Since that last post went up I've been in discussion with a few people, whom I'll classify loosely into two groups, the whingers who like an acapella seem to sing to one line [I thought I was your friend?], and those who just thought I was/am emo. An Asian emo....get the fuck out. Well alright I've got the shit hair and thick glasses down pat, like I'd ever stoop so low. I'll admit this much though, the ending of that last post does need a little clarification, hence this segue before I begin the current post in earnest. The previous post was written with a healthy dose of realism, and think what you may, it's a truth that cannot be denied. In uni you are expected and manipulated by the system to compete, much as we have little or no choice in the matter. It doesn't just happen in uni, it happens from school life onwards, it's just that in school the system in operation is a little laxed. You don't get three hundred people fighting over four or five honours positions, everybody graduates from primary to high school to college or whatever it is that awaits people.

I'll probably sound like a prat for stating this, but I could actually consider the few friends I have left from high school, and perhaps most of the friends from Foundation and first year, truer friends than the ones I made in second year uni. There was at worst inconsequential competition between us, and our friendship operated with the idea that there was nothing holding us back from continuing for as long as possible. In uni major, everyone's fighting for essentially the same thing, that is to get the one up on everybody else, and even the best performers might not even get rewarded. It sounds begrudging and resentful to allow academic rivalry to compromise a friendship, but readers, please, wake up and be dreadfully honest with yourself, could you ever totally forgive the person who's going to run you out on your sorry ass even though you know you tried your best and were probably equally deserving? Probably not. It's the same reason why you wouldn't make friends with the boss who fired you, sure you worked together for ten years, and the relationship was amicable enough, but it only lasted until you were deemed redundant and you ended up unemployed with your shit ruined. I recognise the concept of causality and that everything that occurs is partially my own doing, that is why rather than chomping down in the hippy-pie that is lurvy-durvy friendship, I'll be content making sure I can single-mindedly aim for academic excellence whilst maintaining what is at best collegial relationships with everyone else in second year. Sure there'll be a hell of a lot of guilt involved, but hey, c'est la vie. At least I know, unlike having to euthanise my pet dog, I'll be getting somewhere without having any emotional bonds being severed, and unlike those soppy tight-clad prats who woke up one morning and realised just what shit was coming down on them, I won't don eighteen layers of mascara and cry into it.

Which brings me to the main topic of this post: emos and Goths. Dare I give this subhuman bunch of charlatans any undeserved attention? Well lately I've been rather more exposed to this pseudo-subculture than any well-meaning person with a life would ever deem necessary, so I'll choose to vent my spleen here. For those not in the know, Goths and emos can be readily recognised from other people by one big distinguishing characteristic: they're patronising pieces of shit. The difference is in the plumage, both dress somewhat similarly except Goths manage to look impressive as only turkeys can, whilst emos just look like they need a kicking. Nadia Comaneci would be kicking herself [and knowing her, probably effortlessly in the back of her head] if she saw what people in tights were up to these days.

There is no real definition of a Goth, on physical stereotype they wear thick black coats, even in midsummer [Goths stink in more ways than one], plaster their faces with layer upon layer of acne-concealing make-up and eye-shadow so thick you'd half expect it to cake up and fall off their faces, dislodging a few eyes in the process from the weight, all in an attempt to quite literally look like walking corpses. The whole concept of being a Goth, in fact, seems to be centred around morbidity, incorporating other such tacky fashions as fishnet stockings with holes ripped in them, bourgeois Tudorian gowns which I'll admit is long overdue a return to everyday fashion, basically anything which helps them project the image that they're in touch with the gloomy/dead side of life and wish to look the part. Emos on the other hand look like lame prepped up versions of Goths, usually dressed in tight shirts and pants labeled with some band they consider fashionable, and hairstyles which would result in Martian invaders looking to subjugate intelligent life for their nefarious purposes being forced to look elsewhere. Tacky accessories include black-and-white striped armbands and socks, black[inevitable]-painted fingernails, and duffel bags anointed with more little badges than anyone who's actually rushing off to do something important would ever care for. The fact that many members of either group seem to find these characteristics interchangeable, and that none can ever come up with a single universal definition, serves to illustrate the shallow idiocy of the concepts.

Both groups are essentially musical subcultures, emos more so than Goths, which seem to prefer to connotate themselves to anything dead. The ridiculosity of that first idea is facilitated by the plain idiocy of the music, which essentially can be boiled down to incessant whingeing about the most banal issues whilst conveying the impression that it's somehow encountered something profound. Boohoo my cat died, I've stared death in the face, I'm somehow enlightened to the fact the world is a sorry loveless and tragic place, sod the people who do not accept this understanding, because they know nothing, especially my parents and/or the girl/guy who dumped me because they're not in touch with my feelings, no one understands how deeply I feel, and are merely affirming my stance about there being no love in the world. This why I wear what I do, because I want to outwardly project the fact that I'm dying within.

Here's my message to all Goths and emos: fuck you. As a matter of fact, it's true, no one does give a shit about you, because while you're too busy aggregrating yourself in a musical subculture, slapping on dead-face make-up and lamenting your non-lives, sensible people caught the clue train and either made do with what they had, or worked towards somehow bettering the situation. Sitting and whingeing whilst simultaneously looking dead makes pussies out of society, and benefits no one. Someone barely sensible will probably comment and write 'We're just voices that want to be heard.' Oh really? Well here's a tip, shut the fuck up. Stop trying to 'get heard' and start doing something. If you haven't lost your entire family in a firestorm, aren't stuck in a country where the terrorist militia only come knocking every second Wednesday and there's been famine for thirty years, or been rendered redundant by an economic system which fed your soul to some billionaire fatcat, you've got no right to complain. Everyone's going to encounter some form of negativity in their lives, deal with it.

The only thing that holds up your fragile network is the music you listen to. How anybody can form an entire supposed subculture out of any genre of music, let alone this piss-poor excuse for strung-together crotchets and quavers is beyond my sensibility. The main excuse I hear is that people feel they associate with the music and can see a deeper meaning. For all those emos and Goths out there, grow some cognitive skills. There is NO deeper meaning. A band sings about antagonism and sadness and suddenly everybody's a philosophy professor. Emo music is just every negative-connotating word strung together in a CAFG chord-progression sung by ambiguougly gay frat boys who failed both sports and science whose voices have yet to break at the age of 32 trying to pass it off as mainstream-rejecting punk. Association with the music? Well I'll name one important group of people who aren't feeling particularly associated with the music: the musicians. Whilst spoonfeeding impressionable young minds like you sopshits with their negative lyrics and stanzas of 'heart-written' dark poetry which makes it look and sound like they care, they're siphoning off millions of dollars and doing what none of you idiots have ever managed to do: move up in the world. That's right, they're moving on up, content taking all your money from merchandise sales [and I've seen the prices for emo CDs. LUDICROUS!] and concerts so they can continue their mindless brainwash campaign and participate in seizure-and-nosebleed-inducing shows such as MTV's Trippin' [having seen an episode I can agree with Maddox that this is the most patronising, mind-numbing piece of shit to have ever graced television, and considering it comes from MTV that says a lot]. The only redeeming factor of emo music is it rejects rap and hip-hop, and judging from the impressionability of these asswipes it wouldn't be beyond someone to introduce something along those lines [emo-hop?].

The point is, how can anyone make a sub-culture out of any form of music? I can safely say you don't see shit like that coming from the classical world. You don't see classical lovers dressing up as Bach or von Suppe every weekend and invading public spaces, or locking themselves in their rooms crying to Albinoni. Hell I'd like to see what sort of shit might happen when a military piece comes on, perhaps the Royal Society of Strauss Enthusiasts might invade Munich to the tune of the Radetskymarsch. Anyone who affiliates themselves to a clique the way emos and Goths do, purely based on a genre of music alone, is probably clingy, dependent, and self-insecure. If you like your music, share it by all means, enlighten the crowd, don't go looking for some deeper meaning in it like you've got some professorial understanding of the human psyche. Or better yet, toughen the fuck up, stop catering to these 'musicians', and see to your own shit, and stop trying to lean on the backs of all the similarly parasitic spineless dimwits like yourself to gain self-assurance and simultaneously pass yourself off as profound.

Every weekend I pass through the CBD of Brisbane, and it's full of emos and Goths on ludicrous dress parade [Note: you don't often see the Goths. They're lurking behind the trees in one of Brisbane's spacious well-foliated parklands. Goths are mysterious.], hundreds of mainstream-rejecting [oh the irony] soulless people who block up the plazas and walkways with their gatherings in which they indulge in such mind-provoking activities as water balloon fights and discussing their epiphanies on the deeper meanings of life, as only a 14-year old high school student who's barely started involuntarily bleeding from her crotch can. They come from far and wide, I once was on a train to Cleveland [look it up] and managed to trace an emo all the way back to Ormiston, meaning this pink-streaked lump of pork fat had caught a one-hour train ride just to look for self-assurance. Apparently an outgoing lifestyle for a teen these days amounts to dressing up like a twat and meeting in the city to sit around and whinge about teachers. The fact that parents are willing to allow their children to behave in this manner is beyond sensible comprehension. Parents, know this, your kids are whingeing spineless puussies, shoot them. Since that's unfortunately illegal, beat the crap out of them and send them for psychiatric brainwashing and wash the turds out of their skulls, afterwards propagate them on a diet of Strauss and Mendelssohn so that they can finally affiliate themselves with a musical genre that is actually a culture. Then afterwards beat yourselves for allowing yourself to even dare encourage such idiocy. Be an emo? I'd rather fuck Paris Hilton.

The inactivity here has been spectacular. Seeing as I've missed a lot of fine details over the preceding few months I reckon I'll just cut to a pertinent issue I found plagued me throughout the last couple of months. Currently I feel as comfortable as lichen on a rock, going nowhere fast, comfy in the security of a house with good housemates and a great city. Anyone who's ever been to Brisbane probably thinks I speak with the sanity of a man who's just poured vinegar down both his ears when I say it's a great city to live in, but for me living life in different places is all about jiving to different grooves, and I am personally glad I can dance to the samba of KL and waltz to the swoon of Brisbane with equal adeptness.

It may come as a surprise to many a reader but I personally had found friends hard to come by in uni. Granted I maintain quite an exclusivist policy when it comes to points of conversational interest, which I reckon does subconciously affect my ability to socialise, but one would have thought that in a relatively enclosed society of 40,000 people I would at least have found a clique of people to know on a hi/bye basis. I had earlier lamented this paradox, but having entered second year it seems company is finally availing itself to me, and I now have a few faces I can grit my misshapen teeth at in the corridors.

I cannot however, help but greet this refreshing avenue of potential company with the big foam hand marked 'CYNICISM'. The reality hit home last month with an end-of-sem lecture regarding the deepsea expeditions which UQ will undertake in a year's time. For those who aren't in the know, a good man with more money than you or me [and possibly the both of us combined] bought a ship, outfitted them with two research submersibles [also his], did such boyish things as dive to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean and plant a flag on the North Pole to become the first man to truly do so, because Man likes planting flags into random 'significant' patches of ground to signify his ownership of said terrain, got bored, as men often do, and flogged his Extreme Battleboat set off to this prestigious institution at a cut-price rate, in a sale which I presume did not involve scantily-clad models perched on various promontories of the ship's outrigging seductively directing 'come-hither' glances at the uni's directors. Anyway this wonderful set of toys is now ours to play with, tinker, knock about, stuff intothe sweaty crotch between our legs and genitals until our groins itch, and set fire to in true Aussie bogan style, and should arrive, newly renovated, by the end of next year, after which this Intrepid Institution of Theologians and Thespians shall undertake a series of Intrepid Expeditions to hitherto-unexplored locations wild and pure [okay, the East Australian Seaboard] in order to fathom their biodiversity and with much faux-professorial rubbing of chins and stroking of brows attempt to explain why there is no Cthulhu, and all that marine jazz.

[Hill-billy annotated version of above paragraph for most readers and all Americans: We got us a boomin' big boat and we're gonna catch us stuff n look at 'em reeeal close through our peeposcopes.]

In all seriousness however, it was announced that quite possibly, some highly limited space [and we're talking realty of the Bill Gates' suit cabinet variety- a big thing, but really not very much at all] would be allocated for Honours projects involving this expedition series. Now as stoked as I was upon hearing the good news I looked around the rest of the classroom held in an awe so dumbstruck it'd put shame upon a nun's 25-year vow of silence, by images of anglerfish and bioluminescent critters flashing across the presentation screen, and two things occurred to me: first, there were 112 other people watching this presentation, and second, I was now in direct competition with all of them. These were the faces whom I ambivalently smile at every day, the people I found no shame in fraternising with; I couldn't look at anyone else in the eye for the rest of the day.

I had found the true cruelty of the workplace, that from this point on, there really were no friends, only competitors, people who know each other on a seemingly amicable basis but behind each other's backs are cutting at each other's throats with blades, boxcutters and those cheap Japanese-made single-sheet plastic files everyone in second year seems to keep their documents in, anything sharp they can get their hands on, pitted against each other in a war a la Battle Royale in which only the really adept and jaded will eventually crawl from, exhausted from their endeavours in which they had to downtread and supercede friends, relationships and potted plants, to achieve their own ultimately selfish ends, and I am one of these people. Whether I am one of the victors or one of the fallen remains to be seen. I do firmly believe I write my own destiny, albeit influenced by the outside actions of others, but it seems now I can achieve no end without ending up hurting someone, and almost inevitably the people whom I have grown platonically accustomed to.

Perhaps I am over-complicating matters. Maybe, after all, we could all just get along, despite the distinct competition. People after all have morals, and surely we couldn't all be so devoured by our materialism and the rat race to the top that we'd end up compromising the friendships we built. When I think about it however, I realise that certainly I am not the only person to have had this epiphany. People at my age group and education level would do well to look around at the number of friends who have already shown the signs of promise, the ones who've taken up research and advanced study programmes and in that manner have already been earmarked for greatness, yet still find time to work three jobs in a week and possibly fund their own education. Then you realise that the logic, like a dandelion seed in a tsunami, just won't stand. You realise it's happening already, and as Nick Hornby wrote in his excellent book Fever Pitch, with relevance to Gus Caesar, that maligned Arsenal player of the 80s, that you may be great, you may be awesome, but sometimes in life, even your best is not good enough, and all you can do for the rest of your life is to continue combating, fighting against the crowd which collectively seems to already have an opinion against your success, and finally at the end, jaded and weary, with half your life gone and your sperm count down to near-zero, you realise that you have no real friends, you never did, and you never are going to, that all the smiles you made at that hot blonde in class came to nought, that all the contacts you exchanged in the hope of 'widening your network' never helped, and you retire, cold, and alone, with the cold snow of your life's achievements fluttering to dust around your head, as you realise death is nigh in the cold zephyrs, and you finally muster the strength to question, 'For what was all this for?'...