now

holy shit look at the time, and you only half dressed, only half there. Not all there haha. Not even half, now I examine it. You are three-eighths there and five eighths somewhere else. Thing is I need you here, not there, not three eighths of the time not nine sixteenths. All the sixteenths, all the time. here. now

you’re not dressed, look at the time.

you’ll break that, forcing it, you’ll break it and I won’t fix it for you. I could but pride would stop me and pride is the only reason to bother with anything. Pride keeps it interesting, in the end what else is at stake? You broke that on purpose. give it to me. let me see. I’ll try. now

get dressed, we’re out of time.

# 4 9 7

If I could come back in life as anybody I want, I’d choose me so I wouldn’t have to get all new ID.

Of course that will all change once they activate the chips, the ones they’ve been implanting in newborns since 1948. They’re waiting until everyone born before then dies then they’ll activate the chips and an entire planet of people will suddenly be hardwired wirelessly to each other and everyone will hear what everyone else is thinking. Since thinking doesn’t actually make any sound this will culminate in a cataclysmic silence.

A quiet so quiet it sucks up all sound. A black hole of sound. Humanity, floating in the void, embryonic and deaf. And then, maybe then, I can get some fucking work done.

guy that knows the guy gets the pie

I picture a dusty wide spot in the road and a diner of sorts made from two shipping containers welded together. Wooden sign with holes drilled and light bulbs inserted. Not neon, just 60 watt cool whites her brother scoffed from the factory he works at. Window and door holes cut from the walls with a torch and finished off with a grinder, sharp and shiny. Mind the edges when you go in, but go on in and sit down. Order up some pie, or ham, it’s up to you but when you’re in there check out the jukebox. Push the buttons and flip the flippers and in spot 6643A you’ll find an album by an obscure band from the future that everybody forgot. On the cover of that album is a picture of the band from the old days, before the drummer quit to join NASA, when they were still young and cocky and thought their music would help change the world, just from the pure joy it brought them to play it. Also they smoked heroin quite often, probably more than is good for you. And on the back are listed 6 songs, it’s an EP really, more like a demo, and the third song on that album was written in part by somebody who would say “The name rings a bell” if my name were mentioned to him in the morning, before he was drunk.

And I picture me going into that hell-diner in the dusty cactus backland, high noon hot as fuck, and I say to the limp-haired girl, I say “It’s me, the guy who knows the guy on the album” and she looks up, brushes a wisp of brown hair from her eye, says “whatever” in a her lacklustre casual-concerned way and slops me up some pie on a plate, or saucer, depends on your definition, and it’s no charge because I’m the guy that knows the guy.

influence

If I was more charismatic, had more charm, I’d convince everybody to take off their shoes and throw them up in a tree as a symbolic gesture of one kind or another. Maybe for the fight against whale abortions. It’s got to stop, people. Anyway I’d get them all riled up about something and get them to huck those shoes as high up a tree as they could. Nothing funnier than watching the whole world try to fish its shoes out of a tree with a stick.

But I wouldn’t have that kind of influence, not like a Kennedy or the cute drummer in a boy-band that plays its own instruments but has help with the songs, not like Paris Hilton or Paris Texas or Tex Perkins or Carl Perkins or Charles Manson. I’m too lazy to drum up support, I appear sallow on television, my left thumb does not bend correctly and never has. People suspect I broke it, but I was born that way. Makes it hard to play certain chords on the guitar. No, I have no business trying to lead people.

Jesus had good thumbs, fine long thumbs. Couldn’t play guitar worth shit, though. I believe he preferred the banjo. Bluegrass. People warm to that, people like that. And Jesus could make wine at will, also heroin, a lot of people like that too. So it’s no wonder Jesus had so many disciples. I wonder if he ever tried the shoes-in-the-tree thing. Probably not. They wore sandals then and trees weren’t invented yet.

#494

Got these crazy mutant red moth-wasps that come out at night and bat against the screens trying to get at the light. They act like moths and associate with them, but are red and thin-winged, multi-sectioned and equipped with black pointy stingers at the aft end. They don’t do waspy things like fly about with purpose or lay their eggs in the nest of another insect where they develop under the care of unsuspecting host parents who’s final parental duty is to be devoured as a last meal for the pupating larvae. Nothing so ironic as that. They do unoriginal, mothy things like smack into walls and make kamikaze dives into the reading lamp above Mrs Joe’s chair causing a chain reaction of confused batting and flapping about.

I spoke to Big Daz about the moth-wasps, he knows almost as much about Australia as I do, having actually been born and raised here (you’d think he’d know more than me, but he’s got a narrow attention span, claims to have never heard the song “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffet) and he’s never seen the likes of them around here before, either.

The government finally called the election and if they’re sticking with past tactics they’ll want to drum up fear of something like immigrants or Muslims or crazed teenage drug addicted gang-rapers. I bet they released the moth-wasps so they can eradicate the flying red menace just in time to save The Australian Way and handily win a fourth term, second longest in Aussie history. Bastards, one of the damn things stung me the other night and I had to kill it with a rolled up magazine. That, sir, is no democracy.

sub-heading ineffective

Did you miss me? No, don’t suppose you did. Oh well, we’re here now so let’s just get on with it. Have a letter here from a young reader:

Dear Skookum Joe,

My name is Tabitha and I am 8 months old. I have been reading your blog for most of my life (we were on holiday in June) but have not yet, as your sub-heading warns, become indifferent. My interest toward life and the world around me remains acute. At the moment I have quite a fascination with shiny things and pooing. I also have a box with a crank-handle and some sort of pop-up lid that I won’t open. I have tried bashing it on the floor and on the walls but so far the lid remains firmly and tantalizingly in place. Perhaps cranking the handle will somehow unlock the lid and allow me access to whatever shiny things might be inside. I’m just waiting for a quiet moment to explore this angle.

So you see Mr Joe, I can’t be indifferent when the world is full of shiny things, mystery boxes and poo.

To which I replied

Dear Tabitha,

How did you get this address? Are you stalking me? Yes, poo is fun.

Sincerely,
SJ

squawk off

Had a parrot looking in the kitchen window this morning. The old owners used to feed them and we haven’t gotten around to carrying on the tradition. Parrots land on the bird feeder, a platform hung in a tree, only to find it bare. They look at the feeder, they look at the house, they squawk curses like a three-year-old in sugar withdrawal. Bastards.

They don’t even talk. Polly got a cracker because Polly learned the un-natural act of vocalizing in a manner similar to human speech, as have many of the people I work with. That’s certainly worth a cracker. But not these bastards, they just want a free lunch. Sure, last Sunday they staged Death Of A Salesman in the back yard, but I found the dialogue forced and the actors ill-rehearsed. And they left the green room a mess, bird shit everywhere.

I’m pulling my funding and moving it to a dog I heard about that paints with a rag on a stick. It’s a better tax write-off too because he’s a veteran. A lot of his work is very dark, but he’s housebroken and can balance a treat on his nose.

And he won’t squawk at me at 5:30am as I stand in the kitchen trying to remember how coffee is made, reassuring myself it’s only 25 years or so until I don’t have to go to work anymore.

#491

Having us an election soon. They haven’t said when yet, this government is coy. But there are a lot of ads suddenly, on TV and in the letterbox, crowing about all the good things brought to us by that government. Vague things like a 2.71% increase in the cost of living index adjusted for inflation averaged over 7 years – but hey, the guy in the picture has a big Thumbs Up going there, so it’s probably good.

Speaking of the government I was checking the dogs for ticks earlier. I thought I found one on Jessie but on closer inspection it was a wart. Either that or a tick with a hair growing out of it. That’s the government, they act at being relevant then turn out to be either a superfluous nipple or a very slow blood-sucker.

They say with all the global warming around these days that Australia’s climate zones are going to reverse – hot and dry in the South and not quite so hot and dry in the North. Meanwhile they’re planting crops in Greenland because the dirt thawed out and Canada is claiming sovereignty of part of the North West Passage because the water thawed out. Soon the bodies will thaw out and I won’t ever be able to go home.