The total amount raised by those who donated for me, excluding those who may have misspelled my name or forgot my name or couldnt follow clear instructions was $840. On calculation that would purchase 212.6 packets of paracetamol; a relatively effective analgesic. That was the cheapest legal price I could find. I decided to round up to 213 packets of 100 tablets and if you think that is cheating then I can honestly say that you are not in the spirit of this blog.
Placing these tablets against one another creates a line approximately 2.8 kilometres long. Enough to create a 13mm wide bridge between my home and the next suburb. Not even returning.
So, that proves the drugs dont work. That is a great song title. Someone should write that song.
Songs ... fucken hard to write. So why should anyone bother? Are songs even worth it?
When you get a corporate creation of minimal age writing of love and loss and being successful in terms of dollar value does it make anyone else vomit with rage and incredulity? I spew my last meal and any associated fluids and then bile and, fuck it, I dry wretch and then I just heave out my stomach and regurgitate that. If I run out of internal organs to disorge in a cascade of suicidal inversion then perhaps I, through thought-process alone, could create some blackhole of vomitus to express my displeasure at the sort of stuff that people will pay for to entertain themselves.
I'm not immune to that either. Not specifically in relation to music.
I'm not proud of that.
Does that mean I cannot judge something else?
Fuck no!
It means I have a perfectly balanced experiential basis upon which to base my conclusions.
Nothing is worth it. Nothing is of worth. Nothing should have a dollar value placed upon it.
Nothing.
In case you are interested I went to see The Drones. I paid $40.
Worth every dollar.
Contradiction soup.
Makes me human I suppose. To bemoan a dollar value and then feel something was worth the cost. I had a smile on my stupid face the whole night and didnt move from my spot and enjoyed every minute and would like the world I envisage in which someone could be supported in creating music like that for free for the enjoyment of others and for the crowd to enjoy it knowing that their home grown tomatoes or home produced art or home typed story could be part of the adequate barter for such a performance.
Now ... dont sympathise with me.
That was an instruction.
I know that I couldnt write a song that perfect in scope and meaning and context. Let alone sing it.
Yet I feel every bit of it. I want to be able.
I want to be able
I want to be able
I want to be able.
It takes too much of what I cannot give or do not have or may not understand or will not sacrifice.
I need to stop pushing the 'ENTER' button and just create a sentence that is not a paragraph in itself and is not just a line of prose that illustrates my state of mind in absolute confusion and disdainful selfdeprocation for my creative life up until this point. Is one sentence that takes up four lines enough to absolve me of using too many paragraph breaks?
Is anybody else enjoying this blog? Does anybody else feel that loss when they hear a Radiohead song? The loss of the song that was within but was not able to be written clearly enough. That realisation that a song chrystallises thoughts within so well that it can make you depressed and elated at the same time.
The song that forms only part of an album worth whatever someone wanted to pay for it as long as it was above a few pence. Really distressing for me that Radiohead is red-squiggly-underlined when pizza and consumerism and shopping mall and fuck-head is not.
But should Radiohead be in the dictionary when that could mean the mainstreaming of the greatest band in the digital age to use the digital age? And does inclusion in the blogspot dictionary mean mainstreaming?
At one point britney spears was in the official oxford dictionary (lower case purposely entered).
How does someone get from a donation total for a charity bikeride to questioning the entries of an English dictionary?
Tom.
Tuesday 23 April 2013
Wednesday 17 April 2013
Imagine
You are driving in your car towards home and listening to your
favourite album. You turn your steering wheel to the left to pull into your
driveway and you feel the shudder as your front wheels lower into and raise off the
concave guttering. The shudder is transmitted to your hands and your arms and into your shoulders where it dissipates. Once you stop the car in front of your garage door you use your right hand to turn the key in the
ignition to the standby position because your favourite song is next. You reach across to push the rounded stereo button with the painted forward arrow symbol worn away. You skip to your track.
Your favourite song plays
and that sets off the earworm in your head and you know the tune will play
through your mind during the rest of the evening whenever you are letting your
mind drift. And you wish for many of those moments.
Once the song is complete you turn the keys in the ignition to the off position and pull out
the key using your right thumb and index finger. You can feel the click of the lock as the key withdraws. You use
your right hand to pull the door handle and push the door open. The
muscles of your forearm and upper arm tighten as you push against the
resistance of the door.
Now step out of
the car and stand. Feel your leg muscles and trunk muscles elongate as you stand
and reach to the sky with both arms to lengthen what feels like every muscle and joint in your body. You can feel the endorphin rush from a simple stretch. Now
lower your right hand with the keys and put the keys in your pocket. Feel the
denim against your skin as you slide your hand into you loose jeans. And out.
Walk
towards your front door and as you do feel your right arm and left arm swing
gently with each step. Your right arm forward as your left foot swings forward.
As you reach your front door you hear the song play again and you smile with your mouth and your eyes. Reach back into your pocket and retrieve your
keys. Fan the keys out on your right palm until you spy
the correct one and arrange the pile so you can clasp the housekey. Gently grasp the rest of the keys in
the rest of your fingers and feel the brass of the housekey between your thumb and index finger. It is slightly warm from
your body heat while it rested in your pocket.
Feel each click
of the lock as you put the key in and turn it to the right and hear the opening
of the lock.
Admittance to your home.
Use your left hand at the same time to turn the doorknob and
push with both arms to open the door. Feel the pressure of the smooth painted
wood on your right palm.
Once you are
inside take your smart phone out and click the button and slide your right
thumb across the screen to unlock it.
Feel the plastic: cold and hard and lifeless.
Much like the medium itself.
Sunday 7 April 2013
The Ride for Pain
Today I completed the UniSA Ride for Pain - a ride to raise money for UniSA's chronic pain research. 100kms, including 1900m of climbing, through the hills plus a few extra to the start and back home. Perfect day for it.
It started at UniSA then moved on up Norton Summit where a few people got a bit ahead of themselves and tried to break the time trial record before realising there were still 85 ks to go. There's always a few in a group.
Then we undulated through various parts of the hills, through small towns and larger towns to Lobethal. The volunteers who kept up the banana replenishment rate, the water stations and the other fuels were a blessing. Fantastic people putting up with sweaty and tired and sunburnt riders when they could be elsewhere in the hills on such a lovely day.
Then it was back towards town with the spectre of Corkscrew Rd looming.
Anyone who doesnt follow professional cycling or is bored by it, play some elevator music in your heads for a bit. I will say when you can start reading again.
So it was a descent towards Corkscrew Rd and the peloton was bunched up but poised like a coiled spring ready to launch. The tight left hander showed itself on my left and I jumped out and made an attack and got some free space as I chopped away at the road, out of the saddle. I heard the roun, roun, roun of bike tires turning hard behind me. I chanced a look back and saw two boys in black pursuing me. Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome were pounding the pedals trying to bridge the gap. Cadel Evans was behind them but he was struggling to pull back time. Matty Goss had given it a crack, but he's no good in the mountains, we all know that.
We fell into a holding pattern, me dancing on the pedals and the British lads sweating it up and gasping in my slipstream. They were not helping a bit. I held that pace while the gradient crept up to and past 15%, then 18%. then it flattened out and they thought they'd pull a move together.
Nearing the top I had them, I changed onto the big chainring and sailed past them and gapped them by the summit. I'd pulled the polka dot jersey off of the shoulders of the great, five times King of the Mountain Richard Virenque who inexplicably had come out of his eight and a half year retirement to compete in a charity fundraiser with Wiggins et al.
The descent along the Montacute Rd was all mine. I tore up the asphalt, flicking it into the eyes of anyone pursuing. I took corners on the ragged edge. Wiggins and Froome were spent, they'd redlined it on the climb and were in energy debt.
I was on my way to winning the thing. But, just like him, Fabian Cancellara pipped me at the post to win another one day classic. I would have finished third but Peter Sagan was too busy trying to pinch the backsides of any female he could see on the street.
**Now you can turn off the elevator music and read.**
I sincerely apologise to anybody who thought that last anecdote about the Ride for Pain was true. I know, a lot of you would have been taken in and it was unfair of me to take advantage of your trust. The reality is that the Corkscrew climb was 2.4 kilometres and took me just over twenty minutes and every time I tried to get out of the saddle I felt my hamstrings about to cramp so I did the whole thing sitting. I am tired and my head is sore and I am pretty sure I am dehydrated and I have never eaten so much and still been hungry. On the plus side, my head is the only part of me that hurts.
There were some motivational phrases and stats about chronic pain on the climb up Corkscrew, as if we would have the energy to move and focus our eyes to read them. Given the physics-defying slowness with which I was ascending I was able to catch one or two. The one that caught me was this: enough pain medication is consumed each year to get us to the moon and back. Twice.
Now, I am fairly sure that is not a play on the hallucinogenic qualities of some of the opioid class of medication. So one can only assume two things.
That is that the number of pills consumed when laid end to end in some form of construction leading towards the moon would stretch far enough to get to the moon and back and you could construct a second one, presumable out of hubris. Now had they done their ABC sketch comedy program research they would have known that Shaun Micallef debunked the possibly of a bridge between earth and the moon made out of bread, and /or stale toast. Stale toast, at least in my mind is a much stronger construction material that tiny little pressed packages of powder.
And what would the earth to moon analgesia bridge accomplish anyway? Assuming it could actually be constructed. And reinforced enough to withstand people trampling across it, indeed up it. Because there is little point constructing a bridge to the moon that runs parallel to earth's surface.
That would be insane.
And the thing could only be feasibly used for its intended function, as an earth to moon bridge, not analgesia for those in pain, once a month. This bridge would reach its intended destination when the moon's orbit carried it back to that exact spot again. Of course, four bridges could be constructed as there would be no need to have a bridge that has a path to the moon and then one back again unless you presumed such heavy traffic that you would need a two way street.
That would be ridiculous.
So assuming light traffic at least in the early stages, at four points along the earth's surface you could construct an analgesic span that someone could scale to reach the moon and then wait for a few days until the moon reached the next bridge so the person could scale down it. This is impractical because the oxygen requirements alone would subvert the usefulness of the bridge. A rocket has only just made the trip to the international space station in six hours, let alone the moon which takes days with the power of hydrogen propulsion. Abseiling would take an incredible amount of time more. At least three days. More.
This whole idea of a trip to the moon and back balanced on a thin rope of pain killing tablets is absurd.
But that is an awful lot of pain killers isnt it?
Back to the ride. The positives.
Sure I groan like an old man with a fresh knee replacement whenever I get out of a chair. And yes I could sleep for at least eight hours if my children would let me. But to those of you who donated, you contributed at least $620 to chronic pain research (as of Thursday April 4th). I, and the researchers it will go to, thank you.
Tom
It started at UniSA then moved on up Norton Summit where a few people got a bit ahead of themselves and tried to break the time trial record before realising there were still 85 ks to go. There's always a few in a group.
Then we undulated through various parts of the hills, through small towns and larger towns to Lobethal. The volunteers who kept up the banana replenishment rate, the water stations and the other fuels were a blessing. Fantastic people putting up with sweaty and tired and sunburnt riders when they could be elsewhere in the hills on such a lovely day.
Then it was back towards town with the spectre of Corkscrew Rd looming.
Anyone who doesnt follow professional cycling or is bored by it, play some elevator music in your heads for a bit. I will say when you can start reading again.
So it was a descent towards Corkscrew Rd and the peloton was bunched up but poised like a coiled spring ready to launch. The tight left hander showed itself on my left and I jumped out and made an attack and got some free space as I chopped away at the road, out of the saddle. I heard the roun, roun, roun of bike tires turning hard behind me. I chanced a look back and saw two boys in black pursuing me. Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome were pounding the pedals trying to bridge the gap. Cadel Evans was behind them but he was struggling to pull back time. Matty Goss had given it a crack, but he's no good in the mountains, we all know that.
We fell into a holding pattern, me dancing on the pedals and the British lads sweating it up and gasping in my slipstream. They were not helping a bit. I held that pace while the gradient crept up to and past 15%, then 18%. then it flattened out and they thought they'd pull a move together.
Nearing the top I had them, I changed onto the big chainring and sailed past them and gapped them by the summit. I'd pulled the polka dot jersey off of the shoulders of the great, five times King of the Mountain Richard Virenque who inexplicably had come out of his eight and a half year retirement to compete in a charity fundraiser with Wiggins et al.
The descent along the Montacute Rd was all mine. I tore up the asphalt, flicking it into the eyes of anyone pursuing. I took corners on the ragged edge. Wiggins and Froome were spent, they'd redlined it on the climb and were in energy debt.
I was on my way to winning the thing. But, just like him, Fabian Cancellara pipped me at the post to win another one day classic. I would have finished third but Peter Sagan was too busy trying to pinch the backsides of any female he could see on the street.
**Now you can turn off the elevator music and read.**
I sincerely apologise to anybody who thought that last anecdote about the Ride for Pain was true. I know, a lot of you would have been taken in and it was unfair of me to take advantage of your trust. The reality is that the Corkscrew climb was 2.4 kilometres and took me just over twenty minutes and every time I tried to get out of the saddle I felt my hamstrings about to cramp so I did the whole thing sitting. I am tired and my head is sore and I am pretty sure I am dehydrated and I have never eaten so much and still been hungry. On the plus side, my head is the only part of me that hurts.
There were some motivational phrases and stats about chronic pain on the climb up Corkscrew, as if we would have the energy to move and focus our eyes to read them. Given the physics-defying slowness with which I was ascending I was able to catch one or two. The one that caught me was this: enough pain medication is consumed each year to get us to the moon and back. Twice.
Now, I am fairly sure that is not a play on the hallucinogenic qualities of some of the opioid class of medication. So one can only assume two things.
Assumption 1
That the profits to big pharma and little pharma and streetcorner pharma from analgesia consumptyion that they could pay for x number of people to fly to the moon and back, twice. Each year. The exact number of people this could be is not defined at all, leaving assumption 2 as the most likely.Assumption 2
That is that the number of pills consumed when laid end to end in some form of construction leading towards the moon would stretch far enough to get to the moon and back and you could construct a second one, presumable out of hubris. Now had they done their ABC sketch comedy program research they would have known that Shaun Micallef debunked the possibly of a bridge between earth and the moon made out of bread, and /or stale toast. Stale toast, at least in my mind is a much stronger construction material that tiny little pressed packages of powder.
And what would the earth to moon analgesia bridge accomplish anyway? Assuming it could actually be constructed. And reinforced enough to withstand people trampling across it, indeed up it. Because there is little point constructing a bridge to the moon that runs parallel to earth's surface.
That would be insane.
And the thing could only be feasibly used for its intended function, as an earth to moon bridge, not analgesia for those in pain, once a month. This bridge would reach its intended destination when the moon's orbit carried it back to that exact spot again. Of course, four bridges could be constructed as there would be no need to have a bridge that has a path to the moon and then one back again unless you presumed such heavy traffic that you would need a two way street.
That would be ridiculous.
So assuming light traffic at least in the early stages, at four points along the earth's surface you could construct an analgesic span that someone could scale to reach the moon and then wait for a few days until the moon reached the next bridge so the person could scale down it. This is impractical because the oxygen requirements alone would subvert the usefulness of the bridge. A rocket has only just made the trip to the international space station in six hours, let alone the moon which takes days with the power of hydrogen propulsion. Abseiling would take an incredible amount of time more. At least three days. More.
This whole idea of a trip to the moon and back balanced on a thin rope of pain killing tablets is absurd.
But that is an awful lot of pain killers isnt it?
Back to the ride. The positives.
Sure I groan like an old man with a fresh knee replacement whenever I get out of a chair. And yes I could sleep for at least eight hours if my children would let me. But to those of you who donated, you contributed at least $620 to chronic pain research (as of Thursday April 4th). I, and the researchers it will go to, thank you.
Tom
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