Monthly Archives: August 2014

Walker’s Origin of More Stuff

Originally I had intended to outline the origin of some other stuff, stuff that had yet to be outlined and stuff like that, then I thought/mumbled, “Stuff that stuff, let’s give the people something truly unpalatable to chew on…

“Let’s see if their hitherto pristine waters, their previously unadulterated mindsets of fragility, are able to cope with the incomprehensible wasteland that is the inner realms of my brain – let us see if they are willing to ride the mental rollercoaster along its convoluted journey through the most tumultuous of daytime nightmares while being swallowed amid the unassailable quicksand, asphyxiated by the fetid sludge of my cognitive quagmire, then only to reach out in a vain attempt…”

Nup. Lost it.

This kind of occurrence used to befall me with startling frequency. I’d be in the middle of a rant or similarly impassioned tirade, run off on a quick tangent and before I could even do the digression justice I’d have lost the essence of both stories. I did attempt to remedy this issue with the employment of speed-speaking, in the hope that if I fired out the content with enough rapidity I’d reach the end before forgetting whatever the hell it was that I was supposed to be saying.

This either resulted in my stuttering to the point of incoherence, or lack of basic enunciation resulting in a similar level of incoherence; whichever form of unintelligibility came through on the day, it usually caused me to ‘lose it’ even earlier.

I recall during one of the aforementioned rants, circa 2005, I was busy illustrating the frustrations endured in hearing young idiots (I was only 22 myself, mind you) milled around the pub jukebox, talking about how much their favourite music ‘rocks’. The issue I took with this is that their favourite music, which apparently ‘rocked so hard’, was generally, contemporary pop music and worse still, these young scallywags had the audacity to play the damn stuff while crapping on about how much ‘this song rocks’.

Therefore, I was ranting away, under the influence of nothing other than perhaps far too much adrenaline, putting disrespecting piss-ants in their respective places, ranting away, having just returned from my second tangent in as many minutes, mid sentence, still on track, going for gold; then suddenly, it was gone. Just like that. All of it. As though my thoughts had suddenly evaporated or something.

Hell of a feeling, mid sentence, having everything just up and clear out like that; just when the rant was going so well, too. Now everybody’s looking at me, big grins on their faces, gleefully absorbing the misguided testimony of a narrow minded imbecile; with no idea that the mind of the young man standing before them has instantaneously gone from having a great excess of thoughts on a greater excess of topics to being wiped clean in less than half a second. Of course they’re still urging me forth with their drunken affirmation, but I’ve lost it. I’ve lost the words, I’ve lost the topic, I’ve lost the theme, shit I’ve lost the origin of the words of the topic of the theme. Dude, I’ve lost the plot.

So what do I do? I capitulate, that’s what. I concede failure. I glance up. With a stupid little half-grin belying my shame I shake my head and say simply, “Nup. Sorry guys. Lost it.”

More recently, although it’s still a big part of my life, my ranting tends to take a much more structured semblance. It now comprises a beginning, some pith, and an end. Furthermore, it is often based on topics that actually matter.

As for the reaction of my audience all those years ago, here’s the thing, they didn’t care. They’d had a laugh, now it was over. In 2005 those drunken idiots could accept that the sober idiot entertaining them was just four years out of hospital after suffering the brain trauma that almost killed him.

Reckon they were just glad that I was ranting at all.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Randy Nuff

Photography by Lisa Platt

Walker’s Origin of Stuff

Just to be clear, any perceived relationship between Darwin’s Origin of Species and this, is a patent fabrication by you, the reader, in an attempt to besmirch me, the eccentric weirdo. The shameful truth is that I don’t actually know that much about origins and stuff; let alone the origin of stuff.

That said, I do know some stuff…

Were you aware that in the past one person was able to ‘sleep with’ one other person, without indulging in carnal pleasure? I know. It blew my mind too, like, totally.

What about that word, ‘like’? Apparently it’s not intended as a conjunction or even as an interjection; in fact it’s not supposed to do anything other than denote preference or similarity. Hard to believe that a word so frequently used in youthful conversation has only two, rather mundane, meanings.

On the topic of meanings, who knew that ‘terrible’ didn’t actually used to mean bad? Surely not, but yes. Apparently it wasn’t even a negative, not really. Back in the day if you were heard saying that a situation had gone ‘terribly’, your audience could well have asked, “Terribly what?”

You see, ‘terrible’ used to be a simple adjective, a qualifier, meaning very serious or severe; therefore ‘terrible pain’. ‘Terribly’, meant severely, or extremely, and get this, you could even use them with a positive connotation – ‘terrible fun’ or ‘terribly exciting.’

Can’t imagine today’s grotesquely overused adaptation of ‘terrible’ ever warranting a smile – today anything the least bit negative is considered terrible.

Reminds me of another manipulated word which used to mean, a difficult situation presenting two equally undesirable outcomes. This fine word is ‘dilemma’ and it has since been simplified to just mean, any difficult situation.

Now, I don’t mind admitting to initial confusion on this one because I had always thought that ‘quandary’ was the best word to describe a difficult situation, but at that same time I knew that ‘dilemma’ and ‘quandary’ were two quite dissimilar terms. Then they were saying that they were the same..? I didn’t know what was going on. Only thing for it, I gave up wondering. I guessed now there must have been two words for difficult situations, which I supposed related to the ever increasing frequency of the aforementioned.

Believe me, it was a terrible quandary.

Speaking of aggravated frustration, I am willing to wager that nobody even remembers a time when ‘aggravate’, similar to ‘terrible’, was simply a qualifier – something to use with another word in order to enhance the subject’s meaning. By original definition, ‘aggravate’ means to make worse; therefore, aggravated robbery – which is essentially a more severe, or terrible, robbery.

Oh and also, did you have any clue at all there was a time when the well known, rhetorical query, ‘you know’, actually required a response? Turns out that when people asked if you knew, they were actually asking you a question; you were actually supposed to answer. I know. Gosh, that must have been one heck of a world – so many questions, you know?

As earlier stated, I don’t know, and I wish people would stop asking me if I did.

I understand that this language of ours is constantly evolving. I understand furthermore that all it takes for something – for anything – to become embraced as an acceptable way of life, is for a vast section of the population to do it over an extended period.

In other words if enough idiots make a habit of acting as such, idiocy will soon become an accepted way of life.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by E Vlushon

Photography by Con. Tempree Dyptiate

Tim Walker’s Incongruous

A fine example of the aforementioned can be seen amid the pointlessly garrulous and decidedly obfuscate content of last week’s post.

Diploma in proofreading and editing notwithstanding, this is what happens when an uncharacteristically insipid brain drawing little inspiration from much of anything couples with murderous time constraints, then from somewhere within that painfully indolent mindset comes the reminder, thus the desire, the unrelenting compulsion, to maintain weekly updates of this…

Loosely translated, I allowed myself a generous half hour to ponder, mentally assemble then physically denote the very first topic that flashed across my internal vision with all the alacrity of a drunken tortoise.

Gosh, what fun we all had.

So you see, as the reader attempting to arrange last week’s calamitous transcription into some kind of fluid literal construction, the problem becomes one of congruity; making sense of the nonsensical.

In fact now I consider it – and I’m sure by now any lonely souls reading this will have flicked back to quickly scan over last week’s page of Uncertainty – I believe the point it was making, or at least hoping to make, related to the mythology of luck. That’s right, I said it. The Mythology of Luck. Damn right. I said it and by implication, you heard it.

For you see, luck is not tangible; we cannot touch or hold it and realistically, the only time we supposedly see it or benefit from its virtues, is when we have carefully put in place all the factors to ensure complete control of a situation, thereby ensuring the reaping of said benefit.

Hold up. That sounds less like luck and more like precision.

Yes. In short, your so called ‘luck’ is largely a sham. Whether you are one of these people who seem to go through life experiencing beyond their fair share of good luck, or perhaps in the eyes of others you are the most hapless soul around with seemingly constant bad luck, generally, it’s because either you applied yourself to life’s gamut of injustice or simply, you couldn’t be arsed.

Wasn’t long ago that I just could not seem to get a break. My life was embraced by The 50/50/90 rule – given a situation presenting a 50 percent chance of success, realistically, there was always a 90 percent chance of failure. Murphy watched over me like a Goddamn hawk. I was constantly stumbling over hurdles then getting up only to clamber over obstacles. Nothing was ever easy. Hardship, bad luck and failure seemed a way of life for me because honestly, I didn’t have the energy to put in that extra bit of effort that would have ensured my regular success.

Ha. If this were a rom-com or similarly lame family movie I would now regale you with a feel-good story, or somehow depict a cute montage of the path to my miraculous redemption; about how I started exerting on life that extra little something and in the scintillation of a Dreamland fairy tale everything was suddenly illuminated by a flash of magic sparkles giving life a glorious makeover and making this existence ever so wonderful…

Don’t be daft. On account of my inherent slackness I still endure the same frequency of tribulations that I always have, the difference is that now I don’t chalk up life’s apparent shortcomings to bad luck – now I know there’s a logical reason.

Huh. That made a lot more sense than I expected. Should probably think about changing that heading then…

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by X Trou

Photography by F Fawt

Tim Walker’s Uncertainty

As we tentatively go along our way, as we navigate this volatile tumult known as life, are we actually expected to comprehend and to be prepared for, or better yet, to somehow pre-empt the haphazard arrangement of eventualities, all lined up to potentially befall us?

Personally? No; but nor does this mean that we must venture into the gauntlet of life unprepared…

I’m sure some idiots will claim that it’s the uncertain nature of the game – the excitement of the unknown and such – that gives life its charm. Yeah. That’s why they’re the idiots. Don’t misunderstand me, I am a big supporter of surprises and an even bigger supporter of excitement, but when it comes to the lifelong struggle of life, sometimes, it is beneficial to have prior insight into the way stuff’s going to go down.

How many times have you witnessed a situation yield an undesirable outcome then heard the people involved cursing their ‘bad luck’?

Bad luck, generally, is just another, simpler, way of saying, ‘ill preparedness’.

Of course this is not always the case; sometimes shit just happens. More often than not though, failure can be avoided with the implementation of a little forethought, a touch of organisation, and preparation. Ha. People used to mock me for my inordinate organisational skills and penchant for preparation – so who’s laughing now?

Still you guys. Right.

Also, those people who claim ‘God’s will’ to be the reason for life’s shortcomings, downfalls, mishaps or failings, need to stop looking elsewhere for someone to blame and learn to take responsibility for their own lives.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by B Smirch

Photography by Ida Yotts