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.

Resolutions for a new me

So now is the time for the old us to be wheeled out in a cart and the new us to be dropped into the mess that is our lives. And with all this wheeling and dealing it is said to be time to have some kind of resolution of what you are meant to do in your life.

But New Years resolutions are not to be taken lightly. They need to be thought out carefully, measured, allowed for and most importantly allowably attainable for the husk of the person who made it past 2008. This is where most people fall into a screaming mess. Now, if I was a halfway decent support column I'd recommend certain aims for people to have and visions for people to attain but I'm not, so I'll just write up my own list of what I won’t do with some descriptions and if they change your life I have failed at my task.

What I will not do in 2009
I will not be the person who bore the life out of other people at a party. Despite there feigned interest in the movement of the planets they don’t really want to hear about them, or that my opinion on star wars is that it’s an allegory for… well you get the idea. I can’t say that I’m that good at mutual conversation but I am going to brush up on sudden opinionated bursts to keep conversations arguementative. If people are showing too much interest in my collection of rubber stamps from Peru in 1940 then I really have to evaluate whether they are on something really good or just plain freaky like myself.

I will not buy useless electrical items of unknown frivolity that has not real use apart from making people go ooooooooo once then turning away. These are not the best way to start conversations and do not make my house feng shui oriented but clutter up the already small place as well as building up my credit card bill exponentially as they are invariably only available online from Iceland.

I will not attempt to join a gym. Considering there policies are written by the devil, the machines are made by demons and the music track is by a DJ(much much worse than the other two) the whole place could be seen as some kind of hell. The instructors seem to get too much fun out of making unfit people burn through calories and almost collapse across the bars of the machines. I should already have learnt my lesson twice(yes twice) but I must keep away from the polo shirts of shame.

I will not start arguing on an internet forum post, regardless of whether the person posting on it has a name like arguer4530 or spambot265 the argument will only leaving me crushing plastic cups and biting the desk(which is expensive when I finally do get to the dentist.) The whole exercise is fraught with idiocy and since I have been known to delve into the occasional fray before it is much better to say some minor opinionated comment to enrage the masses then run off into the sunset, skipping.

I will not try new things, since most new things have been done before, by other people and a lot better. I will just leave myself to do other things that I’ve done before at a mediocre level to ensure that the balance of the world is in good order. Who wants to be the worlds best skydiver(I’m not sure how you do attain it but I presume it’s the one most alive after the fall) and the best bungee-jumper if all it means is that people smile faintly at you after you tell them then move away from you, asking you not to follow them.

I think that should be enough for this year, it’s enough to give me a headache and I’m already five days into the year. If you do think of any others or think that these are not good enough for my resolutions then just post here and we can argue like it’s 2008.