MICF Wrap-Up and Plans for 'The Future'

Once again, it really has been a long time since I've written in here, and I can feel myself getting out of the habit of writing, and really letting myself off the hook, which essentially goes against the whole reason I started writing on this blog. I think I can rationalize it this time though, and so, because I can, I will... here goes.

Comedy festival finished on Sunday (21/4) and that was a really amazing night. Massive. Huge. I felt like something changed that night – although it could have been because of the acid that we all took, because that darling chemical always gives events a sense of high significance, but I think the night itself was really special. One thing I'll always remember about the night that ended up closing out my first ever comedy festival, was that a group of Station 59 comics, disinterested with the Bollywood-themed closing party at The HiFi Bar, went to the Crown Casino – because it was the only place open – and decided to do a standup gig to seven assorted strangers, picked up from amidst the slot machines by the manically ambitious Sofie Prints. I got one amazing laugh at one point which rippled through the crowd, and yes I can sense the eye-rolls of comics listening to me calling seven drunken men and some comics a 'crowd', but that experience really was different. I don't care what anyone says... ew, look at me up on my soapbox defending myself. Gross.

The festival itself though was awesome, if not completely and utterly exhausting. I bitched out on going to see a show last night even though really I probably could have and still been fine for work this morning (I'm cleaning pubs and restaurants Monday, Wednesday and Friday now, but I'll get to that in a minute). I saw some inspiring work: Simon Keck, Jon Bennett, Daniel Kitson, Blake Mitchell, Setlist. I made some new friends, and some connections for the future, I did a bunch of spots including five at the Exford Late Show which was at times a surprisingly good room, but also lived up its reputation the first night I was there. I feel like this weekend will be full of rest as I finally catch up on the sleep I habitually missed throughout the festival, and hopefully come Monday I'll be back to square one energy-wise, because I feel FUCKING DRAINED, just right here.

So now, here's the plan folks. I'm going to Brisbane for two weeks starting next Wednesday (1/5) where I have a few spots lined up, as well as free accommodation with the lovely Corey White who I saw MC the show 'Undiagnosed' to about twelve people, and so feel unqualified to comment on at this juncture. I hear his comedy is very good, and I am grateful as SHIT to him for offering to put me up in his house for the whole two weeks. The reason I decided to do this trip is basically that for the first time in my life I have found myself in the strange position of having some level of disposable income. I feel squeamish... I don't really feel like I have earned or deserve this money, but I sure am not going to fuck it away on drugs and drinking – even if I wanted to I don't really feel like I have the capacity to be doing that anymore: I need to keep moving. I'm not saying that as a sort of order to myself, it's gone beyond that now. I actually need to keep moving, like I can't stop. I don't know how to not be doing anything any more, and every time I drink I end up being bored and edgy the next day when I'm not doing anything productive. Don't even start with drugs, in the last six months I think I can count two occasions where I've actually taken an amount of drugs large enough to create any sort of after-effect the day, or days after. It would be arrogant of me to say “I'm done” this early in the piece, but I am definitely having a break, and I can't see myself going back there any time soon.

After Brisbane I have a loose idea of a plan that I've been formulating in the days since Sunday, and so, in the interest of having something of substance recorded for my future self to fret over, here it is. My plan for the foreseeable future, may it hang over my head like an ambitious anvil, ready to fall at any minute and crush me:

• I want to write a story-show, or at least a show with a coherent through-line, and I have already decided on the topic, although I won't go into that here because to be honest I don't really think anyone is too interested in an idea. But I've started the earliest of early preparations for the show's creation. On the advice of Kieran Butler I think I might try and figure out at least some of the material on stage, even just to see if I can do it. Just to see if I'm anywhere near able to attempt that yet. This is my new challenge.
  
• I'm going to take this show, which will hopefully be up to half an hour in time for October, to the Melbourne Fringe and perform it as many times as possible at the Station 59 Free Comedy season there.
  
• Between the end of the Melbourne Fringe and the start of the Adelaide Fringe I'll keep workshopping the show and hopefully – and this is the part of the plan I'm not sure about and the part that will probably depend most on the performances during the Melbourne Fringe and my ability to stay focussed and passionate about this idea – it'll be up to around fifty minutes for the Adelaide Fringe, and then I'll take it there.
  
• If Adelaide goes okay, then I'll do the show at next year's MICF at Station 59 Free Comedy again for two weeks.
  
• Finally, if everything has worked out and if my money situation is still holding up in twelve months' time, I'll book my ticket to Edinburgh 2014, and book my spot in the Fringe, and then I'll have a fifty minute show to take over there where I'll hopefully be able to book a spot in one of the Free Comedy venues and do my first overseas shows. If I can make it to Edinburgh then I also want to head over to Spain and do the Camino de Santiago for a month, and with a month in between the two I'll travel around Europe a bit and say hi to some friends from Bolivia and people I've met in Australia.
  

So that's it, that's my plan for the next 18 months, and that's my recap of everything that's happened for me in the last month. Well not everything, but everything my fingers feel ready to write about right now. I'm sorry I haven't been writing, although I don't really know who I'm saying sorry to, because even after I put this on Facebook, probably only twenty people will read it, and you wouldn't have read it if I didn't tell you to anyway. So sorry, to me, but also good job me, you're doing okay, although you could really do with some new clothes to be honest.

Peace, Taco.

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.

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.

Daydreams

Today I was eating a banana and daydreaming on the tram on my way down to lunch with a bunch of comedians. I had already finished my first banana and chucked the peel in the bin before I got on the tram, but I was about to be faced with the problem of what to do with the second peel: there are no bins on the tram, and it was looking like a solid ten minute wait between my projected banana finish-time and my stop, where I could get out and find a bin. Ten minutes holding a banana peel? Pffft... not likely, so I thought about throwing it out the window.

The tram coasted past the police station on the corner of Church St and Bridge Rd and I imagined throwing the peel out the half-open window and it landing on the bonnet of one of the three police cruisers parked on the side of the road. Glorious, I could see it there. To throw it out of the window accurately and make sure it landed on the car I would probably have had to stand up, turn around and aim my throw carefully, but if I did it deliberately then I'd run the risk of someone seeing – it was broad daylight and the tram was stopping at the lights and opening its doors. If someone – a police officer maybe? – saw me throw the peel intentionally onto their shiny police car, then I'd be in trouble. They probably couldn't pin me with much, maybe a fine for littering or at worst some trumped-up vandalism charge, but regardless, I don't need that right now. The fine for littering is probably over a hundred dollars, and I need to pay rent god DAMN it.

I imagined the police officer, just walking out to his car after grabbing a coffee or whatever police do in the station, when he sees a young, dark-haired, olive-skinned youth wearing a red Adidas jacket intentionally throw a banana peel out of a tram window at his vehicle. He would yell, “OI!”, drop his coffee on the ground and give chase. “Stop the tram! OI! YOU!”
At this point I'd be sitting in the tram, fretting and trying to think of how to get out of my fine, the cute couple sitting across from me would be smirking at me, having seen what I'd done, and now knowing they were about to see me get caught. I would run up to the front of the tram and beg the tram driver to keep going; “Pretend you didn't hear him! Please dude, just go!”

And he probably would go, because he's cool. He doesn't like cops either, and it's perfectly plausible that he didn't see or hear the police officer, who is now just an angry, but receding figure in his side-mirror, yell 'stop'. After another couple stops though, the tram driver would tell me that I had to get out, I couldn't stay in the tram – he'd be remembering his responsibility here, plus what if the cop called in another car to intercept the tram? He wouldn't want to get involved in this thing. But all the while I'd be reassuring myself that it was only a banana on a police car – how could he possibly care that much about a little, frivolous act of trivial civil disobedience. I'm sure police get that shit all the time...

I get out of the tram, and wonder where I'm going to walk now, because I still need to get to lunch, but before I can really do anything I hear more shouting, and see the angry, yelling figure running up the slight hill on Church St. Running right towards me. WHAT THE FUCK?! Overzealous motherfucker... so I run. Bolt down a side street and into the suburbs, but I know he saw where I was running, so I know I have to get away. I need to hide somewhere, I need to blend in. I stumble upon a sunny park at the end of the street with a playground and two single mums playing with their kids. Some guy in skins is doing laps of the oval before lunch and a girl is sitting on the hill reading a book with the midday sun on her back. I run, panting, up to her and sit down, still looking over my shoulder.
“We've been talking all morning.” I try to run her through my alibi.
“What? Who are you?
“It doesn't matter, look, we've been talking all morning, okay? I've been here with you all morning.”
The shouting comes from behind us and the cop charges over the little hill and runs down it, straight at me and dives, arms out and face red with fury. Tackle. He lands on top of me and we both go flying a good couple metres along the grass before he pins me to the ground and shouts something about a little prick. My ribs feel broken, I can't move, everything hurts.
“What the fuck?!” the girl jumps up and screams, looking accusingly at the officer.
“This young man is under arrest for wilfully vandalising police property! THE CHASE IS OVER BUD!”
“What chase, what are you talking about? We've been sitting here all morning!” She sticks to the script perfectly, and at that precise moment, I fall in love.

During the lengthy court proceedings that draw out over many long and arduous months, I learn her name, and her birthday, and her likes and dislikes and all her favourite things as we fight in the halls of justice against police brutality. I even remember the colour of her eyes: green. She is my witness and with her help I win a victory worth millions in compensation for the injuries I sustained, I was an innocent bystander randomly attacked by a deranged agent of the law. My injuries keep me from work and I lay a spurious claim to a life-long disability pension. Me and my beautiful witness kiss outside the courtroom, and then go off to spend our millions on eating, drinking, and being merry. I propose to her in the park where we met and for the rest of our lives we are happy, and in love.

I imagine this all, while I am sitting on the tram holding the now-finished banana peel in my hand. I imagine it, but it never happens, because I am way too scared of getting caught and fined for littering. Instead the peel goes under the seat, and I brush my hands clean, before pulling out my notebook and writing the story I am not yet brave enough to live.

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.

No More Comedy

This afternoon/night I went to the last show of the year at 100% Nuts in Brunswick and had a great gig with a bunch of other crew. By some mysterious planetary alignment a bunch of random punters actually showed up all within about ten minutes of the show starting and made a decent-sized crowd for us to perform to so that was nice. Damian cut off his dreads as the opener and I bought a BLT for twelve bucks which I really shouldn't have done, but did anyway. A delightful afternoon, no matter who you ask.

What sucks now though – and I only realized this about twenty minutes ago as I was sitting at the tram stop writing a new joke that had come into my head on the quiet eleven pm walk down Victoria Parade – is that there is no more comedy for the rest of the year!!! Today was my last gig for 2012... well, my last gig of material anyway. I don't think I can accurately express how fucked that feels to all of the non-comedian daywalkers who read this blog... and I'm sure there are HORDES of you. Oh yes.

But seriously though, I now have AT LEAST two weeks with no gigs and no stage time. Where will I get validation? The situation is seriously dire, I'm shaking, my mouth is dry, I'm not looking forward to the pain. I was writing this joke and thought of a callback I can do in the middle of it that references some other shit and works really well with a joke I've been doing recently and I was getting all excited and happy with myself when I realized... holy fuck, I'm not going to get a chance to even TRY this on stage until like the first or probably more realistically, second week of January. Jesus Fuck. That's so far away, and no doubt I'm going to be writing a fucking BUNCH of material over the Christmas break, and now there's going to be a massive back-log, and the joke that I just wrote – which I am actually really happy with, and I know has legs – will possibly get lost in this massive stretch of time between today – my last gig of the year – and my first of the new year. The Kieran Butler Roast is on Wednesday, and then the stage is taken away as well. There's nothing after that until the new year is back in swing... god damn it... oh god... oh... oh... oh... I don't know what to say about this. Where to go? What can I do? Nothing is the answer, absolutely nothing.

It's cool that I've fallen so happily into comedy and am still enjoying it and have the same drive after going pretty hard at it for about six months... I would never have expected myself to become so dedicated to doing something as I have become... I really love my life here.

After the 100% Nuts gig at Bridie O'Rielly's I went with Millie, a friend from doorknocking days back in Adelaide that has spent the last five months in the outback working and has just returned to civilization, to the Comic's Lounge to catch the highly-hyped and very talked-about Dov Davidoff perform his last Melbourne gig. He was seriously good... like seriously fucking brilliant. It was weird though, I mean I watched a bit of his stuff on YouTube this week after everyone was talking about how good he is and how every comic absolutely had to get down to the Comic's Lounge and catch him. Normally I take the advice on seeing shows that those guys give out with a grain of salt because I know they like to get butts on seats and will oversell comics to do it... but the amount of raving that went around about this guy was next fucking level, so I thought I'd better get down. It ended up being a coin-toss that decided it, but still, we went down and got in with some free tickets I had buried at the bottom of my bag.

The stuff I'd seen on YouTube hadn't excited me too much, because it seemed to be mostly pandering towards the kind of mass-appeal audience demographic that has produced half of the outstandingly adequate Comedy Central specials of recent times... this guy just seemed like another mildly talented US comedian talking about work, sex and his silly parents. After a few of the jokes that I recognized from the YouTube stuff though he got into some political gear and some other really interesting personal stuff, and I liked the direction he was taking a lot to be honest, I really enjoyed the second half of his set. I mean, I was always going to enjoy it, it was never going to be a bad set or anything. I am under no delusions about sub-standard comedians making it onto Comedy Central or anything like that – I know it requires a massive level of talent to get that far and so to see a guy who has had an hour special perform live is always going to be a captivating and ultimately funny experience, but I wasn't expecting anything too interesting other than a few clever punchlines and charismatically delivered dick jokes.

He started on the introspection though and I really started listening... the lame thing was though, and it was clear that he could feel it too, as soon as he started down on the stuff that was really interesting and actually felt like it was going somewhere new, the audience stopped digging it. At the start of his set, Dov made a few jokes about girl's tits and the first black guy that ever fucked a white girl saying 'look what I found'... that kind of predictable shit. The audience ATE IT UP. They fucking LOVED it, and I let out a small chuckle. But later on when it got a little more challenging, you could feel people switching off. Are we so impatient and stupid as a society that we need any original ideas to be so carefully couched and presented on a silver platter between easily-digestible sex jokes? Has comedy really been reduced to how many laughs we can get per minute? Is that what we want our art form to become? It really worried me to watch this comic who clearly knew what he was doing go up on stage, kill it with dumb material, and then lose his audience with the clever stuff, because it made me think: if this guy can't grab them, then what fucking chance do any of us have?

I went into the gig sceptical about the quality of the comic I was going to see, and expecting a wry smile and a shrug of the shoulders. I came out having realized that the comedians are not the problem, the audiences are – we are, every time we decide to go for safe, sensible vanilla instead of stretching ourselves and giving someone the opportunity to challenge us. That's a scary thought guys, because I don't want to be listening to dick jokes for the rest of my life, and I sure as fuck don't want to be telling them either.

Peace, Taco.

Asian Man

Today I was having a little kick around on my skateboard. (just as an aside, I feel so utterly worthless and lame saying, or even typing the word 'skateboard', but I don't know how else to describe the object in question. 'Board' implies a level of familiarity that neither I nor my readers have with the thing, and with that out, that leaves no other option... I've taken to writing 'bateskoard' instead, because I figure if I'm going to be a try-hard loser, I might at least spoonerise) Shit ok, that was a long aside, let's start again... Today I was having a little kick around on my bateskoard in the parking lot of a bunch of council flats where I've taken to practising. It's quiet, usually pretty empty of cars, and there's no one around to watch me eat shit as I regularly do when I try to pull off a kickflip. (yet to land one) Anyway, so my bag was half-hidden behind one of the parked cars while I skated back and forth, ollieing over the crack in the smooth cement and then turning around to go again. It was warm but not hot. I was wearing the same t-shirt I am now – grey with a picture of a withered tree drawn on the front and 'RaymunDo 1108' signed at the bottom. Vintage.

I decided to take a sideways run-up and try an ollie up the kerb and onto the footpath that borders the carpark – the kerb isn't very high, but at this point I was still yet to land anything other than a regular flat ollie, so I wasn't sure how it was going to go. Anyway, cue the inspirational music maestro, because I did it – kicked up, jump, landed on the higher part of the kerb and kept rolling, maintaining my balance. Let the trumpets play!

I went back for another shot, just to prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke the first time – “I am the greatest bateskoarder the world has ever seen”, I thought to myself in a moment of self-indulgent weakness. Up again, landed again. This time though, I had an audience; a decrepit, old Asian man with a walking frame had stopped next to the part of the kerb I was jumping up and had decided to watch me. ME! He saw what I was doing, and saw that it was good! So I went back again, and again, and again, I landed four of those jump-up-the-kerb-trickydoos in a row. It felt good. Something about the whole situation felt kind of off though. While I knew that I liked the appreciation of this near-invalid who, let's be fair, was probably just happy to be watching anything other than rent collection happen in his tired little corner of the world, it felt awkward to be examined so intently. He just stood there and watched, smiling at me and nodding each time I completed my little trick. I felt inadequate – I knew that there was nothing else I could offer him, I had no other tricks up my sleeve; no more songs in my repertoire. Every time I paced back to jump up the kerb another time I felt like I owed him something more for his continued interest, but there was nothing else to give.

Eventually, after like, I dunno, let's say three minutes? After about three minutes I jumped back on my board, went over to the other side of the parking lot and grabbed my bag from behind the car where I'd put it before. I had a few sips of water, then walked over the metal grate at the entrance to the car park and started skating away down the street. I waved goodbye to the frail old man who had been my number one fan for the afternoon and turned down another side street, then another, finally making my way to Aldi to buy some milk, razors, cheese, onions, lettuce. The story trails off here, and there's no moral... probably because for a moral to be found, there has to be some sort of challenge to be overcome. This afternoon was nice, and that man was even nicer. I hope he comes out again one time, but maybe not for a few weeks so I can hopefully have something new to show him next time. I'll start working on my handstand I guess.

Peace, Taco.

She Was Fucked, Basically

She was fucked, basically; two days to go and not a single inch closer to Newport. She hated that she thought in inches – the old, archaic measurements of the past had been long outdated by the metric system and she well knew that and had grown up favouring decimals – but she couldn't help it. Something about the inch, an inch, the word itself, sounded poetic and subtle, as if the simple act of saying she wasn't a single inch closer made real her predicament, and would somehow inspire motivation in her to move. She repeated it over to herself again, “not a single inch closer, not a single inch closer, I'm no closer, not one single inch... fucked, fucked, absolutely fucked...” She was muttering.

The road stretched out ahead of her, and no helpful vehicles were approaching up its long, narrow length, this final semi was definitely her last chance. Time to wait a second, maybe two, before approaching, but any hesitation would be sniffed out immediately so it was imperative – completely and without question – that she act fast, act now. She picked up her bag.

“Excuse me!” her voice was sucked up by the dusty air and soon drowned out by the silence around her, so she began to walk forwards, but still tentative and careful in her approach.
“Excuse me! Sir! Excuse me?” no trace of her anxiety could be allowed to seep into the next sentence or the whole thing would be finished and she might as well turn around and walk back to the city that dwindled in the distance behind her. His head turned, not a pretty head, or even a welcoming one, and two startled flies flew off his cap and zipped off above the tin roof. Here it was, “Here it is.” – her internal monologue shoving one last jolt of encouragement up her spine before finally delivering the five words she'd been storing up and preparing for this one crucial moment. The time for backing out had passed, and she welled up all of the air inside her lungs before measuring out six even syllables in about two and a half seconds of pure terror:

“Mind if I ride along?”

“Sure love, jump on up there with me.” He said it, and she stood there for a second while the sound passed between them as if she'd been struck by a brick. The flies were about to land down on her bag as she jolted out of her trance and quickly sealed their official agreement, “uuuuh... thanks.” And without waiting for his final nod, she started scaling the stairs and threw her bag at her feet in the cabin of the dirty machine.

She settled down and waited for him to finish his pit-stop; now she finally had time to calm herself in silence. Looking around for the first time at her surroundings, she saw all that there was to see – and it wasn't very much to begin with – was covered in tiny red particles. The desert sand was all-encompassing, pervasive, and seemed to swallow any object past the middle distance except the long, thin road that stretched out in front. The sky was an angry yellow-white with the sun still setting in the west and the world was deathly still and silent. Winds were blowing sand around the floor. The petrol station where she had been sitting for the last day and a half was already like a foreign world painted onto the window, rather than the unfortunate outpost of civilization that served as a refuelling depot to interstate travellers. She did not recognize a single detail, and hoped soon to forget even the location of this hopeless little point, with its lifeless tin roof and its shade bereft of shelter. “Finally, we're away,” she said, again to herself, and she picked her bag up from the spot she had put it at first and clutched it to her chest, drawing it closer and waiting for her driver to join them. A day and a half – the unhappy stagnation.

She heard a sound like quick rattling coming from around the back of the cab, the tank was full and he was shaking the last drops of petrol from the metal hose – the last drops we all shake out, whenever we are given the opportunity. “Cost effective,” she mused, “is it cheating the system to milk those last droplets, or is the system cheating you if you don't?” She didn't have time to pursue the idle thought any further, because the driver's side door opened, and the cabin filled momentarily with wind and chill before once again sealing them off from the world. He started the engine. The truck roared to life. The ground started to move and the giant beast lurched forwards. Two days left, and finally, just an inch closer to Newport.

***

Her eyes opened up sharp as she snapped out of her dream like a child's hand recoiling from a flame. The world flooded back.

“What's the time?” the words came scrambled out of her mouth. She wasn't sure who she was saying them to.

“Just past four in the morning”, he said – the truckdriver. He didn't turn his head from the wheel, but every now and then his eyes were glancing up at the rear-view mirror which was tilted in her direction. It struck her that the centre mirror in a truck is superfluous, as the trailer would always obscure the view from behind, even if there was a good-sized window in the back. The thought struck her from side on, and it seemed somehow important, so she held on to it as a piece of trivia for the future. She remembered her conversation with the driver before she had fallen asleep, although she was unsure at what point she had trailed off.

His name was D... or 'Dee'? That was all he had said; she was definitely not mistaken in the pronunciation as she had made sure to memorise it the first time it had been told to her, mostly out of politeness.

“Dee”, she muttered to herself. “It's Dee.” She was always muttering.

“That's the one.” He replied, eyes darting up to the mirror for a second.
She began to recall their conversation in detail, the six or seven minutes of it before she had fallen away into sleep, and she remembered that he had made a good impression on her. He was gruff and brisk with his words, but not angry or reserved, just efficient. The truck had been like a cradle, slowly rocking her back and forth as it shuddered with the bumpy road and churned under its own weight and momentum. Back and forth. Back and forth. One way with the wind. The other way with the slope of the road. She had realized so suddenly that she was unbearably tired, and while it would have been nicer to stay awake and keep this man company while he drove – and truly, he was her saving grace – she could not bear it. Sleep.

The truck had ploughed on, past the sunset, and on into the night. She had told him she was going to Newport and he didn't ask why, he didn't need to, she needn't have even told him that much – he could have guessed. She was asleep by the time the sun was down, and the time in the cabin had passed quicker without the sun beating on the road in front of them. Dee had been silent with his hands on the wheel and allowed her all the rest she needed. Now she was awake, and she spoke, not to herself this time, but directly to him;

“Did I sleep for long?”

“Around eight hours”, he replied briskly, his voice was immediately clear and crisp and stood out amongst the other noises coming from the engine and the mass of metal behind them.

“Eight hours...” she repeated to herself, “I'm sorry for not staying awake to keep you company”, she looked over to him as she apologised, and waited for him to say something back. He just smiled, and flashed his eyes up to the mirror while she looked at him directly. They were looking at eachother, although because of this triangular arrangement, their eyes never actually met.

“How long were you waiting at that petrol station?” he asked her later.

“A day and a night or thereabouts, I caught the bus out from town.”
“And which town would that be?” Dee asked this fair enough question abruptly but it seemed odd to her that as she ventured out of Hampstead her safe, cosy identity could be left at home with her old life behind her.

“I came from Hampstead”, she answered, smiling to herself as she realised her potential for anonymity.
“Me too,” Dee replied, “stayed there 'till I was old enough to read a map.” His eyes stayed steady on the road as he said this, the cab was quiet for a second – was that a joke? She thought quickly to herself that if he had meant what he'd said to be funny, then he might have laughed at it himself to indicate so... but then again he had a way of talking that seemed as if he might be one to let something like that slip by as if it were an accident that he had ever said it at all. A wry smile appeared at the corner of his lips as he saw her mind ticking over; “laugh if you want, it's only the truth.” He had seen through her uneasiness instantly, and that set her back in her seat and made her comfortable.

“Do you pick up many travellers on the road?” she asked him after another break.

“Every now and then – if a person asks, I'll take them as far as I can.”

“Not many people I've met would have the heart to pick up a traveller off the road like this. Someone they've never met before, never even laid eyes on – most people I know would be pretty afraid of that.”

“Maybe you just haven't met many people yet.” he offered back to her, his eyes lazily drifting back up to the mirror to look at her, it definitely wasn't a question, he was telling her plainly. “The way I see it, if someone's asking for a lift, then they're always gonna give someone who comes to them asking something the same courtesy they asked for.”

“Well yeah, maybe that's...”

“Maybe they're asking out of humility, or maybe out of desperation, but either way, if someone's asking for help, then you can be sure that they'd never turn their back on someone they found in a similar position.” This time his words hung on the cabin for a while, she wanted to let him finish his answer properly and felt sorry for interrupting the first time.
“...and I guess everyone needs help from somebody at some point...” she chimed in after she judged that enough time had passed.
“Exactly,” he nodded. “It'd be a dead, unfeeling wretch who could accept help with one hand, and refuse it to his fellow man with the other – I've never met anyone that cold inside.”
“Maybe you just haven't met many people yet.” she said with a wry smile creeping across her dry lips. She saw the corner of Dee's mouth rise a little too, and she smiled more at seeing this. She liked the way his face looked, and she was proud of having made him smile for a second. The truck and it's heavy wheels pulled the road underneath them like a conveyor belt. The sky stood still and the sun burned overhead while the two companions sat comfortably in eachother's company.

***

After another long while and a pit stop and a small flock of birds in the distance they came to the place where the desert meets the sea. The sun was setting, and the truck turned North and followed the coast up towards the apex of the peninsula; Dee would be leaving her there while he headed inland, Newport lay to the West, just one more day across the desert. She looked back over to him and cocked her head to the side before asking him another question.
“When was the last time you picked someone up in your truck?” She wished she could have phrased it better after it came out, she thought it had sounded clumsy and stupid.

“A few weeks ago I had two boys, a couple brothers, sitting where you are now. They talked and talked about their plans for Newport, the summer and the women they were looking for. I set them off by the train station because they said they wanted to try and jump a freighter going across East. Funny boys, but stupid, I'd say they made it over alright though. Then there was another lady a few days before that, heading back East after losing herself. She'd been over in Newport but she said she'd grown tired of it all... I can't say whether she was telling the truth or not, but she wasn't staying gone for good, no way. She was going back, I could feel it. Everyone goes back. No one can ever stay away.”

“What's it like?” She asked him.
“You'll see.” He smiled again, the same smile as before, and nodded his head to the mirror. “I'll be back there myself before long no doubt... just for now though I like to live through the people I meet on the road, out here in the desert. It's nice to put your life on hold for a second, and appreciate the joy in someone else's eyes as they head out and search for their own happiness.”

“I imagine it is, but I can't say I'm...”

“The part of your story that you share here with me, you'll carry that with you now, for as far as your journey takes you I'll be there as a tiny character. I have no way of knowing where all the people I meet end up, and maybe some of them don't end up too well, who knows what happens to you as soon as you get out of this truck... but it's nice to think that out there in the world there are a few people who can remember the guy who picked them up when they needed a hand, held them a while and then set them loose, back into the empty world.”

“I guess that means you're not so selfless then.” She quipped straight away and eyed him from the side again. She felt his eyes looking at her in the mirror like they had been for most of their conversation, and this time finally brought up the courage to peel her eyes away from the side of his face and meet his gaze in the reflection. They stared for a second. Two seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Thirty-five. Someone blinked, and then the moment was broken.

She retreated back into herself after this, and although the mood in the cabin was still good-natured and pleasant, the unsteady suspicion rose within her that this man was not as calm, as perfect, as simple as he had initially seemed. 'Why should he get to ride the glory of other people's accomplishments?' she questioned. 'Why should I suffer and toil to reach my pinnacle when he can simply offer lifts and stand there with me for free?' She felt cheated somehow, she knew she shouldn't be feeling resentful, but something about his peaceful solitude threatened her. She had steeled herself with tough resolve to be ready for every trial that she knew her new life would have ready for her, and she was prepared to face each challenge head on. Greatness only comes through hardship, and yet this man expected to share in others' greatness, without also bearing a share of their pain. The idea repulsed her and seemed parasitic, but she resolved to put it out of her mind. She softened, and then, after realising her harshness, almost pitied him. He would never know the glory of truly achieving a goal, of suffering through the greatest ordeals only to come out the other side and beat them. To be crowned lord of everything, and rise above impossibility. To live. In her mind it was inevitable – the sky was where she was headed.

***

When they pulled in to the train station she slowly stirred from where she had been, propped up against the door half sleeping. Grabbing her bag from between her legs where it had lay in the shade, away from the burning sun, she checked it once to make sure nothing had fallen out. It hadn't, she was ready to go.
“Thankyou again.” she smiled, and looked up at the mirror to meet his gaze, only this time he had ventured to look directly at her as the need to keep his eyes on the road had vanished. She looked at his eyes in the mirror, and he saw the side of her face in profile, once again their gazes never met, and only after she turned away did he return her farewell.
“Good luck.” the last words he offered her. By the time they reached her ears she was already halfway out the door and jumping down the ladder, the train she wanted to jump onto was getting ready to leave. She had to make it, she refused to be caught waiting.

He looked through the glass as she gathered speed and jogged, then ran towards the depot, jumping the fence between the parking lot and the track. She was impatient, but impatience was good, useful, he started the engine again and turned the big hunk of metal around and back out onto the road. Another story he could hold on to, he was part of another victory. Or maybe another defeat, but either way, he had played his part.

She ran fast for the train, panting, pressing on. The weight of her bag was not significant, but it swayed from side to side with her movement as she swung her shoulders to steady herself while running. She held onto the straps and tried to keep the swinging mass still. Full pelt, maximum speed. The train shuddered first from the front way up ahead but she saw it even as far as she was, as she ran she tried to pick out a carriage to jump on to. Something covered but open where she would be sheltered but not cramped. She couldn't sit on an exposed flatbed, she would freeze to death – she needed an open container. She could hear the clicking of the connectors between each carriage get closer and closer together as the front end of the train edged forward and each successive section was picked up. Clang, Clang, Clang. They sounded out across the yards like a row of steel dominoes. She spotted an open door and knew that this was her chance. It was a little towards the back of the train, but if she kept on her current trajectory, even if it was some way behind her when she reached the tracks, she would easily be able to jump on.

She reached the tracks, the open door drew up close until it was almost level with her. She slowed her pace to draw even. Unhooked her bag from around her shoulders and whipped over with her left arm, it landed with a thud inside the dark, empty space. Something inside there smelled and she winced internally, this was going to be a long night devoid of sleep. She would reek of fertilizer on her first night in Newport. Her right hand stretched out to grab onto something, the edge of the train, her fingers reached around quickly for a steady hold but none was there to grab on to. She stopped looking at the ground, she couldn't, she had to watch her hand, to look for something. Something to grab on to. She looked, but there was nothing. Her left foot slipped on a loose rock, 'why are train tracks always built on mounds of rocks?' she thought, infuriated, muttering it to herself. She slipped again, but her hand grabbed something. Yes! She could feel it! And the train was going faster now, faster than she could run, and her feet were completely away from the ground. Off the ground. Moving! Her left hand struggled to join her right and her feet swung around to the inside, in towards the spinning wheels and slowly accelerating machinery. She clung on as the train kept speeding up, speeding up. Much faster and faster and faster. Her legs lurched inwards again and caught something. She swung her hand, another time, wildly, frantically, desperately. Too late. Too slow. Too much ambition.

As she was pulled under, her feet first before her body, the train kept accelerating. It chewed her up indifferently and left her on the tracks, remorseless. She never made it to Newport.

Today I Had the Idea of Doing This

I seem to be on the downward side of one of my frequent oscillations between king-hitting happiness and the trough; a sad, abandoned laziness best captured by the word 'no'. So, in light of my recognition of this mental state, I have decided to play a game: every day, for as long as I feel like doing it... maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks... fuck it, I might even stop after today... but every day until I stop, I'm going to describe something that has happened to me in the twenty-four-ish hours since my last entry. So I'll start with today I guess.

Today I had the idea to do this thing, this writing thing, the thing that I'm doing right now. I was not so much sitting or lying down, but maybe a fair way to give a quick description of my position would be to say that I was in a position halfway between the two. I was on my knees, knelt at the side of my bed with my head and the upper part of my torso slumped across my mattress in a sort of groaning-prayer position. I had my eyes closed, and it's likely that my mouth was openly drooling. One of my books was in front of me with the title 'Retelling Something Daily' scrawled hurriedly on to the top of a new page – I was looking for something to write about. The idea had come to me tentatively as I was reading Catch-22 – well I wasn't so much reading it as I was looking at the words for the first two paragraphs of chapter eleven, I can tell when I'm not actually reading something because I start to get mental images of things that have nothing to do with what I'm pretending to be taking in.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there is it? No. I had the idea to write about something every day – some episode or story or happening or just something interesting that I can retell in a chronological way so that I might practice pure storytelling and focus my style away from pretentious, stream-of-consciousness ramblings on random, disconnected topics. I keep giving myself excuses to continue with the patterns of writing that I find easy: 'stay true to yourself', 'genius is often misunderstood', 'develop your own unique style'. These petty reaffirmations are useless and will only serve to distance me further from any potential development. I need to push myself. Pressure. Focus. Force. Words. Do not become comfortable.

So I wrote down 'Today I had the idea of doing this' on the first line of the page. I wrote it just under the heading that I'd scrawled quickly before dumping my face on the bed in a tantrum of self-defeating exhaustion. I went back to reading with a bit more focus, and with a reasonable confidence that in around half an hour or so I would embark on the first of what will hopefully be many quick retellings of odd, daily events. “Do one thing, every day, that scares you” – I am scared of writing drivel, and as far as I can see, the day-to-day life of a barely employed twenty-one year old contains nothing but, so here we go. I am afraid.

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 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.

Starship Troopers: An Attempt at Persuasion

Lost in deep cover
"Dear John," said his lover's last letter
Emptied a full clip to feel better
Slipped a rung on Jacob's ladder
Desert boot camp deserter got stung by death adder
Don't get mad get even madder
A10 tank killer fodder
Interrogate? Why bother...
My brother for a last cigarette, no please not yet
One last dance, lest we regret
Look me in the eye, GI, and tell me you're not tired
I'm tired to death sir, I'm tired till it hurts
But when you thought it couldn't get much worse
Well it may...
We march at the break of day
Come what may, rules of engagement say
We will stand to the very last, shrapnel blast
A casket goes home...
Sons and daughters wrapped in stars and stripes to keep 'em warm

("Give peace a chance... that doesn't mean anything"
"It's like give peace a chance")

Under an orange dawn we draw the line
And those on the other side must stand and fight
Tracers like fourth of July in the night
Lighting up like Hiroshima
The perfect sight

I'm a Starship Trooper
This is my letter to dad, transferred from Saigon to Baghdad
And now I'm dead
An allied soldier, with skin boils from Ebola
I'll bring you back a souvenir of what we stole

I was only nineteen
Joined for the pay packet
Now my full metal jacket won't take one more hit
I don't give two shits about oil interests
But depleted uranium, just gave Joe a fit
Captain Kurtz said, "fight till the hurt stops"
Yet all I can see is burned crops
And mates shell-shocked
Morphine under lock and key
Their AK's talking to my M16
Pray for friendly fire
Haven't seen a priest, but plenty of funeral pyres
Triage nurse is dying
My name in the paper
Next to a faceless dictator
And another flag to drape
Here's the commanding officer
A total mess again
Crying in the mess tent
How to make mice or mince meat of his men

I'm a Starship Trooper
This is my letter to dad
Transferred from Saigon to Baghdad
And now I'm dead
An allied soldier with skin boils from ebola
I'll bring you back a souvenir of what we stole

I'm a Starship Trooper
This is my letter to dad
Transferred from Saigon to Baghdad
And now I'm dead
An allied soldier...

Those are the lyrics to 'Starship Troopers', a bleak, eerie song by The Herd that lays an impassioned image of the futility of modern war. I have always loved this song – I feel it has, along with Apocalypta from the same album (The Sun Never Sets), much more replay value and deep passion to be had than many of the other songs on the album, despite it being far less accessible a topic than, for example, a young man's relationship with his grandma (Under Pressure) or even their more popular war song, the cover of Redgum's 'I Was Only 19'.

When I was in high school – now that I try and remember I think it was year twelve, so I was seventeen – I wrote out the lyrics to this song, along with Apocalypta, and put them in an email which I sent to my English teacher at the time. I don't know what I was trying to accomplish at this point; we'd been studying poetry and I think I just wanted to show someone who I vaguely looked up to that I really was interested in what he was teaching, while at the same time also showing off a bit of my own knowledge coloured with the contemporary style of 'poetry' (hip hop) that I was familiar with. I don't know whether he received the email, although he must have, the teachers' email accounts were assigned by some formula or another and I was seventeen, sure, but I wasn't a fucking moron... but I always kind of wondered whether something had gone astray, because he never replied. Isn't that strange, that I still remember that even, and not only did he never reply, but he never even spoke of it to me... I found that really weird because he was the kind of dude that I thought would be completely stoked about having a kid in his class send him some shit that was kind of to do with what he was teaching, completely of his own volition. Apparently not though. The email went unread and I never got to share the song with anyone.

This was by no means the first time that I had tried to share a song that I loved with someone, and it definitely would not be the last. I have a long and proud history of being extremely forceful and single-minded when I get the idea in my head that so-and-so would like to listen to such-and-such song. I obsess over it. As soon as I see the person next, I'll have my phone ready with headphones and ambush them like a music rapist, before making them sit in complete silence while my anticipatory stares burn holes in the side of their head... appreciate or die, I can't help it guys, I just really want you to listen.

So anyway, I thought of all this today, because I started the afternoon off by listening to some Urthboy and reminiscing of the ethereal spring of 2009, and then, once I remembered how Urthboy is the best lyricist in Aussie hip hop, I moved on to a quick revisit of The Sun Never Sets, (easily top three Australian albums EVER by the way... cheers) and without fail, whenever this album makes it into my headphones Starship Troopers is always the standout. Every time. This song... fuck man, this song is like... I was listening to it on the tram home not fourty-five minutes ago, slowly building up the idea of writing this blog in my head, and thinking of what it is that I can say about it. What do I like about the song? What makes it good? What makes it stand out from the rest of the album? I don't know, it just fits together so brilliantly, and Urthboy's lyrics, especially the fifth line “desert boot camp deserter got stung by death adder”... I mean that's fucking brilliant. Seriously. The image of the desert and the allusion to operation desert storm. The alliteration on the three strongest words of the line; 'desert', 'deserter', 'death'. The rhyme of adder with ladder – Jacob's ladder, an allusion to the bible story where Jacob ascends a ladder to heaven in his dream. The deserter slipped though, he didn't make it to heaven, he was stung. Dead. Fucked. Fuck. Fuck. AAAAAAAAGH. I was listening to this song and walking down the darkened streets out of the gritty Asian streets of North Richmond and I wanted to scream out at the top of my lungs. Not anything, no words, just scream. Just to release some energy – thins song makes me edgy and stirs up turmoil within my body's walls. Please listen to it. Please. I don't know what else to say.

I can't force you physically, but fuck. If anyone can persuade a bunch of internet readers to listen to some song off of an eight-year-old Aussie hip hop album with only furious words and lot of swearing, it's me.
Because I'm fucking brilliant.

Peace, Taco.