Mutant Olsen Twins

Welcome back! To you, to me, to the written word which then becomes the read word by you and the spoken word by my friend Ben because he’s too dim witted to read like everybody else. I like to takes this crapportunity to speak about a recent tragedy. My life without alcohol. Ok maybe not completely without alcohol. I mean, come on, I’m not Batman. That guy’s like on call like all the time. He touches a drop of clean skin wine and he puts the entire city of Gotham and the mercy of unmarked, unchecked thuggery buggery. As for me, let’s assume that I’m on my 6^th beer, each beer with alternating chasers of straight Glen Fiddich and bottom shelf cab merlot, and I get a call from the commissioner to go defend city hall from international cross dressing mega bandits, chances are no-one’s going to bat an earlobe when I simply respond with, “wrong number pal”.

So here I am, stone cold sober on the hottest day of the year and nary a Carona raping lime wedge in sight. Like I said. Tragedy. I’m here to protest that there’s a reason alcohol has been enjoyed before history started becoming chronicled. It’s fucking… awesome. Perhaps a little too awesome for its smug self. Subtle and deserving in its smugness might I add. You see, it’s bottled awesome. And when you drink the contents of bottled awesome, well it doesn’t take a puke in a handbag to realise that awesomeness is now inside you.

However it’s awesomeness with an expiry. Not to mention the price you pay to get the awesome and the price you pay the next day in any number of other ways. Be it porcelain hugging “butterflies are too noisy” hangover. Or be it the cost of your pride for making poor overweight practice girl Jennifer walk the hall of shame at 7:46am in your shared house while you’re one successful flatmate Brendan is getting ready for his banking job all the while nodding disapprovingly at you while you lie in your 2 month old sheets, smelling your fingers and eating stale corn chips that you’re quite certain fell out of her hair during a courtship rife with rank and unspoken sweaty horror.

With that said… (sorry, I can still imagine Ben reading this out loud…”wif dat sed”). So ah, yeah, look, they can’t all be winners. Now here’s where I would go on about the heavenly joys of booze but that’s a song you’ve heard and a dance you’ve witness before. I shall never force you through it again. So I have naught but the choice to continue discrediting our friend and saviour, alcohol.

During this last week, where I only got drunk one night and mildly tipsy another (seriously, that’s considered a dry week folks), I’ve become reacquainted with a person long since forgotten. Me. And my God what a stark raving disappointment I turn out to be. Did you know, sober Shane, is completely incapable of contributing to a conversation. He can’t think, create, focus, drive or be interesting in any conceivable or inconceivable way. (all of you who have the Prince’s Bride on your mind right now, kudos to you… now lend me your ears). I’m watching more tv than I ever have before. I’m hungry more often. I don’t play guitar or write. I smile at least 80% less and I’ve forgotten what my laugh actually sounds like, (probably just as well as I’ve been told it sounds like the Olsen twins if they assimilated into one mutant person). I just sit and stare at tv programs I hate and not even notice the poor hapless hours of my life falling through the cracks into wasted oblivion… again.

The wisest of you will interpret these words of mine as just a bit of guff for shits and giggles. The worst of you will say I have a drinking problem. To that I say, read the previous paragraph again you naff. Clearly I have a SOBER problem.

Bill Gates and alphabet soup.

And Bill Gates said, let there be blog.

Ok, perhaps it wasn’t the man who has more money and more pants than Scrooge McDuck but I’m sure he was part of it… or at the very least spying on the idea’s inception through the mini-camera installed on all his products which direct feed back to his space mountain lair on Mars. Hi Bill. How are ya? Enjoying your spying are you? Still have to pay for sex? I thought so.

…that was weird, I just had to reboot my computer after that last sentence.

Blog is a contraction of weblog and to weblog is to take a thought, type it up, publish it and then obsess manically over how many hits it’s got. Then you realise what a tool you’re being and log off the computer and log onto a bar. The thing is, at the bar, you get felt up by a midget in a polar bear costume, just the bottom half of it, and you can’t wait to blog about. And end scene.

I’ve often wondered, since about eight minutes ago, what did people do before the internet? Was there a pre-interent blog equivalent?

Some would suggest it was the Diary. To those people I say fooey because Diaries were always kept under lock and key or sheet and pillow as it were. The diary was the heavily clothed nun’s apprentice while the blog is a Surfers Paradise tube top scragg in logic defying ‘fuck me’ boots. Yeah, we get it Cynthia, you’re a platinum blonde with a horrendous lip gloss to non lip gloss ratio, the letters OMG worn out on your pink Motorola’s keypad and a fake tan so orange that people either speed up or slow down because they think you’re about to turn red.

So did people just type out their fancy on paper and leave copies of it scattered around town? Send a copy of it out to hundreds of strangers? Calligraphic graffiti? Sky writing?

The more I think about it, (which is, to be honest, not a whole lot as I’m quite sleepy), the more I feel there actually was no medium available for the prolific pen master to post his or her rants and raves for all to see and quietly judge. And for that reason, people weren’t lulled into the flawed ideal that’s ok to blurt out one’s opinion on absolutely everything. There was more control, more respect. And the ones that were so good at conveying the King’s language in print, were able to do it professionally, therefore, most things you read back then had exceptional content and phrasing mixed with seamless wordsmithing.

The act of blogging has given wide berth to the literary equal of effluent and allowed rant cowboys like me, who don’t even know that wordsmithing isn’t even a word, to spread like the spilt vat of alphabet soup that we are.

old school...

No, not old "skool" you pale lame gangsta wannabe. You're not ghetto, you're not streets and your low slung baggy pants will only slow your escape as I chase you down and beat you like the slave to misguided trends that you are.

Settle down Shane. As if you would beat up a gangsta wannabe. You'd just blog about it.

I'm talking old school because, while at my course this evening, I realised why it's so easy for me to learn now compared to when I was in school.

This year, I've been learning a little about xhtml, css, media manipulation and other webdesign related topics. I'll tell you what I have NOT had to learn:

• How to sit up straight.
• How to not walk pigeon toed and knock kneed.
• How to talk and interact with a girl.
• How to get out of triple dunce in school yard handball.
• How to conceal my crush on Melody Baker.
• How to prevent my ass getting handed to me by the grade twelves.
• How to avoid a raging and uncontrollable erection during speech and drama class.

Being free from all these lessons that weren't in text books has given me unparalleled focus. I honestly feel like I'm copying and pasting the lessons straight into my brain and I can 'ctrl f' it whenever I want.

Sweet.

(Melody Baker - I just realised your name, taken literally, implies you bake melodies! I'm a musician too!)