A One-Man Anti-Poverty Machine

I read on the news this morning that bloggers all over the world were uniting to bring up the issue of ending world poverty. I thought “Blinder! I’m a blogger of sorts, I could totally get into that.” I read on to discover that international bloggers do stuff about poverty day was actually two days ago, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

It turns out that today is also International Make Poverty History day (for normal people, that is, not just bloggers), so I decided today was the day to get out and change the world. I have emails in my inbox about organising “stand up” events. I realised that it was probably too late to organise anything for today, by I decided to stage my own localised demonstration. At half past eleven at work this morning I stopped typing and stood up at my desk for three minutes for no apparent reason. Very few people noticed. Those who did were starting to look at me like there was something really wrong with me, so I sat down again. I think I got my message across.

Lunch time came around, and I decided I could do more. I marched straight down to my local Oxfam shop and took my stand against corporate greed by buying myself a bar of fair-trade chocolate. Take that Establishment! And I didn’t stop there, either. I also bought myself a rather fetching white “Make Poverty History” wrist band. Oxfam Girl was totally impressed. I wore it for the rest of the day, and I’m still wearing it as I write. It was covered by my long-sleeved shirt at work, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the thought that counts right?

So now I’m writing a letter to Kevin Rudd, making sure he’s aware of how many people are living in poverty. And let me tell you, it’s pretty strongly worded. I don’t pull my punches when it comes to letting politicians know how morally superior I am, that’s for damn sure. As soon as I can find someone to translate it into Mandarin for me, the feathers are really going to fly.

Oh yeah. That’s a good day’s work, right there. I’m going to go and get some ice-cream.

Far from home



Garry with 2 Rs

The awful consequence of writer's block

My recent drive to blog more frequently
has come somewhat unstuck by circumstance
in that, to write, one first should come by some
or other happenstance of some remark.
As chance, or rather lack of chance, plays out
I find myself devoid of all such points
as would provide a suitable platform
from whence to launch another mad tirade.
So now I write purely for writing's sake
which is, whichever way one looks at it
somewhat perverse. But meh. Get over it.

And if you've read thus far it seems to stand
to reason you are perfectly content
to read a brazen contentless blog post
which, posted merely for it's own crude sake
contributes further to general haze
of meaningless cyber-gratuity
which swurvles in an ever-growing storm
of ones and zeros carefully arranged
in such orientations as to bring
the message to a screen at once removed
from my bland desk from which I click 'upload'
and yet connected in some mystic sense
(or even in a physical context
by wires or cables) by the property
of both we having had this set of lines
which, (though I say it of myself (again))
is up there with the weirdest posts I've blogged.

And tending, as I almost always do,
to write with such a style as could well be
described as “needlessly verbose” and “dumb,”
I've noticed, as no doubt have you by now,
despite it's length of full seventeen lines
the second paragraph displayed above
consists of just one sentence. That's cool (well...)!
I also can't be sure it doesn't lack
cohesion, sense or continuity.

So now that it's complete, both I and you
should go and find something useful to do.

Far from home



Garry with 2 Rs

Back to Basics

I've recently been reading back over some of my old posts from the early days. I laughed when I came to the re-realisation that I actually started this blog as a way of documenting my adventures in overseas travel. Once it became clear that I wasn't actually going anywhere any time soon, the blog sort of morphed into a whinge festival about how much I disliked Adelaide. The title "Far From Home" gradually became more and more ironic the longer I stayed living with my parents.

And now here I am in sunny (at last) Sydney where I have been living quite happily for the last year and a bit. I've obviously gotten a little carried away with the self important metropolitan lifestyle, as for the last 12 months at least the blog has just been one amusing (well, I think so anyway) anecdote from my life after another, coupled with the odd cheap shot at Hillsong. And while that's all well and good, I think the time has come for the narcissistic rambling to stop, take a good hard look at itself and figure out what it wants to do with it's life and why it insists so strongly on only wearing fabric imported from Denmark.

Is this the end of Far From Home?

Hell no! It's just time to get back to basics. If I'm going to write about being far from home, then it's high time I actually got myself a little further from home.

I figure Western Europe is about as far as I can get, and still be on land (the diametric other side of the world is somewhere in the North Atlantic), so I've booked me a one-way ticket to Madrid. FFH is going inter-continental, baby! And about time too.

I'm not actually leaving Sydney until January, so you can expect a few more months of inane drivel between now and then. Oh, and I'm planing on actually visiting Hillsong sometime in the next few months, so I can take cheap shots at them from a more informed point of view. Stay tuned...

Far from home



Garry with 2 Rs