Transcendence is the surpassing of others. The going past. The progression from one state to the next. The transformation from the physical to the conceptual.

“You know this is wrong. You know it is. I know you know it. So why are we standing here having this discussion? What is it you’re not grasping here? Is it the way I’m talking, the way I look? Do I have to wear a fancy-arse lawyering suit and a hundred dollar tie to get through to you? Sugar-coat it in psychobabble bullshit? CC it to the secretary and ask her to make it happen? It’s wrong, and I’m not doing it. Not this time. Not again. No way. Mate, you’re fucking out of line calling me out here, and you’re out of line expecting me to go along with this.”

And this is the opposite of transcendence, whatever that may be. This is the state at which the conceptual becomes physical.

And when the conceptual becomes physical, it has a habit of wrecking hundred dollar ties.

Posted in Rant on Friday June 1, 2007. Shoutouts.

Hi, i’m Mother Nature – welcome home! While you’re fumbling for your keys in the dark, please enjoy this very large, very irate, spider that I’ve encouraged to drop directly in front of your face, so that it may swing back and forth whilst trying to bite you in the eye. I’ve also taken the liberty of scattering several other large spiders throughout your house, and you should notice at least one of them as you turn on the lights inside. I even managed to squeeze one onto the roof of your bedroom! I know, I know, I outdo myself sometimes. Anyway, I really need to go, I have some children I need to terrorize with scorpions. Sleep well.

Posted in Rant on Friday May 11, 2007. Shoutouts.

“He had been taught, of course, that history, along with geography was dead. That history in the older sense was an historical concept. History in the older sense was narrative, stories we told ourselves about where we’d come from and what it had been like, and those narratives were revised by each new generation, and indeed always had been. History was plastic, was a matter of interpretation. The digital had not so much changed that as made it too obvious to ignore. History was stored data, subject to manipulation and interpretation¹.”

I was thinking about this today. Thinking about data and life-blogging and the interconnectedness of it all. Thinking about our insatiable urge to record and archive and protect. It’s interesting to think we are merely recording a perspective. One side of the story that, in time, often becomes the only side to the story. A defacto standard.

From the above, you could write: “If you control data, you control history,” and I guess this has always been the case. I just don’t think it has ever been so immediate as in the present. This new age of citizen journalism and the power of the blogocracy means that any one person can disseminate very targeted information, and that information can be spread incredibly rapidly. Look at Digg. Look at Newsvine. Think about memes. Once something goes viral it cannot be stopped. If that information later turns out to be false, or slanderous, or spread with malicious intent, in most cases the damage has already been done and potential millions have already seen, read, and formed opinions upon it.

So if you want to slander someone, you find their personal life and you put it on the internet. Which brings us back to life-blogging².

It seems that every day I get a new invite for some new web2.0 service offering to record some other facet of my life, and compare it with others. Is your book list as good as theirs? Are you drinking in line with your peers? Are you gay? What about religion, huh? What do you think about that?

It’s scary how much information people are willing to share, and it often worries me how much people rely on security through obscurity. Think about anything, everything, you’ve ever written and put on the internet. Regardless of whether it’s still there, regardless of the alias, the email address, or the IP it was posted from. What if that was all traceable right back to you? What if someone could look at anonymous public mentions and link it to you. What if the person reading that information was your next potential employer? Your mother? Your ex?

This isn’t going anywhere, and I’m certainly not preaching³: more information about me, and things I’ve done, can be found on the internet than I’d like. If you look hard enough, and if you know where to look, you can find some truly cringe-worthy things I wrote years ago. Things that I no longer have any control over and could not remove even if I wanted to. At least here, on the blog, I am responsible for dissemination and, for now, I can control this particular piece of history. So I will manipulate, and you can interpret, and I think that’s how it goes.

¹ William Gibson – All Tomorrow’s Parties

² I think Glebe once called it “Egoshooting.”

³ But if you are interested, the Australian Government published a decent primer on protecting your privacy on the internet.

Posted in Rant on Wednesday January 3, 2007. Shoutouts.

About a month ago, I received and email from Qantas detailing their latest bunch of Frequent Flyer promotions. Among them was a deal that included 2 points for every dollar you spend on your Optus mobile bill. As the prepaid mobile handset I was using at the time was in the process of falling to pieces and as I’d also been looking at upgrading to a plan for some time, this seemed like a good time to do it. I call the number in the email, and am put through to Optus’ sales department. The date is the 23rd of November.

After I have selected the contract and phone I would like, and I mention the promotion code I’ve been told to state in the email. “No worries,” the salesperson assures me, “We’ll sort that out for you.” I ask about having my bills debited from my bank account directly, as I don’t want to pay by credit card. “No worries,” the salesperson assures me, “We’ll sort that out for you.” Before the end of the call, I ask him again about the promotion, as he hasn’t actually taken any of my details and am reassured again. “Your mobile will come tomorrow.” When I hang up the phone, I am a little confused. If I want to be billed by direct debit, why haven’t they taken my bank details? If I want to sign up for the promotion, why haven’t they taken my frequent flyer number? I figure that I will have to fill out forms when I get the phone, but it seems like an unnecessary step that could be avoided by taking my details when they do the credit check over the phone. However, I decide to reserve judgement until I have examined the documents in the box.

Sometime early the following week, I find a note that has been shoved through the unused front-door mail slot and which has fallen underneath a table in the hall. The note specifies that I should call the delivery company to reschedule delivery. I call the delivery company and as I won’t be home, I reschedule and ask the company to deliver to the office in two days time. Two days later, the delivery driver fails to turn up, doesn’t leave a note, and doesn’t contact me. It is now more than a week since I ordered the phone. I try and call the delivery company again, but they operate on Eastern Standard Time hours and are closed by the time I finish work. Time to talk to Optus.

I go into an Optus World shop and ask for help. They say that they can’t help me and that there’s possibly a 10 day cool down period after which I may lose service to my phone. They suggest that I call sales from the store, and dial the number. I stay on hold for 35 minutes in the store before giving up in disgust. The following week I try to contact Optus again, this time from home to the sales number. I stay on hold for more than twenty minutes again, before spending a further twenty minutes browsing through the Optus website to find any contact directory or direct number I call a department that can help me. I give up on Optus and decide to try the delivery company again. I manage to get through to the local Perth office of the delivery company, and although they say they have no record of that tracking number, they assure me that they will check the warehouse and try and deliver it if possible, and take down both my home and work addresses. Progress.

Then I stubbornly call Optus again and, miraculously, I finally get through. The woman on the phone coolly tells me that the delivery company is 100% not allowed to redirect deliveries. It has to go through Optus, and through their migraine-inducing automated hold system. Apparently, I should have called Optus straight after it wasn’t delivered and definitely shouldn’t have called the number on the bright-orange piece of paper saying “please call this number to reschedule delivery.” Optus reschedule the delivery to Thursday, two weeks after I ordered the phone. They tell me that after I have got my phone I should call sales and ask for a discount for my inconvenience.

On Wednesday the delivery guy turns up at my office, an address I’d never given Optus. It seems that the delivery company have poked around out the back and found my package in the warehouse, and have gone out of their way to attempt and deliver it to both my house and then the office. Good job delivery company.

The phone comes with no forms to specify a direct debit account, and no mention of the Frequent Flyer promotion that was the whole reason I signed up online. How are they planning to bill me? I specifically requested that I did not want to pay by credit-card and would rather setup a direct debit account.

I need to call Optus again. Joy.

I call support, wait on hold again, and get through. My direct-debit account is specified and I’m told that this will become active next billing cycle. “So, how are you getting the money this billing cycle,” I ask. Direct debit will take effect in time. Good. Now for the Frequent Flyers. “Oh, you will need to call sales, here’s the number.” I call the number and get the same computerised voice, “Please state the nature of your enquiry.” “Sales.” “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that, please state the nature of your enquiry.” “Sales.” “Please select Mobile, Home Phone or Internet.” “Mobile.” “You have selected Mobile, what kind of Mobile query can I help you with.” “Sales!” “I’m sorry…”

Please scream now.

So what do I say? I want to add something to my account, right? Accounts? I ask for accounts and am transferred to a real person. He is utterly baffled. “Call sales,” he says. “How do I call sales?” I say. The pathway I have to take is apparently Mobile / New Accounts / and then ignore the computer until it gives you to a person. Never-mind that I already have an account. I finally get onto to Sales. They tell me that I needed to sign up for the promotion at the time of sale. I tell them that I tried to do that, and quoted the code twice, and that the sales person never took my details. The say that maybe these things take a while to process and it hasn’t shown up yet. I tell them I have never given them my Frequent Flyer details and therefore it’s not possible that it has been processed. Or is in the process of processing, or was ever processed, for that matter.

I was told that the original sales person will call me back at their earliest convenience. The following Monday was given. It is now Wednesday and I have received no call or follow-up. The saga continues.

Posted in Rant on Wednesday December 13, 2006. Shoutouts [2].

I take it all back. All of it. It’s yours. Posting whilst inebriated is each one of the 13 legal kinds of awesome and a significant number of 37 illegal ones. However, something which is not quite so awesome is 8 hours of Royal Show Horror (capital necessary) in which Japan brought an expensive robot from Japan, put it in a tiny room, and then told us happi-coat wearing lambs-to-the-slaughter that we had to tell the hundred-so pissed off Aussies that they couldn’t fit in said room and that they would have to wait for two hours. Then repeat that six times a day.

Actually, I take it all back, you can have it. It was secretly a lot of fun and I feel like I should go into customer service. And investigate the stick-insect fashion models that were in the next stall over. I’ve never felt so attracted to and repulsed by a body type before. Tall and skinny is great. Really tall and really skinny is, er, still kind of great but also really gross. In a great way.

I’m so confused.

Posted in Rant on Friday October 6, 2006. Shoutouts [2].

An adventure in four parts.

SCENE 1: The morning light is dim, and the thick cloud and intermittent fog hide the sun completely. The wind whips what little rain there is into vicious horizontal streaks that slap and dash at your face. Daniel is walking along the narrow footpath that leads through the park and towards the office. As he walks, he struggles with his cheap, plastic umbrella, which threatens to turn inside-out at any moment. He hears a car behind him, and half turns. A large black sedan slows as it passes him, then accelerates away. It is driven by MR HEAD.

DAN: (ASIDE) You utter, utter bastard.

SCENE 2: It is raining.

SCENE 3: Daniel shoulders through the front door of the school and shakes off his now badly misshapen umbrella, before placing it in the already crowded rack. On his forehead beads of sweat mix with drops of rain, shaken from his hair. As he makes his way up the stairs to the staffroom, he meets with MR HEAD, who is revealed to be a sports teacher at the school, and another man, MR FACE.

MR HEAD: Oh, isn’t a shame, I saw him walking to school today. He looked cold.
MR FACE: Ha. Ha. Ha.
DAN: Ha. Ha. Ha.
MR HEAD: Ha. Ha. Ha.
DAN: (ASIDE) You utter, utter bastard.

SCENE 4: It is still raining.

Posted in Rant on Thursday April 27, 2006. Shoutouts.

If, prior to last night, you’d told me you could perfectly synthesize the smell of sweaty human feet with three simple ingredients, I’d have said you were a liar. I came home after school yesterday and opened my fridge to be greeted with the mingling smells of sauerkraut, over-ripe Parmesan cheese and a well aged onion and bingo: feet. And not just any feet. The aroma brought to mind locker room funk after six hours of soccer training in the pouring rain. Hiking boots after nine hours on the trail. The snowboarding socks you peel from your feet and throw to the other side of the room so you’re able to sleep without choking. It was a dense, thick smell that skulked out of the fridge and spent the rest of the evening lurking in the corners of my apartment.

I’m hoping by now the aroma moved on from feet and is trying to emulate roses or maybe Belgian chocolate, but I’m not holding my breath. No, wait…

Posted in Rant on Friday April 14, 2006. Shoutouts.

If I receive one more email, just one more, with a “let’s enjoying (whatever)” joke in it, I might just have to bite someone.

Posted in Rant on Thursday March 16, 2006. Shoutouts [1].

The best way I can think of describing the taste of Georgia’s new “Hazelnut Mocha Au Lait” coffee in a can is to have you a imagine a guy named Tony.

Tony is your average, everyday bloke with just one small, yet significant, difference. He’s been hired by Georgia to eat nothing but hazelnuts. All day, every day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Can you picture Tony? He’s probably slouched on his couch wearing an unfashionable sweater, socks with holes in them and is munching on hazelnuts. Boy does he like those hazelnuts. Can’t get enough of the things. They’re turning his teeth brown.

Drinking the “Hazelnut Mocha Au Lait” is approximate to having Tony kick you in the balls, hold you down and then shit in your mouth. The only significant difference is the liquidity of the beverage and I imagine the aftertaste of poop in your mouth doesn’t last as long. Fuck you Georgia. Fuck you and fuck Tony. I cannot get this taste out of my mouth and it’s been hours since I had your fucking coffee.

Why don’t you write that up, canned coffee gods? Hey?!? Too edgy? Too off that there hook for you? Well boy had you better watch yourselves. Tony’s coming for you and he’s got one damned evil glint in his eye.

Posted in Rant on Wednesday February 8, 2006. Shoutouts [1].

The teacher next to me is staring intently at the computer screen while she uses her left hand to coax huge startling pops and clicks out of her right. You know that intense feeling of edginess you get whenever you imagine someone running their fingernails down a blackboard? Like you want to run somewhere but you don’t know where. Hairs raised on the nape of your neck and an urge to get the fuck out. I’ve got that now and a part of me wants to flinch every time she pops and crunches her way through another knuckle. Instead I’m just concentrating really, really hard on the wall in front of me and hoping she doesn’t start on her right hand.

If I could see into the future and determine that in five years time she’d get crippling arthritis in that hand, at this exact moment, I wouldn’t care at all. Does that make me a horrible person?

Posted in Rant on Monday February 6, 2006. Shoutouts.