bedlam updates

  Last week we walk into a 24 hour place and the proprietor immediately tells us he’s just been robbed and he shows us phone video of two laughing white teenage girls scooping up armfuls of vapes. In solidarity I bought a bullshit vape that tastes like frigging lemonade. That night I sucked on that vape furiously as my story about aggravated shoplifting and police racism and indifference against 24 hour shop owners failed to go over with every person I related it to. How did I manage to make a story about daylight robbery so uninteresting to so many people? I’ll never know, because I am quite autistic. Like, I’m autistic all day. My autism runs on time, I can rely on it to dig me a social hole even when I think that surely I’m working with solid gold material about crimes. Queensland police have murdered another Aboriginal man and we know it’s murder because there were fifteen cops but there is no bodycam footage. If there’s one thing cops do well it’s putting their heads together ...

I am listening to Morbid Angel’s Altars of Madness.  The other week the doctors told me I have diabetes, which is awesome, because I thought I had cancer. And diabetes just means I have to ease up on sugar and sugar’s for kids anyway. And you might think I’m being flippant or glib or blase, or immature, or in denial, but diabetes? Is that all? I’m not saying I deserve more, but can I humbly suggest I’ve put the work in over the decades? I’ve had a bottle, can or glass in one or both of my hands at every social situation I’ve ever been to. I’ve lost count of the panic attacks I’ve had walking into a people event and trying to look like I’m not sprinting toward the bar for the debilitating assistance of boozcohol.  There’s a lot of shit I wouldn’t have done if I didn’t drink so much, however I wouldn’t have drinked so much if I had known I was autistic and I wouldn’t have been autistic if it wasn’t for those goddamned vaccines! Just joking, I won’t hear a word against vaccine pr...

  I was reading an article about a burning issue of grave importance and just for a moment I became completely delusional and began fantasizing about sharing the piece on social media so more people could see it. This was a brief few seconds and I quickly re-entered the world of reality, where the only information that gets mass eyeballs is anything that is such a lie that one glance at it convinces you that you’ve lost your mind. Take a moment to imagine a large swimming pool full of eyeballs. As one, they moistly swivel to look at you. Just yesterday I was getting my hair cut and a bloke in the joint said that The Waterboy, written by and starring Adam Sandler, is the best comedy movie. As one, eyeballs swivelled towards this amazing opinionista and as one those eyeballs tried to roll back into our skulls to escape this horrible reality. Why do people like things that aren’t good? Under a capitalist system of oppression it’s a question worth asking. Cockheads and yes, even fuckhe...

  (Written while listening to Pig Destroyer.) I am writing while listening to Pig Destroyer. I have just been to a Preston barber. I kept my long hair, but thanks to some sweet clipper work I now look like one of the guys who live around here. I mean, I thought so, and when the friendly face at the cafe asked me if my brother works at the rock band rehearsal place up the road (nope) I knew I had arrived. It’s good to stand out and it’s good to fit in. To be honest, I am so far up my own hole right now. Why go to the gym when I can just get a haircut? I am going to live at the barber. Union folk are behind the Trans Day of Visibility this Friday and it should be big, but a trans mate pointed out that they don’t mention the cop union presence at Trades and they also left out the bit about cops working closely with terfnazis on the 18th. I’m sure it’s just an oversight and that they’ll be calling for the pigs to be booted from Trades Hall and for Premier Daniel Andrews to answer a mil...

  I don’t hate cops, I hate the police force, and most cops, and some of their children, especially when the little pricks are nazis. Officers, anytime you want to take off your uniform you are welcome to join the human race. You will also need to take down those instagrams where you wrote that you are so proud of your son. He was wearing nazi merch. I just think it will help your case. I hate you. Rub cancer on your balls. You kill people.  I’m going to the Trans Day of Visibility at State Library Melbourne this Friday and expect the cops to be openly angry that people haven’t forgotten they helped nazis do hitlers on the steps of Parliament only a fortnight ago. “How dare these people judge me”?, they’ll sniffle, “I am the law! Are you looking at me? Are you talking to me? Am I a clown to you? Am I funny to you?” In my mind a cop’s self talk that tries to happen in his brains is just things he remembers from before passing out in front of the TV, again. My guess is cops watc...

  So last night, Tuesday, the Tuesday after Melbourne’s nazi Saturday, christofascists in their hundreds turned up to attack a small LGBTQ counter rally/speak out in Sydney. The direct connection between the two events that I think I see is that the guys who think the cross is a swastika took inspiration from the guys who think a swastika is the cross. They saw the Melbourne knobheads getting away with it and decided to really up the ante. Now maybe it’s not as simple as that, I’m sure these are very interesting people with fascinating backstories, but I’m also sure the people repeatedly being targeted don’t feel like they’re not being attacked by people who are all working together in one way or another. The footage from Sydney is terrifying and it’s just the sight of this mob of meatheads swarming, the size of it, the sheer kilograms of muscle that’s rocked up to fuck up a small group of people who are so peaceful that they’re a whole block away from the event they’re protesting....

  "Cop Hitlers" The flood of normal shit has been truly spectacular. Ban symbols, ban gestures, be offended, feel bad, all amazingly powerful responses to the news that Victoria Police have just again made very obvious how much they love nazis. And I mean real love, a brotherly love, a fraternal warmth, eyes meeting across a crowded rally/counter rally space, eyes that say, “I get it buddy, you’re just doing your job. I wish I could take off my uniform/ put on your uniform and join you right now. I want to feel you inside me. Seig Heil!” I told a cop what I thought of him and he was so happy. He was happy that scum like me were on edge. He was thrilled to be suppressing deviants. He was the most normal person I’ve ever met: middle of the road, easy enough to talk to, because it’s his world, so he feels good, a mile wide streak of sadism. Transphobes held a rally, so there was a counter rally, and the measures used by the police against the counter ralliers can only be explain...

  Drone Kiddies Disclaimer, sort of: don’t take everything I say here literally unless it helps you have bad enjoyable feelings about people you don’t like. Today the kindy kidz at The Age Editorial daycare centre have cracked the shitz and called Australian ex-PM Paul Keating a China “dove”. A dove is someone who can’t be cockheaded into a war with China by cockheads. Before we get into that though, yes, Paul Keating ruined Australia, but his way with words is top notch and hey, I was part of Occupy, so don’t talk to me about being impressed by dodgy folks, if it wasn’t for suspect dipshits, I wouldn’t have had as many people to do annoying activism with. And sometimes I feel like the more I actually agree with someone, the less I can stand them? And vice versa. But maybe that’s just my bone deep lack of respect for nearly everybody talking? Anyway, whatever, Paul Keating is an arsehole, but today he’s our arsehole. How nice is it to hear from someone who just finds people tiresom...

  Demons With Offices Robodebt was this very good idea where the government made up fake debts for people to pay back and lots of those people then lost all hope and killed themselves. Now I’m not saying it wasn’t a great system- let’s face it, it was almost perfect- but in the end the government has had to make massive compensatory payouts. So what we have here is a government spending a lot of money to murder it’s own taxpayers. It just seems messy. Of course no one is going to pay for what was done. Not a single bureaucrat or politician will suffer anything other than an insanely creative promotion to a position with perks that would make the average holidaymaker burst into tears of religious gratitude. I would like to tell you I am cynical enough to have known this before I learned it last week, but no. Until last week I assumed that heads would roll. I, despite having interacted with uniformed officers of the laws of this world’s best practice country, thought some measure of ...

  Cherished Brain Spaces I feel like I should try to be a nice boy and put a disclaimer here: if I were to attempt to be less offensive in my writing I would become confused and forget how to be talented, so don’t be mad, be glad. xx Every day I have this ritual I treasure, where I see that there is news about the war in Ukraine and I will myself to go blind just long enough to scroll past it. This part of my day is precious to me, knowing that I am caring for myself enough to minimise my exposure to news that is extremely likely to be manipulative dogshit, lovingly hand crafted to elicit in me the outrageous emotional responses of the true ignoramus. On day one of the invasion it was decided by the same brains trust that brought us the murder of one million Iraqis that any mention of the history of NATO would be treated as sexual racism or bigotry murder or whatever twisted demon version of social justice language these perverts were extracting from actual dead babies, or at least...

  MARCH 9 AT 2:42 PM Dead Weight in the Waiting Room I’ve reached the age where doctors have such a laser beam focus on my arsehole that they’ve asked me to shit in an ice cream container. They are clear that they need what they call a stool sample, however were not forthcoming about what flavour I’m supposed to be shitting into? Hahaha! God, poo is so funny! Well, it was for my whole life, right up until this morning when in the high wire act of crapping into a container I managed to shit all over myself. Folks, never ever complain about the shower being in the same room as the throne. It’s been a big few days. Friday we were halfway out the door to go see Doug Stanhope- a wondrous fine comic- when blood began gushing from my nose. It was immediately decided that going to a place and laughing really hard for two hours would be a literally bloody bad idea. I decided that since the show was sold out, I wouldn’t try to sell our tickets. What was the logic there? Well, I rec...

  MARCH 1 AT 11:50 AM Field of Broken Skulls Content warning: negativity, hatred, being wrong. I had this idea about what I wanted to write today, but when I started to do it I felt like I was trying, so I stopped. Trying, effort, pushing yourself and persistence are all the enemies of creativity. If I have to sweat and strain to put into words what I think I’m thinking, then I probably don’t care about it enough. I’ve done a lot of try-hard shit in my life. I worked too hard. So I cannot tell you what a relief it was to learn I was autistic. Now I could let go of all that shame, the shame of being a loser. It’s been brutal to want to do things with people while finding them extremely annoying, for instance. It’s been brutal to have a bone deep need to go my way that means every boss, anyone in charge, anyone who even remotely tries to tell me what to do, can fuck right off. It’s almost impossible to explain to normal people what it’s like, so I’m not going to anymore. No...

  FEBRUARY 28 AT 12:31 PM Cringe Rude Words On the weekend we went to pick up things we had to leave behind, including nine big balls I made by wrapping lengths of grape vine around an inflatable exercise ball. I cable tied them in place, instead of using wire, because I wanted to avoid repetitive strain injury. For a long time now my art decisions are partly steered by a strong not want to sustain injuries. My strong not want to sustain injuries really kicked off after I accidentally levered a large set of boltcutters out of a vise that then slammed into my face. Around the same time I had to get a sliver of metal pulled out of my eyeball. Then there were welding fumes, ear damaging grinder noise and all the other things that shorten artists’ lives. Talking with a blacksmith who had to be routinely injected with various drugs just to keep going really got me going too. A couple of weeks ago I started “drawing” on a grape vine ball with a 3D pen. I thought it looked aweso...