It's Good to Get Out

We've got tickets to Giggle and Hoot and Friends, LIVE!

Now I just need to find a babysitter for Darth Baby and we can really make a night of it.

Any Shorter of Ideas I'd be the Dinklage of Ideas

There are times when a bloke just needs to set off in the car for an unspecified amount of time. He knows he just has to be at the helm for as long as it takes.

This is not the romantic wanderlust that will lead to a blog about me getting arrested on the border between Outer Mongolia and Tahiti under suspicion of transporting herring for nefarious means. No, the job is simply to keep the vehicle moving while Darth Baby spends some time in his hyperbaric chamber communicating with the Sith Lords or choking the missing green sheep with his mind… or having a God. Damn. Nap.

Recently, I had to start driving but didn’t have any destination or purpose other than the nap. The Imperial Star Destroyer just had to keep moving, without making the jump to hyperspace. (i.e. Puddle around the suburbs without getting too far from home.)

I can’t imagine the following idea is startlingly original - but I came up with a little game to achieve the above “puddling about” and now I need to iron out the kinks and make it competitive.

I call the game Left Right Out:

Objects of the game (Score weight to be agreed upon with consultation):

1.   Turn alternate left and right turns in your car until you leave the state (I did write earlier that puddling about in your corner of the world was the primary objective, but once you get into it…)

2.   Turn alternating left and rights until you create a repeating circle (to a New Yorker or anyone else living in a planned city, that would make no sense. To a Sydneysider – I accidentally did it in my first two hours.)

3.   Left and rights until you are in the ocean. Playing in Europe? You should be able to go for the open-lay-down-misere. Leave your state, do a circle and end up in the drink all at once. Extra points for committing and actually getting the water above the door sill

4.   Lefts and Rights until you drive by the place that you were born or other significant life event. Again, weights to be determined. If you enjoy and are good at taking your clothes off and cuddling other people with your naughty bits, “I had sex there” is not going to score too well. On the obverse side if you are shy, “I passed out from blushing there” is not that awesome either. Consider swapping. This is where we need to chew over the pooling of goals and then the betting on who can achieve what

5.   Group Goals - Witness Eddy McGuire going through a dumpster, Mark Latham paying a cab fare or Geraldine Doug beating up a nun

To play, you will need:

1 x Car (careful, they’re sharp, so get mummy or daddy to help)

1 x Baby - optional

Rules:

1.   Random generate a number between one and ten by your favourite method

2.   Random generate a direction. All you have to do is not set off in the same direction as last time

3.   Drive in that direction as best you can for the number of minutes or kilometres you generated in step one. Make sure that the next time you play, you stick to time or distance

4.   Once you arrive at point X, mins or km from home, the  Left Right Out begins

5.   Take the first legal and available left turn

6.   Then take the next legal and available right turn

7.   And so on

8.   Do not take “No through Roads” or obvious cul-de-sacs

9.   If you do find yourself in a dead end that was short but not clearly marked, drive back out and continue the journey as though that turn had not been taken

10. If it is a long dead-end and not reasonable labelled, treat it as part of the L/R sequence

11. Remember, only legal or possible –so if you drove back out of your dead-end and the sign at the end of the street says “Left Turn Only”, that is not a choice in the sequence of Left and Rights. Treat it as a straight road

12. Islands, large median strips, diversions such as private roads and any other mid-lane construction are not counted as a left or a right. The question you ask yourself is, “Does this constitute a change from going straight? If it doesn’t involve taking drugs and staying up late, then no.

13.   National Parks, Royal showgrounds and lunatic asylums are quite ok to include in the trip. I spent an hour or so in Callan Park and it was totally worth it.

14. Other semi-public roadways are ok but if the limited and confined nature of the interior-circuit means that you keep being redirected back into the institutions grounds, politely describe your predicament to the guard who has now seen you three times for no good reason and skip a turn in your sequence. Ignore the look on his face. (In fact, print these rules out and hand them to him. Mention my name.)

15. Track your progress. I wanna map this somehow. Go-pro cams on  high speed, geo-stat tracking through your sat-nav and any other fab means to be able illustrate each trip, overlaying each other trip on a map

Sell it as art.

This is a particularly rewarding game to play in a V8 Grand Tourer, where you can also watch your fuel tank level drop at the same rate as the child’s eyelids.

You Have to Starve For Your Art

Having battled Darth Baby to a standstill over lunch I felt that he had, while not actually claiming outright victory in the food fight, definitely made me look silly. I can't undo the preportion of food that ended up on the floor rather than in his tummy but I can still win a moral victory.

I am not cleaning it up.

I am redifining the house as a modern-art museum. Maybe I'll call it the Googooheim or the Poopeedo Centre, I don't know. What I can let you in on is some of the content for our first season's exhibition.

Fame: Abstract in baked beans that shows a witty tip-of-the-hat and flip-of-the-finger to Warhol

Apple and Yoghurt avec Keyboard: A disturbing and possibly expensive commentary on the alienation caused by the increased PC mediation of our lives

Still Life with Mixed Fruit and Stuffed Bear: A timeless piece for a disposable age

The museum will also host Happenings and Installations. Some to watch out for:

Eyebrow, what Eyebrow? A whimsical yet dark journey into the human psyche that challenges the moral bounds between premeditated and unpremeditated violence. The second piece in the trilogy, Gentle Bubba, Just Be Gentle is currently receiving rave reviews off Broadway and off potty.

An Evening of Interpretive Whinging (Monday - Friday. Matinees and late night performances 7/11)

The Best Boy in the World*

*Conditions may apply, check website for details

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.

Just Because it's in There, Doesn't Make it a Cake

Darth Baby doesn't mind a mirror. He gets a kick out of watching what the kid in the reflecion is up to and I'm not going to be a literal or mythological Nemisis and discourage the fun.

Any shiny surface can be the limpid pool of obsession, but the only real-world danger I've come across is sounding odd to the neighbours.

"Oh, whatcha doin'? Are you pointing at the little baby in the oven?"

I Saved You a Little Something. No Need to Thank Me

During the evacuation it became evident that Darth Baby had chipmunked* most of his yakatori-chicken nori-roll. When the acrid smell of whatever was on fire hit him, the resulting sneezing attack covered the people behind us on the travelators with sticky rice.

(Now I can cross writing that paragraph off the bucket list… finally.)

Darth Baby thought it was utterly brilliant and followed up with an extended laughing attack; the woman and her two teenage daughters immediately behind, not so much. I gather that this was a relatively rare fashion shopping trip for them and not only had the shopping centre thoughtlessly burst into flames, but some rotten toddler had made them look like lamingtons as they fled the scene.

*Chipmunked; past participle. The act of having secreted most of one’s meal in one’s cheeks for later dispersal or use.

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.

War Reporting From the Pillow-Fort of Full-Time Parenting

Children and crows will conspire to take over the world. Don’t look at me like that. You can’t handle the truth.

For children, the whole process of growing up is about getting smarter and better at things. The Corvidae are already notoriously smart and have done a bunch of growing up. Let’s face it, you can draw a pretty unbroken line from dinosaur to nevermore and we’ve all seen what happens when the raptors get loose in the kitchen (you had one job, Phil Tippet. One job). 

They’re highly adaptive and have good memories. They are tool users and have basic senses of humour. I mean, that “uck orrrf” call always brings a smirk to the face of an Australian of a certain age and how about that collective noun?

(It’s probably time for a change with the collective noun, though. If I was a crow, I would be on to Pointy Face Black Feather Media & Publicity and be asking some hard questions about their commitment. Maybe, even making a few suggestions. How about a ‘Crows Line’ or a ‘Russel’?)

Anyway, playgrounds in the inner-city are going to be the hotbeds of the Crow-Baby conspiracy because of the food. Crows and babies are spending more and more time together as more and more of us live in ever denser, high-rise accommodation. We take our kids to the park to let them run around and the kids throw their food on the ground. The crows know this and are moving from agrarian communities to dense urban and CBD areas in a metropolitan-drift that rivals any of the so called Tiger Economies in the 90s. (It’s worth noting that the tigers couldn’t make a go of it and moved back out to the country where they’ve been applying for jobs in Queensland zoos ever since.)

So, there I am in the park, watching birds and babies of equal weight and intellectual capacity, breaking bread. I’m the one on the outer. M. Nightshade-Salami-Wanga-Ding-Dong has already approached me for a treatment on how it’s going to go down. I’m going to surprise him and not put in a twist. It's just goint to follow logical, straightforward lines.

DIY Haircuts: After you’ve given your adored child a haircut, try to cut down on the normal number of photos you tend to take of you precious pumpkin. In other words, keep the evidence limited. 

I was certain that I was going to be an absolute natural at hairdressing. I’d arrived at this conclusion because I have met many hairdressers and I would never accuse them of putting a lump in the IQ bell-curve on the right-hand side - know wha' I’m sayin'?

Considering the challenges, I’ve actually done a pretty good job. There were no serious head wounds and Darth Baby still looks like a little boy. It’s just that it could be a lot better. The issue? The kid never stops moving. Never. If we are going to be serious about finding sustainable energy resources, we should consider tapping toddlers. Fit them with a dynamo or attach them to leads that have the dynamo inside a return reel or just make them run around under balloons.

The haircut was more complicated than a 16-year-old girl and to an observer would have resembled more a joisting match than an appointment at the beauticians. I sort of took snips off him as we passed each other. I refrained from yelling “Ole!” but it did require memory and tactics to get it done.

The reason I don’t particularly want the cut recorded for posterity is it could be used as leverage at some future point. It’s the opposite of those photos that a parent saves for the ritual humiliation at the kid’s twenty first birthday party.