Mr G Has Left the Building

I've been grumpy and someone at work said that Grey Area is just +35 propaganda, (not mentioning any names Reeeeshy), and they're right. I have been in a bit of a slump. I usually like to be sweetness and light. You know me. It's just that a good mate of mine died last Sunday and it has put a bit of crimp in my otherwise comfortable existence.

It wasn't a surprise, he had been crook for a bit. But I don't have anything comforting to say, like "at least he's at peace now" or "in some ways it's a relief it's over" or anything like that. It's not. He liked his life and wanted more. It isn't fair and there's no eternal justice to it. He wasn't begging for release, he wasn't bored, he wasn't fed up or exhausted, the tumor just stole his life away. He didn't even get to rage against the dying of the light, because it was a brain tumor so he just sort of faded out.

Graham was a terrific bloke and I'm proud to call him a friend. Funny, kind, unfailingly generous, he was a true weirdo (one of those people that makes you glad there's still room for idiosyncrasy) and bore an uncanny, I mean frightening, resemblance to Ned Flanders. One of life's gems.

Goodbye Graham, I am going to miss you.

Not a Piercing Observation

"Under new laws to be introduced into State Parliament, it will be illegal for anyone under 16 to have their genitals or nipples pierced, and they will need their parent's permission for all other body piercings." ABC Today

Not far enough.

If you are involved with animals, food preperation or the public in any capacity, all facial piercings, except ears, are to become illegal. If you have lip piercings that make you hard to understand, or liable to dribble into my ham sandwich, they are to be outlawed. If you have eyebrow rings that get caught in your sunglasses/hat/jumper/headset, they are illegal from tomorrow. If you have a tongue piercing that you continually need to fiddle with, particularly by rolling your tongue and catching it between your two (badly cleaned) front teeth, it will be removed with pliers.

Oh and a tip for you here kids. I know that the teenage years are rough, and your skin can be a nightmare. You will come out the other side and you'll be slightly less gut-churningly repelent than you are now though. But in the mean time - You know that piercing that you put just above your top lip on one side? That one just like the ugly girl from Atomic Kitten? The one you fought so long and hard with your Mum about? The one that is showing how individual you are and really sticking it to 'the system'? Yeah... that just looks like another blind pimple on your rotten little head.

Last Wednesday

“I'm feeling off balance” he said out loud
As he hops his way to the loo
"But I'm getting things done, I'm making my way,
I'm really doing the do".

But clenching his head and buttocks so tight
The throbbing starting to rise
There’s no way today he’s taking the cake
He’s not winning the prize

Last night was a good idea at the time
It seemed the right thing to do
She was cute, he seems to remember, and thinks
Was it one bottle or was it two?

There was giggling and pinching and winking and such
A flirt, a burp, a gasp
Sandals were slipped, more wine was drunk
A little pinch on the arse

Home time rolls round and the world intrudes,
The rain comes down anew
Cabs are scarce, his shirt is wet
What the hell is he supposed to do

“I’ll just wait it out in this little pub.”
What harm can come from that?
It’s warm and dry and smells alright
Actually, better than his flat

The barman appears at his own sweet pace
Pushing his eye patch in place
A brassy old blond follows him out
Wiping something off her face

“What’ll ya have mate, what’s your main treat?”
He grumbles through his beard
“I can give you a pint of plasma that’s chilled”
You’d think he’d find that weird

But the denizens at the pub of the damned
Don’t turn or care for his fate
It’s usual, it’s normal, for the business type
To drink before they donate

Having hopped his way to the bathroom again
A memory is slowly forming
That he’s arrived home with less in his pants,
He’s got less limbs this morning

Looking down at his flannys and slowly realising
It’s hard to balance whilst pissing
The leg of his PJs is swinging free
It appears one of his legs is missing

“Those bastards, those swine, those feckless thugs
They’ve taken what’s not rightly theirs
I’d go round there right now and beat them all up
If I could only get down the stairs"

Sitting on the couch and mulling over his fate
Decides to get the drop on the day
His PC fires up, and goes to his faves
The first thing he sees is ebay

And there it is, in the second hand listing
Too disgusting to be faced
“Used Left Leg, One Male Owner,
Good Condition, Never been raced”

“I can’t believe it what rotten luck,
Oh god, don’t make me beg
That the only limb for sale that day
Was an unwanted and hairy left leg”

“I’ve got one of those you thieving scum
If you had a right leg I’d be made
I should ring the owner at least and see
If they’re willing to make a trade.”

There's No Business Like Shoe Business

I might have - in the past - bitched about the young kid’s shoes, and how they weren't flattering.

Just say no to small shoes. I have reasons, but I'll take an elliptical route.

I remember reading an interview with the artist who illustrated Judge Dredd in the 80s, where he was asked why the character’s feet were drawn as large as they were. His answer was that characters with slightly exaggerated extremities, always looked more powerful. You always took them more seriously. With Dredd’s large feet, he was grounded, solid and athletic. He represented the ultimate, infallible power, and as an artist you went about illustrating that with these visual cues.

There are reasons why Michelangelo’s David is distended in various ways, and it’s not just because it is designed to be viewed from below. His hands and feet are huge compared to the rest of his frame. Those things, are the doing things.

(Not a perfect example. David does present a paradox to anyone who subscribes to the ‘Big hands = big dick’ piece of wisdom that girls used to delight teasing boys with on the school bus. That’s for another time. This tiny keyboard tortures my enormous hands and long fingers.)

Put another way. If you want something to look thick in the middle, make sure the things at either end are thin. Want to make a fat person look fatter? Give them a neat haircut and small shoes. Even worse, cinch the hems on their pants.

At the risk of ignoring post-modernist ideals about the importance of context, there are ways to look good - no matter what fashion dictates. One of them is to make sure you look less like stomach, and more like limbs (‘doing’ things) and breeding bits (being ‘done’ things).

The obvious post-punk rejoinder to this is, “We don’t wanna look powerful and attractive.”

Slurry Hills in Oz Fashion Week

Helped Partner with her market stall today. I’ve learnt a lot.

Arse crack is the new must-have accessory. I know this is an oft visited topic in the popular press when oldies and conservative commentators are complaining about yoof, but seriously kids, put your bums away. I wasn’t even enjoying 20 something women’s bums, and that’s saying a mouthful.

We were swamped in greasy, stupid, badly tattooed, smoking, arse flashing twits who find it mandatory to talk loudly about… about… Oh… my… god… like…nothing. The sheer vacuity on display along with crack was gob smacking.

So now it’s my turn to say something obvious, and probably said a lot before, (I dunno, haven’t seen it, probably everywhere.).

Fashion is no good if it doesn’t flatter.

Current trends have hit a stupid new low. You might as well reintroduce foot-binding into the mix, what with the ease you can get around town when your belt is somewhere below your scrotum. The overwhelming fashionable look for both sexes in Surrey Hills, Saturday the 3^rd, 2008 is:

Shoes: Flat, insubstantial, coloured lace ups that make your feet look small and slightly flat footed. More on this Later.

• Pants: Stove pipe jeans that have the back pockets at mid-back-of-the-thigh height. This achieves several things. It makes your legs look short. It makes your little pot belly stick out because you are so rock and roll, you’ve never exercised in your spoilt little life. The previously mentioned small shoes manage to heighten the size of your squished and widened arse, and every time you move, more crack.
• Underwear: The undies, important now because they are not technically under anything. They are now ovies and they are grey and ugly.
• Shirt: The black T-Shirt will have RVCA on it. Never forget, you are an individual like everybody else.
• Not certain how your greasy hair is? Try a bad hat. The first sign of having a screw loose is picking out some useless bit of headwear and bunging it on. I used to live near a loony bin and the one constant in all the madness was that when you lose the plot, find yourself a hat.
• Body art: Flesh tunnels are cool. I think your kids are going to just love the idea that when they can’t find a swing, they can sit in your earlobe. Hey girls, get more tattoos on your necks, not only does it flatter the feminine line, it makes finding employment a snap.
• Hair: Brush it forward and don’t wash whatever you do. If not, you’ve gone the other way. The mullet is reviled for a reason.

The human race is doomed. There is no way these people are breeding. They are too ugly to root.

Ibis You Were Wondering What Happened Next

After the previous blog, I was reminded by my beloved sister that the ties to ibis are long and deep.

Her daughter T. was out with Granny (my mum) on the lake. Mum likes to take the niece camping, canoeing, bird spotting, and all sorts of cool gear.

Granny, pointing at a duck.

"What’s that T?”

“That’s a duck Granny.” (You idiot.)

Granny points at an ibis.

“And what’s that?”

“Uhhhmmmmmmmm,” T considers.

“That’s an ibis,” postulates Granny.

“No Granny. That’s the duck’s dad,” explains T.

Ibis: Did You Know They Are Sacred in Egypt?

I’ve been thinking of buying a new car for a while now (my current one has 700,000 km on the clock), but I have a mortgage in Sydney so other thoughts occur.

Recently I stuck new tyres on the car. This is a treat. Normally I put retreads on that cost about $40 each and they are worth everything you pay for them. (Actually slightly more if you include entertainment value). I mean I am not sure if they are even made of rubber. I’m pretty sure they are made of some sort of wood. The handling isn’t much, but they last really well and once you get used to constant four wheel drift on every corner, even at 20km/h, you’re ok. In fact the handling in the rain was so bad that if you pulled out of a parking spot in reverse, you were obliged to honk your horn 5 times, to let others know that you were leaving harbour under power and that your breaking distance had just gone out to 2 km.

So rather than buying a new car, I applied some knowledge of myself to the problem. Every time I put air in the cheap tyres, it feels like I’m driving a new car. I think to myself “This is unreal! How good is this car?! I should do this more often.” So if more air in crap tyres excites me that much, imagine how I could fool myself with good tyres. So last time tyre change came up, I put $140 jobbies on.

And I admit that the change in the vehicle is dramatic. It goes round corners without people staring. It is much quieter and it stops.

Two days after putting the new expensive tyres on the car, I ran over an ibis.

Before the people who get upset by dead bats and lost balloon priests start up…(See Na na na na Bats Man and Flying None in this blog for background) I didn’t go out of my way to do it.

I live in an area that has had an ibis plague. So many that I wonder what the real plural for ibis is. Ibi? They got forced into new areas of NSW by the drought, as well as having their numbers bumped up by a rogue troop that left Taronga Zoo apparently. Suffice it to say, they are on all our bins and they are large, ugly, bald, unkempt bastards and I don’t like them one bit. Larger than a chicken and taller than a 3 year old, they are supposed to be white, but they don’t wash themselves properly and their feet are too big to stand on electrical wires without jinking backwards and forwards like drunk… ibi. Even their droppings are dangerous. It is poison to bats and large enough to dint your car if it lands from a height.

So two days after I put my new tyres on, one falls off a wire in front of my car, starts to fly, doesn’t quite get height, breaks to the left and I think it’s out of my path, breaks back right and goes under my wheels. All of this was done in the crowded main drag of an inner-west suburb. As the front wheel went over it, the car lifted like I was driving over a median strip, and I could see all the people at the crowded bus stop opposite with their hands over their mouths and ears, trying to shut out the crunching sounds.

All I could think was, “I am so upset. I bet I get ibis bones through the wall of my new tyre.” Then when I got to work, I had to clean ibis off the front of my car, that made me sad, then angry, but when I found that the tyre hadn’t gone down, I was happy again.

Locked Mess Monster

So I have this continual problem with my work computer. Every other day, I mean every second day, I have to get my account reset because the server decides it doesn’t like the cut of my jib.

This is not something that is quickly resolved. I work for a large company that has kept its head above the water, year after year, in the most predictable fashion - By making sure they haven’t spent up big on the silly things… like people. Particularly people with skills. They are seen as a bit of a rash spending habit. Now if you want people with exotic accents, well we’ve got them by the handful. Skills… not so much. Anyway, when you ring the IT guys to have your account reset, you are in for sometimes over half an hour wait. You then get someone who got their degree in “Smartology” from a non existent “College of Knowledge” in Calcutta.

I’ve been going through this cack of a routine for months now, and it’s starting to grow old. Once you know the promotional material on the on-hold soundtrack word for word, you’ve had enough. After getting it fixed I said to Harbajarn,

“Any chance of them actually arriving at an overall fix for this? I mean I lose about one working day per fortnight to this one glitch, let alone all the other crazy security delays we’ve got going on.”

He answers,

“You think that’s bad, we’ve got a lady who gets locked out every 15 minutes.”

People used to think that when I referenced the “Help Desk” in conversation, I was making a mistake when I just called them “Desk”. It’s actually developed a momentum of its own now.