When it’s good, it’s excellent

It’s raining raining raining.  All day up in my tower I watched it pelt down on every side.  North south east west.

The printers in my office are named South, East, and West.  Someone wanted to know where the South printer was, and I was trying to do that by looking at landmarks out the window, but I was beaten to it by an iPhone.  They have fucking compasses, don’t you know.  I hate you, Applefags. 

On Saturday, I went to lunch with my family for my brother’s birthday and my mum dazzled my dad with her iPhone’s compass.  I had to watch him test it out, watch him go from cynical to loving it in approximately 20 seconds.  They’ve even gotten to my dad.  I thought he was an impenetrable fortress of Luddism.  This is the man once known for declaring that dishwashers were a fad and would never catch on.  

He also regaled us with a well-worn story of when he was in his early 20s, having lunch with his boss at a fancy restaurant.  He ordered the bouillabaisse, which he’d never eaten before.  The waiter placed a bowl in front of him and he immediately started spooning it away.  When he finished, his boss asked "So how was it?"   My dad said "Oh, it was okay, a bit bland, a bit too watery for my liking."    He was then informed that it was actually the finger bowl water he’d just ladled into his gullet.  

Then my dad told us in a very matter-of-fact way of how the shortness of old people could be cured by stretching them on a rack, and then gave us a list of the benefits of this.  On the drive home, my mum told me that my dad has been telling people this theory since he was in his 20s, and that he was exaggerating when he said that my grandma started off as 5 foot 8.  That was reassuring because I’m only 5 foot 5, and grandma barely breaks 5 foot these days.  I’m not so keen on the rack idea for myself.  

It was a rollicking start to an unplanned weekend that never went bad.  My mum dropped us off near her house in Kirribilli and took the Palex off for a sleep-over, so I walked across the Bridge to the city with Jones.  We talked about masturbation.  Nothing suss!!  I dunno.  It’s normal to talk about that stuff with mates I suppose, but it’s meant to be weird with an ex, but it wasn’t.. but but but.  Anyway, I don’t need to explain myself to myself.  We walked across the bridge making people feel uncomfortable by discussing the medical benefits of self-relief and walked up George st aimlessly until we came to Galaxy arcade.  There was a Batman pinball machine, a Japanese fighting game housed in an old Tekken 5 chassis so the buttons weren’t configured right, Mario Kart arcade, House of the Dead 4, Street Fighter, Dance Dance revolution, more Mario Kart… I sunk about 20 bucks and 2 hours into that place without even blinking. 

I was having fun and had nothing else to do so we walked up to the main drag of Newtown to go to Max Brenner.  I had a Peanut Butter Iced Chocolate so good I needed medication to deal with the sugar headache it gave me.  Jones had a chocolate shot full of pop rocks.  

I know I bitch about Newtown, call it Spewtown and all, but it’s got its charms, like the 2nd hand bookstore.  If I ever need to explain to the Palex what the word "disarray" means, I’ll take him to this store.  Zero OH&S policy.  There are different sections for different kinds of books, but if it’s not on a shelf, then it could be anything. You can easily trip over piles of books or die in an aisle and not be found for a week.    And there’s a cat that just randomly stalks around and appears at the end of rows of books on Australian labour history to tell you that you have come the wrong way, you must go back.  

     
(not my photos…  I don’t tend to take cameras with me to book stores, sorry)
 
One of the sections closest to the entrance is the 2nd hand porn and nudie mags.  Some of them date to the 70s, like the one full of "nature shots" of bearded men with flaccid uncircumcised penises hanging out there while they chilled on a beach or poked a pitchfork into hay in a barn.   I enjoyed that one.   I bought a book on assertiveness and last week’s New Scientist.  The old man who owns the shop is stuck on slow motion, and the time it took to make the purchase made it seem all the more significant.  

The Dendy decided that the M rated anime they played on Saturday should be played in the afternoon and the lame fucking PG selection (there are good PG anime, just not the ones they had) would be at night.  I should have been disappointed not to partake of their anime festival, but maybe it was for the best.

 Instead, we walked back to the city to go to my favouritest pub in the whole world.  I can’t tell anyone else what it’s called because they’ll go there and ruin it.  They have no TVs with horse races or rugby on but artworks on the wall instead by street artists and graff writers and the like.  There are always two people on the bar, and sometimes they are too busy making out with each other to serve you and they pick the music themselves, a lot of it being played on a laptop via YouTube. Every time I go there they play Hip Hop by Dead Prez at some point during my visit.  There is no jukebox; you can’t rickroll the pub or play Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi.  There is an Elvira pinball machine called "Scared Stiff".  There are old couches to sit on and there’s always a spot when I go there (I go early before any DJs start or the trendies from Spewtown start moving in on my turf).  I sat there for ages so so happy.  That pub is heaven.  

And Sunday was great too.  I actually slept in.  Well, that was bad, because it made me feel like shit.  But I did laundry, I cleaned my room, I ate a balanced breakfast, I was so clean, so fresh.  Bryan picked me up to go indoor rock climbing.  It’s the only time I’m glad I don’t have a penis or testicles – they really don’t help you when you’re in that harness.   Being short is a bit of a downer, though.   Maybe I should consider that rack idea…  Whatever, I’m that much closer to becoming Bear Grylls.  Bryan says we can go indoor rock climbing again and again, and get really good at it.  My arm muscles were so pumped even still this morning.  I kept checking them in the mirror… "ooh baby check out my ‘ceps… fuck yeah, I’m ripped…" 

Raining raining.  Thunder. It’s so loud, my house is shaking.  I had a dream last night that there was lightning that spread out in sprinkles across the whole sky, but no thunder, and then the clouds disappeared really quick all of a sudden.  I was in a city that looked a bit like Venice and my brother came up to me in one of those foot-powered paddle boats shaped like a swan, with his hair in a mohawk, wearing bright pink Raybans and fluoro yellow boardshorts, sucking on a lollipop.  I was weirded out but I asked him if he saw the impressive weather-related phenomena going on.  He just licked his lollipop and casually gave me the thumbs up, then paddled off.   But it wasn’t raining last night, so I don’t know what was up with that.