Fire Away

What does this bitch want?

I laugh to myself, kind of nervously. You know, if that is your first thought when somebody approaches you at work, it is probably time to get a new job.

It is what I think when Fatty HR Chick approaches me with "that" smile on her face. "That" smile that told me that she wants something. (Oh yes, as HR chicks do, pass it on, just keep passing your work on.)

I reach for my mouse and clicked on Seek. The mouse, the modern day equivalent of the ruby slipper. Click your mouse and say three times. "Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here."

Poof! Whoosh up into the sky. Whirling around and around and around until I land somewhere new and exciting, where that is nobody knows. Come on, thrill me...

I open one eye. Nothing. Fatty HR chick is still barrelling towards me, Doh! "That" look still on her face.

I look up and smile. Yes, bitch? "Hi. How are you?" I say. Smile. The smile isn't even forced, says the spider to the fly. I have been doing this long enough to know how to fake a sincere smile, as I mentally plot someone's death.

She shrugs and scrunches her nose, clearly she thinks she is Tabatha Stevens, only seventy years, and 100 hundred kilos, too late to pull that one off  “Can I ask a favour?” she says.

Oh, here we go. “Sure.”

“I have this small problem.”

You want me to do your work for you, but you are not sure how to get me to do it. “Fire away.”

I love that expression. I mentally picture 6 men standing behind her with shot guns, each blindfolded. They all fire at once.  I can see the bullets spinning through the air. Her head explodes like a watermelon, red pulp covers everything, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, as the bullets hit her in the back of the head, simultaneously. She falls to the ground like a bag of shit.

“I have a contract that I just need to…”

Just as I thought, do your own work. I stop listening. Blah, blah, blah blah is all I can hear, set to Shine On You Crazy Diamond. I really should listen, I guess. But, I am astral travelling high above our heads. There is purple and red and blue shooting through the crisp air brightly and shiny, like streamers flung of electric magical colour. It is brilliant. It is gorgeous. Everything is beautiful  I'm inside one million neon signs...

“So, what do you think?... Josh?”

Come on you target for faraway laughter... The beautiful light suddenly fades. The music stops. Gone. “Oh, um, er, I don’t know.” I stare her in the eye and dare her to question my response.

She folds like a failed bluff in poker. “Oh... um... rightio then... I’ll investigate... um... a little further then... shall, I?”

“Okay,” I say.

There is a moment where we both just gaze at each other. She is not quite sure of the answer I have given her. But, I am sending thought blockers through my death stare straight into the cavity where her brain ought to be. She is wondering if she should question me further, but she is not really sure what question she should ask. My mental mind fuck is working its magic on her, she is putty in my hands. Oh! Yuk! She is white gloop on my fingers, I shake her off, she rematerialises in front of me.

Her lip curls.

She is a deer caught in headlights, such is my mind control. I am staring at her unblinking. I am beginning to imagine ants eating out her eyeballs. She spontaneously rubs her face. She rubs again, she is not really sure why she is touching her eyes. It is as if she has hey fever, but worse.

“Okay,” she says. She shrugs and scrunches up her nose again. It still has no effect on me, that cutesy nose move, nice try Tabatha. The crow’s feet appear at the corners of her smiling eyes, momentarily. Crease, crease. He skin reminds me of brown paper. She makes big eyes. I imagine what she'd look like with myxomatosis. She opens her mouth and her tongue makes a kind of clack noise, which I am not at all sure she means to make. She backs away.

I spin around back to my screen. I can feel her presence less and less behind me. I am a star ship commander, the two screens in front of me morph into the universe. I say, "Engage." The milky way around me melts into liquid light as we hit warp speed and I am suddenly a thousand light years away from the mundane problems of the day.

Tony and Andy

It will be a late spring wedding, on the north island, which is all the rage, I hear. The simple, yet sophisticated, ceremony will be followed by a High Mass, where a collection will be taken. (To help solve the revenue difficulties) The couple have a list at David Jones, of course. I hear the happy grooms will be wearing blue. They will be honeymooning on Great Kepple - budgie smugglers for both. They ask that their privacy be respected at this joyous time.

Changing Weather

Don't know why the sun won't stay up in the sky

Changing weather

Since my man and I just like being together,

It can cloud over, whatever

Oh, yeah

Life is good, happy and smiles everywhere

Changing weather

And I just can't get my goodself together,

I'm lazy all the time

Love makes me lazy all the time

When he came along contented walked in and met me.

Oh, yeah

He and I, the old rockin' chairs will get us.

All I do is hope the universe above will let us walk in the sun we adore.

We can go on, can go on, can go on, ev'ry thing we want is above

Changing weather

Since my man and I got together,

It can cloud over, whatever

We just like being together

All the time.

Changing Weather

I am getting so sick of the cold, me, the person who quite likes the cold, me, an inhabitant of the great southern town. (Sorry Tasmania, I'm not considering Hobart, despite it being Australia's 2nd harbour city) But it has been a cold year, I don't remember it being so cold so late into the year in other years. (We had open fires into September)

But, the last few days have been gorgeous, crisp and sunny. You want to do things when the weather is nicer. You want to leave the crypt more often when the sky is blue and the sun is shining.

I've been up on the kitchen roof fixing the broken kitchen chimney flu, which, on the high roof of an old terrace really tests my fear of heights. Sam encouraged me and he got on the roof with me, terrifying me when he got close to the edge and peered over. We managed to fix it, muddling through as we do. We reinstalled the old cap and concreted all around it.

Maybe after that we felt inspired... warmed by the sun.

I've repotted all my plants. A little late, sure, but it is still spring, after all. The sun does make us smile, about that I think there is little doubt. And although there is great pleasure to be had from open fires and long walks on a wind swept beach, I think the sunshine does make us feel alive.

The leaking toilet, leaking guttering, leaking roof and building a carport are all next. Let's hope it is a nice long summer.

It Looks Like A Murder Weapon

Do you ever look at knives you have in your kitchen and shiver and think that is not a knife, that is a murder weapon.

I have one that gives me the creeps. It is a ridiculous thing to say, I know, but... it is long and thin and sharp and kind of turns up slightly at the end. And it is really pointy. And I think it every time I use it.

Maybe it is just me? Maybe, I'm a bit weird. I don't know. Maybe, I was a murderer in a past life? I must ask David what he thinks about that.

Just saying. Funny the things you think, hey?

Keep the drug cupboard locked. Aha. And what the hell is tissue glue?

I Heard Sam Shout, “Shit!”

We took Buddy for a walk. He ran around the off-leash, it is lovely to watch him run about, almost, with a smile on his face. He's got his routine now, it doesn't seem to matter that it isn't completely surrounded by fences. He leaps about with the other dogs, he runs off on his own.

We came home and Sam cooked tomato and chorizo sausage pasta for dinner. I was in the lounge room when I heard Sam shout, “Shit!” which was followed by a crash of the saucepan on the tiled kitchen floor. Sam had spilt the boiling pot of water over his arm. He was just moving the cooked pasta from the stove to the strainer when the tea towel, he was using to hold the saucepan handle, caught on the top of the stove, tipping the saucepan over his right hand.

I told him to put his arm under the water.

What to do, this was potentially a bad burn, probably was a bad burn. I knew he should douse it with cool water. But what else?

I googled what we should do. It said that he should keep his arm under the cold water for at least half an hour.

Sam kept trying to take his arm out from under the water. “Leave it there,” I said. He kept turning the water down. I kept turning it up. “Now is not the time to be stingy with the water,” I said.

What to do?

I was also so hungry that I had to eat. I hadn't eaten since lunch time.

So while Sam had his arm under the water, I finished the dinner and filled the lunchboxes.

I called Luke and discussed it with him. He said to go to the hospital.

Sam ate his with one hand, as his other hand remained under the running water.

I ate mine, I had to eat. I was shaking, I presumed from hunger.

As soon as we’d finished eating, we left for the hospital.

“This is not the time to act like a hero,” I said. “If they think you are in pain we will get seen quicker.”

As soon as Sam took his arm out from under the water it began to hurt and he was in real pain, for real, no acting required.

We got in the car. Sam began to moan.

We parked in Gertrude Street, just at Fitzroy Street, it seemed the easiest way to go. There was a car park right there, we could be hunting for one otherwise. I probably could have got closer, but would we have been able to park? The last thing I wanted to do was drive around and around.

We ran up Fitzroy Street, the wrong way, as though being on foot made any difference to a one way street. Sam was in lots of pain by this stage.

Emergency didn't seemed too busy. The triage was vacant.

The nurse wrapped Sam’s arm in cling film. The nurse sympathised with his pain. She winced and grimaced at all the right breaks in the conversation. Then she told him to sit on the green and beige chairs.

We sat and we sat. We watched the carnival perform in front of us. Ah emergency, where the flotsam and getsom of society gather. It is the sea of life flowing into the drain of suffering.

The blond junkie train wreck with sores on her face who continually headed outside for a smoke, seemingly, physically holding her garb together.  She seemed to change clothes constantly. At one point her gown parted and I’m sure her pants were open and all I saw was dark, but I looked away quickly before I focussed on, what may have been, her snatch.

There was the dark-haired young chick who was delusional who also continually headed outside for a smoke. She was painfully thin in her track pants and ugg boots, as she walked she kind of led with her neck, like something drawn by Dr Seuss.

The obese guy coughed and coughed, as he slept in the chair. His jeans bulged out with his skirt of flesh below.

The (what looked like) Muslim family sat around worrying about their son who was in some bad way beyond the emergency ward doors. I joked with Sam that he was some musso kid who had tried to blow himself up. Sam laughed between groans  Their family seemed to be the drama of the night. The kids mother seemed to be really stressed. Their son may have been the reason for the police presence, but I don't know.  The male members of the family, the multitude of beefy blokes, all had beards like they were the Muslim Brotherhood. Mum couldn't stop taking.

There was the happy old chick in the wheelchair in her cheap silk oriental dressing gown, pj's and wool-lined slippers who had a bad foot, who was busily writing in a notebook. She seemed very please with her writing as she'd stop occasionally, smile, kind of wave her hands slightly as she read back over what she'd written, then she'd write some more. She'd, apparently, had been waiting for hours. Her daughter turned up at some point and sat with her.

There was the old woman in a tracksuit with the huge arse, as though she had many pads down there, who could hardly walk who waited with her son to have her diabetes checked. Every time she moved she moaned. Her son tried to comfort her, but she just berated him in return. She was cranky with pain, well, she was cranky.

There was the beautiful young couple who, for some reason, got to sit on the chairs right by triage that nobody else was allowed to sit on. Every time a new nurse came on who tired to move them she would be shut down and they'd remain where they were. They were taken through quietly at varying points.

There was the Asian chick, in the leopard skin jacket and hectic orange patterned plushy pants who’d taken a pill after which she’d felt deathly cold. She insisted on being seen, as she felt she was an emergency. She was told to wait on the green and beige chairs.

There was the woman with the shopping jeep who came in to have her chest listened to, who was told she should have an ECG. When she was told to wait, she said she wasn’t staying, thank you very much. “I’ll call an ambulance, luv, if I need to,” she said. “I’ve done it many times, darl.”

“I really would like you to stay,” said the nurse.”

“No, luv, I’m going home, I have to take the medicine,” she said matter of a factly. “I’ll call an ambulance, I have many times. Thank you very much.” And with that she wheeled her shopping trolley right out of the emergency door.

There was the mental/out of it guy, it is hard to tell, who kept coming in and bothering everyone. He kept coming and going with his various bags. At one point he came in with an extinguished, but previously lit, cigarette in his mouth, which one of the nurses questioned. "That's not burning, is it?" as he stood with his back to the wall making arm movements as though he was directing traffic. Then he departed and came back not long after with it burning, which he stubbed out in a bin, as if defiantly, then he left. Security arrived after that and he wasn’t seen again.

Sam was in agony for the first hour, or so.

All the time the glass door would slide open and somebody would call out a name. Sam kept saying his name, hoping they would say it too... but they didn't.

The Muslim family came in and out two by two. The mum stopped by us and sympathised with Sam's pain, like a mum would. I liked her after that.

The trashy blond bimbo would stagger back and grunt for the door to be opened for her.

The painfully thin dark-haired junkie came back from a smoke and sat herself down at the triage desk and said she knew the answers. "I know, I know, I know!" A nurse came out pretty quickly after that and led her away.

The obese guy would suddenly have a coughing fit in his sleep. You could hear him dislodging the lung butter.

Old happy in her wheelchair, suddenly she said she couldn't wait any longer. She got up marched over to the desk, berated the woman behind the counter, turned and marched out of the place. Her middle aged daughter went after her. "Mum...."


Oh yes, and crying woman came in late on crutches. She was crying with the pain of her back, from what I could ascertain. She'd been promised a stretched by the ambulance guys, but when she'd insisted on stopping outside for a cigarette the ambulance guys had taken off with her stretcher. How could she be expected to stand? Sob. How could she be expected to wait? Sob. What was she to do? Sob. "I only wanted a smoke... ahhh!"

But, then the doors slid open once more and the nurse said, “Mr Sam?”

We were taken to a room. It was about 10pm, maybe 10.30pm. We'd been waiting 3 hours.

Sam’s wrist had blown up with huge blisters by this point under the gladwrap. His skin had turned the colour of a cooked lobster.

The nurses came back and looked at Sam’s arm. They discussed de-roofing the blisters. Cutting them off. They talked about what dressing they would use. They prepared the bandages. And they left again.

The dark-hired delusional, who led with her neck, who had one particular nurse she told her conspiracy theories to, lost the plot at different times and had to be restrained. Code greys were called.

Nurses walked passed the door, then walked back. Everything seems to be steady and slow in emergency.

And mostly we waited. We read all the manuals, clearly we were in the burns room. I opened all the cupboard doors. I sat on the seat. I sat on Sam's bed. I walked to the door and looked out at the corridors. I walked back and sat on the seat.

Around 1am the nurses came back. “The doctor will be here shortly.” The nurses were nice, they sympathised with Sam.

Sometime after that our doctor, Henry, arrived. He said he’d need to go and talk to Plastics (whatever that is) as the burn was on a joint and he didn’t want to compromise the movement in the healing.

Henry got a registrar from Plastics, (whatever that is) to advise him on what to do.

The registrar from plastics came in and de-roofed the first blister with amazing skill, cut, cut, the yellow fluid dribbled down into the kidney dish, and it was done. Then Henry did the rest a little more shakily, with not such skilled hands. Each blister, one by one. The yellow fluid gushed from each inflated balloon of skin as it deflated under the scalpels incision, dribbling down into the kidney dish below, drip, drip, drip. Sam winched and rocked in pain. I held his other hand.

When he was finished Henry wrapped Sam's wrist in silver bandage, then wrapped it in gel bandages and then covered it in gauzed and then bandaged the whole thing up.

We got a script and some pain relief. We left Emergency after 2am.

Obese guy was still asleep in the chair.

Asian chick, in the leopard skin jacket and hectic orange patterned plushy pants was still waiting, looking very miserable.

Sunset in Greeves Street. I couldn't help but be taken with this.

I love the smell of the setting sun on a clear afternoon. I love that crisp light and those delicate colours. I love it when the day ends with loveliness.

I love that whoosh of the burner as the balloon flies over my house. My old dog Oliver used to bark at the balloons as they flew over him. Buddy barely opens an eye to look at them.

I've Been Sick

I had vomiting and the squirts all day yesterday, sure makes everything hurt today. I'm exhausted, quite frankly. Oh, don't you hate, it is the worst point to get to. Sometimes when I am throwing up I just feel like crying. I certainly moan, sometimes I hear myself as if I am listening to another person.

In 36 hours, I have eaten two small bowls of soup and have drunk a glass of apple juice and I still don't feel hungry. Just nothing, I have felt like eating nothing at all. The only think that I wanted was a few sips of apple juice every few hours. I don't know why it was apple juice? Shrug.

It is awful when the contents of your stomach is constantly half way to your mouth and your right hand vaguely smells of shit and you wonder if it will ever be safe to fart again. Don't get me wrong, I am always a good hand washer, I reckon that is why I don't get sick very often. I'm sure it is psychosomatic, there just always seems to be that suspect waft.

Scottish Rocky

Scottish Rocky is a sexy boy. Today he wore black jocks with thick white elastic, elastic like he had on a jock strap, sitting there at the lunch room table with his back to me as I entered. His shirt untucked, that fine spray of hair growing up his back from the crack in his arse.

I wonder what the girls think? I guess they look too. I wonder if they have the same dirty little secret, I'm guessing they do. Do girls like a glimpse of the crack in a boy's arse, like poofs do? I want slide my fingers into it, feel its furriness against my skin. Feel his warmth, you know, take his temperature with my pointer finger.

He's really lovely, too, like that makes it alright to perve on him, which of course it does. :)

Dumping the Prime Minister

I, actually, don't think this is the right course of action for the government, or the country. A Prime Minister should be elected and should stay as Prime Minister until there is an election that his party wins, or loses. This does not serve the country well, it only serves the politicians. This is the politicians governing for themselves. Put forward your best person, put forward your best policies and leave it up to the people of the country to decide if you are successful, or if you a fail.

It shouldn’t be the case that you only have to give it your best shot and if that doesn’t work you get to put somebody else up.

Four Prime Ministers in five years, this is not working.

Shopping Weekend

It was Bunnings and Uni Glow for the weekend. Home stuff and potting mix to attend to my pot plants and new clothes for both of us. Oxalis poison and new pots for herbs. Bags of potting mix. New Chinos and jeans for work, I'm down to one pair at present, how did that happen.

The weather was gorgeous. It is nice that spring is here. It is nice to have the doors and windows open again, to feel the warm breeze fill the room. Breath it in, great lung bucketfulls, it makes you feel alive. It makes you feel happy.

We ate a lot of soup, spicy soup. We ate shashliks and salad with smoked salmon stired through it. We ate fish steaks and Japanese sweet and sour pork, which was yum. Sam rolled me rice paper rolls for lunch. He's lovely.

One of my favourite things, my green glass vase

All The Best People

Today is the day of my favourite uncles birthday, if he was still alive. 

My favourite great aunt's birthday is tomorrow, if she was still alive. 

My brother and my other aunt's were last week, if she was still alive. 

Mine is next week. 

All of our birthdays gather together this time of year. 

A family full of Virgos. 

All the best people, and all, darling.

No, they are really. Virgos are the best people

Morning light looking towards Collingwood, in Gertrude Street

End Days For The Human Race

What a glorious morning it is in Melbourne Town. How beautiful nature truly is. To all those people who are concerned about planet earth, don't be. It is not the planet that is in its end days, it is us. Too stupid not to poison our own nest, too stupid to look after each other. We are the goners. What is there to save, I ask you? Half starving, half bloated. The 20th Century, the golden days of the human race. Over. Our halcyon years are behind us. Our parents and our parents parents lived in the golden era. If car design is any guide, and I say it is, we peaked in 1958/1959, roughly 150 years after industrialisation and roughly 150 years after that we'll be gone. So, stop you whinging and ya carry on, and your meanness to your fellow man and enjoy the last 94 years of the human race, it will all be gone in a blink of an eye. 150 years after that, and there will be no trace of us left.

2259. "Nothing to report," says the worker cockroach to his benevolent overlord Mantis.

Is it blue, or is it gold? You know, like the dress on the internet

Scottish Rocky Wore Blue Jocks

Scottish Rocky wore midnight blue undies. He goes to lunch before me and when I head into the lunch room, he is at his seat with his back to the door, with the undies of the day on display, as I enter him... er, the room.

I'm a dirty perve for a flash of a guy's undies, I don't mind admitting it.

Sexy things, guy's undies.

Ee By Gum Stick Your Finger Up Your Bum

Ee by gum stick your finger up your bum. 

I'm going for a walk, to clear me head and to wobble me fat arse until it is shed... 

by god, I'd rather be dead, than red, no I'd rather be fed. Or wed? 

Or in bed? with Fred. Speaking of fingers up your...

Wish me luck, as I head out into the yed... onder. What a head. Spliff in my gob

By promised good health, I am led. 

Do you believe the bullshit you are fed? 

There is a thread, they said that will put you into bed, with a sore head.

That is why I walk instead. 

What I said. 

Earphones in my ears. 

Off I sped. 

Cough, cough,

I'm ready, nicely de-stress-ed.

Scottish Rocky

I reckon Scottish Rocky would have a big sausage on him. He has a big sausage on him, you can see it. You can kind of see it with the way he walks, like he has something big stuffed down there. I can see it when he is in the lunch room eating his lunch, his pants bulge out noticeable as he sits there, usually playing on his mobile phone.

I can't help but picture him playing with it, as the microwave churns and thunks and spins around. I can see Rocky's pants unzipped, I can see his (stripy, I don't know why) cotton jocks hooked under his balls, I can see his hand wrapped tightly around his thick shaft thwacking away. 

I can see his legs stretch out straight. I can see his left hand unhook his jocks from his balls releasing them. I can see his big cock go rock hard in his thumping hand. I can see him throw his head back. I can hear the silent scream. I can see his face screw up. I can see his jizz fly into the air like a sprinkler on a summers day.

The girls at the table look over momentarily and then look away, without missing a word.

Ding ding, the microwave sounded.

Rocky looks up and smiles almost on queue.

I shake my head.

Balloons in the morning

My favourite green

Tony Abbott Reject

Share "Tony Abbott Reject" if you think that a man who thinks it is perfectly appropriate to bomb Syria to get an advantage in the polls for the Canning bi-election is unfit to lead Australia.

Oh Really Tony Abbott

If conservative politicians really had to admit how they feel, they don't care if refugees live or die. Tony Abbott doesn't care if refugees live or die, Tony Abbott only cares about Tony Abbott.

He says he has increased the number of refugees Australia is taking by 4000. No mention of the 6000 he'd cut them by previously. So we are still 2000 down on what we used to take.

Business As Usual

Kirin text me saying she'd be happy to answer texts, also rather mysteriously saying that perhaps I should delete the text after I had read it, very Mission Impossible, I thought.

I was at work at 8am. Business as usual. No one was saying anything.

Perry called me at 8am to ask if it was the anniversary of Tom’s death and how many years had it been? 8 years. I'd completely forgotten. I took me away from myself for a moment, to some nice thoughts, to something that was real. Thanks Perry.

Fatty Cake continued her sweet little-girl voiced hatchet woman routine. I don't know why I keep thinking it isn't going to go well for me, but Fatty and I continue in a silent truce. I try not to be too resistant to her charms, and she continues to be chummy.

No sugary treats today, though.

I came home at lunchtime and ate lunch with Buddy. Not that he deigned to come inside.

Fatty Cake asked me about some paperwork that needed checking.

“Wouldn’t Kirin need to check this before it was processed?”

What could I say, it is time to dump Kirin in it, not that I really wanted to, but I did, it was the truth. “Um, er, I think she is supposed to.”

“I see,” said Fatty cake. Well, he expression said this, even if her words didn’t.

Kirin had to make a decision by today. I didn’t hear what the decision was. As much as I like Kirin, and I do, despite her short comings, I hope she leaves, then there could be some movement with my role.

I don’t care what happens, obviously I will be upset if they get rid of me too, essentially, if that happened, I have simply extended my temp role for a number of months. Whatever? I don’t care. This is a circus, really.

We’ll see.

I left work at normal time. I guess I should have stayed longer.

We took Buddy for a walk. A bit stoned. We smoked the end of the pot. Boo Hoo.

We ate stir fried vegies, and egg and spam, for dinner.

We went to bed at 10.30pm.