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.