what rhymes with chaos?

How To Do Your Xmas Shopping Without Losing Your Will To Live

I hate shopping. And not just because I'm an 'anti-consumerist hippie.' I hate trying stuff on, I hate waiting in queues and I hate the fact that stores play insufferable techno music with a high BPM that is specifically selected to impair your impulse control systems. 

 

"You know, I thought that $149.95 for a polo shirt was a little pricey, but now that I've had a Bleach-blonde German guy yelling at me for a few minutes over the sound of what appears to be a few dozens synths being massacred by a chainsaw, I realise it's actually a really great deal!"

Around Christmas time, shopping transmogrifies from a mild ordeal into a kafkaesque nightmare soundtracked by horrendous carols on incessant repeat and a horde of holiday shoppers who, I'm quite sure, were friendly, muffin baking, herb-garden-planting suburbanites just a few weeks ago but have now become furious, salivating bargain hunters who occasionally use capsicum spray.

I'm no scrooge though, I like giving presents and bearing witness to that heart-warming half-smile that just screams "Are you kidding me did you seriously think I would like THIS?!? Witness the wrath of my obviously feigned gratitude and appreciative hug!" This year, however, I decided to do 100% of my shopping online through ethical retailers. This means that not only do I skip the queues, irate holiday shoppers and twenty minute search for a car park, but the gifts I get give a little something back to the developing world.

Think about it, if you buy a $120 Adidas handbag for your sister, extremely effeminate dad, or horrendously anthropomorphised poodle and they don't like it, you've not only blown your hard earned cash, you've also contributed profits to a corporation that uses child and sweatshop labour and has a history of sexually harassing its workers.

"OMG! Are you, like for real! ?! That TOTES does not go with this outfit!"

If you do your christmas hopping at an ethical retailer and your loved one throws their gift in the bottom of their cupboard for all eternity, at least you've given some money to working communities in the developing world who will be paid a fair wage and use environmentally sound practices. Doing it online means you can even shop in your underwear whilst listening to the Ramones. Which I suppose you could do in the store as well, but it might come across as a little weird. 

 

"Yeah I'll take one of those wallets, a diary, these candles...oh wait! GUITAR SOLO!!!"

Here's a list of some of the leading ethical gift stores, feel free to suggest others.

UNICEF

OXFAM

New Internationalist 

Ethical Gifts

 

AND A MERRY WHATEVER THING YOU BELIEVE IN TO ALL!!!

 

 

My Dearest Target

My Dearest Target,

How are you? I trust you are enjoying the start of the Christmas period, which I imagine major retailers look forward to with all the anticipation of a sex addict awaiting a holiday in Ibiza.

Yesterday I was perusing your shelves in search of a toiletries bag that I had believed I would require for my planned trip to New York. As it turns out neither the toiletries bag nor the trip to New York will now be necessary as my girlfriend decided to break up with me a few days before our one year anniversary and thus reduce me to an irrational, quivering wreck engaged in peculiar behavior such as writing elaborate complaint letters to department stores, but that’s neither here nor the other place.

Whilst waiting in line to make my purchase I was subjected to your holiday promo clip. Now, aside from the fact that this insufferably saccharine commercial featured lots of sickeningly elated blonde white people and storks carrying babies (when was this thing written, the 1950s?) the ad and its ridiculously loud music were repeated and repeated over and over again and again and again. It was interrupted by only the intermittent PROCEED TO CHECKOUT FIVE announcements, making me feel as though I was alternating my time between some Kafkaesque consumer hell and some Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare (Kafka really was the king of literary misery wasn’t he?)

If I had to listen to a Target ad on infinite loop my writing would have been even MORE despressing!

I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but incessantly repeated music is actually one of the most popular modern forms of psychological torture. During the Bush era two of the favourite bands used at Guantanamo bay were Nine Inch Nails and Massive Attack. Quite ironic given the fact that both of those bands despised the Bush administration. Do you think they got paid royalties for public broadcast each time their song got repeated? 

Once in India I took a 20 hour jeep ride from Srinagar to Leh, and the MP3 player kept skipping back to the start of whatever song it was playing. We asked the driver to just turn it off but he told us that without music he would fall asleep and at this point we were on a tiny Himalayan mountain road with a steep ravine right reaching ominously out beneath us so we let him have his way. Just before we finally reached Leh, we heard the first ten seconds of the song Gimmie More featuring the delightful opening line “It’s Britney bitch!” over and over and over (and over). By the time we reached Leh we had been reduced to giggling, hysterical lunatics.

 

Try listening to THIS 500 times in a row...

So as I’m listening to this syrupy commercial on infinite repeatrepeatrepeat, I’m thinking, what effect is this having on the staff here? Surely this can’t be psychologically healthy? Finally the all-commanding screen interrupts the commercial and instructs me to move to the checkout. I always do what television tells me, so I dutifully obeyed and handed my soon to be redundant travel toiletries bag to the young man behind the counter.

“That’s a total of five cents.” Says he. I looked at price tag, which quite definitely stated $9.05, and I thought to myself, surely I must have misheard him? It can’t possibly be some sort of 99.45% Christmas discount? I passed him $20, and he handed me back $19.95. I took the money in my hand and was open to say something along the lines of “Whaaaaaaaaat?” when the all-seeing monitor demanded that I vacate the checkout so that it might be utilised by another obedient consumer.

In conclusion: perhaps you should reconsider the all-seeing monitor playing your advertisements on infinite loop, not only for the effect it has on your staff, but the effect it has on your profit margin.

AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS OR WHATEVER THE HELL ELSE YOU BELIEVE IN TO ALL!

Swarm regards

J.M. Donellan

 

Eighty-Nine teaser trailer

 

Did you know books have trailers now? Yep, it's the 21st century. Although...um...this one is all about 1989. But set in the future, if that makes sense. Hey it's speculative fiction, we can do whatever the hell we want! This is a teaser trailer, full one coming soon.

 Eighty-nine features my contribution The Story Bridge guaranteed to be the most hilarious story you'll read about attempted suicide all year.

 

Jerks vs. the internet

 Good morrow to you Sirs and Madams!

If you are reading this, then you are clearly the owner of 1 x internet. Congratulations! You now have access to an incredible information network featuring 231 million pictures of cats and a tumblr site that documents Buffy outfits! Not only this but the magic of the internet allows to connect and communicate with your fellow humans conveniently and instantly.

 

Any further questions?

    Can I comment on someone else's

        ideas and opinions?

 

Most certainly!

 Can I, in turn, share my own carefully formulated

opinions based on verified information from

a variety of reputable sources?

Be my guest!

 Can I go onto a missing person's report and whine

to the police service about legal semantics thereby impeding

the search for a missing person who may well be in grave danger?

 

Well, erm, I mean...I guess you could...

but why would-

GREAT! Brb.

A few days ago a friend posted this missing person notice, alerting the community to the fact that a 17 year old man had gone missing. Now, I have to admit that I was previously unaware that under QLD state law a 17 year old is classified as an adult. However, unlike one particularly insensitive facebook user I did not respond to this new information by posting "since when has a person under 18 been classed as an adult...this is a child missing........not a MAN!!!!!!!!" Colour me prudish, but this strikes me as being about as rude as vociferously criticising the floral arrangements at your grandma's funeral.

Oh fuck seriously? Pink and mauve held by

a cute white teddy?!?! Grandma would just DIE of embarrassment!

You know, if she wasn't already dead...

The notice wall quickly degenerated into a series of arguments about the law in question (COUPLED WITH AN OBSCENELY EXCESSIVE USE OF CAPS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!) followed by rebukes and rebuttals. What those posting failed to remember is that the missing person (boy, man, whatever the hell tickles your Sid and Nancy) is an actual human who is possibly in serious danger and unquestionably has a family currently undergoing severe emotional distress. The problem with the internet is that users forget that despite the physical distance and lack of eye contact, bad breath and body odour that occurs during conversations, these are actual people who deserve to be treated with the respect that this particular DNA sequence is supposed to accord an organism.

For instance; reading this post you might be fooled into thinking that it was composed by some manner of incomprehensibly brilliant and witty blogging program. However, the author of this article is in fact a human with emotions, desires, a bad credit rating and a weird rash on my upper left thigh that I should probably see a doctor about.

Despite that fact that you can transmogrify into grandwarrior wizard Archimedes Lothorius on the internet, you still remain the same geeky human in real life. But if you are a jerk on the internet, you are still the same Jerky McJerkface with the face of a jerk when the computer shuts down. Here is a series of diagrams to demonstrate:

FIG 1

         VS        
           internet                                           real life

 FIG 2

       VS    
       internet                                              real life

 If you have any information about Matthew, contact the Queensland Police. If you want to rant and rave about legal semantics and generally be an insensitive arsehole why not try standing on the table of your local pub and talking in a LOUD VOICE!!!! and see how well that works out for you in the real world.

 

Dearest spawn: words of wisdom for the future

Recently I was requested to write some words of wisdom for the as yet unborn child of two of my very dear friends. Having a great deal of words but a rather appalling dearth of wisdom, I soon found myself overwhelmed by the grandiose responsibility of providing the literary form of a guiding light in the darkness to a not yet fully downloaded human child foetus. I ended up crying in the corner in much the same manner of a new born babe for several hours before consoling myself by thinking about breasts (again, much like in the manner of an infant).

My life is so freakin sweet! People lavish attention

on me constantly and everyone thinks it's adorable when I burp or

defecate! I hope the rest of my life is exactly like this!

This whole ordeal got me thinking; if I were to one day be so cruel as to decide to subject the world to the burden of my offspring, what words would I give the little bastard to send them on their way before I suffer an untimely death by turtle mauling or fireworks and pogo stick incident?

Here's what I came up with. Feel free to cut and paste this for your own use.

Dearest spawn,

Congratulations on being selected from millions of potential sperm candidates to become my progeny!

I have decided to bequeath unto you some words of wisdom for the future. However, the future which you will inhabit will doubtlessly differ greatly from the present. Hence the best advice I am able to give you has been obtained primarily from science fiction novels.

This is what people in the past thought time machines

would look like. What a bunch of morons.

It doesn't even have an ipod dock!

1 If you ever get sent back into the past DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING. Not even breasts. (Sidenote: Infancy is the only time in your life when you will be able to gain access to breasts by merely screaming and crying. ENJOY IT.)

2 If you ever get sent to a gorgeous utopian future TOUCH EVERYTHING because you are obviously dreaming. The future is going to be a horrible, horrible place. Really, it will be just awful.

3 Just because everyone else in the world is wearing tight fitting silver suits doesn't mean that you have to. In fact, by wearing a variant outfit you substantially increase the likelihood of being the star of the piece.

4 Big Brother is watching. And he is fucking bored.

5 Soylent Green, while delicious, is no substitute for a healthy balanced diet.

6 Soma, while delicious, is no substitute for a healthy balanced diet.

 

7 Don't do it, she's a robot!

8 Don't do it, she's a clone!

9 Don't do it, she's you from a parallel universe where you've had an extremely convincing sex change operation!

10 When all your human parts are eventually replaced by cybernetic enhancements, make sure you shell out the extra bucks for the extended warranty. No one wants a future where you have to buy a replacement prostate every three months.

11 Floss

 

Pocket Hipster app

Have you ever been walking down the street, thinking about messaging that enigmagnetic boy/girl when suddenly the thought "I WISH I HAD AN IPHONE APP THAT MADE FUN OF MY MUSIC CHOICES!" assailed you like a blunt instrument to the solar plexus?

If the answer to this question is 'yes ma'am!' then boy have I got news for you! The brand new POCKET HIPSTER app is now available. I provided the voices for 'Sebastian Fowler' the pretentious English hipster and 'Atticus Jackson' the too-cool-for-any-kind-of-educational-learning-facility Californian hipster. I also wrote some of their ridiculous one-liners. The app makes fun of your music, and also you, and guides you to music that is better than yours.*Note: neither of these voices is my actual voice. I am using my magical superpower known as 'voice pretending', also known to layfolk as 'acting.'

You can get it from the itunes app store or just click here.

Amusingly I don't own an iphone, so now in addition to not owning a device that can read the digital version of my novel, I also can't watch and enjoy this app that I voiced. Oh great and sage-like Alanis Morrissette, what are your thoughts on this matter?

 

 

PS thanks to the kids at JosephMark for having me on board for this project. I had twelve kinds of fun.

 

Gatsby 8 bit

Great Gatsby, the eight bit video game? YES PLEASE!

 

*sidenote: the wikipedia entry for 'Saturn Return' lists both this book and my novel A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India as literary references. This pleases me in strange and unusual ways.

Dear vending machine in the emergency ward at the Royal Brisbane hospital: I hate you.

Not only do you have the motherfucking nerve to charge $2.70 for a nestle crunch bar, but open insertion of my hard earned currency, you fail to deliver said exorbitantly priced confectionary. Not only this, but considering how long it took to get the clerical staff to admit my chronically ill progenitor I was correct in doubting  that their attention would be adequately focused on this new dilemma.

Subsequent to this thwarting of my attempt to gain endorphin inducing comfort food, I ventured to the hospital cafe in the hope of acquiring some delicious sustenance and time away from staring at the floor in the emergency ward listening to the anecdotes of speed freaks. (Sidenote: no one should ever bother with government sponsored 'kids, don't do drugs videos,' just show them a ten minute video of some toothless guy detailing his colourful medical history and all should be well.) Sadly however, the proprietors of the ingeniously named 'Nescafe cafe' had elected to provide their patrons with a selection of rave music to enjoy with their cardboard and sock flavoured food. I do not use the term 'rave music' erringly, I am an aficiando of electronic music, not some grandma who yells 'that's not music!' as soon as an 808 clap comes within earshot, and this was pill popping, foot stomping, reach for the lasers hands to the ceiling can't stop the feeling let's all get reeling RAVE music.

In a hospital cafe. At 2pm. Like this, only much, much worse:

 

I've often heard it said that vending machines kill more people every year than sharks. Is it not then time for us to massacre at least one malevolent machine in retribution? People are always worried about computers evolving artificial intelligence and beginning a skynet style war against humanity. I say that's looking in the wrong place. The vending machines of the world are already stealing from and killing our citizens. At the very least, should be not pit these two foes against one another in an en masse battle to the death?

  VS

THEY MUST BE STOPPED.

For those of you less inclined to the unsubtle but nonetheless irrefutably effective means of extreme violence, there is the option of placing a simple 'OUT OF ORDER' sign on any and all vending machines in your vicinity. Starved of their lifeblood (money) vending machines will assuredly be forced to move to other habitats in search of sustenance, until eventually resorting to cannibalism and devouring each other in a scene not unlike the finale of the Transformers movie, but with better acting.

 

 

For sale: Midi keyboard formerly owned by Ludwig Van Beethoven

(Link to the full ebay ad is here.)

I'm about to head to New York and then Colombia to do some "research" for my next book, Adonis Comma Coma. I need to raise some funds to assure that I can afford to drink Manhattans in Manhattan and to that end I'm selling off a few things. Please bid with all your dollars:

 

What you are looking at is a 100% authentic, definitely NOT fake ad for a radium 49 m-audio midi keyboard formerly owned by Ludwig Van Beethoven. (Note: Ludwig Van Beethoven is not to be confused with the titular character of the heart-warmingly mediocre family films of the early to late nineties.)

 
              

This one.                 Not this one.

Beethoven is best known for his classical symphonies composed primarily on a traditional grand piano, but in his spare time he also liked to dabble in trance and acid house music composed on this midi keyboard.

It is a well known fact that Beethoven's hearing began to fade later in his career as a result of staying out at too many raves. At this time he stopped going out to doofs and mostly preferred composing hundreds of hours of psytrance and produced the seminal album Beethoven's xtreme haus anthemz feat. Tha D-stroyer which yielded hits such as Girl is on my mind, Pizza is on my couch and Raise the roof (throw yo hands up!) He also released a plethora of seminal dubstep and ambient releases under monikers such as 'BFX', 'B-town Posse' and 'BTHVN sound sistem.'

This item comes complete with an official certificate of authenticity signed by Ludwig himself:

 

 

Considering the substantial historical value of this instrument, it's an absolute steal at $0.99. If you can find another midi keyboard formerly owned by Beethoven at a cheaper price, I'll not only refund your money in full, I'll also give you a Yamaha WR250F dirtbike formerly owned by Ella Fitzgerald. 

 

 

Ella Fitzgerald

Jazz singer, composer and Dirtbike enthusiast.

 

 

FUTURE SPECS: putting the "art" in party

 

 

YOU: "Oh hey man, how's it going?"    

THEM: "Oh hey there guy! Well, you know, pretty good, Carol's been redecoratising the living room and my little girl got a triple double goldstar trophy sceptre for her report on Miley Cyrus."

YOU: "Um...I'm pretty sure that there's no such thing as a triple double trophy sceptre..."

THEM: "what about you?"

YOU: "I'm going to FUTURE SPECS with all my heart and most of my liver!"

THEM: "Future Specs? I don't know Jimbo Jones, that sounds like lefto hippie commie pinko bullshit propoganda juice. Will there be....arty things?"

YOU: "All the types! Sound types! Look at it with your eyes types! Touchy touch with your fingies types! Watch the people do the things types! Plus there will be super cheap booze."

THEM: "Well Jackie James, that does sounds like all the fun things in the world. I guess I'll go. How when why wherefore?"

FUTURE SPECS

20th Feb TwentyTen

@

26 Church st, 

Fortitude Valley (just near the PCYC)

Brisbane

MUSIC>>>

RE:ENACTMENT

 

THE CITIZEN LOUD IPHONE QUINTET

 

MONSTER MONSTER

 

  

 

VISUAL ARTISTS>>>>

Beau Allen, Lix Bacskay, Anna Cooke & Rozina Suliman, Renata Fojtikova, Andrew Forsyth, Hannah Groff, David Heckenber, Monica Rohan, Jose William Vigers  

PERFORMANCE ARTISTS>>>

Daniel Santangeli, Giema Contini, Kieran Law, Gen Ganner, Thomas Quirk & Manda Boyd, Leena Reithmuller, Emma Schofield, Robert Millet's Amazing Time Machine

presented by the 4c arts collective 

FACEBOOK: 4c arts collective

TWITTER: @4carts

[email protected]

0406 083 976