The holly, jolly music drifted across the snow covered field. Every now and then whoops of enjoyment could be heard over the music, punctuated occasionally by the odd breaking glass or the sound of a body hitting the floor. The party was basically going off.
Outside things were far less merry. Rudolph took a long, dejected drag from his cigarette and stared at the misty horizon. It isn't easy for a reindeer to smoke a cigarette, but Rudolph had taught himself because, hey, he was a superstar now and could do what he liked. Rudolph grimaced each time the music got louder or the sound of his colleagues' shrieking laughter travelled across the snow to him. He leant heavily against a tree to support himself, weighed down by the six or seven highballs he'd knocked back the moment he turned up.
It was the North Pole Christmas party. December 23. One night before the big show.
"Hey... Rudybaby! Come back in, we're about to have the pinata," Blitzen called from the brightly lit doorway of the barn.
Rudolph hated Blitzen the most. Even though he was successful now, he would never forget how they had all treated him when he first arrived. Blitzen especially. He had woken after his second night in the barn to find his bright red nose painted yellow, and all his things thrown out into the snow. Blitzen hadn't even tried to pretend he hadn't done it.
Rudolph crushed out his cigarette and turned back toward the barn. He shivered, a little from the cold and a little from disgust. As he stepped through the doorway the party paused as everyone in the room sent up a huge cheer celebrating his return. Rudolph just nodded and headed towards his customary table in the darkest corner of the barn. The party raged on, the music blared and the party lights flickered on and off in an orgasm of colour. Rudolph's now not-so-bright red nose smouldered angrily in dim half-light.
Stone cold Circumstances
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Some things are better left...
There are a lot of things that get left unsaid or unexplored that would undoubtedly be extremely interesting conversation pieces or philosophical points of departure if only we were brave enough to discuss them. They are the things that lurk below the surface of our public lives like Sunday surcharge fine print on a laminated Willoughby Road menu.
Everybody has an idea of what I'm talking about. Those small feelings you get, often on a Sunday afternoon after being presented with a bill 25% higher than you expected, that make you secretly ashamed not just because you thought them, but also because, having thought them, you tend to wallow in them. Often with no tangible beginning, they get drawn out to preposterous lengths as self-indulgence and narcissism take hold.
These flights of fancy may just begin with imagining how bad it would be if something awful was to happen to your significant other/family/friend/pet/treasured trading card. Quickly this train of thought derails into thinking about how sad you'd be, and how much attention people would pay you as a result of the terrible tragedy. You imagine how stoic you'd be. Only your closest friends would realise how torn up inside you were. They'd have to explain to people at parties why you had the thousand-yard stare. You imagine the respect these people would give you when they heard the bad news, saying to each other: "He/she is taking it so well." You imagine walks in parks that don't even exist, and how your inner turmoil would be sharply at odds with the vitality of life around you. You imagine Bittersweet Symphony playing in the background as you watch the ducks move effortlessly across the glassy still water of the pond. Your perspective would be amazing. No one else would realise that the ducks were a poignant symbol that life goes on no matter what. You return to the office job you don't even have much earlier than your colleagues expect and turn in fantastic work with a shrug that says: "Nothing really matters anymore, but I can deal."
But we very rarely talk about these feelings. We talk about the silly dreams we have or how annoying the girl at the check out was today because she said "youse".
We don't mention these thoughts because we just can't take the risk that, although we feel pretty well-adjusted, we are not normal. We worry that divulging these little secrets to others will expose that under our reasonably normal facades we are, in fact, cripplingly and malevolently selfish.
But we aren't. Everyone thinks this way from time to time. We should discuss them. After all, they're quite funny (provided you aren't the person killed in the plane/car/rotunda accident). Openly discussing these foibles could bring us all closer together, by showing us that deep down, we all star in our own movies, and all secretly want them to be dramatic and brimming with pathos.
As I write this, I realise that there is a second category of information we all keep to ourselves. These are those stories or interesting facts we don't pass on because we are ashamed to reveal the source. I'd give an example, but I can't because I heard it at a Young Liberals function.
Everybody has an idea of what I'm talking about. Those small feelings you get, often on a Sunday afternoon after being presented with a bill 25% higher than you expected, that make you secretly ashamed not just because you thought them, but also because, having thought them, you tend to wallow in them. Often with no tangible beginning, they get drawn out to preposterous lengths as self-indulgence and narcissism take hold.
These flights of fancy may just begin with imagining how bad it would be if something awful was to happen to your significant other/family/friend/pet/treasured trading card. Quickly this train of thought derails into thinking about how sad you'd be, and how much attention people would pay you as a result of the terrible tragedy. You imagine how stoic you'd be. Only your closest friends would realise how torn up inside you were. They'd have to explain to people at parties why you had the thousand-yard stare. You imagine the respect these people would give you when they heard the bad news, saying to each other: "He/she is taking it so well." You imagine walks in parks that don't even exist, and how your inner turmoil would be sharply at odds with the vitality of life around you. You imagine Bittersweet Symphony playing in the background as you watch the ducks move effortlessly across the glassy still water of the pond. Your perspective would be amazing. No one else would realise that the ducks were a poignant symbol that life goes on no matter what. You return to the office job you don't even have much earlier than your colleagues expect and turn in fantastic work with a shrug that says: "Nothing really matters anymore, but I can deal."
But we very rarely talk about these feelings. We talk about the silly dreams we have or how annoying the girl at the check out was today because she said "youse".
We don't mention these thoughts because we just can't take the risk that, although we feel pretty well-adjusted, we are not normal. We worry that divulging these little secrets to others will expose that under our reasonably normal facades we are, in fact, cripplingly and malevolently selfish.
But we aren't. Everyone thinks this way from time to time. We should discuss them. After all, they're quite funny (provided you aren't the person killed in the plane/car/rotunda accident). Openly discussing these foibles could bring us all closer together, by showing us that deep down, we all star in our own movies, and all secretly want them to be dramatic and brimming with pathos.
As I write this, I realise that there is a second category of information we all keep to ourselves. These are those stories or interesting facts we don't pass on because we are ashamed to reveal the source. I'd give an example, but I can't because I heard it at a Young Liberals function.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Justin has few friends, but many laughs...
Justin prided himself on his ability to see a good joke coming. Right now he was watching one approach at a painfully slow speed. He had just finished his half-hourly smh.com.au review. Dr Brendan Nelson had been elected as the new Liberal Party leader. To Justin, this news (hidden between a pic story on David Beckham [he's so down to earth!] and a breaking news blurb about a Chinese man cutting off his own penis to win an argument with his wife "Penis chop: Husband has last word") was a Stuart MacGill full toss.
Like a MacGill full toss, the joke opportunity was not going to arrive quickly, but when it did it was a guaranteed six runs. Probably straight into the M.A. Noble. A fat bloke would probably catch it in one hand without standing up or dropping his pie, his beer or his train of thought. The joke wrote itself.
Justin knew that a good joke needed immaculate preparation and perfect timing. Too many good jokes were ruined because people blurted them out too early, held on to them too long, or messed up their research and turned a potential laugh-riot into a crushing faux pas.
"What is the most popular hors d'oeuvre in Far North Queensland?"
"What?"
"Paul Hogan!"
"I think you mean Steve Irwin mate."
Sad, Justin thought. He was determined not to waste this opportunity. What the joke required was this: the Coalition would have to win back government in 2010. Brendan Nelson would be sworn in as Prime Minister. Then, Justin would be able to say, probably at a dinner party, something intimate, so all attention would be focused on him: "He used to be my GP. It wasn't enough to have me by the balls, now he's got the whole country by the Jatz crackers (pause for riotous laughter)!"
Could probably do with a rewording, Justin thought. Oh well, I've got three years to work on it. Maybe I should also look at turning leftie. The joke would probably go down better in Newtown than Point Piper. Justin wondered whether he should find his old prescription signed by Dr Nelson in case someone at the party was aggressively drunk and questioned his integrity.
Justin felt contentedly impatient. It was like a swingers party. He'd tossed his keys into the bowl, and now it was just a matter of time. He made a note in a small pocket diary he kept for such occasions, grabbed his keys, and marched out the front door towards 2010.
Like a MacGill full toss, the joke opportunity was not going to arrive quickly, but when it did it was a guaranteed six runs. Probably straight into the M.A. Noble. A fat bloke would probably catch it in one hand without standing up or dropping his pie, his beer or his train of thought. The joke wrote itself.
Justin knew that a good joke needed immaculate preparation and perfect timing. Too many good jokes were ruined because people blurted them out too early, held on to them too long, or messed up their research and turned a potential laugh-riot into a crushing faux pas.
"What is the most popular hors d'oeuvre in Far North Queensland?"
"What?"
"Paul Hogan!"
"I think you mean Steve Irwin mate."
Sad, Justin thought. He was determined not to waste this opportunity. What the joke required was this: the Coalition would have to win back government in 2010. Brendan Nelson would be sworn in as Prime Minister. Then, Justin would be able to say, probably at a dinner party, something intimate, so all attention would be focused on him: "He used to be my GP. It wasn't enough to have me by the balls, now he's got the whole country by the Jatz crackers (pause for riotous laughter)!"
Could probably do with a rewording, Justin thought. Oh well, I've got three years to work on it. Maybe I should also look at turning leftie. The joke would probably go down better in Newtown than Point Piper. Justin wondered whether he should find his old prescription signed by Dr Nelson in case someone at the party was aggressively drunk and questioned his integrity.
Justin felt contentedly impatient. It was like a swingers party. He'd tossed his keys into the bowl, and now it was just a matter of time. He made a note in a small pocket diary he kept for such occasions, grabbed his keys, and marched out the front door towards 2010.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Dinner, drinks, and the end of time...
Paul picked up his phone and scrolled through his contacts list. Finding the number took a couple of seconds, and he hesitated for another three before he pressed the button with the green phone receiver stamped on it. His every action was of monumental importance. He was acting against the wishes of the universe. Every move he made pushed the cosmos further and further out of balance.
The coin he'd tossed had rolled under the couch. Paul was not that interested in meeting Joanne tonight, but he wasn't against it enough to bother crawling under the couch. Finding the coin had been about as much effort as he was willing to put in. He was bored and feeling a little sorry for himself that night, the kind of mood brought on by a Sunday spent on the couch in pyjamas, or a Stanley Kubrick film, or both. He decided to just call Joanne and go to dinner. He was sick of being inside.
Underneath the couch, Queen Elizabeth's profile stared blankly up towards the universe (or at least that part of it that encompassed the thin black fabric stretched across the underside of the couch). As the universe had planned, Paul had tossed heads. Heads he didn't, tails he did. By not checking the coin, by being unable to perform the simple task of throwing a coin in the air without making a hash of it, Paul had set events in motion that he, and the universe, were powerless to stop. (The universe, although powerful, is only able to influence events up to a certain point. Usually this works out, but tonight the universe had gotten sloppy, and was kicking itself. The universe remembered the day Paul had chosen the floor covering for his new flat. Instead of pushing him towards carpet, a surface known for its coin-retaining traits, the universe had been offering God some unsolicited advice as He made some slight adjustments to one of its malfunctioning galaxies in the Gamma-Epsilon 76 quadrant.)
As the universe brooded, Paul met Joanne at a small Thai place in Newtown that had received a favourable review in the Herald that week. He was surprised how good she looked. They sat down and ordered, and apart from a momentary shiver as she mispronounced tofu "toffee", Paul managed to hold a pleasant, interesting conversation until the restaurant had emptied and the effeminate waiter began rudely stacking chairs atop the tables around them. Paul's expectations had been low, but the evening had been thoroughly enjoyable, and he sensed a certain chemistry developing between him and Joanne. Paul congratulated himself for making the effort, in the same way he had after he finally followed up a friend's offer of Sydney Kings tickets.
Outside the restaurant, the universe registered its displeasure by turning on a dreary, icy rainshower. Helpless to stop itself unravelling, the universe had to content itself by making the sky rumble and crackle with lightning and thunder. Depite the storm's awe-inspiring power, the universe was really just placing its figurative head in its metaphorical hands in a pose much like the one struck on February 26, 1995, by the Barings Bank human resources manager who hired Nick Leeson.
The coin he'd tossed had rolled under the couch. Paul was not that interested in meeting Joanne tonight, but he wasn't against it enough to bother crawling under the couch. Finding the coin had been about as much effort as he was willing to put in. He was bored and feeling a little sorry for himself that night, the kind of mood brought on by a Sunday spent on the couch in pyjamas, or a Stanley Kubrick film, or both. He decided to just call Joanne and go to dinner. He was sick of being inside.
Underneath the couch, Queen Elizabeth's profile stared blankly up towards the universe (or at least that part of it that encompassed the thin black fabric stretched across the underside of the couch). As the universe had planned, Paul had tossed heads. Heads he didn't, tails he did. By not checking the coin, by being unable to perform the simple task of throwing a coin in the air without making a hash of it, Paul had set events in motion that he, and the universe, were powerless to stop. (The universe, although powerful, is only able to influence events up to a certain point. Usually this works out, but tonight the universe had gotten sloppy, and was kicking itself. The universe remembered the day Paul had chosen the floor covering for his new flat. Instead of pushing him towards carpet, a surface known for its coin-retaining traits, the universe had been offering God some unsolicited advice as He made some slight adjustments to one of its malfunctioning galaxies in the Gamma-Epsilon 76 quadrant.)
As the universe brooded, Paul met Joanne at a small Thai place in Newtown that had received a favourable review in the Herald that week. He was surprised how good she looked. They sat down and ordered, and apart from a momentary shiver as she mispronounced tofu "toffee", Paul managed to hold a pleasant, interesting conversation until the restaurant had emptied and the effeminate waiter began rudely stacking chairs atop the tables around them. Paul's expectations had been low, but the evening had been thoroughly enjoyable, and he sensed a certain chemistry developing between him and Joanne. Paul congratulated himself for making the effort, in the same way he had after he finally followed up a friend's offer of Sydney Kings tickets.
Outside the restaurant, the universe registered its displeasure by turning on a dreary, icy rainshower. Helpless to stop itself unravelling, the universe had to content itself by making the sky rumble and crackle with lightning and thunder. Depite the storm's awe-inspiring power, the universe was really just placing its figurative head in its metaphorical hands in a pose much like the one struck on February 26, 1995, by the Barings Bank human resources manager who hired Nick Leeson.
Monday, November 12, 2007
St Valentine was basically just a dude in a jail...
The heavens and the stars above
Are nothing compared to our love
That is hideous. It's good that this one came with the paper insert, I'd actually spew if someone gave this to me. Just gotta tear it out without stuffing the rest of it up. Awesome. Now it's blank. Blank ones shouldn't be so hard to find. It sucks when you find a good picture, but then the message is so terrible you can't buy it, but you've already seen the picture you want and the rest of them look like crap. A good business would probably be one where you made them with white fronts with black typewriter-style writing on the front, and when you open them, the same message in the same font would be there. "Cards for Men" I'd call it. Then, when you give someone a card, it would have "Happy Birthday" written on the front, and they'd open it and it would be like "Happy Birthday" again, and you wouldn't have to stand there cringing while they read it.
Anyway, I better write something in this now. That paper come out pretty well. She won't notice. Now, what to say? You know she's going to expect something written inside it. You can't just scrawl "Happy Valentine's Day Love Greg" in it. Because it's an arbitrary day for selling cards suddenly I need to get eloquent. As if driving into the city to pick her up at 4am isn't a good enough indication that I'd pretty much do anything for her. Suddenly I've got to be the bastard child of Mr Darcy and John Donne because it's February 14, whereas in the preceding 364 days I haven't said anything of note that I didn't pilfer from The Simpsons or someone smarter.
That's not helping. What to say? "I love you" is too plain. She'll expect some kind of comparison or qualification to that. Heaps? A lot? More than ever? Lame. What about a reminisce? She likes it when we talk about things we've already done. Ten pin bowling? Sitting on a couch all day instead of going to the art gallery? Arguing in the car for 45 minutes after I didn't introduce her to my friends at that party? It's too hard to know what she liked. Like that time I took her to the aquarium after she'd mentioned wanting to go, and then she stormed around it and would hardly talk to me. Don't want to risk bringing something up that she secretly hated.
Song lyrics? Which song? I've got that stupid Don't Cha abomination from the Pussycats stuck in my head. Maybe I should use that Dire Straits one... "Can't do anything except be in love with you." It all seems so soppy when you tear it out of context and write it down. You can't express the husky, manly voice he has with some wobbly handwriting or something. No good quoting poetry or anything like that I reckon. It doesn't sound like me. It just sounds like I cracked out the first thing I could think of.
Something original then. Why not something honest? "I'm much happier than before I started going out with you." Sounds a little retarded. "In comparison with other girlfriends, you are significantly better across the board." This isn't working. I'm not romantic. Does anyone actually think like this? Would any man in his right mind be able to fill in a card like this and have her gasp a little, and then look at him over the car, a little misty-eyed and say "thank you so much"? That's what I want to happen. Maybe tape a fifty dollar note in there. She's pretty skint at the moment. Not quite the right gesture though.
Come on, it shouldn't be this hard. What did I say the other night? She seemed pretty chuffed with that. Something about not minding that the rest of my life is a bit of a shitheap because she makes me feel like it isn't. I probably shouldn't use the same thing twice in a week though. Maybe something funny. How does that Mountain Goats song go? The way those eyes I've always loved/illuminate this place/like a trashcan fire in a prison cell/like the searchlights/in the parking lots of hell. That's not bad. Maybe "will you be my Valentine?", get a bit cute... Bloody hell. Maybe I should break up with her and save the trouble... Hold on. Got it.
"Dear Anna,
I spent an hour trying to pick this card and then another hour trying to think of what to write on the thing. Enough said?
Happy St Valentine's Day.
Greg."
Are nothing compared to our love
That is hideous. It's good that this one came with the paper insert, I'd actually spew if someone gave this to me. Just gotta tear it out without stuffing the rest of it up. Awesome. Now it's blank. Blank ones shouldn't be so hard to find. It sucks when you find a good picture, but then the message is so terrible you can't buy it, but you've already seen the picture you want and the rest of them look like crap. A good business would probably be one where you made them with white fronts with black typewriter-style writing on the front, and when you open them, the same message in the same font would be there. "Cards for Men" I'd call it. Then, when you give someone a card, it would have "Happy Birthday" written on the front, and they'd open it and it would be like "Happy Birthday" again, and you wouldn't have to stand there cringing while they read it.
Anyway, I better write something in this now. That paper come out pretty well. She won't notice. Now, what to say? You know she's going to expect something written inside it. You can't just scrawl "Happy Valentine's Day Love Greg" in it. Because it's an arbitrary day for selling cards suddenly I need to get eloquent. As if driving into the city to pick her up at 4am isn't a good enough indication that I'd pretty much do anything for her. Suddenly I've got to be the bastard child of Mr Darcy and John Donne because it's February 14, whereas in the preceding 364 days I haven't said anything of note that I didn't pilfer from The Simpsons or someone smarter.
That's not helping. What to say? "I love you" is too plain. She'll expect some kind of comparison or qualification to that. Heaps? A lot? More than ever? Lame. What about a reminisce? She likes it when we talk about things we've already done. Ten pin bowling? Sitting on a couch all day instead of going to the art gallery? Arguing in the car for 45 minutes after I didn't introduce her to my friends at that party? It's too hard to know what she liked. Like that time I took her to the aquarium after she'd mentioned wanting to go, and then she stormed around it and would hardly talk to me. Don't want to risk bringing something up that she secretly hated.
Song lyrics? Which song? I've got that stupid Don't Cha abomination from the Pussycats stuck in my head. Maybe I should use that Dire Straits one... "Can't do anything except be in love with you." It all seems so soppy when you tear it out of context and write it down. You can't express the husky, manly voice he has with some wobbly handwriting or something. No good quoting poetry or anything like that I reckon. It doesn't sound like me. It just sounds like I cracked out the first thing I could think of.
Something original then. Why not something honest? "I'm much happier than before I started going out with you." Sounds a little retarded. "In comparison with other girlfriends, you are significantly better across the board." This isn't working. I'm not romantic. Does anyone actually think like this? Would any man in his right mind be able to fill in a card like this and have her gasp a little, and then look at him over the car, a little misty-eyed and say "thank you so much"? That's what I want to happen. Maybe tape a fifty dollar note in there. She's pretty skint at the moment. Not quite the right gesture though.
Come on, it shouldn't be this hard. What did I say the other night? She seemed pretty chuffed with that. Something about not minding that the rest of my life is a bit of a shitheap because she makes me feel like it isn't. I probably shouldn't use the same thing twice in a week though. Maybe something funny. How does that Mountain Goats song go? The way those eyes I've always loved/illuminate this place/like a trashcan fire in a prison cell/like the searchlights/in the parking lots of hell. That's not bad. Maybe "will you be my Valentine?", get a bit cute... Bloody hell. Maybe I should break up with her and save the trouble... Hold on. Got it.
"Dear Anna,
I spent an hour trying to pick this card and then another hour trying to think of what to write on the thing. Enough said?
Happy St Valentine's Day.
Greg."
Monday, November 5, 2007
Imagine Thomas Edison electrocuting a horse...
America's wild frontiers weren't just restricted to its, well, wild frontiers. The cowboy ideal penetrated all facets of its culture. Even science had its wild colonial days. Perhaps it's not quite right to say science though, because essentially it was about business.
Thomas Edison is a name familiar to most, and it's a fair bet that most people would know that he had something to do with electricity, or at least remember that he invented the light bulb. Nikola Tesla is a name that would be unfamiliar to most. Devotees of The Prestige might remember that David Bowie whipped up a curious Eurotrash accent to portray him as a mad scientist, but let's face it, there aren't many people who watched that movie and even fewer that bother reminiscing about it. But Nikola Tesla is a very important man. The computer I'm writing this on has numerous components that owe their existence, in some form or another, to Tesla. If Edison was the "father of electricity", then Tesla was surely its pimp, because he was the man who found a way to make it available and user friendly.
Without getting too scientific (or more accurately, not getting scientific at all. If anything, a little patronising) Edison and his team of scientists and inventors created power stations and electrical goods that ran on Direct Current electricity (this is the type of current that means when you're electrocuted, your muscles contract and you can't let go of the wire). The problem with DC is that it can't be transported over long distances. This meant that, for example in New York, power stations would be needed every two blocks or so to make sure everybody could get enough juice to run their radiolagraphs and brill-o-lamps, or whatever people plugged into sockets in the late 19th century. This is bad news for people wanting power, but good news if your company (General Electric, although readers may be more familiar with the company's modern incarnation GE Finance, home of the culturally sensitive GE Money Genie) builds power stations and sells DC-motor powered appliances.
Tesla, who worked for Edison in his early days (and made him some decent scratch), developed technology that could harness Alternating Current. This is the current that tosses you across the room when you touch a live circuit. Alternating Current can be transmitted across vast distances, as well as be easily converted to the low voltages needed for domestic use. In combination with entrepreneur George Westinghouse, Tesla began promoting AC power and appliances to the American public. (Westinghouse and Tesla also had a contract guaranteeing Tesla $2.50 for every horsepower of electricity sold. With more success, this agreement threatened to bankrupt the Westinghouse Electric Company, and Tesla tore up the contract.)
Edison was, rightly, nervous about the emergence of AC power, and embarked on a scare campaign about its safety. Stray dogs and cats, old cows and horses were trotted out in front of the American public and executed to prove that AC power was unsafe. Tesla responded by holding demonstrations where he would pass AC current through his body, illuminating a light bulb he held in his hand. These demonstrations were accompanied by various lawsuits, and the obligatory defamatory comments in newspapers.
In 1890, Harold P Brown, who was on Edison's payroll, used an AC motor and generator to create the world's first electric chair, to prove once and for all that AC current was a danger to society. William Kemmler was the lucky prisoner to be spared the horror of hanging for the ease and convenience of electrocution, or as Edison was calling it by then, "Westinghousing". Unfortunately for Kemmler, they couldn't get the voltage right the first time, and he had to receive a second jolt to finish the job. As Westinghouse reportedly said: "They would have done better using an axe."
Eventually though, Tesla's AC system won out, and all the appliances we use today owe something to his groundbreaking work with AC. But the next time you flick on the television, or toast some bread, take a moment to reflect on the fate of poor Topsy, the elephant who died as part of a vain attempt to stop you enjoying cheap, easy electricity. (The video is a little unpleasant, so I don't mind if you don't watch it. Let me summarise it for you: an elephant gets electrocuted.)
Thomas Edison is a name familiar to most, and it's a fair bet that most people would know that he had something to do with electricity, or at least remember that he invented the light bulb. Nikola Tesla is a name that would be unfamiliar to most. Devotees of The Prestige might remember that David Bowie whipped up a curious Eurotrash accent to portray him as a mad scientist, but let's face it, there aren't many people who watched that movie and even fewer that bother reminiscing about it. But Nikola Tesla is a very important man. The computer I'm writing this on has numerous components that owe their existence, in some form or another, to Tesla. If Edison was the "father of electricity", then Tesla was surely its pimp, because he was the man who found a way to make it available and user friendly.
Without getting too scientific (or more accurately, not getting scientific at all. If anything, a little patronising) Edison and his team of scientists and inventors created power stations and electrical goods that ran on Direct Current electricity (this is the type of current that means when you're electrocuted, your muscles contract and you can't let go of the wire). The problem with DC is that it can't be transported over long distances. This meant that, for example in New York, power stations would be needed every two blocks or so to make sure everybody could get enough juice to run their radiolagraphs and brill-o-lamps, or whatever people plugged into sockets in the late 19th century. This is bad news for people wanting power, but good news if your company (General Electric, although readers may be more familiar with the company's modern incarnation GE Finance, home of the culturally sensitive GE Money Genie) builds power stations and sells DC-motor powered appliances.
Tesla, who worked for Edison in his early days (and made him some decent scratch), developed technology that could harness Alternating Current. This is the current that tosses you across the room when you touch a live circuit. Alternating Current can be transmitted across vast distances, as well as be easily converted to the low voltages needed for domestic use. In combination with entrepreneur George Westinghouse, Tesla began promoting AC power and appliances to the American public. (Westinghouse and Tesla also had a contract guaranteeing Tesla $2.50 for every horsepower of electricity sold. With more success, this agreement threatened to bankrupt the Westinghouse Electric Company, and Tesla tore up the contract.)
Edison was, rightly, nervous about the emergence of AC power, and embarked on a scare campaign about its safety. Stray dogs and cats, old cows and horses were trotted out in front of the American public and executed to prove that AC power was unsafe. Tesla responded by holding demonstrations where he would pass AC current through his body, illuminating a light bulb he held in his hand. These demonstrations were accompanied by various lawsuits, and the obligatory defamatory comments in newspapers.
In 1890, Harold P Brown, who was on Edison's payroll, used an AC motor and generator to create the world's first electric chair, to prove once and for all that AC current was a danger to society. William Kemmler was the lucky prisoner to be spared the horror of hanging for the ease and convenience of electrocution, or as Edison was calling it by then, "Westinghousing". Unfortunately for Kemmler, they couldn't get the voltage right the first time, and he had to receive a second jolt to finish the job. As Westinghouse reportedly said: "They would have done better using an axe."
Eventually though, Tesla's AC system won out, and all the appliances we use today owe something to his groundbreaking work with AC. But the next time you flick on the television, or toast some bread, take a moment to reflect on the fate of poor Topsy, the elephant who died as part of a vain attempt to stop you enjoying cheap, easy electricity. (The video is a little unpleasant, so I don't mind if you don't watch it. Let me summarise it for you: an elephant gets electrocuted.)
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Clooney would probably just charm his way in...
James stopped in his tracks, a little unsure of what to do next. He had the expression of someone who, having ordered a pizza, finds George Clooney standing deferentially at their doorstop clutching a Super Supreme on Classic with no olives. Clooney would probably already be back on his scooter before the person was sufficiently recovered to ask the pertinent questions.
James had the sense he was about to have a memorable experience, and didn't want to be left holding the proverbial pizza and change. He was pretty sure the drummer from the band had beckoned him using the "crooked finger" method. He had noticed her looking at him during their second set, but he figured she was just admiring his hard-to-get Klaxons t-shirt as he shuffled from foot to foot in the second row. She had seemed enigmatic, sort of a cross between a dying octopus and the Mona Lisa, in that while her arms and legs flailed madly during each song, her face remained unchanged, unreadable, elusive. That was her trademark. She never spoke in interviews, despite her band appearing in almost every magazine and on every music television show in the last year. Despite the band's massive successive, she remained a frenetic mystery.
He had downed a few Super Drys by this time, and was feeling a little sentimental. Perhaps it was fate, he thought. Perhaps the poor management of their tour was meant to bring him to her. Perhaps they were meant to play this crappy bar, even though they had filled the Enmore last week. He started walking over to her, keeping it overly casual like someone guiltily looking sidelong at their reflection as they walk past a store window. She seemed to notice, but the sweaty hair clinging to her face made it hard to be sure his movements were being registered.
"Hey, great set," he said, by way of breaking the ice.
The drummer's face initially didn't move, then cracked into a yawn as offensive and prolonged as the Kyle and Jackie O show. The burly bass player stepped between James and the drummer, using his back in the same way the Chinese government uses firewalls. Blocked out like a poorly tranlsated webpage about Chiang Kai-Shek, James turned away, as dazed as someone who had ordered pizza again the next night, and been brutally beaten after George Clooney had invaded their home with a sock full of coins.
James had the sense he was about to have a memorable experience, and didn't want to be left holding the proverbial pizza and change. He was pretty sure the drummer from the band had beckoned him using the "crooked finger" method. He had noticed her looking at him during their second set, but he figured she was just admiring his hard-to-get Klaxons t-shirt as he shuffled from foot to foot in the second row. She had seemed enigmatic, sort of a cross between a dying octopus and the Mona Lisa, in that while her arms and legs flailed madly during each song, her face remained unchanged, unreadable, elusive. That was her trademark. She never spoke in interviews, despite her band appearing in almost every magazine and on every music television show in the last year. Despite the band's massive successive, she remained a frenetic mystery.
He had downed a few Super Drys by this time, and was feeling a little sentimental. Perhaps it was fate, he thought. Perhaps the poor management of their tour was meant to bring him to her. Perhaps they were meant to play this crappy bar, even though they had filled the Enmore last week. He started walking over to her, keeping it overly casual like someone guiltily looking sidelong at their reflection as they walk past a store window. She seemed to notice, but the sweaty hair clinging to her face made it hard to be sure his movements were being registered.
"Hey, great set," he said, by way of breaking the ice.
The drummer's face initially didn't move, then cracked into a yawn as offensive and prolonged as the Kyle and Jackie O show. The burly bass player stepped between James and the drummer, using his back in the same way the Chinese government uses firewalls. Blocked out like a poorly tranlsated webpage about Chiang Kai-Shek, James turned away, as dazed as someone who had ordered pizza again the next night, and been brutally beaten after George Clooney had invaded their home with a sock full of coins.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
There's no such thing as a neutral observer...
A piece of history was making its way down Harris Street. It threaded through the urban obstacle course, weaving around bins and dodging lunchtime joggers. The joggers made no attempt to make way for it, somehow believing that their Macquarie Bank emblazoned, company supported, tax-deductible exercise somehow made them more important than anything else in the CBD that Tuesday. Some joggers raised their eyebrows briefly as they noticed who was handling the piece of history.
"Wasn't that Matt Sanders?"
"Matt Sanders? Really? I thought he'd gone crazy. I didn't think he was still around after So you think you can dance better than a fifth grader's Big Brother was cancelled."
"It's funny to see him here on the street, instead of on telly. I don't reckon there's been a day he wasn't on telly or in the paper for the last five years before SYTYCDBTAFGBB went bad."
"Huh. Oh well. Race you back to our desks!"
Matt Sanders knew the joggers recognised him. He had a keen eye for people recognising him. Right now, for example, the girl in the cafe across the street was trying her hardest not to look at him, while at the bus stop a group of Chinese international students threw their heads back and laughed, undoubtedly at something one of them had said about Matt Sanders in Mandarin.
"Probably laughing about the time I hit Kevin Rudd with that zinger when I moderated the debate between him and the opposition leader," Matt Sanders thought to himself. The exact wording didn't come back to him, but he knew it had something to do with interest rates being "as high as the body corporate fees on my new penthouse." Classic.
Matt Sanders turned in to the Channel Ten studios, and smirked at the tangible shift in atmosphere that took place when he entered the foyer. The receptionist beamed at him, and the people waiting on the long leather divans seemed to sit up straighter, even though they never looked directly at him. He strolled casually to the lift, nodding in a satisfied way at a monstrous headshot of himself that hung on the wall. "MATT SANDERS AND CHANNEL TEN: ALWAYS NUMBER ONE" it said. There was a junior production assistant in the lift with him as he travelled up to the executive offices on the sixth floor. "Hey. Have a great day." he said when the young girl got off at the fifth. Matt Sanders loved how easy it was to make someone's day special. She probably couldn't wait to tell her colleagues what had happened.
On entering the board room, Matt Sanders took the piece of history out of his pocket, and inserted in the disc drive of a laptop that sat on top of the brutally modern boardroom table. The laptop whirred into life and the piece of history was projected against a large screen. Matt Sanders could feel the excitement of the six channel bigwigs growing as the screen flickered and the piece of history began.
"Africa, a place desolate, dry, and cut off from the West, electricity, and even humanity. A place where even I, Matt Sanders, am just another foreign traveller to her wild, untamed plains, and rugged, rocky mountains..."
Matt Sanders didn't realise that the documentary was a piece of history, but he suspected it would be the best thing Channel Ten would have aired, and was absolutely certain it would further guarantee his place in the best stall in Ten's stable of stars. He could see each executive squirm slightly as he turned his gaze towards them. "They know," he thought to himself.
"The Masai are a happy people, and could barely contain their excitement as I told them strange tales of my time on what I described to them as "The Picture Box". Here, their chief hands me a token of his esteem- a chicken- and I can tell that this proud warrior tribe has accepted me, and I am now one of..."
"Can we stop it there, Matt? We're a little confused. You go on a working holiday to Africa, with $50,000 of the channel's money, and come back with a documentary that is essentially about yourself?"
Matt Sanders was confused. "It's not about me. It's about Africa. There's all that lion footage, for example."
"Yes, but you talked about a pride of lions as if they were schoolkids doing a tour of the studio. I think at one point you said something about your stage presence reassuring the dominant male that you were no threat to him? Something like that. I'm pretty sure you were not even there when the footage was shot."
"So... you don't like it."
"Matt, it's not a case of liking it, it's more a case of whether or not we can air it. Even if we called it Matt Sanders' Africa (Matt Sanders liked the way that sounded, he'd been thinking of Matt Sanders in the Wild) I don't think that would disguise the fact that you've come back from Africa with the Worst Documentary Ever Made. Spell that with capital letters," the station executive said to the young girl taking the minutes. Six heads nodded around the boardroom table in agreement. Matt Sanders didn't notice.
"Has it occurred to you that other people's lives are less Matt Sanders-centric than yours? For example, I don't think that rhino turned its charge because you made eye contact with it."
The conversation continued for some time, with Matt Sanders eventually taking the piece of history with him to shop around the other networks. As he sat in a cafe that fronted Harris St, he thought he noticed a girl staring at him through the glass, but maybe she was just checking her make up.
"Wasn't that Matt Sanders?"
"Matt Sanders? Really? I thought he'd gone crazy. I didn't think he was still around after So you think you can dance better than a fifth grader's Big Brother was cancelled."
"It's funny to see him here on the street, instead of on telly. I don't reckon there's been a day he wasn't on telly or in the paper for the last five years before SYTYCDBTAFGBB went bad."
"Huh. Oh well. Race you back to our desks!"
Matt Sanders knew the joggers recognised him. He had a keen eye for people recognising him. Right now, for example, the girl in the cafe across the street was trying her hardest not to look at him, while at the bus stop a group of Chinese international students threw their heads back and laughed, undoubtedly at something one of them had said about Matt Sanders in Mandarin.
"Probably laughing about the time I hit Kevin Rudd with that zinger when I moderated the debate between him and the opposition leader," Matt Sanders thought to himself. The exact wording didn't come back to him, but he knew it had something to do with interest rates being "as high as the body corporate fees on my new penthouse." Classic.
Matt Sanders turned in to the Channel Ten studios, and smirked at the tangible shift in atmosphere that took place when he entered the foyer. The receptionist beamed at him, and the people waiting on the long leather divans seemed to sit up straighter, even though they never looked directly at him. He strolled casually to the lift, nodding in a satisfied way at a monstrous headshot of himself that hung on the wall. "MATT SANDERS AND CHANNEL TEN: ALWAYS NUMBER ONE" it said. There was a junior production assistant in the lift with him as he travelled up to the executive offices on the sixth floor. "Hey. Have a great day." he said when the young girl got off at the fifth. Matt Sanders loved how easy it was to make someone's day special. She probably couldn't wait to tell her colleagues what had happened.
On entering the board room, Matt Sanders took the piece of history out of his pocket, and inserted in the disc drive of a laptop that sat on top of the brutally modern boardroom table. The laptop whirred into life and the piece of history was projected against a large screen. Matt Sanders could feel the excitement of the six channel bigwigs growing as the screen flickered and the piece of history began.
"Africa, a place desolate, dry, and cut off from the West, electricity, and even humanity. A place where even I, Matt Sanders, am just another foreign traveller to her wild, untamed plains, and rugged, rocky mountains..."
Matt Sanders didn't realise that the documentary was a piece of history, but he suspected it would be the best thing Channel Ten would have aired, and was absolutely certain it would further guarantee his place in the best stall in Ten's stable of stars. He could see each executive squirm slightly as he turned his gaze towards them. "They know," he thought to himself.
"The Masai are a happy people, and could barely contain their excitement as I told them strange tales of my time on what I described to them as "The Picture Box". Here, their chief hands me a token of his esteem- a chicken- and I can tell that this proud warrior tribe has accepted me, and I am now one of..."
"Can we stop it there, Matt? We're a little confused. You go on a working holiday to Africa, with $50,000 of the channel's money, and come back with a documentary that is essentially about yourself?"
Matt Sanders was confused. "It's not about me. It's about Africa. There's all that lion footage, for example."
"Yes, but you talked about a pride of lions as if they were schoolkids doing a tour of the studio. I think at one point you said something about your stage presence reassuring the dominant male that you were no threat to him? Something like that. I'm pretty sure you were not even there when the footage was shot."
"So... you don't like it."
"Matt, it's not a case of liking it, it's more a case of whether or not we can air it. Even if we called it Matt Sanders' Africa (Matt Sanders liked the way that sounded, he'd been thinking of Matt Sanders in the Wild) I don't think that would disguise the fact that you've come back from Africa with the Worst Documentary Ever Made. Spell that with capital letters," the station executive said to the young girl taking the minutes. Six heads nodded around the boardroom table in agreement. Matt Sanders didn't notice.
"Has it occurred to you that other people's lives are less Matt Sanders-centric than yours? For example, I don't think that rhino turned its charge because you made eye contact with it."
The conversation continued for some time, with Matt Sanders eventually taking the piece of history with him to shop around the other networks. As he sat in a cafe that fronted Harris St, he thought he noticed a girl staring at him through the glass, but maybe she was just checking her make up.
Friday, October 5, 2007
What's in a name...
2020 had been a busy year for Shaun. When he first began working at Births, Death and Marriages it was a sweet deal. He'd see maybe nine, ten people per day, most of them between midday and 2pm as people came in on their lunchbreaks. Occasionally there'd be the odd annoying Family Tree-er who'd bail him up for hours as they tried to connect their family to royalty (usually French or English). But, all in all, it was a good job that left him plenty of time to stand at the counter doing nothing. Shaun was not an ambitious man. But lately, since about 2018, things had been getting progessively busier. Suddenly changing names had become as fashionable as getting lower back tattoos removed. Shaun was getting 80 to 100 people past his counter each day, all making enquiries about how to go about changing their names from A to B. It pissed him off, particularly because Tom, his manager, refused to put anyone else on to help him. It wasn't just the volume of name changes that bothered Shaun, it was also the type of changes he was dealing with. When he first started working at BD&M 25 years ago, most name changes were fun, like the guy who changed his name from John Westerland to Roxx Ha Da. But these days it was the opposite.
"Hi, how can I help you?" Shaun would ask.
"I want to change my name," the customer, usually in their early 20s, would reply.
"Ok, can I get your current name please."
"Phillip Murphy."
"Ok, and what would you like to change it to?" he would ask.
"Phillip Murphy."
Tom had long since stopped pausing at this point of the conversation.
"Ah, could you spell Phillip for me please."
"Sure. It's Phillip- P-H-Y-L-L-Y-P-E."
There were at least ten of these type of transactions per day. The others were mostly people looking to change their name to John (Jaydun), Mary (Cazzmin), or Scott (Pennsylvania).
The changes that Shaun liked the most were those 18-20 year olds who had been named after early 21st century celebrities. He and the others in the office reckoned they could spot a Shakira from the back of the queue. The conversations between queueing customers were often quite bitter.
"Yeah, I'm Leearna. I'm trying to get a job now, so... I guess it was just time to use a name that wasn't bogus."
"I know how you feel. I wish I'd changed mine earlier so my university degree didn't have the word Jaxxon on it."
"I hate my parents, hey. I know they wanted me to be an individual and everything, but, I want to be different because I choose to be, not because I'm afraid of telling people my name, or making friends... I'm Tahneesha, by the way. Nice to meet you."
Shaun would silently curse the parents of the early 21st century as he stamped the huge pile of change of name applications on his desk. He often daydreamed about moving to a collectivist culture, where people's last names came first, and where phonetics appeared only in the dictionary, and not on business cards.
"Hi, how can I help you?" Shaun would ask.
"I want to change my name," the customer, usually in their early 20s, would reply.
"Ok, can I get your current name please."
"Phillip Murphy."
"Ok, and what would you like to change it to?" he would ask.
"Phillip Murphy."
Tom had long since stopped pausing at this point of the conversation.
"Ah, could you spell Phillip for me please."
"Sure. It's Phillip- P-H-Y-L-L-Y-P-E."
There were at least ten of these type of transactions per day. The others were mostly people looking to change their name to John (Jaydun), Mary (Cazzmin), or Scott (Pennsylvania).
The changes that Shaun liked the most were those 18-20 year olds who had been named after early 21st century celebrities. He and the others in the office reckoned they could spot a Shakira from the back of the queue. The conversations between queueing customers were often quite bitter.
"Yeah, I'm Leearna. I'm trying to get a job now, so... I guess it was just time to use a name that wasn't bogus."
"I know how you feel. I wish I'd changed mine earlier so my university degree didn't have the word Jaxxon on it."
"I hate my parents, hey. I know they wanted me to be an individual and everything, but, I want to be different because I choose to be, not because I'm afraid of telling people my name, or making friends... I'm Tahneesha, by the way. Nice to meet you."
Shaun would silently curse the parents of the early 21st century as he stamped the huge pile of change of name applications on his desk. He often daydreamed about moving to a collectivist culture, where people's last names came first, and where phonetics appeared only in the dictionary, and not on business cards.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
A description of a room...
The room was big, probably about the size of a double garage. It was a confusing collection of different and competing influences, and seemed to bear the hallmarks of a number of different owners, designers, and tenants. The room was like a physical manifestation of those stories children write in primary school, where each student writes one line of the story, using only the preceding line as a guide. These type of stories are always immensely popular with young children due to the disjointed and often hilarious plot shifts the line-by-line construction creates. The effect, however, is less hilarious when reproduced visually. Rather than creating a whimsical atmosphere, the Chinese Whispers design approach had a slightly disconcerting effect. The room wasn't particularly dirty, nor was anything inside it cheap, but the way each piece of furniture combined with the various colour schemes and fittings hinted at an almost sadistic madness, or at the very least, a profound and disturbing indifference to one's surroundings.
It seemed the architect had envisioned the apartment as a monument to minimalist living. If you could somehow shut out the shrieking, battling aesthetics cluttering the room and imagine it completely empty, it would seem the work of a moment to throw in an angular red leather couch, a throw rug and some scatter cushions to create the ideal, impersonal space demanded by today's childless professional couples. This modern, streamlined vision of domestic living had, however, been roundly ignored by the person who had installed the room's light fittings, opting for a gilt chandelier in place of the architect's discreet LED downlights that would have cast their cold, bright light across the room's bare bricks. The chandelier held six lightbulbs pointing upwards towards the wood panelled ceiling, which had appeared to have been installed by a drunken carpenter on the afternoon following an unsuccesful custody hearing. The light hitting the yellow pine boards cast a dim, orangy light across the room better suited to the set of Apocalypse Now than a trendy, inner-west apartment.
The chandelier was the room's only source of light. At some point someone, perhaps in an attempt to protect people from inadvertently glancing in and seeing the room, had ordered the large windows on the left hand side of the room covered with curtains. Instead of a plain colour in keeping with the bare lines of the room's interior, a set of "modern" print curtains had been ordered. The pattern consisted of red triangles and black lines on a white background, offset by huge black tassles at the bottom. Friends of the fabric's designer later looked back on the design as the artist's first cry for help before his descent into an alcohol fuelled depression. But here, they had been selected because the black lines "picked up the black of the new coffee table, don't you reckon?". The coffee table was a monstrosity. A product of the "natural wood" movement of the early-1990s, it was essentially a eucalyptus trunk sliced in half lengthways. It was propped up by two "legs" at each end, which were more like rectangles with semicircular grooves cut in them. In a last schizophrenic twist, the whole thing had been stained a deep black. Thus it now lurked, sprawled down the centre of the room, acting upon the room's orange light in the same way little packets of silica gel work on moisture in shoeboxes.
There are some things that should never be sat on. The laps of strange men at the park, for instance. The long, Balinese five-seat couch running the length of the right hand wall was another. Consisting entirely of bamboo rods and leather ties, it seemed to be involved in a tense standoff with the coffee table. The two pieces of furniture clashed so badly it was hard not to imagine them as Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, facing off across the main street of a deserted town. Between them, they covered about 75% of the room's floorspace, meaning that to cross the room to get to the television, one would have to cut through the crackling electricity the horrible tension between the two pieces had created- an electricity that gave the impression that each piece was straining against inertia, trying vainly to leap onto the other and throttle it.
Upon arriving at the television, one's already frayed nerves would be stretched to full capacity on observing that the $15,000 plasma screen sat directly on an Edwardian sideboard. The television had been bolted to the back piece of the sideboard like an eviction notice on a Housing Commission door. It seemed the kind of person who would bolt a state of the art television to a 120-year-old piece of mahogany furniture would also be capable of other acts of savagery, like taping a cat to a dog and feeling satisfied that both were improved. Looking at the television/sideboard hybrid made you want to look over your shoulder to make sure you weren't being watched.
Above the television, which in order to watch you would have to sit either on the end of the coffee table or sit on the couch with your head turned 90 degrees, was the first of a series of photographic prints that appeared on every wall. Perhaps in a final, desperate attempt at unity, the posters were all from the popular "lighthouses getting worked over by the sea" range. In all, there were eight nicely framed prints around the room, providing a bizarre nautical element as well as being the only wall covering within the room. The only covering that is, unless you counted the black tape that had been used to cover the exposed wires of the television's surround sound system. A hulking speaker, obviously hideously expensive, perched in each corner of the room, visually supported by a black branch of wire-hiding tape. Pushed up against the back wall opposite the television, clearly placed there by someone maniacally giggling having given up the will to live comfortably, was the skeletal figure of a disused and dust-covered Total Gym 1000.
The owners of the room were home, but weren't sitting in the living room tonight. It was a living room in the literal sense of the word, in that it had become an organism- a presence- within the house. The owners had adapted to living with the room. They had been stupid enough to oversee its final creation, but weren't silly enough to try to endure its effects. They ignored it like the mentally disabled child of an early 19th Century aristocratic family, opting instead to eat their dinner standing up in the apartment's galley kitchen before spending the night watching television in bed.
It seemed the architect had envisioned the apartment as a monument to minimalist living. If you could somehow shut out the shrieking, battling aesthetics cluttering the room and imagine it completely empty, it would seem the work of a moment to throw in an angular red leather couch, a throw rug and some scatter cushions to create the ideal, impersonal space demanded by today's childless professional couples. This modern, streamlined vision of domestic living had, however, been roundly ignored by the person who had installed the room's light fittings, opting for a gilt chandelier in place of the architect's discreet LED downlights that would have cast their cold, bright light across the room's bare bricks. The chandelier held six lightbulbs pointing upwards towards the wood panelled ceiling, which had appeared to have been installed by a drunken carpenter on the afternoon following an unsuccesful custody hearing. The light hitting the yellow pine boards cast a dim, orangy light across the room better suited to the set of Apocalypse Now than a trendy, inner-west apartment.
The chandelier was the room's only source of light. At some point someone, perhaps in an attempt to protect people from inadvertently glancing in and seeing the room, had ordered the large windows on the left hand side of the room covered with curtains. Instead of a plain colour in keeping with the bare lines of the room's interior, a set of "modern" print curtains had been ordered. The pattern consisted of red triangles and black lines on a white background, offset by huge black tassles at the bottom. Friends of the fabric's designer later looked back on the design as the artist's first cry for help before his descent into an alcohol fuelled depression. But here, they had been selected because the black lines "picked up the black of the new coffee table, don't you reckon?". The coffee table was a monstrosity. A product of the "natural wood" movement of the early-1990s, it was essentially a eucalyptus trunk sliced in half lengthways. It was propped up by two "legs" at each end, which were more like rectangles with semicircular grooves cut in them. In a last schizophrenic twist, the whole thing had been stained a deep black. Thus it now lurked, sprawled down the centre of the room, acting upon the room's orange light in the same way little packets of silica gel work on moisture in shoeboxes.
There are some things that should never be sat on. The laps of strange men at the park, for instance. The long, Balinese five-seat couch running the length of the right hand wall was another. Consisting entirely of bamboo rods and leather ties, it seemed to be involved in a tense standoff with the coffee table. The two pieces of furniture clashed so badly it was hard not to imagine them as Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, facing off across the main street of a deserted town. Between them, they covered about 75% of the room's floorspace, meaning that to cross the room to get to the television, one would have to cut through the crackling electricity the horrible tension between the two pieces had created- an electricity that gave the impression that each piece was straining against inertia, trying vainly to leap onto the other and throttle it.
Upon arriving at the television, one's already frayed nerves would be stretched to full capacity on observing that the $15,000 plasma screen sat directly on an Edwardian sideboard. The television had been bolted to the back piece of the sideboard like an eviction notice on a Housing Commission door. It seemed the kind of person who would bolt a state of the art television to a 120-year-old piece of mahogany furniture would also be capable of other acts of savagery, like taping a cat to a dog and feeling satisfied that both were improved. Looking at the television/sideboard hybrid made you want to look over your shoulder to make sure you weren't being watched.
Above the television, which in order to watch you would have to sit either on the end of the coffee table or sit on the couch with your head turned 90 degrees, was the first of a series of photographic prints that appeared on every wall. Perhaps in a final, desperate attempt at unity, the posters were all from the popular "lighthouses getting worked over by the sea" range. In all, there were eight nicely framed prints around the room, providing a bizarre nautical element as well as being the only wall covering within the room. The only covering that is, unless you counted the black tape that had been used to cover the exposed wires of the television's surround sound system. A hulking speaker, obviously hideously expensive, perched in each corner of the room, visually supported by a black branch of wire-hiding tape. Pushed up against the back wall opposite the television, clearly placed there by someone maniacally giggling having given up the will to live comfortably, was the skeletal figure of a disused and dust-covered Total Gym 1000.
The owners of the room were home, but weren't sitting in the living room tonight. It was a living room in the literal sense of the word, in that it had become an organism- a presence- within the house. The owners had adapted to living with the room. They had been stupid enough to oversee its final creation, but weren't silly enough to try to endure its effects. They ignored it like the mentally disabled child of an early 19th Century aristocratic family, opting instead to eat their dinner standing up in the apartment's galley kitchen before spending the night watching television in bed.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Colonial Culture and Cambridge (redux)
It's difficult to tell how people respond to things you publish on the internet, as the only audience reactions you see are tainted by the very fact that you are seeing them. People feel obliged to laugh/cry/spew, and are very conscious of you hovering over their shoulder, waiting for them to get to what you have deemed "the good bits". Thus it's not clear whether people are "getting" the things you are writing (how arrogant of you, by the way, to suppose that the things you write are any more layered than a car manual or a Bill Granger cookbook). To make it easier for readers of It's alright, I know you're from Circumstances, here is a previously published piece with suggested reader responses highlighted in bold.
The Setting: 1966- A Cambridge flat, drab with minimal furnishings. Piles of books are stacked against the wall and old newspapers cover a small table in the middle of the kitchen/dining area.Germaine Greer is busily cleaning the kitchen while Robert Hughes sits at the paper-strewn table drinking a bottle of beer. The door opens and in staggers Clive James, drunk. Ah, a quick Wikipedia search reveals that these three are considered leading lights of Australian Baby Boomer intellectualism. The conceit of this vignette appears to be that they all lived together in shared accommodation, which actually never happened. I am intrigued, and will thus read on.
Clive: Whooo! Clive is on the piss again. (Sings) Clive is on the piss again! This seems unusual behaviour for a bookish man like James, but perhaps the piece is building towards something.
Hughes: What's happening mate? Where you been?
Clive: Just down at the rub-a-dub with Barry Humphries. Spew. (giggles to himself) Ha! An excellent reference to another cultural icon of this era. It appears James looks down on Humphries.
Greer: (Not looking up from her cleaning) What were you doing with that dickhead? Although not central to the developing storyline, I am highly amused to see Greer doing the cleaning. The mundanity of her domesticity clashes harshly with her independent feminine views.
Clive: Reckons he's hit on a new idea. Spends three months in London, and now he's gonna start wearing a dress and acting like a housewife. Sounds like poofter activity, if you ask me. How delightful! Here the author presents Humphries' seminal creation at its genesis point, and imagines it receiving an cold reception from his peers.
Hughes: A dress? Bloody hell. What else did he say?
Clive: Not much, we just shot the shit, chatted up the waitresses. Nice birds.
Hughes: Any love?
Clive: Nah, I was doing alright with one, but... you won't believe this... I farted just as she dropped off our second bottle of Beaujolais. Man, it stank. After that it was all over. I think she spewed. A nice contrast between the sophistication engendered by the wine order and the lowbrow toilet humour.
Hughes: That's awesome. I dropped a ripper today at the Tate, right in the middle of the Degas exhibition. The women next to me looked like they were crying. Hmm, a bit disappointing. If the author had researched properly, he would have realised that the Tate is a gallery for British art, and would thus not have been exhibiting Degas (1834-1917), a Frenchman.
Clive: Did they spew? I would have spewed. Your farts are rank. A good fart should always get some spew going. The toilet humour continues here. Probably laying it on a bit thick by now...
Greer: Sorry to interrupt you Rhodes scholars, but what are we going to do about the energy bill this month? Clive, you still owe us for last month. Excellent. If you'll pardon the pun, the story was getting "bogged down" in all the toilet jokes. Now we reach the 'complication'.
Clive: Shit. I just pissed it all away.
Greer: Clive! Didn't Bazza owe you money? What happened to that? It is very clever of the author to present these highly-respected cultural commentators in such a mundane setting, arguing over the payment of a utilities bill. Very clever.
Clive: I... um... I lost it on a dog. You got any more of those beers, Hughsey? I'm gonna spew if I get any more soberererer (giggles).
Greer: Hold on, a dog? Bloody hell Clive. You're useless. What are we gonna do? It's going to be winter in a month, and I don't have any bras to spare for fuel. Riotous! Simply riotous! Such a witty backhanded reference to Greer's militant feminism. Not only does she burn bras for political effect, she also just burns them to keep warm. This writer is as clever as he is tall and good at finding novel uses for potato wedges in pasta bake.
Hughes: (coming back from the fridge with a beer for Clive. Strikes a Shakespearean pose). Now is the winter of our discontent... A wonderful use of irony. Hughes quotes Shakespeare, but reverts to one of the most well known and overused lines from Richard III. An extra dimension has been added to the already rich juxtaposition of intellectualism with the everyday setting of beer, drunkenness, and electricity bills.
Greer: Don't start Robert, this is serious.
Clive: (holding the beer bottle up to his eye like a telescope) Bloody oath it is, I can't get this beer open. He appears to use James as comic relief when the storyline runs out of steam. An effective technique, but a tad overdone. I hope we're not going to get more farting jokes.
Hughes: They're not twisties mate, where's my key ring? I'm not sure twist tops were in common usage in 1966. Damn, I've already closed the window that had Wikipedia open. Oh well, I'll look it up later.
Clive: It's alright, mate (starts opening the bottle with his teeth). It'll be okay Germaine Sausage. I'll tell you what I'll do... (lifts his leg and farts, followed by raucous laughter from him and Hughes). More farting. There are motifs, and then there is bland repetition, and unfortunately this is straying to the latter. I wonder if there's anything good on TMZ.com?
Hughes: That's disgusting you sicko. Oh man, the place is gonna stink for a week!
Greer: Oh well, it's still better than...
Together: Living in Australia! Yes, very nice. Very nice. I worried the scene would descend into farce, but the author has redeemed himself. All three players in this scene left Australia, finding the narrow mindedness of their countrymen too great a restriction on their self-proclaimed genius. A slight whiff of Tall Poppy Syndrome, but all in all a tightly written swipe at the pretensions of the intellectual elite, reminding them that they are, after all, human, just like the rest of us. I can't wait for the next post to this wonderful blog. I hope it's not just some old content slightly dressed up and passed off as someting new. That would be disappointing.
So there you have it, a quick guide outlining the best way to approach Circumstances. Hopefully you're able to identify with the Ideal Reader of this piece. Most blog readers think to themselves in the voice of a mustachioed colonial memsahib circa 1865, don't they?
The Setting: 1966- A Cambridge flat, drab with minimal furnishings. Piles of books are stacked against the wall and old newspapers cover a small table in the middle of the kitchen/dining area.Germaine Greer is busily cleaning the kitchen while Robert Hughes sits at the paper-strewn table drinking a bottle of beer. The door opens and in staggers Clive James, drunk. Ah, a quick Wikipedia search reveals that these three are considered leading lights of Australian Baby Boomer intellectualism. The conceit of this vignette appears to be that they all lived together in shared accommodation, which actually never happened. I am intrigued, and will thus read on.
Clive: Whooo! Clive is on the piss again. (Sings) Clive is on the piss again! This seems unusual behaviour for a bookish man like James, but perhaps the piece is building towards something.
Hughes: What's happening mate? Where you been?
Clive: Just down at the rub-a-dub with Barry Humphries. Spew. (giggles to himself) Ha! An excellent reference to another cultural icon of this era. It appears James looks down on Humphries.
Greer: (Not looking up from her cleaning) What were you doing with that dickhead? Although not central to the developing storyline, I am highly amused to see Greer doing the cleaning. The mundanity of her domesticity clashes harshly with her independent feminine views.
Clive: Reckons he's hit on a new idea. Spends three months in London, and now he's gonna start wearing a dress and acting like a housewife. Sounds like poofter activity, if you ask me. How delightful! Here the author presents Humphries' seminal creation at its genesis point, and imagines it receiving an cold reception from his peers.
Hughes: A dress? Bloody hell. What else did he say?
Clive: Not much, we just shot the shit, chatted up the waitresses. Nice birds.
Hughes: Any love?
Clive: Nah, I was doing alright with one, but... you won't believe this... I farted just as she dropped off our second bottle of Beaujolais. Man, it stank. After that it was all over. I think she spewed. A nice contrast between the sophistication engendered by the wine order and the lowbrow toilet humour.
Hughes: That's awesome. I dropped a ripper today at the Tate, right in the middle of the Degas exhibition. The women next to me looked like they were crying. Hmm, a bit disappointing. If the author had researched properly, he would have realised that the Tate is a gallery for British art, and would thus not have been exhibiting Degas (1834-1917), a Frenchman.
Clive: Did they spew? I would have spewed. Your farts are rank. A good fart should always get some spew going. The toilet humour continues here. Probably laying it on a bit thick by now...
Greer: Sorry to interrupt you Rhodes scholars, but what are we going to do about the energy bill this month? Clive, you still owe us for last month. Excellent. If you'll pardon the pun, the story was getting "bogged down" in all the toilet jokes. Now we reach the 'complication'.
Clive: Shit. I just pissed it all away.
Greer: Clive! Didn't Bazza owe you money? What happened to that? It is very clever of the author to present these highly-respected cultural commentators in such a mundane setting, arguing over the payment of a utilities bill. Very clever.
Clive: I... um... I lost it on a dog. You got any more of those beers, Hughsey? I'm gonna spew if I get any more soberererer (giggles).
Greer: Hold on, a dog? Bloody hell Clive. You're useless. What are we gonna do? It's going to be winter in a month, and I don't have any bras to spare for fuel. Riotous! Simply riotous! Such a witty backhanded reference to Greer's militant feminism. Not only does she burn bras for political effect, she also just burns them to keep warm. This writer is as clever as he is tall and good at finding novel uses for potato wedges in pasta bake.
Hughes: (coming back from the fridge with a beer for Clive. Strikes a Shakespearean pose). Now is the winter of our discontent... A wonderful use of irony. Hughes quotes Shakespeare, but reverts to one of the most well known and overused lines from Richard III. An extra dimension has been added to the already rich juxtaposition of intellectualism with the everyday setting of beer, drunkenness, and electricity bills.
Greer: Don't start Robert, this is serious.
Clive: (holding the beer bottle up to his eye like a telescope) Bloody oath it is, I can't get this beer open. He appears to use James as comic relief when the storyline runs out of steam. An effective technique, but a tad overdone. I hope we're not going to get more farting jokes.
Hughes: They're not twisties mate, where's my key ring? I'm not sure twist tops were in common usage in 1966. Damn, I've already closed the window that had Wikipedia open. Oh well, I'll look it up later.
Clive: It's alright, mate (starts opening the bottle with his teeth). It'll be okay Germaine Sausage. I'll tell you what I'll do... (lifts his leg and farts, followed by raucous laughter from him and Hughes). More farting. There are motifs, and then there is bland repetition, and unfortunately this is straying to the latter. I wonder if there's anything good on TMZ.com?
Hughes: That's disgusting you sicko. Oh man, the place is gonna stink for a week!
Greer: Oh well, it's still better than...
Together: Living in Australia! Yes, very nice. Very nice. I worried the scene would descend into farce, but the author has redeemed himself. All three players in this scene left Australia, finding the narrow mindedness of their countrymen too great a restriction on their self-proclaimed genius. A slight whiff of Tall Poppy Syndrome, but all in all a tightly written swipe at the pretensions of the intellectual elite, reminding them that they are, after all, human, just like the rest of us. I can't wait for the next post to this wonderful blog. I hope it's not just some old content slightly dressed up and passed off as someting new. That would be disappointing.
So there you have it, a quick guide outlining the best way to approach Circumstances. Hopefully you're able to identify with the Ideal Reader of this piece. Most blog readers think to themselves in the voice of a mustachioed colonial memsahib circa 1865, don't they?
Monday, August 20, 2007
Cockroaches and nightcaps...
Chantelle realised she should probably break up with her boyfriend. They'd been living together for three months, and in that time she'd developed a healthy disgust for him. As she walked towards the small, dark kitchen of their one bedroom terrace apartment she couldn't help shake the feeling that he'd scuttle under the fridge the moment she flicked the light on. She turned the light on anyway, and found him standing in the middle of the kitchen, wearing a discoloured white singlet, socks and nothing else. He was drinking a beer. She lived with a man whose daily routine involved a half-naked midnight Carlton Cold. His back was to her. Despite the sudden flash of light, he didn't flinch or turn around. She looked at his broad, muscular shoulders, his right shoulder muscles rippling as he hurriedly tipped the beer bottle to his lips. His buttocks seemed to be taunting her through their fine screen of jet black hair.
"I am living with a man who drinks beer naked in the kitchen with so much intensity he apparently doesn't notice that where once there was complete darkness, there is now light," she thought. Her mother hadn't said exactly that, but her vociferous objections to her moving in with him began ringing in Chantelle's ears. Her thinking voice adopted her mother's whining tone: "You've only known him for four months." I know that Mum. "How do you know he's not a woman basher?" Excellent question, Mum. Can't you be happy for me? He wasn't a woman basher, thankfully. Just a naked midnight beer drinker who, although not literally a cockroach, had the air of someone who at any moment could touch your hand in a way that would make your skin crawl.
Chantelle flicked the light off again. Still he didn't turn around, or even make that annoying grunting sound he'd make in the morning when she said hello. They had the kind of relationship where polite greetings seemed more appropriate than affectionate pet names. She wandered back down the corridor and climbed into bed, wincing briefly as her hand became entangled in the briefs he had obviously discarded before heading to the kitchen.
"I am living with a man who drinks beer naked in the kitchen with so much intensity he apparently doesn't notice that where once there was complete darkness, there is now light," she thought. Her mother hadn't said exactly that, but her vociferous objections to her moving in with him began ringing in Chantelle's ears. Her thinking voice adopted her mother's whining tone: "You've only known him for four months." I know that Mum. "How do you know he's not a woman basher?" Excellent question, Mum. Can't you be happy for me? He wasn't a woman basher, thankfully. Just a naked midnight beer drinker who, although not literally a cockroach, had the air of someone who at any moment could touch your hand in a way that would make your skin crawl.
Chantelle flicked the light off again. Still he didn't turn around, or even make that annoying grunting sound he'd make in the morning when she said hello. They had the kind of relationship where polite greetings seemed more appropriate than affectionate pet names. She wandered back down the corridor and climbed into bed, wincing briefly as her hand became entangled in the briefs he had obviously discarded before heading to the kitchen.
Friday, August 17, 2007
The meaning of life...
Tony despised the people he saw on shows like Australian Idol, and even worse, Big Brother. People who wanted to "be famous" disgusted him. "Notoriety and fame is something you have to earn," he would say. "Being famous for nothing is fleeting, illusory, and shallow." Despite this vehement dislike of people he referred to as "Fifteen-Minute F---wits", Tony's life's ambition was to be famous. Staggeringly famous. Neil Armstrong famous. Tony secretly hoped than in 40 years he would be so famous that even though the paparazzi no longer followed him around, and magazines no longer printed his photograph, people who met him by chance would forever remember the experience as the defining moment of their lives. But Tony was not impatient. He had already been working for two years to fulfil his dream, and was content to wait another two before people started noticing what he was doing.
- "I hope this new job will take me where I want to go, I think it's a good opportunity to get a foothold in a big firm. It'll also give me a good idea if I'm doing the right course at uni. I'm pretty sure I want to be an accountant." Tony's best friend Josh said.
"How can you be an accountant?", Tony answered, slurring a little from the 13 beers he had consumed that evening. It was 3am.
"What do you mean?" Josh asked.
"It seems to me that people who plan their lives around being something are planning to make themselves extraordinarily unhappy," he said. "Wouldn't it be much better to plan your future around doing something? If you say 'I want to be an accountant', and then become an accountant, what happens if you don't like it? At the end of the day, work is boring. That's why you get paid to do it. Even if it's work you like, when it comes down to it you'll still have to sit at a desk 40 hours a week for 50 years. It doesn't matter what you do, that is going to be boring. So if you've planned your life around being an accountant, at some stage you're going to wake up and hate yourself because you are one."
"It's an interesting idea," Josh said, wrapping his fuzzy, drunken head around Tony's philosophy. Both Josh and Tony were private school boys, the sons of successful people, who had been groomed for successful careers since they were old enough to earn pen licences and leave their blazers on the train. Thus Josh had always believed that "career success" and "happiness" shared the same entry in Roget's Thesaurus.
"You know what I think when I look at the future?" Tony continued. "I see myself happy. Not in a job, not necessarily with a family, but rather as a person I can be happy with and proud of."
"But how are you gonna do that," Josh asked, sensing he'd discovered the crucial hole in Tony's thinking.
"I guess we'll just have to wait and see..."
-That had been three years ago. Josh scarcely remembered the conversation at all, rather he remembered the unfortunate incident at a high-class strip joint that had resulted in the two of them drinking alone in a deserted bar at 3am. He had repeatedly mentioned the incident in his speech at Tony's 21st. For Tony however, it had been an epiphany. He had spent the year following that night dreaming up his strategy to become the person in his visions of the future. The first stages of his plan were complete, and now it was more a matter of waiting...
-Suddenly I realised that to finish the story would require the answer to the question "what is the secret to happiness?". I sat back, stunned at my own stupidity for beginning a story that I had no idea how to end. It was all too deep, too heavy, too pretentious to tag on a joke ending like "soon everyone would receive his anthrax-laced letters, and he would be a celebrity", or "he had been standing behind Tim Bailey now for two years, waving in the background of the weather reports. Soon everyone would know his face. He just had to keep on top of Bailey's schedule." Pissed off with my own arrogance, I went to dinner, had a few beers, and did this instead. I like "Fifteen-Minute F---wits" though...
- "I hope this new job will take me where I want to go, I think it's a good opportunity to get a foothold in a big firm. It'll also give me a good idea if I'm doing the right course at uni. I'm pretty sure I want to be an accountant." Tony's best friend Josh said.
"How can you be an accountant?", Tony answered, slurring a little from the 13 beers he had consumed that evening. It was 3am.
"What do you mean?" Josh asked.
"It seems to me that people who plan their lives around being something are planning to make themselves extraordinarily unhappy," he said. "Wouldn't it be much better to plan your future around doing something? If you say 'I want to be an accountant', and then become an accountant, what happens if you don't like it? At the end of the day, work is boring. That's why you get paid to do it. Even if it's work you like, when it comes down to it you'll still have to sit at a desk 40 hours a week for 50 years. It doesn't matter what you do, that is going to be boring. So if you've planned your life around being an accountant, at some stage you're going to wake up and hate yourself because you are one."
"It's an interesting idea," Josh said, wrapping his fuzzy, drunken head around Tony's philosophy. Both Josh and Tony were private school boys, the sons of successful people, who had been groomed for successful careers since they were old enough to earn pen licences and leave their blazers on the train. Thus Josh had always believed that "career success" and "happiness" shared the same entry in Roget's Thesaurus.
"You know what I think when I look at the future?" Tony continued. "I see myself happy. Not in a job, not necessarily with a family, but rather as a person I can be happy with and proud of."
"But how are you gonna do that," Josh asked, sensing he'd discovered the crucial hole in Tony's thinking.
"I guess we'll just have to wait and see..."
-That had been three years ago. Josh scarcely remembered the conversation at all, rather he remembered the unfortunate incident at a high-class strip joint that had resulted in the two of them drinking alone in a deserted bar at 3am. He had repeatedly mentioned the incident in his speech at Tony's 21st. For Tony however, it had been an epiphany. He had spent the year following that night dreaming up his strategy to become the person in his visions of the future. The first stages of his plan were complete, and now it was more a matter of waiting...
-Suddenly I realised that to finish the story would require the answer to the question "what is the secret to happiness?". I sat back, stunned at my own stupidity for beginning a story that I had no idea how to end. It was all too deep, too heavy, too pretentious to tag on a joke ending like "soon everyone would receive his anthrax-laced letters, and he would be a celebrity", or "he had been standing behind Tim Bailey now for two years, waving in the background of the weather reports. Soon everyone would know his face. He just had to keep on top of Bailey's schedule." Pissed off with my own arrogance, I went to dinner, had a few beers, and did this instead. I like "Fifteen-Minute F---wits" though...
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Aborted attempts, skeletons, and failures...
The stories appearing on I Know You're From Circumstances usually begin as a single idea, a sentence, or an observation. The final stories are usually built up around these central ideas or sentences. Colonial Culture and Cambridge developed from a discussion with a friend about Robert Hughes and how pretentious he is, Nothing matters in our private universe was the spawn of a badly mistimed comment at a dinner party, and A bear by any other name was originally an extension of the question "what would happen if someone corrected everything they saw misprinted with a texta?". It's kind of hard to see that last one in the finished story. The character evolved into a wanker in joggers and jeans, roughly based on my girlfriend's father (in appearance only. He is not a wanker, and even if he was I'd be too scared to say anything, lest he develop a property on me or my loved ones. The dude develops property).
"So what?" I hear you, the gentle yet powerful reader, asking. "Is this the blog equivalent of a DVD's extra features section, because I never watch them because they're usually rubbish and self congratulatory."
No, it isn't. What I was trying to get to before you, the impatient yet understanding reader, interrupted me, is the frustration this method can cause. Too often an interesting sentence or idea pops up that cannot be developed into a story. Considering it has been three weeks since the last Circumstances post, I decided it was time to stop forcing them into being stories and just write them down (including the original idea for A bear by any other name). Extra points for anyone who can email me a story using any of these ideas.
1- The army of skeletons that had spent the course of the evening massing behind the closet door took Uncle Arthur's comment as their cue to burst out into the living room and form a faceless, unholy, but unmistakably jovial conga line.
2- Robert was not a Conservative, he was barely even a lower-case conservative. If anything he tended towards muddle-headed liberalism. His primary concern was being lower-case right (ie, correct). He had no particularly strong political views, aside from a nagging suspicion that immigrants were okay as long as they wanted to work. However, when one's favourite pastime is correcting spelling and factual errors on posters around university campuses, one will inevitably come into conflict with members of the Liberal Left and beyond. Robert was in the middle of crossing out misplaced apostrophes on a "Principle's of non-violent resistance" forum poster erected by The Socialist Alliance when he was placed in a headlock by a long-haired youth in a Che Guevara t-shirt and Thai fisherman's pants, front pockets bulging with juggling balls, coloured ribbon, and a bottle of "Firebreather's Delight" ingestible butane. As the two wrestled for posession of Robert's texta, the youth's woven hemp satchel spilled open, scattering a dog-eared copy of Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx across the concrete footpath, coming to rest next to an ancient copy of Harpo Marx's Barefoot Circus Tricks and Juggling.
3- It wasn't that Justine thought Max was lying, she just knew Max's stories represented the truth in the same way hardcore pornography represented lovemaking. It was easy to believe Max provided you were 14 and weren't there when it happened.
So there are three things that were going to be stories but weren't. I couldn't think what Uncle Arthur had said in number one, the ill-kempt youth in number two just became a vehicle for stereotype exposition, and three just had no obvious way of making it into anything, and I hate having to try too hard at anything. This post is proof of that.
"So what?" I hear you, the gentle yet powerful reader, asking. "Is this the blog equivalent of a DVD's extra features section, because I never watch them because they're usually rubbish and self congratulatory."
No, it isn't. What I was trying to get to before you, the impatient yet understanding reader, interrupted me, is the frustration this method can cause. Too often an interesting sentence or idea pops up that cannot be developed into a story. Considering it has been three weeks since the last Circumstances post, I decided it was time to stop forcing them into being stories and just write them down (including the original idea for A bear by any other name). Extra points for anyone who can email me a story using any of these ideas.
1- The army of skeletons that had spent the course of the evening massing behind the closet door took Uncle Arthur's comment as their cue to burst out into the living room and form a faceless, unholy, but unmistakably jovial conga line.
2- Robert was not a Conservative, he was barely even a lower-case conservative. If anything he tended towards muddle-headed liberalism. His primary concern was being lower-case right (ie, correct). He had no particularly strong political views, aside from a nagging suspicion that immigrants were okay as long as they wanted to work. However, when one's favourite pastime is correcting spelling and factual errors on posters around university campuses, one will inevitably come into conflict with members of the Liberal Left and beyond. Robert was in the middle of crossing out misplaced apostrophes on a "Principle's of non-violent resistance" forum poster erected by The Socialist Alliance when he was placed in a headlock by a long-haired youth in a Che Guevara t-shirt and Thai fisherman's pants, front pockets bulging with juggling balls, coloured ribbon, and a bottle of "Firebreather's Delight" ingestible butane. As the two wrestled for posession of Robert's texta, the youth's woven hemp satchel spilled open, scattering a dog-eared copy of Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx across the concrete footpath, coming to rest next to an ancient copy of Harpo Marx's Barefoot Circus Tricks and Juggling.
3- It wasn't that Justine thought Max was lying, she just knew Max's stories represented the truth in the same way hardcore pornography represented lovemaking. It was easy to believe Max provided you were 14 and weren't there when it happened.
So there are three things that were going to be stories but weren't. I couldn't think what Uncle Arthur had said in number one, the ill-kempt youth in number two just became a vehicle for stereotype exposition, and three just had no obvious way of making it into anything, and I hate having to try too hard at anything. This post is proof of that.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Colonial culture and Cambridge...
The Setting: 1966- A Cambridge flat, drab with minimal furnishings. Piles of books are stacked against the wall and old newspapers cover a small table in the middle of the kitchen/dining area.
Germaine Greer is busily cleaning the kitchen while Robert Hughes sits at the paper-strewn table drinking a bottle of beer. The door opens and in staggers Clive James, drunk.
Clive: Whooo! Clive is on the piss again. (Sings) Clive is on the piss again!
Hughes: What's happening mate? Where you been?
Clive: Just down at the rub-a-dub with Barry Humphries. Spew. (giggles to himself)
Greer: (Not looking up from her cleaning) What were you doing with that dickhead?
Clive: Reckons he's hit on a new idea. Spends three months in London, and now he's gonna start wearing a dress and acting like a housewife. Sounds like poofter activity, if you ask me.
Hughes: A dress? Bloody hell. What else did he say?
Clive: Not much, we just shot the shit, chatted up the waitresses. Nice birds.
Hughes: Any love?
Clive: Nah, I was doing alright with one, but... you won't believe this... I farted just as she dropped off our second bottle of Beaujolais. Man, it stank. After that it was all over. I think she spewed.
Hughes: That's awesome. I dropped a ripper today at the Tate, right in the middle of the Degas exhibition. The women next to me looked like they were crying.
Clive: Did they spew? I would have spewed. Your farts are rank. A good fart should always get some spew going.
Greer: Sorry to interrupt you Rhodes scholars, but what are we going to do about the energy bill this month? Clive, you still owe us for last month.
Clive: Shit. I just pissed it all away.
Greer: Clive! Didn't Bazza owe you money? What happened to that?
Clive: I... um... I lost it on a dog. You got any more of those beers, Hughsey? I'm gonna spew if I get any more soberererer (giggles).
Greer: Hold on, a dog? Bloody hell Clive. You're useless. What are we gonna do? It's going to be winter in a month, and I don't have any bras to spare for fuel.
Hughes: (coming back from the fridge with a beer for Clive. Strikes a Shakespearean pose). Now is the winter of our discontent...
Greer: Don't start Robert, this is serious.
Clive: (holding the beer bottle up to his eye like a telescope) Bloody oath it is, I can't get this beer open.
Hughes: They're not twisties mate, where's my key ring?
Clive: It's alright, mate (starts opening the bottle with his teeth). It'll be okay Germaine Sausage. I'll tell you what I'll do... (lifts his leg and farts, followed by raucous laughter from him and Hughes).
Hughes: That's disgusting you sicko. Oh man, the place is gonna stink for a week!
Greer: Oh well, it's still better than...
Together: Living in Australia!
Germaine Greer is busily cleaning the kitchen while Robert Hughes sits at the paper-strewn table drinking a bottle of beer. The door opens and in staggers Clive James, drunk.
Clive: Whooo! Clive is on the piss again. (Sings) Clive is on the piss again!
Hughes: What's happening mate? Where you been?
Clive: Just down at the rub-a-dub with Barry Humphries. Spew. (giggles to himself)
Greer: (Not looking up from her cleaning) What were you doing with that dickhead?
Clive: Reckons he's hit on a new idea. Spends three months in London, and now he's gonna start wearing a dress and acting like a housewife. Sounds like poofter activity, if you ask me.
Hughes: A dress? Bloody hell. What else did he say?
Clive: Not much, we just shot the shit, chatted up the waitresses. Nice birds.
Hughes: Any love?
Clive: Nah, I was doing alright with one, but... you won't believe this... I farted just as she dropped off our second bottle of Beaujolais. Man, it stank. After that it was all over. I think she spewed.
Hughes: That's awesome. I dropped a ripper today at the Tate, right in the middle of the Degas exhibition. The women next to me looked like they were crying.
Clive: Did they spew? I would have spewed. Your farts are rank. A good fart should always get some spew going.
Greer: Sorry to interrupt you Rhodes scholars, but what are we going to do about the energy bill this month? Clive, you still owe us for last month.
Clive: Shit. I just pissed it all away.
Greer: Clive! Didn't Bazza owe you money? What happened to that?
Clive: I... um... I lost it on a dog. You got any more of those beers, Hughsey? I'm gonna spew if I get any more soberererer (giggles).
Greer: Hold on, a dog? Bloody hell Clive. You're useless. What are we gonna do? It's going to be winter in a month, and I don't have any bras to spare for fuel.
Hughes: (coming back from the fridge with a beer for Clive. Strikes a Shakespearean pose). Now is the winter of our discontent...
Greer: Don't start Robert, this is serious.
Clive: (holding the beer bottle up to his eye like a telescope) Bloody oath it is, I can't get this beer open.
Hughes: They're not twisties mate, where's my key ring?
Clive: It's alright, mate (starts opening the bottle with his teeth). It'll be okay Germaine Sausage. I'll tell you what I'll do... (lifts his leg and farts, followed by raucous laughter from him and Hughes).
Hughes: That's disgusting you sicko. Oh man, the place is gonna stink for a week!
Greer: Oh well, it's still better than...
Together: Living in Australia!
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Tackling the issues one cup at a time...
Ideological arguments don't often break out between domestic appliances, but when they do, they're big. Really big. This one had already spread from the granite bench top into the top shelves of the kitchen cabinets, sending cockroaches scuttling from behind the toaster towards quieter regions of the open plan living/dining room with galley-style kitchen. It was essentially a domestic dispute between different generations of coffee delivery mechanisms. It began when the Delonghi coffee machine made an offhand comment about the privatisation of public utilities, but by now it had pretty much degenerated into a slanging match between the left and the right. The Delonghi was leading the right's case, arguing for the inevitability of privatisation as a result of the inescapable need for competition to ensure quality service and an open market. He was shiny and new, and had grown up in an environment where houses were always worth more than they were yesterday, and where six credit agencies would send someone to your house if word got out you were thinking of financing a couch. He had received unexpected support from the Percolator, who many expected to side with the Espresso Jug and the Instant- a decision based mostly on the assumption that because the Percolator wore plastic casings from the '70s, her values would reflect that era. She tempered the Delonghi's more hard-line stance, saying that governments should look at privatisation as a means of ensuring progressive and innovative service, but that any public/private contracts should include provisions to guarantee agreed standards of service to non-profitable areas. At this point the Grinder and Roaster had started chiming in with support, because they supported deregulation, but were put off by Delonghi's aggressive capitalism and views on gay marriage.
It annoyed Espresso Jug that Grinder and Roaster had jumped in behind Delonghi. Espresso Jug didn't mind so much about Percolator, because he felt she meant well, but was misguided as a result of her privileged upbringing and impressive range of accessories. What annoyed him was that Grinder blindly followed Roaster, despite Espresso Jug's hunch that deep down Grinder was more liberal than Liberal. Delonghi particularly irked Espresso Jug, not least because Delonghi's multi-purpose interface had made stove top coffee brewing a thing of the past. Espresso had spent a lot of years in the cupboard since Delonghi arrived, and resented the economic forces that had made a $3200 coffee machine seem like a necessity, instead of the appallingly gross luxury he felt it was. As such, Espresso had taken up a kind of intellectual liberalism as a defence mechanism against the long, cold, coffee-less nights in the cupboard. He and Instant were united behind the idea that most services should be public to ensure equity of access for all. Instant was the driving force behind the left's case. Instant was essentially a Marxist, and saw himself at the bottom of the class system that existed within the kitchen. Despite his hard-left ideology, Instant secretly supported tightening immigration policy, as he resented the influx of European immigrants that had popularised 'real' coffee. He was aware of this inconsistency in his political philosophy, and overcompensated for it by rabidly attacking Delonghi and Percolator as often as he could. He was enjoying this argument, because the subject matter was black and white. "People should control all infrastructure and assets," he shouted at Delonghi, "to prevent the exploitation and manipulation of the lower classes by owners bent on monopoly and profits."
The Toaster had had enough. He was a simple two-slices-at-a-time appliance, and had no strong opinion on politics, religion or sex- particularly not at 3am.
"Will you idiots give it a rest? Save it for the bloody letters page!"
The kitchen fell silent, with each appliance taking their opinion to bed with them. Ideological arguments don't often break out between domestic appliances, but when they do, the Toaster always gets the final word.
It annoyed Espresso Jug that Grinder and Roaster had jumped in behind Delonghi. Espresso Jug didn't mind so much about Percolator, because he felt she meant well, but was misguided as a result of her privileged upbringing and impressive range of accessories. What annoyed him was that Grinder blindly followed Roaster, despite Espresso Jug's hunch that deep down Grinder was more liberal than Liberal. Delonghi particularly irked Espresso Jug, not least because Delonghi's multi-purpose interface had made stove top coffee brewing a thing of the past. Espresso had spent a lot of years in the cupboard since Delonghi arrived, and resented the economic forces that had made a $3200 coffee machine seem like a necessity, instead of the appallingly gross luxury he felt it was. As such, Espresso had taken up a kind of intellectual liberalism as a defence mechanism against the long, cold, coffee-less nights in the cupboard. He and Instant were united behind the idea that most services should be public to ensure equity of access for all. Instant was the driving force behind the left's case. Instant was essentially a Marxist, and saw himself at the bottom of the class system that existed within the kitchen. Despite his hard-left ideology, Instant secretly supported tightening immigration policy, as he resented the influx of European immigrants that had popularised 'real' coffee. He was aware of this inconsistency in his political philosophy, and overcompensated for it by rabidly attacking Delonghi and Percolator as often as he could. He was enjoying this argument, because the subject matter was black and white. "People should control all infrastructure and assets," he shouted at Delonghi, "to prevent the exploitation and manipulation of the lower classes by owners bent on monopoly and profits."
The Toaster had had enough. He was a simple two-slices-at-a-time appliance, and had no strong opinion on politics, religion or sex- particularly not at 3am.
"Will you idiots give it a rest? Save it for the bloody letters page!"
The kitchen fell silent, with each appliance taking their opinion to bed with them. Ideological arguments don't often break out between domestic appliances, but when they do, the Toaster always gets the final word.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Welcome to "I know you're from circumstances"
I've moved my blog to this site for a number of reasons. Hopefully it will improve useability, and allow me to focus more on results-based performance of primary and secondary tasks without process inconsistencies affecting output.
Thank you for understanding.
Stephen
Thank you for understanding.
Stephen
It's the little things that say so much...
"You don't even know what music you're going to play, do you?"
"No, I thought I'd hit shuffle on the old iPod and plug it into the stereo."
"Your iPod? Do you even realise what's on there? The music you play tonight will tell her a lot about you. Do you want to leave your character reference up to a random number generator? What if it starts playing those "teach yourself French in the car" lessons you downloaded but are yet to listen to? You'll look like a wanker."
"Maybe I'll crack out a few of my CDs. She has a picture of Peter Doherty on her desktop at work, maybe I'll play some Babyshambles."
"She'll see right through that. A) you called him 'Peter'. B) The last time you were offered speed, you turned it down on the grounds 'I've already lost too many points off my licence'. Granted, it's the only moderately "cool" CD you own, but even then it's only cool in a try-hard "look how many drugs I'm on YOU'RE NOT LOOKING!" kind of way. You'll hit play, she'll start talking about the Libertines and you'll end up looking like a retard."
"Ok, well what about something fun? I've got that old 2pac album in my room…"
"2pac? Are you serious? Remember what happened last time you listened to hip hop? 'How'm I doin? I'm ballin', biatch!' Bloody hell. Irony requires confidence. You're currently having a conversation with yourself and losing. You can't have rap, you know it just makes you all faux-cocky and you'll drop another clanger like the "I'm ballin'" atrocity you unleashed on that poor girl at The Orient."
"We could have a laugh at my Top Gun sound track? That could be a good conversation starter."
"Conversation starter? It'll start a text conversation with her friends under the table teeing up somewhere to go after she leaves your place before you can even plate-up dessert. You haven't had a girl inside these walls for eight months, and you want to point that out to her by playing the soundtrack to the most testosterone-fuelled, cock-rockin' movie ever filmed? Genius. Why don't you just run a Powerpoint of those pictures you took of yourself flexing?"
"Well… maybe something innocuous, you know? Just some background noise. I've got that Forrest Gump soundtrack…"
"How many soundtracks you planning on spinning tonight? Don't associate yourself with a slow-talkin', slow-witted non-threat. You need something that will paper over your glaring personality problems, not provide her with a cue to say: 'that's who he reminds me of.'
"Maybe I could play the radio, but what if one of those erectile dysfunction ads comes on? You know I get awkward around that kind of thing."
"How do you know? Tonight's the closest you've been since to that kind of thing since your 35-year-old cousin sat in your lap at that wedding last year."
"Maybe I won't play anything. It's too difficult."
"And let her listen to the sound of flop-sweat spewing out of your pores? No chance. Play that Crowded House album. Nothing says 'you' like adult contemporary."
"Good idea. Thanks."
"Who are you thanking? I am you, just the part of you that hates you. You probably shouldn't even be talking to me."
"I like the company."
"And that's why we're sleeping alone tonight."
"No, I thought I'd hit shuffle on the old iPod and plug it into the stereo."
"Your iPod? Do you even realise what's on there? The music you play tonight will tell her a lot about you. Do you want to leave your character reference up to a random number generator? What if it starts playing those "teach yourself French in the car" lessons you downloaded but are yet to listen to? You'll look like a wanker."
"Maybe I'll crack out a few of my CDs. She has a picture of Peter Doherty on her desktop at work, maybe I'll play some Babyshambles."
"She'll see right through that. A) you called him 'Peter'. B) The last time you were offered speed, you turned it down on the grounds 'I've already lost too many points off my licence'. Granted, it's the only moderately "cool" CD you own, but even then it's only cool in a try-hard "look how many drugs I'm on YOU'RE NOT LOOKING!" kind of way. You'll hit play, she'll start talking about the Libertines and you'll end up looking like a retard."
"Ok, well what about something fun? I've got that old 2pac album in my room…"
"2pac? Are you serious? Remember what happened last time you listened to hip hop? 'How'm I doin? I'm ballin', biatch!' Bloody hell. Irony requires confidence. You're currently having a conversation with yourself and losing. You can't have rap, you know it just makes you all faux-cocky and you'll drop another clanger like the "I'm ballin'" atrocity you unleashed on that poor girl at The Orient."
"We could have a laugh at my Top Gun sound track? That could be a good conversation starter."
"Conversation starter? It'll start a text conversation with her friends under the table teeing up somewhere to go after she leaves your place before you can even plate-up dessert. You haven't had a girl inside these walls for eight months, and you want to point that out to her by playing the soundtrack to the most testosterone-fuelled, cock-rockin' movie ever filmed? Genius. Why don't you just run a Powerpoint of those pictures you took of yourself flexing?"
"Well… maybe something innocuous, you know? Just some background noise. I've got that Forrest Gump soundtrack…"
"How many soundtracks you planning on spinning tonight? Don't associate yourself with a slow-talkin', slow-witted non-threat. You need something that will paper over your glaring personality problems, not provide her with a cue to say: 'that's who he reminds me of.'
"Maybe I could play the radio, but what if one of those erectile dysfunction ads comes on? You know I get awkward around that kind of thing."
"How do you know? Tonight's the closest you've been since to that kind of thing since your 35-year-old cousin sat in your lap at that wedding last year."
"Maybe I won't play anything. It's too difficult."
"And let her listen to the sound of flop-sweat spewing out of your pores? No chance. Play that Crowded House album. Nothing says 'you' like adult contemporary."
"Good idea. Thanks."
"Who are you thanking? I am you, just the part of you that hates you. You probably shouldn't even be talking to me."
"I like the company."
"And that's why we're sleeping alone tonight."
A bear by any other name...
Byron laughed. He had to. If the laugh had sounded like it should, it would have sounded like compressed air rushing out of the valve of a BMX tyre, probably a Mongoose. There was a lot of pressure inside Byron.
"Yeah, I know they're not really bears, but they make 'em in China, and obviously they don't know that there," Byron said, trying not to scream at the man in his fifties who was currently waving a small stuffed toy koala in his face. The man was wearing a tweed sportscoat over a black t-shirt that had been aggressively tucked into his jeans. The jeans were trying hard, but couldn't quite cover the man's bright white joggers, which were the only part of his outfit more striking than his prematurely silver hair.
"Well, I think it's terrible that you guys misspell the names of these things. I notice one of the erasers over by the Crocodile Dundee hats was also wrong. Where is "News South Wales", I wonder?"
"I'm sorry you're not happy, perhaps there's something..." Byron didn't have time to finish, the man slammed the by now probably perplexed stuffed marsupial (definitely not bear) down on the counter.
"If I wanted to throw money away on rubbish souvenirs I'd buy match programs at football games. All I wanted was a small gift for an international visitor I'm receiving ("That sounds about right" Byron thought, but didn't say- those kind of comments are best said around friends with gay joke clearance) and I come in here and find koala BEARS. Look, it even has "BEAR" embroidered on its little yellow surf lifesaving outfit!" the man said unnecessarily loudly. His shouting pushed Byron over the edge.
"Look mate, I don't make the f---ing souvenirs, I just sell them and try to explain to Chinese people that there isn't a bus from Circular Quay to Uluru, and get patronised by people who forget that I also shop, and am thus not a lesser person than they are. Patronised by people who think that their position on the shop floor relative to mine grants them the right to be complete dickheads. If you wanted a Louis Vuitton embossed leather koala, you should have gone to the QVB. Perhaps G'day Cobber Australian Souvenirs Surry Hills is not the place for you. Perhaps you should get home and run the toothpaste over those runners again mate, seeing as they're clearly your "going out" footwear. It might rain later, so maybe I could lend you some plastic bags to put over them, but you probably wouldn't want them because there's a misplaced apostrophe in the safety warning. Now, unless you're going to buy the koala bear, piss off and go get the wine spritzer you're so clearly desperate to drink before you go home to- I'm going to guess and say the Woolloomoollo wharf, but not the expensive part- and settle down to write a submission to Column 8 aking "what are they thinking down at the souvenir place" that will never be published. The guy who checks the emails will probably just mutter "wanker" under his breath before he double-clicks your night's work out of existence."
Byron slumped back, exhausted, against a display cabinet full of postcards of women in 1995's hottest bikinis saying "G'day from Down Under". The man turned and stormed out of the store. Byron was disappointed because he realised this was probably the only time in his life he'd abuse a customer, and he still had five years of bilious frustration ready to rush out of him like the aforementioned compressed air. Fortunately the man came back later to buy the koala, and Byron abused him again, having spent the intervening two hours coming up with fresh material.
"Yeah, I know they're not really bears, but they make 'em in China, and obviously they don't know that there," Byron said, trying not to scream at the man in his fifties who was currently waving a small stuffed toy koala in his face. The man was wearing a tweed sportscoat over a black t-shirt that had been aggressively tucked into his jeans. The jeans were trying hard, but couldn't quite cover the man's bright white joggers, which were the only part of his outfit more striking than his prematurely silver hair.
"Well, I think it's terrible that you guys misspell the names of these things. I notice one of the erasers over by the Crocodile Dundee hats was also wrong. Where is "News South Wales", I wonder?"
"I'm sorry you're not happy, perhaps there's something..." Byron didn't have time to finish, the man slammed the by now probably perplexed stuffed marsupial (definitely not bear) down on the counter.
"If I wanted to throw money away on rubbish souvenirs I'd buy match programs at football games. All I wanted was a small gift for an international visitor I'm receiving ("That sounds about right" Byron thought, but didn't say- those kind of comments are best said around friends with gay joke clearance) and I come in here and find koala BEARS. Look, it even has "BEAR" embroidered on its little yellow surf lifesaving outfit!" the man said unnecessarily loudly. His shouting pushed Byron over the edge.
"Look mate, I don't make the f---ing souvenirs, I just sell them and try to explain to Chinese people that there isn't a bus from Circular Quay to Uluru, and get patronised by people who forget that I also shop, and am thus not a lesser person than they are. Patronised by people who think that their position on the shop floor relative to mine grants them the right to be complete dickheads. If you wanted a Louis Vuitton embossed leather koala, you should have gone to the QVB. Perhaps G'day Cobber Australian Souvenirs Surry Hills is not the place for you. Perhaps you should get home and run the toothpaste over those runners again mate, seeing as they're clearly your "going out" footwear. It might rain later, so maybe I could lend you some plastic bags to put over them, but you probably wouldn't want them because there's a misplaced apostrophe in the safety warning. Now, unless you're going to buy the koala bear, piss off and go get the wine spritzer you're so clearly desperate to drink before you go home to- I'm going to guess and say the Woolloomoollo wharf, but not the expensive part- and settle down to write a submission to Column 8 aking "what are they thinking down at the souvenir place" that will never be published. The guy who checks the emails will probably just mutter "wanker" under his breath before he double-clicks your night's work out of existence."
Byron slumped back, exhausted, against a display cabinet full of postcards of women in 1995's hottest bikinis saying "G'day from Down Under". The man turned and stormed out of the store. Byron was disappointed because he realised this was probably the only time in his life he'd abuse a customer, and he still had five years of bilious frustration ready to rush out of him like the aforementioned compressed air. Fortunately the man came back later to buy the koala, and Byron abused him again, having spent the intervening two hours coming up with fresh material.
Real living is having shoes that match your couch...
Leah (pronounced 'Lay' for no other reason than her mother didn't want her to have a boring name) was at a loss. Yesterday she had been the world's foremost fashion critic. Today she was on medication and she was a nobody.
"Got to get some smokes and sort this out," she thought to herself as she walked down the street away from the hospital. At least, she thought she had said it to herself. She was in reality talking in a loud and expressionless voice. The startled look of the private school boy walking past should have alerted her to this fact, but it didn't. She walked into a 7-11 and asked the sullen looking teenager behind the counter for a packet of Winfield Charcoals. As the boy turned to the perspex-fronted display case, Leah cast a disapproving eye across his clothes.
"Sorry, I don't want to be a bitch, but you are dressed sooooo badly," she said, having by now lowered her voice and forced a small amount of expression into it, hence the extended 'o' in 'so'. "I mean, you're making three statements at once, and they're all pathetic. Is it emo, scenester, or indie rock that you're after? I certainly can't tell."
7-11 Guy turned from the cigarette stand and gave Leah the most withering look his 16-year-old angst could muster.
"Look, I'm sorry if you don't want to hear it, but if you're going to wear a The Smiths shirt you need to pair it with something better than black slacks and some loafers. I'd suggest perhaps a pair of black skinny leg J. Lindebergs and some '92 Air Jordans, or possibly the '90 Air Max, laces out of course."
7-11 Guy, realising that his intensely emotional gaze was having no effect on the strange woman in the Macquarie University hoodie and grey fleecy tracksuit pants, changed tack.
"Do you want these smokes or not?" he asked, holding the cigarette packet on the palm of his limply held hand in a way that said "I don't care if you die, but if you do, please move out of my direct line of sight."
"Not as much as I want to spend 10 minutes inside your wardrobe planning you some outfits... but yes."
"They're 12 bucks," 7-11 Guy said, now looking past Leah at the drinks fridges.
Leah realised she had no idea what was in her pockets. She had been in hospital for two weeks, and had no idea whose clothes she was wearing. Certainly not hers. (They were hers, but two weeks ago the hoodie was a Hugo Boss short jacket and the trackpants were a D&G shift.) She checked her pockets and found an American Express with her name on it and a $20 note that smelled like someone had vomited Sambuca onto it. She handed over the $20.
"Just promise to think about what I said," she told the guy who liked The Smiths, or at least liked shirts with their visage on it.
"Piss off." he said.
"Idiot" Leah thought as she left the 7-11. "Who turns down fashion advice from..." Leah remembered she wasn't actually a fashion writer, particularly not a famous one. She had quite enjoyed it- the trips to Milan, Paris, New York, cocktails with designers and models. Leah wondered where she had really been during her "trips". (She'd mostly been in the sun room of a heroin addict's two-bedroom terrace tearing pictures of celebrities out of magazines. On her few ventures outside the sunroom she'd thrust the pictures into the faces of passers-by asking "What was she thinking when she left home in that!?!" Very few gave their honest opinion.)
"Well, I was pretty good at fashion writing then, I don't see why I couldn't do it again," she thought to herself, by this time having realised that if she consciously clamped her jaw down she wouldn't say everything she thought. "I'll give Fernando a call, see if he knows anyone." It occurred to Leah that Fernando was probably not real. In fact, very few of her fashion clique probably actually existed. What had the doctor said? Something about the power of the imagination creating pretend worlds blah blah blah. She'd stopped listening by that stage, distracted by his mismatched belt and shoes. "Bugger it then. I'll do it on my own. I've got an Amex and $6. I'll buy a pen and some paper and start writing."
Later that day, having purchased a black pen and a spiral bound notebook, Leah discovered that although her friends and career were imaginary, her credit card debts were all too real. She sat outside the heroin addict's house wondering how she was going to pay off $10,000 in credit without even a fictional salary. The junkie had refused to let her in, but had given her a milk crate to sit on, and maybe later to collect garbage in. She was now down to her last $1.85, and had just three cigarettes left. A passing homeless man aggressively mooched two of those from her, and she was left with a single cigarette. She opened her notebook and decided to write a review of his outfit. After about half an hour she had written "unoriginal and smelly" 17 times and produced a crude drawing of a small hairy dog. "I don't think I could sell this for much," she thought glumly. For the first time in two years the full reality of her situation was sinking in. Leah let her head drop down, her chin resting on her chest. The hard plastic webbing of the milk crate was digging into her buttocks.
A large delivery truck drove up the small lane and stopped oustide the junkie's home. Two large Eastern European men hopped out, with one running around the back to open the truck's the rear roller door. The second man sauntered up to Leah. "With the exception of the French Riviera, men should never be seen in shorts," Leah thought, having not yet totally given up on her fashion career.
"You Leah St John?" the big man asked.
"It's actually pronounced 'Lay'".
"I got couch here for you. You take?"
Leah nodded, slightly confused but feeling like this might be the first piece of good news she received that day. The two men unloaded what was clearly a $10,000 couch off the back of the truck and placed it on the footpath. Signature received, they hopped back into the truck and disappeared down the lane. Leah cast her eye over the couch. She wanted to describe it, but she was still fixated on "smelly and unoriginal", and neither of those adjectives seemed appropriate. The couch was a bold but elegant shade of red, and was so soft Leah wondered if its manufacturers had C-sectioned calves to get such fine leather. The couch's modern lines matched the boldness of its colour. "Sit on me," it seemed to say, "but always remember I'm better than you." Leah sat down on the couch and gathered her feet up under her. Yesterday she had been a famous fashion writer. This morning she was on medication and was a nobody. This afternoon she was a nobody sitting on a credit-bought couch in the late afternoon sun. She pulled out her notebook again and made a small entry:
"Things to do: Buy red handbag and shoes."
"Got to get some smokes and sort this out," she thought to herself as she walked down the street away from the hospital. At least, she thought she had said it to herself. She was in reality talking in a loud and expressionless voice. The startled look of the private school boy walking past should have alerted her to this fact, but it didn't. She walked into a 7-11 and asked the sullen looking teenager behind the counter for a packet of Winfield Charcoals. As the boy turned to the perspex-fronted display case, Leah cast a disapproving eye across his clothes.
"Sorry, I don't want to be a bitch, but you are dressed sooooo badly," she said, having by now lowered her voice and forced a small amount of expression into it, hence the extended 'o' in 'so'. "I mean, you're making three statements at once, and they're all pathetic. Is it emo, scenester, or indie rock that you're after? I certainly can't tell."
7-11 Guy turned from the cigarette stand and gave Leah the most withering look his 16-year-old angst could muster.
"Look, I'm sorry if you don't want to hear it, but if you're going to wear a The Smiths shirt you need to pair it with something better than black slacks and some loafers. I'd suggest perhaps a pair of black skinny leg J. Lindebergs and some '92 Air Jordans, or possibly the '90 Air Max, laces out of course."
7-11 Guy, realising that his intensely emotional gaze was having no effect on the strange woman in the Macquarie University hoodie and grey fleecy tracksuit pants, changed tack.
"Do you want these smokes or not?" he asked, holding the cigarette packet on the palm of his limply held hand in a way that said "I don't care if you die, but if you do, please move out of my direct line of sight."
"Not as much as I want to spend 10 minutes inside your wardrobe planning you some outfits... but yes."
"They're 12 bucks," 7-11 Guy said, now looking past Leah at the drinks fridges.
Leah realised she had no idea what was in her pockets. She had been in hospital for two weeks, and had no idea whose clothes she was wearing. Certainly not hers. (They were hers, but two weeks ago the hoodie was a Hugo Boss short jacket and the trackpants were a D&G shift.) She checked her pockets and found an American Express with her name on it and a $20 note that smelled like someone had vomited Sambuca onto it. She handed over the $20.
"Just promise to think about what I said," she told the guy who liked The Smiths, or at least liked shirts with their visage on it.
"Piss off." he said.
"Idiot" Leah thought as she left the 7-11. "Who turns down fashion advice from..." Leah remembered she wasn't actually a fashion writer, particularly not a famous one. She had quite enjoyed it- the trips to Milan, Paris, New York, cocktails with designers and models. Leah wondered where she had really been during her "trips". (She'd mostly been in the sun room of a heroin addict's two-bedroom terrace tearing pictures of celebrities out of magazines. On her few ventures outside the sunroom she'd thrust the pictures into the faces of passers-by asking "What was she thinking when she left home in that!?!" Very few gave their honest opinion.)
"Well, I was pretty good at fashion writing then, I don't see why I couldn't do it again," she thought to herself, by this time having realised that if she consciously clamped her jaw down she wouldn't say everything she thought. "I'll give Fernando a call, see if he knows anyone." It occurred to Leah that Fernando was probably not real. In fact, very few of her fashion clique probably actually existed. What had the doctor said? Something about the power of the imagination creating pretend worlds blah blah blah. She'd stopped listening by that stage, distracted by his mismatched belt and shoes. "Bugger it then. I'll do it on my own. I've got an Amex and $6. I'll buy a pen and some paper and start writing."
Later that day, having purchased a black pen and a spiral bound notebook, Leah discovered that although her friends and career were imaginary, her credit card debts were all too real. She sat outside the heroin addict's house wondering how she was going to pay off $10,000 in credit without even a fictional salary. The junkie had refused to let her in, but had given her a milk crate to sit on, and maybe later to collect garbage in. She was now down to her last $1.85, and had just three cigarettes left. A passing homeless man aggressively mooched two of those from her, and she was left with a single cigarette. She opened her notebook and decided to write a review of his outfit. After about half an hour she had written "unoriginal and smelly" 17 times and produced a crude drawing of a small hairy dog. "I don't think I could sell this for much," she thought glumly. For the first time in two years the full reality of her situation was sinking in. Leah let her head drop down, her chin resting on her chest. The hard plastic webbing of the milk crate was digging into her buttocks.
A large delivery truck drove up the small lane and stopped oustide the junkie's home. Two large Eastern European men hopped out, with one running around the back to open the truck's the rear roller door. The second man sauntered up to Leah. "With the exception of the French Riviera, men should never be seen in shorts," Leah thought, having not yet totally given up on her fashion career.
"You Leah St John?" the big man asked.
"It's actually pronounced 'Lay'".
"I got couch here for you. You take?"
Leah nodded, slightly confused but feeling like this might be the first piece of good news she received that day. The two men unloaded what was clearly a $10,000 couch off the back of the truck and placed it on the footpath. Signature received, they hopped back into the truck and disappeared down the lane. Leah cast her eye over the couch. She wanted to describe it, but she was still fixated on "smelly and unoriginal", and neither of those adjectives seemed appropriate. The couch was a bold but elegant shade of red, and was so soft Leah wondered if its manufacturers had C-sectioned calves to get such fine leather. The couch's modern lines matched the boldness of its colour. "Sit on me," it seemed to say, "but always remember I'm better than you." Leah sat down on the couch and gathered her feet up under her. Yesterday she had been a famous fashion writer. This morning she was on medication and was a nobody. This afternoon she was a nobody sitting on a credit-bought couch in the late afternoon sun. She pulled out her notebook again and made a small entry:
"Things to do: Buy red handbag and shoes."
And the NRL think they have a problem...
Australia's football stars are out of control!
Headline from smh.com.au 7/6/07 7.20pm
"Bombers kill eight Iraqi police"
Expect heads to roll down at Windy Hill. Sheeds is gonna explode!
Headline from smh.com.au 7/6/07 7.20pm
"Bombers kill eight Iraqi police"
Expect heads to roll down at Windy Hill. Sheeds is gonna explode!
Nothing matters in our private universe...
John took solace in the knowledge that somewhere out there an alternate universe had been created in which he hadn't just said what he had, in fact, just said. He was the science equivalent of a chardonnay socialist, just taking the bits he liked when it suited him- and Tegmark's theory of alternate universes suited him now as he sat at the silent dinner table like a man who had just soiled himself on the train long before he was due to get off. He imagined the informed, impassioned but unmistakably jovial conversation continuing in this parallel world, unhindered by the sheer, blunt stupidity of what he had just blurted out in the heat of the moment. He imagined the evening progressing, and the conversation performing wilder loops and even more thrilling twists as the wine flowed and people relaxed. He imagined the knowing looks his partner would send his way each time he made a brilliant point, or deftly summarised someone's argument in a way that satisfied both parties. His mind conjured up the intensely sensual sights, smells and sounds of the passionate lovemaking that would inevitably follow such a wonderful evening- an evening in which he would have forever won over his partner's friends, leaving them no option but to quietly encourage her to marry him.
The silence continued as John sat at the table, his eyes staring across countless light years at this alternate paradise. Only the tastefully subdued strains of John Mayer's latest offering penetrated the suffocatingly silent stillness that had enveloped the party. Slowly John's gaze drew back across the infinite ripples and swells of spacetime into the tastefully appointed semi-formal dining room. Aware that he had not only pulled the emergency brake on the night's conversation, but had followed it up with roughly two full minutes of starry-eyed silence, he felt it was time to act.
"I'm not saying that all gays are paedoph..."
Somewhere, billions of light years away, in a separate stream of space and time, an alternate version of John shivered as goosebumps ran from the base of his skull to the soles of his feet.
The silence continued as John sat at the table, his eyes staring across countless light years at this alternate paradise. Only the tastefully subdued strains of John Mayer's latest offering penetrated the suffocatingly silent stillness that had enveloped the party. Slowly John's gaze drew back across the infinite ripples and swells of spacetime into the tastefully appointed semi-formal dining room. Aware that he had not only pulled the emergency brake on the night's conversation, but had followed it up with roughly two full minutes of starry-eyed silence, he felt it was time to act.
"I'm not saying that all gays are paedoph..."
Somewhere, billions of light years away, in a separate stream of space and time, an alternate version of John shivered as goosebumps ran from the base of his skull to the soles of his feet.
Murder was da case he lost...
As I entered the office I strode up to the metal pole in the middle of our open-plan workspace to read the roster for the next fortnight. I knew before I even looked that I would have been, without fail, rostered on for both Sundays, taking my unbroken Sunday run to nine.
"It's meant to be one in two, Mahoney," I shouted across the office at the Deputy Editor.
"Swings and roundabouts, Steve, swings and roundabouts," he called as he leant back in his reclining leather office chair, picking at the gold bar securing his tie to his "yes, I am doing well, thanks" blue shirt with white cuffs and collar.
The Sunday rostering system was my chief annoyance at the Advertiser. When I was hired Mahoney told me I would have to work roughly every second Sunday. What he meant was that he would ask the senior staff on Thursdays, then roster the youngest people on after the established journos told him to piss off. He would then restore "balance" to the system by vocally pointing out every time you weren't rostered on for Sunday, as if one weekend off a quarter was an industrial relations breakthrough on par with the 40-hour week.
As I stood quietly fuming in front of the roster, something else caught my eye. In the photographers' section of the new roster, one row consisted almost entirely of question marks. I pondered this irregularity for a second, recalling for some reason Jim Carrey's subtly-nuanced portrayal of The Riddler in the classic Batman Forever, before I realised why there was confusion surrounding this particular photographer and his work availability.
"So Stu fronts the court this week," I asked Dane in a way that made placing a question mark at the end of the sentence almost impossible. I mean, it was definitely a question, but it was very well disguised as a statement- no upward inflexion etc- if you were there there'd be no mistaking it, but on paper it doesn't look right, so that's why I'm telling you. It was a question.
"Yep, he's there on Monday," Dane answered (see?).
"What do you reckon?"
"After all this time, to be honest I'd feel a bit cheated if he didn't go to jail. It'd be like someone telling a joke for two years and then walking away before telling you the punchline," Dane said.
"You blokes talking about Stu?" Les had overheard our conversation and the cruel glint in his eye suggested he had something to say on the topic. He rolled himself across the linoleum floor on his chair to where we were standing. "If that bloke isn't as guilty as sin I'll sit in Rossco's lap for the next week."***
In fact, Stu's guilt was not in doubt. He'd already pleaded guilty to "Inflicting Grievous Bodily Harm With The Intent To Kill" some months earlier, and had been awaiting sentence since then. In fact, ever since I joined the esteemed ranks of the Advertiser, Stu had been awaiting something or other. The Stu Saga had been going for years now, with seemingly interminable delays between each step of the legal process- from the charge, to the committal, to the plea, to the plea bargain, to the sentencing had taken three-and-a-half years.
I first stumbled across the story on my second day in the job, when Dane had asked me which photographer I was going out on a job with. When he heard it was Stu, he just said: "Ask him about when he tried to kill his wife." Needless to say I didn't. Instead we made small talk. I was about to write "the usual small talk", but with Stu, no conversation could be covered by an adjective like "usual". Just 10 minutes into our 70 minute journey, Stu turned to me with a knowing grin and asked:
"A young guy like you must do pretty well with the girls."
"Not really", I said, as I was still only fresh out of boarding school, and thus still wore terror of the opposite sex as cologne.
Stu then fixed me with an altogether different type of grin, one I would become too familiar with over time. With his eyes leering left at me as he drove, his tongue peeked out the right side of his mouth. This was a bad look, not only because it meant you were about to hear a perverted story, but because it highlighted Stu's mole-like looks. He was short, fat and balding, in his mid-30s and wore small round glasses. He would invariably wear a blue felt Akubra to work, in winter accompanied by a long grey trenchcoat, apparently in an attempt to clear up any confusion as to whether you would let your children near him or not.
"Tell you what you should do, mate," he said, his fat little face lighting up, "get on the internet. There are so many sluts around Wagga, you wouldn't believe it. They just sit around their houses on the computer waiting for someone, then they jump on it. Take last night, for example..."
"You can keep it," I thought, but I was well and truly a rabbit in the headlights by this time.
"I had just put the boys to bed, and was on the computer, and I found this skank out at Glenfield (a very young family dominated area of town) and started talking to her. Half an hour later mate, she's at my place going down on me, and before you know it we're doing it. She was an animal, she loved it. Unbelievable."
"Really?" I asked, trying to make my internal horror appear on my face as a look of ice-cool interest.
"Yeah mate, a young bloke like you would kill it," he said in his soft, weaselly voice, followed by a high-pitched giggle.
"What was she like?"
"Like I said mate, an animal..."
"No, I meant, what did she look like."
"Oh, she was a bit heavy mate, but I don't care, you gotta take what you can get, and baby, was I gettin' it."
From there on the rest of the trip consisted of Stu recounting every internet encounter he'd ever had, including a few he would have liked to have had, while I contemplated leaping from a car going 110kmh and whether the likely consequences of such an action would outweigh the costs of hearing stories that included phrases like "her finger up my date". On the ride home Stu put the sex stories away and told me his life story, which mostly dealt with his two young sons, one of whom had Muscular Dystrophy. (This will be the last mention of them, because they make it too depressing. Let's pretend they're not there.) There was no mention of his court case. I had to wait until Car Trip Number Two for that one.
I returned to the office after the first trip a trifle shaken, and reeking of meatballs. The meatball scent was due to the foot-long Subway meatball sub that had been festering in the sun in the back of the car during our two-and-a-bit-hour trip. Stu printed off the photo for the story we had covered and I took it to Juz the chief sub-editor, who wanted to see it.
"Is this it?" she shouted, looking horrified. I hadn't looked at it yet. "Didn't you tell him it was for the front page?" I had. "It's almost kiddie porn!"
The photo was an unnerving close up of a young girl shoving a sauce-covered sausage into her mouth.
"We can't run this on the front page. We'll have to shuffle the stories around. F--- he's useless. He's a f---in' sicko." As you can see, bad language in the workplace transcends gender lines in the news business. I walked back to my desk, feeling a bit annoyed that my story wasn't going to be on the front anymore, just because Stu took a sexually suggestive photo of a young girl.
"How was it?" Dane asked me.
"Interesting," I said, already repressing the memory of Stu telling me how much a certain woman liked a certain thing in a certain place. "What's with the sub in the car?" I asked.
Dane filled me in. Apparently Stu was, like Bake******, a tightarse of Bradmanesque proportions. Caltex was constantly running a "get a free sub with your petrol" deal, and Stu, eyeing off the company's car fleet, insisted on refilling all the cars each day, thereby pocketing up to six feet of free salad roll. He would then take the free rolls home and freeze them as dinner for his kids. I later experienced countless examples of Stu's thriftiness firsthand. Often Stu would arrive to take pictures of an event, say for example a Country Women's Association bake sale, and help himself to scones, pies, slices that had been set aside for judging, or for a lunch that was still hours away. If the aforementioned scones/pies/slices were not out in the open, Stu would just approach the nearest organiser and say something like "I'm from the paper, can I just have some of the food." It could be embarrassing at official functions, when you (as a diligent professional) had organised and set up a photo only to turn around and see that Stu had left to find the free food. "You've got to take what you can get, mate. If they offer it, take as much as you can, and if they don't, take even more," was his mantra, he explained to me on a ride back from a house where Stu had walked up to the family's fridge, opened it, and helped himself. Stu had once taken his stinginess too far and been convicted of insurance fraud, after he pushed his old car into the Murrumbidgee River. Apparently the insurance company sensed something was wrong when the car contained absolutely no personal possessions.
Speaking of convictions, the first time Stu mentioned his ongoing legal troubles was on our second ever car trip together.
"I suppose you've heard about the court case," he asked me.
"Yeah, I've heard a bit," I said, casually trying to sound like I hadn't been asking everyone except him about it all morning.
"It's all bullshit mate. The ex-wife reckons I tried to kill her, but I don't even remember it happening. It's the only time I've ever drunk, and I don't remember any of it, so she's just telling everyone whatever she wants. Reckons I drugged her and locked us in the garage with the car running. So now I've been charged with attempted murder. Bullshit. She's a psycho."
"Really?" I asked.
"Yeah mate, she's a nutcase. If I'd known that I wouldn't have stolen her off my mate."
"What?"
"Yeah, he was hitting her, and I started looking after her, and one thing led to another. She was a maniac mate, but had the best body. A little gymnast. So tidy, you wouldn't believe it. And the sex... Oh, mate, she was a maniac there as well. Get this, I'd wake up in the morning and she'd set the alarm early so we could do it, then on my lunch break we'd do it twice, then at least twice that night, that's about 35-40 times a week mate. She wore me out mate, you see me now, I used to be about 10 kilos lighter, just from all the sex, she was so..." At this point I zoned out, because I could tell, now that his tongue was poking through the corner of his mouth, that I was about to get details I didn't want or need. I zoned back in again at... "so she started telling people I was hitting her, which no one believed, and then she legged it to Tasmania with some bloke and she doesn't want anything to do with the kids, but every now and then she turns up and tries to take them."
About 12 months and 140 sickening internet dalliances after this conversation took place, Stu told us all that he'd pleaded guilty to the lesser charge mentioned at the start of the story, but "only because it means I won't go to jail." At this statement, there were a few disappointed sighs. In the relatively white bread world of journalism, I think quite a few people were looking forward to telling people they knew someone who was in jail. However, Chief Photographer Les made a prediction that day that he would spend the rest of his career reminding people of at the pub.
"He's a f---in' idiot. They've got him. I bet when it's actually sorted out, the fact that he's admitted to doing something will mean they'll jack the charge up on him at the last minute, and he'll be touching his toes in the shower in no time."
I was still arguing with Mahoney about the Sunday roster when we got the call from Stu's mum.
"Five years, 18 months good behaviour. They jacked the charge up on him at the last minute. He'll be touching his toes in the shower in no time."
Dane picked up a permanent marker, walked up to the roster and replaced the question marks with thick black bars.
Sports Editor Les broke the silence.
"Toodle pip, Stu, don't come back."
Epilogue: Two weeks after Stu went to jail, Fred the maintenance guy was cleaning out one of the cars. He popped the glove box open and discovered a three-week old turkey foot-long jammed in it, accompanied by a Caltex fuel voucher.
*** To understand this reference, read the entry titled "I hate the smell of Rossco in the morning...". I've started making these entries intertextual in an attempt to force people into reading them all.
****** See "Can I have another piece of chocolate cake..."
"It's meant to be one in two, Mahoney," I shouted across the office at the Deputy Editor.
"Swings and roundabouts, Steve, swings and roundabouts," he called as he leant back in his reclining leather office chair, picking at the gold bar securing his tie to his "yes, I am doing well, thanks" blue shirt with white cuffs and collar.
The Sunday rostering system was my chief annoyance at the Advertiser. When I was hired Mahoney told me I would have to work roughly every second Sunday. What he meant was that he would ask the senior staff on Thursdays, then roster the youngest people on after the established journos told him to piss off. He would then restore "balance" to the system by vocally pointing out every time you weren't rostered on for Sunday, as if one weekend off a quarter was an industrial relations breakthrough on par with the 40-hour week.
As I stood quietly fuming in front of the roster, something else caught my eye. In the photographers' section of the new roster, one row consisted almost entirely of question marks. I pondered this irregularity for a second, recalling for some reason Jim Carrey's subtly-nuanced portrayal of The Riddler in the classic Batman Forever, before I realised why there was confusion surrounding this particular photographer and his work availability.
"So Stu fronts the court this week," I asked Dane in a way that made placing a question mark at the end of the sentence almost impossible. I mean, it was definitely a question, but it was very well disguised as a statement- no upward inflexion etc- if you were there there'd be no mistaking it, but on paper it doesn't look right, so that's why I'm telling you. It was a question.
"Yep, he's there on Monday," Dane answered (see?).
"What do you reckon?"
"After all this time, to be honest I'd feel a bit cheated if he didn't go to jail. It'd be like someone telling a joke for two years and then walking away before telling you the punchline," Dane said.
"You blokes talking about Stu?" Les had overheard our conversation and the cruel glint in his eye suggested he had something to say on the topic. He rolled himself across the linoleum floor on his chair to where we were standing. "If that bloke isn't as guilty as sin I'll sit in Rossco's lap for the next week."***
In fact, Stu's guilt was not in doubt. He'd already pleaded guilty to "Inflicting Grievous Bodily Harm With The Intent To Kill" some months earlier, and had been awaiting sentence since then. In fact, ever since I joined the esteemed ranks of the Advertiser, Stu had been awaiting something or other. The Stu Saga had been going for years now, with seemingly interminable delays between each step of the legal process- from the charge, to the committal, to the plea, to the plea bargain, to the sentencing had taken three-and-a-half years.
I first stumbled across the story on my second day in the job, when Dane had asked me which photographer I was going out on a job with. When he heard it was Stu, he just said: "Ask him about when he tried to kill his wife." Needless to say I didn't. Instead we made small talk. I was about to write "the usual small talk", but with Stu, no conversation could be covered by an adjective like "usual". Just 10 minutes into our 70 minute journey, Stu turned to me with a knowing grin and asked:
"A young guy like you must do pretty well with the girls."
"Not really", I said, as I was still only fresh out of boarding school, and thus still wore terror of the opposite sex as cologne.
Stu then fixed me with an altogether different type of grin, one I would become too familiar with over time. With his eyes leering left at me as he drove, his tongue peeked out the right side of his mouth. This was a bad look, not only because it meant you were about to hear a perverted story, but because it highlighted Stu's mole-like looks. He was short, fat and balding, in his mid-30s and wore small round glasses. He would invariably wear a blue felt Akubra to work, in winter accompanied by a long grey trenchcoat, apparently in an attempt to clear up any confusion as to whether you would let your children near him or not.
"Tell you what you should do, mate," he said, his fat little face lighting up, "get on the internet. There are so many sluts around Wagga, you wouldn't believe it. They just sit around their houses on the computer waiting for someone, then they jump on it. Take last night, for example..."
"You can keep it," I thought, but I was well and truly a rabbit in the headlights by this time.
"I had just put the boys to bed, and was on the computer, and I found this skank out at Glenfield (a very young family dominated area of town) and started talking to her. Half an hour later mate, she's at my place going down on me, and before you know it we're doing it. She was an animal, she loved it. Unbelievable."
"Really?" I asked, trying to make my internal horror appear on my face as a look of ice-cool interest.
"Yeah mate, a young bloke like you would kill it," he said in his soft, weaselly voice, followed by a high-pitched giggle.
"What was she like?"
"Like I said mate, an animal..."
"No, I meant, what did she look like."
"Oh, she was a bit heavy mate, but I don't care, you gotta take what you can get, and baby, was I gettin' it."
From there on the rest of the trip consisted of Stu recounting every internet encounter he'd ever had, including a few he would have liked to have had, while I contemplated leaping from a car going 110kmh and whether the likely consequences of such an action would outweigh the costs of hearing stories that included phrases like "her finger up my date". On the ride home Stu put the sex stories away and told me his life story, which mostly dealt with his two young sons, one of whom had Muscular Dystrophy. (This will be the last mention of them, because they make it too depressing. Let's pretend they're not there.) There was no mention of his court case. I had to wait until Car Trip Number Two for that one.
I returned to the office after the first trip a trifle shaken, and reeking of meatballs. The meatball scent was due to the foot-long Subway meatball sub that had been festering in the sun in the back of the car during our two-and-a-bit-hour trip. Stu printed off the photo for the story we had covered and I took it to Juz the chief sub-editor, who wanted to see it.
"Is this it?" she shouted, looking horrified. I hadn't looked at it yet. "Didn't you tell him it was for the front page?" I had. "It's almost kiddie porn!"
The photo was an unnerving close up of a young girl shoving a sauce-covered sausage into her mouth.
"We can't run this on the front page. We'll have to shuffle the stories around. F--- he's useless. He's a f---in' sicko." As you can see, bad language in the workplace transcends gender lines in the news business. I walked back to my desk, feeling a bit annoyed that my story wasn't going to be on the front anymore, just because Stu took a sexually suggestive photo of a young girl.
"How was it?" Dane asked me.
"Interesting," I said, already repressing the memory of Stu telling me how much a certain woman liked a certain thing in a certain place. "What's with the sub in the car?" I asked.
Dane filled me in. Apparently Stu was, like Bake******, a tightarse of Bradmanesque proportions. Caltex was constantly running a "get a free sub with your petrol" deal, and Stu, eyeing off the company's car fleet, insisted on refilling all the cars each day, thereby pocketing up to six feet of free salad roll. He would then take the free rolls home and freeze them as dinner for his kids. I later experienced countless examples of Stu's thriftiness firsthand. Often Stu would arrive to take pictures of an event, say for example a Country Women's Association bake sale, and help himself to scones, pies, slices that had been set aside for judging, or for a lunch that was still hours away. If the aforementioned scones/pies/slices were not out in the open, Stu would just approach the nearest organiser and say something like "I'm from the paper, can I just have some of the food." It could be embarrassing at official functions, when you (as a diligent professional) had organised and set up a photo only to turn around and see that Stu had left to find the free food. "You've got to take what you can get, mate. If they offer it, take as much as you can, and if they don't, take even more," was his mantra, he explained to me on a ride back from a house where Stu had walked up to the family's fridge, opened it, and helped himself. Stu had once taken his stinginess too far and been convicted of insurance fraud, after he pushed his old car into the Murrumbidgee River. Apparently the insurance company sensed something was wrong when the car contained absolutely no personal possessions.
Speaking of convictions, the first time Stu mentioned his ongoing legal troubles was on our second ever car trip together.
"I suppose you've heard about the court case," he asked me.
"Yeah, I've heard a bit," I said, casually trying to sound like I hadn't been asking everyone except him about it all morning.
"It's all bullshit mate. The ex-wife reckons I tried to kill her, but I don't even remember it happening. It's the only time I've ever drunk, and I don't remember any of it, so she's just telling everyone whatever she wants. Reckons I drugged her and locked us in the garage with the car running. So now I've been charged with attempted murder. Bullshit. She's a psycho."
"Really?" I asked.
"Yeah mate, she's a nutcase. If I'd known that I wouldn't have stolen her off my mate."
"What?"
"Yeah, he was hitting her, and I started looking after her, and one thing led to another. She was a maniac mate, but had the best body. A little gymnast. So tidy, you wouldn't believe it. And the sex... Oh, mate, she was a maniac there as well. Get this, I'd wake up in the morning and she'd set the alarm early so we could do it, then on my lunch break we'd do it twice, then at least twice that night, that's about 35-40 times a week mate. She wore me out mate, you see me now, I used to be about 10 kilos lighter, just from all the sex, she was so..." At this point I zoned out, because I could tell, now that his tongue was poking through the corner of his mouth, that I was about to get details I didn't want or need. I zoned back in again at... "so she started telling people I was hitting her, which no one believed, and then she legged it to Tasmania with some bloke and she doesn't want anything to do with the kids, but every now and then she turns up and tries to take them."
About 12 months and 140 sickening internet dalliances after this conversation took place, Stu told us all that he'd pleaded guilty to the lesser charge mentioned at the start of the story, but "only because it means I won't go to jail." At this statement, there were a few disappointed sighs. In the relatively white bread world of journalism, I think quite a few people were looking forward to telling people they knew someone who was in jail. However, Chief Photographer Les made a prediction that day that he would spend the rest of his career reminding people of at the pub.
"He's a f---in' idiot. They've got him. I bet when it's actually sorted out, the fact that he's admitted to doing something will mean they'll jack the charge up on him at the last minute, and he'll be touching his toes in the shower in no time."
I was still arguing with Mahoney about the Sunday roster when we got the call from Stu's mum.
"Five years, 18 months good behaviour. They jacked the charge up on him at the last minute. He'll be touching his toes in the shower in no time."
Dane picked up a permanent marker, walked up to the roster and replaced the question marks with thick black bars.
Sports Editor Les broke the silence.
"Toodle pip, Stu, don't come back."
Epilogue: Two weeks after Stu went to jail, Fred the maintenance guy was cleaning out one of the cars. He popped the glove box open and discovered a three-week old turkey foot-long jammed in it, accompanied by a Caltex fuel voucher.
*** To understand this reference, read the entry titled "I hate the smell of Rossco in the morning...". I've started making these entries intertextual in an attempt to force people into reading them all.
****** See "Can I have another piece of chocolate cake..."
Check shirt, check one two...
"Gentlemen, I think you're playing a very dangerous game here," The Group Editor said, peering over his glasses at Dane and I. It was a scene straight out of a bad high school teen romp, with Dane and I playing the jocks getting a rap on the knuckles for a prank we were clearly proud of, and would never feel sorry for. The Group Editor was playing the role of the stern-yet-understanding year advisor. Dane and I were dressed almost identically in blue, short sleeved check shirts, mismatched ties, tan cinos and black shoes. Both of us also had mobile phones clipped to our belts, and Dane had added a gold tie clip to his ensemble, attempting, as always, to outdo me. (It wasn't the first time we had come to work dressed the same. After walking past Lowes one afternoon, we both bought matching $4.95 aqua shirt and tie combos and wore them to work the next day. Dane outdid me then, too, by gelling his hair to his head like a helmet.) The Group Editor smiled at us, highlighting his resemblance to a much paler, much less "thinking woman's sex object" David Koch.
"Don't you worry that he'll notice what's going on?"
"He" was the reason Dane and I were dressed alike. He was the reason the two of us, usually proud of our status as The Young Trendy Ones From Editorial, had turned our backs on bespoke elegance for the day in favour of shirts better suited to lining a picnic basket than wearing to the office.
"Get out of here and just be careful about how far you take this" was TGE's final warning to us, dismissing us back towards the newsroom and the world-changing events we were covering that day.
"Check Shirt Day" had been months in the planning, originating over a few sly lunchtime beers at The Tourist Hotel. It stemmed from a desire to escalate our ongoing, yet covert, war against our office nemesis Paul. Over the last two years, Paul had slowly climbed his way from the level of "you are a minor nuisance to me" to the vertigo-inducing "everything you do, from the way you look to the way you talk to the way you comb your hair makes me want to vomit my internal organs out onto my keyboard" level of annoyingness. It had now reached the point of ridiculousness, probably exactly at the moment Dane and I entered the office wearing check shirts.
I felt I had the most reason to be annoyed by Paul, as he sat directly to my left in our open-plan office. Dane used to sit in my place, but moved the moment another desk became available, and now had the luxury of being outside the "I can hear all Paul's phone conversations" zone. About six months after Check Shirt Day Dane left, and I literally (ie, in the literal sense) leapt over Rosie's desk in my haste to secure his now vacant seat.
"Moving desks mate?" Paul asked.
"Yeah, umm, sitting under the police scanner is getting to me, and I need more room now that I'm Junior Advertiser editor," I answered, semi-truthfully- after all, taking on the Junior meant being entrusted with Dane's manilla folder full of clippings. I genuinely needed more room.
"That's exactly what Dane said when he moved, I don't mind the scanner. It makes me excited you know, like I'm part of the action," he said, little realising that out of everyone in the office, including Rossco, he was the least close to any form of action.
Paul was roughly 24 years old, and began working as a journalist after dropping out of the local Catholic seminary. During his training for the priesthood, he had spent a year in the Vatican. It was this experience that made him decide to leave, claiming he "saw a Cardinal stabbed to death in the street". I was reluctant to believe this claim, perhaps naively assuming that the brutal murder of a Cardinal was likely to be mentioned in at least one newspaper or church bulletin. He was hired by the old editor, another staunch Catholic, under the old hiring system which was based on knowledge of the rosary as opposed to writing ability.
He was a tall, stringy man, still gawky and awkward like a teenager. His resemblance to a teenager was perhaps appropriate, given his situation. Paul still lived with his parents. "So what?" I hear readers cry. Let me respond by saying what made this case particularly pathetic was that he still shared a room with his brother, currently studying Year 9 at one of Wagga's three public high schools. On learning this from Sara, the most attractive woman at the paper, who had recently had to warn Paul to stop telling people she was about to leave her boyfriend to start dating him, a few of Paul's other quirks began to make sense. For example, Paul arrived at work every day with a blue lunch box in a plastic bag. After some aggressive questioning from a belligerent post-four-beer-lunch Whitey, it emerged that yes, Paul's mum did pack him his lunch every day.
"Whitey, my mum packs me a lunch every day," I responded, at that time I was still living with my parents.
"Yeah, but you don't have to have it. If this big girl's blouse didn't get a packed lunch every morning, he'd just sit there and bloody starve to death, wouldn't you Paul?" Whitey shouted, lurching back to his own desk to write some lurid emails to the girls in classifieds.
Paul said nothing in response to Whitey's half-drunk verbal attack. It was obvious he wasn't comfortable dealing with confrontation, an attribute that made him almost useless as a serious journalist, and made Dane suspect he had been bullied constantly during school. Paul was a classic case of someone who desperately wanted to be "one of the boys", but didn't know how. He compensated by often engaging in hyper-macho talk, during which his obvious fear of women would come to the fore. Frequently Paul would finish a conversation with a woman over the phone, during which he would use a sickeningly sweet voice and obsequiously agree with everything they said, only to later slam the phone down, affecting a butch, gravelly voice and saying something along the lines of "what she needs is a good shag to calm her down, hey Lloydy?"
"I think she's about 50 mate, so I don't know if that's really an option," I replied.
"They all love it mate, even at that age, and you can imagine what it'd be like," he said, slapping the back of his right hand onto the palm of his left- a gesture that I'm sure had Freud clawing at the lid of his coffin to analyse.
I let my imagination run wild at the prospect of Paul, who was so obviously a virgin, having sex with a 50 year old woman. For days I couldn't shake the image of Paul standing, dressed in one piece neck-to-toe underclothes, sucking his thumb while a naked Camilla Parker-Bowles smoked a cigarette in a single bed next to another bed containing his sleeping 14 year old brother.
Misogyny aside, Paul's phone calls were a constant souce of irritation. Usually conducted at 1500 decibels, Paul would make most of his calls standing up, pacing aroud his desk, pausing every few paces to look around and make sure at least one person was listening in on how important his call, and consequently he, was. These looks were invariably accompanied by a large flourish and a removal of his glasses, which he would then wave around like Churchill's cigar for the rest of the conversation. The call was usually wrapped up with Paul promising to give the person "a tinkle" (that's right, he'd give them a piss) in the next few days. This process was the same whether the call was conducted on his desk phone or his mobile, the only difference being that he would stand for the whole mobile conversation, because he'd have to get up to unclip it from his belt.
But time to return to Check Shirt Day.
Dane and I both started work at 9am on Check Shirt Day, with Paul rostered on to start at ten. The tension was as palpable as Rossco's stench as the big hand moved towards 12. At 9.55am, Paul strode into the office with his lolling, almost John Cleese silly-walk style gait, wearing a blue check shirt carefully matched to a jet black skinny tie (secured by a gold tie clip [damn]) on a platform of baggy tan cinos held up with a brown belt carefully selected to match what were quite obviously his old chunky-soled black Bata school shoes. Completing the ensemble, Paul had carefully parted his thin brown hair on the left, presumably with the comb that was peeking out over the top of his shirt pocket. He approached his desk with a stern seriousness, removing his round rim glasses to look me directly in the eye and ask his usual "any messages?" I answered, as always, in the negative.
"That's funny, I was expecting a whole pile of angry messages after yesterday's shitfight," he said, grinning and wobbling his head from side to side in what was clearly a calculated attempt to make me crash tackle him. The "shitfight" he was referring to was a local council story of little to no importance that he had spent the whole day beating up before writing his usual insipid "impartiality is a synonym for boring" style. Paul hated women, but loved his stories. I would spend most working days with my hand clasped over my left ear trying to drown out the sound of Paul bragging over the phone to people about how big a "shitfight" he was involved in that particular day. Quite often this bragging would involve him spruiking his opinion on the story to the people actually involved in it, a habit he seemed to think fit perfectly well with the impartial stance we were theoretically trying to maintain. One classic example was a high-profile case in Wagga where a well-known criminal was beaten to "within an inch of his life" (the magistrate's words) by local police who later destroyed evidence to conceal the bashing. The case took about two years to unravel- two years Paul spent on the phone to various local councillors, police and the victim's family explaining how the police could never have done it and how the victim was a scumbag and deserved even if he did get bashed. You'll notice how I mentioned above that he was saying this to the victim's family as well. (As an aside, two police were eventually sacked and faced criminal charges over the bashing, while another was demoted for having the crime scene professionally cleaned.)
Paul's take on this story reflected another of his quirks. He was convinced that because he spoke to the police and the court staff at least twice a week, that meant they were friends. The rest of us were aware that we at the Advertiser enjoyed, at best, a frosty relationship with the local police. Paul, on the other hand, could often be heard speaking in outrageously familiar terms with senior officers (everything from "how's that wife of yours", to "spent the weekend in Canberra, myself", and "we should get together and have a beer and sort this all out") and frequently referred to the top ranking officers in the regions as My Mate (insert first name of officer here). This was a great source of amusement to Dane and I, who often fielded calls from members of the My Mate club who were "returning a call from that Paul dickhead".
We spent the whole of the morning waiting for Paul to notice we were deliberately mocking him using the medium of fashion. At about 1.45pm, Paul looked up, cracked a big grin and said:
"Hang on, we should start a blue shirt club today, we're all wearing them."
That was it. One sentence. Instead of being an outlet, Check Shirt Day had developed into another reason to despise Paul. Dane and I looked at each other in disgust, both realising that we'd already had our lunch break and would have to spend the rest of the day being silently ridiculed by our check shirts and our ridiculous ties.
Epilogue: Shortly before I left the Advertiser, Paul went on a holiday to the Gold Coast. Rumours circulated following his return that he had met a girl up there. I quizzed him about it, and he had in fact met a young lady, a registered nurse, who on the strength of their week together, was now moving to Wagga to live closer to him. This precipitated Paul making three or four calls a day to the girl, who he exclusively referred to as (I kid you not) My Little Nursie (the one-piece underwear is back in my mind). About six months after I left the paper, I received word that Paul and MLN had married, and Paul had moved on to a regional weekly in Queensland, to continue his unique brand of infuriating good humour mixed with mysogyny.
"Don't you worry that he'll notice what's going on?"
"He" was the reason Dane and I were dressed alike. He was the reason the two of us, usually proud of our status as The Young Trendy Ones From Editorial, had turned our backs on bespoke elegance for the day in favour of shirts better suited to lining a picnic basket than wearing to the office.
"Get out of here and just be careful about how far you take this" was TGE's final warning to us, dismissing us back towards the newsroom and the world-changing events we were covering that day.
"Check Shirt Day" had been months in the planning, originating over a few sly lunchtime beers at The Tourist Hotel. It stemmed from a desire to escalate our ongoing, yet covert, war against our office nemesis Paul. Over the last two years, Paul had slowly climbed his way from the level of "you are a minor nuisance to me" to the vertigo-inducing "everything you do, from the way you look to the way you talk to the way you comb your hair makes me want to vomit my internal organs out onto my keyboard" level of annoyingness. It had now reached the point of ridiculousness, probably exactly at the moment Dane and I entered the office wearing check shirts.
I felt I had the most reason to be annoyed by Paul, as he sat directly to my left in our open-plan office. Dane used to sit in my place, but moved the moment another desk became available, and now had the luxury of being outside the "I can hear all Paul's phone conversations" zone. About six months after Check Shirt Day Dane left, and I literally (ie, in the literal sense) leapt over Rosie's desk in my haste to secure his now vacant seat.
"Moving desks mate?" Paul asked.
"Yeah, umm, sitting under the police scanner is getting to me, and I need more room now that I'm Junior Advertiser editor," I answered, semi-truthfully- after all, taking on the Junior meant being entrusted with Dane's manilla folder full of clippings. I genuinely needed more room.
"That's exactly what Dane said when he moved, I don't mind the scanner. It makes me excited you know, like I'm part of the action," he said, little realising that out of everyone in the office, including Rossco, he was the least close to any form of action.
Paul was roughly 24 years old, and began working as a journalist after dropping out of the local Catholic seminary. During his training for the priesthood, he had spent a year in the Vatican. It was this experience that made him decide to leave, claiming he "saw a Cardinal stabbed to death in the street". I was reluctant to believe this claim, perhaps naively assuming that the brutal murder of a Cardinal was likely to be mentioned in at least one newspaper or church bulletin. He was hired by the old editor, another staunch Catholic, under the old hiring system which was based on knowledge of the rosary as opposed to writing ability.
He was a tall, stringy man, still gawky and awkward like a teenager. His resemblance to a teenager was perhaps appropriate, given his situation. Paul still lived with his parents. "So what?" I hear readers cry. Let me respond by saying what made this case particularly pathetic was that he still shared a room with his brother, currently studying Year 9 at one of Wagga's three public high schools. On learning this from Sara, the most attractive woman at the paper, who had recently had to warn Paul to stop telling people she was about to leave her boyfriend to start dating him, a few of Paul's other quirks began to make sense. For example, Paul arrived at work every day with a blue lunch box in a plastic bag. After some aggressive questioning from a belligerent post-four-beer-lunch Whitey, it emerged that yes, Paul's mum did pack him his lunch every day.
"Whitey, my mum packs me a lunch every day," I responded, at that time I was still living with my parents.
"Yeah, but you don't have to have it. If this big girl's blouse didn't get a packed lunch every morning, he'd just sit there and bloody starve to death, wouldn't you Paul?" Whitey shouted, lurching back to his own desk to write some lurid emails to the girls in classifieds.
Paul said nothing in response to Whitey's half-drunk verbal attack. It was obvious he wasn't comfortable dealing with confrontation, an attribute that made him almost useless as a serious journalist, and made Dane suspect he had been bullied constantly during school. Paul was a classic case of someone who desperately wanted to be "one of the boys", but didn't know how. He compensated by often engaging in hyper-macho talk, during which his obvious fear of women would come to the fore. Frequently Paul would finish a conversation with a woman over the phone, during which he would use a sickeningly sweet voice and obsequiously agree with everything they said, only to later slam the phone down, affecting a butch, gravelly voice and saying something along the lines of "what she needs is a good shag to calm her down, hey Lloydy?"
"I think she's about 50 mate, so I don't know if that's really an option," I replied.
"They all love it mate, even at that age, and you can imagine what it'd be like," he said, slapping the back of his right hand onto the palm of his left- a gesture that I'm sure had Freud clawing at the lid of his coffin to analyse.
I let my imagination run wild at the prospect of Paul, who was so obviously a virgin, having sex with a 50 year old woman. For days I couldn't shake the image of Paul standing, dressed in one piece neck-to-toe underclothes, sucking his thumb while a naked Camilla Parker-Bowles smoked a cigarette in a single bed next to another bed containing his sleeping 14 year old brother.
Misogyny aside, Paul's phone calls were a constant souce of irritation. Usually conducted at 1500 decibels, Paul would make most of his calls standing up, pacing aroud his desk, pausing every few paces to look around and make sure at least one person was listening in on how important his call, and consequently he, was. These looks were invariably accompanied by a large flourish and a removal of his glasses, which he would then wave around like Churchill's cigar for the rest of the conversation. The call was usually wrapped up with Paul promising to give the person "a tinkle" (that's right, he'd give them a piss) in the next few days. This process was the same whether the call was conducted on his desk phone or his mobile, the only difference being that he would stand for the whole mobile conversation, because he'd have to get up to unclip it from his belt.
But time to return to Check Shirt Day.
Dane and I both started work at 9am on Check Shirt Day, with Paul rostered on to start at ten. The tension was as palpable as Rossco's stench as the big hand moved towards 12. At 9.55am, Paul strode into the office with his lolling, almost John Cleese silly-walk style gait, wearing a blue check shirt carefully matched to a jet black skinny tie (secured by a gold tie clip [damn]) on a platform of baggy tan cinos held up with a brown belt carefully selected to match what were quite obviously his old chunky-soled black Bata school shoes. Completing the ensemble, Paul had carefully parted his thin brown hair on the left, presumably with the comb that was peeking out over the top of his shirt pocket. He approached his desk with a stern seriousness, removing his round rim glasses to look me directly in the eye and ask his usual "any messages?" I answered, as always, in the negative.
"That's funny, I was expecting a whole pile of angry messages after yesterday's shitfight," he said, grinning and wobbling his head from side to side in what was clearly a calculated attempt to make me crash tackle him. The "shitfight" he was referring to was a local council story of little to no importance that he had spent the whole day beating up before writing his usual insipid "impartiality is a synonym for boring" style. Paul hated women, but loved his stories. I would spend most working days with my hand clasped over my left ear trying to drown out the sound of Paul bragging over the phone to people about how big a "shitfight" he was involved in that particular day. Quite often this bragging would involve him spruiking his opinion on the story to the people actually involved in it, a habit he seemed to think fit perfectly well with the impartial stance we were theoretically trying to maintain. One classic example was a high-profile case in Wagga where a well-known criminal was beaten to "within an inch of his life" (the magistrate's words) by local police who later destroyed evidence to conceal the bashing. The case took about two years to unravel- two years Paul spent on the phone to various local councillors, police and the victim's family explaining how the police could never have done it and how the victim was a scumbag and deserved even if he did get bashed. You'll notice how I mentioned above that he was saying this to the victim's family as well. (As an aside, two police were eventually sacked and faced criminal charges over the bashing, while another was demoted for having the crime scene professionally cleaned.)
Paul's take on this story reflected another of his quirks. He was convinced that because he spoke to the police and the court staff at least twice a week, that meant they were friends. The rest of us were aware that we at the Advertiser enjoyed, at best, a frosty relationship with the local police. Paul, on the other hand, could often be heard speaking in outrageously familiar terms with senior officers (everything from "how's that wife of yours", to "spent the weekend in Canberra, myself", and "we should get together and have a beer and sort this all out") and frequently referred to the top ranking officers in the regions as My Mate (insert first name of officer here). This was a great source of amusement to Dane and I, who often fielded calls from members of the My Mate club who were "returning a call from that Paul dickhead".
We spent the whole of the morning waiting for Paul to notice we were deliberately mocking him using the medium of fashion. At about 1.45pm, Paul looked up, cracked a big grin and said:
"Hang on, we should start a blue shirt club today, we're all wearing them."
That was it. One sentence. Instead of being an outlet, Check Shirt Day had developed into another reason to despise Paul. Dane and I looked at each other in disgust, both realising that we'd already had our lunch break and would have to spend the rest of the day being silently ridiculed by our check shirts and our ridiculous ties.
Epilogue: Shortly before I left the Advertiser, Paul went on a holiday to the Gold Coast. Rumours circulated following his return that he had met a girl up there. I quizzed him about it, and he had in fact met a young lady, a registered nurse, who on the strength of their week together, was now moving to Wagga to live closer to him. This precipitated Paul making three or four calls a day to the girl, who he exclusively referred to as (I kid you not) My Little Nursie (the one-piece underwear is back in my mind). About six months after I left the paper, I received word that Paul and MLN had married, and Paul had moved on to a regional weekly in Queensland, to continue his unique brand of infuriating good humour mixed with mysogyny.
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