and the world spins madly on

It was my birthday a couple of weeks back. It marked 27 years of accumulated history and a few more layers added to my memory strata.

I’m told that one of the greatest things to be gained with age is growing more comfortable with yourself as a whole. It’s a nice thought, definitely something to look forward to, and yet-

And yet, I don’t think I want to be comfortable with what I am. Like people who become comfortable in obese bodies and in abusive relationships. I’m a bad fit, in this skin, in this skull, in this life. May I never grow comfortable with that, may I stay itchy and restless and never settle and never accept that this is all I am. That would be defeat. Some wars aren’t meant to be won, but not winning is not the same as being defeated.

Being 26 was unpleasant. It was rather like suffocating in scrotum. Sweating hairy rank scrotum that came in great filthy sticky folds. Gross and embarrassing and relentless. Being 26 was quite possibly worse than being 16, although I don’t think the two can be compared, being different people in different times and different places.

I can’t complain (but I sure do), the hardest years are the ones in which we learn the most, in which we are tested and grow, one way or another. It is better to grow than stagnate, but it has been a very steep learning curve, and a non-stop one at that, and I think I’m burning out. Students at exam time go a little crazy, so overwhelmed by everything they have to process. Some down time would be nice, a chance to process everything churning around in my head and recharge all batteries, but I don’t think such time will be granted me any time soon.

Maybe I’ve already burnt out. Maybe I’m just tired. Or desperate. Or crazy. It’s hard to tell. From here, they all look the same. Rejections are necessary for writers, to help build a thick skin, like childhood sicknesses are necessary to build an immune system. Life might work like that for some people. I think I’m a castle, and every rock thrown at my walls just makes the cracks deeper and wider, until I’m so battered that it no longer takes a boulder to knock me down, some small rock will do, then not even rocks, just the passing breeze. Now I take damage from things that don’t even happen. I create my own damage, but it hardly shows up against everything else.

It’s funny, though, that in spite of how far I’ve come, hurtling another year through time, there are some lessons that I must keep on learning.

I wanted a hug. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted something so intensely before. The lack of having a source of hugs on tap made itself felt in my body, it was physical and a little scary. There’s some kink in my wiring and I assume that anything I want is something I should learn to live without (and even harder to fight, the possibility that in seeking the thing I want I will fail and be denied, which is a fear taller than I am), but I didn’t say no to a hug when it was there.

It wasn’t really the hug I wanted. I was looking for a safe place, and hugs are not safe places. There is no place more vulnerable, which is obvious, but rarely realised. Until you find you’ve gone and left yourself vulnerable to someone who doesn’t care. There are no safe places left in the world. I know this, but I have difficulty accepting it. I guess it’s just animal instinct to seek shelter, and Tessaism to do it wrong.

Learning this doesn’t stop me from being stupid. I had the chance to be weak and naked and vulnerable in front of someone who did care, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t say a word. I wanted to break down and didn't know how, and because of that I broke something important, something that mattered.

And that is the lesson I learn, and have to keep on learning. That I’m not the person I want to be, not even close. I can’t and haven’t ever been able to say the things that matter out loud. Maybe one day I will, because I don’t want to grow comfortable like this, but not today.

Until that day, I will do what I have always done, and write.

Goddamn this bloody fucking blog.

I have to take this space back, again, because I’m dumb and keep forgetting what it’s for. Like medication, I shy away from it. The idea of needing something in order to function as a normal person doesn’t taste good, but I just have to swallow that and deal with it. If hanging myself out to dry works, then it works. If When it comes back to bite me in the arse, I'll deal with that too. I know that just because I promise to come back doesn’t mean that anyone will wait for me, but for those of you who have, thank you. There’s no greater compliment you can give a person than your own time, and by merely reading this you give me more time than I deserve, truly.

I’m going to stretch your patience a little further, I’m afraid. There is a lot of junk I need to write out of my system. I’ve been looking for something in my head, in the streets, on the internet, and I haven’t come close to finding it. I think what I’m looking for can’t be found. I think I’m looking for the ground. Somewhere along the way I lost track of it, and now I’m just tumbling about in the sky, in orbit maybe, forever burning up in the atmosphere, forever falling, but never finding the ground. They say from up there you don’t feel yourself fall, you don't know up from down. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m desperate. Maybe I’m tired. It’s hard to tell. From here, they all look the same.

Maybe that’s because they are.

It’s a bit late to be asking for birthday presents, and a bit presumptuous too, but if you care to indulge me, then please, I’d like you to go and give someone a hug. Most people aren’t carrying around all my finely tuned neuroses, and everyone needs a hug. Go hug someone you know needs a hug, you suspect might want a hug, or even someone who doesn’t need a hug at all, but the receiving of one would just be a giant ripe sweet cherry on top of a glorious day. Hug them past the point where they lean in give you a pat and turn away, hug them till you have their attention and you’ve made them uncomfortable, hug them till they stop asking why you’re giving them this hug, and hug them till they’ve accepted this hug, and let themselves be engulfed in it, simple as that.

Here’s to you, and the safe places you make.

And if you get done for indecent assault, well, that's what you get for listening to strange people on the internet.

/end nightshift

Explorasaurus goes strange places and finds new dreams.

- to save the world, one light globe at a time.

The state government decided to continue on down the path that Earth Hour had started, a move which surprised everyone. The restrictions on night time energy use were introduced in stages, in regards as what lights had to be turned off where and when, for how long, and with gradually increasing penalties which were actually enforced, again to everyone’s surprise.

But a dark city is a dangerous city, and so other means to bring light to Melbourne were sought.

On this night I walk to work as on any other night, sloppily dressed among all those decked out club goers. Maybe I’ve walked Collins Street too often now, as there hasn’t been anything interesting to gawk at for a while. The appearance of some sort of work crew outside the Rialto slows my steps. They’re not construction, and they’re not window cleaners, and they’re not messing with the pavement. They appear to be sloshing about barrels full of sweet-smelling water.

It’s for the lichen, they answer, engineered to thrive in sugar water. We wash the buildings with this, and then spray the spores on while it’s still wet, so they stick. It doesn’t take long then, only a couple of days, for the lichen to grow and gain enough mass to produce light.

Bioluminescence? Someone on a committee somewhere is a nerd. Word up.

They let me peek in the back of a truck, at the trays of lichen already grown and glowing in a rainbow of clashing colours. These are for the streetlights, they point out the fittings, we’ll be able to custom grow shop signs and the like, but they’ll have to wait till we have all the buildings painted.

Wow, I say. Wow. Can I help?

They’re short of people willing to work night shift, and within a week I’m learning how to abseil, and I’m knocking on the windows of my old office at three in the morning before washing the windows with sugar water.

My old co-workers think I’m mad, climbing over skyscrapers in the middle of the night. What, they ask, are you doing? Really?

Saving the world.

It’s a never-ending job. Some lichen grows better on one type of surface than others, the body corporate of any office tower always has issues (usually regarding the colour) and the lichen itself is small and alive and not always co-operative. It does what it does, and grows and spores and grows and spores, and outbreaks of invading colour appear everywhere. It needs to be coaxed, fed and herded to the rims of windows to keep it from blocking the sun. It’s like horse whispering, we tell each other, feet to the glass and a fifteen storey drop below, only lichen muttering.

We are the lichen mutterers, saving the world, one light globe at a time.

You can tell us where ever we go. We drop glittering clouds of dust with our every move. The path I tread from the elevator to my door glows intensely even under the corridor lights. My bed is almost too bright to sleep in, and a new mattress every four months becomes a perk of the job. We all have to have our sheets washed at an industrial drycleaners. It’s hard to bring people home for nookie when your bed looks nuclear.

At sunset, I sit on the edge of a building roof, and watch the lights go out, block by city block, and listen to the unfolding of an empty space in the city soundscape as Melbourne’s power drops away, and as the sky darkens I watch the lichen wake up and my city glows a thousand different colours, and I’m in love.

It will be a problem, we tell each other, hosing down the State Library with sugar water, should anyone want to bomb Melbourne. Not that turning the lights off would work as it did in the second world war, what with GPS and all. Melbourne stands out like Emerald City, brighter than before. Amateur astronomers hate us.

The long term side effects of prolonged lichen exposure manifest in us, the lichen mutterers, first. Too many inhaled spores in our lungs, despite all the protective gear we wear. It gets hard to speak, so I don’t. It gets hard to breathe, and when my lungs are biopsied, they can’t see anything because the glow blinds the camera.

What were you trying to do? Mum sits by my hospital bed. She’s upset at me.

Save the world.

She shakes her head.

I got the black lung, pops, I joke, and cough, and when I cough the air sparkles like magic.

submarineasaurus are go

Some more stuff happened, on top of all the other stuff, and I have crossed my threshold of what is acceptable behaviour when interacting with the world at large, lost my judgement and stepped on lots of toes, and so I’m pulling my submarine trick. We batten the hatches, dive deep and run silent until…until we don’t need to any more.

I think I caught myself out when I said I try to keep my angst to myself. It’s true, but for anyone who reads this, it’s very not true. That’s why this blog exists. I don’t have anywhere else to put any of this, and I need to put it somewhere. Sometimes I forget that.

I’ve caused unnecessary worry, and I’m sorry, especially to J, M and M.

Notification of Intent to Disappear

There is violence in the act of writing. Taking thoughts from the mind and putting them down in some physical sense is an act of intention, an expression of will, and any expression of will is an exertion of force on the world.

Some writing is more honest in its violence. The pen is a knife, the slide of the nib across paper the slice of the blade, and what is written can be written over, but never unwritten. The typewriter is a less subtle pound pound pound every key stroke physical and hard pound pound pound until the words are down and won’t get back up, and can never be unwritten.

Computers obfuscate that violence. The key presses are softer, and every letter put down can be erased and unwritten and taken back. It’s easy to forget the consequences that our words and voices can summon when the delete key exists. The only way to acknowledge the violence of the written word in an electronic medium is to have the words read, so that even if unwritten, they cannot be unread.

I have been violent, and that cannot be undone;

and

I am tired and ashamed;

and

I need another hangover;

and

I have nothing left to say.

Spanish Dancers (the nudibranch kind)

picture from here

I was all set to dig up fascinating and weird truths about this most graceful of sea slugs, but the internet offers no such treasures. They can swim, and they're big for sea slugs, which is a succinct summary of what the internet hivemind knows.

I'm forming the opinion that they get away with this by being gorgeous and entirely hypnotic. Who needs to be able to hold a conversation when you do this all day?



(Just ignore the dumbtard diver poking the poor thing, and the further dumbtard diver dancing, and the random apperance of a lion fish. Actual spanish dancing is at the 1 minute mark - it's the best footage I found on YouTube.)

ETA: I stumbled across this page in my GISing. It's a competition gallery of underwater photography that is well worth eyeballing. See?

I noted the fact that today it rained all day in my diary, because the world is ending and precious thing should be recognised.

prettier than thou

It was posted on boingboing so you've already all seen this absolutely stunning collection of sea slug glamour photos up on the NG site. They're most <3 worthy.

To be honest, they made my self-esteem wilt a little. I mean, yes, we've done quite a bit of the evolution thang, and we have brains, big brains, bigger than a whole sea slug, brains that render us capable of picking the fluff from our belly button and wondering whether milk two days past the use by is still okay at the same time, and I'm not even all that ugly even by human standards, but we are-





-never going to be all that.

Have yourself a gander, make yourself feel ugly and cumbersome. I swear the second last slug is the inspiration for Pikachu.

Even more damaging, I noticed the "buy print" button on the bottom left. And I clicked it. And found the whoooole NG print store. May Inari take my soul and keep it in a sardine tin. I want all those sea slugs on my walls. Alas, or perhaps fortunately, it's the entirely wrong time of a very small and bill consumed pay. BUT I SHALL REMEMBER.

PS:



If you desire you may purchase a print of zombie bear here.

"Tomorrow, I think, is a great day to go to work hungover."

i jump from every rooftop

I'm breaking with all the serious posting and we're going to play a game.

Let's play make believe. You're a doctor. Maybe you really are a doctor, in which case, this will require no effort on your part. You run a general practice in an old neighbourhood. You have clients who have been coming to you for the length of their lives. One client in particular. You don't see her more than a couple of times a year for checkups as she's barely sick. You have 26 years of her medical history in your records.

When she asks you about alternatives to prescription anti-depressants, do not look at her like she's just asked you if grafting a live walrus to her face will increase her chances of getting laid.

Just because you have made her cough and say 'aaah', taken her blood and shoved steel umbrellas up her twat does not mean you have any, any idea of what is going on in her head. Reacting as though she's being silly, possibly attention-seeking and overly dramatic, and telling her that she doesn't need any such medication because, well, she's not depressed, is going to do several months of damage.

I was asking for help.

Regardless, I went on St John's Wort which smells funky and comes in tablets the size of my head. Couldn't hurt to try. It's a slow accumulating drug, and it was some weeks before I noticed any effects. As far as I could tell, the only thing the pills did was take away my desire. All desire, for anything, everything, small immediately desires and material desires and long term dreamy desires. I did not become content with my lot, I simply had no urge to change gain move anything. It didn't feel like apathy. It wasn't numbness. I found that, instead of forcing myself to be a not terribly brooding mopey person around other people, I was forcing myself to want things.

If you don't desire things, if you don't have desire driving you through your life, pushing you to act, making you change the world around you, then what is the point of anything? Desire makes us go. Without desire, any desire, nothing I did had any meaning.

None of this actually stopped my head from being a noxious place to be. None of this made me feel any better, or made every day life anything less than a tooth and nail ordeal. The pills stole my sleep dreams, which did not impress me in the least. And when it came down to it, the act of taking these pills every morning made me feel like a faker, a poser, and a failure.

One night, one particularly bad night, I stood in the dark and threw the pills, one by one, out the window.

Most satisfying thing I've done in a long time.

St John's Wort is prescribed instead of Prozac in Germany, and has been in use for so long I don't doubt it helps a lot of people. But the effects I felt weren't helping me, they were scaring me. They took away some of the tools I use to keep going.

So what if night after night I dream of the end of the world, and when I wake up I'm nothing but thwarted desires? These things make me me. These things give me meaning.

Maybe I am being entirely irrational, making up any excuse to return to the devil I know. These certainly don't seem like rational or sensible decisions. But, I'm not scaring myself anymore, and while I haven't yet decided if this is a good or bad thing, it's justification enough for me.

You can stop playing make believe now.

and chimpanzees sling shit

Living on my own has forced me to adjust the way I think about space. At home, I had my room, which was my space and only my space, followed by the rest of the house, which was our space, and then there was outside, which was anything beyond the front door. Due to the fact that we're out near the sticks no one tended to drop by due to sheer inconvenience, and the house isn't really made for hanging out in. I don't think anyone has visited me at home home since high school. My space and our space didn't tend to be intruded on by anyone other than immediate family. And possums.

When I was up in Canberra, there was our space, and outside. Not having anywhere that was specifically my space taught me that I am, in fact, a guy. You know that whole spiel about how men need a den? Like, the shed in the back yard? Where they can go and Be Men without hinderance, or some such bullshit? Tessas are like that too. They need somewhere to go and Be Tessa, piss on the carpet and brood in peace.

Moving out of home was different again. My whole apartment became my space, and what with living without a fridge and thus having to venture out every day to eat for a whole month, and needing to go out for internet access, the entire city has become our space, and there is no outside. I haven't quite got to the point of going to the supermarket in my pyjamas, but I'm giving it serious consideration.

Having the apartment as my space has taken a bit of getting used to, as suddenly I don't live out near the sticks and it is more than convenient to have friends come over and chill on my kitchen floor, which means there are people in my space.

Augh!

Even though I like these people and I've specifically invited them, they're in my space! Looking at my stuff! They're Looking! At! My! Stuff! Making! Judgements! About! Me! Augh! Which is something that I'm getting better at dealing with, but I am still struck by the overwhelming urge to tell good friends of mine to GTFO. Which is rude. I guess I'm a very territorial person, and that's a reason, not an excuse.

Which is all very interesting, but it's only to provide you with the adequate background knowledge to fully appreciate just how fucking stressful having strangers inspect my place is. Strangers who apparently have enough money to go around buying inner city apartments. Who may or may not kick me out, who knows? Because having the strangers who currently own the place demand a $25 a week rent rise isn't stressful enough. Strangers! In MY SPACE!

After the inspection, you're damn right I pissed all over the carpet.

YOU HAVE WRITAAAR

I am an Editorial Assistant for Weird Tales.

No, really.

See, how it works is, well, just imagine that the slush pile is the fridge, right? Ann, being Fiction Editor and thus Head Chef, is rummaging through the fridge looking for amazing food. I am in the kitchen because, I dunno, I'm picking my nose or stealing biscuits or something. Every now and then, Ann pulls out something like milk, sniffs it, turns to me and asks, "does this seem alright to you?"

If sniffing the milk kills me, then Ann does not use it.

If I read your story, it means Ann, that most cunning and savy and sly editor, is undecided on the merit of your story. What that really means is that You Are Doing It Wrong. In order to avoid such a fate and thus keep your story as far from me as possible, WRITE OARSUM.

And if you don't believe me, my name is in the last two issues. It's okay to check. To be honest, I didn't really believe it till I saw it myself. I'm chuffed and more than a little humbled to be involved. Many, many thanks to Ann.



Issue #34 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is currently available for download as PDF for $4.95AUD. The last story in it is mine, precious, mine! Bitter Elsie Mae is a story of a ship gone bad, as only ships can. It was spawned in week 3 of Clarion South 2005 and Ellen Datlow did not die upon reading it. This publication meets my very low standards of what is required in order to call myself a writer. Even if I am not, in fact, writing.

Also, Daikaiju 3, which contains my giant crab story (actually titled One Night On Tidal Rig #13), is now available in hardcover. So even if I am never ever published again, I can still say I've been published in hardcover.

IS THERE ANYTHING LEFT TO ACHIEVE IN LIFE?

driftwood

Matt Staggs, over at Enter The Octopus, gathered together a lovely collection of pictures of coconut crabs-



-which you can view here.

Coconut crabs fall into a sort of "uncanny valley" when it comes to oversized animals. There is a point at which making an animal bigger than normal does not make it scarier than normal, and that is about the size of a small to medium dog. Seriously, if you can drop kick it, it isn't scary. If you can stop it with a golf club, it is not scary.

Still, I wouldn't want to drop kick a coconut crab. I imagine it'd hurt. Incidently, if you happen to be pinched by a coconut crab, the best way to make them let go is tickle their belly. With a feather. Plying them with red wine doesn't hurt either.

Now, I'm sure you've all heard about the defrosting of the Colossal Squid, that which is the MOST BADASS creature of the world. Seriously? BAD. ASS. Bigger than the Giant Squid, and a damn sight grumpier too. Did you know it has HOOKS?



HOOKS.

I'd also like to draw your attention to this sentence, contained in the above linked article:

The Colossal Squid can cloak itself similar to a Klingon Bird of Prey.

Which, actually, a lot of sea beasties can do, but such a trait can only ever add to the BADASSNESS of such a magnificent beastie.

STOP EATING CALAMARI.


(gakked from artbroken, Ironman and Batman do not play together well.)


(gakked from some guy at work: hip-hop about the superiority and delight known as tea. WORD UP.)

And I know you've all seen this article about the sexually frustrated seal;

The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin, and thrusting its pelvis, trying to insert itself, unsuccessfully.
After 45 minutes the seal gave up, swam into the water and then completely ignored the bird it had just assaulted, the scientists report.

But I believe it needs repeating.

45 minutes! XD

I SLEPT FOR 13 HOURS

BOOYAH!

(Except for that bit in the middle where I dreamt of, I shit you not, the zombie apocalypse. At the time, I was back in high school, and on a school camp. We were doing school camp type things, which largely involved swimming around some underwater palace (which was more than my actual school camps involved), and the teachers hearding us into a dinky little cottage country cafe, all the while this incredible sense of impending doom was growing, and for no very good reason that I could see. The teachers began pushing and whispering to get us back to camp, NOW, except there were no buses or cars. There were, however, helpful people with horses. Yeah. Who put us in groups of three to a horse (THREE TO A GODDAMN HORSE!?!? WTF!?!?!). Try organising a whole year level of high school kids into groups of threes when a whole heap of them have never ridden before, and none of us know what is going on other than something BAD was happening. This didn't last long, as other people turned up - what helpful people country folk are! - with more horses. I sat on a hoary old nag which would not stop walking, no matter how tight I pulled the reigns in. Teachers and horsey people had us lined up around a paddock, and were running around getting everyone saddled and seated, ready to trot off back to camp, and on this pain in the arse horse I walked around, and around, and around this loop of all my school mates, catching snippets of conversation that involved zombies, and further snippets that indicated exactly how freaked out everyone actually was, and this horse WOULDN'T STOP WALKING. I had an EPIPHANY; the zombie plague did not originate in Gippsland, it had finally reached Gippsland, but did not originate there. The suburbs of Melbourne were already over run, and in fact so was all Australia. There was no where for us to go, no safe places left in the world, but still, we must go. That's what teachers do, guide their students away from danger. But my god, it takes a long time to get hundreds of kids on horses. And then, just when finally, everyone was ready, there was one shrill scream, and I looked over my shoulder, past everyone else, and saw ONE ZOMBIE. SHAMBLING. VERY SLOWLY. And that was all it took to start an insane panic, a stampede into a highway full of cars, with half of us unhorsed and trampled, and the rest of us with no safe place to go to.)

(When I woke up, I was in my old room, which achieves pure darkness, in my old home, which achieves pure silence, and you're damn right I freaked the fuck out.)

OMG IT'S A LION VELOCIRAPTOR GET IN THE CAR

With no requests made it was artists's choice. The artist is feeling decidedly besieged at the moment, and has chosen to illustrate her headspace thus;

She is trapped at the top of a burning building. The burning building happens to be on a ship, which is sinking. There are velociraptors in the burning building. There are sharks in the water. Should she, either through dumb luck or cunning, avoid the raptors, being burned, falling to her death, drowning, and being eaten by sharks, there is still a GIANT FUCKING ASTEROID come to destroy all life on Earth. Halleh-fucking-lujaaaaah.

Many thanks to Larry, Gillian, Andrew, Baz, Chris, ~, and Jaime for their assistance in this surprisingly gruelling endeavour; they share equal blame. FOR SRS.

When our powers combine...!

Here we see SUPERPOPE, who had thought to give PAVAROTTI his Last Rites, only to be surprised as the PHOENIX, which had been chilling in Pavarotti's immense paunch, launches itself into freedom and glory. Superpope takes this badly, and is about to go all hadouken on the phoenix's ass. He has conjured that most holy power, the YEARD OF GOODKIND. In the corner Statler and Waldorf are on COMMENTARY, and they are not impressed. Statler has a GLISTENING SCALP, due to incidents which he will not be relating at this point in time.

I LOVE TO FIIIIIIIIIGHT!

In this piece we see a confrontation between MONKEY, Great Sage, Equal of Heaven, and a MEXICAN NINJA MARIACHI BAND. The NINJAS are attempting to distract Monkey with sweet music, but he thinks their music sucks, and is giving them the finger. The middle ninja has noticed that they are standing in PURPLE COFFEE, and the right-most ninja does not like the way the purple coffee is soaking his feet. Maraccas ninja is doing a stunning surprise attack, and Monkey is totally going to whup his ass. This event takes place outside the window of an actual ass, who is calling the cops on these damn low-life punks.

Unlimited Power

Here we see the Great Nostromo, a MAN WITH UNCANNY NOSTRIL POWERS, using his particular talents for evil. HAIRY MCTAVISH, THE SCOTTISH DANCING WOMBAT, has been caught unawares and, jig disrupted, is about to meet a very sticky end. Along with some detatched assmonkey TOES and autonomous PURPLE COFFEE.

This is all taking place inside the WORLD'S BIGGEST CHIKO ROLL.

Before The Other War

Here we have a depiction of that eternal conflict between ASSMONKEYS and CTHULHU'S GONADS. On the left, BOOMzilla and the CCTV Allstars jam out death metal on their ACCORDIANS, in the first opening salvo of the battle. The assmonkeys mosh and work themselves into a beserker rage. Being as it is very cold, some of the assmonkeys have elected to wear BOOTS. Those who haven't have had some of their TOES fall off, but in the heat of the moment have failed to notice.

To the left is an interdimensional portal through which the offspring of Cthulhu's gonads are pouring. Being as they do not have feet, they are not wearing boots. Nevertheless, the cold affects them and they have shrunken somewhat.

In the centre is the GYPSY CAB DRIVERwho, being a cab driver, has no idea where she is going and has thus found herself between these two titanic armies. Her friend has just noticed WILLIAM SHATNER'S TOUPEE being wielded by one of the gonads, and realises he has finally discovered the CURE to his poison. He's about to spill his PURPLE COFFEE on his lap in his excitement. They're both going to die horribly.

A LONE FIGURE ON A TRICERATOPS is present in the distance. They are eating chips. With gravy.

Mmm. Gravy.

I like to call this piece "Oh Holy Fuck I'm Going To Die".

After The War

What we see here is the aftermath of that most EPIC BATTLE between Cthulhu and ASSMONKEYS, which saw the assmonkeys most victorious. As they prepared themselves for DINNER TIME and armed themselves with SILVERWARE to feast upon his testicles, Cthulhu had the last laugh as his GONADS flew away.

BOOYAH

Here's the deal: instead of 7wishes, you get MS Paint doodles. Because, seriously, that's what the government pays me for. Leave requests, suggestions, lists of random things that are required to appear in the one image in the comments, and I shall paint what tickles my fancy. One artistic atrocity per night.

Did you like the speshul 7wishes? I did. I want some genius engineer to steal the idea and make it real. It was a shenanigan. I don’t think anything came from the shenanigan, it being one of those things that comes about when a couple of people say ‘oh, that’d be cool!’ while the rest of the world doesn’t actually give a crap. I don’t mind, still chuffed about that lovely illustration I scored.

I’m very tired. I’m probably understating that. I think skipped tired and went straight to exhausted a long time ago, and have possibly even gone as far as fatigued. Nightshift is looming over me. Can’t find solace in music. Couldn’t purge through decibels. Haven’t found validation in strangers. Failed to achieve critical mass – there will be no 7wishes this nightshift. There are no daydreams in my head. I’m sorry. I have nothing left to give.

6 is less than 7

someecards is brought to you by former Onion writers who only want to make your inbox a slightly more fucked up place to be.

Because I can't help but make a LIAR out of myself.

I was rummaging, and found this photo. I took it when I was tooling around the States a couple of years back, it's on the Skyline Trail at Paradise, on the slopes of Mt Rainier in Washington. It was August at the time, and not much further up I was walking through snow and looking down on glaciers and generally making alarmed and amazed squawking noises.



Do you SEE? It's a flower-filled meadow!

I DIDN'T BELIEVE THEY EXISTED.

It's entirely possible that Australia possesses, somewhere, at some point in the seaons, flower-filled meadows, but I haven't seen them, and they wouldn't be nearly this green, and there'd be snakes and nasty biting things hiding in the flowers, and there would not be BAMBI dozing in the middle of it, as there was in this case. And the damn flower-filled meadows were everywhere. Ev. Er. Ee. Where. I felt rather like I'd fallen into a Disney movie, and that I should be singing and frolicking. In the flowers. That were everywhere.

I found it a shame that the others with me, Europeans and Kiwis for whom the alpine environment was not at all a new thing, didn't see the marvel before them the same way.

Even though I have that memory, and I took this photo, I find that my belief in flower-filled meadows has diminished. They're too pretty for the suspension of my disbelief.

I don't have anything to say. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Have a place holder.

This is what the shipwreck coast does to life.


Beats it down, makes it small, misshapen.




Conquers it completely.


These small plants out on the cliff tops speak in quiet meek voices.


They say, “and yet, I live.”


I am not a plant. While I feel just as pummelled and low and bristly and twisted and maggoty, there is no satisfaction for me in merely existing. I want to be a person I’m not ashamed or embarrassed of. I want a life that I don’t need to run away from. Can you imagine such a thing?

I can’t.

clutching at straws that broke the camel's back

Don't particularly like the bathroom mirror either.

Maybe when I get back history will have spontaneously rearranged itself and that won't say what it says. Maybe I won't have felt the need to write it. Maybe it doesn't matter because I'll have to take it down in a few days anyway when the real estate agent brings strangers with money around to see if they want to buy the place.

I have to go; I'm going; I'm gone.

/end nightshift

- to hear.

Paper cuts the webbing between my fingers, and I hiss, and with that hiss realise that I haven’t spoken in a week.

I think about saying something, in that empty elevator. There is nothing I have to say that is worth saying, so I say nothing. The elevator stops. I open my mail, carefully this time.

There is one letter, hand-written, and it simply reads; St Kilda Beach, Sunday, 7.00am. There is no name, no return address, and no postmark. It has been hand delivered.

I don’t know. 7.00am is early. I don’t much like it even when I’m paid to be awake at that hour.

In smaller writing on the back; if you do not intent to come, then say so.

I say nothing. There’s nothing worth saying.

No one misses my voice. Supervisors come by my desk to drop of work, rolling out instructions, and I only need nod. Friends ask questions, and I only need nod. The phone rings, and I’m told I have a package waiting at home. I nod. I can drift through this life without saying a word. Words are force direction movement intent, and I am none of these things.

Do this for me, the supervisor says, dropping off a fifty page historical sex offence report. My fingers hurt.

There’s a long string of emails I should reply to, but they’re words, and nothing I have to say is worth saying.

Maybe, if I hold out long enough, words will leave my mind too. Then I will only think in pictures and music.

Come out tonight, they say, and I nod. I’m tired. Over dinner they talk and talk, and I listen. It’s hard not to listen, when people speak with conviction, so sure of their own voices. I can’t keep them out of my head, and they overwhelm my quiet thoughts. I go home with the voices of so many other people in my head. They won’t be quiet. They never stop and listen, so intent are they on what they are saying.

I don’t sleep. I can’t stop listening to the rest of the world. There’s so much everyone has to say. There’s so much that needs to be heard.

Eventually, I give up. After showering and dressing, I go out. Autumn mornings are nippy, and the sun isn’t up yet. I take the first tram to St Kilda. Tired and sobering and dishevelled people slump in the chairs, their fine clothes not so fine now. The beach is long. I get off at first sight of the sand, and amble along it in that slow, easy, comfortable stroll that so few people can pace. I don’t know what I’m looking for.

I find kites. All manner of kites high in the rising breeze of dawn, tied to stakes in the sand. There are dragons and boomerangs and boxes and snakes and the diamond kites like I remember flying in Westerfolds Park. A great flock of beautiful kites, going nowhere. They sound like motion. The wind tears on their strings. Their fabric ripples. I wander in the midst of them, turn about a full circle, and lie in the sand, watching them glide quietly above me.

A child of uncertain age and gender swathed in beanie and scarf walks out to me, and begins reeling in a fish. It pulls away from the others, and curls about the end of its tether. Like most fish, it doesn’t want to be brought in. The child lands it without tangling any of the others. In their hands, the string is clearer control than the best of reigns. The fish lies at my feet, and I prop myself up on my elbows to see.

It’s a beautiful thing, made of such fragile elements, and yet strong. It can catch the wind, and not be defeated by it. It is no specific fish, just essence of fish. Pure fish, swimming in the sky.

The child unties a paper twist from the fish’s tail, and hands it to me. I unfold it, and in it find my voice.

“Thank you,” I say, and it is worth saying.

- for reassurance.

I stare myself down as I brush my teeth, until I have to look away. I’m not sure if that means I won or lost. The bathroom light may or may not be fluorescent. It doesn’t matter. Either way, I look bad. This morning, the shadows under my eyes are particularly pronounced.

I spit, rinse, and wipe my mouth. My eyelids are puffy. They go down, eventually, but it takes a couple of hours. I have to leave now.

My reflection leans out of the glass, and puts a hand either side of my head. She holds me so I can’t look away, and looks at me with earnest eyes. She says-

Today is not a butterfly day.

Oh fuck off. I brush her off irritably. Not a butterfly day. No fucking shit, Sherlock.

She shrugs.

Way to kill all my hope that maybe, just maybe, something random and nice would happen in the next twenty-four hours.

I didn’t say nothing nice would happen, she snitches.

I leave the bathroom.

She’s relentless, though. Stubborn. She just doesn’t let it drop. In every window and puddle and reflection she stalks me on the walk to work. And she mutters, dropping comments meant to only be half-heard, more gleaned from her tone than her words. Am I like that?

Obnoxious fucking cunt.

I pass a taxi rank, and a driver puffing on a smoke calls out to me. Hey, he says, it’ll be okay.

What? I slow, and behind him she leans out of the car window and gives me a thumbs up. I hurry away.

At the lights a woman in a business suit and early morning sneakers approaches, smiles, and tells me that everything will work out.

The little asian girl opening up Krispy Kreme ducks out the door and chases after me, waving and gasping in the cold, and tells me not to worry.

A car pulls up beside me as I wait for the lights to change. I turn to the passenger window, and she’s there, looking expectant.

These are not nice things, I say.

The window winds down. The passenger leans out and tells me that everything will be fine.

There are no reflective surfaces at work. The monitors are matt LCD, and the windows are hidden behind blinds. Good. I sit through encounters with everyone who walks into the office, whether they’ve worked with me for the past three years or they’re just dropping off some charges. Everyone pauses by my desk, and reassures me that everything will be okay. My answering nod and polite smile becomes sicker with each visit.

I have to go to the toilet, and she’s waiting for me in the mirror again. She’s wearing a ridiculous looking grin. My grin. I never knew I looked so fucking stupid.

Are you doing this?

She doesn’t say anything. Infuriating fuck.

Can you make it stop?

Today is not a butterfly day, she repeats.

I know, but can you stop it? I can’t take much more of this.

She shrugs and does nothing more. The door opens and a random uniformed officer enters. She nods at me, and tells me to keep my chin up. I just about vomit.

She’s right. Today is not a butterfly day. I’m tired and cranky, the tearstorm from the previous night leaving me sapped, and I have no resilience against the world. All the fear and anger and destruction in the reports gets under my skin. I take everything too personally. This constant barrage of hope, support and positive thinking is wearing me down and stressing me out like the best of slow tortures. I have nothing left to spend on keeping a bright face. I walk home with blurry vision, and when the door closes behind me, I cry.

Eventually, I go into the bathroom.

I told you so, she says. Fucker always has to be right.

But you didn’t have to tell me at all.

What do you want me to say? The same things everyone else said? That you’ll get a lucky break, one day? That things will work out, one day? That you’ll remember where you’re going, one day?

I shake my head.

Here, she pulls a wad of grey mush out of her pocket. Take it.

I look at it suspiciously.

Take it! It’s a present.

No thanks.

She glares at me.

Look, no offence, but you’re clearly a product of my unconscious or my subconscious or something like that, and so you’ll just have to forgive me if I don’t trust you.

She doesn’t say anything, just deepens her frown.

Last night my subconscious gave me a dream in which there were icebergs that holed the ship, storms that broke the ship, waves that swamped the ship and a freaking whirlpool that dragged the ship down and I drowned AND froze to death for good measure. You have it out for me.

She puts the grey mush on the bench. It sags a little. The most unappealing playdough in the world.

What is it?

It’s hope.

I raise an eyebrow at her.

I kept some aside for you, and you seem to be running low.

Hesitantly, I take it. It feels like fairy floss, or a spider’s egg sac, but doesn’t collapse when I handle it. It’s warm in my palm, unsettlingly so, and seems to breathe and shift about, like a sleeping foetus. Ick.

You should use it for general purposes, she advises. Keep you going for a while longer.

I think I want-

You don’t know what you want. She reaches out and pats my head. You’re a silly muppet. You’ll be okay.

I fucking hate you.

That’s because you know I’m right.

I crush my hope in my fist, hold it up to my lips and whisper: I hope I’m not going crazy.

She drops her jaw, furious and betrayed for one brief moment, and she’s gone. Tessa Victorius. It’s just me, talking to myself in the mirror. I don't know if that means I won or I lost. I don't think it matters. Time for a cup of tea.

triceratops come home

This postcard is currently up on Postsecret. I think Bert sent it. I know Bert sent it.

"Kind of like Thor."

I was reading this, and was having a gay old time with it, but alas, could not finish the article. For some reason the cut feature is crashing both Safari and Seamonkey. Bummer. Stalked barnacles sound gnarly.

"What is so cool about barnacles anyways? They are the John Holmes of the invertebrate kingdom with penis lengths exceeding 8 times their body length...Imagine your self glued head first to a rock, kicking your legs out your front door to draw in a current, hopefully with food - that is the barnacle."

Being so thwarted, I clicked through to this article about mantis shrimp and how they see, and, like, WHOA. They possess the kewlest eyes in the animal kingdom, they see the difference when light is turning clockwise and anti-clockwise. I didn't even know light turned, my eyes are so dumb.

They also fuck your shit up.

"Mantis shrimps are no stranger to world records. They are famous for their powerful forearms, which can throw the fastest punch on the planet. The arm can accelerate through water at up to 10,000 times the force of gravity, creating a pressure wave that boils the water in front of it, and eventually hits its prey with the force of a rifle bullet."

Like, WHOA. The wiki article linked up there goes into further detail, stating that they're so fast, the energy from their punches creates light and heat, and the wake of their punches has enough pressure to act as a second punch. Holy smokes. Well, with a face like that, you can't really blame them. They break aquarium glass too. I want one. To go with my flamboyant cuttlefish.

There's a video at the bottom of that article showing a mantis shrimp wailing on a crab, but here's a different one.



It's also wailing on a crab, but this video has some great shots of how they move. There's something delightfully centipede-y about them. At the very end, it snatches the crab and drags it off into its lair in a very Alien-esque manner. Fucking OARSUM.

Mantis shrimp. Not a mantis. Not a shrimp.

Also, more unknown beasties found in the Antarctic depths, including these:



Nooooow, am I wrong in remembering that Lovecraft's At The Mountains Of Madness was set in Antarctica? And the beasties were starfishy? ZOMG. THEY ARE BABY ELDER THINGS. WE HAVE STOLEN THEIR BEBEES. WE ARE SO BONED. FHTAGN.

(I always thought the Elder Things were pretty silly looking, myself.)

Phew. I'm rather flustered now. That's far too much radical awesomitude for one day.

consider it passed on

(faraday street, carlton)

worship at the great shellfish pyramid

(taken beneath the Rye front beach pier / the only interesting thing the beach had to offer)

what's in a name?

I think about names a lot. In the course of a day, I can churn through literally hundreds of names, and not all the crapass try-hard wannabe writers in the world can come up with some of these names. People walk around with these names, every day of their lives. They go to the shops and put orders in for books and have to spell their names out every single time, and every single time people still get them wrong.

There are a lot of children out there with 'pretty' names. As though giving your child a name that even a Disney Princess would hesitate over will make them special. As though changing the spelling of a perfectly good name will make them special. Parents, your kids are special, regardless of what you call them. There's only one of them. So do them a favour, and don't spell Chloe like that (I can't even spell it out here, it's too distinctive and I'll get in trouble, but oh my god why). Don't name your batch of children after Top 40 singers. Don't name them something unique and ornate that they can't drag through the mud. Name them something you can yell from the backdoor and not sound daft. Name them something they can introduce themselves by at the G8 summit and not smile apologetically for.

(I can't really talk. My character names suck.)

I think I got lucky with Tessa. It's easy to dress up and easy to dress down. It isn't much of a mouthful, yet still has plenty of play potential. It's plain, but there aren't many Tessas around, so it has rarity going for it. There are more these days, but I haven't met them. I don't know what any other Tessas, so I don't know what they're like, but I've made this name mine. I wouldn't know how to be anything else.

Can you imagine yourself with another name? Would anything else fit now? Do you make the name yours, or do you grow into the name?

(Mum regrets naming me Tessa, actually. She didn't realise it had catholic connotations. When I asked her what else I might have been, she popped out a couple of gaelic, welsh and scottish names that were very, very 'pretty'. I'll stick to Tessa.)

Still, I think there's room to improve. I would like to be this Tessa, or this Tessa, and even this Tessa. Flickr and Google Image Search indicate that I'm bringing down the good name of Tessa. I'm letting the team down with my general lack of presentation, and the fact that I'm not a dog.

Image search your name. I'm curious to know if you think what you see fits.

scuttley crabadger is scuttley

There is no texta here, so I cannot do proper palm graffitti. No mere palm graffitti could possibly do justice to the utter RADNESS of this bar of soap. Phanks gurl.

let me take you down 'cause i'm going to

I'd never been strawberry picking before. The sun was high and the air hot, and standing out in the field the breeze brought the smell of rotting strawberries up on a silver platter. The most delicious air I've ever breathed, it was like standing in a jar of jam, but without the drawbacks of standing in a jar of jam, like stickiness, which is what happens when you standin a jar of jam. It looked an entirely uninspiring way to spend an afternoon, until someone pointed me towards the older rows, where the plants were thick and rampant, and the strawberries invisible beneath hairy leaves. Right then, it no longer became about having strawberries, but finding them. It turned into a treasure hunt, and the discovery of the treasure was more important than the treasure itself. I stayed in the fields long after everyone else had filled their punnets and retired to the cafe, lifting leaves and parting bushes, looking for that one perfect red strawberry.

Then, I ate them. With ice cream.

The End.

you know who you are

Permanent marker doesn't come off easy. I spent the rest of the evening with gratitude stigmata on my palms.

Operation GTFO
Phase 1: successful!
Phase 2: where am I going?

Since my last 7am shift, the Earth has moved so far around the Sun that it is still dark when I leave, and there are stars in the sky.

GTFO. No, Really.

Operation GTFO, Phase #1 -
Current Status: "ask me again later."

(I'm not hopeful.)

Sleight of Mind

There's a huge albino killer whale out in the ocean, fucking HUGE, look at him in comparison to his pod. Biggest, baddest ghost of the sea. Link also contains pictures of various other marine-related albino animals. Leopard slug included.

Iron & Wine at the Athenaeum

Set List

1. The Trapeze Swinger
   
2. Jezebel
   
3. Peace Beneath The City
   
4. Innocent Bones
   
5. Pagan Angel And A Borrowed Car
   
6. Lovesong Of The Buzzard
   
7. Each Coming Night
   
8. Woman King
   
9. Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)
   
10. oarsum jam session
    
11. Boy With A Coin
    
12. Sodom, South Georgia
    
13. House By The Sea
    
14. The Devil Never Sleeps
    
15. White Tooth Man
    
16. Upward Over The Mountain
    
17. Resurrection Fern
    

Sam Beam looked like the living 60's. He has so much hair, he's like a bear. Throw water at him and I bet he'd halve in size. Can play slide guitar like nobody's business, and a voice so tender I could sleep on it. When at last the whole band started jamming, they filled the theatre with this incredible full-bodied sound that was crisp and clear and precise. It's a sound that has evolved far from the folky single guitars of the earlier albums. Hell yes I cried. In the first song. And the second song. Those two have always set me off. They're better live than I could have hoped for.

They're playing again tomorow at the Corner, and I'm more than little tempted to go. But that'd mean bailing on a couple of friends who would guilt trip me to the ends of the earth if I did. Oarsum band alone, or pretty good band with people who make me laugh. Hmm...decisions.

Moment; A

There's a stretch of paving behind the building, along the Yarra. It's over the bridge, and heading towards the Westgate, so apart from the few people living in the apartments there, there's no one around. Directly across the river is a small wharf, and a huge construction site, hoary with scaffolding. I don't know what they're building, carparks or apartments. There's a crane set up on a barge, floating in the middle of the river.

I've taken to going out there to my own personal mooring post and eating my dinner with my feet hanging over the water. It's quiet. Right on seven o'clock is when the trash and clean-up barges are being towed back in from the shipping docks, with thick men in saggy overalls sitting and content to do nothing as they move up stream, the sun setting behind them.

Seagulls attend me. The laziest seagulls I've ever met. They don't work for their scraps. They sit in my shadow and chirp every now and then to remind me that, actually, they're still there, and waiting. I can get them to within a foot of me. Yesterday I brought bread crusts with me, and cultivated my own flock of adoring worshippers.

Viewer Discretion My Hairy ARSE

"Adult householder? Viewer discretion? Que?"

It's a pro-life brochure, and it is full of dead babies. They're smart. They only list a PO Box as a means of contact, and they dropped this in the letter box after dark.

Colour me entirely lacking in sense of humour.

Have a nice fluffy chaser;



I sent RedSun (you'll need to be logged in to view that) a post card that I'd snagged from the Melbourne Aquarium (which was so devastatingly disappointing after Osaka) about giant squid. The card said giant squid were fearsome predators, and they're not, which I waffled on about at length on the back of the card. RedSun drew my waffle - a sperm whale picking on a giant squid and stealing its lunch money.

Heh.

Operation: GTFO

I have to go. I need to go. When I get up in the morning, I just move from the bed to the floor. Turn the stereo on. Stare at the ceiling for hours, till it’s time to go. No desire to do anything, and this doesn’t bother me. So, I think I have to go. I have a nightshift coming up, oh glory days of hell and horror. I have days off after nightshift coming up after that, and I have to go. I’m thinking of stealing a car and heading down the Great Ocean Road for a few days. Drive with all the windows down and the volume up. I want hot chips on a rocky beach, covered in enough salt to kill me. Maybe with gravy. Definitely with chocolate milk. I’ll take up cigarettes for the weekend, just to watch the ocean wind steal the smoke away. Lug my camera around and pretend I know what I’m doing, that I’m taking cliché photos on purpose. Walk on the sand till my ankles hurt. Throw rocks off cliffs. Watch the waves till the sun goes down and there’s nothing left to see. Eat more hot chips. Give chips to seagulls. Be in some other space, because I know all these spaces around me now and I have to go.

Thus commences Operation GET THE FUCK OUT (GTFO).

Phase 1: convince parental units to let me take a car for several days, ‘cause I can’t afford to hire one.

Neighbourhood Watch, foo'.

The Police Force Of The Future Protects You And Helps You Sleep At Night

another train of thought too hard to follow

This morning, I turned off my alarm in my sleep. I think. It's entirely possible it didn't go off just to spite me. Either way, I opened my eyes at 7:07am, which was 7 minutes after I was due to start work. It isn't supposed to be light outside when I get up.

This is largely Andrew's fault, for if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have been at Toff in Town for the album launch of ii (pronounced 'aye aye', apparently, although in my head it's 'eeee!'), who I'd never heard of, but he reassured me they were great, and so far his music props have been on the money, as proven by various other music recs and the Adam Franklin gig down Brunswick a couple of weeks back, who I'd also had never heard of before, and you know in an infinite universe there's infinite possibilities, the whole monkey/typewriter/hamlet thing, so there is a chance that I might eventually be pointed towards music that is shit, but I find that as probable as the monkey/typewriter/hamlet thing, and should it ever happen, I'll-

-probably just type in capital letters for a while.

ANYWAY.

They were great. Like a mash of Mice Parade, The Album Leaf, and a whole bunch of other bands that I can't recall the names of off the top of my head, because it all mixed together to make a brilliant, deceptively easy-looking blend of incredibleness. They started with two drum kits having a duel, oh what an opening paragraph. At one point, someone came on stage to play a time machine. Truly, it looked like a car battery hopped up on high school science projects and duct tape, and it sounded like a time machine. He took us through light years of time and space, till the guitars came in and we landed on a cold alien planet, which was initially devoid of life, but time flies, and the cities were built and grew and took over and fell down again.

At least, that's what I heard in the music. They might have been pining over ex-girlfriends. That's why people make music, right? Maybe they were weeping over the fact that their girlfriend left them for their brother. Who went on to have a snip become their sister. And now they want them to step in and father their lesbian love child. Something fucked up like that. But, that isn't what I heard in the music. I heard landscapes and time, and my time in that music was wonderful.

Which was why I was home after midnight, with an alarm set to go off only a few hours later. To be honest, even if I hadn't gone out, I wouldn't have slept. I'd have just lain on the lounge room floor with different music playing, and probably gone through a box of tissues trying to cry out all the poison in my head.

(For the record, I don't have a couch, or any manner of chairs. The floor is pretty much my only option. I'm not down there trying to add to the emoness of my current state of mind, I just don't have any other place to be except my bed, and right now I fucking hate my bed. Nothing but horror there.)

There is a great gap between me and myself. The me that is out in public around other people is fine. I'm not putting on a brave face or forcing a smile. I don't feel the need to, other people just bring that out. I'm not clinging to my moodiness for the sake of feeling sorry for myself. Admittedly, it takes some time to get past it, but not that long. Other people crack me up. People, man, what a fucked up bunch of walking meat sacks we are. You're amazing, stupid, gobsmacking and eternally surprising. What's not to laugh with?

The me that exists in private isn't doing so great. The last few months have been eventful in that entirely non-eventful way which comes only from failing, failing, and failing. Every direction I've tried to go, in every area of my life, I've been blocked, denied, and quietly and systematically fucked over. The last couple of days I've been wondering if this feeling of being entirely powerless and having absolutely no control over anything is the final step towards becoming an adult. I fight. With myself, the world, anything that comes along, 'cause I'm trying to get where I'm going. I've lost sight of where I'm going. I've tried new directions, and they haven't worked, because sometimes you just can't win. There's only so many times you can 'get over it and start over'. I didn't know that, now I do. I'm running out of Plan B, C, D, I'm running out of alphabet. Running out of fight. Running out of desire. My mum keeps calling and asking how I am. I'm not dead, but dead in the water. Going nowhere. Nowhere to go. I've had months to stare at proof of my own worthlessness, and now I can't see anything else. Can't see past it, can't move past it, can't even breathe past it.

Is that division healthy? If the public me was a mask, I'd say no. I'd know no. But it isn't, I'm not hiding anything. There's nothing to hide out there, because out there I'm okay. I'm okay here, because here I'm home home with dogs and creaky floorboards and gum trees dropping sticks on the roof. If it is like a switch flipping, is my personality splitting?

Just what I need, MORE ME.

I censor myself so much, I don't know when I'm lying to myself any more. It's been getting worse lately; I'm more and more aware of how many people read this place, which makes it harder to put things like this here. This isn't written for you, it's written only for me. It's my survival mechanism. It's my sabotage of my mind. I betray my secrets so I can't keep them. This isn't written for you, but you read it, and without you reading it, it doesn't work. What's the point of exposing a secret if no one notices it? I'm sorry, if this is not what you came here to read, but I need to take it out, and put it down, here. I don't want sympathy or pity, I don't want advice or attention, and I don't want to talk about it. Just need it out, out, out. So, now, I take this space back.

This is Tessadom. The shit smells like fucking roses.

Incidentally, that is why I haven't been so hot on emails lately. It's a private me that checks my mail. It's a private me that's lost her voice and can't say anything to you. Responses will happen, sooner or later. (My money is on later.)

I don't know what I need to do to bring myself out of this, which isn't a position I've ever really been in. I've always known how to pick myself up, but this time, I don't have much reason to do so. Was it Nietzsche who said (paraphrased) that man can tolerate any how, as long as he has a why? I have no why. Don't know where to look to find one. Didn't even realise I'd lost the last one. There's nothing I can do, except wait for life to do what it does, and change. There is only time.

Until then, I'll lie on the floor like a melodramatic twat and weep at sad songs. I just preordered/downloaded Ghosts I-IV, the new album by Nine Inch Nails, which Reznor appears to have tailor-made just for me. In The Fragile and Still I found the most resonance. I consider all NIN albums to be fucking OARSUM, but those two resonate with an emotional complexity and maturity that gets in my blood and lives in my bones. Some call it self-indulgent. I call it beautifulperfectsoundtracktomythoughts. Ghosts I-IV has that same breath-taking resonance. It is pianos and cellos and so thick with mood I can taste it, and it tastes like-

It starts with music. It ends with music. Just ignore all that wank in the middle.

Kitchen, 1:52pm 4th March 2008: who cares if it was half-empty or half-full, it's broken now.

While eating a sandwich at the kitchen bench I knock a glass, and the fingers of both hands cupping bread, watch it smash on the tiles. That’s the usual state of my dirty dishes; twenty or so used mugs and glasses, the bread board, and a couple of knives from making sandwiches. There’s a pathetic lack of plates.

That particular glass had only been sitting beside the sink since somewhere between four and five am. I’d woken myself crying, head pounding from drink and a tearstorm, and downed two Berocca and two Panadine before crawling into bed. Prior to that, I’d fallen asleep on the lounge room floor with Metamorphasis One on repeat. I’d drunk till I’d stopped crying. I’d drunk till I started crying again.

This glass must be safety glass. It shatters in tubby blocky little chunks, spread across the room. I have this habit, when standing and barefoot, of lifting my toes off the ground. There’s glass now under my toes, and I can’t put them down. I can’t move.

I won’t move. Or I might smash all the others, and while that would offer some fleeting satisfaction, then I’d have nothing to put my juice in.

I don’t move. I stand, with toes in the air, and finish my sandwich. The glass is broken. The mess isn’t going anywhere. The larger pieces, run through with cracks, separate and fall apart with little ‘tch-tch’ noises for minutes afterwards. The glass is broken, the glass keeps on breaking.

They are selling my apartment.

Flamboyant Cuttlefish

It is pretty, cute, flashy, limp wristed, POISONOUS and walks. Seriously, what a lump of adorable dragqueen death. This is a case of nature understanding the importance of packaging, and getting the contents right.