Your brain on machines.

Well, this is that day where I was supposed to get my brain checked. I awoke this morning, full of the promise that a new day brings, especially a new day that has the distinct promise of having the insides of your head photographed, and even without coffee, skipped merrily off down the hill to the hospital at 8am.

I'll say this again: you can get the INSIDE of your HEAD...PHOTOGRAPHED.

We live in the future. You want a flying car? Go out and build one. I just want pictures of the inside of my head. Also, me in a car is a bad idea, me in a flying car is insanity.

Anyhoo. It seems today I was to be disappointed.

Apparently going to the neurology outpatients does not mean that they put you inside a rotating magnet tube like some hospital dramas would have you believe, I was just poked with a pin on various parts of my body to make sure I could still feel. The eventual diagnosis for my occasional stabby head pain is neurualga, which is when your nerves start decaying or something, which can be caused by herpes, but apparently not the kind I have. The leading competitor to this conclusion is a benign tumor, described to me as a "brain wart", that even if I do have they wouldn't remove because it is not actually doing anything. Apart from intermittent pain. But that pain be so intermittent I don't even need medication.

But at least they have referred me to get a CT scan. I will have a picture of my brain yet. And then I shall use it as my facebook photo, and put some glasses and a beard on it. Of this you can be certain.

In other news: Did you know you can make your own bread at home? Also your own beer, soups, and soap! Never leaving the house just got easier!

From on high.

Soon I am going to go to the war memorial above Brooklyn and look over wellington as I drink some wine. It is easily one of my favorite places to be in wellington, that and the waterfront: for me it is a place where you can be closest to the elements without actually being in them. Above in the air, closest to the water. Without being all emo and crap.

It might be this kind of time that one young man starts to think about what the hell its all about, why are you here, ectera. I'm not entirely sure that there are any answers, let along my ability to know them. I'm going back to go see a "councilor" on monday, and the following monday I'm having my brain looked at my MACHINES. Apart for the awesomeness of being, like, a cyborg, and crap, I really don't want to go back on those green and purple happy pills. Even though I feel the worst that I have felt in some time, I don't want that kind of chemical influence over my life again. I know that those of you on such medication will sympathize with my position.

"Am I here?" "What the hell am I all about?" sometimes seem like more pertinent questions, although just as difficult to answer. It is a continual source of disquiet for me that I am not yet grown up. When you are eight and want to be fourteen, you are told to just wait. When you have your first breakdown as a teenager, you are assured that everything will be fine later. When you are in you early twenties, and finding that it is just a little harder to more, a little harder to get out of bed, you are reminded that you are still young. But apparently, at 25, well past the time of legal adulthood, you still face quandaries about your identity, your direction, your purpose.

This month I came very close to giving up on my Master's study. I have now been in study 7 years, and probably, one of the biggest reasons I decided not to stop study is that, according to the rules of assistance put forth by the government, this is the last year I can be enrolled in a NZ institution of study and be allowed to put my course costs on my student loan. Effectively this means full time study is an impossibility if I wanted to continue immediately after this year. I cannot go out of this path on a failure.

Have I talked about the bias against academia. I think it strange that in our "knowledge economy" a student cannot get assistance for the entirety of their study from high-school to phd.

Fantastic.

Anyway.

Has anyone read "The Wasteland" by T.S. Elliot? I'm becoming slightly obsessed by it. It seems true, which I suppose is what poetry attempts. Also of great truth to me is "the Rock" by Wallace Stevens. I guess that is what poetry tries to do: to arrive at truth through emotion, not reason (which are probably opposites). Why not.

"Come in under the shadow of this red rock"

Well.

Apologies for this ramble. A more cohesive post sometime.

In other news: summer is actually quite nice sometimes.

What does it take to get a drink in this place, pt.2.

Time for something new.

Next year, unless someone creates the groundbreaking technology that in someway begets me a life partner, I shall be going off the map. To those of you who visitate this ramble, if you go to New Zealand on google earth (its those strange islands which look like an upside down japan next to australia) and zoom in enough until you can see the roads: where the roads are not is where I will be. In gods own, it is somewhat of a rite of passage for you to go over seas before you are considered grownup. And I shall do that: I've been informed that a Phd from my current univerisity means next to bat shit in a mountain cathedral if I want to pursue a career in academia, so I shall be going overseas for further study.

But there is so much of my own country that is not well trodden. In the southern Fjords people have believed they have sighted moose, which, unlike the sasquatch, was actually introduced to NZ at sometime in the history of European's coming over and fucking up the ecology. There are places on our islands where a blind carpenter can count the number of people who have stepped there on their remaining fingers. And since I was a child, my father has treasured a basket of rocks he scavenged from Mason Bay, one of the largest coves on our southern-most isle, Stewart Island. A number of those stones were greenstone, or what is sometimes called jade, still en-coated by the geode it was found in. Even as a child, I found it smooth, cold and entrancing.

It has been my dream of many years to travel to the south of our land.

In fact, I have always had a hankering to go south. If it weren't for my friends, and the fact that it would have been more difficult for my parents to send me food parcels during my first year of uni, I probably would have migrated further south. The south has an hypnotic pull on me: the cold, the solitude...its all that I wish for on those mornings when I wrap the duvets around me and keep hitting the snooze button late into the afternoon. Like I said in the post immediately previous, I'm getting sick of things. And hopefully this trip I am planning will be an acceptable compromise between being the sociable creature you all know and love and actively shutting myself off from the world, its inhabitants, its worry.

I called my parents today. I wanted to ask my father about the challenges of traversing Stewart Island. He said he wants to come on the hike with me. I'm not opposed to the idea, as long as I am left alone in the Fjords, but I know why he is offering. My parents are worried. I could hear it in my father's voice when he hopefully asked if all those people on facebook were wanting to hang out with me, if I was doing alright, said he was comforted by the fact that I was still making my usual status-update jokes.

Hah.

But I know they are thinking back to when I was 17 and, after a breakup, had a depressive episode and asked to retreat up into the mountains for a couple of nights. Those were bad times- these are bad times, but the difference is, I guess, that I am older. A difference that parents are often quite blind to. Sometimes I wonder why at that past time my parents let me go up that mountain alone. It must have stressed them like nothing else on the planet could.

Well, this really has no point. Someone once said that they could sum up life in three words: Life goes on. I'm not so fatalistic, I think. On my good days a least. And so I'll leave you with these encouraging words:

Herrings communicate underwater by farting.

The Mechanical Breathmint.

Today I went and saw my ex-girlfriend. I know it is not a smart thing to do. People had wisely advised me against such action. Being the stupid twit I was, I decided not to talk to said wise people until after the fact. Apparently I enjoy hurting myself.

It is impossible to love me apparently.

Apparently. And again I say apparently. Such a nice little word.

For those of you just joining, let me reiterate tonights top news stories! There is no one trapped down a mine, no one give a damn about teachers wages or about the death toll on the roads, no, prepare yourself for tonight's channel [insert number of your choice here] special three hour broadcast about people you don't care about whining about something quite devoid from your life but that you watch because you like to pretend you are up to date, interested in the wellbeing of others or there is nothing better to watch until The Simpsons throw up another repeat that you are all too familiar with but you will watch because it reminds you how fantastically predictable life is. The Simpsons has all the answers.

So yes, once again, I have become the dumped in life's next new reality tv show: Relationships.

Relationships. If you are new to playing this game, please let me impart an old soul's advice: do not look for the instruction manual. There is not one. The only thing you can possibly do is understand yourself and, if the partner in question didn't appreciate the things you cherished about yourself, then be glad you are out of said relationship. If this sounds a little after-school-special for you, let me use the voice of Bill Crosby to tell you how it is:

"Minuufuu bughingginburg! Bragabfinhugandirgabfer? Hiklimbergerfortthatternbugh! Othhothma!"

And now everything is alright again.

But seriously. I'm getting a little sick of this.

This will be the second Christmas in a row where I have been recently dumped. Deck the halls and traa-laa-laa as much as you like but its not getting any easier with experience. I'm not too keen on changing the person I am. I'm am fairly gad-damn-arse-shit-cock happy with myself- or at least most o myself. There are of course things that are up for negotiation. But I am starting to get a little worried. I am now 25 and quite possibly single for the next few years. And this is a worry.

Oh yes, anyone who is older and trying to impart wisdom to someone younger than you? Saying "Oh don't worry, you are still young" does not help. At all.

What am I saying? I don't know. I was deeply into this lady. Balls deep. And her not being a part of my life makes everything sound a little hollow. Yes, I know things get better with time and I know there are plenty more "fish" in the "sea" (a metaphor I have always found disturbing, by the way) but I swear if any of you presume to throw another hack-kneed cliche at me in the sincere hope it will alleviate my suffering, then prepare to have your feelings worn like a second hand condom because I will be taking an eye for an eye in completely biblical fashion.

I do not direct this comment against the friends who have been truly wonderful to me in the past couple of weeks. I know that everyone is getting just a little bit sick of this; hell, I am getting sick of this. It's disappointing to know that we all have to continue growing up. There is no such thing as a grown-up: we all keep learning.

Damn.

That which happens now I honestly have no idea. Watch this space. No doubt with more time on my hands (hah!) I shall be blogging more.

Hooray.

In other news: I have obtained a part time job! It is the most boring piece of crap I have ever come across! YES.

I want to be a politician.

Lately, as part of something I think of as my quarter-life crisis, I have begun to care about things. It's a very disconcerting sensation. Previously, I have only been directly concerned with things that directly influence me: how much I earn, my relationship status, the price of pies... but now, for some reason, obviously bread from a mind insane, I have become somewhat obsessed by a couple of concerns, not all that large, just, you know, something to be concerned about if you have the time. The couple of things, little things, minuscule, possible unworthy of your attention unless you can find the time in your busy schedule, that I am concerned about are the following:

1) The Media

2) Politics

3) Bias against academics

4) Absolutely everything else.

These are quite small and insignificant things, I agree, but I would encourage you to take some notice. The best place to take notice of these issues is, I would posit, the newspaper opinion pages. These pages contain such gems as:

"If the government is planning to change all European place names to Maori names, they should consider how this will impact pakeha tourists from other countries, as they will view us as a third world country"

or that from the minister of education came provably false claims about the rate of raise in teachers earning ability over the past four years,

or that in a recent mock exam given to 16 year olds a speech from our prime minister given at waitangi on waitangi day that stated that people were using the waitangi treaty as a crutch to avoid facing real life.

There are a great many more, but I admit myself as being too drunk from despair and wine to remember them.

I just ask that you read the newspapers, watch the 6pm broadcasts and think "why?" Why are they saying this? How does it benefit this or that person? What are the possibilities that we aren't being told about?

Now, more than ever, even more than in times of strife, when the change can be insidious instead of sudden, we need to be critical, questioning of what we hear and see.

Serious Procrastination

You know how there are different levels of seriousness for murder? Murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, manslaughter- I get the manslaughter one, I mean hey, it was just a mistake, running with scissors ectetera, but what is the difference between first and second degree? You still go to jail, or so I hear, and them jails are not as nice as the pamphlets make them out to be. Perhaps its a status thing.
"I did a murder and all I got was 2nd Degree Murder on your tee-shirt or something. First the worst, second the best, manslaughter the golden eagle.
I never understood that rhyme. There were no golden eagles ever, and I was always last anyway so it didn't mak any difference.

Well, that preamble was just to set the scene and give you, gentle reader, something with which to compare my epic procrastination to. This has been a day of first degree procrastination. It was premeditated, willfully exected and I've been trying to cover up the evidence ever since. If this was a race, the person who came first would be about to be given the gold medal when suddenly everyone would realize that I had crossed the line first and had just kept on running and had in fact came first twice. Then I shot the third place guy and stole his eagle, the fucker.

I did have good intentions this morning, I swear. Got out of bed early, came to my office, armed with my notes on the article that I was supposed to write up, then somehow read three years worth of an online web comic. I think this action was provocotatededined by the fact that I still haven't got a job and I still have no money and I'd really like a drink. I'm going to go a beg people to lend me some money soon under the guise of various lies so that tonight I can forget that the work I was supposed to do today I have a meeting about tomorrow. I'm fairly certain I can get most of it done tomorrow morning, but still, once the spiral of procrastination gets to you it can be difficult to get out of.

Like alligators. All them teeth.

Fun fact of the day: Apparently you cannot find the sheet music for "Five Spot After Dark" for free online! I have sucessfully proven that the internet is not infinite, only infinite in terms of pornography.

Wild Horses Couldn't Drag Me Away...

OR COULD THEY? I think you will find that they could. I'm not a particularly strong person, and nor am I some elephant behemoth cross, so I'm thinking that wild horses would have absolutely no difficulty in dragging me away, not even if I had a really good grip. They are, after all, wild.

Perhaps if there was only one wild horse, and it had been a bad year and it was rather weak and instead of being truly wild it was just a little bit peeved, perhaps it had just seen something stupid on fox news and so felt the need to complain about it but not actually do anything, then perhaps I might stand a chance.

Therefore:

""Mildly annoyed horses, who have not had much to eat

whit, perhaps, chronic fatigue syndrome, and been watching tv,

Possibly couldn't drag me away."

I was looking back at a few of my older posts (Or as I like to call it, accessing the cybernetic memory banks) and read my rant about the evilness of horses/unicorns and all equine life forms. It may have been a bit scathing. But far be it for anyone to accuse this news media of not giving both sides of the story, I decided recently to give horse kind the benefit of the doubt and try once again to be on cordial terms with said beasts of the field. The adventure occurring I shall chronicle shortly, but first a few facts:

- Once, I was thrown from a horse. So it's not like I'm horse racist or anything, I have reason to suspect that all horses, past, present or future, don't like having me on their backs. Who can blame them? Silly looking two legged creatures, I wouldn't let you on my back.

- Horses are big. Really big. Not big in an elephant way, kinda large and docile, in a strong way, no doubt, they can push over trees and shit, but in a compact, coiled, I-could-kick-your-kidneys-through-your-nose kind powerful while still being really big. Think of Bruce Lee. Now think of Bruce Lee with four legs. You are fucked.

- Horses apparently have a similar nature to that of cats, and also can tell if you are nervous. This results in an animal that doesn't really care if you are on it's back or not but probably has a short fuse for things that twitch and annoy them eg: said human passenger.

Alright. The tale.

Sunday morning, rain. Phone rings, Ellen (the pseudonym for my girlfriend, in Higlyflannable style) picks it up. We are to go horse riding. Now.

Neat. 3/4 of an hour later, we are in the middle of a paddock in the middle of nowhere which is inside a void and no one will hear me scream. I am introduced to the horse I will be riding, Mango (actual name, horses don't get pseudonyms) and I spen a small amount of time walking Mango round by her halter so as for her to get used to me. I spent most of that time talking to Mango, or rather pleading with Mango, and convincing her that I really wouldn't be that nice to eat.

So far so good. Up into saddle, complimented by Ellen's Aunt on my riding posture, but asked to keep only my toes in the stirrups, as, "she [Mango] isn't really a beginner's horse and if you fall and get your foot stuck in the stirrup, she'll just trample you to death, silly thing."

Please at this time go and re-familiarize your self with the horse facts. Silly or not, I wasn't too pleased about this predicament.

My horse was startled twice, both times managing to get me out of the saddle but not beneath the silly, murderous hooves. On our little hour long trek, Ellen said that when she looked at me I looked like I was trying to enter into a mediative state, all forceful deep breaths and weak smiles. This was true. I was trying to enter my cave and find my power animal. God help me if it turned out to be a horse. I may have been slightly less nervous if I was told how to operate the animal I was on, stop, start and turn for example, but after being told of my horses unsuitability for novices such as me I was reassured that it was ok because Mango would just follow old George, the gigantic old male horse Ellen was riding, which "I don't often let girls ride because he's so Gigantic that they can't control him. But Ellen's a good rider. Ellen, don't let George get a fright there, otherwise both you and Flan will be off!"

This proclamation was followed by a small chuckle.

So really, I cant blame Ellen for not giving me any advice, she was too busy just controlling old George so as our horses would throw us over a cliff like something very easily thrown and possibly trampled. We both managed it alright however, and lunch was well earned.

Slightly ironic that the scariest part of the endeavor was Ellen's aunts driving. On the way home, she showed us how the cruise control worked, in a downpour of rain, swerving in and out of traffic while cursing drivers going under exactly 100km an hour.

And, of course, I shall probably have to do this all again.

In other news: Apparently people have played some soccer. Well done them, I say.

No, seriously, you can't make me.

Growing up. It's one of those terms that you have a strange relationship with. From when you are young and making sure that everyone knows that you are 8 and three-quarters thank you very much mr. butcher man I am a big boy but not big enough to not want my free saveloy to woo I'm 18 or whatever the age it is that you are legally allowed to drink/procreate/drive a vehicle and hoping that you stay that age forever but engaging in activities that make said age go past faster than a Concorde on speed and probably age you mentally just as much to the age in which I am now, 24, where there is a complicated process of nostalgia-for-the-good-old-days candy floss laced with the arsenic of sudden remembrance of what you actually did in those good old days, and it seems like the world is asking you to step right up to adult hood with its unfunny clowns and evil smelling ringleader with the seedy mustache which hides a leer that you know is directed directly at you...

Metaphorically speaking, of course. In short, you might be just a little afraid of what the future holds but have clear enough hindsight to see that you don't want to keep on going as you have been.

Welcome back to Highlyflannable! It's not really a mid life crisis but my younger sister is going to drop a sprog sometime in the next 6 months and I have a fairly serious female friend and these things make me think. I wonder what relationship I'll have with the aging process when I'm older. Hopefully I'll look back and think that I was an idiot who knew less than he thought he did and had the social grace of duckweed. That'll mean that as I get older I might just have learnt something.

And when I get really old I'll use my false teeth as a puppet in public, tell my grandchildren where their parents were conceived and generally push the limits of faking senility until even I don't know if the old loaf is working or not. That should be interesting if this blog is still around then.

There are many other things of fact about my life I could talk about but really, I think I'll just let you discover them through reading between the lines of the incredibly deep and complicated prose stylings of this publication.

Oh yes. I changed my profile picture too. Don't I look sagacious? Deep in thought? Scholarly? Would it surprise you to know that it was taken when I had passed put with my eyes open? Even if this is your first time here, gentle reader, you probably can.

In other news: WHY IS IT SO DAMN COLD?

Decade the second: More decader...

Minions rejoyce! I return from the land of the living once again with blood curdling stories and interesting happenings! I tell you what, all that living really takes it out of you! It takes your life, some might say! Exclamation marks! But now I am really getting back into the ole Flan swing (TM) of things. A brief recapof things that have happened to me lately:
-Got Dumped
-Got Fired.

And that was the last bit of last year I remember. I would be still drunk and incoherant if anyone would by my junk for money, but, alas, it seems as though I have already sold all the things that are worth anything and now all I am left with are those sentimental pieces that you hang on to because they remind you of a rainy sunday morning three years ago when you felt you had crap all worked out. Not that there is anything wrong with sentimental crap, but if it is sentimental crap that is worth any money then you feel guilty if you sell it for money and sober if you don't A less sophisticated catch 22 perhaps, but still quite true.

Anyway:

Tonight is the night of a new year. I quite enjoy the new year times, compared to say, christmas, where this holiday and reflective occasion does not actually require me to be around anyone. This time, however, I did decide to spend the night with a couple of friends, watching movies and having a drink ect, and my new new years tradition, which is the new years steak. Just steak, nothing else. Because it is my personal philosophy that you should always start each bench mark of your life in the way that you intend to finish that period: for example, this is why I am always very, very drunk on my birthday and new years. I know I'm going to be that way at the end of the year.

Some people might consider this pessimistic, or even cynical, but it is simply maths and science, and its hideous offsping, hope, which through the proper steps you can keep chained up in the basement. Don't worry about feeding hope, that might breed an unadvised attachment to the beast, no, ust know that it thrives well enough on the rats of doubt that grow in you mind and gnaw at the side of your waking consciousness. Its not really a bad thing, it can in fact engender some comfort in life, and you soon lear to sleep through the banging nosies it makes at night.

Anyway:

Must all aquaintence be forgot?

Probably.