Procrastination

Like that mythical yet unknown teenager so long ago, procrastination will be the death of me. I’m addicted to it. I can’t stop. Invades my every waking moment. Every time I get home, every time I’m alone with nothing to do, I begin. I hold nothing sacred, I think about nothing else. I have a problem.

The Mid-Course Exams for Year 12 are rearing their ugly head like neatly categorised toothed dolphins. You may not think that’s ugly, but imagine dolphins with teeth for a second, and like the British Empire in Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series, I’m sure you’ll come around to my way of thinking. The Mid-Courses are here on Monday and I’ve got to study. I’ve got to write two practice exams at least, one for English and one for History, and added to that complete the backlog of German work that I’ve been neglecting via correspondence. To be fair I have excuses to rationalise my behaviour.

I don’t feel to well. I have a headache. My throat’s sore. What she said really hurt me and I need some time to recover. I feel fat! Leave me alone!

But really. Essays are harder to write than a blog post or a story. You need evidence. You need to read two texts, comb them for quotes and specific stylistic features and shiz, formulate them into structured and orderly paragraphs (Topic, Example, Explanation), then arrange those paragraphs in a way that misdirects the hapless marker into thinking you have some grasp of logic, and can think coherently. It’s nearly impossible. I prefer to go back to my work writing a post-apocalyptic surrealist stream of consciousness romp through the British Orient.

And as for the German homework. I’ve explained the unique mindbending features of the German language on another post. Besides, I have to log into some internet site and listen to RP accented folks speak to me for half an hour to complete the required task. That comes under my definition of cruel and unusual torture. Lol jokz. Love you guys xox.

So instead of making a productive use of a beautiful Saturday morning, here I am. On the computer, switching back and forth, birdlike between a ten year old strategy game and the twisted gaudy wonders of the internet. I am procrastinating. This infection, this disease infects my life like the spread of neoliberalism across the Western world after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. I can’t get out of bed. I can’t be bothered going for a run. Homework is left in a tattered pile within my schoolbag. And I’m feeling the effects.

Like a conscientious Russian housewife, my taught athletic frame is collecting flab in strategic places. I’m falling behind in certain subjects, and every day I put off my required tasks to listen to eighties music and sleep. I know of course where this will all lead. I’ll be unhealthy, stupid and hopeless, crying naked in my bedroom, listening to an Adele, album with a cardboard cask of wine in my hands, surrounded by stray cats.

But I know how to stop this! How to take control of my life! I just need to get stuck in! Je fais m’y mettre! I need to get up early and stop watching reruns of Torchwood! (I’ll have to get my daily dose of homoerotic violence somewhere else instead) I need to start an exercise routine! Run to Buladelah and back with twenty kilo weights on each arm! I need to dive into my schoolwork with joy and panache! That’s it! Routine! Order! I will become the master of my own existence via the divine force of free will!

In a minute.

The English Language Is A Sandwich

The English language. I’m writing it. You’re reading it. Unless you’re a godless foreigner, plotting down the downfall of the Western world beneath a deep system of caves and an elaborate moustache, you probably use it as your primary tool to interpret the world around you, but how often have you considered it’s character?

Like old cats, galapagos tortoises and boats, languages have a distinct character, a uniqueness that sets them apart from all the other unique languages. Yiddish for instance, was formed in the shtetls, the segregated urbanised communities of the Ashkenazi Jews, and therefore, while lacking many words to extensively describe nature, it’s packed full of words to describe social situations and phenomena to the minutests detail. It’s here we get words like “shmuck”, “chutzpah”, “klutz” and my perennial favourite “meshuggeneh”. Click here for there meanings and more Yiddish hijinks.

German is guttural and good for heavy metal. It also likes to add bits of words on to other words to make highly confusing lengthy composites. Scholars often suggest this as one of the key reasons for their success in the Second World War. A good example of this would be “Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz” or “Beef labelling supervision duty assignment law”. To German’s credit it’s is also filled with useful philosophical and psychological terms such as “angst”, “schadenfreude” and “zeitgeist”. Perhaps we can hypothesise that the mental stresses and rigours Germans must feel, due to their day to day dealings with unreasonable compound words such as Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, have forced their language, like a guttural, atavistic teenager, to become more inward looking and existential. Man. Here’s a vulgar showtune that sums it up quite well.

Russian is longwinded, forcing people to use abbreviations to get by, like “Komsomol”, or alternatively “Vsesoyuzny Leninsky Kommunistichesky Soyuz Molodyozhi” The Soviet era Communist Youth League. The Irish, convinced that then they can get by on half the language those damned Saxons use, get by with just thirteen letters, which they form into interesting (read frustrating) combinations. “Mbh” for example equals the letter ‘v’. The Chinese and Vietnamese have a tonal system, which can change an entire sentence’s meaning depending on what mood you’re in. The Slovaks have over a dozen suffixes. The Japanese have several parallel language systems that depend on the social status of the speaker and the spoken too. And taking the coup de grace, to excuse my French, The Yagan language of Tierra Del Fuego has the word “Mamihlapinatapei”, a beautiful expression meaning “the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start”. And no. I won’t even attempt to pronounce it.

Then what is the character of the English language? Good question imaginary ballgirl. Well, perhaps the most distinctive feature of English is the fact that it steals stuff. Like pubic hair, every language has loanwords, but the history of English is important here. Perhaps the fact, and here I go again indecently massaging conjecture, that early England’s habit of getting invaded by foreigners every couple of years set it up for a special sort of versatility. A shamwow style absorption ability. The video below only adds to my point.

Afterwards of course it became the literary vehicle of the best form of Imperialism, and has now through Uncle Sam and his diabolical superweapon, the internet, transitioned to become the language of globalisation. Excellent theory aside, there is no doubting that England is the unsuccessful sex tourist of linguistics, picking up a disturbingly large variety of exotic and undeniably useful words and phrases. We stole shampoo and pyjamas off the Indians, chocolate and tortillas off the Mexicans, robots off the Czechs and cheques off the French, but by George the wine quaffing papists deserved it. Huzzah! For the versatility, and the ease in which English adopts new phrases has made it the perfect vehicle for evil contemporary Yankee corporate Imperialism. English wins free market style. Through pure competition… and the fact that it has the patronage of the world’s major military and economic superpower and a monopoly over the internet and commerce.

English is also highly logical. It’s a popular folk tale that English is one of the hardest languages to learn, and it’s got about as much truth behind it as Rapunzel, and a couple of the Brothers Grimm’s more dark and anti-Semitic classics. The kernel of truth lies in that due to a lack of an early regulating body, when print media was first birthed from Satan’s burning tubes, the spelling of our language is erratic and nonsensical. This of course is a blinding condemnation of capitalism. The French set up the Acadamie Francaise to purify their tongue, and the Germans were collectively devising a set of guidelines regarding correct orthography before they brought down the Roman Empire.

It Is Said The Battle of Teutoberg Forest Stemmed From The Roman Emperor's Public Disdain For The Runic Alphabet

Apart from that minor blip English is logical in grammar and structure. A key part in the simplicity of our grammatical system is the fact that we don’t have genders. Unlike many languages, including those diabolical French again, English doesn’t assign genders to every noun. We don’t inexplicably designate a table masculine and a newspaper feminine, we don’t have six gender dependant articles and we don’t modify our word endings with snazzy little suffixes to confuse the wits out of our enemies. Indeed, we may surmise that the English is the perfect language for feminism. Did not the first outbreaks of Feminism take root and grow in the Anglosphere? Did not Germaine Greer pen her seminal work, the Female Eunuch, in English? Did not women first gain the vote in New Zealand? Is it not too audacious to surmise that English’s egalitarian nature lead to these very social changes in the first place? That the way a society talks about and to a group, often affects the way we treat them?

So indeed, in timely dramatic and perfect synthesis, is not the English language’s character now simple? It is versatile, it is logical, simple, and virulent. Like a perfect disease, like the Borg it incorporates the unique and useful features of every foreign laguage it encounters and embeds them into itself while inexorably wearing down all opposition. It is the very embodiment of a succesful Empire. But within itself it is more or less egalitarian. It has little place for honorifics, and those it has are hardly grafted into the very substance of the language like Japanese. Like the perfect man it’s chin is covered in a fine coat of masculine stubble, and it refuses to genderise nouns. It is therefore the perfect handmaiden for feminism.

Therefore to personify English would to be describe it as a sandwich. And yes. Sandwiches are people too.

Bungwahl

Hands up who has heard of Bungwahl? And should we explore the idea of socialism in it’s humbled groves?

That was a silly thing to say. I’m sorry. Despite the special powers outlined in previous posts, and my uncanny ability to navigate through rural towns in the early morning, I cannot see your hands. Perhaps if you scanned one of your hands and uploaded the jpeg to a Wikipedia article about a Virgin Islands basketball player I would be able to gauge an accurate answer to this question/directive. But like the social benefits of unregulated capitalism and polyester, this is immaterial.

Bungwahl is a town within our beloved and glorious Great Lakes region of NSW. It is within the area of land that rightfully belongs to our free democratic association of socialists, and therefore is of some interest to us. Much like a boil or wart on the sole of one’s foot, which you  attempt to ignore, but occasionally become aware of when climbing a specific incline, or inspect one’s toes for tinea, fluff or sudden and unexpected inbreeding.

Bungwahlians are Often Bemused by Large Puppets

Like a boil or wart, Bungwahl is small, sweaty,  forested and has reputation for inbreeding.

According to some interweb people with a website and that, Bungwahl has a population of 211. However, I know someone who lives there, and he says there’s “like seven people here”, and since I know all of those seven people fairly well, I’m more likely to believe him, then a cabal of dodgy mustachioed, fez-wearing, wine-skulling foreigners on the internet who are probably overly fond of mice and collect model planes. Model planes are irritating. I once watched a movie with a German in it and a plane that crashed in the desert. The German said he built planes, so everyone was like “Cool! Rebuild the plane!” and he was like “Ja. OK.” But then in the end he turned out to have only built model planes, so a fat English guy got angry with him, and someone drank all the water. Irritating right?

Germans and rucksacks aside, I visited Bungwahl recently for some fraternal socialist communion. Not religious though. Religion is the opiate of the masses, says Marx, and he had a beard and his dad was a Jew, so he’d probably know better. Anyway, when I went there, after unloading some Polish furniture and walking up a long steep driveway with the smell of numbat in my nostrils, I noticed there was water in a ditch by the road. There was also a dog in the water. This has several key impacts on revolutionary policy. Water means that there is mosquitos and that means malaria. The forces of capitalism would never dream of searching for us in a malaria ridden hole like Bungwahl. Also the added threat of numerous, perhaps plentiful dogs means that aerial reconnaisance is out of the question. Dogs are also known to guard against most forms of malaria, and their happy-go-lucky attitude and willingness to learn will make them good socialists, and better bakers.

Demotivationals Are Almost Never Wrong

Bungwahl is also much endowed with trees and green things like uranium. That was a lie. There’s no uranium in Bungwahl that I know of, there’s far more simple and unsettling ways to explain the prevalence of extra limbs, toes, fingers and organs amidst the local population. That will be explained further on. Luckily the whole tree thing is being fixed with chainsaws and whatnot, and the government says that all this leafy nonsense will be over and done with fairly soon. That’s also a lie. I’m saying a lot of them now. I just ate a Monte Carlo biscuit, and as we all know the Count of Monte Cristo was a notorious lier. Need I say anymore? That said, there is some logging underway, and we all know how animals like wombats, bears, dolphins and Greenies hate logging. We could draw a local militia from the disgruntled forest folk, and reach out to the no doubt disgruntled and oppressed loggers, gruntling them together into a mighty force for good. We can use the trees or, depending how long it takes to convert the loggers, stumps to hide in from the capitalists. We can use the dogs to climb the trees and act as lookouts.

Inbreeding however is double edged spoon, and like a splade, fickle and cynical to the ways of the world. The extra digits of the local folk might mean their ability to handle peaceful revolutionary weapons of virtuous lethality would be hampered, their low IQ and high birth rate, does however counteract this. The inbreds, due to their smell, unsavoury appearance and awkward culinary habits are ostracised by our bigoted society, this combined with the promise of fresh meat should see them flock to our banner. Once our doctrine has been memorised by rote, they will make good albeit somewhat rigid socialists. The lack of morals, contraceptives, and things to do in Bungwahl means the birth rate is relatively high, allowing our armies to be replenished with ease and speed.

Unfortunately, I’ve never actually seen an inbred in Bungwahl, and most of my ideas about recruiting them come from a movie about inbred hillbillies that go crazy and kill people in America. The plot was implausible and I found it made light of certain socio-economic problems and social issues in the Appalachians that should be confronted in a more serious manner.

Be that as it may, I have made up my mind, as have you and the Grand Council. Efforts in Bungwahl will redoubled and tens of dollars of funds poured into a number of dog training and jazz piano programs. The red flag will fly over Bungwahl within an indefinite period of time, and become a bastion of our ideology, and haven for the eleven (or twelve) toed peoples of the world.