Reflections #1 Day #1 - Rainy Day Woman Blues #13 & #35

the dude 

The day started magnificently. I received a lanyard and a t-shirt. It rapidly went down hill after that. There is actually an expectation that I will actually do stuff. No shit. Actually. (Surely they're not serious? They are serious. And don't call me Shirley.) 

Thinking, is it overrated? It is with a certain Jackie Gleason-bug-eyed-sense of Huh? that I have to now channel my inner stoned Lloyd Bridges and equally stoned Jeff Bridges and see if I can come up with something creative, sort of coherent, and vaguely presentable, so as to address the requirements of this subject... Hmmmmm... this could get ugly... 

First of all, let's step through this. I declare that I am more of a life-stylist than anything else. To suggest that I am a student of any sort would be a grave insult to all the real students. The only real ambition I have left these days is to one day own a coat like this.

This is presently available on Ebay for $135 USD. It is a vintage 1940s Utica DuxBak... It is rather sad but I do honestly metaphorically cream my pants at the prospect of owning something like this. (Even sadder, there is some literal truth in there as well!)

There is a neat website - The Fedora Lounge - that has a really cool history on the Duxbak of Utica. 

Or else I could go with a brand spanking new Woolrich Classic. At $409 AUD it's bit of a bargain. (I seriously can't afford that...) 

Now back to the blog. 

I don't really have any interest in networking. (It just seems unseemly...)

I also suspect social media is simply exacerbating a pre-existing condition within society-at-large of gormlessness that sadly is all too excited at the prospect of any opportunity to publicly express itself. (Blogging is of course excluded from that because nobody will ever actually read this!) (So in this space of privileged anti-social aloofness I can be as fucking gormless as I want...)

The assessments look interesting, but I have to find a voice, perhaps even a persona, to wrap all of this in.  

I am tossing up between going all out gonzo...

And spending the next four days completely off my nut a la 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'...

... or perhaps approaching it with a more sensible-single-malt-Scotch-informed-Martha Gellhorn-inspired sense of heroism. Not that I am expecting a bloodbath at the Benders-bash, but if war does break out between the fascists and the communists I want to be prepared. 

It is all a bit like one of those choose your own adventure books. I now have to start working through options, committing myself to some decisions, and see where it all leads me.

But whatever happens I am claiming this Bendigo Writers Festival as my very own. I am Jason, an anti-writer inaction. (No. I am Jason, an anti-writer inaction...)