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!)

I’m on the train… and I hate John Mayer.

Fact: you say I’m on a train if you’re heading somewhere social however you say I’m on the train if you’re heading to work.

Like a child unwrapping a toy remote control car on Christmas Day, I opened my laptop this morning with wide eyed ambition and youthful exuberance. Unfortunately, all this positivity was hacked mercilessly to death by the scerated broadsword of reality. It’s another Monday morning, absolutely identical to every other Monday morning in every way. And as the train pulls away from Ballarat station at precisely 7:46am en route for the hive, Melbourne, the revelation insists itself upon me that the toy remote control car was a lovely gesture, but the batteries weren’t included. Last year, I was doing backstroke in woman shaped pools of beer and scotch and fun. Now I’m barely treading water in suits and budgets and targets and I’m pretty sure I’ll soon be dead from drowning in all these ridiculously misguided metaphors.

“stay positive”. That’s what you need to do big Shane-o. Stay positive. That’s the key. Wise advice but as I sit here amongst the biological droids on their way to their respective nine to fives, I’m starting to wonder, (in fact, now I am in full wonderment), if the “stay positive” approach is the long term solution or just a disease soaked bandaid of inevitable demise. If it is indeed the key, then it’s the key to a door I don’t want to fucking open. A door that leads to a room of suppression and misapprehension. My dear friends will know I perform at my optimum when I’m fired up and angry. From doing the dishes to driving my car, from competitive games to competitive sports, from the boardroom to the bedroom, I do it best when I’m angry, (that’s right babe, you’re beaten battered and bruised and you’re welcome). I’m a big fan of anger. I find it provides the necessary and easily accessible framework for powerful focus. You know what doesn’t help me focus. Yeah that’s right.

So the alternative to staying positive is to remain outright fucking livid, irate and/or any other ill-tempered mood that gives you the sort of drive and focus that could help you punt a fluffy penguin 100 yards. You’re flying now you fat, lazy, overdressed beak donning bird imposter! No amount of staying positive would’ve made fluffy fly. Chalk another one up for anger.

It’s by no means the best way to go about things. But right now, I need to use whatever methods I have at my disposal. If anger can power the Shangatrain (lame) to the last stop, then I shall embrace it. After all, we can’t all be perfect… like John Mayer, sleeping on a bed made out of thousand dollar notes made of satin and being woken up each morning by a bevy of supermodels gently gnawing at the genitals. God I hate John Mayer.

Shane of Train and the anonymous funk.

So here’s my idea. When you buy your train ticket, you are not given an actual ticket. Instead, you’re given a small beeper like device that you clip onto your collar. Why Shane? What’s the basis of your proposal? Is it some ingenious method of researching public transport data? Are you doing this in the pursuit of a more efficient commuting future for your fellow man, woman and grommet?

Well, as the invasive and anonymous gaseous filth born in the bowels of another passenger slowly washes over and in my defenceless nostrils, I can safely and securely announce that NO! My idea is not intended for anything so grand. The purpose, the ONLY purpose, is for this beeper to start beeping and shrieking (with as much frenzied electronic franticness as its tiny battery will allow) when the person wearing it… farts.

I’m completely fed up with commencing each and every day by being unwillingly subjected to an onslaught of human waste. An armada of ass acrobatics the likes of which should never be smelt. Poo samples. Because that’s what a fart is. It’s shit, molecularly altered to take flight in gaseous form and relocate from a strangers ass, down the aisle and into your nose, ears, lungs and perhaps even your eyeballs.

Here’s why the beeper would work. The device would automatically calibrate to the user’s scent and instantly recognise the aerial discharge of said user and not the scent of a nearby passenger, thus eliminating the ‘blame it on the dog’ defence. Upon detecting a user offence, the beeper would set off in a pitch and frequency that draws attention of everybody in the carriage to the filthy offender. The fear and shame of drawing attention to oneself in this way will deter most potential sample stirrers.

But what about the few that have no shame and will not fear the beeper. And what about all us non-offenders? As we sit peacefully and respectfully, will we have to endure the sounds of beepers for our journey? I’m glad you asked. Both concerns are valid but in actual fact, they cancel each other out. Initially, non-offenders will become more and more irate at the beeping. So much so, that the stares, glares and potential beatings from non-offenders will scare the fart mongers’ sphincters shut tight. So you see, even though some punks have no shame and don’t fear the beeper, they will indeed fear the thrashing they might receive from other passengers. Ergo, no offending takes places and no beeping will have to be endured by the respectfully clenched commuter.

This is the way of the future as it has been predicted by famous philosopher, Nostrilledanus.

Funny the way it is.

Culture. Even public transport has it’s own culture. I’ve commuted by car or foot ever since I’ve had a need to commute. So now that I ride a train two hours every day, the public transport culture has been a real eye opener for me… because until now, I’ve been walking and driving with my eyes… closed?

Back when the earth was still cooling and I attended primary school, I rode the bus to and from school, (school = a place where every other child on earth who wasn’t scrawny and so pale he was transparent would go to endlessly taunt scrawny transparent kids). The bus hierarchy was simple. Cool kids down the back, below the radar in the middle and geeks, nerds, nannas and myself up the front. In fact I was so uncool, I was sometimes the hood ornament and spent the afternoon walk from the bus stop to home carefully removing nanna’s spitballs from the back of my head and thinking of all the comebacks I should have said at the time. Comebacks like, “that last spitball was a great one old woman… but now this is happening” and throw her bitter chalky skinned ass off the moving bus. And on that note, young bullies be warned. Choose your next victim wisely as he may just grow up to be 6’7” and over 100kg with a temper to rival that of a thousand over cooked Gordon Ramsays with an unyielding penchant for revenge whereby the punishment supersedes the crime by a universally epic margin. One poor chap has learnt that the hard way in 1999 and now his nose is still on his face but he has to do a handstand to smell something.

The earth has since cooled, the core stable, the mantle restless but restrained and the crust dormant and docile. And with that comes my transition to my thirties. My how the hierarchy has changed. Recently I’ve taken to riding in the very front carriage of the train, (toward the far end of the platform). Initially I did this to avoid the fat, wheezing, anti-punctual yet highly perspirant seat molesters who would turbo waddle onto the train just as the doors closed and sit right next to me. Now I realise there’s more than just the extra 40m walk keeping these poor soon to be dead burger king and queens away from me. Every day, without fail, I see the same business men and women sitting in exactly the same seats in the front carriage. This is their commute too. Week in, week out. And weak out. No messing about. The front carriage has an unspoken prerequisite for occupancy: Treat others with respect and dignity and accept nothing but the same in return. There is no bending of this mission statement. This is the front carriage culture (F.C.C.) and today I witnessed a series of delft moves to seamlessly eject a young man who was still operating under the bus backseat spitball guidelines. He entered the almost full carriage, loudly speaking into his mobile phone about how ‘wasted’ he got last night. To avoid the whole pot calling kettle black routine, may I make it clear I have no problem that he got wasted last night. It’s just the manner/volume in which he chose to communicate it given his surroundings. Conflicting with the F.C.C. and still on the phone, he approached several spare seats but each time, the seat was either occupied by a briefcase or a comment to the tune of, “my wife is sitting here”. Clearly she wasn’t sitting there. No-one was sitting there. But this punk didn’t dare put the lie on trial. It then dawned on me that I had unwittingly gained acceptance by the pride. Perhaps by the honourable way in which I conducted myself. Or more likely because no other lion was big enough to challenge. Either way, my commute is more often than not, free from the great unwashed.

Funny the way the hierarchy has shifted from the back of the bus to the front of the train. It also means I was actually cool back in my school days too. I was just ahead of my time. Fuck you Nan.

Insomnimaniac

I'm lying in bed... which is a good start because if I was standing up in bed or doing capoeira in bed or hunting quail... well that wouldn't be conducive with sleep.

I've tried counting sheep but all I can think about is how immeasurably insane the first person was who tried to do that in the ridiculous hope it would actually help him sleep! I wonder how man other animals he tried counting before the sheep. Perhaps he started with Dodo birds. Once he travelled the world to find they were to soon be extinct which made counting them exhausting, he decided to just count the sheep in his yard. He only had one sheep but fuck he was tired! Sad that the poor bastard thought that sheep counting and not globe trotting was responsible for his eventual slumber.

...and segway...

For some reason, right now, right at this very moment, I feel we're being watched from our relatives at the far reaches of the galaxy on a smouldering and ruined planet. You see, they sent us here thousands of years ago to colonise this planet and prepare the place for the arrival of the rest of the race.

Sorry guys, we kinda fucked up. Hope you sent your A-team somewhere else!

...and away we go!

03/01/2009

It is here on this day, the 3rd of January 2009, that I find myself inevitably drawn to the idea of keeping a diary, a journal, a log. The memory splinter nagging the flesh of my thoughts at this moment is that of past attempts at keeping a journal. I first tried when I turned 13yrs old in 1991. It was called “Shane Butler – The Teenage Years”. I would’ve called said literary diatribe “Shane Butler - The Wonder Years” but that didn’t seem appropriate. Not because of certain Fred Savage television show but because my childhood was littered not as much with wonder as it was with a series of explosive and awkward growth spurts. “Dear Diary, today I grew another couple of metres and continue to resemble a giraffe on rollerskates”.

The diary was, of course, pen and paper. Only the wealthy had home computers. Laptops were of a size rivalling that of a small sedan and the internet, let alone the term ‘blog’ was still something familiar only to Buck Rogers. For those of you familiar with my munted concentration span and lack of self discipline, it will come as no surprise that “Shane Butler – The Teenage Years” last less than two weeks and the diary was used as kindling for the living room fireplace. Righteous.

It wasn’t until 2006 and the arrival of Myspace.com that the need to document my day to day to week to month to year to marriage to second marriage to mental asylum administration became too bullying to ignore anymore. With Myspace came the trend that is weblog or blog as it’s more commonly known. Although blogging sounds like something you should do with a girlie magazine and a gym sock, it is in fact something far more unwarranted. It’s a digital voice for the whinging masses and it’s proof read by naught but bias. I’m indeed aware of the inherent hypocrisy when complaining about whinging. And now that I’ve decided to publish this diary entry on the net, it’s hypocrisy squared.

All that really matters is, last night, I accidentally saw up a young woman’s dress. Take THAT Fred Savage!

Schoolies Go Home.

Schoolies week. It’s like Surfers Paradise is a healthy prostate and 22,000 school leavers are cancer. It’s a plague, an epidemic, an unholy, unwarranted and unwelcome invasion of stupid and horny boys and girls who can only muster a backbone if in a group of at least 6. It’s 2008, over 20 years of schoolies week is behind us and the best you can come up with from the back window of an overloaded Camry wagon is “yeaaah! Whoooo!”. I fucking hate you you stupid fucking schoolie and if I could run as fast as that Camry, you’d currently be in the predicament of finding a new way to chew food and sit down since I stuffed your head up your own ass! Just imagine how messy a sneeze would be!

What I find sadistically amusing is one of the poor kids has been struck down by meningococcal disease. Oh sweet terrible justice how I love thee. And the symptoms? I can barely type them out because I need my hands to stop my sides from splitting with evil laughter. They include, headaches and vomiting. Well that’ll sort it out then! The measures of prevention include good hygiene and avoiding sharing drink cups! Oh… my… god! Can you hear that, schoolie? Can you hear it? It’s the sound of your worthy demise.

Schoolies week is supposed to be the Australian version of America’s Spring Break. But the imagery conjured from Spring Break is that of tanned bodies in wet t-shirt competitions while schoolies week imagery better resembles a pimply faced Victorian throwing up at a bus stop. Well you wretched batch of smelly, unwashed upgraded monkeys; one of your own has been sacrificed to a Brisbane hospital and the Grim Reaper might just be lurking in that bush you’re about to dry hump each other in. Headaches and vomiting. Yes, it could be the booze, but it might, it just might be Death and his name is meningococcal.

Take the hint. Go home. Live.

Shane’s Anatomy

Alcohol abuse. It’s a serious problem facing today’s society. Well, perhaps face down. In a puddle of it’s own urine. Outside 7/11 at 4am. However, I feel it’s only a problem if you wake up on the wrong side of the puddle or live too far away from a 7/11 or 24hr servo. In my experience, far more good has come from being completely one eyed and legless than harm. Yes, it’s true I can’t hold a lighter steady enough to avoid setting myself on fire anymore. Yes, it’s true my liver has attempted to escape my body on more than one occasion. Yes it’s true my memory has deteriorated faster than Tatu’s music career yet I still maintain boozing it right up is the shiznit. Yes, I’m far too white and lame to churn out words like shiznit and bidness but I care not. And why? Because the last drop of my fifth beer just now was delicious but also inhibition destroying and confidence building! See? Do you see how this works?

Ok well I can sense a bunch of you shaking your head, rolling your eyes and/or internalising a negative response to what I’m preaching. To this I have two things to say. One: Internalise more, no-one wants your opinion anyway. Stop boring everybody with your incessant, nonsensical and sleep invoking miseratic musings. And Two: You’re my facebook friend. And if you are indeed my facebook friend, we’ve shared a bottle of scotch, wine or a carton at some point anyway. In fact, the booze might have been the thing that brought us together in the first place. If this is not the case for you, it will be or you can just go ahead and “remove friend” right now.

Friendships, love affairs, marriages, families, empires… all these things can be made possible by the mutual love of a nerve numbing cocktail or ten. Hell, I’m a September baby for Christ’s sake! Which means I can think of two people who had a pretty kick ass new years eve party nine months earlier! Now excuse me while I crack open my sixth and finish writing my business proposal to open the first ever Alcoholic Exhibitionists club. Don’t worry, it’ll be walking distance to Hungry Jacks.

Yeah, miseratic isn’t a word. Well done. Now internalise that shit like I told you.

11 minutes at an internet cafe

here we go, 10 minutes 50 seconds left, no time to spell check, no time to refine or revise and there's certainly no reason to call this sweat stained terminal out the front of Woolworths a CAFE! But I guess Internet Cafe sounds marginally more appealing than Internet Station of Communal Crapulence!

On the subject of meatballs, I've discovered I don't know how to walk on escalators that aren't working. And I don't think I'm alone... damn, just took a phone call and wasted 2 minutes of my Crapulence credit... Yeah so I approached the inoperable escalator to this very shopping centre knowing full well the fact that the escalator isn't working simply means it's a set of STAIRS. Well whoever is at the controls of my woefully inept body refused to adhere to the navigators sensible instructions and prepared my person for standard escalator boarding procedure. I approached with caution... put my left hand on the rubber railing which of course wasn't moving... put my right foot on the first step which of course wasn't moving... prepared for the mini-momentum adjustment that you do usually in such scenarios, like KnightRider boarding the back of that moving truck (yeah I know the car is called Kit and not Knightrider but I'm trying to relate to the masses...nerd)... and of course once I had committed to the text book escalator boarding procedure, I tripped over nothing but my own idiocy and fell over... fell over on the stationary staircase. You've done it haven't you. Haven't you? Answer me! Answer me before my time runs ou

Application Complication of the Nation

Another human and I have been looking for a cosy little place to call home for over two weeks now. Because of my fear of spontaneous combustion upon entry of a bank, credit union or any other lender, I find myself flailing in the neglected filthy storm water drain that is the rental market. Oh, the 'human' is a female by the way. No, not a girlfriend so don't worry ladies, your free pass to ride the Shane train is still valid but you'll probably get more thrills folding said free pass into a paper plane. (Ego followed by self pity, I am douche).

ANYWAY, the Brazilian rainforests' worth of paperwork one must labour over ranges from the next to non-existent to the far beyond outrageous. The names of the following real estate agencies (as opposed to pretend estate) have been changed to protect the innocent and in turn, the shamelessly guilty too.

A massive shout-out goes to "We Love Commandment Breakers" Realty. We lodged an application at their office today, although it was less of an application and more of a literary shrug of casual endorsement. I'm not even sure if I had to fill out my name! I'm certain they must have rental properties out there presently occupied by shopping trolleys and abandoned Christmas trees as even those inanimate objects could've successfully negotiated what can only loosely be described as an 'application form'. Love their work, or more accurately, their terrific ability to avoid creating any with their crayons and cardboard paper.

Then we have the agency driving the bulldozer and holding the chainsaw. I've never dealt with such a remorseless bunch of oak-mongerers as the ones at LJ Prostitute. If you had a little trouble breathing today, it's because I asked for an application form and forty-thousand hectares of oxygen producing trees disappeared. Their application form, or High Court Trial if I may, appeared to be in hieroglyphic Latin braille and made the Beijing yellow pages look like a pamphlet. Apparently the current version of the form has already been truncated from it's former horrific glory. LJ Filthy Prostitute management have omitted the following from it's applications:

• Mothers maiden name in binary code: _________
• Fold or Scrunch (please circle only one)
• May we treat you like the personified pond scum of the earth?: Yes/Yes/Yes (you may circle more than one)
• Your previous address in your previous life: _________
• I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 1000000: _________

Thanks to my recent experiences, I'm thinking of opening a rental agency where the property is awarded to the person who can do the best Daffy Duck voice. You know what, even a solid hi five ought to seal the deal!

"Shane Butler Realty - All unsuccessful applicants can crash at my place!"