spiders on drugs

An info link on spiders on drugs of a different nature: http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm

Living in a Sauna

It's 9:30pm, or thereabouts. It's extremely hot and there are fires not so far up north. We can hear fire engines all around. I'm still sweating. It's sooo hot, and our fan is broken. Hey, what's a fan going to do anyway. Yeah, enjoy your air conditioning, fuckers, you're only making it worse.

Look, bushfire. Mikey's friend has taken photos of the fire up near the freeway at Mount Colah tonight. It's creeping south at a pretty fair speed.

Weatherpixie lies. That stupid whore says that it's 27^oC. I think that's taken from Sydney airport where it's closer to water. Olympic park, out at Homebush, has it at 32.8^oC. That sounds more like it.

These fires could cut power to us tonight but then the lappy would have about 3-4 hours battery life (the lappy & her battery are almost 3 years old now). Thank Jah for mobile technology.

Oh fuck I'm melting. This is ridiculous. I can't sleep. I should get a sick day tomorrow for heat stroke or something.

Projects

I've realised that Spod - the Sydney band - doesn't have a Wikipedia article, but does have a reference in an article about a technical term "spod". So I'm going to write one for them.

Also, I have a fat-arse essay I'm writing about public reaction in Australia to criticism, dissent and unpopular opinions. It focuses mostly on Germaine Greer and Sheik Hilali as case studies. Yeah, I know, boring for everyone else but me. It's more a writing exercise for my own amusement. I'm also doing a shorter and less researched piece on the right-wing conservative euphemism of "pro-family".

Add to that I have 3 books to read right now: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson and Philosophy for Dummies^TM. And I've just sent us broke (almost literally) by buying up some beads & elastics for making bracelets.

Other "exciting" stuff I'm planning:

• Finding good bushwalking tracks (mostly for cooler weather though, I would get heat stroke if I went bushwalking on day like today (it's 27^oC / 80.6^oF now but feels hotter, check the current temperature in Sydney here)
• Thinking up and researching more essay topics
• Getting the Palex a toy box
  
• Lacquering his easel so he can do fingerpainting and drawing outside on the balcony
• Finding a nice big cheap outdoor table for our balcony (it's a big wide balcony, more like a terrace I guess)
  
• Organising and throwing out and selling stuff so we have more room
• Fixing my typewriters and getting back into letter-writing
  
• Trying to figure out where I can study when I start TAFE... if I get in...

Speaking of TAFE, it starts in February. I hope I can find my old HSC documents in time so I can get in. But if I do, when will I have time for any of this stuff? I'm going to be doing a Certificate III In Mortuary Practice. I can't wait.

Oh well. Keeping me occupied is very important for making sure I don't get too neurotic and annoying. If I always have something to do then I won't go craaaaaaazy.

Jesus. This is the worst blog entry ever.
Meh. I don't care.

J'en ai marre - ça suffit!

People are such complete douchebags.
I'm convinced our brains are over-developed.We now are a bunch of self-aggrandising spoilt brats with unrealistic expectations of life. I look at my dreams and I'm almost 100% sure I'll die disappointed. Cue song: Everybody wants to rule the world.

The fear of disappointment and not getting our way causes us to do strange and extreme things to get our way. Like stalking. Yeah, the fucking stalker AGAIN. **rolls eyess**

Last night, I heard a twig snap outside the fence. It was quite loud, which leads me to believe it was a fairly strong stick that required a bit of force to break it. Force is a function of mass, so I think it was something bigger than a cat or possum. My suspicions were confirmed later when Mikey saw a light behind the fence. He went out to see who was there but couldn't find anything - it was very dark.

SCARIEST BIT: After I went to bed, Mikey went upstairs to his room, and from reading his blog this morning, it seems that he called the police that night, because he saw a green light - a laser beam - on his bedroom wall. That means this fucker isn't just hiding behind our fence - he's coming into our estate, and lurking around the driveways.

Who could be bothered to sit in itchy scrub, with mozzies and spiders and pointy sticks, and risk arrest, rather than any other option. When I'm pissed off at someone, here's the ideas that run through my head:

1. Launching a sit-yo-ass-down STFU tirade at them, preferably in front of other people, so that my moral victory is known by all
2. Beating them up. No weapons, not Sagara style, just a good old-fashioned punch-up.
3. Talking to them directly about it, usually when it comes up in conversation
4. Making comments about it to people I know will pass it on to my intended target so they know what I'm pissed about and preferably just drop it
5. Emailing them, writing a letter, or some form of visual communication from afar
6. Boycotting all their social events and not replying to their attempts to contact me
7. Whining like a little bitch about it without ever intending to take action or find a solution

See what's missing from that list? A lot of these options are about me avoiding confrontation, but the worst psychological warfare that is there is ignoring them. Beating them up is not something I'd actually do, I just imagine it - it's cathartic, but probably only worsens my sentiments towards them.

Only recently I rang someone about something that was bothering me. From getting more information and discarding misinformation that I had taken for granted as true, I realised the situation wasn't how I thought. Things always seem worse when they're left to fester in your imagining and worst-case assumptions. That notwithstanding, relieving myself of the burden of anger and hurt was well worth it. That's because I actually just wanted to sort things out. I didn't want to punish anyone or torment them, otherwise I would've gone about it another way.

Either this person is a really damaged, scared, weird little person, or they don't want to actually solve anything that's bugging them, they'd rather draw energy off those problems so they can keep tormenting their "enemy". Which then leads to the question: what on earth could Mikey have done for such punishment to be proportionate?

Methinks that this petty fuck is overreacting big time, and needs to get a life, or at least just another hobby.

Haven't You People Ever Heard of Finishing a Goddamn Song?

Know what sucks about PANIC! At the Disco?

They're songs start off great, but then they die. Like they have a great idea when they're stoned, but 3 seconds later they've forgotten it. Like they get bored after composing the first minute of song and just "auto-fill" the rest. Like they come up with a concept, and 2 short verses with a chorus, then fit it into a pop-hit template to work out the rest.

Don't get sucked in by their avant-garde titles, like "There's A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey You Just Haven't Thought Of It Yet" There's a pedestrian lurking behind each one.

I Write Sins Not Tragedies:

"Haven't you people ever heard of / Closing a goddamn door"

Oh what a great chorus. And the verses have a little story going on. Well the first one does, the second one is half a verse that is repeated and doesn't really tell you anything at all. As for the third verse - what do you mean third verse? There is no third verse? These cunt run off with the last phrase of the chorus "poise and rationality" and just float off into a foggy middle eighth refrain (more like a middle thirty-second) that repeats and repeats and repeats, with a chorus thrown in there for good measure.

So if you like the verse and chorus, the band basically says "tough shit... 80% of this song isn't going to sound like a song at all, it's going to punk version of ambient music with some emo wanker cooing over the top".

Listening to this song is like wading through mud.

Lying is the Most Fun A Girl Can Have With Her Clothes On

"Let's get these two hearts beating faster faster"

Starts off intense and serious and personal. It sounds like a song about sexuality and jealousy. Sounds hot. Like it? Wanna hear more? Tough shit. AGAIN.

Did their constant repetition of "poise and rationality" make you want to die during I.W.S.N.T? Just wait until you wake up screaming at 3am, sweating, with "dance to this beat, dance to this beeeeat" on constant loop in your head.

What the fuck does that mean: "testosterone boys and harlequin(?) girls / dance to this beat and hold a lover close"? Fucking hell. The only time a song can address its audience as a large collective mass is in hip hop and rap. "B-boys" and "fly girls" have no place in rock. It doesn't work. That's why people who like hip hop think rock is corny: because it does shit like that.

My god. Would you ever hear Kurt Cobain sing "Everybody in the house, put your hands up in the air"? NO? So what gives PANIC! the chutzpah to do the equivalent themselves?

---

WHY AM I SO ANGRY? Because if there is a God then he has really fucked us over. It should be the 4th law of thermodynamics that you can't give someone the ability to do something proficiently, without creativity and imagination to make it enjoyable for others. It's like God gave them the talent, and I got the ideas, but without both in the one person, they're each useless.

Why God? Why give my talent to those air-head art-punk-emo fuckwits who think that a simple key change will make the song sound a bit more varied? Did I offend you in the womb?! Are there some in utero sins I have yet to pay off? Did I worship my umbilical cord as a false idol?

PANIC! At the Disco are no more than a dressed-up, over-glorified Blink 182. In fact, the only real difference is that PANIC! know more than 3 chords and don't sing songs like "shit piss c*nt f*ck cocksucker motherf*cker" and if you really think about it, that actually makes Blink 182 better, because at least they're honest about the purility of their work.

Yes I feel like shit today, as predicted

My mouth tastes like carpet cleaner.

Everyone says I look really tired. Probably because I had two and a half hours sleep.

Right now, I value sleep higher than the interweb. Almost.

Spider Park

Mikey and I stayed up last night making South Park versions of ourselves, Shadi and Jones on some german website called Plenearium. The results are bowel-destroyingly funny. See for yourself:

Here's Mikey. Actually, one of Em's sisters made this. It's quite accurate though.

Here's Shadi - Mikey logged into her Lankyland account and use his admin priveleges to change this to her avatar. Then I fucked around with her signature. lolz0r.

She's a fucking dune coon. Look at her hiding in Afghanistan. HAHAHAHA. And all the icecream on her face.

Here's Jones. We tried not to make him look too stoned or give him a joint in his hand (but then he edited his own picture) or pay him out too much, because he's quit weed and is actually doing quite well at it. Despite what some idiots think, idiots who like to sit down with a joint in their hand and say "Jones, we really think you should lay off the drugs...." Fucking hypocrites.



Oh, oh and I made one of Waz, our other flatmate, and also of Mandreano. Mandreano is a pedophilic sado-masochist. I tried to capture that essence about him. And his long shiny shiny hair. No bald spot, sorry.

And finally, here's me.

paranoia paranoia

I'm way too paranoid. I wonder if there's anything I can do about it. Like a lobotomy or something.

I feel okay today, but on other days and particularly at night, I feel very alone and a bit depressed, but most of all, I feel scared of nothing. My brain likes to generate worst case scenarios and disasters just to make things better. Worst of all is a pervasive feeling of impending doom, like being cursed or hunted down by something evil. At these times, I'm convinced that I'm destined for a horrible end, and then possibly an eternity of torment in the afterlife. And I'm supposed to be a freaking atheist.

This stalker creep isn't helping. In fact, everything is causing an overreaction of emotions from e me. I watched the 2nd Ghost in the Shell movie, and couldn't sleep that night until about 3am. The shadows that the trees make on my curtains look like evil faces. One night, there was this giant grinning evil face, and even Michael could see it too.

I'm like a little kid. Everything scares me.

The other night I was out to dinner and I felt all fine. I was talking to everyone there and doing well at pretending to be sort of normal. We went to a Vietnamese Vegetarian restaurant, whose entire menu is made out of meat substitutes, like mock lobster. Perhaps the soy-induced overdose of oestrogen stressed me out, because afterwards I got really angsty. I got on a train home, and suddenly my brain started thinking about children in third world countries dying in gutters and bullshit like that. Crazy images just tore through me, and I couldn't stop them. It felt horrible. I got home and watched Rage until Mikey came home - via the back door, which scared the shit out of me, because the backdoor is right next to the TV.

I'm going to avoid alcohol and drugs for as long as I can, as per my New Years resolutions (that had to be reset after the first week of January). Maybe that will help. I haven't been doing enough lately to really justify my random bouts of paranoia and depression, but who knows. Comedowns are obviously the times I'm most susceptible to these stupid moods. However, it is an irrational fear, and while I rationally don't believe in supernatural psychic powers, part of me worries that this is all a premonition of something horrible that will really happen.

I'll just have to wait and see. If I'm going to die young and painfully, then I'd like to spend my last days not flipping out and worrying over nothing.

Cornish Alkal-eye for the Metal Guy

My flatmate is being stalked. Further details on his Fagspace blog.

Who the fuck has the time, really? See, in theory, I'm the perfect candidate for a stalker-type. I hate everyone: there'd be openings for new stalking victims everyday.
But I am full of hate because I see everyone else as boring, self-absorbed one-trick ponies. I'd never waste anymore time on them than I have to.
Then again, I guess I shouldn't hold stalkers and other humanoids to the nose-bleed heights of my own standards.

Stalkers have a lot of misdirected creative energy, I'll give them that. This stalker uses a cryptically named email address (cornishalkali@gmail.com... perhaps misspelt as cornishalkalai@gmail.com... yeah there's the email for you to spam and harrass if you like, oh non-existent reader.), and writes cryptic emails and even may have been lurking around behind our back fence a couple of times, shining a torch or pen-light through the thatching. Oooooohhh sppooookky.

It seems very alarming at first, until you consider that 99% of people who get this worked up about things that other people don't even realise they've done to them, and if they do, the adult thing is to confront people about it. . They can't even take it face-to-face, mano y mano. And they can't even just argue it - they have to stalk them and pretend to be out to "destroy them" with "retribution" and other "stupid shit in quotation marks".

Yep. I don't understand stalkers. I don't even get people pretending to be a stalker as a joke.

My Apathy Finally Pays Off

Haven't resigned. Haven't bothered to hand in the letter. And the Business Manager I have to give it to is on holidays until the 18th. Figures.

But we might be creating a new position in the team to do all the admin side, order uploading and marketing calls (which is like 6 a day at the moment). My team manager and I were discussing it and throwing in some ideas, and I remarked that I'd find it a sweet job, so to my surprise he responded "Hey... well, you know you could... how about it?"

Now it just has to get funding and I don't have to talk to stinking customers all day. I'll still have quite a workload, but it's the kind of workload I prefer, and I feel very confident fixing up other people's mistakes. It's fixing up my own mistakes that gives me the heebie-jeebies.

w00t. Now to post about something other than boring stinky work.