Anew post(man)

Ok so a here’s a new post, man. This is a poem I wrote while I’m here in Melbourne. Oh yah, didn’t you know? I’ve been here for three weeks and I’ll be back to Perth on the 12th. This one is dedicated to my current girlfriend, who has now become part of an extensive list of women. I just collect broken hearts like someone might collect photos of dead animals or failed auditions.

Anyway it started out as a description of her and I started playing with a more general topic of reality and art. The final line is supposed to be an oxymoron and represents the acceptance of imperfection, in this case related back to my relationship. There is no such thing as imperfect.

Enjoy.

Where I Call Home

Frangipani smile.
Bloodswept cheeks,
Lustful teeth.

Swollen lashes.
Forgetful hands and
Vinyl eyes.

Darkened oak,
Honeyed strum,
Tumbling wine.

Aging rivers.
Piercing lips and
Breaking kiss.

Closing wounds.
Static bliss and
Imperfect frequencies.

News Room Story: B is for Political Bias

This story was handed to me after I had unsuccessfully tried to write a story on the Bodhi’s dwindling Slimmer Choice sales. That’s a type of bread for those not in the know. I work at the bakery packing bread so I thought I’d get in touch with my bakery manager and write about dwindling sales because I had no other ideas. He refused to do the story (for fear of losing his job) so my newsroom manager gave me this ad he found around the university and thought was funny enough to write about. Funnily enough it turned out the ad was placed by my bakery manager and I just interviewed him for the story.

Bodhi’s Recruitment Drive

Need a new job?

Fremantle bakery needs packers for casual evening work.

Would suit someone in the Fremantle area.

Call Ryan on 0403 828 873

.One of the several ads placed by Mr Barter.

By Camilo Cayazaya

Fremantle Bakery advertisements doing the rounds at Murdoch Uni have gotten some attention for their humour and political slant.

The ads showing the disgruntled faces of John Howard, Robert Mugabe and George Bush all feature the caption “Need a new job?”

Ryan Barter, head of the packing department at Bodhi’s Bakehouse, says the ads came as an idea from a marketing website stating that all good ads needed a picture, the rest came naturally.

News Room Story: My Camel Frequency’s Tingling!

No, that’s not the real title for the story. This is another news room story that my tutor handed to me on my first day since I had no ideas on news stories, but I had to wait another 2 days later to write it due to my source(s) being in the Australian outback doing research.

Once again, the story can be found at eMU News with pictures and ev’rythaaaang.

Camel VHF Tracking

By Camilo Cayazaya

The destruction of the Australian environment is being curbed by WA’s environment department through the innovative VHF collaring of feral Arabian camels.

Introduced from India in the 1840’s, feral camels have become a pest that threatens wildlife, vegetation, and now rural infrastructure.

News Room Story: Test of Strength

This is a story I wrote for my university Newsroom, where we have to spend a day every week for four weeks writing a story on news we have found ourselves. Most of it is local news but you have the chance to write about things in other states if they haven’t been reported. It was written on a guy I met while making our short film, he is our protagonist.

The stories can be found at emunews.murdoch.edu.au and you can search my name in Journalists. All my stories have been edited slightly by the editor for a more Australian style… rather, an “Aussie” style, with more slang and traditional sayings. I can’t say I’m happy but if that’s what tickles their goose, dresses their salad or shakes their martini it’s not a big deal.

Test of Strength

By Camilo Cayazaya

Cannington local, Daniel Peter Macri, is set to take on the world in early November when he competes in the World Powerlifting Titles.

Macri started competing when he was 14 and broke two national records his first year. Now he has qualified for the next powerlifting world championships and is looking to make a mark for Australia on a global scale.

Primarily coaching himself at Muscle Pit, his partly-owned gym, the 18 year-old has 12 official world records for squats, bench presses, deadlifts, and totals (the sum of all three best lifts) over three different age and weight divisions.

“My personal bests have been a 410kg squat, 225kg bench, 270kg deadlift. They were all set last year,” said Macri. “[This year] I’m looking to do a 1000 pound squat, the first in the country’s history, that’s 455kg.”

Feature Story

This is a feature I wrote for technology rounds at uni. I didn’t like it but I had to write it and here it is. God, I hate writing newspaper style.

Games in Australia Feature Story

Hands up if you believe games are for children. Hands up if you think games are mindless wastes of time. Hands up if you think video games are dangerous and will create more criminals. Did you put your hand up?

The fact is that, like any new form of media, gaming and the culture surrounding technology has long been stigmatized: “Games are for nerds.” “Games are dangerous.” “Only children play games.” “Games are pointless and will fry your brain.” Are the most commonly regurgitated ideas you might hear on a regular basis from the average observer. The truth is that none of these common beliefs about games are real.

News Story

Here is a news story I had to write for uni. It’s not great but I couldn’t be arsed doing anything else.

Nokia Morph News Story

Nokia has unveiled a new concept phone, Morph, which uses nanotechnology to bend, recharge and self-preserve.

The concept is designed to illustrate the way future consumer appliances might benefit from nanotechnologies such as the ability to bend and lock around your wrist, power themselves via solar energy or detect compounds in the air.

The Morph supposedly uses the new technology to clean itself with small frictionless super hydrophobic materials called “Nanoflowers”. This allows liquids to roll off it, while spider silks and microfibres allow the phone to stretch into tablets, wrist-bands or handhelds.

The phone’s technologies are being jointly researched by Nokia and Cambridge University and show promise in other fields such as energy conservation. “Nanograss” would line building walls and windows to solar power them locally or to analyse air pollution and detect bio-chemical traces.

“We hope that this combination of art and science will showcase the potential of nanoscience to a wider audience,” said Dr. Tapani Ryhanen, Cambridge NRC Head in a Nokia press release.

The Morph draws heavy inspiration from the Nokia 888 another concept phone designed by Tamer Nakisci of Istanbul’s Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts. The 888 can bend, make videocalls, play movies and be worn as a wristband but was not designed with nanotechnology in mind.

Chaos Theory

So here I was thinking about what to write. What is funny or interesting? And I remember an artist by the name of Amon Tobin. This is one of the experimental/alternative DJ’s I love and I wanted to have a go at talking about his music, especially since I’ve never written a music review or anything music-related.

So to begin with, let me paint you a picture of the eclectic artist if at all possible. Big adjectives are usually used to describe the sound and cliches like “poignant”, “dark”, “moody” are constantly thrown about as frequently as new Emo bands are signed. But there is something else to his music.
It has an ability to push beyond the boundaries of orthodoxy, paralyzes the listener and begins to consume them whole, like a snake swallowing its prey.

Picture story

As part of my pledge to keep this blog open to all types of writing, here is my picture story’s final edit. I really am too tired to keep editing and it looks fine to me. This was written for Print News II at Murdoch University, Western Australia.

Bungarra Picture Story

*Martin’s picture goes here* (I won’t post it for privacy reasons)

Bungarra Games is a small next generation games developer based in Fremantle, and it’s fighting for a place in an American and Japanese-dominated industry.

Martin Malek is part of a local, four-man development team struggling to make a name for itself with its latest prototype, Surfers (working title), for a next-generation console.

He is the 2D and 3D artist, texturer, modeler, and animator in the team, a set of tasks that would normally be given to as many members as there are jobs.

Martin believes the Australian gaming industry has some large obstacles to overcome if it is to become a major player in the global industry.

He says development teams receive “no funding from the government because they don’t understand the industry, even though games are making more money than Hollywood.”

Australia is also one of the only developed nations without an R18+ rating for games. “At the moment, Australia is out of step with the rest of the developed world on this issue,” said Rob Hulls, Victoria’s attorney general.

Without an adult rating or funding for the industry Australia is a very difficult place for gaming to flourish, as technology improves and development costs grow. This is especially disheartening to many due to the growth of the industry as a new art form.

However, Martin believes that moves by the Game Developers’ Association of Australia to receive a 40 percent investment rebate will greatly accelerate industry development in Australia.

Bungarra are expecting approval for the prototype from Microsoft or Sony within the next three months.

One More Cliche

Here is a spoken word poem I wrote, and you need to imagine an impassioned speaker delivering it, maybe over a beat. I don’t know, I like to think of it on its own. I wrote this because defeat is something we all experience, but the word itself is meaningless. I think it’s more a process of recreation. Deconstruction, recreation, where you become greater after assessing what it is that allowed you to be deconstructed. And your pieces have developed a resistance or resilience to everything that damages you until you are unstoppable.

But that is an active process, it isn’t just a “Let me lie here and wait to die” kind of passive process. A lot of people expect to be given the right to withstand pressure. Like everything else, you need to fight for every inch you gain. Through constant struggle, the natural law of nature, you become stronger. And that is basically what this poem is about.

In a sense, it is about the, now clichéd, Phoenix. Hence the title.

The Phoenix

The man is never defeated.
The man is never defeated.
He is simply reborn.

He considers himself a finite entity that exists outside the boundaries of eternity, because synthetics, arithmetic and cold metallic brick have shrouded his empathy for nature.

He tends to wager with regression as he looks at depression with fear and uncontrollable anxiety. Lacking piety he throws himself down into pits full of wolves and seals his own tomb, asking god to return him to the womb.

‘He’ is a man that gets angry in life and love because ‘he’, the man, is a failure. Untailored to such complex systems and vindictive vixens vying for his sexual attention. They confuse and clutter him with sexual muttering and feints and twists, clouding mist all to make him play a game for which he is untrained and in which there is nothing to gain.

He.
The man.
Is a failure.

First poem. It’s lengthy!

This is not my favourite poem but I think there are some moments in it. It is, like all of my work, somehow involved in romanticism and hopelessness. Unfortunately I have a habit of falling back onto this theme pretty frequently but what the poem talks about is the dilemma of existence and the constant struggle against the forces of the universe to become strong enough to withstand it. I wrote this when I was tired of fighting and I guess maybe I was just tired cos there is a lot I don’t like about it.

Perish The Thought.

Some days I sit by my window and stare out at the unfinished walls we create, at the entries and exits to our own fortresses of sadness, with windows sheathed in metal, too scared to let all our work be destroyed. While rats below look into the clouds and plant beanstalks in the shadow we’ve cast.

I like to think I could one day shut off my mind. That I could sit in verdant
fields and fill myself with nothing but satisfaction. That one day I will lay my emotions to rest with a single slash from the blade of wisdom.

Some days I simply lay with you and stare at the lines in the ceiling, connecting lines with every fine intersection creating a weave of cracks until I don’t know where the lines begin anymore. Until they flow into a wave that becomes a sea that I ride past pelicans and flounder, past fishermen and whalers, until I find the shore. A beach isolated by cliffs and the fears of men. Where I reach to find you once again and we lay together and stare into the sun. And we will stay until our silhouettes are burned into the sand.