Adelaide During the Fringe

From Tuesday til Saturday I was in Adelaide seeing friends, Fringe shit, and fam. I planned this trip and bought the tickets pretty much as soon as I got back from my Hometown Christmas last year, but this time around – without everyone having the obligation to spend so much time with their families, and everyone from everywhere being back in town – the trip was way way way way WAY much better. Here's why:

Tuesday I got into town at seven-thirty at night after a brilliant (as always) bus ride involving books, music, and some great ideas and time alone to think. I love those bus rides – there's a reason I always include at least one in each trip home. As soon as I got off the bus I headed straight to the Cranka for some free Tuesday night comedy and caught up with Ross Voss, Josh Cruze, and saw some great comedians who I hadn't seen before. Jesus, what a refreshing change seeing people's sets that I haven't seen ANYTHING from. Being around the same comics all the time in Melbourne, while obviously lovely as it gives a great sense of community, can become exhausting because whenever someone has a good set, you already know more or less how the set is going to go. I can still recognize when someone has done a good set because they have performed well or really captured the audience or whatever, but it's rarely THAT exciting to see someone do well if sixty to eighty percent of what they're doing on stage I have seen before. So seeing my open mic contemporaries in Adelaide do their thing was a great break.

Then the Rhino late show that night was awesome – Will Anderson did some great stuff about framing Adam Hills for a murder by hopping away from the crime scene. Then we somehow got into the Artists' Bar. Then we got drunk. Then we went home. By the way 'Home' for this trip was Phil's place in Kent Town, which was a fucking great change in and of itself because it was a ten minute walk from town, and the posse that he lives with are fucking sick. Sick as dawgs.

Wednesday I woke up earlyish with a hangover, me Elle and Leon went to breakfast at ETC which was always one of my favourite Adelaide breakfast spots. We consumed, then I sweated my shit down to the DMV and got my full license. Tick. Then back home, broke into the guys' house through Leon's bedroom window and crashed out for the afternoon under a fan waiting for MA BOIIII S. Rouse to call, but finally having to pay a Twenty-Five-Dorrah cab to his place during rush hour after he was to shit to get out of bed all day. We reminisced over Pool Party (WHOSE PARTY?!!) days in Empire and then I had a gig at the Ed Castle that night where I also met the lovely German, Sarah for the first time after chatting to her for ages on CouchSurfing since mid-year. The gig went okay – good enough, although I felt I performed a really tight set, but the crowd reaction wasn't AS amazing as I would've liked, but I was happy enough – then me, Elle and Josh Wills jumped into the Artists' Bar again after Rouse went home to crash.

Thursday: another hangover, another breakfast, another cruisy afternoon in Kent Town that ended with the most brilliant snap-decision of recent times with me, Phil, Leon and Nick Fuckenwhatever unanimously agreeing in about five seconds to go to the Tap Inn and have beers. After this I went on to dinner with the fam and shaking Dad's hand after his last day of working some shitty job that he's had for the last ten years and moving into semi-retirement at the tender, supple age of forty-five. He now plans to become a stay-at-home wife and paint the house while Mum Dawgz is off making DEM STAX. Now THAT'S Feminism, bitches!

After family dinner I went off to see David Quirk's Fringe show which was fwarking brilliant I have to say, notwithstanding the tech blunder that sort-of ruined the ending. I can forgive that, the show was great, and I still need to write to that dude and tell him how much I liked it because it really was that good... if any of you reading have a chance to see David Quirk's 'Shaking Hands With Danger' at either the Adelaide Fringe (until march 16^th I think?) or the Melbourne International Comedy Festival later this month, do it. Drinking and deep hangs with Lucy at hers, and then the Rhino Room Late Show again capped off my Me Time before I headed to the Botanic to romp some cunts I'd never met before in doubles pool and crash out around three AM watching something I don't remember on the laptop. Or maybe it was music? Three days into this journey I start to get mixed up about details.

Friday played host to another breakfast/lunch thingo at the Austral with Phil and Eliesa, and then meeting up with Sarah again for a CouchSurfers' picnic in the Botanical Gardens. I convinced my new CS friends to join me in jumping the fence into WOMAD that night to see the Cat Empire – I decided to jump even though I had a press pass, a move that infuriated Phil after I lost his pass in a drunken haze later that night, but for which I'm sure he has forgiven me, and will understand. Adrenaline baby. A-dre-na-line. Before WOMAD though, we went to the UniBar for some final nostalgia and I caught up with Sammy B and Chess – DA BOIZ from Immanuel College. We spat the shit over jugs of cider and laughed heartily as if we were seventeen again. I know I'm not really allowed to reminisce that heavily because I'm still only twenty-two, but whatever, fuck you. I remember shit too you old fuck reading this. That's right, you. Old.

After loosing my shit to the Cat Empire (six years since the last time) me and Jaleesa the Dutch girl went to Trashbags in EC and I capped off my stay catching up with the Kings of Hindley St: Johnny Monday, Jason 'Terror Terror' Petersen, Jake Baker, Liam Ball, and a million other cats that were there that I won't start to list off now mainly because I don't remember shit and I'd probably start guessing, and guessing poorly. When I woke up at ten am on Saturday, I looked at my phone and confirmed what I knew instinctively was the case anyway – I had missed my bus. Mum bought me a plane ticket because she's a diamond, and I spent the rest of the day in Glandore, spending some time with my little bro watching Louie off my hard drive, and then driving around with Eliesa in order to make up the loss of the press pass to Phil. I bought the boys a bottle of wine for letting me crash at their place, and then at nine pm, Eliesa drove me to the airport, and an hour later I was inside a flying steel box, soaring over the country on my way back to Melbourne.

So that's why this trip was better than the one over Christmas. Any questions?

Peace, Taco.

On the Road and Other Medications

Reading Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' the first time was a bit of a blur for me to be honest, I was in Bolivia, and I read the entire thing on my HTC Desire HD screen (that's a phone, if you were unsure) in less than twenty-four hours. Most of those hours were spent on a bus, sitting next to a Bolivian kid who was sixteen or seventeen if I remember correctly. I read the book for hour-long stints at a time, and then would turn to the kid and continue the conversation we'd been having before I had dipped off into my reading and he back into the 'cincuenta centavo' (50 Cent) playing on his iPod. I don't think I rushed through it, but the book has a real habit of lifting you out of whatever you are doing and taking you away on the journey, the road, off into the distance with it... so I definitely read it quicker than I would have a normal book. I'm reading it for the second time now though – I'm typing it out actually, word-for-word on my laptop – and this time I'm taking it much slower.

I've just reached the start of part two, and I'm only going about four or five pages each sitting, because to type about that many pages takes around forty minutes to an hour, depending on how good a day my fingers are having. But I'm loving the fact that it's so slow. I almost forget about this ongoing project every few days, but it sits there – the Penguin-Paperback copy of 'On the Road', the clothes-peg I use to hold the pages open, and the hardcover children's 'The Fun-To-Learn Picture Dictionary' that I use as a board to peg the pages of the book onto – it all sits there on the back corner of my desk, waiting to be opened whenever I feel a little desperate. Typing out books is something that I've grown to really depend on in the past year; first it was Orwell's '1984', and now this. It's a great way to immerse myself in someone else's words and thoughts, forcibly and directly, and take my busy mind off of whatever frantic problems are troubling me. The idea came from Hunter S. Thompson and my former obsession with his wild, drug-addled life and persona, but now that I've appropriated his activity as my own I can see benefits completely separate from what he described – or what were described on his behalf. He did it to “see what it felt like to write a great novel”, if I remember correctly – he typed out F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' – but his motivation is of much lesser concern to me. My aims are much more simple, but much more immediate, and vital as well.

I just passed over a part in 'On the Road' where Dean Moriarty has left his second wife, Camille, with their child to go back to his first wife, Marylou, and beg on his knees for her to take him back. She does, and in Kerouac's own words;

“She understood Dean; she stroked his hair; she knew he was mad.”

More reassuring words have never been written, and upon typing them out as my eyes flitted over the page I felt a wave of understanding and hope wash over me. I recently watched a video of Neal Cassady, upon whom Moriarty is famously based, when he was on the bus with the Merry Pransters in the early-mid sixties and to be perfectly honest, he looks and sounds like a complete lunatic. A madman. But sometimes it's hard not to feel, in the furious changing tides of life, that I am mad as well. Although maybe not as outwardly eccentric as Cassady/Moriarty, I'm sure every one of us feels at some point as if they are the exception to some sane rule of the world, an outlier on the bell curve of acceptable normalcy. “Am. I. Insane?”

Well maybe you are, and maybe I am, but Jack Kerouac, in a surely unplanned but far from accidental stroke-of-genius example here, shows that no matter how crazy you think you are, or how crazy you are by everyone else's admission, you still have a place in this world, and you can still find someone to love you. Dean Moriarty, with his head in the hands of his sweetheart, is proof enough of that.

Sometimes I wonder when I'll get tired of the violent up-and-down cycle of my mood and of my life and of the world that I constantly create around myself. I find myself hoping that that day will come soon; “soon, surely, soon I'll find it within myself to settle down and find a level of balance in my life, soon I'll be able to relax.” But every time I find myself repeating this tired inner dialogue, I am tempted, once again, by the promise of a higher tomorrow, and the irresistible, surging rise of a brand new peak. For as long as I am tempted by these peaks though, there will be a frightening low waiting in the trough, and that's where Jack Kerouac and his famous tale of freedom come in. Whenever I feel like I need something else to hold onto, to support me while I ride out the lows and confront the fear, I turn to the pages of this book – and when it's done, the pages of another classic that I'll start typing out – to escape to the open spaces of someone else's words, and leave the dark churnings of my own mind behind for a while. In this way, I remind myself that a new high is coming, and peace is a comfort that, for the moment, I do not need. Not just yet, Tugzy. Not today.

Peace, Taco.

Living on my Birthday

Yesterday I met the most ridiculous person I have met in a long time... jesus shit! I went to some writing club meeting in South Melbourne with little expectations considering the previous meeting in December wasn't so much a 'writing club' as it was a bunch of people who share writing in common meeting up for a drink. I mean, that could be called a writing club, I guess, but it wasn't really what I had in mind... it can't have been all that terrible though, because I went back, albeit half an hour late.

So when I walked in some lady – who I later discovered was a 'writing guru' (someone else's words, but not difficult to believe) – was talking about journalism and a writers' group/course thingo she'd set up and I sat at a stool on the far end of the table and proceeded to crackle in a violent ray of sun that was beaming through the front door of the bar. A sun-tan indoors – well life is just full of surprises? Tee-hee-hee. Anyway, Mrs Guru (Valerie, her name was) was interesting and she had some cool stuff to say, but the ridiculous person that I met wasn't our speaker, no no, she was a lady by the name of Samantha.

Samantha was a early/mid-thirties (I hope that guess is accurate) writer who had been sending off a few bits and pieces of comedy writing to competitions and doing quite well, but what grabbed me was when she said to the group that her preferred method of writing was sitting down with a bottle of red wine and headphones full of hip hop. YES! My People! She told me about her writing, and then her life before her writing, which had consisted of about a decade all around the world (Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, South America) as a tour guide for a travel company. She had been taught how to play backgammon by Sean Connery and serenaded by Alanis Morissette, and received a donkey from native people in some far flung corner of the world... the details elude me at this point, friends, as I stand in awe of a person who has truly stepped up to life and nutted the beast between it's piercing eyes. She said that at twenty-three she was engaged and stuck in a dead end job, but one day she woke up, looked at her fiance and said, “I really don't like you”, and within two weeks she was off. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. These are the people that we all need to know, my friends. This is the person that everyone should be.

And then, a few days before that, there was another lady, this time someone I met on a tour, who was originally from Adelaide (of all the promising beginnings) but had lived in South Africa for twenty-five years including the apartheid era and Nelson Mandela's release from prison. She told me about how many households, including her own, had had black slaves during the era of segregation. One day, after a law had passed which would have nullified the black/white segregation of beaches within six months, she and her kid went to a whites only beach. They also took their slave's (I think she used a different word, but I heard slave) kid along, and the kid would have been no more than ten years old at this point. So while the segregation law was due to be repealed in six months – the decision had already been made and passed – for the time being the beach was still 'whites only', so when they got there a police officer saw the young kid and told the mother that she had to take him off of the beach or they would all be arrested. That's right, that shit happened. Imagine the kid – how confused. Imagine the mother, and the looks, and imagine people actually abiding by these laws and legitimately believing in their righteousness to the point where they knew they were going to be defunct soon, but until then the plan was racism as usual.

She talked about Nelson Mandela and the rugby game depicted in that movie Invictus and she talked about the feeling of national pride and togetherness when Mandela walked out onto the field wearing the national team's jersey. She told me about his ex-wife, who was apparently a part of some underground group and used to send her harems of male entourage on assassination missions. Mandela had to leave her and distance himself from the warring clans – the divides between different groups of black people in South Africa were apparently just as pervasive as the one that we heard about on the news. She lived through that, she saw it first hand. What have I seen? Maybe I've been a part of something important already, I just don't know it yet... maybe the eyes of history will look back and see Melbourne, 2013 as a strange pocket of human existence... maybe. Maybe not.

Crazy, disjointed thoughts on this sunny February day, this day that happens to be my twenty-second birthday. Samantha, this outlandish specimen of a person, has forced me to look at what I am doing and make absolutely certain that what I am doing with my life is exactly what I want to be doing. How can I possibly spend one single day doing anything other than that, when there are people out there in the dankest pockets of existence being given donkeys by villagers and playing board games with James Bond. Not a single second, my friends, not a solitary fucking moment can we afford to waste. Wring with all your strength, and drain this life for every drop. Be sure, it can be done.

Peace, Taco.

On Stragglers

I remember a conversation with Brodie a few weeks ago about Adelaide, Melbourne, and the dozens of people who seem to be stuck in between. I couldn't put an exact figure on it, but there would probably be at least ten people that I know who are caught in some premature stages of moving over to Melbourne, or saying that they are moving, or thinking about moving, or wanting to move but not knowing how. Some of them I trust when they say that they are coming, I know that they'll get here when they are ready, and some, on the other end of the spectrum, I know are just sitting around puffing on pipe dreams, and I'll be lucky to see them down here for a weekend.

Brodie and I were talking about this while we sat out the front of our 3121 abode, he was smoking cigs and I was probably eating stir fry of some sort, it was probably around six in the evening. Tommy Martin was supposed to come over and live with Lolly and Tim, but he's doing something at uni now. Phil is still sorting his shit out in Adelaide before he makes the jump. My mate Jayden, and to a lesser extend his partner in shit-talking T. Wood, have talked about coming over many a time, Jayden even going as far as to say that he almost has a job lined up. Chris... well, Chris is a bit of a lost cause at this stage. But there are plenty more, people who are 'coming' to Melbourne, just not yet. Just not now, just wait, hold up while I get my shit sorted.

This isn't some post railing against those people and trying to paint them as lazy, or dumb, or useless, not at all, and I know that sometimes you need to lay your plans properly before you hatch them or else they'll go sour. A few people who have said they are coming have my genuine trust, I know they'll make it over here, it's only a matter of time. But what Brodie said in the midst of this idle list-making struck me as a bit of fair warning to anyone who has ever had even the most cursory thought about leaving Adelaide and coming to join the youth of the world in Melbourne. “Yeah, maybe they'll make it down,” he said, “but it won't be for a few years at least, and by the time they get here the party will be over and we'll all have moved on to bigger and better things.” He said it like it wasn't even news. Like that's the way things were always going to be, and it was as obvious as the colour of the sky, but I had never even considered it that way.

The party will come to an end, eventually, but not because anyone says it has to, it'll just come to pass, some moment will fly by and the Melbourne vibe will be finished with. I've heard Chris, several times, bemoan his lateness in arriving to the town scene in Adelaide. “I can't believe I missed those few years of partying with you guys, I don't even know what I was doing?” I've heard him spill these words out after again hearing the stories of climbing cranes or lighting fires or Block Party or stupid, one night absinthe fling-benders. So why are you missing it again, then? I don't know... just know what you're doing, I guess. If you have a plan and you're doing something, make sure you know why, or at least have a fair idea. Don't be putting off what you really want to do in favour of what seems easier now, because what you really want might not be there forever.

Peace, Taco.

What was Two-Thousand and Twelve?

Last year started with a crusty-eyed glance out of a second-story bedroom window in the Cactus Hostel in La Paz Bolivia. As I focussed my vision and adjusted to the harsh light coming in through the thin, high-altitude air, I saw a condom – mine, fresh from the early-morning ,sloppy, drunk frecking only a few hours before – dangling off of an electricity cable over the street and dripping Nobel Prize Winners onto the pavement below. Two-Thousand and Twelve was a good year.

When I came back from Bolivia it was the middle of February, and I had a girl travelling from France – the other side of the world – to Australia to come and be with me. No story has ever begun more beautifully, but it only took me five weeks between her decision and her arrival for me to ruin it... not that I'm bitter or angry at myself, these things just happen, and the luxury of time passed allows me to speak so frankly about it. But I messed that one up, and hurt a lovely girl quite unnecessarily in the process, she really was lovely. She really is. Lovely. We were together for two weeks full of shame and falsity and when everything unravelled it took only a few days to destroy a summer's worth of good memories. They weren't destroyed forever, I look back and smile now, but when it was happening, it was tough. Easter was tough. I bawled my eyes out after she left in the side-street behind the Cranka just of Rundle, but after that I couldn't cry anymore, which surprised me a little. Two-Thousand and Twelve surprised me.

I stayed at uni for another semester, but you know me – and by you, I mean me, because let's face it, I'm talking to myself here – I sat around and did the minimum required to feel fulfilment at the end... that's two years of a three year degree finished, but I can't see the final year materializing in the near future to be honest. I volunteered at a Salvation Army store because I thought it would look good on my resume and I couldn't think of someone who would give me a nice reference – OH! That's the other thing, I spent like six months desperately unemployed – the first six months of this year. Jesus that was terrible, I don't ever want to be that unemployed again, lucky I turn twenty-two in a month and qualify for Centrelink (YES!)(Yes?). Two-Thousand and Twelve was skint, and really, really slow to get started.

I finally landed a job around June selling energy door-to-door for a joke of a man named Nathan in his AIDA franchise in Adelaide. That job lasted for two and a half weeks and was easily the worst stretch of employment I've ever had, even if it was also the shortest... a few funny things happened at that place though: getting screamed at by the office pussy for lighting up in the back of his brand-new car and spending the day at the pub instead of knocking doors. Roaming the streets of some shitty suburban region of mid-northern Adelaide belting out Ed Sheeran's 'The A Team' between houses and sitting by the river under the bridge in Black Forest hiding from the boss... not everything about that place was terrible. The people and the routine got me out of the house for about twelve days, and the brutal stupidity of my situation for those two and a half weeks finally pushed me over the edge and into Melbourne. Two-Thousand and Twelve was dumb.

I just remembered that we're supposed to be pronouncing it 'twenty-twelve'. Sorry guys, too bad, looks like the programming hasn't quite sunk in has it? Two-thousand and Twelve. I'm not changing just because it's quicker – I'm going to need a really clever piece of marketing directed at me from 180 degrees backwards and wrapped in chocolate to get me to kick this inefficient habit of pronunciation. Two-Thousand and Twelve sounds sexier.

Melbourne has been a constant firestorm of new faces, busy evenings, words, pictures, and no pedestrians... that doesn't really sound like a firestorm does it? I think I'm trying to be over-dramatic... but Twenty-Twelve was a bit like that as well... inconsistent. I found a calling this year – maybe that's a bit over-dramatic as well, but it sounds ok to me, not completely superficial. Stand up comedy has given me a place to go where before there was only the night stretching out past sunset and it has filled the void that used to bring so much dangerous introspection. I finally feel like I am going somewhere, and doing something with purpose, not just because I know it's healthy for me to be filling my time with things. Two-Thousand and Twelve has given me something that I am going to be able to carry around with me for the rest of my life – a purpose. Don't ask me what that is just yet, I'm not that far, I'm still figuring these things out, but Two-Thousand and Twelve helped. Thanks Two-Thousand and Twelve, cheers for the hand.

Quote of the year, although I think I might have actually heard it last year to be honest, is as follows:

There is no way to happiness,
happiness is the way

That's Buddha, apparently, but it doesn't really matter who it is, just what it says. After everything that's happened in the last three-hundred and sixty-five days, I feel like that quote could sum it all up pretty near perfectly – the whole year, and all of the years before it, I have only been having as much fun as I have been willing to admit. And now that I'm over in the most hyped youth destination in the fucking world, it's almost like I have to report back that I'm having the time of my life... it's no coincidence though, that I really, completely am having that time. The best time ever. And whether it's because I came to a place that was supposed to be brilliant, or because I found that place within myself, and then happened to move cities, it doesn't matter. Two-Thousand and Twelve was Happy.

Twenty-Thirteen?... let's go for 'spontaneous'. Sorry about the sappy, seriousness of this post for anyone wonderful enough to have made it this far. Thanks for reading, whoever you are, to be serious for a second, if you have ever taken the time out of your day to read anything that I've written and pushed out into the ether, it means more to me than I can put into words here. Thankyou.
And I promise I'll put more funnies in next time. Until then, dicks dicks dicks. Big fat willy. Asses.

Happy New Year everyone.
Peace, Taco.

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.

3121 Hangs

Yesterday I had only one person on my tour, an Indonesian girl called Neysha, and so instead of packing my bags and going back home in a huff, I decided to take her on a quick tour in exchange for her buying me lunch (atlantic salmon... I get my money's worth). We were going to go check out Ballarat after lunch which would have been nice but in the end we couldn't because it got a bit late in the day, so we went our separate ways. It was a lovely afternoon all in all, and I'd like to thank the lovely Neysha for lunch, although … (I pondered long and hard over which conjunction to use here because it seems that the use of either 'and' or 'but' to preface the information I'm about to deliver would set the tone for the rest of this bit and betray my feelings towards the events I intend to describe... I have definitely over-thought this... hurry up Taco, people are getting bored) … there was something else that was far more interesting than salmon.

We were sitting at the tram stop in Richmond waiting for the tram to head back into the city to Southern Cross Station. I sat on the end of the bench on the corner of Church and Victoria streets and Neysha sat in the middle, to my right. To her right again there sat an old man, probably around sixty-five or seventy years old, dressed as most old men usually dress and waiting for the tram like we were. Neysha and I talked for a while about Richmond and why I love living in this suburb – to paraphrase my housemate Brodie, “it's that 3121 real shit” – there's a real grittiness about Richmond and I told her I enjoyed that. While we were talking, as if on cue, a local smackhead approached the bench. I've seen this girl before, wandering aimlessly around Victoria street in the middle of the day, stumbling, glazed eyes, riding the tram with a lost look on her face. She's one of many sad characters that populate the streets in this shitty inner-city suburb of Melbourne, and I'd always had my suspicions.

She approached from the right – from the other side of Church St – and looked first at me, but must have assumed that the girl I was with, being as she was roughly the same age as me, was my girlfriend. Her eyes then fixed on the old man, and she stopped herself just in front of him and squatted on the footpath in a submissive, prostrate position before looking up at him and engaging in conversation. Her voice was thin and high-pitched, and she was clearly drifting in and out of lucid consciousness, never fully in control of herself, but she grabbed the reins for long enough to look into his eyes and ask, “you looking for a good time?” As she said it she made a motion with her right hand to imitate the way she would suck his tired, sixty-five-year-old dick to a climax for some pithy sum of money that I didn't quite manage to overhear. I was paying as much attention as I could at this point while still trying not to be too obvious... it was hard to maintain an air of normality and Neysha and I had stopped talking as soon as the afternoon's twisted courtship had commenced. I wanted desperately to hear what he was saying, but I couldn't grasp much of anything. Maybe he said something to her that I didn't hear, or maybe he didn't even reply to her, but whatever his voice did or didn't tell her, I could understand everything from his uncomfortable body language... he tacitly refused her subsequent urges and offers to give him her phone number. “Do you want to call me later?” She asked. “I just need some money for food and a packet of smokes.” She was getting a little more forceful, sensing, surely, that there was no relief to be had here.

All this time I said nothing, and Neysha said nothing, and we both allowed what was definitely the saddest, most enthralling spectacle we were likely to see for quite a while, to play out. The woman with the thin voice stood up after about thirty seconds, having obtained neither business nor money from her client, and walked away in the direction that she had come. Once she was out of earshot I resumed talking to Neysha and told her about how I'd seen this woman before. I saw her with a bunch of other broken, drug types across the road from Woolies a month or so ago; one of the guys she was with was trying to sell a gold necklace to some fresh looking Asian kid with a hoodie and trackies. He was talking with quick, dirty slang about how he'd stolen the necklace off of some guy he'd bashed the night before, and was using words like 'bruz', which made my skin crawl. It reminded me of the way some of my friends back in Adelaide talk, and it scared me to think that people I know are constantly only three bad decisions away from staring this life in the face too. They had left the hooded Asian with the promise to be back in half an hour – they were “going off to hit the hammer” (inject heroin). I told Neysha this other story to go with what we had just seen, but I left out the part about it reminding me of people I knew because I didn't want to start down that depressing conversational path, only having met this person five or six hours ago.

Both times I've seen glimpses of the course underside of Victoria Street, 3121, I have laughed to myself. I don't really know why, I don't know what about seeing a drug addict solicit prostitution or overhearing another try to sell stolen jewellery is funny – actually I don't think anything about it is funny, not at its core. At the very base of it, it's fucking sad. It's terrible, but it's also surprising – not that it exists at all, but that it exists right there, right in front of me. It's kind of scary, but also kind of exhilarating too, although the naivete required to believe that makes me want to rethink myself a little... nevertheless though, the sheer shock of the whole situation is where the laughter comes from. When the heroin lady walked away from us after failing to pick up her lonely, uncomfortable target, Neysha and I both laughed to eachother with raised eyebrows and twisted faces. We weren't laughing out of amusement, we were just shocked... so fucking shocked... we knew what we'd seen, and as much as we were laughing, we both knew that neither of us was making a joke.

“When the heroin lady walked away...” that's how I started that sentence. That's how I described her. “The heroin lady.” That's all she is to me, that is her only distinguishing characteristic. Not her face, not her eyes, not her hair or her voice or her clothes or her views on China. Heroin... that's who she is, and that's what she does. Jesus Christ... where do I even begin?

Peace, Taco.

November Life Update

What has even been going on for the last few weeks? I haven't kept y'all very well updated have I? Not that the majority of people give two shakes of an indifference stick about my day-to-day potterings and trips to the toilet, but for those of you who do, enthralling tales of a young man out in the wild lie within. Tacooooo is doin' it for hisself!

I have seven days of drinking left for twenty-twelve (FINALLY, my compulsive need to type numbers has paid off, none of this 'two-thousand and twelve' bullshit) and it's looking right now like they are almost all spoken for. I'm saving four for my trip back to Adelaide from the 20^th to the 28^th of December, which means only three remain. One will be for next Thursday when I hit up the Peek Tours pub crawl in an effort to gauge the amount of alcohol required to achieve complete standing-unconsciousness – doing it for science – and that means the last two days will fall somewhere in between a week from now, and December 20^th. I've found the best nights, even with my freakishly regimented year of monitored alcohol intake, have been the unplanned ones, and so with that in mind, I won't be pre-booking nights for those two remaining nights of drinking, but I'm sure that someone cool will pop up in the three or so weeks and convince me that Now! Now! Now! is the time for drunkenness.

Money-wise things are looking slightly tighter than I would like – and with every indulgent cafe lunch the noose keeps slipping – but as it stands I am making $250 a week from working at Yah Yah's, and probably another $250 a week from doing walking tours. Let's make that $200, just to be conservative. Realistically I'm probably pocketing around $550 a week, but at least a hundred of that goes straight into the wind so it's not even worth counting, $450 it is. Rent is $170 a week, so with another piece of nifty rounding that leaves me $250 a week to play with – and I really have to catch myself here, because although I use the term 'play with', what that should really mean is 'put away in an envelope and not look at'. I have to pay $500 by mid-January for the festival show I'm doing with Rob Caruana at Station 59, and a bus up to Adelaide and Plane back for Christmas – probably another $250 – and I'll be wanting some party-money for when I get down there, so unless the opportunity for sort of Mafia-sponsored contraband run on the Greyhound bus presents itself in the next month, that'll be four weeks of income spoken for. Conveniently, four weeks is the exact amount of time that stands in between me and Adelaide right now, so without getting too confident here, I think it's gonna be ok... there's always the surprise phone bill to worry about, but fuck it... live a little.

My ankles still hurt from repeated falls off my skateboard, although I'm getting better (marginally), although I'm guessing it's going to be a while before these badboys return to their regular size. Cruising down to the river-side skatepark the other afternoon with Brodie and his bro was easilly call of the week, watching people who can actually do things other than roll around gave me the balls to eat shit in the hope of being able to land even one tiny little trick. I just want to be cool guys!!! Fuck, that is seriously not far from the truth.

Also our internet is capped, which is probably the most crippling ailment known to civilized man. I have slowly begun to doubt the existence of AIDS, Hepatitis, and all forms of cancer, by the logic that if God wanted us to suffer needlessly through our lives, he wouldn't waste his time with microscopic viruses and fiddly tumours, he'd just cripple us by taking away our access to the infinite database of porn that should, according to all sane reasoning, be available to us instantly at any hour of the day. That's exactly what he's been doing to me and my housemates for the last six days, folks. God works in mysterious ways, and today his name is Telstra.

I think I just lost my notebook – one of three, even in note-taking I am meticulous and thoroughly organized – no massive loss really because this one contains the hurried scribblings of ideas for jokes and stories that I then look back on and expand in my other two books, but still annoying nonetheless. I've found myself lately thinking about the way that we use paper and the written word as a method for dumping the thoughts that occupy our brains onto a physical medium, thus eliminating the need for our minds to stagnate upon them. It's kind of like the way a computer uses a hard drive to store information it isn't using right now, while the info that it does need immediate access to is stored on the RAM. The written word is so amazingly useful because it allows us to free up our minds constantly for new information, and ensures that if we have a good idea, we don't need to stress ourselves remembering it, because we can just record it and have it waiting for a time when we feel ready to pick the thought back up again and follow it through.

I've gone off track slightly... but now that we're here, you can get a pretty good idea of how my life is faring right now. Without anything serious to think about – no real troubles to speak of, no stress, no pain, no emotional hangups – I am free to float and dawdle around whatever thoughts and pastimes I want. Sometimes things feel hard – comedy is not an easy pursuit, as friendly as the people might be (and they are), the stage is a lonely place – but whenever I feel myself getting down on setbacks, I recount the things I've done in the past week and shake my head once the ridiculous simplicity of my life sinks in. Life gets hard friends, but right now it seems easy.

Peace, Taco.

An Idle Thought

If I were a cynical person I'd probably say that life can be fairly reduced to a series of desperate, frantic attempts to invalidate our own profound loneliness. These attempts vary in ingenuity and design but the basic question – the cry that sits at the core of everything we do – is always the same. 'Please accept me!' The scream rings out and cuts through every moment of our lives. 'Be with me! Think of me! Care about me!' We want to be loved, and so we long to find people who will love us while we struggle to disbelieve, or even forget if only for a second, the brutal fact of our ultimate aloneness in death. Then we die.

I think that's what I would say if I were a cynic.

Ugh, Sunday.

Peace, Taco.

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.

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.

Calling Out from a Good Place

Rising sounds, and the beat keeps rising. The time is ten twenty-one and it's Sunday evening, I'm sitting in the living room with Brodesh (that's Brodie and Desh – PICK IT UP!) and everything is happening. Where are the parents? Where are the law enforcers? Where is the landlord when we are skateboarding up and down her wooden passageway like a bunch of lecherous louts? “Who cares?” should be your immediate answer to all of those three questions, today is the day for answers, discovery, and simple solutions.

I'm not trying to say that we're somehow pioneering some new way of life – we're clearly not – and the phrase 'out front, breaking boundaries' has become so overused that applying it to a person now seems to imply a level of mundaneness completely separate from the original intention. But we're doing the do out here... something just feels right. Something happened by accident when I moved over here that has made life that much simpler, like the unintended triple-syllable rhyme at the end of a sentence you said to the cashier when you were down at Coles buying your groceries. I was doing absolutely nothing in Adelaide... for the last two and a half weeks I had a shitty, terrible MENIAL joke of a fucking 'job' selling electricity to people door-to-door. Not even selling, just convincing – I was a door to door convincer – trying to persuade people that their current electricity companies, whatever they were (it was irrelevant really) were somehow screwing them out of money and that the company I worked for could save them cash. (we couldn't... AT ALL) But even when I wasn't taken up with this worthless existence, when I had free time, I wasn't in the right place within myself to do anything with it. And before those deathly last two point five weeks when I had NO job, it was even worse. I couldn't bring myself to do anything, but coming over here just changed everything.

I don't even know what it was, but from the first day that I was in this city my life and my mind just felt different; as if a change of scenery was the permission slip I needed to get out and do something every day. Sitting in and watching movies and pretending to work no longer enough.

So now I'm sitting here with a tie wrapped around my head and fastened in a crude granny-knot with the two ends hanging down over my left temple like a cheap ponytail-wig and everything in my universe feels right. Of course I can't leave you here, how could I that would be like leaving myself. But I just want you all to know that from where I stand right now, things couldn't get much better. It reminds me of what Bill Hicks once said, that “evolution didn't end with us growing thumbs you know... now it's time we started to evolve ideas.” It's a stretch to tie in, but you know I'm up to it... I feel like I've gone about as far as I can in the happiness direction, being happy isn't even a goal any more, it's done. It's still happening, but I don't have to try any more. I have to find some new direction to progress in now, and that's where the idea of evolving ideas comes in... whereas for as long as I can remember since I emerged from the mist of adolescent emotional entrapment I've just been trying to find and maintain pockets of happiness in a chaotic life, I now know that regardless of the good days and the bad days and the dips and highs and swooping changes in my mood, I don't have to worry about that any longer. Now it is time to grow in another direction. In the last two months that search has begun, and it continues today. I just thought I'd report back for a second, and maybe rest on my laurels just that tiny bit.

So this is me, calling out. Aidan Jones, for one night at peace with the world, before the search resumes tomorrow.

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.

Make Me Angry

So it's looking like I'm going to be moving in with Brodie and Desh in the next week or two as Tim moves out of the Richmond place and in to his own sex-nest (my words, not his) with his lovely lady-friend Lauren. Logistics for this move will be tricky and Ill be recruiting my main main Philly P for transport duties when he drives down from Adelaide next week, hopefully with my queen-size mattress fixed semi-securely to the roof of his car. Bond is only seven-hundred-and-something dong so that shouldn't be a massively stressful ordeal, and seeing as rent is taken out monthly by direct debit I'll just have to make sure that my bank accounts are set up nicely so that more than enough is sent to my net account each week so I can't get at it with my evil plastic money funnels. I'm definitely looking forward to being out of this hostel and into a room of my own where I can crank beats and kill the light at any hour I desire, although I will miss the communal feel of this place and plan to come back every now and then to kick it with the few friends that remain... god damn it I feel really boring today, is this really all I have to say? 'really' twice in one sentence... I can't even string a sentence together. AGAIN? REALLY TACO? REALLY?

Fuck, should I get fired up about something? Uuuugh... This morning at knock-offs after work conversation turned to the now-recurrent theme of government and civil rights and I must say the fact that this is becoming a regular topic is both scary and exciting. Exciting because it's nice to talk with people about the shit that gets me really revved up and ready to debate, but scary because I know, before even entering into the discussion, that my frequently held position as devil's-advocate may not sit nicely with my work-mates, including managers and owners of the venue. Nevertheless, when we started talking about minority rights and the three other people sitting at the bar all begun the ritualized back-slapping that is common to people who are prepared only to energetically agree with eachother and sit back in comfortable chairs while the world's problems solve themselves, I could see exactly where things were headed. I raised the point that while affirmative action and quotas may hold a part of the solution to problems of, specifically, gender inequality, their implementation could conceivably, and from experience, does, cause resentment and feelings of tokenism among the non-minority groups. I'm not claiming to have a better solution here, but I would rather be a part of a debate where unfinished ideas are fleshed out and considered openly than sit back as one side's unfinished ideas are presented as though they are complete and uncontested, and then accepted as truth.

God damn it, still not really getting riled up here am I... What is wrong with me today? I don't feel blurry or anything, although Remi, my French room-mate, did just ask if I was hungover today, so maybe I am a bit worse-for-wear this morning (7:13pm) than I thought? I'd start on another topic here for the sake of attaining the magical number of three different ideas for this blog, but I really don't see the need... or have the impetus or energy. Yesterday Rachel and I went to Alex's new place in Coburg where they had bands playing in their basement and a fire going in the back yard. The place is fucking enormous and promises an amazing summer of backyard parties and lazy Sunday afternoons... but I'm finding it hard to gather up the furious excitement that I know that place deserves right now, so even with this hot at hand, I'm going to leave you guys waiting. I'll tell you about it next week.

Feeling half-faded –
sad, unenthusiastic.

That's me, signing off.

Peace, Taco.

Heartbeats, Fast

God DAMN it I have been busy... at least it feels like I have. Often times I have to breathe out quickly and mentally slap myself in the face, then focus on something still and try and figure out which set of emotions that I seem to constantly dart between are real and which are make-believe. Am I constantly on the verge of losing my head and jumping out of the nearest first storey window, just to exert the frantic energy that frustrates me from within? Or are the moments when my body feels most on edge simply fleeting weaknesses? Am I really so stressed? Am I really so busy? Is life really as hectic as it seems in the depths of my most flurried of moments? Or am I still floating gently through a series of difficult moments, only ever becoming conscious when the times seem far too tough?

This week I took a quick trip to Adelaide (I left on Sunday night by bus and returned Tuesday afternoon by plane) with the original stated purpose being to farewell my now-estranged ex-girlfriend, Melanie. While I had made a commitment to return for her last day in Australia several weeks ago, I knew deep in my heart as I departed Melbourne at 8pm Sunday evening that I did not want to go, and I bore a shameful resentment towards her for the fact that I was spending money that I didn't have on a trip that, really, I didn't need to take. I had a good time in Adelaide – I got to see my friends again and performed a killer spot at Rhino Room – but the truth of the matter is that I didn't need to be there and I should have just told her I wasn't coming in the end. We had fought enough and the last hug wasn't a hugely moving experience, as all the goodbyes were said long ago. I need to learn to say no to myself and to other people when faced with hard decisions that involve other people's feelings and I need to man the fuck up and cut my losses sometimes. This was one of those times. Yeah I mate a commitment to go, but what good was that commitment once it had become clear than any friendship we were going to have would be hollow and forced for the remainder of the time that she was in Australia and.... ugh, I'm just going to stop myself there. I think I've said everything I needed to say on that... Melanie is gone. Adios francessa, bien viaje.

So with that I can move on to something else I have been avoiding discussing in here – my new girlfriend... and there's an ugly little phrase if ever I saw one. We made it facebook official today... wow. If I could delete those last few sentences from this page and replace them with some sort of dot or squiggle or picture of a cat with a funny caption that could convey the same meaning, then I would... those words are ugly, and they make me cringe. Unfortunately though, they are a necessity, and while I'm not happy about writing the words themselves, the events that have brought me to this point could not have been better.

Rach and I met in the first couple weeks that I was in Melbourne while I was on the door at the Worker's Pub taking coin for a gig in the band room... she came up to the door and we chatted for a while, but I didn't ask for her number under some misguided pretence of 'playing it cool'. Good job Tugboat, cool. Professional. “Don't worry babe, I've done this all before.” Well anyway after your standard courtship etc. etc. we made it official for us on the 9^th of August (her calculations not mine) and then made it official for everyone else a few hours ago. I'm seriously fucking ecstatic to have met such a funny and interesting girl after only having been in this city for two months and am excited to see what happens with us as time goes on. But the catch – and there is always one – is that she is leaving for a gap-year tour of Europe on the 11^th of September and, while her stated return date is somewhere in February, it could be as long as that, or as short as the time it takes to get mugged at Heathrow Airport and be extradited home for vagrancy outside the international terminal.

It's the uncertainty that's really getting to me, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it I guess, and for the moment, I'm having the time of my life... as always pretty much. I don't want to expound on this shit too much here, as these are really thoughts for my private pages and surely are as laborious for you all to read as they are difficult for me to write. Other than that though I have done three spots this week, and did as many last week, and I have a big one lined up for Tuesday at some place called Soto E Sopra which I have invited all DA BOIZ to come and check out. I know I have grown a lot in the two months that I've been here and while seventy percent of the material I put down ends up being scrapped before I even get to the stage, I have managed to put together a fair amount of good stuff including a solid five to seven minutes that I am confident I can take to whatever stage I can get on to. I can safely say that the initial period of settling in here is finished, and interestingly enough I feel like the first stage of me as a stand-up comic is over as well. I am confident enough on stage now to not fall completely to pieces if a bit doesn't work and while I am still coming up with a lot of stuff that, upon reflection really isn't very good, I can look back on the gigs when I ate shit back in Adelaide and say that I roll with the punches a lot more smoothly now.

Over the next few weeks I'll be working on a few stories that I have been telling to friends, and taking them onto the stage without having them written down word-for-word to see if I can capture a bit of the improvised feel that I have noticed crowds respond really well to. I'll still have my strict material there and will keep developing more of that stuff, but I think if I can make something that isn't written down work a few times in a row, then I'll be on the way to becoming a lot more versatile and gaining another level of confidence in myself again. It's all working towards what I know to be a very important goal – to be able to trust that what I'm going to say on stage will be funny, before I say it, and even when it isn't funny anyway, to keep saying what comes into my head again and again.

Fuck this entry is a little all over the place... um... I dunno. Maybe it reflects my slightly rattled mood at the moment. I feel like I have a lot of shit to do today, but really I don't at all... in fact when I walk back to the hostel I'm going to take it slow for once. Yep, that's the ticket folks. No worries. Maybe I'll listen to some Bob Marley... by the way, if you pay close attention, almost every one of his songs starts with a quick drum fill... now you know.

A little Easter Egg for everyone who kept reading.

Boobs.

Peace, Taco.

A Million Reasons Why Ebay Can Get FUCKED, and the Beautiful Busker I Saw on Swanston

So I bought this MacBook Pro from a guy in my hostel (Jordan) the other day for three-hundred and fifty ding-dongs after he had asked me to take it down to Cash Converters and sell it for him. They had offered that much and I said I'd match it and he could keep the money he was going to give me for running his errand. The whole point behind buying it was that me and my best mate Phil (who spotted me the money and came up with the idea) were going to give Jordan the money he was going to get anyway – money that he needed right now for a plane back to Perth – and we would sell it online at a higher price, but without any time limit. It seemed like a good idea at the time... and really, it still seems like a good idea right now. There's one hitch though – and it only takes one – that has brought our operation close to failure and placed my shuddering nerves on the precipice of complete collapse: Ebay... go fuck yourself.

We first listed the item with an instant buy price of $950 and a starting auction price of $700 over five days... seems simple enough right? WRONG. After about two days we got a bid for the full nine-fifty and we were ready to hi-5 and dance the funky chicken, but the buyer turned out to be a fake account from Nigeria and the person behind the keyboard came out with some “I'm just on holiday at the moment can you send it to my home account” bullshit. Fuck off, I'd rather my money remain un-grifted thanks. After the item was bid at the full price though, Ebay took the listing down assuming that we had completed the transaction and all was fine... even though it clearly was not fine, and any cursory glance from the Ebay staff towards the status of the transaction would have revealed this. No money changed hands, and no sale was made. Nevertheless nine-hundred and fifty chattleford noo-nahs were deducted from our Ebay account's selling limit for the month (which starts at $2500 and can only be increased by a rigorous proof-of-identity process which... well let's just say we can't increase it) even though... ahem... NO SALE HAD BEEN MADE.

I relisted the item (short note, I have noticed that I've been using that word – 'relisted' – an awful lot during this saga; on my phone, in gmail, in word etc. and nowhere is it recognized as a word... I keep getting the little squiggly red line telling me to hyphenate but GUESS WHAT – I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING HYPHENATE!)... Ok I relisted the item a few days later and surprise surprise the same thing happened. Dodgy lady paying the full price of nine-hundred and fifty imaginary moneys and then running her imaginary mouth about some imaginary story of how she's on holiday and needs the money into an overseas account and... well whatever. Of course, being the oracle of foresight that I am I had thought to list my phone number in the description of the item this time so that real potential buyers could contact me directly and we could fuck off the worthless middle-man that is Ebay and get this thing done right. So I got a text from someone in Sydney asking about the MacBook and I feel like we have developed some level of mutual trust in the concept that we are both real people and not darkness, West African confidence tricksters... but this (calm down Aidan, caaaaaalm... breathe) this person still wants to complete the transaction over Ebay. I'm assuming this is to ensure that his money is not made off with by me, an untrustworthy foreign entity, and as far as he knows, a shady West African confidence trickster.

Well here la-di-FUCKING-da buddy. I'm SORRY I don't have FIVE GOLD STARS next to my name when it comes up in your phone and my pleas for a PHONE CALL are met with stunned silence and RETARDED REQUESTS FOR PICTURES OF THE LAPTOP WHICH I AGREE TO SEND YOU AND THEN WHEN I DO YOU STILL STUTTER AND STAMMER AND SIT ON YOUR FUCKING HANDS LIKE A LITTLE BITCH NOT EVEN RESPONDING TO MY SUGGESTIONS OF HOW WE CAN FINALLY END THIS DISGUSTING FARCE OF A DEAL FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKING FUCK KILL EVERYONE...

Can you tell I'm upset?

Earlier today I was walking down Swanston St in the middle of town and reciting the speech for my new job as a walking-tour guide in my head. I was about to cross over Collins St when I heard a lovely, clean guitar chord amplified by a small, portable speaker that the girl playing the guitar had mounted in her case. She started singing, and I forgot all about crossing the road and turned back to watch her – the only person in a sea of faces with nowhere in particular to be and nothing in particular to worry about missing. I sat down on a seemingly superfluous white, wooden block that I could only imagine was fixed to the pavement four-hundred years ago with the sole purpose of giving me somewhere to sit while this beautiful siren sang her songs out into the world on this windy Thursday afternoon. She played smooth and sweet as I rummaged around in the bottom of my bag for the silver coins I knew rattled around in some obscure pocket... I knew it wouldn't be as much as she deserved, but it would have to do.

I don't normally give money to buskers – mainly because I don't normally stop and watch. This girl though, and that moment, there was something about the five or ten minutes that passed as I sat on my lonely chair in the middle of the footpath... it was one of those perfect silences that come around very rarely in life and must be savoured when they do, no matter the surroundings. I knew the storm that was brewing in the cables and hollow wires of cyberspace at that very moment when I sat down and stopped my life for the girl with the guitar. I knew it was there, but when I sat down I decided that for now, just for a second, it could disappear. In these quiet moments when life stands still, only a smile can intrude on my peaceful meditation. No troubles. No worry. No scathing insults or fiery torment that grinds inside my brain and threatens to boil over violently at any moment. No jittery unease... just me, and the music.

I dropped the coins in her guitar case, and she quickly said “thanks” in the middle of singing. I smiled at her one last time, and walked off down Swanston street, ready to swear at people some more and curse the stupidity of creation. The MacBook is a long way from sold, but I feel that the blood clots inside my brain have begun to slowly repair themselves and I've stopped thinking about different ways of killing people.

Smile.

Peace, Taco.