Sunday, November 14, 2010

Reminiscing with Uncle Tongs

*falls out of rocking chair and drops pipe full of embers down shirt and managing to curse profusely and with unmatched innovation at the same time* Well, I'm gonna try a segment again, because they don't last and I can blame a lack of quality on subject matter. Hello and welcome to Reminiscing with Uncle Tongs... because it makes me sound like a loveable old slave from Song of the South or something. *NOTE: This is NOT an example for the level of insensitivity in this post, I'm talking about MY childhood, a series of crude exaggerations of sexual inadequacy... I'm liable to lose my shit at some point and put Mel Gibson to shame, THIS IS YOUR WARNING*

Okay so I got bored and decided to catch a moth alive today, because I'm of good old(er by the day *violent shuddering*) Gen Y, I've been conditioned by the mass media to associate any and all barbarism concerning animals with Pokemon. Nice one guys! Now you know the only one's kicking up a stink about cosmetic testing had hilariously deprived childhoods that never involved the excruciating complex of having 'Catching 'em All!' carved into their brains right before starting off by deciding on the two. fucking. pokemon. you. could. never. ever. own.

Anyway, I've decided, I'm on holidays and to stop me planning the slayings of D-list celebrities I'm gonna play through Pokemon until I get stuck, lose interest or rip my laptop in half because Sand Attack used nine times is FUCKING CHEATING!!!

Oh yeah, I'm playing this illegally too, if you don't realise, but fuck the Nintendo corporation, I bought enough pokemon related shit as a child to retire them all into next week. So here I go, I'm booting this up...


Yeah, it's the newfangled colourful homosexual one, for the record, I wanted BLUE because I'm obsessive over these things

Oh god, how quaint... 'New Skool Pokemon for pussy children who don't know shit about anything' is explaining how to play... If I recall, you press A to talk, B to back out of a selection like I wish I could've done with all my past relationships and directions to walk in them... kids these days suck, you know it. ALRIGHT, LISSEN TO ME GAME AND LISSEN UP GOOD. I HAD 150 FUCKING POKEMON BY LIKE THE END OF 1999 AND THE ONLY REASON I DIDN'T GET ANY CRED FOR IT WAS BECAUSE YOU BASTARDS TACKED THAT MEW THING THAT LOOKS LIKE ABORTION, DON'T. TELL. ME. HOW. TO. DO. THIS.

Well, the ball is rolling, fates are turning... you get the point


'So you'd basically flip out if during the throes of passion I accidentally yelled Digimon Doctor?'


Oh for fuck's sake, I do this to escape the horrors of my reality, I don't need everyone over 60's definition of manhood haunting me here as well...


I want to say NO, I really do, it destroys all social convention... but I'd have to spend another four minutes typing out an alias and working out how the hell I find lower case letters


What the hell is rivalry at the infant stage? Or is it just some other fucked up element of this backwards culture of pitting everything against everything for NO GOOD REASON?!?

Okay, so I call my rival GARY because I'm a purist slut and TWATSODWITHBETTERHAIRTHANME didn't fit. I go downstairs and head off to Prof. Oak's mysterious back shed 'lab' for my free goddamn pokemon to nurture into a merciless killing machine without a hitch, oh, apart from the fact that it makes that funny noise that sounds like a beepy frustrated groan when you try to walk into space occupied by some other character... yeah after eleven minutes of going 'Oh, Ash's mum, OH, OH, OH'... WHAT?!? I'm trying to catch the perspective of immaturity alright?!?, I'm allowed. I arrive at a building that smells like sweat and acetone.

I enter the lab... and the music changes, to some stupid upbeat theme that isn't the battle music... or that really epic Route #-- song that I had for my ringtone for ages because it made me cry with nostalgia... Well, I do what anyone else about to receive their FIRST. REAL. POKEMON. would do... I check out every bookcase looking for free potions, hey, free shit... and I might find whatever kind of distressing pornography that I have no doubt in my mind the old professor is into...

CUT TO THE CHASE, I pick squirtle, that thing's a beast. It evolves and gets guns. I'm pretty sure I could wipe one of these small towns off the map with those... For all you bitching about charmander because it's a dragon, grow up. Charizard is a sexual fantasy that can never happen... The fire breathing dragon WILL. NEVER. BE. YOUR. LOYAL. COMPANION. TO. FEND. OFF. BULLIES. AND. LONELINESS. Get over it. Oh and as for Bulbasaur, it's a matter of consistency. You see, Squirtle at least rhymes with 'turtle'... Bulbasaur DOESN'T rhyme with 'cancerous frog'. Cry me a river... you seriously fucked up people for not picking Squirtle...


'Don't choose me, Don't choose me, Don't choose... Oh shit... SHITSHITSHITSODDINGFRIGGEN!!! NO, PLEASE, DON'T LET THIS KID EVEN TOUCH ME, LOOK INTO HIS EYES?!?!? DO YOU SEE A SOUL?!? DO YOU?!?!?!


Just so he knows what kind of person he's dealing with... FOR THE REST OF HIS NO DOUBT SHORT AND HORRIBLY-LADEN-WITH-AWKWARD-SOCIAL-OBLIGATION-TO-AVERT-MY-TEARS-LIFE

GARY goes ahead and takes Bulbasaur. Dick move, GARY, dick move.

And what's the first thing that cocky little bitch does?


Rubs in how my sense of style is more than a decade old now...

So now I'm thrust into yielding my Pokeginity... at least I've known the guy all my life... and so I awkwardly fumble around to determine what I'm comfortable with and trying recall stuff I've seen in the movies. He gets a little weirded out when I try to figure out what other people have done in this situation through subtle questioning and struggling not to look like I'm defensively obsessing over some of Gary's more experienced past RIVALS (because that's what the kids must be calling it now).

Like men of this land of pokemon, we duel to determine our fate...


Yeah, I'm already in tears... I get to watch my first friend get eaten alive while I flail around panicking uselessly... "JUST RUN, WE CAN'T WIN"


TAIL WHIP IS A FUCKING ATTACK. IF I WHIPPED SOMEONE WITH AN APPENDAGE IT WOULD BE CLASSED AS ASSAULT MAKING IT A DAMAGING ATTACK. SERIOUSLY, THEY USED IT AS AN ATTACK IN THE SHOW ALL THE FRIGGEN TIME?!?!?!

So yeah, I lose horribly and everyone is kind of looking in stunned silence at this display of terrifying inadequacy and what it says about the fact that I'll be a voting member of society one day... then they recall this is pokemon land and there's nothing remotely close to democracy, any ol' criminal organisation can run the show... A series of increasingly teary and reluctant retries tricks GARY into commanding his toad to fight like an acid dropping hippy... I'm serious, his attacks just started to miss me regardless... Forcing the game to let me win WAS my scheme however, so I'm cool with this... but for his passive aggression in letting me win I might go let FREND-1 relieve himself in GARY's room later...

So I leave the town... CLEARLY NOONE MISSES ME... and proceed to let FREND-1 eat as much of the native species he feels inclined to. Introducing a grossly dominant species to a fragile ecosystem gets me stupidly drunk on my newfound sense of power over a world that's wronged and ridiculed me for so long. In a stupor of violence I begin nourishing myself on the prospect of an unholy beast army cleansing the world of it's sins... Through imprisonment and extensive waterboarding I convince a small bird that it was placed on this earth as a saviour for all of mankind. Now it can only say it's own newly christened name, over and over again, but it still has claws, which will do nicely... 'FREND-2, FREND-2' it screeches in a euphoric joy as it pulls mice apart at my whim.

Now that society is aware of my deviance, I'm left with no choice but to flee to the woods. The woods are infested with filth. The filth of man's progeny. You see in pokemon land people don't have children, they have Bug Catchers, which sit among detritus the bottom of the predatory chain.


'THEY WILL NEVER FIND YOUR BODY'

Oh god, OH GOD?!? Is there even a pokemon god?!?! NO, I'm in no fit state for worship... I've just assisted my FRENDS in the slaying and subsequent partial consumption of a child?!... oh and I like, totally threw a pokeball at his caterpie, which is a hangable offence in pokemon land... I think I need some serious help, I have a condition... OAK! He's a professor!! Surely he'll know what to do... No maybe I'm taking this all way too seriously, all I need to do is hide what's left of the body and then I'll just chill out and go play some Pokemon on my laptop, yeah, that's it. I've got a feeling everyting will turn out... juuuuuuuuuuust fine...

Mel, the ball is in your court ;)

TONGS AWAY

Friday, November 12, 2010

reflections...

So after what can be described as the end of a very successful period of anything but study I feel it is only approriate to look back and just have look at some of the time wasting creations. Doodling is always the best last resort option becuase it can be just done right over the top of your study notes.

Each exam period brings about a new trend to my doodling crazy so to keep you up with the latest trends I will provide you with a piss poor excuse of a blog. So the fashion of the field for the spring of 2010 was arrows. Nobody really saw it comming they had been out for a while but you find once you draw one arrow it must be followed by another arrow. I mean an arrow cant point to nowhere hence another arrow must be drawn. The trend was enourmous and covered many practice exams and blank sheets of paper that could have been used for good. So now I shall leave you with just a small taster of what was on offer...


 ...who would have ever thought ethics were boring

 phyiscs is a sorry excuse of subject and the purple pen really just makes this one so much more than a doodle....


 ... Some of my earlier work


To be honest a tree wasted its life for this peice of paper it came to no use and it is only here out of my own guilt.

So I hope you enjoyed this taster of boredem
MF

Monday, November 8, 2010

"There's always someone else having a worse day... like being chained to a wall in someone's sex dungeon."

So I just got out of the bath, and it made that suctioning noise that makes you cringe. You know that noise? Maybe you don't, but it's a kind of sucking, suctioning noise of water draining that happens at odd Tourettes-esque bursts and makes you feel slightly uneasy and embarrassed, like something dreadfully awkward is happening that you're not REALLY at fault for, but you ARE related to.
I felt embarrassed. I felt embarrassed FOR the bathtub.

Anyway, the point of my bathtub rant is probably due to the fact that I've been sucked into, as the french say, L'Exam Study Void.
I spent the entire day today listening to 100 different excerpts from approx. forty different pieces, over and over again, trying to differentiate between them. When I wasn't doing that I was researching the composers of them.
Suffice to say, that if I have to listen to one more minimalist/serialist/pre-emptive electronic piece with a soprano shrieking over the top, I will attempt to headbutt myself into a fine paste.

The other issue with studying is also obviously procrastination. There are far too many things I don't want to consider the amount of time I've spent doing... them.. I don't... want to... consider the amount of time I've spent doing things... too... much... I don't --- LOOK, YOU FUCKING GET THE POINT, GO AND PUT A SQUIGGLY GREEN LINE UNDER IT AND CONSIDER REVISING IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.

But anyway. For your reading pleasure, I will consider the things I don't want to consider that I've done too much of that shouldn't be things you should do much of at all.
Yeah. We got there in the end.

LIST OF THE THINGS I JUST MENTIONED ABOVE THAT I DON'T WANT TO WRITE AGAIN.

Playing Procrastination Tetris

So I got this macbook about six months ago. It and I besties. We became better besties when I actually learned how to use it properly and got a bunch of programs installed on it that were halfway useful. Anyway, the thing is, with these programs I got tetris. I haven't played Tetris since I was about seven and spent time at my Dutch grandparents' house, playing the games on my Papa's ancient computer. Interesting fact: Being yelled at and berated by a morbidly obese man with a combover and glasses in a some kind of thickly veiled version of English rife with Dutch swear words because you didn't put the right shape in the right play, while a small and feisty elderly lady in clogs force feeds you ostrich meat and Dutch liquorice is not fun for anyone, in any country, regardless of your heritage. And I shit you not about this previous description.
Anyway. So it just sat there on my desktop for a while, and I didn't think about it. Until I had to write a 3000 word essay. It started with one game. "I'll just see how I go", I thought (foolishly). I, of course, lost at high speed. But then I needed more.
The thing they don't tell you about Tetris is, it's like crack. That should be the tagline for it, in fact: Tetris - JUST LIKE CRACK.
You need it ALL THE TIME. You need to beat that last score, there are bright coloured blocks falling, FASTER AND FASTER, AND IF YOU DON'T SLOT THEM INTO A GEOMETRICALLY CORRECT PLACE, FAILURE IS IMMINENT. YOU MUST PLAY. YOU MUST WIN. But you can't. The battle is endless.
The other warning I can offer about Tetris is: it is scarily similar to a gambling addiction. Quit while you're ahead and the loan shark hasn't broken your knee caps.

Procrastination Weepin' and Gorgin'

Oh, how I wish this one weren't true.
But alas, it is.
If a career could be made out of weeping and eating (and yes, I do mean this SIMULTANEOUSLY. You cannot just WEEP and NOT GORGE. It doesn't work like that. The full effect can only be achieved by simultaneously gorging oneself and crying like Bridget Jones while you lament about all men being bastards through a mouthful of cheesecake). ANYWAY. If a career could be made out of weeping and eating, I would be the CEO. If there were a weeping and eating test, I WOULD BLITZ IT.
JT, I could cry you a river, baby, and pack my sinuses with camembert simultaneously.
Okay, so let me straighten things out: I don't actually cry THAT much. Just like, contrary to popular belief, I don't actually vom EVERY TIME I DRINK. The nickname "Vomasaur" is at LEAST mildly deceptive.
Also, I am not a thousand pound Chunk Monster. I just really like food, but my actually body type could best be described as "frail, jagged and birdlike".
The thing is, at high levels of stress, and anxiety, and general world bitterness, I occasionally have finished my day at uni, bought a block of chocolate, and wept in my car on the peak hour drive home, while listening to "Bittersweet Symphony" and stuffing my head with Cadbury.
Yeah. judge me.
But when I get my PHD in Weepin' and Gorgin', THEN WHO'LL BE LAUGHING?!??!!
A: not me. I will be doing the aforementioned.

Procrastination General Screaming and Bitterness.

Depending on who you speak to, I seem to come across in a number of different ways:
1. Friendly, exceptionally hyperactive and bubbly.
2. Vaguely careless, loud, overly sweary.
3. Generally bitter towards everything and everyone, including (and especially) inanimate objects and random passers by, and excessively sarcastic.

Sometimes I mix them up, just to keep things fresh.
I have spent many a day recently in my stompin' and clompin' boots, and unnecessarily see-through/lacey-ridiculous clothing, glaring bitterly behind my sunglasses at innocent people in the street, and throwing back double shot coffee after double shot coffee.
A nice girl takes my change. EYES NARROW.
A charity worker asks for money. JAW CLENCHES.
A slight breeze blows a strand of hair out of place. INSTANT DOOM FOR ALL MANKIND, ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY WALK INTO MORDOR, ETC. ETC. FIERY EYE OF DOOM.

Anyway. I really, REALLY need the exam period to end.
Well. Right now I have to go write about some Australian composer who essentially wrote a piece about the Northern Territory that spends the entire time wanking itself off with Australian culture.

YOU HAVE A GOOD NIGHT.
xx Anna

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

VALIDATE ME. CRITIQUE ME.

I should be studying for exams, but I'll pass anyway. Why? Because I'm a middle class white male. THAT'S WHY *blocks ears*

Anyway lately I've been hating on everything I write seriously rather than for artistic merit. In the last few days though I think I've been improving... but that shouldn't be for me to decide, so here's some stuff I'm chipping away at. This stuff's all pretty unfinished... but less unfinished than my usual angsty verbal wank. So judge and puke at the lack of stylistic control.

-STUFF THAT'S SOMEWHAT THOUGHT OUT-

Our hearts are on our sleeves
Because it's all we need
Fisherman's tales not to be believed
Never see someone swim so deep

I thought this sounded a bit too simple and boring but now I'm sort of warming to it. I want to write something on the importance of face value rather than the usual 'what's inside counts'. I mean, I even realise how I think I present and how things have shaped me is very different to their outward effects... Hell, I think you're reading and enjoying this...

The boiling turmoil
Right to reach for eyes in the sky
Trembling in tremors
The earth splits it's words in it's surface
Mispelled and rearranged

Again, and like everything else my noncommital births, this isn't finished, I know where I want to take it but the words aren't coming yet, if you dig. It's similar to the first one, but I'm feeling a slight variation in theme, rather misrepresentation, but I'd like to present it as both good and bad... which I'm finding hard right now.

An excellent hiding place found
Unremarkable, no movement, no sound.
Search carries on, wills never gave way
Found a corpse left behind
Given away by the stench, a stubborn decay

I tend to find my stuff too wordy and grammatical obsession taking up too much time, so this is good to get me to loosen up a bit (and not freak over 'inventing' words and stuff which noone's going to kill me for... I came up with 'lobotomic' the other day... it's awesome). Anyway, I've tried to kill some useless words and get the point across anyway.

This pride imprints in a sinister prince
Inky spectres in control
of the sphincter to the soul
Feeling fearful and forlorn
Not the reason you were born
The path you follow seems unknown

I'm thinking of splitting this into two or three different things and using them as focus points for two or three different poems or whatever I call these. Anyway, I actually like how alot of this sounds, at least the first couple of lines. I'm thinking of scratching all the 'in's because the repetitive alliteration seems to cover it anyway. Just observations.

This stake to rape a heart
that's been tearing you apart
Both have terrors in their eyes
Conceal their need for ties

This is a little lacking in actual direction I think. I THINK I know where it's going but again it's not coming to me yet (I WRITE USING FEIGNED PSYCHIC POWERS). This does strike me as a little too lyrical... and needs a little more alliterative flamboyance... I like the idea that we're not really all that separated from our own fears.

-LINES THAT SOUND TOO COOL NOT TO USE-

'Born of cold, plastic womb'

I got this from Mysterious Follower's links to abandoned building galleries. It was an amazing description for a plastic coating to stop a bannister from rusting. I really like that image with that description so I'm gonna steal it and write something using it... I just don't know where it fits yet, any ideas?

'Fogged up compliments with sales pitch'

I wrote this down in my douchey little black book of lines and sketches and words after some street preacher or whatever commented on my jumper... and in characteristic paranoid melodrama read into this a universally acquired autism. Possibly wrongly, but I think it's a good point, sometimes I know I get confused with people's motives thanks to being bombarded with advertising and stuff. I was thinking of turning this into some kind of scathing critique, but I haven't been feeling subtle enough to pull it off.

'Withdrawals from what I wished to exist'

A bit of an angsty interpretation from a bit in Naked Lunch where Burroughs types up a letter for help explaining he's become addicted to a substance that he doesn't think exists. Anyway, I occasionally slip into thinking that sometimes the things I'm aspiring for aren't real. For people familiar with Catcher in the Rye, it's a fear of phonyness. For normal people who now realise my perceptions of the universe are largely plagiaristic it's a fear for the loss of authenticity in favour of things like insecurity. But yeah, I want to use this for something, sometime.

'There's too much noise to discern sound anymore. Everything's falling into a cacophony of silence.'
'My life became the remote I held, flicking identical channels like identical people'

These are a bit scathing and angsting in here, but I thought they might suit some kind of dialogue for an idea I had watching Fight Club (AGAIN) the other day. I like the idea of maybe a short film narrated by someone in that pit of misery to just emphasize how it morphs and distorts the outside world.

'In this premade world I sit and must imagine it's destruction'

I wrote this down sitting on a park bench thinking about the idea of 'making your mark on the world'. The point, I thought, was so many other people have made marks on the world and manipulated it for themselves. My mark would be made over someone else's. I also thought it presented an idea of a world that seems to be doing alright. One where nobody has to work very hard to stay alive, everything we get is 'prepackaged'... which I think I might change 'premade' to (THIS IS WHY I DO THIS, IT GIVES PERSPEX... no... PERSPECTIVE!!!).

'Only madmen smile forever'

"Life's sinusoidal, you see" I said to someone once, no doubt waving my hand around in pseudo-intellectualism... Well, life has ups and downs and it's not life without them, opposites define each other. But this was the temptation of illusion, the idea to ignore all misery... but it also struck me as innocent. To ignore the normal option and instead smile regardless... I dunno, it's a bit weird but it's some random idea I had.

'I want a knight in shining armour, so hard they'll never hurt'

I like to play with tropes, I heard someone talking about being swept off their feet by a knight in shining armour. I liked the idea of necessitating the armour. I mean, we have an amazing capability to hurt people, among other things. But I like the idea of vulnerability in saviours, it's one of the things you realise as you mature.

'We think we're so deep, but six feet isn't out of reach'

This is a response to people complaining about how miserable they are and how beyond help they are and stuff... yeah... uh... *ducks under desk to avoid barrage of thrown implements*. Okay, well, it's just sort of thinking that maybe using your tragedy as the crux of your identity isn't a fantastic idea...


I might leave it there, everything else is still revolting and this is probably getting really boring. But I really want criticism and stuff. It helps to get ideas and improve and all that cal. So there's a comment section and I'll post a facebook link so you can comment there if you'd really rather. Hell, pm me on facebook or something if you really must warn me of how laughably awful I am. Or if you've had any ideas sound them off, I'd be happy to swipe... uuh... give my critique... (because it's SO worth something) or just read it if you'd prefer. Anyway I'm normally just enamoured with other people's talent anyway...

So, hope this was a somewhat interesting insight into my process and next time I'll try to post something substantial for a change...

TONGS AWAY!!!!!

Friday, October 29, 2010

A Deconstruction of Bindi Irwin's "Save Me"

HEY EVERYBODIES. This is a critique/essay written by occasional blogger & regular wearer of crappy facial hair Frankly Less Than Amusing and yours truly. It's on the subject of this awesome as song by Bindi Irwin. Enjoy.



CROCODILE TEARS OR POST-MODERN MANIFESTO? 
— A Deconstruction of Bindi Irwin's "Save Me"

From a thematic perspective, Bindi Irwin's environmentalist critique of modern capitalist society, 'Save Me' deals with issues of violence, death, cruelty and freedom. The narrative is penned by the oppressed flipper of what we as the audience guess to be a humpback, southern right, or other 'baleen' whale. Thus, Irwin uses the technique of personalisation in order to to give the 'whale song', pun intended, its resonating and chilling tone. From the outset, the role reversal of Irwin's sonata places the greed and cruelty of humanity at the fore, prompting the audience to contemplate and reflect on their place and responsibilities as custodians of the seas. Themes of death are interwoven amongst the narrative, as our 'friend', the 'giant of the sea' calls upon the collective conscience of society to protect the freedoms that we as humans take for granted and apply them to our 'warm blooded and skin covered' relatives. A self-conscious awareness, an ability to contemplate mortality and to contextualise identity is inherent to the text. Subsequently, Irwin brings our protagonist to recall times before the reign of man - to times of a 'wonderful blue planet...before humans overran it'. This blatant environmentalist agenda seeks to undermine man's hegemony on the ecological stage and subvert the traditional notions of state actors as justified in their exploitation of wildlife. Thus, Irwin's 'Save Me' is a timely and reflective narrative that deals with pressing and contemporary issues in a style that engages the reader on a spiritual and social level. A piece that epitomises the self-reflective and post-modern nature of the youth of today, both brilliantly constructed and immaculately executed.

On a more personal level, the devastating psychological conflict of the tweenage poet resonates throughout her lyrics. When listening to the track, it becomes immediately clear that Irwin's "whale" persona is an anthropomorphic projection of her inner existential turmoil. This is a sharp allusion to a long line of animal allegories which Irwin would have no doubt encountered, such as "The Rainbow Fish" (a striking, if hamfisted plea for the immediate introduction of a global socialist state) or "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (a stark reimagining of Buddha's Fire Sermon and the emancipation from material desire in a consumerist world gone wrong). The overt phallic imagery of the opening line; "Save me, from the man with the harpoon gun"; is a desperate plea for girlish innocence in a world of patriarchal lust. The lyricist, on the cusp of puberty, desperately clasps to the pristine blemishlessness of childhood, where she and her cohort remain "winged angels playing games in the ocean blue". Irwin feels the palpable loss of this Edenesque state, and cries to be saved as the waters of the abyss surge above her impractically large Khaki collar. Man, the hunter, the bringer of death, takes on an a predatory, even Nabakovian character as he and his "boats that catch and slaughter" ruthlessly engage in the corruption and destruction of this crumbling child. However, "Save me" is more than a futile plea for the preservation of sexual innocence; entwined through the work is a curious dialecticism that jostles with the primary message for prominence. The major turning point in Irwin's artistic life is undoubtedly the premature demise of her father. Steve served his daughter as the loving protector of "Eden" – her innocence, and more superficially, the environment – against the ghastly machinations of perverse, self-serving hunters. Yet Irwin the Elder was felled not by an agent of man and his all-tainting industrial empire but one of the very creatures he devoted his life to protecting. The object lesson of this bloody cataclysm is that nature – Gaia if you will – is an amoral force and a fickle mistress that is at once majestic and terrible, she slays her allies as unflinchingly as her foes. The bitter paradox at the heart of Irwin's spiritual narrative is that the erosion of nature and innocence was initiated by nature and innocence itself. Sexual maturation, the eradication of our orcine brethren through natural selection and parental death ala stingray are all inherent aspects of the thing we call life, a phenomenon that despite it's "freedom in the water" is perpetually self-eroding and ultimately self-destroying. This is a profound microcosm of the 21st century predicament: that with the rise of anthropogenic global warming, nuclear arsenals and relentless overconsumption, life itself has become it's own greatest threat. The true tragedy of "Save me" is Irwin's gradual realisation that to fight against such inevitably is folly; and like a pigtailed Kierkegaard or a wallaby loving Plath, she finally sees that her only choice is to join her beloved father in the "deepest ocean". Indeed Bindi, the deepest ocean of all.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Paint Yourself

Put on your Jungian Hack Hazmat's, because I'm venting.

Here's the deal with life, it's got these wheels called motivation. Some people get up every morning because they've got dreams to work on, some people would rather have someone next when they open their eyes because they want to be understood.

I can only get up when I'm pissed off.

I am alive to see the red.


The last couple of months irritate me. They haven't irritatED me, they're getting to me now. Basically I find an excuse and like the good little patient I've been, I take every pill in the fucking box. Skipping on commitments is the quickest way to nihilism, I've been convinced I don't care.

People before mirrors are filthy liars, thing is people make for the best mirrors around... and breaking them doesn't sum up to seven years bad luck. We are our own affliction, every problem, every gripe, it's all on the shoulders of the guy on our driver's licences. 'I'm trying something new', 'I've been drinking', 'Lately everything's gone wrong'. These have been my big three in the last few months. No more excuses, I do bad things because I think one day someone's coming to save me.



I think I don't care because I don't. Why should I care? I'm living an intravenous life. I'm more profitable alive, so someone sees to it. Hell, even today I've been refusing to breathe and someone's been doing it for me. Anybody who knows me is aware that I haven't been properly employed for years now. Why bother? I'd have to walk among more of the army of cardboard cutouts. There's a government willing to pay for my necessities. I'm not going to die if I fail, I just get a participation award. One that I've been getting too proud of.

So I've turned my mirror on myself and it's reflecting my darkness. It hurts and it should. The dead are the only ones beyond repercussion. Ask any artist, it's the shadows that add depth. But this is ridiculously addictive. People can spend their entire lives struck blind by the allure of their malaise. I find I fall in love with my own solitude. It explains why I screw up around people, it's a passport for unwarranted insecurity. The white lie here is that a lack of selfishness makes me a good person, my obsession with treating other people right is the justification behind Caucasian M #6288439562227849. No, just no. On the flip side, it comes from looking at people in fear. Looking at people and thinking, 'one day, you could be this'. I fear for my own identity. Stupid, considering I have no idea who the hell I am anyway. I tremble at my mimicry, I shiver at the anchor of aspiration lying amongst these people, I scream at the beckoning mass grave.

These were my saviours. These people just as small, frightened and lost as me. I want their appreciation why, again?



I haven't lost my faith in humanity. On the contrary, if anything I've finally found it. We exist in ourselves, behind drawn curtains, iron bars and then buried. It's about looking at your own conundrum. What makes sense? What doesn't? What can be resolved and how? What can be cut off like a gangrenous limb? Can I stand the pain? There are the people who keep this in mind and the people who'll do anything to ignore it. The people who can look at everyone and understand that noone fully understands and the people who think too much of themselves or expect too much from everyone around.

It can be horrific, really coming to grips with what is and what isn't meant to be. Having your dream turn to a nightmare all around you. Then came the wrath. The fury to cut it all away, to sever the black fingers restraining my arms, to tear away the white mist over my mind.

And now I'm red with my own blood. My own blood I pulled back. Red and ready to live for all I'm for and opposed to what I'm not. To move on from what should be left behind. Sure, I still don't know where the hell I fit. That's not a problem. I know too much to call myself an intellectual, still, as has become widespread knowledge by now, I'm way too dumb to fall in line with the backbone of our society. I've got my own measure for success and I think I'll just stick with that...

...

... And there will always be room for MY CHEESY HEROIC LAMENESS!!!









In summary: I need to get out more and stop stressing myself into illness...

Love & Justice and all that cal
TONGS AWAY!!!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

always comes a time


So it would be that procrastination time of year once again which leads me to becoming once again another tedious soul broadcasting waste. I can assume the only reason you would be reading this would be because a similar plague troubles yourself. 


So onto a post of somewhat interest and the thing that has been tinkering in my thought box of late has been the notion of death. Not in the depressing sense of loss but more of what there is to come. The whole idea of being conscience and suddenly not is both terrifying but simultaneously intriguing. Personally I have struggled with this idea since I was about four years old which I remember as paralysing fear. Since then though it has developed into genuine interest, how can you be content with your life when there is always so much more? It has become apparent that the only reason I fear death is more the fear of all that I won’t get to experience.


To me it’s not all about the time you have but how that time is spent and whether or not you can experience the real important things to yourself in that life. This arises the issue where I sometimes find myself questioning myself, should I be rushing off to experience as much as possible in as quick as possible or should I be doing the responsible thing and building up to a wealth of experience through education hence employment and the opportunity to really experience a lot of these things properly with maturity? 


Sometimes I find I become much too focused on aspects of my life that I tend to leave relationships and experiences behind without fully taking the opportunity they offer and then end up racing back to play catch up back to where I was. It is silly but it’s a frequent occurrence. So as it stands currently I am back on this quest to find what I lost. It starts of simply just with actually talking to people again but it’s forgetting to those things that locks yourself out of your own life.


Back onto the main focus of this post its how easily life is forgotten after death. Sure there are some people that leave a legacy but for every one of those there many who are just simply forgotten over time. An interesting example is the city of Chernobyl where basically the city was evacuated and turned into a “no go zone” due to the high levels of radiation that remained after the disaster. Recently it has been opened up again for people to go through and the photos of the place have a chilling history within them (http://www.boredpanda.com/chernobyl-20-years-after-the-accident/ ). Personally I find it interesting just to imagine the kind of world that once occurred in these kinds of places. There is actually quite a lot of photography like this and just like a person a building without its life is just a shell, but it is a shell of potential where anything could have happened. Hours can be spent staring into these photos just wondering and dreaming of life in the past.


So I guess the question I am really coming to after all this diverging all over the joint is how do you want to be remembered? In the end I guess that is all you have control over because death comes and goes as it wills but memory humans can create. If it was up to me right now I think I would wish to be cremated and have my ashes spread somewhere people can sit and just be happy. I find grave yards depressing places and if I have to spend eternity somewhere it may as well be a place people still can laugh…



So yes post your thoughts on the issue I hope it did not come across as depressing it was not supposed to its just death kind of has an image it cannot shake. Also below are some more links to some of these photography collections if you are interested…