Helpfulness-ness

I had the chance this morning to help a bewildered visitor to Melbourne town who was trying to get to RMIT from the corner of Elizabeth and Collins. Now for all the non Melbournites out there, this kind of direction is quite simplistic and helped me feel good about myself for the next hundred meters or so till I started dodging trams jaywalking on Bourke St.


The man, of unknown overseas origin, wandered on his way happily hoping that he was one step closer to his destination than he had been when standing on our meeting corner. And I can't recommend enough that you ensure these tourists, visitors, new residents, interlopers or otherwise time travellers do get the assistance that they are asking for.

It may be a little far to run ahead of him and drop bread crumbs or pay a skywriter to lead them towards there intended goal but it does give you a good kick to make people feel a little better.
Now, I know you can all see this as self congratulatory but this should lead to an obvious conclusion.

People need to help people out.

Well, I don't think that was that much of a revelation but maybe, just maybe if you're feeling a little down you should go out and find someone who is incompetently trying to parallel park their scooter and assist them (without appearing to actually steal the scooter).

Heck, this should be naturally for everyone to assist any stranger, who happens to walk by, across a pedestrian crossing regardless if they want to cross or not. Why not wait half an hour to merge onto a freeway letting everyone else past first, you'll feel 189.3% better than you had earlier in the day(figure not yet proven)

But lastly, if you want to truly help someone else. Maybe you should let them help you. If you notice a friend or colleague feeling a little glum then what better way to make them feel better than to go out there and injure yourself(only to a slight degree, no point killing yourself) so that they can give you the kiss of life, tourniquet up your acute angled knee and feel for a good two days on top of the world.

Well, that's all from me for this post.
I think it's time I went and helped some people out.
Maybe just a twisted ankle this time, broken bones just take too long to heal.

Inspirational Purgatory

So I have been sitting here looking at the many pieces on Mister Fine thinking about a piece or two to post in my mind and nothing seems to be gelling. Despite years of cynicism, coffee, bad travel experiences and other such stuff there seems to be no rhyme or reason why I can’t put down fifteen paragraphs or so without sobbing quietly into my pillow at the third and declaring that whatever talent I had is all over and it will never come back.

I can’t seem to shake this sense of foreboding that after working on the full 32 posts (and one dodgy mobile phone photo) that I can’t seem to get the ideas in my head down on paper. And the ideas seem to be there, from inspirational school television influences, crazy american familys with hot air balloons to the excitement of not paying a cent extra for public transport for the next 2 years (the last one apparently was enough to pay for more ticket inspectors.) but the issue seems to be that I get to a good point, then I lose the moment and stop...right...about...now……..



….so the question is that, while wallowing in a mire of inspirational deficient mud, I should be able to step forward and get enough momentum to move on.


And at this point I want to kick start my muse like a motor scooter without the use of hard or soft drugs. Without resorting the methods such as extreme antarctic polo(with seals) or running off to an ancient emo temple to wear lots of black and talk to no one. I need to get the movement going again with a cheap and practical muse for hire, especially if I want to keep Mister Fine moving at some pace.


And I don't seem to be the only one. I know numerous blogs that start out so well with the updates occuring in such a regimented fashion that the Army feels out of step before tailing off with posts occurring yearly, like the school journals of old.


So my real question to everyone, and it has only taken five paragraphs to get to a point, is on the way we get our muses to work. We seem to be dependant on these little spirits of inspiration so much so that without them, our motivation falls like a brick(I prefer a brick to a stone on this occasion). And the point is that why are we so reliant on our muse?

In reality(at least this one) being subservient to a bodily function seems to be akin to reverting to being a toddler. We get to train our bodies to wait for us to eat, sleep, exercise, go to the toilet and even breath(should you be a pearl diver or sewerage worker) but our creative mind gets to be waited upon like Cleopatra until it feelshappy enough to help us out.

So the answer to all this is either in blaming our parents for only toilet training us as a toddler(which is always a good excuse to a board of directors) or to work out exactly what the muse needs (may be alcohol, hard drugs, maths books or monopoly money) and then withold this until you have a better exchange policy. Blackmail always seems to be a good option, right?

Feasible?

I'm out of other inspirations I think I might just blame the parents.

The allen key of reliance.

I was recently extremely impressed by the ingenuity and ‘can-do’ attitude(one of those wonderful business terms my old work loved using) of a neighbour of mine recently when he decided to paint his own car. Now, I’m not one to normally talk up the virtues of breathing in litres of toxic chemicals, but truth be told, the job he did was equal, if not better, than most jobs completed by a fully fledged paint monkey at a repair center (please not that we do not condone the hiring of monkeys for painting, only for panel beating). My own surprise was initially compounded by the fact that his entire equipment compliment comprised of a herald sun, a couple of cans of black gloss spray paint and a breathing mask. The fact that it cost him the smallest fraction of a fully fledged paint job in both time and monetary value really made me sit up and take notice.

But can this not be transferred to other jobs that do exist. Can we not look at important everyday jobs such as chemical manufacture, children’s entertainment and submarine tester to save our dollars instead of handing over an unused organ to a dodgy organ store to ensure we get our personal submarine tested?

I think that some jobs can be taken away from these niche markets to save our own pennies. Why hire a person to peel grapes and other food items for you when you can do it yourself for a saving of almost 100%. Have you actually looked at your life to see if there are some jobs you can do yourself.

Personally, I think the car wash industry, with its self service bays has led the way for years and I think that most industries should take a leaf out of their books. Can we walk straight into a dentists surgery sit down in the chair and skewer our gums with a drill without hearing about the attendants newest yacht. Can we walk into a farm and grab a milking cow by it’s udders to get a litre or so instead of all this newfangled milking and processing techniques with the added benefit of mocking city slickers for not understanding country life.

Truth be told, this idea is already in evidence. Ikea has been working on this theory for years and they still seem to be getting bigger, despite the fact that every person who has put together an one of their beds has nervously slept for a few years after for fear that they hadn’t put every bolt into the frame and could now be sleeping on a death-trap in darkened pine.

But anyway, I can see this is the way to live my life from now on. I am saying 'no more reliance on useful industry jobs' and more work by my own two hands.
Well, except for the dishes in the sink.
I think washing is just a little too complicated for me.