an elegy for thursday night
six months ago, i would have filled this journal with every little thing that i did or every redundant idea that came into my head. these days i can't really be bothered. i dunno. maybe it's cause of the complete and utter lack of comments. seriously what's up with that? oh well.
maybe i'll give to y'all in point form, as seems to be the trend these days.
- feeling generally run down all the time.
- went to the doctor about it and had blood tests and was told there's nothing wrong with me, so now i'm in no man's land.
- going to class is more and more of a drag.
- people who continue to make me second guess my arts degree.
- being hopelessly (silently) in love with certain people.
- getting all amped about the fact that it's thursday today, and then nobody doing anything.
- working too much for my own good.
- re: above...therefore not going out much.
- god damn it myspace depresses me.
- need to wash my car.
+ been 'exercising,' whatever that means, so i guess i'm like fit again.
+ got accepted as an assistant journalist for the commonwealth games next year!
+ bank account looking healthy.
+ despite complete lack of effort (and interest, really), been getting good marks this semester.
+ parkway drive.
+ end of fashion.
+ going overseas looking more and more promising.
+ scored some awesome dvds recently (citizen kane and amelie are my most recent two).
anyway you know what they say about leaving the best till last...so we've still got this prank phone caller, except now they've moved beyond 'pranks' (ie calling and hanging up) to insults and death threats! trust me, it's a blast. and wait for the punchline...the police STILL won't help us! neither will telstra, or the federal police (to whom we have described our situation in writing), or the telecommunications ombudsman.
isn't our country fantastic? australia: where the stalkers have more rights than you do. telstra KNOWS the phone number they're calling from, but won't tell us who it is, won't block their calls, won't even tell us what service provider they use so we can go to them. and the police, who so considerately informed us that they can't do anything until this person starts 'harassing' us, still won't do anything about it. their policy: they don't 'intervene' until we've done everything in our power to stop the calls. apparently until we change our number, we haven't done 'everything in our power.' but the entire fucking point of this whole ordeal is so that we WOULDN'T have to change our number. what did i say about stalkers having more rights than us? seriously i love waking up to a message on our answering machine that says 'your sister is a slut (nb: i do not have a sister) you shit head, i'm gonna get you...' followed by up to a minute's worth of babbling in some incomprehensible asian language. lovin' it.
so combine this with the constant terrorism propaganda and life is just peachy. headlines last week (before the most recent bombs in bali) read 'TERRORISTS AMONG US.' no shit? that's like saying, pedophiles among us. murderers among us. of course they're among us, that's what makes them terrorists. they can't be proxy terrorists now can they? anyway as if i CARE. if these latest bombings have taught us anything it's that NO AMOUNT OF ANTI-TERRORISM PROPAGANDA, OR PARANOIA, OR IMPROVED SECURITY MEASURES (re: complete disregard for civil liberties) IS GOING TO STOP THEM. if they want to blow something up, they will blow it up. smsing your concerns to the OHFUCKTERRORISTS HOTLINE about a gentleman wearing a backpack and a dark jacket on the train is not going to stop that.
hell, now i feel like a trip to bali.
i have been wondering recently; think about the amount of time, money, brain power and political stress that must go into these trivialities we take for granted every day. i'm talking about satellites that send sms' to coke machines, digital television, internet that gives pc users a billion terrabytes of data per second, cars that tell you where to turn to make it to the johnson's soiree in time. if we devoted HALF of this technology and man power to space exploration, or alternative energy sources (eg the sun, the jet stream), or even GM food for poor countries, wouldn't the world be a much nicer place?
the entire planet has been restructured and reassembled to cater for every single person's most trivial whimsical fancy. there is absolutely no cohesion in these technologies, no unifying constants, not even some arbitrary code of ethics. basically, if you want something, you can have it, as long as you can pay for it. it just blows my mind that countries can bicker with each other almost to the point of war, children can die on the streets, racism runs rampant and corporations manipulate and control the entire western and eastern worlds. yet if i want a night of porn, i can just 'hit my red button' (as i am so often encouraged to do so on foxtel) and it will be automatically charged to my credit card. imagine the infrastructure something as meaningless as that requires. why can't we organise governments as well as we can organise websites? why don't we build energy efficient space ships instead of 60gb ipods? why don't we desalinate some ocean water for the starving african children instead of concocting enticing new mineral blends for flavoured water for when we're 'on the go'?
i'm not pretending to be 'above' this. i'm not going to sacrifice my car. or my mobile. or my computer. or even this stupid webpage. i've been brought up to depend on these things and i'm gonna stay like this till the day i die, no doubt. is there anything that can even be done about this? or are we all that deeply entrenched in our lives of convenience to ever snap out of it? as long as we have distractions like the ones i've described above, i don't think we will ever wake up to ourselves.
ending these entries on a negative note always leaves me feeling guilty and narcissistic. so let's not. i'm practicing guitar heaps cause i got sick of not being able to absolutely kill it when it comes to solos and brutal riffs and all that stuff. i figure it can't hurt.
till next time!
maybe i'll give to y'all in point form, as seems to be the trend these days.
- feeling generally run down all the time.
- went to the doctor about it and had blood tests and was told there's nothing wrong with me, so now i'm in no man's land.
- going to class is more and more of a drag.
- people who continue to make me second guess my arts degree.
- being hopelessly (silently) in love with certain people.
- getting all amped about the fact that it's thursday today, and then nobody doing anything.
- working too much for my own good.
- re: above...therefore not going out much.
- god damn it myspace depresses me.
- need to wash my car.
+ been 'exercising,' whatever that means, so i guess i'm like fit again.
+ got accepted as an assistant journalist for the commonwealth games next year!
+ bank account looking healthy.
+ despite complete lack of effort (and interest, really), been getting good marks this semester.
+ parkway drive.
+ end of fashion.
+ going overseas looking more and more promising.
+ scored some awesome dvds recently (citizen kane and amelie are my most recent two).
anyway you know what they say about leaving the best till last...so we've still got this prank phone caller, except now they've moved beyond 'pranks' (ie calling and hanging up) to insults and death threats! trust me, it's a blast. and wait for the punchline...the police STILL won't help us! neither will telstra, or the federal police (to whom we have described our situation in writing), or the telecommunications ombudsman.
isn't our country fantastic? australia: where the stalkers have more rights than you do. telstra KNOWS the phone number they're calling from, but won't tell us who it is, won't block their calls, won't even tell us what service provider they use so we can go to them. and the police, who so considerately informed us that they can't do anything until this person starts 'harassing' us, still won't do anything about it. their policy: they don't 'intervene' until we've done everything in our power to stop the calls. apparently until we change our number, we haven't done 'everything in our power.' but the entire fucking point of this whole ordeal is so that we WOULDN'T have to change our number. what did i say about stalkers having more rights than us? seriously i love waking up to a message on our answering machine that says 'your sister is a slut (nb: i do not have a sister) you shit head, i'm gonna get you...' followed by up to a minute's worth of babbling in some incomprehensible asian language. lovin' it.
so combine this with the constant terrorism propaganda and life is just peachy. headlines last week (before the most recent bombs in bali) read 'TERRORISTS AMONG US.' no shit? that's like saying, pedophiles among us. murderers among us. of course they're among us, that's what makes them terrorists. they can't be proxy terrorists now can they? anyway as if i CARE. if these latest bombings have taught us anything it's that NO AMOUNT OF ANTI-TERRORISM PROPAGANDA, OR PARANOIA, OR IMPROVED SECURITY MEASURES (re: complete disregard for civil liberties) IS GOING TO STOP THEM. if they want to blow something up, they will blow it up. smsing your concerns to the OHFUCKTERRORISTS HOTLINE about a gentleman wearing a backpack and a dark jacket on the train is not going to stop that.
hell, now i feel like a trip to bali.
i have been wondering recently; think about the amount of time, money, brain power and political stress that must go into these trivialities we take for granted every day. i'm talking about satellites that send sms' to coke machines, digital television, internet that gives pc users a billion terrabytes of data per second, cars that tell you where to turn to make it to the johnson's soiree in time. if we devoted HALF of this technology and man power to space exploration, or alternative energy sources (eg the sun, the jet stream), or even GM food for poor countries, wouldn't the world be a much nicer place?
the entire planet has been restructured and reassembled to cater for every single person's most trivial whimsical fancy. there is absolutely no cohesion in these technologies, no unifying constants, not even some arbitrary code of ethics. basically, if you want something, you can have it, as long as you can pay for it. it just blows my mind that countries can bicker with each other almost to the point of war, children can die on the streets, racism runs rampant and corporations manipulate and control the entire western and eastern worlds. yet if i want a night of porn, i can just 'hit my red button' (as i am so often encouraged to do so on foxtel) and it will be automatically charged to my credit card. imagine the infrastructure something as meaningless as that requires. why can't we organise governments as well as we can organise websites? why don't we build energy efficient space ships instead of 60gb ipods? why don't we desalinate some ocean water for the starving african children instead of concocting enticing new mineral blends for flavoured water for when we're 'on the go'?
i'm not pretending to be 'above' this. i'm not going to sacrifice my car. or my mobile. or my computer. or even this stupid webpage. i've been brought up to depend on these things and i'm gonna stay like this till the day i die, no doubt. is there anything that can even be done about this? or are we all that deeply entrenched in our lives of convenience to ever snap out of it? as long as we have distractions like the ones i've described above, i don't think we will ever wake up to ourselves.
ending these entries on a negative note always leaves me feeling guilty and narcissistic. so let's not. i'm practicing guitar heaps cause i got sick of not being able to absolutely kill it when it comes to solos and brutal riffs and all that stuff. i figure it can't hurt.
till next time!