splinter

tpo

i was speaking to an older japanese businessman the other day and he was describing a wayward employee who suffered from a distinct lack of TPO. after playing along like i knew what he was talking about i decided to look up the term later on. it turns out that the initials are a japanese pseudo-anglicism for time, place, occasion - a reference to the notion that one should adopt different behaviour in different situations. interestingly, as a pseudo-anglicism, TPO is a word that the japanese use in the mistaken belief that it exists in english. so, in short, don't believe those who try to tell you that time, place, occasion matters.

regrets of the dying

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chris cunningham

saw chris cunningham at the opera house yesterday. some of the first few things he played freaked me out and made me feel sick. which was kinda cool. i don't care too much what emotion a performance arouses in me, just that it arouses an emotion.

invoice

i had an argument with this guy today about an invoice.

judge who masturbated in court

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you tube

you tube - finally a way inside a teenage girl's bedroom.

global warming opening up shipping lanes in canada for more mining.

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the fall song, eat yourself fitter comes to mind.

tolstoy

there is an old cafe where i go and sit and write. tolstoy used to write in the village square for inspiration, that is, if you believe seinfeld and, frankly, what torah-fearing satirist doesn't. the cafe is a place where i can be away from my room and away from the memory of death that clings to me there. i seldom buy anything, content to sit with my headphones on shielding me from the popular music that blares from the speakers buried at the back somewhere. the headphones also protect me from the inane conversations that go on in a place like this. it's ok though, one has to make concessions. the staff are good enough to let me sit there without buying a coffee and i love the cavernous, dingy ambience.

it's a place where i can be more in my own head than anywhere else. funny that one should go to such a public place to seek solace in the depths of one's psyche but, as yeats said, you can distil your own identity nowhere so clearly as a place where you do not belong.

there is a tv in the corner that plays sport mostly. i use it as a distraction from time to time from whatever i am working on at that particular moment. recently i have spent an hour or two at the cafe before an evening lecture, offering my imagination one last chance to come out and play for the day before it faces an onslaught of facts and rules at university. anyway, it has been with obvious disappointment that i have noticed my ex lover's new celebrity fuck buddy has got himself a regular spot on a weekly sports panel that screens right at the time i sit down to quietly ruminate. i mean, for goodness sake, i'm trying to do the right thing here. i'm not calling her, i'm not feeling sorry for myself, i'm trying to live my life and this is the sick, perverted reward i get.

this does not bode well for my output this semester. if i have to continue to glance up and see that hairy, unwashed b-lister scratch himself every time he comes on screen then i may end up churning out something titled as poorly as "war, what is it good for?"

this is awesome

this is america

more on the same shit

developer of compact disc dead

the guy who led development of the cd died. he was trained initially as an opera singer hence the 75 odd minute capacity of a cd (the length of beethoven's ninth symphony).

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robbo vs banksy

"skinny little art fag" explains robbo vs banksy battle

the show

i think today i'll write. write about my dreams. write about the dream and the dream i had last night.

in my dream i saw a showman, performing in a dimly-lit antechamber. gradually he built up to the final act where he made us take our pants off and tell everybody else our story in our underwear. it was a fun exercise. i woke thinking how far we must be from the truth if a showman can bond us and enliven us with such a zany act.

but life's not full of showmen, well, unless you're in the circus. do they even still have the circus?

maybe i'll go to the drive-in today, the very last one in town. i'll sit and watch a movie, with my pants pulled all the way down.

kevin costner

everybody knows why every movie kevin costner's been in since the nineties has floppeed - it's obviously a government conspiracy brought about by how close he got to the truth in jfk all those years ago.

or something.

the farm

i walked around the old farm where i had lived. it had been turned into a bed'n'breakfast, so at least i could pay to visit it. the old man who had come to possess it after we left years and years ago was odd but warm and welcoming. as he showed me my old bedroom i recounted to him the first memory that sprang to mind. i told him how i remembered a proud and insane bird who used to bang irascibly against my window first thing in the morning, disturbed by its own image. strange that my slumber should be interrupted by this animal's reflected delusion. the man said with a smile that the very same thing still happened to him now. i couldn't believe it.

as i set out on my walk the man related how he had been overcome by emotion when he had visited places from his past. i discounted his warning, inured as i thought i was to overwhelming feelings of that nature. away from the farmhouse the memories came back, slowly at first. the bend in a river, the quicksand in the marsh, the smell of a hollow log. as i climbed the hill i wondered what the view would be like. when i reached the top and turned around the first thing that struck me was that i could see much further than i remembered was possible. as i looked over the distant terrain, the neat, pine covered hills nudged by the gathering rain clouds, i was suddenly overcome by the emotion the old man had warned me of. as i collapsed in a teary heap i thought of all i had lost, all i had missed and all i had not felt in those twenty something years since i had lived here. i thought of my sick mother. and i thought of the girl i should have had by my side. she would have been surprised at my tears. some of them were for her.

it was the most beautiful thing i can remember seeing. in my manic state i was careful to make sure i was out of sight of the farmhouse although i'm sure the man would have understood...

fuck shit stack etc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJQU22Ttpwc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es3H0_IMLvo

ryde lantern club

i won't be hurrying back to the decidedly plebeian used clothing outlet, the ryde lantern club, for a while after my episode there today. an old hag-like woman attempted to strike up conversation while i was handling an armani t-shirt that had somehow found its way inside the confines of this shit hole charity boutique. "everything here is so expensive," she began. "how much is that then?" she inquired.
"3 dollars," i answered.
"yeah, the prices here have gone up, that's for sure" she went on.
i tried to explain it was an armani t-shirt. "that's a brand is it?" she inquired. when i indicated it was she gave me a smug look and continued, "oh, so you're one for the brands then."
"yeah, lady that's why i shop at the ryde lantern club," i thought to myself as i turned my shoulder to the old bitch and pretended to examine some dented china nearby. what the fuck is it with the particular class of bogan you find in ryde. you'd pay more than 3 bucks for an armani t-shirt in fucking kazakhstan, i'm sure.

to top things off, as i was leaving i heard one of the old birds who volunteered there say to her friend, "oh well, at least he's got his intractable diarrhea under control."

bi-winning

self esteem

the problem with focusing on chicks with low self esteem as potential mates is that their medication inevitably fucks up their sex drive. checkmate loser.

humility

in a perfect society, the citizens would not be motivated by fear but by humility.

erotic ear-cleaners in demand

where else but in japan?

victorian-era antique dildo

lots to say

the more you have to say, the harder it is to start saying it.

onyxia nazi

i would love to party with this guy:

onyxia nazi

darth vader adidas

darth vader adidas

guns and god

the thing i don't get about americans is their dual fascination with guns and god. i mean, isn't believeing in god all about having faith? so where do the guns fit in? "i believe jesus christ is our lord and saviour and i have faith that he will protect us and provide for us. and just in case he doesn't, i'm packing a 12 gauge shotgun."

loretta's scars

only live version that i've seen.

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real superheroes

i dunno if this is cool or shit

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video

seymour at the cafe

looking over the men seated at the cafe he frequented, seymour realised they were mostly older than him. the fragments of conversations he overheard didn't concern him, the music they played over the radio was from an era past and a discerning observer would surmise the men were mostly here to avoid spending the afternoon with their wives. as they smoked at their tables on the street they grandiosly discussed large currency exchanges and challenged each other's authority on the subject with what appeared to be overzealous vigour.

seymour was always fascinated that people could have so much to talk about. he thought that, if he combined all the worthwhile conversations from his life together, he would struggle to fill much more than a day with talk. but these folk appeared to really enjoy their conversations, especially the newly acquainted boys and the girls, crouched across the table from one another in anticipatory glee. soon enough their thighs would be intertwined. soon enough their hearts would be at odds. anticipation was not a state that seymour relished. it had been a long time since that. he liked to reflect, knowing that the sun had left him unblistered for a day at least without a care for tomorrow and the horror it might bring.

moving on

it's a hard call making the decision to move on from someone you love. we don't always have the luxury of choice in that regard. sometimes people are taken from us. but when you show someone your very essence and they resent what they see then you can't rationally let them remain close to you.

life's balance sheet

if my life were a company, i would have been charged with insolvent trading by now.

kristina keneally

i had a dream about kristina keneally last night. nothing particularly noteworthy about that. except that most of the dreams i have about her end up with me moving a motion in her lower house. the dream last night involved her changing her hair as a last ditch effort to sway nsw voters. this morning when i woke up i had to think hard for a few moments about whether it had actually happened or not. i guess that's less a reflection of my delirium and more a reflection of the current state of nsw politics.

new years 2011

well after the clock had ticked over, i made a resolution that i would live life. considering i've successfully managed to adhere to my previous two new years' resolutions, i'm on something of a streak.

exactly what living life entails i'm not really sure. but i do know i've made a decent start in keeping to the resolution by lasting about 36 hours without sleep to date. time to crash.