Escalator Riding For Beginners

ooh, there's a sound in the hallway. Can only mean one of seven things. 1.) dinner is served 2.) Bagman Jack Herbert is back for more corruption money 3.) the government workers want to swap places with me 4.) more coffee 5.) I woke up from a nightmare and I'm really booked in here to play a concert at the convention center tomorrow night 6.) whatever six was, or 7.) the cleaning crew are making their first appearance. Too late, I've washed my own stuff already and drying it outside on the balcony with the low center of gravity railing or else drying it in the closet with the complementary hair dryer. Ooooohhh it's tinker bell - that means FOOD.

Okay the rule here is, if you need something, order it the day before, or two days even better. On the phone they be like "If you need anything just let us know! We're happy to help!" So I asked if I could have some more instant coffee sachets and another little milk. "Yeah no worries." So now five hours later. I make a second call "Listen, um I asked for some coffee and milk about 4 or 5 hours ago and just wondering..." "Yes that'll be coming to you tomorrow." "Say wha?" I said. "Just put it in the lift. Take 20 seconds." "Well we've got 300 guests at the hotel..." "And no staff?" "We will get that to you as soon as possible... but there are a lot of guests and...." "I know what hotels do." I said. "But what, we're at the bottom of your list?...okay thank you. Loud and clear." "We'll try to get it up this evening." "Tha-aaannks."

All hail Matt Denny, the discus thrower from Allora (neighbouring town to Clifton) who threw the greatest sequence of throws ever by an Australian at the Olympic finals last night and finished 4th. All hail also Rohan Browning who won his heat of the 100 meters track sprint in astonishing fashion - it's the first thing I've ever seen that I literally could not believe while watching it. God I cried and whooped and hollered "You bloody beauty!" Shortly thereafter Matt threw again and again this amazing series of throws - all over 65 meters with a best of 67.02. It's hard to put what Matt did into perspective for non-athletes. The discus for men is a huge 2kg plate. Next time you're in a gym, non athletes, ahem, pick up a 2kg plate - well they probably don't have them, but they have 2.5kg plates, and have a feel of it in your hand. Then swing it around your body and notice that you couldn't throw it 15 meters, probably not 10 meters. Denny threw one 67...

Quarantine for dummies: "Served with Fruit Bowl" means you get an apple.

it is indeed a great comfort to know that the quarantine-ass health department covid test team have a sense of humour. (At my door, see, I was waiting. When they knocked I knocked straight back. The lady laughed. I yelled out "STEP BACK FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY!" She laughed again. We have a coffee date on August 13th at Starbucks on the corner.) It is indeed a second great comfort to know that when they stick the fickle finger of virus in your head they do the mouth first, both sides, BEFORE they do the nostrils, right and left. For I had feared that that memo may not have reached them - that doing the nostrils first may cause gagging when the mouth is penetrated on account of how it is the one fickle finger of virus for all four locations. amen.

Day 2 highlights: I put my milk in minifridge plus waffle gets cold outside in quarantine-ass hallway while my body remembers how to sleep

Australians all let us rejoice... for we're in quarantiiiiiiinnnneeee We've Golden Gate and Sofitel skyscrapers built on saaaaaannnndddd You cannot leave your five star room the pool is out of bounds Fill every page at every stage with details you already gave Now I don't feel lonely cos the state is in lockdoooooowwwnnnn from lofted balcons let us sing Advance Oz Quarantiiiiiiinnnee The laughing stock from sea to sea Advaaaaaaance Ozzz Quarrrrr aaaannnnn tiiiiiiiinnnneeee 'and now here's Alan Jones with his feelings'

quar-an-tine.... you don't have to sound so mean, there's a time for isolation and for the space between... I know you don't understand me or any place I've been.... quar-an-tine you don't have to sound so mean... you got some of the greatest views I ever seen... I know the breakfast bowl and two weetbix was some kinda low beam, but the meat pie and sauce helped me blow off some steam, please stop sending me weeds and leaves from yonder village green, that ain't no kind of salad, it don't belong in no kind of cuisine, and I'm sorry for scaring the shits out of Suzie when she dropped off the paper bag, I wasn't even in my room yet and I let my disposition sag, she reared back so fast she made it seem like she seen a ghost, "Put a sack on your countenance" she cried, "don't put your face where you ain't supposed," Well I heard that before a time or two in this life of suspect hygiene, but it ain't never knocked the wi...

Thanks #sofitelhotel But um I usually use a spoon

They've decided, the people who run society, that instead of knocking on your quarantined-Ass door, they are gonna ring a bell from the quarantine-ass hallway. This confuses single cell life to buggery. I've decided to rebel against this by taking a 14 day long hot shower.

The 13th Officer the 13th person at the airport who wanted my details was also a police officer and waves at me from behind his plastiglas screen and motions for me to come on over, but not too close. He says "Do you have your paperwork for quarantine?" And I go "I assume one of these forms I filled out three times already is what you're looking for." He says "Did you fill out your Travel Declaration for Queensland?" I go "No, I did not. Cos I was not supposed to come here. I filled out a Travel Declaration for South Australia cos that IS where I was supposed to land, but they fucked me again, so now I'm here. I also filled out a Travel Declaration for entering Australia form less than 7 days but more than 72 hours before my initial flight - but I must warn you since my stopover was suddenly 20 hours long none of that may be permissible" He says "I see." I say, "Isn't a Travel Declaration for entering Australia the same...

  on the upside - this is the best time ever to take photos and film of other people in public doing shit - cos they all got masks on and you don't have to blur their faces after the fact. They come pre-blurred, if you will.

Quarantine Survival At Brisbane airport the customs officer is about the tenth person you have to deal with after stepping down from your Stephen King novel flight with Qatarstrophe Airways - in between you have to be told by some dude to go straight ahead into the taped off area. Then the next dude gives you a brochure for the early adopters of Covid Tourism, then there's this woman who shoots you in the head with her digital paint ball gun and says "Do you have any loss of smell or taste, fever...." and I say "not anymore I don't...." This throws her off so much she forgets what else she was was supposed to say and waves me through. So I fill out another form with all the stuff that's already on the form I filled out on the plane which is all the stuff I filled out online less than seven days but more than 72 hours before my flight. Then there's a dude who ushers me into a sheep dip and then there's a passport check girl who wants one of the f...

I used to think I was not on the shoreline, standing there forlorn, hands on hips, tsk-tsking everything and everyone else. I used to think all my relatives and the families of friends and even most if not all of my friends were all there on the shoreline, afraid of the deep dark ocean. That shoreline is nothing more or less than accepted society. The community. Civilisation. I used to think I alone had broken free somehow and was out on top of the ocean, swimming the breaststroke, ignoring the pleas of everyone else on the shoreline for me to come back to them where it was safe on sand. I did come back in to them regularly. To help with this or that. To guide, to give solace, to sing, to tell stories, to tell them they were all okay. But I would always return to the sea, to the dark, to the universe that had ushered me forth. Mainly I kept swimming, floating, and when darkness fell and the pleas from the shoreline got louder and more intense, more plaintive, at that point I woul...

"The Dark Star Open Mic Night" So I drive to Darmstadt, right? I drive there - 188 km- find a place to park my car (hahahahahaa ahahahahahaha) and go into the building that houses the Irish pub where I am gonna play a couple songs at this Open Mic. 

 Fuck it.

 Dudes. 

It was sick. 

 No…

I mean it in the way the word was intended to mean...

It really was ill.

 There were pale heads floating about in dark clothes and angular dyed-black hair, you know, like it was Emoville, and their feet weren't touching the ground when they walked. They were already dead, dude. Ghosts. Corpses. And cool as fuck.

 And they all floated around in twos, not singles or threes, and just thinking about the significance of that made my ears melt right off. 

At the open mic night there is a massive stage that could have used a good vacuum back during the Carter administration. It sat like an alien bunker at one end of this giant underground basement, see. On this stage there is enough r...

President Karen didn’t like to lose the election. But his sole professional skill, as it turned out, was not even a skill and everyone knew it. It’s something anyone can do. It has no value. But since it was his only ‘skill’ he used it. This ‘skill’ was firing people. Not like a Boss. But like a Karen. Post election he called the manufacturers of viagra and sacked them over the phone. “We don’t work for you, president Karen,” they said. “But I lost my election…” he whimpered from the 11th green. “We have nothing to do with elections,” said the Viagra execs. “It’s already been ten days and still no election….” Cried Karen. “We deal with erectile dysfunction,” said exec #1. “Covfefe?” Said President Karen. Karen waddled into the member’s section back at the clubhouse and sacked an illegal immigrant he had hired just a week earlier. “Why you sack me?” Said Philip (he was from Dakota which Karen mistook for a central American tinpot dictatorship) Because he had dared speak Karen sacked him...

The folks at the dump hate my guts. That's okay, I'm used to it. I don't care one way or the other about them and I think this shines through my fragile, porcelain exterior.  They, like so many before them, sense my absence of a.) loyalty to their tenets, and b.) deep respect for the importance of their line of work. While a.) is true, b.) is not necessarily true. It is a nuanced respect. Nuance is difficult to get across in the brief episodes which find us, the dump workers and me, at loggerheads. Now normally, in a sane town, the folks at the dump, like, the workers, would hide in a low shed, sweating, eating corn chips and watching soccer games - diverted only every whistle-blow by online gambling. But our town has no budget for such a low shed. Indeed not even for the corn chips. So the dump workers are forced to either stand guard at the cul-de-sac of sorting bins or else hide in the trees around the perimeter sucking on German tree sap and posting sticky-fingered...

My wife loses her wallet nine times a week on average. She can NEVER find it. My job is to find it. It's an unwritten law. If I don't find it within ten or fifteen minutes I am deemed hopeless as a hunter-gatherer by her DNA. I gotta climb down off my silver steed, pull my helmet visor up, and scour the Kingdom. Now over 15 years that means she's lost it seven thousand and twenty times. I have found it seven thousand and ten times. Our daughters, the dogs and the cat have found it the remaining ten times. Once early on it was under a saucepan lid. So naturally every time she calls out "Have you seen my purse?" I say, almost every time, "Did you check under the saucepan lid?" This gets no laughs at all. Today she lost it again. She arrived home from the shops, came in the house and said "Have you seen my purse?" I said "Didn't you take my car out last night? Maybe it's in there?" "I took it out of your car this morning ...

I've just lay in bed for no more than two minutes and then this thought insisted itself on me. So now I pass it on to you because that's part of my job.  It's not so much that it's the left verses the right, or the young verses the elderly, or the poor verses the rich, or the black verses the white verses the yellow verses the brown, or the new verses the old, or the analogue verses the digital or the bitcoin verses the dollar, or women verses men, or Jesus verses Muhammed or Krishna or Buddha or the great Joo Joo up the mountain. It's darkness verses light.  And this battle is being waged in every small interaction, no matter how seemingly trivial. This is where hell lives - in the everyday, in the mundane, in seeing the worst in everything. And heaven, heaven is the opposite of that. Shining a light - through love, kindnesses, wisdom, patience, understanding, empathy, sympathy. If the world was a great warehouse there are now more than enough people trying to...

The river of Ad is ancient, broad and voluminous. Its tendrils reach every creek bed, every gully, every nook, every bend every rivulet, stream and oxbow, and nowadays of course every strip, every high street, every mall.  The ancient Egyptians, it is said, manufactured a sweeping detour of the Nile near old Cairo so that boatsmen, usually naked but predominantly elbows and knees, could wield their low-tech craft by the squared feet of the pentacled pentagram adorning the Grea t Pyramid, there to be visually asphyxiated also, suffice it to say their eyes momentarily affixed on the unsuffixed Sphinx, by the brethren and schwesterthren of the Great Pyramid - Larry, Moe, Curly, Groucho, Harpo (who always carried a chromatic harmonica) and Karl. The river of Ad is now, with the advent of bits and ones and bound-to-fail start-ups, inside our pockets, on every flat mat surface worth the name. One is deluged by Ad and it's descendants all day every day and 24 hours every night. 48 hours ...