Fallout (Pt 3) – I’m Coming Out So You Better Get This Party Started

Dear Diary,

OMG it’s great to get outside. I didn’t realise this, but my complexion is hell. I’ve got vault pallor. Post-apocalyptic wastiness pastiness. Mind you, I don’t know how much of a tan I’m going to get wearing all this bulky armour I got off the guys inside and it’s going to make it twice as hard to… yeah…look... about the armour and stuff.

That whole “leaving home” thing didn’t go the way I wanted it to. At all. I went to help more folks and maybe look for stuff to “collect” and all of a sudden there was a posse after me and people were yelling and acting all panicked again. (The giant cockroaches were not helping either.) Why do so many adults not know the difference between a warning shot that goes close, and someone actually trying to do them harm? Ok, some warning shots sort of went ‘in’ rather than ‘close’ but a girl’s got to try.

Vault 101 was run by a guy called Alphonse Almodovar. He was sort of the Mayor and Head Doctor and all round creepy dude all in one. Spirit Guide wasn’t impressed either. He kept mumbling about how much he hates Almodovar’s movies and why did he always have to go out with girls who would make him go and see the stupid Almodovar movies when it was really Spirit Guide on the verge of a nervous breakdown, not those noisy women. Honestly, Spirit Guide went on and on and I guess it got the better of him because the next thing I knew, I was standing over the Overseer with a smoking pistol and a dripping knife and the klaxons were even worse than before.

I realised I was in trouble for more than just the accidental homicide of Butch and his Mum... and those three guards. And that annoying scientist dude. And his friend. And that other guy running down the hall near them. Which I felt I could explain.

As I was wondering what to do and going through the Overseer’s clothes for loose change, Spirit Guide realised that it was Pedro Almodavar, not Alphonse, who directed all those movies. Spirit Guide then wondered if he might not have overreacted a little and negatively influenced my fate. Good one, Stupid Guide! It’s me living this, not you. What the hell kind of Supreme-Being-Puppeteer are you? The way you pick me up and put me down is really bad. Dude, it’s not a game!

Spirit Guide was justifying things after the fact by saying stuff like, 'even if he wasn’t an overrated Spanish film director, Alphonse still had the Orwellian stink of a Big Brother about him and it was probably better this way for the oppressed and huddled masses'. What. Ever.

Anyway, I’ve shut the door on Vault 101 and I hope that there aren’t any visitors expected any time soon. They’re going to find one hell of a mess in there and it’s not going to be a three minute job with some Spray & Wipe. (Spirit Guide’s humming some annoying old tune, now).

Diary, I don’t know if my excuses are going to stand up that well if any other authorities try and look into what happened in there. I mean, I had my reasons, but holy-crap it was so easy for everything to spin out of control. It was really nutso. I bet it’s that compressed environment that’s to blame.

But, I have this great feeling it’s going to be much better out here. Even though I lost my Birthday BB Gun in all the excitement, I can already feel a more positive vibe and the sky is such a pretty orange/yellow/brown/purple.

So, Diary, I’m just a girl who’s off to find her dad. Pip Boy 3000 tells me I’ve got three pistols, a couple of security batons, spare armour and half a carton of cigarettes. It’s light and I’m wearing a helmet. Hit it.

Overwriting data,

jules*

*Come on SG, work out how to correct my name, already.

Fallout (Pt 2) - Charity Begins At Home

Dear Diary,

The Spirit Guide (or puppeteer) was super keen to get me out of the house. For a supreme being, he can be quite impatient.

The house, or Vault 101, was where I used to live and for the most part, I liked it. A decorator would’ve needed a nuclear weapon to brighten the place up, but the indiscriminate use of atomic bombs was what put us here to start with, so, mustn’t grumble. The style is what Spirit Guide thinks of as 1950’s Neo-Brutalist. I think 'Dark Brown with Dark Grey Highlights'.

I had a birthday party recently and it was excellent. I got a Pip Boy 3000 which is like a giant digital watch that tells me all about myself and keeps track of everything. I look at it all the time. I also got a gun. This feels transformative and I can say that a couple of giant cockroaches down in the basement sure found it transformative, too. Transformed them into so much perforated meat, is what it did. Liam (Daddy) says I’m a natch.

Butch, the local micro-penis who shouldn’t have even been at my party, wanted one of my cakes and carried on like a right molerat until he got one. Luckily, I’ve got a bit of a salt-tooth and don't care for cakes. Chow down, Butchy-Boy. You’ll get yours, you archetypal bully.

Just as I was about to wrap the day up I was blasted, without any warning, forward in time again and I lost six years. They are taking a lot of time from me, whoever they are but on the upside I have filled out nicely without all the embarrassing conversations and training bras.

I found myself sitting in a lab and Liam Neeson  (or “Dad” as he’s still insisting I think of him. God he’s a dork) was talking to me again. I kind of vagued-off there for a bit. My eye was caught by an enticing little doll on his desk and my palms itched. When I got up to go to my exams, I pinched it and having it seemed to do me some good. I got a nice warm feeling from my Spirit Guide. He likes Bobbleheads too, apparently.

On my way to the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test (hilariously known as becoming a Goat Whisperer. God my teacher’s a dork) there was a bit of a ‘to do’ in the hallway featuring Butch and his two bumboys. They were giving this girl, Amata, a hard time. Amata’s always trying to be my friend and I don’t hate her, she’s just a bit of a pain. She might be a pain but Butch needs a kick in the cajones and I got a couple of really nice shots in before everybody started running around acting all scared. He’ll get his – Spirit Guide feels certain of this. It’s only a small vault.

Anyway, the test went alright and as my teacher was giving me vocational guidance, I was concentrating on what stuff I could steal from the room. This is becoming a bit of a habit with me. Puberty’s tough enough without being driven to klepto by Spirit Guide. I’m starting to feel like maybe he isn’t such a good and kind being after all, rather an avaricious and immoral one.

I gave Spirit Guide the benefit of the doubt at the time, but not long after we had a bit of an incident that makes me wonder.

I was looking around the vault for more five-finger discounts and Amata was talking at me about this and that, and how Liam Neeson had taken off and the door wasn’t sealed and here, hold this gun for me (God, what  a dork! Who gives away a gun worth that many caps?) and all of a sudden we had a bit of an insect problem. Giant roaches running through the place and all sorts of alarms going off. I felt a little scared, but this is where Spirit Guide really took over and I went a little medieval. I’m going to put it down to how Spirit Guide feels about cockroaches.

So, as I was saying, there were all these roaches running through the place and they sort of nibbled on people a bit and Butch ran up to me and was begging and crying like a little girl to help save his mother. I did the only reasonable thing under the circumstances and quickly put a few shots through his ugly face and went through his clothes for loose change.

Ok, that didn't go so well, but he'd always been too hard to forgive, let alone like.

To make amends, I went to help Butch’s mother. She had a roach in her hair. Spirit Guide hates that. He had it happen to him in the shower once… or was that Goldie Hawn? Anyway, it made him a little crazy, and there was another one slowly crawling towards her. Under the circumstances, I did the only merciful thing and euthanized everything in the room. Then I had a quick look around for things to steal. Dear Diary, you might find that a little inappropriate, but Spirit Guide says I’ll thank him later. Besides, Butch’s mum won’t be needing any of it.

I decided to go and look through the rest of the Vault and see who else needed my help and whatever ‘bargains’ there were that weren’t nailed down.

I think I will overwrite data now.

Yours,

jules (Stupid Guide still hasn't worked out how to capitalise my name)

Fallout (Pt 1) From Fallout

In a disturbing development, I have become addicted to a video game. It has infected my mind. I roam its shattered landscape in my dreams. It’s eaten into blog writing time and that’s no good for the roiling creative drive in my loins (eyeeew).

It’s not even a new game. I picked it up for 30 bucks on a whim. It was sitting next to the thing I was sent to the shop to buy, and the cover design caught my eye. If I can lose my personal will to a three-year-old video game, what’s going to happen when total-immersion holographic environments are available? You’ll find my emptied, inanimate husk with a sensory helmet and a grin on its head, by following the smell.

Damn you Fallout 3 and your depressing, yet fascinating world. Damn you to the fiery, apocalyptic hell of which you so ably illustrate the aftermath.

I have to pull out. I have to make the break. In stages, though baby, in stages. I can’t go cold turkey. I’ve decided to try and kill two mutant birds with one irradiated stone in an effort to get back into the real world. I need to write a blob. Yeah, writing and an addiction in one go – how could you not be entertained?

The Diary of AGA’s Character, in Fallout 3.

Dear Diary,

It’s been an odd sort of day. I came to consciousness with a bright light in my face and Liam Neeson leaning over me in a paternal manner. He bade me welcome to the world, made me pick my name and my gender, fussed around with a lady next to me and then quickly left the room. I gather the lady was my mother, but I’m not certain. She didn’t last long and I didn’t get a chance to question her closely on intent, relations, worth-in-caps or upcoming moves. The next thing I knew, I was cruelly thrust forward in time and found myself inside a drab room with the bars of a playpen blocking my way to a heavy door. If this is childhood, it’s brief, it’s entirely grey and someone needs to see to the amount of fluffiness. There’s way too little fluffiness.

Liam came in to the boring room again and started banging on about things I needed to do and made some broad hints about character defining stuff – he left the room pretty quickly again. I’m confused as to how I knew it was Liam Neeson. It’s sort of like I have the spirit of a bloke from 21^st Century Australia talking in my mind, like a poorly qualified puppeteer. I seem to know inconsequential things about a place and a time that is very far away. I would get to the bottom of this, but first I had to see what Liam was on about.

Dealing with the bars of the playpen was easy and the puppeteer, or my Spirit Guide as I will think of him, advised me to trundle around the room looking for everything I could to pick up and steal. Not finding anything immediately useful, I sat down to read the only book that was at toddler height i.e. on the floor.

At this point, you might be wondering. Reading? Toddler? I’ll put this down to Spirit Guide shenanigans again. Anyway, I read a nice story where I got to move numbers around on the book, which apparently affected the basic attributes of my physical and mental make-up. This is tough work for a little girl, but Spirit Guide (SG) had some pretty strong ideas on what makes up a useful individual in this world.

I had the feeling he’d had a previous vessel to commune with and had found them wanting. I got the real feeling that he had a plan for me. He said I was going to be S.P.E.C.I.A.L. The Spirit Guide (SG) also gets a bit funny about that and starts to laugh and talk about “Special Olympics”.

I’m not sure what any of this is about, but as far as I can tell, I have:    

Strength: of an ox

Perception: of ox poo

Endurance: of an ox

Charisma: of the worm that lives in the ox poo

Intelligence: of the Dean of Smartology at Oxford

Agility: of an ox

Luck: of an ox who, when being transported to the abattoir, is accidentally loaded on to the wrong truck and ends up hosting Top Gear

Like I said, Dear Diary, it’s been a funny old day, let’s [Do You Want To Overwrite This Data] and see what the next one brings. I think that Spirit Guide (SG) might be good and kind... or some kind of wanker.

Yours,

jules (SG cannot do capitals on a console.)

Are You..? Never Mind

This week I thought that Emergency Contact was spying on me... badly.


In old comedies, whenever the protagonist was caught watching someone they shouldn't, they'd always try to cover by quickly picking up something to read. The laugh would come from them holding the book upside-down.


As of writing this blob, she's reading the book shown on the left. When I look at her reading, I get a little creeped out.

Under Six Parsnips

Town Mouse - that’s what I am. I know or understand almost nothing about “the country”.

What are those crops? Where is everything? When should that thing with the blades be used? How often do sheep have a haircut? Do you have to inspect that fence every week or century? Come to that, why is that vast, totally empty - whatever that is - fenced? Those giant, circular hay-bales that seem to have come into fashion, why do they just sit there by themselves? Are they the leftovers from crop-circles?  Why Country music, why?

As Emergency Contact (EC) and I put the necessary kilometres on the lease car, the list of what I don’t understand about the country only grows. For instance, electric tea-candles on restaurant tables. If you were going to do away with lighting tables with real candles, why fake a stupid little tea-candle in a coloured glass bowl? Another one; Australian flags on letterboxes. You are pounding along the left side of a highway, bounded by yellow, dry scrub with the occasional appearence of a gum tree or kangaroo carcass. There is quite simply nowhere else you could be. The flag seems a bit redundant.

I’ve written a couple of blobs on getting the miles on the lease car. We had a few to get, let me tell you. This weekend we did a pretty impressive loop. We went out via Pluto, looped in as far as Saturn, swung back out to Neptune and then came back in via Saturn again. I’m not joking. Not even a purile Uranus one. Let me explain, because this was one country feature I totally understood.

Using the Anglo-Australian Telescope Dome at Siding Springs as a model of the sun (at 1:38,000,000 scale) there’s a little bit of science art radiating out from there. It’s called the Solar System Drive and at appropriate distances away from the dome, the other bodies of the solar system are represented to scale, on billboards. It gives you a nice impression of how vast and appropriately named space is, when you pass a billiard ball on a sign that says “Pluto” and then you drive for a couple of hours at a 100 km/h and then pass a blue basketball on a billboard that says “Neptune”.

One hundred kilometres an hour in the one to 38 million scale model is three times the speed of light. That’s ticking along, Chewie. Sorry, I mean EC. We’ll get those lease car kilometre easy peasy.

Open Letter To Toyota

Dear Mr Toyota,


I have enjoyed many of your products for many years and in general find them a byword for reliable motoring, if not actually a life changing experience. But I have to get something off my chest.

You have built into your newer cars warning sounds designed to stop me from killing myself. In fact, you have built in noises that are designed to stop me from even mildly inconveniencing myself and you should not have done this.

Let’s go through three examples:

1)   The beeping that tells me the key is in the ignition and the door is open. 
Yes, I know. I did both those things. Is the warning to stop me from shutting the key in the car? I can’t lock the car without that key, so what’s the point? If it’s to stop me from walking away from an unlocked car with a key in the ignition, well, if I am daft enough to do that a chime is not going to help. I’m guessing the type of person that walks away from a car in that state probably wouldn't have worked out what the noise was about anyway... or even heard it (looking at you, wrinklies). If the answer is to stop yoof easily stealing the car, well the type of people who need to go joy riding are not going to choose a 1.8 litre Corolla to re-enact Ronin. What’s the harm in it, you ask, Mr Toyota? Maybe it will save just one person some embarrassment, you think? It ruins things, Mr T. I have been in the middle of nowhere, I mean somewhere  we've not seen another car for hours, got out to take in the view (or a quick piddle on a tree) and the car stands there in the glorious, empty, vast quietness carrying on like Pac Man. STFU you styooopid little drama queen. Look at the naicha. Look at it. Does it need your input? NO!


2)   The beeping that tells me I have turned the car off with the headlights still on. 
Why can't the car turn them off automatically when the key is pulled? I’ve owned other cars, quite a good deal older, that had no problem with this simple task. The Toyota has sensors and doohickies all over the place that allow it to carry on like a pork chop, why not do something useful with all of that technology?


3)   The beeping that tells me that someone, somewhere, hasn’t got their seatbelt on. 
On the face of it, not so silly. There’s no argument from me about the efficacy of seatbelts. But, I do have a gripe about what the car considers an animate or inanimate object or indeed, what this situation is really about. It gets all Florence Nightmare when I’m trying to take home two bottles of mineral water. Two and a half litres of water is enough to make the seat think there’s an unrestrained child in the front. This sensor needs to be cranked up to not start complaining until there’s about 30 kilos sitting there, and it needs to detect breathing. Anyone who’s putting a person lighter than that or not breathing in the front passenger seat of a car is not operating within the bounds of polite society and a cute little beeping noise is not going to be the thing that makes them straighten up and fly right.

So, Mr Toyota, think about who you have attracted to buy your car. They can afford it. They are conservative and experienced drivers. They are the type of people who have reflexively put on seatbelts and taken out keys for many years. These safety “features” do not help, they are the type of thing that makes them rethink buying the brand next time. These people have enough aggravation in their lives and, to them, peeping machines rank with crying children on international plane flights. They can't do much about it, but they do start to get gun-shy.


However, I’m not here to just whine. I’m here to provide answers.

Right there on the dashboard next to the radio volume dial, put the car volume dial.

If this opens you up to possible liability issues, particularly in America where they sue as a kneejerk overcompensation for stupidity, we can get around that. Make the option a mechanic’s only override that can be done at the shop. We sign a liability waiver and they turn off the sounds.

You see, the final thing I find so annoying about this, Mr Toyota, is that you are currently in the middle of your umpteenth recall for life threatening safety issues in your cars. Get your own house in order before you go shorten my life with all your nagging.

Love from Grey Area.

Labor The Point

After probing the general public to a depth of one micron, I have the following finding to share with you:

New South Welshmen are sick of the State election and the campaigning that goes with it.

According to every predictor, State Labor is about to get its arse handed to it. It is about to come wandering back into the Lower House and be told that the only seats left available, are on the “special” bus idling in the driveway.

I have no reason to believe this isn’t true. I have absolutely no love for the Liberals and wish I had more choices when it comes to the ballot, but Labor has set a new low and it seems hard to see how it would ever be turned around. At this point, Kristina Keneally might as well appear on a parapet and wave a random weapon around like Gaddafi, Hussein or Sheen for all the good the campaigning is going to do.

So, if the election is going to be a bit of a landslide, there should be no access to the public purse for campaigning. It’s not justifiable and it would be nice and peaceful.

Ceiling Fans

The other night, I was in the lounge watching a TV show when Emergency Contact started yelling at me from the bedroom.

“Baby, there are…” pause and pause. More pause. I started to wonder if she’d forgotten what she was doing. Pause. The reason for the pause then became apparent.

She started again, “There are 21 spiders on the ceiling!”

My first thought was that she’d started some drinking song I didn’t know.

(To the tune of It’s Raining It’s Pouring)

Twenty one spiders on the ceiling

You know that’s not a good feeling

What we should do

Is kill one or two

Twenty one spiders on the ceiling

Twenty spiders on the ceiling

Only slightly better feeling

What we should do

Is splat just a few

Twenty spiders on the ceiling

Nineteen spiders on the ceiling

Make me nervous when I’m kneeling

What we should do

Is spray till they’re through

Nineteen spiders on the ceiling

… and so on.

But turns out she didn’t want to get into a long-distance-drive time-waster. We really did have 21 spiders on the ceiling.

A lot unlike Indiana Jones, I didn’t go barrelling down the hall, whip in one hand, fly-swat in the other, to face tarantulas looking like brown tennis balls with legs. Rather, I finished my very important show and sauntered in when it damn well pleased me. I figured if she’d had time to make a headcount, it couldn’t have been that bad.

I was right, but so was she. All over our ceiling, were baby huntsmen. They were large enough to recognise as huntsmen, but small enough for it not to be a scene from Arachnaphobia.

Twenty one was an estimate because there wasn’t a reliable way to get an exact count. They were randomly yet equidistantly spaced across the perfect white expanse of the ceiling and in constant motion. Not all of them at the same time, but always one or two. What was really cute, though, was that one would get the rabbits and take off in a crazy spider run, and every time he came within the zone of one of his mates, they’d take off in a ziggy zaggy to avoid being inside his  zone. It was one of the most perfect and furry-faced little examples of chaos theory in action in nature… then we killed them all.

You Could Knock Me Over With A Sledgehammer

There's a lot of criticism of Benji Marshall at the moment. People are saying he's really let them down. I agree. He was out late at night punching blokes in the head. Not a glassing, dog, drug bust or sexual assault in sight. What kind of "Face of Rugby League" does he call himself?

Micallef's A Replicant

I'll get to the heart of what this blob's about in a tick, just let me explain the picture. I wanted a simple image of a meerkat, preferably with a white background. A meerkat has only the most tenuous link to the subject matter, and would therefore be mildly amusing to me... and blend nicely with the new theme. Instead, I found that and... well... um. Look, it's got absolutely nothing to do with this blob. It just made me giggle. Ok, down to business...


Shaun Micallef is the best Australian TV presenter. In fact, he’s the best presenter on Australian TV, but he’s got problems.

 I’ve just read his book, watched him on telly and spent the weekend in a bush outside his house peering in through the windows and I think he’s suffering an obsession.

 For those of you who aren’t sci-fi fans, I’ll let you in on the clues.

His book, Preincarnation, has a character or two quoting the movie Blade Runner completely out of context. In fact, he finishes the book with a pretty memorable set of lines from the film. I laughed out loud when I read it, partly through the shock of recognition, partly because it was so ludicrously misplaced and partly because it was a pretty daring way to finish a book. Emergency Contact was dead impressed at one in the morning.

On the game show he hosts, when talking about what is carried around inside the heads of Baby Boomers, he lapsed into the death monologue of Rutger Hauer’s character from Blade Runner. “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion…”

He hosts his show from a chair with “Tyrell Corp.” stencilled on the backrest. Tyrell is a fictional organisation featured in, you guessed it, Blade Runner. They manufacture bespoke human beings and trade with the catchy motto, “More human than human”.

The chair features in a scene of the movie where a cop is interviewing a suspected escaped artificial human (replicant) and places the suspect under interrogation stress. The suspect reacts very badly to this and it’s one of those scenes that is hard to forget, especially when witnessed at an impressionable age.

I enjoy Micallef’s show as much as I enjoy a meerkat with a bon-bon on its head, but it would be less tense for me if I didn't expect an angry replicant to turn up and blow Shaun through the wall because he didn‘t want to talk about his mother.I will also say this, Shaun (I know you’re a regular reader): The artificial meerkat that keeps popping up and down on your TV host desk, I think was locally manufactured. Finest quality. Superior workmanship.*

 *... and the award tonight for most oblique film reference of all time, goes to...