Chavs and Rude Boys

I think they’re kind of like bogans…

Well, this is it. I fly out tonight for the UK. As is usual for these kind of things I am in equal parts excited and terrified. And I haven’t even finished packing yet.

The terror in particular is compounded by my discovery yesterday that I totally screwed up my dates and am arriving in London a day earlier than I thought. On the upside this means I have an extra day to do stuff in. On the downside it means I have no accommodation booked for my first night. I imagine the hotel I’m staying at will be able to fit me in, but if not I may end up sleeping under a bridge, fighting off chavs and rude boys with a pocket knife.

So yeah. My plane leaves at 1:05am tonight. Wish me luck!

Foolish Musical Ideas

If I had the tools I’d do it myself.

Back in ancient historical era known as the 80s, British House giants Cauty and Drummond (perhaps you remember them as the KLF – also known as the Justified Ancients of Mumu, and furthermore known as the JAMs) sat down to create a House remix of the Doctor Who theme.

After messing around with it for some hours and getting nowhere they realised that it’s in triplet time, and you can’t do House in triplet time. So they threw the House idea out the window and just mashed the theme up with perhaps the most famous triplet rock song ever – Garry “I want to touch your children” Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part 2.

The result was one of the most successful and annoying novelty tracks of all time – Doctorin’ the Tardis – which transformed them into millionaires almost overnight.

The reason I mention this is that in the shower yesterday morning I realised that Marilyn “Oo! I’m so Evil!” Manson’s Beautiful People is also in triplet time. Which means you could easily do a Doctor WhoBeautiful People mashup!

Go on! What are you waiting for?! đŸ˜€

You might have Aspergers Syndrome if…

Your sexual preference is ‘get the hell away from me!’

Some applicable examples from an old list I stumbled over…

  • You have passed many a happy minute watching a fan spin.
  • On the one hand you think you are the most interesting person you know, but not too many other people are trying to get to know you.
  • People sometimes check you out to see if you really do, “know everything”.
  • You know the historical derivation of the word, “trivia”.
  • You get extremely disappointed in yourself if you don’t know something when you need to know it because you really *SHOULD* know that.
  • You choose the grocery aisle that you go down based on whether or not there are any other people in that aisle.
  • You will go many extra steps and take lots of extra time to figure out the answer to something rather than taking 30 seconds to ask someone.
  • You ever stayed with a hobby so long and with such intensity that you hurt yourself (can you say “carpal tunnel syndrome”?).
  • You talk back to the people on the TV and radio and call them idiots or say sarcastic things to commercials.
  • You think an old fashioned egg beater is a very cool toy.
  • One of your favorite hobbies is “autie spotting”.
  • You get irritated when people come up to talk to you when you are doing something important like staring at a wall.
  • You get irritated when people come by unannounced when you are totally getting into some research topic or painting or doing mosaics or whatever.
  • You feel somehow privileged to have insights into the subject of cultural anthropology because you have been studying anthropo’s your whole life trying to figure out what makes their culture tick.
  • You think “Cure Autism Now” ought to be called “Eliminate Autistics Now”.
  • You can smell the storm before it starts to rain, But you go and check the weather channel anyway just to be sure.
  • You’re friends with the church secretary, but can’t recognize her when you run into her in the store.
  • You keep bumping into people but the only time you actually remember to apologize is when you bump into a tree.
  • You forget to eat or drink for a few days because you are working on an interesting project.
  • Someone wants to get past you and says “excuse me” and you reply “sure” without moving a bit.
  • Someone asks you for directions but because you can’t remember streetnames you reply with “second chewing gum machine right, then left at the yellow fence the dogs use as marker…”
  • You constantly forget taking the trash out even if you walk past it all the time because it isn’t on your mental agenda of things to do.
  • You spend hours trying to figure out how someone could find a meaning in your words that was not there.
  • You clean up the house and later find you put the oranges in the shoeholder and the shoes in the fridge.
  • You are asked to write a short report and it gets over 10 pages long because otherwise you’d not fit all the important details in.
  • You are at a tour at a science museum and can’t help correcting your touring guide on matters of quantum mechanics.
  • You sit around trying to decide what to work on today, and by the time you are done deciding the day is over.
  • Someone tells you to “smile sometimes” and you reply “I’ll do it later.”
  • Your standard reply to any “when” questions is “In a moment” but your definition of a moment never agrees with anyone else.
  • You still remember poems you learned at school 25 years ago.
  • Someone tries to wash the dishes for you and you freak because your home is part of your personal space and you feel like they’ve touched you without asking.
  • As a child you didn’t comprehend the concept of lying or “teasing”. So if your older brother told you that clouds are floating rocks you believed him until you learnt otherwise in school.
  • You can’t stand kids but you spend inordinate amounts of time browsing through “Toys ‘R’ Us”.
  • You’ve ever re-enacted all the parts of a one-act play in the shower.
  • The words “Do you want fries with that” aggravate your PTSD.
  • You keep a couple of shoeboxes full of love letters you wrote but were scared to death of delivering.
  • Every couple of months you have a chuckle over the sword-on-the-table scene in “Get Smart” even though the last time you saw it was over 30 years ago.
  • You have to ransack your entire home a couple of times a week trying to find something you often need, and even though you usually don’t find what you’re looking for you find half a dozen useful other things you thought you’d lost.
  • You get your front door key out and ready to insert in the lock while still a minute’s walk from your house
  • You need to reinforce the foundations of your house to allow for the sheer tonnage of books you own and insist on keeping around, even though you remember everything in them.
  • You shop for new clothes once a year or less and only retire old ones when they are no longer providing enough coverage to avoid indecent exposure charges.
  • You own 7 sets of identical fleece trousers and soft cotton T-shirts.
  • You gave up on ever convincing people that you are not odd ages ago.
  • You hate having to talk on the phone and confine your conversational depth to ‘Yup’, ‘Nope’, and ‘Bye’.
  • You refer to what is supposedly your own species as “the humans”.
  • You shake your head and mutter “humans….” when you see some example of social behavior that you find unattractive.
  • The last time you moved house, you had 25 large boxes of books to every one smallish box of clothing.
  • It took you, your parents, a friend, and 4 movers 3 days to move all your stuff, and you were only moving out of a 2 bedroom apartment.
  • You don’t mind visitors signing their names in the dust on your furniture… but you’ll get pissed off if they add the date.
  • You’re the only person around who will decline an invite to a big party to stay at home to watch a TV show.
  • You wear jeans to the beach in the summer.
  • You can remember the exact date The Flintstones premiered (Oct. 1, 1960) and the name and production number of the first episode (P-1, “The Swimming Pool”) but completely forgot about the now-congealed casserole that’s been sitting in your microwave for three days.
  • You get really annoyed because you realize the first episode of “The Flintstones” to air on Oct. 1, 1960 was episode P-2, “The Flintstone Flyer” (it aired out of production order) but didn’t catch the mistake until you sent off the e-mail, and now you’re going to look like an idiot.

Countdown to arrival in the UK – 7 days…

The Invisible Wandjina of Coode Hill

You know, I can’t remember if it was Google Maps or Google Earth actually…

My life is getting more and more frantic the closer I get to my trip to the UK for Ali’s wedding (I have mentioned that on here before, right?). It’s madness at work, and madness at home as I try and get things sorted to jet out in the early hours of Monday next week (that is the Monday after the next Monday – we really need some more precise time-based terminology in this language).

Anyway I had reason today to think about the Wandjinna of Coode Hill. So I went looking for it.

Coode Hill is what I call the fairly impressive rise on Coode Street between Broun Avenue and Railway Parade in Bayswater. I don’t think it has an official title, but I’m all for giving local names to local features. As such I regard Coode Hill to be an outflung western arm of the Collier Hills, overlooking the Chisholm Valley and the Meltham Basin (names you won’t find on any map). Coode Hill is fairly impressive – rising a good 20 metres (65 odd feet) above the surrounding landscape, and its eastern side is particularly impressive, the hill having been carved out to make a nice, flat cricket pitch at Hillcrest Reserve. This cliff was the location of the Wandjina.

What’s a Wandjina you ask? Well, for the last few years, someone (or more likely a number of someones) has been painting Wandjinas all over the northern suburbs. Wandjinas are the ancestral creator spirits of several Aboriginal nations up in the northwest, and are famously depicted in sacred rock art sites throughout the Kimberly. The mysterious artist has been adding them to walls, bins, rocks and even trees scattered all around the place. This has caused a fair bit of debate and consternation within the Aboriginal community – according to some Elders the Wandjina is a sacred symbol and should not be painted by anyone who hasn’t been properly initiated. Other people (such as myself) have watched on with interest, and kept an eye out for new ones – there are quite a few sets of them on Flickr.

In any case, the biggest Wandjina I’ve seen was either daubed or painted on the slopes of Coode Hill for a while. I know this because although I never saw it with my own eyes, it was clearly visible on Google Maps.

So today I went to take another look at it, and maybe post a screenshot of it to my Flickr account, only to discover that it was gone! Removed in the latest update of imagery – which I have to admit does a much better job of showing the local area.

So, the Wandjina is lost. I tried looking for it in the historic imagery in Google Earth, but no dice. It has disappeared completely. Boo!!

That’s about all I’ve got to say. Depending on how crazy the next week is my next post may well be from merry olde Englande.

(PS: Aha! Someone else got it!)

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