Election-Related Injuries a Real Headache for the Left

A massive surge in head injuries thought to be the result of exasperated left-wing voters attempting to vent their frustrations against masonry has sent emergency wards across the country into a panic this weekend. These election-related injuries have been mostly concentrated in the inner-city suburbs of capital cities and have caused several Fitzroy coffee shops to designate certain walls as 'Non-Essential Government Resistance Outlet' or 'NEGRO Walls' in a bid to ensure structural integrity.

Conservative commentators and Liberal voters alike have condemned the leftists' actions, with some going as far as to suggest that the number of self-inflicted head injuries over the one weekend constitutes a coordinated effort to overload the cities' hospitals and manufacture a panic about the state of the health system. Others claim the behaviour is simply the result of the easy inner-city hipster lifestyle, and that this “faggy tantrum” will soon play itself out.

“Maybe if he stop readin' all them fuckin' books and did a bit o' work mate!” contented Dave, from Ceduna. Dave's son is currently in a critical condition in St Vincent's Hospital in Fitzroy, Melbourne, after being found next to a lamp post on Saturday, with his phone screen displaying a text from his father that read, “BLOODY0BOAT0PEOPLE!” [SIC]

Right-wing pundits are urging all voters who are disappointed with the election result to take their frustrations out in a more traditional manner, for example in competitive sports, or organized street-fights, while medical experts are suggesting that if the left is adamant that it will continue to beat its head against the wall, it at least wear a bike helmet.

From Richmond.

Peace, Taco.

More Politics

Okay, so the election was yesterday. Far from detaching myself from the whole process, I actually got slightly emotionally involved, which was nice... and interesting to boot. I think I'm going to start volunteering for the AYCC on a regular basis, it could be a really cool opportunity to do some public speaking and put the skills I've been learning in comedy to an effective and noble use.

I think the key to engaging emotionally in political issues in the way that I was bemoaning being unable to in my post last week is that I just have to become more involved. Rather than just sitting around thinking about them and waiting for emotional inspiration to strike, if I start engaging physically with the issues and actually putting in work towards the goal that I know I intellectually support, then I'll be able to attach emotions to that work, and to the community around it.

I also think I'm starting to understand just what it is that is messed up about our country, please forgive me now for working through the ideas in writing here, for those who care, I'm sure you already know, and for those who haven't thought about it, I'm sure you don't care:

When I used to read TakiMag it always made a lot of sense to me because I had missed the foul assumption that all of those right-wing thinkers make when they talk about national government policy; they assume that they only have the responsibility to care for those within their own nation-states. Or states, or nations, whatever. That's why they can morally rationalize harsh immigration policy and low taxes supporting a consumer economy. But how is that fair? It's not fair at all. Our economy is supported and paid for by raw materials and cheap labour in the poorest regions of the world, all so that we can continue to spend money on the consumer purchases that keep our economies afloat. So then governments like the Abbott-led Coalition that has just been elected in Australia campaign on the idea that we only need to look after our own, without making mention of the fact that us and our own have been and continue to be propped up by the suffering of millions beyond our shores. It's selfish thinking, but by omitting all mention of the source of our wealth, right-wing, protectionist governments give the masses in consumer-capitalist societies a way of absolving ourselves from responsibility for the suffering we create.

This is where the often-quoted, always smilingly dismissed 'hippie mushroom-rhetoric' about seeing all of us as one and forgetting the arbitrary distinctions of nationality should become so much more important than it is. People seem to accept this thinking readily, and espouse it wherever possible, but no one goes on to live by it. I don't, neither does anyone in our society.

I don't know that I feel guilty, because I don't think it's realistic to expect someone who is advertised to every single second of their life to be able to make decisions like 'what should I have for lunch today' whilst considering the global ramifications for their choice of salad dressing. I am angry though, firstly at everyone who voted for Tony Abbott for not recognizing the weakness that exists within ourselves that allows us to discount the suffering of billions of people that we are partly responsible for. Also though, I'm angry at myself for not recognizing sooner that I should have been trying to do something about the cause that I am and have always been so passionate about, and only expecting that if I sat and thought about it long enough, a concise, and developed opinion would avail itself of me, and I would be ready to enter the world, a fully-armed crusader for truth.

Ah the complacencies of affluence... it's a nice day outside today.

Peace, Taco.

TGIF

Today Seizure Kaiser, a comic from Sydney, arrived at my place with his bags at around 2pm; he's staying the night before he goes to a party tomorrow night in an attempt to stay up all night and catch his 4am flight on Sunday. I met him last night and saw his set which was cool, and after seeing his last-minute post on the 'Melbourne Comedy Rooms Hub' Facebook page, I offered my house up. This is the best way to meet and hang out with other comedians.

So we went to lunch with his non-comic friend, and another aspiring comic Micaela Moore, who is yet to do her first gig but has spent the last week hanging out at shows. After that, a nerd-shop called Minotaur. After that, beers at Rooftop Bar. Good day.

I feel a little light-headed now, not hugely, I've only had two pints, but enough to combine with my tiredness and fairly sap my enthusiasm for writing this entry right here. It's probably for the best that I decided against waiting until Luka and Macdonald finished drinking at the latter's house and headed to the workers, if I'd ended up joining them I would have been in no state to fulfil my duties as flyer hander-outerer tomorrow on election day. I'm actually pretty psyched about how much of a fun-times, positive experience that could be. Also a thing that's kind of nice is that suddenly, due to a venue that I clean regularly deciding to close on both Sunday and Monday, I have Sundays off of work. SATURDAY PARTY TIMES. Yessssssssssssssss. That's fun.

That's all I'm going to write for now, I think. Just a brief, jumbled note about the pithy events of the day, and my joy in anticipating those of tomorrow. I'm setting out Seizure's mattress in the lounge room, although I'm sure I'll be asleep by the time he gets home anyway.

Peace, Taco.

Money Money Money

Right now I have three-hundred and seventy six dollars and ninety-eight cents in my bank account. In my 'NetSaver' account I also have two cents, which I feel is a good buffer to maintain, but in ten days rent is due again, so I need to stop buying things.

In unrelated news though, walked into a dope little store on Brunswick St today; me and Richie had just SMASHED OUT A GYM SESH (oh god, I still can't say it without some degree of ironic self-parody, but I'll get there) and were walking back towards the Workers when Richie wandered into a shop. The guy at the counter was a huge chiller and we started talking about the day and anything. I picked up a Vice and put that in my bag for later – I just read it actually, there was some sick story about a reported who went to El Salvador to investigate the gang culture over there and ended up being the catalyst for a huge incident with the police force and local media because he was the first reporter to be allowed into the prison in ten years. That's neither here nor there though... we walked into the store and chatted to the guy for a while, Richie tried on some New Balance shoes that were pretty nice, and I found a tan shirt with these funky Mexican-style patterns on the pocket and cuffs, so I bought that for $39...

Fuck, wait, okay so right now I'm about to go to the Monet exhibition with Luka which I'm pretty excited about. It closes tomorrow, and I've literally been meaning to go since it fucking opened in like July, when I used to see the advertisements on the side of trams as I was giving my tours. I can't believe I don't give tours anymore, that's crazy to me, that was such a fucking cool job man, and I never did get around to executing my plan of putting my couchsurfing.org details on a business card and handing it out after every tour. That would've been a phenomenal tool for global networking... but now tours are done. So anyway, we're going to Monet, it's going to be great, I don't know quite what to expect as I've never been to an exhibition like this before but Phil went with Todd a few months ago and when I talked to him today he said, “don't take mushrooms.” So I guess I won't take mushrooms. I just looked online and it costs $26...

Ugh, okay so tonight I might be going out to Ferdydurke for a bit tonight for Richie's birthday, and also just to hang out with the boys. I might be doing something else but if that plan falls through then to the club it is, although I hope my other plans don't fall through, because Ferdy will no doubt entail expenditure of coin, which is kind of the theme of this blog post. I don't want to spend money. Why does everything I do fucking cost money? Why does EVERYTHING period. Fucking Cost Money? Ugh. Sigh. Groan. Self-inflicted anguish.

I looked through some more applications for medical testing today, but I can't reconcile myself with shifting gigs I've already booked just to stay in hospital for a relatively short (two day) trial that would only make me a thousand dollars or so anyway. I'm just getting impatient, really. Hurry up money, when will you cease to be a burden to me and my otherwise idyllic life. Go away, I want to be free for once.

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.

Paranoid Dream

I'm MCing at the Comic's Lounge tonight for the Young Guns show, I guess it's a kind of important gig because if I can get people watching then I'll hopefully be able to book a spot on a Monday or Wednesday night there, and move into some of the weekday/weekend gigs. I'm a little nervous about it, although nowhere near as nervous as I was for my last Spleen gig, but apparently still pretty nervous, because the whole thing just played out in my dream.

It was showtime and there weren't very many people there, maybe twenty or so, which is a pretty tiny crowd for the Lounge, even on Tuesday, but the show started anyway. It started with Brad Oakes giving me a very poor intro from the stage, and then me running from my spot at a table (why wasn't I ready backstage?) to behind the curtain, and then having to push through the curtains which had been stapled shut. I got out and my opening line was “that was done on purpose”, which got a bit of a laugh. Then I noticed that about six or seven kids in the front row were wearing purple shirts, and so I guessed correctly that they had come from school... they were so close to the front they literally had their chins resting on the stage. So now about a third of my audience were school kids, and they were WAY TOO CLOSE to the stage. The gig was not going well.

I went into my opening gear and it was going all right – not great, but all right – but the audience were moving around a lot, this should have been an indication to me that it was a dream. At one moment they were ten metres back from the stage, the next they were all crammed in on two tables to the far left with no other furniture in the whole massive room, then they were all lined up together with the school kids right next to the stage so that the only way I could make eye contact with them was to hang off the side of the stage and do my bits there. I was leading up to the main punchline of my opening 3min chunk when a bigger-than-expected clap of approval swept through the crowd and I turned around to see Brad Oakes standing on stage, introducing the first act. Apparently I had gone over time and the show needed to be kept moving. I was blowing it. HARD.

When I got back on stage to introduce the second and third acts it seemed as if the sound guy was trying to edge me out of my role by introducing them over the PA instead, also I didn't have a list of who was on, and the only act that I got to the mic in time to introduce ended up being different to what I had written down on my sheet, so that was fucked too. I went to the sound guy to get the running order, and while I was there another act came on without me. Then I lost the run sheet as soon as I had it, then I went back on stage pointlessly and saw the crowd had about quadrupled because a teen song-and-dance act were taking to the stage to close the first bracket and they had brought heaps of friends. They were singing weird harmonies and were very good. Something like Step Up meets X Factor, only people didn't hate it and throw fruit.

Brad Oakes left through the back door which led to conspicuously more steps than it actually does (clue. IT'S A DREAM DUDE!), and when the break came at the end of the first bracket, the lights went out and no one was left in the room. My dream ended about here, as I was resolving to do a better job with more material in the second bracket. I didn't even get a chance to redeem myself.

So yeah, that was my dream. Pretty shit, I know the gig's not going to go like that tonight... to be honest, MCing is pretty easy because even if you go a little poorly at the start, you get about fifteen chances to redeem yourself; one in between every act. It's going to be fine, as long as I get a good chunk of solid material in – I'll probably aim for the 7-8mins at the start of the second bracket – then I'll have something to point to when I talk to the guys that make the decisions about Monday/Wednesday spots and say, “that's what I'll do, now put me on motherfucker.”

Comedy huh... it's really really fun.

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.