Category Archives: Life

Poverty Bites

(A Whinge)

My iPod is broken again. It won’t play when I press play and it keeps hanging. Worse, this time it was definitely my fault. (I dropped it last week, and then it got a bit wet on Friday.) So I’ll have to pay. Which means it probably won’t be getting fixed for a wee while.

No iPod makes Homer something something.

Meanwhile, I still need a new keyboard. And I owe the #$@& tax office $60. And look, my chronic fare evasion finally caught up with me:

Ticket Infringement Notice

$154. Ouch. That’s this wayward commuter told.

I will be too poor to acknowledge Christmas at this rate. No cards for anyone! I can’t be having with such festive frivolities.

Prospective wealthy benefactors: we should talk.

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Today Was A Strange Day

I did nothing at all today. Like, almost literally nothing at all.

I worked for four hours in the morning like I do every weekday morning. Then I came home and just sort of.. thought about things.

Actually that’s not true. I didn’t think about anything, very much. I was just kind of blank and empty. All day long. It was not at all unpleasant. It was cleansing and nice.

I answered a little bit of email. In the early evening I went for a walk. Didn’t even notice I’d decided to do so until I was halfway up Acland Street. It was a perfect first-evening-of-summer. Lots of people out. Market stalls, for some reason. I looked at them for a bit then I went down to the beach.

Sat on the pier. Looked at the water and the sky. Felt empty. Felt very depersonalized, like I wasn’t really there. Or at least, the person who was there wasn’t me. I was just observing this boy staring out to sea in the third person.

Where am I? I’m in such a funny place right now. I feel very happy about a lot of things, very sad about others. In some ways I feel really burned out and dissolute but in a totally different – and infinitely better – way than I did at this time last year. This sense of dissolution has a healthy quality. It feels substantial. If that’s not a contradiction. I feel satisfyingly exhausted and drained. And I feel.. like I’m a going concern, y’know? Not just an empty shell.

This year has been like running a marathon. It was always going to be. I’m pleased I made it to the end. It was touch and go there for a while. And I’m pleased with where I’ve ended up. Although it isn’t where I expected. Wherever that was.

I’ve learned things this year which have changed all of the rules. So it’s hard to make comparisons with the past. And that’s frustrating me.

I can’t write for shit right now, either, and that’s frustrating me even more. Too many late nights and early starts. Too much indulgence. Too much everything. Too much, too much, too much.

I wish I could describe how it is.

Doing so would involve going to a number of places I can’t go in this context, for various reasons.

But more fundamentally, all of the useable metaphors I can think of (so many of them) contradict each other and none of them really cut it.

Must.. express… self..

Gnrrnrnr..

Something’s going on here. I feel like I’m pregnant. Not sure what with exactly. It might be something amazing. It might be something horrendous. It might be amazingly horrendous. It might be beautiful. It might be nothing. I don’t know. We’ll find out soon enough. Once I’ve finished destroying everything.

I’m going to read this tomorrow and want to take it down, but I won’t.

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Time To Die, 2005

SCHEDULE of DESTRUCTION

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Monday 7th of November

Was the first anniversary of my move to Melbourne. I only just realized. Time flies.

I should have celebrated. So much has happened. It has been a unique twelve months.

But I was too preoccupied with other things to even notice.

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My Tuesday In Pictures

by Operative Pulat
aged 29 and 2 months

4:24am: Get up.

4:24am (lights off) 4:24am (lights on)

5am – 5:30am: Predawn emailage.

Predawn emailage

5:30am – 6am: Tram it to work.

Predawn Fitzroy Street

Tram to work

Approaching work

6am-9am: Work.

At work

9am-12pm: Participate in anti-IR reforms protest, inadvertantly exposing Operative Li Han to emotionally threatening situation.

IR protest sign, explaining everything

Firefighter's union @ IR protest

12pm-12:30pm: Tram it back to my ‘hood.

Tram from work

12:30pm-1pm: Grocery shopping.

Supermarket interior

1:30pm-2pm: Arrive home.

Unlocking my door pt 1 Unlocking my door pt 2

2pm-3:15pm: Bloggage, pay perilously overdue electricity bill etc.

Billpayage etc

3:30pm-5pm: Beers at Espy with P.

Beer with P

(He’s lost his false front tooth. The effect is well scary.)

P's scary teeth

5pm-5:30pm: Haircut.

Barber Shop sign

Waiting at hairdressers

5:30pm-7pm: Home again, some emailage.

Afternoon emailage

7pm-7:30pm: Tram it back into town. Camera battery dies.

Evening tram step

8pm-9:30pm: Turns out to have been a wasted trip anyway. Come home.

9:30pm-10:30pm: Smoke bongs, curse enemies etc

Bong

DOWN WITH GRIMSBY

11pm: Go to bed.

Bed

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Wedding Invitation

Wedding invite front

My sister’s wedding is on the 17th of December. I’m getting used to the idea but it still seems kind of weird. My sister can’t get married; she’s just a kid [*], it’s ridiculous. She and her nordic beau make a lovely couple though.

Wedding invite inside

I will always remember when she phoned to tell me about this, back in April – I was sat on a chaise lounge at a bar on Alexandra St in a mask, surrounded by other masked strangers, mostly playing chess with each other. The first person I told was 2ript (now in exciting new package), who I had never met in person before. Naturally at the time I didn’t even know who he was.

[*] She is 26 years old; your mileage may vary.

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This Is One Of Those Ones That Just Doesn’t Want A Title

A couple of weeks ago – and not at all by design – I bumped into an old acquaintance from Canberra, P, at one of the supermarkets on Acland Street (I forget which one; I have been known to patronize both although these days I tend to favour the IGA on Fitzroy Street – prospective stalkers take note). He used to play the saxophone in a band, and sometimes pretends to have Tourette’s Syndrome. He is going through some heavy shit right now. I like him a lot.

Postcard for Chesh

We had a beer on Wednesday at the Espy. Whilst I was waiting for him I chatted to my friend Gethsemane. She was a bit drunk and asked me to transcribe a postcard for her – to Operative Tenex of all people. Seems they’re quite close – or were. I hadn’t even realised. It’s a small world.

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New Camera!!

Photographed using old camera:

New camera

Old camera photographed using new camera:

Old camera

Other gifts I have recieved:

  • Amazon gift voucher from an undisclosed Neurocam Operative, with which I bought this.

  • Someone made me a cake:
    Cake

  • About 60 people associated with RMIT Photography, the vast bulk of whom I did not know, sang me ‘Happy Birthday’.

  • I was blessed with several text messages and a phonecall from baby sis.

  • And Li, for reasons best known to himself, sent me this remarkable animated gif of David Hasselhof breakdancing in what appears to be a chipmunk suit:

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Twenty Nine Years

That’s what the figures say – I double checked. But it doesn’t seem to be correct.

Most of the time I feel about 20. And in some ways I feel very, very old.

But I don’t feel 29. Soon I will be as old as Lady J, and she’s, like, thirty.

I cannot possibly be one birthday away from turning 30.

There has to have been a mixup somewhere. That’s the only plausible explanation. I’m making enquiries. I may have to call my lawyer.

Who do you sue for being erroneously 29, anyway? I’m not even sure. I hope it’s someone on the Federal frontbench. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate those fucks? Ruddock, Costello, Howard, Vanstone, fucking Downer, fucking Abbott. I would pay serious money to see them all eaten by a pack of wild dogs. I really would. Cunts.

Twenty nine.

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Sometimes I Grow Quite Weary

Well, I do.

More recent search hits:

  • “fuck you by wesley willis”
  • fuck the ato
  • “neurocam surrealism”

(How did this wind up in my referrers?)

Jobs I would rather have:

That reminds me; I have to go to work. I’m half an hour late!

I hate my life.

There will be no new post until Jo pulls her finger out. Go hassle her.

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Advisory (& Dan Pritchard)

Posts will likely be a bit thin on the ground this week. I am feeling sick and demoralised and – just for a change – I have a stack of email that I really want to clear.

Jo is taking me to Luna Park on Thursday. It’s just down the road from where I live but I’ve never been. We shall eat faerie floss and go on the Faerris Wheel. If it’s open. Which, looking at their site, it isn’t. Unless it’s school holidays right now. Is it school holidays? It isn’t, is it. Damn.

I’ve also been encouraged to attend a certain event on Friday, which should be interesting.. although I probably won’t be able to say much about it.

What else? Dan “Conchis” Pritchard is drawing attention to himself again. Dunno what it’s about, but it seems to have something to do with the return of the legendary Robert Henley and they’re all over it on the Neuroboards.

Here are some nice bonus pics of The Magus burning which somehow got left out last time:

BurningMagusRevisited

BurningMagusRevisited2

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Goodbye, House

My sister is coming home tomorrow, and I shall be returning to my cosy St Kilda cupboard.

It’s sad. But all good things must come to an end, I guess.

In other me-related news, Jojo thinks I’m great.

My sister's bedroom floor

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I Can’t Keep Up This Frenetic Pace

I hosted a combined dinner party/book burning on Thursday night. I went out to the movies on Friday night. I spent all day at work fighting vigorously with baby sis via SMS and I’ve just been out trawling Brunswick St and drowning my sorrows with my cousin. Tomorrow night I’m doing things as yet unknown with Ben the punk rock librarian, who is down for a visit.

Then on Wednesday, there’s looking to be The Neurocouncil.

I feel like Tript. The local chapter of the Recluse Society (oxymoron?) is going to be calling for my resignation at this rate.

It’s good!

Exhausting, though.

PS I am becoming addicted to the Missy Higgins album. Is that wrong?

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Ambitions

Someone asked me what my ambitions were the other day. I can’t remember what I told them, but I should have said:

  1. To work in a streetcorner newsbooth.
  2. To become a cult leader by rising to the front ranks of Neurocam and then either taking it over, or creating a sizeable splinter group.
  3. To write a novel, which I am doing in November.
  4. To make an album, provisionally entitled “Everyone’s Too Stupid”, which I will do next year when I have more time.
  5. To study for and obtain a degree in Creative Arts from Melbourne’s premier university, guaranteeing me a colourful and lucrative subsequent career as a Creative Artist.
  6. To finish reading “The Magus” by John Fowles, and then to ritually burn it.
  7. To have fun and not care about people.
  8. To be beautiful.
  9. To be loved.

Other things I want:

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Jonesin’ & Pining

I still haven’t managed to secure any weed. It’s really driving me out of my mind. I don’t know why, particularly. In recent times I’ve gone for whole months at a stretch without so much as thinking about the chronic.

It’s pretty goddamn lame. Here I am in trendy, urban Fitzroy and I can’t even score. I wonder how many people are getting stoned right now within a one kilometre radius of where I’m sat. Probably hundreds.

Being an isolated recluse may sound pretty sweet but it has its drawbacks.

Stupid prohibition.

I know I’ve been banging on about this to an extent which is probably getting somewhat tedious but it’s becoming all I can think about. I’m hoping if I whinge about it enough someone’ll email me and sort me out just to shut me the hell up.

I wish Toots were here. She’d know what to do. She’s like a high precision ganj-seeking missile.

I miss you, Toots.

Someone else I’ve been missing a bit lately is a girl named Sarah. Where are you, Ms Whatever-Surname-You’re-Using-These-Days? What are you doing right now, I wonder? (Sleeping, probably.) Did you get the Christmas card I sent to your mum’s house in Howth? Or did the two of you finally kill each other? Are you really, as it says in your disused Yahoo profile, a wedding planner? Or was that a joke?

I asked around a bit a little while ago after a working email for you, but without success.

I really hope you are well and happy, and that you will stumble across this page by chance and get in touch.

Finally: how cool is this?

Later, bitches.

Disused bong in garden setting

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