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
Stone cold Circumstances
Thursday, June 28, 2007
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..."
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