So it's been a week already. Get over it.

Two things I have a yen to do - and that better not be a doco on the goggle box or I'm not even going to get this done for another hour...

*sigh* I'm addicted to documentaries - especially BBC or Ken Burns documentaries.

First things first, this week, a young guy did an interview with Chris Locke. It was superbly subtle (on RB's part) and if anyone reading it paid really close attention to what Chris said, it was also the quintessential guide to the philosophy of blogging. Yes, it surpasses the ability of the English language to adequately impart the wisdom of his replies.

Replies to questions which, frankly, left me cold. But anyway, I sought immediately to redress the balance by doing to RB what he did to Mr Ed. If he can do it, so the hell can I. Out of due deference though, I would actually make an all in seriousness disclaimer that RB did in fact have nothing whatsoever to do with the interview, that it was all me and my idea and it was done without his permission, approval or sanction.

It also occurred to me that if Chris was not happy about it, I would invite him sue me. This would do both of us a world of good. I'm just dying to be sued - and so is he - for things we've written, and it strikes me as eminently amusing that he might sue me for something I might write. I mean, can you imagine it?

The headlines belch forth:

Rageboy sues Australian blogger.

Colorado: Internet guru and author of Gonzo Marketing, Winning Through Worst Practices, Christopher Locke is suing an Australian blogger for using the name Rageboy in an unauthorised article, which Locke has trademarked.

Apparently a Rageboy devotee, Australian Paul Ritchie has taken the title of Locke's second book to heart and is enjoying the notoriety provided by the publication of details of the court case, which isn't doing Locke's hit ranking any harm either.

One could almost believe they cooked this up between them.

When asked by a reporter why he did it, Ritchie simply replied he wants to have a threesome with Locke and Judge Judy and this was the best way he could think of to achieve those ends.


Back to reality and something else which requires a bit of effort on my part - and that is to get some sort of humourous story going - using only the lyrics of songs as the contents of the story. I've done similar things in the past - indeed my first effort was substituting teachers' names for real things in a story I wrote for my school magazine when I was 14 years old.

I'm going to enlist the help of others for this though... my vision as far as music is concerned is fairly narrow. I get hooked on songs and listen to them over and over again instead of just letting things flow and picking up on new stuff I might like, thus broadening my music horizons. The kids have helped a bit by sending me stuff. Cartoon Heroes was a classic. I still think that song is funny as hell and more camp than a Petshop Boys anthology.


There are some other rather amusing things - amusing to me, so that automatically means they're amusing to all of you as well and if they're not, I don't care anyway - rolling around in my head like loose marbles and one of those involves the time difference between waking up and getting out of bed. I'll leave all that to your fertile imaginations.

If you have no idea of what I'm circumlocuting, my advice is to just get fucked.

See? It's more fun to be a bastard.

ChatRat

Sanctimonious twats of all persuasions piss me off no end.

I ditched a few of the dullest msn groups it's ever been my experience to have umm experienced. Plus one run by an irritant who has taken a dislike to me because of a spat we had in a football forum.

As everyone knows, I swear quite a bit. So does he. I left a brilliant swipe at one sanctimonious twat and dropped the f word a couple of times. My message was deleted and I was told to drop the swearing or leave the group.

I left.

Piss on him.

It's the second time I've done that to him too. Different groups but it's not going to happen again. To hell with that. I don't invite people to my place if I don't like what they say or how they behave, he's known me for 5 years, knows my temper and all that. Why invite me only to remove what I say? Fuckwit. Bye bye. Have a nice life.

A few of the kids have started leaving wraps of their 2005. I was going to do one here but, frankly, I can't be bothered.

I got another funny email from Rageboy the other day too. Funny as in funny haha. He asked my opinion of something he'd written. I told him he's asking the wrong person, that I'd crawl naked over hot coals to hear the sound of him pissing in a jam tin. His reply was that he'd go and get himself a jam tin.

lol...

I can't wait until that book is finished. I SO badly want to buy several copies and distribute them amongst a hoard of fundy imbeciles with that expression of delighted ignorance and innocence which I'm so skilled at displaying.

I wonder if Hank will in fact come to Australia now that I've made the suggestion. I sure hope he does. I have a feeling there would be much laughter coming from our meeting.

It's late again. I always leave it too late to do this updating thing. I have to get sleep for I am working tomorrow. Short day, but I still have to get up early. Bummer.

On mixed blessings...

I finally got another edition of The Swamp out tonight.

After 4 months of neglecting my faithful Swampees, I have finally rewarded their faith with a tale of mixed blessings that constitute the unlikely events which just happen to be the reality I live on a daily basis.

I was going to put it here but thought better of it. If you're already a subscriber, you'll understand why it is better left unadorning of the world wide timetrap, in favour of the discretion of those voluptuous in boxes of those beloved subscribers where it is less likely to come back and bite me on the arse.

:)

The oddest thing about the one I've just put out is that 99% of it is absolutely true.

I feel uber. I feel like I could just keep writing until my fingers explode. What a shame it's half past midnight and I have to get up in 6 hours and go to work.

Is this yet another case of mixed blessings?

It seems that way to me.

http://www.Break.com/articles/holditin2.html

The second funniest thing I've seen in my life. I would dearly love to get the mpeg of this.

In other news, mes amies have been in full flight this weekend, thereby protecting me from the abhorence of Christmas. The day was further enhanced by my putting the old Pretenders song 2000 Miles on repeat and just listening to it over and over.

I'll confess here, I got quite soft and started leaving nice messages around the internet, and I even apologised to someone for sending them a rude reply to an email they sent me in good faith.

But have no doubts on one thing: I'm still the same old Rat you all know and treat with a great deal of suspicion if not actual trepidation.

I haven't managed to do one solitary jot of actual work since September. Aren't you all terribly ashamed? I'm not. I've been busy doing other stuff that doesn't in any way advance my social standing but which still makes me feel pretty good anyway.

I have been working - rather long hours as it happens - just not on anything that is strictly for my own benefit. Slack I know, but let's face it, I'm the one who's going to suffer most because of it. The rest of you have archives and older material which I bet not one of you has bothered exploring yet.

As for the first book, although I haven't finished retyping it (I told you, I've been incredibly slack), I have given it its new dustjacket and last week I gave the beneficiary of the would-be largess to spring therefrom the link to where said largess will emanate.

Still, it's not fair that I just sit on my laurels and expect to be kept afloat by the generosity of strangers. I will get the 2nd book out and put lots of loveliness in it, mixed with some philosophical nuggets which might just give it some credibility with the denizens of stupid little plastic boxes festooning every CBD on the planet. I might actually do some research and out a few of the bigger fuckwits and perhaps land myself in court as a result. (Oh I wish.) Thank God Australian courts have no jurisdiction in California.

I had a very enjoyable and fairly lengthy discourse with RB last week. I can't remember if I gloated about that in my last entry or not, but I'm gloating about it again now anyway. I worship that man.

I have decided I need to make 3 investments: A digital camera, a scanner and a personal voice recorder - and not necessarily in that order. Why?

I'm glad I asked myself that very question on your behalf.

The camera because I want to photograph Melbourne in all its glory because no brochures or spamful websites put up the sorts of pictures that make Melbourne what it is. I wish to remedy that situation so anyone with a lazy few thousand dollars will flock to my hometown and say hi.

I want the scanner because I have photos I want to get on the internet - via Photoshop of course - to make a mockery of all things in print which would otherwise not see the oncoming headlights of the traffic on the information super highway.

I want the voice recorder for purposes of my own devising which I'm not about to divulge here, but I may publish the results from its usage at a later date. Obviously, since I don't have thing to do any transcriptions now, I have time to organise the occasion for best impact. It will involve pleasant company and getting very chemically imbalanced. Hopefully I won't kiss anyone with whom I would still wish to be on good terms the following day. (I do that sort of thing when I've been tipping the scales as it were.)

It's been a long time since I indulged in anything not sold legally to minors. This means my tolerance levels will be pretty well zero. And you know what that means, boys and girls. It's way fast and easy to get the Rat off his face. And when that happens, anything else humanly possible and undesirable is more than likely to happen afterwards. This is why I want a voice recorder thingy - to capture the glory of the moment in full surround sound stereo which can then be transcribed and flung to the ends of the earth for general consumption. It's an occasion not to be missed.

Did I happen to mention the kids again? I know I did, I just disguised with a bit of verbal dexterity more commonly known as French. I think over the course of this weekend, I've spent a cumulative total of 14 hours with them plus however much longer than that with message swapping. What a totally massive bunch of people. They and that song - for the first time in 6 years - actually made Christmas 2005 an enjoyable day for me.

I am so me I can't believe it.

I got an email...



Oh the possibilities!

I'm sometimes drawn on whether I get enough spam or not. Some of it can be fairly entertaining and let's face it, with a few clicks it's all gone. Inboxes are fucking enormous so it's not likely any one of mine will ever fill up unless people start sending me massive attachments, which a lot of the time I won't even bother downloading. I'm on dial-up for two reasons: It's dirt cheap and there is only so much I want to do when I'm on the net and downloading shitloads of other people's stuff isn't one of them.

On the other hand, none of the spam I get is of a questionable sexual nature - none of it is of a sexual nature at all if you don't count viagra spam. Most of it emanates from Russia because of some online wargame thing to which one of the kids got me to sub up. The rest is spamming me about dodgy Rolex watches and other shit.

But as I said, clickery gone, no biggy.

One of the other kids had the most extraordinarily kind thing to say...

Mad props to the Rat. We're lucky to have you around.

Oh my brother. Would that he were here to say the same thing.

I got one of the other kids to admit to something too. It was like drawing teeth but it had to be done for his sake. It's part of dismantling some unhealthy and unhelpful trains of thought. I hope he feels much better for it, but self esteem is a hard bugger to rebuild when it's been dealt so many blows. Then again, I enjoy spending 5 hours in one sitting talking to any and all of them anyway so I guess the privilege was all mine. If you're reading this, Chris, I meant what you said and if it weren't for the bloody time difference between here and Texas, I'd spend more than 5 hours with you.

The one kid about whom I'm most concerned hasn't been around for a couple of weeks. If I had to pick just one of the kids to hug, it would be her. She needs it so desperately. I hope she's ok, but I have a growing idea she may be in hospital and I have no way of finding out. I suppose if I trawled the net long enough I might pick up some clues, but that just feels wrong on too many levels - especially on account of her being unable to trust anyone. She might take it the wrong way. She might also leap to some incorrect conclusions and that would be disastrous.

Tart's got a new picture. God, she's a beautiful woman. She makes me proud to know her. By pure coincidence, she got our relationship worked out just right first go without any prompting from me - and unlike that fuckwit, dopey, she's earned the right to consider me her net-brother and doesn't mind that I consider her my net-sister.

When dopey sent me an email telling me she considered me like her little brother, my gag reflex almost killed me. It was about that time I told her unequivocally to fuck off. It took her weeks to realise I meant it.

She left a message for Bong in Philochat2 this morning too. So I made Bong a manager so he can delete the message or delete the comm - whatever he wants. I can't be bothered talking to him anymore. There's no point when he's not stable, can't make head nor tail of what he's saying when Veil has convinced him not to take his meds, and frankly, I just couldn't be bothered taking the chance. Nor do I give a cusper's about Philochat2 so if he wipes it, too bad.

Some interesting developments in the MB story but I'm bidden not to reveal them by the author. Personally. Woo! The MB is a link by the way and it should have clickage upon it. Failing the interloping of any other book which might happen to pass under my nose and beckon my purchase, MB will be my next book purchase. I can't think of a time I was more excited about the production of a book like this - not even my own. Without exaggerating, to me, it's stand on the chair and cheer like they do in corny B grade college movies material. It's flipping one massive bird at everyone who ever harboured some hokey notions about herbal remedies and ancient recipes for happiness and wealth etc. I love Chris Locke and everything he says. I only wish I could write as well as he does. Maybe some day I'll apply myself to the task of producing something wicked. Until then, I'll just be satisfied pumping the air like an idiot every time I turn the pages of his books.

My playlist is the most inspiring lump of music in the universe. The drumming in the OMD song "Maid of Orleans" is phenomenal. Seriously. If I could fly, that's what I'd listen to while doing it. Maybe I'll come back as a hawk in the next life. I should be so lucky.

No matter, really. When I have those kids on the other side saying things like Mad props to the Rat, I don't even feel like I need to eat to stay alive - which is fortunate really, because eating is a nuisance and I fairly frequently forget to do it until it's too late at night to bother. Speaking of which, it's 1.34am here in beautiful Melbourne and I have to get up and go to work in 5 hours.

Plans are afoot to make some extra dosh between Christmas and New Year though, so we'll just see how it all pans out. After New Year, George has plans of his own which might just make all things more comfortable in Casa Highett. More on that later, but for now, it's bed time.

Toodle pip.

Continuation of that bit I threw up in PA this week, I'm going to kill my subscription to Oxfam. Getting that picture in the mail was the end of it for me. Really.

I don't know how I could have been more specific when I said I don't want to know anything at all about the people I sponsored. I just didn't and don't want to know. I can't explain it, but it's more than I can handle.

Fuckers.

I'm getting very emotional about this. I did NOT want ANYTHING at all to do with anything or anyone to whom I was making this anonymous donation. What do I get instead? A shitload of... shit. It's just shit. Gratitude is shit.

It fucking sucks. Charity sucks. I knew it when I signed on, but to have it come back and bite me on the arse like this - and pay for the damn privilege? Fuck that.

All I wanted was to help a poor Cambodian family, completely anonymously and relieve them of any need to feel gratitude (guilt, basically) for putting up their hands asking for help then actually getting it. The idea is to make the most of what you get with no thought for anything but your own future. That's about the best gift I can give and that's of what I was thinking when I started my subscription.

What the fuck are these people on anyway? Oxfam, I mean. Can you tell I'm a bit fucked off right now? How dare they fuck up my gift. Maybe not for whomever is on the receiving end, but my trust in Oxfam has been royally fucked in the arse. I know it's just a procedural thing to send these stinking updates to keep it all warm and fuzzy and make the donors think what they're doing is so wonderfully worthwhile.

I'm sure it is, but what does that make me? Just another name on some mailing list somewhere.

Now I want to run and hide away from these felching scumbags so they never find me again, never send me their stupid begging letters and load me up with guilt for something I haven't done.

My kids on the other side mean more to me than anyone else right now. I keep going on about them, but only because I love them all so much. Am I grateful for the time they accord me? In a way, yes. I'm probably more proud than grateful. I'm certainly amazed they let me in there. It's a fairly tight little circle but they're so incredibly acceptant and generous with their time and themselves. I consider myself very lucky to have encountered them.

It's what they give me which has the big impact. They give me the opportunity to share myself with them and they allow me the opportunity to share their day to day lives as well. It's extremely selfish of me to even be there, I know that. I have the unfair advantage of 20 years worth of experience which they do not yet have. I'm aware of that - always. On the other hand, because I consider them equals - which is to say, as human beings - and I won't behave condescendingly towards them because condescension is right up there with the most despicable things adults do to kids, that not only can I share with them and they with me, but at times I have the opportunity to share the benefits of the experience I have which they do not.

They actually let me care about them. That's incalculable to me. I know I sound like a broken record for saying it yet again, but how I can I compare anything I have with the gift those kids continue to give me?

Gratitude? Fuck gratitude. How about respect, how about trust, and, for what it's worth, not just a modicum of affection. Yes, that's why I love them all so much.

I did a terrible thing on the train on the way home from work tonight.

Terrible or typical? You be the judge.

Melbourne has a free daily newspaper called MX. In it is a puzzle page which contains a few word game thingies and a crossword - amongst other stuff I tend to ignore.

Anyway, a fat bastard had his backpack on the seat next to him instead of on the floor, thus he was depriving one of those forced to stand of a seat on the train.

Enter the Rat.

Rat spots fat bastard reading the puzzle page. Rat further spots fat bastard having copious quantities of difficulty with the crossword.
Rat is a wordsmith with an enviable vocabulary and usually finishes the crossword in 15 minutes.

Rat also has a copy of MX. Rat stands close to fat bastard, close enough to allow fat bastard to hear Rat's stomach grumble. Rat ostensibly ignores fat bastard.

Rat turns to the puzzle page, pulls his pen from his backpack and reads 3 across: Make eyes at, 4 letters. Except Rat reads aloud, and announces the answer as OGLE, 4 down: Dirt, 5 letters. Hmm, "Grime" says Rat, aloud.

"9 across: Liquid measure, 4 letters. Oh, pint!" says Rat.

Fat bastard gets off train at the next stop and goes to the next carriage down.

Rat and one other person sit.

Rat turns to fellow seated person and says, "Well that was easy!"

God, I love being me.

Teresa is a dangerous woman.

No, seriously!

Well, as you can see, I haven't gone bush - yet. I'm still giving it serious consideration though. The first invoice I submitted for payment came back with 30% less than what I was expecting. I had their payment arrangements explained to me and I listened through clenched teeth and said nothing. I saved them several hundred dollars more today, though I have a sneaking suspicion gratitude will be non-existent on their list of things to say to me tomorrow.

No matter. I got a call from another professional this afternoon who is keen to make my acquaintance. It's 45 minutes closer to home for me too.

I checked in with the office yesterday too. For some stupid reason, they've got me down as inactive. If they didn't submit their claim on my behalf for the $5,000 they should have got, I'm going to have to go in there and have serious words with Lance to find out why the hell not. I don't have to do these little things for them - it's not my money after all, it's theirs. I do it because I can and because it's the right thing to do. I'll fire off a fax tomorrow and see if I can't scrape another few hundred out of it though. :) It's only money after all.

(Don't try to make sense of all that. I don't operate the same way everyone else does. It's complex and I couldn't be bothered explaining it.)

I've got the playlist going and trigger songs are messing with my head. Consequently, I feel like a manic-depressive just now. I experienced a very strong urge to go to Geelong and catch Matt's gig. I'd been meaning to go for weeks but I don't operate the same way everyone else does and besides being complex, it buggers my social life as well. Matt's enormous, not physically, he just means a huge amount to me, even though we didn't get in contact with each other for about 2 or 3 years. I tend to store my friends. They come and they go, but they never quite fade away entirely. Sooner or later, I can pick up the threads of where we left off and carry on like no time had passed at all.

Australia won the test series against the West Indies 3 nil today.

Total match attendance over the 5 days was 69,342.

On Boxing Day, the test between Australia and whoever (South Africa I believe) will begin. The total attendance for the 5 days of the Adelaide test will be surpassed by the 2nd day in Melbourne. It would have been walloped on the first day had the venue been The G, but because The G is being prepared for the Commonwealth Games here next March, they're not playing cricket there. The game will be moved to the Telstra Dome which doesn't even hold 70,000 people. I'm not happy about that, just quietly.

Something else about which I'm not especially happy is the fact it's only 10:20pm and I'm more than ready to head for bed, such is my lack of energy and enthusiasm right now. I miss my all night sessions. I'm not sure I like behaving 'responsibly', going to bed early and getting up early.

*sigh*

I need to write. I need so desperately to write. I've got it all here, I'm not feeling blockage, I'm just overwhelmingly bloody tired.

Why aren't you people all doing something more productive than reading my blurtage? Hmm?

Go on, away with you.

Much has happened since I last set the fingers to the Ratblog.

I'm not sure how much of it is good and how much of it just sucks and the end result as I sit here this Saturday afternoon is that I'm sore and tired.

I've been helping out some people who are shortstaffed - to the tune of 10 hours per day since last Sunday. Sure it's money, but Christ, it's not a labour of love. It amazes me how people can be so focused on their own little worlds they forget others have different perspectives each of which can be just as valuable. I already made one change, after just a week, and that change has borne fruit. My thoughts on that particular matter are why spend a fortune on something that's going to go to waste when you can spend a few pennies and make a 700% return in 2 days? I also made a few other changes which surprised the owners by the magnitude of the success, then I get blamed for not taking care of something that isn't even my responsibility - ie; purchasing. If they know something has to be replaced every two days regardless, replace the fucking thing. Waiting for the interloper to tell you it has to be replaced is absurd. They've been there 17 months, it should just be automatic - every two days, replace what needs to be replaced. Don't wait to be told it needs replacing. I told them this and it went down like a lead balloon. I told them if they want me to take that responsibility in future, I'm happy to do it, but don't blame me for not doing what they should know needs to be done every two days anyway. I'm not having that. I've only been there a week.

I can't see myself sticking out the 6 weeks for which they said they wanted me.

BUT...

The old girl reckons she's going to lose her job over a slip of the tongue at work which just happened to be a breach of confidentiality and it looks like the old bro and I will have to support her until she gets the old age pension. What a joy that will be. I'm not going to work 50 hours a week just so she can have ballroom dancing lessons for $400 a month. Fuck that.

I'm good at disappearing. (Just ask my creditors.)

I know that sounds incredibly callous. She is, after all, my mother. On the other hand, she's been going on round the world cruises on the QEII every year for the last 4 years and spending tens of thousands of dollars on ballroom dancing, so much so that when she croaks, she'll be nearly a hundred thousand dollars in debt which the old bro and will inherit when the bank moves in to repossess everything she owned.

I need to write like a demon and get something published mainstream if I'm to get out of this jam any time soon. Fuck working 50 hours a week for someone else's benefit.

Ozy's post in PA almost brought a tear to my eye. He's going to need a mountain of strength over the next few weeks to see himself through the inevitable - unless some miracle happens along the way, which, because of circumstances, I doubt will be forthcoming. It would be nice if it did though. He's one of the more worthwhile people at PA, even if others don't see that. I feel for him, I really do.

Working these long hours for the whole week just past seems to have taken its toll on one of my young friends too. We used to talk on messenger every day and now I haven't been on for a week. He blogged his dismay that he has no idea where I'm lurking and it cut me like a knife. It's not like I can just get on the phone and talk, he's on the other side of the planet. All I know is this 6 week committment I've made is not just making me tired, it's getting in the way of people.

Just to explain that a little better, there are people who have become accustomed to my being available and suddenly I'm not so available any more. It bothers them and it therefore bothers me. I don't necessarily care about the money, which is 3.1 times what I usually earn, what I care about is those people who get upset when I'm not there for them.

I'm on the very edge of packing up a few belongings and going off interstate somewhere and starting from the bottom and working my way back up the ladder of success. Anonymity has its own rewards. The only people with whom I feel a personal need to maintain contact all live in North America and I can do that just as easily from an internet cafe as I can from here. I don't want all this bullshit money headache from all these different quarters. It's not my problem, nor do I want it to become so.

Finding out new things is always fun. It's even more fun when what you find out will help you solve all sorts of other things going on in your life from one day to the next.

Take Zen Buddhism for example.

No, please take it - the hell away from me.

This peaceful little philosophy come religion to which half of the world's Asiatic populations adhere and which an increasingly diverse chunk of westerners are beginning to embrace is the latest form of moral bankruptcy making its presence felt on the best sellers lists at the expense of genuinely valuable works of fictional art and the odd interesting biography.

The central ethos of Buddhism is paradox. Paradoxes are interesting little intellectual talking points, but as bases for a philosophy or a religion, frankly, they suck. The most basic of paradoxes - which in my mind anyway - completely debunks the God myth, is the God vs Big Rock paradox. It goes like this:

If God is omnipotent, can he build a rock so big even he can't move it? Either way, God loses.

Buddhism is more fundamentally paradoxical than this. Buddhism, for anyone who has seen the Dalai Lama in the Mercedes commercial, tells us that all life is sacred, even the lives of insects. Love your friendly neighbourhood mosquito.

Pardon me, but fuck off.

Mr Locke's latest works have hit that primeval chord with me tonight, inspiring memories I Swamped years ago which irritated me then and irritate me no less today. (Click the Rageboy links over there on the right for more information.) I can't wrap my head around the concept that other bits of living matter on this planet should somehow mean as much or more than the humanity admonished by these charlatans to think exactly that in order to achieve a state of peaceful blissful enlightment.

If I want to achieve a state of peaceful, blissful enlightment, I'll read a volume of the encyclopedia when I'm having a shit.

As far as I'm concerned, humanity itself is the standard by which all values should be judged. Is it good for us? Yes? Then it's a good thing. Is it bad for us? Yes? Then it's a bad thing. Does it make one jot of difference to us one way or the other? No? Good, let's see if it's edible.

Obviously I'm not a fan of all this hokum. More fool you if you've been taken in by it.

I don't mind the idea of yoga insofar as sitting quietly and clearing one's head being a good thing, but any pseudo-scientific philosophical clap-trap that goes with it is what I reject out of hand. A basic concept like "empty your mind" is one thing, behaving like a cherry blossom is just fucked up.

There is a flipside to the Buddhist recipe for internal happiness, and that is to put yourself at the service of others and sacrifice any excess to the fat statue of The Man Who Laughs. (Victor Hugo, now there's an author.)

I don't hold with that bit of bullshit either. What's the point of working for the benefit of others when you should be teaching them to work for their own benefit by producing more than they consume? Don't create a race of co-dependents, create a race of self sufficient efficacious individuals who build bulwarks against the fickle hand of nature. Happiness is a by-product of personal security. Pride is a by-product of achievement.

This pseudo-self esteem built upon a rock of self denial and valuing the lives of insects above that of humans is the second biggest load of shite ever set to print. That sort of happiness is entirely dependent upon circumstances over which you have absolutely no control whatsoever. It's built on the faith that should you come a gutser, someone else will assuredly pick you up and put you back on your sandal shod feet, dust off your saffron robe and give you a hearty meal of boiled rice and lentil soup.

Fuck that. I'll have Whopper Double Beef with cheese, large fries and a Coke. I'll sit in an air conditioned plastic box to eat it then I'll walk out in my child-labor constructed Nikes and I'll do it all, safe in the knowledge that I'd rather live like an environmental vandal and be comfortable and smug than subject myself to the whims of the next tosspot who sets him or herself up as an authority on what's good for the human spirit.

My message to the Buddhists is quite simple, yet profound and conclusive: Fuck off and die.

Since everyone else is doing it...

I watched the most ridiculous movie last night on the idiot box - Supernova. It had Tia Carrera in it which was good, and that tosser from a few years ago all the teenage girls couldn't live without - but now can't remember his name. All I remember about the guy is his face because it reminds me of Richard Gere gone wrong and sucking a lemon.

Oh, Luke Perry. The man whose only claim to fame is being eminently forgetable. In fact pre-eminently forgetable.

Tonight, it's that old Dudley Moore, Julie Andrews and Bo Derek clunker, 10. Besides Bo Derek's tits in that beach scene the only thing remotely memorable about that film is Ravel's Bolero. And Bo Derek's tits. They were nice tits. Shame about the face.

Nice tits though.

One of the kids I've known since about 1988 played cricket against the visiting West Indies cricket team today and yesterday. Brad Hodge smacked 177 runs in 178 deliveries and (just quietly) buried them. He's been named in the Australian team to play the West Indies in Tasmania next week. He's been 12th man 6 times, maybe this time he'll actually get a cap. Go Brad. I'd go and watch the game, but I don't relish the thought of going overseas to do so. If they pick him for the Boxing Day test in Melbourne, I'll be there with bells on.

I did the Nazi thing in PhilosophyAbsurdity yesterday and Liz has been ominously absent and/or quiet since. I booted Labyrinth for being obnoxious enough to make threats to take stuff off the boards and into real life. What a knob. Even if he had no intention of doing anything of the sort, even the threat is too over the top. When I switch the machine off, everyone in it goes away until I switch it back on. Only those with my phone number are the truly privileged ones.

Those fuckers in the other room have the television at an unnaturally high volume. It's encroaching uncomfortably onto my auditorial senses and interfering with my listenage of my playlist. I love my playlist. It's better than yours precisely because it's mine.

If you had my attitude, I wouldn't say that sort of thing. Not because you wouldn't like it, but because your playlist would be identical to mine. You know it's true. Some people would say it's arrogant of me to even think such thoughts, but it's not arrogance at all. Arrogance would be to say that if you had my attitude, you'd still be inferior because you probably wouldn't have the vocabulary to match. See?

Just be glad to have my example to follow. It really is the best anyone can do anyway and that still puts you at least one step ahead of those who haven't encountered me yet.

Finally, I'd like to say a big thank you to Teresa and Veronica for keeping the Ratblog Gripage files alive and kicking on a regular basis but I know there's no need for that either. Just being here, reading my words and making gripes is ample enough reward of its own.

Fuck I'm good!

lol.

I got my own back yesterday and it felt marvellous. The good triumphs over the ignorant again - as it should be.

There have been one or two other devlopments as well but nothing significant in any true sense of that word.

My head cold has migrated down my spine and into all my limbs. Today is Friday and in the last 48 hours, the total of everything I've eaten is one Tim Tam - a chocolate biscuit for you non-Aussies - two Vegemite sandwiches, a fruit mince tart, about a dozen cups of coffee and maybe 20 cigarettes.

I weigh 63 kilograms. 3 kilos less than the most I've ever weighed. I wonder what I weighed last week.

My blood pressure is being kept artificially high by the shit I'm shoving up my nose to stop it dripping like a tap - which is a good thing. Having been averse to eating for the last two days, if I didn't assail my beak with pseudoephedrine inhalants, I'd pass out every time I stood up. (The joys of unbelievably low blood pressure. Don't knock it, it saved my life once. Ok knock it, you know I don't care.)

As long as they keep adrenalin infusions away from me if I land in hospital again I don't care what happens. I hate that shit. It's like having an elephant sit on your chest and they give you morphine straight after so you can actually breathe. WTF! Morphine's more addictive than smack!

I just keep telling myself it's a cold, a couple of Codrals and I'll be right as rain. No drama, no infusions, no worries, mate. She'll be right.

I'm disgruntled again or still, however you all prefer it...

Despite the fact some wonderful things have been said to me or about in PA over the last week, it has still been trumped by that vengeful and vindictive person who should have well and truly kept her fingers off the keyboard. There are people I value fairly highly from whom I am being kept from corresponding because one person doesn't like it. I'm thoroughly narked by it.

In other news, I haven't had any 30 hours days lately which means I'm going to bed before dawn and getting up before lunchtime. I'd say I'm pleased with that but it means certain aspects of my creativity are being stifled. It's just a hunch, but I seem to be able to write more to my own satisfaction when I'm writing at times sensible people are asleep.

Speaking of sleep, I had a dream the other night which ended with a black silhouette of a ghost coming through the window above where I was hiding after having just killed its erstwhile host - and I woke up in time to stifle a yell. How very odd. I don't have dreams like that. I mean EVER. Mind you, it's the second dream in recent months where I've actually offed someone. I'm sure they were very bad people. I'm always on the side of the angels in my dreams so whomever I rub out when I'm dreaming must be really bad. But how do you kill a ghost? Oh yeah... you wake up.

Silly me.

I didn't find out if that kid managed to stay awake for the full 64 hours he was trying for. I have a feeling he didn't - which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

I must email Hank. You should email Hank if you know his addy. Anyone who can use the word cloaca in ordinary parlance is worth emailing. Anyone brave enough or careless enough to use it in reference to me is definitely worth emailing.

Melbourne's weather is up to its usual tricks again. Hot one day, cold the next, cold nights followed by hot days... It means at night time your coffee goes cold too quickly and during the day, your Pepsi goes warm within 34 seconds of pouring.

The upside of it is, during the day, you get to wallow in magnificent sunshine, and at night, when it's much cooler, you get to party all night in shorts and t-shirts and still get some sleep when it's late enough to do so. This is just another reason I love this place. Adore it.

A friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go into the hippy weed industry with him.

Ahhh... getting into that sort of thing isn't that hard. You buy seeds and equipment, you tend the plants, harvest the product and sell it.

Nothing hard about that at all.

The hard part is what do you do with all the equipment and the whole shebang when you've had enough of the idea? It's not just a matter of hoping the neighbours don't smell the product, it's a matter of getting out of the whole scene when it proves more hassle than it's worth.

I told him to buy a computer and learn how to day trade on the internet instead.

I'm full of good ideas like that, but nobody ever asks me what I think any more so I hang around places where doing so is more likely to prove intellectually stimulating. Yep, you guessed it - the other side of the net. I got to "peer review" a 12th grader's earth sciences essay last week. Apparently, it scored 100% - just as it damn well should have if I had anything to do with it.

Sometimes I want the whole world to go and lock its collective self in a lavatory and not to come out again until it has rid itself of all its shit.

If I see one more fucking idiot complaining about their right to freedom of speech on the internet being violated, I'm going to hit something unhealthily hard. It's the internet. How can anyone claim their right to freedom of speech is being violated? How fucking stupid can anyone get?

These dickheads might feel as though they have every right in the world to say whatever they want to say to whomever they want to say it, but are oblivious to the fact others have a right to expect certain standards because of the area in which they're participating.

If I'm posting messages to a football forum, I want to read messages pertinent to football. Not some fucking whack job preaching the fucking gospel at me and decrying football as a devil's creation.

Then there are other arseholes who piss me off because they can't resist spouting their prejudicial crap as well.

Observe a conversation between two people who know each other quite well and understand the intention behind each other's comments. Enter the outsider, destined to be spurned for all eternity for being nothing but a snotty little antisocial twerp who drops an ignorant comment based on nothing but prejudice and first impressions - not paying any mind to what history may have passed between the participants and suddenly the joy is removed from the exchange for everyone. And the ignominious little wretch goes away giggling at an apparent victory.

Add to those sort of sad individuals the likes of dopey and ironbox and I sometimes wonder why I bother logging onto the internet at all sometimes.

If it weren't for the friends I've made who outnumber the fucktards by an order of magnitude, I'd cancel my subscription to my ISP and never log on again. Sometimes I feel like creating a list of people I consider to be irretrievably emotionally, psychologically and socially retarded just to see what sort of an accumulation of dross I have encountered and on the other side of the ledger, those who've made it all worthwhile. If I can name more duds than legends, it might indeed be time to kiss the net goodbye. I don't need it and in the face of these shitheads, I don't even enjoy it.

Then again, maybe I can put a stop to the interaction and just do my own thing and not provide anyone with any sort of means of responding to what I've done. It does sound infinitely more efficient and less troublesome.

Come to think of it, it's like having the headphones on and someone beginning to talk to me. I mean, it's not like I want to listen to music or anything, I just have the headphones on to prevent my head from exploding. For fuck's sake, get a fucking clue.

God, I seriously need to sleep but I'm not remotely sleepy. I'm sitting in the middle of an atmosphere of contained dynamism waiting to have its constraints removed.

I just wish George wouldn't send stupid text messages to my phone. Even if I could, I wouldn't take out a $6,000 loan to buy a car. A far more cost effective solution is only a mouseclick away - eBay.

One of the kids is trying to beat his own sleeplessness record. He wants to go 64 hours without sleep and I'm not happy about it. Primarily, it's physically very dangerous - he could hurt himself doing that. Secondarily, one of the rationalizations he's put forth for why this feat should be achievable is "mind over body". Willpower in other words.

He seems to have forgotten that the mind doesn't exist independently of the body - damage one and you damage the other. (Don't argue the finer points of this statement, you will more than likely lose.)

On the other hand, who am I to stand in his way if that's what he wants to do? It just bugs me more than a little bit that I can't be there in case my fears are realised.

I quite often have 30 hour days. I get going on the internet and Windows Media Player and I just don't stop until I can't see the screen properly any more. But 64 hours is seriously pushing the bounds of neurochemical imbalance. What if, after 58 hours without sleep, he walks out in front of a car?

Oh well. I've made my opinion known, it's now up to his friends and family to take care of him if he's determined to go ahead with this attempt.

Not for me though. It's 3am and I'm going to bed.

Niters all.

Knowing certain things is a curse.

The potential evil of poetry is one of those things.

I'll just explain for the uninitiated why poetry is potentially evil.

Poetry has rhythm and it therefore bypasses the conscious mind and goes straight to the subconscious. That's the reason you get songs stuck in your head all day. You have no control over that unless you know how to get a rein on your subconscious.

Poetry also has its message composed of intelligible words which don't go straight to your subconscious, they lurk right up there in the thinking part of your brain and they stay there thanks to the hooks supplanted into your subconscious. Thus the unrealistic messages of poetry can be used to subvert the thinking mind.

If that rhythm were not so successful, do you really think ad agencies would use jingles to promote their clients' products? Hell, those fuckers even sing the damn phone numbers because they know you'll remember them better if they're sung than if they're just read out. It's an deniable truth that rhythm can be used to subvert thought.

Now why is this a curse to me?

Firstly, because there's something I want someone to understand. At any time, it can be a particular individual or nobody at all - just a general message for anyone who wants to read it. I can trust that whoever reads what I write will understand what it is I'm trying to say, but whether or not the message gets through is another matter.

What better way to get the message across than by wrapping it in poetry.

To me, though, that's tantamount to dishonesty and it's manipulation of the first order and I will not participate in that sort of activity. I'm perfectly capable of writing a poem sufficient unto my needs to get the message across, but it's also a betrayal of the trust that has been placed in me.

Other means I could use to transmit the sentiment without the betrayal of trust is by using the means of music without lyrics. Unreliable and not always clearly understood since people listen to certain types of music according to the moods they are in and the wrong music at the wrong time will - to coin a phrase - fall on deaf ears.

The other means I have at my disposal is to write a narrative and I was exhorted to do just that earlier tonight. "Write a bestseller" I was told. Easier said than done, but moreso because the marketplace seeks out certain stories at particular times. I can write anything that's attractive to a few people at any given time but only as a diversion, not as an offering for posterity. It's a bit of a coward's way out, but under the circumstances, it's probably the best option available to me right now. Of course it also means the immediacy will be lost.

I'm not conceited enough to think that's going to be any great catastrophe, but it still leaves me without the option of adequately saying what I want to say right now.

I would pen more poetry. Only if I didn't know what I know. I can't get my head around the ends justifying the means. Where people are concerned, the ends never justify the means. Time to quit PhilochatX methinks too. Not to sound melodramatic, but evil has taken hold of that place and I can't stay there any more. Why are people so slow to recognise pure evil when they see it? Knowing what they know, how can they tolerate it being in their midst? It makes me despair of humanity when I see ignorant people putting up with that vile woman, knowing what she does and what she's like and letting her continue doing it... Just staggering. No more for me. I'm fed up having my blissful existence elsewhere stained by the memory of that filthy bitch.

Why has it been so long since I've blogged?

Simple, I've been busy elsewhere - doing what I like best.

Gripe if you must, they come to my inbox so I see them pretty well instantly.

Dear Diary,

Today I watched the cricket. Australia is playing the rest of the world in a 6 day game in Sydney, but the game won't go that long. The rest of the world is getting its arse kicked by the Australians. It's at times like this I really love cricket.
It's only gone two days so far and I suspect it will be all over before the close of play on the 4th day with Australia winning by about 200 runs.

I was going to have lunch today, but I forgot. I forgot to eat yesterday too until it was time to go to bed, then I remembered I was hungry. I had sort of about half a dinner tonight because I was experiencing a hypoglycemic crisis and fell over on my way to the kitchen to put the kettle on. If I remember to eat, I don't pass out every time I stand up.

I also got industrious and washed the dishes so whipping up something to eat was one way to relieve that depressing phenomenon known as an empty sink. If there are no dishes in the sink waiting to be washed, it makes me remember I've forgotten to eat. If there are dishes in the sink waiting to be washed, I can ignore them and make coffee instead.

I need to write a dragon story for Lea. Not because she wants me to but because I need to write it. It will be a challenge to make it acceptable to her rather exceptional son who likes piano music. Anything too childish will be an insult to his intelligence - of that I'm only too well aware. Anything not fantastic enough will bore him. I dislike Harry Potter. No, I mean I really dislike Harry Potter. I dislike everything about them except Robbie Coltraine's portrayal of Hagrid. I also disagree with the Vatican's appraisal of the books. Anything that gets kids reading can't be all bad - especially if they're not reading that stinking tome called the bible. (Bugger giving its titular capitals too.)

All that means I'm not remotely interested in writing a Harry Potter style dragon story for Lea's son. The trouble is, I'm agonising over a plot and character names. Thinking up names for the characters is the worst part of story writing. Just ask George Lucas's daughter who named just about everything in the Star Wars books. What kind of poxy names are Tatooine and Naboo. Not to mention Jar Jar Binks. Faaaark off.

I'm more and more engrossed in the blogs of those Canadians. They are fast becoming the centre of my internet activities. I know groups like theirs are out there, I just haven't taken the time to look for them. The other really great thing about them is they're not about to rock up on my doorstep unexpectedly - which is something I hate. I like my front door because I can close it and thereby close the rest of the world out of my mind and I need it to be that way.

Slowly but surely, they've been getting me on messenger too. That's fun. Every couple of days I get the message that so-and-so would like to send me a message, would I like to accept it. Of course I would. These are brilliant people and I don't seem to be able to get enough of them. I feel like a rock band's groupie, only cleaner.

I get an absurdly good feeling everytime one of them sends me an email too. I'm getting 8 or 9 a day now. If it weren't for the fact I'm getting more messages back than what I'm sending, I'd feel slightly creepy. And if it weren't for the fact they're adding me to their lists - not the other way round - I'd feel slightly creepy and foolish. As it stands now though, I couldn't be more ecstatic about the whole thing unless I took mind distorting drugs. They all know I think of them fondly, but I doubt they've given any thought to just how much I value them, which happens to be fairly immensely.

My playlist has me caught between heaven and ummm... heaven. I can't make up my mind whether to keep replaying individual songs or just let the 5 and a half hours of it just play itself through. Sometimes I listen to 5 or 6 songs then start from the beginning again because I love all of the tracks so much I sometimes feel like I can't wait another 5 hours to hear particular tracks again. When I decide to share anything from it, it's because there's a song with which I can't live for very long and I feel everyone else should suffer the same sweet agony I suffer. I only know I'm no longer a teenager because I don't listen to the same few songs sitting with my feet higher than my head and with a bag of chips sitting on my chest.

And I don't play online games with anyone either.

That's all you're getting tonight. I need to answer more email from the Canadians.

There was something I was going to do today, but because of circumstances that's not going to be very probable now.

Maybe later.

Isn't it weird how the oddest things make their insidious little connections in our minds. I'm listening to 60s music and I'm reminded of the most insignificant little incident at a nightclub many moons ago...

I was there with half a dozen friends and it was "alternative night" as it was every Wednesday night. That means if you didn't see the participants getting dressed up, you wouldn't know who they were when they'd finished.

There was Patrick - our fearless peer group leader, his sister, Colleen - with whom I was insanely in love, David - Patrick's boyfriend, Darren - the token outsider we let in because we were too cool not to, Patricia - one of our friends and other David - Patricia's boyfriend.

Now Darren just had the name we liked to pick on. Remember Bewitched? Darrin? What did Endora call him? That's right. Dustbin.

Now, on this particular night, Darren and I were sitting around on some bit of improvised furniture when a photographer from Beat Magazine chanced upon us, just as Patrick happened to coming up from the other way. He saw the photographer taking a photo of Darren and I looking sublime in our costumes then come up and ask our names - at which point Patrick lobbed up, pointed at us and said "This is Dusty and this is Polly."

Naturally, and because we were already very drunk, we laughed our arses off. I never bothered to check the mag to see if our pics made it. Given the reputation our group had among the club scene, I'd be surprised if it didn't make it to the mag. For 8 months of 1986 - 87, we never once paid to get into a nightclub and we never once lined up with the little people. I had so many free passes I could have wallpapered the house with them.

So what prompted this memory?

Listening to this old music on my machine, it struck me that "Son of a Preacher Man" is not one of the songs on the machine. Who sung that song? Dusty Springfield.

Instant memory.

And now someone I hold in the highest esteem has just sent me a music file.

What a hoot. The song is Cartoon Hero by Aqua.

LMAO.. just get it and listen to it. It speaks to me, very loudly too just quietly.
Camp as a row of tents but funny as hell.

"What we do is what you just can't do."

I have a friend who is a bit older than I, but for whom I still have a fair bit of respect and I like him because he tells good stories. He also sends me regular emails full of lots of good things like videos of stuff exploding or small furry creatures being mown down by locomotives. You know, just the sort of stuff I find appealing.

Since he’s a fair bit older than I am, I had the idea of telling him about something that has been brewing in my head for about the last oooh 20 minutes but what I wanted was a good story that has a start, middle and a conclusion.

Because my life has been that many years shorter than Don’s, I have lots of starts, quite a few middles – but am lamentably short of conclusions. To put it another way, I haven’t managed get myself into enough situations, the resolution of which would provide a good basis for a plot of some length. All mine are either over inside 5 minutes or (and more likely) I’m still up to my eyeballs looking for the best way to get out of trouble.

I’ve been developing another case of writer’s block over the last two weeks too. I could see it coming, felt it encroaching and getting in the way of all things I consider important and worthwhile. It dawned on me yesterday what was causing the precipitation or perhaps the ascension of a massive head swallowing turd. A Volkswagon sized buffalo killer of a piece of shit enveloping its victim, ie: me, blinding, deafening and suffocating the life out of me and rendering any creativity I might erstwhile have enjoyed completely quashed.

I decided upon a course of action not 5 minutes ago to remove myself from the source of this inexorable drainage upon my sensibilities, but on visiting the hallowed halls of doom (one of the msn groups of which I am a member) I discovered this black hole for intellect was gone and so was all her stuff. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking ecstatic.

It was a good culmination to a pretty substantially lacklustre weekend.

Someone else for whom I have developed a fair bit of affection and empathy left a couple of messages here and thereabouts and I wanted to respond to them but didn’t have the words. (Writer’s block, remember.) Then it suddenly dawned on me. Don’t reply, lead by example. So I did. The upshot of it was that a message was left for me by way of a response to this and I was not a little moved by it. Adherents to my blog know of what it is I am talking though my repeated references to it must be driving a few of the more curious among them insane because I’ve kept its location pretty much to myself.

Now that I have my brain back, I was struck with the idea to which I made reference above (for those who weren’t paying attention, it’s the bit about having lots of starts and middles but not enough conclusions) and I was thinking of emailing my friend, Don to help me come up with a few good examples of scrapes into which he has stumbled and how he got out of them. Don is well traveled and knows just enough about a lot of things, not enough to be a bore about any of them, and that’s more than I can say for many people of his vintage and experience.

On the other hand, he couldn’t write a one word instruction manual and when I’m free from braindead love vultures clogging up the bandwidth, I can. Moreover, when people around me invest so much of themselves in my presence and what I might be inclined to say to them, my natural bent for not wishing to disappoint tends to work fairly efficiently in everyone’s favour, especially mine.

So I’ve given birth to a premise for a story, I haven’t named it yet and it’s second in line to the throne of what I’m intending to make available to the broader public. I’d like to share that premise with you but I’m acutely aware of similarities this idea of mine has to ideas others have been diligent enough to make known to the entire western world, therefore mine needs to get a bit development happening before it’s allowed to be shown off.

Which reminds me, Locke, you did it to me again. You told me about what it was safe for me to write and I gave it careful consideration, couldn’t conjure anything satisfactory enough, thought about other things and even wrote about them – then a week later – so did you. When you finish with my head, it might be nice if you could tell me when you give it back.

This time, I’m cogitating something purely fictional – for a change, and it involves narcolepsy. That has got to be a subject nobody else is even remotely considering, so I’m thinking I’m going to be safe as houses writing it. If any of you reading this knows of any other work of fiction – besides Rat Race – that includes narcolepsy, I don’t want to know.

It includes quite a lot of other things as well, but here’s the dilemma: If I enunciate now what those things are, I run the risk of getting in the way of what I consider to be something of far greater importance than me being a showoff. It’s happened twice now and it has been just a private little thing and all is well and good and right with the world.

Anyway, back to narcolepsy. Although it can be seen all over the world in lecture theatres, church sermons and parliamentary venues, it’s generally not regarded as a problem until it starts happening in places where it could conceivably result in the death of the narcoleptic or someone else for that matter. Anything short of tragedy is comedy anyway so I’m perfectly happy making a definite statement such as that.

What I propose is putting my poor old narcoleptic character into situations no narcoleptic should ever have to face. Naturally, there needs to be more to the story than that and I don’t mean curing the narcoleptic. How could there be a sequel if I did that? Oh no no, I’m not that charitable.

It’s just that I am acutely aware of my oversupply of beginnings and middles and the scarcity of resolutions since I don’t have that sort of experience upon which to draw – but I’m getting there.

In fact, being as close as I am to pretty much every conclusion in which I've ever been involved, it's probably difficult for me to see them properly - sort of like getting up close to a wire fence so you look through the gaps in the wire, rather than look at the wire itself.

Maybe looking at things from a different perspective might enable me to see what it is I'm presently missing. Meh. It's something upon which I shall have to work a little harder and a little later. I am at present pre-occupied with other matters.