Stuck In Da House, Yo!

The return of Blue-Eyed R&B/Rap, tonight, one night only in my living room.

Performing as The Wuhan Clan:

Hits include:

Slouch This Way

Napper's Delight

Nuthin' but a 'C' Thang

Fight the Power (bill)

Get Your Clothes On

Sniff It (real good)

Me Myself and I

The Message (don't push me 'cause I'm close to the fridge)

Inevitable

The traditional perps have become the vics. We fall over each other to politely and politically talk about the “narrative that allows this to happen”. “How does the West address radicalism and social threat?”

“The normalisation of terror.”

“An attack on them is an attack on us”

Faith, peace, obedience, submission.

In the same month that two of the most senior reps in the Catholic church have been either indicted or jailed for sex crimes, is the same week that we see yet another mass-murder performed in the name of god.

Clarity and epistemology is required here. 

Faith is the enabler and found wanting.

These things could not happen in a secular, rationalist society.

If the response to the great spiritual and moral questions is “still working on it,” society will be a bit bland, but bland in the right way.

I am appalled but not surprised at what happened.

It will always happen when people can call “Faith” and abrogate responsibility.

Meanwhile, at the First-World Second-Hand Car Lot

"Gals at school dropoff are totes giving me crap about how little my SUV is."

"Nothing worse."

"Friend of mine will be here in a minute to check you're not ripping me off..."

"Yup. Big decision. The Mitsubishi or the M1 Abrams. Kick the tread while you wait, if you want,"

"Maybe.... hey, I don't want to leave the other car here, can you deliver the new one?"

"Sure. Too easy."

The 80s were a bit frisky with the nooklia weapons. I did my final years of highschool assuming/banking on the fact that I was gonna die before any of it had to matter.

Having dinner with one of my favourites the other night, I asked how he was going with the current administration. He answered, "We are interested in how far we can go, with the crazy."

I have always had a problem with short, to mid-range nukes. It suggests that somehow there's a way to use them in a limited way...

The Empire's New Basin

Mad Max: Blurry Road

Spoilers. (Well, hardly, at this late stage of the game)

It's time I spoke up. For the few. For those of us who are fans but have not been blinded by the nitrous-fuelled hype-machine.

Mad Max: Furry Load, is not as good as “mastermind” George Miller would have us believe. The use of the word mastermind alone should send up warning flares. If the mastermind epithet is accurate of anything, it's the brain behind the marketing juggernaut. Or, maybe the editor. Margaret Sixel famously had to churn through nearly 500 hours of film to distil the final 120 minutes. I don't know if that indicates her remarkable patience or whether Miller has spent so long out of the game, he has forgotten how to say “Cut, that's a wrap.”

Attempting Mad Max again should be undertaken as carefully as, say, attempting Star Wars again. (Bunch of us waiting to have our hearts broken there, is all I can say.) And George, you can't just do away with major characters on a whim.

Here's the top ten list of rides in the Action/Sci-fi film world that are also characters, as voted by Grey Area is Right.

1) Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)

2) The V8 Interceptor (Mad Max)

3) Enterprise (Star Trek - not differentiating which one. We're talking about the spirit, not nerdy detail.)

4) Most Batmobiles, other than ones driven by Clooney or Kilmer.

5) Thunderbird 2 (“Thunderbums are go!”. Oh, how we laughed as 5-years-olds)

6) The Liberator (Blake's 7)

7- 10) Blah, blah, blah. Shan't bore you with the rest but here's something interesting. Coming in way down the list:

48) TARDIS*

Look at number two! Incontrovertible proof that Miller could not take this lightly. The Interceptor is a cultural icon. The only time I've ever cried at a film was when it crashed and burned in MMII. The airy-fairy way in which he dispenses with the V8 is like saying, “Whistler's Mother? She looks good on the floor. I thought the rocking chair was a touch too much.”

It does supply the impetus for a great line from Max, though, and that was almost enough for me.

"First they take my blood. Now they take my car?!"

Pity though. Many of us wanted to see more of ol' Black Beauty.

The film:

Nothing, not a thing, makes sense if you examine it. But you shouldn't.

As silly as it is, and it is plenty silly, it is a gorgeous piece of art.

Charlize Theron is faultless as an action heroin. She had me at Aeon Flux anyway - she does it again.

Quentin Kenihan is inexplicably present, playing what else but a genetic misshap in a wheelchair. (Wow, what a jarring note his sudden appearance was. “Is that...? Could that be...? I thought he was dead. Didn't he sneeze and his head fell off or something? Well. Good on him. Wait, what just happened?”)

Tom Hardy channels Max incredibly well. If I was to criticise anything it's, and this sounds crazy, he's not quite tough enough. I'm no fan of Gibson's personal life but he was absolutely, completely Max. The laconic, whippet thin, brawling survivor. Gibson owned that and Hardy does a magnificent job with action and voice. Voice in particular is uncanny - but he looks too well fed and just not merciless enough. Max's redemption lies in sudden and uncharacteristic moments of selflessness and honour. Hardy looks like he'd lay his leather jacket over a puddle for a damsel to tip-toe across at the slightest provocation. But, let's face it, the jacket could do with the wash. That leads me to some gossip.

A friend of mine, loosely connected to the production, said that Charlize was less than thrilled about working with Tom by about day two, because allegedly he got all 'method' and wouldn't step out of his character or leathers to step into the shower. Good one, Tom. It's important to remain true to the entirely fictional, two dimensional character at the expense of your workmates comfort. That's gritty realism.

The War Boys are disgusting and repellent and fascinating and what you need for a set of minions – and their death-cry, battle-rant, call-and-response is hilarious and feels very Australian for some reason:

We're on the back of a speeding War Rig. A mortally wounded War Boy sees opportunity to go out with Kamikaze style, sprays his mouth and teeth with chrome, turns to his brethren and screams, “Witness meeeeee!”

All the other War Boys within earshot, scream back, “Witnessssssss!”

Mortally wounded War Boy throws himself off the back of the truck holding two explosive spears, into the cockpit of a pursuing, entirely spiked battle-buggy, exploding it, him, neighbours and earth. He has saved his brothers-in-arms with a selfless act of flaming heroism and will be welcomed through the gates of Valhala itself.

All the War Boys who have seen this, scream, “Mediocre!”

Oh, what a lovely day.

So, I guess in conclusion, we were promised something that was going to change the world. It's not going to. It is a cracking, high-paced piece of entertainment where I spent a good amount of time wondering how stuntmen weren't killed. There is a depth to the world that we are to take on trust, but it's not mind-blowing if you're an experienced SF reader or watcher, it's competent.

And, I get that it's a scavenging society, but some detail is distracting and doesn't add depth, it makes you wonder about the wrong things at the wrong time. For instance, I wish the mask fitted over Max's face for half the film, was not so obviously a three-pronged-garden-fork with its handle removed. During an explosive race-to-the-death across a barren wasteland, I kept on thinking about little old ladies and well watered flower beds.

*We'll argue about this another time.

Outside the Lines

A friend of mine wants to do a colouring book for adults. Apparently, it's a good stress reliever. I can understand that. I've entered into a few Easter Bunny Colouring Competitions in my time (I never win. Might have something to do with being honest about my age.) Anyway, she asked me for some ideas for subject matter, so I went blue-sky-mining and here's my preliminary list.

1) Moments before Great Moments in Science, Colouring Book, Featuring:

- Archimedes cleaning the bath

- Newton pulling up a carrot

- Alexander Fleming clearing his throat while hanging out the washing

- Oppenheimer sexually harassing a co-worker

2) Favourite Scenes from 80s Movies Colouring Book

- Ferris Bueller's Bedroom

- The Breakfast Club's detention room

- Sixteen Candles exercise room

- The Princess Bride's Inego Montoya threatening the six fingered man (in a room)

3) Great Transport Disasters in Cubist Style for Easy Block Colouring (By numbers*)

- Hindenburg

- Titanic

- Linnard Skinnard's Plane

*Note, if numbers are followed, they will result in output of varying shades of blue or high gamma

4) Great Newspaper Front Pages from History, Colouring Book (For those who only use lead pencils)

5) The Punch Line Colouring Book, Featuring:

- The chicken on the other side of the road

- A mini with four elephants in it

- An actress speaking to a bishop

- A ute full of pigs honking the horn

- A sheep without legs

- A blond in a BMW

- A light-bulb being changed

- A frog in a blender

- A nun and a vampire

- An Irishman 

6) Great Album Covers Colouring Book (With complimentary CD. Colour as you croon)

7) Crowd Scenes, Protests and Audiences - Animé Style, Colouring Book

8) Exploded Diagrams of Machinery In the Style of Lead-light/Stained-Glass Windows, Colouring Book

9) Old, Inaccurate Political Maps of the Known World, Colouring Book

10) Mythical Beasts Colouring Book (Who's to say you got the colours wrong?)

Aldi Good Things

Occasional, I pull on the bio-hazard suit and go to Aldi. When I do, I make sure to go to the middle section of the shop, the Area of Mystification, just to see what madness they have stacked on the shelves. Sometimes it's not the article on its own that provides the fun, but its proximity to another. I often find the phrases, “... and therein lies a tale”, or “The winter nights just fly by”, spring to mind and I end up giggling my way down the 800 meter checkout conveyor belt.

Purple cello next to under-car-light-kit. (ELO band members getting pissed and confusing which thing to 'hot up'.)

Artists' easels next to motorbike safety leathers. (Because Fauvism.)

A lot of the time, though, something will just sit there and beg all of its own questions.

What kind of day have you had, when you are forced to buy your wheelchair at a discount supermarket?

You are not picking it up from the medical supplier provided by your insurer. You are not being issued with it at the exit of the hospital. Your rehab specialist has not just had it measured and fitted and is going through how lightweight, modern and Jackass it is and how all of the young skate pros will be getting one.

What are the alternatives? You have dragged yourself with your lips through the car park, like you normally do, to get the shopping done but today, the answer to your prayers accidentally turns up in the Aisles of Bafflement? You needed to buy so many cans of suspect dog food that your spine and legs gave way before the checkout, luckily salvation was at hand?

I am a bear of very little brain, but I simply cannot get my head around the set of circumstances in play, where an opportunistic purchase of a discount wheelchair is the antidote. Even the aging couple on the pension, fat of fluid-filled-ankle and mad as a box of hammers (both available in aisles seven and eight) are not going to get there and realise that was what they needed. That happens before then.

Now. Let's talk about Baun tablets and mobile phones...

Bland Designs

"It's already four months into the build and with winter approaching, Rene Magritte has still not moved in. He then suffers a further development application knock-back, because of his windows."

Clint Doesn't Get My Coin

I like to read the book before I see the film. American Psycho Sniper is a difficult one to write a fair review of, particularly as a non-American. As I was reading it I found myself almost laughing at what an unreconstructed plonker the guy was. What I didn't know until the end, was that he was killed recently and the edition of the book I read had the testimonials and memorials from many who knew him, after the main body of the book. While it's not traditional to bad-mouth people in that sort of message, they couldn't say enough how good he was. He evidently touched a lot of people's lives in a positive way.

Now, let's pretend that he's still around so that I get the chance to warn you off this book in an honest fashion, without feeling like I'm speaking ill of the dead.

It is jaw-dropping in its infantile view of the world, the blind patriotism, the one-eyed religious bigotry and the unexamined hypocrisy. It's sort of like Ronald Reagan whispered his fevered fantasies into Donald Rumsfeld's ear, who then in turn dictated them to Captain America's, Down-Syndrome brother.

The guy was far too happy about killing people and dressing it up in patriotism. I understand that soldiers gotta do what they gotta do, but he didn't see any problem with calling in air-strikes that would flatten entire city blocks. There is no way that only combatants were killed. He also mentions that every time he looked through a scope, there were “bad guys” for him to kill. Far more than any other snipers he was working with at the same time. You know what that suggests to me? Yeah. They weren't really all bad guys.

So, he loves killing “savages” to protect Americans and their way of life, but gets on his high horse when not everyone back home agrees with or supports what he and his comrades do. Guess what, psycho - That's one of the major things you're fighting to protect: The right to disagree.

The book is also extremely disappointing in what it doesn't talk about. If you are going to read one of these sorts of books, it's because you want to be a little bit pervy and nerdy and you want to hear what an expert has to say on the hows, whys and wherefores. As an example, he works with the Polish GROM a lot. He respects them but says there were a lot of differences in the way they did things. Then doesn't mention any of them. He's always getting into bar fights. Always. He never mentions any detail. Like I say, if you're reading a book about a SEAL, by a SEAL, you would expect to hear how a professional soldier handles these things. Nup.

He also says extraordinary things such as; the reason he didn't wear a helmet, but preferred a baseball cap on backwards, was because if you want to be cool, you have to look it.

Nup. No. Never. That is almost exactly the opposite of how real cool works.

Even more weird, is that it is just plain dull. I don't know how you achieve that when you are facing daily life-and-death situations but Chris Kyle and fellow writers managed it.

The one shining achievement that stands out for the American military machine, is the effectiveness of their indoctrination.

The delicious, horrible, mortal irony is that he was killed by one of his beloved comrades-in-arms, back home in the US. If it didn't leave a grieving family, you'd almost say it was poetic.

I will not be seeing the film.  

Low Deeds in High Places

Well, I can tell you a couple of things after being a delivery boy for a few weeks. No one living on the bottom floor of a block of flats has ever ordered a box of veg. If I was a small person or pregnant or... bone idle, I would get some dumb lug to carry my 50 kilo of groceries up my stairs for me, too. It does make me appreciate the places that have a level driveway that points straight in the front door, though, despite the horrendous feng-shui.

While I'm invoking the gentle art of rearranging the furniture, another thing I've learnt while traipsing into people's houses with their nose-bags is that I don't feel so bad about my standard of house keeping. I'm continually amazed at who has decided their lives would be improved by getting their shopping brought in to save them time to fight the Minotaur lurking between their bathroom and bedroom.

There are far too many women out there with far too many dogs. I'm wondering where the cat-lady stereotype came from because more often than not, the first thing I'm greeted at the door with is the wall-of-dog smell, followed by yapping, then the directions to, “Just take it down there, don't worry about Buffy. Fluffy, Muffy and Cujo”. Maybe cat-ladies don't answer the door. Maybe they just peer out through the gap in the dusty blinds, muttering. Or, more likely, just lie there being eaten by the furry, mewling throng.

It's not all gloating about other people's squalor, though (my third favourite kind of gloating). Since the last time I had to spend any time in delivery vehicles there have been clutch-thumping leaps in that particular workspace. It's positively luxurious now. This is an unpaid endorsement - I have got to say that the Hyundai iLoad is a very pleasant place to spend a day on the road. I can get the seat far enough away from the wheel not to feel like I'm doing the quando, the air-con is not only present, but good. The stereo is excellent, with blue teeth and controls on the steering wheel like it thinks it's luxury car! They're automatic to the point that the one I regularly drive has cruise control. You barely have to be there.

If I had one improvement to make, well, two, it'd be the following. The rear-collision detector needs to climb down from Def-Con 1. Continually being panicked by the presence of the road on the other side of the driveway is not helpful. When backing out of a perfectly normal driveway it sort of sounds like a shark alarm at the beach.

“Oh my god, there's tarmac here. And here. And here. And still over here. Look out, there's ground. And more ground. Totally clear behind us but beware of the planet earth underneath you. It's still there! Christ I'm going to pass out.”

The other change I would make is probably not so important and a little more esoteric. It's just a matter of font. Here's the conversation I had with my mum.

“So what do you get around in?”

“A Hyundai. It's marvellous.”

“It's good is it? I think they've got tickets on themselves.”

“Why? I don't understand.”

“Calling itself an iLord. Bit egotistical isn't it?”

“It's an “A” not an “R”, mum."

“Oh. Well. That makes more sense.”

I'm Extremely Busy and Important - You'll Need to Buy Another Phone

Did Chief Engineer Scotty instruct Apple how to estimate back-up times?

For those of you who've never watched a Star Trek, the starship Enterprise would suffer some battle damage, Kirk would straighten his lustrous hair, snog an alien hotty and radio down to the engine room,

“What's our status, Scotty?”

“Well Captain, the trans-warp inverters are verted, the dilithium crystals have thrown a shoe, all the weapons systems are pointing at each other and life support has just started a long, flat beeping noise at an old lady. We'll not be operational for at least 24 hours.”

“You have 13 minutes.”

“Right you are, Captain!”

We've all marvelled at the Windows download progress bar that will say, “ten minutes remaining” for two hours, but the Apple back-up smacks it out of the ballpark for hysterical overstatement, followed by a picket-line, a meeting and then a return to work with a revised estimate.

“Apple Manufactured Phone, Captain Grey Area here. How long to back-up?”

“O.M.G. You just won't believe how many folders there are in my own retarded filing system and then there's the music and these photos and that video and some games and... oh crap, is that really email? How old are you?”

“None of your bee's wax. There's a clue. I used that phrase.”

“Well, I can tell you that this is going to take at least 16 days. No, five days. No, six hours. Yeah. Six hours.”

“Really? That's where we've settled? Six hours? Can I quote you on that?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Six hours and not a jot le... finished.”

“Yeah. Thought so. God-damn drama queen. Now, if I could get you to...”

"Bup, bup, bup. I have important updates."

The Slow Road Back

Everything has changed.

If you read the previous post, you will be aware that life took an unexpected and terrible turn for me and my family this year... and that's why I've been silent.

I've been step-by-stepping it and just staying sane. It was only recently that I realised that I could even live through my daughter's death. It wasn't that I was suicidal, it was simply that profound grief and mourning hits you in a way where everything beyond a certain point becomes opaque and that point is very near. I had no vision for what happens next. Not even lunch.

It's weird. You (assuming you aren't suffering the same thing and I fervently hope you aren't) are right now, aware of what you have 'going on'. You have several plans in your mind, some things that need to get done. You also have longer range stuff that you need to think more specifically about and you make time to think about them because they are a forward narrative that gives your life shape and meaning. There was a T-shirt slogan that went something like “life is what happens while you're making plans.” Well, I don't believe that is true at all. A lot of life is driven by making those plans, even if it doesn't go the way it was designed, it is at least still going.

Grief robs you of that. In among the many horrid things it is, it is a profound state of motivationlessness. You get stuck in some very tight thinking that spirals in on itself, revolving around one certain fact and one certain event. Everything outside that gets obliterated. But, as the spiral starts to loosen, you become able to come back to some larger idea of yourself. That's when you can actually picture living again.

In May, I went back to my corporate gig, shortly after the funeral and found that not only was the effort of being motivated and energetic about driving the project utterly beyond me, the mental agility required was gone, as well. I was anxious and agoraphobic, sleep deprived and jittery and just plain sad beyond description. I couldn't even reliably count coins to make change at the shops, let alone lead people in a competitive, business environment. I'd been on parental leave with her before it happened and coming back to 3,000 emails is one thing, coming back to 3,000 emails when all your priorities have been blown out of the water is quite something else. You couldn't find the amount of care I had with a tunnelling electron microscope.

So, I quit. It wasn't even a decision. It was simply a matter of survival.

I took the period that would've been my long-service leave just to 'be'. To be with my broken little family and keep breathing.

That period has finished and the vision and idea of what I will now become, has to sharpen up. A mortgage in Sydney guarantees that I can't be a house-husband forever. I have taken the first, tentative steps back out into the world and that's why I'm firing up the blog again.

I think it's potentially amusing and that was the point of A Grey Area to start with. I'd never promised to always be light-hearted and my moral compass always tells me to at least acknowledge the complexity of life, but I do actually live for a giggle and my new gig is an amusing turn in life.

I'm delivering organic fruit and veg to people's houses, for a family run company, a few days a week. Never, in the field of human digestion, has one man been paid so little, for delivering so much.

In the 80s, I was at a Steiner school. Since then, in a varied work life, I've been a cabbie and a bus-driver, driven trucks and delivery vehicles.

I've gone back to my roots.

The road and god-damn hippies.

Broken Hearted

My daughter died.

She was having morning tea, choked on some food and despite the efforts of ambulance staff and then the doctors at the hospital, she could not be revived.

She was at day-care. I had just started her there in preparation for my return to work after three months as stay-at-home dad, to her and her brother.

It is at once too personal to share and too monumental not to talk about. I find myself broken in unimaginable ways as Emergency Contact and I go through every parent’s nightmare.

I’m dwelling on whether to post her eulogy, or not. It identifies us in a lot of ways and that’s not good for a number of reasons. But, I also want my boy to be able to come back to his daggy dad’s blog at some time in the future and not hit a blank spot where his sister should be.

While I think about it, do me a personal favour.

Be good to each other and back-up all the photos you have of anyone precious to you.

I've Been Bullied at Daycare

I’m back as a stay-at-home dad for a few months. Darth Baby had me to himself for three months last year, so it’s only fair we offer the same level of so-called care to The Bobble Head, his little sister.

As well as me retying the apron strings, Darth Baby (which he isn’t anymore – let’s call him “The Boy”) started at his new daycare centre. When you are introducing a little person to daycare, a parent attends for a few hours on the first couple of days, which is how I found myself being bullied. Not once, but twice.

At lunch on day one, I was sitting at the miniature table next to The Boy (now two), enjoying watching him do his free-form thing to outmoded ideas such as portions and possession, when a coterie of three, three-year-old girls flounced in and sat around us. 

If ever I’ve had a terrifying vision into past, present and future, it was delivered perfectly by these three. I was sort of blindsided by the simultaneous impression of what these girls are now and what they will become and what they’ve always represented to me. They were so far from being blank-slates, I felt fairly sure I could’ve walked out into the car park and pointed out each one of their surgery-enhanced mothers in their giant four-wheel-drives just from the high angle of the ponytails and clouds of Givenchy.

Mean (three-year-old) girls.

The girls size me and The Boy up, and the ringleader whispers into her lieutenant’s ear. The lieutenant speaks,

“What’s that on your forehead?” she asks, pointing at an old scar that I don’t think about from year to year.

“What, this?” pointing to where I think it probably is these days.

“Noooo, *sigh*” corrects Ringleader. “Here,” she indicates on her head where it is and how stupid I am in the one, simple movement.

“It’s, it’s a scar,” I stammer, already badly on the back foot. The effrontery! (It’s a bloody good story, how I got this scar. Should I tell it? Probably not appropriate and a little too long for this audience.) The Boy, oblivious as all good innocents should be, hides something he doesn’t like from the inside of his mouth on the third girl’s plate. “Go, Boy”, I think.

Ringleader, after a nanosecond of consideration, says, “My mother had a scar on her face, but she did something about it.” Am I allowed to admonish them about their manners? Come to that, am I allowed to punch them?

“I’m certain she would’ve.” I’m getting arch and defensive with a three year old. Meanwhile, The Boy leisurely eats a yummy looking thing off Lieutenant’s plate without her noticing because all three of these vicious little pieces-of-work are focusing on me. “Go on without me, Boy,” I mentally encourage. I’m a goner, but you don’t have to be.

To shift gears, I ask their names. Ringleader speaks for all three and I would love to list them but it’s not legal to publicise underage criminal’s names, so probably not cool to accurately identify horrible little Uber-snobs. What I can write is that their names so hilariously occupy the centre of a Venn-diagram of intersecting circles named, “My astrologer says it’s a power name” and “Cashed up Bogan”, I had to stop myself from asking if they were joking.

Introductions made, Ringleader’s predatorial gaze falls on my beautiful, little lamb of a boy as she hisses,

“Why is that kid using a sippy-cup?”

“’Cause he’s… he’s little… and can be a bit messy. And he’s my son,” I bleat, starting to feel the heat of a blush rise to my cheeks for the short-falling in my parenting and The Boy’s abilities.

“Pfff,” says Ringleader meaningfully to the other two. Mercifully, at this point, The Boy hands one of them a half-eaten piece of cucumber in a gesture of sharing (she didn’t have any) which requires a staff member to come and intercede to correct the social infraction.

On day two, the bullying was far easier to take. I was mobbed by about eight kids who all wanted to rub wet sand on me, telling me it was different kinds of poo. The Boy stood to one side, leaning on a miniature shovel, laughing fit to burst. The staff were required once more to correct things as it appeared that several of the kids had got so worked up while battering me like a sav, they’d started throwing sand - and that’s a no-no. Rubbing poo into people, well, that’s not covered in the rule book.

Not long after that, while sitting on a rock getting the sand out of my shoes, a kid I hadn’t seen before came up to me and said, “What’s that on your forehead?”

Got It In The Bag, This Year

I have an unofficial competition going with my mate, Linda. It doesn’t really have a name, but I will call it Unlikely Injuries.

This one’s my gambit for 2014, Linda.

I am currently sporting a decent mouse (I guess “blood-blister” is the description, for people under the age of 30) on my neck.

Delivery method: Eleven-month-old.

Implement of destruction: A pair of reading glasses.

Incident description: I picked up Bobble-Head (the child in question and Darth Baby’s little sister) to say hello. I’d just got home from work.

Her reaction was to give me a big smile, grab my reading glasses out of my shirt pocket and reef them in a scything arc, over her shoulder.

Halfway through the arc, one of the arms of the glasses straightened to the open position, pinching a chunk of my aging neck skin between arm and lens frame, on the way past. 

The glasses continued on their path over the child’s shoulder, where they stopped in mid-air, having reached the limit of my skin’s elasticity. The specs then flopped back onto my chest, still attached to my neck, after being released by the child, who was startled by my yelp.

Glasses were removed, child was mollified and dad staggered to bathroom mirror to inspect the damage. I feel I’ve opened the season’s bidding on Unlikely Injury 2014, in strong style.

She's Baaaaaaaack

You may have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet lately. It’s ‘cause of the munchkins. Since the little monkeys arrived, the last 18 months just blew by like an election promise. I was also a little short on material. But, a little Christmas treat has come down my chimney and I feel the need to share.

Susans Trippin is maintaining the rage – not just with a comment on the previous blog post, but with an email to me, as well. So, for those that haven’t caught up, read the previous post Don’t Trip Yourself Up, Susan, and her comment on it that arrived last night. 

Then, let’s bask in the warm glow of her crazy.

Note: I’m not going to comment on grammar, punctuation, spelling or any of those other things (much) that help communication make sense. That’s just shooting comatose fish in a tiny, dry barrel. I’ll let the breathtaking stupidity speak for itself. 

But, she did start this crap and then writes, “Not my problem” - but is quite happy to make it my problem. At that point, Susan forfeited any rights to a sympathetic hearing from me.

The email she sent first, this morning:

Fbi and fcc already are on u sorry I guess they email ****@** is
still tracing back to u.
Not my problem if ur not this hacker he's using your identity via email.
I'm not some dumb bitch. I been tracking this person for 3 months.
Goodluck

I would love to overhear the imaginary phone conversation when the FBI call the AFP and ask to start a joint, international taskforce on behalf of someone who thinks that because a word appears in two different addresses, they must be the same address. 

Again, Susan, just because 'greyarea' appears as part of the address line, it does not mean it is the same address. Stop huffing paint thinner for a second, get your brother/husband out of bed and get him to help you read the below three lines, out loud if it helps.

[Scene opens with an ambulance officer leaning over a recently recovered Susan.]

[Susan] – You gave me the AIDS. I be getting the police on you!

[Ambulance Officer] – No, you took yet another drug overdose and I gave you 
first aid. That’s not the same thing as AIDS.

[Susan] – Doesn’t matter. Them words sound almost the same so it is the same. Gimme my syringe back.

End Scene.

I promise I have not tampered with the last line of her email. She actually wrote, “I’m not some dumb bitch. I been tracking..”

Ahuh. 

If you can’t see what’s wrong with that, Susan, I can’t explain - and it’s taken you three months to arrive at the wrong address and now that you’re at that address, you consider the best approach is to kick the door in and shout a lot.

That's not enough for our Susan, though. About an hour later, the comment on yesterday's post arrives. I have not edited or played with it in any way:


Seriously I'm 36. Yep have a past doesn't everyone. The fcc and fbi can clear you I just googled the base address and your blog pops up. Thanks for all your pleasant comments. That was uncalled for. I stated I hope this wasn't you but you reply in this manner? OK well its SUSANS TRIPP IN as in trips, concerns, and a V log name suppose to be funny not as you took it. 
Thanks for publicly replying. I am not perfect. Who is. 
I shouldn't have stated my comment so crudely but what's happening to my family is no joke and it lead to your blog. So I'm sorry nick. What would u have done? 
I'd appreciate u deleting my 1st comment and your reply. And this one. I'll let the authority's address you more professionally and leave it there. Btw my junk mail email IS ROMAN NUMERALS. MERRY CHRISTMAS


Seriously, you’re 36? You shouldn’t publicise that. It's not helping. You sound, at best, like a petulant teenager.

As for having some history – no, that’s a particular sort of past. It's the sort of past that usually comes with a theme song that goes, "Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do?" You can actually measure how much everyone else doesn’t have that kind of past.

If three months of tracking consists of you Googling the words 'grey area' and deciding I was the guy, then I guess I should applaud you. Too often we don’t recognise the true heroes among us. It’s the little, ordinary people who manage to go about their lives, despite crippling brain injuries, who really deserve our appreciation and praise. Well done.

As for my previous “pleasant comments” – If you cast your mind all the way back to Wednesday, it was you who started things, by publicly calling me a sick fucker and a paedophile. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t turn tricks on the carpet, Susan. What would I have done? Probably looked at who it was a bit better.

I did take your name as funny. Susan Strippin’ was one of the other variations that occurred to me.

Your apologies come a little late in the scheme of things – and it becomes obvious that you really haven’t understood or even properly read my first reply. A “base address” doesn’t lead to my blog. Go and learn about domain names if you’re going to be your own detective. They're important. All you’ve done is associate similar words.

And Susan, after going for a little sympathy, you don’t disappoint. You finish up your delightful message by capitalising (shouting) yet another bone-headed stupidity. I get that your disposable email address is roman numerals. That’s why I wondered, in the previous post, if it meant the 29-October-2002 and then wondered if you were an 11-year-old (see, ‘cause if that was your birthday you would… oh, never mind). Americans tend to write dates with month first, then the day of the month and then the year. The only combination in the American format that can be a date with your numerals, is the 29th of October.

So, seeing how much you have not understood, I have little hope for the following making any sense to you, but here’s my guess at what’s happened.

1) My blog comes up in a Google search for the words “grey area” because that’s the NAME of the blog - "A Grey Area". With the unusual (in the USA) English spelling.

2) The ADDRESS for the blog is “largegreyarea”. Not “greyarea”. Please try and hold on to that fact.

You got my email address, from the blog. nickgreyarea@gmail.com. And again, that is not the same as "greyarea@gmail.com" please try and understand that, too.

You found it with a search because I am enormously popular, very sweet, tall, handsome, engagingly modest and have readers in the US who are able to cope with the subtle difference between address and name. (Have a look into that. I bet that's why a lot of your welfare and alimony cheques aren't arriving.) I bet my readers, like me, are not used to having trailer-trash poking their heads out from under piles of empty beer cans, to point with their chewed fingernails and start shouting “paedophile”.

If I am the 'super hacker' that you accuse me of being, don't you think it would be unlikely that someone like you would be able to find someone like me? Do you really think that you're bringing down an international identity thief by writing straight to a gmail address that can be found on the front page of a five-year-old blog?

I was going to write, "Now disappear back into your squalor, you fucking moron," about here, but I thought it was a bit harsh.

Merry Christmas.

Don't Trip Yourself Up, Susan

This is good.

A comment was left on my previous blog, it reads:

“You need to stop coding me and my family u sick fucker”

… and it’s from someone who trades under the completely trustworthy name of Susans Trippin.

Spam, I think to myself, and don’t do anything more than wonder what's with the email address she supplies: xxxixmmii@gmail.com.

If you look at it the way an American would write a date, it might be the 29th of October, 2002. Judging by the overall grammar and language, it’s just possible that Susan is 11-years-old. I don't think so, though. Her presence all over the net makes her look like a schizophrenic, out of work, ex-semi-glamour model with a few names and a few more arrest warrants to her sheet.

Forget about it, Nick, I say to myself. I've got better things to do, like curl my nasal hairs.

Then, a little later, an email arrives from the eloquent Susan, it reads:

Is this just a assumed email?
I have tracker a supercoder, Hacker, & Pedo using it. 
I'd hate to see u in trouble but seems I've Google that email and its leading to your blog
I'd stay clear using greyarea@gmail.com if your not involved but the fbi and fcc will have ur blog in the morning
You realize this is no joke. 
Xo

Then, a little later again, a second copy of the above email arrives, this time with secrurity@apache.org cc’d on the correspondence. I am now officially intrigued and will do a little investigation.

But, in case you do come back to A Grey Area, Susan, let's nip this in the bud. I'm a busy bloke and don't really have time for your brand of misguided, righteous anger.

Let’s start with your gambit. (You might need to look that word up. I’ll wait here.)

“You need to stop coding me and my family you sick fucker.” I’m not certain what coding your family means. Can you elaborate? Does it involve me inserting them into a game of The Sims or something?

Your email:

First, I need to congratulate you on making an error on every line. I didn’t even know that was possible but you seem to have invented new ways to hurt the language.

I’d love to know, or meet a “supercoder”. Do supercoders and hackers divide into different sub-groups at parties and fight over who would be a better Sith Lord? Why does “Pedo” get a capital letter? (I’ll assume that’s not a pedometer. I don’t want people using my blog to track their exercise. Ewwwwwww!)

I do realise it’s no joke and here's the bit you need to understand. 

I don’t use greyarea@gmail.com as an address. It's not my address. Address - not mine. As far as addresses and me are concerned, this address and I are not together. We've never met.

I use nick.greyarea@gmail.com – see there? See that whole other word there in the address? It’s sort of like adding another word to a sentence that changes how the sentence works. Here’s an example: 

You're so smart. 

Then, you add a whole other word, like “not” and it changes the sentence. 

It’s like magic except completely not.

Susan, don’t even start me on “your” versus “you’re” – and then in the same sentence you lapse into “ur”. Total madness.

But, while we’re on that sentence, you see how you are threatening me with the FBI and FCC? (I’d capitalise them, what with being initials and all) Let’s look back at my email address. There’s a huge clue in it that you should pick up, considering the amount of time you’ve allegedly spent “trackering” it. 

That’s the English spelling of Grey. Not the American spelling. That spelling alone would indicate that I neither care about, nor am I under the jurisdiction of, the FBI or FCC. You’ve now got a couple of choices on where I am most likely from, but I haven’t made it too hard for you, Susan – it’s in my blog profile. A profile that also indicates a couple of other things.

1) I’ve been blogging since mid-2008, so it’s the most elaborate front for a Pedo-super-hacker known to man, considering there are hundreds of hours of golden, hand-tooled turns-of-phrase in there (ahem).

2) My pet themes are whimsy, ethics, humour, culture, anti-religion and scepticism. That’s almost a Wikipedia entry for someone not interested in ‘coding’ inbred, illiterate hicks from Bumfuck, North Carolina.

Now, a question of manners or sanity – you sign off with kiss/hug after threatening me. I think you need to see someone and talk things out a little. That's not normal. 

Calm down and look at who you’re yelling at. I don’t even really know what “coding” is, let alone do it. My address has greyarea in it, yes, but that’s not my address. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be “tracking” and as for your Google+ account that you've led me to... I think I might add you to my circles. 

You’re hilarious.

P.S. My mate Smurfy says you've got some really bad Ebay feedback for not sending stuff, too.

Just Wait For My Sauna Design

My bathroom is poorly named. There’s no bath.

There was once, judging by what is left in the room. There’s a bathy sort of space, all tiled over. The surfeit of safety handles and grab-bars in the room hints at the previous owner having the bath removed due to some brand of human frailty. I could rent out the room for Ninja Warrior training with all those points of purchase mounted on the walls.

“The challenge today at Mount Midoriyama, using only the wall furniture, is to go to the toilet, wash your hands and moisterise your toenails, all without touching the floor, falling down the waste drain, or losing too much blood to the mosquitos living on the ceiling.”

For our kids, though, it’s a bit of a bummer. Having become embarrassed at the tiny size and huge grottiness of the baby bath I’ve been jamming them into, I started considering alternatives… and I think I hit on a beauty. A giant Esky.

Think about it. Watertight, energy efficient, drainage tap at the bottom, multifunction and fun! Imagine being grown up and saying to your rich and successful mates, over dinner,

“You think that’s awesome?! Dad used to bath us in an Esky. He’d close the lid and play a game he called Trapped in a Capsized Boat. Sometimes he’d turn the shower on as well for a Das Boot variation on a theme. If we were particularly dirty, he’d hold the lid, and just shake the Esky.”

Carry a Big Stick and Operate at Whatever Volume You Like

This week I presented what I ‘manage’ in my professional capacity, to some heavyweights from the Japanese Head Office.

They were unfailingly polite and showed interest in what we were doing. They raised eyebrows, made noises, asked questions and said things like, “We will be back to talk more about this.” They were senior and polished and experienced.

I was polite and reserved. Maybe a little more than usual. Afterward, a colleague asked why I hadn’t taken the opportunity to really show them how it was done. Why I hadn’t gone all out and impressed them with the numbers and the doovers and the thingamebobs.

I answered with the below story. Partly, because I wondered why I’d been bashful myself (and the answer had only just popped into my head at that moment) and partly because I would like the word “gnomic” in my obituary.

In or around 1983, when I was a teenager, I bought my first 3-in-1 stereo. It was bought with the savings from my job at the bookshop (see how long ago that was? Bookshop!) and topped up with Birthday gift cash. It cost hundreds of dollars. That’s hundreds of 1983 dollars, I’ll have you know. Not your crazy Bitcoin imaginary spondoolies you young kids are smoking.

It was a Panasonic with a turntable in the bottom that came out on a tray (so it could go in a bookshelf without needing room to lift the lid). It had twin tape decks. 'Tape-to-tape' meant you’d joined an elite club that no longer needed to put two tape players face-to-face and then quietly leave the room, to get their mixed tape pirating done. It had 25 or maybe even 50 watts per channel and I was enormously proud of it.

A friend of mine was over to get changed for a party and I had the stereo on. I’m painful these days with a new gadget, so I cringe to think of what I would have been like with 30 less years of disappointments in my electronics cupboard. She showed genuine interest. She listened closely. She asked to hear it up loud, hear her favourite song on it as well as mine and generally made me feel like I had indeed made a good purchase and it could well be one of the finest stereos ever to have been manufactured.

A few weeks later I was at her place to change for a party. It was my first time there and we went to her room to put some music on. She powered up her hand-made, fluid damped turntable, swung the imported tone-arm suspended on the latticework of counterbalanced wires onto the platter, warmed up her NAD pre-amp, switched on the Yamaha amp and kicked the pile of clothes out from in front of one of her four JBL, totem speakers, grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. Then my head caved in and the wallpaper started to bleed.

She didn’t say a thing, just went to hunt for her mascara. When I had picked my jaw back up and had moved to spluttering and pointing, she just gave a graceful little shrug.

And that lesson has really stuck with me.