Slackjaw Week In Revue

This week we have a guy in Perth (it’s the world’s most isolated city, I hear), Western Australia who put a baby in the clothes dryer. The 16 month old baby spilled something on itself, whereupon the 21 year old man caring for the child while the mother was out on an errand, put said baby in the dryer for “a minute or two”. The baby suffered second and third degree burns and bruising, but is expected to recover according to latest reports.

Next, from Sydney, we have a 59 year old man who was found to have five times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood…clocking in at a respectable 0.265…doing 80km/h (50mph), in a school zone, at 3 in the afternoon, with kids on the road.

Finally we have the rugby player who has been fired from his team for punching a bikini model square in the face, breaking her pert little nose.

All further evidence refuting the Intelligent Design theory to be sure, but that last one really bugs me. It’s just so What Not To Do, and on so many levels.

49th Parallel

Eighty percent of Canadians live within 200km of the US border. The reason they are all huddled down at the bottom is partly because its warmer and partly because they sell cheap beer everywhere in the States. Service stations, corner stores, video shops, anywhere. Of course it is the land of the free, nes pas?

One morning on the way to work, my colleague and I decided this day might be better spent drinking beer than working in a plastics factory for $8/hr. Our dilemma: where to purchase beer at 7am? The United States Of America, of course –it’s ALWAYS open! So we got the old Corolla rattling south and in about an hour we were at the border where we were waved through with nary a glance. We were quite pleased with the operation so far.

We stopped at the first service station we came across and bought 24 bottles of Canadian beer for ½ the price it costs in Canada (no tax). I grabbed a pack of Canadian cigarettes and some fuel, and we were headed back north in a jiffy. When we reached the border the nice man asked “How long were you in the US?”. We told him about 40 minutes. He looked at the rusty car, two guys in grubby work clothes and asked “Buy anything?”. We said yes, beer and fuel, and gave him the receipts. “Anything else?” Nope. He pointed to the pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket and asked to see it. It had tiny writing that said “not for sale within Canada” – meaning it was declarable. Shit.

He motioned us to pull into a holding area. He sent me inside to renounce my smuggling ways, where they fined me $50 then charged me double duty on everything I’d bought. So the beer now cost twice as much as in Canada but I wasn’t going to lose it now, damn it. When I got outside after an hour I find my colleague still putting the car back together, after they’d trashed it looking for further contraband. I paid $200 for that car, so I wasn’t too fussed.

By the time we got back to Vancouver it was after 11am, beer was on sale, but that’s not the point. The point was giving the finger to the man*, the man that said $8/hr was a decent wage and that I can't decide when I want to buy beer, that man.

That was important to me then. Now I just ignore the man best I can.

*use of the term “the man” does not make me a hippy, I just dig the lingo.

Right Not Right Say Leftists

On the left is my right hand 4 years ago.

On the right is my right hand this morning.

I make more money and work less hours now.

Somehow it doesn’t seem right.

Apply Now!

It is becoming apparent that my dream of raising a genetically engineered Baboon Army (with robot brains) is going to be more costly than I anticipated. DNA sequencers are not cheap! The one I got from Tandy is just not cutting it (little splicing joke there). I still can’t find a baboon supplier and the aquatic primates I purchased by mail order turned out to be brine shrimp, not monkeys at all. I mean that’s fine if you wanted an underwater Crustacean Army but it does me no good.

So I’ve revised the plan and am now selling a limited number of places inside the Baboon Army Headquarters Compound, when it’s built. I need the following: A nerdy guy to run the computers, a woman in a leather cat suit who is good with grappling hooks, a large man made entirely of living stone, a little girl who can shoot microwaves from her eyes, and someone who likes to cook light meals with panache. I don’t really need any Mad Scientists, as they tend to take over, but I’ll accept a Mad Lab Technician (yes I know, you’re scientists too). I wonder if Beaker from The Muppets is working.

Should you be accepted, you will be guaranteed a place within the compound, protected by the Baboon Army from idiots, dickheads, jerks, ponces, flamin’ mongrels, mugs, Mormons, bureaucracies, democracies, autocracies, zealots, liberals, conservatives, people who walk too slowly, the words “bling” and "pimp", graven idols, pop idols, Billy Idol, idle gossip, and people who would call you “chief”.

To apply, simply leave a comment below with a few words on the topic “Why I am Not Annoying”

*slightly annoying people may be considered if they are very good looking which, although irritating, is not entirely their fault. Besides, they could easily be disfigured if need be.

Toast, among other things.

One definite advantage to living in Australia is the fact that it is 7:20pm Friday night here. But for most of you people it is something like 4:20am Friday. You still have an entire day of work ahead, whilst I am free to do crazy shit like drink coffee after 5pm, smoke my medicine, and fuck around writing this crap.

The missus and kids are away overnight so I got even wilder than usual and let the dogs in the house! It’s ok, I know what I’m doing. Later I might make some toast and masturbate to images of fully clothed, average looking women in mundane situations. I'm not sick. I could stop anytime.

Yes, I said Detroit

Lets see if I can get it right this time. New link today, from California (its a real place, turns out), Exile Industries Department of Redundancy Dept. See? That’s a little play on words - irony! Lots more stuff like that at the site. Website that is, there is no building or anything. AHH! There I go again assuming things, that’s how I got in trouble with Sarcasm Dan. I don’t need a Center and a Department mad at me.

While we’re at it lets add H. Wood’s blog Jet Blach Jabber . He’s the one I got Sarcastic Dan mixed up with, location wise. H. actually really does live in Detroit which, as we found out, is on some fucking river and not some fucking lake*. Its all water damn it. H. doesn’t get a lot of time to post, but he writes some hep shit when he does. (*see comments, Tale Of Two Blogs)

Mission Quite Likely

Ok the first mission was really really hard, not as impossible as you at first thought, but still bloody tough. But now you’ve managed to do three “impossible” missions haven’t you? I mean it’s a bit silly still calling them Missions Impossible isn’t it? Everyone appreciates how difficult the missions were, but clearly they were not impossible at all. I don’t know the details of the last one, but I’m sure you managed to wrap it up in 2-3 hours. I have heard some of those civil servants over at the CIA take months or years to wrap up missions, and they don’t go on and on about how “impossible” they are, do they?

That said, your base rate of pay for future missions will begin in the Rather Tricky bracket. Should the mission prove more difficult, please submit the correct documentation and you’ll be bumped up to either the Pretty Hard, Really Hard or What A Bitch categories. You will now only receive the Impossible rate of pay for missions which indeed turn out to be impossible. That is, any where you actually die in the attempt.

Thanks for coming in. Sasha will validate your parking.

Warning: Graphic Violence

There's a reason that truck has such a huge bull-bar...and you'll notice a second screen across the windshield. Kangaroos are fast, stupid and they can jump high - you don't want one coming through the window at 110 km/h (that's 6o mph in yankee-bucks).

What's funny, though, is you'll see bull-bars almost as big on some family sedans in the city. They want to ban them in Sydney because they also do an excellent job on pedestrians, cyclists, parked cars, letter boxes, bus shelters...instances of soccer mom rage were on the rise. Don't get in the way of a pissed-off soccer mom in a Ford Explorer with a 1/2 ton of iron work on the front. Some of them were starting to weld on spikes, for Martha's sake!

Who Said It?

“We love the juxtaposition of playing Mozart while wearing a corset.”
Not something you hear everyday and I’m assuming they mean a corset each. I’m not sure I see the juxtaposition either, come to think of it. Mozart himself probably wore a corset or two when things got freaky backstage after playing the Winter Palace. The Wolfman was a madman in his day, an eighteenth century Andre 3000 or Andy Warhol…bit of a dandy, really. Sort of powdery, you know?

So who the hell said it? Clare Brassil, classically trained musician, that’s who. Yes, that’s right, you can now hire a string quartet to come over and play while wearing lingerie. A quartet in corsets, cello for the fellows, [insert G-string joke]. You can also get super-hero costumes, your standard French Maid and Naughty Nurse, and other fantasy gear. And there are all-male or mixed quartets available too. All this class can be yours for only $1000/hour. Crikey!

The quartet is popular at “40 and 50th birthdays, along with the occasional Hellfire S&M night.”, said Clare.

Wouldn’t want to get those gigs mixed up would you?

Weapon of Choice

A reader of English Women’s Weekly (May 2006) writes in to tell how marijuana ruined her child, and that she’s trying to get the government to re-classify pot. Seems her “stunningly beautiful” (aren't they always?) daughter was being bullied at school, had low self esteem, did not like her appearance, suffered depression and was close to an eating disorder. She also smoked pot “2-3 times per week”. The mother says pot was responsible for all her daughter’s woes and wants it bumped back up to a class B rating (with heroin and cocaine).

I’m not a pot activist -I don’t normally go for activism, it’s a lot of work and it’s never wise to give away your position – and I feel uncomfortable agreeing with the government but this is not a pro-marijuana argument as much as a furthering of my already existing anti-idiot argument.

This girl was clearly messed up long before she got hold of a joint. If she hadn’t started smoking pot she’d have started pulling out her eyelashes instead, or puking up her tea every afternoon, or making a million tiny cuts up and down her arms, or fucking anything that moved. All self-destructive and all due to her psychological pain, not the cause of it.

This woman cannot face the hard task of unraveling her daughter’s over-wrapped brain out of fear of finding herself in there, so she attacks the easy target. “If it weren’t for the devil weed, we’d all be out on a picnic now celebrating our perfect life.” If the poor lass had took to bashing herself with a hammer would this woman now want hammers classified as an intoxicant? - “Pssst, I just got a shipment of ball-peens in from Czechoslovakia…drop forged, case hardened, good shit.”

The point is you can’t go banning things just because someone misused it. The KGB killed a guy with a poisoned umbrella, yet years later we are free to buy umbrellas with abandon. You need to tackle why they abused it, the circumstances involved, the mucky grey slop of the human psyche.

And if you are going to do that, I recommend you smoke a joint first - and have a hammer handy.

Death Downunder

People ask me if there are deadly animals in North America. I say yes, bears, cougars, wolves…but you are not as likely to find one curled up in the letter-box as you are here…

Red Back Spider: Relative of the Black Widow, nasty bite.

Funnel Web Spider: Aggressive, bites can kill children / elderly. The male is especially toxic.

Snakes: Eastern Brown, King Brown, Death Adder, Black Snake, Taipan. All require anti-venom immediately if bitten.

Sharks: Hammer Head, Tiger, Great White, Maco, White Pointer, Bull Shark. Bull sharks are known to travel far up rivers. A dog was taken in the river near here last year.

Freshwater Crocodile: Mildly aggressive, ask before you swim. Never swim at night.

Saltwater Crocodile: Very aggressive. Will take surfers. Don’t stand near the river bank.

Stone Fish: Lives in rock pools, toxic spines. Excruciating pain if you step on one.

Blue Ringed Octopus: Tiny octopus about the size of a silver dollar. Extremely toxic suckers. Victims can go into anaphylactic shock in minutes

Box Jelly Fish: Full paralysis and death can occur within seconds of contact.

Even the loveable Platypus has a pair of poisonous barbs on its hind legs.

So what Australian animal causes the most deaths every year? Kangaroos. Kangaroos and wallabies (little kangaroos about 3 feet tall) are like deer on steroids and about half as bright. They sit on the sides of the road at dawn and dusk and launch themselves into the sides of passing cars. So far in Australia I have hit 3 wallabies. Driving to work in the dark at 5am and suddenly its like someone threw a truck tire into the side of the car and you see this brown blur go spinning off into the bush. Wakes you right up, that does.

They could feed the toads asbestos

Australia has a history of good intentions gone bad. They introduced sugar cane which was great until the cane beetle came along, so they brought in the cane toad from South America. Except cane toads cannot reach the cane beetle which lives at the top of the stalk. Luckily for the toads they will happily eat anything else – lizards, snakes, mice, insects, other toads, pet food, pets, whatever they can fit in their mouth. Also they are highly toxic so anything that tries to eat them promptly dies, and they breed like our next subject…
Before the toads came the rabbits. Some English Lord-type missed a bit of rabbit shooting so he imported a few bunnies which did what bunnies are famous for and now the country is overrun. No natural bunny predators, you see, so they brought in foxes to catch the bunnies, which they did…but they also started eating everything else that wasn’t used to having a natural predator. The virus myximatosis, sort of an Ebola for bunnies, was then introduced which so far has had some success. Foxes may be shot on sight for a bounty.

Back in the 30’s or 40’s someone worked out a way to bond concrete and asbestos into sheet material. It’s waterproof, fireproof, termite-proof, light and easy to cut. A perfect building material for this climate…except, well, it’s asbestos. Turns out it kills you. Australia has the world’s richest asbestos deposits, and for about 40 years they built everything from this stuff. Now there’s a whole industry devoted to getting rid of it, billions in legal settlements, and more than a few nagging coughs.

This is why I have a nail gun which came with the warning: Do not press gun against yourself and depress trigger.

You can never be too careful.

Got Prawns?

My friend Daz stopped by this afternoon and told me a joke which involved a man on a bus, eating a bag of prawns. The punch line was based on his fingers smelling like fish.

I said to my friend Daz “Who the fuck eats a bag of prawns on a bus?” He asked if we don’t eat prawns in Canada to which I said yes…but in cheap Chinese restaurants not on the bus, and not by the bloody bag-full either. He shrugged, as is the Aussie way.

You can buy prawns anywhere here. But ask for mushrooms on a hamburger? Crazy talk! Couldn’t be done, my son. I once took my travel mug into a coffee shop and asked them to fill it up. Well sir, the two ladies were flabbergasted! “But how much does it hold? Ours comes in these cups, what will we do with these cups?” Finally we settled on them pouring me two of their cups, then they watched as I poured both of those into my own mug. I paid for two coffees and left them with quite a tale to tell their families at dinner. “…was the biggest mug I ever saw. Didn’t buy any prawns, just the coffee. I think he was American.”

My Lack Of Diligence May Have Cost Lives

Well I was going to write about some dumb things I’ve done, but I see Exile Boy has done that. So then I was thinking I might do something based on the different search terms people have used to end up here…but Swearing Lady is doing that. I thought I could write about the time I solved a crime using forensic pathology with my Japanese American colleague Sam…but that was an episode of Quincy, I realize now. Pretty sure, anyway.

Fuck it, lets do the weather. Getting cold in Australia blah blah other side of the Earth blah blah winter for me, summer for you blah weird huh? Blah blah not really cold compared blah blah to Canada blah.

When I worked at a dinky little AM radio station, I used to make up the weather because I couldn’t be bothered to phone the parent station for the forecast, or walk down the hall to look at the thermometer. I’d look out the window and unless it was actually raining I’d say “Mostly sunny, some cloud, chance of isolated showers” which about covered it. For the temperature I’d stick my hand out the window and have a guess. Wasn’t like NASA was using the data to launch space shuttles…or maybe they were. This was at the same time as the first shuttle ‘splosion. Shit. You think…?

Meeting re: Communication

I am being driven slowly mad...

Q: Ok, what sorts of things do we need on the new Form, designed to improve communication between departments?

ME: I wrote up a list of the information I need in order to process each job.

Q: Well, there’s no place for the client’s name.

ME: What? Oh no, it’s just a list of what I need on the form, not the form itself.

Q: Riiiight. So in this example form, is there a place to make changes?

ME: No. There is no form. That’s a list I made up of information I currently don’t always get, that I would need on the form, when a form is eventually made…which I believe is what we are discussing now.

Q: So would we staple this to the file?

ME: (uncertain) well, we could staple the form to the file, sure.

Q: Form? What’s this then?

ME: That’s just a list of things I would like on the form.

Q: And why do you even have this?

ME: You asked me to write it up last time we discussed this. Before Christmas.

Q: So this is a list of…?

ME: All the stuff I need to Specify the job.

Q: Like what?

ME: Like hardware codes, colours, finishes…um, it’s actually listed there.

Q: Do you think the form should be on yellow paper?

ME: I’m not really too worried about it, as long as I can read it.

Q: Right then. What should we have on it?

ME: Well, that list…


And that was only ten minutes out of a 2 ½ hour meeting.

Team Midwifery

What the hell is going on here? I’ve never witnessed a birth, but I had no idea it was so complicated. I always thought you really only needed the one little helper to give a pull if needed, maybe unwrap a cord or two - but this looks like a full-on team effort!

Here you have the Anchor position (seated behind the Birther). She’s like the Captain of the birth. In this picture it looks like the Anchor is a man, but this cannot be as no man can captain a birth. No, this is a 19th century lesbian.

The left and right Wings supply tension under direction of the Anchor. This is to manipulate the Birther by stretching her until the Baby lets go and falls out. The Wingers are usually spinster sisters with some sort of grudge against the Birther.

Kneeling in front is the Catcher, usually the junior member of the team. Virgins are often chosen, in hopes of scaring them into remaining so. This is also the most dangerous position on the Birthing Team and many catchers were injured by high velocity births before the introduction of the Catching Mask in the 1950’s.

This particular team went on to place third in the Birthing Finals of 1844, delivering 17 children in sixty minutes (one breech, two dropped).

Quick Stop

Places I have visited for less than an hour:

Auckland, New Zealand
Suva, Fiji
Honolulu, Hawaii
Brisbane, Australia
Tallahassee, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
Birmingham, Alabama
Cincinnati, Ohio
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
Buffalo, New York
Knoxville, Tennessee
Louisville, Kentucky

Most of those US stops were on my epic Tour of US Bus Depots. At the airport in Hawaii, I was outside having a smoke when a city bus pulled up. I could have hopped on and been gone. So much for homeland security. The trip to New Zealand was solely so I could turn around and re-enter Australia…which was the only way I could renew my visa. I landed in Auckland, cleared customs, got sniffed by a sniffer dog, bought a bottle of duty-free liquor, checked in and re-boarded the same plane within 1 hour.

Conversation with sniffer dog cop:

Cop: Where have you come from?
Me: Australia
Cop: How long are you staying?
Me: Actually I’m boarding a flight now.
Cop: Where to?
Me: Australia
Cop: How long were you in New Zealand?
Me: (looks at watch) About 45 minutes.
Cop: (puzzled look)
Me: Renewing my visa
Cop: Ahh - I hear you, mate.

The airline staff thought I was lost, as they had only just seen me get off the same plane. I told them the food was so good, I came back for the dinner flight.

Keith Richards says I should move to Tasmania.

Fact: Keith Richards is injured in Fiji
Fact: I once spent an hour in the airport in Fiji

Fact: Keith Richards recovers in New Zealand
Fact: I once spent an hour in the airport in New Zealand

Fact: I have never been to Tasmania
Fact: Keith Richards has never been to Tasmania

You see? It's so obvious. Keith Richards wants me to go to Tasmania and open a bait shop. Hey, I smell toast.

Keith Richards

Poor old Keith Richards fell out of a tree.

On the news they showed the high tech piece of equipment they used to relieve the pressure in his head. Looked a lot like a ¾” auger bit on a Makita drill with a plastic bag over it to me, but I’m no surgeon. The happy news is that Richards has left hospital in New Zealand under his own power, contrary to reports in The Sun that he was partially paralyzed. Jeez, he just got out of hospital…give him a minute.

I was never a huge Stones fan, but I always liked Keith. Drugs, booze, women, throw him out of a tree, drill a hole in his head…he’s back on tour in about a month. That’s rock and roll.

Wild Dog Rids Continent of Evil

I've been reading up a little more on Tasmania, and I found this website that makes the most amazing claim! According to devils in Australia, the Dingo is responsible for single-handedly ridding the Australian mainland of Satan! Apparently the continent was rife with Devils up until only 600 years ago. They've even found Devil fossils! Check it out...

Distribution:

Devils once occurred on mainland Australia, with fossils having been found widely. Today, however the devil is only found in Tasmania. It is believed the devil became extinct on the mainland some 600 years ago -- before European settlement of the continent. The dingo, which was brought into Australia by Aboriginal people, is believed to have ousted the devil from the mainland. ---from webpage about devils in Australia

No wonder house prices are so low in Tasmania. Who wants to live next to Satan? Imagine the noise...all that wailing and gnashing at all hours. Demons pissing in the rosebushes, possessing the kids...Exorcisms aren't cheap you know.