It's Been Too Long

It's been too long, so I have to write something, three weeks almost, but what to write? Updates? Last week I had six gigs – one Sunday, two Tuesday, one Wednesday, one Thursday, and an MC spot Saturday. One of those went okay, three went very well (I'd at least say well, but at least two I was quite happy with), one went to shitsville and was me eating dicks for five and a half minutes, and one (the MC spot) went averagely for the first half, but then pretty well for second half. Now that I'm breaking it down like that, that's a pretty good ratio – and I think I'm being fairly honest with myself there.

That was a good week, not just because of the volume of gigs, but also because of the quality, those three that went really well felt great while I was doing them, and with the solid five minutes that I've got on me now, as well as with the twenty or so minutes of other material, I'm feeling fairly confident going into my run of ten fifteen-minute spots at the comedy festival. Also this week I printed off my flyers for the festival – eighty A4 sheets each with four flyers on them – so that's three-hundred and twenty A6 flyers ready to be given out to people that I meet in the next three weeks... I think I can do it. I'll be pretty happy with myself if I can hand out all of those flyers by the end of the first week of my run.

What else, what else? I'm going to Adelaide for a few days (Tuesday the 5^th to Saturday the 9^th) which should be cool, doing a spot at the Ed Castle and hopefully catching up with a wide array of crew down there during the fringe. The fringe is going to be sick, and I've got a few cool shows lined up that I want to see as well – Wolf Creek the Musical should be sick. Rhino Room Late Show should be sick. Grills at Phil's and jumping into WOMAD, it's all going to be sick. When I get back I'll have to sort out this Centrelink Bullshit that I'm too confused and tired to go into right now, but suffice to say that it needs to be sorted, and quickly, or else I'll be sitting in a room full of lifetime fuckup losers learning how to write cover letters and 'effectively present myself' for job interviews.

This has been an update from Tugzy, your pal, out in the midst.

Peace, Taco.

...aaaaand we're back

Two weeks exactly since my last post, and things have changed quite a bit in those two weeks, but I don't even want to talk about those things. I just want to sit. I want to write something. I just found this mixtape by a dude called Joey Bada$$ whose name I have heard around the place in the last few months, but as is always the case with new music, I've been way late to jump onto the new stuff coming out, even if it is TRAGICALLY up my alley. Basically the idea behind this guy and his crew (Pro Era) is that they love the 90's New York hip hop sound, and they are making music in the style that came out of the greatest city in the world during the Golden Era. I cannot express how much I would have absolutely lost my mind over this about eighteen months ago. Two years ago. This would have been the most amazing thing in the world. Now, it's just a nice surprise.

Today has been a nice surprise, sunny outside, and at ten-thirty I woke up after getting to bed at four-thirty in the morning, and felt great. I felt so great, in fact, that I went for a run with the Vintage Beatlab Podcast number twenty pumping through the headphones I found at the Workers last night. Luck luck luck motherfuckers, it's coming in through the windows.

I've been stressing this week about the looming rent day on the sixteenth, which is tomorrow now, and I was about ready to cruise down to the bank with a pocket full of coins and fifty bucks I'd borrowed off of Benny to pump my account up to what would have been about fifty cents above the required amount. Shit was deep. Things were getting thingy. But then, just as I was finally contemplating the beginning of preparations to leave, I saw an email come in – PAY SLIP. I'd forgotten about my pay from the one night I worked at Yah Yah's on the weekend. That's A-Hunned-and Twenty-Fo' of them sweet sweet dorrah ladies and gentlemen. Crisis averted. The lucky streak continues.

Tonight I'm going to kick the football around with Rich and Mick in Flagstaff Gardens – and yes, by football I do mean soccer ball... oh how I await the day when I don't feel the need to clarify on that point. Then, after a bit of social outdoorsing, I've got a gig at Stomach Ache in Collingwood where I'm OPENING of all things, and have a seven minute spot. I've written a bit of new shit over the past few days and am actually feeling okay about it. This week is going to be all about new material. Heaps of new. I've been getting a bit lazy on that front I think.

Okay, so maybe I will talk about what's been happening lately, I guess I kind of can now, I feel okay about it. Not great, but okay. Rach and I broke up. I mean, we talked for ages and it was shaky and we couldn't come to a decision, but I think I've sussed out that I need to be by myself. Yeah. That's what's going to happen. Who cares. HAH! This music is so fucking good. The 1999 Mixtape by Joey Bada$$ – it came out in June last year – so about the time that I was heading over to Melbourne DAYM SUHN... but I'm recommending it now. Listen.

Wow that feels good, finally, something written down. Stay tuned, whoever is tuned at the moment, I feel a resurgence coming on. Fuck, I just jinxed it.

Peace, Taco.

Failed Organization

Directly to my left stuck to the wall with Blu-Tack is an A4 piece of paper with a bunch of dates and corresponding dollar amounts listed on it, which are divided into two columns: 'spent' and 'earned'. This depressed, abandoned piece of written record is just the latest in a long line of failed attempts at organization that stretches as far back into my past as I can remember. I'm always trying to order things like this, and I always give up. Half-finished projects and notebooks full of meaningless numbers haunt me from the bottom drawer of my bedside table. Why?

The column on the left of this thing hanging on my wall is the 'spent' column, and the one on the right is 'earned'. Basically, from what I can tell after deliberately ignoring it for the last two weeks, the idea of this little table was that I would write down every dollar I spent on the left, and every one I made on the right, but I think the catch was that only money that didn't pass through my bank account would be included... the idea behind this was that, of my two jobs, one pays in cash and one pays into my account. So my cash job would fund spending money, and my other job would be for rent, which is direct debited on the fifteenth of the month. Since I make roughly $250 a month more from my legit job than I need for rent, I should be able to save $250 a month in my account, and so if the 'spent' column equalled the 'earned' column on this little sheet, then I'd be $250 up at the end of each month.

It was a good system, in theory, but there are millions of variables that always contribute to these things not working out. I won't go into any of them here because we all know that to organize the finances of a twenty-one year old male requires at least a bachelor in some sort of accounting as well as a keen readiness to accept mysterious syphoning of money into nefarious late-night/early-morning frivolities. That having been said though, surely I should have been able to stick to the system I'd devised for myself for longer than – hold up, I'll just read the dates on the paper... – nineteen days. Jesus christ, that's woeful.

Nineteen days of diligence... this reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to race marbles down my Hot Wheels car tracks two at a time, pitting the marbles against each other in a sixty-four-marble elimination competition and studiously recording the scores as one beat another and another and another and eventually the grand final was contested by the remaining two. I had massive sheets and tables and a track that extended across my room and I would draw up the fixtures in preparation for the competition, and the games would begin. Inevitably though, the four that ended up making it all the way through to the finals were my four favourite marbles, and the gold one always won because I thought it looked prettiest – I was never one to accept the outcomes of pure chance. I could never sit by and watch my world be ruled by chaos... now that I'm twenty-one though, controlling reality is hardly as simple as giving old 'goldie' a little nudge at the start of the race. Shit is real in here... shit is DEEP.

I do it all the time: my system for recording comedy and blog ideas is split into two books, the distinctions between which I have yet to be able to confidently define... and each book is split into a front and back section, which are also separated in an equally arbitrary fashion. This one has jokes... that one has premises... but then this one has a few premises that are sort of half in joke format... and that one has stuff that's slightly more developed... and this one has stuff I tried last night... but that one has a few bits and pieces in it that belong in the other book but I'd left it at home that day... that one has something about Christopher Hitchens next to a shopping list... this one has poems on the middle page. It all means NOTHING. USELESS. DROSS. Swear words.When I go to find my new bit about how my housemate owes me eight beers, I know which book I wrote it in, because I just remember... as much as I wish that I had a system, so I didn't have to remember anything, I don't. So to the casual observer, it may look like my life is arranged neatly in a simple system that allows me to work at optimal efficiency, but this casual observation is a fallacy. My shit is fucked. I don't know where anything is. I'm admitting it. Right now. I'M COMING APART AT THE SEAMS!!!

I don't know what else to write here, because I didn't plan this piece of confused word-jumble out before I wrote it. I guess I should end with a funny quip – something to tie everything together nicely and make me feel good again, so that I can accept the mess that is my bedraggled existence with a smile and a flick of my long, flowing hair. Quips... jokes... funny chucklings... if only.

Peace, Taco.

Now We're Fucked

Okay, so what's this about then? I feel a little shit all of a sudden. I feel a bit strange. I got a call today from Ben who is one of the guides for Peek Tours, the walking tour company that I've been getting about half of my paycheque from for the last few months. He said he had to cancel his tour this morning because he only had two people rock up, and when he went to check out the competition (I'm Free Tours) their guy had like twenty people... that's a lot of people for a Monday. That's worrying.

They must have been doing something in the month or two that they've been running that has given them these numbers, but what that thing is, I am absolutely clueless... I've never even SEEN THEIR FLYERS!?! But the fact of the matter now, is that they have fucking WAY MORE people, and we are left with barely any base from which to make money. This is stressful because tours is really the main base of my income right now, and add to that the fact that I've just faced this week, that I'm going to have to quit Yah Yah's after the new year. I won't rant and spit here right now because I don't think that'd help anything, but to put it plainly, I can't work in that place anymore. I hate it. It is fucking terrible.

So let's look at how things are now then... in about a week, my two sole sources of income now have a limited life, one due to work conditions, and one due to competition. Fuck. FUCK. !!! Things were going way to smoothly... I know I'll be able to get work at another bar with Sean around February when his new project kicks off, but until then, and until the final security of my twenty-second birthday rolls in (twenty-two is the age when I can finally claim centrelink... but more on that well of shame when it rolls around in two months' time) … (THIS PIECE IS INCOHERENT!!)

Until February, I'm going to be waiting in the wings, basically. I'm going home for Christmas, but now that I'm faced with it and the looming rent deadline on the fifteenth, I don't know how I'm going to be able to get the coin together unless one final gambit pays off... Tomorrow I'm going to go down to the I'm Free tour and suss out their situation. I'm going to have to move fast... I'll have to talk to this guy... ugh... FUCK... I think I'm admitting to myself right now already that I'm going to be jumping shit... FUCK... this sucks so hard. I want to bring the Peek Tours guides over as well and make sure everyone can still keep doing tours... I won't know what the score is until I meet this guy tomorrow and suss him out, and suss out their guides situation.

Shit just got really stressful this week. No more smooth sailing. Oh yeah, I had some gigs yesterday though. Well I say 'gigs', one was ONLY comics, so it was basically a workshop, and for some reason I got really freaked out when I was on stage and bailed... I'm kind of pissed off that I did that, because I could have hung around longer and got some really good feedback on jokes... anyway, that's neither here nor there. I went and did another spot at Voltaire after that and did a new bit which went pretty well, but the recording fucked up so I didn't even get to listen back and see what I could polish up... Ugh.

The getting drunk and partying on Saturday night was really fucking good... but I don't feel like that really matters at this point. It wasn't especially satisfying and felt pretty arbitrary to be honest... like, why am I drinking? Why do I need to go out and party? What have I done to warrant this? It was really lucky that I had the Saturday off work because I would have killed myself if I'd had to go in and had my face spat in for five and a half hours again by... *breathe* … ugh... fuck... breathe, breathe. This ranks as EASILLY the most unreadable and retarded thing I have ever posted. Don't even bother.

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.

Paying Fines is Shithouse

There is something that instinctively irks me about bureaucratic hoop-jumping. Centrelink, taxes, court dates, fines, rent, uni enrolment; it all seems so over-complicated and every time one of these makes an appearance in my life I find myself walking down the streets muttering swear-words and sulking. Today, this happened.

A month and a half ago I was the unhappy recipient of a fine from the transport people, whatever they like to call themselves, for resting my feet on the seat of a train as I made my way out to Footscray to hit up a comedy gig. I gave them my ID (SA Driver's License) with my Adelaide address on it, and the conductors explained to me that if I just contested the fine as soon as it arrived then everything would be sweet and I'd be let off with a warning. That all seemed well and good at the time, but when Mum Dawgz called me the other day to let me know that my fine for two-hundred and seven Australian Currency Units had arrived, I shuddered with bilious anger at the fresh realisation of the exercise in futility that I was about to embark on – I was shaken from my peace.

I trudged into town, infringement notice in hand, to fix this shitiness – I am not paying a two-hundred and seven dollar fine for putting my feet on a fucking chair, this is the future and I REFUSE to be needlessly oppressed. First stop library: I went in to print my carefully worded letter at the library as my home, inhabited as it is by four young drifters, each in varying stages of emotional decay, does not have a printer. The letter contained phrases like: “to whom it may concern”, “excused having regard to exceptional circumstances”, and the always convincing, “I apologise for any inconvenience and I hope that this matter can be brought to a satisfactory close.” Filthy grovelling, really. I felt dirty, I still feel dirty in fact. I wrote those things, and I can't un-write them now... also I forgot the data cable to connect my phone to the printer, so things weren't looking up.

After obtaining a library printing card, putting a dollar of credit on it, re-typing the letter in notepad in a font that resembled a Soviet military dossier, and printing the thing off, I asked how to work the scanner. “Sorry, you can't scan straight to the photocopier, you have to scan to a USB and then print a copy from that.”
“Why?”
“That's just how it is.”
That's just how it is dude, just leave it – my internal monologue, always the voice of reason – that's just how they do things here. Just let it go... twitch... shudder... *%### … ok, so I left the library and went around the corner to Officeworks where I got another printing card, onto which I put another dollar, and printed off a scanned copy of my drivers license (my excuse for contesting the fine is “I'm from Adelaide, and I didn't know that 'feet-on-seats' was an offense here”... details, details). Armed with my two pieces of contesting evidence, I walked with purpose to the post office, arms swinging, eyes burning, and coins jangling in pocket.

After making it to the post office, past the big red sign hanging on the corner of Little Bourke and Elizabeth that says 'Shopping as Usual' (I could vomit a lake of dark sludge and still not be purged of my deep hatred for this consumerist placard, but that's neither here nor there is it) I wrote the address on a postage-paid envelope and sealed my letter within. I considered not paying for the envelope, but then I thought that maybe when you pay for the envelope they put some special stamp on it which validates it – what if I don't pay? My thingy won't reach the place this will all have been for naught!! – so I paid, because I'm a pussy. Turns out I was right, they do stamp it. Crime doesn't pay kids, stay in school.

I flushed it down the chute of the red mailbox after performing one last OCD-check and then it was gone. Finished. Now begins the extended waiting period while my appeal is processed and re-processed through the dripping annals of the machine before being rubber-stamped by some hooded beetle-man behind a desk in the Transport Department. Hopefully my name will be cleared and I will be merrily released from debt. I guess if I do eventually escape a two-hundred and seven dollar fine then all that running around and frustration at having to deal with the mind-numbing inefficiency of a system where appeals have to be submitted in written form and reasons are called 'excusory clauses' and and every telephone is answered by the same machine... if I get to keep my money then all of this hoop-jumping will have been worth it. I can't help being angry though, even though, if we're honest, it's my fault for not following the rules. What's so fucking precious about those train seats anyway?

Peace, Taco.

Socks: History's Greatest Monster

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

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

You are being oppressed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace, Taco.

A Letter to Ted Danson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace, Taco.

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.

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.

My New Room

I'm sitting at my computer right now in a black, fold-up chair that I stole from the back yard and wiped clean with the new(ish) towel I bought from the Salvos yesterday for like three dollars or some shit. My computer is sitting on top of one of my two speakers – also purchased from the Salvos, but the Adelaide one this time... the pair cost four bucks (YES!!). I've got my copy of George Orwell's 1984 open to my right and the left set of pages are held open with a peg that is fastened to a hard-cover children's book that I brought to Melbourne for this very purpose. I was typing it out before and have been every now and then since March, I find it really helps me clear my mind to completely fill my brain with someone else's thoughts... granted I got the idea from the Hunter S. Thompson documentary where it says that he typed out The Great Gatsby a bunch of times, but I like to think that I've found merit in the activity other than imitation of my literary idol.

On the floor, further to my right past the already burgeoning mess of cables plugged into a five socket powerboard that I'm sure Dad is pissed about me having (even though I know for a fact that he would have no use for it back home... motherfucker doesn't even own a cellular telephone-machine) is my second monitor. It's a 17inch flatscreen that I bought for three-hundred badboys when I was like fifteen or some shit. In the corner are some sheets that will never be used because really I have never understood the usefulness of sheets. Like yeah sure I get the ones that you cover your mattress with, and we'll get to my bedding situation later, but the other ones... that thin layer of superfluous cotton that is supposed to line the people-sandwich between person and quilt cover... they are bullshit. If someone is using those sheets then they are clearly too afraid of something.

Past that along the wall to my right are a few books including the English-Spanish dictionary given to my upon my departure from Bolivia in February by my formerly estranged, now slightly-less-estranged ex-lady Melanie. She wrote a nice note in it for me when we left and I plan on holding on to that guy because, as it says in 'Everyone Has the Right to Wear Sunscreen': “keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.” There are no bank statements in this room... you can do that shit online now. Then more books and a fat pile of clothes, most of which I don't really like any more but I know will eventually be worn out of sheer laziness and aversion to trips to the laundromat. I only have one laundry bag and while it is a hefty piece of bagery, I really can't see myself making that trip any more than once a fortnight... that's fine, I needed to buy new socks and underpants anyway. (On that note, just quickly, the list of stuff that I lost that I ended up losing to the hostel tax grew by three pairs of socks, two undies, and another tube of toothpaste along with countless food items in the final weeks... I've come to terms with the fact that those losses are largely my own fault)

Behind me, after the door and the appropriate amount of empty floor-space to account for that, are my shoes, and some of Phil's shit that he left here like a the lowly drifter that he is – also mate your jacket is hanging on my door, come get it back or I will spit in the pockets. Then there's my bed; a single mattress with the fitted sheet-cover ON (ladies) and five pillows arranged in the optimum arrangement to avoid floor-touchies and the dreaded midnight head-roll. (trust me, I've done tests) Now we're on the wall to my left, just over my left shoulder and if you have a good ability to spatially visualise what I'm writing about you will have noticed (do the sums guys, it all adds up **gasp**) that my bed is on an angle with the wall and actually forms a nice little right-angled triangle between the short end and the two sides of the corner over my left shoulder for those of you playing at home. There's my big bag – the one with the 'Troop 712' tag still on from my heady junior days at the Australian Jamboree – and a few hoodies and shoes and then directly to my left are the sheets that will, god and Hubbard willing, be going on my queen size bed when it arrives from Adelaide. (it's on the list, you can't rush art, dickhead)

Finally, the most important item in this room, and the one that has allowed me to begin reclaiming my sense of normalcy and begin to make this bare, languid pit my new home: my Dad's old stereo amp. He told me that it didn't work when I brought home the two speakers from the Salvos a few months ago in Adelaide but I took it out of the shed in Naldera Street and plugged it in anyway and, well long story short... it did. It works fine mate, thank you nineteen-eighties. This badboy has already done about ten solid hours of work in the five days that I've been living here... actually make that twenty... and don't you people let anyone say that I let a hard slog go unappreciated. On top of that are my wallet, keys, and oh yeah to my right my phone is on charge. Piece of shit is always on charge. Feels like my life is on charge every time I walk into a room and I see a power point to plug that bastard tool into. Okay... time to stop, I think things are about to get a little too serious.

Peace, Taco.

(29/10/12 EDIT: For the sequel to this post, click here)

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.

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.

Musings on Immoral Behaviour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace, Taco.

A Well Thought Out Budget

This week I've decided that I need to start sticking to a strict budget if I'm ever going to make it out of the god forsaken hell hole that is the Melbourne Connection Travellers' Hostel. I may have been a bit harsh there, this place isn't that bad... in fact, it's actually quite a lovely little corner of Melbourne and I'm quite sure that if I had to be holed up anywhere for a period of months (and let's face it, I do) then this would be my preferred location. Well, top five, easy. The kitchen floors are gritty and brown from dropped food, the bathrooms are wet and slippery, and my room mine is frequently noisy thanks to a snoring New Zealander who sleeps on the bottom bunk of a two-bunk single bed with his Romanian girlfriend and gargles what I can only assume is motor oil in the back of his throat from the hours of 2am to 5am nightly. I could rant at length (far greater length than one particularly long sentence, of this, my people, you can be sure) but I will NOT! (Raised fist. Bright Eyes. Angry mouth. Defiant stance.) because tonight is a night for much softer voices. Tonight, you will come with me, my friends. Tonight, you will listen.

About ten days ago it became clear to me that my passage out of this homely three-storey bomb shelter would not be as simple as my previously half-formed ideas about moving into a rental house had led me to believe. For some reason I only choose to envisage the final moments of any plan when thinking about it in my head – the final handshake, the last signature, a fattish man in a suit exiting briskly – I never consider the weeks or months between me and those thoughts, or how much effort and work will be involved. Ok I do know the reason... it's WAY easier. I don't want work... I want PAYOFF MUTHAFUCKKAAAAA!!!... Sorry, I know... yelling.

But since it's become clear that moving out of here isn't going to be a simple hop-skip-catchalaterbaby I've slowly had to accustom myself to the unwelcome idea that making a budget and sticking to it may be my fastest passage to complete independence. So here it is yeh... behold! budget:

Expenditures

$140 a week for hostel

$40 a week for food

$20 a week for other fun things like drinking or a lady of the evening

Money In

$250 a week from job

$30 (ish) a week from tips

Ok so granted it's not the most comprehensive budget... in fact I'm quite sure that for all the fuss I've made over this piece of accounting the sole calculation here – $280-$200=$80 – takes all of five seconds to do. Whatever... the crux of this meandering story is that I am planning to save $80 a week every week from now on... plus more whatever I end up making from this tour guide noonah once that kicks off... Money is coming in is all I'm trying to say... batten down the hatches, it's MONEY... CAN YOU SEE THAT ON THE HORIZON???? MOOOOONNNEEEEEYYYYY.!.!.

I am seriously fucked... and I'm going to be in this hostel for a long time.

God damn it.

Peace, Taco.

Week Four: This Post Is A Pipe Bomb

I don't know how long it's going to be before I start accruing things again, rather than losing them... or even whether it's a good thing that I want to start accruing things again. I keep thinking about that George Carlin bit about stuff where he says that looking down on a city and seeing people's allotted houses all in rows is like looking at 'a bunch of people's stuff with a roof over it'. It's true, most of the stuff in your house is crap that you are never (or hardly ever) going to use again, and realistically you could get by without ninety percent of it, but it's still nice to have, for some reason. It's probably the security of knowing that whenever you need to do something – be it cook or wash yourself or eat or sleep or be alone or drink or spend time with people – you have a space to do that and all the items that are necessary. But there is a certain idealistic freedom to not having to lug all that stuff around and worry about it when you can't see exactly what it's doing. This is stuff that may not be critical or even incidentally useful in day-to-day life any more, but stuff obviously has cost you money at one stage or another, and thus retains some value even after its usefulness has long passed. Right now though, my stores of 'stuff' are, slowly but surely, depleting. I am becoming a free, vagabond spirit, through no choice of my own.

Since I've been in Melbourne I've lost one Jacket (my warmest and favourite one) and another remains in the possession of a friend so I guess I'll tentatively say that that one's still ok. I've also lost a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, a bottle of sweet chilli sauce, a jar of spaghetti sauce and a full thing of salt... like, the big one. I attribute all disappearances bar the jacket to the group of Asians that shared room six with me during my first week of the hostel, (I KNOW those boxes were for something the sheister bastards) but nevertheless... food is replaceable and spring is coming so fuck the jacket anyway. I think I'm just about ready to let go of that one... sigh uhhhh (wistfully)... yep, there it is. Closure.

I'm sitting in the state library right now typing away on my laptop which I dared to bring on a rare adventure out of my room – the battery lasts all of about five minutes now so normally there isn't much point, although I might try and make this a bit more of a regular thing as being away from the hostel means no temptation to eat out of boredom, or sleep out of laziness. I might go play some chess in the fabled 'chess room' that I've heard so much about... although I'm guessing the chess monkeys that surely inhabit the upper levels of this complex would prove more than a match for my feeble chess skills. I guess there's only one way to find out: chess it is. Sorry JayBone, can't really be Charles Dickensed looking for houses today... I think it'll be better to wait until you're up here too so we can sort out going to inspections together... I'll have more money by then as well. Save save save. Come on Taco. Fuck.

Anyone still following this? Didn't think so...

Ugh. I need some chicken.

Peace, Taco.

Nothing Much

Ok so I know I haven't written in a week an a half or some shit but it's sweet, I'm here now, and I'm ready to open up my heart. Cue music – let's go.

I went to Sydney last week for a few days and besides breaking the bank and still owing French Girl some one-hundred noo-naahs I had a pretty chill time – almost better than the last time I visited Sydney, although not as good a story to tell around a table of drunks which is generally my final measure of how good an experience something was. We went on a tour of the Blue Mountains, ate lots of sushi, and fought bitterly in the way that exes trying to give friendship a crack are inevitably wont to do. All around though, I had a nice time.

Other than that I've been thinking about becoming a walking tour guide in Melbourne and am meeting the dude that's going to be sorting that out on Friday to get a script and learn the tour etc. etc. so that should be a chuckle... and I did my Victorian RSA yesterday so I can work behind the bar at Yah Yah's and hopefully pick up a few more shifts and whatever.

I really don't feel in the mood to crank out something very interesting right now which sort of sucks because I haven't written since before Sydney and so much interesting shit has happened... but maybe I need to wait until I tie up one more little knot out here in the real world before I can start changing the record on here and writing about what's actually on my mind right now. I think I'm just going to wait until it's a little bit easier, a little further down the track.

I've been writing a whole bunch of comedy though, and last night I had some mushrooms and came back to the hostel and wrote a WHOOOOLE bunch of what was, at the time, A-grade Material. I'll be trying it out at the Comic's Lounge workshop tonight so we'll see how good it really is but I've re-read it and it does look rather intriguing. It wasn't just he psilocybin.

Peace, Taco.

A Non-Racial Tram Ride (AKA How I escaped $380 worth of fines and danced the happy dance)

The most private times for me have always been on public transport. Or when I'm walking between the station and the destination – time spent in transit for me has always been when I get most of my serious thinking done, so stepping onto the tram is about as close as I get to going to a therapist. The sessions last as long as it takes me to get from A to B, and even then they are sometimes drowned out by music. If the song of the day is struggling to hold my attention though, or if I have made a conscious decision to allow my thoughts to bubble up in front of me today so that I can stand face-to-face with whatever I think might be on my mind, then public transport is the place where the thinking gets done. Public transport is my special place, and when I ride, I don't like to talk to anyone.

Yesterday I was sitting on a late night tram on my way home from a comedy show. I was listening to Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and enjoying the seats on Melbourne public transport that, unlike those of Adelaide trams – which I have always contended bare a closer resemblance to rocks with a thin layer of algae than to seats of the sitting variety – are actually comfortable and possess a generous a softness. I had my feet on the seat in front of me (the seats are arranged in booths so that a pair faces another pair and then backs onto the ones behind it and... fuck it you all know how chairs work) and was nodding my head to Mr West's magnum opus when the doors opened and two transit cops came on: a heavy set black dude whose eyes I would soon discover had a scarily large pupil to white-bit ratio (the white bit was clearly winning), and another guy with a ticket scanning machine whose race remains unknown.

I didn't notice them at first, although old mate white-eyes sat across from me and, seeing him in my peripheral vision, I politely removed my feet from the chair that he clearly intended to sit on. As I removed my feet though he continued to stare at me, as if expecting some further grace or acknowledgement of his entrance into the tram – I had no idea that he was a transit cop at this point and so I searchingly removed an ear phone and asked him in a cool, young-person way, “what's up man?” He then pulled out his big boy badge from under his coat and the penny dropped in my mind, “you're fucked dude, you do not have a ticket WHATSOEVER... NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT... here comes the shit”. I pulled out the other earphone (from memory, I took the right one out first) and heard him say something about a two-hundred dollar fine for having my feet on the seats. “GOD DAMN IT MOTHERFUCKER,” I thought to myself, “not only am I going to get completely James Blunted for not having my ticket, but I'm going to cop another fine for having my feet on the fucking chair... Jesus Christ this is the end, drink the Kool Aid now dude, let's have it over with.” I gave him my ID when he asked for it, and apologised in a regretful, defeated mutter, resigned to my fate and considering the ramifications this would have for my living situation. The fines together would total three-hundred and eighty dollars. Gobble, gobble, gobble mother fucker. Gobble, gobble, gobble.

As the indiscriminate race man (who is described thusly not because I took a good look at him and noticed a distinct racial ambiguity in his physical appearance, but precisely because I only got to notice him out of the corner of my eye, and race just seemed to be the order of the day for describing people with Samuel L. Wackson sitting across from me) paced down the aisle scanning people's tickets with his truth-telling machine I felt my bowels move, and then brace for the final evacuation. He had skipped me because I was talking to the glassy-eyed bear who was probably looking forward to using my limp body as a puppet once this was all over with, but I was sure that my fare evasion would come to light in due course. As my mind was busy making sums and my eyes were trying to avoid making contact with the decider with the fare-evasion-testing-kit so as to delay the eventual truth-telling, I heard something impossible. An insane sound made its way, first into my ears, then slowly through the side of my head and finally squeezing into my brain like a tube of toothpaste... “IIIIIIIIIIII'lllllllll juuuuuuuuuussssssstttttttttzzzzzzz lleeeeeeeeeehhhhhttttk yyyooouuuuu offfff wwwiith a warning this time.” The world snapped out of slow motion and the stern face belonging to the man with the tiny pupils sat in front of me, fully in focus. “People have to sit on these seats you know, think about it.” I heard myself saying, “sorry, yeah that's cool,” and behind my face some unnamed part of me was writhing and contorting in sheer horror at the situation that had just presented itself. The ticket guy was at the other end of the tram at this point and my hulking one-time foe had just gifted me what was most surely a chance at the most beautiful and timely escapes ever in the history of escaping since the time when people first thought up simple traps to catch birds, and a particularly crafty pigeon said, “fuck this, it's my kid's birthday tomorrow.”

So I jumped up as soon as I had calculated the optimal time of exit (quick note: it was RIGHT FUCKING NOW) and as luck would have it the tram was at a stop and the doors were already open. They closed just as I jumped out of the tram and even though I was still three blocks before my stop I turned down the nearest street to get off of Collins and make it look like that really was the stop I had meant to get off at. I don't know why I put on that little show for those two guys – to be honest, it was more for my racial friend than the other guy who I never had the chance to be introduced to – but one the tram was a fair way down the street I doubled back, and before turning my music back on I let fly a victorious scream. “FUCK YES, SUCK MY DICK MELBOURNE”. The kind of scream that I imagine all young travellers would release in such moments of pure relieved ecstasy. I am still undecided on whether I agree with the feet-on-seats rule over here... I sure as hell don't agree with it on the Adelaide trams, or even the trains, because the seats back home are only marginally better than sitting on the floor, and that margin is not significant enough to be worthwhile protecting from the two grains of sand or droplets of moisture on the bottom of my shoe. Over here though the seats are nice, squishy, soft, comfortable, friendly... they even look like they might just have souls.

I don't know about completely abstaining from resting my feet on those badboys, I mean a man's gotta have his man-space and I think we all know that public transport thinking is best performed in as close to horizontal orientation as can be practicably achieved at the time. But from now on, I think I might at least survey the chair to see if it's one of the nice ones before wacking my ole' size eight-and-a-halfs down on them. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

Peace, Taco.