Life, love and in vino veritas

Every day is like sunday,
Every day is silent and grey.


Happiness part 1.

There is some chimerical line that is crossed, somewhere between 35 and 45. It's the point of no *romantic* return. Mortgages, kids and flat screen TVs take precedence over "well up for it" tottie. Maybe I should be saying "real love", or maybe what idealists might call "true happiness", takes over.

But hold on a minute, "happiness", jesus what the hell is that, happiness is truely dumb. Movies and weddings end in happiness. Happiness is an afternoon nap, on a blissfully languid sunday afternoon. Happiness is something, but it's not life, certainly not a life lived. When you look back, on your one and only life, what more a tragic thought could one ponder than, i never really lived.



I'm happy with not being happy, this fact confuses people. I'm often accused of being "a little bit of a lost soul", perhaps I'd be happier if I saw a spiritual advisor, or meditated or something. Please don't make the logical mistake (no apologies however for the 98% of you that do) I'm not saying I am unhappy (denying the antecedent for the geeks). What I am saying is that "happiness" is overated.



Personally I think excitement rates higher than happiness. Forget contentment, lifes too short for that, you can be content when you are dead. The problem with excitement is that it comes barbed, particularly in your suburban nuclear family setting. Excitement is as inherently risky as happiness precedes brain-dead mediocrity. Given the choice of excitement vs happiness, You can guess what I'd choose. It's a boy thing, no fuck it, it's a man thing - nothing wrong with that is there - we love adventure. Why do I skate, climb mountains on my own etc (at 45) because the alternative sucks - I see the 30-something risk-averse-daddys with 50-something guts supervising their scooter riding kids at Waitangi Park tragically dressed by their pursed-lipped wives - that's happiness!??

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with "relationships", or kids, I have both, in fact I recommend them both - but you die one day, get that, one day you are going to die. In reality, love and death are the only things that really matter.

Scooter Rage - It's a mod thing

What is it about the general (generally stupid) public that they feel they have the duty to accost scooter riders and make motherly obtuse comments about our riding ability or behaviours? Not to mention moronic retards driving several tonnes of metal who think it their god given function in life to run you off the road because you sneaked ahead of them in a queue.

I mean for fucks sake if I was on a Triumph Bonneville 850 they wouldn't dare come near me.

Riding to work this morning at a round about a queue of traffic was banked up, my usual behaviour in this situation is to carefully pick my way to the start of the queue - gods sake, that's the reason WHY I ride a scooter. As I slowed scooted my way to the front a car in front of me spotted me and move forward and right to stop my progress, this just made me laugh because I simply ran the diagonal directly behind her and continued up the left hand side of the stationary traffic.

I glanced in the passenger side window as I cruised past only to see this haggard frustrated middle aged cow who's spent far too long sunbathing in her youth mouthing obsenities that I had no chance of hearing - her head was doing figure 8 movements with irritation at the fact that I didn't have to sit like her in a non-moving vehicle.

Anyway - the story continues. I stopped at pak-and-save for a muffin, they do the best muffins, great price too. As I emerged with my muffin, there she was, she was visiting pak and save too. She let rip with this tirade about how I ought to be careful - blah blah blah. I just laughed and scooted off.

***

I think it was Nietzsche that said the 'ideal world' is lie concocted to deprive reality of its value, its meaning, its truth. How can people bear to move through their lives with this collectively imposed ideology of mediocrity. Why should I want to live by the ideals of others, others that hold no importance or significance to me. I feel sorry for that woman, living her life with little more than the empty blandishments offered up via her motherly chastisements and passionless asceticism.

Ok, enough - I'm going to eat my muffin now.

Focus















... however, the dilemma we face is never too far from my mind

Planet of Slums

Jeremy Harding gives a great review of Mike Davis' Planet of Slums - here is a snip:

Homogeneity, Davis would argue, is what late capitalism does: already a billion people live in roughly the same extraordinary way in roughly similar environments. Vast, contiguous slums are the habitat of the future for even larger numbers, yet the future looks more and more like it did the day before yesterday.

By 2015 there will be at least 550 cities with a population of more than one million.

Already this aggregate population is growing ‘by a million babies and migrants each week’.


The peak will come in 2050, when ten billion people, by then the great majority of humankind, will be living in cities: ‘95 per cent of this final build-out of humanity will occur in the urban areas of developing countries, whose populations will double to nearly four billion over the next generation.’ ...



On another front I picked this superb little article up from Antonio Lopez's blog Media Mindfulness.

Freedom Hits 2006

True automotive freedom has to be 3 to 4 hour delays driving out of Wellington north bound on State Highway 1. Merry Xmas and thank Christ for the motor vehicle. I can just hear the collective anger, frustration, whinging kids... Just what you needs to begin your holidays. And if you think more roads will solve this you head is up your arse.

Thank god for America - I mean what would the citizens of Iraq done if they hadn't been libertated. The world is a safer place, and the citizens of Iraq must be enjoying the blandishments of democracy this Christmas. On another note "Iraqi insurgents", freedom fighters, terrorists, criminals, thugs whatever you like to call them have offered the US a 30 day truce to get the fuck out of Iraq on news of several more dead americans fighting for the continuation of the American Way of Life - What a choice, either leave the place to the Shiite death squads or continue sending Marines home in body bags, as long as you are able to fill up the Ford Explorer it's worth, isn't that right punters.

Imagine trying to sleep with the temperature 27 degrees C, at night. Melbourne is currently enjoying such conditions - nothing to do with Global Warming however, continue burning whatever you need to burn to ensure the economy ticks along at 3% growth per annum.

While we are on the topic of Australia, the drought is certainly putting constraints on peoples freedom to water their gardens and wash their cars. Once again - nothing to do with global warming I am sure...

Feel free to add your freedom picks for the year in the comments.

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Merry Xmas
Steve