This journal's over. Thanks for the fun times.

New journal is located at boh_thrashsody, where I invite you all to come along and holla.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest (unless it's too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1).
6. Tag five people. nah lame not doing this anyone who i didn't steal this off cos they haven't done it can do it

"Convinced of their own benign intentions and superior civilisation, the English regarded Irish resistance as rank ingratitude by stubborn barbarians. One West Country leader concluded that "nothing but fear and force can teach duty and obedience to such rebellious people." Treating the Irish as treacherous beasts, the English waged a war of terror and intimidation, executing prisoners by the hundred, including women and children. Dispossessing many of the Irish, the victors obtained great estates that they colonised with Protestant settlers from England and Scotland."

- A chapter on the Irish conquest as a sort of dry run for England's colonisation of the New World from American Colonies by Alan Taylor, aka "Why Every White Person In The Anglosphere Likes To Say They're Irish Whether They Are Or Not" (it eases white guilt because the irish were treated almost as badly as the native americans)(genuine irish ancestry here which i never mention because it was seven generatins ago also dilligaf)

i guess it's better to have loved and then lost
than never stumbled across
the gift of knowing that whatever the fucking cost
to put it in perspective
and under my vision
this world is superficial
i'm done with others opinions

I'm thinking I'm going to end this journal.

Don't get me wrong. It's served me well, or sometimes not so well, for close to three years now. And because of its roots in pre-myspace social networking, livejournal has always been underrated as a blogging service (I rate it far higher than, say, blogspot). But the fact of the matter is that this journal should no longer be my journal, because it's no longer me. Facts are simple, I'm a different man to when I started here. Far too radically different to justify continuing with just some slight changes.

Let's look at simple, objectively obvious things shall we? When I started I was 18. I looked kinda like this:

I'm now 21, and look a bit like this:


And while I'm sure a few of the metal types reading this will probably still give me shit about the shavin' of my ~glorious flowing bishie locks~ but hell, it's helped me get away from the retarded focus on image (and a broader "metalness", which I want to talk about in detail sometime). It's sure as hell helped me get me jobs and female attention a lot easier than would have been possible with long hair.

When I started, I was a South Park libertarian. I relentlessly mock these types now because they fucking deserve it, and I'm kind of cut that nobody did it to me. I was GBS all over. A middle-class white male who honestly thought that the Western world was an open playing field where anyone could succeed if they tried hard enough. As a white male from a Christian upbringing, I couldn't understand why brown, asian or black people, women, poor people, muslims or whoever could whinge when we were obviously in an equal society these days. Growin' up in the whitest state in Australia (less than 10% of non-European heritage) didn't help either, it just blinded me to how fucked some people's situations were. Fuck me, I was an idiot. Political ideology these days, if you're asking, is international cynical realist (largely theoretical as lol@ your average person acting on an international level) and progressive socialist with a hint of marxism on the domestic scale (more practical but obviously still difficult). Basically I want my country to be more like, say, Denmark or Sweden.

And the music. Oh fuck, the music. When I started I was a METAL IS MY LIFE kid. These days it makes up about 40% of my collection by band, and even less of what I listen to. Yet I listen to more metal than I did back in the days when it was all I listened to. Music is still such a huge part of my life and broadening my boundaries is an essential part of that. Every genre has its redeeming factors, and every genre is about 90% made up of shit bands. Why do I still talk about metal more than anything else, then? Because it's what I know best. Metal has so much support for listeners wanting to get into it - Terrorizer is one of the best-written music magazines across any genre, metal_community is the finest music discussion forum on the entire internet. And it's all dedicated - hip-hop there's little you can get which doesn't focus almost entirely on the biggest acts, indie publications and websites tend to encompass all matter of genres. Metal makes it easy to continue down the dark path, and it's become apparent that I'm good at writing about metal, and apart from incorrectly guessing in early 2008 that Death Magnetic would be worse than St Anger, I've not been proved wrong about metal in the last few years. I know metal and still love it, in an open relationship kind of way. But I'm not a metalhead. I can't define myself by a style of music, especially not when two-thirds of the time I'm listening to something else. To reject the sublime pop of the Beatles, the intense emotion of Radiohead, the limitless gleeful energy of Daft Punk, the dirty, dreamy pulse of Massive Attack, the contrasting smoothness and brutality of the Wu-Tang Clan, and thousands of other artists simply on the basis of being "not metal" is foolish. And yet it's what I did and thousands of other metalheads still do. Oh, I know, you've all got a few token names you can rattle off - Rush and a couple other prog bands here, some 80s hardcore there, Public Enemy as the acceptable face of hip-hop and maybe some harsh electronic which you read about in Zero Tolerance - but you're not fooling anyone when you do that. Only listening to metal is far, far, far dumber than listening to everything but metal.

Then of course, there's my real world life. As is probably obvious, I was your classic aspie shut-in when I started here. Christ, every night I spent out of the house was cause for a massive celebration. These days I - well, I still have dramas, but don't we all, and using fuckin' Asberger's Syndrome as a goddamn excuse for that is the most fucking shit thing someone can do in that situation and an outrageous offense to those actually suffering from mental debilitation. On the downside as my social life has become healthier my liver sure as hell hasn't, but despite heavy drinking I'm still reasonably confident I'm not an alcoholic (only like 1 in every 10 days I have a drink it ends in drunkenness, and fewer still in the variety of passing-out-in-a-pool-of-me-own-vomit drunkenness which every night used to end up in back three years ago). But social life isn't just drinking, it's talking to people after tutorials at uni, it's having easy conversations with coworkers during a quiet time at work, it's meeting friends for coffee or going to the gym with them. It's having a goddamn life, and the fact that I see it as such cause for celebration is probably a comment on how a mere few years ago it was right fucked.

I don't know if I'll just DELETE FUCKING EVERYTHING or just start again on a different journal. If I do, the lj will certainly become a secondary thing, used only for talking to you all and watching or running communities. I will probably use wordpress or something for my main blog and crosspost things here. The blog's content will probably be similar but with less drunkposting - I'll leave that to facebook, twitter and the comments on all of your entries.

But I've changed, and now so must this.

but for ONE CROWDED HOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUURRRR
YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE IN THE ROOOM
and i sailed around all those bumps in the night
to your beacon in the gloom
i thought i had found your golden september in the middle of that purple june*
but that ONE CROWDED HOUR
would lead to my WRECK AND RUUUUUIIIINNNN



*yes that shit makes sense i'm quoting an aussie band for once you fuckin' northern hemispherians FUCK

GODDAMNIT

AAAARRGHHH

I intend to meet as many of you horrible deviants as are willing when I do my 2011 EPYKK WORLD TRIP.

If you're tagged, answer the questions in your journal and change the ones you dislike with something else.

#01 - What song are you currently addicted to?
Laura Marling - "Devil's Spoke", from I Speak Because I Can.

#02 - What books are you currently reading?
Don Watson's American Journeys. Also intermittently reading Niall Ferguson's The War of the World and rereading Guy Rundle's Down to the Crossroads.


#03 - What was the last movie you saw?
In a cinema? I haven't a fucking clue. On DVD or TV? Um... I still don't know! I'm shit with movies.

#04 - Happy news you've just received?
The Greens called Labor's bluff perfectly and receive both a cabinet and ministry position in the Tasmanian government, which is either going to make them or break them as a party over the next three or four years - and is making the Liberals fume HILARIOUSLY.

#05 - At least one detail about a person you like?
She gives really fantastic hugs. I like that in a bird :3

#06 - What's your current fandom/obsession/addiction?
Politics. I am being a politics junkie so hard and the amount of elections happening this year make it the equivalent of telling an alcoholic that he gets to spend a lot of time in a bottleshop this year. The oddly flavoured boutique beers of the Tasmanian state election to open up, then we get the black 'n filthies and fine scotches of the UK election next month, and later in the year get completely drunk off easy session lagers and big-flavoured bourbons of the Australian Federal election and US Congressional elections.

Okay this makes it sound like I am an alcoholic. Whatever.

#07 - What present are you expecting?
Not really expecting anything - does my next paycheck count?

#08 - How would you want to humiliate a person you dislike?
Just reveal something fantastically hypocritical about them - and most of the people I dislike I dislike specifically because of their hypocrisy - in a very public manner which noone could ever forget.

#09 - What was the last thing you've bought?
A large latte, a couple of shirts, a belt and a bag of peanuts. God bless capitalism.

#10 - Would you rather date a good singer, or a good cook?
I'd have to say cook.

#11 - Something that made you laugh today?
The reactionary Islamic Caliphate of the Middle Kingdom collapsing due to US annexation of Manchuria and rebel pressure and turning into an eerily historically accurate militant atheist socialist dictatorship in LF Age Of Imperialism.

#12 - What do you do to change your mood?
Depends what I want it changed to. If you mean "i am down in the dumps and want to feel happy please send halp" it's probably going to be Daft Punk, Andrew WK, Edguy or MGMT. Maybe Megadeth, because there's a certain perverse sort of happiness to a few of their songs.

#13 - What was the last meal you ate?
Mi Goreng. Om Nom Nom Malay/Indonesian style fried noodles with shitloads of soya sauce.

#14 - Countries you want to visit?
So very many. At the moment, number one seems to be the US, although the next country I plan on visiting - the first one on next year's EPYKK WORLD TRIP - is Turkey.

#15 - Any plans for tomorrow?
PUB
DAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY

#16 - Find the closest book currently sitting near you and flip to page 54. What is the first sentence of the second paragraph?
"Corporate pedophilia, explains the discussion paper, is a metaphor that "encapsulates the idea that such advertising and marketing both of children and public morality."" Waleed Aly, one of Australia's finest political commentators, in part of a discussion on the loss of direction of the political right in this country called What's Right?: The Future of Conservatism in Australia. In this chapter specifically, the fact that conservatives have worked themselves up about "moral outrages" which everyone else got over decades ago, like homosexuality, and genuine moral outrages such as the sexualisation of children are, oddly, only being fought against by the left and ignored by the right, indicative of a broader crisis of identity among conservatives both in Australia and to a lesser extent worldwide.

#17 - The most disturbing thing you've ever watched?
1 Guy 1 Jar
...crunch

#18 - What kind of music is contained on your hard drive?
Literally every kind. literally

#19 - How do you watch your anime?
Massively drunk at my weeaboo friend's place.

I tag: anyone who'd like to do this.

Like the politics junkie I am, I've been following this UK General Election a bit along with the state and federal ones in Australia and the Congressional ones in the US. For the longest time, it looked like it was going to be an absolute Tory whitewash, although we're hearing in the last couple of months or so that it's going to be a closer contest - then again, that could very easily be a Murdochian conspiracy to sell more - after all, a close contest gets more people watching and reading the media.

Since all the poms here are doing it, I decided to give the "who should I vote for" a shot. Being as I am a latte-sipping, dope-smoking marxist uni poofta (only some of which is ironic), I'm hardly surprised with where it went:

Take the Who Should You Vote For? UK General Election quiz

Green				33
Labour				21
Liberal Democrat				9
UK Independence	-17
Conservative	-37

You expected: GRN

Your recommendation: Green

Click here for more details about these results

Obviously, the Greens in the UK, even more than the Greens in most places, are notoriously anti-development. But given the state of your three majors (and I might expand on it more later, but I'd like to compliment you on this, while not as good as the 8+ parties you tend to see with the Scandinavian model it's the best you see in the Anglosphere), the Greens are who I would vote for. Incidentally, the Greens got my top vote in the recent Tasmanian state election, but they're far more centrist and professional in my state than they are in most of the rest of the world - something which has been forced upon them, as these days they pick up over 20% of the vote in their own right. From what I understand of the UK:

New Labour: Corrupt, nanny-state, had the opportunity to wean the UK off the dick of the American Right in the post-Thatcher era but did the exact opposite. I'm surprised that Labour appeared as my second preference, so either that survey is based on traditions rather than current policies, or they're not as bad ideologically as I thought - just inept and shit at running things.

Lib Dems: I remember going to my favourite political discussion forum a couple years ago and asking what the deal was with the Lib Dems. Nobody knew - and neither did the Lib Dems. They seem to be very similar to what the Tasmanian Greens are now: a party which runs itself like a minor party who exists to hold the balance of power rather than to run shit, which has suddenly found itself in a power-holding position. And that's even before the current split between old-school social democrats (who, as I understand it, make up the majority of the party membership) and the neoliberalist "Orange Bookers" (who make up the majority of the leadership). No prizes for guessing which lot I'd rather side with, but the split combined with the party's perceived general ineptitude is enough to cause a serious worry for any traditional socialist voting for them.

UKIP: This lot tend to come across as rather right-wing, which doesn't really surprise me: I'm sure I'm typical of many on the "left" who promote regional integration in the hope that it will perhaps temper the often fearful and insular ideologies of right-wing groups. I'm very much pro-EU, so a generally right-wing party whose main platform is being anti-BARMY BRUSSELS BUREAUCRATS is never going to sit right by me.

Conservatives: They're fucking Tories, what did you expect? They're even more right-wing than the Australian Liberals under the Mad Monk (or indeed any leader since Menzies, who completely remodeled the party based on the Tories), and while they're at least based around traditional conservatism with much less neoliberalism than most conservative parties (the combination of which has led to most of the world's worst leaders in the last 50 years), they're still Conservatives and still anathema to a functioning, progressive society - so, they don't really belong in this century. The only reason I could conceive of voting Tory is if they were led by a strong moderniser with a good hold on the party and they look like being more competent leaders of the country, whatever direction it may be going, than whatever Labour or the Lib Dems might throw up. And it's a sad comment on the state of politics in the UK that that looks like it might be the case.

ADDENDUM 1: Get rid of First Past The Post, you primitive thickos.

ADDENDUM 2: Dear seppos who will come into a political discussion on another country asking "who are the republicans and who are the democrats": The Tories are the Democrats, the BNP are the Republicans, everyone else is to the left of you because despite the best efforts of a few outstanding individuals the US is still a neoimperialist paleocon hellhole.

If I was a month, I’d be: January, on account of it's holidays and Tasmania is warm.
If I was a day of the week, I’d be: PUBDAY BITCHESSSSSSS (known in uncivilised nations as "Wednesday")
If I was a time of day, I’d be: 6 PM, because it's not quite day and not quite night, and the only other way I can get that is by being awake painfully early.
If I was a planet, I'd be: Earth. Seriously, are any other planets as full of awesome things as Earth is? But if it has to be another one I'd say Mars because I could chill with Doctor Manhattan on his clock-fortress thing.
If I was a sea animal, I'd be: WHITE WHALE HOLY GRAIL a narwhal because horns are brutal.
If I was a direction, I’d be: north, because I'm already further south than everything except Chile, Argentina and New Zealand.
If I was a piece of furniture, I'd be: an awesome, big-arse couch that you fall asleep on more often than you do your actual bed.
If I was a liquid, I’d be: a well-aged Irish Whiskey. Awesome and smooth but kinda harsh if you're not used to me, but if you know me well you can really appreciate me. Wow my ego is off the wall tonight.
If I was a gemstone, I'd be: a diamond because I'm a hard cunt and the chicks love me :smug:
If I was a tree, I’d be: a willow. The highlight of getting dragged along to church every week when I was a little kid was always the big old willow tree out the back of the church which I would have a blissful minute or so swinging on the branches of after mass every Sunday.
If I was a tool, I’d be: a leatherman. Jack of all trades, master of none. Also fits in your pocket :3
If I was a flower, I’d be: one of the useful ones which has fruit. flowrz r ghey
If I was a kind of weather, I'd be: a sunny day but with plenty of light clouds so the heat never gets overbearing.
If I was a musical instrument, I’d be: a guitar, because it's the only one I can play with anything resembling skill :shobon:
If I was a color, I’d be: BLACKER THAN THE BLACKEST BLACK TIMES INFINITY okay fine it's a shade, Red. I always liked red. For all the usual fire/danger/lust/whatever reasons, plus girls almost always look better in red than they do in other colours, not a clue why. Try it sometime ladies!
If I was an emotion, I’d be: THE RIGHTEOUS FURY OF THE EMPEROR, ALWAYS ANGRY ALL THE TIME
If I was a fruit, I’d be: a passionfruit. Passionfruit are fucking delicious and never get enough love.
If I was a sound, I’d be: the sound of a slightly distorted, tightly-wound guitar and a grand piano simultaneously playing a big, pounding, victorious riff in all major chords. Like the one after Petrucci's solo in "Stream of Consciousness" or the one at the end of "Ants of the Sky" (although that one doesn't have any piano, and it fucking should).
If I was an element, I'd be: mercury, because I just have to be fucking different, don't I?
If I was a car, I’d be: a Kingswood. You're not taking the Kingswood!
If I was a food, I’d be: mi goreng, with plenty of soya sauce, but hold the chili.
If I was a place, I’d be: the good old country town pub, transplanted into the middle of the city.
If I was a material, I’d be: velvet, because I can be smooth as (and good looking) but if you rub me the wrong way I am hell of awkward and probably irritating.
If I was a taste, I’d be: the well-deserved cold lager after a hot day of hard work, fresh off the tap.
If I was a scent, I'd be: the smell of a good stir-fry being cooked that hits your nose as soon as you walk in the door after a long day and makes you happy someone's done something for you.