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(continued from over here.)
FRI.22nd JUNE - the stuff that got lost was all really "nihilistic", man, so it was very ironic when I realised that I actually cared about it getting lost. So I'll try & dredge it up - OK I was saying I got this CRISIS OF PURPOSE going on, see it used to be that we played rock'n'roll, that was just what we (me & my friends) did, one did not have to discuss it or intellectualise it in any way, Rock bands were just the units that we gravitated into in the way that most normal people sooner or later gravitate into, what do you call those things, you know, semi-permanent sexually-determined 2-person units...some time in the last couple years though it all started to dry up, people got diverted into other things that took up all their time - jobs, relationships, or in most cases (including my own), narcotics addiction - & I have only recently emerged into the light to find that ALL THE STUFF I USED TO TAKE FOR GRANTED IS MISSING. So I was kind of sniffing around for...I don't know, just new stuff to be interested in. The obvious thing is to undertake some kind of formal study - it would probably benefit me, Christ knows I'm far more ignorant than I usually manage to pass off as (it's not put to the test very often or very seriously), but the truth is that if I did that I'd just be immersing myself in the exact stuff I already decided I have little or no use for. FUCK culture & society & everything, that's exactly the stuff that I fled from in horror. I went on (as I recall) to bemoan my sentimental attachments to blah blah de blah & yada yada yada, 'cause these minor pleasures that I kept myself hooked on were the only things that kept me attached to a world that I fundamentally hated...man I was on a roll, it was good stuff. I think I concluded by saying OK maybe I should just go & live in a hut in the mountains, my main impulse is after all to get the fuck away from other people & that, one supposes, would be a healthier (less painful in the long run) way to do it than sticking fuckin' chemicals in my arm every day & cultivating the society of other people who do that ... (Has everyone gone yet?)
MONDAY 25th JUNE - I still didn't tell you what happened to [name excised], did I? Last month our practice rm. was raided by the police, he'd been growing pot up there (I "didn't know about it"), shortly after that he told me he thought we should move out. I said Sure, 'cause it was costing too much now that I'd found a house & was paying rent there, + anyway our rock activities had gotten to be so sporadic as to make it not worth paying for any practice rm., overpriced or no. Anyway so I took most of my stuff out of there around the time we played that last show & I haven't seen him since. I also found out that none of the rent $$$ I'd paid (& I had paid it, got no way of proving it but I did) ever made it as far as the owner of the bldng or her representatives. Oops. I'm suppose to go to a justice of the peace & get a signed affidavit (sp?) to the effect of y'know, "I paid rent at a rate of blah-blah-blah between the period of blah-blah & I was under the impression that blah-blah-blah-blah-blah" & then I gotta show it to the guy & he'll let me get my stuff back. But the combination of my reluctance to go out & do any stuff where you've gotta deal with humans & the non-urgent nature of the things I left in the bldng (I kind of need that Steppenwolf single though) means I have not gotten round to it yet. Meanwhile, where is [name excised] ? Is he hiding from me? Is he in jail? I don't know.
THURS. 28th JUNE '01 - Yo, WHO SEZ there's nuthin to do? you can always (for inst.) write a letter to the paper, 'cause there's some dumm-ass little thing worth doing that about pretty much every day. So today for the 1st time ever in my life I writ a letter to the ed. of the ODT - response to Frank Haden's "Living Language" column which if you don't know it is one of those cranky-old-geezer columns that attack decadent modern values as reflected in decadent modern language-use, there's 1 on every provincial newspaper I'm sure. Anyway today our man was saying he was super tickled by this hot discov. in the not-his-bag-usually world of teen slang - dig, he'd just found out that "the backwards-baseball-cap & oversize trousers boys" (word's MOOKS i believe) have "reclaimed" the word "gay" to mean "dumm", "crappy", "wankeresque", whatever. 'Cause you know what a major deal "gay" is to these guys, it's supposedly 1 of their most favourite werdz & they can't use it any more 'cause of those pesky sodomites. So I had to write this letter explaining in a cold & patronising tone that seeing as how the mooks were not in fact "reclaiming" it in the true sense of "just get[ting] the word back to use with its proper meaning (sic)" (yeah & i actually said "(sic)" there, haw haw haw, that was SWEET) but in fact investing it w/ a new & deliberately offensive slang meaning, there really appeared to be little to applaud from the POV of the true champion of "correct English usage". Boy that was FUN, maybe I'll become a major NUISANCE LETTER-TO-THE-ED. WRITER.
THURS. 5th JULY - Good news for all the Axemen fanz out there, all 2 of you - the SleekBott page is back up. Go look, go buy stuff.
SAT 7th JULY - A sad piece of news that filtered down to where I live today - the death of BBC Radiophonic Workshop electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire who made the (still spooky after 20 or 30-something years of overexposure) theme music of Doctor Who and lots of other stuff for the BBC. One of my favourite pieces of music by her is called 'Great Zoos of the World', and it's made of tape looped noises or something of animal noises all echoed and stuff. She made lots more great stuff & I just wish I'd heard more of it ( = Radio NZ, please do a tribute programme!). Read her obituary here.
MONDAY 9th JULY '01 - hey TVNZ you suck for paying real money to fuckin' foreigners for STINKING FAECES like "Something For The Weekend" & "Yanky Panky" just 'cause (presumably) they're "proven overseas" but SHITCANNING "Back Of The Y Masterpiece Theatre" on whatever grounds of obscenity(?), grossness(?), actually being FUNNY (?), who knows...you people just SUCK. Yeah I know "they" won't be reading this but if you see "them" you oughta TELL 'EM FROM ME. Anyway does anyone know why "B.O.T.Y" didn't play last week? I was SO looking forward to that (seen it when it was on Triangle when I lived up there in AK so I already know it's ONLY THE FUNNIEST N.Z. SHOW EVER MADE) & then what did they put on instead without even explaining why, "Dharma & Greg", oh man I was so slutted out I produced an automatic weapon & shot my TV into a smoking pile of jagged splinters & then killed my flatmates & my girlfriend & the dog & the cats before turning the gun on myself. If it's not on again this week I'm definitely going to write a letter to the paper....(BTW did they print that last one I writ? If they did I never saw it.)......Hey anyway - today I just enrolled for my 1 little universe city paper - actually my 3rd foot-in-the-water of tertiary edumacation (it's bin many years tho') - my overwhelming feelings about it are still that it is a waste of time & an ideological copout - I know I'm ignorant & aimless & that left to my own devices I get nothing done - the perverse satisfaction in the knowledge of being an underachiever isn't enough any more, y'know? - but mainly what you learn in any university course that isn't directly vocational training is (1) sophistry & (2) the ability to show off about "difficult"-sounding books you've read. And, y'know, BFD, I can already do that stuff. O pleeze someone write to me & try & say something encouraging pro- or anti- , c'mon please?
TUES. 10th JULY - I oughta be at my 1st lecture right now but as you can see I am not. I got here on time & everything but because I had no idea how one goes about finding out where lectures take place I just sort of raced around in aimless panic for a while - I am terrified of crowds & of speaking to strangers so I certainly wasn't going to ask anyone - 5 minutes past the hr. I just gave up on the whole idea. That's how I do things, aren't you glad you're not me.
THURS. 12th JULY - Hey people actually read this shit, what a terrifying thought. (Thank you Hamish & Dan for yr responses to my
"should I go back to school" crisis - if nothing else these clarified for me the silliness of treating the matter as a "crisis" in the 1st place)(Also, Hamish told me that PHIL105 is known to be both the EASIEST & the most POINTLESS paper you can do here...Cool! I'm "there", dude!).
FRI. 13th JULY - I just made it to my 1st, should've been 2nd, lecture, & it was like possibility #2 of the 2 projected versions of what I feared it would be like, i.e. it was just pounding really simple ideas into the ground to the extent that you think, Oh shit I must be missing some IMPORTANT SUBTLETIES. (Poss. proj. #1 would've been worse: hi-density barrage of words & ideas that you'd actually have to think about what they mean). So, duh (ain't even the word). I guess I can hang with it. But yeah I c'n see what you mean about EASY/POINTLESS.
MON. 16th JULY - some stuff's happening that I can't be bothered telling you about yet. It's all cool...well sorta...MAIN IMPORTANT DETAIL as far as I am concerned I am now FREE & SINGLE & DISENGAGED just like I supposedly want to be, I guess that's good. Anyway Maryann & me are still gonna be doing this site together, that's also good. More specific personal details I'm not ready to write about yet & anyway I suppose the whole matter of no particular importance to you. Unless yr a girl who wants to get with me that is. In which case - that's now feasible, although I'd say (logistic reasons for a start) not very fucking likely
WEDNES. 18th JULY - It was pretty weird today 'cause Jane (my flatmate, 1 of my best friends anywhere) didn't even know we'd broke up 'til she read about it on here. I felt dumm for not having told her but y'know. It's all sorta weird...living in the same house still & stuff...You wanna know the truth? OK here it is real simple - I DON'T LIKE IT.
SUN. 22nd JULY - man that was kind of bad timing - my mother came & stayed & we'd decided we would not tell her we had broke up & would just try & act normal...I didn't handle it very well, it caused me actual physical pain if you wanna know the truth. Having dinner w/ Mum & she's thinking, Oh Maryann's so nice, it's so good he's got such a nice girlfriend...not knowing...boy it was unpleasant. Also the whole time she was here it rained & was really cold.
THURS. 26th JULY - I'm kind of feeling constipated re: what I can write freely about here any more, now that I know that more than like 2 or 3 of my friends read this. (Hits = double[!] figures every day, hoo hah! Our mysterious new referrer - links page from Snapper fansite...I don't even know who does this site but it looks remniscent of Hamish Noonan's style as seen on the High Tension House site. Same sorta taste in music & stuff in evidence - political links suggesting the same. It's not him, tho, pretty sure. But yeah whoever does this site - yr site is cool, Snapper are cool, thank you for the link...Anyway he/she/they/whoever include this among their 'literary' links, along w/ Kathy Acker, Philip K. Dick, Maryann, & a guide to online slash fiction). So, gee, I'll try & come up w/ something 'literary' for ya but the stuff that's weighing on me the most...kind of can't discuss. I mean it'd probably bore ya anyway...but it's frustrating, you can't really write a completely honest account of anything, anywhere - even if it's for good reasons, you don't wanna hurt your friends' feelings, you don't wanna describe people's illegal or secret activities - the whole value doing an online diary seemed to have is compromised. Yeah well. I got Liz Mathews' new fanzine ROBOT THEORY (PO Box 68506 Newton, Auckland, Aotearoa/NZ) (I don't know how much it's supposed to cost, you could email her & find out) off Maryann yesterday & was all inspired by it, going Yeah see of COURSE you can just just write anything, the way it occurs to you, PUNK ROCK IST NICHT TOT, all publishing should be treated as being as ephemeral or permanent as you need it to be when yr doing it...I know I'm 38 & writing a little photocopied fanzine would seem dumm (doing a website about, UUUHHH, NUTHIN is cool tho)...yeah but Liz's fanzines are always great, she dashes stuff down without thinking about whether it's going to be cool or not & that's obviously WHY it's naturally GONNA be cool...I wish I could do that.
(later) H. Noonan re: the Snapper site - "Yeah that Snapper site is Elizabeth Kane's. Little eerie that you mention the similiarity with (the hopelessly outdated) HTH site 'cos they were both done before we'd met each other." So there I go. Hey thank you Liz for linking my site even though it has made me scared of writing any stuff any more. + anyone reading this should go look @ her site because (1) Snapper are great, obviously, & (2) she has the most amazing LINKS PAGES.
This diary's started being about all this shit I had NO intention of writing about when I 1st started doing this thing, jesus. Contrary to the SPECIFIC intention of doing the thing in the 1st place. It was going to replace dope & talking about how depressed I was & apathy & cynicism. & y'know, it was supposedly going to be about music & stuff. I am actually still interested in music, you know. But it hasn't just automatically re-assumed the importance it used to have in my life, you have picked up on that I'm sure.
Yeah & I don't think they printed my letter to the ed. But I don't know, I didn't look.
You know what else, I decided to go back to school. On a pretty modest level, i.e. doing 1 paper (philosophy 105, Critical Thinking), it's sort of an acceptable level of reintegrating myself back into society to some extent without doing anything remotely useful. Which was what I was looking for I think.
To More important matters then - did you know I've never kept any kind of inventory of my record collection, ever? In fact I've never had a clue how many records I've owned, even approximately (can't count too good). The other night, then, I started on an alphabetical rundown of my singles collection (easiest place to start 'cause most of 'em are already in alphabetical order already) - I'll post the results here so you can, y'know, check out my stuff. If you wanna come round & steal them I live at 1 Oates St., Roslyn, Dunedin.
(the list-so-far - it's like this)
Oh yeah & I got the scoop on "Back Of The Y" (thanks Jon) - turns out it's NOT TVNZ's fault , it's the YMCA who are raisin' a stink about the back of their gymnasiums being associated with (whatever it is they're being associated with). Curse those Village People!
Hey anyone who I sent that petition about bonsai kittens to, uh you probably figured for yr self that it was a hoax. I didn't...blame Maryann & her sister 'cause THEY believed it & I just thought, oh well OK if you say so (I didn't even look at the site before passing on the petition, having now done so I hope I would've figured it fairly swiftly, because it's pretty patently absurd) (yeah but I kind of thought Net Authority was 4-real too...).
I'm in Arc cafe, they're playing Bjork. As they do in cafes, y'know. It's not making me scream & cover my ears, oh no, could I be getting habituated? Damn, it's a important aspect of my "persona" that I don't "understand" music like this. My hate is not as strong as it was when I was young! the thought makes me sad.
Yeah I know like there's not other stuff to write about than my own stupid life, that's the main thing I oughta derive from Liz's zine, yeah I know. (Falls silent.)
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