In which I bitch about annoying phrases people like to quote

People have the capability of saying some really profound things. Some can string verbs and adjectives together in an effortless Shakespearean manner to create staggering sentences that can induce Claude Monet inspiration. The rest of us just breathe out useless concoctions of grammatically lined up words on a day to day basis. That’s cool though. We, the talentless and less eloquent, instead can rely on quoting. Like parasitic speech bacteria, one line from Thomas Jefferson or The Beach Boys makes us seem as if we have something worthwhile to say about our slipping futile realities. If not just that, quotes and sayings are fun. Scrolling through a liege of Oscar Wilde’s quotes on being a decadent asshole is a night’s worth of entertainment. And when you can actually remember a quote you earn the benefit of sounding passably intellectual (which can be a redeeming feature if it’s 3am and you’re about to projectile vomit tequila shots on the person you are quoting to*).
*all scenarios on this blog are fictional. If they bare any resemblance to reality that is purely coincidental. Purely. Stop judging me.

But with great power comes great responsibility. Between ‘I have a dream’ and ‘THIS IS SPARTA’ there are a bunch of shithouse cliché quotes that people like to verbalise over and over again to the point that I want to staple-gun the words across their foreheads.  These are the ones I cannot stand.  And when I say cannot stand, I mean schizophrenically-stuffing-a-gun-into-my-mouth-to-blow-out-my-temporal-lobe-bukkake-style cannot stand.

Seriously.

Hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn…………………………….to these fucking annoying quotes/sayings.

Live in the moment/ YOLO

There is truth to this saying in its organic form.  We are all skeleton structures on a dying rock hurtling through space, with the past unchangeable and future unsure. Any moment a bus could accidentally ram its lights into your vital arteries and cease your existence. In fact as you are reading this very sentence you could be taking your last breath**. You just never know what’s to come, besides the fact one day this will all end. As a result, and as Buddhist like to say, the present it sort of the only thing we’ve got going for us. In this sense we do and should live in the present moment. We only have one shot at whatever this is.
** If you died reading this, I am sorry.

But unless someone comes up to me with this rationale before screaming out ‘LIVE IN THE MOMENT/YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE’ don’t be surprised if I squeeze lemon juice into your eye.

People who quote this are usually drunk. They scream it out in the middle of a dance floor, whilst someone is deep-throating a goon sack and your friend is smashing your face into the mouth of some hairy kid wearing a suspiciously stained singlet. Basically, people like to scream it out when they want to do some really dumb shit.

That’s okay, dumb shit is hilarious. I’ve done a lot of dumb shit. Once I was binge drinking at night and decided to trespass a pre-school (because I am a probably a closet paedophile) and got caught by the police. Another time I dyed my hair blonde because I thought it would be funny. This other time I told these chicks to ‘come at me’ on the internet, and they did indeed come at me. Eight of them. With friends. Whilst I was studying maths at a tutoring college.  In hindsight, all these things probably happened because people were giving me the advice of ‘live in the moment’ or ‘YOLO”.

On top of that, it gets annoying when you wake up after a particularly bitchin’ party and you have the word YOLO written all over your arms and legs in permanent market and the hot water in your house is all gone. That’s just mean.

Another reason why I hate this quote is because people who say ‘I live in the moment’ are usually wankers who disregard the future. I know what you’re thinking, I just had some massive spiel about how the future was uncertain and blah blah blah, but that doesn’t mean you discount doing anything practical that could potentially benefit you in the future. We all want a roof over our heads and food on our table when we are older. No one wants to live in a trailer park with five kids and a husband  that is never around, so alcohol and cocaine become your best friend.

Conclusively, finish school kids.

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.” –Marilyn Monroe

I love Marilyn Monroe, but god dammit do I want to hurl a deluge of flaming ball sacks at people who like to use this to describe themselves. I hate it on so many levels.

The first level is the fact that it ignores all social skills. Now I’m the last person to be lecturing on social skills, but even I know that if I start off by meeting with a person at my ‘worst’ and expect them to stick it out until my ‘best’, then I’m going to have a load of printer cartridges hurled at my face. You don’t want me at my worst. My worst is crying in a heap of insecurity telling you to leave me alone, and calling you names like: ‘douchebag mc fart fart’.That’s why I trick people at my ’best’, lull them into a false sense of security, until they’re stuck with me.

 You don’t make a good impression by acting like a brat. In fact, you don’t get to act like a brat around other people in general. That’s just being an immature douche. No one wants to deal with you if you’re going to be an uncompromising ‘selfish, out of control, hard to handle’ bitch. No one will want you. All your friends will leave you. You’ll live alone with cats. Then those cats will leave you because cats are intuitive and realise how much of a brat you are. Then you’ll die alone. And when you do die, no one will know until your body starts stinking up the third floor of your apartment block (you live on the ground floor). No one will come to your funeral.  Then in six months, a bunch of drunken teenagers yelling ‘YOLO’ will come along and kick in your tombstone.

The second level on why I hate this quote is because only someone like Marilyn Monroe can say shit like this.  She was a talented Hollywood star with a shitload of accolades and money. People fell to her feet. Teenage boys and girls masturbated to her face at night. I still masturbate to her face at night. I mean, she didn’t even bother making her affair with JFK a secret. She earned the right to be a crazy, drug-addled, unhinged bitch. Only when you have achieved this much, can say something this dumb.

If you love something set it free, if it comes back then it is meant to be.

When I was four, my pet mouse ‘Spotty’ chewed through the cage and ran away.  I was devastated, but then my mum told me this quote to cheer me up. He never did come back.

This story just shows how nothing is meant to be, because if anything was meant to be, it was me and my goddamn childhood mouse. Everything in this universe is random, coincidental and magnificently strange. There is no divine order. Once my dog walked into his own faeces and I had to spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning his feet.  If you can summarise in dot points on how that event had any profound impact or meaning within the universe’s grand plan, then be my guest. Until then, realise there is no such thing as 'meant to be'. 

In fact there is a higher chance that the reason that something ‘comes back’ to you isn’t because it was’ meant to be’, but probably because they failed to find something better, And probably because Switzerland wasn’t all that cracked up to be.

Anyway, years later I found out that my mouse was actually mauled by a cat. He was dragged along the ground, blood and guts smeared across the veranda, and decapitated in our vegetable patch.

My dad threw his body in the compost bin.

You are beautiful in every single way – Christina Aguelira

I was once sitting at a bar innocently sipping on a bourbon and coke making eye contact with no one in particular. This is a euphemistic way of saying that I was once drunkenly running around a bar wearing a skanky top, a skirt too short and makeup so thick that I looked like the victim of a paintball attack. My chest was out, my game face on and I was staring down any unsuspecting victim who gave off the vibe of having an Asian fetish in the most unapologetically whorish manner you could imagine.

Sometime during the night a semi-drunk guy with a clean shaven face and a cap on backwards came up to me, cross-eyed, grabbed me by the neck and drunkenly whispered into my ear:

“You are beautiful in every single way.”

Now I know I should have taken this as a compliment. I should be giggling, flicking my hand and twirling my hair. This dude not only summed up the courage to approach a fine looking chick with spectacular hair and a great piece of ass but he also called me beautiful. Coming from someone who has tried to pull chicks, in the hopes of setting off my lesbian college phase, not only is that shit hard but it’s also more than most dudes would do.  In a bar scenario, most drunk guys just grind their dicks up against my thigh on the dance floor in hopes that I will throw my drunken vagina at them.

But I’m an asshole, and this gronk just quoted the most fucking annoying line in the history of Christina Aguelira hits.

So because when I get drunk I think I am wittier and cleverer then I really am, I replied with:

“Bitch please, you have never seen me at 3am in the morning. Also wearing your hat backwards makes you look like a lesbian elf.”

Disregarding the second part of that line, this unnecessarily long anecdote brings me to the point that no, no we are not beautiful in every single way. No one is. At best we are ‘pretty okay-ish’ in some ways. Tell this line to me when you have seen me blazed out in sweat pants, no make-up, my hair unwashed and unkept, where I am lying in a pool of Doritos packets in front of a television and my face is squashing out fat tears because Cilian Murphy has just found the windmill he made as a child in the safebox next to his dying father***, then call me beautiful.
***I am sorry if you haven’t watched Inception, but it’s really your own fault. That masterpiece has been out for fucking ages.

Most of us are ugly all of the time, and that’s okay. Beauty is a short lived tyranny. In time, everyone’s skin looks like it’s melting off their faces. It’s the glorious passage of life.

That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. - Friedrich Nietzsche

That which didn’t kill you probably didn’t finish the job.

Come at me Friedrich.

Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down – Socrates (apparently)

I had never heard of this quote until a few Sunday nights ago when I found myself in a deep and meaningful conversation with this chick who I did not want to be in a deep and meaningful conversation with. This lady was wearing really purple shoes and had super big ears. We were sitting at the bus stop, rubbish and old copies of torn up “Big Issues” swirling in the wind, getting all bambi-eyed and sentimental in nostalgia and insecurity.

Then she hit this bombshell on me.

After she said this, she proceeded to go on a five minute rant about her terrible break up that had happened four years back, which changed the mood of the entire conversation because I was getting spit on my face and the twisted contortions of her face were beginning to scare me.

Anyway, this quote annoys me for numerous reasons. The first is how self-absorbed it is. The lady who was emotionally bomb shelling me quoted this in a manner that made it seemed as if she was the only special person who acted this way. In reality, just about everyone I know has ‘walls’; especially the older, jaded, more hilarious divorcees.  I know plenty of people who have met really great people but because they've built themselves emotional walls made out of iron, they force people to jump through of hoops and hurdles. The reasoning is always some murky back story involving a broken heart or a Chihuahua rejecting your love.

 ‘Walls’ are the natural defence mechanisms created out of fear or insecurity because someone once planted an explosive shit bomb in the centre of your universe.  But while a lot of people suck ass and will do this (and take your Maxibon while they're at it), there are also some pretty shiny gems out there who won’t. It is, however, not the job of these gems to ‘break down your walls’.  Nor is ‘breaking down your walls’ a measure how much someone cares for you. So stop making us buy ropes, gadgets and WMD’s to break down your wall. It’s fucking expensive. Sometimes I feel like that Wolf in the Three Little Pigs. I’m huffing and puffing, but your walls are layered with bricks. Quit that bullshit. No one is here to baby you. You’re not that special or cool. We all have our own thing going on. If you actually want to connect with someone, breaking down your walls isn’t their job. It's your own.

It’s like what Coketalk said:, walls are fear-based defence mechanisms that you take down and put up over and over again to protect yourself from your own vulnerability. It’s dumb and exhausting. What you need instead is a filter. A filter is not fear-based but instead defined by your own set of personal standards and values. This brilliant device allows you sieve out the assholes and, most importantly, embrace your own vulnerabilities.

So don’t feel so high and mighty with your wall. Walls are annoying to maintain. Also, if you think about it, pretty pointless without rooves. I would know. I practically built the Great Wall of China. Then I was attacked by a load of angry, stealthy and clever Mongolians. Now I have tourists walking all over me and that is not as fun as you think.

I love you –anyone who has ever said that ever

YEAH SURE YOU DO. THAT’S WHAT THEY ALL SAY. THEN THEY LEAVE YOU. THEY  LEAVE YOU SO THAT YOU ARE A SHADOW OF YOUR FORMER SELF.

Anyway, those are the quotes that grind my gears. I really never know how to end my posts, so I'll just leave you with some quotable Bukowski.

I met a genius

today

about 6 years old,

he sat beside me

and as the train 

ran down along the cost

we came across the ocean

and then he looked at me

and said,

its not pretty

- Charles Bukowski

(Comment section has been fixed, so now anyone can blog comment. You should give me validation)

Times I've tried to be organised

I once tried to organize myself by scheduling every moment of my life.

The causal factor to this were three things. The first was that American Pyscho taught me that most important people with successful wall-street jobs, slick haircuts, blackberries and ridiculously white teeth seemed to have had schedules. The second was that I had three assignments due in the next 18hours and I had started on none of them. The third was that I needed to get organised. So instead of starting any of the assignments, I decided to make a schedule to organize the manner in which I would start assignments and my life in general.

Here is an example of one:

The problem with making schedules for yourself is that you always to forget the fact that you're not the latest innovative Apple gadget. You are a sloppy tonne of mess structured by a skeleton. You think too highly of yourself, your productive capacities, your self-discipline, self-control and the anarchic way reality is ordered.

For about a month or so I did stick to my schedule and things were working smoothly. But then the high of being routinely productive wore off and slowly chips started to fall. Concessions were created. Time blended together. The internet existed. Procrastination got the better of me.

In the end my schedule ended up looking like this:

However in all fairness, timetables and schedules just don't work. Cityrail have been attempting to follow schedules and timetables for it's entire career. Go figure the success rate on that one.

Another way I tried to combat my lack of organisation was by  keeping a diary.

The problem with diaries though is that no one really uses them anymore unless you are the CEO of a multimillionare firm, and at the time I was not. So I kept thinking people were judging me when I would retrieve it from my bag to check things.

So instead, I began putting reminders on my mobile of the tasks I needed to complete or plans I had. The problem with that was that during the time I adopted this method I had a shitty Samsung brick as my phone where some of the keys were punched in or not working. This meant that there were parts of my phones I could access and parts I could not. One of the parts I could access was my calender and setting reminders. The parts I couldn't access was changing my reminder alarm to silent, vibrate or something that was not Bohemian Rhapsody.

I also have a habit of keeping my phone in my bra because I never went through puberty properly and girl clothes never have pockets.

As a result stuff like this would happen:

The only good that came out of that was getting so annoyed I smashed my phone. Then I had to buy a new phone with a shitload of gadgets and a built in knife.

My most recent attempt to organize myself was by cleaning my room.

I should probably get back to that.

In which I hate most self-help books

On my shelf there is a copy of 'Eat Pray Love' embarrassingly shoved among a collection of Baby Sitter's club books. It is oil stained, gathering dust and I'm hoping a termite infection will spontaneously grows within it's pages over the years because it's not even worth the effort of throwing away. I bought it because I saw it outside in a bargain bin on a street that was hurling rubbish and homeless people at my face. It was $2, and I was going through period of brutal self-actualization, an existential crisis to Bush-invading-Iraq proportions (in other words I was bored, had just re-watched Fight Club, and not much was going on in my life). The gleaming reviews of how this book was 'empowering and inspiring to all woman' made me think that it would help with the disorientation.

If you haven't read or heard of the book I'll summarise. Imagine a run-of-the-mill story of a bored, over-privileged, narcissistic suburbian mother with little understanding of anything outside her own bubbled reality who decides to take a magical overseas journey of self-discovery in a sweeping Hollywood-esque fashion because she's got too many points on her frequent flyers card. It's basically one of those novels. Those self-indulgent, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, self-help and novels that spans an entire book too long, chock full of diatribe babble and cringe-worthy 'power' words and wisdom the equivalent of an expired pencil case. In many ways it's like this blog, only that most of these books make a shitload of money.

From the selective few self-help books I've read, most of them are full of shit and so hard to swallow. I'm not talking about books which are targeted at specific forms of mental illness written by professionals and based on research. I'm talking about those tacky, opportunistic, pyschobabble books written by motivational speakers or people who've 'gone on a journey', where 'HAPPINESS NOW' or 'BE A BETTER YOU' or 'YOU HAVE THE POWER' as the name. The ones that tell you how to live a 'fuller' life when you've been bogged down by post-modern ennui , coupled with some whimsical but all round boring anecdotes. 

If it works for you, that's fine, go for it, but a part of me can't help but think that there is something disingenuous about creating happiness by molding your lifestyle to a set of standards created by a book instead of finding individualistic solace. Or when you need to constantly 'positively reinforce' yourself to remind yourself that you are the shit.

Sounds more like a coping mechanism.

In which I try my best to conquer negativity

Sometimes (usually when I remember that Game of Thrones has another year until it airs) I can't help but adopt the life philosophy that my life is a toilet and the world is an asshole constantly taking a shit in me without flushing.

If you're a ridiculously optimistic/delusional person yet to be crushed by the weight of the world let me explain to you how this negative mindset works as best as I can.

Negativity is a self-perpetuating manifestation. It's like poverty: it breeds from its vicious cycle, only without all the slave labor. The mind process goes something like this:

Nothing constructive really comes from negativity. It is a comatose state. One of mindless and self-depreciating numbness, where your mind is stuck and spinning on destructive hydraulic mode.

Most people's suggestion to combating the vicious cycle of negativity is through redirection. You redirect your unhappy thoughts with happy thoughts.

However, this technique never really used to worked for me or anyone I knew with the same neurotic tendency. I'd spend more time thinking about how I had to think positive thoughts rather than thinking positive thoughts. The result would be over-analyzing situations to the extent that the mildest of activities would end up looking doomed or futile.

That’s the thing when you’re in a state of vicious cycle of self-hating. The more you try to think happy thoughts or be positive, the opposite effect of what you’re trying to achieve happens.

Soon, I began to realize that my problem wasn't that I was having negative thoughts, it was the fact that I was having thoughts full stop. Over-analysis was the problem. The more people overthink, the more they lose themselves inside the washing machine of their own minds and talk themselves out of things from insecurity. But there is a reason why the saying 'keep it simple, stupid' exists. It's because most of your thoughts are dumb. The solutions isn't redirecting negative thoughts, it's realizing that your head is fundamentally unhinged and squashing the cycle out all together.

Instead, I fought fire with fire. I began to override negative thoughts by loads of concentrated abuse.

People usually end posts like these with something resonating, inspirational, hopeful or at least somewhat motivational. I'm not are how to do that without sounding disingenuous, so I'll just end with saying that I hope this post was somewhat helpful to no one in particular. 

I'm going to make a batch of brownies now.

I am going to become a drug dealer

And then date a crack addict.

My source of riches, love and skinny bitches would be everflowing and invincible.

In which I give a deep and thorough analysis of 'The Hunger Games'

So today I was bored and felt like watching people kill one another for sport. As a result I decided to  download 'The Hunger Games' illegally because I am philosophically against the capitalist notion of art being exploited to procure profits (in layman's terms I am too lazy, poor and amoral to pay for movies).

There were a few obscure things I noticed about the movie.

First was the fact that it was PG-13, even though the movie was essentially a Battle Royale situation with children. People were dying, heads rolling, bodies being decapitated. The dreams, hopes and futures of these poor children were being ended early, severed like metaphorical guillotines, for the sake of sport. It was a reality TV version of Lord of the Flies, except everyone was Piggy. That shit is not PG-13 material. When you're thirteen (or under) the thought of mortality or the bleak twisted animalistic side of human nature isn't being contemplated. In fact, I think I spent majority of my under thirteen years trying to eat the paper cranes my dad used to make for me --that's how little disregard I had for anything.

I wonder how parental guardian would make this movie any less confronting.

Kid: Dad, why is everyone killing each other in cold blood?
Dad: Son, you have to realise that sometimes people can be bad.
Kid: What do you mean?
Dad: Well sometimes, situations dictate that you hurt other people for the sake of your own survival.
Kid: Like you hurting Mummy when she found you in a bed with another Mummy?
Dad: ....eat your popcorn

Despite the fact that the director tried to avoid showing too much gore in the movie due to it's PG-13 rating, there was still a lot bodily fluids being transfer. For example, there was this one particular bit where the annoying blond  love interest of the storyline was trying to help out Jennifer Lawrence's wounds. His job was to apply ointment on her gash but instead he decides to rub it all over forehead repeatedly like a maniac, smearing and spreading more blood across her forehead.

I don't really know if this scene in the movie was supposed to be sweet or romantic or even necessary, but when I was viewing it the words: 'HEPATITIS HEPATITIS HEPATITIS' kept flashing in neon light against the backdrop of my spinning head. Bitch, get your hands away from my wounds. You've been outside running around trying to maim people on an artificially manipulated island for at least a week. When you're in that situation, you've definitely touched a bunch of weird substances organically, accidentally or just for the hell of it. At least go to a clinic before you decide to sensually rub your thumb against my gash and get yourself checked out for diseases. Or use protection. Education people.

And that would be how I would die in a Hunger Game/Battle Royale situation. Disease paranoia. Priorities have always been my strong suit.

Also what the dick was up with this weird three fingered salute?

I get that it's supposed to be a symbolically charged hail Mary gesture encapsulating solidarity and support, but it just reminded me of the Hitler salute. Maybe 'The Hunger Games' world is actually a hypothetical dystopia based on an alternative and speculative timeline where Hitler won. Who knows. (The book readers probably). It'd make sense, because there was this one dude was sporting really weird facial hair throughout the whole movie, and it was distracting because I couldn't grasp it's narrative importance.

I don't know how long it took to shave this beard, but there should be an entire industry dedicated to molding facial hair just like it. In fact, every place should offer a service that moulds facial hair into patterns of your choice. I want a parlour where you can walk inside and ask for the Mona Lisa to be shaved into your chin. It will be a new fashion trend, like bubble pants. Only on your face.

I am more turned on with this concept then you can imagine.

Anyway this wasn't so much of a review as it was evidence that I didn't pay attention to much of the movie due to my habit of blatantly projecting and hypothesizing irrelevant shit. You shouldn't expect any better.

I feel as if I need to justify this blog.

I have to because most bloggers are self-involved assholes who like to put up photos of angry looking mudcakes they've recently baked or dumb pictures of unwearable paper mache clothes made purely out of soy beans. The problem is that I can’t cook and I don’t know how to wear clothes. In a Shakespearian tale, baking would be my literary downfall and protesting pants would be my primary character motive.

Hence the need to justify this blog (with graphs!).

I’ll be frank; I have a pretty fucking mundane life. A metaphor for my life would be the waiting room of an STD clinic that consists only of books entitled: 'the history of grass growing' as distraction material. In other words: uneventful, mildly disconcerting and with a healthy dose of anxiety that you might be HIV positive. Here’s a venn diagram of what makes up majority of my time:

The thing is that most people’s daily lives are pretty banal if you really think about it. Most of us glorify the 1%. The 1% being that one time something amazing happened to you – like that one time I threw accidentally threw a duck at my dad. As a result people are lulled into a false sense of perception that your life is thrilling, glad-wrapped in glory, glamour and g-strings, where you spend most of your time throwing ducks at your dad. Add the lights and cameras of advertising, nonstop social network, James Deen being a pretty decent writer/blogger and you’ve essentially created a generation of people thinking their lives are remarkably unremarkable comparatively.

That’s not the case though.

I am here to break that myth. The difference between me and most people is that I have an overbearing need to share the entirety of my life.

The thing is that there hits a point where people stop giving a shit about what you want to share. If you’ve ever witnessed a cold distant semi-translucent glaze screen over the person you’re conversing with know that that isn’t a mucas infection –you’re just way too self-involved. And probably an asshole.

This basically means that most of your friends get sick of you. While you think all your thoughts are equivalent to the Mona-Lisa or Hegel’s causation theory, they are, in brutal reality, ridiculously unnecessary. The problem is that when you have an overbearing inner monologue with a Scottish accent, like me, bottling in these thoughts are borderline unhealthy. Add onto the fact that your friends are now beginning to avoid conversations with you in a German social isolation process known as 'The Restraining Order', it’s no wonder that terrible things begin to happen to your psychosis.

With no outlet, in real world terms, this manifests in a bad way. Here are a few examples:

·        

Basically I’m doing society a favour by blogging.

There is no alternative.  

Starting this blog is like deciding to start gardening as a hobby.

Nobody really knows how you get to the point where you feel the intrinsic need to take up gardening, but it’s just feels like the natural progression when the cares of the years have worn you down and you’re basically waiting for death. Blogging is the same, but replace a lifetime worth of esteem crushing experience and replace it with a disposition of finding yourself in front of the computer at 3am in the morning, white glow of the screen altering the natural chromosome make up of your facial cells, where you are youtubing ‘animals eating their young’ and you’ve got the same rationale. Between dealing with expectations, society, annoying hipsters and the supermarket running out of Cheerios tonight, this blog was pretty much inevitable.

I’m sorry in advance.