Welcome to my Blog

Here, I talk about personal affairs, random topics, the site itself and whatever else comes to mind!

September 16th, 2022

I’ve begun to form a political identity again. This time around, instead of falling down a right wing pipeline, I call myself a socailist, albeit with caution. As of late, I had made myself involved with a local socialist group., which had revived my interest in politics, educating me on the sorry state of Australia’s dogshit climate policy. While it radicalised me to an extent, its resolve always made a screeching halt at any sort of attitude of violence against the state. It brings me to understand that if a state allows a socialist gathering to be as prevalent as it is, there is a degree of complacency and obedience to the state that comes as part of the deal. Non-violent protest rarely ever leads to change outside of the confines of an established system, and with the stigma and lack of understanding leftist ideology has generally, we won’t be a succeeding outlier.

This stigma is beginning to fall, though. Unions around the world are seeing a surge, and right-wing ”intellectual” spaces have been poisoned by masked bigotry and Rupert Murdoch’s media monopoly to the point of becoming insular circlejerks, filled with constant paranoia and ad-hominem. However, the absence of a rational, open-minded conservative voice (that is willing to admit their conservatism rather than masking it as “centrism”) pushes chuds down a neatly crafted slope, helped along by what Nyx aptly calls “ad companies masquerading as tech companies.” This creates a far more insidious issue of counterproductive radicalisation, breeding frenzied, bigoted killers like it had with the mass shootings of Buffalo and Christchurch, to name a couple.

To completely veer off that political rant, I watched the 2021 action flick Nobody with some friends recently. While the movie was fairly cliché, it was still great fun and I enjoyed it quite a lot, especially with Bob Odenkirk’s performance as Hutch, in a movie that is as far a tonal cry from Saul Goodman (note: not naming McGill or Takovic here) and his Mr. Show skits with David Cross as you can get. Speaking of the name Hutch, I swear black-and-blue I saw a DVD in a store for this movie, but it was titled Hutch. Though, I can’t find any discussions of any regional renaming. I’m very sure I’m not rewriting my memory either, it was when I was first made aware of the movie, and it was on a rack that was near a bargain bin, as labelled with a cutout of Tommy Wiseau. This was a few months back, on one of my fruitless searches for niche CDs.

On that note, actually, I ordered Viper’s compilation album One Day You’ll See Me Again (on CD, my favourite medium) and when it came, Viper actually left me a written note!

Isn’t that sick? Note that it was written on the back of a business card for some random realtor company in Texas, which is so damn real. I love it. I’m probably not the only person who got a note like this but this one’s mine. God bless you, Viper.

June 6th, 2022

Well, this is my first blog post here! Hello to anyone reading this. I’m not yet too acquainted with this writing style, but I’ll ease into it.

The first thing I want to bring up is the theming and direction for this site. Since you showed up here, likely via the site’s homepage, you will have noticed the different theme I have incorporated on this page. Only the home and blog page exist at any capacity at this time, but I have plans for more sites not yet indexed, and themes for sites not yet produced, both indexed and unindexed. This website is a passion project, which I also intend to have personal utility, by organising archives.

The reason for this site’s name, 55-Pedro, is in reference to a little album called Double Nickels on the Dime, by San Pedro, CA band The Minutemen. 55 means “double nickels” while “the dime” refers to the I-10 highway, running across the southern States of America, including through San Pedro. The meaning for their name is admittedly more deeply rooted in the band members’ personal experiences, and in turn I am appropriating it for flair, but I really couldn’t care less. My website looks cool and has a cool name referencing a cool album. I don’t think they’d be bothered by it either. The homepage is coloured with a palette indicative of the album’s cover, part of which I used in the headmast image. The pixelated transparency gradient on said image isn’t something I’m 100% happy with, but I’m by no means discontent with its outcome. Could be a little better, could be a lot worse.

The theme for the page you’re looking at right now at the time of writing is derivative of the 1997 Kitano film “Sonatine”. I could rave on about how much I love Kitano’s hands-on director-producer-writer-actor approach to filmmaking, I won’t geek out too much about it just yet. It might make for a future blog post, though. Since this page isn’t yet fleshed out, I can’t tell if I like the direction I’ve taken with thematic choice, so expect some alterations and adjustments from time to time.

But, enough about the site. Recently, I went on air with a good friend of mine in an hour-slot on a community radio station, as part of an extracurricular excursion with my school. I’ve been a part of my school’s Radio Club for as long as I’ve been here, and now in the midst of my final year of secondary education, my friend and I have been met with the task of recruiting and fostering a new generation of Radio Club members. A while ago, I made a poster (which I still see around and am super happy with) to advertise the club to other students, and it brought our club from three permanent members to about twelve! They’re sure loud, but I’ll get used to it. When we were returning to school from the station, some of the students, who tagged along to do a practice off-air broadcast in the other studio, were adamant we take a detour to McDonald’s for breakfast. Needless to say, we didn’t (thank god).

The on-air broadcast with my friend did actually go fairly well, all things considered. We didn’t have much time to prepare, with us both being shackled by school work piling on us because of getting sick. There was a slight technical mistake on my end, but it was so minor I doubt it got noticed. It can get a bit stressful both hosting a show and managing the technical side at the same time, but it’s a fun experience, and a challenge I enjoy rising up to. Still, my strong suit lies in my speaking. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been a good public speaker, or so I’m told. I just wish that the station’s song library was just a little wider. I can’t bring an example to mind now, but you’d be surprised to see what they didn’t have sometimes.

In any case, this concludes the first blog post here! I’ll write again when necessary, or at my pleasure. I have a lot to talk about into this void.