Are You In Love?

I tried to write a story about something that happened at work today but when I read it afterwards, it was terrible. OK, look, all that happened was that I rode the elevator with a woman who admitted that she never had a hairdryer, and she never wore makeup. I loaned her my phone that for some reason has a mirror on it, and she looked at herself in the mirror as she rearranged her hair and examined her makeup-free face, and said something about a boyfriend she had who was twenty years younger than her. I don't know why she told me all that. I couldn't think of anything to say, so maybe she just kept going.
What I should have tried to write about was when I delivered the mail to the HR department and there was the Filipino woman I like to talk to, and she overheard me singing some song I made up, and she came over and said what was that song? Where do you get those songs? I told her they come from another planet and the only way to stop them is to wear a helmet made from aluminium foil. She started laughing. Maybe that's why I like her - she laughs at things I say.
Later I found out I had left some other department's mail in the HR department - the Polish woman I'm CRAZY about told me that on the phone.
'You left it here,' she said. 'Are you in love?'
Why did my heart leap in my chest when she said that?
Are you in love?

Nile

Friday night Anders and I went to the Gaelic Club in Surry Hills to see Nile. Have you heard of them? Yes? No? Well, Nile are a US death metal band obsessed with Ancient Egypt. They write songs about all the different ways that people were killed by Egyptian gods and demons in the Ancient Egyptian world. As with all the best death metal, you can't understand any of the lyrics so you need to consult the booklet in the CD. You can't understand the lyrics because the singer growls, or rumbles; sometimes it sounds like he is vomiting, or he is trying to clear a blockage in his throat. It's a very guttural kind of sound, like you would imagine a zombie might make. It's really great and fits the music perfectly. The music is fast and violent and sounds like you are under attack, but in a good way.
Anyhow, we got there early so we saw the two support bands. The first band I can't remember what their name was, but they were pretty good. Then the second band came on and they were called Furor and they were pretty good too. But wait a minute, I thought, these bands sound like black metal bands! See, black metal has keyboards - there is more of a symphonic element. But I like black metal too, so it was all good, as the saying goes. But with this band Furor, I became sort of obsessed with the guitarist. What I mean is, for their entire performance I was trying to figure out what was going on with him or her. From what I could tell, this guitarist had long beaded hair with glowing lights in it, and goat horns on top. Sometimes he or she reminded me of the Predator in the Schwarzenegger movie, the way it moved. To get closer to the point, this guitarist didn't seem completely human! It was a hypnotic performance, whatever the case.
Then Nile came out and to the dismay of everybody there, took a while to get started. The audience chanted NY-AL! NY-AL! NY-AL! The air was buzzing with suspense! At last they began. They played some songs from their new album Annihilation of the Wicked (which I've got), and from their last album, I forget the title. Yes, I am a total Nile noob, ha ha! I only discovered them fairly recently, actually. But for years I have hardly gone out so you must understand, it was a big deal for me, and for Anders, for that matter. But Nile were great, and the sound quality was magnificent; loud and clear and brutal beyond words. The audience were as interesting as the bands too. Some of them looked like vikings, as though they might swing an axe any minute and send someone's head flying, spurting great jets of hot blood. Yet, consistent with my limited experience of death metal shows, the audience were perfectly well mannered and polite. Excuse me, excuse me, yes yes, of course, no, after you, by all means! etc. But having said that, what do you know happened after the concert! Anders and I walked across the road to sit down for a minute so I could have a cigarette, the cops showed up and started shoving their weight around. They were not dressed like regular cops but like some special division, the same that I have been seeing on street corners around the city lately. Anyway, three of them came over to me and Anders and said OK time to go, time to go. Move it. I said what, I'm just gonna finish my cigarette, but the cop said no you're not, you're going. Now! What the fuck? Well, we didn't feel like giving any shit to these bullies - it would probably not be a very good idea, so we got up and headed off, but the cop said not that way, that way!, pointing back towards Central Station. I said no, we're going THIS way, pointing in the opposite direction. The cop said oh is that where you live? I said yes, we live that way, we have to go that way. I thought it was strange, but soon figured that maybe it was because he thought that it was only Westies who liked death metal, so we would have to go back to Central Station to go home, back out to the Wild Wild West.
Anyway, it was a sour note to end the night on. But at least before those cops rudely forced us to move on, some dude handed us a flyer for another death metal show coming up in January: Behemoth! Hurrah! We'll be there!

Rabbit King

Earlier this year I read a news report about a man who had been arrested after allegedly having sex with and mutilating a large number of rabbits in an empty building across from the [Sydney CBD] office where he worked.
There is an update on this story here:

Rabbits case gets stranger still

Market City Beautician

Every day I go to Market City to have lunch. Every day I walk past this beautician joint. Every time I walk past it, my eye is drawn to a particular detail. I can't help it, it just happens. You can see for yourself. Would you not notice it? Of course you could not fail to notice it. But God! Is it strange to notice that? Is it perverse? Did only I notice that? Is it strange? Only normal?
*falls into a tunnel of madness*

Office Nipples

Pray tell, dear readers, what do you make of the following scenario?

A man is going about his morning routine of delivering and collecting mail around the many offices of the large organisation in which he is employed.
In one of those offices he begins a conversation with a woman he enjoys talking to and who, by all indications, enjoys talking to him. They are standing next to a large office machine being operated by another woman. In the middle of this conversation, the woman who a second ago was operating the machine approaches the man and woman and, with a big smile, leaning forward slightly and standing directly to the side of the woman, appears to examine that woman's breasts from her side-on perspective.
The man and woman are confused and maybe even a little embarassed by this odd behaviour, and even though the conversation is halted momentarily, they do not betray any signs of alarm or indignation. In fact, the man finds it rather amusing. And not only does the man find it amusing, but when he looks from the first woman's breasts (which, naturally, he could not help - there may very well have been something interesting to see there) to the second woman's breasts, he notices that her nipples are clearly erect beneath the red fabric of her sweater, or t-shirt, or whatever it was.
The only conclusion the man can reach is that, since he well knows that many women complain of the low temperature in these offices, it must be that she wants to find out if the other woman is *feeling it* to her own degree.
But that would raise the further question: Is this appropriate office behaviour?

Five Seconds

I was joking with somebody saying I would get in a taxi and see how far one cent would get me when all hell broke loose. Men started shouting, 'IN FIVE SECONDS WE ARE GONNA START SHOOTING, SO YOU BETTER START RUNNING!' They had set themselves up in the middle of intersections over a grid three blocks by three blocks. They wore blue denim and red bandanas. I started running. One of the men saw me and fired. I felt a bullet zing past my right shoulder. People were screaming everywhere. I felt sick with fear. At that moment, I remember thinking, 'You know, those super sadistic horror movies don't seem so funny all of a sudden.'

Devil May Cry II

I spent most of the afternoon reading my new book (The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - the Devil appears on Earth and torments Moscow's literary and theatrical community) but tonight I have been playing Devil May Cry. (Devils and demons everywhere! No wonder I've been dreaming about them.)
I'm at around the halfway point and now can do some pretty spectacular moves. My favourite one right now is double-jumping against a wall for height, blasting the hellfiends with Dante's twin handguns which also makes him hover in the air for a while, then on the descent come screaming down with a devastating meteor blast. The way the automatic camera spins around to get the action, sometimes you will have Dante in the air letting rip with his guns (he calls them Ebony & Ivory) and the camera is behind the enemy, so you see Dante high in the air in the distance, so when you do the meteor charge, he comes blasting in toward you, that is, the camera. It is impossible to convey just how awesome stunning amazing breathtaking and cool this looks. Not only that, but there is one breed of fiend called Sin Scissors - insane cackling witches with big scissors - and they fly around so you can land on them with your meteor strike move, jump higher when they block it, open up with the handguns, the witches will slash at you with their big scissors but if you jump at the right moment you bounce off the scissors and fly up even higher, so these battles can take place fifty metres in the air. This game is so pumped full of style it's ridiculous.
The game never gets boring. The missions are never too long. It's never too hard. OK, well I am actually playing on Easy mode (yes, by all means feel free to have a big laugh at Stratu who is not a hardcore gamer at all, ha ha!)
Anyway, even though I'm only halfway through, it's already become one of my favourite videogames. What are those games, you say? I'm glad you asked! ... The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, LoZ: The Wind Waker, Ico, Final Fantasy X, Resident Evil 4, Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time and Animal Crossing.

Don Quixote

I've read some more books lately. None of them were space operas.
One book I read was Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. I'd heard the saying 'tilting at windmills' but didn't know what it meant. Why didn't I try to find out what it meant all those times I heard it? I don't know, but I heard it again recently and found out that it was from Don Quixote. Don Quixote was the one who tilted at windmills. I was a step closer, yes, but still didn't know what it meant. But a couple of weeks ago I saw the book in the library. The answer to this windmill question was there! There the answer was, and so close! Dare I ignore this sign? And of course it was A SIGN. I dare not!
Don Quixote lives in a small town in Spain and spends all his free time reading books on chivalry and knights errant. He becomes so obsessed with it all and wrings his hands despairing that chivalry and knight errantry has disappeared from the world that he decides to bring it back by becoming a knight errant himself.
He rides off on his flea-bitten horse, wearing some pots and pans beaten into the shape of armour, recruits a local goat herder called Sancho Panza to be his squire, and heads off for adventures.
He has created such a fantasy world for himself in his mad brain that innocent people he meets on the high road he believes to be black knights and bounders, scoundrels. He stands in the middle of the road and demands they acknowledge his Dulcinia as the greatest beauty in the world. In reality he has only seen that woman from a distance, never spoken to her, she is probably not even aware of his existence.
His squire Sancho Panza soon realises that his master is raving mad, but still goes along with him, and in fact seems swept up in Don Quixote's extravagant fantasy.
They meet a barber on the road and Don Quixote charges at him with his lance and the barber runs away, dropping his metal bowl, which is only a bowl used to put water in when he shaves somebody, but Don Quixote seizes it and believes it to be a helmet of legend and triumphantly puts it on his head.
To most people who encounter him, Don Quixote is clearly mad and delusional - he transforms reality into something that fits everything he has read in these chivalric books - yet he is so eloquent and passionate that people get swept along with it.
What a great book! I'll read this one again for sure.

Three Dreams

Yes, it's true that talking or writing about your dreams can be a terrible bore to other people. Why should mine be any different? I wouldn't dare say they are, but I had these three in the last seven days, and the third one was this morning and it really freaked me out. I woke up in terror! And these are very short anyway. Are you excited? Prepared to be bored? You don't have to read on anyway, after all. Exercise your free will!

1. I made a comic and read it to some people, but after a little while they walked away. But when I looked at it again, wondering why the hell they walked away, I was convinced it was a masterpiece.

2. 'When TVs first appeared, it was not uncommon for people to sit right next to them all day to make sure they, the TV people, did not disappear.' - from a book in my dream. [I never remember stuff I read in a dream. But I managed to hold onto this line! Can you imagine how triumphant I felt, even with this one ridiculous line?]

3. Gosia showed me a short footage of a demon. The man sitting next to it moved so the face could be seen, with an intense expression, gnashing his teeth, blue face, very frightening. A real demon!

Bunster Gorbin

Hey, do you remember Bunster Gorbin? He wrote some funny music reviews on Amazon and I wrote about it here. Anyway, he found out about it and left a message:

Hey this is Bunster Gorbin. Amazon.com took off most of my reviews because they thought my reviews were tasteless. I did a google search for my name and found your website. Luckily I backed up all my reviews including the Kansas, Styx and everything I reviewed, so they will be appearing again. If they are not under the Buster Gorbin name they will appear under the name Munster Borgin, because Amazon has me blackballed for right now. Thank You, Bunster Gorbin

Good to hear from you, Bunster, and that was unsporting of Amazon to remove your reviews. Maybe you should start a blog. Your writing is amusing. Good luck!

Devil May Cry

I started playing another videogame today. This one is called Devil May Cry.
This game is AWESOME. (Did I put that in caps? Yes. Good.) And not only is it totally awesome but it is so goddam INTENSE that while playing it I think I am going to have a heart attack any minute. I can only play a mission or two then I have to lie down.
In the game you play as Dante, a guy who is half demon and half human. His father (Sparda) was a demon-knight and 2000 years ago a supreme evil dude (the Devil Emperor) appeared and wanted to enslave humanity, but Sparda liked the humans so he and his pals went up against the Devil Emperor and his foul hordes and kicked their asses, destroying his army and imprisoning the Devil Emperor in a sealed vault. So peace was restored and Sparda settled down with a human woman and they had a kid, Dante.
Now, somehow, the Devil Emperor has broken out of his sealed vault and Dante is the only one who can stop him and his demonic army. Why the Devil Emperor didn't decide to start with Sydney or New York City or London or Paris or any other big city where he would have a chance to really make his mark is a mystery. Instead he chose to start with an old Gothic castle on some remote island. But who cares? I don't. The main thing is the castle looks great. No! The main thing is how amazing the ACTION is!
See, Dante goes up against all these demons armed with a big sword AND guns so what he can do is whack a demon up into the air with his sword, then whip out the twin handguns and blast away at the demon, in effect juggling the infernal creation, and then let it fall just enough to switch back to his sword and finish it off with a great killing slash of his sword. These combos look AMAZING and are only limited by your imagination.
I'm probably not even a quarter of the way into this game but everything so far has left me in awe. In AWE, I say!

Post Office Confusion

I didn't go and see a movie today even though it is Budget Tuesday and even though I had a half day. What the hell is going on here? It's highly unorthodox, I'll agree. But what happened was that I looked at the movie listings and there was nothing I wanted to see.
So instead I took a bus and went straight to the post office because I had one of those red and white cards (PIAC - Postal Item Awaiting Collection! for any mailspotters out there) that say I have to pick up a parcel or something because it won't fit in the little mailbox. Inside the post office the lady asked me if I had ID. That was strange because I never get asked for ID. But I showed my ID (the one where my face mysteriously looks like that of a frog) and signed for the thing and when she gave it to me I thought hey look! here is another odd thing! This looks like a record, being as it is, square and flat and not small and rectangular and a bit thicker, like a DVD, which I was expecting and thought it must be. Then I looked at the name and it said Owen Wigov. I didn't know who Owen Wigov was but it wasn't me so I pointed that out. She said oh that's why I asked you for your ID. I said hey that's cool and she said OK no worries I'll sort it out, and it wasn't until I got outside that I wondered why she didn't say something when she saw that the name on my ID was different to the one on the thing I signed for. She could have said: Are you Owen Wigov? I only ask because the name on your ID says Stratu Perfect Leader. Is Owen Wigov an alias? Is he your brother? A brother who changed his name? Is he a friend? If he is, you can't sign for it, he has to come in and sign for it.
You see, it should have gone on like that.
Oh well. Everybody makes mistakes, to use an exhausted old saying, but I hope they are more on-the-ball with the exploding felafels.

Who Killed Bambi?

I just finished watching a movie on SBS. It was a French movie called Who Killed Bambi? or, more accurately, since it is a French movie, Qui a tué Bambi?
Isabelle is a young nursing student, an intern at a hospital. As she is going about her hospital life - trying to get enough sleep between juggling nursing studies and her boyfriend (who is an orderly at that hospital) - she comes into contact with a young brain surgeon, Dr Philipp, a handsome devil and quite charming when he wants to be.
Isabelle has recently begun having dizzy spells. What happens is, she hears a buzzing sound then falls over. While sharing an elevator with Dr Philipp she has one of these spells and slumps down into the corner of the elevator. Dr Phillip looks down at her like what the hell are you doing down there? She says oh it's cool, I'm OK, really, and gets up. He says you better get that checked out. It could be an inner ear problem because that affects balance you know and you lost your balance just then and slumped down into the corner like that, so maybe that's the problem.
Meanwhile we see Dr Philipp on his rounds and discover that while he may indeed be a handsome devil and quite charming, he is also a fiend because he likes to visit the female patients who have come out of surgery. He visits them late at night and even though we see nothing with the first two, we know he's up to dastardly deeds. To put it another way, he is not simply going into their room late at night to examine their charts.
The third patient he visits on one of his nocturnal missions is an Asian girl, and this time we explicitly witness his fiendishness. What's more, while he is running his hands all over this unconscious girl's body, he is whispering wacky stuff like I'm your baby and you're my mummy. The guy is clearly abusing the Hippocratic oath.
Gradually, Isabelle realises that there is something sinister about Dr Philipp but when she mentions to senior nurses that he is probably a fiend, they laugh and say well that cannot be, after all he is a genius surgeon while you are only a dumb student nurse. Banish the thought, and all that jazz.
Dr Philipp finds out that Isabelle is onto him and his sick hobby. Isabelle gets really freaked out when she has to have an operation on her ear, knowing for sure that he will come and visit her post-op and have some fun with her hot nubile defenceless body.
The movie looked great and the hospital was successfully transformed into a terrifying place, made more terrifying because this is a hospital and supposed to be a place of safety and not a place where you get porked by a sick deviant surgeon. That sort of stuff is only supposed to happen in funeral parlours and morgues.
The soundtrack was very good too, and the end credits theme song reminded me of Julee Cruise and her songs for Twin Peaks.

Walk to Work

This morning I got out of bed feeling groggy. Unsteady on feet moving in not one direction but multiple directions toward bathroom.
Wait. I've already done this one, haven't I? Or one like it. Oh well, who cares.
Anyway, I got up wobbly and stood swaying under water. Didn't ride bike to work because bike was already at work. So yes I walked to work and again there was no sign of my reading walking woman. Where is she? Maybe she only works one day every six months. It seems that way. That's how often I see her. She's like an eclipse.
There was nobody else notable on this walk to work. Was there really not? Well, there was the Asian guy who had a t-shirt with a big dragon illustration and it said 'Sinful Dragon'. What is that? I wrote it down and still haven't found out what it means.
There are metal cages along Oxford Street where they are widening the footpath or the street or something. This has happened before but on George Street and I still wonder how they can widen the footpath AND the street while the space between the opposite buildings remains the same size. How do they do that? Yet another mystery!
Walking along I realised how hot it was already. It was only just after 8:00 and already 27 degrees (that's 80 degrees Fahrenheit, you know). Already it was time to start sweating like a maniac. If it's not enough that other people have white eyeballs, everybody else seems to handle the heat like it's nothing. The rare times I see another poor bastard sweating like a madman I feel like cheering.
And I see other men wearing proper shirts. I can't do that. It's not only because of the heat. I have to wear t-shirts because my skin is itchy. I've always had itchy skin. When I was a kid I looked like a leopard. I used to curse my mother's choice of white bedsheets because they showed the bloodspots so clearly. Every morning it looked like a bedful of baby mice had been slaughtered. When you are a kid these kind of afflictions are a horror, not because you are horrified by them, but because of the horror you feel that you know they will be discovered.
Anyway, that's why it's t-shirts for me. I twitch and itch enough without having to do battle with a goddam collared shirt.

Cheers!

I raise my glass to you, dear readers!

Dancing Men

Walking to work this morning I saw a sign saying DANGER MEN WORKING OVERHEAD. I thought, Could that sign really say DANCING MEN WORKING OVERHEAD, but I read it wrong? In that part of town it would not be surprising to learn that dancing men were working overhead. Nobody would question it, or wonder about it at all, they would only walk past and think to themselves, Oh well, I guess those dancing men are working overhead again.

Stratu's Room III

Stratu's Room II

Stratu's Room I

Gantz 3

Monday night has become Gantz night so on the way home coming up to where the video store is and even before the bus slowed down for the bus stop I jumped out the window with my feet moving fast so I wouldn't trip over when I landed. Imagining that somebody was filming, because it must have looked spectacular, I crossed the road went into the video store and got Gantz 3: Process of Elimination.
Here is the rundown on the four episodes. Beware of spoilers. Just about everything that follows is probably spoilers so if you haven't yet watched it, don't read it.

ep.9 I'LL KILL YOU WITHOUT A MOMENT'S HESITATION
Everybody argues in the Gantz room. Kashimoto almost gets raped again. The dog licks her again. Nishi (the veteran of Gantz) berates everybody and lets them know how lame they all are. One of the bikers shoots him but it has no effect. Woah. Nishi turns around and shoots the biker but with these weapons there is a delay so the biker has a moment to regret his action before his head explodes. Big mess. Kurono's power suit (he calls it his *cosplay suit*, ha ha) is back in his apartment so he is shitting himself. They all get beamed down to go after the Suzuki Alien.

ep.10 YUZOU-KUN?
Kurono arrives first and is scared because the Suzuki Alien is walking towards him, making a noise like a robot. In fact he walks like a robot and really seems to be a robot. He has little robot birds walking around him and one jumps up onto Kurono and starts pecking at his shirt sleeve, it looks harmless and cute but Kurono gets scared and swats the bird off, killing it, which makes Suzuki Alien angry so he chases Kurona to where everybody else is. Nishi has a big fight with Suzuki Alien. Nishi can teleport around the place but his device breaks so he asks the others for help. They debate it because Nishi said all those mean things to them. Eventually Kato jumps down to help Nishi.

ep.11 HE CAN'T SHOUT
Before Kato can get to Nishi, the Suzuki Alien pops up and delivers a nasty sonic scream right next to Nishi's head which bursts his eyeballs and eardrums. Kato manages to get hold of the alien in a bearhug grip from behind and Kurono shoots. Did it hit him? It must have because a big bird comes out of the Suzuki robot head. Now Kashimoto shoots it and it gets lasered up into the night sky. Big emotional scene at the end where Nishi is scared of dying. It is revealed that he (like Kishimoto) committed suicide. Unlike Kishimoto, who slit her wrists in the bathtub, Nishi jumped off a bridge. At the end, Nishi dies. Maybe. Could he really be dead? I, for one, hope not. Even though he berated everybody, by the end there he didn't seem like such a bad egg.

ep12. KATO, YOU WAIT HERE
It turns out there is more than one of these Suzuki Alien robot/bird things around here, which they soon realise when they are not beamed back to the Gantz room. There is a big fight with the Suzukis. Everybody gets split up. Grandma and the spoilt kid get attacked by two of the Suzukis when the kid needs to take a wizz. Grandma gets killed. Maybe the kid too. Kurono is forced by one of the bikers (who managed to get the guns, although Kurono sneakily stashed another one away in his jacket) to go into the house where the radar shows there to be a whole bunch of Suzukis. Kurono walks in to find not only four Suzukis coming out of four rooms, but in a room at the end of the hall he sees an ENORMOUS creature sitting on the floor surrounded by little plastic toy eggs. The end.

Speaking of endings, maybe it's the 13 year-old Japanese girl in me, but, like Depeche Mode, I just can't get enough of that power ballad they use for the closing theme.

Finally, and it KILLS me to report this, but there won't be any Gantz 4 next Monday because the video store girl told me it doesn't come out until later this month. Yes, depressing.

Dialogue Wizard

Goddam it. Don't know what to write. Wait! Nope. Really got nothing. Hey! How about some stupid dialogue? Big drumroll.

'You are an idiot.'
'You sir, are the idiot. I am a genius.'
'Prove it.'
'OK. Behold! Here is a bunny rabbit I just pulled out of my bum hole, as you can plainly see.'
'That is amazing and disgusting, in equal parts.'
'Yes it is. Now you see I am not an idiot.'
'No I do not see. That what I just witnessed failed to prove you are not an idiot. If you ask me, only an idiot would keep a bunny rabbit up his bum hole.'
'Sir, you have me there.'

Was that stupid enough for you? I hope so. OK, let's see what else my idiot brain can produce. Another dialogue? Why not.

'Look! I bought new shoes!'
'They sure look new alright.'
'I just told you they are new, but what do you think of them? Aren't they fabulous?'
'They look pretty stupid to me.'
'How dare you say such a thing! Are you trying to hurt my feelings?'
'No. Do you have a problem with criticism?'
'I do when you call my new shoes stupid.'
'Well, that's not my problem.'
'You are horrible and mean!'
'Oh well.'
'You don't even care!'
'You are right about that.'
'You're a MONSTER!'
'Now who's trying to hurt whose feelings?'

Ugh. Have you had enough? Is anybody even still reading this stuff? If you are, I salute you. Your threshold for tolerating this idiot dialogue is admirable. And if indeed you are still reading, you no doubt have the constitution to read one more.

'Fiddle faddle foddle, the world fits in a bottle.'
'What the devil are you on about?'
'I am writing a poem.'
'Is that what you call a poem?'
'It's the best I can do. Please don't say anything mean that will hurt my feelings.'
'I wouldn't dare. What do I know anyway? It might be a great poem that will cause a sensation.'
'Now I am sure you are making fun of me.'
'Not a bit of it. Let's hear some more.'
'Well. OK. Blitto blotto blatto, the moon is like a tomato.'
'That was rather fine.'
'You really think so?'
'It moved me. I felt something.'
'You really did?'
'Absolutely.'
'You have made me so happy!'
'Think nothing of it. Now let's take ourselves off at once to celebrate your poetic triumph with a drink.'
'*blub!*'

UGH. I will subject you to no more. If you are still reading, God bless you! *BLUB!*

Blogger

Busrider

Robot Helmet

After work today I had to go to the mini market for some supplies. I rode there on my bike and went in. I got everything then went up to the checkout. There was a man in front of me, in the line, and he had a little kid up on his shoulder. The kid couldn't make words very well but it was obvious he had spotted the lollies. I guess the father pretended he couldn't understand his kid because he didn't move an inch, and kept his head straight forward. Then one of the checkout people, an Indian guy, started calling out for the next customer, which was the man in front of me. The man with the kid didn't hear. He was wrapped up in ignoring the kid's lolly lust, I guess. But the checkout guy kept calling and eventually I said hey dude you're next and he heard that and went up.
At that point I could look up at the security monitor and see myself standing at the checkout, which I always do. I spent some time trying to figure out where the camera was located, which was tricky, then I moved my head from side to side and up and down, and shuffled to the left and right, watching my movements on the monitor. But I couldn't enjoy that distraction for long before I got called by one of the checkout people, this time a Japanese girl. I walked up to her and started taking my stuff out of the red plastic basket and told her don't worry about putting it in a bag I'll put it in my backpack.
'Is that for a scooter?'
What? Was she talking to me? Was what for a scooter? Oh. She was talking about my helmet, my silver bicycle helmet, that I was holding in my left hand.
'Oh, this? No, this is for a bicycle. It's a bicycle helmet,' I said.
'It looks amazing! It doesn't look like a bicycle helmet.'
Her face was animated. Her eyes were shining. She was smiling.
'No, it looks like a robot head, or a futuristic army helmet,' I said.
She laughed, her face seeming to radiate a pure and mysterious joy.
'What is that TNT on it? Is that who made it?'
This girl. This strange girl with her questions. And I was already falling, enchanted and falling.
'Yeah, I guess so. Yep, that must be it,' I said, looking down at the TNT ('There's No Tougher') sticker.
I believe we could have continued in this way for ever, discussing my robot head bicycle helmet, and maybe even other things, but there was the line, other people who wanted to pay for their stuff and get home.
With not a little reluctance I said thanks and goodbye. She still had that big smile, her whole face was smiling. And her eyes!
My God. But wasn't it all really a simple, small thing? She was only fascinated by my strange-looking bicycle helmet, wasn't that it? Yet why did it affect me so much? Did it somehow get into my mad head that it could have been more than that? Of course it did. This girl, who was clearly half my age, was using her fascination with my robot helmet as a clever way to start a conversation in the hope that it would lead to me asking her out. Of course, that couldn't be it. What a crazy idea! No, it was really only an innocent conversation, after all. ... But was it?
etc. etc., on and on until the sun explodes...

Phobias A-Z

Australophobia, Novahollandiaphobia - fear of Australia, Australians, Australian culture etc.
Ballistophobia - fear of missiles or bullets
Cacophobia - fear of ugliness
Demonophobia, Daemonophobia - fear of demons
Epistolophobia - fear of writing letters
Fecophobia, Coprophobia, Scatophobia - fear of feces
Gymnophobia, Nudophobia - fear of nudity
Hadephobia, Stygiophobia, Stigiophobia - fear of hell
Ithyphallophobia - fear of seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis
Japanophobia, Nipponophobia - fear of the Japanese
Kneemaphobia - fear of the knee bending backwards
Leukophobia - fear of the colour white
Metallophobia - fear of metal
Nyctohylophobia - fear of dark, wooded areas
Optophobia - fear of opening one's eyes
Panophobia, Pantophobia - fear of everything
Quadraphobia - fear of quartets or of being drawn and quartered
Rhypophobia - fear of defecation
Sesquipedalophobia - fear of long words
Teratophobia - fear of bearing a deformed child, of monsters or of deformed people
Urophobia - fear of urine or urinating
Venustraphobia - fear of beautiful women
Wiccaphobia - fear of witches and witchcraft
Xenoglossophobia - fear of foreign languages
Ymophobia - fear of contrariety
Zoophobia - fear of animals

Source: www.aboutphobias.com

Grim Prospect

The TV is on but I am not going to look at it. No sir. Why should I look at it? Any kind of magnetic attraction it may exert on my eyeballs will be neutralised by me trying hard not to look at it. Blazes! It didn't work. I snuck a look, and saw white eyeballs. Thank you, that's all I need to know. Ha! Nobody has eyeballs that white. Only on TV. I won't be tempted to look anymore, knowing they airbrush the eyeballs. Maybe somehow I could get on TV and they could airbrush my eyeballs. Just once I would like to see my eyeballs pure white, not even a tiny bit bloodshot. Yet I suppose it will never happen. The TV people are obviously robots and if I went in to the TV studio they would, with their superior robotic technology and white wires, detect the presence of a biological intruder and hit the alarm, then I would most likely disappear, never to be seen again and would not be able to make my reports here, ever again. A grim prospect!

Stratu Comics a Reality?

I saw a movie today but tonight I've been writing back to my Tasmanian comics friend Simon James. Remember him? He said he wanted to make comics out of some of my blog stories, like the ones about the women reading on the bus. Well, I got another letter from him today and he says that he's involved with some zine workshop (he calls it 'Zine Idol' because it's a competition) and whoever makes the zine or comic that gets judged the best will win. And if they win, the prize is that 500 copies of this comic or zine are made and sent all over the place. And guess what? The project he is going to do is the 'Stratu Comics' project. So can you blame me for being excited and neglecting my movie reviewing duties? No you can't, because these things do not happen very often so I am naturally excited about it and wanted to write back to him immediately, tonight, meanwhile shamefully neglecting my movie reviewing duties.
But the movie I saw today was called The Devil's Rejects and it is Rob Zombie's sequel to House of A Thousand Corpses and it was very good and even very funny at times although sometimes quite nasty, but that was OK. People are getting upset by horror movies again. At last people are again making movies that have some nasty elements of real terror, unlike those lame Scream movies, and people are getting all upset and indignant. But you know, you must know, it was just a movie and these things did not really happen to real people. They were in fact actors who walked away after it all, with money in their pockets, quite unscathed. And you are supposed to be horrified by what is happening on screen anyway. That is why it is called a Horror Movie.
And I like horror movies, and this was a pretty damn good one.