Ick

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 05:08:27 GMT

Well, that was a surprise.

Hooray for old emails.

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 15:54:22 GMT

"Love is the difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real."
- Iris Murdoch

I wish I were more confident about writing in the third person. Writing about the revelations and thoughts in my mind just don't sound the same when using the word 'I'. It's just amazing how much of the world goes on when you're just doing nothing. I notice this most when I'm alone in the CBD of Melbourne, usually waiting for someone at the city's most popular rendevous point, the Flinders Street train station clocks. With Ludovico playing in my head, I watched the world go by. Every person you see there who is sitting on the steps, waiting for someone or just hanging out, they all have a life just as big and as complex as yours. All your thoughts, dreams, emotions, every person has them and it's a hard concept to grasp. Hearing nothing but music during this time of observation only makes it all the more surreal.

I feel as though I'm being left behind in the world. For as long as I can remember, my life has been split into school semesters. Sure, I live week by week, but most times of year are, in my head, related to dates of breaks from class, examination periods or times of assessment. A lot of my friends are finishing university now, and their lives are moving on. I had a goodbye dinner for a friend tonight, his life isn't arranged by semesters anymore, it's orchestrated to a 40/50/60 hour workweek with much less flexibility.

Another has become so much more scary in terms of life perspective. I think my thoughtless ramblings really hit a nerve and now he's trying to get as far away from a career as possible. You'd think I'd be happy about this, but I'm not because while I may scream about the horrors of a rigid life, I'm not angry enough to run in the opposite direction. It's as though I see a giant bear coming to rip my face off, but instead of running away, I stand firmly in place, more out of lack of enthusiam than anything else.

Every day I more seriously consider becoming a stand-up comic. Maybe it's the lifestyle or admiration of people like Doug Stanhope and Lewis Black who really aren't the best role models, but it just seems like such an appropriate way to escape the world. Nothing is serious anymore, anything can be turned into a bit for the amusement of others, pain or pleasure. The only catch is that I'm largely amusing only to myself, and the audience inside my head didn't pay for their tickets. Maybe I just need to actually sit down and structure my anecdotes into a more consumable form for the world.

I don't really feel many emotions for more than a few hours. I get angry about things, but I wake up the next day and I feel fine. I feel sad about something, but all I do is speak to a friend about penguins with flamethrowers and everything is okay again. Some emotions don't really go away, though, they can resurface at any time and make your stomach do a flip all over again, and all from the smallest provocation.

I have a hard time connecting with people, and it's something I really want to do. The problem with that is that I'm too superficial. When I say 'connect', I mean to have this sort of understanding of one another that is silently acknowledged, and for some reason I seem to believe that this is something I can only experience with women. Whether it's because this connection is something I equate very closely to love, or whether because if I ever found a guy who thought the same way I do I'd probably want to throttle him, I'm not sure. I want to be able to talk my personal philosophy with someone who isn't going to just ignore me or contrarily try to out-argue me on anything. I want to be able to ramble about some ridiculous piece of new without things turning into a fistfight. I want to be able to propose the ownership of a shark on a skateboard for the sheer amusement value without someone thinking I'm a nutcase.

In short, I'm lost but I kinda like it that way.

The Top 5 List of Things Indians Can and Cannot Do.

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:05:50 GMT

AKA "My experiences living in a shared house: a summary".

Can

1. Make a portable bidet out of the most random items.
2. Break windows when locked in a room but then not use the open window to escape.
3. Show absolutely no emotion even when they know you're eating beef right in front of them.
4. Lock their keys in their room then contact you as though you know a secret way to get into the room that they don't.
5. Beat me at Rockstar's Table Tennis game on XBOX 360. Okay, the character is really from Egypt but I didn't know that for like ten minutes and he looks Indian damn it.

Cannot

1. Speak English.
2. Remember my name (I just refer to them collectively as 'the indians').
3. Use their bidet without putting shitwater all over the toilet floor.
4. Sit inside for ten minutes. They have some innate desire to stand around outside the house and do exactly what they were doing inside: NOTHING.
5.

Everywhere I go, I get into trouble.

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 13:22:14 GMT

Stomach is killing me, other health problems prevalent. 2-month diet of Mountain Dew and ham rolls has finally caught up with me. Actually, I think the cold, canned spaghetti may be the culprit, but that wasn't my fault. At any rate, I guess a visit to the doctor is in order. Maybe get some placeboes or something.

Time to go watch Australia get thumped by Italy. Congratulations on them reaching the second round though!

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 09:27:28 GMT

I finally figured myself out and my perceptions so that I can explain it to other people. You know that kinda smirk and warm feeling you get when you hear in the news that someone was run over by an ambulance? That's pretty much how I live my life in terms of how I see most of the world.

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 01:24:59 GMT

I wonder if society will ever become so vain regarding body hair that chemotherapy will become the new, hip way to keep yourself hair-free.

So you see some bald, hairless kid in a wheelchair down the street, desperately trying to not get an infection and all you can think is "Boy, the price of beauty sure is high these days".

Duff Gardens, HOO-RAH....

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 04:08:12 GMT

So I bailed on another exam.

edit: AND FUCKING HELL MORE INDIANS ARE MOVING INTO MY HOUSE FLNGSDJFLSAHFDKNA;S'SADF

Australia defeats Japan 3-1

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:21:24 GMT

It took over 60 years, but we finally got them back for bombing Darwin during WW2. Awesome.

Sat, 20 May 2006 09:55:07 GMT

I smell like poop.

I am happy.

No, it's just a coincidence.

How was breakfast? Unbelievable!

Fri, 19 May 2006 12:35:14 GMT

So I apparently am moving in with an attractive girl.

Though, this is according to the 60 year old man who is renovating the place, so perhaps I shouldn't take his word for it. Most people his age think anything younger than 25 is hot.

Note that I did't mention the smelly Indian family of 3 who will also be there. I intend (almost typed Nintendo then, Wiiiiiiii!) to mentally block them and their nonsense soon enough.

Arj Barker?

Wed, 10 May 2006 12:27:53 GMT

You go see a stand-up comic you like, and he uses the same bits and everyone complains. This complaining is something I'll never understand. Do these same people who go to concerts and complain when a band plays songs that they already know? Of course not. A finely-crafted piece of comedy has just as much work put into it as a song, perhaps not in the technical sense of the word, but so much thought and careful manipulation are put into both, only to have someone complain that they'd just heard it all before. I do sympathise, but the reasoning behind it is something I can't figure out.

In slightly-related news, I'm seriously considering having a serious attempt at being a stand-up comic. Not as a career choice (yet), just something I'll dabble in. Surely I can beat some of the no-hopers I've seen at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year.

Saw:

Dylan Moran
Daniel Kitson
Arj Barker
Joel Osmont/Osmond
Ahkmal Saleh (twice)
Dave Hughes
Charlie Pickering
The Umbilical Brothers
Demetri Martin (twice)
Danny Bhoy
The Amazing Jonathon
Dave Grant

I think that's it. Most were good. Dylan Moran was disappointing, ditto for Arj Barker and Dave Hughes, but the rest were pretty good.

News in brief: living completely alone on Monday, had a bike accident, bit the inside of my cheek (not during the bike accident), got a 10-day trial account on WoW and it's eating my soul, fell for an Iranian-Italian girl, having weird dreams and disliking Family Guy more and more each week.

Also, hi.

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 09:45:37 GMT

I admire Chinese people for the simple fact that they are pretty much the only people who still use styrofoam in their fast-food stores. Fuck the environment, they want to save money. It's admirable to see people being openly selfish, because it's honest.

oh how good it feels to write

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 14:15:27 GMT

TV is funny. It's charity drive for famine in some disadvantaged country time, and the point they want to drive home is that you (your donation) can make a difference. For only a $30 donation, you could feed a family of four for six whole months! This brings up an interesting question: why the hell am I paying $3 for a Big Mac?

I mean, theoretically, if you compare to that example, I should be able to live on $30 for 2 years if I were in some little war-torn country, but I pay one-tenth of that, 2.4 months of money, just for two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles all on a sesame seed bun.

Right, cost of living and all that. They charge the price because they can, but I want to know exactly what corners are being cut to stretch $30 to last 6 months to feed four people. I'm guessing they don't have a whole lot of McDonalds vouchers lying around to give to the families, so it must be some farming thing, which is ridiculous. It's a bit insensitive to expect them to drag themselves away from something fun like a civil war or mass female circumcision to do something as boring as farming.

In high school agriculture class, I had to farm for two hours a week, and that was two hours too many. At first, it's entertaining to see dirt and shovels and things that you stuffed into the ground with average enthusiasm grow into some sort of vegetable I didn't eat because I was 14 and hated vegetables, but it gets boring fast. This is especially true of developed countries where childrens book illustrators have been asked "to avoid showing uncut loaves of bread and freestanding wardrobes because they might be unfamiliar to American readers." link. It's just a little offensive to maintain such a harsh double-standard, that's all I'm saying.

Looks like a bit of haggling may occur the next time I'm at McDonalds.

lol

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:09:25 GMT

hey look

i found a workaround

damn, i can't even keep myself out of deadjournal as long as i remember one of the six hundred email addresses i've used for this account since i created it (unless i use that supposed thing called willpower, which no-one really seems to have if they get emotional or bored enough)

well, that was interesting

seeya

How to stop using Deadjournal.

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:18:09 GMT

1. Install LJ Archive and back up all your old entries.
2. Write final entry.
3. Get a temporary email address from Mailinator that you'll never ever remember and change it to your default DJ email address (so you'll never be able to request your password and won't get emails from Deadjournal)
4. Change your password using the same Mailinator gibberish text string for your new password (once again, because it's something you'll never ever remember).
5. Wipe all Deadjournal links and cookies from your bookmarks and history, as well as Mailinator history so you won't get the urge to go and reopen the journal. Optional: edit your HOSTS file to redirect Deadjournal to Google or something so there won't be any anonymous browsing).
6. Uninstall Semagic and LJ Archive and delete the install files.
7. Here are my leftover DJ codes: xkgqjaaac7wk, mmvvvaaac7wm, 2z4zqaaac7wj, pse4yaaac7wh, h3yzsaaac7wg Please don't hog them all at once, just take one if you need it.
8. (Optional) Block and delete all Deadjournal contacts from instant messaging programs.
9. Play Age of Empires III for the next 72 hours.

Sorry, kids. It's just not fun anymore.

The answer is 8.31 minutes.

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 14:39:55 GMT

So, changing lifestyle didn't work. Staying the same didn't work.

Hell, I don't know what to do. Too lazy to get another job.

Ohhhhh.... gay.

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:45:47 GMT

I just found out I have to work at the Commonwealth Games.

Oh well, at least the majority of them aren't going to be deaf.

Note to self

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:11:11 GMT

Don't jump off the roofs of boats when your friend is there to give you a leg down, that's just silly/ Three hours later and I still can't walk straight. Part alcohol, part messed-up knee.

In other news, I had the best night out that I''ve had in a long time. And it wasn't even thathorrible for Chris, he picked up another girl. as is customary when i take him anywhere I must be a good sign or something.

Lauren didn't turn up, though. I was hoping she'd come to some sort of revolution and realise it'd be worth her while to come and see mne, but I guess not. Oh well. There's always next year.

Bleh, I'm so lonely.

edit: I lost my watch. The shitty one I took to Japan, not the good one I fixed a few weeks ago.

An update I'm sure you're all dying to read.

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:35:46 GMT

So apparently I need to learn to interpret the body language of women in clubs better, because I think I accidentally rejected a girl because I thought she was messing with me. Haha. Those places really are meat markets, and I think I finally lost my distaste for them, even though Tuesday had me waiting two hours in line without entry. Oh well.

In other news, nothing.

edit for clarification: my friend was off dancing on some podium (I have no idea why he does that, it doesn't help his chances of anything. In fact, girls are scared to get on the podium with him), so I sorta just wandered off elsewhere on the dancefloor on my own (I'm starting to believe that I'm either an average dancer or nobody has the guts to tell me/or cares that I suck yet, which is also part of why I don't hate them so much now), and I'm just doing whatever when this girl in a dancing circle next to me (you know all about girls dancing in circles, they do it all the time, no idea why) reaches over, gives my arm a quick stroke and when I turn to look (it was very deliberate, unlike the guy behind me slamming me with his penis occasionally) she waved and game me a smile. I seriously thought she was fucking with me, like the sort of thing groups of girls would do to dorky-looking guys as some sort of joke, so I sorta just smiled and kept dancing to unknown RnB song #4958. About ten minutes later, I dragged my friend off the podium and asked him what the hell it meant when a girl did that to you (I seem like a completely inept tool at this point, I know), and he said that she probably wasn't fucking with me and wanted me to dance with her. I became frantic because I'd never been 'tagged' by a girl like that before and was interested in following through for fun. I guess I look reasonable in the near-dark, heh.

"She's right over th-SHIT"

And I didn't see her again. She was kinda cute, it's a shame that I'm an idiot, heh.

I thought it was funny that girls are allowed to do the whole tagging thing, but if a guy tries it it's wrong in twenty different ways. Meat market, meat market, I know.

You've had your chances and all i get is smart arse comments........

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:25:41 GMT

Oh man, I don't need to read shit like that.

Unrelated: eBay scam guy is a bastard. Hopefully I can tear the unprofessional prick apart.

And for fun, friendof list breakdown:

Number of active DJ users (updated in last two weeks): 26

Absent: 50
Of those, presumed dead users: 10

Accounts that are dupes or fakes: 4

Zeno's Paradox: Modern Day

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 03:03:58 GMT

I had on my public face last Friday morning as I walked into the supermarket to buy supplies for the upcoming nuclear winter (you never can be sure when you're going to need a year's supply of baked beans). Actually, things were going okay. It was warm outside and I had things to do as well as prepare for armageddon. As the sliding doors opened, I encountered possibly the most surreal thing I'd ever seen at least that day. It was dark inside and everyone was immobile. Not that it was pitch black or anything, but it was clear that the overhead fluorescent lights weren't on. Also, no-one was moving at the checkouts or any of the service counters.

Now, if you were in this situation, your first thought would probably have been identical to mine, that zombies from outer space had finally developed that weapon you see in movies that freezes everyone, and as the only person unaffected due to a romantic fling between your mother and a dead politician many years ago, it is now up to you to stop the zombie's attempts to enslave the human race.

Or it could have just been a blackout, which meant the registers and lights were down so no-one could do anything. Regardless, it was logical to assume either of these things.

So, taking advantage of all this, I grabbed a newspaper and hurried off to get my shopping done, ignoring the blank stares and silence of staff and customers. I was halfway down aisle 10 before it hit me like an oncoming train.

It's 11am on Remembrance Day. Shit. (Actually, it was 11:10, but I won't use that as an excuse for my ignorance).

An announcement comes over the speaker shortly after this, thanking customers for observing the minute of silence. I was hoping they'd give me a special mention and call me an unpatriotic bastard for prioritising my need for tinfoil and watermelon over war veterans, but they didn't.

Funny how when thrown into a situation, one can develop an entirely erroneous conclusion. Looking back, I should have interpreted the total lack of activity (which means I didn't hear customers whining about the lack of power or watching shift managers throttle employees who didn't know how to deal with the situation) in the store differently, but I'll stand by my defense that it was too subtle for me to pick up on at the time.

Current crises: educational, boredom-based. Also, I think I just got ripped off on eBay for like $60. Oops. And that thing with that place isn't going to pan out without some massive creeping, and I don't think I should do that. I think I'll just reengineer my electives next year instead. Should be interesting. Guitar lesson at 4, I think my tutor is wholly unimpressed because I know fuckall music theory. Might start looking for a nice data entry job soon to keep me occupied over the holidays. Depends on how quickly I get sick of being a slacker.

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:50:15 GMT

I asked my friend yesterday if he ever felt as though he operated on a different frequency from other people (which really was just a way to project my own feelings). He said he didn't.

At first I was disappointed, but then I realised he was actually proving my point, heh.

NTLDR is missing.

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:56:13 GMT

I don't understand the pursuit of knowledge, science and all that. It's as though everyone secretly believes that a certain amount of communal knowledge will suddenly transcend us to holistic beings or that we'll begin to levitate on our own or something. There surely has to be a point where we know everything (disregarding the idea that scientfic truths aren't actually truths at all but just infinitely probable predictions of behaviour), and what's going to happen then? Do we all just suddenly take up a new hobby like building model planes?

All the knowledge that I have hasn't helped me any better in dealing with things. I'm aware of schematic-based processing (ie. categorisation) within the brain and it doesn't change anything. Awareness of something you can't change is hardly an improvement over something that you didn't know existed. It would be like discovering that all the weather patterns of earth are really under the control of immortal flying gnomes that cannot be destroyed, life goes on with the knowledge and nothing has changed. Even in other fields such as medicine, it's like climbing a mountain where a peak has to exist. It's just going to be weird when doctors have a press conference and say "Well, there are no more diseases, and each human has been genetically-modified to be impervious to broken legs and the like. Also, you will never die. Us? Oh, we're all going to become stamp collectors now, don't worry about us".

I understand that the pursuit of knowledge is something that has to be done as part of improving quality of life or some shit, but I honestly don't see the point of it. After we've decoded the human genome and travelled to all the corners/edges of a finite universe, God will just wipe us all off the chessboard with a sweep of his hand and say "Round 2. This time I'll put the frogs in charge", kinda like when you got all the Pokemon in that game and then just started again because you wanted to see if things would be different.

Bleh, schema. Fucking associations within the linked brain. It's bullshit.

This song is depressing the fuck out of me, but I've got it on loop and I don't know why.

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:55:55 GMT

I popped into some discussion about Christianity. One guy thought Hitler and Stalin are good reasons as to why religion should be banished, drawing the cart before the horse. I generally just poke fun of people in the thread, mentioning Invisible Pink Unicorns and Kelsey Grammer. I don't take religion seriously, unlike some people. Still, it prompted this from a concerned individual:

I really don't even know where to begin. At least he didn't say that he'd pray for me, I guess. Actually, I've wondered if Christians even understand what it is they do when they pray for someone. When you combine the doctrine of God's divine plan which effectively destroys free will and the one that says a person must accept Jesus as their lord and saviour (but why not God? I understand they're somehow the same person and not at the same time, but it's still odd. Maybe it's because Christians only want to follow something they are relatively sure of it having ever existed (ie. worship of Jesus preferred over worship of God just because he was on Earth and God was not, which is laughable), surely Christians secretly realise the futility of praying for others, or even themselves if their heart is already in the right place. Suppose it's an indicator of how illogical religion is, though it's not exactly the only source of irrationality in people.

The other thing that bothered me was the lack of faith that this guy has in other people, even those of the same faith by suggesting corruption amongst them. It really seems to me that he doesn't follow any mainstream faith at all. He answers to God, but not to any representative of God, it just strikes me as odd. Upon looking into what else he had to say, I'm slightly even more worried (in the way that someone would be worried about a kitten walking into the jaws of an alligator, but will still watch with fascination):

The Salvation

Jesus came to earth to set us free. The thing that people do not know is that He was fulfilling terms set forth by the current owner of our souls, the devil. Jesus met the devil and satan was not budging on any of the terms set forth by Jesus. This went on for years. Finally, Jesus said, "What will it take for you to let them go?" The devil smiled, thinking he had found terms that Jesus would never fulfill. He said, "Ok, I want your blood to be spilt for them, and I want you to be humiliated for crimes that you never committed. I want you to be crowned as a mockery to your throne. I want your body to be stabbed and bled during an execution. Lastly, I want you crucified and I want you to die painfully. Not as God, but as a man." Being rather satisfied with these ridiculous terms, the devil began to laugh and started counting all the souls in his possession. Jesus looked at him, with peace in His heart and a tear in His eye, and said, "Done."

It's easy to say, "Jesus came to earth to set me free and died for me". It is a great Sunday School answer, but the next time you examine how poorly your life is going or how "no one loves you" think about in detail what this man went through to clean our hands. No one loved him enough. Now we do, because we know what He did. Even his disciples were quick to deny Him when he was on the road to Calvary. Before you dismiss this journal think, would you deny him? Do you deny him today? If he walked down the street, would you worship him? Or would you just walk by on the other side of the road? He loves you, always has, and always will. He knew the sacrifice he had to make the minute he formed the heavens and the earth. I submit this to provoke your thought.
Blessings,
Gavin

Pretty sure that he wrote this himself, I googled sentences from it, so it's at least not a common passage. To look at this from a utilitarian point of view, can anyone really be surprised at Jesus' resolution? For the physical life of one man (who happened to be an eternal being anyway, so whoopdy-fucking-do if he died), he could rescue the souls of everyone? Even today, this view of the human life and soul being priceless is still demonstrated daily in courtrooms and hospitals, so how can the actions of one ethereal being be decided to be any more noble than those shown by humans, even those who don't believe in Jesus? People sacrificing themselves isn't exactly rare. It's respected, but it's not as uncommon as you'd think.

And to follow from this, if Jesus died to save us all, why does he still decide to turn some away? That would be the equivalent of rescuing a kitten (kitten metaphors are popular today) from the pound only to dump it on the road as you drive away, leaving it to its own devices (I'm reminded of the scene in House of Leaves where the woman kills the puppy after begging someone else to take it home, was it an act of salvation or just cruelty?). And to follow that with what was said earlier about predestined futures, what happens there? Are we predestined to be damned back to hell, and Jesus knows that this will occur yet does it anyway, all because you don't believe in him, which is apparently something you cannot conciously control. The whole thing just reeks of irrationality, and how can one worship a being who does not even stand up to simple tests of logic?

In short, if this guy doesn't end up running a cult in five years, I'll eat my hat. Hats are actually nutritious, believe it or not.

Work all weekend, picking up new computer on Tuesday and pretending to study for exams until Friday, even though I'll just be playing Half Life 2 and contemplating investigating avenues of neurotransmitter-modifying chemicals, just like my Psychology lecturer recommended. There's much more I can write about, but a lot of it is uninteresting and I'm starting to keep more and more to myself lately, I've never been good at talking to people, and especially not a meaningless text box.

Okay, really done with it this time.

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 13:33:40 GMT

I was trying to think of something to post about, but I gave up and resorted to playing minimalist interactive fiction games instead.

This one is called "Don't Pick Up The Phone Booth".

The Town Square
You are standing in the middle of a pretty town square in the center of a nondescript New England town. Like most any other nondescript New England towns, there's not much to see or do here, but maybe you'll find something amusing and enjoyable to do.

A shiny metal phone booth sits in the center of the square.

>enter phone booth
The booth is welded shut. Sucks to be you.

>look at booth
It looks like any other normal phone booth you might see in any other normal city, but this one has the words "PHONE BOOTH" scratched out and "P#0N3 B00TH" instead.
Someone has also added a smiley face under the two 00s in "B00TH".

>pick up phone booth
You grunt with all your might and heave the phone booth onto your shoulders. For a moment or two it looks as if you're not going to be able to lift it, but heroically you finally lift it high in the air! Seconds later, however, you topple underneath the weight, and the booth crushes you fatally. Geez! Didn't I tell you not to pick up the phone booth?! Isn't the name of this very game "Pick Up The Phone Booth and Die"?! Man, you're dense. No big loss to humanity, I tell ya.

*** You have died ***

In that game you scored 0 out of a possible 100, in 3 turns, giving you the rank of total and utter loser, squished to death by a damn phone booth.

Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, give the FULL score for that game or QUIT?
> restart

100 points is a bit daunting, so I guess I'm supposed to explore.

The Town Square
You are standing in the middle of a pretty town square in the center of a nondescript New England town. Like most any other nondescript New England towns, there's not much to see or do here, but maybe you'll find something amusing and enjoyable to do.

A shiny metal phone booth sits in the center of the square.

>n
You can't go that way.

>s
You can't go that way.

>e
You can't go that way.

>w
You can't go that way.

>help
That's not a verb I recognise.

>damn it
I only understood you as far as wanting to damn.

>damn yourself
I only understood you as far as wanting to damn.

>oh well
That's not a verb I recognise.

>fuck
Not even on your birthday.

>shit
We're not here to discuss your diet.

>okay
That's not a verb I recognise.

>kick phone booth
That's not a verb I recognise.

>punch
(the phone booth)
Sure, that looks non suspicious, a psychopath attacking a phone booth.

>push booth
You give the damn phone booth a mighty push and watch as, in a brilliant slow-motion display, it topples over, glass sides shattering onto the lawn, welded door crumpling under the impact, the phone itself flying off the hook and landing pathetically in a mass of metal and plastic. You have the distinct feeling that the booth will bother you no more.

[Your score has just gone up by one hundred points.]

>pick up booth
You've pushed it over. You've won. No need to pick it up now.

A familiar sound now comes out of the phone's receiver, lying pathetically on the ground. You glare in satisfaction as you to the repetitive BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP sound and then as the recorded voice of the Operator, the person you're going to marry someday, comes on and says...

"... if you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again ..."

*** You have won ***

In that game you scored 100 out of a possible 100, in 6 turns, giving you the rank of phone booth pusher-over extraordinare!

This stuff is great, much better than playing Enter The Matrix.