Wet Wilderness & The Great Unknown

Random thoughts, happenings, and etc.:

I have been offered a place to study fashion design in RMIT Australia, in 2007.

It's raining so damn much nowadays that it's barely enjoyable; who cares if you have to work while the weather is more condusive for sleeping in? You can't go anywhere without getting dirty and wet. Plus a dirty wet umbrella to deal with, which is easily lost.

I am extremely sleep deprived, it's so bad that I'm forgetting ridiculously. My short-term memory is probably gone. I can forget to switch off the lights even after being reminded minutes ago. I can forget a brand new waterbottle, bought just yesterday, leaving all 7 bucks of it, full of water, in the cab. I can forget to eat, forget my lover's birthday, forget something you told me just now. My brain is dying.

My parents and I are not getting along. Maybe the communication breakdown is complete. The difference in wavelength, misunderstanding, misinterpreting...and yet because I inherited all my personality flaws and communication behavioural traits from them...it's a bloody cycle of stupid emotional trauma I just want to escape from.

We all have our moments of insecurity, fragility, helplessness, and worthlessness. My parents have never made me feel worthy or self-respecting...funny how the people who created you and raised you can also torment you the most and inflict the most agony. We've lived together for so long and yet we barely tolerate each other; there's never enough patience.

Fine, if my life is screwed up, I'm really going to run away then. What now? What then?

I have no idea.

There is no time, and friendship at work is a scam

I am tired, and depressed, and I feel like an alien.
Work is not working. I am not coping.
Sometimes I muse that I deserve to be left alone.
Do these people even care? Maybe Pin's right, I care for them more than I should.
Colleagues cannot be friends.

Then I ask myself, what about my own friends? Is that all a scam too?

What kind of a loner am I?

Breakaway running

Let me break away for a while
Let me run into some foreign place
Sit a while and drift my mind
Submerge the self in a little peace:
Unconditional calm

Let me run free, a broken shard
Splintered from an unknown source or space
Forgetting my despised pain
Losing all senses in rushed euphoria -
Because fools run away

Broken fools run away

I. A.M. C.A.L.M. Integrating Anger Management: Critical Analysis, Lucid Mentality

I. A.M. C.A.L.M could also stand for Ignoring Anger Management: Cultivating Anal Loser Mindsets.

It's been a bad week, overall. Kept getting chewed up, screwed, battered and figuratively spat on. I suppose for someone more fragile and vulnerable, all this shit combined warrants some sort of emotional breakdown during the weekend. I simply do not have that option.

I am quite literally leading a double life now, and struggling with it. It's tiring and very bad for the creative juices. And the frustration building up inside, which probably will never find an outlet, is becoming an emotional tumour, festering cancerous. I'm not sure how to deal with it.

In the bathroom I hit the walls and stamp the floor like a madwoman, but even that is insufficient venting. If I could I would fling my whole body against the wall, but it would probably create a mess.

My left leg is in pain, or numb, and sometimes I suspect it belongs to someone else. Perhaps the emotional angst is manifesting itself as physical pain, proving to myself ever so obviously that this hidden problem could literally cripple me. But I continue to limp along anyway.

There's the future to think about. It's not going to be easy or smooth-sailing, I know. But even if I lose my limbs or am heading down some path of self-destruction masquerading as self-fulfilment, I have to persist.

I have to persist, keep my head up, keep my strength together and my energy high, and stop succumbing to the vicious cycle of compromise and loss.

I have to be calm.

...

Life twists you open and makes you give

But until when?

I've been feeling stupid and empty lately, like I can't keep pace, and that feeling of doom shadows my insides, making insecurity this foggy reality I can barely breathe in.

As though I am sprinting with all my worth, and that definitely, I will trip and fall and suffer tremendous agony.

That desperate desire to escape suddenly rears its horrible gorgeous head and roars. But I cannot go.

Perfectionism: the Clients' Epidemic

Insufferable is the life lived according to the Client's whims and fancies.
Hellish is the deadly combination of the spineless Client and the anal Consultant.

Perfectionism is a gloriously devilish ideal in this fucked-up, sick game. We're just pawns wrestling for meagre survival without any scrap of dignity or respect, in this hypocritical war for power, control, and right of way.

This is what voodoo dolls are for, I guess. Oh the fantasies of gory violence and sweet retaliation!

Pain, coffee, cheese, and bad breath

Oh the agony of miserable Monday.

Weekends don't ease backaches. They worsen them.

Cheese sandwiches and coffee give you bad breath, and a horrid aftertaste.

Urgh!!! The stomach revolts.

Silence is violence

It's not Keane's famous songs that pierce your heart most.

Have you heard "We Might As Well Be Strangers"?

I don't know your thoughts these days
We're strangers in an empty space
I don't understand your heart
It's easier to be apart

We might as well be strangers in another town
We might as well be living in another time
We might as well be strangers

For all I know of you now
For all I know

It makes me cry.

And there's "She Has No Time"

You think your days are ordinary
And no one ever thinks about you
But we're all the same
And she can hardly breathe without you

She says she has no time for you now
She says she has no time

Think about the lonely people
And think about the day she found you
Or lie to yourself
And see it all dissolve around you

She says she has no time for you now
She says she has no time

Lonely people tumble downwards
My heart opens up to you
When she says she has no time for you now
She says she has no time

I suppose when one feels down, melancholic rock really impales you like a knife in the chest.

We keep quiet, but really, we are fighting a vicious battle, but neither of us will ever admit to the glaring truths in this detached, strained, hidden war. Our silence is a subtle violence that rips up the insides, a clawed animal insane, frenzied, imprisoned, repressed, desperate.

It's all wrong. Everything is wrong now.

My mind is a blank, and it is like death.
How I yearn for it all to be bloody, and exploded anger, and real, physical wounds that will then heal. But it's not possible, because you are too kind. I don't know what to do, and how to live with all this.

Can I just disappear, just cease to exist for a while? Complete escape from this life, this monstrous trap, away from all its ruthlessness and vicious cycles and suffocating burdens.

Can I just stop breathing...inhaling, exhaling, all this stale, recycled, polluted air...for a while?

What's out there, in the great beyond?

Tears?

Gotta Love:

http://www.whitedogbobby.com/

Got Life? Or Life Got?

We are corporate-zombie-slave-machines marching into oblivion;
One team, united in ignorance, our numb unfeeling bliss
Never moved, ever indifferent, ever secure in the repetition of
The Routine, that which is supreme.

We feed like maggots on the rotting fruit of capitalism; with just
One goal, that deadly aim unwavering, to glut ourselves with unseen gold,
Luxuriating in the sordid fantasy of material wealth unbound -
At the knee of the god called money

We kneel for superficial gain, blinded by our glorious achievements,
Never expecting the poverty of death.

Then
Damnation mocks and
Minces our existence
in its entirety,
Worthless, worthless, worthless
In the infinite reaches of Eternity.

Egads the squeeze!

From that great giant blender of Life, spare me some small ounce of time to do more of this:

http://www.funkygrad.com/lifestyle/displayarticle.php?artID=731&subcat=live


and get as good as this:

http://www.venacava.org/newmain.html

Hmmm

http://www.onedotzero.sg/

A handful of thoughts

• Imagining the emptiness and pain when I will have to give up somebody in order to fulfil something. Dream or Lover?
• Wondering if I am losing my child-like perspective, and therefore, my youth and the heart and spirit that give it strength
• Am I too self-absorbed and do I deserve what I am getting in life?
• Collars and cut and clothes and fabric
• Sleep deprivation
• The warmth I feel when he is with me
• Am I taking too much for granted?
• Money problems
• Getting rid of my spare tyre
• Getting down to doing all that craftwork, drawing, painting, and etc. stuff that I've put aside for the longest time
• How the heck am I supposed to break out of this cycle???

Whole meal in a pot'o'rice

I'm brainstorming a bunch of easy-to-cook one-pot meals for lunchbox purposes...to save money, of course. Maybe completely vegetarian, maybe completely oil-free. Healthy eating!

Something pseudo-Korean, to be all dumped in a rice-cooker:
white and brown rice, a variety of mushrooms (button, straw, abalone, etc), diced red carrots, snow peas, maybe some yellow capsicum, and a bit of Taiwanese sausage, all cooked in chicken broth, then topped with pine nuts, toasted nori seaweed, and bonito flakes.

Quickie soup:
Add chicken stock to cucumber, white/red carrots, corn cobs, sweet potatoes/potatoes, maybe even leafy veggies like watercress, quickly boil together or microwave, then beat an egg into the mix. Tofu optional, for protein.

Super-chawanmushi (can't be lunchboxed; it's a cook-now-eat-now dish):
Pork/chicken cubes or mince, prawns, squid, crab-sticks, carrot cubes, corn nibblets, dried Chinese mushrooms, broccoli/cauliflower pieces, beaten eggs, water, all mixed and steamed or microwaved to form a savoury egg-pudding dish.

There's also Tofu Salad, where you can top it off with lots of different toppings...that's kind of fun if the silken tofu doesn't turn into mush.

Hmmm...gotta dream up some more...

Struggling in the Workplace

What lines should be drawn between "training" and "exploitation"? How do you measure the value of a human being as an employee in an organisation? How far does the employee have to go, what does she have to endure, and what kind of dire and drastic circumstances have to occur, before she has to finally evaluate that there is simply no other route to walk, other than out? What if there are comfort zones too valuable to ignore, too (surprisingly) reassuring to break out of?

How does one find balance in the clashing perspectives of the employer and the employee, and is there any right or wrong? When peace is kept through silencing the opinions of one party, where is the fairness and openness, and the "completely necessary feedback process" so highly recommended in a secular corporate organisation? Or does politics always prevail, and seniority/greater hierarchy always triumph?

When you judge a person by the error she commits, do you also not consider the context, motive, intention, magnitude, and, of course, consequences? Or does the initial agenda of teaching a lesson to the errant person serve an even higher purpose, therefore deserving greater priority?

I'm trying to find justification in all of this, some rationalisation of the situation. Maybe I just don't learn. Maybe I'm being too stubborn, inflexible and narrow-minded, Maybe I'm naive and inexperienced, foolish, immature, and rude. I just cannot understand my boss's point of view, and he cannot understand mine, and we just are so paralysed in arguing our individual cases that we neglect to come to a compromise, and then I get mowed over by his reprimand and end up sulking for the rest of the evening.

We just seem to be playing this cruel game that parodies a conflicting, melodramatic family-tragedy, and spins in a vicious cycle that cannot end, over and over again, each time in a new scenario, but always with the same frustrating conclusion.

Should I just walk out and never return? When will that time come?

Crapazine is Cool

http://www.crapazine.com/

A cool collective

http://www.the-03.com/

Cool Site

http://www.funkbuilders.com/

The End of Tolerance

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11569485/site/newsweek/

Farewell, multiculturalism. A cartoon backlash is pushing Europe to insist upon its values.

America's younger workers losing ground on income

By Mark Trumbull, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Mon Feb 27, 3:00 AM ET

In the race to get ahead economically, America's young workers are falling behind.

A new survey shows that median incomes fell for householders under 45, even as they rose for older ones, between 2001 and 2004.

Income fell 8 percent, adjusted for inflation, for those under 35 and 9 percent for those aged 35 to 44. The numbers add new weight to longstanding concerns about whether younger generations of Americans will achieve living standards that are better - or at least equal to - those of their parents.

"It's a scary question," says Carrie Brown, who runs the Blue Frog Bakery in Boston. She says that for now, at least, she's not keeping pace. And if she and her husband have children, she says she's not sure if her children will enjoy the same lifestyle she did while growing up.

Her concern is shared by many Americans who follow the baby-boom generation. One often-voiced worry is about generational fairness in tax burdens, given the prospect of a soaring federal tab in coming decades for Medicare and Social Security as the number of elderly Americans rises.

But today, even long before any such fiscal shock arrives, younger workers are already feeling squeezed by other trends. An increasingly competitive global economy, the rising cost of higher education and healthcare, and changing patterns of family life are among the factors that have combined to make the career environment tougher, economists say.

"There's no guarantee" that US living standards will continue to rise, says Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University specialist in generational economics.

For now, the prospect of a generation underperforming their parents may be more of a fear than a reality. By many measures, America continues to grow more prosperous with each passing decade.

A long-term trend of falling interest rates since the 1980s, for example, means that even after the recent runup in home prices, houses are generally more affordable today than they were 20 years ago. And homes today contain gadgets - from a child's video-game system to an adult's pocket e-mail device - that didn't exist a generation ago.

At the same time, however, evidence of economic challenges also abounds.

The signs include:

• Rising debt levels. Over the past decade, the volume of federal student loans tripled, reaching $85 billion in new loans last year, according to a new book by Anya Kamenetz, "Generation Debt." Nearly a quarter of college students are using credit cards to pay some of their tuition costs, she writes.

• The median income for men under age 44 was significantly lower in 1997 than in 1970, after adjusting for inflation, according to a long-term analysis by the Census Bureau in the late 1990s. For those over 45, incomes barely held their own during that period.

• The entry of women into the workforce in those decades has helped push median family incomes up over time. But even when men and women are included together, younger workers (age 25-34) are earning well below what they did in 1970. And at all ages, evidence suggests that families are putting in more hours of work to make their household incomes rise.

• Even with extra time at work, median family income has barely budged since 1995 for householders below 45, up about 5 percent after inflation through 2004.

Those aged 45 to 54 did better, with family incomes rising 23 percent during that period, according to the numbers released last week from the Federal Reserve Board.

And since the end of 2001, at the outset of the current economic expansion, younger workers again have underperformed, with incomes generally falling while their older counterparts have seen incomes rise.

That all helps explain the subtitle of Ms. Kamenetz's book: "Why now is a terrible time to be young." The book is partly a manifesto on generational politics, as she eyes the cost of baby boomers' retirement for her generation.

It's unfair, some economists say, to blame the baby boom generation, since the larger issue is that healthcare costs keep rising and people keep living longer in general. Rising healthcare costs are hitting younger workers in another way, too. As benefit costs rise, employers often have less left to boost wages.

Another factor behind the weak incomes for younger generations may be shifts in household composition.

The past few decades have seen a rise of single-parent and nonfamily households, which typically have lower incomes than married-couple households.

Perhaps most significant, though, is a labor market that has become tougher on workers, especially those with lower skills. Global competition has compressed wage gains.

Thus, despite a boom in worker productivity, "what the typical family or typical worker has to show for it has been remarkably little," says Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

In his view, the biggest issue is the rising inequality of incomes during the past quarter century.
At the Blue Frog Bakery, Ms. Brown sees that trend among her own peers. "People are either doing phenomenally well or living paycheck to paycheck," she says, as the smell of fresh croissants wafts through the air.

Still, many economists say progress is possible.

"In the long run I'm optimistic," says Michael Shields, an economist who specializes in demographics at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant.

What worries him most, he says, is the long work hours for his children who are just out of college. "When are they going to be able to take a break?" he asks. "I don't see it."

Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor