Can Tiger change his stripes?

A few days ago Tiger Woods won a golf game by being the best at whacking hard little white balls into a hole. His first professional win in five years, as I understand it. It was a HUGE DEAL game in the big PGA Tour series, with the winner’s loot coming in at a staggering UDS $1.62 million; which is really just maintenance money on his USD$54 million private jet. 
 

If there was one thing Tiger probably wishes he could do with the enormous mountainous alps of golfing cash he’s earned over the years, it’s deleting his internet history. I don’t know much about The Golfing, but I do recall the sensationalised history of Tiger Woods, and The Internets is only too keen to remind me.

As we can recall from our previous experiences with Tiger, he is a tiger. Arguably the most recognised of the world's large animal species, he has widespread popular appeal. He spends his days stalking his prey and charming the tigresses. It's a jungle out there.

 

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly nine years since the world discovered that the golf world’s golden boy  - the human Tiger - had an off-duty hobby that took up nearly as much time as his golfing commitments. 

That being his wild infidelity scandal involving a gazillion affairs, and the fallout in 2009, when the media drooled as one mistress after another crawled out of seedy Las Vegas and New York City stripclubs to tell their sordid Tiger tale.

 

Back in the day, he really took his most bankable sponsor’s logo to heart – Just Do It.  While the media tore him apart, much of the public merely marveled at Tiger's clearly superior time management juggling so many tigresses.  He really put wedding planners to shame with his organisational skills.

Amid all the scandal and the global media's insatiable appetite for celebrity sleaze, one thing confused the hell out of me. Apparently Tiger first met his wife Elin when she was the on-tour babysitter for Swedish golfer, Jesper Parnevik, and his wife.  At what point would Parnevik's wife have agreed to having a gorgeous, Swedish ex-model come along to look after their children on tour with her husband? 

For the past few years, apart from a few trips in and out of court houses, Tiger has done a great job - or at least his management company have - at staying off the radar to refocus and concentrate on the sport that enabled him to score with so many trashy tigresses young women in the first place. 

While Woods was once widely acknowledged as the best adulterer golfer in the world, he is currently ranked 13^th, up from the 55^th a few years ago, which is roughly the same number of women he had going in 2009 before he was caught with his hand in the skanky jar. 

Which begs the question; should we expect a return of strippers / cocktail waitresses / nightclub door tigresses now Tiger’s clawed his way back out of the jungle?

 

Coles mini shop obsessive-compulsive disorder

A few months ago, Australians were busy shopping for groceries wherever we damn well pleased. It was a great time to be alive. Coles, Woolies, Aldi, the markets, you name it, we were there, purchasing things, for no reason other than we needed things. 

And then the Coles marketing team came and ruined everything that is good about grocery shopping forever.

They stormed into our lives uninvited and, since July, they have been hunting us like prey. They threw out a silky web, made up of gross spider glands and other gross things, and also millions of those Coles Mini Shop Collectibles that have made us lose our collective shits with the excitement of all of it. (Don’t pretend you are collecting them for your kids.)

Me gently cradling my beloved Coles Mini
Shop Collectible Nescafé Gold.

We should have all kept our poker faces and shown only a vague, passing interest in the useless miniatures but, no, we’ve showed our hand and actually LOST. OUR. MINDS. over pointless pieces of plastic handwash. 

Bloody iconic products too, because Coles are not amateurs at this. This is not  their first time at the rodeo. Who turns down a mini Timtams or Weetbix? 

I haven’t read up on the Constitution recently, but it’s presumably in there as an Act of the Australian Parliament – if someone gives you free iconic Aussie shit, you take it, and you collect it, until you have all of it and, ironically, can no longer afford to buy groceries because you went and spent all your money buying minis on eBay. She’ll be right, mate.


Since the promotion came, saw and conquered I have become conditioned, like Pavlov’s dogs, to spend $30 or more in store when I just pop in to pick up some milk. But I think, eventually, I will be okay and come out of this fog. 

I’m popping in this afternoon to get bread, which, because I don’t buy the gluten free type, will come in under $30. I’ve got this.

But you just know there’s more to come. The marketing and advertising teams of the big companies now know how to catch their prey. Which, in my opinion, isn’t an accident.  

As if it couldn’t get anymore dire, the chatter on the street (in Coles aisles – I don’t go to streets anymore, unless there is a Coles), is that they are going to bring out a second range called Coles Normal Size Shop. 

Which is just grocery shopping, Coles. And we won’t play your game. We won’t no matter what (we will).

The Making of Cadbury

Once upon a time, many aero bars ago in like 1801, a man was walking through the forest near his village in rural England when he decided that he didn't like people actually at all really, so he devised a top secret plan to make them all very, very fat. I guess he didn't have access to the internet so had to troll his frenemies in person.

"I could bury some of those people!", he exclaimed to his cat, and thus Couldbury, or Cadbury, was born.

Unfortunately, for this plan to work, he would need access to sugar and a sugary food making machine. "Oh fudge!", he said to his cat. Fortunately, he then remembered he had in fact bought a sugary food making machine in the village trash and treasure last week, so that was a very convenient and somehow not pointless purchase indeed.

He spent weeks but mainly just a few hours reading up about the history of chocolate, modern techniques of whipping up a batch, cultivating, processing, marketing, production, the chemistry of flavours, tempering, dipping, decorating and molding, ganache making and fondue excavating. That last one isn't even a thing, but - guess what - I'm telling the story.

And thus Cadbury was born. And just like all demented fairytales where the storyline is terrifying and the antagonist is fucking crazy, this one was too.

*names, places, truth have been irrevocably altered to ensure a more captivating storyline.

I went to rugby. I blogged.

The other night I dusted the spikey icicles off my season pass and dragged my seasoned arse to Canberra's numero uno football stadium. I was wildly anticipating an evening of watching my Super Rugby team, the ACT Brumbies, get their (foot)balls handed to them by the Wellington Hurricanes; a team that is, generally speaking, considerably better than my team. 

It was never going to be about Having Fun or Enjoying Oneself; one just has to support one's team through thick and thin, rain or shine, snow or hurricane, Chief or Crusader, self-annihilation or crushing smackdown. You have to be there and just go with it when we are playing a New Zealand team.

ACT Brumbies versus Wellington Hurricanes. Let's take a look at the matchup on e-paper. A free-roaming feral horse, an animal known for its random roaming usually through alpine countryside for no particular reason, versus a hostile weather system known for its wanton random destruction of stuff in its path.

Well it seems to me that everyone involved just needed to sit down for a planning morning and focus on developing some type of strategic plan for getting through the game with maybe some scones and jam for morning tea if you don't mind. None of this fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants entertainment; that's not want the people want.

As it turns out, the wild horse gave the hurricane from UnZud quite a run for its money. Alas, as they say in the classic sports broadcasts, "Are you not entertained?! Are you not entertained?! Is this not why you are here?" Or maybe that was a quote from the movie Gladiator. It's hard to say.   

At kickoff, the opposition started as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds, causing heavy rains that were expected to continue for several hours. Linesmen were down, sponsors were airborne, and there was all kinds of carnage going on at that place that sells cold hot chips, which was potentially not hurricane related though.

Wild horse fan, Jimbo, saw all the action, saying “Everyone was warned to expect catastrophic flooding, and I think we got 6-8 metres of storm surge. Now my cold hot chip are wet”.  I think Jimbo may well have had a few.

But before you could say “that’s a ferocious battering, squire”, the strong gusts stopped, the eye of the storm passed, and the cell was fairly quickly downgraded to a tropical storm. And then it turned into a little rain shower as it continued to make landfall. My team won, which made my head spin on its axis and explode in astonishment.

As the game went on, I turned my attention to all the similarities of professional rugby union and my work as a public servant. Playing for a professional public servant team is a dream for thousands of people. But behind the glamour is grinding hours of hard work:

Desk work
Look, I did see a slew pf people with clipboards parading along the sidelines at the footy. It's hard to say what they were doing, but they looked like they were of great significance; they had pens and they were ticking things on paper. And if ticking things on paper for no good reason whatsoever doesn't constitute a desk job then I don't know what does.

Applause
Every morning, as I jog out of the elevator with meaningful purpose on my face, there is a throng of people who cheer my sudden presence and clamour for a glimpse of me as I head to my position on the floor, and then spend the day marvelling at my skillset - what a skillset! - when I use the printer, and cheer loudly - what a great delivery of that email!

Near the end of the day, they yell loudly - hurrah! - urging me on, to keep doing the impressive things I do. I didn't want this. This life, this dream life, was thrust upon me. I can’t make it stop. They idolise me. Occasionally, after work, I hang around to sign autographs.

Blood bin
Like rugby players, as soon as we have a piece of trash that needs tending to, we can leave the field of play to place it in the blood red bin. But only if it can't be recycled.

Offside
This occurs when you eat your packed lunch before lunchtime. It's not really in the spirit of the game, but some people do it deliberately - and get away with it - when the ref isn't looking. What's that? That doesn't even make sense? Well, look, the cyber universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

Nutrition
Every public servant player knows the secret to maximise on-field performance: 'tis cake. 'tis always cake.

Scrum meetings
A key part of the day. Unlike an actual scrum, which rugby players use as a method to restart play to gain possession of the ball, public servant players pack down closely together just for the hell of it. 

The average acceleration at which a public servant player moves forward, out of a scrum meeting, is 29.2.54m/s2. What's that - that doesn't make sense either? That's not really relevant? Much like the minutes wasted in rugby scrums, many scrum meetings are also an officially sanctioned waste of time.

Rugby union for puppies

I've recently added value to my life by getting a puppy. Ellie is easily excitable, often overstimulated, bubbly, bouncy, unrelenting when I’ve relented; a textbook case of puppy.

Every morning – before, throughout and after I’m getting organised for work – we play chase the ball, which mainly involves her making forward passes, consistently knocking the ball on, deliberately obstructing me when I don’t have the ball, making a late tackle after I’ve already kicked the ball away, or some other type of illegal tackle like a head-high tackle around my neck or jaw violently at high speed, which is often my fault because my head is on the floor.

But her tackles are potentially very dangerous and are not sanctioned by the rules of the game, so at this point I blow my whistle to give her a yellow card, but she just bites me. It’s like she doesn’t know or care about the rules of rugby union.

Sometimes she plays fairly, but more often than not she plays the man and not the ball. Like any puppy heading towards the teething development milestone, she loves her chew toys - among her favourite ones being my hands - which often sends me to the blood bin to stop the flow before I can return to the pitch to continue playing.

I kick off from the 22m line, just off the try line, but I’m not going to make any ground because she charges it down when I try to clear the ball. I get it back and box kick over the top of her clear into undefended territory and then try to play the advantage but she ankle taps me with her milk teeth and it really hurts.

I won’t accept it so I call a free kick for myself and stand with my back to her as per the ‘How to stop your puppy from biting you” Youtube videos, but she barks at me for holding up the game, so instead I call a line-out, and she barks at me for holding up the game.

She’s lucky I don’t pull her up on all her impatient puppy barks, let alone all the infringements and technical offences. I’ve got no-one to throw it to in the line-out, but I throw it right down the middle, which is completely missed by Ellie because her hand-eye coordination is not a thing yet.

She prances off to get the ball and does a grubber kick, her favourite, which makes the ball tumble and roll along the ground, making it bounce all over the place. It’s literally the only bit of this game she’s good at. She runs down the blind side straight past me, dummy passes the ball, and goes on to score a try in the corner of the lounge room. Well, there go the blinds.

Instead of taking a kick to convert the try for extra points she runs up the field of play with her bed, shaking it furiously in some weird post-try celebration, which is not in the rule book so I’m not entirely sure what the infraction is.

I decide to have a scrum, because that’s always a great idea with a puppy. We crouch, bind, set and then she tries to scalp me because she sees my hair dangling in her face.

I call a red card on her and she sits and looks at me with puppy dog eyes, which are the only eyes she has admittedly, but still doesn’t get her out of the penalty.

And then just for funsies we have another scrum, because I hadn’t learnt my lesson, which collapses, but then we have a rolling maul, because if the ACT Brumbies can do it, so can we.

I grab her by the head in an illegal spear tackle, and she rolls around on her back trying to be cute as we both scrap for the ball. She wins obviously because teeth but I award myself a penalty try because I believe she illegally prevented me from probably getting over the try line. So many professional fouls.

We’ve been playing 30 minutes – not even half time – and it looks like she’s going to take a kick from the centre line but then she lies down and goes to sleep.

Succulents, you succ.

I feel life this isn't my best blog post - it's maybe in the top 490 - but the brain wants to write what the brain wants to write.

When it comes to sticking my fingers in dirt with the intention of growing little green things into big green things, I fail like a fat kid trying to get excited by a stick of broccolini; which is just more of the many types of green vegetable things that I can not grow at all with a very high success rate.

And the absolute pinnacle of plant growth impossibility is the ruthlessness that is succulent propagation, which is really just plant porn with fancy science name. Propagation is the act of breeding specimens of a plant or animal by natural processes by the mummy and daddy. Apart from trying to illegally download the U.S. version of Netflix, there are fewer challenges that you will face in your adult life that will be tougher than trying to propagate succulents.

Herein lies the problem. Succulents do not like water. They do not care to be fussed over. They don’t want you serenading them with Bing Crosby tunes or to cover them with a thermal baby blanket when it gets a bit cool in the night hours or give them some sunscreen when it’s a bit too sunny. They want you to leave them the fuck alone. They can manage all the life things by themselves please. As a chronic overwaterer, I can't cope with this.

It’s unnatural. It’s inhumane. The only people who should be comfortable leaving a poor little succulent leaf to flounder are sociopaths. It goes against human nature.

Humans are nurturers. If a human can’t water something, or wrap it in a blanky, or give it benzos when it can't sleep in its pot, their head will spin on it’s axis until it explodes. Succulents lure you in with their charisma and magnetism and then, once you get to know their cold hearts, they end up destroying the lives of all they touch.

If a living thing doesn’t require water and shelter from you, because it's already stored it in its body when you were sleeping in a Freddie Kruger type scenario, then I put it to you that they are in fact zombies, and we all know how well zombies can be controlled by anyone who isn’t already dead. They are corpses. And they will stop at nothing until they suck all the joy and happy out of the world.

In the human world, one can become a plant zombie by having your brain’s sucked out by another zombie plant or by getting a job in the public sector, but how does one possibly make a second plant, without turning it into the undead? Does anybody on the mothership earth know.

#InstagrammableCrumpets

In 2010, two guys - probably two nerdy, but now detestably wealthy beyond their wildest instagrammable imaginings type-of-guys – unleashed on the world their online photo sharing portal that we all should have just known from the get-go was going to play right into the most narcissistic human tendencies in the history of humankind. Selfies. These jerks invented the platform that allowed selfies to breed, through their creation of Instagram, and now there is no return. Internet is hashtag forever.

Aside from the nation states that are weirdly not signatories to the Mass Selfie Treaty, the last time the collective world lost their egotistical minds over a modern advancement was following the creation and unveiling of the phonograph, the 1877 innovation of the first device to record and play back audio. 

Believe it or not, the phonograph was not invented by the ubiquitous Apple. Or Samsung. As if it was invented by Samsung. They are still struggling to work out a reliable method of searching GIFs to add to text messages.

No, it was little known light enthusiast, Dr Thomas Edison, and it made him a celebrity. He even Broke the Telegram when he posed naked with just a light bulb covering his…brain.

Sponsor me. We can be great together. How can I butter you up?

Edison was involved in the invention of the electric light and the telephone, which was just the start of the master plan to ensure  future generations had as many options as possible to communicate with people they hated in high school.

His first recording on the phonograph was of Mary had a Little Lamb, and then it all went major slippery slope when rappers got hold of it, a-yo bitches. Instagram and its social media peers could potentially be a vehicle to viscerally change the world, but find me someone who hasn’t whiled away important hours of their day looking at baby goat Youtube clips. Someone other than Thomas Edison.

Anyway, I’m a keen purveyor of going off on tangents, so back to Instagram. The other morning I decided to Instagram my food, because a few reasons:

(a) I have a Mickey Mouse-inspired toast cutter, which trims the bread to the shape of Mickey’s noggan, and that requires worldwide showcasing;
(b) all the cool kids are doing it;
(c) sometimes I naively want to be one of the cool kids;
but mostly (d), I accidently woke up at 0445 and I must have been profusely sleep-deprived.

I have a new appreciation (I don’t) for the Instagram-obsessed who walk among us, and then into lightposts and trees because their heads are literally in an iPhone app. I want to start a new meme trend which will entail taking photos of iPhone users with their head in the iCloud and then superimposing it onto a cliff edge, or walking off the rim of a firey volcano, or into the mouths of sharks. Just positive stuff like that to make non-wankers feel good.

There’s so much to think about re. planning any foray into Instafoodland.

The Right Light
First, you must wait until the light is right. The right light is all of the things that are important. Given my early rise, I had to wait about eight hours before the damn dawn happened, so I just inhaled five cups of coffee and waited. 

If I had an extra three hours and the schedule of a celebrity - which seems to be remarkably similar to that of an unemployed person - I could have riddled my crumpet with sun flecks that would make the butter shimmer and mouths drool with insta-envy, but I didn’t, so I didn’t, and the only people who suffer are everyone on Instagram. 

Hashtags
You gonna need a hashtag son; you gonna need a real good one. There is absolutely no point at all in any socially acceptable way in creating an Instagram post if you don’t use witty, pithy words and phrases that make people laugh out loud or cry tears of self-pity. 

The number sign, or hash, aka “#”, used to be the most boring symbol in the whole symbol world. Now, thanks to it’s elevation as Instagram’s global superstar, it is outrageously famous, hangs out with The Kim Kardashian, and, like Prince, insists that people refer to it as a symbol. 

My only hope for the future is that one day it remembers where it came from, and goes back to its birth name, Gary. Personally, I believe hashtags have #jumpedtheshark, which incidentally has over 3,000 posters at present, which is just mocking what I just said. I'm mocking you Instagram, not the other way around.

Likes equals self-esteem
Don’t fall for this. If people don’t like your post it means they are living their own life at that point in time. I know! - they be weirdos. But I’m sure the time will come when they are 100% invested in your life (it won’t). People like other people’s posts in the hope that the “favour” will be returned. You know there’s a problem on planet self-esteem when there are apps where you can buy “likes”.  Yes you can.

1,000 draft photos
How many photos do we need to take until the creation is perfect? Oh, the crumpet is in the dark. There’s too much shade. Why is there a crumb on the plate - this crumpet cannot have crumbs. Should the coffee be in there too. That’s not the crumpet’s good side - don’t upset the talent. It’s all just too hard so eventually I gave in and hired a cherry picker from a construction company for an hour to get the right height and perspective. Money well spent.

When you start to think of people who make money from their Instagram by taking off their clothes as a bunch of talent-free, antisocial pariahs who are genetically incapable of feeling shame or self-respect, it makes it quite enjoyable. 

Some social media tarts have come out to tell the world how hard their inst-life is, and how long it takes to set up a photo and how many they have to take to get a good one and it just makes me really sad for them because my proper job isn’t hard at all. I just wish there was a way I could help their plight that involved somehow making their suffering so much worse.

Delete that post and move on with your life
After 23 hours of Crumpet Time, I eventually deleted the post because I didn’t want my conceptual art, replete with mockumentary hashes, to offend anyone who takes instaphotos of food for a living, especially not the people who use the hashtag conceptual art.

Musings from the Seaside

I’m been presenting myself for weekend penance at the South Coast, New South Wales, quite a bit lately. The South Coast, if you are unfamiliar, is the coastal belt between Sydney to the north to the Victorian border to the south.

My location of choice for optimal sun and sand experiences occasioning sunburn is Broulee, just south of Bateman’s Bay, which is often branded as Canberra by the Sea. Broulee, population of just over 1,700, is so laidback and blasé about life that it's on the brink of toppling over.

It feels like the place is a refugee of the 1950s or 60s, whichever decade was the last one with unobtrusive capitalism and a laissez faire attitude and I do not hate this. Sure, internet reception is scant (but very curiously receptive on the beach), there is not a lot to do if you don’t want to devote the entire day to sand worship, and there is just one takeaway shop, which has implausible opening hours for an operational small business. 

On the flip side, there are no loud and kitschy billboards encouraging food or services, just sporadic signage of a small business courteously and respectfully expressing the purpose of their existence.

If you need to uber-advertise your goods and services to the market for a price to do capitalism properly, Broulee doesn't really care a whoop-de-doop.

What commodity are they selling in Broulee, then? If anyone cared, it would be lifestyle of ye olde days, by effortlessly laidback means.

I don’t care how current your hipster status is, how many mason jars containing salad you have in your arsenal, how many trimmed bearded men work for your ironically named business, you cannot engineer ye olde days. Thank goodness the hipsters haven't gotten their conceited mittens on this seaside haven.

Walking in the direction of the ocean I can smell it's briny aroma, but it’s not always that way. The wind has to be blowing from the east, or at least from the north. 

October in Broulee? It’s all about cold sandcastles and iced water. I go there for the simplicity, the ease of life. Minimalism. 

Also, there are birds. Lots of them. David Attenborough would be able to tell you more. Or anything. The birds are arguing about bird things. Or just being interactive in a shared space. Who knows the ways of birds.

Painted whores of the plant world

The first of the summer flies harass me as I walk past all the painted whores of the plant world (A Homer or Bart Simpson reference to flowers) on the way to the beach. 

Teenage boys ride their bikes past me on the footpath, precariously balancing their beloved surfboards in their strong arm, forgetting that when they recklessly spin around to chat to their friends the board whips around too and there goes my ribs if I wasn’t quick like a butterfly.

And then I see the offending sign, which is always there; a picture of a dog with a cross through it. DOGS NOT ALLOWED. Seriously, if you a barbarian who does not like watching dogs playing on the beach then we have nothing to say to each other and move along from this planet please.

I love watching people playfully encouraging their dog to do instagrammable tricksies for photographs, which they obligingly do, through a volley of barks which ricochet for kilometres along the beach.

This visit, to the beach, I had to be vigilant. There are brutal brutes seaside who will find you. And then they will hurt you. But they are so pretty, so one must get up as close and personal as possible to their tentacles to admire their bright hues. Bluebottles. Lots of ‘em.

The statistics are not in your favour when it comes to avoiding their sting, and the little suckers pack quite a punch. I imagine it is their vengeance for being purged from the ocean.

Weekend visitation to the World Ocean

Stop it, Broulee.

I’ve just returned from an unscripted getaway to the New South Wales coastal town of Broulee to visit the Hydrosphere. I always find it a bit annoying that, despite the ocean comprising 70% of the earth’s surface, it still take me two hours to get anywhere near it.

The World Ocean and I have a thing, but it’s more of a unrequited type of thing, because I care considerably more about our bond than it does.

I spend thousands of dollars visiting it nearly every year (courtesy of the Hawaiian Islands unfortunate stranded geographic location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean), and it's never visited me once. I think it likes to keep things planktonic. That’s the thing with the ocean; it's quite shellfish.

I’m always a bit of a nervous shipwreck driving down to the South Coast via the precarious Clyde Mountain, the 780 metre steep, winding peak that comes between me and my watery plankonic friend. Evidently it is the locale of many car crashes. No big packet of surprises there.

Moi

If you have the stamina to endure the oncoming racing cars speeding right into your face and overtaking vehicles side swiping your side mirror - presumably because they are neurosurgeons heading to perform delicate emergency open brain surgery? - then you will have a pleasant trip down the way.

I do hope they know that if they crash into a tree I’ll have to choose between my need to casually continue my drive and any attempt to prolong their lives, and I've already made my choice.

It was forecast to be a lovely day down the seaside and I was heading there with one porpoise because long tide, no sea. It sounds like the sealiest thing, but I swear the ocean waves at me every time I get to its shores. I'm not a stage five clinger, but I will pier pressure it to come around to my way of thinking. Stop doing ocean jokes? Shore thing, buoys and gulls.

In the nineteenth century, the township of Broulee wasn’t all that. One squire, in 1840, even wrote to the District telling them so:

“SIR, – After a tiresome journey from Braidwood over a most mountainous road, I arrived at this place a few days ago, having been induced to visit it from certain passing accounts of it which have appeared in the Sydney papers, vaunting the excellency of its harbour, land, but, after a patient investigation of the whole country, I find I have, like many others thrown my time away to very little purpose... Being here, however, and being thoroughly disgusted with all I have seen and heard, I take advantage of a leisure hour and opportunity to Braidwood to forward to you the following description of its situation…”

Okay.  Not a fan.

Still, old mate was probably in the area prior to the invention of rest and relaxation, because those pursuits, or lack of, are a hit down that way these days. I suppose relaxing and letting off steam in 1840 wasn’t a prospect many could afford. If it couldn’t be peddled, vended, propositioned or haggled, them what really was the point in spending time in the sand and water.

I imagine most spent their every waking minute trying to avoid the massive waves of contagious diseases and epidemics, rather than the massive waves emitting from their jetskis. What did people do for fun in Australia in the 1840s? A quick Google search will tell you that fun was actually invented in the 1960s, so I guess they just worked and then died for their troubles.

Mogo

Free lunch. There is such a thing.

Tinkerbell's maid service

I'm sitting in the lobby of my San Diego hotel waiting for my maid to clean my room because she didn't have the good sense to show up this morning when I was out touristing. Rude.

I like having a maid. You don't have to make your bed, clean your bathroom, wash towels, or clean your water glasses. You go out and Tinkerbell flies in, strikes one of her sassy Tinkerbell poses, flicks her bathroom cleaning wand and ta-da!

Although it's a bit annoying when hotels make you feel guilty for wanting fresh towels. They tell you to reuse them, because of the shortage of hemp washing machines in California or whatever, but they give you very limited options to hang your towels. You're the ones running a damn hotel, people; don't make me responsible for your poor life choices and need for an eco-friendly lifestyle.

DAY 24 The Writing Inquisition - Hawaii is everything.

Repost from 2011. Just in time for my 5th vacay to Hawaii. I am somewhat partial to the place.

Last year I flew to heaven, via economy class. I imagine first class to heaven is reserved for Mother Teresa types and that wonderful man who saved the lives of 12 horses in the Queensland Floods.

I had just permanently borrowed products from my Las Vegas hotel room, including pens, paper, slippers, handcream, shampoo, conditioner and other unidentified items in pretty aqua bottles, so that's probably why I got a seat in air steerage.

Heaven was just as I had imagined, but perhaps the stereotype was a little too cliched. Descending through puffy white clouds, I saw crystal clear waters, sandy white beaches and swaying palm trees. It was either going to be heaven or one of those trashy, indoor beaches they have in Japan.

I've always wanted to get off a plane and receive a colourful Hawaiian lei. My lei made of vibrant purple and blue frangipani was beautiful, but the flowers were wet and the climate was humid, so I popped it into my hotel room fridge and admired it from its new location, away from my neck.

The hotel was very decent, non extravagant and about a block from the all important Pacific Ocean. From the balcony I could see Diamond Head Mountain/Volcano, Waikiki Beach, and some of the Honolulu cityscape, where you could watch the morning and afternoon showers come through like clockwork.

Honolulu is very laid back, and the Hawaiians are extremely lovely. This is likely because they live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world.

Much of my time in Honolulu was spent getting sunburnt in the amazingly warm water of this tropical part of the Pacific. You just never want to get out, even when your suncream is due for a reapply. I swam, waded and floated in the water for hours, and leant on the ocean rock wall watching sail boats drift, and naval ships head in and out of Pearl Harbour in the distance.

The visit to Pearl Harbour was quite moving, and it's understandable that the U.S. decided to enter the war after this attack. I toured Mighty Mo - the U.S.S. Missouri - which wasn't stationed in the harbour in 1941, but is a magnificant floating museum near the naval base, just across from the warships that remain in their watery graves.

I stood on Mo's deck where the Japanese surrendered, and I saw the spot where a kamakazee pilot "dented" the starboard fenders on a suicide mission during the war.

The marines recovered the pilot's body, and the U.S. Government insisted he have an honourable and respectful funeral. He got his funeral, but legend has it they then unceremoniously dumped his body into the ocean.

We also visited Kilauea Volcanic Reserve on the Big Island, Hawaii. Our guide told us the island experiences all of the climates of the world, which may have been a sales pitch.

Although, I think we had about five types of weather that day. The rain drizzled as we walked down to and through the eerie Thurston Lava Tube (underground conduit in which lava has previously travelled), and the sun shone as we watched the cranky volcano plume smoke and ash, before the rain bucketed down again. It was like Melbourne on ice.

At nightfall, we fought with about 100 other tourists to stand on a rock not much bigger than your average sedan to get the best view of glowing red lava on its slow drip towards the Pacific. It was incredible and quite formidable watching raw, violent mother nature in the distance, and well worth the day trip.

Although, I learnt an important lesson on my U.S. vacay. I was given pre-trip advice which I failed to heed, which is that everything is better from the air. Helicopters all the way next time.

Miss you already, Hawaii - see you again soon.

DAY 22 The Writing Inquistion - Hawaii Lilo

Repost from August 2012, during my 2nd trip to Hawaii. I'm about to make my 5th, but no-one's counting.

It's the heat of the day in Hawaii, and I'm trying to stay out of the sun a bit, to avoid adding to my collection of freckles. It's hard work getting myself banana boated for the beach every day. 

Gratutitous waterfall shot.

In other beach related news, yesterday I bought an orange donut lilo from one of the ABC convenience stores that are dotted throughout the Islands. You can't go five metres without tripping into the doorway of an ABC.

I bought the donut to enhance my aquatic pleasure, because it can often get quite tedious just lolling away the afternoon in the beautiful, temperate waters. Yes, you should feel some empathy for us poor unfortunates trapped inside the hideous ring of Hawaiian Islands.

My donut has proven to be quite handy out of the water as well. I don’t have the finest depth perception, due to my long slash short sightedness difficulties, which means I walk into things a fair bit. My donut has been used on more than one occasion as a buffer for life’s obstacles on the way to the beach, which is just across the road, but w’ever.

Perhaps when I come back to Australia I will tie three of them around me so I never get hurt again. The ultimate bandaid. I’ll get the paperwork for the patent underway on my return.

We have these new fancy high tech elevators at the hotel, where you type your floor into the keypad which is stationed outside the lift, rather than once in the lift. I am in cahoots with these machines, because I have them in my workplace, but I remember what happened when we first moved into the building a few years ago.

It was bedlam as everyone tried to cram into one lift without pressing a button, which allows the computer mainframe or something to sort you into an elevator queue. Sort of like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter, but mostly not like that at all.

Thus, every day the tourists shove themselves in because most tourists evidently don’t know how to read the big signs in multiple languages posted everywhere. Try cramming yourself into a small lift with ten other people and 6 blown-up lilos. Must go - it's beach time again.

DAY 16 The Writing Inquisition - Mickey Mouse Land

This is a repost from 2011, following my first trip to Disneyland. I'm allowed to repost in my blogging challenge. It's my blog and my challenge. Long live me: 

Last year I paid a visit to a little mouse in his little house in his humble little town called Disneyland. By day it was a land of fairy princesses, friendliness, happiness, children screaming with delight, and grown men dressed in painfully bright cartoon costumes, presumably to entertain their infant children. 

But nightfall gives rise to Disney’s underbelly. While it prides itself on being the happiest place on earth, after 7pm it's the crankiest place in the universe. 

The kids scream, fuelled by sugar and tiredness, and an influx of psycho ushers with a preference for the Stalinist approach to crowd control enter the game. They taught me everything I need to know about getting myself thrown out of a theme park. 

I first met Mickey on the sidewalk of Main Street USA, which is akin to the Las Vegas strip, but without creepy men handing out stripper cards. 

I queued to get a photo with the manmouse, pushing aside his shorter, weaker groupies to get to the front of the line. I learnt this tactic from observing the Usher Jedi – from the school of “may the force of the sidewalk break your face”. 

Mickey was awesome and I was a little bit starstruck, hence the demented look on my face during our photo opportunity (that's Mickey's hand/foot/paw on my shoulder). This mouse is one of the biggest stars in the world, which says quite a bit about the world. 

S T A R P O W E R

I also met Mickey’s defacto wife Minnie; I don’t know, are they married? They seem very happy together, but they live in separate houses in Toontown so maybe it’s a tax thing. It’s none of my business.

Minnie admired my Minnie tshirt when we met, so I chose not to tell her that I bought it from an unofficial merchandise store near my hotel that doesn’t mark up the price threefold. 

Minnie is the only mouse in the world who can get away with wearing canary yellow shoes and black opaque tights. I also saw her in her aviator outfit circa whenever that was in fashion, ready to fly off in her spitfire or whatever the hell it was.

Her partner, Mickey, has a vast array of human life skills. For example, apart from being CEO of Mickey Inc, he is also the leader of the Disney Band, the cheeriest band you’ve ever seen in your life.

It’s amazing how much Mickey gets done throughout the day by flapping his arms, clapping his hands excitedly and jumping up and down holding his head.

The force of the Usher Jedi came to my attention on the first night, when they strided into Main Street en masse to keep the marauding crowds from trampling each other during the evening parades and fireworks. 

I came to admire their unique management style; it truly is astounding how much power you can wield when you have a glow wand and know how to wave it.

But there are always some that go rogue, who have watched more than their fair share of Star Wars, and these are the ones who kept you entertained while sitting in the gutter waiting for the evening fireworks show.

DAY 12 The Writing Inquisition - Vegetable onesies, Vegemitisation, and mixing your blues and maroons

Today's cinematic drama on the blog is just a couple of quick snips of things that unfortunately made their way into my brain today, where they were tossed around like the spin cycle of a washing machine and then spat out; completely unrecognisable, and now cleverly disguised as meaningless drivel.

For example, speaking of washing machines, after work I saw a lady in a green onesie in a food court. She looked like a stick of celery. I don't know why she did it either; there really is no good reason for getting about looking like a stringy vegetable.

And then I thought how fun it would be to break into someone's house and put food dye in their washing machine because it's good times when people wear only green clothes.

Knowing how to wash clothes, without ruining them, is a basic life skill. Before you load up the machine, do some prep work, such as separating the blues and the maroons, preferably into separate washing machines in separate States. Put them in a machine together, with all the different textures and added 'detergent', at your own peril.

I also thought about Vegemite, and how iconically and stereotypically Australian I must be, because I wasn't a happy little V at all when I discovered I didn't have any for my toast this morning.

And then, as I rode home on my kangaroo like the Man from Snowy River with bushranger swag to my corrugated-iron roof homestead in The Bush with a verandah, windmill, watertank and flies, I thought about whether I posess any other iconally Australian behaviours. And I couldn't think of any.

DAY 11 The Writing Inquisition - Eating: Socially acceptable fruits

Certain things, like turkey legs and tinned tuna, are just not meant to be consumed in public. Certain fruits also fall into this category.

I think we’ve all been in that situation where you’re at a Royal state dinner and, just as Her Majesty the Queen enters the room, you decide at that point to rip a big chunk off a whole pineapple with your teeth and it’s dripping off your chin like a caveman devouring the raw leg of a wildebeest. It happens; it’s just one of life’s many social situations you have to negotiate.

Fortunately, there are various types of fruit options you can eat in public.

BANANAS

In terms of feel and functionality, bananas are one of the best fruits fit for public consumption. 

They are drip free, non-stick and are born with a handy skin to hold onto to get the job done. Their one downfall is their phallic nature - which is grossly dramatised in nearly every type of social situation - including in the previous sentence.

MANGOES

They are totally delicious and nutritious and their happy, summery hue ensures they are endlessly fussed over by browsing shoppers who pick them up to touch them, squeeze them and smell them and do other creepy and gross things with them. Up there with avocados and the banana, they are the most inappropriately touched fruit on the market.

Mangoes have clothing companies named after them, songs written about them - none are coming to mind, but I'm sure there are some - and are delicious enough that their reputation survives being a key component of mango pickles. However, while blessed with a juicy flesh, they are a public relations disaster to eat in social situations, unless you chop them into tiny pieces and put them in a bowl. Seems like a lot of effort.

ORANGES

They are also indeed highly pleasant on the tastebuds, but you need to bring in a team of paratroopers to clean up the mess you made. They’ll parachute in, hit their strategic target, arm any innocent civilians with citrus masks, and swoop out again, with only a couple of bridges and roads around you as collateral damage. You decide if the citrus hit is worth it.

APPLES
Red apples freaking freak me out. Did life work out well for Snow White after Applegate?

Apples are, literally, the ripened ovaries of a seed plant. Oh that's just lovely. No wonder I don't eat as many as I should.

STRAWBERRIES

Here we go. Cue pretty, cute little strawberries, marked by daintiness and charm in colour, pattern and perfect proportions. Strawberries have truly branded themselves as the socially acceptable fruit ambassador. 

They are right there whenever fancypants food is called for, and provide a dainty accoutrement to champagne. Adding strawberries to your big night out ensures you will remain respectable even when you can no longer stand on your own two feet.