A timely time

Hello to anyone who still has this on their mailing list, or who for some reason has been checking this webpage for 5 years without fail! What are you doing? What would possess you to check back here for so long? What has possessed me to check back here after so long? How was I able to remember my log in credentials? It probably does not speak well of my password security protocols, no indeed.

I've just spent a not inordinate amount of time reading some of the posts of my former self, marvelling at the use of metaphor, at the amount of feeling I was able to place in lieu of not doing much at all. It would have been a sobering experience, had I not been most of the way through a case of beer and a bottle of wine at the time. It's been interesting, relearning some of those old patterns of thought, being simultaneously comforted and disturbed by the fact that what I have done in the past remains, at least on the interwebs. If I go back far enough, I am very embarrassed by the man I once was.

But it's a good thing - I am glad that I have something hanging around to remind me of some of those times: and in fact, to date, this blog represents the longest standing enterprise that I have dedicated myself to outside of education and, you know, being alive. Off and on, it went on for 6 years. What the actual living fuck. Obviously, the main concern and most intriguing concern for myself over the years has been myself. I would like to say that that has changed - probably it is more accurate to say that I got too accustomed to myself to think that any of it was worth writing down, and probably rightly so.

But all of that being said, it is time for an update. You might have gotten away with a five year hiatus 20 years ago, but nowadays we have all these things that do things all the time in a timely manner - apart from cutting off your own hands, it is unlikely that you haven't typed anything today. So here we are, together, in an elevator, someone you have seen around and know has a name but are really hoping that wont have to strike up a conversation with because your wife left you and if not for the obligation of income you'd rather spend the rest of your life in a ditch. An update on the life of an insignificant being, pushing though life at the same speed as the rest of you, a tiny mote within an uncaring universe who still hasn't learnt how to spell check his work.

Since the last you heard from me:

 - I have lived alone for three years, at present I type this from a darkened room, listening to music. This is a net win.

- I have finally stopped studying. For the last two years, I have been gainfully employed in a business that offers possibility of advancement. I have found, unexpectedly, that I enjoy such an environment, and much like a video game I am spending inordinate amounts of time and effort to raise my level in a system that those outside of the system neither understand nor want to understand.

- I have gotten quicker at typing. I still eat too many toasted sandwiches.

- I now have a method of transport, a vehicle that is two wheels joined by a chamber that explodes. This was a thing that I never thought that I would ever do, and I find that I enjoy it almost beyond reason.

- Many of the socks that I owned 5 years ago I still own. Apparently I form attachments with foot coverings easier than I form relationships with humans, for, apart from a few long term companions, I have socks that I have known for longer than many people. Some would say that this is a serious defect in my character - I would argue that I am simply working my way up. If I can accept a sock full of holes now, much greater the chance that I will be able to accept you in the future.

- I've not yet travelled, around my country nor overseas, but I still harbour hopes to do so.

- Being an adult brings with it its own set of exhaustions - work, bills, measuring yourself against the success of your peers,  unexpected insights into the tribulations of your parents - but it also brings contentment. Contentment is not always a good thing, and come only at the sacrifice of idealism and often energy. But it beats not being out of bed because of he mind demons. Now I stay in bed because I want to.

- Mostly. No doubt I'll stumble on this post in some years time and wonder at the idealism and energy I exhibit now.

- I've thrown away a lot of cutlery, plates, and old acquaintances, mostly via the same channels. What I have left is either necessary or invaluable or, I don't know, that giant anatomically accurate heart soft toy I bought the other week when I was drunk and had access to the internet. A reflection of my soul.

- I am drunk and have access to the internet.

This is a modest list. I like that it is 100% accurate while only briefly touching anything that could be called truth. Such is everything you have ever heard everywhere. I won't promise that this will happen again tomorrow - shit, I'm not even going to promise that this is going to happen ever again. I shall put some words here whenever I god damn feel like it. You can't make me. Or rather, you can make me, but that would mean coercion, force, bribery or blackmail - and although I've done more than enough to be blackmailed over I'd probably rather just lick a porcupine even though they have diseases on their spikes, if I could have been bribed the guilt of absence would have gotten this updated sometime sooner, pushing my hands onto computer keys forcefully means that you are technically writing this yourself just using my body as a proxy which I might be ok with but we'd have to talk about that first and I'm not even certain coercion is actually a word.

So yes. You'll hear from me in five years. But probably not. Because fuck it.

 

Place holder

This is just a placeholder to keep Calvin Shine happy. But I shall be doing new updates every second day now, for I am unemployed and the government pays me t live.

That living is paid by your wages. But to be honest, you would have just spent that 15% on booze and pissed it against the wall. Now I can spend it on booze and piss it against the wall. It is like you are doing involuntary charity and making another human happy. And what is happiness? You 15% that I recieve. OH YEAH.

On the plus side, most of my friends are also unemployed. It is not nice to be a friendly parasoite.

OR IS IT?

Pragmatism.

I am alone, so very very alone.

But who cares? Enough of that self indulgent pity begging hilariousness, lets talk about PHILOSOPHY.

Begin Flan's Philosophy Extravaganza the First: Pragmatism! Or something.

Recently, my sister had a baby. It is small. It is wrinkly. Also lately, my friends Grandmother died. Also small, also wrinkly. If one were to be horribly cynical, as I intend to be, one could therefore deduce that the only things anyone manages in life is to learn how to speak and produce more wrinkly things. All other skills learnt go by the wayside, rendering them nill.

Add to this mix of misanthropy and existentialism the fact that I have been thinking. Thinking about things. I am to go and talk to some parlimentarilists early next month to give them reasons as to why a society for the promotion of the sciences should not absorb into its functions the promotion of the humanities. There are many reasons why this is a bad idea, the chief of which is that it won't work none good. But I'm having trouble thinking why it is a bad idea financially, which is, of course, the main way we measure health, happiness, and our place in the world. So I might be a little buggered.

Anyway. That was not what I was thinking about, well, not what I was thinking about to write here. Here I am going to complain about vegetarians.

Or at least about the arguments that vegetarians make for vegetarianism, and then I'll have a little bitch about ethics in general, ultimately showing that our societal constructs, where they aren't simply crap, are harmful crap. YES.

So. The most annoying argument for vegetarianism: Meat Is Murder.

Yes, it's snappy, yes, you can chant it though a loudspeaker, yes, it is the name of an album by the cold war kids. But when you are having new years steak in a restaurant and some smug bastard is explaining to the young lady he wishes to bed about the immorality of being carnivorous, using you in conjunction with dead kittens to illustrate his point, you apparently aren't allowed to go over and meat-slap the irritating goatee off his face.

I'm not against anyone not eating meat. There are damn good reasons not to: one of my friends will throw up if he so much as licks the stuff. I am not against individual choice, and for the purposes of this discussion let it stand that individualism is completely open within the scope of society and the law. But these arguments are used to try and convince others that this isn't an individual choice, that it is fundamentally wrong with the capital double-you. And perhaps it is. I haven't worked that out yet. And I think other people haven't either?

How is meat murder? Murder is a legal point of view, which requires, as much as my watching of Boston Legal has imparted to me, several things, two of which are intent and actually killing something. From our place at a restaurant table we can say that no, I didn't kill this piece of meat, nor did I form mental intent to do so. I was just like "Sweet! Meat!" Perhaps this is a deficiency on our part as we have severed the connection between dead flesh and once living creature, but still, murder as a legal charge is out. The goateed, bespectacled man who also, incidentally, votes for the more consevative parties and knows a lot about something boring, lets say the rate of fingernail growth at different stages of your life, would then retort that you are supporting murder. We are accessories to the crime.

Well, apart from having to change the original, oh-so-snappy saying, that's a rather large definition of accessory to a crime. Yes, paying for meat creates a market etc. but your paying taxes trains soldiers that are then put in kill or be killed situations sometimes? Your having a car creates need for crude oil which sometimes spills into a gulf as it is collected, causing untold harm to creatures you will save the indignity of eating? I suppose I wouldn't eat them either now that they are all oily and crap.

I can go on. Don't get me started on "natural law" arguments or questions of consciousness. We will be here all day. Suffice to say I find none of them airtight.

There are lots of reasons to abstain from certain foods, health risks and the lack of fish around the place for example, but the prescriptive you should not eat all meat has little if anything to do with these arguments. The problem with arguments for vegetarianism, and most other ethical and moral arguments for that matter, is that the person or people have already decided on what is either right or wrong and then created an argument to prove it. This is not as much of a problem if you are debating emotional matters where the only possible outcome can be for someone to respect your view (not to trivialise such debates, they are often more important than other types) but when someone promotes their emotional view as a logically reasoned one when it is really just the quickest rationalisation between two points then it makes me want to tear of someone's face and put it in a blender while shouting "WHERE IS YOUR REASON NOW CHEESE BURGER?" The face might well end up being mine.

Like I say, I don't know the 'right' or 'wrong' to the position on eating meat, ethically or morally. Perhaps at a latter date I will be convinced emotionally, or someone may come up with an airtight logical argument, and then either meat will be taken off the menu or I'll still have to be emotionally persuaded, for history shows us just what people are able to do or think in the face of 'hard' evidence. This course of creating an argument is called "pragmatisim" when the argument is to be judged against the practical consequences of that argument/ belief. Its a helpful tool, and is one way of moving from theory into action. However, it is often taken the opposite way, as in above, where the desired consequence is decided and the argument built around it. Not only does this often cause really bad arguments, but it can be used to give apparently reasonable consideration to really bad ideas. We can think of many ways and conflicts between races that bear this out.

The worst thing, I think, about this type of constructing an argument is that it already makes to many assumptions, which, as we all know, turn us all into a donkey. The biggest assumption in religion is that religion has all the answers. The assumption of science is that science can find the answers, and even that there are answers to be found. The assumption of pragmatism and the murder of meat arguments is that reason is that which gives truth, that logic is the way to dictate action, that empirical ways of knowing are the only ways of knowing.

Starting by asking questions about someone's reasoning is a good start, but sometimes I wonder whether we need to ask question of reason as a practice itself.

Years they come and years they go...

...but god I love that rock and roll. Those fast blunt puns hit you at the most unexpected times.

A more socially acceptable new years was had this year: people, I think, were somewhat concerned about my plans to sit in solitude and drink three bottles of wine while eating new years' steak. Instead, Although the quantity of wine did not change, it was instead a new years' roast and a night of talk, shouting, sitting on roofs, making the word 'poo' out of legos. Today, the day of rest after the festivities, I watched four movies. Pizza for breakfast.

It could be considered the sweet life. Except, we all know this isn't life at all. Excuse me for being a whiny bastard, but you can feel it start to come down. The painting isn't finished and you're out of paint. We all fall down. Etc. Other expressions of woe and doom. What. The. Fuck.

Anyway. Other news. Yes. I am now the proud owner of the title of Uncle. Saw the small child of my sister on boxing day. Less than two weeks old. When placed in my arms to have my photo taken, the young one promptly introduced himself to me by emptying his bowels with what could be described as the throbbing noise you sometimes get when you hold a dry rag up to a window and drag it with some force. I'm sure it will colour our relationship forevermore.

Language is an important thing. It has certainly been my life for 7 years now. I will enjoy talking to a tiny human when he can, I certainly don't have a huge amount else to offer. But I can teach words like "oxymoron" and"prandial". Some scientists and philosophers think that language might be the defining factor between "human" and "animal". Neat.

Christmas also happened. I got bubble mixture, quite possibly the best present you can receive. Bubbles make everything better.

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.

Woo, what to do, what toooo dooooooooooooooooo!

I'm gonna go home, get into bed with a bottle of wine and drink while watching boston legal and playing video games. I AM A GENTLEMAN OF LESUIRE!

just thought you'd like to know.

In your face!

Or rather, in my face. And what was in my face was a squash ball. Hit, may I add, at large amounts of velocities. My lip swelled up and then stopped swelling and now is no longer swolen.

Which leads me to enter into my thinky state (oh no not the thinky state) where I am thinking: what the hell is with the human body? I just got hit in the face with a small, compact sphere of rubber, so your responce is deform my face so's I cannot leave the contry due to not looking like my passport photograph (which I do not have one of but if I did there would be trouble)? If you are a scientist, do not answer the following question because I actually just like complaining about things, but why is it a normal response for your body to swell up when hit? Is it to stop kissings happenening? Brusies aren't contagious, I hear, unless you are of a low socio-economic background. Is the throbbing there to make you aware of the injury and then stop you touching it/bannging into more things? Because I don't usually spend time prodding my lip unless It happens to be gigantic and throbbing.

Perhaps it is one of those things one was not ment to know. Like those dreams of falling when you suddenly wake and realize the dream was a little spunky... and you wonder why, because I definately do not have a boner for heigths. But anyway.

PART 16 OF FLAN'S EXILE FROM CIVILIZATION IN THE LAND OF THE DEAD SLASH WAIPUKURAU!!!!:

Nothin.

Misinformation

I am not back in Wellington. I am still in waipuk. Thats fine I guess. I'm ok with it sort of.

What I am not sort of ok fine with is the fact that I have an exam in a week. This by itself would not be too much of a problem either: I have alright marks for this and so as long as I am sober for the exam I shouldn't have much of a problem with the exam, even without studying.

And there we are: you have spotted the problem:
I get back to wellington on Saturday. The Exam is on Monday. It is traditional for me to get as drunk as possible on my return to wellington from the hawkes bay, it burns off the evil. And although it hasn't been a tradition, I should like to spend some time with my lady friend who I have not seen for two weeks when I return to wellington. You might not think that there is a problem here: two nights, two activities, you say. But I say I cannot put off the womanising for fear of deadly insult, and I cannot drink on sunday because I will not wake in time for my exam. I could wait until monday night to drink but I don't want to.

The is the possibility of doing both on sat, but that takes plans, and I don't know them.


In other news: Koalas.

In a serene land of serenity, full of serene things, like pixies of serentiy...

...but not unicorns. I'm not buying that bollocks they sell to tweens for nineteen dollars and eighty four cents: Not only is it an ominous number, but nothing in nature is pink which sparkles and smells like cupcakes. No, a unicorn would just be a great big horse, smelly and rank like other horses, but unlike other horses, it has a great big horn, pointy, you note, and not for conducting a symphony or showing students the position of uraguy, oh no.

Look into the eyes of a horse the next time you see one. In that dark eye framed with long lashes, you will see the soul of a bloddy minded killer, waiting to imdiscriminately slaughter all until the streets run forth with blood...all it is waiting for is for evolution to give it what it desires: a weapon.

And don't even get me started on those mini horses. Just because there is less horse doesn't mean there is less insanity. It's just more compacted. And their heads are groin height.

Speaking of insanit, I am at home. Home home. Home on the range home. Home in the middle of nowhere home, Waipukurau. It's a place I come sometimes, sometimes for a place to unwind, sometimes because I feel guilty about not seeing my parents for so long, but mostly because I am sick of toasties and have come to eat all their food and beg for money. Also, now, in the depths of winter, they have a fireplace with wood to burn in said. I like fire. I also like lounging around all day in frount of said fire, reading and playing guitar. I am trying to be a jazz person, but all that is happening is jozz, or possibly juzz. Most of the reason for this, I beleive, is becuase a person who is proficient at jazz needs seven fingers on each hand and must contain all musical knowledge ever, future included, in their minds. Never ever laugh if you see a jazz musician's tounge protruding slightly from the side of their mouth as they play. It is because their tounge is being forced out of their head by the gigantic pressures needed to bend quantum physics and only by clenching their tounge between their teeth as they strum that Am7+5dim chord at 12/7 rythm can they stop that precious mouth organ from rocketing forth from their mouth hole, causing them to bleed to death slowly from the wound, not to mention acute embarrasment.

I'm noticing that everything so far has ended in blood. Don't worry: thats just Waipuk. I'm often surprised that my hometown isn't known for its bloody gun rampages, but apparently people are saved from the general populaces muderous intentions by a comblination of rugby, laziness, and top quality television programming such as "border control". Just because it's on, does not mean you have to watch it! It's not even out border! It's Austrailia's! I have better things to do with my life that spend half hour segments of "reality tv" which is, in reality, what was first produced when a camera man went to lunch with his camera left propped up against a pillar inadvertently left on in his house. The next day, as this is new zealand and the production crew couldn;t afford a new video tape, they spliced scenes from the horror/comedy movie they had previously been making "House of the Reanimated Idiots", spent a few minutes for voice overs and Big Brother was born.

And that was all true. All of it.

In other news: I had vastly importaint and pertinent things to say here, but as they say here, "EaSYning", which, I belive, is some sort of addage on the fleeting nature of life around here. Or its just a muddle of sylables spewn forth but a member of this town known for it's one invention, a shot cocktail known as the "Main":

Take one large glass.
Place a piece of mouldy bread across the opening.
Filter 1/2 bottle of methelated spirits through the mouldy bread. Place bread to one side as chaser.
Fill the rest of vessle with Viking ("Conquer the taste!") beer. Mix thoroughly.
Add vanilla essance, lime juice, or rotted leaf mould to taste.

The best part is that you think I'm joking. Oh well. Back to the metropolis on Sunday.

Life is difficult...

...sandwiches are not. They aren't difficult to make, they aren't difficult to eat, and they aren't difficult to invent. Some bastard who was too lazy to stop playing cards, get off his behind nad make some soup. No, he sat there and his big old earl behind and said "O say I say serving woman, create me a meal that can be eaten in one hand while I construct this Royal Flush" and then when the woman had the great idea of putting a piece of meat between two pieces of bread he claimed the idea as he suggested and patented it and now thats why an egg mayo sandwich will set you back $4 at your nearest cafe. Earlcharge.

In other news, a friend of mine has just modified his remote control car so it travels at the speed of snail.

12 minutes before work super fast blog

HOLDIDAYS! Holidays happen soon after today FOREVER! Well, five weeks, but thanks to a edict passed down from the world institute of naming things (they never claimed to be good at naming things) a stretch of time totalling five weeks exactly can now be called "Forever". The reason being that we have names for two weeks, four weeks and even a period of 52 weeks, and so we obviously need a name for five. And since they couldn't be bothered coining a new term they just used an existing word. It is also hoped that this will stop plumbers and electricians from quoting that the work needed will take forever, and then living off you till the end of your life.

Ever wondered why there are so many damn plumbers in Tahiti? Thats why.

In other news that isn't so obviously made up, I am going to play poker tonight. But not for money, because gambling is a vice that lays open your soul ready to be snared by the devil. And because we are all really bad a poker and the las time we played with money, none of us one. The fifteen dollars is now kept in an ai tight bok, buried at the bottom of the garden, along with with three hands of two pairs of two. Thats how bad we were.
But Anywhoo. Queens of the stone age and low priced beer will be my friends tonight, as we jelosly horde our precious match sticks against those who would take them from us. Tommorow I shall go to the birth place of Katherine Mansield and clean my rancid living space.

I now live alone, by the way. People have warned me, my friends, my father, the festering hobo at the buss stop at the corner of cuba and manners, all have warned me that such a move might, finnally, make me so crazy that I no longer have the ability to tell the difference between the imaginary people I converse with everyday in my head and the weasle ridden, post apocalyptic world I actually inhabit. Oh reality checks. You can bee too cruel.

And a time better you had not having...yes.

It has been a long time... and yes, you may feel like you have read this line many times before, but many things have, in fact, happened.

I finished my teaching degree. Then I worked as a relief teacher for half a year. Unfortunately, my school, which was a rather un-traditional school and let me drink coffee while I taught, shut down. Such a shame I have never known. I don't think I could actually get closer to my ideal job, apart from my reccurring dream that when I retire I shall open a book-store/ wine bar. You heard it here first folks, and if I find you have stolen my Idea I shall hunt you down, take your kneecaps and sell them to foriegeners as overpriced trinkets from the japanese meiji era. AS you write in hell, know that you are part of a horribly racist conspiricay bent only towards money-making.

After having woked in such a wonderful school I found myself rather lacking in enthusiasm when it came to teaching in a more...traditional...school. Enter Honors english, at the presitgious university of wellington, where apparently I am a god. As you may recall, troughout my undergrad diploma I did mot much more than drink and sleep, only deigning to write an essay when curcumstances demanded. Not much has changed in my accademic lyfestyle now, but apparently even though I spend little time on my essays, and I hand in my first drafts, and my tutors know I hand in my first drafts, their cmments tell me so, but still I get A's and B's. I might as well just pay for an diploma over the internet and be done with it.

But now, against all expectations, I seem to have found myslef with a woman person. Perhaps that is why I haven't been writing lately. Or not. Maybe I just dont like you.

Next time I shall write more witt things, and soon, I promise.