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...

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.”

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.

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.

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.

More Power to Me

Emergency Contact and I recently moved into a new house. New to us, one-hundred-and-ten-years-old to Sydney. The change from living in a flat is quite stark. I wasn’t happy with what the guttering was doing in the rain last night and made a mental note to make it the strata management's problem… 

There are upsides to living in a free-standing house and I’ll let you know when I come across them. But, in the meantime, my house is determined not to let me finish reading my book.

After the chores are done and Darth Baby placed in his chamber, I like to climb into bed and read a book, or latterly, kill the zombies with the plants – but the house has other ideas. I read my books electronically and the house does not charge iPads or iPhones. Weird, huh? Let me explain.

The building inspection did warn us in fairly definite language that the wiring in the place was a little substandard. I think I remember seeing the words “dire”, “cataclysmic”, “abysmal”, “rudimentary”, “Neolithic”, “foolhardy” and “laughable”. Suffice to say, we knew the house needed a little money spent on the wiring.

I insured home and contents and moved in with Emergency Contact and a toddler, anyway. (To those that know EC, it’s hard to gauge who of the two is more dangerous in certain situations.) The plan was to gently ramp up the demands on the electrical wiring until we saw the upper load point and then I’d know what we were working with. It went the other way and we've found our low point.

As many people know but few are ready to admit, electricity is borderline dark magic and no-one really knows how it works. Sure, there are sparkies and electrical engineers who will make bold and baseless proclamations about harnessing it and charge you like any other high-priest of a forbidden sect for their “expertise” but deep down, I’m pretty sure they know it’s all just luck and insulation. Even the fact that they named positive and negative the wrong way round tells me how circumstantial the whole thing is. I’ve owned cars at which auto-electricians have thrown their hands in the air and said, “Don’t understand how this car is running, mate.”

So, our house can simultaneously run a washing machine, dishwasher, lights, hot water, fridge, stove, oven, central air, lamps, large flat-screen TV, DVD/Blu Ray player, home theatre, PlayStation, PC, curling iron, clothing iron, and sundry other bare necessities but it cannot charge an iPad. In fact, it sucks the electricity out of an iDevice. I left a pad plugged in overnight and it was so depleted the next morning it weighed less and it took three hours of charging at work before I could even turn it on.

The answer? I’ve put our iThings on the floor because everybody knows it’s easier for things to run downhill. That’s why lighthouses are constructed at sea-level.

Now, if I could only get Darth Baby to stop sucking them.

(Perfectly reasonable explanation to tell the coroner, too.)

It's A Medical Issue

I awoke to the news that there had been a streaker at the State of the Union football sports last night. That feller has got one of two things going on that need to be addressed.

One – he’s suicidal. Who runs, nude, onto a field populated by 30 fit thugs who professionally run after people and throw them onto their heads?

Two – he just needs a little love. Who else would run, nude, onto a field full of blokes who like to roll around in the mud, on top of each other?

Far from banning and fining and jailing and slapping and book throwing, this person should be helped.

Our Culture Just Lost 'The Culture'

Iain Banks died today. For many of us it will feel like we’ve lost a complex, visionary and hilarious friend. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be his new widow, as he was notoriously good company in real-life as well as on the page. Banks has been my favourite author for nearly 30 years. He’s the only author I have bothered to collect and re-collect in entirety, several times. 

(When you really love an author, you always end up “re-collecting” because at dinner parties you recommend and loan to guests. The guests might return, but the books rarely do. I don’t mind. Books are fair that way. You’ll do the same at someone else’s dinner party.)

Banks is such a favourite for so many of the right type (i.e. people who think like me) that he is a touchstone for a couple of my best friendships;

“Hey man, good to see you. Have you read your latest Banks Statement?”

“Yeah. Better than the last one, not as good as the one before that. How about that bit where…”

And we’re off.

He wrote under two tags, Iain M. Banks for his Sci-Fi and plain Iain Banks when he was doing literature. When he announced he was “poorly” a few months ago, I started reading more things about him. Here’s something I found amazing:

It was assumed in a lot of places, including my own, that his Sci-Fi books were his dirty, great cash-cow that supported the more highfalutin literature.

Wrong - and by orders of magnitude. Mr B. himself reported that his literature outsold his Sci-Fi, four-to-one. I find that astonishing. I think good Sci-Fi is as important as any other writing, so I’m not going to say that it’s heartening to hear that, but I do find it mighty interesting. He also said that he enjoyed writing his literature - but always looked forward to getting back to the main character in his Sci-Fi universe, The Culture.

I read him in order simply because I read as his publishers released. I suggest, if you haven’t read any and are interested, that you start out of order:

Iain Banks - Espedair Street

Iain Banks – Complicity

Iain M. Banks – Consider Phlebas

Iain M. Banks – Use of Weapons

If you’re a Sci-Fi bod, do Phlebas and Weapons first. (Maybe Player of Games. That’s also a cracking place to start.)

After that, you’re on your own and I’m jealous that I don’t get to go there with you, for the first time, again.

I will doubtlessly need to rebuild my collection of Banks books in the future, and they will move inexorably into the digital realm, rather than being in the physical. It’s deeply unfair that he won’t get the chance to be uploaded and go digital like some of his characters and give us more, but he lived in and wrote about a deeply unfair and uncaring universe.

Bloggers Note: This blog is called “A Grey Area” first and foremost for one of Banks' characters, the GCU A Grey Area.

Banking, Spanking, Thanking and Walking On

Yesterday, I misread the television guide and thought Extreme Fisting With Robson Green was a show. In my defence, it was on after 8.30pm so Robson had at least bothered to come down on the right side of the watershed, if not limbs. I double-took and realised it was fishing. Gill by association I thought, and moved on.

Unfornately, I'm now worried that the problem isn't so much with my eyes as much as what goes on behind them.

I'm dealing with commercial banks at the moment. Emergency Contact and I are trying to get into a larger house, in the Sydney real estate market of 2013. I couldn't be more pissed off with the way in which every single step in process lifts your shirt and sticks you in a boat with a fully lubricated Robson. Maybe that's why I had the mondegreen moment with Mr Green. It's just on my mind.

It may also be why I think I saw the following.

A billboard for a bank that has very orange colouring in its campaigns, advertising an "ATM Amnesty". 

I was driving and didn't get a chance to get out and firebomb the sign, but if that is what I think it is - a period where you don't get charged fees for using another bank's ATM, then I'm driving back there to right a wrong. 

An amnesty is for the guilty, not the exploited. If I really have seen this billboard, you have my full permision to riot. If not, I'm keeping a sharp eye out for Robby Green and his marine of mean.

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!

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’.

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?

Not At All Dangerous When Cornered

On Saturday, I leaned across to Emergency Contact and hissed, “Remember me telling you stories about that horrible Miss G?”

“Yes”, hissed back EC.

“Well, that’s her. Eat what you can as fast as you can, we’ve got to time our escape.”

EC and I were in a café having breakfast and Miss G was filling the doorway. She’d had to lose weight before even being allowed to have lap band surgery. After the surgery, she made up for the lack of room in her stomach by permanently having a straw attached to a flavoured milk carton hanging out of her head. The surgery procedure was doomed to failure. Filling a doorway was no challenge.

While Miss G was eating two cakes washed down with litre of Diet Coke (diet, so it’s alright) I threw a handful of cash at the counter and we made our break for the car.

A little later, realising we needed to stop at a supermarket, EC started to reverse-park into a spot right out the front. I started to panic.

“She’s there. Oh Christ she’s there. Fuck. Don’t stop. Don’t park. We’ve got to go.”

EC’s panic reaction was to lapse into helpless giggling and stop dead, halfway through the parking manoeuvre. I had turned my back on the window and was facing into the car so Miss G wouldn’t recognise me. I was terrified and staring wildly at EC who was really starting to laugh.

I couldn’t stand it, “I can see her in your sunglasses. We HAVE to get out of here. Oh god oh Christ oh shit.”

“What’s soooo bad?” Asked EC, finishing the park.

“She liked me,” I explained, adding Puss-in-Boots eyes to the affect.

“Oh,” said EC.

Watching Miss G in EC’s glasses, I timed my exit from the car and went as quickly as I could without running, to the nearest knot of people so I could lose myself in them.

While EC was in the supermarket, I kept an eye on Miss G using reflections and glances. To make it look more natural, I engaged with the small group around me as naturally as I could. They had a card table and some pamphlets and were really interested in me. I gave them two neurons of attention. What was really getting to me was why hadn’t Miss G moved on? She was just hanging around the side of our car. Why wouldn’t she just, bloody, move on? Get a life! Get away from the car!

As I was concluding whatever it was I was doing with the card table mob, EC came out of the supermarket and thankfully, Miss G started to move down the street. We could make it back to the safety of the car and then all would be alright.

In the car, I looked at the envelope, key ring, tax forms and various other bits of paraphernalia I’d collected while I was performing surveillance on the car.

It turned out that I had signed up to give the UNHCR $40 a month for the next year.

And in a couple of ways, I don’t mind. The thought of undernourished people getting dollars from me because I was scared of an over-nourished person, appeals to my sense of universal balance. That, and the fact that it could have been so much worse than saying goodbye to $480.

Soup Strainer Strain

I know that some people like Movember. I find it confusing and hard work. Certain workplaces end up looking like seedy gay bars or 1930s RAF officers clubs and that’s confusing. What I find hard work is the threat this month represent to my manners and reputation.

Late in the month, I have to check men’s faces very carefully before I know if I can laugh or not. I have to judge a complex set of inputs such as length-of-bristle-over-lifestyle-commitment before I know if I can giggle. Movember lulls you into a false sense of hairy hilarity and I am never saying to another senior manager, “Dude, the Harley Davidson Memorial Village People Tribute Band called. You’re late for rehearsal.”

Man About The House

There’s a franchise called ‘Hire a Hubby’ and it is remarkably true to its name. They’re a bunch of guys who promise to come round to your house and do odd jobs, or not, as the case may be.

A friend of Emergency Contact’s called them and got one of the Hubbies to come around and give her a quote on putting up some fly-screens. His professional opinion:

“Nah, it’s too hard, love.”

Not being put off, she did get the guy to paint her attic (not a euphemism). He seemed ok with that, and when he was around coating her interior (not a euphemism), she asked him how much it would be to strip back her draws (not a euphemism). His professional opinion:

“Easier to just get some new ones, love.”

For a little extra, they'll sit on your couch and drink your beer for you.

Couch Potato Field

Emergency Contact relaxes on the new couch.

After lounge camping for far too long, Emergency Contact and I took delivery of our new couch… and it’s freakin’ huge. Warehouse tastes on apartment acreage. There’s the couch and the telly and that’s all, now. No cooking, no washing and certainly no dancing. I have to come in through the second story balcony window because I can’t get the front door open. EC has given up trying to get out and works from home now. The Eastern plateau of cushion area 18, just near the fuzzy summit of the North Face is casting shade over the bathroom. The cushion nearest the front door started broadcasting on Sunday night a message that read: ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

Comfortable, but.

I'm Not Buying Your Thing. I Don't Understand You

Making up words and describing things in exciting ways is how the impotent make themselves feel better. You don’t just "start" a computer application. What you are doing is so important it rivals moonshots and maiden voyages, you "launch" it. You don’t "fix" a laptop. What you are doing is so butch and hardcore, you "flatten" and rebuild it. One of the most useless additions to the English language from this brigade of macho-mercenary-gangstas, is "functionality". Function does fine. Stop pretending you’re clever by using the stupid word. You just reveal yourself as a tool.

I expect this kind of crap from men trying to impress themselves but today, the self-important, word-mangling, chump-of-the-day-award goes to a woman.

In describing a medical breakthrough that took a couple of teams working together, she said, “This kind of cooperativity is blah blah blah…” I write, blah blah blah there because I was unable to remember what the rest of the message was, I was so busy wrestling with what cooperativity has over plain old cooperation.

She totally undervalued her opportunity to maximise and leverage her information delivery with the consumer/participants using a benchmarked methodology that guarantees enhanced synergy in the multi-media ecosystem.