My Inner Monologue

Death by KFC

2006-04-05T20:45:00.000+10:00

Last Friday night I did something incredibly stupid. I was given some work by my brother-in-law's boss to sort of cover for my bro' not being able to work.

I was working as a cleaner and I couldn't finish the night's work. By the end of it I was shooting fountains of out of both ends of my digestive tract and in incredible pain. I couldn't work out if I had some massive attack of the flu or if I had reacted to inhaling the super strong industrial chemicals we used to clean with.

My boss-for-the-evening shouted us some KFC and I hate KFC. But I ate some because it seemed like he might be offended by the fact I wasn't eating with the group. Was the chicken off? Was Kentucky Fried Chicken getting their dubious pieces of meat from mainland China? Everything seemed to get really bad after I ate that oily, strange smelling rabbit/chicken?

Within about half an hour of the feed I had diarrhoea. And then an hour and a half later, something happened to me that hadn't happened in around ten years... I vomited. I never vomit. I hate vomiting. It feels like someone ramming their fist down my throat, grabbing my stomach and then pulling it inside out through my mouth. But this ungodly purge, it was like the fucking Exorcist! Plus it was in a toilet in a business we had the responsibility of cleaning!

I got worse and worse through out the night, and the biggest, toughest job of the night (cleaning a local pub after a heavy friday night) was last on the list. And I couldn't manage to keep sewerage exploding from one end of my body or the other for more than five minutes at a time. And I was shivering like a chihuahua in an Arctic dog sled team during those five minutes of upright motion. I offered to give the boss his money back, but he wouldn't hear it. He didn't pay me for the pub but everything else I had done, he made me keep my money for.

It was only at about five o'clock the following morning (Old Faithful had been erupting out of some orifice or another every half hour exactly), as I thought about my ghastly experience with a set of CSI inspired hallucinations, going through all my actions from the night before, that I realised what had actually caused my body's meltdown...

I saw myself eating the chicken, the pus yellow oil squirting out between my fingers. I saw a zoom in of the camera to a near microscopic level and mixing with that fluorescent oil was something on my hands, in the skin. In my shivering, sweating, delusional state, the answer hit me: I had somehow forgotten to wash my hands before eating, and my hands were covered in industrial strength, cleaning chemicals and fragrances. I had fucking poisoned myself.

The following day it felt like I had been gut-punched by Mike Tyson and, disgusted by the fact that I crumpled from that first punch, Iron Mike just proceeded to kick me in the belly until everything was soft and squishy. I had sweated out most of the toxins and woke up cold and clammy and I was covered in some sort of greasy, chemical smelling residue. My kidneys felt like they had been squeezed in someone's hands who was trying to pop them. Every joint in my body was aching like arthritis. And there were blisters on my tongue and the skin was peeling from my lips.

Another day and I was almost fully recovered.

Two sayings come to mind. One is something I say to myself a lot, "all experience is valuable." And that is most certainly true. I am NEVER going to eat so much as a Smartie now, without cleansing my hands obsessively. Plus, I now have an inside perspective on what it's like to suffer from mild chemical poisoning. So, I'm bound to give some poor character in one of my stories the exact same symptoms I suffered from.

The second saying is, "that which does not kill me, makes me stronger." And that is just wrong. I don't see myself building up muscles I never knew I had from having a gut full of tainted chicken. Who knows, if in twenty or so years I'm diagnosed with kidney disease or cancer of the rectum, maybe it'll be time for another CSI style flashback - to the poisons that were in my guts, burning away cells and damaging the genetic code just enough to cause a slight error in one or two cells replications, that will snow ball into a peppering of tiny tumours many years later. And then I'll smile, my ironic, bemused grin. 'Cause ya gotta smile, kids, ya just gotta smile.

The way of all flesh

2006-03-26T15:39:00.000+10:00

Order breeds chaos. Light creates shadows. Life cannot begin, cannot continue, can not exist without death. As life prospers, it does so only at the cost of other lives. Diseases are mostly forms of microscopic life, surviving and flourishing with the life it takes from its host. To cure the disease, is to kill, on a scale that would be genocide if applied to the macroscopic world. If we were to choose a course of action that kills the fewest number of living things, we would let the disease take hold. Our one life balanced against the millions of bacteria – surely they have the rule of majority.

So too, would the hundreds of animals slaughtered over a lifetime of human food consumption. Or if vegetarian, the thousands of vegetables and fruits that are harvested for our needs. Parasites like fleas and intestinal worms do not kill their hosts, instead stealing life in tiny portions so as to not destroy their source of food. Are they then, the most noble of all creatures? Is the sickness and irritation they cause a symptom of their merciful sparing of our lives? Hardly, when you consider that these peaceful parasites are responsible for more human deaths than any predatory species or war we could wage on our own kind.

And plants, feeding only on the soil and light and rain – are they not nourished by the countless dead and rotting things lying in that soil? Trees that war for centuries, blotting out the skies from the weaklings of their kind, starving their own children of the sun’s warmth. Knotted, tangled roots, wrestle beneath the corpse flesh on which they feed. Each gentle forest giant choking kith and kin, themselves wreathed in strangling vines, their insides gouged out by putrefying fungi. When finally they fall, their children that they murdered again and again may finally take root and feed upon the decaying corpses of parent and sibling.

There is hardly a single life form on the planet that would give up its place in this world for another. No flora, nor fauna, that would selflessly sacrifice its existence for the benefit of any entity not directly related to it's own continuation in some form. And while it is true that humans do occasionally offer their lives willingly for some cause or another, mostly it is only for what they might gain in return: Celebrity, some spiritual reward to be collected in the afterlife as payment, or simply the feeling of moral superiority, etc.

To continue to exist in this world, to live and breed, every life in the universe must take life. To survive is to kill and kill and kill again, no matter what form or manner in which a being exists. From viruses to whales, amoebas to human beings, all things in this world – require something to suffer in order that it may thrive. Humans are no exception to this rule, nor are we excluded from the smorgasbord of raw materials. And to some arcane and forgotten beings, we are very nearly the only item on the menu.

As it is with life, so it is all existence. Without a force of destruction there can be no force of creation. For the elements essential to our planet’s life forms, matter must be smelted, fused in the violent atomic furnace of a star’s core. Then the star must die, exploding into a planet atomising fireball, spewing its transmuted innards across the galaxy. This is the stuff from which we were formed. Many thousand suns have perished and disgorged their fiery bodies into the firmament so that life could begin on Earth.

The Paradox of Omniscience

2006-03-26T02:47:00.000+10:00

A theory...

There are an infinite number of things to know, but there are a finite number of things that can be known by any being, species or society. The maximum amount of things we can know about our universe is limited, when the amount of things to be known is not. As a result, the things that we do not know, still outweighs what we do know, by an infinite volume. And so our finite collection of knowledge, compared to the infinite expanses of our ignorance, makes our fraction of known facts infinitesimal. So no matter how much we learn about existence, we will always know next to nothing about it as a whole.

The only thing in the universe that can know everything there is to know about the universe, is the universe itself as an entity. But omniscience must include positions of ignorance and compartmentalised experience, in order to know everything, instead of simply knowing about everything. For omniscience is not simply being aware of all things, but also knowing the experience of all things, something that is impossible if the omniscient applies all of its knowledge to each of its experiences. One cannot know childlike wonder, without limiting one’s experiences to those like a child’s. One cannot know bigotry, without limiting one’s beliefs to those of a bigot. One can know of these things, or about these things, without experiencing them first hand, but one cannot know them in this way.

It is not enough, however, to simply know all things by experiencing them from within. All things must also be known from the external, unbiased neutrality of existence. And all this experience and knowledge must be unified as a single cross-referencing, contextual unit. And this combined volume of knowledge must also have complete understanding of the things that are unknowable as fact to those within the universe. The knowledge of the universe’s structure and creation and history and future, must be included in the omniscience. As well as its rules and limitations, its paradoxes and contradictions, it’s nonexistent possibilities and it’s existent impossibilities. And these things must be known in intricate complexity and in absolute simplicity.

Essentially, omniscience is a self-defeating concept. For omniscience to exist, it must contain qualities that make itself impossible. And yet omniscience must exist, because if there is anything that can be known, there must be something that knows it. Anything that exists leaves evidence of its existence; that evidence can be thought of as knowledge of that thing – awareness of its presence and memory of its creation. All of reality simply exists by an awareness and memory of its existence. Being is just the knowledge of a thing stored in a physical form. Our physical manifestations are simply place-holders for the concepts of what we are.

I Just Needed My Space For A While...

2006-03-17T02:04:00.000+10:00

Long time between posts.

See, this is just the sort of thing I was afraid of. I can't have the responsibility of maintaining a blog! I just wander off for months at a time and stop posting.

Truth be known I have actually written a couple of posts in the time I've been away, no, correction, I've started a couple of posts. They're in my drafts folder right now, but I haven't had the inclination to finish them, nor the balls to post them. They're political themed rants and I want everyone to love me, sad, pathetic person that I am. And who knows, maybe the one person I actually manage to interest with this little pretend column of mine, is someone who will be offended by what I say... Then again, if my future friend for life is some racist bigot or small minded dimwit who can't read between the lines of what I say, then do I really need that sort of attention? Fuck 'em.

I've had my share of relationships with people who turned out to be crazy, evil or who just plain suck. Most of them are girls I've either been attracted to or have actually gone out with. Mind you, I was no prize pig myself for the longest time (like everything up until this point).

So I've decided to announce to my loyal public (pause for sound of crickets chirping) that I've started a new endeavour in cyberspace. As I do with everything in life, if I can't keep up with doing one simple thing, I've started something new that I'll end up fucking up and abandoning later as well... I'm now on MySpace!

I avoided it for as long as I could, but due to actually knowing some real life people (as in, people I can actually smell and taste in the world of flesh) who use MySpace, I've decided to jump on the latest bandwagon. At the very least, it'll give me another link in my favourites to mindlessly prowl in my insomniac boredom. Speaking of which, please give me a look in over at...

http://www.myspace.com/godsbane

I'll be posting stuff in the blog over there as well as here. I know, if I can't do one thing right, I might as well not do two things right at the same time. So hopefully there'll be some cross over of viewers. If you're a MySpace user, feel free to try to get onto my friends list, though it won't matter for the most part, as everything's open for you to comment on anyway.

In other news, I started back at uni this week. It's week two. I missed week one. Stupid fucking internet. You see, I went in and booked my classes for the subjects I was doing. When I went in to my first class, there was nobody there. Seems I'd only booked my tutorial times for the classes I had already missed. Oh joy. I'm still paying for that mistake, but it looks like I'll catch up.

I'm focusing on my Media Production major this semester (and probably will as long as I can, before I have to do some more of my Multimedia major) and I've got a class in Elements of Media and another in Computer Based Video Production for the Web and Multimedia. I only have those two, which is about half of a regular workload. Centrelink has stated that two subjects per semester are all that I am allowed to take on, before they label me as a faker and try to get their money back from me. Because of my depression. But it's working out well, as I don't think I could really handle doing any more work than I already have.

Oh and by the way, any kiddies who are still here after I told you to fuck off or keep your fool mouths shut, let me let you in on a little secret... Highschool and University, are nothing alike! One will not in any way prepare you for the other! And your abilities to cope and excel in highschool will not serve you one jot in university... University is easier than highschool! University is more fun than highschool! Well, it is for me, at least when you do it the way I'm doing it. So if you're having a hard time in highschool like I had. Fuck them all! You'll have a second chance and it'll be ten times better! So don't panic, don't stress and don't let the fuckers crush your spirit.

Sure you'll be in debt for a lot of money until you make enough money to have it taken away from you to pay off your HECS debt, but if you get to that stage, well then the experiment was a success after all, wasn't it?

Wow, I sound far too cheery now, don't I? This is supposed to be a melancholy and jaded look at the world... At least, going by my previous posts it is. Well, that's the joy of my type of madness, sometimes, you have good days.

Well, I've decided not to leave another marathon post like School with Satan again. So I better wrap this up.

If you check my blog over at MySpace, you'll see that it already has a first post, which includes a video hosted on YouTube. You'll also notice that it's a lot shorter than the regurgitations I post here on Blogger. And it's a lot less deep. So, rest assured, I'll post all my most meaningful stuff here and all my shallow pulp over there. So you can decide which one you'd rather read. Of course, if you're reading this blog post a long time after it was written, having just discovered it, you have another treasure trove of my literary genius waiting for you over there. Or maybe not, at any rate, you-then will be in a better position to say then me-now.

So. Go look. I'm not going to say anything more until you do. Starting... Now.

School with Satan.

2006-02-06T01:53:00.000+10:00

I've been thinking about my highschool years over the last couple of days. My (ex)wife and I were talking about it last night. It's funny, she asked me about the subject even though I hadn't said anything, but I had just started thinking about it recently. She is psychic, of course, so it's not really that surprising.

The thing we started talking about was my ten year highschool reunion, that happened a couple of years ago. My (ex)wife, who was at that time just my wife, came along for support - not only at the reunion but also braving my mother's presence once more. And last night we talked about what had happened that night of the reunion and back-tracked to what had happened to me at school.

I guess I should fill you guys in on some of the back-story. You see, my mother is quite religious. She doesn't go to church, but that's only because she thinks she can't go to church, as she's going to go to Hell because she married my father. She is a Seventh Day Adventist. When I was growing up in England, there were no SDA schools where I could be sent. I was sent to whatever was the most religious school that could be substituted for the real true faith. And for the last few years before I left the UK I went to Camborne Church of England School.

My mother believed very strongly in the Devil and in Hell and she felt that almost everyone would be going there when they died. She believed in Demons who would both tempt you and torment you in order to corrupt and take possession of your soul. And she believed that life was a slippery path around damnation and that even the slightest slip or concession on this path would mean a certain fall into the Abyss. And she filled my head with this also.

I was intensly afraid of Satan and his horde of fallen angels when I was a child. I would imagine them perched at the foot of my bed, waiting to slip under the covers to violate me. I would cover my mouth whenever it was opened and say a little prayer when I sneezed as the Devil can enter your body that way (it's why people say "bless you" when it happens). All things considered, I was pretty messed up.

Now the school I went to was Church of England, which some people called Anglican, but they didn't call themselves that and I wasn't allowed to either. I'm guessing it's kind of like when you call Mormons, Mormons. They smile and nod with good humour, but make sure later that their kids know that they are really members of the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" or LDS for short.

What was strange about this CofE school is that they were very much about hellfire and brimstone (which Anglicans rarely are). They did however encourage questions and delighted in providing explainations about God and the afterlife and about other things, such as the Fall of Lucifer.

I was very interested in Lucifer and his later persona, Satan. Very interested, because I was terrified of him and all he represented. So I asked a lot of questions about him and of the war in Heaven and his Fall and imprisonment. I also asked a lot about his eventual future return from exile, when he would rule the Earth and the world as we know it would become hell for thousands of years. All in all, I wanted to know everything about him and his kind - his weaknesses, his limitations, the rules that bound him, and how to be safe from his temptations and his attacks on my soul.

"Know thine enemy" they say... They also say "you become the thing you fear the most."

Well, many years later I moved to a town called Bundaberg, in Queensland. The best religious school there was apparently Shalom Catholic College. When I finished primary school, I was sent there, to be educated as a good Christian should.

I was out of place right from the first day. 99% of the students who attended Shalom were wealthy and 99% were Catholic. I was neither.

My problems started from grade eight, but got really bad in grade nine. I've never handled school well. Even in England, I hated every minute of it. But Shalom is where I can trace most of my defining disorders to, that weren't picked up at home.

My fear of the Devil and all things Demonic made me continue asking questions about him. And when teachers didn't know how to respond, I'd fill them in on what I knew, to see if they could add anything to arsenal of knowledge. I think what surprised them most was that my knowledge of the prince of darkness was so extensive. I was sent to Christian Brothers to be set straight, and I'd be teaching them a thing or two. I even read some of the Encyclopaedia Catholicum when nobody had the answers to my questions and learned even more about fighting against Satan from the Catholic point of view.

So they made a logical assumption about me. I must be a Satanist.

They started saying that I was turning to dark and blasphemous routes for theological discussion. They even used words like "heresy" and "sacrilige" about the things I said, which were things that had come from their books, their own scripture.

Though I had always been bullied, the bullying in grade nine doubled, then tripled. Worse yet, the teachers turned a blind eye to it. I even remember one teacher saw me getting beaten up and he simply watched it happen then went about his business. Perhaps worst of all, the bullies had a new nickname for me.

They called me, "Satan."

Grades nine and ten at Shalom were hellish for me. As well as assaults from other students, many of my teachers also regarded me with disdain or outright hostility. I was ridiculed and humiliated inside and outside the class rooms. And my parents did nothing. My father thought of me as weak and cowardly. I was always sensitive and I cried, something my father abhored. At the time I idolised my father and I thought he loved me well enough. But he didn't do anything to stop the abuse I was recieving.

Much later I found out a lot more about how my father regarded me. When he became a full blown alcoholic he told me in drunken rants what his true opinion was. He felt I was not worthy of his name or reputation. He had sired three boys, but only one of them would be a man, he told me. I only knew of my half brother in England and myself, so it was interesting that he told me that this third son, who I'd never heard of and who my father seemed to have had nothing much to do with, was the least disappointing of the lot of us.

Now, looking back on it, I can see a different reason for his not stepping in when I was being abused. It was the same reason he had allowed my half brother and two half sisters to be abused at the hands of my mother, before child protection services threatened to take them into care and my father conceded to have them sent away to boarding school instead. It was cowardice. A lack of conviction and the urge to put himself before the protection of his own children. And to think, all these years, we all thought we were undeserving of his legacy.

My mother on the other hand thought the business at Shalom was all my fault. She had recieved word of my diabolical inclinations and felt I had been somehow touched by the Devil.

When I was young, my mother worked as an usher at a local cinema. Around that time she saw the Omen and the Exorcist and became convinced that they were messages to her about me. Apparently she thought I was either possessed or the Anti-Christ, due to having an atheist for a father (again, the reason my mother was hellbound). It took a long time for my father to convince her otherwise and prevent me from being exorcised or even murdered by my mother. So my father told me in a slurred drunken stupor.

So when the reports came back from Shalom and the gossip circles in town, the news came as no surprise to my mother. I guess I'm lucky she didn't call the priests or stab me with a knife shaped like a crucifix. I think she just felt it was too late by then anyway and she'd see me in Hell.

For whatever their reasons, I was alone and had to deal with the bullying, the abusive teachers and being likened to the being I feared the most in all creation, by myself.

Then something strange happened. I started fearing Christians more than their antithesis. The boys and girls, men and women, who all proclaimed alliance with God were the ones who wronged me the most. And as I turned my hatred towards them, I didn't care so much about Devils and Demons and how I had been counted with them in their number. And the one thing about me, as misconstrued as it might be, that still gave me some degree of defence from these God-awful people was the fear they had - that perhaps I was actually linked to the thing they called me. That I had currency with Satan himself.

So around the end of grade ten, I went with it.

Instead of taking the beatings and name callings and protesting my innocence, I threatened them with their own misconceptions of me. I let them think I knew spells and sorcery. I let them believe I practiced human sacrifice and that I would come for them soon enough. I let them know I wasn't afraid of them anymore, for I had a powerful protector, one who fought a lot dirtier than their God. And all I had to do, was stop denying all the things they said about me.

So I became "Satan" for them. I researched more and more about the character, to better play the role for them. And despite all my devout Christian upbringing, I found that the things I read were very interesting. I learned more about Paganism and Wicca, Qabbalism and Tantric Hinduism. And Demonlogy, the most I learned was everything I could about Demonology. And I would regurgitate this knowledge at anyone who asked me about it.

But what served me the most during this time was the stuff that got me into trouble in the first place. All the Christian doctrine that the Catholics and Protestants believed in, even though they had never heard of it. I knew so much of their religion that they couldn't debate it with me. And for someone to know so much about God and still (seemingly) choose his opposing alternative, it filled them with about as much fear as they had filled me over the years.

The rumours about me were fascinating and I started some of my own to keep the mill turning. Some said I killed babies and ate them. Someone said I cut disks of bone from the skulls of corpses and had them festooned around my bedroom - that one was actually dropped into a suggestion box at the school and I was confronted by the vice principal about it, I offered to take him on the tour, if he wished. Some said they had seen my powers and gave eyewitness accounts of my sorcery.

I started having younger students come up to me and ask me to put curses on people. They offered to pay me and would do whatever I said they needed to. I'd turn down their offers (I was still a little naive back then). Half the people still hated me, but the other half were, well, curious I suppose.

As I went into grade eleven, the bullying was cut dramatically. Not entirely from my new Satanic facade. For a large part it was because all the people who beat me up were usually at least two years older than me and they'd either graduated or dropped out of highschool by this time. But the teachers at Shalom, they hated me with far greater ferocity.

Many just had issue with me personally. I was a right bastard during this time and I had made it my goal to drive whoever fucked with me to tears, to drink, or to an early grave if I could. And in the battle of wits, so many of my opponents came to the fight unarmed. The establishment however I think had originally condoned my being bullied in the hopes that it might scare me straight. But now, I was a confirmed blasphemer, a heretic and I seemed to be growing in my arrogance. The school faculty, as a whole, were called to task to combat the "Carl Problem."

This is not to say that every teacher at Shalom fell in, rank and file, behind the cause. I had some very good teachers who stood up for me, under great pressure from those around them and at possible detriment to their careers.

The good guys included:
The Fresta's, Mr. and Ms. (related, but not married to one another) provided me with some of my happiest memories at that school. Mr. Fresta was a brilliant science teacher who actually taught me how to hold a pen/pencil properly. He encouraged me greatly, but then I think he encouraged everyone, he was just that great a teacher. Ms. Fresta scared the hell out of me in grades eight and nine - and with good reason, she was intense and never took shit from anyone. But I had the pleasure of having her again in grade eleven English. I was terrified at frist, but then she read some of the fiction I had written and told me I had a gift. She gave me a whole lot more space in which to express myself than I had seen her give anyone else. And it worked. She's also an accomplished writer and published poet... If she ever gets to read this blog, she might throw her hands up in dismay... Or elation. It's hard to guess which.

Mrs. Durnsford, who had a strange sort of patience for my disruptions. It's weird, whenever I got in over my head and went to her, things seemed to smooth over somehow, though I have no idea what she did. She also had a love for guiding students that seemed to be dead in almost every other teacher at that school. She was perhaps the teacher I'd want most to have as a friend in the real world.

Mr. Downey, my grade twelve biology teacher. He was always a cool guy. He had long hair in a ponytail and facial hair. When Shalom was trying to get me to cut my hair and shave (what a pathetic form of rebelion that was), I'm sure he was getting pressured to do the same to set an example. He let us order pizza delivery, right to the class room, a couple of times. He played guitar on slow days and let us do what we wanted after we'd finished tests for the year. But the real reason he's on this list, is because of a certain biology test (see below).

Mrs. Cheng. Though I had so little to do with Mrs. Cheng, who mainly taught home economics, she helped me greatly. For it was she who offered to stand up for me against the powers that be. It was Mrs. Cheng who was prepared to appear as a witness for me if I was to take some of the abuses I suffered at that school, to a higher power. She saw me being abused one day and approached me, saying she would act on my behalf if I sought legal action. My God, I wish I'd taken her up on that offer. But back then, I didn't do things that way, I handled everything myself. It's a pity I didn't listen to her.

And now, for some of the bad guys:
C.C. One of my old maths teachers. She was highly strung, with a chip on her shoulder and something to prove. Of course, all that aggression and bitchiness might have been hormonal. Lord knows she had a thick luxurient moustache for a youngish woman. She also had one very bushy, black haired armpit. I say one, because she shaved the other one. We never found out why she shaved one and not the other, though it was the source of much amusement.

When I had C.C. for maths, she was constantly shouting, screeching and basically yapping like some breed of small dog. She disliked most people, but took special interest in hating me. It was far too easy to get her irritated however and became boring after a while, her emotional state was so volatile that the tiniest push would send her over the edge. I don't think I ever saw her happy and know for a fact I never saw her act in a civil manner to another human being. It was widely known that she was having an affair with a Mr.H that I never had many dealings with. I think I was the only person who ever asked her outright though. I had seen them together in town leaving his house, so I asked her why she was there and she screeched that she wasn't. Then she threw me out of her class, again. Maybe he was married.

My biggest argument with C.C. relates to a certain biology test. In grade twelve I sat for a biology exam. I was quite good at the subject and knew, when I left the class room that I had done well. When I got the test back, it had been marked by C.C. Why? I don't know. But she had failed my test. She had also written quite a few comments on it, that I didn't understand the basics and that I shouldn't be doing this subject, etc. I was as angry as hell and I confronted C.C. with my test and asked her if she stood by the mark she had given me. She snapped at me that I had no right to ask that and that that was the only mark I was going to get for that test.

I decided to test that very theory. I went to Mr. Downey and asked him if he could go through my test and tell me what he thought of the marking. I explained, if he agreed that it was fair, I'd accept the mark and say no more about it. Of course I knew what the reaction would be.

Mr. Downey got back to me very quickly. He said he was appauled that someone would do that to a student and that the marking was not only harsh, but so obviously incorrect that C.C. would be in a steaming pile of trouble when he took this up with the rest of the staff. I got my mark corrected to about a 95% I think... And then... Nothing more. Mr. Downey wasn't allowed to talk about it, but you could see that he had been given a sharp yank of the leash.

Now Mr. R.A. seemed like a nice guy. He was a younger teacher, with a good sense of humour. He seemed to not take notice of the bullshit that was going on in the school. I thought he was actually a cool dude. Then one day I saw a different side of him. When we were doing a cross-country run around the school, through the bushland that surrounds Shalom. I didn't run a lot and had asthma when I was that age, so a four kilometre run wasn't my event.

I was coming last, had a stitch and was wheezing in the cold air. R.A came up the track behind me and I felt a hand hit me in the middle of my back. R.A. pushed me, nearly pushing me over. I looked back in disbelief and then looked around to see it was just me and him. He told me to hurry up, but it wasn't encouragement, it sounded more like a bully taunting his prey. I found out it was just that when he pushed me again a few strides further along. He pushed me three or four times and I nearly fell.

I made it to within sight of the finish line with my lungs freezing and my legs burning. "Come on," he said and he started giggling, "come on." He grabbed the back of my shorts and ripped them upwards, he jutted out his thumb and stabbed it into the small of my back. He grabbed a fistfull of the back of my shirt and with my shirt and shorts he lifted me up and threw my forwards over the line.

I turned on him, my fists raised up, ready to fight him. He laughed and pushed my shoulder. I grabbed his hand and he wrenched his wrist around mine grabbing me again and tossing me back. "Come on," he said again, "hit me. Go on, I fucking dare you. Hit me. I'll knock you down and have you expelled before you even wake up." I believed him.

He laughed and faked a throw at me then barged past and went back to the school. I felt like crying, but didn't. Looking over I saw someone from the other side of the oval walking up to me. It was Mrs. Cheng. She'd seen the whole thing. The rest, I've already said. R.A. is still at Shalom, my (ex)wife found his name on their website. He has a very good position in the faculty, so I guess he did notice all that bullshit afterall and used it to his advantage.

The worst person I had to deal with, however, was A.H. my speech and drama teacher for most of the years I had at Shalom. Despite all the physical and emotional abuse I suffered at the hands of students and teachers at Shalom, this vile piece of shit was the worst. The lowest, most pathetic, bitchy, manipulative, lying egomanic it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. A.H. was such a miserable, devious psychopath that listing his crimes against me would take a blog entry all of its own. One day, I might write that entry.

There are quite a few others who came and went over my time at Shalom. If, by some miracle, somone who was a teacher of mine at Shalom reads this blog and you don't see your name, well, you should know in your heart how you treated me and how you deserve to be remembered by me. Post a comment if you'd like.

If you're still reading, I'll now return to the ten year high school reunion. You will probably be better able to understand the situation as I describe it now.

The reunion was organised by a friend of mine. I abused the hell out of him while we were at school, but only really because he genuinely seemd to enjoy it and always came back for more. He came out a while ago, I'm not sure if he knows that he was never quite "in" to begin with.

It was never certain to most people whether or not "Satan" was going to attend the reunion. But much as I hated Shalom, I did develop a taste for the notoriety of the persona, so I decided to see how people felt about me ten years later.

The catch was, when my R.S.V.P. was eventually confirmed, there was only one table left - the teachers table. It seems that even after all our fallings out, God still had a special place for me... As the punchline for some of his best jokes.

I got along with few of my fellow classmates, but of my teachers even fewer. However, I realised I'd love to see some of these old traumas face to face and see who blinks first. So I await the hour of truth with great anticipation.

It was amazing seeing all the kiddies in my class again. They all looked so old. Well, older, and I guess so did I. Some people came up to me, some delighted, some shocked, some had heard I'd killed myself, others that I was in jail. Some called me "Carl" and a few called me "Satan," which warmed my heart.

And then I took my seat.

At the table, was the Principal when I finished my final year. He was a Christian Brother who always struck me as a bit, funny. He had some very nasty graffiti written about him all over the school when my class came started the twelfth grade. Everybody thought I was behind the graffiti, because someone had spray painted the Virgin Mary statue with a pentagram and the word "Satan". I did nothing to disuade this rumour, of course.

There was also Mrs. Durnsford, who I flirted with and exagerated my admiration for her to the rank of "crush." She seemed to like that, which was good.

There was Brother Rochford, a strange but jolly and harmless Christian Brother who took photos of everything. His nickname was Brother Fuji, he had three cameras around his neck for most of the time we were at school. I remember him taking photos of me on the first day I ever set foot on Shalom soil. Those photo's were in a slideshow, along with what seemed like every one of the other hundred photos he had taken of each and everyone of us.

And then, there was A.H. in the flesh. He looked sick. A weak and broken man. His wife had died of cancer a few years before the reunion and the loose skin on his bones, the withered creased face seemed to hide a sort of self pity and defeat. What it didn't hide was the fear in his eyes when he saw that I was not dead, not in jail, not too psychologically scarred to make an appearance. I was there and sitting right across the table from him.

I stared at him while I chatted with the others, I don't know if anyone saw how I regarded that man with defiant contempt. I'm guessing he knew though.

I was going to take him aside, take him back to when we last met. I was going to ask him, why he, a grown man would dedicate so much time and waste so much energy to test his will against a teenaged boy. Why did he compete with me, someone between a child and a man with such ferocity and with such bitterness. I was going to face him as a full grown adult.

But he had already gone. He left less than an hour after everybody had arrived. Sneaking away before the storm broke.

I suppose it was all he could do. Even half grown, I still won as many victories over him as he did over me. And if I could meet his challenges as a teenager, is it any wonder he crept away?

I'd still like that final showdown though. With him, and with all of them. Success is the best revenge, however. Oh, to be rich and famous and see their fucking faces when they hear. One day, if I'm successful at screenwriting or directing or anything like this, I hope they call me back to Shalom as a guest speaker. I might even refer to this blog for notes.

Insomnia, how to be a burnt out loner.

2006-02-04T04:50:00.000+10:00

It's five o'clock in the morning. And, like many fives o'clock, I'm sitting at my computer, wide awake. I check other peoples blogs, the forums I post on and anything else I can think of to try to abate the boredom that's giving me that numb, full of cotton wool behind the eyeballs feeling that I get.

But no one is responding to my oh so witty comments on the forums. No one is updating their blogs, like they have real lives and aren't here just to entertain me. And there is only so much YouTube and Google Video trawling you can do before you feel like you're just watching any mindless junk that comes up in a search.

So, leading by example, here I am. I'm posting on my blog.

I'm reluctant to do it. I get nervous about posting. It's not because I don't have time. I'm trying to kill time if anything. And university doesn't start again till March. No, I have a weird sort of performance anxiety about blogging. Partially because I want every entry in this online diary for the voyeurs to be literary gold. I want you all to know how clever I am and embrace me and love me and shower me with approval. But mostly, because I'm scared that if I do write something down, I might have to do it again! It might be expected of me! And that would mean, well, it'd be like a chore.

All of the jobs I've ever had... Um, one-two-three... four. Of the four jobs I've had, the one bad thing they all had in common, the thing I hated about all of them, was repetition. Having to do something again and again until all the joy had gone from the exercise. I would burn out after a very short period of time and it would become almost painful to do the same task once more. I'd avoid my work, make a half-arsed job of it, I'd start feeling like I was falling asleep and I'd be filled with that gnawing dread. The one you get when you know you're going to be fired, but you're worried that it might just be wishful thinking.

I've been like this since school. I think on the second day of school, I might have looked up at my mother and said, "what, I have to do this again? How many times will I have to come back here? Five? ...More than five? ...Ten? Because ten times is going to be tough for me. Nine more days of this and I might start to crack!"

It's strange because in many respects I'm a creature of habit. Pretty much every year of my life I'd try something new for lunch, then I'd eat that exact same lunch, every day for a year. But then food was never something I really thought about too much. I'd forget to eat when I was younger. Literally going for a couple of days before I'd realise I hadn't eaten anything and I still wasn't hungry. I wasn't anorexic, just absent minded. And the signals that the stomach sent to my brain were not understood when they got there, being hungry and being too full felt much the same to me. Not anymore though, now I eat a lot! Sometimes twice or even three times a day!

My insomnia is also something that I've had since childhood. My parents used to hate it because I'd come into their room complaining that I can't sleep. And unlike other kids who could be out like a light when they got a glass of warm milk or bedtime story, nothing sent me off to the land of Nod. Also, other kids had good nights and bad nights, I was every night. And other kids grew out of it too. Here I am, five thirty in the morning twenty-five years later, tapping away at a keyboard about how I've always had insomnia.

But let me say something about all this: I'm not even sure it is insomnia. I can sleep up to twelve or more hours a day. But the key word in that sentence is "day." You see, I can't sleep at night, and I'm rarely fully awake during the day. So is that insomnia? Or is that just morbidly nocturnal? I used to just say I was nocturnal, but then people would think I'm a wanker. They look at you like you sleep in a coffin by day and read Anne Rice books all night with an I.V. drip of espresso in your arm, trying to be cool and gothic. It's not some fashionable lifestyle choice I've made, it is something to do with biorhythms or cycles or pineal glands or something. But I moved from England to Australia when I was ten years old and I had the same problem there as I do here. Daylight shuts me down, night time boots me up.

It's almost dawn and I'm starting to get a bit drowsy. Which brings me to my third problem with blogging. I have to finish these posts somehow. I have to wrap up the whole sentiment with some all encompassing conclusion somehow. I mean, sure, I could just say, "fuck ya's all, I'm going to bed," but that's not me. I have to be clever, remember? I'm showing off how articulate and urbane I can be. I have to be witty and charming and make you come back for more. So all these other poor saps all over the world can check my blog in their ever repeating circuit around their favourites list and be entertained. I have a duty to make... Ah... You know what?

Fuck ya's all, I'm going to bed!

It all began (again) one night...

2006-01-24T04:16:00.000+10:00

Okay, this is my blog.

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Carl, but as you can see, I go by Godsbane most of the time. Almost everyone who knows me on the net only knows me as Godsbane... Or GB, or Bane, or Godsby - as someone nicknamed me. Christians seem more comfortable with saying "G-Bane" than risk blasphemy. So you can call me any of those or anything witty you can come up with - but Carl if you get to know me. If you read this blog and think that perhaps you do know who I am, please send me a private message and maybe we'll catch up.

I think you can see from the above pargraph that I'm really fucking anal about shit that probably doesn't matter. Don't worry, I'm not always like that, sometimes I'm really easy going. Sometimes I'm a real fucking mess.

That next paragraph was meant more to keep NetNanny and CyberSitter and all those other no kids allowed programs away from me. If you are under 18 and you are still reading this, either go away or don't tell your parents you're coming to this blog. It's for mature people... Well, maybe not. It's for people who don't get offended and bitch and moan and then keep on reading just so they can give me a hard time about how vile I am. If you are easily offended, or even moderately capable of being offended it's probably better for both of us if you just FUCK OFF NOW!

So, lets have a little more info about me... I currently have a sort of fantasy that I might one day become a screenwriter. I'll fill you in on how that's going for me later. But before you sigh, roll your eyes and click away from this page, let me assure you...

This is not another screenwriting blog!

I have depression. Don't make that face, it's not that bad. I used to be manic depressed, but now I just have depression - the difference is that I managed to control that "manic" side of the disease. So now I'm "uni-polar" and I'll talk about that over the coming weeks. But...

This is not another living-with-depression blog!

I live with my ex-wife and some other guy. No, she's not with the other guy... No, I'm not with the other guy! No, I'm not with my ex-wife. It's complicated. And maybe I'll talk about that, or maybe I won't. Lets just say, she's my best friend and I love her dearly. The other guy is... a friend. And sometimes I want to kick the living shit out of him. Before you ask...

This is not another bitching-about-my-whacky-housemates blog.

I suppose, this blog might have some degree of cross over with all those above styles of bloggism. But it'll also have accounts of my constant struggles with Centrelink (Australian Social Security). My rise and fall through university. My constant complaining about my migraines. My late night, insomniac rants. My general disgust in politics and humanity in general. My sometimes controversial, often unintelligible, philosophical and religious theories. My memories of an unhappy childhood. And my aspirations for a better future.

All in all... It's just another blog.

Welcome to My Inner Monologue.