Accumulation

I have some big posts coming up so apologies for the haphazard nature of this one. This is essentially little tidbits that i have taken out from my notebook.
There isn't a hell of alot to do at work so most of the time i write or draw. This is the accumlated bullshit of my notebook.
Don't take it too seriously



Why should we allow the cathedral to be rebuilt?
The cathedral is a building that is there for only a select portion of society. Anglicans. Its not only just christians but its a particular type of christians.
Why should we allow our central plaza to be dominated by the leavings of a bygone era? an era of repression and suffering, exclusion and hatred.
Now the space is free why not us it for something we could all use? Maybe like a blowjob machine?
Now thats what i would called progress.



New zealand has a problem with the brain drain. Our best and brightest go overseas for the money they can earn.
They do so because they can. They have no children or wives or husbands so they go elsewhere.
nothing holds them back.
We lament the loss of our budding specialists yet do nothing to convince them to stay. But what could we do? we can't pay them what other countries can. we are a wealthy country but some will always be richer.
Our country is rich in other ways.
We are isolated.
Apart from the maori land wars no war has ever touched our sleepy isles.
Our government, while it doesn't provide enough for its citizens it provides huge amounts more than other countries. Where we have interest free student loans other countries provide nothing for their citizens or student loans with interest that introduce young adults to a life of debt.
New zealand is near to being the best place to raise a family one could be offered.
For the restless youth our land offers not the adventure or the money foreign countries do. We will never keep the young from leaving, that is their right. We can however convince them to come back when they are ready to settle.
The problem with admitting this is we will lose our specialists, we wont regain them for a long time, if at all. In the meantime we will lack doctors, nurses, teachers and professors.
There are those who grow fearful of their country.
In the last few years the wealth inequality of the U.S. has skyrocketted while some people are paid eight dollars an hour others earn 1000 a second.
The patriot act has nullified the 1st ammendment
NDAA has nullified the 5th and 6th
The constitution means nothing anymore
Expect it to be legally nullfied within 50 years. Cops kill innocents and get off scot-free, Peaceful protests are broken with vicious force
While the murder rate has been going down for some time it is still frightening.
The land of the free in name only.
It is not suprising that there are those who wish to jump the sinking ship.
They wish to have a ship which will support them. A ship that they can live on till the end of their days and their children too.
They wish for a ship that doesn't force them to walk the plank if they aren't rich and psychopathic.
Lets open our borders to American refugees.
 Because its better to take people out before the building crumbles than to wait for it to fall then search for survivors.

When the rising sea swallows the pasific islands (as it is already doing) where will the thousands upon thousands of polynesians go?


Where are we going?
Sand dunes rolled past him as he struggled with his binds.
He'd been in the back of the hovercar for two days now. and all he'd seen since he was thrust in was dunes.
Dunes, dunes, dunes. He might've been bored by them if he wasn't so extraordinarily high. The air was warm which was weird because its like a desert and shit.
The lemur drove on without speaking. She hadn't said a word the whole ride.
Her tail swayed from side to side as she stood by the steering wheel. She had muscular arms for a lemur she could have definately lifted a desk, a large one probably.
The haze wasn't fading anytime fast. I am still incredibly incredibly high, I thought. He tried to remember how he came to be in this position but the mental stress was too much.
"Where are we going"
Was the first sentence i croaked when I remembered i could speak.
The lemurs face snapped around and stared directly into my eyes.
"The party"
It then snapped its head back towards the way it was driving. The car had not veered off course once.
He tried to remember what he knew about lemmings. It had become difficult with all the lemurs around.
I sighed. I was beginning to come down. and i was remembering more. Penguins...
Penguins came to mind...
But why? what could penguins have to do with my situation, i asked myself. I mean i'm in the desert why would i remember penguins?  maybe its my body playing a trick on me, i'm probably way dehydrated i'm thinking about cold things cos i'm thirsty.
Then it hit me.
there were many of them. They talked to me In Bamako, I met them in a bar.
They appeared out of nowhere. One clamped his hand over my lips and another few held me down.
I recognized them instantly.
They were the Penguins out of Madagascar.
"Calm. caaaaalm down!" the penguins whispered through his beak. " We just want to talk. We are going to let you go but just don't break our cover."
They slowly let go of me.
They all exhaled.
"Now i know you must think you are tripping balls your not. We are right here talking to you right now."
" we've come to offer you a proposal."
I contemplated what a penguin might want from me, I imagined something to do with fish.
"sell it to me"
So i sat and waited as the penguins explained their plan.
I was to go out into the sahara in a hovercraft filled with supplies. I would drive to a location whose coordinates were carved into the dash. When i got there i was assured that the penguins had a stash of an ancient tuareg technology called.
Jinturba
It was the most powerful THC hit you will ever feel. Lasting for days of absolute bliss and monglike states. So powerful the penguins said that two could administer the lethal dose.
Needless to say i was in.
The penguins said that if i brought half of it back i could have the other. They also pointed out that they were tracking the hovercart and would turn off the hovercart and leave him to die if he tried to fuck them over.
The Hovercraft stopped and the lemur jumped out.
In the distance i could hear music. The beats of drums and thousands of high pitched voices.
The Lemurlady was chatting with another lemur. I'm not a an expert on lemur facial structure but i think they were happy to see me. Maybe in my stoned stupor i made friends with the lemurs? Why would i be tied up?
I was hauled out of the hover car. I was wrong the lemur could probably lift two large tables. she moved towards the music. Gradually i began to make out the words...
We like..... Move....... we....... like to....... We like to move it, move it! We like to move it, move it!
"Dear lord" i Thought. I'm too high to be at a social event let alone a lemur social event.
As i entered all the lemurs were shocked to see me they hollered and they whistled and the cheered with their pinched lemur faces. I didn't know what i had done but damn was i loving the attention. I was waving at the lemurs and they were waving back and like i was sure that small one wanted the D.
The took me up  towards a statue in the center of the party and we started climbing up.
Up and Up and up we went until the lemurs looked like smaller lemurs.
We reached the top of the statue and boy was there a view.
Fucking dunes as far as you could see. Laaame. "I'm fucking sick of sand."
Ladylemur snapped her head at me and bit off my ear.
AHHH AGRRGRGGHHH UHAHAHAAUUUAAAAAAA I screamed horribly.
The lemurs gathered around and stabbed needles into me. The tubes slowly drew my blood away from me and into the statue.
"this is a dream this is a dream oh god this is a dream " i muttered frantically.
I could see the lemurs all crowding around the statue. There were people holding little droppers attached to tubes and dropping blood on lemurs tounges.
My blood.
I struggled meekly but the drug was overpowering. I was just so intensely high, My mong state just hadn't been pierced at all. I was practically a lump of flesh for all the good i could do. I watched as My life slowly dripped away onto the tounges of stoned lemurs and the words rang in my head
We like to move it move it
We to move it move it
We like to move it move it
We like to
MOVE IT!

All the smog and lights over our cities is just a government conspiracy to shorten our horizons. It forces us to focus on our  day to day, basic tasks.
Like the lighting and effects of a theatre show, the ruling classes have created a show. They have put it on every day to stop us wondering
About our place in the universe. We look at the stars and wonder whats out there and as we are wondering what could be out there in the vast
expanse of space we come to the realisation that we haven't even explored a minute scrap of this earths surface for ourselves. Keeping us in isolation
from eachother, glumly tredging through a world of black and grey clouds.
(i don't actually believe this)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5ni5L-MSc&list=LLMkdC7sUBCcZh8vw6oLjJAg


Yep. Thats it.

I'll talk to you again when I'm a better person

Yo.
I'm sure those who read this blog already know but i got a job. Its a pretty fucking sweet job.
I got taught how to make coffee by the job which i was stoked about. They sent me to a course to relearn all my barista training shite that i did in high school. Its cool being in a job which actually wants to better its workers (fuck you Euro Cafe)
I work from 7pm-3am 5 days a week. I thought i would be really hammered by the schedule until i realised that falling asleep at 3am and waking up at 12 was my usual routine anyway.
My job consists of keeping everything clean, restocking the fridges, making a few coffees but the most strenuous part of the job (and the thing i spend most time doing) is reading Game of Thrones.
Because there is precious fuck all people in the airport once i've done all my work to a decent standard (which doesn't take long at all) I can just read Game of Thrones.
Stannis is a wanker.
A guy came into work today and berated my supervisor for moving the wheelie bin. "bring back the WHEELIE BIN!" he said with a certain eloquence that only a drunk skinhead can have.
he rambled around the airport snorting and shouting. Generally waking up all the travellers who were sprawled around on the floor.
He came up to the supervisor and asked for a latte then when she said that she had called security he inexplicably told her " ah yeah your not the type to have a double degree are ya?"
I think it was an insult on her intelligence but it didn't really have the punch that it could have because the cig he had behind his ear dropped to the ground and he hit his head on the counter picking it up.
The airport police man came in.
I call him the crimson chin

I'm fucking great at photoshop

I sort of imagine the tune of "business time" to be playing at this point
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOohBytKTU
He went up and talked to him. You could see a glint in his eyes as he eyed up the suspect. They chatted for a while. You could cut the sexual tension with a knife. The skinhead had gone red in the cheeks, It was love. The chin turned him around and started patting him down.
"that's all part of it, that's foreplay."
The police man spent alot of time patting him down. he spent alot of time on the legs and buttocks area. He went down, down, down.
" and you know when you down to your socks you know what time it is"
"its business time"
So the chin led the skinhead to his love station. The skinhead wailed cries that i could only assume to be primal mating calls.
True love has been born this day.

Its business time....



Its business time.....

On monogamy

On Monogamy

I saw a post on my facebook feed the other day. Some woman said we have r13 r 16 r18 for movies because the themes those movies held shouldnt be shown to people of those ages. She said that alternative sex practices (homosexuality) dont seem to have a R-anything and teaching her kids alternative sex practice just isn't appropriate.

Two can play at this game.
I don't think its appropriate to teach kids that monogamy is a normal or preferable way of living life. Monogamy is when people stay in a relationship with one person and don't have sex outside of that relationship.
Its my opinion that this form of relationship, among other things, degrades romance, causes trust problems and nurtures an environment where negative emotions can thrive.

So get on with it will ya?

Monogamy causes trust problems.

I've seen it happen all the time. Lets start a scenario. Dani (or danny) in a fit of lust, maybe at a party, maybe elsewhere, has gone and had sex with someone that isnt their partner. The partner in a fit of jealousy breaks off the relationship and causes a rift between the two and their respective friend groups.

Now. In most circumstances when the Dani has cheated that sex meant nothing to them apart from the hugely pleasurable act of acting on their lust. Dani isn't planning to elope. They aren't planning on running off with them person and starting a new life having cut the previous relationship out in its entireity. Generally they have just got really horny over a particular person and their lust had become too much. They just wanted mindless sex.

But Dannies previous partner feels hard done by. Why exactly?
The relationship hasn't changed. Her DNA hasn't been sullied by this act. Her is still the same person behind it all.
Sex with her hasn't been sullied. This isn't the middle ages. No one is virginal till they meet you. If that were the case then you wouldn't want to have sex with her because of her past partners.

Monogamy creates a situation in which you have to worry about whether the other half of your relationship is out having initimate times with someone who isn't you. It makes you constantly wary of what your other half is doing.

This often breaks friendships. Lizzie might be spending a bit of time with Rob maybe they have been spending a little too much time in the eyes of Bill, Lizzies boyfriend. Bill tells Lizzie that she has to spend less time with Rob or stop seeing him all together or even at the smallest level Bill might tell Lizzie it concerns him how much time she is spending with him.

This then means these things to me:
Bill doesn't trust that lizzie loves him enough to stay emotionally attached to him.

Lizzie now feels bill doesn't trust her to not go and fuck any person that comes along.

Rob now feels awkward (if he knows about it) and will probably distance himself from the friendship.

If you truly love a person and you trust them you can trust them to see whoever they feel and at anytime they want with as much frequency as they want. A relationship means trusting in your mutual love for eachother if you cannot trust your partner that they will come back to you at the end of the day because they love who you are then I question why you are in that relationship in the first place.

So now we return to Dani who has cheated on her boyfriend. The most obvious argument that I'm sure you are wondering why I didn't address I will now address.

Dani broke her partners trust didn't she? It was a unspoken arrangement that you wouldn't have sex outside of the relationship. Dani is still at fault because that was the arrangement she agreed on right?

Monogamy degrades romance

Now it seems that its not your trust he has broken but your pride. That woman was yours and no one else should be having sex with her.

That woman was yours (I understand this is a strawman but people say this all the time and I still think its a valid point)

That woman was yours....
In what way was she yours? This sounds to be like she is your property. That she isn't a person you love but a commodity that you can hoard away for your personal benefit.

Monogamy says that you have the right to tell your partner what she or he can do with her own body as if you have any right to another persons body.

How wholly unromantic.

I would never want to be in a relationship where my partner felt she had the right to tell me what I could eat or drink or who I could associate with

Why does it change with sex? We are all our own people. We are not our partners, we are individuals. We have total liberty over our bodies because anything less makes us slaves within our own skins!

How is this romance? How can any relationship where the other person can tell you what you are allowed to do and not allowed to do be considered loving, trusting or romantic?

We talk about loving a person as they are but we apparently draw that line just before the persons sexuality and sexual needs.

But perhaps it truly was your trust she broke. The agreement was no sex outside of our relationship, however unromantic or isn't doesn't make a difference. This was her agreement and she must stick to it.

Monogamy holds our emotions and youth to ransom

The predominant relationship model in our society is monogomous. If you want to be in a relationship chances are you are going to have to be monogomous regardless if you feel it is right or if you feel breaks the whole concept of love.

We may love a person hugely but have to succumb to monogamy because anything else isn't considered a relationship at all.

For those of my age we are in the age where we would like to have many sexual experiences and many meaningful emotional connections but monogamy holds us to ransom.

If you want to have a meaningful emotional connection with someone you will have to remain monogamous and there is also a chance that because of a ridiculous idea that has been perpetuated throughout the media, you cannot or should not remain friends with the partner afterwards.

If you want to have heaps of sexual experiences chances are you are going to have to trawl the clubs and bars. But if you like to know the person beforehand, perhaps you like to know that they are at all similar to you or they aren't stupid or they are a cool person well fuck you better get into a relationship with someone (no this isn't true of all sexual experiences. I know plenty of people who are intimate with a lot of interesting people)

The problem with Dani's situation is that yes she did go back on the relationship you agreed to but was she given a choice of relationships? Would you have thought of her as a whore if she wanted to act on her sexuality away from you?

If yes (or if you wouldnt call her a whore but something more PC) then is your relationship based on love or possession?

But in the end has her indisgression changed anything at all? Has it destroyed the relationship?  

Only if you want it to.

On responsibility

On responsibility.

There is this common belief that I hear people say pretty often in regards to protestors.

Grow up.

Stop being a rebellious teenager and just get on with your life get a job and stop trying to change everything.

I don't buy this idea that protestors are less mature than their status quo loving counterparts.

One of the ideals of becoming an adult is that one has to accept responsibility for ones own mistakes and work to fix them.

I heard a song once say “neutrality means that you don't really care because the struggle goes on even when you're not there”

Say you are an engineer who inspected a hundred buildings before the earthquakes in christchurch. You find that all of them dont live up to the requirements that the government set for a safe building. If you say nothing and the building crashes and kills hundreds of people can you held responsible?
Well i've heard of a few engineers being caught out by this and bought before court for this reason.

You might say that we are not all engineers. We don't all know what makes a building unsafe.

To that I say it doesn't take a genius to see the girders bending, it doesn't take a genius to see the walls crack and when the ground rumbles slightly it doesn't take any education to know the way the building is swaying is not how a building should look like.

The point of this analogy is that if you see something is wrong it is your responsibility to change it.

The bystander effect does not invalididate your hand in the crime at hand.

If a woman is raped within your sight and you do nothing to help or even try to do a thing you are no better than he who raped. You aided the man in his act because you could have been the hand that stopped it yet you did nothing.
Doing nothing is often times just as good as aiding the other side. Think of any sport and how good it would be for the other team if one team member sat down and refused to play.

Maybe it wasn't you who caused the problem.

You still live in this building and if the building crashes it wont give two shits who's fault it was.

Maybe you don't know how to fix the problem.

A common problem. Hell, I don't know how to fix the building its far too big for me to know exactly what concrete is needed where or what type of weights a floor can hold or where we will get the resources to fix it.

But again. Neutrality means that you don't really care because the building keeps crumbling even when you're not there.

Maybe you are going to go somewhere else? Live in the forest or another building all together.

Living in the forest is fucking hard and none of us have been brought up with the skills necessary to survive in the wild alone. My main problem with this, however, is that you are leaving everyone who every helped you get where you are in the dust. Essentially leaving them to fend for themselves.
What wonderful thanks for all the good times and experiences that made you who you are.

Maybe you think that the building has gone to shit and there is no point because no matter what we do its going to collapse and kill us all.
What is easiest when faced by a problem is to just ignore it. To say its impossible. You might a shitton of evidence behind you as to why it may not work but I have the surest possible way of making sure something wont work.
Don't even try.
When in your life have you ever got something you really wanted without even working towards it?  When have you sat on your ass and everything just magically got better?
Perhaps thats not your argument. Perhaps you really don't think anything can ever change. To those people I say:
Man. It must be hard being a clairvoyant. It must be hard being blessed by god with the ability to see into the future. It must be hard living knowing that no one will win the lottery because every time it comes round you just win because you already know the numbers. Fuck it must be hard knowing everything in advance you special little snowflake. You are burdened with more knowledge than any human will ever have.
Get off your high horse. You don't know shit. You don't know when anything will happen in advance. You might have an idea and you may be very knowledgable about the psychics of weight distribution and you might know the exact breaking point of every part of the building but you can never bank on knowing everything. You can never know how every person will act or how each part might break. You don't know shit.

The only way anything will get done is if we have as many people doing as much as they can. Any little bit of help is a blessing for the whole.

Many people I know see this building we live in crumbling. We can see the cracks and hear the creaks. We all know that the building is unstable. Every day a block falls off or maybe even someone is killed by the stability of this building.

The question isn't when is the building going to fall because that implies we cant do anything to stop it falling. It implies that we cannot raise a new building ourselves.

The immature define themselves by what they cannot do and try to project what they cannot or are not willing to do on to you and bring you down to their level.
The immature shit their pants and expect the mature ones to clean it up time and time again.

So why in the hell would we listen to those who are still in diapers?

Bit of an update on me.
Its brief because there isnt much to say. My passport application was stalled because some stuff on the application wasn't finished (it fully fucking was.)
Anyway im a bit afraid I wont make it back in time for the start of lectures. Also I was wondering if anyone was looking for a flatmate? I very much would like to flat with friends but if not it would be great if I could crash on someones couch until I found a flat (shouldn't be hard i'll just look on those walls in the library where everyone advertises flatemate wanted.

I have been writing a lot. This is the first post in a while but thats only because my piece of shit laptop now doesnt do the internet and is a rather large digital typewriter.

I really just want to go home and it fucks me off how hard it is just to get back to your home country.

They should have emergency passports good for one trip and signed by the NZ embassy.
That would make things easy.

Yeah. I've been busking most nights making about 50 bucks a night over about 1-3 hours each night. Its good money and im fucking good at poi now. You guys should see. Its gonna be nuts.

I apologise to all those that I start talking to on facebook and never get a good conversation going. The only times im on facebook are when im at the internet cafe and my time is limited there. Often I just start talking before I realise I came here for a reason (sending emails stuff to do with my bond tenancy shit or trying to keep up with current events (mali is really interesting.) and way too much league of legends) Yeah so sorry bout that. Ill get proper internet soon.

At first I thought frances mali intervention was going to be another imperialistic shitfest but I heard a story about how before leaving the salifis burned down a library full of priceless original source histories of timbuktu and the region. A huge chunk of knowledge about empires and life in that region is lost.
I fucking hate salifi islam. Fuck their education hating bullshit. Fuck their hatred of women. Fuck the regression they brand as bringing them closer to god.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again. It can't come soon enough!
Cheers
Cam

What the fuck are you doing France and other stories.

I was going to write a post about Frances Mali intervention but realised i didn't know shit about it and wasn't in a place to be able to talk about it.
I will give those of you who don't understand it the low down. (or atleast everything i understand about it)

so Mali had been a one party for ages and was that way until 1991 (i think) and then a military coup took over everything (as it often seems to in Africa) they installed a citizen led government. that government held elections in 1992 and Alpha Oumar Konare was elected. Konare went through the maximum allowed term of two terms as leader mainly because the elections were crap and other political parties boycottted them. When his two terms were up he stepped down and a new leader stepped up. This was a pretty cool milestone because this was the first transition between two democratically (and i use that term loosely) elected leaders.
Anyway that sort of went on until Jan 2012 when a rebel army called The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA) rose up and swept up about 2/3 of the country.
Malis north is mostly the sahara desert and the native population are the Tuareg who are nomadic and have had heaps and heaps of clashes with the rest of the more southerly populace over independence and racism.
So the Tuaregs among others liked the idea of an independant nation of Azawad so they rose up.
Al-qaeda and affliated groups sensed an oppurtunity to gather more people for the cause of jihad and salafi bullshit. So they started moving in. They have money so its tempting for poor maleese to accept food shelter and a brotherhood in return for jihad and a purpose in life.
So Al-qaeda moved into rebel held territories and started converting. The NMLA didn't like the salafi's but didn't want to open up a second front against Al-Qaeda so let them in. Now Al-Qaeda is quite well entrenched in Mali.
Enter France.
The Maleese government asked France for aid in its conflict against the NMLA and Al-Qaeda painting the both with the same brush.
France accepted.
Its yet to be seen exactly whether France is their for purely humanitarian reason or other reasons entirely. I had sort of imagined that this was just another Iraq or Afghanistan but as i was looking at Reports about Mali i saw this:
|http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2013/01/201312113451635182.html
People from Mali are encouraged to send texts in to Al-Jazeera who translate it and put them on the site. Apparently (according to Al-Jazeera) 2/3s of the population has access to mobile phones.
Anyway. only 4% of responses were negative.

This is an interesting conflict. We will see how it grows.


To follow up on my last post the show that i was supposed to do never fucking happened.
On New Years eve i got a call from the dude from an unknown number
"Hey Cameron! Yeah the show wont happen tonight. Sorry about it all i know you've been practicing but yeah something serious has come up and the party is off."
"Uh uh what? OK so.. Are you saying you want your money back?"
" No no no no. Don't worry about it i will just get you to do a show for me in the next few days"
"Ah ok. well sweet as i guess just call me when you want me to come in"
" Yep sounds good, also i lost my phone so don't bother texting it i'll send you a new number when i get a new phone."

I haven't heard from him since.
Its been 3 weeks now.
I would love to know what the hell was happening but I don't and i can't find out because i have no contact with him.
Its all very weird.

In other news i am moving back to New Zealand.
After months of trying to find a job and failing i have decided to come home and get a degree.
Yeah. Cameron going back to University who would of thought?
I can't get a job without qualifications and I don't want to work in shit jobs forever or follow the pipe dream of busking for a living. I'd like to change minds as that is the thing i find myself pretty good at and what i enjoy doing above all else.
I am going to be doing a history degree and working towards being a history teacher in secondary. I think i'll be a pretty fucking cool teacher don't you?
Anyway. I'm sorry this post has been a little dry but i just haven't felt like writing a blog in ages and i've been sort of working up the push to do one of these again. If you want to hear more from me put a few likes on the facebook post or better yet tell me what was good or what was bad. comments are great.
In the end i don't write this for myself and if i don't know if anyone is reading it i don't write them.
That wasn't meant to sound like a guilt trip but it sort of did anyway.

Welp. i'm off to go busk now.
Wish me luck.
Cam

The Behemoth

And here you were thinking i'd forgotten about all this.
Its been some time and my world has changed dramatically. The most important thing recently that has happened was that i finally acquired my busking license. You can only imagine how boundlessly happy i was when given this small piece of paper in a convenient plastic sleeve.
It also serves is where i keep excess coinage.
Dollar dollar bills yall.
(I intend to put more time into my posts. That is certainly what i have done with this one. This is however going to be the biggest post that i have done, Thus the name. I have realised i go on mad tangents sometimes and they can be hard to follow. So instead of focusing on one story like i should i am just going to manage my tangents by putting them in parentheses. Hopefully it makes it easier.)
I havent had work since my last post, save sporadic days of work that i have been given maybe once a week. I have been busking almost every day since i got my license. Its amazing. Its feels great to be in a job that is exactly what you want to do, making good money, working only for yourself with no one above you you must report to.
On the first night me and James went out. I was pretty nervous, it had been some time since i did this last and that, was by no means, like this.
A good 60% of people in this city are like trains. They are on their own personal rail from their last destination to their next. They do not stop, they do not look around, they are completely unwavering in their dedication to their goal. I'd swear that a good 20% of those people don't actually see that there is a man twirling fire right next to them.
(Infact. Now that i think about it that is exactly what happened last night. Little ol' me was doing ma thang in my spot in red square. I saw a woman crossing the road to my right, i almost heard the 'chugga chugga chugga chugga' that her engines must of been making. She was walking with her head down trundling along at a breakneck shuffle towards my flimsy orange circle. I spun my flames straight in her path of vision but she just kept coming. she trundled straight through my circle while i spun fire around her.
She rolled her rickety way far away from where we stayed. Off into the sunset she went. Did she ever reach her destination? Was she waylaid by robbers along the way? I couldn't say. But sometimes i look at the sunset on a warm Melbourne day i can almost hear a 'toot toot' on the horizon and i know shes out there. Somewhere.)
So while there are significantly more people in Melbourne no more people seem to stop than in Dunedin.
The difference is, however, those people who stop give  much much more.
Me and James went out, first night. expecting to make max 60 bucks. We sat out there playing about for people and were getting alot of gold which is great. Some people said it was amazing and other said they appreciate what we are doing, which is, always a pleasant thing to hear.
These four guys came up, obviously drunk, and just went nuts over it. They bloody loved it. I did two shows and they came up to give me some coin. One guy dropped a handful of coins. Another, not to be outdone gave a more golden handful of coins. The next dropped a 10 dollar note, the tension was in the air, would the last man give more? Could he afford to beat his friend?
A single yellow note emerged from his wallet '50' it said my heart skipped a beat an-
Yeah he gave me 50 bucks it was pretty cool.
That night we made just shy of 90 bucks in two hours. Happy days.

I'm learning alot about people. Gathering a crowd is hard. Especially without music. Its amazing this herd mentality we have.  Crowds of people will walk by and throw only a chance glance my way but as soon as the first person stops within seconds you will have 10 people stopped then it snowballs so quickly until you have a huge crowd.
The kids don't realise it but they are my best money making asset. Whether it is a 5 year old making his lopsided gallop towards the crazy fire man or a twelve year old tugging his parents to watch the dirty hippy burn himself, kids are always the first ones to make my crowd.
Lately i have been visited by a pack of kids, they range from year 9 to what looks like around year 12 they are in Melbourne on a volleyball trip. They cant hope to get anything higher than 5th but they reckon they can get 5th.
They have watched me every single night i have been out in the past week.
They must have a hotel close by or something because they are always on Southbank. They have been really helpful. They have told me what looked good, what i should stop doing, what i should start doing. I Dont listen to everything they ask me to do (I can't do a fucking backflip stop asking!) but i dont think they mind too much.

I wrote that about a week ago. maybe more I don't know. Alot has happened since then. Things were looking up. I got a job fire dancing through a friend of a friend. Its going to be tomorrow. New years eve. i've been practicing for it for a while and its been good.
The job is on the ninth story balcony of this guys house. it has a 270 degree view of the city so that when new years eve hits the horizon so too will the abusrd amount of fireworks that will be dispensed on that night. The performance is going to link up so that the crescendo of the song will sync with midnight.
Its going to look so fucking sweet.
I did have a few problems though.
So a few days ago i had my first go doing fire on the balcony. The fire went out halfway through the song.
i had sort of expected it but the idea was that i would have my other poi dipped and ready to go.
I went busking the other night and i had a reasonable crowd. I was doing well and the crowd was enjoying it.
I heard a gasp of shock and looked up to see a fireball sitting in the midst of the crowd.
My poi had broke. in the middle of the show..
'everyone give it up for faulty equipment!!!'
silence
'yeah exactly no one likes that shit. This wasnt my fault my friends this is jugglearts fault and im actually fairly pissed off that they would sell me these trash poi. but wait around for a second or two more and i'll be ready to go again!'
So they did wait and i kept going and made a solid 30 bucks off that crowd.

Backtracking to where i was before i realised i needed to buy some new poi but Juggleart was closed till the 14th so i couldnt get replacements so i texted everyone i knew who did poi and asked them where they knew where i could buy poi or whether i could borrow theirs.
most text back saying go to juggleart
cool, thanks.
one dude text back and said that off ya tree sold poi but also that i could borrow his.
Keep in mind i had met this guy once. on a tram, on my way home.
I hadnt texted him since or seen him but he was all good with me using his poi.
i declined his offer of borrowing his poi to go buy some from off ya tree.
they were among the most pitiful poi ive ever seen but i bought them anyway because i needed them.
Fast forward to rehearsal on the balcony and lo and behold the new poi went out in like 40 seconds.
Cool beans.
So i called Brad ( the tram man) and asked him whether i could still borrow his poi. He asked me what the big deal was, why i needed poi so bad and i told him the whole situation to which he answered:
'dude why dont we just do a doubles act? i mean, i wont take any money for it'
A smile spread across my face because this dude would single-handedly save my performance. So fucking pleased.
We only had a few days to practice so we got to it quickly. we got one song choreographed in a day and we were thinking ' damn this is going to look sweet'
We went home to get some rest and practice the next day.

I had been paid in advance for my gig it was a considerable sum and i was stoked.
Finally i had enough money to buy something that wasnt oats and eggs.
I didnt have enough money in the bank account to transfer my rent to my landlord so i went to pay eric in cash and have him pay mine through the internet.
I went to my closet to get the cash.
Half of it was gone.

I scraped together all the spare notes and what was left to pay this month rent i was short 40 bucks but eric said he would spot me the shortfall.
I have been trying to find a job for  so very long. sending out cv after cv after cv getting not even a call to say i havent got the job. all ive been doing is busking and that isnt making me enough.
This money was going to save me from having nothing for the next month or so maybe pay for lessons in capoeira or circus skills or..
Something, anything.
So i cried. What really can i do? i have no idea who it could be because it could be anyone. i cant accuse anyone because where is my evidence?
Maybe it was the stress or maybe it was the fact i quit smoking a little while ago but i started getting a pounding headache. It was al a little much.

So here i am on new years eve with about 50 to my name. I have to do a performance tonight that im not properly prepared for. with a guy i barely know and i have to nail it.
And i will nail it.
I'm pretty optimistic lord knows you guys know that. But i can feel myself falling into a 'fuck the world' sort of mentality. Its been hard lately but i guess i'll survive. when this show is done it'll be one hell of a weight off my shoulders.

There are supposed to be alot of pictures in this post but i cant be bothered and i need to practice. tonight is the night and i cant screw it up.
Wish me luck.
Cam

Theives and Hooligans

So. I lost my job.
Yep.
Its not surprising, I am beginning to become quite adept at losing my job.
I Went into work and had breakfast, afterwards was told that i had to get two people signed up to The Wilderness Society today or i would be fired.
Well, shit
Id only ever got 2 or more once, The odds werent high. I however went to work confident i could do it. This was the day that i was going to prove that i could keep this job. My heart swelled with pride in my work, ready for a new day!
Yeah. that lasted for an hour. Its sort of hard to keep up morale when every second person said that they would be dead before it mattered to them. Also we have these ipads that are supposed to help us put down peoples details but when i got someone wanting to sign up the ipad didnt work and she didnt have time.
Jesus why have you forsaken me so?
By 3pm i had pretty much given up and had begun just saying anything to get people to stop. Not a soul was stopping for my devilish good looks. So i decided to climb a tree.

James would try to stop people on the street by asking them whether they want Cameron to lose his home. I would then follow it up by shouting nature facts at them and trying to get them to stop.
Suprisingly it didn't work. At all.
I mean come on. There is a dude up a tree surely that is worth stopping for! So as you can see everyone walked past while i dined on leaves. No one cares about the humble tree hippy. I told one man if he didn't help save the endangered tree hippy there would be less hippies in the trees and more in the cities making the place smell.
I am one hell of a salesman.
So yeah, end of the day came and i had no sales. a bit of a quick end to a new job but well.. thats how it seems to go here.
The bright side of this is that i finally have enough money to get my busking license. I've paid for everything and i was told i had to show up at ten on monday. It also said that all members of the act must be there so i wrenched james from his bed so that he and i could perform for the bureaucrats. They weren't there at ten then moved it to twelve and didn't show up then because they had actually got the date wrong. Its next Monday which is frustrating because thats another week of performance that i cant get paid for.
I feel that i should probably go on strike due to these ridiculous work conditions. I imagine if i sit on the side of the road with a sign saying "The Melbourne Local Government are sort of pricks" I would get more money than actually busking.
We went busking this morning for about 2 hours and made a solid $3.50 It might have something to do with the fact that we were just improvising and between us we didn't know one song fully. But my primary school teacher told me that the fact i tried was what counts so i don't feel so bad.
Or atleast i did until i realised i was working for 90 cents and hour then i was like "daymn ms winter why you gotta be so wrong?" and she was like "Well daymn Cameron that doesn't really apply to modern life. All i was trying to do was make you feel better about the fact that your pirate ship in art class looked more like a turd than a nautical vessel"  Then i was all like "Thanks for your insight you bitch. Why are you even in my subconcious?" and she be all like " Repressed sexual tension probably" and then she vanished.

OH also these are pictures of my flat. Its pretty sweet.

Its a really nice place. Its like 30 mins to town and 5 minutes to the nearest Aldi (supermarket) They sell bottles of wine for $2.50 its nuts.
We also live next to a river. It has a rather large bridge over it and we took some pictures there.

I actually set my goatee on fire doing this picture. Instead of the goatee ending in a straight line at the bottom, one corner is singed into a curve. It looks more ridiculous than it did before.

 The video is well on its way! we have been getting some wonderful footage and soon i'll have a little portfolio video! :)
So i'd like to think i have a high tolerance to alcohol but as these things go you never know how often your toes touch the line until you go past it.
So I went on a date with a girl i had met at my old work, Grill'd, It started out well. The conversation flowed and we sunk some beer while yarning away outside. We had a few jugs at that place before leaving to find a park to chill out in. we bought a six pack and started drinking that.
It was around the fourth time i'd taken a leak in 20 minutes that i realised that i was actually pretty trashed. The girl i was with was an ardent feminist, vegan and general all round lefty. So in my eyes a pretty cool cat but the problem with finding someone that cares about this stuff as much as you do is that they know all the things you do and will pull you up on every fallacy you make.
My usual ease at talking spiraled down into a neverending cycle of bad sterotypes and just generally not finishing sentences.
When i was among the drunkest i was that day she started asking me why i wasn't vegan.
I knew it was coming, hell she told me she would talk about it at the start of the date, but boy i wasn't at all prepared.
She told me all the reasons why i couldn't be an enviromentalist while not being vegan and damn was she convincing. When it comes to discussing veganism Vegans have all the arguements. All of them.
I couldn't really do anything but agree. The only thing i bleated was something along the lines of "Meats pretty good though. A bit of meat never hurt anyone"
My face sort of sunk into the realistion of what i had said and she wasn't pleased.
But Cameron how do you get yourself out of this situation?
AH! i have the perfect line!
"look.. i'd like fully turn vegan for you. Cos like i should do it anyway yeah. i'd do it for you"
"That is possibly the worst reason you could ever have chosen to turn vegan. Thats really fucking weird too. what the fuck"

It was a pretty good date i'd say. I made some strong impressions. Made some strides in the dating field. Crashed and burnt worse than i have ever done before.
I crack the fuck up when i think about it. Whats done is done, but i still wish i had a little more style that day.

Graffiti is pretty sweet here.

Anyway Thats all i remember i wanted to write about.
Oh i was doing poi at the train station today and there was a bunch of school kids on the other platform watching me. When i stopped they applauded and hollered. IT was pretty cool i havent been applauded by a group that big in a while.
It was pleasant.

Anyway. thats the end.
If you want to read my flatmates blogs here they are.

Eric was once named Martha Stuarts number one fan by an internet poll on MSN.com. 93% of votes came from one IP address but Eric still claims he won by popular consensus. His hobbies include buying from Coles, picking up fine ladies and generally having one of the most bitching smiles this side of Tanzania.
http://wavesofoz.blogspot.com.au/

James has never once accepted that clouds are not solid and still claims that the problem is that no one has ever tried. He enjoys photography, nude modelling and crack. Also well known for his ability to make the same joke about my accent weekly.
http://xeyesandpeacesigns.blogspot.com.au/


Seeya guys!