Honey, He's Back... and He Brought Friends!

Beauty May Be Skin Deep, But It's The Only Skin I Got

Five days a week, I drive by a church on my way to work. It has a billboard out the front that rotates a series of pathetic little messages that are supposed to be modern, hip and religious at the same time. They’re about as hip as your grandmother’s joint replacement. Stuff like, “Jesus. Detox for your soul.”

There’s one there at the moment that is so dumb, it’s self-defeating. It features a large picture of someone with absolutely terrible facial deformities. I mean, there’s been plastic surgery, there’s a glass eye, there’s no lateral symmetry, this poor person has either suffered the most awful congenital condition or they’ve suffered an absolutely horrendous accident. I can’t tell because I’m driving at the time but suffice to say, this person is doomed to a life of other people avoiding their gaze and praying that their little children don’t say something too honest within earshot. The large font caption is, “Beauty is in the eye of the creator.” I understand that the church is trying to be deep as a tonic to the shallow beauty-consciousness of the rest of us, but I want to run through the logic of that.

The all-powerful creator, the one that keeps the atoms moving in the correct orbits, the one that designed the universe, its magnificent machinations and all of the laws that keep it delicious for life, Him; every now and then can’t be bothered and makes some basic errors in the construction of some human beings. Or, he does it on purpose.

He also finds it acceptable to leave the poor sod the way he sloppily turned them out. He doesn’t think it worthwhile enacting any miracles to correct the oversight.

He also designed the rest of us to find physical attractiveness very important, to the point that we will pay certain especially beautiful people enormous amounts of money just to appear in pictures (moving or still). This slavish attention to physical beauty will ensure that someone who doesn’t get anywhere near the barest minimum of attractiveness is going to find the world a very hostile and difficult place.

This all-powerful being is happy with this situation. The beauty is in His eye, remember. Doesn’t matter that it isn’t in anybody else’s, He’s happy with a lifetime of misery that He’s foisted on someone for… what reason? Has He ever explained why?

If this God was real, why would you want to abase yourself to something so manifestly cruel and unfair? My “God-given” right as a person of self-determination, would be to rebel and reject this monster with every fibre of my being, even if it cost me my life. Lucky I don’t actually have to put my money where my mouth is on that one.

All the church has advertised, is that He is cruel, capricious and sloppy. It’s actually better to assume that the universe does not care, feels no animosity or joy at your existence and that sometimes awful things happen. Better to understand that and not also be worried about the super-long-term consequences of being born with horrible facial deformities. In the religious mind, the reward for putting up with such unfairness in your temporal life, is to go to heaven. Who the hell wants to spend eternity with such an unconscionable bully?

I Swear I'm Not Doing a Period Drama

It’s absolutely amazing how impressions that are a long way off the mark can be made - and how indelible they will inevitably be.

Yesterday, I traded a Ford Ute for a Jag. At the trading yard I needed to take the remaining 1% of crap that I wanted from the old car to the new one before doing the paperwork. Stuff like the eTag, the old directory and some other items:

1) A doctor's bag. I had a birthday recently and at my request Emergency Contact gave me an antique doctor’s bag. They are unusual in a world full of synthetic back-packs. They are leather, which I like. They have big, gaping mouths that make it easy to fossick around for leads and cords and PC bits and pieces (which I do daily). They are big enough to take a laptop, paperwork, a tablet, and sundry crapola and sturdy enough to keep all that junk protected. They are lockable. They are uncommon and practical.

2) A walking stick. A few years ago, I fractured an ankle. I was on a walking stick periodically for a couple of months as it mended. I haven’t used the stick for years and had forgotten that it was rattling around under the passenger seat of the ute.

3) Dark grey suit. I arrived at the dealership from work, wearing a muted, conservative grey suit.

So, down at the car yard, a tall man in a grey suit, carrying a walking stick and doctor’s bag, got out of a Ford one-tonner, walked over to a Jag and started loading the kit into it.

They yardies stared at me, unable to decide if they were watching the weirdest episode of All Creatures Great and Small or an elaborate car-jacking.

(I wasn’t as amused at their infernal gawping and, removing my monocle with as much dignity as I could muster, I poked one of them in chest with the stem of my hickory pipe and gave the unprincipled scoundrel a piece of my mind.)

Growl

With the arrival of Darth Baby, the ute isn’t so sensible anymore. The baby-agency ladies frowned at my suggestion of just disengaging the airbag and fitting the car-seat in the passenger side of the cabin and they looked at me funny when I suggested facing it backwards in the tray, just on top of the lock-box.

So, with a mid-weight heart, I’ve had to get rid of the vehicle that has supplied so much entertainment over the past few years. Who can forget, “There’s a wet mattress in the back of your ute and the forecast is for two more weeks of rain,” and “I’m sure a cupboard was in there when we left, well that saves carrying it up the stairs.”

It’s time for me to grow up and get ‘family oriented’. I researched four-door, family sedans with good mileage, airbags and reasonable resale. Last weekend, with that knowledge under my belt and sensibleness in my head, economics in my heart and role model in my pants I went and hit the auto markets…  and bought a Four-litre V8, S-Class Jag. 

‘Allo Beastie!

Nothing screams family transport like cream leather, walnut dash, electronic seat memory and a supercharger blowing a decent sized eight, built by the lads in white coats in Coventry. Nothing. Let me explain - Shut up.

I know what I’m getting into and it’s a pretty quick and handy train trip to work. 

Not Even Pretending

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a colleague that I found amusing and instructive:

He kicks off, “We’ve got a delay with delivery”.

“Yeah, how come?”

“We’ve got to change some of the coding for the Chinese.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Chinese Government has told us that we’re not allowed to use 128 bit encryption, they find it too hard to crack. We’ve gotta drop the Chinese version of the software to 64 bit.”

Time Wounds All Heels

Tragedy + Time = Comedy

Therefore:

Comedy – Tragedy = Time

Therefore:

Act serious about something that's actually silly, and you can bend time. That's how Dr Who does it.

Prometheus

Imagine a futuristic flying machine constructed by humans landing on an alien world.

The immediate landscape is a large, desolate depression surrounded by geological features that are ill-defined because of their distance although obviously massive. In the middle of the vast depression is a dome. It could be the result of natural processes but it is more likely built and is evidently very old. It is also forbidding.

The occupants of the craft exit and approach the dome. They are nervous and excited. At the end of their epic journey they wonder whether they will meet proto-humans or perhaps sit at the knees of their makers and learn cosmic truths.

As it turns out, a little from column A, a little from column B. But enough of In the Night Garden (ABC2 for Kids) with the naughty Igglepiggle and the sleepy Tombliboos and on to my review of Prometheus.

One of the reasons it has taken me so long to write this review is that I wanted to include spoilers to make my point and you all should have seen it by now.

The other reason is that I only got around to seeing it myself the other night and I’m now going to try and make a habit of only reviewing films I’ve actually watched.

In the classic sense the story of Prometheus is a sad one. He taught little cave peoples lots of nifty tricks, not least of which was fire. He was not lauded by some of his colleagues for his efforts and wound up in really sub-par accommodation chained to a rock with his innards regularly used as a bird-feeder. Unlike the protagonists in the Ridley Scott movie, he meant no harm. These half-baked clowns (who somehow manage to snag a trillion dollars to go chasing an intergalactic pipe-dream) are the equivalent of graffitists in the Louvre.

The film has some serious problems. To borrow from the inimitable Micallef, the plot has more holes than a machine-gunned piece of Swiss cheese with stigmata. I spent a lot of the time thinking, “Why would you do that?” So, let’s get into some of these occurrences. Bitching is fun.

In any film, when the scary music starts and the woman is alone in the house, we are always mystified by her next action which is to go and check the basement with a busted torch. It’s the same with Sci-Fi thrillers. Why, in the name of all that is creepy and crawly, do highly-trained astronauts and scientists feel the need to take their fucking helmets off at the first opportunity? No sooner is the needle on the dial pointing to “Breathable”, than some bone-head is sighing loudly and unclipping the protective covering on his noggin, intimating that it was as comfortable as a sandpaper g-string. It’s the year 2094, people. The helmets are comfortable, lightweight, have all your comms gear in them, are tougher than an end-of-term assignment and, oh, what is it again? Oh yeah - HELP YOU BREATH.  I’d be showering with that sucker on.

As for the really dangerous looking bit of fauna, here’s a tip from Alien Husbandry 101. Don’t tickle it under the chin. This bit of egregious fauna mishandling in the film is particularly galling. Let me set the scene. One of the scientists, a biologist qualified enough to crack a spot on a trillion dollar interstellar voyage, sees a giant penis dentata type thingy and moves towards it for a better look. The earthworm-alien cross-breed reacts by, now pay close attention here, reacts by spreading the cowl behind its head. The highly qualified biologist has never seen a cobra and thinks that bearing your teeth and rearing up to look bigger is the interstellar language for ‘give us a hug’. He gets a hug, alright.

There are many other utterly nonsensical bits in the film. The music is pretty dire at times, too. But it’s still a good flick. There are dramatic and horrible deaths. The tech is gorgeous. The look is wonderful. The 3D doesn’t feel like a waste and Fassbinder is magnificent as the android who wants to shout “no prisoners”.

There are some lovely tie-ins to other Alien films that I found satisfying and the casting of Noomi Rapace was bang on. She actually looks a little Ripley-esque in some scenes and that provides a nice visual continuity to the Alien series.

The biggest mistake the movie makes is that it tries to insert more meaning into its content than it deserves. I don’t need the big questions and answers in an Alien film. I need people yelling, “Oh, well that’s just great, that is,” and, “Get away from her, you bitch!” and of course, “They mostly come out at night. Mostly.”

I need my pants scared off. I need shootin’ and runnin’ and tongues with teeth. I do not need pseudo-philosophy and matters of faith. I’m going to show my hand as an amateur futurologist (a polite term for someone who makes shit up).

The whole premise is flawed. If we have the tech in 2089 to get that far into space, we sure as hell are not going to need to explore the dangerous dome in the middle of nowhere in person. We will send in our robots and tele-presence devices and do it all remotely. As they suggest in Aliens we could just do it all from the safety of orbit, including nuking it. But, I suppose that’s not really going to make an exciting Sci-Fi romp and that’s really what we were all there for in the first place.

I give it 7.5 eggs that you should never look into, out of 10.

The Fourth Law Of Robotics. (We're happy to help little robots that help themselves)

Curiosity landed on Mars yesterday. I guess he’s on the run after that nasty “cat” incident.

I love a Mars robot rover. I love a little thing beetling about on a distant planet, chirping to itself, picking up rocks, looking at them and then chucking them over their shoulder like Wall-e did with the diamond ring because the box it came in was more interesting.

I also feel for them a little. Don’t you wonder if they might get a little cold and lonely, out there, all by themselves?

Sojourner, who landed in the late 90s, has officially had his case closed with “communications lost” stamped on the last page of his personnel file. It’s more likely he went a little crazy and switched his own radio off, preferring to be a hermit rather than continually hearing orders from the voices in his little mechanical head.

Spirit got bogged*. He landed on Mars in 2004 and like the brave trooper that he is, he trundled around looking for Sojourner for nearly six years before he came to a dead stop in a sand pit. He is going to present a puzzle to the aliens who explore our solar system when they see a little robot that had somehow managed to cross interplanetary space, only to become baffled by some sand.

So Spirit and Sojourner are out there somewhere, having been reclassified as stationary communications beacons or just plain MIA and I see that Curiosity is as large as a decent sized car. That got me thinking.

I am particularly good at remaining stationary inside a vehicle for long periods. All I’d need is a nappy (well, maybe two) some sandwiches and one of those Bladder Buster cups with the straw. The straw is not idle whimsy, it’s a safety device. I’d need to keep both hands on the wheel during re-entry. I’ll go out into the desert in a small vehicle and round up your escaped robots and I won’t even bitch and whine and then go and become Darth Vader afterward.

*(Now something is missing. All the people round here are too bony for kissing. Sing it like the Mentals. It’s more fun that way.) 

We've Come to Kill The Rooster

I’ve often wondered why a lot of children’s books cover the subjects that they do. Why do most kids need to know what sound a cow makes? Why does the modern, urban kid need to know that lions are kings of the jungles? (Which they’re not. They’re more the Snorers of the Serengeti.)

It would be more useful to know how to spot the parking-pay-machine in a multi-story car park or know the sound of an urban hipster when ordering a chai latte and half-caff soy flat-white, so they can go to another coffee shop without having to stand behind the tosser.

Well, for the most bizarre of reasons, now I know.

A neighbour of ours just got a rooster.

Let me be utterly clear about this: We live in the Inner-West of Sydney. Not traditionally considered farming territory. The neighbours have bought a rooster with a busted timer and he goes off from about 4.30 am to midday.

So now I have a reason to point at those bucolic baby books and say, “Look baby-boy, a rooster! They make a cock-a-doodle-doo sound at any time of the day and if you see one, run it over.”

Fitting Tribute

Garfield on the inside of the car window revealed you as a deep thinker. Baby on board told us we owed you some respect for having bred. Stick figure representations of your family made us give a crap about the delicious unity of your domestic bliss. The hibiscus flower transfers match your southern cross tattoo beautifully and the rosary-with-cross sticker on the back window warn me that not only are you not very smart, but that you think traffic accidents are an act of god.

What I cannot get my head around though, is the thinking behind treating your car like a mobile tombstone. Why has it become fashionable to put “In loving memory of Guido, 1990 – 2011” on the back window of your 20-year-old Torago, cuz? Is “RIP Paikea” printed in crooked type across the tinting of your rusting Commodore a suitable eulogy to your dead bro, considering he killed himself street racing?

The mind bending bathos of this is going to come home when you have to sell, or better yet, take to the wreckers, your heap of crap car. Stay classy, yo!

Nice One, Dad

There is an awful lot of doxy, both ortho and hetero, on controlling your child’s crying. Do you have non-stop contact with the child or do you increase the periods of time between visits to the wailing infant? It appears that the jury is still out but I am pleased to say that my research into uncontrolled crying has been started and concluded in a single morning.

What I have found is that if you get a good chunk of flesh in with the fingernail when you are manicuring babies miniscule fingers, you can go straight from zero to uncontrolled crying in a nanosecond.

Now that I have successfully broken the sacred bond of trust between father and infant, I’m going to nick up to the shops and see if I can run over a few kittens on the way.   

He Saw It Too, I'm Just The Only One Who Can Speak

There are sideline benefits to having kids (apart from having organ donors on tap) that I had not considered. Here’s one. Criticism By Proxy. I have never, ever before, been able to say:

Did silly mummy put your nappy on backwards? She’s so silly. Look at how silly she is. Daddy wouldn’t make those mistakes. No! Gusha gooo gooo.

Did crazy mummy think that a bath this deep wouldn’t drown you? Crazy mumma. Dadda wouldn’t do that, would he? He’d make it safe, wouldn’t he? Yes he would. Yes he would. Yes he zsha zsha gia boo gia boo.

Did mumma push the plutonium rods too far into the reactor just before the Soviet Delegation got here? Silly mumma. She does that, doesn’t she? A gusha goo goo blatty bum.

The avenues for self righteousness open up before me in nauseatingly proliferate ways.  

Cut It Out

Tribal Wives is a show that takes English women of varying degrees of poshness and catapults them into a village where vaccination is witchcraft and the technology behind bras is borderline magic. I’ve watched only one and I was disgusted, but probably not for the reasons that you would expect me to be. (I’m fine with people volunteering to be put in embarrassing or potentially dangerous situations for my entertainment.) This was something else.

One of the Posh Girls was getting to know her local matriarchy when she came upon their practice of female circumcision. The elder proudly stated that she had circumcised hundreds, maybe thousands of girls in her community. Our Posh Girl, remaining open minded and culturally sensitive, asked why. The main reason for a total clitorectomy on all of the girls in this “society”, is so they can get pregnant.

Let’s be clear - They believe that if they don’t get circumcised, they can’t get pregnant. Obviously, no one in this group has put that to the test, but there’s their reasoning.

Posh Girl remains politely interested and asks questions of the girls who have had it done and we learn a little more about female sexuality, but nothing more about the hideous injuries that must have been inflicted. Posh Girl finishes the show with a new found respect for her sisterhood and we’re all heart-warmed as she disappears back to Blighty to resume her life with running water and antibiotics.

But, really, after the cameras stopped rolling, Interpol should have swept in. Why isn’t this elder up in front of the Hague for crimes against humanity? She is a self confessed butcher of children and her rationale is an easily disproved belief. We’re happy to try Milosevic for his stupid beliefs. No doubt Anders Breivik is going be dealt with as harshly as possible for his ridiculous beliefs, why does this mutilator in a mud hut get away with it? We’re now too embarrassed to intercede with the noble savages after centuries of our rape and pillage?

Priorities and perspective please, people. 

Dwarf Star

Recently, Emergency Contact and I were sitting in a boardroom with four other seasoned professionals, and all of a sudden, I met my son.


He swept into the room like Darth Vader and the world sort of stopped for me. Well, like a small Darth Vader being carried by his current minion, but he had a retinue and he definitely swept in, carrying all before him. True to form, the boardroom went silent. He was polite enough not to choke anyone with his mind, but my throat did go a little tight when I held him, and EC burst into tears, so there was obviously some mind trick going on.

Little Vader moves his base of operations to our place on the 18th of this month. I'm expecting that there will be tours by lesser minions to see if it suits his purposes. He will want to know that the troops don't need new ways to be motivated and that everything will be finished on time. EC and I have been working feverishly to get the base finished. It's no moon, I can't promise him that, but we do have a good feeling about it.

C'mon Already

I’ve never been terribly good at waiting. I’m particularly no good at waiting for a delivery. Once I’ve committed to the misguided shopping spree brought on by promises and poor judgement, I just want the thing to arrive before the thrill wears off and regret sets in.

You may or may not remember my debacle with the steam mops, but that is actually a fairly accurate portrayal of my general dealings with the non-bricks-and-mortar retail world. And yet, I persist.

After several years of up and down, in and out, optimism and straw-clutching, Emergency Contact and I were recently given the go-ahead by a local NGO, and now we’re waiting on another delivery.

Of a baby boy. Ahuh... a boiby. Doesn’t that drop a couple of steam mops down the list of ‘things I’m looking forward to the delivery of’.

The Urban Wilds

I might have finally hit upon something useful to do with myself - Come up with PhD thesis subjects for perpetual students who can’t think of one themselves. I know, right? How much more useful to society could I be?

This brilliant idea came to me today as I was driving to work and I noticed a new phenomenon.

Recently a giant, multinational, Swedish, flat-pack-furniture retailer opened up on my route between home and work. I don’t want to give too much away, but it rhymes with Ikea.

Anyway, what I have noticed is the gradual but uneven migration of trolleys into the surrounding suburbs. I take many different routes to and from work dependant on influences such as:  Traffic. School Days. Angle of the sun. The soreness of my back versus the number of speed-humps. Boredom. Visions. Hallucinations. Revelation. Whether I want to turn left more than right or vice-versa. Number of gear changes. Radio reception to small, independent radio stations. Shopping needs. Parking direction coming into main shopping strips. Needing to keep a check on the hoarders up the road from my place. Whim. And some others that I can’t think of right now. Point being though that I can take an almost limitless number of ways home and I get to observe the suburbs that neighbour the furniture store in some detail.

These trolleys are spreading, but clumping. I observed four in a heap in a street some distance away from the main car park. Someone needs to track them somehow and observe what is going on. Not only would it be an interesting exercise to compare it to other networks and natural migrations, I bet there would be some advice there for future town planners and urban environment designers. At the very least, the impoverished student-about-town would stand to make a couple of extra bucks as “This month’s champion Trolley Tracker”. I understand you can win nearly a hundred dollars for finding a few trolleys.

Fatting The Gap

One of the highlights of my television year was on last night. While there have been better episodes, i.e. more unethical, this one still bore the hallmarks of entertainment designed by Donald Rumsfeld. It was the “Challenge” edition of The Biggest Loser.

Or, Get A Fatty To Shit Themselves To A Better Life.

This year they were taken to Switzerland to be challenged by going from high places to low places. The reward for getting enormously heavy was to let gravity do its job.

(If I didn’t know a little something about Galileo and falling bodies, I’d suspect that the tubbies would be better at that than the rest of us. The real challenge would be getting them to go up… but I digress.)

Last night, Switzerland played host to, by weight, about 18 Australians. By headcount, about five. Even though it's ANZAC time of year, I've got to say that the Swiss were incredibly brave.

They got those fatsos up in helicopters, on thin suspension bridges, hanging off ropes and all sorts of other adventurous stuff. I mean, who wants to pilot a helicopter with a hysterical shifting load in the back that could roll you into a mountainside at any moment?

For that matter, who wants to stand on a wire-and-sky-hook construction, ninety metres above the earth, with a panicking fatty? They drag you down just like the fabled drowning man. They don’t have much to live for. If you’re lucky, they just take a bite out of you as they shamble past to throw themselves off the platform. More likely though, they make a lunge and hug you all the way down - like the last lamington at the gates of a health farm.

Who’s the guy who does a tandem sky-dive with a panicking lardo strapped to the front of him? The physical limits of what a harness and parachute can take beggar the imagination, let alone the opportunity for the fatty-in-free-fall-feeding-frenzy-fiasco where the instructor arrives back on earth as nothing more than a pair of hands gripping the chute controls, while the ‘contestant’ dabs at the corners of their mouth. Croix de Guerre for that guy.

Last night had some high points, but mostly low. The Swiss will be convinced of a few things after dealing with this lot of winners:

• The only response to anything outside the set of experience even narrower than the set of their own eyes, is “Or Mar Gawd”
• The only response to having just achieved something momentous, such as relaxing and letting the equipment and tour personnel do all of the fucking work as per usual is “Or Mar Gawd! I didn’t think I could do it. I am so brave.”
• Despite the wheezing and asthma, those lard-balls can really scream. There’d be wildlife in those cliffs that are going to grow up slightly deaf and fearing a legendary wild-thing they once saw swing by

Yup, the rolly-pollies really did us proud last night and I was relieved to see that the angry lesbian who pulled the full Gabor before her jump, was able to pull it together enough after her jump to make another pass at her instructor - before waddling off to the all-you-can-eat buffet. It was a win for equal rights all around. I’m pro-Gay Marriage. I’m anti-Gay Cannibalism.

Next year, I’m looking forward to a naked chubster fighting their own weight in angry lemurs and another, using nothing but Sellotape on their eyelids and a giant adult nappy, to fake their way into the Sumo grand finals.

Life Does Get Around To Imitating, Eventually

The boring old farts often say, “We take too many things for granted”, but I think we take even some of the for granted things for granted. Take the below:

The other day, I saw a bird fight its way out of a wet paper bag. It was unreal. It was funny. It ended in triumph and it also gave me an indelible mental image for that often used saying.

In the recent filthy weather we’ve been having in Sydney, I was afforded another terrific image. A for real-deal drowned rat. Never seen one before, now I know what people are talking about.

I mentioned this to Smurfy and he suddenly got all excited and said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I slipped on a banana peel the other day. It was outside the post office and I went ‘wooowah’ and looked down and thought, so that actually happens, does it?”

And I bet you’re thinking the same thing. I’ve never, ever slipped on a banana peel. Thought it was just one of those ‘things’.

In Hind Sight

For those of you who don't know, my partner Emergency Contact, has a unique relationship with the world. Don't get me wrong, she's a smart cookie - in fact, she's Dr Emergency Contact, but there is the element of the distracted academic about her. Take the following exchange for example. 


EC: You know you've got things on your mind when you put your contacts in... leave it for a couple of hours and then accidentally put them in again. I spent the morning wondering what the hell's gone wrong with my eyes. 


Me: That is both hilarious and tragic. 


EC: And, when I took one pair out, and then put on my glasses, I went, 'Hey wait a minute. I don't need to be wearing these. Cool. No. Wait. What the HELL is going on?' 


Me: Are you going anywhere without adult supervision today?

An Ode to Skyrim

Dorothea Mackellar (OBE) will be remembered for “My Country”, as most Australian school kids have trudged their way through those lines that start with, “I love a sunburnt country”. 

But, she was also interested in art, politics and in later life, she really got into computer gaming.

She was particularly fond of The Elder Scrolls trilogy. So much so, that with a very small amount of imagination, she wrote an ode to Skyrim; the third of the games.

I love Bethesda’s construct

A land of stabbing pains

Of see-through mountain ranges

Of shouts and levels gained

I love her many dungeons

Her empty, shallow sea,

Her mutants and programming errors

This RPG for me

Scale

Emergency Contact and I live opposite a sports oval. It is very well used.

We were coming home from weekly shopping when a ball rolled onto the road in front of us. I drew the car up sharp. EC's head jerked forward and I felt bad, but what normally follows a soccer ball onto the road... ?

When the inevitable chaser in team-uniform appeared on the road behind the ball, EC said, 

“Jesus! That's a bloody big child!”

I added, “Yup. But normally we just call them men.”

Seoul Survivor

For those of you who haven’t been to South Korea, you will find this blob a penetrating insight into a culture and its people. For those of you who have, you will find it hopelessly half-arsed.

But, you don’t come here for the latest update to Ban Ki-moon from his cultural attaché so let’s do this.

On the map, South Korea looks approximately halfway between Japan and China. When you get there… it feels exactly halfway between Japan and China.

Don’t tell the Koreans. I think I mentioned it once but got away with it.

Japanish

• Bowing
• Seniority
• Politeness
• Yelling as entertainment
• Masochistic challenges on TV
• Tech-fetish
• Efficiency
• The sound of the language
• The look of the people
• Public transport
• White gloves on service personnel
• Twisted sexuality
• Latent gayism
• Order

Chinesish

• Air-quality
• Size of the city
• Rubbish
• That odour that washes over you frequently
• Brand-names
• Murder of English on signs
• Reckless approach to fun
• Reckless approach to crossing roads
• Reckless approach to public health
• Reckless approach to my dinner
• Battery housing for humans
• Money

Halfway betweenish

• Smoking
• Traffic
• Personal safety
• Regard for the government
• Treatment of women
• Pricing of electronic goods
• Food

Seoul is vast. It beggars the mind in exactly the same way the Shanghai does. It’s got half the population, but when you are talking about things of that size you just stop comprehending and sit slack-jawed at how many identical, white, residential tower-blocks there can be in the world.

Anyone a bit sceptical about human impact on the planet should see it. In Australia, we simply do not get to witness what the weight of humanity can really do to a place. We sit on top of Australia like a gnat on a donkey. Koreans sit on South Korea like Nigella Lawson on a race horse. (It’ll probably make it across the line. It'll also probably have to be turned into stew afterward.)

Everyone under the age of 40 has a phone that is halfway in size between an iPhone and an iPad. Also, everyone looks under 40 and there are no iPhones or iPads here. The Samsung rules supreme. Oooooh, Garaxy.

The time of year you choose to visit a place will influence how you feel about it, so keep that in mind. But, it is brain damagingly cold in Seoul at the moment. I can’t imagine living with it. My delicate tropical glands don't know how to cope and I’ve had a persistent nose-bleed for three days. 

Koreans have a deeply civilised streak (and don’t give two hoots for fuel costs it seems) every building is heated to “desiccate”.  I’m either sweating like a sumo in a sauna or crying like a codger in the cold or bleeding from a frozen orifice.

And, do you know, I quite like it here.

Smash That Together, Cupid

There’s a huge circular underground metro type thing here in Seoul. It’s huge. It’s underground. It’s circular. When I mentioned this to Smurfy, he said, “Like a Large Hadron Collider for people”.

We laughed.

But now I’m here, I’ve realised - it is. Where two metro trains collide is where babies come from.

Just Met A Girl Called Korea

First time in Seoul and I’ve seen almost nothing of Korea... so what the hell? Let's make some generalisations.

Incheon international airport is a long way from the city of Seoul. It took hours at a decent speed to get into town after landing. After spending nearly 11 hours on a plane to get to Incheon, you then backtrack under your own flight-path for two hours in a bus to get to your hotel. It’s so far out of town that I wonder what it’s doing, claiming to be Seoul’s international airport. I think it might be more accurate to claim to be Pyongyang’s.

I usually look forward to a decent bus or train trip in a new town. Chance to get a feel for the local traffic, the local architecture and the locals. This bus was so frosted, bespattered and misted up, I saw nothing. We could’ve been driving through the long, dark teatime of the soul for all I knew. Having seen a bit more of Seoul in the daylight the next day, I can say this. It’s a giant Asian city with lots of Dunkin’ Donuts, Papa Pizza , Texas Beer Houses and other traditional South East Asian dining establishments.

Question: Have there been a lot of disastrous fires in South Korea? I ask because my hotel, which is nicely appointed, has a really obvious preoccupation with fires. Everywhere you turn there’s a 3 kilo extinguisher, the doors all open in strange directions (Like, my room door opens outwards. That’s got to be a fire thing, right?) and there’s an inertia-reel harness arrangement, bolted to the floor with a window-smasher sitting next to it, so I can repel down the side of the towering inferno if I feel that I’m going to get done medium-rare using the stairs.

Here’s a business tip; I reckon that new little car maker, Hyundai, is going to do quite well here. I sense that Daiwoo might have managed a toe-hold as well.

Here's a health tip: If you are part of a region where it is an economic beehive and also the place where they will find Patient Zero of the next global pandemic - Cover your damn mouth when you hack up a lung, will you?

And it is cold. It is colder than charity. It’s into the negative C’s and it’s raining. By contrast, the interiors are hot. They are hotter than the lunch I just had.

It’s kind of good, though. I like it here, so far.

Next Week, On "Who's Your Favourite Baldwin?"...

I tweeted recently that we had had our inaugural game of “Who’s your favourite Baldwin”... and that Daniel was the winner.

I need to elaborate. Smurfy found this in Wikipedia:

In 1998, Baldwin was found running naked through the halls of New York's Plaza Hotel shouting "Baldwin!" and was arrested for possession of cocaine.

There’s nothing in that that sentence that isn’t good, but there is a fair amount that is baffling.

Yelling your own name… as though you have just won something. Brilliant. Makes the copper’s jobs a bit easier, too.

Arrested for possession of cocaine. While naked. Where was he snorting it from? Brilliant.

Again, from the same reliable source:

Baldwin starred on the VH1 reality television show Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, filmed in 2007, but left the show after the fourth episode. His stated reasons for leaving included having a prior commitment to an acting job and the others' behavior interfering with his recovery, but it is eventually revealed that he left because of inappropriate text messages he had sent to Mary Carey, fellow patient in the same treatment group as him

The only thing that’s not so brilliant about that is we originally read it as Mariah Carey and fell about laughing for about fifteen minutes. Can’t explain why. It’s not as funny when it’s not her, but as he seems to be living in a fantasy land so, you know, goose, gander, Baldwin.

Enemy Mine

If you’re going to have a nemesis it’s important to have a good quality one. Take me for instance… I have a proper one. I loathe and detest my nemesis to a level where I actually lose sleep over them. I stay awake, just to get in a little extra loathing. My nemesis is able to affect my life. He can make it good or bad. I'm pretty sure I can affect his.

I have talked to my nemesis every week, for at least an hour, for the last three years. I always talk to them on a Wednesday. That’s important, that is. You’ve got to have regular contact with your nemesis. You can’t just see them every now and then down the street or at school reunions. You’ve got to know them nearly as well as you know yourself.

I know my nemesis so well that my hatred is not pure. Sometimes, I feel a little sorry for them. Sometimes, I even see their point of view. That’s the way it has got to be with a nemesis. There has to be a little yin with the yang. There has to be some dependence on each other. Something that binds us inexorably across the fields of space and time. There has to be, let’s face it, a little love smattered through the deep, stinky veins of hatred.

I get shaky and angry for about 12 hours before I talk to them, and I feel an almost pathetic sense of relief when the phone call ends - and that’s where I want to thank my nemesis. Because, I talk to them on a Wednesday and after it’s over, I almost feel like the weekend has started. Everything else feels easy.

Thank you nemesis, for being such an unholy thorn in my side that I am able to relish at least two days of the working week. If and when our relationship is over, we'll keep in touch of FoesBook.