Childish Gambino

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In these fast times, it is rare for one to stop and consider with another of the same headspace some pondering about life. One sometimes runs out of these persons, and heads on a journey for more. 

One would think that, considering the success of social interactions on the internet that new friends are a sentence away in real life if you share common interests. Today I stumble upon a man who shared an uncommon interest with me, or so I hoped. Seated in my art class, I was unbeknownst to the fact that the only male in there was dressed in a hoodie with 'CHILDISH GAMBINO' written on the front and tour dates on the back. I automatically knew that this person liked the rapper enough to go to his live show. That is dedication beyond me because I missed that opportunity. I decided, mistakenly, to attempt to publicly make a friend of this man. 

"Oh!" I exclaimed, "you like Childish Gambino too! That's it, we should be best friends now!" His response did not align with that of which played in my head prior to my brave conversation starter. Instead, he scoffed and continued walking right past me to the back of the classroom and sat amongst four beautiful looking girls and revelled in their presence. These girls shared no musical interests with him at the level that I did. I simply could not fathom how a listener of the musical rebel Childish Gambino would refuse a grandeur offer such as the one I threw at him. Am I that unapproachable? Am I that intolerable? Or is sex still selling?

It is sometimes rather disappointing to believe in the fact that out there, there possibly exists somebody who shares your interests. That you are not alone. Because most of the time, the world proves you wrong through the actions of stereotypically conforming status quo persons who emerge from the depths of capitalism and tempt outcasts like me into an abyss of further loneliness where even despite my strenuous efforts to pull myself out, and despite all the observations I have undertaken displaying human social behaviours, all that I know turns out falsified and I fall back into the abyss.

I shall not let this person ruin my seeking for deep friendships, though. Perhaps I am better off straying from those who wish to converse with persons who look as though they will fall apart at the sneezing of a snail. Perhaps I should aim higher than a person who scoffs at my complimentary remark. Perhaps I will just withdraw into my shell again and stop associating with humankind altogether.

Four Cougars and Twenty Problems

As an overweight young adult in contemporary society, I constantly feel victimised by the media and its multi-faceted prowess. Today, though, they took it a tad too far, which is nothing our of the ordinary.

Fat-shaming has been circulating around on television and in magazines for years, and just when one thinks that nothing worse could be introduced by a form of technology that has agency over our every notions of thinking, the media has surprised me once again. Just when I thought nothing could be worse, that there can be nothing to potentially further offend me on a personal basis, I see this advertisement on television and I dread the day that I age even more.

This new Four'N Twenty advertisement showcases two Australian 'blokes' purchasing each a meat pie from a very nice woman, who later turned out to have slipped her number onto the napkin of the more Australian looking man, if one were to stereotypically analyse the actor selection of this short clip. The Australian looking man then continues to react in a manner displaying the opposite feeling of contentment.

Ever since when has our society become so fearful of age? Judging by all of the late-night 'cougar' dating site commercials, CougarDating, CougaRed, CougarLife and CougarRoot to name a few, and all of the disgusting requests I receive online from younger men, I fail to see how the people behind this advertisement ever saw any potential for it. 

Even though what I am about to say includes myself, I cannot wait for the next batch of young adults to grow even older than they currently are. I want to see the look on the faces of all those who fear and deny age,  for when they look in the mirror that is all that they will see. When they walk by a lake and ponder upon it, the reflection will resemble that of a fish not built for water that has been left to wrinkle in water for centuries. 

That simile aside, though,  age is a beautiful thing. First of all, it highlights that one has lived for a long time, long enough to hopefully feel fulfilled in one way or another. Second of all, it brings forth the next phases of our evolution. We too are like Pok'emon, and we too level up and learn more skills with age. Not all of us get any wiser, but that is irrelevant. 

I am certain that any Denise out there would get a call back immediately. If not immediately, then certainly some time later that night. After all, she did heat up that pie for him. What kind of man would deny himself the presentation of a fresh pie, and two packets of tomato sauce? Two?!

The Apple Falls Far from the Tree

There lies a partial explanation as to why students favour foods of a fatty basis rather than foods with a somewhat healthy basis, especially upon the observation of my current university setting, and it has crossed my mind that this is due to the susceptibility of humiliation.

One instantly draws attention to themselves after taking a mere bite from a crispy fresh apple, sending the juices from within it flying onto their peers who are quietly sipping away on their innocent protein shakes, or munching away on their seemingly quiet muesli bars. One panics as they do not wish to continue spraying their peers with natural juices, so one attempts to chew the apple in a way between not looking like they can fit the entire apple and their fist in their mouth, and opening their mouth enough so as to not bite into their inner-lip lining instead. This proves a difficult task, but one proceeds to chew into the apple at varied speeds, with their mouth opened at varied sizes.

But one soon finds that despite their best efforts, their apple crunching either dismantles their peers' thoughts, or the apple juices soak them. One's apple crunching sounds should not be undermined, for they can bring focus of even the most focussed of minds, particularly in the longevity of a literary in-depth discussion of a classic novel. One would assume that they would be spared by the apple and its noisy and messy injustices seeing as one is making a healthy choice by choosing a fruit over preservatives, but one is highly mistaken.

Apples are deceiving beings. They exist not to draw you away from the doctor, but to rather use that force to draw you into humiliation to the point where you feel the need to seek mental help for one, feeling victimised by an apple, two, being able to converse with an apple to the point where it victimises you and three, that you personified an apple so much so that it began to speak in the first place. The apple schemes all of this, and always in this order, so be weary of this mischievous lunchbox snack. It is the one fruit that has the ability to turn you into a fruitcake, and the one fruit that holds the ability to turn you into a vegetable. Be very wary. 

I would suggest before you decide to bring an apple into a classroom setting, that you should remove its sticker of identification as an apple from whatever origin, stripping it of its dignity, and cut it up at home. Yes. Slice into it, slice it into less than a half, slice it into quarters, into eighths, into tenths, twentieths, whatever you can manage. Slice it until it becomes weary and small, so that when you eat it in class it has no ability to humiliate you and when it is angry from this fact it cannot act in any way because you have either eaten it or it is so thin that it cannot utilise any of its decapitated body parts against you.

Only then, my fellow friend, will you defeat and conquer the deadly and vexatious fruit that is the apple. Only then may you continue to consume healthy foods in class without drenching your peers or attracting too much attention. Heed my warnings, for the apple does indeed fall far from the tree, and it also has relatives willing to assist it in whatever it needs.

Societal Feud

The subject of human equality should not be in discussion considering how most societies have progressed in terms of marriage equality. I especially thought this was the case, until today.

This afternoon, a Family Feud episode aired, and I thought that I should watch it seeing as it is another televised competition that I could potentially take part in. Little did I know that there was a prejudicial undertone awaiting my watchful eye, and I was lucky to spot it.

Two families were against each other, both heterosexual-based with its mix of daughters and sons. I saw this as a coincidence, for surely Australia is mildly accepting of other recognisable family types that have come to be in the social norm as of late. This was not the case, for upon the asking of the question, 'name something every handyman should have', one of the top answers were 'woman/wife'.

How has nobody declared this as preposterous? How can we televise, on Network Ten's neighbouring network Ricky Martin, a husband to another man and a father, on The Voice for its second season yet not recognise firstly handymen to be women, and secondly handymen to, if they were indeed men, have husbands? What is wrong with the acknowledgement of same-sex couples? Why are we allowing our audiences to subliminally agree to the social categorisation of sexualities?

Each person should be able to express their sexuality freely, and not preach it unto others. This is a way of preaching. A child unbeknownst to social wars that have been happening for freedom and rights, would accept this little 'joke' as the truth, as cement knowledge, that every tough handyman needs to have tools and wives. This both objectifies women and demeans the advancement of gay rights.

It upsets me that these sorts of malicious undertones still are prevalent on our televised shows. This is almost as bad as The Simpsons episode that made even me feel pressured into smoking a cigarette aired. I, naturally, sent my complaint to the network only to have no reply. I feel somehow that this could result in the same thing if I were to complain about it.

Undertones like this sets our society back. We should not have to be told who to love. Handymen should be able to love other handymen too, and handywomen can be handywomen without having the word underlined in red signifying that it is wrong and does not exist. 

The Peril of Materialism

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One knows not the peril that materialism brings until one is caught in a situation where they must safely acquire a parking space in a factory outlet shopping centre.

All humanity is lost when one is found in that circumstance. One is thrown into the fight or flight mode, and will always choose fight over flight simply because somewhere inside the factory outlet lies a special bargain that one believes that they will never find elsewhere, even though one knows particularly well that at home on the internet, they can find a better deal that is the quarter of the price in this area. 

One persists despite this fact. Mistakingly, one places their indicator after having circled the entire complex over three times, taking longer each time due to the building up of traffic, and stops three metres behind a reversing car filled with victims of capitalism whose things they have purchased have been crafted by exploitation. One makes another mistake in thinking that since they have their indicator on, other people will understand that they have claimed it first, for despite the orange flashing, one's parking spot immediately can lose its vacancy by a lurker, if one is not careful enough to watch all corners of that parking space.

And one cannot do anything about a stolen parking space, for if they tried then they will instantly be categorised in the state of fault, even if one was not at any fault at any time at all. One will find that they will lose the argument in spite of all truth and all odds and one would know not to bother arguing in the first place so as to avoid humiliating the other or hurting the other severely. So, one calmly turns off their indicator and keeps on driving, searching for another car park and hoping that the same thing will not happen to them again.

One then finds themselves contemplating about why they are in that situation in the first place. They wonder why they bothered driving just over an hour to an outlet they might not have a chance to even enter when the shopping centre down the road from their house has relatively the same things for reasonable enough prices, and offer plenty of car park spaces minus the probability of being in a car crash, getting run over or partaking in a road rage brawl. 

One hurries back home after finally finding a car park and acquiring the things that one initially needed but learned to be without after experiencing the traffic on their way back home. One now does not even consider reliving this experience again and does not recommend it to others.

Daddy Daughter Dance Off

As of late, numerous amounts of father and daughter singing and dancing videos have surfaced on the internet and have gone viral. It is a delight to see these videos because of the captivating collaborations that they are, yet there is one thing that will never leave me.

And that is my disconnectedness with my own father. My family is not a broken one, nor is it more than a little dysfunctional. My parents have always supported me in my academic endeavours alone and I am rather grateful for that. But one essential thing that I am missing is the failure to forge the broken link between my father and I, and I am afraid that it is something that has always been there, that will always be there, and that will always be irreparable.  

Seeing these videos make me feel rather jealous. I am jealous not of the amazing skills portrayed but of the connection I see and feel that I lack. I both admire and envy the videos of this type that I come across. If I had had that connection with my father, I think things would be a lot different for me. I think that all of the general 'boy' knowledge that he has on hold would have been mine - he abides by gender constraints and therefore has not ever taught me the basic tricks of the mechanics of cars, nor has he taught me the basics of fishing, or anything else that exists outside of our household. 

I am sorry for my father for not being able to liberate himself from the gender constraints which bind his thought processes. I remember distinctly one time when my mother told me about why he does not help her with any housework. Back in Lebanon, he once was washing the dishes for her when one of his friends walked past the window and yelled a derogatory term at him which is along the lines of the excessive loss of masculinity due to partaking in 'a female's activity'. "Ever since that moment," my mother told me, "he has not helped me." 

His own father is partially to blame for this. My grandfather is the epitome of what makes an 'absent father'. He has been throwing away his money his entire life on gambling, and he has never learnt his lesson. To this day, he watches horse racing channels on full volume, and zones out of the world so as to focus on yet another loss. To this day, he walks into the nearest Tattslotto agency and revels in every two-dollar winning after spending hundreds to acquire that little winning, though I would hardly consider it a 'winning' in the first place. When my father was younger, my grandfather would take him to the horse races and on several occasions he would lose him and not care.

In fact, the main reason as to why my family emigrated from Lebanon to Australia is because of my grandfather's debt to various people. He had borrowed so much money to place bets back in Lebanon that he had to flee along with his family due to his inability to pay it all back, otherwise he would have had to pay with his life. One would think that that would have taught him to perform otherwise, but one is heavily mistaken. 

I suppose it pains me moreso that my father had not learnt from the absence of his own. It pains me how despite my efforts he has not improved all that much, and how I have to find and watch videos such as the one above to feel some sort of feeling that most daughters all over the world feel, to pretend that I have such relationship with my own father. It pains me but it teaches me how not to treat my future children. Count your blessings, right?

Harriet Vomited

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It is becoming apparent that every time I have a lovely day, the evil energies in this world work so terribly hard to present me with something spawned from the complete opposite. 

I had a great day today. I soul searched, I went out of my comfort zone and said things I normally would not have said and did things I normally would not have done, such as go to another building on campus, which happened to be hosting some social justice event. For the sake of being there, yes, I accepted free popcorn and I ate a free veggie pattie enclosed in plain bread. I heard silly opinions and strolled around with a good friend, bumped into two of my past lecturers who were equally as happy to see me again - all in all, I decided to revel in today and in my existence and let go of all inhibitions. 

And it was great, and I really felt in one with my soul and I found that I was truly happy today, more than the happiness I have felt on other days. I beamed with delight despite my tired state. After another cup of coffee, tiredness was utterly diminished and happiness remained, and after about eight hours on campus, I decided to call it a day. I got into my car, dropped my good friend off at the train station, and headed home.

Just as I was driving back through the campus to make it back home, I saw a middle-aged man wearing a fluorescent worker's jumper squeezing himself out of the yard behind my campus' steel wire fencing. He had, I assume, made a cut in the bottom of it prior to my witnessing of this, and managed to pull himself and a trolley full of salvaged metals to the extent where it gave him trouble to push it. I knew immediately that this man was stealing salvage from this site. Originally, I would have called the police and notified them of this, but then I hesitated. I stopped my car for a minute and thought, what if this man has a family and is behind on his bills? He did not look as happy as I felt today, thus I concluded that I will let it be so as to absorb some good karma later on, and drove off.

I arrived home. I parked out in front of the fish and chippery, which is situated next to my father's shop, and just as I was stepping out of the car a bald man leaped outside of the fish and chippery and poured a bucket full of some sort of liquid substance underneath my car. It began to slide closer and closer to me. "Did they release a fish?" I jokingly asked the lady who witnessed this, who was standing next to the outpouring of this strange liquid. "Pardon?" she replied. I asked again. "Oh no," she returned, "Harriet vomited."

I felt queasy at that moment. Did that lady mean to tell me, assuming that I knew who on earth this 'Harriet' was, that the liquidy substance crawling up to my feet was vomit? Right after that, the man returned with another filled bucket to flush it all even further out to me, faster. Without hesitation I ran to the back of my car and retrieved my art supplies from my day of study and locked the car, ran away from the seeping pool of vomit water building up beneath it, stood at a safe distance and stared at the scene in disbelief.

Was this a reenactment of the time England was affected by the Bubonic Plague? Was I being pranked? Was Ashton Kutcher going to pop out of my shop with his camera crew and scream that I was 'Punkd'? I sure hoped so! But all of that did not happen. What did happen, was that the bald-headed buffoon of a father of this 'Harriet' did not courteously pour his daughter's vomit onto the patch of grass right beside the shop, he thought it sensible to firstly spill it all over the pavement in front of the fish and chippery and my father's shop, and pour it right beneath my car after he saw me stepping out of it. I would have preferred the liberating releasing of a fish.

After having spent an entire day at my university without the taste of food, I come home hungry to the sight, smell and almost the feel of Harriet's vomit, without even being acquainted with her. I had learnt her insides and her sickly story involuntarily. I stepped inside without wanting to cause a problem with her helpless parents, and stared blankly at the amazing food that my mother had just finished cooking that was waiting for me. I walked off after explaining what had just happened and my family stared at me n disbelief, not at the fact that that just happened, but at the fact that I did not retaliate.

Please, loving parents of all Harriets and non-Harriets out there, be sure not to spill the vomit of your child on or near strangers, especially when you have the convenience of a garden bed nearby. Next time this happens, I will projectile vomit onto the parents. Do not make yourselves prone to being a victim of my projectile vomit.

Morning Fog and Silent Hill

If anything, apart from video games contributing to my excelled skills in problem-solving and my ability to converge and connect with students and their interests, they have, along with horror movies, contributed to my sense of paranoia so much so that I have fallen more into delusion than Cheech and Chong watching a thriller.

Today I drove to university at around eight in the morning. The temperature was around four degrees celsius, and there was a blanket of fog so thick around me that I was afraid of accidentally inhaling a cloud. I thrived on the excitement, though. I immediately gained an adrenalin rush because of hardly being able to see the road beneath me or the cars around me, which was a dangerous thing altogether. I managed to pull through, and I might have exaggerated my lack of vision a little, however there is something that I cannot exaggerate;

And that is my imagination. My imagination is a force that I recommend you do not reckon with. My imagination stretches far and wide like the original map of the world, and it stands taller than the tallest towers in the world and lower than Hades' dirty toenails. It is heavier than the conglomerated weight of all planets in existence, and is an ever-growing thing. It is on a complete other level, and that is what differentiates my thinking process to that of others.

There are many benefits to my differentiation, however there is moreso one large negative aspect that I wish did not exist. And that is my imagination's ability to grab all that it witnesses in scary movies, and replay them on a larger scale and a more detailed and evolved scale than the original footage it remembers, scaring me terribly. Today, my imagination did not cease to surprise me in a nasty manner, and fortunately for it and unfortunately for me it had the right atmosphere to do it in.

Looking out onto the pasture in front of my university car park, and having taken the photograph above, one thing came to my mind: Silent Hill. My mind decided to imagine Silent Hill and all of its ghastly images. I was praising the Gods for having been surrounded by other students who were equally as amazed by the fog as I was, not to my level obviously, otherwise I would have been running to class and that would not have resulted in any success due to the fact that I have not ran since my primary school relay sports games. 

I must admit, though, I do mildly revel in my imagination. It makes things very entertaining. Had I not had the imagination I currently have, I would have just seen the fog as fallen clouds - or just as mere fog. I would have walked to my class without the constant fear that I was being followed by demonic entities, assuming of course they would leave their warm and comfortable beds in such weather.

A Costly Talent

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I have never quite been a fan of compliments because I do not know how to react to them. This has always been my problem, and it especially was in existence when I had 'happy birthday' sung to me when I was younger. Though, I do admit it still gets to me now. However, now moreso than 'happy birthday', there is something else that I am not a big fan of when it comes to compliments.

And that is the classic compliment, "wow, you are so good at art!" Thank you. Really, I appreciate the compliments that I receive for my artworks, it keeps my spirit high and almighty - and that there lies the problem, for when my spirit is high and mighty and my bank account is high and mighty and my university art unit is high and mighty, then crazy things occur wherein I lose a great deal of money to ensure my consistent receiving of compliments. And today, that happened.

Today I spent just under three-hundred dollars on art supplies for my new art unit. They were compulsory, but had I not been graciously encouraged by my artistic admirers, then I would not have been caught in a situation where I feel like I am paying with my flesh for something that will go to some unit results. To be honest, something more than just paint or pencil goes into my artworks. Invisible blood, sweat and tears. I go through so much effort firstly to devise the concepts of new artworks, and then comes the execution. Both do not occur on one day each, as much as I would love them to. They take up my mental and physical stamina, and these invested things are priceless. 

Having lost so much money thus far that I cannot afford to lose on artworks that have been seen and critiqued once weigh out the feelings of my so-called talent. I feel as though I am doing all of this for no reason. I am not capable, or I might be, of opening my own gallery, though the choice was granted to me today in my second art unit, a unit where I also have to spend around this much money on supplies. I just wish there was some sort of support system for artists so that they could acquire all of the pricey things at ease. Had I not had some sort of income, I think that I would draw far less. Unless I stalk areas of wet concrete with a wooden stick in my hand. 

Art itself should be priceless, and its supplies. I wonder every day how Picasso made it before he was famous - how did he afford all of that paint? All of those canvases? It frightens me. It also frightens me how art is becoming less and less of a thing in secondary schools. All this money, all that disappearance of art classes, all that effort going to the same pay cheque as someone teaching another subject like Japanese, I am beginning to wonder if Art is a useful skill at all.

Deliver Us From Popcorn

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Tonight I went to the preview screening of the new horror movie Deliver Us From Evil. Just hours before then, I promised myself that I would get back on track with my health, which means that yes, I would have to endure watching the movie in a comfortable cinema chair without popcorn.

And it was a rather difficult task. I have no problem discontinuing the drinking of soda drinks, and I thought that I would be the same way with popcorn - yet in this situation, with the smell of butter coating freshly popped corn kernels and the sound of erratic munching due to the witnessing of horrific scenes, it proved a troublesome task. I did pull through, however, without eating one piece of popcorn. I merely watched my sister eat hers and listened to the rest of the cinema's audience munch on theirs.

It was also the first time for me doing another thing, that is bringing in an apple into the theatre. I held it as casually as I could walking through the shopping centre, held onto it whilst standing in the line collecting our tickets, for I was accompanied by some relatives as well as my sister, and I held it as I passed through the ticket inspection area. It followed me into our cinema, and it sat patiently in my hand through half the movie, at which point I could not handle the sound and smell of the popcorn. I then pulled my hand up to my face and took a gigantic bite of the apple, crunching over the sound of everyone's fatty snacks.

I suddenly felt great about myself. It was a snack that was not salty, it did not leave a greasy mess on my fingers, nor did pieces of it lodge into my teeth or cling to my chest. I did not feel like drinking anything because it was as equally drenched with juice as it was with flavour. However, there was one problem: as much as I enjoyed the taste and texture and smell of this healthy and natural food, it did not nearly last as long as everyone's popcorn did, so there I was again, sitting there with the core of a delicious apple, listening to and smelling everyone's popcorn. If only apples came in the sizes of combo boxes.

Another benefit of popcorn is, apart from the free Spongebob plush toy that my sister received with her popcorn combo, that one can, in the event of a scary scene in a scary movie, hide their face behind the popcorn box, and eventually peek out of the side to stare at the screen which would have a limited view, providing extra safety. The use of my hands to do this job in place of a popcorn box was a tiresome job, and it left my hands smelling like my face, which does not in the last smell bad, but left me smelling what my face smells like for the length of each scary scene.

It is difficult to be overweight in this world, particularly when the food that I need to avoid is the nectar to my bee, the honey to my Pooh Bear, the salmon to my real bear. It is the cough syrup to a sleepless ill child, the beer to Homer, and America to Abraham Lincoln - I cannot do without it. But tonight, I proved to myself that by not acquiring popcorn nor eating it during a scary movie and instead substituting it and other snacks for an apple, I am capable of ensuring my health be placed on track.

Kickstart

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For many, university is a place of academia, a step closer to achieving a career goal, and a leap deeper into student debt. That mixture is what I aim for, however what I consider university to be to me is a kickstart back on track with my life.

When I am on a break from university, I feel as though my life is jumbled up. I fall out of any routine that I once had, and I ruin my sleeping and eating patterns. I lose myself again. All the gain that I would have gathered from every sense of my wellbeing flies away from my grip, and I again fall into the well of despair that I annually attempt to pull myself out of.

I celebrate the coming of holidays as much as any other student, though. I finally acquire headspace. I start plotting places to go, things to do, things to see, road trips and projects and such, and I indeed pursue them - the thing is that  pursue them all too fast and they are over early, leaving a lot of time for me to, yes, procrastinate.

I suppose then any course that I choose to undertake in the future, including the courses I have taken and the course that I am taking, are utterly worth the price that I one day must pay back. Along with paying for an access to education, I am paying to get my life together. I am paying for clarity, for direction, for self-worth. 

I have met amazing professionals, most of which still communicate with me to this day. I have been reborn as someone that I never saw myself as being. When I was eighteen years old, I had no idea what I wanted to do, and if one asked me where I saw myself in ten years I would have honestly replied with death. I was in a bad place, mentally, and I saw no light at the end of the tunnel I caught myself in. I did not see a way out, I did not see any educative possibilities. I thought that I would acquire a job and live off whatever job I acquired - I had no luck. I thought that I could live off youth allowance, and I did for a while until they required me to either get a job or study. I went job-hunting again and failed, so I decided to enrol in any mere course. I chose Professional Writing and Editing.

I loved that course, but I was highly distracted with my youth and my inner confusion. I did not know who I was, and I still had no sense of direction. I dropped out of that course when I had not long left to complete it, and sought after Information Technology. I flourished in it. I was the only girl, and that was to my advantage because I always had help whenever I needed it. I excelled in web design, programming and project management - I was beginning to see myself as in I.T. expert, until I had a networking class. I tried to pass but failed, and again, gave up on the course. Then I was stranded.

Until the Diploma of Education Studies came along. I was surprised that I had gotten into it, and I did not take the first semester seriously at all. Something then lit up inside of me when I heard the possibility of being able to get into the Bachelor of Education if I pass the diploma. I suddenly wanted that opportunity. I me into that diploma thinking that I could never get into university, and then I was given the option, and I took that option by the reigns and steered it in one direction: up. Now, I am pleased to say that I am excelling in what I do, and I am enjoying what I do.

But I want more. I hunger for more. The Bachelor has given me a kickstart into the educative life, and it has pushed me to want much more than a teaching job at a local high school. I want to study beyond this and hopefully lecture. I have a dream that one day I will walk into a lecture theatre and place my powerpoint presentation up on the projector and talk about that topic for a whole hour, and later go in-depth for three or so hours. I am education hungry, and I have university to thank for that, for now it has kickstarted my realistic career goals.

Give whatever you doubt a chance, because sometimes the things you doubt turn out to be the things that you need. They could be the colour your life is missing. Unless of course those things are drugs, cigarettes or alcohol, because, you know, they are not good for you.

Things to Do

Every time I feel a sense of boredom overcoming me, I find it rather difficult to imagine anything to do that will occupy myself so as to alleviate my ennui with life. I find myself instead procrastinating about things that I want to do, instead of doing things that I need to do.

It is effortless to fall into the misconception that there is nothing to do. I have begun to realise that that is your mind attempting to fool you in order to severely stall whatever it is that you must do. I have so many things to do, in actuality, so much so that it seems rather impossible to execute them. My to-read-list, for example, spans across four pages, with book titles and authors branching down two columns on each page. This list expands weekly, and I frighten myself when I look at it and think of all the books that I already own that I have not yet read, and I am frightened even more when I look at the slow rate that my reading has gotten to as of late.

I always have to prepare for university. Whether it is printing unit guides, finalising my timetable, procrastinating on my results page, checking if I have overdue library books, or staring at the many other options available on my university website. I even have the checking out of other university websites to tend to, to ensure a smooth sailing into another course after the completion of the current, yet I do not bother. This is partly due to the fact that each time I sit at my desk, I am overcome with and overwhelmed by the amount of mess that sits there that I, on several days, promised myself I would tend to.

I must not forget to mention my bookmarks bar, which expands daily. I have always hated the idea of bookmarking websites because they end up never being visited by myself again, and that is happening all over again. My webpages' borders are cluttered with sites aching to be revisited - it reminds me of my desktop, the place that I once promised never to clutter but I ended up breaking it, yet again; I always break this rule a certain amount of months after owning a new device, particularly when it comes to my mobile phone(s).

I enthral myself with these actions. I know that they are nothing to be proud of, and I know that procrastination is the biggest distraction attacking students all over the world, but I wonder if there is a way to combat it? I know for a fact that if I go on to research this I will procrastinate some more, just like the time that I had a presentation due and I looked up procrastination videos to ironically place in my presentation and instead, ended up spending the rest of the day procrastinating myself, by watching other YouTube videos. It was a dilemma.

I always wonder if this sort of procrastination is beneficial or not. I know that it is not due to the sense of mistaking my lack of activity for the lack of activities, but it could be productive in the sense that I could use that time to plan my next moves. I know that I certainly do this, I have done so on multiple occasions and the things that I come up with from these times prove rather extraordinary, and I cannot perform in the same way with a different approach. But at the same time, I move as slow as the tortoise when it races the hare. The only reason I continue, though, is that just before the race is over, I beat that hare by far.

I do not know what to think of all of this. I suppose it is my way of coping, and my way of performing. I would not have it any other way, despite how slow-paced it all seems at times. I think I will just have to remember to do things when I feel as though I have nothing to do. And I suppose feeling that I have nothing to do is mildly escaping them.

Supermarket Stories

Usually when I go to the supermarket, I eavesdrop on repetitive stories engrossed in gossip of other people or the constant verbal negotiations between wants and needs. Today, though, I was surprised to know that my eavesdropping went towards something far more different and other-worldly than that of the town's gossips. 

Heading over towards the pumpkins, my mother's small shopping list in my hand, I passed a fragile little old lady wearing a light blue jacket, the kind that one would enjoy being inside during cold weather, tidy tan pants, and a light pink scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. From what I heard, she was of Polish descent. She stood rather close to her communicative recipient, a middle-aged woman in a bright orange jumper, and boasted the words "Hitler" and "concentration camp". That was enough to catch my attention. "You know," she said in a thick Polish accent, contoured with some Australian, "I was 17 when a German boy asked me to the formal." "Oh you were!" returned her alleged accompaniment with delight. I tuned out for a moment, sticking to the task at hand and attempting to dismantle my sister's yearning of my attention. I pretended to examine the pumpkins up close to get some more of the conversation. "You know Hitler, yes?" "Why yes of course!" "He took me and my family." "You went to the concentration camps? You were one of his victims?" "No no no, I wasn't taken to the concentration camp, I was taken to one of the farms, you know, those farms."

I wanted to listen some more, but by then my sister suggested that she was conversing with her carer so I felt rude. I walked off, hesitating on several occasions due to me wanting this woman's story to be heard. I walked further and further away. I debated in my mind for several minutes on whether or not I should interview her. What could I say? What if that lady with her was her carer? What if she refused to allow me to ask her things, or refused to allow me to photograph her or share her story? I could not risk the humiliation. Another part of me could not risk losing this opportunity. It was a rough battle in my head and I found myself struggling to walk off. I walked back around the corner, finally thinking that I should approach her, and as I saw her in the distance continuing with her story I became hesitant again. 

I did not take the opportunity. It turned out that the lady she was with was a stranger. Standing near the potatoes, the old lady must have reminisced on her time on Hitler's farm and decided to share her story. The last I saw of her, she held tightly to the stranger's hands as she told her something that seemed important enough to be fully heard, smiling through it. The old lady walked off towards the meat. The stranger then resumed shopping, picking out potatoes, and it was then that I decided to finally go ask for her story but it was too late; like her legacy she disappeared, into the many supermarket aisles. Meanwhile we finished scanning our items and we had to leave. 

And it hit me - everyone has a story. Think about how many people you pass in the supermarkets, and how man stories there are that are untold, just like the story of this little old lady whose recipient could not care less. I keep thinking about what she endured, and I am upset with myself for not asking her personally. I should have abandoned all fears and grasped that opportunity but I did not. I luckily listened enough to know the backdrop of the conversation. Every stranger has a story, do not limit yourself to their backdrops. 

The Planet of the Apes

"It's the adorable moment art and life collide!" boasts the reporter, as footage of two domesticated chimpanzees, led by human hand into a human theatre is shown. These chimpanzees, once creatures of the wilderness and advocates of freedom, are now being shown hints on how to rebel.

It will be interesting when these chimpanzees return to the other chimpanzees that they interact with - that is, if they even are allowed to interact with others at all - what will they tell them? Firstly, they will boast about the mere act of purchasing movie tickets and popcorn and juice that they performed for their human companions. They will burst out into laughter as they speak of what little humans know about the capability of chimpanzees.  If this is all that they think we can do, they will think, then boy, have we got it easy! 

They supposedly reacted like humans too to the varied parts in the movie, assuming of course humans do not react like chimpanzees to movies. While the humans applaud their great computer generated imaging skills thinking that they depicted Caesar in the most realistic chimpanzee form that can be identifiable with real-life chimpanzees, the chimpanzees applaud the humans' lack of knowledge about what is to come, the lack of knowledge that only the stencil artist Banksy and his greatest fans already know: 

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"But some viewers were concerned, asking [...] if the chimps should really be watching and learning how to take over the world" - which brings me to my point. This is highly possible. I mean, what is life? Is reality truly real or is it fluid, abstract? What does it mean to exist? How are we truly aware that we are the only 'intelligent' species out there? None of these have solid answers, and that is what, in a way, increases the possibility of a gigantic chimpanzee rebellion.

I think chimpanzees would, in the event of a rebellion, make the world a better place. First of all, bananas would be the number one priority in the diet of any living thing - think of all the nutritional benefits! Bananas come in tough peels, protecting the inner layer, making them entirely portable. They are tasty, and change colours so as to ensure the recipient of the banana is never bored with what they are eating. Think of the language that will be introduced - "ooh! Ooh ooh ooh! Aah! Ooh ooh ah ah!" - people will never struggle with the difficulties that come with learning English grammar; no more apostrophes! 

Modes of transportation will be greener than ever too - think about it, we will no longer need cars or bicycles or trucks or planes. We will simply swing from vine to vine, tree to tree, ensuring the growth of more trees and the utter depletion of air pollution that spawns from engines and motors!

And ladies, think of all the hair that you will not need to remove ever again! Hair will once again fall into fashion, and it will be a survival necessity. You will no longer have to secretly shave your upper lip when your partners are sleeping, you will no longer have any areas of skin to cover with make-up or clothes. You will simply be a big ball of fluff and you will thrive as a big ball of fluff and you will enjoy life as a big ball of fluff.

It seems, after all, that a life led by chimpanzees would prove very beneficial for humankind. Gone will be the days of media, of prejudice, of anything slaughterhouse, and in will be the days of banana consuming and tree swinging. Who is to say that all of this is impossible? Well, certainly not I. I will believe in such a thing as an impossibility when I meet a human who claims to be vegetarian and actually is. 

"You Must Be Really Smart!"

Lately, I have been acquiring an insurmountable amount of compliments from every direction due to my daily essaying endeavours. Apart from the fact that I am content with receiving some form of compliments per se, I am stricken with some amount of annoyance at the sorts of compliments I get.

The most annoying of which is, "wow, you must be really smart!" How exactly can writing one's daily thoughts for everyone to read deem one smart? My essays may show my level of punctuation, grammar and my ability to conform to certain structures and to maintain a certain argument, but they certainly do not prove to anyone my intelligence. If they did, then I would probably be studying somewhere much more fancier than the institution in which I currently study. 

If my essays displayed my intelligence level as "smart", then I would not even need to study. I would not need to strain myself in the duration of both semesters in order to achieve scores high enough to please me. I would not even bother travelling to and fro university, nor would I bother paying car park fees in order to be able to stay there at all. I would not even have a student loan to pay off. I would be "smart" enough to live in some intelligent way that I would just happen to conjure up.

By telling me that I "must be really smart", these people are placing themselves below me. They are making what I am doing seem like it is some impossible task. It is not. And I do not exceed anybody in any way. I, instead, choose to partake in the sharing of my innermost self through daily scribblings so as to relieve myself of intense thoughts at times where I should be sleeping, to leave a little imprint of mine in the world, to connect with those who my imprint reaches, and to prepare myself for the strenuous task of novel writing. 

I do not intend to place myself above any individual. I do not condone the placing of myself above any individual either. I believe that everyone has something that they excel in, but that does not mean that they deserve to be treated better than another. I simply do what it is that I do for the same underlying reason that you do whatever it is that you do - for self-enjoyment, self-expression, for the relieving of boredom, for the sharing of ideas, for existing and creating and thriving. Any one talent should not undermine the talent of another.

It also appears as though people have forgotten that I am someone other than the person who writes an essay a day. There is a lot more to me. I shall not allow myself to be categorised as one being, for I thrive as many. I thrive in the department of the arts - performance, creative, illustrative, decorative. I thrive in the department of literature - reading, writing, editing. I thrive within words as well as colours, but limit me not to those two departments! For I am ever evolving, ever learning and ever aspiring. One aspect of this evolution is my newfound interest in the continuous writing of essays, but that is not to say that it is my main one!

I am a conglomeration of many things. I will not allow anybody to limit me to merely one. I am multi-faceted, ever learning, ever changing.

The Sheep Counting Myth

My insomnia as of late has peaked to the very early hours of the morning, and it is beginning to worry me as I am nearing the return to university after my long winter break. 

This is worrying me to the extent that I have tried new ways to fall asleep, such as the stereotypical one that most parents have actually used on their children: counting sheep. I lay there at 3am, my room pitch black, my phone and books well out of reach, covered up to my chin in my warm blankets, my eyes closed tightly. I then imagined a wooden fence high enough to still allow for sheep to be able to comfortably jump out of their entrapment, and low enough for them to be able to land without harming their little kneecaps and ankles. And away they went, grey fluffy sheep after grey fluffy sheep. And they kept going. 

In fact, they went on for hours. And I counted them one by one. I did not feel at all tired. In fact, instead, I got to thinking who thought of this fallible technique in the first place. I wanted to drop a load of sheep on their head.

The main reference that I found to 'counting sheep as a means of attaining sleep' was, according to Wikipedia, found in Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy, dating back to 1832. The quote is as follows:

"It was a sight of monotony to behold one sheep after another follow the
adventurous one, each in turn placing its fore-feet on the breach in the fence,
bringing up its hind legs after it, looking around for an instant from the summit,
and then making the plunge into the dry ditch, tufted with locks of wool...
the recollection of the scene of transit served to send the landowner to sleep
more than once, when occurring at the end of the train of anxious thoughts which
had kept him awake." (p. 355–356)

Are sheep really that boring? Do they exist to lull us to sleep with the imagining of their fluffy woollen bodies? What if one'a imagination permits the sheep that they are imagining to call out, sending one back to being wide awake from the sudden noise of the sheep? 

Sheep aside, I cannot actually recall anything that constitutes as my last thought as I fall asleep. All I am aware of is that each time that I try to envision something, I am distracted from falling asleep. Sometimes I even try envisioning darkness, but when my mind is alerted of my attempt I wake up again. I am quite certain that I do think of something right before I sleep, but I can never remember what it is. 

I suppose Martineau is not to blame for this myth. She may have just suggested it and never intended to advise it. Cartoons are to blame for this. I remember distinctly an episode from the Looney Toons wherein sheep counting was displayed. There are a lot of cartoons that showed me this, actually, and I suppose I was falsely led to believe them. 

When I sleep tonight, I will try not to imagine Martineau sanding beside sheep jumping over a fence, sticking her two middle fingers up at me and laughing menacingly. Because I know for certain that that would not lull me to sleep. 

Momentum

Daily, I experience more fallouts with humans that I once associated myself with. I used to think that there was something wrong with me, that I was the problem in these fallouts and that I deserved no better.

Upon reflection, I no longer see it that way. Upon reflection, I have began to notice that I have evolved so much mentally, that sometimes I cannot recognize myself. Sometimes, I surprise myself in the way that I speak and in the thought processes that I undertake to the extent where I cannot keep up, thus I do not expect anybody else to. I used to substitute my 'big words' for words that are much simpler to comprehend, and I lost essence in conversation. 

And that there is the problem, I think. Most of the time, whenever I share my ideas, people demean them and deem me 'weird' or 'strange'. That is to say, though, I have been fortunate enough to meet people who do not think that they are all that odd, thus my academic flourishing. But outside of the realm of academia, it is a cold and barren place. It is a place that is intellectually scarce, a place where the pedagogical journeyers have no resting place, nor have they a mere welcome mat. 

I remember distinctly a time when I was around eighteen. I had just finished high school, and I had sought a writing course that would suck me in, spin me around and throw me back out. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I was not prepared to search within my souls for words that would resonate with others, or so I thought. 

To apply, I had to show excerpts of my writing just to show my cognitive calibre. I searched through my laptop and gathered typings that I had created at different points in time, typings that I had never gone ahead with. Among the pile sat my favorite, one that was initiated out of no place at all and that focussed primarily on my study of human behaviour. I did not know that I would need this so much later in life, that the table of contents I had devised for it summarised most of what I would experience. I did not know that the table of contents was not enough. Had I continued to write that book, I think I would have gotten far.

But the truth is that I am passively adding to that book daily. I am finding new things about myself, my psyche, that even Freud would not understand, and things about others. I find that my observations are never over because there are so many different people that I have come to meet, know or know about. There are so many chemicals inside the human that mix together and toggle different things, and I think that as a pre-service teacher, I am fortunate to have come to terms with some of these chemicals. There are people all over the world experiencing the things I am experiencing, and sometimes I need to remind myself that this is so.

But the momentum that my mind is undertaking travels at speeds so rapid that sometimes I do not stop and observe my observations, and that is when I forget about the behaviours I already know, and in that forgetting I forget about the natural reactions that I deal with, and I thus put myself down. But I am slowly gaining control of that momentum, even if most of the people I meet cannot even begin to grasp the concept. I too consider myself outer-worldly, and I am beginning to embrace it.

My momentum is nothing that I should fear, nor is it something others should. I may not come with all of the prerequisites needed to thrive in my generation, but I am prepared when it comes to intellectual straining and I am equipped with tonnes of creative artillery. I will not stand around and wait for allies.  

On Makeshift Stretchers

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In the release of the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the movie has already reeled in 73 million dollars. I had always taken a large but subliminal interest to the Planet of the Apes franchise only because it contains positive undertones of animal rights activism.

Watching 60 minutes tonight, though, I came to a sense of internal shock as I watched footage of the aftermath of a massacre of a gorilla family in Virunga National Park, a sanctuary for these animals. What was meant to be a home, an area of sanctity, promised land of safety was turned into a battleground due to the wants and desires of a greedy pack of humans. These humans placed themselves once again over the animals and thought it decent to slaughter this precious family to make a statement about bits of charcoal. What is a life worth anymore?

Sometimes I feel guilty looking at a five-dollar note. That mere five dollars that can buy me a meal from McDonald's. It can get me a little more petrol to take me home in the event that I run out of petrol. It can buy me a large block of chocolate to share with my entire family. It can buy me a nice warm lunch at my university campus. It can do so much. But what it can also do is, if divided equally, contribute to five charities. The power that pink plastic note has is enormous. Think about that. Think about a ten-dollar note. Then a twenty-dollar note. Then a fifty, then a hundred. Then think of several hundreds. Then think of a life. What would money be without a life? Life is priceless. Money can only improve life, but in this situation it obliterated it.

The Planet of the Apes appeals to me also in the way that it portrays a revenge-esque attack on mankind. That should frighten me because maybe Banksy is right after all, that one day rats and monkey will kill us instead, but instead it makes me happier. Animals deserve their rights. Animals and humans alike should be able to live on this planet peacefully, and all species must work according to natural selection and the food chain. We have upset the food chain by injecting chickens with hormones, by fattening up pigs prematurely - and we have upset ethical and moral standards by slaughtering them in brutal ways. Is it necessary for a camera crew to have to go into a slaughterhouse for people to start taking action? 

We should have our own rising. Our own rising against people who test on animals, people who torture animals and kill them for fun, people who think that little chicks are getting treated fairly, people who think that animals are not treated awfully in their moments of slaughter. We need more of the releasing of animals who are tested on. We need more people to protest. We need to stop the torturous handling of baby Turkeys - maybe then celebrators of Thanksgiving will have more legitimate things to be thankful about.

As for gorillas, I will be there to support their cause when they rise. When they form allies with chimpanzees and apes and orangutans alike to revolt against human beings and their need to hold animals in captivity for their own selfish indulgences. I will be a less-hairy ally for these beautiful creatures. 

Noah and the Faeces Problem

Tonight I was able to painlessly make it almost through halfway of this year's flick Noah before shuddering and turning it off, watching instead of it the wicked thriller Shutter. 

Though my attention span and love of movies died in the duration spent watching Noah, one thing remained alive, and that was my inquisitiveness. Throughout the sailing in the crazy tides, and the rescuing of the many pairs of animals in all of the world, I wondered just one thing about the ark itself which had nothing to do surprisingly with the wondering of the lack of room for all of the species nor their strange and sudden newfound abilities to be able to cope with one another seeing as they are on each others' food chains: was there no plumbing system in the ark? 

Chaos would indeed ensue had there been the presence of both the king of the jungle and a young juicy deer in the proximity of one another however a more disastrous chaos would ensue had the king of the jungle dumped a large load of digested juicy deer all around the young juicy deer in its vicinity. If the young juicy deer would not die of being eaten by the suddenly friendly lion in this situation, it would definitely die of suffocation by a pile of mighty lion poop. 

Onlooking dung beetles would be excessively content with this sight but as would the onlooking pythons who have grown sick of consuming the rats and mice on deck. The foxes would then be irritated because they would have nothing to eat so they would turn to try to eat alligators, but the alligators would consume the foxes easily because they are no match for them and the onlooking sharks will be laying there dead next to the dead fish and the dead sting rays among the dead jellyfish and dead clown fish underneath the two giant dead whales because nobody considered building a water tank inside of the ark. Chaos all around. 

It is a nice story though. I quite enjoy the prospect of rescuing animals instead of mankind even if mankind will later on grow into a large population which demands the slaughter and consumption of these animals. I am happy that somewhere in history the animals were liberated from human maltreatment, that they acquired a free ride through a heavy storm and that they a got along inside a large wooden ark in the meanwhile, forming secret alliances that would later on work in their favour when they take over the Earth. 

As for the plumbing problem, I am surprised it did not sink. Either the elephants and other heavy animals held their faeces until they would land or they drilled a hole in the middle of the ark and deemed it the waste hole, otherwise it would have sunken faster than the Titanic  if it had hit a giant angry porcupine.