Jul
06
On the road to Canberra, as we enter the magnificent rolling hills and plains around the Lake George area, I am momentarily stunned by the majesty of the vista before us.
“Wow! That’s incredible! It looks like something straight off a, uh. Hrm.”
“You were going to say desktop, weren’t you?”
“Yes. Goddammit.”
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Jun
25
Hello everyone. My name is Tim Colwill, and I have a problem.
Hello, Tim!
Actually, I have a number of problems. For example, my facial muscles tend to operate on a ten-minute time delay, which causes me to sometimes be unable to properly communicate emotions to people important to me. In the same manner one can look up at the sky and see the stars as they were hundreds of years ago, my face is a delightful mirror of the emotions I was feeling ten minutes prior.
Working in combination with my expressionless voice I often, to my great chagrin, give people the impression of being either utterly disinterested, monstrously sarcastic, or having actually passed away several minutes ago and now operating entirely on volatile corpse gas and twitching nerve reflexes. My thanks to all those who have frantically, and mistakenly, dialled for an ambulance. I appreciate it.
But we’re not here to talk about that, are we? Today I would like to talk about my unnerving tendency to not so much blur as demolish the line between the internet and real life. I have, at various times in the past done, and probably will do again in the future, the following things.
Yes, I have done all of these things. I am not proud of these things, but they are my things, and I have done them. I will probably do more of them in the future even, until the time comes when I am found curled up in the foetal position on the floor, sucking binaric dregs from a blue CAT-5 cable and cackling quietly to myself.
Still, at least when I am asked in job interviews whether I “eat, sleep and breathe the internet”, I can hold my head high and say proudly: “Yes. Yes I do”. And then I can break down in a series of embarrassed, choking sobs.
I’ll always have that.
Jun
01
Good morning Cat-Dogs!
That’s right its morning here, almost 5am to be exact. Which I guess makes it morning over in Perth as well, and in like 50% of the world. But that’s not the point. The point is, I’m AWAKE. AGAIN. Tonight I realy can’t blame anyone but myself, I did nothing but sleep and drink tea and eat sugar all day, so I sort of saw this coming. Anyway, I figure, if I can’t sleep, BLOG.
My only problem with that, you see, is Tim’s ridiculously loud spacebar. I basically have to turn and see if he’s woken up after every word, which will make this post, at the very least, well thought out. Every space might be your last!
Mar
07
This morning, I’d like to tell you all a story. It’s a story about the single most inspirational man I’ve ever met. Despite the length of time since I last saw him, which is probably close to 4 years, and the fact that I’ll probably never see him again, doesn’t change the fact that he often comes up in my thoughts as a vague guideline to attitudes and life in general. I’ve probably mentioned him in passing to a number of you in the past, mostly regarding his unorthodox teaching methods.
You see, he was a lecturer at SIBT, a bridging institution with delusions of grandeur, that I attended for a year. His name is Aaron. I somehow never discovered his last name, perhaps he did that deliberately, most lecturers are all about the simple firstname.lastname@dumbuniversitydomain.com.au email addresses and things, but in any case, I never knew it.
Of the three trimesters SIBT was divided into, I was lucky enough to have three units, over two trimesters with Aaron as a lecturer. I’d heard of him from friends who had previously taken the units I was, and also been lucky enough to have him as a lecturer, but I’d always assumed what people had said about him was exaggerated. I mean, how good can this one guy BE, right?
The thing that probably needs to be mentioned somewhere, so here seems like a good place, was that SIBT is like baby-uni. The tutorials were about the same size, but instead of lectures with literally hundreds of people, you were reduced to classes of say, 20? Maybe less if it wasn’t a popular class. So when I say he interacted with you personally, he really did. He knew most every student by name, greeted them in corridors, and really made you feel like you meant something to him.
I realise, reading back, that a lot of the words I’m using and will continue to use might make it sound like a schoolgirl crush was going down. But I gotta tell ya, that simply wasn’t the case. I’ll be using a lot of these emotional words, because that’s what he did to you, he made you feel like an individual, not a faceless student, or a number. But I had nothing but the greatest respect for this guy.
I’m sort of all over the place with this. It sounded more structured in my head. But I haven’t even really started yet. This is kind of just backstory. I’ll understand if you wanna stop reading now.
Jan
20
Well, I’m early for my lunchdate, so blogging when I have nothing better to do has always worked in the past, right? Only now – I’m doing it on my phone. So yeah, spelling mistakes. Watch out for those.
Between this and listening to music, I’m sure I’m giving my battery a run for it’s money. Or, well, my money, I guess.
Man it shits me that different songs are different volumes. There should be some kind of normalizing software built in. Or at least some kind of volume control on the headset so I don’t have to go digging it outta my pocket every five minutes.
Jeez, I’m sorry I’d I don’t have any life changing epiphanies for you! I’m pretty freaking hungry, not to mention thirsty. Does that count? I mean, that’s pretty life changing, right? If I don’t get something soon I’ll DIE. If that’s not life changing, I don’t know what is.
Alright, lemme think.
Oh right. So I got a call from Thingz in Belmont today. They want to interview me for a job. Yay, right? Well, not really. I mean, hell, I could get money, and lots of it. But… is it wrong that I don’t want to work full time? I have no problems with working. Even working full time. I just… can’t face the same thing everyday. Two jobs that equal fulltime of something. I just can’t face waking up, working all day and then going I bed to wake up and do it again. Particularly in a job I have no real interest in.
I feel really whingy, and in the “current economic climate”, as Tim would put it, I know there are lots of people looking for work that can’t get any at the moment, and I’ve put a lot of resumes out, and this is the only reply. I’m just… hesitant to invest so much time in a job I don’t want and whose skillset is so basic that I won’t even take anything away from the experience except piles and piles of money.
Goddamn, and now I’m talking myself out of it. And Tim did such a good job of talking me into it this morning.
Man, I haven’t listened to a lot of music lately. Basically my intake has been nonexistent since moving to Perth since I no longer spend 6+ hours in front of MSN talking to Tim, where all my music listening used to take place. But I’m slowly rediscovering my playlist. Slowly, slowly but surely.
I sort of feel like it’s stagnating though. And I don’t have the patience to discover new tracks like I used to. I listen so infrequently now that I just want to hear the goodstuff, not try and listen to new things. Which makes me sad. Oh so sad.
Having said that, funny story. I was going through Wikipedia last night, via the random page function, and found the page of a band that sounded interesting. Couple of iTunes purchases later, and, uh, yep. I guess it wasn’t that funny afterall.
There are flowers on the seat next to me. There aren’t any trees around of the same type, so they couldn’t have blown here, despite the substantial wind. I like to imagine the story of these flowers, like somebody brought them here after a break with a loved one, and they got left behind. Bittersweet.
Ah, young/old/middle-age love/courtship/marriage/flowerlover.
Yep. I don’t even know any more. For complete juxtaposition, I can’t wait to get so drunk I can’t feel anything anymore on Saturday. That’s going to be a nice holiday.
Not So Unwashed is the collective blog of Jess Berensen and Tim Colwill. You can read more about them here, but in the meantime, relax. You're in safe hands.
