Said Young Man then walks away, as Avril follows him out of his apartment, and down the street singing about how adamant she is that she has no interest in him, and wants nothing to do with him.

Of course there was much mirth at the sheer misguidedness of this video, the comical lack of self-awareness that it demonstrated.

So much, in fact, that I never watched to the end of the video.

Specifically the part where Young Man turns around to see an empty street, revealing to the still-chuckling audience that Avril has in fact not been following him, that he is only dreaming/fantasising about her being obsessed with him, thereby proving her point.

I have been, in the vernacular of the youth, ‘owned’ by an Avril Lavigne video.

Of course I immediately went out and bought a copy of her latest album Under My Skin, because I know when I’m beaten, and I’m not going to begrudge her the spoils of victory.

They say music can alter moods and talk to you
Well can it load a gun up for you, and cock it too?
Well if it can, then the next time you assault a dude
Just tell the judge it was my fault and I'll get sued

-Eminem

The teacher in the room next to me who’s been at my school for twenty odd years has finally had enough of the shit and the politics, and has accepted a job at another school. This means that after my whopping tenure of just under three years - not all of it full time – I am now the longest serving member of the English department.

Hey, King of Hell still means you get to be King, and it’s good to be King...

Read an article in Time magazine this week saying that blogs were the way of the future. I reckon this place is of great social import, and I'm sure that the fine upstanding citizens who have come here in the last few weeks searching for 'caught jerking off by workmate', 'girl on boy action' and of course, the perennial favourite 'www.gangs.com' (which brings more seekers to this page in one day than any of the other posts do in a month) agree with me.

In a point not as unrelated as you might think, I saw a preview for the new Lindsay Lohan vehicle; Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen. The website address listed for more info was teenagedramaqueen.com.

I want you all to do a quick scan of the recent updates on blogger and livejournal, and then tell me with a straight face that you're not just as surprised as I was that the domain name teenagedramaqueen.com was still available...

Works for me.

It’s my one major right wing vice hidden among my mostly socialist leanings. I’m firmly in the ‘fracture for fracture’ camp in a way that would make the Old Testament God say “Hold on, dude, calm down a little bit…” I can’t really be bothered going into the whys and wherefores, so I’ll just repost an old thing from somewhere else that sums up why I think all criminals should be locked in small dark cages until they die.

....

There are two possible ways that society exists: Either we don't have rights, or we do.

If we don't, then I have no right to expect to be able to walk the streets of my neighbourhood safely.

So, one night, local goat worrier Dodgy Bob MacMayday drags me off the street and beats me brain damaged because, hell, I don't know, I looked like a fag or some other perfectly justifiable reason for belting hell out of a passerby.

Well, sucks to be me. I have no rights, boo hoo. We all live happily ever after.

Of course, that means that when my cultist army comes round to Bob's place for revenge, he has no right to safety, and must simply accept that my minions are going to kill his goats, feed them to him, and bugger him with a chainsaw in the name of vengeance.

Option 2 is that there exist as societal constructs, certain rights.

Say then, that I DO have the right to wander to the dairy unmolested.

Bob sticks a screwdriver into my brain for whatever reason, and we have two possibilities:

Possibility the first - Bob, having violated my rights, gets put in a cage. It's a nice cage - it's dry, and we feed him. Sure, the other animals may bugger him onto a prolapse, or maybe, if he gets lippy, the guards will be a bit zealous, but, you know, they're not meant to.

Just like he wasn't meant to leave me lying on the street with my head juices pooling on the cement.

Sucks to be Bob.

Possibility the second - Bob gets a free pass for a few years stay at a nice walled resort where he gets hot and cold running hugs, hand holding, sundry educational programs and resources, vocational training etc.

Menwhile, I can't go to the toilet or tie my shoes without one of my cultists wiping the drool from my face. And just enough of my mind remains for me to remember that, hey, it wasn't always like this - I used to be an intelligent, self-sufficient person.

Bob is having thousands of dollars and as many man-hours spent reassuring him that he's a good person.

I have an incontenance diaper and a pack of friends who don't visit any more because they can't handle.

Five years later, he gets released, put into a job set up for him by the Corrections Dept, and is earning a nice wage and feeling productive.

I still have my diaper.

Now, this means that Bob has a better life than I do - a more privaleged life. And he earned this privalege by violently ruining my life.

Is that justice?

I don't remember my dreams, not in any specific detail anyway. Probably for the best, as I clearly remember the one I had last night, where someone was using me as a motorcycle. Given that I am, in fact, not a motorcycle, you can imagine I found the whole experience quite unnerving, even in my dream.

That's it, from now on, no more not eating junk food before bed...

But it has bugged me, if only slightly, that all of the strange, fantastic visions I had as a young person had given way to endless dreams about the minutiae of my day job. I mean, certainly, it makes my martyr complex feel like it’s earning it’s keep, but part of me missed those dreams.

So, after the motorcycle thing of the last post (which was work related – a colleague was driving me – no I’m not analysing it, and I don’t think you should either…) I then wake up remembering last nights dreams. Almost all involved me going on duty and futilely trying to convince my seniors not to wag.

Then, as I lay there, the details came back to me about the other dream; the one where I was bleeding on a raft trying to do laundry, and my companion ripped off a bit of his own skin under the mistaken impression it contained some manner of laundry power. The extra blood and viscera made the shark filled waters a very interesting place to be. Once we had landed we discovered that the house we were next to was owned by some mask wearing cultist freakshow who wanted his seven foot tall mutant son to kill us because his other son had given us vitamins.

I guess that I am still having the sort of dreams I used to, but for some reason, most of the time I’m only remembering the school ones.

On the one hand, this is good news. On the other hand, sitting around with the Year 13s chatting about wagging was a pleasant dream that made me feel happy. Being in shark infested waters, with a feeling of déjà vu so strong that I broke the fourth wall to figure that this dream had happened before and had ended badly...

Oh well, better take more of those pills. Or did I have to take less? This could explain a lot...

I choose to respect them because they are three wise old men of hiphop who have clearly said “Hey, our new member is an impossibly athletic girl who wears an unfeasibly small amount of clothes. Lets the three of us, when we’re next to her, take to wearing golfing outfits and see how long it takes people to notice.”

It’s been three videos so far and no one’s said a word...

Now, that is all pretty responsible behaviour in the context of my peer group, but more and more I’ve been realising that my peer group aren’t necessarily the best yardstick to gauge this sort of thing...

However, I read in today’s paper that apparently there are a lot of people like this. Social anthropologists haven’t decided on a name yet, but are wavering between kidults, adultlescents or rejuvinalia.

Turns out I don’t have a problem. Society has a problem.

If society really wants to fix me, it can put the effort in - I’m too busy listening to my Avril Lavigne CD and watching Tranformers on DVD.

There is one time that flashes into my mind every time I am feeling discontent. Sure, when I’m upset or angry at something, I’m usually thinking of the something in question. However, at the end of a bad day, when I have nothing to latch my unhappiness onto, when it’s dark outside, and I have nothing to do but listen to depressing music...

Last year, my favourite student was in hospital. She had been diagnosed with Lymphoma, and the doctors were carrying out a series of lumbar punctures to ascertain what the other mystery illness going along with it might be. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, my student was refusing to go through the painful procedure any more times.

I was going out to the hospital to try and convince her otherwise. It was a long bus trip, to a place I’d never been before. It was getting dark by the time I left, so night had fallen before the trip had finished.

I was reading a book called ‘The End of Alice’. Written by AM Homes, the narrator of this story is a convicted pedophile who is writing to a like minded woman on the outside – a young woman who has written to him looking for tips on preying on young people.

Homes does her best to make the pedophile a sympathetic character, to make him seem like the good guy. She does a scarily good job.

This is the only book I’ve ever read that has sickened me. It was actually hard to read. After a while I was reading it only because I had committed myself to doing so – I’ve never consciously put a book down knowing that I wasn’t going to pick it up again.

Sitting on a bus in the dark, not knowing where I was or how long until my destination, reading a book that made my skin crawl, knowing that the end of the trip heralded the pain racked, cancer ravaged body of a student I loved like she was my daughter...

Thinking too long on this makes me a liar – in reality the pieces didn’t fall exactly like this. Oh, they’re all there, but the order is wrong. It’s not worth explaining in too much detail.

But that’s the image I get in my mind every time I am feeling discontent.

At a guess, this is why my grandfather tells me so many stories about building sheds, laying thousand of kilometers of electric cable across the country and fighting Nazis in Italy, and I spend a lot of time reading books and updating an obscure webjournal...

Insomniac City...

Sitting looking around, I see a preacher. His body is distended and deformed under his clothes. After a while, I realise that he’s not talking about Jesus – he’s screaming and ranting at passers-by about the health system. I know we fucked up the mental health system fifteen years ago, but I thought most of these people had died when they were released into nice, stable community care, or the ‘Tards In Traffic policy that was the closure of over ninety percent of care facilities for the non-broken-headmeat-challenged, or whatever the term was back in the day.

I shouldn’t know that much about something that happened so long ago.

I feel too old.

It’s hard not to feel tired – It’s late, and the preacher is starting to make too much sense, even though I’m pretty sure he hasn’t used real words in almost fifteen minutes.

The neon on the buildings around me is broken, glaring at me in fractured multicolours from a dozen different angles. One of the signs is humming, but is drowned out every time traffic picks up.

I think I know how it feels.

I can’t remember the last time I slept more than an hour at a time. I’ve been reading research that says television stops children from sleeping properly. Near as I could tell from the reports, the concentrated input of too much light and noise convinces the brain that it’s still daylight, so it doesn’t bother producing enough of the sleep hormone melatonin.

Looking around at the neon, the streetlights, the lit-up shopfront displays, hearing the cars, the thumping bass from the nearby bar, the ever more coherent gibberish from the preacher… Connections start being made in my brain, but I don’t think that helps anybody.

I’ve considered sleeping pills, but taking drugs is probably not the best idea when what I’m really wanting is lucidity and for things to become a bit more ordered, the world to be a bit clearer around the edges.

A group of Punks walk past. I scan them briefly for familiar faces, but they all look so young. For a moment, I can see into their minds, but I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be able to, so I look away.

And not dirty in the good way.

I’m not sure I properly understand the biology of it (that can be my next wee project, after looking into pole reversal) but it seemed to be that too much stimulation of the brain vis a vis light and noise pretty much convinced you it wasn’t bedtime yet – sort of the opposite of putting a blanket over a birdcage.

David Icke seems to think that melatonin is related to the part of the brain that controls intuition and the more esoteric parts of the mind. Of course, he also believes that George Bush and Bill Clinton are cousins through an ancient lineage of shape-shifting interdimensional lizard aliens.

For years I have lived on the corner of what is probably one of the busiest suburban intersections on the city, if not the country, with a streetlight and a lit-up billboard shining into my room. Waking up several times in the course of a night is something I take for granted. But before now I never really questioned why.

In desperation for a good night’s sleep last night, I drew the thick curtains the previous occupants of my room installed. I’ve always ignored them because it was too strange trying to sleep in darkness.

I lay there for a while having to get used to not being able to see my surroundings, but then had the best night’s sleep I’ve had in almost as long as I can remember – despite the fact that it only lasted for about five hours.

My flatmate told me her boyfriend turns on his computer before he goes to bed every night and loads up FarCry. He steers his character to the water’s edge and leaves him there. He then goes to sleep listening to the waves.

My flatmate thinks that’s weird, but you know, I think it’s kind of nice...

But you know, I sort of have to, don’t I? What with today, when I overheard the pretty sixteen year old girl telling one of her friends how much she wanted me in her life, and how heavenly her existence would be if only I was

her father.

Hers isn’t up to much apparently, and I’m slightly more understanding in my day to day dealings with her.

Frankly I think it’s a sign of how well I’ve acclimated to my age that I found that immensely flattering.

Of course I still told her to stop sassin’ me and assigned her the homework task of cutting a switch from the whuppin’ tree out back...

The new rule is that if you own more computers than you’ve had girlfriends, you are officially a Nerd™ and the rest of the flat gets to bully you and give you wedgies.

“You know a lot about violence – Help me!”

We’ve been going out of our way to impress the public – The Dean who wears short shorts and a skivvy was dressed in pants and a tie to deal with outsiders (who we’ve very diplomatically stared calling ‘visitors’), the Head students were given flash new blazers (as opposed to their no old blazers) and my war zone of a room was quietly shuffled off the route of the walking tour during the Open Day.

So of course, on the morning of Enrollment Day, what does the front page headline of the local community rag read?

Student stabbed at school.

Alright, in hindsight, it may have been slightly bad form for me to laugh quite as loud as I did in the middle of the staff room, but come on, the secret to comedy is timing, and you’ve got to admit, this was perfect...

Hectic lesson meant that we didn’t have time to be properly introduced before I had to get on with the business of trying to finish an assessment.

After the lesson, she walked up and stared at me.

“You need to be less stressed,” she said in her thick Portuguese accent, reaching out towards my head. I felt a sting as she plucked out one of my white hairs and held it up for me to see.

I know I’m going gray through stress and age, but this, from a student I have never met before, is one the more charmingly direct ways I’ve had it pointed out to me.

Really? Never?

Well, fuck you, I do, so here you go…

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I dunno – In a week where work has kicked me in the stomach and left me reeling for days, it’s some small comfort to know that Cambridge High has finally been sanctioned for it’s shit, shit way of doing things.

The fact that Cambridge is a bit dodgy (in much the same way that the sky is a bit big and the ocean is a bit moist in places) has been pretty much open knowledge for a few years, but it has taken this long for anything to really be done about it.

The Ministry has appointed the heretofore unprecedented job of Limited Statutory Manager – a position that in all but name usurps control from the Board, which can no longer be trusted to work in the best interests of the students.

Hell, I probably shouldn’t be too smug – Having sorted that place out, they’ll be coming for us any day now.

I guess I should be worried about the impending visit (read; audit) from the Education Review Office, but I’m not. I may dodge traffic in my ’76 Dodge Charger on my way to Dodge City, where I work as Sheriff, but I’m still not as dodgy as most of my department...

I just wish I didn’t still feel like I had been kicked in the teeth and told to keep smiling.

Last day of the most brutal week I’ve had in a long time. I’ve been awake for around twenty-one hours, barring the few moments of sleep I got on the bus home and the couple of times I grayed out during Fahrenheit 911.

What remains of my brain is filled with stuff and things all about politics, activism, Michael Moore, George Bush, my flat, school, old friends and whatever else I’ve had to think about recently.

While I could ramble at length on any or all of these topics, each has it’s own reason for not being worth the time expended on such an endeavor. Half are boring. The less dull ones are not fodder for some public webjournal thing (nor a private one for that matter, so they stay in my brain for the time being. Where’s my cutting knife..?). So, instead, I present you with a list that I stole from somewhere on the intermanet.

Thank you and good night...

21 things you’ll never hear a redneck say:

21. Duct tape won't fix that.
20. We don't keep firearms in this house.
19. Has anybody seen the sideburns trimmer?
18. No kids in the back of the pickup, it's just not safe.
17. Wrasslin's fake.
16. Honey, did you mail that donation to Greenpeace?
15. We're vegetarians.
14. Do you think my gut is too big?
13. Honey, we don't need another dog.
12. Too many deer heads detract from the decor.
11. Spittin is such a nasty habit.
10. Trim the fat off that steak.
9. Cappuccino tastes better than espresso.
8. The tires on that truck are too big.
7. I've got it all on the C drive.
6. Would you like your salmon poached or broiled?
5. She's too young to be wearing a bikini.
4. Does the salad bar have bean sprouts?
3. Those shorts ought to be a little longer, Darla.
2. Nope, no more for me. I'm drivin tonight.
1. Checkmate.

I’ve had a full-time job since 2002, and my brother was calling me from the office he’s been in since halfway through last year, but still half of my brain thinks that I’m an unemployed bum.

Stupid imprinting.

ARKANSAS STATE RESIDENCY APPLICATION

Name (last): ________________
Name (first): Billy-_____________

Age: ____

Sex: ____ M _____ F _____ N/A

Shoe Size: ____ Left ____ Right

Occupation: (_)Farmer (_)Mechanic (_)Hair Dresser (_)Unemployed

Spouse's Name: __________________________

Relationship with spouse: (_) Sister (_) Brother (_) Aunt (_) Uncle (_) Cousin (_) Mother (_) Father (_) Son (_) Daughter (_) Pet

Number of children living in household: ___ Number that are yours: ___

Mother's Name: _______________________ Father's Name: _________________(If not sure, leave blank)

Do you (_)own or (_)rent your mobile home? (Check appropriate box)

Total number of vehicles you own ___ Number of vehicles that still crank ___ Number of vehicles in front yard ___ Number of vehicles in back yard ___ Number of vehicles on cement blocks___

Firearms you own and where you keep them: truck ____ bedroom ____ bathroom ____ kitchen ___ shed___

Model and year of your pickup: _________194_

Newspapers/magazines you subscribe to: (_)The National Enquirer (_)TV Guide (_)Soap Opera Digest

Number of times you've seen a UFO ___ Number of times you've seen Elvis ___ Number of times you've seen Elvis in a UFO___

How often do you bathe: (_)Weekly (_)Monthly (_)Not Applicable

Colour of teeth: (_)Yellow (_)Brownish-Yellow (_)Brown (_)Black (_)N/A

How far is your home from a paved road? (_)1 mile (_)2 miles (_)don't know

Q: What do you call a bunch of tractors parked in front of a McDonalds on Friday night in Iowa?
A: Prom

Q: What does a redneck say before he gets injured?
A: “Watch this!”

This guy walks into a bar down in Alabama and orders a mudslide. The bartender looks at the man and says "You're not from round here are ya?"
"No" replied the man, "I'm from Pensylvania." The bartender looks at him and says "Well what do you do in Pensylvania?"

"I'm a taxidermist." said the man. The bartender, looking very bewildered, now asked "What in the world is a tax-e-derm-ist?" The man looked at the bar tender and said "Well, I mount dead animals."

The bartender stands back and hollers to the whole bar which is staring at him "It's okay, boys! He's one of us!"

I had one of those days today. I’ve been having them more and more recently.

Every so often The-Flatmate’s-Idiot-Friend-Who-Tries-To-Talk-
To-Me™ inquires how work is going. Next time he asks I’m just going to shout the following lyrics at him:

Bees in the caramel and I'm not afraid
Surgeons make incisions
What a mess they've made
Tearing at my skin leaving knives in my brain
Stabbing at the voices making me insane

Girls vomit candy and lies that they're fed
Boys whisper lullabies and wet their beds
Eat TV violence on the toast that they spread
Talking with their mouths full here is what they've said

Say Hello to my Little friend
The world is getting ugly and we did it again....
Say Hello to my Little friend
The world is getting ugly and we did it again...
Ohh Uh Ohh The Band Aid only covers the Bullet Hole
Ohh Uh Ohh The Band Aid only covers the Bullet Hole

LA LA LA -LA LA LA LA LA LA-

Spiders in my hair and guns on my mind
Thinking about the people who've been so unkind
If looks could kill them
I might make myself blind
Startled at the reasons that I just can't find
Kids break the dishes they crash on the floor
Parents hate the noise and shove them out the door
Robots steal emotions hide them under their beds
It's gets them so excited
Here is what they've said......

Say Hello to my Little friend
The world is getting ugly and we did it again....
Say Hello to my Little friend
The world is getting ugly and we did it again...
Ohh Uh Ohh The Band Aid only covers the Bullet Hole
Ohh Uh Ohh The Band Aid only covers the Bullet Hole

The Band Aid only covers the Bullet Hole
LA LA LA -LA LA LA LA LA LA- BLAH -BLAH-
BLAH -BLAH BLAH BLAH-BLAH-BLAHHHHHH.

-Band Aid Covers the Bullet Hole, Scarling

So a quick game of hangman last period Friday to refresh my Year 13s about the wedding procession of Peleus and Thetis.

Peleus was done, and we were up to T_ _ t _ _

Student 1 “Titties!”
Long pause...
Me “See, every so often when I’m with my Year 11 class and I’m berating your girlfriend about miscellaneous things, the subject of you comes up, and she asks me: ‘Why are you down on us going out?’ But you see, I can’t tell her, because she’s only fifteen, and the conversation would need to have at least an R16 rating! Now guess some damn letters!”
Student 2 “S?”
Me “Yep.”
Student 1 “It is titties!”
Miscellaneous guesses get all of the letters.
Me “Peleus and Thetis.”
Student 1 “That’s easy to remember; You just need to remember ‘Penis’ and ‘Titties’”
Far longer pause...
Me “...AND NOW THEY WILL!”

...

I’d just like to clarify that I am not having a mental breakdown, so all of you counting your winnings from the deadpool can put them back in the jar and go about your business. You'll know when it happens.

...

One of my friends flipped off a Nun today. The last three weeks may have been some special hell, and I’m not sure I’ll have a weekend for the next eight or nine days (which will probably be the next time I sleep, at this rate), but the fact that, hell, one of my friends flipped off a Nun, well, that makes life a good place to be.

I’m not going to claim any street-creder-than-thou sort of thing, but I’ve spent my time around people fucking themselves up on things of dubious legality. Of course it wasn’t like my living room suddenly turned into Trainspotting or anything, but, well, the two on the landing outside my room are currently hyperventilating out of a brightly coloured balloon. And yes I know that it’s filled with some piss-weak mood-altering chemical or another, but for fucks sake, a yellow balloon? When this is how you start, what constitutes the hard stuff – using a Barbie straw to snort glitter off the back of My Little Pony while mainlining sandwiches-that-have-had-the-crusts-cut-
off-them?

Dammit – In my day drug use had a certain gravitas.

Bloody kids.

Yes, technically it was my account. However if, some years ago, when I was setting it up, the bank teller had shown the fresh faced young man with his smooth unruined brain what he would become, and had asked; “Do you want that to have access to all the money you’re going to work so hard for?” then honestly, the answer would probably have been no...

Sideshow Bob "How can one man have so many enemies?"

Homer "I’m a people person. Who drinks."

In a perfect universe “TS Eliot” would be “toilets” backwards. But it is an imperfect universe. It is flawed. It has tears and holes and big gaps of nothing, and a strange fungus, called life, which begins to grow wherever there is water. So sadly it’s only “toilest” backwards which is not as much fun.

All these years, I thought I was the only one! Since high school I’ve lamented the one misplaced ‘S’ that reduced Eliot’s name to a mere anagram of toilets, rather than the word itself reversed.

Finally, I'm not alone!

I say ‘someone’ because I’m buggered if I can remember his name...

I remember what, to the best of my knowledge, was my first encounter with him, a few years back. He ran up to me in town, full of enthusiasm, waxing emotional about how long it had been since we had seen each other.

Now, it wasn’t like I had no idea who he was – he looked kind of familiar, and there were subtle clues that told me the mutual acquaintances we would have had back when I was at university. So I figured out the general malaise in which I might have come across him, but that didn’t explain how close he seemed to think we were.

Strangely, this isn’t entirely uncommon. Back at university I was, apparently, one of the People-You-See-Around, you know the ones. So over the years I’ve had various and sundry people come up and say “Yeah, you’re that guy from uni, ay?” Also, a lot of people over the years have assumed that, because they know who I am (by sight at any rate), I will know who they are. Of course, due to the complete obliviousness with which I shamble through life, the complete opposite is true – by and large I don’t notice things or people unless they are directly pointed out to me. Quite a pleasant way of living really – I’m still noticing new and interesting things about the street I’ve lived on for the last four years... The upshot of this of course is that every few months someone I’ve never seen before will start a friendly conversation with me like we were old acquaintances, and I’ll eventually figure out that they’re my next-door neighbor, or they were in a tutorial with me five years ago, or we take the same bus every morning.

Anyhoo, once or twice a year I run into this guy; he gushes about how good it is to see me and I struggle to remember his name (I usually fail, but sometimes he’s with a friend who’ll address him or something equally as convenient).

So the other night he scribbled down his contact details (which helpfully included his name) and said we really must catch up, because you know, we don’t see each other enough these days. In fact, we should go one better – we should round up the old gang, because we never get together anymore; and he proceeded to reel off half a dozen names that I’ve never heard before.

Now, I’m not one to look a gift friend in the mouth or anything, but I’m sort of wondering where I was for all the time this guy and I spent together when we were younger.

To say nothing of “the old gang”...

The only theory that makes any sense is that there must be some kind of alternate reality that one or other of us has accidentally slipped out of without noticing.

Presumably in this alternate reality a version of me (without a goatee, so he’ll be the Good One™) is rushing up to this guy every six months to go through this:

“Mate! How’s it going? Good to see you!”
“Who are you?”
“Man, we fought in the war together. I saved your life!”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“Dude, I married your sister!”

And so on...

It’s the only logical explanation.

A worrying precedent is being set here; Mean Girls impressed the hell out of me, and 13 Going On 30 was actually good enough that some parts broke out of being “not-as-shit-as-I-was-expecting” and actually floated up to “good”.

There are two possibilities: Either Hollywood is getting more intelligent and putting together cleverer and more subversive family movies, or I’m a Great Big Pussy who has lost every sense of edginess I used to be able to delude myself that I had...

If anyone cares to speculate on which of these two options is indeed the case, write your answers on the back of a postcard, and go fuck yourselves.

So, looking for a link to the movie Dodgeball that I could throw up, I come across the actual site for the International Dodge Ball Federation.

I think I need a holiday. Anyone want to be me for a while? I work near a Wendys, in case that's a deciding factor...

So here’s a story that I haven’t told because it’s way too self-indulgent:

Wandering the corridors a while back, and I see one of my projects forging her daily Dean’s report – this is the thing we give the bad students to monitor them on a class-by-class basis.

I rant and rave at her. I tell her that she’s better than this. She doesn’t believe me. I rave some more. I tell her that she is too good to be getting detentions, that she is better than the trouble that she is letting herself be marred by.

And off I go on my way.

The next day she stops off at my room to show me her daily report. She tells me that she confessed all to her Dean re; the previous day’s forgeries, and accepted the resultant detentions, and that she had gone to all of her classes that day, and not forged a single signature.

I tell her entirely sincerely that I am proud of her.

That kept me walking on air for a while – that’s how it is when The Job Is Good. Sure, it was one thing, one rant. But it proved to her that someone believed in her, and it got through to her, at least in the short term. Who knows how her life will turn out? That’s dependant on a million things that have nothing to do with me. But maybe that one small thing could have made one small difference, which, when combined with any number of other co-incidences, could have had a positive effect on her life.

Been thinking of that since this morning, when I saw the scar down her wrist.

My job is teenagers and my friends are goths – I’ve been doing this long enough to tell a real attempt from an attention-seeking dose of parasuicide.

I’m not sure if it’s a sign of professionalism or emotional detachment that I managed to get home before I started screaming.

I’ve found the litmus test of whether you are a Grown Up™:

Coming home to find your lounge so covered in empties and nitrous canisters that you can’t even cross the floor to get to a seat, let alone see the tv over the detritus, and when your flatmate tells you that he couldn’t clean it up because he was too hungover, you don’t actually think that’s a good enough excuse.

It’s good to have a conclusive measure of this.

“Ask me the secret of comedy.”
“What’s the secret of...”
“Timing.”
Yeah, we’ve all heard that joke. But the secret of comedy is sadness. Bleakness. It’s a young man’s game. Only the young have sufficient moral certainty to see how things are and how that differs from how things ought to be. The anger of comedy is for the young. Age sucks. With age comes ambivalence, the inability to be shocked anymore by the constant disappointments of life.

The Road to Mars – Eric Idle

you can tell
from the scars on my arms
and cracks in my hips
and the dents in my car
and the blisters on my lips
that i'm not the carefullest of girls

you can tell
from the glass on the floor
and the strings that're breaking
and i keep on breaking more
and it looks like i am shaking
but it's just the temperature
and then again
if it were any colder i could disengage
if i were any older i could act my age
but i don’t think that you’d believe me
it's not the way i'm meant to be
it's just the way the operation made me

and you can tell
from the state of my room
that they let me out too soon
and the pills that i ate
came a couple years too late
and i’ve got some issues to work through
there i go again
pretending to be you
make-believing
that i have a soul beneath the surface
trying to convince you
it was accidentally on purpose

i am not so serious
this passion is a plagiarism
i might join your century
but only on a rare occasion
i was taken out
before the labor pains set in and now
behold the world's worst accident
i am the girl anachronism

and you can tell
by the red in my eyes
and the bruises on my thighs
and the knots in my hair
and the bathtub full of flies
that i'm not right now at all
there i go again
pretending that i'll fall
don't call the doctors
cause they've seen it all before
they'll say just
let her crash and burn
she'll learn
the attention just encourages her

and you can tell
from the full-body cast
that i'm sorry that i asked
though you did everything you could
(like any decent person would)
but i might be catching so don't touch
you'll start believing you’re immune to gravity and stuff
don't get me wet
because the bandages will all come off

and you can tell
from the smoke at the stake
that the current state is critical
well it is the little things, for instance:
in the time it takes to break it she can make up ten excuses:
please excuse her for the day, its just the way the medication makes her...

i don’t necessarily believe there is a cure for this
so i might join your century but only as a doubtful guest
i was too precarious removed as a caesarian
behold the worlds worst accident

I AM THE GIRL ANACHRONISM

Drama teacher: “Isn’t it sad that we have nothing better to do than sit around after school talking about our kids?”
Me: “I actually don’t have anything better to do.”
Drama teacher: “I really don’t either.”

By and large the students at my school lack pretension, and are straight up in their dealings with you. A possible downside to this (which I have come over time to see as an upside, or at the very least as slightly charming) is that you have to prove yourself to them. Many is the teacher who has come in expecting the students to know their place and to automatically respect the person standing in front of the white board.

Not how my lot work.

For lack of a better way of putting it, they hate presumption. Especially given the cartoonishly high staff turnover at my school (and specifically my department) - the new teacher is likely to be the third they’ve had that year; the students were there first, so who is this new person to be telling them what to do?

So, onto the New English Teacher. With the old one going, I was worried that his replacement wasn’t going to be up to much. However, the Principal assured me that she had a PhD, so she clearly knew her stuff.

Today was her first day, and I hadn’t even gotten out of the gate before I had been given an update; She went into the class and sternly introduced herself as “Doctor Smith.”

Is it wrong that I’m actually looking forward to watching this one crash and burn before the end of the year? I’m tired and old – I have to take my entertainment where I can get it...

Anyhoo, turns out an MP called Judith Collins is still trying to pass a bill that will force doctors to inform parents if their child needs an abortion.

Collins states that legislation similar to the proposed changes to the Care of Children Bill has led to a lowering of the number of abortions in girls under sixteen in other countries.

Many doctors are against this because they say, quite accurately, that a lowering in the number of abortions reported doesn’t mean that less are happening, just that Back-Ally Larry and his All-Coathanger Surgical Team will finally get over that slump in business since Roe vs Wade (which, as pure as Ms Collins would like to think we all are, was not a discussion on the best way to get across a river).

I oppose changing the Care of Children Bill because I actually do care for my girls; I’m so fond of them in fact that I would be very sad if they died.

And let’s be clear here – that’s not hyperbole. Anyone who is now saying “hillbilly boy’s overreacting again” hasn’t seen Tongan or Indian girls come back to school the week after their boyfriends were found in their rooms; black eyes, yellowing bruises and a note saying they’ve been away for a few days because they had the flu.

Now, never let it be said that I’m not vehemently opposed to young people engaging in the human sexing. Speaking as someone who has probably known more pregnant teenagers than the rest of you, I can quite honestly say that I favour hair shirts and boxing gloves taped to the hands of everyone under the age of twenty. However, just because the government won’t accept my proposal to lock all of the hormonal wee animals in small dark cages wearing wetsuits and oven-mits until they’re safely out of their teens doesn’t mean that getting them beaten to death by their fathers is the second best solution...

Last day of term – Also the last day of the best teacher in the school.

Walking around the school with him, he smiles and says I’m the new morale officer – it’s now my job to make sure that people don’t let themselves get too ground down by this place.

Then the small silence where neither of wants to acknowledge that he’s not actually joking.

Spent the day getting maudlin with sundry students over his departure. They’ve adopted me as the new him – some even went so far as to tell me that.

Yesterday, my Year 13 who was invalided out of school several months back because she was a bit pregnant had a baby boy.

The sort of mood I was in, I almost started getting poetic about endings and new beginnings, Fortunately it didn’t last.

Me “You look sad. What’s wrong?”
Student 1 “Should I tell him?”
Student 2 “Tell him.”
Student 1 “You tell him.”
Me “What’s wrong with her?”
Student 2 “She’s pregnant.”

Later that lunchtime, school grounds, talking to the new member of the English Department when students come up.

Student “Are you the doctor?”
Doctor “Yes.”
Student “So are you a medical doctor?”
Doctor “No, I’m a doctor of English.”
Student “Do they have those?”

Carpark at lunchtime, still with the new doctor, chatting and stopping waggers from leaving the school too overtly. A student wandering past us.

Me “Oi, get back here.”
Student “Nah!”
I turn her around,
Me “Come on.”
Student “But I want to go home.”
Me “So do I, but we both have to stay.”
Student takes a few steps towards the gate. Doctor turns her around like I did.
Student “Excuse me, I don’t think I know you.”
Doctor “Get back inside.”
Student “Don’t touch me!”
Doctor “Go back inside.”
Student “Sir, you’d better tell her not to touch me again. I don’t know her, and Miss Thing isn’t going to act like that.”
Me “Yeah yeah.”
Student “By sir! Bye Miss Thing!”
Me “Nice girl. I know her family.”

In the staff room at after work drinks, talking to the Art-Teacher-Who-Was-Also-Teaching-An-English-Class-Because-
We-Can’t-Hold-Onto-Actual-English-Teachers. She’s also leaving.

Her “What do you reckon of this new Doctor woman?”
Me “She’s... interesting.”
Her “She’s taking over that English class I was taking. I’ve given her all my stuff, so she can use that.”
Me “Oh, she won’t. She’ll have them reading Chaucer inside of a week.”
Her “Really? She’s like that? The students will hate her. They’ll revolt. God, I hope she doesn’t mess them up too badly, I’ve put a lot of work into them.”
Me “Don’t worry. I’ll look out for them.”
My internal monologue “Wait, is that the sort of thing people in other schools have to promise? I’m tired.”

Multi school dance competition, sitting with students and ex-students in an auditorium in the city.

Me “I’m probably going to sneak out after we’re on.”
Former Student “You could get beaten up.”
Me “Hell no – After teaching at School as long as I have, I know every hoodrat in the greater metropolitan area – they wouldn’t try anything with me.”
Current Student “If you’re surrounded by hoodrats just say ‘Sione, I know it’s you!’ then like, four of them will go ‘Oh shit, he knows it’s me!’”

Car park of the auditorium after the competition, talking to miscellaneous students.

Student “Are you on drugs?”
Me “No.”
Student peers into my eyes. I open them wide to assist her.
Student “You look like you’re on P.”
Me “I’m nearly asleep – I’ve been awake for twenty hours. How can I look like I’m on P?”
Student “You look strung out.”

"Don't you know you should NEVER end a sentence with a preposition?"

The first woman thinks about this for a second.

"Where you flyin' to, bitch?"