Poisonous Mushrooms and Wanking Dildo-heads.

I've been so depressed lately I think I'm going to OFF myself as the human race just doesn't seem worth participating in any more. It's not just the BIG picture of wars and degradation, the microcosm of one's personal daily life contains such disheartening contretemps, I feel like giving up. Every scene I attempt to join, contribute to and act within inevitably has one or more arseholes who go out of their way to obstruct, rip off, destroy or carp at, out of sheer jealousy, small-soul nastiness and to further their own non-careers. It's obvious it has to be this way, world capitalist civilization is cruel, the competition is stiff, there are just too many people on the planet, and you can't like everyone. Still, it's hard to keep going, especially after 50 years of being kicked in the teeth at every turn. (Boo hoo hoo.)

I know this sounds like the usual punk Toby bitch but, really, there's not been an event I've entered over all the years where there hasn't been some exploitative cunt ready to shred the skin from my back because they wanted a nice lampshade to shine on them and not ME ( Yeah yeah, ME, ME, ME!) Right back to my teenage years when I helped build Melbourne's first vegetarian restaurant, (Shitahari), only to be shoved out at the grand opening by the cosmic Transcendental Meditation team leader so he could play the big hero and make his first million bucks flogging chapatis to dumb hippies.

Today is a case in point. I was hiding out under the blankets, loathe to get up and face the world, when I got a phone call demanding I be humiliated further. It was from Mushroom Records (Music/Pictures), snippy because I'd sent them an invoice for a lousy 80 bucks for some old film footage they'd hassled me over to use in some bullshit music doco they were making. When they first contacted me, it was all gushing smiles and supportive enthusiasm, I was rung constantly and chased about the city, they really wanted to look at my old films like "Darling It Hurtz!" to see if they could use some of the footage of the seventies punk bands and rock clubs. Many years ago I'd been ripped badly by Mushroom, (I'd prefer to call them Toadstool), so I should've been warned but, believe it or not, I'm actually an easy-going guy, co-operative, generous, even naive, to my detriment, and I went out of my way to help them, even taking my films down to their premises in Wooloomooloo to save them the trouble of a courier.

They were very eager to get their hands on the material, and I had fond dreams of being rediscovered, offered further film contracts, maybe making some much needed money as the dude chasing me was ever so friendly and had promised me $20 a second of whatever film they used. But as soon as they had the material, and decided only 4 seconds was good enough, I didn't hear from them again, dropped like a hot turd, no more enthusiasm, not returning my phone calls, only making sure I signed the contract giving them the footage.

And of all the stuff from Sydney's burgeoning rock scene of the '70s I'd recorded, all they chose was 4 seconds of the worst rocker of them all, (in my mind), that psuedo-saviour of Indigenous Aussies and the environment, Peter Carrot, the Walking Dildo, who I'd shot on Super-8 in a club called the Stagedoor Tavern, jumping about like a rabid epileptic with his band, Midnight Soil. As if he needed any more glorification, but opportunistic shit-heap climbers like pop-stars turned turn-coat politicians and soul-less record company executives need all the kudos they can garner to bolster their bullshit facade, and I curse the day I inadvertently contributed to the cunts' career. (He's notorious for using indigenous Australians as a photo-opportunity to further his political pretensions, as if he really cared, and for metamorphosing into a politician and opening up Uranium mines where previously he'd campaigned against such noxious trade.)

It's infuriating that pollies get rewarded with a lifetime pension of $150,000 a year in spite of all the mistakes and bad decisions they'd made while in office, such as clearing forests and causing salinity in the soils to the pink-batte insulation scheme that killed four workers.Of course, that's why they all get into the game, for the perks, power and pensions. I can point to a specific case where Peter Carrot ripped me. Seven months after the premier of my film, "The Thief of Sydney" where I animate a nuclear missile hitting Sydney and turning it to a heap of slag, causing the water to rush out of the harbor, leaving it an empty hole, his band "Midnight Soil" brought out a hit record with the cover art reproducing that very same image. In the future, regardless of his selling-out turn-coat shallowness, he's cheered and hailed as a hero by gronks at rock concerts, all of them baying for his return, as if they have no memories and no brains, just vacuous worship of ugly celebrity. Hitler was cheered thus in his hay-day, the masses can be fooled by the media's bullshit hype..

And today I'm hassled over the $80 I've been trying to squeeze out of the multi-million dollar record company. What a bunch of cunts! It was inferred that I was being an opportunistic beggar demanding a measly $80, they'll pay me from petty cash, how dare I trouble them over such a paltry sum. I've been waiting 3 months to hear from them over the "paltry sum" and took great pleasure in wheedling it out of them, Mushroom Records are notorious for ripping off artists foolish enough to fall into their avaricious grasp, the company drone hung up on me with a grim splutter, "It's only 80 dollars, what the fuck!" But I had a mischievous smile on my mug, companies increase their profit margins by ripping off all and sundry and I was happy to wangle my dues, but, nogod, the pain!

Mushroom had ripped me egregiously in years gone by and I wanted revenge! For what it's worth, here's the story of the Big Rip. It's a true story, tho discounted by the cunts who made their careers by it, but I'm sticking to it, for the Akashic Record. A lot of good it will do me, I just don't want to go quietly, like a wimp, I imagine I'll merge back to the DUST tomorrow, I feel that close to THE END, and I want to say my piece and stick it to all the Dickheads that fucked me along the way, fuck 'em, I don't call myself a Punk for nothing.

Somewhere around 1985 I was asked by a friend of mine, Jo Piggot, to make a video clip for her band, Scribble, and I had to go into Toadstool Records to convince the manager, Martin (not so) Fabulosi to give me the job. I showed him my animated film "The Thief of Sydney" and bitched to him how previously his company had ripped me badly over intellectual property rights on designs I'd done for that film. There were no sympathetic whimpering forthcoming but he did watch "The Thief" with keen interest and I did get the job of making a part-animated clip for Jo's song, "He Takes Me to Sunday School", a put-off title I know, but a sweet song none-the-less. (And, tediously, I had to chase the company for months, like a beggar with my hand out, for the measly $1000 wages for my 2 months of hard work.) Unbeknownst to me, he obviously adored the animated opening of "The Thief" wherein a nuclear missile flies in and knocks the Harbor Bridge down and destroys the city of Sydney, a huge mushroom cloud growing out of the ruins.

Years later I saw the logo Toadstool put at the beginning of all their films, and what do you know, it's an exact copy of my animated sequence, only done by some other shithead, the Bridge knocked down, the mushroom cloud etc, like now I've been ripped twice by the bastards, they couldn't be fucked giving me the job to do their logo, and there's no Intellectual Property Copyrights here in Auz, artists can be ripped mercilessly, it's the convict colony mentality, society is made up of Masters, slaves and overseers, and I'm just a faceless, voiceless slave. I defy anyone to look at their logo and my film and say it's not been copied.

(You will probably declare that a mushroom cloud is an obvious logo for that company but, I swear, if I'd done an animated Alice in Wonderland tripping furiously on psychedelic mushrooms while a giant toadstool popped up between her legs, they would've gone for that as their logo as the world is mostly made up of uninspired deadheads with money to buy hack-workers and copy who they like.) Every artist I've ever met has this same tale of woe, of being plagiarized and dumped in the trash, like it's a ubiquitous urban myth but, darling, it fucking hurts!

For the tale of the first time Toadstool Records ripped me, read "The Thief Who Got Ripped Off" on this Blog site. It was the most heinous in my mind as it robbed me of the impetus my non-career as an artist needed in the "ME" era of the '80s. Nobody reads this shit so what's the point? But I've got to get it out of me or I think I'll explode and turn serial-killer, cleverly bumping off record company executives and dildo-head rock-stars. In a world that worships fame and money, everyone is up for having their back stabbed, there are no rules and no morals, it's who wins that counts, dumb suckers for The System overlook how they did it.

Toadstool profited from the Big Rip by selling lots of records, and not only was Martin (not so) Fabulosi disinterested in my complaint when he watched "The Thief", (an ironic title I know), he purposely planned to deepen the cut by ripping off my mushroom cloud for his company logo, like, Machiavelli rules baby.

I'm now on my existential deathbed and this is my dying statement: nobody gives a shit, a loser is a loser and that's what I am, but I've got nothing else to lose and so I spit on all the fame-whores and money-grubbing wannabes in this burning world, for all the clever art and technological progress it's all gonna go up in nuclear smoke anyway, because Arseholes have always ruled.

For every 7 people one meets, 3 will be indifferent to one's soulful existence, (but willing to stand on you to get ahead), 3 will actively work against and try to destroy you, and one blessed sweet soul will try to help, to love, to feel compassion: this is my philosophy, so I'm not a total misanthrope, there are good people about, but they're as rare as friendly cut-snakes. And I just won't passively eat the poisonous toadstools the wanking dildo-heads try cramming down my throat any more. Goodbye cruel world! Stick art and career up your tight crocodile arts-hole, I'm hitting the road.

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APEC Apemen.

The police and pollies predicted the big V for Violence at the protest rally for the APEC summit meeting here in Sydney because that's what they wanted, they love violence, it's mother's milk to them, they live for it, have all the equipment poised and psyches geared up, and if it doesn't happen, they'll make it happen. It's as if the Police are another species from the rest of us, from another planet, (we don't call them Pigs for nothing)(they dont socialise with the rest of us and can only marry each other), they hate humans and are champing at the bit to attack and cage us at any provocation. The way they bashed up that straight accountant just for crossing the road was direct proof, 7 cops stomping on him when it would only have taken one to grab him by the arm.

Anyone who's been to a political demonstration knows what I'm talking about, the Pigs rush in with maniacal glee, it's their version of a rave party, they curse and bash, grapple and drag, punch and kick, and in true Orwellian speak, blame the Peaceniks for the afray. All of it to smokescreen the horror of worldwide warmongers like Bush and cabal with their economic gabfest, who for money and power don't blink at hundreds of thousands being killed and maimed, it's a sick civilization we're in and I'm mighty disheartened.

The protest rally itself was like a feral fashion parade, a freak's fiesta, lots of colourful costumes, crazy placards waved and drums beaten, what else to expect from a motley crowd of Peaceniks. Tho we were corralled and herded about like sheep, still I enjoyed the afternoon with my friends, it was festive and we had a lot of laughs. I went regardless of the threats of water-cannons, capsicum spray and mass arrests for I demand my right to protest, as useless as it is in these days of total population control, where Society is allowed to let off steam and the radicals can march home thinking they've done their bit, while latter-day fascists continue to divide and vampirise the planet. But what can we do? THEY have the weapons and the brain-wash, the religion of Consumerism has opiated the majority into begging for their gilded chains to be made tighter and deadbeat misfits like me can only hide-out and bitch incongruously.

Yeah yeah, I know about 'terrorists', the Islamist Jihadis wont be satisfied till we're all back in the Stone-age picking fleas from each other's hairy backs, but the Bush/Howard approach has increased the dangers and the horror, even created them, so that it's more likely we'll all be bombed back into prehistory, back to being Apemen with no trees to swing from. There are alternative living systems to warmongering Capitalism and Islamic Jihadism, and I'm not thinking of the Communist Party either, it has been theorised that apemen only put in a few hours a week making a living, the rest of the time was spent partying. Once They've had their all out wars, and humanity has to start again, maybe it'll be different next time around. I'll just have to hide out in my flat and wait for it.

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At The End of the Line.

 
I stopped writing for awhile as I was looking my mortality in it's phantasmal face, convinced I'm at the end of THE LINE. I've been in a delirium, painting my last piece of visionary madness before kissing planet Earth goodbye. My injured leg has been poisoning my whole system, the reason for my boils and heart attack, I thought I was dying and had nothing more to write about, and who gives a shit, civilization is teetering on the edge of chaos, and in my punk nastiness I think, good riddance! But then I tackled the source of my problems, the shoddy pin the mad Indian surgeon put in my leg 4 years ago, it's going to be ripped out, and maybe, just maybe, I'll get another 20 years of swashbuckling adventure, I wouldn't mind living till 77, after all, it is an amazing existence, this Universe so awesome.

So I stumble on with my life, no direction home, no great purpose, except for knowledge and ecstatic experience, I'm thankful I've still got a brain and the heart to remain amongst flawed humanity. The Piccolo Cafe also staggers along. Vitto is numb with fatigue and grief, his sister Maria died last month, there was a full Catholic Requiem Mass at a church down Roslyn Street, it was like a Vittorio De Sica neo-reallist movie, with absurd drama and heartbreaking sorrow. It's a weird church, lots of bums and druggies sleeping on the portico and being fed 3 meals in the basement, a true sanctuary and what Christian charity should be all about, but still amazing to have to run the gauntlet of crashed out zombies to get thru the front doors.

The coffin was carried in by a gang of bikers, The "Life and Death" club, her son Joe was a member even tho it seems he doesn't ride a bike, they all wore their colorful biker leathers and were suitably solemn. A large crowd of King's Cross locals turned up, freaks and straights made to ogle each other across the klunky church. Maria had been a notorious underground matriarch running cafes in the Cross/Darlinghurst area for 50 years and people either loved her or feared her. I loved her, she was a real character, grumpy but dead honest, no bullshit. She hated bludgers and druggies and made no bones about it. I never let her get to me, I've always been able to handle old curmudgeons with aplomb having lived and worked with gerries all my life, and me being the most curmudgeonly of all.

In the middle of the tirade of nonsensical prayers there was a commotion on the other side of the coffin, I glimpsed a weird tableau of a black-clad family trying to drag back into her seat one little old lady. An old Italian widow in black was trying to stand up to say her piece, the sister of Maria's divorced husband. After much struggle she threw her family off and grizzled loudly her remorse, "Maria was a bitch but we loved her!" A bit embarrassing but it wouldn't have been a real Italian funereal without such drama. Thankfully Tina, the daughter-in-law got up and gave an inspiring, loving eulogy that dissipated any reservations on the life of the hard task-mistress that was Maria.

The priest, a milksop Auzzie, was named Father Syn (of course) and he thought he'd proselytize to a room full of freaks, Christ this, Christ that, Christ dying for our sins bullshit, the service went on and on forever, stand up, sit down, stand up again, my bung leg ached thru-out, but none of us deviants was up for conversion, even Vitto and family refusing to partake of the sacrament, we're all lapsed in one way or another. All the while Peter played violin up in the choir with 2 other gay guys on organ and chorals, it was so sweet I couldn't help but cry, especially at Ave Maria, funerals always make me cry, they're so final, the soul gone away for good, only the memories left to assuage the heart.

Afterwards I moaned to Peter that these things come in threes, first Auntie Jack died, then Maria, perhaps I'd be next, my leg giving me so much grief. My misgivings were pooh-poohed but Maria had a young friend, Eric, almost an acolyte, one of the few souls who saw her great worth and gave her much energy. Only a few weeks later he had a massive heart attack, at 36 years old, and died, almost as if he'd gone to join her, to keep her company in the happy hunting grounds in the sky. Life/death is such a great mystery, I reiterate, I'm in constant awe of IT.

Vitto has forbidden me to write about the funereal, being too close to the bone for him, he thinks I put shit on him and the cafe with my Blogging, I assure him I'm just painting an impression of Piccolo life, fairly supportive and simply my attempt at creative writing, nobody reads it and, anyway, how to gag a compulsive poet, neither the blood-stained Nazis in Berlin nor the redneck Auzzies in Canberra have succeeded.

Back at Northcott Housing Estate life continues it's dysfunctional roller-coaster ride. The fire alarms clanged mercilessly again last Saturday night, only this time there really was a fire, a fuckwit nearby set his apartment alight cooking drugs in a bent table-spoon no doubt, smoke poured like a tsunami out of his shattered windows and filled the entire complex with a thick fog of noxious fumes, with droogs hollering about the end of the world and firemen stomping in and out hosing down anything that moved, I loved the drama but only as long as I can watch it from inside a protective space-suit, my intact skin, as if I'm exploring an alien planet.

Cursula next door has been up to her sleazy, moronic tricks, bringing back mugs to her flat from the all night pubs down the street with promises of erotic delight, then wheedling money out of them so she can score drugs and return to oblivion, her preferred state. I heard the argument thru my thin lounge-room wall, some dickhead guy furious that he had been conned, spitting on her after he fucked her, throwing 50 bucks at her then demanding she suck his cock when she asked for more money. She whined and pleaded, she had expected he'd give her $200, he laughed in contempt and threw another 5 bucks in her face and charged out the door, kicking the pot-plants over, she staggered after him and I heard her pleading for more money out on the pavement and with a demonic snarl he threw 5 cents in her face and spat on her again. Nogod, what a pathetic existence for some, how can getting drug-fucked be worth such dehumanizing behavior? Oh humanity, where for art thou?

(Her story is my story, everyone with no money, no love and no hope do desperate things, I feel sorry for the poor cow but I dare not be nice to her as she'll be knocking on my door 24/7 wanting to borrow something or get endless counseling, and I don't have that much compassion.)

Maybe I'll carry on with the writing, I'm spurred on by the likes of Bukowski and Genet, only I'm kidding myself with delusions of grandeur again, but it's fun, much like masturbation, even if purely for my own enjoyment, like throwing thought-waves out into cyber-space begging for rescue, making footprints in the Akashic records, I EXISTED, IT sure had it's moments, there could even be a few more stations to go here at the end of the line.

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From the Trenches of Desolation Row.

We had a wake for Auntie Jack at the Piccolo Bar last weekend, it always amazes me how a mob comes out of the woodwork after a death, we humans love to commiserate and reminisce with our fellow lifers in the face of omnipresent death and OBLIVION. It was agreed by everyone that for all Jack's curmudgeon-like carrying on, he was an unforgettable character, shining explosively from the void, and we all miss him badly, there's a hole in the cafe that no longer growls witticisms in repartee. Dennis the basker warbled Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and we all sang along to it, a fitting piece of poetry for that soul's journey upon planet Earth. In the jaws of pain and horror, how awesome it is to be alive and in with a chance at Ecstasy.

The oldtimers hang upon the Piccolo like a life-raft, time is fleeting and flesh is frail. Ayesha the Drag(on Lady) is working herself up to another Dementia furore, cursing the heavens and spitting chips over little nothings. Lately she's been wearing crazy head-dresses of plastic flowers like Bloody Mary in meltdown or covered in faux fur like a cross between Zsa Zsa Gaboring and a dead cat. She'll blow someday like an Asian volcano and I dont want to be in the vicinity, last time she kicked a kid in the guts at a kiddies' birthday party, and lately she's been aiming her abuse at me, whose always got a flippant word for her, like "how's Lee Pong Poo today?" as she's notorious, in her madness, for not bathing daily.

She still thinks the spotlight of "Les Girls" is shining upon her, any camera within a hundred miles she rushes to pose in front of, a star in her own toilet break. What a comedown for her to discover that she was flung to the cutting-room floor of the film "Cross Life", the latest tittilating expose on Sydney's gentrifing declasse red-light district, and she seems to blame me for it, just because I heap scorn on fame whores. I just hope she doesn't drop dead in the gutter on Roslyn Street where she's already had fainting fits, there's a crowd of ghosts in front of the Piccolo and no room for any more.

We had a hissing spat yesterday like two cats locked in a dumpster and it feels like we got the bad air cleared for now she's being nice to me, she knows how sharp my claws are, in her non-fame fever I only have to remind her that she was actually sacked from Les Girls, too bitchy even for that crew. It's a pity we disempowered gronks in the gutter have only each other's skin to shred in our angst, the out-of-reach ELITE depend upon it. Harsh realities like the Iraqui war have got us spewing in sheer sadness and horror with only each other to take it out on. Many conformist patrons of the Piccolo Cafe ogle me like they've never seen such a nasty, spitting pink poofy cat before, but hey, I'd rather grate on robopathic nerves than be demure and melt into the wallpaper like an insipid celebrity worshipper, I may not be nice but at least I'm real.

(Only the other day I was telling a friend, new to the Cafe, about the "old times", when Vitto worked the nightshift. You could come here at 3 am if you were restless and there'd always be some action, someone to rave with, guitar strumming, juke box rocking, ganjha smoke filling the small room till it resembled a sauna, in reality a hothouse for existential raconteurs, pop culture surfers and dispossessed deadbeats. Some nights it boiled over into a punch-up, yours trully often twisted on the hotspot and beat up too, pot smoke wafting like fog up Roslyn street. The Piccolo was notorious, the Daily Terror did it's screaming heebie-jeebie Sunday paper shock treatment, the pigs raided the Cafe repetitively, Vitto go fatigued and paranoid and swapped over to the day shift, fights dwindled to a minimum and, drug free, we sip our coffee and natter how wild and fun it once was. No more fighting, thank nogod, we're sick of the fistfights.

It's a shock when it's me who still comes under attack, I find it hard to humour fools and have to bite my tongue when I'm made to deal with them at the Cafe, compassion wears thin, most people seem to stay alive by manipulating their fellows. Take Fat Greg's side-kick Barry, he really makes me bunch up my fist. Recently he offered to buy groceries for this crippled 70 year old gerrie named Carlito, taking his last $50, then returned with a bullshit tale of how the cops had stopped him and taken the money from him. The truth is he has a wicked poker machine habit and he blew the $50 in 7 seconds. When the old decrepit fumed and replied how he thought Barry had ripped him off, the hefty retard slapped the old fellow around, right in the doorway of the Piccolo, where PEACE had long been declared.

All of Roslyn street was pissed off, old folks should be protected, not brutalised, otherwsie the area falls, the junkies, gamblers and crooks will make mince-meat of all of us. Fat Greg's been rushing about effusing endless apologies, his "adopted son" is existentially challenged, we have to make allowances, in three weeks he'll dredge up another $50 to pay the gerrie back, he's got his own "pokie habit" to deal with. I think the Barry the Beast should be locked in a cage in a back-yard and occassionally poked with a stick, I'm tired of being under threat at a simple rendevous like a Cafe, even if it is on Desolation Row.

Other than this tawdry drama there's been no action at the Cafe, just Vitto slaving dawn to dusk and anxious about his ancient sister who is dying by inches at St. Vinnies hospital. One day, if I stay alive long enough, and when everybody else is mulched back into the VOID, I will tell the full story of the Piccolo and it's gallery of rogues passing thru as I know where the bodies are buried, the 1001 filmmakers and journos who rush the dump to get their thin slice of the Bohemian pie only get the bullshit facade, it's the lifers like me who learn the nitty gritty for somehow I get people confessing all to me, the truth is always amazing, more twisted than a horror movie.

Speaking of which, the latest video-nasty I've relished was "Hostel 2", the critics hated it and gave it zero stars, "torture-porn" they all crowed, but they're not horror-heads and love to wear their morality upon their sleeves to broadcast what good citizens they are, but they're really just media apologists for a cruel system involving a 'profits-at-any-cost' Money-god, they hate social critique dressed in terror. Take the movie's premise, that in this world, if you're rich and nasty enough, you can join a monstrous private club, bid on hapless captured backpacker tourists ( a real terror for us world travellors) and buy yourself an innocent victim to torture at your own pleasure, a spot-on metaphor for our class-ridden world. And most fans of horror-stories doesn't identify with the torturer, thank you (not), we identify with the individual who turns the table on the fuckers and escapes in the end!

I've been devouring lots of cyberpunk novels lately, the only genre that trully fills me in on present and future realities/possibilities, and one can't get past the Masters, William Gibson (Idoru, Pattern Recognition), Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age, Cobweb) and Bruce Sterling (Holy Fire, Heavy Weather). In the latter is the scary idea of "lifeboat cannibals", power-mongering creeps who, in an overcrowded decaying world, prey on others and bump off as many as possible, so that "lifeboat planet earth" has more room for them. They invent and spread disease, encourage terrorism, create nuclear meltdowns, push WAR as the answer to Earth's overcrowding problems, rather than encourage half the planet's population to go "QUEER" for instance, fascists have always favoured the 'death wish' over the 'pleasure principle'. (For what are poofs good for except bashing up?) All these cyberpunk concepts ring true and add fuel to my hard-arsed surrealism, no wonder I'm a hissing, spitting cat on Desolation Row.

Another Cute Northcott Story.

Most nights here in the trenches of Northcott war-zone are blessedly silent and peaceful tho I do hold my breath, taking nothing for granted, for chaos can explode at any moment. 1001 humans living on top of each other can be a disaster waiting to happen and noise is the greatest of our woes but there's no succour for I forgo calling the police as it's like inviting shreiking harpies into the heady mix. The list of noisome phenomena is endless, no wonder we have massacres and suicides, yet I doubt prolonged 'bad noise' would be a good defence at a trial for assault.

We've had a faulty fire alarm for years that often shreds the peace, clanging away at all hours for no good reason, the fired brigade wailing to the rescue, then stomping and shouting, more clanging as the dammed alarm is tested, thus sleep can never be regular. For the last few weeks there's been an ultra-sonic whine ringing thru the nights like tinnitus of the collective head, it's source unfathomable and me ready to run amok with an axe, it's piercing my brain like an ice-pick. We've got jackhammers throbbing thu.out the days while they renovate the crumbling towers, and the garbage trucks trundle and crash, the cleaners clatter and smash, for my flat is near the dumpsters. Ambulences and police sirens scream at the ongoing Estate emergencies and every fortnight the dreaded lawn-mower brigade shows up to tear away at any wayward blade of grass, machine-grinding from Hell, all the gardens chopped to bits whether they need pruning or not for this army of contractors wants the easy money the Estate provides, vegetation and resting invalids be dammed.

Then there's my next door neighbours, Cursula and Bawl, whose constant bickering pierces my lounge-room wall, him berating her slovenly existence, her whingeing defence of her leprous honour, then their reconciliation with bad musical duets that grate on my nerves, him on guitar and her on tink-plink piano, and their lovie-dovie smooching that churns my guts, ending in a crscendo of sexual bellowing, as if a rhino is mounting a hippopotamus. Because she's filled her flat with garbage and junk that's stacked to the ceiling, any of her fellow drug-fucked friends that come visiting can't fit in so she holds her moronic soirees outside, in front of my door, and for hours I have to listen to inane trivia, "gee, if you put a photo of Kylie Minogue and Dolly Parton next to each other, you'd swear they were sisters." I scream thru the door, "try photos of Cursula and King Cong next to each other!"

More hours of saccharine compliments upon her filthy lifestyle, "Wow Cursula, you managed to bake a sludge cake using dirty dishes, that's clever!" till I have to bite my tongue and handcuff myself to my bed or otherwise I'm going to run out there with a baseball bat and knock her teeth down her throat. I've begged her to desist, she just moos like the cow she is and carries on chewing the cud, there's no explaining the waste of space that drug abusers create.

On the other side of me I've got Eric the Viking Beserker, howling hideously at the nights, cursing every passer-by, and climbing thru his window every 7 minutes, the window shudders open then screeches closed, over and over, he's lost his front door key again. The other day he pissed his pants as he clambered thru, a trail of noxious yellow running down the wall and across the footpath. The gay couple down the other end of the verandah shreiked outrage at the sight of it, they have a cleanliness fetish, Tony the Tooth Fairy is forever hosing down the concrete while his obnoxious paramour, Dravid the Undertaker, drunk as a punk 24/7, yells abuse at the heavens, "it's those dole bludgers, those pensioners, they make the bloody mess, they won't work, they own nothing, THEY OWN NOTHING...!", this last repeated like a mantra, all he owns is a black Bat-mobile, big deal.

The main path that cuts thru the whole Estate runs past my front door and I get all the marauding mobs in my face, drunken louts yahooing, Abbos shattering beer bottles, ICE-zombies shouting murder, domestic quarrels weeping and begging at 3am like restless ghosts from the ancient cemetary buried under the foundations of Northcott Compound. Stolen cars are set alight and exploded in the carpark, furniture is tossed from 21st floor balconies and zombies drag trash from the garbage dump in the twilight of dawn, Cursula in the vanguard, broken furniture scraped and banged thru her door just when I'm finally falling asleep. All this noise swells up into a tsunami of caterwauling, a symphony of cacophony, an 1812 overture of angst and recrimination, and I'm swept away, down into a whirlpool of sonic vibrations, my quantum consciousness dissolved, madness filling the void.

All of which brings me to the cute story about Northcott. Some years ago, after a hard night-shift in the House of the Dying, I was trying to sleep when the most god-awful machine thumping threw me from my bed. So loud the walls shuddered and my nerve-ends frayed and exploded. I rushed outside to find a fifty-something moron pushing a pneumatic machine that sprays water, he's swishing trash and leaves from the footpath, ripping up the peace worse than a jack-hammer. I scream over the racket for him to turn the machine off, it's giving me a nervous breakdown, is a terrible waste of water and hasn't he ever heard of a broom. He just looked at me vacant-brained and kept waving his water-wand at a few twigs and cigarette butts.

I yelled and yelled but he was impervious to my admonishments, grunting "it's my job, fuck off!" An ancient old man in a dressing gown hung over the 4th floor balcony and yelled, "yeah, stop the noise, turn that bloody machine off!" I felt somewhat vindicated so I kept squawking, "turn that fucking hell-macine off!" The thump/whine noise increased in pitch the louder I yelled, my brains felt like they were shredding out my arse and the mentally challenged cleaner carried on oblivious, spray spray, thump, thump. I went over the edge and grabbed at the cumbersome machine, wrestling to the death with it like it was some invading Dalek, heavy as an armoured tank, in my rage I flipped it over onto it's side, the thump-thump whining dwindling to a wheezing gasp. The retarded cleaner's face swelled with outrage, he adveanced upon me waving his water-wand and sprayed me head to toe with dirty water till I was drenched and sqeaking like a drowned rat.

I spluttered fury and ran back into my flat and for the second time in my life I rang the cops, I had gone into meltdown and wasn't thinking clearly. Within 7 minutes a matching pair of pigs showed up, as if spewed from a conveyor belt, the usual blonde female with a pony-tail chewing gum, the fat male behind her scowling over her shoulder. She asked me what the big emergency was and I told her how I'd been assaulted by the moronic cleaner with a spray device. They went over to the retard and questioned him, him jabbering away and pointing at his precious machine as if it was a sacred relic I'd desecrated.

They marched back to me peering from my doorway and growled, "look mate, what's your problem? He says you attacked his machine!" "We have enough noise around here, the garbage trucks, the fire alarms, without that moron adding to it with a ridiculous machine from Hell!" "Mate, I've got garbage trucks out front of my place, that's city life for you, we all have to put up with it, he's only doing his job." "The noise here is out of control, there's a lot of old, sick people here who can't stand it and that moron has to add to it with a bullshit piece of make-work, an unneccesary job they've thrown to a retard to give him something to do, like why can't he use a broom?" "Mate, he's only doing his job! And if you keep it up we'll drag YOU away!" "Gee, thanks for all your help, remind me not to call the police again when there's trouble!"

I slammed the door in their grumpy red-faces and prayed they wouldn't take the issue further. I could be murdered with a chain-saw and I won't ever consider ringing the cops, they're useless. I must say, that retarded cleaner ran off and never did come back with his infernal machine, the front-office must have got wind of the affair and told him to desist, so flipping out can get results but it's a pity I have to suffer madness to get 7 minutes of peace.

When I was a young man I fled to the Himalaya mountains looking for a cave where I could meditate in peace and find some kind of enlightenment. But in the deepest jungle and highest crag someone always found me, a grass-cutter or goatherd, a curious cop or zealous tourist, there was no getting away from humanity, anywhere. In my old age I've discovered my apartment can be like a mountain cave, if I discourage most people from visiting me, can keep it reasonably quiet, I can meditate and contemplate the mystery of the Universe and my existence in peace, it's like a monastic cell.

But society hates a drop-out, they drag you into the bumptious world willing or not, and I go screaming. Somehow I'll just have to switch that scream over to my all-soothing mantra, instead of "fuck, fuck, fuck!" it wil have to be"AUM, AUM, AUM" or otherwise I will go mad and there'll be a new Surry Hills massacre at Northcott. Not so cute.

Midnight Cowfag a Child of Gaia.

I should stay indoors permanently as I only get into trouble when I go out into society. The Piccolo Cafe is an endless source of grief yet I suppose I need the spice of life it provides for I yo-yo in and out of the hotspot like a zombie. I was sitting there, lonely and desperate, when an old ex non-boyfriend showed up and asked if he could sit with me. His name is Adyll and he is a DILL! He has robbed me twice over the years and I hate his guts but he gushed friendliness all over me, seemed straight and clean, and his crotch bulged erotically so I gave in and smiled in return. Big mistake as he turned up at my flat a few days later, talked bullshit to me for a few minutes then stole my best sunglasses as he went out the door.

Then he had the nerve to come back the next day as innocent as mud-pie and when I accused him of being a moronic thief he went into an ICE-cold rage and chucked a rock thru my window, screaming blue murder for half an hour, threatening to kill me if he saw me at the Piccolo. (On revisiting one of my all-time favourite movies, "Midnight Cowboy", I realised I'd led a life close to that of poor Ratzo with years of squatting in derelict dumps, scrabbling for food wherever it was handed out, rifling thru punter's pockets, hustling my butt or that of my mates, a pauper poof without the spunk of Joe Buck, my story could be more appropriately tagged "midnight cowfag" but at least I didn't die in a puddle of piss on a bus to Queensland.) Anyway, I shat myself for a week imagining the hobgoblin Adyll at my door then I fled to Melbourne, hoping it would blow over. I'm always escaping from one imbroglio to another like an outlaw on the run, never ever settling down into complacent quietude, a restless homo sap sap sapien.

Yet I lucked out, for I was led straight to a cosmic event in a Pub in inner-city Melbourne, a memorial concert to a woman named Gaia, a great soul who had given her life to helping Aboriginal artists find their way. She was a white woman who had married a black and was the only known whitie to have walked the song-lines of Northern Auz on the directions of the Elders. The royalty of Aboriginal music flew in from all over Auz to perform, each act better than the one before, Joe Gaia, the Dili All Stars, David Bridie, Amy Saunders, Dave Mann, Sally Dastey, on and on, such sweet voiced heartfelft soulfull music that I wept with sad joy, all culminating in Archie Roach singing his big hit, "They Took the Children Away", with a choir of all the other acts behind him. A white light exploded in my head, my eyes rolled back in ecstasy, he'd never sang it better, especially the refrain "bring the children back home", it went to my heart, for that Pub was in Richmond, where I had been born and spent the first 7 years of my life, and after travelling the world for 50 years, I was another troubled child who had found his way home.

I've been to 49 trully great music recitals in my life and that was definitely one of them, convincing me that the first tattoo I'm to do upon myself with my new tattoo kit will be an Aboriginal design of a kangaroo, for after all I am a 7th generation Auzzie, Auz is deep down in my blood, and I pray there's even some Abbo genes in there somewhere, my family's been here long enough. And how cool my family was to me for those loving 2 weeks I hid out in Melbourne, lots of counter meals in pubs and cakes in French patisseries, then off to the Coburg drive-in movies to relish "Pirates of the Carribean 3" with hamburgers and pot in the car, and gyspy music from "Babaganoosh" in a funky hall in Fitzroy, white Auzzie maestros who again pushed me over the edge into bliss, especially the girl violinist who did a Verdi song.

Back in Sydney I reverted to the Piccolo for my daily dose of drama, Hamid the gay black African commiserating with me over the pitfalls of unrequited, unasked for bad-love, both of our nemesis showing up as if summoned by a seance, for him the dreaded Stephan who had broken a bottle over his head after Hamid had given him a blow job, for me the horrid Adyll smacking me on the back of the head as he strode past, yikes, what a life! The two goons met on the corner and blabbed drug deals then marched off without another look at us two sorry fags. That fucker Adyll is a bad-arse Christian wog from Syria who had been sponsored to Auz by his uncle and from the moment he arrived at the age of 17 has done nothing but bash and rob any Auzzie unlucky enough to cross his path. Now at 32 he's spent half his life in gaol, apparently has assaulted yet another victim recently and so hopefully will not be free for long. I'd like to see him parachuted back into Syria where he'd quickly learn the differance between paradise and hell. But I was a fool for even looking twice at him, he glows trouble, so I deserved all the grief I got.

Like a murder of crows on Desolation Row, the poofs seated outside the Piccolo all gazed at me as if shellshocked. There was Fat Greg smoking up a storm, just out of hospital after his umpteenth heart attack, the fire brigade had to get a crane to lift him from his bed and heave him into the ambulence. He had the Last Rites read over him and still he staggered back into existence, three cigarettes in his mouth, this guy wants to kill himself, he can't take "the horror" no more. And oh oh, here comes the 'gay priest', white collar choking and black frock flapping, a smug, holier than thou look upon his face, his aura electric with deviant angst. He's come out from England to proselytise us godless colonials and espouses some weird hybrid Christianity, mad as a UFO cult, with arcane crucifix tattoos on his arm that he flashes as proof of his hipness.
Three doors up from the Piccolo Cafe is John's antique store. His sister Sue came rushing into the Cafe in tears, hysterical, she couldn't take IT anymore. For she'd been begged into letting her main bedroom to the 'gay priest' and he wasn't as lovely as he made out. He'd turned the pristine room into a pigsty, weeks old food stuck all over, fan heater on full blast for days and blowing the circuitry, refusing to pay his share of the bills, tapping into her internet account, a real user and bludger of the highest order. He's always drugged up, even on Good Friday he lay about his room drunk as a skunk, spends most nights in the backrooms on Oxford street giving sex to all and sundry, and has nothing but abuse for us Auzzies, declaring us to be uncultured, iredeemable boors whom he hates thoroughly. What kind of 'priest' is this?

No priest at all we now suspect. It's all a con job, he's come out to the antipodes hoping to fleece the stupid colonials with his outrageous costume of black frock and white collar, like it will get him an easy living. What a nerve, what a fuckwit! As he strides by me I'm tempted to step on his black robe and trip him up, then kick him in the arse. It's bad enough being a priest amongst pagan atheists, but to be a false priest, and egregiously gay at that, takes the half-baked cake. Over the 30 years I've hung out at the Piccolo I've seen all types of con artists and bullshitters creep by but this guy gets the Wooden Spoon award, shoved up his black frock hopefully. Talk about midnight cowfags, even Mother Gaia would disown him. At last I can feel smug about myself, I'm a demonic angel in comparison.