Queues Music, The Environment That Makes One Half Want to Shank the Other.

Is there anything worse than a queue? Damn right there is, a queue with fuck-wits in it. Waiting, while being the hardest part for Petty and so many mortals, is a part of life. You wait for someone, someone else waits for you, we all have a Merry Christmas.

But you don't make yourself difficult and then make life difficult for someone else. Difficult people are difficult, that is the sum of their make-up. They make things difficult because that is their go to. Regular folks don't make life difficult unless shit is really on the line. I suspect there is some correlation between difficult people and confrontational people, which is of course a blessing and a course.

An example. My uncle is a ball-breaking, unabashed and unashamed difficult person. I have been through the McDonald's drive-through with him three times. He is always ordering as a . proxy as he doesn't eat it himself. Usually it is for his grandchildren, who are understandably mental about the salt and sugar orgy.

I digress. Each and every time he takes the stance of Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview with someone who just fucked up. He has the order on a handwritten list, it should be as simple as reciting. It isn't though.

'A large coke mate', the well-off ocker, the Lexus driver in the stew of the bum-fuck central coast.

'Ok, anything else?' replies the well to do teenager who wants nothing more than to try and get his older brother to score him a 6-pack and a 20. It is Friday night.

'How large is that, mate?'

'This fuckin' guy' I can see the would-be drunken, pothead teenager thinking.

'It's, ahh, it's pretty big' crackles back the voice.

'What like a litre?'

'Who THE FUCK knows! Order some greasy shit and move on!' I can still see the kid thinking.

'I suppose about that big' his voice waivers, in it a call to his supervisor.

'Well is it, or isn't it, I'm paying good money here'.

He was paying two-dollars fifty to bring his petite grandchildren a cup of heaven bigger than themselves. This is the same guy who demanded a refund on a brush-less car-wash in said Lexus because there were four spots of dust remaining.

'It's still covered with shit mate'. Apparently.

But to my point. What happens when that guy is in the queue. In essence? The silent, agonising scream of a generation.

I am a day-to-day shopper. It is really fucked up and something I am not at all proud of. But things DO run out and go off at different times and I DO change my mind on meal-choice at the drop of a god-damned hat. As a result I am exposed to queues a lot of the time and thus, exposed to queue molesters a lot of the time. So it goes, the life of a daily shopper is a thankless one.

Regardless, here are my queue species:

'The Normie'

Fucking hates the queue as much as anyone else, but abides as a matter of social etiquette. The Normie typically has but a few things and if he or she has more will insist those with drastically less proceed in their way, not because they are fundamentally decent (though this may be, and likely is, so) but because they know the scourge of the queue better than most. The Normie is quick on the cash or card and quick on goods collection too. The Normie is a hero.

'The Bush-Lawyer'

First come, best served is the order of this day and every other day. You have a dozen eggs and The Bush Lawyer has two trolleys. Still they are adamant, they arrived first, it is their god given right to get their goods first. So you have exact change, one item, your own bag? Don't expect an invite. This ain't no sweet sixteenth. You wanted to be served first, you should have run a little harder, PUSSY!

'The Bean Counter'

Usually an older person, The Bean Counter is the x-factor of simple shopping. You deal in cards, they deal in COLD. HARD. CASH! Cash Baby! That's where it was, that's where it's always been. And Damn! Do these Playboys make it rain, ten cents at a time, slide that motherfucker across the counter so they know that motherfucker counts. That is ten more cents toward that buck-fiddy bag of potatoes. And I got coin to spare, for soup and shit!

'The Return-To Spender'

This day old cat-food is no good, my cat only takes day-young cat-food. For some reason the big thing with such people is baby formula. For some reason that shit is always being returned. And in this ever health-concious world it is being returned at the same counter designated for cigarettes. Also, there is always some elaborate back story.

 Yeah man, your kid is gonna be retarded because this bad-boy didn't have the right level of B12. So please spend an hour explaining this to the clerk, flaw the product you bought yesterday. And for the love of god, don't invite me in front for a quick transaction in the interim, your BABY is your LIFE man. As for formula, sorry you failed him

On Popping Your LSD Cherry.

My friend just called me, 15 minutes ago. My dear friend. He has just dropped acid for the first time with another guy who is generally known in our bitter little circle as a complete cunt of a thing. I feel for him, my friend, and all the nutty shit that is about to happen to him. Through the stubbornness I was able to get him to go outside, but able to get little else through.

Like the football player before a big match, the politician before a big speech or the former fatty before a wedding buffet; the rookie LSD doser needs a coach.

I had one, and a damn fine one at that. Being that I am compulsively neurotic, this was essential. Without it, the drug would have been a thirty-dollar nightmare, as I suspect it will be for my dear friend. But with it, or with him, the experience was as fine as one can be. I marvelled at the sun, admired the haircuts of trees and watched clouds collide, or fuck. Who knows?

LSD can be, and super is, fun when the time is right. Though way more importantly it is the atmosphere that matters. I only survived to drop again because the first time was smooth and gentle. I wish I could say the same for others.

NP.  

On Trying To Overcome Your Crippling Hatred Of Wankers In An 'Experimental Poetics' Class.

It is full of them. Kinda. Or, it it is full of people who seem like wankers to me, which is most people who go slightly interpretive or artistic. Definitely a fault of mine. A fault, incidently, I have had since high school when my teacher tried to infer that Hamlet was full of 'cunt', but tried to infer it on emphasis and syllables so she didn't get sued.

I just don't see it. I don't see much when it comes to poetry. I am a prose baby (now trying to overcome a hatred of myself) and I have trouble placing the words in versified form when there seems to be no point to it. If you have to read a bunch of other shit to unlock the core meaning of a poem, then it may as well be an index or a map key.

Having said that, there is poetry I supremely enjoy that only makes sense as a poem, in the same way Groundhog Day only makes sense as a film. But trying to study the workings is doing me under, it seems the value of a poem is like that of a bass player, you don't notice how it works when it's good.

So reading poetry or hearing it is, to borrow a term from my surfer brethren, super rad. It's just writing it and listening to it from my peers is, kinda cringey.

Here is the problem, really; I am in a class where everyone understands or respects poetry more than I do. I have never known what makes a poem a contest winner, I probably never will, did I tell you I was a prose baby?

As a result I am dismissive, snide and cynical. In my head. In reality I really want to support your vision on the death of your imaginary friend, childhood. Or that ripper you had about how things are worse when it isn't light.

I really do, I take the workshop process seriously and would like to give you the constructive criticism I would like to receive back. But I don't know how, I am no good at poetry. Scratch that, I am notably bad at it. I would love to know what you mean but I am way to dumb.

So to me, you are a wanker. It is my defence against my own lack of understanding. Better you a wanker than me an idiot. Although, really, better me the idiot.

NP.  

On The Struggle Of Being Generally Interested and Being Super Attracted to Your Tutor.

University is a confusing time. You are trying, primarily, to be drunk for most of it while simultaneously furthering your future. Most of it is not interesting and, if you are an arts student like I am, even less of it will convert to useful knowledge on the open market.

Once in a while you will find a class that genuinely interests you, or that will further your career prospects. Easy, pay attention and put the time in. You will anyway, you like the subject matter and grasp the benefits to your end game: a job.

Then again, once in a while you will have a raging hard-on jabbing into the underside of your desk during your interpreting medieval philosophy class.

Your tutor is doing her best with the dry subject matter, but to you she is doing so much more. The words fall gently from her lips, her hair tosses with her vivid movement and she has an arse that most of your twentysomething kin would dream of. Still, no problem; wank yourself silly after class, listen enough to get the vibe and pack a whole lot in on your assignments.

The real problem comes when you come across the rare double. Your tutor is both immediately fuckable and teaching a class of interest use to you. Life throws you curve-balls and this is the number one for university students Australia wide.

Picture it; you are finally doing what you are supposed to, you actually want to learn, you are excited for assignments. And who should walk in but a 40-something semi-bombshell with just the storied face that lets you know what she is doing and could probably coach you through the weird breakdown you are shit in the middle of.

I know, I know, we all know it well. But for me, this is now the case. I want to pick her brains and her loins. I want her to tell me I'm is the best student she has ever had, in the grossest way imaginable. I want to stand up in front of the ethics board and declare my love for my happily married tutor. I want to be expelled and know that, fuck it, I took my shot. I want to wake up with her and rush to our late class together, sex-hair intact.

But, objectively, I want to learn what she has to teach me. About Journalism and love. More objectively still I need to stop being so horny, I imagine this is how rapists get in the game.

But then really, I want my milf-ass tutor more than I want tomorrow.

NP. 

The Most Embarrassing Moments Of My Life, In Raw Retrospect. Pt. 1 Maybe.

I am scrutiny. When someone says, 'I was just a kid' I inevitably think 'you should have known better'. I do not love this about myself as forever fretting silly past incidents only make me a shittier present human. Though this is me and I am a hard subscriber to old dogs never learning new tricks. As in, I am way too lazy to strive to change myself. I don't love this about myself.

For some reason, I think of my embarrassing moments as a child as though they occurred when I was a reasonable adult. Naturally not a rational thing. I think I am over compensating for the 'I was just a kid' excuse which, as we know, is super rampant.

Anyway this is the highest of highlight reels in terms of shit I was embrarrassed by as a kid, deeply regret and think about how great it would be if they never happened.

Incident One.

This one time (which is always how these things start) I was 10 years old. In the flurry to get to school, even though school was 20 metres from a house, I put my shorts on backward. It is seriously, nearly as bad as the holocaust. Older kids made fun of me for not having the fly hem in the right place. It was before school. Being the genius I was, and am, I went behind the toilets to remedy the situation.

Before you start, I was intending to enter a stall to switch my shorts right way but some dumb teacher hadn't unlocked them. Against it I changed in the open.

Then was the same year sixer who gave me shit about the arse of my pants being where the dick should be, and he laughed AND went back to his dickface friends.

Incident Two.

This one time I was at my cousins dads. So I guess my dad in law. You don't understand my family, dear reader, cousins are like sisters and brothers and parents are messy at best.

Either way, I needed to take a shit. There is a cousin of mine, a dear person and a dear friend, but he was indulging himself on the shit-house and in my waiting a turd speared out of me and into my underpants.

As a kid you know enough to know this is dirty, shameful and not OK. I held out as long as I could, but the smell of shit is as apparent as a missing child and eventually found out. The dad actually ran his nose by all the arses of all those present and one of those arses was not like the other, it was mine. Literally full of shit. Down bottom, plain brown. Up top, pure beetroot.

Incident Three.

I was at my grandmothers house. We were eating, which is kinda normal for my grandmother. My guts were playing up so I throned her toilet and took a glorious shit, that bad-boy wasn't complete but I felt safe enough. Standing to reach the paper was a lesson in humility. A smaller turd dropped from me, landed right on the matt. I thought about how to remove it for a long while, but ultimately just removed she shit proper, not the stain. The next time I saw my grandmother she had a bone to pick. Word for the wise, bone to pick means...BAD.

NP.