Saturday, June 1, 2013

Train Spotting and the Self Obsessed Furby.




I think Blogs are a platform for the self indulgent to stand on the table during a monkey fight and yell: “Listen to meeeeeee”, while the smart people sit in the corner, in the shade, drinking intelligent drinks, reading the financial review and chatting about evolution and the descent of man into chaos. My blog is no different from the monkey yellers. It is a platform for me to pretend to be funny and wise, without having to listen to your response. Here I am pretending to understand it all. Well I don't understand it all, but that doesn't stop me dishing out trough loads of advice for sometimes fictional quandaries/ conundrums. (It keeps me entertained!) My happy “Danny Katz wannabe”, yet tiny advice blog might give you the impression I am not stymied by fear, plagued by neurosis and interested in shiny, superficial obsessions. Wrongopongodrongo.

Currently rating high on my fairly extensive worry list (not in order of importance):

I have given a vast amount of thought to buying a swimsuit that doesn't make me look too much like a seal (aka shark dinner), so I buy bathers that make me look like a tropical fish, or a pasty and confusing extra in an 80's cigarette commercial so that I can avoid getting chomped by a shark. I spend a lot of time worrying about myself, my success, my happiness, my wrinkles, my cellulite and then finally my loved ones and have vivid visions of getting hit by a bus and sometimes wonder how it would feel, I also have an unnatural fear of worms in strawberries and the descent of man into madness, oh and I worry about being painfully lonely. I like to read magazines a fair bit (for the pictures, not the articles) and wish I had loads, loads more money. So what is my god damn point?!!! Well recently a friend of mine showed me a little perspective, so I'd like to use this monkey-yelling-table-platform to share what I have learnt.


LIFE: If you're lucky enough to survive the birth canal you'll come into this world firstly asking why placenta tastes so yummy, but looks so gross, and then you'll reach your arms up to the great and almighty God of halogen hospital lamps and question “Why-why? Cry-cry!”. (It's an annoying rhyme.)


Here is a picture of a Furby cupcake to represent new life. Look at his pleading little hands, he's so vulnerable and confused. 

The question of your existential purpose, life, the cosmos and it's meaning may cross your mind a few more times during your menial existence, mostly you'll be more concerned with:

  • Food
  • Hugs and hand holding
  • Toys and bed jumping

Then someone might introduce you to a god, but you're still young enough and wise enough to realise that this god concept is less important than your toy collection and food.

Then a bit later on, if you're lucky, you'll be concerned with sex/boys/girls and bed jumping (the toys will still feature)

Then you'll ask yourself why people take so many selfies and put them on facebook
(insert picture of a terribly awful facebook selfie)

Other things that may concern you:
  • sun burn
  • buy a cat and wish it was a puppy
  • step on a slug
  • jealousy
  • war
  • pedophiles
  • see a doctor about a weird mole/rash/ itch
  • loose a lot of money
  • make more money than you dreamed of as a kid and yet you don't use your riches to buy truck loads of lollies (this was the wrong choice by the way).

You might listen to Simon and Garfunkel and wish you were in New York at their concert in Central Park in the 80's, mostly because it was free and you'd get to tell people “I was there” and that would definitely help give your life meaning, especially if facebook was invented then and you could post “Jst hang w Paul & Art in the Park, wat the fck w the q for the toilet?”.

Then you might get really lucky and find somebody to love (cue “Queen” medley), then you have babies who also pray to the god of halogen lamps and it gives your life meaning. If your life was a movie it would be called “YOU: GREAT CREATOR OF LIFE. BAM!” You have things sorted, sigh.

When you finally forget about how you felt in that magic moment when you created life once again you return to your toys and maybe to the question of “Why?” Ah, the endless cycle of questioning “Why, why, why!”

Then, if you're lucky enough to get old enough and to that point where you're very busy with your search you wake up one day and realise your eyes have gone, the balls are still there, but they function at 50% and you ignored it for a long time. Shit. It will make you super grumpy and cantankerous.

Furby has taken a turn for the worse. In this picture he still has his eyes, but he looks so sad so I thought I'd use it. 
And then, if you're lucky enough to get old and to that point you realise you can't taste the same as you used to. You'll add salt to everything, but not pepper, until everything taste like a saline rinse on your gammy gums and you'll rinse you futuristic contacts in your porridge by accident and then you'll get fucking grumpy.


And then, if you're lucky enough to get old and to that point, you might not be able to do a pooh without someone lending you a giant nappy and you'll feel like you're insides no longer belong to you. Crap (literally).
Furby is up shit creek. 
And then, if you're lucky enough to get old enough and to get to that point, you'll need someone else to help you breath and some young doctor whipper snapper will be nice, they'll be friendly, but they'll never truly understand what it feels like to be half alive....and then, maybe then you'll realise that life is meaningful. Life is precious and it's a gift not to be taken for granted and worry is a tragic waste of time. Then you might crack the shits because you lost old people scrabble.

However if you find out the meaning of life earlier than the rest of us you might try and spread the word. You might post a status on facebook saying: “If you can eat, swallow, walk and breath for yourself be grateful please”. People might listen, they might not, but you'd really want them to because you know. You've learnt what it all means. You've been to the place where you no longer ask, you no longer whinge about the weather, or not having enough of everything, or a fancy this, or facebook, or arse-monkeys, but you're simply grateful to be alive and you're going to do all you can to enjoy the fuck out of life while its still given to you. You might go to a grave yard and leap off all of the tomb stones, because you can.

I haven't figured out the meaning of life, but I would like to take a tip from a friend, who generously tried to teach it to me. We were going to meet in Egypt for some Egyptian fish and chips, but ran out of time.  I reckon he found the greater meaning in life, If he were here I think he might say we should be happy- we get to breath, we get to sing, we get to eat cake. He may also swear a bit and talk about being fucking melodramatic.  Whatever he'd really say I'm pretty sure he figured it all out and I promise not to take his lesson for granted.

Thanks Nick, you Bell-end. I wish you didn't have to be so smart.













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