First the obvious one, that Roger Federer is unbeatable. Don't tell Marat Safin that. I don't dislike Federer; he's a bit boring, but he's inoffensive. I just get sick of people saying he's unbeatable, just like they did with Tiger Woods (who just won his first game in a hundred years). In the mean time, go Lley-Lley. I like him for the same reason that everyone else hates him. He's passionate, he leaves nothing open to doubt and he has bad taste in women. Next, the alleged experts in the financial industry. For reasons better left unsaid, this morning I had reason to glance through the Sun-Herald of January 16,apparently they'd been running some sort of stockbroking competition(Couldn't find a link for it.). I don't know how long the competition ran for, but there were eight contestants, who all finished within about eleven per cent of each other. There were five stockbrokers, an astrologer, a person I believe to be a fictional character and one portfolio was selected via the dartboard method so favoured by meteorologists. The astrologer came second, the dartboard fourth. So much for justifying the fleets of Mercs and Beemers. In the meanwhile, these same media financial types who organised this competition will be at pains to tell you that the sharemarket is a long-term proposition. Go figure.
We had a bit of a storm here yesterday. It didn't last very long, but it was fairly impressive all the same. We only got about 120 points here, whilst there was only 30 points over the cotton. There was quite a bit of lightning and wind to go with it. My lounge and dining room walls were facing the brunt of the wind. Both rooms have picture windows in them , the lounge window being slightly larger and the wall was flexing that much that the rain was coming through between the top of the window frame and the wall. The wind took the skillion off the side of the woolshed and blew one of the whirlybirds off my roof. We've been spending all day cutting up fallen branches and carting them away. To commemmorate this, I thought I'd show you a few old photos from a week or two ago.The first couple are from the north side of Dirranbandi. I took them on my way back from Gladstone. On the way up to Gladstone, these were ordinary Coolibah trees. Then came a hailstorm... This one is of the road between Bugilbone Siding and Pilliga. It looks all nice and green, doesn't it? Until you realise that most of the green is the stuff below. Don't know what it's proper name is, we call it roly poly and it is useless stuff, even rabbits won't eat it. Just down the road from where I took those photos, there is some dryland cotton. Looks like it was planted into wheat stubble. Grown as an opportunity crop, dryland cotton yields are much lower than irrigated cotton, but so are the input costs. Personally, I'd rather try sorghum. Finally, just for Hooch here is photo of my ute, on the road next to the dryland cotton.
Ahh well, I always liked Kimbo. Funny how the papers always see two defeats as a major problem, I seem to recall that Our Glorious Leader (hallowed be thy name) wasn't an instant hit.
The bloke came and put my satellite dish in yesterday when I was at work. Woo daddy, it's good. Previous to this I'd been on the world's slowest, most unreliable dial-up connection. Really slow; about9.6 kbps usually. Really unreliable; I could make a cup of coffee in the time it took to get connected, then it would drop out every time three crows landed on the wire. Not any more; now I'm on my way to having city style speeds; 512kbps download and 256kbps upload - not ADSL fast but still a lot better than I'm used to. This is only a cheapo 'pooter, so it only has 256k of whatever you have 256k of, what I want to know now is, is this the new limiting factor on download speed and if so, how hard is it to hot it up a bit? On a different subject, with my nbew-found bionic speed, I went on a bit of a blog-blitz last night; 81 of them, according to the tab thingy, didn't comment on hardly any of them, just had a look. Except that I tried to comment on this post over at Adrian's place. For some unknown reason it wouldn't let me post, so I'll try to remember what it was I was going to say and put it here. Henry Rollins is, musically, a bit of a non-event as far as I'm concerned, the Rollins Band and Black Flag just didn't do it for me. He is also a pretty ordinary TV show host, although that might be more the fault of the show than the host. However, he is a pretty articulate guy and has a good sense of humour.I remember him decribing how he performed at the same festival in Germany as Marilyn Manson. Manson was on in the daytime, and had the full make up and smoke effects and things going, Rollins reckoned they looked like the Addams Family at a barbecue. Manson tried to whip up the audience but, according to Rollins, "Germans aren't big on audience participation these days, in the thirties..." Any hoo, gotta go.
Gang oft agleigh. Or something. Anyhoo, I got away for a day, keeping to the backroads and visiting the scenic delights of Bugilbone and Pilliga before doing possibly irreparable damage to my liver at the Cuttabri Wine Shanty, which is the most substantial shanty I've seen in a while. The current building has been there since 1903, replacing an old Cobb & Co way-station which had burnt down. The current Proprietor, Bronwyn, is somewhat of a babe, too, which may or may not have contributed to my willingness to lay my liver on the line. I've got some pictures somewhere, when I can find my camera, including some of the ute for Hooch, but in the meantime, fuck it. So what time did my Dad decide to call on the morning after? 5:30 am of course, the time all reasonable people make phone calls. He was at St. George (NOT the one in Sinny) and wanted to know how to get to my place. Directions given, I put the ute into warp drive to get home first, via Wee Waa, Burren Junction, almost Walgett and the Ridge, where I stopped to purchase a christmas present for Dad, a limited edition John Murray print called, appropriately enough, "Waiting For Dad." I beat Dad home in time to make the place look like somebody lives here, luckily. He stayed five days, which was pretty cool, I like having Dad around. There's not much to say about those five days, nothing exciting happened. We watched videos of the entire '04 Speedway Grand Prix season, as Dad hasn't got pay TV and hadn't seen it yet. And talked a lot, mainly.
On a completely different subject, I'll give a few short spurts in the direction of the Tsunami. You will note that I didn't say 'Tsunami Disaster'. Not because it isn't a disaster, but because the phrase has become a slogan; like 9-11, or even worse 'Ground Zero' when referring to the WTC site. To the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly minimal), 'Ground Zero' refers to the terrestrial point directly below the epicentre of an atmospheric nuclear explosion. As far as I am aware, parking an aeroplane in an insurance office is not the same thing as a nuclear explosion. Stop being melodramatic, it is superfluous. Sorry for the disruption, normal service will resume as soon as possible; in fact I think I see it coming now. Short Spurts: a) Why won't India accept humanitarian aid? (Not a rhetorical question.) b) Why won't Thailand accept economic assistance? (See a) c) For the very first time since his tilt at being opposition leader in the whatevers, I've had reason to believe Alexander Downer may, in fact, be a decent human being. d) Ditto John Howard, although I'm not 100% convinced about this aide package for Indonesia. I mean, the package itself is a good thing, but are the countries which didn't do so well proportionately going to be a bit shirty? Also, on a more cynical note, it's $1,000,000,000 well invested; it creates (hopefully) a sense of friendship and indebtedness in the Indo government, it lessens the amount of leverage J.I. recruiters may have when seeking disaffected recruits but most importantly of all, it is a small price to pay for taking away the only piece of the political landscape the ALP still had a claim on: the Moral High Ground. e) I heard a bloke on the wireless a couple of days after the Tsunami. He'd just reurned from Thailand and pissed and moaned about how difficult life was; all the hotel staff had deserted and he couldn't get anything to eat or any help, boo hoo hooo.... Newsflash, dickhead: All the hotel staff who 'deserted' were probably dead, or their families werer dead, friends dead, homes gone, neighbourhoods gone, etc, etc. No wonder they call us Ugly Australians. f) On the other hand, two different women made me proud to be an aussie. The first, whose name I missed, was in Indonesia when the shit happened, realising that there was nothing there she could do to help and that if she stayed, she was contributing to the problem, she came home. Before she left the airport she contacted the Red Cross (as I trust you all have, credit cards ready) and is now working as a volunteer in the call centre. (As an aside for the blokes, she is also somewhat of a babe. Think what would happen if Natalie Imbruglia ate properlyfor a month). The other women, whose name is Calder or Cauldwell or something like that, is a medical student who was holidays in Sri Lanka. She helped to set up and operate a temporary morgue. Equality is bullshit. Some people are definitely better than others.
So, I'm having a go at this W:Bloggar thingy. We'll see. What I want to tell you about today kiddies, is one of the less fortunate events I was forced to suffer through over the christmas period. You see, it wasn't all sweetness and light and conspicuous consumption; ohhhh no. I was forced to suffer through an abominable experience, one I feel sure that the gubment doesn't know about or there would be legislation introduced into parliament to outlaw the practice. I am of course talking about the disturbing habit some teenagers have of watching Mary-Kate and Ashley movies. I did manage to escape very early on in the piece and with the help of a few counselling sessions and much beer imbibing, I feel that I am now ready to talk about my experience. The aforesaid movie is apparently a road movie. Because of my extraordinary powers of perception, I was able to deduce this quite early in the piece as a) all the action took place in a motor car - quite a nice motor car actually, spoiled only by the presence of annoying teenagers,b) there was frequent mention in what can only be loosely described as 'dialogue' of the recent acquisition of Drivers Licencs and c) just in case you still didn't get it, there were frequent interjctions into the conversation of "Roadtrip! Woo!" with attendant arm waving and high fives. I don't know what happened after that; by this time I had realised the apalling depth to which I had sunk in my depravity and took steps to rectify it.* This is the first time I have seen any of the Olsens work since they were little, alledgedly cute, kids on Full House, or whatever it was. I had, of course seen magazine articles about them (Which one is anorexic, at least, which one admits she is anorexic?), I had problems trying to work out their popularity then; now I'm completely confused. They can't act, they can't dance, they can't sing and they've got heads on them like robbers dogs. They look like a Saturday Night Live parody of stereotypical California mallrats, right down to their Gladstone small pigeon necks. What's to like? I'm so confused. Meanwhile, I'm outta here again, cop you later. *Actually, I'd been snoozing on the couch when the horror started. The steps to rectification consisted of a) getting up and b) leaving the room. Pretty easy, really.
So OK, I'll have another go at doing this post. Well, a similar one, anyway. Which is to say
that I'll just dribble some shit and pretend that it's the same as the shit I dribbled the other day. Where do I start?
I know, I'll tell you why my new boss is better than my old boss.
At my last job they would occasionally get my wages wrong. I would leave a note on the next fortnights time card saying “ I was paid for xxx hours, according to my diary, I did xxx+2 hours.” My boss got me a diary for christmas. At my new job, the boss gave me a carton of beer and a card with the following inscription: Thanks for your dedication and support in '04, here's to a wetter and better '05.” Oh, and there was a cheque for $2,000 in the card, too. His parents also bought me a christmas gift.
At my last job, the boss would occasionally shout a couple of beers. Literally a couple. If there were seven of us, he would bring out fourteen beers. That were given to him by a chemical company or some such. At my new job, the boss will bring out an esky full of stubbies, for no apparent reason, he pays for them, too.
Two weeks after I started my last job, I ended up in hospital for three days when an implement dropped on my foot because of a faulty jack. The day I got out of hospital I was hopping down the street on my crutches when the boss drove past; he waved and kept going. When I bought my ute, the boss asked me how I was going to pick it up. The plan at that stage was to ride the bike to Brisbane, find somebody with a loading bay, put the bike on the back and drive home. “Don't be silly,” said the boss, “I've got to send some stuff into the accountant, the missus can take it in person.”
So I got a lift to the door, an eight hour drive away, and Mrs. Boss got to go shopping.
In two and a half years at my last job, I was invited to the boss's house a grand total of... never. In four or five months here, I have been to the boss's house for two separate kid's birthdays, an anniversary of something or other, and a couple of times at random.
Actually, I've been thinking about how well I get treated by people in general. Remember the pub by torchlight? It occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that I'd never paid for the food or drinks. I asked the publican-ess about it and she asked me what else I wanted for christmas.
Speaking of christmas, I found out at noon on christmas eve that after doing a few weeks of sixteen and seventeen hour days that I could have the next four days off. I headed for CQ and lobbed on old friends. I've known them for ten years, but hadn't spoken with them for about six months (I'm not good at that whole “keeping in touch” thing.). Despite this, my bed was already made up, there was a bottle of Canadian Club on the sideboard and a gift with my name on it under the tree “Just in case you turned up.” The best part happened when the fifteen year old daughter gave me a big hug and kissed me on the cheek, all the while saying something I couldn't understand but which ended in the three scariest words known to man - “I love you.”
That's all you're getting for now, I've got an early night and I'm going to see if I can get eight hours in.
A brief recap of the aborted post:
My new boss is better than my old boss (apologies to Pete Townshend)
I get treated well by a lot of people,
A fifteen year old girl told me she loved me,
I bought a new (to me) ute,
I've got a few days off from about the middle of next week, so if Dad doesn't land on me I'm going to go for a ride; all invitations or suggestions gratefully accepted, unless you're a Scientologost and you want invite me in for a personality analysis.
