Addendum

I've got Queer as Folk on the telly on mute. I hate the dialogue, it's terrible, and so are the stereotypes, but I think my brain is hanging out to see some gay sex. Not for arousal purposes but... I don't know... childish curiosity?



I'm sorry I flushed the toilet while you were on the shower. I'm sure it didn't burn you too bad. It was quite necessary.

Surely it's too late now to rant on about APEC.

No, it's never too late to rant. While I'm at it, I might share my thoughts on how stupid it is for newspapers to actually write articles on the Prime Minister falling over on wet tiles. Or maybe I already have... meh...

Yeah. So. APEC was shit. It was so shit, in fact, that I don't care that there's probably as many blog entries on the net right now about APEC as there are crappy Mac vs PC ad parodies on YouTube.

I am glad I didn't end up going into town for the protests. I mean, there were snipers on the roofs. Fucking snipers. Men with long-range weaponry, with scopes and shit, highly trained in the art of killing people. People with better guns and better skills than Lee Harvey Oswald probably. Not that Lee Harvey Oswald ever tried out his skills.... or did he? Point is, I don't care who they're trained by or what uniform they're wearing. I'm not comfortable walking around in range of a SR98. The military don't seem to like private school turned lefty pinko scum like me. Best not to tempt them.

Oh yeah and it cost a lot. And no one really seemed to want it. Well, no one that wasn't in it. Like all of Sydney who had their week fucking re-arranged for a big bourgeoisie wankfest. Or even business owners who had to dish out extra time to employees on the Friday or just suffer lost business. And then there were proles like me who ended up working anyway, and only at time & a half. I've said it numerous times since last week, but that means that everyone else at work that got a bludgey day-off, while I only got half a day's extra pay.

Shit, I always have to work on public holidays that mean something to me, but nothing to the people who get the day off. Like the time I was rostered on for 10 hours at the call centre on May Day. May Day being significant for commemorating the struggle for the 8 hour working day, for which a few people actually died. Fucking rainbows and lollipops and baby birds chirping all round.

I did like that the guy who was behind painting "No War" on the Opera House organised for a mass mooning of the convoys. People always bitch about direct action being too violent and disruptive. The same people who wouldn't notice these things unless Channell asiNine news reported about the violence of protesters. Well this guy seems to know how to bring attention to a cause without violence. Still not good enough for people though. Showing your arse may not hurt anyone or any property, but it's "indecent" and "crude". Trespassing into the Opera House is also not on, graffiti is bad because it changes the appearance of property you don't own but have to pay for and look at, and nowadays you'd probably be taken out by a sniper before getting up there.

The best non-violent protest of all was of course The Chaser's expedition into the Red Zone. They didn't even intend to get that far. Never underestimate the lacodaisical ignorance of police. If you're not coloured, wearing Adidas or driving a Nissan Skyliner, of course they don't care. The cops at Burwood station seem to pay more attention to detail to me and my boyfriend passing through on invalid tickets than they do to a convoy that looks important enough. But again, despite being harmless, cut short by the pranksters themselves and a lot better than real terrorists getting that far in, people reckon they should go to gaol. For what? Who's ever gone to gaol for doing what the police sanction? If a cop tells you it's okay, aren't you supposed to follow without question? I think they were just being good citizens.

Most of all, APEC sucks because it's about, as apecsec.org.sg puts it, promoting "liberal trade & economic policies" while invoking oppressive police powers and new "anti-terrorism" practices, and collecting together some of the most un-liberal world leaders when it comes to social policies and personal issues... like gay marriage, the war on drugs, immigration, y'know, stuff to do with the daily life of us little people. A bit unbalanced isn't it?

Okay I'm spent. Dear diary, see you in another 6 months. Love, spider.




WTF? --->
Chaser Team Charged - Sydney Morning Herald, September 6, 2007
Wiki...wiki... wikipedia entry on APEC

Waxing lyrical

Damn fucking creative people with their creative lyrics. Damn them to hell.

I can't possibly come up with anything very beautiful or eloquent. But seeing as these other jerks are so prolific with it, I'm going to just quote them. Not all of each song, just the highlights.

The Modern Things by Bjork

All the modern things
Like cars and such
Have always existed
They've just been waiting in a mountain
For the right moment
Listening to the irritating noises
Of dinosaurs and people
Dabbling outside

Chaææ
Enginn fylgist alveg _{Nobody really follows}
Chaææ
Sólin sekkur _{The sun sets}
Chaææ
Enginn sér við mér_{Nobody gets the better of me}

Það er sól þegar hann_{There's a sun when he}
Andar inn í mig_{Breathes into me}
Hann bítur mig_{He bites me}
Hann bítur mig
Já, hann kemur með _{Yes, he comes along}
Fylgir eftir mér _{Follows after me}
Telur mig _{Counts me}
Siglir eftir mér _{Sails behind me}

Does Bjork write her own lyrics? I'll just believe she does. They're fantastic. They sound like a 8 year old kid's picture of a unicorn pissing rainbows on leprechaun. Singing in Icelandic makes me want to wet myself. I want her to father my children and roll my burritos.
The english translation is in italicised subtext.

Twenty by Klinger
Got a hot and heavy teenage romance with my hand.
Growing old is easy, it's growing up that I can't stand.
And I know, that I know, that's uncool.
To admit that I still miss high school, high school, my school.

Twenty is so close, and it terrifies me, it terrifies me.
No more dreams of Molly Ringwald and me, in a teenage movie.

By the finger nails I'm hanging on but may now,
Cause hanging on is easier than getting down.
Saturday is the day when I grow up.
If I think about it too much then I'll throw up, grow up.

It's over now.

Somehow a fairly insignficant flash-in-the-pan Melbourne band with some very run-of-the-mill "alternarock" lyrics managed to predict an impending truth about "growing up". As my time being 19, the best year of my life, was drawing to an end, I listened to this song, and pretended to be worried about getting old. Secretly, I thought the fun times would go on for a few years yet. BAM, motherfucker.

As a side note, I was at a couple of their gigs where I saw them making a point of acting like they were completely above it all. What a joke. Who's Klinger? Exactly. This just proves that a shit band with shit music can still write things that you'll "identify with". No, they're not idiot savants, you're just really easy to figure out, you stupid little teen-angst consumer groupie.

Mistakes & Regrets by Trail of Dead
If I could make a list
Of my mistakes and regrets
I'd put your name on top
And every line after it

Because every inch of hope
Becomes a world of shame
I've had to walk through
Each and every day

And if I screamed "you were wrong"
At the top of my lungs
It would never return
All the faith that I've lost

Because there is nothing left to say
That has not been said
If I shouted, would you listen
I don't think it'd even sink in

If you forget how to feel
Reach inside your chest
Is there a heart beating?
Is there just emptiness

I listened to their CD in utopia when they'd just released Source Tags & Codes, because I thought that "And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead" would be a hard-as-fuck war metal band. They were awesome, possibly my favourite band, but they really aren't hard or metal at all. Apparently the name is from some ancient Mayan and/or Egyptian texts.

This song is the kind that you associate with someone you harbour resentment against almost to the point of pathology, but were previously or even currently romantically involved with. COUGH COUGH JONES COUGH. Sorry, man.

This is the space where I'm supposed to post At the Drive In lyrics. If that's what you're expecting, then fuck off.

It's like contemporary art. It takes a yob like me to point out that it's meaning, as profound, significant and relevant as it may be, is completely lost on 98% of the people exposed to it.

A lot of pretentious people, probably half my friends, will say their lyrics are the shit. They serve their purpose, yes, they fit together well, but what do they mean? I see from the vacant expression on your pompous face that you can see that At The Drive In don't write the kind of lyrics that even by reading them on paper are going to make you remember the time you hung out with a Russian tourist you'd never met before in Hyde Park who let you smoke all his weed.

If I want to do a post on At The Drive In, I'll do one on what I understand in James Joyce's Ulysses at the same time.

Aenima by Tool

Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this

Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of
Freaks

Some say a comet will fall from the sky.
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.

One great big festering neon distraction,
I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied.

Learn to swim.

Fuck L Ron Hubbard and
Fuck all his clones.
Fuck all these gun-toting
Hip gangster wannabes.

Learn to swim.

Cuz I'm praying for rain
And I'm praying for tidal waves
I wanna see the ground give way.
I wanna watch it all go down.
Mom please flush it all away.
I wanna see it go right in and down.
I wanna watch it go right in.
Watch you flush it all away.

Time to bring it down again.
Don't just call me pessimist.
Try and read between the lines.

I can't imagine why you wouldn't
Welcome any change, my friend.

Tool. There's a reason that every man and his dog has Aenema in his CD collection, whether it's sitting next to Insane Clown Posse, John Farnham or Gene Pitney. It's because Maynard is the single exempted prick around here who has reason to be arrogant and annoying. He's not being pretentious. He really is that superior to you.

And this song is not just about LA. It's about any place you live in that's populated by undeserving overpriveleged ignoramuses. Like Sydney.

Lustmord And Wargasm (The Lick Of Carnivorous Winds) by Cradle of Filth

An Archangel in bondage
Bediademed, souled
With a murder of ravens
But no less Astarte to behold
Abandoned by Heaven
To the dead, dark and past
Cast Her dispersions
On life's brittle glass

And though Her eyes still held fire
As stonewalls caged the beast
'Gainst the lassitudes of Death
She fought but fell to greet
And midst lies in collusion
She was martyred to teach
That "Divinity and Lust
Are forever forbidden to meet"

But I swore that they would
Before the veil could part our embrace
Twixt Her cold, silent hips I kissed
And promised Christendom in flames

Gravid with madness
Like a feculent dirge
That obsesses the heart
I am covened by words

To avenge Her
Ebon splendour
And surrender
My soul to the dead to achieve
Prophecies of libidinous scourge
Horripilation braying o'er carious herds

How they plead to the skies
But this is mere foreplay to war

Scar-riddled saffron eves bleed like the conjugal
Vestal daughters giving throat to the priest
A psychophant, the despoiler of faith
Now His skinless crucifixion feeds a winged diocese

So came the night
Its obsidian light
Is a master whom disasters
Suck upon like concubines
And under black skirts
That whisper of delight
Darkseeds near fruition
Darked deeds to marry mine

The breath of the storm that begins
By forcing its Herod tongue in
The womb of the holy virgin
To taste of immaculate sin

Commemorating sickle moons
The pack are poised to reap
A scythe of white roses in bloom
Whose twisted thorns will keep
A crown upon a dead man
Daylights crucified in sleep
And lives that hide in scriptured lies
To the memories of a scream

"What the fuck barbeque?" you will be saying. Lighten up, guy. Everyone would masturbate to Cradle of Filth if they would just let go. Liberate yourself. Danni Filth obviously has. Maybe your ejaculate will land in the form of neo-gothic poetry that you can make money off.

It was the best of oatmeals...

... it was the worst of oatmeals.

I still get occassional moments of inward panic as I forget why I get out of bed in the morning, and search unsuccesfully for something to look forward to. Wait, no, panic sounds too interesting. It's more like a hollow, despairing feeling that nothing but boredom and disappointment stretches out before me endlessly.

I'm slowly realising I'm not alone. It's very unexpected that so many people would seem to have a mid-life crisis in their early 20s but that's what seems to be happening now.

But then I get these weird periods of euphoria, these zen moments, a feeling of neither particular excitement nor dread, just content with the bubble of reality I occupy at that moment. It's not really nirvana or anything, but it is a weird detached acceptance of the universe that buddhism talks about.

Sometimes I get it when I think about religion and spirituality, even if I think about gasp vomit christianity. Could I be bipolar? I do associate christianity with bipolar disorder for some reason. Every second ex-Christian deconvert on the atheist forums seems to have had it or has christian family members who are bipolar. I have sent away for some free booklets on Who Is The Antichrist? and12 keys to Answered Prayer. I struggle to justify why. I'm not trying to convert or understand it anymore, I just wanted the literature. I think that it's a symptom.

Also, what does it mean that I usually feel this way on the bus home? I get travel sickness if I read or play DS, so it's the one time of the day I can force myself to sit down, shut up and just stare out a window. Perhaps that's it. It's my meditation time. The worse the traffic, the closer to the Buddha within I creep.

Here's a tip for enduring public transport. If you manage to get a seat, it's fun when looking out the window to imagine that your eyes can shoot laser beams and cut trees in half as you whoosh past. Sometimes an unfortunate car gets in the way, however, and some poor family or businessman is seared in half. Oh well.

Killing Myself Softly...

... with this intestinal cleansing fast.

What is it? 10 days fast on a special mixture to flush out the bowels. No food.

Why? Everyone at work is doing it. Well, they were... now it's just two of us. Anyway, the challenge intrigues me, I'd like to see how long I can go without solid food ("but I love solids!" ).

Also, I've become obsessed with calendars, such as the Mayan calendar, and want to create my own calendar cycle with my own festivities. Catholics have Lent, Muslims have Ramadan, Jews have Yom Kippur, Hindus have... lots of them.... I could have my own 10 day annual bowel cleansing festival.

How? Just a breakfast of salty water, followed by 2.5 L throughout the day of a strange lemon juice - maple syrup drink, topped off with a herbal laxative at night. I've added my own twist with some Mylanta (mmmmm... fibre...) and Centrum multivitamins.

Where? Where? What sort of question is that? In my abdomen, that's where.

Last night I had the herbal laxative. It was just a teaspoon of herbs washed down with water. I nearly threw up. This morning I had the salt water flush. It was luke warm. I nearly threw up.

Then I took Apple Passionfruit juice to work instead of the mix by accident because they were kept in identical bottles. I didn't notice the difference because I hate apple juice and I've never drunk Apple Passionfruit juice.

So I sat there like a dork saying how nice the mix is, and how the lemon tastes stronger than the maple syrup, which I couldn't taste at all, and how the cayenne pepper wasn't spicy at all. Then Jones rang asking where his apple juice had gone and it clicked.

IDIOT. Oh well, KFC mashies for lunch for me I guess. Cleansing fast starts tomorrow.

Apathy ==> Antipathy

I nearly cried at work yesterday. Why? Because I used the word "action" as a verb. The corporate zombies are eating my brain.

I've discovered that if you say something enough times it becomes true, even if it starts off as a joke. Like "I hate everyone" and "I don't care what people think of me" and "deep down inside, everyone around me is a soulless douche". There is not a single human being in sight, especially not one that I don't want to do grievous bodily harm to. I can't talk to people. They talk bullshit. It's all gibberish to me. It's just random sentences, most of them quotes from something or in-jokes that make no sense to all but 3 other people. There's no topic of conversation anymore. It's all just an asinine attempt at being post-modern. I can't stand it.

But that used to me, right? I used to speak incoherently about nothing and everything and giggle constantly while doing it. Right? Look at those sentences! Incoherently! Asinine! What are these fucking words? This is why there is no conversation! These words are from non-fiction novels by evolutionary biologists commenting on religion in the modern world, they're not things you actually say or think in your head! No one talks to text books. No one even looks at them. They just pretend to flick through them when they feel obligated.

Let's just think logically about this. Is it really that everyone else has slowly become intolerable, and that somehow I'm the only sane person left? Is anyone really doing or saying anything different to before? Who is it here that is being anti-social? Show me who is causing this calamity, I'll bash the living shit out of them...

Is this maybe... my fault? =gasp=

Choices and consequences. Choices. Consequences. First you make a choice. Then there are consequences. Choice. Then consequence.
Oh. I see it now. Oops.

How do I undo it? Where's the rewind button? Cntrl + Z... cntrl + Z!! CNTRL + Z!! Fuck. It's not working. It's irreversible. I'm stuck with it. Arg.

So this is what the word "alienation" means.

Dave Montomery

If you've ever set foot in the area from Berowra up to Turramurra, particularly around Hornsby RSL after 10pm, then there's a chance you've met Dave Montgomery. You know you've met this guy because he'll introduce himself with his first and last name, then request your full name too. He's lived here for a long time. In fact, Jones' granddad says when he was younger, he'd have dinner with Dave Montgomery up at St. Ives shops on regular basis.

He likes to ask me if I have brothers. He then pretends that my surname is familiar and that he thinks he knows my brothers from rugby results in the local paper. At first I took him for real, but then I remembered that my brothers have a different surname to me, and don't play Union. So now I know he's full of shit. Oh well. He's just a bit funny in the head.

I've met many people from my area who know Dave Montgomery, either by name or description. He even came up and started talking to me in Turramurra Video Ezy once, when picking out videos with my family. My brothers found it kind of weird.

The first time I met Dave actually links in with another interesting anecdote from my past. This is one of those stories that starts "when I was 19". When I was 19, I was waiting at Hornsby for the Nightride bus. Dave Montgomery came up and introduced himself, as already described. He then started talking on with his signature craziness.

He was interupted by another guy sitting on the same seat as me. "Oy Dave", he said, as if he knew him personally. "Dave, do you have any money?"

Dave said "No." The guy said again "Dave, I'm broke, give me some money". Dave and I both thought he was just playing silly buggers, but then he said "Dave, you're going to give me some money or I'm going to have to hurt you"

Fucking great, I thought. Why do I have to be around this? If Dave gets rolled, I'll be next. I was a broke uni student at this point, so this prospect didn't thrill me much. Well... actually... I guess it wouldn't thrill me now either. Some other guy behind the bus stop who seemed pretty off his face and bleary-eyed found it hilarious. Good for him.

Dave was a bit shaken by all this, and after the guy repeated himself a couple of times, he quickly left the bus stop. I felt that it would be a good time for me to follow suit, but the guy on the seat just said to me "Don't go, I was just joking. Don't worry, I'm not dangerous. I just don't feel up to listening to Dave harrass another girl at a bus stop all night with his stories"

I sat back down and started to talk to him. The bleary-eyed high-as-a-kite guy joined in. These guys were really funny. Despite the three of us being strangers to each other, we got on really well. We got on the bus together, I even had to borrow money off them because the cunt driver rejected my concession card.

The weird sense of deja vu set in when the drugfuck guy started to tell an awesome story about him spilling hash oil on his jeans. He got off the train at Hornsby station, right at the end of the school day when the sniffer dogs are rife around the station concourse. The sniffer dogs got a whiff of his illegally stained pants and went nuts. The cops started hassling him and did a full search.

Then he came out with the immortal line "How were they expecting to arrest me for that - cut the stain out of my jeans and weigh it?".

I suddenly realised I'd met these two guys at least twice before, at the same bus stop, and that I'd heard this story as many times before, including that line. In fact, I can't be sure if I'd met them a thousand times, but apparently our weekly routine of being mashed on public transport late at night in hornsby was a ritual we all shared, along with a dislike of Dave Montgomery, and we'd gotten to know each other all over again several times, only to forget it with the next morning's sobriety. It's kind of buddhist ... almost. You know - past lives and reincarnation, being reborn only to repeat much of the same bullshit next time round, with the same unenlightened souls.

Or perhaps that's just reading too much into it.

Losing Touch

So I completely forgot that May 1st has been and gone. Well, not forgotten. I remember getting to work and figuring out that there is no such thing as the 31st of April, but it didn't click with me that May 1st is one of the most important days of the year - it's Labour Day.

I realised this during my 3rd hour of unpaid overtime tonight at work. Some would call that irony. I wouldn't, because that's not what irony is, but you get the idea.

People died for causes I actually consider worthy, and I'm too busy slaving away to remember. I'm completely out of touch with my own ethics, my own interests and passions. Thanks to work. It's taking over my fucking life. I'm moving to government accounts, which is a Great Career Opportunity, but that scares me more. I don't want this to be my career. If one day I actually started making more money for all this extra workload, then I might decide to not change jobs. That would be a disaster of my own making.

Agh. If only I didn't owe the socialist cult $100, I'd just join up again. Hell, I could go to Melbourne again, to billet with rampant marxists and pretend to go to conferences on socialism.
Hmmm, I wonder what the membership fees are like for anarchists...

Super Stalin Bros.

It's not original, but I just wasted a huge chunk of my evening on this. And I used MS Paint. Why, I don't know. I should take the time to learn how to use photoshop to fix it up.