This got me to wondering, what do the Voodoonista [2] consider to be the creme-de-la-creme of the fast food experience?

Shout it out in the comments section!

Okay, so normally I’d bury this post where it really belongs, somewhere in the reply section of Saturday’s original rant about all things technically attractive and attractively technical.

However, there was something about Darren Saturday’s post that demanded a little extra attention. Maybe it was the implied threats? Maybe it was the explicit threats?

Or maybe it had something to do with how amazingly wrong he was.

No conversation I ever wanted to be a part of has ever started with…

“I had to do it,” Saturday says, laughing his snuffly laugh.

I wince. I know this laugh. I’ve heard it before. This is Saturday’s laugh when he thinks he’s just committed some minor act of bastardry and that he’s also pretty certain he can talk his way out of it. This is the laugh that says, “Everyone is going to find this funny, eheh heh heh, except for maybe you. Heh heh heh.”

“What did you do?” I ask in a resigned tone. Experience has taught me that there’s no point approaching this conversation any other way.

He chortles some more and then adds the deathblow sentence. “Just promise me you won’t take it personally.”

***

Here’s the thing. No conversation I ever wanted to be a part of has ever started with the words, “Don’t take this personally.”

***

The revolution, one pretty gadget at a time

Turns out, Saturday was actually ‘fessing up to some pretty harmless thing or another. In a post about how he envies me for having a more up-to-date iPod, he mentioned how he fantasises about stabbing me in the eye with a pencil.

His iPod is newer and cooler. Sometimes I fantasy about poking him in the eye with a pencil. Sometimes. But I don’t.

The funny thing is, I know exactly what he’s talking about. Not so much with the stabbing-in-the-eye-with-a-pencil thing [1], but certainly I understand the gadget-envy thing.

Pardon me boy…

Every weekday my morning begins with the same ritual. Somewhere around 8am — a little before or a little after, depending on the time I make it to the station — I cram myself onto an overcrowded train bound for the city.

These morning train rides were already unpleasant enough, but not too long back Queensland Rail added to the joy by cutting the number of trains stopping at my station, and then in a sort of Orwellian exercise spent a lot of money telling we clueless passengers about how amazingly improved the new timetable has become.

Of course, maybe I’m just being an ungrateful sod, complaining about overcrowding while having my face pushed into some guy’s armpit-of-questionable-hygiene, but the overcrowding isn’t the only unpleasant thing about catching the train.

Serenity now… now… now… please now…?

Funny thing being, I originally bought the techno-lust-inducing iPod I own because I was certain I was going to go stark raving bonkers on the train one morning and either harm myself or a number of my fellow passengers, or both.

Seriously, Lady-sitting-across-the-aisle-from-me, I don’t want to hear about who your best friend Jenny ‘got with’ 3 weeks ago and how he’s a love-rat because you ‘got with’ him 2 weeks before that. And 16-year-old-kid-with-the-fucked-up-haircut? If you fondle your crotch in that ‘sup, dog?’ way one more time I’m going to throw up on your school uniform. Oh, and Dude-who-thinks-he’s-in-the- Matrix-with-his -Zen-Raybans-and-heavy-Neo- coat-in- the-middle-of-fucking-summer… I don’t know where to start with you, I really don’t. Suffice it to say that I have occasionally wondered how you’d react if I maliciously tweaked your nose. Also, I know you work part-time at my local Blockbuster video store, so maybe a little less of the intense ninja stare, if you don’t mind.

These are just a few members of the intense sea of humanity I have to deal with every morning; and let it not be forgotten that these people also have to deal with me. That can’t be pleasant.

So, we sit and pretend we’re somewhere else, and shoot passive-aggressive glances at the people having loud mobile phone conversations, and parents with screaming babies, and at the school kids who fill the carriages with a solid wall of sound, and at the evil twin sisters who never speak but who glare down their noses at everyone for everything [2].

And the only tool I have at my disposal with which to defend myself from this daily psychologic barrage is my pair of Skullcandy earphones combined with something relaxing from one of my carefully maintained iPod playlists [3].

Armed with these I close my eyes and hope I can make it into the city just one more time without going out of my tiny, tiny mind.

I’ve got a great idea for a new reality show — let’s call it “Temptation Carriage”

But there’s another reason why I force myself to mentally check out when I’m commuting on the train.

You see, just like Darren Saturday I’m a filthy early adopter as well. Or at least, I would be if I could afford any of it. I crave almost every piece of new technology I encounter, and a long time ago I forced myself to come to terms with the fact that I’d never earn enough money to buy even a small percentage of the gadgets I covet.

Sadly, for some reason this has done absolutely nothing to reduce the actual covetousness I experience.

So, every morning on the train I do my best to ignore the surrounding plethora of laptops, portable gaming systems, Apple iTouches, miniscule mobile phones, Blackberrys, and who knows what other beautiful, gleaming devices my fellow passengers are fondling with their dirty, gadget-owning hands.

Wax on, wax off… No, you’re not doing it right.

“See, I think you’re thinking about this the wrong way,” I say. This is a different telephone call, but really it’s still the same conversation.

“What do you mean?” Saturday asks.

“Well,” I say, “let’s face it, someone is always going to own the latest cool thing, right?”

“Yeah, true,” Saturday says. And then he adds, “Maybe we could track that someone down and rough him up until he gives us all his cool things?”

I choose to ignore this. “But the point is, right, the point is that it’s not the cool thing you should be focusing on. The thing you should be focusing on is the fact that you have a superb music collection.”

“I do have a superb music collection!” Saturday says aggressively.

“I know you do. And this is where I think you’re going wrong.”

“I have a superb music collection,” he repeats.

“Right, and you’re agonising over the tool, and forgetting that the tool is really only there as a means of accessing your music collection. Forget which iPod version you own — other people should be envying you for the amazingness of the music you can listen to.”

“You know,” Darren says, “you’re absolutely right. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. But I still have one little problem.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“How do I let people know that I have an amazing music collection so they’re aware that they’re supposed to envy me instead?”

The Tao of Hardening Up, somewhere in a forest

Apparently in Tibetan Buddhism, it’s a blessing when a friend experiences good fortune. Obviously the Tibetans have become practiced at looking for blessings in unexpected places, since they could hardly count their current political landscape, for example, as being any source of blessings.

In Western society, however, when a close friend experiences good fortune, we have the time-honoured ritual of saying, “Oh, wow, isn’t that great? It plays video? Fantastic. And it stores how many songs? And the interface is updated and much cooler than the one I own? That’s… That’s just really, really, really great. Really, really.” And then we go away and privately fantasise about driving sharpened bits of stationery into our close friend’s head.

But it doesn’t always have to be like that.

Every now and then you can stop and think about the things you already have; pay attention to the trees for once, instead of always focusing on the forest.

In Saturday’s case, that might mean browsing through his extensive music collection, rediscovering old favourites, maybe giving an album a 2nd chance to grab his attention.

For me, it might mean playing with my much newer and cooler iPod, and watching video on it [4] and enjoying it so much more than I would if I had Darren’s older, much less cooler version. Also, I might say to myself, “Screw the extensive music collection, I don’t have time to listen to all the songs I already have, and my iPod is sooooo pretty,” or something similar.

Whatever the method, there’s always a way to reexamine your situation, to put your desire for something newer, better, prettier into context, and to be more genuinely satisfied with where you are in life, right now.

And then you can fantasise about stabbing your friends in the eye with a pencil.

Photo courtesy of Aaron Michael Brown.

And when the police find the rollerskates and have them sent to forensics for fingerprinting and DNA analysis and blood spatter testing and whatnot, the people who work there are normal looking people, instead of looking like they all just wandered up from a swimsuit calendar shoot on a nearby beach and are just killing time until there’s an emergency lack of abnormally good-looking people somewhere else and they gotta roll. And also, these forensic people will sometimes use a piece of equipment again, instead of always doing something new and amazing and cool, and they won’t have bizarre conversations with eachother where they’re explaining basic crime scene 101 concepts that they should all know, but which are really for the benefit of the audience.

When they interview the lead suspect, the conviction won’t hinge on cleverly faking him into a confession. They’ll use evidence and deduction and they’ll show the guy the footage of him using the rollerskates and he’ll say, “I think it’s pretty obvious to everyone that I did it, I mean, look here, here’s where I did this pretty cool 360 degree thing, watch watch watch, there.” And everyone will be in general agreement that the 360 thing was pretty cool, but he still shouldn’t have stolen the rollerskates. Or the cat, in case this episode is about someone stealing a cat.

During the trial the defense will not try to aggravate anyone by using unjust but apparently legally valid techniques to suppress the evidence of the confession, and the footage, and the fingerprint analysis, and the eyewitness testimony, and the previous 12 convictions for rollerskate theft (or cat theft, if this episode is about someone stealing a cat) and the judge won’t have to begrudgingly allow this travesty of a legal proceeding to go ahead because commonsense will say it’s pretty obvious he did it and it will also point out that most of the time these things do not actually happen in court cases. Also, since the guy confessed, there probably won’t be a trial anyway.

In this show there will be no rampant moralising.

In this show there will be no surprise “You’ll never guess what happens next!” moments.

In this show there will be no attempt to make everyone look guilty so that you have a migraine by the end from accusing everyone, including the blind mute guy and the 6 year old kid with the model train collection.

In this show there will be no serial killers, because there are probably shows on 3 other channels at the same time about cops chasing after serial killers, and the combined bodycount of all 3 shows will be larger than the population of a small town or village already.

And in this show there will be no scenes just before the opening credits where the main billboard star is fed a cheesy setup line so he or she can put on a pair of sunglasses, pause, and then say something catchy and deep and meaningful and mildly judgemental and possibly obvious but still cool so that you will wish your conversations also came with a highly paid scriptwriter whose job it is to feed you with great lines just before the loud music and the montage of the beach or the desert or the buildings or the casinos.

In this show there will be none of that.

Also, the cat will be alive and well and possibly called Mister Snoggins.

In essence [1], a local council on the New South Wales coast has taken the step of installing shipping containers on a cliff top to spoil the view of homeowners it suspects of cutting down trees that were, well, apparently spoiling the view for some of the homeowners.

Unfortunately and sadly, I’ve known people who honestly wouldn’t pause for a nanosecond before cutting down trees growing on public land to improve the view from their balcony, so it’s possible that I experienced a mild, vicarious thrill when I read this article. Also, in the interests of full disclosure, I doubt I’m ever going to have enough money to own a home where cutting down trees might improve the view, but I’m certainly poor enough to appreciate public parks and their trees; so it’s fairly obvious I have a built-in bias.

But what do the rest of the Voodooista think about the Port Stephens council’s measures?

Is it an overreaction? Does it unduly punish homeowners who had nothing to do with cutting down the trees? Or is it a valid gesture on behalf of the council to educate the wider community regarding the consequences of vandalizing public spaces for personal benefit?

Get your hands dirty in the comments section below…