What the fuck is hungrythirsty?

Alright, what the fuck is hungrythirsty?  Why is it pathetic?  Why is a vegan sausage pathetic and what the hell is oak?  If you haven't seen this current advertising campaign it is for a 'new' chocolate milk drink and makes a variety of interesting claims.  This one forced me to put digital pen to virtual paper and comment on the ridiculousness of brands trying to create problems in order to sell a solution.  Of course this is not a new phenomenon as you will know if you buy anything from whitening toothpaste, through to deoderant or even the simplest of sphincter chafing garments the G-String (to solve the problem of VPL of course).  But seriously, hungrythirsty?  I get what you are trying to say oak, but I am so disgusted at the condescending nature of your accusation that I actually walked three blocks to another service station the other night to avoid buying your product.  Not to mention the fact that the other advertisement in this campaign claims to "kill hungrythirsty dead and inform its next of kin via text message".  What the hell is wrong with this world where a reference to bloody murder and lack of remorse can be used to sell a product in a marketplace.  And what exactly is pathetic about a vegan sausage?  Unless of course you wish to create some kind of representational link between meat eating, masculinity, strength, popularity and generally being 'hard as fuck'.  This advertisement is obviously trying to appeal to that energy drink guzzling hyper masculine demographic where nothing is worse than being 'soft' or 'pathetic' and the ability to appear tough as nails is the highest social capital that one can attain.  Sure we have witnessed this phenomenon before and have seen advertising agencies try to make "the fuzzies" part of our vernacular (to encourage kids to eat sugar laden breakfast cereals) along with the promotion of the idea that hair growth is abnormal on any place other than the head (thanks cK),  that men should be able to sustain sexual intercourse for periods of up to an hour (nasal delivery), or that any kind of natural cellulite on a woman's body can and should be simply be zapped away (fatzap).  I'll tell you what's pathetic, the fact that Oak would have the gall to think that an advertising campaign like this would be taken seriously by anyone at all.  I swear I will break down and cry if I ever overhear somebody in the street say "man i'm so hungrythirsty I could really go an oak" and as long as this advertising campaign lasts I will do everything in my power to avoid ever purchasing this product.  Advertising can be a perverted beast sometimes and sometimes it's all very well to scoff and say things like "well nobody takes it seriously" but the problem is that the most vulnerable members of society are those being preyed on by the industry.  People with self esteem issues, the lonely, the mentally ill and the young are all of the people that are likely to be swayed by the belief that being 'hard as fuck' is of any value at all in today's society.  Change the game people, don't buy into the bullshit. 

www.adbusters.org

BREAKING NEWS - Emergency Situation Unfolding

29 people are stuck, above ground without food or water living in poverty and are likely to die if they are not reached within the next four days.  There is hope that they can be rescued and the international community is currently considering mounting a rescue operation in a series of meetings.  Estimates of the cost to save them range between one and two hundred AUD and the victims are hopeful that the international community will provide the necessary help to reach them in time.  There will be no need for remote controlled robots to be flown from the USA or Australia nor is there a need for specialist equipment or relief wells to be drilled to provide access to them.  The international media is currently not flocking to the area, nor are they trying to put pressure on governments to help the desperate victims in this unfortunate situation. 

The Brownlow, keeping bogan dreams alive.

So it's Brownlow time again and the masses of bogans are salivating at the latest HPOA that some strapping young footy player has managed to convince to hang off his arm for the walk down the blue carpet.  The Brownlow medal ceremony evening is significant for many reasons and an important night in our sporting history.  I know you are thinking "yes of course it is, it importantly recognises the incredible amount of talent our young footballers have" but you would be wrong. Allow me to explain why the Brownlow medal ceremony is really an important part of Australian culture.  Firstly and most importantly it keeps the dream alive for many parents living vicariously through their children at under 14s footy on the weekend that their child may actually have a story on the channel ten news one day.  ACA might even agree to do a feature piece on their child's amazing 'against the odds' struggle to become an elite athlete.  All the swearing, the training, the instilling of hatred for both teammates and competitors will pay off one day with that triumphant walk down the blue carpet.  The second group of people that are happy to see Brownlow time roll around again are the not too bright but ridiculously attractive 'footy babes' that know that if they sneak into enough club functions and training sessions, then they might one day be invited to participate in the waxing, preening, and frocking that is the Bronlow for the WAGs.  There is however the possibility that during the course of becoming involved in the club they will of course be date raped by one of the young football players that hasn't quite worked out that fucking drunk girls after they have passed out doesn't count as consensual sex.  Unfortunately there will be a lack of evidence and she will receive a hefty payout from the club to keep the incident quiet but will possibly end up on ACA herself as part of an expose piece years from now.  But let's not let that detract from the possibility that there is a slim chance that she will one day be invited to the Brownlow medal ceremony night.  The final reason that the Brownlow medal night is an important part of Australian culture is that there is one last dream that it keeps alive.  Brownlow night instills the belief in the promising young footballer that despite having a face like a smashed crab and not being able to string a coherent sentence together without offending several minority groups (see pic),  he might be able to somehow snare a relatively attractive piece of arm bling for the evening.  It goes unsaid that part of this fantasy is knowing that there are teens all over Australia beating off to the revealing picture of her that will no doubt show up in the 'small' paper the following day thereby cementing his status as a football god.  The Bronlow's is all about the hype and surrounding fanfare and if a sport can't be commodified then what's the point really.  It's a shame that genuinely talented people in the public service or the arts don't get the same adulation and spectacle afforded to them. The Brownlow night has become a farce, far from the original idea of a celebration of sportsmanship and talent at the end of the football season.  It has become a competition to get the hottest chick, the most expensive bling, the most revealing dress by the most 'in' designer and let's not forget, it's also about who can get the drunkest.  Far from being a legitimate celebration of sportsmanship and talent it has become a joke of which I am sure Charles Brownlow would not be proud.

War is wrong, fight for peace, revenge for the fallen, I'm confused.

So many phrases have become synonymous with war including the three mentioned in the title.  What I am struggling to understand is how they all fit together to form some kind of coherent moral stance.  Often the same person will say war is wrong, we're fighting for peace, we need to show strength or risk defeat or similar loaded rhetoric.  Almost ten years on isn't it time to review the situation in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  The image I have published above was selected to make a particular point.  Is revenge a good enough motivation for putting a small child through the horror of war.  It should be included that my google image search of "injured civilians Iraq" resulted in images of a far more graphic nature.  So again, is revenge enough justification for countless civilian casualties and more to the point, what is justification for such large civilian casualties.  The first argument that normally gets thrown up by the advocates of Middle East intervention is that the despotic leader Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power.  Justification for this generally rests on either his supposed stockpile of WMD's or the fact that he carried out systematic genocide of Kurds in the North of Iraq.  We know only too well that the decision was made to enter Afghanistan to kill one man representative of a much larger anti-American sentiment within the fundamentalist Muslim community.  I believe it is important almost ten years later to review this justification as it seems to be a fairly groundless justification for the murder of civilians and children on an almost daily basis.  People need to get involved to send a clear message to our leaders that hypocritical justification for war crimes is no justification.  If removing a tyrant was the agenda then why was Mugabe allowed to continue the murder of innocent people and the oppression of an entire population.  For that matter why did the west not intervene in countless African nations when there was clear evidence of genocide and violations of human rights.  I make this plea because currently there is a need to keep our leaders accountable for their actions for if we do not, we risk one day becoming the group that is persecuted against and we risk that our voice too may one day be the one silenced as we try to scream out to the world for help.  The only way to stop this from happening in the future is to get involved, join campaigns, start and sign petitions, donate small amounts of money to organisations that can have a larger voice than just one person.  Organisations that apply political and social pressure on governments as they continue their agenda of revenge and military aggression for national gain.  Below is a selection of some organisations that are helping keep our leaders accountable for large scale human rights abuses and while we are pointing the finger at developing nations collectively for human rights abuses, sometimes it's good to remind ourselves that our leaders are not infallible either.  

These organisations are some that hold all leaders accountable for their actions and try to hold war criminals accountable for their actions from all countries, not just the ones from the global south.  

http://www.amnesty.org/
http://www.asf.be/index.php?module=home&lang=en
http://www.hrw.org/
http://iwpr.net/
http://www.iidh.org/index2.php?language=en 

Excuse me please, what is a typical Australian?

It is important for humans to define almost everything we come across.  If we cannot define it it makes us uncomfortable and uneasy.  Perhaps the worst kind of social or cultural definition that we can make is a general assumption based on race.  Racism manifests itself in comments and gestures designed to antagonise, exclude or humiliate people with no other basis than biological lineage or the geographic location assigned to one's birth.  As Australians, we are exposed to rhetoric from our leaders almost daily about what it is to be Australian.  Particularly during the recent federal election we were bombarded with comments aimed at 'ordinary working Australians'.  But what exactly is an ordinary Australian?  Is it even possible to define what a typical Australian is?  As you are trying to answer this question with jingoistic notions of BBQ's and hills hoists, consider also whether anybody is actually a typical Australian.  Throughout the course of human history perhaps only the indigenous Australians could even hope to come close to being defined as typical Australians and even then, what would constitute normal behaviour in one cultural group would be quite the opposite in another even though they exist within the same physical continental border.  Or consider also the fact that Poland has actually moved physical location and is now located in a completely different location than it once was.  And consider also that any notion of acceptable cultural behaviour is exactly that, a cultural construction based on an evolution of what is an accepted set of behaviours within a particular society.  So considering all this, if somebody is born outside the geographical border of Australia, and then comes to Australia and exists peacefully with those around them, would you then consider them a legitimate Australian or even typical?  Of course we can! Everybody currently living in Australia is a typical Australian.  An unbelievable amount of different personalities make up this world and it is only when we stop trying to define them that we can hope to live together as people.  It is only when we realise that the notion of nationalism or race in anything other than a biological sense relating to physical attributes is completely false.  The idea that Australians are loyal to their mates is as ridiculous a statement as 'the French are rude' or 'Germans are serious'.  Statements like this seek to homogenise a culture and evoke a sense of nationalistic pride with the goal of perpetuating the idea that the Nation State is somehow an entity in itself.  In recent news in Australia we have seen Sam Newman call a Malaysian man "a monkey", we have seen Stephanie Rice refer to a losing football team as "faggots", a channel 9 cameraman Simon Fuller call a Middle Eastern man a "fucking terrorist" and countless other acts of racism within Australia recently.  The Cronulla riots, the NT Intervention, the way Indian students were treated in Melbourne and last but not least Hey Hey it's Saturday's Blackface stunt all serve to make a statement to the world that Australia is a racist nation.  Even the UN has recently expressed concern that our foreign policy relating to the way Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers were excluded from the process of application temporarily.  We need people to stand up and say to the world that we are not a racist nation and there are many good people here who realise that race and nationality is as flimsy a concept as trying to define countries by drawing lines on a map or trying to sum up a person's whole way of life in a national title.  What we need is people to stand up and say 
Sam Newman, you sir are a fuckwit and you continually try to prove it to us. 
Stephanie Rice, you used an inappropriate derogatory term for homosexuals as an insult and that was stupid.  You need to review your vocabulary (especially if you are going to tweet it). 
Simon Fuller, you are in need of some re-education if you truly believe that someone's ethnicity defines them as a terrorist. 
Hey Hey it's Saturday, your time has passed and four words sum you up - 'shit then, shit now'. 
Everyone must work together to build awareness around this topic because I do not want to live in an Australia where racism is viewed as acceptable behaviour.
People are people and deserve respect. 
Peace.
(The photo was taken in Australia at the Cronulla riots)

Yes but do they earn enough to go on holiday?

I need new shoes.  I would like to buy myself some shoes that I could feel good about wearing but unfortunately I can't feel good about these shoes for two reasons.  The first is that they are gym shoes and nobody needs to feel good about new gym shoes.  It's kind of like getting a new iron, it's new and all and there's something exciting for that brief moment you get something new (damn material conditioning) but I don't think I will be feeling good about these.  The second reason requires more explanation.  I am a fairly simple person with fairly simple requirements.  No big logos, comfortable fit, not too expensive (on account of me being an arts student and musician), and here's the kicker (get it) - ethically made.  What exactly is an ethically made gym shoe?  Can you even buy them and if so, can you buy them relatively cheaply?  My last pair of gym shoes were second hand given to me by an ex AFL footballer.  I kind of figured that if they were good enough for him to train in that they would do me for my fifty squats and general inept exercises on minimum weight setting on a Sunday morning at Fitzroy Gym.  But now I would like to get some new gym shoes.  I would like to have been the only one to have gotten slightly moist feet in them, I would like to feel that nice bouncy feeling of a new sneaker and I would like to smell that slightly rubbery smell as I pull the laces through my new shoes for the first time.  So back to the ethical shoe idea, what exactly constitutes ethical shoe construction?  Can you even buy athletics shoes made somewhere other than China?  So what would I settle for in my purchase of these shoes or what would I like to believe about the people that have made my soon to be new shoes?  I would like to believe first and foremost that the people who made my shoes weren't being threatened with violence to produce my shoes.  I would also like to think that the people making my shoes were all over eighteen and were there of their own free will.  I hope that they were able to take a lunch break and did not have to work more than a 12hr shift.  I hope that their jobs were rotated so that they did not get stuck performing the same task for said 12hr shift.  But is that it?  From the web research (open to scrutiny) the average factory worker's salary in China is $100 per month.  This is essentially a meaningless number until you take into account PPP or Purchasing Power Parity.  This concept compares what it would cost in one country to how much money you would need in the USA to buy the equivalent amount of goods.  Advocates of cheap Chinese labour will tell you that PPP in China enables the average Chinese worker on $100 p/m to afford as much food and basic essential items as a worker on $2000 p/m in the USA.  While PPP has merits as a measurement of purchasing power if all you are purchasing is food, it has little merit when you are trying to establish whether Chinese workers can afford luxury items.  Electronic devices are generally a little cheaper in China, some European made goods such as clothing and department store goods are more expensive and some things are about the same as they are in Australia.  For example you can get a plane ticket for many destinations in South East Asia for approximately $800AUD return, about the same as you would pay for a short holiday somewhere from Australia.  This is where simply looking at PPP in terms of food fails as a fair measure of quality of life and ability to buy non essential items.  If you consider that $800 is eight months wages for your average Chinese manufacturing worker it doesn't look so good when compared to the USA wage of $2000 p/m.  If a ticket for a small break somewhere close to home (but international) cost $16,000 then we might view PPP a little differently.  So my point is that while we might argue that the workers in manufacturing industries in China are paid fairly, PPP is an inadequate measure when it comes to luxury goods and access to non essential goods.  They might earn enough to eat well, pay rent and pay utility bills but perhaps we should be asking another question............................... Do they earn enough to go on holiday?

Things I didn't have to do today.

When I started to wake I didn't have any pressure to get up before dawn to work to support my family. 
When I awoke from my night's sleep I didn't have to chase away a bunch of people trying to steal my things.
I didn't have to move along because the police asked me to.
I didn't have to stay hidden for fear of being seen by the militia that ransacked my village last night.
I didn't have to clear my sleeping gear out of my booth so others could start work around me.
And I did not look over to see a photo of my deceased partner sitting beside the bed. 
There was no need to go to the well to pump some water for me to boil and then drink.
I did not have to cut wood for the fire.
When I finally got out of bed I did not need to hunt for food for breakfast.
I did not have to check to see if my ill siblings had lived through the night.
I wasn't wondering about how I would obtain the drugs I am addicted to without getting arrested.
I noticed that there were no bars on my window, and I could see daylight. 
When I turned on the water tap, I did not wonder whether the water was safe to drink
When thinking of where I had to be today, the four hour line for the opportunity to buy food and medicine was not one of the places that came to mind.
There was no sound of explosions and gunfire.
There was no stench of faeces.
When I picked up my clothes they were not tattered, or dirty, or wet.
While eating my breakfast I did not have decide how much I would eat myself and how much I would leave for my family.
Nor did I have to worry about whether there would be food later in the day.
When getting ready for work I did not have to wonder how I would possibly pleasure up to thirty men in the next fifteen hours.
I did not wonder whether my work would be deemed worthy of pay today.
And as I thought about how I would get to work, I did not consider which route would be the least likely to result in my leg being blown off by a landmine.
Nor did I have to morally justify to myself the fact that I was being paid to kill people.
I didn't fold my cardboard box mattress up and hide it behind a bin.
I didn't have to defecate under a bridge and I definitely didn't have to search the restaurant bin for last night's leftovers to eat.
When I finally made it to work my boss didn't threaten or blackmail me.
And I didn't even have to use potentially dangerous machinery that could kill me.
My skin wasn't burning from the sun and my hands weren't frostbitten from the cold.
I don't think I wondered whether I could afford to stop for lunch.
I wasn't exposed to any toxic chemicals and I didn't have to compromise my health to stay employed.  I don't remember thinking about my children in substandard health care.
I am pretty sure I didn't wonder where my husband was.
And I am certain that I did not have to use another employee as a scapegoat for a mistake that I made just to keep my job and a way of putting food on the table.
So when it came time to leave for the day it wasn't dark outside.
And I wasn't too physically worn out to stand.
I didn't have to clock out.
And I don't remember asking the boss if it was ok if I came in tomorrow.
On my way home I didn't ask anyone for money for a hostel for the night.
And I didn't have to carry 40kg of water in buckets across my shoulders.
I wasn't concerned that I might not get to my second job on time.
I didn't have to borrow a blanket from my neighbour so my family could fight off the cold for one more night.
And I don't remember wondering if they would let me across the border tonight.
When I finally arrived home the locks had not been changed by the bank. 
My house had not been destroyed by a mortar round. 
I didn't have to cook for my husband and his family after a fifteen hour day at work.
I did not have to kill and gut my food.  
I didn't have to protect my food from the other prisoners.
I wasn't wondering when the test results would come back.
I didn't have to explain to my child why the bad man touched her.
My wife didn't say "we have to talk"

And as I thought about all of the things that I didn't have to do today I realised that all the things that I did have to do weren't that bad.
Spare a thought for all of those people that had to do one or more of these things today.

Would you still donate if you didn't get a free sticker?

Here we are again at that time of the year when we begrudgingly haul a year's worth of crinkled up receipts and spuriously work related purchase invoices in to the accountants, ask them to make sense of it all and provide us with a fat refund cheque at the end.  Inevitably at some time in the conversation between justifying six hundred dollars worth of stationary and explaining that your 'Guitar Player' magazine subscription was in fact necessary for keeping up with industry trends, the accountant will ask you about donations to charity.  If you are like most of us you will donate a few bucks at the traffic lights, maybe sign up to sponsor a friend for a marathon for a worthy cause, maybe sponsor a child or give to the salvos a few times a year.  Generally for your efforts you will receive a pin, a sticker, a fridge magnet or in some cases even a sticker to display proudly your affiliation with said charity which brings me to my point.  How much of our motivation is the actual 'sticker' itself or indeed how important is displaying our affiliation with the charity to others and for what reason do we do this.  In Melbourne currently the 3RRR radiothon is up and running.  3RRR for those who don't know is a community based radio station which relies solely on subscriber donations to keep it on the air.  Every August they have a subscriber drive and through donations they offer subscribers the chance to win prizes for subscribing during this month.  Perhaps the best thing you get for your money though is a shiny 10cm x 20cm sticker that simply says 3RRR to display proudly your affiliation with this station.  But what does this sticker actually say about you and why would you choose to display it so prominently on your car/house/bike/ etc.  Well for starters it says that there is a fairly high chance that you live/work somewhere north of the river or have done at some point in your life and are vicariously staying there by listening to 3RRR on a regular basis.  It says you are into independent music, interviews and thought provoking discussion on a wide variety of topics.  It says that you reject being subjected to shit music trying not to be too offensive with the purpose of getting you to stay tuned until the next advertisement is blasted through your speakers stimulating your desire to consume endlessly.  It also says that you were willing to spend seventy bucks to keep a station that promotes free speech and independent music alive.  And isn't that a lovely image of yourself to put forward to the world.  I bothered to spend money on a worthy cause.  And 3RRR is by no means the only organisation that does this.  Consider all of the Amnesty International stickers on the backs of cars around town.  It's pretty nice being able to instantly tell people that you are a proud supporter of human rights, a community radio station and that you like to vote green all simply by getting stuck in traffic.  However think for a minute about all of the worthy causes that don't have stickers.  And also think about all the kids that are starving in the world that weren't lucky enough to have World Vision take their photo and write a blurb in English appealing for help.  I'm not saying for a minute that the charities that use stickers as part of their marketing campaign are not worthy of your dollars, I am simply making a point that the idea that true charity is anonymous is a point worth thinking about.  Many charities require behind the scenes help, often with no actual interaction with the recipient of the benefits.  That's not to say that the guy that volunteers to clean the Amnesty International offices once a week, or the guy that letter drops all day hoping to raise awareness of the plight of malnourished children in developing countries, are not doing just as much as those who receive recognition through displaying their affiliations and donations to the world.  As I mentioned before, true charity is anonymous.  It feels great to hand over a fiver to the guy selling the Big Issue on the corner and watching him smile as you hand over your money but the feeling is slightly different when you hand over a donation to a doorknocker for the same cause.  It is a hollow gesture that is made simply to make us feel better about ourselves, but can you really disagree with the fact that at least part of the reason for donating is to feel like you have been a decent person and done something good?  Even the most giving and selfless souls in our society are driven by the self motivation that making the world a better place is the right thing to do.  Rather than devaluing this feeling and making anyone feel bad for having it I am encouraging the contrary.  After you have subscribed to 3RRR (and you should), and received your 'xxxxxxx' sticker in the mail from 'xxxxxxx' charity, consider doing something for which you will receive no recognition, no payback, no thanks and indeed no sticker.

South of the River part 1

One of the major sources of confusion for me in life is people's obsession with naturally unobtainable physical traits.  For example, how is it that beauty and health has become associated with a shade of skin reminiscent of the Nullarbor Plain, contrasted with teeth whiter than Arctic ice.  I get that Australia is a fun loving sun filled country and enjoyment of outdoor life is part of our culture, but nobody's fooling anybody in winter.  Clearly you have not been sunbaking at the pool on the weekend nor have you been frolicking at the beach in your swimsuit.  Instead the only truth that can be ascertained is that you have paid upwards of fifty dollars to a stranger to spray your body with a synthetic substance designed to temporarily stain your skin the colour of a southern Italian fisherman because of your skin's natural inability to produce enough melanin to enable you to wear the 'skimpy little black number' that all the boys love.  And the teeth is another thing, our obsession with oral hygiene is frightening.  Sure a clean mouth is desirable and nobody wants to get hot and heavy with a mouth full of funk but seriously, there are shades of white seen on teeth south of the river that shouldn't even be used to paint walls in art galleries.  Advertising agencies clearly have a lot to answer for but advertising agencies don't have an agenda pushing this ideal without a product.  The beauty industry playing on people's insecurities is clearly to blame here.  Fair enough being tanned in Australia during winter isn't that much of a stretch but when beauty product manufacturers play on class ideals and cultural identity primarily in Asian countries clearly there is a bigger problem.  In India, beauty products contain whiteners as pale skin is associated with the higher castes and often with higher socio-economic status and wealth.  Helping to support this beauty myth and unobtainable physical traits only serves to provide these companies with a market for unnecessary products.  I won't pretend for a second that I haven't ever bought in to this before and I confess I once purchased a home teeth whitening kit and remember diligently sitting for half an hour being unable to speak because of the massive piece of plastic in my mouth coated in awful tasting jelly.  I guess we all buy into the beauty myth once in a while but when it starts getting associated with class and status we find ourselves on a slippery slope.  Are we to believe that because a person is tanned all year round and has enough money to visit the tanning salon weekly, they belong to a higher class than those who are pasty and pale during winter?  Are the tanned better people and worth more to society?  The purveyors of these products would happily have us believe that this is true by actively associating the 'tanned look' and 'white teeth' with good health and an active lifestyle.  I don't wish to generalise in this blog and try to claim North superiority because obviously that would be just as harmful a generalisation as I have just critiqued.   My intention is not to claim that this only exists south of the river however vintage clothes stores in Brunswick profiting from the sale of 'indie' cred to me is far less psychologically harmful than tanning salons and dentists using a bunch of toxic chemicals to alter the body's physiology in the name of fashion.

I can feel you judging me.

During the mundane little lives we lead we somehow bumble our way through existence trying to assemble some sense of normalcy and control over a world which is clearly as random and chaotic as life itself.  It becomes a necessary part of our existence that we adopt certain guises to make it obvious to the outside world which particular cultural 'hat' we have on today.  Now if you are like most of us you will no doubt have to transgress between these defined and structured sets of cultural guidelines purely to  earn some kind of living.  Whether you are a pharmacist by day and a stripper by night (I know, I always wonder) or a kindergarten teacher who sings in an 80's glam rock tribute band, there exists a certain need to present different images of ourselves to those we come in to contact with.  It would hardly be considered appropriate for our second life to somehow intersect with the first.  It's not exactly this that I have a problem with as such, it's my problem with people having some sort of idea that there is a way to rebel against society and make a statement against the blind conformity of people in today's society by wearing skinny jeans and a black shirt.  Now it's not the first time in history this phenomenon has occurred.  Think of Kurt Cobain wearing flanelette shirts and cardigans circa 1991.  It's cold in Seattle, really cold but Kurt (by trying to keep warm and being in a mega succesful band) gave a disillusioned, disaffected youth a mode of expression and pretty soon in order to rebel against society there was a strict set of cultural guidelines that one must abide by.  Every "rebellious" subculture has a quite clearly defined set of culturally accepted norms that must be obviously adhered to for immediate categorisation in this group.  And as human beings our lust for belonging is insatiable and undeniable.  So when I was on the tram this morning on my way to work for a meagre salary as a sales representative in my shirt, black pants and tie, I felt a certain unease as the skinny jean asymmetric haircut sporting hipsters cast their eyes my way and judge.  Fair enough I admit, I am abiding by culturally accepted norms of business attire and what it means to be an inner urban male in inner urban society.  And I admit, I am also sacrificing a certain part of my creativity and individuality by adhering to these guidelines BUT.......... For you to judge me for trying to make enough money to put myself through university, play in a band of a night time, run an independent record label, volunteer for charity, try to be a supportive partner, release independent music and occasionally do my dishes is a bit of a stretch.  Particularly when although you might look like the lead singer of the latest shithouse indy rock band to grace the gig guide of Beat magazine, how the fuck do I know that you don't get off the tram to go work in a call centre scamming the elderly on insurance deals or utilities providers, then go home and play your Playstation 3 through your 50 inch plasma TV in your upwardly mobile post gentrified inner urban suburb while simultaneously verbally bashing minority groups while your vacuous (but hot) girlfriend talks about the latest "news" she read in the MX.  The point is I don't know that.  But I don't feel qualified enough to cast judging looks at you on the tram so to you I say, judge not lest ye be judged.... or something equally as biblically profound.  We can all get along fine as long as we are prepared to admit that there is a little bit of bullshit that goes along with living in any society, and it's ok to admit it.