Category: [Personal]

Farewelling ’25

So New Year’s Eve rocked. Who could’ve imagined that leaving the house would actually be a good idea? Certainly not me, and yet so it was… all-round good vibe, good crowd (if somewhat smaller than I’d thought it might be), didn’t even have undue problems with taxis either way (though the street closures around Central Station made the return journey slightly more complicated than it was to get there). It was actually worth going out on NYE after all. Maybe I’ll even do it again next NYE, that’s how good a night I was having last night.

And I’m particularly glad I did cos it appears that we all died at midnight:

Click to enlarge the image to full size so you can read the fine print about the UN’s various agendas for the 21st century… on which note, well, the attempt at massive depopulation didn’t really work out, did it? Covid-19 didn’t cause quite the same carnage that the “Spanish” flu did… But yeah, apparently all of us that got THE JAAAAAAAAAAB were supposed to die by NYE ’25, so I presume that, when the clock ticked over at midnight to January 1 2026, those of us who hadn’t already carked it before that finally did so in accordance with the prophecy, and I am now blogging from beyond the grave…

…And no doubt you’ll be amazed to find this is far from the only interesting thing on Jane’s Twatter. Not exactly Holocaust denial per se, but the next best thing… oy.

Anyway, talking of things people post online:

This was posted last by a FB friend who posts quite a lot of this sort of thing, and this one… kind of hit a little more than usual. Cos one part of my evening involved a conversation with Jennie Langton, who’s kind of the current photographer of whatever passes for the goth scene in Sydney (and who took this rather good photo of me), and she was… concerned when she saw me. She seemed to think I’d lost quite a lot of weight. Which I certainly haven’t been trying to do and am fairly sure I haven’t done (if I’m thinning anywhere it’s in the hair department); my gut is sometimes more or less apparent depending on how recently I’ve taken a shit and what t-shirt I’m wearing, but Jennie was really worried about how much she seemed to think I’ve shed… and, well, I found it kind of puzzling cos, apart from anything else, no one ever, you know, says that sort of thing to me. I’m not used to people caring about me that much. The only thing I can think of that I’ve done differently lately has been my diabetes meds, last time I saw the doctor he changed me from the metformin I’ve been on for about 20 years to a somewhat more jumped-up version of the latter called Trajentamet to try bring the old blood sugar down a bit more… and all it’s really done to me is make me sick; as I’ve discovered, vomiting and nausea are known side effects of this stuff, and I was getting a lot of that… so I’ve stopped taking it and had no such trouble since, but even so it shouldn’t have changed me that much. Did Jennie see something I can’t? I don’t know.

And, well, it’s not like Jennie and I actually really even know each other that much. We don’t interact online cos she’s almost never online, and I think the only time we’ve spoken to each other that wasn’t at a club was one night when I’d just left Oxford Art Factory and we passed each other in the street while she was on her way there… that’s about it. But Jennie was worried about me when she saw me last night in spite of all that and she meant it, and she said as much to me, which is more than people usually do (and, again, more than I usually do to others). And it was a bit confusing. And then I got home once I was done, did my first scroll of Facebook for the new year and saw that picture above. And, well, I realised that I had in fact just got kindness from someone right at the end of a particularly infernal year, of a sort that, as I said, I’m not used to… and which, to be honest, I kind of liked and wish I were more used to it. Perhaps if I practise it myself towards others more often? Perhaps I should be a lot less hard on myself than I tend to be? I think I may not practise it towards Jane Orrick, though…

And compensation for it, too

Doggo here seems eminently correct. As one of my Facebook friends noted the other day, he hadn’t seen anyone posting “2026 is going to be My Year” or any of the similar bullshit that people say when the old year is ending and the new one’s about to start once they’ve got over their NYE hangover. Similarly, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone saying what a great year 2025 has been for them personally. Every December 31st I tend to say something about how glad I am to see the back of the old year, and I think this year that is more true than ever, and I just wish I had any confidence whatsoever that 2026 will be an improvement. I’d like to at least be able to say it won’t be any worse than 2025 was, but I fear 2026 will just shout “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!” at me and prove me horribly wrong if I do say that… so I won’t. Just in case.

Anyway, unless something astonishing happens in the afternoon that I simply must comment on, I think this might be my last post for 2025 (getting it in during the wee hours of the 31st), because—and I can barely believe it myself—I might actually be going out. Yes, incomprehensible as it sounds, I’ve decided I might actually Do Something for New Year’s Eve this year, which I can only assume is a sign of baffling desperation or of something being wrong me… I mean, a number of things are wrong with me, including mentally, and I will probably end up with regrets if I do go out (which is dependent on me still feeling up to it on the night and taxis being obtainable if I am)… but anyway, that’s where things stand, so this might be my last word here for 2025. Time for bed and hopefully something approximating to sleep…

It’s been a week

Not bad enough that we had the Brown University shooting, the Bondi Beach thing, and the Reiners, on top of whatever other events of this sort that didn’t make the news that I saw, I discovered this week an old school friend and someone I used to know from the goth scene died recently, the former from complications after surgery and the latter “by choice”, which I presume is the latest euphemism… hadn’t spoken to either in years but that doesn’t make the news any less awful. Both of them were younger than me.

So it’s been a bummer of a few days. On the plus side, a friend who had a cancer scare a few months ago just celebrated his birthday yesterday, and though said scare is not quite over (he’s still waiting to find out if he needs radiotherapy) the signs have generally been good. More trivially, Joe finally got someone to mow the back and front yards and trim the bushes out front—nice to be able to walk down the driveway again without being assaulted by the hibiscus—and I got a new blu-ray drive for the laptop that can handle 4K discs and has succeeded in ripping a number of recalcitrant blu’s the previous drive didn’t feel like doing… Miniscule in the grand scheme of things, I know, but I suppose you have to make do with the miniscule things these days.

Cinquante et un

Yeah, your humble scribe is now 51. I am now undeniably in my 50s (I say “undeniably” because the world is full tedious cunts who are tiresomely pedantic about a zero year being the end of the old decade, not the start of the next one, and I hate them; if you are one of them, please go and fuck yourself). Middle age continues. I won’t go over the usual birthday existentialism (“how have I made it this far and why am I still here?”, etc), though I will say I think I’m feeling it more than usual. But this year has been like that, hasn’t it? I’m hardly the only one for whom the state of the world at large isn’t enhancing their wellbeing…

Ooga-booga

…Anyway, that’s me in the early hours of today. Hair unwashed and uneven, and increasing receding from my forehead though still keeping most of its colour, while the beard gets greyer (and it looks even more so in the bathroom mirror), and the black t-shirt has seen better days much like the individual wearing it. Still, could be worse for 51, all things being equal…

Look sharp!

So I socialised on Saturday night, club called Halo, a goth/industrial event that runs as an annual special event out of Oxford Art Factory… found it a bit flat this year, took me an awfully long time to get in the swing of it, and I think it was essentially just further evidence for what I’ve long felt, i.e. that if you can’t drink at a club (and I can’t, not really, and certainly shouldn’t) and can’t dance at it (which activity was always helped for me by alcohol, and which isn’t helped by my body being what it is) and you’re not DJing at it (which I used to, I had two regular monthly slots, but one of those nights ended and I appear to have been surplus to requirements since the end of 2019 for reasons I frankly don’t know), then it’s probably not really a lot of fun, even more so when your camera is frankly crap and you can’t even get any decent photos of the night… a fair bit of effort in my case for not a great deal of return…

…having said all of which, I will nonetheless not deny the skills of the sword swallower, Sian Jackson (one of various additional performers Halo offers); I only wish I’d got a shot of her when she had three swords down her gullet at once, but given how piss-poor most of the photos I took that night were, I’m glad this one turned out acceptable…

Happy 2025, if you’re into that sort of thing

So much for that, eh. 2024 was intermittently amusing, up to the first week of November anyway. I occasionally left the house and turned 50. I’ve noticed that, at least since I was 29, I’ve felt… not really angst or anything at starting a new decade but a sort of fascination, for want of a better word, with the fact that I was at the end of one and about to start the next, and I spent most of the year thinking about it. I did it when I was 29, I did it when I was 39, and I did it when I was 49… and each time, once I’d rolled over into my new decade, I stopped thinking about it. Did it when I turned 30, when I turned 40, and again when I turned 50. I don’t think about being 50 now that I am 50, indeed I almost have to remind myself that I am…

I spent years dreading NYE because I spent too many years thinking I should Do Something To Mark The Occasion and that it was important. One of the good things about getting older is that I have long since stopped feeling that; it has to be something really worth going to the effort of trying to wrangle transport to it and back home again. I can’t even remember the last time I did, though from looking through my old photos it appears to have been ten years since I last socialised at a club for NYE (I see no other NYE-timestsamped pictures after that… I dimly recall my friend Lara driving us there, first to a friend’s place out at Marrickville for their gathering and then to the Imperial where the club was… I think the year after that was the time I went over to Joe’s place for NYE before he moved in here, had an unexpectedly easy time getting taxis there and back, and otherwise I don’t think I’ve been anywhere on NYE since. Part of me misses it, there was a club on this NYE that would’ve been nice, but I no longer feel the need I once did to put up with the probable difficulties I’d have had getting there.

Friend who was out working tonight posted the midnight view from Darling Harbour (where he was working):

Looks delightful but I don’t need THAT shit any more either. Back in 1994 and 1997 I went with a friend to Circular Quay for the 9pm show before we kicked on to other things. Do you know how long it takes a hundred thousand people to evacuate that area once the show’s over? Cos I know better than I’d like. With hindsight I can’t believe I actually did that a second time. It was fun, the atmosphere was pretty good, and I don’t ever need to do it again. In fact, I can barely believe I did it once, never mind twice. But I was so much younger then, and still thought that Doing Something on NYE mattered, and wasn’t smart enough to worry about these things. Doing Something didn’t require the effort or preparation it now does…

Anyway—to bed. I don’t have a lot of optimism for 2025, but I’m assuming the world will still be here when I wake up, so back to normal disservice later. And happy 2nd birthday, blog.

Christmas images 14

A festive image of myself! This turned up in my FB memories the other day… your humble scribe menacing Frank the bouncer outside Tailor’s, the “goth RSL” on Mary St in Surry Hills, for what I presume was the December 2010 edition of Die Maschine. I had no idea how much I needed a photo of me menacing Frank until he insisted upon it being taken (no idea who actually took it but I think it was my camera).

L

So I turned 50 about an hour ago, as I write these words. I remember being told once that the actual time I popped into the world was quarter past five in the afternoon, so ever since I’ve taken that as the “official” time I turn whatever my new age is on my birthday. This dating is probably somewhat confused by the amount of international travel I did in my younger years and the numerous different time zones and dateline tomfoolery that involved, but never mind. Let’s just stick to that date and time.

So… 50. Feels much like 49 did so far HA! and, as usual, I feel perplexed by my ongoing existence. As I said the last time this birthday thing happened, I always feel slightly confused by the spectacle of me having survived another year. I am more so than usual today, though, cos I have to change the digit at the start of my age from 4 to 5… it’s not just another year I’ve finished, it’s a whole decade this time.

And I can never escape the question of what any of it has been for. The amount of actual achievements I have to my credit is, frankly, negligible, and I often find myself thinking about the number of people that I’ve outlived who have, you know, DONE things. There’s a remarkable number of people that haven’t made it as far as me and yet still had interesting lives in which they did interesting things that lived on after them, that were useful to other people. I… haven’t really done that. The things I have done have been… pretty much nothing. I don’t really know what if any purpose I serve, except perhaps as some sort of cautionary tale… Existential angst is FUN, eh kids, and it’s only 9pm as I write these words. Not even midnight, when this sort of thinking really hits hards…

I’m not doing anything to mark the occasion. I had a club night to go to for my 40th but there’s nothing comparable happening tonight… there’s such a limited range of events I’m interested in checking out, and frankly it’s hardly worth the effort, physical or mental. Frankly I thought I’d pull through the pandemic period OK cos it wasn’t like I was going many places anyway—most of where I did go was to the shops every couple of days—unlike people who were out at work every day and so forth, staying home was harder on them than it was on me… and though I used to semi-joke about that being enough to stop me becoming a complete hermit, it really was. I’ve turned into that hermit I was always afraid of turning into, because there’s very little need for me to leave the house. If I don’t have to now, I generally don’t. And when I do, I don’t find myself enjoying myself much, cos it cost me mental effort to find the will to go out quite apart from the physical demands involved.

So, 50’s just another day, isn’t it, nothing much to be said for it. Still, much as I puzzle over my persistent existence and whether or not there’ll ever be a point to it, I think I’d rather be here as not, I don’t really find the alternative much of an option. Got too many books to read and too many films to watch, if nothing else, and it’d be nice to check out that Magritte exhibit at the AGNSW. So you’re probably stuck with me until I’m not surprised to have made another birthday, which will be because I didn’t make it that far… in the meantime, here’s me at 50, looking not too bad for my advanced years…

BOO!

I can feel the warning signs

Oasis are reforming! And people are losing their minds! Or at least they are on Threads, which I have recently started making use of, and where there seems to be a running battle between people loudly proclaiming their lack of interest and other people sniping at those people. I’m kind of more in the former camp in that I’m not terribly excited by this comeback, but I also can’t be bothered dumping on it too much… anyway, the Graun says:

Rock’s biggest will-they-won’t-they finally has an answer: Oasis have announced that they will reunite for a 14-date tour of the UK and Ireland in 2025.
They will not, however, be headlining Glastonbury festival as was rumoured over the weekend, nor playing 10 dates at Wembley and the Etihad Stadium respectively.
Instead, the concerts will take place in July and August, at stadiums in Cardiff, London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin. Tickets go on sale at 9am on 31 August, with prices to be revealed on the day.
A press release billed the dates as the “domestic leg” of the tour and said that “plans are under way” for it to go beyond Europe later in 2025.
Of the famously feuding brothers’ decision to reunite, the release stated: “There has been no great revelatory moment that has ignited the reunion – just the gradual realisation that the time is right.”

The fact that both Liam and Noel have undergone messy and costly divorces in recent years has absolutely nothing to do with said time being right, of course, and the fact that each is expected to personally make about 50 million is also perfectly and entirely beside the point.

Anyway… Oasis. Far from my favourite band of that era, though also far from my least favourite; never owned any of their albums but I liked a fair few of the singles and some of the b-sides and albums, at least up to the Standing on the Gramatically Dubious Misquote of Giants (you know what I mean) era. Just heard “Gas Panic!” for the first time in probably 20-something years the other day and thought it was great. But I think “Half the World Away” was always my favourite Oasis tune, and I have a certain very particular memory associated with it.

It’s March 6th, 2005, me and the folks are out visiting family friends who live in the vicinity of Lurline Bay. I’d been given a digital camera for Xmas, so I took the opportunity to put it to use. This one I got from their balcony…

…and here’s a couple of others I got after I wandered down to Marine Parade. Anyway, it was an eminently fine Sunday afternoon; I remember it being warm without being overly so, obviously untroubled sky, lovely day all round. And from somewhere at a distance there was music. I soon discovered this was coming from someone’s car, whoever owned it was presumably in the are, and they’d left the radio (or tape player, or whatever they had in the car for music) on. And that was where the music was coming from, and as I got closer I could make out the song playing at that moment. And it was “Half the World Away” by Oasis.

And for some reason that I still don’t understand and can’t really explain, everything just felt exactly right. I had this sense that, right there and at that moment, everything in the world was exactly as it should be. This beautiful Sunday afternoon looking out over the ocean, this weather, those people out on the rocks watching container ships on the horizon, that car and that song playing in the slight distance, me being there to observe it all… all of that came together with the feeling that this was completely what should be happening. It was kind of a mystical thing, which is probably why I struggle to put it into words. Sensations of this sort are kind of hard to analyse as such. But everything right there and then was perfect, and I was perfectly attuned to it.

And then the song changed to something else, and the moment passed. I’d never felt anything of the sort before, and I don’t think I’ve felt it since. And nearly 20 years later I still don’t understand it, but those couple of minutes when everything was perfect still remain with me… and Oasis were the background music for it. Which is not how I would ever have envisaged things, but so it was…