Life and Associated Annoyances – Page 22

New Adventures in Aspiration

I drank the slab that Bon Scott drunk…

As all should know, Bon Scott was the original lead singer of ACDC and is famous for shuffling off this mortal coil by choking on his own vomit after a marathon drinking session.

The reason I recount this sordid tale is because last night I almost managed the same feat – albiet without the aid of alcohol (and of course the very fact that I’m writing these words shows that I didn’t shuffle off any coils – unless Edison has finally got that spooky telephone working).

It happened thusly. I was woken in the early hours of the morning from a particularly unpleasant dream about my tax return by my stomach deciding it would be fun to void its contents through my throat. I managed to avert this plan by reflexively jerking upwards into a sitting position, clamping my jaws shut and (and yes, this is an unpleasant detail, but necessary) swallowing for all I was worth. This avoided one catastrophe, but started a second as I suddenly found myself completely unable to draw breath – some of my liberated stomach contents apparently having decided to head for my lungs rather that back to where they belonged.

After a good deal of coughing, choking, wheezing and gargling I was able to free my airway and resume normal respiration. The slight shortness of breath and mild chest pains I find myself subject to today however suggest that I may be in line for a bout of aspiration pneumonia, which should be plenty of fun.

I’ll keep an eye on it.

In other news, how did I not know that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day? Happy (late) 200th birthday Mr Lincoln!

How Wude!

Noooooo!!!! My sideburns!!!!!!!!

Among various other bits of running around I had to do yesterday, I went and got a haircut – as the top of my head was starting to resemble… well something hairy and puffed up. I don’t know, a polar bear with a perm? Anyway it seriously needed cutting back.

So I went to my usual budget quick-in/quick-out haircut place where my hair was – in defiance of the trend established by every other visit I’ve made there over the last decade – cut by some guy, the place usually being staffed exclusively by women.

He did quite an adequate job – adequate is the best that can really be expected with my hair – but, as I noticed with horror in the mirror this morning, he shaved off my sideburns! Without even so much as a ‘by your leave’ he massacred my carefully cultivated semi-eccentric sideburns! Inconceivable!!

It’s going to take me at least three weeks of carefully not shaving near my ears to get them back to even a semblance of their former selves. Which is frankly a lot to ask at 6:30 in the morning when I’ve just stumbled out of bed and only my hindbrain has successfully completed its bootup sequence.

Bah!

(Oh, the title. Well I spent a few hours yesterday reading through Darths and Droids, and hence my opinion of Jar Jar Binks has been elevated slightly. Give me a few days and I’ll revert to passionately hating him like every other sane person in this world.)

Goose Pimple Bone

Oh I’ll be a good boy, Please make me well, I promise you anything,Get me out of this hell

Well, I’ve been holed up ever since 3:30am Monday morning with a really nasty and persistent case of gastroenteritis. I’d write about what it’s like not being able to eat or sleep for four days straight, except that John Lennon did it so eloquently for me back in 1969 with Cold Turkey…

Temperature’s rising
Fever is high
Can’t see no future
Can’t see no sky

My feet are so heavy
So is my head
I wish I was a baby
I wish I was dead

Cold turkey has got me on the run

My body is aching
Goose-pimple bone
Can’t see nobody
Leave me alone

My eyes are wide open
Can’t get to sleep
One thing I’m sure of
I’m in at the deep freeze

Cold turkey has got me on the run

Thirty-six hours
Rolling in pain
Praying to someone
Free me again

Oh I’ll be a good boy
Please make me well
I promise you anything
Get me out of this hell

Cold turkey has got me on the run

Amen John, amen.

Don’t Filter Me Bro!

Ah! Activist chicks!

OK, it’s again been a long time since an entry. I’ve been oscillating between not feeling like writing, or feeling like writing but being plain too tired to do so. End result? Decals for turning lego men into the Freakangels, and no blog entries.

But I’m pulling myself together today and actually getting some writing done (it’s 35 degrees outside, so it’s not like I’m doing anything apart from cowering under my air conditioner).

So anyway, yesterday there was a nationwide protest over the Government’s plans to force a mandatory net filter onto everyone. This is an absolutely terrible idea on any number of fronts both technical and social, so I figured I’d go along and make my voice heard. Ryan was also sufficiently motivated to go along, so we met up at Stirling Gardens for the rally at midday.

It wasn’t huge with about 300 protesters turning up, but that’s reasonably successful turnout for a city the size of (and apathetic as) Perth. There were a number of speakers, most of whom were pretty good once they abandoned the farcical PA system they’d bought along and switched to a megaphone (the one exception was a 911 conspiracy theorist who wouldn’t give his name and tried to tell us that the net filter is the work of the Bildenburg group, as are laws forcing children to wear bicycle helmets and restricting when you can water your lawn). I even got interviewed by a journalist and quoted in today’s paper, which is pretty gratifying on a personal level 🙂

(There were also a number of rather cute activist girls around the place, one of whom kept glancing at me. I’m not sure if she was glancing at me because I noticed her glancing at me once and kept glancing at her to see if she was glancing at me again which prompted her to keep glancing at me to see if I was glancing at her, or if she was actually glancing at me. She left before I had the chance to go over and say hi, which is convenient, as it meant I didn’t have to walk around cursing myself for being too timid to go over and say hi ;))

We also ran into Sam who I used to work with (actually I’m surprised there weren’t more people there I recognised). She and I had a quick chat while Ryan distracted one of the 911 Conspiracists who was trying to force pamphlets on us. Then we all cleared off before the riot cops arrived.

(That’s a joke by the way, we’re not quite a police state yet although this proposed filter is a good first step)

Apart from that I haven’t done much else lately. That should change as Christmas draws near, I’ve still got plenty of gift shopping to do at least. Watch this space for Astounding Tales of Holiday Commerce!

That’s about it for today. Expect more entries soon! (I know, I always say that… 🙂

I’m surrounded by f******* goblins!

With a shout out to the Potter Puppet Pals…

Apologies for the lack of updates but it’s been a rough few weeks.

There was a State Election resulting in a hung parliament which was resolved when the evil National Party decided to ally with the evil Liberal Party, bringing the state under the control of an evil pseudo-Coalition. Now I’m the last person to say the Labor party were great, but at least they weren’t going to start wholesale uranium mining, which seems to be about number one on the new government’s wish list. To quote Kent Brockman “Democracy doesn’t work!”

On a more personal note my parents had to have their dachshund Jacques put down last week (he had stomach cancer and couldn’t eat). They actually got him when I was still living at home, so he was sort of my dog too. It was all rather sudden, so on top of having to have him put down, I didn’t get a chance to see him first to say goodbye. I guess that sounds fairly wussy, but he was a great dog, and I miss him.

I’ve also been under a fair amount of stress at work. Thankfully that seems to be coming under control. One major job is out of the way, and I’ve got a clear list on what to do on the other major one, so things are looking up.

Expect more updates soon!

Making Lives More Surreal Since 1976

Attack of the mysteriously materialising lemons

Went around to Rebecca and Dom’s on Saturday night to try out the pizza maker I bought them for their joint 30th birthdays. The night (and the pizzas) were a great success, but they wouldn’t let me leave until I agreed to take with me a bag of lemons from their manically overflowing lemon tree.

On arrival back at my place around 10:30, I – having no use for large quantities of lemons – got rid of some of them by sneaking around and putting one in each of the alcoves outside the doors of everyone on my floor.

(I would have done the entire building but there were still people about and I didn’t want to get reported to the terrorism hotline or anything).

Mysteriously materialising lemons! 🙂

Things I Hate (The Ongoing Series)

We have a language people, use it!

People who say “change tact” when they mean “change tack”. Example: So I said we had to change tact…
People who can’t tell the difference between “cliché” and “clichéd”. Example: The plot was so cliché!
People who can’t tell the difference between “to” and “too”. Example: Can I come to?

Train Follies

Air and buttocks.

There’s an old wives’ tale, sometimes bandied about in “did you know?” type lists, that every breath you take contains an air molecule once breathed by every single other person who’s ever lived.

I do not believe this for a second.

It seems possible to me that the number of molecules in a single breath of air is greater than the total number of humans that have ever lived, but I find it unlikely that the air breathed out by every person in history has been so perfectly distributed that every breath one takes contains a molecule breathed by (to pick some names at random) Caesar, Hiawatha and Yul Brynner. I just don’t see how the necessary air-distribution infrastructure could exist.

I suspect the story came about based on the (provisional) fact mentioned above – that a single breath of air contains enough molecules to give one to every person in history and have a good number left over. It’s a short leap from that to the idea we’re discussing – a variation on the fallacy that since many cats are black, anything black must be a cat (I’m sure there’s a better way to put that, something about Cretans being liars, but I can’t think of it at this time of night). It’s probably a fairly easy mistake to make – until you start thinking logically about it anyway.

(If any mathematicians or meteorologists want to correct me and prove that I am breathing the same air as Hitler, please feel free).

As unlikely as everyone in history sharing their air may be, I think it’s fair to say that a bunch of people crowded into a railway carriage do, in fact, breath the same air. And this brings me to the main thrust of this article, which is an extremely attractive girl on the train tonight.

She was fairly gothy (which I have to admit is a look I like) with long red (dyed) hair, and was standing more or less right in front of my seat on the journey out from the city. She was accompanied by another gothy chick and from what I could make out of their body language I think they may have been together (which is fine). She was really remarkably beautiful and quite captured my attention for the whole journey to my station.

I spent said journey entertaining the kind of melancholic thoughts that plague the lonely nerd – how I would more than likely never see her again, how I’d almost certainly never get to speak to her, and similar jolly imaginings. Then, when we were getting close to my station, I stood up to fight my way to the door, and she sat down in my seat!

So that’s my story. I didn’t speak to her, I’ll probably never see her again, but we breathed the same air, and she sat in a seat warmed by my buttocks. And in a strange, silly and probably slightly disturbing way that made me feel a little better about the whole thing.

(Of course some people are now going to suggest that I should have offered her my seat – providing a perfect opportunity to speak to her, and creating a good impression all in one. Yes, well, a stuttering, sweaty nerd offering an attractive woman a train seat always goes over so well doesn’t it?)

Kolfinnia Kokokoho?

Finland! Finland! On the Baltic Sea! Finland! Finland! Also known as Suomi!

Ah, busy week, busy week.

Not only have I been co-ordinating our efforts to go to the Supanova convention tomorrow (I have four tickets in my hot little hands right now which mean we’ll be able to go straight in rather than queuing) but we’ve got a new employee at work. His name is Lasse and there are a number of interesting things to note about him…

He’s from Finland
His birthday is February 29th, making him only 6 years old
Ummm…

Well he’s only been with us for a week so there are no doubt plenty of other interesting things that shall be revealed in time.

(Oh, and I know he’s not really 6 years old, but it’s such a common joke about people born on the 29th that it shouldn’t really require any explanation).

We asked him about the Estonian message from last week. It turns out that as similar as Estonian and Finnish may appear to us Indo-Europeans they’re actually mutually incomprehensible – although there are a few well known similarities such as the Estonian for “milk” meaning “sour milk” in Finnish, and the Estonian for “Wedding Day” meaning “Trouble Day”. This is no doubt a great source of amusement among Finns, probably of much the same calibre as the Australian/Kiwi “Fush and Chups” 🙂

I was tempted to ask him about the famous “Kokoo kokoon koko kokko” but figured it’s probably as annoying to Finns as “You chop a tree down then you chop it up!” is to English speakers, so I let it be.

I also caught up with Katie over dinner on Thursday night. We wandered around Subiaco looking for somewhere to eat, but everywhere was either stupidly expensive, closing or Indian (I have nothing against India, but I just can’t abide Indian food). We ended up at Cafe Ecco where we had a potato and rosemary pizza – which is a lot more delicious than it sounds. We then adjourned to Gelare for ice cream. A good night overall.

Today I headed over to the Galleria for groceries and a haircut. I figured I could do with a haircut before tomorrow as while the odds of Jewel Staite spotting me in the audience, falling madly in love with me and us living happily ever after in a flying castle are ’round about fifty billion to one, they’re bound to be slightly better (say forty billion nine hundred and ninety nine million nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine to one) if I’ve got a decent haircut. Or at least any kind of haircut at all as opposed to the rather unorganised mess that was sitting on top of my head. So I got one. Any kind of haircut that is. I don’t know if it makes me look any less geeky, but at least it looks a bit neater.

Continuing with preparations for tomorrow I’ve spent the last hour or so fashioning a Pringles can into an insulated Red Bull can holder. You know, if I feel the need for a quick caffeine hit. The only problem (apart from my apartment now being littered with styrofoam scraps) is that it looks a bit like a pipe bomb, so I’ll need to be careful with it. Hope there won’t be any bag searches 🙂

Finally a FreakAngels Google Earth update. After the interlude last week the story is back in full swing, with Jack seemingly about to get into serious trouble. The GE file has been fully updated – including the exact location of “Camping Etc.”, which I managed to track down by dint of a lot of zooming around studying intersections (I could tell you where it is, but you’ll just have to download the file and see).

That’s it, early night before tomorrow’s festivities 🙂

No TV makes Denys something something…

I’ll need a plastic bucket…

Go crazy? Don’t mind if I do!!

Well OK, it’s not quite that bad. But it’s still having an effect. Last night for instance I had the most appalling trouble falling asleep. I didn’t drift off until the early hours when I took the measure of snuggling up to some spare pillows and making believe that they were Alison Mack (Awwww, how sweet! And vaguely disturbing). I think I’m beginning to see why any extended period of TV deprivation should be preceded by a (Twitch City style) Pon Farr.

But seriously, the issues I’m having have less to do with TV deprivation and more to so with autism. We autistics have a natural tendency to organise our lives into rigid routines, and when those routines are suddenly forced to change it tends to mess us up badly. Having no TV in the evenings is a major change to my daily routine, and I’m suffering the consequences (mainly ill focused general anxiety). But sooner or later I’ll adapt – probably just in time to get my TV back, and start all over again 🙂

Ain’t life grand?