THE LEGS THAT TWITCHED

My leg muscles have been ravenously twitching for over 12 hours and it's official - I need to go in a bin.
I probably need thorough testing by a good specialist, but seeing as I haven't found one in a decade, I must go in a bin now.
Sleep may help, but you can't sleep when your legs are stockings filled with electronic pinballs and a huge cramp is only half a second's warning away.
I know I'm meant to be grateful for a lot of things. I should be happy to be alive and in a first world and have cool hair. But try enjoying a roadtrip in a car with the engine scraping the road. Try even getting from A to B. Try not panicking that mechanics shrug even though the car is filled with fumes that make you dizzy and sick.
I've mixed my metaphors again.

Anyway, come cut off my legs so I can sleep,  because you can feed them to your rescue dog as soon as the spasms stop - which could be after the first bite, who knows.

Algorithm Method - get fucked & die

What the hell is wrong with all the platforms?

YouTube removes your monetisation if you have fewer than 1000 subscribers or fewer than 4000 watch hours in a year.

The newer Instagram algorithms make you invisible unless you boost ($).

Facebook does the same.

Freelancing platforms now send harrassing emails every month saying they've stripped ANOTHER seller level status due to lack of sales (outside your control), making you lower on searches/directories, or even literally INVISIBLE.

This is like when there is a competition and the entries on the front page get seen most so they get voted highest and win.

No-one looks at page 7 of anything.

People rely on being seen, BY THEIR FOLLOWERS - PEOPLE WHO CHOOSE TO FOLLOW THEM. We are BOMBARDED by ads by the platforms, and they are mining our info, AND we are creating the content (that's not how entertainment platforms ever used to work). So none of it is free at all.

You can't even study SEO or learn how to do this stuff better. Hustle and clickbait and bullshit will become final tools of survival. Outside broadcast TV, and brick & mortar stores, this is how people's businesses are seen.

And what do the algorithms want?

These binary code beasts are demanding something but no-one is telling us what the fuck that is. You go from trying not to please people at the sacrifice of integrity and quality, to trying to please a fucking mathematical code invented by people trying to extract more money from toothless mouths.

If these platforms supported their freelancers and artists and business owners, hey, everyone would make money. Then the aforementioneds would HAVE income. You boost a post, do you know how many sales that converts to?

Shit, they lie and say you'll get 1400 views and then the report says it reached 728, would you like to boost again?

Oh, want to be seen on page 2 of Google? Better pay for that, motherfucker. Too bad if you make stuff to make people happy. To not be some slime-coated, tooth-whitened, collar-popping entrepreneur scumfuck out there pyramid-scheming innocents into soul death.

These algorithms decide who and what we see, and therefore who and what we care about, and our lives. Our life experiences. 
You didn't see that your friend's dad died. But you sure do know that that place has a watch sale on because you clicked an ad once a few years ago.

We are being trained to be hypervigilant over nothing. If it beeps, it needs feeding, of our attention. Phones are parasites - cleverly designed to prey on our evolution. We're not dumb for it. But we have to set a lot of tools and systems in place to fight it. 

Because in all these disruptive changes, that all these CEOs are smiling over and saying will make the platforms more individualised and user-friendly, not only are real people essentially having supermarkets built right in their shop entryway, but we are being told who we are and how to continue being like that.

It's death to some, and the stunting of growth to the rest.

You won't discover new. You'll just be forever faced with a snapshot of you a you you've long-since outgrown.

Ocka Musica

I had a terrible thought yesterday.

I woke up with one of my pop songs in my head, and it was playing in there all day, and at some point I was singing it while pulling clothes out of the washing machine, and I wondered... 'What if I sang it in an Australian accent?'

I know. Disgusting. It worked, but I felt so dirty. Courtney Barnett is like calcified duck poo gold-panning on my eardrums. I am happy to enunciate a lot of words Aus way inside my tracks, without thinking, but not okay with sounding like someone clangin' on at Centrelink about how the baby bonus ain't what it used to be.

Film pitch: 'Killing for Two'

A serial killer must seriously rethink her career and life-or-death choices when she finds out she's pregnant.

Carried by the Fever

I was thinking today about how we let perfectionism stop us from doing things, 'cos we're waiting until things are in a state that we can be proud of and we make something that can follow us around a long time. But then I looked at bands like The Mavis's - and they post photos of themselves from the nineties, like, oh my god, look at us, we were babies, look at our strange haircuts and clothes, and they went through many eras but they didn't let it stop them, that, you know, in 20 years time they were going to look back and go isn't that weird. They just went through with it anyway. Carried by the fever.

Penis Salesman

Should I just lie, when asked - "No, I'm not single"?
I don't want to lie. But answering "Yes" leaves me open to instant, underwhelming mating attempts from insidiously boring men.
When I tell them how much I fail to appreciate the gross forwardness of men at establishments shilling liquor, not only do they fail to get the hint, but they advise me on how to deal with it: tell the men outright I don't want to fuck them.
Even if they haven't hit on me.
Even if they're just being friendly.
I'm doled this advice too often.
This idea that I'm too attractive to be standing there alone and any man who approaches must be verbally warned that his penis has no presence in my body, existence, or future.
What the fuck.
I'm to assume all guys want to fuck me?
That my value to a male stranger is only sexual?
How fucking arrogant is that?
How fucking arrogant is it that when an interested man does talk to me and finds out I'm single, he assumes his attraction must mean I want him back.
Like some schlub who works little on his appearance walks up to me with 2 hours of make-up and thinks he's a prize.
No, they don't even think about what there is to offer, beyond alcohol. No good conversation, seldomly good looks or fitness, nothing. Just want. Sometimes they talk themselves up, shit like how they love to go down on chicks and can go for hours.
This is always a lie.
I've been told I make eye contact a lot and listen, and men only experience this from women with interested vaginas.
These dudes don't get that I grew up with 3 older bros and think more like them - I forget I'm female but get constantly reminded.
They also don't listen when I tell them I don't hang around guys who always remind me of my fucking gender.
When I'm playing music, I barely have a gender.
Instead of girls being expected to tell men to fuck off, or to let them down mid-one-way-flirt, or pre-emptively ward them off, and most likely leave them rejected and uninterested in any professional or personal relationship and potentially earning their spite, or worse... maybe guys shouldn't expect so much.
I know - dudes are evolved to be more optimistic and pushy about mating. You can learn about it in The Psychology of Attractiveness - studies have shown in.
Men have 400,000,000 sperm per ejaculation. Women have 13 eggs a year. Of course we are pickier. Of course we pick up on signals better - for benefit and safety.
But this idea that if we make ourselves pretty we must be up for it by whomever (dude the other night said "You're a knockout - of course every guy here wants to put his dick in you. I want to put my dick in you"), that we need to verbally deter - hiw about guys change their fucking shit. Listen. Watch. STOP FUCKING DRINKING
STOP FUCKING DRINKING
STOP FUCKING DRINKING
If you come off as a 1970s Aussie male chauvinist bordering on rapey vibes, you have no fucking right to go drinking in public. Esp. if you imagine booze helps you talk to women - talking to them like they're your bagsied fuckhole is not welcome. And then turning passive-aggressive? Nope. Nope nope.
I havr social anxiety. Pretty bad. It takes a lot to go out, especially alone. And then to be treated like garnished meat? Girfriends scowl at me, men either avoid me or become penis salesmen? What's the alternative - go without makeup or nice clothes and be looked at like I'm sick (I am, I hide that for survival).
I'm watching Mad Men and getting angry seeing the shit that was commonplace then is still standard now. Boys will be boys.
Will I ever meet a man? The only guys who hit on me are ones that I would never want, and refuse to see me for who I am, no matter how much I tell them who I really am.
Maybe I'm just destined to be a lone cat, slinking around different driveways, never with my own backyard.

Maybe I should wear a wedding ring. I'd rather men learn that single doesn't mean available, but I don't want to have to have a conversation about why no means no all the time. I don't want that job.

Germanic genital RANT

I am frequently amazed by confident drunk guys who nod and smile at everything you say and flush you with compliments in between telling you how you should think and act because you are wrong about basically everything. I'm sorry, but it's hard to have my entire personality mansplained by someone who keeps pointing their dick at me like a compass needle poking north. I can't be awe-inspiring one moment and literally the next an example of a misguided fool who hasn't read their non-existent book. Err on the side of caution - once I'm no longer a dazzling, manic, Germanic genital, those traits you disapprove of will be all there is, so back the fuck away. You can't spend a night making a woman feel physically uncomfortable then point out her traits that make you morally uncomfortable. You don't get to say what goes on a pizza you try to steal.