Comfort Stop

A cold, crappy day. My feet are wet. A single screw has come loose on my umbrella, resulting in the entire oddly fragile, oddly ubiquitous, oddly beautiful contraption to function only with great difficulty. I dare not close it because it will be too hard to open again. But, repeatedly, I do close it, through force of habit, thus condemning me to the task of forcing it open whenever I need to use it to walk my middle-class arse a few metres under open, active sky.

The DVD in the AV library skips, often during montage sequences accompanied by music that I greatly enjoy. I don't get irritated but I am aware that it is happening. People near to me snort amusedly at audio-visual content that to me is neither audible nor visible. I think about how much I want a companion as I watch the based-on-a-true-story people on the screen have amazing relationships with willy-nilly ease; an illusion that they are possessive of prowess being provided by the fact that their life story has been condensed into two hours and, because many of them are homosexuals and probably because the directors are such people, seemingly placing emphasis on every successful relationship that they had ever had.

I stew about how the guy at the Saint James supposedly overcharged me by five dollars each in purchasing tickets to the last Th' Dudes, Hello Sailor and Hammond Gamble show for me and Mat. I stew about the fact that I had to pay for a ticket at all, but justify my purchase on the basis that it is a good bargain and that I thoroughly enjoyed it last time. I might not get drunk this time, particularly considering that I will, more than more than likely, not have any money. Borrow, borrow, borrow, I don't want to miss out on this bargain and that bargain and help me, I have driven too far afield for my bank account to allow, in other words Hamilton City, where I do not like being.

It costs a lot of money to live life, unfortunately, and as such I find myself boxed into the situation of having to decide whether I will sell my tomorrow to an air conditioning firm -- which will have me sweeping small shreds of steel off the floor, dressing differently and pretending to be a homophobe so as not to attract negative attention from companions in wage labour -- or spend it doing my two thousand five hundred word essay about a misogynistic Marxist and a homosexual libertarian, both of which I feel to be self-contradictory personality type identifications. I should be writing the essay right now. Nay, I should be in class. But what am I missing out on anyway?

Never Work / Diligence

Last night I went to Th' Dudes, Hello Sailor and Hammond Gamble at the Saint James, which manifested itself as a quality experience. The investment of additional money in drink enhanced it further. At present I am still reeling, drunk, at Mat's work. I don't feel safe driving home until I've fully given the alcohol a proper chance to wear off, and as such I'm overdaying here until four o' clock, when Mat will finish and take me back to my car. You can tell how bored I am by the fact that I'm blogging. I was intending to get back to it anyway, but partly I didn't feel it was appropriate to follow up the Steve Irwin "obituary" (RIP) with, well, anything really, and otherwise I've just been trying to live life directly for once as opposed to letting it be mediated through inauthenticies and falsities and imagery as the Internet has a tendency to do (Situationist International for the win).


Anyway, the concert was excellent. Hello Sailor was supposed to be playing acoustic sets on this, Radio Hauraki's fourtieth anniversary commemorative tour, in conjunction with their recently-released acoustic album When The Lights Are Out, however, it seemed that they had thought better of doing this by the time they reached Auckland last night (it is quite a way into the tour) perhaps spurred on by audience response at previous shows. The result was that they really rocked out in a spectacular performance that would probably easily set itself on a par with the Hello Sailor of the seventies. Highlights were Graham Brazier's awesome harmonica work and interestingly interesting dance movements and methods et ceterahhh. Th' Dudes were of course comparably awes9ome with me being drunk to the point that I took my shirt off during Bliss, yes, and repeatedly shouted "Peter Urlich is the man!" through all the songs instead of listening to them. People got annoyed with me. Mat collaborated, with me, not the annoying people.


I also bore a striking five dollar shirt from the Warehouse that I had emblazoned in fabric marker "HELLO SAILOR" across the front (Mat's idea and he also went ahead with it). Incoherent. The night was punctuated in grammatically incorrect places by people we were passing by being told "Hello, Sailor!" in a jolly manner. Line Red. Panic! At The Disco are, for the record, a horrendous band and I am led to believe by my expert telling apart of wannabe-emo vocalists that I am being forced to listen to them right now by Mat's co-worker, whose name I don't know because I can't concentrate and who I went to the bakery with before to get a massive tank of a croissant for one dollars and eighty cents' worth of twenty cent coins, as he is cranking it in the shop but now there is lots of customers so everybody better be shush (PS his name is Ony). Mat thought the boss was here before and he was gonna smack my bitch ass off the computer, that he may look like a good man. He's leaving the position soon anyway. Tomorrow he has to try and remember to bring the TV to work so that he can watch Bathurst all day. Oh yes and we only got one hour of sleep last night which probably doesn't help my decidedly artistically miffed state. Save the Rails.

I don't know what the heck kind of idea Toll Holdings think they're doing by threatening to close the North Island Main Trunk Railway, which is of course a very important transport artery of New Zealand and which many of the towns throughout the North Island were built as a result of its existence, just because high track access fees pushed by Ontrack -- that being the former New Zealand Railways Corporation, the government, which now owns the tracks -- are going to cause them to pull less of an absolutely gargantuan profit. Haven't these Australian business imperialists ever heard of social responsibility to a nation? I guess not because we are New Zealand, but these idiots want to put tonnes more trucks on the roads instead of having trains, because it saves on costs. You capitalist bastards. You, capitalist bastards. It's kind of weird that this is happening right after Toll feigned the will to completely shut down the legendary Overlander train service between Wellington and Auckland in what seemed to be an attempt to milk aid out of the government.


I don't know who what you're kidding by deciding that Latin American was a good subject for me to take and that it is money well spent. I am going to fail the bloody thing. And guess what? I took it that I may get into a Paul Buchanan paper, but with the release of the 2007 Arts Course Handbook it has turned out that the prerequisites for that course have been broadened now anyway so I'm just going to be able to get in having passed two stage politics papers already! So it's a complete waste of suffering and time and effort. Also, one of the other Paul Buchanan papers that was supposed to be happening next year for stage three has taken a crap and died and been taken off the list. Less fetish material less fetish material. Not fair not fair. What an arse. Primo, he's got this philosophy. Art student. You fine arts student. You're fine.

This has been time well spent doing a poofaced blog that I have given up on when I should slash not could have been doing ethnomusicology and Latin American suckful assignments due on Friday, Friday on which I will be occupied chasing steam trains around the south of Auckland and the north of the Waikato with Mat's camera that I have yet to ask him if I can borrow. Yes I am a trainspotter. Marcus Lush is. That makes it even more cool. Don't deny that you like steam trains. Diesels even, or electrics. Trains are good, even though some Situationist theorists seem to take the approach that it symbolises the dehumanising bullcrap procedure of not swearing and of blimmin' shuffling along to work each day, line red. But this is hopeless, atrocious. I'm still working at ze air conditioning manufakturer at the teh moment buttt, buttttocks I have some potential jobs lined up, I hope that I will perhaps get them. It is always a possibility. Yea Mat stop talking to that lady.

Alex put the 9 in the awesome. I hope you enjoyed the post Pie. I have MSN anyway. See ya there.

This is the chemical dump, boy.

Mmmmate.

mate.

Here's me being Graham.