Monday
The screen is bright because after I plugged the Apple charger cord the ailing laptop jerked itself out of low power mode and the display brightened. The website is asking me for my email and identifying number, which I cannot remember, but that’s ok because the website saves your details from the last time you visited. Once I click the login button, the website asks for a six digit code, delivered from the MyGov app, downloaded from either the Google Play website or Apple Store, which will appropriately and securely log me into the government services website. The code delivery app operates in 30 second cycles, every 30 seconds a new six digit code is released, which ensures absolute security, and implants trust in my brain vis-à-vis the governing system. I copy over the code and am presented with the familiar homepage, listing several government services I can access: with Medicare, Workforce and Centrelink taking up the main space. I have been on Centrelink for almost a full year now, a ridiculous state of affairs for someone as surely, unquestionably, demonstrably talented as myself, but I am cursed to be a university graduate in a world which still applauds such, but nevertheless recognises that the ‘degree’ is at most a pastime, at the worst an anchor. I would turn to religion but if infographics shared over Meta presents Instagram (nee Instagram) have taught me anything it’s that religion is bad unless you are Shinto, Buddhist, Hindu, Bahai. I click the hyperlink that will direct me to the Centrelink government website, a friendly but somewhat garish homepage in tones of blue and grey which informs me ‘You have no tasks to complete’.
I wonder what it would take to completely bring down a website, how many strands of internet connect to this homepage and if I could yank hard enough to remove them all. I picture reaching down the throat of the internet, tearing at globby red skin inside the chest cavity, scratching until I gather enough strands and then pulling it all up through the throat of the superhighway. I have no tasks to complete, I am idle, but my idleness is not rich enough to be called Entrepreneurship. I almost wish I was really poor or disadvantaged, there is nobility in poverty, which is why I call the beggar outside my local Coles ‘Sir’ whenever I avoid his gaze. He is always there, outside the entrance nearest to my house, and I cannot avoid him when all I want to do is purchase a four pack of Bundaberg Ginger Beer, in the little 500ml glass bottles, with instructions to ‘Flip, Open, Enjoy’ printed in neat red lettering on the label, the red letters jauntily italicised, in a slightly larger font, and printed above the paragraph describing the ethical farm to table ginger used in the creation of Australian’s favourite beverage. Someone who, in all likelihood, lives a life better than I ever will, made the bold decision to produce a line of Bundaberg ginger beer, Zero sugar. This has the same timeless glass bottle design, but with a slash of silver encircling the top of the label, the words ‘sugar free’ stenciled in black on the silver, also italicised. I want so badly to try this new drink, but the most noble homeless man is going to be there, I know he is, and I know I cannot walk by him again without either inviting him into my house for a shower, or even worse, to feel like I am him. Centrelink requires the recipient to earn 80 points through the Workforce website, a separately linked government service also available under MyGov. Workforce requires the recipient to submit proof of job applications, interviews or training programs, and Workforce will provide in exchange five points per application. A recipient needs 80 points before the 25th of each month to get the money. My days are an endless morass of job applications, each representing five percent of a possible future where I can afford to live. I no longer believe I will ever work, or indeed even receive a response. I have been on Centrelink for a year, almost, and, with five points per application, and 80 points a month, have therefore sent at least 192 applications through Seek, Indeed and more specific job websites, such as “SellPlasmaItDoesntHurt.com”. Of these 192, I have received exactly one interview, for a private equity firm three hours away by car, offering a position in an unpaid program which might transfer to a casual job in the next 2 years. I have also received three phone calls from possible employers, all of whom wished to know how I had found the experience of applying, and one email from the Victorian Socialists, asking me to contribute to their campaign attempting to overthrow the seat of Brunswick, which is not where I live. There is nobody around for whom I should sigh, but I do it anyway and close the laptop screen. The laptop has been with me for years, and I would feel some affection for it if it did not have a sticky spacebar key. I would get rid of it, but I cannot afford a new one, although, being unemployed and likely to stay that way, I would not be opposed to selling if I thought I could get more than $500. I’m looking at the screen and then I want to throw up, because Christmas is in three months. It’s later now, Centrelink is asking me ‘are you still here?’. It wants me to move the mouse, or press space, or something to show I am in fact, here. I close the tab instead. The unfairness of it all is almost too much, but I am too logical and clear minded to get upset, so instead I open the laptop again and look at Netflix.
Tuesday
I’m in the bakery section of Coles, and the world is cracking, revealing its true demonic state because the half loaves of bread they started selling as a part of their baked selection doesn’t have a multi grain offering today. Multigrain is better than white or wholemeal bread, because white is not filling enough, and has no health benefits apart from whatever bread normally has, while wholemeal tastes too grey and processed for me. Multigrain bread, sliced, is the perfect way to consume both bread and grains while not sacrificing taste or health. There is no half loaf of multigrain however, and I am reduced to contemplating a sandwich which will neither fill nor satisfy me. There is a Coles employee replacing fruits and vegetables behind me who I almost back into in my haste to get away from the barren-of-savings bakery section. The employee is a girl, possibly high school age, and she smiles at me. The smile is not a customer service smile, learned by rote and plastered on at the first sign of Employee–Human contact, the smile is deep and broad, and she smiles with her eyes and I am picturing the next 50 years of my life with her. Courting her with my witty remarks about the inferiority of white bread vis-à-vis multigrain, picking her up from her high school, where she no doubt wears dark green blazers with a thousand student affiliation badges on, and skirts. Marrying her and having no less than four perfect babies, all while she works fruit and veg at Coles while I create vast sandblasted statues in the desert. The smile is a sunbeam, casting itself down to my world, where I sit like a filter feeder at the bottom of a silty pond, and her smile is real, and I am real, and the Coles is real, and the sign above her head informs me ‘the savings are real’. I have not said anything to her, and while her smile hitches a little, she is looking at me with genuine curiosity now. I don’t say anything, either my words would be useless sound and noise, or, more likely, too complex and daring for her. Instead I turn on my heel and walk back to the bakery section, I cannot stand another moment of her perfect smile, and even though I know she will probably make fun of me to her co-workers, for a moment I consider turning back and asking what her name is, but I know her name, it’s Christie, such an old fashioned name, and I know this because her name is printed on her nametag, below larger font that says ‘Coles’. Christie is two people 3D superimposed in my head, one version of her indifferent to me, already forgetting about the handsome stranger who she saw today, the other version keeping me in her head for years, in a memory vault titled ‘losers’. There is a deep chasm in me, one which is only filled by half loaves of multi grain bread, and which I can only paper over for so long. I leave the Coles with one of those Bundaberg Ginger Beer 4 packs, smiling in a friendly, but not gay, way at the beggar who slumps at the entrance.
Wednesday
I am watching YouTube. The homepage looks new, it has been updated again with changes I anticipate will cause minutes of discussion across the internet. My recommended videos are listed in a grid, each with bold and eye-catching thumbnails. One, by channel OfficialBlueBen, forty one thousand subscribers, promises to show the ‘Ultimate High Pop Zomboid experience’. The thumbnail is an actor famous for playing Superman (but he is evil) in the hit Amazon show, Superman but he is Evil, making a face which suggests to me he is in shock or perhaps extreme happiness. An intriguing expression regardless, it makes me want to click. Behind the smiling-grimacing face and combed back blond hair is a screenshot from the video game featuring a large crowd of zombies, smashing a storefront apart, some on fire, and the word ‘Insanity’ in dripping red to the right of the actor’s face. The video is 10 minutes and 11 seconds long. Next to this is a video which has collated all the times the character ‘Niel Mink’ appeared on the show, The Sopranos. The video by channel Ceerious, 32 thousand subscribers, is 8 minutes and 29 seconds long. The thumbnail is a simple but elegant screenshot of a scene featuring Mink, played expertly by David Margulies, whose Wikipedia page is barely long enough to scroll down once on. Another video promises to reveal ‘What it’s like to meet the last uncontacted Amazonian tribe!’, published by the official BP YouTube channel (subscribers hidden), and features a thumbnail of a smiling, clearly AI generated, but still beautiful, woman releasing a bunch of balloons over the heads of a smiling crowd of brown skinned men and women wearing grasses and furs. The balloons all say variations of the phrase ‘B and P is good for Me!’. The balloons are red except for the top which is artfully smeared with black, emulating, in a fun and sexy way, the shape and colour of an oil spill. I am eating Tom Yum Noodles, the gold packeted ones.
Thursday
Homeless people are just like you and me, except different, and invisible. I imagine I am homeless, but not of those lazy unproductive homeless. I am, I would be, the best type of beggar. I would not have a dog with me, not because to do so is to prey on the empathy people will feel towards animals, but because I am also a jealous person, and the knowledge that a dog is more the target of my benefactor’s empathy would be too much: I would probably not have a dog. It is strange the invisible power the homeless have does not extend to their dogs. I would not wipe people’s windshields for coins, because that is forcing unnecessary closeness and trauma to the people who don’t see the homeless as people. I would not sell The Big Issue, because their stories are not often fact checked. There must be a universal rule, like the opposite of the inverse square rule, that the more stuff a homeless person has, the less space they take up. In the city, some of them have whole forts, sections of the sidewalk they have carved out and annexed, walls of cardboard and milk crates, mattresses, even appliances. Yet the people who walk by do not see these people, or their domains. The eye slides over the space the homeless occupy, it unfocuses and the brain sets off a hum which drowns out the natural response of disgust and fear. When walking in pairs, sometimes the conversation will lull when passing such a camped out tramp, sometimes the person speaking will speak a little louder, to drown out the voice coming from the ground, asking for money or water. Most often though, the people who walk by simply don’t see, don’t want to see, I know that’s how I feel. From there comes the invisible. The power of the homeless extends only in the place the homeless sets themself down. If they try to enter a building with real people, their invisible field evaporates, they are tossed out, or refused entry. If I was homeless, I would try to be a good homeless person: that is to say, I would recognise that my humanity is gone, turn to cannibalism and get killed by the police, thus solving the resource problem. That happened the other day: a homeless person who once had been a man, killed and ate the left leg of his former business associate in broad daylight. I watched a YouTube video breaking down the tactical response, which, as per ‘Cop That’, (240,200 subscribers) consisted of the tactical firing of 23 separate anti personnel kinetic bullets into the vagrant’s cranium and chest cavity. I envy at once the dead, and the dealers of death. Suicide is another form of invisibility.
Friday
I am doing more job applications and thinking I would like very much to get high, when I decide to break for the day, which is already over at 2 p.m. and so I watch stories on Instagram.
Story 1:
By: @BrokeAngel (220 followers, following 189), the account of a girl I dated for one date years ago.
Content: Screenshot, all white background, boxed text, shared from the personal page of a famous drummer, admitting to an affair and child of wedlock he has fathered. There is an added caption under the screenshot, it says ‘Dave Grohl love child was NOT on my bingo card’.
Reaction: I press like on the story to show that I liked it.
Story 2:
By: @WankerJaiden (127 followers, following 229), who was a housemate for a year or so when I first moved out of home, and who is employed as a chef.
Content: Three photos of meals he prepared. The first is homemade ravioli, the second a crumbed chicken breast, the third a custard pudding. Each photo is recessed slightly creating a border with a beige outline only a few pixels wide. The plates with the food on them are on a wooden tabletop, placed so the wood grain runs vertical in the photo. There was no flash on the photos, and they were taken from an almost entirely top down angle, although there is a slight angle to the photos, probably because the photographer could not completely make the phone flat.
Reaction: I don’t like the story.
Story 3
By: @DaisyAnkle (592 followers, following 365), who I went to high school with and desperately wanted to fuck once, but not anymore.
Content: Infographic screenshot, familiar to the ones described in the article I read titled ‘How social justice slideshows took over Instagram’, featuring an eye-catching orange and blue colour scheme of bubbled slides, each describing the last moments of a child in Gaza along with their shoes. The captions she has posted with each assure me she knows this is a bad situation, and I understand she is a good person because she has posted these.
Reaction: To like the images would be, possibly, to convey I approve of the content they show, which would open me to criticism. Not liking or reposting however proves I don’t care. Instead of resolving the contradiction I turn my Apple iPhone off.
Saturday
I am thinking breakfast. I am thinking I need work. I am thinking I don’t want to work. I am thinking about getting high. I am thinking about my iPhone. I am thinking about noodles. I am thinking of taking a walk. I am thinking about the weather. I am thinking about money. I am thinking I am human. I am thinking about what the homeless do when it rains. I am thinking I need to work. I am thinking I will never make it out of here alive. I am thinking supermarket. I am thinking YouTube. I am thinking TikTok. I am thinking reels. I am thinking about the next Marvel movie. I am thinking about climate change. I am thinking that I trust Mike Flanagan with the Hearts of Atlantis reboot. I am thinking about skin picking. I am thinking jazz. I am thinking videogames. I am thinking about death. I am thinking about work. I am thinking of the synthesis of death, work and videogames. I am thinking about Stalin. I am thinking the buzz of a billion insects. I am thinking I would like to peel the skin off of Gina Reinhart’s face. I am thinking red slaughter. I am thinking guillotine. I am thinking Heinz beans. I am thinking Victorian Bitter. I am thinking the Toyota AFL finals series, brought to me by Toyota. I am thinking of Harry Potter branded pencil toppers. I am thinking what weapons I would use in a zombie apocalypse. I am thinking travel. I am thinking self-immolation. I am thinking which subreddit is best for combat footage. I am thinking what to have for dinner. I am thinking rent. I am thinking lunchtime.
Sunday
Here’s how to make a thousand dollars off of slop. First, use a website which creates word clouds based on common search terms. You want to export to this website the 50 most common Amazon search terms filtered by length and relevance. This will generate a word cloud where bigger words are terms in the immediate zeitgeist of common searches for books.
Examples include:
- Hypnotherapy
- Keto dieting
- Epilepsy
Next, find words which are big, but not the biggest. Our slop will be based on this. For example you might find the words Brain Chemistry and Primate Bonding. Next, contact a ghostwriting website. I recommend a post Uber nightmare service where every ghostwriter competes for commissions, while also being independent contractors with the service, so you can really lowball them and rely on the fact they need these commissions to, you know, pay rent and buy food. Get a ghostwriter to produce twenty thousand words of a novel titled something like Chemical Bonds and Social Bonds: A field guide to friendship groups. If you’re doing this right, it should not cost more than $250.
Now you have twenty thousand words of slop, based on topics we have gamed to become popular in the next few weeks. Repeat the ghostwriter step, only with another Uberised service for audiobook readers. Again, find a service which has independent contractor audiobook readers who compete for commissions. Lowball, complain and be pushy, what are they gonna do, say no? Get Chemical Bonds and Social Bonds: A field guide to friendship groups, read by a narrator and, easy, you’re done. Upload two separate creations of slop, the E-book of Chemical Bonds and Social Bonds: A field guide to friendship groups and the audiobook version to Amazon via their self-publishing service. You have now, for a total cost of less than $400 (if the method is applied correctly) created that most precious of all resources, Passive Income. Upload your slop, and await the flood of paychecks.
There comes a point when I wonder how any of this is possible. I read once that if the entire power system of the world went down, anyone who needs blood, for any kind of medical issue, would be dead in three days because the whole world has only three days’ supply of donated blood at any one time, which I think could be rectified by market forces by allowing people to sell blood, instead of just giving it away. I try not to apply the same logic to what I would eat four days after the power goes out, but I know I would happily crack my neighbour’s head open for sustenance if I had to. My ideal world ending scenario would be some kind with zombies, or any other kind of vaguely human shaped monster I could feel no guilt about mass murdering. I would settle for a nuclear winter because I would like to see snow in real life. The worst part though is that I know, most likely, nothing of the sort will happen, the world will plod into death instead of doing a cool forward roll off the cliff. I will live a long, vaguely comfortable (if less so than my parents) life, where nothing so bad that it cannot be fixed will occur. I will never experience the kind of suffering that creates real art, I will not explore new planets, or fight in wars over water. I will drink ginger beer farmed with more and more water intensive techniques, eat the gold variant of Tom Yum noodles (how nice it is to have a choice), watch ever more hours of content and I will be middling, white and protected, all the while cursing my bad luck. This world is a slop world. Maybe I should give blood.
Monday
I log into Centrelink. I have no tasks to complete.