On Football Part II

Hello! It’s currently Round 3 in the 2011 AFL season. Excite.

I thought this would be a suitable time to talk about my changing perspectives of various teams, AND add Gold Coast into the mix. Since I last posted Gold Coast now have their logo, colours, players and team song. Let the judging begin.

Here’s my old team hierarchy:

There are categories and then lists in the categories, (this is basically how my head works). So, for example, the gap between Carlton and Richmond is much bigger than Adelaide and Carlton. CONFUSED YET?
ANYWAY, HERE IS THE LIST (CAN CHANGE IF PLAYERS ARE DICKHEADS, MICHAEL JOHNSON)

2010 LIST

1. The boganest and most amazing team ever
   Geelong Cats
2. The teams that are awesome and many people that I know like
   Fremantle Dockers (mum’s/Ben’s/most of my amazing friends’ team)
   Adelaide Crows (relatives’ team/where my family is from)
   Carlton Blues (dad’s team/where I was born)
3. The “non-dickhead Victorian teams”
   Richmond Tigers
   Melbourne Demons
   Essendon Bombers
4. The “I’m indifferent” teams
   North Melbourne Kangaroos
   Brisbane Lions
5. The “teams that I just don’t like for different reasons, even if they are really OK”
   Hawthorn Hawks (2008 – you fuckers)
   Western Bulldogs (My family seems to think they’re no better than Collingwood so that’s rubbed off a bit)
   Sydney Swans (mostly indifferent but I just hate Sydney)
   St Kilda Saints (the main threat to Geelong plus I just don’t like them and I don’t know why)
6. The “the main rivals to group #2“
   West Coast Eagles (I don’t really mind them but my brother and sister go for them and it’s fun to create sibling rivalry so I’m going to put them down here)
   Port Adelaide Power (A fucking joke/booo!)
7. The scum of the world
   Collingwood Magpies (fucking die)

NB: When the new teams come I am anticipating that Gold Coast will be in indifferent, unless they start winning because Freo needs a few flags first, and Greater Western Sydney will be in the new “I don’t like you because you’re from Sydney” category (which will be a new sub-group of #5 for the two NSW teams).

Quite a lot has changed since then. Let’s see what’s going on now:

2011 LIST

1. The boganest and most amazing team ever
   Geelong Cats
2. The teams that are awesome
   Fremantle Dockers
   Carlton Blues (spot pending kicking out Chris Judd because he’s a fucking tool)
3. The “non-dickhead Victorian teams” that you can’t really hate
   Richmond Tigers
   Melbourne Demons
   Essendon Bombers
   North Melbourne Kangaroos (Promoted!)
4. LIMBO
   Western Bulldogs (promoted! I have overcome my prejudices but still don’t know where they stand)
   Adelaide Crows (mega-demoted but I can’t bring myself to hate them yet).
   Port Adelaide Power (mega-promoted but I don’t know if I can put them above Adelaide yet)
5. The teams that I just don’t like for different reasons, even if they are really OK I guess
   Gold Coast Suns (They have a stupid name, song and colours and their rugby players are douches)
   Brisbane Lions (demoted and I don’t know why. I just do not like them)
   Sydney Swans (They are from Sydney)
6. The druggies, rapists, wife-beaters and fuckheads
   Hawthorn Hawks (demoted because I hate them even more for 2008 now and Buddy makes me want to punch babies)
   St Kilda Rapists Saints (demoted for being rapists)
   West Coast Eagles (fuck they make me so fucking mad)
7. Ew.
   Collingwood Magpies 

    

So the main changes are to the Adelaide teams. Port Adelaide are starting to make me think of the SA version of Fremantle and Adelaide the SA Eagles. This loses a fuck ton of points for Crows and gives a lot to Port.

BUT. Port still have stupid colours, a retarded name, a fucking terrible song and some d-bag players.

We’ll see what the future brings.

On Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights

Oh hey there.

So since September I have been trying to read Wuthering Heights.

I find it to be the most tedious and, well, shit book ever.

I have started it so many times in my life and normally only get a chapter or two in before I throw it away and scream “FUCK YOU, EMILY BRONTE! GET A LIFE.”

There’s just something about it. It is written well enough, most of the characters are pretty well fleshed out and it has some really evocative descriptions. I just can’t stand the arrogance of it.

Every second sentence I just picture Emily Bronte writing and either chuckling to herself

“Ah ha ha! I am so brilliant and dark!”

Or, someone has just upset her in real life so she makes characters randomly beat each other up/die.

“NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME. LIFE IS PAIN. TIME TO DIE, CATHY.”

It’s literally like, 19th Century fan fiction and she is the Mary Sue (see below post for definition) that is Nelly. Some servant bitch who somehow is all fantastic and everyone loves her and she gets away with the most ridiculous things BECAUSE SHE IS RIGHT IN THE LONG RUN.

So yeah, the book makes me pretty mad, BUT, I have found a way to make it fucking amazing. With the help of Kate Bush.

1. Every time they say “Wuthering Heights” sing “WUTHERING, WUTHERING, WUTHERING HEIGHTS”
2. Heathcliffe is always read as “HEEEAAAAATHCLIFFFFFFE” and you have to imagine the Kate Bush dance, especially the movement she does while singing his name that looks like “The Crane” from the Karate Kid
3. Cathy/Catherine is always mentally read as a really high pitched squeaky Kate Bush singing voice
4. Moor/s is always read as “wiley, windy, moors”
5. Nelly is renamed to “woah, Nelly”.

Fuck yeah. Instant amazing novel.

Also I have this mug:

My friend, Demelza put it perfectly:

“You can’t pick Pride and Prejudice or an AMAZING novel because the other classics will get jealous. If you pick Wuthering Heights then they’ll understand that it’s a big joke and won’t be mad.”

So fucking badass.

PS: I am now halfway through! I am so fucking butch it hurts.

On “Butch”, or, The “Butchest” Movies Ever

The history of “Butch”.

So in the long autumn of 2009 there was a production by the name of Lit By Limelight: The Story of a Little Tin Soldier and it pretty much ran my life from February to June of that year.

Within this production there developed, between the backstage crew (who didn’t have a hell of a lot to do during rehearsal except paint things) some inside jokes. One of them was “Butch”. For about a year I knew, in my heart and in my head what I meant when I called someone this new butch. It did not specifically mean a large, lesbian on a motorbike with or without a mustache. It was simply a positive thing, they were awesome, they were possibly slightly masculine but not in a testosterone loving way.

The other day I re-watched, for the seven billionth time, what is possibly my favourite movie ever made:

Alien (1979)

For those of you who do not know Alien, this post is basically the biggest spoiler on the planet. Note that it spoils horror/action movies so it’s not such a big deal. Also notice the date of the movie. IF you haven’t seen it then I doubt you care enough about it being spoiled. Anyway, it features Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, a Lieutenant on a space miner rig thing. By lieutenant it is important to note that the generally accepted cannon in Science Fiction is to treat space craft  and their occupants in a similar way to real world ships. So there are captains and officers and such but they are still civilians. They have absolutely no military training unless it is their hobby. It is not Ripley’s hobby.

Anyway after an emergency signal from some creepy desolate planet, a strange, parasitic creature latches onto one of the crew’s faces. Ripley, (who is in charge of the ship because the captain was one of the people on the planet), is the only person smart enough to refuse to let the landing crew back on board with an unknown alien being (the technical term for this is ‘xenomorph’).

“WHY DON’T YOU TRUST ME?

There is a mutiny of sorts (plot involved!) and the infected crew member, the captain and that bitch, Lambert, are let back on board.

Then everyone dies.

“LOL, YOU’RE FUCKED.”

Except Ripley. Who blows the fucker out of an airlock (Guess which one she is).

In Aliens she does things like charge into a nest of the creatures (the same creatures that have just slaughtered an entire squad of trained, experienced marines). She does this to save a young girl (Newt) who may very well be dead. It’s like a 50/50 chance. She goes in anyway, despite having only been taught how to use guns properly about an hour ago. Then she uses gaff (the god of tapes) to attach TWO guns to each other. Also she has a fuckton of grenades.

Screenshot from the film Aliens. © 20th Century Fox

Note! Her haircut makes her look like a lesbian and thus the ‘traditional’ interpretation of butch but it is from the 1980s, when everyone dressed like massive fags. So it is OK. You should see Vasquez if you want a lesbian.

Hudson: “Hey Vasquez have you ever been mistaken for a man?”
Vasquez: “No. Have you?”

ANYWAY! BACK TO RIPLEY. I LEFT YOU AT A CLIFFHANGER.

After charging into the nest and kicking the shit out of the Aliens within (we never doubted you!), the Queen gets pissed off and rips the only other able-bodied, “adult” survivor to pieces. Then heads for Newt, who is so totally next. Until.

“Get away from her, you BITCH!”

Ripley charges at the Alien queen head on in what is essentially a forklift.

Big deal? Why is that so great?

THIS is the Alien queen:

Screenshot from the film Aliens. © 20th Century Fox

Who’s seriously going to fuck with that thing? Ripley. That’s fucking who. Nobody else would last half a second, let alone yell insults at/taunt the thing. (AvP DOESN’T. COUNT. THE PREDATOR ESSENTIALLY DOES ALL THE WORK.)

PS: Ripley is the only survivor again. Yup. The young girl dies. That’s how butch Ripley is. She defies the laws of Hollywood which states that children will inexplicably live just because every tragic circumstance needs a symbol of hope. Bullshit. If there are Aliens around then every child is fucked straight away. Pretty much the only thing AvP 2 did right.

This brings us to the next, epic, installment of the series. ALIEN 3. AKA Ellen Ripley is simultaneously Jesus, Mary and a skinhead. Also she kicks just as much arse as before WITHOUT EVER HOLDING A GUN (OR REALLY ANY SORT OF WEAPON).

Ripley has an alien inside her; she is pregnant without having sex. OK she does have sex in the movie but it doesn’t put the alien inside her. Anyway she’s fucked now. She knows that it is a queen and everything will die if it gets out. Also there is no way to stop it from getting out. Also there is another Alien on the loose anyway. This one is the dog version. The previous ones were human (OK maybe the queen came from the space jockey, it’s unclear). You know how in zombie movies it is the zombie dogs that are the scariest because they are the natural predators. Imagine the natural-est predatory animal you can and then times it by another natural predator. That’s essentially what the alien dog is.

Guess what happens? Ripley kills it. Of course. How, you ask me, even though you know what happens in the movie or you wouldn’t be reading the spoilers. SHE SUBMERGES IT COMPLETELY IN MOLTEN LEAD AND THEN MAKES IT EXPLODE BY SPRAYING IT WITH COLD WATER WHEN IT JUMPS OUT OF THE LEAD AT HER.

“SCIENCE. IT WORKS, BITCHES!”

Right then, in order to deal with the alien queen that is inside her, Ripley dives into the molten lead herself (or the furnace that she threw Newt and Hicks’ carcasses in? It isn’t quite clear… POINT IS: TEN BILLION DEGREES). That’s right. Ripley died for us. She died for all of us. That queen nearly got to Earth.

Oh guess what. The Alien burst out of her chest before it was incinerated by the fire. Oh snap! Nice try, Ripley, we still love you but I guess it got away after all.

WRONG.

She fucking grabs it and drags it down to the firey death with her.

Let’s channel the movie “Speed” for a second…

POP QUIZ! ONE OF THESE, THE SIZE OF A HUMAN BABY, BURSTS OUT OF YOUR CHEST. WHAT DO YOU DO?

1. Die horribly because something the size of a human baby just burst through your ribcage AFTER you’ve exhausted yourself running and climbing.

2. Have the reflexes and skill to grab and hold something that has enough force and speed to burst through your ribcage.

PS: If you are not Ripley, option 2 is not available to you.

IN CONCLUSION.

When I say “butch” I do not mean some lesbian and/or tomboy with short hair, muscles and attitude but that does not mean that those attributes are excluded. Often, butch people will have these qualities, making the description twice as valid. When I say “butch” I mean “Ripley-esque”. Or even “Sigourney Weaver-esque”.

On football and then music gigs

Long time, no update.

THE REASONS:

1. I couldn’t think of anything
2. Long weekend (hilarious, given I’m essentially a housewife, that ‘holidays’ are when I’m the busiest.)
3. I installed “Spore”

BUT DO NOT WORRY! FOR I HAVE FINALLY COME UP WITH SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT!

You may remember, back a few lines, that I mentioned that it was a long weekend. Well, how about I tell you all about my long weekend?

Firstly, football (AFL to you foreigners/unbelievers, none of this rugby or soccer or grid iron shit… for now). If you do not care about sport skip to the big, bold block of text now.

My side has quite a few injuries, from pretty much every position imaginable (as in starting position in the sporting sense, you sick fucks.)

• Joel Corey (EPIC MIDFIELDER)
• Marcus Drum (Wait isn’t he a Fremantle player? Oh right hasn’t actually played for us yet…)
• Tom Hawkins (Really tall, pretty-boy forward! Now who’s hair will I laugh at?)
• Cameron Mooney (ROAR, Sad. Come backkkkkkkk)
• Steven Motlop (indefinite, fucking sad)
• Brad Ottens (our the amazing ruckman)
• Max Rooke (Did his knee. Fucking worst thing)
• Matthew Scarlett (The best defender in the competition, PERIOD). <== (and then a second period there for good measure).

Anyway DESPITE this, we still flogged Essendon because

1. Our rookies are amazing, even if one of them is actually pretty much the oldest member of the team
2. Jimmy Bartel is magic
3. The team is so fucking solid that they have replacements for the injuries so the only bad thing is that they are hurt, not that the team will also suffer.

Also Fremantle lost, which sucks. That reminds me to post my “football team hierarchy” (aka, the pecking order of teams that deserve my support)

There are categories and then lists in the categories, (this is basically how my head works). So, for example, the gap between Carlton and Richmond is much bigger than Adelaide and Carlton. CONFUSED YET?
ANYWAY, HERE IS THE LIST (CAN CHANGE IF PLAYERS ARE DICKHEADS, MICHAEL JOHNSON)

1. The boganest and most amazing team ever
   Geelong Cats
2. The teams that are awesome and many people that I know like
   Fremantle Dockers (mum’s/Ben’s/most of my amazing friends’ team)
   Adelaide Crows (relatives’ team/where my family is from)
   Carlton Blues (dad’s team/where I was born)
3. The “non-dickhead Victorian teams”
   Richmond Tigers
   Melbourne Demons
   Essendon Bombers
4. The “I’m indifferent” teams
   North Melbourne Kangaroos
   Brisbane Lions
5. The “teams that I just don’t like for different reasons, even if they are really OK”
   Hawthorn Hawks (2008 – you fuckers)
   Western Bulldogs (My family seems to think they’re no better than Collingwood so that’s rubbed off a bit)
   Sydney Swans (mostly indifferent but I just hate Sydney)
   St Kilda Saints (the main threat to Geelong plus I just don’t like them and I don’t know why)
6. The “the main rivals to group #2“
   West Coast Eagles (I don’t really mind them but my brother and sister go for them and it’s fun to create sibling rivalry so I’m going to put them down here)
   Port Adelaide Power (A fucking joke/booo!)
7. The scum of the world
   Collingwood Magpies (fucking die)

NB: When the new teams come I am anticipating that Gold Coast will be in indifferent, unless they start winning because Freo needs a few flags first, and Greater Western Sydney will be in the new “I don’t like you because you’re from Sydney” category (which will be a new sub-group of #5 for the two NSW teams).

*I HAVE STOPPED TALKING ABOUT FOOTBALL NOW, IF PEOPLE WERE BORED/SKIPPINGTHAT BIT.*

So Saturday night was my first review job in Melbourne. I say job but I didn’t get paid, if anyone was wondering, but that does not matter/wasn’t why I’m doing it.

It was for the band “Cassette Kids” and I slightly toned my style down (just a bit!) because I wanted to make sure that everyone in Melbourne knows that I can actually write seriously when I try.

Here’s a shiny link!

I won’t bother repeating myself too much (count those 700 words as part of this blog so my comeback post seems long!) but it was really fun and Bec was doing photos (for fasterlouder, so they are here instead: 

http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/gallery/16802/Cassette-Kids.htm

(there’s a photo of me in there!)

I think that’s all for now. This was mostly about football but if you also read my review/looked at Bec’s photos then it will appear be bigger.

On Not Being Crazy

“…and I may be romantic

and I may risk my life for it

but I ain’t gonna die for you
you know I ain’t no Juliet
and I’m not gonna watch you

while you burn yourself out, baby
no, I’m not gonna stop you
‘cause I’m not the one that’s crazy…”

‘Ampersand’ – Who Killed Amanda Palmer (Amanda Palmer) – 2008

ATTENTION: I talk to myself lots. Especially in the shower/bathroom because of the same principle as singing in the shower/doing the occasional stupid thing in the bathroom like pulling a face at the mirror. That principle is that you are in an isolated space and you believe that nobody can see or hear you. I was wrong. The sudden, dreaded realisation that people actually can hear me talking to myself in there was the motivation for this post.

NB: This is also applicable to car singing/doing embarrassing things in your car. I talk to myself when I’m driving alone, too.

I don’t even know what I’m saying half of the time. It is strange. Words just come out and they probably mean something and they normally make coherent sentences or phrases but they make absolutely no sense to me at all. I believe that the cause is stress (in this case about being poor and not having a job).

SUBTEXT OF THE ABOVE:

“ATTENTION, PLEASE, PEOPLE I LIVE WITH: I AM NOT CRAZY.”

I used to hear voices, four very distinct ones, I gave them labels based on what they said to me; “good”, “evil”, “right” and “wrong”. I still get them when I’m mega-stressed out about something. That hasn’t been since first year uni when I thought missing one class was a bad thing. I have had counseling and was eventually told that I wasn’t “crazy” anymore. BY PROFESSIONALS! (Extreme, emotive formatting powers activate!)

AW YEAH!!!

Actually, thinking back on it, the concept is pretty offensive (If you haven’t read all my previous posts you may not realise that I get offended by everything!).

The reason why these things bother me is because of a societal norm that classifies these personality traits that I have as being “crazy” or “mad” and then classifies being those things as bad. Maybe I just have a super-conscience? Maybe my imagination runs riot in my subconscious (if you KNEW the dreams I had… wtf) and this effects my thought process.

In any case whatever it was, it is gone now and I automatically fight it off when it does come back using the most frustratingly powerful anti-logic ever of “you aren’t real”. Yes they are or I wouldn’t be writing a blog about it but hey: at least I’m not crazy!

The amount of times that I have said that I’m not crazy in this post is really starting to make me think otherwise.

Photo courtesy of Ashley Allen (http://www.flickr.com/photos/missashaley/)

UGH STRANGE COINCIDENCE! I was just talking to someone that I know (they do not read this blog so it is clearly OK to bitch about them) and they were all “ugh I have depression”. They’ve been saying this since forever but they don’t DO anything about it and they just tell everyone as if it’s some free pass to be an unpleasant, whiney, attention seeking bitch.

NOT. COOL. GUYS.

This reminds me of my friend, “D”, (not for David, I’m not talking about myself through an alias because I’m not crazy) who constantly gets angry at slutty female bitches? girls? PEOPLE who are sad so they say they have “depression” or who hate their weight so they say that they are “anorexic”. Um, pretty sure the point of anorexia is that you don’t admit that you HAVE a problem? Maybe? I’m no expert. Anyway these dumb moles? morons? girls? people? living constructs of what is wrong with western youth culture pretty much achieve the amazing feat of trivialising immensely serious, powerful and, life changing (normally for worse) DISEASES. So, to paraphrase “D”: No. I will not write ‘love’ on my arms, how does that help? It doesn’t, it tricks stupid, overly emotional people who are vaguely sad for wahtever reason into thinking that some word is helping them and it makes light of the problem. I focussed on depression here because I think that’s the most common but it is applicable to lots of things. Also vaguely related are the fake bisexual people. Or “trendsexuals” as I like to call them.

NB: AMAZING ORGANISATION THAT DOESN’T DO THE ABOVE AND IS ACTUALLY AMAZING:

Beyond Blue

If you are actually worried about depression and think you might have it and aren’t going to admit it because you actually have it and thus do not tell every person you meet about it so they give you attention, then go there and it should help you get on the right track (they also do boys, *face*. Male depression is even worse because MEN DON’T GET DEPRESSED. THEY MAN UP AND GET OVER IT).

NB: woman? frustrating cunt? Girl I was just talking to who inspired this post (if you do read this) slash anyone who may act like her. You are just sad, tell people that you are “sad” and, if you actually want to be happy, they will be able to cheer you up. (Eventually). Or call a hotline about it. I know people who have been crippled by this disease and you are spitting in their face and making their problems seem trivial and that is a really rude and wrong thing to do.

NOT. NICE. AT. ALL.

Side note tying in with the “regrets” post from yesterday; I think  I maybe acted like this as a1 teenager? I’m not sure because it was pretty freaking serious to me at the time but in hindsight it totally wasn’t that bad. Maybe? Who knows, I probably just regret it because it wasn’t “normal” and social pressures have got me this time. Anyway, this “regret” motivates me to talk to myself.

WHAT THE FRICKEN FRACK? WHEN DID THIS BLOG TURN INTO “DAVID’S LIFE STORY”? BORING!

I PROMISE I WILL BE BACK TO LIGHTHEARTED SOCIAL COMMENTARY SOON!

PS: REMEMBER THAT I’M NOT CRAZY!

PPS: I have confronted the anonymous girl about the issue so you don’t have to think that I am a bitchy, backstabbing, talking behind peoples back person.
PSPSPS: Even though I totally am one of those.

On Learning from Mistakes

Ugh brb… coffee.

OK GANG! Who, reading this right now, constantly thinks of times when, in hindsight, they were really really stupid and/or embarrassing. I’m not even talking about being awkward like in a previous post. This is when, at the time, you thought that you were hot shit/being really cool and now that you think about it, you’re like “FML.”

I have those moments every day. I think every second of my life up until I was about nineteen consists of one of those moments. I blame being a teenager.

However. I feel as if I still make very serious mistakes quite a lot of the time. For example, just now, I decided to make milo instead of coffee and whilst it is rather delicious, it has no caffeine. I regret this.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. Then I just accidentally kicked a chair with my smallest toe and that really, really hurts. It’s like the worst thing to possibly do. How many things can go wrong today? Brb going back to bed until this hell of a day is actually over.

…

THE NEXT DAY, EVERYONE.

These are seemingly trivial mistakes. They will be made better very very soon, the purpose of this post  is to discuss terrible mistakes. Mostly they pertain to social situations and explain why I didn’t have any friends when I was a child.

NB: I had SOME friends and they were amazing. I meant compared to know when I have a more than I have fingers and always  seem to forget to talk to them.

BACK ON TRACK.

The fact that most of my mistakes pertain to social situations means that they are rooted in the moment and are once off examples. This makes them very hard to learn from because you never know what variables are going to change tomorrow and the next day .etc.

THIS MEANS THAT I AM DOOMED IN EVERY SOCIAL SCENARIO FROM NOW ON.

Oh great, time to become a recluse. Except I am pretty sure that I consider being a recluse as a mistake.

Oh fu…
OK seriously though, we all make mistakes in a lot of things and learning from them is basically why we are all so smart (compared to the “old” usses [the plural of "us" not some retardation of "use"] anyway). It has nothing to do with what school we went to or how many times we pretended to go to class while we actually used facebook or watched DVDs and still got amazing grades. That is because we learned from the biggest mistake of our lives committed in first year. The mistake of thinking that actually attending class was actually important.

…

.

Except that one exam that I am pretty sure I didn’t know anything about.

I regret that.

So what is everyone’s current regrets?

Mine are:
Not moving to Melbourne earlier
Being a jerk to certain family members because “they started it”

Being a dick to my friends because they thought I was awesome
Being a dickhead to my superiors at my old work because I was a billion times smarter than them

Being a jerksnap to my superiors at Uni because they liked me

Thinking that, because I was achieving things whilst being a dicksnap, it was totally justified and OK.

The End.

PS: I am sure I am over-exaggerating how much of a jerkhead I actually was but I still regret things. I am pretty sure it would be like, one scenario in 700 that I was actually a dickjerk.

PSPS: I regret not having coffee for a second day in a row.

On Melbourne

8:30 AM. A house devoid of any other human life. The floorboards creak and ghostly wind rustles even more cliches through the trees, they are cliches because they are true. That’s exactly how to describe them. The creak is from the cats that have appeared because according to the routine, someone’s going to be eating soon and they might get to lick the plate in the sink afterwards. Cats are the auditors of the animal kingdom.

“Ahem. You made coffee before making toast today. This is different and I do not like it, so I will meow at you. I hope this trend does not mean that you will not stroke me after eating and before the shower. That would be most unpleasant.”

The kitchen has pink cupboards, by the way, and white (grey) linoleum floors and a reddish-pink plastic and metal table straight from the Post-War Australia boom. I can see the outlines of a bustling 1960s mum listening to the wireless while preparing a feast for her screaming kids and angry, possibly alcoholic, husband (who has a bowler hat and is reading a newspaper). They aren’t ghosts, they are memories that probably never even happened. Today it has one man (boy?) making toast and instant coffee with cats swarming around his feet. Meanwhile, as seen through the single kitchen window, the wind has blown someone’s shirt off the hill’s hoist and into a puddle. It doesn’t matter because it has been raining steadily for the past 24 hours anyway. This is probably why the cats are particularly affectionate today: they are bored and can’t play outside.

After showering the boy who likes to think that he’s a man loads up one of the two computers that aren’t his (like almost everything around him) and immediately signs into facebook, opens a new tab to check emails and then a third tab to a job hunter’s website. This is the morning routine. Sip coffee, laugh at an immature joke, archive spam, write a cover letter to a company that won’t ever be read, pretending to be someone who might be successful and, sip coffee. However, today is different. Today the boy who would be a man is packing his bag full of hopeful resumes that will never be read and is going to Melbourne.

Tracey Chapman is singing about fast cars and then Tegan Quin mentions that “it’s a little cold outside”. It is still raining outside but the boy has a scarf, that isn’t his, so he is warm.

He doesn’t waste money on the tram. Nobody checks tickets anyway because nobody buys them. If the occasional officer who hates himself comes along then surely someone else will be caught without one before him. Or he’ll get to his stop in time. It always happens this way. That’s the routine.

Flinders Street Station.

The boy begins to stroll down the Yarra River, asking wherever he can for someone to give him money on a regular basis for in return for completing some meaningless chore that he would probably hate. He passes men in suits and women in heels and people jogging in the rain, desperately trying to hold on to their youthful bodies. Meanwhile people who have held on to their youthful bodies (at what personal cost), jog next to them, yelling encouragement and trying to have a conversation with that they are stuck with because there’s nothing else to do.

Southern Cross Station.

A woman in a blue uniform is sweeping water all over the floor. So it doesn’t form puddles. The boy muses that he could do that. Anyone could do that. They just didn’t get picked, for better or for worse. The woman looks like she hates herself, a shame. In the department block with “hundreds of specialist stores” the boy is told hundreds of times to apply online. He probably already did it this morning. He leaves and heads down Collins Street where men in suits keep bumping into him because they are everywhere. It is probably “lunch”, although it feels more like 5:00 PM, if you get what I mean. Elizabeth street feels deserted after the previous gauntlet, maybe the artist didn’t have the scope to see both directions or maybe that’s the difference between lunch time and 5:00 PM.

Melbourne Central Station

“Hi, I was wondering if you guys were hiring.”

“Yep, if we are then the best place to go is actually our website. We do all our applications online now.”
“No worries! Thanks for your help”
“Have a good day!”

“You too!”

“Desperate, jobless bum.”
“Two-faced Bitch.”

The boy isn’t upset, he just looks sad because of the rain. It is impossible to be upset when you’re surrounded by ancient streets and the wind, blowing memories across the city and into the suburbs. That’s where the boy is now, he’s on a computer again making sure that all the places he went to have his details. They probably just get emailed straight into a bin. That’s where all the resumes that he collected when he had a job went.

Seemingly fed up with the routine of failure. The boy who is a man but thinks he doesn’t deserve it sends a few letters to places that he thinks will never read them. He is different this time.

“To whom it may concern,

I am amazing.”

The next day he wakes up to the same routine but pauses when he reaches the “open a tab to check emails” stage.

There are two letters in reply.

The general purpose of one is, “We weren’t really hiring but please come in for an interview.”

The other one is better, even if the news isn’t so good.

It was polite because the woman wanted to be. It was personal, not automated. It suggested that, out of 1000 resumes, one person actually read it with interest, even though she didn’t need to because she wasn’t hiring.

For 3 minutes, the little house with the same routine was the happiest place that the world has ever known.

The cats had no idea what to do.

On “The Internet” and “Maturity”

Google This! *motions to crotch*

I started with a penis joke. This blog is doomed.

OR MAYBE I WAS SETTING UP AN ENVIRONMENT WHEREIN I COULD DISCUSS MATURITY AND THE INTERNET!
(Because, you know, the title of this post TOTALLY doesn’t account for that)

Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (while refreshing facebook and applying for every job on seek.com.au) and I have noticed that the vast majority of my friends act like twats on the internet, compared to what they are like in person, anyway.

Clarification: By “twat” I don’t necessarily mean “unpleasant” or “unlikeable”, I’m just referring to the fact that, whether it’s in an email or on MSN, Skype or some other chat, or even on facebook and the like, the people that I know will say stupider things (usually to be funny), be bigger bitches, and just generally act a hell of a lot more immature.

Now usually I would not write a post like this based only on the experiences with my friends because that is not scientific! However, I fell as though this is an area that my context qualifies me to discuss. I have a hell of a lot of friends that I have met on the internet and have never actually met in person, a handful that I met on the internet but now know in person, a slightly smaller handful that I met in the real world but now only ever talk to on the internet and even fewer still that I actually met in the real world and I’m actually still friends with in the real world (aka I’m a loser). THIS MEANS THAT I HAVE PERSPECTIVE!!

…(For once).

Anyway, within these four groups of friends, there are people that I know very well, and it is  these people to whom I will be referring from now on.

There are people that I have known since forever who are really quiet and mature and nice in person and will go on facebook and say “LIKE OH MY GOD, DAVID!! YOU, LIKE, HAVE TO SEE THIS VIDEO CLIP! SOME DRUNK MOLE, LIKE, HELL FALLS ON HER UGLY FACE.”

This person doesn’t even say “like” in real life (unless they are discussing something that they actually, you know, like).

It makes me wonder what it is exactly about the internet that causes people to act in this manner. For a long time I thought that it was simply a forum without consequence, people acted immature because they could get away with it. There’s no judgment or repercussions on the internet because everyone is essentially anonymous, (even if they are a well known “screen name” or posting on Facebook) because of the separation of “reality” and the cyber world. However, because I am never content with anyone’s explanation for anything, including my own reason and because I always feel the need to periodically challenge ideas, even if it’s just to make sure that they continue to be reasonable, I noticed flaws in this explanation.

For one, if it is the fear of judgment that motivates maturity, then the construct of maturity is inherently false. The true, free self, acting without fear, is the ‘real’ person, even though it exists in only in a cyber-reality. For example, the idea that toilet humour is lowbrow is programmed into society, yet the internet is swarming with this so-called smut. I can’t spend one session online without reading at least one lowbrow joke, but I can go for multiple “real” days and never hear it muttered. The fear of judgement, that comes from another social construct (the moral compass), is something that I believe comes with intelligence. Children don’t know right from wrong until they are taught it and learn the human way. Humans, as a species, are one of the few that can feel guilt. The power of this emotion is infinite (just look at Organised Religion and name one doctrine that isn’t based on doing good out of fear of judgement, even if that isn’t necessarily in the original teachings of that religion’s philosophers).

This explains why the people I talk to mostly online appear to be more immature than my “real” friends, but it doesn’t account for my real friends acting “immature” when they’re online. I believe the explanation of this again lies in the social construct. The cyberworld has its unspoken rules, just as the real world does. There’s a cyber-norm matrix that is prevalent, just as “real” society is dominated by the heterosexual-norm matrix. When people log into the cyber-world, they change to adapt to the cyber-norm, out of fear of judgment. I usually do not even try to be eloquent on the internet, the vast amounts of trolls and the dreaded phrase “tl;dr” make the exercise almost pointless. If I could somehow manifest a compilation of everything that I’ve ever said online, I am positive that there would be a downward trend in my maturity as I “learned” the new, normal way to be.

Thoughts?

I mentioned in a previous post that I always feel as if I look like a moron or awkward, even though apparently I’m educated. I believe that this is why. By spending too much time online, as is the norm with my generation, my “real life” self has suffered a lapse in maturity. I am losing my eloquence because, these days, all my conversations are in

really short

phrases

with enter pressed

as much as possible

so that while I am chatting

I give the impression

of a flowing conversation.

This is probably also why

my grammar skills

have gone to hell.