The muthafreakin' realness or similar.

Hi, is this That's Mister Nora to you Sonny from http://cremated.blogspot.com? How are you today?

'Tragically sober', thanks for asking. Apart from that, today I am obviously pretty pumped about the upcoming Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Conference (www.ttcus.com/uav) in Arlington. Like I don't want to brag or anything but "This comprehensive conference will examine the gamut of UAV programs, platforms, and missions and identify the hottest issues in the industry that are calling for your organization’s involvement."

I don't know about you but my organisation has totally been ravaged by epileptic seizures of excitement in anticipation of the Hottest Issues in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.


Whoa! You just came back from Adventures in the Lands of Not-Australia, did you catch anything?

Not much, just some Racisms, Liver Diseases, and a bit of Fondue. I tried to catch some Street Urchins and the like for Souvenirs of Abroad, but those little fuckers run like they have six legs/modern engines/Nuclear Powers etc. Basically I was just glad not to catch Herpes and/or Ebolas.


Any Lands/Populace you and The Dude thought were fairly rad?

OK Germans are not on my list of Great Peoples of the World right now due to various "VEE AVE LOZT YOUR BAGZ, HAHA!! NOT SO SMUG ABOUT ZE WARZ NOW, ARE YOU, DIRTY LEETLE CONVICTZ!! HAHA!!!" type incidents....but Berlin was pretty fucking awesome. Overall, though, for an unbeatable experience involving heaps of Sheer Horror, a bit of Civilization in Decline, and some Excellent Neon Signage, it's hard to go past America, which was basically as Crazy as you could ever hope a place could be, only more so.
NB I should note that my findings about Foreign things generally might be in danger of being 'Grossly Untrue and Wholly Unsubstantiated' given that for quite a lot of our Holidays me and The Dude just sat around and investigated Alcohols of the World (our research in that department was fucking thorough though, you know. I could write a motherfucking PhD in that shit).


Did you travel to the Northcote Wine Monkey's country of origin to spread vicious lies about him selling merchantable products at competitive prices?

Sadly I did not have the pleasure of visiting whatever Stinking Two Bit Backwater spat out the Wine Monkey approximately 600 million years ago, but I'm pretty sure it's basically just like any other fetid Paleozoic Era swamp home to Bloated Rodents and Foetus Like Creatures armed with fangs, glowing genitals and SCANDALOUSLY MISLEADING SALES PITCHES.

In other news, I have it on good authority that the Northcote Wine Monkey now lives either somewhere beneath a Portaloo, or at home in the Villa of Satan. Wherever it is, it's sure to be completely decked out in the manner of Franco Cozzo.

I.E. LIKE OLD SCHOOL HELL ONLY HEAPS WORSE.


Please fess up, who is better at the Getting Of Drunk; you, A Medieval Bishop or The Dude?

Oh, man, The Dude is like a super fit Marathon runner of Drink. I don't like to compete with him in these events, he makes everyone else look amateur. I guess sometimes he has an off game but most of the time he is like Dorothy Parker and I am stuck being Lindsay Lohan.

The Medieval Bishop is a wildcard entrant but he probably beats the shit out of both of us at all events involving the Blood of Christ.


Those childs you call The Cats seem to be more hairy and slothlike than most childs. Are they actually teenagers?

OMG how did you know. I like to call them "Cats" because obviously it doesn't look good for me that I am old enough to have teen childs; also this small deceit prevents DHS Child Protection Agencies from getting too interested in what some really uptight cunts might refer to as "negligent substandard and abusive child rearing practices". I guess now The Cat is Out of the Bag (HA HA), I will just have to deal with it.


Would you mind dispelling a rumour for us? Is it not true that the website called IOYC is just you writing in a girly voice? You both seem to have a similarly awesome command of English, as childs did you have the same Dean of Expressions?

Hah! That's very kind of you, but unfortunately it is probably more accurate to describe me as 'petty thief of stylez' than 'alter ego of genius'.

Also, obviously IOYC deals in Facts, whereas I am pretty much limited to 'rumour and innuendo'.


How many jobs do you currently have? Are you a hardcore Private Investigator or a Professional of Lore?

I used to have several jobs, but having Multiple Places of Employment was kind of getting to be about as much fun as having Multiple Schlerosis, so I have cut down to just the one. I won't go into much detail as it would fully make you implode with Self-Annihilating Envy about how Amazing and Exciting my life is, but basically I sit in an office with some cunts all day and wish I were dead.

AWESOME.


Who is your favourite friend in the whole world? What is their favourite colour/shape?

Well it used to be Claudie the Roach who lived in my bathroom, but she seems to have packed it in and fucked off to a more tropical climate, so I hardly ever see her any more, ungrateful little bitch. Luckily I still have quite a few lovely fellow drunks and some Other Upstanding Citizens who are happy to hang out with me and The Dude, but I can't really choose between them any more than I can choose between The Rich List and 1 v 100. Like, sometimes even Deal or No Deal has it's place.

Nonetheless I believe I can speak with confidence when I say that their favourite colour is "faeces" and their favourite shape is oblong.


Since you're the only person in the whole world covering the threat that is squirrels teaming up with the rats of the sky, what are we to do? Aren't they are too little to be hurt by bazookas and/or nuclear missles filled with computer viruses? Do we throw armadillos/emos at them? Cry "Anyone for a game of baby Seal Tennis?"

I think the nuclear missiles filled with computer viruses option is the clear winner, although they might need to be supplemented with some "UN Peace Talks" and the like for the sake of appearances. Also, I am currently in talks with the Pentagon re harnessing an army of Genital Warts to take down the more Hardened/Adorable of these militant critters, but those dudes are like constantly distracted by their latest War on Air Conditioning or whatever it is that they do. Sometimes I feel so alone.


Thanks heaps for this interview of awesomeness/the rad. Do you have any parting words for the gazillions (if not thousands) of readers out there?

"OMG WTF LOLZ!!1!"

you totally can quote me on that.

xoxo nora

While the guy sobbed, our friend was robbed (ps, he didn't really sob)

Hey kids,
Thanks for all your way awesome comments in the post below. Instead of responding in the comments section, I might write a whole new post on my thoughts but I'll do that later.

I watched TV last night, I didn't really want to, but I got an sms telling me too.

We had a mate on the new game show One vs One hundred.
The premise is that one person and a group of a hundred people answer questions. The hundred people have 6 seconds and if they get a question wrong they are out of the game. Each question eliminates more and more people and for each person eliminated, the one person gets money added to their total winnings. The one person has heaps of freakin' time to answer and has a couple of lifelines but if they get one question wrong the money goes to those in the hundred that have not been eliminated. The contestant gets to decide after each question whether they are taking the money and running or answering another question with the possibility of losing out completely. If the whole 100 people get eliminated, the contestant takes home a cool million dollars.

It was a bit retarded, the questions weren't interesting, the talking the answer through thing is totally painful, Eddie just isn't likeable and the contestant last night was a bit of a doof. Our friend told us some inside goss when we went rollerblading with them on Saturday.

Last night, the contestant had answered quite a few questions correctly and the One hundred had been whittled down to 18, our friend had done awesomely and was in that 18. Struggling to eliminate the stragglers, the contestant decided to take the money, a nice 132 thou, and scoot.

What our friend told us on Saturday, over a lemonade icy pole, is that the contestant got the last question wrong and lost all the money. The One Hundred won and the prize money was to be divided between the remaining 18. Eddie, however, stopped the taping and asked the contestant to choose A instead of B. the contestant won, the sob story retold and everyone is happy. Everyone, obviously, except the One Hundred, the studio audience, me, you and the law.

You got a question for me?

Whoa!
Whoa! Whoa!
I got totally slammed on the weekend.
I had to justify my non-excitement about getting engaged so many times,
it was pretty hardcore. I don't mind people elbowing me and asking when
I'm going to be popping any questions, but I wasn't expecting such emotional
responses when I answered with "probably never".

The responses seem to vary between trying to talk me out of my
non-excitement to the more condesending, 'I used to feel that way,
you'll change...' type retorts.

We really seem to have hit that spot where everyone we know is looking
aisle-side for their future and I can see the division between babied up
and non is just a couple of years away.

I'm happy for people that are truly excited to follow The Script, car,
chick, married, house, kids, but I would like a bit of uncondescending
understanding if I'm just not that excited. When I'm eventually
interviewed for some inflight magazine, I don't want to be saying that
the best days of my life were my wedding day and the birth of my child, I
want to be all like 'well, holding Cara's hand when she was nominated for an
Aria/Cara was pretty awes, or just beating my little half-brother down
the slopes was way righteous, or getting photos published was excitement
plus more excitement or you know, I'd even be happy not to have one or two
standout days in trade for lots of days to qualify for Pretty Freakin'
Coolness status instead'.

The Script is totally fine, but I just feel that anyone can follow it,
which makes it less fun for me.

I am excited for my friends and their decisions about between arriving
in veils and humvees, but it just all feels a bit cliched and daggy to me.
I just can't generate any funness about the process. I'm still not sure
if I believe that people should spend their entire lives with one person. I
get that it's awesome to share the journey with someone, someone who knows
where you've come from, but I also think there is heaps to learn off
other people too. In my head I've got images of people who have just been
married for far too long versus an excited loving couple in their
fifties who had just found each other. We've way steered away from jobs for
life, is this not at all similar? That said, I do love the Caras muchly and I
adore the thought of her being my partner in crime for life... but I
would want that to be because every year, or every decade or whatever, we both
decided we were better off with each other than anyone else and not
together just because we were all ringed up.

I feel a bit bad for Caras, she was all 'I don't have time to get
married, I have to be a rockstar' for ages, but I think she's slowly getting
caught in the excitement of wedding photos and nice makeup and a year of people
being excited for you.

It's a shame, and I totally don't want her to be unhappy but I'm
starting to feel like I might be alone in my circles of my rejection of The
Script.

Uh, and the child thing. People of late have been quite upset to hear that I don't want kids.
Like the engagement thing, a few just figure I'll grow out of it, but some people have actually felt fairly affronted and have put in good efforts to convince me kids are the way to go. I do wonder if it's a survival of the species thing, but personally I think the human race is surviving plenty fine, selfishly, I'd much rather concentrate with what I want out of life than raising people. I find it a hard conversation to have, because I don't want to upset future parents to be with my reasons, I don't really want to say "well personally, I'd be embarrassed to bring a child into the world only to say 'well son or daughter, here's the world, you should be able to squeeze a couple more years out of it' but good luck with your and yours."

I totally understand that people find their weddings and their kids the happiest bestest things of their lives, but I would love for people to understand that I'm excited about different things.

Thorin' out.

Whoa! Freakin'! Hot diddly doodily hot.

I'm working up a sweat just walking around at lunchtimes now, how cool gnarly is that?
Anywho, as fascinating as the weather is, I really wanted to write about people... in particular, star struck people.

My usual passage to work has been interrupted by dudes talkin' on their walkies. Someone has been filming something at the QUT campus that I walk through, I've been quite interested in the amount of hardcore lights and people just standing around and not so interested in what they were actually doing. There has really been some kind of filming going on sparatically for months.

Anywho, this morning I saw inside the building they've been lighting and it was filled with cool gold statues in glass boxes. I was way keen to cat burgler in and steal stuff but I was late for work so left the theft of the century for some other time.

Anywho II, there was more people loitering than usual and the catering table seemed bigger and better than ever. When I got to the bit right outside my office, I was stopped by some chick who was on traffic control. They were filming a street scene and had a whole lot of extras purposely walking around.... has anyone noticed that extras smirk a lot? The chick had 'Thor' written on her coat.

What is the story with these superhero movies moving in on my turf? I'm sure the shorts for Ghost Rider show him riding over the bridge at Southbank Melbourne. Now, when I was allowed to walk, across the street were a million kabillion people all peeking and then all went absolutely psychotic, with the screeching and the yelling and the mobile phone videoing. They were all screaming "Matthew, Matthew" and while I don't know exactly who they were talking about, but I was a bit embarrassed for them. Why do people go so nuts for famous people? I can imagine it's exciting to meet someone who you feel like you know, but to go so so nuts? I thought Australia was a bit cooler than that? I thought we were all a bit aloof and not phased when it came to this kind of junk. Shame.

How did Brisbane score a movie thing? Are these people aware there are other cities in the world?

P.S) When I'm Emperor of the world, I'm banning celebrity-inspired hysteria, banned for daggniess. BANNED!

The Hottest Skills for 2007

There are many differences between myself and the little red rockstar, but I'd say the biggest difference is straight up hotness.

I am daaaaaaamn hot.
She is not.

For a coupling though, this works a bit alright for us.
I heat her up and she cools me down.
They always say the really hot ones always go for people far less hot than themselves.

When Cara was up in Brisbane she was totally doona'd up why I could manage a sheet at best. If anyone wants to invent a half-sheet/half-massive-doona, you have my blessing.

So, now that you know the back story, I want tell you that I sleep in my underwear, and it was in my underwear that I leapt out of bed last night. Leapt, I tells ya!

At midnight last night, a big fatty boomba alarm completely startled my everything. I knew at once what it was, chucked all the lights on and ran to grab a broom.
Stupid, goddam smoke alarm.

Since I am so hot, I usually have all the external doors and windows open and living in a way high density, hugely apartmented area I imagine every man and his little fluffy apartment dog was watching me wave the broom around and trying to hit the retardedly small hush button.

Cursing my unglasses'd eyeballs and moving like a 90s superdude I grabbed a chair and tackled the dectector on the ceiling, elevating my undied form for everyone to see.

Son of a Damn, it was fully wired into the ceiling.
Stupid, goddam smoke alarm.

The hush button didn't work, and the alarm was so so loud. Shockingly loud. The front section wouldn't twist off, I couldn't get to the battery. I wrestled with it for ages, which in loud piercing noise terms is superages and couldn't affect it.

Eventually it turned off itself.
Whoa! Like, phew, totally.

And turned straight back on.Taking me by surprise, I nearly fell off the chair and nearly ripped the whole thing from the ceiling. In my desperation, I nearly thought about it anyway, but then I remembered that I need to look decent if I'm going to risk electrocution.

By hitting it hard, I managed to turn it off, but then a second later it would turn back on. After a while of trying to wrestle the casing off, the hush button started to work, then it stopped working.

During one pause, I chucked some clothes on.
During another pause, I grabbed my phone.

It got to the point where the best I could do was press against the speaker so it only deafened me and not so much my neighbours.

My arms were getting sore and the smoke alarm was so hot I was getting burnt on the palm of my hands. My building manager didn't answer his mobile.

I could now smell smoke, I think the wires in the smoke dectector were burning.
I was exhausted and out of ideas when I heard a soft knock at the door. 6 floors down the building manager happened to be awake and detectively went out side to see which was the only apartment had their light on.

He managed to remove a clip which removed a wirey plug and got it off the ceiling. It was still going. I wanted to chuck it in the pool but the manager broke a bit to get the battery out. It was still going.

He threw it in his tool bag and it finally ran out of juice. Now it was just making loud 'battery dead' sounds - it was freakin' invincible.

Ears ringing and with burnt hands I went back to bed.

I do have a quick message for smoke detector manufacturers: Good Invincibility, maybe make them less internally flamable.

Old time good times

I was bored at lunch.
I usually go for a walk in the park, eat my lunch and go straight back to my desk, but this time I went for a walk into the city. Unlike most people I know, I don't really like stuff and I'm heaps not excited about things and as such our current enforced pauperism to get back in the black has been much easier for me than the little red rockstar. So, walking around shops is pretty freakin' boring for me, I just can't get my enthusiasm on. This time though, I was curious about this post from Deb just because I do like the X-Men and lately TV has been the crap.

So I walked to JB Hi-Fi.
Pretty much as soon as I went in I wanted to leave. People were just so into things, and buying stuff. So much so I was a bit embarrassed to be sharing the same floorspace. Slinking sideways against the walls, diving over the cheap DVD table and crawling between aisles to avoid suspicion I went over to the TV show DVDs and had a look. I didn't find it but I saw something I got very excited about.

Not understanding my emotions, I ran.


My Dad's favourite thing in the whole world is hooking people up.
Not for smoochy smoochy, lovey lovey, bouncy bouncy but 'to share conversations on your mutual passions and/or circumstances'. Tell a story, any story and my Dad will know a guy you should meet.

The first (and I think only) guy I did actually meet was the dude who gave me my first job. Now, this very post could land me in jail but since I trust the internet not to nark on me and because it's not at all integral to anything I worked at a candle wrapper well before the age you're actually allowed to work. I think it's 13 and 9 months.

This meant I was the youngest, richest dude anyone/my family had ever met and I became a bit of a bank to my parents, I think there was a recession on, I wasn't really paying attention. Anywho, when I wasn't lending currency to the parentals I was buying up big on comics.

Yes, I was a nerd.

Yes, was. Want to take it outside?

My comic collector status lasted for about 5 years and there were so many that I really liked. I liked the Australian-made Phantom comics and I liked the the UK joke comics but I never really got into the American ones. They were just heaps confusing, how many X-Men and Batman titles were there, freakin', and how did they all link in to each other. How many Spidermans can there be? They were always so much more expensive and glossy and filled hardcore with ads.

My distaste changed a bit when my Mum was up late one night and saw a show about a superguy or something and even though she didn't know how to use the video player she managed to record half of it. I watched it the next day and heaps loved it.

My parents were always very complimentary and impressed about all my drawings and big Lego cities and stories about skateboarding but they weren't totally interested, you know. That's not criticism on them, if a kid came up to me and was telling me all about Pokemon or shooting up or whatever kids are into these days I'd listen and ask cool questions but I personally am not into Pokemons/The Fat Controller/winning thousands on internet poker.

First up, my Mum was proud that she introduced me to something cool so she'd watch the weekly taping of the superdude show with me. It was a pretty fun show so after a few episodes we'd both be totally hanging for the next one. It was called The Flash and was about a dude dressed in red who could run really, really fast. Like, even faster than me and I won blue ribbons. Whoa! Too freakin' fast.

Unfortunately, like all good TV shows it just disappeared in the middle of a season without explanation and I scanned the Green Guide for like a year looking for it. I was still in my comic phase and that's when I found The Flash comics.

It started off pretty confusing because the dude in the comics wasn't the dude in the TV show. Piecing together little clues in the comic, I worked out that the comic dude was, like, the nephew of the TV show Flash who had been killed in comics land years earlier.

The comics were good but still not as interesting as The Phantom and whatnot... but then they starting getting better. Like, Better x 100. They changed writing staff and drawing guys and the stories became so much more involved and awesome and just hardcore good.

Just hardcore good. Freakin'.

By this point I had been replaced by a candle wrapping machine and so now I was totally awesome at doing my chores for pocket money. Our cats got fed every day now. The comic would come out once a month and I've devour it in like 3 minutes and then basically savour it for that month. I used to set them out in order on my desk with a clean spot ready for the next one.

Was a nerd.

Eventually, the main writer left and the drawing guys moved on and it got more expensive and it wasn't as good and I got a pair of rollerblades and the comics are in a box in my Dad's garage somewhere (I hope) and I totally forgot totally about it totally... but thinking back I don't reckon I've ever been that excited about a fictional character since.

Until I went back into JB Hi-Fi a couple of days ago and bought this:

I've only watched a couple of episodes but I goddam love it so much. It was made or released or something in 1990 - it's even daggier than Bill Cosby always overhearing his family's plans to trick him, daggier than a serious Cool As Ice. The peeps be wearing crazy print shirts all the time and when they dress up spiffy they look like Chandler dressed like Miami Vice and when he dons his superdude suit he looks far more like a cherry flavoured Ninja Turtle than anything else. The acting is terrible, the jokes are baaaaaaad and the whole thing was so poorly done and I don't think I've ever been so excited.

Assume the crash position

So, you all know I came out recently.
Cara was a bit surprised but a bit excited too.
After the initial excitement of a whole new world opening up to her, it got a bit emotional.

There were things about her in my blog, especially in the early days, that I've long forgotten and forgiven. It was a bit rough on both of us, we had a couple of discussions that we never had at the time and neither of us were expecting to visit now.

After Cara got a bit upset with some of the posts, she decided to only read the now and not worry about what had been. I could only remember interviewing bloggers and telling stories about riding on the footpath so then I started to read my own blog from the start and it didn't take me too long before I had to give it away, it really did dredge up old, old emotions, ie, ancientness, fear of starting a meal without my pillbox/circle cushion, etc.

Have you guys ever re-read your old posts?
Tell you what, I'm glad I have it all, as a marker of time and a snapshot of the rollercoaster of emotions but it's totally not easy to tackle.

At the start I really only created posts to vent, to get crap out of my system so I could move on. When I'm upset about something, I really, totally focus on it until it's unleashed. It consumes me and I can't focus on anything else. Venting via blog allowed me to expel and refocus on work and eating.

After a while I stopped writing it and started telling Cara. I actually got betterer at putting words like 'I don't like...' into sentences which is way hard for boys that are lovely. I also started not venting in my blog because I was gearing it up to be read by my friends when we traveled. In the end I didn't use it as a travel diary and just kept it to myself.

However, in the same week as my coming out of the blog shadows to Cara, the brilliant writer TT who is marrying our awesome friend Sophie across the globe found my blog too. I really wanted to tell Sophie about my blog because I've loved hers for months and just as I went to leave a comment with 'Adam' instead of 'Anon' I noticed one of our Melbourne friends had left a comment on Sophie's. Which means he may know about Cara's. Then TT linked to both of us in his blog and in an e-mail I thought Sophie had said she given our bloglinks to this Melbourne dude (but she hadn't) who knows all our friends and in the same week the most excellent Bevis gave Cara a bloggy Christmas present that detective types could have used to worked out who she was. Since he is awesome like some awe, he changed his post. Quite lovely, that one.

At the same time I've been writing a post about my workmates and unable to do so because they keep interrupting me at my desk... and I couldn't write any other posts until I expunged that one. Then I got a new dude sitting next to my desk who kept busting me reading everyone's blogs and who hinted that he knows a bit about the blogworld himself. Unrelated, yesterday I found out that the lovely Deb's boyfriend knows a dude in my team at work.

So, this blog that I've kept totally secret to each one of my friends, family, work dudes and chicks for 2 years has been nearly totally outted like a million times this week. Maybe even a billion.

I think I'm good now.
It's not really a big deal, but there are bits in this blog about work people or my friends that I don't want them to read, but I don't want to delete the posts either. I like the opportunity I've created here to share or vent various things in a way that is completely one-sided in my favour. I like to blog and then forget about it. I don't want to receive e-mails from friends who didn't like how I presented something or have to justify my posts at the pub or at a party. I don't want to tell stories in a way that is totally not offensive to every person I know. I'm happy with my little gang here and I'm especially happy to extend that gang to include Cara, Sophie and TT. I hope they stay and enjoy a little visit here, because, with their blogs I now feel closer to them than evs.

All this has totally shown me the value I place in this little html code. It is more than $6.00AUD.

Feel the fear and stab it anyway.

We were trapped!
Rooted to the spot by the horror of the moment, each person experienced the same emotion but felt their fear differently. Each person's horror stories, their personality, their experiences, their revulsion and the reactions of everyone else intermingled into one big bubbling black pot of 'Yuk'.

We were all witnesses and yet we could all change the course of what was happening. We all could have walked away, but we couldn't. We all could have gone on a murderous rampage, but we couldn't. We were scared. Scared of the horror, scared of the perception of the general public of our actions, scared for ourselves and scared for the horror that could unleash if we made it worse.

Then Jac just hit the damn spider with a large pole, it disappeared and we were all okay. I wished I had a large pole and Deb sniggered.

Other witness accounts can be found here and here.

42

Why hello there, this post contains spoilers about life, the universe and everything. Please don't read if you know you get offended about religiony and non-religiony stuff.

This post is really, purely for myself, to write down all my ponderings of late and to order my own views and opinions. They are only opinions and I'm way totally happy for every single person to have their own take on things. That said, I do apologise if anyone reading this feels affronted.

Most, if not all, cultures have a religion or belief system that imparts values on its people and tries to explain the unexplainable. Throughout the ages, people have looked to older or more learned people for guidance and these people used stories as a medium to impart that guidance and other lessons. I do reckon this might be where religion started.

Stories were used to console, entertain and explain, but they were also used as a tool to admonish and control people. 'Why should I not kill, you are not strong enough to stop me?' 'Because you will be punished in the next life.', etc.

In any society, physical strength and aggression most often is a person's most valuable assets, but I think less strong or elderly people found another way to power, utilising the power of the unknown, the power of religion and basically making up new rules to suit their situation.
Our brains are hardcore cool and as survival became easier for peoples and less taxing on our energies and brainpower, the search for answers filled that space. More people had bigger questions and those that were willing to offer an answer would have become more powerful, you can see this in any group of people, and this, I'm guessing, was the start of organised religion.

Everyone believes something different, each shaped by their own perception and how strong their faith is. Without meaning to offend, I do feel like the measurement of someone's faith is how strong they are willing to suspend their disbelief and how willing they are to accept someone's story.

Religion is a big business and while the Catholic church may not have the power it once did, religion as a whole is still very much on everyone's mind... but I think that all belief systems have muddied the waters and have confused people. A lot of people seem to spending their time sorting through the stories they are willing to believe and the stories they aren't.

I think that Religion has it's uses; it makes people feel less alone, it motivates them to act correctly, it makes it much easier to console someone who has lost a loved one and gives people something to think about that is a bit bigger picture... but I personally feel that it's time to give it away.

The simplest answer is often the correct one:

There is no divine.
There is no afterlife.
There is no plan.

This planet has a million kabillion wonderous and horrifying things on it, but that is all down to our perception. The complexity and amazingness of it all can be explained by evolution, what doesn't fit in, dies. The concept of transferance of souls is overly complex and is just born of our own fear of death.

Humankind doesn't understand a lot of things, but I think that is the greatest thing that it needs to understand is that we don't actually have to have answers for everything. There is nothing wrong with confusion and there is no shame in not understand something - and I feel all and any religions may have simply made up answers instead of simply admitting they don't know.
Life is random and confusing and really has no point - which might be upsetting for people, but I think there is also a freedom there; we can make it what we want it. We can decide what the point is and I think it should be to leave this world better than how we found it.

With freedom comes responsibilty. I feel that mankind's insistence on a greater power with a plan helps people accept events out of their control, but it also passes responsibility to someone else. No gods are ever going to come down and teach/save/condemn mankind.

The rest of our little planetary coinhabitants would probably see us as gods, ie, we can help them or destroy them.

I don't feel that religion has caused wars, because frankly if it wasn't that excuse it probably would have been something else - mankind is just another aggressive animal. However, without the concept of an afterlife, soldiers on ever side might be far less likely to throw their lives away or take anothers so easily. Or maybe not, who knows... Justifying things is our best skill.
We each only get one shot at this life thing, and then all that is left of us is any legacy we leave behind; be it objects, projects or memories.

With all this in mind, the whole preparing for the next life does seem a bit selfish, I know most people don't really think about it, but how rockin' would it be if the same energy that was spent in leaving the world/our communities a better place than worrying about praying enough or concerning ourselves with an omnipotent watchdog.

And this might be oversimplified, but if peoples all shared the view of 'it is best to leave the world in a better state then when you rocked in', mankind might have been far more in tune with the rest of our little planet.

I guess I would be labelled as an atheist, but I reckon that this term implies a cynicism or jadedness that I don't feel. Could I be an 'Everythingatarian' or believe in 'Aderism' if a label must be used?

Tagation.

Four jobs I’ve had:
Candle wrapper
Rollerblading phamplet deliverer
IT Ninja
Photographer

Four places I’ve lived:
North, South, East and West of Melbourne
Sydney
Brisbane
In the realm between sanity and waiting for girls to get ready

Four movies I can watch over and over:
Zoolander
The Incredibles
The Blues Brothers
Sin City

Four TV shows I love:
Family Guy
Simpsons
Rockstar: Supernova
Robot Wars

Four places I’ve vacationed:
Honduras, Central America
Kyoto, Japan
Lyon, France
Ararat, Australia

Four of my favorite dishes:
Manly meals
Meals that are manly
Substantial meaty meals
Big ol meals of manliness

Four sites I visit daily:
Gmail
Hotmail
Blogger
Cara's blog (that's right, uh huh, I told her, go say hellos)

Four places I would rather be right now:
In the Secret Suburb
On the Brisbane Balcony
On the Skimmin' Surf
Under a doona with the chick

A Brand New and Improved Year.

...and a top o' the new year to you dudes and chicks, I do hope it was a bit alright.

The ladeez and I travelled down to Byron Bay for the pashfest that is New Years.

Now, I personally can't wrangle too much excitement out of that one night, since everyone is so desperate that it be The Very Best Night Ever. I'd almost rather go out every night but.

That said, we had a great time. Byron didn't have the big raves of yesteryear that close off the town, so we were able to drive in, park, hang at the beach all day and then dress up and drink up.

I designated driver'd up so I accidentally had more lemonade than I have ever, ever had. I was nearly hungover on sugar before midnight. None of us got trashed, it was a bit packed at the bars so it was actually too hard to drink too much, which works.

The place we went to was great. It is exactly called The Byron Hotel or the Balcony or the Beach House or something - it was full enough to be fun and friendly but you could totally grab a quiet spot when the crowd got a bit much. The music was totally daggy dancy 'I like big butts and I cannot lie' which can be a whole bit of fun on The Very Best Night Ever and when the crowd was daggied out, live music took the stage. The band was called True Live - hip hop with an orchestral string section and they were brilliant. Freakin'.

In other news:
Adam = Survivor.
I've survived the 7 Days of Mich, but not, bah, completely unscathed. I'm not sure that we'll be good friends furthermore. I totally like her one on one, but around everyone else, I just find her dishonest to everyone and to herself and so I now rate myself : OD'd.

In way groovier news:
Adam = Fully Awesome.
The other dude in our gang of nine asked, no, demanded, no, actually just asked that he teach me to skim board. Skimboarding is where you chuck a smooth board on a centimetre of water and then jump on it and slide along. Think socks on a shiny floor.
I tried it for a bit and I sucked more than the suckiest sucker that ever did suck. Then later I tried again and, impossibly, I sucked even more. The next day I tried again and I was the best skim boarding dude the world ever did see. Seein' my sweet skimmin' skills, I said I was 'bodacious to the max', the ninja turtles said I was a 'cowabunga' and Cara said I did 'very well'. You can't get bigger praise than that, my friends, you just can't.

For New Years Resolutions I'm going to make the following changes:
- Teach myself Parkour.
- Replace offensive sentences that I say like 'Those Citizens of a Different Birthplace Whom Share Our One Beautiful World' with 'darkies', etc.
- Read either more or less blogs - still undecided.