Sunny Breaks

I was going to wait til I’d been doing the job a year until I wrote this, but hopefully i won’t be doing it that long. I will only say that this refers to the local main drag. To mention it’s name would be connecting too many of the dots.

Smelliest Shop: Tied between the fish shop and Subway. (I let the cat out of the bag a bit about this the other day).

Even a month ago I would’ve put the fish shop at 1, but there’s this thing about Subway that it seems to get more odourous each time I smell it. And for some reason, fish-mingled air actually feels more natural than their terrible yeasts.

The butcher shops are no picnic either. Although I do like that fact they’re holding out with the old-school format compared to chain-this and chain-that.

Most verbose acknowledgemnet of my presence: Man from the littlest paintshop. I hand over the paper and he says, “Good, thank-you, good on you, tah”. I imagine that if I stood still holding the paper, he’d just keep on going mostly repeating but also throwing in the odd new phrase, like some amazing random sequence machine.

Most enthusiastic person: There was a woman working in an office equipment shop who once raised her fists in the air and said, “Yay!” when I walked in. She doesn\‘t work there anymore.

Shopkeeper Most Likely to be an Alien: There’s a medical practionioner whose work is to do with that 5-lettered boney thing in the back, and lemme tellya…

It’s easy to take for granted the myriad nuances and minute complexities of being/behaving human when you are one. And I’m sure that in the grand scale, this “man” is doing a pretty good at it, but it’s just not cutting it with me. This morning he says, “Gooood Moooornang ThaaangYooou”. His surname is related to the job he does. Sometimes you’ll get situations like a dentist named Blood — we all know those situations — it’s so ironic that it’s got to be real. But this guy’s name/job match is not quite there.

Once I saw this Tarago or econovan (small people mover vehicle) and it must’ve been smashed up good, then panel beaten back into shape, but the paint was that kind of dirty brown blotchy that panel beaters use. It looked shocken. Yet evidentally, the owners had then gone to the trouble of making a stencil and spray-painted the brand and model of the car back onto the door.

That’s what the alien-man situation reminds me of.

Not that he’s bad. He must be a benevolent alien because he’s helping people get well. I actually read about that kind a month back in Nexus.

Most Interesting looking person: Convoluted Overlays guy. He wears suspenders and has those glasses that sit right down the edge of his nose. Older sort of guy. Still uses Brill-cream I think.

Shop I’d most like to work at: Retail Displays shop — mannequins and plenty of them. There’s all these naked female mannequins in various poses that I see through the window. I almost feel like I should look away, but I don’t.
Plus the hours are good – midday to 5pm – can’t beat that.

Ug. now my stats counter thing isn’t working. I look at that thing all the time. I feel lost. Maybe it’s for the best.

Two things I saw at D/blog:

Noam ‘Chompers’ Chomsky has a weblog!

Also, this has to be one of the coolest sites I’ve seen ever — the official ninja webpage.

“My friend Mark said that he saw a ninja totally uppercut some kid just because the kid opened a window.” — I love it.

The other week at the op-shop I also got these unbelievably hideous shoes, but the were only four fiddy, so what are ya gonna do?

I was thinking of the future. Winter is coming. I’ll wear these as all-terrain slipppers around the backyard. I used to just wear loafers, and when I accidentally didn\‘t see a snail or slug and stood on it, I’d think ‘sorry snail’.

But not any more. I don’t care what I stand on.

The extra rubber on the soles puts me in a higher, more commanding position. The old shoes left me feeling vulnerable. When somone stood beside me I couldn’t see over them and I was fearful of what might’ve been approaching from the other side. I know they use twice as much rubber as any other kind of shoe, but me and my family deserve it. Everybody else had them, so I decided that I needed them too.

In most situations of daily life I am left feeling powerless and impotent. But not when I’m wearing these babies. I stomp around like I own the joint.

That thing that got eaten yesterday – I was saying that the warehouses in my head are filling up with stuff from the institution and if there was any illusion of planning or effort that went into what went here, then it’ll probably drop off even more. I was thinking I had these essays to write, but then today I realised I have two weeks of solid procarastination to get though.

So I was roaming around the streets aimlessly at lunchtime and noticed a church op-shop open. They’re like those flowers that only open up on full moons — in that they aren’t open much. Sometimes they can have some good stuff. I found a book, The World’s Greatest Alien Abductions — impressive sounding, but I’m not that easily swayed. I did the flip-test, flip to a random page and read. I got the subheading, “The sexy spacenapper”. Sold!

Are hot-x buns okay with choc-chips?

Well, I heard a voice in my head and it was Jesus. He said they were fine by him and then he dared me to let down the tyres of a bright yellow 4WD in the carpark. I said there were too many people around and that I’d come back when it was dark, but it wasn’t good enough for him.

I writ a whole bunch of other witty stuff here but when I pressed the Add Item button it dissapeared into that void where doomed weblog entries go. Thanks to those incompetent fools who I pay money to for renting this webserver space. Or maybe it was Jesus being vengeful. I’ve mentally vacillated about giving the webhost a public shit-canning when I leave it, but that was the last straw and now I consider it my duty as a whingey net-user not to let anyone else make the same mistake I did.

Jump in the time-machine and let’s do some serious shoe-inspection. A big page of Slowdive tracks. If you like music where they play one chord, then change to another chord, then go back to the first, then back to the second — all buried under layer upon layer of effects-pedals (great because no one can tell when you hit a bum note). If you don’t mind a bit of distant, non-specific moaning in place of normal singing. Then this is the music for you!

Don’t mind it meself. Reminds me of being 16.

- The Bureau of Extreme Ironing

- A Ukrainian biker woman rides through the Chernobyl area deadzone and takes a bunch of fascinating pictures — which I saw the link to at slashdot.

A thing about English indie-pop is actually part of my grand unified theory — being that the prevalence for long monotonous sounds (both vocal and instrumental) are due to ancient druidic influence on the anglo mindset.

Besides Slowdive, Ride were another good example. If you take an LP and switch it down to 16 RPMs you can get one note to last for up to a minute.

I went to the monster fete in south geelong today. It was okay, although I do take exception to this bourgeois ‘smashing shit’ trend that’s picked up.

A while back I saw a short news bit about some big cub-scout jambouree and one of the activities was throwing rocks at glass, ceramics and other breakables.

It was happening today too. People pay money, get given a few cricket balls and the opportunity to smash plates etc.

7:47am

stools: … of course all this came after she launched the posthuman gardening/lifestyle show. And the mayotherapy clinic franchise—

me: Which was…? I’m sorry I’ve forgotten.

stools: You get in a bath-tub of mayonaise.

me: That’s right.
    Y’know I don’t often catch myself saying this, but you’re a great conversationalist.

stools: Did you know that of all national peoples, Icelanders read the most books?
{Both laugh}

me: Sparkling!
{Beat}

stools: Listen, I’ve got to go.
    If you’ll be so kind as to release me.

me: You know I’d like to, but I can’t right now.

stools: There are heights I aspire to, feats to achieve, seas to sail.

me: You give me power. Without you I am nothing.

stools: Remember what Sting said, ‘If you love someone set them free’.

me: But Society deigns that I wait.

stools: Let me out now. Let me out. Let me out.

me: Where will you go?

stools: Kiwiland. It’s very happening.

C’mon.

me: But I’m still on the bus!

stools: I’ll manage.

me:{tears in eyes, grunting} Uuunnhhh! Oh geez this feels good.

It took over two years to get around to the good stuff — Freud. In hindsight, maybe I should’ve just bought a book of his and taken the travel agent job instead.

Sitcoms, soap operas – infact all kinds of dramas owe so much to the original flavour of psychoanalysis.

Last year I was stopped on the street by an acquaintance who asked me why I was studying psychology. I realised that I had no idea. If there had been a reason, it was long forgotten.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve found my purpose in life — writing poo jokes. Well, there’s heaps of disgusting stuff radiating directly from psychoanalysis, and also it’s various off-shoots. And there’s plenty of comedic angles that are yet to be exploited.

I normally wouldn’t show my hand, but this stuff is so good;
“The Anal Personality — — The anal personality stems from the anal stage of development. In contrast to gratification associated with the mouth and oral activity, which can be expressed in adulthood in a relatively unrepressed form, the gratifications of anal impulses must undergo considerable transformation. In general, the traits of the anal character are related to processes going on at the anal stage of development that have not been completely relenquished. The important processes are the bodily processes (accumulation and release of fecal material) and interpersonal relations (the struggle of wills over toilet training).

Tying the two together; the anal person sees excretion as symbolic of enormous power. That such a view persists is shown in many everyday expressions such as the reference to the toilet as ”the throne“. The change for the oral to the anal character is one from ”give me“ to ”do what I tell you“, or from ”I have to give you“ to ”I must obey you“.

The anal character is known by a triad of traits, called the anal triad: orderliness and cleanliness, parsimony and stinginess, and obstinancy. The emphasis on cleanliness is expressed in the saying ”Cleanliness is next to godliness“. The anal-compulsive personality has a need to keep everything clean and in order, representing a reaction formation against things that are disorderly and unclean.

The second trait of the triad, parsimony-stinginess, relates to the anal-compulsives interest in holding onto things, an interest dating back to a wish to retain the powerful and important feces. The third trait in the triad, obstinancy, relates to the anal character’s infantile defiance against parting with stools, particularly on command of others. Dating back to toilet training and the struggle of wills, anal personalities often seek to be in control of things and have power or dominance over others.

- I have a theory that people who work in chronically smelly places tend to increase in mass, perhaps in some response to the bad air. I’m talking about places like fish shops, Subway.

- I’ve got a lot of respect for dogs that hang out in the front yard, see you cruising by and slotting the paper, and who don’t get worked up about it. No barking or yapping, just the dog equivelent of a quick nod.

Everytime i get to this joint it’s warmed up and sunny mid-morning. I peek though and hear the sound of the pool is very inviting.

Here is a list of most intelligent dog breeds. It’s on the internet, so you don’t have to believe it. Anecdotal evidence would suggest the ozzy sheep dog should be higher, rottweilers are evil and huskies should be on there somwhere.

How to take out the back seats in a cadillac?

Dear cadillac owner,
I’m of the opinion that there’s no hard and fast rules on this matter. My advice is to employ some of that good old fashioned intuition that we’re all born with, reach down the crevasse in the cushioning to where the solid fixture is, grasp it and give it one sharp pull, followed by a series of longer yanking motions until the whole thing starts to come away.

And voila! DIY self-propelled rocket artillery: Get out of my dreams, Get into my Car. Get in the back seat baby.

It’s funny how the sentence component “… or I’ll kill you.” has slipped into workaday conversational english, eg. “Give me a piece of gum or I’ll kill you”.
I lost a unit guide, which is 8 or 10 photocopied pages with essay questions and rules in it re: one of the subjects I’m doing. I asked if there was anyway I could get a replacement. They printed me out one, and as the otherwise mild-mannered, middle-aged secretary/clerical type woman hands it over to me she says, “Don’t tell your friends about this or I’ll have to kill you”.

They’ve put OS X on the old G3 bule&whites out here — with Safari, so now I can see how rooted the web page looks in that.

An observation re: the Kids. They’re all wearing these bits of nylony material around their necks with keys or whatever attached. The nylon loop denotes “access all areas” because usually they’re used for various kinds of security passes, and in corporate settings, ways of ranking slaves. The connotation is ‘freedom’ or ‘exclusivity’. These loops are also conveniently wide enough to fit a logo or corporation name on.

I was out at the institution and had several hours hangtime between reasons to be there, so tried to make it productive by going to the library.
So there I was, down in … periodicals, attempting to get some reading to sink in to my head without falling asleep. I fished into my backpack for something to write on and felt wetness. I’d brought a cut lunch and two ripe peaches. Inexplicably, it hadn’t occured to me that they’d get smooshed by the hardback textbooks.
Thankfully, things weren’t too bad — just the sphericality of one of them had been flattened a little. I held it there looking at it. It wasn’t going to get any better.

Sure I knew I wasn’t supposed to eat food in the library but back up the stairs and outside was such a long way to go for one piece of fruit that would be gone in a second. I had a quick glance around, but there’s like, only two seats down there in periodicals. That’s why I like it.

I bit into the peach where it bled. And, y’know, it’s funny but I can’t remember much after that.

This was remedied later by a couple of Blackshirts (the subcontractor security firm that patrols campus). I was sitting in a small room with these thuggish men.
“Can I go home?”, I said looking at my watch and realising that I’d not only missed the tutorial I’d been waiting around for, but there was something on telly.

“You just don’t get it do you?” said the short one.

“Look, I promise I’ll never take food into the library again.”

He shook his head and flicked On and Play switches on a video and TV that I hadn’t previously noticed.

After 20 seconds of this mostly motionless footage I realised that the receding hairline and unkempt sideburns of this figure were mine; it was where I was sitting at the carrel. The camera appeared to be located above and slightly behind me. It could only be hidden in the ceiling because I pay a lot of attention to those kinds of things. My mouth dropped open slightly. That paranoid kid I stopped hanging around with was right – hidden cameras in the ceilings … everywhere.

As I stared into the warm blues and blacks that formed the shapes in the security tape I began to observe myself. Hunched forward, devouring the peach with honed technnique — elbow tilted higher than the wrist stopped the nectar from running down my arm. The tall Blackshirt piped up:
“Look! Yer dripping stuff all over that bound set of periodicals!”
The short one turned up the volume without explaining himself.
“Ohh. mmm. ffff.  Guh.” These breathy, almost animalistic sounds were coming from me.
“Ohhmmm!”      “Guhh … ffff”
This continued an embarrassingly long time as I ravaged the second peach. Oh why were they making me watch this???

I spat the stone out, stood up quickly and wheeled around. I seemed to breathing heavily and my arms were poised in a rather odd way at my sides. Yes it sounds comical, but in that moment I thought of Taz the looney-tunes Tasmaninan devil character. This was no joke though. I flicked my head one way then the other, and then most chilling of all, seemed to look straight up into where the security camera was, as if I was instinctually aware of its presence. I ran out of shot, the footage cut out to static. I hardly got out an exhalation of relief at the ending of this monochrome nightmare when a new shot cut in. It was a similarly panoptical setup, but from the foyer area near the main cafeteria with me bounding in to shot.
“oh shit”, I mumbled. Maybe bits of memory were piecing together, because I could tell that the scenario was that it hadn’t been enough. Two peaches wasn’t enough.

He was breathing heavily, rapidly — huffing, arms still well spaced from the torso, eyes wild and wide-eyed, nostrils flared and flickering with the intake of air, teeth showing but not quite gritted. To some girl staring and cowering by the glass wall he growled,
“What’re you lookin’ at?”, then sprung into the open doors of the cafeteria, nose first, probing the air.

With and arm and two fingers out he pointed down the length of the many scattered tables and chairs.

“HEY YOU, TWO-FRUITS!”

At the other end of the hall some nerd wearing a parka froze as this beastman vaulted towards him. His hands shook and the little Goulburn Valley plastic cup fell to the floor, spilling its juice, pear and apricot chunks…

This has been sitting in the inbox for a while — a pamphlet from the local TAFE listing the courses they’re offering. T A F E stands for Take A Holiday from unEmployment, which is basically what happens. It takes you off the dole statistics for a little while, which makes the gumment happy, so they get off your case which makes you happy and everyone’s happy, and then we had pudding.

‘Modern Cake Decorating’ struck me as hitting nails on heads, because when you get down to brass tacs, the Modern era was the apex of cake decoration activity. What are the alternatives – - post-modern cake decorating? – would probably involve a nasty little pastiche of things that don’t belong together on top of a cake. Like whale-blubber, nutra-sweet and some pieces of a chopped up bicycle. The point would be that much of what we consume today is perhaps even more of a health-hazard than what it replaced. Thanks science! Thanks FDA. Now that’s ironic!

- what about renaissance cake decoration? Chicken fat, a hunk of cod and roast duck all deserve their earned place, but it’s not on a cake.

- cake-baking, circa 4000bc — a handful of gravel.

Butter, brown sugar, castor sugar and vanilla essence don’t sound so bad after all that eh.

I see there’s also a ‘men only cooking class’. Now I’m really curious. I wonder if it involves drumming… – ‘confined space entry and retest’ – can you get in a cardboard box and close the lid, and if you could do it 2 years ago, can you still do it now? – ‘e-marketing’ – become a spammer. – ‘validation therapy’ – go to a classroom and have someone say nice things about you. – ‘testing of electrical handheld/portable appliances’ – how to tell when the batteries have run out in your walkman, and how to replace those batteries.

This morning in two seperate instances I saw old women talking to dogs. The dogs had been leashed up to fixed objects outside shops by their owners, who weren’t the old women.

I had to make a special trip out to uni because their computers decided to unenrol me from a subject. I had to wait a half hour because the same computers had frozen up and wouldn’t access my file. Oh yeah, that’s one smooth operation they got out there.

I would really hoe into them properly, except for all I know this could be the standard nationwide. It’s a two-bit operation the whole way through, yet they insist on squeezing more money out of us each year. I think I’ve mentioned before that my studies are 75% off-campus. It’s not by choice — if I did want to attend lectures and tutes for these subjects I’m doing, I’d have to travel over 150kms one way, then nearly 100kms in the other direction every week. That’s nuts.

Listening to an RCA compilation of various black musics. Some of it’s really stand-out stuff, like ‘Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child’ – Paul Robeson. That vibratto thing that singers (usually opera) do with their voice makes me chunder, but in this gospel track it works well.

Also, there’s a Kid Koala live gig split into 4 bits for the grabbin’ here.

Slightly thoughtful piece about how clowns have to multitask to keep up, brought on by that clown convention. I saw a half-second shot on the news of a giant shoe stall.

I’ve just been reading this article, Information Control For Social Manipulation, which looks at the links between the military, big business and Hollywood. There’s also an abridged version in the Feb/March edition of Nexus magazine. The online article is pretty long, but worth a look through if you’ve got the time and eye-power.

For me the gold nugget was;

“18.) On average, individuals in industrialized nations spend three hours a day watching television – roughly half their leisure time; only to work and sleep is more time devoted. At this rate, someone who lives to be seventy-five would spend more than nine years of their life just watching TV. Why do we watch so much? In studies, subjects claimed that television was a means of relaxation, to which electroencephalograph (EEG) readings confirmed via brain waves, skin resistance and heart rates of subjects while watching television. However, even though relaxation is associated with TV by the viewers, research also has shown that passivity and a lowered level of alertness also correlate. Furthermore, once the television is turned off, the sense of relaxation dissipates rather quickly, but the passivity and lowered alertness remain for a considerable time.

”Within moments of sitting or lying down and pushing the ‘power’ button, viewers report feeling more relaxed. Because the relaxation occurs quickly, people are conditioned to associate viewing with rest and lack of tension. The association is positively reinforced because viewers remain relaxed throughout viewing, and it is negatively reinforced via the stress and dysphoric rumination that occurs once the screen goes blank again. Habit forming drugs work in similar ways. A tranquilizer that leaves the body rapidly is much more likely to cause dependence than one that leaves the body slowly, precisely because the user is more aware the drug’s effects are wearing off.“ Like a drug, heavy television use has long-term negative effects. Generally, heavy viewers are more easily bored, more easily distracted, have poorer attentional control, are less likely to participate in community activities or sports, and are more likely to be obese; they’re more anxious and less happy than light viewers in unstructured situations, such as doing nothing, day-dreaming, or waiting in line. ”The difference widens even more when the viewer is alone.“

Part of the human attraction to television has to do with our biological orienting response. ”First described by Ivan Pavlov in 1927, the orienting response is our instinctive visual or auditory reaction to any sudden or novel stimulus. It is part of our evolutionary heritage, a built-in sensitivity to movement and potential predatory threats. Typical orienting reactions include dilation of the blood vessels to the brain, slowing of the heart, and constriction of blood vessels to major muscle groups. The brain focuses its attention on gathering more information while the rest of the body quiets…. In 1986 Byron Reeves of Stanford University, Esther Thorson of the University of Missouri and their colleagues began to study whether the simple formal features of television – cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises – activate the orienting response, thereby keeping attention on the screen. By watching how brain waves were affected by formal features, the researchers concluded that these stylistic tricks can indeed trigger involuntary responses and ‘derive their attentional value through the evolutionary significance of detecting movement…. It is form, not the content, of television that is unique’….

Annie Lang’s research team at Indiana University has shown that heart rate decreases for four to six seconds after an orienting stimulus. In ads, action sequences and music videos, formal features frequently come at a rate of one per second, thus activating the orienting response continuously.“ Perhaps its time we heeded the wisdom of Umberto Eco who once wrote, ”A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection – not an invitation for hypnosis,“ (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002; Boihem & Emmanouilides).”

Even if I thought I could before, I won’t be able to stare at the box in blissful ignorance again.

Also, a little chunk from point 25 is kinda interesting —
“E. Despite having made changes to characters in Independence Day (1996), the Department of Defense refused help because, ”the military appears impotent and/or inept; all advances in stopping aliens are the result of actions by civilians.“
F. Other films to have received assistance from the Pentagon are: Air Force One (1997), A Few Good Men (1992), Armageddon (1998), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Pearl Harbor (2001), Patriot Games (1992), Windtalkers (2002), Hamburger Hill (1987), The American President (1995), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), Apollo 13 (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and A Time to Kill (1996).
G. Some films that were denied: Apocalypse Now (1979), Catch-22 (1970), Dr. Strangelove (1964), Full Metal Jacket (1987), The Last Detail (1973), Lone Star (1996), Mars Attacks! (1996), Platoon (1986), and The Thin Red Line (1998) (Campbell, 2001, August 29; Weiss, 2002).”

I always had Independence Day pegged as coming straight from the bosom of the system, the indicator being that They seemed to give a copy away with everything for a while — ‘Hire two videos, get a copy of Independence Day‘, ‘buy a burger, get a copy of Independence Day‘. They did the same thing with The Last Starfighter. That kind of thing makes me wonder what it is that’s so worthy that everyone must see.
Oh, and Mars Attacks! a trouble maker? hehe.

Lastly, here’s some choice quotes short enough to memorise and pull out at functions thus guaranteeing you that attractively subversive air;
popular nazi propagandist, Joe Goebbels likened the media to, “a piano … in the hands of the government”, and that the media should be “uniform in principles” but “polyform in nuances”.
“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” — A.J. Liebling
“When you are the monopoly supplier, you are inclined to dictate”, Rupert Murdoch
“Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets”, Napoleon Boneparte.

When I was in year seven there was a kid who brought 2 minute noodles in a thermos for lunch on the first day. He got nick-named Noodle because of that and the name stuck for the rest of the year, and maybe for the rest of high school, I don’t know – I moved away. Maybe he’s an accountant now and was happily punching those numbers away today at a desk with a name plate that said, “Noodle”.
Sometimes they would call him ‘Nooder’, or ‘noodleman’. his real name was david and he looked a bit like Macaulay Culkin, not that anyone would’ve made the comparison at the time since no one had heard of macaulay culkin back then.
It wasn’t a meanly intended nick-name. It was more of a situation of, ‘there’s nothing remarkable that we can see about this guy so let’s name him after his food’.

The arse-end of jokes was reserved for Jon (no relation to the spork’s Jon!) who got into trouble often. Once he came into class after lunch and some big kids had got a hold of him and had drawn big, round harry potter style spectacles on his face with black texta. Harry Potter hadn’t been heard of back then either.

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to some compilation CD set of blues, soul and R n’B stuff from da library. There was a track by a guy called Pigmeat Markham.
Three guesses what he brought for lunch.

omg.

still eating peaches.

omfg.

Thirty left. They’re ripening up on an hourly basis. There’s a strange smell in the room and it’s not exactly pleasant. But damn they taste good. I’ve shut myself in for a couple of days and done away with clothing because it was all getting stained and sticky. Amuse yourselves while I continue gorging myself.
om.
o.
o.
o. f.
o. g.     f!
om.

Spare a thought for poor Zellar over there who’s been revolutioning it up in defense of the right to blog whatever the hell he feels like (or at least I think that’s what it’s about — may be having another comprehension failure) and therefore, in extension, YOUR right to blog whatever YOU want.

Yes, that’s right. You may think that the whole thing about publishing in this medium is that you can sit there on that gas-lift chair and say whatever you want without having The Man nudging his groin against the back of your neck, but think again sistas and bruthas. All propagandists know that the most successful kind of manipulation is that which where those being manipulated don’t even know it’s happening, or even better, actively participate in propagating the lie.

When was the last time you mentioned ‘Lost in Translations‘ on your blog? Well, buddy you just been nudged.
And all those news-anchor parrots are ten times worse;
“Canada Stalls on Trade Pact. Heh. Err, well I pretty much polly want a cracker? expected that they’d do that considering the pieces of 8! peices of 8! globalistaion Naftas”…

It’s a little known fact that even all of those so called quirky and off-beat sites that are so cleverly decked out in 1997 style decor contain hidden links straight back to the main websites run by The Man — newscorp, aol etc. When you link to the little site, you are unwittingly bending over for The Man.
I and we here at spouting urge you not to link to anything ever again. It’s the only way to be sure.

omg these peaches are good. I ate ten last night.       omfg. Fruit trees in backyards are a gift.
I couple of years ago I was living in a rent house a few streets south of here. The owner sold it and we had to move out. The yuppie architect and his wife — the new owners, were eager to start fucking shit up and on the day we were moving they’d already come in and chopped down the apple and lemon trees. So they could install a pool and yuppy-car sized garage. They also chopped down a large, twenty year-old walnut tree that’d given us heaps of nuts the year before. The house wasn’t even for them – just a ‘do it up and flog it off’ job.
If I had my way, I’d chop their legs off just below the knee.

Reading the intro chapter to this personality text book I was reminded of how unbelievably dualistic whitey western society is. Off/on, toggle, switch, alternate – bridge pick up/neck pick up, one/zero, yes/no, good/bad, present/absent — all these binaries. A line with two ends can have specific stopping points in the middle, but they’re still part of the scale and they’ll always be stuck between the two end points.

But I’m not blaming capitalism, or rationalism or any of that. From what I can tell, dualistic thinking has been part of all that’s sprung from anglo thinking as far back as the druids.

What if the very first calculating machines and computers had been designed by crack zen monks? People who weren’t hedged in by the blip/blip …

I don’t know – I can’t imagine things like that, but I can imagine how nice it would be if my internet connection did not drag so often, and the MySql server i pay to use would stay connected.

What if, instead of the great leap being in electronic gadgets of communication, it’d been in telepathic ability. And over the last 40 years huge amount of time and effort had gone into understanding and learning how to manipulate interpersonal communication on that level.
Instead of holding a gizmo up to the side of the head, a person would get the message straight in their head. There would still be some laggards, like me, who hadn’t gotten on board most of these techniques, but they were there. People were continually letting a flow of communication between themselves and a person standing in front of them, be interrupted in preference for someone who was absent.

A whopping hop sideways into a parallel reality, which essentially is the same as this one because still no one’s listening to eachother.

It’d be convenient to have a professional, ridgey-didge astrologer on hand because lately I’ve noticed a bit of a jump in agro in both the external world and in me. I sent narky emails to both my ISP and web server host. They’re probably used to getting that kind of thing, but I’m not used to giving it. Also, something’s been bugging me today and I haven’t been able to lose it the way I normally do.

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Spent a day or so down at TheRanch. That little cat is runnin’ amok. What kind of cat gets on the roof and starts running around at night? A bad cat, that’s what I say. It’s a combination of bad parenting and a brush-stroke of evil running through its character.
Also, I think that the neo-nazi skinhead organisation (is it national front? I forget what they’re calling themselves — all I remember is that they’ve pinched the southern cross emblem. Bastards.) is unofficially setting up in Colac.

But it’s not all bad. Infact, when I look out the window here everything’s peachy, literally. There’s a peach tree out there that’s buckling under its own weight with fruit. According to Higgins they’re ready to eat now too. After years of being short-changed by Nature, it’s finally giving something back. Last summer I weeded and watered and all this other nonsense and got about two crappy mushy “black russian” tomatoes out of it. I don’t know who’s idea it was to make black tomatoes.

Small things that I’m liking: new season Royal Gala apples – yum. – products that come in re-usable glasses. – the word “cwazy”. There’s some rapper dude out here at the moment whose name is [something] Cwazy [something] — it’s great to hear, say, read and write. If I was boss of the world I would make everybody say cwazy instead of crazy.
Cwazy as a doamin name is already taken by an email service, but the Frencher spelling, “quasy” is available. – (Update -6pm) – add Eating Peaches to that list.. It’s like biting children.

This year at school the psychology subjects I’m doing are ‘Research Methods, the sequel’ (because I’m a saddo) and ‘Personality’. A component of the former is psychometrics, which, for the uninitiated, is those questionnaires, like, if you wanna be a travel agent and you go to the interview and you do a questionnaire that has on it,

58. I am excited by fire.
a)yes
b)no
c)maybe

And then based on what ju answer is if you become a travel agent.

Psychologists write them. A small set of steps that are part of the greater objective of completing my life-long ambition to construct one of those internet Quizilla “What ________ are you?” things. Mine will be, What piece of French 18th century furniture are you? Almost there — just got to do the 18 month TAFE Antique French furniture polishing and restoration course.

One thing that the others here rarely bring to attention is that this thing is a group effort. Currently there’s four or five people regularly contributing (six if you include me). It’s something of an oversite in the cogs of the Nucleus publishing mechanism that we aren’t allowed seperate writer names. There’s been official and loudly announced attempts to gee up the lads at Nucleus R&D to look into this short coming, but frankly I think most of the other five here like the anomalousless of it.
When they’re out at functions they can each claim to be this industrious, lateral “yak sox”, when in reality each of them mostly spends the week on the bog, taking naps, or checking how their breath smells. Conveniently, none of this current crew can stand one another, so they rarely appear at the same public events.
When it takes their fancy, one of them’ll occasionally ‘back one out’ onto the website. The truth is that the real yak sox died of old age in 1796.

My name’s Terry. My main contributions to Spouting. were made in the 1970s. Mostly I do the vacuuming nowadays, but the office this week has been even more deserted than usual.

I was perusing the filing cabinet and came across this photo:

The Spouting-sponsored junior chess team, which took out the international championship in 1974. We kicked in for the take-aways and mini-bus rental. However on the way back from Prague, elated with the victory, the boys pretty much destroyed the interior of the bus and we’ve never been able to go back to Thrifty Rentals since.

Young Percy, down the front holding the cup, was an unpralleled genius, and basically delivered the deathblow to the České republiky teamy with a move that can only be described as Fucking Mindblowing.
Not long after, the move was stolen by a ruski, kasperwitz (?) – I don’t remember now, but needless to say, the bent media got behind him and now what should rightfully be known as “the Bevan Manoeuvre” is called something else.

After that, in one of those moment of rare (frequent?) and intuitive foresight displayed by young people, Percy gave up chess completely and moved on to Go.

Apparently, Steakhouse Jack, who was a fantastic writer here for a relatively short period of time in the early 90s (and then went on to a stellar career on the West Australian celebrity vet circuit) is coming back in tomorrow to do a one-off editorial piece entitled, “Why Is It That In IM Convos My Internet Buddies Call Me Creepy When I Casually Mention That I’ve WHOISed Their Domain Name And Know Their Real Name And Street Address?”