Soup, the Final Frontier

Two Orbiting Spheres. As seen depicted (slightly hairier) on bus seats everywhere.

Like many of you I’m sure, I work in a company that likes to put the odd environmental challenge before its workers.

Depending on where you sit in my office, we go from arctic tundra blasts to tropical zephyrs within 20 feet. One person has the heater on in summer, whilst I quite regularly fall asleep on chilly days because the mercury is topping out at 25C inside. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

So when I arrived in the canteen shivering yesterday, Sticky Monster saw my plight and offered me her giant mug of chicken cuppa-soup to warm my hands.

In an ill-conceived moment of hijinkery, I dropped the mug down to crutch level and pretended to warm my hands over it a-la hobo style. Stick recoiled screaming, protesting that she used to like that mug, and the soup was totally ruined now.

I need to say at this point that there was no contact with any part of the crockery, with any part of my clothing, let alone cockery. And her explanation was particularly hurtful but enlightening.
“NO, you see it’s the fact that around there, parts of bodily moisture become airborne and can get into anything… right there around the genitalia region.”

I was shocked into an old standby comeback, “You know that genitalia is Italian for genitals, don’t you? And there’s no way what you are saying makes any sense.”

From the other side of the table, Smurf hits us with, “I just don’t think she wants it orbiting inside the nutmosphere.”

He takes a sip from the offending plutonium mug and next to him, Man 2 comes in with, “What? Too Salty?”

I’m back, still wiping my eyes from the nutmosphere crack. “Binary System, who knows what you’ll run into…”

Smurf replaces mug on table, Stick reaches and then, as if taking the rejected dish back to the chef, “Did sir find the chicken soup too nutty?”

Me: “We’ve all got bags to carry on this trip ma’am.”

The Definition of Sanity is to Continually Repeat an Action and Expect a Different Outcome

I saw a giant rabbit praying the other night, and it quite put me off balance. Then I realised that it was the South Sydney Rugby League mascot waiting for a video referee decision on a try.

I was watching the football match with Smurf and it was a replay for him, but the first viewing for me. (I don’t normally watch football of any description, but it was filling one entire wall of the place we were sitting in. You couldn’t get away.) He mentioned that something was about to happen - and when it did, it didn’t happen quite as he expected.

Now I’ve always been pretty sure that every time you watch a replay of a sporting match, it’s slightly different. Each time the match is observed, particularly with the observer wishing for a different outcome, another parallel universe winks into existence and sets off down its own path. In turn, in each of these side by side universes, the outcome is just a bit different each time it is observed, and so on. With enough viewings, it is possible to reverse the outcome of, say, a football match.

This is proven in the wisdom of the home game advantage. More people are watching and willing the near infinite number of universal probabilities to come down in the favour of the local team. This can be reversed if the away team supporters continually watch replays of the game they lost – but they never do because it’s too disappointing for them.

So the take home message here is: Don’t give up, each time you watch, it gets you closer to the result you want. I promise. Or at least take comfort in the fact that in some parallel universe, the Rabbitohs are winning a Grand Final and Russell Crowe has stopped being such a weirdo about it.

Now we have to harness this power, and really upset some bookmakers.

Pope Sends Traffic Problems Early

Religious militants show Grey Area

"where the trouble is" with his new car.

The gods; they conspire against me.

Annoyingly it’s in a semi-humorous way. I’m an avowed and evangelical atheist, who adores his comedy… but…

I bought a new car this week, despite my best efforts to fool myself with fresh tyres on the old one (click here for context Car Story) . But there was a biblical element to the entire fiasco.

On the sixth day: Having received no manna, I petitioned the lenders to make clear the nature of their displeasure with my supplications. The tumult was quieted when the vendor was proven to have supplied false witness to the market. (The fuckin’ idiot dealer couldn’t put a Vehicle Identification Number correctly on a fax - three times in a row. The bank couldn’t find two of the three faxes and sat on it for a week.)

I could go on and on with rude comparisons between the usurious banks and the venal marketeers in a fashion that would bring Leviticus to the mind of anyone who had the misfortune to suffer through Sunday school.

But I’m not going to.

After my victory over the forces of stupidity in a day long battle that included two phones to my head at the same time to prove the fax was sent; two and a half hours on-hold, and other assorted modern insults, I drove the new car home.

I drove the new car home, loving the feeling, and smell, and the ride, and comfort.

And then the hail storm hit...

Ma's Lander

Nasa's Phoenix takes a photo of "Mars".
The shadow my Mother casts as she
takes the photo, can be clearly seen in the
top left corner.








I had one of those conversations the other night.

In reaction to a TV news break, I start up with, “How about the way it just fell apart at the end of the runway! Just totally into three bits. They shouldn’t do that!”

Little old lady comes back with, “Yes but it’s alright, there wasn’t anyone on board.”

“Well I know there weren’t any passengers, but there’s still a crew.”

“No I don’t think so, I think they’re unmanned.”

“Uhm, I know the autopilot can do a lot, but they still put guys up the pointy end.”

“Are you sure? I really thought this was an unmanned mission…”

“Hang on, hang on. I’m talking about that 747 cargo plane that fell into thirds at the end of a Brussels runway yesterday.”

“Oh sorry, I thought you were talking about the Mars lander robot thingy.”

Talking of which, I was chatting to my Grey Nomad Mother who is on her way home from her latest trek across Australia. She was in the middle of an arid, dusty, stony and barren place.

The first pictures that the Phoenix Polar Mars Robot Lander (or as I call him, Terry) sent back, reportedly came via Australia. Really?!

As I listened to my mum's description of where she’s camping in, I look at the photos coming back from Mars, and I can’t help but feel that the timing is more than coincidental. If you squint I reckon you can see guy ropes and tent pegs in the corner of the shot.

I Hear They're Not Even Good Eatin'

Pandas. They are the symbol of the WWF. That’s the World Wildlife Fund, not the World Wrestling Federation – but now that I say it, imagine an entertaining blend of the two… but back to the panda. I think it got the job simply because the WWF is a poor charity on a budget. An easily identified symbol for your pamphlets, printed cheaply in black and white, is ideal.

Of course, pandas are also in the upper-stratospheric levels of cute. However, in line with the previous piece in this blog about dwarves, it doesn’t matter how cute they are, I’m not fooled and I’m over them.

Pandas are useless. They are the most ill adapted animal for their environment I can think of off the top of my head, and let’s face it, most of my thoughts are no more considered than that, but read me out.

They are a carnivore in a herbivorous environment. This means their short meat eating guts have to be fed all day, to wring enough nutrients out of their all-bamboo diet to survive. When I say all day, I’m not exaggerating, they sit and eat all day.

They’re not too bright - if you want to laugh yourself silly at some animal footage, go to YouTube and search for “Panda Frightened by Baby”. (I’ll find the link when I’m on a computer that will allow me to, but seriously, those words will bring it up straight away.)

I’ve also seen footage of an English doco maker, clambering through some mountainous bamboo forests, whilst narrating something close to the following:

“… and it was in this region, exactly a year ago, that we first released Xia Xia back into the wild. In the first 4 months the radio transponder fell silent, so we are expecting an arduous search over the next few weeks to locate the…. Oh and here he is…”

Followed by a rushing noise as a panda looks up from his circle of cleared bamboo, recognises his ex-keepers, and comes running over doing his best impersonation of a child lost at an airport. If pandas could talk he would have said,

“Oh thank god you came back, you have no idea how much a bamboo forest sucks. It’s wet, it’s cold, and I’ve only been able to eat in this little circle here… where you dropped me… ages ago… heeeeeey wait a minute…, you’ve changed your clothes. You mean it wasn’t an accident? Hey, hey, where are you going? Can I come too? Hey!”

The useless black and white bastard hadn’t moved an inch in a year. Just sat and ate.

It’s no surprise that they are forced to eat bamboo too. It’s the only living thing a panda can sneak up on. Of what possible evolutionary advantage was being coloured black and white in an all green environment? You’d suspect that it gave some advantage in being able to pick each other out of the forest - for mating reasons. But they have proven themselves hopeless at mating.

The Chinese keepers involved in the breeding programme, have had to produce panda-porn to try and get the bludging, black and white boofheads, up and on the job. Doesn’t work a lot of the time apparently.

One other thing about being black and white. If you are, please try and keep your white bits a bit cleaner. The high contrast of the black on white, means it's really obvious when you're not keeping your fur in tip top nick. Polar Bears can get a bit grubby and get away with it, it takes a while to really notice because there's nothing to compare it to (it's just like my car). However pandas are their own test pattern.

Finally, and I learnt this from a mate who has just been in the south of China photographing them(one of his above), they don’t have proper thumbs. The original digit like other bears have, fell off a while ago (probably from sucking it too much). They then changed their tiny minds and it reappeared as an extension of a bone further up the wrist and arm. So they don’t even have opposable thumbs. That means if you ring up a panda to tell him how useless he is, he can’t even answer the phone.

It's inevitable that they'd become endangered.

Cutting it Short

I’m going to come out and say it right here and now. The fashionableness of dwarves is over. They have had their time in the sun. (Even though the rays take a little longer to get to them.)

For quite a while now they have been the giggling stock of those who want to appear a little quirky and naughty. I love a show called Robot Chicken, but when the creator said that it was “More fun than slapping a dwarf.” I knew that it had entered far enough into mainstream culture for it not to be hip anymore.

I remember a regular article in a weekend paper called ‘The Two of Us’, where couples (of all sorts) talk about their relationship. One time they had a midget who had married a dwarf, or maybe it was the other way around, I can’t remember. Anyway, she was interviewed first and spoke eloquently about the day to day issues of being a little person. Then the fellow was interviewed and he said that his wife was a lot more active in the little people rights movement than he was, and that there were just some jobs she wouldn’t do, and he respected that. For instance, one time their agent rang with a job where they would circulate at a party with ash-trays strapped to their heads. She wouldn’t be in it, but he said it was good money.

Now as brain-bendingly good as that is (you’d take up smoking for the night wouldn’t you?) that’s tired now. We need a new collectable. A new group of uncomplaining people who are a bit different to ‘us’ and are willing to be the sideshow for a while.

I loved you little dwarfies, with your crazy little shoes and roads made of yellow brick – but I’m over you. (over you… tee hee hee)

See, now I think Gwen Stefani is leading the pack with her collection of Harajuku girls. You can dress them up, and they dance so purty…

Well... That's a Real Fly in the... Water

Smurfy and I were talking the other day, and he wanted to kill half the world.

It was a reasonable thing to want to do too. You see he'd just read a statistic that pointed out that the population of Germany is added to the world each year. That's really true. The population of Germany... and that's allowing for deadies.

So after doing some pretty complicated mathamatics, he concluded that statistic means we are all doomed if we don't reduce the population. (I guess he's thinking that even half of us being doomed is better than 100%).

He was trying to work out the test or questionnaire that you would give you the thumbs up or down. He had "pick one of these four foods", and if the person picked without trying the foods, they got the heave ho. I suggested that if you were unable to explain your own remote controls to a child, you got the chop. We argued for a while about cultural bias, philosohical positions on "what is person" like Peter Singer would... all the normal stuff when you're supposed to be doing work.

We're yet to agree, but I do have the walk-up start, for who goes first. This guy is the absolute dinner winner.

A Change is as Good as a Holiday

Dumping him and buying a cat is like 3 months in Europe.

Cutting your hair short for the first time in 10 years is like 2 weeks on a tropical island.

Changing the look of your blog.... like arriving slightly late for work.