bedlam updates

'We're taking the bridge?" "We're taking the bridge." By the time the march through Paris reached the river by the Eiffel Tower a very simple plan was taking shape. The location tells you what to do. Here was a bridge in a spectacular spot, a perfect place for an act of civil disobedience. On the bridge we could create a dilemma. If it is filled from one end to other with sitting people, what can the police really do? Attack? No. That's a river and those are people who could fall and drown. We had the cops well and truly fucked. The day before, under the emergency powers, nearly 30 of us had been scooped up on our way to a protest at Le Bourget. The men were all handcuffed, a few of the women were put in coffin sized enclosures in a van and we were all driven at high speed to a police station. It was a rough ride and one of the women vomited upon being released from a van cell so small she could only turn her head. I found I had to brace myself

Only hours till we go to the worst event in the world in a city full of cops hallucinating from lack of sleep. I'm also thrilled that white people are starting to shoot guns at Black Lives Matter people, that World War 3 might kick off while I'm overseas and that working class people in Australia have decided now is a good time to rethink our earlier poor relationship with Hitler. It's fucking hilarious. Our AFP has been ignoring atrocities in PNG so they won't close our refugee c ruelty camps. Concentration camps. Death camps. When I say it's hilarious, I'm not being ironic. This is all solid stuff and anyone who can't laugh at it is someone to run screaming from. Alert your friends: if anyone is being a bummer about this shit avoid them at all costs. Do not let depressives, anxious people or drama legends fuck with your high. This is an amazing time to be alive so enjoy it to the motherfucking limit. It's all happening, man.

Since the Paris attacks there's been a lot of talk that makes me think of a flabby pale dude who is seeing himself shredding on an electric guitar on a cliff top during a wild storm. "ISIS are bad and they're cowards and I can't stop laughing at them because they're silly!" says Epic Bravery guy in no way letting on that he's so close to shitting he's been online all week doing close research on which adult diapers won't show over the top of his cargo shorts if his X-Men T shirt rides up while he's reaching for Star Wars merchandise. Well I say "merchandise" but he's in the kids section at Kmart. Which is where I hope ISIS gets him.

Uh, duurr. Haven't been blogging but I have been doing Facebook posts that consist of writing. This one is one week after the Paris attacks, one day before Fascists rally in Melton (45 minutes out of Melbourne) and a few days before I go to Paris as part of WACA to support the Climate Guardians during the climate talks:       Reckon I might give the Melton encounter with fascists a miss because I'm days from Paris and I can only absorb so much dumb fucking scary fuckfaced bullshit coming from people who just need to read a fucking book but won't.  The Paris burden is enough: media have taken every chance to get it wrong and inflame tension. Some spooked activists are talking frightened shit that (if anyone listens to them) could see the climate talks go entirely unmolested by any contact with reali ty.  The people who make the big dosh from wrecking our world are in those talks and we the people are not. Our only hope is people in the streets of Paris letting these lege

http://comedianwithnomates.tumblr.com/ I'll be collecting my new video series at the above address. The fourth episode was supposed to go out last night but iMovie misbehaved and I immediately folded in half because Apple products have groomed me to become a consumer worm consisting of a tube that joins a mouth and an anus and frankly the 24 hour news cycle has me unsure sometimes which hole is which. Anyway, do share these fights of fancy. Yes, I said fights, because I am a fighter and a loser and quality entertainment is freely available these days that it's hard to tell if civilisation is collapsing or if it's just my attention span. Much more to come.

Australia's refugee problem is so complex that normal humans cannot be expected to get their heads around it. I know this because I visited Jeff's Shed to witness Labor Party delegates communicate detailed logistical insights mostly through sad stories about feeling bad. One even lovingly described a post-it note upon which was written a baby asylum seeker's name. He kept it over his desk to remind him of the real stories behind the issues behind the feelings he was having. Just imagine the Groundhog Day of seeing a post-it note and exclaiming, "Oh that's right! Refugees! No wonder I'm sad! If only their plight was not so bloody complex! Well, it's drink'o'clock." It's tempting to get on a moral high horse about Australia's cruel treatment of people on leaky boats. However the fact is if you express any concern at all about these people you will be instantly set upon by a guy rubbing his fingers together, saying, "Look it's t

A huge penis has appeared in Clifton Hill and it's not me. What an auspicious sign. This same week as if proving that magic is real I had an idea that wasn't yet another can of worms. Yes, I had a practical thought. Off the back of this massive brainwave I made my way to one of those places that specialises in products aimed at people who are blessed with an eye for a bargain and no taste whatsoever. The psychic energy of the place groaned under the weight of crappy products made by weeping Chinese teenagers. I mean, I assume so, I try to live in my head precisely to avoid feeling the misery of people I'd like to assist in some way, but can't, because the Left are too paralysed by anger at dick jokes to actually help people struggling with problems a bit more pressing than being made to feel uncomfortable. Seriously guys, I am fucking obsessed with the notion that the cliched earnestness of some radicals when it comes to demanding that spaces be made "sa

My current routine is quite simple. Upon waking I like to spend some time simply lying peacefully. I drag this out for as long as I can to increase the possibility that I may have a major stroke while I'm in a nice comfortable position. After a while it usually becomes quite clear God wants to me to get out there and at very least ruin some other dickhead's day and I slip into my comfortable, elastic waisted internet surfing pants and make two slices of toast that stare back at me and ask, "You again" like evil twins covered in crumbs. Or made of crumbs? Who knows. Perhaps we'll never know. Breakfast is my least favourite time of the day because I am also on the internet being reminded most people who say stuff and talk words are an argument for ethnic cleansing, genocide or any of the cool processes that make piles of dead people. I like my coffee just so and then it's time to get on my bicycle and go for a ride to really clear my head by muttering to mysel

On this Saturday just past, July 18th 2015, I watched police storm over the top of a Street Medic privacy circle set up by people with arms linked to protect the health and dignity of a person with breathing difficulties. I knew that an ambulance was very long overdue, with no sign of it's arrival, the cops would not allow it. If I took a step to the right I could see a hospital maybe a two minute walk away. For fucks sake. The injured person had been badly pepper sprayed. There are levels and layers of interaction with this foam spray and all of my friends copped from some to heaps, including myself. I assume the badly injured person appears clearly in one of the many videos that show the first major spraying. Onlookers witnessed the last drops coming out of big canisters. They emptied those things in people's faces point blank. Two days later I'm hearing that people are still suffering with proper skin burns. Just imagine breathing the shit. When the cops rush

Pretty sure I'm hearing young Australians saying, "Do the math", which is interesting because we don't say "Math" in Australia as far I know. It's Maths, as in Mathematics. Anyway, I'm all for stealing cool language from black Americans, that's all part of what white people do because we're too embarrassed to be ourselves. Well not the sport ones. Sport white people are very happy to be themselves and the less said about that the better. But why would you steal white people American words? Makes no sense, then again, fuck all does. So I'm listening to two Young People on the radio who are there to let the world know that Young People are something called "Smart and Savvy". Now look, I understand that older people who never had an original idea in their lives look back at the young for hope out of sheer despair, but let me break that down a bit further. The world is full of borderline tools in leadership positions who never gre

I'm building a time machine so I can travel into recent history and kill our Prime Minister. I realise that is a complicated plan but I'm trying to find a way to talk about murdering the Australian Government that won't get me put on a list. Of cool people! Hi guys, let's talk politics. This week an American white women is telling the world that she is actually black because she says she is and that's that. Meanwhile in France anti-racism activists are terrified that the search for Viking DNA will stir up hard feelings. What's going to happen when activists discover France is really quite close to Germany? How offensive will that be? How come no one makes sense anymore? Is this The Singularity? Yes. We have entered the time of great bullshit, where the simplest things are confusing, where hardworking humanitarians using only the power of baffling jargon wrestle with the Imperial US Empire. For the right to wrap up and package our freedom, forklift it into a

I was grinding my teeth about going because I get depressed about this shit, but my feelings of futility about activism were outweighed by the chance to make some sweet propaganda for the cause. So I went to Richmond Town Hall to video the attempt by fascists to hold a rally there. I arrived and there were hundreds of folks waiting for these Nazi scum. What a party! I said hello to mates doing street medic and legal observer duties and made out the fascists way off down a side street. These tiny idiots in the distance became even smaller as they marched closer and the details of their ridiculousness became clearer. Cops in their dozens carved out a pathway for these cockheads all the way to the steps of Town Hall, but even with horses trampling our folks they just couldn't do it. 50 full on bigots with 100 cops helping couldn't manage. Good one. I get extremely frustrated at people in this country refusing to get involved in anything that looks like a hard struggle. If ther

It's Tuesday and I'm two days into work on a Fringe show, which right now looks like it's going to be about the way conspiracy theories are going mainstream and ruining all life. I was into that madness before social media went big, however when I crapped on about terrible threats and dark forces I had to do it under the burning heat of actual eye contact. Which cured me. Now people are egging each other on (circle jerking) online, they're creating their own weather (a circle jerk) and things aren't looking good for stories that aren't part of a (circle jerk). Great time to wank publicly though, so yay for that. Superfoods. 9/11 Truth. People having delusions of grandeur about food(!) because they think it's probably best for everyone if all finicky middle class people live forever. Folks wanting to share the unique wow factor story that governments lie. Wellness. Truthness. We're in trouble unless people work out that stories are just stories, but tra

In the United States a cop murdered a black man by shooting him in the back, putting him on the ground with as many bullets as he could manage conveniently. He then faked up the crime scene, probably thinking (and quite rightly) that a little bit of stage magic would make the whole thing go away. Unfortunately for the badge wearing murderer the whole thing was caught on video. The only thing that remains is to see exactly how he eventually doesn't face justice. Because he won't. They never do. Black people in America are inconvenient. They were shipped in to build an empire and haven't had the sense to disappear now that they are no longer necessary. White people in America are largely desensitised to the brute facts of the thing: you used black people to build your empire of comfort, your Sloth Heaven and you don't even realise you want them dead. You live off the suffering of others and facing that fact would be so hard on yourself that it's easier to be philoso

Around this neck of the woods a view is developing and it is that the growing and monstrous wave of man child behaviour is a fairly direct and cowardly reaction to climate change. Because the future is so terrifying, young people are disappearing into fantasy and bullshit and when I say young people I mean everybody. It's just a shame that the people who are usually so good about angrily railing against injustice, the young, are so pants pissingly terrified of the future that all their energy is going into building a bubble of bullshit for their boofhead selves. The young have historically lost their minds and fucked shit up when presented with outrageously unfair bullshit, but in the case of climate change they're playing possum. And why is it that the only young and outraged political stand up comics I know are from Queensland? Melbourne people should be embarrassed that we have to fly in talent from other states to hear funny opinion that kicks against the pricks. But Melb

We had a Herald Sun reviewer in the audience last night. From the moment we appeared from behind our silly curtain with our funny faces, he was clearly exasperated. We've had absolutely glowing feedback from earlier shows so we are just enjoying our performance and getting lost in proper fun. Which is hard to do when a guy you know is a reviewer is sitting there looking like we are Yoko Ono breaking up the Beatles. His review gave one and a half stars, by the way, which people who don't think for themselves will take as gospel. Tonight we stopped by a group of young comics, some of whom had obviously read the review, because one of them was doing something different, which was looking like he was going to pass out from not knowing what to say. We didn't mention it, just enjoyed their discomfort for a moment before moving on to go home to do damage control, which this is. Oh, and if I want to end a sentence on "is", I will, stick your review up your arse. And

Last night I saw my friend Simon Keck do his show Eating Tiger Dicks. He's sort of ultra cerebral and filthy, moralising and warm hearted, all that good shit. As a comic he tries to do hard things, not gimmicks or anything he's dumbed down for safety, though there's no reason he couldn't be a mass appeal pop entertainer doing exactly what he's doing. I hate him. Spoiler alert: I am not going to describe the show at all. It's comedy. Comedy is Jesus. It's great to see a comic talk properly about what he's really interested in, no matter what it is, in such an unaffected yet clearly passionate way. And he's super fucking gross. My God. And in a really good way that doesn't exclude anyone. When he drops invented six letter swear words it's shared joy, not some fucked up hammer of shock. I hate him. Anger without warmth is just bitterness. I wouldn't call Simon Keck an angry comic, but there is that kind of anger underneath that com

Last week at one of my favorite comedy rooms a shit storm was born and it shows no sign of dying down. What began as a very funny joke was completely misread by a person who then hijacked the room by making a really weird, irritating stand and got so under the performer's skin he was rude to her. The list of comics who would have utterly demolished this person is, I'm guessing, all comics. Her behaviour was reprehensible, but because she thought she was fighting for a cause and because she and her friends are in fact monstrous bullies with a lot of power their ludicrous take on things made it into a major Melbourne paper with the nightmare words, "Comedian Ray Badran tells audience member to 'die' for objecting to rape joke". I've spoken with several people who were in the room, particularly a feminist woman whose appraisal of the heckler's behaviour was purely scornful. The heckler was a piece of shit and this was proved when her and her friends use

My last post was about how soul crushing the Festival has been, this one is about what a properly great time I am having doing The Wrong Show and The After Party.  A man said my face looks like his mother's vagina. A woman pulled down her pants to reveal great big fucking capital letter W's tattooed on her buttocks. This same woman was the best racist I've met in ages. Some shitfuck hecklers dropped 50 bucks on the ground so me and me mate picked it up and went to the Golden Tower to spend it all on booze and fried food. The spots at The After Party have been a delight. You just have to know how to handle that room. Last year I got into an argument with three drunk women just before I did my spot and went on to do nothing but crumble into ash. That year I begged awful bogan men to fuck me in the arse and bellowed at others to shut the fuck up. About halfway through the festival I cracked the code and started doing proper comedy. I'm not sure why now, but I wasn'

Monday means no comedy and that means a well earned break from going to The Red Violin at 14 McKillop Street day after day to cancel my show. I cannot tell you what a rush it has been to not do stand up. A dream run. I hope it's a fucking dream anyway. Because I don't know how "really good at cancelling shows" will look on my resume. But it's going to be okay. Opening night was awesome, we nailed our opening ten minutes of introducing ourselves then took turns doing the stand up things and the stage felt like being in the womb. So it's been great to not do that at all for the following three nights. But it's going to work out. If you stand at the Town Hall and look up at the big map the Melbourne International Comedy Festival displays you'll see something quite interesting: our motherfucking street isn't on it. A street that is 5 minutes walk from where you are standing,  with a festival hub running 12 shows, a place with multiple bars and a

Tomorrow our show starts in a venue that has an old fuck maze on the top floor. It's sort of like a haunted house, but the ghosts are cum. The place is huge, multi-levelled, there are a lot of shows and up above us is a series of tiny rooms splattered in historic cum from Melbourne's fuck maze past. We have unwittingly walked into a 21 night stand in Melbourne's most interesting venue. Haven't we just. I like the place.   The place is rather amazing, really. It would make a dream comedy hub and I hope that happens and that no one ever goes upstairs with a UV light to map out the intricate lacework of cum in the place up there that is some kind of fuck maze. I am not saying that a visit to see our show will get cum on you. It won't. We're not performing on the cum level. But you may breathe in cumdust from the 1980's. See you there guys! Tickets to Two Bearded Ladies    

During this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival I am going to drink as much as I can without ruining my show, which I have to able to perform 21 times at the top of my ability. I also have to go out fliering for hours every day. What this means is I won't be able to drink as much as I would like to in my fucked up little heart. What this means is I need to have goals and a point and a mission with clear objectives. Drinking goals. There's no point pretending I'm not going to go out and and get royally fucked up. That is definitely going to happen. However I won't be doing any pills and powders because I can't afford the comedown, which can be pretty suicidal. Even the closing party is a bad choice for drugs because the end of the festival provides a comedown of it's own that needs to be managed like the brain damage it is. What I want more than anything is to have a ball this year, but not so much that I am trying to do comedy or give flie

So after sitting through twenty-odd minutes of advertising after paying twenty dollars to see a movie an old lady sits nearby in the nearly empty cinema and begins unwrapping Christmas presents. I think. For the length of the screening I didn't look in case razors shot out of my eyes and decapitated this human being with feelings and her own story. Jupiter Ascending began and I was hating it in record time. A voiceover delivered by a woman we soon see holding a toilet brush very close to her to face walks the audience through the first meeting of her parents who are the Cutest Couple Ever. Only the sudden death of one of these fluff farts kept me in my seat. I so was close to bailing out to head home and rage blog about the Wachowskis final unmasking as people swimming in vats of taste destroying money. What happened? Do I need to watch the Matrix again to learn that it's actually not good? Maybe I won't do that. Maybe I'll pick up where that guy in the USA left off a

So a group of boys were taking turns holding me still and punching me in the stomach as passing adults walked by pretending they didn't have eyes. Here I am copping this as part of an after school program run by the Lord of the Flies and these parents are rolling past with their own children, teaching by example the magic of temporary blindness. Let's arbitrarily choose this as the moment my problems with crowds of polite adults started. Any one of those people could have played the grown up card and shut down what was happening but they didn't. Why? Because most people presented with an emergency go all soft and will be turned to ash when Jesus returns with his laser sword. Hi I'm Sean and I have a myriad of issues that have gradually hardened into a set of attitudes and beliefs about how the world works and how I will rule it after the Apocalypse. Well, my neighbourhood really, which I will enslave in an act of pragmatic self-care. As a very damaged unit whose

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/bytestories/family-related-tragicomedy_b_6690126.html That link goes to the Huffington Post, where a couple of my Byte Stories are making an appearance. It's pretty exciting. The Byte Stories thing appeared at just the right time, because leading up to the festival I'm finding writing true stories is a pretty slick way to crank out material to then filter through the joke consideration process. I grew up in a pretty basic suburb, not poor, but with the threat of violence pretty much a constant and writing these stories has been sort of therapeutic in some ways. I did need to stop for a few days though, to take a break from thinking about things I can't change. It's good to put traumatic events into words, but it also stirs up some unpleasant feelings. There is no escape. That's the lesson of my basic suburbs. You've got to find ways to make the most of fucked situations, face them head on and hope to fuck you have enough mag

So I wrote a little thing that's sort of a window into how I got fully involved in activism: Occupy Melbourne: Week One On Saturday I stayed home and did social media as my mob visited an Air Show that is really an arms fair. They were all tossed out of the event just as they were about to drop a big banner off a fighter jet, but the point was made. I was sent this image from the show. It was too perfect and all I had to do was put in Picmonkey to add some text. This is the first year of a campaign to #DisarmAvalon2017 and with shit like this going it shouldn't be too hard: I sacrificed an opportunity to leave the house that night and visit friends to unwind. Instead I got my hands on all the images and video from the day and knocked out a video. As always, working in a window of just hours means my videos may never win any awards, but the plus side is I get it done and get on with my life. Here's what I made in roughly 2 hours of fevered editing: In that B

So I've just done a run through of my chosen material for the show and it went like a dream. The joke consideration process consisted of anything that's gotten a real laugh before, arranged into a coherent world view. It's a very clear picture of what I am, which is pretty much a Gen X Everyman and Fucked Fuckhead.   A few years ago a good comic advised me that by the time you get off stage, the audience should have some idea who and what you are. It's not about telling people your opinions, but telling people what you see and why you see it that way. I've also learned proper stories are a good honest way to honour the fact an audience is good enough to give you their attention. Because most people even slightly outside their comfort zones are thick as fuck and need to spoken to like babies.        I'm doing a live trial show this coming Wednesday upstairs at The Exford. I will have a set list on a great big piece of paper. I've used a set list before

So for twenty years I've been barking up the wrong tree with my art practice. No wonder I had a mental breakdown only two years into working with metal to make sculpture. See, I thought you were supposed to focus with maniacal intensity on what you were making and the business side of things would sort itself out. No. You're supposed to be spending a good chunk of that time making contacts, talking with people, networking, schmoozing, marketing, all that shit! Fuck! I started out doing markets, but I would stand around all day bitching with stall holder mates and making almost no attempt to talk to customers. I didn't know I had to. No wonder I became super bitter and depressed and then lost my mind and became a dribbling mess and ended up on a disability support pension and on top of all that had kind of a bad time. If I had actually spoken with potential customers and listened to them my business would have blossomed. Instead I drove myself insane endlessly secon

Preparation for the Two Bearded Ladies show is going swimmingly, by which I mean I am doing a lot of swimming so I look buff for the time I'm on stage. Wait, did I say swimming? I meant 'drinking'. Judge me and I will put your judgement up my arse. I can't lose. (Note to self: what was that arse business about? Consider seeking therapy and/or ass play opportunities.) I don't consider myself an alcoholic because I don't think it's a disease. You can stop drinking, you can't stop tumours by feeling bad enough about them. I think there is no shortage of stuff people believe right now that 100 years from now will be proof we all have light to moderate head injuries. Not that there will be a 100 years from now if we don't stop passionately believing in Miracle Bubbles(TM) and start making real moves in the actual world. Yeah I know that leaving the world of beliefs for the world of the actual might be too much of a big step for a society built on bill

(At the moment I'm getting right into a site called Byte Stories that's all about true stories. It's changing my thinking about what's worth writing and what isn't. Here's the latest).      I don't know why I chucked a rock through the newsagency window but I guess I can think of a few possibilities. It was late, so no one was around and by some miracle a rock was right there in the street. Why was a rock just lying around in the paved street of a suburban shopping strip? A strip so ordinary that the milk bar with three steps was called the Three Steps Milk Bar? God put that rock there, surely. I didn't have time to admire my ability to make holes in things because a loud alarm convinced my body to sprint away into the night. The whole event lasted ten seconds tops. The weird thing about that newsagency was that the lady co-owner maintained an awful 1960's beehive hairdo right up until 1980. Here she was selling magazines that constantly

It would be awesome if people didn't have such tunnel vision about their pet issues, then again one of my pet issues is that civilisation run by empire churns out bubble people as a matter of course. It shouldn't amaze me that activists can be so blind to the connections between climate change and endless war, between arms manufacturers and mainstream media, between everything and everything else. While we must reorganize our friends who've drifted away, or those who continue to fight but without a strategy for victory, it's imperative that we also engage segments of society who've never been organized around these issues. Of course for the sake of getting shit done you need to pick your targets and focus, but very often people become blinkered. And when they do think of the connections between all things it's in some mystical bullshit sense. Let me clear that up: all issues are connected because they unfold and dig in on a finite planet. It's a big plac

The Prime Minister now wants to suspend reality indefinitely so we can live in his fantasy of the hero leader. What an incompetent. He is incapable of understanding his own shortcomings. We are seeing a man child grow more feral every day as he flails about for a solution to a problem that is himself. PM says Australians have been ‘played for mugs’ by ‘bad people’ and signals sweeping policy shift aimed at bolstering national security You know, I get it, we're all victims of circumstance. In the case of this turkey, he's been groomed from an early age to be what the conservative side of politics calls a "fucking idiot". He was never supposed to have a point, but like benighted cabbages everywhere he's the last to know he's a plant. When I was putting my brain back together after my big mental breakdown all those years ago I experienced a moment of realisation: none of these sane people know what's going on either. I fact, many of them are crazy, bu

Thanks to the private school head injuries running Australia right now we know that if you are Australian there's a roughly 35% chance you're a worthless organ bank any good person should be legally allowed to slice open with a knife to show your kids how fuckheads work. Our treatment of people who've broken tiny rules is not just world class it's historically accurate, right down to the bottomless cruelty. But look at how we treat our own! Here in Melbourne we've accepted gangs of ticket inspecting thugs on public transport because hey, if you don't have a validated card or you talk back to to the fucking idiots who are all the way into your face on a tram you should of course be hurt badly and the bruising should reach where your inner child lives. In this supposedly easy going nation of laid back types we absolutely accept any kind of violence dropped on rule breakers and back talkers. We not only cop it, we applaud it. Today the Ombudsman found train pig