The Little Boy

There once was a little boy, who when asked what he wanted to be in life, simply replied: ‘Happy.’

His teacher told him that he wasn’t likely to find happiness in a book, so he wandered into the streets to find someone who was happy.

He first came upon a couple of fisherman, who were telling stories as they cast out their lines. “They sure seem happy,” thought the little boy. So he bought a box of tackle, and cast a fishing line until the sun went down. But he didn’t catch a single thing, and couldn’t get the smell of bait from his fingers for hours.

The little boy then saw a pair of businessmen, who were laughing and smoking cigars as they carried their bulging wallets. “I’ll bet they are happy,” thought the little boy. So he shaved himself for an interview, and filled his wallet with stones until it bulged. However it soon weighed down his pants, and they fell off when he gave out his resume.

The little boy then saw some well-dressed socialites, going to a party. “They look so happy,” thought the little boy. So he bought himself a suit and a hat, and went out to a party. However the trousers didn’t fit well; they flapped around his ankles and tripped him at the entrance.

Then the little boy saw a drunk, singing to himself in the street. “Now there is a man who is happy,” thought the little boy. So he bought himself a bottle of whiskey, but just became sick, and passed out in the gutter.

Finally, the little boy saw a young couple, who were sharing an embrace in the sunset. "They must be happy!" thought the little boy. So he found himself a girlfriend, and immediately thought "Yes, I am happy." But the girl said "I'm unhappy," and promptly walked away.

Melanie

Nearby, a few children were playing a game. The sound of delighted shrieks pierced the air.

Melanie shivered.

Children disgusted her. In their eyes was contained a whole future: pain, suffering; the petty hatreds and jealousies of adolescence; the sex and revelry of their later teenage years and twenties; the prudishness of their thirties; the senility, sickness and despair of retirement. And somewhere in there would be the child’s own children, born after a condom breaks when they are nineteen, or in an elated pre-menopausal midlife crisis; the filthy cycle continuing like a plant that germinates, seeds, and bursts forth in fruit to wither. In their eyes was the future of every dick and sociopath, every pretentious child, every naïve romance and fantasy. And so it would continue, ad infinitum, until her own bones had long been shrivelled to dust.

One of the children fell, scraping her knee. She burst out crying. Her mother rushed over, making hushing noises, while the other kids looked on awkwardly. The game had been extinguished instantly. The cries rose up to shrieks, which burst forth incessantly.

Get used to it, kid. For most of your life you’ll be searching for happiness, and it will always be taken in an instant. That’s the basis of a life. We were born in agony, brought shrieking into the world; most of us haven’t left that state, but have merely become quieter.

Melanie stared down at her coffee. It had grown cold. The milk would have a fatty taste, and a residue of sugar would have settled on the bottom. She left it, and turned to get up. She felt horribly aware of the mass of consciousnesses around her: most of the patrons had turned, awkwardly, towards the screaming girl. The scene concentrated them, channelled it like a flow, and Melanie felt sickened as it washed over her, aware that she was part of the maelstrom.

The screams rose, breaking to a coughing sob, before repeating. What a set of lungs on the child!

Melanie smiled wryly: perhaps she would take up singing. Her parents would make her take piano lessons, and she would be allowed to buy a violin in primary school after much begging. She would play for the grandparents each Christmas, and they would remark how proud they were after each recital.  She would take it in her head to start drawing; after a birthday present of a camera, she would attempt to become a photographer. She would soon convince herself that she had talent, and take pride in it immensely. Her friends would praise her, but she would deflect it deftly - “Oh, I’m quite terrible, really” – and drink in each compliment in secret.  She would read, of course, and dream, and write a diary – considering her thoughts both beautiful and unique. She would read Capote and Plath with rapture, and feel that they had been speaking directly to her. And her parents would be so, so proud when she got accepted to an Art school on a scholarship.

Eventually she would wind up sitting in a café listening to some brat scream.

Melanie bit her lip in a moment of self-disgust. She hadn’t meant for her thoughts to lead that way. A trace of lipstick had been left on her coffee cup. It seemed to her like dried blood.

By the playground, the child was settling down. Her mother was murmuring to her cheerfully, and she was laughing again.

Melanie walked away, a bitter taste left on her lips. 

All Stations

Michael stood in front of the rail tracks, and jumped.

Mentally.

He flung himself out over the chasm that divided the station like a fissure; beyond the lines which demarcated safety, consistency – the certainty of not rushing headlong into a pair of headlights, of not having your legs sheared off by fifty tons of steel and screaming passengers.

He felt himself hit the metal of the track and sprawl out over the gravel; his legs hurt with the impact, and the breath was knocked out of him. His hands grazed, and he felt immediately dusty.

The metal was warm, and vibrated slightly under his fingertips. A woman screamed on the platform; there was the sound of panic and rushing feet.  Michael was aware of it only distantly, as if listening to a conversation underwater. A mother would no doubt be turning her kids away, and a man further on would have buried himself in his newspaper.

The sound of a horn cut everything out, like the apocryphal horn of Gabriel. The line vibrated violently, as if the horsemen of the apocalypse were upon the track, beating the steel with leaden hooves. The roar of the engines combined with the clack-clack sound of carriages on tracks; it’s preceded by a blast of air, drawn out from the tunnel with a leviathan’s fury. A guide-light glared red with uniocular malevolence.

The brakes crescendo to a wailing banshee shriek and Michael has a single momentary view of the driver, a face frozen in a mask of terror. It’s a sight that will forever lie suspended, inscribed upon the glass of an eye’s final glance. Michael’s voice joins in the scream, a mind cauterised of all but terror and regret.

* * *

There’s a brief rush of air, and the train passes harmlessly in front of his eyes. The driver toots the horn to announce its arrival, and a female voice intones over the intercom. “The train arriving on platform three is an airport train, running express all stations from Bowen Hills to Eagle Junction.” There is a hiss of air as passengers disembark. An attendant blows a whistle to that the station is clear, and the train resumes its motion. Michael feels as if he’s about to cry.

“Mum, why is that man standing there like that?”

“Shh, dear. It’s rude to stare. He’s probably just deciding which train to catch.”

Le Fils De L'Homme

There was once a little boy who loved to stick things up his nose. He would stick pens and pencils, seeds and rocks – anything which was small, and would easily fit. It was his favourite past-time, and he considered it a very dignified one at that age.

“Oh now, stop!” his mother cried, as he stuck a coin up his nose. “We don’t have the money to spare, and if you keep sticking things in your nose, something will grow up there.” The little boy was confused. If the dollar would grow, then surely his nose would be a safer investment than the stock market given the state of the current economy. So the little boy didn’t listen.

As he was walking to school, the little boy chanced upon his neighbour, an aborist. A small twig protruded from each nostril like the mighty tusks of a walrus. His neighbour gave an exasperated sigh.

“If you keep sticking things up your nose, it will grow up there!” The little boy gave a happy laugh. Tusk length is a sign of virility among walruses, and a tusk extension could only help his chances come mating season.

At school, the little boy sat at the back of the classroom with an eraser deep within one nostril. He ducked as an eraser came flying towards his head. His teacher burst out, furious: “If you keep sticking things up your nose, something will grow up there!”

Little Betty sighed in the second row: “I wish he would put my heart up his nose so it would grow there,” who at that age had no idea what a terribly unromantic thing that would be.

Walking back from school, the little boy came across a small seed in the middle of the road. He considered it appraisingly, turning it in his hands several times before depositing it in a nostril with artisanal care. Delighted at his newfound fortune, the little boy continued on his way home, making a nasal whistling noise with every breath that he took.

The next morning, the little boy woke to discover a small vine emanating from his nostril. It was slight and green, twisting around his nose like the beginnings of a fine moustache. The little boy was stunned. He was too young for facial hair, let alone any that was green. He curled it contemplatively for a moment before deciding against the rigors of maintenance that a new moustache requires. He yanked against the vine quickly, and smiled as it gave a satisfying ‘snap’.

At school, the little boy was considering which piece of stationary to grant admittance to Chez Nez for the evening, when Little Betty came up to him. “Your moustache is quite pretty,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes. “And green is definitely your colour.”

With a start, the little boy felt towards his nose. Sure enough, curling like the hair of a greased Parisian, was the vine. He dropped the pencil case in despair. The room for rent was occupied.

At the front of the room, the teacher was giving a lecture on parasites. He noticed the vine protruding from the little boy’s nose and smiled.

“Why, there are even plants in the Amazon which are known to grow from a seed high in the branches of a host tree. The parasite sends out little snake-like shoots which curl around the host, strangling the very life out of it. Its roots spread out as the tree rots inside; eventually there’s nothing left except for the hollowed out husk, and a new tree where it once stood.”

The little boy was rooted to the ground with horror, though only figuratively.

Running home from school, the little boy came upon his neighbour again. The vine had begun sprouting leaves, and curved upward like a set of antlers. “You’ve got to help me!” he cried.

His neighbour peered at the branch with a professional interest. “You’ll need to watch closely to make sure it doesn’t get scale or root rot. You see the smallest sign, come straight to me.”

“You’ve got to help me get rid of it!” the little boy cried.

“Why? You’ll make a good tree for my garden!”

The little boy ran home screaming and saw his mother. Wordlessly, he pointed to the developing bush on his forehead. His mother considered it carefully. She had once studied horticulture at university, and was delighted at the chance to show off her skills. “I could trim it if you’d like,” she suggested. “If we get in early, we can shape it into something interesting, like a bunny rabbit or a swan.” Her major had been in hedge manufacture and design.

The little boy burst out crying. He didn’t want to become a rabbit or a swan, let alone one made entirely out of leaves. His tears trickled down his face, where a developing root system drank them greedily.

Resigned to his arboreal fate, the little boy made his way to bed. His mother put out a pot, in case he needed to take root in the night, and couldn’t make it to the garden in time.

In the morning, little boy’s vine had developed into a miniature tree, which sat above his head like a leafy green bowler hat. It would have been unsightly on St Patrick’s Day, and it wasn’t more fashionable now in September. The little boy felt like a bonsai.

At school the teacher was delighted at his transformation. “I had always hoped that you’d branch out into other areas,” he said, and he said it often, as he was proud of the pun.

Little Betty noticed him sitting by himself in the playground. She could see he had wood.

“What are you doing all alone here?” she said. “I think a little foliage adds character to a man. And look – there are even a couple of flowers.” Indeed, the little boy’s tree had burst into bloom with tiny pink and white flowers. “She reached up to pick one, before pulling her hand back with a shout: “Bees!”

Little Betty ran away without a second look.

The little boy’s teacher placed a comforting hand on his back. “Maybe you should just leaf for the day.”

The little boy walked home with a wooden expression on his face. If he was going to become a tree, then so be it. He would just root himself in the soil, and that would be the end of it. A squirrel chattered happily in the branches. The little boy sat down next to a large oak tree in the cemetery and waited.

The little boy sat there patiently, like a botanical Buddha  The wind whistled through his leaves. The squirrel chattered noisily and tried to stick an acorn in his ear. He had been doing his best to think tree-y thoughts, but it was nuts. He jumped up and shook his head violently. The squirrel leapt off in alarm and rushed towards his dislodged acorn. The little boy sat back down, and yelped as something fell into his lap. It was hard, and round, and shiny. The little boy reached up, and sure enough, the tree was filled with apples.

The little boy ran home delightedly. On the way, he ran past Little Betty, who was cradling her stung hand. Without stopping he threw her an apple. Little Betty bit into it carefully, and smiled – he had just become the apple of her eye again.

From that day on, the little boy was renowned for his apples, which were both juicy and sweet, and could be baked into the most delicious of pies. He eventually became quite wealthy with a cider he produced from the fruit, until the FDA caught wind of it, and he was shut down for numerous health code violations.

The Young Duck

Once there was a little town of ducks, called Splashville.

It was a little town in the countryside, filled with lots of ponds. It had a park, and the roads were made of cobblestone, which were hard and apt to hurt a young duck’s feet if she wasn’t careful.

‘Mummy, mummy,’ a young duck cried, as she tripped over a particularly hard cobblestone. ‘Can’t there be a better way to walk across town? The cobble stones are painful, and my feet are always bruised and battered.’

But the mother knew there wasn’t anything to be done, and so life continued as it always had: safe and happy, as long as you knew where to place your feet.

However the young duck was a clumsy one, and it seemed that no matter how hard she looked, or how carefully she stepped out on the stones there would always be a cobble there to find its way under her foot. 

And so, she spent most of her time swimming around in the pond, where there weren’t any nasty cobblestones, and where there was hardly any chance of running into them.

But her friends would all play featherball in the afternoon (which is a played lot like soccer with feathers, and is a duck’s favourite sport). It was played on the cobblestones, and so the young duck could only watch from the sidelines, or risk bumping or scratching or bruising her toes, which always made her sore in the evenings. She was very lonely, and wished that she could play like the other ducks.

One day, while swimming around in the pond (the other ducks had waddled off to play featherball some time ago), she came across a piece of rubber which had floated downstream, along with a piece of ribbon which lay beside it. The young duck was curious, and nuzzled the two inquisitively. The rubber was thick, but soft, and gave away under her touch. The ribbon was a bright red, and had no doubt adorned the hat of some sonsy lass. At last the duck gave a happy ‘quack’. She’d had an idea.

All through the night the young duck worked on her project: pulling and prodding, fashioning and fastening, until finally it began to take shape. Her mother hovered behind her, worried and curious, but the young duck continued her work unheeded, her crest puffed up in concentration.

In the morning a curious sight came into Splashville, and a crowd gathered all along Feather Way. What was in the middle of the crowd? Was it a horrific traffic accident? A fowl crime that would ruffle the feathers of all who saw it, and leave no duck unflappable? No. It was the young duck proudly waddling down the cobbled way. On her feet were two wellies fashioned from the rubber she had found. A piece of leftover ribbon had been tied around her neck and caught the wind and sun as she walked.

The young duck quacked happily as she waddled, giving no notice of the cobbles as she passed, much as you or I would give no notice of a pebble under our boots. The little duck was happy, and went on to have a semi-professional career in featherball, until she was indicted for her part in a match-fixing scandal which saw her banned professionally for life.

Picture credit: Stephen G. Johnson

The Problem of Externalities

Happy New Year! Or Happy Financial New Year at the very least.

It’s been a month since I’ve last written a blog, and while I’d like to say that I’ve been fighting Samoan pirates on the high seas, or staging a daring coup d’état that now sees me placed as the new King of Sweden, the fact of the matter is that I’ve been busy with final assignments and exams. That and I haven’t had a clue of what to write about.

I’ve been on holiday for the last week now, and my stubble has gone beyond the level of ‘acceptably shaggy’ and is well on the way to ‘unemployably scrubby’. I’m letting it go if only to see what grows, like an experimental Petri dish more likely to result in anthrax than penicillin.

As many of you should know, today also marks the introduction of the Gillard government’s new Carbon Tax, which is set to put a price on carbon emissions and give Tony Abbott supporters plenty of chances to wave their fingers and say: “See! See! She lied!” as if it were the first time they had ever watched a political campaign. It also marks the start of a set of offsetting reforms, which include the tax-free bracket increasing from $6,000 to $18,200. I’m a strong supporter of the Carbon Tax, so while I’m as unqualified as an elk to even discuss it, and at the risk of bush-lawyering, I thought I’d write a few words on the basic theory that underpins these kinds of actions.

Left entirely to its own devices the private sector is remarkably efficient in the allocation of resources. Inefficient practices have the effect of increasing a firm’s overall production costs. Over time, this provides an incentive to move to more efficient production methods, increasing overall profit.

 Similarly a free and competitive market provides an efficient allocation of resources as firms bid up the price of goods depending on their individual assessment of their value (two people value a piece of cake, they will continue to bid up the price until it’s just higher than what the other would otherwise be willing to pay). Where individuals can trade according to their individual preferences, the market will theoretically result in an efficient allocation.

The issue comes in when we’re dealing with a common resource (air quality, the environment, fishing stocks, etc). In this situation, individuals are not able to trade according to their own individual costs and benefits, and the resulting market allocation may not be socially efficient.

For example: a washing company may be remarkably effective in washing old socks and underwear in a nearby river, but has the unfortunate effect of poisoning it for everyone down-stream. This is known as an externality – a cost not included in the normal price allocation of supply and demand.

Externalities can be either positive or negative. A beekeeper provides a positive externality in the pollination of local fruits and flowers (and a negative in the increase of beestings). Positive externalities are benefits that can’t be captured by the profit system, and so too little will be produced. Negative externalities are costs that aren’t incurred by the producing firm and so too much will. In either case a market failure occurs, and there is potential scope for the government to intervene. Carbon emissions are a classic example of a negative externality.

The Carbon Tax introduces a base cost to the production of carbon. While the extent that this cost is passed onto consumers largely depends on the degree of market control a firm is able to exert, the effect is an overall reduction in carbon pollution. Over time it provides an economic incentive to innovate and switch to less carbon intensive forms of production.

It must be noted that the current fixed price is only a temporary measure. Eventually an Emissions Trading Scheme is to be implemented, where a number of free credits for the production of carbon are allocated, and the free market determines the price of these credits in the free market. This is generally seen as a more economically efficient model for reducing carbon emissions.

The potential effectiveness of the tax is a divisive issue. The effects of carbon emissions are distributed globally, as opposed to locally or nationally such as in acid rain (a similar example of a national ETS implemented in America) or chemical pollutants, and has led some commentators to declare it a Tragedy of the Commons rather than a matter of externalities.  However I remain personally optimistic in the overall effectiveness of the scheme, and that it will coincide with similar measures being enacted internationally.

Ashmeko

A couple of days ago the door to my bathroom silently and irrevocably decided to become a wall. There was no warning, no creaky or groaning indication – in the night it was a welcoming portal to showery goodness, and in the morning it had seized up completely as if to say, “Hey, remember those communal bathrooms you’ve been assiduously avoiding since first year? Guess where you’ll be going for a while.” In the end, there was no fixing it – maintenance cut through the lock with a circular saw, covering the room with a fine layer of metallic dust, and turning my towel into a steel-shard encrusted piece of sandpaper. I’ve been drying myself with toilet paper.

I’ve decided to post a few of my writings from high school: partly because I was far better at writing back then, and partly because I am a very unproductive uni student and it allows me to procrastinate on what is already an ostensibly procrastinative blog. This will allow me to do all those things I don’t have time for and will never do anyway, like actually giving a textbook more than a precursory glance towards the shelf where it sits alone, dusty and dejected.

In this picture: books I never read 

and textbooks I'll never open again.

To the few that might be interested I hope you enjoy it. To the others that won’t, and who are currently wondering why they made that fatal error of clicking on this blog in the first place: my sincere condolences, may it fill you with the same feeling of joy and satisfaction that kicking a toe on the bedstead does early in the morning.

I’ll end this short entry by mentioning that a friend of mine has recently released a pop single on iTunes. As someone whose usual listening falls closer to progressive death metal and Finnish cello metal, I’ve listened to it several times already since downloading it yesterday: it’s an upbeat, catchy, and genuinely enjoyable release from a pair of ridiculously talented singers.

For the few that read this, and the infinitely rarer breed actually willing to take my music advice I recommend that you give it a listen: 'You and Me' by Ashmeko. 

Kitten Kong

I’ve been down with a cold for the last couple of days. The sounds and things emitting from my mouth would be enough to make Ridley Scott squeal with terror, curl into bed with a stuffed xenomorph plushie and refuse to come out until the lights have been switched back on again. My voice has taken on the gravelly, straight-edged sound of a partial laryngectomy. I’ve been mistaken for Bruce Wayne several times in the street, and it’s becoming more difficult to keep my midnight vigilantism a secret.

Leaping laryngitis, Batman! 

I’ve taken a short break for coffee, which is as close as I’ll get to a ‘three day cleansing binge’ without first strapping my arteries to a vat of cucumber juice and taking all fluids intravenously. One day of caffeine withdrawal later and my voice has disappeared completely. I refuse to consider that the two events are not related, and will never, under any circumstance try to stop drinking coffee again. I’ve been surviving the withdrawal by listening to Meshuggah, which is aural heroin already; and Ministry, which is perfectly suited for a Junkie.

(If you get the Burroughs reference, well done – you’ve earned yourself a naked lunch at your favourite restaurant).

I’ll be honest here and say that this post is a little bit of an experiment. The previous blog post went a little crazy by any definition of the word which does not include asylums and dictionary writing surgeons. While I’m more than convinced that this will only be seen by the usual collection of aunts, incredulous friends and those few tragically misdirected individuals looking up ‘hoes’ in Google Images and receiving gardening implements instead, I’d like to say hi to any Redditors that may come by for a second look after running out of cats pictures in /r/Aww.

The biggest favour you can do yourself today is to
go home and watch all 9 seasons of The Goodies.

Tamám Shud

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve last written a blog, which I’ll blame on a series of exams and assignments, insomnia and caffeine induced hallucinations. Now that they’ve gone, I almost miss it, as the vacuum left in its absence has left me scaling walls in the hope that I’ll find something vaguely interesting stapled into the ceiling to save me from this well of boredom.

Which is where this blog comes in.

The thing I miss most from my childhood is the ability to read. By this I don’t mean being able to make sense of a series of orthographic glyphs thrown up on my screen and rendered unattractively in Comic Sans. I mean being able to sit down and consume, devour a narrative in a single sitting; to become so utterly absorbed in a fictional world of swirling type that your family begins to treat the purchase of a new novel with trepidation. This is an ability I have lost, or at least misplaced haphazardly in adulthood.

Today, the places I find time to read seem concentrated solely on public transport – on trains, on planes, at airports, and in cars. Places that are so utterly devoid of stimulation that cracking open a text of P.G. Wodehouse or H.P. Lovecraft (or anyone else that starts with a couple of initials, and ends with a portmanteau) feels like a complete liberation. For a few short hours, I seem able to dive into a story, and when I arrive home it dissolves into a mush of crushed up memes and amusing cat pictures.

This is all laziness, of course - there’s nothing stopping me from picking a book off the shelf and working my way through a Douglas Adams novel except my own lack of will and motivation. But I still miss the feeling of discovering a new book at the library, and finishing it a couple of hours or days later. I remember being denied a book at the library once in grade 8 – it was a Jeffrey Archer novel. The librarian refused to let me borrow it out, saying all of his other novels were fine, but this one she’d feel uncomfortable letting a 12 year old read (it had a graphic sex scene, I found a copy at home just a couple of weeks later ;).

A year later I wandered through the senior fiction section again, Jeffrey Archer consumed and finished. I came across my first novel by Stephen King, ‘Misery’, and wandered over to the check-out, fully expecting to be denied once more. He took one look at it, and asked me if I’d seen the movie, then recommended that I check it out. (“Blood, everywhere.”)

I’ll end this blog by giving a story about the last time I visited bookstore in Brisbane, Archive Fine Books. I was there with a friend from French, and we were browsing (she ended up going home with a steamy, Harlequin French romance - “If you don’t buy it, I will”). I chanced upon a hard-cover copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which is famous for the stanza “The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ/ Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit/ Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line/ Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it." The spine was damaged, so the shopkeeper offered to fix it. As the glue was drying, she asked us if we had heard of the Tamám Shud Mystery.

The Tamám Shud Mystery takes its name from the final line of the Rubaiyat and roughly translates to ‘It is ended’. On the first of December 1948, a man was found dead on Somerton Beach in Adelaide. He was in top physical condition, dressed well - however, he carried no identification, and the tags to his clothes had all been torn off. The man carried no papers on him except for a tiny piece of paper which had been rolled and placed in a fob pocket in his trousers. It had been torn from a rare first edition copy of the Rubaiyat, and simply bore the words ‘Tamám Shud’. Despite intense media scrutiny and police investigation the mystery remains unsolved to this day.

TAMÁM SHUD.

Comedy

The comedian was unfunny, the chair uncomfortable, and I had a sneaking suspicion that my dinner was attempting to make a run for it.

Despite being proclaimed as ‘A Side-Splitting Barrel of Laughter for the Whole Family’ I wasn’t overly convinced. The only thing I could see close to splitting was the dress of the woman sitting next to me, whose heaving gouts of laughter placed a tone of wonder on the miracles of modern fabric design. A family sitting further along seemed divided in opinion: the parents looked on with undisguised mirth; the children seemed to share my distain and sat around listlessly, kicking the chair in front of them. I considered doing the same, but the ex-naval tattoo on the man in front of me suggested, quite politely, that this might not be such an excellent idea.

I allowed my eyes to wander. The bar was one of those derelict places (but almost intentionally so, as if to save on cleaning) which appear cheap, but are simply dingy and populated entirely by college students who don’t know any better. A dartboard hung packed away in the corner, in prescience of the comedian’s performance. A single family populated the table to the right; the remainder were filled with the usual assortment of dull-comics and habitual barflies. A few spiels of laughter rang out occasionally like the dying calls of a moribund bird indigenous to Australia.

I played with the napkin in front of me, and attempted unsuccessfully to shepherd a piece of lettuce to the centre of the plate, where something dark was hiding embarrassedly. I placed down my knife, edged the plate determinedly away and perfected the wings of my origami swan.

“You’re not really listening to this, are you?” a voice from my left asked. The comedian had just descended into a Republican parody which had been lifted clumsily from last week’s Saturday Night Live.

The voice belonged to a woman at my side who look positively enraptured in the performance. I said something to the effect of ‘If I could tear my ears off without making a scene – I would’ and she laughed.

“It’s genuinely awful. Which also means that it’s the best performance I’ve seen in months.”

I looked at her quizzically. She was blonde in a way which spoke more of sunshine than hydrogen peroxide, and had a figure that was svelte instead of ginormously rotund.

“There are few things in life more liberating than seeing something that is a complete and utter disaster. You give up the idea that comedy needs to be structured and controlled - that seriousness needs to be something moody and austere. Instead, you’re left with something that has so left the mark, which has departed so far beyond either the serious or comic that it becomes farce. It becomes wonderful for that. I love it.”

 I stared at her in a way which I hoped displayed befuddlement and bemusement without appearing creepy. She laughed.

“Look at this place – have you honestly ever seen a place as hole-in-the-wall, as awful and dingy and just plain dirty as this is?” Something scurried out from behind her plate, did a circuit around the table and returned slightly abashed, as if that was all the exercise it was willing to do today. She ignored it, and continued. “It’s wonderful. It makes me happy to see that there are still places like this – places where they are so far removed from what should be in society that it becomes beautiful instead. You feel a part of it, the grime, the dirt, the unwashed glass and infested beer. But at the same time you feel apart from it, able to recognise the farce with amusement and incredulity.”

I looked from her to the failing comedian, who had started on an unconvincing impression of the former president.

“Part of you realises this, doesn’t it? You didn’t walk in from the street to see an unsigned comic with the expectation that they would actually be good.” She peered at my clothes. “You certainly didn’t arrive here to meet with someone. No, part of you realises that there is something magical about seeing the terrible in life occasionally. This kid might actually be good one day; he may put all evidence aside and actually make a name for himself. But until then he only retains the potential for that. Now, he is simply awful – determinedly, enthusiastically but above all genuinely awful, and for that it is a gripping performance.”

I spent the remainder of the performance in relative silence, digesting everything that she had said. Eventually, I asked her if she would like to get a drink afterwards.

She laughed. “I like things that are awful, but that would be pushing it.”

I left alone, uncomfortably.

I hate comedians.

Unapologetically Dismal Science

A few days ago I was asked about the title for my blog by a group of inquisitive aunts. Admittedly they were more concerned with the fact that I may have described them all as hiding their ‘cloven hooves’. Just for them, here’s another Wodehouse quote:

“If I had my life to live again, Jeeves, I would start it as an orphan without any aunts. Don’t they put aunts in Turkey in sacks and drop them in the Bosphorus?”
“Odalisques, sir, I understand. Not aunts.”

The name Dismal Science refers to the dark, slightly tongue-in-cheek alternate name for Economics; Unapologetically is simply a word with far too many syllables crammed into a small area, which allowed me to take a bizarrely vacant url. While the term ‘dismal science’ is properly attributed to Thomas Carlyle, it’s frequently used to describe the work of Reverend Thomas Malthus, which is where I first came across it a couple of weeks into first year economics. The dark, pessimistic theory it described was one of the first indicators that I might genuinely love economics, and that the decision to change out of Law was a completely justified one.

Considering this is my first post actually dealing with economics, it’s a little more technical than I usually write, however the concepts are interesting and generally simple, so I hope that you’ll bear with me.

As described in the textbook, Malthus’s theory was constructed in two parts: the amount of food each person requires, and the amount of food that each person can produce. The first part increases linearly – each individual person requires the same bare minimum amount of food, on average, to avoid starvation and survive. It can be described with a simple formula Y=NF where N is the population size, F is the necessary food for each person, and Y is the total amount of food required (because Y not?). 

The second part is a little more complicated, taking into consideration the idea of Diminishing Marginal Returns, which basically means that each successive unit of input produces less than the one which preceded it. The idea for this is pretty simple to follow: Malthus believed that the total area of farmable land was fixed, or limited. A farm which only has a few people working on it can produce far more if another person starts working on it; when you have an additional 50 or 100 people however, they will start getting in each other’s way and produce less individually than that first person’s contribution to the farm. Labour for the farm has diminishing marginal returns. 

The same applies for machinery. A single hoe or tractor can make a massive difference in productivity for a farm. When there are a hundred, the workers will be too busy fighting over who gets to use the shiniest one than actually doing any work. The thing to take away from this is that production does not increase linearly – each individual worker does not produce the same amount whether you have 10 or 50. Individual production decreases as the amount of workers increases.

If you've got gardening problems, I feel bad for you son.
I've got 99 problems, and a hoe for every one.

When the amount of food being produced is more than what’s required by the population, there’s a surplus. People eat more, are happier – live longer, and breed like rabbits. The population increases.

When the amount of food being produced is less than what’s required, there’s a shortage. People starve, and aren’t very happy; the mortality rates increase, and while people might still be breeding like rabbits, the overall population decreases.

The effect of this is that the population approaches an equilibrium, where food being produced is the bare minimum to avoid starvation. At this point there is no tendency for population to increase or decrease - it’s a point of stability in misery. It’s a dismal place to be. 

It must be noted that Malthus’s theories were developed before the rise of the Industrial Revolution, and before the extent of globalisation that we see today. You can produce a lot with a hoe or tractor, but you can produce much more using a combine harvester. Technological progress is one of the defining reasons why we don’t simply subsist in a Malthusian equilibrium.

The theory still has some relevance in today’s society: large parts of the world still live in abject poverty and famine, and certain aspects of subsistence agriculture can still be examined using Malthusian theory. Neoclassical Growth Models in particular bear more than a passing resemblance to the Reverend's work.

More importantly, I can finally explain the name of this unfortunately titled blog.

Parade

It was after midnight on a winter evening.

A woman sat alone at a bar; nursing a drink with a pensive, melancholic air. She sat alone because it’s far easier to describe someone if they’re sitting alone in a bar, nursing a drink with a pensive melancholic air. Imagine if she had been with a group of friends – the entire setting would have been run over by a bunch of gaggling sorority students giggling and making half-guarded glances at the barman’s pants. No, she was sitting alone. It was pensive and melancholic and just a little moody.

She sighed, and a lock of hair hung languidly over her cheek. She was formally dressed, in nice clothes that were expensive but looked far cheaper. Her face was pockmarked, owing to a juvenile bout of acne which had decided to make a rather hasty retreat after college, but still left the scars of a prolonged battle. It had been covered with a delicate slathering of make-up. She looked quite pretty when all was said and done.

She finished the remainder of her drink, and called for another one; an oleous, swirling bourbon which glinted warmly in the bar-light, because no one drinks UDL’s in a story. Her eyes glittered also as she stared; a warm touch of ebony and topaz which mirrored her drink and which were made pretty more from a trick of the light than any inherent pulchritude.

“How long are you going to stand there, throwing out descriptions to ignore the fact you have no idea where this story is going?” she called directly out of the page.

I was taken aback. Fictional entities don’t generally speak to me.

“Oh come, now. Stop looking so surprised, and come and have a drink,” she beckoned to an empty barstool beside her and waved her hand impatiently.

Dumbfounded, I took up my place, writing in an incorporeal, spectral presence to the chair which seemed to fit the omniscient presence someone should have in a story of their own creation.

She looked mildly piqued.

“No. Real. Full body and everything. And all of that fog and ethereal light just looks silly.”

Deeply blushing I appeared beside her, feeling very abashed and silly.

She looked on incredulously. “You couldn’t have made more of an effort? Written in a square jaw, or broad shoulders? Eyes a piercing blue like an iceberg overlooking an arctic sea? A longer hairline – larger muscles and a tan?”

I looked down in my chair, embarrassed.

“At the very least you could have chosen some better clothes. What are you wearing – it looks like a bag draped over a skinny tree. And those colours – awful. Do you ever even wash it? And that aftershave – it’s nauseating.”

I couldn’t say a word. She peered on again, exasperated.

“You’ve actually missed a spot shaving. And where you didn’t, it’s covered with tiny cuts. What are you, twelve?”

I mumbled that I hadn’t expected to be going anywhere tonight.

“I certainly hope not!” She exploded, incredulously. “Come on, at the least you can buy me a drink. It’s on you by the way.”

I bought myself a scotch, fumbling in my pockets for loose change. It tasted insipid, which I suppose is to be expected for an entirely fictionalised drink. It had the desired effect however, and we started talking.

It turned out that she was some part of my subconscious that I had inexplicably included writing. Some recollection, a relationship’s reflection - the moral turpitude of my psyche and id, and a surprising amount to do with a downed cup of coffee. I thought it was all rubbish, but she was very drunk by that point.

We stumbled out of the bar around two o’clock. The night air hung with the stillness of summer. Crickets chirped contentedly; the world stumbled with a thick, lumbering gait. The stars came in and out of focus uncertainly, and the moon was bigger and brighter than any moon had a right to be.

We hung off each other laughing exuberantly. Her skin was pale and soft and flawless, her waist firm and hard and warm. A sudden breeze whipped her dress into the air. She slapped me.

“Don’t be fresh!” she exclaimed, her mouth a perfect ‘o’ of shock and lascivious modesty.

We came upon her house. I asked her if she would like me to come inside, and she hesitated.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.” Her skin was flawless porcelain, her eyes indescribably beautiful. “But you should come by if you’re ever in the area, figuratively.”

She kissed me on the cheek, but it travelled quite by its own reckoning to my lips, where it lingered, warm and mournful.

She entered the house, closing the door with a short little glance behind her.

I put down the pen, and woke up with a hangover.

Manque de Pain

Perhaps the most painful thing to happen yesterday – and it was a bad day, all things considered – was that I didn’t have any toast.

By ‘I didn’t have any toast’ I don’t mean that there was any overtly material deficiency of toast in my life. I mean that there wasn’t any bread there to be toasted when I wandered down to the meal room late last night. I had of course had two slices of toast for breakfast, and another two in the afternoon. But it was tragic all the same.

My back ached arthritically in an arthritic ache of arthritis that had inconceivably decided to be more than 30 years better than punctual. It gave off comforting murmurs of pain at every touch, like a lovably neglected puppy left outside in a rain storm with a less than satisfactory bowl of kibble.

The internet was down, so I was forced to grapple with the fact that I still can’t speak a recognisable word of French. People always seem surprised when they hear that I’m studying two languages, but frankly I speak them to the point where if I ever managed to convince a native speaker that I wasn’t dropped on the head as an infant, I’d consider it an occasion to break into spontaneous jig, which would cause their opinion to be immediately reassessed.

I don’t like admitting that I study them – it sounds pretentious and academic, and brings to mind images of sitting down under a lamp with an esoteric text and dictionary, making insightful notes and practising conjugations. Which is what I should be doing, but rarely - if ever - or will ever, do. In reality, the truth is that I lay sprawled over the computer watching some anime or movie thinking happily ‘Hey! I know some of these words.’

I took a photo of myself last night to prove to some high schoolers that I do indeed have a monocle, and in the vanity that I do indeed have a monocle. The face that stared back was one tinged slightly red, a few scars in the process of recovering from acne; skin that will become hard and ugly later in life glinting prophetically. The cheeks showed the nascent visage of newly formed fat, showing that at least some progress is being made on my medically-advised binge, and reminding me that I need to start going to the gym again.

I shaved yesterday, but not today; deciding that at least the hint of stubble was the right spirit for taking a university exam. It was a small, annoying quiz that suited my 36 o’clock shadow perfectly.

Yes, this is a motley collection of non sequitur mussed mishmash. (I really just wanted to use 'mussed' in a sentence).

Procrastination

I should be studying.

Instead I’m perched on my bed listening to Nine Inch Nails, starting the first blog in a month to avoid admitting how very little I actually know about Economic Development. That’s right – this is procrastination, plain and simple. I’m currently far more concerned with the causes for my poverty than Causes of Poverty, which at this moment includes Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails.

I have green tea mochi. Microsoft tried to autocorrect that to mocha. I can’t imagine what green tea mocha would taste like, and it’s not an experiment I’m willing to try out, despite the bar of chocolate in my fridge advertised as having just a ‘Touch of Sea-salt’. There’s a limit to my madness, however I’d draw the line conservatively.

My innards are twisting themselves into new, unusual and frankly creative patterns in the concerted agreement that perhaps the chicken tikka wasn’t such an excellent idea.

I started procrastinating this optimistically described attempt at procrastination in a little over 3 paragraphs totalling far less than 200 words. I’d say that this speaks wonders for my knife-like focus and motivation. I am useless.

Here are some pictures of cats. I’ll trust that this makes up for it.

Not a cat. Dog-mop.

Soundwave Brisbane Review

A week late and I’ve finally decided to do a Soundwave review. I’d love to say the reason for this non-punctuality was due to an existential crisis which saw me attempting unsuccessfully to rear a clutch of misplaced chicks, evidentially deciding that being a chicken is easier than university; less interestingly I’ve simply been settling into college, and avoiding my un-air-conditioned room like the plague. A word of warning, this is still a hobby blog, so for those expecting a more professional, well-written and concise account – Google is your friend.

After battling crowds of black shirted bandits through public transport, and settling into a viscous line which stretched nearly, but not entirely, the distance to Ipswich, we eventually made it into the RNA showgrounds as the first band began to play on stage 1. With a metal-intensive line-up filled with an almost unprecedented level of quality, we made our way immediately to the metal stage, where Finnish Folk metal legends Turisas were scheduled to begin. Unfortunately, after an increasingly impatient 15 minutes, their banner was torn down and reset for The Black Dahlia Murder, leaving my nascent, but deniably lifelong desire to see red-painted, pelt-clad Finns performing metal-violin dashed. The second band for the day Chimaira launched immediately into their set - a crushing performance that made up partially for the Finnish absence, and which set the bar high for the day.

We set up camp near the trees, avoiding most of the heat of the day, and the fickle set of showers that began shortly into Black Dahlia’s performance. I was introduced to Black Dahlia a few months ago by a friend, and I was impressed by their set – it motivated a strong response despite the crowds that flocked undercover, or threw on wizard-esc rain ponchos. I’d left mine behind after deciding to give the few optimistic rays of sunshine in the morning the benefit of doubt. Next on the line-up was Times of Grace – they delivered a great performance, and I made a mental note to look into them later.

There comes a point in any concert where you realise that “Yes, this was worth the exorbitant amount I paid to get here.” For me, that moment came about thirty seconds into Gojira’s stellar performance. The French metal band in their debut tour of Australia were always going to be one of the highlights of the day, but their heavy, melody driven set – laden with intricate, crushing drums and unrelentingly dark guitars was a complete strand-out. Tinged with touches of levity and humour (“This is a song. About whales. Flying in space.”) the crowd reacted to it impressively, at this point being soaked to the bone (I was among them, venturing out of cover for the French metalists).

We headed over to the main stage for Lostprophets. I don’t know much about the Welsh rockers, so I can’t say much except that the crowd loved them, and my friend was thrilled. It was a welcome break from the metal stage, and I enjoyed it. We stayed at the main stage for most of Alter Bridge, leaving shortly before the end for Meshuggah, but not before making another mental note to look them up further.

Meshuggah occupy an interesting place in the metal world. Deeply unique and influential, the band stretches from dissonant riffs to jazz influences, syncopated and complex drum patterns coalescing to a brutally atonal style of metal. Their set was comprised mainly of songs from the album Obzen, along with the crowd favourite New Millennium Cyanide Christ and a preview track from their new album Breaks Those Bones Whose Sinews Give It Motion which deserves recognition, if only for the length of the song title. Overall, they delivered a brutal, memorable set and were one of my favourite performances of the day.

My thoughts for In Flames can be summed up neatly: Caught in a Mosh. After Meshuggah, my friends decided to check out the mosh pit. Now, some people are simply born to mosh – fitting a full 120lbs into a skeletal 6ft frame, this is arguably the last thing I was designed to do. I’ve been in a few moshes before, however this was undoubtedly the most intense, and possibly dangerous, with more than a few people body-slammed into the ground. After a few songs, I moved back to a more comfortable distance, and enjoyed the rest of the set.

I made my way over to Trivium. They performed a tight set showcasing their new album ‘In Flames’, along with fan favourites from ‘Ascendency’ and ‘Shogun’. I had seen them before in their concert with Disturbed last year, and they actually seemed more at home in the festival setting. The crowd were drawn Like Light to the Flies - the response was exuberant and massive. Mastodon was next on the agenda, and my dream of finally seeing Crystal Skull performed live was fulfilled. Despite being one of the few bands that sound better on album (an intricate, effect driven style slightly drowned by the bass), it was a solid performance that left my life slightly less incomplete.

We caught the end of Limb Bizkit on main stage, who gave their performance in tribute to Jessica Michalik. We were situated under the feet of a middle aged couple on the grandstand – crouched and uncomfortable, but still a better view than the swirling maelstrom of the crowds. A gap eventually opened up, and we managed to grab a pair of seats before Marilyn Manson opened. I’ve read a few reviews criticising Mason’s performance – for me, it’s an unfair assessment. Festival concerts gain their longevity from two things: the actual performed music, and the spectacle endemic to these events. In this Manson is incomparable – clipped calls of ‘Who is on nar-co-tics? Find the person with nar-co-tics,’ the staggered demeanour, ‘Cheer for dicks – if you have a dick, or if you like dick, cheer for dicks. Ah! We have some eunuchs here,’ all succeeded in putting the audience on edge, uncomfortable and silent, but viscerally enduring. From the screams of pure delight that emanated from the crowd on the first few bars of The Beautiful People, I’d say that Manson succeed on both fronts, delivering perhaps the most memorable performance of the day.

We stayed at the main stage for the headline acts. I’m not a Slipknot fan, so bear with me. They undeniably had one of the strongest stage-shows of any band on the line-up, filled with pyrotechnics, masquerade antics and animatronic insanity. They were also masters of crowd manipulation, convincing the full stadium to fall to their knees – it looked incredible from the grandstands. If you were a fan of Slipknot, it would probably have been one of the concert’s highlights. For me, the 90 minute set dragged on slightly, and I would have been happy with a set half as long.

The final act of the day System Of A Down were nothing short of incredible. Entering from behind a dropping banner to the opening chords of Prison Song, they delivered a consistent, powerful set – delivering on their position as the concert’s premier entertainers. While the stage antics were kept to a minimum, each song was imbued with comedy and performance; political commentary and polemic. ‘I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch – right here in Hollywooood.’ It was a fitting end to a complete and satisfying Soundwave; the bar raised high for next year’s iteration.

Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love

Valentine’s Day is a wonderful day where we can all come together and realise just how bitter and lonely we really are, and reconfirm our hatred of everyone who isn’t. Some spend the day waiting at the mailbox, hoping for the mailman to finally arrive and deliver their massive box of lubricious chocolates which they had sent – self-addressed – several days before. Others make hurried calculations to determine how many cats they can possibly spend the rest of their life with before the risk of a vicious cat uprising outweigh the benefits of a life where being mauled by Mrs. Tinkles marks the end of a sordid feline existence. I still don’t have a cat, so I’m spending the day updating a blog that’s frequented less often than O’Malley’s Bar. (Yes. Nick Cave references, everywhere).

Now, I have nothing against the score of lurid romantics. I enjoy nothing more than a good story involving romantic, but tragically inclined nightingales (niche market, but Wilde delivers). I’ve got nothing against the flurry of half-price sales on February 15, where people as romantically moribund as myself can drown themselves in an orgy of sad chocolate. I think the annual influx of love-heart toting bears and anatomically incorrect balloons might be an elaborate cover for an ursine invasion; or simply a little hackneyed, but that’s just me.

If you’re lucky enough to have someone today, make the most of the holiday. It might be a corporatized, meaningless holiday as abjectly romantic as a gun-slinging polar bear with the words ‘I wuv woo’ emblazoned on its blood-stained chest; but it comes only once per year, and you should enjoy it. Try to spare a thought for the hapless souls who aren’t as fortunate.

We will be, and we hate you for it as well. :)

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I don't feel amorous
I knew you'd misconstrue.

Plaster Powder

It’s been a while since I last posted a blog.

It’s also been a while since I last gained weight. The bathroom scales have begun to mock my belated attempt at gluttony by displaying acridly encouraging messages that yes, once again, I’ve lost 100g. Most people would be thrilled by this; I’m considering sticking my head in a bucket of lard, with the hope that the failure would go away. With my luck, not only would I consume the entire sordid mass without gaining a single skerrick of fat, I’d also lose a kilo from the vigorous exercise.

I could make a healthy living by shilling out fad diet books; making television appearances, and assiduously avoiding placed palm trees out of fear that I’d disappear from sight completely. They could make it a recurring segment entitled ‘Talking with Cameron’, where the regular viewers would primarily include pelagic cetaceans able to discern bass mutterings, and wondering just how they can strip away a few unsightly tonnes from their dorsal posterior. The market segment for whale viewership has been positively untapped.

I’ve developed a strong and vehement distaste for Sustagen, a diet supplement which would have had far more success as a makeshift substitute for walling plaster. The noxious goop has become a perennial fixture of my waking nightmares, overriding the normal human instinct which prevents innocuous food substitutes from becoming part of a continued vendetta. I’ve had fantasies consisting entirely of the powder’s graphic, and unnecessarily excessive demise. I would stretch it out on a train track, and laugh while it burned.

A week's worth of Sustagen. Finished.

The only upside I’ve found in making relatively svelte stick-insects look surprisingly rotund has been in sour cream. Sour cream improves any meal, without exception. There comes a time every day when I ask myself ‘Should I have a little sour cream with this?’ The answer comes back, quite clearly: ‘No. I should have a lot of sour cream on this.’ This is the high point of my day.

I’m aiming to gain weight considerably by the end of the year. Until then I’ll need to be content in making diffraction patterns every time I pass by a series of doors.  Goodnight.

Yes, I exhibit wave/particle duality.

Slave Called Shiver

Stupid Dream has arrived. I’ve spent the afternoon reading Anais Nin, and deciding quite prudently not to include any quotes on this blog. Ever. Septembre et Ses Dernières Pensées is still in transit, several months after I first made an order. If I could how incredibly, utterly, drifting-into-hyperbole-but-still-ridiculously keen I am for its arrival, I’d be far better writer than I am right now.

I’ll break from the usual blog rant/terrible poetry for a moment to ask that you take a look at Samantha Holford’s fundraising page. She’s running a half-marathon in the Twilight Festival on March 18, and hoping to raise at least $200 with proceeds going to Cure Cancer Australia. Even if you’re not overly interested in donating, or are about as charitable as Scrooge before his late night epiphany with a ghostly ménage a trios – have a quick look, if only to send mental and psychic support. This is a thing, as far as I’m concerned for this endorsement.

Today marks the second consecutive day off I’ve had since New Year, and despite all signs to the contrary – it doesn’t look like I’m about to be called in at 9 o’clock at night. To celebrate the occasion, I thought I’d give a few pieces of advice I’ve learned from a month and a half selling phones, which will only serve to show how little I actually know about selling phones to begin with.

Firstly: If you work at a trade, buy a protective cover and insurance for your phone. If you do not - bad things will happen to it. The number of customers we have in with cracked screens, chipped motherboards and assorted miscellaneous phone-related trauma is staggering. A decent phone case will put you back around $60. If you’ve recently entered into a $2000 contract, and are working at a site where dropping your phone is not only possible but likely – now is not the time to quibble over a sum you’re likely earning in less than a 2 hour period.

Secondly: If you work at a desk, buy a cover for your phone. The rules are slightly less relaxed here. If you’re working at a desk (so long as it’s not a desk inconveniently located out in the middle of a quarry, overlooking a precarious drop and exposed to the elements – in which case, you should defer to Rule 1) you likely do not need to be sporting a bulky piece of hardened rubber and a protective screen. Even a light case will offer it a far greater level of protection than allowing it to brave the elements naked. The one thing that you should remember is to have the case level higher than the edge of the screen – it will help break the fall. After this it really doesn’t matter whether it’s a leather flip case, or a case flowery enough to put a kimono to shame.

Thirdly: Now that you’ve bought your case, do not test its durability by throwing it against the wall. Just don’t.

Fourth - Coverage issues: If you live with a metropolitan area, chances are that you’ll receive excellent coverage with Optus or Virgin. If you’re constantly travelling out to the mines, or frequently complain that you can’t receive Optus coverage where you live – do not attempt to an Optus contract. If you need to stand out in the middle of the street to receive coverage, it’s a safe bet to assume that you might want to switch carrier. Stubbornly refusing to mention that you need to dangle off a ladder in your backyard before you’ll receive even one bar of coverage, until we’re halfway through a contract, all because you ‘Didn’ wanna go with Telstra,’ is an excellent and productive use of an afternoon.

Vodaphone coverage is less than exceptional in Mackay, at least until they erect a few more towers. If you want to go on a plan with them, expect a few raised eyebrows.

That’s about all. I stopped listening to Porcupine Tree to finish writing this. I’ve started it up again, and that’s as good enough a reason as any to bring this blog to a close.

Black Coffee

"On page eleven I found a poem titled 'Florida Dawn'. I skipped down through image after image about water-melon lights and turtle-green palms and shells fluted like bits of Greek architecture.
'Not bad.' I thought it was awful." Sylvia Plath

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I'd avoid the bitter poetry that makes reading blogs like this an exercise in inanity. I intend to break that promise as quickly as I've made it. As before, a great deal of this means nothing - some of it does, but that shouldn't get in the way of reading it. I've spent the last week pretending to sell phones, secreting away a copy of 1984, and abysmally attempting to gain weight. So far I've lost 1.5kg - success. For those that expected something better than badly written poetry: Jimi Hendrix. For those curious about the blog title: The Seatbelts.

'Pressed up against the beetle
Alone in the dark electric box;
Turning out Labyrinthian explanations
For the mangled mass of Skinner flesh.'

'Blame the pretension of enjoyment

On this sudden onset of depressive anxiety;
Confirmation, affirmation
Proselytizing, analysing;
Throwing words out without the rhyme or reason
Of a madman walking to the gallows
To deliver his final vapid verse
Plucked straight out of Corinthians and a scribbled toilet curse.'

'Laying flint against the mettle;

Lighting spark after spark of fizzled fury
Fortuitous meandering verse
From mental stone plucked
As meaningless as gravel
That lines the path
And leads straight
To the manure at the rose’s verge.' 

Pulchritude

'Where is the beauty in your heart
Which sees the world through fickle eyes
And turns a love to vapid lies.
Where the lascivious kiss
Was nothing but a lecher’s wish;
Or a once romantic day
Nothing but a children’s play.

Where is the beauty in your soul?
Directed by such terminable desires
That used to ignite the midnight fires
And are now empty at the core;
The fruit that Adam spurned and Eve then turned
Rotten evermore.'

Missive Missed

'What is it?
What do you hope to find
By clawing at the head of some poor wretch
To find memories that a heart couldn’t etch;
Dragging at the clasp of some mental latch
Spinning off words that simply will not catch.

What is it?
What do you hope to find
To break a masochistic soliloquy
So that you could ramble with brevity;
Not once, not twice – not three times or four
Not again will it cross my lips,
Not ever, anymore.'