I was going to wait til I’d been doing the job a year until I wrote this, but hopefully i won’t be doing it that long. I will only say that this refers to the local main drag. To mention it’s name would be connecting too many of the dots.

Smelliest Shop: Tied between the fish shop and Subway. (I let the cat out of the bag a bit about this the other day).

Even a month ago I would’ve put the fish shop at 1, but there’s this thing about Subway that it seems to get more odourous each time I smell it. And for some reason, fish-mingled air actually feels more natural than their terrible yeasts.

The butcher shops are no picnic either. Although I do like that fact they’re holding out with the old-school format compared to chain-this and chain-that.

Most verbose acknowledgemnet of my presence: Man from the littlest paintshop. I hand over the paper and he says, “Good, thank-you, good on you, tah”. I imagine that if I stood still holding the paper, he’d just keep on going mostly repeating but also throwing in the odd new phrase, like some amazing random sequence machine.

Most enthusiastic person: There was a woman working in an office equipment shop who once raised her fists in the air and said, “Yay!” when I walked in. She doesn\’t work there anymore.

Shopkeeper Most Likely to be an Alien: There’s a medical practionioner whose work is to do with that 5-lettered boney thing in the back, and lemme tellya…

It’s easy to take for granted the myriad nuances and minute complexities of being/behaving human when you are one. And I’m sure that in the grand scale, this “man” is doing a pretty good at it, but it’s just not cutting it with me. This morning he says, “Gooood Moooornang ThaaangYooou”. His surname is related to the job he does. Sometimes you’ll get situations like a dentist named Blood — we all know those situations — it’s so ironic that it’s got to be real. But this guy’s name/job match is not quite there.

Once I saw this Tarago or econovan (small people mover vehicle) and it must’ve been smashed up good, then panel beaten back into shape, but the paint was that kind of dirty brown blotchy that panel beaters use. It looked shocken. Yet evidentally, the owners had then gone to the trouble of making a stencil and spray-painted the brand and model of the car back onto the door.

That’s what the alien-man situation reminds me of.

Not that he’s bad. He must be a benevolent alien because he’s helping people get well. I actually read about that kind a month back in Nexus.

Most Interesting looking person: Convoluted Overlays guy. He wears suspenders and has those glasses that sit right down the edge of his nose. Older sort of guy. Still uses Brill-cream I think.

Shop I’d most like to work at: Retail Displays shop — mannequins and plenty of them. There’s all these naked female mannequins in various poses that I see through the window. I almost feel like I should look away, but I don’t.
Plus the hours are good – midday to 5pm – can’t beat that.

Ug. now my stats counter thing isn’t working. I look at that thing all the time. I feel lost. Maybe it’s for the best.

Two things I saw at D/blog:

Noam ‘Chompers’ Chomsky has a weblog!

Also, this has to be one of the coolest sites I’ve seen ever — the official ninja webpage.

“My friend Mark said that he saw a ninja totally uppercut some kid just because the kid opened a window.” — I love it.

The other week at the op-shop I also got these unbelievably hideous shoes, but the were only four fiddy, so what are ya gonna do?

I was thinking of the future. Winter is coming. I’ll wear these as all-terrain slipppers around the backyard. I used to just wear loafers, and when I accidentally didn\’t see a snail or slug and stood on it, I’d think ‘sorry snail’.

But not any more. I don’t care what I stand on.

The extra rubber on the soles puts me in a higher, more commanding position. The old shoes left me feeling vulnerable. When somone stood beside me I couldn’t see over them and I was fearful of what might’ve been approaching from the other side. I know they use twice as much rubber as any other kind of shoe, but me and my family deserve it. Everybody else had them, so I decided that I needed them too.

In most situations of daily life I am left feeling powerless and impotent. But not when I’m wearing these babies. I stomp around like I own the joint.

That thing that got eaten yesterday – I was saying that the warehouses in my head are filling up with stuff from the institution and if there was any illusion of planning or effort that went into what went here, then it’ll probably drop off even more. I was thinking I had these essays to write, but then today I realised I have two weeks of solid procarastination to get though.

So I was roaming around the streets aimlessly at lunchtime and noticed a church op-shop open. They’re like those flowers that only open up on full moons — in that they aren’t open much. Sometimes they can have some good stuff. I found a book, The World’s Greatest Alien Abductions — impressive sounding, but I’m not that easily swayed. I did the flip-test, flip to a random page and read. I got the subheading, “The sexy spacenapper”. Sold!

Are hot-x buns okay with choc-chips?

Well, I heard a voice in my head and it was Jesus. He said they were fine by him and then he dared me to let down the tyres of a bright yellow 4WD in the carpark. I said there were too many people around and that I’d come back when it was dark, but it wasn’t good enough for him.

I writ a whole bunch of other witty stuff here but when I pressed the Add Item button it dissapeared into that void where doomed weblog entries go. Thanks to those incompetent fools who I pay money to for renting this webserver space. Or maybe it was Jesus being vengeful. I’ve mentally vacillated about giving the webhost a public shit-canning when I leave it, but that was the last straw and now I consider it my duty as a whingey net-user not to let anyone else make the same mistake I did.

Jump in the time-machine and let’s do some serious shoe-inspection. A big page of Slowdive tracks. If you like music where they play one chord, then change to another chord, then go back to the first, then back to the second — all buried under layer upon layer of effects-pedals (great because no one can tell when you hit a bum note). If you don’t mind a bit of distant, non-specific moaning in place of normal singing. Then this is the music for you!

Don’t mind it meself. Reminds me of being 16.
– The Bureau of Extreme Ironing

– A Ukrainian biker woman rides through the Chernobyl area deadzone and takes a bunch of fascinating pictures — which I saw the link to at slashdot.

A thing about English indie-pop is actually part of my grand unified theory — being that the prevalence for long monotonous sounds (both vocal and instrumental) are due to ancient druidic influence on the anglo mindset.

Besides Slowdive, Ride were another good example. If you take an LP and switch it down to 16 RPMs you can get one note to last for up to a minute.

I went to the monster fete in south geelong today. It was okay, although I do take exception to this bourgeois ‘smashing shit’ trend that’s picked up.

A while back I saw a short news bit about some big cub-scout jambouree and one of the activities was throwing rocks at glass, ceramics and other breakables.

It was happening today too. People pay money, get given a few cricket balls and the opportunity to smash plates etc.

7:47am

stools: … of course all this came after she launched the posthuman gardening/lifestyle show. And the mayotherapy clinic franchise—
me: Which was…? I’m sorry I’ve forgotten.

stools: You get in a bath-tub of mayonaise.

me: That’s right.
    Y’know I don’t often catch myself saying this, but you’re a great conversationalist.

stools: Did you know that of all national peoples, Icelanders read the most books?
{Both laugh}

me: Sparkling!
{Beat}

stools: Listen, I’ve got to go.
    If you’ll be so kind as to release me.

me: You know I’d like to, but I can’t right now.

stools: There are heights I aspire to, feats to achieve, seas to sail.

me: You give me power. Without you I am nothing.

stools: Remember what Sting said, ‘If you love someone set them free’.

me: But Society deigns that I wait.

stools: Let me out now. Let me out. Let me out.

me: Where will you go?

stools: Kiwiland. It’s very happening.

C’mon.

me: But I’m still on the bus!

stools: I’ll manage.

me:{tears in eyes, grunting} Uuunnhhh! Oh geez this feels good.

It took over two years to get around to the good stuff — Freud. In hindsight, maybe I should’ve just bought a book of his and taken the travel agent job instead.

Sitcoms, soap operas – infact all kinds of dramas owe so much to the original flavour of psychoanalysis.

Last year I was stopped on the street by an acquaintance who asked me why I was studying psychology. I realised that I had no idea. If there had been a reason, it was long forgotten.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve found my purpose in life — writing poo jokes. Well, there’s heaps of disgusting stuff radiating directly from psychoanalysis, and also it’s various off-shoots. And there’s plenty of comedic angles that are yet to be exploited.

I normally wouldn’t show my hand, but this stuff is so good;
“The Anal Personality — — The anal personality stems from the anal stage of development. In contrast to gratification associated with the mouth and oral activity, which can be expressed in adulthood in a relatively unrepressed form, the gratifications of anal impulses must undergo considerable transformation. In general, the traits of the anal character are related to processes going on at the anal stage of development that have not been completely relenquished. The important processes are the bodily processes (accumulation and release of fecal material) and interpersonal relations (the struggle of wills over toilet training).

Tying the two together; the anal person sees excretion as symbolic of enormous power. That such a view persists is shown in many everyday expressions such as the reference to the toilet as ”the throne“. The change for the oral to the anal character is one from ”give me“ to ”do what I tell you“, or from ”I have to give you“ to ”I must obey you“.

The anal character is known by a triad of traits, called the anal triad: orderliness and cleanliness, parsimony and stinginess, and obstinancy. The emphasis on cleanliness is expressed in the saying ”Cleanliness is next to godliness“. The anal-compulsive personality has a need to keep everything clean and in order, representing a reaction formation against things that are disorderly and unclean.

The second trait of the triad, parsimony-stinginess, relates to the anal-compulsives interest in holding onto things, an interest dating back to a wish to retain the powerful and important feces. The third trait in the triad, obstinancy, relates to the anal character’s infantile defiance against parting with stools, particularly on command of others. Dating back to toilet training and the struggle of wills, anal personalities often seek to be in control of things and have power or dominance over others.

- I have a theory that people who work in chronically smelly places tend to increase in mass, perhaps in some response to the bad air. I’m talking about places like fish shops, Subway.
– I’ve got a lot of respect for dogs that hang out in the front yard, see you cruising by and slotting the paper, and who don’t get worked up about it. No barking or yapping, just the dog equivelent of a quick nod.

Everytime i get to this joint it’s warmed up and sunny mid-morning. I peek though and hear the sound of the pool is very inviting.

Here is a list of most intelligent dog breeds. It’s on the internet, so you don’t have to believe it. Anecdotal evidence would suggest the ozzy sheep dog should be higher, rottweilers are evil and huskies should be on there somwhere.

How to take out the back seats in a cadillac?

Dear cadillac owner,
I’m of the opinion that there’s no hard and fast rules on this matter. My advice is to employ some of that good old fashioned intuition that we’re all born with, reach down the crevasse in the cushioning to where the solid fixture is, grasp it and give it one sharp pull, followed by a series of longer yanking motions until the whole thing starts to come away.

And voila! DIY self-propelled rocket artillery: Get out of my dreams, Get into my Car. Get in the back seat baby.

It’s funny how the sentence component “… or I’ll kill you.” has slipped into workaday conversational english, eg. “Give me a piece of gum or I’ll kill you”.
I lost a unit guide, which is 8 or 10 photocopied pages with essay questions and rules in it re: one of the subjects I’m doing. I asked if there was anyway I could get a replacement. They printed me out one, and as the otherwise mild-mannered, middle-aged secretary/clerical type woman hands it over to me she says, “Don’t tell your friends about this or I’ll have to kill you”.

They’ve put OS X on the old G3 bule&whites out here — with Safari, so now I can see how rooted the web page looks in that.

An observation re: the Kids. They’re all wearing these bits of nylony material around their necks with keys or whatever attached. The nylon loop denotes “access all areas” because usually they’re used for various kinds of security passes, and in corporate settings, ways of ranking slaves. The connotation is ‘freedom’ or ‘exclusivity’. These loops are also conveniently wide enough to fit a logo or corporation name on.

I was out at the institution and had several hours hangtime between reasons to be there, so tried to make it productive by going to the library.
So there I was, down in … periodicals, attempting to get some reading to sink in to my head without falling asleep. I fished into my backpack for something to write on and felt wetness. I’d brought a cut lunch and two ripe peaches. Inexplicably, it hadn’t occured to me that they’d get smooshed by the hardback textbooks.
Thankfully, things weren’t too bad — just the sphericality of one of them had been flattened a little. I held it there looking at it. It wasn’t going to get any better.

Sure I knew I wasn’t supposed to eat food in the library but back up the stairs and outside was such a long way to go for one piece of fruit that would be gone in a second. I had a quick glance around, but there’s like, only two seats down there in periodicals. That’s why I like it.

I bit into the peach where it bled. And, y’know, it’s funny but I can’t remember much after that.

This was remedied later by a couple of Blackshirts (the subcontractor security firm that patrols campus). I was sitting in a small room with these thuggish men.
“Can I go home?”, I said looking at my watch and realising that I’d not only missed the tutorial I’d been waiting around for, but there was something on telly.

“You just don’t get it do you?” said the short one.

“Look, I promise I’ll never take food into the library again.”

He shook his head and flicked On and Play switches on a video and TV that I hadn’t previously noticed.

After 20 seconds of this mostly motionless footage I realised that the receding hairline and unkempt sideburns of this figure were mine; it was where I was sitting at the carrel. The camera appeared to be located above and slightly behind me. It could only be hidden in the ceiling because I pay a lot of attention to those kinds of things. My mouth dropped open slightly. That paranoid kid I stopped hanging around with was right – hidden cameras in the ceilings … everywhere.

As I stared into the warm blues and blacks that formed the shapes in the security tape I began to observe myself. Hunched forward, devouring the peach with honed technnique — elbow tilted higher than the wrist stopped the nectar from running down my arm. The tall Blackshirt piped up:
“Look! Yer dripping stuff all over that bound set of periodicals!”
The short one turned up the volume without explaining himself.
“Ohh. mmm. ffff.  Guh.” These breathy, almost animalistic sounds were coming from me.
“Ohhmmm!”      “Guhh … ffff”
This continued an embarrassingly long time as I ravaged the second peach. Oh why were they making me watch this???

I spat the stone out, stood up quickly and wheeled around. I seemed to breathing heavily and my arms were poised in a rather odd way at my sides. Yes it sounds comical, but in that moment I thought of Taz the looney-tunes Tasmaninan devil character. This was no joke though. I flicked my head one way then the other, and then most chilling of all, seemed to look straight up into where the security camera was, as if I was instinctually aware of its presence. I ran out of shot, the footage cut out to static. I hardly got out an exhalation of relief at the ending of this monochrome nightmare when a new shot cut in. It was a similarly panoptical setup, but from the foyer area near the main cafeteria with me bounding in to shot.
“oh shit”, I mumbled. Maybe bits of memory were piecing together, because I could tell that the scenario was that it hadn’t been enough. Two peaches wasn’t enough.

He was breathing heavily, rapidly — huffing, arms still well spaced from the torso, eyes wild and wide-eyed, nostrils flared and flickering with the intake of air, teeth showing but not quite gritted. To some girl staring and cowering by the glass wall he growled,
“What’re you lookin’ at?”, then sprung into the open doors of the cafeteria, nose first, probing the air.

With and arm and two fingers out he pointed down the length of the many scattered tables and chairs.

“HEY YOU, TWO-FRUITS!”

At the other end of the hall some nerd wearing a parka froze as this beastman vaulted towards him. His hands shook and the little Goulburn Valley plastic cup fell to the floor, spilling its juice, pear and apricot chunks…

This has been sitting in the inbox for a while — a pamphlet from the local TAFE listing the courses they’re offering. T A F E stands for Take A Holiday from unEmployment, which is basically what happens. It takes you off the dole statistics for a little while, which makes the gumment happy, so they get off your case which makes you happy and everyone’s happy, and then we had pudding.

‘Modern Cake Decorating’ struck me as hitting nails on heads, because when you get down to brass tacs, the Modern era was the apex of cake decoration activity. What are the alternatives – – post-modern cake decorating? – would probably involve a nasty little pastiche of things that don’t belong together on top of a cake. Like whale-blubber, nutra-sweet and some pieces of a chopped up bicycle. The point would be that much of what we consume today is perhaps even more of a health-hazard than what it replaced. Thanks science! Thanks FDA. Now that’s ironic!
– what about renaissance cake decoration? Chicken fat, a hunk of cod and roast duck all deserve their earned place, but it’s not on a cake.
– cake-baking, circa 4000bc — a handful of gravel.

Butter, brown sugar, castor sugar and vanilla essence don’t sound so bad after all that eh.

I see there’s also a ‘men only cooking class’. Now I’m really curious. I wonder if it involves drumming… – ‘confined space entry and retest’ – can you get in a cardboard box and close the lid, and if you could do it 2 years ago, can you still do it now? – ‘e-marketing’ – become a spammer. – ‘validation therapy’ – go to a classroom and have someone say nice things about you. – ‘testing of electrical handheld/portable appliances’ – how to tell when the batteries have run out in your walkman, and how to replace those batteries.