Civilization

A busy city, full of microcosmic blocks full of people interacting in the largest and smallest ways, inconceivable to a pedestrian walking the street outside.
Yet all these society’s verge in certain areas, pathways to the train station, migrations to the corner shop, the local tavern, the nearest Chinese restaurant.
Here these worlds collide with each other, making a larger society, a street,

a block, a shared address.
Outwards and onwards it goes, street companions join to form unions of the suburb, sharing bus routes and petrol stations. These all collide to make coalitions of the city with tribal sports teams wearing the same coloured armour and yelling unified war chants- taught to them by fathers, uncles and brothers….the male elders.
Every weekend battle is joined, with fierce foes taunting each other as spherical artillery is hurdle from one end of the battlefield to the other- sometimes to victory, sometimes to defeat, but always to a conclusion that half will complain wasn’t fair....
In the upper tiers smile the influential, some with pendants of office or industry, others with flash vehicles and flashier suits. These are the ones who control the destiny of those below, yet they too belong to a greater union, one that brings all the feuding fiefdoms into a whole, into something greater than a city, a street, a block or an individual. Giving the gathered a sense of purpose, a largeness of scale that over time seems to shrink as the many, the vast hordes that occupy every corner, are sown into the one. A single face presented to the outsider as a whole, through union is strength, through strength there is unity, through unity there is peace. Peace in the streets and peace in the mind. A congress of wills!
Be it a troop of apes on the savannah facing their rivals or the largest city on the planet looking hungrily at its neighbour, civilization is part of us all…
…which makes it all the more important for us to be civilized.
Don’t you think?

2 chew or not 2 chew

Ever thought much about chewing?
Well I hadn’t, though over the last hour I think I’ve spent a little too much time thinking about it, it can become so easy to be fixated on something can’t it?
I’m currently sitting here eating some roast chicken flavoured chips and slurping on a Fanta, one of life’s little indulgencies I must say.
Now I know some things goes exceptional well with other things out there. Peanut butter and jam (jelly) sandwiches are one. Apple pie and ice cream another. I also know that some people have some truly bizarre combinations they enjoy. I’ve driven more then my fair share of girlfriends’ crazy with my need to always have cheese with chicken Kiev, orange juice with peanut butter crumpets, milk with vegemite toast. You must always have a freckle with a ripe raspberry and you must always eat chicken chips with Fanta (or some other orange coloured soft drink that, when you read the label, has almost entirely nothing to do with oranges….I suspect the same will apply to the ripe raspberries and chicken chips now that I think about it).
So I’m sitting here, eating my chips and slurping my drink and having a whale of a time. I do what I suspect everyone does, rifle through the pack in search of that perfect chip, then flipping it in my open maw like some dude of a chip ad, happily crunching on it until its nothing more then a white paste with an orange hue. Chips are probably the only thing on the planet that you truly must chew properly before swallowing, as a half masticated crinkle cut will cause severe lacerations to the esophageus on the way down! Even the smallest chip can do some serious damage if swallowed too early!
It’s also fun to chomp away on something so hard and yet so brittle, feeling its form shatter satisfactorily under the impact of your molars.
I just love the power and imagery behind the motion of chewing a chip. Sentences are entirely inaccurate to describe the joy; you really can only rely on the power of single words like. Crush. Pound. Mash. Pulverize. Smash.

And now, an experiment! I want you to go get some chips (they don’t have to be chicken flavoured), I’ll wait till your back.
Ready to go? Good!
Now open the pack and pick out the best handful of chips you can find.
Ready? Go ahead and pop them in your mouth and chomp away, making sure you give them a good going over.
Swallow and repeat a few times. Having fun?
Now this time, grab some big chips and start chewing 1…2…3…now STOP!
Hear that? Listen to the silence. Its fucking unnerving I tell you, just how much noise you make while eating chips. I only noticed this because as I was munching away and thought I heard someone creeping around outside my window.
I sat here, in front of my computer, working on a story that just wasn’t doing what it should (i.e.-be good), with a mouthful of half chewed chips listening intently for a follow up noise.
As they say, the silence was deafening.
After a while I went back to chewing my chips and I just couldn’t get over how much noise I was making.
Now obviously chewing chips in themselves makes a lot of noise. I’m sure we all, as kids, had endless fun chewing them with open mouths to annoy siblings or priests (a long story), but I never realized just how deafening eating chips could be.
I wonder if anyone has ever got ear damage from eating too many chips?
I remember reading somewhere that our lower jaw is actually a bone form our ear, one that slowly grew forward as we were forming. Steadily this bone moved forward in those first few months, until both halves join at the front and created a solid bone. This means the lower jaw is almost directly attached to the ear.
This of course is rubbish, I mean it may be part of the ear at some stage but our lower jaws are detached, only connecting to our skulls where the hinge is at the back. This has always confused me as how could it be part of the ear when it’s a completely separated piece of bone?
Anyhoo…
Picture this please- think of a moron sitting cross-legged on the floor next to a coffee table with a laptop sitting on it. Next to the laptop is a half drunk can of Fanta while on the floor, next to the moron is an open bag of roast chicken potato chips. Now have the moron placing his hands against the side of his head and making the most over-exaggerated chewing motions with his face with the occasional ‘oh’ and ‘ahh’.
You’ve just pictured what I’ve been doing for the last few minutes!
I did notice in my own ape-ish way of self discovery that your bottom jaw does actually take a right angled turn at the back, then heads all the way up to attach to the skull, almost directly next to the ear. Thinking about that for a second I also realised that the ear is not really attached to the skull but more grows on it like an elephant ear fern on a tree-attached, but not really part of.
The ear is now obviously the only place where our lower jaw could have come from as there’s nowhere else on the head that you’d really get such an odd attachment coming out of.
I’m starting too also wonder what kind of odd chemical reaction I’m suffering from, thanks to the mixture of ‘little to do with’ roast chicken chips and ‘engineered’ orange Fanta. Perhaps it’s making me a little strange, but then if you ask anyone who knows me…probably not!
So there you have it…not exactly a scientific exploration on the chewing mechanisms of Homo sapiens but an excuse to run away from something else that was frustrating the hell out of me.
Ok, let’s put it this way, my drinks almost gone, the chips are half eaten, and I’m no closer to fixing my story then I was before is started this…oh, the woes of a writer with a short attention span!

Hey…I just found a bag of Snickers…ever noticed how…ohh, never mind, I think I’ll just watch some TV!

We’re all animals!

We’re all animals!
From politicians and the ‘leaders’ of high society to the lowest mud farmer, we’re all animals and its time to get over it!
Just because we built some superior twig technology that allowed us the beat up the other ape dudes a few thousand years ago- this doesn’t make us superior to them, it just means we were a bit meaner, a bit more conniving, and had some pretty good anatomy that one day, allowed some to earn millions throwing small spherical objects around.
Now I ask you, are these qualities for us to admire in ourselves?
And what the hell does this have to do with what follows? Read on dear ‘only person who found my blog by mistake’, you’ll see soon enough.
For the last hundred years, religion (in the west) has been on the downslide, yet suddenly it seems to be making a come back in a big way. Well the reason for this sudden success is the oldest one there is.
Now for starters these ‘new religions’ are nothing like the old ones. Gone are the parables, and the Latin, and the monotonous sermon droned out by an aged priest in a frilly dress, whose nose shows he likes a bit too much port on the other 6 days of the week he doesn’t have to work. Instead modern Christianity is full of stage lighting and audio equipment that Bon Jovi would be jealous of. Hymns are now upbeat rock and roll tunes that the ministers backing band, choir and singers punch out to a ‘ruptured’ audience. No longer are there drone-like worker bees, sitting, kneeling or standing in their ‘Sunday’s best’, mumbling the same prayer said every Sunday since they could first walk. No more children being pinched hard and having later revenge threatened through clenched teeth by nervous parents, determined that their brats will be better behaved then the dreaded Smithson’s one pewee over. The drudgery is gone, for now all can clap along to a righteous beat (huh, righteous….get it), swaying to and fro as the rock and roll message of the Lord sweeps over us in our ‘Gee-Hee-Sus is da’ bomb’ T-shirt. Now sermons are chronicled by well-presented, good looking youngsters in clear, well manicured voices crying out their poignant messages about how they’ve suffered, and how the modern world can ruin anyone’s life, just like it did theirs… “But Gee-Hee-Sus can save us all….Now here’s the collection plate!”
It’s uplifting, joyous and in the end, exactly the same old message… which was exactly the same when it was spoken in Latin… or as the druids preached before them …or when a lamb was slaughtered to Zeus. The church is your salvation, and if you’re not with us, then you’re against HIM (pointing up at the ceiling, statue or tree-depending on the particular deity at the time). Note- I should point out here that I’m really talking about Catholicism simply because I was raised catholic. I’m sure the same thing happens in the world’s other religions; I just don’t feel it’s my place to rant about them as I was never repressed by them.
What I find really interesting is that the Catholic Church exterminated all the druids for simply being a group of yahoos who’d run around dancing and singing a little too much in their ‘mother god who can be found in all things is good’ togas. These priests could see little piety in such actions as they could only lead too one thing…. fornication…and fornication is bad!
How interesting that these new breeds are springing up everywhere, encourage everyone to sing, dance, get married and start popping out lots of junior little singers and dancers so the church can keep filling its coffers. It seems the church has finally caught on; they’re in the business of ‘bums on pewees’ and building the next army of crusaders to charge off against whatever they perceive the new threat to their ‘kingdom’ will be. The more the message changes, the more it stays the same!
Yes, I know their message is peace and love for all, but how many of the worst crimes start that way? Every dictator and mass murderer needs a bunch of people to wear the same t-shirt he does and cry out the same slogan. But people are generally sensitive to outright hatred. You can’t just stand on you’re soap box, waving your fist at the ‘purple people’ or ‘Pavlova worshipers’ and claim they’re the ones causing all your troubles. You gott’a ease into it. Start with the good and nice stuff. Make everyone feel like they really belong to something important, get them caring for the group around them, get them isolated, get them righteous…then fill them with all the bile and hatred they can take and set them lose on the world. It’s called doctrinarian boys and girls and it’s what religions are all about. Don’t believe me? For those of you that have lapsed, say it with me… “Our father who aren’t in heaven, hallowed….” heh heh, got ya’!
Do I sound cynical? Well tough…the truth often hurts, and the more hurtful, the more outraged you feel, the more likely I’m right…Oh, and if it’s really hurting that much, I’m sure there’s a ministry out whose congregation will pray your hurt away…give me an Amen brother!

Anyhoo, back to my point. In a world where family values seem to be slipping away, where the rights of an individual are supposed to be as important as those of the whole… unless of course the ‘whole’ is a corporation (or government) that seemingly can run shotgun over anything and anyone… is it any wonder that people who feel slightly unsure of their place in society, or their ability to cope without some ‘pat on the head’ by a higher power that everything’s going to be ok, that these people are turning back to a church that’s gladly awaiting them with open arms and a catchy rock tune.
Typical pack behaviour if you ask me. Watch any wildlife documentary and you’ll notice the first thing a small, doe-eyed Dik Dik or large, menacing, heffalump does is make sure he’s got a dozen or so mates around him. With voice overs saying things like… “Though fleet of foot and skittish, the antelope’s true weapon against a world full or predators is its ability to stay in a crowd. 20 sets of eyes are more likely to see danger before it can become a real problem then one”.
After W.W.II, the church started to decline a little because the western world was apparently safe (and many soldiers I’m sure came face to face with their God out there and didn’t like what they saw). There have been very few wars fought on western soil in the last 100 years, and western society has profited from it. Even today you hear the mantra of “fight them over there and you won’t be fighting them here!”
Industry grew and even the poorest family in our society was far better off then they’d ever been before. This of course had a weathering-like effect on our belief system. Who needed to pray to a god for support when the only relief from a harsh world you needed was a 2000 bajigajoule air condition and a plasma TV?
People no longer needed to turn to god for protection…so they didn’t.
But things change. The very industries that made us rich now started making us paranoid. These businesses became corporations that were hungry for more and more wealth, and after expanding as much as they could and investing in everything under the sun, the only way they could get these vast quantities of ‘moolah’ their ‘investors’ (which was usually themselves-don’t ever fall for that one guys) were braying for, was by screwing over their employees. Lay people off, cut pay rates, more work in more hours for less money. Even today you can see the top end sharpening their knives like a 60’s dad over the Sunday roast, ready too carve away on the overcooked and thoroughly stuffed carcass of their employees.
And all this is being done under the watch of those who are supposed to protect us. Governments are being run by pals of big business. While their coffers are full of legal, undisclosed ‘donations’ from every industry group under the sun (and how is that not a bribe again?), our government undermines worker rights, pushing for individual employment contracts and fewer pay rises while destroying unions. Is this sounding familiar at all people? They’re separating the weakest from the herd, ready for slaughter by corporate hyenas that are waiting by the waters edge.
Now add to this anxiety, wandering bands of uncountable teenagers, perceived terrorism threats and huge debt, along with the constant pressure to have the new phone, the new car and the new house that’s been ‘backyard blitzed’ into shape. All this is slowly driving breadwinners insane. As the seemingly secure family life shatters around them, is it any wonder some are looking for anything that will glue these broken lives back together?
Enter the new ‘Farmhouse ministries’ and their chicken batteries of peweed drones, singing in unison to an electric guitar….and cue old British guy voice over. “ now assured that its safe to come out of the tree s for a drink, the entire flock of parishioners, skittish from their seemingly endless night with no god, move down to the watering hole to sip the ‘truthiness’ of their own, pack behaviour.”
Now to be fair, it’s not just religions that’s cashing in on all this insecurity. Suddenly everyone has to have a personal psychic along with their own trainer. Gone are the Gurus and swamis of the 60’s to be replaced with ‘life consultants’ and ‘eternal decorators’ of the new century. How else would morons like John Edward and Oprah Winfrey become some of the most influential and powerful (*shudder*) people on the planet?
In the end, because it’s all the same thing! As long as there’s people who feel they need to follow something, there’ll always be someone who wants to lead them. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, most people are morons and if someone can show them a path, any path, so that their stupidity doesn’t effect me, well I’m all for it… but it can be dangerous.
People are more than happy to gaze at some glossy rhetoric that looks great on a t-shirt or a coffee mug, yet they’re just as unlikely to glimpse the motivations behind these easy slogans because, in the end, it’s a lot safer to have a dozen set of eyes around you looking for the baying wolves at the door than just one!
It’s the most primitive, basic instinct we have. We’re all naked apes with a few well-shaped twigs with power-chords and whammy bars, beating the ground as hard as we can to scare away the big nasties.
At the end of the day we’re all animals, no better and no worse than any others out there in the wild!

On behalf of Generation X,

On behalf on Generation X I’d like to thank everyone else for the bang up job they’ve been doing!
Thanks very fucking much!
Now before I start, let me just quote a movie to keep the following prattle in perspective, so you get a good idea where I’m coming from…
Scene: King and his dashingly handsome son standing by a window of their castle looking out across theirs lands.
King: one-day son, all this will be yours.
Son: What…the curtains?
One day all this will be yours. The older generation passing on what’s been in their care for the last two decades, along with the collected wisdom of their age.
Again- thanks very fucking much!
Why the anger you ask? Well, let’s have a look at this lemon you’re trying to fob off on us.
Generation X are the cleaners that have come into work after the staff Christmas party. There’s shit everywhere. Vomit covering all the toilets, the bins are overflowing and there’s a decidedly evil smell coming from the waste paper bin in the corner. Half eaten food and glasses in various stages of emptiness are scattered everywhere, reminiscent of the forests that once covered the planet.
“Don’t bother tidying up- the cleaners will get it in the morning!”
Well that’s us. All you arseholes from the 60’s and 70’s have really done a job on us haven’t you? There’s not a thing you haven’t busted or fouled and left for us to deal with. The environment, the economy, Jesus even society has one decidedly wobbly tire that’s going to fall off unless someone does something about it soon…and you even managed to fuck up the water! How on god's green earth do you fuck up water? Didn’t any of you idiots’ think, ‘hey, we need this shit to survive?’
Apparently the answer is no!
Don’t bother tidying up- the cleaners will get it in the morning!”
Each generation is supposed to be the opposite of the one that came before it. In the 50’s and 60’s you had all this paranoia about commies and space invaders and you decided you couldn’t trust your kids because they listened to evil rock and roll, which sounded like a dentist drill to you. But these kids escaped your psychoses by becoming hippies and political activists…no one was going to tell them what to do! So they took drugs and listened to even louder music and managed to freak everyone else out because basically, they had no jobs and kool combie-vans and were having all the sex anyone could ever want and you were pissed off because you hadn’t thought of it first!
Well this just went on and on until disco and the 80’s came along. Disco fucked everything up for everyone. We have it to thank for those wonderful 70’s and 80’s pop songs(what the hell is a Babushka?), that terrible 90’s techno shit (anyone remember jive bunny?) and the turn of the century’s sudden love of what they call ‘R&B’. Some guy grabbing his crotch and talking into a mike is not R&B- unless of course the name contains to the rhythm of hitting your head against a wall why listening to that shit and the blues you feel afterwards when you realised you paid good money for that crap!
And as for you 80’s monsters, you were the worst of the lot! “Greed is good” I believe the catch phrase was.
Well lets see here, all the ‘young adults’ that grew up with this motto are now running all the companies and governments today. Hmmm. High flying execs living the good life and running their business’s -I’m sorry, did I say 'their', I meant the business’s they are ‘caretakers’ off- by profit margin rather then quality of output. Instead of making money by, oh I don’t know, building a better mousetrap, these pricks think everything is everyone else fault and they’re all going to fucking pay. Sales down, output falling, loss of marketplace, well it’s the little fucker on the factory floors fault- you know, the lazy ones who steal everything not bolted down. I know, I’ll sack half of them and decrease wages while increasing the workload of the few that are left. That'll turn this company around!
And then the keys are handed to us! Generation x…the hope of the future. Well thank you very fucking much. There’s never, and I mean ever, been a generation of kids that are as guilt ridden as us. I mean everyone else has had the parties and the good times and made all the money and then simply stepped aside and said…
“And one day all this will be yours.”
You broke the environment. Having cut down all the trees for your rollies, eaten all the whales in your sushi rolls, while leaving your beer cans on anything even close to a horizontal surface, you’ve now handed the keys to us with a grin on your face like a second hand car dealer fobbing a lemon off for a song. “Here ya’ go kid, you deal with it.”
So we join the animal rights movements and we march at the rallies and we try and apply what political power we have to the problem, but we’re told that’s it’s a lost cause. The animals are dying off at a species a minute while the pollution you fuckers dumped into the atmosphere will continue to build up for decades yet… and that’s not all you’ve done, is it you bastards.
We also have to enter a workforce where these 80’s power greed fuckers are now running everything into the ground. Business are staffed at their lowest levels ever, in search of that all important profit margin, while governments keep squeezing every cent out of us because our stupid hippy parents were to stupid to keep these fuckers in check and now the non-kool kids, you remember them, the ones that were laughed at for all those years, well they’re running everything…and they still remember the hurt and they’re going to make everyone as miserable as they were. If they couldn’t have fun and sex then no-one will!
You’re also not dying and retiring you fuckers! You’re living longer than any generation before and you’re working until your 100. No longer is the natural process of burrowing your way up through a company and taking over from the old man once he gets his gold watch or is carried out feet first, a job strategy anymore. You fuckers are intent on living forever and taking it all with you!
Everything is bad. Driving cars is bad, eating food is bad, drinking milk and eating eggs is bad. You’ve filled us up with chemically produced margarines and unnaturally flavoured red cordial. You’ve made us paranoid about eating bacon and having unsafe sex because just about everything good and fun and tasty will kill us thanks to you!
And worst of all you’re blaming us for this next generation of fuckers. You got gangs of uncontrollable kids running the streets and terrorising everyone, and you have the balls to blame us. Well I got new for you, we’ve been so busy saving fucking trees and growing organic vegetables (apparently they were robotic before we came along), and having all that wonderful condom protected sex so that we don’t DIE that none of us have had any kids! They’re not ours, they’re yours. All these feral hooligans are the product of over achieving 80’s wankers who are only now dropping sprogs in their twilight years, and you're so old and tired from all the drugs and multi-corporate buyouts that you can't control these little fuckers, and you’re hoping that everyone will just blame it on us!
And best of all…you fuckers are intending one day to retire to the good life, you kow, the one with the baby seal fur lined suitcase full of money from the business you wrought and the woodchip sales you made, and you're going to sit back and wait for us to fix it all and look after you in the twilight of your life!
Well guess what... it ai’nt gonna’ happen. More and more we are starting to force our way 'in'. We're getting into the good jobs and the political positions and it's only going to get worse. There's no generation that is more determined then we are. There is no generation more savvy to the mistakes of our forbearers and the bullshit they’ve dumped on us…and we will get our revenge! The tiny, environment friendly latrine filled retirement homes that will be powered by the decomposing garbage and bodily fluids of the ‘inmates’ are being built. We’ll dump you in them and then forget about you while we get to work planting whales and using the space shuttle to fix the ozone layer with Spak-filler and Blu-tac. We will be sweeping your footprints from our forests and ajaxing the targets off the side of every animal still left alive while forcing vat grown tasteless protein meals down your throat. We will be taking to the skies in our hover cars- oh believe me… we have them…we’ve had them for ages, we’ve just been waiting for you fuckers to piss off because you simply don’t deserve that much fun! We'll live in the oceans and on the moon, in great clean cities and we'll replace our organs with cheap, regenerated ones from stem cells while you’re tapped into an old petrol guzzling blood pumper here on earth.
And best of all, we'll leave this next generation, you know, the ones with the terrible music and the A.D.D pill addictions, to care for you while we're off living in the stars!
And one day, all this will be yours…”
“No thanks, you keep it!”