Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

I’ve been critical of Facebook before. I’ve closed my account twice, and deleted all my friends and removed all my personal information, because I just got SICK of people being FAKE on it all the time. Much of my hate that I level at Twitter applies equally, or more so against Facebook. In particular, I hate when people post stupid, “socially aware” messages in their status. Your status is supposed to be just that – your status. Where you are, how you’re feeling and maybe what you’re doing (if it’s interesting enough to want to share).

It’s not meant to be a place where you can copy and paste bullshit Hallmark-style nonsense where you pretend to care. People post these pretentious, cheesy little messages about the importance of being a nice person, or a little message about being aware of mental illness that they saw on someone ELSE’S status, most likely with a message at the bottom that says “If you care about this, please post this as your status for at least one hour”, so that you feel like if you DON’T post it, you are an arsehole and you DON’T care.

Sometimes people just post garbage. I have a close friend who seriously abuses status messages to send meaningless messages to his girlfriend. He once updated his status to say “Honey, can you pour me another drink ?” as part of a dozen-update evening. It completely spams your homepage to the point where you have to consider ignoring certain friends’ updates. I like this person and I’d like to know what they do in life. I just don’t need to know when they pour a drink, have dinner, take a shit, or go to bed. I don’t care if you feel sleepy, or if you think it’s hot today. Not if you’re going to tell me shit like that a dozen times a day.

And I ESPECIALLY don’t want to know that you just attained level 53 in Frontierville and that you desperately need someone to give you a hammer. You can block games-related messages, but the very idea that you have to opt-out of this nonsense is absurd. Some people I know have over 600 apps installed, so I literally have to just tell Facebook “Block all app-related messages”, which is a shame because it is vaguely possible that those messages could serve a useful purpose. I’ve just never seen that happen.

I know people who keep Facebook open all day, and that’s ok. That’s fine. Keep it open so you can stay in contact with people if you want. But maybe don’t spend all day playing Farmville. Honestly, if you spent 4 hours a day playing World of Warcraft instead of taking care of your kids and cleaning the house, people would probably look down on you. But for some reason most people just ignore it when you spend that amount of time tending your virtual farm or playing a pet game that involves producing unusually shaped dog poo. NO I WILL NOT WATER YOUR LETTUCE CROP WHILE YOU’RE ON HOLIDAY !

Yes, I DID re-enable my Facebook account. I just don’t use it regularly. I make it send its email to an address that is no longer in use, and I might log in once a month just to make sure noone desperately needs me. This year I have made only one status update, and it’s almost mid-year. I don’t need to tell you that I’m sleepy or bored, because you probably have a lot of friends and if everyone did that you would be flooded with updates. Maybe I might let you know if I’m living in a foreign country and post you a video of where I live, just so that people I really care about can go “Oh, that’s what’s going on in pawz’s life.. he’s in Bangkok”. I’m just not going to announce what I had for fucking breakfast, nor am I going to pose and be pretentious by posting stupid feel-good messages about shit.

And I’m not going to tell you what I “like”. If you know me, then you know what I like, or we can chat and I’ll tell you. I don’t need to announce it to EVERY SINGLE PERSON I KONG. You’re not going to see the message “pawz likes Tiger beer” and go “Oh wow. I think I’ll have a Tiger because pawz likes it”. And it shouldn’t be a conversation starter. If you need me to tell you what sort of beer I drink in order to have a conversation with me, then we’re probably not really friends. If my beer preference mattered to you, you would just ask me. I don’t need to broadcast it. Get to know me by getting to know me, not by reading a stupid one-line pseudo-advertisement.

And I don’t care about your fucking causes either. Yes, it’s great that you’re a fan of the World Wildlife Fund. But are you REALLY ? Or did you just think that’d look good on your status. Do you donate ? Do you subscribe to their newsletter ? If it’s something we might share in common, there’s a good chance I already know you might be into that, and it’s something we’ve probably already had a conversation about. When I was at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia, I noticed they have huge posters that stretch from the floor to the ceiling advertising the fight against people smuggling. At the bottom of every advert it invited people to “Like” the Facebook page the government had setup.

Really ? You want me to “Like” not liking people smuggling ? Apart from that being a double negative, so what ? Where’s the button where I can say that I DO like people smuggling. I want to press it just to make you question my announcement. Who the fuck would actually LIKE people smuggling. Why don’t you just announce “I LIKE not killing babies with an axe”. Really ? Wow, coz I thought everyone DID like killing babies with an axe. Way to state the fucking obvious. Do you really think that clicking a button is a form of positive action ? Do you think that people smugglers, smuggling child prostitutes into Australia are going to go “Oh shit. 1,843,857 people DON’T like people smuggling ? I had no idea. I should find a new line of work !”

No you dolt, it means NOTHING. It is NOT affirmative action. It does NOT change anyone else’s viewpoint, or send aid to the needy. Not liking people smuggling by hitting a button is precisely as effective as saying “Pray for Japan” on Twitter after a quake, a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown. IT MAKES NO GODDAMN DIFFERENCE ! You are contributing nothing to the world except creating more spam. So don’t do it.

I get the argument people make when they say “I don’t want to be on Facebook… but I have to be. Even my GRANDMOTHER is on Facebook”. Yes, I understand that. I have friends in foreign countries that I don’t want to lose touch with if they change their phone number or their email address and forget to inform me. That’s why I’m on Facebook. Because it’s a good way of connecting with people. But I only have 12 friends on Facebook. And one of them is a cat. No, seriously. A cat.

But being on Facebook to stay in touch with granny doesn’t excuse you if you use it to announce that you hate broccoli, or that you just harvested your corn on Farmville, or that it’s hot today. I don’t care. If we were chatting, I’d be happy for you to tell me that stuff (well, apart from the Farmville thing), so if we are chatting, tell me. Tell me something because you have a REASON to tell me it. Not because you just want to announce it to your 848 friends.

More friends is just more people you don’t really care about. You don’t really need to stay in contact with that smelly kid from grade 4 who you spoke to once in the cafeteria. It really won’t help your life, and in fact, all it’s going to do is make you judge him or yourself. Life is a game, but you don’t need to be constantly comparing yourself to people you really don’t know. Sure, stay in contact with the people truly important to you. But that doesn’t mean you have to literally “friend” every single person you meet in your life. If they are not someone you would accept an invitation to dinner with, then they’re not your friend, so stop pretending they are.

A kid called Ross Gardiner who is an English teacher in South Korea made a great little video back in late 2010 that was featured in a recent documentary on Facebook. I’m not saying you have to follow his advice and delete your Facebook account. But just think about what he says in this video and ask yourself: “Do I really need to tell EVERYONE everything and have 848 friends ? Or would it be better if I just had a few friends that I really care about and actually have the time to give a fuck about ?”

Think about it before you make that next status update or confirm that next friend request from some idiot you never really liked anyway. Now, I’ll let Ross say it even more eloquently and without speaking a single word. I especially recommend you turn out the lights, turn up the sound, and view this video fullscreen for maximum effect. It’s well done.

I wrote a weird little article prior to this today about my own funeral wishes. I have always said I wanted to save some money to keep my websites online after my own demise, but I have always wondered how viable that was and whether I would even have some money left to leave and how long it would last. But, then it occurred to me that there IS an organisation who is already dedicated to doing that.

The Internet Archive.

I have talked about them before and suggested that you give them money, but it was only in relation to something that didn’t involve me. Suddenly I wondered “Do they archive this site ?” Well, turns out they sort of do. They have spidered it once, and once only, in 2009. It wasn’t a very big site back then, and they haven’t spidered it since, but they did a good job and everything including styles and images is archived to that point. Maybe they will do it again in the future, but that’s not what this post is about.

I was laying in bed, almost asleep, and I guess I’ve been aware that my brother’s birthday is coming up next month. It’s the one birthday per year that I think about months before it arrives. And I was pondering the fact that I would again be overseas for this coming of it. Suddenly I wondered “Is Josh’s site archived on the Internet Archive ?”

Well, I got out of bed to check, and it is. It’s been spidered NINE times. The most recent of which was in December 2010. Yes, Josh’s site is heavily and repeatedly spidered it seems. Which means that our parents will have passed on, I will have passed on… god forbid, Suki and her own grandchildren will have long passed on… but you know what ? As long as that organisation still exists, which I strongly suspect it will… Josh’s site will live on. Josh’s memory will live on. There is nothing of my parent’s or my grandparent’s or anyone else in any time before me in history that will STILL be online in potentially a thousand years.

But Josh’s site will be.

When I made it it was just a tribute site because I didn’t know what else to do and how to honour him and remember all the stories about his life and pictures of him, except to create a website. But now, that site is part of an enduring, worldwide archive. Did you know that the Internet Archive bury time capsules periodically of the world’s internet history ? Human civilisation may end next year, in a thousand years, in ten thousand years or may endure for as long as our universe. But in a few thousand years, our planet will be exhausted of resources and we will most likely have moved on. But people love history. People go back and dig shit up just for the hell of it. And that’s why the Internet Archive exists. Because one day, someone IS going to dig that shit up and go “Wow, this thing says it contains all of human history as recorded by the internet in 2012, let’s go work out how to read these memory chips and see what they have to say”.

So, tomorrow, I think I need to donate a few dollars to the Internet Archive, and so should you. History was written on stone tablets, and they faded. It was captured in black and white photos, and they faded. It was captured in film and that faded too. But digital records don’t fade. As long as human civilisation exists and people care enough to keep records, things like Josh’s website will remain. Who knows. Maybe one day it will be one of the only things that do remain.

Josh, you may live forever after all, not just in our hearts while we are alive, but in the hearts of the electronic world, for as long as it exists.

I have a stupid grin on my face right now.

I can’t really explain why. I’m just happy. I just got a wonderful email from a friend in Japan that I met on my travels, and another from a friend in China that I met in another country. These people were both touched by me in a certain way. I introduced the Japanese friend to a fantastic Japanese anime producer who he was not aware of, and he told me that after watching the anime I recommended, he was absolutely in tears because it was set near his home town and represented a lot to him.

The Chinese friend, I guess I just touched as being an unusual person. We hung out with a lot of people that weekend that I met, but somehow, he was by my side the whole time as we talked furiously about photography and religion and travel.

Then the was the Vietnamese friend that I met, and we keep in contact from time to time and she is keen to catch up the next time I’m in the country.

I’m planning to visit at least two in the next year. One I hope to visit in a couple of months, the other in about a year, both in their home cities in China and Japan.

I always remember when my wife had her penpal Hiroko that she talked to in Japan. She used to exchange snacks with her initially and later when Hiroko got married, she lamented on how sad she was about having to quit the navy in her job as a helicopter pilot to go home and be a housewife to her husband and have his children. I always thought it was sad that she didn’t remain in contact with her, but as much as I am impulsive and flighting, I guess my wife was more, because despite Hiroko sending us a beautiful, framed copy of her wedding photo, I never heard anything of her after that. If my wife ever conversed with her any further, she never told me.

But I don’t want to do that. When you meet interesting people, especially from far away, you should nurture those relationships. You should stay in contact. I know it’s hard to know what to talk about with someone you’ve met for only a brief while or not at all, but sometimes you have to find things. Friendships can grow from the simplest roots and online and letter-based friendships are often some of the strongest because sometimes there are things you write in letters that you might never say in real life. They may be simplistic summarisations, but sometimes that’s the sort of expression that you never give to your feelings in real life.

People are important, and the ones afar more so than ones close sometimes. I once heard a beautiful quote in a Chinese movie that I once wrote on this site.

Attention Scott Mintred. Please rejoin the interwebs.

I have no idea when I first found your site, but it was fucking ages ago. Way before I found David Thorne’s. I won’t blow smoke up your arse by saying your site is good. It’s pretty average. But I still sorta like it because you really don’t give a fuck and you’re happy to let people insult you online. Well. At least you were up until October 2010, at which point you seem to have made this weird “I’m throwing in the towel” page where you claim that none of it is real and that you were just trolling people.

Well, yeah. We all got that. But admitting it is a bit lame. There’s no need to throw a “boo hoo I’m not really like this” tantrum and quit writing. I guess people finally got to you, though I suspect you won’t admit it and will claim that your life just got too busy.

The internet needs people like you who call it as they see it (even though I don’t always agree with your opinions) to counterbalance the pretentious bullshit that people like David Thorne spout all day. Could you imagine Mr Thorne ever allowing comments on his site ? No, because people would call him out on his bullshit and suddenly he wouldn’t get the attention he deserved because the journalistic outlets that constantly praise him would suddenly have reason to doubt if all his nonsense was real.

Get back on the computer, and find something to write about. Unless you’re in a mental institution, in which case, start bribing an orderly to post your crap to me and I will publish it for you. I might even visit. As long as you save me some of your better medication. (slip it under your tongue and they might not see it) Then again, it’s probably best I don’t go to the USA. I’m not very welcome there.

Best wishes,

pawz.

This pointless little post is in relation to my previous article about the importance of physical media and the pride you feel when you purchase it.

But I mean, you know how amazing tearing the shrink-wrap off a brand new DVD, CD or piece of electronics is, right ? I bet you even inhale the smell of the contents. People love this so much that it’s led to a whole concept known as “unboxing”, where people will take their new purchase and film themselves opening it and examining all the contents. These videos are pretty fucking hilarious to see people who are that excited by their purchases and it’s easy to make fun of them, but then… who hasn’t done this at some point ?

When you get your brand new expensive Apple laptop home from the store and you reverently unbox it and inhale the smell of the styrofoam and cardboard that has been sealed up since it left a factory on the other side of the world. Our parents had a similar concept; “new car smell”. But in our generation, we are more about the “new electronics” or “new dvd smell”. Sure, a DVD doesn’t really have that much of a smell to it, but surely you have waited desperately for a particular new DVD to come out for years, and then when you finally get it, and tear off the shrink wrap, and then just slipped the DVD case out of its pretty cardboard jacket and just inhaled the smell.

I know I have. I just did it with the latest Ghibli movie. For some reason, it seemed to take a long, long time for “The Borrower Arrietty” to come out on DVD. It wasn’t available for download anywhere that I could find for YEARS after it’s release. So when I finally saw it sitting on a shelf in Kuala Lumpur, I didn’t even look at the price tag. I just snatched it off the shelf and said “That is DEFINITELY coming home with me”. And I took it home, and waited until the right moment came along, and then I tore off the shrink-wrap with my teeth and inhaled the smell of a Chinese factory within before getting myself perfectly ready before slipping it into the DVD player.

I remember so clearly the release of the Playstation 2 and Wii, both of which I preordered months beforehand and in the case of the Wii even attended the midnight launch and jostled amongst all the young kids to hold it in my hands… the culmination of years of anticipation. I took it home and unboxed it, and my wife and I sat and pored over the all the controllers and fiddled with them and pretended to be shooting each other. We didn’t even play any games that night. We just plugged it all in carefully and booted it up and looked through the menus and calibrated the controllers and then went to bed. Sure, we had many great games of Wii Tennis over the years, but the moment that I loved the most about the Wii was that first night when I brought it home and looked at the shiny box and the carefully packaged contents held in styrofoam like they were surgical instruments or something.

Physical things matter. They make us happy. It’s sometimes hard to imagine paying for something ephemeral. Maybe one day, future generations will just accept it as how things are, but for people today, buying a new game or DVD or CD whose release you’ve been anticipating for ages and opening it for the first time is one of the greatest little pleasures in life. I freely admit I am a consumer addict. Retail therapy is awesome and there is just something incredibly pleasing about opening up the packaging for something and getting a little shiver of excitement as you slip it into the player or plug it in for the first time.

No moral lesson in this post. It’s just an observation. I love the smell of shrinkwrap in the morning.

Before you think that this article is going be in favour of some sort of “copy anything you want for a fixed monthly fee” style piracy tax, let me say, it’s not. It’s a much more revolutionary idea entirely. I’m going to talk primarily about music here, but the argument holds some validity for movies and such as well. See what you think.

Now, one of the biggest problems that has plagued me with the idea of digital music is that I don’t get anything physical to put on my shelf. Some people say they don’t WANT anything physical, but I do, and let me explain why with a brief anecdote.

I was living in a share house, and we had lots of people visit from time to time to see various members of the house. One time this one guy came over to see the bloke in the next room from me, and he paused in the loungeroom and said “Wow. Whose anime ?” I glanced out from my room and said “It’s mine. I have quite a lot”. It’s no big deal for the average person to be into anime, but I wandered out anyway to see what he was looking at. To my surprise he picked a fairly obscure and not well known series off my shelf and said “Oh my god, you like Kino’s Journey ?” and I said “Yeah. I do. I’m amazed you’ve heard of it. I’ve never met anyone who knows that anime” and he said “Hell yeah, this is a great anime”. Suddenly we were talking excitedly about our favourite anime and he became a good friend and would come over regularly to watch anime and even Jpop videos with me. Just by having that physical media sitting on my shelf, it caused us to strike up a conversation that we otherwise would not have had, and I gained a valuable friend out of it.

Likewise, when you are dating a girl for the first time, and you are at her house and you are wondering what common interests you have to talk about, what’s the easiest way to strike up a conversation ? You look at her CD collection and see what favourite artists you have in common. Maybe you borrow a CD or lend her one. It’s not just about sharing the music, it’s about sharing your INTERESTS. It really is true to say that in many ways, we are a product of the culture that we consume. What we like is what makes us who we are. You might be a Metallica-fan.. You might be a Nirvana addict. Why do we wear band t-shirts ? Because we’re proud of what we love and we want to share it with others. It’s a way of saying “Look. I’m really into this group. Are you ?” and inviting conversation and the sharing of interests.

So when the physical CD has disappeared and we are purchasing everything digitally, how do we show it off for others to flick through ? Coverflow certainly isn’t the answer. As someone sarcastically mentioned to me, Coverflow isn’t a way to see your music, it’s a way to flick past it as quickly as possible. The iTunes screensaver is sort of cool and I think maybe if we all had our media centres setup so that when we played an album, it could show the artwork on our nice bigscreen TV and also maybe cycled through some of our other favourite art. But how does that help us monetize and legitimise digital music and make it worth buying ?

It pains me to hear how many younger people these days freely admit to having never bought an album, either digital or physical, because they just don’t see what the point is. Now I discussed in an earlier article about Metallica, that the sharing of music has always been of massive importance to the spreading of new music AND driving legitimate sales, especially the less mainstream bands. Unless you are lucky enough to live in a huge city that has dedicated stations for different genres, how are you going to realise that you really love Danzig, without someone copying it for you and going “Hey, check this out, I think you’ll like it” ? Music sharing has always been an integral part of the music scene, especially for younger people. I mean, who hasn’t made a mix-tape for a girl at some point, or copied some album of a friend’s ?

So we need a way to make the music still able to be shared, but make people WANT to pay for it. We need to give them something that makes the purchase worthwhile to do them. And I have two concepts for this. The first is very simple, but could be either poorly or wonderfully implemented depending on whether the industry embraces it or abuses it. That’s the concept of added value. When you buy the album, you might get a small discount voucher to get a band t-shirt more cheaply, or a slight discount on their next concert. You might even get some extra demo or remix tracks which are not available in the normal download. This last one is a slippery slope because you have both the problem of it being abused by studios to water down the content they are already providing and make some things “extras”, and also because we know that anyone could just go and copy these extra tracks and release them online anyway.

Which is why I propose that we have some sort of protection against this. Oh yes. I am going to say that evil word, Digital Rights Management. But I don’t want it to bring up the negative and evil connotations that it has had in the past. I don’t mean something that cripples your purchase and makes it impossible to play on certain computer platforms or hardware. I just mean something that allows you to prove that you bought it, so that you can get access to something “extra”. Which leads me to my next, and most important concept.

Certification of ownership. Many of the anime DVD’s I buy, I have never opened. I watch the fansubs that I download because I think they’re superior, and normally of a much higher resolution than the shitty DVD’s that are available to purchase locally, since they are typically ripped from 1080p satellite TV. So why do I buy them ? Well, yes it’s to display them. But why do I want to display them ? Because I’m PROUD to say that I own them. I want people to know that I care about a particular movie or series enough to lay down a huge chunk of cash and own it, so that I can say that I respect the creators enough to make sure that they got paid for their hard work.

So what can certification of ownership provide ? It could be as simple as a little gold star in the corner of your album art, but that hardly equals massive bragging rights, does it ? So let me just jump back to the point I made at the beginning about the importance of artwork to help share your beloved interests with others and introduce you to an idea I came up with the other day. Now, I already discussed band t-shirts… but that’s mostly a young teen thing. But what about posters ? Come on… how many middle aged guys do you know with a Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd poster on their walls ? Heaps of them, right ?

So, I thought… how could we extend that into the future, and also make it tie in with the concept of certified releases ? Well, here’s my proposal. We have E-ink posters that are wirelessly connected to our home networks and the internet. Think about it. You put a nice big 5 foot tall E-ink poster on your wall, and depending on how you want to configure it, it can either just display your current favourite artist’s picture, or it could cycle through all your most favourite artists, or a combination of the above. It could be linked into what you are playing and show your favourite piece of album art from the currently playing album.

But mostly, it would be a sign of authenticity. These posters could be watermarked or adorned in some way as to prove they are real and represent the purchase of a real album. They would be a sign of your pride, not just a piece of artwork. They would be locked down with Certified Ownership Certificates (note I am deliberately not using the acronym DRM to avoid its negative connotations due to its abuse in the past) so that you couldn’t just steal them. Sure, some people would hack their E-ink displays to show whatever they wanted. You can never fully stamp out piracy and some people are always going to steal, but the point is in making it a point of pride to have purchased something. So that when you have a friend over and they see a particular piece of artwork come up on your E-ink poster they could say “Wow, you bought that album ? You must really like it” and you can then rave on about it and tell them how into it you are. It’s a conversation starter, a way to share your interests, and a point of pride.

So my idea is that music should be freely shareable. But we should develop a culture of PRIDE in the purchasing of the things we love the most. Let’s face it, we all have big music collections these days, but most of us only choose to purchase a small percentage of it. So let’s use that point of differentiation to make people WANT to buy the album. When someone sees a poster on your wall that they adore, you can say “If you love that band so much, won’t you just buy the album ?”

So, basically, the music itself is unshackled and we are free to copy it to whoever we want without restriction, but when you buy an album digitally, you get maybe a discount credit on a band t-shirt or other merchandise (these could maybe even be cumulative and you could build them up), you might get access to some special demo or remix version of the title song, maybe special pre-release access to the artist’s next single (though piracy quickly makes this redundant, but even for that first day when you have something that noone else has, it’s pretty special, right ? And imagine the extra pride you have when all of your friends who are certified owners get to sit around and proudly talk about the latest song that noone else has yet), and most of all, you get a certificate of authenticity in the form of being able to proudly show off the album art on a beautiful big electronic poster.

And for the oldies who don’t want huge posters on their walls, they could have more elegant, framed pictures. If they are into classical music, why wouldn’t they want a nice, framed picture of Mozart on their wall ? If they’re a teenager they might prefer a huge big wall-sized poster of the Foo Fighters or someone. I mean, teenagers are some of the biggest consumers of music in the world, despite often having less expendable cash, but they wear their favourite bands like a badge of honour, and how many teenagers do you know that DON’T have their room plastered in posters ? It’s time that we took advantage of the always-connected world we live in and merged the concepts of musical appreciation and visual appreciation and artwork display in a way that could not only provide a fantastic new way to show off he music that you love the most, but could also provide a whole new means of legitimising the sharing of music and STILL let artists get paid. Share the music… but BUY the right to show off how much you love it.

That’s my 2 cents. I hope the music studios like this idea and see the potential that it has. Stop making money by fear and reduced availability. When it costs nothing to distribute music anymore and anyone can bypass copyright measures and share it anyway if they want to, the price has to come down and we have to accept that the best way to make money from music is not from the music itself, which should be a public asset that is to be treasured by all like a painting in an art gallery, but from the good feeling that people get in their heart by having legitimately bought an album, knowing they have done the right thing, that the artist is getting paid, and that they can wear that as a symbol of their love for the music. And when we are paying for the right to authenticity, we need not have these absurd prices that music has currently. When an album costs $20… you think twice before buying it. But if it cost $5 you would be much more likely to legitimately buy music. It’s the culture of scarcity and high prices that drove people to piracy in the first place, but digital distribution makes the concept of scarcity meaningless. So drop the prices and I think you’ll be surprised how much more music people are willing to purchase.

Make money through pride and added value, not fear, scarcity and draconian laws. That’s what I’m saying. Now, who’s going to make me some gorgeous 6 foot tall, wifi-connected E-ink posters ? Coz believe me, I will be FIRST in like to buy that shit !

Footnote:

As many of you know, I’ve been involved in the MP3 scene since way back. I’m also an amateur musician and a technology enthusiast, so this idea is a culmination of all those three interests. I know some other people who are very passionate about the MP3 scene and how ragged bands of kids formed together to popularise a format that was originally intended just to be used by radio stations in such a way that MP3 has become one of the most commonly known technology concepts in today’s world.

I literally know people in their 80′s who have never so much as touched a computer in their entire life, but who purchase their music as MP3′s on SD cards and listen to them on physical MP3 players. Companies like Apple owe a massive debt of gratitude to the people in the MP3 release scene (I refuse to use the word piracy), and I think those people who flaunted the law to make music public property that everyone could share without waiting for studios to distribute physical media around the world as they pleased deserve a lot of respect.

It’s the MP3 release scene that made the current digital music business viable. Without that influx of “free” MP3′s back in the early days, noone would have ever been willing to accept the concept of buying music online without getting anything to show for it. It was the availability of free music made people go out and buy iPods, not the iTunes music store. Now, the technology has exploded to the point where you can barely buy a floor fan without it having an MP3 player integrated into it. MP3 players have become one of the most widespread and iconic pieces of computer technology in existence and we have the great groups like RNS, APC, ATM, DAC and the many others who put their arses on the line to help distribute and promote new music to thank for making the whole digital music industry exist today, when it might have otherwise taken decades longer to reach the point it has reached now in just a few short years.

So, if you are also interested in this great scene and the people who cared enough to make it all happen, I suggest that you wander along to http://mp3scene.info and enjoy many of the fascinating and historical documents available there on the old groups who kickstarted this great industry and new concept in musical distribution. The site is run by a guy I know called Dalton, and he’s about to launch a whole new revision of the site which is greatly enhanced and which I think is a valuable historical resource. So props to both Dalton for documenting it and everyone who was involved in this scene. Hats off to you guys, you changed the world, even if the average Joe on the street barely knows who you are beyond a little 3 letter tag at the end of their MP3 files.

Normally, I’d probably write a massive long discussion of a book like this, but I’m about 50 years too late to write anything about Salinger’s one and only novel that hasn’t been written before, so I thought I’d just make a few random comments for my own interest’s sake. By which I mean about 2200 words. LOL. That’s short for me.

I enjoyed Catcher. Mostly because it reminded me of my own writing. Not because mine contains deep and subtle insight into the human psyche or is loved by millions the world over. But just because it goes nowhere. It’s just a meandering tale of 3 days in some kid’s life as he heads toward a nervous breakdown in which nothing much really happens. It’s great that an uneventful story in which nothing really happens can manage to become such a highly praised literary masterpiece. I would love to think my own writing was capable of such greatness, but my stories are more of a Kerouac-style road story than a Salinger-style introspective novel on the plight of human mental fragility, though they certainly do exhibit traits of mental fragility.

I hate to say that I connect with Holden Caulfield, because EVERYONE identifies with him. That’s why the book is so goddamn popular. Everyone thinks they’re Holden goddamn Caulfield. Everyone wants to be this persecuted little brat who is spiteful at the world and thinks everyone around them are phonies. I am pretty spiteful at the world and silently critical of people too, but I don’t really think everyone are phonies. Lots are, but not to the extent that Holden would like you to believe.

I think the scariest thing for me about the book was how analysts have called Holden self-destructive and called his three days wandering around New York attempting desperately to connect with people a sign of mental breakdown. Because that’s pretty much how I’m living my life at the moment. I just wander around (South East Asia is my New York, it seems) throwing myself into relationship after relationship, doing dangerous and foolhardy things as though I don’t care about my life, trying to find some meaning and some happiness, or at the very least, adventure.

I thought Holden’s actions were fun and carefree. I thought he was cool and un-troubled in a way. Not disturbed and headed for a breakdown, as the analysts see it. They all say that he’s messed up and in a downward spiral of self-loathing and bitterness that will only end in tragedy. I think he’s just being adventurous and just throwing off the shackles of normal life in order to live like he doesn’t give a fuck. I admire that.

I dunno. I know I talked about prison in my last post, but I think a mental institution would be interesting. I didn’t say they were fun or anything. But they are interesting. I was in one twice. It was pretty interesting. I mean it sucked that I was involuntarily committed, but in retrospect, I really had nothing better to do at the time since I was so recently separated from my wife. I think I would have liked to spend more time there, except I would have rathered there be more people. It was a relatively small town and it would have been fun to meet some really crazy interesting people (note the lack of a comma between crazy and interesting).

I even wondered if it’d be interesting to check myself into a mental hospital. When you hang around with people who are that different and unique, you tend to learn something about yourself. I always sorta thought it would be cool to be one of those people who check themselves into a mental home voluntarily just to take a holiday from life and impart some wisdom upon those who need it. I have a terrible nurturing complex and I always want to take people under my wing and it seems like an interesting place to do it in. But my town is incredibly small. I doubt we have anything other than a single room at the hospital for the “mental ward” so it wouldn’t be very interesting at all. I’d probably just share a room with some weird unshaven guy who threw faeces or something.

Maybe at another time I would, but right now I just don’t feel like talking much about Catcher. I enjoyed it and would like to discuss it, but only in a two-way medium so that I could take others’ point of view into account. It just doesn’t seem like the sort of book I want to rant about on my own. I’ll just list a few major plot concepts that I feel parallel my own life.

* Constant phone calls due to the need for human contact
- I used to do this, but I found it boring and unsatisfying

* Loss of innocence
- I dunno, that speaks for itself.

* Enjoying late night train rides
- I enjoy all train rides. But more daytime ones. I like to observe people. I like people, unlike Holden. But trains are awesome and I love them so much.

* Wanting sex between two people who love each other
- Meaningless sex repulses me. It’s not that I don’t sometimes desire it, but it definitely repulses me. Sex should be an act of love.

* Desperation for company despite despising everyone
- That’s my life in a nutshell in a way.

* Pretends to be mature and sophisticated despite being immature
- I’m 33 and as immature as any 14 year old. I don’t want to grow up. When I was young I was always pretending I was older, like Caulfield. When I got older I started acting younger. The more I was around people, the more immature I became. I have always been the class clown at times, while at others pretending to be mature and above everyone else.

* Hatred of conflict
- I hear you there, Holden. I’m not scared. I just find conflict incredibly unpleasant and like to avoid it any time I can. I don’t see the point. Life isn’t a “game” to me like Mr Spencer indicates. It’s just some stupid dick-measuring contest and I just don’t care thank you very much.

* Shying away from intimacy while simultaneously desiring it
- Mostly I desire it, but I do push it away a lot. No really, it’s what I want above all else. I just worry that noone can truly appreciate me. Even when I thought I had someone who did, she left. So now I don’t really feel like opening up to people anymore. It’s the hedgehog’s dilemma. I want to get close, but I know I will only hurt myself and the other person.

* Wanting everything in life to stay the same
- This is why I am a photographer and archivist. I want everything to be just the way I choose to remember it, in some perfect fantasy. I want to write my memories down so that my children and ancestors and anyone in general can read them. The world is fucking special and I want to share it with people just the way it is. In my perfect picturesque memory of it. Life isn’t like that, but I always think I can capture its best moments and re-create it for others.

* Constantly judging others
- Yup. As much as I love other people, I judge them like fucking crazy. They piss me off when I bring them close, but I love them from a distance. Just like Holden loves Sally, but as soon as she’s there, he despises her. I guess I’ve had that before. Not my wife though. I really loved her, even if it was for the wrong reasons. C’est La Vie.

* Unbalanced and cries easily
- Oh you don’t even want to know about that shit. LOL. I can cry over ANYTHING.

* An interest in the subtle and mysterious
- “I cannot explain that in lines” as Dylan says. It just is.

* Wants to be the saviour of innocence
- Girls should all wear long dresses and carry flowers and be cute as hell until they come of age in my mind. I hate sexualisation of children and I think they should be protected, though this is a clear issue for Holden and he eventually realises that children should be left alone to live their own lives and not be saved by a “catcher in the rye” as he describes. It’s a hypocritical thing because personally I would have hated to have been heavily restricted as a child, yet I wish I could restrict my own children. Not really fair. I just think innocence is a virtue and I wish everyone had it for as long as possible.

* Protective, fathering role
- This has always been my biggest downfall. When I see someone who needs help I want to take them under my wing. It’s an inferiority complex, but I always feel that maybe my experience can help others in some way. I guess in a way it makes me feel better to be around people who are more messed up than myself, but also I just feel massive empathy for them and I want to protect them and also nurture them. Certain people on IRC who come specifically to seek my advice on things would understand totally what I mean.

* Wanting to be the protector, despite needing to be protected
- I’m messed up. The only way I find myself able to deal with this is to teach those even more messed up than myself. It feels good. I understand those people. It’s enjoyable. I have always wanted to be that person who checks themselves into a mental home but ultimately does it just so that he can hang out with crazy people and help them out.

So what does this mean ? I dunno. I think I’m more Holden than most people, because I think most people are fucking idiot posers (ie “phonies”) and just wish they were Holden, whereas I am actually Holden in more respects that most. But that’s a pretty conceited point of view, and Holden himself would probably call me a total phony.

What did I get out of Catcher ? I got that my literary style wasn’t entirely useless. Admittedly it may not be as laden with subtext as Salinger’s, but it is still laden with meaning. Ultimately I could publish it as fiction and noone would even know the fucking difference. It’s so boring and trivial sometimes that anyone could mistake it for a Salinger-style work.

Also I got that I should maybe be disturbed about my lifestyle. I know I’m headed for a cliff and a fall. But that’s fun to me. I was idly wondering as I lay in bed last night if I should just write a post about how happy I was and then just kill myself so that everyone was left scratching their heads in confusion. Holden would no doubt tell you he was as happy as Larry, and then break down in tears and kill himself, if only he wasn’t so yellow.

I have to excuse the book because it’s half a century old, but to be honest, the thing that annoyed me about it the most is I thought “Jesus christ. That’s self-destructive ? Seems like a day-in-the-life for me or most of the people I associate with”. I guess people were maybe more reserved than that back then, but when I hear how the book was banned based on Salinger’s use of profanity I can’t help but laugh. Personally I think Holden’s efforts to erase the words “Fuck you” from the school walls and even the museum’s catacombs were awesome. I would totally do that. I always imagine myself a protector of the innocent or a destroyer of it, if I’m in a fucked up mood, but that’s just the sort of incongruous life that Holden leads, just as I do my own. I want to hide the innocent from the harshness of the world. But you never can. They always see it. And sometimes you’re responsible for exposing them to it.

I want to employ someone to come and write “fuck you” on my tombstone in crayon regularly, so that people can come and erase it and it keeps getting written anyway. What the fuck would I care when I’m dead anyway ? I want neither flowers nor insults. Just let me be when I’m dead. All that shit is to make the living feel better anyway, it has no effect on the dead.

I mostly get why Catcher is a classic book, but in a way I also think Salinger must have been just shaking his head thinking “Why are you analysing this ? Analyse yourselves you idiots !” and I wonder how much of it people got other than “Holden is cool. I wish I was as blase and casual as he is”.

People are so fucking dumb. They’re all phonies. Well. Most anyway.

Good on Salinger for continuing to write after his withdrawal from society in the face of criticism. In a way I admire his courage, but I know I’ve done the same. I do post my work online, but only where I choose. I have posted to other public sites and been ridiculed for my postings based on length or pointless meandering, so I have retreated to my own sites where I control everything and no comments are allowed. What I write isn’t FOR you. I’m not trying to grow as a writer with YOUR help. Just by myself. I have a style and I’m happy with it. I don’t need your stupid tips or opinions because I have no interest in changing how I write.

It’s not that I don’t want to get better so much as I think you’re all a bunch of douches who have no fucking clue about what you’re talking about. My writing is art, and if you don’t understand it or appreciate it, then it just wasn’t intended for you. Just fuck off and go read someone else’s work. I don’t need affirmation from anyone except… myself. I put it out there so you can read it, but that doesn’t mean I give a fuck what you think. If you hate it, then fuck off. And if you love it, then you’ll probably make me uncomfortable if you tell me. Tell me if you want anyway because I’m vain, but ultimately.. it’s not really of any benefit to me. I write mostly out of pain and isolation anyway, so having some receptive audience who loved me and applauded all the time would just make me into some fucking phony like Eddie the pianist out of Catcher. And if there’s one thing I don’t want to be, it’s a goddamn phony.

Hats off to you Salinger. I hope we get to read your unpublished work post-humously.

This story is meant to be boring. On purpose. Someone told me I wrote boring stories that went nowhere. But life tends to be like that. Anyway, I like to prove people right when they say stupid things, so I thought I’d write a pointless story.

I was on IRC last night. That’s a bit of a redundant thing to say because I’m always on IRC. But I was, anyway. I was drinking as well. That’s redundant too. I’m always drinking. Except when I’m not. I asked the channel owner for a +F flag. That would make me equivalent status to the channel owner. He removed my +f flag instead to be funny. That’s the admin flag that lets you manage other users’ permissions. I parted the channel in silent protest. It wasn’t a big deal because I know he was just being funny, but I like to be dramatic.

See, I have a reputation on IRC for being a bipolar nutcase. And I’ve always found that the best way to deal with people knowing you’re a little crazy, is just to be all-out crazy. Then they stop annoyingly trying to help you and just shrug and write you off as crazy. So I like to play up the moody, crazy thing to entertain people. Now when someone asks “Where’s pawz ?” they can say “Oh he chucked a huge hissy fit and left the channel”. You have to give people something to believe in, you know what I mean ? In reality I just needed an excuse to leave because I’d been wasting too much time chatting lately. And that was a convenient excuse to leave. Plus it reinforced my position as the crazy, moody person people think of me as. Bonus.

I chatted to this black girl I know. She has some sort of complex with me saying that I don’t find black girls attractive. I mentioned I didn’t like boobs. She got very offended and demanded to know why. I told her I just didn’t like them and that’s all there was too it. She seemed very upset about it. So I told her I’d look at her boobs and asked her to send me a photo of them. She consulted with her boyfriend and he said it was ok. But she didn’t send me one anyway. I’m glad. The last thing I wanted was to see some black girls’ boobs. I just thought it’d make her happy if I complimented them. But she didn’t send them, and became massively annoying as she usually does, so I got really mad at her and told her to fuck off and that I hated her. Then I believe I told her I loved her. She is sort of fascinating because she’s such a complete aspie, but I also can’t fucking stand her. I just have a fatherhood complex and when I see people with problems I have this urge to take them under my wing.

I was massively drunk by this time. I don’t normally get drunk. I drink too slowly. But somehow I got really drunk. So drunk I think I must have gone to bed by around 7 or 8pm or something. I woke up just after 1 in the morning and lay in bed staring at the ceiling and wondering if I should get up. I got up, went to my computer. Ahh, so that’s why I had Telegraph Road stuck in my head. I was listening to Dire Straits last night. On a physical CD. That’s so weird. I never bother to put CD’s on. I prefer to just download whatever I want to hear, even when I own it on CD. I didn’t feel like doing anything online so I went back to bed.

I’m reading Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye at the moment. It’s a pretty good book. I like it because it seems to go nowhere. The bit where Holden is just wandering around New York depressed and bored is great, because nothing really interesting happens, which is what makes it so interesting. Stories like that are good because all they do is paint a picture. And pictures aren’t really supposed to feature interesting things. The best pictures are of nothing at all, but people love them anyway. I ponder carrying a copy of Catcher in the Rye with me everywhere to make people uneasy and wonder if I’m going to shoot someone, like when Mark Chapman killed John Lennon. But it seems like a lot of effort to drag a book around with me everywhere just for the sake of a stupid joke that most people wouldn’t get.

I continued reading Catcher until dawn broke and then I get my camera and slipped a second lens into my jacket pocket and wandered up the road to take photos of kangaroos. Noone believes me when I tell them that kangaroos are as common as dog shit in Australia and that they hang out in suburban streets. They seem to think that you have to go on a safari into the outback to see them. As I’m walking up the road a little blue car drives past with learner plates on it. I ponder what a learner driver would be doing out at 5:30 in the morning and watch as the car indicates to the right but then goes left. It’s not even a corner, it’s just a bend in the road. Something strikes me as massively odd about the whole thing.

The road is a dead end anyway and I wonder if it’s some teenage girl going to kill herself and if I keep walking, I’ll find her at the end of the road where it turns into dirt, locked in her car trying to gas herself with the exhaust. I imagine that I could save her and she’d fall in love with me. But then I remember that people aren’t normally that happy about people stopping them from killing themselves. At least not initially. I guess it’s much more likely that she’s just been out at a party and got drunk and is driving home. But my little fantasy was a much more interesting explanation.

I get to the end of the road without seeing a single kangaroo. Dammit. Oh well. I walk home again, pondering about the learner driver. I want the police to come down the street and ask me what I’m doing so that I can be a smartarse and give them some absurd explanation for being outside at 6 in the morning with a camera and tripod just to piss them off. I hate cops, but it’s always fun to fuck with them when you’re not doing anything wrong by making them think you might be. Unless they find a reason to arrest you anyway. Though I have this weird urge to go to prison at the moment for some reason.

I’ve been to prison before. But I had a wife waiting for me outside, so it was rather inconvenient and I would have preferred to not be there. I still have a wife, but we’re not together anymore, so it seems like a good time to serve a short spell in prison. I’m not sure why. It just seems a bit interesting. The worst thing about prison is having to talk to other inmates though. It’s like school or something, except everyone’s trying even harder to be cool and act tough. You meet some interesting people though sometimes. They’re not all completely boring try-hards. Just most of them.

I get home and slip in the front gate. It starts raining briefly and the air smells nice. I decide to go work on this computer my neighbour brought over that belongs to a friend of his. I hate fixing people’s computers and I normally would have made an excuse to say “no”, but he had already brought it here for me to fix. I figure I can probably do it anyway, since he has to put up with me listening to Korean pop music at loud volume most nights and doesn’t complain. I try to wake the computer up and realise that it’s crashed. Hmm. I think the CPU is overheating. Some asshole charged the woman $170 to replace the fucking fan. Apparently he didn’t do a real good job. Oh well. I couldn’t be bothered pulling it apart to look right now. I write this pointless story and go back to bed to continue reading Salinger. The End.

I had this discussion on IRC tonight. It’s something that’s been on my mind for a while. I recently heard that the interest alone on Australia’s loans from China were half a million dollars per day, but that the USA’s debt was so massive that China had insisted that if the USA didn’t get back up to speed on their loan repayments by 2015 that, basically, the shit would hit the fan. Which I can only assume to mean “We’re sending in the tanks and all your shit is now ours”. Anyway, this is how my rambling conversation went.

* pawz sees an advert saying “click on the current american president to win a green card to the usa !” and cannot resist, and clicks on hilary clinton and feigns surprise when it presents him with a screen saying that he’s won and can sign up for his green card online now
<pawz> i’m so lucky !
<pawz> now i can live the american dream of being broke and up to my eyeballs in debt and working two shitty, menial jobs just to pay off my credit cards !
<pawz> i always knew that if i persevered in clicking online ads that this day would finally come !
<Lornetc> XD I am working a shitty menial job to pay of my credit card, but I graduated from uni at the wrong time.
<pawz> the wrong time being “while the usa was populated and run by people from the usa” ?
<pawz> i wouldn’t worry too much. china will take the USA over in a few years
<pawz> and then you will lots of gorgeous chinese girls all around you
<pawz> who will outbreed you due to the lack of a one-child-per-family policy
<pawz> and all the white trash will be bred out of the country
<pawz> it’ll be epic
<pawz> i’ll finally want to visit the United States of China !
<pawz> i have no idea what the interest repayments on the usa’s debt is to china, but australia has a pretty minor debt, but we still pay half a million AUD per day in interest on our loans
<Lornetc> pawz its rediculously large.
<pawz> if we’re paying half a million a day, i expect the usa is probably paying around 5 million a day
<pawz> but they aren’t paying it
<pawz> coz they keep insisting they’re in the middle of a temporary fiscal crisis and “we’ll pay you next week, honest”
<pawz> “our economy will boom any day now”
<pawz> i believe china’s response was “dudes. you have until 2015 to get your payments back up to date before we send in the tanks to ‘collect’ what you owe”
<pawz> best thing is.. when world war III breaks out.. everyone’s gonna go “well you fucking borrowed it dudes.. don’t expect us to help you.. we’re not fighting off china”
<Lornetc> Indeed.
<pawz> usa will be like “australia.. dudes.. you ALWAYS help us out whenever we tell you to.. get over here and help us fight off china”
<pawz> and australia will say “yeah um… we have an army of about 100,000… china has an army of several million… i think THIS time.. you’re on your own”
<pawz> i really hope our government are smart enough to see the writing on the wall and whisper in Jintao’s ear “um, we’re just pretending to be on the USA’s side.. we’re helping you take them over though really. we’ll help lead them into ruin if you let us stay autonomous and just take over america for at least the next century ok ?”
<pawz> in 200 years china won’t account for 15% of the world’s population.. they will account for more like 50% :”D
<pawz> it’d be nice if they could invent a new language though
<pawz> i’m not really all THAT fond of mandarin
<pawz> and it’d be nice to think that my great, great, great, great, great grandchildren could still read my blog without having to unearth a dusty old sd card on “forgotten languages of the 21st century such as english”
<pawz> not that i’m saying that it’s 100% inevitable
<pawz> i mean, maybe north korea, pakistan, iran and vietnam will all launch nuclear missiles at china and wipe 90% of them off the face of the earth
<pawz> vietnam don’t actually have any nukes afaik, but i’m pretty sure russia will lend them some. russia have always been keen to help vietnam fuck those chinese over
<pawz> it’d suck a bit, because the cost of stuffed toys and cheap tourist t-shirts and ipads will skyrocket when china’s gone
<pawz> but at least the world will retain cultural diversity
<pawz> i for one welcome our new chinese overlords

Note, I don’t mean that as an insult to homosexual people. It’s just an insult, nothing more. I don’t think the word “faggot” has referred to homosexuals in quite a while.

For some reason, on IRC we were talking about blood and semen and I made the comment “Like the cover of Metallica’s Load album ?” but the person wasn’t familiar with that album, so I went to Google Images to find a picture and explain the reference. Google if you want to know the story behind the album cover, I’m not here to explain it.

Afterward I hit the close button on the image, and Google showed me the blog that it came from. I hrmmed and read the page. It was a review of the album saying how Metallica weren’t total sell-outs and they had just decided to reinvent themselves in a new decade, cut off all of their hair, and write poncy fucking pop songs that had about as much metal in them as a pair safety scissors for kindergarteners.

At the end was this amusing video made as a parody of how young metalheads reacted to the album. Watch it now before I explain further.

Ok, it’s funny right ? But honestly, it’s true. Now here’s a little story about how I discovered Metallica.

I was in high school, and I’d really only been exposed to my Dad’s music previously because I had never been to school before and traded music with other kids. But I had a friend named Josh who brought over this cassette he’d copied from somewhere. It was Master of Puppets. We played it and I headbanged my way through Battery, then air guitared my way through Master of Puppets as my mate screamed along to the lyrics. By the end of the album I was dripping with sweat and I said “THAT WAS FUCKING INCREDIBLE !!! WHO IS THAT ?!!?” … “Metallica” he said. “You’ve never heard them ?” “No”, I replied, “But I sure want to hear more now !”. He had a copy of Ride The Lighting with him as well and we listened to that too.

“I need to check out more of this. Do they have any other albums ?” I asked. “Yeah. They have an earlier one called Kill Em All which I’m told is really heavy, and a later one called And Justice For All which is supposed to be really different and epic, but I don’t know where to get them”. “Hmmmm. We should buy them. I would like to own that shit” I said. Josh said “Sure, me too, but I don’t have any money. How about you ?” “Nah me either. Maybe we could get jobs on the weekend ?” “Doing what ?” asked Josh. “What about washing cars ? That would be easy. We could just ask people in the area if they wanted their cars washed and charge them $5 a car”. “Yeah”, said Josh. “I’d do that. But maybe we could get Andy or Ray to come along to make it more fun”. “Sure”, I said. “But we’ll have to split the money more ways then”. “Good point”, agreed Josh. “How about we take Andy on Saturday and Ray on Sunday ?” “Yeah, good call” I said.

So, both Saturday and Sunday, Josh and I and Andy and Ray (on one day each) went out and knocked on every door in the neighbourhood and looked as sweet as we could and said we were trying to earn some money and would anyone like to have their car washed for $5. Some people were real hard-arses. I remember this one guy who came out and picked on everything we’d done and made us re-wash his car in front of him, making sure we got in all the wheel arches and the front grill. He even tried to suggest the job wasn’t worth $5 and that he might only pay us $3. He paid us in small change and we stormed off, bitching about him and calling him an arsehole once we were out of earshot.

On Sunday we got an even worse job. We encountered a couple of young women who were clearly lesbians, and they said “We don’t have a car, but there is something you can do if you want. Our bulldog tore apart some pillows in the backyard and we need someone to pick up all the stuffing. We’ll give you $5 for that”. We agreed and entered their back yard only to find pillow fluff covering every corner of their (very large) yard. Upon picking it up we discovered that it was all covered in dog slobber and smelt disgusting. I nearly vomited and I had to look away as I picked the stuff up. It was a dirty job, and we got less than $2 each for what must have taken a full hour, but it was our final job for the weekend. We each had just over $27 (apart from Andy because he’d only been with us for one day) each.

Josh and I got his mum to drive us to the record store in town, and we walked out with shiny new copies of Kill Em All and And Justice For All and Josh’ mum asked if I’d like to sleep over at their house that night. Naturally I did, because Josh had his own room in a granny flat down the back which was perfect for cranking music in. We turned up to his place and I reverently slipped Metallica’s Kill Em All into the CD player and Josh insisted we go outside to shoot hoops. I hated basketball, but I agreed anyway, and I mostly just took random shots without caring so that I could concentrate on headbanging. The album was awesome. Mind blowing. Sheer, in your face, grinding, pumping metal. With a huge grin my face I said to Josh “That was totally worth working all weekend in the sun for, right ?” and he nodded and said “Yeah, it sucked. But now I own a Metallica CD”.

I became right into Metallica. I bought many of their T-shirts at insane prices, and purchased their entire back catalogue to date, mostly from second hand stores. I was a devoted fan for years. The Black album seemed a little mainstream for me, but I had to admit it had some good songs on it and even my Dad enjoyed it and used to copy the video clips off Rage (ABC’s after-midnight music video show) on VHS and play them. I’d come home and he’d have “Wherever I may roam” cranking out and I’d laugh that I’d somehow managed to get my 40 year old father into Metallica.

Some years later, Load came out and shit all fell apart. I actually was in one of the first mp3 groups at the time as I was a very early internet adopter, but I didn’t wait for the mp3 to come out. It was Metallica. I treasured Metallica and putting their CD on my shelf and showing it off proudly, and reverently inserting it into my CD player to listen to in my poster-covered bedroom (I had a HUGE poster on my ceiling of them all on the steps of a temple in Thailand) was like a ritual to me. So downloading it was just not an option. I wanted to OWN it.

I pushbiked all the way up to David’s Ultrasound, purchased the CD, and rode home again and closed my door and slipped it into my second hand Teac CD player, plugged into an ancient but massively powerful Yamaha amplifier and some awesome big speakers that I’d salvaged from a charity auction. It was a Load alright. A load of complete shit as far as I was concerned. I threw the CD back into the case very un-reverently and put it back on the shelf, never to be played again. Suddenly Metallica were being played on the local country music station. I just pretended to myself that they’d all died in a plane crash like Holly, Valens and The Big Bopper. I went back to Master of Puppets and found my sanctuary, but by that time I was getting increasingly into Pink Floyd, who had never let me down and even their less accessible albums were still interesting and didn’t disgust me, so I began spending my cash on Floyd instead and one by one the Metallica posters tore and came down from the wall to be replaced with new bands.

I laughed through Metallica’s Napster rage and facepalmed at the same time. Seriously guys, you are millionaires, and you are bitching about people downloading your music ? Come on. Are you trying to say you didn’t copy tapes when you were kids ? How the fuck were people supposed to find out about new non-mainstream-radio bands without copying music from their friends ? It’s not like we heard Henry Rollins and Danzig on our local radio stations… we HAD to pirate that shit. That’s how you discover new music. But when you find something you like… well, some of us at least respected the artists enough to go and buy their CD’s. Sure, I know some people who have never bought a CD in their life and just pirate all their music, but they would still buy t-shirts and other merchandise and attend concerts.

For Metallica to turn and bite the hand that feeds it by going on a one-band mission to destroy Napster just seemed so hypocritical. Yeah nice work guys, alienate your fans so that you can buy a new Mercedes. Fuckwits.

But today, after the discussion today about Metallica and watching that video, I had this craving to listen to Master of Puppets. I grabbed the most well-seeded Metallica discography torrent off a site and selected just the first song off the Puppets album. Ten minutes later I wondered why I had not heard a “ding” to tell me the file was done. I looked at the torrent ant it was only 50% done, despite screaming at 200k/s. Huh ? That doesn’t make sense. I brought up the torrent and watched it climb to 97%, then suddenly drop back to 70% then 50%, then start climbing again and then repeat the whole thing. I laughed. Someone was poisoning the torrent with bad packets on purpose.

I imagined Lars Ulrich sitting in his luxurious mansion, with multiple fibre connections going into his house, sitting back in some huge leather chair cackling with laughter at all the people wasting their bandwidth downloading his fake packets and shrieking “You’ll never pirate my albums ! Never I tell you. NEVER !!!!”

I facepalmed, sighed, considered the fact that I already own the original CD of the album I was trying to download, realised the hypocricy of what they were doing, and suddenly lost any interest in listening to Metallica… a band that was supposed to be all about rebellion and anti-establishmentism.

It’s sad when metalheads get old and turn into douches. James Hetfield, I thought you were cool once. Cliff would be rolling in his grave at the music you’re putting out now and he would be haunting Lars in his sleep over what he’s doing. Honestly, if your mission was to make all your old fans ashamed to wear a Metallica shirt in public, you achieved your goal. I wore my Ride the Lightning shirt until it was full of holes, and then kept it in my cupboard for special occasions. Recently I threw it away. Sorry guys, but you just aren’t the band you once were. And I don’t mean just musically. I mean you are a bunch of douches now. It’s hard to even enjoy your old music without being reminded of what you’ve become.

To the old Metallica I loved as a child, REST IN PEACE.

I enjoyed two bitterly sad true stories today. I love sad stories. They make you FEEL. They might depress you and make you feel like there’s no hope in the world, but they are also cathartic and I believe that they help you deal with sorrow in your own life and also to get un-spent pain and tears out of yourself. Sometimes though, they’re just beautiful stories and that’s it. And who wouldn’t rather appreciate a bitterly sad but beautiful story than some meaningless Hollywood drivel ?

Both stories were about young Japanese girls who die of leukaemia. One was a very old book called “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes” which has traditionally been given to primary school children around the world to teach them about the importance of compassion and empathy. I read it when I was very young and it’s always held special meaning to me, because both myself and my grandmother were born on August 6th, the anniversary of what we called “Hiroshima Day”, but what they call in Japan “Peace Day”. It’s only a very short story, because it’s intended for small children, but Sadako’s story is a very moving one.

Sadako’s story is that she was 2 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and she feels no ill effects for 9 years. Sadako is an excellent runner at school and her dream is to represent her school in a relay race, but she begins to suffer dizziness which she hides from everyone around her until one day she collapses at the end of a race and is rushed to hospital, only to be told she has leukaemia. Sadako’s friend reminds her of the legend of the paper crane, which says that if a person who is sick folds a thousand paper cranes, the gods will grant them their wish and make them well again. Sadako’s wish is to get better, so that she can run in her relay race.

Sadly, Sadako gets increasingly sick and she eventually dies in her sleep after having folded only 644 cranes. But her classmates finish the remaining 356 cranes and they are buried with her. In a way, Sadako does get her wish of living forever, because she has become an important symbol of Peace Day in Japan and schoolchildren all over Japan raised funds to build a monument to her, holding her first golden crane that her friend gave to her, which stands to this day in Hiroshima Peace Park, and on August the 6th, people from all over Japan come to lay paper cranes at the foot of her statue out of respect for both Sadako and all others who have died as a result of the two atomic bombs dropped during the war. Sadako, and the paper crane have become a symbol of peace and compassion the world over, and the paper crane is now often referred to as a “peace crane” in her honour. At the bottom of Sadako’s monument is a plaque with the inscription:

“This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.”

The other story I enjoyed today was a much more recent one. It’s the 2010 true story about a sickly girl whose family move from Tokyo to Ojiya in Niigata Prefecture in Japan to help her with her asthma and the movie is called “おにいちゃんのハナビ” or “Big Brother’s Fireworks” but the English title is “Fireworks From the Heart”. In the movie, the girl, Hana spends time in hospital being treated for leukaemia, and while she is away, her brother Taro becomes a “hikkikomori”, or social recluse, never leaving his room. When she is released from hospital she literally breaks down his door to try and reach him and later has her friends fake a house fire in order to get him out of his room.

With Hana’s help, Taro eventually does leave his room and get a part time job, and even joins the local fireworks club, since Ojiya is famous for its fireworks event on September the 9th every year, and everyone from the age of 20 through to 60 contributes to sponsor a particular part of the fireworks display. Taro appreciates his sister’s love and compassion for him and does it all for her, but when she later dies (This is not a spoiler, the fact is revealed at the beginning of the movie) he decides to dedicate a special fireworks display for her, his magnum opus.

While Hana is not there to see the fireworks, she manages to be there for him in spirit by having a special message and a special gift arranged for him on his coming of age day and the day of the hanabi festival. Taro dedicates his display to her, but is most surprised when he realises that she has arranged a special display dedicated to him as well, and he is finally accepted openly by the club, his family, and the entire townsfolk. He finally fits in and is appreciated and honoured by the town. Whether all these details are literally true or whether artistic license has been used isn’t really important. The important thing is that Hana’s story is true, and her brother really did dedicate a special fireworks show to his sister to show how much he appreciated her love and support.

Both these stories are at the same time beautiful and bitterly sad, but both also leave your heart warm and give you a great deal of hope and faith in humanity. They may be sad stories that will make you cry, but they don’t just tear your heart out and stomp on it, they lift your heart up and warm it. Anyone can write a sad story about some young girl dying and bring tears to your eyes, but the fact is that both these stories are essentially true.

Whether Sadako really folded 644 cranes, or whether Hana really sent Taro a phone message after her own death doesn’t matter. The details aren’t important. Like my own blogs, they are stories. They may be strongly based on factual events, but a story has room for artistic license and if any has been used in the telling of these stories, we will most certainly forgive the authors because they are touching stories that give you true hope and both of them contain important symbols of hope and inspiration for others. Sadako’s cranes and Taro’s fireworks are both symbols of compassion and understanding that we can all take to heart and learn from.

If you haven’t read the famous book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, I would suggest you consider ordering a copy. It will cost you less than $6 with free postage from The Book Depository in the UK and it is an excellent children’s book and while sad, it doesn’t traumatise children. You can find order it here. Personally it’s always carried special meaning for me due to me being born on Peace Day, so yes the story saddens me, but it also gives me great hope. If you want to learn more about Sadako, you can research her online. A good place to start would be her Wikipedia page here.

The movie Fireworks From the Heart (or “Big Brother’s Fireworks” as the story is more literally called) may be more difficult for you to obtain outside of Asia, but Amazon does carry it and it can be ordered here or you can read the IMDB page for it here.

I’ve blogged about both of these songs before and posted the videos here, but I want to post them again together, because these two songs are really meaningful to me. How often in today’s society is a song about something REAL ? Sure, you might get the occasional song about insanity or about the stress of life, but how many songs say “Hey, fuckers, you’ve got it all wrong. You’re looking at things the wrong way and you really need to step the fuck back and reprioritise because the things you believe in are just bullshit” ?

Well I know two. One is American, and you will ALL know that song. The other is Korean and very few of you will know it. But both of them carry the same message… “Hey. There’s more to life than money or beauty. Happiness and a good heart are what’s important, not how beautiful someone is or how rich they are”.

I may be a writer, but I’m not a song writer. I have written a couple and at least one I think is pretty cool, but they tend to rhyme too much and I sort of write songs like a sixth grader writes poetry, but I have things to say, and if I ever wrote a song, I think it would be about the throw-away materialistic nature of society today. In Australia in particular, the cost of labour is so high that fixing things is totally impractical. If your MacBook Air screen breaks, guess what ? It’ll cost you less to buy a new one that it will to repair the old one (no, literally, I was quoted the price of a new screen and labour and it was more than the laptop was originally worth). Even if your fridge breaks down… in Australia, you don’t get it fixed. It costs too much to do so.

But in somewhere like Vietnam or Thailand, they fix EVERYTHING. I mean if a speaker cone is broken, they won’t throw it away. They will pull it apart, unwind the copper coils and wind on new copper. Anything that can’t be fixed, they will strip for all usable parts and save them to help fix the next person’s device. If I took a broken Nikkor camera lens into a store in Australia they would laugh me out of the store if I asked them to repair it. “Repair ? You can’t repair a camera lens. They’re precision manufactured by machine. A human being couldn’t repair that, and even if they could, it would cost you more than the lens is worth new. Throw it away and buy a new one”. But I have had the same camera lens repaired from a completely useless state (I dropped my camera from more than 5 foot onto concrete in Malaysia) back to mint condition in both Vietnam and Thailand for a tiny FRACTION of what a new lens would cost. Mere pennies. Because when you have a large population who are desperate for work, and people who can’t afford to just throw things away – you don’t. You find someone who will spend all day fixing your shit, only to charge you $20 for their time. And they’ll be grateful for your business.

In Australia, a G4 iMac is quite a very rare item. Not all that many were sold because they were very expensive. But these days, noone wants them because they’re not that efficient as a computer. They are very slow at browsing the web and they can’t handle the latest Flash player that YouTube requires. My local rubbish dump has had dozens of them for sale for $5 each and noone even wants them. But in Asia, they are still heavily utilised. Ok so they may not play YouTube, but they make great Point of Sale terminals and they make AWESOME video screens for running video advertising. You can re-tool a beautiful old computer like an iMac to still be incredibly useful for certain tasks. And in some countries, they do. But in western societies, we just don’t. We throw them away at the dump and maybe if they are lucky… in six months time someone will buy one for $5, only to throw it away again when it doesn’t meet their expectations.

So that’s what I would write a song about. The way western culture and high wages have turned us into a throw-away society that doesn’t repair ANYTHING. Hell, we don’t even recycle it. It goes to the dump and ends up in land-fill. That’s something I feel passionate about. We don’t have an infinite supply of copper, or nickel or lithium in the world and we can’t just keep digging it up, sending it to China to make into TV’s and stereos and then use it in Australia or America for a year or two before throwing it away and burying it in the ground. RE-FUCKING-CYCLE it you idiots ! Strip the parts and RE-USE them !

But this post isn’t about my song. It’s about Jessie J’s “Price Tag” and Fat Cat’s “Is Being Pretty Everything ?” because they both have an important message saying “Hey, wake up guys. Money and beauty are not everything. There is more to life, and neither money nor beauty will bring you true happiness, so stop wishing for them all the time and being depressed if you don’t have them”.

I hope you enjoy both songs and think about what they mean (The Korean song has English subtitles) instead of just blindly humming along to the chorus. While they may be pop songs, they are pop songs that actually have some fucking MEANING for a change. They have a message that’s really important and that we all need to think about for once. So once more, enjoy both of these beautiful, heart-warming and thought-provoking songs.

And PS, to Fat Cat. I can see your true beauty. I can see your crying heart and if you’re not already taken, I’ll be on the next plane to Korea to show you how much I can appreciate your heart. ;”)

Jessie J – Price Tag

Fat Cat – Is Being Pretty Everything ?

This is the name of a 2010 film about a very different kind of story. It’s about a boy who is having trouble coping with the stress in his life; girls, school, life, and his fathers expectations of him. He calls a suicide hotline and said he was thinking of killing himself and they referred him to the local mental hospital. After answering a few simple questions the wrong way he finds himself involuntarily institutionalised for a week. Since the teen ward is under reconstruction he finds himself I the adult ward among schizophrenics and metal cases.

But the people in this movie do not have the cliche mental disorders that many films portray. This film shows that the nature of mental disorder is sometimes mundane and simplistic even though the effects might greatly affect that person’s life. It shows that there’s no hard line between sane and insane and that sometimes people just have a little trouble coping. We’re not sane or insane. We are a thousand shades of different sorts of people with abilities and skills and ways of coping with things and sometimes we just have trouble with one bit.

The film is a beautiful film with a great love story between the main protagonist and a girl he meets inside who has self-harm issues. Together all the patients help each other come out of their shells and reveal the fascinating and rich people they all are and they discover things about themselves they didn’t know.

This film touched me because I have suffered from mental illness. Apart from the ADD and the personality disorders I have bipolar disorder and I was diagnosed with this during a very traumatic time in my life when my wife and I had just got married and we had financial problems and I was having difficulty supporting us because she didn’t work. I was under a lot of pressure and a few times in rage I punched holes in walls (I was never violent towards my wife once) out of rage and frustration and just feeling helpless.

When I had a problem getting my medication, because my incompetent doctor kept screwing up the prescriptions I lost it in a pharmacy when I was refused my medication for the third time because the doctor had not followed proper procedure and filled out the quantity in numbers only and not words. In frustration and in withdrawal I turned and banged my hands on the shelf, knocking many things from the shelf. I left, but the police came to my house and arrested me and charged me with willful damage and my psychiatrist said I was bipolar.

My wife was crazy about it. Her father had bad bipolar and he hung himself when she was 4 years old and so she feared the worst for me. When I had some episodes of anger (more so than mania) she would say I needed to be more heavily medicated and she would insist to my psychiatrist that I needed to be dosed up on more drugs. None of my medications ever made me feel any better or improved my demeanour or mood or reduce my episodes. I was on a massive amount of medication… very high doses and I felt very groggy and not myself. I felt flat, and lifeless with no passion in life.

I briefly saw another doctor who seemed to know little about me and before I had known her long she wanted to give me Electro Convulsive Therapy. Eventually my wife’s insistence on me being medicated so much it became a major issue with us, and every time I was unhappy she would say I needed more medication. Eventually we separated and she cited my mental illness as a big factor in our break-up, even though at that time I was quite happy as we had a child on the way.

After we parted I moved and found a new doctor and he was aghast at the medication I was on. He said “Your bipolar is mild at best. It has little effect on your behaviour beyond some obsessessive programming binges and late nights. You are not destructive or dangerous. You have some personality disorders that just require you to talk to someone regularly. You don’t need all this medication. You are emotional and impulsive and if you want, you can continue a small dose of your medication, but the amount you are taking will kill your mind and there is no reason for it”.

I continued seeing him, discussing my personal issues and stayed on a small amount of medication. But then I suddenly and randomly moved to Vietnam, and I did not have access to any medication or a psychiatrist. I did a lot of crazy things there and I’m sure you could say I was a little crazy and wild, but I just lived my life as normal. No medication, no psychiatrists and I have never been happier than at any time in my life. I have been making art, I have been composing music and I have been writing like there’s no tomorrow.

I got branded with this label of having major depression and serious bipolar and other diagnoses and medicated to the teeth and my wife would talk about me being mentally ill all the time, but really, I was just caught in the rat race. I didn’t know who I was or how to accomplish my goals and support my family. I was just a little lost. It wasn’t my mind that was broken. I was just out of place and time and worrying about life too much.

Do I have some real mental disorders? Sure, I have ADD and Borderline Personality Disorder, but serious bipolar and major depression? No. I do not. Those are just labels which describe some personality quirks I have. I am a crazy person, but I think that is more my upbringing than my mental state. I am an unusual person with an unusual history and I exhibit a weird personality and sometimes I have some struggles in life like many others.

Does this make me crazy? After my wife left me and took my first child, I tried to kill myself twice. Very serious, deliberate, thought-out attempts. Both times I was involuntarily institutionalised for about a week in a mental hospital. It was a strange place and I think I could tell you stories about those people and they would be just like those sort of people in “It’s Kind Of A Funny Sory”. The people you find in mental homes are some of the most diverse people from the most bizarre backgrounds and they all have something to offer.

I feel terrible that we have this stigma about people who are committed to mental institutions as if they are certifiably mad, when often they are just regular, quirky individuals who are unique and fascinating people who just sometimes need a little extra help getting through life. Even just a confused teenager who is stressed out and thinks about suicide for a moment.

If you’ve ever been touched by mental illness or you have someone close to you who has, then watch “It’s Kind Of A Funny Story” so that you too can see that mental illness is a very blurred line between a regular quirky person and someone who needs to be in an institution. And if someone spends a little time in an institution it’s like Bobby says in the movie, it’s a “vacation” from the stresses of the real world.

I’m glad to say that I am very well today. I may be impulsive, and emotional and sometimes when I travel the world I take my life into my hands and do things some would say are crazy, but I feel like myself. I feel at peace. I have no anger, and my eyes have been opened to the world and what life is like beyond my little suburb. My world is bigger now and I feel like the silly little things I worried about before are nothing now. Now I have seen the world and met people and learned a lot about life.

It is a shame I could not have had the experiences and revelations in my life before my marriage fell apart, but in truth, it was the breakdown of my marriage which caused me to re-assess my life. To focus on my art and my writing and to travel to far off Asian lands rather than just watch them on TV. I won’t be so crazy as to thank my wife for this, but her leaving me was the best thing that ever happened to me. I rediscovered myself and became a new person. I gave up the medication and the constant stigma of thinking I was mentally ill, and now I am someone new and I feel healthy and well adjusted.

Sometimes mental illness isn’t a life sentence, and sometimes it’s nothing more than a passing phase. I don’t mean it always is. My uncle is schizophrenic and he has been in and out of homes all his life and it constantly affects his life, but it’s important to remember that’s not the only type of mental illness and sometimes mental illness can be as simple as having a really bad day.

I hope I’ve explained something here for people who have mental illness or those whose lives are touched by it and I urge you to watch the excellent movie “It’s Kind Of A Funny Story” and also to remember, mental illness is not always a life-changing thing. Sometimes it’s just a tiny part of who we are as people. And many times it is the muse that drives us to create.

Do you want to be “normal”, or do you want to be emotional and expressive and impulsive and wild? Personally, I want the latter and I feel better for it.

You know I write a lot right. And I have many websites. But on this one alone, I have recently surpassed the half a million word mark. That’s around two and a half thousand pages in paperback form, or 50% larger than Tolstoy’s epic three-volume War and Peace.

Just sayin’. :”)

So, this isn’t really specifically about the Sunrise program on 7, but they happen to be one of the offenders of this crime who particularly annoy me. It’s something that annoys me a lot. Shows like Sunrise like to act all high and mighty by saying “We’ve got a donation line where you can ring in and make donations” so that everyone thinks they’re awesome. But how easy IS it to donate ?

Well this morning they had a story on about how a charity in Logan had been ram-raided and thieves had stolen piles of food bound for needy families this Christmas, and the thieves basically destroyed the freezers and ruined much of the food they didn’t take, meaning the annual Christmas party the charity hosts for disadvantaged families would struggle to go ahead.

I felt sorta bad about that and I thought to myself “I don’t have a lot of money, but I’d donate five bucks to that. If everyone else did too, they’d have plenty of money to host that event”. Sunrise proudly exclaimed “Go to our website to donate”.

Dutifully, I grabbed my tablet and opened up the website, and scanned the page for some time looking for the link, which was not prominent in any way, and buried in some obscurely named story title, when it should have been a big button on the front page. When I finally found it and clicked on it, it took me to a page which just said “Call this Brisbane number between 10am-2pm Monday to Friday”.

What ? I have to wait until 10am ? And then call a phone number and wait on hold and then give them my credit card details ? Are you fucking MAD ?! Where’s the PayPal link ? Where’s the Flatr link ? Don’t you realise how hard you’re making it for people to donate ?

Apart from the fact that the show aired at 7am and the donation line isn’t open until 10am when everyone is at work and will have long forgotten about the story, the fact is, I don’t want to ring up and talk to someone. It’s uncomfortable. I just want to give money quietly and anonymously without speaking to anyone via a simple click. Plus, speaking to a real person makes you feel guilty about donating a small amount. You might feel pressured to donate more than you intended.

If they had a PayPal link with some fixed donation denominations (as well as an optional way to choose your own) they could just say “Ok we’re taking donations. Everyone grab your iPadz and go to our site and click the button to donate $5″ … and it would be EASY… and QUICK. People wouldn’t have to think… they wouldn’t have to sit there with their reading glasses on holding their stupid fucking credit card up to the light at weird angles to try and read the numbers on it.

If it was EASY and QUICK, everyone would do it. You would think “I’m going to spent that much on the way to work getting coffee. That’s nothing. I’ll click that button”. You people need to understand… the easier you make payment and the less though required behind it, the more readily people will give you money. Apple know this and that’s why the iTunes and App stores are so damn successful, because it’s easy as hell and you just need to tap one button and instantly the funds are transferred.

Well gaiz, you can act all fucking high and mighty and pretend you’re doing some good by putting a goddamn phone number on your website, but until you’re going to a minute’s extra effort and putting up some sort of proper electronic, online payment link on your site… you’re not really trying and I’m simply not going to wait until 10am and sit on hold to read some bitch my credit card number, which means I’m not going to donate, which is a shame because it would have been a worthwhile cause.

You know.. I was at the pub the other day and I had to pay for a domain through a registrar that I don’t always use. Now my normal registrar takes PayPal, but this one didn’t. Which means I would have had to get my wallet out of my back pocket and sit there holding my stupid fucking credit card up to the light for five minutes trying to read the unreadable fucking numbers, just to make a $10 payment. Now, it’s annoying enough getting your thick-assed wallet in and out of your pocket to pay for your beer. I’m simply NOT going to do it for online shit. You either accept PayPal, or you can go fuck yourself. I moved that domain away to a new registrar simply because it shits me to tears to have to pull my credit card out and enter a zillion fucking numbers and dates and CCV’s and name and address and shit.

ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING ? This shit applies to all you people. Breakfast shows, charity organisations, even people trying to sell stuff online. MAKE PAYMENT EASIER. MAKE IT QUICK AND PAINLESS. OTHERWISE I’M JUST NOT GOING TO PAY YOU. UNDERSTAND ?

… is sitting around with a flat laptop battery and having the last of your three internet tablets fade and go dim and then you suddenly realise “But wait. I still have a smartphone I can get online with. I’m not completely cut off from the world yet !” And you lunge for it only to see the battery in that’s about to give out like a flickering candle and plunge you into electronic social darkness again and you realise with despair “Fuck. Now I’ll just have to talk to my neighbours and my real life friends”. And suddenly you don’t feel like you have 827 friends anymore.

You’re in the real world again.

FML ? Or is it how life was supposed to be?

Some people aren’t happy with their lives. Apparently they’re boring as shit and even when these people think they are awesome and they have it made, they tend to have to put shit on others. In Australia it’s sometimes called “Tall poppy syndrome”, though that normally implies a certain level of success. Sometimes it’s just a case “Damn. I wish my life was as interesting as this person’s”.

Well anyway, thanks to my wonderful blog, and the many, many people who read it, I’ve become a meme. Not like a famous meme. But I do have 4 pages on memegenerator.net so I guess some people had a lot of spare time to spend making fun of me. Whiiiiiich is sorta pointless because I already make plenty of fun out of myself. I mean c’mon. Do you think I would tell you stories about getting robbed by hookers if I was concerned you might embarrass me by bringing them up later ? I don’t care ! It’s funny ! It’s a life experience and I love it.

I mean, I reckon my life is goddamn hilarious and awesome right now and it amuses me so much that not only my ex-wife, but all my ex-friends from more than 11 years ago still read my blog religiously. I mean, they read it so often they even manage to read stories that I’ve chosen to delete less than 24 hours later. So I guess these people, though they claim to despise me and think I’m a loser, are avid readers of my adventures.

And the cool thing is. They don’t even believe that they’re true. They actually think it’s creative writing, when it’s really more like a public diary of my life. That’s sorta flattering. I guess their lives are so regular and boring that they think that I couldn’t possibly be doing the things I claim to be doing. Hahaha, sucks to be you guys I guess.

So anyway, hello Joanna, coz I know you have a fucking miserable fucking life… living in fear of your fiancé finding out that you’re still married.. raising three kids with no job on a shitty cop’s salary and wishing to hell you could do something cool with your life like going and living in Asia… having no computer because you have no money etc. Sucks to be you. I’m sure if I was you I’d be living vicariously through the adventures of my ex-husband and tsk’ing at everything I do so that you can feel superior somehow.

And hello to #warez-oz on EFNet also. It cracks me up that 11 years after you kicked me out for “stealing my best friend’s girlfriend” (though frankly I see it more as her dumping him for me), you still hold a grudge to the extent that I fill up 95% of your ban list on IRC. ROFLMAO. And the dude you’re defending isn’t even part of the channel anymore hahahhaha. As if you could stop me joining if I wanted to. What’s the point in banning me ? Oh my god you think your lives are so awesome because you have some “stable job” doing whatever fucking boring shit you’re doing. And then you see me having fun running around Asia or whatever, and your response is to take unflattering photos of me and turn them into memes so that you can laugh and make fun of me to make your own shitty lives feel better by comparison. Nice work. But I understand. You’re pathetic and bored so you have to take it out on others by trying to imply their lives aren’t as great as they make out.

Well sorry to disappoint but I’m having the time of my fucking life. Getting left by my wife was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I’ve discovered a whole new world. I do so many more things now than I used to. I work more professions and I meet more people and I visit more places. I’m loving it. (Oh wait, is that copyright McDonalds ?)

Come on guys.. You’ve read my blog and the best you can come up with is saying that I’m pathetic for giving roses and “getting no action” or making fun of my comment “It’s hard to distinguish between the stories I tell in my head… and the ones that actually make it online”. Which is also good, because taking quotes out of context is also ideal meme fodder.

One funny thing is how they’ve used my phrase “You can’t make this stuff up” to describe ordinary situations such as “Drank in a bar” or “Met a woman”. Good work. That’s actually how memes work, so that’s actually pretty good shit. “Tiprat 4 life” was a great one too. I’m so glad to see that phrase has had a resurgence in Australia in the last year while I’ve been caught up in Vietnamese culture. “Triprat” was always an awesome phrase and I love that it’s become popular again and I’m so amused to be called that. It’s the Aussie equivalent of being called “White trash” by the way if you don’t know what it means. “Tip” means the garbage dump, so basically they’re saying I’m a rat that scrounges at the garbage dump. LOL ! That’s pretty funny.

Anyway, for those of you who haven’t seen. Here’s just two of the memes that were made up about me which sorta cracked me up. Mainly because they’re the most pointless ones. I mean… The Daniel Morcombe one is great coz I have to give them credit for being so creative as to link me to Daniel Morcombe’s death. I don’t really know why, but I guess that’s why it’s so funny.. because it’s so random LOL ! And the one about Asian pop music ? Well that’s just funny because it’s fucking true ! Who needs meaning in songs when you can listen to bubbly Kpop ? Is that supposed to embarrass me or something ? ROFLMAO… If that was your intention, you certainly failed ! I’m fucking proud of loving bubbly Kpop music. Go listen to your shitty Evanescence or whatever shit you’re listening to and pretend that it has fucking meaning, I don’t give a shit. I reckon “Shampoo” from After School probably has ten times more meaning to it than any Lifehouse song or other crap.

Anyway here’s the memes. Laugh away. I did :”)

Ahahahaha. Am I offended ? No. Am I amused ? Definitely :”)

People were telling me “Fuck the password on the site. Too many people LOVE your site. Don’t ruin it for all of those just for the sake of a few fuckheads who are going to use it against you. You don’t even care about those people anyway”.

They’re right. The site is public again. I will not be silenced.

The truth will always win.

Well, probably not “the end”, but this probably “the end” for a little bit. My story is done. “Love on the Streets of Saigon” has the happy ending I was hoping it would have, and frankly, sooner than I expected. Not to say I’m going home to Australia, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Things have changed back home and my only purposes for returning have vanished and suddenly there is no reason for me to go back ever. While it would be convenient to sort a few things out, they just aren’t that important and not worth the cost of the plane ticket to get there so I just don’t care about them.

But I also don’t want to share anymore. From now on, everything I talk about would be intimate and personal, and while that’s fine when I’m only talking about myself, it’s not appropriate when you’re talking about the person you’re in love with and with whom you share your most intimate secrets.

There’s a lot more I want to tell you about Merry and her background but I’m just not going to. She doesn’t want everyone to know what she’s been through and what her life is like back home.

Suffice to say we are both suffering the same problems right now. We are both dealing with parents who don’t understand us and think we’re fucking retards who have no idea what we’re doing with our lives and don’t understand why we insist on staying abroad, and we’re both dealing with missing our children, which with regard to Merry is a subject I cannot speak of any further. Though at least I got to speak to her kids on the phone tonight. I wish I could speak to mine, but my asshole, criminal, junkie, insensitive, completely un-christian-like cunt of a wife refuses to even tell me where she’s moving to or give me her address to send Suki gifts, let alone see my daughter, and it’s possible I may never see her again.

As such, tonight Merry and I went up to the roof to drink rice wine and take photos and talk about how angry we were with our ex-partners and why our parents just didn’t have a fucking clue what we were going through.

And that’s it. I’m done for a bit. Blogging about my adventures in Saigon has been fun and I know so many of you have enjoyed it, but while I was always aware of the danger of having a public blog and telling everyone about my daily life, it has finally become a liability and everyone I know manages to use the things I say against me in some way.

I simply cannot express myself here anymore without people twisting my words and trying to make them mean whatever suits what bullshit agenda they have, so it’s best I just stop expressing them. As such, while I may blog about some general interest stories about Vietnam from time to time, I think the personal stories are at an end. It’s been lots of fun pouring my heart out to you and showing you what a lonely desperate soul I’ve been, but I’m over that now. Merry and I have our disagreements but we have more in common in our hearts than we could ever have imagined when we first got together and we are both going through the same emotional stresses and difficulties as each other, but now that I share them with someone else, sorry, but I don’t need to share the with all of you anymore.

It’s been great having you all listen but I think a large amount of the personal insights have come to an end just like the way I no longer buy flowers for random girls from Nam like I used to. That time is at an end for the moment.

I guess I hope you all enjoyed the little while I spent looking inside my soul, but I don’t need to show it to you anymore. Too many people I didn’t want to read my shit were reading it and just using it as ammunition for later. I know that’s what happens when you publish things on the internet and I was fine with that before, but now… I’m done ok ?

I hope I’ll still post from time to time, but it’s likely I’ll be writing a lot more stuff privately from now on, because frankly, I don’t even know 95% of you and of the ones I do know, at least half of them probably hate me and will just use everything I say against me, so fuck you. Go find someone else’s blog to read.

Signing off,

pawz.

No, not the rapper. The money. I don’t actually have that much though. I have 49.9 cents in cash and negative $4.90 in my bank account. Cool huh ?

I went out for dinner. My “last supper” if you will. I went to the “other” nearby restaurant. The one that does the great Singapore noodles with vegetables. I don’t really like the place that much because they make me feel really uncomfortable sometimes. They recognise me now so I’m not completely bizarre to them, but they are always still amused and they don’t mind showing it.

At some places you can go in and even when the menu is in Vietnamese and you know few foreigners ever go there, they remain completely professional and act like it’s no big deal that you’re there. But at this place they will all look at me and giggle and they will talk about you and smirk and watch you eat and often they will sneak up behind you and look directly over your shoulder at your laptop for ages to see what you’re doing. I mean, I don’t hate it and I’m not offended but it is really unprofessional and sometimes it really annoys me.

Tonight I choose something different. I chose crispy fried noodles and seafood, beef and veges. It sounded delicious. But as soon as they brought it out I thought “Oh this is going to be awkward”. It was a massive plate of these crispy fried noodles and a big hot pot of stewed meat, veges and seafood with a ladle and a spoon. In retrospect I shouldn’t have spent my last few dollars on a meal I wasn’t familiar with because it was possible I might hate it and then I’d have to leave hungry.

It wasn’t that awful, it was just awkward. I have no idea how you’re supposed to eat those noodles ! I basically broke them up by stabbing them with my chopsticks until they were bite-sized pieces and then I would eat them. I tried dropping them into my bowl with a ladle full of the hot pot ingredients but I realised they quickly went soggy so I decided to eat them as they were and just eat the hot pot stuff separately.

The other stuff wasn’t really great. I don’t mind octopus tentacles so much, but steamed cuttlefish is so fucking chewy. I just can’t eat it. I have to basically slice it in half with my incisors and then wash it down with my drink and quickly swallow it whole with a grimace. I didn’t eat any more of that after the first piece. It’s almost as bad as boiled or steamed sea snake which I would probably prefer car tyre over. The bits of beef were likewise chewy and not very nice. Dammit, why did I pick that for my last meal ? Now I’m going to leave hungry.

Not to mention I was obviously eating it wrong and the staff were all staring at me. Goddamnit, leave me alone for fuck’s sake will you ? One of the senior girls, who are normally more mature and polite enough to not laugh at you came over with a grin on her face and I know some of them know at least a couple of words of English and I was waiting for her to say “Um, ur doin’ it wrong” but she just leaned close with this amused grin on her face and I looked at her and lifted my hands a little in exasperation and mouthed “WHAT ?!” silently at her. She obviously thought I wanted to say something so she leaned closer to listen but I just screwed up my face and shook my head and looked away from her and she chuckled and walked off.

Seriously, I like the food there, well, the Singapore noodles at least, but if they’re going to treat me like that all the time I’m not going to go back again. In the end I was so annoyed and embarrassed that I actually faked a phone call so that I could pretend I was urgently needed elsewhere and I asked for my bill, paid, knocked back my beer and walked off in disgust leaving my meal only half finished. Screw you guys, stop making me feel like an idiot. It’s weird enough being there in the first place without you making me feel embarrassed every time I try to eat an unfamiliar meal. I’m trying my best to be brave and try new things and fit in in a heavily Vietnamese area, and you could at least do the decently of not making me feel like shit to the point where I just want to escape in embarrassment.

I’m so disappointed with them. I wish they could have just come and showed me how I was supposed to eat it so that they could leave me alone and stop staring at me and giggling. And now I wasted my last few dollars on a meal that I didn’t enjoy and didn’t finish. Sigh.

On the way home I looked at how much money I had left. I had enough left for either a bowl of pho tomorrow or a small bottle of brandy. I may not get paid tomorrow. Maybe it won’t be until Tuesday. What would I rather be ? Hungry or sober ?

I bought the brandy. Hunger won’t kill me. Sobriety might. I don’t really care that the meal wasn’t as good as I was expecting. I’m just so annoyed at their attitude. I don’t really want to go back there again after that. That’s why foreigners like Ron don’t go out to restaurants like that, because they’re afraid of the staff making them feel ashamed just because they don’t know how to eat the food or order it or whatever customs you’re expected to follow.

Anyway, so I’m back at home with a little bottle of brandy, about 150ml of cheap cola, and two little 12 cent bread rolls with chocolate filling. I figured I would save them until tomorrow when I was hungry. Didn’t happen. I ate them as soon as I got home because I was starving. I still have a few unpleasant chocolate coins and a small packet of sesame snacks and a few coconut candy lollies that I’m not really fond of. Oh, and half a jar of lollipops. I guess I’ll be sucking lollipops all day tomorrow to stave off hunger. I guess I could walk the 15 kilometers into District 1 and back to get a 10,000 dong sandwich with my last remaining money but I seriously doubt the energy gained would outweigh the energy expended getting there. It’s not like a little hunger will kill me. To be honest I think I should experience it. Joy goes hungry all the time. Maybe being hungry would give me a better appreciation for what some other people go through.

My mum tells me the minister at their church is Vietnamese and I idly wonder whether church ministers are allowed to come into the country as “skilled immigrants” to work. I should find out. I’m sure Joy would love to come and preach in Australia. From what my parents tell me, I think his English is probably better than their minister’s because they say they always have problems understand him, but I have no problems understanding Joy because his pronunciation and vocabulary is very good. It sucks that he’s so skilled and yet still struggles to eat.

I’m just going to tell a couple of other random stories that I’ve forgotten to tell. My local xe om guys tend to know me pretty well. Not because I use them but because I don’t use them and they see me walk past at least a few times a day. The guy on the corner when I get to Pham Hung is especially friendly and twice now when I’ve walked past he’s gone “Heeeeyyyy !” and held out his hand for a high five. Well, a medium five, because it’s normally done at waist height, but it’s cool the way he’s basically like “Hey bro, how’s it going ?” and I guess he knows a little English because sometimes he actually says “How are you ?” which is always cool and cheers me up when I’m feeling down.

Further on down the street there’s another guy who I have gotten to take me places from time to time and he knows damn well that when I walk down the road in the late afternoon that I’m only going out for dinner or to the supermarket so he knows I don’t want a motorbike, but he always asks anyway. This evening on my way home, seeing me walk past for the second time he goes “Motorbike ?” and I shake my head and he chuckles probably thinking “Yeah I knew you didn’t want one, I just wanted to say something”.

But yesterday there was something really weird. On my way into the city I was walking along in the light rain and a group of about 5 teenagers walked past going the other way and they all started talking and looking excitedly at me as I approached and one of them goes “Hello !” and he holds out his hand as I pass and I quickly shake it and say “Hi” without really breaking my stride. But as they pass, one of them runs back and just touches me on the arm and laughs and then runs back to join his friends.

What the hell was that all about ? I can only imagine they had some sort of bet going like “First person to touch a foreigner gets bought dinner by everyone else” because it was all like some big joke for them just to touch me. I mean even if that’s what it was, I’m not offended. It was funny and it made me laugh probably as much as it did them. Whatever it was, it seemed harmless and I continued on down the road chuckling to myself thinking “What on Earth was that about ?!”

Sometimes the weirdest things happen to you in Saigon and that’s why I like to hang out in local Vietnamese areas and walk into the city. If I caught a motorbike into the city I never would have found the weird manga cafe, or run into this weird group of teenagers and whatever. Sometimes you just have to do things differently in order to have different experiences.

Sometimes being poor and having to eat at a random little rice cafe late at night like a did a few nights ago is exactly what you need to do to have the sort of unusual experiences that I have here and frankly, I love it. I mean, it’s very embarrassing when I have to admit to my Vietnamese friends that I actually don’t have any money and they look at me and I know they’re thinking “How can you not have any money ? You’re a westerner. Surely you have a wallet full of money don’t you ?”

Joy said to me yesterday, after I had previously told him that in my apartment in Saigon that I don’t have any furniture or anything “I bet you have lots of possessions at home, right ?” and at first I was going to say “No, not really” because I had gotten rid of a lot of stuff when I was looking at traveling around Australia and when I was running out of money in Vietnam, but on second though, I suppose I do. Sure, I sold my big plasma TV (for an absurd price I might add), but I have quite a number of computers, and an awesome stereo and I have boxes full of consoles and games and books and dvd’s and general household shit.

I don’t think Joy has anything in the world other than a couple of pairs of clothes, a mobile phone and a bible. We went to the Rhum House the other day so that I could charge my camera battery and he ran into a woman that he’d taught Vietnamese to a year or so ago and she was there with her husband. He was giving Joy a real hard time because he was wearing a football t-shirt with a date on it and two team names and this guy was going “You can’t wear that ! Those teams weren’t IN that game that year. That’s totally fucking wrong. They didn’t even play each other. That shirt is a fraud ! Take it off !”

The guy was joking.. I think. But Joy was a bit alarmed and he was quite happy to get out of there and he said to me as we left “It’s not my fault. God provided that shirt for me. I have to wear what he provides. I don’t have any choice” and I said “Don’t worry about him. He was just being an idiot. You shouldn’t throw away good clothes just because someone doesn’t like what it says on it. Forget about him”. But I bet Joy is a tiny bit nervous about wearing that shirt now after the way that guy harassed him.

Later that evening we were sitting at the Bia Hoi place on Bui Vien and Kelly bought some cashews and he wanted to offer Joy some, but he had his nose stuck in the bible so he didn’t bother him, but another girl beside him bought some peanuts and offered him a handful and he took them eagerly and said to me “See ? God provides for me”. I sort of mentally facepalmed and thought “Shit, I didn’t realise you were THAT hungry”. He was obviously expecting a comment and I had to be honest.

I said “Maybe when people believe in god they are just nicer people and then they are more willing to be generous” and he basically said “Yeah, same thing” and I figured “Oh well, I guess we sort of agree then”. I personally think people have free will and I don’t like to think that what we do is determined by any god forcing us to do something, but I guess the way he believes it works is complicated. I just prefer to think that there are some nice people in the world and maybe it sometimes has something to do with belief in god. But If god really makes everything happen, doesn’t that mean that we’re not responsible for anything we do ?

When a mother’s son is killed by a drunk driver and she says “Well, god obviously had other plans for him”, doesn’t that absolve the drunk driver from being at fault ? If god made it happen, then surely that means the drunk drive wasn’t at fault, because god made him get drunk and kill someone. It seems like a slippery slope me to start attributing people’s actions to the will of god, but it makes religious people happy when they’re needy and gives them comfort when they’re sad, so I’m certainly not going to take that away from them and say that it’s otherwise.

I can’t rule out the idea of a creationist god. Certainly not one that created this “Adam and Eve” nonsense, but I vaguely think that maybe our universe could have been brought into existence by some greater being. I like to think about Kelly’s theory of the “dimension of size”. Just as we can create a bowl of sea monkeys by putting ingredients into a bowl of water, creating a universe of a much tinier scale than our own, I think perhaps maybe in an environment far larger than our own universe maybe someone could have put the right ingredients together to kickstart our universe.

I don’t hate the idea of a creationist god. I just don’t like the idea of an interventionist one. This is just my personal opinion, but I think life is random. People die all the time and it has nothing to do with some god taking them away for a higher purpose. It just fucking happens and there’s nothing you can do about it. I understand why some people find that so hard to accept and that surely there must be a purpose to our life, but I think the opposite way.

I don’t think we’re given a purpose. I think we have to create our own purpose in life. Life is random and sometimes good things happen and sometimes bad things happen and you just have to make the best of it. Sure, it must be comforting to think that everything happens for a reason even if you can’t understand what it is, but I can’t deal with that possibility. If I tried to imagine that was the case I’d start thinking “Well, why does god hate poor people ? Why do people in Uganda get fucked over so much ? What’s the ‘purpose’ behind that ? Does god hate Cambodians more than Americans ? Surely if this god was so fair and kind and everything had a purpose he wouldn’t make life so miserable for those people. What have they done to deserve that ? Plenty of poor Vietnamese people believe in god and he’s still giving them the short end of the stick while other lazy non-believers in America and Europe prosper”.

I guess I’m not totally atheist, not totally agnostic and not religious either. I really appreciate what religion gives to people and I can see how much they need it. It’s just that I don’t. I can work out good from bad on my own. Nnot that it means I always act flawlessly mind you. Just like any Christian I sometimes do bad things anyway even when I know they are wrong. I’m not perfect. But I can work out the reason you should be kind to others because I know what it feels like to have someone be unkind to you. Not everyone seems to be able to do that though, and I wonder sometimes if a belief in religion actually weakens our ability to work things out on our own, but I still think it’s mostly a good idea.

Sure, horribly atrocities have been and continue to be committed in the name of religion, but you have to admit that for the most part it makes people happy and gives them a reason to live, and that can’t be a bad thing. So I totally respect religion and I have a lot of respect for people who are devoutly religious……… as long as they don’t try and ram it down my throat, because I think that shows a serious lack of respect for others. And then there’s the assholes who get mad at people for having the wrong religion.

I mean, from my point of view, all religions are good and they all have benefits for those people so I think it’s horrible for people to say “No, my religion is right and yours is wrong and you are going to burn in hell“. We had a discussion about it on IRC recently and someone quoted all these bizarre lines from the bible that literally say that it’s ok to kill your neighbour if he believes in a different god.

People put shit on Muslims and say they are violent and will kill in the name of religion but there are numerous situations where the bible says that anyone who doesn’t believe in the same god as you are a lesser person who deserves to be anything from spat on to killed. That’s horrible. Why can’t people just go “Ok, you don’t believe in the same god as me, but at least you believe in a god, so you can’t be such a bad person”.

I mean, if I did believe in a god, I would be one of those people who think it’s the same god and everyone has just gotten fucked up interpretations of it over the years. “Oh, god is male” “No, she’s female” “God says this is what happens when you die” “No, god says this is what happens”. How the fuck can you know ? Because some millenia old book that’s been re-translated and re-edited hundreds of times says so ? Come on. I think if you believe in the bible you should probably accept that it should be taken very loosely and not literally.

You have to accept the fact that over thousands of years and through many re-translations and cultural differences it must have picked up many, many inaccuracies. If you take it literally to the letter and act on it, you’re very likely not doing what your god intended. And of course, the messages were passed down from an invisible, ephemeral being to some imperfect humans who lacked an iPhone to record it on, so who’s to say that when they got home and wrote it down that they didn’t fuck some of it up ? Stop taking it so literally guys !

Why don’t you just chill out and try and get the general feeling of it right and try not to be so literal ? I mean, ultimately, they all say the same thing; “Be nice to each other”, but we get so caught up in these messages that the fallible humans have added in about “Oh, it’s ok to kill your neighbour if he believes in a different god”.

I’m pretty sure if god had given humans a message, it wouldn’t have been that it was ok to kill your neighbour because he believes in a different god than you because I’m pretty fucking sure that contradicts the “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” message. Like, would god have said that if he knew it meant “Ok, you can go kill your neighbour and in turn your neighbour is going to kill you”. If he did, he’s not a real cool dude, you know what I’m sayin’ ?

You can’t be so contradictory that you say that it’s so important to treat your fellow man with respect and then turn around and go “Yeah unless he was brought up in the wrong country or community and through no fault of his own was taught the wrong religion as a child and therefore deserves to be killed mercilessly”. I’m pretty sure god wouldn’t say that. That’s not very nice, kind, benevolent or fair.

Religion is very conflicting in Vietnam. It’s mostly a Buddhist society but it also has a massive Christian demographic. On my way home this evening I turned into my street and went “Holy shit, am I in the wrong street ?” My street was just jam packed with parked motorbikes. I realised why. The Catholic church across the road from my apartment was having evening mass and hundreds upon hundreds of Vietnamese people were inside, outside and even across the road from the church reciting prayers.

But just as much, if you live in a family of Buddhists as Joy does and you choose to become Christian, you might very well be ostracised and cast out or treated with scorn and ridicule or even threats of violence. It’s terrible that people who call themselves worshipers of any god would act like that against their own family just due to their choice of religion, but sadly that is what religion has become these days. It’s “Me against you. I’m right and you are wrong“. It truly makes me sad that people who claim to be so righteous because they are religious can be so cruel in the name of the religion they claim to represent.

When I was helping seek sponsors for Joy’s religious education, I asked a friend in Australia if he would help Joy with his tuition in the USA and he said “Why can’t he do it in his own country ?”. I assumed that obviously if that were possible, he would do it, rather than traveling across the world at great expense, but I wanted to know the answer, so I asked Joy yesterday over lunch. He leaned closed and whispered very quietly “Communism. We are not allowed. We may practice Christianity here, but we may not learn it. The government does not allow it”.

Well, fair enough. That’s just how it is. I don’t really criticise foreign governments for acting in a certain way. When people get into power they enact certain rules that may seem unfair and unreasonable to others, but that’s their right. Sure, religious oppression isn’t ideal, and only a few decades ago, all religion was banned completely in Vietnam and priests were all sent off for re-education and public worship was forbidden, but the government policy changed in time and it was opened up again and now they appear to have relative religious freedom.

I mean, even in Australia we are uptight about religion. There are schools, public places and even whole towns that forbid Muslims from wearing the hijāb. I think that’s not very cool and I disagree with that and personally I would protest against that because I think if that’s part of their religious beliefs then we should allow it.

Ok, so maybe Australia doesn’t want to allow it, but if that’s the case they need to at least stop being so fucking hypocritical and admit “Ok, we don’t actually allow freedom of religion here. We are a Christian society and there’s certain religions that we don’t allow you to express publicly in certain ways, and religious dress codes are one of them” because we proclaim to be this free and open society where everyone is equal and have the same rights and the ability to express their religion. And we don’t. You can’t claim that and say “Oh yeah it’s a free country…. oh… unless you want to wear a hijāb, because we just don’t allow that. Fuck you, take that shit off in public or we’ll fine you or throw you in jail if you refuse”.

I bet if I was a teacher in a school in Australia and I had a small Buddhist shrine in the corner people would be up in arms saying “YOU CAN’T DO THAT ! YOU CAN’T RAM BUDDHISM DOWN CHILDREN’S THROATS !!!”, but of course it’s totally normal for even a state school to have a crucifix in every room, isn’t it ? Whether you’re in Australia or in Vietnam, under a democratic or a totalitarian government, it’s always “one rule for us, and one rule for them”.

Anyway, I didn’t mean for this to be a four and a half thousand word rant about religion, it’s just that I’ve been exposed to it a bit lately and it’s been on my mind so it turned out that way. Sorry if you didn’t want to read this. But I have opinions and sometimes I want to express them and this is my damn blog and I’ll say whatever the fuck I want on it. And if the government tries to stop me, I’ll go and host it off-shore on some satellite connection where I’m not bound by any nation’s laws.

Because it’s increasingly looking like that’s what people have to do in order to practice freedom of expression. Maybe seasteading isn’t such a crazy idea after all. I tell you what, I’m not saying if I ran my own autonomous country that I would be fair and open to every idea, but I’d certainly do a few things differently, that’s all I can say. Chibihogoshino would have been right into that shit.