I left work early to get a haircut yesterday.
I crossed the river (right across to the other side) and sat down in the chair.
‘Hey, darl, how do you want it?’
‘Can you just neaten up the back and sides and leave it the same length on top?’
‘Sure.’
And then, as always, she goes ahead and cuts how she feels like.
‘Ah, crap, I’ve done it again, haven’t I?’
‘Yes, you have.’
‘That’s 20 bucks, darl.’
‘Thanks, see you in a few months.’
I remember I drove Dad’s truck while he followed me in Micko’s. I was only 16, and shouldn’t have been driving, but I’d been moving them around the yards for years—I was the only kid I knew who could reverse a prime mover around a corner. That is except for Dave; but he was 17.
When we stopped at the toll gates, my dad got out and walked up to talk to the guard. Both of them kept their glasses on; they spoke for a while, occasionally turning back to look at me. Eventually with a pat of solidarity on dad’s back, the guard waved me through.
‘I’ll see you at home,’ was what dad called out as I drove past.
I sat under the awning of Shed 1 with Dave, looking out at the yard and the eight remaining trucks sitting there silently, as if in mourning. Dave didn’t try to say anything, he’d found some beers, and we sat there watching the sun set, red through a haze of pollution, drinking and waiting.
It was about 8:00 when the police car arrived. Two officers got out said something to each other—the woman was shaking her head and wiping her face. They didn’t see me and Dave sitting in the darkness.
Together they walked up to the house and knocked on the door. My mum answered the door in her dressing gown. I couldn’t hear what was said, but I could see my mum shaking her head. The breeze switched direction and carried some words across to us. ‘No. No. That was Micko …’
The female cop put her hand on my mum’s shoulder while trying to wipe her own face.
‘No. No. NO!’
The hairs on my arms were standing up, and so was I. White spots flashed in front of my vision and I could hear my heart beating and my blood swirling. Dave had hold of my wrist, ‘Jim, don’t go over. Jim! Wait!’
‘Let go of me. Fucken let go of me! Dave, let go!’ With my free hand I swung and punched him square in the temple and he let go. And I let go, sprinting across the yard, sneakers slipping in the gravel, crunching and sliding I fell, tearing up my hands and knees, but I was on my feet again and running. My mum was silhouetted in the doorway and the two police turned around, and everyone’s face was wet with tears.
Jesus. Fuck.
I’ve woken up this morning drunk.
Last night was fun. I went out with some people from work; started drinking at 4:30. The others tapered off until it was just two of us left. After our fifth beer or so we thought it was probably wise to go to a different bar; so, we did.
More beer was in order, this time it came in pint glasses. A young, keen fellow came in wanting a game of pool. So we played. He was good, but I won. Twice.
Shaven headed, covered in tats, he looked a little rough. It turned out he was a nurse in an oncology ward. I asked him how he managed it—I said I couldn’t do it, being around dying people and their families all the time. He said he pretty much grew up in an oncology ward—he survived a rare form of Leukaemia.
The people you meet, hey?
The baby next door has been bawling for the last hour.
When I typed the title of this post, everything went quiet.
When I typed that last line, it started screaming again.
Shut up, damn you!
Shhhhhhh …
Last weekend I drove interstate for a friend’s party, partied, woke up thinking I was dead, then jumped in an icy river to make sure I wasn’t.
This weekend I dove into an icy beer (and uncounted others—just to make sure they weren’t poisonous [unfortunately, it turned out they were]), woke up spastically hungover, then went outside and jumped on a bee.
Now, I’m not being euphemistic or metaphorical: I stood on a bee and it stung me. Fair enough, Mr Bee, I probably would have done the same thing. The bee definitely got the worst of the deal—it’s dead, and all I ended up with was a pointless story.
I’m sure it would have looked quite amusing: me dancing around the clothes line on one foot trying to shake the bee off [again, not a euphemism] while saying the first thing that came to mind, which was some thing like, ‘oh, fer fucking Jesus fuck!’
Despite the initial shock (Hmmm, what’s that sensation? Ahhhh!), it didn’t hurt much at all. When I was a kid, bee stings hurt. Gosh, kids are sissies …
Wild bee preparing to attack
My first encounter with a mobile phone was when driving back from the beach one evening in 1996 with my friend Dave. Dave was driving and asked me to get his mobile out of the glove box so that he could call his girlfriend—to say that he was going to be late.
Inside the glove box was a lump of plastic that would choke a horse—although any horse stupid enough to try and eat a phone probably deserves to die. It was a Motorola but looked like it was made by Black and Decker. It appeared to be ergonomically designed to be held in the claws of diving robots, and had a thick antenna that looked like a rogue plastic carrot.
The model name was ‘Ultrasleek’.
It was the year 2000 by the time I bought my first mobile phone. I thought we were all supposed to be driving flying cars and arguing with incorrigible computers (I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that …), so getting a cell phone was a consolation prize. I was living in Korea at the time and felt somewhat emasculated by not having a phone. It also made it difficult to receive phone calls.
After work, a Korean friend went with me into town to a night electronics market. She negotiated on my behalf, and ended signing the contract in her name because, apparently, a situation had never arisen in the history of time where a foreigner wanted to buy a mobile. Sorry, a hand phone.
Yes, ‘hand phone’ is what Koreans call mobile/cell phones. Literally, with bad pronunciation, ‘han deh pone’—which is fair enough as Korean lacks the ‘f’ sound. Interestingly, this is also what the Chinese call a mobile—‘sho ji’, meaning ‘hand machine’. It really makes you wonder what part of the body they previously used to pick up a home phone. (A regular phone is ‘dian hua’, meaning ‘electric voice’, in case you were wondering …)
So after an arbitrary decision and an extended negotiation in a language I didn’t yet understand, I signed my life away on a shiny silver LG hand phone. The menus were all in Korean, but it did have one cool feature: an MP3 player.
This technology was probably a year off being seen on the streets back home, and for a while I felt pretty cool to possess it. It had a 16-meg card, meaning it could hold about four songs—which I listened to on loop. I did regularly change songs—these were the days when Napster was king—but two that stand out in my mind were ‘Kryptonite’ by Three Doors Down and the theme from Mission Impossible by the Chemical Brothers. Good songs to get you ready for work.
I had the phone for a year then when I left I gave it to a friend. He had it for over a year then gave it to another friend. When I returned to Korea in 2003, I got it back.
Most of its shiny silver paint had been worn away, exposing a bone-coloured plastic underneath. It looked significantly bigger than what I remembered.
But of course, there were other phones in between. Three, actually.
To be continued …
I am a little perplexed about:
They said the animal did not have teeth made of enamel and dentine like today’s birds, but bony “pseudo-teeth” common to a group of extinct giant birds called pelagornithids.
Birds have teeth? I thought that was just in the cartoons …
Update: Only mutant birds grow teeth …
I got a new phone yesterday; and no, it’s not an iPhone. It’s a Nokia e71, and it does simply fucking everything—well, it would if I could figure out how to work the damn thing. I’m starting to think that it’s not been set up properly by the phone company …
I’m too impatient to read the novel instruction manual that comes with it. I think I’ll consult one of the uber geeks at work.
When I do have it set up, I’ll be able to post to this blog on the fly.
Instant ranting, complete with photos or video …
Returning from a friend’s house the other night, I stopped at a service station to pick up some hot salmonella. I had to wait impatiently while a woman with a street directory wrote down the attendant’s instructions. ‘So, I keep going until the second set of lights and turn left?’
‘It’s the third set of lights, and you should turn right.’
‘OK, can we go over this one more time?’
I had to interject.
‘I’m sorry, but have you ever realised how fucking stupid you are? Probably not, so I’ll explain things to you: the book you are holding in your hand is full of maps. They’ve been around for a while, and I’d say most people — oh, say … over the age of 10 — can read these things. It has fucking pictures for fuck’s sake. Why are you asking this guy to draw you another map? Is this some kind of fucked-up joke? There’s a line of people behind you waiting to actually buy shit — and I’m pretty confident they can all read maps. See that thing outside on the corner at the top of that pole? That’s called a “sign”. The words written on these “signs” correlate directly to the words written on the little squiggly lines in your book. Fucking amazing, I know. Check it out some time — I’m not making this shit up.’
‘So … right at the next lights?’
Piration (Noun)
The state of becoming pirate-like.
‘After the eighteenth beer, Mike began to experience severe piration.’
