“This is the part of the speech where I digress from describing my early-on apprehensions to discussing just how honoured I am to see you all here now. Despite my irrational fears earlier, it’s clear to me now that this was a great idea and I’m glad you all came. This is the part of the speech that is not going to happen.” The older son raises an eyebrow, perturbed. GET DOWN! GET DOWN! “As you all know, I’m exactly ninety years old today. And my one regret is that it’s taken me ninety years to learn the lesson I have learnt just now.” The son with the eyebrow from before gets up from his seat, starts edging subtly towards the man with the mic. Things are not going according to plan. “And in a way, I really am glad you could all make it. But only in the sense that it helped me to realise that you all make me sick.”

The discord is spreading. People are sharing glances. Eyebrows are going up like atom bombs over Nevada. The toddler sits and giggles at his plastic contraptions. He lives in a safer world. “I’ve just sat through four hours,” the man continues, ” of complete and utter drivel. My entire life, all my accomplishments and all my failures – summed up in a two hour speech in the style of some TV show I never even watched. I’ve seen a friend of mine get up and sing The Pirates of Penzance. And the whole time I’ve just been sitting there thinking ‘Who asked for this? Is this my birthday present? Four hours of boredom and an old priest leading a singalong? When you’re a kid you get chocolate and remote control helicopters. I feel like I’ve been demoted. Some sort of punishment for hanging around so long without kicking the bucket maybe? I don’t even know. Maybe just because I’m old. I live for boring stuff. You clearly all know me very well. Who the hell are you people anyway?”

The older son is visibly agitated now, desperately tugging at the microphone, but the man keeps going. “Seriously though. Who’s that guy? Some sort of second nephew? I don’t know you! What are you doing here? Yes, we share some genes. But when you think about it, everyone on the planet is made of the same stuff. G A T C. Then atoms and qwarks or something. Clearly I should have invited the entire world! Why don’t I just replace you with some druggie I pulled of the streets? Would there be any difference? For all I know you are some druggie they pulled off the streets. Get out of my golfing club!”

The toddler is still smiling. He turns to the man with the microphone and says WE WERE NOT MEANT TO BE. The son has pulled the microphone from his father’s hands, but you can still hear him. “I’ve never even been to this place. There is no emotional connection or anything. Might as well have held it at the local swimming pool. Might’ve had better food as well. And I could have drowned that slacker redhead over there. Just to kill the boredom. I mean look at the weedy little punk. It’d be pretty easy.” The older son and his family are loudly proclaiming the fathers’ suddenly long-standing mental health issues, and are complaining that the temperature is far too high and has probably clogged his chakras. And it might have worked, but the man isn’t hysterical. All this time he’s kept up his inside voice, staring his audience calmly in the eye. EMERGENCY STATIONS. RELEASING NERVE GAS IN FIVE… FOUR… He’s not screaming. He’s just standing there, all dressed up. Dignified. Beautiful.

He sighs. “In the end, I’m not really angry. I’m ninety. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do. I just wanted to say something negative. All of the ninety birthday parties I’ve had, it’s never been okay to say something bad. You just smile at your relatives and put on your first-impression voice and you’re suddenly interested in slug cultivation just because your Auntie Nora did it for a stint back in her days in Peru. I never liked that. You’re all pretty okay I guess. I like some of you more than others. I really didn’t like you or you. I really liked you. I mean seriously. I have a car outside, and I know you’re married but we both know he’s an asshole and I want to go rob a bank and throw the money off the tallest building in the city and hold your hand while we watch the cash-hungry corpses pile up so high that the sunset bounces off their blood-spattered briefcases. And then I’ll go home and laugh until I die.”

The man with the microphone is gone now. The older son stands up, his frown diminished, and steps up to the wall. The speakers scream.

“Thank you all for coming.”

——————————————————————————————-

I went to a ninetieth birthday today. This speech never happened. This isn’t my grandpa. I took the start of it and kinda went off on my own fun ride. I stand by that last bit though. I don’t hate the people, I just think it’s weird that if Aunty Joy-Joy got hit by a bus tomorrow I’d be expected to care more than if it was some other aunt. I don’t know either of them. Family is a weird concept. I’m pretty sure I didn’t bag the right things in this mock speech. I’m not even sure what I think. Having extended family is probably really important or something I dunno. It’s late. Blech.

You know what I really stand by? Altona. It smells goddamn terrible. This is the single most defensible fact in the known universe. Never go to this place.

But anyway yeah. Happy Birthday Grandpa. Despite the fact that you kept your speech polite, you are still a pretty righteous dude. And god willing, you will never, ever read this.

Orrrrr HAVE I?

I’m afraid you’re gonna have to click the owl to get the joke. Well, not the joke. But the rest of the post will make no sense so – cop him right in his ridiculous Kill-Bill-jumpsuit eyes. Or just click the link that’s probably in the sidebar. Now we’re all up to speed.

That’s right. I started another blog. And it’s hotter than this one. Not only that, it’s had more words uploaded onto it in under two weeks than this one may have gotten ever. So yeah. Try not to feel too second-best.

I am being assessed on this thing. VCE Literature, Unit 1. Blogging. Everything’s on computers now. I am hip and with it. And I didn’t want to just transform this place into my lit journal because frankly there’s some stuff in here I don’t want the people who are formally assessing me to see. Think of yourselves now as the readers of some guy’s literary mescaline stash. Which he’s probably going to drive down to less and less because the new cop-friendly house requires weekly moat maintenance and it all gets out of hand…

But yeah. I made a lit blog. You probably won’t wanna actually read it – seems to be pretty much ‘Walls of Words About Books’n'Stuff.’ It’s homework. If it wasn’t a blog I would have no justification for talking about it here. Ah hell, I still don’t.

This is pretty much just me pointing and yelling ‘Look, look, I did something. Please hold your applause until the firework re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo has ended.’ Also I got to stick a giant owl-face in here.

I guess I’ve just always sorta wanted a giant owl-face…

Right. To business. In 2007 I had to write poetry for English, and everyone was all ‘Here have a small amount of money.” In 2008 I wrote a book. No one has paid me for that in money… yet. In 2009 – I didn’t do much. I developed some bad habits and went outside sometimes. There.

The central point – other than that I am as consistent as a bag of m&ms – is I need a new thing. Something to do that I can summarize under one big umbrella term come the christmas letter. And right now the vast eldritch horrors of the cosmos seem to be calling out. They tell me, ‘Write scripts boy!’

First off there’s Kara’s movie. You remember Kara? She suggested some curse words once. Anyway she wants me to write a script for a movie. I’ve been a reasonably shit employee so far, but I’m warming to the idea… I figure it’s something to do. My main barrier seems to be that I have no idea how rockers used to talk. And I mean rockers, hating-on-the-mods rockers. Google search turns up a simply insufficient collection of rocker slang.

Next there’s the post-apocalyptic western idea. Perhaps not as hard-core-serious a proposal as Kara’s, but my brother has brought up the idea and hell I might just write it for fun. Maybe I’ll sell it at auction in a ‘mystery box.’ We’re living in a society where people sell secrets and colors on eBay. This can, nay, will happen. But yes. Post-apocalyptic western. That’s about as far as the plan has gotten so far. I’m liking nuclear winter.

Finally, and in a strange sort of way the most interesting right now… maybe I should write a play. The idea was raised in Theatre Studies – If I can write a script that the class likes, we might use it for Unit 3. And that’d be pretty damn rad. I haven’t written a play since primary school, and that was some baaad granola. But now I’ve had 5  whole weeks of learning about the elements and conventions and forms of dramaturgy. I’ve got some ideas. Plus it’d be at least one thing I wasn’t in any way commissioned to do by someone else. This play would by my goddamn vision. And you would all quiver in your clogs as we brought society crashing to the floor with the power of absurdist rabbit people and the inevitability of Death. And Death is a trumpet. Not a boat. You better be freakin’ scared.

I’m not really thinking I’m going to get anyone choosing to perform my play instead of Brecht. Most of the class is voting for Alice in Wonderland. I’m not big-headed enough to think I can take on Lewis Carrol. Let’s be honest – I just wanna write it so I can put ‘playwright’ on the little list of titles in my head. It’s all going to be on one of those big desk-things in my fancy office someday. My big fancy playwright office.

So yes. Everything seems another possibility to write a script. I’m not even gonna mention this thing. Guess I’d feel a bit better about failing NaNo last year. I blame the government. I’m getting a productive vibe. I’m gonna do something. Until the novelty wears off. Then, back to my humdrum life as the secret identity of Sloth Man!

And you know the really fantastic thing? I’d be working pretty much purely on Celtx. Yes. Yes I brought it up again. Let’s all just sit back and bask in the collective cringe.

So yeah. Scripts. Let’s see how that goes.

It’s late. I’ve had too much Asahi. Adrian’s wearing some kind of thrift-store tee with a smiling helicopter on it. I asked him why he wasn’t taking a jacket. He said he wanted to look good tonight. It’s pretty cold out here. He’s probably regretting it by now. But then, it’s not like he’s going to catch pneumonia. I look down at the empty bottles dripping together behind my ankles. There’s quite a collection down there. We must have been waiting here a while. The helicopter is staring at me. Look at that tiny little neon grin. I’d love to just smash that plastic-surgery-perfect smile into a million pieces of flaming shrapnel. But I can’t. He’s a helicopter. Still. Better say something.

“Don’t you hate that noise boom-gates make?”

Adrian doesn’t respond. Adrian doesn’t tend to. He’s off somewhere, far away from the decomposing suburbia his eyes are living in. I didn’t ask him what he’d been smoking before we left. You don’t ask what Adrian’s been smoking. Goddamn stoner – He’s sitting up real straight now. I hear the air shoot up his nostrils, see the fog pour out a moment later.

“Isaac,” he gurgles, grabbing my arm. Hard. “It’s nearly the farrrkin’ weekend !”

We laugh, and he can see that I agree. We leave the deck chairs and the bottles and step onto the other side of the tracks, the 3:14 to Epping whipping at my shoelaces as it clatters past. There’s always next week.

Point is, sleep. It happens at night time and ends in the morning. And ever since about two years ago, every holiday I have been getting progressively more annoying in my fascination with the growing realization that this last statement is more of a guideline. I don’t know. I guess I find it all kind of fascinating. This idea of what times are acceptable to wake up and what times are considered ‘ungodly.’ Circadian rhythyms, sleep disorders, jet lag and all that. Tiredness; from the blank nothingness in your head to the raging swarm of imaginary locusts that layer themselves on your eyelids and scream their little chitin-encased faces off until you lie down and shut them. Insomnia, hypersomnia, narcolepsy, cataplexy, melatonin… man, did that one come back to haunt me…

Different sleep cycles are like different countries. When you wake up and when you go to sleep on any given day restricts what you can do, how you do things, whether you do them when you wake up or right before you go to bed. Most of the year, we’re all strapped into the societally accepted morning-to-midnight regime thrown at us by school and work. So, on the long holidays, I have a tendency to stretch out a little and drift around the clock. Gotta say, there’s something about the nocturnal lifestyle that appeals to me. There’s something more to it than just the kick you get out of waking up when it’s pitch black outside and falling asleep cursing all the goddamn loud-mouth birds yelling encouragement to the sun.

Maybe just the fact that none of the conventional activities of the day are available, but if I wake up at midnight I have a tendency to feel like I’ve gotten more done in the day. It forces you to either work hard or rise to all new levels of procrastination. Right. I’m sitting here in a dark house with a cat, a bucket, some flammable liquids and a stanley knife. Let’s work with this.

The boredom never sets in. You always expect it to, but it never does. Stuff happens. You end up camping out in a park at 8am, wasted as a speedboat, waiting for the shop to open so you can buy bread. And to add to that, everyone’s asleep. I know I sound like an antisocial creep, and in my defense I don’t do this for weeks at a time, but there is definitely something to having the ability to just sit back and binge on Kettel with no one bursting in to tell you to hang out the washing. Freedom man. Freedom to do anything from dyonisian trances to hours and hours of Daria and Seinfeld. Copasetic dude.

Of course, there’s always the lack of sunlight threatening to melt your bones. And apparently it also causes you to use up your melatonin at a constant rate all day, making it hellishly harder to sleep even after the sun rises (you see?) Then you stay awake too long, sleep too long, and end up on some new area of the clock. Then tomorrow you need to do something during the day time so you stay up for 30 hours and it all goes to pot. And the world at large is decrying to the rest of the large world that you’re a useless deadbeat who can’t wake up at a reasonable hour. And then there’s always the sleep madness. Oh the sleep madness…

I dunno. I find the waves of wastedness from sleep deprivation kind of addictive. What can I say. I’m fifteen. Can’t drink, can’t get drugs because I don’t have Jack’s contact details. The best way I can mess myself up is to load up on coffee and greet the new day lying upside down off the side of a couch whilst daydreaming about a horrific boat-chase through the swamps of New Orleans between a postman and a ventriloquist dummy brought to life by voodoo magic. Makes for an interesting evening.

So yeah. I am a tad over-obsessed with my own dilly dallying about the circadian cycle. I had hoped with this post I could get some closure and move on – but now there are people with springs for feet evading the lighthouse men. Plus pizza.

Life is good.

Wooh?

———————————————————————————————————————-

All right then.

Settle down kids. Tonight we’re going to hear the story of the rolling people.

I myself once met with these skulduggerous beings, and let me tell you – it was years ago, and I maaay have been experimenting with mescaline at the time, but they are as real as that goddamned fifth elephant.

So yeah I was hallucinating like a bitch.

Anyway, we were all sitting in our magical fairy castle (read – three-wheeled gasoline truck in the middle of the desert.)

**I really hope you weren’t hoping for a childrensy bedtime story cuz I am taking this one to meet Hunter S. Thompson – Ed.**

Me, Trent Reznor and Oscar the Grouch being everyone. Anyway, we’re all sitting there when we realize that we haven’t been talking, and the Silence has encroached around our car like a herd of whales. In terror, we switch on the radio.

The radio is named Ted and it starts talking to us.

“Hearken children of the night. Hear our message. We are the Rolling People. We come from a time and place far from here. We bring gifts and good fortune and the secret to all happiness.”

**Ted is a radio and he speaks only what others speak through him. It is a sad life, but Ted is a radio of simple tastes. He has accepted his fate. The story goes on…**

Now, Trent and I were interested in what these Rolling People had to say, but Oscar started having a seizure so we had to stop listening and help him.

Big Bird is a bitch if you bring his muppets back dead.

Anyway, turns out Oscar was possessed, so we didn’t have to do much. No sooner had we leant over to administer the adrenaline, Pulp Fiction style, when he jumped out the sunroof and sprinted into the Colorado night on his little muppet feet.

Grabbing our laser-guns in case of nuclear scorpion attack, Trent and I went to fetch him. As we left I heard the radio mumble something about ‘do not follow the ribbon man’ but before I could crank up the volume Trent had hit the gas on his hoverboard and I had to hurry to catch up.

It didn’t take long to catch up to Oscar, but when we did he knew we were about to meet  the Rolling People.

The way we knew was that Oscar the Grouch didn’t normally hover six metres in the air with his eyes bleeding whilst reciting the Old Testament.

And the glowing coyotes were drawing in…

**TO BE CONTINUED?**

———————————————————————————————————————-

So yeah. I could’ve waffled on for hours but thankfully my audience decided it needed sleep. So now it’s just the first cliffhanger in an epic Icelandic saga?

Many faults with this. Mostly in the fact that I think Hunter S. Thompson and Trent Reznor would each take great pleasure in vomiting all over me just for having the gall to inscribe their names on this piece of crap. I’m not even that much of a NIN fan, I just picked a random name out of my bucket of ‘people I’d most like to end up sitting in a truck with at 3 in the morning in the middle of some desert whilst on mescaline.’ As to Thompson – at least my vague imitations of his style are so badly done that no one will ever know. Except if they’re reading this right now. Shit.

(Actually on second thought I think this is just more of my normal day-to-day rambling in the place of decent writing. Am I subconsciously trying to imitate the great Gonzo writer himself? We may never know…)

(I apologize for all the swearing too. I am a teenager. When I improvise I curse like a sailor.)

(And tell the truth I’d probably be a bit intimidated sitting in a truck full of drugs with Trent and a possessed muppet. But a man can dream, can’t he?)

A man can dream...

Our family christmas tree is essentially one of those Dr. Seuss trees with the long spindly trunk and little tufts of leaves – but pointier. Putting decorations on it is an exercise in both yuletide joy and masochism. (Yuletide Joy and Masochism. I wish I was any good at composing music because I could write an album and I could just sit there for hours and hours not being able to decide what to call it. Ah dreams…)

But yeah. We’ve had it for twenty one years. That’s right, the tree has been around here longer than I have. I bet when I was born it went through the whole jealousy stage, wanted the parents’ attention back, but now I’m pretty sure we’re cool.

Statement: “I think we should turf it after this christmas and plant it out in the woods somewhere so it can grow wild and free.”

Why?

The way I see it, we are taking our beloved syringe-tree of drab-looking doom, and chucking it out in the woods where no one will look at it twice. Or even see it. We are losing a tree. Got me so far? My question is this: Who’s benefiting?

Answer: the goddamn tree.

Yes. Turns out a vegetable in a pot we’ve had for the last twenty-one years has spent the entire time bitching about us internally, wishing it could just break free and spread its roots in the wild.

I have only one thing to say to this. No.

It’s a tree. Yes, it’s alive. Congratulations. But if it was capable of wanting things, if it knew anything about happiness, if it could think, one of two things would happen. Option A) All vegetarians on the planet die of starvation because their salad won’t stop screaming at them. B) Everybody on earth dies because we are knee deep in these things. The tree does not care if we keep it in a pot. It’s just as okay with being chopped up and burnt as it is with a nice sponge-bath and an evening at the pictures with its chums the anarchist dandelions from down the road. It has no concept of leg room. So why shouldn’t I keep it imprisoned in its tiny ceramic holding cell for the rest of its carefree existence?

Ah, but here be the rebuttal. “What about Mother Nature? Have you no respect for the natural way of things?”

Well, as far as me and Mother Nature go, I like to think we’re on pretty good terms. I think she’s a valuable part of my life. In that she is a bullshit argument given the power of repetition by the masses, and is hence useful for making valid-sounding arguments that are secretly wrong. Hence she’s valuable. Just like ‘smart coal’ and ‘God.’

Nature – unless you believe in some omnipotent tree-being who heals spine-snapped squirrels with a breath of her vine-encrusted lungs – is just our word for how the world works. And people have a habit of drawing a line between ‘nature’ and ‘stuff humans do.’ Because skyscrapers don’t look like trees. They’re essentially big beehives, but no, they’re not natural. Because humanity kills off other animals and pollutes things. Lions kill stuff. There’s that whole cow-gas = global warming thing which I’m not sure is true but whatever. Humanity is just another one of Mother Nature’s little helpers which took the ‘kill everything’ side of the natural balance and turned pro. Not saying that’s good. Humans do some baaad stuff. We’re the twisted hellspawn of the known universe. But naturally so.

Back to my original point. Nature makes trees to grow wild and free. But Nature also makes humans who make pots and stick the trees in them. Bees (from Nature) take pollen (from flowers (from nature)) and make a hive (by extension from nature.) In short, if we don’t stick trees in pots, the ‘Natural Balance’ will be broken. And all the little Pokemons will be sad.

So yeah. That’s an angry rant about trees.

———————————————————————————————————————

School is, to put it simply, like the Grand Canyon filled with popcorn.

At first, you think, ‘Yeah, that’s a lot of popcorn. Let’s go.’ You’re excited, you’re hungry, you want to start eating. Unfortunately, popcorn palls after the first six or seven months.

But you keep eating, because you have to. Even when the popcorn starts getting more difficult to eat, and you’re starting to wonder if this isn’t just some bottomless pit, you chew painfully downwards.

And then, one day, you hit bedrock. All is well, you sigh with relief.

Then you realize that you’re now stuck in a hole at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Wonderful.

School is a long-term, arduous institutionalized holding pen, and it never really ends.

Which is why I find the summer holidays amusing. They’re a lie; it’s as simple as that.

It’s like a landing in the side of the Grand Canyon. You hit it, and you get to sit there and imagine it’s all over. It never is.

And I’m not against that. Rest is valuable. But is it really all that restful?

A lot of us have holiday homework. I’ve got a booklet of year ten algebra lying at the bottom of my cupboard. Not to mention that Christmas letter I have to finish, the actual Christmas shopping, and those two novels I want to edit.

All in all, I’m booked out for the entire summer.

What gives?

I’m against holiday homework. Alright, maybe on the little two-week holidays, maybe that’s allowed. But it’s the end of the year! It’s the finale. I can’t feel like that if I’ve got work carrying over between school years. Where’s my closure?

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate the holidays. Nor do I really detest school. I just like playing devil’s advocate. Sue me.

That being said, I do know people who really do count the days until the start of term one. For one thing, the long holidays are perfect excuses for trips abroad, and for those who get left behind, things are rather dull.

Even when your friends are in the same country, you’re not going to see as much of them as you’re used to. Some people are fine with that, content to sit back and do nothing for six weeks. But for those of us who thrive off constant company and activity, the holidays are just a different, duller brand of popcorn.

And it doesn’t help that our holidays are in the middle of the summer.  We’re bored, we have math homework, and now it’s 40 degrees. We’re having an amazingly cool summer so far, but I stand by my point.

Even indoors the world stops moving. TV Channels across the world realise in one shining moment that they can stick anything on the screen and people will be forced to watch.

Christmas and New Years equal house parties, and house parties equal cleaning and fretting and not enough wine glasses and I hope the dog doesn’t bite anyone and does this banner make the house look fat?

You want a quiet holiday?

Tough.

Holidays are those briefest times in which you can stop eating, sit down and look back on the whole you’ve dug with your teeth. The tunnel almost collapses on you and you have to clear it all back out. You realize you’re covered in salt and spend three days trying to bathe in the cleaner popcorns.

You realize, in the end, you haven’t come that far.

But it’s the best time of the year, when we can lie back and fall into a pool of sad delusions and broken dreams.

And the funny thing is, these are the best years of our lives, and I’ve done nothing but hate on them. Don’t worry, it was pure pessimistic conjecture. No matter how true it was, you needn’t fret.

Just sit back, enjoy your placebo happiness, and pass the popcorn.

———————————————————————————————————————

Actually no. If I felt bad about the last post why didn’t I just take it down?

Eh. Waste of the product of about all the work I feel up to right now, plus that’s just like erasing my mistakes. I will accept the trash I spew and move on. With re-runs.

Ah how time makes fools of us all… Moving on.

I think I should just go ahead and scan the Stuff Book. Stick it on the internet or print copies for the masses. It’s the most popular thing I have ever created. Specifically, the big binder book I carry to every class to scribble in instead of doing work. And I had people gathering around in Drama today to flip through the damn thing. It’s got a better viewership than anything I’ve ever tried to produce. Hence my thesis – I should never try at anything. I’ll screw it up. Best just to get a job doing the cartoons for any newspaper willing to put giant melting lizards to print.

I think I should be doing science revision right now. I have exams the day after tomorrow. Will probably do reasonably on science. Hums I will crash and burn. Math… Urgggh… And I tactfully managed to skip English via Bali. So far teacher hasn’t noticed.

I never mentioned Bali to you kids did I? I go away for a week and garner a truckload of amusing anecdotes about Mr. Swastika and the wild marijuana plants. And you’re never going to hear a word of it. Just cuz I’m spiteful like that. I have now very thoroughly disappointed three people. Suck it those guys.

I think this post has taken on a really poppy 14-year-old-girl tone. It’s anecdotal again, which feels unclean. Also I can’t seem to go a paragraph without hating on myself. It’s Isaac-is-a-Whiny-Bitch week everyone. Didn’t mind the first paragraph, thought that might be going somewhere. Nope. Ah well.

Ooooh meta!

Aah I’m probably just tired. Which is stupid because I’ve been sleeping tons recently. However many months of getting 4-6 hours a night tops, and suddenly I’m going to bed at 10. I yawn all day, and yet I don’t feel like I’m going to die. Still get about as much work done as normal. Think my sleep-debt is finally calling in the taxes? That’s my theory. I don’t know enough about sleep to figure it out. Someone’s slipping melatonin into my toast?

Ach. Seriously though. Unclean. I swear I won’t post again until I’ve got something to say. Maybe I’ll do one of those Drabble things. They kinda fell out didn’t they? I’ve gotten about as much writing practice this year as a mourning porpoise. Ah well. I’ll do something.