Death of Mr. Bigglesworth the Cat

We offered him the choice of his last meal. He chose a chicken and turkey packet of Whiskas -- which he ate. He licked his paws clean. We called his name. He looked up at us questionably.

Then we shot him in the head.

It is a rare moment when my brain has nothing to say to me. Usually it has its fists clenched and its mouth wide open; screaming at me like it’s trying to tell off a naughty deaf person. Now everything’s ghostly quiet up there. I can’t even see the standard bundle of tumbleweed blowing past, bouncing up and down to the whistle of music from a typical spaghetti western.

In the three months since my brain went off the radar, I’ve only managed to come up with two likely reasons for it doing so.

The first of these being that it’s pulling some disturbing prank on me. I can picture it hiding in a dark corner, with its hand over its mouth masking a giggle, waiting for me to edge a little bit closer so it can pounce out of the shadows and give me the biggest fright I’ve had since I found out Santa Claus was really my mother (it may come as a surprise to you, but I had no idea my mother had a secret life as a fat bearded man, who could stomach millions of cookies and glasses of milk in the space of a single night).

While the second of these reasons is simply that my brain packed its bags one day and went on vacation. Which is fair enough, because the amount of overtime it’s worked and time in loo it’s earned over the past eighteen years must be extraordinary. There are Tibetan slave children who aren’t worked as hard -- or abused as much -- as my brain has been.

I wonder where my brain would its holiday; Venice? Paris? Morocco?

I’d imagine that right now it’s surrounded by foreign woman, being fed grapes and utilising years worth of charisma it deliberately suppressed.

I wonder how many of its cells I knowingly obliterated.

I wonder if I even want to know the answer to that.

It has occurred to me that I have become a zombie. I’d imagine this is what they feel like: numb -- unable to hold onto tangible thought long enough to do anything constructive besides terrorising humanity and trying to replace their missing brains.

Because my brain’s gone quiet, it means I’ve lost creative thought. I’ve gone into some sort of creative limbo. I can’t work at school (I can’t bring myself to attend a single class at the moment – not even art) and because I’m in this creative limbo I can’t think of anything to draw, or paint, or write about. I’m lucky if I manage to scrape together a paragraph of worthy writing every three hours.

Why isn’t everything fitting together like it used to? What changed?

I feel like a kid trying to decipher why his parents broke up. Or a dumfounded teenage girl after her boyfriend leaves her for the girl next door.

“What did I do wrong?” I plead with him.

“Did I get too fat?”

“Was I too clingy?”

I’m on my hands and knees begging for an answer – for some enlightenment as to why I’ve been left alone. I ask and ask and ask and ask. But he’s too busy sticking his tongue down the slut’s throat to reply.

“Where have you gone brain?”

I’m reminded of a song by Daniel Johnston (whom I consider to be one of the greatest artists/musicians alive) called ‘I Had Lost My Mind’.

You see I had this tiny crack inside my head
And my brains oozed out
With blood, on the sidewalk

If your brain did ooze out of your head, should it be put on ice? Or would that only damage it further? How would you go about transporting a brain from one place to another without destroying thousands-upon-thousands of brain cells?

Where are you brain? I have a thousand questions that need answering.

Procrastination

Throughout my five years at high school, procrastination has been both my best friend and worst enemy. It’s always there holding my hand through all my really important assessments, the sort of ones that my entire future -- right down to what I’m eating for breakfast thirty years from now -- is going to be based on. It has been with me during the return of every failed mark I’ve received, during every belated birthday present I’ve given, and during every late return I’ve made to the video store. And it is still with me at the moment, as I am typing this blog.

I am incomprehensibly good at procrastinating. It is the one thing on this unforgiving planet that I was born to do. I can procrastinate with the same effortlessness Michael Jordon conveys as he sinks hoops. I mean, if procrastination was a school subject or a possible choice in career, I would be very successful it -- far more than Leonardo Da Vinci and Douglas Adams were in the field, even. In fact, if there was such a thing as the ‘procrastination business’, I would be the Bill Gates of it, donating billions of dollars I earned procrastinating every year to a charity of my choosing.

It happens to be my remarkable knack for procrastinating that I’m holding responsible for the huge amount of time it has taken me to write another blog post. Ironically, procrastination also happens to be what caused me to write this post in the end (at the moment I should be painting for my art folio). It’s beginning to feel like the only time I ever get anything done is when I’m working at something to delay having to work on something even worse instead.

My art, for example. The only time I ever feel like I paint and draw is when I’m in my other, non-art related classes. Then again, I’d do almost anything to escape from the mind numbing drone that is Shakespearian English and learning how to identify symbolism in war poetry.

I think, in a funny way, procrastination is escapism. All of the movies and art and writing I’ve done are all ways for me to escape reality. The second I start watching films, painting pictures and writing stories because I have to, they lose their appeal. They become chores I feel like I get no great reward or satisfaction out of, so I avoid doing them for as long as I can.

Procrastination is my foolish attempt at steering my space ship away from earth so I can stay in orbit that little bit longer. It’s my red button, hidden in a secret compartment beside my seat.

What I absolutely need to know is why I press it so much. Has it become an addiction like reality television, video games and pornography? Am I addicted to floating in empty space? To feeling bored? Has procrastinating become my mood stabilizer? My Lithium?

It's a scary thought.

Mr. Smith

The distance for an object in motion at time(t) is given by
5(t) = 1 – 6t + 5t3
a) How far from the starting point is the object after 3 seconds?

Mr. Smith is God’s unreliable, two-faced, multi-racial faecal matter. One day the big man had too much meatloaf for dinner and out Mr. Smith came - a giant piece of shit floating in a toilet bowl that is our solar-system.

a) How far from the starting point is the object after 3 seconds?
Hopefully it’s further away than it was after 1 second.

b) What is the objects velocity at 5 seconds?
Hopefully it’s greater than it was after 1 second.

c) Calculate the objects initial acceleration...

Mr. Smith puts me up the front of the class, so my calculus ability won’t fall below the requirements set by Mr. Smith when he wrote the education system.
Mr. Smith gets me a job at the local pack n’ save - which Mr. Smith manages, stacks the shelves, and runs the checkouts at.
Mr. Smith sits beside me on the bus to school.
Mr. Smith is my principal.
Mr. Smith is my brother.
Mr. Smith is my father.
He is every male I will ever see during the rest of my short, meaningless life.

“So,” Mr. Smith says “A mechanical rabbit starts from the origin. It moves in a straight line, initially moving east. Its distance from the orig – NEIL!”

Neil Smith is talking...

“If you don’t pay attention again I’ll send you down to Mrs. Smith’s office.”

“Alright Sir.”

Neil Smith resumes his conversation.

At my desk in the classroom I can hear the female teacher’s in Math’s Resource next door. I can hear them sipping their afternoon coffee, discussing Grey’s Anatomy and their married sex live.
The Mr. Smiths in Math’s Resource are talking about rugby results and new sets of golf clubs they all purchased.

I am God’s unreliable, two-faced, multi-racial faecal matter.

I am caged.

When I drive to school, I must stick to the speed limit. If I move too far over 50km/h, I risk a fine and deduction of demerit points. Not to mention imprisonment.

When I am at school, I must attend every class. If I miss one period, I risk detentions and a letter sent home. Not to mention expulsion.

When I am speaking, I must remember to talk slowly and clearly, and use appropriate language based on the identity of the person I am talking to. If I speak informally when the situation demands that I do not, I risk loss of respect and social status.

When I am walking, I must keep my shoulders back. When I’m going out, I must dress tidily. I must take my shoes off when I enter my house. I must eat dinner using edict set by Queen Victoria. I must clean my room. I must...

If I’m not following some law – I’m following some rule.

If I’m at home, I must put the toilet seat back down after I take a piss.
Then I go to school and I mustn’t swear or be disrespectful.
Then I go to Maths and I must listen to Mr. Smith.

I am caged.

I must listen to Mr. Smith and his beaver-like face. With his giant, thick-rimmed glasses, and his greying beard.

After an extended period of time at High School, everyone attending merges into one blurry figure.
After an extended period of time living, everyone I know swirled into that blur too.

They all end up as Mr and Mrs. Smiths.

On Wagging

Wagging, like marijuana, is next to impossible to overdose on. But to be on the safe side (and avoid any lasting side affects) it should be done in moderation.

When I first began wagging, the main thing I absolutely, positively, under no circumstances wanted to happen was to have my mother find out. I’d go to great lengths to avoid this; like writing fake notes and pretending to be my father whilst I called in sick. Though despite my best efforts, my mother, like every-other-parent-of-every-other-wagging-kid at my school, ended up finding out anyway.

That would have to be my first piece of bad advice for a potential wagger: When you wag, your parents are going to find out about it. Unless your school’s system for monitoring attendance is still a pen and paper one, or your school’s teachers aren’t doing their job properly, then the moment where one of your parents enters your room, phone in hand, and says “I just got a call from your school” is inevitably going to happen.
For me this moment is usually followed by a very long lecture about the way I’m living my life, and how I’m making the wrong choices, and how I’m only hurting myself, and how it is going to reflect heavily on my promising future.
“You have so much talent.” My mother says (every parent thinks their child has an endless amount of talent) “The teachers can see that, and they are concerned about you.”

That leads to my second piece of bad advice for a potential wagger: Never get into a fight with your parent’s about wagging. If they listen to what you have to say and still want to lecture you, shout at you and deal out some horrendous punishment in order to teach you a lesson, then they’re entitled to. You were the one wagging, after all.

I know I have it easy. And I have to give my mother some credit. She is right. The teachers are concerned about me. Heck, I’m even concerned about me. I don’t want to end up as a thirty year employee of Chartwell McDonalds, and I especially don’t want to end up in a town gutter, unshaven, wearing three coats and preaching about how I could have been somebody.
But at the same time all I want to do is avoid the immense pressure placed on students to do well. I want to avoid the stress, and the work, and the ‘what mark did you get for this test?’ game that high achievers play. And, like so many other people in the world, the only way I know how to avoid these things is to wag.

I agree, wagging isn’t the answer to life’s problems. Yes, in the end, it does stunt my learning because I miss valuable class time. But there are just some days that I can’t bring myself to face. Does that make me a coward? Probably. Does it make me any less of a person than those straight shooting students, with perfect attendance and excellent marks? No. It doesn’t.

That brings me to my third piece of bad advice, this time directed at those who disapproving shake their heads every time someone mention’s ‘skipping class’: Waggers have feelings too! Give them a break! You are not necessarily any better of a person than they are. Has it ever occurred to you that waggers might be skipping school because you make them feel so completely and utterly bad about themselves? Too many times have I been slapped on the wrist and given detentions for skipping class. Not once has my dean asked me ‘what’s wrong?’ or ‘why is this happening?’ before doing so.

Most waggers I know are simply lost, confused and frustrated kids because no one is listening to them. I consider myself very lucky to have a reasonable parent who, rather than making accusations and pointing the finger right away, will listen to what I have to say and let me speak on my own behalf before they take action. Many kids aren’t as lucky.

I am aware that schools are much better than they were thirty years ago, where a school with a permanent guidance councillor was -- at best -- a rare occurrence. But I still think it’s a long way to go until every awkward adolescent receives the help and support they need.

It’s incredible how two thousand kids, each completely different from one another, are stuffed into classrooms together and expected to flourish. Wagging -- in my opinion -- is always better than killing someone because you don’t get along with them.

So ends my first blog. One that reads like an opinion piece in the local newspaper that I grit my teeth at and endure only because: A. ‘Official’ articles are boring to read and B. The sports section begins over the page and I don’t think any newspaper in the world has developed a less interesting section than ‘Waikato Times Sports’. Before you ask: I don’t know why this blog wasn’t filled with sharp and witty humour, either. I mean, if I read a blog written by a high school student on the topic of skipping class, I would expect it to be entertaining.

In an attempt to redeem myself, I’ll sign off with a quote from Bill Hicks:
“There’s dick jokes on the way, please relax.”

Thanks for reading!