The Horror, The Horror

October 31st and the mind turns towards the grotesque. People dressing up in ghastly costumes, greedy little bastards wanting their preciiiooouuussssss and having a Chernobyl-Nuclear-Explosion tantrum and breaking windows if they don't. I am, of course, referring to the upcoming Melbourne Cup Day and not Halloween which is a fun evening for infidels.

Melbourne Cup Day, in my experience, only has two types of weather- meltingly hot or pouring buckets of water. All signs are pointing towards the former so it will be 'The Attack of The Lobster People' weather with punters with their blistering red skin, staggering around and laughing every time they knock over their champagne.

So, tomorrow, as everyone places their hard earned on the horse with the funniest name and the worst odds ( What's the handicap? Well, the jockey is dead) I shall start slogging out a 50,000 word writing exercise involving zombies because I'll have to serve these drunken, red-as-the-Devil's-pecker ingrates at the bar that night and the last thing I want to do is see them during the day as well. That and I have a negative number in my bank account which is never a good thing.

Scream till you're Horse,
Fatman

Movember...denied!

November was supposed to be a celebration of the hirsute. The annual growing of the moustache....MOVEMBER. The deal is everyone shaves their face on October 31 and try to grow their bestest moustache by the end of November. Simple, non? One month for everyone to be like the heroes of the moustache world like Albert Einstein, Salvador Dali, Australian cricketing greats- tubby guys like David Boone and Merv Hughes, Magnum P.I. and Groucho Marx ( yes, his was fake, no, I don't care) or their favorite 'tached villain. Adolph Hitler's cheeky pencil number, the webbed-toed Joseph Stalin's or even Fu Manchu's pointy mo.

In some countries it's also Fro-vember.

But alas, it won't be the case this year. There are two weddings to go to this year in November- Clark and Hayley's and Brad and Nez's- and since the weddings are going to be mid-November our moustaches will be at that weird halfway point where it will be that malformed, strange tufts of facial hair growing from the school lunch lady-stage and not fit for human viewing. So instead of risking being ripped to shreds by a murder of shrieking bridesmaids who will insist we grew them for the sole purpose of wrecking the wedding photos instead of the manly reason of winning a drunken bet we shall remain relatively clean shaven. Dammit.

November also hails the start of NaNoWriMo, the National November Writing month, where you're supposed to write a 50,000 word mini-novella. Although I won't officially participate due to my limited language skills and bad grammar, I shall attempt to write a book that starts off fairly normal but ends up as a full-blown zombie invasion ( Because literature that does not contain the undead confuses me). The Working title is ' Slow Rot Boogie' but that is subject to change.

I'm so cool, I have beard on my hands,
Fatman

Suits My Style

'...and how is the fit Sir, do you like the cut?'. I'm at a suit store today trying the ranges of Pierre Cardin, Hugo Boss, Versace ( that costs the same as a Vespa), Gazman and what have you for, count them, three upcoming weddings and maybe a day at the Melbourne races. I have no idea what this guy has just asked me but I feign understanding and casually look at the price tag on the jacket sleeve.

' I'll go for something a little.....'
' Cheaper?' offers the salesman guy after looking me up and down for about the eighth time. I dress like I've lost a bet.
' Excellent.' I reply as he steers me towards a range of suits more in my price range. I'm expecting weirdly stitched suits that are the fabric equivalent of Frankenstein's Monster but they are actually quite elegant looking. Not bad at all.

The suit salesman guy has the demeanour of a Maitre d' at an upper class restaurant that serves endangered animals for the main course. One of those unflappable personalities that can come across a group of hooligans stabbing each other with shrimp forks after a disagreement over who ordered the Dodo Flambe and cough gently. Suddenly everyone will be at ease and be back to Sorry-Old-Boy mode and even help cauterise wounds inflicted. A calming influence- just what I need because I get a little defensive when I go to purchase things that I know nothing about and costs a bit over a months rent.

I'll admit I get a bit tetchy with buying expensive things. It basically means that I'll have something important that might break/ burn/ get stolen one day. But a nice suit is worth it I think. After all these weddings are over, and if I live longer than the guys sharing nupitals, then I can wear the same suits for their funerals. With appropriately dark ties of course.

I settle on a Dom Bagnato and a Van Heusen shirt in the end. I lob my bank card at the salesman guy so I can complete my purchase. And pray really hard that I've got enough money in the bank to pay for these things.

My, what big teeth you have,
Fatman

God Loves Animal Porn

Two links that are absolutely hilarious. You will need a Quicktime thingy but I guess most computers have them these days. Made by some wacky assistant editors from BoingBoing.com last month as part of the AICE Trailer Park Contest, these are pre-existing films edited to look like trailers for completely different films.

First up we have West Side Story as a Zombie Film by Tom Colella. If the remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead ( a surprisingly fun film by Zack Snyder) and the Danny Boyle/ Alex Garland pic 28 Days Later were to go musical on yo asses this would be it. The West Side of Manhatten is now teeming with....The Infected.

And we also have the feelgood hit of the Summer. A tender, family-orientated picture.... Shining. Stanley Kubrick's horrorfest "as directed by Nora Ephron". This is Jack. Jack has writer's block. Maybe all Jack needs is a little bit of hope from a little kid with problems of his own.

Grab the Popcorn and Hit the Lights,
Fatman

Understatement

Overheard at a deli earlier today.

A guy notices a newspaper with 'Hussein Trial!' plastered all over it. 'That Saddam Hussein, eh? Bit of a trouble maker.'

Yah.

That little scamp.

My Other Car is a Batmobile

When I drive a car, bad things happen. Vultures circle around vehicles that I get into and my turning of the ignition is akin to hearing dinner bells to them. So I leave the whole driving process to people more skilled than I. This gives me plenty of time to have sexual fantasies of girls we pass by, get completely lost when trying to navigate using 1/3 Melways, 1/3 celestial navigation, 1/3 Spider Sense and also my friends can have some amount of enjoyment by getting into accidents and seeing how far my body will hurtle through the windshield.

Of course not having a car means to not have to look after a car which gives me more money to buy things I desperately need to grow physically, emotionally and intellectually as a human being (e.g. computer games). When I started writing this I was sure I was going somewhere but now I....oh yeah.

Woke up on Matt's couch last week. This is because it is impossible to visit Matt for any longer than a few minutes without it escalating in to a night of drinking and destruction (Actually last week wasn't too bad. I wasn't covered head to toe in blood and Matt didn't have to call in 'The Wolf'). The fact that I was on a comfortable couch instead of "hypothetically" speaking the middle of the hypothetical road in hypothetical Sandringham to be woken up by a couple of hypothetical cops and later, by a hypothetical old man who offered you a hypothetical blanket as you tried to sleep on a park bench was a good thing. Also instead of spending $47.50 f-ckcking dollars in cab fare to get home from this stupid, stupid hypothetical situation I woke up indoors, surprisingly not too hungover considering we had a staff whiskey tasting experience, and finally got to watch MTV's Pimp My Ride.

Yes, I know everyone else on this planet has probably already watched at least a few episodes of this awesome show. But I had been UnPimped until recently. For those who haven't yet seen it, like me, there's a brief synopsis below.

Pimp My Ride For The Unitiated:

1. Xzibit- philosopher, artist, musician whose lyrics
contain about the same number of cuss words as a
transcript of a Tourette's sufferer stubbing his toe and
owner of a Humvee that looks like it could withstand a
direct hit from an H-bomb, gives a short introduction.
The gist of it being that they are some poor sons of
bitches who are driving vehicles you shouldn't even
enter unless you've had your tetanus shots recently.

2. He is not kidding. We see people driving around in
things that can only loosely be defined as a 'car'. How best to descibe these 'cars'? Jeff Foxworthy may think these people rednecks as the signs are there. In his words "(You might be a redneck if)....The blue book value of
your truck goes up and down depending on how much gas
it has in it."
Doors are being held together by duct tape and prayer,
the roof is rusted and leaking, there are only three
wheels on the car, several mirrors are missing,
flashlights are used for indicating, the "engine"
consists of a hamster running around in a wheel, etc.
etc. The owner of the vehicle, a young person between
the ages of 18-23, then pleads for MTV to Pimp their
ride. The owner's friends and family, after mocking
their loved onone'sode of transport, also beg for MTV
to help.

3. Enter Xzibit. He materialises in the neighbourhood
( accompanied by dope fresh background music) like a
wandering Jedi, had the Jedi council accepted a
foul-mouthed black rapper into their order. He then
spends a few minutes laughing at the car. In some
episodes even a cursory inspection of the car results
in bits of it falling off. It is a relief to know that
things have settled down enough in the L.A. area since
the whole 'Rodney King incident' and a strange black
guy in basketball attire can prod and poke a
neighbour's car in broad daylight and nobody calls the
police. Maybe the neighbours secretly hope that he
will steal the vehicle.

4. Xzibit knocks on the door of the unsuspecting
owner. Door opens. 'Oh...My...GOD! You're XZIBIT!
You've...you've come to....OhOhmygodthat'ssoawesome!!'
There was an episode where a girl actually cried tears
of joy in seeing Xzibit who must seem like an angel of
mercy to these guys.

5. More light mocking of the car.

6. Keys are handed over to Xzibit who then drives
away. Every once in a while someone will say 'Take car
of my baby. Make sure you look after it.' Although it
is said in jest it is not technically possible to
wreck the car.

7. Xzibit then drives the car to the fine folks at
West Coast Customs- the Pimpers of Vehicles. This is
usually a great scene. A dozen or so mechanics are
waiting at the back of the garage for Xzibit to drive
in the latest hunk of shit and he never disappoints
You can sometimes see the look of total amazement on
their faces, even a tinge of admiration, that the car
even made it to the shop which they will often times
voice by saying things like ' Sheeeit dog! What th'
hell did you bring fo' us this time? Damn man! And
other such sentiments.'

8. The Meeting. Chaired by Q the manager. Each member
of the West Coast Customs sit around a table pitching
their concept.


Q ( Da Man): So, what've we got? What's everyone's plan of attack?
Jimmy (Paint & Body): Currently the car is the colour
of fish heads rotting in a bucket. I'm going to make
it a crazy shade of Molten Green.
Alex ( tattooed/pierced Wheels & Tires guy): Well, as
you guys can clearly see the car has empty beer kegs
instead of wheels. I'm going to give him a rim job he
won't forget. And some new wheels.
Big Dane ( Accessories): I'm-a accessorise the sh-t out
of the car!
'Mad' Mike ( Electronics): Alright. Here's how I see
it. There's gonna be two plasma screens at the back, a
PlPlaystationonsole on the roof here so you can be
playing The Sims when he crashes his car. And
Q?
Q: 'Yeah?'
'Mad' Mike: Just for something special I'm going to
put in some ejector seats.
Q: Beautiful.
'Mad'Mike: Now, it's not exactly street legal...
Q: Just do it.
Token Gay Mexican ( I can't remember his name but Matt
kept on calling him a gay Mexican and so I can't get
that out of my head. Interiors): I think we can do
ththometinnice with...velvet.

9. Car gradualy changes from junk to a pipimpin' good ride. They show the stuff ups and the creative process as well.

10. Xzibit brings in the car owner. There is a sheet over the car. The West Coast Customs guys then reveal the Pimpmobile. It's pretty hard to describe how overjoyed the owners get as they lunge at their cars to see the improvements ( basketball court in boot, karaoke system, goldfish bowl embedded in the interior- I'm not making this shit up).

11. Xzibit then tugs at the shirt of the owner. They've been officially 'Pimped'.

What a Show,
Fatman

Say 'Hi' to My Little Friend

Outside the historic 19th century warehouse building that has recently been converted into the City Library of Melbourne, which is a great place to spend a few hours reading comi...I mean books, on the footpath on the corner of Degraves street and Flinders lane, is a ( presumably) out-of-work opera singer busking. He has been turning up recently and blaring out songs for hours on end. Being a non-opera kind of guy they all sound like the Nessun Dorma aria from Puccini's Turandot to me but I do know that it sounds pretty funky amongst the yelling of caffeine junkies who are shouting for their soy mocchachinos.

It must be hard to irk out a living sometimes when you're a specialist in such a niche market like opera singing or ferret removal. It forces you to join a gang I think. At one time the guys you shouldn't mess with were the four tenors- Jose Carreras, Placebo Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and Ringo. But recently I read somewhere that there's a new gang in the 'hood- the Ten Tenors. I don't think these guys are messing around anymore. It's a lot easier to get bullied into buying their Cd's when there's ten of these f-ckers pushing you around in a record store and threatening to shatter all the glassware that you have. Over your head. I'm getting off track and on to 'Lesbian Brawl' territory so I'll move on.

Where was I going with all that? That's right; Niche Market. Like tap dancing perhaps? I've been waiting in anticipation for Hi the Tap Dancer to drop in a resume with the eagerness of a kid awaiting his package of x-ray goggles or sea monkeys. And it finally arrived. A few corrections. He's Vietnamese not Thai. You spell his name 'Hai' and not 'Hi'. Some highlights of his resume include...
Education:
(1994-96) Self-practise in Michael Jackson's dancing techniques. ( So you've watched music videos and danced along. Why put that in a freaking resume?) (From 2000) Absorbing life-style, culture, music, dances, performing arts and practising French in Paris. ( In short- bumming around. Incidentally France is probably the best place to practise French, especially if you don't like the prospect of starving.)
Work Experience:
(1995-1999) Performing and teaching Waves, Robot, Rap and training Michael Jackson's techniques for 4 years. ( Cool! He can do the Robot. That's awesome! Why does he keep bringing up Michael Jackson?)
Great compliments, love from teachers, staff, directors at BDC ( Broadway Dance Centre) and fellow students and audiences ( That's all well and good but it's not exactly work experience).
Photos:
Hai in tux dancing. Hai in tux dancing with an umbrella.

Now, the biggest obstacle to the tap dancer would be the bar owner "Roy". "Roy", although very likable, is an extremely hard man to get hold of. He has a very hectic schedule coupled with a severely short attention span. Talking to "Roy"l is like pitching a concept to a busy Hollywood producer: 25 words or less. Trying to pry money out of "Roy" is another problem. Although he owns two bars that make enough money to buy a plush BMW he seems to be hounded by people he owes money to constantly. He always keeps a wary eye on the door and leaves rooms via the window. Before the arrival of Piglet one of the office girls, very new at the job, unwittingly connected a phone call to "Roy". The person on the other line had been chasing an old debt from 1998.

I go to the office for a meeting with "Roy". I find him scribbling absently on the back of someones resume. He looks up. Holding up an envelope he asks ' Do you think I can re-use this stamp? You can hardly tell it's been used.'
'Maybe. There's a few work-related things I need to talk to you about but firstly: There's a tap dancer who put in this resume just recently.'
'Yeah, Piglet showed me. Let's give him a trial. Tap dancers make me happy.'

I wonder if mocking someone for what they do make me a bad person.

Hung like Sammo,
Fatman

Three Days Without A Violent Lesbian Brawl

Andrew Natoli, one of the concierges at the Westin Hotel, told me last night that my bar was mentioned in a Gay & Lesbian leaflet as a ' place to go'. Since the bar is called the Amethyst once in every six to eight moths someone will enquire if it is a gay bar because it has a slightly effeminate sounding name. Usually the person asking has just come from a sporting event where he and his viking horde have just finished crushing beer cans on their foreheads and drinking the blood spurting out of the necks of the vanquished losers. I usually reply that it is not and then ask them if they were looking for one which tends to shut them up. Or gets me beaten to a bloody pulp.

For all the reflections I have on love, lust and relationships I hardly touch the homosexual subject. Heh, heh, heh. I said " touch the homosexual subject". Back when I was a kid love was a very simple thing. It was always the Age Old Story of Boy meets Girl, They fall in love, the Boy turns into a 1,000 year-old demon and tries to rape the Girl, Girl manages to escape and goes to her grandfather's underground secret laboratory and finds a complex scientific weapon that is powered by an illegal thermonuclear device and holy water that she uses to subdue the Boy/ Demon who is laying waste to the downtown area of the city, Boy's head explodes. Fin. Of course when I was a kid I used to watch a lot of Japanese Animation that may have influenced the way I deal with love. Hence I am still single.

Love obviously is a lot more complex and convoluted than the Boy meets Girl scenario but I think we as a species of homo sapiens ( Heh, heh, heh, I said " homo") have evolved somewhat from the Dark Ages of the 1950's. All the petty things tend to fall by the wayside- age, religion, stature, creed, race and gender. I'm all for lesbianism. Truly all for it. Gay guys can be OK as long as they realise that having a lisp does not excuse them from being a total prick.

About three weeks ago I was drinking on a Sunday at my friend Matt's bar in Prahran called the Blue Bar ( another semi-gay sounding name. I think it's a colour thing) on Chapel Street ( a street where wearing pink polo shirts is sadly the norm, even for alleged heterosexuals ) where he was telling me of a vicious lesbian brawl. Now when I tend to think of lesbians having a disagreement it is usually resolved with everyone dressed in lingerie or bunny outfits hitting each other with goose down pillows in a pit of mud, sometimes jelly. There is a lot of girlish giggling. ' Nah man it was insane,' says Matt ' One girl glassed another. It took four of us to try to pry these chicks apart.'

I don't know about you but I have seen plenty of films where a coven of lesbians spend the majority of the time bored, lounging around the pool, spraying themselves with water when in comes a friendly pool cleaner/ door-to-door salesman/ substitute gym teacher to "cure" them of their "condition", if only for an afternoon. There'll be a brief bit of dialogue (eg. The girls will read his card and say: ' Mr.Featherstonehaugh is it? That's quite a mouthful.', 'So is this baby!') followed by deep bass music, bad lighting and nekked Twister contests that lasts until everyone is sated. The truth of the matter is we're all the same old mundane humans, except for maybe a Yeti that has managed to get access to a laptop and currently reading this, with the same old anger management issues. Glassing bad. Talk good.

In real life one of the girls would have a broken bottle in hand, the other would have her opponent's teeth

I truly hope that unlike me, everyone reading this is a lot more mature in dealing with all manner and patter of sex and sexuality. I for one am happy that the Amethyst is classified as a ' gay friendly' place and we welcome homosexuals along with the hetero yobs with open arms. As long as no one tries to French Kiss no one.

There is no message so don't bother looking for one,
Fatman

This Little Piglet Ran All The Way Home

This guy who asked Piglet out on a date had sheer Adamantium balls. The fella had ordered maybe one drink at the bar when his friends decided it was time to move on. In the short period between ordering the drink and drinking said drink he mustered up enough courage to write his name and number on a piece of paper and asked her to give him a call if she felt like catching up sometime. Now, instead of just tearing up that scrap of paper, which is the sort of thing that would happen if I tried something like that on someone ( or perhaps a more dramatic gesture, like setting the paper alight in front of me and laughing uncontrollably) Piglet decided to give this guy a chance.

On Piglet:

1/ Piglet is an Irish chick with slight traces of a Canadian accent that sneaks up in certain words. She spent some time in Canadia as a young 'un frolicking with the moose and mounties before she left for another moron country- Ireland. Hence the accent. Customers, trying to get cozy with her, will take a stab at the origin of the accent and guess Scottish or American which will earn them a glimpse of an Angry Piglet Face.

2/ Angry Piglet Face: The eyes turn into lethal obsidian orbs capable of turning people to stone. The mouth curls up, ready to spit an acid-like reply. It truly feels like the instant before a volcanic eruption. August 1883, Krakatoa time. It's a look I see often, usually after a comment like: ' What do you do when your dish washer breaks down? Slap her.'

3/ Despite her namesake ( A.A.Milne's sidekick to Winnie-the-Pooh. Piglet the Very Small Animal, professional self-doubter and teacher of Taoist ways) Piglet is quite purdee.

4/...So I gets to thinking- usually the first step before disaster- I've got my friend Irish Chris who is Irish believe it or not, good-looking and single and Piglet who is also Irish, good-looking and single. And a female. Why not set them up so they don't ever breed outside their inebriated race? They can dance jigs, drink their horrible national drink ( tequila) and hire little leprechaun butlers to buy groceries. And for two weeks it was great. Then a breakdown in communication. Then the relationship got ugly. Not like a factory explosion that leaves many dead, more limbless and families widowed/ orphaned but more like an unresolved implosion.
Piglet: NEVER set me up with another one of your friends ever again.

5/ She used to own an asthmatic rat called Henry back home. It got old and eventually passed away. In an effort to be supporting I was about to say a few words of sympathy ( 'Rats are filthy animals that prefer to be dead') but I felt that an Angry Piglet may throw me off the roof of a tall building and kept my silence.

Back to the date. Piglet goes to meet this guy. He's wearing a Ben Sherman shirt which apparently is a big no-no from word go. So he's started off on the wrong hoof. No problem. Puts a card behind the bar. The plan is Typical First Date: Have a few drinks at a bar, go to an unfancy restaurant, watch a second-rate film and bitch about the woeful acting at a cafe afterwards. Piglet got through three sips of her first glass of wine before she decides that It Is Not Working Out. Apparently he is the most boring person she has ever met. Personality of tofu- he's soft, bland and made of soybean curd. He goes to use the bathroom. When he returns she is not there.

'I decided just to grab my jacket and get the hell out of there,' she's telling me '..and the guy at the bar was laughing, the band that were about to play were cheering me on and I just bolted. I ran all the way to the train station.'
'Did he try to call you?'
'Yeah, I was on the phone to a friend when I got a message ( 'HAVE YOU GONE?') and about five minutes later I got another message ( 'JUST TELL ME IF YOU'VE LEFT SO I CAN SETTLE UP THE BILL AND LEAVE') but the battery of my phone died so I couldn't read it till a few hours later.'

The poor schmuck. I can picture it now, someone at work will ask him how his date on Sunday went and receive a punch in the mouth as a response.

That's what happens when you go on a date with the Irish Houdini,
Fatman

New Housemates= Excessive Cleaning

Although by this time last month I thought there was an outside chance that I may be residing in a cardboard box somewhere next to a garbage can inhabited by a green, furry Muppet I find myself still happily living at Melrose street, North Melbourne. I wish to thank some of you out there-you know who you are as this site is only visited by my parole officer, people I owe money to and spambots- who not only promised to not beat me up for lunch money for awhile but offered to lend me MORE money. There are also those who actually offered a rent-free couch space for a few months ( Cheers to The Peacock for that one). Though the search for the missing rent continues ( nights of pouring over various bank statements to the brink of an aneurysm) the problem is a little less urgent than before.

Megs has moved in. She took one look at the place and started vacuuming almost immediately. I found her scrubbing the shower the first morning she stayed over...like all good women should. When I commented thus she fired back with; ' Now I'm going to start re-arranging the furniture.' She would later recount that my face was a mask of sheer horror, like " The opening of Pandora's Box. All the evils of the world brimming under the surface of my flesh, waiting to erupt". ' You may clean things if you must,' I replied huffily when I could control my seething rage, ' but leave things where they lie.'

The other thing about cleaning up a house is the junk you find. Megs found a copy of Dan Brown's DaVinci Code that I had hurled at the wall some time ago ( lying next to a copy of the equally overrated Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections) and was gathering dust under the couch. The only thing worth mentioning about this piece-of-shit book is that it is part of the Book Crossing program where you leave the book in a public place somewhere and hopefully some dumbass, like Yours Truly, will pick it up and waste five hours reading it instead of...I don't know, learning something useful (eg. Hovercraft Maintenance) or renting pornos. I shall leave the Dan Brown here I think, at e55, where I come to type my musings because they have beer here and a cute bar chick. Perhaps one of these poor bastards will pick up the drivel that is The DaVinci Code and get more enjoyment than I did.

Iceberg Fat,
Fatman

'Uber' is the New 'Irony'

It would be esquivalient of me to not comment on how much I hate hack writers and hack writing. I am not for one moment suggesting that I'm better than these f-ckers, but the print medium is rife with the la-di-dah types who think they'll pretty up banal articles for glossy magazines by thumbing through a thesaurus ( do people ' thumb through thesauri' these days? Or is it all electric-like?) and plonking in words that look cool.

Not too long ago 'irony' was the word that was dripping off every page of fashion magazines, porno featuring hairy amputees, music rags, architecture lit ( if you class Wallpaper* as lit.) and other styles of magazines I find every time I go to the dentist for my monthly filing down of my fangs- incisors that beg to drain blood from hapless backpackers. The problem is no one seemed to know what it actually meant. Alanis Morisette certainly friggin' didn't.

Now 'uber' is the new culprit. Every "trendy" magazine uses 'uber' in front of household words to make it sound (bleagh) chic. Uber-cool, uber-geek, uber-nomics, uber-sapien, uber-long, uber-intelligent.

There was a time back in school when my vocabulary was pretty good. But no one understood what the heck I was saying. So I decided to dumb myself down several notches to words that can be belched out and doesn't make your jaw sore by the twelfth syllable. It worked. It's Homer Simpson lodging a crayon up his nose- I'd erased the complex words from my mind somehow and began misspelling words that even dyslexics wouldn't. As my grades steadily plummeted I found more of the other kids understanding what I was saying. Which isn't always a good thing. But this Taoist/ simplification of life means I devote less time trying to understand pretentious people and more time drinking. Which reduces my vocabulary even more.

Reading makes my Brain hurt,
Fatman

P.S. esquivalience—n. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities . . . late 19th cent.: perhaps from French esquiver

Luke...Am I Your Father?

Had a strange time logging into Fatramblings just then. I typed in www.fatramblings.blogspot.com and the computer immediately shuffled me off to a DNA paternity testing site. Weird. So I typed my address in again and I got the DNA Paternity testing site again. What the f....? Was there something the computer was trying to tell me? Had I gotten REALLY drunk nine months ago and should I be expecting an unpleasant phone call from someone? Or was it questioning where I came from? Maybe that would explain my resemblance to the postman.

Celibacy is not hereditary,
Fatman

Nachos Interrupted

The absolute worst thing to be eating when you receive a phone call would have to be nachos. Your fingers are covered with melted cheese, guacamole and sour cream and your mouth is filled with a corn chip mush mixed in with salsa. 'Hnrufgh?' you ask, still licking the remaining nacho from your fingers. It's a call informing you that the ambulance that was supposed to pick your father up at his nursing home is two hours early, how quickly can you arrive to escort him to the hospital? 'I'll be an hour at least.' I tell Nora the manager of the nursing home. 'I don't think they'll wait that long.' says Nora.

Dandruff, or something like it, had been slowly taking over Dad's body at the rate that a fast food franchise devours a city. Red, itchy, flaky blotches of skin had been forming all over Dad and we were going to the hospital to find out what up. But the dandruff had me worried. For selfish reasons. I have dandruff. Back in 1692 if you were convicted of owning more than two broomsticks or had excessive dandruff you could be hanged as a witch. And although in this day and age being a 'witch' only means you;

1) are supposed to know what crystals do what,
2) hang out with unemployed lentil-eaters with names like "Solitary" and
3) bitch about how crappy 'Charmed' is

I'd still have dandruff that could one day engulf me.

Dad and I take a cab to the Alfred Hospital, which is about $20.50 away from his nursing home. The conversation is a little stilted. The relationship I have with my father is similar to the relationship Billy Crudup has with Albert Finney in the Tim Burton film Big Fish. In the film Albert Finney plays a lovable guy who tells long-winded stories full of imagery and wonder that, thanks to the brilliance of film magick, unfolds before the eyes of the audience. He is also full of shit. Billy Crudup plays the boring son who has heard the stories so much he's like: 'Just tell me what REALLY happened Dad.' for the whole film.

We get to the hospital just as Dad is finishing his story ('....and THAT'S what a Dirty Sanchez is'). After the breakneck pace we've set running through several red lights to get there we have to wait for an hour and a half in a room full of coughing, hacking, sneezing and slightly deceased patients. We eventually see the Dermatologist- an Asian gentleman who would take a look at Dad's skin and chart for five minutes and then disappear for ten minutes to presumably talk about the Condition but I suspect in truth to discuss other doctorly pursuits like golf or banging nurses. He eventually comes back and says ' I recommend either a beheading or cream to treat your father's Condition.' Dad and I look at each other. 'We'll take the cream.' The Dermatologist seems slightly disappointed. He must be a cat person.

And that was almost it for the hospital visit. I did almost beat up an old lady on the way out. She had parked in such a way that our cab couldn't pull out and there was a traffic jam forming behind us. Before the cab driver, the guy in the van behind us or I could lay the smack down on the old bat ('I DON'T have to move! How DARE you talk to ME that way! No! He HONKED me and I want an APOLOGY!') she grudgingly moved her car and thus deprived me of a cool end paragraph.

Eating things is fun,
Fatman