Just To Be The Man Who Wrote One Thousand Blobs And Fall Down At Your Door

Fun facts about 500

• Romans prefer D
• Computers think of 111110100 when you mention it
• If prime factorisation turns you on, then two squared, multiplied by five cubed will get you the answer, but not a dinner invitation
• It's a card game and a car race
• It's not an odd number. It's not even strange

... and this is the 500th post on A Grey Area... and quite frankly, it amply demonstrates the slipshod way in which I produce content for the blob. Sorry. I just had to get it in before 2011 came around. It's an even-number-symmetry thing.

I'm all over the shop like a mad-person's poop over the next couple of weeks, so if I don't post before then:

Happy New Year, everyone. Thanks for reading.

Nick

Break Time

During the non-ratings season, Emergency Contact and I like to get into self-funded TV series festivals. We hire or buy a series that we’ve heard good things about and then watch the entire thing in a few sittings.

At the moment we are serving a Prison Break Stretch and this leads me to an observation. I’m sure I’m not surprising anyone when I say that some prisons in the United States have “conjugal visits”. Your EC turns up for some ‘hide the file in the cake’ and it’s sanctioned by the correctional institution you are the guest of.

That just about tips it. Seriously, what are the down sides of prison?

Some of the activities we find most onerous in day-to-day living are all about acting like an adult and maintaining our freedom. Paying the bills and feeding yourself require you to go to work. At work, you are required to think about things that do not interest you, and quite often for other people who couldn’t be bothered thinking about them on their own. Parking is always hard to find, the cost of real estate is a joke, the need to think of something for dinner comes around far more often than it should and even though in theory you can sleep in on a Saturday, when was the last time you actually did? Knowing that you can have all that removed from the daily equation and still get a federally mandated regular bonk, sounds like the answer.

Look, I know there are some downsides - and getting a new girlfriend called Vince is not the worst of them - but just for a minute there...

Anyway, as I said, we’re in the middle of a Prison Break Stretch (fancy names for the 'binge watching' makes it sound better) and it’s a bit of fun. There are holes in the plot bigger than the underground tunnel system the heroes run through, but I can’t fault the pace of Season One. You’ve got to be careful not to let the binge viewing affect your mind, though. I don’t want to go stir, know what I mean? After the West Wing Incumbency  I could only talk while I was walking, but I can’t worry about that now. I’ve got to go sharpen my toothbrush.

Self Help

There are many challenges and choices presented by the Christmas season. For instance, with Christmas carols in shops, should one sing along loudly and add rude words, or simply burn the place to the ground as one leaves? Is the appropriate Christmas drink a longneck of beer on the couch in front of the telly or a stubby of beer on the couch in front of a computer game? And finally, To self-serve or not self-serve?

Emergency Contact and I had to go to K-Mart for under-chunders. We weren’t actually Christmas shopping, but if you are at the shops at this time of year, you are inevitably part of the insanity. We were lined up waiting for a checkout chick, and got bullied into the self-service lane. We obediently, if reluctantly, trudged over and served ourselves. I don’t like the idea of staff losing jobs but that’s not the real reason I don’t like self-service. It just feels like shoplifting. What adds to the sensation of an unending crime spree, is when Emergency Contact starts setting the beepers off in every shop we walk out of afterwards.

(Actually, it’s not just the guilt of petty larceny. I have discovered there is a big difference between the least user-friendly and most user-friendly of self-service checkouts. I’m fairly hard to bamboozle with this kind of stuff but I was at a supermarket recently where the spoken instructions from the machine were inaudible and the visible, semi-animated instructions on the screen appeared to be happening out of sequence with what I was doing. The good ones give you a subtotal and then ask for the money. I‘ll be really impressed when the machine can count it back into your hand like the little Greek ladies in corner shops, “… and 15 makes 85, 22 makes lizard and ten should be fifty. Tank you!”)

Here’s the thing - if you are going to buy stuff that has those impossible to remove radio tags on them, don’t let the staff bully you into a self-service line. You either won’t be able to remove the tags, won’t think of removing them, or won’t find them all to remove.

Also, as handy as I am with matters practical, I will ruin your Bonds T-Shirt Bra getting the radio tag off with normal domestic tools.

Sassy

I watched a documentary on the SAS selection trials on SBS the other night*. It’s called The Search for Warriors and follows the process an already hardened soldier goes through in the hope to join “The Regiment”.  

For those of you not of the military mindset – let’s face it, for the women who read this blob – to say that SAS soldiers are expected to be tough is almost a libellous understatement.

Allow me to illustrate:

In the non-fiction book, subtly entitled Operation Certain Death, two SAS members had to get behind enemy lines to act as reconnaissance for the main assault that was to happen later. Because of an intelligence blunder, they were forced to stay perfectly still for three days, under a small bush, which happened to be on a fire-ant nest. On day four, they had to spring into action and go and kill the baddies with all of their mates as though they were fresh off the farm. They did and reported that it was part of the job. No problem.

As Friedrich Nietzsche not-so-famously said of the SAS, “There’s tough. There’s bloody tough. There’s too tough... and then there’s the Chicken Stranglers”. (He loved a bit of Australian military slang, did Freddy.)

Of all the contestants in the show, I’ve got a soft spot for Candidate 42. Being 35 years old, he is ancient for the selection and he’s a charmless, simultaneous mix of hang-dog and dogged. He had a bit of a setback – breaking his neck running head-first into a ditch while carrying a 30 kilo pack – but he showed a bit of grit and was back the next day when he felt better.

My own internal smartarse commentary was running as I watched (largely in relief that I wasn’t there, doing any of that) and decided it was time for the laziest style of blob - a list.

Sixteen phrases not heard in the SAS selection trials:

1. But it looks like there are bindis in it.
2. I think the daybed would look better next to the chaise.
3. This is heavy.
4. This is smelly.
5. You’re smelly.
6. You’re heavy.
7. Khaki brings out your eyes.
8. Vampires are cool and sexy and so hot right now.
9. You’re not the boss of me.
10. He was mean and he looked at me funny.
11. You can have the business lift-out, I just want the crosswords.
12. I know you are but what am I?
13. I said one sugar.
14. Stop. Collaborate and listen.
15. Do you think having a woman Prime Minister is going to stretch John Clarke’s impersonation range?
16. ... and that’s why you should always wear rubber underwear when approaching an untamed goldfish.

I’ll be tuning in next week:

“Tonight, on The Toughest Loser Killers, will Candidate 153 successfully beat the crocodile to death using its own leg, or will he wimp out again and just head-butt it into a coma? Candidate 12 is told to get over his childish fear of sky diving without a parachute and is asked if he really is made of the right stuff for The Regiment, or just a big girl’s blouse with spikes on it.”

*Coincidentally, SBS is also the acronym for the water version of the SAS. You don’t want to get those two mixed up, though. Trying to watch Anton Penis read the news on the wrong SBS is only going to get you shot in the ASS.

The Road Worrier

I feel I have joined a select group. Traditionally, rego time is a period of great angst and financial battering for me. I have owned old and, how should I put this politely... idiosyncratic cars for most of my driving life due to either a misguided sense of style or outright poverty. But this year marked a real turning point. Total cost for repairs and rego check for 2010? Thirty Three Doll Hairs, baby!

I do have some suspicions as to how this came about though, and my first port of call would not be the flawless mechanical nature of my ride.

Emergency Contact and I went away for a three day weekend and I dropped the car in to the mechanics for said period with the intention of picking it up the day after my return. Phone numbers were noted with the promise of contact if anything cataclysmic needed doing to get my car through the inspection.

Four days later I came back, sauntered into the mechanic’s office (seriously, how do you get grease on an overhead fan that is four feet out of your reach?) and girded my loins for the news. There had been no phone call, but that doesn’t guarantee a thing.

They could say anything at this point: “Yeah mate, we just went ahead with it ‘cause it’d be a write-off if you didn’t get it done. Three thousand is pretty good for a new big end,” or “Yeah mate, I was just about to call you actually, all the tappets are rooted and we’ve gotta get the head off. You still wanna go ahead with it?”

But no! “Thirty three, thanks pal,” said my mechanic, handing me the keys.

I played it really cool at this point. My jaw dropped and I yelled, “You’re kidding?”

He paused and said, “Damn. I should have stung you for more.”

I paid the bill, and walked out to find the car. It was exactly where I had left it four days earlier, covered in rotting flower blossoms, driver’s seat in my position (not the position a five-foot-tall mechanic can drive it in) and to really put the seal on my suspicions, a spider web between the steering wheel and indicator...

And to all those who would accuse me of being a potential menace on the road due to mechanical neglect - Thirty three schmackos!

Spanish No Fly

The Spanish air-traffic controllers have given up controlling traffic. They all had a sick day at the end of last week and that left some people stuck in airports. I know how a bug can rip through a workplace come flu season, so I’m not going to say it’s impossible that every single one of them felt a bit crook... across the country... all at once.

From the ABC News Website:

The government declared a state of emergency for the first time since 1975, putting controllers under military command with the threat of jail terms for refusing orders.

Air traffic controllers claimed that Spanish troops forced them to work at gunpoint, but the local press and people were unmoved, given that the average controller earns close to $300,000 a year.

I have found that people who are in a position to hold a lot of other people to ransom in order to secure a pay rise can engender a bit of resentment. I was a bus driver in a town where clearing your throat close to a union rep’s loudhailer would bring politicians running with cheque books. It felt nice to be wanted but even I could see that some of the boys were 'swinging the lead'.

But, if there’s a group of people I wouldn’t want working at gun-point; if there was a team that I would want to arrive to work with a certain enthusiasm for their task and a relaxed and competent outlook, it would be air-traffic controllers.

Sudden About Face

Come the start of December, it’s a hell of a lot more trustworthy around here. All of a sudden I breathe a little easier and don’t have the panicky feeling of being surrounded by a bunch of historically displaced Wing Commanders, used car salesmen and child molesters. The start of December marks the end of Movember and I, for one, am glad to see the back of it.

Next year – Nomovember.