Hell is Other Zealots.

I haven't felt the urge to Blog in quite awhile, no real juicy hot tales I feel ready to relate, not even about the underbelly of the Vampire's Kiss Cafe, (The Piccolo), where I spend much of my existential recovery, except to say that Vitto is so exhausted from working 7 days a week he's lost all sense of humour and proprietry, and gets "grumpy old man of the century" award, but we all bear with it, he's like a force of nature, thunder and stormy, sunny and warm, much like my own mood swings. Yet I do have an ongoing bee in my bonnet stinging away at my sanity and feel the need to moan about it, hyperventilating soothes my savge beast.

Everything I read and hear tells me most of humanity suffers from their cross-eyed dealings with their fellows, there's always someone ready to stab you in the back, rip, exploit, bitch and obstruct, it's impossible to please everybody, befriend everyone, each thinks he/she's in the right, deserves more, whatever one's creed, religion, class, status. I'm a militant atheist/science nut and feel world civilization should be based on rationalism and provable fact, mutual respect and co-operation, and I'd like to influence everyone else to think so, but it seems 'parrallel universe theory' rules, most people believe in ludicrous ideas like "god", "heaven and hell" and "righteous lifestyle" and create societies accordingly. I'm wasting my time marching about proseletysing anarcho-socialism and scientific rationalsim, 95% of the population have never heard of "the Enlightenment", humanity has still not emerged from "the dark ages", we've still got a lot of evolution to do.

I get very depressed over it, have the urge to suicide as human attitudes en masse are not going to get more rational in my lifetime, every creed and tribe at war with the other, the planet may get destroyed before a real world enlightenment dawns. When I read the newspapers, I really flip. Gays seem to be blamed for everything and are despised by most. If a politician is suspected of being homo, he's out. The rightwing Christian lobby has opposition to 'gay marriage' at the head of it's agenda. A male member of the British Royal family may have been videoed in a homo sex act and is blackmailed. A Catholic priest has been outed as a homo, shock/horror. The gay friend of a movie star has committed suicide because he couldn't come out of the closet. On and on, every day, from every direction, the antipathy for "gays" is overwhelming, one's potential for social contribution limited or blocked altogether, it twists us till we end up conforming to the monstrous creeps that we're accused of being.

Brainwashed zealots, (Capitalists/Communists/Christians/Muslims/Jews/Hindus), don't want 'queers' to have stable, open relationships, they'd prefer us to sink back into public toilet life, haunting dark parks at night like vampires, denying us our humanity. Whatever happened to kindness and tolerance, the essence of J.C.'s teaching? Bigotry and hatred of "the other" seems to be the true religion ruling the planet, but one would have to start a new Religion to improve the shitty situation, and that's just adding to the huge pile of shit crashing down upon us all. Open your mouth and you're the next messiah! In an age of over-population and tribal strife, it's all going to Hell in a black frock. I can't take it any more, there's got to be a better galaxy far, far away where life forms truly live in love and awe of rational consciousness, and that's where I'll awake, me the Universe.

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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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If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

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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If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

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.

www.amazon.com/author/tobyzoates

If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.