Short Story: Highway Hedgetrollers

Once there was a butterfly who was the happiest butterfly on the planet. He was a monarch which means KING and for him all days were glory days. Except one...

Because on one unfortunate day, the monarch was resting on a garden path when a VILE CHILD came along and touched his wings. It felt like monarch had walked right under a waterfall. He sat on the pavement, felt his spirit seeping out of the blemish on his lovely wing.

Suddenly he was joined by what the Animal Kingdom knows as HIGHWAY HEDGETROLLERS, more commonly known as badgers. Gingerly, the badgers took him in their paws and carried him along the hedge until they reached a trove deep in the forest where bird calls echo like raindrops. Monarch suddenly felt at peace with himself.

The rough badgers placed him on the grass and whistled. On his whistle, a hundred squirrels came and started making a huge daisy chain that they placed in a ring around him, and then squirrels and badgers alike formed a circle around monarch and sang his life into a song.

By now, monarchs spirit had seeped fully out of him but it danced on the breath of the singers. monarch's wings fluttered in the wind as he sighed and let himself go; to forever dance on the breath of anyone who is singing.



***improvised txt short story circa 2009

Do the Drew

When we were in Hamilton for rockquest national finals, we got interviewed by that Drew guy from C4. This was after a number of encounters with TV personnel, having had a mini-doco short thing made about our band in July (iiish?), and filming an episode for the Erin Simpson Show in August (I thiiiink). Overall, the process really told me a lot about how they go about making TV. From what I can assume, it's done quickly, efficiently, with as much forced emotion as possible, and yet with zero to no sentiment. These guys KNOW they're making disposable entertainment. And it's their job to churn it out, all with fake smiles and happy handshakes and best wishes.

It really demystified the whole process for me. I mean, the attitude they had resembled smugness, and yet they constantly put down their jobs. Like, they were aware that what they were doing was seen as exctiting, but like hell they were going to admit that. I dunno, it's really hard to judge their level of enthusiasm, to tell what isn't forced.

I felt sorry for Drew though. He tried soooo hard to be enthusiastic; like, fake smiling and laughing and asking us about our band name and stuff, which always delivers awkard responses from us (not his fault there).

I worry that this sort of happy veil is all these TV guys have got. What happened to the TV presenter people who were legitimately funny, and seemed to actually like their job/were good at it? Happiness is great, but it's not a substitute for humour. Aaah, well.

Anyways, here's an extremely awkward interview that proves none of my points. It's Drew vs. MGMT (he tried SO hard).

note on the following:

I thought I'd publish these half-written posts. They're half-written, so not compelte stories in themselves, but they trigger memories for me, ones I'd rather not forget. Who knows, maybe you were there?

Its been very quiet.

Yeah I know, it's been months. Although I dont think I want to apologise. This is MY blog, and my bevy of readers now have learned the power of that fact. I have had quite a wonderful winter though. And it's almost over.

The cherry trees have started to blossom. I had a cherry tree in my backyard in Opawa growing up. Every year we'd try to remember to take a family photo under it when it blossomed. I think the initial idea was that you'd stack them up and flip through them like some cool Home Improvement homage. Played so many awesome games in that tree, when we were still small enough to think it was a big deal to climb up it. At one stage, this grape vine growing on the fence started growing all over the tree. We thought it was a grape tree. Got mad confused. Teachers laughed.

Old story, anyway... so winters almost over. And it was an extremely enjoyable one. Il go into detail with various stories and photos. For now, here are some highlights...

- Paige and I reaching our 6th, 7th and 8th month anniversaries, all celebrated accordingly.
- The holidays.
-Busking. More than once.
-Making a sick Vincent Price tshirt and then spilling coke on it.
-Buying my Campus A Low Hum ticket.
-Seeing, like, 800 movies. Because that's what you do in winter. Movie highlights include; ALL the Twilights in one weekend, TOY STORY 3, Dumbo, Iron Man 2 (HUGE let down)Once Upon A Time in the West, The Runaways... oh man... so many more.
-Forcing Paige to watch Monty Python
-COOKING (and being cooked) soo much food
-EATING (and feeding) soo much food.
-Spending ALL of my money.
-Callums Night of Extreme Challenges.
-Custard Bear winning chartfest, rockquest regionals and generally playing SICK GIGS!!(w/ Tono, Gigglepop, Die! Die! Die!) and generally being uber productive.
-Going to Blenhiem to play Dixie Music.
-Meeting PROPS BOY!
-Being meagrely productive in terms of school work.
-My 7th Form Formal, and subsequent celebrations.
-possibly having a career opportunity
-Finding some of my personal limitations.
-Figuring out my five year plan to the vaguest of standards.

There were plenty of lowlights, some of which aren't fit for remembering. But I'll do my best.

Heres to Spring!

In other news, my ipods broken. Sad face...

2009 in Drawings

At the begining of this year, me and Eli and Angus and Henry and this brilliant idea to start designing and making and selling wiked tshirts. It couldn't fail. We had Eli and myself to design (I even got us both sketchbooks to fill up (which I only completed about a month ago)), Angus was in promotion and shit, so he started teaching himself binary and html and shite so he could make a website. And we also had Henry as king of finance. We even had a meeting where he drew a graph. And we even had a name... (care of Eli, purveyor of great names) ...

White Sweater Zombie

Bam. But being boys we got distracted by girls (angus and eli) and school (henry) and... uh... art? (me)... and sort of just stopped working on it. We still all believe that it will happen eventually.
SOO... heres some drawings from my full sketchbook which I just happened to photograph this morning.

Mugger Baby

(this is an old story that I forgot about. Happy Tuesday everyone)

I went down to Paiges to have misc. adventures with her and Thom. When I arrived at the playground, Awesome Alex and Paige were on the swings, and Paige had bread, and Thom was late. So someone suggested we teach Alex DUCKDAFUCK (one reason being alex is petrified of birds so that would be lols in itself) and so we ventured to Jelly Park to commence game.

Alex, as it happened, was EXTREMELY terrified of all the ducks. And unnaturally terrible at duckdafuck. Paige on the upper hand kicked ass (AGAIN) and much chuffing and huffing was had. At the near climax of the game however, we noticed a trio of swaggering clots heading our way, annonymous bourbon cola drinks in hand. A ginga child approached me, strangely oblivious to the pretty girls sitting next to me and mumbled "Hey, you want to fight?".
"Uh... what, sorry?"
"You wanna fight man, c'mon! Letss go" he said, bringing his fists up, slightly overbalancing.
"Uhmm, no thanks," I said, turning away, and laughing quietly, but quietly scared. He was small, but I try and avoid fights as much as I can. His mate wandered over. He had slick black hair and gross pimples, as well as a heavy looking black square backpack. He was around the same age, maybe slightly older, but nonetheless takes his lead from the littler ginga child. He decides joins in on the fun, giggling and supporting his friend.
"Well den can I have ten dolluz for ma bus? I need to get hoome man..." said the small ginga child, reaching over for my backpack (which happened to have Oli's digital delay pedal in it, a small token worth around 200 dollars). I roared maliciously with laughter and said "No," an answer he obviously had some grievance with.

"C'mon man! I need to get home ae..." and started reaching towards my bag. I pulled it away from him, telling him to "Fuck off!" he swaggered away, around the back of the bench. I shared a worried glance with Paige. With the poise of a drowned goose, he ripped Paiges bag away from behind her and started to run off, riffling through it. Paige jumped up, shouting various insults and suggesting various activities. The drunkard, realising he was stealing from a girl (harbingers of loveliness), reluctantly dropped her bag. Pimple Git, however, was back in front of me. "C'mon man, give us ten bucks!"

I walked over to Paige. She was having words with General Ginga. He didn't seem to be keen at all on leaving. I opened my mouth; "How old are you guys?"
"Sixteen" was the immediate and resoundingly confident answer. My age. Fuck. How young do I look? I wondered. "Well you don't look it. Do you parents know that you guys are drinking in a park? Or harrassing strangers?" I said. Sure I felt like a dick, but I wanted them to leave, "Are you guys honestly trying to mug us?"
"Nah man," Ginga replied, "Our parents don't give a shit about us anyways," he said looking for support from Pimple Git. He nodded, grinning. "Yeeauah, and drinking what? Were just enjoying a lovely evening." he noted, motioning towards the park he noticed he was in.
"You guys are fucking drunk! You stink!"
"No we don't!" replied Ginga, worried.
"And you've got a whole bag full of booze I bet," I said, pointing at Pimple Git, "What if the cops caught you with that?" This worried them. They got angry.
"Don't you fucking call the cops!! I'll beat you up," cried Ginga, sloshing drink.
"I hear they're on bikes now. They're fast. They could get here like that! And then you'd be fucked, wouldn't you?" At this, Ginga casually hid his rum and coke mixer bitch drink under his rip curl t shirt. It was at this moment that the third mugger spoke up. He was the worried one, standing back from this whole encounter. He had a round baby face and pretty boy brown hair, and long cargo pants. He stood back with eyes down, rocking from foot to foot. I'm dubbing him Baby Bitch.
"Uh, err... should we just go?" squeaked Baby Bitch, from five metres back.
"Shut the fuck up Josh!" spat Ginga.
"Josh?" I said, laughing. I had the little one, "Your names Josh? I've got your name now. You guys are fucked," and started to pull out my cell phone, flipping it open. Baby Bitch started to freak, and Pimple Git strode forward towards me. Before he could get there, Ginga punched me in my ear.

"Oh..." I said, honestly shocked. No one likes getting punched. But in my ear? Man, thats weak, I thought. Baby Bitch stepped in again, pleading for them to go. My ear was ringing so I didn't hear him exactly, although he probably said, "Man, we shouldn't mess with this guy. He looks like trouble. And were all sooks remember? Let's go home and have a group bath."

"Fuck off!!" I shouted, turning to see my female comrades with a mix of worry and admiration in their eyes. Yes. Hero. I held my cell phone up to my wounded ear.
"Okay man," he said, with reasoning, "Don't call the cops," his voice cracking slightly.
"Then fuck off!" I said. Looking towards Paige and Alex, we started to walk away.
"Okay okay!" cried Ginga, "shake on it. You won't call the cops." He held out his slightly pudgy sweat hand. I took a moment, then shook, making sure to patronisingly shake my head as I did so, probably saying something like, "Oh you kids. What a ruckass. Now, go home and tell your mothers you love them."

We walked off, as Pimple Git shouted abusive nonsensicle taunts at Alex, we knew we were now safe. Hero.

Math the Never

Okay okay... Okay. I'm very very excited and stoked right now. But I'm getting ahead of myself (lols for reference)...

Today I was doing my level two maths exam. It went pretty all right. I did a suitable amount of revision in the weekend. On Saturday I taught myself how to do logarithms. For those of you who avoided year 12 maths logarithms are special magic numbers which make algebra awesome. Needless to say I spent all day doing examples and getting real awesome at it (sidebar. there were two logarithm questions out of the whole six papers. I could have done the second one another way but I kinda forced it. It was awesome). Sunday I did calculus. For those of you who dont know anything, calculus is a maths on meth. Its not healthy. But it is kind of magic. But dont go thinking I'm a fan of math. I'm really not... maths is stupid. Well, high school maths is. I've been doing maths all my living memory. From counting... to subtracting... to MULTIPLICUNTION... long division. fractions. adding/subtracting fractions. algebra (giggles)

...

it was a long, long journey. Lots of "why??!"'s were had. I struggled to understand the point for long periods of my life when I was certain that I wanted to do music/film/art/things that Im naturally good at and wont take long periods of academic struggling. But I wont go on and on...everyone feels this way. Even maths teachers... but they would never admit it.

So there I was, halfway through my trigonometric equation paper when I realised... this wwas the LAST TIME I WAS EVER DOING MATHS! EVER!!! EVER EVER!!!! EEEVVVVEEEERRRRRR!!!!!!!

And then I got Los Campesinos! stuck in my head and my day was perfect forever amen.

I love summer and summer smells.

This post is part of my "Its the summer so I'm feeling sentimental" collection. Secretly, I know its only spring. How do I know this?

The clouds are moody and I need chapstick.

Favourite summer smells include damp clean hair and cut grass. I know everyone loves cut grass, but I love it because it reminds me of Hansen Park. That's where we did our athletics at primary school. Towards the end of every year we would do athletics in the afternoons. On Fridays the whole senior school (about 100 people) would walk down to Hansen Park intheir sun hats to do running. It always smelt amazing. And plus we got the afternoon off of school work, so I even enjoyed the exercise even though I run like a desk. And the walks were good too, we would talk about star wars or lord of the rings or something else equally life consuming. And when we did high jump we would fall onto the hot rubber mats and get sweaty backs.

This afternoon I have my primary school reunion. We're taking lemon slice.