My Room Again and Newer

(NOTE: This post is a loose sequel to a previous post which can be found here)

I'm in my room again. In here, just like always, brooding away and chewing pens. Biting down hard. I'm sitting at a desk now – my desk apparently – my parents chucked it in the moving van with all my other stuff from Adelaide and said, “you love desks don't ya mate? How about this one then?” I'd never seen the thing before in my life, but Rolly, Dosh, and Jodger my mittens, this thing is LARGE. It's about two metres long – yeah let's go with that – and a metre wide and while one half is supported by the heavy-yet-flimsy wooden board that some more adventurous types would term a 'leg', the other side is propped up by one of my big speakers which is almost the same height as the leg, (just a bit taller) and that height is made up on the leg's side by a few bricks that I stole out of the back yard. I'm going to keep those bricks when we move out, because I don't give a fuck what anyone says. I am a lone ranger. Revolution. etc. etc.

On top of the mighty table is all the electrical equipment I own in the world (take note, potential burglars) including my newly purchased 2TB external hard drive... last Monday I went on a bit of a spending spree which was facilitated by the finalisation of my dealings with former boss and professional fuckhead Nathan Walker... he owed me five-hundred and fifty wing-wangs, and when those wing-wangs came, oh how the money did fly. New skateboard – over by the wall. New kicks – Puma Suedes. (nowhere other than the internet could I find any Puma Clydes which SUCKS because the pair I bought about three and a half years ago now are still the most amazing pair of shoes I have ever owned) And the hard drive... it's quickly filling up with movies now... let's see if we can't do some real damage to this internet quota here lads – I'm not even sure if there's a limit?

To my right is a letter from my grandma with a few of her short stories on it, sent at my request, and also a letter from the first French girl I ever kissed, back in the original envelope with the words “keep your old love letters, throw away old bank statements” scrawled vertically down the side... I know I said it in the last one, but I'll say it again now, you have to hold on. Hold on. Hold on... A reading list hangs next to it with my hopeful conquests of the next six months including some Stewart Lee, Charles Bukowski, Mark Twain, Kafka, and a self-help book that Rich has recommended called 'Why People Fail'... Because failing, that's not what you want is it? (rhetorical question; easy one there, nothing too strenuous) An angry note to myself – “ONLY ON SUNDAY” – sits right in front of me, glaring down from the wall above my laptop screen. Burning a hole in my retina, it will remain there until I learn... what I need to learn, is for only me to know. I feel lame even saying that it's there without being prepared to come clean about why yet... but I guess that's just part of the process... it will come, once I've learnt. As a now completely insane person once said to me in once of his last glimpses of brilliance before he slipped off the edge and fell down into the lonely recesses of his own mind, “he needs to learn”. He was right... I really do.

To my right, and behind me, each item of furniture is slowly settling into place; a millimetre here, a creaking floorboard there, each leg or stand or corner slowly creating a groove in the wooden floor, and making sure that whenever it is all removed – hopefully not for a long time yet – the hardwood will show up lighter in the places it once sat. I love my furniture, emblazoned as it is with bright, meaningless stickers from a long-forgotten childhood. I don't remember putting any of them there, but I know it was me... it's basically all I used to do. There's some there from the Navy, from ABC Radio, from McDonalds, from random lollies and showbags from the Adelaide Show, National Geographic, caricatures of Darren Lehman and Adam Gilchrist of the Australian Cricket Team in the mid to late nineties, and my favourite, 'My Dog is Registered Because I Care <3'. (Note: I do not, nor have I ever, owned a dog – that's why it's funny, yeah?) If I were over-sentimental, I would tell you that each one of these stickers tells a story of a fond time that I can treasure in the back of my heart. I'd say something soft like "they make me smile, breathe, sigh, and do happy things with my hair..." and trail off with an ellipsis... ew, gross. That would be complete bullshit, they're just stickers, and they bear no meaning other than that they are there now, and I'm pretty sure they look fucking dope... Giddy Goanna; the guy is a straight up badass.

My bed behind me has remained empty but for my lonely, increasingly hairy body for the last few weeks it has been here, and I know a pretty girl who will be very happy to read that should she chance upon this particular entry... but I don't think I'll tell her about it directly. Leave small presents here and there, that's the best way I think. Little treats, little surprises, scattered about the world for those inquisitive enough to find them. This is her present, all the rest of you will have to wait for yours.

Strewn around the floor I've still got clothes... still, god damn it – even with drawers and cupboards my clothes end up catching bread-crumbs on the floor... holy fuck yesterday I ate some cereal with ants in it. Not a funny story there, just the truth, which I hope you can all appreciate and take something away from. It happened because Desh – one half of the famed BroDesh collective, so named by me and me alone, that is comprised of my two housemates – was drunk and whatever else on Saturday morning, and smashed a whole bunch of shit up in the kitchen. My cereal was on the floor when I came home and I lazily didn't pick it up; instead I just stood laughing in eye-rolling disbelief at the scene before me, and then went to bed. Later on when I went to have a bowl of cereal yesterday, I poured the fruity stuff onto my Weetbix and ants came out with it... not heaps of ants, but enough to be worried about you know? Like maybe five per spoonful. So I tried to wash them out with water first, and then sieve the cereal... but that was an idea born of desperation which proved as utterly futile at the time as it looks right now in writing. In the end, I resigned to eating the ants with milk and cereal together – just as god intended – and as my stomach filled with acetic acid, I knew I would be retelling this with what really is an unhealthy lack of embarrassment or restraint, very, very soon.

The plan for the future you ask? Well first I'm going to the toilet, and then I'm gonna grab some incense and light that shit up next to my half-open window, and put on the kettle for another cup of tea. That's about as far as I've thought it through to be honest – my days of late are spent between silent meditation and furious passion over one or another of life's meaningless details... and it's so perfect it makes me want to take my head and smash it into a wall. That doesn't make sense does it? Of course not, what ever does.

Peace, Taco.

Insecure Ramblings of the Fearfully Conscious Mind

I am walking down the road wearing clothes, experiencing the weather, and thinking about nothing in particular. I am always reliably secure in my thoughts and free of worry when I am alone, and alone I am right now. Two guys turn around the corner in the middle distance – fifty metres – and they're walking towards me. The sidewalk is narrow, just wide enough for two people to walk abreast, although not comfortably. It is always the way on these sorts of narrow sidewalks that groups of three are awkwardly split into two walking abreast, and one walking in front or behind, straining to listen and participate in the conversation of the other two. “These are treacherous walkways”, are the words that I think to myself as the two strangers pace towards me, and I towards them. Strange words, they are odd, and so I trace over them several times in my mind. “These are treacherous walkways”, “treacherous walkways be these”.

A car whizzes past on my right from behind me, and swishes off into the distance, stopping abruptly at the spoon-drain that marks the intersection of the road the two guys just turned off of – they are getting closer now. Almost within earshot. The one on my left is talking, with his left hand – the one closest to his partner – gesturing slowly and making circles in the space in front of them. Who are they, what are they talking about? What do they do here and why this street? Why now? They both look up together, simultaneously, and spot me as I had spotted them just before. The tone of the speaker dips slightly as they approach me, surely an unconscious reflex, but I wonder to myself though, what is it that they were talking about, and why am I not permitted to listen? Even by accident, even by complete chance. Surely their conversation is not relevant to me. Surely not? Surely. Surely.

I furtively throw my gaze up from the pavement for one last time before we pass and resume our previous roles of complete strangers – never having met, or even exchanged pleasantries. Their gazes haunt me though, as the distance between our backs grows at the same rate as before. My walk speeds up slightly, and my brain races along with the determined stride of my feet that carry my along the thin footpath. What if they were talking about me? They had every opportunity to look me up and down as soon as they rounded the corner; as soon as I could judge them, so they could judge me in turn. What anomaly could be so obvious in my appearance that they would have discussed it at length, before secretively hushing their judgement as we crossed paths? What did they see? What is wrong with my clothes? My face? My hair or the way that I walk? Why do they hate me, these strangers, two men who I have never met?

Maybe their stares were ones of pity, or sadness, as they saw my pathetic figure approaching them, alone and depressed, with my hands hanging down my sides like limp appendages, swinging without purpose. Maybe they could see in me what I have not yet identified myself, some awful predisposition to failure, or unhappiness. They could tell more about me from one quick glance, than I could possibly have discovered in all my life, after all my wanderings, and searchings, and introspective thoughts. Maybe that is the very reason they could see it... because I have searched so long for imperfections within myself that the truth of my complete inadequacy has eluded me... glaringly obvious as it is, sitting right in front of my nose. I think these thoughts, and I trace them over several times in my mind. “Complete inadequacy”, “obvious, complete inadequacy”.

I think of turning around. I twist my head. They are far behind me... almost far enough to shout? To call out to them? “WHAT IS IT? WHAT DID YOU SEE?” I consider screaming, for a second, consider running, consider finding out. But it would be no use. I march on, slowly rationalizing things and coming back to myself. Of course they didn't see anything, they were just two people, the same sort of people as me. They were talking to eachother, as friends often do, and they maybe glanced up at me as we passed and saw some menace in my eyes. Some judgement that maybe provoked fear in the scared corners of their hearts as well... maybe not, but they surely weren't judging me. I make these things up, these frantic, fretfully insecure worryings... and as I walk down the road, I realize this, and laugh to myself. “They were just the same as me, repeat it Taco.” I say that to myself as I walk on, slowing down slightly and again becoming comfortable. “Everyone is just the same as me.”

Peace, Taco.

Socks: History's Greatest Monster

(NOTE: This post was originally written for The Aristocrat comedy blog and can be found here)

Socks; what a racket to get into. Those little, cotton foot-pouches that stand between your skin and the abrasive inside of a shoe. You can wear them high – even up to your knee with rainbow coloured hipster-stripes. You can wear them low – those little ballet affairs that barely cover the heel. You can wear them just above your ankle, over the calf, hell wear them on your fucking ears right? YEAH! Socks people, what a wonder of modern comfort. What a mainstay of Western sophistication. Indispensable and Priceless; socks are the only thing that separate us from the beasts. Without socks, where would we be right? WRONG.

You are being oppressed.

No one invented the sock – at least no one that I can find on Wikipedia – which is annoying, because the lack of a definite target for the lynching that is sure to ensue after this vitriolic piece of hate-speech reaches the masses is, at best, worrying. I know for a fact my readership consists mainly of crowbar-wielding, high-blood-pressure knife enthusiasts, and I like to give you all what you want. Scapegoats, we hunt them by the dozen. But NO! No traceable lineage for the inventor of this idol of capitalist oppression exists for us to direct our rage towards, but come with me, my people, and we will find our villain.

Socks are shit. I buy about fifty of the fucking things a year. (ok, probably fifty individual socks, so maybe twenty-five pairs... and to be fair even that is an exaggeration, but fuck off who's counting?) No sooner do I get them home from whichever store was in my line of sight when I realized that my shoes were carving flesh-holes out of the bottoms of my feet, than they start to fall apart. Socks aren't built to last guys, they're not long term investments... and yet they cost SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY. Why do you think homeless people spend all their time sitting down, mournfully propped up against shop-fronts on busy metropolitan streets? Is it because they are so weak from lack of energy, and the depression at their sorry situation pervades their souls so completely that they cannot bring themselves to fight against gravity for another second? NO! WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?... the homeless are no stupid few, they are some resourceful fuckers. They refuse to walk, to stand, or even use their feet, because they KNOW that as soon as you put pressure on your three-dollar cotton bonds, they'll wear through and you'll be back in the line at target, forking out another five dollars for a piece of material barely worth half as many cents.

I bought some new socks the other day. “Why did you buy socks Taco? What's the deal with that? You sit here and rail against the capitalist oppression of superfluous pedalian apparel (pedalian, it's an adjective, it means foot. LOOK IT UP!) but you can't even give us a solution? WHAT KIND OF REVOLUTIONARY ARE YOU?” I didn't know when I bought them; the lightning bolt was yet to strike me, but strike it did, and from the ground up too – like a huge mass of electrons being discharged from the surface of the earth and dispersing into the atmosphere. (oooooooh clever) I have it people, it was all so simple.

Why wear socks, which always, always, ALWAYS fucking break or smell or get lost and then you only have one left and your housemate goes “hey dude why are there all these odd socks under the couch in the living room” and you say, “THAT'S NOT EVEN MY SOCK DUDE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”... Why let that happen? When there is a perfectly accessible and reasonable substitute sitting just under our noses. I'll say it once, and only once, and you can all try it for yourselves. Baby Powder.

Just let that sink in for a second. Allow yourselves to be swept up and carried off on the wave of understanding. The tide of knowledge. The inevitable winds of change... they blow, my friends, and the blow for us. Why should we pay fucking eighty dollars a year for socks that will inevitably frustrate and infuriate us when they are lost, will become thin and pathetic after two washes, and will smell like SHIT, when you can just sprinkle a little baby powder inside your shoes before you chuck them on every day? I'm not saying it's perfect, but I'm going to give it a shot. An honest shot. No revolution was won in a day, comrades... I'm willing to take the plunge.

If any of you are still loyal to your precious foot-gloves, then by all means, keep beating your heads against the steel girder of planned-obsolescence and pay, pay, pay to the overpriced overlords that control our society's sock supply. But if you, like me, and so many others before us, wish to affect REAL, TANGIBLE, PALPABLE CHANGE IN THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE... then throw away your socks today. Go out and buy some Johnson and Johnson baby powder, and begin your life anew. And to make up for the sock's other use, guys... stop being a lonely weirdo and do it into an empty bag of chips like the rest of us.

Peace, Taco.

A Letter to Ted Danson

Preface: If you don't know who Ted Danson is, he was the star of the late 90s sitcom 'Becker'. Fucking brilliant show, and WAY under appreciated. Watch it. Watch it now.

Hello mister Danson. Should I have capitalized 'mister' there? I'm not sure, these formalities often escape me but know now that if the convention in this case is, in fact, to capitalize the honorific before your name, esteemed sir, then I have not diverged from it in spite or out of some pathetic attempt to belittle you. The truth is – the whole, complete, unadulterated, bare, slippery truth – is that you fucking rock. Ted Danson, you are fucking dope.

I decided to write this email a few days ago while talking to my friend on the phone (yeah sorry I'll drop the grandiose tone now – let's rap Ted. Let's talk like grown ups). So yeah, I was on the phone to my friend and we were talking you know blah blah blah... we're in our early twenties so the conversation spanned a wide range of topics from girls, drinking, drugs, and the time we broke into a construction site and smoked a spliff on top of the crane after scaling it from the outside... we're basically living the renaissance here Teddy, and it's great. But amid the lacklustre conversation and tired youthful cliches one recollection strangely sprung into my mind for no reason I can accurately pin point. I will now recount what I told my friend that lazy afternoon – it's not that interesting... in fact it's really one of the least interesting stories you'll ever receive as a piece of fan mail. But it's fan mail nonetheless, and while I'm sure the days of Becker have long since faded from your memory, I hope it will bring you some fleeting happiness to know that that show about the angry doctor from Brooklyn still captivates people ten years after it's termination.

So about eighteen months ago – Easter weekend two-thousand and eleven – I was in what might fairly be termed a 'downward spiral'. I was spiralling, Tedford, spiralling in a direction whose mean trajectory was, more or less, vertically downward. I had recently committed several various crimes of petty vandalism, each one more inventively stupid than the last, and was facing quite a serious charge of 'illegal interference' for one of those crimes. Basically I opened the back of this guy's ute and smashed a bunch of stuff that was sitting in the back... but that's neither here or there is it... suffice to say I was in a pretty bad place. At the start of the Easter weekend – the day before Good Friday – my family had gone away and left the house to me and I, in my drug-addled, oblivious state, took this as a sign that I was in for four days of unbridled partying with friends upon friends upon friends staying at my house and spending time with me. It turns out though, that people don't really want to hang out with some guy who is only interested in getting drunk, taking heaps of drugs and going into the night breaking shit... I was that guy, and I was pretty fucking boring.

So on Easter Sunday, after I'd been fired from my job on Saturday night for not turning up (I showed up for my 9pm shift at 9am... I was pretty fucked -chuckle-) and after I'd realized that no one really wanted to party with me I went round to a friends place and decided to take acid. I'd taken acid before, but this time it was some special type of acid that lasts thirty-six hours. No joke, the shit actually hijacks your mind for a whole day and a half, and man... that shit lasted. It was insane. I took it at 7pm Sunday evening, and didn't end up getting to bed until 2am Tuesday, the stuff had legs. It was like my brain was the hard drive of a computer – an old computer whose only function was to calculate pocket change and use it to by cheap wine – and that hard drive had been thrown into a swimming pool with an electronic magnet at the bottom, simultaneously frying the circuitry of the thing with water and wiping every piece of information off it with the magnet. The magnet... god damn it... my brain, my precious, fragile brain. My mind. The thing that I pride myself on more than anything else is that I am sharp. I can think. Maybe I'm wrong to pride myself on that, or maybe a little arrogant, but I do nonetheless; I can't help my opinions of myself any more than you can help that you love cheese, or coffee, or a nice glass of scotch. It's just an opinion.

For this whole day I honestly believed that I was going to have to re-learn ever aspect of my life – I thought that I had broken my brain, cracked it in half and irreparably splintered myself away from sanity and down into the abyss of floundering idiocy. It was the scariest day of my life, and I remember feeling completely alone, and completely worthless. My family were away in our holiday home, and I had welcomed their leaving thinking that the hordes of friends I somehow believed I had would swarm into my house and keep me company all weekend, but it was not the case. I realized that, in my selfishness I had pushed everyone away and not even realized what I was doing, and then I had taken this drug, this insanely powerful drug, and forever crippled myself and rendered my life useless. Then I started watching episodes of Becker on my laptop.

I watched all day, all the way through season one and two, and then I think I skipped a few seasons I'm not really sure, but I remember getting to the series of episodes somewhere in one of the later seasons that started with Becker sitting at a bar recounting his problems to an indifferent bartender, and moaning about how he doesn't have anyone in his life to support him. It seemed to mirror my situation exactly – John Becker, a lonely, bitter man oblivious to those around him who care about him and support him every day. Then there was the episode with Jake's hot new girlfriend where Becker thinks she's hitting on him and right up until the point when she reveals she just wants to be friends it coaxes the audience into thinking John was going to sleep with her. Will he betray his friend? Will he do the right thing? The episode where he and Margaret are attracted to eachother, or not attracted, but maybe... they can't decide whether they are, even if they know they don't want to be together... I'm ranting now, I know it, but I'm trying to remember each episode without going onto wikipedia and refreshing my memory. Maybe it was because I was on hallucinogenic drugs, but each episode seemed more poignant than the last, and as each story wrapped up and laid one of John's anxieties to rest, one part of my frightened mind was subdued as well.

It is possible that the effects of the drugs gave the show a strange gloss of meaning that was intended in writing or filming, or that is, in actuality, not there at all, but it doesn't matter to me. That day changed my life, for many other reasons not related to Becker, or you, Ted Danson, or anything you have ever heard of... it just did. But I thought you might be interested to know about a day in the life of some blandly eccentric, twenty-one year old writer from the dull town of Adelaide, South Australia and read with vague amusement of the time he took acid and watched your show. That really was a great show man. Becker was such a nice dude, and he really cared about his patients and what he was doing... he just had no patience for idiots. God damn it I loved that show haha...

That's pretty much all from me I think, if you end up reading this, I don't need a massive response and I'm sure you don't have time to write one... but just any acknowledgement would be amazing. How about we play it like this. If you read all the way down to here, then reply with the topic line 'A Fan Letter to Taco, from Ted Danson'. That's me, by the way. Taco.

Have a good one Teddy. Also I love bored to death. Cheers I've never seen, although I hear it was quite good.

Peace, Taco.

Comedy Brick Wall

I have always viewed the tendency of our over-sentimental Facebook generation to preface comments on current feelings with the qualifier 'sometimes' as pointless and evasive. Sentences like “sometimes it hurts too much to think”, or “sometimes you miss them and you don't even know why”, or “sometimes I masturbate to people's tumblr feeds” are perfectly normal declarations, obscured by the dirty word 'sometimes' which dilutes their power and sullies their meaning. I was tempted to commit this foul sin just now, as I started to write this blog, but instead decided to comment on it which, as far as I have thought in my own silly mind, counts as not doing it. The following are not emotions that happen 'sometimes', no matter what qualifiers I slap onto my sentences out of habit and laziness; the following are things which I am feeling right now.

I am currently finding it hard to muster up the courage (courage really isn't the right word here... maybe strength? Or 'emotional resources'? Something something something, you get the point) to write more comedy and perform stuff, or work on stuff, or whatever I need to do. I'm just finding it hard right now is what I'm saying. It's weird, I know I can do well on stage because I've done so before, and I've had good gigs on nights that other comedians have done poorly – ie. it wasn't just because of a good crowd that my best gigs have happened. But lately I've been dying a lot more... well not dying per se, just not doing well... getting a few laughs here and there but not loads and I'm having a fucking hard time figuring out why that is.

I have been told by a few people that I need to write some self-deprecating material and open with it so that I can get the audience on side and then have license to get angry and rant about whatever else I want to rant about. I've even had a go at writing some stuff like that, but the first crack I had at it led to my worst gig ever, and the material ended up having the opposite effect to what I had desired – almost making me come off a bit conceited and arrogant. God damn it. GOD DAMN IT. How does this stuff work? Sometimes (FUCK! there it is – I'll leave it in a a punishment, come on Tuck, you can do better) I feel like I want to just stop doing the whole comedy thing and retreat behind the shield of approval that is the written word. Behind my keyboard no one can really harm me and if my sentiments or attempts at humour fall flat, no one is around to be silent and stare up sympathetically. It's safe. Secure. Easy. Tame.

But that's exactly why I need to NOT stay back here in safety, because it is good to do one thing every day that scares you. Well I don't have gigs every day, but maybe if I scare myself two or three times a week then I'll meet enough of the quota... I don't get that nervous before gigs any more – not the regular gigs that I've been doing anyway – because they are just that, regular gigs. But maybe I should be getting more stressed out before gigs... I certainly haven't had a really good one in a while (notwithstanding the aristocrats night at Station 59 where I wasn't doing material) so maybe I should be feeling a little concerned that people may begin to see me in a negative light if I keep going this way. These are rantings of a paranoid mind, I know that even as I type them, but I can't help feeling stressed. Comedy is hard... fucking hard... I'm hitting a wall here people, and I don't know how to make it work again.

Frustrated. Scared. Paranoid. Feeling alone.

Peace, Taco.

Bad Post Turned Worse

I feel like my room is this cocoon; I'm going to be in here for a while. I know that I have entered a stage in my life that will be full of frenzied, hurried activity – but activity that is unseen and unheard of. This room inside my house in Richmond acts like a kind of incubator – a place where I can go and mill about on my own, doing whatever it is that I need to do on this day and that night. I just need to make sure that I maintain focussed, so that I don't fall into the tempting routine of doing nothing. I know that everything I need to get where I want to with comedy and writing is here now, I don't need to go anywhere or have any experiences for a while, I just need to sit and work. To steel my mind and practice my craft.

Interestingly enough folks – and as a bit of a side-note – as I was writing that last paragraph, I realized that I won't much like this piece of writing when I'm finished. About halfway through that third sentence there, it dawned on me that what I was writing was complete wank... I managed to pull it back a little there at the end, after realizing that the words being tapped onto the page were boring and pre-emptively self-congratulatory (oooooooooh look! Hyphens!) but I pushed on didn't I? Because that's just what you have to do sometimes. Sometimes, you have to admit that what you are doing is shit. You put it up on your blog, and leave it there for someone to possibly find one day when you're rich and famous and everyone thinks you're brilliant, so that the intrepid fan who has managed to dig it up can go, “OOOH LOOKIT EVERYONE, DIDN'T HAVE HAVE A HARD TIME OF IT WHEN HE WAS YOUNGER... LEARNIN' ABOUT WRITIN' AND ALL THAT”.

Ok... now I can see this post is in some serious trouble.

I imagined that last quote to be spoken in an English accent – I don't know what type of English accent, because I don't know the names for them all... but some English accent, figure it out for yourselves.

I think I'm going to stop... now... not before any damage has been done – read that second paragraph again, this thing is a god damn train wreck. But at least before I take up any more of your time, patient, persistent reader. Thank you for coming on that journey with me. If you're reading this any time longer than a few months after it was posted, then can you please tell me, because I'd love to know what reason you could possibly have for digging so far into my history and finding this five-hundred-word turd on a page...

Oh, and if I'm famous and have heaps of money and everything, then congratulate me on that too.

Peace, Taco.

A Bad Day Turned Good

This blogging thing seems to be going in cycles and I've decided to stop trying to force it so much and just let it happen. That's not to say that I won't be pushing myself to write whenever I have a free moment – hell yes I'm going to be writing as much as possible. Just that if I've just had a few good weeks of solid output, I can accept maybe that my brain might need some time to catch up. I CAN'T KEEP UP MY RED-HOT, FULL-TILT, MAXIMUM PACE ALL THE TIME!!! That was a Red Dwarf quote, for those of you playing at home.

So today has been a great day so far, and it only promises to get better. If we are going by the conventional 'midnight-to-midnight' day system – and for the purposes of this recap I think we just may – then the day started rather poorly with me beginning my shift at Yah Yah's. Yah Yah's is a great place to work; it's fucking brilliant actually, but starting work is never any good... although, being as it was that my shift started at midnight exactly, and that I had realistically already started working by 11:55pm, it could be said that the worst part of my shirt – the dreading anticipation of a night's labour – was already over by the time the thirteenth of October, twenty-twelve was upon us. I only worked until three because I had to give a tour this morning at 10:30am, which required a 9am alarm and it seemed the day was going to be one feral shit-storm from the get-go, but I think all that sad, dejected moping about how much my Saturday was going to suck has ended up turning things on their head.

So I got home at three thirty to my housemates (and OH what mates they are) parting hearty in the lounge room with thudding house music and deep grooves aplenty. I bought a pack of Doritos (Cheese Supreme you FUCK what else?) on the way home with five dong I found on the floor at work and skated down the big hill. Yes, yes and yes. The scenes I return home to after work every weekend are inspiring to say the least. This is the house I always wanted to live in from ages eighteen to twenty – a natural after-party destination that any self-respecting head would want to return to after the din of the dancefloor dies down. It is precisely because of my adolescent desire for such a place that I never was able to create one in those days, and the greatest comic irony of the whole thing is now that I live in the house of my naïve, popularity-obsessed self's dreams, I don't so much care about the parties that happen here. I'm willing to join in for a while, maybe suck down a few puffs of the spliff in circulation, but before long I'm in bed, and sleeping while the walls continue to shake.

I did my tour – woke up at nine, pickups in town from ten, tour until one, and made eighty cash units from the seven people on my tour, although I did forget to take the photo of the group (god DAMN it I keep forgetting that shit) so I'm looking at a thirty-dollar pay-in for that one. 'E neva lerns, duz e'? Nope. Also ran into an old friend from way back in Adelaide – Dom the Drummer from Brighton. He picked me out of the lineup at Aldi and by the sounds of it he's doing the do just like everyone else is over here in Melbourne; tearing shit up and screaming down the dangerous road. Numbers were exchanged and I'm sure we'll be seeing much more of olde Dominic from now on.

Back at home by one-thirty and in bed watching season two of Community with commentaries by two, and now I'm up at five thirty after a quick chat to Peter Pan of Neverland fame about how he's striking his demons back with bamboo poles and a head of positivity... things are looking up. Tonight I'm doing a spot at Station 59 for the late show, and then work, which somehow seems a lot less ominous after last night's shift and the catharsis of writing this post. Everything is so much simpler when it's laid out in simple terms doncharekkin? Yes, is the answer we were looking for there. Yes people. Just yes.

Peace, Taco.

A Message For You

When is it time to let go?

In recent years (like pretty much, this one) I have gained a deep respect and admiration for my mother for allowing me to do what I did in the years after I finished school. I won't bore you with the OUTRAGEOUSLY INTERESTING details, but I definitely took life by the horns. (note: replace 'life by the horns' with 'quite a lot of drugs') I was eighteen, and then nineteen, and then even twenty for a while, and the train kept speeding up and gaining momentum, and from the outside it must have looked pretty out of control. I always knew I was going to be fine, but I guess I can only say that confidently now having fairly emerged from the clouded mist of loud, thumping bass music and Monday morning blood-vomit... I always knew I was going to be fine – that's what everyone says when they reach the other side.

So for those three-ish years of steadily increasing drinking and two, three, four day benders, my mum (and my dad too, but really he was always chillin' so my mum mostly) was probably scared shitless that her son was going to end up a defective homeless man, scrounging through the gutters of some third-world slum, trying to find algae to cook into a stew... and I guess that fear was well justified. The party lifestyle is an alluring temptress, and there is a very real chance for anyone who is drawn in by it to come out the other side ravaged and broken, their life withered away to nothing. That's why I have such admiration for the courage that I now recognize in the way that she allowed me to go off and do my own thing for those first years of semi-adulthood and independence. If she had reigned me in and tried to stifle me – and doubtless she could have, and would have been acting only out of love – I probably would have rejected those attempts and no doubt run further away. She didn't though, she let me do what I had to do, and now I'm better for it. Good on YOU mum. Well done. Champion effort; here is your first-prize colouring in book.

Thing is though, how far do you let them slip? How long would it have been before ol' mum dawgz had said 'enough' (and she would have said it just like that too... “WOMEN” – amirite?) and told me that I had gone too far. We all know the saying, 'if you love them, let them go'. The implication there, is that if they love you back, then they'll return after realizing themselves the error of their ways, and that that self-induced revelation will be far more lasting and profound than anything that can be taught or imparted second-hand. Well I assume there would have been a point – and maybe I was audacious/stupid/lucky/wary enough to just tickle that point myself in my most self-destructive days, but my exploits in the field of drugs and alcohol really never even approached the levels of those around me. Those for whom drugs were not just simply a recreation, but an escape. Those who possessed an incurable itch which could be momentarily scratched by the familiar, overpowering calm of one or another addictive substance... from what I'm told it's a bleak world out there. I could never see it, but for those who can, I'm told any escape will do.

So they keep falling, or maybe driving themselves downwards. Burning a trail down and down and down into the abyss, happy to be rid of the light and the brutal pains of a world they are increasingly unable to relate to. To understand. What a luxury. I am only assuming here based either on my own extrapolations, or careful observations from half remembered weekends – only those who have crossed over the edge fully understand what is on the other side, but by that time most if not all could not care less about spreading the word. The edge is not a goal to shoot for. This is not a field trip, you can't just stare in, you fall all at once, and you fall all the way.

And this person who keeps pressing on, passing the point of no return, only to have others around them revise that point, and revise it again and again... a glimmer of hope, a moment of possibility. They give up all hope, only to have hope restored to them, almost against their will... and then dashed again. And again and again and again. You think I'm talking about a specific person here, but I'm not. This story is a generic one, fit to be told in generalities. The people who are reading this story are not living it, and those living it are definitely not reading. Not this. Not now. But what would a mother do for this person? This being who admits themselves to being without hope, and has all but consigned themselves to oblivion. What can a mother do? Or a brother? Or a friend? Can we let them keep falling, knowing that they don't even want to be picked back up? Is that a grave injustice? Or are there some who should be allowed to fade away, just as they have always wanted... these are the most painful thoughts my friends, the decisions that no one should ever have to make.

I've tried searching out the blameworthy parties. Doctors. Teachers. Parents. Friends. The government. The clubs. The party people. The scene. The dealer who sold that first bag of weed – marijuana: the gateway drug. The drugs themselves. Some other force, surely something outside of us can carry the blame. God? The Devil? No one is there. No one is listening. No one is going to answer... I don't know what to do anymore... and how selfish of me to make this about myself, I'm not even living it. I'm safe in my perched position, far far away from the edge. Never looking down.

All I have left to say is that if you can hold on, and even the smallest part of you wants to, then please do. We don't want to lose you. Not now, not yet, not ever. I could never hold someone responsible for giving up when their task seems too hard, there is no blame to be found there either. I wish I could do it for you, but I can't... but if you can hold on...

Don't do it. I love you.

Peace, Taco.