Feeling Useless

I just read an opinion piece on Al Jazeera titled 'Obama is Closer to Nixon than MLK' about how, on the 50^th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's famous 'I Have A Dream' speech, “it's virtually a knee-jerk reaction to associate his [Obama's] presidency with the fulfillment of King's dream.” It was an amazing piece – if you have a minute you should read it (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/08/20138296131532445.html) – and once I'd finished it my mind was cast back, as it often is, to my favourite book, '1984'.

I feel like I'm repeating myself in my life, because every time something like this pops into my mind in conversation or writing, I end up bringing it back to Orwell. In fact, I probably am repeating myself, but I'm repeating myself for a reason; everything in that book is fucking perfect. It talks about the means to power being the control of the past, and how any organization that can manipulate people's perceptions of past events can control their ideas in the present, so now, considering the public perception of Barack Obama as an inheritor of King's legacy, it's clear how the past is being distorted before our very eyes. It's a strange sort of racism that casts Obama primarily as a descendant of the civil rights movement of the '60s purely on the grounds of his dark skin – an insidious one, and a lie really. “The first black president, how we have progressed! Joy! Joy! Let's all go join a choir!” But in placing the emphasis on MLK's push for racial equality above all other of his agendas, those other agendas have been pushed into the background – ending war and poverty amongst them, which are no more relevant than in the warring, recession-striken US today. His character is being distorted, soon only a crude outline of the original man will remain.

What is the point of all this distraction though? What was the initial agenda of getting Obama into the White House in the first place? During the first campaign back in 2008 the race card was waved around like a beacon of joy, waved in front of our faces, but more and more it seems to have been only a distraction, making racists of us all as we truly believed the colour of a man could possibly determine his suitibility to lead. A black man has been at the helm of the world's biggest ship for five years now, and still the water keeps flooding in.

I don't even know what it is about the links between '1984' and the events of the real world that are so intriguing. It is, after all, just a book... these situations really fail to get my angry, or even emotionally connected. That's in there too, Orwell covered the apathy of the masses and how it could be manufactured within them from birth through an education system geared towards producing emotional cripples. I feel like one of those cripples. Has my mind been gripped by the hand of those who wish to control me and subdued without me even knowing? Am I already a victim of the rulers of a cruel game I am unable to understand, no matter how hard I try? I should feel scared, but it's almost relieving to think of certain loss as a sweet release from the need to fight at all. But wait, that's in there too.

Ugh, I don't even know where I'm going with this... isn't it the scariest thing ever that I try to write something about an article on governance that I just read, but it only degenerates into a commentary about how difficult it is to write such a thing? Even with my (admittedly paltry) two years of study in the field. We should all care about these things, because they WILL affect us, but in trying to think about them, I run into brick walls and become tired and impatient.

Sigh, I'm giving up today, maybe it's sufficient, for now, to know for sure at least that we ARE, DEFINITELY being lied to. I'm trying to stay vigilant, I really am, but I don't know what else to do.

Desperate.

Peace, Taco.

Year Two has Begun

So I've joined a gym.

I feel like I should be reading one of those pamphlets Dr. Hibbert has in his office on The Simpsons and gives to people when terrible shit happens to them to help them cope. “So You've Ruined Your Life” for Marge's pregnancy, and “So You're Going To Die” when Homer needs surgery. I joined a gym. !!! What the fuck? I always thought I'd have just settled for diabetes.

This self-improvement tip is really taking hold... well, I mean, slow down sailor, it's only day one. I've been to el gym-o ONE TIME, but I'm pretty certain I'm going to be going back on a regular basis – the target I've set for myself is three times a week; Monday, Thursday, Saturday. Right after cleaning, once I've already been forced out of bed in the early morning by the unfortunate imperative of "money = living", I'll be ready to push, pull, lift, bite, and juggle all manner of tough metal objects in the name of health and wellbeing.

Other news on the big-things front is that I'm most probably going to be leaving Baker St, the house that has served as my home for the last twelve months. Richie is pretty keen to find a place and Phil is looking like he might finally get his fucking worthless, shit-talking ass over to this beautiful city if we can just find a three bedroom house somewhere in the inner north to set up camp in. I'm going to browse some real estate sites as soon as I finish typing this blog entry.

Today is the first gorgeous day of what looks to be a phenomenal spring on the horizon; the sun is shining and the sky is crystal blue, no clouds, no wind, nothing. Year Two in Melbourne looks like it's going to be more of the same right now, and by more of the same, I mean more changes, more work, and more frenzied development. Every day, I repeat the same phrases to myself as I slowly work on building my body and mind, every day, every day, struggling, maintaining. Never forget.

“Food goes in here.”

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.

Snapshot 13.08.29

I had a dream about Grace last night, but now I don't remember what it was about. No matter, I had a pretty decent gig last night too, after the pits of doom that spewed from my mind in the minutes after waking up late-afternoon (See: yesterday's post). I don't know why I was so foul at the world, but there seems to be something to it. Anyway, today's another day, and I already feel like it's been a win in more ways than one. The plan today is to read some more Mark Twain, and type a few pages of On The Road, which has lain dormant on the left-hand side of my table for a few weeks.

Yesterday felt like the first day of Spring – it wasn't, it's still winter for another three days. The weather was fine all day, and it would have been pretty easy to rock no jacket, just a t-shirt, from lunchtime til around sunset. Definitely what you want.

Also last night I made a shitty sandwich, borne of laziness: ham, picnic bacon, cheese, onion, garlic, sweet chilli sauce, mayo, hot sauce – it wasn't even a disappointment, because honestly, who ever expected that sandwich to go well? Well, me actually, in some crazed optimism-coma. Three kinds of sauce, no salad, not even red onion, that shit was white as the KKK and burnt my eyes when I bit into it. Eugh, welcome to the future.

So I've been thinking of moving out of Baker St. That's an interesting thing for me to think; for as long as I've been of legal age and allowed to go out and party, I've wanted to live in a house where the agenda is non-stop action. Drinking, drugs, music, party. Now that I've been here for a year though, I don't know, I mean I always intellectually knew that I didn't actually want this kind of lifestyle, but I have still enjoyed every second of it for the past year, it's only been in the last few weeks that it's suddenly begun to seem tired. But look at me, making it seem as if I've been living some high-octane amphetamine-circus for the last twelve months – I really haven't. I'm sure there are just as many examples of me packing it in early or sleeping through a kick-on since I've been living at this place, as there are of me taking the drugs all night and drinking the drinks into the next afternoon. I guess I just feel like it's the right thing to do now after a year

So now I'm looking, I guess, for a new place, although there's no huge rush... The Workers is an option, as long as the rent doesn't go up too far above $130 a week like Richie said it might do once something happens with management that I didn't quite understand/want to know about... eh.

Finally, I don't have a gig tonight, but now that I'm in a fairly good mood, with a decent amount of what feels like zen stored up in my psychic tank, I think I'm going to go out on the prowl for one tonight. Commedia St Kilda could be a good bet, or the Exford. I need to finish writing my show as well, and I promised a random group of people that I'd organize and run a pub crawl for them, with barely any guarantee that I can actually deliver on that promise, so I guess there's that to look into.

That's a pretty reasonable snapshot of my life right now. I guess that's what every single one of these blog entries is supposed to be, or is, really, but I feel like today's is a little more coherent and thought-out than usual. Maybe that's what Grace was doing in my dream last night, a little bit of clarity. Clever boots, evils understood.

Peace, Taco.

Rant 005

Okay, so what happened to me today. I woke up around 10am, had a shower, brushed my teeth, then made breakfast. The breakfast post-shower was an unwise decision as I was eating cereal, and all the bits got stuck in my teeth but I'd already brushed them and didn't want to go back and do it again. I have to stop doing that. Then I sat at my computer and started doing... nothing, really. Nothing much, made a few phone calls and sent some emails. Didn't do anything substantial until around 3:30pm when I decided to leave the house to get some food. I walked around the corner to the Chinese place called Loi Loi, when I got there I asked if they took eftpos, which they did, but only with a $15 minimum spend. Instead of going down the road to the ATM to withdraw money I took the eftpos option, which inevitably meant I ordered too much food and spent over $20 anyway. When I finished eating (I managed to finish all my food) it was still sunny and warm outside, but I went back home and immediately lay down, put on a movie and fell asleep again. I woke up just now at 6:15pm, having accomplished nothing other than making myself feel shit. I have a gig now. Well, in a few hours. I need to leave the house after writing this, and go to the Rochester where I left my phone charger last night in the DJ booth. I hope it's still there, if it's not then I'll probably need to buy another one. It'll probably still be there though, it's plugged into a powerpoint in a secluded corner of the booth, and no one's likely to take it, it's pretty early anyway, and there's only trivia on tonight. Time to leave this house. I don't want to see anyone tonight.

Peace, Taco.

A Great Gig

Waking up today took around three hours, it was one of those mornings when you drift in and out of sleep and lazy consciousness, waiting for the hour when, finally, you must rise. I had a long shower and am now sitting back at my computer, thinking about the business of the day: Rochester flyers, flyering, calls to make, maybe book a few more comics for spots and go for a walk to do some shopping... but first: chips.

I guess I'll talk about my set last night, considering I seem to be running out of steam on this post already, and we're only one-hundred words or so in. I got up at Situation Comedy and did one of the three 'headline' spots (I don't know if that's the right term? They are all around ten minutes, one after the other). I felt like I did pretty well, definitely during the first half of my set more so than the second half – towards the end I definitely let the energy of the room dip a couple times while I was rattling off a few tried and tested bits and I think that showed in the lower reaction to those bits. I felt myself go onto autopilot at one point before a string of three phrases that always get a laugh, and I never really recovered from my laziness there.

What did go well though were two things: first was my little chunk (maybe 3 minutes) about Politics vs Governance – the difference being that Governance is the actual substantive thing that defines how our society works and is structured, whereas Politics is the shitty soap opera or D Grade celebrities that parade around our tabloids pretending to have relevance in our lives. I parleyed that bit into a bit about the news being shit that I tried a couple weeks ago, and it seemed to work well after I got warmed up, sloppily introduced the concept, and then fumbled through the new words – definitely will do again.

Also what I was the most happy with last night were my improvisations. I turned to the couch to the right of stage and building on an observation I'd made to myself before coming on, I riffed on their similarity to the cast of 'Friends' in the coffee shop. Later on I, apropos of nothing, threw my sock at one of the girls on the couches. I was happiest with my general attitude towards them; I was giving them the most attention, as their position five out of the seven present legitimate audience members warranted, while still maintaining a position of power and authority over them, and making fun of their perceived importance. Even if they weren't claiming such importance, I felt like everyone else had been basically playing to them, and while I thought that might be somewhat necessary, I didn't want to grovel to them like I felt some of the other acts had been.

I probably got cocky around the seven minute thirty mark, when I looked at my phone and saw how much time I had left and the pronounced, “I'm having the best time.” But the fact that I was able to get to a point where I was completely inside the moment and doing what came into my head, even if it was only for a second, is something I don't think I've experienced before on stage, and so for that alone, I think last night was one of my best gigs yet. Another Spleen in two weeks, and I'm MCing the Comic's Lounge next week – basically an audition – time to polish up.

Peace, Taco.

Drunk Monday

I'm a bit drunk right now, I'll admit it, but I'll tell you a bit about my night before I pass out. So I had a set at Situation Comedy, and I think I did quite well. Especially the first half of my set was received really well, and the bits where I improvised around likening the cliquey table of girls surrounding their new-comic friend to the cast of friends went down a treat. I threw my sock at a girl.

Then I went to the Workers club and caught up with Gwen just in time to give her the keys for work which she has to do tomorrow, thus avoiding a TERRIBLE early wake-up – I've had to suffer through that a couple of times in the past and it is the most terrible thing in the world ever.

Then back to Situation Comedy where I joined in the podcast, and also climbed up on a wall so that I could urinate from a high-up position into a bin filled with empty cans and bottles – accurate. That will all be on the podcast, which I know you won't listen to, because you're not even reading this are you? Maybe I should cross-promote. I won't though. Drunk people don't know how to make hyperlinks.

I think that's all I have in me at this point... tomorrow I'll try and wake up before midday, and write two entries... that's RIGHT! Tomorrow is the first of those elusive days. Let's get this puppy-dawgg back on par. ('puppy' = 'blog'; 'dawg' = something else) Fuck. Incoherency. Here we are again.

Peace, Taco.