For someone who said he wasn't going to post for a while, this is getting ridiculous. First, a little explanation, the cotton country on this farm is split into two separate developments of about 1250 acres each. I finished planting one half this morning and was going to spray a couple of paddocks in the new development tonight prior to commencing planting again tomorrow, but it looks like there might be a little bit of rain so we've put that on hold for a night. In the meantime, we are still irrigating the first half and I volunteered to give the boss the night off and run the water. There won't be much to do but check everything every couple of hours until about three a.m., when all the syphons will need changing. To stay awake between checks (I've only had five hours sleep in three days) I'll be doing this shit.
Don't know what I'm going to be writing about, but I'll think of something. I also apologise to all those people with whom I should be catching up with in this bonus free time, but you'll get over it.
In the meantime, Primus.
Somewhere recently I've heard or read something that's put this band in my head, for the life of me I can't remember what it was. It doesn't matter anyway. What it made me think of was bass players. You never hear of 'bass Gods' the way you do 'guitar heroes' and yet most bands would suck without a decent rhythm section. Adam Claypool gave Primus their personality with his loose string 'slap bass' style. John Entwhistle (the greatest bass player ever) contributed more to the sound of The Who than Daltrey. Angus Young is a flashy (and slightly over-rated) guitarist and destroyer of the English language, but it was his brother Malcolm on rhythm guitar who was the engine driving the Acca Dacca sound back when they were worth listening to. Yet all these people go largely unrecognized, with the exception of Claypool I guess. Incidentally, have either of my readers heard anything of Oysterhead, the 'other' Claypool band. I heard a single called Mr. Oysterhead(?) a year or two ago and really liked it, but haven't heard anything else from them. Any good?
And in unrelated news;
The other day upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today,
I think he must have gone away.
That little poem has been recited by me at least many times in the last couple of nights. I'm not sure who wrote it; Ogden Nash I think, although it could have been Spike Milligan. Maybe by committing it to screen I will expurgate it from my consciousness and get back to making up new lyrics for Village People songs.
What are you going to do about it? I know I said I wouldn't be posting for a while but several odd things have been happening around here. Firstly, I've spent the better part of the last two days twenty metres along a 1200mm diameter pipe with a hose connected to a two-inch firefighter sleeved back to half inch at the end trying to clear the pipe of debris and silt. Still, I did get to play on the excavator. Secondly, we've had six blokes from Sudan out here since Sunday, chipping and helping us throw syphons, etc. Dumb as dog shit, each and every one of them. Nice fellers, but dumb. Must get fairly warm over there, too. We're all getting around in shorts, with our sleeves rolled up and our tongues hanging out and they've all got jeans on, some of them are wearing jumpers. Thirdly, the boss does things that I suggest. Like I said to work the planter 24 hours a day and we're going to. Now I have to go back to work in five or six hours to do the night shift. Woo - Hoo. Actually, I like night - shift. And Jafa, in reply to your comment on the previous post, I'm on a salary, it doesn't matter how many hours I do. Look at all those words I managed to fit into one paragraph.
Well, devoted readers, I doubt that I'll be posting for a week or two as we start planting in the morning and it'll be sixteen- or eighteen- hour days until it's in and watered. I have much to say about many things, but, fuck it. Suffice to say that the liver is evil and must be punushed.
Plenty to do with cows this week. After the rain we had last week we put back loading out three hundred cows until Monday to give the roads a bit of time to dry out. As this was the first time they had put cattle through the lot, a fair few things could have been improved, such as checking their teeth earlier on. Cattle can lose 15kg's just from the stresses involved in yarding them and so the fewer checks you have to do to them at load-out, the better. They were gone by Tuesday lunchtime and the boss(es) weren't far behind them. The cows to Oakey meat-works and the boss to the Gold Coast for a Lot-feeders' conference and grog-fest at the Royal Pines Resort.
At least on Wednesday I got to do cotton stuff - setting up a couple of tool-bars, using a few tricks I have learnt to make the set-up and adjustment easier and more accurate.
The bloke who looks after the stock side of things started here the same day I did and was getting a bit behind in his work, so on Thursday I spent most of the day on the backhoe, shoveling shit. The pens had to be cleaned out in readiness for the next intake of cattle and the cow-dude was over the other side of the property mustering them up. The backhoe is a stone-age piece of shit and the job took a hell of a lot longer than it should have because about a third of my day was spent repairing hydraulics, power steering etc, etc.
Friday, I had to put on a big hat and talk real slow because the cow-dude and I went mustering. In a straight line it is probably only about ten or twelve kilometres from the feedlot to where we picked the cows up from, but because the cows has us outnumbered 155 to 2 we had to push them along fence-lines to keep them bunched up, a trip of about 20 - 25k's, thick scrub nearly all the way. I was on a bike, the cow-dude on a quad. The first job was to find them. The cow-dude took off along a fence-line and I followed him for about a hundred metres when the bike stopped. Turning the fuel on is always a good idea. I followed the fence-line along until I came to sand ridge which just about pulled me up. I was down to walking speed paddling my way up the hill. I got to the top of the ridge ( which was also the corner of the paddock) just in time to split up a mob of cattle which had charged the fence and were taking off into the neighbours' place. About twenty of them had already gone through, I turned about the same number. The cow-dude and his dog went through the fence after the rest and I worked my way along the fence-line, pushing any cattle I found through the scrub to the open section at the bottom of the hill where the bulk of the mob where grazing.
After a while the cow-dude returned with the strays and we worked the rest of the paddock. Galvanized burr is a silver coloured little prickle bush and there was plenty of it in this paddock. There was also plenty of dead wood laying around. Sometimes the dead wood just won't lay still, and when you're barreling through the scrub trying to head off a few breakaways sometimes you don't notice the logs in your path. Oops. Those little burrs are irritating bastards of things when you're coated in them.
So we cleared that paddock and pushed them back to the edge of the cotton country, a long but uneventful trip (save for a 'river' crossing that was fairly Man From Snowy River - except for the distinct lack of horses in evidence). We stopped for lunch and I left the cow-dude to push them the rest of the way while I went ahead to check on my sole underling. He was doing just dandy so I left him to it and went to the silo's where the world's most inept B-double driver was waiting to unload some feed. When I saw the cattle coming up the lane I gave the cow-dude a hand to put them in the holding yard. The bosses returned while we were doing this.
Friday night was one of the larger nights I've had in quite a while, involving much beer and singing with a bloke from a nearby property who brought a guitar and P.A. to the pub. Don't remember what I sang, but I didn't have any blood on me Saturday morning so I can't have been too bad. Or these people have no taste.
All in all, not the best preparation to put 150 cranky cows through indoctrination. One of the bastards, a big dark-coloured Santa Gertrudis gave me a kick in the thigh that I'm not going to forget in a hurry. Right now I've got a cow-print that covers about half of my right quadricep. I've got your number (literally)756, I'll be looking for you come killing time. They were weighed, tags checked, teeth checked (a few four teeth were drafted out to be put through with a later batch) given a hormone injection and a 5 - in 1 injection. Then we had to finish up shoveling the shit out of the pen (from under the feeders, the water trough and the fence-line). Fix up a few low spots with the backhoe put out some hay - the grain is introduced gradually - put the cows in and fuck off.
I went home with all intentions of going for a ride but sleeping for thirteen hours got in the way.
Who to vote for? I can't think of a reason to publicly support anybody in this election. Howard is an arse-licker, which in itself is no reason to dismiss him from contention. Trouble is, he's reckless to boot. He committed us to a war in which we had no rational reason to participate and then was surprised when this participation brought unwanted attention from (may as well offend everyone) the 'towel-headed camel-fuckers'*. Nobody is suggesting that these people are right - or even rational - but to deny the connection is to deny reality and I don't want a delusional leader who is channeling Menzies. Remember, Menzies was dumped for a lefty during the war. As an aside, a lot of allied leaders were lefties during the war, Curtin ( and later, Chifley), FDR, even Stalin. Of course, the dopey right will also tell you that because he led the National Socialist Party, Hitler was also a lefty, which must mean that Kim Jong-il is a great democratic leader, after all, it is the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (or something like that). On top of this, I can't think of one way that the policies of the Federal government have improved my life.
Which leaves Latham and the Diet-Liberals. We shouldn't have gone to Iraq, there are other priorities that we should have been attending to, like South-East Asian security; but now that we are there, we should stay there. Not because of any 'message' we might be sending, or any perceived appearance of 'weakness' but because it is only fit and proper that, when you contribute to making a mess, then you contribute to cleaning it up again. 'Bring the boys home' is a stupid policy. At least a labor government may delay the sale of Telstra, but it was those bastards who started the whole privatisation thing in the first place. As I have said before, I can think of no single instance when the privatisation of anything has improved my quality of life.
As I live in the bush, I suppose I should mention the Nationals. They are alleged to represent the bush (I'm not sure that it needs representing) and yet roll over on every major policy in order to preserve the coalition. I wouldn't vote for them anyway, but that's another matter.
The Greens seem to have some sort of ethical standards, but the talent pool could use some chlorine. The Democrats have pretty much used up all the good-will I may have had for them and I can't think of anybody else. If Screaming Lord Such hadn't died he could have started an Oz wing of The Monster Raving Loony Party. Perhaps we could get an Oz version of Jello Biafra's 1984 California Gubernatorial thing happening with Jay from Frenzal Rhomb. USAnus instead of California Uber Alles. Even revive one of the parties from the first ACT self-government elections, The Vine-Ripened Sun-Dried Tomato Party, or my personal favourite - The Party, Party, Party Party.
*Quote from a George Clooney movie, Three Kings(?).
Following a recent discussion in the pub, I had cause to embark on my first ever porn trawling expedition. Now, I've had occasion to have an occasional glance at pictorial representations of consenting adults poking their parts at each other, but porn has never really rowed my boat; if I ever get the urge to throw myself around the lounge room (which is rarely) I like to believe that I have enough memories of actual events to think about without resorting to google-searching for inspiration.
Be that as it may, my little research expedition taught me a few things.
People have very diverse opinions on what constitutes 'sexy'. Myself, I think a lot of these things constitute waste disposal, but hey, who am I to judge?
Some of these opinions are somewhat disturbing - promoting incest as stimulating is a bit scary, to say the least. Seventy year-old ladies are nice, too, but I don't particularly want to... well you get the idea.
Anybody who can't find child pornography on the net probably can't find the 'on' button. See, there are these sites that have lots of photos illustrating the various categories of porn that they have linked to. Every single one of them, bar none, had photos of girls who could not possibly have been close to the age of consent. In fact some of them looked like they had yet to reach double figures. Most of these pictures were of the girl alone, but when there was someone else in the photo (particularly with the very young girls) it was always a grey-haired old man. I wasn't game to take my 'research' further because I didn't want to be caught up in some international sting so I don't know what is going on at the sites they are promoting, but I doubt it is very tasteful.
Now, what I'd like to know is, how do these people get away with it? These are not 'secret' sites where you have to be able to sneak under the radar to access them. These sites leap out in front of you whether you're looking for them or not. Surely they must come to the attention of whoever it is that looks after these things. I may be (am) naive, but I'm not fuckin' stupid, the technology exists, surely, to find these people. Or at least block their sites. I mean, if you block them often enough, it must become uneconomical to keep opening them.
Apart from all that, how could you possibly find that sort of shit exciting? I reckon I'm pretty open-minded, I very rarely get cranky at anybody and I'm certainly tolerant of other people's foibles and opinions, but these people are sick cunts. I'd like to personally kill all of them. Slowly.
Guess that makes me a sicko, too. Aah well.
Which reminds me of a (very old) joke:
Two social workers are walking down the street when they hear moans coming from up an alley. Going to investigate, they find a businessman who has been mugged. His face is bloody. His suit is ripped and torn. He is barely conscious. The first social worker turns to the second social worker and says "Wow, whoever did this really needs our help!"
