What the inside of my head looks like…

Now this is the Kittridge Experience™!

Raspberry Surprise!

I have fought long and hard and now the long awaited video masterpiece Raspberry Surprise is available here for your Internet Pleasure™.  Those losers over at blogspot claim they have an exclusivity on this but it’s no longer true.

The video banned at first by youtube and then (inexplicably) by xtube and hated by many…I still think this is my best work.  Come friends, pull up a chair, turn up the sound and wait for the boss to be out of earshot and experience the surprising raspberry.

NB: The video you have just watched may not be safe for work.  It depends where you work though, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: 14:05 Saturday JAN24 – WTF?! The video is gone again!?  I’m going to find out what happened.

Complaints box

For some reason people who don’t complain are thought of as saints and we’re supposed to be more like them.  Well fuck that!  I’m a Complainer from way back and while you were out learning mathematics, social skills and marketable talents I was honing my craft in The Complaint!

Any seasoned Complainer knows that its a balancing act, after all you don’t want to complain too much, then you’re a whinger.   But what’s the difference?!  A Complainer is a story teller and to Complain is to tell a story – everything Charles Dickens ever wrote for example was a Complaint as was the Great Gatsby.  I have identified 2 fundamental differences between these 2 classes of gripe peddler.

1) PASSION

We’ve all met whingers: miserable twerps who bellyache all day long.  You can always tell a whinger by the tone of their voice, they moan like a dying thing with a slack mouth, no doubt many think there’s a ghost about when really it’s just a whingeing co-worker.  What’s interesting about whingers is that they don’t even care what they complain about, its all the same to them!  From the temperature of the air to their missing limb…it’s just another lump of coal in their ice-cream.  They don’t complain because they’re upset (in fact they are upset all the time) but because its all they know how to do, if they stopped they would cease to be.  Where the whinger drains the life from its surroundings, the Complainer burns like a fire!

Whether or not you agree with his politics, Hitler was a great complainer:

2) VOCABULARY

Y’know if these whinge-o dudes just popped an alkaseltzer, it’d probably cut down their moaning…they’d still be boring though and that’s half the problem.  It’s always the same old things with them “I was soooo bored!” “this is the most pain I’ve ever felt” “blah blah blaaaaahhhh!” Gimme a break, losers.  Its as if they assemble all their sentences from the same 25 words.  Five minutes with these guys and even Margaret Cho would seem funny, that’s why Complainers use: creative swearing!  A few inventive expletives can really spice up an evening eg: “cram it up your bradhole!” The English language is such a cluttered wonderland of expression, the way people under use it is criminal!  Complainers are always looking for exciting new words that they add like jewels to their angry crown.

So, don’t listen to these clowns who tell you complaining isn’t the way, so long as you’ve got the chops, complain your little heart out!  As for me, I’m never going to stop complaining, it’s my right as an American!  And if I’m not an American, why is my  TV full of American shows?

I’m so sorry for this

I know I know….sorry.

Art is boring

Sorry artists, you had to find out sometime.

Seeds of Woe

The global financial crisis which has wiped unprecedented levels of value from the stock exchange has taken a turn for the worse with the British Seed Bank filing for bankruptcy today.  The closure comes after the Bird Council’s decision to vote against a $500 billion bailout package that has been hotly debated over the past fortnight.  The powerful Crow Lobby which cares little for seeds is believed to have influenced the rejection.  Holding a press conference near a bin this morning Leader of the Crow Lobby, Surebeak the Wise claimed “Raaa!  Raaaa! Raa!”

Analysts warn the Seed Bank’s closure will have far reaching implications on the eventual outcome of the economic downturn.  The seed market has been shrinking since February and many plants, worried about the status of the dollar and the coming Winter are choosing to not reproduce.

Dr. Saigon

So its over! The course is done and after all that toil comes…well more toil but first I have to win the opportunity to toil in the strange human tradition known as job interviews.

There was an ad in the paper and I called to register my interest and the woman told me with no enthusiasm whatever that I could fax my resume, but of course its not 1990 and nobody has a fax machine, so I asked if I could email it but no, there was no email address. Right. When I said I could just drop it off as I live locally, she said I’d get a call back to arrange an interview. She’s a bit boring, but perhaps they hired a zombie receptionist, equall opportunities?

A different woman called back with the same flat voice, and I wondered if this lack of life was the result of some virus that ate away the soul. Can you come in on Saturday at 11? I could and she gave me the address. Later she calls back and says that the dentist won’t be able to stay after he sees patients on Saturday, would I be able to come in at 7.30? I paused noticeably then said o-k.

Already I don’t want the job because they sound like a real bag of smelly gas over there, who needs that?

I got there at 7.30 in the morning but…I was the only one there. The receptionist came at 8 and then we waited together for the dentist who decided to show up at quarter past 8 god bless him. There were a number of degrees on the wall of course but the only one I remember was issued from Saigon University? Huh?! Is that even real?

While we waited for this dentist with dubious qualifications (for a start, we’ll discuss the rest of his dubiosity later) I tried to make conversation with her but I felt like an annoyance, she obviously had lots of boringness to do.

So then I gave my resume and we’re having an interview. I say interview but he’s just basically reading snippets off the resume and then expecting me to say something about it, its funny you don’t consider that anyone can do a bad job interview until you’re in one.

“Collecting typewriters” he says first, reading the hobbies section “what does that mean?”
There’s only one thing that can possibly mean.
“err…y’know typewriters, I collect them” he just continued staring at the paper. Time passed. “You know…typing machines?”
“oh” he said and I realised that he was the carrier if this virus that infected his receptionists.

I was trying to be charming as is my strategy at interviews but holy hell, this man had no personality at all. Nothing. My attempts to be charming were useless, it was like pouring diamonds into a bin.

He continued to read bits off the resume and I would then elaborate, all the time he just stared at the page. He told me there was so much work there, so much work very busy. I’m so tired, he says. As if I care he’s tired! I don’t give two shits if he’s on fire!

Much was made of my history as a dental nurse…you’re fortunate Internet Reader that
1) you haven’t ever been a dental nurse and
2) that I’ve never told you the story of how I became one because its so boring! Who wants to hear that? If ever there was a book published on the subject, Gabriel would break the seventh seal and destroy the world entire. It was years ago and it doesn’t matter.

For the rest of this mockery of an interview he told me how it was very interesting, “very in-teresting” that I was a male dental nurse. I told him matter-of-factly that it’s not so unusual and he wanted to know who I worked for and why I did it for so long. Hey, here’s something fuckface, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I’m not a robot like you, programmed by my parents into becoming a dentist, at least I made a decision and didn’t inherit it.

Some time ago in Saigon…
ROBOT VOICE: Affirmative father I will become a dentist please insert text books beep beep beep.

He did not tell me when I’d hear about the job, which fits in with the level of professionalism evident throughout the whole process. I want him to offer it to me so I can reject him, then I’ll punch him in the face and ride off into the sunset on a powerful horse, smoke and rainbows billowing from my lungs.

Eat my dust, you cunts! (Part 2)

So, I’ve had a few jobs in my time, not careers you understand, just nothing whatever jobs. I would perhaps have been more inclined to take on a career if I’d been working for people who were deserving of respect and not members of the League Of Miscreants.

A list of the people I’ve worked for/under follows:

• Amorphous mass of wanker dentists
• Completely psychotic ex-army woman whose management style was: “Yelling.”
• Elderly Polish man who would become confused mid-sentence, believing himself to be in the time period of the story he was recounting, getting angry all over again as if the story was happening to him.
• a full time video store manager full stop.

I say “full time video store manager full stop.” because that’s all he was, there was literally nothing else you could say about him that didn’t involve the words “face” “pig” “retard” “ugly” & “fucking”. Perhaps management status is enough for some people but I wouldn’t want that to be at the top of my achievements list, strangely he seemed to expect others to be in awe of it, as if being a manager of a video store in a completely irrelevant suburb mattered. I don’t have an MBA or anything but being a manager doesn’t seem to be about not doing any work and telling everyone else what to do.

“Micromanagement and laziness do not a good environment create.”
-Yoda MBA, Master of Jedi Sc.

I quit on Saturday morning and man, it felt good! I’ve only ever been fired before and its sooo different! I got exactly what I wanted and left a massive hole in their roster! T’aint nobody available to fill that shit! Awoooo! Suck it up you dipshit!

Sure I’m poor but who cares? I’ll no longer have to tollerate a fat loser who made my slacker job difficult because he had the hots for me and I was way out of his league.

My bank account: $310.20
My emotional account: $369, 255, 138, 067.19

SUPPLEMENTAL: I came to enjoy the company of my fellow workers at the video store, in particular the delightfully positive Lucy, Guy the animator who like all of us was much better than that place, Pullman, and pretty much everyone but the manager Aaron. If you happen to get served by any of these people, say something memorable or funny – it makes the shift less horrible.

there goes a Narwhal…

after seeing the narwhal, the approach of the famous bikini whale proved too much for these 2 young women. Image: Reuters.

Eat my dust, you cunts! (Part 1)

Today I handed in my last little fiddly assignments to my lecturers…a few days late but whatever, they got them, they should be happy! As I left the building and clambered into the car, I sped off into a world of glittering freedom screaming “EAT MY DUST YOU CUNTS!“

Ok…not really, I got stuck in traffic but the sentiment remains true.

The last couple of years have actually been fairly horrible, I’ve never been put to the test quite like this before and the experience is akin to sharing a house with a gigantic black hole, you give and you give and it takes and takes and NEVER does the dishes or buys toilet paper. It’s crushing demands on me have caused a lot of stress and I was reduced to clawing for free time and pointless distractions anywhere I could get them, as if I was on my knees, desperately grabbing fistfuls of clay, hoping to find an ancient jewel or the universal truth in the mud. They squish wetly in my hand; its just earth, just filthy, cold slime…containing no more beauty than you’d find on the inside of a pig.

Y’know on reflection, its a fairly strange feeling…a little bit hollow. I was worried on the last day of clinic, that I’d have to go back and repeat a unit here or there, or they’d just plain pull the plug on me and say I never showed up. It was an uneasy feeling because all around me, everyone was chirping and celebrating, having somehow completed all the harrowing tasks set by the course monster. So now that it’s very nearly all stitched up, it feels anticlimactic…it didn’t so much end with a whimper but a tiny puff of dust. Given the complete domination this course imposed on me, now the set has been taken apart, I find myself without a frame of reference. Jump-cut to me standing in the street, holding a slip of paper that says “thanks”.

Maybe I had expected an impressive ending, something to justify the amount of time it had taken from me…and it felt often like the time was taken off me, physically hacked off in thick, gory slabs – chucked onto autopsy scales
“five months, 36 minutes…grab some more off his back”

Well the show’s over now, you fuckers, I’ve got my whole day back and you can suck that up! You cannot kill me with your stifling contact hours, I’m a shimmering fantasy, with depth of character you cannot possibly understand! Hahahaaa! The darkness is slowly retreating and hope swells larger, here I come! Reborn through all the toil: a solemn bird perched high on the tree of satisfaction! Kaw! Kaww! The future tolls! Drowning out the sorrows of the past!

Motion in the ocean…

Today I went to the beach with Donny and holy hell I almost died in the salty expanse of the indian ocean. We had gone first to mullalloo beach but that whole place is afflicted by the brown scourge (sea weed) and there’s nothing quite as gross as swimming in that kind of scene. Who needs raspy buglike dregs floating around attempting to coocoon and take you to their underwater masters? We headed off to scarborough beach so we could enjoy a swim, but it was to prove a bad move…in the groove.

At first scarboroug beach was pretty nice…there were biggish waves and as we waded out I was laughing at the size and force of the waves. Poseidon didn’t like this though, and so decided to drown me in his kingdom. As I say, things were fairly innocent at first, wading out and laughing at nature, but soon I was much too far out and the waves were coming without much rest between them. I noticed that the waves were getting bigger and it was harder to get above them as they broke near me, but the shorewise force of the waves was much less than the pull outward to the big blue tomb. I was swimming in towards the sand but not moving anywhere and I was getting really really tired. Wave after wave came in over me and I felt my strength about to give.

It dawned on me that I was going to die here. But that’s not right! Keating was my favourite prime minister, not Holt! YOU BASTARDS YOU’VE MADE A HORRIBLE MISTAKE!!! YOU’RE THINKING OF SOMEONE ELSE!!

I couldn’t touch the ground. I looked over at Donny, a fair way closer to the beach than I was and I wanted to call out to him for help. In that moment I was completely shot with terror, and that image of looking over at Donny is one I’ll remember for a long long time. So I swam and swam and swam and swam as much as I could making little gains until I finally caught a wave and put my foot on sand. I was weak but convinced I’d live to die on land at a later date.

Writing this has made me feel scared all over again, I’m mildly shaken up. Its funny actually because I spend all my time worried about dying from a pathogen or slow disease, there’s a whole area out there of trauma and accident I hadn’t considered. Looks like I’ll be a lot more worried from here on out.

Fuck you, the ocean, learn to deal with people.

An Elephant never forgets…

to PUT ON HIS GLASSES!

Keyboard Hygiene

It occurred to me that maybe reading about how I’m horny probably isn’t good blogging practice…granted I get horny more interestingly than most but, you deserve better than that, Internet Reader and I have let you down. The post has been deleted and I’ll try and rectify things in the coming years as we grow old and horrible together.

Right now, I want to talk about this…

Maybe I’m alone here but I feel a connection with my keyboard and I don’t know how this guy let his keyboard get so bad. Actually, no I don’t think you can “let” it get that bad, you have to actively dirty it. It looks like they pulled it out of a shipwreck, there’s probably some barnacles under his dick.

It depends what he’s using it for really but I don’t think you could get that capslock to engage for love or money. Also, I wouldn’t recommend trying to engage the capslock without gloves. We can only hope that this man got that ring out of his foreskin before he died of keyboard contracted Syphilis.

I think this picture, sums up the internet.

BTW, the above picture may not be safe for work.

Insincere Smile Competition 2008

The Old Lady’s Fund Raising Committee has asked me to host their promotional video on my blog. I will now do so.

Please vote for your favourite insincere smile in the comments section….why the hell is the comments section of my blog so underused?! This is supposed to be web2.0 guys!

Your guide to fashion

Green is the new orange but yellow is the old red. This means white has become the new green and salmon is the old black. Turquoise surprisingly is still the current turquoise and mauve has shifted into an invisible infrared colour, opting to stay out of the summer market. Puce is alternately the new and the old blue while brown is grey in Europe and dark-grey in Asia.

The old pink was forced to retire after it was reveled that it was actually gold the whole time. Purple was not available for comment at the time of publishing but sources indicate it is moving in a more peach direction after last year’s failure as the new off-white.

A FUCK A HEADPHONE!

Fig1.1 – Well shit.

So how’s this for the start of a week, I cut the cord of my headphones on a door frame(?!?) in a rush to get to a clinic session?(!!!?!??) meaning I had to resort to other methods of destroying my hearing: by abusing recreational ear drops. These were the best headphones I ever had…see, I grew up funny which gave me munted ear holes that don’t accommodate standard issue headphones, I sprung the 200 bux for a decent pair last year…shit man, clinic ruins everything good about my life.

Things kind of got better from there, I actually laughed a lot this week thanks mostly to a new thing I started at uni: the Insincere Smile Competition! Photos pending.

On the downside though, urbandictionary refuse to upload my recent definitions – puzzling when you consider the kind of shit they put up there on a daily basis. Look…I’m not angry I’m just sad for you, Internet Reader, you’ll never know what a Pepsi Princess is.

To leave things on a positive note:

Good evening.

Queen wants to know

Diagnosis: BOY FEVER!

Prognosis: Sssssssssssssssexy!!!

Holy shit dudes! I’m not even kidding when I tell you I’ve gone boy crazy this time. I can’t think about anything else, just cock and sex and dudes! Maybe its a problem because of uni, but I’m so horny that it’s fuckin funny!

So here’s some examples from today of how toey I am. We were at curtin campus in the arvo and I spotted a familiar face. “Wait a minute!” I said “Waaaaait a minute!”
“what are we waiting for?” asked Emily
I recognised him from the ECU commercials this guy is smokin hot in person, he’s more tanned. The interesting thing is, when I first saw that ad, I said “he’s not bad…I’d lick his balls.” Having seen him in the flesh today, I would do more than that. I was pretty loud in telling everyone at my table who he was and how sexy I thought he is. But he knows it…also nobody agreed with me.

Later, on the bus home I sat next to this dude who was ok looking (for a white guy) and clearly gay. I was getting flashing lights on my gaydar. I kept fantasizing about kissing him, just grabbing him and pashing his face! I tried to figure out what his pashing style would be from looking at him. Hot diggity. I need to fuck someone…STAT!

Week In Review: Part 4 – Monday’s child

I’m sorry that I missed the update on Friday but I had things to do…seriously Internet reader, get a life.

Most of the time the course I’m doing is stuffed full of bullshit. But today it ended up being accidentally fantastic but for you to understand what I’m talking about, we need some context so let’s get comfortable and enjoy the backstory. Ready?

BACKSTORY:

So I’ve got a mole on my head, its been there a while I spose, we met about 3 or 4 years ago, it’s above my left ear. So what big deal right? Yeah well what if its ALL-OF-A-SUDDEN-CANCER?! The worst kind of cancer. I had a haircut and that got me thinking about it (read: irrationally panicking).

Anyway, lets’ leap forwards now to Monday morning BACKSTORY OVER.

A woman with glasses asked me how I was and I said “not good, I think I have cancer.” She laughed and I told her more or less what I just told you. What does she say? She looks past me and says “Dr Boyd, this young man thinks he has cancer, can you put his mind at ease?”

Dr Boyd is like a cancer surgeon specialist! Haha, talk about convenient, its great having access to people like that! Boyd says if it was malignant, I’d have been dead a year. And…I don’t think I’m dead a year………yet.

HIGHLIGHTS:

1. No cancer maybe!
2. The drive home where my grooving to Stevie Wonder was watched by cute kids.

LOWLIGHTS:

1. It’s Monday, dude!

VERDICT: Yeahhhh….nah whatever.

Week In Review: Part 3 – Thurs For the Memories

Thursday?! Gimme a break, today dragged on like nobody’s business. Any day that starts with a lecture about economics and geriatric dentistry, is the day you shoulda stayed in bed muthafucka! Mmm and I was so warm in my bed, so warm and comfortable. Come to think of it, why do I ever get out of bed?

I was going to take tomorrow afternoon off until Emily reminded me that our psycho behavioural science teacher will fail you if you miss a single lecture without a doctors certificate. This guy is a total whackjob, he’s on the verge of snapping you can feel it. And wtf one lecture and you fail? This guy needs to get real. Fast. I’m not going to stand for this, Internet Reader! I’ma do something about this motherfucker.

On the positive side, Donny came over after school and we got a lot of work done on our robot costume for the video…other than that today was really a bit of a lukewarm turd.

*****
HIGHLIGHTS:

1. Finishing the robot costume!!! (I’ll post a picture tomorrow)
2. Walking the corridors of uni with Emily, I confessed a fake desire to pee in the drawers of the postgrad’s office area while a postgrad student was walking behind us listening :/ talk about a cliche!

LOWLIGHTS:

1. Sooooooo goddamned tired
2. 99% of the day was boring
3. This unbelievable nonsense about not being able to miss a single lecture of behavioural science.

VERDICT: Dude, thumbs down.

Week In Review: Part 2 – Woah! Woah! It’s Woden’s Day

Woah! Woden’s Day already? We better get a move on then. Today I woke up really effing tired because I was up all night reading articles in preparation for a presentation (Across the nation). In actual fact I was up all night reading erotic fiction and chatting on MSN, I put more work into the title page of the presentation than any other part and that’s the secret of my success™!

I’m pleased with how it went because it got some laughs, even from the stone faced lecturer who is hewn from pure Academite.

Wednesday was more or less your standard day I suppose, and this isn’t really the kind of blog that just blah blah blahs about my boring day, you don’t care about that do you Internet Reader? You’re busy. So I’m gonna talk about things on the wild side. I think I broke 2 laws today…thats if we lump all the traffic laws I broke into 1 category (speeding, running red lights etc) and I spoke openly about patients.

If you haven’t worked in healthcare before, its time you got real and realised that we talk about you. That’s right, your weirdo podiatrist and your kindly old doctor all talk about you when you’re gone! I suppose its some kind of confidentiality issue…but I wonder how many laws we all break on a daily basis, what about you guys? You broken any laws lately?!

*****
HIGHLIGHTS:

1. The presentation which had this awesomely hilarious title page:

1. Talking to the lecturer afterwards about nerdy stuff.
2. Driving home I see these 3 dudes walking along in yellow smiley face balaclavas! Being filmed by a black guy! I imagined them having sex with eachother “nono!” says the black man “keep the balaclavas on.”
3. While picking my nose on the drive home, I spy a hot asian male (or HAM) picking his own nose in the car behind me!
4. Breakin the lawww!

VERDICT: Pretty boring, old Odin would be ashamed!

Now is the winter of our DISC-ontent

Life is great when you’re a New Release! Everyone wants you, and when they cant’ find you they ask about you at the counter. People even invite their friends over to meet you when they bring you home…you always have a great time! And when its time to go back to the Video store, you’re taken care of all the way, no scratches on your young data side.

But time takes its toll…the people forget about you and leave you on the shelf
“Hey, didn’t we have fun? I showed you my special features!” Pretty soon you’re yesterday’s hero and no one even remembers how you end.

Now look at you, you’re stuck in the weekly shelves with all the other rejects. “Get away from me! I’m not like you, you’re not even dual layered! I’m not supposed to be here!” But no one can hear you or see your front cover, as you’re wedged between 2 hasbeen movies, with long abandoned dreams.

Its been so long since you felt that shock, that electricity when someone’s finger touches your case spine and pulls you slowly slowly out, and you don’t even care what they think. They don’t really wanna watch you, you’re just part of a package deal, 1 new release and 2 weeklies $7.95. You glare at the doe eyed new release on the ride home, poor thing doesn’t know what’s coming.

When that take you home and drop you in the slot you can’t even cry anymore as your scratched up used belly stings from the shame of whats become of you…winter has come, you’re never gonna be watched again.

Week In Review: Part 1 – Tyr in Your Hand

NOTE: I have decided to review this week starting Tuesday. Stay tuned for daily updates on whatever…who cares if you don’t? I don’t, fuck you!

The depression express has been derailed! All of its tiny sad little passengers are charred and broken. How dope is that?

As you know from the previous (maudlin) post, I had been tangled in a cycle of regret and obsession by comparing myself to others in the worst possible light. But as I was driving to uni this morning something shifted. What started during the song Sheep, got more powerful in Down the Line and I was almost destroyed by an upwelling of confidence. Don’t let the darkness eat you up, don’t let the darkness eat you up…

I quite literally took his advice and said (though I must not admit it) “Free from love, Farrell. Free from love” (I call myself Farrell when reassuring myself).

Things like this…real shifts in my view hardly ever happen. My addiction to terrible ideas and feelings makes it seem like things will never change, but today I sincerely feel good, as if I’m not in need of that emotional heroin: the idea of some impossible love from bores that don’t give a shit about me, no longer waiting for the love that isn’t real and will never arrive. Free from love, Farrell…

The musical therapy continued as I drove on to school, and my iPod knew what to do. It kept spooling off songs that had distinct tones of closure about them, like songs that would be played at the end of a movie after everything is resolved. The lyrics and the sound of times passed, moving on…

Things just got better and better all day, working with my colleagues in the clinic, I broke another part of the spell that’s been looping in my mind. This idea had developed that people who work in offices are much better than me “wow, so interesting,” I would say “so exotic and stylish!” This is obviously not true, but to someone like me, whose never worked in an office, its easy to make that mistake, as everyone talks about it all the goddamned time. I realised its much cooler and more rewarding working in healthcare.

OFFICIAL MEMO: fuck you office losers with your bullshit suits and promotions. Go on and suck my wig!
*****
HIGHLIGHTS:

1. Obviously starting to feel better is the number 1 highlight.
2. Working in Radiography with Daniel and we were joking about how the xray exposure button looks like a microphone. Daniel sings “it had to be you” into the ‘mic’.
3. Minutes later Daniel picks up a real human skull with the top cut off it and croons “it had to be you” into the bowl of bones.
4. At work, this viet guy rents movies and his surname is (impossibly) Farrell!?!? I asked him about it and he says “my girlfriend’s account” to which I say “your girlfriend is a count?!” Hahahaha, we all laughed.

VERDICT: Awesome day, this is a keeper.

Choo-choo!

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS WHINING AND SELF PITY AND SHOULD NOT BE READ.

All aboard the depression express!

I seem to have this sickness where I periodically pick over the bones of my past as if inviting depression’s ghostly hug. I am obsessive about my past, and the enormous piles of mistakes and pain it contains.

When I lived in Melbourne, I was in love with a man who destroyed me. I was swallowed into his social circle and to be honest I was out of my league, these were highly educated people skimming across the top of everything in their speedboat minds, dragging me behind, thrashing and mauled by the waves they made.

Add my unattractive clingy behaviour into the mix and its a recipe for getting yo’ ass dumped. He went off to New York City, a place so distant and steeped in legend it may as well be Camelot. It was as if he was ascending into the clouds, the flame from his jetpack scorching me in the face. And so I was alone…

The people in his circle kept me around for a while, I think more out of pity than anything, though at the time I genuinely thought they were interested in me…I was “adopted” by 2 of the coolest people in Melbourne and I transformed into this hanger on of a hipster pack. My social time was divided between the hipster clique who I felt were operating on some completely different level, finding a hollow humour in an ironic appreciation of life and the other group who were then the age I am now, drunk on fresh fumes of careers and wanted to talk about wine. Picture a dinner party where everyone is discussing Turkish poetry and being very sophisticated…thats me…silently staring from face to face completely unable to contribute, on the outside of the curve created by their backs.

Eventually I made some friends of my own, and picked up enough of myself that I was able to hot-glue-gun back into some semblance of a personality. But I can’t shake this feeling I’m still the hick at the ball…that their lives have formed them more completely and their level of understanding things, their skills and education open doors of success much higher than I’ll ever reach. I read their blogs from time to time and feel as if I’m watching stuff seep in from a parallel universe.

Sadness is curling in all round me, I’m about to get depressed…start the countdown. I want to burrow into the earth and stay there.

Cathy Fremen

It is by will alone I set my legs in motion. It is by the juice of Saphu that the legs acquire speed, the feet acquire stains, the stains become a warning.