80.

80.

I read the stats of this here blog fairly regularly to keep the mouth-hole of my self-worth above the oceans rocky surface. Looking at them today I realised this blog is 80 posts old. I know its mainly ramshackle and haphazard ramblings. But for me it serves an important purpose, being able to write fairly freely (that is, outside of syllabus demands like 'write yourself as a foetus with foetal alcohol syndrome in a strawberry patch that is your neglegent mother', such is the whirlwind life of the poet).

Anyway, as this is this barely-legible blogs 80^th, I thought I would cast a net toward my own 80^th birthday and hazard an educated guess at what that might be like. Now keep in mind I am rather morally invested in medical science making the necessary breakthroughs to save me from myself. But let's say they do, what does my eighty year old version of this look like?

Probably Just As Miserable, Maybe Half as Good A Bare-Knuckle Boxer.

Marital Status.

There are options here, I guess. It is not like the days of my grandparents when shackin' up (the accepted nomenclature, it was a different time people) was all important. Especially for women, being a spinster was like being a gangrenous foot. Now you can take your time, wait for 'the one' or until you happen on someone who likes you even though they are a grade or two ahead in the looks department, and try to make it work.

           So what is my prediction?

What I Would Like To Think.

Probably happily married. But like a cool marriage where I can still do whatever and she does whatever. I guess my wife is a Jane Fonda type, obsessed with tennis, I write and eat bacon for every meal. We have friends but most of them are fair-weather friends which is fine and dandy with us because we are anti-social sex addicts. 

               We have no children and have lived a hell of a journey-filled life without them. Maybe we have one. He is not a loser per se, he just never quite lived up to the the epic yard-stick of his parents. Nonetheless he is well-rounded, never calls us for bitcoin and comes by regularly to fix our 4D printer- never raising his voice.

What Is Probably True.

Been single for thirty years and, it's probably too late to get back in the game, don't you think? Eyes a can of sardines for breakfast each day and wonder if this is it, the day I will die alone? 

               Had thought about the swinging bachelor thing in my 50s when my last wife left me, but the wound was too raw and it never really got any easier. I have no money anyway and nothing to offer young chicks (who are ,by now, probably something like 'sows', it's an irony thing an an old ass geriatric like me wouldn't get it).

               At the urging of friends (the guy at the tech re-charge station sometimes smiles at me, is it pity, is it friendship?) I hit a couple of elderly speed-dating nights. I don't have much to talk about, no grand kids, no LAN party night. I talk about my kettle, I think it is on the fritz, though it's supposed to be the most reliable appliance. Plus my fingers are too big for the I.D boil function. The neighbors kid, Rafeel set it up for me, it took all day but we got it just how I like it, bathwater warm.  It bothers me, I get animated. The cougars (who are, by now, probably something like 'Tabbys') move on. 

              Only because they got grand-kids to defrag their I.D boil, Rafeel moved out last year to e-read English at Harbridgeoxton. 

Career.

I don't think there is much secret behind my wanting to be a writer. I really always have. Any other venture was always a different angle into my run to put words on paper. Let's see how I go?

What I Would Like To Think.

I have a respectable career behind me. A number of books, or audiobooks straight into the ear-holes via Wi-Fi. Not so many I have cheapened myself. I am no Tom Clancy or James Patterson. I put real work into each piece of writing, created by farting at an iPad.

               I am a statesman of writing, always willing to help youngsters out with advice on their craft. I tell them beans and cheap meat are essential to creating genius farts. Devon works particularly well. If you want to reach the level of Twain, Dickens and Hemingway, dog food is best. Dog food gets your name in the history blogs.

               A number of my e-books have been turned into big-budget cult movies. Those movies have been turned into holographic dream implants which I didn't sign off and complain about incessantly.

What Is Probably True.

I end up writing for an e-vite company. I have been there thirty years and get made redundant one week before I am due my platinuim smart-watch. I fuckin' headed the 'data night' range, the 'Streaming, McSteaming' campaign and the 'One Hot Gigabyte, Let's Save It For Tonight' service. I championed this company when they were well and truly on their knees and they arse me now, by FaceText no less. Weak as dial-up.

Hobbies.

Shit, what are my hobbies now? Old people enjoy, and need, hobbies. They are, and this is no exaggeration, what keeps them alive. So what will mine be? I hope there is no crazy twist!

What I Would Like To Think.

I am a gardener. Probably of e-fruit, watered in my network garden. I share it around with the neighbors, I am a keen gardener and an even better local friend, and they love it. Electric has recently been added to the flavours, it is the one that give you a little jolt. It falls under zest in the MasterChef kitchen, but they are having real trouble keeping subscribers.        

         I also play Words with Friends 60th Anniversary Edition every second Thursday. I mainly have to set it as anonymous, but sometimes the tech recharge guy plays. He is better than I am. I can't help but wonder how, such a coding and data savy boy is still without a Sow. He sheepishly smiles when I tell him, but he knows what he has to offer. He is a catch, and it doesn't take a 40G connection to see that.

What Is Probably True.

I am a big fan of the latest minesweeper update. My stratosphereband drops out a bunch, but it's the 2060s, good stuff is coming. And I cannot wait to play. The old version of Angry Birds is way better, kids do not know what they missed with that one. 

           I still can't get the last one on four pics one word, I ran out of clues 15 years ago. I don't see how a cat, a chocolate bar, a money box and a picture of veteran songstress Katy Perry work into one clue. It frustrates me.

          I spend time at the park. The ducks died in the flu of '36, so I have taken to feeding the stray dogs small bones from the butcher. There are plenty of dogs after spanner crabs became the 'hot pet of '26. I have two myself'; Ryan and Dakota.

How is my aim? We won't know for 56 years. But comment and have an aim at your own doomed destiny.

NP. 

David Koch and Four Other Irredeemable Pieces of Television Shit.

It is fair to say I live a willing sedentary lifestyle. I do not do much in the way of out and about, never properly have. I wouldn't call myself lazy, my job is pretty physical work. More just, I am kind of a defeatist. I guess Homer (Simpson, not the poet guy) said it best when he said “What's the point of going out, we are just gonna wind up back here anyway”.

And with this attitude, and like Homer, I have gotten pretty cosy with television. A sort of constant companion to the disinclined, if you will.

The way you feel about your various television personalities has been termed a 'parasocial' relationship. It's behind why we all hate Willem Dafoe, even though he is a vegetarian. He just looks like a bad guy, plays a bad guy, feels like a bad guy. Though some of that must surely be on the writers.

                                          Write your way outta this one, shithead.

This effect is, of course, more pronounced when it comes to non-scripted personalities. In this case, however, there is less to hide behind. As a morning host, game show guy, reality television star, weatherman or dude who does weird in-show info-mercials; you are playing a version of yourself.

This is not the same as Matt LeBlanc playing a version of himself in Episodes or Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing versions of themselves in The Trip and it's sequel. If anything, the non-scripted personality is playing the best possible version of themselves. The arse-hole without all the shit. Here is five to think on;

David Koch.

Where do I start with this guy? Basically he is the worst. I will start with the nickname, 'Kochie', I have it on good authority that is a nickname he gave himself. Something he perpetuated into being, something to make him feel like an ordinary bloke, which he certainly is.

But to the deeper stuff, the stuff that really matters. He wore channel 7 plugging shirts after the walk on the Kokoda, arrogantly jumped in the back of the ambulance after the rescue of the Beaconsfield miners, connected the bombing of the Boston Marathon to the “Irish” and wrote this horse-shit article after shitting on new mothers: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/kochie-breastfeed-anywhere-anytime-discreetly/story-e6frezz0-1226558512202 Who has a problem with a bare tit in the gob of a baby

                                                                          This Dude!

But really beyond and above that, he is very annoying. I wrote earlier of non-scripted personalities, though maybe I should have written of non-personalities. Especially when considering this waste of a good load....

James O'Loghlin

Did someone say, the most annoying prick of all time? A host, by their nature, should draw you in to the show, make something potentially boring all the more appealing. People like Letterman ran more than thirty years on this very ethos. People didn't tune in to see the guests, they had no clue who they might be, they tuned in because they liked Dave, he was the draw.

James O'Loghlin has reversed this concept. He was the host of The New Inventors, a show I would have definitely and religiously watched if not for him. I watched sometimes anyway, in spite of him, and found the concept to be sound. But the ABC oddly missed a trick. They are usually so sound in their...'casting'.

                                  Annoying People Out Of Good Things From Way Back.

I love Tony Jones on QandA, likewise Kerry O'Brien on 730 and more recently 4 Corners and once more Jonathan Holmes and Paul Barry on Media Watch. All these personalities enhance the program they helm, James O'Loghlin undercut this, the way Judas undercut Jesus.

Andrew O'Keefe

How far can the apple fall from the tree? You figure with bounces its going to end up a few meters away. Shit even with hurricane winds it is going to be mashed against the fence of the same field.

Apparently not. If you don't know what I am talking about, Andrew O'Keefe is the nephew of Johnny O'Keefe, The Wild One, Australias first rock star. JO'K brought the cool the same way winter brings the shitiness.

 But his nephew? Not so much. Be it the constant 'Boo Yahs' (a concept I am sure he made up), the improvised and terrible jokes or his annoying way of calculating the costs of things; make no mistake, this is a turd of a human being.

Again, this is a show I would watch. Probably wouldn't love, but would watch,. There is just one gigantic and obnoxious anus in my way.

                                                                  And Here He Is.

Grant Denyer.

Another game show host. Family Feud. Part of my issue could be that this show is simulcast on all three of Tens channels (that is One, Eleven and Ten). He is the face of the show and so, yeah, I blame him

                                                                And what a face.

But it is more than that. He is a weasel. He is a slimy kind of a person; he hoots and hollers, brings bad impressions and jokes to the table and when all else fails, goes to that loud register that everyone seems to love.

My mother, who used to also hate this kind of thing, now has a fondness for him. Apparently because he treats the contestants with respect and kindness. I think fondly on the days when we would jointly call him a short-arse, a sad little man with something to compensate for.

George Calombaris 

I am growing to like MasterChef. I find it an innovative show with an interesting concept, good challenges, a solid structure and always with contestants to go for. Again I am being hypocritical on my hatred of wankers.

Though importantly I learned this year that the portions are so piss-weak because the idea is to eat like ten of them. I still don't give a good god-damned about presentation, but thease novice chefs have genuinely good ideas for recipes of seemingly left-field ingredients.

The other thing I am warming to is the judges, whom I thought all wankers for sure. What I have been enlightened to is that Matt Preston, the wankiest looking of all three, is actually a meat and potatoes kind of guy, And that the British guy with the dark hair is a fair judge and cuts more slack than he probably should given it is all gourmet bullshit.

Which just leaves one, George. Yes his face annoys me, but so did the other two before I started watching. There really is nothing less appealing than watching others eat. A wank, as my English tutor pointed out, is a self-indulgence and eating the kind of food on MasterChef is nothing if not a self-indulgence.

But what really bothers me is the way he sucks-up. Our version of MasterChef is known for getting high-end chefs in to issue challenges. They issue, the contestants freak out, deliver something and then comes the tasting table.

                                                   That Pretentiousness was a Little Overdone.

Matt and Gary comment on the sauce or some other bullshit and then George will comment on how it is slightly too salty. Then comes the hero chef. We recently went through Marco-Week, which was three-time Michelin star winner Marco Pierre White week. George commented on the consistency of the sauce, Marco commented on the lack of prunes in the dish and George jumps in with the benefit of prunes to the dish.

He is licking the anus clean. Well. And truly.

But perhaps most fucked up of all is that all of the above are popular, or were, and are still on television. If this is our A-Game, we sincerely need to look at ourselves. Not only that such awful people are allowed the wrong side of the camera, but that we lap it up like the last skerrick of milk in a cats bowl.

NP.  

5 Things You Learn As A Sociophobic Student Journalist.

For as long as I can remember, which usually means forever, I have been sociophobic. I know in the old talk that is shy, and that me using anything else is utter hypocrisy given my loathing of wankers. But this one feels more medical and so less like I have a choice in the matter, as passing-the-buck on all of my shortcomings is a consuming priority of mine.

What does this mean? Well, probably close enough to what you think. I avoid making phone calls, I dread a knock at the door, my small talk is more small than talk, I dodge friends I have dodged for too long as they are now strangers and I hope for long lines at the supermarket so I can think of something clever to say to the checkout chick or chap.

                                                             My Dog Has Diarrhoea.

I am also a student-journalist and, as it turns out, that involves talking to a lot of strangers. While I have done various journalism subjects over my degree, none of them involved as much stranger-contact as this one. I actually bailed out of this same class a year ago for my fear of contacting people.

Though this year I am a little older and a little more afraid of falling into that class of irrecoverable weak-sauce. I really like writing feature articles and would consider this a real career prospect, like Gladwell or Ronson. Plus I am within pissing distance of my bachelors. Nothing for it but to sack up and bite the bullet.

Through the process I learned some convenient truths, some of which are:

What Is The Worst They Can Do?

In preparation for some of these big interviews I would continually ask myself this question. It turned out, probably because I was a student-journalist rather than a real one, that most were very accommodating and worked around all my nonsense.

But then, what was the worst? I suppose in philosophical extremes they could have killed me. But realistically they could have said no or told me to leave. Not so bad. Not worth ageing over, though probably a devastating shot to the esteem. Lucky I am a student and don't have to face the real world until I am in my thirties.

Even An Apparently Boring Subject Can Yield Good Stories.

As part of this class all the stories have to be community based. When I went to film school our first semester we edited on Steenbeck's and worked the audio on magnetic tape, totally redundant technologies in the real world but the idea was to gain an appreciation for the craft. I can only assume this was the same idea, to learn from the bare bones, though probably also to set an achievable goal for a bunch of 20something fuck-wits.

                             I Think These Two Have A Story, Way Better Than Your Dumb Story.

At first I thought it too limiting, not in line with my grandiose aspirations. I tried to work myself in and make it a participatory type of journalism. Though through the interviews I realised how stupid I had been. Subjects will give you everything if you let them speak and realise you are not god's gift to the world of the word.

You Want More.

Going into these interviews I had a magic number in mind, one hour. That is conventional wisdom on how long you need to get enough out of a subject. That is also how long I would have to ignore my itchy nut-sack, wonder whether the microphone on my phone was getting everything and chewing my lip, literally chomping at the bit, to get out of there.

What I found was, most of the time, I was genuinely interested and wanting to talk for more time. Most of the interviews lasted longer than an hour and I only ended it because I felt like a nuisance on my subjects.

                                               For the Love Of God! Please Continue. 

You Realise Your Worth.

Yes, it is probably because I am a student these people agreed to sit down with me. But they, nonetheless, sat down with me. What I expected was party-lines, the default answer, the easy way out. But they were open and honest. I know I am not covering a sex-scandal, political wrongdoing or case of bigotry. Still, it is nice to know if you put it on front street, they will too.

It is, essentially, nice to know they will put their words and story in your hands. It is a huge boost to the ego, mine is already bulging, and a nice vote of confidence. Basically, you realise you can do it; the interview, the thing that seems so conceptually impossible. And you feel like a million bucks walking our of there.

                                                   And What A Great Feeling. 

You Aren't As Good As You Think You Are.

Yes, it felt good climbing that mountain. I know, if I do what I want to do, I will have to do it many times more. But I know after each one, I could have done better. There were moments of lull that I could have filled with a good question, I could have redirected the conversation away from the repetitive, I should've asked about about everything that would make my story a well rounded piece.

For me it is enough climbing the mountain, I will be able to have a cigar there with time.

Journalism is, in the words of the Irish, a tough crack. Questioning strangers is, to me, the horror of all horrors. But I am getting better at both, and both are my future. There is a weird amount to learn outside your comfort zone.

NP.  

I Almost Avoided Shitting Myself In India, and So Can You.

I have probably written of it before, but I went to India in the June of 2012. I had to look that up as my date memory is famously shitty. Reading the visa application form is, at three years later, like relearning something about yourself. I am an un-married atheist, for the record.

Anyway, I am sure if and when I did write on this before that mentioned I was going for a friends wedding. Which, in my opinion, is about the best reason to go to India. I got to dress very colourfully (and on the cheap), saw a monkey at the ceremony and fought over a shoe. Just splendid.

India was splendid also, what a country. In some ways it is kind of an unknown unknown, something you think you know but don't. At least you don't know the extent of its awesomeness. Everything is cheap, for a start, and it is hard to imagine many places where getting ripped off feels entirely reasonable. The bars don't kick you out after two beers, you can smoke in the bars, they do this spiced nut combo version of bar nuts. I guess it is fair to say I had a fair bit of fun in the bars.

But the country, at least what I saw of it, is splendid also. After hitting Europes hot-spots the year before it was nice not to see another Australian. I saw two white people (not connected to the wedding or my party) while I was there. I cannot mention the food, it is tough for me in the same way as reminiscing on a dead relative.

Now to brass tacks. What was not so splendid was what we call Delhi Belly. I am pretty sure more than the food was to blame, but I shan't elaborate as I may incriminate myself.

I had become used to, and an avid fan of, the Indian method of wiping ones bottom. That is, ironically, not a wipe at all but a purpose built tap to wash out the orifice once defecation has taken place. I found it works better than any deck of shit-tickets I have come across and, on the whole, seems a more economic option. I saw one in the house of an Japanese friend of ours and was, to say the least, overjoyed.

But naturally, like the kidney shaped swimming pool or the self-cleaning oven, the shitter tap is not afforded every home or venue. In India, at least in Bangalore, proceedings are stretched longer than they are here in Australia. Here, be it our penchant for alcoholism or our busy and important lives, the 'Special Day' is just that, a day.

In India, it is more like a week. They know how to commemorate and or party. The day of the wedding is, traditionally and from what I have learned, teetotal and sober. The day after is what we would call the 'reception'. A meal and money on the bar. The latter appealed to me so I hooked in

We had danced a lot the night before, me never really grasping the Indian style. Im no natural dancer, all the more proved by the style and grace of the Indians. I was well and truly punching above my weight.

The next day, the reception, there was more dancing but it was more relaxed. It felt less like anyone cared and so I, particularly after the open bar, let loose. And somewhere in the throng of emo tion, colour, smiles and splashed drinks my bowel hit red alert. I rushed to the toilet and did my devils work looked for the little shower I was used to.

I instead found an ice-cream tub full of water. I washed up the best I could and thought hard on sacrificing a shirt or a pair of jocks. I was shocked, this place was like a god-damned Novotel, and it didn't have the cool little shower head.

Cigarettes have done a good number on my sense of smell but emerging from the primitive toilet I immediately smelled myself and thought of going home. I opted instead to go and smoke and hope good company would eventually need to smoke also.

As a smoker I am used to sitting out of nose-shot of others, but this was something else. Among smokers I had to sit further away. Pretty young women sat next to me to have cigarettes and I did my best to manufacture a reason to move.

Eventually my friends and I left and the crisis was over. Except that we were due in two days to go further south, an eight hour bus ride. I enquired about toilets.

'Well it stops every couple of hours' my Indian friend deadpanned back to me.

At that point every couple of hours might as well have been every couple of days. I couldn't leave a perimeter that wasn't within running distance of a toilet. To their credit, my friends stayed with me.

I had been there two and a half weeks and could not believe this hadn't happened sooner. I spent three days on the toilet. I almost got away with it, my weak guts almost conquered India.

And I would've gotten away with it, if not for those scheming kids.

NP.

Why the Guy Sebastian Prospect is an Embarrassment and a Travesty to Both Australia and Eurovision.

If you are even faintly aware of Guy Sebastian you will know his potential for cringe. Sure he has a great voice, sure he won a bullshit competition, sure he teamed up with the objectively killer Lupe Fiasco.

But on the other hand he took a long ass time to get laid which is not how playboys do, has an unusually wide and boxy face and made his pretty-much white-guy afro front and center of his Australian idol campaign. Unlike Shannon Noll who had the damn class to make his terrible soul patch the focus of his. I have always been a Noll man, even despite this bitchy shit:

This fuckin' thing.

                                             All lifes regret in one small patch of fur. 

While it is pretty-well undeniable that Guy Sebastian is the biggest success to come out of Australian Idol and arguably one of the most successful Australian singers in the last decade or so I still don't trust him. In some ways he is too vanilla, in some ways he is too weird and not in the fun way. He seems like the kind of guy who would fuck with his socks on or would call his parents to get him at midnight on a sleep over, never quite able to commit.

If you know anything of Eurovision, you know it is weird. It made its name on the back of ABBA; to some a carefree disco band, to some a group hitting at the very humanity of love and life, to me a bunch of Aryan nihilists unhappy with their fat wallets and effortless good looks. Obviously it goes deeper and gets way weirder.

Lordi, the Finnish heavy metal band who dress somewhere between Rob Zombie and Kurt Russell in the Escape movies, won in 2006. Apparently this was classed as 'making history'. Weirdly though, they are a good band who make good music. They just spend a bunch of time getting made up to look like Davy Jones in Pirates.

Conchita Wurst, who won last year, was a bearded lady.

In 2012 these delusional Russian weirdos entered.

Except they weren't really delusional. Europe is weird, purely because it is a relatively small land mass to contain so many conflicting and old cultures. Russians love vodka, Greeks love ouzo, Brits love piss-warm beer, Germans love good beer and the French love themselves. It is a real hot-pot of different ideas and ideals. Slot this into the context of an intercontinental song contest and there is no earthly reason off-key nuns shouldn't be proudly singing the song of their equally weird people.

Eurovision is popular in Australia; the winners get a good run in the press, the contest is televised to big audiences and watercooler conversation runs rampant that special time of year. Call it good tacky fun, it is probably the fun of the piss-take that enthralls us.

And being the staunch competitors we are, shouldn't we love the idea of a real competitor entering this domain of weird? For the win, for the gold?

No, we should not. Here are a few reasons why:

It is Eurovision.

I know the second part is vision, which is obliquely common to us all, but the first part is Euro. We are, geographically and culturally, on opposite ends of the spectrum. Can we not just let them have their fun? And watch from a distant land with a pizza coagulating on the coffee table, a bong within arms reach and a cold slab in the fridge? Is that not Eurovision to us Australians?

Why not Iran, they are borderline Europe and would be a shitload more fun to watch than this guy...Sebastian.

It is Not A Fair Fight.

Name a world competition where a nation need not compete but proceed directly to the finals? Name one and I will show you a bullshit competition. Allowing Australia in at all undercuts the very ethos of Eurovision and allowing us to proceed without challenge undercuts the very ethos of competition. To quote that douchebag Derryn Hinch, 'Shame, shame, shame'.

It Takes A Spot Away from More Deserving Countries.

I don't know but do imagine with confidence that winning Eurovision, or even competing, is like the fuckin' lottery to countries like Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, Estonia, Moldova and Georgia. Putting Australia in pole position automatically snuffs a chance for one of those countries; more deserving, more enthusiastic and you know it would mean a whole bunch more to them.

Our Entry Doesn't Really Represent Australia.

Eurovision, despite all it's insanity, is a patriotic affair. It's about being blindly proud of your country and what it can do in 'music'.

I am not suggesting Guy Sebastian is not Australian, just that he is not quintessentially Australian. By that I mean he is not drunk, racist, a keen cricket fan, on centrelink, the owner of a Monaro or brewing his own beer and cooking his own meth as a matter of pride.

Surely a better representative would be this guy:

He is Doubtless Weird, But is He Eurovision Weird.

As I mentioned above, Eurovision demands a certain amount of weirdness. I also mentioned Guy Sebastian is weird and, once more, the difference in types of weird. He is, at least to me, comfortably straddling the line between weird and creepy.

Put it this way; I cannot picture him gently delivering his lyrics to the sound of rhythmic glass breaking, the back-beat of a hairy fist on a dead goats stomach, all while having his hair corn-rowed by an ageing over-weight Hatian prostitute.

So then the bigger question looms, is he really Eurovision material?

NP. 

Meditations In The Loss

I saw my brother on the phone and trembling, only slightly, as his voice ploughed to the next plane. Wilting as it involuntarily rose to the upper level of his range. If our siblings could be marketed as a superstar pop group he would unquestionably be 'The Sensitive One', though if you stuck us in a yearbook he would also doubtless be 'Least Likely To Show Needless Emotion', I saw tears develop.

This was not the usual 'Life is Shit for the 20-Something' kind of deal, reading his face I knew something serious had happened. What had happened was that a Japanese friend of ours, Ayumi, had taken her own life.

She had been here a few years on a travel/work holiday and her English never advanced to the point that she could express the pain she was in, though common wisdom on suicide might mean that translation difficulties would have meant little either way. It is this sort of question that ricochets around your head when someone goes like this, only hushes, never fully leaving.

I first met Ayumi, probably in 2014. It may have been late 2013, though my date memory is notoriously bad. She had become the third room mate in a sharehouse of two of our other friends when a third friend moved out. I am 6'3 and ,though not exactly Andre the Giant, fairly used of being marginally taller than others. But Ayumi was petite, practically four-foot-nothing with a thick head of jet-black hair, a perpetual smile and a real enthusiasm for the world.

As we did, and as we do, we would mainly run into each other on drinking occasions (Saturday or Wednesday nights, or come to think of it, any night people had the next day free or could slog through it with a fog-head) at the house. Ayumi, probably due to her miniscule stature, was among the cheapest drunks I have ever seen. Three drinks in she would be rolling drunk, but always smiling and laughing more heartily at herself than anything else, which is a rare quality in drunk people.

I have a penchant on a certain amount of drinks of trying to learn words in other languages. It's nothing really new, but pronounced when I drink. So I would bore or crack-up Ayumi with my drunken and way off the mark Japanese pronunciations. She would work hard to correct me in between syllables of complete laughter and I would work hard to try again, with zero progress and more hysterical noise at my utter failing.

It was great to watch her laugh. Even in my failings, my fortified confidence being drenched would usually turn me to a sulky beer-soaked cretin, but that laugh could cut through the worlds pettiness in a heartbeat. You never got the feeling she was laughing at you or with you. Just that she was laughing, laughing at everything and you felt OK about being a part of everything.

In all this I became attracted to her and worked up the courage to ask her out...on Facebook. She accepted and I decided I wanted to show her some Polish food. I cancelled under the strain of school work, but rescheduled. I was excited on the prospect and thought long and hard about how to make a date good, and how to make it good for this girl, then I cancelled again under the strain of self-doubt and sheer weakness. I tried to reschedule, a glutton for self-punishment.

'I have the feeling you will just cancel again' she told me.

'I probably will, but I don't want to disappoint you'

'If you were my boyfriend it would be disappointing, but you are my friend so it's OK'

Her logic and realness let me know I had let myself lose something I really wanted. Another question to ricochet around the mind for eternity.

I miss you Ayumi.

NP.

Note: The name has been changed to spare family and others who might be concerned.

Locked Out, or As Anastacia Might Put It, Left Outside Alone.

In my youth I was a massive Anastacia fan. Sure my cousins gave me epic shit about it. They spoke of how her voice was utterly awful and annoying, how I would be embarrassed one day and how she was basically devastatingly undermining the important efforts of more important bands like Pearl Jam and The Fugees.

To that I say, fuck the 90's. And also I was like 12 they could have cut me a break with my Bieber level worship of Anastacia, I didn't need to have taste then.

You might remember Anastacia as a sort of female Bono, also with an allegedly annoying voice and also who did Evanescence before that was...cool?

This song and video conveniently display all three.

But they also express something I am hitting at. The chorus, or hook, notes the isolation of being 'Left Outside Alone', quote:

'I wonder if you know, how it really feels

To be left outside alone.'

I can only assume my girl Anastacia is referring to emotional neglect in a relationship that likens itself to being outside, with all its weather, and alone with all its lack of people.

Years later, I would know exactly what that is like.

We are at a bar on Oxford St., Sydney’s gay street and also one of the more fun. Not uncommon for us; we lived four blocks away, enjoyed partying and, well both those things.

I am with my house-mate, a sociable fellow and a very dear friend. We have a new house-mate and because of this a shortage of keys. Thinking back on it, I have no idea why the new house-mate resulted in a lack of keys.

We drink and party and have fun, a usual Friday/Saturday night. Then my social friend wants to leave but has no keys. No big deal, take mine. I am too drunk to care or consider the implications. I hand over the precious metal and assure him I will meet him back at the house in the next hour or so.

He disappears, I drink on. Good times, I am having fun. I go on like this for a while. Then, the pain of being human, the fun is over. I am too fucked and it is, regrettably time to go home.

I knock on the door. Nothing. I knock again, louder, still nothing. I knock once more, louder still, and again nothing. I pull my phone from my pocket, dead.

I am drunk and weary. My friend and my keys are both inside. I sit on the step for forty minutes in the brisk Sydney barely-morning. I wonder how this situation will end. I try to prop myself in the door jam thinking I might be able to sleep it off there. No dice, I am too big and the jam too small.

I look up to his window and notice it is open. I want to shout through the unsecured membrane but reconsider, my better judgement pulls me to earth. Our neighbours are working professionals and yuppie families, I can't fuck their tomorrow.

I sit again on the step and notice it is bin night. His window is pretty big, his bed is nearby enough that window that with a good throw I can wake him . I begin lobbing rubbish through the window. Well, mostly through, a fair amount bounced back. I choose from the recycling because I don't want anything soiled to land in his sanctuary, I am desperate but not a monster.

I land around a dozen good throws. No dice. I figure something heavier might do the trick. I fish a large red-bull can from the bin, pedantically drain it and begin throwing. Part of my problem is that to thread the garbage through the window I need to text-book lob, essentially garunteeing a soft landing and disallowing a wake-up call.

I throw the can maybe half a dozen times without hitting the spot. It loudly clangs on the building and falls to earth, over and over.

A pissed-off neighbour, hopefully unaware of my plight, yells.

'Could you please shut the fuck up'

Let it not be said that manners are lost on the affluent.

With this latest defeat I walk to a local park. I am now more weary than drunk, the sun is cresting but it is still cold and I desire a cigarette. I s ee a fat, bald and designer-jeans man walking his abomination of a dog. I am lapping for the smoke relief of a cigarette but have no lighter (I threw that through the window, made a shit load of sense at the time). I see his smoking. Anti-smoking snobbery is not yet a thing.

I ask if I might borrow his lighter. He passes one to me, somewhat passive aggresively, and I torch. We smoke together and I explain my plight. To him I am, on some level, homeless. Though on every level, pathetic

This is how I am to this weird guy and his dog, on some level. 

         He stays on, I figure, because his dog is in ecstasy and probably because the poor little bastard spends all his days in some affluent, post-modern shithole. I bludge his lighter one more time before he leaves.

I sit and smoke alone. The sun is making it's way now. The suburb is lit up. The light looks, and feels, like a supreme hangover. I take that first lit cigarette and use it to torch a second, and a third.

Then I decide we might be close to the hours when the waking might offer assistance. Tough call in any city but I sincerely have no other call. I check my watch, 6 A.M. I have the smouldering butt of the third cigarette and no lighter. I have five cigarettes left, I chain them all. I know the guy next door is a family man.

I know a family lives there so figure the wife is also a family woman, and that the kids are probably family kids. I smoke and shield my cold body in the foetal position with the t-shirt over the knees.

At 7 A.M the woman next door asks me if I would like to walk through her house to get to my backyard. I don't know too many real-life saints.

I stroll across the floor, complete with road map carpet, and promptly hop the fence. The windows are barred and the back-door latch is just out of my reach. I yell up the stairway. It is late enough in the day that I can.

'Noel' comes the eventual reply.

'I'm locked out'.

My social friend and room mate is awake. He let's me in.

'I Woke up and my room was full of garbage'

He buys me a Dominoes sandwhich as repayment.

I promptly accept.

We watch Colbert Report and get stoned.

So, yes Anny, I do.

NP. 

On A Cock-Blocking Polish Grandpa

I was in Europe with my grandfather some years ago. I spent my twenty second birthday there (which I only know because, on the advice of an Irish rugby team, I spent the night telling people I was twenty one to solicit more free drinks. Which would make it, 2012. Or 2011. Somewhere in there, beer in Europe is a huge player.

Anyway, we were in the south of Poland in a town called Muszyna. I guess kinda the bum-fuck of Poland, though in a weird twist, the bum-fuck of the great grey industrial east of Europe is kinda the place to be. Eight kilomeeers from the shitty border into shitty Slovakia. In summer, as when I was there, it looks like

My grandfather, a Polack and a fucking weirdo, is a health nut. He goes back to the mother country to get fifteen minutes of sun on each of his four sides, eat mackerel and walk a lot. He expects the same of me, I don't have the heart to tell him I want to meet our family. I want to see Europe. He has seen Europe and suspects the family is trying to kill him, for all his millions I guess. So we walked. Well, we walked after a bus ride.

Krynica is the neighbouring town, bigger and with more to do and see. We would fork out our weird coins every day, get the bus 8 kilometres up the road and walk around for most of the day, or until lunch time as old people are weirdly preoccupied with lunch. To the elderly, and I didn't know this, lunch is like Friday night beers to the working man, Centrelink pay-day beers to the non-working man and any-time beers to the student.

We would have lunch in a 'home kitchen', essentially someone's house run as a a resturant. The food was killer though it seems to be some sort of compromise for the women not working. Then we would walk a little more and pay more weird coins to go back to Muszyna. After doing what he wanted to do, we did what I wanted to do; drink cheap Polish beer.

We did this for a month. A solid daily routine. Our walks through Krynica would inevitably start, end or go though the town square. In the town square, most days, was a stripper handing out flyers for an upcoming skin show.

This stripper was something of a beauty, though her glory years had long passed. She was oddly tanned for a Pole, buxom, a big arse (my favourite) and cropped peroxide blonde hair. She kind of looked like a more fuckable Jessica Rowe.

I took one of her flyers and committed myself to seeing her nude (seeing her show, that is). I know now this is crass and crude and piggish and all the other bad penis shit. But at the time I was coming off Warsaw, Krakow and Bratislava. I was coming off grey cement cities with the most divinely sculpted things, things inconceivable to me, a kind of astonishing human that I had never seen.

Plus I was very horny. I admired all these women but did jack shit about it. I couldn't even play the rugged Australian angle with any good faith. When my grandfather went for a shit, I would go for a wank. Another different generational obsession.

I got the flyer and told him I wanted to go. He said with the great confidence of the foolish, that he would go with me. He knew full well the non-Polski speaking where ripe for punishment in the open. I did too. He translated to me, in Catholic old guy speak, a torrent of vicious abuse directed at me on the bus from Krakow to Muszya. So, we walked on. I was very keen to see the Polish Jessica Rowe's bits. I reaffirmed with the old man every day that he would chaperone and each day he affirmed he would.

I was, indeed, all the more keen when one day I was drunk at the Muszyna bakery (you can do that shit there) and the aforementioned stripper approached me to ask if I was O.K (At the behest of the bakeries lovely matriarch and owner). The love of my life approached me and was talking to me. The reason was that I desperately needed a piss and was positive the toilet was occupied. The bakeries owner conversed with the stripper and through my shitty Polish it was apparent the stripper spoke English, a cultured sex-pot. I told her I needed to use the toilet, she informed me it was empty and I did my business. Smitten again.

Then the day came. The day I put up with all my grandfathers bullshit for, the day I stayed in Poland for. The strip night.

'Oh I don't think I'll go to that'

Though it sounds like the words of a snobbish Englishman, it was the words of an old Pole looking through the fog.

He had his back to me, straightening out one of many khaki-safari pant and vest combos that he thought made him look taller.

'Why not, you said you would?' I asked, given my natural connection to the lady paid to make false connections with people, I thought this outrageous.

'Oh, I don't know. I just don't feel upto it'

THAT MOTHERFUCKER! After he had agreed twenty times, promised me, told me the horrors of how Australians and English speakers were treated at these kind of things. He really wasn't going to use his language skills to help me see naked women.

'I wouldn't mind paying them to come here for a bit of sex with you' he said.

I wouldn't mind either.

He went to sleep, I went for a wank.

NP    

I Saw Someone Famous in a Wine Bar This One Time.

I don’t run into famous people all that much. There are some notables; I saw the guy who played ‘Rick’ on Home and Away at a Motorhead and Motley Crue concert, I saw renowned Australian music critic Glenn A. Baker at both an Eric Clapton concert and on King St. in Newtown, exiting one of Sydneys great record stores as might be expected. But overall, the A through Z list is far from my day to day.

This Fuckin Guy

Also This Guy...

But there was one notable day. I was in Surry Hills, in a wine bar, with a friend who loves wine. It is kind of the only reason I would ever be in a wine bar. This particular wine bar was on Bourke St. nearby my home and it's days were spent closed with brown butchers paper over the windows. The aforementioned friend is a social animal, though also holds something of the detective spirit within her. In this case, the two aligned perfectly.

So, we go. I am swayed to enter the unbridled wank-fest that is a wine bar on the promise that it is not my shout. My companion and myself drink heartily (I drink heartier, trying to chase sour grapes with sour grapes and be comfortable as wallpaper with no earthly business in a place where jeans have given names on them and things are sent back).

We talk films, my friend has just had a medical ordeal in which she was scared and promised to build churches and so on, and so has some fresh insight on what life can dish out. She has vision and passion for a project, still in its infancy, I support the idea and suggest I could write it. I highly doubt I could make a film worth a damn, but I am fairly certain I can write one. At that age I still believe in myself. We laugh and plot seriously, as you do at one bottle in, the moves we will make to bring her vision to term.

And then the second bottle, then more fun. It is closing in on 9 P.M. In walks, flanked by a group as large as that of a rapper or prize-fighter, Natalie Bassingthwaighte. Though at first we don't know that, of course we don't we are talking movies and writing and art. We are talking everything important .

Closer to the end of the bottle my notoriously awful bladder let's me know of the psychopathic rush it needs. I scan the room for the male toilet. Then I spot her. A tiny person among leeches.

'Isn't that the chick from neighbours'

I was, at one regrettable time, a massive neighbours fan. A moment later my pocket shakes, agitating the already radicalised contents of my bladder. My friend, a foot away, has texted me.

'That's the Rogue Traders chick!'

                                                        This Piece of Shit. 

At that time the Rogue Traders where...kind of a big deal.

Now we share something real. Something more than wine or co-drunkenness. We are both in the room with an awful famous person. The urine recedes into me. Nat, as we now know her, is only mildly famous. Still you wouldn't know it from the kid gloves her possy wears. Each of them seems to be gunning for fame by association. My friend and I laugh our asses off at the dancing each of them does to keep on her good side. She is a dictator, by mild fame only.

Then a slightly racist joke is made. So barely, barely racist it doesn't register to me. It is non-funny, it falls on its face. But the eternal Miss Bassingthwaigthe needs to make an issue of it.

'I just don't feel like that is, I just don't wanna be that way'

And a chorus of 'Sorry Nat' sings pedantically.

My friend and I drink on, laughing, one table over. It seemed pathetic, it was pathetic. At the urging of the ring-leder they leave after two bottles and not a one seemed happy. We leave after three, smiling and singing through the bowels of a Surry Hills Friday night.

NP.