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Long Awaited Ramblings [29 Jul 2007|04:28pm] [ music | Old skool techno,1995 kickin 2ya man ] Hey there Groovers! I'm back! Just thought I'd drop a story off for you to read. As the Coca Cola Corporation says, Enjoy. IT’S A LIVING (Part I of the Work Sucks Trilogy) By PJ McFadden     Some people spend their entire working life worrying about getting fired; if only they knew how hard it really is to get shown the door. I was once like that, looking over my shoulder for the boss, working harder whenever he/she was around to make a good impression and to ensure the same people would be paying my wages next week. Fuck that for a joke.             My resume is now as long as your arm but I can still remember the look on every one of my soon-to-be-former employers’ faces as they yelled, screamed, shrieked, spat out their disgust for my distasteful actions or words or both. I can still feel the knot in my stomach from every boss that sat me down and calmly, politely, quietly told me that they were sorry, they’d have to let me go. The knot was never due to fear, apprehension, anxiety, no, it was the contracting of muscles as I did my best to hold back a belly laugh – no point to laughing and letting them know they’ve done exactly what you wanted them to do. The last thing I’d want is my job back. The saddest thing about living in the modern world is that you’re living in the modern world. Some fuckin’ legacy we’ve been left here: pollution, corruption, war, disease, technology (the new epidemic), the degradation of the planet to the point that we are taking more out of it that can be reproduced. What a way to live, what a time to live, riding the phlegmy waves of the planet’s death rattles hoping we’ve still got time to save the Earth and ourselves and yet slow to progress towards the regression of civilization. I’m a man on a mission, thinking globally and acting locally, Confucius’s sole trampling industry with that first step every journey inevitably starts with. While I have worked in just about every business there is my one true profession is Planet Saver. Every job I choose and lose is another slowing of the industrial machine, not the eventual destruction that I aim for, but one step closer nonetheless. To save this precious jewel glowing in the dark nothingness of space we have to slow down. Just slow the fuck down, people! Our numbers grow and grow and soon we will have claimed every inch of land that holds a tree to our Mother’s bosom and nature will have been replaced by human nature, destruction, construction and self-destruction. We build, we buy, we die, but we don’t die quick enough before hundreds, thousands more are born to replace us. Then they too build and buy and just don’t die. Materialism has taken over as the new religion and procreation just brings more devout followers. Gone are the days where all we needed were the simple necessities of food, clothing and shelter. We no longer just hunt the meat we need and pick the fruit we can eat to fill our bellies comfortably; we no longer dress for practicality in material designed to last; four walls to block the wind and a roof to hold back the rain aren’t enough anymore. Give me vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, DVD, VHS, Beta, mono, radio, stereo, surround sound, black & white technicolour audiovisions of analogue and digital dialogue. Give me quarter length bellbottoms, cufflink, tie, t-shirt, double-breasted suit with slogans and stripes, rings and ropes of shiny metals and stones, body paint temporary and permanent. Just do it. Give me ten bathrooms with ensuites and a walk-in pantry, pillared patios and mile-long drives, double-fronted eight storey brick weatherboard California bungalow with apartment views. Sold. Give me drive-thru suck and chew in paper bags and plastic containers too – no soup for you! ­– fill my plate to overflowing and I’ll take a bite and throw the rest away and do the same thing for three squares a day. Enjoy. Give me the belief that one day I’ll be famous, rich and successful, happily married to a beautiful wife with kids who’ll grow up to make their parents proud. Give me the belief that I’m unique, that I’m special, that I count, that my existence gives the right not to hear someone else’s opinion. Give me that and I’ll throw it all back in your face and say fuck all that. Mass production of trinkets and trivialities must be brought to a grinding halt if we want our people to still be here in a few generation’s time. I have sworn a vendetta against the advertising industry on Mother Earth’s behalf to stop the brainwashing of the purchasing public. Once we are free from the bonds of slavery under the demonic god of Slogans we will only ever reach for a product we need, not a label we have been convinced we want. I can’t work anywhere in the advertising industry in this country anymore, even with disguises, fake IDs and a cut to fit curriculum vitae. They know me by now. They’ve got my picture. At least I left an impression on them. What was it? Was it because I accidentally spilled the mop bucket all over the carpet in the offices and used mock-ups of ads that took weeks to prepare to soak it up those times I worked as a cleaner? Was it because I spiked client’s drinks with Viagra and horny goats weed? Was it because I hired hookers and secretly videoed CEOs and threatened to email it to the entire company if they didn’t resign, and then did the same thing to their replacement? Was it because I then went to another agency where you worked? It’s funny to think how many times that happened. Or was it just all those clients I lost who had to waste time and money looking elsewhere for another agency? Some of my deeds haven’t been as dramatic as what I’ve done in advertising. I go from job agency to job agency and get sent from job to job. I go through that whole bullshit interview process again and again. I can even come up with the right answer to interview questions in those crazy dreams I have, it’s so ingrained in me. You want me to tell you how I dealt with a difficult customer? You want me to tell you about a role I played in a team? You want me to tell you how I went above the call of duty to help a customer? I’ll tell ya, don’t you worry about it. The whole idea is to fill as many job positions as I can, to go to interview after interview, to do training session after training session, to fuck up and get fired and do it all over again. If I can temporarily fill a position as unproductively as possible, then I’m preventing a business from doing business. Every customer I lose, every client I piss off, every file I delete, every system I crash, every machine I clog, every co-worker I get fired stops trade and production for less than a blink of an eye of the business world. Every interview I do is one more the interviewee has to do, and if I’m successful, well then he just has to do another round of interviews when I get asked to leave, doesn’t he? I’ve got all the angles worked out. I can find the Achilles heel in any workplace and exploit it to stop it from exploiting the planet. I’m a master at “fucking up”, making my “accidents” look like bona fide accidents, leaving a trail of madness and mayhem in my wake. If you can’t find something, blame the new guy. If you’ve found something and wonder why the hell it’s there, blame the guy who just left. Blame me. I probably did it. Some places of employment are less deserving of my skills and talents than others, and these are just places to kick up my heels for a bit and earn some cash to fund my crusade. With some bosses, you don’t have to work hard at all to get fired. You can be out on you arse with two days pay in your pocket. It’s essential to leave the building with a cheque payable to CASH. If they refuse, there’s all sorts of scenes you can make as you scream discrimination, sexual harassment, unfair dismissal, fraud, whatever it takes to get that cheque. Nobody likes a drama, especially a melodrama. The best part is not coaxing the cheque out of them, it’s the relief of being fired again. Some bosses make you work for it. I mean, they make you work for it. Bleeding hearts are the worst to work for simply for the fact that they’re willing to give you a second chance. And then a second chance for the second chance. They see potential in you. They know you can succeed in this business and they’re willing to let it slide this time. One thing I’ve figured out, though, is how much more difficult and time consuming it is to bludge at work compared with working at work. You have to be creative to get away with doing nothing but only have to be predictable to do your job. Sometimes I’m just openly slacking, other times I simply enjoy the challenge of finding ways of getting paid to do nothing. A clipboard or a list with a concentrated look and a pen rat-tat-tat-tatting out the thought process onto the paper, making it look like you are deciding which task to tackle next is a surefire way of wasting at least – at least – half a minute. Carrying stock that doesn’t need to be carried from one end of the store to the other. Rearranging a shelf. Deleting old emails. Replying to emails and questioning directives. Repeating directions back to the boss to make sure you’ve understood him correctly. Telling them you’ll do it after you’ve finished the bullshit task you’ve just set for yourself that’s going to take you at least another ten minutes. Making lists of jobs to do, making a list of jobs you need to do, all of it just a way of wasting more and more time and doing less and less work, waiting until it’s five minutes before knock-off time so you can leave. It’s imperative to leave early if you want to lose your job. You have to clockwatch the whole day – except for when your break is ending – ensuring you go on your breaks early and come back late. There’s nothing better than rocking up late on the first few days to return to the world of the jobseeker. I lie. There are some things better than rocking up late. There’s rocking up late hung-over as all fuck, reeking of beer and whisky, unshaven with no deodorant, teeth untouched by toothpaste, hair combed neatly by a pillow. There’s rocking up still drunk and telling your boss that you’d bang her on her desk if you were sober enough to get it up, breathing lustfully in her ear. There’s coming down like a mother fucker after a night on the pills, zombie moans and vacant wide-eyed stares, an inability to speak except to tell people to fuck off and leave you alone. There’s doing lines of speed in the toilets and spending the last three or four hours after lunch chatting to everyone. There’s rocking up so stoned you spend the day eating copious amounts of chocolate and calling everyone man, man. There’s asking the boss why there’s no sharps bin in the staff toilets so you can dispose of your needles in the correct manner. Bukowski was a bum, just an alcoholic bum who wrote a lot and got drunk for the sake of getting drunk, going from job to job because he had more CBF days than good days. CBF? Can’t Be Fucked. Me, I work my butt off for a purpose, an ultimate goal. I get drunk for a purpose too. Maybe one day you’ll read my story, like old Bukowski, but until then you’ll just have to listen to me bullshit about it.   TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES (Part II of the Work Sucks Trilogy) By PJ McFadden   “Look, don’t worry about, we’ll get IT to have a look at it. We’ll have your email up and running as soon as we can.”             Poor Lawrence. He’s a nice bloke, my new boss, and already he has to suffer through technical difficulties with me. It’s not my fault this sort of thing happens wherever I go (well, it is kinda sorta, I guess) but it is my fault Larry has to put up with it. I took this job. Now this poor sucker is going to pay.             I asked Lawrence if I could call him Larry on the first day, but the stony gaze told me all I needed to know. One of my colleagues explained it’s because his wife is the only person who is allowed to call him that. Poor fella. He has to go home and be submissive to his wife after a day of ruling over a bunch of knuckleheads like us, putting up with my computer problems every few minutes. His productivity levels are about to be severely reduced by my mere presence and there’s a big chance he might lose his job as a result.             I feel sorry for the poor bastard.             But there’s not much that can be done about it. Unfortunately, I am a wage slave and I have to work like everybody else. I can’t help it if I have cost the business community thousands of thousands of dollars, both directly and indirectly. I have a condition. I can’t help it.             I can’t get it diagnosed either. How do you walk into the doctor’s office and say, “Listen, Doc, is there anything you can give me to dampen my body’s electromagnetic field? It interferes with electronics wherever I go.” It’s just not possible. I’d be sky-high on sedatives within minutes, strapped into a straightjacket and thrown into a nice cosy little room with lovely white cushions on the floors, walls and ceilings.             I’m not a nutjob, though. I’m not a friggin’ basket case. At first I thought it was just coincidence. Then when the coincidences began piling up until I was drowning in malfunctioning microchips, I thought I just had bad luck. But I soon realised no-one could be that unlucky, not even Mister Murphy himself. Soon I will have a law of my own, Madden’s Law: Whatever went wrong with the electrical device is Amos Madden’s fault. Lost a program or file on your computer? Bloody Madden’s Law. Microwave stopped working in the staffroom? Yep, that’s Madden’s Law for you.             When I was a kid, it seemed that our family had bad luck with electrical goods. We always ended up with the one item in the whole factory that missed the quality check before being shipped out. Something always went bung. If it wasn’t a walking washing machine it was a leaking fridge, if it wasn’t a spluttering lawnmower it was a slow clock. Radios hissed static and TVs hummed over the top of advertising jingles.             One time we got burgled just before Mother’s Day and the invader left with our humming TV, leaving us TVless momentarily until the insurance paid for one that you didn’t have to get off the couch to change the channel. Mum said the burglar probably gave it to his mum for Mother’s Day. We laughed at that one.             For some reason I’m the only one in the family that can hear the high-pitched whine the TV makes when it’s turned off with the remote instead of the button on the box. It’s really annoying. It’s this background noise hovering at the edge of your perception, grating on the senses like nails down a chalkboard, a sound so slight I know now how a canine feels when you give him a blast from a dog whistle. I’m not the only person out there who can hear it, but I’m the only one in my family and they think it’s weird.             They also think it’s weird how often I used to get shocked by static electricity. I used to look forward to Sundays when we would walk down to the video store and shuffle along their new carpet. By grounding myself with the metal shelf I could transfer all that built up energy through my finger and zap my little brother’s earlobe. He could zap me back, but I thought it was just because I was bigger that my laser had a stronger blast. Anybody could have got stung by that carpet, probably something to do with it being synthetic, and once it got worn in we couldn’t play laser tag anymore. I think my brother was glad. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had a lot more electricity in my body than he did.             Mum made a shop manager throw out half a dozen radios before she let me take one home. When I turned twelve I decided I wanted to visit the suburb where I’d spent the first few years of my life and spend the money there that I’d received in the mail tucked between the covers of birthday cards. I found a cheap radio in the Reject Shop and had my heart set on buying one because I didn’t have a radio of my own and loved to listen to music. We took it to the counter and Mum got the cashier to test it, telling her our family has bad luck with electricals. The girl tested two before calling the manager who proceeded to throw radio after radio into the bin until I walked out with a grin on my face and a radio tucked under my arm. It was the first time I had found just how furious technology can make people.             We always had a problem with radios in the house. They’d work fine for a while, but then you could never get them tuned right, no matter how hard you fiddled with that dial to find your station of choice. There’d always be some hint of a hiss or crackle, announcers from neighbouring stations overlapping each other, the signal growing stronger or weaker depending on where I stood and the frequency that had been set on the radio.             I used to have problems reading in bed because my radio alarm clock was at the foot of my bed perched on a shelf, ready to be struck with disgust every morning. If I lay on my back with my knee bent I would get a perfect signal, but if I swung my leg to the left or right, pshshshshshshshshstatic. I had to chose between whether I wanted to lie comfortably or listen to the radio properly. The radio usually won.             But technology isn’t winning anymore, not now that I know what I’m doing. I’m learning to control this power, this gift, this curse. I’m bringing down the machine. Y2K was a non-event but the potential threat it representing is nothing compared to what I’m building up to. I’m not ready to do what I plan to do, I’m still in training, learning more and more each time I let loose and focus on disrupting the workings of electronics rather than my usual subconscious interference from the aura that permeates from me into every machine within range.             The CD always skips in music stores no matter how many times bands, singers, DJs are fed into the player, no matter how many genres are crossed. I can walk into a store to buy something and find that the EFTPOS machine is down or that the receipt roll has jammed or that the computer has just crashed. I prefer to get paid in cash or by a cheque made out to Cash because I find it hard to take money out of an ATM sometimes if I’ve had a hard day and can’t concentrate properly. I get credit cards in false names and buy stuff that I need on it when the machines are down for some inexplicable reason so that the clerk has to process my purchase the old fashioned way and take an imprint of the card. I do a spree for a day, buying new clothes, doing my grocery shopping for a month, buying gifts, buying shit I can flog off for some pocket money, going way over the limit, then report my card missing at the end of the day. When a replacement one comes I get cash advances at the ATM, focusing on making the security camera inoperable so that no photographic image of my deed exists. One I reach the limit, I ditch the card. With the money I pull out of the magic hole in the wall I get the necessary documents to establish a new identity worthy of receiving their first credit card and repeat the process. I don’t have to work, not really. I only need a job every few months to cover rent, bills and any other expenses I haven’t been able to cover with my scam, tucking away whatever I can and still living more comfortably than most. I enjoy going riding that whole hiring/firing, on the dole, off the dole wave of life. I only take jobs where at least a week of training is provided, though. You get paid to sit around and do nothing but learn. It can get pretty boring but you can soak in the necessary bits while still writing volumes of poetry written under nom de plumes that win bullshit competitions and provide a steady flow of prize cheques. The greatest thing about my talent is being able to prolong these training sessions by days and thus get paid more for doing less. I couldn’t tell you how many times training has been inadequate because we haven’t been shown how to use a program because the systems are down or passwords have to be set up again five times, resulting in a postponement of work. Once the work starts, as it always must, something always seems to go wrong. It’s always a shaky start, not being able to perform the tasks in my job description due to one malfunction or another. I let things run smoothly for a few days before I sock ’em again and go gremlin on them whenever I can’t be bothered doing any work. It’s a beautiful life. Nobody else at work ever has as many computer problems as I have. Managers and team leaders peer slyly over my shoulder to make sure I’m not deliberately messing with anything and trying to avoid work. Sure, I know my way around a computer and could do a whole range of things to wreak a bit of havoc, but they can be detected and fixed straight away. Besides, that’s something normal people could do. I’m something better than normal. I’m abnormal. It’s more fun to feel that tingle run through my body, to feel that charge run through the wiring of my veins, to see streams of invisible energy flow from my fingertips into the limbs of a mechanical monstrosity towards its brain, fatal or merely damaging electroshock therapy for a healthy mind. The electricity that flows out of me is a part of me, and I walk with it along every path it takes. I become one with every little chip. I see it in my mind’s eye, I feel it in my soul. I come exploding from deep inside myself and down the stream and I burn, baby, I burn. Sometimes all that is required is a shortsharpshock, a palpitation momentarily disrupting the constant flow of power, causing systems to reboot. Sometimes it requires something a little less temporary. I have to make sure I’m working in different districts for each fire station; good old Firemen Sam would be a bit suspicious if he spotted me at numerous electrical fires. I can shut down offices for hours, factories for days. I can blackout an entire block. Health and Safety laws declare that shops have to be closed to customers if there’s no lighting. Sometimes I just zap the fuse box and blacken the store, other times I work on the power lines and shut down the power to the whole street. Either way, I don’t have to do any work. I’m working on expanding my powers, though. The blocks are getting bigger. Soon I will be able to black out an entire neighbourhood, then a suburb. This is just by tapping into the electricity supply. Once I work on expanding my electromagnetic field, my powers of destruction and disruption will be even greater. It is this field that disturbs the electrical items around me, that shuts them down. It is this field that I reach out and touch the heart of the modern world with. Nuclear bombs release an EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, when they are detonated, rendering any electrical device temporarily inoperable. By expanding my own field, I am a pale comparison to power of the EM waves of The Bomb, but I am still a forcer to be reckoned with. I can only widen it so far, not much further than a few houses down the road, but a year ago I could only expand the field a few metres. In a few years time I will be ready. Living in the city deprives one of a decent night sky. All those nature-defying lights reflecting against the smog in our atmosphere, blocking out the light of all but the strongest of the stars, reducing the beauty of the heavens. When I am powerful enough I will blanket this city in an EMP for a night and see all those stars that have been shunned by civilisation. Once the shock of this momentary transformation of the nocturnal world has worn off, I will repeat the process, again and again until they beg for the darkness of true night. And then from the darkness I will emerge, a blinding being, shining from the energy within. I will be a god. And then I will blanket the Earth with my power. The sun will light the world during the day, but only I and the stars will light the night.         THE MOMENTS THAT MAKE UP THE DULL DAY (Part III of the Work Sucks Trilogy) By PJ McFadden   Tic follows toc and toc follows tic, the same beat repeated all through the day, dragging me slowly from one moment to the next. It’s the same steady beta, exactly the same space between each mechanical click, the same length of silence between each second; and yet, the silences seem to grow.             My perception of time is a little screwy at the moment. This isn’t anything unusual. This is just another day at work, ordinary, plain, boring. Time always moves slower when I’m caged in by four walls, the dank cold of the business world seeping into every pore of my body.             Outside, it’s a nice sunny day; sure, the wind is a little bit on the cool side, but nothing in comparison to the clinical cold inside. The sun and I were once close friends, but not anymore. Now I only get fifteen minutes of natural light as I journey to work, walking towards the rising sun, and the same again as I escape the office and ride off into the sunset. In the interim, I have to content myself with fluorescent lights and blocked window views.             I do whatever it takes to get outside these days, anything that can be done to get me away from my desk. It’s not like I’m seriously lacking in Vitamin E or becoming an albino or anything like that, but I think I have a rapidly increasing aversion to work and being at work. Hell, I’ve even taken up smoking at the tender age of 26 just so I can get out more. It seems that the less work I do, the happier I am, and the less work I do, the less I am inclined to do.             To be honest, I don’t really know how it started or when. I used to be a hardworking, conscientious employee, committed to doing the best job I could. When I was younger I dreamt of climbing the corporate ladder and moving into bigger and better positions with increasing paycheques and fringe benefits. Within a couple of years of entering the workforce that dream had been obliterated by the realisation that the cash wasn’t wroth all the hassle that comes with responsibility.             Responsibility. That’s probably the biggest reason for the change in my attitude. I haven’t really had any responsibility at all, starting off on the lower rungs with each new job, a resume full of positions and titles that could reduced to three words “Professional Shit-kicker.” Perhaps if I had been given a role that I had to give a stuff about then I would actually give a stuff; but when you don’t have to care, why should you?             And it’s funny, because the less you care, the less you’ll have to care. If I were only getting paid for each minute that I did give a crap at work, I’d be better off collecting unemployment benefits.             Time is my enemy at work. Each hour that passes is one that I am not living because I am working. I didn’t go through countless centuries of evolution to be chained to a desk to get my daily bread. My days should be spent hunting and gathering food, maintaining my clothes and shelter, and the rest of the time that is not used for the basics of survival should be reserved for leisure.             But I was born centuries too late to lead this sort of lifestyle, so now I’m forced to play by the new rules. That doesn’t mean I adhere to the rules like all the other players in this game of life. Fuck that for a joke.             The bare minimum is all that is required, enough to ensure I don’t get fired. The trick to maintaining my “lifestyle” (if you can call it that) is to make it look like I’m doing work when I am doing anything but. It’s a talent, a knack, a devious deception, a parody of labor. As long as I look busy, I’m not going to get asked to do any more work, am I?             Well, that’s debatable. The trick is to do enough work to look busy but not look busy enough so that I look like I could handle any more tasks on top of the one I’m already doing. If you work too hard, you’ll look capable, and this is something you want to avoid. It’s not too difficult to put a look on your face that says, “I’m struggling here”, which will ensure you aren’t bothered with more tasks until you get a handle on the one at hand, but looking like you need too much help will mean that someone will lend a hand, thereby cutting the workload in half.             The longer a task takes, the better. A long, drawn-out job means that you won’t have to worry about having to find other work to do to fill in the time.             I’m a master at filling in time. I can turn the simplest, most menial job into a long-term project. Miss a step, make a mistake, repeat a step, create a new, unnecessary step. Shuffle, sort, shuffle, sort. Find, lose, misplace, find again. Hand deliver a document, retrieve a document, print, photocopy, file. Borrow a pen, lend a pen, lose a pen, find a pen. Log-on, log-out, reboot, check all the connections. Whatever it takes not to concentrate on the clock and its slow movements.             Right now, I look as if I’m busy. Right now, the boss thinks I’m busy writing up a report. Right now, I’ve got three seconds left till lunchtime.              post comment

Donnie Darko Corrections [19 Mar 2005|07:32pm] [ mood | annoyed ] Apologies for anyone reading the Donnie Darko piece with the diagram. That fucking thing took ages to "draw" and it was fine when I posted it. Obviously livejournal has smaller margins, thereby fucking up the lines. It was supposed to look like a loop-the-loop. Apologies once again. 4 comments|post comment

Donnie Darko: The new truth [17 Mar 2005|02:49pm] [ mood | thirsty ] [ music | Powderfinger - "International" ] I know I've already written about Donnie Darko before on my livejournal, but after buying the Director's Cut edition and watching it again, I feel compelled to write once more. I've figured the movie out! The clues are all there in the movie. All it took was a little visualiasation and I figured out how this paradoxical (that's a word, right?) universe can actually exist. There's text from Grandma Death's shown on screen at different times throughout the movie. One of these mentions a tangent universe and how it is unstable and will collapse on itself, or something like that. OK, so I've already described how this "reality", ie. the time-frame in which the movie occurs, cannot possibly exist, and yet it does. Having actually noticed the tangent universe reference this time around, I've managed to come up with a diagram to illustrate the movement of time in this movie and how each universe/reality overlaps. _______ / _B__ \ ___| \___/_|____ A__\__\O/_ /_____C Yeah, I know it's a shitty diagram, but hopefully it will make sense in a second. Time should normally flow from A to C (yeah, I know it should go A, B, C, but this doesn't exactly follow a logical progression either). Point A is the time before the movie starts, Point C is after the movie, while B is the tangent universe which exists outside the timeframe of the real time that should have actually occured. The O is the point where the past, future and this tangent universe overlap, creating the wormhole that allows the plane engine to fall on Donnie. These three points exist as a nexus, the point which allows these points to exist in same dimension at once. Think of the movement of time through this diagram as a piece of string tied into a knot, but instead of looping over itself a new strand comes off, still connected to the original piece of string. Confused? Good to hear. 2 comments|post comment

The Northeastern Republic of Victoria shall rise again! [05 Jan 2005|02:58pm] [ mood | nostalgic ] [ music | Hard Kandy II - 1st disc mixed by Nexus ] Today I finally got to see the Ned Kelly exhibit at the State Library. It was very cool. I've already seen Ned's armour dozens of times, but there were some other artefacts that I haven't seen before. What blew me away was seeing the Jerilderie Letter, the letter Ned wrote to explain the way his family was persecuted by the police and his version of the Stringy Bark Creek "massacre" as it was referred to in the display. Does three dead people, even if they are officers of the law, really constitute a massacre? These police were searching the bush for Ned, their horses laden with some serious fucking armaments, as well as body bags/stretchers to take home the bodies - but they were apparently there to "arrest" Ned. The fact that they had such an impressive arsenal and objects to carry bodies home suggests that Ned was faced with a kill or be killed dilemma and acted the same way any of us would in the same situation. If Ned and his brother, Dan, and their mates had been gunned down at Stringy Bark creek, I doubt it would have been called a massacre. Go figure. Apart from the use of the word massacre, the display was pretty balanced. Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly is still an Australian icon. Working class Aussies like myself see him as a folk hero fighting the oppression by the law - persecution of Irish Catholics by the Protestant ruling class in Victoria. Being a republican as well as the grandson of a Northern Irish Protestant (and also an agnostic), I refuse to take sides on the religious issues of this, but as a member of the working class, you have no doubt as to whose side I'm on in this conflict. Others see Ned Kelly for what is on his rap-sheet, a horse-thief, cop-killer and bank robber. I see him as this as well, but still look up to him as a Robin Hood figure. The exhibit seemed to side a lot with the Kellys, but then there were other things that made you think that they were being impartial. Take for example the fact that it is held in the State Library, outside which stands the statue of Sir Redmond Barry, founder of the State Library and the judge who sentenced Ned Kelly to death. The last plaque in the exhibit mentions both of these facts, as if pleading to both sides of the Kelly debate. After watching a segment on a TV travel show about the Kelly Gang, I realised that there was a statue erected of Redmond Barry in my home town. I thought the statue was outside the Treasury Building in Spring Street, but realised that it was the State Library after venturing to Spring Street. I was decked out in GP army boots and my Eureka flag jumper, so as not to be shot as a spy, displaying my affliation with support of an Australian (or at least, a Victorian) republic. I wandered down to view the statue to find out what it was made of so that I could destroy it. I should point out that at this stage, all I knew about my grandfather was that he was from Ireland, and not that he was a Protestant, and I had newspaper clippings stuck to my wall about the IRA after I read an article with the heading "IRA plot to kill Queen". They wanted to kill the Queen? These guys were cool in my book! I was a very passionate supporter of the republic back then. I still am, but I no longer see the need for violence to achieve that aim. Well, maybe to overthrow the Howard Govt. so that we don't get fucking stooged in another rigged Republican Referendum. I'd like to bitch-slap that little midget silly, but that's another journal entry on it's own, maybe a series of them. I decided to go into the State Library to see if I could find out what the statue was made of. Actually, I'd gone in to find out where the damn statue was, found a book, then realised I'd walked past the damn thing. I had thought of blowing it up, but reconsidered this idea due to the possibility of innocents being harmed. My conscious means that I'd never make a good freedom fighter/terrorist. I decided that there were other ways to destroy a statue. I thought about using some sort of acid to corrode or deform it, but I'd have to find out what the statue was made of first to find out what sort of acid would corrode it. So, off I went into the library to check it out. A librarian directed me to a book of Melbourne's statues and I found that Barry's statue was outside the building I was standing in. I also found out some other interesting facts that swayed me from committing an act of vandalism in the name of political protest. It turned out that Redmond Barry was the founder of the State Library and one of the founding fathers of one of Melbourne's universities (don't quote me on this, but from memory it might have been LaTrobe, but then Mr LaTrobe was the founder of that uni, so I don't know). To make matters worse (or better, or perhaps more confusing and conflicting), Redmond Barry was also the judge who acquited the Eureka rebels. This man acquited a bunch of men who symbolised the Australian spirit, men who were from different corners of the globe who united to say fuck the government and their unjust laws, ie. the overly-expensive mining licenses; the men who raised the flag I now wore on my jumper. To say I was confused was an understatement. I still don't know whether to spit on his statue when I walk by or to praise it. I'm still not happy with the fact that an exhibition on Ned Kelly is held in a place where his statue standss outside, only one block down and across from where Ned Kelly was executed at the Old Melbourne jail, but any plans for destroying his statue now lay in past of a politcally angry young boy. One day we're going to get our republic. To paraphase my ancestor's descendants,FTQ (some Protestants in Northern Ireland have the letters FTP tattooed on their forehead, meaning Fuck The Pope). So join me in shouting FUCK THE QUEEN! Anyway, these Kelly artefacts won't last forever, despite the care taken to preserve them thanks to Father Time, so get in and see the exhibit. It's free! 8 comments|post comment

Absence makes the hear grow fonder, but abstinence makes the day go longer [05 Jan 2005|02:02pm] [ mood | but not quite there yet ] [ music | Ministry of Sound Dance Nation ] I am facing the hardest challenge so far in my three days of non-smoking. One thing I enjoyed about smoking was that it gave me a chance to get up from the computer while writing to do something else for five minutes. Now, I go to get up and can't think of anything to do. The addiction is easy enough to get over, but it's the fucking habit that's a bitch. I've even been sucking on nicotine lozenges while I've been writing as well as wearing patches, but my heart started beating eratically and super fast, so now I'm just on the patches. I know that it's a little crazy to indulge in that much nicotine, but what the hell. When have I ever cared what I've done with my body? The dreams have improved slightly and are not so scary. They still remain vivid and seem to go on in an endless show being played out behind my eyelids, to the point where I am easily convinced that I am awake. I'm feeling a wee bit fucking exhausted because of the amount of energy involved in sleeping, combined with relaxing after the stress of Christmas and the week and a half drinking binge that began on the Tuesday before Christmas and ended at 1am, New Years Day. No alcohol, no cigarettes, no drugs... what am I becoming?????? Well, I've still got a few packets of nutmeg in the cupboard that I might tuck into later in the week, but for now I'm trying to keep my feet on the ground. I'm going to Babble with Gareth tomorrow night to do some open-mic poetry, so I'll have a drink or ten then, but at least I won't be sitting in front of the TV drinking by myself. Those days are over (if they're not, then at least I'm feeling positive about beating the demon drink for the moment). It's hard being a man of substance, I tell you! Thanks to Robert for your tips about lollipops for helping with the smoking. I found that a piece of chewie was good for the hand-to-mouth thing while walking somewhere (which usually involves having a cigarette on the way) last time I quit. Lollipops are good because at least you still have a white cylinder sticking out of your mouth, but they make your mouth dry and leave a film across your teeth. I've got one in my pocket anyway, just in case I want one. Because of my days as a raver with all the jaw clenching and lolliepop sucking, my teeth aren't exactly in the best shape,so I'm going to avoid the lolliepops a bit. For those of you following the little green mushroom saga, I have still had no luck. Most of my dreams seemed grounded in reality at the moment and are too much like being awake, so my mind hasn't been able to venture far enough into mushie territory. My day(night?) will come, though. If I feel the urge is wearing off a bit, I may not sleep with the patch on to see if I still have an irresistable urge to light up first thing in the morning. If I do okay, then I'll be sleeping better. If not, well, then sleep will have to suffer for the sake of getting over this addiction. I foresee myself getting very sick and rundown in the near future as my body tries to comprehend why it can't have the substances it has become so accustomed to and decides to fight back. The fight continues one day at a time. I have no illusions about winning the war in the long-run, but if I can win a few battles along the way, the better off I'll be. If I get diagnosed with some terminal illness in the future,then I'll say "fuck it" and smoke and drink as much as I want and fuck myself up with a shitload of hallucinogenics and enjoy the last bit of the ride. Until then, though, I'm going to try and keep this corporeal prison alive and well. For those of you following the little green 3 comments|post comment

I'm a little green mushroom, doo-doo-doo, too lazy to grow [02 Jan 2005|10:30pm] [ mood | like a pioneer ] [ music | More crap on Nova. I really should've grabbed a CD. ] Depending on my ability to control my dreams, and the consequences of what I do in that dream, I hope that this is not my last entry. I plan to eat the green mushroom that has appeared in my dreams quite a few times. Every now and then, a particular little green mushroom appears in a dream. It is small, but in quite good proportion to its size, not too fat, its cap not extending too far over the stem, but in general a decent looking mushroom. That is except for the light fur that is scattered over its surface. Its green surface. The cap of the mushroom is also spotted, perfectly round indents, as if someone had pressed a cylindrical object into it. Sorry if this description is a bit vague, but it does only exist in my dreams afterall. The mushroom is exactly the same size in all of my dreams, a tiny, but healthy looking, mushroom. I don't know why it never appears bigger or smaller than it does, but the size has never varied. The texture looks (I have never touched it, only seen it) as if it could be made out the same stuff that jelly babies are made out of. It is even translucent like jelly babies. Strange dreams indeed. Every time the mushroom appears to me in a dream, I think about eating it, but have never done so. Why, I don't know, the dream just never gets to that point. I've begun to wonder what would happen if I do eat it. Something tells me that I may transcend the dream state and achieve some sort of altered consciousness. It wouldn't be the first time I have achieved different states of mind in a dream before. The altered dream states could be dismissed as being merely part of the dream, but I don't like to think they are. The first time something like this occured, I had the feeling that I was in a dream within a dream. I remember thinking that I didn't want to go back, because I felt at peace, but then I was returned to the land of dreams, and then woke up. On at least two occasions I have passed out in my dreams. This is a weird state of mind. You know you are dreaming, but it is like I have lost consciousness - I am aware of nothing at all, and "wake up" in my dream again, with a sense of time being lost, with no memory of what has happened. If anyone has ever blacked out - or fell asleep and woken up without dreaming(or remembering your dreams) - then you will know what I am talking about. The strangest dream was where some guy named George died on a hospital bed with me floating beside - and at one stage inside - him. We both felt an enormous sense of euphoria, saying "It's beautiful! It's beautiful!" as he died. The first time I dreamt of the mushroom, I remember seeing it in a ceramic pot, similar to one I had in my backyard years ago in which a few cactus plants grew. The mushroom in my dream was growing next to some other plants, but I can't remember what they were. I don't remember much about this dream other than seeing the mushroom. The latest I saw it was a couple of weeks ago. It was growing in my grandparents' backyard in a ditch by the fence. There's no ditch in real life, however. The little green mushroom was growing next to two or three fly agaric mushrooms, which looked like they were unhealthy, as if they were only just beginning to rot. For the uninitiated, fly agarics are the "traditional" magic mushroom, the bright red cap spotted with white dots sitting on a white stem. Once again, I did not eat the mushroom. The second time I saw the mushroom, I remember sitting in the back passenger seat of a car driving along a dirt road in the bush. Next to me, at head-height, an embankment moved past outside. I had the impression that it was summer because the sun was shining and the grass on the embankment was the usual yellowish colour it goes in the summer. I spotted the mushroom on the embankment and we stopped to look at it. I did not eat it. However, one rainy day, I made my way to Mount Macedon with a few friends on an (unsuccessful) expedition/mission to pick magic mushrooms. We drove along a dirt track, the grass beside us on the embankment at head-height lush and green and wet with rain. I was sitting on the opposite side of the car as in the dream, my eyes scanning the embankment for mushrooms. "Stop the car! There's one!" I cried out excitedly. We reversed back to the mushroom and we stopped to pick it. It didn't look like a magic mushroom, and it didn't turn blue. We put it in a paper bag and took it with us just in case it changed colour along the way. It was the first - but not the last - mushroom we found that turned out not to be magical at all. We headed back to the Big Smoke disappointed with a bag full of magicless mushroom. I had thought about boiling them all up and trying our luck, but decided this would be a stupid idea. My friend told me a week or two later that he had heard on the news about the dangers of mushie picking, that there had been some fatalities in the past because of a particular mushroom. You guessed it, that mushroom I had spotted by the side of the road was the same one that could kill. It wasn't until I was telling this to Gareth a year or two after the incident that I realised that the dream and the real-life picking were the same incident, except that in the dream the roadside was hot and dry, while in the dream it was lush, green and wet, and also that the mushroom I had found was on the opposite side of the road. Was this some sort of warning of the future from my subconscious telling me not to eat the mushroom? I have been trying to dream of the mushroom lately but have no luck. I think it was Jacob that had suggested I try eating it my dream. I have been trying, but it just doesn't seem to be a priority when I'm actually dreaming of the little green mushroom. I may have success very shortly. By the time I wake up tomorrow, the third day of non-smoking will have begun for me. No, it's not a New Year's resolution, because those things never work. It is just a convenient time to quit for me right now, and I think I am finally ready. The hardest struggle I have with cigarettes is that as my eyes open in the morning, my first instinct is to light up. I'm using nicotine patches to stop the cravings and so that I don't turn into a narky little bitch - I get nasty when I'm having nicotine withdrawals. I saw an ad on TV for 24 hour nicotine patches. I thought "You ripper, now I don't have to wake up with cravings". I had heard that you shouldn't wear nicotine patches to bed because of the way it affects your dreams, but I thought I should be okay. Boy, was I wrong. I have never been so glad to wake up to the alarm clock on a Sunday morning to go to work before. The dreams are unbeliveable. Some dreams seem real, but these dreams were so vivid that I could have sworn that I was awake. They aren't nightmares, but they are so fucking strange that waking up ASAMFP (as soon as mother fuckin' possible) and not having to go back to sleep is the only thing you have to look forward to. It's fucking horrific, but I'll get over the smoking, even if the 6 week nicotine patch course turns me into an insomniac - one problem at a time, my friends, one problem at a time. Every other time I have tried to quit... before you pass judgement, let us have a quote from Mark Twain: "Quitting smoking is the easiest thing in the world to do: I have done it a million times before." That may not be the exact quote, but it's good enough for now. Ahem. Every other time I have tried to quit I have had dreams where I have had a cigarette. One of these dreams gave me the knowledge to stay quit for almost three years. I realised that if I kept saying no, I would stay quit, but the moment I said yes was the moment I could justify the next cigarette, and the next, and the next, until I was an addict again. Last night, though, I was walking home in my pyjamas and was in sight of home. I reached into my pocket and found a cigarette that wasn't there when I had gone to sleep. Yes, this was another dream where I lost "consciousness". I was metres down the road from where I had last been "awake". I looked down at the cigarette and realised that I didn't want to smoke anymore and threw it on the ground. Let's hope it's an omen. Tonight, in an effort to combat the nicotine dreams, I will attempt to find the mushroom using lavender oil. Lavendar is used to help you sleep, but an old wives tale suggests that if you put some lavender under your pillow (or lavendar oil on your pillow), you can dream what you want to dream about. At the very least, it will help me get off to sleep. At best, I will find my green mushroom and eat it. It is an experiment I feel compelled to make. But what will happen if I do succeed in eating the little green mushroom? Will I trip out in my dream? Will I meet the mushroom men that so many mushroom eaters have reported seeing? Will it transport me to other worlds? Will it have no effect at all and just be a normal dream? Will it kill me? Will I finally reach the point of insanity where I have to be locked up? Will it bestow some sort of cosmic wisdom and knowledge unto me? I have no idea, but being the sort of person I am, I am prepared to give it a try. If it goes wrong, I'll send you a postcard from the other side. Hopefully I will live to tell the tale and emerge in one piece. One thing I do know, though, is that I had to report it here in the same way that someone hiking in the bush will fill out a "Let Someone Know Before You Go" form at the police station just in case anything happens to them. I look forward to letting you know how it goes. "Curiosity killed the cat, But paranoia saved it eight times before that." -Paul McFadden. 2 comments|post comment

Don't let them write about me [31 Dec 2004|11:54pm] [ mood | Left out ] [ music | Whatever shit Nova 100 decides to play ] The countdown to the changing of the date is on. Only minutes remain until 2005 is here. And what am I doing? I'm sitting in front of my fucking computer writing a livejournal entry because I have no-one to party with. Why?Certainly not by choice. Maybe it is only by choice. I had to work either Boxing Day or New ... I pause for the sake of chronology. Fireworks boom across my neighbourhood and my poor dog is driven wild by the loud noise. As am I. I can't see the fireworks for the trees and the ugly constructions we call homes. I saw the pretty sparkling lights before as my neighbours let off some fireworks early in the night, and despite the noise, my field of vision is blocked, as is my ability to enjoy this new year celebration. A little joy would reach my heart if I could see the exploding lights, but alas, I cannot see them. All I have is a resentful feeling for the entire country because I know you are all out there enjoying the prospect of a great new year as the clock strikes twelve. I had to work either Boxing Day or New Years Day. I knew that with the traditional McFadden BBQ on Xmas Day that I would not get more than 2 hours sleep if I had to work on Boxing Day, so I chose New Years Day to work instead. I would rather work on a Christmas Comedown and hang-over on Boxing Day than miss out on another New Years celebration. What a big fucking mistake. I've been drinking by myself for a while now thanks to a lack of a social life because of TAFE and working weekends, depriving me of an outlet to enjoy myself, but tonight is the first time I've felt disgusted by my anti-social behaviour. I've finished off a bottle of white wine that has been sitting on top of the fridge for ages (Kaiser Stuhl, the same brand I drank to the point of bad hangover when I was 17 which made me swear off alcohol and turn to pot as a recreational outlet - for a brief part of my life). I also ventured to the bottle shop to buy a Cartlon Draught longneck, leaving me with 25 cents to my name. After this, I reluctantly (though compulsively) opened a bottle of red wine to finish off the night, which sits by my computer as I rant via keyboard. I spent New Years Eve trying to comfort my dog as fireworks went off around my neighbourhood. People have bad things to say about our law enforcement officers, but let's face facts. Most of the fireworks purchased by Melburnians are coming from Canberra - the place where most of our laws are created - and are being let off in this great city despite laws banning them. I love fireworks as much as the next pyromnaniac, but it isn't too fucking hard to track down the source of loud explosions and bright, exploding lights. Get off ya fuckin arses and do your fucking job properly coppers if u want the public to respect u. Pigs. I only say that cos they are wallowing in their own filth and being fucking lazy. When I turn up for work, I do the best I can in the appointed time I am in my working environment, so why can't they make the fucking effort. Sure, they have a shitload to deal with, but the fireworks begin weeks before Xmas and continue for a few days after NYE and still they do nothing. I don't envy their job, but at least they could do something for a fucking change! The reason I'm so morose at the moment has to do with my choice of TV viewing. I watched "Blonde", the Marilyn Monroe story. I watched the tragedy of her life unfold before my eyes in just over two hours, my feelings of despair only reinforced by the easily-purchased depressant known as alcohol. I realised that film biographies managed to sum up months worth of sadness and tragedy in 2 minutes worth of screen time. I don't want that. If my life ever warrants a film, please do all u can to prevent it happening. I don't want the endless seconds summed up in two minutes. Every second of tragedy goes by in an eternity. Don't let them sum up those eternal seconds ticking by in 2 minutes of screen time. Please! Don't let them do it! I don't want the pity, and cinematic music and someone else playing me won't capture the tragedy. Fuck Hollywood. Let me have the peace in death I never had in life. Oh, and if you're worried about my state of mind, don't despair. I'll be back to my cheery self once tomorrow's hang-over wears off. Hope u all had a better night than I did. 2 comments|post comment

Donnie Darko [31 Dec 2004|04:10pm] [ mood | Perplexed and astounded ] [ music | Chemical Brothers - "Come With Us" (album) ] I just watched Donnie Darko (the director's cut) yesterday. I watched the original version a while ago, but thought it was finally time to watch the director's cut, making this my second viewing of the movie. Man, Donnie Darko still has the ability to blow me away. I still felt some profound emotions after watching the movie yesterday, same as my first viewing. I walk - or rather stagger - away from watching Donnie Darko feeling as if I've just ingested some sort of fucking serious mind-altering drug. And that is what the movie is to me - something that has the ability to mess with my mind and my emotions, leaving me feel as if I've been touched by some divine force. It's great. (It's better than the emotions you get from watching the usual feel-good Hollywood flick.) The reason why I'm tapping away at my 'puter about Donnie Darko is so that I can try and figure out what exactly happens in the movie and hopefully get feedback from anyone reading this. I don't think we are supposed to understand what went on - after all, according to what we know about physics and the structure of time, the movie could not possibly have happened. If you haven't seen the movie, don't read this post until you have. Get down to your local video store and get yourself a copy, goddamnit! You don't know what you're missing! First I'll start by discounting the idea that the movie is one of those "I woke up and it was all a dream" kind of movies. A work of this level of brilliance could not possibly be just a dream sequence. This is a cop-out theory for those with a level of intelligence that can't see beyond their own "normal" reality and accept that what we perceive is not real. It's an option for the generally stupid movie-going population to not have to think any further beyond the "and it was all a dream" idea. If you do indeed think it was all a dream in the end, then fuck off and stop reading my livejournal. I spit on your inability to think outside the square. For those of you who can think outside the square, welcome to my ramblings. Okay, there's a PHYSICally impossible time loop (at least to our primitive way of thinking) running through Donnie Darko (the movie, not the boy, that is). The jet engine that crash lands on his bedroom at the start of the movie cannot have possibly landed at that point in time. The FAA (Federal Air Authority, or something like that) men that are present at the crash aftermath have no explanation for how the engine ended up there. We have to assume that this is because there was no air traffic above Donnie's house at the time of the crash, and that there have been no reports of an air disaster anywhere in the vicinity of his house. The engine appeared out of thin air and plummeted into his house. Donnie Darko, however, is not in his room when this happens. He is drawn out of his house by a giant, freaky-looking rabbit named Frank (one of the most fucking surreal and cool characters ever to grace the silver screen - I feel like I've just dropped some serious acid everytime he appears on screen). Frank informs Donnie that he has 28 days before the world ends (we later find out that it is Donnie's world that will end, not the Earth as a whole). We find out that the jet engine has actually come from the plane his mother and sister are on returning from the dance competition - 28 days into the future. Mom and Sis managed to survive the plane crash only because time moves back 28 days to when the engine originally fell on his house, and they stand outside mourning the loss of Donnie. Technically, the jet engine could not have fallen on his house because his mother and sister were not on the plane until after the engine originally fell on his house. The engine plummets into Donnie's room 28 days earlier than when the plane was over his house. This is not possible without manipulating the movement of time - which we see as the engine moves through a wormhole to fall on his house at the end of the movie. The sole purpose for the jet engine falling on Donnie's house is to give Donnie the chance to live his life to the full, to find love and enjoy his last month on Earth. In the morning after the plane engine has fallen on Donnie's house at the end of the movie and kills him, his girlfriend rides past Donnie's house and doesn't know who he is - she is still just the new girl in town, having never met Signor Darko. Donnie has had his chance at achieving his happiness - and has had a lot of fun along the way, flooding the school and driving an axe through a solid bronze(?) statue of the school mascot, burning down the house of local author and wanker self-helper played by Patrick Swayze, and brining joy to Grandma Death, when he delivers a letter to her - perhaps this is the letter that she has been waiting for all along, day after day because of her own knowledge of time travel. However, Donnie has suffered a lot of misery along the way. At the end, his girlfriend is attacked, then run down by a car. The driver of the car is Frank. Donnie throws a party at his house to celebrate his sister getting into college and the fact that Mom and Dad aren't around. The party is fancy dress, Donnie looking very much like Eliot from the movie E.T. in his pale blue hooded jacket. This look is only reinforced once Donnie and his friends leave the party and ride down the street on their bikes (an homage perhaps, or maybe just a coincidence that - to me - bears no relevance to the storyline). Donnie leaves the party after he notices writing on the whiteboard on the fridge. "Frank was here, went to get beer." Donnie takes the message on the fridge to mean that Frank, his giant rabbit friend, has given him a sign. He rides off with his girlfriend and two mates. When his girlfriend is run over, we see that the driver is wearing the exact same bunny suit that Frank the giant rabbit wears - minus the freaky mask. Donnie shoots people Frank, telling his friend to run home and tell his parents that everything is going to be okay. If we look at an earlier scene, where Donnie is at the movies with his girlfriend, Frank the giant rabbit appears next to Donnie once his girlfriend has fallen asleep. We see Frank unmasked, with a wound where his right eye should be. Donnie asks Frank where he got the rabbit suit from. We can safely assume that these two Franks are the same beings, though one has the power to warp time and the other doesn't. Don't ask me why I didn't pick this up on my first viewing. I'm still trying to figure out why the boy that Donnie kills comes back in time as a freaky - no, make that absolutely fucking scary - rabbit. Is it revenge? I'm making this up as I go along, the revelation hitting me as I write. That was the whole purpose of Frank's time travel. Frank warps time so that the jet engine can fall on Donnie's house, so that he can save him, only to see him destroyed by the same engine 28 days later. Yet, we still have another paradox with this theory. If the engine never fell on Donnie's house in the first place, Frank the rabbit might not have appeared to him at all, which means that Donnie's girlfriend wouldn't have been run over by Frank. Frank appears as a friend and gives Donnie the chance to enjoy his last 28 days, but also makes him do things (eg. arson and assorted vandalism). Is he wrecking Donnie's life or setting him free in the same way that Tyler Durden does to "Jack" in Fight Club in a self-destructive manner? The last thing we have to question is what is going through Donnie's head as he laughs maniacally (I love that word) just before the jet engine falls on his house and kills him at the end. Has Donnie woken up from the most bizarre dream he's ever had, one that predicts the method of his death, laughing at the crazy detail involved in his subconscious visions? Has all of this actually occured, and Donnie knows that he is about to die, but that he has found love and enjoyed a rollercoaster ride for 28 days that he should never have had? Has Frank revealed all this to him before opening the wormhole that sends the plane engine crashing down on Donnie's head? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THIS SCENE? To make it more complicated, Donnie's pyschiatrist wakes with a start after Donnie is crushed by the engine. Is it Donnie's dream or hers? It's all just a little too confusing, even for someone who has seen impossible shapes and colours, flown across the cosmos and felt divine love after meeting a Buddha-like God after smoking DMT. We might just have to accept the fact that the movie is not meant to make sense at all. Perhaps it is just a piece of art putting a paradox into words and pictures, sights and sounds, so that we can attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible - and fail to do so. It is a test of the way we think. Like the universe as a whole, maybe the purpose is not to understand, but attempt to understand, even if we never will be able to understand. Have I discovered the meaning of life while contemplating Donnie Darko? It would be presumptuous to say yes, but these days I'm not really one for modesty. So bow before me. Nah, scratch that, bow down before the writer of Donnie Darko. This is a work of sheer fucking brilliance and genius. To all of you out there who have seen the film and have read this livejournal entry, I would appreciate your feedback. I'm guessing that Jacob and Gareth may have theories of their own, and I know that Robert is going to post a reply trying to discount everything I've come up with, but I would like to hear from everyone who has seen the movie as well. Do yourselves a favour before you post your replies and watch the movie again and see if what I say makes sense. Nobody I know has been able to make sense of the movie, and I don't think I've made sense of it, besides to assume that the writer's intention was to illustrate what a paradox is, rather than the movie being a great but head-fucking way of writing a "I woke up and it was all a dream" movie. ****************************** "I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, The dreams in which I'm dying Are the best I've ever had. "I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take. When people run in circles It's a very, very Mad World." -Gary Jules' cover of Tears For Fears' "Mad World", from the soundtrack to Donnie Darko. It wasn't until after writing this piece that I realised how fitting it is for the movie, with Donnie's dream of his death and he and Frank the giant bunny rabbit running in circles through time. What a great tune. ****************************************************************************** One last thing I must say about the feeling that Donnie Darko leaves me with is the profound sense of joy and loss at the same time. Not since watching American Beauty have I felt so touched by a movie for almost the same reasons. I got up out of my seat wiping tears from my eyes (not quite crying, but moved to weep) after Kevin Spacey's character was killed at the end. Why was I so happy that he died? Everything was perfect for him. His life had never been better. He was happy. Who wants to die when you're fucking miserable? Why not go out with a bang while it's all going good? When I die, I hope they'll be able to say, "Well, at least he died doing what he loved." I don't want to have died when I wished that I was dead, I want to die when I wish that I could live forever. At least it would have all been worth something then. I guess we'll have to wait and see when that day comes, won't we? Live life like you want to and enjoy yourselves. Existence is a paradoxical thing, so you might as well enjoy this figment of our collective consciousness' mind while you still can. Keep on groovin'. Peace, love and mungbeans. - Paul McFadden. post comment

Details for radio interview [16 Dec 2004|01:21pm] [ mood | C'mon, the sun's shining! ] [ music | Progressive techno ] Hiya, folks! I'm going to be on the radio this Friday (17th December) from 12 noon until 1pm on Syn FM (90.7 FM on your dial). I'm teaming up with a mate to do a bit of a comedy hour, so check out just how crap I can perform on air! Listen out for: *"Adidas Fan", my send-up of "Working Class Man" *some stand-up comedy *fake listener calls *some of my funny articles *some of my funny poetry *other funny stuff Well, I think it's funny anyway. You can be the judge. Tune in, drop out... (how's the rest of that go, Mr Leary?) and enjoy. Or shake your head with disapproval as I spread madness and mayhem over the airwaves. I'll be interested to know what y'all think. From Paul McFadden. 3 comments|post comment

TV programming is repetitive [13 Dec 2004|09:22pm] [ mood | Comfortably Numb ] [ music | Maniacally tapping keyboard ] I pried myself away from the TV tonight to write the previous entry, but while I was at it, I thought I'd have a bitch about TV. (Fucking mysanthropic ludite, I hear you scream. Hush, petty human, I whisper back through clenched teeth.) As much as I love Ben Stiller movies, I'm pretty sure they screened "There's Something About Mary" as recent as sometime not too far from yesterday. Now, I don't have a problem with spending two hours checkin' out Cameron Diaz (even though I think I'm more in love with her personality in said movie - man, there IS something about Mary), and I definitely don't have a problem with Signor Stiller's silver screen antics, but I DO have a friggin' problem with TV stations showing the same goddamn movies over and over and over and over and over and over and over and... well, you get the picture. Two words: True Lies. Another two words: Billy Madison. Another pair, you say? Well, how about Happy Gilmore. "True Lies" was kinda cool for its time (and being a one-time wannabe fighter jet pilot, any movie featuring a Harrier jumpjet is cool by me), but this movie does not warrant the amount of screen-time it gets on Aussie TV. Yet... this movie is on at least two or three times a year. What the fuck is it with that? Adam Sandler movies seem to be on even more frequently than that. I am a massive Adam Sandler fan. I was probably a fan much earlier than most of you reading this (unless of course you too had Galaxy pay-TV and watched him on Saturday Night Live before he became a movie star). While his humour is extremely low-brow and immature (yeah, look who's criticising him), I still dig the guy. But I'm sure every single person reading this has watched his movies on TV a dozen times. "Happy Gilmore" may have been funny the first few dozen times I saw it, but after a two-millionth viewing, it gets a little tedious. So why do TV stations play the same damn movies ad nauseum? Is it because they have to bid for the movies to have the rights to screen it? Do they pay so much cash for these flicks that they have to keep on showing them until they make their money back, kinda like video stores? Back in the day - back in the days of VHS (u remember VHS, don't you kiddies?) - video stores had to pay at least $120 for a new release video, and would have to rent these copies out dozens of times to make their money back. Maybe TV stations are working on the same principle. I don't know. Whatever the reason, though, they still keep showing the same goddamn movies, and it shits me up the wall. Damn, I'm so angry, I think I'm gonna work off this fury by whipping myself into a frenzy... in front of the TV as I return to drooling and dribbling over Cameron Diaz. And what's with her name, anyway. Cameron is a boy's name and Diaz is a Mexican name. She don't look like no Mexicano I've ever seen (see the way I said Mexicano, using the "o" at the end, indicating it is a masculine word so that I didn't have to say Mexican boy, but instead wrote an extra 2 or 3 lines instead to show how smart I ammmmmmm... not). Enough rambling! Adios, amigos and amigas. Vai para sombra (well, I know the Mexicans speak Spanish and that phrase is in Portugese, but I think it's cool). Translation: walk under the shadow, kind of a "go in safety kinda parting message. Vai para o corraiyo (written fone-et-i-kelly) means go fuck yourself up the arse. You choose your own parting greeting; I'm going. And who says I have a short attention span? Fuck, I ramble a lot. Via con dios. Pablo Diablo. 2 comments|post comment

DJ PJ on da radio. Check it! [13 Dec 2004|09:15pm] [ mood | Always crazy! ] [ music | Neanderthals from the past beating drums ] Guess who's gonna be on the radio this Friday? I got an email from a mate who has a show on SYN FM (student radio). I asked him ages ago if I could do something on his show (fake listener calls, radio plays, etc), but he wasn't doing a show at the time. He sent me an email yesterday informing me that Friday is his last show and that he needs to fill in some time, so he invited me down to the station. I'M GONNA BE ON AIR, MOTHERFUCKERS! WHOO! (I swear, I'm not excited at all.) I've got to be there at noon this Friday (17/12/04), so I'm assuming that's when the show starts, so tune in. I'm hoping to play my send-up of Jimmy Barnes's "Working Class Man" entitled "Adidas Fan", and maybe rip out some stand-up comedy and funny poetry. I might even do some voices and make a fool out of myself, and maybe even read out a couple of articles and short stories. I'm so stoked, man. I can't wait. 4 comments|post comment

Pablo Diablo ess hi-herrre [06 Dec 2004|08:24pm] Bueno Nachos, compah(Doctor)Dre's. You have been hassling me to write in this damn thing, so here it goes. From now on, I (says with fists against his waist, striking a striking pose and talking in an English accent); I...have a new name! From this day forth, I shall be known as Pablo Diablo! (Insert fanfare of trumpets here) Pablo is Spanish for Paul, while Diablo is the devil. Paul is Latin for "small", so that makes me Little Devil. Pablo and Diablo rhyme, and they're both in the same friggin' language...that's smart, and funny, so don't snigger at me! I am Pablo Diablo, and you will feel my wrath! Sorry bout that stupid compadre/Doctor Dre gag at the start (this last sentence is for anyone who didn't get it). IF HOMER SIMPSON CAN CHANGE HIS NAME FROM HOMER SIMPSON TO MAX POWER, THEN, FUCK IT, I CAN CHANGE MY NAME TO PABLO DIABLO. 6 comments|post comment

Some Channel 9 executives are gonna get whacked! [09 Aug 2004|05:19pm] Whaddaya mean I gotta wait TWO FRIGGIN' WEEKS for the season finale of The Sopranos? I just checked the TV guide and realised why I have to wait until next week for those Noo Joizee goombahs to make their way back onto my screen: fucking reality TV! "The Apprentice" is having it's finale tonight, so I have to miss out on the friggin' Sopranos. Sure, I reckon there's enough reality TV viewers (do I replace that phrase with the word "suckers" or not?) to justify putting The Apprentice on, but given the climate in Melbourne's underworld, there are going to be a few unhappy people with itchy trigger fingers. I hope they whack a few of those Channel 9 executives for this insult. Apologies for using my live journal as a way of venting anger and frustration, but if you have any complaints about it, please forward them to Sapphire, as she is the one who signed me up for it in the first place. 4 comments|post comment

This is indeed bat country [02 Aug 2004|06:50pm] I just saw one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. We have a few bats that live in my area, so it's not uncommon to see one fly over, two on rarer occassions. Just a few minutes ago, I went outside and looked up and saw a bat, then another. I thought, "Cool, two bats flying over at the same time." Then I saw another, then another, all flying together. I moved further into the backyard and noticed that there were more flying above me, coming out of the east, heading west. Every few seconds, another group of bats would fly over. At first I was wondering whether I was having some weird hallucination (as most of you know I have a little obsession with the beginning of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", where Johnny Depp starts hallucinating and sees bats and says "We can't stop here; this is bat country!"). The bats seemed to appear out of nowhere a few hundred metres away, as if they were coming out of the clouds. I guessed it must've been because my eyes had trouble seeing them because it is night and bats are black, even though up closer they were sillhoutted against the grey clouds up above. The bats were coming from roughly the same direction, some from the east, some from the south east (roughly 45 degrees of a compass). The longer I looked, the more I saw. I stopped counting after about 5, but in the ten minutes I was out there, I would have seen upwards of fifty bats. Fucking awesome, I tells ya! -Paul McFadden, Baron Batcountry, Prince of Paranoia. 11 comments|post comment

21st Century - What a joke [26 Jul 2004|07:40pm] I turned on the TV today to find some welcome news. Big Brother is finishing tonight. Damn. What a shame. What are we going to do with ourselves now? Thank god for the 21st Century, hey? Our generation will be laughed at as long as our recorded history remains in tact. What will future historians say when they look back. Our idols are people who are famous just because they're loud or out-there people. Take Big Brother for example. The hopeful contestants for this show are the show-offs in their group of friends, so they think they'll do ok in the Big Brother. So we worship these people because they're loud-mouthed wankers who can fill out an application form and sit on their arses all day and get paid for it (a thought just occurred to me - don't we normally call people who do that dole bludgers?) Shame! Shame! Shame! These people do fuck all and get rich and famous. Same with sports stars. What do they do? They do the same thing they were doing as kids, kicking a ball, or running around playing some sort of game, and getting paid a shitload for it. The reason we call them "GAMES" is because they're fun, not because you get paid for it. Being a professional sportsperson is not a legitimate occupation, it's a case of being unwilling to leave childhood activities behind them. I used to pick my nose when I was a kid, but you don't see me getting paid to do it these days, do you? We need to re-think the people we idolise. Please. Before TV gets any shitter than it is. If I have to watch one more reality TV show (which, in no way resemble reality whatsoever), I am going to fucking scream. Sometimes ranting, always raving, Paul. 5 comments|post comment

Driving you crazy [11 Jun 2004|10:31pm] I sat my Hazard Perception test at Vic Roads today. I got 80% right, which means that I passed and can now sit my driving test on Tues. Should be fun. 8 comments|post comment

My first proper entry [11 Jun 2004|10:04pm] Hi there, all u electronic snoops. Welcome to my life. Well, after a year of blood, sweat and tears, I've finally finished my novel. For those of you who don't know what it's about, well...that's just your bad luck. I think anyone who's gonna be reading this knows about it anyway. So, as I was saying...Last Friday I put the finishing touches on the bastard. I had all the chapters as separate files (to make editing easier) and put them all in one file. Word count is just over 102,000 with 356 pages (well, the first one's a cover sheet, so 355). I'm getting bruises from patting myself on the back. I was only hoping for about 250-300 pages, just so it was a nice, easy read. Chuck Palahniuk (of Fight Club fame) writes short, snappy novels and which seem to read themselves, leaving you hungry for more, and this was what I was trying to achieve, but I kinda went a bit overboard. If you haven't read any of Chuck's books, get your arses down to a bookstore NOW or ask if you can borrow one. "Choke" and "Survivor" are his best works. If you're reading this, then you obviously haven't made a move to read his books. Go! Go! Damn those tangents. Anyway, I was going to get a few of my school mates to read over it and edit it for me, but once I'd considered the cost of printing (not to mention the poor trees that would have to be killed) I decided I was only going to get two of my teachers to read over the manuscript. Katee told me that Tracey wouldn't read over her manuscript, so I didn't bother asking her. I took my manuscript in to Greg (my Non-Fiction teacher) and asked him to edit/proof-read it for me, so hopefully I'll have it back by the time the holidays finish. (Holidays - I can feel another tangent coming on). Once initial editing is done, the huge wad of paper will be sent off to the manuscript assessment service at the Vic Writers' Centre. Once I get their response to it and fix up anything they say needs fixing, then it's off to the publishers with it. I've decided to go with Random House, and they won't take an unsolicited manuscript unless you've got an agent (fuck that, I'm not paying some schmuck to hock my book) or have a positive response from a manuscript assessment service. So, why Random House? They publish/distribute Chuck Palahniuk (remember him? the man's a fucking literary genius), Irvine Welsh (who wrote Trainspotting) as well as Mario Puzo (and if you don't know that he wrote The Godfather, I'll ensure you wake up with a horsehead in your bed). I'd like to think of my novel as an Aussie Godfather, with themes of drug sub-culture (cigarettes instead of smack, like Mr Welsh) and as dark, black-humoured, sick and fucking twisted as Mr Palahniuk. I'm hoping to get in contact with one of the sales reps from Random House who used to come into the bookstore I worked in in on Swanston St so that she can get me in contact with someone so that my manuscript doesn't sit in the slush pile for 3-5 months and so that I can start collecting those royalties ASAP. Any artist who tells you they only do what they do for the love of it and not the cash is full of shit. There's no such thing as selling out. Unless you write absolute shit like Home and Away. I'm in this game to get a message out there, definitely, but who wants to work 9-5, 5 days a week until fucking retirement age? That shit ain't for me. Been there done that. Why do you think I went back to school to write this novel? Let me sit in front of the 'puter all day, get up whenever the hell I want and not when the alarm clock tells me to, and get paid for it. Anyway, enough rambling. It's time for bed, cos I've gotta work tomorrow. See you on the bookshelves. 4 comments|post comment

[23 May 2004|09:51am] Hey, I've been busy lately. Fucking assignments don't they know I have a life? What's everyones favorite chuppa chup flavour? 14 comments|post comment

Told you I'd do it. [18 May 2004|04:39pm] All your bases is belong to us. 7 comments|post comment

DiViDe and Conquer [18 May 2004|04:36pm] [ mood | quixotic ] What happened to the good old days when you could just fast forward through the warnings at the start of a movie? You know the ones I’m talking about: black background, white writing topped with the word “WARNING” in large red letters. The ones that warn you that you can’t show this video in public or on oil rigs. You know, I can’t remember the last time I thought to myself, “Hmmm, I think I might watch Finding Nemo with some of my rigger mates in the middle of the ocean”. Wait a second, I can remember the last time, but that is a different story. With the arrival of DVD, we are now forced to sit through a few seconds of crap as the logos for the production company, the movie studio and whichever other companies were involved in the making of the movie appear on the screen. You can press the fast forward button as much as you like, but it’s not going to work until the movie actually starts. What a pain in the butt. One good thing has come out of the arrival of DVD, though (well, kind of). Gone are the days of hooking up two VCRs and double-taping the latest release to keep in your home library thanks to DVD, and so, thankfully, are the days of sitting through those annoying ads for video piracy that no-one in their right minds is actually going to watch in real-time. No, I’m not talking about a preview for the latest swashbuckling adventure featuring peg-legs and parrots. I’m talking about that ad that I think most of us may have only watch without pressing fast forward only once in our lives, if that. You’ve no doubt had to fast forward through it on countless occasions. “HAVE... YOU... GOT... WHAT... YOU... PAID... FOR?” I certainly hope so, because I’ll be extremely disappointed if the large handful of change I paid to rent it is worth more than the entertainment value of the latest mind-numbing, plotless action movie. You ask me, that is video piracy. And speaking of piracy, thanks to your purchase of a new DVD player, you have now been stripped of your hard-earned cash all in the name of consumerism and entertainment. Tell me, what was wrong with your old VCR? Nothing probably. You just had to jump on the bandwagon, didn’t you, a mad urge to become one of the “haves”, leaving the “have-nots” behind. Welcome to our throw-away society. DVD fever is sweeping the country in a plague of consumerism. How many people actually went out and bought every single one of their favourite flicks on tape compared to the amount of people that have collections rivalling that of the local video store? You now get the opportunity to spend more of your wages replacing all those other titles on VHS that you’ve spends hundreds of dollars on in the past, just so you can have those movies in the new format. We’ve been told that the quality of the picture is so much better, but it is only imperceptibly better, unless your copy on video has been played over and over and worn out. And let’s not forget that there are all those special features on DVD. Yeah, a trailer of the movie which you’ve no doubt seen a million times, some lunk-head actor talking over the movie (aren’t people normally told to shut-up if they talk during the movie?), making “special comments”. There’s also the deleted scenes, which were obviously deleted for a reason! Oh, and don’t forget the actor biographies, which you could have read off the wrappers of the Fantales you’ve been scoffing down during the movie anyway. Yeah, DVD is so cool, man. Suckers. But DVDs are smaller and take up less space than your old VHS tapes, don’t they? So, technically, you should have more room in your house than before. But what happens to your old movies? Are you going to throw them out just because you’ve bought a new copy on DVD? No, they’re going to sit in your lounge room along with your DVD collection. You are now being piratically robbed of more space, not only thanks to your DVD collection, but also your DVD player that’s now sitting on top of your VCR. And let’s not forget that you now have one more remote control to lose between the cushions on the couch and experience more frustration at trying to figure out how to work the damn thing with the “help” of the manual. Arnie was right, man. The machines are taking over. I just wonder how long it’ll be before my latest purchase of technology becomes redundant and I’m forced to buy the new and improved machine for viewing my favourite movies, just so my old DVDs and videos can end up at the op-shop along with my vinyl collection and my house can be cluttered with more junk. Now, where did I put that f***ing remote? 9 comments|post comment

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