There's something about getting scorchingly high and going on a cop killing rampage in GTA-4 that just makes me feel so much better, about myself and the world around me. Perhaps it's simply the reversal of the usual roles. Instead of: you, insect—undoubtedly up to some kind of borderline illegal mischief—snivelling your pathetic excuses and transparent justifications to the all seeing, all powerful truncheon of the police system...

...instead of that it's: YOU, with a pump-action shot gun, about to blow some motherfuckers head clean off for daring to suggest that you might, possibly, oh go on, maybe like to put your hands in air, please sir lets not have any unpleasantness.

Yeah.

It is extremely goddamn satisfying.

In India they had this guy called Man Singh, he was a legendary dacoit, or bandit. Killed 32 police officers personally. Today Man Singh has a temple in his honor in Khera Rathore. Those Indians, they knew the score. Venerated him as a wise man and so he passed from mere history on to godhood.

See you at the top of the clocktower.

I always feel desperately embarrassed on the morning after one of these outbursts. Re-reading is the worst bit. My guts bunch up like a pair of panties and I want to melt into the floor and disappear.

Mind you, there have been plenty of other cringeworthy moments along the wayside. I still recall those tragic days when I used to wear a long black trenchcoat and carried a superfluous cane and drank absinthe, oh dear god.... Eventually I had all records expunged from city hall and the photographs incinerated to fine grey ash via the (perhaps) over-enthusiastic mechanism of atomic furnace—but still! the shame! it still lingers; like a peeping tom at the bathroom window.

Or the time I got into the silos of the heathcote maltworks through a small hole in the ventilation system - only to get stuck fast on the way out and therefore thus requiring both the push and the shove assistance of my combined companions to squirm like a bloated tapeworm to freedom. I do believe I ripped my trousers to immodest shreds upon finally making my exit.

Shit man, I dunno. All about me; some are crushed, while others bloom like skyrockets. And there's nobody, absolutely nobody that got the answers in advance, 'cept to say that if you can do it, well, then I guess it's ok.

Someone told me recently that it wasn't worth trading my sanity to be able to write. Yo! Motherfucker! I would trade what remains of my sanity for talent in a second: I mean the Devil's blood wouldn't even be dry on the contract before I mainlined the fountain pen, squiggled my signature on the page and sealed the deal. There's far too much sanity in the world already. What we need a lot more of are the flailing grand gestures of lunatics. Been soul touched by anything ordinary and plain in the recent past? I didn't think so. We have always, always always hitched our little ploughs to the erratic backs of jesters and madmen.

In times as fractured as these it's difficult I know.

But it's about, and always has been: what you can inflict, how hard you are willing to push your shoulder to the millstone of the universe. It's about having a resolution as firm and unwavering as the edges of the earth. If sanity is a consensus then rationality permits nothing really different, at least in any interesting way, and if you want electricity then I reckon you have to be willing to be struck by lightning, or at least willing to stand in the storm.

Motherfuckers! you got nothing on me—except evidence. If there was any justice in the world at all I think I would have been locked away quite some time ago.

But there isn't, so I ain't. But yeah, you're probably right, it would probably be a mistake, I do have a lot of “bad habits”. Personally, well, I like to think of them more as “hobbies” or perhaps “self-destructively cool interests”, but... you know how it is, I say “syntax” and you say “semantics”, all much the same thing really. It's all covered under the unifying insurance of linguistics. Mandated by royal decree, signed and witnessed by certified members-of-parliament.

I am, on occasion, a genuinely evil motherfucker. I mean: just plain malicious and out to cause harm. I think the best tactic is to think of the people you're hurting as totally other and so not worthy of any real empathy or consideration, think of them as the human equivalent of tasty worthless animals, trust me it becomes a lot easier to cope with the remorse.

Then up comes a man with a hook for a hand

Man, I give you everything on a regular basis. I mean: I serve up myself with a scalpel and also cut out all the fat for you and where is my return-on-investment? When are you gonna make good with the feast? I thought you would, at least, make a gift of everything important. I mean: what else is worth giving away?

Actually, I always write drunk.

Always.

Actually, actually i think if failure was a verb: well, i'd like to be it's adjective.

And as for me, as it happens: I is rolling, I is gathering the absolute bare minimum of moss possible. Personally, or so I reckon, personally I think: I am the mess that's left after the chinless world finally fucking decided to blow it's brains out, I is: the zombie stumbling through the rotting meat aisles of the supermarket,, complaining – and I am always with with the complaints —- complaining about the lack of vegetables and the supersaver vouchers avao;an;e;etc and so forth and on the advice of my counsel about this. this: that, and, you know, and the other thing.

What the fuck? Do I look like I care? About whatever platinum the calculator condescends to give me as sweet apple source privilege of whatever reminder arithmetic happens to be left over after the long division is finished it's workings.

Honestly, some days I think: what the fuck am I doing? why am wasting so much goddamn time? I should, really, just get this shit over and done with, slip, strangle my way via the noose into the suffocation of legend. Bang! But no. still, still I subsist, a wood carving living on the chainsaw snores of dreams.

 God. God. god you are:
 are gorgeous. If only I: 
 I had the balls to approach,
 you
 which! evidently!
 I do not.
 You are gorgeous
 Just sayin.

Yeah, so sometimes i write poetry. Like you cunts are gonna do anything.

Sup lucidspin, really sorry I had to cut things short the other day, extremely rude of me but I'd been jonsing to finish this place for ages. Maybe my priorities are all screwed up but opportunities like this don't come along very often. Let's catch up again properly!

Behold! The Meat Works!

Victimless crimes man, they're a godsend, they even let you feel good about yourself the next morning. Ah yeah, sweet sherbet dreams and a clear conscience – that's candy to the tongue. I know, I know! it's kind of childish but there's just something about breaking the law in harmless petty ways that I thoroughly enjoy! Kinda pathetic, me, a grown boy of 28, playing at criminal, or at least it's closest, most comfortable middle-class alternative... but at the same time; makes me alert, awake, fluorescent with risk and goddamn! charred with the joy of it.

It's weird, afterwards I feel almost like I've done something actually genuinely worthwhile. Like I achieved an important milestone for this quarter, or crossed one more to-do COLLISION IMMINENT! PULL UP! PULL UP! item off the old whiteboard list and explosively carved my face into the avalanche prone mountains of history. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Still, the idea of stencilling absolutely appeals. Basically, it sounds like a hellva lot of fun. Plus—makes the world a drip more colourful and keeps things slightly interesting. I honestly, I do, like to think of this shit as almost being a public service. Here I am, I mean there I was: me, an upstanding responsible member of respectable civil society and role model for several children, proudly determined to perform my civic duty and make the world a better place.

Afterwards I feel that I have cross-hatched a bit more of the woodcut, I am heavy with paint.

I guess it's mostly a case of whatever spins your wheels. so I guess this gasoline is the homoeopathic equivalent of pharmaceutical-grade rocket fuel, the kind of covert CIA horse-steroids normally reserved for cup day at the rings of Saturn.

I guess you have to do things you enjoy.

Low barrier to entry with stencils. Anyone can create a design, cut it out on a piece of lino, grab a can of spraypaint and get straight out to the vandalism. I often find that approaching a subject you know very little about can be quite intimidating—there's no other way to go but humble—but at the same time it's all kinda fresh and new and I have everything to learn and clamber on.

I regularly forget, entirely, who I am. Getting too old, can't find the map with the pin. Like misplacing a set of extremely important keys, you just had them in your hand, they must be close by, retracing your steps, room by room, interrogating the ashtray and shouting ugly accusations at the vacuum cleaner, fuck, what was I doing again? But you can also lose yourself, moment by moment, absolved completely in what you are caught up in doing, seems a better way of spending time.

Whenever I'm not precisely swimming, that is to say; sinking, with my limbs flaying about me wildly like an epileptic puppet, my head sliding, slipping silently beneath the sub-zero surface of the flooded quarry of despair, whenever that isn't happening: I do have to, I must admit: life can be pretty goddamn fucking sweet sometimes.

Sometimes, on occasion, sometimes, at least periodically, I just goddamn fucking rule, you know? Sometimes my steelcaps manage, by pure happenstance, to connect with the right pair of teeth. Sometimes, shit works out.

Despite how I might sometimes feel, as melancholic, as lonely as empty crib, the tumbling dice of fortune, somehow, still seem loaded, fixed heavy with the weight of fate direct and rolling, bouncing, straightforward against the will of God and steadily in my favour. The weird stuff I get away with. Those strange, unsigned boxes, filled with gold, delivered, without postmarks, that come my way on a regular basis.

I am extremely lucky. Are there any limits to my limits? Possibly not, if I am willing to push them far enough. I have always set my compass to the horizon, and then drifted, felt helplessly inadequate when I failed to reach it. On the other hand, maybe, maybe I've already floated further from shore than most.

Maybe I've already got a lot to feel proud of.

theblackoven has some TOTALLY METAL!!! \m/ BAKING.

I am, and will probably remain, at least for the foreseeable future, an idiot. And with this idiocy comes, you know, certain unalienable rights and responsibilities. Namely that I have to tell to truth, as I see it, constantly. Yeah, it is definitely a bit savage; and yeah, this shit, it most definitely cuts both ways.

You are. So, so goddamn amazingly beautiful. As phosphorescent as a sea current. Have you? ever seen? your sweet perfected reflection in the scared and pitted chromium of my head? The way you look: to me, it shears diamonds, in pale and in two. I mean, that you leave me shattered, and afterwards there can be nothing left but pride and broken porcelain.

Never doubt that you are beautiful. You are. I have seen far more, far far more than my fair share of ugliness. Eaten and eaten of that particular pie till my stomach exploded forthwith; burst apart at the seams and split entirely open and spilled it's guts to the world. You are beautiful, I can judge, because I have been privy to the honest comparison. These things I've seen and done.

You sweep, you have blown me with a breath, kite-like, away into the sky, you are the tide to my sandcastle, and even though you might be, completely, out of my league, you are. you remain. still. so so goddamn beautiful, and I thank you for it.

Never doubt you are beautiful, because I always see the executioner in people, but inside you I can also see the priest.

Love ain't blind, it's hopeless; and lady, if you was a gun, I would be your fellatio, in a second.

It seems to me, on some days, that my problems with women are a lot like my problems with drinking. You wake up the next day with a throbbing headache, full of sincerely genuine regret and remorse, and then end up swearing black and blue to yourself that this time, THIS TIME will be the absolute last. No more, no more, you are completely finished with this crap. Done, kaput, it's over. Not worth the cost.

There's plenty of porn on the internet. And I do have quite a few female friends. So it's just a simple cut-and-paste job in photoshop and then I reckon I've pretty much got myself a relationship sorted. And THAT is some serious return-on-investment financial genius rogue trader dodgy hedge fund shit right there. No stumbles, no missteps or stuttering shyness or flowers required. No over-analysis or reading-too-much-into, no vague lines or blurry coke-bottle boundaries, no grim and Aztec crystal pedestals requiring the blood sacrifice of a human heart—to uncaring gods indifferent anyway.

I want a realdoll, with your face on it.

But I give up! On women! For real! Just like a thousand times previously, and like a thousand more times to come.

It's not like I am miserable all the time. Or even most of the time. Cos, mostly I am generally actually pretty much okay, but there are these certain sharp minutes when the earth splits open—fractured chasms gape and gasp—and then, my friends, the lows are very low indeed. The womb of the world is ravenous for love; she sells seashells, and desperately craves the bitter chocolate of our company.

I have only vague memories of writing that last post. I had consumed nearly an entire bottle of vodka at the time (pro-tip: white spirits are the heavy drinkers secret weapon in avoiding the cruel consequences of the inevitably painful morning-after, or, as is more likely, entire next day) and was quite surprised at what I found when, finally, I forced myself to examine the archaeology of my bender. Don't want to worry you people unduly, you know this is just my way of blowing off steam, the all-important safety valve that keeps this poorly manufactured and much abused engine of indifference from overheating and exploding outright in an anti-climatic wheeze or cough. The faded yellow sign sticky taped to the side of the machine still reads: “Caution: contents under pressure” and “Intentional misuse of this device by deliberately concentrating and inhaling contents may (often) prove harmful or fatal (1 in 6 chance).”

You only see the valleys and the peaks. I have given you not my whole soul but only a biopsy, enlarged and exaggerated by the optics of the microscope. One of the reasons why I find the idea of the “mundane” so suspect I guess. The difference between apparent banality and novelty being merely a matter of the amount of repetition.

So how can a cake with so many layers as the inner life of a real person ever fail to be rich and delicious?

Take the frequently overlooked case of the common household door-knob. I don't know how they work. I might hazard a guess as to the workings of the mechanism, but still, I couldn't make one from scratch.

It has really been bothering me. And I really have been thinking a lot about it recently. Unfortunately, I am forced to say, a lot of these uppity feminist bitches come up with is actually, for the most part, pretty much correct. You can fluff around a bit on a periphery a bit. This and that, etcetera, you know. I really did not want this. I did not. Definitely, definitively, absolutely did not want this to happen. But the force! of the argument! there's only so many times you can withstand the persuasive flash! bang! apparent explosion of the truth.

It's made me think. I've been tossing up. Whether I want to be a decent person or not. To be honest, I'm leaning towards, the answer is NO. I mean, you know, everyone likes to think they are decent person generally: But when you actually, exactly, demand to see the list of demands that are put upon you, well! how the hell! you've seen the scroll! what the fuck am I supposedou co to do with this!

I can quite capably justify myself, to myself, at any time you like to ask, but please. sweet jesus, god, don't ask me to justify myself to everyone.

I guess you could call me a nihilist, in so much as these problems scare me as I cower before them, but I kinsda feel like there are no ultimate solutions to these problems, that everything is vanity, all is vanity; vanity, vanity.

But still, bro, I got this cup, that I might fill with empathy; or else disperse to the ground, whatever I felt like.

This cup is not made of clay,, we shape it, we apply our force, direct from of our hands.

Friends! bros, associates... acquaintances, and so forth. I know what you think. I used to think the same thing also. It bothered me for a long time. But I can't deal anymore. And if it's the easy way out, well, fuck it. Cos after ten, twelve, whatever years of this shit I'm really getting sick of feeling unwell. Every day bro, every day of this shit hammering on my head, malicious malformed gnomes of the silver hammer despair beating, beating day at night. I can't cope! By myself! And I no longer care! whether it actually solves anything or not, or whether prozac is just some feel good drug that makes me feel better, because I think I've reached my purchase limit. I reckon this is near the end of train ride. I can longer keep carrying on, carrying on this way I have been previously. All my well worn strings are getting frayed and warned, forgotten anchor ropes forgetting rubbed worn thin.

Shit for me has gone all algebraic. Want to keep making the effort, or x. Don't bother calling cops just yet, this cauldron been bubbling since well before personal.

Let us not forget, despite all this emo expression that: a) I could probably (at any time) beat you into a vague & bloody pulp & b) most definitely, under certain, admittedly relaxed rules, drink you under the table

kiwicon2k8 has been announced!.

So come gets your hax on. Last year was SIMPLY FUCKING AWESOME, and I completely expect this year to be at least as spooge worthy, if not more so. Gotta get my A into G so I can present again, so much fnu.