Oi!

It's 'that' day again - Birthday Party now on at

Chapter 7 - The Daily Tissue.

RatFinks and Rad Cars

I was reading a V8 Cars magazine at the tyre shop whilst getting some new rubber this morning and came across an article about a Porsche somewhere with a fucking huge donk planted in the back seat and a heat shield designed and finished to look like some flash, over-priced leather luggage, followed not long after by an article about the delightfully asymmetrical Orbitron.



Rad, eh! It's about as old as I am and created by Ed Roth, cartoonist, hot-rodder and a pioneer in automotive fibreglassing.

I especially like the additive colour mixing in the right hand headlight set up and if you don't know how that all works, this might help

this is subtractive colour mixing where you sort of start with white and take it all away until only black is left in the centre



and additive colour mixing where the opposite happens, you start off with black and work inwards to white



At night, it's dark outside, right? So where the three colours meet becomes a white area or beam. Cool eh!

Anyway, if you followed that first link, you could have seen pics of the car when it was eventually unearthed, employed as a rubbish skip outside an adult book store in Mexico and can move on to the Mysterion. If not, click it here, go look and stop pissing around then maybe you can keep up :-)

Enjoy!

PS and I thought collecting up all my peg people



lurking all over the house and making a hanging thingy for the garden was pretty cool...

Yakety Yak

After the best part of 9 months volunteering his time, both as a general apron/hangar dogsbody and as a member of the Catalina restoration team at Classic Flyers NZ, Ads got his promised flight in one of the aircraft today - a Yak 52 and although the plane landed hours ago, he is still buzzing from his 30 minute jaunt. Around the Mount a couple of times, down the Main Beach, over Baypark stadium, across the harbour and around our house 3 or 4 times as we waved in the paddock, then with a quick waggle of the wings they were gone, back to the airport to practice a few touch and go landings and some twisty rolling stuff that made Ads glad he had the airsick bag within reach (just in case) and finally back to earth.

Sort of.

This is the plane he flew in today *



and this is some Yaks in Yaktion at Wings over Wairarapa **




He's hoping to hitch a ride in the Harvard, if there's a next time, I think it's his favourite. :-) ***



Lucky, happy wee bugger :-)

* Photo purloined from Classic FlyersNZ website
** Photo borrowed from Google
*** Mine, all mine

Let's get physical

Honestly, I wish I looked half as good as Olivia Newton John did when she made that rather scary little Physical music vid, it would give me something to soothe me as I walk more than the equivalent of a city block tomorrow morning just to reach the front door of the hospital, in preparation for walking down their long loooong corridor that leads you to anywhere that isn't ED just to get to walk miles back down another corridor to get to the gym where my new physiotherapist (lovely as she is) will encourage me to do exercises to help with my mobility.

Oh, the irony. By the time I get to the gym I'll have to turn around and walk back the other way because by then I'll be needing ED.

Another irony is the lack of disabled car parks at Tauranga Hospital. Even the public carpark is a long steep ramp and a really slow lift ride up the cliff away. That'll be why they park all doctors right outside the building - because they wouldn't get there in time otherwise. Obviously the administrators of our fine Government funded healthcare institution didn't read the bit about their role being to provide accessible health care to their community. They don't want us spastics and cripples in their building, oh no. Yet it's us sickos sickies that keep them their jobs - without us they would have doctors standing around at 1am drinking coffee, eating cake and chatting about rugby together. Oh yeah, they already do. Bunch of over paid brain dead numpties the lot of them.



Shame I can't actually walk for shit at the moment, innit. I think I'd better go ask the Universe for a park outside the old Maternity Annexe - if they'd hurry up and bulldoze it now that they make the labouring Mum's walk down that same damned long corridor whilst in labour (I kid you not) and go up in the lift to the next floor they could provide tons of parking for disabled people. It's supposed to be going to be a carpark anyway...

[/grump]

I'm not doing very good at the moment - can you tell?

Tissue, anyone?

'Armless

Ever wondered about shit? I bet you'll find plenty at What's the Harm and Skeptics Dictionary. No matter where you sit on an issue.

Wise council

I had a thought today when parking in town. Scary, huh. I thought about the new Pay and Display parking chit dispensers dotted strategically all over out city that replace the old one per space parking meters and how the City Council might be double dipping on parking fees.

Yes, really!

Back in the day when each parking space had its own meter, if there was time left on the clock, you parked there free as a bonus if the previous tenant over estimated how long they were going to be occupying the space. If you wanted more time than was on the meter, what ever amount of change you inserted incremented the time. In other words, each meter had a maximum daily value it could generate fees for.

Now, with the new Pay and Display jobbies, you put in the required amount of money for the time you think you'll be, grasp the little chit spewed out for you and put it on your dashboard for the resident Parking Nazi to see when they walk past with their wee book of blank parking tickets and chalk and off you go. If you have overestimated and over paid, the next person doesn't get to piggyback on the time paid for because the chits are space non-specific; the next person pays all over again for the time already paid and accounted for. Each chit has the area (eg 1st Ave East) and cost per hour printed on it (it varies from $1.20 - $2.00), so you can't even take it and go park somewhere else to use up the time you already paid for.

Not only did they put up our property rates (again), renege on their promised costs and fees for water rates, do a pathetic half-arsed job of maintaining street lighting and road surfaces, now they are screwing over the ratepayers in other insidious ways as well.

How unusual!

Way to go, Tauranga District Council, you bunch of thieving lowlife bottom feeders. Dogs everywhere have bursting bladders and there is nowhere left to tie a horse. Maybe this guy in Napier had the right idea after all, even if he didn't know it at the time.

Outside the courtroom, Malot insisted to reporters that he had only urinated once on the parking meter, despite a council spokesman saying earlier this month that it had been doused four or five times in the past year.

He said he had been out with friends and wanted to urinate. When they wouldn't let him urinate against their car, he chose the parking machine instead.

"I was not aware of what I was doing," he said.

Malot said today he had not been deliberately aiming at the machine but "couldn't stand properly".

Police dubbed him The Piddler on the Roof because of the second-floor location of the meter and in a statement said: "He pees up in the air in a big arc, so it goes in the coin slot and out the hole where people collect their tickets".

Well, someone had to do it, eh.

A sticky situation

Ages ago, I blogged about stupid sayings and pondered who the hell comes up with phrases like "better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick".

I found out today that, while there may be many things worse than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick, there are a shitload that are better and to prove it, I poked myself. In the eye. With a blunt stick.

I can quite confidently say that it fucking hurts, even some four hours later. I also recommend that you folks don't try it at home - I wish I hadn't. I am the idiot your mother warned you about.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Tomorrow, I might try running with scissors. Or walking quickly now I can't run any more. Somehow I don't think it will be quite the same though, hmmm?

Glum

I'm feeling glum. My sleep patterns are all up the wop and I was walking the estate at 6.30 this morning, in jamas and ugg boots. Tres bon for gardening in pajamas (that's French for bloody choice, mate) saying good morning to the world while attempting to get my legs to work in sequence and my back to unseize. I do it most mornings, with a coffee in one hand and a ciggie in the other and with a dog and at least 2 cats in attendance, cussing each other quietly whilst dobbing each other in for the new footprints in the dirt.

Cats are lying bastards. In fact, Thomas is lying on my bed as I type, keeping my wheat sacks warm and demanding to know when I am coming to bed because it's very late and I've had a very busy day.

And that's why I'm glum - because I just want a week of uninterrupted peace and quiet to sleep to my hearts content and not have any busy days. That and next weeks 20 odd million PowerBall Jackpot.

That jackpot could buy me the solution to the problem.

I'm sore; I'm tired; I'm sick of spending my time fulfilling everyone else's needs and telling myself doing so fulfills mine; I'm sick of taking pills; I'm a wee bit sick of MS as well. MonSter Birthday Blues, I suspect. We have a birthday in 2 weeks.

Each day holds a lesson or two that even someone as thick as me can't miss - today's lesson is accept spontaneity. Oh, and accept my limits and limitations.

I can hear a Tui...

DUI or BUI

When I win Lotto on Saturday night, I will be able to get around in the back of one of these and not have to worry about being skulled on Pams and codeine and not fit to drive even a keyboard. They look like a 6 star whorehouse on steroids and if I had to be shallow and swayed by the cover, not the book, I would go for his one



Classic lines, and my colour.

Blogging Under the Influence, a whole new crime.

Processing

I am sick of looking at bloody computers. That's all I have done for weeks. Make up a quick and dirty old boat anchor for the Old Man to replace his that's blown the power supply and the motherboard; Build one for Beryl (unfinished); Tidy up Flattie's one and install some games; Pick up a bargain at the Seagull shop and install XP on it to start building a new PC for the Old Man; spend a day and half a night trying to get Mark's PC running again; fix the kids PC after I broke it trying to get data off Mark's hard drive in a hurry; Look at Deb's broken Compaq laptop - it's a shop job (whew, it's also bloody Vista); get Deb's new Toshiba laptop configured to use in a hurry - oops, it's Vista too, but it's supposed to be XP; get XP installed on laptop; race through 5 o'clock traffic to retrieve laptop from shop; configure laptop and install stuff.

Still to come this week - teach Deb how to make a newsletter and try to figure out why her desktop will dial up to the internet here but not at her place.

I've gone right off computers. I have.

I've gone right off everything really, or had done until we got $86 in Lotto and I spent it on buying paint to get on with upstairs cos that's what I asked the Universe for the other say and now it's provided it, I better follow through if I want more stuff to appear like that, eh! Next week is Round Two in Vic's Nan's garden, destroying 50 years of jungle to salvage plants before they all get sprayed. Instant garden, my idea of "ooooooooooh baby!".

I have lots more stuff I want to "appear" - a nice BBQ is next lol.

Out there

What does one do at the end of a long day doing much too much in the garden?

Exactly - one takes a coffee and a smoke out into the arbor under the canopy, lights a citonella burner and settles back to ponder how tired one is and how much one hurts whilst listening to the sounds of the gentle drizzle on the canvas above while the corrugated iron fence a few metres away vibrates in synch with the beat when a certain bass frequency put out by the speakers of the sound system from the public venue 50 metres away, a stand of vegetation and 5 metres below us is applied.

Just goes to show how fast sound travels. Really out there, man.

Now that was worth waiting for. Eh.

Parables

Like swamp-gas bubbles rising through the pond-weed of Life, so are the days of our lives.

We had a strange weekend. Someone special to someone special to us died. Some other special people are beating their heads on a brick wall to save their dream. The kids are still not over their colds and bugs and I feel like crap and I fucked the kids computer. It wouldn't matter much if they weren't using mine instead.

Bugger.

On the up side, the weather today was glorious and it was a beautiful day to be alive. There is an occasional upside to waking up in the mornings, after all. It's called coffee and ciggie on the patio in the sunshine before the kids wake up, sorting out which Miracles to perform today.

Almost bliss. Almost.

Adhesions

And now for something completely different...





and



Ok so that one was a bit naff, but this one is different



No post-it notes will be harmed in the execution of our planned practical jokes. We have a little list, but if I told you what's on it I'd have to kill you. The wrong person might read it and fuck it up. I can think of better things to wrap in tinfoil, as well.

I do remember with fondness the one we pulled on Heather at the video shop when we got the assistant Damien to tell H all the Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen (a.k.a. Hairy Date and Smash Me Moleskin) movies were being recalled and burnt because they were utter crap. I'm sure I can date my first bout of incontinence to that event. So can Shari, she's better at this shit than I am.

See you on the other side of someday. Maybe you are on my list...

PS - Have you been reading those Cheeky Quotes over there <<<<---- ? Some of them are bloody funny.

Children of clay

I find this strangely unnerving, almost like the singing budgie Kylie Minogue, but different. It bothers me on so many levels, perhaps because it's presented in a medium more often associated with childrens' entertainment. Unlike Kylie, whose largest fan base demographic is reputedly middle-aged gay males, according to an item I was reading a few days ago and I can't for the life of me see why that might be. Mind you, it's not hard to become a success when you start with a canvas like this, eh



Remember, nothing succeeds like a budgerigar.

Second Coming

Was the re-enactment of the Big Bang in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN tonight really the Second Coming of Christ?

THAT is the question we should all be asking ourselves...

GENEVA -The world's largest particle collider successfully completed its first major test by firing a beam of protons all the way around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:36 a.m. (0836 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled the full length of the US$3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider.
"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.

more...

Even if it wasn't a Big Bang of Biblical proportions, the foreplay was a riot.

Legal bid to stop CERN atom smasher from 'destroying the world' - The world's biggest and most expensive scientific experiment has been hit by a last minute legal challenge, amid claims that the research could bring about the end of the world.

A bit of Black humour to end the day on - Black Holes are what you get in black socks.

I was waiting for the Earth to move, but...nothing. Very disappointing, story of my life, really.

Hey, ewe

This having the flu tends to change ya perspective on life a little. Lying down a lot does that. For instance, I know from all my time in bed over the past week that there is far too much flyshit on the rosette around my light fitting and the wallpaper needs fixing properly. OK so I already knew all that in a cerebral way, now it's been optically confirmed, even without my specs on. I focused.

Anyway, one day I got to thinking about Happy Pills. It seems like everyone is taking them, or has taken them, or will be taking them soon; the same drugs in similar doses for different reasons, with almost ovine complacency. Because, for whatever reason, our life sux. The curse of the modern age is the cure of the modern age - no, not Viagra, Prozac. Or fluoxetine, citalopram, aropax, amitrips, valium or whatever flavour of little helper Mother (or Father) has been prescribed by their medical professional because for whatever reason, equilibrium has been lost. Because when it's too hard to fix a life unfixable, even if you have nothing else, you can always have drugs.

Wouldn't it be nicer to have a world where simple, ordinary desires are met as of right and everyone isn't living a chemically induced false reality and calling it "normal"? And let's face it, most people's happiness is only a chasm-hop away. One way or the other, they won't know if they lost on landing.

OK ok, I'll go take my pills like a good girl, but only because you promised I could wear the Gimp suit tonight.


Life's just much too hard today
I hear ev'ry mother say
The pursuit of happiness just seems a bore
And if you take more of those
You will get an overdose
No more running for the shelter
Of a mother's little helper - Rolling Stones

Nothing's changed much since 1966. Has it?

Throaty

The sore throat that needed Throaties (see last post), became something more sinister as Saturday spun into afternoon and necessitated a trip to the Doc, half a chemist shop and meningitis watch over a teenager with a bad throat infection, oral thrush and a temp at times of 39.8 degrees.

It's 1am and it looks like the medicines are all kicking in, I didn't have to sponge him down to 38.1 - he got there himself. He polished off half a glass of water and 3 spoons of "Pam's* Strawberry Thrill Instant Dessert" too.

I think it's safe to go to bed.

* - Not to be confused with my Pams, which are more of a Strawberry Coloured Instant Thrill Just Desserts and has a completely different smell and texture.

More than you paid for

I been stuck in bed all week with flu, you know aching, coughing, head pounding, nose running dead-on-ya-back flu, chewing on anti-Bs for the chest infection and slobbering down hot lemon, honey and aspirin drinks (with all the flesh left in), sleeping the days away and heating the wheat sacks all night. And then yesterday, Ads started coming down with it.

So, being the good mother I am (even if I'm not really fit to drive yet, I'm better than yesterday and there's not much choice when no-one gives a shit whether you are sick or well, not even your father who lives less than a kilometre away) I went off to the local run down dive little supermarket, where they are giving it a facelift which makes getting around it interesting, to buy Throaties for da boy only to be confronted with a demolition skip right outside packed full of stainless steel - display trolleys and shelves and sheets of heavy gauge stainless mesh that would be nicely Cocky and Ruby proof and on my way back out I stopped, looked, fumbled with my cellie to call Glorious and tell her when this guy comes along, says to some bloke having a smoke not far away "oi, what's happening to this lot" to which this bloke replies "take what you want away" and BOOM, suddenly 6 large sheets of heavy gauge, cockatoo-proof stainless steel mesh are walking up the footpath.

I put the phone away and got my beady little eyes on, eventually finishing up with two upright stainless steel display units poking a metre out the back of my car (one of which is a corner unit) and 8 big steel baskets for the garden. I'll take a pic tomorrow, if I remember. Now all I gotta do is figure out WTF to do with them...

Well Flattie built a fab new shade house for Lady Cat this week, I'm just a sad ol' broken ass trying to keep up with the Flatcats. Besides, being so sick that I can't drive up there as planned this weekend to celebrate Flattie's just-passed birthday, I figured I may as well give him a chance to point and laff at my magpie impersonation here - beats the hell out of a belated birthday present of an invite to three funerals because I wrote us all off in the Gorge instead of staying in bed, where I belong.

Maybe next week I'll be able to walk again. And the tingling and numbness will leave my hands and arms and that new spastic spot in my left thigh near my hip will abate once the fevers stop triggering new MS shit and we'll be able to keep our postponement appointment at the best lil Cathouse in the West East, next weekend.



Here ya go...



Dis be one of them.

Dis be something else.

Whine

Got bot.

I hurt.

Nuff said.

*sigh*

As if the Bot or MS weren't enough on their own, in combination they become instruments of torture and NOT the kind I like ;-)

Hard at work

Time: 2.10am.

I'm awake. And sick. Not just the usual lack of equilibrium, or the ability to stand up straight and take a step; I'm coughing and aching all over and I think I have a cold coming which, if it's the same one nearly everyone around me has had for the past week or few means I could be in for one hell of a ride.

I wonder what this busy little guy takes for a cold - honey drinks?