adrenaline boots

Nothing is over until it has been pushed to the nth degree. There’s extreme, there’s over the top, there’s utmost and maximum. But there is always one step further. And the pendulum will not swing back until the nth degree has been reached. That’s just human nature and that’s why nothing should ever surprise us until it has gone so far that it implodes.

I’m always banging on about the nth degree. It’s a little catch phrase of mine. Let me give you a real world example so you can catch my drift.

Big Bums. We haven’t hit the nth degree yet. We are getting close, but there’s still wiggle room. Go back to 1992 when Sir MixaLot released “Baby Got Back”. The size of the bums in that film clip seems miniscule by today’s standards. What is critical mass for bums? When we read the first news report of a woman dying from butt implants? When somebody’s butt is so big they can’t get through a door? When an eight year old girl commits suicide because her bum isn’t big enough? If an A-List celebrity has something, a B-List celebrity will always get one bigger and a nobody who wants to be on The Jerry Springer Show will have the biggest.

Teeny Tiny in ’92

Heading towards disaster

Adrenaline Boots is my name, Amateur Philosophy is my game.

The way that I make sense of the world is to create visual analogies that neatly illustrate complex theories. They don’t always stand up to thorough cross-examination, but they are a handy little shortcut to provide some clarity.

The Bulldozer Theory has been kicking around in my head for a while. Let’s imagine that we all come onto this earth as a bulldozer. Not all bulldozers are built the same. Some have natural advantages. Better grip on their tracks. A sharper blade or smoother hydraulics. Every bulldozer is situated on some sort of terrain. A level field of soft earth. A slightly more rocky and uneven landscape or completely hostile and unyielding topography.

Bulldozer’s: Start Your Engines

In this analogy we are the bulldozers and the terrain is our life situation. A healthy baby born into a happy, middle-income home in suburban Sydney is a shiny new bulldozer on a bed of luscious soil. In the beginning the going is easy. They trundle along with barely any obstacles. But along the way, they are picking up more dirt. Every push forward, more of the soil of life accumulates. Some rocks get in the way and slow the progress. If all goes well enough, this baby bulldozer will be doing its work for many productive years. But in this analogy, the bulldozer never gets to dump it’s load. The load grows exponentially. The dirt that it picked up in the beginning is still there at the end….along with a whole lotta other dirt picked up along the way. The dirt is our life experience. We carry our life experience with us from birth to death. The load grows everyday. That is why when we get older, we get more tired. We have more to push. More rocks, more dirt and our machine ain’t what it used to be.

Some bulldozers have been pushing shit up hill from the very beginning. Unhealthy bulldozers in unhealthy societies. Big rocks of misfortune scattered in their path from day one. Pushing a load they are not equipped to deal with. Some sputter out and breakdown early. Others have the resilience to keep going, but it doesn’t mean that their load is any lighter. We cannot compare the loads of any two bulldozers, for every bulldozer is different and they handle their dirt in their own unique way. Every bulldozer is alone in their struggle or their duty or their career or their calling or even their torturous hell of dirt pushing. There are endless combinations of factors that determine how we will fare in life. We did not choose our bulldozer; we did not choose our terrain. We cannot remember every grain of experience and yet it all stays with us.

I suppose the bulldozer theory could be seen as quite depressing, but I don’t intend it to be so. It is merely acknowledgement that it can be difficult to push our load, it can hamper our progress. But our only choice is to keep pushing forward and to be cognizant of the fact that everyone is pushing their own load, no bulldozer gets a free pass. A big, messy pile of dirt and rocks and debris is a sign of life experience, challenges met, time spent on earth. It is not a question of whether life is hard. It is. The question is: can we keep pushing our load with dignity and sift through the dirt of our experience to find the meaning?

Young Bulldozer Pup at the Start of Life

This one has seen some tough times

Loads of Life Experience

When Life Gives You Boulders…Make Boulderade

Hey Mon,

I wan tell you bout new craze – it’s called the “Opal Conga Line”.

Here’s what you do: I heard that them gates at the train station are not timed. They are sensored, ok? You put yourn ticket in and them doors open. Them doors not timed. Them doors sensored, ok?

You be 3 miles wide fat, and them doors not close on you.You put ticket in, you walk through. Them doors sense your presence and them shut when you through.

Ok you be one person, you be two. Stick together like glue. You be three, you be four. Hey open up that door…

“It’s the Opal Conga Line”

I wan you get as many people you can, How long can you make your conga line be?

Grab them hips and shuffle through – It’s the Opal Conga Line.

Ok- I hope you using a ‘eavy Jamacian accent. This is the Opal Conga Line.

PS: Excuse the extreme Jamaican stereotypes. I need to harness all of my Conga powers (closely related to limbo skills) to get across the tone of what the Opal Conga Line should involve. It’s the tropical party spirit – it’s about reaffirming connection with fellow human beings and joining the Conga line of civic disruption. How many people can we get through the barriers on one Opal tap? #opalcongaline

I’m feeling a bit like Jake The Peg if he lost his third leg. Something vital is missing and yet I can feel phantom traces of it.

Yesterday I lost my phone.

It’s coming back – hallelujah! Somebody found it! – but I am coming up to my 24th hour without it. Life feels strangely different without a phone. It does feel like something vital to my personage is missing. I feel as though I am letting people down (What if someone texts me and they think I don’t want to answer them?). I feel completely disconnected from information that I need (like the time for instance) but most of all, I feel as though I have lost my default state of engagement.

Whenever I have a spare nanosecond, I check my phone. I check it for texts. I check it for Instagram. I check it for emails. I check just to see that it’s still there. Countless times yesterday I caught myself reflexively reaching out for thin air. My hand works involuntarily – it reaches for my phone just for the reassurance of touching it. When I’m walking I pat my bag for the reassurance of knowing it’s in there.

Last night I was at the pub with Jessicat. When she got up to go to the bar, I immediately reached for my phantom phone. Default state of engagement. With no friend to talk to, I was going to play with my phone, hang out with it for a bit. Once I got used to it, I found it strangely liberating. My default state of engagement could now be reflecting and thinking.

Danger walked past and read the title of this post. He said “Fifth Limb? Isn’t that a penis?”. My iPhone is my Penis. Very Freudian.

There are so many ways to know a thing. We have our five senses but we also have those intangible feelings and hunches and vibes. So much of my understanding of the world is just wisps. A dandelion petal in the great big atmosphere of knowledge and understanding.

The other day I was walking along, thinking, and the term “Miss Piggy Colour Scheme” came into my mind. It felt satisfying – like a jigsaw puzzle piece that slots right into it’s space. I liked the way the combination of the words sounded in my mind. I could see a flash of her colours and the way they embody and represent her character and I could almost feel the soft velvet of her nose as something visually edible. It was a melange of senses that made no sense but made perfect sense to me.

As a non-driver I put a lot of stock in the Gods of Public Transport. They have the ability to make or break my day. Depending on the outcome, they can be benevolent or capricious and sometimes even downright vengeful.

“The Gods of Public Transport were smiling on me today”

“I prayed to The Gods of Public Transport”

“I was at the mercy of The Gods of Public Transport”

These are all lines lifted straight from my diary. If I do have a spiritual life, it all seems pretty tied up with whether my bus comes on time or I make a smooth train connection.

My religious system is polytheistic but I have never thought to imagine the individual Gods. They’re just a hazy idea in the back of my mind, somehow responsible for the fact that I just missed that train (arghhh!!!) or the correct bus was there right when I reached my stop (ahhhhhh).

I suppose they would wear robes made of that carpet-like fabric that covers bus chairs and looks like a pub carpet that threw up its Froot Loops or an ayahuasca vision. They’d wear giant golden whistles around their neck and carry sceptres that unfolded into fluorescent flags. When they spoke, their voices would sound like a scratchy Public Address system. On 11.

Are these scribblings really ancient hieroglyphics or did they steal a pre-schoolers crayon drawing and weave it into a fabric design?

I feel sorry for young kids these days. When I was growing up, Santa was all mystery. You could never quite grasp him, but you knew he was there. When the shopping malls put out their first round of wreaths and baubles, when shop windows got the fake snow treatment and the Christmas carols started crackling over the supermarket airwaves….Santa lived in the space between. He was airborne and nebulous, he was a sixth sense…the smell you couldn’t quite catch, a flash in the corner of your eye…a feeling not a reality.

Oh sure there were the fake Santa’s that you had your photo taken with, or the one’s who handed out presents at group picnics ….or the exuberant ones who seemed to hang out together, slightly under-dressed around pubs and such. But children were able to hold both Santa’s in their mind, subconsciously colluding with the adults so as to keep the mystery sacred. The real Santa was never so brash as to show his face. He left traces and clues. Biscuit crumbs and snowy footsteps. Maybe a letter. Maybe. But that was the most tangible evidence you would ever get.

Now we are in the “iGeneration”. Santa has been kidnapped by the marketing equivalent of Al-Qaeda or Isis and forced to make videos peddling Christmas spirit to children for profit. I know that my outrage is false nostalgia. The Santa that we all know and love was born in a marketing campaign manger for Coca-Cola. He’s always been about selling. But not so long ago, the innocence and joy of childhood transcended the marketing. Families breathed life and magic and mystery into Santa with their own traditions. Now parents are being seduced by shortcuts. They are told that they can buy the mystery from “Portable North Pole”. The fourth-wall has been smashed and Santa can talk straight to you through your “device”.

Children today are being robbed of spontaneity and authenticity. Everything is market-researched and focus-group tested and airbrushed and copy written. Bring back the egg-cartons and pipe cleaners and cotton balls of yesteryear and keep your $9 in your pocket.

One of my pet hates is the way that social media has been co-opted by brands for marketing purposes. Every goddamn ad has a hashtag these days. It’s not enough that they hawk their wares to us at every waking moment of our lives – now they want us to join in too.

Dettol – Mission for Health “Celebrating the little things you do for your family’s health” #missionforhealth

Kleenex – Share the Softness “Kleenex is inviting you to make a pledge of softness to someone you really care about, and share that pledge with Australia” #sharethesoftness

Colgate – Colgate Smile “Celebrate the special moments in life that bring out your bright, Colgate Smile!” #colgatesmile

These are just a few I remember because I can still feel the tingle of outrage that I am being asked to waste my precious time uploading photos or comments about tissues and toothpaste and disinfectant. Disinfectant!

But the one that really gets me trembling is the “Vanish Tip Exchange”. Now I’ll admit that I used to read the Woman’s Weekly Handy Hints page in my Nan’s magazines, because quite frankly some of them were ingenious. But every time I hear mention of the Vanish Tip Exchange, I feel like screaming.

“HOW MANY GODDAMN TIPS ARE THERE HOW TO USE THIS PRODUCT? YOU EITHER SPRINKLE SOME POWDER IN YOUR WASHING MACHINE OR YOU “MAKE A PASTE”. WHAT THE FUCK ELSE CAN YOU DO WITH THIS SHIT?”

Recently I got so worked up over it that I just had to visit the Vanish Tip Exchange to see for myself what possible variations people could come up with to use this product. I only got to the first page and I was stopped in my tracks by a post that cut straight to my heart.

Here is a woman who is obviously going through the most harrowing experience of her life, caring for her sick husband who can’t even control his bladder and bowels, and she is reaching out to the Vanish Tip Exchange for support. It absolutely killed me that no one had replied. This poor soul does not really want to know how to get poo and wee stains off a mattress. She wants other humans to support her and care about her experience. All I wanted to do was reach out and tell her that I was thinking of her. But you can’t even leave a comment unless you sign up to the mother fucking tip exchange. So I signed up as “Tipster Extraordinaire” with the username “Lurker” and I told Gwen that I had no tip, but I cared about her experience as a human (not a consumer) and I wished her luck and told her to look after herself. I didn’t tell her to make a paste or sprinkle any Vanish.

* Please excuse the swearing in this post. I really get worked up over the Vanish Tip Exchange.

Sometimes it’s just a regular day at the office, sometimes you get to do something a little special. Today I was filming the red carpet at The ARIA’s. Technically we weren’t shooting for the event, but rather fishing for celebrities in a barrel…sort of like at a trout farm. We needed to get as many recognisable faces as possible doing New Years Eve “shout-outs” for another project.

The event was held at The Star casino, which is happily in walking distance from work and right above my Light Rail stop. For the last few days I have been observing the set-up as I pass by on my daily commute. Big trucks full of broadcast equipment parked in the loading docks. Scaffolds and bollards and other brutish sounding things.

Last night as I was leaving for home, I noticed quite a few teenage girls hunkering down in sleeping bags, prepared to spend the night out just to secure their position at the barricade in the hope of catching a glimpse of their idols (One Direction is the most likely bet). This morning it was pandemonium. I couldn’t even get out of the Light Rail stop at my usual exit. ARIAmania was in full swing.

Our media passes gained us access to our designated fishing spot and I felt unworthy of such easy access – no sleeping bags required! We were away from the arrivals red carpet….sort of more like a red vestibule. Celebs would run the gauntlet of the street level red carpet and then ride the escalator up to their next spotlight opportunity. Hardly anyone refused a request for an interview. In fact, most seemed prepared to say anything that was asked of them, endorse anything, as long as they were doing it on camera.

All except the elusive Molly Meldrum. He took the lift, not the elevator. I spotted him as the doors opened. Slightly disorientated, in a spangled jacket that Automotiv would give her first-born for. I swung the camera around, but only managed to get a few seconds. It was my favourite part of the day. A confused man in a cowboy hat, an Aussie legend.