Hung, Drawn and Thwarted

Australia now has splinters in its unmentionables from so much fence sitting.

- As good as a hung parliament
- Drawn AFL Grand Final
- Aspiring models who get crowned and uncrowned between ad-breaks.

For chrissake, make a decision will ya?

The Horror

If you watched Top Gear this week you would have seen the Australian presenters being put to a test of nerves by driving slow, disreputable little cars made of plastic and wishful thinking, through an African Lion Safari. I know how they feel.

Here, I have managed to catch on film the moment I have foolishly slowed enough for the beast to clamber onto the back of the ute and start to make its fearsome approach.

The second shot is of the brute mercilessly changing position to look at me with the “hunting eye”. This is where they get a sighting on you by using the other eye to engage both halves of its predator brain. It can also serve to confuse the prey with the sudden shift of position.

The images are testimony to the quality of 'image-stablizer' technology in modern cameras. They are remarkably clear considering how much I was shaking.

A Grey Area - Where Seagulls Dare

High Seas Hijack - Fail

I was pleased when I read my ticket, so I stormed the doorway of the bridge, holding it out as evidence and I shouted, "Take this boat up to ramming speed!" And they said, "Piss off, idiot." And I said, "How dare you countermand my authority, I am your new Captain, as illustrated by this six dollar ticket that says My Ferry!" And they shut the door and kept sailing at what we in the piracy business call 'boring speed'.

Quality Time

Under the guise of “doing something nice together“, Emergency Contact tried to get me lost in a National Park.

We’d had some disagreements over the preceding few weeks about what constituted good couple’s entertainment. She maintained that going to Paris by herself and leaving me to hunt dust-bunnies for sustenance was bang on. Similarly, I felt that spending an entire afternoon on the couch, eating lemonade icy-poles, was domestic harmony.

After a full and frank discussion during which we appropriately mulled over each other’s points of view and carefully weighed up the merits of our individual needs, it was decided that I should join her on a walk from Spit Bridge to Manly. I was thrilled.

We went with a group of  EC’s mates and somehow while pacing along with one of them, Blonde Powerpuff Girl, the two of us got separated from the group. BPG is a keen runner and happy to move at a fair clip for hours at a time so it was not surprising that we might have accidentally put some distance between us and the main body of the group (containing EC). Then, after looking at a confusing sign with varying directions and distances on it, we decided that we had in fact taken an unnecessary scenic detour, adding kilometres to our walk, and that we were kilometres behind the group. So we piled on the pace, only to realise a little later that the main group had taken the same route as us and therefore we had managed to get even further ahead.

This was sad for me. When we had parted company, it was Emergency Contact’s turn to carry the backpack… which had my water, my phone and my wallet in it.

When we got to the end of the walk at the Manly Wharf, BPG and I sat and waited for the group. We shot the breeze about this and that. She shared the last of her water with me. We watched ferries going back to our side of the world leave, one after the other, and I reflected on what a nice couples afternoon EC and I had had.

I Say The Commonwealth Games Are Already Bringing Joy

I am enjoying the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games immensely.

I’ve always been annoyed at the way the Indian authorities will play the race card whenever anyone dares criticise the way they go about things. This comes up particularly around cricket. If anyone on the sub-continent gets looked  at sideways for match-fixing, poisoning, bribery, corruption and all the other things that we know happen, the Indians scream “racism” and bully the dissenting voice into the ground. There is no way they can play that crap now.

The Chief Minister (Mayor) of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit… yes. Stop it. I’m trying to be mature… Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit is assuring us everything will be just fine. Here are two gems that I’ve heard from ‘experts’.

The athlete’s safety is guaranteed; At the village and sports venues. Between those two places however, they’ve painted lanes on the roads to reserve them for just athlete transport because, “Fast moving targets are harder to hit.”

Apparently every police person in Delhi has been pulled in to secure the areas around the various sporting venues. Meaning that everywhere else in Delhi is expected to fall into rioting, looting and antediluvian violence.

And we’ve all seen the other terrific stuff around the village. The collapsing this and the broken that and the unusable other thing. I’m particularly fond of the animal paw-prints on the beds. That’s the kind of thing that really lets a young athlete know they’re away from home.

Putting The Can't In Canteen

There have been improvements at the canteen.

I think there will be a much better profit margin for the beleaguered catering group now that they’ve brought in some cost saving measures. What surprised and delighted me today was condiment streamlining and cost cutting - that should lead to recycling as well.

You find that people will throw their sausage roll on the ground and their hands in the air, when the large pump-pack on the condiments table fires out a stream of what it claims is tomato sauce straight into their crutch. In fact, what is in the large pump-pack on the table is simply red water, which shows they’re saving some sheckles right there. It drips further down your leg, but is easier to wash out. Swings and roundabouts.

And this is where the recycling can kick in. As the sprayed customer runs sobbing from the room, the canteen staff can quietly saunter over to the abandoned sausage-roll, dust it off and sell it again.

Nice One. Now For The Implausible Escape

As a crime-fighting-moral-crusader type, it’s easier to avoid arrest when you’ve got a specialised vehicle.

When Batman’s personal vendetta against evil doesn’t quite line up with the local constabulary's exhaustive enquiries - and the duly elected officials want to stop him, he always escapes and achieves his ends with the use of superior equipment. He’s got a better budget and that’s why the Batmobile is as critical to the story as the guy who drives it.

I reckon our favourite ex-Nazi and reigning Super-Surrealist, the Pope, is dodging his responsibilities as a Superhero by not turning up in countries that are threatening to arrest him.

He’s got the Pope-mobile. Get on with it, Deluded Moral Crusader. Na na na na na na na naaaa, Pope-man!

“To the Vatican, Cardinal-Boy! There’s rational thought out there that must be thwarted.” (Do it in your best Adam West voice. It’s more fun that way.)

The reason I bring this up after a couple of days of quiet, is that my Senior Euro-Gotham-Correspondent, Smurf, sent me an article from the BBC. It covers the latest pronouncement against EVIL that Popeman has dreamt up. It’s a corker. He aligns the evils of Nazism with atheism.

This is so far off the mark that for the first 30 seconds I was angry beyond speaking. After that, I sort of decided to have a sandwich.

Sometimes, you just know you’re going to wreck a lot of perfectly good police cars chasing a lunatic down. There's just no point. If there is the Divine Justice that he craps on about, he will implode under the weight of his own just desserts.

For anyone unclear about why this is a disgusting piece of misrepresentative filth from a particularly disreputable house-of-lies, feel free to drop me a line at, nick.greyarea@gmail.com.

I’ll debate the point - starting with the Catholic Church’s apology to the Jews for, essentially, collaborating with the Nazis. Try escaping from some of their specialist vehicles.

The Story So Far

Nutbag in camp A wanted to say something about the behaviour of the Nutbags in camp B. He decided he would burn something symbolically precious to the B-Nutbags.

Powerful People asked Nutbag-A not to, because when the B-Nutbags are criticised on matters surrounding their behaviour, they behave badly.

In a pre-emptive move, the B-Nutbags, to say something about how badly the A-Nutbag was threatening to behave, burnt a whole lot of symbolically precious stuff to the A-Nutbag camp and rioted in the streets.

Well done, all. Well done indeed.

Kids Are Stupid

I was watching this kid the other day and she was cute, but a dummy. She was all excited about the two-dollar-ride-around-in-a-circle thingy. Merry-go-round is over-selling it. It was a Wiggles brand shopping centre ride and if you were two-years-old, you got in a little vehicle and circled at knee height, at walking pace, in a three foot radius. Happy as a clam, this idiot was. Clapping her hands, big smile, bashing the steering wheel like me in Saturday morning traffic. Then she got out and sat in an even more comfortable stroller, that moved at exactly the same height and speed except unrestricted by a central pivot… and went all morose.

If someone offered to push me around in a padded seat to get the shopping done, I certainly wouldn’t want to jeopardise the arrangement by getting all excited by an inferior mode of transport. No thanks. Good as gold here, with my little sunshade and rain cover. Push on, Macduff.

I Get Gnocchi Down, But I Get Up Again

I used to think that being a restaurant critic would be a terrific job. Now, I’m not so sure. I think I would run out of ways to describe things fairly early on in the gig. I lack the appropriate type of imagination.

I say this because we are currently being challenged by what our work canteen is doing to us. I am running out of ways to describe the bad news. When I walk back into the our office after lunch, someone will always quiz me about the menu because it’s their turn to chance their arm at the bain-marie and they want some prior warning and I am fresh out of ways to say, “Perfectly hideous.”

What prompted this blog was; Gnocchi with basil sauce (not pesto) and vegetables. As soon as the words, “I’ll have a small gnocchi, thanks.” Were out of my mouth, a delicious thrill of anticipation shot through me. How badly could they fuck this up? It’s become a perverse pleasure of mine, seeing how off-the-mark a couple of professional cooks can be. And not just occasionally, but every single stinkin’ day. It actually defies the odds, how bad these guys are. Across all food types, three different dishes a day, five days a week. You’d think they’d just fluke it in there once or twice, but no. They have applied themselves to the fine art of poisoning en masse and they are taking it all the way with 100% commitment and perseverance. I admire their tenacity.

I want to tell you about the gnocchi but fear I cannot do it justice. With gnocchi, you’ve got to be a little brave when you cook it. Really only leave it in the water for 30 seconds. Maybe 28. Not 40. You know what I’m saying? But these guys have managed to cook their gnocchi for 5 seconds and half an hour at the same time. I know! Technically impossible but hard undercooked gnocchi that is sticky and stodgy at the same time is borderline evil genius. As for the not-pesto-basil-sauce. I’m not certain where the cream came from but I’m guessing not an ungulate. I’m wondering if there are rare breeds of lizards out there that are like the step between reptiles and monotremes. A lizard that suckles its young. 'Cause that’s what the sauce was made of. Lizard milk with basil off-cuts from down the back of the industrial deep-freeze. The vegetables? Completely uncooked. Raw chunks of cold onion and capsicum in the luke-warm lizard milk sauce.

Speechless, both because of the obnoxiousness of the meal and the fact that my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth, I returned to the office, knowing that I had been the proud witness to the lowering of a bar to places where a submarine wouldn’t even be able to find it.