...when you have a really, really, really long post heading, so long that's it's even longer than the post itself

I look good as a thumbnail.



Oh wait...

that's not actually me.

...eSS

Well the work trip to Woop Woop was called off due to flooding rain, so I returned from the lush, green Hunter Valley to crispy, yellow Victoria. It's like landing on a big Anzac bikkie. I got out of going back the following week due to a wedding that Sunday (who gets married on a Sunday night?), but didn't escape going back to finish the job off all last week, which involved lots of rolling around in wombat poo and wild dog piss (I end up in the strangest places for work). My laptop is still broke. Suffice to say blogging has been a bit tricksy of late.

But now I'm back in the office and have my favourite modus operandi ala procrastination! Wheeeee! So I thought I'd use valuable company time to finish this meme I got tagged for way back in 1792 by the irrepressible Kath Lockett. Today's meme is brought to you by the letter 'S'.


1. SIMON

Simon was my best friend when I was growing up. Born six days before me, Simon was my 'best friend' because our mothers were best friends and for their convenience they told us we were "best friends" too. Only problem was that we didn't actually like each other. We were chalk and cheese. I like to think I was the cheese.

Simon was the type of kid my Mum (with 35 years teaching experience) would professionally classify as "a little shit". While I wandered around by myself looking for bugs and birds and trains, Simon was wandering around hitting people over the head with a cricket bat. He was aggressive, loud and a bad sport. I was a relatively peaceful, timid and hated sport of any kind (possibly because of Simon's behaviour, now I think about it). My dad recalls when Simon was a little kid he said "When I grow up, I want to be an army." When it was suggested that he meant to say "I want to be in the army" Simon said "No! I'm going to be an army!" Kind of cute, in a scary way.

But many moons ago our mothers had a major bitch-fight and I haven't seen my "best friend" for many years. He turned out alright, the last I heard he was marrying some horrible, pretty thing and was busy setting up a life of misery for himself. I hear a bit of goss from time to time from his older sister, of which my own sister and I remain good friends with. I have nothing against Simon and I'm sure he's a decent enough bloke, it's just that we were never destined to stay "best friends" for ever.


2. SCHOOL

Hated it. Was good at about half of it. Despised the other half. Left it as soon as was legal.... and have regretted doing so ever since. School, for me, largely sucked eggs. But having qualifications is priceless (for where I want to go) so I'm slowly and painfully clawing my way back through the process of obtaining the pieces of paper I wish I'd got 15 years ago. I'm still not a fan of the system, but I've learned that you've gotta jump through the hoops, whether you agree with the hoop setup or not.

The Man at the Pub says, "Stay at school kiddies!"


3. SEA

Spending most summers of my childhood being tossed around in the salty washing machine of Sydney's north shore does things to a person. Aside from a snotty nose and sand in my jocks, I developed an obsession with all things marine. Whales, sharks, fish, seals, coral, kelp, whales, islands, coelenterates, molluscs and other bi-valves, I spent many happy days with mask and snorkel checking it all out. I even had a pet pippie called Kevin who lived in an ice-cream bucket. He died the night I brought him home. He's buried in a matchbox on a cliff overlooking his beloved Manly beach.

But over the years my obsession with the big blue wobbly thing has waned, to the point where I'm now a bit scared to be in it. Well there's scary shit under there man, ugly shit with sharp teeth and poisonous spines and stuff. Still interesting though.


4. SMOKING

Too soon? I've been puffing on something of both the legal and illegal kind since I was in year 8 and a packet of Peter Jackson Extra Mild 20's cost $1.88. Funny how the price of dope hasn't changed in 20 years.
Two months ago I stopped the chimney impersonation and it wasn't as traumatic as I expected. I should probably attribute much of this to the hynotherapy sessions I undertook. To me this shows that nicotine addiction is mostly psychological, and not as physical as the spruikers of patches and gums would have you believe. I saw you can buy "Pre-quitting patches" now. What a scam.
Things are great! I don't sweat as much, a have more breath and stamina when walking and engaging in other vigorous pursuits, and things smell much stronger, which is not always a good thing, depending on how much dahl I've eaten the night before. The only possible drawback is that I've put on a few kilos, which I was already doing after my pre-wedding diet ended last November anyway. But with saving $70 per week on fags, I've nearly paid off the hypnotoad already.


5. SCHIZOPHRENIA

With all the loonies in my family and all the shit I've smoked over the years, I'm quite amazed that I never ended up hugging myself in a rubber room (touch wood). My dad did however, and my best mate... and my grandmother and her mother. And sometimes I wonder about my sister. And my uncle is suffers from epilepsy and my mother's neurotic ways borders on mentally ill.
It's really hard to help someone with schizophrenia because rationality goes out the window. What you say and what is heard are completely different, and what you hear is gibberish. On a sad note, my besty has been in the "Extra Care Unit" of the local loony bin since around New Years. Every time I go to visit him I'm told he's not well enough to see anyone. Looks like he may not bounce back this time... a lost cause perhaps? I may come across a bit blase about all this, but what can one do? Scream? Cry? Stamp my feet? Shake my fists at the sky?

Sometimes I think 'Schizophrenia' is a generic term for "We've got absolutely no idea what is going wrong with this person's brain".


6. SNOOZE BUTTON

Simultaneously the world's most brilliant and most evil invention of all time.


7. SELF CONTROL (or lack of it)

See above. But then again, see #4. It would seem I'm making some progress.


8. SISTER

My sister is my only sibling. Two years older than myself, we've a close relationship for which we're grateful. When I hear about the estranged relationships common amongst siblings, I realise we're quite lucky to get along famously.... to a point that is.
My sister looked after me from the day I was born. She saved my life when I fell into our pool as a toddler (though I suspect she pushed me). We used to play dress-ups, which consisted of her putting me in a dress and mums old high-heels, loading me down with fake pearls and smearing lipstick all over my face. She used to let me hang out with her 'cool' older friends and gave me her hand-me-downs, like Wham and Culture Club 12" singles and Billy Idol posters, which with hindsight, I'm not sure I should be entirely grateful for.
Then came hormone-fuelled, psychopathic, adolescent rebellion, which I won't go much into but it ended in her leaving home at age 15 and I following her at age 16. She let me move in with her and her BF and I spent the next 6 months sleeping under a coffee table in Kilsyth, then a small shed in the backyard. We then all went down to Warrnambool to party study for the next three years. Since then we've lived together several times, I've nannied her children, we've travelled together to the Solomon Islands, West Papua, Bali and Jakarta. It's been great.

But over the last few years we've drifted apart. She lives in the country, 2 hours drive away and we've changed as we've gotten older. We have less in common these days, aside from our love of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food. People have a strong reaction to my eccentric sister. They either instantly love her or are immediately suspicious of her. The latter is not entirely without foundation as she does tend to have a badly disguised, self-serving agenda behind many of her plans. She believes it's better to put people on the spot than ask for something in advance. So I love seeing my sister, but in increasingly small doses. I could write for ages on our relationship, but this is a meme, not a bloody psychology thesis. Oh, and her name starts with 'S' too.


9. SOUTH PACIFIC

Not the musical. I hates musicals! The ocean. You see I've got a thing about islands. I love 'em. I dream about them. Islands to me are mysterious, magical places. So naturally the South Pacific is Mecca for people obsessed with small pieces of land surrounded by large expanses of water. I've only been there once, well to the edge of it (three hour transit at Auckland excluded). I was lucky enough to spend three weeks on Buka and Bougainville in 2001, a year after the civil war ended. Sean Dorney, the ABC's man in the Pacific since 1974 once described Bougainville as "the jewel in the Pacific". While I have little to compare it with, I'd like to agree. Dense, verdant rainforests capped with smouldering volcanoes (in 'paradise' the beaches are black), cut by wide rivers and raging waterfalls and ringed by pristine, electric blue coral reefs of immense biological diversity. A land peppered with World War II wrecks and tiny villages of thatched huts and treehouses occupied by kindly folk of good humour. Sure life's pretty tough there, but I can't help but heap false, romatic notions on this 'paradise'. It's a western tradition.

My ultimate nerd adventure fantasy... island hopping from Sydney to Terra del Fuego on either a P-38 Lightning or a 18th Century Sloop (without all the friggin' in the riggin'). I'll need three years off for that, thanks boss. Well, I'll need a long holiday after all this blogging.

Here's some usesless Pacific facts.

• The Pacific Ocean covers a third of Earth's surface, more area than all of it's land areas combined.
  
• The deepest point in the Earth's crust of in the Pacific near Guam, at a depth of 10,911 metres. It is home to some seriously weird shit.
  
• There are around 25,000 islands and countless atolls in the Pacific ocean, most of them south of the equator. Some of them have very exotic names, like Mangareva, Tikopia, Niue and Fraser and Hamilton.

10. SPACE

Gee this meme is really bringing out my inner geek. Let's just say I have a telescope and I have magazine subscriptions. That sounds incredibly dodgy, so I might add that they are related to the science of astronomy. My interest waxes and wanes (a lunar pun! Ahh, astronomical humour) but thinking about space is my ultimate escape. It tends to put things into perspective for me and makes things such as schizophrenia and the South Pacific and Snooze buttons the minor oddities they really are. If this meme was for the letter 'D', 'Daydreamer' would top the list.

It's been a long post, so thanks for sticking with it. Regular programming will resume shortly.
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...strange days

On Monday I had my last cigarette after 20 years of smoking.

On Tuesday I was hypnotised to reinforce the point.

On Wednesday morning I watched a van plough into the back of a trailer in the lane next to me. Only problem was that the trailer had long lengths of wood tied on the roof, which went straight through the van's windscreen and crushed this poor chap's head. I was looking straight at him. On Wednesday morning, I saw a man die.

I also saw a black man become President of the United States of America.

On Thursday I had a needle in my gums and then a massive filling put in. Now I sit here wondering when dis fwoppy wip wiw subside. The sky outside is red-brown and I can feel the static electricity in the swirling, warm gusts that seem to be tearing my immediate world apart.

Strange days indeed. Not bad...... just different.

And drive safely folks. Life is fragile.

...eternal circle

There is an idea within Einstein's General Theory of Relativity that if an object travels in a straight line through space for a ridiculously large amount of time, that object will eventually arrive at it's initial point of departure. Of course this all depends on the answer to the great question, is the universe open-ended or curved?

As far the bloggiverse is concerned, I am living proof that it is of the curved variety.

I have arrived at my initial point of departure...... again.

You see being the Man at the Pub makes one prone to making rash, emotional decisions whilst in varying degrees of inebriation, and early this year (or late last year) I awoke one afternoon behind the neighbours compost bin with a whopping headache to find my beer had been stolen from the fridge and my blog had disappeared. The whole lot gone.

In an effort to re-invigorate I constructed my next blog, Red in Tooth and Claw, a cutting edge expose into the Janus faced, naked ape, delving deep into the dark recesses of the mind of the third Chimpanzee and it's view of the world around it. I even changed my name to Homo J. Sapien to herald the occasion. It lasted about two weeks, but it did have a nice picture of a Mandrill in the background. You see my intellectualism is like a Japanese meal.... lots of it, in very small portions.......... and an innordinate fondness for sea cucumbers.

A sea cucumber, yesterday.

After a blogless period I tuned my creative meanderings to It's not you, its me!, a tottering, rollercoaster of a blog, about an overweight, middleclass, white male and his problems. While not the most original of blog ideas, it satisfied for a while. And in an act of foolhardy short-sightedness, I started another blog, to revive my flagging painting career, Blank Canvas, an artists journal. But they didn't fire, and I didn't love them, so I caught up for a few drinks with my old mate the delete button.

My bloglife had died in the arse. I drifted through time and space, like in that fantasy movie but without all the cool special effects and beings from other dimesions. I was a failed blogger. A flogger. I needed to redeem my online self. My creativity failed to spark in other departments, like oil painting, photography, playing guitar and model aeroplanes, but the sex was great.

Then one day I got the itch, and it wasn't that fungal thing this time. I needed a new blog. I busily set about the concept of it and then the design and tone. Small World, a grownup's blog. A blog about fascinating places, unusual facts in history and the natural world, of general interest but best used with Google Earth. I embraced my inner geek and knocked up a you beaut header. I would be factual and objective in my posts. It would be a non-political blog suitable for every person from every culture, children and old people, if they knew what a blog was.

But I soon realised the error in my thinking. How could I be perfectly neutral and objective? How could I not crack a joke at someone else's expense? How could I not upset half the world's population when I innocently mention that I think Captain Cook was a top bloke for his time, despite all the colonization and brutal opression that followed him.

Captain James Cook. Man before his time, or utter bastard?

Then I got an email from a lady from west, a reader of the original The Man at the Pub. She reported on the a dire threat to the security of the local blog scene...... rampant complacency. She also said my old blog was good, so that was enough to have me don my cape, put my undies on the outside of my pants, scrap Small World and ressurrect The Man at the Pub, like a phoenix from the ashes who has just realized his DVD's are 3 weeks overdue. So here I stand, ready to add my own unique form of complacency to the local blog scene.

I have my old mouth back. Yay!