I realise that cultural differences will play a part, here, as will generational change, but I just spent the evening hanging out with my cousin’s friends, roughly 5 years younger than me, and this was the main topic of conversation…

How much they earn, for how little they actually work. How “easy” their work is. How they can afford shit like house deposits, shitty anime subscriptions, and drugs… Seriously, their main topic of conversation aside from “how much I make” was fucking drugs, and how much they hate various portions of humanity that aren’t like them…

Growing up, I was taught that this sort of shit is to be kept to yourself. Discussing salaries/earnings was a massive no-no, and don’t get me started on the drugs shit…

Especially around strangers, which I was, for most of them…

I just find it a wee bit sad that such “social norms” have become forgotten, in an era of sheer narcissism and braggadocio…

Then again, these people were also arseholes, and scumbag druggies no less, so selection bias is of course at play…

But I just find it jsrring, I guess, that something as simple as “You don’t ask, or discuss, salaries, unless it is relevant”, has fallen by the wayside, seemingly, amongst “hype”-obsessed zoomers these days…

I've gotten more into it, these last few years, but a lot of the "classics" we frequently hear referenced are actually still excellent.

Casablanca is my favourite movie of all time. To Catch a Thief is bloody good (Grace Kelly!), as is North by Northwest (Eva Marie Saint!). It's a Wonderful Life has grown on me, over time, and, as a Christmas movie, it's definitely above average, if rather bleak. Spartacus, while cheesy, is pretty good, too. The Magnificent Seven (original) is fucking great. Towering Inferno (original) is also, I feel, rather underrated, these days. Hatari (John Wayne) is great, too. Even Logan's Run (just before blockbusters really took off) is very good, if a little weird. Network is a biting satire, far ahead of its time. And the original Pelham 1,2,3 is ahead of its time, too. I didn't really like The Graduate, but the soundtrack is very good.

Even some silent films (notably Metropolis by Fritz Lang, Nosferatu, etc) are pretty good too, in hindsight.

So yeah, I'm not claiming that Hollywood was ever particularly "based", or anything like that, but some of these "Silver Age" and "Golden Age" Hollywood productions are actually very, very good. Credit where credit is due.

No real point to this - just saying, if you are yet to really give "classics" like some of that lot a go, well, maybe it's worth it, for a break from all the woke shit of Current Era, lol...

Any other recommendations welcome, ha.

Strange timing. Of course it’s just how the universe “works”, but it is a bit surreal…

Jeff Beck (meningitis), I don’t know all that much about, but I’ve heard some of his music/playing before… Definitely talented, but I’m surprised he lasted this long, as a formerly drug-taking rocker…

Pell (“complications arising from hip surgery”) - a very controversial figure, in Australia and beyond. Takes his secrets to his grave, and obviously can no longer defend his own name…

Lisa-Marie (heart attack, declared brain dead after being “revived”) - that’s the most tragic one, I think. 54, tragic family history and clearly went through a lot. Seemed like a sad, damaged, volatile, fragile person. You might disagree with some of what she did, and some of the choices she made, but she certainly lived a complex life, and tried to manage the spotlight literally from when she was born, as best she could. It’s very unfortunate that, like so many celebrity families, here has been full of so many early “departures”…

Vale. Vale all. “Advertising Space” rings even more hollow now.

“There’s no earthly way of knowing what was in your heart, when it stopped going.” - 😳

I was talking to this girl who was in one of my online (at that point) classes. She didn’t want to “connect” via Facebook or Insta, but she really, really wanted my number…

From the way she spoke, and acted, and the sheer enthusiasm for everything, I assumed she must have been young, or, at least, younger than me…

I thought this a bit “mysterious”, so I tried to find her. The only place I could? LinkedIn. And fuck, what a LinkedIn…

I had never seen anything like it. It’s full of wokeness (pronouns, flags, “sovereignty never ceded”, “women in STEM”, Indigenous place names, and the most… Self-aggrandizing stuff I have seen on there for years)…

But not only that, she even has her own website… Where she posts her “work”, and also photos of herself, always wearing a suitably woke facemask, or facing away from the camera…

Even on her LinkedIn, it’s absolutely packed with photos and videos, but none of them directly show her face. That, combined with a list of achievements stretching back a decade that are really… Unusual for someone apparently without a degree (Executive Assistant to the Dean, CEO of an environmental org, etc.), just… Really weirded me out.

And yet, despite all this bullshit, she has less “Connections” on there than me (noting that I put zero effort into that place), barely has a “network”, and apparently spends all her time doing volunteer, unpaid work, for which she gets awards (and apparently “tops her class”), but apparently doesn’t actually have any evidence of a paid job, at the same time…

Anyway, I’ve seen this kind of thing before, generally from women. The kind of girl who only has paid, professional headshots on her Facebook. I always found that odd. That and all the “professional” bragging…

I just find it really weird. I suppose it is an extension of Instagram “hustle” culture, but professionalized… Though fuck, at least they attempt to look pretty, on Insta…

But yeah, I just don’t get it. I’ve truly never really understood this. Maybe it’s the depression. Maybe it’s the low self-esteem. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve achieved fuck all, in years. But I’ve never been the type of person who would hype myself up like that, on LinkedIn or whatever. If, by some miracle, I topped a class/assignment again, I really don’t think I would tell anyone much, let alone post about it!

Anyway, I just think this is a little sad, frankly. It makes me feel (much) worse, but it also makes this girl look like a complete narc, if nothing else…

Thoughts?

I realise that this is merely a symptom of current culture, but I hate it. I really do.

Here’s to a better year.

Surely they can’t push Covid for much longer, right??

Anyway, I’ve been struggling a lot this week, tbh.

New Year’s Eve was ok, even if not how I planned it (I almost had a better night, but… Effed it up, lol). Unfortunately the days before and since… Haven’t really been. But New Year’s Day is generally shit, I guess, so I’m used to that.

Anyhoo, hope yours was good, and that this year brings you some good things.

I’m just taking it day by day, myself. If I even make it to 2024, that would be a bit of a “miracle”, at this point. So I guess there’s that.

Peace.

I walked past my city’s Cathedral, yesterday. Clearly, in the past, this week would be the second busiest week of the year, for the (Anglican) bishopric, but there was barely a peep out of it…

Some very needy, QR-code-involving signs, but no real decoration, no one going in or out… And this is the largest church in the whole state…

Some photography group was taking photos of the outside, but that’s about it.

Then I went to a Christmas “food market”, and it was, well, the closest it got to “Christmas” was decorations, an appearance by Santa (initially hidden in a giant paper candle, while he was wheeled in, lol), and a jazz band of danger hairs performing woke, “Christmas-adjacent” songs (“Christmas in LA”, anyone? Erykah Badu, anyone?)…

Aside from that, it’s like the city (with a Greens council, no less) barely cares anymore. Everything is “Season’s Greetings”, “Happy Holidays”, or, like, “Happy Summer”.

People really only care about being able to make money out of it, getting a few days off, a fucking yacht race, and a Summer food festival that starts on Tuesday… In fact, I would say there is more New Years’ stuff around, than Christmas, sadly…

Some of this is symptomatic of being in the Southern Hemisphere, granted, but it’s interesting that in places with higher numbers of first-gen British expats in Australia, which are also more conservative (notably Perth, but also Brisbane and Sydney), I’ve seen much more “Christmas-ness”, I suppose…

But I also don’t remember it being like this when I was a kid, or even like a decade ago, so… It’s just a bit weird, to me, I guess.

Anyone else have this sort of “less Christmassy Christmas”, where you are..? It’s probably mostly an Anglosphere problem, but I feel like somewhere like California (or maybe even Scotland) is probably just as bad, if not worse, lol…

Mine… Is really not good. Like, even by my standards (which some of you have seen, lol), this is really, really bad.

I think there’s a few things at play, there: realizing I’m even worse “off”, in terms of “life progress”, than I thought. Realizing my financial and social situation is worse than I perhaps realized. Spending even more time around family that I obviously do not get along with (I’ve dreaded Christmas Day for the entire year, let’s be clear about that), or just… The supreme feelings of crushing loneliness and… “Emptiness” that this time of year tends to stir.

I’m sure I’m not alone in some of that. I think it’s a well-observed “phenom” that this time of year is awful, for mental health, for many people. So I hope you’re all doing ok in that regard.

On a more “political” note, seeing as we tend to prefer that here, lol, I’ve realized this week, perhaps, just how powerless we all are, to fight back against the worst of this dystopian corporate bullshit we all find ourselves amongst.

Like, I was even talking to, in essence, “leftists”, online, earlier this week, and even they think what is happening, with our corporate-tech-overlord-virtue-signalling dystopia is getting out of hand… And that’s in places with “left wing” governments, too. Even then, the problems have become so apparent, that leftists will begrudgingly acknowledge that something is wrong, even if they won’t admit the source…

No one will do anything. It really feels like we can’t do anything. Even working for, or being a client/member of, one of these corporations/banks/entities, you realize that you basically cannot do anything at all…

Maybe that contributed to the “badness” I have been feeling this week. Maybe not. But yeah, just thought I’d share, in case anyone else is “going through it”, this week.

You’re not alone, if so.

Keep it real.

Just that.

I’ve personally been hit by some unexpected shit, this week, particularly financially, but hearing the neighbours up the street party it away, all day and all night, yesterday (and yes, I really, really considered trying to crash it. Just ended up feeling more alone, though, lol), reminded me, perhaps it did in the same way as one of you the other day, that this is a time that really brings people together, and is about far more than spending money and decorative seasonal tat. Today, in Aus, so happens to be the solstice.

I don’t know “where” I’m going with things, and I don’t know what my Christmas will be like (thrifty, if nothing else, lol), but I sincerely hope you all have good, relatively smooth and unstressful Christmases (or whatever you celebrate) and New Years. Remember what the holiday was supposed to be truly about.

That’s all. Keep it real.

There are a number of caveats to this. I appreciate that. But it is actually quite funny seeing this occur, across the "West", pretty much in most developed countries now, not just in the "Anglosphere"...

It's partially a consequence of 'Rona, and the government policies that various countries went for, in response to that. It's partially because of vaccine mandates. It's partly because, so we're told, a bunch of Boomers used 'Rona as the final push they needed, I guess, to retire, and get out. As a result of all that, though? Massive labour shortages, almost everywhere you look.

Media orgs and governments never admit this, but one of the only reasons that this situation can possibly exist is that young people are, increasingly, hugely overqualified, and are unwilling to take positions that they feel are somehow "beneath" them, or basically anything that they might consider "working class" or "unskilled"...

Previous to now, you also had employers not hiring people, because they were "overqualified" (amusingly, had that problem myself. Not anymore, lol), but now, most are seemingly so desperate that this excuse has gone out the window...

In essence though, in much of the world - the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, NZ, Germany, et al, society has spent the last 30-40 years telling young people that the only way to succeed is to: get a degree, probably get another degree, become a "professional" and fuck and/or backstab your way "to the top"...

No wonder young people have become so deluded as to think that manual labour, manufacturing, agriculture, whatever, is all beneath them. Especially when, in Australia at least, you still need to get qualifications, in order to do pretty much any of those jobs...

This was never sustainable. Nor were the ever-increasing levels of "student debt", across much of the West. Yet only now is it seemingly really coming home to roost, and still, it's pretty unlikely you will see anyone with power or influence admitting to any of this...

Personally, I can't wait until the day that this entire (economic, societal, political) house of cards comes crashing down.

There’s been a shooting of cops (and one civilian) in regional QLD, Australia, in the last couple of days…

Allegedly one of the perps, a former school principal was “active online”, involved in “online conspiracy theories”, and, in essence, according to the media, forums a bit like this one, and almost certainly 4Chan…

Naturally, the media is using this opportunity to attack people “whose online behaviour raises questions”, who “don’t believe the official narrative around the massacre that led to Australia’s gun laws”, and, because of course, “the wearing of camouflage materials”…

This will be used to bring in new restrictions. As Christchurch was. As Port Arthur (the massacre I mention) was. I don’t think you have to be a “conspiracy theorist” to see that…

My parents, in response to this, accused me of “being too active online”, “just like the murderer”, lol… NPCs actually believe that. Crazy…

So yeah. Just wait until you hear about “new laws” that will no doubt follow this, which most of the population, including my own family, will doubtless cheer on as “necessary” and “completely justified”…

Wiew. What a time to be alive…

The news in Australia was very keen to tar them as “antivaxxers” and “conspiracy theorists”, even though they clearly came from disparate backgrounds and ideologies…

The whole thing reeks to high heaven. The first thing I thought when I saw it was “they’re getting rid of anyone who would oppose them”. Yet if you talk to “normies” about it, they’ll very likely just give you the same pre-programmed response along the lines of “They’re Nazis, and they deserved it”, just like with the Capitol “Riot”…

Funny how, yet again, we’re told “Protests in dictatorships good. Protests in “democracy” bad!” and expected to not question it, once again…

Along with the extremely selective interviews they showed with “ordinary” Germans, the whole thing is just… Very dodgy, lol.

Fear porn ads on TV and radio are still a thing. States have brought back indoor mask “recommendations” (but not mandates). My parents are still nuts about the entire thing. So much so that my father obsessed over the state’s “death count”, and uses it to slam me for “not caring enough”…

My grandmother has had, like, four booster shots (because fear). My cousins rarely ever go out, and almost never without a mask…

But it’s not just my family. Someone told me today that he is no longer doing his job for the year, and all his colleagues have taken “an extended break until next year”, because “Covid means we are focusing on only essential services, not anything else”. And this is in the healthcare sector…

It’s insane. It’s been nearly three years. Less than 500 people have died, here. And yet, still this continues…

“Hospitalizations!” “Daily infection numbers!” “One more person died!”

I honestly don’t see them giving this up, or masks and boosters going away, probably like ever, here…

Which is just sad, frankly.

I assume other parts of the world have moved on, largely?

Certainly not Asia, notably, or fucking New Zealand of course, but I would hope that other parts of the world have, at the very least…