Welcome to the Den of Idiocy

To receive my government "looking for work" payment - more commonly referred to as the dole - I have to prove fortnightly that I am, in fact, actively looking for work (bummer, because I'd rather not, but that's beside the point). Part of this process is registering with a job search agency and then being rudely told what to do by them, because they have the power of god over your future payments. Don't attend an appointment, you get a breach and a possible cut of your payment.

Here's what happened at the first required interview:
1. Vic walks in the door, resume and portfolio tucked under her arm, looks at the milling crowd of other hopeless cases and politely makes her way to the counter.
2. Vic is handed a questionnaire and told not to bother filling most of it out because she has an existing resume of her own.
3. Vic returns said questionnaire and is told that's all she has to do, so she can go now. No introduction to the facilities, no meeting the consultants, nothing.

Two weeks later I received a letter in the mail from this company that I am required to be registered with. It contained a welcome letter that looked like it had been photocopied from a copy fifteen generations past the original. It contained a job description of something they had going that they felt I was qualified best for - selling model aircraft in a specialist hobby shop. And it contained a new resume that they had prepared just for me.

It looked like the resume I had handed them at the 'interview'. Except it wasn't. One section had been moved. They copied the layout style. But the thing that got me... The information that they copied from my existing resume contained spelling mistakes. So now instead of looking not particularly qualified I look incompetent and not particularly qualified.

Fucktards.

Today I start a four week intensive job search training course with this company, because it is of course a decree from the payment god that I do so. Let's call it character building. If I can get through a day without telling them they're a pack of overbearing idiots who can't spell I will be a stronger person inside.

Mailbox Monday

This particular shot was taken recently, during a brief visit to my stomping ground of the past eleven years. What we were doing when we found this particular specimen of the mailbox genus was, and still is, one of my favourite pastimes. Driving around looking for anything interesting that takes my eye.

My friends in Armidale were great for this hobby. Weekends were mostly boring spaces of time reserved for being hung over, or working towards the next bout of being hung over, or generally complaining of there being nothing to do. Not many of them had cars, so when an opportunity came up to get out to a national park or just cover some country away from the highways, I could usually count on having at least somebody to take along for the ride.

The best adventures had no set destination. I would have a direction in my head, and a clear idea of where the surrounding main roads were, and that was all that was needed. You could wander around on small roads between the properties for half a day, and then branch off toward a highway when you were done exploring and be home to dodgey up a curry for everyone before dark.

I'm looking back at those days with an unfair lust at the moment. The lust is because I was confident in my knowledge of my surrounds, familiar with the country. I knew without a doubt that I could point my car in a particular direction and have a rough idea of what I was going to find on the way. It was also that I was in control of the game. I was the driver, I was trusted by my passengers that I would know where I was going, and most likely find something different and interesting to beat the boredom on the way.

That kind of lusting is unfair to myself, and the good thing is that I know it. I don't have the confidence in this far larger city to find my way about efficiently. What's more interesting to realise is that I miss the control. We go for a drive, and me being new to this place I just get to sit back and take it all in. It should be great, but suddenly I've become the passenger when for the past eleven years I've been the one that picks the direction. My mind interprets this as a loss of control, a flaw because I do not have the knowledge of this area yet. It's downright irrational. Of course I can't replicate the local knowledge of eleven years in a place I've only been in for a couple of months. Step one is realising the problem. What the hell do I do next?

PhotoHunt: Twist(ed)

The PhotoHunt always makes me think. You get a subject weekly and when you first read the list you think ha! Easy! But it isn't. This week's theme, twist(ed) had me racking my brains and writing a list of all my ideas of possible subjects. Ropes? Wires? Guitar strings?

I spent some time taking shots of guitar strings and they were truly boring. If I perfected them you could have used them in a guitar magazine for an article about maintenance or something equally functional but visually uninteresting to most. What does it mean? Stuff all, really. There's no personality, nothing to identify with in there. Pretty shot. Great. Sometimes that works. I've got a lot of close-up pattern shots that I'd eventually like to frame, bit it's just not me at the moment.

What usually happens with the PhotoHunt is that I write a list, conjure up all sorts of ideas of set-up shots, toy with a few and then give up. In this case I gave up and agreed to be taken along for a drive looking at a few local graveyards. Typically, they don't interest me much. Decay of society is fascinating but depressing, and graves are a prime example of that. Plus they take up space. Monuments are nice, but if you carve away the landscape to bury every person that dies in the world, there's no space left for the living. These places are not very high on my list of locations to seek out as a general rule. Give me landscapes, different experiences and obscure art. Those things inspire happiness in me, so I am most likely to seek them out.

It's when I go off not in search of a PhotoHunt subject that I'm most likely to find it. Maybe it's art giving me a hint for life to imitate. You can research, you can investigate possibilities. You can ponder solutions and discard them all day. Then you can just give up, go do something else and damned if the answer doesn't just fall in your lap.

Nalf-Nekkid Thursday

Dyke with back pain

I couldn't sleep. I tried the side, the stomach, the other side. I tried curled up with my legs crossed in the air. I crawled half off the bed and lay my poor screaming back on the cold hard floor.

Painkillers? Nope, they didn't help either.

So what is this dyke supposed to do?

Well of course. Grab that dildo out of the drawer, shove it right under the offending vertebrae and give it some relief.

Peanut Butter Sandwiches at 3am

"I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I needed it" --John Cage

It's not every day that you wake up from a dream about the composer John Cage. It's definately not every day that you feel compelled enough to drag yourself out of bed and read more about the man in question. So here's the four in the morning, painkiller-laden peanut butter sandwich eating rundown.

There's a lot of fascinating things the man did, but I guess the most famous is the conception and performance of 4'33", which back in those tragic University music lecture days took me ages to figure out as being the shorthand for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Dumbarse. Apparently there's a few versions of the score getting around, but the most famous one is the Tacet edition. Tacet is the traditional musical term for when a musician does not play for a movement - basically it says Hey mate, just sit this one out. We don't need you for it. So the famous score for 4'33" goes something like this:

Movement I
TACET (30")

Movement II
TACET (2'23")

Movement III
TACET (1'40")

That's a score of the first performance of the piece, performed on piano. The performer signifies the start of the first movement by closing the lid over the keys of the piano, and then lifting it at the end of the allotted time. This occurs for all three movements, with pauses in between. The piece has traditionally been stuck with the title 4'33", even though it can be performed for any instrument, by any any number of performers, for any length of time. You're probably performing it now. Cage himself refers to it as his "silent piece" and writes:

"I have spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece... for an audience of myself, since they were much longer than the popular length which I have published. At one performance... the second movement was extremely dramatic, beginning with the sounds of a buck and a doe leaping up to within ten feet of my rocky podium."

So why is this such a significant piece of music? On the surface it looks more like a theatrical stunt than a serious work. How many university composition students have come to studying Cage, with a composition folio due at the end of the week and thought Asshole! Wish I'd have thought of that! I know I have.

In a way it is making the statement that silence within music is just as important as sound, but there's more. It's about listening. While the performer is silent, the surrounding environment goes on making sound, often going unnoticed.

It challenges the definition of what music actually is. If it isn't pleasing to the ear, is it still music? Where does the definition stop? If you look at a painting and don't like it, is it still art? If the artist intends it to be art, do you challenge it's definition as that?

Mailbox Monday

PhotoHunt: Glass

What you get for downloading music

I did a search for Pseudo Echo's Funky Town, and what came up?

pseudo echo cute girl has orgasm on webcam

Well. That's taking grooving to the music to a new level.

Where I stand.

It occurred to me last night that my wrists were hurting, largely due to the terminally boring and soulless factory work that I've been doing. Yes, I realise that somebody has to peel oranges by hand. Somebody has to shovel hundreds of kilograms of prepared sloppy portion controlled salad into two kilogram bags and seal it. I realise that somebody has to come home with their skin oozing the smell of sanitising chlorine. Somebody has to go through their entire working week in a closed off room populated with other workers who appear too scared of losing their precious soulless jobs to have a conversation and get to know each other, just in case the bosses think they aren't working hard enough.

Fuck it. That person is no longer me. Smacking me in the head like a gangster with a baseball bat is the realisation that I want to perform as a musician above everything else. I get into a band after working my butt off on the audition material and now I haven't had the time or energy to work on the material for the rehearsal this weekend. Where do my priorities lie? I'm a fucking musician, dammit. A performer who loves to gain energy from the crowd and dance and lock into the band in the way that makes me so energetic and goddamned happy. I'm the fucking Groover. Second to that priority, and a little conflicting (but I'll work it out later) is the desire to travel, to see, to experience the world in a different way. My way.

It seems to be something I do to myself with regularity. This deciding that I need to work to supplement the traditional Musician income of dole payments and the occasional gig, and then realising that whatever shit job I supplement this income with is actually detracting from my goal. Luckily, the period of drudgery before the realisation occurs seems to be getting shorter. Maybe one day I will not go through it at all. In this case the job I have been in is causing so much strain on my wrists that strapping them is only alleviating the pain a little. I've already given myself a repetetive strain injury in a previous crap filler job (defrosting freezers with a rubber mallet and a bucket of water all day - go figure) and I get knocked around every time it flares up.

Then there's the fact that it is fucking boring. There isn't a social life to distract you from that fact at all. It's in your face all day.

Two strikes. Fuck off, work. I'm a musician.

Introducing my new bed partner

This afternoon I came home from work with aching wrists and no energy. Work is a soulless vegetable preparation factory that drains me mentally from the distaste of being part of an industry direction that I do not support, as well as physically draining me from the repetetive bending and limited movement nature of the work.

I sat on the bed in my room with a coffee and the intention of jamming out on my guitar to an easy listening playlist and eventually bringing myself to learn a few songs for the band I got into. I was all set up - coffee mug on the window sill beside the bed, snuggly pillows to lean against and ease the aching back, ashtray at the ready for the times of sitting back taking a break and just listening.

One song. That was as far as I got. My head couldn't take it and I quit, resloving to just play a few warm-up licks instead. Somewhere shortly after that I fell asleep, leaning back on the pillows on my bed with a guitar across my chest. I vaguely remember rolling over onto my side and thinking huh? Heavy thing near me? but being too absolutely fucked to even figure out what it was.



My girl woke me up later in the evening and reminded me that I do, in fact have a teddy bear for such occasions.

Mailbox Monday

Mortality

I love the beach. Actually, I love to swim in the surf. The sand is an unfortunate side effect of the beach that just has to be dealt with unless you’re in England. Then you have rocks instead.

I wade out into the ocean and meet the low waves with my back, turning around and throwing my arms in the air. As the waves crack against me it’s a smack that wakes me up, makes me feel alive. I yell with the exhilaration of it all, the bashing smacking rush of alive that comes with each onslaught of waves.

Then you’re out past the wash and into the relaxing, rolling calm at the back of the break. It’s here that I chill out and wait for a wave to bodysurf. I’m not good at it. Bodysurfing, that is. I grew up around the beach and knowing the surf but never had a body board or a surfboard. I can pick the waves, mostly. But my technique lets me down.

So today I hit the beach. Unsuccessfully I washed through a couple of waves before the big hummer came along. It looked brilliant, a pearler that would get me most of the way back to shore where I could start the whole process over again. Not so. It was a dumper. Unpatrolled beach, no other swimmers around me, and my companions were a couple of hundred metres up the beach taking photos of whatever they found interesting up there.

This wave… It flipped me. One second I was shooting forward on the crest. My arms were out, my head was down and I was a short stocky arrow of a waverider. Next thing… I was upside down. Flipped. Water forced up my nostrils and then BANG! I hit bottom. Actually, I hit hip on bottom. My body was twisted in way that I don’t think I can ever replicate unless I become a gymnast (which would be fantastic for my sex life… Maybe one day). The shock of that opened my mouth, so I received a gutful of salt water as well. I tumbled for a while and then finally I was free. I came up gasping for air, shocked and scared. I’ve discovered my mortality.

There was a point where I would have said So what if I die? I could wade out there and disappear and who cares? Gone. Fish food. But now I’m scared. I don’t want to be the next missing person. If I die… yes, it’s still who cares?, but I want closure for the people I love.

Keep your head down

I started work at a food processing plant last week. I am in the section that makes salads. That sloppy juicey fruitsalad, the coleslaw that is chopped into little squares and will never ever taste like the hand made goodness your mother came up with, the pasta salad that has that peculiar sauce so tangy that it has almost off taste to it... For a whopping total of three days I have had a hand in some of these culinary tragedies.

It's a combination of "work is work" and "please shoot me now".

It's an experience - yet another thing to slip into the mental scrapbook of things I've seen and done. Another line to gauge further into the carving that is Vic. I've never worked in large scale food production of that type before so I can't say that I'm not interested to see what goes on. However there's no passion. I'm in a room all day with people who couldn't give a shit, making salads to be sold by people who couldn't give a shit to be eaten by who couldn't give a shit. I'm not being helpful toward the society that I want. I'm part of the stain.

This is not healthy.

Time to go to work.

Taking the Easter thing too far...

PhotoHunt: Metal

Yep, it's in the middle of a park.
As you do with all your spare submarines.

In search of The One

I am on a quest. It is very important, and potentially very fulfilling on a daily, personal level. The quest will be frustrating as I requires me to obtain perfection in a tactile form, however I do not yet specifically know what form perfection will take. Many times I will see something that is close, but will need to be left by the wayside because it is flawed in some way. I will reject many in search of the one. Yes, there can only be one.

I will have to beat my way through jungles of children in discount shops. I will have to use my senses, staying alert for the stench of Dencorub that warns the presence of nursing home escapees who find refugee in these places alongside the children. I will need to be agile, even a contortionist, to squeeze past the fat bastards looking at the cheap, shitty chocolate. I will steel myself against the inevitable intolerant anger at the bunch of asians arguing noisily in their own language over the last two dollar frying pan. I will remain focused on my goal.

My quest may take from the dangerous slums of the discount shop aisles to more delicate but equally dangerous surrounds - the boutique kitchen shop. Cat-footed, I will make my way through the too-close shelves lined with expensive bakeware. I will laugh at the frustration of the saleswoman behind the counter - she will be wanting to keep her eyes on me, but will keep losing me behind the shelves that are higher than my head. My horror at the fifty-two dollar price tag on the toothpick holder will be contained to an inner snigger. I will easily dismiss the Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay signature designs. I may be briefly distracted by the now discounted Nigella Lawson signature lines, but I will find strength and dismiss the pastel faffery in favour of my higher goal, my object of perfection.

No more being "Ms. Bitch" for me. I will no longer be "Quietly Plotting My Revenge". My object of perfection will be the one I wake up to every morning, warming me, snuggling into my hands, giving me strength for the day.

My quest... to find the ultimate coffee mug.

Obviously I'm in the wrong profession.

Powered By Rabbit Vibrators


I am contemplating sending my ex-girlfriends a bill.

Mailbox Monday

Machinery seems to be colour coded for easier identification.

Big tractors are green.
Little tractors are red.
Earthmoving gear is yellow.

In case you couldn't figure it out by looking.

Hard-hitting movies

You’ll say “Girl, you kicked some butt” and I’ll say “I don’t really remember”
- Ani DiFranco, You Had Time

The first “lesbian” oriented movie I watched was a film called Lost and Delirious. It’s brilliant. I don’t care what orientation you identify yourself as, go watch it, even though I’m essentially going to ruin it for you right now.

I was shown it by the girl I came out for, the girl who stole my heart literally. I wanted to marry her. She was my everything, this captivating force that had me completely wrapped up in a totally different world. It was not long after we got together that she showed this film to me. At the time I was gathering momentum in a graceless downhill race toward depression. I was a hell of a long way from the bottom, but the journey had certainly begun and the signs were all there for a doosey.

This movie depicted that first love being torn to shreds. All I wanted was a happy ending, to find out that somewhere, even only as a fantasy in a movie, it could be okay to be the way I am in this world. That I don’t have to end up torn and unhappy. Possibly, that I deserve to be loved as much as the next person despite my own destructive thoughts. But there it was – a girl being torn to bits because her lover decided she no longer wanted to be in the relationship, mostly through not wanting to be viewed as different, not normal. She “went straight”. Hell, hindsight is a wonderful thing. There’s so many parallels there to the way that the relationship I was in finally ended.

It gutted me completely. I remember lying on that futon after the movie had finished with tears pouring down my face. My forearms were wet with them so much that I gave up any attempt to wipe them away. I was screaming wordlessly in anguish and it felt as if I would never be able to break out of it. When I did it was through exhaustion.

Despite the bad experience, it is a brilliant movie, and deserves to be seen by all, not just the lesbian audience who treasure the meagre amount of films available to them. It’s brilliant because it made me feel so much – Dead Poets’ Society had a similar effect on me. Head on out to your video store and walk past all the lovely guy-meets-girl blah blah blah versions of the same happy ending and go find the film that tore me to bits. If you can’t find it, (which is likely), go up to the counter and ask for it. If the place does not stock Lost and Delirious I have one request… Ask the staff why the fuck not?

Photohunt: I Spy

Sometimes you spy yourself being spied upon...

Weird stuff

I was sitting at a traffic light today, grooving out to The Cat Empire as seems to be the usual soundtrack lately. As you do when you’re stuck at a red light itching for it to turn green, I checked out the occupants of the other cars around me. Straight through the passenger window in the brand new white Commodore was an old man minding his own business. Staring straight ahead intently and holding the steering wheel… Wearing a pair of gardening gloves. Grey, budget, worn and dirty. Gardening gloves of the cheapest denomination. While he was sitting there waiting, he removed one absently, scratched his ear, and then put it back on again.

So, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen at a set of traffic lights?

Google asked...

What's a Blog?

It's been a while.

I went to sign in to Blogger just now to write whatever drivel came into my head, just to prove to the world that yes, I still exist. The Rifle Range of life jasn't claimed me yet. On the sign in page there is the option to take the tour - who ever does this unless it's trying to see a little more of that certain porn site's offerings? - but the title that it sports is What is a blog?

My blog. It's, well... Mine. My virtual soapbox in place of my real-life milk crate. It's my place to delve into those depths I thought I could never talk about and surprise myself by putting them out in the world for anyone who happens to click "next blog" to find. It's a place to meet people - people who in cases now I could not imagine my life without. It's... me. More than that, it's home.

I've had a hiatus from posting, and I think that also proves something to me - I've been having a hiatus from myself. I've been doing the do, seeing new things and gathering the experiences under my ever-expanding belt. Some of these experiences have been utterly awful and I've hidden away from processing them. It's time to make my head snap out of holiday mode.

That's what a blog is for, after all.

It's time to come home.

Some days you accidentally walk into a rifle range.

Getting the shits with the toilet roll

[figure 1: Creation]

In 1879 Scott produced the first roll of toilet paper. It began. It was in the nature or the thing: in order for any cylindrical object to remain in the same position while spinning – and in this case, dispensing - the cylindrical object requires an axle. Thus was born the need for the toilet roll holder.

The simple modern-day form of this can be found as a wall-mounted bracket with two ends of wire protruding from it. The wire ends are bent to the horizontal and inserted either end of a REMOVEABLE cylindrical barrel. The barrel is the axle for the toilet roll to be inserted upon, and dispense freely as required.


[figure 2: Essential parts of the simple toilet roll holder, as drawn by Vic, with a shaky finger and a stupid little touchpad. Round of applause, please. It took me a half hour to get that far.]

It’s not rocket science. It’s simplicity. If there are replacement rolls available within reach, changing the empty one from the barrel and replacing it with a new on is a simple operation that takes approximately ten seconds. It’s something to occupy the time while you’re taking a shit.

Where I am staying – a workers’ camp of about a hundred blokes and six females – there are communal segregated toilets. Between six females, it seems that I am the only one who understands the nature of the axle in the setup, and the fact that it is REMOVEABLE. The replacement rolls are stored on top of the cistern, and replenished by the cleaners daily. It takes an acrobatic manoeuvre to reach around and grab the next roll, and I believe that the female population in the camp must be made entirely of contortionists. Not only do they reach around and grab the next roll, they start it and put it back where they got it! Often this continues for three quarters of the roll. You’d rather twist yourself into a weird position while your pants are around your ankles and your arse is hanging out than put the next roll on the barrel?

It seems that every time I go in there, I replace the roll, and that’s on the women’s side. Christ knows what happens on the men’s side. There’s probably cobwebs around all the roll holders.

All the workers have to watch an induction video before being allowed to go on the orchard. Simple stuff such as wear a hat and shoes, and how to use a ladder safely. There should be second video for the workers who choose to stay in the camp: How to Live Communally: Toilet Roll Replacement 101.

Mailbox Monday

Going home

Being in a workers' camp reminds me of my days in boarding school. We wake up to an air horn, line up for meals to an air horn, have tiny little boxy rooms and get put to bed by a certain time every night. The food is just the same as boarding school. You can't complain about it, really. It's mass produced and not particularly interesting, but when you're feeding a hundred smelly fruit pickers on a tight budget it's pretty difficult to put any love into what you're serving up.

What really takes me back to the boarding school days is that feeling of being away from home. I miss my family. Not my parents - I couldn't give a shit - but my sister. Then there's my adopted family, the people who have accepted me and embraced me without question. That is home. I've made friends at the workers' camp, certainly. Good friends. It's an interesting and quite friendly place to live. From there I've been journeying through the surrounding area and exploring places of interest, learning new things, netting new experiences and moulding them into part of the ever-evolving version of myself. But always, underneath the wide-eyed wonder at all this new discovery, is the feeling of I miss home.

It was the same at boarding school. You've got your friends, your culture, the weekend projects of delinquency and all the fun that goes with mass living and having your mates h=just down the hallway. But at the end of term you're just happy to go home.

I'm home for the weekend. A ten hour drive on the most boring stretch of road I have ever encountered: Three hundred kilometres of road works, a near miss with a speeding fine, and some bitch in a four wheel drive's tow ball straight through my front grill in a traffic jam. I am home and all that is worth just being here for five minutes. I have to go back, and indeed I'm looking forward to continuing my exploring and experience-hunting, but I will go back with a renewed energy and lust for life after this small respite.

Daytrips and Paddlesteamers

I've been working and living in a small town in Central Northern Victoria, right on the Murray River. The river forms most of the border between New South Wales and Victoria. It's part of a massive inland system, and used to be the highway for trade and transport. I remember watching a mini-series as a kid called All the Rivers Run. I loved the boats, and the scraggly dusty gum-tree Australian-ness of the Murray. It seemed harsh and tranquil all at the same time. I can't remember a damn thing about the plot of the series, but the main thing is that it left me with a desire to see the Murray, and a love for the Paddlesteamer - the main form of transport on this once mighty highway.



The town of Echuca was a busy port and crossing on the Murray - it's docks used to stretch for three quarters of a mile along the river banks. Only a small section remains, but there's quite a few paddlesteamers in operation as tourist boats from the dock area. Also, some are being restored for private use, as well as there being a few modern-day versions as private houseboats. Interestingly, some of the ones being restored were wrecks. As the industry died out, they were moored on the opposite side of the bank to docks, and abandoned. One by one they would have sunk. In the fairly recent drought times the river got to very low levels, and all these boats started emerging. They were preserved in the mud and water. Some got re-floated and restorations began.



That's the boat I wanted to go on, and did eventually. It's the PS Pevensey. She still has her original steam engine. Built in 1910 as a barge, she was turned into a paddlesteamer a year later, and carried cargo along the Murray. As trade died out, she was left to be a floating museum in the town of Mildura. But luck changed for this boat - she was restored to be the star of the series that made me fall in love with the Murray and paddlesteamers in the first place. She starred as the Philadelphia in All the Rivers Run. I had no idea that the steamer in the series was an original, let alone still operating.



This picture was taken while I was standing next to the loud and sweatingly hot muscle of the Pevensey's steam engine. I watched the man stoke it up, and was awed with the whole thing for a while. The paddlesteamer Etona, in the centre of the view, was and still is a missionary boat, a floating church. It still sports the cross above the wheelhouse to show what it is. On it they would perform things like christenings and marriages. I can just imagine it - hey hun, let's get married next time the boat comes past - whaddaya reckon?

I got one of my dreams - to be on a paddlesteamer on the Murray. I heard the steam whistles, I walked through what remained of the docks, felt my feet on the rickety planks and looked down through the cracks to the muddy water so far below. I stood in constant amazement of this river that is so totally different to the ones I had grown up on. Scraggly, muddy and dusty, in the bare shade of the river gums. This is the Australia I've dreamed about but have only seen in movies.



Yes, it's Vic on the bow of the PS Pevensey with a dumb grin on her face and a section of the Echuca docks in the background. Next is Vic also, still wearing dumb grin, on the upper deck after being in the wheelhouse with the captain.

Mailbox Monday

Dear Ladies, Gentlemen, Non-specifically gendered, Midgets, Dolphins and all other intelligent life-forms of blogville,

For years I have not written a personal letter. Application letters, yes. Plenty of those – my technique must be pretty shocking because I’m still writing them and not hearing back. But personal letters… I fell into that bottomless pit of “I’ll just call”. I think the same has happened to far too many people. In fact, Dive had a rant about it not long ago.

I’ve been getting a few letters lately, and I’d forgotten the happiness that holding a personal letter can bring. These pieces of paper become fragile to me. I hold them gently and with total wonder. I smell them. I keep them safe once I have read them, and look at them frequently. It is a gift I need to pay out more often.

So I’m brushing off the cobwebs on the letter-writing skills. Mostly, my letters consist of drawn-out prattle about daily goings on, and a few questions about health and happiness of the recipient. Am I going to bore this person? I don’t know. Sometimes I have given up on a letter for that reason, with a re-read and the decision of “Vic, you sound like a self-centred prat.”

In conclusion, I hope this letter finds you all in good health (and probably a state of mild bemusement at this post). All the best for whatever activities you may choose to fill your day.

Regards,
Vic

Half-Nekkid Thursday

Happy Hallmark Horrorday

The big Murray Cod at Tocumwal says Happy Hallmark Horrorday to all.



I really should have the last pic made up as a card.

Mailbox Monday

I've been driving around in the country the last couple of weekends, doing my normal thing of looking for weird and interesting stuff.

Something I've always taken for granted is the random letterbox. Occasionally I'll notice one and think hey cool that one's made of plough discs, but I've never put much more thought into it than that. The mailbox has become a little more symbolic for me lately. It represents home in a way. A fixed address. I have a somewhat lengthy temporary address, rather than none at all, but my mailbox is a fading green velvet pinboard in a dining room that I share with a hundred or so backpackers and travelling workers. If I receive something that cannot be pinned on the board, it is an announcement from the human bullhorn who is our camp caretaker for the entire workforce to know that I need to get my arse to the office before it closes, if I want to collect my parcel. The ritual of checking the mailbox has lost it's personal touch.

So... I've decided to start a Monday thing for mailboxes. The Monday Melee got old and face it, I'm over thinking that much about what I hate first thing on a Monday anyway. Mailbox Monday it is. I even came up with a logo just for shits and giggles. Feel free to join in - just drop me a link so I can go look at your box...

It seems that out in this area (somewhere along the middle of the border of New South Wales and Victoria) most of the mailboxes for properties are welding experiments. Pieces of old stuff from around the yard slapped together and welded solid. Slap some paint on it and it becomes a personal feature that marks the entrance to your property.

Wonders:

Seven wonders of the world according to Vic:

#1 - The chance to see a tiny birds nest in the top of a pear tree from my orchard ladder. Beauty on a such a small, delicate scale.

#2 - That only once have I created a sandwich in which the filling was my lower lip, and the outer comprised of my teeth on one side and an orchard ladder propelled by a branch in high wind being the other outer. While I like the taste of others' lips, I do not enjoy the taste of my own at all.

#3 - I've existed for approximately two weeks without seeing one hill. Not even a mound. I get excited when there's a bend in the road now.

#4 - I am completely in awe of the fact that I seem to be the only female in the workers' camp that knows how to change a toilet roll. More on that later.

#5 - There are roughly three thousand pears in a 430kg plastic bin. An average picker will pick between four and five bins a day. Twelve to fifteen thousand pears per person, per day. Working on an orchard with around a hundred other pickers, this rate of production blows me away.

#6 - My inability to remember a towel when going to the shower block is a source of constant amazement.

#7 - The final wonder on the list is that tomorrow I will continue to put my body through another week of rough treatment, ignoring the rash on my forearm and plastering my feet with band-aids - all in the name of personal growth.

Stolen from Terroni

Where is your cell phone? Underneath my pillow. It functions as my alarm clock (with a couple of hits of the snooze button…)

Vehicle? Under a stand of trees, being neglected and shat on by galahs and magpies.

Hair? Sonic the Hedgehog revisited.

Father? Not a welcome part of my life any more.

Your favorite thing? Kisses, along the line of my neck near my collarbone. Particularly on the left side.

Dream last night? Pears, picking pears with sweat rolling into my eyes.

Favorite drink? Cold water in the hot sun.

Room you are in? Bulk accommodation on an orchard. The rooms are concrete cells with a door that has a solid lower half and mesh or the upper half. It’s like a stable without the straw.

Your ex? Which one? The scary anti-bi drag king? The verbally abusive drunk idiot? Or the boxassed homewrecking child of the devil?

You are? Bored. What do you do in the middle of nowhere in a stable cell in the rain?

What do you want to be in ten years? A human.

Who did you hang out with today? The person I talked to most was the slow-arse tractor driver – in an attempt to make friends so that he would look after me and make sure he moved my produce bin a little faster. Oh and the gang boss, because she likes me enough not to bother checking my work too closely.

What you're not? I’m not impressed with the rotting dead snake smell from the bins across the road from my stable room.

Muffins? It’s been a while, but alright.

One of your wish list items? A bedside table. Any sort of table.

Where is the ____? Bottle shop.

The last thing you did? Looked up weatherzone to see when the hell the rain was going to end.

What are you wearing? Bare feet and a jumper.

Your pet(s)? A couple of bull ants in the shower. They are there to greet me daily.

Your computer? Can’t live without it. I have a coathanger wireless connection – a complex little arrangement where I winch my wireless card into the air and jerk it a little higher every time the connection cuts out.

Your life? Expect nothing: Experience everything.

Your mood? Bored.

Missing? Being curled on my girl’s lounge, watching the must see DVDs with her beside me.

What are you thinking about right now? The flock of galahs I can see outside my stable door.

Your shoes? Caked in mud from the orchard. They were near new a week ago, but they’ll be stuffed in another month.

Your work? Hard, sweaty, lonely.

Your summer? 82% humidity, 34 degrees celcius. What do you reckon?

Your favorite color? It depends on the mood. I think I like most colours. Except peach. And stupid fluffy faffy washed out pastel pink. Oh and also light green.

vs. Tree and Ladder combined...

---------------- Accident Report ----------------

Location: Big-arse orchard in the middle of nowhere

Parties involved: Vic, orchard ladder, pear tree and approximately 20kg of pears in the picking bag strapped to Vic's chest.

Description of events: Vic mounts second highest rung of ladder in attempt to get bitchy pear from top of tree.
Ladder makes a leisurely exit toward the right of the picker, Vic.
Vic extends arms toward branches to the left and right and attempts to coax the orchard ladder to stay upright for just a minute longer.
Ladder disagrees and makes for the ground.
Vic hangs by arms long enough to squeeze out two perfectly clear swear words - Shit! .... FUCK!
Vic realises the only way is down and loses her grip on the tree.
Picker Vic finishes the plummet on her back, surrounded by pears from the bag on her chest and quite a few that got raked down by her outstretched arms, contemplating adopting the raking as a new tree stripping technique because damn it got the fruit off quick
Vic was relatively unharmed by the incident, scratches but no bruises.


Conclusion: Vic wishes for gauntlets.

What Next?

I just finished reading The Bride Stripped Bare. It’s the type of book that I would call bumfodder. Bumfodder is toilet reading material. Nothing in depth, nothing intellectually challenging and no vast complexity to the plot. You could quite happily pick it up every time you went to shit and put it down and walk away after the event. Clive Cussler is master of producing bumfodder. That’s not to say that I don’t like this kind of reading. It’s easy. The words flow in and out again as quickly as you turn the pages. It is time spent as an ultimate sloth – not moving, not doing, not even thinking.

What I didn’t like with this novel is the main character. I couldn’t identify with her at all. She was weak, basically. I think that not liking a main character really effects my enjoyment of the novel. If they aren’t a character who I would want to spend time with in person, why would I want to spend time reading about them? This character in The Bride Stripped Bare was not someone I would essentially dislike, but not somebody I would crave knowing at all. A person I just would not bother with.

I’m presented with the dilemma of having packed all my books into storage (where I won’t see them for at least another six months) and having a hell of a lot more spare time on my hands. That means I’ve got more time to read, but no more going back to the old faithfuls in my collection. It is time for a new author. This is a horror prospect for me, the person who can be in a movie store and waste the same amount of time it would take to watch a movie just wandering around the store trying to select one.

So I need suggestions. I love Stephen King to pieces – not for the horror aspect, though. It’s because he can make me laugh out loud while reading. Katherine Kerr’s fantasy series is fantastic and she should be jailed until she finishes it. Bret Easton Ellis is brilliant even though the characters are arseholes. That’s his point – they’re meant to be. I look upon Mills and Boon with total disdain. I loved the Da Vinci Code until the ending, which I thought was total shit.

What do I read next? Suggestions, anyone?

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.

The Dish at Parkes

Part of yesterday's massive road trip saw me land at the Parkes Radio Telescope (aka big dish in a paddock). It was the focus of the Aussie classic film The Dish, which is historically inaccurate but brilliant regardless. According to the movie, Parkes was vital in recieving the television transmissions of the moon landing. Since the Parkes dish is a radio dish, it recieved the better quality transmission later, but the first pics were actually through a tracking telescope somewhere else in Australia.





I was standing there, looking at the immensity of it, and all I could really think of was a scene from the movie. I stood there thinking Sam Neill played cricket in that thing. Dammit, I want a go!

Wide Brown Land

Today saw me embark on an eleven hour drive that still did not get me to my destination. I was driving along, right foot cramping so much that I swapped and used the other foot for a while - when I realised something was different. What the hell is going on? I thought. The white line was still flashing by but something was very different. Holy shit - I'm ging uphill! There weren't many of those on the drive.


At a little place with about four houses and a railway crossing:




It appears the crossing may have taken a few casualties:



Look through the bug road toll on the windscreen and it seems that Dive's mates from Pommyland have come and influenced an entire shire with their cooking.



Yep. There really is bugger all out here.

On the Road Again

Two days ago my car Myrtle and I, loaded up with camping gear, a library of about two hundred CDs, and the absolutely essential laptop, embarked on the first leg of the adventure.

Where did I end up? Start laughing now...
Tamworth Country Music Festival.

Yep, they get 'em in nice an' young.

There were country hats everywhere. Leather ones, pink ones, sparkly ones with fluffy edges. You name it, some tryhard dickhead was wearing it.

The entire main street was closed off for buskers. You walk down the middle and it's an aural mixing pot of the lot of them all at once. I did it after hitting the town with a mate the night before, and hell was it a mistake. My head was already hurting, and then it was asaulted from all directions by 1/5 basslines and the occasional busrt of yodelling. How on earth does a child discover the talent for yodelling and succeed in being nurtured in the art, without being told to shut up and sing properly?

What I wanted to see was the people. I'll have to admit I've been to the festival before. It's a time where every single pub is open every night with bands on all through the day. I love that. If you don't like the music in one pub, you down your beer and walk on down to the next. I just love the fact that there is music everywhere. We'll skip on the quality of some of it, though...

But the people...

I have to admit to having a truly shit photography day. It may have been related to not being able to open my eyes to more than asian squint level. Or my pounding head. I wanted to sit around and take pictures of all the weirdness, but instead I just took it all in.

People carry camp chairs around to all the buskers, and if they like them, they set up camp and have a listen. It's all pretty laid back and easy going. There was a guy sitting on a swag, camp mug in had, reading poetry. Another, pictured here, was running a wood engraving market stall. He was nursing a guitar and on his head was a replica of a shed with a can of rum held onto it. On top of that was a chicken. A real one. He just went about his work engraving and ignored the bunch of people taking photos of him.

I spent some time sitting on a hay bale, listening to a family Jug Band. All the kids were involved and it was brilliant stuff. They were excellent performers. Then you move a little further down the street to find the Indian guy crooning along to a backing track... and walk a little faster, fearing for the safety of your ears.

Next on the list of experiences for music festivals is the East Coast Blues and Roots festival. Four days of absolutely everything. It costs an absolute fortune but I'm trying to get in as a volunteer. I hope to get there somehow, anyway.

Fuck it, it's a meme

Old Crone tagged me with a meme.

The rules of this meme are:

Link to the person that tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

So the deal is this:
I hate tagging others. Dive will probably have a go because the man can resist a meme as much as I can resist a beer.
Why do the things have to be unimportant? Fuck that. I can be a self-absorbed snot at times and I'm in the mood where everything about me is important.

1. The one thing I really am okay with about being a short little tyke is that breasts are at eye level for me. Oops. Sorry. You're up there.
2. Everything I know about nail care I learnt from men.
3. I lost all my sexual confidence when my girlfriend/fiance told me she'd rather cut her toenails than have sex with me.
4. My taste in ice-cream has changed. I am not so much a cookies and cream convert any more. Give me Rum and Raisin. Holy shit, am I turning into my mother?
5. I have not baked a cake, actually I don't think I've baked anything that isn't meat or vegetables since I was in primary school fo9llowing my mother's directions. It just doesn't interest me.
6. The best thing about doing the Monday Melee was that I could look up previous posts to figure out when my next period was due.

Letters to self

Maria has posted a letter - to her self as a seventeen year old. It's made me think, also. What advice would I give myself? If I could change anything, tell myself to snap out of anything, what would it be?

It's an interesting concept, but one I don't agree with. I have always been intrigued and ultimately confused by the concept of time travel and altering of the time line. It gets into the whole Star Trek concept of the Temporal Prime Directive:

"The Temporal Prime Directive is intended to prevent a time traveler from interfering in the natural development of a timeline. This can include altering events or informing those in the past prematurely to change an outcome."

It would be nice to change some things. It would be nice to realise that my ex is a box-assed life-sucking incarnation of the devil before I wasted my time on her...

BUT.

I am a product of my past experiences. We all are. Every single experience, good or bad, whether it is the break-up from hell or the out-of-date camembert experience that puts us in hospital, every single experience is a foundation for who we are right now, this very minute. I would not be in the place I am in, knowing the people I know now and being who I am without all these past experiences as a building block.

If I changed just one thing, that would all be different. A butterfly flaps it's wings in China and it rains in New York kind of effect. One small change and the echoes become increasingly larger. I don't want that.

Regret is pointless. I cannot change the events that have occurred in the past, and I believe that I should not be allowed to. The Temporal Prime Directive is about natural development - and that is what we all should experience. The only thing I have influence over is my own future.

So I choose to write a letter to myself, in the future:

Dear Vic,
Do not forget your experiences. Do not regret them.
Expect nothing. Experience everything.

What the fuck was the question?

Mediocrity

I sat down last night to practise some serious classical guitar. Practise of that type, for me, represents an intense need for escapism. I can potentially focus on technical work with a metronome for hours at a time. Although there is a gain involved, I do it for the total focus on that one task that closes the door to any other bullshit that may be going on.

I realised that I haven’t done practise like that for months, or with any regularity for years. Since the days of living with my boyfriend. I do a stint every now and then, but I my focus with respect to guitar seems to be circular. I go through a steel-string phase, then a jazz phase, then a song-writing phase, and whatever takes my fancy. Eventually my focus comes knocking back on the classical door.

Frustratingly, my ear has improved continually over this time. My ability is far behind it and that session of practise was far less of a release than it should have been. So many times I berated myself for not being able to do what I could hear. If I did not value my instrument so highly I would have been wearing it around my knee.

Is this my fate? It seems that I cannot focus enough to achieve my full potential in any one area because there’s so much else to do, so much else to occupy my attention. Am I doomed to mediocrity because of my own diversity?

Taking a jump off the deep end.

I played percussion in a D-grade brass band up until the Christmas just gone. It was my local band, run by a good friend. Basically, I joined two years ago so I could have an excuse to spend more time with him, as our busy paths rarely got to cross. I fronted up with very little previous experience and the expectation of hell, it can’t be hard – I’ve just got to hit stuff. It represented a massive musical learning curve for me over those two years. The main player got sick and I went from taking shitty easy parts to being stuck on the kit most of the time. The only practice I got was at the two-hour rehearsal once a week, and mostly I coped.

From time to time people travelling through would front up to band. They were welcome to come and sit in and play during the rehearsals. When I left town with the aim of travelling I thought I’d do the same, front up to a band in whichever town I was in a the time and have a play. This would keep my skills up and boost my sightreading. It’s with the aim of having a personality building experience to learn to front up to a totally different situation and rely on my skills musically to get me through.

It would have been easy not to do. I looked for a band in town yesterday and got a phone number. They told me when rehearsals were. It would have still been easy not to go. But no, I was determined to put myself into this new situation, with people and music that I’d never seen before.

I get there and the people are nice. I introduce myself to a few and promptly forget all their names, as I’m prone to do. The parts are handed out for piece and I stare blankly. Holy shit. This is miles beyond my capability. Not just miles. Miles upon miles, upon miles, stretching out to a whole ocean away from my current ability. This is not a D-grade band that I have fronted to. It is not, as I was hoping, a C-grade band that would push me a little further. It was a fucking A-grade band, rehearsing for the National championships. Holy shit.

I stayed. At the very least it was a chance to listen to a fantastic professional brass band. I had a hit, and actually did okay for some of it. If I practised my arse off I believe I could do it. It was pure adrenaline for me and the funny thing is I love it. I get onto a high of concentration with adrenaline where I’m in the rhythm zone and it all makes sense.

Ah well, I thought. At least I gave it a go. It was a good experience.

They asked if I’d be back for the next rehearsal. Sometimes the world just blows me away.

Not the hand of death

I karate-chopped a cockroach today.

The little fucker's guts were smashed onto the counter and it still tried to drag itself away.

I employed the Thong of Death instead. Multiple times. The 'roach will not be coming back to life this time.

Health kick = temporary blindness.

I was a water child. Back in those glory days of being a kid my parents would get a family season ticket to the local pool. I could get to it in a minute and a half on my bike, and was always trying for a better time. My aim was for under a minute. I can remember that ride so well…

towel on the shoulder
down the drive out the gate through the big ditch in the spot where you won’t get bogged jump the gutter onto the footpath on the bridge and belt it down the other side
pick your timing through the traffic on the highway belt up the hill and ditch the bike at the top on the fly sending it skidding across the dark concrete that burns your feet into the corner of the walls
up the steps throw your towel to the left as you go through the gate and launch yourself at the water

I would do this every afternoon. Sometimes there would be nobody else but me and the lifeguard, but I could fuck about in the water for hours on end, doing the things that kids do. Making up games, trying to sit on the bottom for as long as I could, swimming lengths of the pool with my breath held. Once a week there was a swimming club for kids and we’d spend the afternoon doing laps. I was so at home in the water. Goggles? Like hell! I did everything in the chlorinated water with my eyes open and it didn’t hurt a bit. Goggles were for old people, or the weak who couldn’t handle it. Maybe the chlorine is a factor in the deterioration of my sight. I hadn’t discovered the need for glasses at the time – that was later into teenagerdom.

Despite the activity I was a lard of a kid, and as I got into highschool the typical peer teasing caused me to stop liking going to the pool. I just wasn’t strong enough in personality to say fuck you, I want to swim, not pose. I avoided swimming in sport as much as possible (difficult because the school was right next to the pool I described earlier, and the entire summer program was spent at the local pool doing lifesaving) and because the popular group were all beach bunnies I avoided being seen on the beach like the plague. I hated the idea of going there just in case they’d see me and say something.

It’s taken twenty-seven years to say fuck you, I want to swim and now I’m in search of it. Yesterday I went to an ocean baths to chuck on some laps – part of the getting fit and healthy attitude that tends to pair with summer and nice days. I don’t often spend much time in the water any more, but all those old growing up habits are right there. I pulled a few laps of the baths, getting more and more comfortable with my stroke and breathing patterns. Then I opened my eyes under the water.


That’s when I had the realisation that no, I am no longer a kid in that small town pool so close to my parents’ home.

This was an ocean baths, meaning salt water.
ouch, DAMMIT
Since the deterioration of my sight, I have been a habitual contact lens wearer.
Oh shit, I’m blurry on the right hand side. DAMMIT

It would have been a funny sight, this chick in a pool by the ocean tipping her head all angles, poking about the edges of her right eye trying to find if a lens got washed into the back of it. DAMMIT. I don’t carry glasses in the car with me – I try to ignore their existence as much as possible – so I had to drive away with double vision, blurry on one side.

It’s time to get old, and go buy some goggles.

In the blood

I left my town to get away from the stuff that I felt was bogging me down. People, bad decisions, work, everything. It was a culling of sorts. An effort to evict some of the crap from my life.

Are you still going to teach? was one of the most frequent questions I heard before leaving.

It’s funny that when I think about it I have been teaching since I left high school. I actually started teaching my friends while I was still at high school. But when I get asked where I work, for some reason I always default to saying Oh, I work in a veggie shop. Come to think of it, I’d even split it when telling the flatmates where I was off to. It was always I have to go to work for the veggie shop and I have to go teach when I was off to one of the schools. I never called that work, even though it was my main source of income.

Am I still going to teach? I’m mad not to, financially. It’s good money for doing something I love, and do well. Seeing my students achieve leaves me proud and happy. But I left my town to get away. To start off by having a holiday from all the things that defined my life previously.

Interestingly, the first place I stopped and spent a length of time after the whole Christmas crap contained a boy who got a guitar for a present. Yeah, I’ll show you some things says Vic. Next thing he’s introducing me to his friends as his guitar teacher and I’m working with him almost daily. It seems that to teach is a part of me that I cannot ignore.

Getting back into the Groove

I came to Kate’s river to spend some time letting go of my past life in a town I essentially grew up in. To connect with myself again. I’ve been playing music, writing music and feeling music. I got my groove back. It’s been absent for quite a while – since I started to feel squashed by surroundings and for long periods before that as well.

The Groover is an integral part of my personality. If there’s music, I’m most likely grooving to it. That is, if I’m happy. Happy tends to be accompanied by an internal groove track that only I can hear– usually something similar to John Scofield’s Over Big Top or Hercules from Aaron Neville- and the groove defines the way I walk and move, because you might not be able to tell but I’m dancing. Watch my fingers and they’ll be moving. Watch my head. It will hint at a beat, or possibly my shoulders will. If my hands are not busy doing something, they will probably be drumming on my thighs. I won’t be standing still at all.

I don’t know which is better:
I’m grooving because I’m happy
or
I’m happy because I’m grooving

I think it’s a bit of both.

Personal Challenges

Beer. I love the stuff.

I've recently got into home brewing and it's been going pretty damn well. I haven't had any explosions or undrinkable brews. There was one that was close to being not very tasty - but to me that depends upon the level of desperation for the first drink. Once you're through the first few mouthfuls of the not-so-good one your tastebuds adjust anyway.

I don't discriminate too much. I've brewed from ginger beer (alcoholic of course) to stout. The stout I haven't tried yet, however I got a text message from a friend that I gave some to - she tried it last night and it gets an enthusiastic thumbs up. I love trying different things and when you can cut your beer tasting costs by at least a third by brewing your own it has to be a good thing.

That doesn't stop me from loving the pub scene though. I'm a beer whore. So when my sister's hubby Mike and I spot a Bavarian Bier Cafe on the seaside Manly wharf... We were up to have a go. They served it in steins! How could I say no?

Then there was the challenge...

You could get a one litre stein.

Again, how could I say no? Some people climb mountains because it is a personal challenge. This was my challenge.

Boots by the seaside

Yesterday I walked into the Beachside Sydney suburb Manly in jeans and steel-capped boots. It's summer, but I was headed for a job agency and wanting to look a little more like I wasn't on holiday. It was not a case of Where's Wally at all. I did not blend. I stuck out like a sore thumb.

This suburb has three main things - a wharf, a paved mall area, and a beach. Every half hour a ferry arrives and a shitload of people pile off it, and are then funneled through the mall area toward the beach. It's madness with sweaty bits. All with a uniform of board shorts and a tan.

But then there was Vic... Jeans and steel-capped boots.

It was an exercise in not caring of I fit in or not. I thought that being in the biggest city in this country, that I could wear what I want and feel no judgement from others about it. But no. I could imagine these people thinking what the hell are you doing at the beach in BOOTS, dyke bitch? in my mind and it was pretty damn annoying.

I'm being me, that's what.

And steel caps are pretty damn handy if anyone wants to get in my way.

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.

Half-Nekkid Thursday

I've left so much behind. This photo was taken the morning after I hit the road for destination uncertain, armed with a tent and a swag and a few other bits. I hit the surf at dawn and it was a rough, cold awakening into my new world. I left me utterly shocked but eventually refreshed. Bring it on, I say.