Hi.

Also; ideas, as it were, lead us to topics.  Topics lead us to insight.  And insight leads us neatly to pancakes.  It’s also a smashing way to start a discussion.  Insight, that is, not pancakes.

And so the tale begins.

Somewhere, nestled deeply between “Which one was better, Jaws, or Nightmare on Elm Street?” and “Can you use cauliflower as a sponge?” lay a delightful platter of near death experiences.

For my part, it’s a summer vacation to Fraser Island with the folks in my teens.  A trip down to Lake McKenzie’s pristine waters.  The kind of water that’s so clear you can see ten feet below you; and beyond that, sparse leagues that disappear off the shelf into the cooler blue wonders of its abyssal treasures.

And as you do, we took a boogey board out into the middle with a diving watch and plumbed the depths.  The game was basically:  one breath, how low can you go.

After about the fourth attempt, we were already pretty knackered.  Four or five metres was about the extent you could manage before the ears started to pop and that familiar dead weight caused your lungs to burn.   Still, it was fun and we were keen.

The next dive was basically the be-all, end-all.  You knew you still had hours of swimming in you, but the fatigue of holding your breath that long, time after time, had started to take its toll.

It’s funny – on the way back up, I remember bumping into something.   At the time it felt hard and sharp, and without goggles, dim light that hampered sight any more than a foot or two infront of you, I immediately started to freak out.  Was that a shark?  What the fuck was it?

Turns out it was a turtle.  There’s hundreds of the bastards in the lake, especially in the summer months.  But, still on my way up, with metres still to climb, and with the dire need to take a breath threatening to bust out my chops as I gulped down mouthful upon mouthful of salty goodness (that one’s for you Lenko), panic struck.  That fucker did look like a shark.  Whatever air I had left just kind of exploded out of my mouth.

Thankfully, my mate had his goggles, and was conveniently watching the whole escapade play out from the safety of a calmer surface above.  Cue dramatic rescue, stage left.

I didn’t really drown or anything.  No tunnel of light or any of that business.  But it was definitely one of those “life before your eyes” moments.  Its ok now though.  I only occasionally wake up, skin a pasty shade of white, bed drenched with sweat, clawing at my imaginary wet suit and gurgling out for Mummy.  It’s not like I have a complex or anything.

Still, it does beg the question.  Have you nearly carked it?
And if so, wouldn’t you like to share your embarrassing tale among the tribe?

Like, right now?  On the webz?

Though he couldn’t, Dustin thought last night must have been one to remember.  He could remember visiting the hospital, dodging questions about his personal life, wishing his best to Daniel, and then escaping into the night.  He hated hospitals.  After that, he thought maybe he’d met up with some friends at the local watering hole.  Kyle, Dustin exclaimed inside his head as an image of his best mate bobbed around like an apple, he might have been there.

The headache that lingered was one of monstrous proportions; an eigentone that resonated deep along the walls in the space between his eardrums.  He could feel the harmonics as they ran along the jaw-line into his root canal.  Dustin clenched his teeth together.  It was really starting to give him the shits.  In a vain move to unblock his ears, he held his nose.  Hand cupped over his mouth, Dustin puffed out his cheeks.  Bad move, he thought with a wince.  Now his whole head throbbed.  It felt like an Irishman was dancing a jig on his grave.

As he slouched at the table, Dustin couldn’t help but feel numb and disconnected from his surroundings.  With the lanterns lit dimly as they were, all you could make out of neighboring patrons were their silhouettes; phantoms that whispered conspiratorially to one another, haunting visions that whose shadows flickered eerily on the walls.  Why am I here?

A kind of stoic solipsism washed over him, a gloomy introspection.  His surrounds kind of hovered and buzzed around the edges, like background noise, before finally settling into a dull hum.  He welcomed the respite.  Dustin’s focus returned to his chopsticks, and he watched as they fidgeted for greater meaning in his noodles.

A short time later, bangles chinked together and a hand darted in front of Dustin’s face.  Looking up, he could see it was Sascha.  She looked happy.

Smiling brown eyes parted high cheeks that swept out from a button nose.  It was a neat effect, so she said, as it gave the impression her eyes were larger than they were.  And that, so he’d been instructed carefully, was a good thing.  Full lips drew attention down a fine jaw to her slim neckline.  She was wearing a grey-wool sweater.

Sacha had a bubbly effervescence about her.  And even in dull mood, you had to work hard not to be infected by it.  He could see her grinning at him.  He smirked back and immediately regretted it.

“Aww diddums,” she said, pinching his cheek as the waiter slipped the chair under her. “Big night?”

Feigning aggravation, he rubbed at it. “Huge.”

“Do anything interesting?”

No response.

“Did you catch up with Kyle?”

“Kyle, where?”

“Last night.  You know, at the party.”

“The party?”

“You know: music, drinks, light entertainment, the pool, scantily clad women. Party.”

“Right.  The party.  Yes.”

“You don’t remember, do you?”

“No.”

Sascha plucked a miniature bread stick from the bowl in front of her.  She seemed content to nibble at it for a moment while she fashioned the next stage of her inquisition.

Sometimes, Kyle was just one of those people that got on Dustin’s nerves.  He was a self-professed genius, by his own accounts, to which various contraptions and ideas would’ve been attributed had they not been pilfered by his peers.  He professed to know a little about everything.  And somewhere, hidden behind those layers of pseduintellectual bravado, Dustin wondered it wasn’t a lonely soul who peered out at the world.  But for all his outward aloof, it was his doomsayer qualities that Dustin loved.  A self depreciation that can only be found in the noblest students of inward eschatology, destined to walk the world in search of some elusive and horrible truth.

“You’ll never guess what I was watching this morning.”  Dustin thought he’d better initiate something that resembled conversation before she strangled him with a napkin for arranging a dinner he wasn’t mentally attending.

“Surprise me.”

“Well, I flicked it on”, he said “and right there in front of me…”

“Yes?”

“Wiggles”

“Wiggles?” she looked puzzled.

“You know, the Wiggles.  They sing and dance.”

“Paedophile.”

“Shut up” and he frowned at her before continuing “so anyway, I figure that’s where I want to be in twenty years.”

“Singing nursery rhymes? Dancing with fluffy toys?”

“No, to still have an idea of where my toes are.  Those guys are pretty flexible you know.  It’s like new-age yoga; killer with the ladies.” He glimpsed up from his bowl to see if he got a rise out of her.  ”If I’m forty-five, pushing fifty, and can still bend like that… man.  Look out!”  He made a posing gesture as if he was midway through seventies-style rock photo-shoot, and he heard her chuckle.  But then she whacked him in the shins.

“Ok, let’s order.”

Dustin woke to find himself choking on a pillow, in precisely the way that pillows do if you gnaw on them.  This wasn’t his room.  Stumbling out to Saschas kitchen to grab a drink, he could hear the TV in the background.  She was silently wording the music to a late-night musical.

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” He wouldn’t have picked it so easily had she not been twirling a cocktail umbrella in time with the music.

“Come back to bed.” Dustin said.

“Maybe.”

“I’ll give you a spoon full of sugar.” He said, wandering back in the direction of the bedroom.

“Nice try, Romeo.” She piped at his retreating back.  But as he turned around, she frowned.

“What?”

“Nothing, must be the light.  You just look taller.”

I used to love those “choose your own adventure” stories as a kid.  So for anyone interested, or wants to participate, here’s the rules.  There’s only two of them:

Rule 1: You get to say one word or phrase in reply, and that word or phrase gets incorporated into the next bit.

Rule 2: If everyone says “penis”, I hate you.

–

Water makes a distinct sound as it passes: a drip, a trickle, a gush, a torrent.  Streams and rivers are born by such passages.  People really aren’t so dissimilar.  We too, find our paths of least resistance.  We too, settle and pool in familiar places.  We too, forge crevasses that define our lives.  It takes powerful influences for us to deviate from those paths, to look for new direction.  And it’s not often that we seek out that change for ourselves.

Dustin turned off the tap.  The hot water system has been playing up for months.  Three minutes was a new record.  Towelling off, the stereo unusually silent, he dressed for the hospital.  The boy’s parents had requested he visit, but he wasn’t sure if he should go.  He wasn’t family.  Hell, he didn’t even know the family.  These people were strangers.  It was an accident, just a spate of random events.  It wasn’t intentional, or even logical.  He’d just reacted.

Dustin played the events out in his mind.  They felt fragmented, like slides scattered across a table.  It wasn’t that he felt puzzled piecing them back together.  They just felt disjointed, like it had happened to someone else.

Daniel, at least that’s what he thought parents had called the boy, had been out riding.  Dustin was a local of the area for a couple of years now.  He had an apartment a few blocks from where it happened.  He’d spotted the boy riding before, though they’d never met, never spoken so much as a word to one-another.  The thoroughfare was often used by kids as the bike lane, so it was a common obstacle for morning joggers.

Daniel must have leashed the dog to his handle bars so that it could run out in front of the bike.  The dog was a Labrador, probably no more than a year or two old.  It seemed young and exuberant, although it was no longer a puppy.  The light coloured coat shone like it was recently washed, and there was an amber glean where the sun caught it.

Riding behind a line of parked cars, Daniel was obscured to oncoming traffic.  It was pretty stupid really, tying the bike to an inquisitive mind.  But he was a kid.  It was innocent.

While the accident itself was over in seconds, Dustin’s recollections of it felt like time played in freeze-frame.

There was a jerk of the handlebars as the dog spied a plastic bag blowing across the road.  A brief pause if as if the canine had weighed the bag’s importance, before a playful whim won out to better training and judgement.  As Daniel’s tire hit the curb it wobbled for a moment.  His instincts made him lean towards the safety of the paved path, but overcompensating, his centre of balance shifted and the bike was dragged out from beneath him.

Daniel was a small kid.  He didn’t have a chance.  The dog took off after the bag with his leg still caught in the frame.  It only managed to get a few feet before the momentum of the bike and its occupant stopped in its tracks.  But that was enough for the dog to be in the middle of the road, while Daniel was left jutting out from the parked cars.  He stopped moving the moment his head met the gutter.

The road itself, being single lane with cars in both directions, had nowhere left for a vehicle to swerve.  Flight or fight.  That’s what they say happens.  Dustin hadn’t thought much about it at the time though.  There were only moments left to react, and a seemingly impossible distance between them.

Dustin couldn’t explain why he threw himself those last few yards.  He just did.  Already worn from exercise, he could feel the strain in his calves and ligaments, and the familiar burn of over-stretching.  In hindsight, he guessed it was around that time that the adrenaline kicked in.  Pain turned to invigoration. His heart pounded in his ears as his steps became less laboured and more propelling.

Five metres between him and the boy.  While there should have been ample time, the car didn’t even seem to be slowing.  Dustin absently wondered whether the driver was paying attention to the road.  They were probably drinking coffee.  He remembered thinking he could use a cup himself.  Four.  In the corner of his eye, Dustin could see the plastic bag had stopped moving.  The dog must have caught up with it.  Good for him.  Three.  Dustin knew he was out of time.  He heard the screech of brakes and he dove forward.  Two.  Dustin’s right hand caught Daniel’s jacket at the shoulder and he yanked hard.  Although unconscious, the boy grunted as he moved.  One.  Using his momentum as his chest hit the bitumen; Dustin’s legs about-faced as his body swivelled across the loose gravel.  Using his size as a shield, he propped the boy’s body against his chest. Impact.  All Dustin could remember after the sound of bike-meeting-fender was a yelp, and the searing pain as if his shoulders had been wrenched from their sockets.

As he fastened the last button on his shirt, Dustin couldn’t help but notice the reflection staring back at him was unfamiliar.  He looked taller somehow.

After a few weeks of contemplation with nothing to do, I’ve come to the realisation that I’m addicted to acceleration and performance.

So I’m now tempted to go spend a bit of money and upgrade my people mover. And before the motley crew pipes in, I’ve never really been that interested in bikes.  Two wheels, no carriage, all that bitumen. Just no.

In fact, if you were ever a Warner Brother’s fan as a kid, well.. I was the guy who empathised with the Coyote.  He always had a plan - he just never had the right tools.  So no, bikes seem about as safe to me as lighting the fuse of an ACME rocket strapped to your gonads.  And I happen to like my gonads. They’re all spongy.

And so, set upon my task of… actually, this brings me to an interesting point. A point I kind of brought up in conversation in guild the other day.

Why in the hell do we still measure things in horse-power? Or candle-light intensity for that matter? Ya know? Didn’t we invent a metric system at some point back in the late 1700’s? I was under the impression that became fashionable.

So anyway, the stock Z comes with about two-hundred invisible thoroughbreds including stables and housing, which they bolt to the front of your car.  You still have to foot the food bill however, and let me tell you, those little fuckers are hungry. They’re all stirruped to the back axle in such a way that you leap into forward motion whenever you crack your metallic whip.

Well, after some hunting around I found a place in Sydney that would not only give me more horses; but they’d make the ones I already had run almost twice as fast!

Apparently they pry their mouths open, elongate their necks a little, tear out their wind wipe and feed it back down their oesophagus, and shove this massive funnel up their arse to improve the digestive process.  They say it’s ok because it’s more efficient.  Heads up to the RSPCA on that one.

But after talking to this dude on the phone, I felt a bit like Scooby after hearing Velma explain how the Gardener had master-minded his grand plan.  Which is to say, I say there with a stupid grin on my face, nodding my head up and down with my tongue lulling out my mouth, while long spindles of drool kind of dribbled down my front.

My idea at this point is if I bother to pay for all this, I’d like to take it up as a new hobby:  go out to some track days and have a bit of fun.

So my question is:

Has anyone ever done this kind of stuff before?

If so, I’d love to hear some worldly advice.  Tips, tricks, anything would be appreciated.

When I was young, maybe three, I remember getting stung by a bee.

We had this little red swing set in the back yard, which in my mind’s eye may as well have been built by giants.  I used to use the rod that propped up the “A” frame as a set of monkey bars, and while I remember it being huge, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of feet off the ground.  And so, as kids often do, I remember jumping up and grabbing hold without looking.

I don’t remember the pain of the stinger, but I do remember being scared.  I remember running inside, looking for the kind of comfort that only a mother can give.  The open arms, the big hug and even bigger smile, and the kind, soft whispers of reassurance as she whisked me up onto a chair and sprouted tweezers.  I can’t remember if I was angry at first, but maybe I was.  It was my swing set after all, and the bee had no right to be there.  What I remember most, though, is that she told me the bee would die.

I remember running outside to have a look at it.  I also remember it being squished against the frame where my hand had been.  It’s also one of the few times I ever remember crying.

It’s funny, you know?  As a kid, everything’s big and new; and there’s a great sense of wonder about the world.  There’s an air of innocence about it.  Lessons like mortality and the consequences of your actions aren’t learned cheap.  And those lessons are revisited, and reinforced, as the years tick by.  I can’t speak for anyone else, but that tends to solidify your understand of a thing.  And no, this isn’t a discussion about death, or mortality.  It’s just an observation about perception.

The problem with trial and error, cause and reaction, and certainty of proof is that you hug to it as you get older.  It’s not that the world has become any less innocent, or any less wondrous; it’s that my perception of it has changed.  And therein lies the danger, I think.  The danger isn’t in understanding something; no.  It’s that the next time around, you expect the same result.  The more proof you see of theory driven from practise, the more inclined you are to shrug off to the possibility of change.   And the less inclined you are to question it.

It’s a double-edge blade, no doubt; but perception, I think, is quintessential to the nature of possibility.  And perhaps, then, its worth tackling the challenges of tomorrow with my eyes open.

As far as the evolutionary ladder goes, we’re by-and-large a social pet.  Most of us enjoy the company of others, flock together for special occasions, and spend a large part of our lives grooming one another.  Throw a barbeque, or “mates night in”, for example, and the hunter-gatherer takes over, foraging to bring together a selection of tasty treats to be shared among the tribe.

Different people, however, enjoy different things.  I, for one, am not the socialite that my mates are.  I can go long periods without contact and catch up again on weeks, months, or even years at a time within a few sentences, with that familiar feeling that the conversation has simply picked up where it left off.  I don’t dine on the prospect of idle chatter; hugging it closely as if to struggle some nourishing morsel from the practise.

In that sense, after much drunken debate, it was determined that I am the savannah pride lion, or the gorilla.  Living out my days in the urban wilderness, piecemeal with my surroundings as I contemplate matters, being social for the love of my pack and mostly content to survey the borders of my dominion while grasping at the loose straws that bind the nature of the universe.  This much is probably true; and I think I took that in good stead.

So everyone else was, in my opinion, a hyena – bickering over tid-bits and morsels, circling their adversaries with cruel malice, and brandishing their pointy white teeth while baying their woes at the moon.  Sadly, lions and hyenas don’t seem to share the same sense of humour, and the finesse of that observation wasn’t as amusing as I, allegedly, seem to think it was.

Which animal are you?

And a happy New Year!

How you even being to wrap a year like that is beyond me.  If you were simply to look at tabloid headlines, this was the year that turned everything on its head.

China holds the games and Tibet, success.
They did a pretty good job really. Few billion people crammed into the rafters and yet they still managed to clear the place out, throw a set of games, put on a good show (lip-synced or otherwise) and keep everyone alive.

Monks complain about their occupation, get some publicity, China says “leave them out of this” and blacklists anything remotely connected to Tibet (again).  Moral uproar ensues, but as usual, people let the topic fade into the twilight.  Notoriety in news, after all, is a fickle thing that depends on what sells the papers – and no one wants to be on China’s bad side and miss a slice of that economical pie.

Martian lander finds water, love, and some kind of fecal matter.
So we sent technology to Mars.  Go us.  We managed to maintain a radio wave link that could control the thing from.. how far away are we again?  We landed the bastard, played with our interplanetary remote control car for a couple of months and used its Tonka truck arms to dig for stuff.  There’s some ice out there.  Nice.  Maybe, it was once even habitable.

We taught it to build blocks out of our trash, and when the aliens landed and started shooting lasers at us and stealing our last surviving plant, we made love to them – while throwing off our evil robot oppressors.

Aussie dollar plummets amid a world in financial turmoil.
But what’s to be expected really.  We don’t make anything any more.  We’ve sold all our shit to someone else, and all but closed down our manufacturing sector.  Bar a few commodities in mining and farming, we’re now a service based industry and therefore a risky capital investment.  On the plus side, we can offset that risk a little via our banking sector, which  isn’t permitted the same loose rules systemic in the US.

It’s one of the weirdest crashes you could possibly imagine.  Because the first people to suffer their fate were the people at the top.  Tall poppies, really tall ones, that actually felt the pinch.  That almost never happens.

Now, as inflation plummets and Joe-battlers enjoy their free government handouts, petrol prices are almost half their indexed price and banks have been quick to pass on the mega-low interest rates to customers. Win.

And there’s just three things.
There’s also:

A new US president, and he’s black. Woah.
There’s the almost internationally accepted need for environmental reform.  Again, woah.
Japan’s own ministers admit whaling is a dying practice.  Woah.
And many more.

But, really, however
No one wraps up a year based on headlines.  Hopefully, you’ve had a rich year with friends, family and/or loved ones close by.

Hopefully, you’ve said, done and accomplished what you set out to.  That’s the real testament to success and happiness, I think.  Having some goals, struggling to achieve them perhaps, maybe re-evaluating how long it might take you, but getting there none the less.

Stay safe on the roads.
From the dwindling days of the year 2008, we wish you all the very best over the holiday season and many, many frosty amber suds in the new year.  Peace out.

If one-hand clapping had theme music, this would be it.

So if you’re an ex-puppet, cowboy, or midget waiting for that one super review to sway you one way or another; let this be thine masked harbinger of good tidings.

Looking for love: Same bat time. Same bat channel.

Who are we, and how will we be remembered? Where are we headed? Is this now the digital age, or the information age? And is that an oxymoron given the medium? Have we converged on the time where information and the means by which we deliver it, define us?

Text, bulletin boards, chat messengers, social networking sites, email, SMS, pictures, digital video – you can hardly say we’re a universal society that’s recoiled from interaction with others. If anything, it assaults us at every turn. It’s inescapable.

Have we then, assumed the mantle of information couriers? And hidden beneath the writhing surface of those methods, have we unknowingly embraced a lock-step culture of enforcing that mantle on others?

And is the design of this mesh merely a vehicle to convalesce ideas? Or is it more? Is it our entertainment, our news and a part of our daily planning? Do we share that wealth of knowledge with others? Does the medium encourage us to do so knowingly and instinctively?

And yet, what is it?

It’s a system of signals and waves that delivers the thoughts and ideas of many; so that many might discuss matters in unison – breaching geographical restrictions.

Is that not a hive mind in its infancy? And at what point do you draw the distinction? Is this the cusp of technological revolution that we’d otherwise call fiction?

Discuss.

If there’s one thing that stands out as you “mature”, its the succession of days that it takes to recover from a big night out on the turps.  It’s only now, for example, on the dawn of the aftermath of a wedding reception on Saturday night, that the synapses have started firing on more than one cylinder.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”, so says Keats.  And while Keats is the man, clearly he hasn’t been to a Vietnamese wedding.

A Vietnamese wedding, let it be known, is a pretty surreal occasion to attend.  Especially when you don’t speak a lick of unAustralian.  And it’s not just that everyone else is four feet shorter than you, which makes you feel like you’re dining at the table alone, no.  And it’s not the bartering for your bride that sets it apart – No, I, too, think a basket of fruit seems a fair trade for a slice of the opposite sex.

No.  The real McCoy is that somewhere between that eighth beer and the tequila shots that began shortly after the little hand reached nine, you start to realise you can actually understand Vietnamese – and you’ve disseminated this from the broken pieces of pigeon-English that are tossed in as filler between real Vietnamese words.  And these scattered remnants of language form together in your mind to tell vast and bewildering tales of the events unfolding before you.

And somewhere in that tale, between the hordes of ninjas pillaging the village of scantily clad women; where rice wine seeped like golden honey from the comb-layered mountainside in thick streams; two people finally tied the knot.

The real kicker about a Vietnamese wedding however, is that the karaoke at the end of the night is in English. So it’s like the whole event was some foreign and elaborate masquerade. A marathon of a practical joke, which ends with the thumping punchline of: “My Sharona!”.

For anyone who’s familiar with Zatôichi – this was totally exactly like that.