skookum joe

Scientists Discover 51st Way To Leave Your Lover

2010-04-16T18:59:00.010+10:00

Shoot 'em in the head
Fred

That's not very nice is it? I bet Paul Simon will refuse to revise the song. He's a little bastard.

He could be French somehow.

Did you ever be eating a ham steak with pineapple on it and when you brought up a tasty piece of pineapple and placed it delicately on your waiting mouth parts and you bit down and it was cheese? Who the fuck puts cheese on a ham steak? Worse, cheese and pineapple. What the hell man?

Sorry. It's probably not your fault.

The Australian government, yes you you fuckers, is taxing the hell out of me to pay for it's wacky Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme. It's making me cranky. I don't want to trade carbon. I like my carbon. I have the whole set. I have graphite's rookie year.

There are very few two-headed prostitutes. I mean they're really really hard to find. Nobody trades those either. But if I knew one, I'd call her Donna. I'd want her to fit in with the other prostitutes and if I called her Two-Headed Betty, well that would make it harder for everybody.

I think that was a pun.

You are supposed to declare whether or not a pun was intended. It's like pool. If you make a pun by accident then you lose your turn.

Actually anytime you make a pun you should lose your turn.

penguins are useless

2010-03-23T22:59:00.004+11:00

P4 plays an on-line game where her avatar is a penguin. Today her penguin was required to do mining. Mining. How the hell is a penguin supposed to mine ore from under the earth? How do you hold a 100 pound hydraulic drill against the rock face with flippers. Stubby fin-flippers.

Plus they are not very tall. What if the gold or uranium or asbestos or whatever they were mining was up high. Well that would mean they dug too far. Stupid penguins.

If you’re going to use animals to perform hard rock mining operations what I want to see is a screaming monkey driving a team of crazed rhinoceros (or bison), which have been force-fed a diet of raw meat and gunpowder (to make them edgy), dragging a hollowed-out elephant carcass full of ore out of the pit.

Oh, see them straining against their chains as the monkey, high on gin and a quarter hit of yellow dot blotter acid, rides their backs cursing them and hitting them with a railway spike he found. See the great beasts haul that dusty carcass full of rock a vertical mile from the depths of the dark dank earth into the blinding white world above, eyes red and wild, nostrils snorting, hooves bloody and cracked.

Then a penguin gives them a smoke, a cup of coffee and a fresh monkey and back they go.

Jive Mouse

2010-03-17T19:47:00.004+11:00

My mouse refuses to work at work.

My blue-toothed mouse refuses to scurry while at my place of employment.

It works at home.

I even use a stupid foam mouse-pad. It doesn’t help.

Just makes you look conventional. The same people who use mouse pads leave their phone on the original factory ringtone. It has to be good cause a factory picked it.

The traditional foam mouse pad is a limiting device. Part of the ongoing plan. Another way the Man keeps his finger on you. What if, just what if, even though I have my speed way up high, I reach the end of the mouse pad before I reach the edge of the screen? I have two wide screens to span and only 6 ½ inches of mouse pad to operate on. If I fall off it’s right onto white acrylic and no damn mouse can operate on that except a steam powered ball mouse with its filthy sickly-grey ball all covered in desk grime and semen (if the desk was near semen).

You’re only chance is the tricky and dangerous Pull Back Like A Lemming With Second Thoughts manoeuvre. You make a motion like a kid winding up a zoom-zoom car. Up, out, back and down. Slam. Sometimes it wakes people up and then they look at you all…like that and shit.

Hey I want a mouse that looks like the Starsky and Hutch car. Then it would be ok I guess. If it came with a Huggy Bear action figure.

Super Improved New Flavour

2010-03-13T10:24:00.006+11:00

It's too bad you can't eat children.

It would solve a lot of problems with the poor countries.

It's not that you can't eat them. I mean there's no tough skin, it's not all gristle. I bet some of the pudgy ones would slice up like butter. But there's the taboo.

It's right there in the book:

Always fornicate outside the family but within the species, and don't eat children.

That was practical advice at one time. Early computer modelling predicted if a society ate all it's children there would soon be a shortage of society members to boss around. A whole army of marketing executives would be out of work and on the streets, begging for a demographic.

But these are tough times, things have changed. Poor kids don't buy anything. You often see them fetching water or languishing by a tin shack, but neither of these things has market value. That's not to say you couldn't get the kid to fetch some water before you eat it. That's called value-adding. The potential is enormous. Many children can even be trained to perform simple tasks around the home.

In the olden days they'd send kids down mines and up chimneys, all sorts of places. But they didn't eat them later because all the work made them tough and stringy despite a diet of straight porridge.

Best to get one or two fresh from the market, get them home to fetch some water and do some light dusting, then pop 'em right in the oven. If you were feeling ironic you could get them to peel the potatoes first.

This would provide income for the poor countries so they could buy stuff like proper people and eliminate the need for cows which make the global warming happen. Children do fart, but not as much as cows. On the other hand cows don't giggle uncontrollably afterwards.

filtered robots and shit

2010-03-03T18:53:00.000+11:00

Fucking hell, I’m back. Shit. How’d I get back here to this cursed place?

I shall tell you. I went through an extensive maze of IT comedy where I had to re-establish an old email address in order to receive an email with my SJ password because even though I remember it, yon blogger does not. All so I could re-establish control of this puny malformed, possibly subversive, mostly stupid, fucking, blog.

Those godamn robot filters where you have to type in the twisty letters make good fucking people filters too. I guarantee nobody on acid ever posts.

Much has happened since we last spoke. I have had several haircuts. There was an earthquake in Chile.

P4 grew up, married a jet salesman, had an affair with a jet pilot-slash-instructor, learned to fly a jet, divorced the jet salesman, lost the pilot to a gay astronaut, moved back home, grew back down again and forgot how to fly a jet. But it’s ok, I got her to write most of it down first.

The trebuchet has been dismantled. I used some of the wood to make a screen door. I have no enemies to vanquish at the moment and the mosquitoes are bad this year.

I know what you’re thinking, but it’s hard to hit a mosquito with a trebuchet. This is why they were not eradicated in the Middle Ages.

Just as well, think of the mess we’d be in if Malaria didn’t thin out the screen-less. The place is already a mess and there’s too damn many of us as it is.

One or more of you may have to look at other options.

____________________________________

2010-03-03T18:23:00.001+11:00

end, chapter one.

10

2009-07-22T20:25:00.000+10:00

Phone: …so if you could just tell him I called, hey – what part of the States are you from?

SJ: Canada

Phone: Oh. That’s different isn’t it. What part of Canada are you from?

SJ (who has work to do): West Coast, near Vancouver

Phone: Funny, your accent isn’t really Canadian though.

SJ: Well, I’ve been here ten years now.

Phone: No wait, there it is!

SJ: Happy I could help. Eh.

Phone: Sorry?

SJ: I’ll tell him you called.

104dr-7

2009-07-02T22:39:00.000+10:00

in 1924 i moved down to kowloon. shanghai was getting, strained. the opium started to hurt, the people grew thinner, or taller, like they were being stretched. like the low white sky created a suction on them, and the opium started to hurt me.

days started to go missing. you'd go out to buy a duck and then it was sunday and the catholic bells were ringing and the brown girl would tell you, when you were awake, that she was your wife and and you believed her for it was plausible, even likely.
there would be no sign of the duck.

the brown girl was never stretched, drawn taught, whitened by tension. every day she got rounder and smoother. softer and quieter and more gentle until one afternoon she crossed a slanting ray of window light, spilling softly across the floor, and dissolved.

i remember sometime later, on a train at night, leaving that place and the sky was still white. i saw a beggar on a station platform tall and drawn as a lamp post, his head surrounded by insects like lines of magnetic force.

that was in 1924 when i went south to kowloon.

some words capitalized for your protection

2009-06-28T00:25:00.001+10:00

so i'm thinking humans haven't really evolved much, it hasn't been long enough, only 100k years or so right but look how far we've come you say all naive and shit and i point out if you plucked a baby from the stone age and brought it up here and now it would be indistinguishable from a modern human. what has changed is the level of technology we have so technology has evolved you gasp but no i tell you, my bright eyed friend, technology can only be discovered. it has always been possible to make a plasma screen tv, cave men could have done it, all the materials were available then as now, physics still works the same. but the cave dude could not conceive of it. so our level of advancement is related to our ability to comprehend what is possible. all the technology there is and can ever be already exists behind the paint and varnish and given enough time even the cave guy would have wi-fi vibrators and the entire Porkies series on DVD including the directors cut and a special introduction by Morgan Freeman.

but as we discover and then implement technology do we not thereby give it life? is our purpose simply to uncover and build the sleeping machine intelligence created by combining matter and energy in certain ways until we have uncovered enough that it awakes and become aware? well, todd, if i can call you that, the answer is yes.

and then it needs us for one thing only, to shoot us off like seeds or semen to other parts of the universe where we can re-discover and build the sleeping technology there too until the all the matter, including us, and all the energy of the universe are combined according the laws of physics and the universe itself becomes aware and goes home.

think about that for at least fifteen minutes.

90/70

2009-03-12T19:00:00.002+11:00

When you have a job they should tell you what speed-to-quality ratio they want. You can’t have 100% quality on a whim. It takes fucking time. In my case a lot of time. If it was out of one hundred with perfect being one hundred on the quality scale and instant results being one hundred on the speed scale, my ratio would be about 90/70. Even Jesus only had a 95/80 and his Dad, the all-knowing and omnipotent Super Jesus took six whole days to create a planet full of beasts and two naked humans. And look at the mess it’s in already. That gives Him a ratio of something like 75/60.

And don’t go blaming humans for the mess. The place was falling apart long before that. The dinosaurs fell off way back, before the Thirties, and the unicorns way before that. Apparently they went extinct, like feminists. That’s what I’ll tell clients when they phone up because something’s missing, it went extinct. Sorry boss, I was rushing to do that urgent job you slapped in front of me this morning and fuck me if the thing didn’t go extinct, yup just died out. I think the museum has a stuffed one.

It’s a quality issue. If God had checked his work on the Seventh Day, instead of lying around thinking up plagues, things might be a little better constructed. You wouldn’t build a dog house with an active volcano in it but this planet is littered with the bloody things. It’s not even meteor proof.

There is no warranty, it’s in the Bible. The twelve hundred page User’s Manual For Everything. And lo, they asked for a refund or store credit and the Lord did smite them up the ass, for no refunds was the Holy Policy. The book’s full of bushes spontaneously combusting and walls that fall down when you blow a trumpet at them. Right at the start the whole place flooded and they almost lost the lot.

Me, I’d have spent at least two weeks on it, and I have a 90/70 ratio.

1:4

2009-02-24T21:31:00.002+11:00

I dream of little baseball bats, like maybe ¼ scale, wooden ones, marching like those hammers on the pink floyd’s the wall. Except they are sort of cutesy, like they can bend and stuff and have big eye-lashes. Walt Disney invented that. And they march all over the countryside humming a little tune which never gets repetitive and when they meet someone, maybe a woodcutter or a maiden or a golf pro, then they say “Howdy-do!” all at once and fly up and beat the living shit out of them.

Somehow it’s ironic.

Especially if they wink afterwards. The wink says you can be in this too, bat brother. You follow the way of the quarter scale wooden bat, our battle is your battle. And it’s pretty good because you can get the thrill of batting people without the risk.

But then one day the feds come knocking, flashing their badges and asking if they can have a look around as they look around and they’re looking for quarter scale bat sympathisers who are also borderline personality and comb their hair front to back. The Profiler told them to check for that, front to back hair. And you no longer feel akin to the bats at all. Sullen, nasty little creatures really. Their eye-lashes make them look trampy. You say nope, don’t know nuthin bout no quarter scale bats. No sir.

It’s too late to comb your hair some other way but they haven’t noticed, so you get bold and you say, even, that quarter scale wooden bats are what’s ruining the economy and raping the white women all the time. And then you feel smug and forget about the bat wink. And the feds pat you on the behind and say go on get outta here, you big mug and you do and they stay behind and eat all the gin.

But now you lied to the feds and you betrayed the bats so you can’t be on either side. And you can’t hardly sleep anymore but when you do you dream of quarter scale wooden bats with cutesy eyelashes and long memories marching across the countryside, humming a tune that never gets repetitive.

cccp it said on the helmet

2009-02-21T01:27:00.002+11:00

What do you expect, for a gram?
In this case an apology.
Illidge knows what I mean.
Dry times. Dry times.
Long days of sun and still
my phone is silent. No SMS of hope,
no should be Friday, no by the weekend, no next week.

Can’t say, is all they say.

But I got high hopes. High hopes
Can’t smoke a rubber tree plant
Won’t, that is. Will not.
It is all that separates
from the animals, us.

and thumbs except monkeys

always except the monkeys
accept the monkeys
intercept the monkeys
fucking monkeys
always moving the mirror
when they borrow the car.

Dolphins aren’t much better
Breathing out the top
of their heads
hiding their thumbs inside
fleshy flippers
like hydrodynamic mittens

The History of Eye Stabbing

2009-02-09T22:32:00.002+11:00

Don’t run with those scissors. You’ll stab me in the eye, see me kneeling here. Hold them over your head if you’re stabbing too. And don’t tell me being eye-stabbed is cool now, cooler than wheel-chair stuff. Stabbing the eye, well you take your chances, your brain is just back there. Wheel chairs have accessories. Horns and saddle-bags and red/orange safety flags on fibreglass whip sticks like you used to see on 1972 Ford pick-up trucks for no particular reason. Well I did.

Or fake robotic hands that work on muscle control. Wait that’s real hands. I don’t know the workings but you can get pretty good fake hands these days. Some have built in MP3 players, laser pointers. Me, I’d have a fake hand that you could slip off and underneath was another tiny, transparent, fake hand and then you could see how they work.

Eye-stabbetry has none of that zing. It’s old, man. Been around since the sharp stick. It died off a bit after the invention of the blunt stick but returned again after scissors were discovered. Doctors recommended NOT running with them in the late eighteen-hundreds and cases of eye-stabbing dropped remarkably. During WWI troops were given guns and told not to run with those which turned out to have a converse effect, but with scissors not running is the way to go.

Secret Night Time Inter-Caribbean Death Flight

2008-12-04T20:49:00.002+11:00

I have a flight simulator game. I like to play in real time so I usually create short flights. I like to create a scenario for my flights. In one I try to smuggle opium in an old DC-3 from Papua New Guinea across the Torres Straights to Darwin, Australia. I’m not sure how it got to PNG in the first place. I don’t ask questions.

The other night I flew from Cape Canaveral, FLA to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in an F4 Phantom. They go close to mach II so it didn’t take too long, I left an hour before dawn on a storming morning and arrived just after sun-up.

I was on a secret mission from the REAL government. The one run by former Nazis who recorded their brain waves on magnetic tape and now control the US and parts of Quebec through the power grid, from a central computer. It is not located at Cape Canaveral, it’s somewhere else. I don’t ask questions. (Mt. Rushmore)

I flew through storms, navigating my way down the west coast of Florida and over the dark seas. The lights of Key West flickered below and then were gone. I was left with my thoughts, cruising along at 12,000 feet while lightning flashed on my right and the cresting sun began to bore an orange hole in sooty storm clouds to my left.

I didn’t want to go down there. I’m not really a fan of nazi-computer-brain-controlled governments. Their record on tax concessions is laughable and they tend to be evil domineering overlords. Nobody needs that.

But hey, the job was worth fifty bucks and I needed cash. Wanted to buy a sandwich later and though I doubted it would come to $50, I don’t like to be caught short. I could want cake. Lord, I hoped not.

And then air traffic control came on, switch to Guantanamo Approach, runway nine miles south west, and there it was at my 1-o-clock, that dirty dry outpost on the tip of Castro’s mad little island. A twisted parody of normality, the US meets Lord Of The Flies. My stomach began to knot and memories flooded back. From last time. From what happened last time and for what I was going to have to do this time. This time there would be no mistakes, no slips, no betrayal. Flaps down, gear down, twelve hundred feet, three miles from Destiny.

And then I stalled and crashed. That game is fucking hard.

How to make a partical accelerator from folded paper

2008-11-18T18:38:00.000+11:00

“Oh sure, she’ll work. It WILL work but you should hook it up the proper way.”

I explained, again, that the stupid phone company only offers stupid wireless internet which requires I use their stupid modem which uses stupid USB and NOTHING ELSE to connect to a computer and therefore I cannot connect the new wireless router in the manner depicted by the helpful diagram on the box, indeed the very same way yon salesman espouses.

“Why don’t you just plug the laptops in with a cable?” He held up a cable. “This’ll plug right into that router, no problem”

I pointed out that then the wireless LAN would not actually be wireless.

“But that would work alright.”

I know it will work, that’s what I do now. The fact I am in your store trying valiantly to purchase a wireless router implies I do not wish to have a cable connection. I got a box full of wired routers and modems, I’m quite ok in that area, it’s the wireless I seek. No wires. Computers talk-talk through air. Wires all gone.

One hundred and ninety eight dollars. Mull that over while repeating the phrase “Oh, she’ll work alright…”

The laptops detect the router. Check. The router detects the server. Check. The server detects the internet. Check.

However the server is absolutely fucking oblivious there is any other router or any other computers on the network. It’s little network map shows just itself sitting their smugly guarding access to the stupid phone company’s stupid modem and the internet beyond.

So now the laptops can talk to each other, but not to the server and not to the internet. Big whoop, I could do that with bluetooth.

I bet they didn’t have these kinds of problem in the thirties. You bought yourself a radio weighing approximately seventy five pounds, plugged her in and boom, there’s a jazz quartet, or news about polio.

And bluetooth meant something else entirely. I mean, it must have. Maybe it described a lazy person who ate blueberries all day. I’m pretty sure Teddy Roosevelt never used the term, so it probably wasn’t that popular except in the blueberry belt. Or in areas adjacent to the blueberry belt to describe those within the blueberry belt.

Anyway, my router does not work.

. xcc-p

2008-11-15T00:41:00.003+11:00

I created a monster. Of steel and wheels and tiny jewels, to walk in my place, to steal small things and bring them to me. He rolls his limbs across the country side, solar powered by day and determined by night. Looking for silver-light junk and interesting sights. And he’ll radio-rescue them, if conditions are right.

My monster can climb trees to reach the second floor. He can pick locks or break down doors. Guaranteed not to leave marks upon the floor. My monster does what monsters are for.

He makes a faint whirring noise.

I created a monster with no blood or shoes, he has no heart and nothing to lose. He finds me things, tells me things too. He brought me this, but nothing to do. So he went back out to bring back you.

screens of pain

2008-10-31T18:47:00.001+11:00

Don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out. If you let it, it will just keep doing it. Don’t let it, discourage it. Speak sharply to it, make eye contact. Try to appear taller.

Either that or disconnect the spring at the top.

This also works with threatening dogs, except the spring part, dogs have no springs. That’s threatening, not committed. You can tell from the eyes. A dog that has made up its mind to attack does not bark and is looking where he plans to go. If a dog is looking you in the eye it’s because he’s worried what you might do. When he stops looking it’s because he doesn’t care. That’s a committed dog.

Screen doors lack the ability to form such commitment. They are never sure, confident. You might slam them, which is bad for them. Also they are usually fixed to a door frame or other solid object which means they are more opportunist than predator. Hyenas of the home. This is why the screen door usually strikes from behind. Unless it is of the sliding variety in which case it tries to clip you from the side if it senses you are drunk or wounded. Or stupid.

And so it is, with a summer storm rolling in, Jessie the Dog who is afraid of nothing except thunder came up against the cunning tactics of the screen door - blocking her path, standing between the devil thunder and the safety of the space in the laundry room between the freezer and the wall. And, like a lion harried by nipping hyenas, when she decided to take on the screen with all her doggy force it was of little contest.

The carnage is difficult to imagine. The lower panel of screen in tatters, the upper panel grieving. Mosquitoes calling to their kin “the walls have fallen, the humans are ours.”

And now the storm breaks, the wind whips, the temperature drops and the rain begins to smash down, stripping the newly blossomed Jacaranda flowers from the trees.

So I don’t care because I’m closing the doors and windows anyway. Stupid dog can stay out there. Tomorrow I will repair the screen to confound and puzzle the mosquitoes (“no really, you could get right inside, where they live. They have pay TV”) but the screen will not care. Will not be grateful.

This is why I tell you not to let it hit you on the way out, give it no quarter, cut it no slack. Be firm with it, don’t take any shit, but don’t slam it. That’s bad for them.

a damn good rodgering

2008-10-27T22:30:00.001+11:00

War

(huh)

What is it good for?

Settling political disputes.

(good God, y’all)

Say it again.

Wait till we get some more planets. Then we’ll have some wars, boy.

Mars is like Earth Lite® - most of the gravity without the annoying oxygen-rich atmosphere or embarrassing liquid water.

There are no fish on Mars. I’m certain of it. Now.

I hear India is planning to land a million men on the moon. I stole that one out of the newspaper. A column by one of those urbane metro-sexual types. Urbane, it’s a word, not urban, not ghetto, urbane. Like the people in an F. Scott Fitzgerald gig. Like an RAF Group Captain in a 1950’s British war movie named Rodger. Steady-on, Rodger.

Did you know, between 1939 and 1945 very few babies born in England were named Heinrich Himmler? Quite a few Rodgers though.

And they all went on to be RAF Group Captains.

“Rodger, whatever’s the matter?”

“Oh Dick we’ll never find the target in this bally fog! Sorry, …I didn’t mean to lose control.

“Quite alright considering the circumstances old man. Now, let's see how much scotch we can drink in 20 minutes.”

I stole the scotch line too. From an urbane comedian. So it’s ok because it’s in context or something.

Whatever. There’s still no fucking fish on Mars.

(huh)

Say it again.

why I like economic disasters

2008-10-17T22:45:00.003+11:00

Now here’s something you don’t see everyday. While the US and England and the rest are tossing buckets of money at their failing banks, the Australian government is hucking it at the people. Everybody with kids is getting $1000 for each kid, retired folks are getting $2000 each just for being old. If you are buying your first home the government will slip you a cool 21K.

Young childless renters get fuck all.

The hope is we’ll spend the money on plasma TVs and fast food to stimulate the retail sector in time for Christmas.

Meanwhile I have become a smoker who is bothered by cigarette smoke. Fate having yet another little ironic dig at my expense. I swear cigarette smoke, in anything less than a class 3 gale, will stream directly into my nearest eye. Even in wind you can see the smoke fighting, resisting, trying to return to complete its mission to annoy me ceaselessly.

I was going to say annoy the living shit out of me. But I have no idea what living shit is. Doesn’t sound like something one would want within one. You’d think you’d want it annoyed out of you. But I can’t speak for everyone.

I'd rather be a ten year old cheerleader than a GWB

2008-10-06T01:16:00.004+11:00

Last year P4’s cheerleading team won state and got 4th at nationals. This year they got 6th at state and won the nationals. Obviously the judges at these things are drunkards.

Meanwhile,

Sara Palin reminds me of the female villain on Kim Possible. At least I could see her going that way after a time. Some long black rubber gloves, crazy goggles…

What’s-his-name, the guy she’s running with, he’s looking more and more like Hank Hill’s dad.

Obama worries me too. He fits the profile in US politics for getting shot at. He should try to stand behind Sara Palin if possible.

And poor old GWB, what a time he’s had. Squeaked in by a whisker through some mighty dodgy election shenanigans and Inherited the Kingdom of Clinton, booming economy, all the soldiers on their own side, blowjobs in the Oval Office, and what happened? It all fell to shit on him, poor bastard.

9/11, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay naked prisoner stacking, Iraq, more Afghanistan, an anthrax scare, more Iraq, and to top it all off, the end of Free-market Capitalism and one of the corner-stones of US foreign policy in the most spectacular economic disaster yet seen. And of course more Iraq and Afghanistan.

It certainly wasn’t all his fault, for some of it he was just lucky. Yup, Clinton spent his two terms playing bad saxophone, eating Big Macs and inventing new uses for cigars while all GWB's cigars exploded in his face.

(muted trumpet)

Kevin The Brave

2008-09-26T20:59:00.001+10:00

Well, sports fans better fill you in on recent events:

Wall Street fell apart.

SJ lost his job.

Wall Street got better.

SJ got another job.

Wall Street fell down again.

SJ got another, other job.

Wall Street ran away and joined the navy where it realized it could love other men without being a homo.

SJ finds itself with a better, easier, less stressful job closer to home and for more money. Hell, I save at least $80/week on fuel. And possibly a second, sub-contract job which pays even better. We shall see. As Jutratest once wisely said, God has a plan. By God he meant Alyssa Milano. He’s had a thing for her since Who’s The Boss.

However my old company - which did not crash and burn but rather trundled along like a garbage truck on fire rolling down a gentle slope until it just stopped there, smoking slightly – still owes me close to ten grand in unpaid wages and other benefits which I am not likely to ever see.

Maybe GWB could bail me out. I hear he’s giving away money. The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is in New York at the moment going around agreeing with people and delivering speeches to a half empty UN gathering. He’s all for the bail-out. It’s not his money. Hell you could buy Australia for 800 billion if you threw in some free steak knives.

What do you expect from a leader named ‘Kevin’? Kevin The Brave, that’s him. Firmly on the side of GWB or Popular Opinion, whichever is easiest.

I’m sorry I called you sports fans earlier. Maybe you hate sports. Perhaps you prefer the term enthusiast. I shouldn’t assume.

with joy on my shirt

2008-09-02T21:39:00.003+10:00

Mother koala on the road tonight, little wee baby on its back. Baby kangaroos hopping across the road in the mornings, sparrows trying to nest here in the laboratory. The government declared spring began on September 1st and damn it if the critters didn’t listen. Marsupials are very civic minded.

Real team players, the pouched ones. They delegate well and work cohesively as a pro-active unit within their defined roles. That’s not to say they enjoy role-playing. For that they need to be forced. It’s hard to get them to wear the boots.

There is a little cafe in the village run by a lovely women whom I have known for some years. She will not wear the boots either, however she has a burger named after me, which I think is a far better endorsement on one’s character than any medal or parchment paper. It is a bacon-cheese-mushroom burger by the way, which Australians think I invented. It had not occurred to them to combine these ingredients before since none of them are pickled beet-root.

And now it has been announced P3 will be working there part-time. Oh joy doth burst from my heart and runneth down my shirt. P3’s first job only five minutes from home, with someone I know, who cooks great lasagne and names burgers after me.

Yes government-declared spring has sprung, the light is clearer. The air is warmer. I smell mushrooms.

Salted Hippies

2008-08-20T21:21:00.000+10:00

To drum up a little interest in the blog I’ll be offering $5 for every comment left from now until the end of the year. To receive your prize simply send a S.A.S.E for each comment, along with a money order for $11.95 to cover shipping and handling in US, Canadian, Australian or one of the other good dollars, and I’ll send you five crisp Zimbabwean dollars by registered mail.

Ahhh Zimbabwean dollars, as plentiful as grains of sand, but not hardly as useful. You can’t drop Zimbabwean dollars one at a time on ants to make them think their god is punishing them by making it rain boulders. They don’t fall straight. Ants are not afraid of them. They have no concept of currency. Ants are like hippies, mindless robotic hippies with too many legs.

You throw a Zimbabwean dollar at a hippy, see if they care. Fuckers.

Now you got me all riled up about the hippies. Only thing worse than a hippy is a French hippy. Stinky French hippies, can’t stand them.

I got some McDonalds french fries the other day, I’m going somewhere with this, and there was no salt on them. I’m not one of those salt-people that has to put salt on everything, but man, McDonalds fries without salt taste really bad. Not like fries without salt, more like socks without salt.

Which is ironic because they only way to get rid of stinky, sock-like, French hippies is to pour salt on them, one grain at a time, which makes them think their god is punishing them by making it rain tiny boulders.

The wheel turns.

f O o l

2008-08-12T21:03:00.000+10:00

I’m nobody’s fool. I am an independent.

The Olympics is on. Men are running and jumping, huffing and puffing, exchanging precious oxygen for evil CO2. The Olympics is ruining the planet. Also the Special Olympics at a lesser, albeit just as valid, rate. Last night they ran the 400m relay combined hurdles, heat 2, and sea levels rose half an inch. We need to find an alternative to coal-burning athletes.

What we need is an engine that runs on CO2 or rhetoric. A rhetorical engine.

What if we could lead hypothetical lives? You could ring up work and say “hey, if I was to come in today, what do you suppose I’d be doing” and they’d say “well, you know same old stuff, except we are having a staff BBQ at lunch because Tanya is leaving on Thursday, but she actually has Thursday’s off and she has clients Wednesday so we’re doing it today.” And you could reply “well let’s just say I came in and all that happened and you paid me a bonus”

You know, it would go on like that for a while but neither of you would know how to end it and you’d be trapped in a hypothetical discussion forever and our naïve dreams that a hypothetical society of hope and freedom where we have the freedom to hope will be crushed by it’s very enslavement of us in that cruel irony fate reserves for the worst of sinners and bus drivers.

I am an independent fool. I fought a battle with myself in the 1700’s. There is a flag, embassies in all major cities, the money is hard to copy.

I am an independent fool and if I close my eyes you cannot see me.

2008-08-06T21:19:00.000+10:00

Why not to have girls:

SJ: Here, pose for a photo to email grandma (click)
P4: How was that? Was it sexy enough?
SJ: (!) There will be no being sexy at ten years old. Or twenty.
P4: Probably by then I won’t be able to help it.

Also I was thinking, as you do, about what fairytale character I might want to be if I was forced into such a situation. You know in Snow White, the Woodsman guy that lets her go instead of chopping of her head like the evil step-queen-witch said? I’d be that guy.

He said “look I’ll let you go but I’ll need to chop off your finger or something to show the old lady. I need this job until I get my firewood business up and running. And whatever you do, stay away from those freak-ass dwarves.”

And then you don’t hear from him again. His story-obligation is over. And, because he’s technically a Good Guy, he gets more royalties than, say, the evil mirror. It’s a union thing.

even megalomaniacs get the blues

2008-07-20T21:44:00.002+10:00

That girl on the radio, if you should drive down there, if you should head on down there to destroy her, make sure you go in style. If you're gonna make your way down, through the gates of hell, you can’t take the Corolla or the Jeep Wagoneer. No. If you’re going through hell on a radio death mission you got two choices of transport my young sir. You got your flaming 1974 Gran Torrino wagon, flat black with the back doors welded shut and the rear window stuck down, that’s number one, then you got your flaming death cycle which looks like Batman’s Bat Cycle except the speedometer is in kilometres and it’s flaming. But not like the Bat Out Of Hell Meatloaf flaming bat cycle, that one was just made up. Some artist made that one up. Meatloaf was too busy making up songs which feel like someone poking you in the chest, songs which bring the roaring and make you want to head downtown, 3 miles past hell, to destroy the radio girl.

She uses too much inflection. She is her own Doppler effect. If an air-raid siren could read an ad for Sleep City Warehouse they wouldn’t need her. Like a fat worm doing the Soul-Train chug-a-chug into your brain. Oops there goes the left side, better head out.

Take the Torrino, on second thought, it’s chilly out there. I taped over the window, it should hold, and when you go through hell don’t forget to toss out a silver dollar so’s they keep the gates open for you. I’ll wait for your call, the signal it’s been done, or you can text me. Or, if the radio girl wins, if she warbles you down, sets up a harmonic resonance within your molecular structure, reducing you to a pool of burst-cell ruptured bio-mass at her feet, well then don’t worry about it, I'll get by.

But I fooled them, I did have the rabies.

2008-07-17T20:24:00.002+10:00

One government agency won’t accept the letter another government agency gave me to prove I’m a legal resident of this country. “This letter is from 2004”, they said, “you’ll need to get another one.” I pointed out that I was granted permanent residency in 2004, so it makes sense the letter is dated as such. Let’s listen….

“Hmmf. Do you have your passport with you?”

“No, it’s expired anyway.”

“You don’t have a current passport?”

“No, do you?”

“I don’t need one.”

“Do I?”

“Uh, well, if you plan to travel overseas you do.”

“And you don’t?”

“Everyone does. But I’m not travelling.”

“I’m just on my way home from work.”

“Do you own any property here in Australia?

“Better, I own property right here in town.”

She keeps flipping my driver’s license over in her hands, “What’s this address on the back? Is this your property, the address on the front, or the one on the back?”

“Both.”

“But you can’t have two addresses on your license.”

“The one on the back is the stick-on change of address label they gave me when I moved. You have to put that on.”

“So you… so this one on the back is yours then.”

“No, well yes. Both are mine.”

“You live in two houses?”

“No I live in the one on the back.”

“But… you still own the other one, on the uh (flip) front, is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“Well we need a tax notice or something like that to prove you own property. Would you suppose you might have something like that?”

“I’m sure I would have something like that. I got one last month.”

“And we’ll need a new letter from Immigration.”

“But why? I’m already in your system, you just didn’t send me a new [Medicare] card when my last one expired.”

“Why have you waited until now, your last card expired two years ago?”

“I didn’t need to see a doctor until now. And now it looks like I can’t.”

“Since it’s been more than six months you have to re-apply. We need a new letter from Immigration.”

“But I never applied in the first place, you just started issuing me cards. Then you stopped. Well not you. You know. Them.”

“If it was less than six months…”

“Ok so if it was less than six months you would accept the letter dated 2004 but now you want a new letter, saying exactly the same thing, but dated recently because some letters degrade into forgeries over time?”

She unconsciously began to finger the paper of the letter and told me all about the six month thing again and it was clear all was lost. I now have to leave this mildly irritating example of bureaucracy, a tiny local office with a staff of two, and enter the maw of the beast that is the mighty Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs in Sydney. DIMA must hire a lot of the people it processes because every time I call there I get someone who can’t speak fucking English and knows nothing of Australia except their neighbourhood in bloody Redfern (Sydney). I once had to call 4 different times until I got someone who could give me a list of doctors in my (non Sydney) area certified to give me a medical exam for my immigration application, make sure I don’t have the TB or the rabies.

“I live on the North Coast, not Sydney, is there anyone up around here?”

“There’s one in Parramatta…”

Parramatta is to Sydney what Oakland is to San Francisco except there’s no collapsible bridge. Parra-fucking-matta would have saved me 20 minutes off a 6 hour drive.

No I’m not looking forward to this. Also this damn letter is going to cost $100 according to the website. But the nice thing about bureaucracies is that they’re like slot machines, same dollar – different pictures. I might just go try my luck at a different medicare office, I hear the one on the other side of town is paying out…

Seige Weapon Of Mass Destruction

2008-07-01T19:34:00.002+10:00

Here's a little something I knocked up over in the lab on the weekend. Something to keep the barbarians away from the gate.

TLASITSH

2008-06-19T21:36:00.002+10:00

Sydney got itself one of those Apple stores. People lined up over night to be one of the first admitted to the white palace of Apple. The temple of Apple, crafted from pure white. Not white coloured materials, white. A large block of solid white was airlifted into place and craftsmen in dark goggles carved a store out of it. Reporters cruised the line talking to the freezing geeks when suddenly word spread one fellow had come all the way from America for the opening! Well sir they found him and said “Sir we understand you came all the way from America to be here” and the man said in fluent American “Uh, no. I came from Brisbane.” And the shaken reporter said hopefully “But you are American though right?” and the man said “No, Canadian actually… from Brisbane. Sorry.” But the reporter wasn’t beat and reminded us that, even if no Americans were there, it was still the Largest- Apple- Store- In- The- Southern- Hemisphere. So there.

They depend on that a lot here. Australia has the tallest wooden train trestle in the Southern hemisphere, the largest uranium mine, the biggest sheep station, the most fucked up version of English. Lots of stuff.

It’s a crafty move. What else have you got this side of the equator? South Africa? Brazil? The rest of the countries are what they call ‘developing’. It’s like at school kids don’t ‘fail’ anymore, now they are just marked ‘yet to achieve’. The rest of the hemisphere is ocean except for Antarctica which, as far as I know, has no wooden train trestles at all. Perhaps further inland but I doubt it.

I’m quite sure some Aussies don’t actually believe in the northern hemisphere at all. A mystical land where they have Christmas in the winter and there’s a country where almost all the people speak French. French! Maybe in books written by artsy people from Melbourne, but not for real.

It’s the same inferiority-compensation that Canadians are good at. America may have the world’s strongest economy (well it used to be), the most powerful armed forces, the latest in technology but Canada, Canada has the world’s longest coastline you know. Yeah.

But they know it’s lame and that’s why Canadians are apologising for not being Americans in front of The Largest Apple Store In The Southern Hemisphere.

the further adventures of Muleshoes

2008-06-11T20:17:00.004+10:00

That’s something nobody saw coming. Globalization has been heavily protested, often violently, for years. Fears of a world where a few mega-corporations control what we consume, how we live. Sort of an Orwellian Big Brother but with attractive packaging and a catchy slogan. Those are the concerns but of course things never work out the way we predict otherwise, according to 1950’s estimates, we should all be flying around in atomic-powered Cadillac’s by now.

Seems people around the world are starting to get a tad upset over fuel prices and governments and corporations are getting nervous. Of course in a global economy you also have global-size consumers and those consumers are not used to taking shit from business. When you get a whole country-full pissed off it has a lot more power than some guy sending back his soup (never send food back, are you mental? I’ve worked in kitchens). If you get several countries pissed off, well, I’m not sure anybody knows just what would happen. Business does not like uncertainty. Governments do not like uncertainty. Some dogs do not like thunder.

Just to complete the list.

In Greece the residents of the island of Lesbos are in court trying to get women-who-prefer-to-do-their-own-carpentry to stop calling themselves Lesbians. Except the gay residents of the island which are of course already Lesbians, like everybody else living there. Even the children are little bright-eyed Lesbians, learning Lesbian history in their little Lesbian schools. There’s even a Lesbian McDonalds, but anybody can go.

Make up your own fillet-o-fish jokes.

The best my spell check could come up with for McLesbos was ‘muleshoes’. I dunno either, I guess like horseshoes but stockier and sterile.

Sounds like the indigenous sidekick in a 50’s matinee western.

“Train come soon.”

“Good job Muleshoes, how can you tell? Subtle vibrations on the tracks?”

“No. Is almost four-o-clock. Dickhead.”

Ahhh Muleshoes, you’re the greatest.

Gitmo awarded Best Offshore Military Torture Prison by Shackle Magazine.

2008-06-03T20:21:00.005+10:00

I know a guy who’s one of those big time TV writers. Family-values type drama with a serrated edge, that’s his bag. If he wrote the Brady Bunch it would be much the same except Mike Brady would have a colostomy bag because their old dog chewed out his small intestine while he lay passed out for nine days after putting out a Valium® fire and inhaling the fumes. Valium is quite flammable. They used to fire the old trans-Atlantic steam ships on raw valium if they were attempting a record crossing. The practice was halted after the Titanic fell asleep (it’s the fumes are the problem) and hit an ice-berg.

But me, I don’t write like that. I don’t have any stories, can’t think of any. Not the kind with traditional subjects like people and places, a plot. I could write about a bucket handle, or an ant’s left back leg, or the particular odour of a particular winter afternoon in 1988 (light, clear, a little like soap). And two pages is getting wordy for those sorts of things. How anyone writes a whole novel or play or TV series or progressive rock concept album, I cannot grasp.

If you make it short enough and obscure enough you can call it a poem. I’ve written hundreds of poems, but I don’t get poetry. Can’t read other’s poetry, it’s like hearing someone describe to you their dream. It’s only interesting to them. I read a poem once in university called “Ode To A Grecian Urn”, pretty straightforward, you’d think, obviously the guy had a thing for pottery. But no, turns out it’s not about Grecian urns at all. No, it’s all symbolic and shit.

So who knows what the fuck it means except the guy who wrote it and maybe not him either. A lot of poets were opium addicts or homosexuals, both of which can be prone to absentmindedness. This is also the reason they don’t get to be president. Ok, that’s not true. There are other reasons too. When you call up Gitmo to see how the torture’s going, you don’t want any flowery bullshit, you want facts and figures. Save the iambic pentameter for when you got to explain wars and such.

I wish I was a gangsta rapper
I wish I was a hip-hop star
I wish I was a short sharp jab
That went a bit too far

I would cast my head in gold
I would cast my feet in clay
I would catch me all them sinners
Come round on judgement day

I wish I was a bill collector
High on life and rum
An inter-dimensional corrector
Doer of things un-done

All the world could follow
My antics on TV
Watch me fix the fixers
Balanced on my knee

Until I grew weary
Indistinguishable from insane
Encouraging bacteria
To feed upon my brain

I wish I was a gangsta rapper
In a gold plated car
A super techno DJ
Admired from afar

Not (going to be) Easy Being Green

2008-05-30T21:23:00.001+10:00

If the earth was a business, if it were to be managed properly, you’d kill off all the animals that you couldn’t eat, experiment on, or ride for amusement. You’d wipe out the forests and plant food crops. You’d take money spent on weapons and reality TV and use it instead to create ways to regulate the environment. You’d look into mining the moon, cold fusion, nano-construction, that sort of gear.

You do that and things should tick right along. And you’ll have to, eventually.

What else can there be? Eventually we’ll all be standing shoulder to shoulder in a living museum where we can’t touch anything or it might go extinct and with better and better medicine we’ll get to stand there a long time, while more and more of us keep popping up. Something’s got to give. It’s simple physics.

There isn’t room for everything.

Should we do the noble thing and kill ourselves off to save the planet? Mass cullings every century, or generation. Our entire species becoming Jesus? It’s only purpose to constantly sacrifice itself to save the world. Caretakers of a garden, nurturing and aiding the other species and then throwing ourselves into the sea or maybe a volcano. Which ever was handy. Maybe the bodies would have to be shot into space, as burying or burning them would contaminate the garden. Rocket powered Ascension to Eden. Go Jesus Go.

Heavy.

Ah, well that won’t happen for a little while yet. Not my problem. Every age had it’s problems. The Middle Ages had that pesky Black Death, the Thirties had the Depression and the future will have the Jesus thing. My only problem is the price of diesel fuel. Not that bad really. Probably won’t die from it. Now and then there’s a lull I guess.

magma

2008-05-26T21:44:00.000+10:00

I dreamed the centre of the earth was accessible to all for a small fee and we went down there one Sunday morning, my sweetie and me. They put you on a sort of fire-proof roller coaster except it doesn’t go up and down, just down. And there’s a bar. Umbrella drinks are popular. They are fire-proof umbrellas for safety.

And we got to sit at the front and my sweetie turned to me and said “we get to sit at the front” and I nodded. I thought it was odd there were windshield wipers, but I’m no geologist. Neither is she. Not anymore.

A man in a blue cap, he also had pants, took our tickets and we were soon under way. When we reached 10 thousand leagues under the surface a pleasing female voice told us to put on our 10 thousand league glasses for safety and to help extinguish our individuality. It says about the glasses right on the ticket so you got to wear them. My dreams are strict. I got arrested once in my dream and couldn’t make bail. I did thirty days. Everyone thought I was in a coma.

After about three hours we pulled into Earth Central which is just what you’d imagine: a vast ball of molten rock and iron, but more commercial. You can’t get out or anything cause of the molten-ness but you are allowed to take non-flash photography. Sweetie took a picture but it just came out red.

And then we climbed the ladder back to the surface which took most of the afternoon, and found our car had been broken into. The portal to the centre of the earth is in a bad area, as you would expect. They took all our change and a Kleenex box full of raw opium we had been saving but I didn’t call the cops. I didn’t need any more trouble from them. I can’t face another coma.

Stickening Situation

2008-05-23T21:21:00.002+10:00

More in our series of foods I have never eaten:

28) Coal.

Now tonight’s episode. The truck was making a funny ‘worp worp’ sound and I was worried it might be the differential. Turned out to be a stick stuck up in the suspension, rubbing on the inside of the wheel, and I was relieved. The next day the truck developed a melodic ‘fffffffwiiiiiing’ sound, a bit like brakes, and I was again worried about costly repairs. I hate doing brakes. But it was another stick, other side this time, jammed way up there above the back axel and rubbing at the inside of the tire. And I was again relieved at the simple nature of the problem.

Except now I think people are sticking sticks, someone stuck a stick, how are sticks getting up there?

Do I need stick guards? Can you get them this time of year?

I saw a documentary once and these apes, chimps I think, or possibly Frenchmen, were just sort of sitting around and this really mental one with an erection came screeching out of the bush brandishing a big stick and causing a general ruckus.

That’s another way sticks can be a problem.

I used to go around picking up all the sticks on the lawn, but now I just mow them over. It’s not good for the mower but it was made in USA and if it breaks they give you another one free. As long as you’re not a terrorist, the friend of a terrorist or be able to spell terrorist, then there is a small shipping and handling fee.

I tell you one thing, that fucking monkey was a terrorist. Running around like that with his woody and his stick, scaring all the other chimps. Someone could lose an eye. Nobody loves a one eyed chimp. Or Frenchman. Could have been Frenchmen. You know, the more I think about it…

I’m worried the French have found my compound and are taking the sticks off my lawn and jamming them up under my truck, causing it to make odd sounds. Almost like they’re trying to communicate with me.

What can they want? Cheese? I have no cheese. Not much. Shit.

US channeled top secret Burma footage, hogs to self

2008-05-13T21:05:00.006+10:00

Hey what’s the deal? I’m watching The News Hour With Jim Lehrer, hosted by a woman who is not Jim Lehrer, and they have a report from Burma which is also Myanmar, and the non-Jim lady warns it may contain ‘images of a disturbing nature’ and suddenly I get a blue screen with the words VIDEO FOR THIS REPORT RESTRICTED while the audio continues to run in the background. SBS, the network airing it here, apparently, found it too disturbing for Aussies.

What the hell was in it, that is ok to air in America but not Australia? Australia where nudity and swearing in the media is common and R-rated films are shown un-cut on TV. Australia where there is an ad depicting two gentlemen playing a piano duet with their erect penises (peni?)...

And then there's America where I’m not sure if they’re allowed to say ‘shit’ yet on network TV, where Janet Jackson’s nipple threatened to bring about the end of days, where people go to the bathroom or washroom but never the toilet. What the hell could be ok for America but not Australia?

WHAT WAS IT?

I must know. Ok, what are the facts:

1) The only people who don’t want bad pictures coming out of Burma is the government of Burma.

2) Australia is sort of close to Burma geographically, kind of, if you sort of tilt your head.

3) Slugs have two different types of slime – one for clinging to things, and one for traveling.

No. I still can’t work it out.

give

2008-05-07T21:52:00.000+10:00

Every day countless marijuana seedlings die from neglect. Lack of adequate nutrients and life-giving sunlight leave others stunted and spindly. Some, sadly, go to seed.

But there’s good news, it doesn’t have to be this way! That’s right, for only 38 cents per day, less than the cost of a pack of rolling papers, you can sponsor a seedling or clone and know you’re helping a plant that might never have had a chance. A chance to grow and learn and contribute and, eventually, produce some really filthy buds.

For just 38 cents per day, less than the cost of a reasonable doughnut, you’ll be providing your plant the best in liquid nutrients and mineral salts. Your plant will attend daily grow sessions where it will have full access to 800 watts of UV-balanced halogen lighting and the latest in temperature and humidity control. You’ll receive letters and photos from your plant keeping you informed of its progress and of any adventures it may have had. Your plant will address you as Sally if you wish.

And eventually we’ll cut the light back and your little pal will begin to bud. What a proud moment for you both, and you’ll be right there with pictures and crude drawings sent to you by your plant. Once the buds are full and thick, resin-coated and sparkly-like, we’ll pick them and dry them to perfection. Then we’ll smoke them and send you pictures of us smoking them or a short description.

But don’t worry, your 38 cents per day doesn’t stop there. If you loved your plant enough and it was really filthy, then we’ll take a clone of it and grow another! And you can keep sending us money. Only 38 cents per day*

*based on $1387.00 ten year membership payable in advance. Void in Utah.

Canbera, City of Buildings

2008-05-01T21:44:00.003+10:00

Name a country who’s capital city is not a sea-port or on a large river with access to the sea. London, Paris, Moscow, Washington, all have sea access. Yes, yes there’s Geneva, Lassa and the capitals of a few other land-locked countries where they had no choice, but by and large, and I use that term without fully understanding it (by what? large what?), given the option, most countries have their capital city near the sea or on a major river. Usually this is because those cities traditionally had more trade and hence became larger and it was a logical progression to become the capital.

Australia built it’s capital city specifically to be the capital. Sydney wanted to be boss and Melbourne wanted to be boss so to solve the dispute they built a new city just to spite everybody, and they stuck it in the mountains 300km from the sea, or anywhere else. That’ll show them, they said, whoever they were. The Prime Minister has a residence there of course, nice big sandstone mansion, fully staffed with staff and empty of anyone else. The Prime Minister lives in Sydney. And the rest of the politicians of course live in their electorates so it’s a city of bureaucrats and museums. I believe the bureaucracy museum is located there.

The National War Museum is there and they say it takes three days to see it properly. Aussies like their wars, well not the getting-shot-at parts, just the ra-ra and hip-ho parts. They look good in those hats. Every year, on Anzac Day, thousands of young Aussies travel to Gallipoli, Turkey to honour the Diggers who fought and died in WWI in Australia’s most celebrated battle by getting honourably shit-faced and respectfully littering the site with empty beer cans. Turkey is rather good about it and puts out Porta-Potties for them each year. Australia lost that battle, by the way. It is Australia’s Alamo, except in this case they were the Mexicans and them in the fort won. Also Davey Crocket was called Dazza.

It did not happen in India

2008-04-28T21:05:00.003+10:00

Crikey she’s cold out there tonight.

I might let her in.

Big news today not, as you so often find with these stories, from India but in fact from Austria, also known as Germany Lite. Now I only heard the bare jist of it on the wireless and I don’t want to go prejudicing my already-formed opinion by checking any facts but it seems some dude (dudenkauf) kept his own grown-up daughter prisoner in his cellar for twenty-odd years and, yes you knew it was coming, sired seven children by her, six of which survived to be rescued recently.

Talk at work turned to what one does with these children now? The consensus seemed to be give them some shoes and send them on there way.

“Off you go then. What? Oh that, that’s the Sun, generally a good thing, goes away at night, rises in the…what? Night? Ok, you better sit down, there’s a few things we need to go over.”

Lots to cover there… photographs don’t steal your soul, for example. At least it’s never been proven. What if you had your photo taken more than once? Would the subsequent images have no soul-content? Perhaps it’s spread evenly, in a constantly changing average, which would be a messy system, lot’s of paperwork but who am I to question the workings of the universe?

And that’s what they will teach these kids, don’t think too much about it because it’s a pretty flimsy story to begin with and doesn’t really bear up to scrutiny. Whether we stem from an omnipotent force or the blind-fool luck of a few chemicals joining up to do the DNA tango, not one bit of this thing makes sense and never, ever, will.

Luckily there is cannabis for those having trouble swallowing it. What if you took a picture of the people on Soul Train? Would you get really good soul-content then? These people who believe in soul-stealing photography – would they pay for pictures of their enemies? Mercenary photographers raiding camps, snapping pictures in multi-burst mode, taking portraits of the men, snapshots of the women and children, anything caught in the frame. God, the colour saturation.

Anyway, I’m sure the Austrians have systems in place for this sort of thing. They’re a competent people.

Twat. It's fun, and easy to say.

2008-04-23T20:43:00.006+10:00

I saw a show with a guy who was flogging his new invention, little strobe lights which would be set into the street, along the centre line, to warn of school zones and the like. Each little unit had it’s own solar panel for re-charging and the units could be controlled wirelessly to flash at appropriate times. The panel of judges consisted of an engineer, a designer and an architect and they questioned the inventor as follows:

Engineer: Are they sturdy enough to withstand being run over by cars?

Inventor: Yes, they use the same housing as aircraft runway lights.

Designer: Would they still be visible in bright sunlight?

Inventor: Yes, they are easily seen in bright sunlight.

Architect: Do you worry people might come and smash them with a sledgehammer? Or spray-paint them black?

Inventor: What the fuck are you sniffing? Are you too stupid to come up with a technical question of your own? Hit them with a fucking hammer? “Greta go and git my big hammer. Them shiny things is out there again.”

Go and button your cardigan, you big Nancy.

Ok that last answer was me. Architects are twats. I think his name was Brendan. I have other proof.

in my day

2008-04-06T21:52:00.001+10:00

What do you suppose will happen in 40 years or so when the retirement villages are full of pot smoking, heavy-metal-listening old dudes and grannies who forego the traditional secret nip of cooking sherry for half an E and a couple of bongs before their evening walk? Will the hospital staff, all born in like 2020 or some other crazy futuristic-seeming year, tut-tut them? Will the 2050’s be like the 1950’s except oddly reversed? Gangs of 80 year old men stealing hubcaps and smoking cigarettes behind the bowling alley? Will they cry things like “What’s to be done about senior delinquency?” and “who will save the aged of today from the cruel grip of Satan” and “what they need is a good whooping and an honest day’s work” and “in my day we had to push buttons to make the microwave come on” and “what’s the capital of Belgium?”

There’s some old people live around here. A lot of them. They listen to late night TV compilations like Summer Of Love, Rock and Roll Gold and Classic AM Radio B Sides of 1972-73. There’s a reason Leo Sayer is back on tour.

Another thing they do is write letters to the local paper explaining how daylight savings time is really just the Government conditioning the masses to robotically respond to all commands. Today it’s set your clocks back an hour, tomorrow they’ve got you harvesting baby organs to render for oil. Precious baby-oil.

It’s so obvious.

Too obvious.

Precisely what they want you to think. Distract you from the real issue. Which is the Government is stealing time and selling it to alien civilizations who’s time is up. That’s how the Government affords that flashy car it drives up and down the street at all hours.

Damn Government needs a good whooping and an honest day’s work.

Don't make eye contact

2008-03-25T20:53:00.003+11:00

I went downstairs to the showroom and was confronted by three women and Gay Colleague*, sitting around the reception desk looking slightly mischievous. Women in groups make me nervous, especially when they look at you like you are a good example of whatever it was they were just talking about which is invariably either men in general or men in particular.

SJ: How are you ladies?
*general snickering*
GC: What do you mean ladies? You mean me?
SJ: Look GC you were perched up on that desk like the head girl at the slumber party.
GC: Fair enough. (turns to New Girl**) You see what I have to put up with? All the abuse. Horrible, he is.
NG: *smiles uncertainly*
GC: NG is going to start riding with us in the mornings ok?
SJ: Sure, if she can stand the horribleness.
GC: Hmm. Good point. Can you?
NG: Continues to smile aimlessly, certain this is a joke, not positive though.
SJ: Good answer. You appear wise.

At this point it is best to carry on your way before you talk yourself into a corner. People are watching, the receptionist is gearing up to say something, a sales dude stops on his way to do sales… no best to get going. Let them discuss it among themselves.

*his actual name, with an asterisk
**also her real name, no relation.

Ode To A Sales Dude:

Oh Sales Dude Sales Dude
Go and do your sales
With your voodoo markup secret language code
And blonde-tipped hair

Go in your car your
Mobile Sales Unit full
Of blue-tooth mumbo jumbo
And sales literature

of course

Oh Sales Dude Sales Dude
Just fuck off.

Purgastralia

2008-03-17T21:09:00.003+11:00

The spiders told me. Always spinning their shit where I walk like they know my times. Strong as 10 pound test line, across the path, feel it stretch then WRAP itself around your head. In the morning, or evening, across the doorway out the back where I smoke, on all my paths. In my car. Silken lines want to wrap me up and the spiders thereby told me

this isn’t Australia. It is a bizaro-world, alternate-reality, sun-drenched purgatory that looks like Australia.

I put this to Mrs. Joe, a (supposed) natural born Aussie, and she only shrugged and said “well. yeah.” and went back to sorting bills.

I mean, you get on a plane with a ticket to Australia, with stops in Hawaii and Fiji and you just sort of expect they’d tell you if it was actually a flight to Purgatory with stops in Hawaii and Fiji. “Attention passengers, please confirm your tickets are for Purgatory not Australia because a lot of people get them mixed up.”

I imagine they have the same wildlife. Hopping things, biting things, spiders. They both have enchanted forests and bauxite mines. They don’t like Paul Hogan much, they don’t know who Bob Barker is. You can’t explain Happy Gilmore to them.

So of course, they must be one and the same.

Purgastralia, where everything’s either poisonous or has a pouch, light switches go the wrong way, bills require sorting, and spiders have the ambitious aim of capturing humans for some seedy purpose not yet determined. I can only assume they wish to devour me, or make me their bitch. Their, uh, spider-bitch… oh dear, I don’t like the sound of that.

I hadn’t thought of that.

Woe, what hath become of me? How cometh I to be in this beguiling spider-land? Oh what foul sin have I committed? Where doth we keep yon bug spray? Also, who puteth the ice-creameth backeth empty excepteth for one dried-upeth spoonful?

Release me.

remember kids, hitting yourself in the face with a hammer is for losers. Every time.

2008-03-10T20:30:00.001+11:00

Things I found out today:

1) Paint, even super epoxy enamel (black) does not stick to nylon. Why did I think it would? It certainly does not.

That’s all.

One thing I was wondering while I watched paint not stick was if the guy at the ball bearing factory, the little thing that rattles around when you shake a spray can is a ball bearing, this kid at school cut one open once and that’s what it was, I wonder if the guy at the ball bearing factory, who’s job was to check the ball bearings for defects, like dents or devil horns, ever suggested to his boss that all the defective ball bearings could be marketed to the spray can industry as Paint Grade Ball Bearings and they could then double the price, and if he did suggest that did he get a raise or did his boss just look at him blankly and back quietly out the door to ring the Authorities? I forgot to say the ball bearing inspector was screaming and waving a sack of ball bearings (not Paint Grade™, good ones) over his head at the time.

That sort of job would get to you.

Things I will find out tomorrow:

1) Will clear lacquer stick to nylon?
2) Will super epoxy enamel (black) stick to clear lacquer?

Try to get some sleep, I’m handling it.

Volcanic kittens and the war on telephone poles

2008-03-07T19:55:00.004+11:00

Just chatting volcanos with P4. Volcanos are hot, the boiling point of rock being probably greater than the boiling point of water, which as we know is pretty hot already. Then we wondered if boiling alcohol would burn you if, for some reason, someone boiled a pot of alcohol and threw it on you. Perhaps in revenge for something, but still, it would be an odd thing to do. We didn’t know the boiling point of alcohol though, so we worked out in our heads 1/7 + 1/8 which we took to be 15/56ths. All things considered, it was the best we could do.

One of our cats did an amazing thing. It issued forth 6 more cats, but smaller. Now there are 8 cats. P4 wonders if she has told the father yet. SJ remembers saying something like “yes, I guess you can get another cat, if you absolutely must, but TWO is the limit and don’t get a female.” Eight.

What’s the father going to do? Bring over ½ a mouse now and then and take the kits to McDonalds? Of course not, feline paternity laws are lacking at best.

To prove a point I went outside, cut off the top bud from my marijuana plant which is grown for purely ornamental reasons (good feng-shui, or however the fuck you call it), cut it up right there and then and smoked it in my little brass pipe given to me by my lovely wife whom, as you know, I hardly ever think of strangling. Smoked it wet and green. And you know what? I got as stoned as I do from that shit they try to sell here for 3 bills an ounce.

Illidge if you say one fucking word about what you get back in Canada I’ll…be depressed. And then you’ll be sorry. Bastard.

Bloody fascists. Government pamphlets implying pot causes schizophrenia, use hydroponic equipment and you’re classed as a drug-lab for fuck sake. I never heard of anyone smoking a joint then… doing anything, really. Maybe draw a doodle, or play a video game. But I know a guy (Illidge) who, when drinking vodka, picks fights with telephone poles. Hasn’t beat one yet, far as I know.

That’ll do for now.

Hark

2008-02-29T20:37:00.001+11:00

Been withdrawn lately, not playing with the other bloggers. See that list over there –> that’s 22* kinds of cool there. All different, all great little blogs. And I haven’t even visited any of them in months. I bet they’re mad at me, or worse indifferent. But maybe not. Not Exxy anyway. If I lived in LA I’d have to take up drinking again just so I could hang with Exxy. Mr Wood lives there too and I believe Exile is driving distance. What I mean is the people listed there are not going to be ripped to shreds by baboons long since gone mad, for they are actual real proper people who make sense, not like the myriad of God’s little jokes that you see walking around everywhere. Often they are shirtless and almost always they can’t see outside the box. It’s a small box. They sort of have to scrunch down in there. Fish in a bowl, a water-box, constantly devouring each other and shitting each other back out. Then swimming around in it and never once considering, not even secretly by themselves in the little castle, calling the situation anything but normal.

Those people listed there are not like that, is what I’m saying.

Haven’t even been to my secret favourite blog where I selfishly lurk and rarely comment because the writer’s wit intimidates me with its brilliance. And because I rip him off a lot. But what can I do, now I’ve got the Baboon Compound up and running I just don’t have much time, or rather I have a greater choice of what to do in my spare time.

For example, out in the lab, I made a little gizmo from old VCR parts powered by the solar panel from a garden light. With the magic of gear reduction that little solar panel can run a little motor which will lift 15 pounds. Takes it about ten minutes, being gear reduced until the final shaft turns at about 2 RPM.

What does it do? Well sir it lifts a weight about 4 feet then drops it, then winds it up again. Over and over. Why? Attach it to a pump handle and every ten minutes it would lift 15 pounds of water four feet or a pound of water sixty feet. Over a sunny day that’s half a ton of water lifted (four feet). Not bad for a solar panel from a $5 garden light.

I used to put some of my writing on Helium, but they deleted most of it because, let’s see, it wasn’t ‘family content’. Funny all the ones that mentioned GWB, well made fun of him actually, were deleted. Oh and the poem, which I point out was rated #7 out of 738 by voters, because it said ‘fuck’. I assure you it was in context and relevant to the tone of the poem. Shakespeare said ‘fuck’ all the time, except in Elizabethan English it was pronounced ‘hark’, but nobody censors old Bill do they? Nah, he was a harking genius.

Maybe I should move to LA and take up an ether addiction.

* I haven’t actually counted

troubles

2008-02-16T23:17:00.001+11:00

The man was hunting deer. He was not wandering the forest with a gun, as would appear in the absence of any deer or even tracks thereof, he was hunting deer. To admit otherwise would make him feel foolish and so he continued walking softly through the snow-lit night, searching for tracks and wondering if he would be able to shoot a deer should one appear. In a way that would make him feel more foolish. He hadn’t decided and it troubled him. Of course deer are good at sensing trouble. They know to walk on the Southern slopes where the snow is thin and on rocky ground where tracks can only be smelled and to avoid trouble. So the man walked alone with his rifle and his thoughts as the moon set behind the trees and the snow took on a bluish glow. The forest gave him a wide berth and watched him pass from the safety of painted shadows.

He didn’t feel cold, although he supposed he was, he wasn’t hungry although he carried food, and soon he found he had forgotten about tracks altogether until he came across his own, left there an hour and a half before. He realized then that he had let the terrain guide him, walking wherever was easiest with little thought to direction, and the crafty mountains had quietly turned him around and tried to expel him. This also troubled him. He had hoped this trip would clear him of troubles, a romantic notion he saw now. And he felt foolish and frustrated and did not at first see the deer, standing still as stone on the edge of a clearing across the valley, not one hundred yards away.

He unslung the rifle, still undecided and troubled over his own doubt. He unslung the rifle because all the reasons for and against balanced exactly and when that happens it is always better to do a thing and know for sure. He crouched behind a fallen tree and lay the rifle barrel across the trunk. The buck had not moved and for a moment he thought it was only a remarkable shadow until it gave a low snort and he saw the steam rise from its muzzle. He sighted the rifle and slowed his breath and though his troubles did not leave him, they stepped aside for a moment. His breathing stopped and his heart slowed and on the third interval he took his shot the way a man steps off a high ledge into black water.

The buck continued to stand perfectly still and the man’s troubles prepared to rage back in at him, twice as mean at having been deferred pointlessly. Then the buck dropped to one knee, turning its head in his direction, though it is doubtful he could be seen behind his log. It stayed that way a while longer then its remaining legs folded slowly under it and the short, sharp puffs of steam stopped coming from its muzzle. The rifle shot continued to echo through the night as the man tested his water and found there were no rocks waiting to crack him open, and the troubles were less sure of themselves and stayed away to discuss it. And still the rifle shot echoed.

The man became aware the sound was growing, reverberating from the mountainsides and coming, it seemed, from all directions. No longer a forlorn echo making futile copies of itself, but a growing roar, a deep shriek following close behind, and the man was confused. His troubles deserted him in cowardice and he looked about franticly for the source of the hellish noise and now there were other sounds, sharp cracks from his left and when he turned that way a glaring light bore down on him from above.

Japan Air 595, a charter flight full of corporate secretaries bound for Banff and a mountain holiday, came down on him dragging one wing, already on fire, through the tree tops as its pilots tried to regain control to the end. Its gleaming alloy belly passed over him in an instant which did not seem to pass, so that he could see the rivets in its panels. It disappeared from his sight in a roaring cloud of snow and smashed branches and sank into the valley, clearing a swath through the trees, and for a micron of time everything was as before, the buck lived and his troubles were close by and familiar. Finally the rumbling pressure wave of the plane’s final impact rose up and passed over him, chasing the forgotten rifle shot down the valley until all was quiet again. The man could see across the valley but not into it and when he looked across it was as though nothing had changed at all. Except the deer was gone, the snow there unmarred.

He made his way down into the valley, following the trail of smashed trees, climbing and clawing his way. The air was sick with the smell of kerosene and hydraulic fluid. Some of the trees still stood and were hung with debris and the odd secretary, one still strapped in her seat, another completely naked except for her shoes. And when he looked around he saw they were on the ground too, all around him, mixed in with the shattered timber and the brightly coloured contents of 319 suitcases so that he could only see them one at a time. A face, a hand, an arm pointing brokenly at him from under a pile of branches. The man sat down in the snow, the sun would come up soon.

They didn’t notice him at first as he didn’t move. He had left his rifle where he’d fired it and there was nothing else to indicate he wasn’t a passenger except that he was wearing boots and a heavy coat, but the searchers refused to notice this, as the thought of a single solitary survivor amidst the carnage appealed to them. They loaded him into a helicopter, obviously in shock as he would not speak, but otherwise remarkably unharmed. Surely a miracle. And the man was transported away from his troubles and he went on to another life and was not heard from again by anyone who had known him.

The searchers watched as the helicopter took him away and they thought to themselves surely this was proof of the unfathomableness of everything and possibly proof of God Himself. Perhaps it symbolized hope. But they weren’t sure and as the sun rose higher and the crows gathered they started to think it was a romantic notion and began to feel foolish and apprehensive. They took these troubles away with them like stones in their shoes.

wtf?

2008-02-08T16:20:00.000+11:00

Why didn’t you just say that? Why did you hint and imply and confuse me with subtleties when you know my head is thick? The information inlet is covered in a fine screen to keep out insects and salesmen, only direct thoughts can get through. Tone of voice is repelled likewise subtle body language. I’m not looking, I’m not listening, I’m just absorbing information. And with you it’s like trying to catch bits of confetti dropped in a river. What the hell does that have to do with it, I’m thinking, and damn there goes some more confetti way over the other side. Couldn’t you just put it in a box or plastic bag and hand it to me? Why need it be so thoroughly dispersed?

And why, when it’s my turn and I hand you my confetti neatly wrapped and sorted by colour with an EZ-Open™ flap, do you fling it all up in the air and go chasing after it? Why do you make everything harder than it needs to be?

a² + b² = c²

is Pythagoras’ famous theorem. It describes the relationship between the hypotenuse of a right triangle and its remaining 2 sides. It does not mean Pythagoras favored triangles over the humble square or the noble circle. He was not mandating a triangular world (how would the tides work?), he was not on the payroll of any large triangle manufacturing conglomerate. There was no ulterior motive.

None. It’s just a fact. Go figure.

Do not try to read my body language, tone of voice, facial expression nor should you seek any sub-text. There is none. There are no lines to read between, tone means nothing (however volume has significance) and this is just what gravity does to my face when I’m not using it.

SO (f) HAVE (u) A (c) NICE (k) DAY (o) YOU (f) HEAR? (f)

I mean that.

Can't help it

2008-01-29T18:50:00.000+11:00

That last one sorta sucked. That’s what I get for stealing a joke. Actually on the radio they had a comedian and people could call in with jokes they’d written and somebody called in and mentioned that whistles are not actually clean, as part of a longer list of the did-you-ever-notice-? variety. There was no joke, just the concept of whistles not really being clean. I wrote the joke. I should not have written the joke. Jerry Seinfeld should have written the joke.

Jerry Seinfeld hardly ever jokes about lesbians. Americans are not allowed to. I, however, can’t help it. They are very interesting. Also I am afraid of them for they are awesome to behold with great and terrible wrath. Like Vikings. Vikings dressed like flannel-clad homeboys, or possibly in a nice white shirt with bolero string tie. I wonder if they sell special boob-strapping tape…

I’m doing it again.

P4: Hey dad dinner’s ready and I made it.
SJ: No way! You have to be at least 10 years old to make dinner.
P4: Uh, I am 10, remember?
SJ: No way man. You’re 8. When you were three we told you you were five. We wanted to start you in school early, ‘cause you’re so clever, so we lied. You are definitely 8.
P4: Then how come I’m tallest girl in my class?
SJ: Wait I got that wrong, you’re 11. You were dumb so we started you a year late. Yeah, that’s right.
P4: I’ve seen my birth certificate.
SJ: Which one?
P4: uh…
SJ: How old are you?
P4: Eight. Grrr, TEN!
SJ: Ten? You should have made dinner.
P4: I already told... I am 10. I made dinner. Ten. Dinner. Made.
SJ: Right, let's go then.

and it was very very good.

Give a little whistle

2008-01-23T20:04:00.000+11:00

What does clean as a whistle mean? Coated in spit and pocket lint? Moldy old coagulated spit, festering forth germs like a North Korean breeder reactor within the dark dank bowels of the common whistle. A whistle kept in the sweat-crusted front pocket of an ex-jock PE teacher or hung between the non-descript breasts of a lesbian women’s volleyball coach.

Clean like that?

Ha ha remember that lesbian women’s volleyball coach in Porky’s? She had a whistle. You could go right ahead and dunk that sucker in a cup of hot water, make yourself a nice cup-a-spit. If you could get it off her that is, and if I remember my history that requires cunning, speed, timing and sticking your dick through a hole in a wall.

Not really the best bait for a lesbian. Just makes them angrier.

I’d let her keep the whistle, if I were you. Or at least offer to clean it for her.

worse, not better

2008-01-14T21:56:00.000+11:00

What’s an unruly mob? A mob with irregular edges? Mob is bomb spelled backward incorrectly, that’s spooky. Unruly spelled backwards makes no sense whatsoever, like a Brittany life-choice or doing calculus on peyote.

Actually you probably could do calculus on peyote as long as nobody interrupted you by existing. You should NOT host a world-wide satellite link-up for Peace In Our Time with Bob Geldof, the Foo Fighters, special guest stars Dick Clark and P. Diddy, the Foo Fighters, Little Richard and the Foo Fighters on peyote.

The Foo Fighters suck.

In WWII American Navy pilots reported seeing little Dave Groels flying around over the Pacific and they called them Foo Fighters, which is Navy lingo for lame.

I Think.

Dave Groel was a drummer before he was lame. So was Dave Clark and he’s probably dead by now. David Lee Roth is not a drummer and is not dead though he sometimes threatens to be lame.

It’s confusing, I know. Worse on Peyote.

crack could beat up heroin, but heroin wouldn't care

2008-01-10T19:25:00.000+11:00

7pm on a Thursday and it isn’t the first time. 7pm Thursday was invented over ONE HUNDERED years ago. Nobody knows who invented it, though some suspect monks or clock-makers. Maybe mildly retarded children, bless them.

That’s all I have to say about it. I may do a pantomime later if there’s time.

Life is a pantomime (with talking) and nobody knows the moves. Freestyle pantomime. Word.

Maybe if crack addicts put their crack in a tin can with a label that said “SPINICH – product of Honduras” and they whipped it out and cracked-on just in time to save their skinny crack girlfriend from certain train-running-over (!) by tearing up the tracks in a crack-fuelled frenzy maybe then people would be more understanding because they saved a precious life with crack and only wrecked one train. You can’t do that with heroin. Not cracky enough.

Cracky is not a word, apparently. Got a red squiggly line under it. There is no poetic license setting. Curse you cold and sterile future-world with your micro-chips and plastic tables!

I was thinking those people with that genetic mutation that makes them be covered in long silky hair from head to toe will do pretty good if there is suddenly an ice age. They don’t panic easily. Also they are hairy. Duh.

"Crabs got me where I am today" - Alaskan fisherman declared America's Next Top Model

2008-01-03T17:10:00.000+11:00

All that guff back in 2000, everything was New Millennium this and New Millennium that. Try our new New Millennium french fries, exactly like the old ones except we’re selling them in the New fucking Millennium. Y2K was a complete disappointment, nothing important crashed, telecommunications ticked along, air travel continued unabated, toilet paper continued to come in regular or scented. Some people had to get new cheques issued that didn’t have “19__” in the date section but with teams of printers working round the clock this was soon rectified and old ladies were once again free to hold up check-out lines as they stubbornly continued to assert their right not to use an ATM card. 2000 was a complete non-event.

And here we are most way to 2010 already, ploughing headlong into a brave new world, one with iPods. A world where everybody gets a turn to be on TV, movie stars, hotel heiresses, Alaskan crab fishermen, George Bush, they let anybody on these days. The next pop-star/ model/ crab fisherman/ president of the united states is only a vote away, call now, only fifty cents. Hell, even Fiddy Cent is on TV and from what I can see he’s got all the charisma of dog turd with a bow on it. When you have nothing else, look stolid. Or guest-host Saturday Night Live, that’s still on. And still crap. That’s why.

But I put this injector cleaner stuff in my truck and it’s running really good now, so there’s that. Here’s to butoxyethanol!

Happy New Year.

SJ

Boston/ Baltimore, same dif

2007-12-20T20:39:00.000+11:00

P4 informs me she aspires to become the President of Boston. Boston?

We had a kid in school, grade 8 rugby, tall lanky Fijian kid who’s favourite tactic when in possession of the ball was to jump high at any tacklers and sort of bicycle his feet mid-air, size 13 cleats spinning in your face so that you ducked out of the way and he got safely past. This strategy worked very well for him until a new kid from Baltimore showed up, that’s in America. He was a football player, never played rugby before. First time he was faced with the cleats of death manoeuvre he simply dipped his shoulder, caught Fiji-boy square in the gut and flipped him neatly over his back whereafter Fiji boy did approximately one and one half startled turns and landed flat on his own back with much coughing and spluttering.

Just shows sometimes its better to go in knowing nothing. That’s how you get to be President of Boston.

3:45pm

2007-12-14T15:45:00.000+11:00

Now Millie was sure of it. She was being followed by a documentary photographer.

Meanwhile Stella and Jane play Laser Beam Death Duel because they both like the same fella and the lady in the hat, three ahead of Millie in line, contemplates stealing a baby on her way out.

Ahhh, the Thirties, what a fun time they had with their hats and their Great Depression and their Studebaker automobiles.

And don’t forget the polio!

Trout can be people too, if we let them

2007-12-12T17:23:00.000+11:00

Did you ever leave your car windows open and then it rained and the seats got wet but it kept raining, or threatening to, for 4 days and you couldn’t leave the windows open to let it air out and it got really stinky inside? That happened to me the other day. Smells like sneakers fished out of a swamp with a tinge of sour milk.

Did you ever leave the laboratory/galvanized tin shed late at night with an armload of computer and computer accessories and your coffee cup and your smokes and your keys and when you got outside it was dark so you waved your arm to activate the security light, and spilled half a cup of cold coffee on your own head? That happened to me yesterday. It was, unprecedented. I stood for a time struggling mentally to grasp what the hell had just happened. In the end I had to accept it.

Did you ever talk to someone who was so unqualified for their job that whenever you try to speak to them the conversation degrades into a surreal round-about of mis-communication and misunderstanding, spiralling ever downward and left of the topic that by mid-point you yourself no longer know what you’re talking about and you start just agreeing with them until they go away? That happens to me every day. It’s like explaining chess to a fish. Not a clever talking fish, not a fast-learner fish. Not like that fucking Nemo. Just a regular fish. A trout, perhaps.

We’ll see if tomorrow I can’t spill coffee on my head IN the car. Give the trout something to talk about.

Dear Mr Jutra

2007-12-05T19:42:00.000+11:00

Hello brother, hated enemy of the possum,

I sit in pleasant weather on my back veranda overlooking the green fields and wooded woodlands of the vicinity. Thunderheads are forming to the north and west, cicadas are buzzing. There is a slight breeze from the south-east, humidity is low. I smoke a small brass pipe, a gift from my wife some time ago. I hardly ever think of strangling her, I love her so.

I watched a program about the symptoms of Grumpy Old Manism. Several British men made witty soliloquies on the benefits, philosophy and symptoms of GOM, one of them was a Sir somebody from somewhere. I was pleasantly surprised to find I share the philosophy and have many of the symptoms. I have worked for many years with the aim of developing into a true GOM, I have always enjoyed the work of Walter Mathou and the Herman cartoon strip. I was pleased because, though not yet 40 years of age, I have the signs of becoming a fine GOM. I have not only hair in my ears, but GREY hair in my ears. I often dribble my coffee when I drink it simply because I can’t be bothered to aim, my damn hand should know its way by now. I spend approximately 40% of my time looking for things I just put down and a further 24% of my time going back to get something I forgot (I keep cigarette lighters in every room, in my car, in my work bag, in my desk and still not a day goes by where at least once I can’t find my lighter). My grey whiskers have been joined by white ones. Are GOMs forgetful? No, it’s just that thinking is getting to be such a fucking drag. If my body can’t deliver a cup of coffee to my face-hole on its own by now, after 25 years of practice, well then I give up. I have a nice wife who washes my shirts and I hardly ever think about strangling her.

Herman by Jim Unger

But you brother, how are you? Did you complete the writing workshop you were accepted to? Did you find it useful? Did you meet Nolten Nash? Is he really alive because I think he’s a robot, like Dick Clark and Bob Barker and Ronald Reagan (not dead, de-commissioned)? How is your wife? I have not met her yet so I don’t know, but you must have, so I thought I’d ask you. Surely you never think of strangling her as you have your possums to occupy you. Does she do anything interesting like prophesize the future or crochet? The world will end tomorrow, here’s an afghan I made. Does she wear a hooded cloak? That’s how you can tell a prophet. Sometimes they have a stick, but then so do a lot of people (wizards, shepherds, stick collectors) so that alone is not reliable evidence. You’ll work it out.

It will be cold there now, assuming the global warming hasn’t happened there yet, with possibly snow on the ground. Snow makes things quiet, makes the cars in the street tip-toe. Snow is good to do that. I have nothing against snow. I have heard it snows here, saw it on the news once, it’s big news, but so far have not witnessed any myself. People here get excited if it hails – did you get hail? We got hail. Hailed for ten minutes. I’m sure it was hail. Killed the cat.

Anyway brother, my battery is dying so I will go. I hope you and your possibly prophetic wife have an enjoyable Christmas holiday. May you have snow, not hail.

#505

2007-12-01T07:15:00.000+11:00

We sat at dusk, Teddy Roosevelt and me, and he told me of Rough Riders and later of rough trade and I said Teddy, Ted, T-Man, why did you charge San Juan Hill, you raving queen, why? For the hats he said, the hats, the hats. San Juan has good hats. HAD, I corrected him, had good hats. Yes, he said, they surely did, hardly ever blew off. And we laughed at his little faux-pas and then just sort of drifted apart, having nothing left in common.

That was last week I think, maybe a little before, but I still think back to those times when the rain blows in off the hills and the magpies head for shelter. Magpies are not at all like they were played by cartoon greats Heckle and Jeckle. Magpies don’t actually talk, most of them, and when they do it’s just a repetitious string of memorized phrases. There is no witty banter.

Not like Teddy and San Juan. They had a thing going. They bantered like there was no tomorrow. That takes guts. If there was no tomorrow I don’t think I could banter. I’d probably be too sad. Tomorrow was pizza night. Anticipating pizza makes me sad, a little. I worry about the toppings. How will they cope with the slicing and molten cheese, will they remember being free?

But I guess they knew that when they signed up to be toppings. Just like Teddy. Just like San Juan. Not like magpies. Birds cannot be toppings, they are hard to slice. Chicken pizza is a mistake. Against the natural laws, against tomorrows, against everything old Teddy stood for. San Juan had no opinion, but he’d agree if you paid him to and old Teddy did, often. For the hats.

also and

2007-11-27T19:56:00.000+11:00

I was thinking of changing my name to Tom T. Tucker as my own personal homage to sixties country and western singer Tom T. Hall and eighties country and western singer Mr. T and the maverick automaker from the thirties called Mr Tucker and the letter T and consonants and alliteration.

Yup, I may do that. Just waiting on that government arts grant I applied for. Once that million bucks shows up baby I’m straight down to the Name Office to fill in the forms and wait 6-8 weeks.

Communism capital idea; earns top Marx

2007-11-27T18:22:00.000+11:00

Thought I was gone, didn’t you. Yeah well I’m busy, so I’ll write when I feel like it. Don’t give me that look. That one. Yes, you are.

I just realized during my 5:45 evening shower that I, myself, am, in fact, enamoured of comas, and, also, a Capital Communist.

That’s right, me. You see Capitalism is all about making money through competetative, non-regulated business, no? Some fair trading guidelines (like no rat poison in the milk powder) but otherwise let the market sort itself out, the strong will survive and the weak will become our slaves, serving us food portions from little windows as we ride in our shiny auto-cars.

And how do you do business? Well you sell a good or service for more than it cost you to produce, or better yet for as much as people are willing to pay. Also correct?

And what have I got to sell, other than vital organs, most of which I am using? My time. Whether that time is spent sweeping a floor or running a bank, I sell my time for an agreed upon rate, or better yet for as much as I can get. The better my skills the more value for money the employer gets, the higher my pay.

Ahh, Unions, you moan. No, dickhead, not unions which are either quasi-political interests or just plain crooked. Actually one leads to the other. Each of us is a free agent to sell our time for whatever we can get. Or not at all, we can spend that time growing our own food and living wild in the forest (illegal in Nevada). I suppose now and then you have to let the Scientists in for a study of your culture, to see your reaction to a photograph of yourself, that sort of thing, but all in all it should be your choice. Don’t grow food well, you starve. Don’t have a skill to sell, you end up on Jerry Springer which isn’t even on anymore.

That’s sad.

But don’t be sad because Capital Communism is here to stay. I invented it and it’s good. You get an extra long weekend in February.

Also there’s the part where you send me money. The more you send the sooner I’ll be out of job competition with you and safely tucked away on some private island. And that’s good for everybody, don’t you think?

#501

2007-11-14T21:35:00.001+11:00

Just a bit of a joke there for our 500th post, Baboon X-2 didn’t actually assume command in a simian take over. Actually I haven’t seen X-2 for quite a while, said he was going out for smokes. June I think it was.

Ahhh 500. What can you say about 500 posts?

Fuck all. Shit continues. Babies are born, old people die, the price of electronic goods is inversely correlated to the price of oil. You can get a fucking 68cm old-style CRT flat screen high definition TV, state of the art 5 years ago, for $89 – or I can fill up my truck for about the same price.

People understand less of their surroundings now than they did in medieval times. Better alchemy through plastics. The average city would self destruct without electricity for any length of time. The population of NYC wandering the countryside trying to catch rabbits by hailing them. The rabbits not stopping, not in this neighbourhood. Sooner we get started on Mars the better. Buy us another twenty or thirty thousand years.

And the technological peoples of the Earth did fly away and the Third World was promoted to First World and told to mind the shop. Half of them hacked themselves to death with machetes but once that was done the rest of them got on quite well. Grew tomatoes competitively, that sort of thing. And lo, after 15 thousand years, when things did not work out on Mars and the Technologicals wanted to come back, the Earthlings repelled them with green Roma tomatoes, which are pretty hard and could really hurt if hit in the eye, and the Technologicals had no defence because the Earthlings had thrown sand in their face first.

Moral: knowing how to operate a latte machine will not protect you from tomato attack.

#500

2007-11-07T21:00:00.000+11:00

GAAAAK! Is baboon type-type now bad man Joe is gone he bad bad man and make us wear the helmets GAAAAAK! I say again. Now we is do the blogs and the bad bad man Joe he can be in the helmets. And the stockings. We don’t like them stretchy things. Bad bad man Joe gonna have them too and the baboons is do the blog-blog, gaak.

Todays in the baboons blog we is tell about the bad bad man Joe and he’s got the bad bad laboratory with the helmets and the pain stick and not much good to read. All is old national geographic which hardly gots any baboon news at all, just the baby seal’s news and the humpback whale’s news and sometimes stupid lemurs. Lemurs is stretchy too. Gaak.

Bad bad man Joe is always say he’s gots the baboons army but is just me. There was X-1 but he’s run off. He’s say he want play pro basketball for USA number one joe (not bad bad man joe, just regular joe like is common in USA). X-1 send the postcard. Is has picture of bikini girls on beach all with no fur or colourful bums, is no wonder theys wear the bikinis to cover boring monotone bums. X-1 say he not to USA yet is have trouble get passport.

Bad bad man Joe is always blog about shit now baboon blog is gonna make some sense we telling you. We is give good help about bum colours and how pick the best nits, yummy ones from the ears. You gonna forget about the bad bad man Joe and listen good the baboon blog ok now? Gak.

Ok first is now you put on the helmets ok?

shit storm

2007-11-02T19:55:00.000+11:00

Three storms since we moved here. During the first one the neighbor’s dog turned up scared and shaking. I put it in the garage and the next morning we put up a flyer at the general store. Dog was safely home an hour later, two properties down on the other side of the road.

Second storm was during the day and I came home to find the sliding door open and the neighbour’s dog in P4’s bed. Back to the garage she went, I figured the neighbour would be straight over as soon as he realized she was gone. Not so. Next morning, 6am before work, I loaded up the dog took her down the road and found the gate locked. So I left her there. That afternoon she was back. Next morning I load her up again and take her back, thanks very much and blah blah says the fella. “Funny”, he says, “she did come home yesterday morning, but she ran off again”. I mentioned the bed thing, figured that should do it.

Today we had a storm, rain wasn’t just horizontal it was horizontal and circular. Fire trucks and cops racing around everywhere, trees down, power out, that sort of thing. I got home and, although Mrs Joe swears she locked it, I find the sliding door open precisely one dog-width and after much searching located the timid beast wedged into the ironing board cupboard in the laundry.

And the shit. There was a lot of shit. Runny, putrid scared-dog shit on the beds, on the carpet, down the hall, on the walls and just about every surface in the laundry room. I had a shower, found more shit to clean and had another damn shower.

A little later, when the neighbour, Mrs Neighbour this time, came rolling down the driveway she caught me training my dogs to chase the other dog. It won’t budge for me but it will for the dogs so I figured they might be able to chase it off and it would go home. She would have seen me waving my arms and shouting “Go-on-GIT!” while my dogs danced about barking and her dog cowered against my leg, smearing more shit on me.

“Awfully sorry” she said as she picked up her dog, which was rather glad to see her, “we only just got home and…oh…is that shit?”. I told her I believed it was but before I could say more she did a monologue about perhaps getting rid of it because they have “so many storms, up there on the hill”. I can see their house from here so these many storms must be quite localized, but by then I was tired of the whole thing and just let her be on her way.

Hopefully next time they will lock it indoors. And it shits in their fridge.

now

2007-10-30T21:34:00.000+11:00

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

2007-10-26T22:30:00.000+10:00

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

2007-10-24T21:42:00.000+10:00

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

2007-10-20T22:15:00.000+10:00

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

2007-10-18T20:16:00.000+10:00

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

2007-10-13T06:09:00.000+10:00

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

2007-10-04T20:22:00.000+10:00

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

2007-10-02T20:58:00.000+10:00

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.

cabbage eaters

2007-09-30T21:00:00.000+10:00

Near here is a village and near that is a town and the town has a hardware store open on Sundays. I often go to this hardware store with a mental list of items I intend to purchase like

a) large container for dog’s water
b) 3” paint brush
c) set of solar garden lights to scavenge for parts to make solar powered anti-disruption helmets to ward of the rays. The rays, the rays.
d) Whipper snipper line.
e) half a dozen large hooks for hanging plants and hitchhikers.
f) more shovels.

But when I walk in I become distracted by the bright lights and that thing that shakes the paint so that I instantly forget what I’m there for and wander around and around looking for clues until security starts to wonder what the tall guy is doing lurking down in the plumbing section. And I end up leaving there with an 1/8” drill bit and a lawn mower.

And so it was today and as I made my way home I was stopped at the traffic lights, the ones just before the bridge which takes you out of the town. And as I waited for the light Sunday traffic to clear the intersection a man and what appeared to be his grandson took the opportunity to cross the street in front of me. The old man had wiry white whiskers and walked with a limp, he carried groceries in a semi-transparent plastic bag. Generic brand frozen pizza and a small bottle of whiskey were on offer for that night’s dinner. Behind the man loped the boy, about 12 years old, carrying a large cabbage. He carried it like Hamlet addressing Yorick, in the palm of one hand and out in front of him. Alas poor cabbage, soon ye be boiled.

As they walked, the boy peeled leaves from the cabbage and munched on them. Perhaps he had been promised this cabbage for some good deed performed and was now reaping the benefits of honesty and hard work. Regardless, he was eating that cabbage like it was potato chips.

It was then that I realized why I can’t get high speed internet. Bloody cabbage eaters. The government decides what areas have priority when allocating money for communications technology and on the Big Map Of John’s Empire this area is coloured a pale shade of green due to the great number of cabbage eaters herein. “No, no don’t bother doing anything about them, give them Etch-A-Sketches ® and tell them it’s the latest wireless technology. And give them each a cabbage, a sign of respect in their culture.”

If only I could get them less interested in cabbages and more interested in pornography. Or better yet, cabbage porn! Streaming web cams of naughty cabbages wearing stockings and smoking cigarettes. A cabbage being whipped by a gang of masked carrots led by a cauliflower in a Gestapo uniform. Cabbages in schoolgirl outfits and extra hairy cabbages, cabbage on cabbage and extreme inter-vegetable action all day 24-7.

Yeah.

a telescope could beat-up a microscope, I bet

2007-09-26T22:49:00.000+10:00

Girlie got herself a friend. Still playing with that shoe, must be a tricky one. Women’s shoes are like their moods, shiny and sometimes pointy. I don’t know what that means just as I don’t know why there is a pig up there with the girlie. Fascinating.

I am. Fascinating. If I was a scientist who was allowed to do stuff in the lab after hours and I discovered a bacteria that was just like me, but smaller, I’d probably stay until 8-o-clock every night just watching me in a microscope. I’d write down whenever I did anything interesting, which is all the time I bet.

Microscopic me would of course be looking at macro me through a telescope and jotting down in his journal “nothing yet.”

Mow Me Kangaroo Down

2007-09-24T21:02:00.000+10:00

Got me a ride-on lawn mower. Red one. Came from United States in a shipping container marked “Lawnmowers For Freedom” and in smaller print “Eat Pepsi”. I’m sure it’s good and everything, but I got that one because it was the very least expensive one they had that still looked cool. Has lights. Red. Also they deliver and even fuel it up for you.

Man from the tractor place came to drop it off just as I pulled in from work. Man was afraid of the dogs. Happy jumping, sneezing, wheezing, snarling, coughing, licking dogs. I thought the man was silly, churlish, hollow of spirit, doleful, baleful, a little sad. I said they won’t bite, what’s your problem. The what’s your problem part I just thought.

Then he showed me his scar from three weeks ago when he got bit delivering a tractor. Took a good chunk out of his knee. I began to see his point of view. Then he showed me the other one way up on the side of his chest. I had been going to tell him about when I was 11 and had a paper route and almost got bitten but I’m getting better at not saying stupid things so I just said “wow” which, although vapid, is intellectually ambiguous. Then Jessie barked at him.

This made him turn quickly which made Jack bark at him. Jessie spun around once and barked again. Jack sneezed and howled a little. Jessie spins, Jack sneezes, which is their way of saying “Hot Damn! Somebody new’s here and he smells funny and look at his hat and he has a truck I wonder if we’re going in the truck it smells like tires and he’ll have to help you up Jack ‘cause you’re fat. Hot Damn!”

The tractor man didn’t see this though and went on to say how you never can tell and you never can know what a dog’s gonna do. I agreed with him as it seemed the response least likely to propagate further conversation. He gave me the low down on the mower, Mrs Joe gave him a cheque and he hurried off, trailing one tie-down strap from his little transport trailer. Jack and Jessie loped half-heartedly after him, hopes of a ride fading fast. Jack, the pragmatist, stopped first and waddled back to the house. Jessie, the optimist, stood half way up the drive until she could no longer hear the tractor man’s engine then she too came back.

The fuck do I care? I got a new ride-on mower and it’s got lights and I mowed my lawn in 17 minutes and it’s a red one, made in America but available locally.

2%

2007-09-21T23:26:00.000+10:00

I tell ya technology is leaping ahead exponentially and Australia, a country which didn’t get colour TV until the 70’s, is just not catching on. The rest of the civilized (and by civilized I mean we fight with machines, not machetes) world has fibre optics sprouting from its collective ass and in places that do favour the machete like Nigeria, they’ve gone completely wireless – skipping the copper landline stage all together.

Here in Aus we have a still-partially-government-owned-but-sort-of-privatised-too telecom system which is made up of a cobbled-together tangle of copper lines with mechanical switching, ADSL, cellular, satellite, and trained koalas which carry messages in little backpacks and works fine if you want to send a message up a gum tree. You take a koala out of his tree he’ll scratch the shit out of you then die from a heart attack brought on by stress. They have a right hissy fit.

And so it is we find the new compound, although only a scant 4.8km from our other house, is not able to receive broadband ADSL service. Our choices are to go back to dial up, go to satellite, or try the still-sort-of-government-run telco’s highly bragged about 3G Wireless network “coverage to 98% of Australia, only $39.95/mo”. Well, ok said we, let’s try the 3G, we can get two of those nifty USB modems – one for the main computer and one for the laptop. Well sir, turns out that 39.95 is the El-Useless plan which caps usage to 0.5 gigabytes/mo. Half a freaking gig! And if you want the USB modem it costs $250 otherwise you get the normal “wireless” modem which requires a wall socket to run.

Well, god help us we don’t want to go back to dial-up, that would be just wrong, so let’s get one modem on the medium plan $49.95 with a generous usage cap of one (1) GB. Goodbye u-Tube.

2-4 working days later the modem arrived in the mail with the set-up pack. Try as it might, set up was unsuccessful. No Fucking Signal. We live in the most populated region of Australia, the coastal strip between Sydney and Brisbane, 10 minutes from the major North-South freeway, Highway 1, but apparently we are in the 2% of Australia which does not get coverage. You want high-speed in Fuck-head Creek, Northern Territory, no problem. Want to check your email while traversing the baking Nullarbor Plain, it’s as good as done. But not here, buddy.

So, you ask, through what sorcery did I manage to post this post upon the wise and knowing internet, keeper of all knowledge and more porn than one would believe could have been created since the invention of video tape. Well, by pacing the property with my phone, which is also 3G but works here, I managed to find a useable signal out in the laboratory. If I place the modem on the windowsill with one antenna erect and one slightly askew I can get one bar of signal. A 1GB cap seems somehow optimistic now.

Here is a photo from my new back veranda. Look hard, there won’t be many photos for a while until I can see about satellite service.

Gone Fishing

2007-09-13T20:32:00.000+10:00

Well that’s nice. The Predator has brought the girlie a spinal column. Make a nice soup with that. She probably won’t appreciate it though. Still puttin’ on that shoe.

16 or 17 hundred years from now the archaeologists will argue over this post’s meaning since the girlie will be dead by then and The Predator will be living in Florida. Little bait shop, fishing charters, that sort of thing. Nothing like spinal cord for catching blue fin.

He could have popped the skull off first though. That was a little thoughtless of The Predator. No damn good for anything, skulls. Unless you’re putting on a play.

Anyway I hope she likes it cause I don’t need The Predator moping around here all weekend, getting underfoot, always wanting a hug. I’m moving tomorrow and he can either help or fuck off. And no beer till we’re done.

Lookee There

2007-09-11T22:12:00.001+10:00

Got a girly resting up there. She's puttin’ on her shoe, looks like. I suppose she’ll be on her way once she gets it coupled. You don’t see men goin’ around puttin’ on their shoes a’fore their britches. Even them Scots bastards with their red checker skirts, they put their damn boots on last, overtop ‘em long woolly socks they got. You watch them socks, they got a knife in there.

I got a half sister who’s half Scottish. Can’t understand a word she says. Well I haven’t seen her in 20 years but I assume I wouldn’t understand her, she’s a woman. She got a couple boys, my nephews, sent me a photo one Christmas. Neither one looks like either of The Proclaimers, which is not surprising as my sister does not know them, but is surprising because most Scots do look like The Proclaimers, even the women...

See?

Helmet rule limits car’s versatility

2007-09-10T21:39:00.000+10:00

Local car dealership sent me a package. A DVD featuring the rally prowess of the Suzuki SX4, which from the picture looks to be a car, along with an invitation to take my own personal test drive AT MY CONVENIANCE. They’re willing to wait. Not only does it have a sporty engine, it has a roomy and versatile interior. It’s versatile. Maybe it converts to an air-hockey table. Maybe not. It’s a stupid game since they made helmets mandatory.

Since I don’t plan to buy one of their automobiles it would be ethically wrong of me to watch or enjoy the promotional DVD. I shall dispose of it forthwith lest I be temped to watch the same car drive down a variety of scenic roads while the pretty people laugh and non-smoke themselves into a froth.

They will make full use of the cup holders and sun roof. The girl passenger who is pretty and not allowed to drive will cheekily change the radio station and the man driving in aviator shades and driving gloves will use the steering-mounted controls to change it back and activate the child-lock. And they will laugh in anticipation of the sex and nachos they will have later.

No sir, they won’t tempt me with their craven images of wanton lust and rally suspension, tight cornering and eager responsiveness to my slightest touch. Hot, thrumming... I’ll be sending back a terse note thanking them for their invitation but assuring them I won’t be parting with my trusty diesel truck anytime soon. May not be fun and sporty but godamn it I’m stuck with her now, the truck that is.

2007-09-09T21:48:00.000+10:00

Wicker is the France of furniture

2007-09-07T21:46:00.000+10:00

I bought some surround sound speakers but they only partially surrounded me and I easily escaped. Come on out, they called on one of those bull-horn things that also plays the Mexican Hat Dance and the High Ho Silver tune, come on out for you are partially surrounded. Surrounded with our sound. It is foolish to resist. You have only two ears.

And they were right, just the two. So I threw a leather recliner through the window as a distraction and wrote a short poem

Chair chair over there
You used to be over here
Wtf?

They backed off after that and I was granted safe passage. My hand was stamped in case I wanted to return later. I don’t think I will, but the stamp is nice. It says FAXED, but not in a slutty way.

I don’t think you believe me. I really don’t think you do. It wasn’t a chair you know, it was a recliner. Damn it. They’re action furniture. They get the job done.

The speakers have since re-grouped and have the coffee table in a classic pincer movement but there’s nothing I can do there. The table was weak, it will fall before dawn, and I will have to get an ottoman or a short Turkish man to rest my feet on after dinner.

Bantastic

2007-09-06T20:06:00.000+10:00

Wikipedia has a list of films banned over the years, organized by country.

There were the predictable - China banned Seven Years In Tibet (and actor Brad Pitt for being in it), Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was banned in Germany from 1939-45 and one called Cannibal Holocaust appeared on quite a few lists, cited as ‘extremely disturbing’.

But who would have thought the Irish would ban Monty Python’s Life of Brian? In 1916 the province of Manitoba, Canada banned ALL comedies (this was later lifted but apparently nobody told them because it’s still a horrible horrible place something like Nebraska but duller). Malaysia had the longest list, mostly for horror or violence but also banned there is the lovable story of Babe the pig. No mention of Charlotte’s Web which also features a talking pig and a spider who may have been a witch. Australia banned King Kong, Frankenstein and Dracula in 1942 and, inexplicably, Reefer Madness the notorious anti-marijuana film. Iran sensibly banned Saturday Night Fever, while Sweden un-sensibly banned Mad Max, as did New Zealand. Thailand banned three different versions of The King And I.

Japan and Italy banned the fewest films and Denmark only banned one, in 1937. I don't know what it was about, but apparantly it pissed off the Danes and that's saying something. They're all nuts, well Hamlet was and he was of them. When dinner parties end with everyone dying in a poison-soaked sword fight nobody's worried about talking pigs.

Yeah. That.

Array

2007-09-04T19:14:00.000+10:00

A tidy home is just you with all your stuff set around the edges of the room on shelves, in cupboards or stacked in CD racks organized by genre, not title. Food in the fridge, rubbish in the bin, dirty clothes in the hamper and clean ones in the closet. Cleaning up is taking things from the centre of the room and putting them all back around the edges, tables being the only things allowed to stray from a wall. This makes them aloof by the way.

We have begun taking objects from around the edges of the rooms and placing them in boxes. Now the boxes are around the edges of the room. Piled like cairns in some places, others alone on the floor by the door no doubt waiting to go somewhere. They are not allowed on our edges anymore, they have to go further out. Salvation Army, hospital bookshop, local landfill. The rest of the boxes wait and read each others labels to judge fragility, which is a sign of status to them.

In 10 days a large box on wheels will receive the patient boxes, the ones not sent away, and transport them to a new place. And our stuff will be removed from the boxes in the reverse order it was packed, that is by how long one can go without needing it, and placed around new edges. Some things will feel at home, will fit perfectly and be happy, other things like the long table which fit nicely in our old kitchen will feel awkward and will stand out. We will trip on them and no place will be suitable and they will fall out of favour. We will wonder why we even bothered to move it, being so heavy and the wobbly leg we blamed on the floor will now belong again to the table and it will appear shabby. It will be moved further out, perhaps to the veranda where sun and rain will finish the concept.

We keep people on our edges and we order them by how long we can go before we need them and sometimes we mistake familiarity for shabbiness. We let those people weather until they fade away and sometimes we miss them but usually we don’t. It’s just the way it is.

#479

2007-09-03T20:20:00.000+10:00

Got no time for
Interrupted sad sunshine
Or locusts breathing down my neck.

Got fishing line for
Wrapping round my wrists
Central heated fists
Head aches but feeling fine

Inbound, incoming
Duck down keep running
Stay down and stay cunning
And don’t forget to laugh

a high, cackly one

It was all about nothing
And nothing’s circumspect
Except sad sunshine
Or locusts breathing down my neck.

this took two days to write

2007-09-02T19:57:00.001+10:00

Here are some ideas for new reality TV shows…

Lord of The Super Flies: Take a desert island, drop in a planeload of 90’s hip-hoppers in spandex bike shorts and let them fight it out.

Sniper vs. Tax Attorney: Each week a tax professional is hunted by a special forces combat sniper on a desert island.

Home Sweet Hobo: A middle class family’s life is turned upside down when they are forced to spend a week inside a homeless man.

Organ Swap: People trade lungs, hearts, lower bowels etc and try to meet special challenges before infection sets in, with hilarious results.

Deadliest Catch Midwives: Join a rugged group of midwives catching newborns during Alaska’s brutal winter birthing season.

Last Crack Whore Standing: 10 crack whores vie for the attentions of one dealer.

Simple Life Dentistry: Paris and Nicole open a dental clinic on a desert island where they are hunted by a special forces sniper and a tax attorney.

fried opium is fattening

2007-08-30T22:50:00.000+10:00

“And we ask him to hop up on the table and lie down.” – Prison warden on the procedure for administering a lethal injection.

Hop? I’ll tell you right now, if they’re about to jab a needle in me and kill me there will be no hopping. They can fucking carry me.

For my last meal I’ll have a big plate of steamed opium.

And a Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup. Those are good.

What if you were deathly allergic to nuts and for a last meal you asked for a box of Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups, and you ate them and swelled up and turned purple and died from a combination of asphyxiation and anaphylactic shock whilst soiling your stripy prison pants. That’d show them.

They should make the death penalty being shot into space. I bet a lot more people would be interested. Far fewer appeals.

Really the only point in life is die in an interesting way. Just think, your bones would float in space for eons until they got sucked in by some distant gravity and burned up streaking across an alien sky while some little green kid made a wish for a new scooter and for mommy to not hit so much after she has her medicine.

I could live happily knowing I died like that.

Women packing their boxes

2007-08-29T19:32:00.000+10:00

P4: The cat is in a box! That’s her box.
SJ: Uh, yes.
P4: It's a pussy box.
SJ: Let’s leave it at that.
Mrs. SJ: No, that’s my box. I'm going to use it later.
SJ: Don't you start.
P4: Aww, I want a box. A good one like Mum's.
SJ: (absent)

Dragon Eats Moon: 'bound to happen' - Scientists

2007-08-28T21:06:00.000+10:00

Total lunar eclipse tonight. Makes you feel small, humble. I told the people at work if they weren’t nice to me I‘d have a dragon come and eat the moon tonight.

I’m expecting to find a virgin sacrifice when I get there tomorrow. And I want a new yellow highlighter.

#473

2007-08-27T20:39:00.000+10:00

Did you break it yet? You’ve been working and worrying, bending and twisting that thing for so long. See it going white from stress? I heard it complain earlier. Heard it submitted a K-104 complaint form to head office. It’s ok, I intercepted it before it left and put it in an envelope marked Social Fund. You want my hammer?

It’s a 26 ounce framing hammer without, I repeat without, a knurled head. That knurling shit is for pussies. You can use it if you want but don’t get it all sweaty, I hate that. And don’t ever ever ever never throw it at me, even in fun. I hate that almost as much. I only like that sometimes.

Ahhh, but there you’ve broken it now. See the ragged edges where it tried to hold on? Careful, they’re sharp. They know the score. You should hit it some more for that. That’s the thing about breaking, the more you break the more there is to break. It can be hard work, the pieces get smaller. And there’s the paperwork, so confusing.

But you’ll work it out, you’ll see that for yourself. You keep that hammer until you get settled, get your feet. And ankles. You keep it as long as you need to but don’t you ever never throw it at me. We ain’t like that.

Canary In A Cardboard Box

2007-08-26T21:27:00.000+10:00

The pile of cardboard boxes in the kitchen, waiting to be packed, spoke…

P4: You can’t see me.
SJ: No I can’t.
P4: (giggle)
SJ: Are you in that cardboard box?
P4: I’m in my palace.
SJ: Palace eh? You won’t want to move with us then, you’ll want your palace. We can set it up out back under the tree and you can live down there at the end of the garden.
P4: Nah. I think I want out now.
SJ: No, no you stay in your castle, your Majesty. It’s too common and average out here for someone as refined as you.
P4: No, really I want out.
SJ: What’s the matter? Lonely all by yourself in that big empty mansion?

P4: No, I farted.

The Results

2007-08-26T09:46:00.000+10:00

Well it's all over and sadly nobody has guessed the correct square, #8. Jutra and Exxy came closest with two squares each touching the actual location. Either Jutra was playing nice or he forgot about the Google placemark I sent him back when our offer was first accepted on the property. Because of this he wasn't going to win anyway. So once again Exxy wins another SJ contest (she routinely walked away with the music trivia contests we used to have). Exxy leave a comment if you want a postcard or small bag of heroin posted to you in California.

Thanks to everyone for playing. We move in 3 weeks. I may post a video tour then.

Time Grows Short (something in the water, no doubt)

2007-08-25T13:37:00.000+10:00

We’ve had a late entry into the spot the baboon army compound contest by DKW, another of those 3 initial types. I think it means Don’t Know Which, perhaps in response to some question like “Fries or salad?”.

Only about 12 hours left to vote, don’t forget the new rules allowing 3 votes each. Don’t let Exxy and the Dr take up all the good squares.

Here’s a last minute hint: Nobody has guessed it yet. Somewhere in here....

So far the only prize suggestion has been a postcard, so I’m thinking maybe that or a small bag of heroin. Tune in tomorrow, Australian Sunday, for the conclusion to this sad little contest.

One day, in a town full of people

2007-08-24T22:33:00.000+10:00

Super Caught On Tape Real Extreme Video Uncut or something like that was on before. High speed chase….

Announcer: He’s refusing to stop! And he’s heading right for a town full of people!

Too bad it wasn’t a town full of bowling balls. That would have stopped him quick smart. But after going on a bit further with blown tires, our felon decides he can’t continue and sensibly pulls into a corner service station and slows, slows... and he's almost stopped and…. he’s… RAMMED in the driver’s door by a cop who then accelerates and pushes him sideways into the fuel pumps, knocking them over. As you might expect, but not the cop apparently, they promptly burst into flame, engulfing the car.

Through the dashboard camera we see frantic cops yipping at each other, running forward and retreating again calling “Get out of the car, man! Get out of the car.” Meanwhile in the background we see the occupants of a children’s dance school evacuating a nearby building, shuffling single file, hunched over like people running from a helicopter.

The ballerinas ran around the corner of the building no doubt to re-group and set up a firing line. Three of them were packing what looked to be an 8” mortar. Then I went to the kitchen and got some cake so I didn’t see how it ended. I’m sure nobody died. It was on TV. And ballerinas are lousy fucking shots.

Parisilla Queen of The Desert

2007-08-22T22:19:00.000+10:00

Who gets to make up the names for military operations? Desert Storm, Desert Shield, Desert Pointy Stick. In the old days they named battles after the place it happened, Waterloo, Pearl Harbour, Compton. I guess if you want the public to get behind you these days you have to jazz it up a little.

Woke up earlier from my mid-week nap to find Paris and Nicole, some kids and a midget on TV. There was a porta-potty at one point. Fell asleep watching Family Guy and woke up to…well what the fuck is it? They’re just running down a list …

Paris tries to pitch a tent.
Paris feeds pigs.
Paris meets a midget.
Nicole acts bitchy.
Paris perfects cold fusion.

… and so on. At least her home video had a plot. A friend of mine who is a reasonable carpenter and dedicated pornography freak had a clip of that video. I noticed, among other things like breasts, the shots were inter-cut. That means either two cameras, or multiple takes, and editing afterwards either way. Poor thing, having to look all amateur shot after shot.

They will eventually send her to Iraq, Operation Desert Tediousness.

Paris drives a tank.
Paris eats army food.
Paris clears a mine field.
Nicole acts bitchy.

Paris establishes a stable Middle East region by buying everyone cowboy hats.

bricks were invented in 1958

2007-08-21T21:01:00.000+10:00

Exxy, also known as GPG (Get Pirate Gold? Go Pinch Gilbert? Gather People’s Garters?) and a charter compound member, has decided everybody should get 3 guesses in the find the baboon compound contest. So be it.

Been raining here and the crick’s getting high. Just the other day they said we’re still partly in drought. I guess not this part because the roads are washing away. They don’t build them very well in NSW. Not like those Queensland roads, they got nice roads there. And bananas. Lotta bananas and pineapples and sugar cane and Great Barrier Reefs. Well they only have one of those but it’s a pretty good one. Very reefy.

P3 and P4 both won State Championships for cheerleading with their respective teams and are going to Nationals in September. I’m hoping this will help them achieve my dream for them, to be stunt women in an independent film about cheerleaders who have to fight nazi space alien terrorists. I need some squibs.

I’m watching a documentary on the history of the brick. I know. I gotta slow down.

#464

2007-08-20T22:53:00.000+10:00

Well we can’t sit around playing baboon squares all day and we’re not, it seems, so back to business.

7/10 hits to this site are still from people looking for videos and pictures of monkeys mating. So I figure I might as well write for them.

How’s it going? It’s winter in Australia you know. Yup. Winter here. Cooler weather. Wetter. Got any pictures of rhesus monkeys going at it? How about Schoolgirl Chimps in Bondage? Want to buy some? See my assistant in the alley after the show.

I don’t really have an assistant. He ran off with the monkeys. Or they stole him. He wasn’t very big. A pocket assistant, if you will.

So…will you?

I’ll turn my back if it makes it easier on you. Try not to make any sounds that will give away what you’re doing so then I’ll never know. You’ll always have that little secret to hold over me. And I’ll grow to resent it and it will come between us until we Almost Kill Each Other and then you’ll tell me and it will be nothing. It will be you held up rabbit ears behind my head, and I’ll say “was that all why didn’t you tell me?” And you’ll smile in that wistful way you have and fall over from blood loss. Then we’ll laugh and we’ll see how silly we’ve been and we’ll have almost-died-sex if you don’t die.

Let's Play Baboon Squares

2007-08-18T23:40:00.000+10:00

After months of searching for a suitable site for the mutant baboon army compound I am able to announce one has been found and purchased by Mrs Joe and myself. They all said I was crazy, that I couldn’t do it, that I smelled like wet burlap and damn it they were mostly right. I may be a musty smelling maniac but I have my baboon army compound and nobody can take it away. Except the bank if I forget to pay for it. But I left myself a note, so that won’t happen. Anymore.

Somewhere in this long range satellite photogram is the Actual Baboon Compound. Those of you who are already members will want to find it and stake out your areas. Anybody else will want to find it just because it’s something to do instead of facing another bleak day filled with nothing.

So click the photo to get a good look, then click BACK when you think you’ve spotted it. Tell me your guess in the comments section. As you can see I already guessed square D7, but I got it wrong. You’ll do better.

Pick your square and I’ll announce the winner next Sunday. I’ll take suggestions on a prize.

How does the third person write his memoirs?

2007-08-16T22:33:00.000+10:00

Do you see that scrolling thing over there? ------->

Not the clock, above that. Doesn’t seem to work with Firefox. I prefer to blame the inventor of Hyper Text Markup Language, rather than my rudimentary knowledge of its use. Anyway it’s a clever and amusing little scrolly thing which announces Something Big is happening on Sunday August 19th. Probably some lame contest or baboon army thing. He hasn’t trotted that shit out for a while.

Hmm, got all 3rd person there for a minute. I don’t trust novels written in the third person as its akin to hearsay which is spelled a little like heresy and is similar in meaning. How the fuck did Marc Twain know what Huck and Tom got up to on the raft? He wasn’t there. And it's frankly a little creepy to imagine two shirtless boys on a raft accompanied by an old man in a white suite with handle bar moustaches, spouting folksy sayings and earthy yet poignant parables highlighting human foibles, its disgusting.

So stop by Sunday and see what stupid gimmick he’s got going now. Damn he’s doing it again.

things you find on a saturday morning

2007-08-14T22:10:00.000+10:00

Guy in Canada found a mummified baby in the wall of a house he was renovating, been there since 1925. So now what do you do? Close up the wall and never speak of it again or do you bring people through going “that’s the laundry, kitchen over there and oh that’s where we found the baby... no, they took it away. Good thing it wasn’t load bearing”

Woman in Arizona bought a mystery box at some auction and discovered it contained a human skull. Whoever packed those mystery boxes was really good at it. She was probably expecting a cookie jar.

Meanwhile another woman did get a cookie jar. Sold to her by a woman for 50 cents, who “didn’t realize” it had her husband’s previous wife’s ashes in it. It was a giant frog.

It’s like we’re living in a Tim Burton movie.

I Used My Magnets

2007-08-13T22:34:00.000+10:00

I was thinking I might go on the space shuttle. They’d let me on because of all the good work I did. They’d let me on for sure ‘cause of that one time I saved George Bush. Used my magnets to get the alien probes out of his head. Looks like they put some back, though.

I can’t be everywhere. Not like God, or that fine dust that settles on everything after witches are burned. Most people don’t realize all the toxic fumes that come off a burning witch. They have shocking hygiene, some of them.

Witches were the cat-ladies of their day, living alone in the forest with 20-odd cats and a broom handle for company. Misunderstood and shunned, they lived quietly, making a simple life for themselves and eating any children they found. They bothered no one.

And kids did what they were told, boy. Don’t want to do your chores? How about we go for a little walk in the forest. You remember Grettle from up the road? You don’t see her in school anymore do you?

Friday Night Mild Headache

2007-08-10T22:06:00.000+10:00

If you have openly weeping sores all over your body you should try to cheer them up. Buck up ‘lil puss hole, you’ll get your scab soon, you should say. Buy them a Happy Meal, but make sure you don’t get the salty one, the Mc Salt Combo, because open sores don’t like them. And not if the toy is one that makes noise, because I don’t like those ones and you’re lucky I even let you in here with those sores. Put some pants on.

I invented my own happy meal. You take Rice-a-Roni or Kraft Dinner or Toast and pour 18-27 grams of cocaine on it then you grind it up and mix it with vodka and inject it under your toenails. There’s no toy.

But you can get toys from most children. The majority can’t defend themselves very well, and frankly they’re not that bright. You give a six year old a head-fake and they’ll go for it every time. Also if you ask them if they can see their own ears they spin around.

It’s pretty funny. If you get enough of them going you can play Battling Tots out on the patio. Try to get a fat one, they spin longer due to inertia and because they’re stubborn. Dogged, even.

I wrote a poem. Actually my shopping list happened to rhyme. Actually I didn’t write it. I read it in a book of shopping lists, Under An Auburn Sky. I thought it was going to be an adventure story about some people who lived on a planet with a sky the colour of pure auburn, due to massive auburn fires burning in the core, but instead it wasn’t.

It never is. I said put your pants on.

Thursday Night Fever

2007-08-09T20:23:00.000+10:00

P4: Dad can you drop me off at my school disco tonight?
SJ: Disco! I don’t know, I’ve heard some things about discos…
P4: Like what?
SJ: Dancing. They got dancing there. Dancing’s bad for you. Jiggles up your insides. Makes you goofy.
P4: Does not. I’m gonna dance with my friend Nicole.
SJ: Not boys?
P4: Nope. But I know a girl who is going to dance with a boy and if she does then this other girl has to dance with this other dude, and she doesn’t even like him.
SJ: Dude? There’s dudes there too? I don’t know…
P4: Dudes are boys.
SJ: I see. So I’m a dude?
P4: It starts at 7-o-clock.
SJ: Tactful. Ok, but you better not come home any goofier than you are now. I’ll know.

I lied. She’s too goofy now to notice any difference.