excuse, I would still be stupefied.

It just goes to show what we are heading toward, a generation of kids who lack the initiative and attention-span to think for themselves; the creativity that is required to make a unique decision is beginning to get lost in the vague midst of teenagers that grow up in this country. I don't want to make the prediction that future employment will consequently be effected, like our big-time money makers, but I certainly won't rule this out as a reason if we have issues. So, to those that are out there shoveling fries or aren’t practicing customer service at a register in some oily shithole, go out and get a real job.

Heavy Drinkers

2009-10-30T02:23:00.000+11:00

Random thought: Since I began working in hospitality and since this country became so obsessed with water due to drought, I have always been curious as to how much water, in litres, is used in my single workplace in one single day? I would imagine that the number would be huge, and for what, to clean dirt off of our dishes, floors and hands? For water that is said to be so scarce, seems pretty petty in comparison. With that in mind, that thought was then followed by the amount of water that would be used by all the several restaurants in the entire suburb such as the one where I work; I mean if one outlet amounts largely, how much would thirty plus amount to? And that’s just Parramatta, how about Sydney City, or just Sydney in general. Then you have to add the households and the rest of it. Makes you think that there has to be some other way, doesn’t it.

this girl

2009-10-22T13:10:00.000+11:00

This girl, I don't really know who she is, and I don't really think that she knows who she is when in the eyes of others, most of all, though, she doesn't know what I see when I am looking at her, that's for sure. When I say 'really' in 'I don't really', it actually means that I think I have a pretty good idea, but that idea might be proven wrong, like I said, our friendship comes down to me knowing her first, middle and last name, knowing where she would rather be right now and who she would perhaps be better without, but I don't know her, like really, I just know what I think.

This girl, this is what I think about her. When looking into the mirror, she sees a speck, replace that mirror with me and I am looking at a boulder. This girl, she uses words like 'empty', 'bored', 'disappointing' and to sidekick her kicking her own arse, she belittles her existence by comparing herself with objects of no substance. She sees everything by looking up and consequently misjudges her own worth. Her happiness is reliant on what others think, that same happiness hungers for prospects she is unable to find, she seeks approval and independence but feels that she is losing her grasp on those two things. Post-to-post, she gets lost in her music titles and is left undiscovered beneath her own fears.

So, this girl, she doesn't understand what I know, or at least what I think I know. This is why I write this, why I am identifying a girl which I know no hard facts about. It's because at every glance I take at the girl, I see a person that is contrary to the one that is spoken of in every blog that she posts. To me she isn't the failure she thinks she is, but how do you tell someone that without them taking it as a friend being nice when in fact I am just a friend being honest? This is why I write this, it's why it has been waning on my mind of late. I mean, the fact that she would never come to me for support doesn't help, it would certainly open up the opportunity for these things to be articulated in a more private manner.

This girl, I know that she's hurting; I know that she is at a pit stop she doesn't want to be at, but if only she would come to me for support, seek some consolation in my general direction just for me to show her that she isn't what her blogs claim that she is. I'm not saying that I'm the only single-digit that has but I've seen that face, and I want it to be looking at me and telling me that the next blog post will be about how grounded things are and about how fantastic things are becoming for her life and her emotions; all I need is some fuel to attempt to make that happen for someone so great, such as this girl.

The Black Plague 2.0

2009-10-20T14:21:00.000+11:00

I consider myself to be quite tech savvy so I won’t bash too hard on those that aren’t, but honest to god, some things just come down to common sense, regardless of if it’s displayed on a computer screen or not.

The internet is a breeding ground for exploitation; this is why Anti-virus companies are in business. People are clever in how they pull people in, very clever. I find that they play on your fears and your desires, for example, virginal teenagers would love to have a tool which lets them know who has blocked them on their IM application, and people would panic at the site of their screen when something like this or this comes up. With the exception of the hoax advertisements, this is why we call these things viruses, because they spread in the exact same fashion a virus would in the real-world and, this is the part that bothers me, when we see them spread we have nobody else to blame but ourselves, I mean, the creators do just that, they code it, package it and send it off to one person and then it goes nuts, from one stupid person to the next, like a virtual domino effect of mindless mouse-clicking. I must ask why this is happening; I cannot stress that question enough.

The MSN Block Checker is the best example I personally can think of. Now, any techy that is an MSN/ Live user would know that the lists of who is actually online and who is offline was made virtually inaccessible on the MSN servers due to improved privacy features as far back as when I was starting high school (2003), unless of course if they are online on your contact list, which defeats the purpose entirely; this act of checking who on your contact list has you blocked, which was once possible, is otherwise known as 'block checking'. The MSN Block Checker would simply embed itself into the skeleton of the messenger application and seamlessly (or not so seamless, not too sure) send out brief messages to your contacts (or what I call a virtual sneeze) with a link to a page to download the program which will then turn your computer into a new host. So to those that fell victim to this, look, I’m not too sure about your friends, but none of mine have ever started a conversation with "Hey! Have you tried MSN Block Checker? It's great - http://www.block-checker.com" and yet, with that fact in mind, you still continued to visit the site and hit download only to be the next person to be sending out the exact same virtual sneezes that roped you in initially. I must admit though, most unlike others that would just link you to a download file, Block Checker had an actual website (pictured here – I am pretty sure this is the one), small but quite convincing nevertheless, this would explain its success rate, but still no excuse.

Aside from that one in particular, MSN have had many less elaborate yet successful hoaxes of the same manner, same do websites with their aforementioned hoax virus warnings and even search engines that have picked up a site which uses tricky methods in getting you to type in your bank or credit card details and to hit submit; it’s all relative, and all the same it’s ridiculous that people are so easily convinced.

So it would seem that as technology continues to progress that our sound judgment is in slow regress. Evidently now in the year 2009, our common sense, or lack thereof, must now be utilised into web tools that our Microsofts and Googles implement as 'phishing filters'. Suddenly not only has technology’s advancements allowed us to send mail instantly to time zones away or be able to execute a task without any need of assistance, but now it would also seem that it is needed to tell us when an obvious fake is in fact a fake, I mean, come on? Although, these features maybe useful (don’t get me wrong), they are primarily there to prevent those of which cannot differentiate a pop-up advertisement from a program on their computer, and as a consequence, they are the ones who spread Trojans like it’s the sequel of The Black Plague.

Think of it this way, if you received a letter in the regular mail asking you to return it with one hundred dollars for home foundation repairs that they seem to be pretty sure that your home requires and if you don’t, your home will be at risk of collapse, would you send the money?

People Will Read What They Want to Read

2009-10-11T12:48:00.002+11:00

I’m just going to be straight out; I don’t appreciate it when people question the importance of this blog - bottom line is that it’s important to me. Never will I take kindly to those that belittle something that has become an outlet. There are things that I hold close to me and these posts are one of them.

I realise that writing and blogging what I write are two entirely separate things, and I realise that there are alternate methods of expressing the way I feel, but I write regardless and the way I see it is, if one were to write a novel, what good would it be if it didn’t get published? Also, don’t treat me like I am the minority either, some people paint and they post to an art site, others take photographs and they submit to a gallery site, I write and I submit to a weblog. So, to anyone that spends half their day posting brief, worthless shit to whothefuckcares.com, or are so utterly disinterested that they loiter around supermarkets like it’s some daily social gathering hall, when you’ve actually done something significant in your life that at least holds the substance that one of these sentences do, then you can give me a call and say things like “your blog is a waste of time” or “why do you bother?” But until then don’t think you have the right to insult the sentimentality that goes into being as vocal as I am. Things are better said out loud than bottled up.

Another thing: I have often heard the saying that it is impossible to please everyone, but I don't agree, I often discover that some people find it impossible to please themselves. The way I see it is people will read what they want to read, in other words, everyone interprets things differently. In saying that, I honestly love the negativity and enjoy reasonably delivered opposing opinions, but what people need to realise before hopping on their high-horse thinking that they are more than prepared to insult me and state that I’ve said something that I haven’t is that I put a lot of time into making sure that I don’t say something that I wouldn’t be able to defend in the event of a hostile, and that’s where they go wrong. What I am trying to say is, I am open to disagreement, I know that I need to be when stating opinion, but when you are commenting what you need to know is that there is a fine line between disagreeing and misquoting me, and if you don’t realise that then you are going to end up looking like an idiot, just like Anonymous did here.

I hope that I’m understood.

Who Wants to Be a Nothing?

2009-10-01T03:45:00.000+10:00

Among others, I have objections with the term ‘millionaire’. Since I was little I had heard the word and immediately questioned its accuracy, authenticity and, in the big picture, it’s prestige. More specifically, I would question how one would be awarded such a title; what prerequisites will tell me that I am a millionaire, aside from the obvious one, of course? Is there some union for these guys that give them some sort of million/billion/trillion dollar amount identity in the world of the wealthy? Or is there some database in each government which lists all of its richest residents? I am doubtful.

The dictionary will tell me that a millionaire is a person whose wealth amounts to a million or more in some unit of currency, as dollars, but does that mean that if my wealth amounts to nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-five cents that I am no longer a millionaire? Am I any type of -aire at this point? If I were to win on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, am I only said millionaire from the time of leaving the studio to the time I sign my name on a form making me the proud new owner of a sports car? That is if a sum hasn’t already been deducted from my winnings for tax purposes, but that’s another topic completely.

The other thing that makes the term ridiculous is the question of who isn’t a millionaire these days. Like in the suburb I live in, the answer would be nobody, but in Hollywood…well, the wealthy would have a population of their own. You see, when we go to the movies, we watch millionaires act, when I listen to music, I am listening to millionaires sing and strum guitars strings, when we buy products from the store, that brand’s chairman is maybe even a billionaire; this whole corporate world is one big -aire breeding ground, I mean, think about how many successful actors, musicians, performers and brand company owners are out there at this very second, and that’s not counting previous ones, and they would all cleanly pass this threshold that tell people to use empty phrasing to glorify the rich.

See, this is the thing I dislike about the term; it’s such a liberally precarious term that has no substance. It’s not an opinion, but it’s not fact either, it’s not even a title, it’s just something people say now, if it held any substantial definition, we would title actors by wealth and not their occupation. The whole concept doesn’t mean anything; 'Billionaire' is not something that you would see on a business card. Aside from the fact that it would mean that you have more money than what a lot of other people do, it really means nothing, and for something that means zip, it is surely used a real lot, and that’s what I don’t understand.

Western Sydney

2009-09-24T19:10:00.004+10:00

There is a small amount of people that reside here in Sydney, Australia that have obviously never stepped foot in this city’s Western region. With the help of the media, their image of this place is to the liking of some sort battle zone with violence and drugs everywhere, like we have no society or something; I don’t know, however, what I do know is that it’s all ridiculous.

Living here myself, I admit that I don’t have a lot of positive things to say about the area, but under all the complaining, I can bluntly state that it is quite tolerable. Crime maybe higher, housing costs maybe lower, the kids could be better contained in some parts, but you can still comfortably live in the environment, we still have shopping centres, corner shops and anything else that you would find in the east, and yet people have this dystopian image like it’s Mad Max over here (even though I have made comparisons in the past). It all sounds nuts but I have known people that are scared to travel to this part of Sydney.

I’ve lived here for eighteen years, and I’ve never been shot, I’ve never been mugged, and even if I had been, it could’ve happened anywhere. People were killed at Sydney Airport a while back, does that mean that I avoid catching a plane until they build another big airport? In fact, do I avoid that entire suburb now that something has happened there? What I am trying to say is, every suburb has its colourful types, every region has its unstable groups, and this is why every suburb has its own police station. You see, if I avoided every place in Sydney that has had a violent incident in its past, I wouldn’t be living in Sydney.

That R Word

2009-09-13T15:51:00.001+10:00

RAPE! Ever since women have been better liberated, that fantastic word has been thrown around and bashed over the head that is the male race like a rocket launcher that disperses misfortune. There seem to be women out there that see the word “rape” as something that gets results, and fast. It’s sort of like the Get out of jail free card in Monopoly, just that it’s in real-life and it’s a piece of shit. Its instant attention, its instant sympathy, its instant destruction, so instant, however, that nobody ever second-guesses the person that has squeezed down on their rape-horn, I mean, I should know, I’ve certainly had first-hand experience.

Why do people do this? I can tell you why. All men have this thing in their pants, it’s called a penis, all women have this thing in their head and it’s this narrow perception that all men, at some point or another, will get so desperate to use those penises that they will have no choice but to turn to rape in order to culminate the desperation. With that being said, apart from the fact that nobody has the stomach to accuse the victim, that obvious stereotype is what makes the rape strategy so full-proof. I don’t care how doomed and how sexually debased a lot of the male population’s morals are, dickhead or not, it takes a lot for somebody to molest, sexually assault, rape or whatever other label you choose to tag it. People need to lose this bullshit mentality about us if they no longer wish to be fooled by these stupid girls. It doesn’t just take a man to commit such an act; it takes someone that is morbidly unbalanced.

I dated this girl, after she broke up with me, all of my friends, all of her friends and all of our mutual friends knew that I was totally mistreated by this person that I would’ve done anything for, so when she began to see all of her friends start to leave her side, and some subsequently coming to my aid, with no knowledge of my own, she played the rape card and it worked. For something like eight or nine months, the trouble I got at school escalated, friends and acquaintances just stopped speaking to me, and I had no idea why. So, when I got told by someone that was probably my only friend and the only person that I can say doubted the accusation, it all became clear. It’s been a few years since and the only real impact was social, I mean, some people still haven’t spoken a word to me with any goodbyes or questions and some psycho stormed into my old work labelling and threatening me, but aside from those two things, at present, it’s pretty much over. Point is, although my experience was only very minor in impact, if an accusation of this nature were to be made about someone a tad older that had more to lose, like a family and a career, and word got to the police, someone’s life is ultimately in the hands of this little white lie, this empty four-letter word; prison, future employment, it all just gets ten times harder, all because some score is trying to be won or someone desires a bit of the spotlight; and suddenly, the alleged victim is now the one morbidly unbalanced.

At the behest of this word, men are absolutely the weaker sex. It’s a scary thought that a girl can simply click her fingers and put me in prison; it’s also a scary thought that in the future we are going to have to treat every alleged rape victim with the possibility that she’s a liar. You see, when harebrained people take advantage, unfortunately it’s the sensible people that seem to suffer as a consequence in the world. Believe you me, the only time you should scream rape is when you have been raped.