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.

Take No Prisoners, Show No Mercy, Leave No Witnesses

I know everyone has their own ways of dealing with stress and troubling emotions.

Some people exercise.

Some people drink.

Some people knit.

Some people clean their weapons* or do maintenance on their car.

Some people turn on the TV.

For whatever reason, I clean.

When I get super stressed out, I roll up my sleeves and attack.

I guess it might be something about not wanting to think about whatever is making me sad/anxious/angry because whenever this mood grips me, I acquire an intense focus that allows me to power through tasks that I usually have to drag myself into doing and there is no room in my brain for anything else.

It's also good to know that even if I'm using the cleaning as a way to procrastinate or distract myself, I'm doing something practical.
There's a tangible real-world effect.
I've achieved something that improves my surroundings or situation in some concrete way.

If you did an undergraduate degree in psychology, you could probably also argue that being able to organise and control your external environment may help you to begin attempting to organise and control your life.
Or help you deal with the fact that you have absolutely no hope in hell of managing to organise or control your life, at least at this point.

Whatever the myriad of reasons, I find wading into a room fists first and cleaning the hell out of it incredibly satisfying and soothing.

There's a system.
There's a sequence.
And it's wonderfully physical so you can work off anything that's bothering you.

The Procedure

1. Clear off all the flat surfaces.
2. Clean them down.
3. Throw away anything that you cleared off the flat surfaces which isn't needed any more.
4. Use the flat surfaces to organise those things you've decided to keep.
5. Empty out the cupboards or storage areas.
6. Clean inside the cupboards or storage areas.
7. Throw out the dross.
8. Use the flat surfaces to organise those things you've decided to keep**.
9. Clean off the things you've decided to keep, if necessary.
10. Put all the things you're keeping back into the cupboards or storage areas in an orderly fashion.
11. CLEAN THE EVER-LOVING HECK OUT OF ALL THE FLAT SURFACES, VERTICAL SURFACES, FLOOR TYPE SURFACES, BUMPY SURFACES, ALL THE SURFACES!
12. Make a list of anything you may need to replenish or replace now that you've gone through everything.
13. Sweaty and dishevelled, stagger off for a cup of tea and a collapse before a hot shower and further collapsing, exhausted but content.
    

At the end of all that, I may have realised that whatever was bothering me wasn't so bad after all, or I might feel closer to being able to deal with it, or I acknowledge that whatever is bothering me is still a poop sandwich but I don't care for a while because check out this freaking spotless room and/or house!
And, honestly, some days that's good enough.



*Not with the intent of doing anything to themselves or others with said weapons, they just find the act of maintenance meditative.

**At this point you may need additional flat surfaces in the form of card tables or similar.

Soundwave!

Just to round out this summer of music, I also went to Soundwave!

The highlights of which I shall now sing!

• Introducing my friend to Stone Sour, which she immediately fell in love with, and hearing her describe Corey Taylor as punk-rock Prince Harry.
  
  
  
• Seeing a guy in a wheelchair crowd-surfing, wheelchair and all, when Queens of the Stone Age were playing and Josh Homme ordering the crowd to pass him up on stage so he could rock out with the band.
  
  
• Rob Zombie singing a weird little song about how the big lads in the crowd should hoist the little chicks up onto their shoulders so that the 'Zombie girls' could see that had grinning guys turning to offer their backs to girls throughout the crowd.
  
  
• Being completely bewildered by the clothing and masks on the members of Primus.
  

• Rocking out to Slayer and being glad that I hadn't been at the Sydney show instead where Slayer had to cancel because Tom Araya had an ear infection or something.
  
  
• I got to see Iron Maiden again! Iroooooooooooooooooon Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiden!
  
  
  
• Giggling like an idiot when Dimmu Borgir were on because of Dimmu Burger on Metalocalypse.
  
  
  

Iron Maiden!

Even though I've listened to a bunch of Iron Maiden, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I went to see them live.

I was excited to have the chance as I'd only just started listening to them when they came out for their last tour and thought I might have missed out on ever seeing them live.
So when they put tickets on sale for this tour I jumped right on it.

I'd never really watched any footage or any video clips of any of their performances and I was figuring that maybe they would be winding it back a little bit as they've been knocking around for decades, throwing in a little less of the old stage acrobatics in favour of a bit more stationary posing and concentrating on their instruments.

Not. A. Bit. Of. It.

Bruce Dickinson jumps around that stage like a monkey who has managed to chug a couple of triple espressos and has then found some pills in a long-haul trucker's glove compartment.

Janick Gers was practically doing the splits up against speaker stacks, his long thin legs clad in tight jeans and topped off with an almost Skwisgaar Skwigelf-esque belt.

What you could see of Nicko McBrain was going completely mental behind the drum kit.

Dave Murray was doing this cute smile and nod as he bobbed around playing that wouldn't have looked out of place during a folk song.

Adrian Smith and Steve Harris were charging about like mad men, grinning the whole time.

One of the things I liked the best was the sheer range of people there.
The classic black shirted metal fans, people in bright colours, people in summer dresses, people in their work gear.
And the ages! There was at least two families I saw that had turned up with three generations of Maiden fans - the grandparents in their late 60s/early 70s, parents in their 30s and kids about 10 years old.
I saw one dad with his son on his shoulders in the mosh pit and the kid was going off tap :-D

Unfortunately for me I'd had a cold for a couple of days before the concert and just as my friend and I were driving into the city to go to the concert, I completely lost my voice.

I lost my voice!

Here I am at an Iron Maiden concert unable to sing along or roar with the crowd or respond in any way to Bruce Dickinson's cheeky banter!

It was so frustrating!

But even without my voice it was a fantastic night.
Surrounded by other people singing along and grinning and doing all the gestures during Two Minutes to Midnight, I felt right at home.

And if they come back I'm going again because my theory with tours is that every one might be the last one and if you like the band you do NOT want to miss out!



P.S. As we were driving to the arena we went right past Janick Gers taking a pre-concert walk and we yelled G'day to him and he waved and my mate almost lost his mind :-D

Cooking With Ricochet: How To Make Lazy Chicken And Vegetable Pasta Bake

Serves about 4 depending on how ravenous your guests are.

Ingredients
1 can of condensed chicken and corn soup
500 g of penne
1/2 a barbecued chicken
1 zucchini
1 carrot
1 1/2 cups of grated tasty cheese

Steps

1. Decide you can't be bothered cooking, opt to have toast for dinner.
2. Remember your parents are coming over, give up and pull out a lazy recipe instead.
3. Preheat the oven to 200 °C*.
   
4. Put the 500 g of dried penne on to cook for about 10 minutes in a pot of boiling water, with a bit of salt. Probably too much. Damn. Drain it and put it aside.
   
5. Grate the zucchini and the carrot, congratulating yourself for not grating your fingers off whilst your parents sit on your couch and flick channels on your TV.
6. Shred the barbecued chicken, carefully not eating any of it before you put it in the bowl.
7. Mix the soup, zucchini, carrot, shredded chicken and penne together and pour them into a baking dish. Accidentally drip a bit on the cat who then runs away and hides under the bed and refuses to come out so you can clean him off. Give up as the other cat runs in and starts enthusiastically cleaning soup and chicken off the first cat for you.
8. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the pasta and bung it into the oven for about 20 minutes.
9. Put on your oven mitts, pull out the baking dish.
10. Decide the pasta bake may be cooked but will be more delicious if you grill the cheese a bit.
11. Take off your oven mitts to turn the grill on.
12. Blithely pick up the baking dish, turn around to put it under the grill.
13. Something's burning.
14. IT'S YOUR FINGERTIPS, YOU IDIOT!
15. Manage somehow to dump the piping hot straight-out-of-the-oven baking dish onto the cooking range instead of the floor.
16. Ask your Mum to put the baking dish under the grill whilst you hold your fingertips under cold running water, reminding her first of the importance of oven mitts.
17. Serve up the deliciously golden brown cheesy, chicken and vegetable pasta bake with some salad.
18. Keep swapping hands between eating duties and a cold pack during the meal.
19. Two days later notice that you miraculously don't have any lasting damage, blisters or any indication apart from a callous on one fingertip that you almost burned your stupid fingerprints off.
20. Cancel planned crime spree.
    

*That's about 390 °F

Filling The Void

When I turned six years old my parents gave me a clock radio for my birthday.

Some kids might have thought that a cruddy gift but I was thrilled!

Now the monsters under my bed wouldn't dare come out because they'd think the radio was somebody else talking, somebody else with me.

Take that you nebulous bastards! No more suffocating under the doona for me!

I'm not sure if that's where my preference for having some kind of background noise came from or whether it was just something I picked up along the way.

I do know that whenever things get too much I like to have sound around me, something I can ignore if I feel like it or listen to if I want to.

Especially when there's something that won't stop bouncing around in my head, something that I'm fretting about or waiting for or desperately but unsuccessfully trying not to think about.

And it's useful in those times, it gives me a bit of breathing room, stops me from going into a spiral of 'ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh'.

But when last week I cracked the shits because you can't listen to your mp3 player when doing laps in the pool, I figured I'd let it get away from me.

What was once a coping mechanism had become the norm.

So as a little experiment* I've been turning everything off in the evenings for the last few days.

No TV unless I was specifically watching a show, no surfing or leaving the TV on shows in a 'this will do' daze, nothing left burbling away on the laptop, no radio, no CDs.

And so far I haven't gone wall-climbingly, effigy-buildingly, backwards-writing-on-the-walls-so-the-words-reflect-the-right-way-around-in-the-mirror-when-the-lightning-flashes-ly insane.

Time seems to go a bit slower, I guess because there's less occupying your senses and you can concentrate on whatever you're doing.

I read more in shorter periods of time, household tasks generally don't take as long and unless somebody/something makes creepy or unexplained noises outside my window I get to sleep quite easily and probably sleep more deeply.

I'm unlikely to keep up this regime of quiet time as a permanent arrangement but it's nice to know that it's doable.

That I hadn't slowly wrangled myself into some sort of audio-dependency that I would have to spend months or years weaning myself off.

It's reassuring to know that despite my overactive imagination I haven't somehow brought the monsters of childhood with me in another form.

That I can empty my mind every now and then, even though it doesn't stay empty for long.

That I still make good company for myself when left alone in the quiet.



*On myself. Like a mad scientist.

An Insupportable Hypothesis

I really don't think you've thought this whole thing through, Rihanna.

The logistics and the realities of the situation.

Sure, it might sound nice as a throw away phrase but do you know what would have had to have happened for you to actually be the only girl in the world?

Have you thought about what would probably happen afterward?

We'll have to assume some sort of global plague as in the excellent comic book series Y: The Last Man because a world-wide gender-based massacre seems very unlikely and would have to itself be caused by some sort of transmittable psychosis (probably lab-engineered).

So there's been a plague, women and girl-children lying dead in the street, bereft men wailing and screaming as the more opportunistic take to looting and trying to establish power-based mini-societies in the aftermath of this civilisation-shaking development.

And you're the only girl in the world.

This can't end well for you, Rihanna.

At its most essential, there are only two outcomes: exile or death.

If your beloved manages to whisk you out of the major metropolitan areas and into hiding or even keep you hidden within a major city your situation will be tenuous at best.

What if there is a riot? Or a war? Or food runs out? Or your building catches on fire? What if there's an epidemic? A pandemic? What if your beloved goes out for food/water/information/to work and never comes back? What if he comes back but is followed by a mugger or a particularly cluey intelligence operative? What if you're seen? What if you start to doubt him? To think that it couldn't possibly be all the women? What if you go out to find out for yourself?

If you are captured for any reason you'll either end up in a laboratory with scientists frantically harvesting your eggs, artificially (or not so artificially) inseminating you and studying you to see why you haven't died yet; or, well, quite frankly you'll probably end up passed from man to man or the exclusive possession of the local powerhouse/warlord who is unlikely to be a gentle and considerate lover.

I know, Rihanna, you might think I'm being unfair to men saying that. I'm not saying that in the absence of a female population all men would resort immediately and with relish to rape but those who rise to power in uncertain and destabilised societies are usually determined and ruthless and probably not well stocked with empathy.
Even if they're intelligent enough to realise you're the only girl in the world they'd also know that you're no Eve, there's no way that in your life time you'd be able to replenish the world's depleted supply of women, so they might as well enjoy you whilst you're here.

So how in our current pre-lady-apocalypse society is the object of your affections supposed to make you feel like you're the only girl in the world?

Lock you in a windowless room and come back daily, whispering shaky, unconvincing reassurances and bringing dented canned goods and meat whose provenance you probably don't want to ask about?

Strapping you to a cold metal gurney under a bright light and talking about you but not to you?

Relentless physical abuse?

At the very best by saying you want to be made to feel like you're the only girl in the world you're suggesting that your lover may only be with you because the only other options are masturbation or reluctant homosexuality, not because you are an appealing and engaging individual in your own right.

It's you, loneliness or wang, Rihanna.

Doesn't sound so romantic now, does it?

Oh sure, I'm probably over-thinking this, reductio ad absurdum and all that.

I'm just saying, maybe you should spend a little more time on your lyrics.