Reality Splinter

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Our bed appears to have been colonised by cats

I've resigned myself to the fact that most of this weekend will be taken up with peace treaty negotiations.

I just know they’ll demand a seat on the “Cat Fud Procurement” committee.

Things I did as a kid #11

I don’t know when it started (I remember doing it in our house in Sibella Road so it would have been about ’83) but as a kid I used to pretend that aliens were watching me on their otherworldly TVs. Not in a creepy, “I think we’ve found the next probe victim” way but like the Truman Show, the whole of another planet was glued to their xeno-visions watching my every move. I would be playing with lego on the floor of the living room trying as hard as I could to appear unaware that another world was watching my every move. I recall laying out a red and a yellow four-by-one block next to each other and moving my hand slowly from one to the other with a quizzical look on my face. The whole time giggling on the inside as I imagined little red men on the edge of their seat waiting to see which block I chose like it was the answer to “Who shot JR?”

I think my internal logic was stolen from an episode of The Outer Limits or Twilight Zone where mundane things like brushing my teeth or walking to school were exotic to E.T. and so kept them captivated by my every move:

- Xegog what’s the earthling whelp doing now?
- Quiet Zepfywl, he’s about to eat a spoonful of Frosties!

Then at some point the aliens turned all Dr Who villain of the week and decided that they liked the look of this place we call Earth and began to plan an invasion. However, in a plot point that the hack M. Night Shyamalan stole for the not-entirely-terrible Signs, they were afraid of water* so every time I showered (it was about ’85 by this stage so I was still pre-teen and I didn't know there was anything creepy about them having a camera in the bathroom) I would hold my elbows at my sides and point my arms out in front of me with my hands balled into fists but with my little fingers extended. This C-3P0 impression caused water to run down my arms and make it look like water was running out of my pinkie. I think I even said out loud a couple of times, “Everyone can fire water out of their fingers but we save it for emergencies and only ever practice in the shower.” I envisioned the Morks up on Alien Prime cursing their luck that the one interesting planet in the universe was protected by life forms that could shoot water out of their digits.

This tells us two things:
A) Thanks to me we’ve escaped the yoke of alien oppression these last twenty-odd years and;
2) M. Night’s ‘plot points' are so weak that even an eight year-old could have come up with them.

* Signs came out in 2002 so I think after six years the statute of limitations on spoilers for this has passed

Chile and Garth Brooks owe me a day on the sofa

I’m sitting here watching the 5th NZ-England one-day game and it seems as if the fates have conspired to ruin my Saturday of sport (following the cricket, we’ve got the there’s the Chiefs/Waratahs game). One neighbour is having their house re-painted and their workmen have a stereo pumping out Country and Western. I don’t Mustard out for two, bowled Mills, caught How have one particular reason for disliking C&W it just grates with me for some reason. I think it’s the combination of the twang in the voice and the twang of the guitar made only worse with the “heartfelt” lyrics layered over the top.

On the other side, neighbour number two is blasting the music of mediocrity – pan pipe covers. Currently I think it’s the Girl from Ipanema and the pipes have taken a mediocre bossa nova song (not a the best combination to start with) and made it terrible. What’s even worse is when they take a good song (Four Seasons in One Day comes immediately to mind) and trash it by playing it on what must surely be the ugliest of instruments. I can’t even listen to Sound of Silence without a shudder, such is the damage that World Music in general and pan pipes in particular have done to the catalogue of Simon and Garfunkle.

All that said, the weather is warm, my cold is on the mend and there’s a full day of sport to come so not even this perfect storm of music is going to get me off the sofa today.

NB - All written from the sofa. I love wi-fi.

Update – They've now gone from Country to Skunk Regea. This has to be some Pietersion out for Thirty-Nine, bowled Patel, caught Ryder sort of cosmic joke.

Dead Catalogues Society

Picture this: It’s 1992 and you’re in a boy’s dormitory at an unnamed English public school. The 13-year-old occupants are all at their classes so the room is empty except for the movie one-sheets on the walls, ten badly made beds and their matching bedside lockers made from cheap, varnished pine. Now look closer at the various cabinets and you’ll find a magazine common to about half of the rooms occupants. Check through the rest of the boarding house and you’ll find a similar story.

Without actually seeing the cover of the magazine you might assume that it’s a Playboy, Penthouse or possibly a Fiesta (which, I feel I should point out, is not a Ford enthusiasts magazine like a classmate tried to claim when he was caught with one on a camping trip) and you’d be half right but simply by the size you can tell it’s natural habitat isn’t the top-shelf of a newsagent’s. It looks like a decent sized phone book but with a glossy cover.

It’s an Argos catalogue and it seems perfectly innocuous as you glance through it. Toys, DIY tools, low-price jewellery, clothes. Then, as you’re thumbing through the woman's clothing section you find a certain part of the catalogue that’s a little worn down at the page edge: the lingerie section. Four pages of tiled pictures that consists mostly of close-ups of the female bust area. It's more Queen Victoria than Victoria’s Secret but for 13 year-old boys, it was the option that wasn’t going to get you a talking to from the teachers (it’s hard to label a document X-rated when it could be found on the coffee table of most of the school’s staff members).

On Monday, I found out that Argos has pretty much become an internet based store with most of it’s efforts focused on their web based catalogue rather than the paper-based behemoth I grew up with and the first thing that went through my head was, “But where will the young boys of Britain find their porn?” Then I realised, with modern scholastic interconnectivity and the ubiquitous nature of wi-fi, they’ll get their jollies from the same place they get their Argos catalogue.

Bus Stop Chicken

A couple of times a week I catch the bus into work. Most days Roo and I car pool but sometimes I need to leave early or she needs to stay late so I take public transport (car parking is cheaper at the university than it is around my work). Now, they're not as punctual or frequent as the Melbourne trams but the Wellington buses are clean, never really get that full and I’m yet to feel like a drumstick in a chicken incubator while riding them.

I don’t know how I started but I’ve invented a sad little game that I play when it’s time for my stop. I win by not having to pull the cord to get off the bus. I lose if I chicken out and pull the chord or miss my stop. I know that only about 1 in 20 trips are bereft of fellow passengers with the same sidewalk destination but as I spot the stop coming closer it’s very hard to hold off pulling the cord.

Last Friday, when I stepped on the bus, I decided that I’d cease playing this stupid game and just travel to work like a normal person. The chance of having to walk five minutes out of my way because of a game no-one else even knows they’re playing was a fairly good motivator to throw the whole thing in and just pull the chord as soon as my stop came into view. However, as we neared the city centre I remembered that I was on a record equalling 9-0 winning streak and who was I to deny the fans of this proud sport the chance to see BSC history be made?

Note - In a variation on BSC, I ‘win’ when riding the lift if fellow passengers get off before my floor, leaving me alone in the lift to do a quick victory dance before the doors open on my level.

Things I remember from when I was a kid #10

At lunch today, I had an elderflower flavoured soda. I was a little bit excited when I found it as elderflower was quite an exotic taste while I was growing up. Twice, that I can remember, Mum made elderflower cordial. The first time was in England and I can't really remember any details except helping Mum to carry black bin liners full of elderflowers through our house in Clapham. The second time happened while we were living in Wellington and so must have occurred at some point between 1984 and 1992. I recall sitting in our car at dusk terrified the police were going to leap out while Mum was outside committing mass deforestation on a growth of elderflower plants that she had somehow found at the end of an industrial park in Lower Hutt. In my mind the entire boot of our car was filled with the flowers and when we left the bushes looked as if someone with a grudge had taken to the plants with a portable combine harvester.

According to my childhood recollections, when we got home there wasn't a vessel in the house that wasn't filled with cuttings infusing their elderflowery goodness into the water. I remember bathtubs, dustbins and paddling pools all filled with Mum's concoction like she was some kind of non-alcoholic moonshiner. In actual fact, it's more likely that there was no more than the laundry sink involved but the making of this elderflower juice has grown to such an exciting event that I would swear that once bottled, there wasn’t a shelf in our fridge that wasn’t filled with elderflower juice and the freezer was similarly packed.


NB - the childhood memories included in this post may not hold any grounds in the actual events

I just invented that abbreviation

I'm a little suspicious of Coke Zero. There's just something about it that bugs me. It’s like in the old Bond films where you can spot the evil Bond Girl because they are just too sexy. In just the same way, the SeeZee has too much going for it. Unlike normal Coke there’s no calories and the taste is a lot better than any other sugar-free drink. Then there's the fact that it comes in a seductive black can and best of all, it has none of the 90’s pretension that you get with Caffeine-Free Diet Coke.

Surely nothing can be that good? I’m betting, years from now, we’ll find out that the SeeZee is made from the tears of baby seals and you’ll all be sad for making the little seal pups cry but not me. By boycotting the SeeZee now, I’m doing my bit to make the planet a better place.

Note – Turns out, you can use beet juice as an effective driveway de-icer.

Surely being "year of the rat" doesn't bode well for 2008

Not much flowing today so you’ve got a bunch of vignettes to hold you over until I can get myself back in the saddle:

* I know I said I’d write before I went but it didn’t happen. A combination of Guitar Hero, leftover Christmas dinner and roadtrip prep got in the way. As penance, here’s a photo of me dressed as Robert Smith.

* I’ve been back at work for a week. It’s been hard getting back into the swing of things but I’m still enjoying what I do. Anytime the work gets a bit hard or a client is a little bit trying I just think, “At least I’m not still at Alleasing.” and I feel a whole lot better.

* My favourite part of cricket is watching the fast-bowlers bat. More specifically when they get a bounced by the opposition quicks. There’s the obvious comedy value that comes from watching the tall non-batsmen clumsily sway out of the path of a solid projectile traveling towards their head at 150kph. But then, after they’ve picked themselves up off the ground and dusted off, they look at the opposition bowlers with a rye smile and you know they’re thinking, “Fair enough, nice try but just remember that soon enough I’ll be the one with the ball in my hand I won’t forget what just happened.” Brett Lee seems to almost channel Christopher Walken when he fixes someone with his "I'll knock your head off later" stare.

* The roadtrip was the vacational equivalent of turning the volume up to 11. Had a complete blast and lots of laughs; exactly the cure for turning 30.

* I know I’ve said that I was going to write more in the past but I actually think I’m going to manage at least two posts a week in 2008. Not as good as my best of six but a good place to start. Last year was all about sorting my shit out: moving back to New Zealand, (kind of) buying a house, leaving a shitty job, (kind of) sorting out my hair. So I now feel that I’ve got my feet firmly set on the ground and I can build on this: start playing some sport, really get to grips with my job, learn sign language, master Paint it Black on Guitar Hero, write regularly.

* Being an adult means not having to wait until noon to have my lunch. I was hungry at 10:20am the other day and though, “Sod it, I’m going to eat now.” And I did. I got funny looks from some of my co-workers as I ate my rocket, ham and aioli sandwiches while they were still zombing about waiting for their coffee to kick in.

What’s the best way to attach antlers to a cat’s head?

Thank you to everybody who told me I was old on my birthday. You really know how to make a guy feel like one’s 30th is a day to celebrate rather than a way-point on the long march to the grave.*Media Player*
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(The keyboard I'm typing this on has a whole lot of kwik buttons along the top to open 'Mail', 'My Computer', 'Favorites' etc. and there must be a loose connection somewhere as every time I hit the enter button, 'Media sodding Player' opens.)*Media Player*
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Seriously though, I’m not at all phased. I am older but I fully intend on living until at least 100 (Deathclock has me living until 86 so I figure that I'll get at least another 14 years from medical tech that hasn't been invented yet) so I’m only a shade under a third of the way through. If I was an hour-long police procedural drama, the first red-herring would have just shown up and I wouldn't even be up to the 2nd ad break yet.*Media Player*
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Seeing as I'm here anyway I'll just take this opportunity to extend the very best of Christmas wishes to the small but perfectly formed community of loyal readers that I’m sure only really exists in my mind. Today looks like it should be a good one so I'll sign off now and report back on Pugilistic Wednesday. After that, there’ll be some road trip enforced radio silence but I’ll more than make up for it by not shutting up about it when I get back. I’ve decided playing Guitar Hero is the best way to spread holiday cheer, so I’m off to throw my axe into a couple of verses of “Rock and Roll All Nite”.*Media Player*
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May your day be filled with stuffing, gravy and brandy butter,*Media Player*
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I don’t usually do this but here’s the soundtrack for this blog. I never would have chosen this playlist but sometimes just chucking Winamp on shuffle works really well:*Media Player*
Finley Quaye - Waiting for You*Media Player*
Kooks - Time Awaits*Media Player*
The Killers - Somebody Told Me*Media Player*
The Beta Band - Dry the Rain*Media Player*
White Stripes - I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart*Media Player*