Some Lyrics: The Patient - Tool

I pretty much just love this song, and it's been my inspiration for a few things. But recently I've really identified with it, for the obvious reason of actually being a Patient. (Something I've never really liked the idea of, considering my desire to be on the other end of the health system.)

A groan of tedium escapes me, startling the fearful.
Is this a test?
It has to be. Otherwise I can't go on.
Draining patience, drain vitality,
this paranoid, paralyzed vampire act's a little ooold.

But I'm still right here, giving blood, keeping faith. And I'm still right here.
But I'm still right here, giving blood, keeping faith. And I'm still right heeeeeeeere.

(I'm gonna wait it oooout 3x)

If there were no rewards to reeeeap,
loving embrace to see me throuuuugh,
this tedious path I've chosen heeeeere,
I certainly would've walked awaaay by nooooow.

I'm gonna wait it oooout.

If there were no desire to heaaaal,
The damaged and broken met alooong,
this tedious path I've chosen heeeere,
I certainly would've walked awaaay by nooooow.

-And I still may. And I still may.-

(Be patieeent. 3x)

I must keep reminding myself of this... {repeats continually in background...

If there were no rewards to reaaaaap,
loving embrace to see me throuuuugh,
this tedious path I've chosen heeeeere,
I certainly would've walked awaaay by nooooow. ...finishes}
(And I still maaaay. 3x)
And I...

Gonna wait it out.
Gonna wait it ouuuut.
Gonna wait it out.
Gonna wait it ouuuuut.

Guerrilla Mattress-fare

With my armies ready to march, weapons primed, I suffered a surprise attack on my right flank. I sustained heavy casualties. Very heavy.
I told you in a previous post to go to war, but I left out that sometimes life goes to war with you, before you're ready. I'm not going to say that I've got the strength to fight back an win, like one of those aforementioned motivational cocksuckers. That's bullshit and life can't be won in a single charge; it can only be ended.
Am I giving up the fight? Nope. This is a fight for survival, giving up means losing.
So how do you win when you don't have the strength? With Guerrilla Mattress-fare.

The "How To?" of Guerrilla Mattress-fare

Increase mobility of your forces. If you can hit the enemy fast, take what you need and run, your strength will grow with each attack.

With increased mobility you can widen the area in which you can attack. Come at what's in front of you from all sides and within.

Learn to live off the land. Become self reliant so you can go where the enemy can't hurt you while you gather your strength.

Rebuild the relationships with your allies, but keep them back from the fight until you're ready. Too much involvement and they can become drained.

Now hit the enemy's supply lines, begin to weaken them as your own strength builds. This will rally more and more support to you, and your enemy will bleed and bleed some more.

As the enemy's structures crumble, allow your allies to invade.

Now burn the mattresses.

Should?

Expectations were high post 2007. Life was going to be fucking fantastic.
I was going to have the best year ever. Work hard at college, get into medschool, get my First Solo and be well on my way to finishing my Private Pilots License. I was going to celebrate my 18th birthday with my closest friends on the back seat of a limo as we drove from bar to bar tearing up the city. All doable things that should have happened.
But should is a bitch of a word. Insidiously it eats away at you until reality becomes just too damn hard to deal with and you crumble.
And as you crumble, all the "Shoulds" snowball and then one day, when you know you really should be booking that limo, you're sitting on a bed in PICU as a very friendly, but very large, male nurse offers you a little cup of medicine.

Nothing goes as you expect, or as it should.
My expectations of what would happen today were that I would be still wearing my suit as I woke groggily in my bed, with an empty bottle of beer on my bedside table, having to recover from the best night ever. I may or may not have been bruised, from calling my very anglo-saxon taxi driver Rangit all night. I would have messages on my phone wishing me happy birthday and saying thank you for an awesome night of drunken debauchery. I would spend the day with my family. Then be phoned by all my reletives in South Africa, who I miss every second of every day.
I'd chugg down a blue powerade, and my hang over would vanish. Then I'd spend my last week studying my ass off, ace the exams and be all set for a great year at Monash University.

Now, my 18th birthday being nearly over I'm sitting here with the flu, writing a blog post.
My phone has not recieved a single message.
My suit is still on its hanger.
Only my grandparents called. I was forced to explain that my flight medical has been revoked and I'm repeating my last year of college, to the people who've always had the most faith in me.
There was no Rangit. Not even a party.

I could talk about the causes of all of this, but that's not the point.
Nothing ever works out as you want it to.
My expectations have been stomped on, lit on fire, kicked in the crotch and sold into sex slavery to a flop sweating arab man.
If I could I'd delete the word should from my vocabulary.

Depression

Well, now that the US is officially in a recession, we have a lot to look forward to. Most of all, the depression the worlds fearless, uncompromising, and over all nice guy leaders are doing their utmost to hasten... I mean halt.
If it takes two quarters of GDP shrinkage to indicate a recession,how will we know when the depression hits?
As a part of his plan to save the world, Australia's Prime Minister has given us a great knew way of knowing when the worst hits us, (because no one could have predicted this disaster before it happened, and certainly not me at the age of 11 along with everyone else I knew.)

So how this is going to work, is we're all going to fill out this form here, and if enough people in the electorate feel that the economy is depressed enough, big K R is going to commission an awareness campaign to make the economy feel better about itself.

The Depression Test

Behaviours
1.	Stopped going out and spending lots of money
2.	Not getting things done at work
3.	Withdrawals from close family and friends accounts
4.	Relying on alcohol and sedatives
5.	Stopped doing things you enjoy because you can't afford it
6.	Unable to concentrate capital
Thoughts
7.	"I’m a failure at business"
8.	"It’s my fault"
9.	"Nothing good ever happens to me since the bank collapsed"
10.	"I’m worthless, bankrupt"
11.	"Life is not worth living expenses"
Feelings
12.	Overwhelmed
13.	Unhappy, depressed
14.	Irritable
15.	Frustrated with my situation
16.	No confidence in the credit market/banks
17.	Guilty for my families current lifestyle
18.	Indecisive
19.	Disappointed in the regulators
20.	Miserably hungry
21.	Sad... I couldn't afford to keep my mother alive
Physical
22.	Tired all the time from standing in the bread line
23.	Sick and run down... disease is everywhere.
24.	Headaches and muscle pains
25.	Churning gut from fear
26.	Can’t sleep on a flea ridden matress
27.	weight loss

Failing the awareness campaign KR has decided that it would be prudent to place the economy on a Standing Order, where it would be kept under martial... I mean hospital... I mean the IMF's supervision until it feels happy enough to go out and live a normal life.

Risky Business

Oh yes, here it is, another post about our fearless leader, Kevin Rudd.
Now rather than scoring political points on a soft issue, he's scoring points by attacking a tough issue; the economy.
The problem; he's made an awful mistake.
The Government has decided to insure all deposits in all institutions. Sounds great, right?
The Government has also sought to "guarantee" our banks credit ratings (in some way, I'm not too clear on), sounds great too, doesn't it?
WRONG!
Once again, this moron has tried to take control of something that is not in his realm of influence. He's trying to eliminate risk, and when you do that, you eliminate reasonable thinking.
By insuring deposits, you're allowing depositors to think their money may be safe no matter what their savings institution does with the money. So then, the savings institution can over extend it's lending without risking a run on the bank. Then the taxpayer is forced to pay up when banks mal-invest.
By guaranteeing the banks credit ratings (it doesn't matter how) you're adding to this false sense of security that the banks will abuse. This is how the American system got to be how it is. Not because of capitalism and greed, but because the government tried to eliminate risk. They made the most reckless decisions possible to lenders, through absurd regulation and a guarantee of intervention.
Australia is heading down the same path, all the while lording the benefits of our regulatory system and damning the free market for causing America's crisis.
It's bullshit! The free market died for America nearly a century ago when Daddy Rockefeller and his cohorts helped push through the Federal Reserve Act, and gave a quasi-government agency the ability to fix the price of the money in-order to regulate the market. Since then they have created agency after agency to eliminate the inherent risks of business, but all they did is cover up the danger. They hid it behind a smoke screen of low interest rates, mortgage insurance, the FDIC, a false CPI, and inflated housing prices to mask the reality of the GDP.
We are living in a fantasy world. There is no free market to blame for this situation, and regulation and intervention are not the solutions. Investors don't need to be reassured that their deposits are safe, they need to know the reality. Banks don't need more credit, they need to pay off their debts, increase interest rates, and give more incentive for people to save.
Yes, many mortgages will become unpayable. Yes there would be a recession, but the recession is not the problem, it's the cure. If people default, house prices will drop, and it will end the affordability shortage we're now facing.
People may lose their jobs, but not permanently. ALL prices need to fall, and unfortunately that includes the price of labour, it will need to drop for people to get re-employed, but if prices are going down, it doesn't really matter.
The Government is price fixing, with all the regulations and measures it's taking to combat a problem that has been caused by price fixing... It's fucking stupid. This is only going to bring us down with the yanks. They have basically ensured that the value of our dollar will drop, and inflation will go up. It won't matter if your savings are insured when it costs you $200/ day to live.
I'm not going to say things would be any different if we'd stuck with Howard and Costello, but Rudd and Swan just don't understand what they're doing.

Fireworks

The preschool (a bit like kinder) that I attended way back when was an interesting place to say the least. It was on the grounds of a Lutheran Church in the middle of Durban's tiny German enclave aptly named New Germany (The suburb itself is actually quite large, but there weren't all that many Germans.)
Before I get side tracked by my experiences with a certain Vrou, I should get to my story about the day we "saw fireworks."

*The official story*

I was playing on the scooter track (yes, someone had laid a mini roadway for us to race scooters around, all asphalt, very impressive), and somewhere up the street (the real street) I hear sirens and screeching tires and shouting. With enthusiasm I run to get a better look. With my own two eyes I see the kid across the street, or someone of the sort, playing with fireworks. The kids thought it was very exciting. End of story.

*Reality*

I was playing on the scooter track , and somewhere up the street I hear sirens and screeching tires and shouting. With enthusiasm I run to get a better look. I see a red car rammed up against the curb, drivers door flung open, as a young man flees two angry looking cops who's car was abandoned further up the street.
I was standing a few meters back from a wire gate, bordered by a low concrete fence, so I could see the entire incident unfold, despite being a bit clueless as to what was actually going on (I was 4). So haring along as fast as he could the criminal was still losing ground to the law. As he reaches the far end of the gate one of the cops pulls his gun and fires quite expertly at the suspect. The criminal drops behind fence out of view completely. At this point frantic teachers and minders usher the little ones inside and begin to adjust reality. We saw fireworks. No one got shot in front of me.

To this day I'm not sure what to think of my reaction to that incident, because I went home and told the story to my parents with great enthusiasm. "I saw fireworks at school and the police shot a car thief!!"

I wasn't much for finger painting and I already knew my times tables, so I only needed to take one lesson away before "Big School." A simple lesson that ended with the metaphorical words:

"Welcome to life kids. It's cheap here, so take as much as many as you want."

Anti-psychotic

I wasn't sure I should publish this, as the quality is dubious in my opinion.
I tend to find this sort of poem annoying from other people, so I'm not really expecting it to be liked. Just reflecting upon an interesting experience that I've had.

I'm floating on lava
cold lava, but it would sear me to cinder.
I can feel it beneath my thoughts,
Inside me like a vile sludge.

I feel it, but I don't think it.
My thoughts are truly clean
Empty.
The vile, icy-hot, lavarous sludge,
a river or a stream, flowing beneath thought.
Peaceful... perhaps.

I feel pain, but I can't think it.
I feel sick, but I don't know it.
I feel the lava burn me to my soul,
but I don't care.
My thoughts are pure and lifeless.

The Anti-psychotic was a yellow, dissoluble half-tablet.
It's how I got to sleep.