A Groggy Recollection of New Years Eve

I'm very sore... my body hurts but my head is fine. I have remarkably managed to drink sufficient water before going to sleep (at about 4am) to avoid a hangover... But I did get very drunk. Let's recap:

I didn't have plans for new years eve until new years eve. I hadn't been invited anywhere (friend who normally brings me places left the state) but I knew of a party happening. A friend on the day kindly let me be their plus-one and off I went with my two pals Alex and Karim. We'd never been drunk all three of us in the same spot at the same time so decided to fix this. It was fun.

The party took place in the country. There was a section of the property called "tent city." I did not have a tent to sleep in. This isn't important until later but it just sets the environment... and the environment was perfectly suited to get crazy drunk and being super loud as neighbours wouldn't be able to hear us. Things that were yelled out during the night include: an explanation of the political situation in Egypt, bragging about our superior comic book knowledge, and "EAGLE! EAGLE!" before piggy back rides.

Alex tore my pants when he picked me up. The tear, of course, was right where my crotch is so my underwear was visible for at least half of the night. Thankfully I was drunk enough not to be crippled with self consciousness. Karim led me to his car (parked behind a shed of some kind so out of sight of the party) and offered me a spare pare of shorts. I didn't ended up wearing them. Somehow this led to one of Alex's friends suggesting I take my pants off...

Karim, Alex, and I all returned the party without pants with the idea of seeing how long it would take for people to notice that we weren't wearing pants. Answer: not that long.

Don't worry, I eventually put my pants back on... but the tear kept getting larger and well... those pants are pretty dead now. Oh well. Being pantsless was fun for a bit.

There was a thing of some kind. An inflatable thing with big soft poles that you used to fight each other with. The arena had four small platforms you could stand on and I suppose one kind of fight would involve four players seeing who could stay on top of them for long enough while being pushed. We sorta did that? But then it quickly devolved into just beating each other. The platforms themselves were just big plastic cushions that you could remove which left four big holes in the arena that went all the way to the grass. This + a lot of alcohol made the entire arena a troublesome place to stay upright in. It was a bit slippery to begin with and while rushing around in the dark we (mainly me) would frequently fall down into these holes and momentarily get stuck which was a perfect opportunity to get beaten. The new rules of the "beat each other up" game became "push them over the edge of the arena" and it was difficult but after a long fight with Karim I finally won... To be fair it is difficult to push your opponent anywhere if they spend half their time in a hole going "oh gosh not again."

I own a Nokia phone. You know the kind: small, no camera, no internet access, no interesting features except "snake", and no known way to completely destroy them. Whenever I show it to people I demonstrate that why yes, you can just drop it on the floor and it'll be fine. Look: no cracks in the screen. Screw you iphone owners! Well I finally got the opportunity to demonstrate to someone what happens when you throw it at the wall. The answer is the back comes off, the battery comes out, and the three pieces fly everywhere. This happens most of the time when I drop it anyway the only problem is I couldn't find the back plate so now I have a phone with an exposed battery. It works perfectly fine though. The screen didn't even get a scratch.

I smoked my first cigarette. Surprisingly not that bad? I was quite drunk at that point. I made an effort to make sure I was drunk for as much of it as possible and got most of the drinking out of the near the start. I actually quite dislike the idea of smoking. I don't want to become a smoker and I find it a really unappealing habit... but I hadn't ever done it so I figured I wanted to do it at least once. I'm not entirely sure if I did it correctly but I could hardly stop and ask the guy I got given the cigarette from. He was quite wasted and was telling me his opinions about The Hobbit movies ("I've read the book like 6 times...") and how he didn't like how the 2nd one wasn't that close to the book due to the inclusion of Tauriel ("I've read the book like 6 times..." he reminds me) but the 1st movie was pretty close to the book ("I've read the book like 6 times...") but he didn't like the 2nd one because you see it wasn't that close to the book (which he then told me that he'd read "like 6 times") and then he repeated everything all over again. He was thus too busy to go "ok how you smoke it is like this..." But I discovered that the deeper you breathe in smoke the worse it is. My breathing rhythm slowed while smoking and it continued on for a bit afterwards which was quite relaxing despite the fact that I now smelled freaking terrible. I figure I could probably still feel relaxed if I just did some nice slow breathing exercises instead and it would have the added bonus of not giving me lung cancer. Cool huh? Yay new experiences!

I was drunk enough to dance. That's pretty drunk. Some girl asked me to dance. I did so but after a while thought "...I actually want to leave now..." and there's no point where mid-dancing you just go "oh OK cool. I'm going to walk away from you now..." Thankfully at the same time she decided that she would go off and do something else so we just mutually walked away from each other. That was convenient.

After a night of running around, running up slides, fighting with plastic, drinking, and harming my body in new ways it was time to sleep. I slept in Karim's car which was an improvement from last new years where I slept in a tent (the ground is even more uncomfortable than a car) where it was colder and also more exposed to mosquitoes. This year I woke up without a bunch of bug bites all over me so huzzah! And just like last year I got about 2 hours sleep before I was awoken by the sunrise. I got a lift home with someone else who was leaving at 6:30am and I got home where I showered and fell asleep.

I'm tired, I'm sore all over (except the head, we've mentioned this), and I have only one new years resolution: take a lot of selfies. I mean, why not right? Here's day 1:

I had fun. I look forward to 2014. First year of not being a student... should be interesting.

Onwards! To adventure!

The Post-Voting Sorrow Party

As optimistic as my friends and I would like to be it was clear that Tony Abbott was going to win from the start. Polls exist for a reason and that reason is to allow you pre-emptively plan how much despair you'll be in. As someone who likes, you know... human rights and the internet... the news of Abbott's inevitable win was a horrifying one so with 4 different plans to get drunk in various places I picked the closest one for most convenient stumbling home potential.

I was getting ready to leave when Kevin Rudd came up on the TV to give his defeat speech. Oh no! Everyone will be drinking in sorrow without me because of this! I headed forth with booze in bag and arrived to a bunch of 19 year olds sitting around with bottles in their hands and watching the horrifying event unfold.

We were watching it stream via the internet and put onto a TV. This led to it being pixellated and occasionally pausing the image while the audio continued underneath it. Somehow it managed to pause on Abbott's horrific reptilian smile as he told us "the government of Australia has changed" over and over to the sound of the cheers from the Liberal crowd. It was like he was mocking the progressive Youth of Australia and rubbing it in. "That got a good cheer so I'll say it again. The government of Australia has changed." He then went on to say it in a variety of different ways while the ABC would occasionally cut to the grim visage of John Howard. His might eyebrows made him look somewhat concerned and the poor lighting that didn't illuminate his face made him look like a dark figure staring up and out of the crowd at a hideous malformed creature (which wasn't too far off).

"Well Abbott's PM now so we need to get used to this shitty internet." We all laughed then drank to wash away the pain of how real that statement is.

"Tony what?"

"Oh... sweet fuck no..."

We decided that we'd turn it into a drinking game and drink whenever he said "Australia" (we didn't have enough alcohol for the amount of times he said "government" + drinking games, preferably, should not lead to death). I told them my story about how I had confronted the Liberal supporters with the question "why as a gay man should I vote for the Liberals?" (a question they poorly attempted to answer and left me unsatisfied as "because of his other policies" was like saying "I actually have nothing to respond to this but I have to say something.") Then someone replied with an even better story about how one of the Liberal supporters handing out pamphlets to encourage him to vote Liberal had hooked up with him at a party. I don't remember who sucked whose dick but that's just a minor detail in the irony of "loves gay sex but supports Liberals."

The rest of the night involved enjoying the odd names of various politicians all over the country like "Jane Austen" (no really) and making fun of Abbott. If we are to suffer him for the next 3 (and hopefully only 3) years then we might as well find ways to lighten the mood. Human rights progress might have been put on hold for the next 3 years and the internet is going to be terrible but it's OK... slow internet is still enough to read my new blog: The Abbott Chronicles.

I will be writing satirical short stories about the misadventures of Tony Abbott: Australian Overlord, Lizard King, and Bungie Smuggler Enthusiast and trying to ease the pain.

Which I really right now because I'm so hungover from last night... I really did try to drink away the sorrow of a Liberal government being elected but alas... The news of Tony Abbott's election last night still greatly outweighs the hangover from today.

Blogging Has Ruined Me.

I was out clubbing last night (for the first time too. So what if I'm 20? Northbridge is a scary place) and it was interesting. It got more fun as the night went on. I loosened up, got more alcohol in me, was in a bigger group of friends than I was when the night started etc.

All the while I was thinking about what moments of the experience I wanted to blog about... Blogging has consumed my life. The problem is this: I spend a lot of time online. A lot. My tumblr page has over 28,000 posts (mainly reblogging, but a bunch of text written by me as well) which grows every day. That's incredible considering it's only been around since November 2010. That's an average of over 1700 posts a month, or nearly 60 a day. This blog itself has an archive the size of two novels and it doesn't even get updated every month any more. If I find a blogging service that is suitable for me then I will use it constantly. A person can learn a lot about my life if they read multiple blogging sites I use.

But this has taken away the in-the-moment-ness of the moment. I become concerned with how I'd document it that how I am currently experiencing it. Something interesting happened and I thought it'd be good to blog about, then I started imagining what I'd write. At that point my thoughts became examples of things I could think, not what I would've thought. For example: I thought about blogging about wondering how many drinks it'd take for that guy over there to turn gay (there were lots more but that is the most memorable for obvious reasons). I hadn't been thinking that until I thought it'd be a good thing to mention in a blog.

The internet has stopped being just a way of documenting experience, but shapes and changes how I interact with an experience. That is... weird...

I should go outside more often.

The Importance of Arbitrary Age Restrictions

Have you ever looked at a bottle of alcohol and thought to yourself "does it really matter that I'm a few days belong the legal drinking limit?" Many people do. After all, it's just a few days. You won't be any more developed to handle that alcohol in a few more days, you won't be any more responsible, you won't have changed at all. There is virtually no difference between you at age 17 years and 362 days and 18 years (or 20 years and 362 days and 21 if you live in America or any other place with a high drinking age).

So why not just break the law? Well... if you start thinking of it as "I'm only a few days younger... what's the difference?" then what's the difference between those few days and an extra few days? 360 is barely different from 362! But well 360 isn't so bad, so why not just 358? 354? 350? A week or two won't make any difference. Like a morbidly obese people who gives in to temptation to take that one cupcake out of a dozen, you're quickly on a slippery slope to having eaten all of them.

The truth is that this cut off of 18 (or 21) for drinking is arbitrary. What makes an 18 year old the best age for becoming an adult and doing things? I was 18 once. There was a party and then I got up the next day and did the same thing I did every day. I certainly feel like an adult and that seems to be a common thing for people. I'm 20 and still telling myself "you're an adult now, be responsible." But we all look at the age 18 for being an adult (let's move away from drinking because I don't want to keep saying (and 21), besides, this applies to other activities like sex or voting) and go "yeah, that's a good age. That age makes sense." Why though? 18 is still a teenager and teenagers are irresponsible idiots. Even the smart ones. If you don't think this is true, you're still a teenager. Just wait until you grow up and you'll look at teenagers and go "...surely I wasn't like that." No. No you were and you have to live with that.

We like the age 18 become we grew up as a culture with that number. Other cultures have different numbers and to us that seems strange, but the situation is the same from their side We're conditioned to believe that this is what adulthood is. Adulthood can be something completely different. It doesn't even need to be a number, it could be a thing earned after a specific task to prove you can be more than just a child.

Though the number itself is arbitrary it is not pointless. Alcohol is poison that damages the body and if you give it to someone young it can have a negative effect on their development. Of course being 18 doesn't mean alcohol is fine for you and you won't have any bad side effects, but your liver will be better developed for dealing with that alcohol. But surely a 21 year old would be better at handling alcohol? Surely a 22 year old... surely a 23 year old...

The same problem in reverse. But every body is different so what applies to one person at age 18 won't be the same for someone else.

Now we have this arbitrary number. Can we change it? No. Unlikely. Imagine being the age group that the age gets changed on... You're approaching your 18th, you're excited, you're finally going to be an adult with all the cool things adulthood brings (this individual is pretty naive) and then... Adulthood is now 19. Your friend, who is one year older than you, is now an adult for 2 years before you get to be one. People would get mad. People wouldn't understand why it changed because 18 was a fine number for them. It's always been 18! Even though the line is arbitrary and if you were to change it slightly it wouldn't matter... so why not do that?

You see, the line doesn't need to be perfectly justified and the best possible option, because that's ridiculous to try and get, varies, and is subject to debate. The line just needs to exist. We need a cut off age and stick to it otherwise you're just stretching at it further and further thinking "well it's not that much different..." until it's just ridiculous.

So just deal with it really. Waiting a few days won't kill you.

Fun Night of First Times

Ever had one of those nights where like "well this is the first time I've done that..."

I had one of those on Tuesday. You ready for it? You sitting down? Good. It went a little something like this...

Lorna decided to throw a fund raising event at a pub in the city for her final year screening (for those films that her fellow film students made) so for the first time I went out to the city to a pub (I don't go out much ok?) The fund raiser was somewhat disappointing as not many people showed up... and I knew that would happen. That's OK, I found 3 people to come with me. The first one I ran into when he just managed to get into the train door just as it was closing on him. Surprise surprise it's my friend from high school, Matt, who has come back to Perth for a little while to drink with his friends who I also knew from high school. I convinced them that if they wanted to drink they should come to where I was going as otherwise we're really going to fail at this fund raising idea...

So we're at the pub and there's a local musician playing. There's people I haven't seen in ages and those I haven't seen... ever... but only one of them really matters to the story. Any way, one of the musicians was a girl with an acoustic guitar just on stage singing by herself to a crowd of 4 people (I know. Attendance was quite poor. There were more, but not all were watching) and and some point the girl next to me says something when a song finishes that the musicians responds to. Can't remember how it went or why it somehow then involved the musician inviting me on stage to play her instrument (I mentioned I played guitar).

First time I've "gate crashed" someone's live performance, taken their instrument and started playing random chords. Now I should point out that the three friends I had convinced to come along were called Matt, Lewis and Kennard. Lewis was blonde, Kennard isn't.

Well, I'm on stage with a guitar and a microphone. I start off with something nice and mellow, a little arpeggiated Am chord with a little hammer off bit on the e string (e-g) added in. (Sounds cool, do it now guitar peeps) I lean closer to the mike and go "This one goes out to Lewis.... you're so much prettier than Kennard." Then I started improvising, tried to get the musician to improvise some lyrics as Lewis and Kennard watched with unimpressed looks on their faces.

So that was the first time I then started serenading a guy on stage with a guitar.

When I got off stage to let the musician continue her set Lewis came up to me and was like "I am not wooed."

Awww...

Well the night continued, and as a joke to do with the empty stage I mentioned poetry readings and stand up. I was encouraged to do that, but didn't. Some middle aged guy from Manchestor who I thought was joking about it too decided that yeah, it's a great idea!

He took the mike and started reciting poems. Poems that he had written. Because he is a poet. At that point in time I turned to the film students and went "....who is this guy again?" and received a few shrugs. OK, random poet just... very enthusiastically and loudly reciting poems about who knows what. I couldn't really follow. I stood there occasionally commenting on it to the guy next to me. "It doesn't rhyme..." "He's using repetition... which is a convention of some poetry for emphasis." You know, the kind of remarks you make during an unexpected poetry reading a pub and you want to make it obvious that you're not really a literary analyst.

Then, mid-sentence, the poet starts yelling at me. "WILL YOU SHUT THE F*** UP!? I'M TRYING TO READ A POEM HERE AND THERE YOU ARE IN YOUR SHORTS AND YOUR CONVERSE ALL TALKING AWAY! THAT'S RUDE, I MEAN I'M FROM MANCHESTER BUT SERIOUSLY!" And then he continued talking.

So that was the first time that a poet had decided to yell at me during a poem. Afterwards he apologised and said it was all in good fun, he hugged me instead of hitting me. I pointed out that my shoes weren't actually converse...

But his poetry did actually keep going on and on... at one point he was talking about oil, slicking back your greasy hair, yeah you something something... and waving his arm in my direction and I was like "...is this poem about me? My hair is actually quite clean...."

The next one was dedicated to the sound guy, who probably hadn't had a night like this... ever...

The poet said he'd introduce me and get me on stage to do some poems/stand up (remember earlier when I was joking about all that?) and I was thinking to myself "I can't follow this... he's just so enthusiastic." The guy next to me goes "Yes, but anything you say would be better" (oh burn) But he decided "Nah, I like talking too much" and so decided not to give me any more stage time, just keep pacing back and forth saying poems. Oh well. I'd been on stage once that night.

There was a raffle at the end. There were about 6 or so prizes and quite a few people had left (including the people I had came with) so it was like "Nah, can't be bothered giving it to people who aren't here..." So they'd draw a ticket, no one had it... they'd draw another... same thing... draw another, someone would win. It was kinda bad for the people who didn't win anything seeing as their odds were really good considering the small amount of competition and the amount of redraws... but nope. I won some wine and someone else won a pizza voucher so we swapped.

I really wasn't ready for walking through Northbridge with a 1.5L bottle of wine in my hand, waiting at a train station for half an hour and then coming home on the train at nearly midnight. You just don't do that. So that wasn't a first time for me thank fully... I don't want to get arrested/beaten up/forced to drink socially with people I've never met who just so happened to have cups on their person and went "WAHEY! GUY WITH BOOZE LET'S GET HIM TO GIVE A ROUND AND TOAST TO SOMETHING YEAAAHHH!!" (It could happen, don't tell me it can't!)

And then that was also the first night I had gone out late, had a drink, yelled over the loud music until my throat was a bit sore, then come home and had less than 5 hours of sleep before my first day at a job where my job description was to talk to strangers on phones. More on that later.

Mood: ???

Mood: Dead inside.
Listening to: Arkona (Russian folk black metal)
Reading: How do I read and type at the same time?
Watching: THE SCREEN! WHAT!?
Playing: My guitar. Because I can multitask
Eating: THE AIR
Drinking: MORE AIR!

Mood: Sticky tape
Listening to: The voices in my head.
Reading: My own blogs.
Watching: THE SCREEN! (Bloody hell how dumb is that!?)
Playing: With a roll of sticky tape
Eating: The consciousness of the universe. (Not very appetising)
Drinking: Something else of the universe's.... *whistles*

Mood: Ice cold shower and midday walks
Listening to: Fall Out Boy (No I'm not a screaming fan girl... I'm a screaming fan guy)
Reading: Day of the Triffids (How ironic my Sunday feels like a Wednesday)
Watching: The clouds go by
Playing: Pokemon Ruby for GBA
Eating: Boiled Pokemon eggs (BREED FASTER! Survival of the fittest = fail. I eat your eggs!)
Drinking: The blood of my enemies (and maybe a margarita or sasparilla)

Mood: Crazy as a I thought I was tomorrow
Listening to: The screams of my endless victims (like a symphony... OF PAIN)
Reading: Instruction manuals to my toaster (I WANT TOAST DAMMIT!)
Watching: The toaster fly out the window
Playing: Left 4 Dead... in my mind (I has no Xbox I be poor)
Eating: NOT TOAST THAT'S FOR SURE!
Drinking: Tomato sauce.

Mood: Paranoid.
Listening to: What's outside my window. Shhh...
Reading: The signs around me that someone is following me.
Watching: out for any stalkers.
Playing: the game of evasion
Eating: nothing. All food is probably poisoned.
Drinking: moisture from the air.

Mood: Apathetic.
Listening to: Simple Plan.
Reading: Margaret Atwood.
Watching: Bambi
Playing: with knives.
Eating: Prozacs
Drinking: Prozacs in liquid form

Mood: Violent.
Listening to: Slipknot.
Reading: WHAT DO YOU CARE!?
Watching: AGGGHHH!!!
Playing: AGGGHHHH!!!
Eating: AGGGHHHH!!!
Drinking: Not enough!

Mood: Cannibal.
Listening to: Cannibal Corpses.
Reading: A newspaper (detailing my exploits)
Watching: My next victim.
Playing: With a dead body.
Eating: HUMAN FLESH.
Drinking: Lemonade.

Mood: Desperately need scissors.
Listening to: Every Mozart and Chopin song.... all at the same time.
Reading: An ancient tapestry (I really don't like it... Someone give me scissors)
Watching: The hair straightener. It's watching me too... I can feel it staring...
Playing: with forks... not as good as scissors.
Eating: Toast! I FINALLY GOT THE TOASTER TO WORK!
Drinking: Rocks.

Mood: High in the sky.
Listening to: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Reading: Whoa dude! The page is covered in pretty colours!
Watching: The pretty colours!
Playing: With the pretty colours!
Eating: Music!
Drinking: Hash brownies

Mood: Banana.
Listening to: Silence.
Reading: Gee you're nosy.
Watching: Why don't you just admit you love me already?
Playing: You're such a stalker!
Eating: Get away from me!
Drinking: Nooooooo!!!

Mood: Avoding reality and sunlight
Listening to: Halo Wars Original Soundtrack
Reading: World of Warcraft related literature (The Sunwell Trilogy Graphic Novel)
Watching: The Trailer for Diablo 3
Playing: Fallout 3 for the 10th time.
Eating: Nothing but chips.
Drinking: Anything with caffeine or sugar (can't sleep. Must destroy megaton and kill entire village!)