Austentacious

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a sane man in possession of a Jane Austen novel must be want of a knife.

...a pretty decent post-opening. A lame, semi-witty wordplay-y title and everything set up for a frolicking, pretentious, comedically dubious rant just liked I've blogged a thousand times before. Well maybe 50 odd times at most. But still.

The trouble is that's as far as I got. I've been struggling to think of something to post for the last five or six hours. After a meandering walk around the block, some msn whinging, a number of distractastic Facebook stops and four attempted post starts, I still have nothing. This isn't necessarily unusual, procrastination is my middle name, something which me and my parents are still on frosty terms about. But 6 hours is a very long time to procrastinate. The alarm bells that this is more than just my regular *belphegoric laziness are the three empty glasses sitting next me.

Not that they were recently filled with absinthe or anything, blinding alcoholism can wait until I have an ill-fated jab at post-impressionism or am I'm REALLY running out of ideas for a post. No, the glasses were only ever full of water. The worrying part is that I only ever get up to get glasses of water when I really don't want to do something. I've barely tasted water in this room since my vain attempt at studying for exams last year.

(Jarring tense shift.)

For a while... a very long while... I tried to ignore the niggling uncertainty in my gut and think of something to write, a regular post. I thought of a few ideas for future posts that I just couldn't get going with, and even wrote half of a wangsty poem. But then, partly at Crucible Tongs' suggestion (even though I think he intended something completely different), I decided I wanted my little corner of D.I.D to be more cathartic and sincere than my other blog, and that I should write what I'm feeling rather than the fun but kind of stagey tangents I normally go on. That's kind of what a blog is for. I'm feeling slightly uncomfortable about doing this for two reasons:

1)I feel like I'm being self-indulgent and uninteresting. Groundless bitching on the internet like this, especially in a group blog with other people, may be slightly cathartic for me but is just awkward at worst and a boring at best for anyone reading. If I wanted to pour out my feelings... well more drip them out, I've been pretty emotionally bland the last couple of months... I'd have a diary.

2)I'm not very good at it. Without the glorious excess of pretentious prose or jamming my writing with as many unnecessary pop-culture references as Don McClean at a Family Guy convention, my writing feels naked and dull.

I have an inferiority complex about this blog. I don't think I can be anywhere near as witty, profound, whimsical, insightful or sincere as the rest of this awesome group. I know this probably isn't completely justified, but I am really struggling to post at the moment. I felt that any of my normal rants I posted wouldn't be good enough, which is why I'm trying to be honest and writing this mess instead. Even then now it's probably coming across as a feeble attempt and plagiarising much more talented bloggers. I should probably stick with the stuff I know but at the moment though, this is the best I can do.

I guess as much as I love mediums of expression, I don't tend to actually express myself. Both my art and writing can be super-happy-lol-fun, about an issue I care about, or to do with the angsty and marcarbe themes that I have no real familiarity with. It's rarely about myself or things I know. I guess I just don't figure that I'm interesting enough. Sometimes I wonder if arts, literature, science, entertainment, philosophy and all the great personal tragedies and expressions of our time are constructs. Um, damacus, you say, a lot people have thought that, it's fuelled a good chunk of human contemplation and arts and at worst is pretty standard 14 year old emo fair. But not because we're ultimately meaningless, or because of the omnipotent power of a god, or because death is inevitable, or because we're pushed by evolutionary imperative, or because we all share a subconscious, or because we're secretly sexually attracted to our mothers, or because aesthetic is all that there is, or because we all need to be free from bourgeois tyranny, or because the end justifies the means. Maybe we're all just a bunch of creatures with brains too big for our boots who are trying desperately to keep ourselves occupied, and really just want to have some chocolate and then go to sleep. Actually, I'm not even sure if we really want anything. The secret of life is that there is no secret. Life is in it's very nature... normal. I don't know if that's liberating, depressing or just a little bit disappointing. Maybe all three, but I think probably the last one.

I have to go to bed now because my father came blustering out of bed to hollar at me. More on this later, maybe.

Sorry about this, I'll regret it in the morning.

Night.

*Yes, Belphegoric is a made up word.

The hardest part

Well howdy fellow procrastinators and those stuck between that terrible void of being bored to the point that they want to hoist themselves off their chairs to find something more interesting to do, and being too lazy to do so.

My dear friend Damacus has so thoughtfully directed me toward this collection of people who cannot control their ranting ways in everyday life, and so must relieve their rant-bladder (what a delicious soudning metaphor) by writing it all down. This is an idea that suits me perfectly. For too long have I bothered innocent friends with the irritating sound of my voice while releasing all of my built up anger or troubles; now they will fall on the eyes of those who enjoy reading such useless rants.

I have never blogged before and although I know that there is an endless supply of things to talk about built up in my brain, as Damacus so rightfully pointed out, it is very difficult to produce something interesting to talk about; it is the hardest part. For this reason, my first post is simply an introduction of myself, and of some of the many things that will no doubt come up within this blog, especially from me.

I am Lieutenant Renji. Religion, although it can be usefull to many people, is generally stupid. Not the whole faith part, I can understand that; but most of the rules and beliefs are pretty pointless. I know that Damacus has some strong ideas so no doubt you will be hearing from him; there is another one who is by far the best person to listen to when discussing religion, but I am not sure if he has joined our blog team of awesomeness. Damacus... you know who I am talking about. Relationships are pretty interesting in my opinion. I often get random thoughts about all types of relationships so I'm sure some posts about that are expected. Now, although I am fairly terrible at spelling, I have a strong dislike for poor grammar. I don't mean typos where a capitol letter is left out, or a comma is accidently used rather than a full stop; I mean people using the word 'then' in place of the word 'than', and things of similar nature. I know it is stupid, but that is probably the thing I hate most in the world so that will appear somewhere in most posts about anything. Of course there are many other things, but that is basically me.

Lucky for you readers, I must stop writing. My true calling is beckoning me towards it; registers! If it wasn't for work I would have been talking about nothing for another hour. This wasn't even a useful rant about something, it was seriously about nothing.

Thanks for reading. I hope this boring post does not deter you from my future writings.
-Renji

Welcome to forever. Feel free to look around.

Hello mysterious anonymous bloglings. How are you tonight?
My name is Anna***, and there are a lot of things I don't know.
For example, I don't know who any of these other bloggers are. Really. Okay, so I kinda sorta know Damacus in a topsy turvy interwebz-related way, and he does appear to have spectacular hair, which is pleasing to me. But what if Damacus is actually some sort of cyborg in witty male youth form planning to consume my soul and take over the world. WHAT IF?!?!?!
One needs to consider these things.

Anyway. What? I'm sorry. It's almost 2am and I shouldn't be awake. I recently got back from a music festival in the middle of nowhere, where I spent most of my time talking to a man who looked distinctly like Gene Wilder (circa Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) but was wearing a skirt and suit jacket, dancing in the mud and having my tarot read by a man with bits of cotton sewn into his dreads. The fact that I was perpetually stoned probably didn't help, either.

But here are some other things I don't know:

- How to swing dance. This is a problem, as far as I can tell. Suppose, right, that one day you're walking down the street, and the Duke of York comes up to you and challenges you to a swing dancing battle, and you can't swing dance, and you make a fool of yourself - THAT is going to be embarrassing.
Now, okay, I know what you're thinking, meetings with the Duke of York don't usually happen in everyday life, but one day when you bump into him unexpectedly, you're going to wish you had those swing dancing lessons. AND DON'T YOU COME CRYING TO ME THEN.

- How to stop talking. I am a very bad blogger. I have a bunch of blogs that keep amassing full of rants about various unnecessary topics (see: why balloons are good, the benefits of men wearing glitter, my issues with improper use of grammar, my neurotic fear of fish and most sea creatures), and there should probably be a point when I just concede that no one actually wants to hear about any of these things and should JUST BACK AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD. Case in point: I've been an arts/music student for the past year, and I turned up to one of my very first tutes to discuss "Saving Private Ryan". The tutor asked the class which scenes emphasised the use of "homosocial bonding" (this is a crap term that could easily be replaced with "thinly veiled homoeroticism" but they like to pretend that there is a technical way of saying it) (there is not, they just mashed words together, and I prefer the original way). Anyway. The point is, ten minutes later, I had explained to everyone how crap the film was for killing off all of the good actors, all for the purpose of saving Private Ryan, who was played by Matt Damon, who is a loser, just so they could promote their patriotic rubbish.
Everyone was staring at me.
It was awkward.
Don't follow my lead, please.

- Anything at all about political anything. I often get in arguments with my friend, who is a Young Liberal, about politics. I like to say I am left-wing. Which is all well and good, until someone asks you why you're left-wing and why such-and-such is so incorrect and why blah-blah-blah is wrong, and please support your theories on yadayada because I have this pie chart that clearly shows the increase of somethingorother under so-and-sos government and---
LOOK SHUT UP, I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR PIE CHART.
Also, I get distracted really easily. And "Young Liberal" reminds me of the show "The Young Ones" and "pie chart" just reminds me of "pie". Pie with or without inverted commas.
I'm not picky.
But I sure could go some English absurdist comedy and some baked goods right now, HOW ABOUT YOU????


Anyway, the point is.... Well, I'm not sure what the point is, but I apologise in advance for my ranting and raging.
Oh, and I also apologise for my unbridled bitterness and overuse of capital letters.
I'm really okay in real life...

Goodnight.

xx

*** Incidentally, my name isn't really Anna.**
** OR IS IT?!?!?!?!!*
* No. It is not.****
**** BUT IS IT REALLY?!?!??!

oh dear crap i cant think of one

The tragedy of today’s tabloid media most specifically being its trivial version of so called factual information has finally become clear to me. It has taught my mother to lie. Not just the a little fib but full blown in your face life changing stories just to teach me a life lessons and to keep me from doing anything remotely enjoyable. I cannot simply believe the vast amounts of mothers of drug victims, violent abuse, car accidents and teenage pregnancies that she has met.

The stories are rich and well crafted. They involve individuals apparently met in my infant years a convenient period where my memory is lacking. For some odd reasons these transfers of great knowledge occur with chance encounters at supermarkets and shopping centres places I would not dare be seen with my mother. The whole thing just feels like a real life version of today tonight. The dark and ominous music is stuck on repeat and the smudged lens guilting me into changing my life.

It is at this point my mother’s greatest flaw is realised. You have to be of rather low intelligence to believe a word of the rubbish fed by current affairs shows. It’s the kind of viewing that only can appeal to the common house wife (or as required in modern times, house man) just dreaming for that exciting escape of mischief and disaster within their domestic boundaries to once again feel the thrill of life outside of the home and away from the clutches of slobbering children. It is that finger grip that holds off insanity. So in this sense my mother has chosen an audience of herself because I can promise you nobody else is listening.

Avante Garde Analysis #1

OK, as I believe this blog was MY brainchild *take that Ben* I believe it's appropriate I get a segment... meaning I do a themed post but can't come up with anything else next week so give up and instead deduce victors in bloody combat between various foodstuffs with a sharply declining level of wit.

So without further ado,
the Avante Garde Analysis!

I did a rhyme... classy

Alright, well we all know cinema has hit it's zenith, what with the romantic comedy becoming increasingly and distressingly identical to the nuances of reality and even causing drastic shift in current society (Men are becoming more like Hugh Grant in relationships... they fake them more often).

Sci Fi is no exception. The recently mind blowing 'Avatar' has audiences in hypnotic spending fits. It's like grossing out more people than Titanic I even heard and without a lame love ballad to boot. It has hair raising paraplegic oriented action, convincing artillery fire and finally appeals to the undiscovered frontier of female interest. That's right ladies, if 2001 was too phallic and the tragedy behind a jealous robot separating a pair of gay astronauts by turning one into the orbital death infant in what could be perceived as a bizarre metaphor for the removal of women in reproduction was just downright offensive, you'll love Avatar. It features a breath of fresh air in the ass kicking spunk of 'forgettable blue lady unassisted by complicated alien name', plenty of steamy, skinheaded, muscle bound, propaganda inhaling male chauvanists and plenty of blue, scientifically proven to assist in figure definition!! Imagine that!

Well, let's get to the analysis. Avatar opens with sleeping man Jake Sully who whizzes about in his magical wheel-space-chair, just one of the many phantasmagorical inventions of marketting genius, Cameron's, fully realised world. Jake 'Wheelywheels' Sully as the viewer will grow to affectionately call him informs us that his brother was working on building blue men to wear to impress his sweetheart (Cue Sigourney Weaver cameo, steaminess guaranteed!) at his college's upcoming halloween party. Biff Tannen plays his time travelling rival in love and tragically defeats him for the sake of narrative continuity in a swordfight even Shakespeare would clamour for those chocolate coated icecreams while watching. Thus begins the overlay of Avatar, people, especially Tannen (Colourfully lampshaded in Back to the Future II) can be right great trumping bastards a good lot of the time. This theme permeates the film through the tragic innocence of Wheelie, the lovable talking space-chair-wheel-machine in contrast with the films believable villain, a dementia riddled Bruce Wayne who forgot about batman and has begun to lust after valuable alien minerals that when suspended in mid air, moderately augment the taste of certain coffees.

The film takes a drastic turn as Jakestromverggiola IX leaves his current plane of existence and enters Pandarama, a Nirvana like state where everything appears as colourfully delectable bamboo plants with the offchance of being eaten by a giant space turtle moose zombie. Jake's response is heart cuttingly cold indifference as he wheels himself into the landing bay where he'll no doubt pay an extra $3.99 for the paperback whose purchase he flirted with for too long in the Earth-hell airport. This is where the narrative concealed beneath the well imagined, constantly present and no doubt intoxicatingly interesting for those willing to invest the 11 months and their virginity in learning the various necessities of plot omitted for the film due to drastic last minute censorship involving removal of a scene in which Tree-mum-god makes a filthy allusion to Michael Jackson's tragic passing, flora of Futurama kicks in. John passes a large bipedal mechanoid pilotted by a brash and arrogant, yet strikingly attractive 12 year old boy. Jerome's dream is made manifest and the reader's imagination is brought to life ready to come up with ingenious weaponry to return to institutions of education with for supreme justice.

This is the brilliance of Avatar, in all it's postmodern glory. Avatar uses the viewer's obsession and disturbing lust for gigantic robot suits to draw it in. It never really matters whether Jim and Carnivourous Big Bird win against their militant father at all. The true story is actually of the responsibility when using Transformers reimagined for the 21st century, unlike that movie that features two people running from scrap metal...

James is never content with his sickening and grossly overweight blue body. He falls for the illusion of relationships with bitchy temperamental blue women, eco terrorism of the highest order in the name of a twisted sense of justice learned from talking trees, sticking his neck genitals in the various wildlife of Oz and the search for Pantomime's next pop idol. The realisation that his real dream is to confront his father, a combination of He-man's He-Man and Street Fighter's Guile with face markings from something that Cameron obviously thought had more significance than I did. This father figure casts a castration metaphor in his staunch defiance of his son and his terydactyl 'special friend''s need to pilot a Decepticon. I will transcribe the oedipal hangar scene right now.

Jeff: 'Dad, I wanna ride that one'
Army mandad: 'You?!? Stupid wheelybin, you can't ride anything!' (wheelchair flashes making dad's intensifying insanity more prevalent)
Armymandad: 'See this young lady, (Scoffs at masculine humour) this is a dogtag, it's what dogs wear on their necks and earlobes'
James: I know, but doesn't it have a (pause for dramatic effect) secret (zoom for suspenseful effect) function? (Pivot for FANTASTIC effect)
Armymandad: Yeah, you can put your keys on it and keys start the giant robo boy I like to climb inside and hurt things... like I hurt your mother... seven years ago... inside a giant boy(subtle foreshadowing, you'll catch it on the second viewing, one of Cameron's ploys at repeated viewings)

Clearly we see the complicated relationship between father and son. Evidently, one has created the other, and the other, the product of the other. You follow? Well when Johannesburg loses his dog, and subsequently dog tag and subsequently keys to home and mech suit, he suffers the ultimate castration at the hands of his father. His father, being the expert on literate method and analytical psychology, points this out with his unfathomable charm in majority of his screentime, often lending to the fan theory that his unmatchable and intelligent wit makes him future Seth Macfarlane cryonically frozen, chipped, baked and served at a moderate temperature.

Well the movie continues, some noteworthy pivoting occurs (in the 3D version audience participation is encouraged by the characters, a sing along section is also present in which the entire audience sings in that hispanic sounding language the aliens speak and are graded ala singstar by a giant blue Simon Cowell who occupied the role of All Father in no more than 11 deleted scenes). The movie becomes a riotous journey of love for nature and all that crap any self respecting gun junky didn't leave a Quake LAN match to come see. But the final scene in which Jehova confronts his father in his father's mech, 'Big Man Inside Boy' a homage to the naming conventions of popular 80's mecha where machines would be named after mesopotamian deities with such sly plot relevance only the mentally distressed writers knew of them. Jormungandr uncharacteristically attacks his father and tells him how he feels.

In epic to the death combat as a final 'get the fuck outta my cinema' to the women in the audience as a delighted and shockingly sexist Cameron emerges from the seat in front. Cameron proceeds to rewind the movie and explain what he was trying to achieve with each individual scene. This is not received well.

Cameron discovers that film goers don't like to be treated like morons and constantly beaten over the head with a theme of demonised humanity that stopped being edgy a millennium ago before we woke up and smelled the Panorama roses. By now the film is allowed to end and Cameron apologises and buys everyone drinks and hires out a whole floor of a swanky apartment complex for a party with disappointing food and underwhelming music, but those comfortable pouffes that you must only be legally allowed to have 9 of because there're never enough for everyone and you have to wait for someone to get up and then deal with their friends you pretend not to know. Everyone has a better time there than being forced to discuss the movie at length with 'that theatre going companion everyone seems to have' and leave promptly at 11:30 (cameron is filming Titanic 2 tommorrow, half the runs have the proper ending in a devilish plan to obtain repeated viewings by those obsessive Titanic fans). You're left to help clean up, Cameron places his hand on yours, you pretend it didn't happen, depart and then everytime he ends up sitting in front of you at the movies you say hi, but don't share your popcorn again.

I'd give it 4 stars and a Jupiter that's only visible for a third of the year.

THE END

...woah... They'll never let me do that again, oh and did I make it very obvious I don't know Cameron's first name?

Oh well, bye

my nam iz legion 4 we R maneee!!!!!!

In the early nineties, a team of dynamic youths from diverse backgrounds overcame their differences through the power of friendship.

Bonded forever by the glutinous Clag of love, they played on each others strengths and defended their foibles, working time after time to achieve astonishing feats of good. Together, they summoned something much greater than the sum of each of them as individuals summed together without the togetherness. Though the original Planeteers are now mostly condemned to tax exile and CIA run anti-socialist Detention Centres, their spirit of teamwork live on. As do their magical rings, though they were ceased by the Chinese government after the fall of the iron curtain and have since ironically used to level several Himalayas in preparation for the Beijing Olypics.



I think I just killed the blog before it started.

WELCOME to D.I.D a Mess, the most intellectually stimulating, technologically astute web 2.0 collective blogging project ever undertaken since that little paper clip on Word invented the internet. We're not quite sure what the tone of this is going to be, or how it's going to work. One of our ideas was to include experimental creative writing bits. Of course, this will also be a sizzling smorgasboard of more bloggity posts, whether anecdotatastic, funny, farcical, filosophical, or dripping with soul-tearing existentialism.

Oh, and the title! I hate to explain someone else's reference, but my fear of this looking like an incontinence support group is overwhelming. D.I.D= Dissociative Identity Disorder. It's a multi-writer blog. GEDDITT?!

If anyone's interested in joining we'd love to talk to you, just comment or contact us.

Well, this draws my little welcome to close. Just think. It can ONLY go up from here.



*My heartfelt apologies to Messers Gadarenes, Jintao, Tong, and Paper Clip.