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Here’s my latest column from from Pee #37. It went to the printers on Monday, so it should be out now. This issue comes with a 26 band compilation CD, so enjoy…

Writer’s block is kind of like being constipated. There’s always a deadline (whether it’s your looming submission date or the fact that your colon will eventually explode), and there’s a feeling of internal pressure that increases the closer you get to the deadline. It’s not much fun to go through, but at least when you’re writing, you know that you will either produce a work of genius or a steaming turd, whereas if you’re constipated, you’re really only guaranteed one of those options.

If an actor wants to show writer’s block, he will bang out a sentence on his typewriter, and scowl at the paper for several seconds before scrunching it into a ball and throwing it into a growing pile surrounding the bin on the other side of the room. Film makers should get with the program – the last typewriter I saw was on Sesame Street. Real writer’s block is all about checking your email every 5 minutes, getting up to make your fourth cup of coffee, and opening your web browser to do research, but finding yourself an hour later reading about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Chuck Norris facts, or filling out a survey to find your pirate name (Peg-dick Stu the Syphilitic Sea Dog).

Writer’s block is realizing that you’ve been writing for an hour and you’ve still only got two paragraphs. It’s staying up all night and watching your word count climb slower than an arthritic tree sloth. It’s when you start to consider whether anyone will notice that you have used a larger font and double-spaced all your lines. It’s when you start thinking about the old Chinese proverb about a picture being worth a thousand words, and consider whether including a picture or two will be accepted instead of text.

Something that is closely related to writer’s block is…procrasturbation. A cute girl introduced me to this word, and even though I had a fair idea what she was talking about (no, scratch that, because I knew exactly what she was talking about), I asked for an explanation. “Well, you know, it’s late at night and you’re working on something that is due the following day; and your brain doesn’t really want to work on it, so you begin to get…horny.” I told her that I had no idea what she was talking about, but that she should continue and not hesitate to go into graphic detail. “Well, and you have to…kind of…take matters into your own hands.” On the theory that admitting to being a compulsive masturbator is not high on the list of thing that impress girls, I told her that I was a little confused, but still offered to come around and help her write her next essay.

People have suggested different cures for writers block to me. So far all of them have been useless. One suggestion was to ring up a friend and talk to them about what you are writing as if it was the most exciting thing in the world. For me this just turned into another way to avoid writing because I started talking about the procraturbation girl and how she almost definitely a sure thing…as long as I didn’t tell her my pirate name.

The cure for writer’s block that is usually mentioned is just to do some free-flow writing; don’t think about it, just let your deepest subconscious thoughts spill out onto the page. This it the crappiest idea ever! It might work for other people, but when I tried this, I just ended up with pages of writing that were both pornographic and unpublishable. I couldn’t use any of it (except maybe the bit about the cross-dressing midget).

The best cure for writer’s block is a deadline. When the deadline is really close, it unblocks you faster than an industrial strength laxative. Ideas just seem to flow from your pen, as you turn the faintest whiff of an idea into a solid chunk of reality. You sweated and strained to create this; and when you’re finished, you feel kind of proud looking at it on paper. You want to show your friends.

If they run away holding their noses, then you know that you haven’t produced a work of genius.

Here’s my latest column from from Pee #37. It went to the printers on Monday, so it should be out now. This issue comes with a 26 band compilation CD, so enjoy…

Writer’s block is kind of like being constipated. There’s always a deadline (whether it’s your looming submission date or the fact that your colon will eventually explode), and there’s a feeling of internal pressure that increases the closer you get to the deadline. It’s not much fun to go through, but at least when you’re writing, you know that you will either produce a work of genius or a steaming turd, whereas if you’re constipated, you’re really only guaranteed one of those options.

If an actor wants to show writer’s block, he will bang out a sentence on his typewriter, and scowl at the paper for several seconds before scrunching it into a ball and throwing it into a growing pile surrounding the bin on the other side of the room. Film makers should get with the program – the last typewriter I saw was on Sesame Street. Real writer’s block is all about checking your email every 5 minutes, getting up to make your fourth cup of coffee, and opening your web browser to do research, but finding yourself an hour later reading about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Chuck Norris facts, or filling out a survey to find your pirate name (Peg-dick Stu the Syphilitic Sea Dog).

Writer’s block is realizing that you’ve been writing for an hour and you’ve still only got two paragraphs. It’s staying up all night and watching your word count climb slower than an arthritic tree sloth. It’s when you start to consider whether anyone will notice that you have used a larger font and double-spaced all your lines. It’s when you start thinking about the old Chinese proverb about a picture being worth a thousand words, and consider whether including a picture or two will be accepted instead of text.

Something that is closely related to writer’s block is…procrasturbation. A cute girl introduced me to this word, and even though I had a fair idea what she was talking about (no, scratch that, because I knew exactly what she was talking about), I asked for an explanation. “Well, you know, it’s late at night and you’re working on something that is due the following day; and your brain doesn’t really want to work on it, so you begin to get…horny.” I told her that I had no idea what she was talking about, but that she should continue and not hesitate to go into graphic detail. “Well, and you have to…kind of…take matters into your own hands.” On the theory that admitting to being a compulsive masturbator is not high on the list of thing that impress girls, I told her that I was a little confused, but still offered to come around and help her write her next essay.

People have suggested different cures for writers block to me. So far all of them have been useless. One suggestion was to ring up a friend and talk to them about what you are writing as if it was the most exciting thing in the world. For me this just turned into another way to avoid writing because I started talking about the procraturbation girl and how she almost definitely a sure thing…as long as I didn’t tell her my pirate name.

The cure for writer’s block that is usually mentioned is just to do some free-flow writing; don’t think about it, just let your deepest subconscious thoughts spill out onto the page. This it the crappiest idea ever! It might work for other people, but when I tried this, I just ended up with pages of writing that were both pornographic and unpublishable. I couldn’t use any of it (except maybe the bit about the cross-dressing midget).

The best cure for writer’s block is a deadline. When the deadline is really close, it unblocks you faster than an industrial strength laxative. Ideas just seem to flow from your pen, as you turn the faintest whiff of an idea into a solid chunk of reality. You sweated and strained to create this; and when you’re finished, you feel kind of proud looking at it on paper. You want to show your friends.

If they run away holding their noses, then you know that you haven’t produced a work of genius.

This column can be found in the latest issue of Pee Zine, along with interviews with Bouncing Souls, Away From Now, Stretch Armstrong, Small Arms Dealer, Aditf and more including free stickers and a free Pee CD sampler!!

“Hi, how’s it going?” is kind of a rhetorical question; it’s not an invitation to tell me your life-story, and it’s definitely not a cue for you to start telling my about the symptoms of your irritable bowel syndrome. These days, too many people seem to lack that internal censor that stops them blurting out waaaay too much information.

Just the other day a woman on the train decided that my non-committal reply about the weather meant that it was the perfect moment to take a big emotional dump on me and share the news that her children had been taken away from her by the government, but it was all really her mother’s fault for not loving her and showing her how to be a good parent. I think there was some more after that, but my ears had shut down in self-defence from the piercing whine in her voice.

I’m starting to think that this is the decade of the over-share. Where too much information is the norm, and being honest and open is considered the same thing as saying whatever pops into your head no matter how uncomfortable it might make your audience. And “audience” is really the appropriate term here. This is not an intimate one-on-one sharing, with a close friend or therapist. This is just exhibitionism of the worst kind…the kind without nudity.

For a while I thought that it was just that people didn’t know how to edit their stories to make them interesting and suitable for public consumption, but it’s almost as if they gloss over the actual story and jump straight to the gory bits. It’s like they all went to the porn movie scriptwriters’ school of story telling or something.

It’s possible to get away with saying just about anything as long as you can wrap it up in a funny story but, trust me on this one, your stories aren’t as funny as you think they are. The last time a random guy I’d been talking to at a BBQ for five minutes tried to tell me a “funny” story it was about his visit to a dominatrix that ended with her dildo in his butt. Not the sort of thing you want to hear when you’re half-way through your fourth sausage.

Now, if someone sounds like they’re about to launch into some kind of personal anecdote, I give them my storytelling rule of thumb: If your story involves a list of your medical symptoms, some sort of emotionally traumatic event, or the words “in the butt”, then I don’t want to hear it.

You would think that a story-teller needs an audience, but I think that the world of Internet blogging is proof that people are prepared to share stuff that’s way too personal even for the slightest possibility of an audience. This attention seeking behavior is made even more tragic by the fact that probably the only people who read their blogs are people who accidentally stumble on it after doing a Google search for the Adventures of Dickman and Throbbin. It’s just like reality TV, except no-one is watching.

It would feel wrong to end a column on over-sharing without doing some of my own. Last weekend I was snuggled up in bed with my girlfriend. I was feeling all loving and affectionate; and my brain was clearly elsewhere, because I said “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else before.” She thought for a moment, smiled lovingly at me, stroked my cheek and whispered “I don’t always wash my hands when I go to the toilet.”

That was either overshare or really funny. I’ll let you know which it was after I’ve spent the next couple of months checking that the soap is wet whenever she leaves the bathroom.

Latest Pee column completed and coming soon…just like all the others. Promise :)

Coming soon… a reprint of my latest column from Pee Zine. It’s finished, but won’t be going up until after the magazine is published.

This is a reprint of my regular column in Pee Zine. This issue, find interviews with benton falls, the get up kids, said girl, park, strength within, madball and more including free stickers, vol. 2 of pee comp cd and a smallman records sampler!!

Wow; Pee Zine hits 30 today. How many years has it been? I have still got the first “ishoo” sitting on a shelf somewhere (I wasn’t joking when I wrote the column about having difficulty throwing things out). Most zines are so transitory that their life-span should be measured like dog years – this makes Pee about 273. If there was an old-folks home for magazines, it would probably be skateboarding down the corridors and keeping the other magazines awake with loud music…kind of how I imagine Iggy Pop lives.

I had a “you’re getting old” moment myself on the weekend. I met my girlfriend’s friend’s boyfriend (can you follow that?) for the first time. He’s five years younger than me, shy, bright, hasn’t quite learnt how to brush his hair or dress himself yet, and has a wide-eyed innocent look, like a Hobbit…just before you run it over with your car. “Help me Gandalf!”

So, basically, he’s just like I was at his age. I’ve never been so glad I wasn’t nineteen anymore. It’s no fun being powerless or clueless or poor. High school nostalgia is for people who haven’t done anything since.

It’s funny how people deal with aging. I was clearing the desk of a recently departed co-worker when I came across some old containers of anti-aging formula with some vaguely scientific mumbo-jumbo on the container. Bovine placenta with hydrating anti-oxidant pheromones (or something) is the sort of product where you don’t know if you’re going to need gloves to dispose of it in a sealed hazardous waste container or if it is comprised mainly of H2O with no active ingredients.

I was hardly surprised; she surfed cosmetic surgery websites at lunchtime and had that peeled, nipped, tucked, lifted and botoxed look. Other co-workers put her age at early thirties. She had a sister with children who were my age; so my money said that she was closer to her mid-forties.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being obsessive about “fighting the signs of aging”, well no more wrong than being obsessive about sport or music or the lives of celebrities (Relativism is great). In fact, in a world that has a tendency to value women on their looks, and where youth equals beauty, it probably made sense for her to treat her career like a hobby to fit in around long lunches and trips to the gym.

It’s a little strange that the cultural standards that define the ages men and women are considered most attractive are completely opposite to the ages that biology tells us are their sexual primes. Guys hit their sexual prime in their late teens (sexual prime being defined as quickest recovery time between orgasm), while women are at their most orgasmic in their mid-thirties. Hollywood has some warped values. Richard “the butt plug stops the gerbil escaping!” Gere, is in his mid fifties and is still considered a sex symbol; yet his ex-wife Cindy Crawford, who is still under forty, is considered over the hill.

With bizarre media double standards like this, is it any wonder that shows like A Current Affair love to fan the flames of inter-generational conflict with stories about evil dole-bludging young people who have no respect for their elders?

It would take a smart-arsed young whipper-snapper to point out that any charges laid against the young could just as easily be applied to their grandparents. They wear funny clothes – check. They listen to strange music – check. They take lots of drugs – check (have a look inside your grandma’s medicine cabinet one day). They don’t work – check (is pension day any different from Youth Allowance payment day?).

Having so much in common should be enough to enable anyone to hurdle the Generation gap, put Glen Miller on the CD changer alongside Slayer’s Raining Blood, and break out the bucket bong…or the Bex powder.

Roger Daultrey from The Who may have sung “I hope I die before I get old” in the sixties, but he’s still singing it in his sixties. Obviously getting old can’t be all that bad. Personally, I can’t wait to get really old - people expect you to be a cantankerous bastard which, coincidentally, is a perfect fit for my personality. Besides, I didn’t get a whole lot of benefit out of being in my sexual prime at seventeen.

If you want me, I’ll be the one putting soap powder in the fountain of youth.