Oh joy.

Have finally found all the diaries of my younger life. I think I will start up another extremely anonymous blog to deal with the horrific details which might explain the pathology of my adult life. If I can string it all together in some coherent narrative form, it might not only resolve some of the ongoing issues I have, but putting it into a structured and thought out manner, might help me link the connections of the destructive decisions I have made as an adult.

I have to say, not particularly healthy decisions. From the few passages I have read... there is a dark and unseemly tale to be told. All names will be changed to protect the innocent, and the not so innocent.

This and a good dose of therapy might get me to a level a functionality again. And possibly some happy pills. And failing that a one way ticket out of Asia.

Geographicals barely help. But in this case it could possibly be the sanest decision ever made.

Niceties Don't Make My World Go Round

In the effort and spirit of "you have to let it go" and other general feelings of acrimoniousness, disdain and contempt... NB*this was written quite a while ago, but I'm in the mood to vent.

Dear Friend: I hesitate to call you that since our friendship seems to have dissolved quite some time ago (years in fact), I find it somewhat offensive that the minimal amount of contact you have made in the previous few years has been for the sole purpose of finding you employment.

Yes, I admit, that perhaps I haven't been the 'best behaved' friend in the world but in regards to that, well, for someone whose perspective changed (meaning you) to "niceties make the world go round" – your niceties fucking suck.

Lets start with the girlfriend (now wife). after shacking up with the lawyerly scholarly type your behaviour seems to have warped into "pudding and paying off the mortgage". I thought she was a nice, relatively sweet girl to begin with. But then I realised it was just a guise to hide her hideous North Shore ways, and her faux upper middle class English attitude.

Really the friendship ended when I had no where else to go and asked to stay on your couch. A relatively small favour I thought after subsidizing your rent and paying a fair share of your bills, whilst you were trying to land back on your feet after the ending of your last codependent relationship. Two nights I thought wouldn't be a big deal. Fuck was I wrong, couldn't have been worse really, and I barely made it through.

After trying to stay out of your way (in a bachelor apartment) when your girlfriend's "proper" female peer came over, and me eating the food "too quickly" you had spent so long cooking (half hour tops), and not bestowing enough praise upon you, not thanking you effusively about how wonderful it was, like your girlfriend's friend did (or possibly not thanking you at all wanting to give you some space in 20 meters squared), I will never forget the words out of your mouth:

"You are the worst guest I have ever had" followed by the overly pompous and totally self righteous "It's niceties which make the world go round"...

1. the fact that I ate the food so quickly should tell you (from previous experience of sharing my house together in your time of need) that the food was more than edible, it was good. 2. When the fuck did niceties come into it you fucking hypocritical medicare money scamming piece of shit.

Don't worry, I will never forget those words of yours as long as I live.

So after a year or two that goes by, I haven't heard from you, and had left a box or two stored in your moldy garage space. I also learn that you have done some short course (3 months) in a well regarded film school. I figure, I'm not really a bad person, and hey you're totally under skilled, but I will sing your praises to my husband and maybe he can help you get a foot up into the highly competitive world you're trying to enter. Not to mention one which is dominated by young idiot savants and social retards in their early 20s who have been in their bedroom doing this shit since they were like 7, coupled with the fact they are about a million times better than you already. And in reality, if you've really not made it by the time 30, well, you're not really going to make it.

Newsflash niceties boy, you're 30 (well mid 30's now) and just beginning your career. But hey, whatever, I will try and disregard the bitter feelings of disloyalty I have come to regard you with and help you on your way.

Congratulations Dumbass, you got a job. You can thank me later for helping you. What, no thanks? I thought it was niceties which made the world go round.

I guess you did say thanks for letting you and the Cankle (sorry, for want of a better word I cannot for the life of me think of another, as her lack of ankles totally distracted me every time she spoke to me), for letting you guys stay in our home while you found your own abode so you could relocate for your new job I so kindly helped you get (admittedly mainly through connections, it is who you know etc). A job that fuck all people, especially people like you, have the luck of getting after a 3 month trumped up purely money making course, without sucking some serious dick.

Anyways, I digress (I usually do). Time passes, you now live in the same town, but I figure Cankles has never really warmed to me so not much point in trying now.

Maybe she thinks I'm a bad influence. I did drag you to that swingers club that one time remember. Paid for you to get in, made you drink my worths of alcohol and tried to get your miserable ass laid. Now wasn't that the water cooler gossip of for the day.

A few more years go by. Little contact is made, particularly on your behalf. No emails, a brief facebook chat before you had to dash off to complete whatever important job it was you think you had to do at the time (I kind of know this is a lie too - there was no work on).

Then you find my husband online. In 4 years you've what, contacted him twice, (me once), and both of those times you were looking for jobs. Mere minutes of these "niceties" you speak of and immediately you are asking for a job again? Naturally he says no, out of being purely offended. He is not inclined to help turds a second time round.

These "niceties" you speak of, well personally I think you're full of shit. You can take these middle class aspirations you have been brainwashed with by your ever so enlightened Cankles and shove them up your faux middle class ass.

I mean you barely have any idea of what i have been through in the last 5 or 6 years, or what I have experienced, because it's not like you have given a shit. We're just some fucking job network for you? Seriously, get fucked.

More to to the point, do you even know what happiness entails? Lets speak about happiness in about 10 years, namely yours. Once you and Cankles have been together for 16 or 17 years.

Of course she will have ballooned out to a healthy size 18, (lets face facts, she was heading that ways anyways) especially if right now is any indication of the future. She might have pushed out one or two "nice" puppies by then. Maybe working part time, trying to save the children and all the other "do worthy goodness" associated with the aspiring middle upper class she thinks she is, who have nothing better to do with their lives, (lucky her mother married into money).

Right about the time you're going through your mid life crises, because your life didn't turn out exactly how you wanted it to, nor did you ever reach the heights of your capabilities, mainly because you were relatively mediocre in the first place. You will maybe be getting sex once a month, if you are lucky, and your passively dominant wife will have by that time (if she hasn't already, and I truly suspect she did years ago) totally severed off your balls, or what ever you had which passed as balls, a long time ago, and served them to you with a nice Chianti.

You'll get that felling, some where along the line, it will be a reflexive relisation devoid of humour. You'll plod along your very average life and it will all be about "pudding and paying off the mortgage" – good luck with the asbestos, congrats on the cheap deal on the house though. It's a real a hip suburb, for the upwardly mobile.

This is where "niceties" that you speak of get you. So you can take your "niceties" and I reiterate shove them so far up your arse they tickle your prostate gland and you orgasm. Because that's about as good as it's going to get for you.

Me, I'm a working class girl. A realist, a humanist, niceties barely work for me, because I figure they are covering a facade of shit waiting to topple down and crush you.

I do believe in treating people with humanity and respect. Somehow these highbrow middle class "niceties" you speak of and the humanity I speak of, seem to be mutually exclusive. One is shared by polite society who feed each other lines of polite conversational weather bullshit to survive on a daily basis. While the other accepts people for who they are, the mettle in their character and appreciates we're all just here to survive.

Initially I thought you had this mettle. But gradually I realised you only had it by proxy. You really are a weak willed man who feeds off those stronger women you have been with. You are now just a second half, a sucubus if you will. You've just become a watered down version of Cankles. A nice veneer with a shitty interior. Trying to cover it up by saving the children and paying the mortgage.

By the way, thanks for the wedding invite (sarcasm, I seem to have lost my touch in a country where there isn't any). And don't ever bother asking my husband for a job again you pedestrian, unexceptional twat.

Ahh, couple years coming, but I feel better getting that off my chest.

Sanitary Napkins, not really one for men.

What the fuck is the point of sanitary pads? Can somebody please enlighten me?

Arguably, for known reasons, they do have a use, I guess.

I know when I have had an operation "down there" and have been probed by horrible steel pointy things, where I had absolutely no concept of the extent the horrific-ness was, until I saw the full length home made dvd version the doctors made, (the drugs were really good, so was the price tag)… Granted, the pads are useful then. Being that there would be no way in hell, after a gynecological invasion, with unfamiliar tools shoved inside your 'wimin's bits' you would want to stick a tampon up your twat.

(I should leave out the pro choice bit here - as I'm pretty sure you would want to use a pad for that)

But seriously. Apart from the handy after the, operation bit… is there any other use? you can't tell me that a tampon doesn't preserve the hymen, because we all know it does.

As a serial tampon offender/user for most of my menstruating life, I can not tell you how fucking angry and despairing one feels, after checking into an airport, and going through customs, which I always encounter issues with, feeling like Pre menstrual shit.

At first thinking it's a tummy ache, then realizing it's cramps, and having a flight at a time when there is absolutely no shops open, bar some overly expensive duty free shop selling perfume, cheapish fags and shitty repackaged chocolates. The only other option being some shitty snack shop posing as a semi 7/11, but had no tampons to be seen, no where to even buy a pad. The airport didn't even have a doodad machine in the women's toilets which dispensed the nappy pad (must be terrorism).

Ok so, you start to bleed like a stuck pig just after they have called the plane to board (you're about 20 rows away at this point, it's all sequential you know).You have precisely two precious tampons left, but you know it's not going to make the 24 hour long journey you have to get home… you hope to whoever and whatever that there will be an 'appropriate' shop open which sells female sanitary products at some inevitable mid point layover on the way home.

So, after the first long leg of the journey pained with want-to-make-you-die cramps, you finally get to the transfer airport. You walk around in a somnambulist daze because you've had intermittent sleep, punctuated with bad adam sandler movies, or at best shitty interrupted sleep beside some fat white person who smells, takes up half your seat on the plane and wants to pee a lot. A plane which is pretty much designed for small people (it's an Asian airline - their staple diet is rice). On your slightly anxious way (mainly because you feel it's poor form to seep blood all over your hired seat), your first and foremost endeavor is to find someone who sells FEMALE SANITARY PRODUCTS on the layover.

In the transit airport, you lackadaisically steer your hand luggage trolley around with your copious amounts of carry on luggage (the heavy stuff you can't check, disguised in smaller bags they don't care about). In a fucked up vague, sleep deprived state (with many bad asian/english conversations that go nowhere) you eventually find a chemist/pharmacy/drug store… the only shop where they sell the 'products' to stem the fucking mass hemorrhaging.

I is overjoyed because so far the tide of red has been stemmed with the available choices on hand to soak up the blood i.e the chippy two tampons I possessed. Most pointedly, I did not want to resort to wadding great stacks of paper towels into my underwear to do the last 12 hours of the journey, as from experience, we know that never works.

I get directed to the chintzy shitty little beauty shop… I look around. For the sweet love of Jebus… they have noting but pads… oh thats right, you're back in asia. They have no idea what a tampon is. Tampons are for white foreign women, possibly fat people it seems, and and worst, loose if your'e puritanical. No one uses tampons in ASIA?

You buy the pad out of sheer desperation and necessity. Waiting till the very last moment, eventually, after having no other option you stick it into your underwear…

not only do you feel angry, grumpy, menstrual, shitty, sleep deprived, but now you're wearing a pad which within the hour just turns into feeling like you are wearing a sopping nappy full of blood. There is nothing quite as disgusting as having the fucking blood trickle down between your legs into your panty protector, and not feel like it's secretly pissing out every where Carrie style.

I just want to go to the toilet and wash everything away every time i feel some warm red gush. I mean it's not contained, not really. Sure it's supposed to go between the wings and shit - in a perfectly blue seepage stain poured from a grade 9 science beaker (it doesn't)… but it feels gross, I don't care how natural a fucking bodily fluid is.

And don't try and sell me that shit in some spiffy ad where there's water sprinklers going off and the girl is running through it, pirouetting, jumping outlandishly high, or doing gymnastics, double flipping utterly carefree, like she is having a good time. They aren't… and you, advertiser, are lying.

Women are actually under their grandmas crocheted blanket with a hot water bottle feeling sorry for themselves, watching ads which make them cry. And if not on the 'pill', taking copious amounts of iboprofen, or codeine or something.

Not only that but, when wearing the pads, my sense of smell becomes very suspect. Can people smell me? Because I think I can smell me. It's like the faint smell of iron mixed in with some cheap off the rack perfume. Yeuk. Just pure yeuk.

I digress, kind of. What I meant to say is: in my personal opinion there is no point to pads, excluding gynecological operations or miscarriages/abortions, unless you are the type of person who likes walking around wearing a blood filled nappy, and don't mind spending half the day sitting in it.

Although thinking about it, I am sure there is a fetish for it. *goes googling*.

RIP Chuckles.

Some people might call me morose of mind, others have said I hold on to my misery because it's a habit and it feels comfortable. My husband told me recently, if a person is depressed for any more than 2 weeks, non-successively, in a year, it could be classified as clinical – I thought 'well, fuck me'.

Who the fuck really wants’ to deal with anyone else's mental health. Sure, we may do it for our most loved and cherished ones, but even for them it has a pretty finite amount of time it can be handled for, or persisted through, without some relief.

So for the people who you would like to consider yourself close to, or maybe you would like to become better friends with… when one is in a shitty state of mind, you really do not want to either A. expose them to it, nor B. have them endure through it, or C. maybe even make yourself vulnerable to their judgments about how sane you actually are, (which is to say… not very, IMHO).

In actual fact, and it's probably well documented and known by everyone that can fathom any idea about anything, it's pretty fucking isolating.

*Whistles*… It's pretty fucking isolating in here, I do have to say. No one likes maudlin. No one wants to deal with the raw emotion of futility, or uselessness individuals sometimes posses, particularly in a society they may not have adapted very well to, in a culture, which on face value seems somewhat devoid of any emotion at all. Every one thinks it's self-indulgent and, to hurry up and get over it. They have a point. Solipsism at it's best, I suppose.

It's like one's appetite for everything just stops. You can't sleep. You don't feel like eating. Forget going outside, it's a novel concept, but waaaay too much effort. Showers become bi weekly optional… mmm-mmm, odorous at best. And interacting with people is chore-like when hibernating in ones brain while it screams: ‘Oh, the humanity’. I can't even be bothered smoking cigarettes that much. That, in itself, is depressing. If you can't be egged on by your nicotine habit, there is something seriously wrong.

Cut ties, hit the gym, get a new girlfriend. The Internet's arm chair philosophical and relationship advice to just about everything.

Well, for me it’s more about learning a language which, going on past experience, I have little to no interest in, a hard time picking up, and no ability to remember. Plus, not one in 6 people speak it in the world, like the useful language of Chinese or the sexy language of Spanish. At best I will be able to order Thai food (I don't even like Asian food, but whatever) in some other country, with the possibility they might understand what I am saying. Unlikely though.

Why yes, I do have to hit the gym. Probably not the gym though, more likely to be Yoga or Pilates. But after living through Red Shirt riots with fuck all money, I am a little hesitant to pay a lot of money on what would be considered a middle class hobby, past time, or luxury here, no matter how good it is for me. And too lazy and impatient to wait for the Youtube downloads to induce the self-motivating, home care package. I possess absolutely no discipline when it comes to exercise… bonus. I am the fattest thin person, EVER. Note to self, if and when genetically spread seed, encourage exercise as a trait in children (+1 personality, +3 hotness, +2 charisma).

Get a job… ahh. This is the quandary. Work for fuck all money doing something you hate for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, just to feel ‘useful’, well, at least for a few months before you slit your wrists (proverbial ‘you’ just means me in this case really, most people probably have a higher tolerance to this 9-5 'normalness'). Intern in a job (at age 30+) for no pay, most probably working for Douchebags & Turds Co. INC, but at least doing something you might like, your labor and time hideously devalued though. You eventually find yourself doing some arbitrary task and wondering why you spent so many years educating yourself, if that's what you can call it. Become a 'teacher' of English - largely a misnomer in this country as any fucking hack can do it. Again, not well paid, and something I would hate. No patience for idiocy, no love of training people, no wait, just no love of people, period. Ebay? *shudders* The most likely option, since I can *try* and spell words in full sentences, get a pay pal account (while annoying, not impossible), speak the England and post pictures on the Interwebs. It took me a month or so to find my local Post Office, and it is pretty fucking close. Handy.

I know, I know, I should be grateful. After over a decade of having passionate, artistic endeavors, and dreams destroyed in front of my eyes and slip through my fingers, coupled with the inability, strength or social support at the moment to fight the good fight and start again… I guess I'm going to end up a stereotypical white wife in South East Asia, slightly bitter… (well, granted, I was jaded by the early teens, this place don't help any), speaking some of the language, I would judge at this point badly, maybe with a hotter body if we get richer, and an Ebay account I can sell knick knacks on. *Claps* Oh boy, Oh boy, all my dreams have come true. Fuck me, no wonder I am so maudlin.

Cake and icing: a friend of mine just died of cancer this morning, or yesterday. I am not quite sure when, I got the status update from Facebook…classy, yes? I feel bad because I didn't really answer his last email, which, granted, was a carbon copy group email of a jpg of an expensive bike he had just bought; rather a moot object, I thought, since he was dying of stage four cancer. So, really that just makes me a Cunt. I had known him since I was 19 years old, from memory (a particularly bad one). A good guy, nice is too beige a word. One of us, and I will always remember him fondly for his impish smile and lothario behavior. Not to mention his excellent wordsmithy-ness, and his great capacity to help others. He will be eulogized by far better a person than I.

Maybe the ability to work through depression, or whatever it is this darkness is, which clings to me with such a possessiveness and has for so long a period… maybe bitching about it on the web might help. Probably not for any audience, save myself… maybe it's like ablutions, or a confessing, or a therapeutic kind of thing. Writing that is. Posting is… well, some poor fucker has to read it, I guess. That's what social media is for these days. Polluting the minds of other people. Just a lower class of people, making more noise.

*I have no idea how to use comma’s, and every time I try to research the grammar on the Google, I get confused. Quality education there Australia, thanks for that. I’m not paying back my HECS debt, FYI.

Barricaded Bangkok, Before the Shit Be Hitting the Fan.

This is one of the main shopping districts the Red's moved into before it all went to hell. Admittedly, posting these a bit late, since these malls have probably reopened by now... bar Central World.

I took these one day on a trip to MBK, before the shit hit the fan. It was eerily weird to see these extremely busy streets of Bangkok cut off from day time traffic. I had no urge to go down into the barricaded area.

You could have shot an awesome Zombie apocalypse movie in Siam square (I think that's what it called - again, never felt the urge to go there, as I don't like to shop). Desolate. Totally desolate.

The tires you see probably got burnt.

Lotus.

The Lotus our Mee Baan (maid), Noi, grew. Housed in a bowl of slimy mud, in our front courtyard (if you could call it that). My Ma would be proud... probably prouder if I kept it alive myself.

Let Them Eat Cake

Personally, I think they should teach more history here. As we are doomed to repeat... yadda yadda. Although it didn't seem to work for the last credit card economic downturn, I know. Please note the financial crisis of 1929... etc. We haven't seem to have learnt a thing.

This was taken in a makeshift mall, set up across from what I like to think of as 'White Man's Stake' on Sukhumvit, The Emporium. It's rumored to be stock that has been saved from the malls which no longer exist, or suffered from a case of the fires.

You get the drift...

Things we do while living in Asia.

Yell… a lot. Preferably in your own company so you don't 'lose face'.

Drive like shit, and not apologize to anyone, because everyone drives like shit.

After about 3 months stop haggling over 30 cents… it's 30 fucking cents people, give it to them, the little people make like 6 bucks a day.

Listen to drunk people talk shit. It's probably the most decent conversation you will get in your native English language.

Love the maid. She is awesome. Luckily she is naturally acclimatized and can cook in shit hot heat. Try not to make funny faces when she cooks what smells like steaming dog turd for herself. It's probably a local delicacy in her country.

Cry… inside. Again, preferably in your own company. Asians don't deal well with the waterworks of emotions.

Avoid the heat by running the aircon day in day out, over what they call the 'summer' period. There is really only two seasons here: Hot, and Fucking Hotter. With a bit of wet chucked in. Freak out on a monthly basis when you get the unreasonably expensive electricity bill.

Lower your standard of people who you would call 'friends', otherwise you won't have any.

When a mini civil war occurs, stay inside and keep running that aircon, praying to 'the big man of your choice', that the warring parties don't burn down the local power exchange. Because you will have no cool air or webbertudes. They won't be serving food over the internet if a curfew occurs, therefore, previous flood experience is good for survivalists who can get through long periods of time being housebound. Stock up before the Asians start 'panic buying' all the 2 minute noodles, and pushing each other out of the way for cabbages. Remember to buy candles.

Get used to the fact that doing anything simple… SIMPLE, will take a day of your time.

Get more used to the fact that doing anything bureaucratic, or something a bit harder than simple, will take up to 3 days of your time, and there will be a lot of kicking and screaming involved (at home, in your own company).

Get used to being fucked over and extorted by the lawyer that your company chooses to use. Expect to pay 10 times the amount that you normally would have to, if you could speak and read the fucking language.

After trying to accomplish something simple, and kicking and screaming in frustration (in your own company), then complaining to your husband, realize that him saying 'welcome to my world', becomes an everyday occurrence. Laugh at the absurdity of the situation when something is actually accomplished.

Glow in schadenfreaude on the rare occasions you can share the frustration around.

Realise that globalisation has occurred. Buying something here in a mall will be on par with buying it in any other country worldwide. Acknowledge that there are a shit load of high end shops that you will never be able to afford to shop in, let alone the little people who make 6 dollars a day. Display wonderment at the fact that people in Asia can afford, and do shop in these places.

Get disgusted with the 'Hiso' attitude of 'Let them eat cake'. Try to avoid these people at all costs, they will make you feel like slashing your wrists, up the tracks not across. Especially avoid the vapid, vacuous, vain younger generation. They are, quite plainly, oxygen thieves.

Get disgusted with the little people holding a capital city, the main business and travel hub, hostage for over 2 and a half months. Ruining all business and taking up the amount of real estate, which is comparable if you lived in Sydney to: Lower Darlinghurst, Hyde Park, Pitt St Mall all the way down to RPA hospital. Feel slightly terrorized by their ongoing erratic behavior.

Quietly celebrate the protesters burning down the banks and stock exchange - sticking it to the man. Feel sorry for the small businesses, their brothers and sisters, who initially supported their protesting, that the people of a particular colored shirt persuasion, then burnt to the ground.

Come to terms with every bar being a business opportunity for a poor Asian chick. Embrace it, these women are quite good at english conversation, they are nice, protective of loyal customers, and rack up your pool balls for you. NB: you will never beat them at pool or Connect Four.

As a white chick, get used to the fact that if you are over 22 you will be seen as: mature, overly opinionated, mouthy, too expensive an investment with no return, and therefore not worth the effort. Relinquish any idea that you have any hope of 'getting some' in this country. Especially when it's being handed out by 18 year old Asian chicks for next to nothing, with a lot less hassle. On the odd occasion, appreciate that some dude who you are talking to, taking notice of you. Yeah... you probably won't be getting laid.

*EDIT* my husband would like me to point out here, how lucky I am to be married, and that I'm the recipient of as much 'great' sex as I desire. Which means, to me, young 18+ year old girls could come in handy for 'headache duty'.

Drink lots of water everyday. You sweat like a mother fucker in this relentless muggy, hot climate.

Enjoy the many house guests which will come through to stay, they provide light relief and entertainment. Avoid, at all costs, going shopping with them.

Get used to power cuts, brown outs, the airconditioner failing on a regular basis, no house phone because it just won't work, even when the phone company tells you it works, things taking a really long time, people always being late, bad traffic, everyone using bad traffic as an excuse for being late, computers cutting out because of the heat. Mostly get used to the fact that you probably won't be achieving much on a day to day basis. And come to terms with it. And be able to fucking laugh over it. Otherwise you will have a heart attack, stroke out, strain some muscle by kicking something, or just feel generally frustrated all the time.

Ironically, get used to the white man complaining... because they do that shit A LOT.

Again…love the maid because she is AWESOME.

Anatomically Incorrect Barbie Does a Bad Bad Thing.

An Ode To Mother on Mothers Day: Or Why I Don't Camp.

Hi Mum, Happy mother's day. Remember this one – our first castle? How's the serenity?

Remember when the tornado came, and hurled the house away, and I ran off with that dingo and found some weird arse friends who were looking for courage, heart, and braaaaains? There was a whole bunch of little people jumping up and down, squeaking weirdly and telling us to follow some gilt road to a green city where we would meet some odd dude with superhuman powers, that could get us home. Then I returned home really sick with a horrible fever... oh wait, no, shit, that was the Wizard of Oz.

Or a really strong mushroom trip.

Funnily enough, I do remember watching that movie in our first castle, on our old black and white TV, tucked up in your bed (the view was better from the loft), a bit sickly and feeling sorry for myself. And you were there, (looks around) and you were there, (looks around) - and you ... nope, that was it.

On the upside, our castle was a total upgrade from the army tent we were living in. Which probably wouldn't have weathered too many more of those nasty tornados.

This mother, is unfortunately why I wont camp - EVER. That and the shovel being the toilet hole digger with tobacco leaves used as toilet paper.

But what a sweet, and innocent and weird ass time huh? Those were the days. The bits I remember started forming me as the person I am today (for better or worse). These are good memories that we can laugh about.

We did have that pet snake for a bit of course, and that crazy fucking neighbour with his shotgun, weimaraner dog, and the bitch of a wife who peed into jars. Could have done without them, she was nasty... *looks around* and he was pretty fucking crazy.

But look at me in that photo, how proud am I looking out our new castle? I love you mum, you're brazilliant. Happy mothers day, and no I wont go camping probably ever again. I like hot running water, and flushing toilets. Fridges and mod cons. Internet and media sharing. Aircons and shops close enough to walk to to buy cigarettes at. What a ponsie wuppie I have become.

You, how ever, much braver than me. Fuckin onya mumsy. *Applauds*

Glorious Blood

Weird photo shoot that I have been wanting to do for ages. The total anti glamour shit, being disgusting and rolling around in 5 liters of pigs blood, with entrails, and miscarrying squid, chopped up fishy bits, and pork ribs, or ribs of some dead thing and watermelon, and yoghurt, and milk and baby oil... it all came strangely together.

I think I have been watching way to many Dargento and Romero films, with WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much horror blood and guts.

After about 5 washes and 3 shampoos I was still finding bits of fish gizzards in my hair.

Dao was the best though. What other crazy arse chic would go down to the

thai food market a day before hand and start pre ordering pigs blood "5 Litre please".

Her line was consistently "I think we need more Blood Andy".

Slaughterhouse Romance

Look Into My Eyes.

Therapy Doesn't Work.

The Wire's Modern Babylon.

Recently, in a period of darkness, I retired to my cave and watched a few series of different programs… I like to call it "research", but lets face it, really I am covering up the severe depression and a self induced case of agoraphobia I encounter occasionally. "Outside" with the "bright light" is just not a viable option in times like these.

On this occasion I had the delightfulness of being introduced to The Wire (again - but this time the full series), I seem to have arrived unfashionably late to the party though. Watching this masterpiece not only caused me to think about the state of things i.e America in its microcosm, and by extension - the world in macro form, but I was also incredibly inspired by and could appreciate the great amount of craftsmanship that went into making such a program as this. Probably not inspired enough to get off my fat ass and do something entirely productive just quite yet though.

I watched it like a fucking junky: greedy, obsessively, with little self restraint, which seemed fitting enough considering the content, devouring 60 odd hours of television within about four days all up. It was such a chronic addiction that 20 consecutive hours of TV staring in one day brought on a self inflicted and well deserved migraine, most probably from eyestrain. Like any crack ho, I was undeterred though.

It totally inspired me cerebrally, even though for the week after I had the weirdest and most violent dreams. Woven tales of killing people, being in gangs, blood shed, and detective stories. These slumber narratives were engagingly descriptive and riveting to be in, but relatively disturbing too.

A few days after the final episode, I woke up having some kind of epiphany… as watching this program stimulates it's audience to THINK with their BRAINS (alien concept I know). It felt like I was having an epiphany, but really, I don't think I am smart enough to epiphanise about anything anymore - television killed that part of my brain which imagines stuff, the internet killed my memory, and I don't do drugs anymore so the pituitary gland isn't giving me any Mandalbrot fractals - shit out of luck there too.

In waking, I ruminated about what David Simon was trying to achieve, and in which I think he did spectacularly. His back ground in investigative journalism ushered him into the world of creating, producing, and writing The Wire - a serialized novel format created into a television program, which he had total creative control over. Whose characters are spectacular in embracing their human frailties, the dialogue they speak savvy, colloquial, poetic and true. The actors playing them... totally believable, you embrace and love them whole heartedly, or are absolutely horrified by them, and relish in the hatred they incite, either way they are all real.

It reminded me of something I studied in University, in my 'Sex and Scandal' unit for history so many years ago (the salacious shit are the only details I can remember from any courses I studied). I decided The Wire drew parallels to what W.T. Stead did in the late 1800's with his Newspaper - The Pall Mall Gazette, and the serialized articles he wrote: 'The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon'. Also a first for its time.

Both set about to illustrate the human condition in their day and age, although 130 odd years apart (you do the math, I am way too lazy).

Reflectively speaking, David Simon was not trying to be salacious in the detail of his program even though the content seems that way. Really, he was just trying to recreate the realities of the declining, modern, shitty American city - which could have been any American city, in this case Baltimore (such a shockingly different Baltimore compared to John Waters' overtly camp, musical, transvestite Baltimore with Divine, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, or Ricky Lake before she thinned out).

It was argued that W.T Stead was in it for the sensationalism, as sensationalism, scandalous detail, and sex, well, it sold papers (not much has changed, but he did pioneer the technique). Whilst investigating the selling and devirginising of underage girls, he too opened up the eyes of people in Victorian times about how totally degenerative Victorian society was. The 'Tribute of Modern Babylon' was an impetus for changing the laws at the time, i.e. the consensual age of sex being raised to 15 (or something) instead of the age of 9 or 11, or whatever it was… (again, you can google for the correct age, fuck me if I am going through all my boxed up uni readings to cite something properly… yes I'm a fat lazy cow - without the fat)

What was amazing - or even more so appalling about the tenets of thought in Victorian times was: fucking a virgin would cure syphilis. Hence the large amount of numbers of pubescent and pre pubescent children in hospitals dying of an incurable disease, given to them by filthy, diseased, middle and upper class men, and being sold off to these fuckers by pandering old wenches for trifling amounts of money. But I digress, this paragraph really is just a side note, as the topic always astounded me. I think some people still believe and practice this same shit in Africa today. But now, instead of syphilis, they spread aids.

One of the many things that I love about The Wire is: at this moment in time, after all it's critical acclaim, yet small audience numbers when originally aired, it's starting to be taught in university courses across the United States - ironically Ivy League universities. Courses highlighting the social and cultural decline of America (a shit hole which they are so patriotically proud of), and courses which are screaming about the poverty and senseless violence which prevails throughout that 'civilised' country, and which will continue to prevail until something drasticly changes.

People are finally discovering the wonderment that is The Wire, and because of this, hopefully it will change the average TV viewing experience for mediocre chumps in the decades to come, as was David Simon's grand design. Fuck me, hopefully people will start reflexively thinking about issues when presented with decent product, instead of the gamut of reality shit which pours out of the bottomless pit of cheap television hell.

David Simon is still alive, and creating another series for HBO set in New Orleans, revolving around Jazz musicians in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, it's called Treme, I eagerly await its arrival (like a true TV junky).

W.T. Stead was one of the poor bastards that died on the Titanic's maiden voyage, because they didn't supply enough life boats, nor filled them properly when the 'unsinkable' boat sank.

If you are autodidactic and want to self educate… follow the links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maiden_Tribute_of_Modern_Babylon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire

I would just like to point out, this is neither a finely nuanced, well structured, nor aptly thought out blog. I always came up with the best lines when far away from the computer, on returning to write it, I could never remember any of the "clever" things I thought... Meh. I did want it to be much more smartly, but fuck it.

We know it's kind of fucked when there are more universities in china, than there are university graduates in America. I think this is one of David Simon's points... there is little redemption or hope for a country which revels in its own Hubris.

This piece of technological shit hasn't embedded properly. Click on

it to watch the wide screen version on youtube. It's worth it.