Awesome Artists

"I'm Damian. 
Or D. 
Or Dude. 
We're going to be drawing all kinds of sh*t. 
Dead sh*t."

There is something about artists of all sorts that simply makes them stand out from those who are not so creative. This is certainly the case with my new art teacher, today.

There were around six of us lined up at the door ten minutes before the class starting time, as Damian walked past. He looked back at us, and shook his head. 
"Early? Really? What is wrong with you, this is university!"
"We're excited!" a student explained.
"Oh you are, are you? Don't worry, I'll change that."
From here on, the class just got even more interesting.
"I'm not going to read the unit guide to you, because well, you're not five-year-olds, and to be honest I didn't even write the unit guide, so I don't even know what's in there. But you will. When you read it yourselves. Alone."
I could not believe how he kept a straight face after everything he said. He said the obscene word used instead of poop to describe everything, in a negative and positive manner. He is so laid back that the class, initially running for three hours, only ended up running for one. 

Damian has taken Mister Schneebly to a whole new different level. Praising Fridays, he hurried on to the large Apple computer and played some music while he went off to do things. We, slightly unsettled, settled in almost immediately. He made everyone bring their tables and desks forward to the computer when he returned so that he could show us examples of Dutch still life paintings, a group of photos that he also did not compile. He did not even think that he would be able to explain them all, however he managed to because, well, it was a collection of photographs of paintings of fruits, anybody could explain them. The way he did though, suggested years of academic study, which I thoroughly enjoyed because it was mixed with an urban style of communication and gritty wit. 

And that is the future teacher that I aim to be. Somebody unique, strange, straight to the point, witty, funny, supportive and all the while intelligent. I want people to look up to me and while they are looking I want their vision to shake because they are uncontrollably laughing at my wit and constant sharing of humour. I will confuse my students with rhetorical questions that actually turn out to be questions and then lead them back on the path of learning by offering them simplistic and secretly complex ways to go about things, to solve things and increase their academic abilities. For to follow the curriculum strictly is to blindly lead, but a leader needs eyes because they are the navigators.

Creative people are interesting. Give them a chance, and the tip of the iceberg will surface revealing a bigger picture, a bigger amount of personality characteristics and do not let them intimidate you. Enjoy them. Because if a creative person pours themselves out onto you like a fountain, drinking from that fountain is more refreshing than spring water. Trust me. There is a lot to creative people. More than meets the eye. We just like to hide because when hidden, we are elusive and comfortable. Sometimes it all becomes too much and we find potential creativity enjoyers. Be a creativity enjoyer more often so people like me can show you our worth. 

I look forward to my second week having this Damian fellow as my art teacher. I do not know what to expect next week, when I have to bring in fragments of my life in object form and arrange them in interesting ways to draw them. It should prove interesting, though the only real form of still life I have ever drawn is a Red Bull can or a bottle of Corona. I think I will do alright, not too exquisitely but rather decently.

Celebrity Lookalikes in Lectures and Tutorials

I have recently returned to university. I have returned to the familiar recurring pedagogical experience for the third time, next year being my fourth, and this year I am mixed with first year students who look like celebrities. Really popular ones, too.

Eva Mendes sat in my Reading Contemporary Fiction class, beside the person directly in front of me, to the left. Her long, dark brown hair rested to the left, then to the right, then to the left, then along her back, depending on the way her slender body moved throughout the tutorial. All I could imagine was Will Smith sitting next to her, quoting some lines from the movie Hitch - the lines which I cannot recall, for I have not seen the entirety of that movie, rather I have seen a glimpse of some scenes, and I did not happen to remember any memorable lines, memorable enough involving these two celebrities, though I did happen to see them together in one scene and that is the very scene that my mind had pictured throughout the entire class, when my gaze met hers. She has a Spanish heritage too, I can tell by the placement and shape of her nose, her skin colour, and her lips.

Beside her, Taissa Farmiga from American Horror Story: Coven, with similar long locks of blonde hair, though the way she plaited them had veered me off track when considering her lookalike for a while. Her constant look of concern, her quiet and shy demeanour, her slyness when she spoke, and the way she observed, and hardly did any movement. The way she just sat there warned me that she could indeed be a witch, and that at any given time she could raise herself from her chair, her feet lifted off the ground, waving her hands about in a frenzy, chanting spells so fast that a train-wreck would happen beside her in slow motion at a normal speed. I snapped out of my imagination, and regained focus on her, seated right in front of me, and chuckled nervously when she looked up at me as if she knew what I just conjured up in my mind, as if she was telepathically signalling to me that she indeed was part of a coven, and that what I saw was her reality, and if I dare spread the word she would burn me at the stake, even though I am not a witch. So I kept quiet.

Kirsten Stewart watched from the back corner, her vision lurking whilst her body remained immobile, her eyelids half closed as though she has lost sleep over the thought of Edward Cullen. Pale skin, a stare as though she has not drunken any blood beside that of a deer, she hid behind the young man in front of her whenever she caught me catching her staring at me as though my neck was her next victim. Her answer to my tutor's question, "any particular fiction books?" was as even as the part in her hair, one tone barely uttering the words "no, just fiction." I knew that she kept staring at me for the rest of the class without having to ever look back at her, in the event of her vampiric teeth surfacing from her gums as she smiled at me.

Last but not least, Sandra Bullock. She sat in my tutorial after Peter Griffin's lecture, and I kept looking around for Melissa McCarthy so that they could reenact a couple of scenes for me from The Heat. Melissa McCarthy was nowhere to be found, though, so when I asked Sandra Bullock to instead reenact a scene from Miss Congeniality, she threw her beauty pageant crown at my head and crossed her arms, frowning at me for the rest of the class. The side of her face, her jawline, her nose, her hair, her laugh that erupted from nowhere and bounced off the walls for minutes. The resemblance was simply astounding.

While I certainly enjoyed watching these celebrity lookalikes and conjured up hypothetical situations in my mind, I lost a great deal of attention that I could have paid my tutors and lecturers. Instead I invested my time in laughing at, while observing, celebrity lookalikes. I have you to blame, Hollywood, if my scores this semester take a plunge downhill. 

Tony Birch's Blood Review

I have never been too fond of Australian stories, and that may be because I live and was born in Australia, so the excitement of anything Australian has surely died down since my eyes first opened – however, Tony Birch’s Blood was beyond my expectations.

If anything, it is a story, a journey, one that you feel like you are taking along with the main characters, Jesse and Rachel. Their journey was a tough one, reaching several climaxes and in each, I screamed internally, “no, no! Please don’t die!” And luckily enough, my wishes were answered. Throughout the book, which took me two days to read, I thoroughly connected with these young characters, and connected with every other Australian thing in the story – the ‘Scotch Finger’ and ‘Monte Carlo’ biscuits, the pies, the ‘servo’, the ‘jacks’, the Aboriginal paintings, and the famous ‘Commodore’. I felt at home the entire time.

And that is what was interesting about me reading this book. At first, I did not think that I would even want to connect with it at all, I had the motive of just finishing reading it for the sake of being slightly ahead of my Fiction class at university, and partly because I am excited to get on to the other three compulsory books. I like to be prepared, and in this case, I am glad that I am that way because it was the most interesting Australian read.

For its entirety I had not grown into boredom once. I was entertained, though in a negative way from all the violence, and the story played out in my mind just like a movie. I could picture the look on little Rachel’s face every time that she felt Jesse was emotionally slipping away, I could picture Jesses little pre-pubescent face as he tried to ‘step up’ to the bullies that they came across, and I could imagine the pain-stricken Gwen, the mother of these two children, who despite her best efforts in pleasing all of the men she had come across, failed her children to the point where her destructive lifestyle soon became theirs.

I automatically found myself wanting these children to evade the welfare, stick together and become reunited with their grandpa once again. I felt as though I was watching a documentary, only reading the subtitles. It all felt so real, and now that it is all finished, it still does not feel abstract. I still can see the children, dirtied with mud and blood and running through the back streets of the outskirts of Melbourne, my own hometown, trying not to bump into the criminals they are running from.

Tony Birch writes so brilliantly, in a down-to-earth manner, so as to make the reader feel as though they are not reading, which is in a way why this book was such an easy and fast read, just like my lecturer had made it out to be. It is addicting until the very last sentence, and captures every scenario in the most realistic way possible.

I do not regret spending double the money that I should have in the university bookshop to purchase this book, rather than waiting a couple of weeks after purchasing it online for around half the price I paid. I will gladly place it on my bookshelf, in its slightly withered state, and watch with pride as someone picks it up and asks me what it is about. “Home,” I will reply, “home.”

Lionel Shriver's Talk at Deakin Edge, Melbourne

I had one mission today - after having acquired tickets to Lionel Shriver's talk at Deakin Edge in Federation Square, Melbourne, I was to find some accompaniment. Luckily enough, I found my mother, who was willing to attend any event surrounding literature, as strangers inside the building in which this event was held were sure to be more civilised, and far more human than her in-laws.

We made it to the city without getting caught in too much traffic, and found the Deakin Edge building, tucked into the heart of Federation Square. Alas, we were greeted with a long line of excited enjoyers of Shriver's books, and we managed to blend ourselves within them, despite our very urban clothing. It was not much of a wait, and soon we found ourselves entering the building, which appeared to look like a gigantic lecture theatre. Before I went down the stairs to be seated, I scurried on to the little bookstore set up in the side of the entrance room, and purchased Shriver's newest addition to her works, Big Brother. My mother and I then hurried, withholding as much class as possible when one is rushing, back to the line which was bustling down the lecture theatre steps. 

Being the socially unprepared person that I am, I found the best seat in the theatre at the back, and being the anal person no longer afraid to take any risks that my mother is, she forced me to the front of the theatre, where two seats waited in the first row, exactly in front of the stage where Shriver was due to stand and speak. Beside me sat a dainty but tall old chap who was seated beside his wife, his right hand rested on his thigh implying their intimacy toward one another, or his unrequited love towards her. And to my right was my mother, restless, taking moments to remove her jacket and reposition herself and asked me questions, and focused on the architecture around us. It appeared she was more excited than I was, not just for Shriver but for the fact that we were sharing a literary experience together without the impatience of my sister and father. 

After a rather cheerful radio presenter revealed to us that she had read Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin on her very own honeymoon, Shriver finally took to the stage and saturated the audience with her take on Big Brother, about the very sad story of the passing of her own big brother due to obesity issues, and then read to us a large passage from around halfway through the book. I have not yet read the book, but from the passage read to me by Shriver and by the way she spoke of it in context aligned with her personal experiences with matters such as obesity and the obsession food, I have fallen in love with it already. Shriver has made it so appealing that I might not read it yet still recommend it, just because it indeed shows us an aspect of society that is "talked about to death".

She spoke about obesity in a soft manner, keeping in mind that she had me, the only overweight person in the room sitting right in front of her. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat a few times, which she noticed, because she touched on things too close to my heart and my experiences. Yet she was still rather consoling with her words. My mother told me that whilst I was taking notes, Shriver would slow her speech and repeat things just so she made sure that I had the chance to write them down. I had not noticed this because I was too busy trying to take in key lines, and remember them long enough to write them down and keep in mind the other key lines being said in the meanwhile. Mind you, there were a lot, and I was ever so grateful to have attended, despite being faced with touchy issues.

Amongst the touchy issue of obesity, though, was a huge sense of humour that was emitting from Shriver herself. She spoke of how, despite the horrid show Big Brother, she named her book the same thing, saying that she did so to bring the original 'big brother' back to its "first principle", which originated from George Orwell, and that it contained a pun in itself to do with the story, a big brother. She mentioned how strange it is that some journalists are obsessed with her own dieting, and the irony contained within that and Big Brother, that society is too concerned with weight and image, and society's response is to question hers. It reached an extent, she said, that while she was in her favorite hotel in London, drinking her favorite tea which came with delicious biscuits, journalists commented on whether or not she would consume those biscuits, and focussed on her exercise routine and daily consumption rather than the book itself. 

I could not think of a question to ask her when she allowed the audience to interview her. I listened as members of the audience forced their opinions of the characters contained within the book at Shriver and how they almost expected her to agree with them despite her utter knowledge of each character and the importance of each, even when one audience member attempted to highlight that there was no need for the main character, who was the narrator of the story itself - I felt that even though I had not read the book, I was knowledgeable enough about it from Shriver's perspective. That certain question was pointless. And, like always, I thought of the perfect question when it was too late.

But I found that it was not late at all, for she was waiting in the entrance room signing her book. I stood in the line, which was not at all long, and waited excitedly. When I reached her, I greeted her with a little, "hello", to which she replied the same thing. I thanked her for her insightful speech, and I asked if I could ask my late question, seeing as I conjured it after it was too late, and she told me it was perfectly fine. "Have you ever been a victim of procrastination, and if so, how do you conquer it?" "Oh, yes! Everyone is a victim of procrastination," she answered, and not necessarily authors alone. She said that the main thing is to not feel "ceremonious" towards your writing, rather feel ceremonious with the outcome. I agreed. It was all something I had known, but it feels better to hear it from a published author's perspective, so that maybe she will inspire me to begin writing. "Just begin."

Just as I thanked her, my mother asked her if she could photograph me with her. Shriver said "of course". The photo above is the outcome, and yes, Shriver appears to be sleeping. That is because the off-chance that one blinks in the photograph decided to happen tonight, especially considering I look decent in the photo for once. I thanked her for the photo opportunity. "You're welcome. That was an interesting question!" Thank you, Shriver, that was an interesting talk.

The Animosity of Bookshops

Bookshops to me are like a large, new forest to a dog desperate to pee, with trees not urinated on by any other animal just yet - so many territories to mark, and the forest is its oyster. In that same sense, despite having been touched and picked up and put back by so many strangers, my mind deviates from the fingerprints located on the covers and focuses on the subject at hand: books. Books, everywhere.

And today, I stumbled upon one of these bookshops. It was not much of a stumble, mind you, because today marked the day of my first lecture as an Education student in her third year, and in that lecture it was as though I fell asleep and dreamt that the lecturer asked of us to purchase four novels - only I was awake, well and truly awake and it really happened. I instantly thought of the two hundred dollars I had in my bank account and how I would happily spend them on class texts and class texts alone, alas the minute I set foot in the bookstore, which is not out of the ordinary as I am always buying class readers, I sensed something was different. Something quite large had differed from my last visit here. There was a change in the layout of the books located within the store, and more importantly, a larger variety.

And when I say large, I truly mean large. I am emphasising the largeness of the variety I was faced with - take your idea of 'large' and expand it thrice its size, and that is indeed the variety I was faced with today. When I say variety, I mean different objects for different purposes all encompassing my very interests - graphic novels, comic books the size of novels, decorative art journals, decorative writing journals, decomposition books, assortments of pens and pacers and other stationery, fiction books, non-fiction books, everything and anything in the literary sphere that aroused my interest was there. I could not think. I stood there, overpowered by these inanimate objects, all of which screamed "buy me!"

With all my excitement somewhat contained after having spent my first five minutes in there with my mouth wide open with amusement and awe, I headed to the shelves where my class texts were located. They had over-stocked them this time, and there was no need to viciously attack someone in order to take their book which was rightfully mine in the first place even though they had been in the bookshop longer than I have and had had full ownership rights of the book that I now held: I do not do this anyway, but when the time comes that books become scarce because of the amount of ebooks and the continuous transformation of technology, I will do all that I can to ensure that books that I want will be acquired by me, by all means both necessary and unnecessary.

The line itself to legally own the books I held was like an immobile stampede. I stood there, struggling to carry the weight of the compiled papers in my hands. I felt as though I were a vulture too full to finish off the rest of the deer that a cheetah left me. Too neglectful to abandon the deer, I soldier on. I was inspired by the continuity of the others who took part of this financially educational stampede, and took pride that I was further ahead in the line than most, having to cramp myself against a bookshelf rather than another spontaneous sweaty human. 

The books now await the scanning of my eyes. I shall pounce onto each page like a hungry lion, seeking to kill the readings and take from them my serve of nutrients, which will enrich my mind. I still adore bookshops, despite the animosity of being in one. 

Blue is the Warmest Colour

Before viewing this film, I had expected a minor lesbian love story, viewed in a heterosexual perspective and I wondered what else they could add to the shallow at the time storyline. Then I viewed it, and my mental state was toppled.

Blue is the Warmest Colour follows two girls, one teenager and one young adult, as they fall in and out of steaming, hot love. It depicts several uncut sex scenes, in which heterosexual’s question “how do lesbians even have sex?” is answered, once, twice, thrice. I was wearing headphones whilst watching the movie, yet the moaning protruding from each actresses mouth had made me mute it for each entire sex scene. In all honesty, this movie felt like a pornography half the time. I was comforted to find out later that the actresses had some silicon shields placed over their genitals, seeing as they felt quite uncomfortable acting throughout these sometimes ten-day long sex scenes.

Its depiction of lesbian love was rather real, though. How explosive it is to be attracted to the same gender, how confusing it is, how repulsive the other gender becomes, and how one side of the relationship is accepting of the change whereas the other side is not.

I think that there is no need for the director, Abdellatif Kechiche to be deemed an ‘Arab persuading young French girls to take off their clothes’ – rather, he is a director who made the French girls work their ways up the ladder of exhaustion to bring the audience of the Cannes Film Festival a movie that is a deeper insight into the lesbian lifestyle than living through it themselves. Its intense scenes, whether it is fighting over cheating, fighting over accusations of lesbian love interests, the sex scenes or even the heartbreaking scene at the end in the art gallery, pulls the viewer by the earlobes and pulls them into a lifestyle that is followed by many.

I could see the exhaustion on the actress’ faces in most of the scenes. It was painful to see, and for the entirety of the three hours I was leaning on the edge of my computer seat, almost head-butting the screen, just to see whether things will or will not resolve between the main characters. Kechiche has captured something no heterosexual could ever capture as beautifully, and shaken the worlds of his audience.

Overall, Blue is the Warmest Colour is a must-see. It is an emotional rollercoaster, filled with love and hate and everything in between. It is the most accurate depiction of a love between two women and how fiery each experience may be, whether it is a good or bad one. Both Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos perform wonderfully in the film, and though they hated every second of the sex scenes, they made it look exceptionally real, to a point where it feels as though you are watching a lesbian couple making love in real life, while they are unaware of your existence.

What Language Are You Speaking?

Most of the time, it seems that anybody that I converse with has no idea about what it is that I am saying. And because of this, most of the time I end up having to filter my words into 'street talk', a type of talk that consists of slang and bodily movements in order to make up for true meanings of words that once were.

I do not talk in complex terms. I just talk in terms that are beckoned to be forgotten by the greater public, because the greater public prefers a sense of simplicity in their speech amongst the complexities of every day life. And because of this, people like me are left to pretend to speak in a manner they absolutely loathe - slang. I am so amorous about America because most of the words I have heard coming from American tongue are words that are not spoken here in Australia on an everyday basis - they are words written by the finest Australian scholars, but rarely ever uttered. And that is what irritates me about having to converse with most people. It is the fact that I can converse better when I write because at least the people who read my writing have some form of interest in it, whereas when I speak people have to voluntarily focus that one extra bit, and it is forcibly done so because I can tell that they still have no idea about what I am saying.

I am tired of condensing my speech. I often sit alone in my study and release these words verbally and ravel in them with utter delight, I marvel at the words that I release because I never knew I was capable, but that is because all of this time I have been hiding them from other people, I have also been hiding them from myself. A piece of myself, a big piece of my inner self cannot be contained any more than it already is, yet most of the time I have no option but to leave it that way. My other bodily functions, like my tear ducts, begin to take over sometimes. They too speak words of their own, words that are afraid to come out. But like me talking to myself in the study, they too cannot be contained any longer.

It is a barren world for people with a constantly working intellect. It is cold, and barren, and there is no warmth. I have to make my own warmth, and I do this by writing, reading and drawing. They are the three things that I have that allow me to be myself, and allow me to thrive in a world where I am just me and not the me that everyone else wants me to be. When I am about to lose myself, I turn to these three worlds and they remind me that I am something, that my self worth should not go a day without being mentioned.

I can recall a day earlier this week when I was in the car with two people and they could not believe that I had written eighty-eight consecutive essays in the duration of my holidays. They could not fathom why I would even bother to write, and they could not understand my explanation of my first year thesis piece, about pedagogical third spaces, even when I placed the terms simply. So I dropped all talk of this and I continued on with their bothersome slang language. And they felt comfortable again, and my discomfort continued alongside their comfort. And that is the way that it is with me, my life, and my inner self. That is the way it always will be, I am afraid, because I am yet to be proven otherwise.

I am yearning to find that one build of complexities who can see through my slang and see my own complexities, who will allow our complexities to mingle and therefore enjoy my true company. But I suppose, just like a decent friend, it is too much to ask for.

Is Pharrell Williams a Vampire?

The most common search suggestion on Google at the moment, when you type 'Pharrell Williams' is the word 'vampire'. It is as though Google is playing some accusatory version of the game word association, almost forcing the world to contemplate whether or not baby-faced Pharrell is a drinker of human blood.

Whether or not he is a vampire, Pharrell still is a good singer, or rapper, or pretty boy, or whatever he is. Why should we shun a piece of eye-candy because of the allegation that he prefers drinking human blood rather than Mountain Dew? So be it, let him be the next Nosferatu, the next Dracula, the next Edward Cullen - so long as he stays far away from my neckline. I appreciate the fact that I am way out of his league, in this instance, otherwise I could have been a form of prey. Just like LGBT equality activists, if Pharrell is a vampire, soon we will have LVA rallies - Leave Vampires Alone rallies. We would have parades through our streets, with human supporters of vampires lying down on stretchers with tubes hanging out of their arms and their fellow vampires sucking some blood from the tube, their hands held high, palms in the form of fists, smiling as blood oozes down the sides of their lips. And maybe Obama might accept all vampires as one of us, in which case most other countries will not and maybe they will wave black flags with a crossed-out wooden stake on it to commemorate their fight for equality. 

Maybe even Google is part of the infamous Illuminati, and it is for some reason forcing us to accuse poor Pharrell over something barbaric, and utterly fictitious, unless of course he is a bat, so that he could lose the fame he had acquired with the help of the Illuminati because of possibly going against them? Perhaps they did not like it when he told the world that he stays up all night to 'Get Lucky'. Perhaps how good-looking he is is a reflection on how easy his life is with the help of the monetisation from the Illuminati, and they wanted to offer another explanation which deters fans from the Illuminati's existence - that Pharrell is a vampire. And this does not become difficult to believe, especially considering all of the oversized hats he has been wearing as of late, perhaps he is protecting his lovely skin from the light?

Maybe in the song 'Get Lucky', Pharrell was trying to imply something by telling us that he is 'up all night' - vampiric beings are, assuming their realness, like owls and bats, nocturnal. Maybe in a subtle way that hinders most of the types of fans of that type of song, in that it makes them think that Pharrell too enjoys staying up late for some sexual action, when really he is staying up late for some neck-suction action. The possibilities are endless when it comes to how sensational Pharrell looks at his seemingly inappropriate age of forty. Perhaps he is one of the lucky sorts of human beings with flawless genetics that allows him to age a lot slower than most. Pharrell has been asked if he is a vampire, to his face, and he replies with something a vampire would reply with: "No I am not." He then wishes to prove that he is not by being "willing to go on record saying that [he does not] drink people's blood", and that he simply looks a lot younger than he is because he "wash[es his] face". 

Ever since Pharrell Williams had claimed that washing his face makes him look younger, the sales in soaps and other hygiene products has sky-rocketed, even taking companies such as Dove and Lux to the top of the stocks on Wall Street. Thanks to Pharrell's allege vampirism, not only do we know the secret to immortality, but we also know that we can lay down at night with one less person wanting to suckle on our precious necks. 

Things You Should Never Argue About: Magicians and Illusionists

There is an Asian man on the television, and from his palms he keeps producing cards. "What is this?" My dad has repeated several times throughout the video. "Son of a b-! Where did he get all of those cards?" What my dad fails to notice, just like all those who deny magic is fake, is that this certain magician had continued to place one hand behind him whilst distracting the audience with the other, full of cards, and he would swap the positions of his hands depending on when he ran out of cards in order to refill his sleeves. But my father does not see that. What he does see is the magician pulling enthusiastic faces.

Amongst all of my father's profanities and exclaims in surprise, I was left befuddled not by the magic tricks but by how reactive my father was to the visual lies being performed, and I learnt one thing: that I should never attempt to tell my father to act any different, because it will result in having the obvious turned into lies. Magic apparently exists, and illusions are not illusions, they are real. A white man can turn into an African American man by entering a 'microwave'. Dozens of girls can appear behind a curtain on a bed when the curtain is pulled down. A man can swallow a sharp sword without damaging his oesophagus. A pigeon can spawn from a cloth. So can another pigeon. And another. And another. And a rabbit, too, in fact make it three dozens of rabbits and three dozens of pigeons, because magic is real, right? Magic can allow anything to happen. In fact, magicians should now play shows for free because they do not need an income, they can simply wave their wands and grow money off trees, or even carry a cloth around instead of a wallet, and pull out hundreds of thousands of dollars from their cloth and pay for whatever they wish for. They better hope their cloth does not charge interest.

All it takes is hours of practise, and days of learning exciting faces so that the viewer is distracted by them enough to not notice tricky little hand movements, hand movements which involve slipping a card out from here, pulling up the invisible-faced card from there. And magicians on television are even worse. I am willing to bet off my life earnings to the fact that almost every single performance on television is totally staged, and all reactions are paid for. When the audience's reactions are not filmed longer than the actual trick, and when the camera is solely on the magician or illusionist in the duration of the entire performance, only then will I possibly believe the trick is real. I might not, though, unless of course the magician or illusionist is surrounded by over fifteen goPro cameras. I will then go on to upload the footage, and watch the trick performed through each perspective, over and over, and only when I am proved to that the trick was entirely real, will I believe so.

That is too much to ask for, though. One should simply never question or argue against a trick. It is only what its name amounts it to, a trick, a trick to all of the senses, so tricky that it is totally believable. But I do not believe it. I am aware that if I continue saying this, when I am pick-pocketed by a magician one day I will cry in misery that I really do believe what he just did - can I please ahve my wallet back now? I suppose then, in that case, I would have been paid with what I originally own when I give into  believing that the pick-pocket is quite magical. In which case he would be talented, very talented. However they all are talented, with that said. All magic tricks are, are repeated skills learned and practised. That is to say that everything that is learned and practised also becomes a trick to he who learns and practises it. We are all magicians of some sort, performing our daily tricks. Authors writing, artists painting and drawing and sculpting, hikers hiking, hustlers hustling, you get my drift.

People like my father will always be fooled. It is a proven thing. Think of all the people you know who believe in magic tricks, then think of their level of success compared to those who do not believe in them. For one thing, you are supporting their tricks by watching them perform. If you are a magician and you are reading this, please do not look for me. I will copy Houdini and run far, far away.

The Snarling Hind who Guarded the Bridge

Hast thou seenest the snarling hind which protects that there bridge? It growls and hisses at any attempting passer, shaking and spitting and twitching until its eyes slowly squirm out of its ravenous eyes.

It allows not the entry of any mere friend nor foe - in fact, entry past this bridge is unauthorised. The hind has permitted not the entry of one friend nor one foe for an entire decade. Though it grows weak and weary it never ceases to protect what is located beyond the bridge, carved into a great wall of sapphires and other precious gemstones which resurface every night time, and gleam upon the touch of the very moon's beams.

The hind's body is covered in deep scars, scars etched into its skin from years of struggle in battle, yet it stands its ground, its big hazel eyes scanning the vicinity. It chants, "Noli Me Tangere," in a rare squeak, for it is indeed wild to hold, though it appears somewhat tame. What this magical hind protects is far from its own reach, for the hind is a figure of the protected's imagination, and it has broken free from the realm of the possible into the realm of reality to protect the sanctity from which it came. The constant silence that once twirled through the hind's realm like the peaceful flutter caused by butterfly winds had transformed into that of a giant's violent roar, shattering both the peace within the hind and the peace around it.

Virginia, the busty brown-haired maiden who once danced with straight shoulders now lay curled up beneath a tree that had branches decayed and covered by poisonous a moss. She layed down, her creamy white face turned to the tree's trunk, and has remained that way, motionless, yet sobbing silently, and at some times, wailing, for the entirety of that decade. Some days, her wailing is so loud that it is haunting. The villagers nearby become very uneasy, and as though the sky can hear her also, it begins to rain, at times thundering to cover the sound of her soul being ripped apart by her memories.

One night, Virginia's wailing was so loud that her voice alone was louder than the thunder. A villager's daughter's mirror had began to crackle from the corners, the cracks breaking through the glass towards the center at a speed faster than the spread of a flu epidemic. The little girl cried in vain as the shards fell from her mirror, landing on her face. The girl's face was scarred, and the villagers finally had an excuse to disturb the hind's keeping of its peace. Like they were hunting for a witch, they gathered their pitchforks and sticks lit aflame and matched to the bridge in unison.

The hind was unprepared, and lost its fight after the third villager. The rest of the male villagers then viciously stabbed at the hind's carcass until every drop of its blood had seeped out of its thin body. The male villagers then led the rest of the villagers across the bridge. When they got to the tree, they found no sign of Virginia. The tree was full of life, and it flourished, its bright green leaves dancing merrily in the wind. The villagers were confused. The knew not the location of Virginia, and they could not see the bridge, for it now also disappeared. The villagers were trapped in a realm of luscious fields of green, and the tree that appeared to resemble the breathing of a human.

He Who Stands Must Obey Demands

He who stands must obey the demands of others placed upon him when he has stood. In the act of defying gravity and raising to his feet, straightening both his knees and his posture, he is automatically placed in the position to serve those who remain slumped in the comfort of the leather sofa.

He must choose willingly, almost voluntarily to accommodate those who are seated; for if he is now standing is in the position of those who are sitting, then those who are standing, who used to be sitting, must also serve he who was standing but is now sitting, for he who was standing is now seated, and those who were seated but are standing have taken the willing action of serving he who used to be standing. If he who stands breaks this chain, then he who stands must accommodate both himself and others when he is both sitting or standing, for he would have broken the serving chain that had for years worked well, without a glitch.

He who stands must obey demands and cease all sexist thoughts, for she who sits has the ability to remain seated and control he who stands into bringing she who sits whatever it is that she pleases at the time of her seating. That brief hint of sexism is thus depleted, until she who is seated stands, in which case he who stands quickly runs to the sofa so that the brief instance of sexism is restored and she who now stands must serve he who now sits. 

There is a rule to this moment, being that he who stands cannot disobey the wishes of those who are seated, ignore them, and just sit down again. It is a wrongdoing and not only does he who stands break the everlasting chain of serving those seated, but he also halts the regulation of good karma brought on towards him from those around him. This act, to serve those seated, knights he who stands with idolising, with gratitude and delight, and when that act is broken it becomes cursed, he who stands and sits without serving is then shunned from most friendly gatherings if he who stands and sits without serving dares to break this flow. 

He who stands is a momentary butler, a butler of many years experience and a lack of exhaustion, a butler thriving on meeting the needs of others, a butler striving with excellence every time it is that he does so, not at one time coming short of the need of any of those seated. He who stands, the butler, must go about his directions with pleasant haste, haste that displays gracious movement, movement that shows no evident sign of lack of enthusiasm, movement that serves those who are waiting to be served at the right possible pace and speed, and with the most accurate result of what it is that those who are seated are asking for. 

The delivery of the items or foods that those who are seated ask for must be flawlessly done by he who stands, for obeying demands ensures the happiness of those who are seated and obeying demands flawlessly ensures an additional level of happiness to those who are seated that guarantee the return of positive delivery from those who were seated and now are standing when he who was standing and is now seated asks for the delivery of his preferred items or foods. 

When you are he who is standing, take too the role rather than just the action. Make the role your action too, and serve those who are seated because when the time comes and you are too comfortably seated, you would prefer it that someone obeys your demands. To have your needs met, meet the needs of others, too.

Miranda Barbour

“I feel it is time to get all of this out… 

it is time for me to be honest and I feel the need to be honest.”

Emerging from Pennsylvania, soft-spoken and short, Miranda Barbour lurked the streets of Alaska, Texas, California and North Carolina, hunting those “who deserved it”, burying them under soil, claiming to pinpoint exactly where each body is on a map.

Miranda considers herself the real life Dexter Morgan, offering a response to the disbelief of her actions due to her small nature “looks can be deceiving”, and that her victims “did bad things and didn’t deserve to be here anymore”. Her first victim was chosen by the Satanic Cult in Alaska that she joined when she was just thirteen years old, whose leader prompted her to kill the man who owed them money – she “hate[s] guns”, yet she still shot him after the leader “took his hands and put them on top of [hers] and [they] pulled the trigger”, and she just “continued to kill”, and apparently when she “hit 22 [victims, she] stopped counting”. She would “lure these people in” and “stud[y] them.” She “learned them and even became their friend”.

Miranda and her husband, Elytte Barbour, had found their recent victim on Craigslist, Troy LaFerrara, lured in by a promise to rid him of the loneliness he felt. No longer was he empty on the inside, because soon after Elytte had popped up in the backseat of the car Miranda and Troy were in, strangling Troy, Miranda had decided to fill Troy’s emptiness with a knife, twenty times. Had it not been for the success of Craigslist sexual encounters, the world would not have known about the murderous capabilities of this nineteen year old mother, who just wants to “start over and forget what [she] did”.

The interesting thing about this murder is that Miranda did not intend on killing Troy. She had placed him in a test, unbeknownst to him. She lied to him when they were in her car, her husband hiding under the blanket in the backseat, ready for her cue, telling Troy that she “just turned 16”. He replied “that it was OK”. She told the interviewers that “if he had said no, that he wasn’t going to go through with the arrangement, I would have let him go”.  Her reasoning for his murder is that “he said the wrong things”.  

When she was just four years old, Miranda was sexually molested by an uncle at her sister’s house. He was sentenced to fourteen years of jail time, charged with the sexual abuse of a minor, who would later grow to be a major figure in the news. She had joined the Satanic Cult nine years later, possibly due to the fragility of her soul during childhood. She claims that she “wasn’t always there [mentally”, and that she “knew there was something bad inside [her] and the satanic beliefs [had] brought it out”. By becoming a member of the cult, she “embraced it”.

Miranda now claims that she has killed over twenty-two people. Infamous serial killer Jeffry Dahmer had killed seventeen, Richard Ramirez killed fourteen, and now Miranda has claimed to kill over twenty-two, probably a umber under Andrei Chikatilo’s fifty-three – perhaps Miranda’s amount of killings might surpass Andrei’s. An honest soul, she claims that “if [she] were to be released, [she] would do this again”.

Things brings to the foreground the question: who really is the criminal? The people subject to wanting to perform sexual acts with minors or the people who, using violent ways, are trying to put an end to it? Perhaps Miranda and Elytte’s approach to killing Troy was wrong, however their reasoning is indeed quite reasonable. Troy could have gone off to have sexual relations with other minors, and what is to say that he had not had sex with a minor before his murder?

Perhaps Miranda and Elytte are the modern-day Bonnie and Clyde with a Dexter Morgan twist – modern-day superheroes, who, at the verge of performing more atrocities for a supposed good cause, were caught. Or perhaps Miranda has had feelings of vengeance lurking within her ever since her sexual molestation, and has had her vengefulness grow along with her over the course of nine years, leading her to hate and want to kill those who have had sex with minors. Only time will tell, and only truth will tell, depending on how much of it will come from Miranda during her trial. She claims that she does not want to “glorify [the killings] or get attention”, rather she feels that she should be honest.

Either way, I certainly am anticipating to hear the rest of this story, as it unfolds.

                                                                                                                                                                                         

References:

The Daily Item's interview and report:
http://www.dailyitem.com/x1708329322/BODY-COUNT-AT-22

CNHI's News Service article:
http://www.cnhinews.com/cnhins_news/x1783673805/Teen-mom-says-shes-a-mass-murderer

Hollywood Life's article:
http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/02/16/miranda-barbour-craigslist-killer-who-is-she/