New Website Coming: Wordpress Theme Recommendations?

So this site's been quiet because The X Gene has been blowing up in a good way. simonjgreen.com has lost its special free server, so I'm taking advantage of that to rebrand and change the site. This blog will change its design, too! That'll be fun as balls. Any Wordpress templates you recommend, especially if it can showcase video well.

The Guy Who Told Me To "Keep Walking, Faggot"

I forgot to write this story up. I'd been meaning to after it happened, and now I'm reminded because of this article by bridgetneval, showing a long list of nasty things that have been done to women as they go about their lives. It reminded me of this:

About a month ago, I was in Sunshine, western inner suburb of Melbourne. It was a sunny day, about 1pm. I came out of Sunshine Plaza's JB Hi Fi exit. My scooter was parked in front of NAB. For the uninitiated, I'm exiting a big door, and to my left, maybe five meters, my scooter is parked on the sidewalk.

As I fiddled for my keys, I looked over at my scooter. I heard a young man I'd not even noticed mutter something. I kept walking for a few seconds before I even realised he'd muttered it at me. He'd just threatened me!

"Keep walking, faggot."

My brain took a slow while to put together what and why. I'd looked over to my scooter, which was behind the man leaning against the edge of the doorway exit. He must have thought I was looking at him. He was standing, talking to a girl. He must have been arcing up to look tough in front of her.

If I'd actually heard the threat at the time, I may have stopped and looked right at him, most likely out of surprise. My experience tells me he'd have taken that as a return volley. It could have escalated.

This guy must be pretty basic to be acting like that, but that's how dickhead guys act towards other guys. I was just so surprised! It came out of nowhere! There are dickheads in the world, everywhere, and no one's immune. We just receive their dickheadery in different ways and varying levels of aggression.

Please, don't be a dickhead.

Two Crips Nod

Yesterday I had a nasogastic tube inserted into my skull to measure pH levels of my belly acid. I had to have it in for 24 hours, and once I got home from hospital, needed to step out for some food. With tape all over my face and the tube leading to a device strapped around my shoulder, I felt a little self-conscious.

Coming out into the carpark, I saw a chap in a wheelchair pulling up to his car. He saw me, I saw him. We both nodded. We both had an idea of what the other was thinking.

Crip brotherhood.

Vote for my company logo!

Please vote for the logo you like the most. The X Gene is a video agency: we work with brands and companies to create online web content that integrates social media marketing. I'm going for a super-science feel - the science of video down to a fine art. I'm curious to know what you think!



Go to 99designs, #1 for Logo Design

BULLET and MACHINE

The Awesome Report's going into production mode now, chums.

A short film called MACHINE and a live-read radio play called BULLET have been taking up my time and I couldn't be more proud of either of them.

MACHINE is a sci-fi short film about what it is to be a person and protect your family. In the not-too-distant future, an android breaks into a high-tech facility and makes away with a power source. The facility's security guard, a family man who loves his job, goes after the thief. When he discovers what the power source is for, he's forced into a terrible position.

Written and directed by Mark Inducil, a very cool dude I went to RMIT with and who shares my passion for genre, this short's got a hefty budget attached already. The script is void of dialogue (except for a background news report) and brings together a lot of talented people I've already worked with, and some I haven't. We're at the stage of signing our crew on, with everyone having given their support. David brand is our production manager, and he and I have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow. We'll sort out the details of our first big round-table production meeting.

BULLET: a superhero comedy, is a live-read radio play about a hero who loses everything. Bullet is the hero of Settlement City (an analogue of Melbourne if superpowers were real), but when he loses his powers, his secret identity is discovered, his wife is killed and his city's stolen. He ventures out to try and regain his powers, meeting the strange inhabitants of this supervillain-plagued Australia who try to help or hinder his hero's journey.

We've been chomping this one up at rapid pace. Sean Fabri and I have been writing the script and writing it HARD, going draft over draft to do it right. None of that first draft shitness for us. Ben McEwing is directing, and this weekend we cast our cast. Five actors playing 15+ characters. Melbourne Fringe is going to explode with our awesomeness.

I intend to nab a brand update for this blog to suit simonjgreen.com, and please Like Bullet at www.bulletradio.net and stay tuned as we swing into gear. Full promotion kicks in once tickets go on sale in August.

Oh, and I registered a new company. The X Gene. Coming soon...

Nominated for Best Blog. Care to Vote?

I hate when friends ask me to vote for them. Instead, then, I'm asking for you to consider whether you think my blog is good enough, and if you believe so, then kindly click the image above and commit that thought to more clickage... only if you'd like to.

Nominated for Best Blog

That is all. They'll be opening up People's Choice votes later.

Melbourne

We love Melbourne so much, we once made a show about it.

Hot damn if I don't love Melbourne. It's the city I was raised in and around and I've got a terrible bias because I've never left the country, but I don't rip on junkies who love junk because hot junk is the only drug they shot into their arm. I'm a Melbourne junkie. I even appreciate the place junkies have in my fair city, because I take a tram, and anyone who takes a tram in Melbourne has dealt with a junkie or a drunkie.

Rolling in through North Melbourne has that rather unique combination of horrendously broken men and women screaming at each other and lightly slapping each other's crusty face with limp, track marked arms, sitting right next to upstanding women with sticks up their butt, ignoring the screeching as desperately as their head phones will allow. The hipsters come on and off, scurrying away to either a derelict commercial space that's been illegally transferred into a rental property or, in stark juxtaposition (a word any good hipster loves), their three-quarter of a million dollar townhouse owned by mummy and daddy. If you hear a note of scorn in my voice, I guarantee you've mistaken the true ring of pride. My unshaven, capped, cargo-panted, flannel visage, clinging with all its might to the nineties, blends in with this freaky-deaky mélange like a needle in a public toilet.

Victorian State Gallery : Cameron Zayec 2007

Melbourne is blue. That's its colour. Look at it from a distance, the medium height skyline, and tell me its overall mood isn't blue. The mix of modern look at me please oh god look at me architecture with the old gothic and deco office buildings, holding firm from the fifties when John Brack painted brown and tan bankers moving from work at five o'clock, their lined mouths barely registering emotion beyond a faint urge to climb back into the nest with a scotch and dinner on the table. The Nicholas Building on Elizabeth Street that I would so dearly love to film inside - this is a building with elevators with grated, manually operated doors, with elevators run by attendees who decorate their cell with flowers, pictures of puppies and an electric space heater. Melbourne University's weird, wavy cow building, the home of the Criminology and Psychology department, whose glass is printed with black and white rounded splotches, long vertical wavy steel dividing the bovine skin. Nearby is the Roundabout of Death, where Peel, Elizabeth, Flemington and Royal Parade meet with three different tram lines and a terrifying rite of passage for any young driver who emerges from the right lane into the left, then suddenly has to fly over to the right again, screaming in fear as your dad yells in frustration until, sweating and broken, you find yourself in the path of an oncoming tram and veer back onto your side, stopping at a red light and the Royal Women's, where you wouldn't mind a little lie down.

Smack bang in the middle of the Roundabout of Death is the giant pole and enormous Australian flag, surrounded by lesser minions usually displaying either a museum exhibit or the Grand Prix. I remember coming out from the Royal Children's Hospital, so pleased just to have escaped, and being struck every familiar time with how immense the flag is. I still imagine myself being wrapped up in it, and knowing there'd be so much room left over that I'd drown in navy blue and six white stars. Sometimes old blue would be replaced with a giant Aboriginal flag that dad or an uncle would grimly curse but that I secretly thought was way more interesting and used way cooler colours than ours.

City from Alexandra Ave : Cameron Zayec 2007

When I walk home from work, out of Shed 4 at the end of Victoria Harbour, to my back is a glorious view of the Bolte Bridge, awesome in its simplicity - two giant silver stiffies, constantly surrounded by swirling seagulls chasing moth jizz. The sun sets behind it and the silver reflects the purples and frosting pinks of the burning sky. The air smells of salt and a cool breeze always refreshes me at the height of excruciating summers. At night, the buildings are always lit with vibrant colours, as broadly skewed towards pretty as the dusk sky. Big, huge buildings, interesting from all angles, the ANZ with its bizarre twisty wind turbines. The Shredder over by the Citylink onramp is black, sharp and severe, like an evil turtle-hunting ninja. I like to listen to Bowie and look up as I walk to the tram terminal. That's what started this post. As I round a corner and pass the deceptively broad expanse of Flemington Raceway where creatures with much bigger penises than me are flogged by frustrated little men with much tinier penises than me, I can't help but spurt rhapsodic about Melbourne, all because I walked home listening to As The World Falls Down and thought that's the gayest damn thing. Awesome. And blue.

West Gate Bridge from the harbour : Cameron Zayec 2007

Scientific Study of My Writing

There is no scientific basis to this, but I did use, like, four different blog posts to get an average result.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Golliwogs at Highpoint

Speaking of racists...! I was walking around Highpoint Shopping Centre with my girlfriend, as is our wont,  when we happened upon this piece of astounding ignorance that I had to snap on my phone.

That, my friends, is a display of Golliwogs. Notice that you can buy male or female Golliwogs, and the female Golliwog rounds the whole thing off nicely by dressing like a classic American Mammy. This Mammy is sporting a charming lemon headband instead of the traditional red.

Are these dolls available as part of some sort of exhibit? Oh my no. They're for sale, as any other item would be, in a gift shop called Cardiology.

The display shows a terrifying lack of understanding or even awareness of the racist connotations of these dolls, to the point that they seem to have invented an origin story that Googling reveals has no basis in fact whatsoever. (Click for a bigger, only barely legible resolution)

What's so astounding is that whoever OK'd the sale and display of these dolls is so incredibly ignorant of their horrible relationship with slavery and racism against African Americans. They're so ignorant, in fact, that they make probably the most egregious error of judgement by stringing the dolls up from the ceiling.

In my attempt to find justification for the seemingly made up story they've written on the plaque, I found an Australian website that carries the same baffling ignorance about the racist origins of the Golliwog. Read this link and marvel at how unaware the author is, going so far as to posit that Golliwogs disappeared from children's book because they were "allergic to the newer style of ink." I hope, for their sake and for the sake our genetic stock, that this website is tongue-in-cheek.

My god, look at that photo below. Unbelievable!

Can you imagine if a black American walked past that display? Can you imagine the embarrassment this would cause if he alerted the American media? Couple this with the Hey Hey blackface incident (one that could have been explained away as a one off incident), and we'd be propelled so far back into the dark ages in terms of the world's view of us, the only way out would be to donate our country to the U.S.

I intend to inform the store that it'd be in their best interest to remove these dolls post haste. I wonder what they'll say?

The look on our faces in the reflection is shock and amazement that anyone could be so out of touch. I wonder if anyone will post a rant about how this is political correctness gone mad? If so, in the interest of education as the our saving grace, here are some links that may give a little context.

• blogs.telegraph.co.uk/golliwogs_have_a_godly_origin/
• dailymail.co.uk/How-golliwog-went-innocent-childrens-hero-symbol-bitter-controversy.html
• search?q=black%20stereotypes
• www.tasa.org.au/conferences/conferencepapers07/papers/380.pdf

Welcome Back!

Pop the balloon and see what falls out.

I have time to write! A scooter accident yesterday has left me sore, a little shaken and with a broken rear view mirror. Meaning? I can ride the tram today and get some time alone with ma words.

First order of business: I have an iPad! I'm typing on it right now on the 57 tram. As we pull up to the commission flat, I need to keep one eye on embarking strangers, but aside from that, I've been absolutely loving it. It's a writer's dream. A small screen with excellent Internet connectivity, and a decent sized qwerty keyboard with a lovely suite of writing and number tools. I have instant access to digitised comics from Marvel and DC and a whole host of indies. All I need now is screenwriting software and I'll be right as rain.

I just passed the corner I took the spill. Yuck. It's the potentiality surrounding the incident that freaks me out the most. The what ifs.

When showing my tablet to someone, I typed a phrase absent-mindedly to demonstrate Pages. I didn't even look at what I was typing, just splurged a sentence down on the screen. Today I opened Pages and the sentence greeted me:

'Pop the balloon and see what falls out.'

What an odd sentence.

That's all. Not much. I'm only having a stretch.

The Adventures of Freddo and the Mystery of Slater Island

It's here! A few months back, I worked as a freelance writer at Public Mojo, an advertising agency. There, based on Mojo's story, I wrote the scripts for 10 episodes of an online animation starring the great Freddo the Frog, of Cadbury fame. The end result is a fun cartoon and game that gets released day by day. It was awesome fun and I got to be the script writer of this bad boy. It's one of my first big writing jobs and thus I hope you enjoy!

Go to the site freddo.com.au and sign up, then you can watch the episodes of series 2 - the one I wrote - or see the first series (I wasn't a part of that one). It's a great little adventure, and if you aren't convinced, here's the trailer (link):



And lastly, here is the media our little Freddo adventure's been getting:
coloribus
advertolog
tweetmeme
campaignbrief
BestAdsOnTV.com
industry.bnet.com
Cadbury Freddo Game  | Kids HYPE!
bannerblog

Killeroo and Where I Am Right Now!

I'm writing Killeroo!

Killeroo is a comic book series by Darren Close. It's Australian, and I've managed to worm my way into Mr. Close's heart, whereupon he gave me a fair amount of freedom to take the character to a more solid, ongoing story.

Check out my updates on the writing process, as well as sketches and the rest of the team here:
http://killeroo.com/

5 Common Irks For Those Who Know CF Patients

My friend and old housemate Dr. Sean Fabri sent me a sweet companion piece to my 5 CF irks! Read on to see what gets the goat of those who know sickos like me.
-
Irk # 1.

The stenches. CF patients don't digest their food very well, which is why they're on all those tablets. Occasionally this gives rise to them passing wind, but not a normal wind, more of a yellow, screaming demon wind, which is going to claw your eyes out, and linger far longer than you thought possible. On long roadtrips, Simon would periodically shoot hot injections of this wind into my car seats.

Irk # 2.

The coughing is easy to get used to. I've lived with someone with CF, and you just tune it out, or in fact, use it to locate them in shopping centres, or remind you that they're okay. Except, of course, that there is almost always a coughing fit at 4am, which ends abruptly, and you lie awake thinking, "is he okay? what if he's not? I can't check, he does this every night. But what if this time...?"

Irk # 3.
The venom with which they rail against kids with cancer. It makes perfect sense. The cancer kids get all the resources and fame. But somehow hearing the rants against them feels like you're breaking a taboo. Society will forgive them, but YOU will be thrown to the vipers, just for having listened sympathetically.

Irk # 4.

You never get the tiniest shred of sympathy from them when you're suffering a minor cold, or sore tummy.

Irk # 5.

Linked to irk #1, the poor digestion means that CF patients can eat pretty much the fattiest, most wicked foods, all day long, and not really put on much weight. I understand this is actually a disadvantage for them, but when you are on a diet, and you've had an apple for lunch, and you're still putting on flab, and then they casually eat an entire roast turkey while you both wait for a bus, well... it's annoying.

 

5 Common Irks CF Patients Put Up With

I have Cystic Fibrosis or CF. It's a disease far too many people know far too little about. Here are some of the irksome things I and many like me often put up with that are unique to people with diseases. (I know most of the time people are trying to help, but too bad!)

The Home Doctors
I don't have one doctor who looks after me, I have a team of them. Their leader is a specialist in CF and respiratory illness. She not only spent 10+ years at university, she went on to study and focus her considerable scientific knowledge on my specific disease. So when some taxi driver, tram passenger or dude with an arts degree gives me advice on my sickness, it really grates my cheese. Thanks pal, but I'm covered!

The Home Remedies
I'm on a litany of drugs that keep me healthy and alive. I take over 80 tablets a day.  Literally. There are pancreatic enzyme replacements extracted from porcine digestive tracts, inhaled genetic therapy that breaks down bronchial mucousal DNA and histamine inhibitors focused on gastric acid neutralisation. But yes, I'm sure your suggestion of cutting out milk and instead drinking honey and lemon in some warm water will do just fine.

Osteoporosis
So this one's kinda funny. Most people have no idea what CF is. Some have a hazy notion they may have pulled from a TV movie or a distant relative, and at best they remember the general thrust of the illness. Others, when I tell them I have cystic fibrosis, say, "What, the old lady bone disease?"

Cancer
When I was young, admission to hospital was always at the Royal Children's. I was there fairly regularly, once or twice a year for two or three weeks at a time, and one visit I was lucky enough to be there for the opening of the Starlight room. This was a mythical cave of fun: all the current consoles, books, TV, lego, toys...awesome. The CF kids from the two respiratory wards were allowed to be the first ones in, snuck through before the official opening. Our recreation officer took us all down, buzzed out of our brains with excitement. When we got there, she went ahead, spoke to someone then came back dejected. She informed us the cancer ward children had beaten us to the punch, and we weren't allowed in because TV camera crews were in there covering it. Devastating! That day I learned from the nurses that there's a rivalry between the CF kids and the cancer children, and it's a resource war: charity donations, funding, equipment, sympathy. So curse you cancer kids, curse you!

A Glass of Water
I cough. A lot. It's part of the deal, and I do it because my manky lungs are trying to get nasty, sticky mucous up and out. It's got nothing to do with my throat, my stomach or dehydration...yet everyone always seems to tell me - after hearing me cough a few times - that I should have a drink of water. Yeah, you're absolutely right! Water going into my stomach! That'll dislodge my phlegm, dry up my mucous, correct the genetic delta f508 mutation and put me right on track! Why didn't I think of it before!? All these years I could've been drinking water and curing my disease!

--
That's it! Does anyone else have any I've missed? Are there any irks you suffer due to your own illness, or even because of a specific job you hold? Leave a comment!

The Rules of my Dreams

Let me tell you about the very specific, unbreakable rules of my dreamworld. I have no idea why or from whence these rules were forged, but they play an indelible role on every fantasy and nightmare I've ever had. I can't break them, as hard as I try, and despite the obvious influence my own brain has on the formation of dreams, I feel that I never purposefully established or enforced the strict guidelines dream-me has to live by.

For one, I can run almost never. If there is a situation that requires haste, running is slower than walking. When I try to sprint I'm taken by a sudden and overwhelming heaviness that weighs me down so much so that running is impossible. It's like walking through invisible sand piled up to my chest. If I'm in the middle of a scene, being chased by CIA agents big, black over coats, sunglasses and dark trilbys, I might panic to the point of forgetting the rules I'm bound to and try as hard as I can to run away. My entire body literally bends against the restriction and I grab at the wall next to me or the gate just within reach, pulling myself through the mental muck. It's excruciatingly slow and frustrating. Yet, as soon as I remember, "Oh yeah, The Rules," I straighten up, stop trying to run and simply begin the first pace of a brisk walk. Immediately the heaviness melts away and I can now make good my escape. A simile is like when you punch wet sand and the sudden force turns the stuff hard and impenetrable, but as soon as you relax your hand and push lightly, your fingers slip under the surface of the sand with the flying trapeze.
The second unavoidable rule that I never invented, but discovered through experimentation in the dreamworld of Simon, is the precise nature of flying. I can usually fly in dreams, especially if I pull myself out of a passive state when I realise I'm mid-dream. More than once I've been in a tremendous fight at the top of stairs in and old clock tower, only to be over powered and thrown through the banister. At the exact moment I look down and recognise I'm about to fall to my death, I actually say to myself, in mid-air and a fraction of a second, "Hang on, this is a dream, Ha!" and as I swoop down, I pull up sharply with my will and rocket up, through the ceiling and into a new lucid escape. The rules of flight, however, are immutable.

1. I cannot simply take off in any direction. There's a method. First, I have to crouch down as low as I can and then push up, as if trying to jump as high as I can. Only the jump works much better than you'd expect and I launch directly vertical. I can't simply jolt forward Superman style.
2. I need to reach a certain altitude before I can begin horizontal flight. After this first big jump, I usually go up, up, up over the city or country, so high that the clouds whip through my hair and all the lights below are breathtakingly far from my floating feet. Sometimes I feel a little giddy in my tummy or get that weird swooping sensation in my groin (like what you get in the forward motion on a swing). I then start a head first dive. If I don't get enough height, the dive ends with me having to quickly pull my head up and land back on my feet. However, I can use the momentum as if the ground was a trampoline, and I'll immediately launch back up again. I pretty much always make teh required height on the second go.
3. Flight is not unlimited. Once I get the right height, as I swoop down I'll know and at the last moment, before I hit the ground, I pull up sharply and rip straight back up, over the threshold of height, and I start flying through the air like the little plumber does in Mario 64. After a few dips and pull ups, I can fly pretty much unhindered until I need to land, at which point I glide down at a weak angle and then softly pull up and plop onto my feet.

I have no idea why, but that is how I have to fly in dreams.
The last rule isn't anywhere near as solid as the other two, but pretty prevalent in Simon's dreamworld. When I websling or shoot guns, I sometimes do it through a Playstation controller. For shooting, this is occasional. For webslinging, a Playstation controller is a must. The way it works is a bit odd. Imagine my dream as a scene you're watching through a screen that takes up your entire vision. Now, when I want to sling across the city like Spidey, my hands pop up at the bottom of the eyeball screen. My mind controls the controller, and at the very same time, the me inside the dream, but the controller controls the webslinging direction and when I shoot each rope of webbing. Usually It's L1 for the left arm, R1 for the right, the left joystick for direction of swing and the right joystick (with far more precision and speed than the real Playstation) is used to aim where exactly I'm aiming the next web shot.

Weird, huh? These rules just are, and always have been, and pretty much never change as far back as I can remember.

Fwd: Is this address real?

This is an email I sent the other day.

From: Simon J Green <simonjongreen@gmail.com>
Date: 8 December 2009 11:51:48 AM AEDT
To: "whosdaman@whosdaman.com" <whosdaman@whosdaman.com>
Subject: Is this address real?

Hello,
I just had a dream that I was the chief aide to President Obama, but on my first day, I found out the White House had gotten my address wrong, and the President had been inexplicably emailing this address, whosdaman@whosdaman.com. When I asked him why, he told me this was the address White House staff had given him. He then gave me a look that said he was disappointed in me, and it cut me to the core. So I woke up wondering if this address was real. Is it?

---
Simon J. Green
Producer, Writer, Friend.

Sent from Mr iPhone.

CFV Newsletter: A Little Catch Up

A Man's Depression

A confluence of events revolving around men's depression means - oh you betcha - I'm posting about depression in the male. Movember just wrapped up and I wore a 'tache. During that 'tache wearing phase, I was privy to the good and hard facts the kind folks at Movember sent out. Here are the numbers from Movember's partner beyondblue:

Around one million Australian adults and 100,000 young people live with depression each year. On average, one in five people will experience depression in their lifetime - one in four females and one in six male.

That's pretty high. There are actually several types of mental illness that are slotted in under beyondblue's care and the over-title depression. Once again, beyondblue:

• Major depression - a depressed mood that lasts for at least two weeks. This may also be referred to as clinical depression or unipolar depression.
• Psychotic depression - a depressed mood which includes symptoms of psychosis. Psychosis involves seeing or hearing things that are not there (hallucinations), feeling everyone is against you (paranoia) and having delusions.
• Dysthymia - a less severe depressed mood that lasts for years.
• Mixed depression and anxiety - a combination of symptoms of depression  and anxiety. 
• Bipolar disorder - (formally known as manic depressive illness) - involves periods of feeling low (depressed) and high (manic). 

So, dudes get depressed. No big deal men, we're all human. There's no shame in the way our brains can sometimes work against us. In fact, an open approach to mental health is part of the awareness campaign Movember runs. It's OK that dudes get brain pain and hey, we have places to call and go to make it better, to help. A man who has helped the types of fellows who might otherwise withdraw into the dark, dank cupboard of depression is Gary Ablett. I know this is old news, but I stumbled across this article. In it he describes his depression and his subsequent addiction to cocaine, among other drugs, to numb the mental anguish. There's a conflict in this article that I'll address briefly then move on: he was a fool to resort to drugs and while many fall for this trap, there are moments of lucidity when the black veil is lifted and the depressed man can see where he is. It's in this moment, or moments, when we need to make that call, to choose the path that leads us out of the darkness, out of a drug's perverted, damaging love and into a life of self-control. To get so incredibly absorbed by the wrong choices, over and over again, is to me a sign of stupidity. Of the easy option. Of failure. It is an incredibly tough and some might say manly thing to ask for the help required to escape.

On the other hand, Mr. Ablett is great for being able to speak to a segment of manhood who might see depression as, well, bullshit. It's real, men, and it strikes artists and football players, dancers and tradies, professors and accountants, brothers, sons and dads. Suffering from depression is not weakness, stupidity or failure. These things are the result of choices we make and have control over. The physical construct and activity of our brain is completely the opposite. You can't stop getting depression any more than you can stop getting pancreatic cancer. There are ways to try and prevent it, but if you get it, it's nobody's fault, unless you blame someone for rain when you're out for a run. If you do, then blame that guy, girl, higher power or abstract concept, but don't blame yourself.

Movember and beyondblue have several aims, but one of them is awareness. Awareness is a term bandied about so often by organisations and not-for-profits that I think it sometimes loses meaning, like when you say broccoli over and over in your head and suddenly you have no idea what broccoli is anymore. To these organisations, awareness is about shining a light on truth. The obstruction of this light is rumour, hearsay and ignorance. Mental health and mental illness are heavy with stigma, often due to misunderstanding in those who simply don't know any better. Awareness hopes to make those people know better, to show depression in the right light so that those afflicted don't have to feel any worse than they already do. And believe me, depression feels dreadfully awful enough without having to worry about how everyone else sees you.

I've battled the blue twice in my life. The first lasted about three months, the second lasted two. I'm lucky in that respect, because while the length of each bout was enough to determine it clinical, I was able to reach out to a counselor in both instances and find ways to get out. I happen to go into hospital every three months for an unrelated illness called cystic fibrosis (although having a chronic disease can lead to causal depression), so I took advantage of that and spoke to my doctor and an in-house psychologist. You can do that guys, you can just mention it to your GP. We spoke a few times and even discussed going on anti-depressants, but I was able to work with her unmedicated and come out the other side. After the first quarter of a year of depression I installed an internal CCTV camera with face recognition software, firmly lodged inside my skull. Understanding how depression feels, I can now monitor every thought, mood and feeling that passes through check-in and if the CCTV system recognises too many known offenders, I can get the right people to intervene. That is exactly why the second bout only lasted two months. I saw it coming and got it seen to. But the method of detection is similar to skin cancer, breast cancer or prostate cancer. Just like a mole changing under a month of observation, the warning sign of depression is dark, disturbed, violent or suicidal thoughts, moods or feelings that stay around too long. My experience of depression saw long, painful days with the occasional moment of lucidity. It's these moments you must take advantage of. Know what you're looking for and if you think there's even the remotest chance you have the symptoms, you need to see a professional.

Self-medication is not the way, nor are home remedies or simply ignoring the problem. Ignore cancer and you die. Ignore depression, you could well die by throwing yourself under a train. Both deaths are the result of illness, but both have the possibility, the hope of a cure. So if you're feeling that hopeless, helpless, heartless feeling but happen to be reading this article, or see a man with a moustache or notice a clear blue sky, remember how you used to feel before the darkness came and ask for help. You can get back there again.

How Time Turns Me Sceptical

It's a sad day when you realise you have shifted to the sceptical side of the scale. The dawning of this realisation took a few weeks, but eventually the rays of a black sun were too hot to ignore. I am, for the most part, a sceptic.

I think I started as an idealist. Reading history and art at university, I saw the changes that occurred at the fist of student rallies and protests. This filled me with hope. I read the accounts of some great cultural revolution burning in the bellies of sixties-era hippies. My optimism suggested they merely failed where we could succeed. I was tricked by the wonderful escapism of cartoons and Disney movies that life was full of little treasures and beauties and that the common goodness of man was inherent in all things. I was lead to believe that in the end, we were all good people and if you trusted in that, you'd find people came through for you.

Then I grew up.

I'm in a shopping centre, speaking to a man who is offering us a great rate on paintballing. For a good price we get entry and 100 free paintballs. We buy 20 tickets, a full day's worth of fun and he gives us 10 extra for free. I plan to use them for my next birthday party. I wait a year, then call to book. I'm told the free paintball offer doesn't exist, that agents of the company aren't authorised to make deals, that I should have called the company within 7 days of purchase to check that what their agent said was true. "Why would I do that? Why would I call your company to ask if the offer your company gave me is real?" I ask if the offer was written down on their system. It wasn't. He doesn't work for them any more. They won't give me a refund. I have to pay $500 minimum to use the tickets I'd already purchased, that apparently only give me entry and equipment but no ammo. I manage to worm out of them 50 free paintballs per person I book, but I ask that this offer be emailed to me immediately so I have it writing. I receive the email. Once again I've been lied to - the offer is written as 50 free paintballs for the organiser only. Misrepresented to several times over, I look them up online to discover others have fallen for the same false promises, but because none of the agents ever put it in writing, there's nothing to be done. The only way to avoid the trap, we conclude, is to simply not trust anyone who offers anything verbally. We can't trust a man's word.

I'm standing under the large archways of the Victorian State Library. Two friends - a blonde girl and a muscular guy - are standing with me and we're chatting, sheltered from the light drizzle. It's lunch time and we're watching a drug addled couple arguing over junk that was sold under-value. Blondie is good natured, a helper, a friend of the earth. She wrings her hands at the escalating argument. The junkie starts yelling in the face of the junkette, whose beaten down despondency only enrages him further. Blondie steps out and tells the junkie to cool down, leave her alone, back off. The junkie springs up like a coiled snake, venom in his eyes and with no hesitation to unleash on my friend. Muscles is forced to act and steps in immediately, "You right mate?" he says with that undercurrent of force, that subtext of aggression that the street recognises as a thinly veiled threat. My tall, strong, far more alert friend's presence makes the junkie back down. He mumbles something and storms off. The junkette is left behind, picking through her ratty old hand bag. Blondie kneels down to help but junkette smacks her away. Fuck off. Mind your own business. Leave us alone. She lurches off after her abusive dealer boyfriend, bent against the pathetic cold drizzle.

I'm walking downhill at night. Two blocks from our house, my girlfriend and I are in formal wear after a premiere in the city. We've had a good run back home on public transport, but we're not usually caught out by nightfall. As we walk along a main road, one of the houses looks a little odd. The front door is ajar and the fly screen has been ripped. The lights are on but nobody seems to be home. I stop, "Just hang on a sec, baby. This looks a bit dodgy." We should probably move on, but I don't want to be that guy who does nothing while a house is robbed. I imagine the heartbreak of our flat being burgled. I try and get a better view inside..."Hey!" My girlfriend and I turn and see a tall teenage boy,wearing a hoodie up over his head. He's coming down an adjacent street, emerging from the blackness around the edges of working street lamps. We take off immediately, walking fast.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing," I say, putting an arm around her lower back, moving to cover her a little. "Just going home."
He picks up his pace, crossing the street. We walk even faster despite the notion it's a bad idea to show our fear. A million and one terrible things are crossing my mind. We reveal to each other later that both of us had grabbed a hold of a makeshift weapon in our pockets. Me: a pen. Her: keys.
"Is that your house?" he says, picking up pace, his hands disappearing into the pocket of his hoodie.
"No, we were just looking at houses to buy in the area," it's an uncertain tactic she tries, but inexplicably it works. He suddenly breaks off his line and starts retreating back across the street.
"Oh. OK."
We've never walked home as fast or looked over our shoulders as much in our lives. Because nothing actually happened, we're not sure what to do, so we simply tell the police our story over the phone, just in case something relevant emerges later. We spend most of the night questioning why we should ever put ourselves in that position again. Multiple bashings, stabbings, a marked increase in violence over matters far more trifle than catching a burglar. In the cold light of a computer screen, we read about the disaster that befell a good samaritan a suburb away, not more than two weeks prior. It's decided, begrudgingly, that we are now the kind of people who will do nothing to put themselves in harm's way while their neighbours are robbed.

Some events are tiny, seemingly mundane in the face of the great tradgedies of the world. Some are events you retell with a chill running down your spine. All of them build up, take their toll, put pressure on the ideals, hopes, trust and optimism. You live long enough and those tales of escape become tales of survival. You live long enough, it breaks.