Squid

Well it were about 20 years back now when me, Old Joe, Phil and Benny Moustrap decided to go out squid fishin’. We didn’t have any squid rods handy but Phil said he knew an old schooner captain’s trick (which he learned at the foot o’ his gran’pappy) where a body could take an ordinary rod and with a few quick applications o’ nails and paint fashion up the finest squid rod you e’er did see. So we hauled out a tin o’ old paint Benny had in the back o’ his shed and scrounged up a handfull o’ nails from the gutters outside Levi’s Gin Palace and before ye could say ‘Jack Whiticker’ we had a fine pair o’ rods ready to go.

Now at this point Old Joe raised the issue that there happened to be four o’ us and only two rods, which seemed quite the dilemma until Phil explained, in his usual wheezy fashion, that he never liked doin’ the catchin’ himself, and much preferred to watch, and then Benny pointed out that with him havin’ no arms or legs he wouldn’t know what to do wi’ a squid rod nobouts. So fully armed and prepared we carried ourselves down to Cap’n Bandy’s Pelagic Boat Hire to acquaint ourselves with a vessel for the catchin’ o’ squid suitable.

Now, as it happened Cap’n Bandy wasn’t around, him havin’ to rush off and take the place of another Cap’n who had made certain promises to judge the Trout contest over at Lake Chudditch and all o’ a sudden been unable to due to an outbreak of the chitlins, but his assistant Lootenant Bejtman was most helpful and led us to a fine boat o’ the sea goin’ by the name of ‘Lucky Betty’. Old Joe weren’t too keen on this at first, two o’ his wives havin’ shared the name o’ the ship and he not havin’ good memories o’ either. But we talked him round and in said process even convinced Lootenant Bejtman to give us a discount on the hire for Old Joe’s emotional pain and sufferin’, which he said was easily the best thing to come out of either set o’ nuptials. So we piled into the Betty – Benny rollin’ in off the side of the dock as was his way – and set off into the wide blue ocean in search o’ squid.

But that my friend is another story entirely.

Musical Tuesdays – Theme Edition

Wow, I’ve actually managed to make a second Musical Tuesday post. Maybe this will last a while after all!

The first song for this week is Christmas Island by Washington State natives Lake. Also known as Island Song, keen eared listeners will recognise it as the end theme from possibly the best cartoon series ever, Adventure Time with Finn and Jake.

Even more keen eared listeners will realise that it’s not quite the same song as the end theme. The Adventure Time version has a whole bunch of altered lyrics – although you don’t get to hear too much of them, as the end credits only run for a verse and a half. If you’re interested in a complete comparison you can track the full version down – think of it as a challenge!

In any case, this version of the song is a sweet, lo-fi ballad with a touch of the 50’s to it, which is A-OK by me.

The second track for this week is another TV ending theme, this one belonging to 80’s sci-fi series Max Headroom. Those too young to remember the 80’s may be unaware of Max and his career trajectory which went from Pepsi spokes-thing to star of a cyberpunk TV series, to interrupting late night Doctor Who reruns with incomprehensible rants about Chuck Swirsky. In any case, I remember the TV series as being a greatly entertaining distopian extravaganza set “20 minutes into the future”.

It would no doubt look pretty dated now, but then Cyberpunk itself is dated. It was the 1980’s idea of what the 21st century would look like (much as Steampunk is the 21st century’s idea of the 19th century’s idea of the 20th century). It got a few things right, but a whole lot more things wrong. Cybernetic limbs for instance are rare, and not terribly good. There certainly is a “net” – but it’s not an exciting virtual reality world made up of vector polygons, it’s a place where people post videos of their cats. Corporations are  not – as yet – in charge of private armies of mercenaries engaging in prolonged gun battles through the city streets. Climate change has mitigated the chance of constant gloomy overcast and pounding rain, and neon signs full of Chinese and Japanese logograms are mostly limited to the areas immediately surrounding Asian restaurants.

But back to the music. This end theme apparently appeared on a only a few episodes, which meant that for years the only way I’ve had to hear it is the scratchy version I recorded straight off the TV onto an audio tape circa 1989 – which features the added bonus of an announcer talking about all the action coming up on a new episode of something called Paradise. But I recently stumbled over a copy that some kind soul has put up on YouTube. So slip on your mirrorshades and chill out to a great piece of 80’s synth that may or may not have been written by that dude from Ultravox.

Best. Put-Down. Ever.

One of the best put downs I’ve ever seen was on a message board I stumbled across many years ago…

Someone had taken it upon themselves to start a new thread by posting a lengthy and quite astonishing white supremacist screed. This consisted of some kind of KKK edited version of It’s a Wonderful Life in which a young idiot named Jimmy (or Timmy, or Heinrich or something) goes off to college and comes under the influence of an evil, atheistic, Jewish professor who convinces him that white people are the worst thing to ever happen to the world. On returning home for the holidays he gets into an argument with his white, God fearing, patriotic father and announces “I wish white people never existed!”

Conveniently for all racist didacts an Angel named Clancy appears and takes him on a tour of a world where white people never existed. This mostly consists of barren wastelands devoid of all civilisation because without the influence of white Europeans the rest of humanity are (apparently) unable to even come up with the idea of rubbing two sticks together. Jimmy makes numerous idiotic requests such as “Take me to a Holiday Inn” to which Clancy invariably replies “Without white people there are no Holiday Inns!”, prompting Jimmy to fall into a state of complete despair and request to be whipped off to some other part of the globe, where Clancy is conveniently able to inform him that Archeologists have “recently proved” that the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China or the local KFC were all built by white people. On the rare occasion when Jimmy and his companion manage to locate some semblance of civilisation, the locals are all bloodthirsty savages who try to cook and eat him, which causes him to fall deeper into despair and eventually see how foolish he was to wish away white people, and Clancy undoes the wish, returning him home.

Rather than put this experience down to eating some bad turkey, Jimmy proceeds to gorge himself on a vast meal that name checks every country in Europe, then heads back to his college and shows his classmates THE TRUTH by bawling out the evil, atheistic, Jew Professor who is corrupting the youth of America with his evil, atheistic, Jewish ideas (I don’t recall if the story mentioned it, but it’s highly likely that one of the Ravens of Odin flew into the room and shed a single tear while singing the Horst Wessel Lied).

Following this bizarre rant was a single post from one of the other members of the forum which I can still recall, word for word, all these years later…

So… did you copy that from somewhere, or did you just wake up this morning and think “I think I’ll go batshit insane today!”

Best. Put-down Ever.

Musical Tuesdays

So here’s a new thing I’ve been thinking about doing for a while to get me back into the habit of blogging, and hopefully resurrect the Wyrmlog from its current state of moribund sporadicity. Musical Tuesdays! Every Tuesday until I forget or get bored I’ll be highlighting two musical tracks that I think worthy of notice. Ideally one recent, and one from the past, but we’ll see how long that lasts.

So the first track I’ve decided to go with is the – as far as I’m aware – only notable hit from Texas natives Fastball – 1997’s The Way. The song is based on the true account of an elderly couple who set out one morning to attend a festival in a neighboring town, never turned up, and were discovered dead hundreds of miles away two weeks later – but it reinterprets this sad tale into a story of a couple who leave their lives behind to head out together onto the open highway into an eternal summer. The anxious verses describe their decision to leave and what happens to them on the road, but are resolved in a soaring, triumphal chorus, and the entire work has an enjoyable latin flavour as befits the song’s south-west origin.

The second track is Pizza Guy from Australia’s own Touch Sensitive. To be honest I don’t know much about the track or artist, except that I stumbled across it on late night radio and spent much of the next day trying to track it down. An electronic piece, it’s redolent of the 80’s and the works of Jan Hammer.

So there you go. Musical Tuesdays Issue One complete!

A New England

People ask me when will you grow up to be a man? But all the girls I loved at school are already pushing prams.

So, on Saturday night it was my 20 year high school reunion.

I didn’t go to the 10th year reunion. I was – as blog entries from that far off era will attest – still bitter and twisted out of shape about the less enjoyable aspects of my high school career. But I’ve mellowed out over the last decade and decided to put in an appearance at the Rose and Crown in Guildford at 7:00 in the evening to see what could be seen.

As it turned out, what could be seen was a really good turn out, including in particular my old friend Mark who hasn’t been in Perth for a good five years. Justin also turned up (after I phoned him on the Friday to remind him it was on) and I divided the evening between lurking with them and wandering out to inveigle my way into various conversations and catch ups.

It was a really good night. Our principal Mr Mulchay turned up for a while, as did chemistry teacher Mr Sorge. About half the people looked the same – with some extra weight, a few wrinkles round the eyes and (for the guys) less hair (apart from Daniel who had a beard Ned Kelly would be proud of). The rest looked like complete strangers, but a good half of those were identifiable after comparing nametags (I had no idea who the hell the remaining 25% were, but that’s the way it goes I guess ;))

Particularly gratifying from my viewpoint was catching up with Renee, who’d been one of the main organisers of the event. She was a major part of my high school experience in that she was the most popular and beautiful girl in the year to pay me any attention at all. I was constantly half in love with her and remember being more or less struck dumb in her presence, but she apparently remembers me as being really smart and funny, and us sitting together at the back of the room in English with me continually making her laugh. So that’s nice to get another perspective on 🙂

She’d also read the Tales of the Geek Underclass at some point (I suspect due to Ryan’s pimping it on Facebook), thought they were great and demanded that I write more. As my old PCG associate Lincoln also complemented them I probably shall.

It was also nice when later in the night she wandered over to the table I’d sat down at (my feet were killing me at that point – one of the perils of letting yourself age for twenty years) put her arm around me and repeatedly told everyone “I love this guy!”. I must admit she was a bit worse the wear for drink at that point, but it still had the tiny ghost of 17 year old me doing cartwheels somewhere deep in my soul ;). As one of the major social hubs of the event her presence summoned a wide variety of people to the table and that same tiny ghost was overawed at hanging with all the cool kids for a while – including Sherri and Rebecca which along with Renee made up a two thirds reunion of my year 10 English table.

I caught up with plenty of other people too. One person I was particularly happy to see was the girl (I suppose I should really say woman shouldn’t I?) I had a major crush on all through year 12. In contrast to most of the rest of the attendees she hadn’t changed a bit – I recognised her immediately, and was surprised to find my heart briefly skipping a beat when I did so.

She also had exactly the same laugh, which – again to my surprise – made me come over all… well I can’t think of a suitable adjective, but you know how it feels when you hear someone you’re crazy about laugh. It took me back for a moment to when I was an awkward, nerdy 17 year old still trying to figure out the world – as opposed to an awkward nerdy 37 year old beaten down by it. That alone was worth the admission cost.

(Of course, even if I were to mistake those emotional echoes for anything real, she – like most of my former classmates – is married with a couple of kids. She seems to be doing really well for herself, which is the best you can really wish for anyone.)

The evening went on, with the crowd thinning out, until midnight, when the Rose and Crown staff explained that they’d really prefer to close. Someone who I recognised and had spoken to earlier in the night but whose name has escaped me took it on himself to climb up on a table and draw the night to a conclusion with three cheers for the organisers, and a call for those who wanted to keep partying to reconvene at the Casino. I was so tired by that point that I was becoming positively gregarious, so after some goodbyes (including hugs from Renee and Rayanne who… well, any guy who was there would agree that she certainly changed… I mean, wow!) got a lift home with Justin, with a stop off at Alfred’s kitchen on the way.

It was a great night, but in the end there was a little touch of melancholy. For one evening we were again those bright, brilliant, amazing kids of twenty years ago with our whole lives ahead of us. I think that’s why the night went on so long – if our 37 year old bodies would have held out and the Rose and Crown stayed open I think we would have stayed till the sun came up, just to try and hold on to who we used to be. But reality calls and we had to go back to our lives and on our separate ways. I suppose that’s always the way it is with reunions. You can’t go back, and – in the clear light of day – would you really want to? One night is enough.

That said, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Roll on 2023!

Some Notes

1: Brumby’s – Having one product labeled “Cheese and Bacon Roll” and another labeled “Roll – Bacon and Cheese” is just asking for trouble.

2: Just finished Anno Dracula 1918 – The Bloody Red Baron and it’s auxiliary content. Richard the Third!? I didn’t see that coming!

3: There are days when I’d really like to be a Water Bear

Yours is the Sword of Michael!

My good friend Paula has had a really bad week, and is at me to compose something amusing to cheer her up. Unfortunately I’m just not up to it today, but I found this clip from The Venture Brothers freakin’ hilarious, so maybe it’ll help…

It stands up perfectly well on it’s own, but it’s even funnier (in a really, really dark way) when you realise that each member of the gang is modeled on a famous psycho. “Ted” is serial killer Ted Bundy, “Patty” is kidnap victim and Stockholm Syndrome sufferer Patty Hearst, “Val” is extreme-feminist and would be assassin of Andy Warhol Valerie Solanas and “Sonny” is David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam”, who famously claimed he was ordered to kill by his neighbour’s talking dog.

Bizarre and disturbing genius!

Oh yes, carn the Dockers. Carn.

Lovecraft World Redux

Long time readers may remember my post about Lovecraft World, the fictional Cthulhu Mythos theme park I did a TAFE assignment about way back in the heady days of the late 1990s. This was a theoretical amusement park that really tried to get into the spirit of Lovecraft’s oeuvre by killing, maiming and driving-into-insanity it’s patrons in the manner of a particularly bleak and bloodthirsty Disneyland where Mickey has fangs and tentacles.

Well, it turns out that Lovecraft world wasn’t entirely a product of my imagination, as it seems to have manifested itself in late 70’s New Jersey in the form of Action Park.

Attractions at Action park included…

  • An Alpine slide cart ride with two speeds – abysmally slow and “death awaits”.
  • A skateboard park so badly built that it was closed and filled in after one season.
  • Go carts that were used as 80kmph bumper cars and gassed their riders into unconsciousness.
  • Tanks that could shoot high velocity tennis balls at each other or, more often, park employees.
  • Speedboats that raced around a snake infested pond at dangerous speeds.
  • Bumper boats that raced around a second snake infested pond and randomly sprayed petrol over their pilots.
  • A bungee cord slingshot ride that induced whiplash.
  • An enclosed water slide that did a vertical loop, resulting in facial and back injuries and the occasional trapping of patrons.
  • A wave pool so terrifying that people got injured just trying to get out of it.
  • A whitewater ride with an electrified riverbed.
  • A tarzan swing with water so cold that it caused paralysis and heart attacks.
  • A raft ride that often dislocated and broke limbs.
  • A second raft ride that took patrons through a pitch dark tunnel, lined with sharp rocks.
  • A diving attraction that allowed patrons to plummet seven metres down onto unsuspecting swimmers.
  • A ride where patrons were skimmed over a shallow, concrete lined pool at high speed. If they sat exactly right, and weren’t hit by other patrons.
  • A skydiving simulator that severed nerves.

I am speechless. Abdul Alhazred would be proud!

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