Gender and the Bathroom

I've started wearing ties again. Oh Fuck, it's been about two years since I felt comfortable enough in one. Let's just say that the elements I surrounded myself with in the time in between were rather quick to judge and I fell for it, slowly but surely cutting out the little masculine things I enjoyed. At the time I was kidding myself that I was fitting in. Now I see it as a major setback in my personal gender explorations.

Anyways, tonight I stepped out in a dress shirt and a tie. Apart from the fact that my chest still sticks out far more than I'd like it to, I looked good. I was happy. All I needed to do was to avoid checking myself out in side profile and I'd be fine and confident in my manufactured masculinity. Happy and fine as a non-gender-specific polymorphous individual.

I'm lucky to be sharing a very supportive environment now. The people around me are not just okay with me expressing who I am, they are encouraging me to explore it more, even. It feels great to be filling out my own skin again.

The fact that there are differences between my reality and that of other people became apperent when I went to the bathroom at the club we were having dinner at just this evening. I went to the bathroom for obvious reasons, and also to tidy up my apperance. I adjusted my tie in the mirror as I was turning to leave. At the same time, a poor older lady was walking in. She looked at me and I could see the embarrassment in her eyes. Panic that she'd walked into the wrong bathrooms. She walked backwards out the door and checked the sign.

Shit.

First thought: I don't want a scene here at all.

Second thought: Fuck you, lady. I wear who I am on the outside. I'm sure you piss in the same bathroom as your husband at home anyway.

Such a dilemma. I felt for her confusion, yet was angered by her narrow-mindedness.

Perhaps I just need to remind myself that other people's thoughts and reactions are their own, and not mine?

PhotoHunt: Fast

The PhotoHunt theme this week is Fast. The immediate thoughts are of speed and motion. Trains rushing along a set of tracks in the middle of nowhere. Jet contrails. Streaks of tail lights in long exposures. The blur of a cricket bat being swung during a game in the hot Australian summer.

Since when has the obvious been fun? A deadline prevents me from bothering to set myself up for any of the obvious shots, however let's pretend that I've actually been clever and approached the task from a different angle completely.

What goes fast around here?

I mean, REALLY fast.



That's right, BEER. It doesn't stay for long at all. It comes and goes again altogether far too quickly for my liking. Especially at this time of year.

Why on earth does the silly season demand that people "get together for a few drinks before Christmas"?
Fuck off.
Why not get together for a few drinks at any time of year for absolutely no reason but the hell of it? It would make Christmas a hell of a lot easier to cope with when it comes to cash flow. Not only do I need to buy presents for the family, I've had to buy carton after carton of beer.

Stuff the silly season. In future, if you really want to drink with me you won't wait until December.

More Meme Slackness (Deal With It)

"Here's the rules--mention the person that tagged you (did that). Complete the lists of 8's (see below). Tag 8 of your wonderful blogger friends (usually don't do this, but I will!). Go tell them you tagged them (if I have time)!"

Now we all know that this is Vic's World.

Vic says:
Fuck the rules.
This is Blogville after all.
In a world without boundaries, rules are somewhat irrelevant.

So I'm not tagging. If you want to be as pathetic as I am and do the meme, go ahead and steal it. I did. Go ahead. Trust me, it feels good.

8 Things I Am Looking Forward To:

1. More sunshine. I was driving along with my arm hanging out the window this morning, feeling right and summery. The tunes were good and the weather was fine. Now it's all up and pissed off in order to make way for a preview of winter.

2. Watching LittleTyke continue to grow and learn. Auntiedom... It's made me fall in love with a baby. LittleTyke is the best. She can do no wrong.

3. The invention and wide distribution of intravenous coffee.

4. Making fresh gourmet pizza. Who knows when, but every time I think of it my mouth waters.

5. Gardening. I don't have a veggie plot yet, but the ideas are germinating. Let's hope they hurry up and take root because I need to get some seeds for winter crops germinating, too.

6. Losing enough weight to be able to look in the mirror and not think ugh, for fuck's sake you have to lose some weight

7. Beer. Always.

8. The day after tomorrow.

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Yet again scored a free ride on public transport. I love that my station has no ticket machine. I get to raise my middle finger to the authorities and also spend the money I would have spent on a ticket on something far more worthwhile, like sushi.

2. I walked into a local photography gallery. Not much of a surprise, really. But this one was holding an exhibition of works by local photographers who are members of the flickr community. I got out of my shell enough to strike up a conversation with the founder of the gallery about it. We had a really open, easy conversation in a setting where normally I would have feared intimidation. I think how easily the conversation came kind of took me by surprise and made me forget to be self-conscious. The outcome: the guy looked me up on flickr and told me that he liked my work. I'm pretty chuffed.

3. Sadly, I did not invent intravenous coffee.

4. Drank tea instead.

5. Cursed my manager many, many times. I try to make an appointment with his boss, and he gives me every excuse under the sun as to why I can't. I try to resolve issues with him instead, and he palms it off on to his boss, who he has made completely unreachable. Good stuff. Much appreciated.


6. Ate sushi.

7. Grinned like a fool for having eaten sushi.

8. Resolved to continue to lose more weight.


8 Things I Wish I Could Do:

1. I wish I could settle on a plan for a garden and just get to it. I spent hours today doing drawings and contemplating where the sun goes the most. I need to revert to a good gardener friend's method of "just stick it in and if it grows it grows". As Nike says, Just Do It.

2. For one week I wish I could actually have a penis. I would have so much fun being given a whole new body part. I'm bored with all the other bits.

3. I wish to invent intravenous coffee. It's a winner, for sure.

4. Wave a magic wand and make it spring. I wasted summer and now it's raining and cold. This signifies icy mornings, multiple layers of clothes, miserable drizzly short dark days and massive power bills. The only positive I see being offered up by winter is the prospect of snuggling up under more than one doona. In fact a mound of them.

5. Retire the poor old Fuji FinePix for a more superior model camera.

6. Dammit, but I wish I could play guitar and sing simultaneously. Occasionally it works out okay, but I could never get a gig doing it. What's weird is that I can play and sing a little on guitar, but give me bass and all ability to even speak while I'm playing just disappears.

7. I wish I could be travelling. Right now. Tomorrow. Every day.

8. I wish I could think of something else to write.


8 Shows I Watch:

Huh? I don't even own a television. I worm my way into other people's lives to watch hours of Bones and the occasional other crime type show.

Stupid, stupid question.

It's Vic's World, so let's change it.

8 albums I'm granting listening time to lately:

1. Jason Mraz - We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things
Okay, so it's a bit poppy/easy listening. But it's just appealing that way. The music is cruisey enough to flow right into your soul and make something move inside you with you even being consciously aware that it's going to happen. Worth a listen on a warm summer evening.

2. Dave Matthews Band - Everyday
I keep coming back to this album, even though I am really only rocked by roughly half of it. The rest is clever but doesn't stick me right to the core in the way that some of the more brilliant Dave Matthews efforts do.

3. Lily Allen - Alright, Still
She cracks me up. The music is tongue in cheek. The lyrics are sassy. I'm in love... but I think she'd slap me.

4. Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You
Latest album: Sadly, not as good as the first. There are still golden moments on this effort, just they're less in number than on the first album. In adolescent style, I've fixated on one track with a sweetly sung little chorus of Fuck you, fuck you very, very much. The plus is that I'm not the only one. It's now our work anthem.

5. Medeski, Martin and Wood - Note Bleu
A nice best of album that just keeps me coming back. Funky, interesting, sometimes completely weird. It's everything I like to be, with a little more confidence.

6. Counting Crows - August and Everything After
This is an old friend that I bring out like a well-worn pair of jeans. I can slip into it like a second skin and feel completely at home with every inch of it.

7. Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd.
Apart the fact that Nine in the Afternoon shits me to absolute tears, I've been pretty clinically fascinated with this album. There's a real Sgt. Pepper feel to it. I'm not happy with committing to liking it yet. I think it's more one of those things you have to stare at and poke for a while to work out what it is, but you cannot just walk away from and forget about. Eventually you figure it out and make the decision to go with well that was a complete waste of time or perhaps the opposite of hey, that's really cool. Judgement is pending.

8. Black Eyed Peas - Elephunk
This is great for just rocking out to when you come home from work. I tend to like funky sounds when I hit the shower, but not overly complex ones. This is perfect. I challenge anybody to listen to Let's Get Retarded and not be moving along with it. You're just not human if you don't.


8 People I Tag:

This is Vic's World, remember? Steal away. You know you want to.

In which Vic huffs and puffs and swears a lot

Lately, due to the unfortunate demise of my car (an incident involving large amounts of oil loss, a sleep on the side of the road, a few kilometres walk and eventual abandonment of the offending vehicle), I have resorted to the "Track and Treadley" method of getting to work on those days that the Roster Gods decide to bestow a shift upon me.

Generally I'll hop on the bike at about half past three in the morning and zoom on down to the station. It's about a ten minute ride. Not far, and only one bitchy uphill in it all. The rest is exhilaratingly downward - especially when you've not long been awake. Actually, when you're still really not awake. A quick sling of the treadley over the shoulder, slog up and over on the stairs and I'm there: a platform that seems like it's on the edge of nowhere. The Last Outpost Before the Crossing of The Great Swamp. But here's where the fun begins. Here there is no ticket machine.

Well you just hop on don't you? There's no such thing as turnstiles at the other end around here. You get on, you get off. Mostly it's honour and policing.

Honour. Pffft. I could buy a ticket at the other end. There's a ticket machine where I step off. But why buy a ticket when you know that you've already scored the ride for free?

It's also become a bit of a fuck you stance on my behalf. We're pushed all the time to utilise public transport, yet it takes you four times as long to get anywhere. And cost? You want me to pay my taxes and then shell out on top of that another four bucks for a ten minute trip on a train that runs only once an hour and sometimes, occasionally, gets to the station on time? Fuck you.

Uhuh. Fuck you... until the potential of getting busted looms. Lack of honour meets policing.

Like last night. I hopped on at my station, contemplating what I was going to do with myself being nearly an hour early for work. I was in the midst of a hazy locker-organising dream when I spied the pair of befatted blue uniformed transport cops working their way toward me from the back of the carriage. Fuck you became Aww FuckIt! rather quickly. I'd cleaned my wallet out completely at home and left not a cent in there, so I couldn't even fall back on the idea of buying a ticket at the other end. What if I pretend I'm asleep? Nope, they saw me get on with my shining silver steed. What if I say I'll buy a return on the way home? Nope. These people are pretend cops, puffed up on their own authority. Not a chance in hell. BAIL!!!

Luckily, some poor bitch was in the same predicament as I was, and a little closer to them. She held them up for just enough ticket-writing time for me to get lined up at the doors to bail at the next station. So fine was the timing that one of them even offered to help me with my bike at the door.

Escaped! Phew!

Now I am at a station halfway between home and work. My regular station, The Last Outpost Before the Crossing of The Great Swamp has been left far behind and we're now right in the middle of it. I am now at The Birthplace of Mosquito. Seriously, the people here have followed the Australian supersizing tradition and have stuck a big mosquito likeness on a pole to show what they are famous for. The next train is a whole blood-draining hour away. And it will arrive after I am due to start work.

Aww FUCKIT!

So I huffed and puffed and swore a lot. I slogged away on the trusty treadley, headed for work the hard way, huffing more and puffing more and swearing quite a lot more.

Have I learned my lesson? Maybe enough to carry four bucks with me just in case. Probably not. The danger of being caught is still by far outweighed by my views of if the system is fucked, fuck the system.

Juvenile?
Probably.

Cost-effective?

So far.

Scraping the Barrel

I was wandering around the city yesterday and happened across one of the local art galleries. It's been bothering me ever since, and obviously enough to write about.

The gallery is a University student gallery. From that typically I would expect a less focused, more emotionally driven set of works, probably more focused on the dark aspects of life. There could be anything from installations featuring broken mirrors and fake blood to grotesque attempts at sculpture depicting the many deaths of the human heart. Cynical? Hell yes.

It was pretty disappointing. I found the space itself far more interesting than the contents. A converted carpark area inside a building! I could have so much fun with sound installations. The exhibits themselves lacked continuity and thought. They were lacking in even emotional depth.

But there was one that really got into my head. A series of photographs taken at night. The intent was "alternate light". Great idea. Piss-poor execution. There were about thirty photographs, half a dozen of them unmounted and tacked to the wall and the rest mounted. The unmounted were marked for sale at $15 each, and mounted for $70. The shots were shithouse! Seriously, if I took anything like that on my camera, I would delete it in disgust. There were no focal points, no interest in the composition. It was as if the photographer walked outside, pointed the lens somewhere in the direction of a lightsource, clicked once and printed the result. There was no thought in the process, and therefore no evocation of thought afterward. Okay, it did evoke a thought.

Does this person seriously believe they are an artist?

I believe myself to be an amateur. Maybe I need to stop learning and go back to Uni. Forget everything I've learned about using my eyes and brain. Then I'll get some gallery space.

I've been messing about in Flickr groups quite a lot recently. Through a local contacts group I've come across a few interesting people. There's also plenty of ones that I would never bother meeting, but that's the same in the wider world as well, I guess.

Anyway, one of the better local contacts invited me to join another group. It's sadly addictive - a group where a theme or technique is decided by anyone, and then three photos need to be submitted to match that theme. After that, the members vote on the submitted photos. To me it's a great way to review other works and learn more about what I like. Also I've submitted a few and been surprised by some of the results. You only need to get five votes to win a round, but that's five votes that I had no idea were out there for the things I see and take pictures of.

Most of the challenges are decided by the first person to post a photo in that round. Usually somebody pops up and chooses "sunset" or "rocks" or "rusty" and really doesn't put too much thought into setting a real challenge. Everybody has sunset photos. We all think they're brilliant. Probably most are pretty good, but come on. It's not difficult to get a good sunset shot. The sky is doing the work for you there. That said, though... I still love a good sunset and I'll shoot them as much as I can.

I jumped in first on one of the challenges in order to be the person who decides what it's going to be. Here was my challenge:

BONES



The moderators removed it, and changed the theme of the challenge.

Seriously.

What the fuck???

So it's not your happy clappy shot. So? It's a fucking skeleton. There's no maggots (though if there were some around I would have shot them, too). To me it's a visually interesting combination of hide, skull and grass. If you wanted to be completely trite about describing it you could say a celebration of the continual cycle of life in nature or something similarly profound.

Close-minded arseholes, I say.

At least I didn't post this one:



The whole thing amuses me more than pisses me off. But it gets me to thinking...

If we approach photography, as well as any other art form, as a means of historical documentation why the hell are we always obsessed with recording the happy bits? Do we seriously want a historical record that says everything was peachy for us? What the hell will the next generation learn from that?

I would much rather see photos of destruction and things that are not readily available to my eyes than pictures of your gappy-toothed grinning sprogs with ice-cream smeared on their faces. A picture of a screaming child is more emotive, and more informative about that child than a posed-up PixiFoto Santa session. Do your kids seriously spend all year grinning hopelessly? I fucking hope not. They'll end up more shallow than Paris Hilton.

When I introduce music composition to students the first thing I discuss with them is intent. If you want to write a piece that inspires your audience to visualise every nightmare they ever had, go for it. If that's your intent. If you want to write a piece that makes people get up and leave the performance in disgust, go ahead. If that's your intent. If you want to write a piece that makes your audience visualise skipping down streets lined with picket fences, bursting blooms of flowers and bright sun, go ahead and do just that. You're most likely to find though, that the pieces that have more depth of emotion have more impact.

So why expect any different in photography? Give me reality any day.

Bones and all.

Album Review: James Morisson's Songs For You, Truths For Me

James Morrison - Songs for You, Truths for Me
Lately I have been picking up anything I can and giving it a listen. This is an exercise to sharpen my ears, broaden my musical experience and hone my ability to communicate about what I hear. Not all the music I listen to I am going to enjoy or respect.

When I looked this guy up on Wikipedia, I got a few choices to pick from. Interestingly, James Morrison the trumpet player from Australia was labelled as musician whereas the James Morrison responsible for this album was labelled as singer. I love the implication there.

The overall impression is that this guy should give up and let somebody else do it. I actually heard him on the radio a few weeks ago, and not knowing who I was listening to I thought Holy Shit is Simply Red still kicking along?. James Morrison appears to be Simply Red attempting to be Joe Cocker at times. His vocal huskiness he attributes to a bout of whooping cough when he was a baby. It would have impressed me far more to conjure up a tale of drinking addiction recovery, or stick a cigar in the guy's teeth for every photo shoot to explain it. I can see this album appealing to the cliched mid-fourties housewife who needs something to listen to while doing their digital scrapbooking - escaping from the teenage nightmares they have spawned and wish to have no more responsibility for.

Tracks of note on this album:
Track 1 - The Only Night
Firstly, the piano is far too defined in the mix. We have Late Show sound from bar one. The track tries to smack you in the face with full on brass/rhythm entry first off and almost succeeds. Funnily the vocal ad-libbing reminds me of a cross between Hanson and Joss Stone.
The chorus here is a disappointment after a nice brassy prechorus section. It builds through the prechorus section then all drops out to what seems like a completely different style - very straight in the rhythm with heavy and predictable vocal harmony. A fitting opening track for the album, showing potential laced with cliche and ultimately disappointment.

Track 6 - Nothing Ever Hurt Like you
The accompaniment has the potential here to be a nice down and dirty groove in the style of The Letter and some of the Tom Jones covers. It builds nicely but then leads straight to disappointment with an immediate lowering of volume in the bass as soon as the vocals enter. What does that do? It makes it feel like the balls have dropped out of the track.
The chorus features more driving rhythm in the drums - snare hits on every beat pushing it along, a direct juxtaposition to the laid back feel of the verse. Vocally, there is some backup harmonising happening. It's at a tasteful level, but still the choice of harmony is not fitting to this style at all.
Overall this track would fantastic live, with pumping bass, a kick-arse session band... and with Joe Cocker performing it instead.

Track 9 - If You Don't Wanna Love Me
Vocally, this is a pretty solid track. The melody is still pretty damn predictable. It's the rest that is letting it down.
The track starts out as a duet between electric guitar vocals - the guitar with a slightly dirty tone, heavy on the mids. Oh, potential! But there's not much imagination in the accompaniment. It's more powerful in the first chorus than the verse to match the step-up in the vocals, however there could be a lot more use of space overall to highlight the occasional fill.
Second verse - drums enter after a brief and extremely pitiful taste of strings (a warning of things to come...). The drums seem to be mixed too clean - they stand out as seperate from the rest of the band enough to bring on the impression of being a midi track.
Then some truly trite and unimaginative string arrangement for the second chorus onwards and it's game over. Forever relegate this track to ballroom dance shows trying keep up with the times by playing the music of somebody who isn't dead yet.

Track 10 - Fix the World Up For You
Ahhh, MERIT!!! Everything seems to fit well in this track. The instruments are well mixed, the vocal harmonies suit the style of the song. There's some wavering in the brass entries during the introduction, however rather than showing up as unprofessional it gives a human quality to the performance.
It's a classic pop soul piece, and well done for what it is.

Track 12 - Love is Hard
This track is one that would be far better live and acoustic. It has fallen victim a little to the temptation of multilayering in the studio. Just because you can have a shitload of layers doesn't mean that you should. A friend once said to me that if you can play a song with just acoustic and vocals, and still have it hold it's own, then it is truly a good song. This track can quite easily do that.
It starts off with a simple high-pitched guitar accompaniment that allows James' rough vocal quality to shine through. He has room to let loose in the chorus a little without his vocals being muddied by anything else that is going on.
It's sad that this track is relegated to last position on the album. It's of quality that I would like to see more of from this singer. Acoustic and vocal is much more suited to this man than a bad arrangement with a few brass instruments thrown in.

File Songs For You, Truths For Me to the left of Michael Buble and Harry Connick Jnr, and to the right of your Michael Bolton and Simply Red. Play when your mother comes to visit, and accompany with a mug of budget-label tea with too much milk in order to match the lack of complexity and predictability of this album.

Capping off yet another week

I've just been to the psych yet again. This has been a constant fight to "get back the old Vic" that I had. Actually, really, to build a new Vic that respects and retains elements of the old one... but is a hell of a lot stronger.

She wants to see what positive work I've been doing toward my goals. Fair enough, that's what I need to do and she has to follow up on it. But when it comes to music she doesn't see that the things I have been doing are absolute milestones for me with respect toward my attitude changes. To a non-musician it seems that getting back into music means that you should go out and gig next week. HORSESHIT. Maybe somebody who has no respect for skills and reputation would. Not me.

Why the hell am I posting album reviews here? Because I'm listening to anything I can get my hands onto. That doesn't impress a non-musician either. Yay, you listened to something. It doesn't seem impressive at all. But what she doesn't get, and that I have to fight to explain in a recognisable manner to her, is that when I listen to something I am critical about it. I don't kick back and let it flow. I analyse, I constantly try to find what could be improved or what the strong points of a piece are. This sort of exposure and analysis is so integral to moving forward as a musician, but so overlooked.

Am I playing, even at home? A little. My instrument doesn't scare the hell out of me any more. Yet, I pick it up and it's a fight to build up the old skills I had. They fall into disrepair so quickly once you stop playing. There is no way I can handle a regimented practise routine yet - the failures I would measure against myself in this would create more frustration than positivity. The fact that I play when I want to shows that I building back the skills without the pressure. Does anyone hear me playing? No. I live in a granny flat seperate to the lives of others and really who gives a toss whether or not I decided to have a bash at my own acoustic version of whatever I've been listening to?. Forward progress? For me. It means that I am inspired, thinking. The fact that I'm playing is building the old skills up without the pressure of practise. The fact that I'm not inflicting this on anybody else is circumstance mixed with respect. Nobody should have shitty playing inflicted upon them without their consent.

When am I going to gig again? Not tomorrow. When am I going to look for others to gig with? Also not tomorrow. There is nothing respectable about somebody who goes for an audition and says, Oh, I used to play but I haven't picked it up in a while. Fuck off, you are not a musician and you have no dedication. I will never turn up unprepared. It's unproffessional. It shows no respect for the other musicians. So the hard yards have to be done at home, alone.

I bought a drum kit today, which I know will be intrepeted by most as a departure from guitar toward another instrument. Again, it's a fight to explain what this truly does for me. Playing a variety of instruments builds your musical knowledge but still has the same core activities involved. It doesn't mean you are giving up one for another, it actually helps your playing across the board. Like hell a non-musician is going to understand that one.

Apart from the music, I've been working and sleeping. Sometimes I take photographs. Sometimes I go on the internet and read about whatever takes my fancy. At work I have been spending hours occupying my mind and hands with drumming patterns and thoughts on what I've been listening to.

Photography has been a way for me to look creatively at what is around me. Kat and I have been playing tag for the last couple of weeks on different themes, and it is my turn to pick one again. I haven't posted many from the last theme, but lets blame that on a time thing. Like the music, just because you don't see it, doesn't mean I haven't been doing it.

It's my turn to pick a new theme.



The new theme is trees.

Remember: Just like the tree falling in the woods with nobody around, if you don't see the it... Doesn't mean that I'm not doing it.

Coping mechanisms

For the last week or so I've been unusually happy. Something snapped in me on the way home from a shit day at work one evening, and I where I would normally go home and be reclusive or ideally drink it off while being reclusive, I laughed out loud instead. I laughed all the way home. I came home and danced. While standing in the kitchen eating, I danced alone. Then I danced with the dog, because he was nearby and an inoccent victim I could rope into my happiness without noticeable complaint.

Work saw a different side of me. I'll write more about what I currently do for money at another point in the week, but suffice it to say the work is shit and the pay isn't great. But I've got renewed enthusiasm and have showed more of my old self to my relatively new workmates. My old self - the one who is not afraid to be seen as a bit of a dickhead, who isn't afraid to jerk around, but also who gets in and gets the dirty work done.

In short, I had my groove back.

My first in-depth appointment with my psych was on Saturday. We talked about the ex from over two years ago, mainly. Her task for me: write a letter to the ex describing all the ways she hurt me. Not a letter to be sent, I guess, but one that lets it all come escaping out of me and forces me to put it into form. Since this suggestion I've been fighting for my good mood. I have flat points - moments where I cannot comprehend anything that is going around me, even the smallest things. It's like time slows for me into dreamlike unreality, and then I wake up from the dream bleary eyed and unable to remember exactly what it was about.

These are things I need to confront. They are going to be painful but ultimately for my own benefit. The pain is scary beyond belief. How do people going into life threatening operations cope? I cannot comprehend it. This shit is not physical, it's only my thoughts! Somehow I'm afraid to face what I know I have to in order to get on with living.

I feel between a rock and a hard place when it comes to coping. Where I would normally shut myself away and blare some weird music on my stereo, I find myself only with my laptop speakers and a tenth of my music collection. The rest - the kickarse stereo and the collection of CDs that I have accumulated over so many changes in my life - are in storage at my parents' house about ten hours drive away. I cannot go there to retrieve them, because my dealings with them are a large part of the reason I've sought therapy in the first place.

So what do I do about this letter? How do I cope with writing it? How do I bust down all the mental barriers I've put up over the two years to block the bitch out of my head? And what do I do to save those surrounding me from having to see my pain?

Fucking Americans!

Today I was rudely ripped off by the good ol' yanks. I could have played the world's biggest playable guitar. But no. I got to play the biggest playable guitar in the southern hemishpere, because some yank went and built a bigger one. Typical.

It's 5.82 metres long (no, you can't have that in feet, yanks, you've already beaten it anyway), 2.019 metres wide and the length of the strings to the bridge is 3.98 metres. I think the people of Nerrandera, where it is kept, are a little embarrassed by it now, because they don't seem to care for it very well. The neck is propped up on a filing cabinet and it's chocked up by a couple of bricks at the back end. The poor thing is in dire need of tuning.

I had a go anyway.

Not heartless, but smart.

Apparently pop duo The Veronicas have refused to refund a booking deposit of $17500 for a charity do. And now they’re copping flack for it. Being made out to be heartless, with a headline in one newspaper – ”A pop betrayal”. The concert was being held to raise money for a boy battling a brain tumour, but got cancelled because they couldn’t sell enough tickets.

Oh what a sweet thing. A kid with a brain tumour. I had a mate in primary school who had a brain tumour and I didn’t see her getting any concert. There are so many charity concerts for different things now – but what makes a concert? Music. That’s your draw card. Crowd-pleasing music, from a live band. What organisers of these events don’t seem to realise is that musicians do it for a living. It is their occupation. Nobody else gets letters asking them to work for free for a week for some charity on a regular basis. The people organising these things seem to have stars in their eyes and no practicality any more. They’ve got their heads up in the do-good angelic clouds and expect everyone to throw money and free products at them because their cause is more deserving than the chosen causes of the rest of the do-good angelic cloud dwellers.

It happens all the time. About a third of the gigs I’ve played have been fundraisers of some description. And we got fucked over countless times, to the point where we usually asked for a booking fee up front. For reasons just like this one – the events were poorly organised and usually fell down on the advertising side. Heartless? No. Practical, yes. We knew where our wages were coming from. You have a booking for a charity do for months, and turn down fifteen better offers for that particular date and then the do gets cancelled because of lack of interest. Whose fault is that? Not the people who’ve donated and lose out. Not the people who need to make a living at the end of the day.

Why don’t we have a Doctor’s charity week? Where you can go see your doctor and they will donate their earnings for that week to charity instead. Or Plumber’s charity week? Get the blockage in your pipes fixed so we can fix the blockage in this kid’s head!.

Maybe there should be a charity for traumatised musicians who’ve done too many charity gigs.

Yes, I do get angry

I spout that I'm a laid back muso. That I'm too apathetic to get worked up, to get pissed off at anything. That I'm reasonable.

All that turns to bullshit, absolute and utter bullshit! when I get a phone call like the one I had this morning.

Indian Call Centre Fuckwit: Hello, I like to speak to ahhh.. Mrs. Ning?
Vic: [Thinking here we go, this is the fiftieth fucking time. ie The time bomb is already ticking for this person] Look. Mrs. Ning owns this place, but we rent. Through an agent. How come the name keeps on popping up on your call list?
ICCF: Oh is the owner there, please?
Vic: [Tick, tick, tick...] No, you don't get it, we've never met the owner. And this phone number is in my name. MY name. How come you lot seem to think that this number belongs to Mrs. Ning?
ICCF: Oh it must be the name at the address.

SNAP. I've done this before. If I wasn't so fucking livid it would be a great sport. But the trap has shut on this guy. It's on.

Vic: No way buddy. This is MY number. MINE. I brought it with me from the last address. How the hell can you tell me my number is in somebody else's name? Where the hell do you lot get your lists from because this is the fiftieth fucking time this has happened.
ICCF: Since the phone is in your name, what I am calling today is about -

Persistent PRICK.

Vic: No way buddy. I don't want whatever it is. I want to know where you get your numbers from?
ICCF: They are from our research department. Your number has been selected randomly -

Now I'm doing laps of the loungeroom, in long strides with the phone attatched to my ear. Voice raised, waves of that particular just fuck right off vibe that I produce emanating from me.

Vic: Look, I don't want to buy your product. Just leave me alone. Don't ever call again and tell your FUCKING RESEARCH DEPARTMENT that this is MY FUCKING NUMBER and that I DON'T WANT YOUR SHIT.

Click.

So now I'm pissed off. Stuff this guy. I own this number. I've had it since I first got a phone in my name. How the fuck can they get someone else's name in that. Piss off. Don't give my number away. I don't own the house but I own the number. Owned it before I even laid eyes on the house.

I'm alone in my house at the moment. So I've got the phone book out and I'm looking for numbers to call to figure out how the owner of the house I rent has been granted honorary ownership of my phone number - and I'm yelling at nobody. Just to yell. I'm absolutely livid.

There is a fucking "Australian Breastfeeding Association"?

Where is the fucking number for "Some Cunt Has Taken My Phone Number?" There should be a fucking help line for this!

And how the fuck can you justify taking a whole fucking page to say all your complaints numbers are exactly the fucking same???

I want old mate ICCF to ring back so I can have another go, I'm so worked up.