Johnny Castaway*

[This is a backdated post] 

When other people think about getting stranded on a deserted island I assume they're contemplating whether they would end up falling into one of the following familiar categories:

• Tom Hanks in Castaway
• Robinson Crusoe
• The Swiss Family Robinson
• Lord of the Flies
• The Admirable Crichton

... or striking out in their own inimitable way (either through extra hardcore survival-at-the-cost-of-all-else behaviour or double extra competence).

I bounce back and forth between the 'I would love to be stranded on a deserted island rather than in this meeting/yes this traffic jam is annoying but you would ascribe less importance to it after being stranded without modern conveniences' curse/blessing thought model; and the 'no but how would you really?' theoretical mindset.

Even if I start with the curse/blessing thought pattern it quickly slips into the theoretical because that's more interesting.

You start with the usual suspects:

• I'm going to need fresh water (Are there pools or springs on the island? Is it a tropical island that has coconuts I can drink from?)
• I'm going to need shelter (Are there materials I can easily build with? Are there caves? Are the caves safe or filled with creepy bugs/snakes/bat guano? Is the weather warm enough that I don't need to go crazy with the construction?)
• I'm going to need food (Are there animals on the island? Would I actually be able to hunt them? If not, how difficult/dangerous would fishing be? Can I safely identify any edible plant life?)

But after that I start getting down into the details, either those that people might not think about or those that people might not think about that much:

• Would I be eaten alive by friggin' insects?
• What is the likelihood of heat exhaustion/super sunburn?
• If there are animals on the island, how many are there? If there are and I'm capable of hunting them, how often should I be eating meat to a) keep myself healthy and b) make sure I don't chomp my way through the population at a non-sustainable rate?
• Would it be better to avoid land animals and the possibility of worms other contaminants/infestations they might contain and stick to seafood?
• Are there dangers with the fish (outside of blowfish = bad) that I don't know about?
• Are any of the plants or fish etc that I'm depending on seasonal?
• Are the plants I'm eating abundant and/or self-seeders or am I likely to nom my way through the entire lot and then find myself nomless?
• Is the likelihood of passing vessels dictated by the seasons? (eg, lots of tourists in late spring/summer/early autumn and then nooooooothing through late autumn/winter/early spring)
• Am I looking at the possibility of tropical storms?
• Assuming I've washed ashore only with the clothes/accessories I'm wearing am I likely to be able to fashion basic tools or even start a fire?
• Will I be able to fish with a line (that I'm assuming I make myself) or is my fishing success going to depend on being able to stab fish out of the water?
• Am I going to get myself investigated and/or sampled by a local shark/predator if I try to swim out to more fish-rich waters?
• What if - just to flip shit around - I'm stranded on an island in the Northern Hemisphere? We're used to thinking of desert islands as tropical paradises where food grows, the weather ain't too bad, and you have materials to work with. If you're stuck on one of the windswept islands off of Scotland all you will have to work with is grass and maybe shellfish that cling to the rocks. There aren't likely to be trees or animals, probably no fresh water, probably no shelter, swimming to fish would be freezing and you wouldn't be able to see anything in the darker waters... Yeah you'd probably die of exposure, curled up on the grass...
• If you're on an island where are you aren't going to be immediately starved/frozen/poisoned/chomped to death, will you be able to stay mentally strong and healthy? Or will you be OK until you've got yourself set up and then give into despair once you realise that maybe you won't be discovered/rescued?

I think the desert island was the original 'how would you survive the end of the world?' scenario for kids who grew up before the apocalypse became such a central theme in our entertainment industry.
Whereas kids born after 2000 will be assessing their ability to survive based on the zombie apocalypse, the rise of the machines, contagion-based wipe out of a large portion of the world's population, or alien invasion, the seeds of survival planning were planted in my brain by the idea of being stranded on an island or in the wilderness.
It was then built upon by books like:

• The Lake at the End of the World by Caroline MacDonald
• The Cay by Theodore Taylor
• a bit of googling suggests Wolf of Shadows by Whitley Strieber might be one of the other books I remember
• Monkey Station by Ardath Mayhar

Even as a kid you understand that the desert island was about self-sufficiency as there is no society to depend upon, that it would also test your ingenuity and mental resilience.
Are you going to sit on the beach sobbing in the foetal position? Or are you going to at least try to get shit done?
Trying doesn't guarantee survival of course but are you the kind of person who will keep fighting for life or the kind who just waits for someone else to save you?

Anything that prompts you to ask yourself 'how much of this could I do myself?' or 'is there knowledge that I've never bothered to acquire because we can pay for goods and services and have them provided for us?' tends to prove fascinating because at least for me it tends to lead to an assessment of the structure of society and the role that plays in dictating the tools and materials available and lifestyles these things are able to support.

I suppose I could just imagine myself swaying back and forth in a hammock, enjoying a primitive fruit cocktail mixed in a coconut shell but even imaginary relaxed-me would only be able to relax if she knew that she had adequate shelter, water and food.
And would that involve having to store food for the non-fruiting times/winter?
And would that mean trying to form pottery and working out how to pickle food in a way that kept it viable and didn't make it poisonous?
And could you harvest sea-salt in a manner that allowed you to salt fish in a way that preserved it without rendering it nigh on useless?

And... and... and...?

Yeah, I can't really do the 'imagine a kind of non-optional holiday' daydreaming.
But I can consider logistics like a motherhugger.



*When we were kids we had the Johnny Castaway screen saver on our family computer and we spent more time watching the little screen saver man's adventures than we did using the computer. We were easily entertained and always convinced that one day we'd see him do something he'd never done before. Even now if one of us hums in a certain way the other two will know exactly what we're imitating.
Oh look, he's on Youtube! Yep, reeeally easily entertained :-D
In our defence it looks like there are 40 minutes worth of scenes so there would eventually be unseen ones popping up, prompting a flurry of excitement.
PS. Johnny Castaway would have died of dehydration and/or heatstroke and/or scurvy! Look at that island!

Afternoon Puzzles

Dear police officers,

Why do you like setting up the breathalysing stations at 1pm on a Thursday?

I know Thursday is pay day for a lot of people but how many of them have managed to gather up their pay and get drunk by 1pm in the afternoon?


I know the point is to set up the stop points in unexpected places and at unexpected times so people can't prepare or anticipate or avoid you but when you set them up in places hardly anyone goes or at times when it is highly unlikely anyone would be pickled...

Do you actually want to catch anyone, police?

Or do you find it annoying and just want to meet your 'yes, I set up a bloody breathalyser station and tested people this bloody week' quota with as little paperwork required as possible?

Because almost every time I have to stop and puff into that little testing device it seems to be at a time of the day when you would not be netting a huge catch.


I'm not sure if I'd be more worried to find out that you were all fed up and listless and feeling unmotivated and unappreciated and just going through the motions or to find out that you are on the ball and there is an underacknowledged culture of morning and midday drinking that I have not heard about...

If it's the first, hey, you guys are doing good stuff, keep up the good work, you look cute in your checker-brimmed caps.

If it's the second, don't tell me, I'll just keep driving carefully and watching out for idiots and not worrying that the breakfast boozing population of Australian could wipe me out at any moment.

Just In Case You Haven't Seen It Yet

Public safety campaigns usually go the 'ominous music, harsh photographic filters' angle to scare you with the idea of what could happen if you are cavalier with your person or short of attention.
These tend to be shocking the first time and then either annoying or - for some people - traumatising after that.

Metro Trains in Melbourne decided to go in completely the other direction and I don't know about you but this message is sticking with me a lot more successfully than the 'OMG YOU'RE DOOMED!' style campaigns.

Plus the animation is adorable and I've had the song stuck in my head for days now :-P

Going Wild

For the last year or so, my brain has obviously been developing some new neural pathways or mutating for maximum efficiency of getting really excited about random stuff because every couple of weeks it seems to bail me up in the corner like a cheerful drunk at a party and go 'HEY, YOU REMEMBER WHEN-' and just won't shut up about whatever it is into at the moment.

One of the things it's been yammering about recently is camping.

My family hasn't been camping for years.

The last time I remember was... 2004, just before I had my wisdom teeth out and was consigned to the scrap heap with the rest of the unwise.

And I haven't got any friends who go camping regularly - if at all - so I haven't gone on any exciting non-family camping trips since then either.

But at the moment it is all I can think about.

I want to go camping.

I want to put a tent, an air mattress, a sleeping bag, a handful of clothes and a bucketful of bug spray into my car and piss off somewhere camping.

I know that there is a nostalgia factor.

That there are things about camping that are extra annoying in any setting and things that are extra annoying in specific settings*.

I like the simplicity of only having what you brought with you.

No paralysis of choice on what to do because you've only got what you brought with you and the location you're in as options.

I like waking up going 'Jesus Christ, it must be like 10am! I must have slept in like crazy because it is BAKING in here!' and getting out of your tent to find that it's actually 7:30am and pleasantly mild once you're not inside a synthetic chamber of temperature amplification.

I like not having electricity because you have to REALLY want to finish that chapter in the book to sit there holding a book in one hand and a torch in the other.
Or with a torch clamped between chin and neck.
Or with the torch stuck in your mouth like the world's most unsuccessful pacifier.

I like being able to sit around in a folding chair or flop around in a hammock and not having to think 'I should get up and do that housework/shopping/organising/mending' because you've left all that bullshit at home.

I like the food, even when you cock it up.

It's handy that this trek in Nepal is going to have a camping component so I can calm my jonesing body down and get it to focus on other things that its sudden resurgent camping addiction**.

And when I get back and it's all summer and lovely, I might somehow manage to fit in some camping.

Though I'll be fighting the rest of Australia to find room anywhere decent at that time of year...



*In specific settings this will either relate to the terrain, the weather, or your fellow campers (e.g. drunks staggering home loudly late at night or tiny children running about screaming ridiculously early in the morning. Though if the kids run screaming around the tents of those shitty drunks while they're getting over their hangovers... Heh heh.)

**In Nepal I'll probably be distracted from my camping addiction by how tired I am and how my feet don't love me no more.

The Sunnies Saga

I admit I get a bit attached to things.

Not in a deep emotional way, for the most part, but I don’t like throwing things out while they still work and I don’t like losing things when I’m still using them.

So when I couldn’t find my sunglasses on Saturday when taking the family dogs for a walk, I assumed I’d left them at my flat.

When I got back to my flat and remembered to look around for them, they weren’t there either.

In the car?

Nope.

Dang...

This meant one of two things.

I hadn’t searched around at my parents’ house thoroughly enough or I’d lost them somewhere.

This was bound to drive me crazy.

I hate losing things.

I did some more searching.

I texted people I’d spent time with at the end of the week.

I did some extra searching in some slightly outlandish places where I might have put sunglasses down but would have been highly unlikely to.
Example: the freezer.

I admitted that they were gone and that as they were only a $10 pair of sunnies that my brother had bought from a petrol station once and given to me when I needed a pair, I should just let it go.

I didn’t let it go.

The last place I remembered having them was in my friend’s car on the way out for dinner and a movie with mates.

I definitely had them in the car on the way there.

I didn’t remember having them on the way home and didn’t have them after that.

Craps.

This meant I’d either left them at the restaurant or I’d dropped them in the cinema.

If I’d left them in the restaurant they might still be around but by now it’s Monday night and there’s a chance they might have been tossed or mislaid or accidentally tidied away.

If I’d left them in the cinema they were almost certainly gone.
Either kicked under a seat, trodden on, thrown out, picked up.
Much less of a likelihood that they would have ended up in a lost property box.

So, fingers crossed, I called up the restaurant.

They were there.

They had my sunnies.

The girl who answered the phone just happened to be the girl who had served us that night.

Hooray!

Of course… The thing about this restaurant is that it is an hour away from my flat…

What a sane person would do – especially a sane person who is soon going to buy a higher quality pair of sunglasses for her trip to Nepal – would be forget the sunglasses.
Tell the nice lady on the phone that it was OK to either keep them or toss them, whatever she felt like.

That’s what a sane person would do.

Guuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeess who just took a two hour round trip to pick up her sunglasses!?

Guuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeess who is super stoked about having her sunglasses back!?

Everything is right with the world again!

Really, I’m very very easily pleased.

The other amusing thing is that when bereft of sunglasses, my mother loaned me a pair that she assumed my sister had left at the family home.

I asked my sister about them.
Not hers.

I asked my brother’s girlfriend.
Not hers.

I cannot think of anybody else who has stopped by recently who could have left them here.

Mystery bonus sunglasses.

It’d be nice if they had a button or switch on them that give them infrared or x-ray filters but I expect they just keep the sun out of your eyes which is a handy feature that the human eye doesn’t offer as standard.

The Imagination Imbalance

I've never been afraid of thunderstorms.

As children my siblings and I would sit at the window and watch violent electrical storms tear the sky apart with blinding spidery fingers of light and covered our ears to dampen the inevitable deafening thunderclaps that would follow.
When we could hear again we'd give measured and considered scores out of 10 for each display before shrieking with delight at the next one.

I would imagine what our neighbourhood would look like if enough rain fell to turn the streets into canals and allow us to travel about in dinghies, kayaks and speed boats instead of cars and of course we would act this scenario out for whole days at a time.

One day we were running around playing 'what we would do if everything was flooded' and some well-meaning adult decided to give us a firm but kind talk on the realities of flooding - the property destroyed, lives lost, lives ruined - and ask us if maybe we weren't being a bit insensitive?

We stared at them, stared at each other and ran off to keep playing but the fun had been taken out of the game for that day.

The thing is, now that I'm older I know that having water up to your ceiling would not be great for the neighbourhood but we weren't earnestly suggesting it should happen, random Reality McBuzzkillington!

Why not point out to me that the carpet is not really lava and that if a volcano really did erupt, those of us not killed by the superheated cloud of poisonous gases would probably be asphyxiated by the falling ash?

Why not run up to the kids playing sword fights and explain to them that being stabbed with a sword would really not be all that great? Or that the person you say can't stab you any more because their arm has 'fallen off' probably has leprosy and how gross real leprosy would be?

Kids use play to interact with each other, to learn to understand the world and to develop the parts of their brains that will eventually help them to imagine the lives of other people in an empathetic and responsible fashion.

Don't tell them it isn't cool to pretend you've just disemboweled somebody; they're not desensitised to disembowelling, they're just mucking around.

There are some exceptions to this thinking.
For instance, I can see how people in a community who actually have regular access to guns and who treat these weapons with caution and respect would discourage letting kids 'shoot' each other just in case they ever got hold of a real gun and didn't realise that when they shot their friends with that gun they wouldn't be getting up to swap places.

But the kids that pretend that their towns are flooded aren't going to go bust the dam for funsies.

The kids who pretend to chop off people's heads aren't going to start a skull collection.

The kids who pretend to be monsters who are eating you aren't going to become cannibals.

Just let the little nutters play, age brings context but youth is for imagination.

What's In A Name?

One of my friends got married last year and much to my surprise, she changed her name.

She's a fairly independent person, her family is very important to her and after her father died she made a big point of commemorating their shared history.

As a result, I was not expecting her to be the kind of person who would giddily start referring to herself as 'Mrs [My Husband's Name]'.

Now another friend in our circle is engaged and is planning to change her name as well.

I have trouble wrapping my brain around the whole thing.

My name is... my name.

It's part of who I am.

I've never really thought about getting rid of it and the fact that other people are so comfortable with doing so confuses me.

I know it's traditional and a lot of people say it's 'easier' but still, unless I was marrying someone with a super awesome surname like Wartooth* I don't think I could do it. And even then I think it would be an addition and not a substitution.

There are all sorts of arguments that usually get trotted out at this point about "If you hyphenate your surnames then what is the next generation supposed to do? How long do you want these names to get?"
At least two women I know who are in long term de facto relationships that have produced children have kept their own surnames** but all their children share surnames with the fathers, not their mothers.

Though it may be unfair, to me that sort of thing always smacks of appeasement.

"Of course they're your children! See? They have your surname!"

"Look! We have children together and they have your surname! They're like little yous! Please don't leave us..."

"I know how you like to own things and now it's like you have your own franchise..."

What with DNA testing it's no longer necessary to use surnames to denote who put what into whom and what the result was and having the kids share the father's surname alone really feels like a matter of possession.

If the children shared the mother's surname alone it would also feel a bit odd as the children are no more just a product of their mother than they are just a product of their father***.

If a same-sex couple get married and adopt a child or give birth to a child, people would acknowledge that a decision would have to be reached that was acceptable to both spouses/parents****. Why do people find it so hard to apply this recognition of individual identity to hetero couples?

There has to be some kind of sensible solution. Or even multiple sensible solutions.

I know stepping away from the 'tradition' means having to think a bit harder about things and have - what might be for some couples - some rather involved and fraught discussions but there are plenty of options:

• both keeping your own names with no alterations
  
• one or both of you adding an extra surname either in front of or behind your own
• adopting a shared hyphenated surname
• making a composite surname from components of both or your originals surnames
  
• making up a badass new surname that has nothing in common with either of your previous surnames

If you choose to take your spouse's name because your own family was an abusive or neglectful train wreck and you want nothing more to do with the name, go nuts.

If your parents named you something cruel and unusual that turns your full name into a little sentence that has made your life hell, I can definitely understand you wanting to change your name*****.

But don't change it just because your spouse's parents/grandparents/family biographer will crack the shits if you don't or because you're worried about people looking at you askance.

We don't accept bullying as acceptable when it comes to partaking in or abstaining from controlled substances, engaging in sexual acts or whether or not to become a parent; why should it be allowed or seen as appropriate when it comes to something as important as your identity?

Catherine Deveny wrote several newspaper articles and a blog post on this topic and when I brought the subject up at work I was actually rather shocked at how conservative most of my female coworkers were, either believing that a woman should change her name 'just because' or using the 'it's just easier' explanation that has Catherine knocking her head against the wall.

I'm sure some people like the idea of changing their name and as long as they're doing it for reasons that they're happy with then that's their choice and right but the whole practice will always weird me out a bit.



*That was just an example, I'm not really thinking about marrying a fictional cartoon character. Toki and I would be totally incompatible.

**It was three but one of the women mentioned got married, took her husband's name and now has the same surname as her children.

***I also know some men are a little paranoid about their likelihood of getting custody or visitation rights after a marital/relationship split and that this option would only exacerbate that anxiety.

****Well, those people who accept the validity of same-sex relationships and/or the existence of same-sex sexual attraction...

*****In any of these circumstances, you could have changed it by deed poll of course but a lot of people don't seem to consider that.

Out Of Toner!

Imagine...

Imagine that we found out that there was going to be a cataclysmic EMP* event, that every computer and electronic device on Earth would stop working at the same time.

Imagine the panic as we realised exactly how much of our information is stored in exclusively electronic mediums.

Imagine the logistics. No really, think about it.

If we knew we only had a finite time before all that information was lost to us forever how would we handle it?

Scientific and educational facilities would obviously start printing at a rate of knots.

The production and delivery of ink and toner cartridges and paper would be prioritised and possibly would require the use of armoured cars.

Government branches and public services would draft all their people into collating and stacking and waving fans at overheating printers.

Would it get to the point where they started commandeering or contracting civilian printers?

Would civilian businesses cooperate?

What about professional publishing houses? Those best set up to print large amounts of material in an efficient fashion.

Would they accept priority jobs from universities and the like?

Or would they be grimly printing as many of the classics and as many new novels and non-fiction resources as possible before technology is knocked back to the industrial age?

Would there be riots in book stores?

Would libraries be at risk?

Does anybody still know how to construct a reference card system on the dewey decimal system?

Would there be time for the companies that still print camera film to go completely buck wild seeing as digital cameras would soon be nothing more than inefficient paperweights?

What would we do?



*Electromagnetic pulse

Dear Lady At The Sandwich Shop

You are pretty awesome.

You're always friendly and efficient and even when it looks like you're having a cruddy day you don't take it out on your customers and you genuinely seem to appreciate it when we try to cheer you up.

You aren't stingy with the ingredients but you know how to hold back on the mayo so it doesn't taste like our sandwiches or rolls are drowning in eggy death unless that's what we've specifically requested.

I like the way you call me 'darl' as if you're about 50 even though you're probably a few years younger than me.

I am very glad that you respect the health code enough to wear gloves when you prepare our sandwiches and rolls.

But the thing is...

You should take at least one of the gloves off before you accept the money for the sandwiches.

Because otherwise, sure you aren't touching our sandwiches with your hands but you are touching them with everything the money you just touched has bumped up against.

I was raised at the tail end of the glorious immune system boosting 'oh Lord, she's eating the dirt out of the pot plant/dog biscuits/something she found behind the couch again, get it off her and rinse out her mouth, she'll be right' era so I'm fairly sure I'll survive whatever money-glove-sandwich contamination might result but others may not be so robust.

And it's also still a sort of gross idea.

Other than that you're perfect and so are your sandwiches.

Yours sincerely,
Ricochet

The Vimeortex

Guys, I haven't written anything for this week.

I meant to.

But every time I got on the internet I ended up immersing myself rapturously in the 5 Second Films archive.

Sooo... instead of a real post here is a selection of my favourites.

That I culled down from 40 to six*.

There are over 600 videos so you know you should stop and do something else but... they're only five seconds long...

I regret nothing.

Planking from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

Clark Kent's Close Call from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

The Day Before Yesterday When Everything Was OK and There Weren't Any Zombies from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

Late for Work from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

Absence of the Towels from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

Brothers from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

*OK, seven, I had to include this one for the badass moustache. It isn't on vimeo so I couldn't embed it.

Don't Mind If I Do

Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror as I wash my hands, I can't at first work out what is bothering me about this outfit and then it hits me.

This hoodie makes me look like a Jedi.

It is at least three sizes too big and is of a manly cut for manly shoulders so it drapes like a cowl and draws closed like robes.

And I have no idea where it came from.

I mean, I know where I got it from but before that the trail gets a little muddy.

I'm not making any sense, let me try again.

The universe gives me jackets.

It does.

On no less than three and no more than five occasions, friends or colleagues have approached me holding out a jacket and said "You left this behind."

I didn't, it isn't mine.

I tell them this and they shrug and say something to the effect of "Whatever, it's been sitting here for over a month, you want it?"

And what the hell, sure, why not, free jacket.

They're invariably at least a size too big but always incredibly warm and cosy and no-one has ever, ever come looking for them again.

I've checked periodically for months afterward if anyone has come looking for their jacket until I am gripped firmly by the shoulders by an exasperated acquaintance who requests very, very politely that I please, for the love of God, stop asking. Just. Keep. The. Damn. Jacket.

Seeing as this is a very odd thing to happen to somebody more than once and definitely a strange thing to happen almost a half dozen times I've decided to go the egocentric route and take this as a sign that the universe wants me to be warm.

This means one of two things.

Option 1: I am inherently important.

Option 2: The universe is in cahoots with my mother who never thinks that I dress warmly enough.

Seeing as the universe hasn't started randomly handing me babies* or sending me baby magazines like it did to Lucy Knisley (see 6pm), it is obviously Option 1.

So if you feel obligated to pay me tribute I wouldn't be averse to that.

I expect it to arrive in the form of jackets.



*Mum never used to be like that but in the last five years she's gotten very 'Oh look at the babies!'
It's... disconcerting...

The Enormity Of Everything

Sometimes I get a bit frantic about the impossibility of ever experiencing everything there is to experience.

And not even EVERYTHING everything.

Even if you narrowed it down and dedicated yourself to one pursuit you'd never manage to do it all.

Read all the books.

Listen to all the music.

See all the sights.

Watch all the movies and/or TV shows.

Learn all the languages.

Try all the foods.

There are so many things to do and see and every now and then the though that you might be missing out on something that would be truly life changing because of what you're currently doing and because you have no idea that this truly magnificent thing exists let alone that it is your perfect thing.

Of course that's the kind of thinking that can either paralyse you* or motivate you.

After a moment of 'Aaaaaaaaaargh am I wasting my time/not taking full advantage of life' freak outs, I generally get to planning which tends to lead to new things of one kind or another.

I know that if I was immortal most of what I'd do for a portion of that forever would be sitting around and reading and watching things, not because I'm lazy** but because it would give me a chance to have a crack at watching ALL THE THINGS.

But first I think I'd travel.

The chances of various bits of the world and the things in it ceasing to exist - or at least ceasing to exist in their current incarnation - is more likely than a catastrophic EMP event that wipes out all possibility of ever watching a DVD again.

And of all the Everythings that there are to do, a lot of them can be done travelling.

Of course by the time I finished travelling there might not be time for the Everything else but it's hard to believe I'd have regrets about that.



*Because you then get so worried about doing the Right thing that you don't do anything at all.

**Though I can be!

Where To? Where From?

I've always been obsessed with doors.

Not with the different shapes, different materials, different colours, different fixtures - though those things are all lovely and also interest me - but with doors as portals.

The idea of a shape or item that stands between one space and another always presented a huge array of possibilities.

I used to wonder if it was possible to pass through a door, close it and when you open it again, find it looking out into a completely different place, possibly completely alien to the one you just left.
This of course led to wondering whether the room you were in still existed on the same physical plane of reality that it had originally and whether therefore you could return to the place you left by exiting via the window instead of through a door that may then strand you in a place you'd not be able to return from.

As you can imagine I wasn't a difficult child to keep occupied.
All you had to do was leave me to my own devices and I could spend hours theorising ways to keep track or hold of your original world, like Theseus using Ariadne's ball of thread to find his way out of the Minotaur's maze*.

Any book, movie or TV show that involved any kind of travel or access to such different dimensions or locations were therefore insanely interesting to me.

Sliders, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe by C S Lewis, Stargate, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, The Weather Witch by Paul Stewart, The Fionavar Tapestry series by Guy Gavriel Kay, Goodnight Sweetheart, all of those crazy ABC kids shows that involved the characters stepping back in time or travelling to the UK or Canada** possibly whilst also stepping back in time...

I'm also pretty sure that despite my lifelong fascination with such portals, that if I found one, I would not have the guts to step through one.
Or if I did so by accident I probably wouldn't do so twice in the event I managed to get back to where I came from.
What can I say.
I'm a giant wuss.
Then again the curiosity and the fear of missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance would be warring with my terror of being trapped forever in an alternate reality or time.

I expect it isn't a choice I'll ever need to make but, y'know, never say never.

And never look at doors in quite the same way again either.



*Except I wouldn't douche-ily abandon somebody who saved my life and ensured I succeeded at an impossible task. I'm looking at you, pretty much every man in every Greek myth ever.

**You know, countries we just happen to have relationships with who also like weird shows like that and want to cross-market/co-produce their kids shows.

One, Two, Keep A Few, Ninety-Nine, One Hundred

I know I have some habits that could be considered mildly compulsive.

I like the colours of clothes pegs holding up one item to match.

I like to write journal items in blue ink, fiction or lists in black ink and diary/planner items in pencil.

I like even numbers.

That's essentially it.

They're not rules, it doesn't bother me to break them but I prefer to have things match when convenient.

I was a little worse when I was a kid.

I would actually go out of my way to avoid cracks in the pavement, not because I really believed that stepping on them would break my mother's back but not quite willing to take that chance.

All that said, every now and then I'll do something a bit odd and not know why.

Like this.


This is 197 cider bottle caps.

One day a few years ago I left a cider cap on the draining board next to my sink overnight.


The next night when I had another cider I put the second cap next to the first.


They were joined by a third.


I swept them into a plastic container to get them out of the way.

And then for some reason I just kept adding to them.


I didn't drink more often or more beverages in order to add to the pile, I just added to the pile when I happened to have something to add.

Over a few years, a few summers really, I kept my caps.

And then one day I just stopped.

I really don't know why I started.

I don't know why I stopped.

I don't know why I kept the collection for a few months after I stopped.

It's particularly perplexing because I don't keep collections of anything else.

I didn't care about it in any significant way at the time and it doesn't bother me to pour them all into the bin now.


It's just something I did and now I'm not doing it any more.

So if you ever worry that you're a bit weird, don't worry, me too.

Dot Dot Dot Dot Dot Dash Dash Dash Crash

The other day I was driving down the highway when somebody coming the other way flashed their lights at me.

I don't know about any of you folks living in other countries but in Australia when someone flashes their lights at you it means one of five things:

1. There is a kangaroo or other animal near the road.
2. There is something else obstructing the road.
3. There is a police car, speed camera and/or booze bus up ahead.
4. I'm a big douche who is messing with you.
5. 'The fifth one' which I'll explain in a minute.
   

So anyway, this person has flashed their lights at me.

I'm already doing the speed limit and I haven't had anything to drink so if it's police presence they're warning me about, I'm not worried.

But just in case it's an animal or obstruction, I slowed down to give myself more time to react.

After a certain number of kilometres when nothing had presented itself I assumed that the light flashing had been to announce a Reason 1, that had resolved itself by the time I got there, or due to a good old-fashioned Reason 4.

This morning I realised that I had forgotten Reason 5, when parked facing a glass door I noticed that I had a headlight out.

The thing is, everybody always seems to forget about Reason 5*.

I know I've flashed my headlights at people because one of their headlights is out, in the hope that when they get home they'll check and confirm this fact.
And I can be fairly certain that in most circumstances they've done what I've done and continued pootling around with their busted headlight until they've managed to catch a glimpse or somebody in a position to do so has mentioned it to them in person.

I started wondering if we could devise and disseminate some kind of national-wide system of flashes that would allow us to differentiate between Reason 1 to Reason 4 (the response to which is simply to slow down**) and Reason 5 (the response to which is to get a new headlight as soon as possible as to avoid potential trouble with the police).

But multiple flashes of lights can be difficult to manage in the time between approaching and passing another car, or may not be fully visible depending on conditions.

So I started thinking about devising a system that would allow you to flash just one headlight, thus clearly indicating that you have noticed the other driver has one headlight out.

Maybe you could flash one headlight to indicate busted headlight, flash the other to indicate obstruction on the road, and flash both to indicate police car.

The more advanced and ambitious of us could develop a sort of car headlight Morse code.

But how would the electronics and controls of these wonderful new cars need to be altered or redesigned to achieve this goal?

And what if you're flashing your lights at somebody for Reason 1 through Reason 4 and they assume it's for Reason 5*** because you have a headlight out?

Then of course you might end up with cars running off the road or into the back of each other as they squint and try to follow or remember the significance of various blinking patterns.

Hmm.

Maybe I should just remember to check my headlights.

Occam's razor and all that****.



*Reason 5: Your headlight is out.

**And in the case of Reason 4, to feel miffed about it later.

***Or possibly don't see it at all, depending on which headlight you're flashing.

****I can't think of Occam's razor without thinking of Dr Standish from Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul.

Olfactory Senseless

Maybe at some point, thousands of years in the past, ancient humans had a more highly developed sense of smell than they do now.

Maybe you could sift through a raft of flavours on the air in a more comprehensive, more instinctive fashion in order to survive.

Maybe when greeting each other you could lean forward and each scent how often the other eats protein, tell how long ago it was eaten, use that information to infer how successful their tribe, how good a hunter they were, how viable a mate.

Maybe it played a part in establishing diplomatic ties, making sure you weren't allying yourself to someone too weak to aid you, someone who would be a drain on your resources.

Maybe it helped you walk the line between survival and oblivion on a slightly better informed footing.

But here and now in the present I think you should brush your teeth.

Possibly twice.

Yeesh.

The Body As A Tyrant

This is ridiculous.

Did you know that if you start feeding your body breakfast first thing after a lifetime of getting around to food in the mid-morning it starts DEMANDING food all the time?

It wants morning tea.

It wants lunch super early.

It wants AFTERNOON tea!

It wants dinner before 8pm.

It wakes you up in the morning demanding MORE breakfast.

And if you start drinking the recommended amount of water and stick it out until it stops feeling like you're trying to drown yourself and then you forget to keep your intake up for just ONE DAY, you wake up the next morning feeling like you're heavily hung over.

I'm talking several litres of beer hung over.

So the lesson here is that you can muddle along for years treating your body kind of decent and it'll accept that but if you start treating it right the dang thing will get used to it and refuse to go back to your previous ways without a fight.

Uppity corporeal form.

The Truth Of It All

I think I'm getting a cold.

This is a nuisance and a bother.

So I'm treating this the same way I do most worrying developments in my life.

With sleep.

Great, long, coddling, soothing bouts of surrendering to somnolence.

I feel the same way about sleep as Odin does in Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul:

Sleeping was a very important activity for him. He liked to sleep for longish periods, great swathes of time. Merely sleeping overnight was not taking the business seriously. He enjoyed a good night's sleep and wouldn't miss one for the world, but he didn't regard it as anything even half approaching enough.

Of course, seeing as I'm not actually an immortal - unfortunately - I am occasionally rocked by the frantic knowledge that I am frittering chunks of my mortal life away in this fashion.

But usually I'm just rock-a-bye-baby'd.

This is one of the things that has convinced me that I'm not a TRUE ARTIST as a TRUE ARTIST would be gripped by self-loathing and whipped into a frenzy by the need to create and the idea that they are wasting prime creating time.

Mostly I'm gripped by blankets.

When I wake up I will create.

But for now...

...Zzzzzzz...

Dust On Dirt

I should be sorry I expect.

I should be gripped with remorse and wishing that things had been other than they are and seeing everything through a rosy glow of nostalgia-tinted grief.

Suffused with compassion, understanding and knowing that whilst things couldn't have been any other way, there were reasons for why they turned out as they did.

But I always knew that you would die this way.

And to be completely honest I'm glad you did.

You had it coming.

I know the odds of your last thought being that I was right are slim but as I look down at your cold body, limbs akimbo, I get to think it.

I don't look for too long of course, that would look unprofessional.

I wish you could see me as I move, smooth, efficient, practiced, as I dust for fingerprints, pluck fibres from fibres and catalogue the tableau of your end.

I'm very good at my job and I always do my best, even for you.

I'd like to think you'd appreciate this but going on previous experiences I won't hold my breath on that count.

They don't know that I knew you.

If they did I would be taken off the case, bundled off to see a city appointed psychologist and treated with care and caution until they were sure I was 'fit for duty'.

But instead here I am, sifting through your worldly belongings for some clue as to who killed you.

I already know why.

And so, I'm sure, did you.

I'm going to find out who did this.

Not for you, you ungrateful shit.

I'm doing it for the science.

I'm very good at my job.

Even when I don't want to be.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Henry Rollins!

This is Henry Rollins.

He is bad for your bank balance.

Not because he advocates materialism, wants you to invest in his foolproof pyramid scheme or costs much to see but because every time I watch Henry Rollins perform I immediately want to book a ticket to fling myself out into the world with no fixed plans to come back.

I want to read more, listen to more music, talk to more people, take more chances, understand more about politics, shout down ignorance and celebrate the impossible breadth of human culture.

Forget New Year's Resolutions, Henry Rollins is an instant reset button for shelved plans and postponed ambitions.

He's uncomprimising, loud and probably exactly as exhausting to be around as he assures you he is but he has probably crammed more into the last five years of his life than I have into the entirety of mine and if I can approach even a fraction of his passion for life or productivity I'll consider myself lucky.

If you've never read any of his writing or seen any of his spoken word give him a chance.
You may not agree with some or what he says - or even much of what he says, depending on your personal views - but he will get you thinking, he will get you fired up and you will be left wanting to debate and research and experience and that's no small gift.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Henry Rollins!