Metal City - Hai Ina Ia Mai Ana Ka Puana

I'm Alive.

What? Oh.

No - I know nobody asked. I can't say I blame you. After all, the former greatness of Metal City has slipped in the latter half of this year. I've been working on other things, and I just haven't had the desire to spill my guts on the internet, for the benefit of the zero readers that come here. But, for old time's sake, I thought I'd post something for anyone who still remembers your old pal Dave.

It has been a strange few months. All of my months are strange, and they seem to become progressively stranger, but as the months have lurched onward towards the year's undoubtedly anticlimactic conclusion, things are changing all over the place. Everyone's changing, and all sorts of new rule books are being written.

And, of course, I'm no exception. The firm policy of hiding out in my house like some stinky hermit has meant that I've got a lot of work done. I know that a lot of you out there are interested in 'writing', and that you'll wax philosophical on the subject in hilariously overblown fashion when given even a nanosecond of an unsuspecting victim's attention - but the truth of the matter is this: if you want to be a writer, boys and girls, the berets, the readings, the references to Leonard Cohen, the endless postulations on the nature of creativity, and the relentless 'blog posts' that your shitty little friends suck your dicks over don't amount to a hill of shit. If you want to write, dammit, it is no different to becoming anything else - it takes bucketloads of... what? Work. Forget about this 1000 word bullshit - if you want to write, and I mean really write - do some work for once in your sad, asinine, art-student lives. Bastards.

So, anyway - that's what I did. I can be really, really fucking smug about it, too. I can be reeeeeally fucking smug about it, because - listen up, you fucking turkeys - your old buddy Dave made a breakthrough.

I've had jackasses like the very sensual Kathryn, and the very enticing Ellie Mae giving me all kinds of lectures about all kinds of bullshit that I've been espousing over the fifty years that have passed since some moron told me that my scribbled ramblings were worth more than ten points when launched at a bin.

"Dammit, David!" they would scream at me, their voices shrill and manic, "Get your shit together, you lazy bastard! Quit fartarseing around and talking a load of bullshit about how everybody sucks and nobody loves your Aaaaaaaaaaahrt, and do something about it."

I've got enough bitches in my life who won't stop yelling at me to cut the shit, so I figured that if shutting them up would cost nothing more than a jiffy bag and a print out of my epic cornucopia of childish nonsense, 'Bronnie The Dog And The Horror Of Sleepy Rock' - a book which conclusively proves that chronological age is meaningless when considering the psyche of the idiot manchild - it was more than worth it.

I printed that shit out, then realized that I'm broke. So, like all good mooching losers, I went to my Dad.

"Dad!" I said firmly, wrinkling my nose as I noticed that his hand was down the front of his pants as he watched NASCAR. "Gimme a bunch of fucking money, you old bastard."

"What?" he screamed, "What do you want money for? I give you enough money. If it wasn't for me, you little bloodsucker, you wouldn't be kept in videogames and pornography to the level at which you've become accustomed. No, I shall not give you any money. Now, get out of the way before I shove my fist up your anal passage so far that it will be way fucking far up there."

"You old knave." I snarled, stepping forward and seizing the old fool by his blue singlet, his grey chest hairs tickling my muscular knuckles, "Give me the money. It's important. It is imperative that you hand over your Visa card and account details to me. Immediately. Do this thing, and I promise that my repressed memories will surely stay that way. It could mean the difference, Julian, between life in prison - and the chair."

The old swine scoffed and drew back, launching a gob of green phlegm directly at my face. It splattered against my glasses, and he let out a shriek of glee, bringing his leg up and driving his foot squarely into my nuts. I fell to the floor, clutching my crotch, my jaws dripping with foam - pointing angrily at him.

"You dirty old bastard! Give me the money!"

"What do you need it for, anyway?" he laughed, bringing the heel of his shoe down again, crushing my testicles against the cold, wooden floor, "Haven't you downloaded enough pornography? Don't we allow you to spend all day masturbating as it is? What could you possibly need more of my money for?"

"For my art." I wept. "Do it for art. For the future of literature. For the future of this country. I have a gift, father. A gift which I want to share with the people. I want to give the gift of words to the children - to lift their spirits, and elevate them to a place far above this world gone mad. Give me your Visa, father. Give it to me."

He considered this for a moment, and - silently - handed over the card, his face shuddering almost imperceptibly in a most familiar tic.

For all you douchebags who aren't down with the biz, like myself, there's this thing called 'manuscript assessment' which all 'writers' have to go through before anything gets published. See, Allen Unwin, or Doubleday, or whoever - they are wise to your jive, you turkeys. They know how talentless and awful and annoying you are, and rather than having to waste valuable cocaine-lunchbreak time sorting my wheat from your stinky, stinky chaff, they want YOU, the starving artist, to pay for the privelage of having some anonymous stiff read your crazy shit. They'll write a four page report on how much of a loser you are, and how it should be made a crime for you to be let loose near a word processor, and how they sincerely hope that wolverines tear off your balls and spit them into your mouth.

All of this sounded simply awesome to me, so I stuffed a jiffy bag full of this weeks magnum opus, went into stamp-licking overdrift, and shoved that sucker in the nearest post box.

In the meantime, I paced, and I fretted, and I wanted to go wee wee because the whole concept of having some anonymous bastard - some emo-glasses wearing, Nick Cave worshipping, poetry-reading fuckwit - reading my work, and JUDGING it, was almost too irritating to bear. And, as that sand sat in my oyster, the weeks ticked by, and it slowly became a pearl. Hee. That's a 'metaphor'. That's how come I'm so fucking clever.

So, this package shows up one day - the postman shoved it through my door, and I stood there with my balls hanging out of my ill-fitting boxer shorts, breathing my filthy morning breath in his face.

It was the package! Awesome!

I ripped that bastard open, preparing to cover the floor in shit as I lost control at the sight of my career, my hopes, my dreams, and my ego being torn to shreds in the space of four A4 pages.

But, do you know what happened?

Do you?

Those cretins fell for my nasty bullshit, and they gave me a glowing report. They praised me for my 'beautiful imagery' and my 'quirkiness' and my 'wit'. The 'sensitivity' struck them, as did the 'poignant, moving' ending.

Haa, fuckers. I always win.

But, what does this mean?

What it means, turkeys, is that I can now sell the book. Don't you see? I can get out of here! I can escape this prison! I have a positive manuscript assessment. People literally kill and rape each other over positive manuscript assessments - they lie, cheat, and steal from one another to get a simple 'that wasn't total shit' written on a piece of Victorian Writer's Center stationary. I, however, was fellated with both sensuality and genuine love by the mind-rapists who work for the VWC - they lovingly caressed my tumescence, occasionally giving me a little slap on the face for being so cheeky. And then, afterwards, I kissed them on the forehead and told them to fuck off to the bathroom to brush their teeth.

Tossers.

Oh, that's the other thing.

So, I did my TAA cert, which means that I could be raping YOUR mind in the near future, if you're enough of a balls-out retard to want to 'study writing' because you think it would 'enhance your skills', or some such fucking bullshit. Since my addiction to pornography and slasher movies won't pay for itself, I figured that I'd better get motivated and get some kind of motherfucking job. Time to get PAID, mofoz - I want the things that money can buy. Like, pornography and slasher movies.

So, I went for a job interview - and while I was sitting in the office - another dude came up to me and asked me for my backstory. Sheet, homes - I told him a whole litany of ridiculous nonsense, designed to make me sound far better than I actually am. After all, just between you and me, I'm a total suburban knucklehead - and, as we all know, the suburbs FUCKING SUCK. Grr! Down with the suburbs!

The next person I hear bag the suburbs is going to get my fist through their fucking spine. I don't care how cool and hip and leet you think you are, cunt, just because you cruise Brunswick Street looking for some fine canoli and a good prole red. You are a complete arsehole by definition, and I want to cut your balls off. I read a post on one of these so-called 'internet weblogs' that the kids are so fucking in love with these days, and at first I thought the author should be given a kerosene bath followed by a flicked match, then I thought he should have wild mules tear his scrotum away from his worthless body with thick ropes, but now I'm pretty sure that any kind of death is appropriate, as long as it is drawn-out and excruciatingly painful. The post dealt with the author's true sorrow that Brunswick Street is being polluted by people from 'the suburbs' who just aren't cool. They're not cool, y'see. Brunswick Street should be the sole domain of the artsy and blessed - a haven for those who are Special, and who don't play by society's rules and regulations, man. A place where Indonesian trip-hop plays in vegan cafes, while punks, rastas, and poets glide by in a melting pot of creative bliss. A place where a big, shaky 'A' on the back of a stolen leather jacket actually MEANS something. A place, friends, where the sounds of commercial radio are banned, and instead, the encyclopaedia of hip that are 3RRR and PBS fill the streets with their sweet, hip, Leonard Cohen-esque siren song.

Fuck off, you elitist prick. If some guy from Springvale wants to go to a pub on Brunswick Street, just suck it up. Deal with it. Get used to the idea that you're not creative, you're not alternative, you're not underground, and The General Public don't fear you because you're so cool and revolutionary - you're nothing but a self-centered, arrogant, pretentious, miserable pain in the arse, and a large, drunken hooligan from Eltham should corner you in a dark alley, tear your colon out with his bare hands, squeeze the contents into your wrenched-open mouth, before wrapping it around your pencil-thin neck and choking you with it until you shit your pants and die.

So, I'm in this office, and this guy wants to know where I've been and what I've done. I give him my resume, and tell him about what a dude I am, and he offers me a job.

Hell, yeah. I'll take your job, dude.

He told me that I have to register a company - an ACN and an ABN. So, like the fool I am, I've done just that, and I'm now making squillions of your earth doubloons doing editing, and copywriting, and proofreading, and related fun things. It's awesome - I get to stay home, walk the dog, spank the monkey, and rake in the cashola.

So, that's where it am at, you crazy little bastards. My plan for elevating my profile to that of a God is slowly coming to fruition, and I'm getting to enjoy the feeling of laughing at everyone who called me a pathetic, washed-up, overweight, unshaven no-hoper. Suck it up, you fuckers - I am the king. Not you. I am the ruler of this galaxy, and many galaxies beyond.

Yeah. That's right.

Posted by David at November 25, 2005 12:14 AM | TrackBack