The last gasping death throes of this miserable month, thank deity.
November's not that bad, you say? Pffft:
- Car, obviously
- That whole wallet thing I mentioned
- I've lost my iPod.
- An Irishman won Idol.
- Thieving bike shop refuses to return my wheel to me — “The part will be here in a couple of days” for just short of three weeks now.
- The previous point and the first mean I've been on public transport everywhere and that's just crap.
- The previous point meant that I arrived late for a test on Monday and rescheduling costs me $60
- The Yellow Wiggle retired.
- Apparently Billy Thorpe retired.
- My friends voluntarily join Nanowrimo and then complain about how much writing they have to do. Bless them.
- Muscat has been out of the side for much of the month and the Victory have kept dropping points.
- My chilli plant seedlings died. I am the original weapon of seedling destruction.
- One word: Movember.
I have friends who are dog people and several have
lovely pets. A joy is given to them which sadly is
denied me because I have to say that it seems I am not
a dog person.
Being a Not Dog Person as I am I miss out on the companionship, the unconditional love and the pleasure of nurturing.
But dog people appear to be oblivious to the unstinting motion, the poo, the way the dogs eat everything, and the noise oh the noise. My god. Stop barking. These dogs bark all the time. They bark and they bark. Barking whenever they see other dogs, whenever they see other people, whenever they don't see their owner, whenever it's time to get in the car, whenever the moon's out, whenever they're outside, whenever they're inside, whenever they're breathing. The little bastards bark. Dog people appear to be oblivious to it.
“But ah,” say the dog people who may be taking this as a criticism of their own beloved and well-behaved pet and perhaps of their entire way of life, “but ah, dogs can be trained to be perfectly behaved.” And they are certainly right. But the thing is the dogs never are trained to be perfectly behaved. Dogs tend to be well-trained up to a point and that point is where dog people feel happy with the behaviour of the dog. The dogs usually come back when they're called for except when they're frolicking with some new dogly friend on the far side of the park, the dogs are quiet docile little chaps but when their territory is invaded by some strange dogly intruder they'll bark and the dog people have to shrug and say, “whatever, it's just dogly behaviour”. Sadly — and it is a fault in ourselves, certainly — we not dog people are cursed with less tolerance.
I have many pleasures available to me. I am capable of enjoying many things — a book with a beautiful ending, a long summer's afternoon on the porch, a cracking cover drive, holding hands with a Pretty Lady — it's this one I fear I just never got.
¶ 12:40 pm 8 comments
What do people do in Sydney? I've never been to Sydney and
I'm off next weekend to visit some friends. I presume we'll
just drink and talk rubbish but if there were specific
things to do while I was in Sydney, what would they be?
Ferries, obviously; hanging out with the homosexuals,
sure; are there pubs there or are they all RSLs?
¶ 1:45 pm 5 comments
OK. In my last post about my wallet getting stolen
I was writing in a sort of whimsical manner but I was
then and am still pretty cross about it all, but you know
most of us lose wallets and it was just my turn etc etc.
Nobody died, I'll get my cards replaced and it'll be as if
nothing happened and so on.
So I rode to work on Monday and laboured to the best of my endeavour for my employers and their shareholders and then I went home.
And discovered that the car had been stolen.
I've been forced to consider the nature of property these
last few days. I spent Cup Day meditating on the meaning
of ownership and its place in identity and I was looking
about my home and I asked myself ‘which of the
objects here do I actually love? What here, if it
were taken from me, would I mourn like a lost lover?’
I could not truly think of anything that way, the closest
I came to were my box of photos, my Highway 1 Fender bass
and the power amp that I built. But I can do without
them sure. In the past I would have said my piano but
that's been at my parent's place for a couple of years now
(my home is not very big, you see) and I'm still living.
That is not an invitation for the universe to come and deprive my of my stuff though. I would prefer to keep my gear because I have some nice things and I really did like the car.
If anybody spots a faded blue '82 Falcon (shown in the photo up at Hotham last winter with my neighbour, Andrew) with lowered suspension and rust patches on the roof abandoned in a supermarket carpark perhaps or a nearby creek, do consider dropping me a note.
And if you stole it, fuck you.
¶ 10:55 am 5 comments
There are some people that have more limbs than they
deserve. Drag them off, I say, and chop off an arm or
something. Cut open their belly and remove their pancreas
with a blunt fruit knife.
I can only hope that the cash that was in my wallet when it was stolen in the early hours of this morning is enough to buy the hit that fucker who took it ODs on.
The fact that he is stealing from me basically means that there is a hierarchy and I am higher on it than him. This may engender pity among some and in me on other days perhaps but I am in no mood for looking at it from his point of view. I am looking at things from my point of view right now so I say screw him.
May his finger get cut off by a rusty hacksaw and shoved in his eye. May a sharp edge on my debit card give him a cut on his hand that festers and turns gangrenous. May his haircut be effeminate and inappropriate. May taxies never stop when he hails them. May his home furnishings be poorly made and uncomfortable.
I hope he had an unhappy childhood and was unpopular and bullied. I hope he has an unsightly mole somewhere that embarrasses him.I hope his toast always burns and his coffee is always cold. I would like him to be strapped to a chair and forced to listen to Boyzone for eight hours or perhaps Howard's IR legislation being read by John Laws.
Wouldn't it be cool to see him tethered by the ankle to the landing gear of a 747 during take off? You may think that is going a bit far but what if I could video it: a prize on Australia's Funniest Home Videos would cheer me up no end.
¶ 10:45 am 4 comments
There is, as I trust you all know, a standard technique
for taking exams. Read through the paper first, answer the
easy questions before the hard ones, go through it all
afterwards to confirm your answers and always pick C for
the multiple choice questions.
I had done all that last night for a test I had and I was still only about a third of the way through the available time so I took a blank page on my answer booklet and wrote out Coleridge's Kubla Kahn for my examiner's entertainment. Having finished that, still unwilling to leave the room—all my exam-taking friends were there working hard and there was nothing at home except pasta and The IT Crowd—I took another blank page and wrote out the lyrics to a Queen song.
My worry is that I might lose marks because I went for ‘We Are The Champions’. Wouldn't the examiner prefer something like ‘You're My Best Friend’? ‘Gimme The Prize’? Obviously I wasn't going to use ‘Another One Bites The Dust’.
¶ 10:40 am 5 comments
