Photoshop Phun: The Phresh Food People

Photoshop Phun: Zaha Hadiddle My Skittle

Photoshop Phun: Westfield

I wish I could do screen shots of people on the train. No wait, that’s what a webcam is for.

But mine stopped working after I dropped my computer too many times and poured too much coffee into her. Poor Camille.

There are some people sitting opposite making out, kind of, well she's sitting on him facing him but they're making lots of really weird noises at each other. It's amusing and embarrassing at the same time. But I can't look amused or embarrassed because then they might hurt me or steal my bike. One of them was telling another one about how their dad had someone leave a bike in their yard and the bikie asked the dad if he could leave the bike there. The dad asked if it was hot and the bikie said yes. So the dad said yes. And while the bikie was gone, the neighbours asked if they could take the bike for a ride and the dad said they could have it.

Anyway, the same girl decided it was a good idea to get on the phone with someone for about half an hour and have a non-conversation, where she just kept saying what she was doing, like "I'm taking my bag off now" or "a train just arrived but it's not my train" and talking about how she ate an apple today, and describing how she ate the apple (from the sides first and then around it until it got thinner and there was only the core left), and then she said that she ate her cousin's apple as well. So it must have been a good apple.

All of this is redeemed somewhat by the fact that they had a kitten.

A Clockwork Orange

I enjoy saying things in Nasdat, and in particular I found the book very easy to read the second time around, and could see the parts where Burgess is giving the reader a bit of help to understand it.

When Ryan visited he saw the book and asked me about it. He had tried to read it after the last time I did, but he said he didn't like it. He said he stopped after about 10 pages, because he couldn't stand the Russian. He requested that any books he reads from now on should be written entirely in English.

I felt the need to establish why he didn't like it. He said it was because he couldn't understand it. Not being able to understand it made him bored and he gave up. So I said that it's understandable to not like something because you don't understand it. For example, my cat doesn't like physics. I tried to teach it to her but she didn't understand. She just got bored and ended up sitting on the textbook.

No doubt he is now reading the book.

Competition

If you join a sporting club, you may find that some of the other players are better at the sport than you are. This is especially true if you are new to it. For a while you will be able to remind yourself of how much more experience they have, and how unreasonable it would be to expect the same of yourself, but soon enough your competitive spirit will kick in, and you will want to be the best, or at least not the worst.

Similarly, you may find that there are some people you know who possess impressive knowledge of music, and without really knowing why, you will attempt to compete with them. This can manifest itself in contests to know the most obscure bands, which are embarrassing for all uninvolved.

Sport, music, politics, art, intelligence, even sex: they are all competitive. You don’t want to be a regular Marxist; you want to be the biggest Marxist, use the best grammar, be the go-to person for a full-body plaster-cast. If someone is having more sex than you, (and this applies disproportionately to people you have dated), then you may find yourself engaging in competition with them, to the sudden confusion of most people you know.

The problem here is that you will always compare yourself to the person who is the best at something you do, and in all of these areas there is someone who has more time for it than you do, or more natural ability. I’m not saying you should give up on trying altogether; that would be pointless. Instead, do what you can do, to the best of your ability, but don’t let it dominate your life. If someone is beating you at World of Warcraft, this is not necessarily a bad thing- you play World of Warcraft and see natural sunlight. You probably have a better balance in your life than all of the people who beat you in individual pursuits.

Unfortunately, having smugly come to the realisation that you are holistically doing better than a whole host of musical obscurity experts and magical internet paladins, you will also realise that it is very difficult to show them how well-rounded you are if they are singleminded enough to devote all of their time to a single pursuit, so revenge is not an option. Instead, settle for the less satisfying, but more healthy, feeling of security that comes with being the jack of all trades; knowing that you can identify The Strokes, put up a tent and discuss economic rationalism competently. Having the right balance is the best thing you could do. That is until you come across someone who has achieved a better balance than you...

Beards and Morality

Beards are tricky. If you admire a man for the mass of hair exhibited upon his chin, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the patchy bits of stubble under your mouth have the potential to attract you admirers of your own, and it’s not necessarily the fault of your dermic extrusions being inadequate.

Growing a beard can lead to problems of style that contain within them nothing short of a moral hazard.

I won’t deny that you have the potential: it’s not just because you have a different hair type to the victorious owner of a fine beard. To suggest that a single hair type applies to all people would be counterintuitive. No, the man you aspire to be takes his formidable ability to generate hair in his stride. He walks a fine line, but has mastered his style. The man you aspire to be is a veteran of facial hair; someone who has successfully managed to forge from his troublesome stubble a glorious mane.

What would you need to do, to obtain this hair, that sits so majestically upon his face? To feel that incredible power? You must make risky choices of style.

The easy option is the study beard. Facing so many challenges to their shaving time, such as playing ultimate frisbee, rolling joints or preempting every line of Napoleon Dynamite with laughter, many students will be economical with their time and their razor blades; they downgrade shaving in their list of priorities, to the same region as taking responsibility for their actions and seeking employment. Not shaving leaves them more time to find the perfect pair of op-shop suspenders, but the fringe benefit should be neither ignored nor taxed.

The study beard has a certain cuteness about, which comes from its innocence. There seems something honest about a beard that has just grown there, free and natural, needing not to be nurtured but independently bringing untold distinction and sexual appeal to its owner.

Obviously it is in the best interests of every man to attempt to tap into this kind of power. But this is where beards meet morality. How can one best fake honesty?

At the beginning of its life cycle, a beard looks like a mistake, as though you have just forgotten to shave. Awkwardness sets in around you, with the realisation that this is an attempt to grow a beard. Everybody will begin imagining what nightmare awaits them all; if Kevin Rudd’s sideburns or Shannon Noll’s facial smut are to be revived and foisted upon them.

With a few weeks of growth, however, those around the beard will begin to see the light. How defined your chin is, how distinguished your mouth, adorned by such carefree perfection. Beware, your joy will be limited.

As the beard lengthens, the degree to which you resemble a homeless person will multiply and the power of the study beard will come under threat. Power corrupts, and feeling the newfound confidence afforded to you by facial hair threatened by the very source of your happiness, there will be the conflicted temptation to maintain a pretend study beard.

A suggested method of keeping this look is to buy an electric razor that will keep a centimetre of hair, but the problem here is inherent to the act of emulating nature. A laboured attempt to grow facial hair to look carefree is no better than paying $400 for a pair of jeans that have been slashed and faded artificially. Such a beard is effectively lying to every person that sees you.

This raises the option of choosing a style, and with that choice comes an even more complex set of moral hazards: Will your beard be an expression of class?; what is wrong with looking homeless, and why does homelessness have a look anyway?; are beard purist snobs just too afraid to attempt a style?; does your goatee make you look like a rapist? (it probably does); does a John Butler beard constitute a moral crime? (yes).

The practical difficulties will be no less challenging. You began the beard with the misguided presumption that you could trust your facial hair to be consistent over time. However, the cruel irony that the more you shave, the heavier it keeps coming back is matched equally by a reduction of growth in response to less frequent shaves. If your choice is to grow repeated study beards, you will find yourself in the awkward stubble-plus phase for longer than you feel comfortable; if you want a colonial-style juggernaut of facial hair, you will almost certainly be thwarted by your suddenly coy dermis’ refusal to extrude hair.

When you threw the razor away, you took a bigger risk than you can imagine. You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into. It might be best to re-schedule ultimate frisbee and get some razors before you visit the horrors of the handlebar mustache on the world.

Free At Last

If I’m bored with music, what should I listen to, silence? Impossible.

I’m bored with my music. There’s a lot in my library, but I can’t just put it on shuffle, because there are 183 T.Rex songs on there, and they are sure to come up. I don’t want that to happen, even though the reason I’ve kept them on there is so that I can eventually listen to them.

What sort of music might I be inclined to listen to? Electronica? Techno? Folk? Indie Pop? Pub Rock? Not Pub Rock. I want to hear beautiful voices, in the vein of Nick Cave, The Dresden Dolls, Sarah Blasko, The Fleet Foxes or Antony And The Johnsons. I got tired of electro because I kept listening to Daft Punk, La Roux or Pnau. There are only so many times you can listen to Grafton Primary, Cut Copy or even Metronomy.

There is of course more to electro than that, but some of the other bands, Fukkk Offf for instance, bore me faster by a factor of 10. Most of Fukkk Offf’s stuff is throwaway, but Bloodfuck is always good. Most of the other songs are ruined because that bitch sings in it. I hate it when some bitch ruins a song. It annoys me though, that the rest of the album is disregarded and one song held up to be good, all their hard work on the other songs just reduced to a singularity.

With techno, it’s not just something to dance to. There are compositions; there is so much to it, but you need an entry point; an Apparat. But you can’t just listen to something that techno-fags can talk about as though it’s a piece of art. I might like how a building looks because it references Russian Constructivism, but you don’t know or care what that is, so that doesn’t make it something good in itself.

I’m interested in anything Karen from the Knife is doing, because hearing her voice always brings me back to electro. The last sound from her was Fever Ray, and that wasn’t even considered good enough for the Hottest 100. On the other hand, the new Vampire Weekend songs were inexplicably considered adequate. The new MGMT is shit, but apparently Vampire Weekend are still good. I have refused to listen to either, for a reason called Autotune. Sorry, but you stop being sweet and innocent when you pull Cher and Kanye on us.

So I will come back to Antony And The Johnsons. One might think that a song called “Free At Last” might sound nice, you know, with freedom being nice. Kind of in the same way that I get good feelings from Cat Power’s song “Free”, from the album “You Are Free,” and the band name has cat in it. Antony’s nasal mistake has tainted my concept of freedom, so I think I’ll stick with silence.

Unlike Santa, The Easter Bunny Isn't Afraid To Completely Freak Out Children In Broad Daylight

Now, I want to tell you about my neighbourhood. My philosophical thoughts on the subject began when I realised I could see my shitty creekside suburb from Nas' harbourside penthouse apartment, during our intense architecture social club party. The apartment remained relatively undamaged, considering people passed out in the corridor, had sex in the fire escape and the beds and bathtub, and did cocaine in the toilets. The main recipient of the cocaine, Amir, used the word postmodern at least 50 times throughout the night.

Anyway, I'm getting distracted. Last night (the day following the big party) we had a quiet weed smoking session at my house, with my housemate and his friends. It was all fine, but then sometime after we got stoned, (only about 9PM), I heard some drunk yelling/talking/warbling from the front of the house. Some strange co-incidence had brought an obvious drug dealer to our house, who was absolutely smashed. We gave him directions to the suburb he had lost (across the creek) and grifted about 10 buds of marajuana from him- he was carrying phreshly cut weed in a plastic shopping bag.

Every day, when I ride west I go through the park where the prostitutes pick up. Everyone knows you might get randomly shot at if you go there at night, so I don't, but even during the day I always see this dealer incessantly doing laps around the running track, bumbag bouncing as he goes. I've seen him do deals too; I think he deals ecstacy. So this is where I live now- the park is 2 blocks from my house, the bridge across the creek is even closer. Up in that penthouse at the harbour is where you do the classier drugs, but down in the valley is where the business is done, and you can sit in your backyard and smell the pot waft in the air from the backyards of your neighbours, all of which you can see into. Your neighbours say hi from across the street, and it's handy to get on with them, because you have to share the public phone with them and if you're lucky, they might give you a racing bike.