Dungeon Hence Dragon

For those of you into the "Lingo" you may have noticed a comment on the previous post concerning DMing. And you people will already be aware, pray tell, what this acronym represents. For those of you not in the know I shall illuminate.

DM stands for Dungeon Master. Now before you reach for the back space button like some mad... Back Space Buttoning Type Person, hear me out. Much is misunderstood about Dungeons and Dragons and if you don't believe me read up at Mr Wikipedia for a history lesson.

Now, personally, I don't give a hoot or any other onomatopoeia's what other people think about me playing D&D but I do get a little tetchy that the stereotype has become so ingrained in mainstream media that the mere mention of a protagonist's having D&D as a hobby immediately turns that character into not only a geek (for which I proudly wear the mantle) but more disturbing gives such a character an unverified and undiagnosed mental disability by giving the impression that any minute he (or rarely she) will soon don a medieval weapon of some sort and start shooting/slashing at passers by with little regard for human life. I realize I may not be helping matters by having just created the worlds largest sentence but you know where I'm coming from.

It's a hobby. It's something to do. Now I'm not saying that there are absolutely no "strange characters" out there playing D&D. Of course there are. There are also some very unusual people barracking for sports teams, some who play video games, some who find collecting cutlery stimulating, some who go to work and come home and do nothing every day, some who mow lawns, some who go to nightclubs, some who balance cheque books, even some (and they are very few) who write blogs. In other words there are unusual people in every walk of life.

And maybe, just maybe, if we embraced them all with equal compassion and interest, those who actually do have mental conditions might be diagnosed sooner and get the help they need and perhaps feel better about having done so.

A Life Most Fortunate

I have just gone through and read all my previous posts.

My dear god, I am an immeasurable twit am I not?

So I shall get you few, you wondrous few, up to speed. I am once again back at my Fathers abode, but my father, not here. He is off and about the world entertaining the masses. As he should. His last couple of years doing "A real job" was not only painful for himself (I'm sure) but for those of us watching. A man of that talent is a veritable crime scene in such a job. And I shall say no more about it.

So here I am unemployed (yes, once again) but living in a mansion in the swanky part of town. It is a strange affair when one looks out from one's (well someone else's) balcony, knees shaking from malnutrition, and sees a wonderful view, knowing well that no one in an eighteen kilometer radius has ever looked though a bin for a cigarette butt. It's humbling, but backwards.

I quit my job because I could no longer handle people yelling at me. That is the be all and end all of it. I know in previous posts I have made fickle rants about my lack of enthusiasm of large company policies, but that was not it. I just could no longer handle being the brunt of others aggression. I have worked in pubs and call centres for going on fourteen years now and quite frankly I think I have used up my "Abused Because You're There" quota. Let a younger and more absorbent pleb run the gamut of idiots that only think in hindsight. Let a more robust and idealistic person try to argue the merits of reading "Terms and Conditions" before clicking "I Agree" to people who believe that the Duty of Care does not stop at actual breast feeding them facts.

I'm done.

So once again I blog to you without a foreseeable future. Once again do I display the characteristics of a shopping bag adrift on air currents yet without so much of the So Lovely Your Heart Will Burst but more of a Why Doesn't This Abandoned Shopping Bag Get It's Act Together And Make It's Way Back To The Shopping Centre And Do It's Job. That will make a lot more sense to those of you who have seen American Beauty.

So in summary, I'm here, I'm alive, I have no intention of going anywhere, and I ain't gunna give up until I do it right.

And there, I think, is essentially what everybody is doing.

Just most people are using more magenta than cyan.

Why I don't have a music collection.

Many friends, family, girlfriends and acquaintances have been baffled, over the years, by my complete lack of a taste in music. To them it seems as though something is wrong with me. When asked what music I like my usual response is shrugging, pointing to the nearest band/person/thing playing music and say “That's ok”.

Needless to say this infuriates people. It seems that the human genome is meant to have a music appreciation DNA supplement that I, apparently, am lacking. It's not that I don't like music as whole. I do. I love it. I just don't go out of my way to remember who does it. And I don't buy it. All in all I have five music CD's. I didn't buy any of them. They are Gorrilaz, Killing Heidi, Martika (I have no idea where it came from), Uncle Cracker (I have yet to listen to this and have no idea who this person is) and Bing Crosby's Christmas Album.

I used to say that “I know what I don't like”. Rap. But I have since stopped saying that. Not because I like Rap now but because I have heard a few Rap songs that didn't seem to be abusing the listener for doing somebody wrong and a few that I grudgingly liked. And here's where the problem starts again, I have no idea what those songs were or who they were by. My theory is that my addled brain has a finite memory and is hard at it holding up to the strain of remembering where I put my pants and which way is “tighty” and which way is “loosey”.

I'm also a little shitty at music. It has been said before, mostly by stand up comedians more eloquent and certainly more amusing than I, that when one is in a relationship songs are just songs. Maybe uplifting maybe fun to dance to and mostly nice as a background score for the walk to train station.

Then you break up. And the songs change. Suddenly they are all about love, meeting the perfect partner, breaking up, the things you've done wrong in love, unrequited love, love, love, love. And not just some of them. All of them. Even Rap songs that have up until that point been about putting caps in peoples bottoms is now suddenly about putting caps in peoples bottoms because of the love of a girl. So thinking that lyrics are the culprits you switch to Classical and you quickly find what the composer was trying to convey without words. Love. The pain of loneliness. The ecstasy of finding one's soul mate. Elevator music now brings tears to your eyes.

Yet, when I was in a relationship I cannot remember a song called “How do you make so many dishes?” or “Your kindness and understanding is killing me” or, on the other side “Did you go out with the boys last night?” or even “You're lying and I will try to pretend you're not.”. And when out of a relationship I have yet to hear a song called “I read a good book today” or “The bus was blue and my shirt was green.”

So that's why I don't have a CD collection. Because music is a crafty sod that can change without changing.

And I have yet to learn how to do that myself.

(Edited: Did the "your - you're" thing. Thanks ZB)

To Sleep perchance to Wake..

The line about blogging more often now that I am settled doesn't come off all that well now that I blog months later. Well if I blog again in another couple of months I suppose that technically can be considered "regular". I am to Blogging what Genghis Khan was to the professional manicure industry.

So what is happening in the life of Tobbë I hear you blatantly fail to ask? The best answer to that question would probably be, Everything and Nothing. I am still in my abode (but not for much longer), I am still seeing the wonderful Miss ZB (but if I don't keep my act together she may go "postal" on my bottom), I still work in a call centre in a job best described as bearable (and here again I have nearly lost the job on no less than three occasions), and I am still drawing whenever someone asks me to (although I have many jobs backed up, promises unfulfilled and I think I am in an artistic rut).

So like us all, my life saunters precariously down the edge of a knife, maddeningly feigning from left to right but never actually getting down from the damn knife and walking on the footpath like a normal life. I believe this scenario is a constant in most peoples lives but unsurprisingly this does not bring me comfort. Possibly brings me to a heightened sense of panic actually. The thought of all of us careening through life with a compass made of string and hope made of glass makes for wakeful nights and dreams full of cliffs and pulled teeth.

Or possibly I'm just a bit of a drama queen.

Home Again Home Again Jiggedy Jig!

It's been a long time coming but finally I am able to put my feet up on my own coffee table (two unemptied boxes of books covered by a tatty sheet) and sleep in my own bed. My couch hopping days have come to an end. I am once again king of my own little kingdom.

And now that I have been here for a week or two I suddenly cannot remember how I could have possibly survived without an abode. It's impossible isn't it? How can one survive? With the gracious kindness of others methinks. The human brain and soul has amazing capacity for blind compassion. No doubt this is in order to balance out the brain and soul's other occasional nifty trick of being chronically rotten. We are a funny species, us lot. And considering I don't have a basis of comparison when it comes to supposed Intelligent Self Aware Life Forms, that's saying something.

But before I saunter down a side track of inane ramblings about my take on the universe and all that encompasses it, I just wanted to mention that now I have a stable port of call, an oasis of cable fed interwebs of my very own, I shall be updating this very blog on a much more regular basis. Just for the information of my fans out there.

Both of you.

Ba doom tish.

Working for The Asthmatic.

I have worked for large companies before. It’s not something I particularly like but it’s usually something I can handle. It’s the statistics that make me cringe. The unilateral condensing of all communications into an indiscernible and totally unnecessary melange of numbers.

I have never thought of myself as a very moral man. My time on this spinning ball of mud is my own and I have been too enthralled to really take notice of the plight of others. A nasty and hard estimation but the truth. Yet here I am, working for a large conglomerate and finding myself fighting for “the little guy”, be that a hick from the outback or a struggling artist on the North Shore. And I think I know what it is. Somewhere and somewhen I was either on the phones or watching a programme and someone said to the programme's protagonist (or me) “I’m sorry sir, it’s just the system.” and the person on the show or the person I was speaking to said “ But don’t you realise, you are the system.”

So here I am, working for a large communications company answering the phones. Whenever I have come across a situation that shows the immense and inhumane ramifications of our company's “system” I have jokingly hummed the theme tune to Star Wars “Enter Lord Vader” to show my contempt for the rotting vine of imperialism of which I happily suck the teat. But it got me wondering. It would take quite a few people to run a Death Star. No doubt somewhere in that immense moon of metal struts and model glue was a call centre. Taking the calls of many billions of inhabitants over thousands of worlds asking “What is this new dictatorial oligarchy doing for me?” The office would be decorated in bright colours in a vain attempt to cheer up the workers. The workers, who are not volunteers, not slaves, but paid employees, just doing a job because they could find no other. And there they sit, unaware of the battle outside, telling the people under the rule of the emperor “No Madam, your credits will remain the same.. Well, yes of course they will deduct for a service not rendered… I’m sorry sir, did you read the contract?”

And then Luke Skywalker gets his end in. And the world blows up.

Statistics are evil. I don’t care in what circumstances they are offered. Average height of the eastern population, obesity in the western countries, shoe size of the average New Guinean, eighteen children will die by the time I finish this sentence, calls should be completed within seven minutes, six out of ten people will die from lawn motor accidents in a room full of lawn mowers. I DON'T CARE! SHUT UP!


We live. We die. Do we really need to be annoyed in-between?

Well.. Looks like I have to give someone my kingdom.

It has finally happened. After many long, fruitless and sufferable minutes of looking for a job some crazy person has hired me. In hindsight I probably shouldn't have spent so many months sitting around hoping that someone would give me a job for no apparent reason. Hence the reason for not Blogging in such a long time. This is one of those jobs where you get training. Very swish. Not a spatula for flipping burgers in sight. No booze either. Well, none that I've found anyway.

So I am now onto part two of my wacky zany "Hey, how about you get a life, Wanker?" campaign. A place to live. This will take a little bit longer as I have to save up for bonds, rent in advance, jumping castles and all the usual palaver. But so far so good.

Now all I have to do is keep the job.

And there's the rub.

Working.

Ick..