I'm Going to get Drunk

I can't fucking wait until tomorrow night. I always put too much stock in these planned evenings, but I guess that's just the way I operate. I'm a schemer. I like to plan things. I like to be in control? Maybe... that could be taking things a little too far. Stop trying to psychoanalyze yourself Tugzy. Chill the fuck out.

I've got work tonight at midnight, as P.U., but this Friday shift doesn't look like being the normal burning drudgery that I wade through every regular weekend because the promise of a whole Saturday of drinking and immorally festive behaviour is looming, bright and hopeful in the distance. Goon is the drink, my friends, and two-dollar-fifty bottles of bitter Chardonnay sit waiting for my thirsty stomach on the shelves of Aldi just one block down Victoria Street. My man Samson Benger is down from Adelaide in one of the rarest random-chance encounters that I have experienced in a long time – the kid has come down for a once-in-a-blue-moon weekend away on the very same weekend that I choose to take my first Saturday off since moving to Melbourne. Stars are aligning and wolves can clearly be heard howling behind the mountains.

The worn-out deck of playing cards that adorn my desk is currently fourty-seven out of fifty-two cards finished, and tomorrow the fifth-last card will be written off. I don't even know how I'm going to contain my excitement after knocking-off of work at five-thirty am... I'm going to have to devise some way of getting to bed. I'll rig a system of pipes up to a bottle of chloroform and hang them from the roof of my bedroom so that a fine mist of knock-out gas will come down in a violent shroud and engulf me bodily upon my return home this morning. I will pay someone to sleeper-hold me when I walk in the door. I'll buy a cryogenic sleep-pod and power it with human tears. I'll... I'll... FUCK! I'm way too excited.

Do you know what it's like working less than twenty hours a week and going to comedy five nights a week to watch people do the thing that you love, and learn from them, and two or three of those five nights you get to do that thing too? Do you know what it's like to spend the majority of daylight hours in any given week writing jokes and stories, and reading brilliant books and browsing facebook and the internet and re-watching old Simpsons episodes? Do you have any fucking idea how brilliant this shit is? But I don't party enough... I really don't... somehow I've managed to trick myself into believing that what I do when I'm not earning money can still be fairly classified as work, and so now that I have given myself this rare opportunity to really get rowdy, I'm so over-ready for the occasion that there is a reasonable chance I'll spoil it by passing out at ten pm anyway? Who can honestly say they've been there? Well everyone, probably, but I bet you were all teenagers huh? I feel like a fucking sixteen year old.

I'm excited, energized, prepared, poised, and anticipant... apparently that's not a word? Fuck off it isn't, that's simple verb-to-noun conversion we're looking at there. Anticipant. Anticipant. An-ti-ci-pant. Fuck off. Good.

Peace, Taco.

This Post is a Little Bit Arrogant but Eeeeh...

Karmon's 'Wowshit' is blasting from down the passage, bass is shaking the floorboards and the fifteen-hundred dollar sound system in our living room is being given its daily workout. I love living with these cats, every week during the day the sunny ambience of the house is inevitably broken when one of the three DJ inhabitants of my Richmond abode decide to jump on the deck s and have a mix. Deep house and techno are the staples of this summer, and while the weed smoke sits heavy under the ceiling and soaks in to the plaster, the pounding bass sends ripples through the air. I sit in my room and write. Listen. Focus.

Then every weekend at sunrise a new horde of loud, obnoxious freaks crawls through our front door and pile themselves on couches and empty floorspace and throb with the music. They are messy and uncouth and ugly and their eyes twitch and their faces are dirty from sweat and alcohol. They are fucking brilliant.

What I have noticed, pretty much since I moved into this place, is that this is the house I have always wanted to live in. Constant parties, a parade of new faces and stupid conversations, drinking, drugs, people... this is the place I wished so hard for every weekend from the moment I turned eighteen, but never managed to secure. I always felt like I was on the outside of some huge social network, forever looking in through the tinted windows, trying to make out the figures within. I strained to see the people inside as they did all the amazing things I thought I could see them doing, I beat myself up wondering why I could never find the way to acceptance. I now realize that this very desperation which has so shaped me the last few years was the reason that I never felt like I was in the middle of things – that I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.

Now, only a year or so later, I have stopped going out and looking, begging for that acceptance and trying furiously to get into the middle of that scene; the town scene. Ironically, after all that fruitless toil, it is only now that I have stopped trying that I somehow find myself sitting in the middle, in the room with everyone else, behind the tinted glass. Of course that's not how it feels, it still feels like I'm on the outside of something, and when the people come into my house on a Saturday or Sunday morning, I don't feel like these are my people coming home, or that I am one of them and they are here to see me, because they're not... but I know that to anyone sitting where I used to sit, out in the world of clubbing and partying and weekend benders, I must look like I'm running the show back here.

I guess the lesson here is something that I've been repeatedly telling myself for quite a while now, something that is undoubtedly, irrevocably true, but that never seems to fully sink in, no matter how often I say it. Everyone is insecure, everyone is troubled, everyone stresses about things and no one really has it as together as they would have the world believe. We are all struggling to fit in somewhere, or impress someone, or live up to some lofty ideal. I look at some people and just think, “wow, you are just fucking cool”... some people just seem to have it and exude positivity and excellence wherever they go. But those people are looking at someone else too, saying the same shit, and wondering the same things. “How do they do it?” We're all looking to someone else, wondering how they built their house of cards... well... like maybe not Brad Pitt or something.

Brad Pitt is the apex of humanity. He is the monolithic idol from which all subsequent human endeavour can be traced. And with that grand, overreaching statement, I think I'm just about finished for today.

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.

The Day I Woke Up

I woke up that morning with a heavy taste in my mouth and crust over my eyes, I knew the time was late, and I knew I had to get out of there. It was 5:45am I think. Looking around in this place I loved once, a pang of sadness crept into me, the first muffled rays of dawn shone through drawn blinds and hit the thick curtains. I think it was a Monday... I think that not because I remember the exact day or date, but because that seems a fair day for the sort of scene I am recalling right now to have happened. Monday comes after Sunday, and Sunday is the last day of the weekend where desperate souls try in futility to hang on to the high and ride the wave all the way in to the shore. For as long as you are prepared to wait until the next, surely bigger wave, you are doomed to be forever swimming back out, away from the shallows, and never making it all the way in.

The last few weeks had been different from what I had expected, the clubbing scene was not how I remembered it. In place of smiling faces and nods and handshakes and expectant conversations I had found numbness. The repetition of it all seemed so much clearer now, even the drugs seemed dirty. When first started going clubbing I remembered the highs coming on like uncontrollable frenzies, welling up inside you and taking over your mind first, only for your body to follow helplessly. I remembered sitting on a chair in Garage one Thursday night in 2009 and looking around with that last, deep breath, knowing that this was the beginning of something special. I remembered these things, but I began to question myself... had it really happened like that? We are all guilty of romanticising the past – each and every one of us holds on to sepia memories and foggy, glimmer-lit scenes of a childhood that no one can verify. Was it really that beautiful back then? Or was I just longing for a time that I knew for certain did not exist right now... maybe it hadn't existed back then either, but more likely then than now... more likely I was happy then, than happy with this. Waking up on a sullied, stringy couch at 5:45am on a Monday morning, back sore, head still muddy.

Even up until I had gone away, the scene seemed happier. I lay under the blanket and tried to roll back over and face the floor – 5:50, still no signs of life. I remembered that spring in 2010 when every Sunday was a sun-filled scene of mayhem. Cashed up and ready to go we were, and the city was our playground... that's what we used to call Friday nights at Red Square: 'Playground Fridays feat. Bollocks DJs and Neverland's Lost Boys'. Saturdays spent drinking and screaming in fits of laughter, Sundays spent jumping around in the grass and arguing about who was going to the bottle shop. Whose turn was it to go buy food. “You lit the Red Square fire Tugzy, I've got that shit on tape!!” Noonahs and nills and lawishi and a million other nonsensical rambling strings of words that couldn't make sense to anyone that wasn't there. They just couldn't, you had to be there for the ride, for the weekend. There were no passengers.

I knew I wasn't just imagining these times, those nights and mornings and frantic afternoons, I know I hadn't just imagined the last three years... so what was so different now? I'd woken up in someone else's house, on someone else's couch, with someone else's clothes on many more times than this... why did this feel different? I'd just gotten back from a four month trip overseas, and in those four months, things seemed to have somehow changed. But looking back from this uniquely privileged perch on Monday morning, nothing seemed to have changed at all. The weekend was still the same, and the clubs and the music and the drinking... maybe the drugs were slightly diluted and gritty, but that shouldn't really have mattered. The whole reason we had been comfortable living this life was because we knew, deep down, that we didn't need the drugs. Drugs are just a tool, they just keep you awake for longer so that you have more time to enjoy the things in the scene that you're really there for: friends, music, dancing, talking shit down Rosina Street and laughing at the kids with their fake IDs. Then selling drugs was just a tool too – everyone wanted them already, no one was pulling kids out of church and forcing the shit down their throats, they were just supplying an ever-present demand and funding their weekend in the process. Funding the life that they loved, that we all loved.

I sat up on the couch and threw the blanket lazily off of my body, only then realizing that there was another body lying one couch down from me – my feet must have been in his face I think. I rubbed my eyes, finally committing to something, and walked out the back to see if anyone was still awake. No signs of life. Six o'clock now and the sun starting to flood the open areas of this cramped back yard. Rouse had a garden for pissing in, and a tree for hanging lights off – little fairy lights that I assume he liked because of the 'Tinkerbell from Peter Pan' connotation. Never grow up. The couches were a bit wet, but I didn't bother to sit down, I was just out here grabbing my lighter and seeing if I'd left anything, I was quickly decided and it was definitely time to go. There was still time to salvage the day and fit in a bit of something normal. Time to write a poem, or maybe start readings for the new semester of uni. The difference between me and my brothers-in-arms – and that's what we were; brothers – was that I had found a life outside of the town scene. I had university, and I had pretended for so long that that was my passion that slowly it had started to become true... I got really, really lucky.

I padded in my bare feet around the house almost slipping on something slippery, almost stepping on something sharp. Bare feet turned to socks, and socks turned into one shoe, then the other as my body started to get it's bearings. Dishes in the sink, shove them out of the way just to get a glass of water. I grabbed what I hoped was the last of my stuff and shoved it in my backpack, then, offering my hand in front of Plummy's face as he stirred on the couch, I waited for a farewell handshake... these were always the sloppiest. Monday morning, who has the energy to do anything?

I never said goodbye to Rouse, it's just not what we did... he was asleep in his room anyway – hidden away and fragile, not to be disturbed. He knew anyway, no one ever left for good, it was just until next time. And we were all coming back, we needed it for ourselves... well that's what it had always felt like. Something was different this morning though, something about wallowing in the pit that we had made for ourselves didn't seem so glorious and appealing to me on that hazy day in the suburbs. I had come back from overseas, and something just didn't feel right any more. I felt like I wanted to purge my system, the thoughts hadn't organized themselves in my head yet though. All I knew was it was time to get moving.

I would come back, of course, many more times. And many more times I would wake up in the same situation, but I was only there to visit after this day, never to take part. From the moment I walked out of the front door to Neverland on that briskly cold Monday morning and stepped into the world, I would be merely a passenger on the ride I had helped to create. Never again to be lost in the high-speed blur of the night, caught up in the drug scene. I remember the cold and the ice on my skin. I remember taking deep breaths of fresh air that burned my lungs and ate at the tips of my fingers. That was the day I woke up.

Peace, Taco.

Still Boring Things

It's been a big week for your olde boy Tuck this week, no word of a lie. Just a quick thought before we dive into the serious shit though; I've been considering how much of a funny funny thing it would be to open comedy spots, or indeed this post, with the greeting, “good evening ladies and people”. Do you GET IT? Fuck yeah you do. The kicker here – and I've italicized for those of you still struggling – is that the classic 'ladies and gentleman' has been ever-so-slightly changed so that the greeting implies that 'ladies' aren't people. It's a little bit sexist, and fun for all the family really. Just a cheeky poke in the ribs for all of you who had let your guard down... IT'S STILL ME MOTHERFUCKERS... anyway, that's neither here nor there...

Three days ago I moved into my new place and two days ago that new place was the scene of a terrible fire-storm crunk session the likes of which will never be repeated in this or any other dimension. Next weekend will probably end up pretty raucous too though.... eeeh. But other than being kept up through to lunchtime by a bunch of lecherous party fiends and a man wearing a cold war gas-mask brandishing a knife, this place is pretty near tranquil. My room is severely lacking in furniture and a bit heavy on the clothes-on-floor aesthetic, but we'll get there Jimmy. We'll get there one day.

Rachel – my pretty girlie girl – left for her adventure to the foreign, depression-stricken lands of Europe on Tuesday which fairly sucks dongs and I've been kind of coping ok I guess. Frantic emails have been flying across the world in both directions but it really does suck that she's gone for pretty much the whole summer. Pretty much. Pretty certain. I saw her friends today at the Worker's pub for the regular Monday morning hang, and kept half expecting her to turn around a corner... anyway, fuck that sepia dream, I'm doing alright. And I know that crazy bitch is going to rock bells over in Europe and I'm going to be hearing all about it so there's not too much wrong with that...

I don't have much to say here again, but I still want to keep y'all (all two of you) filled in and interested in how things are moving along over in Melbourne. Well they're moving along pretty well, donchaknow. I promise tomorrow I'll sit down and write a story on here, because these mundane status updates are barely even interesting enough to hold MY attention, how can I expect them to hold yours? Tomorrow I'll write a story, I promise it'll be good.

Peace, Taco.

Week Five? Six? Fuck it... Brain. Melting.

The rising sounds of Above and Beyond's 'Sun and Moon' tinge a new Monday with a drop of melancholy this clear afternoon. Spring is almost here, eleven days by my chronograph, and yesterday was Sunday. It was one of those Sundays. Oh boy, was it ever.

Losing control of your emotions never comes highly recommended, even when surrounded by close friends and sure allies. Yesterday as I was paralyzed by the burning fear raging inside my nerve centre my emotions swung back and forth and round and round, flinging out in all directions and taking out pedestrians like a giant truck fishtailing down a slippery, one lane road. CRUNCH – a mailbox. BOOM – three rows of apricot trees. BAM – the front of some lady's white sedan. I took my foot off of the brakes yesterday, and, as always, today I am left trying to get my bearings and pick up the pieces.

Melbourne really is an amazing city; there are ridiculous amounts of opportunities for anyone with even the slightest leanings towards artistic expression. Today I've made contact with an online magazine called YAWP that follows Melbourne's comedy scene and gives comedians and writers in general a place to display work and write about our world – I might just submit a few articles for those guys to have a look at... probably a few of the things I've written on here recently that I'm pretty happy with. Also there's a TV series on channel 31 (some community channel) called Crack Up Lab that will feature twenty-five up-and-coming Melbourne comedians in a five-episode stand-up competition with the winners from each episode going into a sixth episode final. I've put my name down for that and even if I don't get selected to go on, I'll probably end up in the crowd checking out which comedians that I've met around the place do spots. That's just the thing about this place, it is literally impossible to be stuck for something to do... if anyone somehow is then I would suggest fairly confidently that they aren't looking very hard and probably spend more than the fair allotment of time smoking weed and touching their dick.

But yesterday man... the part with the Adelaide crew at Timmy, Brodie, and Desh's place... I don't know what it was and I'm sure the fair majority of it was in my head, but there were some wack vibes floating around that place towards the tail end of the afternoon. I was paralyzed in silence for around two hours at the height of my trip which was definitely less than enjoyable, although it did give me time to think about my drastically altered social life when compared with the easy comfortability of Adelaide. Gone are my best friends – those who I can be absolutely sure to call at any time, day or night, and know that they'll be down for whatever cause I throw at them. It really goes along way towards creating a deeper appreciation for the few friends that I have found who I know will be friends forever. It's just like that song says; “understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on... work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.”

I feel like all my life I have been like that truck driver, trying desperately to keep my load under control, to stop it from taking out the bushes and fences and old people's shitty cars on the side of the road. If I let my attention slip, even for the briefest moment, some bump or twist will send the dangerous trailer viciously into the side of Mr Gerald's tool shed. Even sometimes when I remain vigilant, the task of keeping my emotions in check is too great, and shit inevitably gets fucked up. It's hard, this control thing... and sometimes I wonder whether I'm doing the right thing at all in trying to play puppet-master with my own feelings. This is all I know for now though... I guess that's the reason I'm out here. To break the cycle of destroy and rebuild, destroy and rebuild, destroy and rebuild. To kick the bad habit of entropy.

Peace, Taco.

Musings on Immoral Behaviour

This morning I woke up at 9:30am, had and went downstairs to the kitchen where I found that my milk had been stolen and the walls had been written on. There you go... that's a perfectly straightforward English story right there. No frills, no bows, very little difficult language. For those of you with shit to do today – the dishes, bathing, religious ceremony – you can stop right there safe in the knowledge that what you have just read fairly and concisely sums up the first hour of my day today. For those of you with a few more stones in your belly, continue on. Let's make an afternoon of it, shall we?

The last couple weeks there has been a string of seemingly random food thefts perpetrated by a shadowy, anonymous stranger lurking within the annals of the hostel... last week I lost two tupperware containers of lovely chicken-vegetable something that I had cooked and saved for myself. Jean lost one as well, and a few other random items of condiment or whatever have been reported missing from different people's food stashes in the freezer or pantry. Needless to say this behaviour is looked upon fairly unwelcomingly by the community and before long people had started leaving long, sometimes eloquent notes on their food to discourage the thief - my particular words were along the lines of “don't touch my food faggot, go buy your own... actually before you do that, kill yourself”. (I would like to say that I have been the spearhead of this movement and maybe in the eloquence department I fairly could, but plenty of other people have had some rather colourful words attached to their shit – it's not just me) Anyway... considering the recent string of mooch-crime it sadly came as little surprise to me this morning when I trekked downstairs after a shower (not in my favourite shower this morning – it was occupied by a couple of Germans AKGH – but that's neither here nor there) and found that my two litre milk was nowhere to be found... wait that's no good. My milk, that I had found... wasn't... find? Found. I couldn't find it... even when someone hadn't founded.... ugh

Some dick had stolen my milk... is basically what I'm trying to say here.

I've talked to Bobby, the night manager, about checking the cameras in the kitchen to try and pinpoint who the thief is and while there's been words and times floated around the place, I was sure from the beginning that no action would be taken in this crisis. Yeah sure there are cameras and it's not so hard to switch on a TV and check them from particular dates and times, but knowing the calibre of staff that operate this place, even work which basically involves watching an extended version of Big Brother until you see the bad guy is going to be put off for as long as possible. Bobby ain't a bad dude... he's great in fact. But he's never going to do it.

So then at around 10:10am when one of the other managers came out and said something to the effect of, “yep, that's it, we've got em all on camera” in a serious, big boy tone, my mind did backflips. “WHO IS THE MOTHERFUCKER THAT STOLE MY FOOD? WHEN CAN HE BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE? HOW MANY PUNCHES TO THE FACE DO WE GET EACH?” Real forgiving shit... So that was at 10:10am, but before I go any further I need to take you guys back to last night. Just real quick. Because it's fun. It breaks up the main narrative. And adds dramatic effect.

Last night I went and saw a couple comedy shows including one at Pugg Mahone's (interestingly enough, 'pug mahone' apparently means 'kiss my ass' in Irish soooo... there you go?) where Myrthe – a Dutch girl from the hostel – works. Apparently I left without saying goodbye – a faux pas that I was later chastised heavily for, especially because I managed to squeeze a free drink (a squash though, let's be fair) out of the lovely lady while I was there. I got back to the hostel around eleven and found Ollie, the lanky German with the brilliant laugh, back amongst the living after a week in Thailand. This is the guy who suggested to Jean (who has hilariously small eyes) that we should “have a competition to see who can open his eyes the widest and the loser has to buy everybody pizza” so yeah... he's alright. Ollie had bought a litre of Smirnoff back from the duty free store, and Myrthe and Hannah (black English girl... sassy etc.) were down for a drink. Simeon (looks 26, is 21) and Kieran (looks 26, is) joined as well... and the next few hours writes itself really.

After a few hours of these guys slamming down vodka and getting loud with me vicariously enjoying their antics we turned our eyes to the wall behind us which is covered in photos of people who have stayed at the hostel at various times in the last few years partying and having fun. The main problem that we could see with these pictures was that they were not of us, and as such were ripe for alteration... so ripe... top ten ripest. We set to work with a permanent texta rating the people in the pictures out of ten: top angle looking down on blonde girl – six. Fat girl hooking up with other guy – 2. Sexy girl with black hair who is hot in three separate photos – 9. Passed out dude with wack face – MONG. Etc... The real vandalism started when Dutchy and Hannah got on their bitchy-soapbox tip and started ranting about some guy they had both slept with who apparently was “too slow” and “gave no orgasm” and “had a lot 2 learn private lessons could have been 4 free bad personality X”. They wrote it on the wall in thick, blue permanent and faced the cameras blatantly. I'm on camera writing on the photos, which can just be pulled down, but their hateful mural will have to be painted over... silly silly... nothing good ever happens after 2am.

So anyway, that happened last night, and to bring us back to 10:10am this morning, the manager from the hostel had just rolled out the big guns, “yep, that's it, we've got em all on camera”. I realized though, after my initial hopeful fancy that it had been about catching the food thief, that he was talking about the writing on the walls, and that my ass could very well be on the line here. This was only a second after vicious, bloodthirsty images of a lowly, broken bastard, tied to the stake and gnashing his teeth, breath still smelling of my chicken-vegetable something and staring down the barrel of an open, running sewage pipe that was about to be blasted into his face. Guilty as fuck and fucked for sure...

...and now that was me. I was the one staring down the pipe and the sewage was coming straight for me. I am, and it is. And as much as that sucks, I brought it on myself. I did the stupid thing on camera, and even if they caught my thief, his crime is really no worse than mine... well marginally, but they are both shitty things. The photos that I drew on can be taken down, and so too can my food be replaced... the base transgression at the core of both actions is disrespect. I didn't ask to draw on the photos, fagboy didn't ask to take my food. In both instances, I'm sure the answers to the request would have been yes – “can I have some food?” 'yes'; “can I draw on these pictures of mongs?” 'yes' – but the question was never asked. After last night I have been forced, as I seem to be on about a weekly basis, to re-evaluate my position and rethink some of the hasty thoughts that have sprung into my head. Simply reacting to situations is only the clumsiest way of getting through the day and I really have to stay vigilant on my snappy, self-indulgent thoughts if I am ever going to make change. Ultimately, I guess I just have to start making my food a little less obvious. I'm never going to find the thief – sinful bandit fucker that he is – but at least I can make my stuff a little less appetising for his grubby little thief-fingers. Maybe then he will disappear forever, and I can forgive him for his sins, and those two serves of chicken-vegetable something that I miss so, so much.

Peace, Taco.