i promise

runrun from the father of your sins runrunrun

the one who raisedraised you the one who

forgot to

the runrunrunrun its time its time dont look back its time

he hurt hehurtyou and its its not

its not it isnt it is not

okay

butitsokaynow

runrunrunand he cant he wont hurt

you anyone anymore never sorrow

regretregretsorrow he

hurtyouhehurtyou the father of yoursins youre

okay

youll be okay ipromise run

runrun to me help saveyourself from runrunrunrun

regretsorrowregret

itsokaynowbut

yourfather sins and regretregretsorrow i can help

sorry for everything but its it is

okaynow

andimsorry runrunrun

hes gone nomorenomorehurt youre you are okaynow

okay

Sacrebleu! C'est une pamplemousse!

It’s a strange thing to realise that the unthinkable has happened before your very eyes. I’m too young to have been there watching man set foot on the moon for the first time and when 9/11 occurred I was too preoccupied with the fact that Bananas in Pyjamas was replaced with seven channels of collapsing wreckage.

Today was a first time experience for me, the first time I actually witnessed something I would never think imaginable. My French teacher was away.

My French teacher… how do I begin to explain my French teacher? She has the immune system of a buffalo. I hear she used to play national Women’s rugby in France for Paris. She hasn’t missed a class in two years – as punctual as a panda and as consistent as a carp. She’s been known to break the necks off of wine bottles with a single snap. One time she came into class wearing a raccoon cap and told us that she skinned the animal herself… it was awesome.

I respect her, but mostly what I feel is fear. As I flushed the cowardice out of me (she can smell fear) and prepared to enter class it became noticeable as the seconds ticked by that she was late. Now… she’s not the type to be late. There’s only one time I recall that she came to a lesson five minutes after the bell went and it was apparently because her car broke down and she had to cycle to school… from Pymble to Stanmore. For those of you who don’t know Sydney, that’s a fucking long way.

So yeah, it turns out she never came to class at all and I still don’t know why. Death isn’t even an option – I can’t possibly fathom a speeding car, microscopic antigen or lead bullet that could faze this bourgeois wonder-woman. Maybe instead of wearing that metaphorical cape today, she wore a real one and is saving the third-world as we speak. Maybe she finally muscled up the calf strength to leap over the Indian Ocean to her home country because she felt like an authentic baguette this morning. Maybe she intimidated the school’s establishment into giving her the day off and paying her double. Maybe she just rode her bike into a well.

Whatever has happened, all I can say looking back on my experience is that c'était génial de ne pas avoir français aujourd'hui.

Piqued

Underdeveloped, overexcitable,

A livewire of nervous hormones,

Adolescence; hooded sweatshirts,

Maturity postponed.

Young and vain; irreplaceable,

This cardigan is simply striking,

Dapper, level-headed, blue,

Aqua under fluorescent lighting.

Buy me suspenders, boots to match,

Shoelaces untied,

Evaporate in all directions,

You can’t say I never tried.

Poetry happened to consume, to pique,

My interests for this hour,

A giant bianco bowtie,

By which my collar is devoured.

Who cares if I’m a hypocrite;

A constant change of mind?

I’m seventeen so deal with it,

I’m incredible defined.

Inspired by Sarah Kay

This blog can be serious too.

When you have no inspiration, it’s actually really hard to write. And it’s really hard to not write because I know how much all of you love this blog and how a new post makes your day. I’m honestly a little embarrassed because I’m halfway through this sentence and I don’t even know how I’m going to end it, although I now realise as I type that halfway was a long time ago. Full stop.

Halfway was a long time ago.

When horrible things happen to you it’s understandable to dwell on them. Hardship comes hand in hand with incessant complaining to family and friends about how hard your life is – but it shouldn’t have to. Dwell if you want, but the more you moan and bitch about the infinite melancholy that is your existence the less time you spend.

No I didn’t end that last sentence prematurely. I think that we take time for granted and that when we’re refusing to let things get past us we’re not wasting time. Confused? Time is too precious and too beautiful to be wasted. When we dwell on the tiny little negative aspects of our lives that for some reason ruin entire days, we’re not spending time – we’re just aging.

Every moment you cast a sly look at that person is a wrinkle; every time you write a facebook status about that subject is a scar. Maybe when you look in the mirror you won’t see the changes but you’ll feel them. The extra weight on your chest, the increased effort it requires to take a step forward… those are the wounds. The aging is within.

Spend some time.

The best moments in life are those spent making memories out of hard times. The second you go from ‘hate’ to ‘hated’ is the second your clock starts ticking again. It’s the point in time when you’ll realise that you’ve gotten over that horrible thing. There are no ‘five steps to recovery’ – there is just your own inability to brush things off that won’t allow you to progress.

You’re only one thought, one sentence away from finishing your journey. It’s difficult to accomplish, yeah, but the moment you’re ready to put the effort in and move on you’ll realise that halfway was never even a part of the equation – you’re already at the finish line.

One step further

We clench hope.

It’s what they tell us to hold strong,

But we know - they don’t know.

We are strong! At least we

Used to be.

It’s that one step further, or closer if you will,

When that last spark is lost. The one you so desperately relied upon.

You know it’s okay: why would you lie to yourself?

Our illusion falls; crumbles with our soul.

Taking the fall for the physical being.

What’s left of us?

We clenched hope…

We fell.

They didn’t need to...

We fell.

Disclaimer: Joe is depressed, not me. Oh... Joe is the other poster on this blog. Didn't we tell you? There's two people operating this thing.  

sittinginthisroom, theoryofknowledgeclass, breathinginstaleair

Hatred. A beautiful emotion that arises from within at some of the most unexpected and inappropriate times – there’s nothing more magical than feeling every impulse in your body expel a loathing towards a someone or a something.

Today, in Economics class, I was feeling pleasant, if not a little volatile. All was going smoothly until my teacher was drawing on the whiteboard (a graph on the effect of quotas on international markets, interesting stuff). He needed a different colour to shade in an area on the diagram… and he pulled out a whiteboard marker that I lost a month ago.

I hadn’t even noticed that my marker was gone but as I looked inside my pencil case (that now felt as empty as ever) I quickly put two and two together. That cunt took my motherfucking whiteboard marker. (Okay, so maybe I left it on the whiteboard after drawing a diagram but it changes nothing.)

This whiteboard marker, this motherfucking whiteboard marker, is no ordinary whiteboard marker. One side is a menacing coal-black and the other is a serene, emerald-green – it’s one of a kind, unique beyond all other texters. It’s kind of a big deal.

When he pulled out my beautiful, treasured marker the hatred bubbled up inside me like an active volcano seconds before the lava bursts out of the crater. He then started labeling things with it, completely oblivious to my cloistered rage. It was madness, how could he not realise what he was doing? How could he not see my outrage, my face turning an inevitable beetroot red?

It got worse though.

If using my marker wasn’t bad enough, it then started running out of ink. And my, teacher, he… he… it’s hard to communicate this without getting emotional... He started insulting it! The cunt started calling my whiteboard marker ‘old’ and ‘useless’! How dare he judge it, after all I had been through!? How dare he stand there adding insult to injury, rubbing salt in my wounds!?

Sometime during my internal eruption of resentment towards my teacher and the world in general, he threw my marker in the bin. When I realised, I had too much pride to retrieve it and felt too much dejection to even cast a look in its direction.

As soon as I took a step out of the room at the end of class, all the hatred dissolved. My teacher went from cunt back to generally annoying octogenarian. I held a mini-funeral in my head for the whiteboard marker and went about my day, indifferent as usual. :)

Fuck the world.

haiku hour

Sometimes when I’m sitting in class at school I like to ignore the fact that I’d like a good future for myself and completely zone out. I do the IB and for those of you who don’t know what that is… it’s going to stay that way. We do a subject called ‘Theory of Knowledge’ where we discuss what knowledge is and other key issues relevant to my future (theory of knowledge teacher is obviously what I’m aiming for in life at this point). Of course, such a class demands that one doesn’t pay attention and thus I bring to you a quartet of haiku’s to satisfy your artistic palate. I hope they inspire you.

Haiku 1;

sitting in this room,

theory of knowledge class,

breathing in stale air.

Haiku 2;

what are things are things,

i can’t i can’t things can’t things,

i'm a cat meow.

Haiku 3;

sometimes i feel faint,

sometimes i eat pasta bake,

save me from myself.

Haiku 4;

haiku’s can rhyme too,

rhyme with glue and rhyme with jew,

jesus was a jew.

short&sweet

It’s a bit like life isn’t it? When you compare a human lifespan to the reaches of time it’s a mere blip on the radar. And contrary to what nihilists and pessimists might like to preach, life really is sweet. There’s going to be some bad experiences dotted in there but it’s kinda like the seeds of a passionfruit: they might not taste nice at the time but when all is said and done the aftertaste is something to remember. Of course, your life could be a green, unripe fruit (but that’s just the nihilist in me talking). Everyone has a purpose in life and even if you don’t fulfill that purpose you can still do a lot of awesome things on the way... reading this blog right now is a great example.

Life is too short to waste your time not tasting the sweetness. It's about time we started.

Burned

I stare over the remains of a city burnt to the core.

Nothing here, nothing there, nothing left, nothing more.

Remembering the terror that shook this hollow town.

Burning high, burning low, burning up, burning down.

I can still hear their screams, their words left unspoken.

City burnt, city bare, city barren, city broken.

Thinking back to the flames, walls of towering red.

People running, people scared, people hiding, people dead.

The orgasmic pleasure of lighting that match.

Hear the boom, hear the screams, hear the cries, hear the crash.

Nobody understands what these fires make me feel.

Feeling happy, feeling worthy, feeling better, feeling real.

Although I know that there’s something wrong inside.

Something evil, something bitter, something ugly, something snide.

I’ll block that thought out and focus on the burn.

I won’t care, I won’t stop, I won’t learn.

Cindy! This bitch be messin’ up my floor!

You know those childhood memories that cling to your fragile brain to this day? Events of horror and fear that, in comparison, make scary movies seem like The Smurfs? I had the pleasure of never experiencing such an event, or at least I hadn’t thought so until recently.

A repressed memory (the worst kind)…

Mine revisited during my slumber. Usually my dreams are comedic and completely random: a recent example being a giraffe that strived to be a pie-throwing daredevil. This dream… this nightmare, on the other hand, had me wake in fear for my life.

It was raining and dark as my doorbell echoed through the hallway (and apparently my dreams envy clichés so you’ll have to deal with them). Being your typical kid in a story I was ambitious, courageous, optimistic, pure, fearless and any/every other positive word in the dictionary. I flung the door open to be presented with a figure… a horrific demon… a zombie… zombie Hades, ZOMBIE HADES WITH RAKES FOR HANDS! All I remember is running back down the hall I came from and diving into my bed, shaking in fear. This is the time for you to grab all the positive words you mustered up earlier and to throw them in the bin. Whilst running I remembered that I forgot to shut the door behind me, so I was probably being followed by a zombie Hades with rakes for hands at this point too.

I now fear this soul-reaping man everywhere I go. Screw Samara coming in 7 days (see title reference), she means nothing to me anymore. I guess dreams take pride in distorting real-life events and returning my brain to a toddler-esque state, but this one was WAY over the top.

Although it was an exaggeration of what actually happened, I am genuinely scared of this creature appearing in my everyday life. Sort of the same as the remake of Nightmare on Elm St, where *spoiler alert* it ends via a mother getting stabbed through a mirror, and now I struggle to put my back to a mirror. But yeah, this is what actually happened…

Anti-climax time!

The person who was actually at my door was a family friend covered from head-to-toe in blood after a car hit-and-run. In retrospect, running into my room and not aiding him was a bad idea. It’s not my fault dull lightning makes a bloodied man look like Zombie Hades (with rakes for hands!!!).

Dreams suck. Why must I now walk around fearing an imaginary creature? I just want to live in fear of normal things: bees, ghosts, Freddy Krueger and Oprah Winfrey.

...Oh, don’t worry. My mother tended to the man’s needs and called an ambulance so all was well in regards to him.

And all was unwell in imagination land.

Procrastinaception, what?

I’m at that level where it’s hard to even call it procrastination anymore.

I have these little niggling things called Internal Assessments that are worth about 30% of my overall grade for year 12. They’re not really that fun. And it seems like I’ve gone to great lengths- extraordinary lengths- to avoid even starting them. I mean, you can go on facebook and YouTube for a while before you resort to playing on your iPod for hours on end but eventually you get bored of that as well.

I’ve hit that point where I’ve procrastinated so much I’m bored of not doing my work. I’m effectively procrastinating my procrastination. You’d think that once I’d get bored of casual internet browsing I would return to my studies... but you would be mistaken, my friend. It’s not an easy thing to admit and I am honestly ashamed, but from about 8:15 to 9:50 tonight I just sat staring at the blank screen of my laptop- not even my screensaver of dancing Chinese women.

It’s the thoughts that went through my head during this period that I’d like to briefly share right now- briefly because I was only able to actually start writing at about 11:15 and I’m tired and worn out from all my doing nothing. Okay so let’s go (I feel like this deserves an intro song or something to be honest)…

Brandon’s stream of consciousness in the 95-minute period of his Wednesday night where he stared at a blank screen! (Title could be catchier I must admit)

·      First came convincing myself that I was only taking a short break, only resting my eyes etc. I call this the ‘piss-poor excuses’ phase.

·      Next was the sudden and shocking realisation that my mind had got into this rut and that I was stuck- this is when I knew that I wasn’t going to be escaping this position for a while.

·      THE GUILT. This was arguably the most tormenting stage of my ordeal. It’s honestly quite painful to hate yourself so much for not doing something about your current situation and yet still not changing it. This is a stage that never really ended, to this moment.

·      After the guilt came a false sense of acceptance, where I was trying to once again convince myself a series of lies, fallacies and fairytales… “This is giving my mind a rest” “I wouldn’t be doing homework anyway” and so on, and so forth…

·      THE GUILT (again) Second time always hits harder

·      For some reason it was at this point where I began to think of the fictional citizens of an iPod game I discovered yesterday where you take control of a street and it’s businesses and tenants and try to expand it. I thought of the little pixelated men and woman in my pizza shop and hospital and whether any of them had to write an economics portfolio due in the next week. This thought was a mental vacation from the inevitable-

·      THE GUILT!!!!!

·      Now began the winding down stage of my ordeal; I began to muster up the mental strength to be able to pull myself out of the spiral, but not before getting furious at myself and calling myself such names as ‘fucking wank hobo slut’ and ‘useless pregnant dog cunt'. Creativity is a dangerous and pitiful tool when mixed with anger.

·      The anger turned to frustration and the frustration turned into hatred of others- this is when I knew I was getting back to normal.

·      My final thought as I summoned my muscles to physically snap out of my statuesque stupor was of nothing. It was as if in that one moment I had managed to subconsciously convince myself that the last one-and-a-half hours or so never happened.

But of course, they did happen. And when I remembered them again approximately seven seconds later THE GUILT was back and I almost cried.

In between 9.50 and 11.15 I opened up a word document, the one named after my assignment. I stared at the page but forced myself to type something, not letting myself snap back into the last 90 minutes of my life- that was never. to. happen. again. No, I forced myself. I put every ounce of mental power into this word document and typed.

*Approximately 85 minutes and zero facebook breaks later, I knew I had done all that I could.*

Tonight I wrote 159 words. It’s all I’ve done this entire week, but guess what?

I'm genuinely proud.

A dangerous combination; a dangerous combination

Ambition

“I think I want to change the world today.”

Vices

“I’m hungry.”

This is a story about how I combined the above two statements to create an experience that I simply can’t shake from my psyche. Frankly, I think it’s made me need counselling in the near future.

I was home alone.

Home alone is more than just something that happens when your parents fuck off to the shops; it is a state of mind. Home alone is when your creative spark kicks in, when no corner of the house is out of bounds. I was home alone and I was hungry. I was home alone and I was Jamie Oliver.

Changing the world isn’t too hard when you’re home alone. Your world is restricted to you and nobody else exists. I was prepared to change my world and consequently change the way I would view life forever.

I was home alone and I was hungry.

When your parents go shopping it is usually because you have hardly any food left in your house and this was no exception. My fridge was a cold barren wasteland (think Jane Lynch’s vagina). Apart from the odd neglected foodstuff (sushi ginger, apricot jam, broccolini) there was nothing as far as the eye could see. The Sahara Desert of refrigerators.

Luckily I could count on the single most loved food in any adolescent’s pantry.

Two-minute noodles.

But there was a problem. The only staple food I had in my cupboard was one eaten by near everyone in the world- how was I going to change the world with ramen? An extra packet of seasoning? I don’t think so. Also, I had just eaten a bowl of noodles an hour ago, flavouring sachet and all. But then it hit me. I had just eaten savoury noodles.

What I really craved was dessert.

Dessert.

Noodles.

Dessert noodles.

DESSERT noodles.

FUCKING DESSERT NOODLES.

In that moment I was Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb. I was Isaac Newton discovering the laws of motion. I was Regina George getting hit by a bus… a bus of enlightenment.

I cooked my two-minute noodles in the microwave for the five minutes the packet recommended as I assembled the ingredients that would help me achieve fame, fortune and inner peace in the next quarter of an hour.

The ingredients that changed the world:

·      8 squares of dark chocolate with almonds, chopped

·      1 packet of sesame snaps, coarsely crumbled

·      1 chocolate coated marshmallow Easter egg gone rock hard in the freezer, half heartedly chopped before the mission was aborted due to a broken knife

·      SpRiNkLeS~!~!~!

·      1 ounce (what’s an ounce) of caramel sauce

·      10 drops of vinegar that I added unintentionally thinking it was vanilla essence (i am aware that this is stupid)

·      11 drops of vanilla essence

·      2 scoops of homemade sesame ice cream (yes my family is fucked strange)

I pulled the bowl of noodles from the microwave sans some sort of hand protection, burning my palms (it’s alright- they were burns of triumph and determination). I drained the noodles and placed them in a bowl, before combining the ingredients - the ones that changed the world - with the noodles, using nothing more than my bare [somewhat washed] hands.

As the still burning hot noodles scalded my blistering hands and the chocolate and ice cream melted to create a gooey consistency between my fingers, I saw myself in third person. I saw my Eureka moment in an out of body experience, the culinary genius standing in place of my awkward self. I didn’t feel it happening but looking upon myself I saw the enormous grin that had formed on my glowing face, a crescent moon on the sky of opportunity.

The time had come. The tasting. The culmination of all my efforts of the past twelve or so minutes was here. I had anticipated this moment for what seemed like an eternity.

My equation was solved.

Ambition + Vices = Food Poisoning

The story ends here. I had not changed the world. I was still hungry. My parents came home forty minutes later to see me bent over the toilet throwing up brown ramen into the bowl. My ambition was genuine but I had succumbed to my vices.

Next time I want to change the world I’m having dinner first.

How I feel right now, also tacos

Two nights ago, I promised myself that tonight I would sit down and write something/anything. I honestly had nothing planned for this post but I knew deep down that the only way that I could write is if I forced myself to. Normally, this would be fine and I would be happily obliging with the of writing this post about whatever beautiful artistically emotionally traumatically significant experience I can best express in words… but there’s a slight problem:

I. Have. A. Headache.

I can sense that you’re calling me a little bitch as we speak so I’m going to give you a few facts about this headache.

FACT: This headache is one of those 'have it, go to sleep with it, wake up with it, and have it all the next day' headaches. Picture this: I’m a ten year old girl and this headache is following me in a white van, stalking me through every corner and every facet of my life as I try to run away from it’s gang-rape-of-the-brain.

FACT: In the stew of depression, regret and agony that is my mind right now, I actually thought it was a good idea to not only let my friends and I assault hit my head, but to bang it against a wall repeatedly to try and block out the headache. The consequences of my idea was 5 seconds of bliss, where the minor concussion made me forget where I was, and 23 minutes of me whimpering under my pillow as the pain returned 10fold shortly after.

FACT: In the last three hours I’ve taken four tablets of pain medicine and it has merely reduced my migraine into a low throb that I feel in my temple, as if someone inside was escaping the side of my head by breaking through my scalp with a baseball bat. But wait, there’s more!! This feeling has combined with the drowsiness effect the drugs so kindly blessed me with and placed me in the convenient position of being on the verge of sleep yet being unable to actually fall asleep because of the splitting pain. At this point of the pain cycle I would literally stab a penguin in the throat if it looked at me funny.

FACT: Three facts ago I described my headache as on par with gang rape of a ten-year-old girl... I don’t know why I bothered going on.

I could have very easily not written anything tonight, I could have taken the two extra pills to knock me out into a torturous overnight hibernation, but something wouldn’t sit right with me had I broken my own promise. I mean - you guys (does anyone even read this?) wouldn’t know that I promised myself to write tonight, but I would have known and wouldn’t have ever let myself forget. It is likely that I would - as a 40 year old man - be looking back into my past with regret from that time on the 25^th of February in 2012 where I said I would make a blog post but didn’t. Of course, by then I will have 9 cats and a complete and total loathing of life to get me through this horrible time. :D

Empty promises suck, as all empty things do. Empty fridges suck, because they are void of food. Empty glasses of water suck, because not even an optimist can see them in a positive light. Empty jars of vegemite suck, because they remind you of what vegemite tastes like.

Ever had an empty taco? Imagine, as you bite into a hard shell of solitary, lonely tortilla, your mouth being cut open by fragments of corn chip that slice your gums and tongue with brute un-cushioned force. Your salivary glands moan and beg for a hint of salsa… of meat… of guacamole… of anything... ANYTHING to stop the taste of marginally salted incompleteness from sliding down your oesophagus. It is quite simply a mastication massacre and you would literally kill for that one grated strand of cheese or that one drop of sauce. But, alas, the taco is empty because you broke that promise; you didn’t blog that humid late-February evening and it never stopped haunting you.

Effectively, by sitting here and typing this out right now, I’m having my tortilla AND eating it too… all toppings included.

And it tastes fucking great.

7 things I know about my life right now and you will too (soon)

1)   I’m insecure in the way that makes me want to gnaw at the heels of death because of stupid things [let me tell you a story; my friend and I were conversing and he asked me to look at my nails (I obliged) and when I did apparently I looked at my nails the “girl way”. It seems that men place their hands with palms facing upwards and curl back their nails while women (and myself) place their hands with palms facing down and fingers outstretched] Nevertheless I spent the rest of my day sulking about my lack of masculinity and waiting for my vagina to grow.

2)   My bed broke approximately 10 days [236 hours [14160 minutes [849600 seconds]]] ago and I have yet to fix it, meaning that I have slept on a peculiar downwards-and-to-the-side slope, the alignment of which has forced me to sleep with my head on the other side of the bed. Because I really have no time for such meager tasks, it took me approximately 6 days [almost a week] to move my pillows to the new side of the bed. And it’s true, my bed is still tilted and I have unashamedly no future plans to solve this conundrum regarding the gradient of the mattress on which I sleep. Thus is the moral of this little ditty. I don’t do anything. I am lazy.

3)   Everybody hates me [fact]! And yes I do have proof for this because I downloaded an application that lets me see how people respond to my friend requests on facebook and somebody from my primary school that I knew 5 years ago ignored my request (carry the one) leaving me with the conclusion that I am unfathomably, universally, despised. And no I’m not joking, this realisation prompted a wave of depression that ended with me trying to fix my problems via empty calories in the form of a milk and sprinkles concoction I like to call puregenius.

4)   Sometimes I like to think I’m an artist, like for example right now I’m drinking puregenius (cheers wave of depression) and the milk went pink and the sprinkles lost all their colours and I’m honestly more fascinated about this scientific breakthrough than anything else right now- this nobel-prize worthy porcelain cup full of skim milk and now opaque balls of sugar represents the extent of my artistic integrity and somehow I have no problem with this.

5)   I value sleep more than I value my artistic integrity (other things I value sleep more than: the nutritional value of breakfast! human life!! the suspicious mole on my foot that mayormaynotbe cancer!!!) {I really should stop with these bracketed side-notes} and therefore I have come to the conclusion that I shall end this deep psychoanalysis of the very depths of my inner self, two formulated facts short of the seven I promised. But it wouldn’t be fair to sell you short.

6)   I don’t do anything. I am lazy.

7)   My cat’s name is Cirmi, a Hungarian name meaning ‘I wish it dropped dead so I can buy a new kitten that actually loves me’.