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DAY 358: Giving my roadworthy vehicle its first bath

24 Aug

There goes the neighbourhood.

POOR Great White Shark. Its only crime is to have been run into the ground and found wanting, yet so far I’ve kicked it up the arse, shaken my fist extensively at it while issuing vile threats, and have entertained ideas of just setting it on fire; which is particularly disturbing because I am an animist, so essentially that would be murder.

Now I have it back from the mechanic with a genuine looking roadworthy certificate (seven months after I bought it on eBay), I should be showing this ute some good loving.

Good as new.

From Big W I purchase a chamois, a squeegee and a bucket, and set to work in my driveway. I give the shark a nice soapy bath and rub down, and then we both have a shower with the hose. Even the house has a shower, on account of it being inconveniently situated under a wattle tree. Who invented wattle trees, anyway? And why put one in an area where wandering around in furry socks is a necessity?


Keeper?
Either the ute or my carport seems to be listing a fair bit, but I will not be immediately selling the shark, as has been gently suggested. We’re in this for the long haul.

DAY 342: Getting stroked to death in my lunch break

8 Aug

THIS is horrible. I’m grimacing through the little head-hole in the table and clenching my fists as I get slathered up for a 15-minute massage down some basement in the city, staring at my masseuse’s pearly toenails in her thongs.

“Hard or soft?” she’d said. Soft.

As the girl carelessly traverses my back, neither soft nor hard, but a totally ‘meh’ medium, ‘Que Sera, Sera’ pipes reedily through the ceiling.

I’m not one to grumble, but my masseuse has all the finesse of a 14-year-old boy – which perhaps isn’t entirely surprising, as when the light comes on afterwards she appears to be a 14-year-old girl (therefore, nonces, I won’t reveal the location of the joint). If she were a bloke trying that nonsense on in bed, I’d have shrugged her off in five seconds flat.

Maybe, I ponder, as the masseuse settles in for five water-torturey minutes of rubbing a nubby square-inch on my left shoulder blade, massage is more of an art-form than I thought. Inspired, I get home and start Googling for tantra training.

Watch this space.

Keeper? No. Wanted to jump screaming from the table.

DAY 341: Coveting at GreazeFest Kustom Kulture Festival

7 Aug

World's most uncomfortable ride.

I stand corrected!

Keeper? Coveting is fairly fun, but getting lost in Yeerongpilly isn’t.

DAY 312: Replying to sex spam

10 Jul

I’VE always been tempted to respond to email spam, but common sense prevails. Then I get this one, and common sense concedes now would be a great time to hit reply.

From: sefrou100@hotmail.fr
To: ti_gr_esa17@hotmail.com
Subject: re:
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:26:44 +0000


OMG how have u been? I know we havent chatted in a while! totally my fault.. this computer im using freezes all the time. i have tired ot email you a few times with no luck.. ach! sooo sorry.. so whats been up? i am finally moving near you in a couple days.. i hope u didnt forget me? its me amdison lol.. in case u DID forget, we met on ms or cl not long ago.. so im gonna be living right near you and i dont know ANYBODY OMG SHOOT ME! i have my uncle and aunt there but thats not the same.. so can u show me around? help me find a job lol.. i get there next friday late afternoon.. im gonna nee dyour cell number also..ps – im recently single too so u can take me out and show me some real fun * wink wink * hahahha! so anyways im soo nervous about moving. its a load off my back that im gonna know someone there though. so i am happy we met online hehe 🙂 I am hoping u dont have a girlfriend.. i am not a big fan of drama and stuff like that so just tell me if u do..SO I kinda think we should chat a little bit more before we meet. just to make sure we are not awkward and stuff. although i can talk forever about anything with anyone lol. u will notice that right away when we meet. so are u free friday to help me move some boxes and stuff? i hope so 🙂 since i wont know anyone maybe u could also introduce me to some of you friends? are they nice? i am cool with gurls and guys lol.. guess u could say i am bisexual but whatever what girl isnt these days..so back to YOU mister… remind me what u do for work? for fun? what are your hobbies and what do you like sexually ? we have so mucht o get ot know about each other in such little time lol! as i mentioned i recently broke up with my ex. we were together for about 6 months but there was too much drama and my friends and fmaily hate dhim. he had no job and was quite disrespectful.. was also pretty lousy in bed.. i like foreplay and he always just wanted to go right to sex.. at least get me wet first ya know? selfish idiot. anyways so i feel free again now that i am single but i do kinda miss having that special someone to cuddle with ya know? so ur probably wondering how come i am moving right? well its a long story.. basicly i am broke for starters.. add to that the fact that i need to go back to school AND the fact that i ned a fresh start and there u go.. so i am gonna move and hopefully solve all 3 of those problems, the most stressfull one is my debt. 4 August.–Still fog, which the sunrise cannot pierce, I know i owe 8k on my visa ewwww. also i am trying to help my sister pay off her tuition fees also so shes counting on me. Speaking of which, do you have any good hookups to help me find a job? i would LOVE to be a bartender or somehting like that where I can make tips. I think i have a good look for it plus I am SUPER friendly. so here is some random stuff about me. i love star gazing, the outdoors, porn, foreplay, massages, the internet, shopping, doing my nails, sex, cooking, and watching movies. when it comes ot guys i just want someone who treats me the way i deserve to be treated. i can be such a good girlfriend and a total freak in bed. i am up for just about ANYTHING sexually.. serioulsy 🙂 As for my current job doesnt pay that well but coming from where I lived it was my only real option. I am sure I told u about it but if i didnt i really hope u dont look down on me for it and can accept me for who i am. See I do this webcam thing where I basicly get paid to chat to people on cam and tease around a bit. I know its not the most MORAL job out there but i am desperate for money and its pretty easy money. i wanna get a real job though and thats another reason why i am moving. The job suits me cause i like tlaking to people and i am quite dirty minded so its the best of both worlds and i get paid for it hehe.. Anyways here is what i was thinking.. since my computer SUCKS and its hard for me to chat by email or instant messenger.. why dont u come chat me at my work site? i can totally get u in for free.. i have 2 free passes a month to share with whoever i like.. i havent ever given any out but i dont mind giving u one as we totally need to chat before i move. see you can login as a customer but ill give u a special link where u dont pay or get billed anything. its a special vip backdooor link… this woudl be the best palce for us to chat cause i am online all the time now trying to save as much money as possible for the move..also i will kick any other chatters out when i see u sign in. does this work for u? i understand if ur not cool with it.. i kno theres a lot of scammers out there so if u dont wanna chat there then i guess ill email u in a few weeks when i get my internet all set up in the new place. although i woudl really feel more comfortable chating wiht u before i move.if u do decide to come chat me online then u have to PROMISE me that u will not share the vip link with anyone.. for any reason.. its for YOU only baby i am trusting u.. once u sign in we can chat and u can see me on webcam also 🙂 if u have one u can go on too.. oh la la hot.. and of ocurse u wudnt pay me for it ur my friend DUH! I am trusting u not to abuse it though cause once u sign in u can watch ohter girls naked for free too and i wudnnt want that.. YOUR EyeS BETTER ONLY BE ON ME hahahahha!! unless of course we watch them together 🙂 week is quite enough to dine with one’s own relations. In the second place, whenever I do dine there I am always So i am trusting u.. so u can trust me.. the link is at the bottom of the email. remember not to give it to anyone under any circumstances! i am online right now if u wanna come chat now.. its dead in here.. please come 😦 also.. u obvioulsy need a cc to sign into the site but thats just to prove u are not a minor…it says right on the vip link that its free since u are vip and u wont get billed anything.. ok im getting off here now.. im waiting for u baby. cant wait to see u and meet u and hug u and kiss u.. ciao for now.. xoxox —-> localchatcamconnect . com/free (take out the spaces obvioulsy heheh)
 

Such effort! It borders on poetic. It is to go rewarded.

Using one of my more suss email accounts that I started up for suss usage only, I email Madison back. (I discover her name is Madison and that she is an ‘acquarious’ when I visit her website – just for curiosity’s sake, you understand.)

Hi there
 


It’s so good to hear from you! Tell me, did we meet on Christians for Bible Equality? Your name seems familiar, but my head’s like swiss cheese since the accident!

I know what you mean by your ex. Mine always wanted me to pretend I was asleep whenever we made love, and if I complained he’d put a pillow over my face. You’re better off without him, girlfriend.

Absolutely I will be happy to help you move your boxes  –  any friend of Jesus is a friend of mine.
 


Jenny

Keeper? Possibly this is not the end of it – I’ll let you know.

DAY 284: Smashing a telly

12 Jun

TODAY’S mission is twofold:

  1. To let Launceston’s garage sales determine the day’s adventure
  2. To duly have the adventure

I’m secretly pleased that the various garage sales only bag us a rabbit hutch, an Ella Fitzgerald single and a TV, as anything involving a tent or mattress would have had a direct impact on my latte intake.

Instead, we go back to Old Dog’s house, where he determines that I need to smash up his old TV to make room for the new. Because, as the comedian Jeff Foxworthy noted, “you might be a redneck if your new TV is on top of your old TV”.

At first I look into throwing the telly out of the window, rock star-style. I’m pretty fed up with writing about the antics of musicians. I’ve given them the best years of my life, for shame, and now that I’m calling it quits it’s about time I show them how it’s done.

Unfortunately, the window’s not big enough, so I take a sledgehammer to it instead.

Keeper? A tough job for an animist, but it’s ultimately fulfilling. A friend likes to take crockery to a field and smash it. Similar deal.

DAY 234: Dwelling in the gutter

22 Apr

Before.

I’M dubious about driving this ute; I’m sure it’s all fairly roadworthy and everything, but it’s like steering a sodden mattress that only wants to go left.

Despite his years on the road, I notice the bush pirate is gripping the handhold above the passenger window just as futilely as I gripped the map pocket in the glider yesterday. He’s already skulled a can of Monster so that there’s absolutely no danger of him falling asleep while I’m at the wheel.

My task today is to practise driving with the left wheels in the gutter, partly to stop my habit of hugging the white centre line, and partly so I will know not to overcorrect if I have to steer off-road in an emergency.

Inching into a gravelly trench at speed is as uncomfortable a feeling as deliberately punching yourself in the face, but after a few kays I stop thinking about it. In fact, I notice a couple of dead kangaroos on the other side of the road and automatically veer over to take a look.

“It’s time to pull over,” the bush pirate says tightly, “so let’s go through the stopping… process.” I’m not actually trained to drive manuals, so the stopping process pains us both.

“I’ll assume you indicated and checked your mirror there,” he says, voice deepening an octave in displeasure.

With the bush pirate back at the wheel, we reach the desert in double time and the rain stops abruptly. You could score a line where it starts; wheat fields and earth suddenly giving away to witchy black trees and white sand.

The sight of a sidetrack fills the bush pirate with unadulterated glee, and he gets me back behind the wheel for some four wheel driving. At first I’m hammering along, but I’m thrown when a Land Rover approaches and I veer up a verge sideways, burning rubber on sand. I’m as rattled as the suspension, and suddenly can’t find neutral or work the park brake, and have to do the humiliating slide along the bench seat to let the bush pirate take over in front of our new audience. It takes all his skill to hoik us out of both the sand and my gathering storm clouds, but of course he manages it.

After.

Keeper? It’s really tempting to idle, dribbling and glaze-eyed, in passenger mode forever when you’re in the company of a shit-hot driver. I blame VicRoads and their lack of encouragement.

DAY 222: Flagellating myself

10 Apr

DOING this blog, I’ve all but lost the gentle art of self-flagellation. Once upon a time I’d muse lengthily on the bleak implications of my existence, but these days I’m too busy.

I’m in a terrible mood today, though, and I reckon I’ve karmically passed on that feeling of being shat on from a great height; although to my credit I haven’t actually shat on anyone’s desk from a great height in return.

Apart from general fumings, I’m deeply facially unpleasant to the man next to me on the train home, who merely wants to get up three minutes earlier than necessary so that he can stand in a queue for the door. There’s no cause to slam down Dave Graney’s autobiography and cross my arms, infusing the poor chap with black molecules of bad juju as he wends his way, inch by inch, down the crazy carpet.

So to avoid getting karma back again twice as hard, I’m going to flagellate myself with a bunch of sticks and mortify the deeds of my flesh. Pip karma at the post, as it were.

I’m not Catholic, so I only feel bog standard guilt, but still it seems fitting to follow the path of rogue Catholics who enjoyed a good flogging. I don’t want leaves all over my house, so I’ve fashioned a handbag-sized ‘birch’ rod I can take out with me tomorrow. Now I can give myself a smart thrash on the wrist whenever I come over all self-righteous.

You put something down for a second 'round here.

 

Keeper? Am available for flagellatings.

DAY 177: Jaywalkers ruin my life

24 Feb

AFTER 35 years of being a pedestrian myself, I now want to mow each one of them down like rabbits and mount their heads on my lounge-room wall, the hateful bastards.

Quick poll: Who knew you had to give way to jaywalkers when the jaywalkers haven’t even started crossing yet, but are having a good long dither about it on the median strip?

I shit you not. According to my VicRoads tester – let’s call her Vicky – that’s the law, and so I am failed for the third time. And this after my instructor has loudly told me outside her office that she is a soft touch who has a crush on him.

My instructor also warned me beforehand not to point out my prowess with four-wheel drives and V8-style donuts, so I sit sniffling stoically in the passenger seat while he argues the toss with Vicky. The more he roundly patronises her in disbelief, the more she resolutely scribbles damning stuff like “failed to give way to pedestrians” on a form.

Can you believe it, though? I can’t. Quad bike disasters aside, I’m not a bad driver, and that test was smooth as butter. My last instructor kept valiums in his pocket for occasions like this (and for the tests themselves, actually) but there is no such comfort forthcoming today, so I just have to pacify myself with the fact that tests are a lot harder these days. If you could similarly bear that in mind, that would be great.

Keeper? I’m keeping VicRoads in Tim Tams and tea bags, yes.

DAY 176: Hitting the Hey Man wall with a quad bike

23 Feb

Here’s a picture of a riderless quad bike. I refused to pose on my one.

THE downside of trying something new every day is that whatever you try you’re going to be shit at it. So basically, every day, you’re shit.

This ignites an impotent rage after a while; the sort of rage serial killers develop when women laugh at them in bed.

For four days now I’ve been doing the most ace, fun missions in ridiculously good-looking company, but I’ve been floundering about like a panda trying to play a ukulele while wearing water wings. You can only laugh gamely for so long.

Throughout my trip to the Otways I’ve been raring to have a go on the quad bike on the property I’m staying at, and there’s a good hilly terrain to take it out on. I’m told how to start it up, brake, change gear, yada yada yada… but somehow the bit about reversing fails to sink in.

I believe we only have so much space in our heads for instructions. The rest is taken up with thinking about amusing comebacks, rooting, what to eat next, and admiring scenery.

Over the past few days I’ve been taught how to operate a manual, a four-wheel drive, a bulldozer, a milking machine and a chainsaw, but rerouting my neural pathways has produced more of a series of pissling streams than a mighty Shenandoah. I’m starting to lose confidence in myself before I even crank up the quad bike.

I manage to fang around the property with a few near misses (have you tried steering one of these things?), before I wedge one wheel into a bush and then can’t figure out how to reverse back out again. I’ll be buggered if I’m going to trek off for half an hour to ask for help; I’m all out of sheepish grins.

Getting off the bike, I try to manually heave it free, but it won’t budge and just deposits a few more leeches on my legs. There comes an ominous thunderclap – that’s me officially cracking the shits.

I won’t describe in full the following scene, as it is a scene, but needless to say it involves leaving the quad bike in the bush for someone else to deal with and stomping off back to the house – which is quite a long stomp, as I’ve crashed it right at the top of a hill.

Keeper? I’ll be back. Just as soon as I find my smokes.

DAY 174: Milking filthy cows

21 Feb

Dangerous place to stand and sulk.

THINK you get shat upon at work? Don’t talk to me about it – I’ve just been in a shit deluge.

‘Relief milking’, which I’ve got up at 5.15 to do, doesn’t mean you’re ‘relieving’ cows, it’s the milking of cows when someone else doesn’t want to do it – which is completely understandable, as it turns out.

When I first arrive at Graham’s farm, though, I’m blissfully ignorant, and as I explain to the bush pirate, there’s no excuse not to apply lipstick and brighten everyone’s day just because you’re getting down to a bit of hard graft.

My job here today is to herd in 110 cows in groups of 10, pour in feed, hook ’em up to the milking machine by hoovering up their udders with suction cups, unhook them, hook up the opposite 10 cows, spray disinfectant on the first 10 and then herd them out with the aid of a big stick and some plaintive yelling.

My perception of gaily a-milking in clogs and pigtails dissipates in a stream of steaming urine (which smells pleasingly like porridge, I have to say). As I flounder around in the shit pit, dodging downpours, I try futilely to rinse fecal matter off my hands with a hose, and the high-pressure jet propels it into my face instead.

“Eeh scary!” Graham mimics of my little yelp.

Sparkling clean Graham.

“Does it hurt them?” I change the subject, tugging cups off teats while dodging indignant hooves.

“Don’t hurt me,” he shrugs.

Suck it and see.

An hour and a half later I’m well and truly splattered with poo and done for the day. The bush pirate asks Graham politely if he can borrow a towel for me to sit on: “It’s my dad’s car, you see.” Smirks all round. I feel like a child that’s just soiled itself.

Keeper? Ho no.