Things I learned recently…

November 19, 2008

Pepe: Oh, Papa Homer, you are so learn-ed.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Learn’d, son. It’s pronounced learn’d.

1) On the way out, scrambled eggs appear visually and structurally identical… to how they looked prior to going in… (as observed as a result of a controlled clinical trial involving half a litre of vodka and two bottles of wine). Toast, on the other hand, appears to vanish entirely… or perhaps it simply goes to a different stomach?

2) All men wore pinstriped “Zoot” suits, white brimmed fedora hats, white silk ties and white braces in the 1920’s. Well… according to the worldwide experts on all things everything, my local costume hire shop. Indeed the majority of men apparently carried tommy guns too, times being as they may…

3) Never joke to your girlfriend about only getting her flowers when you notice fresh offerings on your drive past the local cemetary… as you will actually then have buy her more flowers… accompanied by evidentiary receipts…

4) Incontinence is not one of the “Seven Signs of Ageing”… at least according to the people from “Oil of Olay”… despite solid (and liquid) evidence to the contrary as oft observed (and/or smelled) when commuting on public mass transit systems…

5) You can burn candles, incense, heck even an effigy of a goat, in a room with a smoke detector and it will not go off. However if you so much as singe the crust of a piece of toast in the kitchen adjoining the room with said smoke detector, it will instantly issue a vehemently shrill and unrelenting response. This is especially true early in the morning while your girlfriend blissfully sleeps in the next room…

There. Don’t you feel wiser now?

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FLASH!!!

October 24, 2008

I heard the Queen song “Flash Gordon” on the radio the other day. Freddy Mercury rocks incidentally. Hearing it brought back a flood of memories.

No, I wasn’t a crimson suited hero who saved the planet in a campy past life (mine was more of a burnt caramel colour).

The story relates to a different past life where I used to work in a gym. I know! I KNOW!!!

At the time, one of my fellow staff members had a massive crush on a gym member named Shane Fallson.*

As chance would have it, she happened to score some liplocked, dirty, drunken, dancefloor action with said fellow at one of the gym’s social shindigs. She did not however have the opportunity, I say presence of mind, to arrange a subsequent meeting or acquire said target’s telephone number. Fucking amateurs…

Consequently, her infatuation made her evermore keen to casually bump into him at the gym, hopefully in order to move things along. However due to her intermittent work hours, combined with Shane’s irregular gym patterns, they kept passing like ships in the night.

Because I was a good Samaritan, or perhaps I was simply bored, I can’t remember, I decided to devise a system where our colleague could be signaled, just in case the target happened to enter her airspace.

After a few moments of pencil scribblings, I devised an anagram code name for Shane Fallson – that of “Flash Nealson”. The code name quickly stuck, so much so that every time our colleague came in to work she would eagerly ask “Is Flash in today?”

We soon tired of being constantly harangued for attendance updates. So one day, while she was out on the gym floor training a client, Flash walked in. As chance would have it, one of the aerobic instructors had an old workout tape with “Flash” by Queen.

By the time he came out of the changeroom, I had the tape set up and ready to go.

At the precise moment he walked out onto the gym floor, I cranked “Flash” up to full volume on the gym’s centre-wide speakers in order to alert our lovelorn, or lust borne, friend.

Initially we couldn’t locate her out on the gym floor as she was kneeling to help a client with an exercise, but the moment the opening sequence of “Dundun dundun dundun dundun dundun dundun dundun dundun Flash! Ah Aahh…. Saviour of the Universe!” had hit the airwaves, her head had whipped up and around like a startled meerkat.

She then promptly turned as red as Flash Gordon’s figure hugging bodysuit, closely followed by a hysterical giggling bout. Needless to say, she was a little too overwhelmed to sidle up to him on THAT particular day.

However the next time he came in, we performed the same ritual. He again made his grand entrance onto the gym floor to the throbbing beat of “Flash! Ah Aahh…. King of the Impossible!”

This time however, she at least regained her composure long enough to bail him up whilst he was belted in and contorting on one of the Nautilus machines.

Sadly, as it turns out, the asshole sheepishly informed her that he was actually engaged, and had done the dirty on his fiancé at the social event.

This however only fuelled our resolve to mindfuck this clown. Every single time the bastard came in for a workout, one of us would crank the speakers with “Flash! Ah Aahh…. He’ll save every one of us!”

As weeks went by, you could see the look of confusion slowly build each and every time it played, but to this day I doubt that Shane ever truly realised the full and complex nature of the machinations working behind the scenes.

But I daresay at some point he must have at least thought “Wow… these guys really love their Queen”.

* Name subtly changed to protect the guilty…

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Dream Analysts? Here… have a field day on me…

October 8, 2008

I dream quite a lot, however as a general rule I rarely remember much of the detail unless I consciously lock it into my memory the moment I awake.

In this instance, for some reason I dreamt that I was wandering the pool-deck of the Beijing Olympic Games while the swim events were in full swing… as is my habit.

All of the sudden, I am approached by a rather panicked-looking team official, who rambles something about the Aussie relay team being short one member, and hysterically implores me to fill in.

Now, those who know me appreciate that I am not much of a swimmer. I could swim to save myself, but only if the weather and tide felt to cooperate.

Even so, I find myself begrudgingly yielding to the desperate, pleading look in the man’s eyes. Hey! You try to say no to that face!

At this point, I am presented with one of those fancy one-piece Speedo Swimsuits (similar to the top photo, as opposed to the latter).

I must say I really don’t know what these “professional” athletes are going on about. The suit was quite easy to slip into and in my opinion, remarkably comfortable. Firm yet yielding…

I am subsequently led out to the starting blocks where I assemble with the other 3 members of my team. The race is about to begin, and one of my teammates stands up on the blocks in readiness for the starting signal. The gun goes off, and I watch on in nervous anticipation as he dives in and starts stroking his way down the pool. As I eagerly peruse his progress down the lane, I remain oblivious to the flurry of activity behind me.

Sensing my presence however, my other teammates turn and look at me, a mix of horror and stunned disbelief on their faces. They then start screaming and frantically pointing behind me. “Don’t just stand there! Go! GO!!!”

Bewildered, I turn around and see a representative from each team haring off on foot in the opposite direction of the starting blocks. Before I can finish asking “What the fuh?” my teammates push me and I start running in pursuit.

By the time I reach my opponents, they are all busily consumed with a task. I look down near my feet and see a large bucket, adorned with an emblem of the Australian flag. The bucket is filled to the absolute brim with nothing other than… mayonnaise?! (I believe it was Kraft). Alongside the bucket are four empty plastic squeeze bottles.

Puzzled, I turn to see my opponents feverishly attempting to fill their squeeze bottles with the mayonnaise by screwing the lids off and scooping gobfuls of the white goop in by hand. I look quizzically back at my teammates who frantically gesticulate to indicate that I should be doing the same.

Caught up in the rush, I quickly set about this awkward and ungainly task, but after 3 or 4 messy but futile attempts at scooping and stuffing (think of an 85 year old man sans Viagra), it dawns on me that there is a better way to skin this particular cat.

You know how when you accidentally squeeze too much shampoo into your hand in the shower, you can stand the bottle upright and squeeze the air out to create a vacuum so that when you place the tip back to the excess shampoo and release your grip, it sucks it back into the bottle? Bingo.

So I embark on using the suction technique. Lo and behold it works a treat. Noticing my rapid progress, my teammates energetically cheer me on, much to the chagrin of my fellow mayonnaise stuffers.

Having filled my 4 bottles, I quickly scoop ‘em up in my arms and race back to join my other three teammates, who have by now each completed a lap of the pool. When I get there, each of them takes a bottle, places it on top of their head and holds it there, urging me to do the same.

Said ritual complete, a nearby official announces us as “Winners!”

Caught up in the emotion, I start whooping and hollering and jumping for joy, thinking I’d pretty much single-handedly luck-boxed our way into an Olympic Gold Medal… As I try to elicit a high-five from each of my teammates, one of them discretely leans in and whispers “Dude, settle… it was only a heat”.

At least I can take solace in the fact that I will likely go down in the annuls of sporting history as the innovator of “The Stick Technique” for any future events of the 4 x 200m x 500ml Mayonnaise / Swim Relay.

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Short Sticks…

July 24, 2008

A collection of random thoughts… the kind that keep me awake at night:

Am I the only one who has a problem getting the first tissue out of the box? By the way, my record is 7 wrecked tissues. Not too shabby, I know. I was in the zone that day. Seriously though, why can’t we design a tissue box that automatically pulls the first tissue out… leaving the second one dangling tantalisingly ready to go? I’m fairly certain tissue box manufacturers have heard this feedback before… but have they done anything about it? No. As such I think I can safely say, all tissue box manufacturers are bastards.

–o–

Have you noticed that whenever you’re shopping and you go to pay for your items, the check-out operator invariably hands you your change and receipt with the coins on top of the notes, and then on top of the receipt. Inevitably you are laden with bags so you then have to play a strategic game of one-hand wallet juggling just to get your shit back in order. Common sense would clearly suggest, coins first… then notes and receipt. I am positive that check-out operators are secretly aware of the hassle they are causing and take some sort of morbid pleasure out of it. As such I think I can safely say, all check-out operators are bastards.

–o–

Congratulations to Nicole Kidman and hubby Keith Urban on the recent birth of their daughter Sunday-Rose. Pundits have been critical of the glam couple’s choice of name. Now whilst I’m not a big fan of the name per se, I don’t find it the least bit offensive. At least not as offensive as names like Saddam… Osama… Adolf… or Cher… or indeed any other historical figure that has wrought evil on this world. It is sad to think, that thanks to just a few slightly bad eggs, these cool names are now taboo forever. Now THAT is an atrocity.

–o–

Crows. Funny wee creatures. They are obviously intelligent, however their language comes across a trifle repetitive. Caw. Caw-Caw. Clearly they are trying to say something, but to me it all sounds the same (except for one local crow, that makes a sound uncannily like the creature from “Predator”. Perhaps it IS the Predator… and I am being stalked as his next trophy. “If it bleeds, ve can kill it!”.). Anyway, I digress. Perhaps crows suffer from a form of avian expressive aphasia? I can picture a crow’s brain pattern. “I’ve been yelling out about this half full carton of chips for ages! Where ARE all those guys?!”. Meanwhile, another crow is listening to him and thinking “Crikey, Cameron’s a bit excited. If only I knew what the hell he was going on about…”.

–o–

I was driving down the street the other day and it suddenly dawned on me just how many poles there are in our day-to-day lives. Seriously, next time you’re out and about, take note. How terrifying would life be if you were polophobic? That is, scared of posts and other supporting structures, not of people who originate from Poland. Mind you my girlfriend is Polish and she’s very small, but she scares me sometimes, especially when I’ve accidentally dropped her toothbrush in the toilet. Consequently I don’t tell her when that happens anymore. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Keep out of my booze!

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Magpies… hmmm… pie…

July 17, 2008

Yesterday, I attended a site meeting for a housing project I’m involved with on the Gold Coast. After a tour of the construction site, I was crossing a park to go to my car, when all of the sudden, I heard a flapping noise behind my ear.

I instinctively turned towards the sound, and was struck broadside on my right temple by a high-velocity projectile. For an instant, I thought I’d been hit by a basketball, such was the force of the blow, but then I felt a trickle of blood down my temple accompanied by a sharp pain.

I immediately looked around to find the perpetrator of the assault. It was then I noticed my black and white clad attacker…

It was a motherfucking magpie.

Here’s a photo of one at his recent booksigning:

In Australia, many of us have childhood memories of aggressive magpies. Indeed, I discovered a national survey that found 90 per cent of males and 72 per cent of females have been attacked by a magpie at some time in their life.

Magpie attacks are mostly just a pre-emptive defense strategy whereby the magpie is simply protecting its nest. However, as with humans, some are simply assholes.

In some areas, over-aggressive “rogue” magpies are trapped and removed. However, removing the father can affect the survival of the chicks as the male is the main food provider, while the mother tends the nest. As such many neighbourhoods are extremely protective of their local magpies. Indeed, there are signs in a lot of neighbourhoods, preaching “Preserve Your Local Magpie”…

Preserve them in a pickle jar I say… but nooooo… magpies are a protected native species in Australia, so it is illegal to kill or harm them…

I know… what a gyp…

Look, to be fair, for ten months of the year, I don’t mind them. They do have charming singing voices. But during breeding season they can be a right pest, so much so that signs are often erected in parks where magpies frequently nest.

As it turns out, magpies usually don’t make heavy contact, however they have occasionally been known to attack the eyes. Most often they turn away just before impact with a clack of their beak as a warning. As it happened, I heard my attacker coming a moment before impact, and turned into his path, causing him to plough into my temple with his beak open. Hence I have two little crescent-shaped puncture wounds on my temple, which went in as deep as my skull.

Indeed I half expected him to be stuck there on impact, Wiley Coyote style, with a comical “Sproy-oy-oy-oy-ing!” sound…

But to give you an idea on what I had to contend with, here’s a nifty video of a magpie attack filmed by a cyclist wearing a camera in the back of his helmet.

So now you know more than you wanted to know about magpies. However, in closing, I think it is important to highlight the truly calamatous and disruptive nature of these scourges of the ornithological world:

Yup… I rest my case…

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I’m not gay… I just really love rainbows…

June 3, 2008

Last week, my girlfriend A and I headed up to the Sunshine Coast Hinterland for a few days to beat the ratrace…

Girlfriend? What are we… twelve?!

But I digress…

On the way up… to kill some boredom, we played a few CD’s and tried to find clouds that looked like something… other than clouds… marshmallows… or cottonballs…

On a side note… we started listening to Meatloaf’s “I would do anything for love”…

I’ve listened to it a thousand times… but for some reason the line “I’d run right into hell and back” made me giggle…

I pictured Meatloaf running into hell… pulling his mouth apart with his fingers… waggling his tongue at Satan… going “blabble-blabble-blah”… and then running back out while tittering like a schoolgirl…

Small things?

Anyway… after a few cloud sightings… like a flying pig… an elephant… and a cat striking a mouse… A led out with “a menagerie of dragons, beasts and giants”… when describing a particularly lumpy piece of sky…

I pondered this… and replied… “I always thought using the word “menagerie” to describe dragons… was… you know… kinda gay”…

To which she instantly retorted “No YOU’re gay!!!”…

To which I could only begrudgingly reply with “Well played madam”…

*Wistfully* If only this cloud had been around at the time…

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Stalking… Is Bad? Who Knew?!

May 9, 2008

I drove to my local shopping centre on the weekend… and spent the obligatory half an hour looking for a car park…

While I was stalking my fellow consumers in the hopes that they were leaving… I noticed a clear run of car parks… right outside the front of the shopping centre!

I raced over… only to see that there were 12 designated handicapped car parks… all empty!

Now I respect the town planning laws that quarantine car park space for the handicapped… but have you EVER, EVER seen them full?

Perhaps it was simply a by-product of car park rage… but at the time… I was so frustrated… I could have kneecapped someone…

But in hindsight… that would only have served to reduce my argument…

So I continued to prowl the car park for departing patrons…

Finally I stalked a middle-aged, shoppingbag-laden lady to her shiny beige Toyota…

It was only once she had opened her trunk that she noticed that I had pulled up, with my indicator blinking, waiting for her to vacate her spot…

And from the instant she saw me waiting… she went into *deliberate* go-slow mode…

She started looking through her shopping… shifting things around in her trunk… and generally wasting time…

It happens all the time… once someone realises you are waiting… they deliberately and purposefully take their time to get in their car and leave…

So I thought I would do some research to see if anyone else had made this observation… and what do you know… there are numerous studies supporting my theory…

One particular study showed that drivers took on average 20% longer to vacate a car space if they know that someone is waiting…

Interestingly, it actually stems from territoriality… in that the person perceives “ownership” of the car space… and will not be dictated to in terms of when they should, or should not leave…

The delay is one last act of defiance…

Indeed if you honk your horn… the “owner” becomes even more possessive and territorial, and will take even longer to leave…

So here’s my take… when waiting for someone to leave a car park… you need to be stealthy in your approach…

Stick’s tips to successful car park stalking:

Do NOT give the departing driver any inkling of a suggestion that you are actually waiting.

Do NOT under any circumstances… make eye contact. If they happen to glance at you… push buttons on your mobile phone to create the illusion that you simply stopped to take a call.

Do NOT put on your indicators unless another car looks like usurping your rightful place in the queue…

Do NOT honk to hurry the other driver up…

Please note that the covert nature of the operation ceases once they have backed out of the car space.

It is your right, indeed your moral obligation, to flip them the bird once you have successfully secured the car space…

Or you can simply do what Lois does:

Alternatively, if this seems a little too complicated, you can simply ride a Vespa…

However, the best solution I can offer to finding a car park in busy shopping centres, and this one takes commitment to the cause is simply:

Get yourself a disability… with a little research, I’m confident you can locate a local thug who can make it happen for around $500… money well spent if it gets you nearer to the entrance…

And it means you can get around in one of those chairs with the wheels… (I forget what they’re called…). No more walking around the shops like a schmuck…

But then there’s the whole… living as a cripple thing… which… while it sounds fun… can have its down side…

So if this whole scenario is disheartening… I have the ultimate solution…

Screw going to the shops… every single one I have been to has been full of people… and people are assholes…

Solution: Online shopping…

Where else can you go shopping and scour for porn at the same time?

Okay… best you don’t answer that… I’m not sure I want to know…

PS PM me if you know

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Tell me about the rabbits George…

April 3, 2008

I love the mood of this dark little animation…

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Simon’s Cat…

April 2, 2008

Maow… point point…

Gold

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Hari Patel and the Chamber of Horrors…

March 11, 2008

A friend of mine was away on a work conference…

He was staying in a room on the 20th floor of a high-rise hotel… and he and a few colleagues had been out on a massive all-night bender…

Hung over… and in need of a strong coffee, and some greasy bacon and eggs… he decided to hit the buffet of the hotel restaurant…

He takes the elevator down to the ground floor… and to pass the time, he lets go of the most rancid cloud of flatulence imaginable… it is stereotypical of PGBS… Post Grog Bowel Syndrome…

It is rank… they say everybody loves their own brand… but these noxious fumes made even his own eyes water…

He cannot wait to get out of this box of torture…

He scrambles around in a haze of putrified air… punching button after button in a vain attempt to free himself…

But the elevator has its mind set on travelling to the ground level…

Eventually, after what feels like an eternity… he reaches the ground floor… he prises the doors open… and launches himself out of the elevator to olfactory freedom…

He breathes deeply… steadies himself… and starts to walk away from the lift well…

Just as he is leaving the lift foyer, an Indian gentleman passes by him and steps straight into the recently vacated lift… he recognises the man as having a room across the corridor from him on the 20th floor…

My friend hurriedly hides his head… and bolts around the corner away from the lifts…

It also suddenly dawns on him, that by pressing all the buttons in his frenzy to escape the chamber of horrors… that the lift will take an eternity to reach its 20th floor destination…

Just before he is out of earshot… he hears the sigh of the lift doors as they start to close…

And just as the doors meet… and as the realisation dawns upon him… the Indian gentleman could be heard to utter just three small words…

They were three simple words… but my friend will remember them for a lifetime…

In a clear, but slightly panicked voice… and with a deep, Indian accent… he simply uttered…

“Oh my God”…

This a true story, albeit with some subtle embellishments… however try it…

For some strange reason it works so much better with an Indian accent…

Posted in General Stick Takes | 1 Comment »

Flowcharts make me want to kick kittens…

February 19, 2008

I had an impromptu meeting with my immediate boss. The reason for the meeting was as a result of a “Professional Development” seminar which I attended with him the previous evening…

He asked me my opinion on the night’s proceedings. Big mistake…

So I let fly… even bigger mistake…

I told him that quite simply… I thought it was a useless load of twaddle that was designed to provide just enough vague information to convince the poor schmucks seated around us to sign on for further workshops…

I then commented about the presenter’s propensity for adopting useless flowcharts and modeling systems to try to illustrate the theoretical and impractical intangibleness of his ramblings…

I had anticipated that my colleague would be in agreement with me… but instead he sat in silence for a moment… and asked if I was “against” modeling of that nature?

I replied by saying that I was against people espousing useless theory… when it is clear that they have no concept of the real world implications of what they are saying…

What do they say? Those that can… do. Those that can’t… teach?

And this bozo couldn’t teach an emo to be angsty…

So my colleague asks, “Do you mind if I show you something?”

I watch on with a growing mixture of revulsion and dread… as he grabs a memory stick out of his briefcase… and proceeds to try to get it started on his laptop…

Fortunately for me… the drive wasn’t mapped to read it…

So he quickly buzzes our IT guy… who comes into the room… and I am shaking my head at him with pleading eyes… which were screaming “Don’t fix… for the love of God… don’t fix!!!”…

My IT guy gives me a quick wink… fixes the mapping problem… smirks… and meanders back out of the room… (I later bailed him up on it… and he simply explained that as long as my boss was in the room with me… he couldn’t bother the rest of them…).

I was considered collateral damage!

So he shows me the contents of his memory stick… and it is literally like a family photo album of his favourite flowcharts and models of various business and management theory… ranging from “boosting staff morale without their knowledge” (ironic… I know…)… negotiating the “management maze” through successful delegation… strategic vs operational interconnecting spectrums…

I thought I’d died and gone to hell… been killed again… and then been sent to hell’s hell…

And he seriously starts flicking through it and asking me… “What do you think of this one? And what about this one?”… all the while gazing intently at me… and subtly nodding in eager anticipation…

I calmly surmised that the only way I was going to get out of this… was to lie… lie well… and lie quickly…

So I said… “Oh… no… what I meant was that I didn’t like the “presenter’s” models…”

“Yours… however… are a delight… and I find them highly poignant… colourful… and compelling…”

Which gave me a small window of opportunity… for when he sat back… with a half smile… and closed his eyes…

I bolted…

Anyway… I had a feeling he was going to need a few minutes to himself… but only a few minutes… if you know what I mean…

Wanker…

Actually… this is about the extent of “flowcharting” I can handle:

Hammer Time?

Definitely Hammertime…

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Flight of the Rare Redneck Warbler…

February 5, 2008

On a whim, I decided to head down to Melbourne for the opening weekend of the Aussie Millions Poker Series at Crown Casino… ostensibly to have a stab at the first event which started on the coming Saturday… but mostly to catch up with some good friends I knew were going to be in town…

I of course only made the decision on the Thursday night leading up to the weekend. As a result, booking flights for the next day turned out to be more of a hassle than I had envisaged with a tilt-inducing usurper snatching the last seat on my preferred flight whilst I was in the middle of booking it. Online flight bookings are a sick rigged joke.

In the end I had to book a Jetstar flight from Brisbane into Avalon Airport instead of Melbourne Tullamarine. For the uninitiated, Avalon is a small coastal airport between Geelong and Melbourne. And for those considering visiting, Avalon has a lingering odour akin to that of a *returning* fishing trawler. It is important to note the subtle distinction.

But I digress. I finally secure my flights and turn up the next day to Brisbane Airport ready to depart and am greeted at the check-in counter by an adorably cute Jetstar employee… who offers me a free upgrade to a seat in the front row emergency exit aisle… with extra leg room.

Let’s set aside the fact that she is paid to be nice to me… and just agree that she dug me…

But then Dreamgirl gave me the bad news. The plane I was to be departing on was in a holding pattern over the Gold Coast as a result of a backlog of arrivals waiting out the storms in South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales…

Dreamgirl told me my flight was to be delayed for at least half an hour… and likely more…

After chatting for several more minutes about the weather and other poignant topics… I realised that Dreamgirl was actually unlikely to be joining me for a coffee… what with the 500 passenger backlog piling up behind me at the check-in counter… so I begrudgingly trudged up to the departure lounge with the other disgruntled masses…

With the numerous delayed arrivals… the Arrival/Departure Lounge was jammed to the rafters… so I sat down at one of the 5 Star (out of a hundred) cafés that littered the Departure Lounge… and grabbed a tepid coffee and newspaper… (to be fair only the coffee was tepid… the newspaper was room temperature).

After several “further delay” announcements… I head to the bathroom to expel some tepidity of my own…

To my disgust… as I am washing my hands… two gentleman (or rather slovenly, unhygienic f*ckpigs) that I had been quietly urinating alongside just seconds ago… walked straight out of the door behind me without washing their hands. Man that gets my goat… indeed… almost as much as goat poachers…

So I go to leave… and not wanting to negate my own hand washing discipline by handling a door handle now clearly littered with random urine samples… I lean to open the door with my elbow… which coincides of course with the entry of the next patron to the bathroom… who promptly whacks the door into my funny bone… humerus indeed…

He apologises… and proceeds to touch me a little more than a man should touch another man… even one he does know… but especially one he doesn’t know… and especially not in an airport bathroom… so I dust myself off… thank him for his help and bluster back out to the Departure Lounge… only to be greeted by the sound of an additional 20 minute delay…

By this stage… I’m so tilted I’m willing to risk stealing a plane and flying it to Melbourne myself. Sure… I’ve never actually flown a plane… but I’ve always been a proponent of “learn by doing”…

However, my mastermind plan doesn’t get to eventuate, because finally… after over an hour of delays… we board the plane… and I take my seat in the front row…

Fortunately… I am seated right opposite another one of Jetstar’s finest… a delightful hostess named Liz… who is perhaps about as cute, sweet and lovely as a person can be…

Unfortunately… in the aisle seat opposite me… is an overweight hillbilly type… who is perhaps about as rude, sexist and obnoxious as a person can be…

He reminded me a bit of this guy:

Surprisingly… he and I weren’t destined to get along… I know! Who knew?

With storms abounding… and the high associated risk of turbulence… the flight crew were stuck in their seats for the first 45 minutes of the flight…

So I get to talking with Liz… she’s had a looooong day… but is surprisingly cheerful considering…

Now as you’re probably aware… the flight crew usually only sit for a few minutes upon take off and landing… however after a day of storms… they’d had to do a lot of sitting all day… and Liz’s back was getting sore… and she was shifting in her seat…

As it turns out… the fold down seats that the crew buckle into for take off and landing aren’t designed with long-term comfort in mind…

I begin to comment with my usual witty repartee about the lack of forethought by the aircraft designers… but am interrupted by the Redneck who pipes up with:

“You’re welcome to come sit over here”… and pats his lap…

I know… classy stuff…

So I continue to make idle chitchat and mention the fact that it must be awkward having to face backwards… with all 200 other passengers staring forward at her…

“The view’s pretty good from here”, quoth the Redneck…

Liz goes on to explain that the whole delay thing meant that they were going to finish several hours late for their final return flight back to Brisbane…

“You can always stay with me in Geelong”, inserts the Redneck…

Liz calmly ignores Hillybilly Bob and asks me what I’m doing in Melbourne… and I mention that I’m coming to play poker…

“Poker… did you say you wanted to poke her? Jump in line mate!”, spouted the Redneck…

Now at this point, this guy is so over-the-top sleazy that I half expect a candid camera crew to jump out and yell “Punk’d”… at least it would give me a chance to slap the smarmy look off Ashton Kutcher’s face… or Nooky Anu (”New Keanu”) as I like to call him…

Anyway… all the while poor Liz is trying to be polite… but is obviously becoming more and more uncomfortable with the tone of his attention…

So I turned to him and said “It would take more than a bottle of tequila and a handful of roofies for you to be able to poke her… you fat inbred bastard!”

In fact… I said no such thing… but I did think it really, really hard… and besides… I couldn’t think of a better way to end this story…

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Auditors… Piles of Fun…

February 1, 2008

The company I work for follows IFRS… or International Financial Reporting Standards…

As a result, we are forever justifying our existence to our auditors… a chartered accounting firm… who are *extremely* persnickety when it comes to accounting for every cent that passes through the place…

I have to say I have mixed feelings about their input… they are brilliant at what they do… and I understand the big picture requirement to have auditors to ensure openness and transparency of our operations… and in order to justify our existence with the tax office… but it does frustrate me when we spend hours tracking ridiculously small sums of money… considering the hourly rate our auditors charge…

As it happens… we were bombarded this week by a crew of five auditors… intent on keeping us honest…

When they walked in… I commented to our Accounts Manager that the “Hemmorhoids” had just walked in…

He thought for a moment… and then asked if I called them that because they were a pain in the ass?

And I replied “No… it’s because they’re an anal bunch”…

He then laughed so hard… and so genuinely… that for just a tiny moment… he almost seemed human…

Posted in General Stick Takes | 2 Comments »

Santa wants three of what now?

November 22, 2007

So apparently… a number of large department store chains across Australia are planning to ban their in-store Santas from using the term… “Ho-Ho-Ho”… and instead requesting that they use the more “politically correct” term “Ha-Ha-Ha”…

The reason…

The term “Ho” is also an offensive and derogatory American Slang term for a whore… or prostitute…

Alright… let’s set aside the fact that it would be highly unlikely that mothers will construe Santa’s “Ho-Ho-Ho” as being derogatory to women… although I concede it would be offensive if Santa was saying “Whore, Whore, Whore”…

Let’s also set aside the fact that “Ho-Ho-Ho” has been in popular and traditional usage for much longer than any of our living memories… for far longer than the slang term has been in popular usage…

But instead, let’s focus on the fact that Santa is communicating with the youngest of young children… so young that they cannot possibly understand that “Ho-Ho-Ho” has any other connotation… and nor should they…

So I say leave Santa alone…

Or else what next?

Are we going to change the soundtrack to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs… just in case young children perceive that the dwarves are singing about a stoned hooker?

“Stoned Hooker, Stoned Hooker…”
“It’s off to work we go…”

Give me a break… it doesn’t even rhyme…

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Sleeplessness… I lie awake thinking about it…

November 4, 2007

I’m so worried about becoming an insomniac… I can’t sleep at night…

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Trading Places Dead Pool…

October 29, 2007

My housemate Dan and I happened to watch “Trading Places” (1983) with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd on the weekend…

We got to talking about the age of several of the actors… and since we don’t mind a bit of a niggle… and as is our want… we came up with a wee bet…

There were a handful of older actors in the movie… and since it was made in 1983… we figured that at least a couple of them had likely departed this earth since the making of the movie… and we were fairly confident we hadn’t seen any of them in a movie in recent times…

So we wagered $20 on whether Ralph Bellamy (Randolph Duke - left), Don Ameche (Mortimer Duke - right), or Denholm Elliot (Coleman the Butler - below) was the first to pass away…

Dan took Don Ameche… I took Ralph Bellamy… but I was secretly concerned about Denholm Elliot…

Have a go at it yourself… scroll down for the result… which… for a whimsical bet… was excrutiatingly close… as all passed within 2 years of each other…
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Don Ameche (May 31, 1908 – December 6, 1993)
Denholm Elliot (31 May 1922 – 6 October 1992)
Ralph Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991)

Yup… Nailed it…

P.S. I know… I know… it was a macabre bet… but we have an excuse…

We were bored…

Posted in General Stick Takes | 8 Comments »

Roadside Assist…

October 23, 2007

I was driving to work in traffic this morning… and I happened to drive past an RACQ Roadside Assist Vehicle (my local equivalent to Triple-A)… with its bonnet up… and being attended to… by another RACQ Roadside Assist Vehicle…

Perhaps I was tired… or maybe it is just how my head works… but I found it so ironically cute… that I almost giggled my travel coffee out of my nose…

It is reassuring to know… in these oft troubled times… that we live in a world that doesn’t mind taking the piss out of itself… at least every once in a while…

Posted in General Stick Takes | 1 Comment »

A play within a play… and then some…

October 19, 2007

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (1990) is indisputably Tom Stoppard’s (“Shakespeare in Love”) best written work. It carries a little bit of a Samuel Beckett “Waiting for Godot” feel… but with a great deal more wit and creativity…

Sure “Shakespeare in Love” won people’s hearts… and picked up plenty of Oscars… and while I enjoyed it immensely… compared to this it had just a little too much of a “made for Hollywood” feel for me… kind of like dating a beauty queen… sure they look good… and they probably make you feel good… but they sometimes seem to be lacking just a little in substance…

But this film won both my heart and mind… kind of like finding your soulmate… captivating and intriguing… witty and intelligent… and one you don’t want to tear your eyes away from…

I believe one of the critical factors here is that Stoppard wrote the screen adaptation of his own play… and then directed it. As a result you know… without question… that what you are seeing is not simply someone’s interpretation of words on a page… but is a rare example of the artist’s mind truly being brought to life…

The premise of the movie is simple… it follows the progress of two minor characters… Rosencrantz and Guildenstern… in one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies… Hamlet…

Indeed in simple terms… it is a play within a play…

Sometimes however… it is a play within a play… within a play…

And for a brief staggering moment… it is a play within a play… within a play… within a play…

For those who have seen the film… this was the moment of the puppet play re-enactment… which formed part of the “Players” play… which forms part of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”… which is a play… within the play of Hamlet…

Phew… ok… time for a lie down…

It sounds confusing… but if you keep a few simple things in mind… it becomes a lot less complicated…

The key premises are:

1) R&G have an identity crisis… they are simply unaware as to who is who. The script of Hamlet lends itself to this ambiguity because as the characters spin in and out of the play, they are always addressed as a pair. A large portion of the wordplay revolves around their own subtle attempts to work out which of them is which…

Guildenstern: Rosencrantz?
Rosencrantz: What?
Guildenstern: Guildenstern?
Rosencrantz: What?!
Guildenstern: Don’t you discriminate at ALL?!

2) Basically… Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are summonsed by the King and Queen of Denmark to help them discover the cause of Hamlet’s melancholy. If you know your Hamlet… you will know the reason why Hamlet is troubled… because within weeks of his Father’s (The King) sudden and mysterious death… Hamlet’s Uncle (The King’s brother)… marries Hamlet’s mother (The Queen)… and usurps Hamlet’s right as heir to the throne… and takes the crown as King of Denmark…

Hmmm… suspicious much?

Rosencrantz: To sum up: your father… whom you love… dies. You are his heir. You come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother pops onto his throne and into his sheets… thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now… why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner?
Guildenstern: I can’t imagine.

So R&G have been given the task of finding out the cause of Hamlet’s madness… and set about undertaking their own peculiar form of clumsy detective work to identify the root cause…

Guildenstern: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself… is no madder than a man talking nonsense… not to himself…
Rosencrantz: Or just as mad…
Guildenstern: Or just as mad…
Rosencrantz: And he does both…
Guildenstern: So there you are…
Rosencrantz: Stark raving sane…

3) Despite their obvious existential identity issues… R&G know their lines in Hamlet perfectly… and deliver them on cue when the play catches up with them… indeed it is quite amusing at times to observe the real play of Hamlet going on in the background… But for the most part… it is simply a play within a play… and as such is a rare chance to observe two bit characters as they kill time between “scenes” while the rest of the play unfurls around them…

Rosencrantz: Do you want to play questions?
Guildenstern: How do you play that?
Rosencrantz: You have to ask a question.
Guildenstern: Statement. One - Love.
Rosencrantz: Cheating.
Guildenstern: How?
Rosencrantz: I haven’t started yet.
Guildenstern: Statement. Two - Love.
Rosencrantz: Are you counting that?
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: Are you counting that?
Guildenstern: Foul. No repetition. Three - Love and game.
Rosencrantz: I’m not going to play if you’re going to be like that.

4) R&G have a sense of imminent fate… like life has a predetermined path for them… (fate in this case in the form of a script) and they stagger onwards towards a tragic inevitability despite their attempts to deviate… right until the moment their fatal destiny becomes apparent…

The Player: Generally speaking… things have gone about as far as they can possibly go… when things have gotten about as bad as they can reasonably get…

The Player: We are tragedians, you see? We follow directions. There is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily. The good… unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

As they stand in the gallows:
Rosencrantz: That’s it then, is it? We’ve done nothing wrong. We didn’t harm anyone, did we?
Guildenstern: I can’t remember.
Rosencrantz: All right, then, I don’t care. I’ve had enough. To tell you the truth, I’m relieved.
Guildenstern: There must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no. But somehow we missed it. Well, we’ll know better next time. Till then.

Since there is no guesswork required as to the fate of the main characters (even if you don’t know your Hamlet… the movie title should give you a clue…) you should be able to sit back and be thoroughly enchanted by R&G’s surreal journey towards inevitable and impending doom.

Now many critics panned it… citing that it was overcomplicated… and at times “too witty”… as if that were possible. Don’t get me wrong… it will not be to everyone’s taste… but I do sometimes think that quite a few critics either became overwhelmed… or simply didn’t “get it”… which is more of a reflection on them… than the actual script…

But I will be the first to admit… because the wordplay is so intricately clever… but also extremely fast-paced… I enjoyed it even more during my second viewing…

Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no… Death is “not.” Death isn’t. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can’t not be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I’ve frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no… What you’ve been… is not on boats.

The Player: The old man thinks Hamlet is in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: Good God. We’re out of our depths here!
The Player: No, no, no! Hamlet hasn’t got a daughter! The old man thinks he’s in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: The old man is?
The Player: (sighs) Hamlet… in love… with the old man’s daughter… the old man… thinks.
Rosencrantz: Ah.

In addition, many critics labelled Richard Dreyfuss (The Player), Tim Roth (Guildenstern) and Gary Oldman’s (Rosencrantz) acting as over the top… but one must remember that it is written in a true Shakespearean vein. The tragic yet surreal nature of the play calls for a theatrical lend to the acting… and with that in mind… quite frankly… they nailed it…

So if you are drawn to period pieces… enjoy witty banter… and relish in genuine onscreen chemistry between actors (Oldman and Roth were born to play these roles)… then this film is most definitely for you… (but it might pay to watch Hamlet first… Kenneth Branagh’s preferably… but Mel Gibson’s in a pinch)

But golf clap Mr Stoppard… golf clap… 10/10…

I think if Shakespeare were alive… he himself would chuckle at this imitation of a true comedy of errors… as was the great writer’s forte.

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Dog Eat Dog World…

October 10, 2007

I was wandering the supermarket the other day… and I happened upon the pet food aisle…

And it got me wondering…

Why is it that cat food is predominantly fish and seafood focussed… but dog food is predominantly red meat focussed?

Cats aren’t natural fisherman… I mean… you don’t see many cats crawling out of the surf dragging a freshly caught tuna…

I realise it may simply be a matter of fish being a preferred taste for cats… despite the fact that seafood is not within the realm of a cat’s usual dietary regime in the wild… or indeed in suburbia…

That being said… why is it that we don’t feed dogs more seafood based products? Do they not like seafood? I know a lot of dogs are happy to steal the cat’s food… Or is it that dogs simply prefer land-based meat forms… like Beef… Lamb… Fido… or Muffy…

Fido and Muffy? You think I’m joking…

Indeed… I wasn’t sure exactly what went into tinned pet food before I started writing this post… so I did a little research…

But brace yourself… here we go:

According to the “Made How” and the “Your Animal’s Health” website:

The primary ingredients in pet food are byproducts of meat, poultry, and seafood, feed grains, and soybean meal. Among the animals used in rendering are livestock, horses, and house pets which have been put to sleep. The National Animal Control Association estimated that each year about 5 million pets were shipped to rendering plants and recycled into pet food during the 1990s. They are generally listed as meat or bone meal in the ingredient lists.

I have to say… hats off. That’s recycling at its most efficient… albeit a trifle cannibalistic…

But now I understand why they have pictures of puppies on the can…

It’s because they are an ingredient!

And maybe that’s why it is called “Pet” Food…

But getting back onto my original topic… maybe we’ll never know why dogs and cats have vastly different tinned food ranges… short of undertaking a pet referendum…

Hmmm… but in thinking it through… I can’t see a referendum working…

Cats are too arrogant to turn up to vote…

And most dogs would simply eat their own ballot papers…

But in closing… I think that Ralph Wiggum sums it up best…

“My cat’s breath smells like cat food!”

It sure does Ralph… it sure does…

But your dog’s breath smells like… well… other dogs…

Posted in General Stick Takes | 4 Comments »

Georgian Roulette…

October 8, 2007

I was flicking through the cable movie channels the other day, and happened to stumble across a little gem of a movie called 13 Tzameti by Georgian Director Géla Babluani. The film won the World Cinema Jury Prize for a Dramatic motion picture at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival… and deservedly so…

This thriller has a Film Noir feel to it… is beautifully shot… entirely in black and white… and the only spoken language is French…

As most of you will learn to appreciate… I love a movie with a clever premise… or with unpredictable, subtle twists… and this film did not disappoint… I had absolutely no clue where it was going…

In fact… if you do want to see this film… I urge you not to read any spoilers. I’m not talking a “Sixth Sense” or “Crying Game” kind of twist here… but you will know what I am talking about the moment you realise what is going on…

Sorry for being cryptic… but I refuse to give the plot away… the only thing I must warn you about… is that it is not for the squeamish or faint-hearted… so I won’t hold a gun to your head to make you watch it…

Here is a synopsis:

Twenty-two-year-old Sebastien leads an impoverished life with his immigrant family constantly struggling to support them. While repairing the roof of a neighbor’s house, he overhears a conversation about an expected package which promises to make the household rich.

It is a winner-take-all thriller, where an unfortunate young man is transformed into a contestant with no way out save his luck.

I cannot wait to see Babluani’s next foray… 8/10

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