Meet My Friend Bill

Got the mobile phone bill today. It was for $66.66.

Creepy.

One Step Better Than A Park Bench

There comes a time in everyone's life where, for one reason or another, you find yourself without a place to live. It doesn't seem to matter who you are- millionaires lose the fortunes, writers get exiled, dictators usurped, chimps released back into the wilderness after decades of captivity- everyone eventually comes home one day to find the house on fire or the locks changed. Sometimes both.

Ever since Piglet returned from Ireland, the snake-less Isle of limericks and car bombings, she'd had a spate of shit luck. It's the age old story: She broke up with her boyfriend, the topless bar she was working at wasn't treating her with respect and she suddenly found that she had no bed to sleep on. Her couch surfing experience has also been unpleasant. The stripper she was staying with apparently turned out to be an insomniatic "crack whore", waking Piglet up every twenty minutes to see if she'd like to partake in dangerous substances, and the guy she's currently staying with seems to be a powder keg waiting to explode. 'Admittedly,' says Piglet, 'I do wake him up at two in the morning to let me in to his room at the hostel. But he really is such a light sleeper.' (I have been informed that Piglet's snore causes ears to bleed, walls to crack and ceilings to tumble. Low-flying bats have been known to explode on occasion)

I hesitate before I say what I say next.

'You could sleep at my house if you'd like.' She looks at me. I know that she'd rather stay at the home of a convicted paedophile or a house adorned with pentagrams but she's a little desperate.
'That's nice of you to offer Fatman but...'
'Look,' I interject ,'I know that under different circumstances you'd happily live in a place where the roommates drink goat's blood and keep photos of dead babies on the fridge but you're a bit starved for choice.'
'Well.....'

Piglet has a strong aversion of nerds. She firmly believes that the interior of our house is decked out like the Starship Enterprise.
'You guys don't have long discussions about the temporal inconsistencies of old Dr. Who episodes do you?'
'No! We are not a household that does that sort of stuff[1]!'
'And I'm not going to wake up one night with a Bowie knife held to my throat/ someone taking pictures of me to download onto the internet/ with syphilis?'
'Piglet. You are not going to come out of a chloroformed torpor with me rubbing scented lotions on your hoof saying; "Ah lahks tuh rub people's feet.". It's not something I'd do. Do I strike you as someone who'd feel up a mongoloid cousin at Christmas?'
'Actually...'
'Shut it! Sleep with a can of mace within arms' reach if you must. And read this Jonathan Stern article from the New Yorker. It'll get you up to speed to what it's like to live with us. Sort of.'

Now, to convince the housemates to let a homeless Irish girl stay with us for awhile.


Mi Casa, Su Casa,
Fatman

[1] 'Anymore,' I add, bitterly and under my breath.

Please Tell Me I've Been Dining On Poisoned Fish

A new scientific study in the journal Clinical Toxicology reports on two men who suffered long, bad trips after eating Sarpa salpa fish in Mediterranean restaurants. This kind of hallucinogenic fish poisoning, called Ichthyoallyeinotoxism, was previously only reported in the Indo Pacific.
From Practical Fish Keeping, April 19th 2006

Everyone has a different way of conquering writer's block. Apparently the German poet and philosopher Friedrich von Schiller could only concentrate on work with his feet on a block of ice and inhaling the fumes of rotten apples. But then again that might just have been a German thing. Others approach writer's block by writing about writer's block. Which seems idiotic and annoying. My personal approach is to...

a) Look at Elisha Cuthbert images on the internet.

b) Stare blankly at the screen while George W. Bush's corpse falls endlessly down an impossible landscape of bubbles, his dead, bovine eyes staring into oblivion (Thanks J.J.Botts for that screensaver. Does it come in John Howard?)

c) Read things.

Ultimately I think reading things is the best way. The more you read the more you want to write and the more you write the more you want to read. When I can't be bothered actually reading books (always) I turn to fellow bloggers because it's cheaper and they tend to have normal lives (except for lion tamers and bomb disposal experts)that is fun to read about. Some of the people I read are great but they only update once a month (I'm staring directly at you Yawn when I say this). Some I have just discovered exist today( Again, I had no idea Broadzilla). But the blog I turn to on a daily basis would have been the 16mm Shrine.

Which I find out is now closing shop indefinitely.

The movie review blog from Hell, I'd read this before, I-shit-you-not, my own emails because I knew it'd be more amusing than most things my friends would send me (Penis Enlargements? No thanks). I can honestly say that the 16mm Shrine made me want to be a better writer. And it gave me a good place to unleash all my dead prostitute jokes that I keep to myself. I'll bid Ash a fond adieu and plonk a Bill Hicks quote right at the end of this post that probably sums up how he may be feeling:

"Well folks, this is a sentimental evening for me -- this is my final live performance. The last I'll ever do ever. No biggie, no hard feelings, no sour grapes whatsoever. I've been doing this every day for sixteen years and I enjoyed every second of it. Every plane flight. Every delay. Every cancelled flight. Every lost lost luggage. Living in hotel rooms. Every broken relationship. Playing the Comedy Pouch in Possum Ridge Arkansas every fuckin' year- it's been great. Don't get me wrong. I'm just very tired, very tired of doing comedy, very tired of seeing your vacant faces staring back at me wanting me to fill your empty lives with humour you couldn't possibly think of yourselves."

You don't just wake up with a body like this,
Fatman

And People Think I'm Insane

Now, I know that some of you may have been a little freaked out by my clone-of-Jesus-becomes-mutating-sea-monster stuff, but I think I've found a contender for "Stupidest Idea since Snakes on a Plane". Some dude named Bourbon Samurai, (Yes-I check out every blog that has a cool title) who was obviously the product of many a beatings and too much mescaline, has come up with a cop show...with a difference. It's Thomas Jefferson and Che Guevara: Private Investigators!

Thought For The Day

If you were in Lapland and were dancing with the natives is that classified as a 'Lap Dance'?

Less To Me Than Meets The Eye

For some strange, unfathomable reason people naturally assume I know stuff despite my assurances to the contrary. My one attempt at reading a book caused me such a headache that I still visibly shudder near a library, my knowledge of history is severely distorted due to my inability to separate fact from fiction and I have the attention span of a mollusk with Alzheimer's. And yet the questions keep on coming. My shortcomings are highlighted on an almost daily basis by Amy the day girl who is a trivia nut.

'Ready for today's questions?'
'Amy, I've keep telling you, I'm an idiot. I'm dumb.'
'You are not,' she replies earnestly ' OK, first question....'
'I don't remember agreeing to this.'
'....with what political party do we associate Karl Marx? I'll take any one of three responses.'
'The...um...Freemasons?'
'Stop kidding around!' yells Amy.
'I'm not.'
'Try again.'
'The Blefuscuans? The Denver Broncos? The Smurfs?'
'Smurfs aren't political!'
'They kind of are.'
'Moving right along,' Amy continues after a long sigh, 'when was the Spanish Civil War?'
'1755.'

Amy glares at me.

'1756? 1757? 1066?'
'Who was the famous martial artist father of Brandon Lee?'
'Steven Seagal.'
'Which Shakespearean tragedy was set in Verona?'
'Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise.'
'WHAT IS THE PRIME INGREDIENT OF PEANUT BUTTER?'
'Swordfish?'

Amy lobs a lime at my head in frustration.

May I use a lifeline Eddy?
Fatman

Such a Musical Bunch of People

There's been a slight change of characters in the household during the LEVIATHAN Incident. Meg the 21-year old masseuse has moved out of the house ( Happily. There were no temper tantrums or thrown crockery. She just found that living with Darren and I was 'too daggy') and has been replaced by Second-hand Bookstore Steve. Which now means I live with two gay guys. But nerdy gay. For instance, Darren does computer...er...stuff (such as designing websites for people like Julia de Ville who makes jewellry out of the corpses of bats). Steve leaves books by Jacques Derrida around the house that he reads for fun.

(A typical conversation with Steve, Steve's friend Larry and Yours Truly)

Steve:...and the statue was called Thus Spake Zarathustra but it had to be changed because of complaints from the Zoroastrians.
Me: What's a Zoroastrian?
Larry: They're a religious group. Followers of Zarathustra/ Zoroaster.
Steve: They're slowly dying out though. I think they only number about 2,000 or so.
Me: So a bunch of people who number less than Esperanto-speakers complain. Who cares?
Steve: Point. (Pause) They have an interesting burial ritual incidentally. They leave corpses atop high towers so that vultures can peck the body clean.
Larry: How hygienic.
Steve: Well, the first time I saw them was when I went to India. The first day. I was staying in a hotel room that was 2/3rds built and I poked my head out the window to see all these vultures circling around some dead bodies.
Me: Welcome to India.

Still, they are gay. Which creeps into their actions from time-to-time. For instance, the first night Steve moved in I come home to find the electric piano out and Darren and Steve were playing Beatles tunes. Gay. Or they team up with the cooking and make suggestions like: 'Let's put in more oregano!', 'You know what will make this better? Cumin.' Gay. They are also both hopelessly addicted to a PS2 game called We Love Katamari.

Me: So what happens?
Darren: You control this little guy who's about the size of a thimble and you go around with this ball.
Me: Ball?
Darren: Yeah. Ball. But it's this sticky ball that can stick objects the same size or smaller to it (ie. paperclips, pencils, cockroaches, etc). The more you collect the bigger you get so eventually you're sticking tables and chairs...
Steve:...lockers, shelves....
Darren:...people, cars, lions, vending machines, elephants...
Steve:...buildings and so on.
Darren: Eventually you can stick whole continents on your ball.
Me: You guys are gay.

Those wacky Somdomites!
Fatman

Random Phone Conversation

My phone rings.
'Hmmmm?'
'Happy birthday man!'
'Grurgrlr?'
'It's James.'
(Who the Hell is James?)'Oh. Hey James.'
'My mum told me it was your birthday yesterday so....'
'James!(My cousin who I've not seen in about five years)Yeah, Cheers. What's happening?'
'Not much. Work. But it's pretty boring today.'
(inane conversation about family)
'When are you coming down to Melbourne next?'
'Who knows? I haven't been down to Melbourne in ages. The last time was....three years ago? Something like that.'
'You should have called me. I could have shown you the sights and sounds of our fair city.'
'Nah. It was a work thing.'
'Anything fun?'
'Murder investigation.'

(James is a detective in the Federal Police)

And Then One Day You're Thirty

A year is nothing: a feather in the breeze, a breath of air. Turn around and it's gone. Ice, bud, leaf ,twig. Geese on the pond, stubble in the field. Three hundred sixty-five mornings, three hundred sixty-five nights. Minor lacerations, a sprained ankle, runny nose, the death of a distant relative. There's a squirrel in the antic, a tree down in a storm. The clock in the hallway cranks round seven hundred and thirty times. Windows are raised, shades drawn, dishes, cups and spoons dirtied and scrubbed, dirtied and scrubbed. Thunder hits the hills like a mallet, snow climbs the fenceposts, sunlight burnishes the windows like copper. A year. One of how many: fifty? sixty? The days chew away at it, insidious.'
T.Coraghessan Boyle, Water Music

One day I woke up and I was thirty. I didn't feel different to how I did the day before nor the year before. Nor four or five years before that. It always felt like it was going to be a momentous occasion- one of great sorrow or joy- but the truth is fairly anticlimactic. Strange how when you're a young kid, setting fire to cats, tormenting teachers with unique and ingenious nicknames (ie. 'Mr. Fuckhead') and dreaming of one day becoming an astronaut, and the whole concept of thirty is something you just can't wrap around your head. It's a blinking crystal that tells people it's time to go. It's the perfect age to become the prime ingredient for Soylent Green. But mainly, it's something that happens to OTHER PEOPLE.

My actual birthday was pretty non-eventful. Apart from the sheer joys of receiving an eviction notice because one of the previous housemates hasn't paid up his share of the rent six months ago (See: Why Micah and I are no longer friends[1]) nothing much happened that day. I knocked off early, had dinner with mum and shared some drinks with Matt and Mack. A pleasant evening but not one filled with any deep emotion. Compared to that I remember a week previously sitting outside a bar with a beer in my hand and watching the lights slowly turn on in the buildings around the city as dusk became night and thinking that it somehow felt like Christmas. And, in a way, that felt like a true day, like a year had finally clocked over.

Soylent Green is People!
Fatman

[1] It was actually the follow-up to the Notice to Vacate letter from way back when. But eviction letter sounds cooler.

I'll Never Eat Calamari Again

Aboard the Blythe Danner. Slow, slow week all 'round. Apart from that mild mutiny on Wednesday that resulted in fourteen injured and three dead (Wolfgang Peterson's Das Boot was NOT popular amongst the crew) and a compulsory crotch exam for everyone, nothing much seems to be happening. I've had very little sleep in the last three days and I mumble the same command that I have every day since I've been aboard this damn sub.
'Find him.'
'Found him,' replies the ensign peering casually out the window.

There lay LEVIATHAN, the tragic result of genetically engineering the supposed DNA of Christ and a mutating sea monster, helplessly struggling under the weight of it's own tentacles. It seems that it's self-replicating nature was it's own downfall. After weeks of searching for this sucker using satellite imagery, state-of-the-art digital multibeam systems and even employing an on board soothsayer and cross-referencing everything with what we know of the bathymetry (sea-floor depth) and backscatter (data that can provide insight into the geologic makeup of the sea floor) of the area we've finally found him by pure chance. I know that LEVIATHAN possesses an insatiable appetite for blood and yet it seems so helpless now. No threat to anyone. As I aim the thermo-nuclear torpedoes at it's struggling form I wonder...What would Jesus do?

'Arm the torpedoes!' I bark.
'I had this dream last night,' starts the Soothsayer.
'Hm?'
'I dreamt that the tentacles protruding from the body of LEVIATHAN was another branch of Christianity. Every tentacle, another skewered belief. What was once very simple and beautiful was slowly becoming a creature of horror, spilling much blood for the sake of it's distorted self.'
'Sounds like pure horseshit padre,' I say as I grip the trigger,' LEVIATHAN is a bloated sea creature, pure and simple. It ain't a high school religious education essay.'

Before anyone else can voice their objections I launch the torpedoes into the side of LEVIATHAN. A direct hit!

I blame the peyote,
Fatman

We All Die in the Yellow Submarine

Hunting down the massive cloned Jesus/sea creature LEVIATHAN is....well....it's been a bit duller than I expected quite frankly. After the cool a la Flatliners outro of 'All aboard men. It's a good day to die' I'd expected a high speed underwater chase but so far it's been days of looking baffled at the instruments and playing cards. No one had the foresight to bring any dvds and so everyone is amusing themselves in some other way. Dr Lim is currently working on his autobiography entitled 'Risking Life and Lim' where he basically spends 350-pages blaming me for this little fiasco. Van Cleef spends the nights carving my name on bullets and Terry the one-eyed intern is proving to be quite the virtuoso of a piano accordion. The rest of the Krakenguard spends their time repairing leaks to the submarine Blythe Danner[1] (Damn you "Honest" Vladimir and your shoddy vessel!), making sure we're not lost and getting drunk at night. They had also been playing Spin the Bottle but I have put a stop to that. It was making me uncomfortable.

Known Some Call Is Air Am
Fatman

[1]- Not Pequod nor Nautilus but the Blythe Danner. Go figure.