Ghosts, ghosts, GHOSTS

It's Halloween today, depending on where you are or when you're reading this, so it may possibly have been Halloween yesterday, or possibly even three months and six days ago, and that's exciting because Halloween is ace, and Halloween means lots of things, but of course one thing more than any other thing:

And that thing is this:

That if you find yourself camping anytime in the next year or twenty, you're going to tell some ghost stories. 

Now I've never really told a ghost story, and I don't think I've ever really had one told to me, although one time when camping as a Boy Scout, true story: 

I got horrible diarrhea, then someone accidentally flung some water on me that was in a pot on a fire getting ready to boil, it wasn't hot yet, but I pretended it was so that I could claim my burns hurt so much that I couldn't get involved in scout activities, and I could instead spend all my time spraying the rats at the bottom of the pit that was our toilet. So I know TRUE horror. That's why it's time to give this halloween's definitive list of things to include in your next ghost story: 

1. Awesome settings: forget your cliches like isolated motels, broken down cars, shacks in the woods, mountains by the sea, dark alleys, well lit alleys, sandwich shops with alleys behind them, alleys that lead to dark places, places that aren't scary right now but could be if the budget in your story can afford to shoot at night, keeping in mind not just lighting costs, but also overtime pay for any union workers, scurvy tents, rats nests, giant bird cages that still contain giant birds yet no giant cats, a laundromat that doesn't sell detergent and you always forget to bring some from home, inside the mind of a bowl of soup, alleys that have dark senses of humor or any of the other tired old settings: 

Instead go with somewhere unique, here's a twist, try somewhere sweet, innocent, and pure so they'll never see it coming: like a flower shop, a baby clothes store, or inside your mothers vagina.

2. Include at least one hilarious joke: here's one I prepared earlier:

'I've got a cold, I don't know where I got the germs, I wash my hands religiously, at Christmas AND Easter!'

Here's a twist, if your listeners don't laugh yell 'zing' after it so they know it was a joke:

 If they still don't laugh yell 'zing attack' then jump on them and squeeze a marshmallow into their eye socket: 

If they STILL don't laugh, tie them to a tree near a pit of fire ants, strip them naked, then pour honey all over them:

If they STILL just don't laugh they just don't have a sense of humor so de-friend them:

If they are currently more than your friends, lovers even, demote them to mere friend to punish them. Make sure you tell your current friends you consider being your friend a punishment. 

3. A bad guy.

There you have it, these are the three key elements. Now just have all those elements come together in a satisfactory way for your audience. Boom. 

If your ghost story fails, don't worry, you can always grab a boiling pot from the fire and chuck it on your fellow campers:

Or just give them diarrhea, I have a hunch those rats need a good spraying. 

Today's blog was brought to you by:

- Colons, punctuation's version of the cute double butt mole. Colons, often overused and misused, but not in this blog.

- The word 'twist', a perfect replacement for 'tip' anytime. Who doesn't love getting drunk and going cow twisting.

Now THATS' a zing. You better laugh, cause I buy BIG marshmallows. 

0h wait:

4. GHOSTS!! 

Sad Halloween

This Halloween I'd like to ask you all a favor. While you're out having fun, eating candy, bobbing for apples, eating witches hair spaghetti, drinking punch from the witches cauldron, making love to the witches broomstick, burning the weird girl down the road alive at a stake, eating steak cooked by Superman (ha ha, cute), and all the other classic fun Halloween games we all adore every year (well let's face it sometimes the steak is cooked by Batgirl, Halloween is no time for sexism or assumed binary gender roles, save that for world leprechaun day thank you), I'd like you to have just as much fun as normal.

Having said that, as the night goes on, perhaps before the stake is burned to the nub, and before the splinters are being tweezed out, just spare a thought for a moment or five, for all those sexy ghost pirate robots from space, with Jokers smiles, mermaid bottom halves, jungle cat tails, and Smurf coloring, and who are REAL. 

Normally they are the absolute center of attention, but then one day a year  strangely, inexplicably, they start having lots of people suddenly say to them 'nah, you tried WAY too hard' when ALL they did was put on some bunny ears. 

So sad. 

Intrudabley Repudably - A Poem

'That guy Kevin, he's shady' they said. 

They said this because Kevin had a reputation for being shady.

This was because everywhere Kevin went he carried a knife.

Although Kevin was adamant that the reason people called him shady was because he'd often say things like 'need shade? I got a knife I'll cut a tree down, build you a fire, make you some shade'.

It would have been a better ruse if he knew how shade worked.

Or how fire worked.

Or how knives worked.

Or how offers to strangers in need of shade worked. 

Or if he didn't say it in an old-timey New Yorker criminal voice like from the old-timey pictures set places like Chicago. 

Or if he didn't carry around a mink coat with a court ordered sign on it saying 'obtained through mugging at knife point'. 

Or if the Reputiblesofrights, the people in charge of assigning and administrating reputations, could get off their fucking high horses, and give out a god damn reputation or two that aren't steeped in unnecessary metaphor. 

Why not just say 'he's got a reputation as a guy who a carries a knife'.

You know what, next time someone gets stabbed just because they felt like they had gotten too much sun and would like a break, or relief, perhaps in the form of shade, let's blame them! 

Fuck the Reputiblesofrights!

Anyway that's my rant for today.

I've been Dave. 

A man with a reputation for 'occasionally unwittingly pissing off the WRONG people my friend, and often being too dumb to realize, how's that for no metaphor dick'.

Wait, I do NOT have that reputation.

What do you mean it's 'just been officially assigned?'

No.

Please no. 

Please, please, nooo! 

What he hell did I do? 

Fleeting forever is Fleeting Forever

It's just come to my attention today that if you google Fleeting Forever you do not in fact easily find Fleeting Forever, by which I mean THIS Fleeting Forever, that you're reading right now, this website called Fleeting Forever that is.

I discovered this when standing in the lobby of a hotel holding my bag, which has 'FLEETING FOREVER' painted on the side of it, and I noticed a girl walk past, see it, mouth the words 'fleeting forever' with her mouth (which is my personally preferred method of mouthing words, I tried doing it with my spleen for a while with only limited success, and I once met a woman who used a taxidermy skunk she'd had grafted to her back to cover up the scars from where she'd had a cluster of moles removed, but again with only limited success) she then pulled out her phone and seemingly typed 'fleeting forever' into google, and I thought 'woopee, my brilliant advertising campaign is working, I'm finally going to build readers, make fans, get love, start to matter, get some attention, not feel so alone, scare the dark clouds away, I can stop feeling worthless, I can stop drinking a bottle of cough medicine a day, I can stop purposely wearing a slightly too heavy coat and feeling slightly too hot and thinking that even though this cosiness is nice at times, I deserve the times that it doesn't feel that way, and be me!!' You know, the average thoughts of a real writer has upon getting a new reader. 

Then of course I thought 'woopee' Seriously Dave? No REAL writer would ever think that word, you're a nothing, a pathetic loser, a complete waste of biology and atoms and then I thought 'well real writers do think thoughts like THAT all day? Why is this so confusing?'

Then I decided to google Fleeting Forever to see what comes up when you google it. Which of my hundreds of blogs would be the highlight? How many links to the many things I've attempted to achieve would be found? Why don't I have any cold drinks near me? Warm soda is gross but I'm still drinking it. I'm hot for some reason damn it. Fleeting Forever, my baby, it's been years since I googled it, and since then I've written several million words of it! It must dominate that corner of Google now. 

So I googled it. What comes up? Fucking nothing!!!!!!!!! Well at least nothing to do with me.

- A defunct band. 

- Some Napoleon quote.

- Articles that have used both those words but not concurrently.

- But no me. 

This is bullshit. 

It's occurred to me that perhaps I need to use the words Fleeting Forever more often in this to sparkle up those search engines, so I have used Fleeting Forever several times in this blog already, and I may even write Fleeting Forever a few MORE times. And by write Fleeting Forever, I mean type Fleeting Forever, and by type Fleeting Forever, I mean into my phone, where I write most of Fleeting Forever's blogs. 

Now while Fleeting Forever is a beautiful poetic term I coined myself, who can forget all the wonderful times it's subsequently been used by others in this world. Let's list some:

- We all gasped when watching Pulp Fiction yet again, but for the first time noticed that in the scene in the coffee shop at the end when the briefcase is opened we can see in the reflection of a knife in the background that the golden glow is in fact sourced by golden yellow neon lights spelling FLEETING FOREVER.

- We all sighed beautiful sighs of beauty when we finally got speakers loud enough to hear what Bill Murray says to Scarlett Johansen at the end of 'Lost In Translation' and discovered he'd said 'I wish it was you instead of the redhead, well maybe not, then you'd be a cheater, I don't think the audience wanted that, anyway have a nice life, don't eat the peanuts on your flight, someone told me once they're now this artificial synthetic replacement thing so as not to kill people with peanut allergies, oh you've got spinach on your teeth. When did you eat spinach? Anyways I best be off, the director just said to whisper something, I'll cya at the wrap party, peace, fleeting forever'.

- We burped when we saw the actor who played Tim's neighbor in Home Improvement in subsequent acting performances and discovered instead of a chin he had an elephant tusk with Fleeting Forever engraved in it. 

- We gurgled you we ran World War Two era decoding machines over 'one small step for man, one giant step for man kind' and found it broke down to 'Yay, Fleeting Forever, check it out, it's Ace'

- We all exhaled wind from our ears by holding our nose and blowing, when's watching the original 'Planet Of The Apes' when Charlton Heston spots the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand, but when watched through the eyes of an official set used ape mask you instead saw a billboard sticking out of the sand saying 'Fleeting Forever' and he screamed 'you maniac' knowing he was in fact on earth. 

- We pussed from our scabs when Ringo Star performed one of his most famous and epic drum solos with the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and morse coded out the words 'Come Together right now? I pitched Fleeting Forever, big cow, but I guess I don't matter, my opinions don't count, pricks, well one day I'll get my revenge, I'm going to voice a cartoon/ claymation train! John or Paul could NEVER pull that off!

- We all sweated out a fibula bone when no name tweeter @gluedome tweeted 'Fleeting Forever, pretty good' to his seventeen followers. 

Ok that last ones a bit far fetched and I'll admit I made it up, but the others are all real. 

So yeah, that should do it. Wait. Hang on. Fleeting Forever, FLEETINGforever, FLEETINGFOREVER, fleetingFORVER. Fleeting Fleeting Forever Forever 

Fleeting Forever Forever

FleetingFleeting Forever

Fleeting

Forever

Ok that should do it. Hopefully this will make me googlable. If that doesn't work I can always move on to my next big idea, mouthing words using a puddle of Gatorade I pull around behind me on a tarp, it might not be memorable, but I could get some sponsorship money! 

Poor Mountain Love

Hello everyone, I'm sure you all saw the latest survey results, the whole world has been talking about them, but for those of you that don't pay attention to the news I'll fill you in - this past Tuesday, for the first time since Tuesday the 17th of February 43BC (the day when it was first pointed out that while volcanos do indeed make badass science project entries, in reality they're 'interesting at best' to live next to) mountains have failed to finished number one on Price Waterhouse and Young Ernst's weekly 'People's Favorite Big Thing, You Know, Mountains, Pyramids, Volcanoes, Shit Like That' Survey. 

The new number one.... 'Dwellings, but not like houses, big dwellings, like buildings and stuff'. 

Obviously this is devastating news for mountain fans and mountain well wishers everywhere. And I've managed to get an exclusive interview with someone right at the forefront of this pain, someone truly suffering, and I now have the opportunity to capture this pain in print, please welcome to this blog Geographer Greg Gurber! 

Dave: Welcome Greg, thanks so much for being here, you obviously are a big mountain respecter, reminiscer and even ramshackle style lover, and you look devastated, truly broken, it's lovely to get to see you like this right in the heart of the pain cycle.

Greg: Thanks Dave, I'm just a humble geographer, simply a prophet speaking the language of the flawless wonder of nature, and yep I'm truly destroyed, you have certain things you hold dear in the world, your rocks, the things you can rely on, and to have one of them yanked away is utterly crushing, so it's lovely to be here. 

Dave: Can you tell me how you your feeling about dwellings right now? 

Greg: Sure thing, well look, I'm just a simple geographer, basically gods travel agent, and it makes me sick in a real guttural intestine fizzing way, I mean dwellings? Seriously! Only a medium percentage of them even are big, and even so, how long have they been around a few thousand years? So that's how we pick our favorite big things now, just the hot new thing? Mountains have been around ages, and unlike dwellings they'll STILL be around in future ages! 

Dave: You don't think dwellings will stay around?

Greg: No way, look I'm only a geographer, basically a conductor of splendor, and as such I am utterly crushed like a toe under an anvil after someone said 'take that out, there is literally nothing good not throwing that out will provide', so I'm no expert of dwellings, but they feels like just a fad to me. 

Dave: So what is your speciality? 

Greg: Geography. 

Dave: So like maps and things. Shouldn't I really be talking to a geologist? 

Greg: What do they do? 

Dave: Rocks I think? But aren't mountains made from rocks? Maybe that's more likely to result in extreme mountain love than geography?

Greg: Hey you invented me, you just conjured me from your brain, there's no part of me that's real, so I'll be whatever you want.

Dave: Well you didn't have to tell everyone that, people like the illusion, but yeah, I think I want you to specialize in geology.

Greg: Sweet, I'll make the necessary adjustments. Oh wait, can I still do that self-aggrandizing stuff? That was fun.

Dave: Sure. 

Greg: Hey I'm just a simple geologist, link between mankind and millennia of awesome, and I'm horrified like a witch getting startled by a REAL witch threatening to both expose her as a charlatan AND add more demand for essence of gnat at the local 7/11 potentially driving up the price, and you know what, fuck dwellings, big or small, mountains are here to stay! You know, except the bits I drill out and take to the lab to experiment on. And you'd be surprised how many bits we take! Sometimes entire mountains. There used to be a mountain bigger than Everest that now only exist samples in my storage unit. 

So there you have it folks, a real life, genuine professional geologist says 'fuck dwellings'.

And I for one will not just sit and wait for dwellings to stop existing without a solid plan as to where I'll live next. 

I think maybe I'll go for some form of Iron Man type suit that's completely self contained and livable in. Fortunately I know an expert in Iron Man style suits, or he may just work at a fancy dress store, meh, I invented him, he can be anyone I want! 

And then...

And then there were the screeches from the metal bed frame dragging across the floor as it was being hauled towards the door, no longer welcome in the apartment ever since it was discovered that its owners brand new box of fancy trinkets won't fit under there, which is exactly where he planned to put them.

And then there was Sally yelling 'I told you not to buy those fancy trinkets. They were an ill-thought-out, poor consumer decision, and now we're resigned to purchasing a whole new bed frame to make this bed high enough for them to fit'. 

And then there was Jonathan saying 'but they're fancy trinkets!'  

And then there was Sally saying 'damn it you've got me'.

And then there were the tentacles that slammed through the windows and swept them into the mouth of the giant half squid half horse, which looked a little 'off' I guess you would say. It wasn't a natural combo. The whole thing looked awkward and unbalanced. Plus the segment where the squid skin morphed into horse hair was a bitch to find moisturizers for that didn't irritate. 

And then there was Sally and Jonathon who sure were glad they'd finished their fight before they were eaten to death. You know what they say 'you should never be ground up in giant hybrid animals teeth angry'. 

And then there was me, getting a FREE box of fancy trinkets! So it was pretty much an all around happy ending. 

Except for the giant squorce, who would soon discover its digestive system didn't like humans as much as its taste buds did. Plus it got the bed frame stuck between its teeth so it required a trip to the dentist. Who was obviously like 'you need to floss more' and it was like 'have you seen how big my teeth are? I have to use power lines for floss, and then people get pissed off that their phones don't work for a couple of days'.

And then there was the dentist saying 'I'm glad you added the "and then" in there, because that last paragraph nearly become the first one of this whole story that was lacking those words, plus who even uses their land lines anymore?' 

And then there was the squorce saying 'no you forget, you still need the line rental for your modem'. 

And there was the dentist saying 'oh yeah, I forgot about that'. 

Yep, it was definitely a happy ending all around. And then some! 

Bird

Just remember...

BIRDS WOULDN'T BE SO ARROGANT IF CATS COULD FLY! 

What you got to say about that? 

Ok, well played, you got me this time bird. 

Guest blogger - Adam Niven

Daves busy alright, so I'm writing today's blog. 

Do you need a bigger explanation than that? I don't know, he didn't give me intructions, he just called me up, and we caught up for a while, I told him how my kids were doing...

Hal - still married. Still not telling his wife that he had a weird 'needy' relationship with his mother. If you know what I mean, and I hope you don't, cause it's dark and fucked up, Dave knows what I mean though, so we talk about it, whatever, we're friends.

Suz - Still pretending to have cancer to get sympathy at work. She gets that from me. By which I mean I'm a cancer survivor so people believe her, she gets the conniving bitchiness from her mother. 

So you know, standard kid catch up. 

Then we talked about hermit crabs, Dave's for them, claims they're good at reminding sea and land creatures alike that it's ok to hide away sometimes, that's it's ok to carry your house on your back, and that it's ok to have a face full of sand occasionally, something he believes passionately seeing as he's long found sand to be the tastiest of all the  granulated shell and corral based forms of dirt-like substances that are not dirt. I'm not for them because the last time I went to the beach one of them nipped my scrotum. Sure you could say that my scrotum should have been tucked tightly in my shorts, but I've long felt that sand is the third most gentle on the scrotum skin of all the granulated shell and corral based forms of dirt-like substances that are not dirt. So I beach scrot out, other guys do it at the salt flats, it's a personal preference I guess.

Then we talked about curries. Daves against them, because he finds they make him think about how he's not racist, because he'd never call an Indian person a 'curry muncher' but then he realizes that realizing that required him to think it, and if you can think it doesn't it mean that it exists inside of you, hmm, doesn't it, hmmm, doesn't it, hmmmmmm. I'm for them because them stinkin' Indians have got to be worth something.

Then we got talking about how my racism is getting worse. I'm for it, I don't want to be liked by everyone, my ex liked me once and I do NOT want to go through THAT again. Dave's against it, he thinks it's simply ignorance and hate, although he is happy to automatically hate anyone with a nazi smurf tattooed on the third arm they've sourced by killing a toddler and holding a surgeon at gun point till its successfully attached in the place of their dicks, um, he AUTOMATICALLY hates them, doesn't get to know them at all, hypocritical much? 

Then we talked about how we got onto talking about curry and we remembered the salt flats and me talking about guys who prefer to go scrot out at the salt flats, salt being an ingredient occasionally used in curry. Daves for it, he thinks that if we can hurry up and eat all the salt then he'd see less naked guys on his frequent trips to the salt flats to scream at the salt for only being his third favorite shell and corral based dirt-like but not dirt substance to eat, after ground up car parts that someone has dyed and tricked him into believe is sherbet. I'm against it, I always see guys with toddler arms for dicks at the salt flats, I'd rather just eat bland food thankyou. 

Then we talked about how he didn't have time to do his daily blog today because he's busy damn it, BUSY and asked if I could do it? He's against it, because he prefers to ask favors and have them denied and instead develop deeply rooted grudges which he then extracts from his body and let grow and develop in a super heated aquarium he keeps in his log cabin in the middle of Tokyo, one of only 15 log cabins in ALL of Tokyo, and then once the grudges develop into morbid, disgusting, festering mould looking sick looking growths he uploads them to the Internet and sits back and watches what happens next with glee. I'm for it, because I'm jealous of the HUGE audience and acclaim he gets for his blogs. Get this, one time someone said 'nice blog', I fucking want that hard! 

So here I go. Ok, topic, topic. Um, I don't know where to start, how the hell does Dave come up with stuff to write about every day? I'm on my first one and I've got NOTHING to say, fuck. Oh shit. Why did I agree. I've got NOTHING! 

Well um, I don't like walking over drains? Could that be a thing. They make me think of dropping stuff down them. 

'Walking over drains - no thanks, I like my keys, wallet, phone, ear lobe I found and keep meaning to hand in to the ear lobe department of the cops one day, and keys being in my POCKET, not in the drain thanks!'

Alright. That's it done. Phew. Wow, doing a Dave quality blog is easier than I thought. Now time to sit back and wait for the praise. 

By the way I bet Daves FOR walking over drains. That fucker never agrees with me on ANYTHING. I don't even know why we're friends. You know what, I'm going to set him up with my ex-wife, I hate her, it'll be a match made in heaven! 

Shandy would've been more believable - A poem

'No, I'm not lying, the cockroach DID talk to me, I swear it on my daughters life!' Bellowed Taylor. 

She'd dug herself a hole. 

An innocent lie about where she'd been for the past hour had spiraled out of control and she had no idea how to reel it in. 

It was only after she claimed that the engagement ring the roach had given her had been stolen by a sneaky liquid metal glass of port that she thought 'maybe I should just admit I was masturbating in the disabled toilet'. 

Having a super attractive boss had NOT turned out to be the joy she'd imagined. 

Of course it was her daughter who suffered in the end. 

Considerably Fortuitous - A Poem

Adam sat and pondered...

He thought. 

He deliberated.

And then he went right back to pondering.

The topic - just where would the music industry be if fate hadn't intervened all those years ago... before music had even been invented.. And fortuitously conjured up the reality that the word 'love' rhymes with the word 'shove'. 

After six hours he finally reached an answer -

'Bout the fucking same' he said out-loud.

Then the lady on the bus sitting next to him got up and changed seat. 

Adam now moved onto his next topic of ponderation - wasn't this bus ride supposed to only be ten minutes? 

'This one threatens to be a doozy' he thought 'it may possibly even require a level of thought rare for me - consideration, perhaps even musing'

Then he realized...

'Oh shit' he thought 'that in itself is another thing to ponder, this is going to be a LONG bus ride'. 

Pattern

There's a pattern 

There's a streamline 

There's a lateness

There's a half life 

Like a bookshelf without a book making it a fucking liar 

Untrustworthy

And if you can't trust a bookshelf

What can you trust?

A coffee table?

Nope

I once saw a magazine on one of those 

That's NOT a coffee. 

A better tomorrow

Duncan was looking into the bottle. He wanted to see something in there. He wasn’t sure WHAT he wanted to see. Although he was sure of a few things that he did NOT want to see in there:

-       A fully operational miniature zebra wrestling zoo, where the zebras wrestle, just to be clear, if the zebras were just to distract people from the horrifically brutal miniature springbok wrestling matches in the background that would be fine.

-       A contaminated edition of the daily news that held the singular story that held the solution to the contamination problem sweeping the town of Daily, the town named after it’s local paper, and named on a day when no one knew that ‘daily’ merely meant the frequency of the paper’s issue.

-       Creepy looking cornhusks hell bent on revenge against husky dogs for being the most badass things named after husks, with plans on trying to recruit husky young men to their cause, but not sure how to do it, because it’s not nice to go up to someone and say ‘hey you look husky, wanna join my husky campaign’ especially when as a corn, it’s your cousin ‘high fructose corn syrup’ that’s caused half that huskiness.

-       Beer.

He also knew why he didn’t want these things to be in the bottle.

-       Cause zebras have weak legs for an animal in their animal category, so the wrestling matches wouldn’t be brutal enough.

-       Because how did the town have a paper before it had a town name? That’s backwards fella.

-       Because he was husky, and he had a pet Husky dog, and he did not want to get in-between it and his best friend, a creepy looking cornhusk.

-       Because if he was holding a beer, then it probably meant he had just drank his science experiment, and his boss down at the ‘Society of Experiments For A Better Tomorrow’ would NOT be happy that he drank his last six years of work.

Ten minutes later Duncan had a brainwave – it was right as his best friend the cornhusk began to beat him in his ‘fat tummy’, and the miniature springbok kicked him in his chin so hard that he spat contamination all over his newly opened beer – ‘I should have thought more about what I WANTED to see in that bottle, and LESS about what I did NOT want to see in that bottle!’ he thought.

And that is why we do not currently have a better tomorrow. Although I have heard good things about two week’s from Sunday.

RIP The 121 days of fit challenge

RIP The 121 days of fit challenge 

The 121 days of fit challenge died a sad and sudden death last night. 

 

It came down ill at about 930pm when it became clear that on this two and a half day train ride that I'm currently on from San Francisco to Chicago there will be no breaks off the train long enough to get a decent walk in, that there is no space to do any burpies or jumping jacks, and that the conductor didn't believe that my pacing for thirty minutes up and down my carriage was 'for exercise' or else why did he keep asking me if 'I'm sure I'm alright?'

Some awkward push-ups with half an elbow in and half out of a doorway didn't feel sufficient, the Nevada desert didn't provide any phone service to post an exercise achievement anyway, and the 121 day fit challenge just stopped fighting for life. In the end I think the the sleeping tablets I'd taken and the rocking of the train at least let it go peacefully in its sleep. 

While it lived merely a short 139 days, that was quite a decent life length for a 121 day challenge. And over that life there were definitely some highlights and some lowlights, these included:

High - People thinking that my gym videos looked like I was masturbating angrily and sweatily at the camera numerous times a week, which creeped out hundreds if not thousands of people, but possibly led to some enjoyment to some sick silent soul out there.

Low - People thinking that my gym videos looked like I was masturbating angrily and sweatily at the camera numerous times a week, which creeped out hundreds if not thousands of people, but possibly led to some enjoyment to some sick silent soul out there. 

High - Sticking it right up the skinny attractive face of my truly good friend Nick Day who received tonnes of praise for how good he looked in his 'after' photo at the conclusion of his personal 120 days of fit, where as I got ZERO praise for his 'after' photo, despite being the very person who took the photo he was being praised for, leading to me spitefully declaring 'ah yeah, well I'll do a 121 day challenge out of spite and really stick it up your ass, and take ALL the compliments for me, for MEEEEEEEE, woo ha ha'. 

Low - Ending the journey on a journey in the US, where despite an enormous amount of walking I have been stuffing my face with fattening food, haven't showered, and am bloated, greasy, dirty and pimply, so I can't produce a satisfactory 'after' photo right now. 

High - Finding myself on dozens of long walks, to all sorts of corners of my city I'd never bothered before to explore and finding lots and lots of beauty in places I never thought I would. 

Low - Finding out that Sydney has a significant rat problem late at night, and one time walking through a spiderweb so big that I'll be finding parts of it, and it's hatching spider eggs, on my body for years.

High - Discovering that these walks were enhanced greatly by taking photos and seeking great photo opportunities, simultaneously re-ignighting both my travel bugs and photo taking bugs.

Low - Which have really thrown my artistic career plans in the loop, made me very unhappy to stay still anywhere, and led me to being pimply on a train. 

High - Unleashing the awesome power of spite. I mean that wasn't just any photo I took of Nick, I got the light right, on my balcony at magic hour sunset light. I asked him an enticing question to unveil a fascinating facial expression, 'how's it feel to know that now as a skinnier more attractive man you're now more likely to get laid more and therefore more likely to get Aids more?'I handed his iphone back to him. It was a multistep process, how do people not praise the goddamn photographer? 

High - Achieving a significantly better body. Well slightly better. I think. 

Low - Being reminded I'm the kind of guy who will NEVER be satisfied with, happy with, content with, or in any way like my body. 

Yes, the 121 days of fit challenge has been a wonderful presence in my life. It's been a challenge, it's been fit, it's been a length describable in days, so it fit all its intended criteria. It's given me some purpose, and a daily sense of achievement, made my bathroom stink of stale sweat, led me to skip many chances at making connections with other human beings to instead spend hours in my stairwell, made it so I've listened to every episode of every podcast ever made, at least a dozen times let me hear some form of this sentence 'I don't care about your fucking challenge, I'm not fucking walking there you fuck', got me at least four people saying 'you look like you've lost weight', and ninety times made me think 'I wish it was girls who praised my looks occasionally, instead of elderly family members who got my name wrong'. 

And now it's dead. It died a success, and an inspiration (I know of at least one guy who decided to take on the same challenge and lasted nearly forty-eight hours!), and it shall now leave a hole in my life, even though it pretty much won't change anything about my life, because I don't want to eat well or be too fat, so lots of exercise is must. 

Long walks will continue, new adventures shall be sought (anyone got any suggestions?) but the #121daysoffit hashtag will no longer be with me, as per it's last will and testament it shall:

- Be cremated and have its ashes spread all over Nick Day's stupid compliment earning 'after' photo that was such a great achievement for him. 

- It's belongings will be fought over in a court of law by its surviving heirs, INCLUDING Phil, the child it so long denied to be its, given that he was conceived during a one night stand on a trip it took to Phoenix. 

- A fifteen gun salute shall be shot in its honor, 'but please not aimed at the sky, that's where heaven is you dicks, don't shoot heaven!' 

- The official eulogy shall be delivered by 'Barbra Streisand, or any other big nosed singer, but NOT, I repeat NOT, sung, I like those big nose nasal speaking tones'. 

- If an international holiday is named in its honor 'please don't make it in June, the middle months suck, and I never remember which goes first, June or July, or is it May? Oooh ooh, but DO enforce a silly costume! I know, make all those idiots wear half eaten burritos on their heads! That'll be hilarious!' 

- And most of all it would like to be remembered for its scent 'no one ever gets remembered for its scent, plus it would be a good excuse for Dave to never clean his bathroom'.

Thanks #121daysoffit. I'll miss you. 

Ps. And remember folks, next time you ask yourself 'did Dave just post a picture of himself jacking off?' the answer will still remain - maybe.