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.
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.
