Chaos Dreary.

I'm all mollified and quiescent these days after throwing temper tantrums across the city because of my supposed fuck-over at the art competition. I've got the local community in a tizz trying to placate me, people who know me gird their loins at my approach, trying to figure out how they will manage me and my "children of the dammed" glowing eyes. With much ringing around it has been arranged that my fabulous painting will hang in the red-light district library for a few months and so I'm happy again, a stunted Talouse Lautrec who finally discovers he's trully loved, by someone.

Here at Northcott Housing Ghetto chaos rules as ever, there's been another murder, 2 nutters had a fight on their 20th floor balcony, one tried to slash the throat of the other with a saw-toothed blade and got himself pushed over the edge in the struggle, to splatter onto the copncrete far below. The housing officers here must be mighty sick of scraping up the human detritus, they sure make a mess of the place when they come crashing down. It reminds me of the time 2 ugly cops knocked on my door and questioned me about a corpse found squashed on the pavement a few doors up from me, did I hear anything in the night, did I know the fellow, did I know anything? "Mate, bodies rain down around here like frogs!" I replied, much to their displeasure, a grimace on their mugs as they marched off to question other hapless denizens. I stay inside when I hear the squishy splatts, I dont need any extra aggravation.

Cursula and Bawl next door have gone sweetly quiet since my mental furor of a month ago, they don't dare rouse the sleeping dragon of T.Z., in all the years I think it's been my insomnia that has me raging so maniacally at the drop of a pin. On the other side of me Eric the Grey has lost his keys again and every 5 minutes climbs thru his window making a nerve-shattering racket, scrape, scrape, bang, bang, my teeth are on edge when I hear him limp by,why cant someone kill him? I'm often awoken by lots of shrieking, old Dolly and the gay guys freaking out cause the schitzo has left his taps running and flooded his flat again, this happens every weekend, no kidding, and we just cant get rid of him, like the omnipresent cockroaches.

Dolly and I had meeting number 1001, this time with the head of the whole housing complex, an avuncular bureaucrat who pretended concern and arranged a time when he would inspect the damage all the flooding has caused but then stood us up, we're just gutter waifs and have zero importance, and I've simply given up trying to improve our situation, I'll just run away to India instead. Apparently there are lots of empty apartments in the complex as most good citizens dont want to live here, at least for me it's good grist for my writing mill, chaos rules, making life interesting at times, dreary when it's inexorable.

All Cranked Up on Crank.

Being a movie hound, for what it's worth, here's my 7 favorite movies of 2006, tho the year's not over, maybe nothing could beat these. Near top of the heap is "8 Below", the huskies in Antarctica, which got my heart strings in a zing, but I give my highest accolades to the Aussie movie "10 Canoes" by Rolf De Heer and the Northern Territory Tribes, absolute consummate film-making, when the Aboriginal protagonist danced himself into his death at the end, my soul flew away with him.

Then there was "The Libertine" with Johnny Depp, an incisive treatise on sex and mores, and "The Departed" by Scorsese, (I've become a fan of Leonard Dicaprio all over again as he's truly intense, maybe the best actor on the planet at the moment), and "Children of Men" with Clive Owen, grungy futurism that had me on the edge of my seat. But yesterday I saw something that knocked me off my seat, "Crank", rock'n'roll, drug-fucked, the next new-wave splatter-fest, it leaves Tarantino way behind like a coked out geriatric, what a slammer of a movie, it rocked and gets 9 "Dings" on my schlockometer, funny, cool, exciting, gory, a ride to tighten your seat belt for, it has it all to satiate a jaded old punk like me. The last place is now given over to "Color Me Kubrick", so witty and entertaining, a nasty old poof passing himself off as a celebrity so he can bludge a living and get a root with all the stupid fame whores.

Tonight I'm off to see the latest Aussie offering, "Suburban Mayhem", which hopefully will join my list of 7 runner-ups, the first of which is a piece of real schlock, "The Hills Have Eyes", a Wes Craven remake but I liked the atomic mutants raping and murdering the happy campers, it confirmed my pessimism about our nuclear future. Other runner-ups would have to include "Good Night and Good Luck", "The Man Inside" and "Final Destination 3", I just cant fit them all in my obsessive top 7. Movies shmoovies, who gives a shit, but it's the art form I love and I make no apologies, I rush with the lemmings over the cliff for every schlockbuster, for me it's like an engrossing book, painting and music C.D. all wrapped in one, it's my drug and "Crank" particularly got me very, very high. Now I'll blow it out my arse, signing off, good night and good fuck.

P.S. ""Surburban Mayhem" was way cool, it gets 8 "Dings", Auz gets nasty and dangerous at last, what an evil little bitch "Katrina" was, the movie would have to have the best line of dialogue for the year, "you're the kind of girl a guy has to kill a dog just to get her to suck his cock!" When said dog got killed I was mighty pissed off, it fucked the movie for me, bad voodoo, but that's PUNK, there are no sacred cows, or dogs!

The Nastiest Cut.

I forgot the coin has two sides, if you have friends you're sure to have enemies. A friend said to me after my win of the People's Choice Award, "now for the cut-down" and I was waiting for it. I was told the show could only hang for 3 days and to come and fetch my work quickly, and as I was taking it down a fellow painter and friend sitting next to me was told to leave his work as the Taxi Club wanted to hang it. I felt the mental-telepathic message to "fuck off" but I stayed cool, wondering why they didn't look me in the eyes as we politely talked, while most of the other artist's work remained up on the walls.

The next day I got an e-mail inviting me to the "Flow On" of the Images of the Cross at the Taxi Club, which goes for 6 weeks and has much greater promise of sales and from which I've been excluded. My guts dropped, tears came to my eyes, I realised all the handshaking and congratulations of the crew from the TAP were totally insincere, fork-tongued, they were jealous and peeved at the clamouring of the crowd and thruout the proceedings were planning to "fuck me off" , they knew of the ongoing exibition from the beginning and kept it quiet from me. A no-talent poet, Robert Nobody, who had insinuated himself into the organization and helped hang the comp, got to choose who lived and who died, he seems to have held a grudge for 2 years from when I refused to submit a drawing to his book of poetry after he'd requested me to pay $150 for the privilege.

The dice are always loaded, there is no such thing as a level playing field, especially in master/slave Sydney. Red Robert had already told me the judge's panel for the comp was predjudiced against me. While one of the judges, an art lecturer from the local art college, was all for my entry, the other judge is another bastard who's held a grudge for the last 7 years, a grossly fat pig we call Jabbba the HUB after the arse-wipe street paper he prints, the HUB, a waste of trees. Once upon a time he'd begged me to do a cover for his paper, promising me $15o if I did it in the 2 day deadline and he pretended satisfaction when I achieved the goal, only he then refused to pay me and I had to chase him for 6 months to get the money, and the last thing he told me was, "you'll never get work with me again." And now he was my judge, I could paint the Sistine Chapel and he'd say something was missing. He's known to consume 7 water buffaloes per day and could feed half of Africa if he went on a diet, how infuriating to be judged by such a bag of shit who wouldn't know art if he sat on it.

My non-career in particular has been a long travaille of such predjudice, grudges and jealousy, at every level of the pyramid of shit there is a wicked bitchfight of manouevring, cudos pumping and money grabbing, it's enough to stop an artist in their tracks, it's just too painful to participate. I now realise the TAP crew were infuriated I'd won the Judge's Prize 2 years ago and had rigged the panel last year for a bastard named Toady Joe who won with a self-portrait, like Dorian Grey, and not an "Image of the Cross", but he's a personal friend of the organiser and she's the ultimate wicked Queen, me being Snow White and the 7 Dwarves. I let it go and participated naively this year without relising they had it in for me, I could've walked in with a Van Gogh, it would do me no good, they'd already decided to fuck me off, they should've been honest as I carried the painting in and saved me the $25 entry fee, but cunts like these are never honest.

My old guru had told me many years ago before he died in my arms that people will only like your work if they like you. This infuriated me as I hoped good work would stand by itself, but he was right, he'd had a long experience of the ARTS and humanity, you have to suck up to all and any, try never to stand on toes or say a controversial word, and maybe, just maybe, you will get hung on a wall. The sad thing for me is to have created so many enemies, yes, from an abrasive, cheeky personality but often from nothing at all, just for being talented, for jealousy is a mighty powerful force. I should be pleased I did such a great painting it's caused a kerfluffle and the no-talents have tried to abolish it, it really must have power. But after only 3 days in the gallery it now sits on my living room wall with no one to appreciate it, a winner that doesn't get an audience, like what was the competition all about if not to show the winner, why would anybody bother to achieve if this is their reward? Every dog has it's day, mine is still to come, something to look forward to I guess.

Robert the Red, a demon with an alcho's flushed face, is sending me urgent e-mails bullshitting me as to why I was excluded from the ongoing show: it's all for the other artist's good, there's not enough room on the wall for me, splutter splutter, crap, crap = they fuck you, they lie to you, then they pretend shock at your upset response and assure each other they were right to do the fucking as the fucked deserved it for not going quietly. Thank nogod I've got 7 true friends, all the fork-tongued back-stabbers can go fuck each other.

A Quirk of Fate.

 Oh yes, I'm happy this morning as I won a prize at an art comp last night, the Images of the Cross Award, I won the People's Choice, $500 worth of Matisse paints. From a lifetime of hard knocks I wondered if I'd won only because a lot of my friends came to support me. I didn't lobby them to vote for me, I was in too much of a tizz to even focus on what was happening, but my friends kept yelling my name thruout the announcements, it was so embarrassing, I think they swamped the voting box, but they wouldn't have done it if they didn't truly think I'd done good work. (I discovered later that 2 of my best friends didn't even vote so it must've been members of the crowd that put me over the line.)

I cringed out the front of the gallery as soon as I realised one of the judges was a a fat bag of shit who hated my guts, I should've heckled him as he gave his welcoming speech, he manages a free street paper and lives off the advertising and knows nothing of art, just his prejudices. But I figured that was the way of all things, judges are always prejudiced in one way or another. As I sat disconsolate, a booming voice resounded upon me, "Toby, get your arse up here, you've won!" I knew this was impossible but duty called and back into the gallery I went only to be met with the glum stares of the crowd, a friend sidled up to me and said, "You didn't win, you got highly commended." I went back outside, my surmise of the scene confirmed, dear Leslie the organiser had loaded the judges once again to make sure I'd get fucked off.

The judges gave the cash prize to a technically perfect photo-realist piece, exquisite, but it looked like it had been traced from a photo it was so perfect, it had a bit of soul but not all those layers of meaning a painter can throw in via his/her mindset/philosohy, not many have a story to tell or an attitude to explode upon the world it seems. The crowd got riled up and kept shouting my name, it really freaked me out, and I knew such avid support would get me in the neck from those jealous types who'll never win anything. And so the crowd voted me The People's Choice, and the organisers gnashed their teeth, they hadn't planned for this.

There's nothing like a crowd of well-wishers cheering one on, and strangers complimenting my talent, shaking my hand and taking photos of me in front of my painting, it'll take me a few days to come down from the high. My bestest friends are running around telling everybody on the Cross I got robbed of the judge's award, I think it's great to get the People's Choice, it's so sweet to be popular and appreciated, I feel like a 7 year old kid again, who after a tragic infancy is suddenly given a birthday party and told he is indeed loved. With enemies, life is hell. Without friends, life is dead.

Reality is Freakier Than Fantasy.

When I paint a picture that turns me on I go on a flight of mania wherein I give up all for the art, throwing health, money, society to the dark nights, for a possibly shit-house painting that only proves my madness, even delusions of grandeur. And as the the last brush strokes went on the canvas the rest of the world collapses and explodes, outside my studio door Eric the Beserker howls like a hyena throughout the night till my own wires get crossed and short-circuited, I rushed out brush in hand and screamed for him to go back into his filthy lair. He picked up a chair and threw it at me, I caught it and threw it back in his face and he scurried into his flat, slamming the door, the whole building awakened by the kerfluffle.

I went up to the Piccolo Rar for some respite, was quietly reading a newpaper when Barry the retard sits by me and demands some human contact. I excuse myself curtly and he flips, he grimaces like a rampaging ape, calling me a "poof" and asking to punch my face in, trying to get me out the front for a fight. I'm too old for it tho I was furious at his moronic rage and ready to smash him in the face with a sugar dispenser if he tried a swing at me. How extremely boring! Why can I never get away from violence, as if I have a neon light above my head that reads "Hit Me!"

When I got back to Northcott Ghetto I found water was pouring in a flood from Eric's front door and from under the building's foundations. For the 1000th time he'd left all his taps running and gone out to forage in the dumpsters. The water wells up thru my bedroom floor like sewerage, the room is mouldy and I haven't lived in it for years, I've had it with this freak, he'll bring the whole building down upon us. I call the Housing dept for rescue, they need to send out an emergency team immediately, single-handedly Eric is going thru Sydney's entire water supply. Eventually a plumber arrives but he is superfluous, other drastic action had been taken.

Over on the other side of his flat Old Dolly comes home and nearly has a heart attack at the sight of the noxious water lapping at her door and, weeping, she relates to me the sordid tale how of late he's putting pornographic photos under her door. Apparently he's found a hoard of porno mags in the dumpster and has been seen masturbating to them while sitting out the front of his flat. He's also been seen handing torn-out pages from these mags to strangers outside Central Railway Station.

Dolly can bear the flood no longer and calls the police. I smoked a strong joint and tried to put the last flourishes to my painting as outside Dolly cried, the gay guys from the end of the verandha cursed and sirens wailed. I heard a lot of yammering and when I went outside got cornered by an old dessicated police seargent and his sidekick S.A.S stormtrooper. They'd climbed thru Eric's window and turned the water off, then were trying to placate the crowd of us sqwarking horror and pleading succour. I was so stoned I couldn't focus and the old cop was laying on the soothing platitudes, telling me all would be taken care of, I was not to worry, I should write a letter to the front office. I laughed hysterically and went back to my painting, just the fleuro flourishes above my central character's head to indicate he was tripping and it was all a dream, and I was finished.

I was in such a daze when I took the painting to the gallery that I lost my expensive mobile in the cab, as if the Grand Whore "ART" demanded one last sacrifice in her honour. Eric got shot up with Modicate by community nurses and I heard one telling him thru his window that he was off to the doctor's next week for an examination, Eric laughing like a demented hyena in reply. The sun is shining, I can kick back and relax till the Kings Cross Arts Festival competition this Thursday night when I'll get feedback on my maniacal creative effort, and Northcott is again sleeping peaceful at night, for awhile, till the next psychic storm breaks. I feel like screaming, "Life, I'm over it!" But I chant my mantra, "AUM" instead, and the Universe evens out blissfully.

Sleaze Ghetto Fabulous.

I woke up to much screaming this morning, Eric the Gray had flooded his apartment again, the sludge is seeping thru the floor and wall into my apartment and into old Dolly's. She was shreiking in hysteria when she found a trail of sludgy garbage-food leading to her door. Some Housing Dept inspectors had come for the 1000th time to eyeball the mess and when Dolly tried to show them the desolation of Eric's lair he came roaring out like a trapped wild animal and tried to hit her. The poor guy lives in a parrallel universe and the rest of us are so many shadows lurking on his periphery. The inspectors were much ruffled and hurried off to hold urgent meetings with the Health Dept, maybe, just maybe, he finally might be put in a hostel where he would be looked after, and we could get the rest we need in our dotage.

My muscles are acheing all over, I must've danced my blues loose at the Sleaze Ball but I dont really remember. The trouble with "trance dancing" is you get extremely high and time whizzes by, the party's over before you know it, you think you danced a lot as there were such yummy moments, like moaning in ecstacy cause the music and crowd were fucking you so dam good, and the gates of 'paradise' swung back and forth, but you can't quite pin it down. I rarely take drugs and my body is very sensitive to foreign chemicals, the pill was too strong and I danced too fast and hard, I spun out and my guts heaved, I found myself lying on the floor dry-reaching, finally I had a slight Ecky spew, psychedelia vomited from my third eye and exploded out the top of my head, the extra poison leaping out of my system, enough remaining to get my body/mind as high as it could go. A sweet old poof rushed over to make sure I was still conscious, I sat up quick and reassured him, and then partied on.

Virtually nobody followed the "Sleaze"encouragement to dress up in costumes as of old, most wore the gear they'd gone to the footy in, the men mostly stripped to their jeans in sexual display, but hardly a nice pair of tits in the hall, if only they realised they looked like soggy dough-nuts, a hot shirt is much more alluring. Lots of het couples were there teasing and snogging, the girls really dressed up sexy, almost the only eye-candy available, except for the cute ghetto boys in their hip-hop gear. But 'dance' ruled, it's what we were there for, 13,000 punters can't be wrong, I wasn't loking at the others, I got lost, I'm pretty sure they went to the max along with me, it felt like a collective orgasm at times.

The live acts were fabulous, sexy girls singing sleaze while a dance troupe of hip-hop boys and pop-ballet girls backed them up, hot excitement surged across the crowd, we jumped to the funk, it was a mighty cool show. I moved to the beat for 7 hours and by the end was exhausted, like stuck in honey, could hardly move a limb. I sat in the blessed bleachers to relax and go inside myself to where the kaleidoscopic lights open up heavenly vistas. I saw a fat s/m blob approach with a young surfer gronk in tow, the blondie had only his board shorts on, he swayed his long hair about as if he were Brad pitt, his tanned flesh pudgy in my face. The bumless gay blob fell drunkenly upon me and I had to shove him off, then they sat beside me, the surfer edging closer to me and touching me up. The psuedo-macho fairy suddenly rushed off and the blonde gronk got closer, leaned upon me and put his arm around me. I knew that in years gone by certain deviants actually had sex in the bleachers with everybody watching and maybe that was what this guy was after. Why he picked grizzled old me I'd like to know, maybe the mirror sun-glasses turned him on, giving me an air of cyberpunk mystery, it was supposed to be a masked ball after all.

He had zeroed in on the wrong cyberpunk, I was too out of it to consider entertaining anybody else. I shrugged him off and asked him, "what's going on ?" In a miopic stupor he pulled away and said nothing but within a few minutes he leant close and tried to embrace me again. The fat pick-up returned with drinks, much displeased to see his fuck for the night was now trying it on some body else. Maybe they were planning one of those 'group sex' pig-outs I'd read about in the gay press, for it was the end of the night and some were probably desperate, but for this little piggy it was the stuff of nightmares, again I pushed the surfer gronk off me and shouted to the laser-light storm, "Ï'm out of here!" I bolted thru the writhing crowd, scoping the freaks, the dykes stood out as the most attractive of punters, they bothered to look good and show style, the poofs might've well have been at a sauna for all the designer gear they threw off. I was so happy to make it home in the mellow dawn light to the safety and quietude of my bed. I'd melded with the Universe in one more glorious celebration and I was satiated.

Then it was back to the existential challenge of Northcott Housing Ghetto. This week the Dept is coming to replace our lovely shower-heads with new gadgets that only piss out steam, as if we were sci-fi space cadets living in a rocket. The whole building is refusing to give up their lovely showers and are going on a collective strike, no officials are getting in our doors, it'll be the Paris Commune all over again, let's hope we beat it and Big Brother backs off, I need peace and solitude, life is too exciting.