The Door to Success

Like most children, I have always dreamed of working in a door
factory. Well, boy, I just couldn't believe my ears when I heard
the description of the job I was offered the other day.
So yeah, from Tuesday I am working 45 hours a week operating
machinery in a factory that makes doors. I imagine the way I will
get through my days will be like Bjork's character in Dancer in the
Dark. I'll listen to the sounds of the machines and pretend that I'm
in a musical, pretty sure everything worked out well for her. I can
do a pretty good Bjork accent too which will help.
The reason that I took this job is because I desperately want to
start saving up money to go overseas at the end of next year. But
who knows, maybe I will be enchanted by the kind hand of the
construction godfather that is Fletcher. This could be a stepping
stone for me to move through the ranks of Christchurch's lucrative
door industry which, post-earthquake, is holding the people to
ransom for their need to stop intruders, bugs and cold drafts entering
their homes.
Also, am I supposed to dress like how I think people there will dress?
I'm thinking like Ryan from The OC. I never liked Ryan, I'm way more
of a Seth.

Bar Tending at a Riccarton Racecourse Function

• Enter building
• Small drunk old man talking smack, impressive goatee
• Two tap beers: Speights and Steinlager Light
• "Hey Zac Efron"
• "Oy, Zac Efron"
• "Hey you, High School musical"
• Living on a Prayer
• Drunk old people are funny
• Cotton Eyes Joe
• Drunk old people are annoying
• Hey Mickey
• Drunk old people are tragic
• Mama Mia
• Old lady passed out on table
• Gangnam Style....?
• Different old lady falls over
• "Can I have 3 Speight's mate?"
• DJ: "Some cunt poured beer on me"
• Lady with decaying teeth: "Can I have one more beer? I love you"
• Lady with Decaying teeth: "If I move I'll be sick"
• DJ: "I do fucking cage fighting, I'm off duty now"
• Exit building

Manual Labour

I feel like I should start blogging again because I am having a post-university
crisis.

I decided that for the summer I wanted to do manual labour jobs because
I've never really done anything like that before and it's good to try new things.
I'm now starting to regret this decision for a few reasons. Firstly, I don't think
I really know what labouring means. In my mind it's like that books Holes,
where you just mindlessly dig until your boss is happy with the amount of
ground that isn't there anymore. However, when I went in to this place that
gets you into labouring jobs the lady said that she could get me a job that I
wasn't really qualified for, operating heavy machinery at a door factory.
Yesterday it took me 30 minutes to work out how to use my parents printer
so if I am behind the wheel of a crane, someone will get hurt. It was also kind
of worrying that the lady said 'it's best not to let them know that you have a
degree.'

Another reason why labouring may not be for me is that the lady kept going
on about how most of the people that did it were 'of a different background'
to me. This brought up the usual anxiety of not being able to talk to anyone
that isn't exactly the same as me. I don't know anything about car parts or
whether the boys won the game last night. I know that I'd get into the
uncomfortable situation of someone going in for a 'cool guy handshake'
and me not knowing what to do. Every time someone does one of those
handshakes they act as though it's the only combination that exists. I might
go in for a 'Fresh Prince' but he will be doing a 'Kenan and Kel', which will
make me look like an idiot. Do people from working class backgrounds get
the same kind of anxiety in the reverse situation? If someone who grew up
in Aranui got a job at C1, would they get worried that people would ask them
about Band of Horses tracks or the latest episode of Girls? I think I'm
over-thinking everything again.

Me and My Long Term Girlfriend Just Broke Up

Shit's about to get depressing

This is Mr. Barkinfresh

Mr. Barkinfresh is a anthropomorphic dog that I created for
a intermediate school project in 2002. In retrospect, his name
sounds like it should be a brand of dog toothpaste.

Comparative Poetry

Madeleine, our love is good, like a flower is good
I like you more than I like Tegal char-grilled breast fillets
You have a good face, like a bear
Eamonn, I like you more than I like the off-brand Rashuns called Cheezy Aliens
Daniela, I want to see you, like I want to see through walls
You are better than a bloody good pooch
Elsie, our friendship is nice, like Ms. Honey from Matilda
You are a better friend than my old friend Tyler Robinson from Cobham Intermediate
Alex, I would choose you existing over the swimming cap being invented if I had to

Argument Tactic #26 "It's just that..."

As we all know, all conversations are competitions and to

win, you need to know all the moves. Today's tactic is one

that is used regularly by a lot of people. It will allow one to 

turn an isolated argument into something broad and unrelated 

to inspire pity in the other person.

Example:

Person 1: I don't want to mow the lawns

Person 2: But you said you would and I did it last time

Person 1: Pause

               (looks down and takes in a deep breath)

               It's just that... 

               Pause

               you know, with what happened with Grandma

               and everything, things have been really tough,

               and I just really don't feel like mowing the lawns

Person 2: Oh of course. Fair enough. You just sit down

               and don't worry yourself. Here, have a Popsicle 

               Slushy

Also try it in intellectual arguments:

Person 1: Stupid Palestine. Woop, Israel

Person 2: Well the Israeli government keeps driving Palestinians

               off their land while not recognizing Palestine as a state.

               It's a very complex situation.

Person 1: Pause

               (Extremely serious expression)

               It's just that...

               Pause

               the Holocaust and everything...

Person 2: Oh, I guess you have a point, the Holocaust was bad.

               Do you want to have the rest of my Popsicle Slushy?

Now you might think this is emotionally manipulative but the world

of social interaction is a jungle and you need to be prepared.

Dr Dre Rap (edited)

I moved out of the hood for good, you blame me?
Friends aim mainly at friends they can't be.
But friends can't hit friends they can't see.
I'm out of sight, now I'm out of they dang reach.
How would you feel if friends wanted you killed?
You'd probably move to a new house on a new hill.
And choose a new spot if friends wanted you shot,
I ain't a thug, how much Tupac in you, you got
I ain't no bitch neither.
It's either my life or your life,
And I ain't leaving, I like breathing.
Friend we can go round for round,
Clip for clip, shit, fo'-pound for pound.
Friend if you really want to take it there we can,
Just remember that you fucking with a family man.
I got a lot more to lose than you, remember that,
When you wanna come and fill these shoes.

Campaign Trail

After reading a lot about something I tend to relate it to my real life
a lot. Currently I am doing a research essay which is partly about the
campaign for the 1986 Homosexual Reform Bill. This made me
think about flat politics.

I live in a democratic flat where the current issue is about cleaning
reform. The issue being that we currently hand wash dishes, yet
we have a dishwasher. Eamonn Marra saw the need for change
and so introduced the bill with an impassioned but concise
speech where he made such points as 'hey, do you guys think
we should start using the dishwasher?' and no other points. From
my field research, the voting is split as follows:

-Eamonn Marra (radical equalist) for
-Madeleine Ashton-Martyn (cyber-liberal) for
-Jonathon Edwards (handsome protagonist) for
-Meredith Harris (social progressive/sanitation traditionalist) against
-Hannah Strom (relentless idealist) against
-Alice Connolly (poetic pacifist) unknown/ possible swing vote
-Kupe (cat) extremely indifferent

If put to an election I think that Alice, regardless of position, could
be bought off with some chocolate covered pretzels. When it comes
to washing up, Connolly is willing to get her hands dirty. However,
the main problem with the pro-reform campaign is their 'I don't really
care that much' attitude. If I've learned anything from my research
essay it's that the best way to rally support for a bill is to frame the opposition
in a bad light. This is why I will now refer to their position as pro-chores.
It is hard to predict how the outcome of this campaign but I think that
everyone will probably forget about it. Another lost liberal cause.

Cards #2

I think this deck is rigged.

Cards

The arts student argument starter deck.

From the lovely people at Microsoft Paint

Hipsters

I heard the word hipster yesterday for the first time in a long time.
Still not exactly sure what it means but from what I've heard, a hipster
is: Someone who wears lots of black/someone who wears bright
colours. Someone who listens to listens to underground music/
someone who listens to pop music ironically/ someone who listens
exclusively to hip hop. Someone who protests a lot/ someone who
is privileged and only cares about themselves. Someone who buys
cheap op shop clothes/ someone who buys expensive designer
clothes. Someone who cares about feminism/ someone who posts
violent pictures of rape to their tumblr. Someone who wants to be
different/ someone who desperately wants to be cool.

Lies

When I was little I was a chronic liar. I don't lie very much any more but occasionally I will lie about something when it seems like the easier thing to do. Most of the time this ends very badly. I am going to admit to some lies that I can remember telling over my lifetime:

• Age 7: Bryn Ealey- I did not have an older brother named Micheal, nor did I have any other siblings except for my sister
• Age 9: Many people- I did not have a holographic mew Pokemon card
• Age 10: Friend Jasper's Mum- I don't actually think your baby is cute. Your baby is ugly. There is no hope for that child.
• Age 18: Girl at Bar- I don't actually like Sci-Fi
• Various Ages: Many people- My name is not Henry and I am not South African.
• Age 19: David and Eamonn: I had never flatted before Madras Street. I said I had because I thought you would only want me to live there if I had experience flatting before. I didn't know that we would have to walk past where I said I flatted every time we went to the Asian Food Warehouse. I'm sure both of you noticed how awkward I got every time you asked me which one was mine. I felt like I had left it too long to admit to it.

  

Thieving

Ever since a modern day Robin Hood named Stelth liberated

a block of edam for us from the Wellington City New World,

I have really wanted to steal something. I have never stolen 

anything from a store before but feel like it would be a huge

rush. I imagine stealing a big packet of pistachios would make

me feel like a glorious stallion, galloping through the planes...

be free, majestic creature. I have a friend who steals all the 

time and always gets away with it and I have already justified

stealing from a supermarket in my mind, wastage and markups

etc). However, my dream ended today when I saw some skate

board hooligans get caught trying to steal a butt load of groceries.

The scene was really intense and has scared me off stealing for

good. Security guards are big.

Uni Stress

So it's a new semester next week, meaning that I will have a new
start in which I will manage time really well and do heaps of work.
 If anyone sees me not doing work at any given time they should 
slap me in the face (I will probably still hit you back, or maybe 
just give you a grumpy look, depending on how much I like you).
I also wont get stressed this semester because it's just a uni course,
one which I will get done eventually. I wont stress. Kids in Somalia. 
People with bigger problems. Right? RIGHT?! I'm pretty close to 
hyperventilating right now.

Praise Me

Because I live in a flat with a lot of people it sometimes feels like

I am doing everything wrong. I realised today that this is because

I am at an age where you don't get praise for doing simple things

right, you only get told off for doing things wrong. No one ever

says, "you are doing a really good job of cutting those onions. I

am so proud of you. I'm really glad we are friends." It's always,

"Oh, are you putting potato in the pasta? No that's fine, I just

wont  have any." Or "You can't put a metal pot in the microwave."

Jeez, get off my back man, i'm just trying to do my own thing. 

Idol Worship

Tonight I watched a game of tennis and for some reason I really cared who
won the game of tennis. The person I wanted to win the game of tennis won
the game of tennis even though he wasn't expected to win the game of tennis.
I am really happy, which is really stupid. why should I care who wins?
A guy in my history class (who is a lot smarter than me) was saying the other
day how he was skeptical about some aspects of Marxism because adhering to 
the ideas of an individual can bedangerous. It is this inability to separate 
individuals from the things they create that strongly influences my tastes. I will 
never like the band Swans because Michael Gira seems like an asshole. I also 
don't like the Smiths that much because Morrissey is an arrogant douchebag. 
This shouldn't change how I feel about the music itself but it does. But if I have 
liked a band for a long time and something challenges my perception of them 
I will just deny everything. Like when I heard that Wayne Coyne from the 
Flaming Lips said that Arcade Fire were terrible,  pompous people. Arcade 
Fire was one of my favorite bands in my late teenage years so I just choose 
to believe that he is lying. Anyway, fuck Wayne Coyne because he was on 
MTV cribs. You are the pompous asshole with your stupid excessive house. I 
will come at you with a gun and Catcher in the Rye in hand... This is the part 
where I realise I need sleep.

Blog lag

Man, I haven't blogged in a while but I can't just go straight into a normal
post after so much time has passed. It's like a father abandoning his kids
and only to be found in the kitchen 3 years later making them sandwiches
like nothing happened. I'll ease my way into angst posts by linking a video.
This guy gets me:

Jono's Guide to Food and Drink

This is not a list of opinions about food and drinks but the objective truth as to
how they taste:

• Peanut Butter- yum
• Pizza- fine/overrated (but because so many people love it so much I am forced to say that it is terrible to contrast)
• Seafood- delicious
• Oysters- the best seafood (delicious x 2?)
• Avocado- yuck (controversial discovery)
• Curry- yum
• Souvlaki- delicious (But Christchurch is the only place I know of where you can buy them which angers me)
• Kabab- fine but nowhere near as good as souvlaki
• Cheese- recently discovered to be yum (previously thought to be alright)
• Beer- yum
• Woodstock- Maddy, you're not fooling anyone. Bourbon and coke is gross and deep down you know this
• White wine- yuck
• Red wine- yum
• Fish and chips- quite good
• Too much fish and chips- depressed
• Some kind of bland chick pea tomatoey thing with soy sauce on rice- okay unless you have recently been home recently with parents that feed you like a proper human
• Mexican- mostly bad
• Anything with gluten- amazing

Many people may not agree with this list but they are wrong

Infomercials

I am leasing this post as an advertising space

• Is thinking too much getting you down? Is talking about your true feelings only making everything worse? Well TRY 'bottling your emotions'. By bottling your emotions deep down inside you, you can get rid of those pesky feelings of inadequacy by pretending they don't exist. BAM and the feelings are gone, making you a blank shell of your former self. You can bottle your emotions for weekly payments of just pretending everything is ok.
• Do you feel that your life is leading nowhere? Are you not where you want to be? Then you should TRY distracting yourself with forms of mindless entertainment. By watching tv shows or videos on youtube you can forget about how you haven't taken full advantage of life opportunities. Videos of funny cats can make you forget about your mediocre existence! Distracting yourself could be in your life right now by taking a deep breath, swallowing, then downloading a movie.  
• Tired of feeling guilty about buying products that are unethical? Do you pull up people for racist and sexist slurs but listen Odd Future? Then TRY 'justifying it to yourself'. By justifying it to yourself you can can eat all the meat you want while listening to your favorite explicit rap music. Make yourself feel better with phrases like "it doesn't matter if I buy this or not, a difference can only be made through systematic change which happens collectively" and "I can listen to this ironically, realising the prejudice that exists in the lyrics, acknowledging that this is a product of the environment that these artists grew up in". Justifying it to yourself could be yours in three easy payments of swallowing your values.

Ideas to Change the World

So I found a page near the back of this writing book I have which
I titled 'Ideas to Change the World'. It's actually a list of a few out
of context puns, some other things that don't make sense and a
picture of an anthropomorphic dog. I think I was incredibly drunk
when I wrote this because I really don't remember doing it. I barely
understand it. It looks like this:

Ideas to Change the World:

Jason Seagull

Harry Potter alcohol range:

• Harry Porter
• Ron Riesling

Shark Twain

Concert for Haiti   
Concert for Tahiti
A concert in Tahiti

Mr. Barkinfresh is disappointed in furniture

Feminine Eminem = Slim Shady Lady

Mr. Barkinfresh is told he has a degenerative disease

Pop

I go through stages of getting really annoyed when people play only
pop music at the parties. Part of the reason is that I don't know most
of it but also I have to be in a very specific mood to enjoy it. However,
I was listening to Rihanna before and man, that girl speaks from the heart.
I got absorbed in some song, it was about a big bed or something,
and I really feel like my deepest feelings of loneliness had been taken
from my brain, put into words, and produced by Timbaland. There
is that certain mood I get in where the lyrics of Like a Prayer start to
sound like lyrical a collaboration between Leonard Cohen and Jesus.
Man I could go for some Madonna right now
I also saw a new video from Chris brown playing in a bar the other day.
Isn't he in jail? Why not? How can domestic abusers be so quickly
accepted back into society and have no.1 songs? Granted, I don't
actually know what happened with that but i'm pretty sure he beat
up Rihanna.What the fuck, just learned they are collaborating in two
songs coming out this year? Fuck this, i'm out.

University

It is now my fourth year at university and I am really over it. Especially 

now that I am doing history honours, I feel like everything I am learning 

just seems so pointless in the scheme of things. All of the essay questions

for my Gender and Empire course have the same answer, 'no one gives

a fuck.' No one in their everyday routine thinks 'how can I go to the 

supermarket without knowing if there is a particular pattern of gender 

relations that arise on ‘resource frontiers’ rather than other kinds of 

‘colonial frontiers’?' Now you might be thinking that putting 'gender' into

an in depth and theoretical analysis of empire might be interesting. You

would be wrong. As I go on in honours, I keep thinking how academia

exists in it's own little bubble and for the most part, has little interaction

with the rest of the world. And so I come to the conclusion that I always

come to when I am unhappy with my life: I need to go and live on a farm,

listen to country music and hang with a border collie. I think I also want

to eat whitebait but i'm not sure. I like that they are small because that

means you are consuming more souls when you eat them. I can play

the Country Calender theme on guitar.

Facebook

This post is triggered by a picture I saw on Facebook of a guy in
my honors class. In it, he is shaking hands with Hillary Clinton. Or,
as you may know her, the most powerful woman in the world.
From some kind of student exchange thing (I don't really know)
he was allowed to meet her and then interview her. So, it's a pretty
amazing picture to have of yourself.
Then I saw  that down the bottom that the picture that it had 15 likes.
15 likes!? Really Facebook? Is that all that picture is worth to you?!
That doesn't impress you?! I could post a picture of a turd and get
more than 15 likes. Well, maybe not, but Von Klap probably could
and probably have.  To put this in perspective, I only had to go to the
last post of my flatmate Eamonn to see that he got 15 likes for a picture
of his face after having shaved while pictures of my flatmate Alice with
a cat can fetch over 40, especially if she adds a caption such as 'pat pat
da cat'. Now I know that there a more important things in life than
facebook likes but a lot of people think of it as a new measure of worth.
If pretty much everyone you know uses Facebook then 'liking' is like
democratically calculating what is better from a bunch of completely
unrelated things e.g.: (unfunny meme < annoucing you got a new job) or
(shaving = Hillary Clinton)

I don't like this.

Oh man, just found out he has almost 700 friends. Really, people on
facebook? Really?!

Friends

Often when I meet someone that I get along with really well 

there is a common formula that occurs. First, I meet the person 

and am infatuated by them. I will think they are the most 

perfect person ever because I will only look for the good things. 

My internal monologue is something like: 'Oh man, this person 

is so witty and intelligent. They like the Beatles? I like the 

Beatles! They have exactly the same music taste as me. 

They've read the Secret History? No f-ing way. They find 

Black Books funny? This is getting creepy now. How did 

I manage to find my future best friend here tonight?' The second 

stage is when the person doesn't live up to my unreasonably 

high expectations and I either start liking them slightly less or 

become annoyed by them. Internal monologue changes to:

'Your voice is louder than I remember. How do you not know 

about this obscure historical event that i'm studying? You led 

me to believe you knew everything. I understand all of the words

you are using right now but they don't really make sense in that

sentence. Yeah, you have Bright Eyes on your ipod but it's 

overshadowed by all the Jay-Z on there.' After a while I remember

that I'm not perfect and that everyone has faults and that the

person in question is probably a nice, interesting person and so start 

liking them again. I call this the Obama effect. In saying this, there 

are some people who don't fail my unrealistically high expectations 

and I continue to idolize. I just read this back and I sound pretty

judgmental. 

Kids Are Evil

Following on the theme of children being evil. Although much less
extreme:
As I have made clear before, I don't really like kids. As cute as they
can be, they are hyperactive and have no sense of reason. Today I
walked through a primary school where some kids were playing
sports and I remembered something else about children, they are
savages.

One of the many conversations I picked up on was between
three boys playing cricket who were approximately 10 years
of age. One said said to another "Christian said he could smash you"
to which the third boy said "Whatever we smash him all the time.
The other we smashed him at morning tea and lunch". Maybe I'm
naive, but I don't think they smashed Christian at all. Although I don't
know how tough the kids from Mt. Victoria Primary are. At my school,
everyone was just talk and the way kids won fights was by bragging
about how much money their parents had (like sutpid Bailey Whiley
who made fun of how much money I had made at the school fair
selling candy apples by saying "I brought more money than that to
spend at the fair!") Yet maybe they did smash Christian all the time.
It would fit with my hypothesis that children are all evil.

Another child, much younger, had a ball and wouldn't give it to his
brother. This might not seem like a big deal but I was getting really
annoyed by it. Little Calum was hogging the ball despite his mother
telling him to give it to his brother. Calum had a stupid dweeby
expression on his stupid dweeby face like he was really pleased with
himself. Why didn't he just give his brother the ball?! He wasn't even
using it! He looked like he was showing off but no one was impressed.

No one thinks you are cool Calum!

Killer Children and Conservatism

I was studying at the National Archives today and decided to issue
out the original police report from the Parker-Hulme case. For those
not familiar, that is the case around which Heavenly Creatures is
based where two Christchurch girls killed one of the girls' mothers.
It was pretty creepy reading the actual report which had direct quotes
from the girls because you realise how crazy these girls really were
and that it wasn't just Peter Jackson's poetic licence. There were
heaps of interesting things in it including:

• A transcript of the detective interviewing Pauline Parker. It is pretty creepy because she keeps referring to Juliet as 'Deborah'. There are also strange parts where she attempts to lie to the detective like in this part:

      "When asked how she knew that her mother was dead she said “The blood, the blood, there was a lot of it.” When asked about the stockings she hesitated and said “We didn’t take mother’s stockings off.” Then she said after another hesitation, “I wasn’t wearing stockings, I was wearing sockettes.” After a further hesitation she said, “I did have a stocking. I had an old one in my bag. We used it to wipe up the blood”."

• References to Christchurch making it way more creepy. Just normal things like the fact that Pauline lived at 31 Gloucester Street.
• A part about Pauline writing an admission to her diary on a piece of paper and when asked about it at the police station, throwing it into the fire. A policewoman quickly got it out but all that could be made out was the line "They have questioned Deborah but I am taking the blame"

However the strangest bit to me was a report by the caretaker
of Victoria park who saw the two girls in the tea rooms covered
in blood and was taken to the body. In this account he tells of
how he saw the body, covered in bruises and blood and saw
that from the position she was lying in, her skirt had ridden up
past her knee. So he adjusts it and pulls it below her knee so
that she is decent. Never mind that she has been brutally
murdered, she must be terribly embarrassed that her knee is
showing. Good to see that people back then had their priorities
in order.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl

For those of you who aren't familiar with the manic pixie dream girl, they are pretty, whimsical, alternative 'free spirits' who haunt the dreams of any straight male who even remotely enjoys The Pixies. They have been depicted in movies like Garden State, Almost Famous and 500 Days of Summer as sweet and advetureous girls who like cool things and make boys that watch these movies wish there was such a girl in real life. I used to fall into this trap too but then I realised there are people like this in real life and they are really annoying. Pretty, wears nice clothes, listens to good music, neurotic. I've met plenty of people like that, yet if in real life someone said "Ringo is the most important member of The Beatles", I wouldn't be thinking about how quirky and different they were because life doesn't have the ability to alter your mood by playing The Shins in the background. I would be thinking, 'no, that is an incredibly stupid thing to say because he his quite obviously not'. Yet when this is said on 500 Days of Summer the viewer is thinking what it would be like to live with her in a cottage on a hill with horses and old things and pretty dresses and she would have a face. So don't worry if you can't get a girl like this because if you could, you would grow to hate her. Imagine every attempt at a normal conversation changing into 'but what if the red I see isn't the same as the red you see?'. Oh my you are so thoughtful, you should write philosophy, and tell me again about how we are spiritually connected to the lettuce that grows in my garden. Fuck you, Zooey Deschanel.

Stream of Consciousness

Everything is the worst. I found a great tennis court today. Also walked through some amazing forest tracks. Taylor Swift never replied to my email. Today I drank something that I thought was whiskey but it wasn't. I think it was poison. I don't like Wellington central city that much. I'm really behind on uni work. That was some really good blue cheese. Everything hurts. I probably have cholera. I keep writing songs but then throwing the piece of paper out. I'm don't have many close friends in Wellington. This whiskey definitely needs some ginger ale. I want to sleep on the couch but Netta is sleeping on the couch. You are allowed to write anything on your blog right? Oh jesus, is that a weta? I'm not going near it. There are definitely mice in the roof. They sound to big to be mice, probably racoons. I want to listen to the Beach Boys. I want to listen to Bright Eyes The Beatles are underrated. Yeah I know they are one of the most critically acclaimed bands of all time but whatever. Hello fridge.

Going to be Great

There is something about walking home at night feeling sick, eating KFC, to finish off a seminar presentation that is due the next day that really makes you think about how you are living your life. I turned 21 yesterday and I wont let myself have a quarter life crisis. Instead i'll be great. I'm going to eat way healthier, get on top of uni work, and fit in as many things as I can into my days. This is some real Tony Robbins shit here. I decided a week ago that i'm going to do the Wellington half-marathon because if I do that i'll be great. I'll be all like: 'I can run really far'. I'll also read more, write songs and generally do more creative things and become pretty much the best person you've ever met. I might also buy some new pants. No I wont

No Imagination

Sometimes when I am walking around I imagine I am
on a tennis court and swing my arms around like I am playing
tennis which is pretty embarrassing/annoying for anyone
walking with me. I don't think I do this because I am really
obsessed with tennis (although I am), I do it because it
fills the void that was created when I stopped imagining I
was on another planet/in a jungle/secret-cave-base fighting
alien creatures/evil robot soldiers/Micheal Phillips (a guy from
my school who was massive jerk but Laura Wells still liked
him because he was good at swimming or something stupid
so I would imagine that he went crazy and murdered everyone
and I was defending their honor). I played these kind of
games way past the age where it is appropriate to play these
kinds of games. Fighting creatures was eventually replaced
with pretending I was in a famous band which was replaced
by tennis (although I have been known to still play
air-instruments from time to time).
      Today I walked through the beautiful forest behind our
house which in the past would have been the perfect
inspiration for my young mind to think of evil creatures that
needed to be killed. I thought, 'why not' and tried to picture
myself doing some kind of magic-fighty thing with some kind
magic-fighty creature. It didn't really work. I couldn't really
think of anything. It wasn't very fun. Growing up sucks

Enough About Me

I haven't really had much to say recently so why don't you
tell me about YOUR feelings?

Zen (Jono found out there was a camera on his computer)

Has the weight of the world got you down? Has the bitching and
bickering of mean-spirited people left you stressed? Well we have
exactly the right thing for you. Today we will show you how to
create your own zen space in the corner of your room where you
will experience a cathartic release of all stress and anger.

Step 1. You will a medium sized desk and a laptop containing
your favorite music

Step 2. Ceramic cowboy ornament (essential).

Hank the Cowboy will provide a real feeling of comfort to
your zen area. Hank is the best-friend figure who is ever-loyal
and never-judging. Your calm and collected friend will snipe
stress from a distance leaving it squirming on the ground, begging
for mercy.

Step 3. A ceramic eagle filled with whiskey.

Like the big brother you never had, this eagle watches out
like a hawk for thoughts that might plague you. The whiskey-
eagle is wise and logical and it's eyes say "None of these problems
really matter in the scheme of things". It also has the bonus of being
filled with delicious whiskey for when you need just a little extra
help to reach that perfect level of calm.

By following these steps you will create a comfortable place
for yourself where you can go to be calm no matter how
stressed you feel in the real word. Your zen area will also
temporarily rid you of: depression, anger, irritability,
disillusionment with the world, grumpiness, sadness, angst
and broken-heartedness. But don't take our word for it,
Just look at this content customer:

Soap

Reasons not to drop the soap in the shower of a male prison:

• Someone could slip on it and hurt themselves
• It could fall on your toe which could be painful
• Someone might put their penis in your butt
• It might get gross hairs stuck to it

Sincerity Allergy

I'm a big fan of replacing sincerity with a healthy dose
of dry irony whenever possible. Sharing feelings with
anyone but my closest friends brings on a kind of
sickness only usually felt when witnessing casual nudity
(people should only be naked for sex and showers).
Lately, however, I have been occasionally feeling a
kind of David Kline-esque appreciation for beautiful
things. My natural instinct is to bludgeon these kinds
of thoughts to death with a hammer but there is just
something about the view from my new flat at night.
I'm sure these feelings will pass and i'll be back to
saying 'totes' in no time. I think I will really like it here.

How my Facebook Friends Comment on Other People's Pictures

Comments:
Kitty-Kat Kate: Omg you are such a fucking mega babe!

Meow-Meow Melinda: Dayum girl! Need to party wit u soon!

Glitter-Glam-Sarah-Woof: Holy shit babe. Lookn' flyyyy

Melbourne #1

I went to a casino for the first and hopefully last time of my life.
It was very big and very depressing. I played roulette and plan
to never play again because I won. I am up and pretty proud
that I had the restraint to double my money and leave. I beat
the house. Fuck you house. Plus I got your free 5 dollar note
that you wanted me to spend on gambling but I spent it on a
doughnut. I also took two complementary juice boxes.

Oamaru

Land of hopes and dreams
Land of old people, small children and about 3 suicidal 20 year-olds
Land of Steampunk and steam trains
Land ongoing fear (the lowest the fire danger sign ever goes is 'moderate', making the townsfolk believe that everyday there is a reasonable chance of combusting. This constant fear allows the city council to maintain an authoritarian rule on the people)
Land of casual racism

Land of bogans yelling strange things from cars (at my sister: "Just because you are skinny doesn't mean you have to run in town")
Land of penguins, seals, sheep and penguins
Land of ceramic whisky bottles in the shapes of eagles, crows and books
Land of wishing it was 100 years ago