A Justification of Picking One's Nose

One of the great, treasured joys in my life is a good, thorough pick of the nose. I know it's gross or whatever, but it's also one of those minute social taboos where you know people can see it, but you're not shitting on a park bench or anything, so people just pretend not to notice. I like it that way, and I know most of you are squirming right now a going, “Dude, really? We get it, your nose whatever, but do you really have to talk about it?” Well no I guess not, but what the fuck else am I going to talk about?

I got in to London today at 7am after a presumably long bus ride that was rendered short and blissful by the second-last 10mg valium tablet of the pack of 12 given to me by my friend Kay the week I left Melbourne. I arrived at Victoria Bus Station, and walked for about 80 minutes with all my bags and sweat and organs and shit to my hostel just North of Park Lane and Hyde Park (CLANG NAMEDROP!!) and after hanging out for a while applying for barista jobs online I decided to go for a walk past Marylebone Station (CLANG!!) towards Fleet Street (CLANG!!!) before I transformed into a little toy figurine of an Artillery and... okay sorry I'll stop.

I'm a little over-excited I think... or maybe I'm not, I don't know. I don't feel the same sense of awe and wonder that I remember feeling when I first got to Melbourne, although maybe I didn't feel it back then either, and I'm just romanticising the past as often is so tempting.

“It would be nice to entertain the idea that I, Aidan Jones, am a trailblazing nomad beating down a path never before seen or even considered in the history of human experience... but that would also be completely fucking retarded.”
That's what I wrote last time, day one, July 11th 2012. This time I feel a bit more sure of myself, I know what I'm doing a little better, and I'm trying not to write so grandiose...ly(?).

Oh jesus I just realized I just quoted myself. Wow. Fuck. Sorry. Oh my god... anyway. Bah.

It would be nice to say that it feels like love at first sight with London, I mean that would fit the narrative perfectly: “young man travels across globe with twenty pounds and a towel, falls in love with city, wins life, dies surrounded by loved ones aged 85¼”. I don't think it quite is though, I just walked around today trying to feel that sense of wonder and awe, trying to tease it out of myself, but instead just feeling sort of content. I think it may be a case of, “let's definitely keep seeing each other”, rather than love at first sight this time. I will keep putting that phrase in here though, because even if I don't feel it, it's bound to turn up a few hits to my blog from popular Google searches. “'Love at first sight'? Oh I LOVE love!” LOLOLOL. While we're at it: “does he really like me?”; “why does it hurt when I pee?”; “how to make moonshine”. It's a numbers game guys, let's be honest with ourselves.

I meandered through the centre of the city today, my hostel being on the Western side and an interview for a barista job being on the East. The place just keeps going, I walked for almost two hours in a straight line and the rolling buildings four, five, six stories high just kept coming and coming and coming. I waited out the front of the cafe for like half an hour and did some writing, then went inside, made some coffees, chatted to the guy and got a final trial shift for Tuesday. I left feeling great.

Also someone from Melbourne said something really nice to me over Facebook chat, and so as I walked down more streets surrounded by looming stone giants my smiling turned to heel-clicks and I broke out into a weird, celebratory jog/skip for a few metres every block or so. It sounds dumb here, and I'm sure it looks dumb in person too, but I have fun guys, I really do. Promise.

I had a rest underneath this statue of some guy called Charles James Fox who I've never heard of and is more famous that I'll ever be, and noticed that my left foot hurt from all the walking – three hours. My body felt weird from the coffee – double shot: unnecessary. I was cold and hot at the same time, and couldn't figure out whether to leave my jacket on or off, or draped around my shoulders, or whether I should just throw it over a tree branch and abandon it forever. Charles James Fox eh? Good on ya, I wonder if old Foxey ever went for a bit of the Ye Olde Nose-Pick? Because that's what I did sitting at the foot of his grand statue there, looking stately, erected MDCCCXVI. I sat there for at least a whole minute, picking away, and that was the highlight of my first day in London.

If you're reading this and feel in any way connected to the things I've just said, then please walk down the street and click your own heels, or say something nice to a friend you love and admire, and if you see someone picking their nose call out to them, wave, and then give them a thumbs up. Because it's nice, and they've earned it.

Peace, Taco.

First Day of Summer

It's summer, that's right. “Thirty-seven today”; the opening line of every work-conversation I've had this morning. “Fuuuuuck! I'm definitely heading to the beach!”
“Lucky you mate! That's what I'd be doing!”
“Yep!”
“THIRTY-SEVEN! They say...”
Yep... the weather sure is interesting.

Yesterday I woke up at 8:30am to the sound of my phone buzzing and ringing through the still, hungover air at Thomas McMahon's lovely apartment in East Melbourne – I had no idea where I was. On Saturday once I'd finished work, I'd forgotten to take the keys for the venues I clean and put them in the PO Box for the next person to use, so now I was being rammed upright and forced out of bed. Three hours sleep. Still drunk. Acid Hangover. It was already hot, but I bustled out of the house and onto the tram, down to Meatballs, put on No Woman No Cry over the speakers, and started cleaning until Kim got there, I realized I wasn't needed, and dazed, headed back to my room in Richmond. I was in far too good a mood.

By the time I got back it was getting hotter, my hangover was kicking in, I remembered a sandwich (realistically, it was two pieces of bread with a bunch of cheese in the middle, chucked in the sandwich-maker for thirty seconds until I said “I HAVE TO GO!”) that Tom's girlfriend made me, and realized I would need to brush my teeth. I did that. I had a shower. I watched a bunch of South Park episodes – drifting in and out of sticky consciousness... Phil called, “do you wanna go to the 007 Exhibition?” In truth, at that point, not particularly, but I had to do something, so I agreed.

A few hours later and the 007 Exhibition plan was off, I waddled down to the air-conditioned pub to see what was going on, 4:30pm. All the regulars were hanging around, playing pool, drinking, smoking out the back. Andrea told me about a party in the park to farewell some Scottish chick who had been denied a long-term visa and had to go home on Monday, “I have NO money” (-$60 on the bank balance). We bought some 'John Smith Extra Smooth' beers – a case – that had passed their 'best before' date in March – they cost $30. I owe Jake ten dollars from that purchase. The beers, as promised, were Extra Smooth, and although being extra warm as well, proved the hit of the party once we got there. I shotgunned one, some old guy (he was forty, whatever) shotgunned two... or was it three? Jake did one. We played drinking games with cards until the sun set at 9pm.

On the way home after being abandoned by our lift without notice, we (Jake, Brett, and I) ran across the train tracks and were stopped by police and our details taken down. “Look mate, at this stage, we're gonna have a talk about it, but you'll probably be getting a fine in the mail.” Cunts. As one text correspondent put it when I told her the news,
“I hate that, say yes or no don't be a tease!”
Don't we all? Well I know a fine is coming, even if neither of our valiant Mr Protective Servicemen (not even real fucking cops, just chumps, with chump titles) could decide for us. I like to imagine that as they went back to their posts to consume the pizza that had arrived for them while they were fighting crime, they were struck simultaneously with a crippling sense of shame in their pointless actions, and so when their steaming-hot cheese-covered treats touched the rooves of their respective mouths and the skin sizzled and gave way, they knew, in that moment, that justice had truly been done.

The three of us got back to Station 59 just as Stiff (Steff, she's a Kiwi) was closing the bar. Macca was there too, and we all sat out the back and drank Mountain Goat until the jug ran too low for Stiff to top my drink up while I wasn't looking, and I went upstairs to bed. There's not much of a point to this story, other than to let you all, who care so so much, know about how I spent my Sunday. Solid experience overall, full of the trappings of any exciting or woeful day, but gladly it was neither. I don't know what else to say, or what I could say even, to polish the memory of my first day of summer 2013/14 so that when I look back it might stand out amongst all the other days that shine and blend into a radiant, sepia-lit history. There is nothing else, so I guess that day will just fade in as the distance grows, lost in the rear vision mirror.

Peace, Taco.

A Well Made Drum

For the first time ever, I have a costume. Well, okay, it's a drum... but HEYFUCKYOU this is the first time I've ever been ready to go to a costume party. Finally, I won't be that loser who didn't dress up because he 'didn't care' or he 'thinks costumes are lame' or his 'skin becomes inflamed when exposed to most fabrics' – lame excuses every single one, and if anyone pulls that shit on me tonight they are getting a smack upside their head-bone. Fuck all you hoes. I have a drum.

So what I did was I found a bucket that had been sitting outside my room for like ooooooh fuckennnn... two weeks? Not a big bucket, it's a modest affair, like maybe something you would get five kilograms of lard in from a grocery store for the grossly overweight. It has a handle, which I was unable after some effort to remove, but that shouldn't be a problem. I have tape in my room always, so when I saw the bucket my mind made the connection between those two items and the weird slouch-hat thingo I have never worn that's in my wardrobe and went 'BEATNICK'. Oh fuck yes.

I tried a few different materials for the skin of the drum before I hit upon a winner: old shirt? Not able to be pulled tight enough for good sound, plus looks dirty, plus can't fasten well and is too bulky – shit. Plastic bag? Tightness problem solved but has too much give in it as a material to make a good skin, doesn't POP when struck, as drum should – shit. Paper bag? Good skin, slightly weak, but can be taped over to make strong, plus as added bonus can draw peace symbol on with pen – YES!

DRUM!!

The bottom of the bucket (it's white, I think I found it and used it to wash my brushes in terps when I was painting the room) is still showing out of the bottom of the skin (I used a brown paper bag in the end) and the sticky tape looks kind of tacky when it reflects the light. But my drum makes a nice POPPING sound when I hit it, just like my old bongo used to. The idea for the costume ACTUALLY came from Phil – I was going to use the hat as the foundation for a French Philosopher outfit, but he suggested Ned Flanders' dad from that tiny cut-scene in The Simpsons: “Ned spilled ink all over my POEMS MAAAAAN!”

The best.

So now all that's left to do is figure out how to incorporate a red scarf thingo into this outfit – there IS a way – and go buy a tiny pocketbook from a newsagent before they all close so that I can walk round the party drunkenly accusing people of spilling ink all over my poems, and I feel like I have a fair chance of taking out the title at this Halloween 'party'. There's no title, as far as I am aware, but there will be. I will be sure of it. And when I win, I'm going to beat the fuck out of my drum, probably put my fist through it, cry, yell, and then throw it at someone's head.

Watch the fuck out Melbourne. Today, is Saturday.

Peace, Taco.

Please, I Can't Focus

Funds, funds, funds. Always funds. Money on my mind. I need to figure out a way to make my mind less cluttered. Next Tuesday I'm going to start meditation classes at some place in Fitzroy whose name I have forgotten and am too frazzled to look up right now. I'm really looking forward to it. I need some focus in my brain, because right now, and lately a lot, all of my thoughts come at once, and it's paralysing. It isn't that bad yet, but I can tell it's only going to get worse unless I act.

This is something that a lot of people around me have talked about – being bogged down in the mire of too-many-tasks-to-do-not-enough-time-to-do-them-in-too-much-time-spent-thinking-fuck-now-it's-Wednesday... I never used to be able to understand what the problem was when I would sit in my friend Sam's living room with the lights off and a piece of paper and pen, waiting for him to dictate to me the tasks of the day, his mind helplessly cluttered with thoughts strewn wild by damaging drug use. “Why the fuck can't we just START something?!” I remember thinking, every second of every day spent by his side. But now I'm beginning to understand. It's hard.

I don't want to start listing the things that I have to do here, lest this post be reduced to a mere shopping list of thoughts, but then again it's tempting... because I have to pay this thing and that thing and get money and do invoices and... AGH! NO!!

It's hard to catch myself, but when I do, I do it with all my consciousness, so that instead of thinking about doing this or that thing, I'm thinking about not thinking about doing this or that thing. Still useless thoughts, more and more mud in the swamp. More wading to do. Hours fly by and I manage to free an arm, a leg, but only at the expense of losing the other two.
“Maybe I should go get lunch... get outside for a bit... that always helps, to START the day by venturing out... just abandon the tasks left remaining, cut your losses.”
These internal monologues are dangerous, because if dwelt upon too long, they can become their own tasks, and the absent mind stares out through glazed-over eyes into space, accomplishing nothing.

So what am I doing right now? I had a shower maybe two hours ago (judging from how dry my hair is, rather than any actual recollection of time), and after that I sat down at my computer and sent out a bunch of messages booking acts for the Rochester in January 2014. About five minutes ago I put on my jacket and shoes for the day, but since writing this post – as my mind is never completely focussed on one individual thing – I have realised that I need to report online to Centrelink and invoice my boss to get paid this week... they both lead to more things. No, no no no no. Concentrate. I have more time after this, some of which I will use to walk down to Lentil as Anything and get a meal for which I will pay around $1.50 because I'm poor. My door still doesn't have a lock on it, the smoke detectors beep all night, I need a light for the fixture on my roof.

I think the ultimate danger is having too much time. If I absolutely have to do something and only have a limited amount of time, then I'll find a way to make it happen. But right now I have about four hours and no urgent tasks other than eating, so I find ways to sit around and do nothing, wasting the time. Wasting it. God damn it, look at me go.

I am starting meditation on Tuesday. I am starting meditation on Tuesday. I am starting meditation on Tuesday. Next Tuesday, that is. It looks like a paradise island, somewhere off in the distance. Please save me from myself, I need calm thoughts, because right now, and every day always, I feel like I'm drowning.

Peace, Taco.

Dandenong

 Once again we reach Saturday and find me running on very little sleep after three days' activities. Last night I went down to Dandenong to do some standup at an open mic night in a local pool hall... what a strange experience.

I'd never been to Dandenong before last night, and my only experience or knowledge of it at all was a joke told regularly by Doug Gordon, a comic from around the place, which goes; “Did you know there are over 300 languages spoken in Dandenong? That's crazy, how many ways do you need to say, 'gimme your wallet!' ”. Make of that joke what you will, it is liable to plant a certain picture in the blank mind of any wary traveller. Then just before I left to jump on the train I stopped by Baker St to grab some stuff I left there on Tuesday and say hi to Brodie and Jimmy, and after I said I was going to Dandenong Brodie (ex-dealer with more than ample experience dealing with sketchy people and shady situations) told me to be careful, and not to walk around at night. Fuck.

So I jumped on the train notably tense and began rehearsing a script in my mind for what I was now sure was the inevitable run-in I was going to have with a gang of angry youths as soon as I stepped off the train. “If you can make 'em laugh then you'll be right” - I remembered the words Plummy told me one day a long time ago as he recounted his story of being backed against a wall by three guys in Adelaide and getting out of it by calling one of them a fluffy teddy bear. I don't fancy my chances tickling someone's tum-tum while they stare into my face with the “I-want-to-pulverise-something” eyes on.

I tried to spy my foes on the train, but saw no one other than a few cute girls and some sad, repressed business-types I couldn't help myself from gleefully judging internally. No threats, but my head was on a tense swivel. As we pulled in to Dandenong station at the end of the line and a twenty-five minute ride, I saw the blue and white checkered pattern of the police force on the side of one of the buildings and let out an audible sigh. But I still had the walk to the pool hall. Phone out, and I started adding up the value of all the clothes I was wearing just in case they muggers were organized tax-wise and were offering invoices. I remembered advice from Bolivia; don't walk over bridges because then you can be trapped by two people... but I also remembered my blind confidence from Bolivia, and so when faced with a foot-bridge, I crossed that shit like a motherfucker. WOOOO!!!! WHATTT?!! PROJECT CONFIDENCE! HEAD UP! BREATHE STEADILY! LOOK AT HOW IN CONTROL I AM EVERYONE!!

I got to the pool hall in one piece, they didn't have EFTPOS, I had to walk another ten minutes back to IGA to get cash out (back over the bridge, and back over it a third time on the return!), and when I got back the salt-of-the-earth types that I'm sure would be offended by such a condescending label were setting up instruments for their various open mic bands. I went up third to maybe twenty strangers whose attitude towards me ranged from indifference to mild uncaring opposition, and I ate shit for seven minutes and forty-eight seconds, throwing out my punchiest material to two or three one-note chuckles at each painfully delivered punchline. “These people are so different to me, this place is so different to mine, how can I possibly hope to connect with this audience, or with any of them individually?”

After the show most people who had shaken my hand before conspicuously avoided eye-contact, and the couple behind the bar advised me as to the differences between my sheltered inner-city home and their gritty suburban locale. “They'll laugh at anything over in Richmond, mate! 'Sept they'd prob'ly do it like this [mimes snobby cigarette-holding hipster laugh].”
“Yeah, look dude, you're probably right.” is what I wanted to say, but my response probably came out a bit more mumbled and unclear as I just wanted to get out and home so that I could get to planning my next trip out there. For a comedian, each different crowd is a new puzzle to be solved, and there is a solution to every puzzle, make no mistake. What started out in my mind as a frivolous and ill-advised danger-mission to one of the 'worst' suburbs in Melbourne quickly turned into the beginning of an exercise in empathy. My ego won't let me to give up the idea of walking on to the stage on Friday Open Mic Night at The Green Table Pool Hall/Social Club in Dandenong and capturing the hearts and minds of those twenty odd people, so different to me, but surely not that different where it counts.

I'll figure you out Dandenong, see you in November.

Peace, Taco.

Moving Out

 I'm moving out of Baker St today. There's something surreal about this day, I don't really trust that it's actually here, but it is, and I'm about to start packing up my bed once I can wake up Benny and ask him if he's still got my alan key.

I've been living in this house for over a year – by far the longest I've stayed anywhere other than my parents' house in Adelaide – and it's been a great year. When I first moved in I was just relieved to be out of the Melbourne Connection Travellers' Hostel where bed bugs tore through the night and my food was stolen from the fridges weekly. I moved into the house and the environment that I had always wanted to live in; when I was nineteen I pined for a 'party house' and lamented that the house I lived in in Clearview wasn't one. Brodie the Instigator proved to be the catalyst that my house had lacked, and so almost every weekend here there was something happening and my house was turned into a revolving door of beautiful drug people.

At first I felt at peace with the whole thing and felt that I couldn't be happier with my surroundings, but this is what went wrong: I am no longer an active part of that lifestyle. Sure I go out to clubs every now and then, like maybe once a month or so, but this household is predicated on the every-weekend lifestyle. Benny and Brodie live for clubs and clubbing and pounding techno music, but for me, the night is only a passing fancy. The ever-changing circus of people coming in and out of my house began to blur, faces coming and going like a merry-go-round, and I found myself adrift in a sea of strangers every Sunday morning. And I was a stranger to them too, a stranger in my own house.

So I've started to withdraw into my room and not speak, not move, never emerge when the house is alive and the air is full of basslines, because I know that if I do, I'd be greeted by a bunch of people who I don't know, and who are operating on a different level than me, because I've not been up all night and they have. I don't know them, as much as I want to and would love to, I can't, because I can't commit to that world. On Sunday mornings I really fucking wish I had been out all night just so that I could sit down comfortably and feel normal. Fuck.

So my ever-present scrambling to fit in and forcibly identify with some group of people has led me to this, moving out after a year of living at 45 Baker St, Richmond. It's been a good year, and although I've been less and less comfortable with it in the last few months, I'm glad that I have ticked 'live in a party house' off of my teenage bucket-list, if only so that now I have that book of stories to tell people too, full of embellishments and characters whose names I never knew myself. I can't help but be subject to a feeling of slight melancholy as I finish this blog post, knowing full well that as soon as I do I'm going to have to start picking up the clothes from my floor and packing them into drawers, ready to be carried the 300m and then up stairs, into the room that waits for me above Station 59, one block over. I think I'm finished here though. Actually, I almost certainly am. Now at least I can come back, after an actual absence, and be a part of this world on my own terms and surely be more comfortable. A stranger in a strange house, at 45 Baker St, Richmond.

Peace, Taco.

Have a Good Life

I just answered a phone call from John from Habitat Hostel in St Kilda, John was my contact down at Habitat during my year as a tour guide for Peek Tours – the best job I've ever had. He was calling me to ask how the tours were going... at least, I think he was, I didn't really get the gist of what he was calling about as our conversation was cut short when I told him that Peek Tours no longer does the free tour. We got edged out by the competition ('I'm Free Tours' /petulantspitting) and had to shut up shop. This would be our last phone call, oh the mildly shocking emotion.

The first time I met John I didn't really meet him, and for the first months of our relationship (is that the right word? Friendship? Not quite... professional relationship is too long, relationship is too... gay?) he existed to me only as a number saved in my phone: 'John – Habitat'. I would call him on Friday mornings when the groups he chaperoned on that day each week were late, or failed to arrive at all. “Anyone for the tour today dude?”
“Nah, no one was interested.” He would say.
“Aaite, cool. Catcha later.” And we would hang up. Click.

Our tour company suffered from a severe lack of promotional funds, and slowly but surely we were pushed from first to second position in the free tour market by I'm Free, but Fridays were as close as we had to a sure day of at least ten people. John – Habitat brought groups every week of fun tourists and backpackers, and after a while he started hanging out whenever I was on and chatting for five or ten minutes while his group lingered in the background acting awkward and not knowing to do with themselves. He'd usually ask my how my comedy was going and what I was up to, and I'd tell him, and then tell him my latest interesting story of some weirdo on the tour, or some shitty heckler at a show. Once a scary-looking, bedraggled homeless guy approached me in the Block Arcade while I was talking to a group of fifteen or so and yelled almost incomprehensibly; “LIAR! FUCKEN LIARRRR!” My group were fairly shocked and taken aback, and looked to me to resolve the tension and extricate us from the situation, I turned to them and replied:
“Okay guys, this is Dave, he's going to be one of our new guides but he's still training and learning the ropes, so everyone say 'Hey Dave!'”

I was pretty happy with that.

Whenever we talked on Friday mornings the conversations never strayed far from basic, surface level chatter, but I always liked how John – Habitat hung around for a little rather than bailing straight away. Maybe his job back at the hostel was a little boring, or maybe I was a little boring and he just felt obliged to make idle banter? Or maybe his job was great, but he just enjoyed talking to people. Or maybe he didn't work for Habitat at all? But was just a strangely motivated homeless man who would drag tourists who seemed lost from the streets, round them up, and take them to a free tour under the guise of working for an established hostel in St Kilda. Maybe, but probably not.

It's weird to think about how many people we meet in just one day, how many people you say “hi” to, how many people you make eye contact with, how many people you walk past on the street and share nothing but the air of an artificial city and the harsh streets covered in crushed-up rocks and chemicals. There are a lot of them. Our days are all a constant parade of changing faces dancing in and out of our tiny little personal worlds, some of them stay for a while, some of them leave before we learn their names. John – Habitat was a small part of my life for a year, and when I told him that Peek Tours was no longer running, we both understood that our professional relationship was about to come to an end.

I am very quick to attach undue meaning and emotion to these kinds of tiny events that, much like the aforementioned faces, crop up hundreds of times in every day. When we hung up the phone, I couldn't resist pointing out the harsh reality of this particular goodbye. What does it mean? I knew you for five minutes, every Friday for a year. Is that significant in any way? I'll probably forget your name in another year. Although John is a pretty easy name to remember... but then, it's John. Easy to forget too.

“I'll see you around them man... probably never.” he said to me as our conversation wound down and we prepared to return to our existences.
“Yeah man, have a good life.”
(together) “Haha...” Click.

Peace, Taco.

Mysterious Lady De-Mystified

She was the queen of the tram stop. Well, she was the only one there, sharing the bench with me in her worn, pink hoodie and smoking a cigarette while she screwed the lid back on her bottle of Carlton Draught. Eleven AM, even. When I first saw her she looked like a broken angel, breathing out lung-fulls of ashen smoke and looking around at her surroundings, eyes darting back and forth.

She didn't seem to notice me, but I sat with my back towards her so as not to intrude. She was in charge, and sat upright with her spine arched – postured like the queen. A stripper bag at her feet ('stripper bags' are the ones like businessmen have in airports, with the pull-out handle and wheels on the bottom; too big to be a backpack, and obviously full of clothes) made me guess that her life was not in order. No one ever carries that bag around at 11am with a clear plan in their head. She had either just finished work (no strip clubs in Richmond) or had been staying somewhere and had to leave. These were my conclusions, to my eyes, the bag said it all. She was smoking and drinking, but those were just plain quirks.

The tram pulled up, only five or six stops to the end of the line, but it's always quicker than walking. We got on, and I sat in the booth across the aisle from her, my eyes peeled to the left as she lugged her bag up the stairs, sat down, and then cursed as she remembered to put out her cigarette. No boundaries. Perfect.

An elderly couple waddled across the crossing while the tram waited for the lights to change, the driver signalled to them that he was waiting, and they waddled faster, shaky on wavering limbs. The man made it up first, his wife followed twenty seconds later – they were very old. I heard m'lady whisper. Something under her voice, maybe? Surely not speaking to me. No, definitely under her voice. Sharp. Hissing; “Don't think I can't understand you.”
Who? Who can you understand? The elderly couple? They seem to be speaking Greek to eachother.
“Fucken hurry up, you're gonna fucken die soon anyway you old cunt.”
That was definitely her, holy fuck, I think she's out of her mind – well that broke the spell a little...

So now I'm sitting there like, holy shit, this fucking insane woman is about to lose her shit because two old people have made the tram wait like twenty seconds at the lights because their old legs couldn't get them across the crossing as fast as she could. She's muttering under her breath at them. At the next stop an elderly Asian woman got on with her cart full of whatever, and pink-hoodie chick said the same shit, only worse, probably. Something along the lines of “don't fucken touch my suitcase”, when the elderly woman's cart bumped her stripper-bag as she hobbled up the steps. So much anger, so much resentment, so much blind spite seething out of her brooding form in the corner. She was no longer a queen, but a serpent hissing viciously with a piercing gaze. Still looked pretty though.

It's strange how much I want to like people who I can immediately see are in some way 'damaged' or at least from the areas of our society that are sick with something. Drinking from a bottle of beer and screwing the lid back on before midday on any day of the week is not an action borne of confidence and a life well going – she was scared to finish it and be left alone, it seemed. But the first thought I had when I saw her sitting proud and upright was, “what a woman!” I wanted to tell her that she was amazing, until she opened her mouth at least, when I wanted to tell her that her scathing half-remarks were “neither intelligent nor funny.” (quoting my own thoughts now)

The only action I took while watching the whole thing play out this morning was to stare openly in her direction. I don't know what I was trying to accomplish – maybe if she'd looked back I would have had to decide whether to fall in love with her or hate her for her spitefulness to her face – but now that she's gone, I'll never know. I will confirm this though: I stayed until the last stop, just so that I could remain a spectator of the performance, or maybe out of hope that she would glance. I honestly don't know why, but I know I could have gotten off one stop earlier.

Peace, Taco.

Saturday Introspection

 It's a hard struggle, that between the desire to live healthier and improve yourself – myself – and the responsibility to not become an ego-driven maniac. Sometimes in the heat of drug-induced introspection I have fallen into the trap of thinking that just because the ego can be a destructive force, it should be completely annihilated. I don't think that's true really, but sometimes in the vulnerable state that hallucinogens usually induce, the easiest way out seems to be 'admitting' that “I am a terrible person” – self-effacing to escape the torture of thinking about wrongdoings. This, however, is a false admission. Two reasons:

First of all, I'm not a terrible person, duh. Okay, I mean, maybe not, 'duh', let's not get complacent here, but to feel bad about something I've done wrong is a very good step on the way to being a good person, and so regardless of how bad something I've done may be, flagellating myself for it doesn't make it better. The danger in 'admitting' (and I use inverted commas here because really, an admission of something that isn't true is analogous to a 'discovery' of something that doesn't exist) that “I am a terrible person”, is that it leads me into absolving myself from whatever thing led me to this conclusion. So while I may behave for a while, sooner or later that guilt subsides and the cycle starts all over again. It goes from “I'm a terrible person”, to “I made up for that”, to “I'm doing sweet”, to “LOOK AT ALL THE IDIOTS, I'M AWESOME!” And then we're back to square one.

This then leads me to the second reason why simply reaching for the excuse of being a terrible person to justify past misdeeds is probably not the way to go; it leads on to the idea that the self should be destroyed completely. I remember a story John Lennon told during the 70s (if I remember correctly) about how he spent years following the Timothy Leary Acid Trip and thinking he was a worthless human being and should live his life hidden away within himself for fear of his dark inner nature wreaking havoc on the world around him. It took him years to realize that while the forces inside the human soul are sometimes destructive, they are also creative – the yin and the yang. We need both to survive, and to live lives worth living.

So when I reach out of well-worn reflex for the “I suck” card, I'm really being lazy and cheating myself out of an opportunity to improve. The self is required, as the whole of society, which is used as the basis for so many moral-political philosophies (“the most good for the most people”, “equal opportunity for all” etc.) is necessarily made up of multitudes of individual, indivisible 'selves'. The trick is to not let the ego run rampant and start sucking up too much attention and importance, it is a ravenous beast when allowed to run free and needs to remain as a player of equal importance as every other, lest it become, as Bill Hicks said, “another fevered ego tainting our collective unconscious.”

I don't know why I started writing about this stuff, but I'm very happy with my results, I just thought it all though as the words were coming onto the screen. I haven't done anything particularly wrong lately that I feel like I should apologize for – although if I had, this would be a great way of apologizing to my internal moral compass without having to do anything. GENIUS! But no, I was just thinking this morning that I haven't had any of those kind of self-effacing, 'Revolver' “my ego is ruining me”, I-just-fucked-up thoughts in a while, and I started thinking that maybe I was overdue for one. But then I thought, no, fuck that. I don't need to push myself back into another cycle of feeding and then starving my self of endearment, maybe I might actually be able to strike a bit of a balance for once, and maintain. Maintain. Ah, there we are.

The Struggle To Maintain.

Peace, Taco.

Engaging with Emotions

I really don't want to get dragged into this whole election thing... I mean, I do, because it's important, but also I don't, because from what I can see of this fetid election campaign, our country is fucked anyway. The circus of Dreadful Mediocrity versus Frightening Evil continues, and no amount of last minute self-education or concerted voicing of opinions can help. We're going down, folks, hold your loved ones and scream through tears and dangly mouth-saliva.

I don't know why it takes so much effort for me to engage on an emotional level, I've been trying to get to the bottom of this question for a while. I get a little jealous – although that's not really the word – of people who can convert their concern for our society into tangible passion about politics and issues of governance. I wish I could bring myself to care more, to do more, to get angrier and more proactive.

Yesterday I received a call from a random number – not blocked, just not saved to my phone – it was some guy whose name I have forgotten but who introduced himself as the co-ordinator of Power Shift, a climate summit I went to a month or so ago. I didn't have the most amazing time at this summit, mostly because I didn't really know what to do with it as an experience, and because I'd been up all night on one of the worst benders in recent memory, and attended the event without a wink of sleep... but the co-ordinator was calling, he was on the phone right now. He asked me whether I'd had a good time, and I lied poorly and said, “sure”. Then he told me about the AYCC's plans to man polling booths giving out information about the major parties' positions on climate change on election day, and asked what my plans for the 7^th were. I lied again, and said I was busy all day. Why?

This is the same thing I'm talking about, right here. I don't even know why I lied, and why I decided that I didn't need to get out and do something to support what is probably the closest thing to a cause I legitimately care about in our political landscape on the most important day of my voting life thus far. If this election really is looking like sending our self-destructive patch of dirt down the tubes like I so resignedly fear it is, then shouldn't I be ready to act? Shouldn't I have jumped at his opportunity without a second thought?

I think the reason I am so reliably distant from my emotions when engaging (or failing to engage) with the Australian political landscape is because my emotions towards it are so overwhelmingly negative, exposing myself to them would wreak nothing but havoc on my mind. “Why bother?” is the overarching theme of this story. Why bother trying? Why bother caring? Why bother hurting myself and damaging my psyche when the slithering worthless cunts of the world armed with PR campaigns and professional liars in tow will undoubtedly do it for me regardless? Why? Why? What's the fucking point?

Well, the point is probably that me and my apathy represent a large section of young people in the electorate, and it is highly likely that me, and people like me, are one of the main reasons that I can go on Facebook and read status after status after tearfully frustrated, screamingly impotent, devastatingly hopeless status struggling to comprehend how Tony Abbott – the hideous face of democracy gone foul – will be running our country in under a week. From the 1200 Facebook friends I have, I've not seen a single pro-Liberal opinion in the last month, and know of only one person who might MAYBE hold one. Every young person I speak to says the same – that they are scared for our future, and wish there was a way out – so then how are we in this situation, drifting towards destruction, when everyone seems to be pushing the other way? Well, because no one's pushing. No one cares. Everyone has given up, and it's so heartbreaking that we can't even bear to think about it. Because we know we've betrayed ourselves, and come September 8^th, I challenge any one of us to look ourselves in the mirror and not see what we have become. Shudder in fright, friends, this is our tomorrow.

So I'm about to call back that unknown number, and speak to the man whose name I have forgotten, and tell him that actually, yes, I will be there on Saturday, handing out flyers and talking to the masses. Because I should. Because I have to. Because we all have to. We're still going to lose, but to be honest, I had only planned to sit in and watch porn anyway.

Peace, Taco.

Sunday Evening Win

One of my many minor regrets in life is that I don't get to consume as many movies and TV shows as I would like. I always hear people talking about the latest shows and new movies and I'm sure I'd like them if I could figure away to penetrate the initial barrier of effort it takes to get into these things, but whenever I try and watch something on my laptop, I invariably lie down to get comfortable, and within half an hour at the very most, I'm asleep. Am I narcoleptic or something? Is my brain broken?... it took me a week to watch the four hour documentary 'The Century of Self' on YouTube, because I could only watch it in one-hour instalments, and even then I had to be sitting upright in my chair, focussing intently. No phones. No Facebook. Concentrate, Fuckhead.

Today was a slow starter, I woke up around midday and didn't feel like doing much once I had, I drank a cider and a half, and hung out with Team Weekend, who had been out all night taking happiness. I'm really glad I didn't chose happiness when it was passed around early in the afternoon – although I did wrap some in foil and put it in my drawer for later – but without a distraction to keep my day moving, sadness started to creep in. I found myself lying in bed at 5:30pm, drifting in and out of a useless sleep, comedy playing in the background. I was unable to listen, no focus. Once horizontal, my mind begins to switch off.

The decision to go to the movies was one borne mostly out of a lack of other options: I searched 'Melbourne theatre' on google, and came up with a few burlesque shows (eugh) and one show that looked really cool, but that started at 6pm and so was probably out of reach by that point. Then I thought about the cinema (do people still call it that? Awkward wording). I haven't been to a movie since The Dark Knight Rises came out last year – I went with a German backpacker called Ralf Elze who always introduced himself as English and it was like, okay dude, sure, you hold a British passport, but I don't care how well you think you can speak the language (no better than any other Northern European), I and any other native speaker can hear your German accent a mile away so sorry, you're still associated with efficiency... anyway. So I went to the movies this afternoon, Ralf is not in this story.

I chose the independent (I think?) cinema on Collins St because I knew where it was from a failed outing where Brodie, his brother, Nairns and I didn't get to the spot early enough to get in to see a new skate video (STOP GETTING SIDETRACKED), and because I felt like I'd be more likely to be able to see something interesting there. Regardless of how regularly I watch movies, I still maintain a healthy level of hipster snobbery about the whole exercise. First I looked at the Steve Jobs pic starring Aston Kutcher, but I decided that dated early '00s reference and went with the altogether more sophisticated-sounding 'Stoker'. Nicole Kidman, oh how I know nothing of you or any other cinema figures! Something something something...

The movie was pretty great, I won't say 'fucking great', as much as I was tempted to, as I wouldn't really give it Five Tacos, but for as much as my irrelevant, although admittedly VERY ENTERTAINING opinion is worth, it was definitely a solid four.

Now I'm kind of sold on the idea of going to see more movies, see what good one nice experience can do? (that rhetorical chiding was more for me than anyone else) Tomorrow I might go to Fed Square and watch some shot film thingo narrated by Tim Minchin, and maybe I'll be able to conscript a lovely someone to come along with me. Other than that though, when I was waiting at the tram stop to go home I had an interesting interaction with a guy who approached and first commented on the book I was reading ('On The Road', again), and then asked which tram I was catching (109, for the record). I think he wanted to find someone to accompany the lady he was with on her trip on the 112, at one point telling her that, “it's a big city!”, before leaving anyway. What a strange thing to ask of a stranger; I already used up the word 'conscript' before, but it's pretty apt again here I feel.

All in all, a really solid evening from me. Bad thing turned good, and I'm pretty happy with my outfit to boot, but even without all of these frills and little happenings, the overwhelming positive spin to today would definitely have to be the soothing fact that HEY! At least no one died.

Peace, Taco.

A Faraday Cage and Facebook

I'm sure sometimes I write things just to write them, just to have written something. This blog is the perfect example of that, but more than this blog, I do this on Facebook and YouTube comments. The ease with which I can say something to (potentially) thousands of people really is intoxicating sometimes, and often, what seems like a great thought to immortalize online at the time of thinking, does not prove to be so.

This is no more true than today, when I stood in the elevator at Little Hunter (the restaurant I clean four days a week) and watched the number tick down one floor while holding my breath so that the smell from the bins I was taking down in the lift with me wouldn't make me dry reach my stomach lining onto the lovely polished steel interior. I went from the ground floor (GF) down to the basement – front entrance (BF), and the similar double meaning of both these acronyms was – as it is on most days – glaringly apparent. 'Girl Friend', 'Boy Friend'. This was my idea for a Facebook post:

[photo of the elevator display reading 'BF']
Caption: “Wow this elevator sure is keen LOL! Sori elevator, I dnt swing dat wai LOL JK!”

Not great huh? Pretty fucking TERRIBLE ACTUALLY – even if it was meant to be satirical (for the record, yes, it was, I'm not a 14 year old boy). But now, if you go on my Facebook wall and look at the posts on today, the 30^th of August 2013, you can clearly see that no such post exists. I don't like deleting old posts, as I think it perfectly reasonable that I should have to be held accountable to my former thoughts and ideas, however deranged or idiotic. So how did I manage to dodge this bullet?

One recollection from my time in year 12 physics with Mr Turnbull that has continually puzzled and frustrated me for five years since my graduation, is the Faraday Cage. Apparently, so our wise master taught us, a Faraday Cage is a closed three-dimensional shape (cage), composed of conductive material, that forms an electromagnetic field through which electromagnetic signals cannot pass. The cage doesn't have to be completely solid, just the frame, but it does have to be closed. In our lessons he always used to refer to something like the body of a car being a Faraday Cage, and using this to justify why using a mobile phone in a car is a bad idea – because the EM waves that make up the phone's signal are 'trapped' within the car, thus subjecting you and your passengers to far greater doses of radiation than normal. This never made sense to me cos... like, if the signal can't get out of the car, then how does your phone work at all? Okay sure, I'll accept that the radiation might be greater within the car, but a pretty decent amount of those charged particles have to be able to leave or else the phone's signal would die. Yes, the radio antenna is on the outside, but not the phone... its a phone. Ummmmm... anyway, I passed year 12 physics and did really well ACTUALLY, so there! For those five years I've been content to tell Faraday and his dumb cage to SUCK IT! Ha.

Until now... so while I was in the lift today, safely (although still not happily) breathing bin-air in through my mouth and writing what I at the time was a cutting piece of social satire, my phone lost signal. The elevator, as previously mentioned, has an interior made of polished steel – not a great conductor even, but still okay considering the completeness of the cage. So while I was there, with my half-asleep brain at 6:45am trying to post my photo onto Facebook, something inside me said, “wait, dude, someone is trying to tell you something here.” I was already unsure about what I was posting – I guess just like to post when I wake up – and this little hitch thankfully pushed me over the edge. “Nooooooo Taco, no postey postey, this attempt at satire isssss DUMB!” I closed the window, and when the elevator doors opened, I grabbed the bins, and left without ever having uttered a word to the world of social media.

So thanks, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Thank you Michael Faraday and also to your lovely cage, dumb though it still may be, you have saved me from widespread embarrassment and the shame of less-than-three-likes that draws the piteous stares of wall-scrollers the world over. I felt I should do something to repay you for my five years of disdain and dismissal, so I wrote you this post, and HEY, look at that I even learnt your first name. Good on you.

Peace, Taco.

There's Bread in Our Toilet

There's bread in our toilet. I'm not necessarily against it, but I mean, it probably shouldn't be there. Not heaps of bread... not even a full slice, in fact, I'm not even sure it's bread, it's a chunk of something a little bigger than your average crouton and it's floating in the toilet bowl. I thought it was spit at first, like someone had just spat in the toilet (as people do – not being ironic here, I definitely do that almost every time I go to the toilet) but then I tried to flush it and NO NO NO it wouldn't go down. Why the fuck am I writing this, seriously?

But it was weird, it's like, okay so now the question is – if we're all in agreement that yes, it is bread – where did it come from? Was someone eating a sandwich while using the toilet (unhygienic), and if so, were they going number 1s or number 2s? If they were taking a slash then okay, sure, I'll let it slide, that makes SOME sense, even if it's still a bit gross to be eating a sandwich while standing at a toilet pissing, and it also raises the tricky question of how they got their fly undone or how they were aiming. But if it was either a girl, or if they were Daking a Tump – just, if they were sitting down – then SORRY! That's fucking GROSS. Do not eat sandwiches while you're sitting on the fucking toilet, you animals. You beasts. You creatures devoid of hope.

Okay, I'm still not 100% sure it was bread... but no, I am not going back to check. Okay, I'm thinking about going back to check. I could poke it with a stick? But we don't have any sticks in our house that I'm willing to poke into the toilet for the purposes of miscellaneous object identification (MOI). Also fuck that, I doubt I'd be able to learn anything:
“Okay, so I poked it with a stick and it didn't cling to the stick, nor did it change shape in any way.”
“Still stumped?”
“Still stumped.”
I can't see that going anywhere useful.

What would annoy me the most if it did turn out to be bread – and just for the record guys, I think we're all going to have to reconcile ourselves with the unwelcome reality right now which is that we're probably never going to know what it was, and it will most likely be gone by morning – what would annoy me though, is that it's not like we live in a house that can boast a proud abundance of bread. We're not bread starved by any means, I mean, I did buy two loaves the other day, and we're only halfway through the first one... but still, who the fuck is anyone to go throwing crouton-sized chunks of bread into toilets like Elvis fucking Presley right now? We don't have that kind of bread (pun) (See: The Young Ones) and frankly the only time I like to see food in the toilet is if it's gone through a good several metres of digestive tract first, and even then I'm not thrilled about the experience.

All I wanted to do was take a nice little piss by myself after coming in from the cold night and this is what I'm greeted with? Bread in my fucking toilet. Well I don't know what you guys think, but I've just about had it with this day I reckon. Bed time.

Peace, Taco.

The Best Pun

The cream came on the market during a time of fear. “VinceCream™, be your own best friend.” There were rumours that the original development team had formulated the prototype with the goal of permanent transformation, but marketing had watered it down for mass-production. No point in selling a once-off, better to make it temporary and keep the money rolling in. Vince Melling was a God: the fastest, the smartest, the most well-groomed, wives on every continent. Nobody could resist.

The day they brought it out doors were rammed down in every department store across the developed world. China, Japan, South Korea, Great Britain, The European Continent, Australia, North America, Brazil. Also in developing countries: Indonesia, South Africa, Mexico, New Zealand. The wave of homogeneity spread out from each source as people rubbed VinceCream™ on themselves and their faces and bodies, even voices, changed to resemble the one true Vince Melling. Everyone's change was different – no one looked exactly the same as Melling or each other after the three hour transformation period, but “the product's effectiveness was assured across all races and body types”, they said, “to within three standard deviations from True Vince.”

Within three months the first customers started coming back after their little plastic tubs started to run dry... the elderly, the infirm, those who needed more VinceCream™ daily to maintain their new state (for the wonder-drug also cured sickness and disability, as Vince Melling, it was widely known, had never been sick in his life). VinceCream Lite™ was a smash hit with twenty-something women. VinceCream Starburst™ with pre-teens. Mothers bought their children VinceCream™ for their third birthday. Sex bars stocked glow in the dark VinceCream™ to use as lubricant in late-night orgies. Vince's sexual prowess was renowned.


The years wore on and VinceCream™ remained the number one selling product of any kind world wide, children were born in hospitals full of look-alike nurses and doctors and parents with smiling faces chiselled from the same stone as their charismatic god. Vince Melling, he walked Earth's every corner, every day, his clones in billions of places, all at the same time. No one could object, and it started to be that even those who had no particular fondness for the man initially had started using his product – social pressures. Don't be left out. Don't be left behind. Racism ended, gender inequality too, and the world was divided into Vinces, and the steadily diminishing ranks of those who continued to hold out. The fringes of society: outlaws, rednecks, idiots, followers of the old religions in the strangest parts of creation where the sun, it was assumed, no longer cared to shine.


Tolerance is not an easy game, and so these corners were slowly wiped out... eventually by force, though never were the hold-outs long in their protest. One week of VinceCream™ can turn anyone, and once the world has been rearranged by a new set of eyes belonging to the immortal himself, like faces in a cloud, it is hard to ever see the chaos again.

*****

Vince Melling sat in his mansion, surrounded by beauties – himself. Walking mirrors, talking and moving in a way almost identical to his own, he spat upon them. They fell directly at his feet.

In the bathroom he locked the door, and drawing his face up close to the mirror and carefully with his hand, trembling with fear and anticipation, he rubbed the VinceCream™ into his own face, then sat silently, waiting for something to happen.

At noon the next day, the world seemed empty. A godless, barren wasteland, filled with living bodies wandering; images of a ghost. Even Vince Melling, because no one is un-Vinceable.

Random Encounter

What. The. Fuck.

First of all, I hate when people knock too many times on your door. Knocks on the door are a tolerable intrusion at the best of times, and only because they herald the bringing of lovely things, but when someone raps 5+ times on my front door with a sense of entitled urgency audible through the house, it makes me unhappy. I'm trying to restrain myself here, because this isn't really part of the story.

I heard one of these obnoxious knocks at the door just now, and left my room to answer what I thought would be one of four or five deliveries we get every week. I opened the door and a gaunt, pasty smackhead, stoned out of his mind with a half-smoked, unlit cigarette in one hand, stood before me. He was swaying.

The first thing that struck me was that this person must have summoned up all of their strength to execute the knocking that had caught my attention, because as he stood there on my front doorstep it looked as if any change in local air pressure would have him reeling on his ass. I've heard plenty about the miraculous feats of balance addicts are capable of (see: David Cross, 'Bigger and Blackerer') but to witness something like this first hand was really a wild ride to Silly Town.

Then he asked me if I had seen his dog. “I've lost my dog... it's a little shitzu... if you find it... I'll give you my number...”

Normally I would have been excited about this... actually, scratch that, I WAS excited about this... but not yet. I was a little worried, or maybe just anxious for this insane interaction to be over, so that my excitement at having had something dumb happen to me today could kick in. “Who are you, ridiculous person?!” I could hear myself preparing to ask. I could hear the story formulating itself in my head already. I love telling stories... I just had to wrap this thing up, this beautiful present that the world had offered me up. Saturday afternoon in Richmond. 3121.

“...uuuh... yeah okay dude.” was all I had... and all I really needed to be honest. The guy had probably forgotten that he'd offered me his number, or that he'd asked me where his dog was, or that he'd ever had a dog (did he ever have a dog?) or what a dog even was. We stood there for a second in silence – just a second, but long enough for it to be mutually understood that our time together was at an end – and then I stepped back a fraction, and began to close the door, looking at his face as I did so. His face looked back at me, and then turned, with the rest of his body haphazardly following it, before disappearing from my view. I heard the gate open, so I know he's not asleep on the couch out the front right now... that's good. I'd to go past there at some point.

It's strange that we live here, so close to the barely-beating heart of the heroin scene in Melbourne's inner East. It's weird to see people consumed with a half-life, stalking the streets every day, I often wonder what their day-to-day lives are like, even though the mystery really isn't hard to guess at. Today though, I didn't have to wonder, I got to peek in, I was allowed the rare opportunity to gaze over the edge and into the blackness in the abyss, just for a second. Only a glimpse. Initially I was angry for the intrusion, then spiteful... but that was just a reflexive reaction. Enjoy your heroin bro, it's your choice, and as far as I can tell you're not hurting anyone – it doesn't hurt to be woken up from idle daydreams every now and then by a bit of reality. That's the reason we live here.

I'm going to get lunch now. The pasty, white ghost with whom I shared a twenty second conversation at 2:45pm this afternoon will probably start feeling sick before sunset. I hope he finds somewhere warm to crash, some downers to help him sleep, and a lighter for his unlit ciggie.

Happy Saturday.

Peace, Taco.

(To read my thoughts on this encounter a few days later after some interesting information had come to light, click here)