The Plague Years

what a way to make a living

2012-01-12T19:27:00.000+13:00

my boss has me writing death-bed-time stories,
telling me not to worry, and to make the extra gory.

sweatshop manufactured religious iconography

2012-01-04T10:37:00.002+13:00

i am the son of god; the son of man; the son of abraham
he said to me through bloodshot eyes from a far-off land
he said to me - plastic prayer beads in hand.
i am the son of life; the son of sam; the son of modern attention spans
he said to me through broken glass in a disused parking stand.

quote #3

2012-01-04T10:34:00.002+13:00

did you ever want to set someone's head on fire, just to see what it looked like? did you ever stand in the street and think to yourself, i could make that nun go blind just by giving her a kiss? did you ever lay out plans for stitching babies and stray cats into a perfect new human? did you ever stand naked surrounded by people who want your gleaming sperm, squirting frankincense, soma and testosterone from every pore? if so, then you're the bastard who stole my drugs friday night. And i'll find you. oh, yes. - warren ellis [transmetropolitan]

quote #2

2012-01-04T10:32:00.003+13:00

no wonder, then, that mankind, being placed in such an absolute ignorance of causes, and being at the same time so anxious concerning their future fortunes, should immediate acknowledge a dependence on invisible powers, possessed of sentiment and intelligence. - david hume [the natural history of religion]

quote #1

2012-01-04T10:29:00.002+13:00

the wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life. now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. soon there will be no place to go. and then, the madness becomes universal. and then, the universe goes mad. - edward abbey [the monkey wrench gang].

idea #2

2011-01-20T14:38:00.003+13:00

a tv show called 'are you sexier than a fifth grader' where a group of borderline // 'part-time' pedophiles choose between you and an 'average' 10 year old. possible spin off of 'to catch a predator'.

idea #1

2011-01-20T14:34:00.002+13:00

gloves that you wear while jerking off that look like Madonna's hands. you imagine that you are getting a handjob from 'the queen of pop'. it feels 'okay'.

sunrise

2010-12-05T05:04:00.001+13:00

sunrise as a concept seems nice/'chill'. in reality the only time you see sunrise is when you're walking home at 5am. the sun is rising, the birds are chirping and you know that the following day is irreconcilably fucked.

job

2010-11-23T12:58:00.003+13:00

as predicted, i had to get a job to pay rent, so won't be writing fuck all for the rest of summer, probably. probably no one cares. get to sand houses all day. turning into 'a labourer' anyway. gonna call girls 'bitches', use the word 'sick', drink Diesel. maybe get a few 'sick tribals'.

feels good man.

burnt lips

2010-11-11T21:32:00.003+13:00

Every summer I tell myself I'm gonna write something substantial. This is the beginning of this years effort, which will probably also fail in the face of 'chasing paper' to pay rent - making this start of the story itself 'kind of meta', or something.

When Ed awoke on March first he was filled with a self loathing he could not endure. “I had no desire to continue living with all the problems that were inside my head.” Unable to make a living, at age 49, he walked into the woods near his house and shot himself. “I have taken my life in order to provide capital for you.” [Please note the above paragraph is 'stolen' from a Dystopia song entitled 'Sanctity'. Dystopia themselves 'stole' the sound clip from a mental health documentary. I had hoped to steal these words, not acknowledge the source and make 'mad cash' from it, but was 'called out' by some guy who's obsessed with the word 'chud'. Pretty crack up, all things considered. Thank you for reading my word blog.]

Years ago, I'd planned this as the first paragraph in an epic novel spanning the scope of modern life, love, anomie, destitution and the poor of spirit. Within these meager lines, I'd hoped, was a hint of something much more – a Celinesque promise, maybe, towards a lost and rambling hero who wasn't exactly cut out for life on this strange, brutal planet we happen to call home but was in any event, like, trying to make his way, or something.

It was this general idea of self-loathing that brought those fleeting lines of barely promising prose to my mind as I stared at the peeling floral wallpaper of James' living room and tried to keep from succumbing to the putrid nausea of a terrible cask wine hangover. In the years which had passed to date, that opening paragraph had become a cairn stone marking my unbeatable inability to complete a single worthwhile thing. To my credit (and perhaps, again, due to that terminal inability to see things through to their end), I hadn't drank the whole three litres of barely passable wine – roughly 1/8^th remained in the plastic sack hanging over the cigarette-burnt arm of the damp brown couch I was calling home 'this week'. Looking at it in any great detail caused, without fail, the terrible gland-rush of saliva familiar to afternoon waking, shivering deadbeats the world over. In slow time I decided that maybe self loathing and regret are two words for the same buried feelings.

Already the day had announced itself as an obnoxious, denim short and socks+sandals wearing American tourist – too loud, too close and bearing an awful damned headache. The problem with this metaphor, of course, is that there's no opportunity to steal a camera from an idea like 'today' while it makes expensive dental work into a cheap smile waiting for you to take a picture. With small minded and petty revenge off the cards, the only option available is to stare at the ceiling and ride it out. Lord, I hate your day.

love in the time of the human papillomavirus

2010-10-29T09:36:00.003+13:00

It took him seven tries with the magnetic swipe card to escape from the office building. This was more than the average, but still fell far short of the record 24 attempts required last Monday. Eyes bleared and head numb from 7.5 hours punching numbers into a computer station, he gulped in the outside air, a rare treat to his lungs after days on end of the recirculated variety in the office or at home. He thought about the not-insignificant pleasure the experience of dioxide-flavoured air occasioned as he walked home. Somehow, sucking air is the highlight of my day. This is probably a hugely terrible thing.

Walking home he passed lifeless window displays, and avoided the tough looking girls outside the bus exchange, not wanting to be asked 'what he was looking at' because there wasn't really any way to answer that question, you couldn't just say 'I don't know, shops, pavement'. It can all get very messy. He saw the early evening weekday drunks pissing on ancient gravestones. He listened to music, and when Ross Farrar compressed to 196kbps said ‘I’m going to throw this fucking bottle as hard as I can hope it hits you in the teeth make you learn your lesson it's dog eat dog in a place like this hard luck life sucks so I use my fists I got a chip on my shoulder I'm on a losing streak there's a cloud of contempt hanging over me', he wanted to throw a fucking bottle as hard as he could.

Inside, the air-con hummed and the TV, left on in the morning rush, screamed about the latest in a seemingly endless string of Briscoes sales. At first, the one bedroom flat had seemed lonely. By now he was used to it. The painted concrete block walls matched the rest of the city. He hadn't decided to live alone by choice, more out of necessity. Moving to town for 'his career' (as if it could be called that) had been a hasty decision. The thought of sharing space with strangers on a day to day basis creeped him out a little. A product of 21^st century media, he was convinced (via To Catch a Predator, Target and various Crime and Investigation channel re-enactments) that 'stranger danger' was not only very real, but also waiting just around the next wrong turn he happened to make. Life was threatening. Once in High School, Chris Whittaker had called him a 'sheltered pussy'. In his mind, he knew he was nothing more than a pragmatist.

He spent four hours browsing the internet that night, again the result of fierce necessity – Monday night television had sucked forever, and well, what else do you do when you don't know anyone in town? After catching up on the news for practically the entire globe and making a series of vague, cry-for-attention Facebook updates, he turned to an old favourite time killer – the local hip hop forums. He hit the right password first time, and his alter ego, EATPUSSY666, was online. He took his time, slowly devouring the rap scene's interpretation of new alcohol licensing laws, and where the best sushi was made. He avoided the 'PoSt HuNnIeZ' thread, deciding that it was not yet time. This could always wait, until the more pressing issues of the evening were completed. The 'Post Your Sh*t” thread, where Christchurch's newest 'talent' came to show off their 'material' via short videos of themselves rapping – putting themselves out there for all the world to see – was maybe his favourite thing in the entire world. Tonight, he decided to review 'Shawty Jam', by SUB D.

EATPUSSY666 wrote:

Dear Sub D,

Thank you for posting this. I have not laughed so hard since, well, your last effort. I am wonderfully excited that you have continued to explore the 'pastiche of Soulja Boy and an eight year old with Down Syndrome' style you had previously established. I assume the lengthy delay between your last post and this latest update was the product of you inability to decide what to rhyme with 'ass'. I am glad you were able to overcome this by simply employing 'ass' again in the following line – perhaps it is a clue towards your embrace of post-modernism and a distaste for the 'conventions' of rhyme, and rap in general? Or perhaps, as I suspect may be the case, the real explanation is that you are borderline retarded. Given the mongoloid expression you wear, and the low brow-line which you have attempted to hide with a counterfeit New Era hat, combined with your slow and stuttering flow, I think it is realistic to settle upon this as an explanation. I did enjoy the beat though! It reminded me of childhood – a simpler time for those of us who weren't subject to daily shock therapy and molestation like the unfortunate wards of the state mental health care facility where you grew up. One can clearly make out the distinctive tones of a Fisher Price brand 'Noise n Learn', over what sounds like someone slapping greasy hands on the disgusting bloated stomach of a solo mother somewhere in Linwood. Hopefully you have not employed child labour in the 'production' (if one could call it that) of this piece of shit. Not only would that offend the laws of the land, but most likely the children have been scarred for life in the process. Please, give it up. Give up rapping. I have literally heard eight year olds better than this. And they weren't even rapping at the time – just going about their daily business. I will propose a deal. If you stop rapping and kill yourself, I will cover all funeral expenses. I would also offer to support your family, but I suspect that through my payment of taxes I am already doing just that.

Before you come back, crying like a baby, and saying 'Oh, but what have you ever done, wah wah wah', note the logical fallacy in this. (You can find these words in 'the dictionary'. It is arranged alphabetically). Must one be a great chef to know that one shouldn't eat dog shit? I think not.

Thanks for reading my review,

EATPUSSY666

'A hip hop connoisseur'

Satisfied with the night's effort, he turned to the more pressing issues at hand – starting to stream some free online pornography, and cooking instant noodles while it loaded far enough that he could play the whole way through. He ate, cursing the third world internet speeds this part of town was burdened by.

Lying in bed later, feeling somehow gratified yet still filled with that horrible, lingering post wank self-loathing guilt, he considered calling Rebecca, his ex-girlfriend from back home in Palmerston. There was, of course, no point in doing so. If he called from his cell phone, she'd know straight away it was him and ignore the call, probably. If he called from the payphone downstairs, the anonymity might once again lead to the phone call amounting to nothing more than a torrent of abuse in a 'cleverly disguised' Chinese accent. Much like his confused post-release feelings that evening, his thoughts about Rebecca had also recently become increasingly conflicting. Sometimes he'd find himself thinking about 'the good times' – the romantic meals shared and work missed because it was easier to stay in bed and 'make love'. The good times. Usually, though, these idyllic memories were shattered by an overwhelming sense of regret and stupidity, which kept the kind respite of sleep at bay as his mind tossed in a seemingly bottomless rage. Why had he wasted all those years on some bad toothed slut who was becoming 'increasingly like her mother' (which, as usual, was nothing more than euphemism for gaining like twenty god damned kilos) as the years went on? How had he been so dumb? He thought about her and her new boyfriend, a pathetic skinny man. He thought about his under-developed arms trembling as they struggled to keep her girth at bay for the thirty seconds it probably took him to blow his measly load up her well used... The new guy had, according to his mother, also dumped her.

This was always a bad path of thought to traverse. He was still unsure where, months on, the overpowering urge to telephone her and 'catch up' came from. Sometimes you just do things, I guess.

From the start, the next day seemed to progress far better. He woke early, with time enough even to turn the television set off on the way out the door. The swipe card worked first try, for perhaps the only occasion in its entire existence. The day's filing was numerical – a welcome relief from the far more taxing alphabetical variety. His good mood meant faster work, and hourly targets were reached with sometimes as much as fifteen minutes to spare – fifteen heavenly minutes to bask in the halogen glow from above, and stare contentedly at the purpled grey carpet which lined the cubicle wall. Had he cared more about religion or, for that matter, metaphor, he might have spent some of that time in the bathroom updating his Facebook status via cellphone to something like “feels like Siddhārtha Gautama in Bodh Gaya”. Amongst this sourceless calm and goodwill he was even able to complete a 3 ½ minute conversation with the receptionist (who happened to be another Rebecca), about (generally): today's weather, yesterday's weather, and the outlook for the weekend. He wondered afterwards whether Jim Hickey had it easy with women.

That night, just as he sat down to (an almost celebratory) dinner of Watties 'Big Eat' Butter Chicken, someone started knocking on the door. At first he ignored it – not knowing anyone in town meant it was unlikely to be anyone of interest. Probably some recent immigrant stumbling over the English language as they tried to sell discount movie tickets door to door, he thought. The knocking persisted, however, and he was forced (out of a mixture of irritation and curiosity) to get up. Through the spy-hole he gazed out at a giant in a hi-vis vest and a white hard had. All signs pointed to something serious.

Opening the door, something felt a little off. Emergency workers coming to warn of gas leaks didn't usually wear Slim Shady jeans, did they? The man standing before him had no identification tags, and stood with his hands behind his back.

“Yo, this James Alexander's place?” the fluoro-vested man asked.

“Um, yes, it is?” said James Alexander, at once confused and vaguely terrified as to where this might be going. He still hadn't seen the man's hands.

“I guess you've got a problem then, ma'fuckaaaa” said Mr. Hard Hat, spitting the final syllables and finally revealing his hands – which happened to both be curled around the grip of a steel baseball bat.

James' stomach dropped, and kept dropping, as if one of those bottomless third-world sinkholes had opened in the pit of his torso. He had to swallow a rush of saliva, that harbinger of vomit. Fuck. He tried to keep from shaking. To pull himself together. Be a Man. The cops on those home invasion TV shows always said to just do whatever the 'intruders' said. Lest you wind up dead.

“I mean... I mean, yeah, he lives here. But he's out! At the moment. I can give him a message for you maybe?”

“What's your name then? Door man said there's only one room in this place. You some faggot boyfriend? What's your name, queerlord?”

“I'm... I'm, ah, his brother, Steve. From, like, out of town. I'm staying on the couch. James went out to get us dinner, yeah” said James, hoping like hell that somehow he might get the bat weilding fake Council worker to leave.

Instead of leaving, another giant appeared from around the corner to join the man. He seemed bigger. His bat, this time wooden, seemed bigger. His vest seemed brighter. James' sinkhole deepened significantly.

“I don't believe this ma'fucker”, said the second man, who in plain view began to look almost familiar. If he weren't fearing for his life, James might have taken delight in the sight of a giant wielding a wooden club, which provided an opportunity to use the word 'bommy-knocker' in a serious context for the first time ever, thus fulfilling a lifelong objective. Such are the opportunities lost to fear.

“We're gonna take a look inside then, gay boy”.

“Well, hold on,” said James, stalling desperately. “I don't know if James would...”

“FUCK UP FAGGOT DO YOU WANNA GET THE SMASH TOO CUNT?”

He was forced to press himself against the wall as the two giants passed. The copious sweat from his clammy hands left an impression on the lilac paint. This is not such a great day, after all, he thought, and considered running – sacrificing his worldly possessions in exchange for the preservation of health. Upon later reflection, James would decide that modern life itself was to blame for his failure to seize this one opportunity to escape – either through its fetishization of commodities which caused an unhealthy attachment within him to the consumer goods he had amassed, or through the sedentary lifestyle (and its consequences) which was enforced upon employees of large corporations in the name of 'the greater good' (and meant he sat filing all day in an air conditioned office rather than, I don't know, hunting wildebeests across the prairie or something). It all meant he was totally unfit and could run about three metres. No doubt they'd have caught him by the end of the corridor, had he managed to tear himself from three years of locked in finance payments. Resigned to his fate, James followed the two men into his apartment.

“Yo, dick nose, how you sleeping on the couch when there's no couch in here?”

“And how's that fuckin' nerd out getting food for yous when you're already eating some bullshit in here. Either you're lying, or your some greedy motherfucker. And by the look of you, I'd say you eat maybe once a week. So, that means you're lying.”

“We're gonna fuck you up you lying faggot. Talk shit about me on the internet this is what you get bitch”.

James was struck by four things almost simultaneously:

1) A sudden realisation as to where he maybe recognised the second oaf-giant from;

2) Some vague insight into the cause of his current predicament;

3) A metal baseball bat to the side of his knee;

4) A wooden baseball bat to the forehead.

These two sudden flashes of comprehension were, understandably, followed by a long bout of nil mental activity.

After the initial bouts of disorientation passed upon regaining consciousness, the first thing James wondered was – 'AM I DEAD'. Having decided that heaven (or hell) probably didn't consist of his own living room messed up and stripped of anything valuable, he concluded that this probably was not the case.

Now, though, he was unable to keep from throwing up. The sight of orange rice pouring from his mouth did nothing to help the overall feeling that everything was a little bit too close – his brain was too close to his skull; his eyes too close to the light overhead; his stomach too close to itself, as if his intestines had divided up and turned into a pile of snakes fucking; his knee, too close to the nerves that surrounded it, pressing on them, pinching them... more orange rice appeared.

His attackers, those grotesque giants, were still present, sitting at his computer, laughing together.

“Oh shit, he's awake bro, should I smash him again?”

“Nah g, bring him here”.

The smaller giant approach, forcing James to his feet. With the bat prodding into his back, he was forced to hop over to the computer desk in the corner. The bigger one threw him down in the chair in front of the screen. In front of him sat a webcam. He could see his face in the screen, and the arms holding him down. SUB D pushed a torn scrap of paper into his hands, commanding him to read. James' hesitance earned him another punch in the stomach.

"This is EATPUSSY666. If I had any friends they'd call me James Alexander. I live at 23/8 Rosehip Lane, if anyone wants to come hang out / shut me up. I'm a fucking loser, I guess. I talk shit about people on the internet because it makes me feel better about my tiny cock, which I use for docking, because I'm some Freddy Mercury wannabe free-gayer shit talking pussy. I live alone because I have no friends, except the gay men I meet in St Albans Park to have sex with and spread AIDS. I look like a more feminine, white Tina Turner. I pretend to drop knowledge but the only thing I drop is soap in the showers at the swimming pool. I'm so poor I blow homeless men for their pocket change. I get beaten up by school kids. My father molested me twice a day. I do the same to my four year old neighbour".

James paused, trying to choke back the tears. Failing, he wiped them away. He saw his reflection in the screen – a fat, tanned slug sat on each of his shoulders. Looking down, he recognised them as the flaccid penises of the home invaders. Of course. Why not. More tears came. A tear for every regret he felt. The moment seemed an apt metaphor for life in general. How it could go from almost successful conversations with receptionists to telling the world you molested children while the penises of violent strangers dangled centimetres from your face. It was all a monument to just how unkind the world could be. Maybe he'd been a bit of a jerk. But this? This? This doesn't seem fair, he thought, as the tears continued to flow.

'Keep reading, little bitch'.

"Sub D is actually the best rapper I've ever heard, I just talk shit because I'm jealous. I'd blow him if I could. Anyway, its been nice. Hopefully see some of you soon. Just come over whenever. Better go back to knitting for my boyfriend."

Time was muddy as the giants unplugged the webcam and started uploading the video. James' brain was stuck in recursive loop, like the radio at work, replaying over and over, Ian Curtis Ian Curtis Ian Curtis Ian Curtis Ian Curtis Ian Curtis. Any form of escape would have been acceptable. Ian Curtis Ian Curtis Ian Curtis Ian Curtis Ian Curtis Ian Curtis.

It looked as if they were preparing to leave. A small ray of sunshine through a Chernobyl acid rain cloud, maybe. Not one of those Josef Fritzl 20 year ordeals, at least. This didn't stop the tears, or cure the recently-gang-raped-by-the-world feeling.

He saw their stupid, wide faces upside down from his position on the floor. Crooked, grinning, stupid faces. An image, he thought, that was burned forever behind his eyelids. To be seen indefinitely. SUB D delivered the following speech: "Fuck you, faggot. That's what happens when you talk shit about me g. You call the cops, and I'll kill you. Literally. I will find you and kill you". He went to kick again, but the other one stopped him.

‘Chill out bro, he’s already fucked as. We better gap eh’. And then, they were gone, stomping out the door like Butch Cassidy heading towards the sunset.

James lay on the floor. When your head feels like implosion and your entire life seems void, there's not a whole lot else to do. His mind tracked from Kurt Cobain Kurt Cobain Kurt Cobain Kurt Cobain to Budd Dwyer Budd Dwyer Budd Dwyer Budd Dwyer .

In the canon of motivational literature, one phrase is ascendant - "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!". Ignoring the obvious fact that lemonade made with only lemons and no additional ingredients is simply lemon juice, which is itself scarcely better than a pile of lemons, the phrase is meant as a succinct way of declaring the importance of making the best of a bad situation. The problem is, people don't really feel like making lemonade. They feel like taking the pile of lemons and hurling the fuckers through car windows. Metaphorically speaking.

This dilemma, this choice between broken windows and lemonade, struck James a few hours into his lying on the floor crying, thinking about famous suicides and wondering if maybe he could just stay lying there, forever, until expiring from lack of food or water or whatever else it was about lying on floors that could kill you. Letting wretched life pass by outside the locked door of his small apartment. Imagining the world outside going by like the life-cycle of grass in a David Attenborough documentary. Furious movement around a fixed point, outside of his (hopefully) impregnable urban fortress.

Twelve hours on, he thought, this is not an honourable way to die. I should avenge myself, or something, maybe. God, I’m hungry. And my back hurts. I should have called work. Slowly, he crawled to the bathroom, where he saw his bruised face in the mirror. It looked worse than it had through the webcam. The high resolution of real life, in all of its blooming and busting glory.

He threw himself into the scalding shower still clothed, in a fashion any cynical observer would have labeled as an ironic tribute to the eternal post-rape-shower-scene trope James had often joked about. Hot water flowing over mental nothing and broken life. An attempt, maybe, to sever oneself from the past. Cleansing. Something like that.

Lying back clean but still broken, he allowed himself to daze. Having never been 'in to' science, he wondered if Einstein's theory of relativity was the same as the fact that everything was relative, and context was everything. His ex-girlfriend danced across the jagged fever-ridges of the inescapable beat down images. Now, she was beautiful. She was christian god offering Salvation in the face of the Romans who'd only hours before invaded on the barest of pretexts to crucify him. Out the window the concrete town looked more and more like Jerusalem, ancient or modern, torn by conflict, forever hostile. As set beside Palmerston, it practically was a war zone. The West Bank. Basra. Wherever you please. James felt ashamed of his previous pleasure in the stale air. The same air choked down and spit out by thugs who can't take a joke. Enjoyed by an inept police force who can't just tell where a violent sexual assault is taking place. An atmosphere, he knew, that would slowly choke him if there was no escape. Maybe this is the lesson. I need to get out. I need her.

The day followed an uneasy sleep. James walked to work without showering, and ignored everyone on the way to his desk. The forty two year old unmarried claims adjuster in the next cubicle looked over hesitantly, before delivering her evaluation in the tone he usually reserved for the victims of arson - “Wow, James, you look like shit!”. He ignored the comment, staring at his desk while he packed his things in a box. There was no point telling the bosses. He'd miss holiday pay and maybe a reference declaring him the world’s best alphabetical/numerical filing clerk. There are things people can make do without in life. Sometimes sacrifices must be made. Later in life, all he'd remember about the place was its overwhelming grayness – down to the managers' early-morning sweat covered skin.

He didn't bother calling the landlord either. Who knew what would happen. Probably nothing. How do they even track you down? The omnipotence of debt collection was another terrifying though. Probably how they found me. It always seems to come back to money. The good thing about knowing no-one is that there aren't any slow goodbyes. You just start driving down SH1 and don't feel the need to look back. Who cares if the door's locked or the stove's on. Momentum’s enough to keep the memories well hidden, trying and failing to bust through the overwhelming detritus of swift movement.

He avoided shouting at the hitchhikers. The irony in shouting at the defenseless to 'GET A JOB' // 'NICE HAT JEEEEEEEEERK’ might have been enough to crack the meagre shell he had attempted to build between himself and the rest of the world. The town hadn’t changed. Still a mistaken, timeless place where the only teenagers around hung out on bikes in the main street wearing too-big hats with their ears tucked in, pretending to know what ‘cool’ meant. A place devoid of Sub D’s. Devoid of concrete block mountains. Probably (hopefully?) even lacking the internet. Home. The smell of stale air was replaced with slow commerce and rural decline. It tasted clean, and you didn't share it with anyone you didn't know. There were always jobs at the tannery. Take it easy, keep your head in, smile at your neighbours and make it through the next fifty or so years. This is how you live life. Slow life beats fast life in the right contexts, relativity, and all of this. Images of falling into her arms, locking themselves away, free from the world, tracked through his mind as he walked the main street.

He found her at the pub, of course. Drinking the same beer with the same friends. Always ready to forgive and forget; to take him back; hopefully. He approached slowly, and pressed himself close in the embrace. ‘I came back for you, baby. You know I love you, and I guess I just couldn’t stay away. Things were bad, but I came back. What good is big city life, a job, all of that, without the things you really care about, y’know? I need you.’

Acknowledgements: Title stolen from an Andrew Jackson Jihad song. Other parts stolen from a Ceremony song. Please don't sue.

DREAMS

2010-10-05T21:31:00.000+13:00

JUDGING A WET TSHIRT MONSTER TRUCK CONTEST SPONSORED BY THE ROCK AND MOTHER ENERGY DRINK.

eehbaby 4 sione

2010-09-13T16:51:00.003+12:00

this piece of paper was stuck to the ground next to the Orbiter bus stop on Buckleys Road, Linwood (opposite Eastgate Mall). i was stuck wondering whether there's any significance to the fact it was discarded. is 'forever and ever' over for eehbaby or sione? cue: existential crisis centered on the impermanence of life and love. ms word love notes kind of tear me up sometimes.

obligatory earthquake post.

2010-09-08T10:06:00.006+12:00

so, christchurch is gonna suck even harder now. go figure.

post apocalypse.

some things i have been dwelling on to kill time in between no work and no university:

+ is 'being drunk and on speed' during 'a major natural disaster' going to replace seeing some guy get dumped, beat down in 30 seconds after trying to fight us for like ten minutes, and arrested, as 'the 'buzziest' thing that ever happened'?

+ if god exists, and therefore should be thanked for the fact that no one died in an earthquake, should he not also 'take the blame' for stupidly creating a world based on tectonic plates? i feel like this dude is getting off kind of easy here. you owe me a television, bro.

+ how can i cash in on the suffering of thousands of people? is this an ideal time to purchase 'stocks and bonds' in relevant industries?

tuesday 1am, victoria st nite and day

2010-08-26T17:04:00.004+12:00

christchurch with nothing but a used bus transfer,
two bottle caps, and a muddy head full of defeated thoughts.
ducking passing conversations about how
what we're writing can't be plagiarism
because 'the Beats' died with our falling enthusiasm for life.
still stuck on forever's problem;
the space between reality and late night schemes.
still trying to reconcile
the unfulfilled promises of modern life.
degrees in 'sales and marketing'
tuesday night punk rock shows.
full nude striptease.
full nude striptease.
the far off sounds of street-lit vomitting, and
drunks asking 'what're the cheapest smokes you sell'
to a school aged fuck up who 'gets it'.
spilled cans of Diesel and Carter Lager
leaking like the wounds of wartime.
surrounded by humming signs and hostile footpaths,
empty land guarded by barbed fences
and twenty four slash seven security signs.
still shouting songs of revenge at the moon.
our one chance
wasted on these streets
take no prisoners
take no prisoners
take no prisoners (x ∞)

doing my bit (broken glass as community action pt. 2)

2010-08-25T00:53:00.001+12:00

i walked home with a brick in my hand
and broke every motion sensing light
that lit me up.
doing my bit for crime deterrence deterrence.

a numbers guy

2010-08-18T18:27:00.003+12:00

This is the start of a longer short story I started writing. Not sure if it will ever get finished. Enjoy it going nowhere, for now.

June 12, 1990 was an unremarkable day in a relatively straight forward year. On this day, free from major air disasters or stock market crashes, Mark Smith entered the World. He was neither early nor late, and neither kicking nor screaming – just another unremarkable soul joining the procession of millions of other unremarkable souls who wind up seventy years down the track wondering where it all went wrong.

Throughout childhood, Mark maintained his steadfast commitment to the ordinary - role playing Dragon Ball Z at school with his four friends until a respectable age, and tossing his uneaten peanut butter sandwiches in the bin daily. His parents separated and his father moved to Australia, as was par for the course in those days. Later in life Mark would wonder if this event hadn't played maybe just a small part in how it all turned out. At the time, though, it had just seemed so, well, normal. All his friends got two Christmas presents too. Mark's mother Sharon had been back working since he started school, and so they were never poor or anything. And so, life marched on, each day inevitable as the planet's revolution, every week punctuated by Simpsons re-runs and Friday night fish and chips.

Adolescence, with its bursting hormones and the accompanying government-sanctioned sex-ed classes, proved the turning point. The point where Mark Smith, for reasons that would remain unknown to him, realised that he was Different. At first, it was just 'different'. The capital D came later in life. And not just different in that boring and cliched 'I'm a unique and wonderful snowflake and will dye my hair green and shout obscenities at authority figures' kinda way that was almost expected of teenage dirtbags at the time. Different in a different way.

By the time he was in High School, Mark was moving in the second-tier popular crowd. Not the top rugby players crowd, but only one step below, on the grand High School scheme of things. Sure, at 14 he wasn't attending all the parents-outta-town parties, but he still did okay for himself. This second tier friend group had corresponding second-tier friend groups at at least two of the girls schools around town at any given point, which was pretty good.

When the 4^th form school dance came around, Mark bowed to the pressure of his friends and asked Christina from the Catholic girls school (with the eternal reputation for teenage pregnancy) to come with him. Leading up to the dance, Mark and his friends spent more than a few hours talking about 'how mean the dance was gonna be', and 'who was gonna pash and/or finger who'. Despite this undefeatable young man bravado , Mark was becoming increasingly nervous. He'd never even kissed a girl before. Mostly, he messed up talking to them. Didn't know what to say. Sweaty hands preceded nervous laughter, which itself was the harbinger of impending failure. These pressures teamed up with a catalog of imagined inadequacies to weigh heavy on Mark's mind on the Friday of the dance. He almost threw up on the skill saw during last period woodwork.

the battle of adrianople

2010-08-16T19:17:00.001+12:00

Through his father's connections (specifically- the production company which owed him a favour for sorting out the whole Next Top Plus Sized Model fiasco), he'd got a shot at it. At 'the big time'. Thirteen half hour episodes, commissioned after the pilot's entirely ambivalent test screening.

“It's essentially a show about nothing, y'know, like Seinfeld” he'd proclaimed to all the adoring young girls, who'd taken to ringing his long-term table at the bar, hoping for some sort of 'big break'. He left out the part about how it was like Seinfeld, minus the jokes. And how he enjoyed most television about as much as the general public enjoyed watching 'curvy, natural' behemoths heft themselves self-righteously across the screen each night to empowering messages about being 'real women'. That is to say, he knew fuck all about television, and even less about how to make it. What he did know, though, was how much television meant to these vapid martini drinkers. To have your own TV series, though, meant you'd made it.

“It's kind of like this conceptual, hard realist take on young peoples' lives, I guess. Like Skins, but funnier. And grittier. A realistic take on drug use”. He didn't even know about this part- it was mainly conversational filler really. Or maybe he would throw in some more drugs. Glam things up a bit with some thick white lines off of porcelain in 'pumping clubs'. Tired old cliches. It had to be nose drugs. The pilot had consisted almost entirely of the 'funniest' of his friends, smoking weed and talking about 'buzzy shit'. But really, no one wanted a 'realistic take' on weed. 6.5 hours of some doss cunts sitting on second hand couches watching Spongebob slightly paranoid and not wanting to talk heaps didn't exactly sound like Emmy material. And what else was there? Some old man, half-grey mustache waving as he rides helmetless on a stolen bike across wide ghetto avenues with pockets full of meth? Pockmarked depraved ex-private school girls slurping on the bulbous, diseased penii of grey faced and lecherous finance company directors? It had to be 'cocaina'.

“But yeah, we're gonna be casting next week, probably, if any of you are interested? I could run through some lines before hand too?”

the thrill of livin'

2010-07-18T16:50:00.004+12:00

Today I woke up and wanted to write a story about nothing. So, I did. More buses and getting drunk, because that's all I know.

There were three lines. Two of them were lime green, and stretched across the automatic doors, where the buses pulled up. The other was a dappled tan stripe of vinyl, which cut a path through the industrial-kaleidoscope carpet. Through my blurring eyes, the effect was like a strange upended topographical map, and rendered the room in an extra dimension. I tried to ignore this illusion and focus instead on the other people waiting for the night's last bus--trying to figure out who was going Out, and who was going Home. Across from me were two girls gossiping about god knows what, and I could almost taste the cheap wine in their piercing laughter. I wondered if maybe they were going to the same party as me. Small chances in a big city, but you never know. Maybe I'd get drunk and hit on one of them. The red head, probably. Not the fat one. Or maybe, depending on how I was feeling. I thought about what her face would look like when she came. The only thing I ever learned from my uncle is that fat girls try harder. Anything for a distraction.

I thought the man who'd sat down next to me was trying to start a conversation, before realising he was talking only to himself.

'The boats! The boats! The waves!'

He looked like a homeless Robert De Niro, and kept up chanting his strange incantation the whole time I sat there. If I was a better person, maybe I woulda talked to him. Found out his story, if he needed help, that kind of thing. It's always a risk though. Talk to a guy like that and there's a fifty-fifty chance he starts putting dead cats in your letterbox, or something. I took the easy road and ignored him, instead stealing sidelong glances at his big wet eyes and wondering if being retarded is just like being drunk all the time, not caring about the god damned world and all of these problems, or if maybe it's like a bad acid trip with no way out. Blind speculation. Anything to pass the time.

The bus arrived around the time this guy progressed to 'The boats! The boats! The waves! The sand!'. It was empty apart from the four of us who got on. My fat girl and her friend paid child fares, and I felt like some creepy old pocket-masturbating weirdo. Our love died with a $1.40 concession fare. The muttering tard sat right behind me, even though almost every other seat was empty. I spent that bus ride focused on the classic rock hits which played quiet through the speakers somewhere up the back, praying to God that I wasn't minutes away from death by strangulation and wishing that I hadn't had those beers after work so I didn't have to ride the damned bus. I learned from John Mellencamp that life goes on, even after the thrill of living's gone. And it did.

The underaged girls got off at the same stop as me, and to avoid feeling even more like a creepy rape dude, I said hi. They were going to Josh's party, too--friends of his sister, or something. We parted ways in the kitchen, and I felt better. Soon enough I was outside by the fire, opening beers with lighters and talking shit about oh my god who was so drunk, and all that other stuff. Thinking about that red-haired girl I'd left in the kitchen and how society just couldn't accept a love like ours. You start to accept the impossibility of it all the further through the dozen you get. Less matters. Sure getting laid would be good, but who cares, have a good time. On the piss, or whatever. We talked about the guy on the bus. How he was some Navy experiment gone wrong, or De Niro himself, trying out method acting for the remake of Rain Man. How he was probably watching us through the fence, waiting to rape Josh in his sleep.

The night drew on and soon enough, I was sitting alone on a couch outside, tasting the cold air and watching the ashes fly skyward. Wishing there was someone I could talk about those ashes with without getting called a fag. Wanting to shout about what it'd be like to slowly float out of this scene, everyone blurring into the same face, the house beginning to look just like all the others. To look out from above, across that very same strange topographical dimension, on a grand scale, and see all the other blurred faces in the backyards of identical houses across the city. And how you'd look down, and see all the other ashes rising, making the exact same journey as you, and feel so common and meaningless, before realising that even if the journey's the same, your perspective right now is, like, different from all the other ashes, and none of them are in your place. Wanting to shout all of this at anyone who'll listen, thinking about all of this and feeling a bit to drunk to make sense of it all, and it stopped mattering at that point anyways 'cause Josh was sitting down with his arm around me telling me how drunk he was and how he wanted to bang the fuck out of his sister's ginger friend, and how we should go watch John 'Cougar' Mellencamp on youtube. I took one last look at the fire, and realised that some day those ashes would be the death of me.

bad poetry for negative losers (broken glass as community action pt. 1)

2010-07-15T10:48:00.005+12:00

i.

the ad on the bank said
'set them up for life,
with a long term savings account'
and I threw bottles through their window
like i was vomitting
anarcho-sentiment
'set them up for life'
with a healthy distrust of Everything
'set them up for life'
with powerful arms for smashing glass.
set them up for nothing.

ii.

i watched a cock fight
razor spurred.
two days later
i went to a rock show.
razor spurred.
my arms like tornadoes
tearing up flesh.
sometimes
i can still taste
the blood of swollen dreams.

iii.

i shot myself in the back yard
of a house where no one lives
don't let me be a burden
even in death.

iv.

we all have our coping mechanisms.

Hash Palaces #2: Intense Flows of Positive Energy

2010-06-26T10:49:00.003+12:00

The problem with most people, man, is that they're stuck in this weird kinda earth-bound trip. They've got no, kinda, 'perception' of what else is out there. The parallel dimensions, and alternate astral planes. How easy it is to transcend all of this temporary human nonsense, and really get down to what it is to like, exist, man. And that's what we wanted to do with Old Mary. That was the whole deal man. Get people out of it, and explore the expanding universe that is human spirit-consciousness.

We'd just drive round the North island, sleeping in the van and selling enough to pay for petrol to the next town down the line. Some of those kids, man, they had no idea what'd hit them when we rolled into town! It was like a whole new world for them. And the girls, man. Talk about a spiritual experience. Just so many beautiful souls, floating around and somehow connecting with us along the way.

Every couple of months we'd have to head back to the Coromandel, up to the Rainbow, to stock up again. Stock up on greens of both kinds, man! That was the life, man. We were never in it for the money. It was never about that. And sure, we took a few beatings along the way. Some of those rugby club type of guys started swinging as soon as they saw us, and I never could understand it. Young souls, I guess. We never fought back, man, because someone had to keep the spirit of Gandhi alive, right? Plenty of cops took to beating us too, but they never found the stash. An old friend up at Rainbow had welded this box under the van, to look just like a fuel tank. And they never found it. I guess beating us down was just easier. That's the way with cops, I guess. Still is, if you ask me. Maybe they didn't think our buzzed out weed-feed brains could handle the mechanics of deception, or something. But, higher consciousness man. Peace.

It all changed in Foxton, though, when we hooked up with this older guy. I'm not even sure what his name was, or if he even had one. Told us he was a chemist, from way back, and he'd been making LSD since before '62 even, when that Misuse of Drugs Act came through. We switched up our product after hooking up with this cat, and for me things got kinda hairy after that. There were some great times, but some bad vibes man. We lost Old Mary #1 after the steering wheel melted into my lap while we were driving. A whole different trip, and I didn't see it coming.

The negative vibes won out in '67, on a full moon winter soulstice. We'd each dropped a handful of Rolling Stones, and I freaked out, man. There was no coming back from that night, for a while. If you've ever talked to the moon, only to have it unravel the realities of space, time and the complete inconsequence of your own existence, you might know what I'm talking about. It was off the road, and into the hospital, man. I'd always heard about the acid casualty guy who'd got perma-fried and thought he was a glass of orange juice. I just thought I was a ball of nothing, man. A human black hole. I spent enough time in the hospital though, and it got better. Those doctors, and the largactyl, sorted me out. No more acid though, and no more weed. For me its just herbal tea, meditation and buzzing out on the realness of life.

The above is an excerpt from the forthcoming book 'Hash Palaces: An Oral History of Great New Zealand Tinny Houses'.

Hash Palaces #1: The Kings of Queen Street

2010-06-24T18:09:00.004+12:00

You've gotta remember that this was the 80s, of course. Everyone was gonna make it big on the stock market, live in a huge house and get the trophy wife. I guess the problem for us was that we didn't know a whole lot about stocks, or any of that Michael J Fox 'Secret of My Success' type stuff. What we did know about was weed. Bro, so much weed.

I'd been down to the library, the Central one, and got this book about business, to figure out what we needed to do. It turns out, this book said, that the capitalist business model is pretty simple, when you get down to it. Buy for a dollar, sell for two. There's your profit. Not a whole lot more to it. And so, we came up with a business model. This was pretty straight forward too—buy heaps of weed from Dave's cousin, using 'our capital', which we got doing the summer work at the freezing works back in ??. Then, we need 'premises', and 'customers'. This book I was reading said the premises should be central to our target customers, and should be well furbished. So, there goes more capital. We signed a six month lease on this place, and told the landlord we were 'trading futures'. I still don't even know what that means, something Dave came up with, but the landlord guy was happy enough. It was a pretty nice building, too. We got some desks, and some of those swivel chairs. A broken photocopier, and even some of those posters with people in suits running a race, to make it look right. Sometimes when the landlord was coming past we just drew these graphs and numbers on a white board. Seemed to make him happy.

Anyway, we had our business model, our product, and our premises. According to the book I'd got, the next part was customers, and this meant advertising. For obvious reasons, this was gonna be a little difficult. You can't exactly buy up a bunch of radio time and start shouting “COME BUY OUR WEED, IT'S REAL MEAN”. Cops and all that. In the end, it never really mattered. In business, advertising is all about increasing demand for your product. As we found out, though, demand was pretty sky high anyways. I wouldn't even like to guess why. Life's just not that interesting when you're not wasted, I guess. Still, its a weird New Zealand thing, maybe. The rest of the world was busy chucking cocaine up their noses at this point, or washing up a few bowls of crack before breakfast, or whatever, and here we are, everyone smoking a few cones just to make Top Town bearable evening entertainment. I'm not complaining, though. There was the demand. We had the supply, and the law meant that supply was always gonna be on the limited side. The word got around. Some jokers are selling tinnies outta the NZMP Tower! In business terms, we were set.

The average day went like this. One of us would open up, and serve all the before-work types. The dudes that worked in town in weird data jobs where they had to get wasted at 9am or the unbearable day would grind them down. Come to think of it, this was always the most depressing part. The dependents, the early hours, the inescapable impression that everyone else's job was a horrible waste of time, and the corporate ladder everyone was talking about was about as climbable as the Green Bay Fort on datura. We'd just hang out all day, while business boomed and bloomed. Open late, for the after-work wind down types, with their ties loose and their shirts all wrinkled in the same places from slouching over the same desks all day. I realised that for most of the world, that's what 'business' meant. Not us. The last thing we'd do is count the money. That was always the best part of the night. Some days, it was ridiculous. We were selling 10 ounces some days. Wasting all the money on useless shit too, come to think of it. Big shouldered suits and steak dinners. Champagne by the barrel.

The headlines said “THE KINGS OF QUEEN STREET” when the cops finally cottoned on and busted us. I'm still not sure who narked, but I guess it was our own fault. Selling drugs to strangers, and always staying in one place, with nowhere to hide when they did turn up. A whole pound, they got us with. It was gonna be all conspiracy and distribution charges for all of us, but I said it was mine. The rest were just customers, just hanging out, I said. We weren't the kings of anything. Just greedy kids in a greedy world, and I paid the price. Only four years, though. Nothing major. They never tracked down the cash, either, and that got me back in business, at Jimmy's Spa and Pool.. Some of the boys hooked it up for me when I got out. Even the building's in my own name, and we're moving more spa pools than any other bastard in town, so business is good. The game never changes, no matter what you're selling.

The above is an excerpt from the forthcoming book 'Hash Palaces: An Oral History of Great New Zealand Tinny Houses'.

an open letter to AMP Capital

2010-06-19T16:26:00.006+12:00

Dear AMP Capital,

Saturday 19 June was the date of my first visit to The Palms Shopping Centre. I'd been drinking, but then who wouldn't be, on a day like that. Probably the warmest all winter. The nor'wester was blowing, and it'd left the sky banded grey, white and blue, like the tricolour flag of some imaginary skyward republic. For reasons I'd rather not get into, I had to ride the bus that day. At first, it wasn't so bad - there was a cute girl with pink hair and a nose ring, sitting across from me. Just as I'd reached the point in my daydream where I was taking her to Tahiti on our honeymoon, I realised she was listening to 'My Way', by Limp Bizkit. Really loudly. Keeping in mind that the date in question was 19 June 2010, you can probably see why this became an issue.

In any case, it was with a head swimming with imaginary sky flags, the unfulfilled romantic potential of pink haired nu-metal throwbacks and the yeasty, head spinning drunk that only comes along when, in a move combining innovation and self hatred, you mix homebrew beer with good Scotch whiskey, that I arrived at the Palms. All I wanted was some food, and I'd heard that this mall had everything! The predictions were true. I'm glad the place decided to cheap out on those blue-shirted people who clear away the discarded food, because those food court tables were like some kind of dream buffet. Rather than 80 days, it took me a mere 30 minutes to traverse practically the entire world, in culinary terms. The sauces! The spices! the things people are willing to spend money on and then cast aside. The food court seems to make a fitting metaphor for these modern times. I'm still trying to work out how my getting asked to leave by security fits into this metaphor, but I'm beginning to think the answer to this question is bigger than I will ever grasp, and will probably refer back with several layers of ontology and rely on a complex yet perfect syllogism. This is all besides the point, which is that I was kinda drunk, kinda full and kinda happy while getting escorted out of the Palms. The sorta gratification that usually only comes when tall buildings collapse on my birthday.

I was carrying this feeling when I noticed the many advertisements throughout the Palms for the Champion family, to which an AMP Capital logo was appended. I spent many minutes at the time wondering what the significance of this proud and upright family was. Do they list amongst their (no doubt limitless) achievements the ownership of an entire shopping mall? Are they the subject of an upcoming TV drama or reality series, in the course of which their perfect facade will be torn asunder by drug use and interracial romance? Without any further explanations offered, the possibilities swiftly approached the infinite. John Locke, in his c1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, perhaps best explains the resulting conclusion that maybe these advertisements meant nothing at all:

Men, extending their Enquiries beyond their Capacities, and letting their Thoughts wander into those depths where they can find no sure footing; tis no wonder, that they raise Questions and multiply Disputes, which never come to any clear Resolution, are proper to only continue to increase their Doubts, and to confirm them at last in a perfect Scepticism.

In the spirit of Mr Locke, it seemed only fair to attempt to cure my scepticism through the rigors of empirical investigation. The internet at the local public library informed me that the Champion family were the product of AMP Capital's new advertising campaign. I was left to figure out the rest for myself, when my internet money ran out. I finally decided that there were two phases to the advertising. The first was where each member of the Champion family represented a key mall demographic. These ads were practically shouting to the world: rich white people! we want you! Labradors! you may shop here! As time passed, I thought more and more about the second phase of the advertising.

I decided that, because no one in their right mind could honestly believe that a stack of pictures of some retardedly wholesome and obviously fake family would somehow make people want to go to their mall, rather than stab their eyes out with a rusty coathanger, there must be some other reason behind all of this. I have called this phase the aspirational phrase. I have taken some liberties here, but I hope you will not lump me in with the hollow-earthers and David Icke types. The most likely explanation, of course, is that the association of the Champion 'family' with the AMP Capital brand was an exercise in aspirational advertising, whereby I would see these advertisements and realise my tragic and general lack off success in life, compared to Mr. Champion. I would tie this castestrophic failure to my lack of ownership of AMP Capital bonds or shares or whatever sort of financial derivative it is that people even own these days. I would think this is the only reason I have no patrician-chinned and gracefully aging wife, no daughter to jealously protect while secretly scheming to 'have intercourse with' her best friend, no son to make feel terrible for missing that tackle. The only reason my posture has slackened and my hairline receded.

Well, you got me. It worked. Since those ads, I've been seconds from suicide. Only the thought of investing in AMP Capital and thereby remedying my life have kept me in the realm of the living. I'm sorry for the long-winded introduction, but I thought you should hear it, in order to pass along congratulations to your advertising staff. I guess that brings me to the point of this letter. I would like to somehow invest in AMP Capital! I have about $70 in cash on me right now. Will this be enough? If this isn't enough, I would be willing to trade the following intellectual property, in exchange for a piece of your fine organisation:

i) A collection of photographs of elderly people wearing matching tracksuits and hugging. This would be perfect for your next advertising campaign! Everyone knows a partner wearing the exact same clothes as you is the 'perfect family' of later life, in terms of aspiration marketing!

ii) A list of every single person I know who regularly shoplifts from your 'The Palms'. I realise that some people might see this as 'selling my friends out' or 'back-stabbing'. However, as I am about to enter the business world in any case, I figured, why not get a in a little 'screwing over the poor' practice before I receive my interest in AMP. I'm sure you guys understand!

Finally, in terms of the family, will I get to select them from a catalog? Or is it more of a lucky dip type arrangement? I understand the necessity of woollen jumpers in heading up such a family, but is this an absolute necessity? Wool has caused problems with my eczema in the past.

I look forward to hearing from you!
George F. Mill, Vagrant.

needles

2010-06-17T10:39:00.003+12:00

I always thought there was that whole unconditional love thing which went with parenthood, but it looks like I was wrong. Those fuckers aren't having a bar of it. Won't even open the door when I visit. I mean it's not like I took anything major last time. Just an iPod. Turns out an iPod is worth more than their love for their only daughter. I got a good price for it too. And it wouldn't have happened if they'd just lent me the money in the first place. They know I'll pay them back. One day. When I sort myself out, get clean. One day soon, I might add. Ah well. There are some bastards you can live without, and now my own damned parents are going on that ever growing list, I think, walking back down their stupid winding gravel driveway. Its like a medieval fort in here or something. Bourgeois wankers, anyway. Good riddance.

I start to shiver, waiting for the bus. Not sure if its cold shivers, or the withdrawls. Senses have started to blur lately. Its been a day since my last shot, and this winter's been hell. Coldest in twenty years, they're saying.

I don't bother smiling at the bus driver when I get on. I'm sure the greasy old creep is trying to catch a view down my top. Not for free, baby. Call me when your shift's over, maybe, if I'm desperate.

All of these well-painted houses, with their new fences, the leafy parks and the occupied shops over this side of town, rushing past out the window, remind me of how far from home this all is. So fake. So sterile. Christ, I need dope something real too. Not that fucked up homebake cut with shit knows what Anton's been selling either. I can almost taste that chemical fuck-up, and it's making me wanna spit.

I'm off the bus in town, thinking maybe I should eat. Getting too thin. I could be a model, though! A life of glamour, cocaine instead of the dope, maybe. Dreams are free. I'm in that bakery, where for some reason the rolls are opposite the cash register, outta sight. Its like an unintentional soup kitchen, without all the Christians. These rolls have been keeping me alive, I'm pretty sure. Nothing wrong with carbohydrates.

Walking home, I run into someone from school, I think. They know me, anyhow. “What've you been up to?” etc. I don't say sucking old man dick to get high. I don't say ripping off my parents. I say “not a whole bunch, you know how it is, you?” and listen to some bullshit about marketing out at the University or something, thinking the whole time that I must look like shit, like a role-model for how to fuck yourself up good. I walk away without asking her name.

“I'm worried about her, David. We should have let her in at least, to talk with her”.

“Look, Mary, I know it's hard, but I thought we decided enough was enough. Dr. Robertson said the treatment, the CADS or whatever it was, had to be voluntary. And she won't do it! So what are we supposed to do? Let her steal from us? Buy her drugs?”

“I don't even know here she lives any more. What if she's on the street again? What if something happens? It'd be on us”.

“It wouldn't be on us. It'd kill us, sure, but it wouldn't be our fault. That arsehole boyfriend of hers, those druggies and the ones that make money off them, it'd be their fault. Fuck! I'm sorry for swearing, honey, but it just gets me so mad”.

I arrive at Jason's room without realising I'd been walking there. I'm in a fucked up mood, and being here never seems to help. This giant rotting house, with its tiny rooms and smaller kitchens attached, somehow justifying the almost extortion-level rent. The smell of cat piss that never seems to leave, but gets worse when his neighbour passes out in the stairwell. Which is every other day. The fucked up mood part is nothing new. You never get used to feeling like the entire world's about to collapse inwards, squeezing your lungs and choking the life outta you, almost constantly except when I take the needle, the pipe, whatever, the Great Escape from all the bone-cold and surface tension built up in the grey clouds//grey faces of the city. A counsellor once asked me why I 'abuse substances'. I asked him “Why don't you need to get high? Why aren't you running away from all of this?”. “This is about you, Laura, not me”. All of the best questions go unanswered.

I knock on Jason's door, and stare its flaking paint, waiting for him to answer. Part of me is hoping he won't. This part is probably some evolutionary survival instinct, hoping to protect my liver, veins, head, whatever, from abuse. Good luck, instincts. Jason opens the door. Bob is standing behind him. They're almost twitching in unison, which is kinda cute. The more their faces sink and scab, the closer they resemble each other. One day, they'll merge together. I'm sure of it.

'Hi Lauuuraaa', goes Jason, in his messed up queer-junkie slur.

'Hi Jase. Looking good! What's new?'

'Oh the saame old, y'knoww?'. I know.

'Bit of a problem, Jase. I'm sorry to ask. I need sorted out. But I'm broke. Temporarily at least. Wondered if you could sort me out if I pay you back tomorrow or something, after I get some more work done tonight?'

'Uhhhhhhm. Suure, I guess. But chuuu gotta pay me back, cos I'm no ch-charity, right?'.

I must have come at the right time, because Bob's too outta it to object. Usually, he knows the chances of payback are slim at the best. Jase would know too, if he hadn't fucked his memory doing god knows what. They're good people.

The foil wrap's in my pocket and I'm thanking him before leaving. I'm thinking about friends and co-dependence and co-defendants and this wonderful sense of community and commonality that springs up because of the opiates. And how false it is. How every single guy I know would pimp me for a fix if I hadn't got there first, and how every girl'd rob their man just as easy. Bleakness, weakness, humanity and all of that. 'What a wonderful world' is playing in my head as I push through my own front door. So cold. So small. Single bedroom condensation hell. There's black mould on the roof. What kind of fucked up City Council builds houses from cinder blocks? Black mould covers the roof. Probably somehow toxic, and killing me slowly. I lie back in the bed, with my pipe. No more needles, I promised myself. I'm soon enough forgetting about cold and toxic moulds and enjoying the sweet relief of no thought at all.

'Maybe we could do one of those intervention things, you know? They have them on that TV show. Show how much we care, how much we want her better?'

'If she doesn't know how much people care by now, that's not gonna change. We gave her everything. All of those toys. That damned dog. The schools. $10,000 a year. For what? Its not like we were hard on her. And we were always there! Not alcoholics, not molesters, not gang members. I can't figure her out! Its like she's doing it outta spite or something, I think sometimes'.

'The doctor said you need to watch your stress, honey'.

I'm waking up in a weird clogging sweat and it's already dark. I don't have a clock and so the only way to tell the time is by the traffic volume. I never can get it right though. It doesn't matter. 'Night' is enough. Soon enough I'm dressed and out the door. Cold, so cold, but always it pays off. Walking out for work like this I'm only glad for the fact my parents don't go out at night any more. They'd die if they saw me. Maybe even literally. I talk to Tony, who's in his car watching the girls. Keeping An Eye Out, for a reasonable fee. Quiet night, he tells me, absentmindedly twirling an axe-handle, the modern pimp. Hourly rates, rather than commission. Income security. I stand by the Church, on the corner. Usually the spot's free. These girls know its mine, even if I'm late, and Tony'll sort out the ones who don't get it. The headlights are blinding, and sometimes I wish I could wear my glasses. I guess then I'd make out their faces, though. Greasy, sweaty white faces – like the school principle or the priest or the mail man or your father. The nights are easier when they're not much more than a dribbling pink blur.

I take my first guy behind the church, and he's cumming in minutes. Blowjob, $50. “A religious experience”, maybe that should be the slogan. He pays up, shuffling off away from the city. You never know the regulars if you can't see the faces. Maybe his cock tastes familiar. Fuck him. Exploiter. I'm shivering again and walking back over the bark to the street. Roadside, in the dirt, there's a golden light shining. Reflecting the headlights of a passing car, or something. I go to look. Maybe someone's dropped their watch, or something. Straight to the pawn shop. Maybe I'll get the night off! You spend enough time kicking around in the dirt, you're bound to strike gold eventually, I'm thinking. All that glitters isn't gold, I'm thinking.

Getting over there, its certainly golden but it isn't no watch. At first I'm not even sure what it is, and almost stick myself in the finger from the needle's spike. A golden needle, full of some kinda something. One of those reusable types, from old movies and stuff, with the double loops on the plunger. As tempting as it is, I'm not about to jam it into my vein and fire it home. How do you know what's inside? Could be rat poison. Maybe some asshole's tossing out golden needles full of rat poison to take out a few junkies. Thinks he's doing society a favour. Removing our sort from the gene pool, for God or for Darwin or for whoever. This all starts me thinking on science and evolution and how my brain's wired and why it just makes me 'fuck up' every day, why my body feels so god damned sick every morning I'm trying to quit, and it must be a strange sight for all the punters, a messed up junkie whore looking like she's trying to solve Fermat or something.

Thinking about the punters, though, reminds me of this story an old dero once told me and Tony, in the Square on night. One of those guys that somehow, after twenty years on the streets, has been left alone by Death. Alone to wander with lank hair, torn up jeans and a jacket held together more by grease than the tiny-handed stitches of Chinese children, or whatever. Anyway, I remember the story this guy told us, because it seemed so ridiculous. Far out, even for an old dero, which is stupidly wide—in normal terms. He reckoned that some time back in the day, which probably means the 80s, there was this rumor about a golden needle. He swore to God that his mate's ex wife's brother had this golden needle. And, no matter what, it was always full. Always the best stuff you ever had. A golden needle, full of magic and wonder. Like something out of a Walt Disney movie, if he'd traded his hatred of the Jews for a love of junk. Me and Tony, we were laughing around with the old guy. About his story, and about the fact that it'd taken six cops to get him down from the bridge he was threatening to throw himself off the week before. The drop from that bridge was about two meters. I spent a few nights thinking about that story. How it was that we were building our own mythologies, just like the Greeks back in Classics, maybe to give us hope. Salvation through golden needles. How the story couldn't be true, because Hume killed miracles and Science stabbed magic right in the god damned back. We have to above all be Rational, and there just isn't anything rational about the magic golden needle in my bag being a magic golden needle.

After finishing the shift and paying Tony, I'm walking home. Done 'selling myself' (as if everyone else who ever worked a job hasn't lowered themselves just as much), and ready to run some tests on the needle. Rigorous science, not magic, will facilitate explanations. At home, I've got the needle off the tube and I'm scraping it out. I'm knocking the bottom off a wine bottle in the sink, and the tinfoil and butane lighter are ready. Small doses. Lighting up, feeling fire, feeling fine. Shit. Maybe there is a magic in these humble streets, because oh man. Right before my eyes, the needle's bubbling back. Instant refill. There is no way. I might be high. I don't hallucinate, much, usually. Give it half an hour. Somewhere in my mind I know that in fifteen minutes it'll be sticking outta my leg, no matter what promises I've made to myself about needles or veins or anything, and I'll be outta here, maybe for good.

But certainly this is a bad thing because who the hell leaves their house when all they've ever needed is sitting right next to you when you sleep and when you wake up. Maybe this is Love. What some other jerks get from spending time with their best gal, or something. Three days later and all I'm left with is a view of the ceiling and an overactive brain and a Golden Ticket to oblivion. No more surprises, and no need to believe in the passage of time or the metaphysics of history. I feel each day seeping out of me, but it feels just like every other day and comes rushing in again in the morning. The same lifeless faces. The same dealers and the same tricks. The only things changing are the veins we're shooting off into. These are our calendars. The only marker of the 'time' I can't believe in, a reminder of days stretching backwards forever, and probably forwards too. I'm part way around the circle, with no way of knowing where it starts and ends. Maybe that's deja vu. Maybe the return to the beginning comes in an overdose or a hanging. All I know is that I've got a ticket out of this place, and away from the feeling that you're just another face in an endless guilt parade before God, and the lucky ones, the chosen ones, get to live it forever and eternally. Over and over. Total oblivion is a grand gesture in the face of it all – a penultimate expression of self and agency. People would care, though. Mum and dad, they'd want someone to blame. Its all they've ever wanted. Plus I owe Jason $20. Shit. My mind is jumping from practicalities to the metaphysics and possibilities of life's destruction and its on fiiire, baby and in the end it's 4am and I'm meditating on 'I Wanna be Sedated' and sleep seems far far off, as far away as God, and there's nothing to do and no where to go and I wanna be sedated over and over forever.

main gareeb hoon.

2010-06-01T13:15:00.004+12:00

if there was a market for unfinished short stories i would probably be able to pay my rent. other potential new jobs:

+ sell tshirts with pictures of new zealand on them to new zealanders.

+ let myself go and become one of those gross people malls pay to hang out at food courts to make people leave faster and free up more seats.

+ be a documentary film maker covering weird shit that happens in Japan.

+ rich people can pay me to hang around so they feel better about themselves when they are sad.

+ become, like, the Warehouse of christianity and undercut Brian Tamaki by offering salvation for like 2-3% less.

if you would like to pay me money to do something real easy that would be cool.

drums

2010-05-16T10:22:00.004+12:00

Those traffic lights, they looked like supernovas in the rain. Light exploding in every direction. That was the only thing that could take the edge off my jitters, walking down the boulevard. This town, and this damned weather. The thunder was starting to wake me in the night. The sky-boom and window rattle had got me thinking about this far gone old drunk we used to know. He'd sit down on the boulevard, beating hell out of an old bucket and telling anyone who'd listen how he'd invented jazz. He was just like the thunder. Far off, no sense of timing and invasive as hell. If that man invented jazz, then I invented rain. If only that were the case. If I'd had the good sense to invent rain, I'd be collectin' royalties, and these last few months woulda been my retirement fund. Sometimes when the thunder wakes me, I wonder what happened to the drummer. Some things don't bear thinking on, though. Probably dead like the rest.

eschatography

2010-04-29T22:13:00.005+12:00

your heart, which you thought so eternal and constant, will be plucked still beating from your ribcage and thrown upon the smouldering ashes of your youth.

blowback pt 2

2010-04-03T11:49:00.003+13:00

You feel the slow shudder of adrenaline release as you break down the rifle and return it to its canvas bag. No matter how many times you've been in the same god damned roof-creeping position, you start to shake. Well, I start to shake, anyway. Like Muhammed Ali. There's no helping it. Most everyone you'd ever run in to is smart enough to write it all off as nothing more than some shakin' dope sick blues in any case. I walked down the staircase shaking and high on the goodness of life, thinking about the twenty thousand I'd been promised just to save this city from even more tacky high-rises.

Feeling smaller and less like God down on the street level, I decided to ride a cab over to the Boss' club. A luxury I could afford. They buzzed me in and it was the usual scene of Boss and Jimmy and Pope sitting around the card table, no cards to be scene. I was leaning against the pillar, waiting for them to throw me the cash. Their faces were cut with the biggest grins I've seen, and looking back I should have known something was about to fuck me right then. These are not happy people.

Finally, after a cheshire grin eternity, the Boss finally decides to let me know what's up.

'You know who you just shot?' he says.

'Naw, some yuppie I guess, owed yous some money?'

And the fuckers started laughing.

'You know why I like this kid, Jimmy? Because he's so fuckin' thick. He'll fire without thinking. Hell, we could probably get him to shoot the president for a few speedballs, huh?'

This was not going well and right about now was that increasingly common of moments when high spirits and anticipation u-turned into outright fuckin' dread and cold sweats.

'Who... who was he boss? Who was the guy in the suit?'

'Since you're gonna find out soon enough, I'm gonna tell you. You know the Robinsons, right?'

'As in the north side Robinsons? The ones that car bombed those Chinese for tryin' to get that crack in?'

'Those very same fuckin' Robinsons. And that guy you just shot. Rob Robinson. I hope that name means something to you, or you're already dead'.

All the paper in the world couldn't fit the amount of fucks and shits and misfired neurons my brain was throwing out at this point in time. I probably woulda busted one of those fancy heart rate machines down at St John's Hospital too. Messed up as I was, I could see how bad this was gonna be.

'Here's the problem, kid. They find you, they're gonna beat hell out of you. And you, being the junkie piece of shit that you are, is gonna tell them who paid you to shoot that guy. Maybe they won't even have to beat you. Maybe they'll just wave a fat needle in your stupid god damned face, and let you choose between goin' out hard or easy, if you snitch. And we can't have you telling them shit. And on top of this, there's no doubt gonna be a bounty on the head of whoever was stupid enough to shoot our man by the end of the week. So, the way we see it, there are two paths open to you from here out. A plane ticket away from here and away from this horrible life of sin, which your obviously deficient brain has led you to so badly fuck up. Or, we shoot you, and give your body to the Robinsons. Maybe even put a bow tie round that fuckin' neck of yours. You're lucky though. I'm feelin' generous today. Pope's got your plane ticket here. How do you like Korea?'

This was where I got lucky. The fuckin' plane ticket thing. Last time Pope got me in was to help him stash the body of some some other ex-jerk who messed up. He couldn't stop talking about the plane ticket thing. Thought they were so clever, how they tricked the guy into thinking he was about to start a new life in sunny Mexico. Next thing, slam, 45 caliber to the brain and the only place the guy's headed is to an abandoned house down by the lake. Wouldn't shut up about the look on this guys face when he pulled the gun rather than some paper. I took it as my cue to split, and ran like hell for the door.

Reaching it, I heard the soft thud of metal on plaster. I didn't have to look back to know there'd be two guys standing, firing hell at me. I could even picture the sour fuckin' snarls on their faces as each slug somehow sailed too wide or too high. The pillar had covered me long enough, and somehow I'd made it out of that damned old hornets nest. As if that was enough.

I took off down King Avenue, still not looking back. Thank fuck, there was still a good number of day time shoppers around. Too many civilians for anyone chasing to risk getting trigger happy. By the time I'd cut across Castle Park and down two brick alleyways, my legs were burning. My heart was hammering even faster than earlier. Everything was a blur. I chanced a look around. There was no one around. A pigeon landing above me scared the hell out of me. I sat down, and it was as if my heart and my head were tryin' to out do each other in a foot race, both going far, far too fast.

blowback pt 1

2010-03-29T10:33:00.003+13:00

I should have seen through their lies, but sometimes you just need the money so bad that when there's just one dead suit between you and it that you stop thinking things through. You start thinking about the sweet dopamine drift that will follow the work. And oh god you never, ever think about the suit. He's just a suit and nothing more because if he becomes something more than just a suit, or just a pair of grey eyes, that's when you start feeling bad about the whole deal. And if you start feeling bad, you start to shake. And if you're shaking, you might miss. Either that or you take the diazepam to stop the shakes and then you got no idea what's going on because the sky looks like somebody burst the sun and sent its insides spewing forth over the world, and fiery death is held out only by that thin ozone we've all been ignoring. Or something. They're never more than a suit, or a pair of eyes.

This guy was no different. Should have been no different, anyways. That's what the boss told me. Just your average nouveauriche property developer type. Turning brick buildings into apartments for young professionals. A king of the commodification of shitty vibes and making people feel 'urban', while they sit safe behind two alarms and steel-barred windows. Got himself into trouble with the wrong people, as it turns out. I'm not sure how, or why. They never tell us why – just where. Where and what time and how much, and maybe if you're lucky they'll tell you you'll get half in blow (at their wholesale prices) if you do a good job. And so you do a good job.

You show up early, and get up to the roof opposite the guys work. Where he comes in at around 8.30 every morning, leaving his car for the valet outside. Sometimes he'll have a hat on and maybe you'll miss him for the hat. Maybe it's just some other grey-suited jerk in a hat, and this is the kind of think you want to maybe have a little bit of certainty of before you pull the trigger.
I was feelin' a little jittery still. The night had not been a kind one and the wire sting to my nerves from altogether too much speed and maybe just not quite enough liquor wasn't exactly helping. The endless loop of nonsense thoughts I couldn't throw away had me on edge. I was screaming focus in my lungs but my brain wouldn't follow, it was caught up in the idea that the competitive feasting of primitive societies was often called “potlatch” without knowing why or how it knew this. I had nothing to pull myself together except the strange adrenaline which will flow every time you point a gun at another man from on top of a building and feel just a little bit like God.

Today there was no hat. That face, fat from years of 'business lunches', almost filled the telescopic lense. I waited until he turned his back from the car, passing the keys to the red-coated valet. I took a last look at the suit before squeezing the trigger.

I watched through the scope just long enough to see the two arcs of gristle and gore which had erupted from his head splash to the pavement. Sitting back with my eyes closed all I could see was that copper ten cent hole right through where our man’s most intimate thoughts used to live. That’s life, I guess. One minute you’re on top of the world, and the next minute you’re a pile of bones on a street corner, avoided by the mid-day shoppers and big business suit types, and not even the homeless will touch you for the easy dollars sitting in your back pocket.

TBC.

girls xxx

2010-03-16T18:12:00.003+13:00

I have never dated the sorts of girls
that have pictures of themselves
and 'their BFFs'
wearing sunglasses and hugging
at relevant social events
like the Big Day Out
or maybe
something at Orientation
as the wallpaper
for the laptops
which they bring to lectures.

I imagine you'd spend
a lot of money
on drinks and taxis
dating one of these girls.

I imagine that they,
with their expensive hair
and expectations,
would cheat on me.

I imagine this and
I don't care
They ignore me
and
I ignore them
and
It's as if we are
different species.

Theres is the species
which gave the world
MTV
and
Vajazzling
and
that thing where
slutty girls call equally slutty girls
'moles'.

My species?
We gave the world nothing,
I guess.
Maybe some wasted breath.
Maybe some extra SSRI prescriptions.
Maybe audience to other
dead-hearted devils
getting CDs pressed by the hundred
and selling half of them
and caring less.

Sometimes I wonder where I went wrong.

voices and fists

2010-01-31T16:00:00.001+13:00

There was that one Summer when we all agreed that our voices were stronger than fists.

And we went tumbling down into a world of metaphor and 3am debate on metaphysics.

When we were young and thought our words would reshape the world.

If only we could talk one on one with everybody.

Sparring them, delivering left hooks of perfect syllogism and haymakers of analogy.

Thinking, knowing that the only punches we would feel would be the thud of our hearts against our chests.

As we skim read Bakunin, called ourselves Anarchists and plotted the revolution.

Printing presses were going to be our machine guns.

A thirty second television advertisement was going to turn the Southern Broadcast Region into a Hiroshima of free-thinking enlightenment.

When we were high on home brew beer, badly cut speed and the untenable arrogance of youth.

The group momentum sent us onwards, carried us onwards, always onwards.

We were sure that Summer was our May 68.

Our voices are stronger than fists!

We shouted, our rallying cry for the weak of arm and the hoarse of throat.

Every day there was a static in the air.

We got arrested and released.

We stole photocopy credit from our bosses and gave out pamphlets showing wrenches stuck in gears.

We ate food from dumpsters and it was all lifestyle revolution.

We didn't know about the working classes and we hid our private school educations to claim 'proletariat'.

It was as much Kerouac as Kropotkin

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted,

Until we found out that no one ever lost three teeth at 3am outside KFC, City Mall, from someone's voice.

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted,

Until we realised that no one ever went to hospital from a cop's voice.

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted,

Until the liquor ran out.

Until the job offers came.

Until you moved away.

Until pot became your own personal revolution.

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted.

Until we realised that swift knockout is maybe better than the slow erosion of empty rhetoric and the same grating voices.

And I am still shouting.

'My voice is stronger than my fists'.

But I'm lifting weights.

And I'm keeping quiet.

And I'm counting down the days until I can punch myself out.

For all the shit I ever talked.

the yeti from SkiFree as a metaphor for the inevitability of death

2010-01-12T19:57:00.002+13:00

stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.

colour

2009-11-18T18:37:00.001+13:00

At dinner, I had been telling you about my dream.

And how I have only ever had black and white dreams.

And how there has always been a violence to my dreams.

One that I can never understand.

You told me that Jung would have a field day.

As I explained this to you.

You nodded as I talked about the blurred shadows, and the noise like a detuned television.

The sickening scramble of images when my eyes snap open to a fully-toned world.

We talked about the self-indulgence of talking about dreams.

And how no one really ever gives a damn.

How they just wait in line, for the chance to talk about their own dreams.

And this somehow makes us feel normal.

'I am glad that I'm not the only one who can't dream in colour', you said to me after the movie.

I wish you had said this sooner.

After I had told you this, I had felt incomplete.

As if I was missing something vital.

Like you would push me away for a real man.

For a whole man.

Someone who's dreams bloomed in technicolour.

All flowers, balloons and baby animals.

'We have seen too much', you said.

'How can we dream in colour, when our lives are black and white'.

'The black is work and the white is home to a colour television and a microwave dinner'.

'After a while it all blends to gray'.

'And there is nothing left to see'.

I slept with you that night.

You asked me to hold you, as we listened to the slow beat of rain on your roof.

It was almost in time with my heartbeat.

The gap at the top of your curtains let in a soft light.

Which cast shadows on your face.

In my dream that night, we held hands on the beach.

Your eyes were green.

Your lips were read.

I woke up, and I was not afraid of the day.

two poems

2009-09-19T13:13:00.004+12:00

friday night

GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP

saturday morning

the god of friday night is dead and
saturday morning i'm left alone with the ghosts in my head.

i will hug my pillows.
i will send apologetic text messages.
i will remember stealing drinks and laugh inwardly
cheeseburgers hold too much appeal
i feel like i could go out and order all of them.

i will have dreams that we tidied the house on friday night.
i will wake up disappointed.

i have never known what isotonic means but i will seek it out
in the hope of some modern witch-doctor cure

blue powerade has come to taste like regret.
but every other flavour is no good.
they are offered, i think, to allow us to revel in the illusion of choice.

no one ever thinks of the environmental cost of a hangover.
probably not even greenpeace.
the oil for plastic to make bottled drinks.
the trees felled for our burger wrappers.
the rainforests that are probably cleared for coffee plantations.

i think about this and it makes me depressed.
i think about this and it makes me hungry and thirsty.
i pray to Anything for the courage to leave my bed.
i pray for a vengeful, Old Testament kinda God to
S M I T E
my neighbours kids.
someone, lend me salvation.

the chemistry of common life

2009-09-13T10:52:00.004+12:00

Chemistry is just a word we use to describe what occurs when subtle changes in our minds make energy from common lives, I thought. My heart punched my rib cage for what seemed like the three-hundred and sixty-fifth time in an endless minute. We were walking hand in hand and we were all strung nerves and muscle tension.

In the gardens you said to me 'We should sit down', and I said 'Yeah, that would be nice', and so we sat in the ornate benches just staring wide eyed out at the world, as if we were seeing properly for the very first time. Vibrant flowers framed the water cascading from the fountain.

'Sometimes when I come here I like to look at this fountain and think about what it means. Right now I am thinking that it is a stand in for how you make me feel', you said.

We were big on metaphors around this time, like cryptologists making sense from some lost meaning.

'I mean, this fountain is beautiful and alive, and this is how you make me feel'.
'That is a wonderful thing to say. And I feel the same way. About you, I mean. Not about myself. That would be weird. I'm sorry.'
'It's okay. I knew what you mean'.

We were young and the awkward, self conscious anxieties that go along with that still hung over our heads. We were vaguely terrified of absolutely everything except each other, and you had a theory that this was the true definition of love in the modern world. Maybe 'I am not terrified of you' would be printed on Valentines cards in years to come.

We sat hand in hand, watching the water. It was probably cascading, although maybe it was more like gushing, or surging. We couldn't settle on the appropriate verb, so left it at that. We made promises to remember this forever, living in the endless moment, making great heaping piles of seconds in our minds, a pile of sixty to be called a minute and a far bigger pile to be called a memory. The sun was setting directly in front of us, and you asked me to tell you about my ex-girlfriend.

I am five years old and struggling for vision over the dashboard as we drive to the shops, learning the meanings of words like weekends and sunlight and the Bangles are playing on the radio. Suddenly, I am seventeen years old and struggling to see through blurred vision, learning the meaning of things like serendipity and the blues, as we drive home in this taxi, knowing that this is the last and final time this is going to happen, because things have changed. I am eight years old and throwing bark instead of kissing her, and learning the meaning of regret.

This is what I did not say about my ex-girlfriend.

These were my own 3am Tramadol meditations in F# A# (infinity) about her. These were the things I was not yet ready to tell you. I could have laid myself open to you, bearing all. I could have explained all of this, but instead I said 'She got fat. She has a kid, now. You're about 10,000 times better than her, in every possible, conceivable way', and this was, I think, what you wanted to hear anyway.

Sometimes 'romance' and the truth / memories / 3am meditations shouldn't cross paths, I thought. It is usually best this way.

With your arms around me and your eyes on mine, we felt eternal. We felt like were were running head first down steep hills, building so much momentum and energy that we were going to explode.

'Lets go'. You.
'But where to?'. Me.
'I dunno. We can take a walk'. You.
'I'd like that', and we took a walk. You were decisive, and I needed this. It was almost time for the park rangers to lock the sharp-topped gates – we could have been trapped.

Walking past the Art Gallery you told me how you don't like the sculptures above at night. How they seem so grand and looming and important, lurking in the sky. How they remind you of great extinct birds, ready to swoop. How you don't like to feel like the insignificant prey of giant imaginary animals. How you never got these feelings when we were together though. I told you that you were never insignificant, and that besides, I would protect you. You would protect me. Together we would be some sort of unstoppable super-hero duo, overflowing with the relentless energy of youth, running and believing and gasping for air, never stopping, in constant combat with the entire world. Taking on all six billion if we needed to. We both agreed that this, probably, was kind of over the top. Holding hands, we stopped to admire the Gatsby posters pasted to the theatre bollard.

'When I am with you', I said, 'I feel like this town is the ragged edge of the universe. Like we could be rolling champagne bottles down any avenue, under the light of a wanton moon. I feel like I want to give in to the world in all its cliched and romantic glory'. This was back when we were big on metaphors. Back when we were tragic and embarrassing, caught up in waves and tides of feeling, abandoning the Puritan restraint of previous years and lifetimes, as if this time around we'd been born feet first and never bothered trying to put ourselves right, or find out how it was supposed to go.

We walked towards the Square, bright lights surrounding us down Worcester Street. The quantity of streetlights meant we each had four shadows, in varying shades of darkness, and we weren't afraid of a single one of them. We stopped on the Bridge in view of the sell-suited drunks down the Strip, their heads all ethanol and property figures. The caged doors of the Our City gallery reminded me of a prison, and I had to fight the urge to offer you a private performance of Free Bird, grateful you didn't even hear me humming. Insecurities blooming, as we leaned against the same prison gate, pressing lips. Hearts racing, skipping to the same rhythms, without the need for the intoxication of the bars, or the choking commerce of the glass fronted buildings. Feeling drunk off of each other. Feeling like right then and there we needed absolutely nothing but each other, still absolutely terrified of the world, but no longer scared of ourselves. Discovering that maybe this is what love is, and maybe, just maybe, this is the most important thing that will happen to us, breaking free and offering ourselves up to the world, proudly offering our necks to the world, screaming 'come and get us, come and get us, you fuckers' because we are ready, we are ready and we are never looking back.

in this story i ripped off- fucked up, cold world, the great gatsby, every cliche 'love story' ever.

letting go

2009-08-17T08:47:00.003+12:00

Thomas Packman sats in his room, making a new list. This was a list which he would pin next to all the others, on the cork board, next to his computer desk. He would (probably) use a red or a blue pin to put the list up – these two seem to be the dominant colours in the most recently purchased pin bag. This new list would probably go under the weeks shopping list, and beside the long unaltered Girls I Have Had Sex With list. Lists mean order, and we need order, thought Thomas, putting the final touches (having decided to turn the -'s into +'s) on his new To Do list. On final inspection, everything seemed to be in order:

+ Buy groceries

+ Pay phone bill

+ Letter of Resignation

+ RSVP

Thomas, with the sense of satisfaction that comes from having truly achieved something for the morning shining in his mind, decided that he could take the rest of the morning off, and get started on the list in the PM. 'Might as well spend the morning jerking off to porno thumbnails on Google Images. Why not. Treat myself. I have earned a break'. Etc.

As 1pm rolled around, Thomas is feeling increasingly nauseous. Could be the result of three hours over-stimulous and relentless self-abuse, but is more likely a side effect of the new sleeping pills his doctor has him on. Big, obnoxious looking red pills, but christ, they lay out out flat. The entire ordeal would be better titled temporary coma, rather than 'sleep'. Closing his eyes, fluorescent colours swam like spilled oil in rainwater.

“Those fuckers” he thought.

“Oh Christ” he thought.

“I should go to the store” he thought.

Walking to the supermarket, he feltnothing but anger towards everyone he saw. Fucking kids in their weird baggy clothes. Old people and their sense of entitlement, their free bus rides. Middle aged mid-day drunks picking up cigarette butts out of the gutter to re-roll. Obese teen mums sweating over their children.

“There is something wrong with me. We should love our neighbours, or something”.

Bearded women. Handicapped me choking themselves at bus stops and screaming 'let me out'.

Thomas can at least empathise with the last group.

The supermarket was crowded, but seemed like a bastion of calm civility compared to the manic, overpowering streets surrounding, where humanity overflowed.

There are rules to supermarket shopping, and rules mean order. You line up, and you're polite. Because otherwise, the whole god damn thing falls apart, and everyone has to go back to hunting our own potato chips and juice boxes. This is the kind of regression we need rules to avoid, thinks Thomas, standing in line.

The checkout girl smiled at Thomas. She was kind of cute, and Thomas smiled back, wondering if smiling was in their contracts, as some sort of explanation, before realising that even if it is, who cares.

“Have a nice day”

“You too!”

Walking home, Thomas ignored almost everything, staring fixedly at the pavement. Even the broken glass and asphalt cracks provided minimal distraction, as he went about mentally composing his letter of resignation. By the time he was kicking his stuck front door, the letter had arrived at its final form.

Dear Sir / Madam,

Please take this letter as notice of my intention to cease employment, effective two weeks from the date of this letter. I thank you for the employment opportunity you have provided, and feel that things have gone well. It has been a pleasure working for your company. This is an “it's not you, it's me” kind of resignation. By way of explanation – I am simply no longer in need of employment. I would appreciate it if my accrued holiday pay could be included in my next pay cheque, if this is possible.

Regards,

Thomas Packman.

'This is a good letter', he thought.

'Maybe my best effort yet. Saves me having to talk to them, too, which is a bonus'.

Carefully reaching over the humming computer, Thomas unpinned his to-do list and black lines through two of the items. Letter and shopping. Done. Five minutes later, another black line. The phone line would stay connected for the next month, at least.

Thomas stared for a few minutes at the list's final item. Just four letters – R.S.V.P. These four letters had made it through the last three Saturday's to do lists. His head hurt just thinking about it, but he knew what was required. He had to get it in the post tomorrow, or it would be too late. He could feel his brain pounding at his skill as he pulled the invitation from the desk's drawer. The familiar crest at the top meant more headache.

“These cowards”, thought Thomas.

Class of '99. Ten year reunion!

His vision narrowed as he tore the perforated bottom off the letter. His glasses slid down his nose as he ticked the form's “Attending” box.

It is important that you R.S.V.P BY WEDNESDAY 16 MAY to ensure we can book for the correct numbers.

For weeks, the invitation had been pinned to the cork board. Sitting right under the “List of People Who Fucked Me Over”. This was the longest list, amongst a large collection. It was a list dominated by high school class mates, and so this this seemed like the natural place for this sort of invitation.

“These cowards”, thought Thomas. He had, after two weeks, put the invitation away in the drawer. It had become painful to look at, especially right next to the List. A single glance its way could meant being hit with memories which felt like a sack of hammers, falling from a great height.

“These fucking cowards. As if the ever present sour-milk taste from expired milk enjoyed across the table from this week's New Dad wasn't enough. As if being legally fucking blind wasn't enough. The petrol-drunk mind fuck weekends trying to escape it all had been in vain. The electro-radiance of flashing screens and 10c space invaders to get away from it all really didn't mean shit when Monday mornings kick in the teeth rolled around. There was no escape. No escape, and no sleep”.

Thomas knew he would go, and he would set things right. Looking at the completed R.S.V.P form, he wanted to scream at it.

“My blood is thick now! My eyes are clear! I will prove you wrong. You bastards. I could break all the glass in the world with these eyes now, and I will break their windows. They will shatter”.

There was two weeks left at work until the reunion, and the days passed like clockwork. Thomas was methodical in his job – processes were established, and followed to the letter. He found the cleaning work relaxing, and enjoyed the fact it meant avoiding ever having to talk to the public.

Later, his boss would describe him as a 'conscientious worker', who 'kept mostly to himself'.

Thomas had worked nights before the sleeping pills. They let him go in whenever, as long as it was after 6pm. Might as well work later, rather than thrash around in bed at home, fighting the hallucinations and restless ghosts that circled in his bedroom. Might as well go mop some floors and watch the walls melt, listing to his own brain sing sing singing out in deserted office blocks. This had been his logic for night work, but after the pills, he started going in earlier. The walls now blurred, rather than melted. His brain hummed, rather than sang. It was a reduction of all things, and he felt Better. Still not good, but Better.

Every night after coming home from work, Thomas would take the small grey shoebox out from under his bed, lifting the lid off.

“You're the only one I ever loved”, Thomas would say to the box. This wasn't necessarily true – he thought he loved his mother, too. He knew he would have cried, had she died before him. It was just that Thomas liked to dwell in the affect of his shining, heartfelt love for the box. To explore the tragic fate they now shared, and cherish it.

On the Thursday before the Saturday of the Big Event, Thomas found his bank account flush, with five weeks worth of holiday pay. $2,000.00.

“This is my life, in totality”.

On the Saturday, the day of the Big Event, Thomas walked to the shopping centre. Today, there was no need to write a lift – two weeks of mental planning had etched the day's progress all over his brain. He was focus and purpose, for the first time in countless years.

Buy a suit for the evening - $1,189.00.
Buy new shoes - $109,99.
Get a haircut - $30.00
Post a letter to Mum in Auckland – 50c.

He didn't care about the money. He spent freely, cherishing the experience. Wanting to look his very best. Tonight is a special occasion, after all! Hours wound past, and his nerves built up. At home he was in a pacing, shivering kind of mood. The internet bored him. The television was a disappointment, like usual, and in his time killing mood his hatred towards it was only affirmed.

“God damn Dr. Phil telling people how to live their lives. Fucking movies about girls and their horses. Stupid music videos. Endless loops of soldiers with legs blown off. I don't need you, television. Goodbye, television”, Thomas shouted at no one in particular. He felt like punching the wall, just for something to do. He checked, and re-checked the box, and finally decided to take a walk around the block, fists clenching and unclenching as he walked.

“Houses”, he thought.

“Trees”, he thought.

“People”, he thought.

“Animals”, he thought.

“Fences”, he thought.

“Shops”, he thought.

“Insects”, he thought.

“Cars”, he thought, the meditative rhythm of simple thought dulling the jagged edge he felt he'd spent the last ten years walking on. The sun was setting behind an abandoned house.

“Goodbye, sun”.

At 6.34pm, Thomas ordered a taxi. The invitation had said 7.00pm, but he hadn't wanted to be early. There's usually no rush, at these things. No point in seeming desperate, and all that.

When he heard the taxi's tyres at the start of the long gravel driveway, Thomas opened the box, glancing towards the Glock 17 which lay on inside on a bed of folded napkins.

“You're all I've got” he whispered, before slipping the pistol into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. It felt right, there. When he had purchased the pistol, years earlier, Thomas had been made to swear a declaration to only use it for sport, or in self defense. He found himself still smiling at the absurdity of this as he got into the front seat of the taxi.

The taxi ride was pleasant. The driver, a Samoan man with a wide smile, talked religion with Thomas.

“There is something for all of us after we die, you know, this is what the bible says. We find salvation, then. We are with God.”

“I don't know about religion. All I know is that no priest ever did shit to help me out, excuse the language. But maybe you're right. That's a god thing, though, and maybe a soul thing. Right now, we're stuck on people things. I'm stuck on people things, anyway”.

This was the final exchange, as the taxi pulled into the hotel's fore-court.

“$26.80. We'll call it $25.00 though, eh?” smiled the taxi driver.

“I have around $800.00 here. I don't need it any more. I want you to have it. Please, take it. I promise you, I don't need it. So take it! I am just going to leave it here. You'll never see me again, probably. Just do me one favour. Don't let it touch the hands of a priest. Spend it on yourself, or your family. Do something nice. Live life, or something”.

And Thomas was unburdened. No more job. No more money, just him, a heavy pocket and a high school reunion.

This is people stuff.

Inside, Thomas took his seat at the assigned table. The pleasantries were already in full swing.

“St Pauls High School – Class of '89 – The Best Time of Our Lives!” hung on a banner, in the school colours. Thomas felt sick again. Saw the oily colours floating again. The conversations circling around him were all “You look fantastic” and “Haven't you done well for yourself!”. He was himself subjected to the same set of questions and declarations. Oh, they were all so nice to him now. So damned polite and grown-up, everyone looking their best. Any failure was made invisible, at things like this. These cowards, acting like nothing had happened. Flashing their teeth at him like it wasn't these same mouths that had meant ten years sleepless and fucking terrified and alone. Thomas felt his heart thump against the gun's cold metal, and knew what was necessary.

As he reached into his pocket, Ashely King appeared by his side.

“Hi, Tom! It's been a while, huh?”

“It sure has. Being here... it really takes you back.”

“It does. And that's why I wanted to talk to you. Look, I know I was an asshole to you Back Then. We all were. And to be honest, I sometimes still feel bad for it. I wanted to apologise. I know it doesn't mean much now, but anyway”.

This was unexpected. They were meant to deserve what was coming, not be fucking apologising to him. Ashley was never the worst of it, though. Relatively, he was a fucking saint. It was those other bastards. Chris Jordan. Kyle Smith, those types of guys. Ash didn't need to be here for this. Just the rest of them.

“It's okay, man. I try not to think about it, to be honest”. This was the truth.

“Do you think you could do me a favour, though? I left my camera in the car. My leg's still kinda busted. Don't walk so good. Maybe you could go and grab it, for me? I'm so sorry to even ask, but y'know”. This was untrue.

“Of course, no problem. Promise to send me the photos, thought?”

“It's a deal. Mine's the red Toyota, off to the left. The valet should have the keys. Camera should be under the seat, up front”. More untruth. Thomas had no idea if such a car existed.

Ashley King walked at pace out of the main room. Thomas, watching him depart, realised that he had limited time until Ashley would return.

“We could have been friends, maybe”, he thought.

Thomas checked his watch, as he climbed steadily up the stairs to the stage. 7.46pm. “Goodbye, time”. From the stage, he had a better view of the crowd of suited men, and women in bright dresses. There were no speeches planned until later, and Thomas felt conspicuous up on the stage. Usually, he hated people looking at him. Hated being the centre of attention. Right now, though, it was necessary. He screamed, at the top of his lungs.

“St Paul's High School fucking rules!”. He was met with cheers, and applause. Conversations came to a halt, with expectation. Slowly, Thomas reached into the pocket of his brand new jacket. He removed the pistol. It's smooth grip was reassuring in his hand. It gave him a new confidence. The women in the crowd screamed. The men shouted. People dove under tables, ducked behind doorways.

“These fucking cowards”, thought Thomas.

7.47pm

“This ones for all of you. Sleep well, you fuckers”

Thomas felt the cool metallic weight of the pistol pressed against his temple. He blinked twice, and tasted the static in the air, one last time. And finally, he let go.

3am tramadol meditations in f# a# (infinity)

2009-07-27T20:45:00.004+12:00

This was, I think, around four months after we started smoking. It all started off naturally enough – explosions of teenage vigor in experimentation, lungs and cones made from empty $1.50 Coca Cola cans down by the creek after school, holes punched with Mum's kitchen knives. Ignoring the aluminium threat of Alzheimers before an afternoon of bad television or knife-cheating on foreign Soldier of Fortune servers. Just dead Ramones, just living for the soft static kick of electric feedback and brain-buzzed loudnights. Everything was so straight forward. At school you pretended to listen, and six hours shot by five times til freedom. We were invincible and the weather was blessed and an almost holy holy ghost obsession was dripping from our pores. It was, I think, summer '05 and we were kicking down fences and running running running. We were young. We took the endless sucker punches to brain cells which were at that point in time far too abstract, far too infinite. They existed in the same sense that gravity exists – invisible but, presumably, always there. Hour long bus rides to far off lands, to crawl over the same well-trampled grass to the same state-looking houses open to the public, fifties and foils only, trying not to pay with change, too scared to cause offense or fuck with what seemed like our connection to this wonderful wide ol' world, so big so big and oh so fucking majestic. Our fear of the keepers of our habit, their almost aposematic ways of dressing and talking. Their aversion for anything resembling customer service in the parts of town where we never knew anyone, has never before had occasion to hit out into. And we would talk shit on the bus, just to catch the time. White noise to fill the stale emptiness, a distraction from the way you could see the dust particles in the shafts of light, and just how terribly impermanent it all made you feel. And we would talk about anything, composing what we were sure were symphonies of dialogue, knives to time.

“Dudes who catch the second bus when there are two leaving at the same time are making a statement. They are the laconic, time-less coyboys of our age. They simply do not and can not give a fuck. This is their identity, and they cling to it, damn the consequences”.

“And lonely, overweight people should get dogs. They will have to walk them, and lose weight. They will feel loved. They will love. They will meet other people at the park. This is flawless. This is what you would call killing two birds with one stone or getting two birds stoned with one joint, depending I guess on how old you are and your relative subcultural capital”.

Days seem to melt, from this kind of psychic distance. There are devils in the detail. We were running backwards down hills to feel our hair in our faces, and we were leaning with intent to fall. There was a girl we knew, and she'd never got high before, and so we said, but we must! She was older and in her lap lay promised lands, and we were all sweat and breath and muscle tension around her. She was wonderful, and we were secret contest scheming to claim her, pink-laced skate shoes and all. She was not scared. She lay herself open, overflowing, bubbling from the attention. Not realising her future as little more than the epaulets on some shitty kid's jumper. Little more than a story told on slower bus rides. She wanted to get wasted. Get cut. As far as all other nights go, this was infinity. This was just like any other night, at her shitty top story flat down a gravel and weeds driveway east of Central. We came prepared with junk food and indoor, diabetes clearly the least of our worries. We sat down on rugged couches, and watched bad music videos. We passed around the anodized purple and silver cone. We said things like “it's cut” and “out of it, man”.

My heart pounded.

My heart pounded.

My heart pounded.

My head screamed.

Pins and needles sung from the very back of my brain, and thoughts rushed like a cracked damn. I felt sick. I felt everything. I looked in the mirror and saw myself as an eight year old boy. I felt sick. I felt so, so sick. I thought about life, and I thought about thinking. I was smoke haze and panic. The room spun, but everyone else was still. They smiled and laughed and threw food at themselves and complained about dry, dry mouths. I panicked about every single thing that had ever and would ever happen to me. My brain spat at me.

Everything hated me.

I was collapsing inwards. It was not like, ‘do you every like, think about thinking man’, it was like ‘oh shit oh shit I never thought about life ////////// my own consciousness ///////// the universe //////// I am a voice inside my own head head spinning in circles, I cannot fucking handle this kind of thing right now shit shit. I am me’.

God, I thought, must hate me. I am lost and so fucking alone. This is maybe divine intervention, assuming there is a God and he is one vengeful spiteful kinda Old Testament mother fucker who just wants to fuck us up for being pathetic humans, I thought. Life weighs too much, I thought. Don't panic don't panic don't panic I thought, for three hours.

And I panicked. I didn't sleep. I was, mentally, out in a desert – as if every single second of my life up until this point, this fucking goddamn whatever you call it, that fell down on me in this shitty fucking cursed room in this bastard town, had been severed from me. I had no memories of anything before this.

“Pass the cone bro”

“Aw, shit is cut. Yous got any left?”

“Nah, bol. I'm pretty wasted though, eh”.

Nothing. I remembered faces, pin numbers, email addresses, but nothing that had actually happened. This is to say, I was fucked. Comprehensively. And, still the next day. I was trapped. I had no idea what to do with my mind for 18 hours a day, now that I was aware of it's presence. I forgot, in totality, whatever it was that I had used this foreign, screaming internal voice for in the preceding years of my life. Like I said, I was fucked. This was an unanswerable question, the sort that flings confusion like tar in all possible directions. Every time I thought about this, I was sick. I thought about the days that stretched out ahead of me. A constant nausea washed over me. I had no escape and besides, no idea where I was (metaphysically speaking). I looked around my room and saw everything far too clearly, like it was over-bright and hostile. I couldn't explain everything. I did not think this was the sort of “self discovery” that anyone had in mind. I saw days stretching endlessly, forever. I could not escape my own life, and it terrified me. I was constant panic and sweat and nervous piss and no sleep and night tremblings and mental connections gone horribly fucking wrong. I was floating way way above everyone, when all you really want is two feet stuck firmly to the ground, and you hope and you pray, you even goddamned pray, with no success. I was internal screams and I realised that '05, it was not such a great year, any. Externally, maybe, I was the same. I couldn't tell anyone. They would lock me up somewhere, shit, this was all far too giant and looming for me or for anyone. I had no idea what anxiety disorder or panic attacks were, and everything was through a screen of surreality. Memories of dinner with parents at a Mexican restaurant still feels like tacks on my brain, the same with days at school. 6 hours is bigger than space when you're taking it each second at a time, making piles and stacks of saved up seconds to call a minute, an hour, lunch time, home time. Endless days stretching out forever. I quit.

I quit smoking anything. I quit going out. It all meant nothing, is what I thought. I discovered, somehow, that drinking was pretty much the best thing I could do. Alcohol to kill the brain / pain. I spent far too much time drunk. I learned not to think. Not to feel. I was anhedonia and I was coping. I read about anxiety and I identified. I read books and forgive myself. Wilbur Smith saved me when I was fifteen. The words harden the fuck up took on a post-ironic, First XV Rugby Team-Free meaning, and I suppressed. I was floating and alone but I was rational and drunk and with these bags of sand I saw that all that remains is to get used to life in the low oxygen disconnect. To know about neurochemistry, and hit out. To tell know one. To evolve. To realise that life goes on, and soon enough you slip back to being just another face. Things will always get better, that kind of positive shit that always seemed so cliché seems to hold true. Maybe, I thought, I have grown as a person. Maybe, I think, 2005 was an okay year.

Infinite

2009-07-03T15:16:00.002+12:00

I have been reading Infinite Jest lately. David Foster Wallace is (was? shit) a fucking genius. RIP. My second attempt at this book, I guess. This part struck me:

'Well, love, but you know the idiom “not yourself” - “He's not himself today”, for example' crooking and uncrooking fingers to form quotes on either side of what she says, which Mario adores. 'There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness, especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these people as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.

'Engulf means obliterate'

'My point here is that certain types of persons are terrified even to poke a big toe into genuinely felt regret or sadness, or to get angry. This means they are afraid to live. They are imprisoned in something, I think. Frozen inside, emotionally. Why is this. No one knows, love-o. It's sometimes called “suppression,” ' with the fingers out the the side again. 'Dolores believes it derives from childhood trauma, but I suspect not always. There may be persons who are born imprisoned. The irony, of course, being that the very imprisonment that prohibits sadness's expression must itself feel intensely sad and painful. For the hypothetical person in question.'

Kind of think I am afraid to live, maybe. Not really sure right now. Going on a tropical holiday, anyways. Back in 8 days - might write some shit and read a bunch and swim lots and drink from pieces of fruit. Hopefully!

dialogue

2009-06-28T13:30:00.002+12:00

“Imagine if we were in a movie. Like, some Truman Show sort of thing. Would you want to know?”

“Would I rather the ED TV or Truman Show scenario, is essentially what you're asking?”

“Essentially.”

“I don't think I'd want to know. It would become too much pressure. It would change me. Performance anxiety. I would wonder if people 'liked my character'. You would change.”

“I wouldn't do most of the stuff I do if I thought people were watching. My balls would remain stuck to my thighs forever if I thought people were watching.”

“I know what you mean. It would be lame. Paranoia and self consciousness could ruin you. Hell, it already halfway does in front of like, ten people. Multiply that by 100,000 and you get exploding heads.”

“I would prefer not to know. I don't think our lives are TV shows though. Descartes can suck my balls too. This is real life, I think. I couldn't sleep if it wasn't.”

“Even if it isn't, its easier to pretend.”

“Suspension of disbelief I guess is what we're getting at. Necessary in real life too.”

“Exactly. I choose what I wanna believe, and stick to it. Choose arbitrarily, but whatever, Makes life easier. Don't worry, be happy. Whistle that shit all day long. Suspension of disbelief. Have you seen the Transformers yet?”

“Nah dude. It looks ridiculous. Worse reviews than the Hannah Montana movie. Michael Bay, holy shit.”

“On a purely explosion per dollar / Megan Fox screen time per dollar basis, it is totally worth it. Summer blockbuster, man. Anyone expecting something 'good' is a fucking chump. Just wanna see fire and tits. Not at the same time though. Well, maybe. I dunno. The point is you get to forget yourself for a few hours. It works.”

“I might go and see it on a Tuesday. Maximise the explosion per dollar ratio.”

“That is a plan. Hell, I'd probably go again. If my life was a movie I wouldn't want it to be like Transformers. Shit would be way too stressful. Imagine having saving the world on your back? I'd want my life to be the sort of movie that achieves poor ticket sales because it lacks drama and suspense and explosions. A generic romantic comedy, maybe. I do some 'dumb / zany shit' and end up with my hot best friend after she decides not to marry her sports-car driving gelled hair boyfriend, who cheats with waitresses.”

“You want to be a real life Matthew McConaughey character? And I think I am your best friend. Are you suggesting I be your Meg Ryan? Are you coming on to me in some fucked up and elaborate way?”

“I always thought of you as more of a Kate Hudson. And, nah. Besides, you wouldn't date a guy with gelled hair. I hope.”

“You're probably right. But the life of a Matthew McConaughey character. Are you sure?”

“It could be worse. Just seems pretty chill, y'know,”

“It would be interesting to see the 'AFTER' in a romantic comedy though. 'They had three kids and lived happily ever after.'”

“'They slowly grew apart and had awkward sex on the first Thursday of every month, to keep up the illusion. He 'had his golf', and she went to book club. They both still had dreams about how things were.'”

“Like I said, happily ever after. Even what you described sounds okay. Kind of like happiness, these days.”

“Is it the same 'being contented'? I'm not sure sure. At least there is something resembling a family.”

“The 'AFTER' could be that he skips to Australia to work the mines, leaving her with nothing but the DPB and a bunch of Legal Aid bills to try get some money out of him.”

“She will catch the bus alone with a pram and people will judge her. Slowly she will absorb the identity of the single mother. Maybe start smoking at her baby, expressing secret loathing and regret. Adopting the dress code one item at a time. Trying to replace him.”

“There is no single mother dress code. You're being judgmental. Do you realise how much like a talk back radio caller you sound like right now?”

“Okay. So if I said to you – white girl in pink and white skate shoes, boot cut polyester pants, one of those white singlets which is kinda long and then a shorter black one over the top, a Playboy bunny necklace, hoop earrings and way too much foundation, you wouldn't think 'oh, there totally is a single mum dress code'?”

“I would just think 'skank', to be honest.”

“I think there is a lot of cross over. It leads to my confusion, maybe."

“Would you watch a reality show about skanks? If it was like Cops but just followed a bunch of skanks round instead. Sucking dick for bus fare, missing the bus and spending the money on cheeseburgers. Smoking weed through aluminum cans. Riding in cars with “crack a Woody” stickers on the back. It would rate well. I am on to a winner.”

“How do you get a TV show? I think your idea will die.”

“Its one of those things which you talk about happening but know never will”

“Like starting a rap crew.”

“Or dealing meth.”

“Did those guys just throw a bottle at us?”

“I think so. It was way off.”

“Its probably hard to hit stuff when you're throwing from a moving car.”

“It seems like it would probably involve physics. Maths, at least – factoring in the speed you're moving in the opposite direction, making allowances for it. Beyond the average bottle thrower no doubt.”

“Guys like that throwing bottles. I dunno. Kind of seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, the broken glass is just gonna pop the tyres on the bikes they have to ride when they lose their license for trying to do one too many 'fukken sweet driftiez bro'"

“Yeah. Lacking in maths, and foresight. A blind generation with dead tyres and too much fucking anger at nothing. Why throw bottles.”

“It is pretty anarchy! Pretty chaos! My job sucks so I break stuff!”

“'Life means nothing so we steal bikes'”

“Huh?”

“I am paraphrasing Cioran, I think. Like, it doesn't matter what you do because life is so meaningless – no objective morals. Life means nothing so we steal bikes is how I sum it up. Like I said, I'm paraphrasing.”

“Life is meaningless, so we litter!”

“Except I guess throwing bottles isn't littering. Not in the city, anyway. You can't litter on concrete and steel. That shit is already litter. Fucking entire civilisation of litter. All of us. We are litter and getting bottled is a part of that.”

“Oh man, you're getting depressing. Lets not start this.”

“I'm not starting. Just sayin'. It doesn't matter.”

“I think I'm gonna rap about how cars look when you're walking.”

“What?”

“My eyes are cut to ribbons by the bright lights

walking down dark roads on hot nights”

“It sounds cool.”

“That's all I've got so far. It kinda sucks.”

“You got any more beers? I'm out.”

honesty is another word for neurosis

2009-06-23T13:55:00.002+12:00

Decided one day that I don't really like myself sober. Awkward and over-active-brain-hindered. Wanted an escape. Decided three days later that I don't really like myself drunk. Loud and liver-fucked in the mornings. Can't stop caring what other people think. I am a bad drunk. Or my conscience needs to quit. Or my memory needs to give up. Shit. I am floating. I am tragic and I will one day pitch a TV show where I interview everyday people about their lives. Just like the worst parts of game shows. “Gail is a hairdresser from Christchurch!”. It will have limited market appeal. It will get cancelled. I cannot concentrate on anything ever. Television and the internet stole my attention span, and every time I do lines of ritalin off the tops of rubbish bins down alleyways I secretly pray that rather than the chatterbox-energy-rush, I will feel calm and centred and ready to 'get myself together'. That way I would have some clear idea of what is actually going on. I'm not coming to terms with anything. Being older doesn't make sense. Should I own stocks? Maybe I should buy stocks. Or bonds. Whatever they are. Maybe I need both. Have been thinking about “becoming a capitalist”. Not quite sure what this involves but it might make me “a man” or something. I would feel happy and mature. If I lived in a systematised world I would know where I stand. Could just move to Japan, I think they have rules for everything there. What to think about at certain times of day, that sort of thing. Feel kind of racist now. Have been thinking about putting everything I write into 'scare quotes' maybe. Seems 'kind of popular' right now. I could pretend to 'be detatched' and just write about things ironically. I went to a 'totally cool' party last night. That kind of thing. I could just grow a beard instead. It would be easier but probably achieve the same results. Every time I walk through town I feel like I have been doing the same thing for the last six years and I start to choke. Every show I go to with the same faces and the same bands, I want to stab myself in the heart, or get out of this city. I feel like telling people I think their band sucks. That they should give up. Just for a change, something different to the same old local-music-circle-jerk-no-objective-opinion-because-you're-down-with-the-band fuckfest I dive headfirst into. Yeah, we get by. Yeah, 'the scene' is a joke. Yeah, honesty is looked down upon. People would rather drink in carparks than watch the bands. I would rather do this too. I want to throw hammers at the crowd, and use razor blades instead of stamps at the door. This should be ugly. This should be blood-on-guitar discomfort. Bad vibes, bad vibes, bad vibes – take me away. I will never act on my opinion. I am too scared. Fucking terrified of everything. Cars that go past in the dark. Groups of people outside houses waiting to fuck me up / stab me / bottle me / rob me. Life. Death. Almost everything in between. Feel like I'm floating 90% of the time and crushed the other 10%, and can't figure out which I prefer. The funniest thing I ever saw was a bible in the toilet at church. It made perfect sense at the time. Almost everything that “is true” makes me feel like shit. Objectively, I'm gonna have 2.2 kids and live until I'm 80. Objectively I am one of 6 billion of a specific class of mammals. Objectively, my life is pointless, meaningless and worthless. Good vibes, good vibes, good vibes. Bring on the escapism of blockbuster movies, Big Macs, internet porn and $16 dozens. Its all I've got left, anyway.

EVERYTHING I DO IN LIFE I DO TO AVOID ONE DAY HAVING TO HAVE SEX WITH SOMETHING IN THE LIKENESS OF A PERSON MADE OUT OF PLASTIC BECAUSE I AM ALONE.

2009-06-22T15:34:00.005+12:00

gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.
gotta get a job.

soap

2009-06-08T22:15:00.001+12:00

Bill was, by most accounts, a reasonable man. Bill watched his kids play rugby on cold winter mornings, and Bill paid his taxes. He didn't like paying his taxes, but he did it anyway. Bill was a straight up kinda guy like that. A straight up kinda guy in every sense of the word, even – the sort to call a spade a spade, and the sort to have a few DB's down the pub on Fridays, after work knocked off early. Bill knew the guys down the pub, and they knew him. They talked about work, and family, and sport, and cars. Mainly about sport and cars. Sometimes there was crossover. Motor sports were a popular topic. Bill was a “lifting equipment salesman”. He thought he liked his job, and it paid the bills. Kept the missus happy. Mouths to feed. That sort of thing.

Bill got broken one day. It was, ultimately, the oatmeal soap which broke Bill. Cause and effect, determinism, modern life and all that played its necessary part too. It is easier to say that the oatmeal soap broke Bill, though.

The soap at Bill's work had been the same for as long as he could remember. White. Non-descript in almost every way – yeah, it cleaned your hands alright. There was a new manager at this office, a young bloke, had his degree and everything. Got on fine with Bill, but y'know, a boss is a boss and all that. He was making changes alright, but nothing major. The coffee in the break room changed. The timesheets were electronic now – you needed to log in each morning. And the bathroom soap had changed too. Bill didn't notice the soap change, until some of the other guys were talking about it.

“Yeah, the boss was saying. Oatmeal and honey soap. Gentler on your hands, or some limp-dick shit like that”.

And Bill laughed. Fucking soap. The day progressed. Pneumatic hoists were sold.

Two days later, Bill drove to work like usual. The traffic was heavy down Blenheim Road. The weather was messing with the radio reception – Hauraki was cracked and edged with static. Bill punched his code into the computer ten minutes late. “Another day, yeah, another dollar”. Make a coffee, drum out of time on a free desk pad with margins of printed advertising, yeah waiting for something to happen. Check your emails, read the news. Maybe do some work, if the boss is in.

Bill went to the bathroom around 10 o'clock that day. Good to take a walk, at least, get the blood flowing. And Bill used the oatmeal soap for the first time. Bill wondered about the soap. Why is our soap made out of food? Are people somewhere eating soap? Life was confusing. Bill wondered about the endless days in which the old soap had featured. How many more times in his life would he look at a different-but-the-same bar of oatmeal and honey soap, in this same bathroom stall? Synapses fired blankly. Cum to infertile eggs. Resulting in no life. “This is not life” though Bill, as the procession of old--soap days, all constumed in the same drab grey cloth, danced through his mind. “Yeah, this is nothing”.

Bill left the bathroom, and left work entirely. He didn't bother with his jacket. He never even clocked out on his work computer. Bill was shaken. It wasn't that he couldn't face the soap. It was that he couldn't face the days that would be punctuated by soap. A daily reference to the crushing boredom. The soap would become a symbol. From the first thoughts about soap, everything fucked with Bill. He didn't know why, but it did. The pace at which people in malls would walk. The way his teenage daughter would blank eye stare at the sixteenth birthday parties of spoiled Americans. Before, this was just “life”. Things that just happened. A good look at the daily soap had opened Bill's eyes, replacing squinting acceptance with a wide-eyed view of caustic banality. Bill was fucked.

leaves

2009-05-20T15:14:00.003+12:00

I wake up in the rain and it doesn't sound like stopping. It sounds like its gonna keep going for three days straight. I feel like staying in bed for three days, too. A contest of patience with the rain. My boss calls. I am already late for work. The rain will win, this time. "You've won this time, asshole" I tell the rain. Outside, there is an involuntary moat around my house. The autumn leaves have choked the drains. A rain-lake is trying to make me loss my job. Shouldn't have called it an asshole, crosses my mind. But I won't let it win. I will be like Carl Lewis and I will jump clear over you, rain puddle! How silly you'll look then. I run and jump, with perfect technique, planting my front foot only millimetres from the water's edge. I am flying and then I am landing. With a splash. "You win again, asshole!". My shoes and socks are soaked through. I am late for work. I can't go back and change, because I'll just have to jump again. My whole day will be coloured and damp and off from this. I will have to work late. The blockage is only going to get worse throughout the day. I'll have to jump harder and further when I get home. Some days, it feels like even the leaves hate you.

smokes

2009-05-18T11:36:00.001+12:00

Life would be a lot easier if I smoked cigarettes, thought Mary, as she sat in the gutter waiting for her bus. She was more sitting on the edge of the footpath, with her feet in the gutter – this is more accurate. Mary thought that the people in cars driving by must wonder – what is that girl doing sitting in the gutter like that? If she had a cigarette though, people would just think “Oh, there's a girl smoking, how perfectly normal!”. Mary sat not-quite-in-the-gutter because the bus stop had no seat. A steel sign strapped to a wooden telephone pole was the extent of it. Sitting is easier then standing, or leaning against the telephone pole.

I should start smoking, thought Mary.

I could stand outside at popular social events, awkward and alone and no one would know. They would just think “Oh, there's a girl smoking. That makes sense”. I would not have to talk to anyone, because I would look busy and occupied. I could smoke so intently that people would know I was unable to focus on anything else at the time. I would ask a cute boy for a lighter even if I had one in my back pocket. Our small talk about progress to meaningful conversation about things with the prefix post-. He would become my boyfriend. He would seem awkward and self absorbed at first. I would change him. O would teach him to love. We would lie smoking and talking after sex. He wouldn't just roll over and sleep, leaving me with nothing but messy sheets, low self esteem and serious questions about my appearance / life / taste in men. We would sit outside at cafes drinking black coffee and eating bagels. He would know every second person walking past, and introduce me to them.

Yeah, thought Mary. Life would be easier if I smoked.

crucial unit

2009-05-11T21:00:00.004+12:00

here are some more exciting lyrics, to provide a counterpoint to the stark and serious tone of the previous offering. we are working with opposites here in an attempt to stumble upon bold new flavours. crucial unit:

zines killing trees, littering our scene, nothing is unique so they better be free! let's wig out at kinkos! GO! photos of the cool bands for this season. political advice on how to commmit treason. regurgitated bullshit xeroxed for the masses. these rags would be better for wiping asses. do something new and make it real funny. otherwise, don't ask me for my money.

**

i'm throwing a sleepover this next friday night. just like any sleepover i'm going to invite one kid that we all hate just so we can fuck with him. i'm going to invite that lousy snot nose God. sure he'll eat all the munchies. sure he'll talk through the movie. sure he'll fuck up truth or dare. but it will be worth it once he falls fast alseep. SO WE CAN teabag God!

**

don't burn down the churches. because they are still useful buildings. that could be used for show spaces or skateparks.

**

riding my bike and i saw such a mess. hundreds of white people in protest. i rode a bit closer to see why they were pissed. thought they were buying barry manilow tickets. they weren't coming from playing tennis, but they had a picture of a giant fetus. i knew it was time to round up the kids so we could lock arms and fucking resist. wall of death the chain of fucking life.

**

tape goes in, kids go nuts. we're not here for kickin butts. we don't need a band with an amp. just don't break the goddamn lamp. moshing with the d-boiz - won them on the air, stage dive off of steev's reclineable chair. living room mosh pit! coffee table GO!

**

thrashin' is our business...and business is mediocre at best. go!

RIP.

dystopia

2009-05-09T04:14:00.003+12:00

i spent an hour after coming home listening to dystopia and shuffling paper in my room. this is not a metaphor. the most gut wrenching / fucked up / make you want to get back on the fluoxitine you stopped taking / h8 u life / oh duuuude lyrics ever.

i dont have no one
i dont want no one
and i show no love
to anyone on the other side of the gun
what have i become
a threat to me and the ones i love
stare at the mirror and spit on my reflection
tears stain my bed
i write a letter to my mom and dad
telling them their son has failed them once again
gun in my mouth
i pull he trigger
the same story
a dead son
a fathers gun

-------------

lying bastards
decieving fuckers
you are a curse
violation
kicked in the head
when i hurt the worse
my body boils with
both anger and confusion
thorazine is such
a bitch to endure
i wanna rip your
fucking head off
you desecrate
all that is pure
stab me in the back
enemy
and to think
i fucking trusted you
you never cared
like a fucking doormat
you wiped your feet
on my dignity
so what
you caught me
when i was down
i must have been blind
to think your actions
constituted any love
liar
apologise till your
throat is sore
youre not sorry
cover your tracks
like you did before
no not any more
the drugs im taking
dont calm me anymore
i sit in angry depression
im worse off
than i was before
you fucking pig
i dont forgive
i dont forget
my minds set
i hope youre proud of
what youve done to me
you never fucking cared
backstabber
are to me in many forms
my best friend
hitler. jesus
christ. the law
fuck all you cunts
you shat on me
i hope it happens to you
maybe youll understand
how fucked it
really feels.

Feeling posi about life though. Everything is relative.

45 rpm

2009-05-08T11:13:00.001+12:00

Too fast cars drive by, and smoke from the house on the corner of Hope Street flavours the air. The midnight streetlights are my only company, but I try writing letters to ghosts in the mist of my breath. Before reaching home I am swallowed by the warmth of fire and friends. We watch trailers for bad movies and drink cheap beers. I soon leave, returning home to refresh Facebook and listen to slow records on 45.

sometimes

2009-05-04T21:09:00.002+12:00

sometimes when i'm typing stuff on the internet i make typos and spell 'yeah' like 'yeha',
and then i pretend like what i actually meant to say was 'YEHAW'.
just so i can start talking about something that i am more interested in.

Dan says:

yeha

Dan says:

**yeehaw! just saw some lions and some crocodiles fighting over a wounded antelope.

But, by god that Lift would have been refreshing!

2009-05-02T11:29:00.000+12:00

Just want to tell people that I need to look extra hot tonight, because my personality's gonna suck.

And then text them in the morning saying that I don't remember anything but I'm an asshole so probably said something horrible and i'm sorry.

Then I want to walk to the dairy and buy a can of Lift.

And try to remember what I did last night.

Then I want to get declined buying Lift because I have no money,

further adding to the mystery and making me think I probably had more fun than I actually did.

THINGS I LEARNT WAITING FOR THE BUS AT EASTGATE

2009-04-28T17:29:00.001+12:00

That Sonny is going to smash that cunt for talking shit man
That he said he was gonna fight him but then dropped nuts
That a real obese woman is going out with a real lanky guy with ape-arms
That his favourite sub is Teriyaki Chicken, and hers is Meatball.
That they like kissing.
That one of them smells bad.
That it is probably the woman.
That some girl only wears trackpants when she is around kids
That when she saw some other girl wearing trackpants she was like what the fuck
That the other girl wore glassses half the size of her face and it was like oh my god, I know!
That the answer to every question is 42
That it's off that movie, y'know?
That if a teacher asks you something you don't know in class you should just say 42
That most teachers have seen that movie
That all teachers in Germany have seen that movie
That they will laugh if you say 42 is the answer.
That you should never wait for the Orbiter at Eastgate.

I wish Michael Jackson's auction wasn't cancelled because...

2009-04-20T18:29:00.001+12:00

What we talk about when we're avoiding talking about that time we got drunk on wine and had sex on your parent's bed.

2009-04-16T15:49:00.003+12:00

"I never really understood the difference between a river and a stream. I mean do they have some definite standard of flow and width and depth that makes the difference, or do people just take a look and go like 'oh hey yeah that is definately a river?'"

"I'm not really sure to be honest, this isn't something I've actually thought about before. We should look it up on wikipedia though for peace of mind".

-A stream is a body of water less than 60 feet wide with a current, confined within a bed and stream banks.

"What about like braided rivers though? They're just like streams that criss-cross and blend together and stuff? I think I need more clarity on this.

- Sometimes a river is said to be larger than a creek,^[1] but this is not always the case, due to vagueness in the language.^[2]

"It is a tough question. I think on the face of it though I'd rather hang out next to a stream though, it seems like it'd be more peaceful. Like maybe streams have been romanticised by popular literature or something, but serious, they seem like a better place to hang out. Rivers seem violent for some reason but I don't really know why."

"Rivers are filled with dead hookers."

"That's another thing about them. Pretty much fuck rivers."

"Do you remember that time..."

"Which time?"

"Oh sorry, I mean that time we hung out by the river eating those ice-creams and for some reason there was all those piles of hair all over the grass in front of the bench?"

"That was way weird. Sometimes I still think about that and wonder what was going on. Like I would probably pay money to gain some context on that situation. I think maybe it was an installation art piece."

"And then the homeless guy that came along and started throwing hair round and stuffing it in his pockets? Do you think he was a part of the art installation? There wasn't really anyone else around. Maybe like life is art though and in that case the homeless guy is kind of on par with Duchamp or something, because I couldn't stop thinking about that for weeks I guess."

"I thought you were gonna ask if I remembered something else..."

"What'd you think I was gonna ask though?"

"Oh nah, don't worry, nothin'! Lets talk about deserts instead of streams, though"

stayin' rad

2009-04-14T22:44:00.003+12:00

dropping outta law school, just gonna ride my bike all day, "take art pictures on a holga camera and try mythologize myself". direct community action.

i have nothing else to say YET so here is a conversation i had with Ian today on "the facebook":

-----

10:29pmIan

only a few hours left at gay work

hour and a half, actually

then back to my house with 8 foreigners

10:29pmDan

FUCKPILE

10:31pmIan

well, theres 1 guy from Canada, 0.5 girls from Norway, 1.5 girls from Sweden (one of the girls is half-Swedish, half Norwegian), 3 girls from Germany, a girl from Holland and a girl from Switzerland

so it's not inconceivable

10:32pmDan

just get your dick out

----

I was in a weird mood.

Boats

2009-03-29T21:36:00.000+13:00

John sits on the side of the boat, legs over the edge, dangling. Attempting to study the almost blinding light of the sun's reflection on (or in) the water. His heart is racing, but his head is clear. Not even a thought to the delicate processes involved in a racing heart pumping atrium to ventricle to lungs and in/out/around again. Just like how people catching balls don't need to think about the parabolic and trajectory calculus required to accurately plot the flightpath of ball to hand. These things just seem to happen and the why is superfluous in almost all instances. It's strange, John thinks. He can't remember the last time he was able to tear himself from the jumbleheadedness that kicked in about a week after he stopped sleeping. After he realised one night that he had forgotten how to fall asleep, and from that point was rendered incapable. John didn't know whether this was like “insomnia” or not, but did know that it somehow made for an overactive mind at the best of times jumping from thing to thing to thing. An ex-girlfriend had once left him a breakup letter that read “Today you missed the bus because it went by as you were bent over reading the timetable, and I feel like this is generally symptomatic of the way you tend to be more interested in the way things should be rather than the way they actually are. We can't be together any more, obviously, because of the way I've come to realise this”. John wonders if this is in any way connected with the whole forgetting how to go to sleep thing but is never quite sure, and he's damned if he's gonna let some overpriced professional asshole explain the whole deal.

None of this he has mentioned to Mary, the current cause of his racing heart, because at this point Mary is a stranger. Mary is a stranger lying face down on the deck of John's boat, at this point. John had only talked briefly with Mary when they had first set out into the clear blue day.

“Usually when we get these charters it's a group going out, y'know”

“I can imagine”

“A lot of parties too, y'know, with bosses who insist on wearing my hat and spinning the wheel. Plus the nouveau-riche big noters with their gold watches and cases of Bollinger I have to sack barrow on board”.

“...”

“But it's just you today?”

“Today, it's just me; that's not a problem is it?”

“No problem at all, ma'am”. They liked him to call the women ma'am on the boat, just like they liked him to wear the hat.

And so Mary is the cause of John's racing heart, and makes this true through the position occupied on the ship's deck, lying face down in only bikini only inches from the slim shadow the overhead sun/sail combination creates. As the sun wanes in the sky she will be engulfed by the shadow, John thinks. It is not the overt display of toned and bronzed skin on this upper deck of this yacht under John's charge that is behind the slamming ribs. Post-pubescent blues, he thinks, he got over that sort of reaction to half naked and beautiful women – oh Plato! Reason must rule! and all that. Instead it is the (nominal) gift of predictability and foresight which has John's heart skipping double dutch.

John is never embarrased to call himself a seaman. He has noticed recently that some of his younger colleagues seem almost afraid of the title. Shy away from it. John is a proud seaman, and likes to think of himself as the type that's not afraid of anything, except:

a) fear itself, and

b) never sleeping again.

John the seaman of beating heart and blessed foresight still sits looking out to sea, trying to trace the horizon's slight bend with his finger. This is something else they like him to do, even though it serves absolutely no purpose. Mary the passenger of perfumed hair and overpriced undergarments lies still. John considers briefly telling her some crock of shit story about the 'healing properties' of the fresh sea air surrounding. This is usually reserved for tourists.

It is strange, thinks John, how many women there are in the world just like this one. But there are no others, he thinks, on the boat right now. John has resigned himself, “blessed foresight”, to the fact that he shall be defeated by this woman. She will initiate, and dick led, mentally a 14 yr old again, he will oblige.

And how she will celebrate! Overjoyed with her catch, readily mentally composing the brunch-story for her circle of friends. “He was a real man! A gentleman! Sea strong arms and a dark tan! Weathered face! Yes honey, just like Robert Redford!”. At this point she is Hemingway's Santiago, John thinks, and he a big fucking marlin. Except without the struggle.

But, thinks John, he is also the spoiler of the catch. He is the circling sharks. Mary's brunch fishermen friends will celebrate the catch, but will not appreciate the trials of the return. And Mary will be left with the skeletal remains of her once proud catch, but will put on a brave face about a situation! Oh yes, she will say, it was wonderful!Because, after the inevitable happens, Mary is no longer a stranger to John.

John the seaman of pumping heart, blessed foresight, a week of sleepless nights and undiagnosed OCD, is ready to even the scales by halving himself. It will be, he thinks, as if the old man's marlin was taken out not by sharks, but eaten from the inside out.

She will have regrets. “Yes honey, I swear he was just like Brad Pitt!” She will tell her friends. She will not tell them that by this she means just like Brad Pitt in fucking Fight Club, that bizarre damaged ranting sea captain son of a bitch, 3 hours of banalities he subjected me to, damaged damaged damaged.

She will be, thinks John, one of that particular breed of fishermen in it more for the stories and the competition than for the experience. John's heart stays pump pump pumping.

“Excuse me?”

“Yes ma'am?”

“Oh, you wouldn't mind putting some sunscreen on my back, would you?”

“Of course not, ma'am”

in the future (tomorrow) i wrote a poem

2009-03-24T18:30:00.003+13:00

Today i realized that i am old and
today it is/was my birthday and
today i realized that i'd rather
suck on ice than get old and
today i sucked on ice and
i was still old.

Park

2009-03-20T00:22:00.003+13:00

today, i went to the park.
and there was a guy reading under a tree, and playing with his dog!
and i thought, oh! modern life! how glad I am that you afford such pleasantries!
and then i got closer. and it wasn't a book, but a portable dvd player.
and it wasn't a dog, but his penis!
and i thought, oh! modern life! sometimes, you're not so rad.

electric lights

2009-03-18T23:22:00.003+13:00

NOTE: sorry I can only write about riding buses and people getting punched in the face maybe it is all I know but maybe I am also just really lazy. "Themes" and all that.

I am electric. I am alive with the static kick of feedback buzzing on my brain as I walk home through the sodium lit city streets back home. My mind awash with a night of cheap guitar tracks and cheaper wine on the wrong side of town. A night of conversation as thick as tar, and just as transparent – meaningless. The vaulted sky seems higher than normal, and the dry nor-west wind adds to this. A snapshot of invincible summer^¹, when “songs will sing themselves”^². We walk down the City Mall and back towards Colombo, spirits high. The streets of daytime commerce are alive with the sound of big-exhaust cars, people and humming neon signs. I walk with Dave and Chris, thoughts elsewhere.

“Hey you fucking faggots” yells a guy in a polo shirt that is (by statistical probability, rather than memory) striped salmon pink, interrupting. I wish Dave wasn't here. Then we might be able to avoid a fight. Stupid violent bastards.

There are five of them. We're going to get Fucked Up. I've never even seen Chris fight before. Dave, many times. Oh fuck. The urge to run is overwhelming but I don't. Could never live that shit down.

“Yeah, you fucking faggot. Why don't you get a haircut?” another of Salmon Shirt's companions.

“Fucking metros, you're all pussies anyway. Why don't you fucking come here and say that” spits Dave. This was avoidable, but now, necessary.

“Look at those gay fucking faggots” yells another guy (maybe the same as before). This is an insult that has me puzzled. Does “gay faggot” create a double negative? Fuck it.

“Honestly, you guys are fucking pussies. Come say that over here or fuck off back to your ugly two-bit whores”. Dave again. He can't let it go.

The group approaches, menacing. Original Salmon Shirt Guy pushes Dave, who pushes him back. They're all big guys, but are just standing back while the two of them go at it. And Salmon looks pretty drunk. A messy fight, like twelve year olds at intermediate – more time spent wrestling on the ground then actually connecting with any solid blows. His friends and us standing round, not really knowing what to do. Should we be fighting too? Is that how these things are meant to go? You can tell Dave's getting fucked off with this, and he's pretty sober. And so he gets up off the ground, quick, and kicks the fucker in the head. We all see it, and see he's still wearing his work boots. That'll fuck a guy up.

'”Holy shit” says one of the Salmon Crew.

“Fucking run man” yells Dave, and we take off down the alleyway from High Street onto Lichfield.

And keep on going past the new bars on His Lordships, almost overwhelmed by people wearing clothes worth more than my rent for two months. I look back and no one's chasing, but still I can't slow my heart and still I feel fucking sick for the whole situation.

“Man, that was FUCKED”.

“Nah man, he deserved that. Fucking metro's. I hate this town.”

“I don't mean what you did was fucked. Just the whole situation. I mean what the fuck, aren't those sorts of guys meant to be the ones we don't worry about? Don't we worry about the ones in the baggy jeans and polyester shirts? The ones with bandanas under their caps and shit?”

“Dude, what? That's like the second time we've been hassled in a few weeks by polo-shirt assholes.”

“I guess I'm struggling to adjust. I mean, do I need to be scared of everyone when I'm walking home now?”

“Nah. You need to be ready for everyone though.”

“What? Where did you get that man? Sounds like some cliché shit”

“I guess dude”.

“But seriously. That's never happened to me before. Not once. In my whole life, that's the closest thing to a fight I've ever been in. What about you?”

“I've been hassled in town before, but never like that. Mostly I just ignore them and nothing happens.”

“I just can't ignore that shit. Fucking metros. Fucking gangsters.”

“Dave, you need to chill the fuck out.”

“I can't man. Something just happens when people talk shit and I can't let it go”.

There is a violence inside all of us, and this is the sort that ruins any night out. I decide to head home alone in a taxi. Paranoia.

Walking up the driveway, the traffic noise subsides. This is my house. This is where I come back to every day after my 9 hour shift at the video store, plus whatever else I've been doing. I don't usually do a whole bunch – I'd say I'm kinda socially retarded, especially sober. So I don't leave the house much. But if these walls could talk... if these walls could talk they'd probably tell me to shut the fuck up and stop talking to myself. They'd tell me to get a real job, and stop jerking off so god-damn much. I forgot to mention – my dad built these walls. I'm 23 years old, and in none of those years have I owned a television to do that weird thing where the wall behind gets discoloured. I can watch all the movies I want at work, and everyone knows that network television is for chumps. But tonight, instead of going for the easy distraction of reading, I think about the day ahead.

Tomorrow, I will serve fake smiles and b-grade movies to the drooling and infantile sycophants who seem to infest the Mall my work is attached to. A whole room full of Godard and the most popular hire is 2 Fast 2 Furious or Wrestlemania XVI. From the ivory tower of my checkout counter, my unjustified sense of superiority will rage. After the days work I will walk to the supermarket, buy some easy food and catch the bus home, the whole time avoiding eye contact with anyone lest, they take offence and stab me. It's that kind of neighbourhood – paranoia abounds. On the bus home I will listen to music which is totally original and cool, and I would start namedropping right now if you were a pretty girl and there was a chance you would sleep with me. 4/4 timing and distortion pedals have come to define my personality – it's an easy fit. At some stage I'll probably call my mother, just to talk. It's nice to catch up some times. I know this is how my day will likely turn out because it's how most other weekdays of my life turn out.

________________________

1 Albert Camus - “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. “

2William Carlos Williams - “In summer, the song sings itself. “

Getting punched in the face: REVIEW

2009-03-17T18:45:00.000+13:00

I saw you while I was walking down Manchester Street that one night. I guess we made eye contact on the almost deserted pavement, the scene illuminated by the display lights that shops like leave on so people can I guess go window shopping in 3am insomniawesome dream states or something? Anyway yeah I guess we made eye contact because you asked me what I was looking at and I didn't know so I just said “nothing man, just walking” and I think you didn't like being called man or something because you sure didn't waste time after that. Just straight in with a punch in the face. Your fist a rough circle between my lip, nose and cheek. It was over soon enough but still kinda awkward because you were still there and I didn't really know what to do because well I just wasn't like ever instructed on how to deal with the situation. Would it have been a faux pas to run? Kind of like the first time I had sex with a girl I didn't really know in this respect, confused about the required conduct et cetera, worried. This is not to say I associate the idea of sex and you, dude who punched me. To be honest you strike me as the type who'd make for an overly selfish lover. My lip starting bleeding, like actually pissing blood is probably a good word for it, and you kept staring. Then you ran off and the way you ran stuck me as unnatural – not enough arm movement I think. Kinda just started walking again after that, but seriously, way to do something real weird, punching guy. While I was walking all I could think about was how it would have been totally awesome to know hardout as martial arts and just flipped out and done some like kick to throat sort of thing and just ruined you. Ruined your shit. Or how I could silently follow you and find out where you live and get my friend's Mongrel Mob uncle to go round and scare you with his arms that are bigger than like two normal people's fucking bodies and make you say sorry like a total little bitch. Before you punched me I had just been walking home but also thinking about getting dumped and how I should just take a dive off some crappy bridge or put pencils up my nose and headbutt a wall, and so in this respect you kinda punched me out of myself, onto another track of thought.

So all in all pretty grateful/10, hope the rest of your random punching career goes well but I also kinda hope your dog dies because it really did fucking hurt and I still have a scab / scar type lame thing which looks like a cold sore and is kind of gross.

OH MY GOD

2009-03-12T18:06:00.000+13:00

This is not a story of “the imaginative” as in the “imagine-if” type of thing you usually associate that whole thing with. It's more of a story about a swift one pulled on a detestable guy. Not like a Tom Swifty-esque thing or anything related to Jonathon Swift, in fact fuck it I don't even know why it's called pulling a swift one which actually sounds like smashing off real fast behind a curtain at some social function rather than getting one over someone but whatever who am I to quarrel with the English language I mean it has served me pretty well for a while allowed me to communicate got me blowjobs etc but yes back on point this dude's name was like Calhoun or Posslethwaite or something equally detestable (again with that word it is a pretty bangin' word so lets run with it) and I can't remember exactly what he did but it was to the effect of talking shit about me and getting my girlfriend to not like me for a while or some such which was totally bogus. Yes bogus. Well anyway the plan was to helms this guy when he didn't expect it. I mean no one really ever expects a helmsing but y'know, do it at some inconvenient point in life where it's A) public and B) MAXIMUM HUMILIATION. So even though yr devoid of the subcultural capital to even understand at this point a helmsing I am going to sell out and explain that, for expositions sake – basically a helmsing is an “atomic wedgie” if you're one of those retarded fat Americans that says things like atomic wedgie and if you say words like that you probably also call your friends “brah” and scream “spring breaaaak” when it's spring break at Cancun Mexico and I'm not even American haven't even been there and I know you are below average humans, on an objective scale. So yeah it was set up this Calhoun/Posslethwaite ma'fucker was gonna get helmsed because he spat some bullshit and upset my girl and basically he wasn't a total dude and people didn't really dig him or the fact that he was just making things awkward and shit so an ambush was planned right. Not like some gnarly over the top “oh lets grab him and skull fuck him and kill him” sort of thing, it was more like “let's wait til he's talking to those babes that he talks to sometimes (and they were babes) and just run up and helms the fuck out of him (we have a lot of spare time but that is not a bad thing because it means A) we can helms this dude at any stage because the reconnaisance + tracking part of things will not eat away at valuable Company Time which would otherwise be the case and B) I have time to philosophize post-event (e.g. right now) as to the significance of that happened.

Okay changing perspective now, excuse me, from now on you're reading from the perspective of that crappy dude with the annoying name that makes you want to punch something and you don't even know why.

“Oh man I was just walking down the road thinking about my sweet hair or something because I like to think about my hair and I was like oh my god I bet girls see me and are like “oh man I would suck his penis if the opportunity presented itself” or something blah blah blah man I have a sweet name I bet no one gets annoyed by it ahahaha yay <33>

“Hey, s'aaapening babes?”

“Uh not a whole bunch man”

“Blah blah blah” fuck my own voice actually sounds pretty cool, wouldn't mind hearing more of it.

“Dude who are those guys behind you?”

“alksjdalsdoiwuroiujpfqj;s”

Back to the like “narrative perspective” if you would like to call it such I don't really know don't have an English degree eh anyway pretty much just helmsed the shit out of that guy. The sun was setting while this happened, casting an almost surreal shadow, what would in other times by Cecil Woodham-Smith be called a “dim gloom across the battlefield”. It is almost sad that the world is overrun by universities, each offering a department of history, because when there was only one or two dudes who even cared enough to record history (hi Tacitus we should hang or something) individual perspective was worth a lot more. And in this I would suggest that from my individual perspective the Battle of Helmsing Some Crap Dude was of far more significance that I guess at least the Korean War. This is all subsets of the relativity of time I'm sure but don't expect anyone to understand that because I don't myself and really fuck it all this is only about a guy that got his underpants ripped off because he crossed a line. Hardly needs analysis or whatever.

Subsets

2009-02-09T17:23:00.005+13:00

We caught the wrong bus home just the other day, but our blind pride made us stay.

“We already paid our fare” you said to me through bloodshot eyes, realising.

“We can see where it ends up” I said to you, in a sweatstained t-shirt.

We took our seats, middle of the bus, before the few steps up the the higher back section. I guessed it got higher there because there was a motor underneath. You told me you didn't care why it got higher. The bus was nearly empty. Aside from us, there was a Somali kid holding tight to a basketball, and a group of six along the back row. 3 guys, 3 girls. The guys in Jim Beam merchandise and tribal tattoos, the girls in von Bitch.

I think it was at this stage that you started explaining your theory of Buses as a Subset of Reality. “No other places are like buses, I'm sure of it. The same rules don't apply here. This is the last outpost of the sublime. The surreal”.

At the time, I didn't know what to make of this. But, as if to confirm the point you were making, one of the von Bitch'd girls up the back started singing along to a T-Pain ringtone, and so we fell silent. Soon the other two joined in, perfect pitch and tone. A ringtone choir.

“I, um, I sort of see what you mean?”

“There was no chance I was wrong about this”.

We continued in silence through the empty streets, your hand in mine or my hand in yours. I can't remember, but you know I don't like to get mixed up with details. “Hand in hand” is probably the best thing to call it. The streetlights illuminated the etchings that marked every window of the bus, and cast shadows on your face.

“There's something grand about traffic lights”, you said to me. “Like, the idea of them”.

“The fact that we so easily submit ourselves to the will of machines?”

“No. Stop being so depressing. I mean the way they keep going, doing their job, even when there's no cars around. Even with no one to appreciate their effort, they keep going. People could learn”

But you were cut short. The bus stopped suddenly, and the driver got up, marching past us to the back (the Higher Section, where the motor (possibly) is), past the now-terrified Somali kid to the back row.

“What have you been saying to this boy?” he demanded. We hadn't noticed anything. Caught up in traffic lights.

“We didn't say shit”. MTV emphasis.

“You called him a nigger. I heard you.”

“Whatever man. We didn't say shit”.

“Don't you say another fucking word to him”. Heartfelt emphasis.

“What the fuck are you gonna do about it anyway?” They were drunk. The air was static. You said later that it was like watching the final show of a long followed reality series, but I still don't know how I feel about this analogy.

“Besides, he is a fucking nigger. And so are you.”

We watched as our bus driver exploded, a ball of fuckin' rage. Back Seat Occupants looked genuinely scared – they knew a line had been crossed. Almost instantly our driver had “the leader” by the shirt, dragging him to the back door. He hit the emergency exit button, and as it opened inwards, smashed this fucker's face right into it. Nosebleed. Then threw him off the bus. The timing of it seemed practiced, maybe some sort of secret bus driver martial art. His eyes were like railguns or something – had the rest of those white trash fuckers running without saying another word. Ha ha!

“Thank. You.” said the kid, slowly and precisely.

“That. Was fucking rad.” I said.

“Where are we?” You said.

The driver only smiled, and restarted the bus.

“If people in DC Comics rode more buses, they wouldn't need Htrae”

“What?”

“Bizarro-World”

“Oh”

You saw Eastgate Mall, and pushed the buzzer.

“We can catch another bus from here. Orbiter, maybe. Or Metrostar”.

“Why do all our bus routes sound like clapped out carnival rides?”

“Reality in advertising? Lets go”.

We got off at a wide avenue littered with broken glass, sparkling under street lights. I remembered seeing the liquor shop fifty metres away get robbed about a year ago, and started to feel sick. You checked the timetables, announcing that we were too late. Everything was finished. I smelled of nervous sweat and piss.

'We'll walk. It'll be half an hour, tops” I told you.

“I'm scared” you told me.

“I Will Protect You”.

Necessity was all that caused this walk, which neither of us wanted to make. I took your hand in mine as the cars with red-hot motors and screaming exhausts circled like sharks and seagulls around a shoal of sardines on Discovery. Only without Attenborough, it seemed far less interesting. We walked in silence, until we got scared of our own shadows.

“There's something following us” you whispered.

“No there isn't. It's just our shadows”

“Well, that's still something, isn't it?”

“You're being facetious”.

“I'm scared”.

Multiple streetlights surround cast multiple shadows. In front, behind, and out to the sides. They grew and shrank, depending on how far we were between each set of lights. An unknown stalker, advancing and retreating. We were both surprised when walking faster did nothing to help our escape.

“We need to be rational about this. It is only our bodies, blocking the light from hitting the ground. We can't be afraid of that. It is physics, or something”. I was protecting you with physics.

“Yesbutwhatifsomeone'shidinginourshadows?!”

“Oh, fuck.” We ran.

The closer we got to home, the better we felt. Familiar streets, parks. A 24 hour gas station, where we bought chocolate milk for $4 and felt okay about it.

“Don't even give no fucks about it!” you shouted at me. I think you were being ironic, or at least post-ironic.

In the familiar surroundings, we felt fine. We were the Warriors, returned to Staten Island. We were invincible.

“I wasn't really scared” you told me.

“Neither. I could fight ten guys right now. At least run from ten guys, if it came to that. My legs would be fucking tornadoes man. I would fly.”

“But I couldn't keep up. You'd leave me like that?” you asked, wounded.

“Of course you could keep up. We'd be like track cyclists. I would break the wind resistance for you. We would fly.”

LOL WUT.

2009-01-26T21:59:00.002+13:00

Black Flag - Damaged (review)

2009-01-20T17:08:00.001+13:00

Dear Thomas,

The other day we talked about Damaged by Black Flag, and you told me you “didn't get it”. In this, I respect your honesty. Almost every other “hardcore” jerkoff would just smile and pretend, afraid to say what they really thought. Because, well, you don't fuck with the Flag, man. Or something.

I was 15 years old when I first heard Damaged, and to this day I still associate the record with myself back then – pissed at the world, without a clue as to why. In Damaged I was tipped to the universality of teen angst stemming from nothing. I realised there were more confused and pissed off fuck-ups out there than just me. And I mean, these people were fuck-ups – poorly recorded chords thrown over basic drumbeats and bad vocals. “The Stooges, man”. At the time I was spending my weekends hanging out with boy racers and getting handjobs of skanks drunk on Bernadino Spumante. To me, Damaged means revelation. It means that any pissed off shithead can start a band, and this fact alone changed my life. In this it is a signifier to something more. But, maybe to everyone else it's just a collection of songs played by Rollins, Ginn, Cadena, Dukowski and Valverde, and in this case, there's not really any such thing as “not getting it”. You just don't like the music! My only suggestion is that listening to Police Story drink at 4am might bring the sort of shitty-vibes- overload cathartic experience which means you truly do “get it”.

Best regards,
Dan.

Of poppies

2009-01-20T16:42:00.000+13:00

There are poppies in the back yard at Dave's house. They appeared from nowhere, unplanned, yet totally befitting the glass-strewn courtyard. Some days as the sun went down we would sit in the back yard drinking Carter Larger and finding fault in everything, from radio singles, to girls we knew, to Hobbes' Leviathon. These poppies in the back yard weren't the sort that bleed opium when the stems get pierced, which we knew from experience. But, this fact didn't seem to stop emaciated space-heads scaling the fence on a regular basis and hauling away armfuls of whatever they could pull from between the cracks of concrete. This started a few weeks after the poppies first appeared, and show no signs of stopping.

This is Flanders! screamed Dave. This is Kandahar, and we're going to war for these fucking poppies. War against ugly rusted bastard needles sticking from ruined arms. We're going to war against modern life in the name of these poppies.

And so we sat in the top window at night, air rifle loaded. Every lank-haired face we saw rising over the back fence meant a readied trigger finger, and every arm and leg meant a rush of compressed air, and a .177 pellet striking human flesh. To address these people like this was to take back a little of what they took from us. It wasn't the act of stealing itself which was a problem, but the loss we felt. Sometimes we shoot junkies to deal with loss.

I'm In a Coffin - One Final Action (review)

2008-12-07T15:35:00.001+13:00

My mind,
It is pool of blackness…

Depressive Black Metal is a fucked up genre, no one will deny that. But what I'm in a Coffin have created with One Final Action is beyond fucked up.

In a study of the Black Metal genre, you come across corpse paint, forests, and retarded leather costumes with metal studs on them. I'm in a Coffin have surpassed this, and One Final Action places no stock in "looking the part", instead relying completely on the music, and the creation of atmosphere. And in terms of emotion generated, there are few albums that can have such a harrowing effect. The thundering bass, distant yet longing yells, simple yet melodic guitar, and the stripped-down drums combine, leaving a bitter taste and the inevitable feeling that somehow the world has used you. What excels this even more is that unlike most Black Metal, you can understand the lyrics in One Final Action, and they are truly grim.

We are both waiting...
I am a weapon against myself...

One Final Action follows a simple narrative, which tells of happiness for a moment, followed by a return to shit -beginning with thoughts of how they are dangerous to themselves, and ending with the final act of suicide. In the time between they confront themselves, alone. Emotions combine to a giant fuck you to humanity, which is the only was to accurately describe One Final Action. This is a classic of the genre.

This is my coffin,
And it's time to shut the lid...

-a

Counterfeitz

2008-11-27T10:55:00.001+13:00

For some reason I've been thinking about counterfeit goods lately. In the art world, it seems pretty much universally accepted that forgeries are inferior to original works of art. While debate continues as to whether the fact of a forgery causes a work of art to be actually aesthetically inferior, or inferior on a range of other grounds including the importance of originality, art history and economics, this would seem beside the point – in any event, a number of well reasoned arguments are given for the fact that counterfeit or forged artworks are inferior. Forgery is also a problem in the fashion world – almost everyone has seen counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags sold in back alleys the world over. This forgery is decried universally by the fashion industry. However, the arguments to this effect seem weak. Cynthia Nellis provides some reasons why counterfeit 'high-fashion' items should not be supported:

1.Counterfeiting robs the U.S. alone of more than $200 billion a year. It's a cash, tax-free business; legitimate citizens like yourself will still get stuck paying taxes, while counterfeiters line their pockets at your expense.

2. Terrorists, gangs and organized crime syndicates all profit from selling counterfeit merchandise. Sometimes designer handbag knockoffs are lined with drugs and used for smuggling things like heroin, too. There is also evidence that the bombing of the World Trade Center in '93 was funded by the sale of counterfeit apparel.

3. You might realize that things like knockoff toys or electronics are an unsafe idea, but did you know that even items such as fake sunglasses can hurt you. According to IACC counterfeit sunglasses can shatter easily; they may fail to provide UV protection as advertised.

In summary: We should support counterfeit goods because they're tax free, support terrorism and will hurt you. This sounds like scare-mongering – terrorists and cut eyes! Bin Laden's money comes from construction, and anyone believing that the UV protection quality of a $5 pair of sunglasses would always be equal to that of a $500 pair would seem to deserve retinal damage, if only to advance natural selection. As for the tax thing – this would seem to rely on the idea that there is something morally wrong or reprehensible about tax evasion, which is a far wider issue than the one in question here.

Nellis goes on to say that “now, fakes are so good that you simply can't tell the difference”. If so, why should it matter who makes them, if the end product is essentially the same? The only difference in this transaction would seem to be that money is going to Chinese enterprises, rather than Western shareholders.

This is not to say that there is nothing wrong with counterfeitting, but rather that some arguments advanced for this idea seem rather weak. A better explanation for the problem with counterfeit fashion would include reference to the originality of a design, and this forming the basis of value in expensive fashion items. Also, it cannot be ignored that much of the appeal of such items comes from the fact that their price elevates them to the standard of “luxury goods”, inaccessible to a majority of people. You could even say this is the basis of these brand's appeal – status symbols. With counterfeits, this value is eroded. Such arguments probably do already exist in a fully reasoned form, but if so I can't find the articles. Sorry, Google, for I have failed you.

Tapes - even more obscure points than flexi 7"s?

2008-11-26T20:24:00.002+13:00

When the tape slows down, that means the battery's run out. But, I listened to these tapes on a deck which thankfully has the wonderful addition of an AC power cord, and so the danger of slowdown was avoided. Thank fuck for that – fast music slowed down generally sounds like funeral doom made by spastic three year olds. Unlike slow music sped up, which either sounds like a) Alvin and the fuckin' Chipmunks or b) 9 Shocks Terror (all their riffs are stolen from Boulder records played at 78rpm) but fuck whatever, this is a pointless fucking divergence that I never should have started down. Anyway, I got a couple of tapes lately and decided to review them. They're probably old as hell too, but fuck it:

Shortlived: Turns out this tape is actually just the CD-r demo (but, obviously, on tape). Still, it fucking slays – 8 tracks of ripping Fastcore ala What Happens Next or R.A.M.B.O before they added all the melodic shit.

Walrora: KhrvstP0nx from Australia, am digging these guys at the moment. Tape is pretty short (only four tracks) but somehow manages to pack in a bunch of influences – from the stoner-rockish (I swear that's a legitimate fucken term) first riff in Toothwalkers to blast beats, d-beats and a few generic crust riffs. Female vocals work well – am reminded of Detestation or the heavier Garmonbozia parts in this regard. The artwork is rad as hell too – only now do I realise how bad ass walruses are.

Of the Standard of Taste in People

2008-11-18T20:44:00.003+13:00

I don't know if this is a common or universal thing, but I often hear people all like "man that person is shit at life" etc. It has got me thinking... how possible would it be to create an objective standard of being "GOOD AT LIFE". You'd need some sort of judge, at least, to set some criteria. Now, I'm in no position to take on such a demanding metaphysical position - I have no idea what the criteria would be. All I know is that this guy:

Wouldn't be the judge. Because he fails hard at life. Any judgment would be subject to endless discussion as to whether it's worse to a) have be in koRn, b) be Christian, or c) have played on THE WORST LIMP BIZKIT ALBUM. When the answer is ALL OF THE ABOVE, everything becomes invalid.

SPECIAL BONUS!!!: Holy shit. Godtube.

An Imagined Interview with Hatebeast, Christchurch's Premier TWISTED METAL band.

2008-11-15T12:13:00.002+13:00

HATEBEAST are a band that has captured the imagination of numerous suburbanites across Christchurch, proving that all you need to play "some totally fuckang sweet as and hella moshable" music is bad white-man dreadlocks. I caught up with them to discuss the band.

Why don't you tell everyone reading this about HATEBEAST?
Ohhhaharakkata untisss YEAHHHH

Okay... You guys have been labelled 'twisted metal'... what does this genre mean to you?
Uh rakkata-ahh yeah SICKNESS. Ohhhwahahha.

Jesus christ. Fuck this. Final words?
ICP! ICP! ICP!

Bang! Bang! Eche! Interview

2008-10-28T20:53:00.003+13:00

I talked to James from Bang! Bang! Eche! real quick before they flew to America and Europe to be total rockstars / ambassadors for Christchurch, with the help of .govt money. I'm pretty sure this means they sold out, but whatever. There is a definate 'rape-theme' running through this interview, which probably makes it pretty edgy.

(picture shamelessly boosted from somewhere else)

First: You guys have come along way from practicing in a shitty dero house back in '07 - wanna give a brief history of the band up to this point?

OK so first off we were a 6 piece joke band who formed for rockquest out of pure bordem, Members came and members left. Then we wrote some actual songs released an ep. Badda' bing' badda' boom.

How'd this tour come about - self-booked, or some hardout awesome people putting it on for you?

Mainly it was down to me having too much sparetime and wasting it on the interwebs. Added some German booking agents and told them we were coming over(this was 5months ago). We had no plans to come over but we kept in contact and things started to moved forward. Now its actually happening, its' fucking crazy.

Which part of the tour are you looking forward to the most?

New York. Being in Manhattan when the election is on will just be insane.

Given that you haven't even reached the age of consent in the USA yet, how likely do you think it is that you're gonna get stat-raeped by some electro babes?

Highly likely. Were all about the stat rape here at bang bang eche camp.

Are you goin' to miss anything about Christchurch? Are you ever gonna come back?

The botanical gardens and Lyttelton. Two biggest things I'll miss about chch. Of course were gonna come back! Chch is the new Sanfrandisco didn't ya hear?

What's happening with the video you guys filmed?

What one? We got sent a rough edit for one of the ones we did in wellington the other month its looking HAWT. More to come soon though. Will keep you posted.

Care to recommend any cool bands you're listening to at the moment?

THE MOTHERFUCKING DEATHSET. Health. High places.

FINAL WORDS?
"Aint never been cleaner then a post rape shower"

You can download a live-to-radio set recorded in New York City HERE.

Politicore

2008-10-28T17:13:00.002+13:00

I am taking a quick break from a day of intense study to pass comment upon the upcoming US Presidential elections. This is an event which I will not be voting in, and the outcome will likely have a minimal effect upon me. However,following modern western tradition, I feel that what I have read on various blogs run by anti-social basements dwellers qualifies me to have an opinion.

All I can say at this point is that I hope for Barack Obama to win. John McCain will obviously die in office, and then Sarah Palin will be president. I mean sure, she does porno and her presidency would mean the first American retardo-prince, but still. Anything that would make this woman happy should not be allowed to come to fruition:

Seriously, look at her. There is no doubt in my mind that this woman would put on an American flag cape, beat the shit out of you with one hand and order an entire catalogue's worth of Franklin Mint eagle statuettes with the other.

"Politics is the business of keeping the party with the most supporters in badly airbrushed XXL t-shirts out of power" - Aristotle, in the lost 7th Book of Politics.

Of penguins

2008-10-13T21:38:00.003+13:00

A while back, someone told me a great story. There was a seven year old boy with Downs Syndrome, who went on a class trip to the Antarctic Centre. This kid, he had a backpack that he would take with him wherever he went, even if he was just walking around his own home. For arguments sake, lets say the bag is red. Anyway, this kid comes home from his school trip to the Antarctic Centre, wearing his bag around the house. He even takes it into the bathroom, where his mum's getting him ready for a bath. She leaves him in there for a few minutes, maybe to get a towel or something. When she comes back, she sees the red bag lying open on the ground, and in the bath is her son, and a blue penguin. Turns out this kid had gone to the Antarctic Centre, and walked out with a penguin in his bag. No one noticed. And why should they? Most people don't take the time to look beyond the everyday – on the surface they see a 'retarded kid' with his favourite bag, on a school field trip. And yet just below the surface, there's a blue penguin with a bathtub future.

The point here is that the every day seems, on the surface, overwhelmingly mundane and similar for everyone. We get up, go to university, learn some things which will apparently benefit us later on in life, get drunk with the same friends as usual, and fall asleep. And yet, how many of us have the metaphorical penguin-in-our-backpack, some hidden layer of complexity to an otherwise mundane life?How many individuals are there doing things and thinking things contrary to what is considered 'normal'? Maybe the next girl that serves you in McDonalds is writing a novel to rival Darger's The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion in length, and maybe the next abandoned house you pass contains a lifetime of memories, left to rot or left to be discovered by someone breaching some imagined barrier. And maybe, the next time you pass that gray wall that's been boring the fuck out of you longer than your memory stretches, you'll return with some ink pens, some good friends and some running shoes.

So basically, if you haven't figured it out by now, what you're reading is someone proselytizing a completely and obviously romanticised notion of life, and how it should be lived. Why? I don't know why. I guess it's a profound boredom with the every-day. Rock and roll, carry me away.

This was meant to be a review of the latest Grails LP. I guess I'll actually review it at some stage, but for now I guess you can accept that it's good, and gets better through headphones at 2am.

Of employment

2008-10-13T21:36:00.002+13:00

Applied for a copywriting job with this blog as the only portfolio, and a four page cover letter. Didn't get an interview. Is anyone surprised y/n?

"Well I guess if I don't get this job I'll probably stick to my original career plan of becoming a water-cooler service person. A pipette full of liquid LSD and a building full of suit-and-tie business people will no doubt end up as press releases and company reports that Lewis Carroll himself would describe as "fully buzzy, man". If this fails I guess I'll become a televangelist, spiking the holy water with MDMA daily and claiming the result as religious ecstasy. All I'll have left to turn to for employment is putting various chemicals in water, and this is a dangerous state to leave a man in. Please give me a job"

FUCKEN' TRIPPY MAN, YOUR HORRID BEIGE PANT-SUIT IS LIKE, SWIMMING.

Fall of Efrafa - Interview

2008-10-08T18:08:00.003+13:00

This is an interview I did with Fall of Efrafa before their latest album was released. So I guess you could say it's somewhat old...

First things first; give us some info on Fall of Efrafa.

Fall of Efrafa is an epic crust/hardcore/post rock band from Brighton, England. Lyrically and aesthetically we base our band upon the political and mythological undertones in the book “Watership Down“ by Richard Adams. It is a metaphorical tale about a group of refugee rabbits fleeing from a warren destroyed by man. Throughout the book, the rabbits encounter different political institutions. The final of which is “efrafa“ a fascist warren that oppresses its own people, with particular reference to women as second class citizens. When we formed the band, we took this idea and applied it to our own narrative, the “efrafa“ representing the encroachment of man, and “owsla“ representing the natural world.

You are releasing a new LP some time in the very near future, what can we expect?

Elil is the second part of a trilogy of records, compared to our first record we have matured a lot. We’ve taken the crust sound and spent a lot more time pacing the songs, giving them more time to build and create more of an atmosphere. The songs are all around 20 minutes long. We all have varying influences in the band, and we didn’t really want to do anything more than to create a record we would love to listen to, and to be about something we all cared about. “Elil” means “enemy” – in this case we apply this to the evils of organised religion and belief. We want each record to deal with something we all cared about and agree upon within the band. We’re all vegan and atheist, all very angry. I guess a band is a perfect avenue for that anger.

How did Watership Down come to have such a big influence on you as a band / your lyrics?

The book Is an amazing metaphorical journey through various human political situations. Its structured in a way that allows a view of a fantastical – yet visually stimulatingly believable world. It has an earthy resonance that evoked a feeling that we got from a lot of modern crust, secular pagan mythology and imagery. We used this both in the lyrics and the artwork, it was important to create something worthwhile – hence the trilogy of records, it was great to have this finite existence, three records and then split up. I guess that’s the great thing about having such a strong concept. It can sound a bit pretentious but its more to do with the fact that we’re all control freaks and geeks.

Apart from Watership Down, what else inspires you in writing songs?

Politically within the band we’re all very similar, I guess the only big difference is that some of us are very optimistic, where as others are not. I’m a pessimist so my lyrics can come across as a little hopeless. From the point of view of this record a big influence was the work of Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and atheist spokesman. His work has inspired us a great deal to find so much solace in atheism, something I felt alienated me a little through my life. We’ve used a fair few of his quotes on the record, he is a very eloquent man. We also of course applied the narrative from watership down to the last song on this record. Within the book there is a religious theme. The holy trinity is mirrored by three characters “Frith” their god, “El ehrairah” the Christ figure, and “inle” the holy spirit” The last song on this album, and the album artwork itself, attack these repugnant characters, its great to have this unique way of conveying ideas and such.

In 'A Soul to Bare' you talk about the distinction between human and non-human animals, as created by religion. Do you want to say anything more about this?

Homosapiens are a bizarre evolutionary twist. Aware of their own birth but most are too blind to see our own potential. The human race is quickly becoming nothing more than a disease. The song was aimed at those of us who have this superiority complex, to use such feeble ideologies as “the soul” to separate human and non humans animals. All this does is embarrasses us. We shouldn’t apply the term “civilised” to humanity until we have equality within all species. We are tackling every other primitive prejudice apart from speciesism. It even irritates me that many atheist people still see animals as only an avenue for improving the health of humans, butchering innocent lives for our own end. These are the practises of medieval torturers. I think that we need to really reconsider ourselves are “guardians” of this world. It appears we’ve done nothing more than squander it.

What do you think is the future for humanity, continuing in it's current path?

Personally, I don’t see a future for the human race. This is not an opinion shared by the whole band, I know that some of us will feel that there is hope for us in a post oil age, where community living and DIY agriculture will replace our dependency on oil and money. I hope that these routes will be chosen and we will create a more sustainable society. But these are huge steps away from what we are all used to. When we think of food, we think of going to the local supermarket for food, not the vegetable patch. This is so flawed. I think that in the next 20 years the world will go through some horrid upheavals, both politically and physically.

Have you guys played any interesting gigs or been on tour recently?

We toured Europe earlier this year, throughout france, spain and germany. We played with some amazing bands and met a lot of lovely people. From a century old mining town in the French mountains to the infamous Kopi in berlin, it was a great experience. We’ve been really lucky as a band, and got to meet and play with a lot of favourites bands. We have a good punk scene in brighton, UK, a lot of people working hard to create a vibrant scene. Some of us work in a co-operative anarchist centre called the Cowley Club, and this is a great focal point for DIY shows and touring bands. As for tours in the future, we have a mini UK, tour, a show with Envy from japan and hopefully sometime next year an east coast tour of America with the mighty Protestant.

Someone told me that you don't perform live with your cello player?

Our cello player left after the recording of our first record. Live it was a nightmare to get a good sound. He was either to high or too low and we drowned him out. You also need to be able to ear yourself play, and playing squat shows and touring was not going to make a cello easy. I know that other bands have managed to do this, but we felt like we were having to write songs to serve the cello, not the other way round. As a band we’e had to become better musicians to make up for the loss, and we all feel as though it isn’t needed any more.

What about plans after you've finished the 3 planned LP's?

I think we will tour Europe once more and maybe America, but after that we will break up. The last record will be very long and I think it will be time to call it quits. e may form another band after it, maybe not. We’re all involved in other projects, fall of efrafa has always come first. I think we’ll need to spend time apart by then or we’ll kill each other!

Death to false metal, pt 2: Slipknot

2008-10-06T15:22:00.002+13:00

I was all ready to throw down a 10,000 word dissertation about how Slipknot are "the most fucken suxest band ever". But then I realised that anything I could ever write is surpassed by:

Death to false metal, pt. 1:

2008-09-30T23:28:00.003+13:00

Dimmu Borgir – What kind of asshole names their band after a stupid hill in Iceland anyway? "Oh hey dudes you should check out my new band, we're called Tungnafellsjokul that's totally grym right". This band is nothing more than some dude totally raping this parents' cat because he couldn't whack off (his hands were all bloody from “hardout shredding”). And you KNOW they probably have songs about Lord of the Rings. Seriously, check the mustache. Mustaches never lie:

"I'm gonna finger the SHIT out of that cat"

For some reason heaps of fat goth girl-dudes seem to rock Dimmu Borgir tshirts. I can think of only two possible explanations:

(a) they think they have better chances with guys that will obviously root cats, or
(b) Dimmu Borgir tshirts go up to size XXXXXXXL.

If we're being honest with ourselves, it's actually (b).

'Melodic' metal can eat a few thousand dicks. Think about it this way - Bolt Thrower = cool. Playing the an Orchestra = lame, unless you're Cypress Hill (or a classical musician, but that should go without saying...). So, Dimmu Borgir fails - they're not Bolt Thrower or Cypress Hill, they're just a bunch of dudes wearing facepaint who probably root cats and fat girls

BONUS PICTURE OF AWESOME DUDES BEING AWESOME:

From left to right: Really fucking scared of some shit, disapproving, homosexual glad-eyes (back), the pain of penetration (front), probably think's he's a snake, and that weird bitch off the Ring.

Thought Creature (REVIEW)

2008-09-23T21:59:00.004+12:00

There was an All Ages Thought Creature show at the Otautahi Social Centre:

(photos by Chris Andrews - thebigcity.co.nz)

First up, OSC is pretty much my favourite venue in CHCH - total DIY vibes, and you don't feel like some greasy mustached pedo for showing up to an all ages show. The first band, Rufffians, were kind of average - 'noise/art' rock kind of thing, with MP3 player-based backing tracks. Sounded like equipment was malfunctioning, in a "we're inexperienced with our shit" way, rather than a Man Is The Bastard fuck-the-crowd ear-rape kinda way. Warble and the Shocking and Stunning Statement were better, playing experimental post-rock droney type shit. It's seriously weird that 'under 18' bands are playing this sort of music. I would say that Thought Creature are the best new live band I've seen in a while - I got Jim Morrison-esque vocals (re: reverb) on top of one of the tightest rhythm sections in a while, with some sweet rock 'n roll lead over the top. There were technical difficulties (PA was a bit fucked), but aside from that, everything went well. Overall - surprised by new bands.

There was an R18 show afterwards at Als Bar, with support from Tiger Tones and Frase+Bri. Everyone has seen these bands like 23 times anyway, so there's no point in further detail. 'Modern' pop-electro-whatever - nothing new/special imho (that's not to say they're not good at what they do... Check myspace if you really care. I'm almost certain that every city in the world probably has the same sort of bands - there's probably even central database where they share songs or some shit. Sitting outside I heard "but how do you quantify authenticity?", and then left halfway through Thought Creature. They were just as good the second time, but y'know. [/stereotypical disconnected hater review]

I walked home listening to Poison Idea and some fat girl came up all like "oh you can't hear because of headphones blah blah blah I couldn't get into Shooters my night was so crap blah blah blah" and then tried to make out with me. It was wierd. $10 dozen Flames + no sleep.

Top 20 US Hardcore Albums

2008-09-23T20:58:00.003+12:00

Fact Magazine tells us that hardcore is popular again, thanks to some history books, and bands like Fucked Up, Sex/Vid and Pissed Jeans getting 'noticed' by the indie crowd. Fucked Up vocalist Pink Eyes doesn't see it this way -"we're not the saviors of hardcore. We just made it safe for indie rockers. The H100's saved hardcore.", but whatever. Sidenote - throwing hammers to save hardcore is a noble task. In the article, Fact goes on to list the 20 best hardcore albums - maybe as education for everyone ready to be "DOWN WITH THE 'CORE!!`1!" now that it's officially cool? Anyway, the point is that this list could be a lot worse - there's no denying it features some crucial as fuck records, especially with reference to '80s hardcore. However, it could also be a whole bunch better. How? A few minor suggestions.

#1 - Black Flag should be No. 1 on the list. Why? Because Black Flag is always number one. Black Flag forms the fuckin' paradigm of hardcore in the minds of millions of people, and anyone who thinks that the Germs are better, well their parents probably drank paint thinner while pregnant or some shit.

#2 - If you can have Eyehategod on a list of hardcore bands, then Dystopia qualify too. Dystopia's Human = Garbage went so much further down the raw, fuck-my-life anguish path cut by bands like Void and Negative Approach, and so automatically takes the place of Take as Needed.... For me, one of the best measures of a good 'hardcore' band is how quickly they can clear out a room of hippies on acid, and there is no band better for "harshing some mellows". Neurosis are in almost the same boat, as in: probably don't qualify, but if they do, automatically replace Eyehategod.

#3 - Botch should be somewhere on this list - mathcore pioneers who never make you be all like "hey, that widdly bit they just played sounds retarded, these douchebags are just showing off". Would we have bands like Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan etc without Botch? Probably, but they'd most likely be horrible posi youth-crew bands. (Well maybe not, I'm just being dramatic, what a fucking horrible thought though...)

#4 I'm pretty sure there was a hardcore scene in Boston and New York at some stage. I'm not even going to get into this right now.

#5 List lacks powerviolence. I mean even if you're going to ignore the absolute rawness and desperation of bands like Man is the Bastard, No Comment and Crossed Out, Charles Bronson or Spazz should make this list for their retardedly awesome lyrics and use of vocal samples. Plus, even God knows they're both better than fucking Heroin. Maybe the fact that "it's cool to be into hardcore now" will mean a renewed interest in hardcore scenes and bands around the world, but in the words of St. Mark McCoy, what the fuck are these people going to do when it's cool to think for yourself?

P.S: Turns out the guy that wrote the article is a techno DJ or some shit.

I'm sure every asshole out there has their own suggestions on how the original Fact list could be improved. Add them below.

TEST

2008-09-22T16:46:00.005+12:00

Elections are coming up! Politics! A totally exciting chance to choose which group of rich white dudes is going to control the country and inevitably fuck things up. There are only two good things about elections. The first is the inevitable scandal involving some MP's bizarre sexual practices. Predicting this prior to it's media explosion is a bit like playing Cluedo, and this year I'm totally picking Gerry Brownlee in the public toilets with the small boy. I'm pretty sure the UN said you're allowed to be racist to Catholics.

Anyway, second only good thing about elections is getting to fuck with the metric fuck-tonne of signage which seems to appear from nowhere. Finally, pockets corrupted by ink because you were too drunk off Country cask wine to put the cap back on a pen after drawing dicks/quoting DH Lawrence on public toilet walls will be avenged. There's even an established scoring system, so (just like everything else) you can now compete against your foetal-alcohol suffering peers at destroying a whole bunch of shit. You should pretty much be shouting (or at least thinking) 'uP tHe PuNx!!' while touching your destructo-boner right now. Anyway, the scores work like:

+1 point for every small sign stashed under your bed;
+2 points for every cock, Hitler 'stache and crudely drawn set of tits applied;
+3 for every billboard;
+10 for wheatpasting the face of Antonie Dixon over local candidates pictures;

+10,000 points for fingerbanging any candidate and pasting photos all around town;
-100 points for being an asshole and actually trying to write some 'meaningful' political message on a billboard.

As a prize to whoever ends up with the most points I am offering the fuckin' sweetest picture of a vampire sucking a dude off (for money) that I have ever seen. You are unlikely to ever again be offered such a good prize for drawing penises on things.

Oh and there's probably no point being all like "oh man but it's totally not cool and it's wrong to go doing some crimes and being a saboter" etc, because the standard Emile Cioran response will just get flopped out, I'll be all "Objectively, life is essentially meaningless, so watever do wat I want" and the argument will be over right then and there. You pretty much can't compete with the combined logic of Romanian nihilists and 14 year old girls throwing tantrums because their mum won't let them move in with their 23 year old boyfriend.

NOTE: THIS IS ALL A HUGE JOKE AND PLAGUE YEARS IN NO WAY CONDONES ANY CHALLENGE TO THE RULE OF LAW UNDER HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF BUCKINGHAM PALACE(c). GERRY BROWNLEE (MAYBE) DOESN'T MOLEST CHILDREN. ALL PICTURES RECEIVED WILL BE PRESUMED TO BE PHOTOSHOPS BECAUSE NO ONE EVER DOES CRIMES.

The Religious Right, as Engineers of a Chokey Holocaust

2008-09-21T22:07:00.001+12:00

People are always going on about the fact that violent video games and movies cause violence. Games like Grand Theft Auto, movies like Pulp Fiction and all that shit. I'm pretty sure there is actually no basis in psychology for this claim, but such details don't usually matter to the Family First types which tend to spout such bullshit.

But what I want to know is – have these people ever watched Matilda? I mean, if their point about violent movies influencing people is valid, then any fucking movie could influence us. And so watching Matilda, people could get all inspired to make a fully functioning Chokey, which is basically the most terrifying thought a person could have. The chokey is like 10,000x worse than beating an animated hooker to death and stealing all her animated money. I mean just look at that shit:

Holy fuck that is terrifying.

The same people that run campaigns against violent movies and games are the same ones that promote parents being allowed to beat their children. Based on this, and their ideas about how media stimuli influence us, there is a good change that some of these people have built cupboards filled with glass, nails and quite possibly medical waste, for the sole purpose of punishing children. The women pretty much look like Ms. Trunchbull too.

Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life (REVIEW)

2008-09-19T11:26:00.006+12:00

Fucked Up are a band that has gone from the obscurity of the underground hardcore punk scene into the spotlight of magazines like Vice and NME in a relatively short period of time. Strange, for a band that (as far as I can make out) has never had anything but a raging boner of hate for 'mainstream' fans - guitarist 10,000 Marbles (in Distort fanzine) “whenever we play shows I get that Black Flag vibe, where I'm feeling like I hate the audience and can't really understand what sequence of events brought me onto a stage to play music for whatever bunch of cretins has been assembled. So the more popular you get it seems, less is the ratio of people you respect, to people you wouldn't otherwise give the time of day”. But, I have this theory as to why the sudden popularity: they're really fucking good. The Chemistry of Common Life, the second full length release by Fucked Up, confirms this theory.

Formed in Toronto in 2001, Fucked Up have from the start been a band shrouded in mystery – releasing a steady stream (over 25 in total) of 7” and 12”, to an devoted underground following. Actual information on the band is thin, with Fucked Up having shunned the usual “Myspace and add the shit out of anyone and everyone” route for the path of ambiguity – a Wikipedia page, a blog and a string of interviews in punk and hardcore fanzines, often filled with mistruths and creative shit-talk. Live, the band is known for shows punctuated by nudity, blood streaming from vocalist Pink Eyes, and crowd destruction.

While markedly different from any previous Fucked Up releases, Chemistry strikes me a logical progression from Hidden World – the same driving hardcore, taken even further along the progressive and experimental path. Fucked Up introduce a range of elements not usually associated with underground hardcore– extended synth and piano-heavy intros shift effortlessly into pounding hardcore riffing. Take the first track on the album – the intro is some fuckin' pan flutes, which, without managing to sound contrived, shift to distorted mute-picking before singer Pink Eye's distinctive growl kicks in. This in itself should provide a good indication of the nature of this album – it's as if Poison Idea took too much acid, and spent a week listening to nothing but Television and the Buzzcocks (who am I kidding, Poison Idea probably did this all the fucking time, but whatever). Throughout the album, Mustard Gas and Mr. Jo hold down the rhythm section, with tasteful bass lines flowing over solid drum-beats in support of guitar riffs ranging from traditional three-chord hardcore to the more progressive The pace of Chemistry is overall more restrained than previous releases (especially early 7”s like Police and Litany). In spite of this, the power and urgency is not lost, as evidenced especially by tracks like Black Albino Bones.

Chemistry features a number of collaborations, notably the addition of female vocals from members of New York's Vivian Girls. The use of male/female vocal trade-offs continues on other tracks, and works well in providing contrast to Pink Eyes' pissed-off-and-fuck-the-world voice. Just like previous releases, Chemistry kills both lyrically and thematically, addressing a whole bunch of shit, from religion to chemical process. Best of all are the one liners, including “It's hard enough being born in the first place, who'd would want to be born again?”.

The end result is powerful, progressive and a little-bit-weird hardcore that reveals more of itself on every single listen – layer upon layer makes up The Chemistry of Common Life. Fucked Up are angry, intelligent, and catchy as hell, and the end result is one of the best releases of 2008.

Wu Tang (Lite)

2008-09-16T16:01:00.004+12:00

As much as it hurts me to admit this, I'm not actually from the Shaolin Slums. But, in spite of this, I guess at some point in my life I'll probably find myself in a situation where I have to torture some dude. Or even be in a position to release a totally AUTHENTIC middle-class white-dude rap album. (Sage Francis if you steal this man I'm seriously going to be pissed off). Back to the main point here... TORTURE MUTHAFUCKA, YEAH, I FUCKEN, I'LL FUCKEN...

Fucken make you brush your teeth and then make you drink some orange juice**;
Force you to go out in public in some trackpants motherfucker;
I'll pay some kid on Myspace to remix your favourite band;
I'ma fucken tell all your friends I saw you goin' into a Streetwise Scarlet show man, and not just because you were trying to root some scene bitch, and they'll be all like "yo I herd you got the musical aids, don;t wanna hang out no more lol";
Make your ass drink instant coffee. Literally, your ass.
I'll drink your 1986 Cabernet Sauvignon and replace it with inferior cask wine.
I fucken cook you a three-course meal and over-salt the soup, ruining the whole experience and letting you the fuck down.
I will sprinkle pubic lice in your underwear drawer then tell everyone you're itching because of herpes.
I'll fucken put like some chip crumbs and some sand in your bed man, yeah lets see who's sleeping now muthafucker.

TORTURE MOTHERFUCKER. I accept no responsibility for any lives totally fucking ruined by the above methods.

**If anyone can come up with anything worse than this then I will seriously give you like $3 to never come near me.

the Outsiders, Media Club, Fri 12th September (REVIEW)

2008-09-16T15:29:00.003+12:00

The year 2001 was pretty sweet I guess. I was 12, heard NOFX for the first time, and decided it was the best thing in my life up to that point. Even better than that time I pulled the world's smallest pocket-knife on some kid. This year was also the beginning of my descent into life as an elitist asshole teenager too, but whatever. The point is that pop punk was pretty popular back then. On Friday night I went to a pop-punk show, and felt twelve years old again. Turnout was pretty shit, but we are talking about Christchurch here. The bands played with energy, the songs were generic as fuck (seriously half could have been covers for all I know) and the socks were pulled up to the knees. And you know what? It fucking ruled. The Outsiders basically sound like Hot Water Music rimming the Bouncing Souls, but it totally worked, especially live. Total vibe-bringers.

As a footnote, “You're too fucken' drunk, either buy a beer or fuck off” is totally the sign of the worlds most awesomest venue owner.

The only shit thing about the whole night was that the woman at BP wouldn't take $5.00 to tell everyone who came in saying they'd just been “going hardout as doing some sweet rock moves, 'throwing up goats' and/or moshing” at Disturbed that they now had musical fucking AIDS and would die soon. I can only assume she wouldn't take the money because she was willing to do it for free.

Hipster How-To

2008-09-11T18:40:00.007+12:00

by MANTON (he is a total dude).

Let's face it: you are not hip enough. You're probably sick of walking into trendy clubs only to be ignored by everyone. Or worse, not even being allowed in. There's a whole scene of kids who are not fitting in, and you're not a part of it. Fear no more: with this exclusive guide to being hip, you too can be a trendy non-conformist!

Clothes. Start with the essentials. Every hipster's wardrobe needs:

Tight jeans, preferably a women's cut. Guys take note: the women's jeans are the ones which squish your testes and have little useless pockets.

Several T-shirts. They could be "ironic", which is a hipster code for "rubbish that no-one would willingly wear otherwise". Acceptable themes for these could be: obscure post-punk/no-wave/noise bands, Midwestern petrol stations or "Vote for Pedro". Acceptable colours are white, pink, neon-green, yellow.

A jacket. You could ask your parents to buy you a leather jacket. If they try to ruin your dreams of hipsterdom with their usual "maybe when you're not failing art school any more" talk, head straight to the thrift shop. Guys: buy the most old-man suit jacket you can find in your choice of grey, brown, chequered or tweed. Girls: buy something 1980s with shoulder-pads and large plastic buttons.

A hat. Guys, find a trilby that does not match your jacket. I cannot stress this enough: if you co-ordinate your outfit, it ruins the whole effect. Girls: a floppy beret in your choice of colour, but again it must not match your jacket.

Shoes: if in doubt, Chuck Taylors go with anything, especially suits. If you want to take it to the next level, replace the laces with a non-standard colour.

Accessories & flair. You'll need something "retro" or "funky". Ironic (i.e.: completely rubbish) badges are a highly prized way of accessorising. Large sunglasses with plastic frames or spectacles with thick black frames. A messenger bag that was made before Nirvana became popular. Roll-yer-own cigarettes. A khaffiyeh, which is one of those "Palestinian scarves" - don't worry, no-one is going to mistake you for a politically-conscious student, it ain't 2001.

Your hair-cut can be some kind of mop-top, something with a fringe or generally anything bohemian. Guys also have the option of growing an "ironic" moustache or three-day stubble.

If you're having trouble, just get the latest issue of Vice, leaf through the fashion pages and find similar items in a thrift shop. You'll know when you found the right gear because it will look rubbish, but cost a lot more than anything else in the shop.

Now you got your wardrobe sorted - time to turn your attention to the rest of the room. Cover the walls with posters. Acceptable choices are: independent film posters, photocopied gig flyers from indie bands and "ironic" posters. Photographs are acceptable, but they absolutely must be either over-exposed, out-of-focus or cut off the subject at the head.

Now that we mentioned photographs, you need several cameras. They do not need to work, their mere presence in your room is enough. The most-prized hipster cameras are 35mm silver-body types with brown leather cases (or anything that uses film stock which is no longer made). Display these prominently.

Next, head down to the furniture store. You're after kitschy furniture that was made between the time the Beatles started going really weird and Sonic Youth becoming widely known (i.e. roughly 1970-1989). If in doubt, ask yourself: "would Stanley Kubrick use this furniture for one of his sets?" You're after strange colour combinations, rounded shapes or polka-dots.

Generally, think of yourself as a human magpie. Collect various mismatched shiny, interesting, weird and "ironic" items. Toys from your childhood are good. Toys that were made before you were even born are better. If in doubt, turn to Vice and see what kind of weird crap they have in their weird crap section.

Now you look the part - congratulations, you're on your way of mixing with other hipsters! There are only a few simple rules to follow:

Never use plain language. Try to fit art-school jargon into any conversation, even if you're just going to the shops for bread and milk. Practice speaking like Derrida in front of a mirror. Slip words like "postmodern" and "deconstruction" into your conversations. Never use an English word when there's a French word that'll suit the purpose.

If you don't like anything, call it "boring". Examples of "boring" can include petrol prices, doing any kind of work, doing any kind of study and people who are not hipsters. Denounce modern art as "boring".

This brings us to the next point. Cultivate a deep and abiding cynicism. Learn how and when to employ a sardonic smile and be all like "oh, that's very interesting" while stifling a yawn. In particular, direct your cynicism towards things that excite your peers. Stop liking bands as soon as they become popular. If it's not in you to be incredibly conceited and to just know that you're hipper than everyone else on the planet, then stop reading now.

Frequent indie bands' shows. You will know if a band is really indie when there is an audience of hipsters standing around and looking in their shoes while swaying side-to-side in a zombie-like fashion with sardonic smiles on their faces. If the band sounds like Sonic Youth would have sounded about 20 years ago, you're right on the money. The band would either be one-two people with whole bunch of synths, or a alternative-rock four-piece. You will know band sucks when everyone is just standing around with the same sardonic smiles, but with their arms folded, looking straight at the performers and not swaying. The detail counts. Owning an electtic guitar is optional, but if so, it cannot be anything except an old Strat copy.

Go to every art gallery opening you can so you can, barely glance at the art and spend the evening schmoozing with other hipsters and drinking the free wine. Make sure you own at least one item of clothing with paint splatters, a few canvases and some half-squeezed tubes of oil paint. Most of your actual art should be either: stencils (overspray, underspray or runs are mandatory), collages/zines or photography (as described above) and definitely "ironic".

By all means avoid any kind of proletarian accoutrements, unless they are "ironic".

And never, ever actually call yourself a hipster.

UPDATE: Google says this is a hipster. Redemption? No. Google is wrong.

SCIENTS

2008-09-09T16:48:00.001+12:00

A study came out a few weeks ago, which confirms that people's personality tends to relate to the type of music which they listen to most. The study was in all likelyhood conducted by the same totally bad-ass, hard hitting and relevant group that gave us last years groundbreaking “Men with attractive partners want more sex” conclusion, but this is irrelevant. Building on this study with by asking approximately none of the 36,000 people originally surveyed and instead just adding my own opinion, it has become increasingly clear that peoples lifestyle's are also dictated by the music form which they listen to / identify with. Every single person who listens to a genre of music is the same. It's SCIENCE. Here I present my research, which expands from music preferences giving clues to personality, towards specifics.

Indie: You drink coffee from trendy cafes, live (or want to live) in a central city loft apartment, use words like “authentic” and “postmodern” pretty much every day, hate on bands you previously liked if they gain an ounce of popularity. No matter how hard you pretend, Nu Rave is your fault. So are the Arctic Monkeys.

Punk: You wear patches saying shit like "Upping the punx, smash teh state, anarky and chaos in the UK oi oi". On your $120 sweatshop 'punk pants'. And sell the front door to your squat to buy glue to sniff, or some homebrew ethanol.

Classical: You're old, or want to root old dudes (classy old dudes, not like Southern Blues Bar old dudes) (Women can be dudes too, stop being sexist). Or you're one of those weirdo band kids that got forced to play clarinet by their parents and never had the balls (Women can have balls too, stop being sexist) to be all like “go eat a bag of dicks, I just wanna play Sega and listen to Hanson”

RnB: You're a female commerce student who goes to Shooters every night. Even when it's closed. Figure that one out.

Rap Music: You're an asshole. You're white, and you wear a sweatband halfway up your arm. You contemplated getting corn-rows at some stage in your life

'Twisted' Metal: You think that “uhwaahahaha” is some straight up lyrical 'genious' shit. Probably have dreadlocks and think that Maynard isn't a total douchebag. If you don't have a can of Woodstock 8% in your hand, it's because you spent all your money on meth and now have to save up for a shitload of dental work.

'Trve' Metal: Total asshole. You wear boots all the time, and would be totally down with Nazi shit if it didn't mean your skinny white ass would get pounded on a regular basis. You're a total elitist and will actually try and kill some one with your gaze alone for not being faniliar with Insect Warfare's Endless Execution Through Violent Restitution.

"Rock Music": Just like sinking heaps and being the man, basically. While listening to Shihad and thinking it's totally sweet and original, bro.

What gives me the right to pidgeonhole everyone like that? It's not like I have any authority on the matter, right? Wrong. I am a scientist. This is science, so you can't really argue. Want some evidence? It's... in the bible or some shit.

For some reason, we really like to judge people, based on whatever characteristic. Pretty much every other form of judgment based on one single aspect of a person's life is off limits now, so scientists (read: me. I am a scientist) have turned to music. Next, groundbreaking research will show that people that prefer McDonalds to cooking at home are generally lazier, and people who work in sales are more outgoing. Does it matter? Will you use this research in everyday life? This is not helpful. Money would be better spent on researching which alcohol preference makes you more likely to sleep with losers. At least you can sell that sort of research. And spend the money on something worthwhile. Like a supercomputer.

Please sir, do not step on my Nike Jordans.

2008-09-08T11:46:00.008+12:00

Is Nelly the (possibly retarded) love child of Imelda Marcos and Glenn Danzig?

Yes, yes he is.

MTV Snow Jam!!~1!

2008-08-18T19:22:00.005+12:00

To be fair, it was a pretty flawed concept to begin with – travelling for an hour just to hear Lil' John go YEAYUHHHH a few times. It seemed like it would be totally fucking worth it beforehand, though.

Anyways, Snow Jam, for those that don't know, is some retarded event put on down here every year by MTV (the same people responsible for OFF THE CHAIN shows like Punkd and My Super Sweet 16). This year it was at Terrace Downs, a golf resort usually kept as the exclusive domain of dairy farmers, freshly rich from recent world food price ass-rape, and Japanese businessmen. For one day however, Terrace Downs was transformed into a haven of Kathmandu-puffer-jacket wearing Commerce students, determined to legitimately post on their Bebo//Facebook//watever it is that shitheads are into these days that they'd ACTUALLY SEEN OPSHOP AND DOVONAN FROKAINROUTER.

The bands sucked, which was unsurprising considering every single fucking performer on the lineup (aside from LIL JOHN, obviously) could be included on one of those CDs that they play at supermarkets for the sole reason that even a raggin' Mormon could find absolutely nothing to be offended by. This isn't actually true – I'm 90% sure Mormons don't like rap music, but what I'm trying to say here is that everyone involved was boring as fuck. Also, there was a news report of people gettin' taken away by ambulances because they were too cold. Snow Jam, cold?!? Fuck my life.

We left after about two hours. I guess I'm stuck with having to imagine what Lil John was like...

If you want to read an actual review by a reputable journalist who most likely thinks Shihad are the greatest band in New Zealand ever, you can CLICK HERE. I wouldn't bother, unless you're after some cheap laughs from the comments section, including the bizarre statement that “Opshop are NZ royalty !!”. The only positive to come out of this business is a new-found respect for Cut Off Your Hands - “lead singer was so drunk, and openly admitted that to the crowd, saying he didn't care if he disappointed them”. At least he wasn't throwing hammers, you fucking pussy.

Bono - more of a douchebag than any previous estimate

2008-08-18T14:31:00.005+12:00

From Gizmodo:

"Now, I know Bono is the kind of guy that loves the sound of his own voice a whole lot, but his predilection for his own crooning apparently led to four tracks from U2's upcoming album getting leaked online. Bono was playing them so loud from his villa in southern France that a fan passing by recognised his voice and recorded the songs.

Naturally, the fan sped home and put them on YouTube, meaning by now you can find them at all of the usual online venues. The leaked songs include the album's title track, apparently called "No Line On The Horizon" (puke) and the first single, "Sexy Boots." Of course, the bootlegs probably sound like they were recorded inside Bono's arse, but let this be a lesson to Bono about forcing your music upon the world. Someone will steal it and give it away, even if it's not very good. [The Sun via Torrent Freak]"

Basically the same rules apply to listening to your own music REAL FUKKIN LOUD as to wearing your own merchandise - if you're not in Iron Maiden, Suicidal or a mid-90's rap crew, you're crossing the douchebag line.

WELCOME

2008-08-18T14:06:00.001+12:00

THE PLAGUE YEARS is a music blog established with the sole goal of earning a punch in the face because of something said on the internet. From the same people that bought you colour television, distortion pedals and meth-babies.