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.

A great American died today. A man of talent and a man who roused a generation and defined a culture. Adam Yauch, better known as “MCA”, the lead vocalist of hip hop band Beastie Boys died on Friday the 4th of May 2012, ending a very successful career and bringing to a close one of the most formative American hip-hop bands in history.

The Beastie Boys were a law unto their own. Mixing metal, scratching, and rap with lots of samples thrown in in a weird combination of hard rock, punk and hip-hop, they were a type of music unlike most others, yet still well within the bounds of the hip-hop genre. Inspiring later groups such as Outkast with their melodic tunes which could appeal to the most hardcore b-boy and yet still be accessible enough that regular listeners could find something to love about them. Hell, my 60 year old father has The Beastie Boys in his collection. They spanned at least three generations of fans.

I loved their early songs as great party songs but I never considered myself a real “fan” until their last album, the 2004 epic “To The 5 Boroughs”, a tribute album to the city they loved, NYC. The album was heavily themed to their love of New York City, as the title indicates and a tribute to the strength of the people who lived there, featuring some anthemic post-9/11 songs full of NYC pride such as “Right Right Now Now”, “Time to Build” and the awesome “An Open Letter to NYC” which I consider one of the greatest songs ever. The whole album features the same lyrical themes as their music videos, concentrating on things like public transport and urban society, making millions of listeners dream about the gritty New York life where people would “come together” on the subway. I listened to the album on repeat a couple of times a week when I was doing community service in the local Japanese Gardens where I would spend all day raking attractive patterns into the pathways and slipping into the bamboo to smoke a joint before rocking out to ’5 Boroughs on my iPod, unsure whether I was in Australia, Japan, or deep in New York City.

Adam Yauch was diagnosed with cancer of salivary gland in 2009 and given only a short time to live, but true to his party-hard, punk nature, he hung on for three years before sadly missing out on the Beastie’s induction into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame just last month, and passing away this last Friday.

I’m glad to see that their discography was well and truly seeded by hundreds of people online today and my download absolutely screamed. I think when someone like MCA dies, the record company should declare a one month amnesty on downloads of their album and let everyone share it around for free so that he can be truly honoured.

MCA leaves behind a loving wife and a daughter, pictured below.

I think there’s only one thing left to say.

“You gotta FIGHT, for your RIGHT, to PARTY !!!!”

Let’s hope Adam never stops partying, wherever he is now, though being heavily Buddhist, it’d be nice to believe that his party will go on forever.

Adam Yauch and daughter Tenzin Losel

UPDATE: I’ve been wandering around the net looking at other people’s blogs to see what they’ve had to say about MCA. Sadly most have just posted one or two sentences rather than proper, thoughtful articles, some only a single word link to the news report. But the comments sections have been well used on most blogs. I looked on Twitter and I found this video.

It’s Coldplay covering “Fight For Your Right To Party”, and yes, at first I almost facepalmed too. Until I listened to it. It’s amazing. It just goes to show how many groups’ hearts they touched. And as one of the commenter says, at 3:22 it’s virtually impossible not to have tears in your eyes.

This is something that has to be said. Bitches just do NOT appreciate E-Young’s talent. I’m serious.

I was chatting in this Korean chat room. And despite the fact that it was supposed to be a channel for discussing Korean culture, noone, not the Koreans or the foreigners had any interest in Korean movies or Korean music. They were heathens. Even the Korean owner of the channel admitted he had little interest in Korean music and that I knew far more about Korean music than him. He admitted to be into Guns ‘n Roses and other such shit.

It’s not that I hate that music. It’s ok. But I don’t come into a Korean channel to discuss it. Oh but these people are not OK with what is popular Korean music. I mean, when one person dared criticise me I, for humour’s sake pretended to be obliterating it with SNSD’s “Gee”. The person did not even know what the hell that was. They literally asked “What the hell is that ? Should I have heard of it ?”

I mean, that’s ONLY the most FAMOUS Korean song in all of history, staying number one in the charts longer than any other song in history. I am not suggesting it’s a great or musically talented song. It’s not. But if you fancy that you are into Korean culture and you do NOT know that song, then oh my god, you are the biggest poser fuckwit that ever walked the earth. How sad. How sad.

For amusement’s sake, and I guess to further prove the point, I listed the other Kpop song that was most famous around that era and known internationally – After School’s Shampoo. I explained the story of how when I lived in Vietnam, those two songs were played in that order, religiously at 3am every single morning and how I would leave the TV on so that those songs would wake me up happily and naturally (since it was closer to my wake-up time back home).

I then discussed E-Young. Look, I don’t care what you call her. She has many names, especially to foreigners, but I have and always will call her E-Young. She is a genius. She is a virtuoso. An absolute madman of talent. She is talent itself. There is noone in all of history who I have thought had as much talent as she did in her little fingernail. She is amazing. No, she is far more than amazing. She is mind-blowing. She is just…. Not even human. Look, let me just paste one of her videos here. I have pasted some of these before in the past, but at least one was removed from YouTube due to copyright complaints, but fortunately this uploader has incorporated many of her most famous and most talented performances into once video and this one, for the moment at least, has survived removal.

There’s honestly not much I can say about that that it does not say on its own. If you are not impressed, then no words I say can save your miserable soul.

This girl is amazing. She can dance, sing, play guitar, drums, bass, piano and GOD KNOWS how many other instruments she has not even bothered to show us. I bet she is a violin virtuoso as well but keeps it to herself. She is clearly a genius. She is a one a billion. She is a Mozart in her own right.

But some people still want to be critical of her. They say that all she’s done is “practice hard”. Bullshit. That sort of skill takes more than practice. It takes sheer talent. Someone dared to even suggest that she dropped a few notes and that she was “looking at her fingers”. Fuck you guys. I’ve watched videos of Yngwie Malmsteen himself play this song and even he needs to watch his fingers.

How many musical geniuses do you see in your life who can play so many instruments so well AND be young and beautiful as well ? These people even dared suggest she was “ugly” but I realise this was a troll. That’s absolute fucking crap. E-Young is a goddess. She is above everyone.

It’s not that I want to put her on a pedestal. I honestly want her to be “just another cute girl with some talent” that I can quietly adore. But she is not. She is far beyond this. She is something incredible.

If you don’t see this, honestly, I feel sad for you. To those people who just want to troll me because they think it’s funny to insult her just to rile me up, that isn’t funny. It’s sad. Find something else to pick on, because she is clearly far beyond your stupid comments about being untalented and ugly.

I may have a sense of humour and I admit that most of what I do online is an act. But this girl is amazing and if you actually genuinely, trolls-aside can’t see that, then… I don’t even want to talk to you. I pity you. Go listen to your shitty Axl Rose songs from the early 90′s and pretend you understand what culture and talent is about. You have no fucking idea.

Have you ever watched a movie that was absolutely unbearable, but which you just had to see through anyway ? I don’t mean that it was awful. I just mean that it was immensely painful, awkward, upsetting etc.

I bought this Korean movie when I was overseas. It looked on the cover to be a happy, feel-good movie about some guy and a sweet, innocent looking girl. But an innocent movie it is not.

It’s called 허브 in Korean, and “Herb” in English, and I swear it has to be the most fucked up, frustrating movie I have ever seen in my life. It is just IMPOSSIBLE to watch.

The basic premise is this. There’s girl. She’s a little mentally handicapped. She’s not retarded per se, just developmentally challenged. She lacks maturity and she doesn’t really understand the world that well. She meets this guy. He sees her coming out of some office and thinks she’s most likely a beautiful international lawyer or something. He makes an absurd scene in order to find a reason to date her. They go out. She admits to being unable to ride a bike and he helps her. She falls off and her bag spills out and he finds her ID card which identifies her as being mentally handicapped.

That’s when things take a turn for the worse. He freaks out and won’t have anything to do with her. When she approaches him, he is very angry and rude and smashes the present she has bought for him and he tells her he never wants to see her again. But she keeps appearing in his life and he obviously can’t stop thinking about her.

So… they get back together. But things are not simple, by any means. She has a pretty confused life. Her mother is dying of cancer, though she really doesn’t understand what’s going on. Her niece stops talking to her, and she is unable to explain her feelings to her mother. She suddenly gets a hint that her mother is dying and freaks out. Her mother tells the guy that he must break up with her daughter so that she is the last person to ever break her heart.

The whole thing is really messed up and I honestly had to stop the movie early on (when he found her ID card and rejected her) and not resume it for more than two weeks. When I did, things just went from better to worse repeatedly and I honestly could not watch more than a few minutes at a time without becoming incredibly frustrated with the world and everyone in it.

It’s just so hard to work this movie out. One minute it’s a romance. The next it’s light-hearted comedy. Then it’s serious drama and the next it’s some crazy surrealist stuff with three inch tall fairy tale characters running around representing the girl’s inner turmoil.

Just when you think it’s going to go good, it goes bad. When you think it’s going to go bad, it comes good. It’s the single most infuriating movie I’ve watched for years. I mean, I *know* it’s obviously going to have some sort of happy conclusion (other than that the mother is obviously going to die tragically) because the cover art leads us to believe this, but like many Korean movies, it explores the nature of human relationships and exposes the worst parts of people.

Japanese movies love to explore what it means to be human. Whether they are sad or happy, they always try to focus on why we exist and what the reason is that people are alive. But Korean movies are different. They focus on people. On their hearts and what drives them and what makes them both good and bad. And honestly, sometimes I just can’t handle it.

There are a few very beautiful, quotable lines from the movie, but my favourite has to be when the daughter has been told by her niece that when someone packs all their goods to go away it means they are going to die. Her mother has been doing this for days, and she freaks out and starts burning everything. When her mother finds her and tries to calm her down, in her innocence she screams “Don’t go. Just pay the late fee and go later”.

Honestly, I still haven’t finished it. The further I get into it, the more complicated and heartbreaking it becomes. I just had to explain right now how it made me feel. I hate this movie. It makes me so angry. But it also exposes the fucked up, raw nature of human relationships. In a way it’s over the top. It’s charicaturised. The guy (a junior police cadet) hates her one minute, and then ten minutes later he’s there by her side and they kiss. It’s quite a whirlwind. But the point is, as dramaticised as it is, there’s nothing in that that you could say isn’t real.

The situations are very real. The people are real. Maybe the time is a bit compressed and sometimes things are more black and white than they would be in real life, but the way the craziness of the situation rubs off on the guy and he loses it in a supermarket and starts breaking everything, buckling under the stress of the situation. That is all very real.

Normally I love movies about insanity and mental illness because they’re sweet and funny and things always work out in the end, even if the ending is essentially sad. But this is not one of those movies. This movie is complicated and messed up and will screw with your mind and your emotions in a way I can’t think of many others doing.

The performance of the girl, Sang-eun is… I must say, extraordinary. Honestly, it is mind-blowing. The expressions on her face. Her childlike innocence. Her frustration, anger and at other times sweet love are just amazing. I am sure that the only reason I continue to watch it is to see what happens to her and how she reacts to each situation. I understand why this movie is such a classic that it has been shipped overseas as an example of classic Korean popular cinema. It is an amazing movie full of some of the most stellar acting performances I’ve seen in my life.

But it’s also undoubtedly the single most painful movie I’ve ever watched in my life, and I’m quite positive that most people would give up on this movie half-way through and just say “I simply cannot watch this anymore”. I did. But I came back to see Sang-eun’s pretty face and sweet character as she deals with all the trials in her life. All the actors deserve applause in this movie, and I don’t just mean the girl, her mother, and the boy, but also the emotional aunt and the crazy and constantly shocked head of the police unit.

Isn’t it funny that sometimes the worst movies are the best movies ? I love sad movies that make you upset and feel something, but this movie makes you feel EVERYTHING. I honestly cannot think of any movie that has made me feel so many different emotions constantly one after another. The term “emotional rollercoaster” simply does not come close to doing this movie justice.

Watch it at your peril.

YouTube turned 7 years old today. It’s 7 years to the day since the first video was uploaded.

Yet, YouTube has become a sea of mediocrity. Gone are the days when you could go there and watch classic music videos. Even fair use has no place there, with even a small piece of copyrighted music use causing your video to be yanked from the internets. The best things about YouTube aren’t there anymore. And what are we left with ? A billion vloggers, cat videos, people reviewing other people’s reviews of other people’s videos, more cat videos, strategically placed viral videos, and even more cat videos.

YouTube is so boring, and people are more easily entertained by its idiocy than they were by television in previous generations, because at least you couldn’t waste time watching TV at work and then sharing it with your friends on Facebook or IRC. But now, in the age of “Like” buttons and auto-tweets, sharing the latest idiotic video you’ve just seen seems to be necessary no matter how boring it is.

How much utter SHIT is on YouTube ? Well, YouTube has no hesitation in telling us on their press page. Let’s review a few of the more staggering statistics.

• 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.
• Over 4 billion videos are viewed a day
• In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or almost 140 views for every person on Earth
• More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years

That last one is pretty amazing right ? So, YouTube has put the art of video creation into the hands of the masses, right ? That’s a good thing, surely ? But wait. I have two more staggering statistics to quote you. It’s impressive how much video has been uploaded, but how much time do people waste on YouTube ? This much…

• Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• 500 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook, and over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute

Yes. I am deadly serious. The 3 billion hours figure is very hard to comprehend, right ? Humans aren’t good at dealing with big numbers. Our minds go to mush. But that second one just floored me. 500 YEARS worth of human life is wasted, EVERY SINGLE DAY, by people watching YouTube videos just on Facebook alone !

I mean, I hate how much time is wasted on Facebook in general, but I’ve never been able to quantify it. But that figure… that is just incomprehensible to me. Over 500 years worth of YouTube on Facebook. So how much is the total viewing time of YouTube ?

Why, it’s 11,000 years worth of video PER DAY. That’s all.

All I can say is, turn off the YouTube people. You are wasting your lives.

This will mean nothing to those of you who do not know who Cuca is, but if you are a regular reader of my blog then you probably know, because I have spoken about her many times.

She’s just some girl who despite being born in the 21st century, loved early Morning Musume songs from the previous one. She was only eight years old when she put herself in front of a camera and did her first song to the world, covering Morning Musume predominately, but on occasion other groups.

Cuca became very popular over time, with many songs achieving several thousand views. I mean, Ray William Johnson is the most famous person on YouTube with 1.7 billion views at the time of writing, but he’s been going for much longer and his silly comedy videos and repeats of other YouTube videos obviously appeal to a much larger audience.

But this week, at the age of 10 or maybe 11 years old, Cuca achieved a milestone. She reached over FIVE MILLION FUCKING HITS !!!

How the FUCK a ten year old girl who just covers dance tracks from a group that performed before she was even born manages to get FIVE MILLION HITS I cannot imagine, but do it she has.

Every single video she uploads has people screaming “Please Tsunku, sign Cuca to Morning Musume… she is a genius !” but so far this hasn’t happened due to her young age, but I know that sooner or later the Cuca phenomenon will be too big and some big labels will be scrambling over each other to say “Cuca.. we want you… we NEED you”.

I won’t go on at length, but I will just say this… Cuca is a phenomenon and I am constantly jealous, wondering how I can raise some beautifully talented child who will achieve five million hits on youtube before her 11th birthday.

So here’s a video of Cuca. It’s not her best video or most special, but it is the video that pushed her over that 5 MILLION HIT barrier.. so it’s pretty special and I dearly hope that her parents realise how incredibly famous she has become and encourage her talent… but in the meantime….

CONGRATULATIONS ON FIVE MILLION VIEWS CUCA !!!

Cuca’s five millionth-viewed video was this one.

I was reading The Australian on the train today (yes, in broadsheet form, not online) and I encountered this article by this woman about how Australia’s overseas arm of the ABC, The Australia Network was a pile of shit and should be scrapped to “save the country a few million dollars”. I cannot provide a link to the full article as a large number of the articles in The Australian are now only available to paying customers, but I will include the first two paragraphs here.

We have been travelling around Asia for the past three weeks. In some of our spare time, we have tuned into the ABC-produced Australia Network channel aired on local television, as well as a number of other channels.

What is my conclusion on the Australia Network? Repetitive, pointless tosh. It is completely unclear who the intended audience is, the mix of programming is quite bizarre and the news services are patchy, unreliable and boring. Frankly, a lot of the output looks cheap and dated.

She goes on to cite that it contains an eclectic mix of many outdated dramas, children’s shows and “cobbled together news from various sources”, and says that Sky provides a far better Australian channel. Now I can’t comment on that for a simple reason; despite how much time I’ve spent in Asia, I’ve never SEEN Sky’s channel because it’s only available in premium subscription packages in expensive hotels. It is not part of the bog-standard satellite package that pretty much every person in Asia has access to like The Australia Network is. I was so incensed at her denigrating comments about AN that I immediately ripped out my laptop to fire off a letter to the editor, which I have included below.

In regard to Judith Sloan’s article “Please axe Australia Network” (April 17, 2012) I must say I disagree wholeheartedly. As an Australian who grew in PNG with just the ABC, I have in recent years been living in various countries in South East Asia, and I consider the Australia Network an invaluable cultural aid to foreigners. In Saigon I enjoyed the excellent tennis coverage in my favourite bar. In Bangkok I lived in a cheap short term apartment and one of my greatest pleasures was having lengthy political debates with my Icelandic neighbour who astounded me with his intimate knowledge of Australian politics, contrasting Gillard and Rudd to Abbott and rattling off the names of some politicians that even I wasn’t too familiar with. When I asked him how someone from as far away as Iceland who does not use the internet could acquire such detailed knowledge of Australian politics he said simply “We only have two English channels here in the building; HBO and the Australia Network. I hate movies, so I watch AN all the time”.

The fact is not everyone uses the internet, especially to research foreign news, nor does everyone have access to Sky as Ms Sloan suggests unless they are staying in a high class hotel. The average person DOES have access to the Australia Network though and I frankly believe that the interest in Australia and the tourism it generates among the local people in Asia are well and truly worth the running cost of throwing a bunch of re-runs and some “cobbled together” news stories on the air. Get out of the Hilton and into the suburbs, Ms Sloan. People watch AN, not Sky, and it’s an invaluable Australian cultural resource to the people of Asia.

Now, for the more scathing commentary. I don’t know what sort of posh hotels Ms Sloane has been staying in on her whirlwind tour through Asia, but having stayed in many cheaper hotels in 5 different countries I can assure you, I have never seen Sky’s channel offered, so I can only assume she was in the Hilton or Sheraton or some such crap. Normal people don’t have access to Sky. It’s not available in bars, cafes, or most hotels and it’s not a part of any of the standard satellite TV package that I’ve seen Asian locals subscribe to. Perhaps it is available to people who subscribe to specialised English packages, but obviously that is NOT the greater Asian community, is it ?

And to complain that the programming is out of date.. what the fuck ? Who cares ?! It’s in a foreign country for fuck’s sake. They don’t care if the episode of Neighbours they’re watching is TWENTY years out of date. It still gives them an impression of what life in Australia is like. I think episodes of Sea Patrol and The Wiggles would be most welcome to Asian families who want to expose their children to a little more English programming so that they can practice their English language skills, and other than shit like HBO which is just back-to-back American movies, there is little to no other English content available to Asian viewers, and if they can get exposed to Australian TV as part of their standard package then that’s a massive boon to Australia.

As to the mix of programming.. well it’s one channel isn’t it ? Of COURSE it’s an odd mix of programming. It’s not meant to be for you DUMB SHIT fucking Aussies to catch up on the latest programs on because you’re TOO GODDAMN STUPID, lazy or disinterested to bother exploring any Asian TV shows. I certainly can’t see Ms Sloane ducking down to the markets or to a local DVD store and picking up some great Asian dramas or movies (subtitled in English of course). No, she seems to seriously expect to be able to find the latest Australian programs being aired overseas so that she can actually visit Asia without ACTUALLY having to experience Asian culture. Fuckwits like her REALLY piss me off. What the FUCK sort of Australian on a “three week tour of Asia” (what the fuck can you even SEE of Asia in just three weeks anyway ?) has enough free time to even sit around watching TV in the first place, let alone wastes their goddamn time watching TV programs FROM THEIR HOME FUCKING COUNTRY ?!?!

Jesus, fucking Christ. What a moronic bitch. It’s not FOR YOU, Ms Sloane. It’s FOR the Asian people, and they don’t mind if it’s a bit out of date or the programming is varied. Most of them are probably struggling to understand the English language and want to watch it in an attempt to better understand colloquial language and customs and see what life is like in Australia.

I mean for fuck’s sake… In Saigon, it was the TV channel that was aired pretty much 24/7 at my favourite bar, because it was one of the only English-language channels available in a standard satellite TV subscription, and when the bar was quiet I used to regularly sit there watching Australian sport, dramas, documentaries and such while putting away a few beers. Noone fucking HAS Sky because it’s expensive and costs extra on top of your normal plan. The Australia Network however is ubiquitous.

I myself was sitting in Bangkok when I saw a promo for the Kuranda Scenic Railway come onto The Australia Network and I immediately went “Oh wow… Kuranda. I’ve always wanted to go there”, and when I got back to Australia, the first chance I had, I hopped a train to the other end of the state just so I could ride the train that I saw advertised on TV in Bangkok. In fact, I’m writing this very article on the Sunlander train as it heads back down the coast after a lovely week in Cairns which is FULL of Asian tourists I might add.

So there you, go. If The Australia Network managed to convince me, as an Australian resident who spent years in Far North Queensland, to board a train and spend a week in Cairns, spending money on travel, taxis, hotels, bars, food and souvenirs, then surely the amount of tourists it brings to Australia from Asia and the money it injects into the local economy must be incalculable. If it costs us “a few million” to throw a bunch of worn-out docos, dramas, kids shows and a little bit of current events and news onto an overseas TV network, then surely it is worth EVERY GODDAMN CENT when it brings such cultural awareness to the local people.

Goddamn stupid bitch needs to get out of her ritzy hotel and go visit some real Asian households and she’ll quickly realise that The Australia Network is not only one of the most valuable English-language cultural resources available in Asia but that it’s the ONLY one most people have access to. Maybe if she spent more time talking to local people and less time sitting in her fucking hotel whinging that they only have years old episodes of Sea Patrol on TV for her to watch, she might have actually learned something about Asia, instead of wasting her time trying to watch Australian TV in a foreign country. Fucking moron.

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.

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 like art, but I’ve never owned any until I moved to Saigon. Nice art is expensive in Australia and the best I could ever afford was some framed prints of big cats and even those were costly. But like everything else, art is much cheaper here, and some of it is very beautiful.

On Sunday when we were all eating in Pham Ngu Lao after we came back from our camping trip, a guy came up and wanted to sell us paintings. Noone else was interested, but I was. He had literally hundreds. A whole folder full. It took me ages to go through, picking out the ones I liked and then narrowing them down to three of the best ones. They weren’t particularly cheap. I had to haggle to get what I wanted. The guy wanted $12 just for one small rice painting, because black and white rice paintings are considered to be more beautiful and harder to do than coloured silk paintings which are cheaper, but I wanted at least one of each.

So of course I haggled like mad. It should have cost me 550,000 for two silk and one rice painting, and the guy was willing to go to 450,000 but I just said “No. I told you. 400,000 for three is all I will pay” and I turned back to my meal. He thought about it and then said “Ok ok. 400,000″. Now I don’t have a lot of money right now, nor a proper job, so I really shouldn’t be buying art. But I saw these and I just *wanted* them. I have always wanted some of this beautiful Asian artwork and I managed to get three very beautiful original paintings for $17. I’m not complaining. They’re not huge but I’d say they are about 40 cm in height.

So today I went out to buy some double sided tape to stick them up with. Later I will get them framed because right now they’re just stuck onto pieces of white cardboard, but for now this is the best I can do. At least I have them on my wall. Now I’d like to share them with you. First, just as regular images, and underneath I will link to the full quality versions so that if you want to zoom in and appreciate their true beauty you can. Enjoy them. I am. I’m actually sitting here wearing my kimono, drinking French wine and looking at my artwork. God I’m classy, aren’t I ?

There’s this wall in Pasteur street with a large piece of graffiti on it. I’ve seen it before but tonight I noticed that it’s dedicated to the artist’s grandmother who’s passed away and I just thought that was so awesome that I had to take a photo of it. It’s a really great piece and I googled for the guy’s tag which is “Daos” and I found his Flikr page with heaps of artwork on it and I left him a comment saying that I really liked his work and I thought it was great that he dedicated it to his grandmother and I gave him links to my work.

He emailed me just now and said he loved my Assange stencil and wanted to see more and encouraged me to keep doing stuff like that. I think he’s from Hanoi, but he must be in Saigon now because he asked how long I was here for and suggested we go out for a coffee and talk about art. Dunno if I’ll have time now since I’m going to go home on Sunday night but I dunno. Maybe he’ll have time and we can go chat. I assumed that his piece had been authorised because it was so huge and in the middle of a busy street but he said that it was an illegal work and that’s why he liked it so much. He painted it one afternoon last year and it’s one of his favourite works and he said it was a really great day when he did it.

Street art is fucking awesome. It lets people express themselves. It’s amazing to look at. And sometimes it brings together two total strangers from different parts of the world and gives them something to talk about. I do hope I have time to catch up with him while I’m here. I told him about the stencil I did after the Brisbane floods which said “Stay Dry West End”. I must have done about 50 off them all over the suburb with probably 10 right outside the art gallery alone. The Courier Mail actually featured a photo of it on the front of their website with the caption “Words of inspiration for local residents” which was so good to hear and made running around in the mud all night putting them up totally worth it. At one point I was hanging out at my local pub and some guy said “Have you seen all those stencils up around Melbourne Street ? They’re pretty cool. I laughed when I saw them” and I said “Seen them ? I DID them” and he said “Wow that’s awesome. Good on you. Everyone’s been talking about them”.

They were just shitty basic stencils with a few simple words on them, but they got a lot of exposure and apparently it touched people’s hearts and made them smile which was the whole reason I did it. I mean yeah, it was illegal and probably pissed off the owners of the businesses that I put them on a bit, but after a flood like that, it was just one more thing to clean up and I’m pretty sure that the benefit of making people’s day a tiny bit better when they saw it far outweighed the annoyance caused for those who had to clean them up.

I didn’t actually have any photos of them because I lost them on my old laptop, but I thought “I wonder if maybe anyone put them online” and I googled for the words, and sure enough, yep, they are online on several sites, and lots of people have commented on them. One guy called it an “open-ended letter of solidarity” which is great. You can call it graffiti and say it’s illegal and irresponsible, but when people say things like that about it, you’re glad you did it. People would have been depressed and upset after the floods, and seeing this brought a smile to their faces and made them feel a little bit better and they would have gone through their day a little happier than before they’d seen it. That makes it worth it. You do it to make people think and to make their lives a little better. Normally it’s a one way medium and you never know what people think of your work, but when the Courier Mail said those nice words about it, and when people posted it on the internet and said how much they liked it it made me really happy.

Anyway, here’s Daos’s work, followed by my own. Note the dedication at the top which says “My grandma. Rest in Peace”. Obviously he has skill and I don’t, but ultimately we both did something that people liked. He emailed me back and we’re gonna catch up on Sunday morning for coffee and chat.

The other day I watched the latest Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Wife”. It was the best episode I remember seeing in many many years and it literally brought tears to my eyes at the end it was so emotional and beautiful. I decided to see who had written it because I was wondering “Was that a Russel T Davies (my favourite writer), a Steven Moffat or a Terrance Dicks perhaps ?”. It was none of them. It was a guest writer by the name of Neil Gaiman. I had no idea who that was, and it wasn’t until my friend Peta said that she was really excited about being about to watch the new “Neil Gaiman episode” of Doctor Who that I bothered to look him up.

He’s a well known writer and has written books and screenplays including Coraline, Mirrormask, Stardust and even did the english script for the legendary Studio Ghibli anime movie “Princess Mononoke” among other things, and apparently he has a unique and twisted bent on the world (he certainly does in those first two, god they’re weird movies) and apparently he was asked to write a script for Doctor Who, which he did, and it was nothing short of fantastic. So good that after watching it I felt the need to review the credits and see who had written it.

He’s working on the screenplay for a new movie at the moment. It’s an adaption of one of the “four great masterpieces of Chinese literarature” from the Ming Dynasty in the 1590′s called in Chinese “西遊記”, in Japanese “Saiyuki”, and in english “Journey to the West”, but you still probably have no idea what I’m talking about. So I’ll tell you the name of the most famous version known to western society. It’s known here as “Monkey Magic”.

Yes it’s the classic tale of Tripitaka the priest and the three demons, Monkey, Sandy and Pigsy who aid Tripitaka on his quest to get to Tenjiku and retrieve the holy scriptures that will save the world. The story has been re-told countless times, and the recent 2006 TV re-make of the series counts as the 5th version of the story in Japan alone. The latest version was my favourite as it’s dramatic, it’s epic, and it’s emotional. It’s an adult’s show rather than the previous children’s show, and it’s billed as a “drama” which it is, despite still containing the cliched fight scenes we all remember. One of the coolest things is that in every episode, before a fights starts, Monkey will say to the antagonist “God or Buddha may forgive you. But I will NEVER forgive you !” and the fight begins.

To have Neil Gaiman write the screenplay for a new English movie version of this classic story is going to be brilliant and it will finally bring the story back to western audience’s attention for the first time since the 1970′s and I truly hope it is the great success that it deserves to be, although I think that with the amount of people who grew up watching Monkey Magic as kids, it cannot fail to be. I remember sitting around the black and white TV (all we had) in the early 80′s somewhere in Papua New Guinnea watching the English dubbed version Monkey Magic every afternoon, broadcast from Australia on the ABC. It was part of growing up. Everyone knows that show, so I urge you to keep an eye out, because in the next few years, it’s going to hit the big screens all around the world, and I expect it to be nothing short of brilliant with Neil Gaiman behind the script. I’ll end with a photo from the 2006 TV series and subsequent movie (which I am proud to have imported from Japan on Blu-ray), featuring the main characters as you will remember them: