Wash me away,
Clean your body of me,
Erase all the memories,
They’ll only bring us pain,
And I’ve seen all I’ll ever need.

Muse - Citizen Erased

Isolation

better?

I had a dream last night that I manged to vaguely remember it, so I’m going to write about it, since apparently that leads to more vivid and memorable dreams, and I’m all for that.

I was playing at a concert with Muse. For some reason I’d replaced Chris the bassist and we weren’t actually playing any Muse songs, though I can’t remember what we did play. There was a massive crowd but either side of them there were these rows of massive water tanks, big blue plastic rectangular boxes, and it was like we were at some sort of water plant. There were two times where for some reason I had to go off-stage and get the roadies to change cables or something, and both times it seemed like they hated me. On the second time I was walking back to the stage from this grass area behind and I jumped down into this flooded kitchen area under the stage to grab jam and bread so I could have lunch, since we’d already been playing most of the day. I had to swim around a bit and the whole time make sure the bread stayed dry. So I came back on stage making a jam sandwich and stuffing it in my mouth when they had already been waiting like 15 minutes for me to get back so we could play Little Secrets by Passion Pit and nobody seemed too happy with me.

I don’t know what to think of this. 

The words “further” and “farther” are essentially the same; people just use the one they want to.

• To use my camera more and take pictures of everything.
• To play guitar and piano and maybe even saxaphone much more than is healthy.
• To run away somewhere cold and far from civilisation, probably Tasmania, where nobody makes any judgement on what I do or don’t do, simply because there is nobody else around.
• To find someone I care deeply about, who I want to spend all my time with, and who runs away with me to Tasmania where we play music and write poetry.
• To listen to “That Home” by The Cinematic Orchestra a billion times on repeat without getting sick of it.
• To not have to worry about all the uni work I have, or the people, or the social events.
• The full moon to come back around, so I can sit at the beach and contemplate life.
• To have the warm fuzzy feeling I’ve got right now, despite the lack of all of the above, to last forever.

As odd as I find how this question tends to be asked inquisitively over the medium of the internet, there’s no point in me ignoring this as the information you seek is tucked away in the side under “What am I doing here?”

I’m 18. The language above comes from me reading Shakespeare tonight. Feeling educated is great!

The best arguments are the ones with yourself, here are some of my recent ponderings.

WHY EVERYONE WHO THINKS THEY’D PASS PROCRASTINATION101 WOULD FAIL MISERABLY

Everybody loves to procrastinate. That feeling of joy when you’ve spent all night on Facebook, or a Google+ hangout, instead of doing your uni assignment cannot be matched by any other experience in life. Naturally, anyone who happens to waste their time scrolling up and down their News Feed, Hanging Out until 2 in the morning, or writing Tumblr blogs about procrastinating believe they have so much experience in the field of procrastination that they would ace the subject if it so happened to exist.

THE PROBLEM

So imagine for a second that your university runs Procrastination101 for a semester. Everybody takes it, because all you have to do is procrastinate. It’s great at first, but as assignments for other subjects build up, people start to procrastinate. They say, “Oh hey! I’m so great at procrastination, I’ll do my procrastination work!” to procrastinate from their other work. And then they fail, because they did their work for a subject you’re supposed to procrastinate.

(Procrastinate (and its variations) was first spelt “procastinate” 11 times during the writing of this article)

HAPPINESS AND MUSIC

(The following is a dialogue between Paul, and his alter-ego, affectionately named Couchman)

P - I love music that other people label as “depressing.” Despite the themes, lyrics, and overall sound, it makes me happy.
C - That’s great, but if you wanted to show other people you were happy, you wouldn’t listen to depressing music would you?
P - I guess I should listen to upbeat, happy music when I’m around other people then right?
C - You could, but would you really be happy listening to less artistically beautiful music that falsifies the harsh reality of life by painting a veil of celebrity lifestyles and impossible dreams? I mean there are good, upbeat, happy songs, but there’s very few of them, and you can’t say they necessarily match the quality of “depressing” songs.
P - So while I should listen to “happy” music when I’m happy, I wouldn’t really be happy listening to that and I should just keep listening to “depressing” music?
C - No.
P - Now you’re just messing with me.

For the past 15 years Geoffrey Jefferson had woken up to a clear sunny morning at 7.30 AM. Today he woke up at 11. It was raining. (Cue montage and upbeat music)

He slumped out of his bed, confused by his surroundings having not received his morning injection of caffeine.  As he stared out of the small window to the dark sky he did not notice that he was not dressed.  Tired and hungry, he made the foolish mistake of deciding to go outside for the first time in 15 years, into the rain, naked.  Geoffrey quickly realised that the rain was cold and wet and that he was naked so he darted back inside, more awake now than if he had gotten his caffeine.  After that experience Geoffrey was completely aware of his surroundings and nudity. When he finally noticed that the puddle of water at his feet was not being cleaned up, and that he still wasn’t wearing clothes, Geoffrey realised the great horror that had unfolded. (It wasn’t his washing)

The Computer had broken.

Since the time when humanity had become so lazy they bothered to invent something that would give them the luxury of not having to do anything, the Computer would have been regarded as the single most important invention of the 22^nd Century. The only reason it hadn’t been regarded as the single most important invention of the 22^nd Century was because since it was invented, nobody has been bothered to think about what the greatest invention was, thanks to the invention of the Computer. Everybody’s life had been simplified to the point where a pessimist would argue they weren’t really living at all, but those people didn’t exist anymore ever since the invention of the Computer.

Geoffrey took a fleeting look around the white box he found himself in. The walls, floor and ceiling were all made up of small white panels. A white couch rested against one wall, and there was a simple black coffee table in the middle.  This living room, the dining room, bedroom and bathroom were all the same shape and size, and all of them had the same white panelling. Computer access panels.

Still dripping, and still without clothing, Geoffrey ran to the bathroom and started banging against the walls, trying to pry them open with his fingers in the hopes of finding a towel. To his dismay whenever he could pull a panel out by even a fraction of an inch, it would quickly snap back into place. He collapsed on the floor; tired, hungry and unclothed. Glancing quickly around the room he noticed four things: The shower, the toilet, the sink and a crowbar. Delighted by his new found ability to think for himself Geoffrey turned on all the taps in the hopes that flooding the panels would either break them or make them easier to tear off. However the shower and sink were both ingeniously designed by the Computer to never flood.

Geoffrey sulked out of the bathroom, feeling more depressed than the time he fell asleep while watching The Matrix. As he trod out past the door he happened to notice a small switch labelled “PANEL LOCK.” He flicked it from on to off and suddenly the panel he had worked so feverishly to detach popped right off the wall, and a rather large fluffy towel quickly followed. Overcome with joy. Geoffrey wrapped himself in the towel and ran into the bedroom to find some clothes. The first wall he tried only contained bed sheets, pillows and exposed 12000 volt electrical cables, while the second wall contained his wardrobe of white shirts, white pants and white shoes, along with some more exposed 12000 volt cables.

When he was finally dry and dressed Geoffrey headed for the living room to try and entertain himself. Unfortunately all forms of entertainment relied on the Computer, so he found himself playing “Stare at the Coffee Table” for 4 hours. Once that got boring he decided to pull every panel off the walls of the room. His hopes of finding the rainbows and joy these walls usually produced were dashed when he discovered nothing but lead pipes, electrical cables, dinosaur fossils and broken dreams. Fed up with insides of the inside of his house, Geoffrey made the firm decision to bravely venture outside.

With the panels from the walls and his vast knowledge of survival tactics that only Man vs. Wild could teach Geoffrey was able to fashion a small shelter to shield him from the rain. Armed with an array of quilts to keep him warm he sat outside the front door of his house and stared into the dark, wet darkness. Geoffrey reminisced on the good times, when the Computer would wake him up to warm artificial sunlight, drugging him into a near comatose state of euphoria. He could play Tetris for weeks on end while needles jabbed him with dinner and stimulants, and the toilet would come to him. Alas, those days were over. He would now have to face the music, the torrential rain as it were.

Hours later he retreated back into white-panelled box, confused as to why the walls were missing from his living room.

Geoffrey glanced over to a door he had never opened before. It stared at him as if it had the ability to stare him down for never opening it in the 15 years he had lived with it. So on this day, when everything else may as well have been upside down, he moved towards the door. He took slow, small steps so as not to frighten it but as soon as his breathe touched it, the door fell off its frame and with a soft *thud* fell onto the floor. The dining room was far from Geoffrey’s expectations. There were no beds, televisions or toilets. In the centre of the room there was a square black table, with four black chairs around it. Unsure what to do Geoffrey sat down at one the chairs and tried to imagine what might happen if the Computer was still working. He failed miserably, as the Computer had stolen whatever imagination he had to start with.

After a few more hours of staring at the table he decided to peruse the rest of the room and happened to notice a small black table in the corner with a shiny red ring-dial phone on top. Of course Geoffrey had no idea what the contraption was, nor did he know of the colour red’s existence. Holding his chair up as a shield he crept towards it. When it didn’t collapse he decided it was safe to put down the chair and have a closer look. Next to the phone was a laminated card that read “IN CASE OF COMPUTER MALFUCTION, DIAL 7 FOR MAINTENANCE”