Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Daveeee!

From a local real estate listing I saw this afternoon:




I like to think that this is Dave's way of telling Dean that perhaps he should do a little more to earn his five figure commission. Like, ooh, I don't know, maybe writing his own damn blurb?

Friday, May 25, 2012

Nerve

At the hospital where I work there is a multi-year, multi-billion dollar construction project that involves tearing up all of the carparks and replacing them with enormous eight and nine storey buildings. Unfortunately this means that there has been a drastic reduction in available parking spaces as well as a drastic increase in people who need them.


The hospital has been dealing with the intractable problem of too few spaces for too many cars the same way that all large, empowered, misanthropic bureaucracies deal with intractable problems: with propaganda. Propaganda so barefaced and reality-dodging that it would make Josef Stalin blush. It sees the bright side, and only the bright side, of every new failure in parking provision. It's all silver lining, all the time!


Take this latest outrage:





Apparently Jennifer is getting on so well with Tara, James and Michelle because they are bonding over the shared misery of having to carpool. The pain of the extra time, expense and inconvenience of having to collect each other from their respective homes, and the inflexibility of their time of departure from work, has forced them closer together. Much like the intense camaraderie of the trenches in World War One, only with more Honda Civics.


Other posters in this series include "Why is Sharon looking so fresh and rosy-cheeked these days? It must be the painful burn of the freezing winter air as she cycles 20kms to work each morning... and evening!" and "Why does Lucky Joe get to spend the day in bed? Just because he caught a cold while trudging through the rain between buses!"

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Fulfillment

Late on Tuesday night I discovered that a local cult and specialty DVD store was closing down and selling off its stock.


As you can imagine, this is like Cookie Monster discovering that the Arnotts factory is throwing out several tonnes of irregular Tim Tams. At the earliest opportunity I was there, and so loaded up with DVDs that my arms hurt.


I bought some movies for one dollar...





I bought some movies for two and a half dollars...





And I bought a couple of TV series for six dollars each...





Russ Meyer breastsploitation, 60s sci-fi paranoia, 80s splatter horror, cheesy Italian sword 'n' sandal epics... it's all here, baby!


I am so happy!

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Bedfellows

Human instinct is an amazing thing.


It was this morning, a few minutes after 4am. I was in bed, deep in sleep, when I had a sensation of something touching my upper right arm. Something alive. And moving.


In less than a second, two things happened.


One, while I was still fast asleep, my left hand shot across, snatched up the thing, and flung it across the room with a speed I could never consciously manage.


Two, I snapped from asleep to wide awake, with my heart racing.


With alarm bells ringing and my conscious mind going "Wha.. who... what?", it took a few seconds for the reports to coalesce from the senses. It had been kinda moist, reported my skin. Small, but not tiny, recalled my fingers. There was a loud "ker-rang" as it hit the vintage pedal car hanging on the adjacent wall, reported my ears. "It was a GIANT SLUG!" squealed my subconscious.


"It was not a giant slug," said my brain, still groggy but growing more rational by the second. "If it was alive, small and able to rebound off the pedal car, it was probably a cockroach."


A bloody big cockroach, judging from the finger feedback.


The two options - get up and investigate or go back to sleep - presented themselves. For a moment bed warm, room cold, me tired, beat curiosity, but then curiosity played its trump card: if it's out there, what's stopping it from coming back here?


So I got up, staggered to the door, flicked on the lights, glanced around the room and saw this:





A FREAKIN' MOUSE! IN MY BED! SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP!


It was lying still on the carpet. Do I squish it to make sure? No, that would grind gross mouse ick into the carpet. Pick it up? NO FREAKIN' WAY! Find something to collect it with, like a plastic container.


Still groggy, I ventured off into the rest of the house, dismissing various containers as unhygienic, or already containing other things.


You know, it might just be stunned... my subconscious warned ominously.


I went to the kitchen, got an old peanut butter jar from the cupboard, and returned to the bedroom. Just as I got there, the mouse regained consciousness. It leapt up and darted away... or at least tried to. Something, either brain or bone, had broken when it hit the pedal car, and it bounced chaotically off the walls and bits of furniture.


"Oh no you don't, you son of a bitch," said my brain. "We are not doing this at 4am."


When it came to a momentary stop under my suit rack, I shoved the jar over it. It cheeped piteously as some part of its body got caught under the edge of the jar, but I was in no mood for empathy. I shook the jar to get it in completely, then slammed on the lid.


It was in a bad way, it's rear legs scrabbling at the jar while its front half lay motionless. Pity finally made it past the groggyness and instinctive disgust.


"I'm sorry, little mouse," I whispered.


A few seconds later it stopped moving, even when I shook the jar. It wasn't long enough for it to have used up the oxygen in the jar, so it must have died from its internal injuries.


It's kind of sad... but that's what you get when you're a mouse and you nibble on a man's arm in his own bed!

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Accountable



If this doesn't make you laugh, then there is no hope for you.




I pretty much lost it at the start of the second verse.

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Fools!

I went out to dinner on Friday night, and since it was a lovely evening, I left the roof down on my convertible. When I got back to my car after dinner I discovered this:





On the downside, someone lobbed a perfectly good icecream cone into the bumper of my car. Icecream wastage is a crime against humanity, or at least blandwagonity!


On the upside, they were probably aiming for the cabin.