rantolotl.

Rantolotl has moved!

2011-02-19T17:18:00.002+11:00

Hello there everyone!

This is just a note to let you know Rantolotl has moved, and is now active at: http://rantolotl.com

Please update your bookmarks/feeds/etc, and enjoy!

Cheers,

The Rantolotl.

Vale Monty the Hat, 2005-2010

2010-07-05T10:27:00.003+10:00

Yesterday, I lost my favorite hat. While changing from hat to helmet out the front of Bridie's in Brunswick, I put Monty somewhere, obviously not in my bag, and rode off into the sunset. 30 minutes and 10 kilometers later, whilst eating my dinner in a delightful restaurant, I realised Monty was gone. I checked my bag once, twice, and later, thrice, but alas, no sign of Monty. Nor Mark Latham.

Monty was a faithful hat and so much more. He was a friend, my greatest confidant, and erstwhile traveling companion. I first met Monty after a long search to replace his predecessor (Monty II), whom I foolishly left on a BA flight somewhere in Austria in 2005. It was a terrible flight. It was delayed two hours because someone vomited on a seat. Instead of being informed of this before trying to board the aircraft, we were told only when we were in the airgate. Two long, long hours with 30 strangers in a freezing airport appendage, and one single copy of the daily mail to share amongst us. This was the fateful day Monty II would be lost, and the hunt for Monty the latter would begin.

And similar in tone was Monty's final day upon my scalp. He came with me as I visited a pub I intensely dislike, kept me company while I drank pint after pint of terrible domestic beer - and at what price will I lose my standards? $5 a pint, apparently - and even stayed by my side during a set of what can only be described as Kew's finest rap quintet, who regaled us with fascinating tales of dealing with terrible associates who waste their lives stealing drinks from Liquorland, and other varied songs about the life threatening dangers of walking the mean streets of Melbourne.

I couldn't agree more. Melbourne is fucking terrible. Just last week, I was riding my bike along, and I was assaulted by a dastardly rain drop and icy cold wind, but somehow I get the feeling we're on different pages with that one. Either way, don't let me tell you that they weren't tough motherfuckers. And Monty's last ride; he was there, he protected me from it all.

So, now the search begins for a new Monty, a wonderful new cap that will wear well and be as hardy and strong of character as Monty II and Monty were. I'm sure I will soon find him in my travels, but in the meantime, anyone with suggestions of where to find a good, rugged, short peaked black cap (I am open to minor decoration, such as pinstripes and other such low key fancies), please let me know.

Goodbye, Monty, my dear friend. You will not be forgotten.

G is for...

2010-03-19T09:00:00.000+11:00

I recently read a fascinating article in The Age regarding the ongoing urban development plans for Coburg. I suspect this isn't of much interest at all to those of you who have nothing to do with Moreland, let alone know where it is (about 9kms north of Melbourne, incidentally), but lets just run with the whole redevelopment - if it ever happens - as having big implications for the remaining suburbs to be molested by the Melbourne 2030 plan.

Moreland City Council seems to be approaching the redevelopment in a cool enough way - they want to preserve the character of Coburg (presumably with less smackies). They recognise that industrial closures in the area over the last 30 years have gradually led to little in the way of employment for those who live in the area. They want to reinvigorate the suburb for the locals who have made it what it is and what it was (and recognise that's a good thing to do). So why at the centre of all this reinvigoration, are there plans for massive townhouse and apartment developments? Further still, why are the fuck are only a fifth of these new and proposed apartments actually categorised as "Affordable living", in a residency with acknowledged depleted employment?

Surely, this council might have worked out by now that placing expensive multi story apartments right on a train line isn't exactly establishing housing for locals, but is instead, you know, maybe aimed at attracting city workers to Coburg in a hope to increase rates and decrease dependence on community facilities? Now wait... what's the word for that again? That's right, it starts with a G...

Oh yeah - gentrification.

The reason traditional employment in Coburg has dropped in recent years, is not just because of those nasty industries closing down - though I have to say that the closure of Pentridge is one industry I'm happy to see in decline - but because of rocketing value of real estate in the area given its proximity to the city centre in the middle of a very, very long housing boom. However, while employers can move where they wish without much hassle, surely they'd have less incentive to if industrial land was not rezoned as residential – making it incredibly profitable - so willingly by councils?

Maybe someone needs to remind these Councillors that you don't protect jobs or community by razing factories and building unaffordable apartments, and that no amount of creating 'green squares' and - rather oddly - sinking rail lines and stations will help that.

Now I'm not arrogant enough to deny that I'm part of one of the key groups that benefits pretty well from this sort of gentrification, and that while I've spent the last ten years odd on my preferred side of the Yarra, I wasn't born there; my parents weren't born there; I have no connection to these suburbs other than what I directly choose to have now. That said, even I have felt driven out of these areas by overdevelopment, displacement of heritage, and just general fuckwittery – all of which doesn’t just force massive rent increases, but destroys community culture. It happens so slowly, too - one day you realise that the road that you would never choose to go north of, you would now never go south of. Why? Because the shops have changed so completely that they don't so much cater for the locals and blow ins, but cater almost exclusively for half cut 16 year olds from Ringwood trying to up their credibility over the space of a weekend. Basically, when people stop wearing moccies and hangover appropriate eyewear and instead start styling themselves after Corey Worthington, with the added touch of designer moccies, you know you're in the shit. Get the real estate guide out right now, you're going to need it.

But at least when this happened to Brunswick, and yes, I'm going to be the first to say it - right here, right now - Brunswick has gone to shit. It used to be great. Then it was AMAZING! Then it was good. Then less good. And now it just sucks. I have a few minor exceptions to this rule, and those are the Brunswick Hotel, Cafe Mingo, and Warwick Thai. Don't even fucking think about trying to placate me with lines such as "Oh! But have you been to The Retreat!" Have I fucking ever. It's a soulless cesspit smacking of the arrogance and desperation of the coked up owners clinging to their youth*. It was, is, and will be the future of Brunswick, I have no doubt. But sorry, I think I was saying there was some kind of silver lining about when and how this happened to Brunswick. Ah, yes, that's right. They didn't start knocking down buildings. Well, not many of them. I suspect it's just because I got there a lot later in the piece, but just in the same way that Fitzroy suffers in a different way to Collingwood, Brunswick will suffer in a differently to Coburg.

But lets get back to Coburg. The hypocrisy of the Councillors involved in this decision making process astounds me. The really wonderful thing about places like Coburg, and why I love living in these suburbs, is because they have not just a sense of history, but a sense of community. These aren't suburbs where the Italians are hidden in one corner, and the Asians in another - the cultures are there, they are vibrant, and they have living communities. Food, language, religion, art, and hell, even architecture** is all practiced, shared, and celebrated in its own way, and living in these places I've always felt every bit like the fly on the wall - I get to see all these wonderful interactions around me, I get involved in them as much as I please or want, and overwhelmingly, I've felt a part of it without much effort at all.

And that's what I find strange when I cross back over the river to visit family, or head further north visiting friends and so on. Hell, driving around Mill Park, you find house after house shuttered up behind a myriad of security devices (bars!!); other places, you find yourself as out of place as Shirley Bassey’s corpse in the set of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Some, you turn up and you get the overwhelming sense of unsettled, unsatisfied, restless people. I'm glad I don't live in these suburbs, but I think that as rent inevitably rises, I'll probably have to sooner or later.

To see Councillors actively destroy that awesome community culture of Moreland, shouting down gentrification while committing all the worst tenets is truly awful. These suburbs should be protected, and the council is absolutely correct that they should be reinvigorated; the residents deserve that at the very least - but expensive apartment living and eradication of industry is not the answer. It's great that they want to spend money on this community - but maybe that money would be better used in finally providing Coburg with a public high school, by supporting its desperately under funded sporting centres, and by giving industry an incentive to stay in the area, and even to move back into areas like the old Kodak site; all those issues that the residents have been fighting for over the last decade. Once that's done, maybe then you can talk about placing the rail system underground. Is that what we want to see as a model for the Melbourne 2030 redevelopments? Why the hell not.

To hell with their apartments,
The Rantolotl.

* I have a great story about that. Remind me to tell you one day.

** I have many great stories about that too. My favorite involves a dug up road, a burst water main, and four elderly Italian men complete with stubbies, knitted singlets, shovels, and ridiculous hats trying to convince any concerned passers-by that everything was A-OK.

Food reviews from a sickbed

2010-03-16T21:57:00.003+11:00

As I contemplate spending day number three lying on my couch, watching vastly improved daytime television (thanks, GO!), and dozing, I can’t help my mind drifting to all the food I currently can’t eat. I am so hungry, yet drinking half a glass of juice in the terribly greedy amount of time, of say, half an hour leaves me feeling absolutely disgusting. While I hope to return to the world of chewable food in another day or so, I also know full well it’s going to be a few days I can eat the food that I started craving almost the minute I was told I couldn’t eat it. Yep, my two favourite food groups – cheese, and chilli.

It’s funny – you get to the point in your life where you think you’re right on track to fulfilling your career as a raging alcoholic, but after two days off the piss, it’s cheese you crave, not a drink. Hell, it’s not even like I actually eat cheese all that often – but remove my ability to enjoy a delicious platter of David Jones’ Foodhalls finest, and I’m not a happy camper. Remove my access to Sriracha, Tabasco and all inherent varieties, and my mood improves none at all.

Luckily, one kind person has delivered me a stash of supplies to keep me going in my temporary home imprisonment. So, in the interest of ensuring others who get struck down by food poisoning/gastro/other various bodily complaints, I’m going to review the foods I would not ordinarily buy, let alone eat.

Triangle Juice:
The thing about Triangle Juice (or Preshafruit, as the company actually likes to call it), is that it’s quite cute, and as such, appealing. In this particular 350ml of triangular juice packaging, I found an apple and strawberry combination which tasted every bit as fresh as the label suggested it would, but wow! So, so, incredibly sweet. Unless you are a two-sugars-in-your-coffee sort of person, I would not advise drinking nor purchasing said juice. I am guessing it is popular in Queensland.

Tiger flavoured Gatorade
I’m not kidding you, the label actually says TIGER! In large letters, forfeiting pretty much any ability to market the product as something relevant to your tastebuds at all. However, I’m sure that if it was trying to appeal to your tastebuds, it would be very successful and indeed impress many a persons tastebuds. Some would call this cheating, some would call it sporting prowess. I mean, delicious taste. Hmmm. Anyway; if you add a couple of ice cubes to it to thin it out a little, it fares quite well as both food replacement and rehydrator of rather sick people. As with any sweet drink, it just gets sickly and horrid after awhile.

Gatorade Lemon-Lime
You know how any time you eat anything blue coloured, it doesn’t have a described flavour, just ‘Blue’? Well, this drink makes me believe that sometimes the same thing has to happen with ‘Yellow’. This beverage is indeed very yellow, in both colour and taste. Again, thin it down with a couple of ice cubes to make it drinkable in useful quantities.

Vitamin Water
I kinda figured these drinks would be a lot like the Gatorade varieties, just with different packaging. This was largely because the ‘flavours’ of these drinks were named ‘Super-V’ and ‘Triple-X’. Now, far from the contents of these bottles being filled with strippers, as the name might suggest, they were indeed filled with something vitaminy. Super-V was actually quite nice, a light lemon flavour, and a little less sweet than the Gatorade. Triple-X however, tastes exactly like a 500ml bottle of cough syrup, and I suspect, without any of the benefits. I think it just exists to trick dirty old men in trench coats into drinking it, just to make the rest of us laugh.

Campbells Condensed Chicken Soup
This was the one item on the shopping list that I asked for, and somewhat insisted upon. I had childhood memories of being a bit crook, and eating a bowl of this soup, and somehow everything being a bit better. My conclusion, is that child memories are fucked. There’s nothing remotely nice about this soup as an adult, it’s pretty much the equivalent of eating clag with extra salt and some chunky bits.

LaZuppa Microwavable Creamy Chicken & Vegetable Soup
This soup was everything I expected the Campbells Condensed to be, but with bloody excellent peas. Marketed as a delicious and healthy convenience lunch, I currently recommend it as a highly enjoyable sick food. It may also double well for a standard lunch, depending how much you like bloody excellent peas.

Salada biscuits
Ohhhh, Salada! How I’ve missed you from my life! How has it happened that I’ve gone this long without your delicious, dry, crunchy wonderfulness? The salada is a truly under-rated biscuit! Perfect with vegemite (which I am hoping to broach tomorrow with success!), with butter, with cheese, or just by its lonesome, the Salada is surely the king of the plain cracker world. I heartily recommend it, regardless of your dietary requirements. I am almost certain that it will fix any kind intolerances you might have, from lactose to gluten. Trust me, I’m a doctor.

Unfortunately, that’s about it from the food assessments for me for a few days. Other interesting factoids I can comment on from the comfort of my couch are: I have a bat-tree outside my window which also acts as a doorbell; Digital TV has vastly improved Australia’s televisual landscape; My fish are boring as fuck and are free to a good home.

Good evening and good health.
The Rantolotl.

Romantic? All I can smell is diesel.

2010-03-12T11:04:00.002+11:00

Catching a train often seems like a good idea until that moment you’re standing on the platform, left wondering where, exactly your train might be. From there, if you happen to be a Victorian, it just goes downhill. Quickly.

A large part of this feeling of rapid decline could well be attributed to the fact that there aren’t really any regional trains anymore. Oh, yes, they say there are, but it’s pretty obvious they’re lying through their back teeth like the scum dogs they all inevitably are.

Once upon a time when I was just a little Rantolotl, I went to school in Melbourne and caught the train home for school holidays, the odd long weekend and other momentous occasions. This was in the days where the train actually ran all the way to Wangaratta, and in fact, they bothered to run more than once a day. My school would foolishly transport us all to Spencer Street Station some time in the afternoon, and let us loose on the unsuspecting public. We would spend hours cruising the dodgy little subway, the dodgy giant cafeteria, and the even dodgier pub across the road - the one that is now boarded up - where amazingly, we would get served despite being fifteen year olds in full school uniform. Mind you, in those days the ‘unsuspecting public’ largely consisted of junkies, thieves, particularly grotty homeless, and exceptionally low grade hookers, always presumed to be the retarded cousins of the ones we had heard about in St Kilda. But none the less, we ran riot. It was great fun! I might also add that these were the days where Spencer Street Station actually had character. Not necessarily a nice one mind you, but character none the less. It made you feel alive. Doubly so if you survived a mugging.

The trains themselves had character too. Just like the suburban lines, the regional lines all had a different feel about them, and different regard in the eyes of the seasoned V/Line traveller. Geelong line passengers were just taking the piss. You call that a train trip? I’ve seen better train trips coughed up into a hanky. Yeah, that’s right. A HANKY. It was trips to Mildura, Wangaratta & Warrnambool that earned you the real train-cred. In retrospect, I’m not sure I understand why Wang scaled to the dizzying heights of that illustrious list, but for some reason it did. I’m beginning to think it got extra points for danger.

I recall not once, but twice, that there was a police chase in the train. Somewhere around Benalla. My favourite one involved the bandits in question leaping off the train as it slowed down to stop at the platform. The police somehow didn’t quite anticipate this, and just stood on the platform looking dumbfounded as these guys ran off in the opposite direction while the train slowly came to a halt. Clearly they decided to make a day of it and searched and interrogated the train anyway. WHAT WERE THEY DOING! They barked. DRINKING! I replied with equal enthusiasm. WHAT WERE THEY DRINKING?! They responded. STRAWBERRY BIG M! I replied with gusto. And that was my interrogation over.

These days the train is far less fun. It’s full of old people and young regional refugees like myself. As I type, I’m sitting on the train, still waiting for it to leave Spencer Street (It’s now an hour late) and am surrounded by avid Herald Sun readers, and a nice young man, who, unfortunately, is reading a Dan Brown novel. The elderly are clambering over themselves to get little microwaved treats from the buffet car, in total denial that there are now places at Spencer Street that you can get food at much cheaper. Without the risk of stabbing.

Once upon a time, the punters on this train were all sorts. Families, kids, the elderly, bogans, farmers, scrubbers, ferals and bush pigs. In between the carriages people would drink tinnies of VB, and craftily open the door and smoke cigarettes and spliffs, usually in equal amounts. Occasionally someone would walk through on their way to the buffet car with a kid on their shoulders, having a chuckle and telling the enshouldered child not to breathe too deeply – a lesson/joke that would be lost on the child for about ten years or so, I suspect.

Now, the punters, particularly midweek, are mostly holidaying elderly or country residents who have lost their license. There’s also a smattering of younger country refugees (the lucky ones who escaped) like myself, who are almost inevitably heading home for a birthday, funeral or family illness. I will probably see a lot of these people on the return train tomorrow. And when we’re all collected on a train like this simultaneously – some in tears frantically trying to contact their mum or dad or brother or sister or hospital at each stop when there’s a hint of mobile coverage, some desperately trying to wrap their last minute birthday presents, almost certainly bound to be some random crap bought at a Spencer Street chemist(Happy Birthday! I bought you a travel pillow! Don’t like it? Here, have a luggage lock!), and some just patiently biding their time with laptops and ipods – boy, do we stand out. We’re all dressed to impress our regional acquaintances, while remaining hideously under dressed for Melbourne - unless you're heading directly to a funeral, in which case the standard Melbourne uniform of black on black is just perfect! It’s a delicate balance, one that involves jeans, sneakers, a smug look, and careful t-shirt selection. The delicate art of making it clear that we are at home on a farm, but are also successful Melburnians is clearly deeply entrenched in us all.

But for all the reminiscing, the dubious romance of train travel is not all gone. Why, just now, the conductor – who I might add, in my long career of regional train travel have always been wonderful, helpful and friendly – declared that she has a ‘sweet little super charger’ waiting for her at home. I’m not sure what the prompt for this was exactly, but she soon moved on, telling me that she likes my t-shirt, and proceeded to explain the graphic on it to me in full detail: "I like how the space invaders are learning to become space invaders! With a blackboard and a teacher!".

It’s very nice that VLine give country types a job. Since they don't really bother with the trains much these days, perhaps the conductors are the last honest thing you can really expect out of them.

Politician deathmatch

2010-02-11T12:08:00.003+11:00

Say what you will, but I'm still a bit sad that Latham was never elected to the top seat. Australian parliamentary politics would have so much more engaging. In fact, I suspect they’d be at least 60% more awesome. Better? Perhaps not, but definitely more entertaining. For starters, he wouldn't be afraid to grab Abbott by his stupid flappy ears and give him the beating he deserves. HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES!, he would scream, foot firmly planted on the back of dear old Tony’s sodden head, stuffed into a filthy toilet bowl out the back of some kind of gambling hall of ill repute. WHAT APPLES, MARK?! WHAT FUCKING APPLES?!

*FLUSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*

Surely this is the sort of behaviour we should expect and encourage from our erstwhile leaders. Bring back the days of honest politics where blokes were blokes and your ability to drink enormous quantities of low grade beer measured your mark as a sportsman, family man, politician, hell, even race car driver. Nothing says ‘responsible member of society’ like a booze cruise turned pirate-like expedition somewhere between the consumption of slabs number eleven and twenty three.

Australian cricketer David “The keg on legs” Boone famously drank 52 tinnies of full strength beer on a single flight. Bob Hawke, later to become Prime Minister, managed to down a yardie in the record time of 11 seconds. Now we live in a world where the little talking Boonie’s distributed with VB have been banned for setting a poor example to the darling little young‘uns. I reckon if they were stupid enough to be buying slabs of VB in the first place, a talking Boonie is the least of their problems.

But what would I know? I have a shrine to Melbourne Bitter in my house. I’m not sure there’s an official mascot for good old Melbs’ yet (do you like my abbreviation? Do you think it will stick? Is ‘Bitters’ better?), but I’m going my damnedest to create one. Recent visitors to my house have been sent away with a traveller of Melbs’, and some kind standout adornment. Last week it was capes, goggles and sailors hats. But it’s been disappointing. Not once have I seen anyone else in the street walking around with a good ol’ Melbs’ imitating the dress style of my unwitting social experiments. That said, I have noticed increased sales of Melbourne at my local, so maybe I just need to ramp up the accessorising a little and see what happens. Or just move further away from a white trash pokies venue.

As a society, we crave all these things and more in politics. We love a good stoush! And despite the weird ultra conservatism we seem to be slowly sliding into - I mean really, a drinking age of 21?! How on earth are the kiddies meant to be proud of our celebrated cultural heritage when they can’t actually participate in it? – we clearly love a bit of biffo. There’s a reason footballers – particularly the drunken-rampage-assaulty-lets-take-a-shitload-of-coke ones – get more public sympathy and support than our politicians ever will. Perhaps it’s the honesty that wins us over. “Yes, I’m a dickhead, and yes, I was pissed. But seriously, that guy deserved to be smacked in the chops! What’s wrong with that?”

I think Abbott would be up for it too. While I’m not sure he’d fare that well against Latham, I reckon he’d give it a red hot go. It’s really very difficult to imagine the same thing of Rudd. Or Bob Brown for that matter. In fact, the only thing I can think of those two dudes bringing to a schoolyard fight is a blimp and an inflatable raft. Don't ask me why, that’s just the way my brain works. Gillard would be into it I reckon, and she’d give Abbott a run for his money. Wayne Swan would of course be the little fat kid in the corner who’s screaming PICK ME! PICK ME! on the inside, but will of course remain there, sulking, silent, and unchosen. Naturally, he’ll have to defect and lead the Democrats.

As Gough Whitlam famously said; It’s time. Time for a leadership deathmatch, that is. All parties; all leaders; all cabinet and shadow cabinet members: Fight like it matters! Fight like you mean it! Show a bit of passion! But for the love of christ Abbott, do not show a bit of leg. The budgie smugglers were bad enough the first time.

Patriotism in bounds!

2010-01-29T15:01:00.006+11:00

The problem with Australia Day is... well, that it exists. But beyond that, there’s a whole bunch of reasons it’s a bit shit. That it celebrates genocide is certainly a biggie, but then there’re the more practical and less political reasons it’s worth avoiding. Starting with the fact that the 26th of January is totally meaningless in the national sense – I mean really, if we want to pick a day to mark on the calendar to celebrate the successful invasion and colonisation of this large island rock we call home, then surely celebrating federation would make a touch more sense?

But just like how we search and scrape and hunt high and low now for some kind of national identity – something more culturally binding than a burnt sausage and a can of VB - federation wasn’t exactly a matter of great consensus either; more of a matter of solidifying an economy rather than any great push for national independence. It’s this kind of enthusiasm we see echoed in polls today indicating that supporters of a republic are now down to 44%. This might be a weird drop in numbers tied to the recent Prince visit, as well as those echoes of British colonialism that we hark back to every Australia day in total ignorance of the Australia we actually do have around us.

I’m pretty sure I’ve harped on about it here before because it is something that really engages me, but the whole notion of a united, federated Australia was a crock in 1901, and is still a crock in 2010. It took actual decades to get the now federated states to agree to federation, and let it not be forgotten that at the drawing board, there were a whole lot of other colonies slated to join. On top of that, for better or worse (no doubt better for the Pacific Islanders enslaved at the time), Queensland (and other now familiar states) very almost didn’t make the cut – because federating would mean giving up its slave labour force (unfortunately it remained more or less legal to enslave/withhold wages from indigenous Australians for a few more decades… after all, they were fauna, and not citizens). On the whole, white settlement of Australia was an incredibly disjointed affair, and the people who actually lived here had very little interest in actually cementing it into a single nation state… a sentiment that’s still reflected today if you scratch even slightly beneath the flag be-caped surface.

What does it mean to be Australian? This time of the year, you can find thousands of us useless dickheads asking that question, and invariably answering it with that list of qualities that are obviously unique to all ‘true’ Australians… such as:

Mateship. Yep – no wonder we’re such an awesome country – no one else in the world understands this whole friendship thing! Weird, cause every time we travel, we seem to accumulate masses of new ‘mates’… clearly we are very influential and effective ambassadors for our cause. Frankly, I’m surprised the UN hasn’t cottoned on and started deploying Australian friendship brigades to all the worlds’ major military conflict points. Oh wait. We already do that. We just throw grenades instead of joy.

The Fair Go. We (apparently) generally believe that everyone should be able to have ‘a go’, if for no other reason, then so we have an opportunity to do that other uniquely Australian thing, the slow clap, in response to their meagre efforts. Having ‘a go’ is not to be confused with ‘Having a go’. The two are mainly distinguished by tone, and blood alcohol content (though to have ‘a go’ can produce a great exponential curve in any measurement correlating ‘fun’ and ‘beer consumption’), and resulting violence. If you end up being chased by a pack of angry sportsmen waving various sporting implements, you’ve probably misread the situation, and have indeed confirmed that you are ‘having a go (mate)’.

Mate. Not to be confused with mateship. ‘Mate’ can be used as a greeting to a best mate (not to be confused with Mate, or mateship), as a warning to a stranger, acquaintance or enemy, or, as a direct insult to someone you’re about to either punch, or get punched by (friend or foe, doesn’t really matter). Generally, you can determine any potential threats to your short term health by assessing the length of the word if it is used against you; Hey Maaaaaaate! (Greeting); Mate Mate Mate Mate Mate Mate! (potential warning); Mate. (potential threat). My personal favourite use of the word is: “Look sharp, Mate!”. Even I can’t tell if it’s an insult, a warning, or a greeting.

Barbeques. We like to burn the shit out of meat while rat arsed and standing in a kiddie pool (or perhaps even an eski) in a park/backyard/balcony. Anything that gives us the excuse to stand around for six hours and murder a slab of cheap domestic beer while eating large amounts of salt, fat, potato and bread is alright by us. However, just because we like to do this, doesn’t really make it uniquely Australian. I was tremendously disappointed when I first travelled overseas and found that pretty much wherever you go, you will find bogans barbequing things and getting outrageously pissed at the drop of a hat.

Recently, equipped with these ‘qualities’ and a few Maaaaaaaaates, I made a return pilgrimage back to the States. While that’s a story for another day, we ended up staying in a house filled with 9 adults at one point - with combined heritages covering corners of Australia, Europe, and all over the US, including the deep south, where the drawl will put any proud Aussie bogans’ to shame. We spent three weeks being mates, trading stupid accents, barbequing, ‘having a go’ and having ‘a go’, and getting completely, utterly, rat arsed drunk. Either we’re bigger ambassadors to our nation than we’d ever care to admit, or maybe – just maybe – people are pretty similar and pretty awesome all over the world if you give them half a chance. Except for the dickheads. You should just avoid them. A good start is not leaving your house on Australia Day.

There was a man who entered a local newspaper's pun contest...

2010-01-06T17:23:00.008+11:00

...He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win.

Unfortunately, no pun in ten did. *

When I grow up, I want to work for a newspaper. No, not as a journalist. Nor a columnist. Not even as an editor, copy writer, typesetter or any of those other important sounding jobs. No. I want to be that very special person employed by News Limited to create the most inane, cringe worthy, spectacular insults to modern day communications; that’s right – the person who comes up with the headlines.

Obviously, the pinnacle of this particular field would be being responsible for the front page of the Herald Scum, or some other capital city distributed tabloid rag. There’s challenge in such a job; three to seven words in the boldest of bold type, accompanied by a picture from a completely different story, in a daily paper which seeks an audience of society’s lowest common denominator. It must be defined by scandal, it can’t be too clever, and anyone who lives in a caravan backing on Kananook Creek must be able to relate to it in some way. Dodgy plumbers (Dishonest brutes taking advantage of widowed pensioners!), immigration scandals (Indian student gets bashed – own fault for listening to an MP3 player in public!), hard done by footballers (Sure, I raped that girl, but all I ask for is my wife’s understanding and support!) and other imminent threats to the Little Aussie Battler™ are king.

But sometimes, they really get it right:

But for those headline crafters who are lower down the ladder, they might get paid less, but there is a particularly silver lining in that very hefty cloud. Just as they must suffer, so must we, the readers. They have a captive audience, and very low standards to meet in the editing and readership world. They can resort to the most groan worthy, stupid, ill conceived, offensive, backwards, extremely un-witty, and sometimes – surprising and rare times – they pencil actually witty titles and headlines. In short, they can make Queensland look good. In case you haven’t worked out which particular litter box liners I’m talking about today, stand up and take a bow mX.

For the uninitiated, mX is a free daily Melbourne commuter rag, which appears to have very similar equivalents in every city I’ve visited, from Prague to Brisbane. Equally similar are the despondent uni students hired to hand them out at train stations around the globe. They really look the same everywhere, and not just because the logos and banner of these papers are virtually the same (yellow/orange/blue or red/black/blue), but because they’re poor bastards whose job it is to be surrounded by rude, arrogant commuters who are in a hurry to get home and be fed, bask in the warm glow of the telly or sit and cry in a dark corner or whatever it is that these people who can’t say ‘please’ or ‘thankyou’ do with their spare time. And they do it well. They tolerate the pushing and shoving, the snatching and the interfering, all the while resisting the urge to punch people. I couldn’t do it. Day one, and there’d be shredded bits of paper, Armani, and metcards everywhere.

Such is the quality of the mX that once upon a train, people seem to either settle into the crossword (which is shit), the sudoku (which is alright, but usually a bit on the novice side), the ‘witty’ one line observational comments about the world today interspersed among the pages (which are shit), or the ‘mX Talk’ pages (which are really shit). Or the quality journalism. Hahahah! – Oh, I’m clutching my sides!

I‘m one of the mX talk reading people. For the same reasons I cast an eye over the Andrew Bolt column whenever a copy of the Scum is left lurking near me, I like to peruse what the good people of Melbourne have to say about life, the universe and everything in the space of a text message. Just like Bolt, the submissions either remind me why I always keep an escape from Australia plan up my sleeve, or just leave me wordlessly shaking my head. That is, until I started submitting them myself.

In an effort to find out exactly how stupid a message the mX would accept, I started texting in numerous entries, all from different names, with the same mobile phone. So far, they’ve published every single one of them. Big and Beardy wrote in to the ‘Here’s looking at you’ column, requesting contact from someone of a non-specified gender who caught his eye after falling off a train platform and gaining assistance from a lawyer. In peak hour. The genius who published that one titled it “Platform Souls”. Another submission, this time from a shady character named “More punk than you”, detailed to the Melbourne public, in form of argument with both a non existent person and a non existent previous submission, exactly how influential Green Day were in the baby days of punk rock. So influential that they invented the flannelette shirt, it seems.

I intend to keep this going for as long as possible and encourage you all to join in. Let’s turn this paper from something disappointing and mundane into the absurd and confusing. Theological debates about Lego? Bring it on! Thinly disguised innuendo about unlikely subjects? The more the merrier! The beauty is that you don’t even need the paper itself to do this – all the numbers you need are here. General comments should be texted as VENT to 1994 4000. "Here’s looking at you" (train stalking colum) can be texted to the same number, with HERES in place of VENT. If you’re not in Melbourne, let us know you’ve submitted in the comments, and I’ll be sure to pick up a paper and keep you posted. The submissions usually take about two days to appear.

But lets face it. With headlines like mine, I'm never going to make it in this industry. Not unless I start to get some serious coaching. In the meantime I'Il leave the headlines to the professionals and get back to whatever it is I'm meant to be doing.

* Courtesy of Krus; aspiring News Limited editor.

** Big thanks to Mr Fandango Jones for capturing what would have to be the most entertaining Herald Scum headline of 2009.

Well!

2009-12-16T14:53:00.004+11:00

Instead of turning this into yet another apologetic post stinking of Yirmumah type shame, commitment and remorse, I'm gonna come right out and say it: I am more than a bit shit at maintaining a functioning blog. I thought I'd got away with it until the last couple of weeks when the international period of seasonal slow-down/work-slacking kicked in. Take note: Everyone who has commented on the lack of posts in recent history, I've kept a record of who you are and when you asked, and I'll be forwarding those details to your respective managers ASAP. That is... unless you purchase me a nice, cool, refreshing beverage in the interest of seasonal goodwill.... wink wink.

The good news though, is that I have a backlog of material, all so out of date that I'll probably never bother to publish. So you'll be spared that particular bullet. Phew! I hear you gasp with relief! Well, the next bit of news you may, or may not also enjoy, is that I'll be changing the format of this blog a bit in some kind of attempt to make sure I start publishing it in some kind of timely fashion again. What does this mean for you? Probably more frequent posts, even more flippant material, and best of all, they'll probably be a damned site shorter.

If you're still around, let me know your thoughts. Otherwise, to hell with 'ya.

at least I still have my miniwheats.

2009-04-01T15:41:00.003+11:00

As usual, here I stumble in; head hung, slouching, and full of half arsed apologies regarding the frequency of my updates. Oh! The updates that could have been, but never were! I can no longer recount! Tragedy! Drama! Foes! Vanquishment!

Some time ago when I was probably quite bored and on the curious side, I checked out the stats for this blog over a couple of years, and was tremendously surprised to find that I average an entry once a fortnight – not once a month, or indeed once in a fucking millennium as I would certainly have suspected in my recent updating history, but once a fortnight! Well! I thought to myself. Slack I am, and slack I can be! And since then, I’ve obviously never looked back.

That is, of course not entirely true. While I’m certainly on the unforgivable side of slack, let me recount to you by way of apology in a manner more or less completely ripped off the Good Author* of Well Done Fillet, what my life has been since we last met.

Since my last entry, I have:

Caught trams.
Not an exciting prospect in itself, no! But when you add a good handful of Brunswicks’ finest crazies to the mix, you just count the seconds down to sheer fucking insanity. In just three consecutive days, I’ve suffered a number of affronts to my dignity, nay!, my very person and property on these normally adequate trams.

One of the more notable incidents was a mentally ill (I hope) semi-elderly woman who… well… I’m not quite sure how to say this, but… assaulted me… with her rude bits.

There I was on a tram, sitting on the nanna seat up the front, when I was surrounded by elderly people refusing the offer of seat, instead choosing to glare in my general direction while coughing sick germs all over the place in that way only elderly people can. Oh look! You had toast for breakfast! Isn’t that just lovely? COVER YOUR FUCKING MOUTH.

Anyway, the tram is at capacity. I am studiously focusing on playing my DS, refusing to even begin to engage with the horrible and smelly world around me. I’m completely hemmed in by stubborn elderly. That is, until they start topping over like loud, smelly and very fucking angry bowling pins. People are shouting exclamations in more languages than I can recognise, and walking sticks are flying. Well, maybe just one, but none the less, commotion is afoot. I further refuse to engage in this strange game the listless elderly are playing.

They settle down, I did not think to perhaps examine why. Had I, I would have found right before me, a completely bonkers woman, surrounded by a ring of elderly doing everything they can to keep their distance, avoid eye contact, and by all means not engage the woman in speech. Oblivious to all this, I continued to play my game, occasionally considering that the person standing in front of me was falling on me rather a lot while the tram was jostling. That’s okay, I thought. Trams jostle, and not everyone is sure of foot.

More and more, I found myself justifying the woman’s constant bashing into me; however it reached a point – and I note this with quite some alarm - that I could no longer justify a damned thing. The woman was now straddling my leg, her entire weight it would seem, supported by her crotch on my knee. I froze, looking to my neighbours for help. Their expressions, I believe, reflected my own. They stared on in absolute horror, as the crazy woman made little to no effort to stand up, occasionally doing so only to end up right back where she started. I tried to wriggle away, but there was no room. People around me hurriedly offered her their seats, but she refused. Some old men even tried to jostle her away, but to no avail. There I sat, screaming on the inside, my sudoku game long forgotten. Eventually – and I doubt I will ever say this again – a pram came to my rescue. The woman had no choice but to move on the presentation of a pram into our little commute of horrors, and the woman was whisked away. There I remained, stunned. I reflected upon what had just occurred, still staring mindlessly at my DS, and I think, inside, a little bit of me died.

The previous day, a completely different nutter had punched me in the back of the head in some kind of crazy-speak way of asking me for my seat. I found this to be a preferable approach, sore head and possible concussion issues aside.

Listened to ‘metal’**.
I’m always a bit reluctant to get onto the topic of ‘metal’ - whatever that might be these days. I know absolutely fuck all about it (and certainly don’t profess to), but through the people around me I seem to have latched onto the odd band here and there. But what I don’t get about metal are the two extremes of what I would personally call enjoyable music***, and what I’d like to call unenjoyable music****. I get that some people ‘ironically’ enjoy the whole theatre, makeup and general glam/cheese overtones of the latter category, but I’ve certainly got fuck all time for it. But back to what I don’t understand… what on earth gels these two – I think – vastly different styles of music under the ‘metal’ banner? That’s a genuine question, too - I really have no idea. I honestly see way more in common with a wing of my traditional genre of choice – old school punk – with many of the metal bands I like, than I do with the likes of, well, Satyricon.

Anyway, enough of that. What I’d really like to discuss now is a great little gig VG, Fandango and myself attended a few weeks ago – the Musicians Against Police Violence benefit gig for Lex Wotton. It was a genuinely fun gig, and for a rather good cause, but the overwhelming thing I noticed was the number of people there at the gig, really getting into the ‘metal’ on offer, were like little lost man-child-nerds who somehow missed the punk boat of the 90's. Or perhaps thought the boat wasn’t manly enough for them. Or that not enough people were running around shirtless, growling and throwing horns up in the air sweatily enough, on said boat. Perhaps, the boat was goatless, and they were forced to shed a very manly tear in its notable absence.

Maybe it was just a bit of a bad lineup, I don’t really know, but I can’t say it’s inspired me to turn up to any future gigs officially sanctioned by the united board of metal. After all, one vocalist could be heard repeatedly screaming “Lets hear it for contact lenses! WOO”, and sadly, the crowd responded, cheering her and her stupid showboating on. It was all just a bit sad.

Maybe I’m just old and far more attached the good old nerdy punks of the day who were equally shirtless and sweaty and yelly and stampy, but at least managed to refrain from working on their ‘crazed maniac’ stare for the crowds, or indeed, their hair solos. Plus if anyone had gone on at length about contact lenses, we’d have just set fire to ‘em.

Toyed with the notion of firing a steady stream of landlords straight into the sun.
The short version of this story is: We’ve been evicted! The long version is: We’ve been evicted so our money-grubbing landlord can flog it off to the highest overpaid, Brunswick invading scumbag they can find.

Real estate agents are making our lives unbelievably difficult in the process, and I’m downright sick of looking at houses claiming three bedrooms, but actually having one quantifiable bedroom, and a garden bed in which one might be able to erect a tent or two. I’m also getting fed up with filling in completely ludicrous applications that usually involve some kind of certification that you had a kidney removed when you were two years old, and YES, I am certain that this is the name, address and indeed first-born of the doctor in charge at the time. I bet they secretly sell identities to shady types on the side. The real estate business: very profitable indeed!

So; it’s goodbye to Brunswick (but not Hanover Street – we’ll be taking that with us), and hello to somewhere beginning with P, where we will become the overpaid, place-beginning-with-P invaders. Such is the food chain, I suppose.

Over and OUT!
The Rantolotl.

* Certifiably so! I guarantee it!

** By the time you have finished the 'metal' bit, you will want to kill me for putting the word metal in between these ''. Don't worry, I do too.

*** This! And this! And some of this too!

**** The list is too long. But you can start with some of this and progress - if that's what you want to call it - from there.

To the trenches!

2009-03-10T11:12:00.004+11:00

The problem with being a bit of a foodie/boozie, is that one often encounters other people of this type, most of which are beyond fucking tedious. These people are generally avoidable, but sometimes, when you make the mistake of attending something food and/or wine education based, you find yourself knee deep in the fucking lot of ‘em. There seems to be quite a few types of this lot, and I’m sure despite my protests, we fit somewhere in the mix of all this, or perhaps we have our very own category, something like, ‘pretentious yet unwashed sloth’.

“Oh, this caviar is just divine!”

One of our house can be heard annunciating this whilst delicately holding – caressing if you will – an elegant long stemmed champagne flute filled with the finest offerings Yering Station has to offer… whilst sitting on a beyond filthy couch permanently stained with many an upturned curry over the years, in a pair of track pants, quite possibly about to give her crotch, or perhaps breasts a good scratch.

Of course, I lie. She’d never have said “Oh this caviar is just divine!”, it would be something far more straightforward;

“Try the caviar! It’s choice!”

Or perhaps, as is the style of our house in general;

“CAVIAR! OM NOM NOM NOMMA OM NOM NOM NOM!”

But enough about us, lets talk about them. Them being those other types that offend us merely by their very existence. After all, we’re nothing if not antisocial and socially scathing.

There’s your nice middle class types of course, who sit about and try to look oh so terribly dignified, yet still think of lasagne as one of those exotic, foreign, migrant delicacies. They probably drive a nice, sensible car like a Camry, but one that displays their elegance of their older years and symbols of slowly yet surely accumulated wealth. So, a Camry in the highest price bracket I guess. The one that comes with an extra shiny stripe on the side and some kind of special coating on the headlights to prevent excess glare should you find yourself driving through a waterfall at night, in the high-glare season (April through August, apparently). It also no doubt has several extra letters tacked onto the end of the model number. Maybe a C, or perhaps an X or an S. Or perhaps all three, indicating that they are indeed Sexy Cunts with Xylophones.

I never really understood the vehicle naming system. I don’t understand why every car/motorbike/thing with a motor attached generally has a sensible name (obviously I’m excluding any ever made by Ford here. Ford Focus? On what? The bits falling off the sides perhaps?) which people would use to describe it, however they always seem to have a ‘real’ name, some kind of combination of letters and numbers that only an unusually unbalanced code enthusiast should be able to remember. Motorbikes are particularly guilty of this, probably thanks to bizarre brand of people who ride the damned things.

"OH! You have the ‘91 FGB##19273Z, do you?"

I get asked this by random people on the street (motorbike enthusiasts generally feel that their comments are welcome material to anyone within fifty feet of a motorbike, or indeed a poster of a motorbike). My confused response is something along the lines of “Er. It is a hornet 600. It’s yellow!”, in the sheer hope they don’t ask me some inane question about spark plugs. WHICH THEY OFTEN DO.

But back to the topic at hand, which is of course not vehicle loving freaks, but food and wine appreciating types. There’s your general art wanker types - and we know how I feel about those people – but they can be alright once you get past the ‘oh, I work in the filum industry’ sentence being dropped every ten minutes or so. They seem to know their chardonnay from their Riesling; their puttanesca from their saltati; or indeed their easymac from their 2 minute noodles, if you will. This is a good thing. For this, I can forgive them their over inflated view of themselves in conjunction with the rest of the world. Unless there’s a particularly obnoxious one wearing an ‘ironic’ collection of popped collars.

A group Fandango and I recently encountered was one I’d managed to mostly avoid up until that particular point, and we are probably best to refer to them from here on in as ‘The Hiltons’. This is of course based on a delicately balanced combination of their attire, their respective fathers’ wealth, and their sheer fucking stupidity. They don’t seem to know what ordinary objects like lamps, kerosene, and good fucking taste are. Don’t suppose they need to either, I’m quite sure they’re the sort of people who keep a slave or twenty stashed in some kind of terribly illegal yet beautifully furnished underground concrete cell buried beneath the family botanical garden, or perhaps their very own museum - Of course tastefully filled with artefacts acquired from those darkies all those years ago when it was the expected norm for rich wankers to march around deserts sporting stupid hats and improbable moustaches sometime after daddy granted them an entire army of peasants to carry everything from the mahogany desk to the complete contents of the Prime Ministers office on their backs. There were of course other important duties too; like maintaining a roving stock of freshly prepared gin and tonics/mint juleps (I’ll trust you to alter the drink mentally as required, based on perceived adventuring location. In your head. Or, if you prefer, in your lunchbreak.). But, you know, just in case.

This particular type seem to eventually grow into the category known as the ‘entitled bitch’, the type of woman who can be seen with a permanent sneer on her sixty year old dial, and who is just generally dissatisfied with everything and every fucking person around her. I do not like these people, and as such completely disregard any funny notions they might have about tasting, learning, or indeed, breathing.

The final group that spring to mind as I sit here at my desk, all enraged at the stupidity of a particular someone encountered recently, is of course, the complete and utter nutjob. Someone who is probably single and in their thirties, and have turned all the failures in their life, the tragedies of not owning a house and having a loving partner and 3 children at the age of 25, into sheer, unadulterated enthusiasm about food and or wine. Usually food. They are compulsive note takers, and in their eagerness to learn EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING actually miss out on a lot of good advice imparted to them. Like that little memo about valium.

These people are insatiable, and tend to ruin everything good around them by being just so obsessive about something fairly insignificant. Was the flour milled in Italy? WAS THE FLOUR MILLED IN ITALY?! I NEED TO KNOW! Are the cries heard, falling piteously to the uncaring ears of those intending to source nothing other than a pack of blue bag white wings to complete their future baking tasks. Yet they need to know, and until they do, nothing will seep through their collective ears or eyes into their very brain. It’s a terrible disability, one which is generally deserving of a sound proof booth and quite possibly some kind of straight jacket. These are the kind of people who stock those insanely pedantic internet forums about the most trivial of topics. Like the sourcing of Peruvian sprinkles hand made by grain-fed peasants in a broom closet painted purple. The internet has probably been a very good development in the keeping them away from us department.

It just goes to show that in the hospitality industry, everybody loses. I just feel incredibly sorry for the poor staff, who try as they might have to deal with a rapid succession of total wankers just to pay their rent. I mean, the rest of have to do that too, but at least we have the internet. These guys have bogan shitheads with too much money insisting on tasting their port before their chardonnay, then have the audacity to complain about the chardonnay afterwards. Every time I see this happen, I see the pain and anguish in the face of the poor server, doing everything in their power not to bottle the bastards right there and then. I suspect they later sneak out a side door and let the air out of their tyres, cackling maniacally.

I think it’s only fair that come the revolution, we force them to hand over the endless cases of wine they don’t deserve, as well as all the top notch chefs they keep chained in the aforementioned concrete cell. Sure, we’ll have to let the chefs run free, but maybe they’ll make us a lovely feast as a reward for releasing them. We should appropriate their large expanses of lawn too, and dig them all up and make a fantastic veggie garden, stocking the most fantastic of heritage and heirloom fruit, vegetables and herbs. No more of this safeways single species ‘mushrooms’, ‘onions’, ‘tomatoes’ – we will have all the mushrooms! All the time! Varieties all vastly different in taste, texture and colour! We will also establish large and elaborate barbeques where we will cook the fish farmed in their endless lakes! And the tofu that we will grow on the… er, tofu plains! Yes, the glorious tofu plains! We’ll store the sheep in the ceilings and walls where they will double as insulation, and the horses on the rooves where they will loom more gloriously than any gargoyle ever hoped to achieve. Actually, we’ll put cows up there – I’m not sure I’m particularly inclined to eat horse.

Actually, fuck the revolution, they should hand it all over right now. All we need is a large trap, some fine cheese, and a number of prestige four wheel drives. Oh! And a butler named Jeeves!

To Toorak!

Paint my nails in a pasta bake.

2009-02-17T11:40:00.004+11:00

The week before last, I spent quite some time agonising over a particular post I’d written but not yet published here. The following Saturday, now of course known as ‘Black Saturday’, as the temperature slowly climbed until it was perched somewhere over the 46 degree mark, my mouse hovered over the ‘Publish’ button. This was in between little trips out into the backyard to try and wrestle the portable gazebo over the kiddie pool into submission, while it was doing its best to fly off and terrorise the neighbourhood in the incredibly strong and oven-like northerly winds. Eventually, sated with deliciously refreshing and ice-filled cocktails courtesy of VG, I opted not to publish. It’s probably worth mentioning a lot of this was influenced by Mr Jones, who had threatened me with all kinds of verbal abuse should I publish this post a day or two before.

This turned out to be a very, very good thing, because just like delightful turns of phrase such as ‘Die in a fire’ have been shelved somewhat indefinitely from outside our household, so too would a long and whinging post about the weather in general, filled with self righteous indignation about my initial demands for some nice, frying days a few months back.

As the body count from the fires rose, so too did the number of status updates on Facebook from friends threatening all sorts of nasty things against journo’s who’d been demanding that summer turn up. I quietly kept my own status to myself, and thought Well, thank christ I’m not a journo then. Dodged that bullet! I felt a little bit guilty, but also knew full well that many of these people were just as guilty of wanting a nice warm summer as I was – and after all, there’s nothing wrong with wishing for a warm summer - if we’d been declaring we wanted several hundreds of kilometres of bushfire front, then I think that might have been a different situation.

Luckily for some, soon the whole notion of deliberately lit fires came into the public sphere, and quicker than you can say burning pitchforks, the villagers had a whole new, far more plausible and violence-worthy target. While I was all for conversations in pubs amounting to a list of what we’d like to do to someone who has deliberately lit on of these fires, it all got a whole lot more disturbing when the notion of an arsonist became less arbitrary and a whole lot more pinpointed to some guy the cops picked up in Gippsland.

Frankly, I can’t believe for a minute that someone of sound mind could light one of those fires and not feel tremendous remorse. I think that anyone picked up and actually found guilty on these charges probably needs some pretty significant psychiatric care. I also tend to think that anyone who believes that bashing the shit out of anyone who may or may not be an arsonist, in a summer where we’ve had record heatwaves, uncleared bush, poorly maintained infrastructure such as powerlines, and a total reliance on volunteer firefighting forces, is fucking kidding themselves if they think that would solve this problem – that this would undo all the damage done.

I can’t imagine any chance in hell of this guy getting a fair trial in Victoria, let alone the rest of the country. The image of this one arson fire of many fires alone – a fire that met up with a bunch of ‘naturally’ sparked fires in the area, can’t help but be mixed up with all those images of the lost families and completely destroyed towns of Marysville and Kinglake. So few people in Victoria are removed enough from the impact of the fires to form a jury of any real, legal validity, and the prosecutors and magistrates themselves are under such incredible pressure to produce a guilty verdict – to produce a real, physical thing - a person - that can be blamed for everything that’s happened in the last week or so. After all, this is a lot easier than addressing the issues of effective forest management, of the issues of managing an ever expanding urban sprawl encroaching bushland.

During the record breaking heatwave in the week prior to the fires, let’s not forget that Melbourne virtually shut down. The train lines buckled. The power supplies collapsed. Roads were closed due to fires on their fringes – fires that could have, and should have been prevented with basic firebreak management by vicroads… you know, that organisation we each pay hundreds of dollars a year to in vehicle registrations, just so they can approve more toll roads. Now we all know that those were extreme conditions, but none the less, it’s a rare summer in Melbourne that we don’t see the thermometer slide over the 40 degree mark at least once, often to then hover in the thirties for quite some time – so why on earth is our city – and indeed our state – so poorly managed that we’re not even bothering to maintain, let alone build infrastructure that can cope with our temperatures?

Christ – Adelaide had something like two full weeks of over 40 degrees, and they coped! We had three days, and the state all but collapsed. Three days! Adelaide! What next? Fucking Tasmania? New Zealand? It’s just fucking embarrassing. We’re Victorians – we can do better than this. After all, we should be the ones setting an example for the rest of the heathen states in this country. Surely it’s basic fucking logic – you live in a part of the country where it’s not socially acceptable to run down the Aboriginal population in your cars, you should get functioning fucking train lines. I mean really, Cronulla. The entire state of NSW seems to have some kind of weird deep-seated fear of Mosques, yet they have seemingly constant supply electricity. The fuckers probably have functioning fire breaks, too.

The really depressing part is that ‘they’ (being experty types I presume), seem to think that this is an emerging pattern. Superfires and the like. What I want to know is how many seasons of full on fires like this it’s going to take before the State actually throws the necessary money at all those basic maintenance tasks that have become dilapidated through neglect over the years, let alone expansion of those tasks. I can honestly say that a couple more years of this sort of thing, and I reckon I'll be out of here... though that's probably not much of an incentive to getting things fixed I suppose.

It’s either that, or they blow the cash on migrating us all to Canada, which I suppose is one kind of solution. The really cool bit about that is they already have a Victoria sitting there just waiting for us.

*sigh*

So, how did you deal with the heat? Everyone doing alright? Not joining vigilante arsonist-hunting groups I hope?

The Rantolotl.
ps - please be sure to thank Shane for his title contribution.

Unsubstantiated rumours...

2009-01-19T12:39:00.004+11:00

In stark contrast to last year, this glorious year, 2009, is off to a slow and drawling start (yes, I know drawling isn't a word, or at least not in that context, but lets just imagine it is for a minute or two.). So slow in fact, that the first 19 or so days of it have not quite been long enough for the newly appended digit to lose its shiny new sheen. It's quite the novelty, isn't it? Two thousand and niiiiinnnneeeee (Actually, now I really am drawling. But in the correct sense of the word. Hmm.). It has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Niiiinnneeeeeee. I was a big fan of two thousand and eight, since it just seems lovely and rounded, probably for some mathematical reason I'll never understand, but two thousand and nine is just novel. It doesn't sound like it should be a year. Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnneeee.

None the less, here we are, in the oddly placed linguistically speaking, yet highly amusing 2009. One day I'm sure we'll look back on it and be utterly convinced that it never existed, that it was a patch of our lives that was lived entirely in a magical pocket exclusive of time, and perhaps even physics. I'll be sure to experiment on that aspect when I get home, possibly with some kind of home made catapult, some pineapples, and Krus' shed. I'll let you know of any interesting developments. Anyhow, regardless of the space/time status of this current 'year' or whatever else it might actually be, it is indeed off to a start.

Now, while we all seem to have ascertained that 2008 was a horribly shitty year all round (except for the task of writing or pronouncing the the numbers two thousand and eight. Speaking of which, I wonder how the world would accept the lettered form of the year number on forms and the like? Hmm. Maybe a new dating format could be established. Again, in both senses of the word. Perhaps it is time for you, reader, to stop indulging my brackets now. I suspect they're making less and less sense.), 2009 seems to be showing some promise. Now I know it's only January and we're not back in full swing yet, but things are running quite smoothly thus far. Work is slowly getting back on track, social events seem to be occurring with minimal fuss, the weather has been a whole lot more typical than 2008 ever managed, and, while I wait for my normal coffee shop to reopen after a holiday, Hudsons have been serving me exceptionally average coffee - a marked improvement from their normal standard of inconsistent dirt water complete with crunchy bits. There is of course this whole Israel-being-the-worlds-biggest-fuckwits-and-shamelessly-getting-away-with-it aspect, but to be fair, that did start in 2008, that filthy trollop of a year.

Regardless, this first very quiet and relaxed 19 days or so has given me some time to reflect, and not being one for new years resolutions, this has quickly evolved into a rather abstract process. Niiiiiiinnnneeeeeeee. Now, I know what I'm about to say is rather insulting to many people, particularly those who have actually experienced what I'm about to discuss, and I'm pre-emptively going to go one step further and tell you right in advance, that the thing you really have issue with is the process. Yep, definitely. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to take this moment to discuss my thoughts on my workplace being remarkably like a minimum security prison.

Bear with me on this one. Currently, I have very little to do in terms of workload, so I spend most of my hours on the internet reading about stuff. From now on, the 'Internet' will be referred to as 'The prison library'. I also talk to a lot of people on msn, which I suppose could be closely considered to be chatting to my homies, my homies of course being my fellow prisoners. We discuss many mundane and uninteresting things (though we do also discuss interesting things) with the sole purpose of passing time whilst enjoying some form of human company. Many of these conversations would never pass as such were we to have them outside of work hours. In fact, we would just be considered rather strange, just as one would if prison conversations were to be aired in the public realm, I imagine. Every lunchtime, I go to the gym, which I will now, in line with the library reference, refer to as 'The exercise yard'.

We are contained in fairly lax, yet overcrowded conditions, and are required to enter through various locked doors to get in and out of a floor or building. We also are required to seek permission to do things from supervisory types. Our toilets are often on the disgusting side, and we have a kitchenette which we are required to look after, lest we lose the 'privilege' of using. We also have rations in the form of tea, coffee and sugar sachets, and arguably, the 'charity snack box' which no one seems to pay for. We also have a lot of fluorescent lighting which gives quite the institutionalised air.

Of course, we do get to go home at the end of each day, but I think this is a fairly trivial matter when one is expected to return the following day at the obscene hour of nine to ten-ish. We also have a chaplain.

This year, I plan to take advantage of the prisoner education scheme, I mean, professional development scheme. This will allow me to spend some of my hours here re-educating myself so that I may be of further use to the community, er, institution... er, company. Once completed, I can apply the parole board... er, human resources department, for an early release, er pay rise.

Do you see?! Do you see how interchangeable these situations are?! I mean sure, one has a horrible social stigma attached to it, arguably some potential violence, and the nasty matter of having to deal social low lives such as magistrates, lawyers and of course the police, but these trivialities aside, I think it's fair to adapt the old Anarchist Black Cross slogan of "Jails are the real crime!" to something a little more relevant to the working class of today. I think "Workplaces are the real prisons!" is quite fetching. It could be applied quite neatly to a badge or patch format, complete with a little icon of a coffee cup, symbolising all those hours we spend trapped in caffeinated escapism. Actually, we could even get a little skull and crossbones dealy going, with the steaming coffee cup as the head, and a couple of crossed cigarettes as the crossed bones. We could be the office-prison-pioneer-buccaneers.

Too much?

I don't think so.

This is the promise that 2000 and niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinneeeee offers us. A chance to start anew. Greener pastures. A pocket that time forgot, where we will wage a war against open plan offices. It may not achieve a lot, but it'll certainly make for an interesting year.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got an appointment with my exercise yard.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeee.

A letter to one or more criminals

2009-01-08T13:05:00.003+11:00

Dear inconsiderate lout,

I would like to take this opportunity to verbally punch you in the face, since I have no option to physically perform this task on your person. I'm sure you will accept this verbal punch in the spirit it is intended. That's right. Pure, unadulterated annoyance.

I call you a lout, but chances are that is exactly what you are not. In fact, I refer to you as a single human being, yet I suspect you are many more than that. From now on, I will automatically correct that statement to read 'a group of human beings who must all be single, mostly because they are contemptible arseholes'. There, much better.

I write this correspondence, because, just shy of a month ago, you stole my fucking wallet. Not only did you steal my wallet, but you promptly hopped on a tram, and took a little ride to the closest ATM that isn't right next to my workplace, and withdrew all of my money from my bank account, plus another three hundred dollars for good measure, using my very own bank card. What did that bank card ever do to you, you monster?

Now while this whole general umbrella act of wallet and money theft was a bit shitty and annoying, it's not what lies at the heart of my annoyance with you. I'm glad you didn't do something rude like mug me or beat me up, though that said it would've have made a far more interesting story, and given me the chance to feel very clever for at least being able to tell you to fuck off before being smacked in the face for my efforts. However, that is a small concession.

What you have managed to do, is steal both my bank card, and magically acquire my PIN. And no, for the last time, I didn't write it on the fucking card. You'll have noticed that my card has a credit facility on it. I sincerely wish you had used that instead of MY FUCKING BANK ACCOUNT AND PIN NUMBER. Why, you ask? BECAUSE I'D HAVE MY MONEY BACK NOW. You know what else I'd have? MY SANITY AND MY DIGNITY. Why do I not currently have these intangible items in my possession? BECAUSE THE COMBINED FORCES OF THE VICTORIAN POLICE AND A CERTAIN FRIGGING BANK CREATE ALL HELL ON EARTH AND LET IT LOOSE RIGHT INTO MY VERY LIFE.

Do you know what the police asked me when I reported it stolen? Do you? Right after I explained that money had been withdrawn from my account, and that no, *sigh* I did not write my PIN on the card, the cop in question asked me:

'How do you know it's been stolen?'

Seriously.

When I went to see the police in person, they told me to go to a bank with a card they had filled in, to take it in, hand it to them, and the problem would be resolved. I can only assume it's some kind of magic card, because as far as I can see with my non-invisible bank/police ink reading eyes is this:

To.....*my name here*.....
Constable .....*cops name here*....
attended this address today but you were unavailable.

Would you please contact
.....*location*..... Police Station on telephone ......*blank*.....

The icing on the cake is what is presumably meant to be today's date, written as 1/9/08. Clever.

The problem with this, team of single people, is that I actually need a piece of paper from this establishment in order for the fraud group at the bank to actually investigate the fraud, let alone return my fucking money. I suspect this fabled return of funds may never, ever, happen. This is unfortunate, since unlike knowing you're not going to get your rental bond back or something of a similar nature, I don't get to trash a damned thing.

You absolute mother fuckers.

Sincerely,
The Rantolotl.

Tis the season for Boxmas.

2008-12-17T12:22:00.003+11:00

I’ve noticed a lot of my fellow bloggers, friends, and much to my dismay, colleagues have been abusing the slow moving days of December to eke out 2008 retrospectives. You know the type; “thanks for a wonderful year, the kittens and rainbows were fantastic and I couldn’t have done it without you!” or alternatively, “another year where everything has deteriorated at an ever increasing pace. Inevitable really. But chin up, cause next year some thoughtless bastard might choose not to steal my kittens and rainbows and leave me in a pit of misery. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, YOU WHORE”.

Now I know these things happen from time to time, people feeling a great urge to look back on a well defined time frame and take stock - in fact I’m probably guilty of it myself – but this year it all seems to be happening too early, and waaaay too often. What happened to waiting until New Years? Isn’t this what January’s for? Bloody hell.

People need to get their priorities straight. FIRST comes November, with bbq’s and parties, then comes December with bbq’s and parties held on weekdays and weeknights as well as weekends, then towards the end you get the whole Christmas thing, boxing day thing, and then, of course, Boxmas. If you're not familiar with the traditional holiday, you might want to read up on it sometime before the 27th. A noble and spirited festival celebrating all that is BOX. A day or two to rest up, and then New Years it is. It’s after New Years that you start to look back on the last year and feel a bit miserable, and no wonder – you’ve just spent a month drunk and eating snack food in fucking droves – of course you feel like shit.

I don’t really blame people for stuffing up this quite basic seasonal equation, but it’s just so bloody arbitrary; particularly when we’re all meant to be hanging around the city, frolicking inappropriately among workmates, champagne bottle in one hand, stolen trophy from previous venue in the other. Where’s the love, people? Where’s the love?

Instead it’s all:

Dear all,

I’d like to take a moment out of my year to thank you all for the wonderful contribution you’ve made to my life, in between the hours of 8am, and 10am this morning. As some of you are aware, it got off to a rocky start when I was woken up quite rudely and with little regard for my own peace. Normally, this would’ve been okay, but this morning it wasn’t, it just cascaded. I spilt my coffee all over the bed. VG then spilt hers. We had to hang our doona out to dry and wash. They were really hard times, and I really appreciate you all for helping me out. You know who you are. That’s right – a big thanks to my coffee shop – you really came through when I needed it most – at about 8.45am with a large skinny cap. A big thanks to Dave who ran and got me some tissues after I spilt that coffee all over myself and the lift, a dangerous side effect of walk-reading. Also, Anna – massive shout out to you, you got me to the tram stop this morning, and didn’t ask any question about the stale coffee smell filling the car. Also, big ups to the metpigs this morning, who were kind enough to not be on my tram and do me for fare evasion.

You guys are like my team – I couldn’t function without you. Here’s to the next two hours being so much better for us all.

Much love,
The Rantolotl.

Now I know I’ve been lamenting the crappy weather lately, but I really do feel it’s a key contributor to all this doom and gloom reflection. For fucks sake, it’s been pissing down this last week, and the temperature itself just seems to be getting colder, not warmer. Hell, looking at some photos taken at an outdoor event last Saturday, the scene seems far more appropriate for a Scandinavian city street, rather than Summer in the worlds largest desert continent. BBQ’s really aren’t much chop when it’s raining sideways.

So what do people do with all their extra hours of daylight when it’s fucking freezing and the streets are flooded? They write lots of introspective wank while staring despondently out the window, shrouded in blankets. Perhaps they also huddle by the warmth of a fire fuelled by old photographs, treasured memories and childhood pets, cursing the war lords… er, rain gods? who bought this fate upon their mortal souls. Either way, they write a lot of tripe. I know this, because I’ve been fighting back the urge myself.

Where’s the fun Melbourne? The streets are empty, the students have left, people are on holidays, but no one’s coming out to play. Just the other day, the only scrap of interest to be found on Swanston Street were two young unicyclists, with one with a very large unicycle, and a very bandaged nose. They also had nice hats. Other than the rather untimely theft of my wallet, and subsequent removal of several hundred dollars from my bank account last week, this has been about the only moment of interest around my little corner of the CBD for days and days. Thieves, and wannabe circus performers. I’m not impressed. Actually, I should note that there were plenty of police around too, presumably hiding from the northern suburbs until this whole murdering a fifteen year old thing blows over. I notice that crimes such as WALLET STEALING and NOSE INJURIES seem to have risen since their arrival – coincidence? I think not!

But indeed, it is time to stop wallowing in our rain drenched filth and take Summer back. We will need heaters, champagne, and party hats. Maybe some good quality party drugs too, just to get things moving. After all, if we don’t get onto this matter soon, Boxmas will be at stake, and Mr Fandango Jones will not be happy. You don’t want to see that man angry, no you don’t. There’s lots of gnashing of teeth and projectile weapons and nasty, nasty, ham filled traps. Which is more or less how he is when he’s happy, but a bit less gnashing of teeth and a bit more evil chuckling.

Sincerely,
The Rantolotl

Merry bloody summer

2008-12-08T10:22:00.004+11:00

A few weeks ago, I sat here extolling the virtues of Spring and made some kind of greeting to the warmer months. Now, in earlyish December, I would like to take back every last fucking word I hammered out on this keyboard in praise of this time of year. So far, the first eight days of Summer have been shithouse. The heater has been on more that once so far, it’s been fucking raining or drizzling every second day, and my office is currently sitting at a chilly 18 degrees – a temperature that’s more or less matched outside.

I know this, because about half an hour ago I decided that it’d be warmer outside, wandered downstairs without my jacket, and thinking it may have just been a problem more of mindset than actual temperature, I purchased a summery mango smoothie. Then I stood outside shivering, and threw out my not so delicious icy treat in disgust and came back to the equally chilly, but somewhat more fluorescent office. In summary – this is not pleasant beer garden nor bbq weather, and I’m not fucking impressed.

I wouldn’t mind so much, but Winter was an absolute trial this year. It was cold - as winter often is – there were far too many of us living in the house, my wife had a broken arm and was generally insufferable, the power we were churning through in heating and entertainment enough to stop us from killing each other cost a small fortune in bills, and for some reason I’ll never work out, my office was heated to thirty degrees. To put it bluntly, it was a bit shit.

In Spring marched, being all promising with a couple of thirty degree days and balmy evenings, only to end in random hail storms descending on us and cloudy overcast days, and so here we find ourselves right back in some kind of screwy alterno-winter with well lit evenings.

For those of you in other states and indeed countries, I could go on about how this is not typical Melbourne summer weather, no matter how many ways you desperately try to stereotype it in a thinly veiled attempt to cover your own denial about Melbourne being so much better than say, Sydney, or indeed the whole of Queensland. But I won’t. Instead, I have one simple message for you. Fuck you all, you sun stealing motherfuckers. Why don’t you all fuck off and tend to your tractors or your suntans or whatever the fuck it is you do up there when you’re not inventing new racist slurs.

All this said, it’ll probably end up taking a swift turn from the 17 degree forecast tomorrow and end up being a nice dry forty. Which will be very nice for sitting around and enjoying a beverage or two after nightfall, but not so pleasant to actually move about in. Luckily, I’ve thought ahead and purchased this years paddling pool – an essential device for cooling down both tempers and temperatures of whiny and overheated wives and housemates alike.

I totally recommend the paddling pool to all Melburnians during the summer days. We’re so oft ill prepared to face the heat, and if you live in the inner suburbs, chances are the house you live in is a little on the old side, and your landlord is a little on the stingy side, so you’re unlikely to have air conditioning. Conveniently, most of these houses are built in a way allows you to block out the heat relatively well for several days by closing all doors and blinds during the day and not moving, then opening them all up from 10pm to 6am. It can become quite annoying, particularly if you live in a noisy neighbourhood, or own cats. Indeed, I’ve lost count of times we’ve been awoken by the sounds of thrashing, meowing and bloody great bellows of “ARGH! YOU FUCKING CUNT OF A CAT! GET OUT! OUT!!!!” accompanied by the sounds of stamping, thumping, and the occasional smash.

Last year, there was great excitement after one of the cats jumped straight through the venetian blinds and onto a stack of papers, paintings, and lots of other things that go ‘smash’ and ‘ruffle’ when you throw a high velocity cat at them. In the confusion of many belongings being scattered everywhere, and the cat trying to run out of the door at an insane pace, only to turn around and jump back out the window (via the bed and our faces), we of course awoke, grumped at the cat and each other a bit, and went back to sleep. This was of course short lived, because there was now something on the sheets, in the darkness and new found quiet, creeping about with spindly legs. VG very suddenly screamed, dramatically leaping out of bed, and I for some reason pointed out it was just a cat, when it clearly wasn’t, and went back to sleep.

This sleep was also very short lived however, because VG had now decided that the best way to resolve the issue of the mystery creepy crawly was to simultaneously hit the bed (and her wife), and try to remove the sheets off it, all while being extremely high pitched. No longer able to pretend I was asleep, I started grumping quite loudly, only to have the creepy thing now assumed to be a very large spider given all the commotion, land on my face. I too leapt out of bed, yelling. It actually turned out to be a caterpillar that had at some point been attached to the cat, and I chalked up yet another notch to the list of reasons why I should get the bed, and why VG should have to sleep on the couch.

So. The all windows open through the night plan of action does have its downfalls, but it is probably quite a lot better than having an ultraheated house on day one of a four or five day warm spell. Maybe this year we can get around the problem by tossing the cats through Krus' window then gaffa taping all the exits on his shed shut. In the morning, over our breakfast we could untape the room and enjoy the spectacle... I imagine it would be just like going out for dinner and a show, only a bit earlier in the day, and perhaps a bit bloodier. Something to ponder on, one way or the other.

In the meantime however, I will prepare the pool, and try and find my sunglasses and my best summer hats, all beautifully suited to long evenings sitting in a wading pool with some other pleb at the helm of the bbq, and a nice cool esky within reaching distance. I might even get a heater or two at the ready to provide us with some warmth to actually make these very summery tasks possible. Or alternatively, I could just burn down The Shed.

Stupid bloody seasons.

Happy 110!

2008-11-20T09:57:00.004+11:00

This post officially marks 110 published Rantolotls! Fanfare please!

Actually, it seems kind of strange, because it's been pottering along for some time now - since February 2006 in fact - , and it really feels like I should have a lot more than 110 of them. Perhaps if I counted them by paragraph I'd feel more accomplished. But none the less, 110 it is, which I suppose equates to one post every week and a half or so, which is obviously a little shy of the original intention of a once a week posting. That said, I think there's been gaps of a month or more along the way too, so lets stick with every week and a half being a good thing.

Interestingly, I get less comments than I used to, but have much higher regular readership and lots of small numbers on my stat-a-majig, however, small numbers that I can't possibly account for in terms of people I know. So I'll chalk that up as a win, I reckon. Also, I suppose I should take this moment to introduce myself to those readers I don't know. Hello to you all! I'm glad you're here, and I hope you enjoy your stay!

Over the last couple of years, my rants have varied greatly. From mocking my housemates, to complaining about Connex, to trying to implement a terribly flawed and indeed failed points system, to complaining about Connex, to mocking my friends, and indeed, complaining about Connex. I think there's probably a lot of bitching about work in here too, but I really can't be fucked looking through the archives. Oh wait, just last week will do. But I feel some of the more important events documented here are the fierce and ongoing rivalries. Such as the square/round scone issue. Believe it or not, this remains a contentious issue in my social circles, but I am proud to say that many have been recruited to the side of the round. Soon, we will be able to completely ostracise those foolish enough to slice their fucking scones into squares.

Which brings me to another baked goods issue, one that I hope can unite all appreciators of the bakery, regardless of scone preference. I am referring, of course, to the occurrence - or indeed lack thereof - of savoury muffins.

I think savoury muffins are tops. I'm not at all a fan of their sweeter cousins, but I do really enjoy a nice savoury muffin, preferably complete with feta, pumpkin, and perhaps some roasted red peppers. They are absolutely fantastic, and everything a delicious lunch/snack should be. The problem is, I can't seem to locate anywhere in my little chunk of the CBD that actually sells them. Hudsons claim to, but then again, Hudsons claims to make coffee and not sugar filled, crunchy sludge. Their 'savoury muffins' actually appear to be quiches, and given the only fillings they seem to offer are egg and bacon, I'm guessing that's exactly what they are. Fucking hell that place is backwards.

But I don't get it. I used to find savoury muffins everywhere I went. Now, the only place I can say for sure actually stocks them is Cafe V in East Melbourne (and they're pretty excellent). Why has Melbourne abandoned the savoury muffin? Why?

Unfortunately, with the advent of Drink for Change the hunt is only going to become more difficult as I strenuously avoid every fucking cafe that's signed up to this feelgood cashgrab whose one credit is in demonstrating its ability to manipulate a public complacent enough about water use to not actually pressure its government to enforce sensible policies, but suffering from middle-class guilt just enough to accept the ridiculous argument of consumer use being the root cause.

To cut a long and stupid story short, Drink for Change is a collaboration of cafes who will be asking patrons to make some kind of payment or donation in return for tap water at their table. Somehow - just somehow - this is meant to raise awareness for water wastage, and will assist in funding participating cafes in switching to water saving devices and so on. And here I was thinking that water wastage/usage could be addressed most effectively at an industry and planning level. You know, silly ideas like using grey water to flush toilets, water gardens etc. Perhaps even legislating that all new constructions must collect their own rainwater runoff and use its powers for good and not evil.

But trivialities like that aside, I for one, didn't realise that drinking water was wasting it. In fact, I was operating under the strange illusion that water was somewhat necessary to my survival as a human being. But clearly I was wrong. Bottled water, on the other hand, is completely sustainable. My theory is that the plastic bottles it comes in generate the water magically, which is fair enough I suppose, given the amount of water that goes into the production process for the bottles, let alone other environmental costs associated with shipping and distribution, etc.

Things like this really piss me off. Cafes are fucking businesses, not a public service that's scraping funds together. When the cost of electricity goes up, as it often does, we don't get asked to make a donation for the lighting in our area, or indeed the increased cost of operating a sandwich press - at worst, we see a small rise in the costs of the products the shop sells. In fact, that's kind of the whole notion of setting up a business and selling your wares. You don't just sell a fucking muffin for the cost of the base ingredients - you sell a muffin at a price higher than the proportional cost of the labour involved in manufacturing and serving the muffin, the capital investment involved in making the muffin (ie, oven), the rent on your shop, etc etc. But all this is moot, since you won't sell any fucking muffins anyway, you bastards.

So please, tell me all about your favorite savoury muffin recipes, or indeed where to purchase them (quality suggestions only please). Alternatively, share your favorite rantolotl moment, and I'll get off my arse and update the disgrace that is my sidebar. Oooh, and if you look to your left, you will find a brand spanking new poll for your enjoyment!

Sincerely,

The Rantolotl.

If my titles were numbered, I wouldn't have to think of words.

2008-11-10T11:24:00.004+11:00

Last week, VG went on a bit of a shopping mission, and as often occurs when she embarks on such missions, she returned with a great number of items not really detailed in her original quest, and only some of the items that actually were. None the less, this tends to work out well for all involved, with the notable exception of the credit card. Among her purchased items, one could find 'summer slippers' (fluffy thongs), a few other boring items, and surprises! Yes! Surprises!

Treating us like the overgrown children we really are, VG picked up a treat for myself and Fandango Jones, namely, chocolate filled advent calendars. Fandango received the really cool Transformers one (old designs!!), while I received the notably shitty 'Marvel Superheroes' calendar. Together at last, I can view Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, and some other hero I don't even know the name of in their full, spectacular, chocolate backed glory. Dear, if you really loved me, you would have got me the Freddo calendar. A DIFFERENT FREDDO FOR EVERY DAY OF DECEMBER! Obvious, I'd have thought. Ah well, never mind.

But then... then I realised that she had provided me with a most awesome gift. The gift of jealousy! You see, my teamlead is a complete and total manchild. He buys so many games, usually purely based on the hype they receive around them. He has man-toys (warhammer) hidden from his girlfriend in other peoples' desk drawers around the office. He giggles as he hijacks coworkers msn conversations foolishly left open on an unlocked workstation, writing witty and derisive insights such as lol!, I like poo!, and I'm a fag!. But most of all, he likes comics. Marvel comics!

The only assumption I am left with, is that my partner is now quite wittingly encouraging me to
bribe, or at least seriously taunt my boss with my newly acquired possession. There is clearly no other option.

How I will carry this out however, I have no idea. At the moment, everything is backfiring on me and I have little doubt that any attempts to misuse this advent calendar will likely end with me wearing a great deal of chocolate, quite possibly on my arse, while hopping around on one foot, perhaps partially blinded. In fact, those last two things happened to me (along with several other little bits of tragic) the last time I really, truly tried to humiliate a coworker - so I speak from quite extensive experience.

But really. In this last week or so, do you realise how many times I've been to the same stinking, bogan filled shopping centre? Do you have any conception of the number of children being marshaled - and I use the word marshaled very fucking loosely indeed - by inconsiderate, line pushing, aisle blocking, noise emitting, god fearing Aussie Battlers? Do you realise that while writing this post, Cold Chisel came up on my playlist? And that now, mere minutes later, Alanis Cunting Morisette just came on as well? Given that I've never owned nor enjoyed either of these 'artists', both of these events in the musical timeline of my day, nay life, should be highly improbable, if not outright impossible. Kittens and rainbows this is not.

But I digress. Maybe I'm being totally unfair on these tools (both the artists and the bogans, you understand). It must be difficult being a bogan. All those inner city types who just don't understand your stringent set of revolving door, Today Tonight style morals which they so frequently go out of their way to offend by doing such things as breathing and existing. And then, those inner city types, they'll do other things too. Like have facial piercings. Or wear slogans on shirts that actually read as a sentence, instead of disjointed words in varying fonts and sizes. Some even have political opinions! And I swear, last week, I saw one eat foreign food. It's just not cricket.

What a fucked up world of sensibility these people must live in. Well may we make jokes about VB, supporting the coppers, meat and three veg and shopping at kmart, but it's all fucking true, and they're all fucking proud of it. These are the same people who criticize the yanks for being backwards, but really, they're just as guilty of remaining wilfully ignorant about the world around them, or indeed even such advanced scientific theory as appropriate eating for climate. Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge fan of the traditional aussie christmas... forty degrees and we'll all be out playing cricket in the sun, drinking heavily, eagerly awaiting our roast pork, our roast turkey, roast chickens, roast beef, potato salad, pasta salad, and of course, a flaming pudding. But fucking really, does this principle need to be applied to every fucking Sunday? Do we need a miniature version of it on our plates every night of the week? Fucking really - we essentially live on a very large dessert island, and we insist on farming and eating food typical of your average miner living somewhere in the rain and cold of the north of england, and swilling it all down with VB, the end result of many failed ale and brewing experiments from the days of british invasion.

Perhaps the one redeeming feature of this nation of fools is the sentimentality they so dearly cling to in the face of progress. All of their stupidity seems, guided by whatever ridiculous excuse, essentially comes down to some kind of base emotion. Just like Tamagotchis. Or, if you prefer, the driving forces in a childrens educational video game. The other major bugbear of my week - connex - completely does away with any such notion, and will just arbitrarily screw around with your life, with no reason, excuse or indeed apology offered, with the obvious exception of that ridiculous 'Connex apologises for this delay' recording, which is about as sincere an apology as shit on toast is a delicious breakfast.

Interestingly, the major aspects of their fuckups this week haven't actually directly affected me. I've sat in my office nursing a coffee while reading the paper, and have been in the privileged position to sit there and shake my head in disbelief, instead of shaking my fist at everyone in my path in the unenviable position that would be being in the middle of one of their many, many cock ups. What has affected me, however, is the increasing number of incredibly angry people stamping their way onto trams and trains, and worse still, the even angrier ones stamping pushing and yelling their way around platforms and associated stationy areas. I have very little doubt their reasons for anger are quite legitimate, but I must say it's a pretty contagious attitude. One person stands on your feet, looks at you as if they're just daring you to bitch about it, then walks off scowling, and that's a good few hours ahead of you ruined.

Perhaps Connex should try and redeem itself by handing out free Marvel advent calendars at city stations. Sure, at first everyone would be completely perplexed, but I'm sure they'd all eventually end up causing everyone great delight as part of a extremely elaborate teamlead trap. Sure, they may not know my teamlead (though he does seem to know a remarkable number of people), but he has such comical reactions to pretty much everything that I'm sure they'd enjoy it. I certainly would, and having the commuting population of Melbourne directed right to his desk would save me a hell of a lot of time and effort.

How is your week going? Angry? Not angry enough? Surrounded by bogans? Are a bogan? I'm sure we can find some kind of non lethal cure...

Sincerely,
The Rantolotl.

Testing ones temper

2008-11-02T15:35:00.005+11:00

Last week, I said two things that could have been construed as a little inappropriate for the situation. It hadn't really been a good week, and the only thing left to do was get a bit squiffy and generally voice my disdain with all unfortunate enough to be around me. One of the more unfortunate things about this whole scenario, was that VG and I had to go on a shopping mission to cater for the events detailed in my last installment - ie, wedding.

Unfortunately, over the nesting winter months, too many bottles of red, hearty beef and guinness stews, and of course cheese platters and a good number of puddings have left me a little (a lot) on the porky side. As you can no doubt imagine, this doesn't really leave me in a particularly good frame of mind for shopping expeditions. It's not so much the excess fat that's the problem, but the absolute spectacle of trying to find womens clothing that isn't designed to fit a minibus as soon as you cross the awful, awful size 16 threshold.

And it's not just the fit that's insanely miscalculated either - it's the fucking god awful patterns they insist on covering everything with! "Oh look, it's spring and FAT PEOPLE LOVE FLOWERS!", I could be heard shouting across one particular clotharium as I threw yet another shirt back in the general direction of the rack from whence it came. Needless to say, I am currently back at the gym.

But moving on - or indeed moving back somewhat - it's reasonably safe to say I had a varied and somewhat lonely childhood, one that to this day leaves pleasant enough, but still somewhat bitter memories of my primary school days. This had very little to do with the kids, or even the various towns, but more so the frequency at which my parents shifted locales during these formative years.

Actually, even when we were quite stationary, they had a very strange habit of removing me from one school (always at the midpoint of a term, of course) and placing me in a 'completely different' and 'much better' school, usually about 37 or so meters down the road. It's difficult to say why this did this - indeed it's difficult to say why these two do a lot of the things they do, presumably because they are both absolutely, barking, batshit insane.

By grade six (final year of primary, for all you dirty foreigners), I had attended well over ten different primary schools. The vast majority of these schools - particularly towards the end - were tiny schools in hick filled farming communities, where by the age of ten most kids could probably, quite accurately detail what they would be when they grow up.

Every now and then when I visit these towns, I notice that many of them have done just that. Mr Hammond is now a boilermaker, Jenny is a nurse, and the rest of them pretty much grow various types of animals. So, when this weekend past, VG & I sat on the balcony of our hotel, half cut and listening to Shazza and Matt below on the street argue about what song to play on the jukebox next - Khe Sahn or Living on a Prayer - I did not yell out the obvious answer ('You're the voice! You're the voice!'), no. Instead, and quite reasonably I believe, I observed that "I probably went to school with some of these people... AND LOOK WHO'S ON THE BALCONY NOW!". Then I chuckled evilly to myself for awhile. VG shook her head and looked suitably embarrassed.

But despite these recent and somewhat escalating outbursts, in the face of the circus that is currently occurring around my good self, I have mostly, I believe been the absolute picture of calm in the more retarded situations (yes, I know some of you are likely spitting your coffee all over your screen at that, but I still stand by it).

Like Saturday night, when I was in the middle to attempting to charm Mrs Campbell at a fancy affair involving hats. All was going well, we were discussing the economic development of the Melbourne CBD, and how this has affected the restaurant and bar scene in the city. I was erudite, I was charming, and I was earning my many refills of their tasty Gewurz. I was also writhing in pain after being stung on the arse by some fucker of an insect or another. Slowly, I transferred my wine to my left hand, and in some odd attempt to appear completely normal as I attempted to maim whatever the fuck was stinging me, I smoothed my shirt with such enthusiasm that my hand would brush over my arse from time to time. Strangely, she didn't seem to notice. However, after a quick glance over my shoulder to see if I could spot the errant insect, I found Mr Campbell staring at me sternly, mouth agape.

And still, patiently, I sit at work with my arse-bite itching madly, resisting the urge to yell at my bottom or otherwise throw tantrums about it. Currently, I am funnelling all of my anger and discomfort into addressing the ongoing matter of my work pc being a piece of shit. Last week, it crashed every time I tried to open a word document. Today, it's crashing every time I log into a particular database. Tomorrow, no doubt, it will find something equally irrational and annoying to torture me with. Stupid fucking piece of shit that it is.

Still, much better than yelling at ones coworkers. Wait - scratch that.

Anyway, as the weeks progress and wedding, christmas and the rest of the never ending train of events pass, I'm sure many a comment will be yelled enthusiastically at the unsuspecting, and hopefully, hopefully hopefully hopefully, I have suffered my first and last insect sting of the season. If any more were to occur, I might be compelled to take some kind of vengeance mission against all living bees, wasps, ants, etc, formal event or no formal event.

Stupid bees.

Kept by bees.

2008-10-30T09:58:00.003+11:00

I find that Spring can often be the most obvious of seasons, and I don’t think this year is any exception. Maybe it’s the emergence from a long, cold and miserable winter, or the sudden requirement to flaunt all sensibilities and wear your favourite sunglasses, hats and shorts, in whichever way suits. Our house enjoys sipping Pimms and lemonade - or, gin and tonic depending on available ingredients - on the back deck, observing neighbourly traffic as we generally gossip/whinge the evening away. This task involves quite a spectacular array of shorts, sunglasses and hats, often combined with some remnants of the days’ work wear. We wear these items, and glare at people who glance into our open backyard, visually challenging them to utter a single contemptuous word in our domain. Spring. It is truly an exciting time.

But perhaps the greatest thing about spring is all those events! All of a sudden, people who you thought were dead start organising things, or attending them, and be all chatty and propose various alliances and so on. At first it is a lovely feeling, being wanted, appreciated, and most importantly offered lots of complimentary champagne, but then – oh but then! You realise you are but a pawn in this celebratory game. A pawn who is part of a list of pawns that is a longer list of pawns than the list of pawns some other person throwing some kind of celebration - perhaps involving prawns - has.

And these people who appear as if out of nowhere. At first, their re emergence is fun, a little frolic if you will – but soon you remember why you thought they were dead – turns out it was just wishful thinking. They are annoying, and you want to sever all ties immediately, preferably with a rusted chainsaw. You will manage, but it will take another 3 – 6 months, and then you will make the same mistake all over again the following year. But fuck all that – the awesome thing indeed is all the parties, the promise of an even more partacious summer (yes, that is a word), and in my case, all beautifully capped off with early autumnal birthday celebrations before we begin the slow trudge back into Winter. Don’t get me wrong – winter can be pretty awesome too, but there is simply no denying it is summers hangover.

This particular spring is, I am afraid to say, quite familycentric. A spring wedding is on the cards, and while the marriagees are friendly enough sort of people, they run the risk of Too Much Family Exposure Syndrome (TOOMF). You see, some families are like a delicate ecosystem, and are not to be messed with. After years of trial and error, and even a few deaths and international migrations, the Clarks have worked out an arrangement which ensures Maximum Enjoyment © and Least Frustration ©.

While I advise such an arrangement, the crux of the issue is that we avoid each other for 364 days a year, so that the one day we do actually see each other is not marred by stupid activities, comments or general behaviours which may have occurred in the last year or so. It is instead fuelled by a genuine want to be in each others company. Sort of. By and large, people are pleased to see each other – with the exception of Fandango, who I suspect is rarely pleased to see anyone, let alone random bits of family - , do the standardly superficial catch up on each others lives, eat a lot of food, drink a lot of piss, and tell a lot of stories. Hoorah!

Unfortunately, a spring wedding is in great danger of sapping all of that goodwill in one fell swoop. I experienced the first taste of Family Spring just last Saturday when attending a Hens do for the bride to be. All the aunts were present, as was my mother, and of course VG. Now, as anyone who knows me would realise, I was way out of my depth, and was relying on VG to navigate the unfathomable seas of Girliness, Hens Protocol, and of course, Alcohol Provision. She possesses all of these talents, and more. This is why I married her, you see.

However, even with all of this preparedness I was still a little bit surprised when I arrived, to find a room full of women. My little, round and behatted rudder frottered off into the sea of clucking aunts, and I became more than a little bit awkward about my surrounds, and indeed my general place in the room. So I stood in the doorway a bit. It wasn’t until the third or fourth prompts to get out of the doorway from the one person, and indeed the ushering from a drinks waiter, that I relented and attempted to stroll into the room, all casual-like. The aunts, sensing my general discomfort with the situation, took great pleasure in mocking me, by stuffing me into grapple like ‘hugs’, all the while tsking various items of clothing, or laughing at my general demeanour. I hastily set about acquiring more champagne.

So, it was inevitably strike one in a long list of social events to occur prior to Christmas. I say long list, but it’s really just one more event – the wedding itself. But it will be long, and tedious no doubt, with the added bonus of hired hotel rooms for wedding preparation, promises of room service lunches, and christ knows what else in store. Regardless, it will certainly break the three-hours-and-no-more family rule.

But it has given me some insight into the very nature of spring. In reality, the whole spring/summer thing in Melbourne is quite a novelty – will it be 40 degrees? At some point, definitely – but on any given day, it’s just as likely to be some kind of hailing thunderstorm, or even a cool 18 degrees. This makes every day - let alone event - new and exciting, and another opportunity for exotic and mostly disused dress-ups. For the entire 5 or so months, Melbourne is one giant return to childhood and fancy dress, only now, we’re allowed to drink and stay up past our bedtime.

And the Hens day was no exception. There we were in a room full of 20+ grown adult women, all of which were sporting completely impractical handbags, accessories, jewellery (are these all the same thing? I don’t know), a variety of dresses that would seem impractical for virtually any occasion I would ever attend, and bracelets big enough to knock out and kill your grandmother with. Now that’s dress-ups if ever I’ve seen it.

But it turns out that even adult dress up parties have their limits. A bit of a family scandal has erupted over a recent piercing in the family, sported by the ever noble Fandango Jones. His mother could be heard snapping “What do you mean he can’t take it out for the wedding?!” over the general Hens day din, soon to be followed by a later comment from my very own mother, telling me just how traumatic it is when “your children go and get pierced like that”, no doubt referring to my own collection of mother-traumatising piercings. So kids – clothing dress ups are okay, facial ones are not. God help us if they ever see the tattoos.

How Spring should be enjoyed.

But tell me, what are you looking forward to this Spring? I’m hanging out for the first barbeque of the season (Cup Day of course), complete with stupid clothing, painfully bad attempts at neighbourhood graffiti, and of course, a great deal of splendidly refreshing summer drinks washed down with deliciously charred and condiment smothered meat.

Plus I saw a real life bee swarm a couple of weeks ago, so I’m kinda hopeful they’ll come and abduct the neighbours kids. You know, turn them into bees or something.

Bigger may be better, but queensland is still a shithole.

2008-10-27T10:52:00.005+11:00

In these heady days of economic turmoil, I have to say that my thoughts have been returning to those delightfully… basic days of the late eighties and early nineties. It was a simpler time. One where everyone wanted value added products and more bang for their buck. Indeed, it truly was the golden age of Bigger is Better.

But slowly, things changed. While Pauline Hanson was busy running around the countryside denouncing immigrants and aboriginals alike for arriving in our country and stealing our jobs, our welfare, and presumably our women, those of us in more populous and less redneck infested areas were getting with a new program – rediscovering the awesomeness that is disposable income! Yes, yet again, the farmers and the hicks were living in the past, and we were all moving on up, right there with M People.*

And that’s about the time we all got fat. With our newfound wealth, we purchased lots and lots of small things, and enjoyed every last morsel at remarkable speed, just in case anyone turned up and confiscated our ill gained and clearly undeserved riches. Instead of paying $1.20 for over half a litre of ‘buddy’ coke, we payed $3 for a 125ml ‘classic’ bottle. We enjoyed the decadence of eating new and foreign cheeses, like ooo! - Edam, and mmm!Jarlsberg, shunning our previous years of Kraft singles and those terrible, terrible foil wrapped blocks of Kraft Cheddar.

Look! It even comes in a tin!

But while Kraft Cheddar and Singles ranges still exist (albeit somewhat expanded on) – probably due to people my age who must’ve left high school, bred, and never got to understand, let alone appreciate a diet beyond boxed macaroni cheese and oven fries – the scars of failed eighties and nineties bulk budget consumerism are all around for us to see, and indeed mourn. In fact, one of the last bastions of bigger is better has to be the cinemas, where even a small box of popcorn is enough to feed a starving African nation for a week, or, if you prefer, to be able to fit your head in.

The ones that have fallen however, are everywhere. The Big Pineapple has been battling closure for the last decade, and is now finally on its last legs with over half the plantation closed, the dining room empty, a skipping CD in the ‘nut mobiles’ that they can’t afford to replace, and free entry to try and massage the masses into rocking up and hanging out with the worlds’ most ridiculous chunk of fibreglass. The Big Banana doesn’t seem to be far behind – with slightly more impressive ‘attractions’ than the Pineapple, the Banana boasts a toboggan park, and a “whole bunch of fun” on the website. Get it? Bunch? Fun? Witty!

But down here in the sensible state, we’ve had our own little mishaps almost slipped by unnoticed. Remember Pizza Hut all you can eat? I certainly do. I remember the terrible, terrible things we would do to their ‘dining rooms’, and now in my older and wiser years, I would completely understand if a stranger walked up to me in the street, and punched me right in the face for all the pain and suffering I/we caused them years ago when they worked at Pizza Hut. It was still fun though.

But now where are they? They seem to be all gone, I’m afraid. Yes – it’s probably for the best – all that nasty mass produced shitty pizza and pasta and bolognaise, those awful ice cream machines that never really seemed to work properly, and of course, the salad and dessert bars where people would openly pick up food items, take a bite, or perhaps a lick, and then place them right back where they found them. Yum yum! But they did have their charm, even if that charm was just the ability to sneak out without paying, or perhaps taxing someone else’s ‘real’ pizza, or indeed, on one occasion, walking out with their complete stocks of rainbow paddlepops stuffed into our jackets. Not sure why really – they tasted bloody awful.

The city store closed down once and for all mere months ago, and I’m yet to see evidence that any more actual ‘restaurant’ stores still exist. So a few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to Yum!, the owners of the Pizza Hut franchise (and KFC as well, I believe):

To: customer.service.hotline@yum.com
Subject: Pizza Hut restaurant enquiry

Hello there Yum!

While wandering along Bourke Street mall in Melbourne last week (I'm going to assume this is an Australian administered email address... please do not hesitate to correct me if I'm wrong in this assumption), I noticed that the old Pizza Hut restaurant up on the second - or perhaps third - floor of the building on the corner of Bourke & Elizabeth has finally closed. Personally, I found this quite sad, but it's got me wondering - are there any pizza hut sit down restaurants left in Victoria? Or Australia for that matter? Specifically, ones that offer the old all-you-can-eat smorgasbord we became so familiar with in the 1990's?

It would be wonderful if you could get back to me on the current status of Pizza Hut family style restaurants and indeed the dining options available at any that may be remaining.

Kindest of regards,

Rantolotl.

Unfortunately, they didn’t respond. So if you’ve seen any Pizza Hut restaurants lurking about your neighbourhood, please let me know.

But this does bring us to another favourite chain restaurant, one that we do know the current status of. That’s right – Smorgys Family Restaurants. The Smorgy’s chain is actually an Australian grown chain, which emerged out of the ashes of the seafaring themed ‘Trader Joes’ restaurants. When they bought out the Trader Joes locations, they seemed to take the approach of keeping all the bizarre sea themed fishermans nets, boats, and other oddities, and then mixed in a bit of Essence of Polynesian around it all.

In the Melbourne venues, each restaurant took on a marginally different theme – Ringwood being Easter Island – the theme only seeming to differ from other restaurants themes by way of the centrepiece. At Ringwood, it was a giant head with glowing eyes. Sadly, there are only two Smorgy’s left in the country – one in Geelong (which has a nautical theme), and one in Bundoora East. Or perhaps West. I can’t remember.

Recently, we decided to relive our childhood horrors of this place, particularly for Giovanni, myself and Mr Fandango Jones, and took a lengthy tram journey up Plenty Road to the ‘Volcano’ themed Smorgys, complete with – you guessed it – a large volcano as the centrepiece. The less said about this evening, the better perhaps. We spent the entire evening absolutely gobsmacked at the locals who clearly enjoyed the ambience, and indeed the food on offer. But as bad and trashy as the food may have been, it had nothing on the wine selection.

Hello there barkeep! I said maybe a little two cheerfully, and received a slightly gruff Whadyawant complete with confused expression from the gentleman behind the bar. After much negotiating about the state of the wine list, we discovered that far from the eight varieties on offer on the list (all under $20! Value!), there was indeed only a single bottle of red wine left in the restaurant. I enquired as to what this bottle of red might be, and I was informed it was the pee not newer. I was a little confused, and asked the gentleman to repeat himself, and again got the answer pee not newer. I nodded in appreciation of all the trouble he had gone to, and secured the establishment’s finest bottle of Pinot Noir, and two carafes of the house red (as displayed on bar in 20lts cartons).

I’m not sure it’s really worth going into the pros and cons of the wine I had selected for myself and Fandango, in fact, the pictures should say it all, but I do feel I need to note that the cask wine was miles ahead of the bottle in all scored categories, ie, value, quantity and ability to drink without retching.

I don’t think we’ll ever go back. That item really needs to be checked off whatever insane list it’s on once, and once only.

But as economy fears grow, as we all start to tighten our belts a little in anticipation, do you think we’ll see a resurgence of Bigger is Better? Bottles of coke so large they can double as a personal weapon? Super-upsized McValue meals? Some free gimmick attached to any purchase over $20 anywhere? Time will tell, but never, ever, let us regress again to the age of boxed processed cheese and pie in a can.

Cheers, The Rantolotl

*I dare say it’s a bloody good thing she didn’t get the ear of the nation just a couple of years earlier, or things really could’ve been a lot worse. Indeed, she could’ve been the leader of some kind of BNP clone, instead of the nations’ very own Dancing with the stars darling. Let us never forget the hatred she fuelled and the big fat thumbs up these attitudes gave to full blown fascist groups right across the country – some of which still exist today, and have no hope of rehabilitation through reality tv. Fascist wants a wife? I don’t think so.

Smorgy's had at least one happy customer

Falco vs The Canoeist

2008-10-13T11:02:00.004+11:00

It's been a fairly tumultuous few months in Casa Del Hanover. So tumultuous indeed, that there is a distinct possibility that the Casa, the Del, and even the Hanover may soon be coming to an end. That’s right, we are moving out, and we will be returning to burn the property we will no longer occupy. Well, maybe not the burning down part, but we will of course write naughty things all over the fence.

As of October, we’re up to significant rent increase number three, or perhaps four? I can’t remember, I lost count some time ago. Either way, it’s really taking the piss. Myself and Fandango Jones huffed and yelled in disbelief upon reading the fateful letter, doubly so after reading that their claim for raising the rent (again) was due to their need to ‘cover the cost of increased maintenance to the property’. Now, aside from the fact that maintenance costs are pretty much an accepted and indeed legally required aspect of being a slum lord..er, upstanding contributor to the private rental market – you know, right up there with sky blue, grass green, bogans liking footy, etc - , I’m wondering what, exactly these exorbitant maintenance costs are.

Perhaps they are the cost of the following items that we’ve reported as generally fucked to the estate agent over the last year or so:

- The radically unhinged tv antenna on the roof. Now, to be fair, I’m not sure if it’s the landlords’ responsibility to ensure we have crystal clear telly reception, particularly in these heady days of So You Think You Can Dance and other assorted tripe, but what I am sure of is their responsibility to ensure that no pedestrians are killed by large metal objects falling from our roof.

- The water pouring out of roof on rainy days

- The light fittings that no longer work as a result of rain pouring through them and surrounding bits of roof on rainy days

- The burn marks from the light fittings that no longer work as a result of rain pouring through them and surrounding bits of roof on rainy days

- The associated also no longer working electrical fittings that presumably suffered the same fate as the aforementioned light fittings. Such as the bathroom light (works intermittently), and other lighting circuits.

- The bathroom door handle (again), which is exactly zero percent effective as a handle, and approximately one hundred percent effective as a tits on a bull, as my father would say. That is, completely useless (both the handle and my father). But this is a different kind of useless than it once was. Actually, some would argue that it was far more useful during its prior temperament issues, where it would close and lock itself quite indefinitely, lest operation be forced with the assistance of a screwdriver. This time around, the door just won’t stay shut, which is a touch unfortunate for all involved.

- The bathroom sink, which has lost all connection with the wall it is intended to be attached to. This wouldn’t be so bad if it had some kind of cabinet device holding it up from the floor, however it doesn’t. Now obviously the sink is not floating by itself in mid air, but is actually supported by some sort of miraculous gravity defying plumbing. During our last house inspection, the agent was rather shocked – indeed astounded! – by the engineering feat.

- The newly constructed fence quite comprehensively failing in its attempts to be a successful fence. Primarily by not being even slightly secure, let alone particularly upright.

But wait. That can’t be right. They didn’t fix any of these things. They certainly expressed horror at some of these things, particularly the ones that involved possibilities of electrocution/severe bodily harm, but no; they did not arrange for them to be fixed.

In fact, the only thing they have fixed recently is our kamikaze oven, and what a debacle that was. For once, the debacle side of things came from our end, and not the handling agents’, but a debacle it remained. One fateful day a couple of months ago, I decided to do a Sunday roast. It’s pretty rare that I do this, mostly because I can rarely be stuffed using any more than one pot in the cooking process, let alone approach the intriguing science of operating our oven at optimum temperature. But I was in a good mood, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

I acquired my pork, and sorted out a stuffing of feta (Greek, not that terrible Danish bastardisation), pine nut, fennel & thyme, which was duly inserted into a lovely cavity between the fat and the meat. I carefully prepared the skin to make a lovely and crisp crackling, lovingly seasoning it with toasted fennel & cumin seeds and a good dose of salt. I surrounded the fantastic looking chunk of meat with an assortment of vegetables and popped it in the oven, set the timer, and wandered over to my laptop where I gloated about my creation to a friend who was facing the grim prospect of trying to make a meal out of cheese and mayonnaise for dinner in a kitchen where a full blown housemate war had developed, leaving him with only a microwave and an empty cutlery drawer. I giggled at the thought of him drooling into his microwaved coffee.

Periodically I wandered back to the kitchen to remove the excess fat from the roasting pan and into a frypan I’d left on the stove. Eventually, the time came where the timer went beep a lot, and I enthusiastically removed the roast from the oven, and gave it a good stab with a knife, sadly discovering the inside to be rather pink and not particularly cooked. I stuck it back in the oven, turned the heat up a fraction, and gave it another half an hour or so. This was around 7.00.

At 9pm, I returned, flicked the door open, and glared angrily at my roast (now cut into portioned slices in hope that it might actually cook before midnight) as I dragged it out of the oven. I placed it on the stove, drained a bit more fat off, and yelled at it rather enthusiastically as a small prod revealed it to still not be cooked - It was getting close, but it definitely wasn’t there yet. I thrust the pan back into the oven, still yelling threats at both it, the surrounding vegetables, and indeed the oven. This task performed, I looked at the timer, considered setting it again, and decided against it as I yelled a bit more, and tossed an errant fork noisily into the kitchen sink. I checked the oven door was shut properly (this was a significant part of the problem, no doubt), and as I stood up again (still yelling), I managed to knock the entire pan of drained pig fat straight up into the air. All over the roof. All over the wall. All over the fridge. All over the floor. And of course, all over myself.

The yelling stopped. But for only a moment.

FUCKING JESUS CHRIST BUGGERY CUNT!

FUCKING BUGGERY BASTARD PIECE OF SHIT FUCKING KITCHEN ARSE! I stated, as I moved forward to pick up the pan, now on the floor.

OH YOU FUCKING PRICK! I yelled, - as I discovered that movement, barefooted on the greasy hardwood floor was now virtually impossible - sliding.

ARRRGHH!! I screamed, stamping rather ineffectually in the general direction of the pan, trying not to fall on my arse spectacularly.

It was safe to say that by this point, not one person in the house could claim to be unaware that I was by now, the textbook definition of angry. And perhaps tanty throwing. I can only imagine that they were huddled in the lounge room exchanging furtive glances and eye rolling, when VG loudly announced that she was going to open the door and that I was not to throw anything at her. I probably yelled something about how I couldn’t throw anything at her even if I wanted to. But she came in, looked at the general scene of chaos and enquired as to what the hell had happened.

So I explained. Mostly by yelling some more, and right about the point I explained that IT’S NINE OCLOCK and our food is NOT COOKED, therefore the oven is a PIECE OF SHIT, I gave the oven door a punctuating shove.

And then the door fell off. Not the whole door mind you, just the handle, the glass front, and some other random bit of adornment.

But don’t worry. This story has a happy ending. Fandango Jones was the next person to enter the kitchen, quite concerned for VG’s welfare after mistaking her now hysterical laughter for a crying/screaming combination, which I suppose was quite a reasonable assumption given the circumstances. The icing on the cake was the mop disintegrating while attempting to clean up the kitchens’ rather major oil spill. The roast was cooked (the oven door ended up having to be wedged closed with a slab of beer), and the occupants of the house made generally satisfied noises while eating their dinner, if only to stop me from launching it out the window.

Which brings me neatly back to my second point in this Casa Del Hanover moving malarkey. We need a place with a larger and less trapped kitchen. Some storage space and other such trivialities would be nice too. Primary on our wish list is our dire need for a spare room. We’ve always been a house fairly accommodating of house guests (read: couch surfers), but I think we recently discovered our threshold in such endeavours after a six month stint from my friend and yours, Mr Aunt Hillary/Special Shane. Our blue couch is now a grey couch. It is also a smelly couch. But most important of all, it is now an empty couch – and in a house where storage space is a fanciful notion once perhaps described in fairytales from another lifetime; where clearing off a table means carefully balancing one stack of shit onto another stack of shit, an empty couch is the most amazing of items. I’ll fill you in on the endeavours and adventures of Couch Boy some other time, however the fact remains, that post-move we will never again have to house someone in our lounge room. Hooray!

So, if you know of anywhere in the Brunswick/Coburg area with three bedrooms and a shed to put a Krus in (I’m really not kidding), give us a yell. There will be ice cream and donuts and flowers and maybe even hotdogs raining from the heavens on you. Hmm. You might need to invest in a hard hat.

Sincerely,

The Rantolotl.

Spring has sprung, the bogans are here?

2008-09-26T15:54:00.005+10:00

I do like living in Melbourne, it has to be said. But there’s one rather annoying thing that always catches me by surprise in late September every year, and that something would be the AFL Grand Final, and more importantly, all the general wank that occurs in its’ hallowed name.

This year has been particularly impressive; both in my level of surprise, and indeed the ferocity of the celebrations, presumably because it’s the first time in almost ten years that it’s an all Melbourne final. Not that a technicality like that has stopped us as a city in the past – even with the two competing teams belonging to states that we don’t even share a border with, we’ve still held the damned thing in Melbourne. It’s a bit odd if you ask me. But still, here we are, 2008, and an all Melbourne final is bearing down upon us.

The good news is that this means less wankface interstate footy bogans touristing about on our streets. The bad news, is all of a sudden, all those perfectly normal people around you on the train, in your office, in your café, hell – just fucking everywhere, turn in to fully certifiable footy crazed lunatics. They can’t possibly all barrack for one or the other of these teams! No one has even barracked for the Hawks since the Platten years - that was twenty years ago! What the hell are all these people doing?! Where did they, their bogan shirts and their banners and their flags come from?!

But worst still are the footballers themselves. Here are guys the size a minibus who are renowned for getting on the piss and beating the shit out of their mates, their girlfriends, and indeed any inanimate objects that get in between them and their desired destination at any given point. Their adult fans, of equal size but considerably less muscle and considerably more beer gut also get on the piss and emulate this behaviour, probably managing to fight a touch less but yell "Show us your tits!" a whole lot more from the comfort of their large, obnoxious mobs.

Why on earth do we consider these blokes to be the prime stock of Australia? Why, in this particular week of September every year, do they walk the streets of Melbourne kissing babies and ruffling young boys’ hair with a higher frequency than any election fuelled politician could ever muster? Who would let someone like that near their children?! I understand people could certainly admire their physical attributes and prowess on the footy field, but you know what? I admire Choppers’ general ability to make a go of it these days – I still wouldn’t let Uncle Chop-Chop near my imaginary children, let alone my very real cats. And don’t give me that unrealistic comparison crap – the courts have shown footballers to have more filthy fingers in more filthy pies than you can ever imagine; organised crime being just one of those many pies.

Now I have to say that in high school - and indeed now - I had a good friend who shall remain nameless. This friend was extremely fond of the idea of digging holes, particularly if it were to support some kind of retribution or trapping. Towards the final days of our last school year, the time when the best pranks often emerge, this friend was quietly plotting the demise of the school oval, one shovel load at a time. Bearing that enormous and adventurous scheme in mind, I don't think that even he could dig a hole large enough or trap filled enough to deal with the scourge of the AFL finals season, let alone the decent sized handful of pisshead players and fans who'll be up to their usual top notch behaviour.

Still, I do maintain that it's significantly better behaviour than when the interstate fans are in town. If there's anything worse than a footy bogan, it's a bloody sydney footy bogan. But what can you expect from a city where the highest form of entertainment seems to be going down to the local sports club, scoffing your parma, and propping yourself up at either the betting tables or the poker machines for the rest of the night, drinking bloody schooners of all things. Fucking abysmal. No wonder they punch people and yell a lot in Melbourne - they're simply in shock at the notion of people being friendly and nice here.

The simple greeting "Have a nice day!" would obviously be interpreted as "That's what she said!". "Can I help you?" is no doubt something along the lines of "Ya Mum!" and I think we all know what being served a pot instead of a schooner means - that's right, that the recipient clearly must be smaller in the trouser department that the server. That said, if we try and feed them pints instead of pots they just get all giddy and vomit everywhere from the ~~intoxication~~ excitement of it all. Messy bloody bastards. I think we're much better off without them this year. In fact, forget the finals - I'm sending my friend to Sydney to dig up the entire city. Much better.

And on that note I'm heading off now - to weave through the banners and the streamers and the fat met in inappropriately small football strips all the way to either a nice quiet pub or alternatively, my house. If you're in the same boat as I in this terrible football predicament, I suggest you don't bother turning on your telly until at least Monday, and stock up on a lovely range of non prescription...er...medicines, dvd's, takeaway, or perhaps even all three. Certainly sounds tempting to me!

Have a lovely weekend,
The Rantolotl

(I'm actually going to go and put $20 on the Hawks...)

PEW! KAPOW! ZAP!

2008-09-10T10:48:00.006+10:00

Tim glared angrily at The Boy. It was no surprise really, Tim being the bastard he was. The Boy, even at his tender age of three feet high passionately disliked his father. It might have been something to do with his lazy cunt of a father actually naming him The Boy. It was just the latest in a long line of his guardians’ misuse of the Births Deaths and Marriages office, all seemingly designed to torture The Boy. The Boy and His Sister glowered back at the angry eyes of Tim The Bastard. Their plan would soon be complete, but even now, they realised they should have acted sooner. His Sister’s eyes drifted down to the fabric of Tims’ jeans. Collected around the still unbuttoned fly, feathers. Little soft downy feathers. Another innocent life lost to The Bastard, one more family parakeet buggered to death.

Today, thought The Boy, will be Tim The Bastards’ last day alive on this planet.

To be continued...

Recently, the Human Resources department moved into my building, and I have to say so far I'm not impressed. It's pretty much confirmed every thought I've ever entertained about them being totally incompetent, head up arse, perpetual wankers. Christ, they've been here a good couple of months, and they still haven't managed to plug in their fax machine. In this age of electronic everything, we actually have to fill stuff out on paper, then hand deliver it to them if we're to have any hope of receiving our overtime payments. Though, this has grown a lot more convenient with them actually residing in the same building.

What has not grown more convenient however, is using the lifts since their arrival. Every fucking day these tools crowd up the foyer, endlessly chatting away and sporting their knock off designer sunglasses, handbags and perfume, waving these items around like they're going out of style (which I suppose in all likelihood, probably are). But as annoying their mere presence may be, it's nowhere near as bad as their inability to actually walk down a single set of stairs to the foyer instead of catching the fucking lift down from their floor.

The previous tenants of that floor didn't do that. No. Once in awhile they'd do something a little retarded and manage to set off the fire alarms, but that was okay, because we'd all get to go for a little stroll and have some coffee and maybe even a cupcake. These silly bastards could never manage to accomplish something quite so considerate. In fact, I suspect they may be the antithesis of considerate. I wouldn't be surprised if the next time we have some sort of celebration the bastards managed to infiltrate our floor, then sit on, steal, or otherwise sully our cakes. But that wouldn't be enough for them. No. We'd all dejectedly wander back to our desks to find our papers all ruffled and shit in our shoes. Fucking monsters!

They manage to form this quite special type of annoying that not even your stock standard office-admin-fridge-nazi types muster. You know the type - the ones that decide that their children are their future (teach them well and let them lead the way, woooooo) and lose any sort of ambition in their jobs. Don't get me wrong - I too lack ambition in my particular form of wage slavery, but at least I don't expend all that extra energy on policing sink and dishwasher usage, or perhaps creating spreadsheets that precisely outline who has put what in the fridge and how long it may or may not have been there.

But that's a little beside the point, after all, we're meant to be focussing on the gutterslime HR staff here. Okay, sure. I suppose they're not all gutterslime, but you have to admit that if you think about your own HR deparment, that there are certainly some telling and universal signs across the industry.

I don't really know what to do about these unsavoury characters. I want to set traps, but they do control the pay run, which seems to be a tricky operation at the best of times in their remarkably incompetent hands. Perhaps some kind of trapapault (surely the term for the external delivery of a trap?) would do the trick? If so, I'd quite like to nominate Couch Boy for the task.

Couch Boy has a long history of being a madman, and placed in correct circumstance, can cause quite the stir. Would he eat all their cake? Why yes. Yes he would. Would he burrow into their fancypants handbags to nap, only to be discovered at a later, most inconvenient time, perhaps in the Ladies room? Perhaps with gnashing teeth? Most assuredly so! Would he lope around the office indiscriminately yelling ANOMMANOMNOMNOMNOMMANOM OORRRRRUMPH! ? Fuck, I can only hope so.

It's settled. Couch Boy is the secret weapon. He will bring punishment to HR departments when nothing else can. And what will the rest of us do? We will sit back and laugh the laugh of the righteous, for that is what we will surely be.

I like to think of them all in their horror, swatting at the duo-flacid-horned beast with their expensive coats, stopping only to spray whole litres of perfume in his face, only to realise the futility of it all as he rolls around in abject joy of his newly acquired smells and fabrics. They could never tame him; they could only hope to feed him donuts at regular enough intervals to make him sleepy.

Who ever knew that left handed, colour crippled, early onset coffee drinkers could be so useful? I suppose you learn something new every day!

Sincerely,

The Rantolotl.

The adventures of Scruffy Girl and Boy Orange.

2008-08-26T10:57:00.005+10:00

The names are true enough, I suppose. I was indeed a scruffy child - and many would hazard a scruffy adult – and Fandango Jones was indeed orange. Though quite possibly more orange these days with the addition of facial hair. Either way, it’s safe to say we were a pair of little bastards when let out on the prowl in the elderly-filled town of Mount Waverley.

The perpetually slow moving streets of the sleepy suburb were the ideal playground for a couple of antisocial children with a lot of time on their hands. No matter where we went, boredom would set in, and sooner or later we’d be lobbing objects over fences for some trivial reason or another.

SG: “Man, that’s the house with that bastard in it!”

BO: “Oh!”

SG: “Well then. I wonder what we should do with all these apples…”

BO: “Mmm, I wonder”

And then would come the inevitable hail of rotting fruit over the fence and onto some poor housewifes nice clean washing. But it wasn’t just fruit that we used to turf at our enemies, real or imaginary. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that we often didn’t really bother with the construction of enemies at all, and just restorted to games of ‘golf’ in our grandparents tiny backyard, equipped with a treeful of lemons and our grandfathers set of golf clubs. Our idea of damage limitation was not to try and chip the fruit around the backyard, but more along the lines of trying to hit the fruit around in the way that it could be construed as an errant chip that may’ve accidently flown over a fence… or two. That, and lemons. Totally less damaging than golf balls, they are - Certainly in terms of our grandfathers’ reaction to them being lost, at any rate.

Then came the trips outside of the house. I think it was one of the few places you would have children actively offering to go out and grab a litre of milk.

“Hi Nan, do you need anything from the shops?”

“Er, no, don’t think so”

“Are you sure? I think you’re low on cheese”

“Why don’t you take a look in the fridge, and see dear?”

Now given Nan was more or less confined to the dining room chair for most of her career as an elderly person (and probably knew damn well what we were up to), and Pa was always just as keen for a stroll up the street, it wasn’t really much of a challenge to be sent up the road for a stick of butter with a ten dollar note in your pocket.

Off we’d stroll, Boy Orange and I, in search of the nearest shopping trolley. This generally wasn’t too difficult, as it was back in those heady days when people actually walked to the shops, so would leave trolleys, post-shop, in conveniently placed locations for the trolley boys’ nightly collection round, And of course for errant eight year olds.

With our shopping trolleys (one each) secured, we would usually head to the railway station carpark. If it was a Sunday, we would head over to the empty Wooly’s carpark, just for a bit of variety. Both of these carparks presented their individual challenges. Both had speedbumps, but more impressively, both had bloody excellent ramps of one form or another. The Railway featured a pedestrian underpass, which consisted of a rough ashphalt slope, with a right angled turn to the left at the bottom into a small tunnell, and then another right angle turn into the pathway on the other side. It also featured guttering which had to be avoided at all costs, and a couple of pylons, presumably to stop people doing silly things like racing shopping trolleys down there. Needless to say, the challenges in this particular race were to;

a) stay upright ,

b) make the turn if possible,

b) scare the pants off any pedestrians who were so foolish as to try and actually use the underpass.

In later years, we would try and emulate this feat on my skateboard. Though for some strange reason, we never used to stand on the bloody thing, instead we would lie on it and try and paddle it around like a surfboard. This seemed to result in more grazes.

Over in the safeways carpark, the only slope to be found was in the loading dock. The smooth concrete provided a much better surface for ones’ attempt at trolley racing, resulting in a far more satisfying speed. The real problem with this slope was that it ended quite suddenly with a concrete wall and a big jutting out piece of metal at the bottom. Clearly, the key was to obtain maximum speed, and to time ones’ jump off the trolley in a way that would not result in;

a) your head being removed by the metal bit,

b) your body being maimed by the concrete wall,

c) the trolley bouncing back from the concrete wall and mangling you.

But as much fun as it was to race ones trolleys, it simply didn’t compare to the fun a daring duo such as our fine selves could have in a supermarket. One of the supermarkets (the Woolworths) had installed a complimentary coffee machine in an ill fated attempt to win customers away from the competing supermarket 50 metres away (the other Woolworths). As we were still children and did not drink coffee yet (I’m looking at you, CouchBoy), it was rather fortunate that they had thought to include a hot chocolate option on said machine. It was crap, but more importantly, it was free. After helping ourselves to several cups, and then disposing of all the whitener in the bin, because really, who the fuck wants whitener, anyway?, we’d make our way into the supermarket.

I recall one particular time, not long after the launch of Kinder Surprise into the Australian market; I made an arbitrary decision that they were the kind of chocolate clearly designed for toddlers, and therefore unsuitable for our consumption. Based on this decision, the next time we went to this particular market, I set about breaking the kinder surprises, and nicking the toys from the toddler-chocolate shells. I’m not entirely sure where the rationale for this came from, and didn’t have much time to consider such a thought, because it soon became apparent that Boy Orange had come prepared for his supermarket trip… with a cap bomb. We delighted in tossing the little metal ‘bomb’ up in the air, complete with rolled paper cap (or two, or three) jammed in the top, watching it fall, make contact with the floor and bang loudly, scaring the bejezus out of whichever elderly woman we’d been stalking. I don’t recall seeing any heart attacks onset by this, but I’m guessing a few years were shaved of already shaky lifespans that day.

After a good bit of cap bomb fun, the store manager tracked us down. He was fucking furious, and as he stood there in his silly white shirt and his silly Woolworths tie, going pink from anger and not quite knowing what to say, I think all we could do was giggle a bit, completely diffusing his anger. Don’t get me wrong – we were indeed little bastards, but we weren’t the sort of little bastards that could usually deflect a telling-off like that, we were the sort that would crumble, cry and bit, and be suitably ashamed – which is why it was so fucking ridiculous that this grown adult seemed to be having so much trouble trying to get a pair of young kids out of his store. We weren’t disagreeing with him, we weren’t even being argumentative and refusing to leave, we were simply waiting for him to take the lead and escort us out. Eventually we wandered off, leaving the store in good will (with our stick of butter), stopping for a complimentary hot chocolate or six on the way out. When we got home, we were saddened to discover that the Kinder Surprise toys were just as shit as the chocolate they were encased in.

One day, nan filled me in on her latest news, absolutely elated. The nurse came in on Tuesday, and she says I can’t walk anymore!, she conveys with a huge grin on her face. But we soon discovered the source of her unusual eleation at the news of being permanently disabled – she was now eligible for a mobility scooter! This was a pretty big win for her, because I don’t think she really had any intention of walking anywhere again anyway. I think she hit about 65 and decided that she’d been walking for at least 60 years now, and it was about time she had a good break and put her legs up. So, the scooter was delivered, and she used it all of twice before going back to the dining room chair she was so fond of. I suppose I can understand why though, she was head of her own little world in that room, where people would come and visit her and chat, where the heater and tv were always on, and where food smells were always coming from the kitchen.

It really was quite amazing – she managed to maintain control of the kitchen and all the meals it produced from that chair. She’d cut up beans on the table, and then instruct someone to go and put them in pot x, or to give pot y a stir. On special days, she’d instruct someone to bring her the electric fry pan, and there she’d sit, in her chair, at the table, frying up some salmon patties. It was really quite extraordinary, now that I think about it.

The upshot of this recently acquired yet completely unused mobility scooter, was that much to the rest of the familys’ dismay, nan would actively encourage myself and Boy Orange to take it out ‘for a run’ to stop the battery from dying or some other feeble excuse. That woman sure knew how to make us kids happy – ten dollars placed in our ownership, a mobility scooter with a fully charged battery, and instructions to go and get some chips from the charcoal chicken shop. We were in heaven.

A bit like this, but more of a bucket seat and a basket on the back (for dinking. Not for groceries)

We would jack the speed up to ‘Rabbit’ (as opposed to ‘Turtle’), and away we’d go. We quite effectively became pavement hoons, taking every corner as fast as Rabbit allowed, usually getting the scooter onto two wheels, and if you were really good, just one. With the help of the basket on the back, you could dink people, and you were showing pretty serious skills if you could get the scooter into a skid – though it’s safe to say that we usually managed to flip the thing sideways when that happened. Actually, flip is maybe too strong of a word. Perhaps something along the lines of an inevitable slow motion fall. As I recall, we used to manage to break things with the scooter on a pretty regular basis – often by presuming it had much better braking qualities than it actually did (it had none – just motor regulation). Terracotta pots, garden gnomes, garden edging and errant bits of hedges and fencing all fell prey to the scooter at one point or another, and with the help of the little horn it came equipped with, we only managed to clip a small number of pedestrians on our travels.

The funny thing is though, through all of this, the only time anyone actually got angry at us was the manager in the supermarket - and even then it was of to absolutely no effect. We would regularly terrorise these streets, lob lemons into peoples yards/windows/antennas, throw rotting fruit into peoples backyards, and regularly endanger pedestrians. I’ve no doubt we found lots more mischief to get up to in one way or another, but all these old people would just smile at us, ask us to pass on some greeting or another to our folks, and perhaps offer us a choccy biscuit. It was a very odd place.

Unfortunately, I think most of these kindly people are dead now (I’m going to presume the supermarket manager died young from some kind of heart condition). It is a shame, because I suspect it’s a rare place where a community are so tolerant of childish shenanigans. Christ if kids did that now, I’m guessing hapless bystander would get arrested for being a pedo, and the parents would be stripped of their parenting rights for being so careless as sending their kids up the street to grab some shopping. I can just imagine them being dressed down about all the dangers for kids in the world these days – don’t you understand? THERE COULD BE TERRORISTS IN THAT SUPERMARKET!

I think what the adult world it totally failing to understand is children are a much bigger threat to the adult community than the other way around. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just deluding themselves.

Sincerely,

The Rantolotl.

Rocks of the north, part three (fuck it. The crappy title stays).

2008-08-01T07:44:00.018+10:00

STOP! She squealed.

I froze.

What?

Argh! I yelled, in response to my own question. Why? Because there was a big fuck-off snake darting around in the grass disturbingly close to my untrousered lower legs. I leaped back, and refused to move for quite some time, in fact, until some elderly people walked past me, laughing. Fools.

What you can't see in this photo are the six trillion species plotting to kill VG. There's probably
a small bushfire lurking behind one of those trees somewhere too.

Welcome to Kakadu.

A place where a simple walk around a small bird watching circuit is likely to get you eaten by some already impossibly overfed reptile. A place where swimming is likely to be rewarded with a loss of at least one limb. A place where the elderly become even more vindictive than usual, revelling in the full knowledge that they’ll soon be dead anyway, so they may as well go out with a bang. Or perhaps more appropriately, three venomous snakes attached to an eyebrow and a lizard for a foot.

Seriously, everything in this very pretty little chunk of land is more or less out to kill you. As you move around, you’re essentially running from one very pretty killing machine, to another very pretty poisoning machine, and then, as likely as not, to a whopping great bushfire. All the while being surrounded by german tourists, the elderly, and big tough barramundi hunters (failed and aging football players), all doing their best to shove you off tall and high killing precipices (lookouts, I suppose you could call them) in order to get a better, and indeed prettier photo than you.

That said, it was well worth it. This was the last stop on our way to Darwin, where we intended to do nothing other than civilised things like use the internet, use our phones, and visit markets and stores and all those other things you do in townships that actually have a population. This was our last and final chance to go and play in the mud and climb things and try to successfully identify things which were about to bite us. We did all of these things and more, including a great little jaunt into Arnhem Land.

The thing about Arnhem Land is that there are two road crossings to it, both through a river. That’s right, not over a river, but indeed through a river. Filled with crocodiles. For some strange reason the Federal government has never seen fit to perhaps create passable access points into this part of the country which spends a good deal of the year knee deep in mud and inaccessible by road… I’m guessing this has something to do with it being Aboriginal land and not, say, any part of the rest of the country. As a result, through the wet season food and other essential supplies have to be flown in, and work in Kakadu is inaccessible. Even in the dry, because the river crossings are tidal, access to work is made a bit tricky by having to wait for low tide instead of simply being able to cross a bridge whenever you please.

And let me tell you, there is nothing more entertaining that watching tourists in rental four wheel drives attempt to make that crossing, even at low tide. Because you can’t actually see the road - and I use the word ‘road’ loosely, because by the way vehicles travel over it, I’m more inclined to say it’s more of a collection of large rocks – they end up zigzagging all over the place, lurching this way and that, looking like they’re going to be swept away at any moment. Watching the looks on their faces, I’d say it was brown trousers time all round.

cue: Benny Hill theme music

Still, it’s well worth the hassle of the crossing to check out the fantastic landscape and rock art over the border. I’d thoroughly recommend a tour guide, because there’s simply no other way you’d find the art sites or any of the other cool little hidden gems, without one, let alone even begin to understand what you’re looking at.

Probably the biggest downside about Kakadu was the accommodation. Being a Wotif junkie, I’d pretty much left booking to the last minute, or indeed, the first available minute of Wotif booking, only to find that everything was more or less sold out, and that Northern Territorians absolutely fail at the internet. As in, more than you can ever believe. But after a lot of stuffing about, I managed to secure a booking at the delightful sounding Kakadu Aurora. Foolishly trusting the photos and descriptions, I was led to believe that this was a delightful little tourist resort tucked away in the billabongs about 20k’s out of Jabiru. It came complete with the delightfully eighties bedspreads (a mixture of salmon pink and cobalt blue triangles and wedges, of course) we’d come to expect from Territory accommodation, and two restaurants, a bar, a swimming pool, and a raft of other delightful sounding features, including such luxuries as the Internet!

What we got however, was a room in one of these:

We had the 'deluxe' room, meaning we only had to listen to three families with

young, screamy children, instead of five

It was spectacularly seventies. Everything was wood, or wood panelling. There was a restaurant, with a bar attached to the side that could competently open a bottle of VB, or Four X for you – the choice is yours! The bar seemed to serve counter meals which were just as expensive as the restaurant, and indeed, remarkably similar to the restaurants’ offerings. Now I’m all for a nice ‘lamb curry with rice and poppadum’, but I’m not sure I’m quite prepared to fork out $35 for the pleasure. The internet connection was even better. For $2 for five minutes, you could surf the web in the comfort of the middle of the reception building, at a whopping 14kbps connection. That’s a speed of dialup that wasn’t acceptable over a decade ago, for those of you who are only familiar with the term ‘broadband’.

So after a few days, off we went heading for the bustling metropolis of Darwin. After about two minutes of driving through the outer suburbs, we found ourselves at our inner city hotel. We laughed and laughed and laughed at the audacity of this place for calling itself a city. After another few days, we were indeed still laughing, and right now as I sit at my desk, a giggle can still be heard. It's a funny place, Darwin. It's a bit like the country town that time forgot - like Wangaratta from twenty years ago, or Hamilton, if you'd like a NZ comparison, say, about six months ago. Though a few less sheep.

The good people of Darwin are an odd lot. They don't really like to answer questions. Well, they do, but not with what the rest of the Australian populous would consider and answer. A simple question, like "where's your restaurant?" is likely to get you a response involving a childhood story, an offer of a beer, and some strange sort of explanation of why you want a receipt for your goods, even though you really don't. Primarily, because you've not yet purchased any goods. But you will never, ever, find out where that restaurant is. To find that out, you need to ask what the time is.

We spent a few days in Darwin, where we largely spent our time wandering around, drinking beer, and wandering around and drinking beer. After spending all my time in the long drives up to Darwin perusing the many guidebooks we'd seemed to accumulate, we worked out a pretty lazy itinerary of going to the Mindil beach market, and checking out the museum for the Cyclone Tracy exhibit. Mostly because that's about all the city really has to offer, bar a couple of decent restaurants. Upon getting to the beach markets though, we were pretty disappointed. After asking many questions about low and high tide times, I found out that while you could drink all you like at the markets, you certainly couldn't buy any booze there. Further enquiry on this point just got me strange looks, as if it was perfectly natural to not sell alcohol in an area where you are actively encouraged to drink it. This put a pretty massive dent in our original plans to spend a lazy several hours browsing stalls, eating, and watching the entertainment, and as I watched bogan family after bogan family unpack their eskies of four x, while having loud and meandering arguments about which child was to go and fetch the food, I realised that this plan was just not going to work unless we could magically acquire several bottles of wine immediately. Which we couldn't. So we browsed the stalls and went back to our hotel, where funnily enough, we could purchase wine and drink it. Amazing!

Sunset at Mindil Beach. Awwww.

The following day we ventured out to the museum, where after checking out every other bloody exhibit in the place, and not voluntarily, we finally found the Cyclone Tracy exhibit. In a nightmare layout which only just allowed for one person to pass another whilst perusing the displays (but only you're fond of intimate contact with strangers), I began to feel an enormous amount of sympathy for the poor bastard who was forced to put this otherwise rather good exhibit together in the collected space of a single stairwell. It would be great. You'd go through years of education in arts, art curation, and other generally arty things - hell, lets throw some architecture in there too - and be given a great opportunity... to create a record of Australias' greatest natural disaster, a cyclone that destroyed an entire city. On christmas day. A disaster with a living history, which is the subject of engineering, psychological, and emergency response education to this day. Except then you're given a budget of fifty dollars, a beer, and a broom closet in which to set it up.

That was another thing that seemed typically Darwin. There's such an intense focus on the Japanese bombings, and pretty much everything associated with that and indeed world war two in general - but next to nothing on an event which affected the city far, far more financially, socially, and physically than the bombings ever did. That's not to say the bombings were a picnic in the park - I'm sure they weren't - but fucking seriously... one day you go to sleep, and the next, you wake up and half your city, your cat and your mailbox are embedded in the windscreen of your car, and you don't bat an eyelid? Christ. I don't know about you, but I think if it'd happened to me, I'd want it to be recorded in history very firmly, as one very, very fucked up christmas.

But despite all the shitting about and general failure at, well, everything, Darwin was a pretty nice place to hang out in for a few days. Chilled people, lots of beer, good food, and nice and warm. We got to feed fish, be scared of super-armed cops, laugh at some World Youth Day pilgrims, and even see several hundred screaming middle aged women from 'out bush' attending the premiere of Mamma Mia. We even got to see a stack of men sleeping on top of each other at the airport, which I for one don't see every day.
And with that, I bring this little travelogue to a close. Normal programming will recommence shortly, less stories about rocks and billabongs, and more about... whatever the fuck it is I write about. Cake mostly, isn't it? Hmm. Anyway - now it's your turn to tell me about your holidays. Go on. Comment. You know I love 'em.

The main streets of Darwin, embracing indigenous culture

Fin,
The Rantolotl

Rocks of the north, part two (still no better title)

2008-07-16T14:54:00.007+10:00

The delightful town of Elliot, NT.

We headed out of Yulara to Wycliffe Well by way of Alice Springs. Alice Springs is a strange place, and I suppose the best way to think of it is perhaps as a rather large airport security area - you know, the bit where they scan your bags, look grumpy/bored, and threaten you with deportation. Everywhere we went, we were safely removed from the dangers of sharp objects which could be used as weapons... like scissors. In fact, the townsfolk of Alice seemed to be quite proud of this achievement. After purchasing a pair of sunglasses from the local K-Mart after discovering, oddly, that the Northern Territory is a touch brighter than mid-winter Melbourne, the checkout chick offered to cut the tag off the glasses for me.

Oh! Yes thanks! I replied to her foresight filled suggestion.

Well sorry, but I can't do that. We're not allowed to have scissors here - you know, being that they can be used as a weapon and all. You'll have to go over to the returns desk.

Well then. That was me told.

I could only assume that the returns desk kept such dangerous items locked in a hidden vault, only to be accessed by the most highly trained in martial arts and possibly armed staff on duty. But no, there they were, stuffed into a desk caddy, sitting right there on the bench being within reach of my personal 'danger' zone (being my wrists, and I suppose heart, if you're that handy with a pair of craft scissors).

We hastily left the security, the more or less geographical, and indeed the apartheid centre of Australia* by way of a petrol station where a similar situation occurred, but this time the dangerous object in question was a public toilet. Strange place, Alice. Very strange place.

And with that final stop, we were well on the way to Wycliffe Well, the self declared UFO capital of Australia. Wycliffe Well lives up to its name, even if only by the number of glow in the dark figurines it houses, including a particularly enjoyable bright green Elvis. When we finally arrived after many hours of driving, we were met by a gruff man, who was looking strangely dignified for a man neck deep in fluorescent aliens and other associated space and country music themed paraphernalia.

It was actually a pretty entertaining place, tackiness and captain Gruff aside. The on site restaurant appeared to be staffed by Gruff's brother and his wife, where we were presented with our choice of chinese and western menus! - the chinese menu presented fried rice, chinese noodles and your usual staples a la black bean sauce, and the western basically consisted of your standard steak and/or fish pub grub. The chinese selections were all a little bit occa for my tastes, but VG's roo steak was pretty good. All of this was in the delightful ambiance of the dining room, complete with plastic outdoor furniture, themed wall murals, and an old bloke sitting in the corner with a roland keyboard, playing his favorite songs until he stuffed them up, at which time he would promptly go back to the start and begin again. Interestingly, the chinese menu was handed to us, with the explanation 'there's a shitload of room out here in the outback, so why on earth shouldn't we let anyone in who wants to come? Why should people and their kiddies live in poverty when we have all this room for them and their food?' And with that, we realised that these guys were a little bit strange, but in a jovial and well meaning sort of way.

We have both kinds of food... Chinese AND Western!

Roo wrapped in bacon, covered with fried potato...and pineapple. Yum yum!

The lovely little man and his Roland.

This bloke clearly stocks his bar in a similar way to how you might do your non-essential weekly shopping... 'ooh! I like the look of that! Little red hen? Ooo!', so when I ordered the Estrella, he went into ridiculous detail about what international beers he's tried, and how many of each you can drink before you fall on your arse (the Little Red Hen came it at two, I'm told). Seeing we were the first people of the night who hadn't reacted poorly to his banter (ie, we didn't back away horrified nor punch him), he took this as licence to keep chatting. He told us a delightful story about how his young asian kitchen hand had been 'very admirable' (complete with dodgy and full blown occa caricature of a chinese accent) of his ability to lift weights, and wanted to be shown how he could do the same. One thing led to another, and the barman ended up being held down on the kitchen floor, with quite the quantity of frozen broccoli stuffed down his jocks. Now if this were you and I, I'd reckon we're be pretty fucked off by such an affair, but not this guy - when he got around to fishing out the vegetables, he noticed the vegetables had thawed out, and became rather impressed as his genitals' ability to thaw, and indeed cook food. He promptly offered to reheat a couple of dim sims for us while we perused the menu - and don't worry, we needn't bother with soy sauce... after all, he hadn't washed in a couple of days.

Mr Dim Sim himself!

From here, we were off into the Top End, which I'm told is anything in the Territory further north of a joint called Renner Springs. This place, like about 80% of the 'towns', 'locations' and anything else with signage we passed until Darwin, was actually nothing but a roadhouse., a dog, and perhaps even a chicken. We only stopped at a couple of these on our trip, usually for fuel or water, but I have to say that they're absolute little gems of places! Before heading off, I was preparing myself for a journey of pretty sketchy food until darwin - dodgy pub fare... you know, cheap steaks, more cheap steaks, sausages, and probably something involving bacon. Figuring this, I prepared myself for the best of these offerings I could stomach... in fact, I was quite relishing the opportunity to compare and rank the ever crappy - but always interesting - pub prepared spag bols... but the closest I came to such a meal the entire trip was a place doing nachos with bolognaise sauce slopped over the top... accompanied by fishbowl margaritas.

Does drinking with snacks get any better than this? I think not.

The reality was surprisingly different - the food pretty much everywhere, from fine dining setups in the middle of lush wetlands to the sketchiest of motel restaurants in the middle of the desert were all serving the same thing - huge lumps of barra, huge fillets of roo, and something salady with a good dose of croc in it. There were usually decent looking scotch fillet steaks for you to fall back on if you weren't all that keen on indigenous animal for dinner. But the roadhouses, oh, the roadhouses! They pulled us straight out of this world of kitsch dining dressed up as progressive cuisine and straight back into the good ol' days of microwaved from frozen meat pies, and, on one occassion I was delighted to note, rissole and sauce sandwiches, refrigerated for your convenience! They of course all offer the full complement of flavoured milk varieties to go with your meal selection.

The stretch from Wycliffe Well to Katherine was a rather enjoyable one, complete with a trip to the Devils Marbles, the Daly Waters Pub, and the most amusing 'tea house' I think I will see in my entire life. The stop at Daly Waters was a given, as I tend to think if you're going to go driving up the middle of the country, you should make sure you visit at least one divey little pub complete with underwear stapled to every surface. The Daly Waters Pub definitely ticked off that checkbox. The real surprise though was Frans Teahouse, about twenty minutes or so up the highway from Daly Waters. This was an exciting moment for a number of reasons - for starters, seeing two things which aren't rocks or campervans in the space of twenty minutes is a bit of a rarity on this road, and secondly, actually bothering to stop at two such places on the tail end of a multi-day driving session seemed even more amazing - but it was definitely worth it.

The Daly Waters pub. I still can't decide if the building is sinking into the
ground, or if I just took a terrible photo...

VG attempting to 'wizard' the Devils Marbles, perhaps?

Frans Teahouse is not exactly what I was expecting. For an hour or so, we'd seen roadside signs advertising the place, dinky little things with "Frans!" in a faded cursive script tacked to the odd fencepost. The Lonely Planet guide for the NT described it as a delightful teahouse right on the highway, specialising in fantastic home made pies and scones. Again, what it turned out to be in reality was a little different. We eventually located Frans after some confusion, and parked out the front, next to one of many handwritten signs filled with many misspelled and wholly capitalised words, all underlined. None of them seemed to make much sense, now I think about it. So we ventured in to find a strange little setup of basically a caravan type annex, surrounded in plastic outdoor settings. And more handwritten signs. At this point, there was no real sign of life, so VG ventured forth and rang a bell with another sign attached to it indicating something along the lines of Fran might be asleep, but you should ring the bell, because Fran really won't mind. After a few bell rings, and a yoo-hoo or two, Fran had not appeared, but we could hear Fran hard at work washing dishes inside. VG stepped into the first of the annex rooms and yoo-hooed a little more enthusiastically, to have Fran come out and use some kind of crib to ensure VG stayed well outside of the little annex, where she was apparently not to be allowed.

Some confused garbling later, Fran was off to the kitchen to make some scones, damper and coffee for us, pretty much refusing to allow us to order anything else. Bemusedly, I sat down at a table (as ordered), and started flicking through a laminated notebook, figuring it was a guestbook of some description, as some sign or another had promised. What I actually had my hands on, it turned out, was a convenient and thorough guide on how to properly butcher your camel, should you have one. Each cut of camel meat (including tail - you should discard the last third or so of it by the way) was carefully detailed and depicted in both diagram and photography. Now I have to say I was delighted by this, but VG not so much. Our scones, damper and coffee arrived, and we tucked in - the food was every bit as good as promised, and there were no bits of camel to be found, which I suppose is a good thing to achieve in the food service of scones. Not long after, some more tourists arrived and were duly instructed by Fran to sit down and talk to us while she made them an unrequested coffee. We were sure to recommend the scones to them, as if they had any more choice in the matter than we did.

Visitors book? IT'S A TRAP! A CAMEL TRAP!

We later arrived in Katherine, where we would stay for a day and check out the spectacular gorge, and then, we would soon say goodbye to our friend the Stuart Highway and head off into the wonders of Kakadu before winding up in Darwin. Which I'm sure you'll hear all about in part three...

Katherine Gorge looking pretty. And big.

Sincerely,
The Rantolotl.

And now, a little side note on part one and part two that just didn't seem appropriate for the 'offical' parts;

There's a hell of a lot to be said about the racial tensions that exist pretty much as a way of life right through the territory. For some reason, I'd always placed towns like Alice Springs an Katherine, and even Tennant Creek somewhere along the lines of your standard regional town, just a but dustier. And this is kind of true - but what you don't see in places like Wangaratta, Geelong and Albury is such a clear cut racial segregation of a town, with each side of the colour barrier kind of getting by, pretending the other doesn't exist. In Alice, the shops were entirely staffed by europeans, and the sharp objects and toilets unavailable because they had to coexist with the local indigenous groups. The streets were filled with the black, the buildings were filled with the white. And that extends beyond just the shops and the schools - in Wangaratta, if you were on the dole and had to resort to state housing, you'd get just that - a house. In Alice, and indeed most of the Territory from what I can see, if you're black and in that situation, you end up in a 'camp'... a 'community' set up by the government, well away from town, with the most basic of accommodation and amenities. So basic, that when they built these fibro shacks in the 70's, they didn't even bother to put in basic plumbing - but that's what Today Tonight's next expose on those naughty aborigines won't tell you.

This blog isn't really the time or place to get into the nitty gritty details of how fucked this country is, particularly in relation to our treatment of the indigenous, but I really do need to mention some of this stuff as a bit of a sidenote if nothing else, because it was such a mentally domineering aspect of our trip, and it does certainly leave me wondering about how a country can allow - and I mean allow, because we were only two of the thousands of Australians that saw the red centre these school holidays, and saw this settled but unwilling segregation - an entire race, indeed the traditional owners of this land, to live in conditions that I would relate to a refugee camp in Palestine, in apartheid, right under our noses? We then have the gall to measure these massively displaced people against our own institutions of schooling, of welfare, of healthcare, by the standards we would apply to it, having grown up in nice suburban homes with an education and a future. And tell me, how exactly do indigenous get work in the Territory in any position other than 'indigenous tour guide', when every person in a uniform, in every shop, or information point was white as day? For fucks sake, it's one thing in Melbourne, when the indig population is virtually nil, but in the territory, where it's above 27%, how, just how can you turn a blind eye to all this?

/rant

Rocks of the north, part one (better title pending)

2008-07-10T19:19:00.008+10:00

Welcome to part one of the several part series also know as 'my holiday'. VG and I headed off on a little adventure, flying from Melbourne to Alice Springs, where we'd pick up a rental car and head to Yulara, to check out the sights and then back to the highway where we'd travel to Darwin by way of Kakadu. We learnt several things on the way... including why not to pack your bags (ie, drunk the night before your early morning departure) - while the three tshirts I packed myself were quite comfortable, the slogans 'Justice for Jack Thomas - he's not a terrorist, he's just a naughty boy', 'APEC - Armed Police on Every Corner...NO POLICE STATE', and 'FREE PALESTINE! VICTORY TO THE INTIFADA!' didn't really seem all that territory appropriate, particularly given the sizable population of military and police who can be found withing spitting distance, even when in the middle of a seemingly empty desert. Anyhow - enjoy. More to come in a day or so!

This needs no caption, so you should probably ignore this text.

This is alright for a budget airline, I thought to myself as we boarded the dinky little plane tucked away out the back of Tullamarine. Three hours of having the seat in front of me repeatedly rammed into my knees, I thought a little wiser of my previous sentiment. Don't get me wrong - Tiger are decent for a budget airline... their staff seem to know what they're doing, their planes seem to leave and indeed even arrive on time, and they don't put on the sickening 'we're so friendly' song and dance that leaves you retching in your Sky Soup that Virgin & Jetstar have seemed to have so well developed. But they do have very snugly packed seats, that are far from ideal for anyone who isn't a midget (VG of course had no trouble here).

Air travel aside, we were now on the road and heading towards Yulara, fresh from our journey to Alice Springs. As we drove, we gazed and noted the crazy as all batshit architecture (from mars of course), the vegetation or lack thereof, and the fucking insane wildlife which seemed to insist on repeatedly battling our car. The rather large hire car insurance premium flashed before my eyes at one financially scary point, as a kangaroo bounded off the red dust, and straight in front of the car. Narrowly missing us, I relaxed a little and pointed out the local wildlife to VG who'd been hankering for some Australiana action. Much to my own alarm, the only response I could have when she asked "Oh! Where?!" was "OH FUCK - CHRIST! RIGHT FUCKING NEXT TO ME". Now I know I slowed a little when the little fucker jumped in front of the car the first time around, but I have to say I was more than a touch surprised to find the little shit not on the other side of the road hopping off into the spinifex as I'd expected, but instead keeping pace with the car and hopping next to fucking window, only very slowly losing ground. I slowed again, and the bastard tried to dart into the side of us, and this time, very narrowly missed running straight into the back of the car. We continued down the road keeping a very sharp lookout for further kamikaze roos, and successfully avoided any further nasty wildlife encounters, bar a dingo going a little zig-zaggy whilst chasing a rabbit.

We arrived in the town of Yulara, and by 'town', I mean resort complex owned in entirety by a cunt of a company called Voyages. Now the best way to introduce you to Voyages, I suspect, is by telling you all about an award winning dinner they run out of the Ayers Rock Resort, called The Sounds of Silence. Upon much brochure reading, website reviewing, and of course, Lonely Planet consulting, the general opinion of Sounds of Silence was that it was a pretty good night out. We booked it in a flash, treating ourselves out to a ridiculously expensive night out in the safe knowledge that it would be a once in a lifetime dining experience... Five star dining in the desert - in fact, in the very shadow of The Rock itself. A romantic dinner for two, if you like, in the vast and private expanse of the desert, in the capable hands of expert restaurateurs. What we got however, was this:

Spacious and comfortable viewing platform

Salubrious dining environment

It seems the description was a little stretched from the truth. When we hopped of the bus, we were presented with the ominous view of a small sectioned off area of desert, complete with ten or so round, 10-seater tables, jammed in next to each other. Then we were lead off to an equally small area of fenced off desert, where we were to stand for the next hour or so, watching the sun set. The view of the rock was lovely - the service was embarrassingly inadequate though, with very mediocre champagne on offer, a choice of crownies or crownies in the beer case, and the promise of canapes fulfilled with a single offering during the entire hour, after which, the tasty little snacks were no longer to be seen. This was a pretty far cry from vast expanses of desert with private dining tables in the sunset that all the pictures had presented us with. In fact, it was safe to say that the only view available in the 'dining area' (after fighting over tables of course) was of the toilets and the bain maries; which we were later to queue up at and serve ourselves our dinner out of. It was the point that I sipped at my shithouse champagne, observing the far from described 'award winning' environment around me that I decided that the only award these dickheads were going to win was the rantolotl 'shittiest and most overpriced tourist trap venture' award. I then decided to award myself for an equally ambitions award, the five champagnes in five minutes trophy.

Well into the crappy white wine award

I shall treasure it forever. The $150 a head price tag was almost worth it, when you considered the salubrious company we got to share our table with. Pig Man, as I like to call him, invited us to sit at his table, as we scrabbled around for spare seats among the larger groups. And indeed, when he called it his table, he meant it - him and his 6 guests were part owners in the Voyages venture. Like all very little fish swimming in even smaller ponds, this group thought they were the shit. Now there's no real way to really recreate the experience that was pigman & co, but it's safe to say that they gave us the shits, and we gave them the shits, more or less in equal parts. This was the fate we were more or less resigned to when, upon being politely asked where we came from, and somehow, mistakenly answering Melbourne, we copped the biggest ribbing this side of Durex. When the other couple at the table, a lovely Italian couple residing in Perth, pointed out that they rather liked Melbourne, because unlike the rest of the country it actually felt like a city, Pig Man pulled out the big guns.

"Oh yeah? Well. You know why parliaments' in Canberra, don't you? Because we gave Melbourne their chance at it, and they were shit. So then they had to decide between Sydney & Brisbane, so they compromised and put it in Canberra"

Now onto glass six or seven, I couldn't help but retort.

"Brisbane? Are you fucking kidding me? Queensland barely federated with the rest of the country let alone had a shot at hosting Parliament"

"Oh yeah? Well let me tell you about my grandad, Matthew Flinders!"

"What the fuck? WHAT DO BOATS HAVE TO DO WITH PARLIAMENT?!"

And with Pig Faces' ladyfolk looking totally confused and a little bit embarrassed at this point, I thought I'd won. But then VG chipped in...

"Ha! You don't know who you're messing with, do you?"

Just as I thought to myself, no dear... who is he messing with? Do tell! Pig Man of course echoed my own thoughts, but surprisingly with a little fear in his voice...

"Oh... who am I messing with then?"

"Well!" VG started, soon realising her own error.
"Well... Michelle here... She reads a lot of books, you know!"

Oh! Books! Shit - run for the hills! And with that, our vantage was lost, and all we could resort to for the rest of the evening was drink more and become increasingly belligerent. I can safely report that we did this well.

Foreground of Kata Tjutu

The deplorable role of Ayers Rock Resort and all other associated Voyages ventures aside, Uluru (Ayers Rock) & Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) were absolutely fantastic. The landscape is insanely different from anything I've ever experienced, and the landmarks are just stunning. The Olgas in particular, perhaps helped by the underhype of them, are fascinating.... larger than Uluru in size, and hiding the most amazing chasms, gorges and other little secrets among them, they are a lovely way to spend an afternoon. The great shame of it all is that the only way to experience these areas is by dealing with Voyages - who I find not only generally incompetent at what they do, but downright exploitative. But I'm sure I'll fill you in more of that later. Now, I need to plot the downfall of Pigman....

A quick inventory...

2008-06-19T10:49:00.002+10:00

Whilst at work today, I made the tragic mistake of actually attempting to do a task that had been sitting in the too-hard basket for quite some time now, such was my boredom. Bored at work?!, you query! Yes, indeed, bored at work. My days are generally whiled away in a strange and depressing combination of investigating mundane tasks, ignoring mundane tasks, and searching through mundane youtube clips until I find one that hits paydirt.

But back to today.

Whilst begrudgingly yet voluntarily completing the long forgotten task, I kept getting all distracted. Sometimes for legitimate, work related reasons, but more often than not for silly mundane things, like... the immediate need to check if my shoelaces are of even length. Or to play with the blinds a bit. Maybe go for a little stroll and see what treasures the stationary cupboards hold this week. So it'll come as absolutely no surprise to you that part way through this task, when I needed to refer to the current formatting rules of the data I was playing with, and I couldn't locate the stickynote which held this information on it (yes, I file everything important on stickynotes - I really do), I decided that it was an excellent time to do an inventory of my desk.

Which is as follows:
10 stickynotes on monitor (one displaying a blueprint for a dalek cake made of lamingtons - that one's my favorite).
9 stickynotes on pc unit.
untold number on and around desk (over 20).
8 caseless CD's, scattered.
2 water glasses, one half full (both smell of windex, but the water tastes fine).
5 coffee mugs, some containing liquids/solids.
1 water jug.
1 lockable cashbox.
1 baseball hat.
1 fluorescent vest.
3 teaspoons.
1 fork.
5 packs of gum.
3 assorted stamps.
rather a lot of empty cd cases.
2 magazines.
a book.
a number of brochures and business cards.
change of name documentation, completed.
lots of more work related documentation (scattered, of course).
1 phone.
6 highlighters.
far too many pens and other assorted stationary.
1 bottle of cough syrup.
1 toy gun which fires little discy thingoes.
4 mints, unwrapped and scattered (xXx mints I think?).

And I for one think that's a pretty impressive collection for just one workdesk. So important, I had to document it right here for your very eyes!

Come back next week when I document the content of my office drawers! It'll be fantastic! Stickynotes! Oh! More stickynotes! On a slightly more serious note though, I do apologise for my tardiness - I've been a little preoccupied with scheming for another little non-work project, one I will be delighted to share with you shortly. In the meantime though, I'm heading off for a holiday, where I will be preparing a very special rantolotl travels journal for you all to enjoy upon my return.

As always, feel free to of course document your own desk collection!

See you in July!
Oh, and enjoy!

om nom nom nom

2008-06-04T10:54:00.002+10:00

The diary of ten stolen glasses, as recalled from the Good Food & Wine Show 2008. Consider this a review of the event, if you will. In fact, I’ll cut to the chase right now and award it 9/10.

It was glasses nine and ten that really turned heads, though it’s fairly safe to say that number seven was our prize capture. One and two, I don’t even remember, but I do recall that by number four we were gaining some attention, our bags clinking with enthusiasm every second syllable as our arms gesticulated wildly in explanation of just how we planned to assault our housemates with empty Crownie bottles.

Number three was about the time we decided that no sentence couldn’t be vastly improved by appending the words ‘in my pants’. This rule was utilised heavily particularly between three and four, and then sporadically throughout the rest of the day. And night. Not only was it a lot of fun, but it turned out to be an excellent way to thin out the eavesdroppers from the crowd. It all started out relatively well executed, ie, “mmm, I’m really liking the 2001 shiraz, very plummy and it has an excellent aroma… in my pants”. By glasses seven to ten, it had all gone south. No longer were we just appending the words to our own sentences, but had decided in all our wisdom to also append them to other peoples’ speech, usually by yelling.

Not long after glass four VG vanished off to a wine seminar, leaving CouchBoy and I to our own devices for an hour or so. With our feet starting to ache from several hours of slow pacing between stalls and lots of general standing-abouty activities, it seemed to be just about the right time to sit down for a bit. Not wanting to slow down our rate of wine consumption, we headed for the Lindemans ‘Fine Dining Enclosure’. Upon arrival, we were turned away and somewhat confused by the notion of having to buy ‘food currency’ in order to acquire anything from said enclosure. After attempting to get to the stall selling this supposed ‘food currency’, the words ‘fuck’ and ‘it’ were uttered, a tad loudly, and we went back to the fine dining enclosure to explain our case to another person.

L: Hi, Welcome to the Lindemans Fine Dining centre. Have you purchased your meal currency?

Me: Yeah nah, we don’t have any tickets, but it’s okay, cause we don’t want to eat

L: Wh –

Me: Sorry, no, we’d just like to purchase a bottle of wine, if that’s alright. They do sell wine in there, yes?

L: Uh…

CB: As in, not just by the glass, but also by the bottle? Because we wouldn’t need this currency to do something like that, no? It’s just wine, not food.

And as those final words were muttered, the poor woman decided that we were far too much hassle to be bothered with, and waved us through. This was rather convenient, as we were already halfway past her anyhow.

Upon getting to the wine desk, we discovered an unhappy woman who seemed to be intent on selling us a bottle of mineral water, rather than the overpriced bottle of wine we were asking for. No, not mineral water, I stated for the second time, but wine. The ‘crisp dry white’, thankyou. Yes. WINE. From the WINE ENCLOSURE. Two glasses and the bottle were brusquely placed on the counter, and my change dispensed with a slamming motion on the counter. Feeling rather pleased with ourselves for performing this piece of deceptive wine purchasing, we went and found some seats. They were conveniently placed at the edge of the enclosure, allowing us to commentate on passers by and their conversations, attire, and general demeanour with relative impunity.

A bottle of wine and a good chat later, I loudly summarised the efforts of our hour long conversation in a single sentence; "Crownies... they're easy mac of beer!" CouchBoy shoved numbers five and six ineloquently into his handbag. And with that, we left the Fine Dining enclosure, only to be accosted (for the third time this day) by a madman wearing a Hawaiian shirt covered in chillies, capped in a sombrero which can only be described as insane.

Naturally, we were on our way back to the wine enclosure, and who’d have thought it, but in the space of the fifteen meters or so we needed to traverse, we encountered a stall selling chocolate flowers. Now ordinarily, I’d have thought something along the lines of ‘hah! Chocolate flowers! What a fucking rip!’, but in my slightly inebriated state, I found them fascinating. They had this amazing display of a Christmas tree made of chocolates. Noting our wonder, the sales women came and spoke to CouchBoy and myself.

Chocolate woman: Blah blah blah chocolate flowers blah

CB & I: Mhm… So, can we buy these today?

C: Er no, but you can go online and purchase them there if you like.

CB & I: Oh (frowny face)

C: But you get a discount if you use this card!

CB & I: Oh! (smiley face)

C: And you can even get same day delivery!

Me: Can you order Christmas trees?

C: …Yes.

Me: Even when it’s not Christmas?!

C: Yes!

CB & I: Wow!

C: Yes! And you can even get them in pink, and blue and silver!

CB & I: WOW! Thankyou!!

And off we went on our merry way.

Seven - the crowning glory of our collection - was obtained by blatant and unashamed deception of several people. It’s fair to say that by this number, we were fairly jolly. VG had returned from her seminar, somehow managing to track us down somewhere in the wine enclosure with less than helpful directions. Where are you? We’re drinking wine. Yes, but where? I’m not sure, but they have a very nice Petit Sirah. What’s the stall number? It was something 95, but we’re not there now. And then BAM! There she was! She’s clearly very clever, or at least quite excellent at finding and following the sounds of clinking classes, ‘MOTHERFUCKER!’ toasts, and the guffawed laced renditions of the words; ‘in my pants’.

Having found us, and us having purchased several bottles of wine in her absence, she ventured off again to find a shopping jeep in which to store our increasingly heavy goodies. At first this proposal incited argument.

VG: I’m getting a trolley.

Me: No!

VG: Why not?

Me: Because every cunt around here has one and they keep running my feet over. They’re fucking terrible things to have in a place like this. Look at all the room they take up! Cunts!

VG: Stop being silly, I’m getting a trolley.

CB: Yeah, we can get people back with them!

Me: YES! Like that one over there, and there, oh, and over there!

CB: YES!

And so our trek to glass number seven began in earnest, with CouchBoy and I taking turns to run people over along the way. While I opted for the ‘do-de-do-de-CRUNCH!-oh my goodness, I’m sorry’ approach, CouchBoy simply wheeled along at a great pace, slamming into people full pelt and wandering off without so much as an apologetic glance. The effect of this was no doubt enhanced by my trotting along behind him, giggling at each particularly severe collision.

It was by this particular method of transit we arrived at Michilini’s wines stand. There, CouchBoy loudly noted that the staff were being rude to VG, in fact - he declared - particularly so given the better job she was doing of selling the wine than they were. He wasn’t wrong, either. While the staff sat around throwing corks over the wall at the people in the booth next door, VG had to hustle to get her tastings, and did a far greater job of explaining the wine and indeed the winery to the punters than these guys did. We suspect they may have sampled a little too much of their own product, perhaps.

But, bitching aside, we decided to move on. Before we did so, I hastily grabbed VG’s temporarily abandoned tasting glass from the table, and went about stuffing it in CouchBoys’ handbag. Then I informed VG that she left her glass at the stall. She walked over, hoping to reclaim it, and they all quite rudely shrugged at her. Luckily, the appointed glass-police person had seen the whole thing at the exit gate about two meters behind us (they had glass police on every gate, employed to stop people leaving with glasses), and instead of wandering up and asking to take a look in our now rather loudly clinking bags, instead laughed and gave VG a stamp allowing her to go and fetch a new glass. Jackpot! It was at that point we decided to make her the honorary fourth member of our team.

Having worked this system out, CouchBoy went off to declare his glass missing to another glass-cop. He returned successfully with a stamp on hand and headed off to the nearest glass collection point. And with that, we had eight.

At this point, we decided to make our way home - after all, we had a party to get home to and organise. Leaving the wine enclosure with our treats and a slightly altered gait, we made our way to the venison stand to pick up some kabana, stopping only to allow CouchBoy to lean over a wall and pluck a couple of errant glasses from the Lindemans enclosure, with nothing more than a victorious HA! to the assembled crowd of Lindemans staff and elderly women now laughing in amazement. Out the door we went, clanking the whole way and feeling rather victorious. In fact, the only hitch in the whole escape was when VG & CouchBoy wandered off ahead and left me to drag the shopping jeep loaded to the gills with wine down a set of stairs. The cart of course toppled over, a couple of bottles of wine escaped, people gasped and came running to help and I waved them away and yelled such delightful phrases as “Oi! You ARSEHATS! GET BACK HERE!” & “ALL THIS WINE IS MINE NOW! MINNEEEEEE!” all the while laughing hysterically. It certainly succeeded in clearing the good samaritans away.

Catfight on the Jersey shore

2008-05-19T12:11:00.001+10:00

Hello good readers! What have you been up to lately? Myself, I've gone to a couple of gigs recently, the most notable of which being Against Me! at the Forum. While it was an enjoyable gig, it was certainly an unbelievable one in that the crowd that the latest album, New Wave, attracted was a little odd, to say the least. But, New Wave is a different line for such a band, and bogan rock will indeed attract bogans (and bevans too. Lets bring that word back!). Boys in footy jumpers, girls tarted up in heels... it just felt very wrong, and I couldn't help but feel just a little bit dirty at the whole ordeal. But anyway, that's not really what I wanted to write about today.

Once upon a time, I visited a quite little seaside town called Asbury Park. For the most part, it looked barren and abandoned. As we approached in the car, a large number of people congregated around this otherwise desolate looking waterfront building. It was chilly day, and lots of young kids (those are the ones who are far older than, say, toddlers. You know, 16-18 years old sort of range) stood hunkered against the building, with the remarkably cold and wintry sea breeze visibly whipping at their punk-logo'd shirts and mohawky hair. The collective effort of the wind and the venue security guaranteed to have them frozen to the bone and well seasoned with salt by the time they'd be let through to the warmth inside.

The admission price to get into this building was some insane amount from memory, like $80 or something (that figure could well be in US dollars, or aAUD transliteration at the time. Bear with me, it was awhile ago), and as a result, all the cold looking kids standing around the front were the type who were still in high school and successfully funding their teen angst and rebellion with mum & dads bank accounts. The rest of us older types justsnuck in around the back, ticket money safely spent on the many two litre bottles of wine smuggled in a nappy change bag.

This event of course, was the great Skate & Surf Festival of New Jersey.

Only one band was playing that day that I particularly cared to see, and after a few forays into the larger staged areas to watch a variety of local bands strutting their stuff, I decided it was high time for a drink. I headed back to the band-table-come-secret-headquarters, and poured myself and surrounding compatriots a sly one beneath the table. We regaled ourselves with stories, and whiled away the hours going here and there, to and fro, and some may even say back and forth. Mr K occupied himself with the task of making a fake wristband, the kind that would indicate that he was a paying customer. He cut a length of paper from a notebook, and found himself a red marker, and went about crudely marking the paper with vaguely appropriate symbols, then stapled the paper ends together around his wrist. Naturally, I mocked his attempts, pointing out he'd stand out far more than if he was wearing no 'wristband' at all. Turns out I was wrong.

Embarrassingly few minutes later, whilst attempting to re-enter the venue from a fenced off smoking area, clearly set up to be deemed as 'inside' the venue, a gentleman from security asked to see our wristbands. Mr K flashed his homemade portion of notebook at the clearly visually challenged man, and strode through. Myself, I went with the 'I think I shall ignore this foolish man' approach, which ended with a marginally ridiculous chase through a crowd of kids who had a whole lot moremohawk , and a lot less fedora than I. The thug caught be by the arm, giving me a rather good clip in the process, and attempted to escort me to a nearby security office whilst I abused him in a drunken Australian drawl. He clearly had little idea what I was attempting to communicate to him (other than indignant anger of course), and seemingly very little interest, either. Mr K darted past me, and no sooner was I about to startfocusing my abuse at his traitorous self did he return, complete with Jack Terricloth in tow. Jack appeared equally confused at the torrent of non-sensical abuse flowing from my lips, and wasted no further time on the matter, yanking me from the grip of the large and bald security thug. The thug gave chase for awhile, while Jack detailed to the man, now foaming at the mouth, of my involvement with the band, and how utterly appalled he was at the treatment of the very band members making the event which employed his good self possible. In mynewfound position as band member, I happily sneered at the angry man. We cut through the crowd and ran up a set of stairs, the thug scratched his head and looked a little perplexed, none the wiser as towhether this band was fictitious, let alone even playing this weekend.

Upstairs, I was led to a room. In this room were a number of people, an amazing amount of wine, a shower, and a lot of yelling. Soon, there were someeaster ornaments undergoing surgery with a pocketknife for the purposes of inserting larger style vanity mirror bulbs up their dates. Then there was an upturned table, wine everywhere, and a confiscated lighter. Jack, who seemed quite adept at vanishing from rooms and appearing with additional guests now appeared in the doorway, this time with Against Me! in tow. When presented with the sight of several er...modified rabbits, brokenlight bulbs, smashed bottles of wine, walls scrawled with indecipherable graffiti , and many people dancing/jumping/grinning inanely, they cautiously wandered in, stepping around the broken things, bearing a similar look of surprise as the previously mentioned security thug.

Time wound on, and as the band in questions' set was pushed further and further back, the green room gradually became more and more destroyed. But alas, the hour did indeed come when the band were due to play, and there on the sidelines and in the crowd, did the inhabitants of the green room congregate. The crowd was surprisingly large, and also surprisingly appreciative of the band whom they had not yet heard. So appreciative in fact, that when the next band on the playing list invaded the stage a mere two songs into the set, the crowd urged the band to play on. And that, they did. The amps were unplugged, and still Jack sang. The microphone was unplugged, and still Jack shouted. The microphone was thrown to the air, the stand laying violently dismantled in pieces on the stage. The guitarist played on, fending people off his amp with his fists, and soon the scuffles broke out in earnest. Rat ran interference, Against Me! jumped in, all guns blazing, band members from a number of seemingly uninvolved groups punching on and running away.

Melee on the stage, one faithful in the crowd tore over the barrier to assist. The crowd had been whipped into a minor frenzy by this point, doing their best to yell, scream, throw and dismantle the stage scaffolding & security barriers as best they could. Security flew wildly, grabbing the boy in a headlock and rather impolitely dragging him away, choking. I flailed at the bouncer, but to no avail. I shouted at him, as the boy started to turn crimson, but also to no avail. As a last option, I scrabbled over the people in the front to a prime location, and mustered all my effort into spitting at the bouncer. It succeeded in gaining his attention... the boy was let loose, he thanked me and ran on his way. I too ran, and frantically joined the crew in getting as much equipment off the stage and into the band-van as quickly as possible, while various band members hid. Themerch table was gathered and loaded into the van, the remaining hidden members reappeared and made a dash for it, and some foolish bouncer got his mitts on me long enough to hear exactly what an angry drunk Australian can really throw at one verbally. I was let go, he was told to fuck off, and Rat swept me out of there before any furtherstouches had the chance to break out. Hastily, we retreated to the car, and watched as the bands' van peeled out of the parking lot under a hail of bottles, mainly being tossed by the ever professional security staff. We left just in time to see an ambulance pull up, and drove back to NYC to the bands' local pub to celebrate. That was the last night I spent in NYC.

The moral of the story, and there is(n't) one, is while you can still count on a World/Inferno Friendship Society gig to turn into a tale that can stand the test of time, don't even bother with Against Me! anymore. They may still throw saving punches, but chances are one of their new stream ofbogan fans wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. You will receive nothing more than black eyes and bad memories.

Google my space & I'll come on your face book*

2008-05-06T15:06:00.002+10:00

God I hate children. It's not so much that I hate each and every one of them personally (though I often do), but it's more that I dislike the entire notion of them. They're small, they're breakable, and most of all, they're fucking creepy. I don't really understand why people willingly choose to have them.

Not so recently, I made myself an account on Facebook. Yes, yes, wah, social networking sites, etc - Trust me, I know the drill. But for my first three or so months on said site, my entire purpose for using it was to play Scrabble at work. You see, our organisation had blocked access to such frivolous sites such as Scrabulous, yet have left the door wide open on Facebook. At first, this was fine and dandy; kittens and rainbows even, if you will. Gradually, my circle of games expanded... I was playing Scrabble, Risk, something akin toStarCraft, and some retarded game called Pirates. Oh! And Warbook - that was a good'un . This was all well and good - I had a lot of spare time on my hands, and all these games require players to be able to procrastinate their real priorities at an advanced level.

But then came the whole 'social networking' side of Facebook. I thought I could avoid it. I still think I can avoid it - but what I can't avoid is the sheer amounts of disgust that this dark side provokes. People I didn't recognise started 'friending' me. It wasn't long before I worked out that I actually did know them - in the vaguest possible sense - from my first high school. Now - and this bit is important - my old high school and I have a bit of an understanding... I don't think about it, and it leaves me the fuck alone. I would like to think that this rule applied to every fucking person I met there, but it appears it hasn't. Particularly in the case of the Mormons.

But that's an interesting concept, isn't it? You, the devoted Lutheran send your children away to a Lutheran high school. You hardly expect them to come out the other end of the six years as a practising Mormon, do you? But, it happened. Christ knows how (pun totally intended), but it did. Maybe they gave up on trying to convert the unbelievers and decided to go straight to poaching. I quite like to think they sent some kind of stealth mass Mormon infiltration into other religions' educational territory. You know, with crack Mormon operatives - armed withcamouflage bicycles and bibles of pure titanium.

But anyway, it seems the Mormons have found facebook. Seriously, go check it out - they've all jumped on there and have organised into their little cells. They're mobilising amongst pretty much every fucking person they've ever met from about kindergarten onwards, including the whole fuckingyearlevel of the-school-that-I'd-best-not-mention. At first, it seems nice and innocent, but then you find yourself knee deep in terrible memories and images of what your once-peers have become... which in itself is a terribly terribly depressing sight, and a bloody addictive one at that. Morbid curiosity takes you from one oldschoolies ' profile page to another in a desperate search for someone who has an even vaguely interesting life these days, and in this case, you're pretty unlikely to come up with any results.

The plus side of all this is that having completed a bit of cyber-voyeurism into their lives, I'm fairly certain I'm unlikely to cross paths with any of this mob any time soon. In fact, I'd go so far to say that even if any of us were to bump into each other, both parties would be prepared to look the other way for a few seconds while our respective realities recomposed themselves. After all, pretty much all of these people can be neatly divided into two separate camps - the mass-baby producing suburban/hotshotbogan families, or the psychotically insane conservative Liberal supporting queers. I don't even know how the latter group can survive without incorporating significant amounts of self harm into their daily routine, yet against the odds, they seem to.

It's the baby producing ones which fucking amaze me. Sure, I'm still at an age and mentality that a little part of me quietly screams away in abject horror - okay, sometimes also audibly - when I hear of people I once set fire to things with/drank with/sneered at across a classroom (cross out as appropriate) having children. And I suppose to be fair, none of these people were ever interesting enough to vandalise things with, but still. The women seem to have dedicated their post-high school lives to reproducing as quickly as humanly possible - and when I say post high school, I mean only fucking just... a ridiculously expensive private school education** has not been completed with a view of going to uni and maybe learning something about the world as the rest of us know it (ie, outside of the council they were born, raised, educated and will probably die in), but instead has been applied to pursuit of stupid and pretentious jock boyfriends/future husbands. Particularly it seems, the kind you knew werefuckwits since year eight because, say, your darling David there publicly cheated on you for not fucking him, his footy team, and their girlfriends on his fifteenth birthday. For example. But it's alright now, he's older and more mature.

That must be one fucking life of bliss, mustn't it? Pop out sprogs, play your fill of bejeweled, make dinner, and otherwise be all Kath & Kim, put up with your fuckwit solicitor and footy bogan husband and his mates, and wonder which receptionist he's screwing in the office this week while you clean baby shit out whatever it is that babies shit on... again. While I can't even begin to fathom this mentality - of both the men and women involved - I can't help but feel ultimately relieved that these absolute fucking fools of people are all paired up together and more or less confined to whatever pleasant leafy suburb they've decided is a nice place to raise their oh-so-entitledhellspawn.

God, just typing this is making me want to vomit. And then, preferably, track down that stupid Mormon who started all this and punch in him square in his stupid smug looking dial. That said, I'd like to partially redeem old-highschool discoveries on Facebook by pointing out that connections from my other, less cunt filled high school, have been an absolute delight to catch up with. Particularly the ones that are now reading this blog. I always liked you the best. It's true. You should buy me an ice cream to thank me. No, don't think about that comment, just go and buy the ice cream.

Someday, I'll tell you more about the adventures of shitsville highschool. But not now. I have ice cream to eat. Please feel free to share your facebook reunion horror stories in le comments.

Sincerely,
The Rantolotl.

* courtesy of a sticker in a bathroom stall, for the young writers festival 2007. Appropriately, there's a facebook group for it.

** I had a scholarship to this school, so I feel a little more justified in pissing this portion of my lifes education against a wall. Plus I think I at least came out of it with some useful knowledge, even if that knowledge manifests itself as a general hatred of rich suburban wankers. No, fuck it. That's a really good attitude to have. More of it!

Today I listen to World/Inferno.

2008-04-15T15:37:00.005+10:00

This coming weekend marks the delightful enterprise known as the 2020 summit. Now, now, before you start to scoff, might I remind you that – and this is according to the 2020 website – “The Rudd Government believes Australians, whatever their political views, can come together to build a modern Australia capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century.”

That’s right. We’ll all hold hands and clap and sing campfire songs, while we toast in the new millennium (only eight years too late), and most importantly, discuss Australia’s so-bright-I’ve-gotta-wear-shades future. But in throwing together this summit, the Rudd government seems to have already run into their fair share of ‘21^st Century challenges’… such as understanding digital media (or new media if you prefer) in the Naughties*.

But I’m certainly not the first person to make this observation, in fact, Marcus Westbury has made a wonderful attempt at just that yesterday in The Age. I know I've been less than pleasant to Marcus before on Rantolotl, and unfortunately, I find myself in a similar position today. And just like last time, it's not because of what he's done, but far more to do with where he is.

It's not his fault he finds himself as the posterboy for new media in Australia, and I don't really suggest that it is. After all, he is but one man, perhaps aspiring to be to new media what John Safran is to indy film (and perhaps nonsense in general). But this is all totally beside the point, and more or less without meaning to those who haven't yet read The Age article in question, let alone kept up to date with the shambles that is the 2020 summit.

To cut a long story short Marcus is heading to the summit. What he has done with this invite is point out the ridiculousness of the situation, ie, that there is no delegate so far who has any significant experience in the games industry. He has now offered up his blog to comments from industry types, which he will attempt to convey at the summit, if possible.

And to be completely honest, I praise this. But what I really can't praise, is firstly his decision to actually go (but that's just the Trot in me), and the bizarre series of decisions that must have been made to reach the point where Not Quite Arts' darling is having to place callouts on a blog to garner opinion on a growing industry which has been systematically spat on by the Australian government for a number of decades now.

I'd like to say that if I suddenly found myself to be the government appointed voice of all that is important in something I had a dedicated interest to, but not professional opinion on... say, Bill Bryson books, I would be outraged**. Not only because that would be a downright fucking stupid thing to appoint someone to a summit - though it has to be said it would be likely to be just as relevant as a great deal of the topics that will be discussed - but also because I think I'd be personally offended that I was considered boring and introspectively wanky enough to even be considered in the first place. But probably not so offended that I wouldn't attend just to abuse the free drinks (and Marcus - if you're reading this, and I suspect you are, if I hear you don't take advantage of the bar, the finger food, and everything else this summit has to offer, I will be very upset indeed).

It's not to say that I think the callout to the blog was wrong. I don't. And as much as I think people shouldn't attend or pander to this ridiculous summit, I don't even particularly begrudge his participation. For a long time, the new-arts community (for lack of a better term) and the games industry have somewhat butted up against each other - for funding, for space, for recognition - you name it. There have been many attempts for the fringes of the arts community to engage with the fringes of the independent games community, and this has been great. But the games community needs to take on its own structures, both physical in the form of the Games Lab at ACMI, and as a state of mind - otherwise independent developers, supporters, and even industry lobbyists (say, for the R18 rating) are always going to find that their interests are compromised by the decisions of the arts crowd that in part tolerates them. It's happened before, and it'll happen again.

I dare say it's a ridiculously difficult position to find yourself in, trying to straddle the many forms of new-art and so on, particularly in a city like Melbourne. But unlike the other emerging media now being considered art in some way, like graffiti & stencilling, the indy games movement is a fledgling. It doesn't quite fit in the art box yet, and I'm not convinced that many of the people involved in this area see it doing so any time soon either. It does need fostering in many ways, but I'm also not convinced that the new-arts community is the bunch to do it. Maybe it's just me, but it really fucking rubs me the wrong way to see the gaming community kind of stapled to the coat-tails of the very communities that directly benefit from the lack of arts & industry development funding towards games & their developers.

But enough of that. Back to the burning issue at hand, the 2020 summit.I might just have it all wrong. After all, I've been a bit precious about this whole 2020 thing ever since Cate Blanchett was announced to be the only female in the leadership group. And what a female, too. I mean, not to disparage her or anything, but fucking seriously - this summit supposedly represents the 'best and brightest' of Australians; scientists, engineers, doctors, researchers, academics, industry leaders... and the only woman they could find to embody any of these highly sought after values was... an actor. Clearly, they expect her to rock up and play the roles of a trail-blazing Victorian-era doctor. Maybe she could play the much lauded statesman Winston Churchill? Regardless of which role(s) she may be asked to play, the impertinent question remains... does she have to wear some kind of strap-on? If so, will they also draw a little moustache above her lip and arm her with a pipe and a Playboy, just so everyone's sure? Oh! And a can of bundy & coke!

But yes, I for one look forward to seeing this sinkhole of smug come and go. And maybe I have Marcus all wrong on this. Maybe he's trailblazing the 'youth agenda' of videogames, web2.0 & all those other newfangled contraptions to a pack of stale old middle aged white men with a vengeance. Maybe they'll have to introduce a R18-rating system to just shield the collected audience from the very words that spew forth from his mouth of fury, as he tears their pathetic moralistic arguments limb from limb, syllable from syllable, whilst scooping up all the cocktail spring rolls his artfully-blessed hat can hold. But I doubt it. People aren't invited to this summit to behave as activists, catalysts or even banner bearers for their interests and areas of expertise, they're invited to sit around, look pretty and be able to formulate snappy to-camera quips for the event & the future and the general good of the nation. They're every bit as superfluous as Cate Blanchett is.

Anyway, Marcus, I do wish you luck in raising these issues, but I'm very interested to hear from you what you expect to get out of this summit. I'll certainly be keeping my eyes on your blog to see what your post-summit thoughts on the matter are.

Cheers, and we must all have that beer soon (each and every last one of you).

The Rantolotl.

*I'm very sorry. That's the first time I've used that word, and trust me, it's been eight years of mulling it over in the making. I feel dirty.

** I am indeed outraged now, as I type. And part of this is the hypocrisy of my own position. I don't work in the games industry, and I have no claim to connection to it, but what I do see around me is a great deal of friends who do, and who suffer from the ignorance of a whole range of different characters to the Australian games industry, not least of all the Australian Government in its various bodies. I dare say Marcus finds himself in a similar position.

Shut up Scott, you're not even really here.

2008-03-31T10:30:00.007+11:00

With every trip to Queensland, I believe I gain further insight into the minds and the habits of your average backwater suburban redneck arsehat. Such as those who live in the thriving township of Caboolture.

Don't get me wrong - there are good things, lovely things even, to be found in Queensland. But I'm fairly sure you'll find none of said positives in the drained inland swamp lying between Brisbane & the Sunshine Coast. What you will find however, is an interesting approach to salad.

Given this appears to be the realm of the burnt bbq'd steak & the cheap and nasty safeway sausage, it should come as no surprise that the region may have a slightly flawed approach to those green edible things called salad leaves. But I assure you, these people love their salads. In fact, there seem to be three common kinds of salad available in the culinary hub of Caboolture, and interestingly, all three appear to have one thing in particular in common. Mayonnaise.

Now I like a good potato salad as much as the next person, it's true, but I also recognise the virtues of the common garden salad, as well as the marginally more exotic and always delicious chicken caesar. But true to their vision of a state lacking in greens, or indeed any realistic application of the theory of 'nutrition', these people live by the three staples; potato salad, pasta salad & coleslaw, thrusting them at you frequently in bucket sized (and sometimes even shaped) quantities all the while treating them as some kind of health food, and not like the fat & sugar laden carb-fest they really are. Completely barren of vegetables that aren't potato, if you didn't manage to stick with me there.

This really only reaffirms their position as the heart attack state... a title that runs somewhat cruelly hand in hand with their other glorious title, 'the state with fucking shithouse healthcare'. But I think the thing that disappointed me most about the salad situation, was that despite being quite clearly fond of mayonnaise, they didn't take that to the next logical step and introduce natures' finest mayonnaised salad - the good ol' waldorf. I suppose it's quite possible they tried, but just couldn't work out how to farm all those waldorfs. They tried and they tried to mate them with the pineapple crops. While it didn't succeed in establishing modern day tropical waldorf farming, it did produce the unexpected, and not entirely unpleasant byproduct, the Bourbon Pineapple Flambe Sundae (best served with mayonnaise, of course).

Hellooooo sailor!

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that this state plays fast and loose with its nutritional health. After all, the life threatening effects of a life fuelled by pies, charred meat & potatoes in mayonnaise will probably only kick in after 40 odd years. And that would mean that you'd managed to actually survive 40 such years on Queensland roads. It appears that they believe in traffic lights just about as much as they believe in the existence of brussells sprouts. Instead, they run with the novel idea of plonking roundabouts at seemingly random intervals. Ideal solution for quiet suburban street perhaps, but I refuse to believe that this is an adequate 21st century solution to entry and exit traffic on a 4 four lane major freeway, albeit one connecting cities, airports and major tourist attractions.

I have to say, I've often wondered why drivers tend to not make any attempt to giving way to people entering freeways in the sunshine state, but I suppose if I was stuck on the giant hamster wheel that is the south east Queensland transport network on a daily basis, then I'd be rigging up the good ol' bonnet-mounted shotgun too.

But for now, I leave you. A lengthy, and at time of writing, 100% unwritten essay awaits my further procrastination. Here, keep yourself busy with the following Queensland inspired morsel;

The Vegetable Rights Militant Movement

Toorah!
The Rantolotl.

The stars are projectiles...

2008-03-21T17:34:00.003+11:00

You know, I was browsing through the rantolotl archives today, trying to work out what I may have said about easter this time last year. Sometimes I feel it's important I do this, so my general rants don't contradict each other too much, or at least not too often.

Luckily, I was safe. It appears that the only thing I had to say about Easter last year, was regarding the importance of sticking things in a blender. And while that's not quite where I was intending on heading this time round, it's certainly an excellent, if not timely reminder.

This easter, I've been less concerned about giant food and blended ice treats, and more so over bloody easter products. Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of foil wrapped chocolate bunnies and other such delicious seasonal treats - but jesus, the chocolate companies are getting bloody lazy these days. I guess it's fairly safe to say they always have been, but maybe they bank on children being far easier distracted with colourful bits of foil & sugar highs than with the intricacies of the product they have just consumed whole, wrapping included.

I got all excited about a week ago when wandering around the supermarket, I happened across one of those egg-carton style easter packs, proclaiming that the eggs inside were indeed Malteser eggs. I thought this was most exciting! The eggs looked quite a good size; not too big, not too small... in fact, just the right size to secret a snack-sized handful of maltesers in the middle. Images of the perfect easter egg containing bite size treats swam around my head - excitedly, I leaped at the carton, lifted it to my ear, and gave it a good shake. My face which until that point had to have been struck with a look of pure, joyous amazement suddenly collapsed into an angry and confused frown. There was no rattle from the carton, as you would expect from chocolate containing little bits of chocolate, but instead an unsettling silence. I suspiciously checked the packaging on the eggs, only to find by 'malteser eggs', they actually meant yet another fucking crunchie egg. Not a malteser in sight, but instead bits of fucking honeycomb interspersed in the shell of the egg. Now that's fine if that's your thing, but it's certainly not a fucking malteser egg, and you would be a lying fucking scoundrel if you attempted to claim otherwise.

Then there's the gift packs. You can buy the Mars bar egg 'casket', and for some fucking ridiculous reason, they'll give you an egg, and two mars bars. What the hell is special about that? Why are you paying $12 for a fucking $1.50 egg and two pint-sized mars bars?! Surely the packaging is not that special? Christ - talk about bloody unimaginative - put something worthwhile in there. Like a hot cross bun. Or a rabbit.

For years, all I've wanted in an easter egg is to be able to crack the edible-enough-yet-a-bit-shit shell, and find awesome little tasty treats inside. Like gummy bears, maltesers, marella jubes, or hell, even those awesome little hens eggs with the uber-crunchy shell (now they are excellent). I reckon you could even have an adult range too - forget those nasty little chocolate liqueur bottles - bring out the real deal. Minibar sized alcoholic treats for all! How fucking excellent would that be? Nibble open your egg to find a spliff and a shot of scotch inside. Now that's how easter should be.

Instead, we have months of crappy advertising and crappy products saturating our supermarket shelves. All stuff that gets your hopes up, but just doesn't deliver. Then there's Easter Friday and Sunday - we get given this great long weekend opportunity, which frankly, gets a little ruined when you wake up on Friday morning really, and I mean really needing some berocca, or maybe a lucozade - but every fucking shop is shut. Here I am today needing to complete my easter shopping, and I can't buy an egg for love nor money. At least not from a reputable retailer - I suppose I might be able to find some homeless guy selling them in a darkened alleyway somewhere, but I'm not sure I want to tread down that path just yet.

But the really grating thing, is that last night when I was wandering around the city looking for said gifts, I saw the queues and the stacks of half-mauled merchandise and the fiery eyes of every pissed off office worker in the city, and I thought to myself; 'now I know nothing will be open tomorrow - but you know what? I'm not dealing with these lines right now. They can go joust'. And I was right. Everything is closed today, I'm still annoyed about it, and you know what? I have every right to be. 365 days a year, give or take, we have our shops available to us in some form. Anzac day, they're open from two in the arvo. Christmas? There's even a few open then. Queens birthday? Labor day? Everything's open! So what the hell is with Good Friday? What makes it the supreme motherfucker of public holidays? Surely the celebration of christs' birth would be a little more important than when the dickhead managed to get himself nailed to a plank of wood? Why would you even celebrate that, let alone with buns filled with fruit? Ugh - bloody christians. I don't understand them, and I resent their bloody holidays taking precedence over real annual celebrations that we don't get holidays for, like Mayday & Boxmas. Plus I must say that it's just a little bit mean in todays consumer society that supermarkets can be advertising hot cross buns & chocolate for several months, and then decide to not sell them to you on the actual days we're we're meant to be consuming them.

What kind of backwards logic is that? Stupid fucking capitalists.

Anyway. On a lighter note, I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite recipes. It's for the most awesome treat, namely, golden syrup dumplings. Make them, eat them, and bloody well enjoy them. Tonight, we shall enjoy them with some roasted chestnuts & a good riesling. Perhaps followed by some amaretto. All in all, an excellent appetiser to the long held easter tradition of cocktails blended with such culinary delights as marshmallows, easter buns and steak.

Stuff you will need:

dumplings
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/3rd cup of tasty tasty golden syrup
1/3rd cup of milk
1 1/4 cups of self raising flour

sauce
1 tablespoon of butter
3/4 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of tasty tasty golden syrup
1 1/2 cups of water

Stuff you will need to do:

- Mix all your dumpling ingredients until they become a delicious batter

- Heat butter in a largish saucepan (make sure you have a lid for it somewhere)

- Add sugar and syrup to saucepan slowly, giving a good stir. Add the water, and stir until it's a tasty looking delicious syrup. Bring to a simmer. Maybe throw in a splash of amaretto or cointreau if you feel so inclined.

- Grab a teaspoon and drop lumps of the batter into the simmering saucepan mixture, until all batter is gone. Stick the lid on, turn to the lowest heat setting, and leave it alone for... 10 - 15 minutes or so.

- Go and check out your dumplings. They should be all big and puffy and gooey. Don't worry too much if the bottoms are burnt a bit, just scoop out into bowls with the syrup.

- Enjoy with some ice cream or cream - you'll need it to cut through the tasty sweetness of the dumplings.

The Rantolotl.
PS - A note to Rat, Kit & Aunt Hillary: Hah! I told you so!

The two ronnies would be proud.

2008-03-14T11:11:00.004+11:00

My goodness, it's been a bloody long time since I've been here and done the update dance. But never mind, with any luck it'll all be a little more frequent from now.

Now, down to the meat and potatoes of this all. I know I whine a lot about my workplace, and frankly, I think every last syllable is completely founded. However, I've often been quick to pigeonhole the generally shitty behaviour of my colleagues and other floor-occupants as being a by-product of working within a male-dominated IT department. Having a chat to Fandango Jones about this however, seemed to raise some contradictions. He works in what can be loosely described as an IT department (the games industry), it's extremely male dominated, but his workmates by and large don't pull the boorish wank mine do here.

Here, innuendo flies around. Everyone is extremely conscious about looking extremely cool at any given moment. You need to lock your workstation when you go to the toilet, lest someone comes along and uses your MSN account to send "I AM TEH GAY!" to everyone on your contact list. If you're really lucky, you'll find that someone has done the same thing, except via SMS to every person in your mobiles' address book. But there are other, far more serious and professional people around here, who do not behave like that. They wear suits and ties and attend lots of important meetings. They also seem to like saying things such as "Fwoar!" as loudly as possible when attractive young women get out of the elevator, and of course, to trying to be as charming as a ferret in a tophat the remainder of the time, leaving a long, stinking trail of smug behind them. Oh, and of course also taunting people who are clearly straight, by calling them gay.

But as a small aside, I need to share a little story with you. Last week I experienced an excellent, if unwitting example of cock humour; Two people I'm yet to introduce you to, Gandalf, and his girlfriend Poncho, wandered into a pub where we were meeting for delightful evening of dinner and trivia. Now this pair are a notoriously hungry couple, and will bicker and squabble, and probably attack you with a bloodied, rusty razor if they ever suspected you might be withholding some kind of cheesecake from them. But I digress - they arrived, and they were hungry.

Gandalf immediately sourced a menu, and Poncho began babbling incessantly about food. In particular, meat. "I want some meat!" she declared, pulling up a chair. "I've been wanting meat all week, and Gandalf keeps denying me my meat! I just want a big hot piece of meat, Gandalf! Tonight I'm going to have meat whether you like it or not!". Gandalf went a superb shade of red in the face and studied his menu just that little bit more intently, and Fandango Jones, well he could be found, face pink, looking like he was about to explode and wildly gesticulating in silent excitement.

See, now that is good cock humour.

What isn't good cock-humour, however, is what the not so charming top-hatted ferrets around the office were disgracing themselves with today. Our office did the worlds greatest shave dealio, and as such, there were large clusters of already very short haired men having their heads shaved, and behaving as if they were taking a bullet for their flag or some shit. Some of them were even bravely munching on hot cross buns. The womenfolk gathered 'round, and served plates of hot cross buns to the awaiting manly masses, and cleaned the dishes, and put away chairs, and did lots more of that domestic stuff you'd expect from 80K-plus-per-annum earning IT executives. I steeled myself, scavenged a couple of the tasty buns and found a perch behind a laughing pack of pinstriped hyenas.

It soon became obvious that the woman wielding the clippers at this point didn't really know what she was doing with them. I imagine in ordinary circumstances, someone would've either told her how to turn them on, or would have come and demonstrated this themselves. Instead, our delightful coworkers started yelling out such helpful advice as "give it a good stroke Marg, that'll get it going!" and the equally nauseating offering of "You need to wait until it's vibrating and then stick it in... his hair". Amazingly, the response to these downright retarded comments was not the slap in the face you'd expect, or a good(but not really) natured zinger back at them, but instead was raucous laughter from their peers, closely followed by lots more little pieces of clipper-penis innuendo.

Now, putting aside the rather strange association of a pair of hair clippers to a cock - because frankly, I can't see that being a good idea in anyones language - what on earth were they thinking? What are they thinking, in fact? It's not like these comments came as any surprise to me - they come up equally stupid comments/gestures/general behaviour on a daily basis. But what I can't get my head around is why on earth makes they think it's appropriate for the fucking workplace? Not only is it a crime against humour, but it's also incredibly insulting to the women, and the marginally more domesticated men who also have to work here (including the "I AM TEH GAY!" messagers). I'd say they should take this sort of behaviour to the pub with them, but I'm fairly sure that's downright inappropriate too unless you're an AFL player.

There's something about these business IT types - people working in what are essentially highly paid administrative roles - that makes you feel a little ill. Individually, they're probably relatively nice people (well, for Howard voters anyway) - but you stick them together in a room under the influence of a hot cross bun, and it very quickly degenerates into a well dressed pissing content, complete with prominently displayed boys club aspirations. They may as well be walking around in the office wearing shirts with I HAVE A DICK printed across the chest, with an arrow pointing toward their crotch. Or perhaps more accurately, towards their heads.

God, what a horrible place. But you know what workplace full of IT people I'll bet isn't horrible? The Google office! Now there's a place with class! Everyone there clearly knows that they're geeks, and embrace it! Instead of standing around in suspenders trying to make wise cracks about breast sizes, these people are far too busy playing on their engineer-designed slide. Or perhaps, having mature discussions (or at least discussions about the latest release date for Smash Bros Brawl) in their igloo themed meeting rooms. Alternately, they may be playing on the fireman poles they have set up between floors. See, if you set up fireman poles here, our stupid gits would be forever trying to make women pole dance with them. In the google office (the land of kittens and rainbows) they would simply think it, and keep their thoughts to themselves, instead of forming a roving pack to dig out some recruits.

Anyhow - this is far too much typing for one person on a Friday afternoon, so I'm going to go and get some lunch and consider the benefits of trapping the office. If you have any suggestions, I of course suggest you leave them on the comments board.

GOOD DAY!

"Then your head is skewered on a stake..."

2008-01-13T23:51:00.000+11:00

Greetings from Cambodia, good readers! It's amazing, but yes, it does appear that I update my blog far more frequently when surrounded in land mines than I do from the comfort of my office/lounge room/wading pool. The quality of the post however, might suffer. Then again, it might improve some, too.

VG and I arrived in Siem Reap this arvo, after two and a half/three (I can't remember exactly - I'm still trying to pretend they didn't happen) days from the Thai/Cambodian border crossing at Poipet, via Battambang (pronounced Battambong, apparently). On this journey, and I'm sure you'll hear all the personal stories later, we encountered many things. People drawn carts (big fuck-off wood ones - like you'd expect a horse to pull), more dodgy immigration staff than you could point the biggest stick ever found at, and - get this - a camry mafia. Yes, that's right - a camry mafia. Oh, and there was a landslide onto a construction site too, which was quite exciting, if not a little worrying.

The camry mafia aren't your normal everyday tommy-gun carrying mafia thugs. No. Instead, they wield a steering wheel... of a late nineties Toyota Camry. I could really go on and on here, but I just can't really do it justice - in retrospect, it's one of the funnier things I've ever seen, while at the time, and while still relatively uninformed, it was one of the scarier situations I've been in. Though luckily, it turns out that while I was concentrating on being super-vigilant from the back of our (voluntary) camry-bound prison, my wife was sizing up the driver, figuring that between the two of us 'we could take him'. With what exactly, I'm not sure. Maybe she was intending to bludgeon him into unconsciousness with my camera, whilst I glared at him sternly or something.

Either way, it was a big relief to arrive into Siem Reap today, even if it was by one of the hairier roads I've traversed in my 25 years*. I can see how people who fly into this city, and then fly out again after checking out the temples would never get even the slightest idea of Cambodia as a nation - poor, easily corruptable, and often non-sensical. Don't get me wrong; outside of the Poipet crossing - where there is this Vegas-like strip of casinos in no-mans-land - people are lovely, and as far as I can tell, very hospitable. But it is so incredibly, incredibly poor. In the last three days, we've dined like foreign diplomats on aid-paid junkets... for the ridiculous sum of $10. A $2 tip leaves staff bowing and scraping from your table, leaving you more than a little embarrassed. And it's no surprise really - government bureaucrats earn only $72 a month - and the government is quite clearly the only group with money here. A textile worker (which apparently is quite highly paid here) earns only an average of $41. From there on in, the pay only gets lower.

But that's probably enough of my harping on about a third world country being dirt poor (duh). People will continue to be blown up by land mines, people will still live hand to mouth, and arguably, a semi-secret civil war will continue in isolated areas of the east. For now, I suspect we will try and subtly leave tips behind so as to avoid spectacle.

But now - the cool things we've come across!

* More cake shops than you could throw a oddly-painted mating elephant at (yes, they paint them!)

* 1 litre bottles of Absolute for $10!!!

* Bottles of some strange liquor involving a coiled, dead snake, a scorpion, and a handful of peanuts for $12

* Thai whiskey! $1.30!!

* Curry as far as the eye can see!

* NOM NOM NOM!

* Little Cambodian cats

* Cheap, luxurious accommodation

* Cool temples and carvings and stuff

* Transport via little motorcycle-drawn open air cabs

* Other stuff I'll remember about two minutes after I click 'Publish Post'.

Anyhow, for now I get on with my travels. The next thing on my to-do list is to find out if I can get to a Cambodian McDonalds. After all, no international trip would be complete without adding to my 'McDonalds of the world' diary...

Cheers,

The Rantolotl.

* The road in question:

I D20 you in the head.

2007-12-30T21:59:00.000+11:00

Happy festive season, good readers!

Yeah, I know I'm a little late in the piece, but hey, it's not the New Year yet, therefore I win. Hah!

But in other ways, I just don't win at all. Currently, I sit inside hiding from the mosquitoes as housemates and co. discuss geek card games (it's called Mages or Mist or something. Apparently it's a piss-take of dungeons and dragons, but I remain unconvinced. Any game with "Plus 1" anything is sure to require a good few beers and both my 'good humoured' and 'good natured' hats to be worn simultaneously. Good thing I'm on holiday really). Anyhow, they're clearing a table down now, so I fear I have limited time before I'm dragged off to join them. Good thing I have some Amaretto & left over stolen-mystery christmas cake to see me though. Fucking geeks. So enthusiastic about card games, but so terribly difficult to shift out of the house for physical activity.

Speaking of which, I'll be both out of the house, and as a direct result, out of this blog for the next month. While it's not really all that unusual these days for me to be away from the blog for that sort of stretch of time, it's not usually intentional. Not that this is either, but at least I can give you some forewarning so that you're not forever left pining for your sporadic dose of wit and charm* every hot day of this stinking hot month. That said, you may well see a surprise post or two detailing my hate of mosquitoes from other parts of the world, just to mix it up a little.

I'm guessing if you all felt so inclined, you could send care packages of instant food to Krus & Fandango Jones, who will no doubt suffer in the January air and generally mope about a lot. I also suggest Ice cream cones with surprise kittens (dipped in chocolate of course) stuffed in the bottom. It'll cheer them up and cool them down!

So, with that, I'll leave you to your New Years celebrations. I'd say something inspiring, but in 40+ degrees, that's simply not going to happen. Merry cunting christmas, Happy cunting new year, stay safe on the roads, and don't pass out in your pool. Or ours, for that matter.

See you in a bit, you bastards.

* Wit and charm sold separately.

Things that go bump in the night...

2007-12-20T11:41:00.000+11:00

It was a dark and stormy night. Our hero listened intently from the warm comfort of his bed as the scraping sound grew closer. And louder. And somewhat more intense.

It had been a long and tedious night, filled with these constant interruptions from the darkness. The rain pelted against the half-open window, but now, even the sound of a storm could not mask the creeping noise of the intruder. Our hero tensed, steeling himself to face whatever lurked beyond the window pane. He longed for nothing more than to sink into slumber, but now, found himself readied in defence.

It was at that moment, with a resounding crash, that the trespasser made their final entry.

SPAGNA* WILL YOU FUCK OFF!

“Meow!”, came the indignant reply as the storm drenched cat stamped her muddy, stilt-like feet over our hero’s doona, making a clear beeline with her head towards his face.

This is the more-or-less nightly battle that our good compatriot Fandango Jones faces, at the will (it's a very tough will) of the little cat Spagna. Such a sweet looking fluff ball, but downright bloody stubborn with the slightest hint of evil. If were to dare to call Spagna a particular kind of food, she'd probably be some kind of baked, yet inedible cactus. Or perhaps a rich plum pudding filled with tacks. Our other cat, Guinness, well, he's more akin to a cooked noodle. That's not to say he can't be annoying, but at least he's generally not annoying with intent.

Spagna has a long and rich history of giving people the shits, often with the help of this particular window. When myself and Vomit Girl resided in said room, you would find the window clad with a set of blinds (venetian and made of plastic) and with a computer located directly below it. On top of this computer, invariably, there would be stacks of crap everywhere. Paperwork, bills, printouts, the printer itself, and other random bits and pieces. Despite all of this, the fucking cat would still manage to shove herself through the blinds, onto the stacks, where she would send piles of absolutely fucking everything up into the air, and then eventually scattered all over the room as she tried to jump off it. If we left the window open at night, she would do this without fail, four or more times. If you were really lucky, she'd drag a freshly decapitated rat through the blinds with her.

Once, and I'm not entirely sure of the order of this story, but I suspect Kipper can fill in the details, a pigeon ended up in the room. I'm not really sure how it ended up in there, but I suspect Spagna had something to do with it, being the chaos merchant she is. Unfortunately, the pigeon gained entry at some time around 2am, while Kipper was residing in said room. What occurred next, so far as I could ascertain, being on the other side of the wall, was a three ring circus. The bird flew around the room, trying to find an out, the cats ran around the room at full tilt, trying to catch the bird while trying to nobble each other, and Kath jumped from one piece of furniture to another (it's not a huge room) trying to catch all three, all the while yelling her thoughts on the matter. Apparently she managed to catch the bird at one point, only to take it into the hallway and drop it. The chase then reconvened in a similar manner throughout the entire house.

I interrogated Kipper about the happenings the next day, only to receive the response; Oh... did you hear all that?

The incredibly painful thing about this (apart from the irreparably bent out of shape blinds), is that she appears to do all of this for absolutely no purpose at all, other than to have an angry, semi-nude human yell at her whilst throwing broken figurines or other cat-damaged trinkets in her general direction at a very fast pace.

Fandango Jones has since suggested that he may attempt to place some fly-screening up to prevent such unwanted entries for the remainder of summer, and while I generally support such entrepreneurship, I suspect the little cow of a cat will find some kind of cat sized hacksaw and just carve herself an entryway through the new barrier. Plus, noodle-cat will probably not notice it's there until he bounces off it, head first.

But her general misbehaviours don't really end at this particular bedroom. She also does the same thing now to our room should the windows be open for more than five minutes. If you dare to use the kitchen table for any length of time, you're likely to get a face full of Spagna arse. I'd think it's general attention gathering, but if you go to pat her, she immediately runs away, kicking anything you have on the table off the table in the process. And she's also a fucking thief. Bitch ate seven hundred fucking grams of premium mince the last time I made Spag Bol. You wouldn't think it's that unusual, given the chance, except she's the size of a slightly overgrown fucking hamster. I can't even begin to imagine where she fit it all.

Given my current obsession with Human Tetris**, I'm not really capable of coming up with a sensible solution to this cat-shaped problem that doesn't involve her jumping through various silhouettes cut into large blocks of foam. Though, interestingly, as I listen to The Clash's Spanish Bombs*** all I can picture is the damned cat wearing a little black cap, carting about a rather large firearm with an anarchist flag slowly flapping in the breeze behind her. It's strangely fitting.

Which leaves me with the old standby solution. Traps. Not sharp, pointy traps, but traps designed to prevent her from trouble-making, and to humiliate her in the process. Ideally, something that would transport her to the lounge room directly from her mischief making in some kind of makeshift cage, so while we sit and watch TV or play games, we can all point and laugh at her. And dress her as a large wedding cake.

Anyway, enough of all this cat-talk. I'm off to drink beer at the office Christmas party. All this typing of cats has made me thirsty, and frankly, if I'm going to go home and start building elaborate Spagna traps, I think I should be pretty pissed first.

* Pronounced something like: Spun-Ya, or alternatively, You Fucking Bitch.

** More Human Tetris can be found here, here, here and here. And other places too, no doubt.

*** Off the bloody brilliant London Calling album. For more background on the lyrical contents of Spanish Bombs if/when you are familiar with it, I suggest reading George Orwells Homage to Catalonia(****).

**** In joke(*****) : Hot buttered toast!!

***** In joke for those who didn't get the previous one: That's a hot dog!

Pints of Guinness make you strong...

2007-11-14T14:40:00.000+11:00

I know I've been harping on about this for awhile now - well, very sporadically for awhile now... As we all know, I've been a bit shit with updates these last few months - but yes harping on and all, and not at all about shitty public transport (though I do have a few sharp words to say about tram patrons, and these so called 'ghost trains'), but indeed, about my ongoing JobQuest™

As I'm sure most of you are aware, JobQuest's are usually a fairly uneven mixture of 'fun' and 'not fun'. While this recent spate of JobQuesting has had a good amount of 'fun' - ie, getting interviews for jobs that I don't remember applying for, responding to Key Selection Criteria points detailed as 'Must have significant experience of the Internet', 'Must be willing to attend team lunches', etc - it's also had more than its fair share of 'not fun'. So this morning, whilst doing a quick review of what I've been applying for in the frantic hope I could maybe piece together what exactly I'll be interviewing for next week (and what exactly I've told them in my application), I was kind of surprised to find that I had somewhere along the lines of 22 incomplete job applications, and only five fully completed and sent off apps. Until recently, I'd more or less figured I'd sent off at least 20 of the buggers... and looking at the apps, I could see why.

Almost every single unsubmitted application was entirely complete, save for one unanswered Key Selection Criteria point. In fact, one of the unapplied for documents did indeed have every point answered, albeit one point succinctly answered with the word PORN!, courtesy of Special Shane (who was kindly delivering a cup of tea to my office at the time). Other applications had some points filled with total gibberish, a fairly safe indicator that I'd tired of writing corporate wank-speak and had instead resorted to repeatedly punching the keyboard with my head. Others still contained pleas of finding some kind of magical workplace where I could wear shorts and thongs and t shirts all the time, and not have to speak to anyone except for the tea lady who would bring me cupcakes and interesting mail.

Later, comparing my semi-completed applications to my bank account details, I further determined what exactly went wrong. It seems that at each point in the breakdown of the application-writing-process - presumably often accompanied by the words "Fuck it! I don't want someone to pay me tens of thousands of dollars a year to do this thing I like doing. They'll only want me to do other things too, and lets face it, I won't be truly happy until I can turn up at 11 wearing tattered jeans" - I had resorted to giving myself a break from the whole debacle and rewarding myself for a job well done by buying random shit on the Internet.

Upon this discovery, my immediate thoughts were to amend my response to the afore mentioned 'Must have significant experience of the Internet' statement to something along the lines of:

The Internet is my realm. As demonstrated in my current position, I have wide ranging experience in Internet based research (my wikipedia skills surpass all in my field), I have soundly displayed my ability to interact on it (forums fear my awesome wisdom), I successfully use the Internet as an efficient communication tool (In this last week, I have spent at least 6 hours writing messages to contacts on MSN), and I have extensively demonstrated my ability to purchase shit on it like no one's business (my bank account is now empty, I have a week to wait until payday - but at least I'll get some really cool mail soon). Additionally, I have been proactive in my workplace in utilising the Internet as a form of new media (I have a flickr account).

To demonstrate exactly how serious this situation has become, here's a quick list of what I actually know I've ordered in the last couple of weeks...

- A Kevin07 tshirt
- An unknown quantity of Kevin07 car flags (I was hoping you can attach them to the bonnet)
- A variety of christmas and anniversary gifts in ridiculous excess (totaling six packages so far)
- A DVD (He died with a felafel in his hand)
- Some CD's (Atari Teenage Riot)
- A swimming pool (Yes, really)
- And finally, a camera for my cat.

The purchase I'm most excited about (not including gifts. I get very excited about gifts) is the cat camera. This thing is fucking awesome! It's a itty-bitty camera that's programmed to take a photo every minute until the battery runs out. You attach it to your cats' collar, and off it goes on soon to be visually-documented adventures! Now, we have two cats - one is a psycho killer bitch cat who is rather fond of Fandango Jones, and I think we can safely assume that we're not going to get the camera anywhere near her neck. The other cat is a big fluffy pool of happy molasses, who loves just about everyone - He is a truly awesome animal. Not only will he not mind the camera around his neck, he probably won't even notice it; If he does, he's likely to consider it his new best friend.

I can't wait for this camera to arrive... we'll finally get to see the adventures of Guinness - and while a lot of that will probably be photos of him napping under bushes, I think there'll probably a hefty dose of awesome cat adventures... you know, running about on rooves, visiting other cats, chasing rats, flying miniature hot air balloons and wearing aviator goggles... you know, the normal sort of activities cats get up to when no one's watching.

But I digress. Purchasing things and generally wasting time on the web seems to be my way of avoiding annoying and boring issues at hand. And now that's sorted, I'm going to finish my post, duly abandon my variety of half finished job applications, work, and assignments, and go and purchase myself a beer. After all, it's a terrible day to waste sitting inside, and I clearly deserve an award for having such an awesome cat.

Sincerely,
The Rantolotl.

PS - OMG, it's Angry Pants Man. Long time no see.