I am simply posting to say that I am alive, that is to say I am not dead. There is nothing to say. I still come here to read my friends' journals, when LJ will let me (that is to say, not today).

This is not the end, it is only the beginning.

Six months since one Christmas message, six months to another, and it's an excellent time to review my year so far.

It's interesting how six months changes everything. That woman-hatey attitude is gone. In fact it seems like 50% of my friends are women. Curious, no? *shrug*

Teeth are almost fixed, and that is because pain began, in a nutshell. Abscesses are a threat to my long-term health. I have been determined not to repeat my mum's mistake and try to cheat death.

The car thing is slow going but I can live with that. With regret. Importantly, it is going. I rely on the "when it rains it pours" factor which caused me much pain two years ago.

I guess so far this year has been unpredictable, and in many ways it has been better.

I guess there's not a lot to say. I'm tired. Life is good and I love the surprises it gives me. I will leave it at that...

9.42am

Today is shaping up to be another yesterday. It's rainy, my shoes are wet, and the smokers are huddling undercover and pumping out their fumes like Koffing or something. By the time I got to work I had a nasty stabbing, twisting pain in my lungs from it. I suppose the smoke agitates scarring from my collapsed lungs. Smokers say passive smoking is harmless, but my lungs beg to differ. Even if it doesn't kill me, it hurts. A lot.

I managed to make a small start on my site last night. Not much, but it paves the way. Nothing much is happening otherwise. It's payday. That is all there is.

I saw this on the way to work and I only managed to get blurry photos of it. I am going to put up two because it is that awesome. Ladies and gents, I present to you: PIGEON FIGHT CLUB.




10.10am

FOOD POISONING GAME!

Today we have something better than a slightly expired Mars bar. We have...



...two entire packets of very expired generic Mars bars from Coles! Expired on 30/12/2008. Well, they're definitey dead. But are they edible? Let's find out...
- As soon as I open the big bag, the smell of caramel escapes. Nice.
- It's prolapsed and beginning to turn white. Smells normal. Why do I have a bad feeling about this? It looks normal...
- Oh god, this is disgusting! Look at this, the nougat has changed colour from a pale tan to a caramel brown:



- It tastes vile. This time it actually tastes like musky wood, too! It has the same texture...I think...it's just...ack! *splutter*
- It has an aftertaste of flyspray, or perhaps cheap perfume.
- I can't finish this. The one I ate yesterday tasted better, which defies logic. -6/10!
- I can't get the taste out of my mouth! My mouth feels furry! Make that -7/10!

...I eat an expired Coles orange ball to get the taste out of my mouth. Is that irony? Don't know...but it worked.


Adventure O'Clock

I have spent most of the day so far researching the origins of my GA-KO, which despite being a MGS4 limited edition clock has a copyright of 1996 on it, two years before MGS. Research shows it is part of a series of toys made by a company called "von Traumer", a division of Konami, and indeed it dates back to at least 1998, undoubtedly longer.

Very hard to blog holding an umbrella...let' let my camera do the talking, huh?








1.43pm

"People in glass houses..." "I'm entitled to throw stones! It's lots of fun!"

Unsurprisingly I tracked down a giant plush Kerotan and put a bid on it. If I win, I will buy more plush crap.

20/4

Lunch O'Clock

It's foodikins time, or rather no time in particular, and for whatever reason I just suddenly decide to resume diarying. Because madcap is cool. It gives my life a slight direction when I have none. Let's skip the reasons and get down to awesome...

But on a rainy day in suede shoes, how does one find awesome?



A daft memory tickles my brain, and I go troddling down to Big W. A task made much more difficult by the rain, the hordes of idiots seeking shelter even though they have an umbrella, the smokers. And suede shoes. They don't look happy. ...unfortunately, Big W does not yield the happy that I seek...but!



It looks like the new full-sized Woolworths iis half opened, just like the new full-sized Coles is half-opened! And boy, does the bakery smell pretty. I'd get something but...I'm on a diet! Unfortunately once again, I fail. Apparently Pop Tarts are 'back'n but I cannot find proof. Still, I wanted an adventure and an adventure was procured. It is hard to dislike a new supermarket. Especially since I have no real ability to venture into the suburbs. We are amused.



After trying to find Pop Tarts I can all but dismiss the story. It is a ruse! It is communist propaganda designed to overthrow democracy through breakfast!



2:55pm

Hooray for FF o'clock! ...I hate it when you get the Flea Market Mongomery song stuck in your head. And I have nothing better to do right now than to...um...



There. It was that or the food poisoning game.

3:19pm

FOOD POISONING GAME!



Okay, today it's Wuss Edition. We have a Jaffa (just one), and a Coles noname expired orange ball. The shiny one is the Coles one! ...but they taste exactly the same. Bah! That is boring. Let's try a Mars bar that expired in October 2009...
- Ugh! It stinks! It's a bit like musky wood!
- It tastes like reconstituted anus!
- It has an aftertaste of...you know how when you're sick, everything tastes off and really disgusting? Exactly like that. Why I'm still eating this is beyond me.
- 0/10!

5:18pm



Here we are at the end of a work day, feeling slightly chuffed for no reason at all. It's cold, wet and miserable, but I have a desire to be awesome. But any minute now, my train will come, leaving two possible outcomes: I will fall asleep and wake up tired; or I will be unable to sleep due to the stench of MX being fanned in my face, and the drone of crap music everpresent in the background, probably with a very fat man partially sitting on my leg and elbowing me while he flicks through pages in his commuter-targeted toilet paper.

(Note to reader: It was a bit of both.)

I need to stop posting boring shit on this journal. I should start doing that live blog thing again. When it works, it works great...I find it absolutely insightful to go back and see what I was thinking.

That being said, it was absolutely insightful to go back to posts before July 2008 as well. In fact even days before my life went to shit, I seemed perfectly oblivious and plotting that weird gaming thing, which I completely forgot about.

Not that I'm depressed or upset or even really thinking about back then with emotion. I'm simply looking for funny quotes. It's just a fact that life was better back then and despite all the effort I've put in stuff, it's still shit. I really worry people can't disaccociate statements like that from emotion, though. Being shit doesn't equate to being a living hell, you know!

On Tuesday night I went for a bit of a drive with Paul, since he has an open licence. It's the first time I've ever driven without an instructor from a driving school, or their car. My car of circumstance was and regretfully remains a 1982 Datsun/Nissan Pulsar GX hatchback.

( CUUUT )

This time tomorrow, I'll be on a magical jet tour to Melbourne! Yeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! So awesome~! Pew pew pew! CAW CAW! Uh, yes. (Don't ask.)

I don't know what I am doing there but I am reliably told often that I have to find the magical donut happy land. I have also been told to jump off Rialto Towers, and I need to go visit the Headache Suite.

Melbourne is _so_ cosmopolitan.

Part III!

---

My plans for 2010? This is really hard to address because it's conflicting.

Simply put, financially, I will either fix my teeth or I won't. If I don't it's because I'm investing in my future in other ways, and although it may seem less important, I assure you I am in no discomfort and I do not waste my money. I'm a tech nerd. To buy technology is to not pretend to be somebody else. Simple.

I do, however need a car. But that is a distinct thing.

...

The above is my financial plans, mostly. But what about as a person?

I've become a mysogynist after all that's happened. Understandable, but let's not continue. Considering I usually refer to women as "bleeders", "ovulators" and "women", I think it's run its gamut. (This isn't a New Years resolution. I don't believe in those. To wait to do something on an "important" date is a significant weakness.) I don't like being single, so this is important.

Overall though, as bad as that sounds, it'll only sound bad if you're a woman. Seriously, if you referred to a guy as a "spermer", he wouldn't get cut, and women use "men" as an insult all the time and we don't give a crap. So that is a very small blip.

Overall I've been happy with my progress in the last year. I have mentioned before my philosophy of not living in other's shadows. The result of this is you develop entirely original cultures yourself...the purer your imagination, the more awesome the results. I think the only time I permit myself to reference culture is when it is unpopular culture (I still think iSnack 2.0 is a great name!), so it is at the very least avoiding herd mentality. My point is I should continue. I may feel stupider at times, but my head has created so many amazing concepts in the last year. I can do better. I will.

I am happy with my social level, more or less. It could be better. A car is integral to that. I look forward to the freedom it will bring. In theory it should open new worlds. I may make new friends too. But I have such great friends already, friends I love (no homo). I try so damn hard to please them, and I am never happy with my efforts, and sometimes that is crushing. The only weak point I have left is my friends. I didn't cry when my mum died - she lived a long life. I didn't cry when I got dumped - that was not the person I cared about, evidently she 'died' six months before. But if a friend died....I could not bear it.

And that is one thing I forgot last time to mention, I think. With all the shit that happened in 2008, hell yes it hurt. Hell yes, I was upset. I may have even gotten depressed...but I have been far worse, it was more of a feeling of hopelessness for an hour every once in a while. But never did I contemplate suicide or self-harm. I couldn't do that to my friends, even when I didn't know who to trust after 'everyone' said to dump me. I had seen how ugly humanity could be. There was no way I could let that be stronger than me. Just so you know.

That brings me to the best thing about a new year. It's unpredictable! Look at 2006. I had no idea it'd be the year when I get my first girlfriend. It wasn't even a prospect, let alone a realistic one. Look at 2008. I never knew. I was happy as late as early July. Content might be a more accurate word, but I was certainly NOT unhappy. Look at 2009. It's been a year where I've made new friends, reached unachievable goals, overcome fears and contantly, CONSTANTLY stepped into the unknown without thinking twice, but never in stupidity. 2009 couldn't have been better.

I dunno. I guess I'm done. I go into the new year not with fear, not with uncertainty, but a determination to make it mean something...whether it be the year where I continue to establish my future, build friendships and ensure long-term happiness that way...or the sappy route, y'know, meet my future wife. Or both! That's not greedy.

My only regret is my mind has blanked a lot of the good times before this year. I didn't do it on purpose, I don't even think it was a defence mechanism. I guess it just meant nothing anymore. Sigh. And I can't look back at it yet...I have lots of records but, I'm a different person now. It hurts just to look at a weaker me. I've always disliked that! (If you thought it was about my mum or my ex in that respect you are mistaken. Shit happens. I thank them for their contributions to my morals and personality, though.)

Is that it? Yes!

2009, what a year. If 2008 was my annus horribilis, then 2009 was definitely my annus mirabilis. I achieved a lot this year, and I end the year a much different person.

Obviously, I made tremendous inroads in my dream of arcade collecting. Long considered impossible, out of last year's problems arrived this year's solution. One could say out of something bad, something good came. One could say perhaps last year wasn't so bad. But if you did, I'd thump you in the noodle. No, I'd just say I refused to die. I refused to let life bump me in the poopchute. I refused to be a weak person. Out of the most dire point in my life...one which honestly could have driven people to suicide, an easy temptation in a crisis such as that...I harnessed the power and I made it mine. 2008 was terrible, and I didn't just know things would get better; I took proactive steps and forced it to be the best it could be.

And that is the definition of 2009 for me.

2009 was peppered with small achievements and many big ones which superficially look small. I finally started driving lessons again, that was a small achievement but a significant one, because I had to do it. Going back to the arcade romp, I dealt with salesmen, I dealt with international shipping and I dealt with customs. This seems easy, but ask yourself: What is the process? It's incredibly obtuse, people were completely unhelpful and the only thing that can get you through that sort of thing is confidence. And for someone known to have a fear of phones, that is a daunting task.

But I overcame that fear this year. I still don't like doing it at home...which is odd. I'm much more comfy at work or even in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps there is deep-rooted psychosomatic trauma.

I've made new friends, too. Paul has been especially awesome. But all of the Friday night crew are awesome, that's why I keep coming back. It's great to be able to go to the valley for dinner every week. It's also great that we do so completely sober. I'm not anti-alcohol, but the last thing the valley needs is another eight-plus drunks. Friday night is now an essential staple of my week. Hooray!

I've displayed not only a control of money never seen before, not only proved that I can save, but I've left money in the bank and spent far less (despite two massive purchases). A small move, I admit. But one with awesome consequences.

My culninary appetite has broadened. Of course, I am still partial so much the same as before, but now there is choice and more often than not a willingness to experiment. People who have put up with my fussy eating would know that is no small thing.

I've always had a philosophy of not living in the shadows of others but in practice this is much harder to do than say. It's an anti-pop culture philosophy. Disestablishmentarialism, if you will.

Much of what I have said are small things, but the point is there is so much. Most people seem to make a few of these changes a year. Some people make none. I've made loads.

I think ultimately it's like I said at the start...I'm much a different person now. I only have to look around me to see that. But it's not just what you see. I just see stuff differently, too. Perhaps for this reason I feel stupider this year. I doubt I am, but my eyes are opened and I am aware of greater things than before. And, of course, 2008 taught me much of things like nihilism.

Another thing. I've achieved all I set out to do this year (except get a licence. But I started), and that in itself is something many people don't do. At times this has meant less time to be social, but like I said, Friday night is an essential staple. My life at the moment is stable and if I step back to look at it, it'd be really hard to make it better. I can't even fault the fact I'm single. A year's hiatus has been healthy. But two years won't necessarily be. I don't like it, but so far it's been helpful.

The only real bad stuff this year is the shadow of last year - bad dreams causing insomnia, and loss of appetite because of last year. Also my eyesight is getting worse (short-sighted). I think I have at least another full year before I need glasses...

There is one thing left for me to do this year. I must go to a cafe. One particular cafe. I will not say why.

Next time...I will discuss my plans for the future.

First I clear my throat, then I clear my mind.

It's Christmas Message time!

I haven't done one for at least two years, I suspect I did one in 2007 but I can't find it, but here's 2006's:

http://model-gg2.livejournal.com/2006/12/24/

...as you can see with it, things change. A lot of it is either irrelevant. *sigh*

...but the basic premise is, once a year, at Christmas, I open my heart to people. I'll do it anytime, anywhere really...but at Christmas, I do it without asking. It's my magnum opus, my magnificent octopus if you will.

It's going to be a bit harder because the boundaries are blurred. A lot of you I only know online. If that's the case, I'll probably skip you. But even so, just remember you're a friend, and I'm always around for my friends regardless. You're not a lesser person to me just because I've spoken to you little...I'm not one to start conversations! Also I'm taking an effort to keep it trim this year. If I've got nothing to say AND you won't read it, *snip*!

Alphabetical order, as usual, so nobody thinks they're less important.

Identifying marks removed, so people can't Google.
---

Axey: As always you have been an excellent friend. I know you worry because you don't see me often enough, but that's the nature of your job! Every year, it's the same, and I only worry that I don't do enough for you in return sometimes. So I definitely appreciate you, bud.

Carlos: I don't really know what happened in the middle of the year there, but I'm not worried about it. I've always considered you a good friend and you're certainly somebody I care about, so I hope 2010 is a good year for you!

Ebe: Most years we swing around in different social circles so don't interact much, but for some reason this year, that hasn't been the case - we've actually done stuff quite often. Which was swell. I'm hoping the future stays like that.

Eddie: Not much to say and I don't know why I include you on this list really since you'd never read it, but I suppose it's worth saying that even though you're far away, you're still an excellent friend and I regard you highly (as does everybody). Take care of your family!

Gap: Haven't spoken to you much (online) this year because your timing is always off - usually messaging me right before bed or something. Sorry about that. Hope I can make it up to you in the new year.

Glenn: I think I said it just right in 2006. But I will add to that: You're an awesome person and I admire you a lot. Always a pleasure to bump into you.

Jared: Although I've only seen you online in recent times it's still great keeping in contact with you. It sounds like you're going to have a swell 2010. So stay cool! I honestly don't know what more I can say...

Joel: You've been a great friend as usual. I honestly don't know what I can say! 2010 will be fun. Keep it real.

Kylie: I know you'll be disappointed but there's not much to say. Although I don't see you that often (and I think you regret that), I still consider you a very good friend and I value your company and wisdom. So all the best in 2010, and I'm sure you'll have a great time in Japan. (Who wouldn't?)

Pascal: You've been an excellent friend this year. I feel like I should do more for you in return, but I assume I do all I can already. Either way, I think you're a great person and I wish you all the best this coming year. I'm sure you'll do great - I know I'm not the only one who thinks highly of you so your friends are always glad to...*shrug* whatever friends do.

Paul B: I haven't seen you since the start of the year yet I've still heard from you regularly. Hope I get to see more of you in 2010. (At least it's not my fault I haven't seen you in that long! :P)

Paul E: You've been pretty much a perfect friend this year. I'm not really a "best friend" person, but with friends like you, Shane, Pascal, Joel, Axey and Kylie (considering I've barely seen her, that's a compliment to her!), life is not only great; it means something. 2010 is going to be great.

Michael S: I haven't seen you much this year but I still think of you highly, and I really have to try harder to fit you in next year. I'll have to get in contact with you soon!

Nat: Haven't seen you for a month or two but we're all glad you're still around. Hope you're around for a long time yet, because you're great company!

R: I only want to say that I'm sure we pissed each other off to no end when living together, such is life. You got an awesome Christmas present last year from me because I wanted to say sorry for being such a pain in the ass. I honestly don't blame you at all for my break-up and if anything I'm sorry you were dragged along to it as a meatshield. Hope you've had a good year and hope next year is rewarding for you!

Shane: As always you've been a great friend. I honestly don't know what more to say because that's one of the highest compliments I can give people. You've done heaps for me and I try to do all I can for you. I'm sure we'll be around for each other for many years yet. Hope 2010 is a great year for you!

Shannon A: I can't help but feel bad because I haven't really talked with you as much this year as I have spent time hanging out with you and Paul together. I feel bad. I'll be a better friend for you in 2010, promise. You're a great person, you know. And whatever you do, don't waste your youth. Go out there and do something. (So many of us wasted our youth!)

Steven: I haven't seen you as much as I would have liked to in 2009 but what time I did spend with you, I thoroughly enjoyed. I hope 2010 is a great year for you, and here's hoping I can be a bigger part of it.

T: This is by far the hardest paragraph to write. I really don't know what to say, but I have to say something. The past is in the past and even though the way you dumped me was disgusting (and I'll leave it at that), I forgive you. But you know me. You know I don't believe in grudges, so that's speaking the obvious. Honestly, the only reason I haven't spoken to you in six months is because you only ever started conversations when money was involved, so I got the distinct impression you didn't really want to speak to me. That being said...I'd be perfectly happy to talk to you. Peace. Hope you have a good 2010 whether we're speaking or not.

Tim: Haven't seen you much this year, but you seem content anyay, and I'm really happy for you. And sorry I got mad that night when I lost my ATM card, I thought you were a random hobo! (It's funny now though.)

Tony: You're always a good friend to me and I try to be the same to you. Here's hoping for more awesome times in 2010.

Everyone from Friday night dinner: I really gotta be a bit more social to y'all. Seriously. I consider you friends though. Good friends, at that!

---

I will leave it at that... I have probably forgot people...remind me and I'll add you. But honestly, you're all awesome. I will speak more about 2009 for _me_ next time...