O HAI I MAYD U A BLAG BUT I 4GOT 2 UPDAYT IT

Remember me? I live here now (sorta): http://beezageeza-life.blogspot.com

End Title. Meant.

So I’m sitting on the train, yet again, tapping away in the face of “artistic” futility. Yeah, who am I fooling? I can barely write code, let alone a meaningful, first-person analysis on the Lifestyles of the Repressed and Cynical.

There was a chap on the platform this morning… early 20s, about 5 foot 7, looks like a shorter version of Ioan Gruffud (read: hawttie). I’d seen him around before and had a fairly passing appreciation of his aesthetic… until today. He’s actually really good looking, and in an uncharacteristic (and masked) display physical attraction, I checked him out. Oh my, did I check him out. Horizontally-striped “sailor” t-shirt, perky arse in denim, two earrings in the top of left ear, light olive complexion, tiny waist and fairly buff. Yanno, flattered-by-the-too-tight-t-shirt type of buff. Good arms, which were apparently impervious to the late-winter cold of my rural area because they were quite, quite bare up to just below the shoulder.

The guilt kicked in soon afterwards – I’m not often so deeply, deeply shallow as this – and it occurred to me that I’m now officially a dirty old man. You don’t have to be old to qualify – just subtly lecherous and devoid of the burdens of regular shaghood. That’s me all over, I guess.

*sigh*

I haven’t had a lot of time to myself lately. The stress of my daily commute and fast-paced, thoroughly unimportant job is taking a toll on my health. Last week I came down with a somewhat brutal cold which refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of my immune system for a good deal longer than any curable virus should, and when it was finally vanquished, it decided to play the scorched earth card on my lungs. Self-medicated leftover antibiotics (yes, I know, very bad) had the organs back and up and running, but at the loss of my weekend from Friday to this morning (Monday). Hardly a trade-off; I stayed in bed almost completely, except for a quick run to the shops. Out the window went my plans for a Sunday night jaunt to the cinema to see… well, whatever’s playing… even though I can’t afford it because completely broke and won’t taste any rental income until the end of August, thanks to a slight oversight in my expectations of landlandyship. Oh well, payday Wednesday, I can slum it until then.

In my copious time, free from the distractions of penile stimulation or social life or, yanno, health, I’ve had ample opportunity to ponder an increasingly pronounced sense of discontent with my life… and it seems to resolve itself into one big issue:

Entitlement.

I hate entitlement. I really do. There’s so much of it going around, rather like a virus, and it’s shitting the hell out of me. Who is anyone to just expect a free ride? How can anyone be so god-damned deluded?

You’re standing on the platform, waiting for a train, hoping desperately to find a seat so you can sit down, whip out the laptop and do a bit of overdue blogging for the ~60 minutes you’d be otherwise wasting, and then you get pushed out of the way by some rampaging, government-sponsored infant factory with a veritable elephant-trail of offspring stretching half the carriage. Oh, she’s entitled to a seat, and you’re not, because she’s got literally hundreds of kids, and you don’t.

You’re walking down a busy street, trying to avoid the crush of people moving in all sorts of insane directions. Some moron with a surgically-implanted mobile phone is rushing to some extremely important corporate wankfest and raving like a schizophrenic, obviously distracted by the desire to appear important. You’re headed straight for each other, blocked into a narrow corridor of free space by street hawkers, pamphleteers, the aforementioned baby factories and their produce, and psychotic, Evel Knievel bike couriers. There’s nowhere to go but forwards, and at some point, someone is going to have to stand aside to let the other through. Being the smaller of the two obstacles, carrying less and being far more manoeuvrable than Cellular Lunatic, you decide to dash a zig-zag between the human traffic, clearing a blockage and facilitating an open corridor for a whole stack of people stuck behind said Lunatic, like an impacted bowel movement blocking an intestine. Mobile Schizoid decides (correctly) that your inertia is less than his, goes for an icebreaker tugboat kind of shove, pushes you out of the way with a glancing blow to the shoulder and leaves you within the slowly dissipating free space, pushed back a few steps by his obesity, then pushed a few storefronts further back because you can’t go forward into the human pressure wave, you can’t go sideways into the slipstreams, you can’t crowd-surf over them and going under them is not an option, unless you want to break every sliver of bone and cartilage in your body. They’re entitled to take over the whole left side of George Street because there’re more of them. He’s entitled to bulldoze you out of the way because he’s as wide as he is tall. You’re not because there’s only one of you, and you’re only about human-sized.

It’s 9AM on a Saturday. Your biological alarm clock didn’t just go off, it went completely ballistic at 8AM and woke you like a gunshot. You’ve spent the last hour phasing in-and-out of the sleep-time continuum because you work what is effectively a 60-hour-week, you’ve had a major cold/flu combo, you’ve barely eaten a meal in days, it’s freezing outside and you’re FUCKING EXHAUSTED. There’s a knock on the door and a parent decides to make sure you’re awake so they can let you know that they’re going out for a walk. This is not to let you know that they’re going out for a walk around the block and they’ll be back in an hour, so you don’t suddenly get up and flit about the house in a mild panic, wondering if aforementioned parent has been abducted by aliens, fled the country, or been killed, diced and consumed by a serial killer in the night. No. This is your Saturday morning wake-up-call so you can get up and do your laundry (which you absolutely insist on doing yourself), because this parent cannot detach their inactivity-paranoia from your life quite long enough to realise that maybe you deserve a lie-in, because hey, it’s been a big week, and further, maybe it’s not up to them about what you deserve, because it’s your life, and if the laundry doesn’t get done, it doesn’t get done, and by the way, your laundry actually doesn’t have anything to do with them at all. Their disregard for your physical and mental health, because they think laundry is more important, is itself more important than maybe letting you rest-your-weary-everything. They’re entitled to decide what time you should be awake on a Saturday morning after a very, very long week/fortnight/month because they’re stuck in the childhood you left behind so long ago. You’re not, because you’re merely an independent 29-year-old who works absurdly long hours during the week, is almost completely unconscious on a Saturday morning, and therefore powerless to prevent the invasion of his slumber.

Your parents are on holiday in Western Europe for a month, again, leaving you and your brother to look after the house, the dog, the cat, the birds and the chickens down the backyard. Your brother does bugger-all to maintain the house, despite working only half an hour away, and will occasionally feed the animals. You work in the city, a good 90- to 150- minutes one-way and often get back when it’s dark and bitterly, bitterly cold. Not only must you feed random animals (though not to each other, sadly), there’s domestic upkeep, cooking, laundry, self-preservation and sleep to contend with. A friend suffers a technical disaster with their PC and asks you to drop around and take a look. You do what you can to salvage the situation, offer a spare computer as a replacement (which subsequently fails… of course), try to make time in your already overwhelmed schedule to continue repairs, and generally put yourself out for many hours at a time, often not getting home until much, much later in the evening than is practical, starving oneself of food, relaxation and sleep because of some sense of duty to your friends. A large amount of data, for which you rather nicely provided a temporary home, must be returned and returned pronto because it’s more important than anything you’ve got going on in your own life. Your parents have returned and your schedule has lightened up, but you still find it difficult to meet the supposedly reasonable demands being made of you. You make a special journey to the letterbox of the owner of said data and leave it all, fully intact on one of the ever-decreasing numbers of spare hard drives you have lying around. They are entitled to what they want because they are your friends and the data is extremely important, moreso even than your health, wellbeing or personal obligations. You are not because, well, it’s you and you’re supposed to fix every major computer problem that comes your way, and everyone has every fucking right to be shitty with you when you can’t solve their myriad technical ills with a mere flick of the mouse.

You’re stepping out of the office to grab some lunch from the subterranean eatery across the pebblecrete plaza. There’s a homeless chap hovering around the garbage bin, wearing a groove into the ground between the cave of culinary capitalism, the steps down to the other street level, and the automatic swinging (not sliding, swinging) doors of your building. You’re starving because you generally don’t get a chance to eat in the mornings, it’s now 1PM and you haven’t eaten since about 9PM yesterday. He doesn’t just ask you for spare coins, or even silver ones for that matter, he demands that you reimburse him in gold for his time. You actually have nothing on your person at the moment, and politely decline. He launches into a surprisingly verbose hissyfit about your supposed lack of generosity and how you never donate anything unto him, because somehow, of all the thousands of people who cross this one patch of perpetual shade, he’s remembered you, and your coat in particular. He’s entitled to your pity and guilt because he chooses to ignore the virtually infinite options available to him, like shelters or rehabilitation or other such initiatives – many of which are planned, sponsored and run by the very organisation you work for – and decides to stay here, in the plaza, day in, day out, every day for six months, in the middle of winter or not. You’re not entitled to say anything, because to do so would be in extremely poor taste and would also likely convey a sense of ignorance, greed and absolutely mercenary lifestyling in the face of ugly, rank economic oppression.

You’re blogging away on your laptop, quite badly wanting to purge, through words, the depression, frustration and general dismissal you feel on a daily basis, and you repeatedly choose to go easy, in your blitherings of innate idiocy, on the people who are royally pissing you off because, hey, they’re only human, they have their own battles, right? They’re entitled to sleep easy each night under the impression that they’ve gone and been perfectly reasonable about everything they do, and you’re not, because everything since DAY FUCKING DOT has been your fault, your responsibility, somehow due to your own ignorance or inadequacy or incompetence or general MARAUDINGLY EPIC FUCKDOM, and you drive yourself mad trying to find some other outlet for your not-so-latent misery, and physical exercise isn’t possible because you’re tired, hungry, sick and your shoulder’s playing up like it usually does in winter; you can’t actually talk to anyone because you’re either on the other side of the planet, in a different state, surplus to their requirements or because you know that everything you say will be memorised and used against you later on, when necessary or not, and your blog, once the last bastion of sense and reason in your own seriously conflicted and completely warped existence, is looking as barren and empty as a Tom Cruise sperm sample, and you finally, finally decide to shut it all down because it no longer serves the purpose you, at long last, understand. Everyone’s entitled to have their feelings protected because it’s them, and you’re not because you are actually much less important than anyone else and really, you should just shut the fuck up and deal with it.

So there. Rather than go all FUCK ENTITLEMENT, I’ve decided to take it up as a hobby. I’ve decided that people aren’t owed anything anymore, they have to fucking earn it from now on. I’m not putting myself out there, I’m not offering anything, and I’m not obligated to do or be anything for anyone. If that makes me a COMPLTELY SELFISH CUNT, so be it, I’m not going to be stomped on and used and implemented and disposed of and bypassed. It’s my fucking time that’s running out while I’m busy helping everyone else. I’m fucking entitled to a bit of leniency within my own life, and it starts now. This blog ends, and another... infinitely less visible one... begins somewhere else.

THE END.

Something good in everything I see.

*SPOLIER ALERT*

OK, if you haven't seen Mamma Mia!, look away now. Really. Just click on by.

...

...

...

I would happily - HAPPILY - live in ANY universe where Meryl Streep sings ABBA and Colin Firth is a posh, English, straight-acting hommoh-seckshual who plays guitar, likes to get it on with the younger chaps and bounces around like he's dropped an E, without a shirt, under a spray of water. I AM SO SEEING THIS FILM AGAIN.

Gosh darn it.

*sigh* I was going to post this big-arse entry on the topic of World Youth Day, but it's likely to offend a whooooooole swathe of people - plus, in real life I've already told all the good jokes I'd intended to use here. It seems churlish to recycle them to same people.

Instead, I shall (eventually finish and) post my musings on the unsustainability of public transport and land ownership with respect to 21st-century civic development. Fascinating stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

The Confessions Of Zelda

What would happen if someone took the to the opening track of one of my favourite albums ever - "Hung Up" from Her Madgesty's Confessions On A Dance Floor - and vaguely redid it in the style of 1980s Nintendo console game theme tunes (for example, 1986's The Legend Of Zelda)?

Well, now you know.



(P.S. I love SeeqPod)

Linky because he totally deserves it.

Pull up to the bumper, baby...

I am now the proud owner (loser?) of a stolen car.

Hooray! At least now I don't have to sell the thing when I go to London*.

Of course, as long as I drive to the train station in the morning, I'm screwed. Could life get any more meaninglessly complex?? Or is this yet another kick in the complacency for someone who, admittedly, needs a cattleprod-esque jolt to his copious behind?

Until whenever

*WHICH, by the bloody by, SEEMS LIKE A BETTER IDEA ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

UPDATE
It's been found. Relatively intact. Certainly driveable. And only a suburb away.
What awesome luck, eh?

Good sport Granny WINS AT LIFE.

You want me, baby.

Okay, minor FREAK-OUT time.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is touring! AGAIN!

Free plug because they fucking deserve it: http://www.hedwig.com.au/

Three times I've seen this show. THREE TIMES. It's only love I have.

Location, location.

It's so strange seeing your home as the featured rental property on a real-estate website.

Gotchya, you evil, menacing technoslag.

Dear REM ReplaceTokens,

You're my donkey bitch now.

Regards,
DeeMacGee

***FREE TICKETS - THIS IS NOT A JOKE****

Don't worry, my account hasn't been hacked. It's not spam.

Anyone wanting two FREE tickets to the 7PM session of Frank Woodley's Possessed, at the Opera House TONIGHT (yeah, that's just under two hours from now), EMAIL ME STAT: deemacgee@gmail.com, and I'll give you instructions on what to say at the box office. Seriously, peeps, I can't make it. Won them this morning, and they're going to waste otherwise.

Until Whenever (but before 6:55PM).

Waste

You know your social life is up to shit when you can't find anyone to use the second of two tickets to a comedy production down at the Opera House, which you've won in a competition only a few hours before.

When even a parent won't come with you.

For free.

To a not-inexpensive show.

*sigh*

It's all just greed.

This pisses me off so badly.

http://payrise.careerone.com.au/

It's greed. They are appealing to your sense of greed.

Not professionalism.
Not passion.

Greed.

I especially detest the top-right hand corner. Are they saying that an income of at least $55,000 per annum will stop the rain? No fucking wonder there's a drought in this country.

Shameless marketing cunt scum - as though CareerOne, or any of the vermin agencies who infest it, have any regard for your career beyond the spotter's fee they'll so happily, parasitically "earn" by desperately placing you in a job which often bears NO resemblance to the one they've advertised.

It could happen.

I should really go into business for myself.

No, really.

UPDATE:

Now I'm deadly serious.
So much of what I do is designed to circumvent the human element in this particular aspect of technology, and today was a good day for such things. It's like SkyNet without the psychosis, or a Von Neumann machine with a hard-coded kill switch.

I'm so proud.

Actually... I think I could take it one step further and turn Windows into a fully-fledged virus. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Excuse me whilst I fire up VMWare.

Kill it with microwave radiation.

Interjection

Very quick post because it's late and I'm tired.

1. LCD Soundsystem is the new Pet Shop Boys.
2. I'm 29. HOLY CHRIST, I'M 29.
|there's a video clip coming soon|
|no, not of me|

Extra nutty fruitcake.

For the most part, I'd not give that fucking Nazi Bill O'Reilly the time of day.
This is part of the reason:



Remember, though - for every action there is an equal and opposite overreaction. Praise be to whomever put this together for managing to wring just that little bit of goodness out of FoxFuckFace:

I'll never know if they're minty or sweet.

The special edition box set for Madonna's new album Hard Candy actually does come with... hard candy. Whoda thunk Madge'd be so literal, eh?

Destined for greatness.

Looks the same from everywhere

I am in such fucking limbo right now.

Argh.

Just rip it from the wall, shall I?

I may need to shut down this blog in the very near future, so if Blitherings does vanish, you were warned. Things are getting a little too... too. It's my own fault - of course - plausible anonymity will get you only so far.

In other news: there are some major life changes I've been putting off for way, way too long which simply must be attended. We're all running out of time (whether we admit it or not) and I intend for my thirties to be somewhat different from the security-building, indoorsy, sedentary, hibernatory decade of my twenties. I've earned myself a bit of fun, dammit!

But first... one must prepare.

Anyway.

Oh, and my family pisses me off. But that's hardly news.

Until Whenever

Update: Heterosexual men - simultaneously the bane of my existence, and yet, apparent reason for living. Ugh, please don't make me wake up tomorrow morning.

Oddly arousing.

Damage alert: do not watch if you want to keep your happy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles memories...

...enter at your peril.

Demonoid is back!!

No, seriously - it is.

Somethin' up in thaya

Someone will come fo' yo' ahbatrarahly angry ass when it's tahme fo' yo' appointment.

Walk on by, walk on by. Foolish pride.

Currently listening to: I'm taking back the knowledge / I'm taking back the gentleness / I'm taking back the ritual / I'm giving in to sweetness / Come preacherman / shoot me with your poisoned arrow but I dance on Vaseline / and I'm tripping out / working on a revolution / you don't let the music in / I'm taking back the children / I'm taking back the ceremony / I'm taking back my offerings and I'm taking back what you mean to me / you're dangerous / shoot me with your poisoned arrow but I dance on Vaseline / and I'm slipping out / working on a revolution / don't let the music in / and war is all around us / your gods are dead and buried underground / I was a silly putty / your big ideas are useless to me now / my baby saw the future / she doesn't wanna live there anymore / it's lousy science-fiction / it's on your skin and seeps into your bones / come preacherman / shoot me with your poisoned arrow but I dance on Vaseline / and I'm tripping out / working on a revolution / don't let the day begin / and you're dangerous / shoot me with your poisoned arrow but I dance on Vaseline / I'm slipping out / working on a revolution / don't let the music in / it started in Oklahoma / you always think it happens somewhere else / this madness is attractive until the day it happens to yourself / and power might seem sexy but check her in the cool grey light of dawn / a legislative body and all at once your lust for her is gone / and I'm tripping out / working on a revolution / don't let the day begin / we'll turn you down time to time for evolution / don't let the music in / and I'm tripping out / working on a revolution / don't let the day begin / we'll turn you down / make a time for evolution / don't let the day begin
Dance On Vaseline / Feelings / David Byrne

I hate the world right now. I hate myself; I hate my life; my eccentricities; my physicality (most especially these wisdom teeth); my fears and doubts and uncertainties and all those endless, distasteful things that spring to mind when I try to conceptualise I... a self-image which rather resembles that picture of Dorian Gray after his years of debauchery. It's a sensitive topic, like a pus-filled, weeping wound is sensitive, and every glance thrown my way is a bony finger, forcing itself deep into an infected ego: blunt and unnecessarily intimate. I walked down to the International Passenger Terminal at Circular Quay after work a few days ago and found myself hyperconscious of every look cast over me: buskers, businessmen, bimbos, bums and babies all gorging their ocularity on my reflected photons. To notice is not the same as observing; viewing is not monitoring; looking is not seeing is not watching...

...have you ever seen the inside of one of those places? The laughing and the tears and the cruel eyes studying you?
Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)
Psycho (1960)

...eye contact is the worst. I can barely do it with people I know, let alone workmates or strangers, and certainly not with those for whom the heart doth toll quite rapidly - unless I summon up every last milligram of illusion and blast it out to give the appearance of a presence, a soul, behind these eyes. It's not often convincing, but that's all there is once the innards have imploded, gone rotten or just generally dropped away.

Despite the obvious happymaking of the above paragraphs, I am... in some fashion... getting over the most recent insanity. As explained to a friend in email the other day, my bouts of quasiromantic collapse take the vague form of catching a cold or the 'flu: there's an incubation period, then I'm completely flattened by it and unable to do anything, then it's a slow and uncomfortable climb back to relative health, and then I'm immune to infection for a period of time (usually 6-9 months). Strange that I didn't notice the parallel before. Not that it matters, of course; there's probably no vaccine for this - aside from what we administer unto ourselves...

...though having resigned myself to the fact that he's too good for me - which was a harsh but effective (and accurate) rationale - I've been somewhat altered by this iteration. There's a pervasive singularity about everything I do now; it's impossible not to notice that all my friends and familial peers (but not my brother, oddly enough) are now attached, involved, engaged, or on the very verge of matrimony. I say this only out of interest, observation and curiosity, and without the implication of background violins... but... having flown north for the weekend to celebrate a birthday and an engagement... no, I can't tell it like this.

It had been an exceptionally big fortnight and getting away from Sydney for a couple of days was a welcome break - an enormous statement for someone who generally doesn't go on holiday. Dear friends opened their home (thank you, my darlings!) and we caught up; discussed the world and life and plans for our impending 30s... I slept like a fucking LOG (as in, fallen tree trunk - you filthy-minded people), but had still not recharged fully before the second evening's celebrations. Big battery, you see. Anyway, party in swing; guests rockin' out on the dancefloor to the hired band's version of a Shakira tune and I noticed that virtually everyone was a couple. Aunts and uncles, parents, cousins, friends, strangers and other randomites all twofold gyrating... and me, exhausted by 11PM, nursing half a glass of San Pellegrino (was barely drinking, for better or for worse), lying on the couch on the back verandah in full mutual view of the dancefloor and, spontaneously - inexcusably - an horrific, horrendous wave of solitudinous resentment descended. Completely unspottable (facial repression still fully functional, thank you very much) but by god, it did not hit gently. I had the most overwhelming desire to crawl inside, find a soft, flat surface, curl up and fall asleep... the usual response: cope through a coma. So, there, I'm officially - after six years - Feeling the Single Life. Perfectly timed, now that the rest of my existence has reached a reassuring pretence of equilibrium and stability. That is, if you don't count the finances, the living arrangements or the travel plans. *sigh*

You live from self-induced crisis to self-induced crisis.
Saffron Monsoon (Julia Sawalha)
Absolutely Fabulous, "Fashion"

Truer words were never spoken in a sixteen-year-old sitcom.

Even after pumping all that paralytic venom into my own bloodstream, I'm still no less together. Moving around the city during lunch and after work and it's couples galore; a freaking pairfest, everywhere I turn. Small mercies that I'm glitching now and not six weeks earlier; had Valentine's Day* crept up on me - as it does every year - in the midst of this particular funk, and there'd be a severe sense of melancholy pervading this post and invading your monitor. I blame Entropy, of course, which is completely pointless because it fixes nothing.

So here am I; moving in circles I'd never expected to see (again?), and which itself makes another case against blaming Entropy.

Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.
Commissioner Pravin Lal
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

But the least comforting thought by far, in an electrical storm of synaptic self-destruction, is being aware of my potential for utter cluelessness in the event of finding myself in a romantic scenario. Quite simply, I would not know what to do. How does one behave? What sort of action, or interaction, is appropriate? What do couples actually do? It's been so long since my last relationship that I've forgotten the details. No, truly - what did we get up to? When we weren't at our respective jobs, or in transit, or asleep... how did we make use of our time together? (Your automatic response was predicted, and by the way, not funny.)

What is it that retains a person's interest in their significant other, even after years of togetherness? At least if you're going out somewhere, you're occupied and have a common experience to share - that seems logical enough - but being surrounded by pairs of people (or reading their blogs, for that matter) doesn't make the answer obvious. I can only assume there's talking... but what about? And when the words run dry, what then? Sitting on the couch, staring at walls? Or the TV? Or each other? I am filled with dread at the idea of awkward silence. It's enough to completely undo the recent rethinking; I'm convinced I'd be useless to the other person if ever I were to couple up again - why should I put anyone through that?

Sooooo much concern, apprehension, doubt, fear! How do I find time for the rest of my "life"? On the upside (there's an upside?), I've stopped biting my nails. Oh, and I've dropped a few kilos... which you'd expect if your appetite had completely vanished. It's hardly a fair trade-off, but it's something.

I seem to be stuck in this place of self-absorption and introspection. Going over history and discerning patterns might reassure me of my sanity, but it's not a course adjustment. I'm not sure if that's even possible, but regardless, I think perhaps it's best if my past stays in the past. No more dredging up of distant detrius through social networking sites (*points at Facebook in particular*); no more Googlestalking the loosening annals of my personal then; no more reading of blogs written by the war criminals of a mostly internal conflict; no more misguided communication with those who should, in future, only ever be referred to in the past tense. An end to contact with severed history, and an exit from this purgatory of personally pescatorial pursuits. Easier said than done, isn't it? To clear the calendars, contact lists and chats of at least the last decade is not an insignificant task (and I can't find GMail's block function), but then, necessity has a way of being difficult. Maybe when I'm better-adjusted, I can put my TARDIS in reverse... but for now, moving onwards and upwards seems - feels - right. Not that I could be accused of living in the past per sé; but perhaps if I show a smidge less interest in parts of my earlier life, it might not so closely and constantly resemble my present. I'm honestly not sure... but I'm willing to test this theory. However: I'm really only talking people and places - some patterns of my existence cannot be excised in the same manner. My life needs a relaunch but exactly where it should be is a topic undergoing much examination. Part of the answer (cause AND symptom) is known, and that's a big thing... the rest is still very much the proverbial iceberg.

For now, though, it's time to reformat a few things and hope for the best.

Until Whenever
(for values of "whenever" which equal "the future")

*yes, I know it's completely artificial. But still.

"...to think of yourself as a fraction, is already problematic."

Currently listening to: Forgive me for I did not know / 'cause I was just a boy / you were so much more than any god could ever plan / more than a woman or a man / and now I understand how much I took from you / that when everything starts breaking down, you take the pieces off the ground and show this wicked town something beautiful and new / you think that luck has left you there, but maybe there's nothing up in the sky but air / and there's no mystical design / no cosmic lover pre-assigned / there's nothing you can find that cannot be found / 'cause with all the changes you've been through, it seems the stranger's always you / alone again in some new wicked little town / and when you've got no other choice, you know you can follow my voice through the dark turns and noise of this wicked little town / it's a wicked little town / goodbye wicked little town
Wicked Little Town (Tommy Gnosis Version) / Hedwig and the Angry Inch / John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask

What, so I just *cannot* let myself be happy for any stretch of time? Pathologically anhedonic? Utterly incapable of lasting joy? What's my freaking problem, exactly? Where am I going wrong? It's a small mercy that I'm conscious of this chronic fuckdom - I think - but how could I not be?

Edina: It's like a mirrorball, spinning around inside my head! WHY WON'T IT JUST STOP?
Saffron: For most people your age it usually does.
Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and Saffron Monsoon (Julia Sawalha)
Absolutely Fabulous, "Birth"

I would really like to get off this god-forsaken horror ride and move beyond the sheer stupidity but it seems... impossible... I have as much control over circumstance as I have over this week's lottery numbers. And the more I ponder this situation and all its previous incarnations, the more it seems like a form of gambling: you have to be exceptionally lucky to break even, let alone hit the jackpot.

Likely none of my warblings are revelation to the vast majority of you, my dear and tiny readership, but this is all new to me. I have no problem with tough lessons - I just wish I wasn't always failing the class.

Being philosophical about It All is becoming more and more infuriating; what's going to happen when I run out of rational road? I nearly skidded off altogether the other day, when the realisation slammed into me with all the force, impact and detonation of a small atomic warhead: I'm not particularly gifted in any way (except maudlin); I'm chronically aloof (despite my best efforts otherwise); I am a near-total anachronism to my generation (whoever they are) and I am culturally isolated from almost everyone. The short version is: I actually have nothing to contribute or offer to - well, anyone - beyond a blogfull of self-indulgent, faux-intellectual, emotional seppuku, typed out for an audience who is as bored of reading this shit as I am of living it, over and over (and over and over, like a monkey with a miniature cymbal...). How could I possibly, realistically, logically even, expect not to be disappointed when I am, myself, the very avatar of disappointment?

Anyway, that extemely uplifting thought was enough to send me straight to the little boys' room, where I took a seat and severely angered myself back into a state of focus. The remains of the day were much smoother after that, though I'm still aching inside and out (which could be as much the weight training as anything else).

What really got me in all this, because, let's face it, I am way too crazy to be damaged in any simple or obvious fashion, was being so easily knocked down by a catastrophic sense of inferiority. I'm pretty sure I got over that, yanno, years ago.

But no.

...to think of yourself as a fraction, is already problematic.
John Cameron Mitchell
Interview on DVDFile.com (link)


I am feeling particularly worthless right now... and it seems, amazingly, all those "why-does-this-always-happen-to-me"-type questions now have the same answer from this perspective: Because I Deserve It.

Until Whenever

They'll bring him back when there's a cure for old age.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke.
You will be missed.

Squinting into the sun.

Ah, pedestals. I love them... so grand, so functional, so impossible to scale. Maybe it's a phallic thing. Maybe it's about keeping that precarious balance. Maybe it's because I'm fundamentally damaged and seem to enjoy setting impossible, defeatist tasks for myself - not so much putting someone on, but more trying to get them down. It's not in me.

I could not wipe the grin off my face yesterday, on the train home - it's insane what a single, simple comic gesture from relevant parties can do to my mood when I'm in this state - and I spent half the evening trying to shake off the ridiculously unjustifiable good mood. Then I gave up and revelled in it for the other half of the evening. Now I'm on the EXXXTREEEEME COMEDOWN. Why do I keep doing these fucking things?

DeeMacGee is a stupid, stupid man who really needs to just resign himself to the abject inevitability of his situation.

Grow the fuck up, you idiot.

Dual Colds

Currently listening to: I never understood before / I never knew what love was for / my heart was broke / my head was sore / what a feeling / tied up in ancient history / I didn't believe in destiny / I look up you're standing next to me / what a feeling / what a feeling in my soul / love burns brighter than sunshine / brighter than sunshine / let the rain fall, I don't care / I'm yours and suddenly you're mine / suddenly you're mine / and it's brighter than sunshine / I never saw it happening / I'd given up and given in / I just couldn't take the hurt again / what a feeling / I didn't have the strength to fight / suddenly you seemed so right / me and you / what a feeling / what a feeling in my soul / love burns brighter than sunshine / brighter than sunshine / let the rain fall, I don't care / I'm yours and suddenly you're mine / suddenly you're mine / and it's brighter than the sun / it's brighter than the sun / it's brighter than the sun, sunshine / love will remain a mystery but give me your hand and you will see / your heart is keeping time with me / what a feeling in my soul / love burns brighter than sunshine / it's brighter than sunshine / let the rain fall, I don't care / I'm yours and suddenly you're mine / suddenly you're mine / got a feeling in my soul / love burns brighter than sunshine / brighter than sunshine / let the rain fall, I don't care / I'm yours and suddenly you're mine / suddenly you're mine / got a feeling in my soul / love burns brighter than sunshine / brighter than sunshine / let the rain fall, I don't care / I'm yours and suddenly you're mine / suddenly you're mine / and it's brighter than sunshine.
Brighter Than Sunshine / Strange and Beautiful / Aqualung

I'm sick. Well, we knew that; what I really mean is that I have a cold. (*sniffle*) See?

Obviously, this is a physical disadvantage at a time when I really don't need to be laid up... but the fucked-up sleeping patterns (it's pushing 9AM as I write this, and I've not slept since about midday yesterday), the sniffling and the sneezing and the constant stream of wet handkerchiefs absorbing a few clearly-running streams of their own isn't the worst of it. Being viral, as I am, comes with the even more uncomfortable side-effect of being rendered emotionally vulnerable... and I could do without that at the best of times, let alone right now.

Those who know me know just how closely I keep my feelings in check - having them running rampant around my life is, quite possibly, the last thing I need (or want) and has only ever caused Sadness, but keeping the inner thermostat on low is a difficult state to maintain when you're in a self-indulgent, self-pitying funk.

Plus which, I'm on schedule (and target, sadly) for another of those infamous crushes. The need for immediate, internalised refrigeration is pronounced to say the least, now that I've worked out how to minimize the impact of developing an impossible fixation on someone who, for whatever reason, cannot/will not/does not acknowledge your existence but it's a very tricky path to navigate without the Rational Sensibilities - and that's where I am right now. They've been taken offline thanks to this bastard bloody cellular invasion. To quote one of my favourite films:

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do / I'm just crazy all for the love of you / It won't be a stylish marriage / I can't afford a carriage / but you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two

HAL 9000 (Douglas Rain), immediately after having his higher logic circuits disconnected.
2001: A Space Odyssey

Sing it, baby.
(Is it worth pointing out that HAL's failure was diagnosed as the computer equivalent of psychosis?)

Normally I wouldn't be in such a frizzy tizz about this - shit happens, and on a loop for me - but the paralysing question did occur: now that I exist primarily in a space with a much greater density of people than I'm used to... should I expect an increase in the frequency of this particular glitch in the DeeMacMatrix? Am I likely to more often run headlong into new and different people who spark that otherwise frosty firepit somewhere down near the cardial cockles? Because if that's how it's going to be... wow, this is going to be an interesting couple of years. Sydney is big enough to induce concern... London is... another story...

And yet, in spite of all this present and historic talk of free, unfettered, happy singledom (marred only by those controlled, regular plunges into Infatuation Purgatory), I don't think it's going to hold true forever. Things have changed a lot since last August - travel plans, work, ambition, finances, self-awareness, domestic circumstance, health! - but I don't think I'm done with the evolution revolution yet. The thought of being attached, being close, being intimate in various ways, is not as... offputting... as it has been. The idea of meeting someone... is... well, it's beginning to regain the appeal it hasn't truly had since my last relationship ended, nearly 6-and-a-half years ago. Not that I object to singledom; I love my personal space and would go completely postal without it (worse luck for me)... it's just... sometimes you just need a hug, yanno? And not just a friendly hug; not just a comfort hug from friends or family (and don't get me wrong, they do a great job!), but an embrace that means... I don't know what, exactly... something along the lines of sharing intimate, arm-wrapping personal space with someone who feels that they need to be right there, right then, for themselves and for the other person... and all the whateverness that sense of need or entitlement might imply.

Like a pacifist who takes up weapons trafficking in a desperate measure to provide for his family - I'm not as averse to giving or receiving arms as I used to be.
(*boom boom*)
What can I say? I'm a hug fiend.
Rawr.

Noone is more stunned by this than I, even though it's possible a few of my close personal friends are right now sitting with jaws agape at this seemingly incredible reversal of a position I've so firmly held since 2001. These are strange and complicated days for DeeMacGee, and this is a strange and complicated post for his readership. If you've made it this far, I thank you.

Until Whenever

Pasture. Now.

Iggy Pop ruins a perfectly good song at a perfectly inappropriate moment. Seriously, shouldn't he be dead by now? And when did he get a gut?

"I'm gonna live forever!"

Christ, I LOLed.

I love the New Media...

...'cause you can use Daft Punk to make brilliant stuff like this:



and this:

I've got the Baileys, but I'm fresh out of everything else...

Memes are easily stolen.

Yet another from Todd in Hell's Kitchen:

Your Mind is Blue

Of all the mind types, yours is the most mellow. You tend to be in a meditative state most of the time. You don't try to think away your troubles. Your thoughts are realistic, fresh, and honest. You truly see things as how they are. You tend to spend a lot of time thinking about your friends, your surroundings, and your life.

What Color Is Your Mind?

Ever-decreasing social circles.

You know what's really scary? Going on a Facebook stalk and finding out that the people you were in high school with, the people you went to Uni with and some of the people you used to work with are all directly linked to one other.

If Facebook had had the same penetration a few years ago as it does now, I would be firmly trapped in a deep, dark and fatally sticky web of uncomfortable social awkwardness. It seems timing and chance have been well on my side in the last decade-plus since graduating... I'm very impressed by the distinct lack of coincidental run-ins with my Past, though I imagine luck will run out at some point. Sydney's not all that big, which makes it inevitable (Mister Anderson).

The last happen-upon was about a month ago, but it was one of those people you'd happily live without seeing if they were still likely to project the same sort of rampaging cµntdom now as they were quite willing to back then. Why would I even stop to greet them, anyway? Our only exchanges involved the word "faggot" and a fair bit of contemptuous snarling... what now? Would they gloat about their accurate gaydar? Feign interest in my professional accomplishments since our parting of ways? Would they have invited me to join them in that mid-city sandwich bar? Somehow, I doubt it... and I'm pretty bloody certain of my own nil-rated concern factor about what (or whom) they've been doing in the last hundred-or-so moons. Shocked disbelief at the (confirmed) rumours of sproglet is probably all I can muster right now.

I have no real links to my educational past; it has been slowly relegated unto the darker pages of (t)history's book blog. On some level I feel better for it - I'd rather not be reminded of the specifics of the worst six years of my life - a horrible period that launched a series of cycles I'm still, even now, trying to unwind - and yet occasionally, there's a fundamentally damaged nostalgia attached to this endless list of names and faces with whom I spent a particularly influential (for better or for worse) time. Oh, my temporal fetish for the 1990s probably has something to do with it... but even with all the inherent complexity and psychological brutality of the era, it still - somehow - seems simpler than Now, when really... it wasn't. It was traumatic and oppressive and traitorous and I could easily go until Judgement Day (whenever that is) without talking to 99% of my old schoolmates. There are very, very, very few I'd choose to interact with these days... I've developed a preference for watching them from a comfortable, digital distance... but regardless of the conceptual geography, the past is a scab I can't help but pick. It's not altogether sucky, but sometimes it's not worth trying to satisfy the curiosity. That is an unstable middle ground; it's like the proverbial car crash where you can't look, but you can't look away, because in this case - egotistically or otherwise - either way, you're looking at yourself.

And we all know what happens when you look into the abyss.

Until Whenever

The chills that you spill up my back...

Whilst I'm still uncomfortable with the ongoing degeneration of Mardi Gras from all-out spangled, glittery fabulousness to pissweak political bitchslapping, for those who care:

Happy Mardi Gras!